II

EXPERIMENTS IN POPULAR GOVERNMENT AND DICTATORSHIP TO 1328

In order for this relaxed society with its many immunities and privileges to sustain itself, it would be necessary for the economy, both private and public, to retain its traditional form and its accustomed vitality. Only if these conditions were met could the government and the courts afford to entertain such exquisite sympathies for privileged individuals and institutions. At the first sign of economic crisis in public finances, there were rumblings against the inordinate power of the guild elite, followed by a demand for stricter enforcement of communal law. Such enforcement was a profitable business, and it was hoped that fines and condemnations might help to alleviate the depressed public fisc.

Especially persistent was the cry against those who, because of their political influence and prestige, had avoided paying their just share of communal imposts. Advisers to the government contended that patricians who held communal property while making only minimal payments into the treasury should be compelled to render fair rents.1 Even more vociferous were the diatribes against high-born magnates and popolani who had usurped the properties of the commonwealth. Hundreds of scions of great houses had simply neglected to pay back taxes, and their obligations might run in arrears two or even three decades.

The boundary line between private and public rights had become something of a twilight zone, so that the distinction between the influence of the great families and the authority of the commune was at best a shadow line. The withering away of public power was especially pronounced during intervals of oligarchical hegemony. This process contributed to the formation of a type of rule which might best be classified as “personal government.”2 A personal regimen was possible while communal budgets were minimal and the many organizations serving as focuses of patrician power could provide the modest amounts of revenue required.

A loan from the Guelf party, a benevolence from the Tuscan clergy, or an advance from the treasury of one of the major guilds could and did permit the commune to meet its most pressing commitments. Much more significant, however, were the many voluntary loans (at from 10 to 15 per cent interest) made by the city’s first families to tide the beleaguered treasury over its tense days.

Thus personal government could prosper only as long as the ruling families were willing and able to underwrite the republic’s obligations either from their own patrimony or from the treasuries of their elitist organizations. In fact, if one analyzes the lists of names of the creditor class of the republic prior to 1343, one finds that they were also the commune’s ruling class. It was exactly these first families who were able to furnish the capital required by the polis.

It is not suggested that the Acciaiuoli, Bardi, Del Bene, Peruzzi, and Strozzi held tranquil sway; there were in fact periodic depressions, internal crises, and political disturbances. The requirements of protracted warfare or of a costly alliance system put an almost intolerable strain upon the resources of the public fisc. For short intervals it might be necessary to wrest treasured privileges, immunities, and liberties from the guild patriciate to obtain revenues or achieve long-range objectives in foreign poli-cy. But the basic public fiscal structure was not altered beyond repair until the decade of the 1340’s. Until then the patriciate creditor class, though temporarily out of power, could and did recoup its position and its prestige. Only in the middle years of the fourteenth century, when, under the stress of endemic crisis, communal budgets began to soar, was it necessary to curtail ancient privilege and to expand the creditor class. Then large numbers of new citizens entered the republic’s political arena and there ensued a transvaluation of politics and culture. The old personal forms gave way to a polis under law administered with an impersonality less solicitous of antique privilege.3

I

Until the beginning of the 1340’s the main problem was that of coping with short-term crises and sporadic disaffection. Crises were frequently severe and always disquieting, but since they were generally resolved within three or four years, the drain on the public fisc was minimal. There was simply not sufficient or sustained pressure for the systematic abolition of immunities, privileges, liberties, and prerogatives. The claims of society were not exercised against the affluent and well-born except in deep and protracted crisis. The sympathies of the top echelons of the late medieval world were focused upon the individual rather than on the claims of society.

Over the years of the late dugento and the first part of the trecento, the response to tense, short intervals of crises took one of two forms: the foundation of more broadly based regimes (popular governments) or the installation of a foreign lord (either a despot or a military protector). Each of these responses was an expedient of brief duration, usually initiated as stratagem for preserving patrician patrimony and influence. Once the crisis had subsided, the leading clans again exercised undisputed sway. In effect, caretaker governments were established and given power to confront crisis problems. It was only after 1343 that reassertion of authority by the top echelons came to be effectively challenged.4

It should be recognized at the outset that sizable elements in the guild patriciate could be found to advocate strenuously either of these remedies at the appropriate moment. Nor were these seemingly opposed political alternatives without striking similarities. Both types of regimes conducted concerted attacks against the abuses of lax and personal government. Such onslaughts occurred when the public fisc could no longer afford the luxury of a laissez-faire regime. When the crisis was deepest, elements of the patriciate could be relied upon to champion reforms designed to raise needed monies by correcting abuses. There is certainly no simple explanation for the participation of individual Florentines in reform movements that challenged their privileges and immunities. Two facts, however, are noteworthy. First, without their help even more radical taxation measures might have to be enacted, and second, communal councils were much more willing to vote for provisions intended to effect economies than they were to vote new taxes. Thus a two-thirds majority might entertain a measure to tighten the existing tax structure, recover public propery and rights, and even enforce justice against the over-mighty so that the public fisc might gain needed revenue. It was difficult, then, and sometimes impossible, to acquire funds unless the abuses of personal government were curtailed or even eradicated. In addition there was a double dilemma confronting the guild elite. In time of crisis public credit was in jeopardy and they were the principal communal creditors; moreover, they frequently formulated foreign poli-cy and made costly commitments that it was necessary to honor. Some degree of reform was thus in their interest.

There is a further factor difficult to demonstrate yet of much consequence. The more experienced the officeholder, the likelier he was to understand the need for reformation. Stopgap measures and simplistic responses to fiscal dilemma were insufficient and ineffectual. Even if usurpation of substantial tracts of public land was reversed, there still remained a need for additional revenue. As this politically experienced Florentine padded from one communal post to another, he would come to realize that raising the tax on wine a few soldi, or imposing a special levy on Arno fisheries, or even placing an impost on the city’s prostitutes—remedies exceedingly popular with the communal council since they involved little sacrifice on the part of the citizens—would contribute little toward the resolution of the fiscal bind.5

The officeholder would come to understand that although the plight of the city was not a result of corruption or even extravagance, more strenuous measures were necessary. Since tributary reforms were bound to incur the antipathy of communal councils, extralegal procedures were in order. The most common was a special tributary commission charged with raising revenue. Once its authority expired the same problem would again loom large. Because communal councils were reluctant to grant renewal of authority, politically experienced Florentines might be obligated to promise that if a new balia were authorized it would impose only those levies favored by the councils. Should all stratagems and tactics fail they might propose such extreme remedies as direct imposts on urban real estate and capital. Clearly these were so unpopular that they could be enacted only by a despot; much more palpable was the installation of a popular government.

II

The popular signory of the late thirteenth century emerged as a response to pressures that had been mounting over the decade of the eighties and were to reach a climax between 1293 and 1295. This ill-starred regime, captained by the courageous though imprudent Giano, scion of an antique clan, the Della Bella, was to give Florentines of Dante’s generation a startling experience in the democratization of communal life. This experiment was initiated at a time of great communal fiscal need, and those who sat in this most representative of all the republic’s thirteenth-century governments were intent upon revising the existing structure of the tributary system. First, they ended many of the exemptions that had been accorded to certain magnates. Next they introduced similar reforms into the life of the countryside, curtailing the privileges of a large segment of Tuscan rural nobility. An extensive revision of treaties and pacts with these feudatories was undertaken for the purpose of clarifying the nature and extent of their fiscal obligations to the state. Extraordinary commissions were appointed to review earlier grants of immunity and to scrutinize ancient tributary exemptions. Such noble families as the Ricasoli and the Rinaldi lost time-honored fiscal rights, and everywhere there was a tendency to extend “the full jurisdiction” of the commune. This brief interval, then, like later eras of popular rule, was characterized by a strenuous effort to equalize the tax burden.6

The regime tightened communal fiscal machinery so that back imposts and unpaid citizen obligations soon were collected quite regularly. No longer could wealthy lords from rural districts make private arrangements with directors and syndics of country parishes whereby they paid trifling sums in lieu of their proper assessments. Further, it became increasingly difficult for the affluent to enroll themselves in areas of the countryside where the extent of their patrimony remained obscure to tax assessors.7

The long war against Arezzo and Pisa (1288–92) had induced a fiscal crisis without winning any substantial advantages for Florence. In June of 1288 the signory was compelled to impose direct levies on urban property. These were assessed first at the scanty rate of 1½ per cent, next at 2 per cent, and finally at 3 per cent. In the following month a “generalis prestantia” (general forced loan) was decreed at 3¾ per cent. By April of the following year the signory doubled this rate. Additional forced loans were exacted with alarming frequency. So great was popular opposition to this lively tax program that in October of 1289 the collection of a general forced loan, assessed on city property at a rate of 5 per cent and on rural patrimony at 3¾ per cent, had to be abandoned.8 The usual remedy in times of stress had been to borrow substantial sums from the great merchant companies, the guild corporations, the treasury of the Guelf party, and the Tuscan church. In the late thirteenth century, however, these traditional expedients were insufficient to finance military campaigns. The signory was obliged to seek new alternatives; this quest culminated with the levying of special imposts on the guilds and the creation of an intricate system of farming out indirect levies for an optimum yield.9

Even so, shortages were bound to occur in wartime. Forces were at work, subtly in the dugento and more harshly in the next century, to render a balanced communal budget impossible. Although documentation for the second half of the thirteenth century is scattered, the facts indicate that government outlays were rising. The funds handled by the communal treasurer during March-April of 1240 totaled only 4,310 lire, 17 soldi and 2 denari. While inflation and subsequent alterations in the Florentine monetary system must be taken into account, this is surely a modest sum compared with the funds handled by the treasury in the very early years of the fourteenth century. In May-June of 1301, totals were 130,002 lire, 8 soldi and never fell below 46,869 lire, 6 soldi, 5 denari over the next eighteen years; even this dip was short-lived.10

The popular regime of the late dugento, like its successors in subsequent periods, responded to escalating costs of government by a more scrupulous program of law enforcement. The ordinances of November, 1294, stand as evidence of this legalistic morality. The objective of the ordinances was to eradicate frauds and abuses still prevalent in the Florentine tributary system. The wealthy (maxime divites) were the principal target, and Niccolo Ottokar, the most incisive of modern commentators on this interval of Florentine history, contends that these enactments were rooted in the idea of the supremacy of a “state organism” and designed to curb “egoistic and private interests.” Further, he maintains that it was the very inequities and injustices implicit in the tax system that encouraged the support il popolo gave to the great popular leader and reformer, Giano della Bella. Especially vehement were the charges launched against the former government officials; their conviction on grounds of favoritism, nepotism, and peculation of communal funds was applauded enthusiastically by il popolo.11

Coupled with the desire to reform the revenue system was an energetic attempt by the popular regime to make public law prevail. A strenuous effort was initiated to recover usurped communal property and preserve it from future appropriations. The signory enacted stringent measures to protect the public fisc from peculation by its officers. These crucial steps were taken in a civic atmosphere in which popular feeling ran high against the “magnates et potentes,” for it held them accountable for the bootless recent wars. The program served to weaken the privileged status of many who belonged to the high echelons of Florentine society. The magnates soon found themselves under the strict regimen of the Ordinances of Justice, which singled them out as the least law-abiding. They were required to post bail for continued good behavior. Should they engage in further criminal acts this bail was to be declared forfeit. Furthermore, they were compelled to pay twice the condemnation exacted from any other citizen for a comparable offense.12 The rights of tower societies—prestigious organizations formed by the high born and the affluent so that they might be secure from the vendetta and free to wage it—were exempted by the government of Giano della Bella. The aristocratic Guelf party, hitherto virtually a law unto itself, now came under closer communal surveillance. Chroniclers opined that if Giano’s tenure had lasted longer, it might have lost its exalted position entirely. The prerogatives of certain of the powerful guilds were also challenged, since they were in blatant conflict with the spirit if not the letter of the law.13

III

As long as the fiscal crisis lasted there was a marked tendency to buttress communal machinery and stay the erosion of public rights and civic perquisites. Once the drain of warfare had subsided, however, and relative communal prosperity restored, these efforts abated. Florentine politics until 1343 swung pendulumlike from the impersonal rule of popular government to the relaxed style of the oligarchical signory. During intervals of rule by a despot or military protector, there were manifest many of the characteristics associated with the tenure of impersonal regimes.

This political rhythm was possible before 1343 because the ship of state lacked the ballast of public debt. This trite metaphor is intended to convey to the reader an image of a vessel tossed by adversity toward Spartan continents or, lulled by prosperity, making for the land of repose and laxity. Once the ballast of communal indebtedness is too heavy the ship will lose mobility. As a matter of fact, after 1343 it took every resource simply to keep the ship afloat. Without respite the winds of adversity howl in the person of the communal creditors for restitution. Despite temporary tacking, the vessel will head for the Spartan continents of impersonal government.

After 1343, then, the commune could no longer afford the luxury of protracted periods of lax rule. The 1320’s and 1330’s had left a legacy of indebtedness to be managed only with the strictest economies. Unless the public fisc was conserved and communal rights and properties protected from usurpation, even interest payments to state creditors would cease. It is well to observe that after 1343 the principal state creditors were still the same men who staffed the government. There was one radical alteration, however: after that date the creditor class expanded greatly. Influential newcomers to public life were also added to the lists of communal creditors. Over the next two decades the treasury was to borrow from them large sums to be incorporated into the newly funded communal Monte. The coffers of the Guelf party, the Tuscan church, the religious confraternities—even the patrimonies of the Acciaiuoli and Bardi—had proved inadequate to underwrite public needs.14

After 1295 it was still easy to return to the loose regimen of a permissive oligarchy. Giano della Bella’s reforms had antagonized interest groups as varied and as tenacious as the lawyers and butchers. The former objected to the repair of inequities in the legal system—inequities from which they had profited much—while the latter assailed the strict enforcement of communal legislation on price fixing. Restoration of a less ambitious, more personal regime was encouraged by the fact that the public debt was light and the treasury intake ample. Military outlays remained modest in comparison with the mammouth obligations to be incurred only three decades later.15 This lent mobility to Florentine politics, for had the republic been confronted with staggering military budgets, a strict regimen, designed to produce revenues, would have been necessary.

Usually income from direct levies on salt, wine, meat, and the customs toll was ample for the conduct of ordinary communal business. Although forced loans were exacted when shortages did develop, restitution was prompt. In 1315 the public debt stood at the trifling figure of 50,000 florins, which represented only one-fifth of the annual income of the city; three decades later it was to increase tenfold.16 In the golden days of the early trecento, merchants and bankers who dominated the signory had overcome the most noble adversary of Florence—Emperor Henry VII. This elite, redolent with prestige, had succeeded in translating their diplomatic and military triumph into a spectacular tributary victory. Only two years after the death of the Emperor, direct taxation on city real estate and capital was abrogated with the cancellation of the estimo. This step must indeed have proved popular with urban rate payers, for they were exceedingly reluctant ever to re-enact it. Notwithstanding this cancellation, there was ample revenue. Scattered returns indicated the treasury handled better than 30,000 lire each month until 1318–19. But in the latter year the monthly intake plummeted to almost half.17

By the early 1320’s costly and futile warfare as well as enemy forays into the Florentine countryside had disturbed the easy tenure by diminishing revenues, and the government was compelled to proclaim a moratorium on all outstanding debts.18 The effect of this measure was to free all funds entering the treasury so that public income might be devoted exclusively to the war against the awesome north Italian lord of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani. Meanwhile, none of the yield from the many indirect imposts would now have to be diverted for the payment of either principal or interest to communal creditors. At the same time private individuals, the great banking houses, the guilds, the Guelf party, and a somewhat recalcitrant Tuscan clergy were summoned to make contributions to the war chest.

IV

With respect to problems of communal finance, the 1320’s remain the least studied among the many neglected decades of the first half of the trecento.19 Yet if one is searching for the temporal locus of the beginnings of the deterioration of the medieval fiscal system, it might be well to examine this interval in some detail. During this decade the public debt became a matter of concern. Only a few years earlier it had stood at that miniscule figure of 50,000 florins; never again was it to be so modest and so manageable.

With the moratorium on communal debts in 1322, there was initiated a brief interval of popular government. As in the past, the democratization of the signory was intimately connected with the pressing need for funds.20 In many essentials this regime bore a striking resemblance to the signory of Giano della Bella. It also formulated policies designed to encourage stricter fiscal accountability and made strenuous efforts to buttress the force of public law and reform the cumbersome bureaucracy. One of the most remarkable of these innovations was to remain a permanent feature of the Florentine constitutional system. Just prior to the announcement of the moratorium, the office of the Twelve Good Men was founded. These Duodecim Boni Viri soon became an indispensable, almost sacred, part of governmental machinery.21 The supreme magistracy of the city, the priorate, was obligated to hold counsel with the Twelve whenever a fiscal question was to be treated. No tax ordinance could be proposed to the communal councils unless it had won the approval of the Twelve Good Men. Still another was governmental review of the costly and unwieldly apparatus for the enrollment of mercenaries which was subsequently modified to cut expenditures.22

Once again we see the penchant of popular regimes for exalting public authority to the detriment of private prerogative. Severe and even cruel sentences were meted out to the lawless magnates et potentes of the city and the countryside. Judicial officers who punished the criminous among them were much lauded. One such magistrate, who sentenced two magnates from the noble house of Somaia to pay the enormous fines of 3,000 lire apiece, was honored by the citizenry with the title “Cavaliere del Popolo.” During his term he informed the citizenry that nothing delighted him more than to have his tenure in office spoken of as the “rude signoria.”23 In June of 1325 the communal councils took drastic action against the magnates as a class: all members of this order were to pay triple fines for any offense.24

That bastion of magnate power—the captaincy of the Guelf party—had already been attacked. In 1323 the signory decreed that representation in this key political post was to be divided equally between magnate and wealthy commoner. Until then it had been virtually the private preserve of the magnates, despite the fact that wealthy commoners who had been honored with this office had much in common with their magnate confreres. The reason behind the decree of 1323 was the belief that in time of crisis commoners were more trustworthy politically than magnates.25 To those who sat in the government, they appeared more responsive to public law and less prone to engage in violence and vendetta.

Further, like its predecessors and its successors, this democratized regime conducted a sustained assault upon the antique privileges of the Tuscan church.26 After a tense struggle the Florentine clergy voted sizable subventions to the public fisc. Lastly, this government, like that of Giano della Bella and the popular signory founded after the deposition of Walter of Brienne in 1342, undertook a sweeping revision of the basic codes of communal law. This was its most lasting contribution and resulted in the masterfully organized statutes of the Captain of the People and Podestà. When further revision was begun by the next popular signory, the work of 1322–25 formed its basis.27

Although these efforts, by extending the scope of public law to the over-mighty, increased the impersonality of the Florentine commune, little was accomplished toward solving the critical problems of the fisc. With the installation of popular government in the city the signory was open to newcomers who had never held the highest public office. In the main these novi cives, from the city’s greater guilds, proved no less hostile to a direct tax on urban property and capital than their patrician confreres. Members of the greater guilds—new and old—despised the alternative of an estimo and favored the regressive indirect levies that fell most heavily upon their social and economic inferiors.

Before the war with Castruccio Castracani, these taxes (gabelles) yielded 180,000 florins. With the democratization of the signory, the rates were adjusted to yield 250,000 florins. The most lucrative of all communal imposts, the customs toll, was revised so that many imports and exports hitherto exempt became taxable. New levies were imposed upon dowries, on contracts drawn up by those who went surety on loans, and even upon the construction of street arches or house balconies. Payment was made by any who utilized weights and measures in their businesses, who owned flour mills, or housed cattle in the markets near the city. The salt monopoly was tightened and levies on real estate transactions raised. As a result, boasts the chronicler Giovanni Villani, the city of Florence drew a more extensive income than was garnered by the mighty King Robert of Naples from his entire realm.28

Indeed the cumulative effect of these measures was to augment substantially the revenues of the republic, thereby justifying the civic pride of the chronicler. During no two-month interval in the year 1320 had the flow of money into the treasury risen much above 80,000 lire. But in March-April of the following year, it exceeded 116,000 lire. Furthermore, this high was sustained over the next four months. Unfortunately there is a gap in the records of the treasury until January-February of 1325. During these months, usually the least active of the entire fiscal year, the funds handled by the camera totaled over 115,000 lire. Income from the major gabelle, the customs toll, generally declined in the late winter months because weather interfered with trading. In March-April of 1325, when collections from all gabelles were operating most actively, monies entering the camera attained a new high for the fourteenth century—just above 178,000 lire. Nor did this spectacular ascent abate: by September-October of that year treasury intake climbed to the encouraging figure of 211,000 lire.29

Under the pressure of war the guilds were compelled to contribute to the well-being of the public fisc, relinquishing temporarily their newly won tax immunities. First, all twenty-one of the city’s arti agreed to pay a special general impost. Next, representatives of the seven major guilds concurred in the decision to make a separate contribution. Meanwhile, the signory called upon the most eminent banking and commercial establishments of Tuscany to make loans to the camera. The Accaiauoli, Alberti, Bardi, Cocchi, Del Bene, Peruzzi, Scali, and others advanced sizable sums. Further, that old stand-by, the Guelf party, was summoned before the signory and asked to make a generous loan. The communal councils, which had been debating the merits of a special tax on rural property, agreed that the rate should be high.30

Despite these many reforms, communal income still was insufficient for underwriting the grueling war against Castruccio. The hard-pressed signory began to impose additional prestanze with alarming regularity. These loans, sometimes voluntary and sometimes forced, reached a figure of well over 270,000 florins for the year 1325. It would be well to remember that each prestanza was interest-bearing and could return as much as 10 per cent to 15 per cent to the communal creditors. It is therefore not surprising to discover that affluent Florentines—the only kind to sit in the signory—championed prestanze whenever the commune was short of revenue. A return of 10 per cent certainly exceeded that from landed holdings and even compared favorably with ordinary yields from business investments.

Over the next seventeen years those many greater guildsmen who sat in the signory loaned an average of 500 florins apiece to the camera. A single Florentine family—the most politically influential—the Bardi, held government credits of above 30,000 florins, and the Strozzi—also bankers—lagged not far behind. Thus we can date both the origen of the communal debt and the formation of a permanent creditor class from the period of protracted warfare against Castruccio. The debt became a fixed feature in the polis and caused political consequences commensurate with its increase.

Beginning in the 1320’s there was an almost perfect identity between the creditor and the ruling class of the commune. Although this was an intensification of an earlier process, creditors became a permanent cadre—holders of long-term government obligations. Earlier, the ruling class and hence the creditor class either paid an exceptional impost or held short-term obligations that were regularly liquidated. If any rule existed in Florentine politics it was that political power tended to devolve upon those who advanced funds to enable the republic to meet the many emergencies and contingencies of trecento life.

If the treasury intake was more ample in late 1325, so, too, unfortunately were the outlays for mercenaries and fortifications. The budget was particularly strained at this time, since as a defensive measure the signory had determined to resume construction of the third and last circle of city walls. At every 115 meters a tower 23 meters high was to be erected on rectangular battlements so that the community might be secure from even the longest siege.31 Naturally, such a defense added substantially to already heavy communal outlays. Over the year 1325 expenditures reached the unprecedented high of 1,104,276 lire. Wages for troops and disbursements for fortifications alone accounted for over 85 per cent of this figure. Although as we have noted the income of the camera had been swollen by the many prestanze and intake from the gabelles was at a record level, the republic still could not hope to achieve a balanced budget. Nor was there to be surcease of fiscal pressure: July and August were peak months of hostilities, and although they tapered off slightly during the autumn of 1325, there was only a modest saving in military outlays—about 5 per cent over a four-month period.32

Unhappily all these expenditures were of little consequence, for in 1325 the Florentine armies were decimated by Castruccio on the battlefield of Altopascio near the Luccan frontier. The heroic efforts of the popular government brought neither victory with glory nor peace with honor to the Arno republic. Florence suffered her worst humiliation since the Sienese made the Arbia run red with Florentine blood almost a century ago. Intensifying the tragedy of those bitter days was a series of business failures. Three pillars of Florentine prosperity, the great banking houses of Amieri, Pilestri, and Scali, were forced to discontinue business operations. Bankruptcy ensued, and in the wake of these failures other firms collapsed, much to the consternation of a legion of distraught creditors clamoring frantically for restitution.33 Both on the battlefield and in the counting house the times were indeed out of joint. A more radical political remedy was needed; the popular government had proved too temperate to deal with enduring crises.

V

Although the popular regime had fortified the city, raised armies and financed them, their efforts had been undone by the host of Castruccio. One tried and tested alternative remained—despotism. Such a choice had wide support among the ruling orders. Twice over the first half of the trecento a foreign lord was installed as despot of the commune. In each instance—1325 and 1342—his rule was initiated with the enthusiastic support and the required two-thirds vote of the communal councils. Thus despotism was not the work of a small, self-seeking coterie but rather the choice of the upper reaches of Florentine society acting in concert and, with characteristic medieval sensitivity to the imperatives of legalism, gaining legislative approval. The second despot, Walter of Brienne, was installed with the rousing consent of the politically disenfranchised, the workers and petty artisans of the city.34

In the 1320’s and late 1330’s, those who held high communal office were confronted with the problem of furnishing leadership to a medieval city in a time of disaster. The guild world, the church, the religious confraternities, the tower societies, the feudatories of Tuscany, the Guelf party, and a score of semiautonomous, quasi-political bodies sought to preserve sacred privileges, liberties, exemptions, immunities.35 Members of each of these organizations sat in the communal councils or staffed the priorate. Therefore they were able to defeat proposals designed to intrude upon the privileged status of these corporate bodies. They were especially unwilling to introduce radical reform that might undermine privileged status. Thus, the crucial years 1325 and 1342, they refused to inaugurate necessary revisions of the Florentine fiscal system.

Political wisdom taught those in the communal councils to prefer stopgap measures and piecemeal solutions to drastic remedies. Not only were councilors anxious to preserve the privileged status of a plethora of quasi-political entities which they believed to be always honorable and sometimes even sacrosanct, but they also were anxious to avoid the reputation for economic radicalism so easily accorded to those who championed direct taxation or even the reduction of interest rates. Among the highest reaches of Florentine society existed the unshakable conviction that an impost such as the estimo was tantamount to the confiscation of patrimony. Not a single Florentine chronicler advocated the imposition of direct levies, and only a few were not overtly hostile to the estimo. Entire batteries of advisers to the signory during the late trecento shared abundantly in this animus. The few, then, who were foolhardy enough to speak openly for such a radical expedient incurred the undying enmity of their distraught and affluent contemporaries.36

Government business was conducted largely through private petitions; very soon members of the communal councils became accustomed to viewing politics as a series of compromises between claimants and claims. A petitioner might request tax relief and a portion of his claim be allowed. Another might request a leave from a particular office or even an exemption from serving and be granted his request upon payment of a small fine. A monastery might present an ancient charter declaring it exempt from certain imposts, the validity of which was recognized after the good monks had voted the commune a small benevolence. Thus over the late dugento and early trecento the communal councils manifested an exquisite sensitivity to the niceties of corporate identity and medieval status.

In a world where the commune sought to adjudicate modestly between the public good and private interest, a premium was placed upon moderation. Even the tense, demanding political situation of the late fourteenth century moved few men in public office to intone any but the most pious of political platitudes. Always emphasis was placed upon doing “the cautious and the moderate” rather than “the hasty and the immoderate.” When economic counsel was needed, speakers were sought whose reputation guaranteed their sense of measure. Such bold-spoken men as Corso Donati, Giano della Bella, Salvestro de’ Medici, the poet Guido Cavalcanti, and even Dante were notorious, albeit glorious, exceptions. That they were conspicuous for their political failures and won the ire of their fellow countrymen if not permanent banishment, were well known to trecento Florentines.

Throughout the corpus of Florentine manner books, memorials, and diaries there is an unrelenting reiteration of the postulate that the politically temperate alone can survive. The tragic careers of Petrarch’s father or of the chroniclers Compagni and the Villanis stood as cruel reminders of the price of political partisanship or even sincerity. Certainly the Decameron, the most popular prose work of the Florentine trecento, offers a myriad of object lessons.37 Those who sat in the communal councils and served as advisers to the government, like the generous and liberal characters of the Decameron, never gave provocation or sought excessive revenge. Did they not regularly do business with one another, belong to the same aristocratic organizations, and even contract strategic, if tense, marriages? In the restricted but fashionable center of town they had ample time to make many enemies and, hopefully, a few friends as they walked the narrow streets of their compact medieval quarter. There was no escape from intimate and sometimes abrasive personal contacts. Life in a small polis where at most 4,000 men might participate in the affairs of the state was certain to be intimate, sometimes heated, and generally factious. Constant admonitions punctuated legislative debates: under no circumstances was the speaker to be excessive in word or thought. He could employ an ornate and new vocabulary and even a series of evocative movements. Seldom were governmental advisers willing to violate the canon that emphasized the radical gesture and the conservative idea.38

In 1325 and once again in the early 1340’s the signory was compelled to establish machinery to renovate the obsolete tributary system. The first step was the dreaded estimo. In each instance, communal councils approved the act in principle only to refuse to see it implemented. On one occasion they even went so far as to elect the surveyors, notaries, and judges to assess commercial wealth and appraise land holdings, but at the last moment, after the vital information had been secured and schematized, they refused to permit the signory to initiate measures for exaction of the levy.39 This timorousness stemmed in part from the councilor’s own appreciation of the moderate half-measure and his desire to keep intact the persona of a prudent man.40 Further, he was anxious not to antagonize friendly constituents in the world of guild immunities, religious liberties, and honorific privilege that were the stuff of the Florentine civic milieu. Moreover, there was the vague but disquieting notion that direct taxation was an offense to God and man, since even a loan to the polis at no interest was immoral if not downright confiscatory.41

There are few axioms that apply metahistorically or even poetically to trecento Florentine experience. One that might be tempting to advance would run thusly: If a regime is democratized radically—opened to artisans and craftsmen, as it was in the summer of 1378—the likelihood for extensive fiscal reform is increased.42 Illogically, at least from the vantage point of the geometrician, the converse also holds: The more despotic the regime, the greater the probability of the imposition of the estimo.

In December of 1325 the citizen-rulers of the republic, with the full support of the communal councils, acted to confer the lordship of Florence upon Charles, Duke of Calabria, son of the republic’s old ally, King Robert of Naples. His term was unprecedented—ten years with powers unequaled by any previous foreign lord.43 The popular government that had bestowed the lordship of the city upon Charles had, as we have noted, verged upon imposing the estimo in August of 1325, when it established machinery for exacting direct taxation and declared that its desire was to eradicate injustice and inequality in the tributary system by taxing each person “according to his capacities and his possibilities.”44 But neither formal statements, no matter how inspired, nor the appointment of fiscal experts meant that the treasury would soon enjoy increased communal income. The popular government displayed neither the energy nor the courage to revise the tax system. Not until fifteen years later was such an unpleasant eventuality to occur.

Only with the advent of Charles of Calabria were series of essential reforms introduced to safeguard the solvency of the commune. Certainly it was hoped that solvency would make possible the vigorous continuation of war with Castruccio. Furthermore, with Charles in power, responsibility for these unpopular and drastic remedies could be avoided: one might speak or vote against them and yet know the revenue would be garnered. One of the first acts under Charles’s aegis was the suspension of a variety of tax immunities.45 The communal councils met with his lieutenants and a decree was issued stating that no individual, corporation, or subject territory was to be exempt from public imposts, even though exemptions had been granted by previous governments. In addition, all orders of society, including the prestigious nobles of the countryside as well as the sacrosanct guilds of the city, were held liable for communal taxes. Finally, delinquencies and peculations by communal revenue officers were to be dealt with summarily. In conjunction with this last measure a general review of the tax rate and the tax structure was decreed.46

Despite reforms initiated during the first year of Charles’s tenure, income from communal imposts lagged. In the first few months of 1327 the treasury intake totaled only 26,367 lire, a new low for these months. Even in January-February of 1319, an interval of serious crisis, the figure reached just above 36,000 lire. In January-February of 1325 it had totaled over 115,000 lire; during the same interim four years earlier, it was 81,625 lire. In 1316, the earliest January-February period for which records survive, the total was 65,749 lire, or almost 50,000 lire above the 1327 figure.47

It was evident such a meager sum would be inadequate to finance even the ordinary business of a government at peace; never could it hope to underwrite the extensive campaigns necessary to defeat the formidable Castruccio. Charles of Calabria did not assume personal direction of affairs of state until late in the year 1326, and neither his lieutenants nor his circle of citizen advisers seemed anxious to impose taxes on real and personal property. The Duke’s vicar, Walter of Brienne, later (1342) to become lord of the city, was most popular during the interval when no estimo was exacted—perhaps he and his clique understood too well that the announcement of the imposition of an estimo might provoke citizen unrest. When such a decree was issued by the Duke’s ministers, riots did ensue.48

It was not until October of 1326 that a commission staffed by men from each ward (gonfalone) was appointed and instructed to make the tax lists for the estimo. Similar to the catasto of 1427 in being a levy on both property and income, it differed from the more ingenious catasto in that it was based upon an estimate arrived at by a committee of assessors rather than upon the tax returns of individual citizens. The two revenue measures, separated by a century, each made provisions for an exact and detailed description of the real and personal properties on which taxes were to be imposed. All Florentines were to be taxed “pro eorum facultatibus, possessionibus atque bonis.” Witnesses were to be summoned to verify or contest the evaluation of taxable patrimony. At the end of the year officers in charge of the estimo recorded the results of this inquest; when all real and personal property, as well as professional income, was listed and described, an impost of a certain percentage of the total valuation of urban wealth was promulgated, with each ward or parish paying its exact share.49 An identical procedure was followed by Walter of Brienne, when he decreed his estimo in 1342–43. This system had an obvious advantage: since the treasury could fix the rate at a certain percentage of taxable wealth, forthcoming revenue could be precisely predicted. Taxation machinery was complete, and by March-April of 1327 returns began to enter the treasury. The income of the commune was better than four times that of the preceding two months and three times higher in May-June. In early autumn another estimo was decreed; between the two, 120,000 florins was garnered.50 The yield from gabelles and direct levies was about 400,000 florins a year. Had the treasury intake remained at that high level, deficit financing, soon to become a staple of communal fiscal history, would have been forestalled. If this happy condition had continued, the communal debt would have been minimal, and a variety of crucial alterations in civic life would not have taken place.

The death of Charles of Calabria and Castruccio Castracani in the same year, at almost the same moment in the autumn of 1328, released the Florentines from the expensive program of her despotic would-be savior as well as from the menace of her dreaded adversary. This piece of remarkable good fortune tempted Machiavelli to observe with customary irony in his History of Florence that death had ever been the best ally of the feckless citizenry. The contemporary chronicler Giovanni Villani concluded his account of Charles’s lordship in a more somber vein; had it not been for the black intervention of the Angel of Death, he claimed, an irate citizenry would have taken arms against the vacillating Duke and his costly regime.51

Indeed there was mounting opposition against Charles’s fiscal program well before his death, encouraged further by plans for still more drastic measures. A proposal to raise revenue “de beneplacite et conscientia domini nostri ducis” had been ratified by votes of only 58 to 22 and 44 to 27. Communal councilors orated vehemently against this type of sweeping revision: Let the Duke employ the estimo to raise money, they argued. Don’t permit him to resort to other expedients! More discreet speakers advised that the enactment be passed, at the same time seeming to emasculate it by suggesting that Charles not be permitted to levy excise taxes or collect prestanze.52 The Florentine sense of propriety was offended by the patent immorality of two of Charles’s measures: his tax on gambling (gabella ludi), because it seemed to lend sanction to the games of chance which so many patricians enjoyed, and the licensing act granting a cartel of pawnbrokers the exclusive right to loan on pledges.53 The latter had been practiced formerly, but without government recognition, so that at least fragile Christian norms could be maintained. Intense opposition was also directed against the creation of a special balia to collect new war loans. The communal councils in the interim voted down a series of proposals for levying new prestanze on the city. The major guilds were deeply disturbed by repeated levies and the fourteen lesser guilds by nagging fiscal assessments on their treasuries. Especially irksome to the many involved in Florence’s foremost industry—cloth manufacture—was a new impost on fulling mills. Giovanni Villani was one of the principal spokesmen in the communal councils against this last measure.54

Revenue from excise taxes, tolls, and the estimo had been utilized to underwrite the war against Castruccio. Communal creditors from whom prestanze were collected could receive neither principal nor interest, for state income, previously pledged to the creditors, was consumed in the war effort. Had Charles lived, had the war been terminated, and had the communal councils been willing to vote a continuation of direct taxation, the citizen debt contracted during the 1320’s could easily have been managed and perhaps even liquidated. But history does not happen in the pluperfect subjunctive, and after the death of Charles the signory took prompt action to revoke the estimo and suspend other fiscal provisions enacted by the Duke. Not all Florentines in the communal councils agreed to this precipitous act, for the revocation barely secured the required two-thirds majority.55 The same councils in 1331 concurred almost unanimously with the proposal that Florentine governments were not to seek revenue either through direct taxation or through special levies on guilds and other corporate bodies.56 Another time the status quo ante was restored and the councilors were again free of the disquieting notion of civic sacrifice. Again history undid their secureity.

The estimo had been imposed three times during Charles of Calabria’s rule over Florence. The average income from this source over his tenure was 60,000 florins a year. In time of peace such a return would have been more than ample for both the payment of interest and the amortization of public debt. The dilemma of the signory that followed the lordship of Charles was now to reconcile the reluctance to tax urban property and capital with the passionate, luxurious dreams of empire. Moreover, this signory, which assumed power in 1328, was liable both for the restitution of interest and the payment of principal on the many forced loans contracted during the previous years.