Italian Renaissance - John Addington Symonds

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were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the privileges of government, together with a larger population, who, though they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages of the city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was hereditary in those families by whom it had been once acquired, each republic having its own criterion of the right, and guarding it jealously against the encroachments of non-qualified persons. In Florence, for example, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.[1] In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the Golden Book. The rivalries to which this system of municipal government gave rise were a chief source of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor did the burghers see far enough or philosophically enough to recruit their numbers by a continuous admission of new members from the wealthy but unfranchised citizens.[2] This alone could have saved them from the death by dwindling and decay to which they were exposed. The Italian conception of citizenship may be set forth in the words of one of their acutest critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors in a state:[3] 'Non dico tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti quelli che hanno grado; cioè che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli antichi loro, facultà d'ottenere i magistrate; e in somma che sono participes imperandi et parendi.' No Italian had any notion of representative government in our sense of the term. The problem was always how to put the administration of the state most conveniently into the hands of the fittest among those who were qualified as burghers, and how to give each burgher his due share in the government; not how to select men delegated from the whole population. The wisest among their philosophical politicians sought to establish a mixed constitution, which should combine the advantages of principality, aristocracy, and democracy. Starting with the fact that the eligible burghers numbered some 5,000, and with the assumption that among these the larger portion would be content with freedom and a voice in the administration, while a certain body were ambitious of honorable distinctions, and a few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they thought that these several desires might be satisfied and reconciled in a republic composed of a general assembly of the citizens, a select Senate, and a Doge. In these theories the influence of Aristotelian studies[4] and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the city.[5] The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, with which we Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth century, or that again of the rights of men, on which the democracies of France and America were founded. The right contemplated by the Italian politicians is that of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for their advantage. As a matter of fact, Venice was the only Italian republic which maintained this kind of oligarchy with success through centuries of internal tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a series of revolutions which ended at last in their enslavement.

      Intolerant of foreign rule, and blinded by the theoretical supremacy of the Empire to the need of looking beyond its own municipal institutions, each city in the twelfth century sought to introduce such a system into the already existing machinery of the burgh as should secure its independence and place the government in the hands of its citizens. But the passing of bad laws, or the non-observance of wise regulations, or, again, the passions of individuals and parties, soon disturbed the equilibrium established in these little communities. Desire for more power than their due prompted one section of the burghers to violence. The love of independence, or simple insubordination, drove another portion to resistance. Matters were further complicated by resident or neighboring nobles. Then followed the wars of factions, proscriptions, and exiles. Having banished their rivals, the party in power for the time being remodeled the institutions of the republic to suit their own particular interest. Meanwhile the opposition in exile fomented every element of discontent within the city, which this short-sighted policy was sure to foster. Sudden revolutions were the result, attended in most cases by massacres consequent upon the victorious return of the outlaws. To the action of these peccant humors—umori is the word applied by the elder Florentine historians to the troubles attendant upon factions—must be added the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity of intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the treason and the egotism of mercenary generals, and the false foreign policy which led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany or Spain. Little by little, under the prolonged action of these disturbing forces, each republic in turn became weaker, more confused in policy, more mistrustful of itself and its own citizens, more subdivided into petty but ineradicable factions, until at last it fell a prey either to some foreign potentate, or to the Church, or else to an ambitious family among its members. The small scale of the Italian commonwealths, taken singly, favored rapid change, and gave an undue value to distinguished wealth or unscrupulous ability among the burghers. The oscillation between democracy and aristocracy and back again, the repetition of exhausting discords, and the demoralizing influences of occasional despotism, so broke the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were glad to accept tyranny for the sake of the protection it professed to extend to life and property.

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