DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0015
INTROD NOTION.
vii
who would fain have held rich Florence in bondage, main-
tained a vague allegiance to the alien ruler, the German
emperor, under the shield of whose distant power they
might oppress and overrun their neighbors ; and that the
burghers, who had gradually pushed off their yoke and
risen into freedom of trade and prosperity, felt themselves
better able to hold their own with the support and patron-
age of the great popes, who were the arbitrators and
judges of Christendom, than in their isolated position as
an independent city. Thus a vague general meaning was
in the party names which rent Florence asunder while
yet it was the straightest of walled cities within its cerchia
antica; but hundreds suffered for their cause on both
sides, to whom that cause meant nothing more than a dear
and cherished hostility against their neighbors over the
way—a true civic grudge, deep and bitter with constant
encounter, and a hundred daily pricks of insult or injury ;
and to the majority of the factions, which apparently bore
exile and misery for their political creed, that creed repre-
sented only the well-known but never exhausted principle
that every Bianco had a right to hate every Nero—to kill
or banish him, and rob his house or burn the goods he
left behind. We cannot even make sure that the reign of
the Guelf faction, though under its sway Florence began
to put on her glorious apparel and to make herself notable
and renowned over all the earth, was any better than that
of the Ghibellines, or bore any rich fruit of national hap-
piness and prosperity which might not have been attained
under their rivals ; for the balance of good sways through-
out the story like Fortune herself, sometimes remaining
with one party, sometimes with the other, and having
little or nothing to say to the continuance of the perennial
struggle which raged between one citizen and another, one
family and another, one side of a street against the dwell-
ers opposite, without rhyme or reason, or thought of any
vii
who would fain have held rich Florence in bondage, main-
tained a vague allegiance to the alien ruler, the German
emperor, under the shield of whose distant power they
might oppress and overrun their neighbors ; and that the
burghers, who had gradually pushed off their yoke and
risen into freedom of trade and prosperity, felt themselves
better able to hold their own with the support and patron-
age of the great popes, who were the arbitrators and
judges of Christendom, than in their isolated position as
an independent city. Thus a vague general meaning was
in the party names which rent Florence asunder while
yet it was the straightest of walled cities within its cerchia
antica; but hundreds suffered for their cause on both
sides, to whom that cause meant nothing more than a dear
and cherished hostility against their neighbors over the
way—a true civic grudge, deep and bitter with constant
encounter, and a hundred daily pricks of insult or injury ;
and to the majority of the factions, which apparently bore
exile and misery for their political creed, that creed repre-
sented only the well-known but never exhausted principle
that every Bianco had a right to hate every Nero—to kill
or banish him, and rob his house or burn the goods he
left behind. We cannot even make sure that the reign of
the Guelf faction, though under its sway Florence began
to put on her glorious apparel and to make herself notable
and renowned over all the earth, was any better than that
of the Ghibellines, or bore any rich fruit of national hap-
piness and prosperity which might not have been attained
under their rivals ; for the balance of good sways through-
out the story like Fortune herself, sometimes remaining
with one party, sometimes with the other, and having
little or nothing to say to the continuance of the perennial
struggle which raged between one citizen and another, one
family and another, one side of a street against the dwell-
ers opposite, without rhyme or reason, or thought of any