See Guelphs and Ghibellines. * * * WHITE GUELFA WHITE GUELFA, see Art. Guelphs and Ghibellines (see GUELPHS AND GIBELLINS) ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Popolana Party of Medieval Florence. See Art. Guelphs and Ghibellines...
See Art. Guelphs…
GUELFA- [ital. Guelfi], the political trend in the Middle Ages. Italy, supporters of the popes in opposition to the emperors St. Roman Empire. Appearance in the 12th century the term "G." connected with the struggle for power unfolding in Germany between the dukes ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia
Political trends in Italy in the 12th and 15th centuries that arose in connection with the attempts of the emperors of the "Holy Roman Empire" to assert their dominance on the Apennine Peninsula. The Guelphs (Italian Guelfi), named after the Welfs, ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
- (Bianchi e Neri) was the name given to two hostile parties in Florence at the beginning of the 14th century. This, in fact, is only a new name for the parties that continued the old struggle between the townspeople and the nobility. The remnants of the Ghibellines and moderate Guelphs joined the whites, and ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
In Florence, one of the two parties, on which in the 14th century. the Guelph party broke up. The C.G. united the noble elements (while the White Guelphs grouped the wealthy townspeople). Following Florence and in some other Italian. cities happened ... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia
Lat. Respublica Florentina ital. Repubblica fiorentina Republic ... Wikipedia
- (Dante Alighieri) DANTE ALIGHIERI crowned with a laurel wreath, in a portrait by Luca Signorelli (c. 1441 1523). (1265-1321), Italian poet. Born in mid-May 1265 in Florence. His parents were respectable citizens of modest means and ... ... Collier Encyclopedia
Engravings by Gustave Doré illustrating the Divine Comedy (1861 1868); here Dante got lost in Canto 1 of Hell ... Wikipedia
Books
- Dante, Richard Weifer. The novel by Richard Weifer is dedicated to the life of the outstanding Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). He created his "Comedy" for 14 years, and admiring descendants called it "Divine".…
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In 1480, the Milanese architects who built the Moscow Kremlin were puzzled by an important political question: what shape should the battlements of the walls and towers be made - straight or dovetail? The fact is that the Italian supporters of the Pope, called the Guelphs, had castles with rectangular teeth, and the opponents of the pope - the Ghibellines - had a swallowtail. On reflection, the architects considered that Grand Duke Moscow is certainly not for the Pope. And now our Kremlin repeats the shape of the battlements on the walls of the Ghibelline castles in Italy.
However, the struggle of these two parties determined not only the appearance of the Kremlin walls, but also the path of development of Western democracy.
In 1194, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI of Hohenstaufen had a son, the future Frederick II. Shortly thereafter, the nomadic court in Italy stopped for some time in the south of the country (the Sicilian kingdom was united with the imperial territories thanks to the marriage of Henry and Constance Hauteville, heiress of the Norman kings). And there the sovereign turned to abbot Joachim of Flore, known for his eschatological concept of history, with a question about the future of his heir. The answer was devastating: “Oh, king! The boy is your destroyer and son of perdition. Alas, Lord! He will destroy the earth and oppress the saints of the Most High.”
Pope Adrian IV crowns Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the Hohenstaufen family in Rome in 1155. Neither one nor the other still imagines that soon the Italian world will split into "admirers" of the tiara and the crown and a bloody struggle will break out between them.
It was during the reign of Frederick II (1220-1250) that the confrontation between the two parties began, which to varying degrees and different form influenced the history of Central and Northern Italy until the 15th century. We are talking about Guelphs and Ghibellines. This struggle began in Florence and, speaking formally, has always remained a purely Florentine phenomenon. However, for decades, expelling defeated opponents from the city, the Florentines made almost the entire Apennine Peninsula and even neighboring countries, primarily France and Germany, accomplices in their strife.
In 1216, a drunken brawl broke out at a rich wedding in the village of Campi near Florence. Daggers were used, and, as the chronicler narrates, the young patrician Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti killed a certain Oddo Arrighi. Fearing revenge, the well-born young man (and Buondelmonte was a representative of one of the noblest families of Tuscany) promised to marry a relative of Arriga from the merchant family of Amidei. It is not known: whether the fear of misalliance, or intrigue, or maybe true love for another, but something made the groom break his promise and choose a girl from the noble family of Donati as his wife. On Easter morning, Buondelmonte rode a white horse to the bride's house to take the marriage vow. But on the main bridge of Florence, Ponte Vecchio, he was attacked by insulted Arrigi and killed. “Then,” reports the chronicler, “the destruction of Florence began and new words appeared: the party of the Guelphs and the party of the Ghibellines.” The Guelphs demanded revenge for the murder of Buondelmonte, and those who sought to gloss over this matter became known as the Ghibellines. There is no reason not to believe the chronicler in the story of the unfortunate fate of Buondelmonte. However, his version of the origin of two political parties in Italy, which had a huge impact on the history of not only this country, but also the entire new European civilization, raises fair doubts - a mouse cannot give birth to a mountain.
Groupings of Guelphs and Ghibellines really formed in the 13th century, but their source was not the everyday "showdown" of the Florentine clans, but the global processes of European history.
At that time, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to Tuscany in the south, and from Burgundy in the west to Bohemia in the east. On such large space it was extremely difficult for the emperors to maintain order, especially in northern Italy, separated by mountains. It is because of the Alps that the names of the parties we are talking about came to Italy. The German "Welf" (Welf) was pronounced by the Italians as "Guelphs" (Guelfi); in turn, "Ghibellini" (Ghibellini) is a distorted German Waiblingen. In Germany, two rival dynasties were called that - the Welfs, who owned Saxony and Bavaria, and the Hohenstaufens, immigrants from Swabia (they were called "Waiblings", after the name of one of the family castles). But in Italy the meaning of these terms has been expanded. The northern Italian cities found themselves between a rock and a hard place - their independence was threatened by both the German emperors and the popes. In turn, Rome was in a state of continuous conflict with the Hohenstaufen, seeking to capture all of Italy.
By the XIII century, under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), there was a final split between the church and secular power. Its roots go back to the end of the 11th century, when, on the initiative of Gregory VII (1073-1085), a struggle began for investiture - the right to appoint bishops. It used to be held by the Holy Roman Emperors, but now the Holy See wanted to make investiture its privilege, believing that this would be an important step towards spreading papal influence over Europe. True, after a series of wars and mutual curses, none of the participants in the conflict managed to achieve a complete victory - it was decided that the prelates elected by the chapters would receive spiritual investiture from the Pope, and secular from the emperor. A follower of Gregory VII - Innocent III reached such power that he could freely interfere in the internal affairs of European states, and many monarchs considered themselves vassals of the Holy See. Catholic Church strengthened, gained independence and received large material resources at its disposal. It turned into a closed hierarchy, zealously defending its privileges and its inviolability over the following centuries. Church reformers believed that it was time to rethink the unity of secular and spiritual authorities (regnum and sacerdotium) characteristic of the early Middle Ages in favor of the supreme power of the Church. Conflict between the clear and the world was inevitable.
Cities had to choose whom to take as allies. Those who supported the Pope were called Guelphs (after all, the Welf dynasty was at enmity with the Hohenstaufen), respectively, those who were against the papal throne were called Ghibellines, allies of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Exaggerating, we can say that in the cities for the Guelphs there was popolo (people), and for the Ghibellines - the aristocracy. The mutual correlation of these forces determined urban policy.
So, the figures on the board of geopolitics are placed - the emperor, the Pope, the cities. It seems to us that their triple enmity was the result of not only human greed.
The participation of cities is what was fundamentally new in the confrontation between the Popes and the German emperors. The citizen of Italy sensed the vacuum of power and did not fail to take advantage of it: simultaneously with the religious reform, a movement for self-government began, which was to completely change the balance of power not only in Italy, but throughout Europe in two centuries. It began precisely on the Apennine Peninsula, since here the urban civilization had strong ancient roots and rich traditions of trade based on its own financial resources. The old Roman centers, which had suffered at the hands of the barbarians, were successfully revived, in Italy there were much more townspeople than in other Western countries.
urban civilization and its characteristics in a few words, no one will describe to us better than a thoughtful contemporary, a German historian of the mid-twelfth century, Otto of Freisingen: “The Latins (inhabitants of Italy), he writes, “to this day imitate the wisdom of the ancient Romans in the arrangement of cities and government. They are so fond of freedom that they prefer to obey the consuls rather than the lords, in order to avoid the abuse of power. And so that they do not abuse power, they are replaced almost every year. The city forces all those living in the territory of the diocese to submit to itself, and it is difficult to find a signor or a noble person who would not submit to the power of the city. The city is not ashamed to knight and allow young men of the lowest birth, even artisans, to rule. Therefore, Italian cities surpass all others in wealth and power. This is facilitated not only by the reasonableness of their institutions, but also by the long absence of sovereigns, who usually remain on the other side of the Alps.
The economic strength of the Italian cities turned out to be almost decisive in the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy. The city did not at all oppose itself to the traditional feudal world. On the contrary, he did not think of himself outside of it. Even before the commune, this new mode of political self-government, finally crystallized, the urban elite realized that the enjoyment of freedoms must be recognized by the Emperor or the Pope, better - both. These freedoms were supposed to be protected by them. By the middle of the 12th century, all the values of the urban civilization of Italy were concentrated in the concept of freedom. The sovereign, who encroached on her, turned from a protector into an enslaver and tyrant. As a result, the townspeople went over to the side of his opponent and continued the ongoing war.
When, in the 1150s, the young German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa appeared on the peninsula in order to return the northern Italian provinces to obedience, he saw a kind of huge chessboard, where the squares represented cities with more or less large provinces subordinate to them - contado. Each pursued its own interests, which ran into opposition from the nearest neighbor. Therefore, it was difficult for Mantua to become an ally of Verona, and Bergamo, say, for Brescia, and so on. Each city sought an ally in a more distant neighbor with whom it had no territorial disputes. The city tried with all its might to subordinate the district to its orders, as a result of this process, called comitatinanza, small states arose. The strongest of them tried to devour the weakest.
There was no end in sight to the strife in Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany. The cruelty that the Italians showed to each other is striking. In 1158, the emperor laid siege to recalcitrant Milan, and “no one,” writes the chronicler, “participated in this siege with more fury than the Cremonese and Pavia. The besieged also showed no more hostility towards anyone than towards them. There had long been rivalries and strife between Milan and these cities. In Milan, many thousands of their people were killed or suffered in heavy captivity, their lands were plundered and burned. Since they themselves could not properly take revenge on Milan, who surpassed them both in their own strength and in the number of allies, they decided that the time had come to pay for the insults inflicted on them. The combined German-Italian troops then managed to break the proud Milan, its fortifications, as the most important symbol of freedom and independence, were torn down, and central square a no less symbolic furrow has been drawn. However, the glorious German knights were not always lucky - the city militias, especially those united under the auspices of the Lombard League, inflicted equally crushing defeats on them, the memory of which has been preserved for centuries.
Cruelty was an indispensable component of the struggle of the Italian medieval parties. The government was cruel, but the townspeople were just as cruel towards it: the “guilty” podestas, consuls, even prelates were beaten, their tongues were pulled out, they were blinded, they were driven through the streets in disgrace. Such attacks did not necessarily lead to regime change, but gave the illusion of temporary liberation. The authorities responded with torture and stimulated denunciation. Exile or the death penalty threatened the suspected of espionage, conspiracy and ties with the enemy. Ordinary jurisprudence did not apply in such matters. When the criminals were hiding, the authorities did not disdain the services of hired killers. The most common method of punishment was deprivation of property, and for wealthy families also the demolition of the palazzo. The methodical destruction of towers and palaces was intended not only to erase the memory of individuals, but also of their ancestors. The ominous concept of proscriptions returned (this is how the outlawing of a certain citizen was called in Rome back in the time of Sulla - his murder was allowed and encouraged, and the property went to the treasury and partly to the murderers themselves), and often they now extended to the children and grandchildren of the convicted (on the male line ). So the ruling party uprooted from public life entire family trees.
In addition, the daily flow of violence also came from special organized groups, such as extended tribal "militias" ("consorteries"), parish "teams" of one of the churches or "counterparts" (quarter "teams"). There were various forms disobedience: open refusal to follow the laws of the commune (actually synonymous with "city"), military attack on the entire native city by those expelled from it for political reasons, "terrorist attacks" against magistrates and clergy, theft of their property, the creation of secret societies, subversive agitation.
I must say that in this struggle, political preferences changed with the speed of a kaleidoscope. Who you were, Guelph or Ghibelline, was often decided by momentary circumstances. For the entire thirteenth century, there is hardly one Big City, wherever the power has not changed violently several times. What can we say about Florence, which changed the laws with extraordinary ease. Everything was decided by practice. The one who seized power formed the government, created laws and monitored their implementation, controlled the courts, etc. The opponents were in prison, in exile, outside the law, but the exiles and their secret allies did not forget the insult and spent their fortunes on secret or open struggle. For them, the government of the opponents did not have any legal force, in any case, no more than their own.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were not organized parties at all, subject to the leadership of their formal leaders. They were a network of independent factions that cooperated with each other up to a certain point under a suitable banner. The Guelphs often turned their weapons against the Pope, and the Ghibellines acted without regard for the interests of pretenders to the imperial crown. The Ghibellines did not deny the Church, and the Guelphs did not deny the Empire, but they tried to minimize their real claims to power. Guelph governments often found themselves under excommunication. Prelates, on the other hand, often came from aristocratic families with Ghibelline roots - even some Popes could be accused of Ghibelline sympathies!
The Guelph and Ghibelline parties were mobile while maintaining their employees and corporate rules. In exile, they acted as mercenary gangs and political groups, exerting pressure either by war or by diplomacy. Returning home, they became not only the authorities, but the most influential social force (the concept of a ruling party did not exist). For example, when in 1267 the Guelphs once again established control over Florence, their captain and consul entered the government. At the same time, their party remained a private organization, which, however, was officially "awarded" the confiscated property of the expelled Ghibellines. With these funds, she began, in fact, the financial enslavement of the city. In March 1288, the commune and popolo already owed her 13,000 florins. This allowed the Guelphs to put pressure on their countrymen so much that they sanctioned the outbreak of war against the Tuscan Ghibellines (which led to the victory at Campaldino in 1289). In general, the parties played the role of the main censors and guardians of political "orthodoxy", ensuring with varying success the loyalty of the townspeople to the Pope or the Emperor, respectively. That's the whole ideology.
The leader of the Pisan Ghibellines, Ugolino della Gherardesca, together with his sons, was imprisoned in the castle of Gualandi, where he died of starvation.
Reading medieval prophecies, the historiosophical reasoning of the followers of Joachim of Florence or the writings of Dante, promising troubles Italian cities, one gets the impression that in that struggle there was neither right nor wrong. From the Scottish astrologer Michael Scott, who spoke to Frederick II in 1232 in Bologna, both the recalcitrant Guelph communes and the cities loyal to the Empire got it. Dante condemned the Pisan Count Ugolino della Gherardesca to the terrible torments of hell for betraying his party, but despite this, under his pen, he became perhaps the most humane image of the entire poem, at least its first part. The 13th-century chronicler Saba Malaspina called both the Guelphs and the Ghibellines demons, and Geri of Arezzo called his fellow citizens pagans because they worshiped these party names as if they were idols.
Is it worth looking behind this "idolatry" for a reasonable beginning, for any real political or cultural convictions? Is it possible at all to understand the nature of the conflict, the roots of which go far into the past of the Italian lands, and the consequences - to Italy of the New Age, with its political fragmentation, "neo-Guelphs" and "neo-Ghibellines"? Perhaps, in some ways, the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines is akin to football tifosi fights, sometimes quite dangerous and bloody? How can a self-respecting young Italian not root for his native club? Can he be completely out of the game? Struggle, conflict, “party spirit”, if you like, are in the very nature of man, and the Middle Ages are very similar to us in this. Trying to look in the history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines exclusively for the expression of the struggle of classes, estates or "strata", perhaps, is not worth it. But at the same time, we must not forget that the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines largely stems from the modern democratic traditions of the West.
Oleg Voskoboynikov
In 1480, the Milanese architects who built the Moscow Kremlin were puzzled by an important political question: what shape should the battlements of the walls and towers be made - straight or dovetail? The fact is that the Italian supporters of the Pope, called the Guelphs, had castles with rectangular teeth, and the opponents of the pope - the Ghibellines - had a swallowtail. On reflection, the architects considered that the Grand Duke of Moscow was certainly not for the Pope. And now our Kremlin repeats the shape of the battlements on the walls of the Ghibelline castles in Italy. However, the struggle of these two parties determined not only the appearance of the Kremlin walls, but also the path of development of Western democracy.
In 1194, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI of Hohenstaufen had a son, the future Frederick II. Shortly thereafter, the nomadic court in Italy stopped for some time in the south of the country (the Sicilian kingdom was united with the imperial territories thanks to the marriage of Henry and Constance Hauteville, heiress of the Norman kings). And there the sovereign turned to abbot Joachim of Flore, known for his eschatological concept of history, with a question about the future of his heir. The answer was devastating: “Oh, king! The boy is your destroyer and son of perdition. Alas, Lord! He will destroy the earth and oppress the saints of the Most High.”
Pope Adrian IV crowns Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the Hohenstaufen family in Rome in 1155. Neither one nor the other still imagines that soon the Italian world will split into "admirers" of the tiara and the crown and a bloody struggle will break out between them.
It was during the reign of Frederick II (1220-1250) that the confrontation between the two parties began, which in different ways and in different forms influenced the history of Central and Northern Italy until the 15th century. We are talking about Guelphs and Ghibellines. This struggle began in Florence and, speaking formally, has always remained a purely Florentine phenomenon. However, for decades, expelling defeated opponents from the city, the Florentines made almost the entire Apennine Peninsula and even neighboring countries, primarily France and Germany, accomplices in their strife.
In 1216, a drunken brawl broke out at a rich wedding in the village of Campi near Florence. Daggers were used, and, as the chronicler narrates, the young patrician Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti killed a certain Oddo Arrighi. Fearing revenge, the well-born young man (and Buondelmonte was a representative of one of the noblest families of Tuscany) promised to marry a relative of Arriga from the merchant family of Amidei. It is not known: whether the fear of misalliance, or intrigue, or maybe true love for another, but something made the groom break his promise and choose a girl from the noble family of Donati as his wife. On Easter morning, Buondelmonte rode a white horse to the bride's house to take the marriage vow. But on the main bridge of Florence, Ponte Vecchio, he was attacked by insulted Arrigi and killed. “Then,” reports the chronicler, “the destruction of Florence began and new words appeared: the party of the Guelphs and the party of the Ghibellines.” The Guelphs demanded revenge for the murder of Buondelmonte, and those who sought to gloss over this matter became known as the Ghibellines. There is no reason not to believe the chronicler in the story of the unfortunate fate of Buondelmonte. However, his version of the origin of two political parties in Italy, which had a huge impact on the history of not only this country, but also the entire new European civilization, raises fair doubts - a mouse cannot give birth to a mountain.
Groupings of Guelphs and Ghibellines really formed in the 13th century, but their source was not the everyday "showdown" of the Florentine clans, but the global processes of European history.
The so-called Emperor's Castle (at one time it belonged to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen) in Prato served as the headquarters of the local Ghibellines
At that time, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to Tuscany in the south, and from Burgundy in the west to Bohemia in the east. In such a large space, it was extremely difficult for the emperors to maintain order, especially in northern Italy, separated by mountains. It is because of the Alps that the names of the parties we are talking about came to Italy. The German "Welf" (Welf) was pronounced by the Italians as "Guelphs" (Guelfi); in turn, "Ghibellini" (Ghibellini) is a distorted German Waiblingen. In Germany, this was the name given to two rival dynasties - the Welfs, who owned Saxony and Bavaria, and the Hohenstaufens, immigrants from Swabia (they were called "Waiblings", after the name of one of the family castles). But in Italy the meaning of these terms has been expanded. Northern Italian cities found themselves between a rock and a hard place, their independence threatened by both the German emperors and the popes of Rome. In turn, Rome was in a state of continuous conflict with the Hohenstaufen, seeking to capture all of Italy.
By the 13th century, under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), there was a final split between the church and the secular authorities. Its roots go back to the end of the 11th century, when, on the initiative of Gregory VII (1073-1085), a struggle began for investiture - the right to appoint bishops. It used to be held by the Holy Roman Emperors, but now the Holy See wanted to make investiture its privilege, believing that this would be an important step towards spreading papal influence over Europe. True, after a series of wars and mutual curses, none of the participants in the conflict managed to achieve a complete victory - it was decided that the prelates elected by the chapters would receive spiritual investiture from the Pope, and secular from the emperor. A follower of Gregory VII - Innocent III reached such power that he could freely interfere in the internal affairs of European states, and many monarchs considered themselves vassals of the Holy See. The Catholic Church gained strength, gained independence and received large material resources at its disposal. It turned into a closed hierarchy, zealously defending its privileges and its inviolability over the following centuries. Church reformers believed that it was time to rethink the unity of secular and spiritual authorities (regnum and sacerdotium) characteristic of the early Middle Ages in favor of the supreme power of the Church. Conflict between the clear and the world was inevitable.
Cities had to choose whom to take as allies. Those who supported the Pope were called Guelphs (after all, the Welf dynasty was at enmity with the Hohenstaufen), respectively, those who were against the papal throne were called Ghibellines, allies of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Exaggerating, we can say that in the cities for the Guelphs there was a popolo (people), and for the Ghibellines - the aristocracy. The mutual correlation of these forces determined urban policy.
Otto IV, Emperor of the Welf family
Crown vs tiara
The words "Guelph" and "Gibelline", although they were "invented" in the early stage great conflict, were not particularly popular in the Middle Ages. The conflicting parties in Italian cities preferred to refer to themselves simply as the "Party of the Emperor" and the "Party of the Pope". This was practical: the Latinized German terminology could not keep up with the political conjuncture. And for some time before the beginning of the 13th century, the situation, in general, was the opposite of what went down in history: the Welfs were considered the enemies of Rome, and the Hohenstaufen were its allies. The situation was as follows. In 1197, Otto IV (1182–1218) Welf was elected German emperor. As it usually happened in that era, not everyone supported this candidacy. Opponents of Otto chose for themselves another monarch from the House of Hohenstaufen - Philip of Swabia (1178-1218). Strife began, ruining everyone, but beneficial to a third force, Pope Innocent III (1161-1216). At first, Innocent supported Otto. It was a strategic move. The fact is that the pontiff was the guardian of the minor Friedrich Hohenstaufen (1194-1250), the future brilliant Frederick II, who then occupied the throne of the King of Sicily. In this situation, the Pope tried to prevent the Hohenstaufen from the German throne, because in this case the south of Italy could become part of the Empire. However, if luck had smiled on the Hohenstaufen, Innocent, as Frederick's regent, could have influenced their policy. However, in 1210, Otto himself retreated from the alliance with the Pope, deciding to take over all of Italy. In response, a year later, the vicar of St. Peter excommunicated the traitor from the church. He also did everything to ensure that the council of German princes in Nuremberg elected the 17-year-old Frederick, now under his tutelage, as the German king. From that moment on, the pontiff became an enemy of the Welfs and an ally of the Hohenstaufen. But Frederick II also did not justify the hopes of the patron! The pope died in 1216, without receiving the promised lands and without waiting for the beginning of crusade which he was counting on. On the contrary, the new ruler of Germany begins to act, openly ignoring the interests of Rome. Now the Guelphs become "real" Guelphs, and the Ghibellines become Ghibellines. However, the process of final disengagement dragged on for another 11 years (until 1227), that is, until the new Pope Gregory IX (1145-1241) excommunicated Frederick from the church for unauthorized return from the Holy Land (where he was still in eventually left).
Pavel Kotov
So, the figures on the board of geopolitics are placed - the emperor, the Pope, the cities. It seems to us that their triple enmity was the result of not only human greed.
The participation of cities was what was fundamentally new in the confrontation between the Popes and the German emperors. The citizen of Italy sensed the vacuum of power and did not fail to take advantage of it: simultaneously with the religious reform, a movement for self-government began, which was to completely change the balance of power not only in Italy, but throughout Europe in two centuries. It began precisely on the Apennine Peninsula, since here the urban civilization had strong ancient roots and rich traditions of trade based on its own financial resources. The old Roman centers, which had suffered at the hands of the barbarians, were successfully revived, in Italy there were much more townspeople than in other Western countries.
No one can describe urban civilization and its characteristic features in a few words better than a thoughtful contemporary, a German historian of the mid-12th century, Otto of Freisingen: state management. They are so fond of freedom that they prefer to obey the consuls rather than the lords, in order to avoid the abuse of power. And so that they do not abuse power, they are replaced almost every year. The city forces all those living in the territory of the diocese to submit to itself, and it is difficult to find a signor or a noble person who would not submit to the power of the city. The city is not ashamed to knight and allow young men of the lowest birth, even artisans, to rule. Therefore, Italian cities surpass all others in wealth and power. This is facilitated not only by the reasonableness of their institutions, but also by the long absence of sovereigns, who usually remain on the other side of the Alps.
The economic strength of the Italian cities turned out to be almost decisive in the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy. The city did not at all oppose itself to the traditional feudal world. On the contrary, he did not think of himself outside of it. Even before the commune, this new mode of political self-government, finally crystallized, the urban elite realized that the enjoyment of freedoms must be recognized by the Emperor or the Pope, preferably both. These freedoms were supposed to be protected by them. By the middle of the 12th century, all the values of the urban civilization of Italy were concentrated in the concept of freedom. The sovereign, who encroached on her, turned from a protector into an enslaver and tyrant. As a result, the townspeople went over to the side of his opponent and continued the ongoing war.
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri: Poetry as Politics
The first half of Dante's life was spent in Florence during the turbulent events of the last decades of the 13th century, when the scales tipped here in favor of the Guelphs. The great poet actively participated in the public life of his native city, first as an adviser, and from 1300 as a prior. By this time, the pope's secular power in Tuscany was beginning to be felt quite strongly, and a split had occurred within the Guelph party. Around Corso Donati, the fundamentalists ("Blacks") united - firm supporters of the Pope and the French kings, and around Vieri dei Cerchi - "Whites", moderates, inclined to compromise with the Ghibellines.
The conflict reached its apogee under Boniface VIII (1295-1303). According to his bull "Unam sanctam" of 1302, all believers must obey the pontiff in all spiritual and temporal matters. This Pope was afraid of the political resistance of the obstinate White Guelphs (in particular, they were preparing to shelter him worst enemies, the Roman family Colonna), and besides, he planned to include all of Tuscany in the Papal States. To build bridges "in this direction," Boniface VIII sent the banker Vieri, who controlled more than half of the Florentine finances, but Dante and his comrades figured out the pontiff's plan and did not accept an intermediary. Moreover, the White Guelphs decided to “play ahead of the curve” and sent a delegation to Rome themselves (the author of The Divine Comedy was also included in it) in order to protect themselves - after all, going into open confrontation with Rome was not conceivable. In the meantime... the priors remaining in Florence let Charles of Valois, brother of the French King Philip the Handsome, into the city. The presence of the prince of the blood in a city generally benevolent to the French made it impossible for the government to maneuver, and the Black Guelphs took up arms and expelled the Whites. Proscriptions followed, and Alighieri never returned to his homeland. He was given two death sentences in absentia and only fifteen years later was amnestied in absentia. In exile, the White Guelphs often allied themselves with the Ghibellines. This policy was a successful form of moderate Guelphism, which suited popes like Gregory X (1271-1276) or Nicholas III (1277-1280) quite well. But as for Boniface VIII, this pontiff caused only hatred in Dante. Yes, and other Guelphs were ashamed of the personality of the one whose interests they were supposed to protect.
At first, Dante was the mouthpiece of the exiles. However, he soon changed his point of view: the poet became convinced that only the firm hand of the German monarch could save Italy from civil strife. Now he pinned his hopes on Henry VII of the Luxembourg dynasty (1275-1313). In 1310, the king went to Italy to rein in the cities and put pressure on opponents. He succeeded in something: he received the imperial crown. But after that, Heinrich behaved in the same way as his predecessors, bogged down in an endless game of chess. The cities also did not know how to behave, their leaders rushing about. In 1313, the emperor died suddenly in Tuscany. From that moment on, Dante decided that it was better to be "his own slanderer" (in Italian, more precisely: "to be his own party"). He was both cunning and completely sincere at the same time. The Divine Comedy ends with the apotheosis of Empire and Love in the Rose of Paradise: the universe was unthinkable for him without a monarchy that unites the world of people with love. But the last legitimate, from the point of view of Dante, Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) is executed in hell among heretics, along with his courtiers: treasurer Peter Vineisky, sentenced to torment for suicide, and astrologer Michael Scott for sorcery. This is all the more surprising since, with the breadth of his views, this emperor evoked deep sympathy from the Florentine poet. But such was Dante: when he felt that he should punish, he overstepped his personal feelings. In the same way, he was really outraged by the antics of Cardinal Giacomo Colonna, who, according to popular rumor, slapped the captured Pope Boniface VIII. He personally hated Boniface, but as a true Catholic he revered the Pope and could not imagine that he could touch him, commit physical violence against the pontiff. In the same way, Dante respected Emperor Frederick, but could not help but send to hell the one to whom rumor attributed heretical statements (disbelief in the immortality of the soul and the doctrine of the eternity of the world). Dante's paradox is a paradox of the Middle Ages.
When, in the 1150s, the young German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa appeared on the peninsula in order to return the northern Italian provinces to obedience, he saw a kind of huge chessboard, where the squares were cities with more or less large provinces subordinate to them - contado. Each pursued its own interests, which ran into opposition from the nearest neighbor. Therefore, it was difficult for Mantua to become an ally of Verona, and Bergamo, say, of Brescia, etc. Each city was looking for an ally in a more distant neighbor, with which it had no territorial disputes. The city tried with all its might to subordinate the district to its orders, as a result of this process, called comitatinanza, small states arose. The strongest of them tried to devour the weakest.
There was no end in sight to the strife in Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany. The cruelty that the Italians showed to each other is striking. In 1158, the emperor laid siege to the recalcitrant Milan, and “no one,” writes the chronicler, “participated in this siege with more fury than the Cremonese and Pavia. The besieged also showed no more hostility towards anyone than towards them. There had long been rivalries and strife between Milan and these cities. In Milan, many thousands of their people were killed or suffered in heavy captivity, their lands were plundered and burned. Since they themselves could not properly take revenge on Milan, who surpassed them both in their own strength and in the number of allies, they decided that the time had come to pay for the insults inflicted on them. The combined German-Italian troops then managed to break the proud Milan, its fortifications as the most important symbol of freedom and independence were torn down, and a no less symbolic furrow was drawn along the central square. However, the glorious German knights were not always lucky - the city militias, especially those united under the auspices of the Lombard League, inflicted equally crushing defeats on them, the memory of which has been preserved for centuries.
Cruelty was an indispensable component of the struggle of the Italian medieval parties. The government was cruel, but the townspeople were just as cruel towards it: the “guilty” podestas, consuls, even prelates were beaten, their tongues were pulled out, they were blinded, they were driven through the streets in disgrace. Such attacks did not necessarily lead to regime change, but gave the illusion of temporary liberation. The authorities responded with torture and stimulated denunciation. Exile or the death penalty threatened the suspected of espionage, conspiracy and ties with the enemy. Ordinary jurisprudence did not apply in such matters. When the criminals were hiding, the authorities did not disdain the services of hired killers. The most common method of punishment was deprivation of property, and for wealthy families also the demolition of the palazzo. The methodical destruction of towers and palaces was intended not only to erase the memory of individuals, but also of their ancestors. The ominous concept of proscriptions returned (this was the name given to the outlawing of a certain citizen in Rome in the time of Sulla - his murder was allowed and encouraged, and the property went to the treasury and partly to the murderers themselves), and often they now extended to the children and grandchildren of the convicted (on the male line). ). So the ruling party uprooted entire family trees from public life.
This is the proud word "Lombardy"
The inhabitants of the northern Italian cities understood perfectly well that it would not be possible to fight the German emperors alone. Therefore, back in 1167, sixteen communes led by Milan created the so-called Lombard League. For representation in the new union, each participant delegated his deputy, the so-called "rector". The competence of the rectors included political strategy, issues of declaring war and concluding peace, as well as general commissariat (army supply). This well-established federation showed its strength most clearly on May 27, 1176, at the Battle of Legnano (30 kilometers from Milan) against the knights of Frederick I. The emperor acted strictly according to the then accepted rules, relying on the frontal attack of his heavy cavalry. And the Lombards showed imagination. They pushed forward the heavy Milanese cavalry, which, simulating a retreat, led the Germans to the spears and hooks of the Lombard foot militia. Frederick's troops mixed up and immediately received a blow from the cavalrymen from Brescia, who were in reserve, on the right flank. Frederick fled, leaving his shield and banner behind. In 1183, he was forced to sign the Peace of Constance, according to which all that had been taken away was returned to the cities, there were privileges and an even wider autonomy of management was provided. However, when in 1237 the grandson of Barbarossa Frederick II came to Lombardy to complete the work unsuccessfully started by his grandfather, military happiness turned away from the Italians. On November 27, 1237, near the town of Kortenuovo on the Olio River, the German cavalry unexpectedly attacked the Milanese. The blow was crushing, the townspeople were defeated and overturned. True, the Lombard infantry did not flinch - having taken up all-round defense, it held out until late in the evening against the knights clad in armor, shielded themselves from them with a wall of shields and withstood cruel hand-to-hand combat. However, the Guelphs suffered heavy losses from the arrows of the Arabs who were in the army of Frederick. Late in the evening, the last of the defenders surrendered. In this battle, the defeated lost several thousand people killed and captured. But despite the defeat, the League continued to exist and struggle. Moreover, thanks to her efforts, Frederick did not succeed in completely subjugating Lombardy. It fell apart after the death of this energetic sovereign.
Pavel Kotov
In addition, the daily flow of violence also came from special organized groups, such as extended tribal "militias" ("consorteries"), parish "teams" of one of the churches or "counterparts" (quarter "teams"). There were various forms of disobedience: open refusal to follow the laws of the commune (actually synonymous with "city"), military attack on the entire hometown by those expelled from it for political reasons, "terror attacks" against magistrates and clergy, theft of their property, the creation of secret societies, subversive agitation.
I must say that in this struggle, political preferences changed with the speed of a kaleidoscope. Who you were, Guelph or Ghibelline, was often decided by momentary circumstances. For the entire thirteenth century, there is hardly a single large city where power has not changed violently several times. What can we say about Florence, which changed the laws with extraordinary ease. Everything was decided by practice. The one who seized power formed the government, created laws and monitored their implementation, controlled the courts, etc. The opponents were in prison, in exile, outside the law, but the exiles and their secret allies did not forget the insult and spent their fortunes on secret or open struggle. For them, the government of the opponents did not have any legal force, in any case, no more than their own.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were not organized parties at all, subject to the leadership of their formal leaders. They were a network of independent factions that cooperated with each other up to a certain point under a suitable banner. The Guelphs often turned their weapons against the Pope, and the Ghibellines acted without regard for the interests of pretenders to the imperial crown. The Ghibellines did not deny the Church, and the Guelphs did not deny the Empire, but they tried to minimize their real claims to power. Guelph governments often found themselves under excommunication. Prelates, on the other hand, often came from aristocratic families with Ghibelline roots - even some Popes could be accused of Ghibelline sympathies!
The castle of Villafranca at Moneglie near Genoa changed hands many times between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and back again.
Price of freedom
It is possible and necessary to look for the origins of modern political traditions in the confrontation between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Western Europe- the origins of bourgeois, that is, in fact, in a literal translation, urban democracy. Moreover, as we have seen, neither in terms of their structure, nor in terms of the methods and goals of the struggle, its participants were at all "democratic". Members of the parties behaved not only authoritarian, but simply brutal. They uncompromisingly strove for that power that eluded the hands of the "universal", great-power sovereigns, whose position seemed to be securely fixed by the centuries-old tradition of feudal society. But if the economic, legal and cultural situation in Europe had not really changed and would not have allowed new forces to emerge and grow stronger, perhaps democracy, by no means alien to medieval consciousness as a whole, would have remained only a dream or a memory of the long-gone past of Greece and Rome. . Indeed, in addition to bloody weddings, executions and betrayals, the first parliaments, the first secular schools, and finally the first universities were formed. A new culture of speech also arose - a modernized oratory, with the help of which politicians now had to convince their fellow citizens that they were right. The same Dante is inconceivable without the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, without the urban culture that nurtured him. He is also inconceivable without his teacher - Brunetto Latini, who, according to the chronicler, was the first to teach the Florentines to live according to the laws of Politics. And without Dante, his contemporaries and descendants, in turn, the Renaissance is impossible - an era that showed the European peoples the opportunity to develop for everyone according to their own choice. For example, in Renaissance Italy, the terms "Guelphs" and "Ghibellines" lost their former meaning, political passions boiled over new people and new problems. But as before, the inhabitants of the country remembered that it was then, in opposition to the formidable Hohenstaufen emperors, that what was dearest to them was born: Freedom. Remembered, not even always realizing it - reflexively.
The Guelph and Ghibelline parties were mobile while maintaining their employees and corporate rules. In exile, they acted as mercenary gangs and political groups, exerting pressure either by war or by diplomacy. Returning home, they became not only the authorities, but the most influential social force (the concept of a ruling party did not exist). For example, when in 1267 the Guelphs once again established control over Florence, their captain and consul entered the government. At the same time, their party remained a private organization, which, however, was officially "awarded" the confiscated property of the expelled Ghibellines. With these funds, she began, in fact, the financial enslavement of the city. In March 1288, the commune and popolo already owed her 13,000 florins. This allowed the Guelphs to put pressure on their countrymen so much that they sanctioned the outbreak of war against the Tuscan Ghibellines (which led to the victory at Campaldino in 1289). In general, the parties played the role of the main censors and guardians of political "orthodoxy", ensuring with varying success the loyalty of the townspeople to the Pope or the Emperor, respectively. That's the whole ideology.
The leader of the Pisan Ghibellines, Ugolino della Gherardesca, together with his sons, was imprisoned in the castle of Gualandi, where he died of starvation.
Reading medieval prophecies, the historiosophical arguments of the followers of Joachim of Florence, or the writings of Dante, promising troubles for Italian cities, one gets the impression that there were neither right nor wrong in that struggle. From the Scottish astrologer Michael Scott, who spoke to Frederick II in 1232 in Bologna, both the recalcitrant Guelph communes and the cities loyal to the Empire got it. Dante condemned the Pisan Count Ugolino della Gherardesca to the terrible torments of hell for betraying his party, but despite this, under his pen, he became perhaps the most humane image of the entire poem, at least its first part. The 13th-century chronicler Saba Malaspina called both the Guelphs and the Ghibellines demons, and Geri of Arezzo called his fellow citizens pagans because they worshiped these party names as if they were idols.
Is it worth looking behind this "idolatry" for a reasonable beginning, for any real political or cultural convictions? Is it possible at all to understand the nature of the conflict, the roots of which go far into the past of the Italian lands, and the consequences - to Italy of modern times, with its political fragmentation, "neo-Gibellines" and "neo-Ghibellines"? Perhaps, in some ways, the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines is akin to football tifosi fights, sometimes quite dangerous and bloody? How can a self-respecting young Italian not root for his native club? Can he be completely out of the game? Struggle, conflict, “party spirit”, if you like, are in the very nature of man, and the Middle Ages are very similar to us in this. Trying to look in the history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines exclusively for the expression of the struggle of classes, estates or "strata", perhaps, is not worth it. But at the same time, we must not forget that the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines largely stems from the modern democratic traditions of the West.
Maneuvering between two irreconcilable enemies - the Pope and the Emperor - did not allow any of the parties to achieve final military and political superiority. Otherwise, if one of the opponents turned out to be the owner of unlimited power, European democracy would remain only in the history books. And so - it turned out a kind of unique power parity, which in many respects ensured a sharp breakthrough in Western civilization in the future - on a competitive basis.
In 1480, the Milanese architects who built the Moscow Kremlin were puzzled by an important political question: what shape should the battlements of the walls and towers be made - straight or dovetail? The fact is that the Italian supporters of the Pope, called the Guelphs, had castles with rectangular teeth, and the opponents of the pope - the Ghibellines - had a swallowtail. On reflection, the architects considered that the Grand Duke of Moscow was certainly not for the Pope. And now our Kremlin repeats the shape of the battlements on the walls of the Ghibelline castles in Italy. However, the struggle of these two parties determined not only the appearance of the Kremlin walls, but also the path of development of Western democracy. In 1194, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI of Hohenstaufen had a son, the future Frederick II. Shortly thereafter, the nomadic court in Italy stopped for some time in the south of the country (the Sicilian kingdom was united with the imperial territories thanks to the marriage of Henry and Constance Hauteville, heiress of the Norman kings). And there the sovereign turned to abbot Joachim of Flore, known for his eschatological concept of history, with a question about the future of his heir. The answer was devastating: “Oh, king! The boy is your destroyer and son of perdition. Alas, Lord! He will destroy the earth and oppress the saints of the Most High.”
Pope Adrian IV crowns Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the Hohenstaufen family in Rome in 1155. Neither one nor the other still imagines that soon the Italian world will split into "admirers" of the tiara and the crown and a bloody struggle will break out between them.
It was during the reign of Frederick II (1220-1250) that the confrontation between the two parties began, which in different ways and in different forms influenced the history of Central and Northern Italy until the 15th century. We are talking about Guelphs and Ghibellines. This struggle began in Florence and, speaking formally, has always remained a purely Florentine phenomenon. However, for decades, expelling defeated opponents from the city, the Florentines made almost the entire Apennine Peninsula and even neighboring countries, primarily France and Germany, accomplices in their strife.
In 1216, a drunken brawl broke out at a rich wedding in the village of Campi near Florence. Daggers were used, and, as the chronicler narrates, the young patrician Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti killed a certain Oddo Arrighi. Fearing revenge, the well-born young man (and Buondelmonte was a representative of one of the noblest families of Tuscany) promised to marry a relative of Arriga from the merchant family of Amidei. It is not known: whether the fear of misalliance, or intrigue, or maybe true love for another, but something made the groom break his promise and choose a girl from the noble family of Donati as his wife. On Easter morning, Buondelmonte rode a white horse to the bride's house to take the marriage vow. But on the main bridge of Florence, Ponte Vecchio, he was attacked by insulted Arrigi and killed. “Then,” reports the chronicler, “the destruction of Florence began and new words appeared: the party of the Guelphs and the party of the Ghibellines.” The Guelphs demanded revenge for the murder of Buondelmonte, and those who sought to gloss over this matter became known as the Ghibellines. There is no reason not to believe the chronicler in the story of the unfortunate fate of Buondelmonte. However, his version of the origin of two political parties in Italy, which had a huge impact on the history of not only this country, but also the entire new European civilization, raises fair doubts - a mouse cannot give birth to a mountain.
Groupings of Guelphs and Ghibellines really formed in the 13th century, but their source was not the everyday "showdown" of the Florentine clans, but the global processes of European history.
The so-called Emperor's Castle (at one time it belonged to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen) in Prato served as the headquarters of the local Ghibellines
At that time, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to Tuscany in the south, and from Burgundy in the west to Bohemia in the east. In such a large space, it was extremely difficult for the emperors to maintain order, especially in northern Italy, separated by mountains. It is because of the Alps that the names of the parties we are talking about came to Italy. The German "Welf" (Welf) was pronounced by the Italians as "Guelphs" (Guelfi); in turn, "Ghibellini" (Ghibellini) is a distorted German Waiblingen. In Germany, this was the name given to two rival dynasties - the Welfs, who owned Saxony and Bavaria, and the Hohenstaufens, immigrants from Swabia (they were called "Waiblings", after the name of one of the family castles). But in Italy the meaning of these terms has been expanded. Northern Italian cities found themselves between a rock and a hard place, their independence threatened by both the German emperors and the popes of Rome. In turn, Rome was in a state of continuous conflict with the Hohenstaufen, seeking to capture all of Italy.
By the 13th century, under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), there was a final split between the church and the secular authorities. Its roots go back to the end of the 11th century, when, on the initiative of Gregory VII (1073-1085), a struggle began for investiture - the right to appoint bishops. It used to be held by the Holy Roman Emperors, but now the Holy See wanted to make investiture its privilege, believing that this would be an important step towards spreading papal influence over Europe. True, after a series of wars and mutual curses, none of the participants in the conflict managed to achieve a complete victory - it was decided that the prelates elected by the chapters would receive spiritual investiture from the Pope, and secular from the emperor. A follower of Gregory VII - Innocent III reached such power that he could freely interfere in the internal affairs of European states, and many monarchs considered themselves vassals of the Holy See. The Catholic Church gained strength, gained independence and received large material resources at its disposal. It turned into a closed hierarchy, zealously defending its privileges and its inviolability over the following centuries. Church reformers believed that it was time to rethink the unity of secular and spiritual authorities (regnum and sacerdotium) characteristic of the early Middle Ages in favor of the supreme power of the Church. Conflict between the clear and the world was inevitable.
Cities had to choose whom to take as allies. Those who supported the Pope were called Guelphs (after all, the Welf dynasty was at enmity with the Hohenstaufen), respectively, those who were against the papal throne were called Ghibellines, allies of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Exaggerating, we can say that in the cities for the Guelphs there was a popolo (people), and for the Ghibellines - the aristocracy. The mutual correlation of these forces determined urban policy.
Otto IV, Emperor of the Welf family
Crown against tiara The words "Guelph" and "Ghibelline", although they were "invented" at the very early stage of the great conflict, were not particularly popular in the Middle Ages. The conflicting parties in Italian cities preferred to refer to themselves simply as the "Party of the Emperor" and the "Party of the Pope". This was practical: the Latinized German terminology could not keep up with the political conjuncture. And for some time before the beginning of the 13th century, the situation, in general, was the opposite of what went down in history: the Welfs were considered the enemies of Rome, and the Hohenstaufen were its allies. The situation was as follows. In 1197, Otto IV (1182–1218) Welf was elected German emperor. As it usually happened in that era, not everyone supported this candidacy. Opponents of Otto chose for themselves another monarch from the House of Hohenstaufen - Philip of Swabia (1178-1218). Strife began, ruining everyone, but beneficial to a third force, Pope Innocent III (1161-1216). At first, Innocent supported Otto. It was a strategic move. The fact is that the pontiff was the guardian of the minor Friedrich Hohenstaufen (1194-1250), the future brilliant Frederick II, who then occupied the throne of the King of Sicily. In this situation, the Pope tried to prevent the Hohenstaufen from the German throne, because in this case the south of Italy could become part of the Empire. However, if luck had smiled on the Hohenstaufen, Innocent, as Frederick's regent, could have influenced their policy. However, in 1210, Otto himself retreated from the alliance with the Pope, deciding to take over all of Italy. In response, a year later, the vicar of St. Peter excommunicated the traitor from the church. He also did everything to ensure that the council of German princes in Nuremberg elected the 17-year-old Frederick, now under his tutelage, as the German king. From that moment on, the pontiff became an enemy of the Welfs and an ally of the Hohenstaufen. But Frederick II also did not justify the hopes of the patron! The pope died in 1216, never receiving the promised lands and waiting for the start of the crusade he had hoped for. On the contrary, the new ruler of Germany begins to act, openly ignoring the interests of Rome. Now the Guelphs become "real" Guelphs, and the Ghibellines become Ghibellines. However, the process of final disengagement dragged on for another 11 years (until 1227), that is, until the new Pope Gregory IX (1145-1241) excommunicated Frederick from the church for unauthorized return from the Holy Land (where he was still in eventually left). Pavel Kotov
So, the figures on the board of geopolitics are placed - the emperor, the Pope, the cities. It seems to us that their triple enmity was the result of not only human greed.
The participation of cities was what was fundamentally new in the confrontation between the Popes and the German emperors. The citizen of Italy sensed the vacuum of power and did not fail to take advantage of it: simultaneously with the religious reform, a movement for self-government began, which was to completely change the balance of power not only in Italy, but throughout Europe in two centuries. It began precisely on the Apennine Peninsula, since here the urban civilization had strong ancient roots and rich traditions of trade based on its own financial resources. The old Roman centers, which had suffered at the hands of the barbarians, were successfully revived, in Italy there were much more townspeople than in other Western countries.
No one can describe urban civilization and its characteristic features in a few words better than a thoughtful contemporary, a German historian of the mid-12th century, Otto of Freisingen: state management. They are so fond of freedom that they prefer to obey the consuls rather than the lords, in order to avoid the abuse of power. And so that they do not abuse power, they are replaced almost every year. The city forces all those living in the territory of the diocese to submit to itself, and it is difficult to find a signor or a noble person who would not submit to the power of the city. The city is not ashamed to knight and allow young men of the lowest birth, even artisans, to rule. Therefore, Italian cities surpass all others in wealth and power. This is facilitated not only by the reasonableness of their institutions, but also by the long absence of sovereigns, who usually remain on the other side of the Alps.
The economic strength of the Italian cities turned out to be almost decisive in the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy. The city did not at all oppose itself to the traditional feudal world. On the contrary, he did not think of himself outside of it. Even before the commune, this new mode of political self-government, finally crystallized, the urban elite realized that the enjoyment of freedoms must be recognized by the Emperor or the Pope, preferably both. These freedoms were supposed to be protected by them. By the middle of the 12th century, all the values of the urban civilization of Italy were concentrated in the concept of freedom. The sovereign, who encroached on her, turned from a protector into an enslaver and tyrant. As a result, the townspeople went over to the side of his opponent and continued the ongoing war.
Dante Alighieri: Poetry as Politics The first half of Dante's life was spent in Florence during the turbulent events of the last decades of the 13th century, when the scales tipped here in favor of the Guelphs. The great poet actively participated in the public life of his native city, first as an adviser, and from 1300 as a prior. By this time, the pope's secular power in Tuscany was beginning to be felt quite strongly, and a split had occurred within the Guelph party. Around Corso Donati, the fundamentalists ("Blacks") united - firm supporters of the Pope and the French kings, and around Vieri dei Cerchi - "Whites", moderates, inclined to compromise with the Ghibellines. The conflict reached its apogee under Boniface VIII (1295-1303). According to his bull "Unam sanctam" of 1302, all believers must obey the pontiff in all spiritual and temporal matters. This Pope was afraid of the political resistance of the obstinate White Guelphs (in particular, they were preparing to shelter his worst enemies, the Roman family of Colonna), and besides, he planned to include all of Tuscany in the Papal States. To build bridges "in this direction," Boniface VIII sent the banker Vieri, who controlled more than half of the Florentine finances, but Dante and his comrades figured out the pontiff's plan and did not accept an intermediary. Moreover, the White Guelphs decided to “play ahead of the curve” and sent a delegation to Rome themselves (the author of The Divine Comedy was also included in it) in order to protect themselves - after all, going into open confrontation with Rome was not conceivable. In the meantime... the priors remaining in Florence let Charles of Valois, brother of the French King Philip the Handsome, into the city. The presence of the prince of the blood in a city generally benevolent to the French made it impossible for the government to maneuver, and the Black Guelphs took up arms and expelled the Whites. Proscriptions followed, and Alighieri never returned to his homeland. He was given two death sentences in absentia and only fifteen years later was amnestied in absentia. In exile, the White Guelphs often allied themselves with the Ghibellines. This policy was a successful form of moderate Guelphism, which suited popes like Gregory X (1271-1276) or Nicholas III (1277-1280) quite well. But as for Boniface VIII, this pontiff caused only hatred in Dante. Yes, and other Guelphs were ashamed of the personality of the one whose interests they were supposed to protect. At first, Dante was the mouthpiece of the exiles. However, he soon changed his point of view: the poet became convinced that only the firm hand of the German monarch could save Italy from civil strife. Now he pinned his hopes on Henry VII of the Luxembourg dynasty (1275-1313). In 1310, the king went to Italy to rein in the cities and put pressure on opponents. He succeeded in something: he received the imperial crown. But after that, Heinrich behaved in the same way as his predecessors, bogged down in an endless game of chess. The cities also did not know how to behave, their leaders rushing about. In 1313, the emperor died suddenly in Tuscany. From that moment on, Dante decided that it was better to be "his own slanderer" (in Italian, more precisely: "to be his own party"). He was both cunning and completely sincere at the same time. The Divine Comedy ends with the apotheosis of Empire and Love in the Rose of Paradise: the universe was unthinkable for him without a monarchy that unites the world of people with love. But the last legitimate, from the point of view of Dante, Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) is executed in hell among heretics, along with his courtiers: treasurer Peter Vineisky, sentenced to torment for suicide, and astrologer Michael Scott for sorcery. This is all the more surprising since, with the breadth of his views, this emperor evoked deep sympathy from the Florentine poet. But such was Dante: when he felt that he should punish, he overstepped his personal feelings. In the same way, he was really outraged by the antics of Cardinal Giacomo Colonna, who, according to popular rumor, slapped the captured Pope Boniface VIII. He personally hated Boniface, but as a true Catholic he revered the Pope and could not imagine that he could touch him, commit physical violence against the pontiff. In the same way, Dante respected Emperor Frederick, but could not help but send to hell the one to whom rumor attributed heretical statements (disbelief in the immortality of the soul and the doctrine of the eternity of the world). Dante's paradox is a paradox of the Middle Ages.
When, in the 1150s, the young German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa appeared on the peninsula in order to return the northern Italian provinces to obedience, he saw a kind of huge chessboard, where the squares were cities with more or less large provinces subordinate to them - contado. Each pursued its own interests, which ran into opposition from the nearest neighbor. Therefore, it was difficult for Mantua to become an ally of Verona, and Bergamo, say, of Brescia, and so on. Each city sought an ally in a more distant neighbor with whom it had no territorial disputes. The city tried with all its might to subordinate the district to its orders, as a result of this process, called comitatinanza, small states arose. The strongest of them tried to devour the weakest.
There was no end in sight to the strife in Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany. The cruelty that the Italians showed to each other is striking. In 1158, the emperor laid siege to the recalcitrant Milan, and “no one,” writes the chronicler, “participated in this siege with more fury than the Cremonese and Pavia. The besieged also showed no more hostility towards anyone than towards them. There had long been rivalries and strife between Milan and these cities. In Milan, many thousands of their people were killed or suffered in heavy captivity, their lands were plundered and burned. Since they themselves could not properly take revenge on Milan, who surpassed them both in their own strength and in the number of allies, they decided that the time had come to pay for the insults inflicted on them. The combined German-Italian troops then managed to break the proud Milan, its fortifications as the most important symbol of freedom and independence were torn down, and a no less symbolic furrow was drawn along the central square. However, the glorious German knights were not always lucky - the city militias, especially those united under the auspices of the Lombard League, inflicted equally crushing defeats on them, the memory of which has been preserved for centuries.
Cruelty was an indispensable component of the struggle of the Italian medieval parties. The government was cruel, but the townspeople were just as cruel towards it: the “guilty” podestas, consuls, even prelates were beaten, their tongues were pulled out, they were blinded, they were driven through the streets in disgrace. Such attacks did not necessarily lead to regime change, but gave the illusion of temporary liberation. The authorities responded with torture and stimulated denunciation. Exile or the death penalty threatened the suspected of espionage, conspiracy and ties with the enemy. Ordinary jurisprudence did not apply in such matters. When the criminals were hiding, the authorities did not disdain the services of hired killers. The most common method of punishment was deprivation of property, and for wealthy families also the demolition of the palazzo. The methodical destruction of towers and palaces was intended not only to erase the memory of individuals, but also of their ancestors. The ominous concept of proscriptions returned (this was the name given to the outlawing of a certain citizen in Rome in the time of Sulla - his murder was allowed and encouraged, and the property went to the treasury and partly to the murderers themselves), and often they now extended to the children and grandchildren of the convicted (on the male line). ). So the ruling party uprooted entire family trees from public life.
This proud word "Lombardy" The inhabitants of the northern Italian cities understood perfectly well that it would not be possible to fight the German emperors alone. Therefore, back in 1167, sixteen communes led by Milan created the so-called Lombard League. For representation in the new union, each participant delegated his deputy, the so-called "rector". The competence of the rectors included political strategy, issues of declaring war and concluding peace, as well as general commissariat (army supply). This well-established federation showed its strength most clearly on May 27, 1176, at the Battle of Legnano (30 kilometers from Milan) against the knights of Frederick I. The emperor acted strictly according to the then accepted rules, relying on the frontal attack of his heavy cavalry. And the Lombards showed imagination. They pushed forward the heavy Milanese cavalry, which, simulating a retreat, led the Germans to the spears and hooks of the Lombard foot militia. Frederick's troops mixed up and immediately received a blow from the cavalrymen from Brescia, who were in reserve, on the right flank. Frederick fled, leaving his shield and banner behind. In 1183, he was forced to sign the Peace of Constance, according to which all that had been taken away was returned to the cities, there were privileges and an even wider autonomy of management was provided. However, when in 1237 the grandson of Barbarossa Frederick II came to Lombardy to complete the work unsuccessfully started by his grandfather, military happiness turned away from the Italians. On November 27, 1237, near the town of Kortenuovo on the Olio River, the German cavalry unexpectedly attacked the Milanese. The blow was crushing, the townspeople were defeated and overturned. True, the Lombard infantry did not flinch - having taken up all-round defense, it held out until late in the evening against the knights clad in armor, shielded themselves from them with a wall of shields and withstood cruel hand-to-hand combat. However, the Guelphs suffered heavy losses from the arrows of the Arabs who were in the army of Frederick. Late in the evening, the last of the defenders surrendered. In this battle, the defeated lost several thousand people killed and captured. But despite the defeat, the League continued to exist and struggle. Moreover, thanks to her efforts, Frederick did not succeed in completely subjugating Lombardy. It fell apart after the death of this energetic sovereign. Pavel Kotov
In addition, the daily flow of violence also came from special organized groups, such as extended tribal "militias" ("consorteries"), parish "teams" of one of the churches or "counterparts" (quarter "teams"). There were various forms of disobedience: open refusal to follow the laws of the commune (actually synonymous with "city"), military attack on the entire hometown by those expelled from it for political reasons, "terror attacks" against magistrates and clergy, theft of their property, the creation of secret societies, subversive agitation.
I must say that in this struggle, political preferences changed with the speed of a kaleidoscope. Who you were, Guelph or Ghibelline, was often decided by momentary circumstances. For the entire thirteenth century, there is hardly a single large city where power has not changed violently several times. What can we say about Florence, which changed the laws with extraordinary ease. Everything was decided by practice. The one who seized power formed the government, created laws and monitored their implementation, controlled the courts, etc. The opponents were in prison, in exile, outside the law, but the exiles and their secret allies did not forget the insult and spent their fortunes on secret or open struggle. For them, the government of the opponents did not have any legal force, in any case, no more than their own.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were not organized parties at all, subject to the leadership of their formal leaders. They were a network of independent factions that cooperated with each other up to a certain point under a suitable banner. The Guelphs often turned their weapons against the Pope, and the Ghibellines acted without regard for the interests of pretenders to the imperial crown. The Ghibellines did not deny the Church, and the Guelphs did not deny the Empire, but they tried to minimize their real claims to power. Guelph governments often found themselves under excommunication. Prelates, on the other hand, often came from aristocratic families with Ghibelline roots - even some Popes could be accused of Ghibelline sympathies!
The castle of Villafranca at Moneglie near Genoa changed hands many times between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and back again.
Price of freedom. In the confrontation between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, one can and should look for the origins of the modern political traditions of Western Europe - the origins of bourgeois, that is, in fact, in a literal translation, urban democracy. Despite the fact that, as we have seen, neither in terms of their structure, nor in terms of the methods and goals of the struggle, its participants were at all "democratic". Members of the parties behaved not only authoritarian, but simply brutal. They uncompromisingly strove for that power that eluded the hands of the "universal", great-power sovereigns, whose position seemed to be securely fixed by the centuries-old tradition of feudal society. But if the economic, legal and cultural situation in Europe had not really changed and would not have allowed new forces to emerge and grow stronger, perhaps democracy, by no means alien to medieval consciousness as a whole, would have remained only a dream or a memory of the long-gone past of Greece and Rome. . Indeed, in addition to bloody weddings, executions and betrayals, the first parliaments, the first secular schools, and finally the first universities were formed. A new culture of speech also arose - a modernized oratory, with the help of which politicians now had to convince their fellow citizens that they were right. The same Dante is inconceivable without the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, without the urban culture that nurtured him. He is also inconceivable without his teacher - Brunetto Latini, who, according to the chronicler, was the first to teach the Florentines to live according to the laws of Politics. And without Dante, his contemporaries and descendants, in turn, the Renaissance is impossible - an era that showed the European peoples the opportunity to develop for everyone according to their own choice. For example, in Renaissance Italy, the terms "Guelphs" and "Ghibellines" lost their former meaning, political passions boiled over new people and new problems. But as before, the inhabitants of the country remembered that it was then, in opposition to the formidable Hohenstaufen emperors, that what was dearest to them was born: Freedom. Remembered, not even always realizing it - reflexively.
The Guelph and Ghibelline parties were mobile while maintaining their employees and corporate rules. In exile, they acted as mercenary gangs and political groups, exerting pressure either by war or by diplomacy. Returning home, they became not only the authorities, but the most influential social force (the concept of a ruling party did not exist). For example, when in 1267 the Guelphs once again established control over Florence, their captain and consul entered the government. At the same time, their party remained a private organization, which, however, was officially "awarded" the confiscated property of the expelled Ghibellines. With these funds, she began, in fact, the financial enslavement of the city. In March 1288, the commune and popolo already owed her 13,000 florins. This allowed the Guelphs to put pressure on their countrymen so much that they sanctioned the outbreak of war against the Tuscan Ghibellines (which led to the victory at Campaldino in 1289). In general, the parties played the role of the main censors and guardians of political "orthodoxy", ensuring with varying success the loyalty of the townspeople to the Pope or the Emperor, respectively. That's the whole ideology.
The leader of the Pisan Ghibellines, Ugolino della Gherardesca, together with his sons, was imprisoned in the castle of Gualandi, where he died of starvation.
Reading medieval prophecies, the historiosophical arguments of the followers of Joachim of Florence, or the writings of Dante, promising troubles for Italian cities, one gets the impression that there were neither right nor wrong in that struggle. From the Scottish astrologer Michael Scott, who spoke to Frederick II in 1232 in Bologna, both the recalcitrant Guelph communes and the cities loyal to the Empire got it. Dante condemned the Pisan Count Ugolino della Gherardesca to the terrible torments of hell for betraying his party, but despite this, under his pen, he became perhaps the most humane image of the entire poem, at least its first part. The 13th-century chronicler Saba Malaspina called both the Guelphs and the Ghibellines demons, and Geri of Arezzo called his fellow citizens pagans because they worshiped these party names as if they were idols.
Is it worth looking behind this "idolatry" for a reasonable beginning, for any real political or cultural convictions? Is it possible at all to understand the nature of the conflict, the roots of which go far into the past of the Italian lands, and the consequences - to Italy of modern times, with its political fragmentation, "neo-Gibellines" and "neo-Ghibellines"? Perhaps, in some ways, the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines is akin to football tifosi fights, sometimes quite dangerous and bloody? How can a self-respecting young Italian not root for his native club? Can he be completely out of the game? Struggle, conflict, “party spirit”, if you like, are in the very nature of man, and the Middle Ages are very similar to us in this. Trying to look in the history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines exclusively for the expression of the struggle of classes, estates or "strata", perhaps, is not worth it. But at the same time, we must not forget that the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines largely stems from the modern democratic traditions of the West.
Maneuvering between two irreconcilable enemies - the Pope and the Emperor - did not allow any of the parties to achieve final military and political superiority. Otherwise, if one of the opponents turned out to be the owner of unlimited power, European democracy would remain only in the history books. And so - it turned out a kind of unique power parity, which in many respects ensured a sharp breakthrough in Western civilization in the future - on a competitive basis.
Guelphs and Ghibellines political trends in Italy in the 12th-15th centuries that arose in connection with the attempts of the emperors of the "Holy Roman Empire" to assert their dominance on the Apennine Peninsula. The Guelphs (Italian Guelfi), named after the Welfs (Welf), the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony, the rivals of the German Staufen dynasty, united the opponents of the empire (mainly from the trade and craft layers), whose banner was the pope. Ghibellini (Italian Ghibellini), apparently named after Weiblingen, the family castle of the Staufen, united the supporters of the emperor (mainly nobles). In the course of the struggle, the programs of these directions acquired a complex and conditional character; their social composition also changed, the orientation of individual social strata largely depended on specific circumstances: for example, in Bologna, Milan, Florence, the trade and craft strata adhered to the program of the Guelphs, the nobility - the Ghibellines, and in Pisa, Siena and a number of other cities of trade and the artisan strata were part of the Ghibelline camp. This was explained by the fact that the same layers of the cities competing with them adhered to the course of the Guelphs. However, in general, the enmity between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines reflected the deep contradictions between trade and craft circles and the feudal nobility. This social antagonism was intertwined with the struggle of cities for independence from the empire, the papacy and foreign states. From the 14th century in Florence and some Tuscan cities, the Guelphs were divided into blacks and whites: blacks united noble elements, whites became the "party" of wealthy citizens. The White Guelphs had real power in Florence, had their own palace, which has survived to this day. The weakening of the political role of the empire and the papacy in the 15th century led to the attenuation of the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Lit.: Batkin L. M., On the essence of the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy, in the collection: From the history of the working masses of Italy, M., 1959; Gukovsky M. A., Italian Renaissance, vol. 1, L., 1947; Rutenburg V.I., Popular movements in the cities of Italy. XIV - beginning. XV centuries., M. - L., 1958, p. 145-66. V. I. Rutenburg.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .
See what "Guelphs and Ghibellines" are in other dictionaries:
Political trends in Italy in the 12th and 15th centuries that arose in connection with the struggle for dominance in Italy between the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy. The Guelphs, who supported the popes, mainly expressed the interests of the popolans, and the Ghibellines, supporters of ... ...
Political trends in Italy in the 12th-15th centuries that arose in connection with the struggle for dominance in Italy between the "Holy Roman Empire" and the papacy. The Guelphs, who supported the popes, mainly expressed the interests of the popolans, and the Ghibellines, supporters of ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines Crema Legnano Cortenuova Brescia Faenza Viterbo Parma Fossalta Cignoli Montebruno Cassano Montaperti Benevento ... ... Wikipedia
The Guelphs were a political movement in Italy in the 12th and 16th centuries, whose representatives advocated limiting the power of the Holy Roman Emperor in Italy and strengthening the influence of the Pope. Feuded with the Ghibellines. Ghibellines, who was at enmity with ... ... Catholic Encyclopedia
Guelphs and Ghibellines- hostile polit groups in Italy; arose at the end of the XII beginning. 13th century The name "Guelphs" comes from the Bavarian and Saxons, the Dukes of Welf, hostile to the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The Guelphs are supporters of the papacy, opponents of the empire, mainly ... ... Medieval world in terms, names and titles
- ... Wikipedia
See Art. Guelphs and Ghibellines... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
GUELFA- [ital. Guelfi], the political trend in the Middle Ages. Italy, supporters of the popes in opposition to the emperors St. Roman Empire. Appearance in the 12th century the term "G." connected with the struggle for power unfolding in Germany between the dukes ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia
See Guelphs and Ghibellines. * * * GIBELLINS GIBELLINS (Gibellini), the name of the political party in Italy, which stood on the side of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and the hostile papal party to the Guelphs (see Guelphs and Ghibellins). The party was formed in... encyclopedic Dictionary
Political party in Italy 12th-15th centuries. It arose in connection with the attempts of the emperors of Holy Rome. empire to assert its dominance in the Apennine Peninsula. Party G. (Italian Guelfi), which got its name from the Welfs, the dukes of Bavaria and Saxony, ... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia
Books
- New Chronicle, or History of Florence, Giovanni Villani. Trojans and Romans, emperors and popes, Guelphs and Ghibellines, martyrs and villains appear before the reader in the grandiose chronicle of Giovanni Villani. This contemporary Dante included in his work, ...
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