by lot or the institution of the podestà, an administrative
judge who was by law a foreigner, proved relatively in-
effective. The emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) tried
to use this situation to restore imperial authority in
northern Italy, but the papacy proved as effective
an obstacle to his designs as it had to those of his
grandfather. The son of Henry VI and Constance,
daughter of Roger II of Sicily, Frederick inherited a
powerful, well-organized kingdom in southern Italy
that, together with his imperial election in Izzo, made
him a genuine threat both to the freedom of the Italian
towns and to papal autonomy. When a political faction,
hard-pressed by its rivals, sought his support, its ene-
mies invariably turned to the pope. In this way two
great “parties,” the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, were
born. In theory, Guelfs supported the pope and Ghi-
bellines the emperor, but ideological and even class dif-
ferences were minimal. The real issue was which faction
among the richer citizens would control the city.
The Guelf-Ghibelline struggles led to the break-
down of civil government in many Italian cities. Fearful
of their own citizens, governments began the practice
of hiring condottiere or mercenaries to defend them
against their neighbors (see illustration 10.5). In so do-
ing they created another mortal danger to their inde-
pendence. Victorious captains proved capable of
seizing the town when the danger had passed. By the
end of the thirteenth century, an exhausted citizenry
was prepared to accept almost any remedy, and nearly
all of the towns fell under the rule of despots. In some
cases, as in Milan, the despot was the leader of a faction
that finally triumphed over its rivals. In others, desper-
ate citizens sought or accepted the rule of a prominent
local family, a mercenary captain, or a popular podestà.
They abandoned their cherished republican constitu-
tions in return for the right to pursue business and per-
sonal interests in relative peace. It was not always a
good bargain. Whatever their titles, despots were ab-
solute rulers whose survival demanded a certain ruth-
lessness. Some were competent and relatively benign; a
few were bloodthirsty psychopaths; but none was pre-
pared to encourage the rich culture of civic participa-
tion that would one day produce the Renaissance.
That task was left to Florence and Venice, two
cities that escaped the soft trap of despotism. In Flor-
ence, the Guelf triumph of 1266 paved the way for a
guild-based democracy that survived, in theory at least,
until the end of the fifteenth century. Social and eco-
nomic tensions were expressed in the long struggle
over whether or not the major guilds, which were dom-
inated by the great bankers, should control the elec-
toral process and therefore the signoria. The issue was188 Chapter 10Illustration 10.5
The Condottiere.The mercenary
lived apart from the communal values of
the Italian city-state. In this painting
from 1328, Simone Martini shows the
Sienese commander Guidoriccio da
Fogliano riding in splendid isolation
across a war-torn landscape.