All That:

The little community grew, and the people became very active. Because it was in their nature to organize, they tended to pursue their activities in associations: guilds, households of noble families and their allies, militia companies that trained together, neighborhood associations, subordinate councils in the outlying districts, and other groups formed around the pursuit of common interests. The membership of these organizations naturally overlapped a great deal, since many people were involved in more than one at a time, and this intermixing bred a kind of synergy. And the overall level of activity grew, and the whole community prospered.

But the actual running of the community remained in the hands of the governing council. The low-level, broad-based associations (and their members) grew to feel that they, rather than the council, were where the activity and the prosperity were centered, and that the high-level, top-down council system could no longer speak for the community as a whole. A political confrontation was looming.

No, this is not Carolingia in A.S. 30; this is 13th-century Florence. Okay, so it was a deliberate set-up, but the parallels are striking.

In Florence, as in most cities of central and northern Italy at the time, the government was the commune. The commune first appeared around 1100 as an association, formed in the absence of any other authority, to protect the property and interests of a group of private individuals. In their own private interests, the commune soon took on public responsibilities such as control of trade, police duties, maintenance of city walls and streets, etc. Since these works benefited everyone in the city as well as the individuals of the commune, naturally the commune expected everyone to contribute. This meant taxes, which meant that, without really meaning to, the commune had become the government.

The commune members were well aware of the delicate situation posed by what was in effect a private government. In order to limit the potential for abuse of power, the commune of Florence (like most other cities) settled on the institution of the podesta: a professional administrator brought in from outside the city, for a limited term of office (usually one or two years), and answerable to the commune council.

The membership of the commune was drawn almost exclusively from the upper classes, the nobility and (especially) the wealthier merchants; the popolo, the class of commoners, were effectively excluded from the government. But there were other associations and organizations that were forming at the same time, some of which welcomed all classes: trade guilds; craftsmen's guilds (or arti); parish-based neighborhood associations (vicinanzi); consorterie, consortia of landed noble families; and armi, militia companies, or street-fighting gangs, or a sort of vigilante city watch, depending on what sources you read. As the popolani (common citizens, members of the popolo) became involved in these associations - the arti, armi, and vicinanzi were mostly organized at the lower social levels - they developed a sense of political self-awareness, and sought participation in the city government.

This was the looming political confrontation from the beginning of this essay: the emergence of the popolo as a political force in the mid-13th century - not in Florence only, but in cities all through the region. With every crisis that split the city - Guelph and Ghibelline coups, papal interdict (lifted for about two hours, but that's another story), the deaths of emperors, German and Angevin invasions - the popolo gained a more formal place in the structure of government.

Finally, in 1293 a new constitution was promulgated, the Ordinances of Justice, and it remained in place for almost two hundred years. The popolo formed a separate, parallel commune open to popolani only, with their own councils and officers. Those councils were made up of representatives of associations (the arti, the armi, etc.), not of population per se. The officers of the popolo included:

Baron Patri always said that Carolingia was set up like an Italian city-state, but I didn't realize at the time how true that was. It's not just that we used titles like podesta and gonfaloniere, it's the basic make-up of Council, which is much closer to that of 13th-century Florence than to any form of government in medieval Europe north of the Alps. And also closer than many other SCA branches.

I find it interesting that when the set-up got strained, it got strained along lines parallel to the older model. Of course, the Florentine crisis arose from its own historical background, different from Carolingia's: the arguments over the role of Great Council in the baronial election came from people's mundane 20th-century identities, not any Florentine popolani personas. And of course the outcome was different as well: no one would expect a period solution to apply, or even to be wanted. But still, the parallels are so remarkable that, well, I decided to remark on them.

"History repeats itself, because people don't listen." (Laurence J. Peter) Maybe that's a little harsh - how about, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." (Mark Twain) Let's try to listen closely enough to notice the rhymes when they do come up.

Further Reading

There are plenty of books out there on the history of Florence; some of them are good, but many of them are turgid, dated, or have a bad tree/forest ratio. I haven't found one that I can really recommend above the others. A more interesting book is John Kenneth Hyde's Society and Politics in Medieval Italy: the evolution of the civil life, 1000-1350 (St. Martin's Press, 1973). Even this I only recommend if you're actually interested in society and politics - but if you are, it's very readable and unique in its scope: covering so much of Italy (instead of just one city) and in this period (instead of the Renaissance and the age of despots).

For really interesting reading, may I suggest the works of Niccolo Machiavelli? The Prince, of course, is what everyone thinks of first - it's infamous, short, and very accessible to the modern reader. But I don't really recommend it here: for one thing, it deals with Italian society and politics in Machiavelli's own time, 200 years after the developments described above; more importantly, he wrote the book to please the Medici, not himself. He also wrote a history of Florence (Florentine Histories), but that was a Medici commission as well and he was careful to tell the history that his patrons wanted to hear.

For the subject in question, I mainly recommend his Discourses on Livy. He wrote The Discourses to please himself, as a commentary on Livy's history of Rome, and the book ranges back and forth through Italian history as he compares republican Roman with more contemporary politics. Where The Prince takes despotic rule as a given, in The Discourses it is very clear that Machiavelli personally preferred a citizens' republic to all other forms of government.