Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/640

 584 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE Florence, and the Papacy, and made it no longer possible for her to hold aloof from Italian politics as she had usually hitherto done. Florence during the later Middle Ages brought most of the other towns of Tuscany under her sway and was more /- ^ powerful than Pisa, Lucca, or Siena, her closest Constitu-. , TT • i. r tional history rivals. Her internal city government, after pro- o orence g ress i n g f r a while in the direction of democracy, had then undergone a reaction and deteriorated into a vir- tual despotism under the cover of the old republican forms. This process we may briefly trace. At about the time that Venice was restricting both voting and omceholding to its nobles, Florence took an opposite course. In 1282 the su- preme magistracy was put in the hands of six priors rep- resenting the gilds and elected anew every two months, and in 1293 the members of thirty-seven noble houses were for- ever disqualified from these offices. There were twenty-one gilds making up the popolo of Florence. Of these the seven richer gilds of notaries, cloth-makers, money-changers, wool- weavers, silk-weavers, physicians, and furriers were known as "the fat people." The "little people" consisted of the fourteen gilds of linen-makers and mercers, shoemakers, smiths, salt-dealers, butchers, wine-merchants, innkeepers, harness-makers, leather-dressers, armorers, ironmongers, masons, carpenters, and bakers. Sometimes, however, the first-named five of these constituted a middle group with privileges superior to the other nine. These lesser gilds now began to struggle for an equal share in the government with the fat gilds and ultimately won. Next the Ciompi, who did not belong to gilds at all, secured political rights by a rev- olution in 1378, only to lose them in a counter-revolution of 1382. Under the forms of the republic there then ensued a fifty-year rule by a political ring composed of a few burgher families. This oligarchy was very successful in foreign policy, but finally in 1435 was overthrown by Cosimo de' Medici, a wealthy banker. Cosimo was a political "boss" who had put himself at the head of a popular reaction against the oligarchy in