| 5. The Period of the Communes |
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 At the death of Countess Matilda (1115) the Florentine
populace to all effects already constituted a Commune. The
numerous privileges conceded by the "gran contessa" and
the events in which the Florentine community had played a leading
role in the struggle against the emperor, induced the people to
organize autonomously and to undertake action aimed at weakening
imperial power. It was therefore inevitable that in 1125, upon
the death of the last emperor of the Franconian dynasty, Henry V,
the Florentines decided to attack and destroy Fiesole, the
neighboring rival city. As a result the two counties were
conclusively united and remained as separate entities only on an
ecclesiastic level with Fiesole maintaining its own diocese. In
any case Fiesole as a city was annulled and, no more nor less
than the suburbs of the contado, was obliged to acknowledge
Florentine supremacy with the symbolic offering of candles at the Baptistery for the festivities of
St. John the Baptist.The first
mention of an officially constituted Commune dates to 1138. Two
Florentine consuls, Brocardus and Selvorus, are mentioned as
representatives of the city in a meeting of the Tuscan cities
held at San Genesio (on the via pisana where it crossed with the
via francigena) and where it was decided to constitute a League,
for fear that Henry the Proud who had in precedence oppressed
them as imperial legate might be elected emperor. From the middle
of the 12th century on, information about the political makeup of
the Commune became more specific. We are thus informed that it
was under the guidance of twelve consuls, who took turns, two at
a time, every two months. They were flanked by a council of boni
homines, con sisting of 100-150 individuals, while at the base
was the popular assembly or Parliament, which met four times a
year in the cathedral of Santa
Reparata.
From what we can gather from the documents, the social structure
of the city reveals a community constituted of religious and
secular representatives, with three dominant social groups: the
nobles, grouped into consorterie (the so-called
"Società delle torri"), the merchants, and the
horse soldiers, the backbone of the army, who included all those,
noble or not, who were able to provide their own arms and on
horseback serve the militia of the Commune. Among the nobles were
to be found the old feudal families who had always lived in the
city such as the Uberti and the Adimari, as well as the landed
proprieters of the surrounding countryside or contado who were
forced to live within the walls once they had been conquered by
the Commune. Examples were the Buondelmonti and the Ubaldini.
Although the nobles held most of the power in the 12th century,
it was nevertheless mainly the merchants who were responsible for
the growth of the city. The rise of the merchants accellerated in
the second half of the century, as trade with distant countries
was intensified and became a new and much richer source for the
accumulation of capital. Extensive trade and its inseparable
companion, credit, were what provided the Commune with its power
of growth and were the basis for the economic and demographic
expansion of the city. The requisites
of commercial activity (the need for free circulation of the
goods that arrived in or left from Florence) forced the Commune
to protect the communication routes from the extravagant tolls
imposed by the proprieters of the contado, as well as the
authority of the neighboring municipalities. Throughout the 12th
century therefore a goodly part of the military power of the
Commune was earmarked for the struggle against the feudal regime
(represented above all by the consorterie bound to the noble
Guidi and Alberti families) and against rival Communes.
This process of expansion underwent a temporary halt when
Frederick Barbarossa advanced south into Italy. In 1185 the
emperor even deprived the city of its contado and restored the
marquisate of Tuscany, setting his younger son Philip at its
head. But the provision had a brief life. In 1197, taking
advantage of the death of Barbarossa's successor, Henry VI,
Florence regained control of her contado, which she had probably
never completely lost. At the end of the century and at the
beginning of the 13th century, thanks to a series of fortunate
military exploits, the Florentine Commune succeeded in getting
most of the peoples of the contado to pledge allegiance
"which formerly had been owed to the signoria of the counts
of Guidi and those of Mangona and Capraia and Certaldo". (G.
Villani, Cronica, V, 21). Henceforws, deprived of their authority
and their power, were to be pushed back to the borders of the
municipal territory and later fought and defeated even in what
was left of their dominions.
The rivalry with the neighboring municipalities also led to any
number of disputes, mostly based on pretexts involving the
establishment of boundaries of their respective spheres of
competence. Particularly frequent was conflict with Siena, which
was enlarging its contado in southern Tuscany at the expense of
the bordering cities. With Pisa, which was the richest city in
the western Mediterranean in the 12th century, things were
different. Since Florence normally used the port of Pisa for its
commerce with overseas countries, their relationship was one of
collaboration and mutual aid. Clear evidence of the power
Florence had acquired in the course of the 12th century is to be
found in the expansion of its urban territory. All around the
circle of Matilda's walls, in correspondence to the gates,
populous suburbs had sprung up, initially elongated in form as
they flanked the streets that ran out of the city.
In 1172 the Commune therefore decided to enlarge the city walls
and incorporate the newest districts. The perimeter of the new
city walls, raised in barely two years (from 1173 to 1175), was
twice that of the "old circle" and enclosed an area
that was three times as great. The new walls touched on the Arno
and were characterized by a rotation of about 45° with
respect to the other city walls which had all been basically
planned in relation to the Roman quadrilateral. As a result each
side of the old belt (and the gates which generally were set at
the center) corresponded to a corner of the new walls. Thus after more
than a thousand years, the orientation of the city and its
network of streets finally corresponded with the layout of the
various routes enclosing the city which were based on the
division into centuriae of the land surrounding the Roman colony.
The course of the Mugnone was once more deviated for the
construction of the new city walls. Brought further west, it
flowed into the moats that ran along the walls, reminiscences of
which are found in the names of what is now the Via dei Fossi
(moats), as well as the church of San Jacopo tra i Fossi, in what
is now the Via dei Benci. In place of the traditional four
entrances, the new enclosure had six main gates and four
posterns. As far as the suburbs across the Arno were concerned,
which initially lacked an organic system of defence, it was not
until later that they were fortified, even though a small part`of
the "Oltrarno" was enclosed in the walls as early as
1173-1175. As a result the Arno became an infrastructure within
the city, both as a communications route as well as a source of
energy and a water supply for industries (mills and fulling
mills). The bridge over the river, rebuilt in the early Middle
Ages, "fell at the end of the fourth day of November"
and was rebuilt at the present site of Ponte Vecchio, but with
five arches and a road surface that was not nearly as wide as it
is today.
In the 12th century the urban fabric of the city must have been
punctuated by numerous towers: in 1180 thirty-five were
documented, but there were certainly many more. The existence of
the towers, however, did not establish a "logical order
coordinated by environmental and monumental qualifications"
since basically their distribution was not bound to any special
part, neither the "civitas vetus" (the Roman,
Carolingian and Matildan city) nor the "civitas nova".
Originally the purpose of the towers was that of offense and
defense. They provided the owners with a place of refuge in case
of danger and were therefore built alongside the houses with
which they communicated through openings in the adjoining walls.
Only later were the towers used as houses (13th-14th centuries)
when they underwent a series of transformations giving them the
form we know from surviving examples: the Visdomini tower in the
Via delle Oche, the Baldovinetti tower in the Borgo Santi
Apostoli, the Torre della Castagna, in the Piazza San Martino del
Vescovo. The tower-houses were not as high as they had previously
been, and were provided with more openings and had large portals
with pointed arch moldings at the base (previously the only
entrance, as specified above, had been at a certain height). But
in the 12th century the towers still served for military purposes
and gave birth to the phenomenon of the "Tower
Societies", associations which reunited the owners of
various towers and through which an association (or consorteria)
of several noble families succeeded in controlling a portion of
the city. This union of various towers into the same association
lies at the base of the city block, a typical structural unit of
urban space in the 12th century.
A considerable number of small and large churches also sprang up
as the size of the city increased. In two centuries the number of
churches in Florence was tripled, so that at the beginning of the
13th century the city had as many as 48 churches (12 priories and
36 parishes).
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