ey systematically and recklessly defied as long as they were
in a position to do so. The magnates behaved like brigands, and the
people replied by practically making them outlaws. They gradually
excluded them from all share of the government, they endeavoured to
make the Podesta personally responsible for keeping them in order,
they organized a militia of trade bands that could fly to arms and
barricade the streets, or lay siege to the fortified houses of the
magnates at a moment's notice; and finally, in 1293, they passed the
celebrated "Ordinances of Justice" connected with the name of Giano
della Bella, by which when a magnate murdered a popolano his whole
clan was held directly responsible (the presumption being that the
murder had been ordered in a family council), and "public report"
vouched for by two witnesses was sufficient evidence for a
conviction.

It is this struggle for the supremacy of the mercantile democracy and
the Roman Law over the military aristocracy with its "barbarian"
traditions, that lies at the back of the Guelf and Ghibelline troubles
of the thirteenth century. The papal and imperial principles that are
usually associated with the names enter only in a very secondary way
into the conflict. In truth neither the popes nor the emperors had any
sympathy with the real objects of either party, though they were ready
enough to seek their advantage in alliances with them. And in their
turn the magnates and merchants of Florence were equally determined to
be practically independent of Pope and Emperor alike. Nevertheless the
magnates could look nowhere else than to the Emperor when they wanted
material support or moral sanction for their claims to power; and it
was only in the magnates that the Emperor in his turn could hope to
find instruments or allies in his attempt to assert his power over the
cities. In like manner the Pope, naturally jealous of a strong
territorial power, encouraged and fostered the cities in their
resistance to imperial pretensions, while he and the merchant bankers
of Florence were indispensable to each other in the way of business.

We have now some insight into the essential motives of Florentine
history in the thirteenth century. But another step is needed before
we can understand the form which the factions took. It would be a
fatal error to suppose that the Ghibellines were soldiers and the
Guelfs merchants, and that as each faction triumphed in turn Florence
expelled h