THE PODESTÀ OF SIENA

AMONG the almost infinite diversities which mark the constitu- · tional evolution of the medieval communes of Italy, it is possible to distinguish three well-defined periods of development, through which they all passed. Having achieved self-government and virtual sovereignty under the magistracy of the consuls, they gave themselves a closer and more effective organization under the podestà, only to yield, shortly, to the demands of the great masses, arriving through the industrial arts at the consciousness of their dignity as political beings, and to inaugurate an epoch of democratic experiments unparalleled in fervor and abundance of life, unless we travel back to the old city-states of Greece and Sicily. Of these three stages the writer purposes to treat only of the second, marked broad with the name of the podestà, and of this magistrate to investigate his origin, functions, and decay, only within the frame of the political destiny of the single city of Siena. This town of southern Tuscany -Sena Vetus, Civitas Virginis, as the tender title ran, wherewith its sons commemorated it upon their seals and coins lies among the foot-hills of the Maremma mountains, and its ancient walls, raised to shelter it against the power of the emperors and the still more formidable forces of jealous neighbors, yet enclose it, no longer, however, with their former air of challenge, but softly, lovingly, as though only concerned now to shield it against the disruptive agencies of a new and different age, plotting and threatening, vaguely but dangerously, somewhere beyond the line of the blue hills. When this city, its walls, towers, houses, and steep-tiled roofs flush red with the sunset, the home-bound native, mounting from the valley or winding along a neighboring crest, still looks up and mutters his exclamation of delight, and the chance guest from foreign parts, moved spectator of the scene, has suddenly borne in upon. him some of the deeper meanings of that conservatism for which this commune was known even in the days of its splendor, and by means of which it has retained, as no other city of its size in all Italy, its medieval character. Narrow street and sunlit square, Gothic church and battlemented palace still bear witness to the general traveler of Sienese piety and love of home; to the student of history these characteristics reveal themselves in a particular way

by a rich and adm rably-managed archive, and by the numerous contributions and researches through which a handful of local students have sought to give currency to the documentary treasures of their past. Crown and summit of these is the truly monumental publication of the constitution of 1262 by Lodovico Zdekauer, with which that distinguished jurist has furthered historical investigation in the whole medieval field of Italy, and has poured a flood of light upon that official who forms the subject of this study—the podestà. It is this constitution which has brought the podestà out of the mists of time and has made him a definite historical figure. What follows is largely founded upon the materials contained in this vast publication.

The origin of the podestà at Siena can no longer be regarded as surrounded with impenetrable darkness. And owing to the general similarity of Italian communal conditions, it is no over-bold assertion to maintain that what is established for Siena in this particular is sure to have more or less close application to other towns. Perhaps it will not be entirely superfluous for the writer to state at the outset his point of view toward his material. It is too common to look upon the rise of the podestà as a violent interruption of what certain authors are pleased to call the democratic régime of the consuls, and as a kind of monarchical usurpation, which the people, after having suffered for a while, rising in their might, brought to an end. Although it would be ungracious to say a single word against good old Sismondi, who originated this theory, it is both necessary and proper to warn against the habit of mind. from which flowed most of the errors of the Swiss historian. Following a tendency of his age, he crowded the facts of the past into the convenient compartments of modern political philosophy, with the result that the authority of his name has given persistent life to the above and to many other perverse and injurious views. Surely a more reasonable and temperate path to follow is to accept the podestà as a perfectly natural evolution, provided, as is every effect, with a sufficient cause. The present inquiry proceeds from this hypothesis and aims merely to set down in order all the material about him which the documents will yield.

In order to understand the conditions under which the podestà originated, we must go back to the consular régime, in which he had his roots. Although the documents for the era of the consuls are not nearly so plentiful as for the later period of the podestà, and therefore much room is still left for conjecture concerning the first period of freedom, nevertheless much accurate information is now at hand concerning the origin and functions of the consuls,

How

chiefly through the remarkable contributions of Davidsohn. ever, this article does not concern itself with the consuls; its business is with the podestà, wherefore it will not be taken amiss if the characteristics of the consular epoch, which affected the constitution of the podestà, are given here in rapid outline without an attempt at systematic evidence.

Toward the close of the twelfth century the situation was approximately the same in every Tuscan commune. The consular government was declining to its setting. Under its banner the young cities had done great deeds; they had put forward their claim to independence, and had heroically and successfully defended their young freedom against the barbaric régime represented by emperor and territorial nobility. But the consular government had perforce a loose, fortuitous character, corresponding to the haphazard conditions of its birth. Offices created or powers delegated to meet a newly-risen necessity were abandoned as soon as the conditions changed and the old necessity yielded to a new. That the first free government created on feudal soil was a rude and imperfect mechanism is not very astonishing, when we reflect that its artificers neither found help in their own practical experience, nor enjoyed the mental advantage of a long historical perspective, furnished in our own day by schools and libraries. Under these uncertain conditions the power fell naturally into the hands of the well-to-do, who combined with their riches, or rather possessed because of their riches a higher measure of enterprise and intelligence. Not that the commune is other than a democratic product, the achievement of the combined and harmonious action of all orders of citizens. But the masses seem to have yielded voluntarily, during these first steps in regions dark and unexplored, to the direction of their more influential fellow-citizens; and the superiority inherent in birth, wealth, and intelligence was firmly clinched by the fact that the first business of the new organization was to provide for its defense, and that, whenever the call to arms was sounded, only the wealthier citizens could provide horses and fight as knights or milites, whereas the common people, armed as their means permitted, had to content themselves to serve as foot-soldiers or pedites. The constitutional development of the commune in its whole first period (1100-1200 approximately) turns about the relation of these two classes the two military orders, dividing between them the male population of every Tuscan town. It will be well to hold fast to this simple fact, and not to allow it to be obscured by a problematical social element, which some writers have elaborately exploited. We have been told frequently of a noble faction of Ger

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. IX.-17.

man descent-heirs of the Teutonic conquerors-which was settled. in all the Italian cities, and did its best to clog the wheels of municipal progress. The assumption of such a body of unassimilated foreigners in the commune of the twelfth century is based on a misunderstanding, and can contribute nothing to the solution of the constitutional problem. It will be found safer not to abandon the region of fact, and fact establishes that there were nobles resident within the pale of every commune from its earliest days of freedom, but whether they were of German or Roman descent rarely appears, and was a matter of indifference, the sole distinguishing feature of the privileged class being, as I have already shown, that it was composed of those citizens who, when the local army was called out, served as milites. This expensive military service was so exclusively the mark of nobility that commoners who had enriched themselves by trade to the point where they were enabled to ride to war on horseback were also regarded as milites. Doubtless they were snubbed at first, in the usual fashion, by the men of still older wealth, who looked upon themselves, in comparison with their upstart rivals, as an aristocracy of blood; but the rich were soon inseparably fused by virtue of their riches, without regard to the date at which they had acquired them, and at later times at least, were never distinguished, for common parlance and the law itself designated the descendants of all the great families of the consular era as magnati. The miles was therefore the local noble, but the local noble owed his position not so much to birth as to wealth; and all the later popular fury which assaulted and finally brought him low, while in part, it is true, directed against his military and feudal habits, incompatible with a democratic and commercial commonwealth, was more especially directed against a position of privilege founded upon material resources. It is becoming every day more and more clear that the key to the political revolutions of the Italian communes must be sought in the industrial situation,2 and that the popular outcry against the noble was quite as much an attack upon the capitalist.

Here then, to recapitulate, are the features to be kept in mind of the first free or consular period of government. First, the institutions were in the experimental stage, and presented the picture of a hurried, haphazard, and faulty mechanism. Second, the power was in the hands of the wealthy class, who, because they rode to war on 1The most lucid explanation of how these early military divisions of the commune gave rise to the social and political classes is given by Davidsohn, Geschichte von FlorBand I., 685 ff.

enz,

2 See the latest book which propounds this theory, Arias, I Trattati Commerciali della Republica Florentina (Florence, 1901).

horseback, were called milites or knights, and gave themselves feudal and aristocratic airs. Third, the democratic movement, which had its beginnings in the consular era, although how and when is not entirely clear, was a protest on the part of the dispossessed against the privileges, both political and economical, of the noble class.

We turn now to the influences which led to the transformation of the government of the consuls into that of the podestà. This happened almost simultaneously all over Italy, but we are concerned only with Siena. The consuls of this town, always three at least in number, though often more than three, held their office for one year. They were appointed by the council - the meeting of the citizens or their delegates — and at the end of their term again reported to this body. Their administration was reviewed, and in case of malfeasance they might be severely punished. This process of audit, which was gradually extended to all other officials of the commune, was called sindacamentum (Ital. sindacato), was long retained, and is one of the most important institutional features of Sienese public life. Its existence during the consular era can be satisfactorily proved from the constitution published by Zdekauer, which, although it bears the date 1262, contains embedded in it, as the editor in his introduction shows, many of the earliest features of Sienese selfgovernment. One article in particular shows how it was the practice with which we are here concerned that of sindacamentum which contributed to the replacement of the consuls by the podestà. We read that the podestà must solemnly swear to hold the consuls to their accounting. This passage, which in the year 1262 was without meaning, because the consuls had already been abolished for half a century, is plainly a survival from an earlier redaction of the constitution, and clearly gives a hint as to the earlier condition of affairs. Its meaning can be none other than that the podestà, before he crowded the consuls out of office, was called in temporarily, at the end of their term, to investigate their conduct. Probably the council came to consider itself unequal to the task of sindacamentum, or at least became impressed with the convenience of having the audit carried out by an appointee who had its confidence. Since there were here, as everywhere and always, people who had an ax to grind, the choice of this person, charged to act as supreme arbiter,

2

The constitution of 1262 is of that year in the sense that it was transcribed on parchment in that year, not in the sense that the institutions which it enumerates and defines were then originated. On the contrary, Zdekauer brilliantly shows that many of them go back a century, and that most of them were created at the call of some necessity arising in the preceding hundred years.

2 Distinctio II. 174: Et post depositum eorum officium constringam consules comunis et placiti, qui modo sunt, et omnes eorum officiales, ad rationem faciendam, etc.