SIGNORIE AND PRINCIPATI. — The two words, and especially the first, indicate two things that are connected with each other but in reality quite different: namely, the new monarchical form assumed by the government of many Italian cities from the middle of the thirteenth century onward, and, at the same time, the corresponding period of Italian history up to the fall of independence. Under this new monarchical form, the communal constitution is emptied of real authority, and effective power is concentrated in the hands of one man—first temporarily and extraordinarily, then for life, and finally hereditarily. Once this last stage has been reached, the s. seeks to legitimize its authority, apart from the original popular election, by resorting to imperial conceptions, which ultimately result in the establishment of a p. of the feudal type. The s. is the inevitable evolution of the commune, brought about by the inadequacy of its institutions to maintain internal peace and restrain the violence of struggles among families, parties, and classes, each of which tends to dominate the city alone, to the detriment of its opponents, who were often expelled. The severity of these internal struggles increases as the commune’s political base expands and new strata of the population participate in the government, and it is aggravated by the external threat, when the guerrilla warfare of the exiles relies on aid from neighboring and rival cities. At that point, the gravity of the danger makes the action of a leader necessary
This origin of the principal signorie, as a means of defending an internal situation, excludes personal violence and intrigue, insofar as the certainly ambitious work of the leader becomes identified with the interests of the stronger party. The phenomenon began around the middle of the thirteenth century, as a result of the intensification of internal struggles in the cities during and because of the conflict between Frederick II and the Communes; its first signs are seen among the popular and Guelph element, for example in Milan, when the della Torre family frequently became elders of the Credenza of S. Ambrogio, only to be overthrown in 1278 by the nobles and Ghibellines, who acclaimed the archbishop Ottone Visconti as signore. The same Guelph element, after expelling Salinguerra, leader of the opposing party, brought Azzo VII d’Este back to Ferrara in 1240 with Venetian assistance; until his death he enjoyed strong pre-eminence, whereas the title of signore was instead given to his nephew Obizzo (1264). Earlier than this was the signoria of Ezzelino da Romano over Verona (1232), and subsequently over Vicenza and Padua; this, in fact, rested on the forces of the Emperor Frederick II, who thereby sought to secure the route toward Germany. Only after his death did the internal forces enjoy free play; they soon found a leader in Mastino della Scala, and when he was killed (1277), his brother Alberto, elected to succeed him, was given the title of captain and rector of the gastaldioni of the Guilds and of the people of Verona, indicating that he was to defend the predominance of the people organized in the Arts against the ancient families in exile.
The signoria in each city where it arose had different origins, according to local conditions, but everywhere there was a common need for peace, even if this required the expulsion of opponents and a tenacious struggle to keep them at a distance: this was a consequence of that spirit of intolerance and monopoly of political liberty on behalf of one’s own party, characteristic of the Middle Ages and the communal age, in which the identity of the party with the commune was often asserted («quae pars est Comune»). At times, indeed, the office of signore was disguised under the title of «conservator of the peace», given in Bologna to Taddeo Pepoli (1337). In its relations with the commune, it is logical that the signoria should allow Councils, magistracies, and even patrimonial individuality to subsist; and its creation and succession were legitimized by an election, even when they sometimes followed an initial proclamation to which arms had contributed. Among the first powers granted to the signore were arbitrary authority and the bailia, that is, a power superior to the constitution, a power of which the new signore made use only slowly, relying rather on skillful and less conspicuous forms. The persistence of the signoria was due to the gathering around the signore of the interests of persons and families fearful of suffering serious harm to their position and interests from the succession of strangers or from the return of the communal regime; thus the popular election, always performed as a matter of ritual, was little more than a formality, unless the signoria was undergoing a crisis and the election could provide an opportunity for discontent to make itself felt. The signore, however, often avoided this danger by associating his heir-son with him during his lifetime through an early election. The beginning of the signoria, nevertheless, was exposed to a serious internal danger from the signore’s former companions, who could ill tolerate the transformation of the function assigned to their leader merely to defend their common victory into a personal or familial privilege that elevated him above and separated him from his former companions. But, in opposition to its dangerous popular origin, the signore sought a guarantee by legitimizing his authority through an imperial vicariate (papal in the Papal States). The office of imperial vicar also granted a power superior to local laws and thus the right to modify the communal statutes, a power already granted in the arbitrium, but always exercised with great prudence. The title of vicar, which had already arisen at the end of the thirteenth century, became under Henry VII and his successors a necessary complement of the signoria and, for various reasons, common in the fourteenth century. From the vicariate to the principate was but one step, all the more so because feudal signorie of ancient origin still survived in Piedmont (Savoy, Monferrat, Saluzzo): Lodovico il Bavaro had already created Castruccio duke of Lucca, but the decisive event was the transformation of the Visconti signoria in 1395 into the Duchy of Milan. Thus, gradually, for reasons of prestige and vanity, the various signorie of northern Italy obtained the titles of dukes, marquises, and counts, paying for them handsomely to the Emperor, who had long been selling lesser titles of feudal nobility to members of the bourgeoisie. Thus the old signore, who already commanded by virtue of his effective authority, now governed legally in the duchy or marquisate by imperial grant. When Italy had in fact eliminated the Empire from its life, there remained the fiction that the new Italian princes of the north exercised legitimate authority only because they had been invested by the Emperor: a fiction that would prove fatal when Charles V asserted these imperial rights, which had seemed emptied of value.
A rather different process accompanied the formation of the signoria in a city such as Florence, where the broader and deeper development of the communal regime and the Arts, together with its powerful mercantile life, delayed this evolution by more than a century. In moments of crisis, the need for internal peace, unity, and continuity in foreign policy was met, during the first half of the fourteenth century, by the Angevin vicariates, which left internal autonomy intact. When, however, the Duke of Athens (already an Angevin regent, elected at a moment of grave crisis) exceeded these limits, he was expelled by the entire city in revolt (1343). Once the Angevin Kingdom had declined, Florence, from 1382 onward, met the need to concentrate authority and ensure continuity through a close mercantile oligarchy in which power lay in very few hands. But this signoria, concealed behind the fiction of the commune, required men of exceptional qualities; when they were lacking, the regime fell apart, and Cosimo de’ Medici rose in their place, in the name of the popular party, without the struggles and bloodshed of the northern cities. He too, however, had to maintain the republican fiction, which would gradually be suppressed, though not without the possibility of revival, by his grandson Lorenzo.
Having examined the internal aspect of the s., there remains the other aspect, that of external relations, which give the historical period itself its character, blending with the general tendencies of Italian life: the decline of the two universal authorities, Empire and Papacy, and the consequent autonomy of Italian politics; the tendency toward a reorganization of the ancient feudal Kingdom into large States on a regional basis, which would lead to a kind of political equilibrium among the States themselves. Now, the organization of the s. is closely connected with this tendency, because, by constituting a stronger government, it reinforced that need for expansion already manifested in the commune, directed first toward subjugating the contado and, after that, adjoining territories, land and river routes that could have economic and military importance, especially through attempts to forestall neighboring cities—a circumstance that occasioned most of the struggles among the cities themselves, struggles due not to ideologies but to concrete interests. On the other hand, even in relations with the Empire and the Papacy, it was the firmness of internal government that enabled the s., even when nominally Ghibelline, to display such independence toward Charles IV, so that he had no choice but to exploit the Guelph communes. This evolution of Italian politics toward real independence was largely the fruit of the power attained by the principal s., which, absorbing the minor cities, were reorganizing the ancient Kingdom into large States. The surviving communes followed this course, eventually coming to be dominated by oligarchies that ensured continuity and firmness of government: Venice above all, and then Florence as well. Comparing the political geography of Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century with that at its end, one can see how far this territorial and political reorganization had advanced; it would find its definitive form in the fifteenth century. Between the two centuries, however, there is this difference: in the former there was still the possibility, or at least the illusion, of creating a great hegemonic State in the north; but after the crisis of the Duchy of Milan at the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, during which the Venetian mainland dominion was formed, and the development of the Florentine and Savoyard States, this design became impossible, and, after half a century of struggles, the political equilibrium created by circumstances was imposed by the Peace of Lodi (1454). During these two centuries, the importance of the southern Kingdom receded into the background. Under Charles of Anjou, it had seemed intent on reviving the ambitious designs of Frederick II; but the wound inflicted by the Sicilian Vespers, the almost continuous state of war between the two Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and the dynastic struggles in the former paralyzed every ambition of its sovereigns. Through these conflicts, foreign domination insinuated itself into the Mezzogiorno, first in Sicily and then in Naples; from there, it would advance up the peninsula as far as Milan. Only the internal problems occupying France and Spain delayed until the end of the century that foreign invasion which would bring Italian independence to an end. Only the most astute men—Francesco Sforza above all, and Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici—were conscious of this danger and sought to preserve the equilibrium despite the constant discord among the Italian States. When the agreement among Milan, Florence, and Naples was broken by the presumptuous and murky policy of Lodovico il Moro and by the rashness of the son and successor of Lorenzo de' Medici, while Venice was viewed with hostility by all because of the suspicion that it aspired to further expansion, Italy possessed no political or military force capable of halting that invasion which had been preparing beyond the Alps.
These two centuries, politically not very fortunate, were instead glorious for the splendors of the literary and artistic Renaissance, which found its greatest expression in the capitals of the new States and at the courts of the princes who were their generous patrons, especially in Florence and Rome, as well as in Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Naples. Despite these splendors, the Italian economy tended from the middle of the fourteenth century to stagnate and retreat, especially in the banking sector, as a result of competition arising abroad and the damage caused by the advance of the Turks in the East.