SIGNORIE and PRINCIPATES. — The two terms, and especially the first, denote two things that are linked but in reality quite distinct: namely, the new monarchical form that took over the government of many Italian cities beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, and the corresponding period of Italian history up to the loss of independence. In this new monarchical form, the communal constitution is stripped of real authority, and effective power is concentrated in the hands of one man, first temporarily and exceptionally, then for life, and finally as a hereditary office. Once this last stage is reached, the *signoria* seeks to legitimize its authority, apart from the original popular election, by appealing to imperial concepts that ultimately take on a feudal character. The *signoria* is the inevitable evolution of the commune, arising from the inadequacy of its institutions to maintain internal peace and curb the violence of struggles between families, factions, and classes that sought to dominate the city at the expense of their adversaries, who were often expelled. The fierceness of these internal conflicts intensified as the political base of the commune expanded and new strata of the population participated in government, and it worsened due to external threats when the guerrilla warfare of exiles was supported by aid from neighboring and rival cities. In such circumstances, the gravity of the danger made the action of a leader necessary—as in any form of warfare—and the leader exercised power in defense of the faction he had led to victory. The pressure of external enemies and the snares of internal foes, when they failed to overturn this situation, contributed to expanding the leader’s powers and ultimately to legalizing them through the conferral of a title that defined his function and through decrees that fixed his authority, soon to become unlimited.
This origin of the principal *signorie*, arising from the need to defend an internal situation, precludes violence and personal intrigue, since the ambitions of the leader merged with the interests of the strongest faction. The phenomenon began around the mid-thirteenth century as internal strife in the cities intensified during and because of the conflict between Frederick II and the communes. The first signs of it appear in the popular faction, for example in Milan, where the della Torre family often became elders of the Credenza of Sant’Ambrogio, only to be overthrown in 1278 by the nobles and Ghibellines, who acclaimed Archbishop Ottone Visconti as signore. Similarly, the Guelph faction, having driven out Salinguerra, the leader of the opposing party, reinstated Azzo VII d’Este in Ferrara in 1240 with Venetian help; Azzo held strong preeminence until his death, though the title of signore was later given to his nephew Obizzo (1264). Preceding these events was the *signoria* of Ezzelino da Romano over Verona (1232), and later Vicenza and Padua, though this was in fact supported by the forces of Emperor Frederick II, who sought a secure route to Germany. Only after Frederick’s death did the free play of internal forces unfold, quickly producing a leader in Mastino della Scala; after his assassination in 1277, his brother Alberto was elected to succeed him and given the title of capitano and rector of the gastalds of the guilds and the popolo of Verona, a position that indicated he was to defend the predominance of the popolo organized in the *Arti* against the old exiled families.
The *signoria* in each city where it arose had varied origins depending on local conditions, but everywhere the need for peace was common—even if it meant expelling adversaries and waging tenacious struggles to keep them away. This stemmed from the spirit of intolerance and the monopolization of political liberty by one’s own faction, typical of the Middle Ages and the communal age, in which the faction was often identified with the commune itself (*quae pars est Comune*). Sometimes the office of signore was disguised under the title of “conservator of the peace,” as in Bologna, where Taddeo Pepoli received this title in 1337. In its relations with the commune, it was logical for the *signoria* to allow councils, magistracies, and even the personal patrimonial structure to persist; the creation and succession of the *signoria* were legitimized by an election, even if this sometimes followed an initial proclamation backed by force of arms. Among the first powers granted to the signore was *arbitrium* and *balia*—that is, authority superior to the constitution. The new signore made use of this power sparingly, employing more subtle and less conspicuous methods. The prolongation of the *signoria* was due to the coalescing around the signore of the interests of persons and families fearful of suffering serious harm to their position and interests either from the succession of outsiders or from a return to the communal regime; thus, the popular election, though still a formality, was little more than a ritual, unless a crisis in the *signoria* was underway and the election could serve as an outlet for discontent. Often, however, the signore avoided this danger by associating his heir while still alive through an early election.
The beginning of the *signoria*, however, was exposed to serious internal danger from the signore’s former companions, who resented the transformation of a function entrusted to their leader solely to defend a common victory into a personal or family privilege that elevated and separated him from his former comrades. To counter this dangerous popular origin, the signore sought to secure his authority through legitimization as an imperial vicar (as in the Papal States). The office of vicar granted him power superior to local laws and thus the right to modify communal statutes—a faculty already included in *arbitrium*, but exercised with great caution. The title of vicar, already in use by the late thirteenth century, became with Henry VII and his successors a necessary complement to the *signoria*, and for various reasons became common in the fourteenth century. From vicariate to principate was but a short step, especially since in Piedmont *signorie* of feudal origin still persisted (Savoy, Montferrat, Saluzzo). Louis the Bavarian had already created Castruccio Duke of Lucca, but the decisive event was the transformation of the Visconti *signoria* into the Duchy of Milan in 1395. Thus, slowly and for reasons of prestige and vanity, the various *signorie* of northern Italy obtained titles of duke, marquis, and count, paying well to the Emperor, who had long sold lesser feudal noble titles to commoners. Thus the old signore, who already ruled by virtue of his effective authority, now legally governed in the duchy or marquisate by imperial concession. When Italy had in fact eliminated the Empire from its affairs, there remained the fiction that the new northern Italian princes exercised legitimate authority solely because they were invested by the Emperor—a fiction that would become fateful when Charles V asserted these imperial rights, which had seemed devoid of value.
A rather different process marks the formation of the signoria in a city like Florence, where the broader and deeper development of the communal regime and the guilds, together with the powerful mercantile life, delayed this evolution by more than a century. For in moments of crisis during the first half of the 14th century, internal peace, unity, and continuity in foreign policy were secured through Angevin vicariates, which left internal autonomy intact. When, however, the Duke of Athens (a former Angevin regent, elected in a moment of grave crisis) overstepped these bounds, he was driven out by the entire insurgent city (1343). With the decline of the Angevin kingdom, Florence from 1382 supplied the need for centralized authority and continuity through a narrow mercantile oligarchy in which power was concentrated in very few hands. But this latent signoria, concealed behind the republican fiction, required men of exceptional quality; when such men were lacking, the regime collapsed, and in their place rose Cosimo de’ Medici, acclaimed by the popolo without the strife and bloodshed seen in the northern cities. Yet even he had to maintain the republican fiction, which his nephew Lorenzo would gradually suppress, though not without the possibility of revival.
Having examined the internal aspect of the signoria, we must turn to its external relations, which give shape to the historical period itself by merging with the general trends of Italian life: the decline of the two universal authorities, the Empire and the Papacy, and the consequent autonomy of Italian politics; the tendency toward reorganizing the old feudal kingdom into large regional states that would lead to a kind of political equilibrium among them. Now, the organization of the signorie is closely tied to this trend, for by constituting a stronger government, it reinforced the expansionist impulse already evident in the commune, which soon sought to subjugate the contado and, after that, contiguous territories—land and river routes of economic and military importance, especially by preempting neighboring cities. This gave rise to most of the conflicts between cities, not over ideology but over concrete interests. Likewise, in relations with the Empire and the Papacy, it was the solidity of internal government that enabled even nominally Ghibelline signorie to display such independence toward Charles IV that he could do no more than exploit local factionalism.
This evolution of Italian politics toward real independence was largely the fruit of the power attained by the principal signorie, which, absorbing smaller cities, were reorganizing the old kingdom into vast states. Even surviving communes were drawn into this trend, ending up dominated by oligarchies that ensured continuity and firm government: Venice first, then Florence. Comparing Italy’s political geography at the start of the 14th century with that at its close reveals how far this territorial and political reorganization had advanced, reaching its definitive form in the 15th century. Between the two centuries, however, there was this difference: in the early 1300s there still existed the possibility—or at least the illusion—of creating a hegemonic state in the north. But after the crisis of the Duchy of Milan upon the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, during which the Venetian terraferma dominion took shape and the Florentine and Savoyard states developed, such a design became impossible. After half a century of strife, the Peace of Lodi (1454) imposed the political equilibrium dictated by circumstances.
During these two centuries, the importance of the southern kingdom receded. Though Charles of Anjou seemed to revive the ambitious designs of Frederick II, the wound opened by the Sicilian Vespers, the nearly continuous warfare between the two kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and the dynastic struggles within the latter paralyzed every ambition of its rulers. Through these conflicts, foreign domination insinuated itself into the Mezzogiorno, first in Sicily and then in Naples, from which it would ascend the peninsula as far as Milan. Only the internal problems preoccupying France and Spain delayed until the end of the century that foreign invasion which would end Italian independence. Of this period, only the most acute minds—above all Francesco Sforza and Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici—were conscious of the need to preserve the balance despite the constant discord among Italian states. When the agreement among Milan, Florence, and Naples was shattered by Lodovico il Moro’s presumptuous and murky politics and by the recklessness of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son and successor, with Venice distrusted by all for its suspected expansionist aims, there was no political or military force in Italy capable of halting the invasion being prepared beyond the Alps.
These two centuries, politically unhappy, were instead glorious for the splendor of the literary and artistic Renaissance, which found its fullest expression in the capitals of the new states and among the princes who generously patronized it, especially in Florence and Rome, as well as in Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Naples. Despite this splendor, Italy’s economy from the mid-14th century tended to stagnate and decline, particularly in banking, under pressure from foreign competition and the losses suffered with the advance of the Turks in the East.