Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2
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Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 431
This was not a matter of simple theoretical formulae, as was shown most
signally by Frederick’s intervention in the affairs of numerous cities to influence
the choice of a podest
`
a responsible for the communal government and faithful
to the empire. The emperor, however, in his pursuit of general political control
over northern Italy, was forced to accept many compromises, in his relationships
with both lords and cities, granting privileges to those entities reliably effective
in their offers of support. This is what happened to the commune of Asti at the
beginning of 1159.Having succeeded, by its energetic action, in demonstrating
the discrepancy between the ambitions of the marquess of Montferrat, nurtured
by imperial favour, and his effective political and military capacity, the city
was received back into the emperor’s favour and obtained confirmation of
its civil jurisdiction over a large number of the surrounding villages. At this
point it became clear even to Barbarossa that what counted above all in the
Po valley were the cities and that an understanding with them was essential.
Faced, however, with the persistent reluctance of Milan to accept the heavy
conditions imposed upon it, the imperial struggle against this city and its allies
flared up once again and continued until the destruction of Milan in the spring
of 1162. These events took place against the background of the complications
caused by the papal schism, which had dragged on since 1159.With the defeat
of Milan, Frederick reached the height of his predominance in northern Italy.
His inability to follow a coherent policy with the well-established princes of
the kindom of Italy is very obvious from the range of conditions negotiated
with the cities, always relating to interests contingent on the imperial power. A
particularly striking example is the vast concessions made to Genoa and Pisa all
along the Tyrrhenian coast, when Frederick hoped to make use of their navies
against the kingdom of Sicily, the main obstacle to his supremacy in Italy.
In actual fact, Barbarossa found himself faced with too many problems at
the same time. The development of the papal schism in favour of Alexander
III in various regions of western Europe led him in the summer of 1162 to
defer the expedition against the Normans and to leave Italy for the kingdom of
Burgundy. He sent Rainald of Dassel, the most commanding and energetic of
his counsellors, to Italy. Rainald, who had been elected archbishop at Cologne,
broadened the empire’s field of direct action in central Italy, depriving Welf VI
and his son Welf VII of authority in the Tuscan march and the duchy of Spoleto
and uniting himself with the local lords and cities in these regions, as well as
in the march of Ancona and in Romagna, while making considerable use of
German functionaries. When the emperor returned to Italy for the third time
in the autumn of 1163, dissatisfaction with these imperial officers was already
spreading throughout northern Italy, until in the following spring rebellion
broke out among the cities of the Veneto, closely united in a league drawn
up at Verona and much encouraged by the support of Venice. The military
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reaction of the emperor was unsuccessful and he returned to Germany to seek
reinforcements.
In Germany, however, Frederick found himself involved in both local
and European problems. Moreover, the ideological climate fed by the events
of the papal schism induced him to promote the commemorative rites for
Charlemagne, declared a saint very obviously with a view to obtaining the
supremacy of the empire throughout Christendom. When in the autumn of
1166 he returned for the fourth time to Italy, his mind was dominated by
the problem of the persistent papal schism. After some months of political
and military preparations, he headed for Ancona, confederate of the emperor
Manuel Komnenos and in rebellion, and then to Rome, from which Alexander
III was forced to flee. Meanwhile, in 1167 the Lombard League was formed
and spread, born in imitation of, and developed from, the League of Verona
of 1164.Frederick’s move south made possible a full-scale rebellion in the Po
valley. Milan was rebuilt and with this event, Lombardy vigorously returned to
the line of regional political development, which Milan’s rivals had tried for a
number of years to counter by coordinating their forces around Barbarossa. The
alternative failed on account of the disillusion felt everywhere at the corruption
of the German officials.
Frederick’s expedition in central Italy failed on account of an epidemic
which broke out in his army. In 1168,hereturned to Germany. Meanwhile the
Lombard League, from the Veneto to western Emilia and eastern Piedmont,
organized itself into a sworn alliance of free cities – although the marquess
Obizzo Malaspina soon joined it too. This alliance was allied to Alexander III,
in honour of whom the name Alexandria was given to a new city founded in
eastern Piedmont to resist the marquess of Montferrat. Pope Alexander did his
best in his turn to help the united cities to act conjointly, threatening anyone
who wished to secede from the league or disobey its governors with interdicts
and excommunication. The league in fact served not only as a military alliance,
but also as an association – societas – directed by a college of rectors. Its aim
was to obtain from the empire recognition of the political, administrative and
jurisdictional conditions which individual members of the league had arrived
at through long tradition and which had remained in force all the way up
to the new decrees promulgated at Roncaglia in 1158. Thus the absolute and
indefeasible sovereignty of the empire, which Frederick had claimed on the
authority of Roman Law up-dated by the researches of the Italian jurists,
found itself under challenge.
Problems in Germany and central Europe kept Frederick at home for six
years. His fifth expedition to Italy in 1174 led to an unsuccessful siege of
Alexandria, unsuccessful negotiations with the rebel cities and the celebrated
military engagement at Legnano, between Milan and the Ticino, in 1176.The
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Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 433
defeated emperor again began negotiations and, since the cities had no wish
to forsake the cause of Alexander III, solemnly met with Alexander at Venice
in 1177 and put an end, at least as far as he was concerned, to the schism. A
truce was arranged with the Lombard League, until the peace of Costanza, on
the Reno, was agreed in 1183.During the long wait, the league showed signs of
disintegrating and Frederick signs of a resigned moderation.
The peace treaty confirmed the profound changes which had come about
in the relationship between the rival parties. It was presented formally as a
privilege granted in perpetuity by the emperor, who in this way confirmed his
position as the supreme source of legitimation. In the actual content, however,
rights born of custom – implying a broad autonomy for the communes, with
urban jurisdiction in general extending also over the surrounding countryside
and sometimes over an even wider area – were tempered by norms which
ensured the ruler ultimate political and jurisdictional control. The right of
the cities to choose their consuls as heads of the commune was recognized,
but it was anticipated that the consuls would receive their investiture from
the sovereign or his representative, swearing loyalty to him, except where the
custom of certain cities demanded that he be placed under the temporal power
of the bishop. It was established that in the exercise of justice, appeals against
the sentences of city bodies should, in matters of greater importance, be referred
to the emperor, but that the emperor was to delegate the actual judgement to
his own representative in the city or within the bounds of the diocese, who
would be under the obligation to pass judgement according to the city’s laws
and customs. The right of the cities to erect fortifications and make pacts was
recognized and their duty to help the empire preserve and recover its rights
and possessions in Lombardy and to subsidize the sovereign on his visits to the
region were established. The position of the emperor at the head of the feudal
hierarchy was confirmed and the duty of loyalty towards the empire on the
part of all citizens was specified.
The resolutions taken at Costanza give an over-view of the orderly state that
the kingdom of Italy was beginning to assume after decades of tension and
struggle between Frederick and the Lombards and years of wearisome nego-
tiations for a balanced peace. Fundamental was the treatment by the empire
of feudal lords and city-republics as parallel. It must be made clear above all
that the legally established feudal seigneuries with a certain degree of political
and jurisdictional independence originated to some extent in the functions
of count or marquess exercised for more than a century by the great families
of the kingdom, by their individual branches or by their vassals, and in part
in the allodial seigneuries. Already in the period before Barbarossa there had
been a certain spontaneous tendency to turn these allodial seigneuries into
feudal ones by taking on the obligations of vassalage towards a lord dominant
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in territorial terms, or directly towards the empire. Subsequently, Frederick’s
chancery was apt to distinguish between the allodial possession of seigneurial
holdings and the exercise of powers of jurisdiction, which were considered to
be of a public nature and susceptible to legitimization and inheritance only
if conferred by the ruler, directly or indirectly, through feudal investiture. In
this way the whole varied political world of the nobility tended to organize
itself into that feudal hierarchy culminating in the sovereign which the edict
on fiefs, promulgated in Italy by Conrad II, had postulated as early as 1037
and which Lothar III in 1136 and Frederick in 1154 had tried to consolidate.
But henceforth the noble world of the kingdom of Italy was to become ever
more limited and controlled and indeed often actually incorporated into the
communal republics. This occurred not only as a result of the spontaneous eco-
nomic and territorial development of the city-states, but also to some extent
through the military solidarity widely established in ‘Lombardy’ in reaction to
the centralization which Barbarossa obstinately insisted upon. Hence the fun-
damental importance of the parallelism which came to be established between
the self-governing cities and the independent seigneuries.
It is true that the terms of investiture and fealty no longer had a technically
feudal value except where they existed in conjunction with the relationship of
vassalage or that of beneficiary. The importance conferred by the imperial in-
vestiture of the consuls and the swearing of allegiance by consuls and citizens in
the negotiations which led to the peace of 1183 revealed an intention to provide
a substantial juridical equivalence which represented for the cities the guaran-
tee of a stable autonomy and which also acted as a guarantee for the empire,
under the hierarchic profile of subordination. Everything naturally depended
on the real possibility that the equilibrium of forces postulated by the peace
of Costanza should function, with a notable difference in political weight and
position among the cities which had subscribed to it. This was an equilibrium
which needed, as fulcrum of the new Italian situation, collaboration between
the itinerant curia of the emperor and Milan’s restored centrality in Lombardy.
The problem of central Italy in any case remained open, since the peace of
Costanza only dealt with relations between Frederick and the members of the
Lombard League.
the decline of barbarossa and the age of henry vi
In central Italy, from the time when Rainald of Dassel developed direct relations
between the empire and the nobility and cities in 1163, the imperial organization
was maintained with noteworthy stability, above all through the long period of
activity of the imperial legate in Tuscany, Christian, archbishop-elect of Mainz.
This was obviously only a relative stability because of the disturbances the papal
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Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 435
schism continued to provoke, more directly in central Italy than elsewhere.
Small nuclei of German troops were permanently stationed in many fortified
places in Tuscany, under the command of castellans and counts appointed by
the empire, who could be removed from their posts by the emperor. They
should not therefore be confused with those counts and lords of the feudal and
dynastic tradition who made up the regional aristocracy and were endowed
with the usual autonomy, although these too were often linked to the imperial
authority, as were the larger monastic bodies. The most important German mil-
itary centre was at San Miniato, near the Arno between Pisa and Florence. This
system of imperial political control normally had the support of the power-
ful republic of Pisa, which unlike the other city-communes of Tuscany often
obtained from the empire liberal recognition of its freedom of action and terri-
torial expansion. Conflicts between Pisa and the empire did take place, but they
occurred for the most part when tensions between Genoa and Pisa involved
the empire, which needed the fleets of both republics, as for example in 1164
over the question of Sardinia, when Genoa, through rivalry with Pisa in the
Tyrrhenian Sea, induced the emperor to concede official recognition of the title
to rule and supremacy over the island to a local dynasty. The empire thus found
itself in conflict with Pisa, which in the end obtained a reversal of the imperial
mandate and recognition of its own supremacy over the island. This was in
any case in greater conformity with the real situation in Sardinia, although it
was contested by Genoa afterwards and led to further imperial involvement.
Parallel to what was taking place in Tuscany, a strong imperial presence was
developing in these same years – the 60s and 70s–inthe neighbouring regions
which were theoretically papal. In Romagna relations with the archbishop and
individual cities were close. In the march of Ancona a marquisate was created
for the whole region under imperial nomination. Similarly, in the duchy of
Spoleto the imperial legate ended by formally taking the title of duke. In
Lazio the activity of Barbarossa and his representatives assumed the character
of sovereign protection of the nobles and citizens, which was also extended,
accompanied by grave conflict, to the city of Rome. The peace of 1177 with
Alexander III gave rise to papal protests against persistent imperial intrusions,
but produced no noteworthy consequences on the political and territorial
plane, except for the city of Rome, which the empire renounced and which
alternated between submission to the papacy and renewed attempts at civic
autonomy and territorial expansion.
These various developments in central Italy were not interrupted in the years
following the peace of Costanza, which therefore implies that the profound
adjustment in imperial political policy applied only to Northern Italy. In 1184
Frederick visited Italy for the sixth and last time, after a six-year absence, and
acted in close unison with Milan in Lombardy. At the beginning of 1185 he took
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part in a meeting of the rectors of the Lombard League at Piacenza. The league
was by then in decline, but it was still a symbol of Lombard autonomy, against
which the emperorhad fought with such tenacity for decades. This was followed
by the recognition of the formal right of the commune of Milan to exercise
jurisdiction over a series of countships from Lake Maggiore and the Ticino to
the basin of the Adda. In exchange, the Milanese undertook to support the
rights of the empire, especially over those allodial estates which had previously
belonged to the Countess Matilda and which Barbarossa, disregarding papal
claims, had granted to Welf VI in 1152;Welf had renounced them. At the
beginning of 1186 there were celebrated in Milan both the marriage of Henry VI
to Constance of Altavilla, with a view to the possible succession to the kingdom
of Sicily, and Henry’s solemn coronation as king of Italy by the patriarch of
Aquileia. The double ceremony celebrated in the Lombard capital served, as it
were,toconsecrate the political link established between the Staufen and their
destiny in an Italian context and the restored and consolidated supremacy of
Milan from the Alps to the Apennines. Similarly, the operations conducted in
June by the German forces, together with those of Milan and other ‘Lombard’
cities against Cremona, once most faithful to Barbarossa and always a more or
less stubborn rival of Milan, sealed their military collaboration.
Set against this situation in northern Italy was the German dynamism in
central Italy. Here the leading role was now entrusted to the daring and tenacity
of Henry VI, the new king of Italy. His father continued to try in vain to induce
the papacy to add the imperial crown to the rule of Germany and Italy, for
the greater security of Henry’s future succession as supreme political leader
of Christendom. While Frederick was taking action against Cremona, Henry
was undertaking military operations in Tuscany against the expansion of the
commune of Siena and in support of the autonomy claimed by noble dynasties
in Sienese territory. This harmonized with a recent decision taken by Frederick:
to remove from the Tuscan cities, with the exception of Pisa and Pistoia, public
jursidiction over the lands they had conquered.
In the summer of 1186, after the surrender of Siena and while the emperor
was on his way back to Germany, Henry VI broadened his political and military
operations, carrying them out of Tuscany into the lands formerly belonging
to the papacy, and entered into negotiations with the aristocracy of Rome.
This corresponded with his unswerving concept of a supreme imperial respon-
sibility, even in the regions depending on the papacy; but it also arose from
the disagreements between Pope Urban III and the empire over a number of
serious ecclesiastical questions. After the death of Urban III and the news of
the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims, papacy and empire drew together under
the aegis of preparations for the Third Crusade, which also enabled Henry VI
to leave Italy to join his father in Germany, where, in March 1188, the great
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Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 437
assembly of Mainz was held and Barbarossa took the cross. Henry VI then
assumed the regency of the whole empire.
After the death of the king of Sicily, William II, in the autumn of 1189,a
few months before Barbarossa himself perished in the east, Henry claimed the
succession to the kingdom of Sicily, both in the name of his wife Constance
and in order to restore, as he himself said, ‘the ancient right of the Empire’,
based on his universal claims and, more specifically, on the concept of an Italian
kingdom extending over the whole peninsula, following a tradition going back
to the Lombards and the Franks. The conquest of the south thus appeared
to be the logical conclusion of the German ascendancy in Italy and turned
imperial ambitions towards the Mediterranean. The control of central and
northern Italy took on a fundamental importance in the vast political context
which resulted from this, as an essential bridge, territorial and ideological,
between the military force of the German kingdom and the new Mediterranean
horizons of Swabian power. And in this ancient Italian link between the north
and the south of Europe, the fleets of Genoa and Pisa acted in their turn as a
fulcrum, when in 1194 Henry VI’s conquest of the south attained its end. It was
not indeed easy to make use of this fulcrum, because, although powerful, it was
split by rivalries between the two very active sea-faring republics both in the
Tyrrhenian Sea and in the east and by each city’s internal dissensions. Henry
had to confirm all the jurisdictional and territorial privileges which Barbarossa
had already granted to both cities in Tuscany and in the Tyrrhenian islands and
he was generous with contradictory promises regarding their commercial and
political establishments in the kingdom to be conquered. The promises were
not subsequently honoured, to the great disappointment of the two cities.
This was an indication of the difficulties which imperial expansion created
in the course of maintaining German control over central and northern Italy,
difficulties which were further exacerbated by its new orientation towards
Milan as a power.
In fact, from 1190 on, as soon as the death of Barbarossa in the east became
known and Henry made preparations to return to Italy to claim the imperial
crown, the problems of Lombardy and Tuscany once again became matters of
prime importance for the German kingdom. Faced with the tangled rivalries of
the city-communes, the king abandoned the position adopted by Barbarossa
after the peace of Costanza. Instead of accepting Milanese superiority and
associating it with the imperial interests in central Italy, Henry attempted a freer
form of political action along the road which led to Rome, seeking support and
financial aid for his expedition. He favoured Piacenza against Parma, conceded
privileges to Como, Cremona and Bologna, made an agreement with Pisa and
procured possession of Tuscolo for the city of Rome. After his coronation at
Rome in 1191 and an unsuccessful expedition to the south, his renewed activity
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in Lombardy took on a decidedly anti-Milanese flavour and hinged on the
alliance with Cremona. The result was that the cities marshalled themselved
into two opposing camps: one closely bound to Milan in the tradition of
the Lombard League, the other involving a union of Cremona, Parma, Pavia,
Lodi, Como, Bergamo and the marquess Boniface of Montferrat, the son and
successor of William V. During Henry VI’s stay in Germany, the struggle
between the two factions resulted in the Milanese victories of 1193. The respite
caused in the following year by the emperor’s return to Italy and the conquest
of the south did not alter his anti-Milanese bias which ended, in the summer
of 1195,byprovoking the city – still the most important in Lombardy – into
open rebellion and an understanding with Genoa, recently deceived by the
emperor in Sicily.
In central Italy, German control proved more successful and in the spring of
1195 it was reinforced by the elevation of Markward of Anweiler, the powerful
and faithful minister of the Staufen, to the duchy of Ravenna and Romagna. He
was also made duke of Ancona and count of Abruzzo. Similarly, the duchy of
Tuscany and the allodial estates of the countess Matilda were assigned to Philip,
Henry VI’s energetic brother, whose political activities extended into Perugian
territory and into Lazio as far as Rome. The strategic points occupied by
German forces were firmly held and the aristocratic and ecclesiastic seigneuries
were favoured, in order to balance the vigour of the communal republics. This
balance was extremely difficult to achieve, in view of the variety of forms of
economic and civil development then evolving between the autonomous noble
estates and the prosperous world of the cities. In any case, Henry VI’s empire
did not last long enough to inflict any serious check on the expanding power
of the communal republics of central Italy. The death of the emperor on 28
September 1197 not only brought to an end his great plans to restructure and
expand the empire and to crusade in the east, but also freed urban Italy from
outside constraints and made possible the process whereby the church of Rome
once again rebuilt its position of territorial domination.
The so-called testament of Henry VI, which was in fact the declaration
of his intentions as sovereign when faced with death, already represented a
compromise between the situation arising from the intense imperial activity
in central Italy and papal aspirations, for long frustrated. In it were set down
the renunciation of the allodial estates of the countess Matilda and also the
recognition of the dependence of the duchy of Ravenna and the march of
Ancona, although in the possession of Markward of Anweiler, on the church
of Rome. The testament also forecast the papal claims – made at the end of
the pontificate of Celestine III and during that of Innocent III – to all the
places and regions deemed essential for the territorial security of the church of
Rome. Thus in 1198 the papal intention of succeeding to the empire throughout
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Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 439
central Italy, taking advantage of the anti-German risings which occurred in
many places on the news of the death of Henry VI, became clear. But the plan
only succeeded in a fairly limited way. It succeeded principally in Lazio and the
duchy of Spoleto, but only because of the respect accorded to local autonomies
by the papacy and through agreements and the control of certain fortresses. In
Romagna and the Marche, Markward of Anweiler tried to continue operations
until the autumn, when he moved on to the kingdom of Sicily. The pope,
however, had the cooperation of the archbishop of Ravenna in Romagna and
in both regions the cities, which in the Marche had formed a close league and in
Romagna were even encroaching on the allodial estates of the countess Matilda,
for the most part recognized papal sovereignty, although in an essentially formal
way. Such recognition did not occur in Tuscany, where political control lay in
the hands of a powerful league of cities, with Florence increasingly to the fore.
To that league also attached themselves the archbishop of Volterra and the
Counts Guidi, Alberti and Aldobrandeschi, while the republic of Pisa stood
aside in proud independence.
The twofold royal election of Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick
in Germany in 1198 prevented any effective imperial presence in Italy. In
Lombardy, the Lombard League revived, from Vercelli to Verona, with Mi-
lan as its axis, still in conflict with Cremona and its allies. Throughout the
areas of Italy in which communes existed, the independent government of
each city continued to improve its internal structure and in the process the
rule of the consuls was often flanked, or substituted, by the authority of a
podest
`
a, following a pattern which had already been established at the time
of Barbarossa. The need for a strong single authority, like that of the podest
`
a,
became all the more urgent in these various cities, in that their economic and
social development was reducing the importance of the major families who
during the twelfth century had monopolized power, competing among them-
selves. This was a time of crisis for the so-called consular aristocracy. The entry
of new and energetic social groups into the political arena and their progress
led to rivalry between those described as noble on account of their traditional
political superiority and those known as popular. This continuing develop-
ment of the cities took place in symbiosis with events in the countryside and in
spite of the political preferences of the Swabian dynasty, which aimed to break
up concentrations of power and frequently suggested a balance either among
the most enterprising cities or between the cities and the rural aristocracy. The
process of integrating these aristocrats with their lands and castles into the
sphere of the major cities was never actually halted, as was clearly seen at the
death of Henry VI.
The most obvious exceptions to this process took place in the areas along the
edge of the Po valley. It is true that the house of Savoy, after having succeeded
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in 1131 in crossing the valley of Susa and reaching Turin, had been driven back
by the bishop of Turin, acting in collaboration with the city commune and
the German emperors. But Piedmont’s interest remained intact, despite the
far-flung and complicated political activities of the dynasty, and it was the
prelude to a future expansion. Meanwhile, among the various marquisates,
the territorial domination of the marquess of Montferrat, Boniface, had been
consolidated. He was a faithful ally of Henry VI and took part in his various
enterprises, but in Piedmont along the Po and the Tanaro he was tenacious
in opposing the communal republics of Asti, Alessandria and Vercelli, whose
dynamism he was able to cope with, even after the death of the emperor,
adapting himself prudently to the dominance of the resuscitated Lombard
League. To the south of the region dominated by this great league, which
was in fact tormented within and beset without by Cremona and its allies,
the Malaspina had emerged from among the various Obertenghi marquisates,
heavily fortified in their strongholds in the Apennines, between the republics
of Genoa and Piacenza, as had the Este, ever more attracted by Ferrara, which
was destined to become the fulcrum of their power.
To the east of the Lombard League, the communal republics in the hin-
terland of the Veneto reacted to the disappearance of the imperial threats by
achieving complete control of the various rural districts and absorbing their
ruling houses into the lives of the cities. Venice, meanwhile, was strengthen-
ing her character as an aristocratic and mercantile republic by developing the
administration of the city and defining the powers of the doge and the or-
gans of the city-commune. She also consolidated her power over the Lagoon,
the Istrian coast and the islands off Dalmatia and spread her influence both
through the hinterland, with the support of the commercial privileges granted
by the German empire, and on the seas, going as far as to threaten the very
survival of the Byzantine empire. North of the Lagoon, Friuli, known as an
ecclesiastical duchy, was still under the sway of the patriarch of Aquileia. It
gradually evolved a legal constitution based on the consolidation of customary
law, but suffered political interference by some of its powerful neighbours – the
counts of Gorizia, on account of their having the sympathy of the patriarchate
in this matter, and the cities of Treviso and Venice. North of the Veneto, the
princely bishopric of Trenta persisted with a ducal dignity in maintaining its
feudal structures and exemptions, with a complete lack of uniformity, main-
taining a juridically ambiguous position between the kingdoms of Italy and
Germany.
The failure of the imperial policies of Frederick I and Henry VI resolved itself
at the end of the twelfth century in an exuberant activity in the most varied
centres of political activity, from the Alps to the borders of the kingdom of the
south. It was not, however, a chaotic anarchy, since there were no areas which
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