age when Frederick II. united
the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the
utmost moment for Italian independence. Master of the South, Frederick
sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and
Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting
Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church. The
warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of
Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom.
They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy
and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the
cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was
devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da
Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the
parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable
force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed
by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes,
the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the
friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the
naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of
feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with
disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while
the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a
matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war
lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to
possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted
principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the
precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety
of the whole people. A city does not pronounce itself either Guelf or
Ghibelline till half the burghers have been exiled. The victorious
party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself
in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at
home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and
confiscations.[1] The exiles make common cause with members of their own
faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and
Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a
common dualism. In this way we are justified