the body of privileged
burghers. The party does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered,
and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this
clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower classes
of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular
revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now assert
their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the _Arti_ is the chief
social phenomenon of the crisis.[1] Thus the final issue of the conflict
was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood,
because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse
currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in
antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial
and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the
old nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of
earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the
port asserted themselves against the mountain fastness and the
barrackburgh. The several classes of society, triturated, shaken
together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but
few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however
humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism
disappeared; but the constitution of the city itself was confused, and
the Popolo, whether 'primo' or 'secondo or even 'terzo,' was diluted
with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'[2]
The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and
Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante
finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood
aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in
Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never
felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the
skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even
so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other
hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating
from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased
to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed
themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic
colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the
feathe