The founding of the city
Although Florence becomes enormously important by Dante’s times, nothing about its early history was, objectively speaking, particularly noteworthy. Even the details of its founding are still somewhat uncertain. Some believe it took place under Sulla (82-79 BC), others under Julius Caesar (around 59 BC) and still others during the reign of Caesar Augustus (42 BC).
We can be relatively sure, at any rate, that it was during the first century BC that Florence became a fully functional Roman colonia. The surrounding region had been controlled by Etruscans, who built nearby Fiesole on high ground, but the Romans chose to build their village of Florentia near a natural crossing in the Arno. The Roman engineers arranged the spot in their typical fashion and even built the first dependable bridge over the river.
The layout, superimposed over the modern city below, was fairly common for the period. Florentia was shaped like a rectangle; it was divided by perpendicular streets that made city blocks and surrounded by walls. The ellipse on the right was their amphitheater (which you can still clearly make out on modern maps) and the backwards D-shaped line traces the position of the theater.
Christianity
Catholicism reached the small town relatively late, carried by foreigners, chiefly merchants of Greek, Syrian and previously Jewish backgrounds. In fact, the Roman religion was still quite strong in 250 AD, the year of the martyrdom of St. Minias (S. Miniato) who had come to Florence from Greece.
Christianity had won the day, though, by the time St. Ambrose lived in the city in 393. While in Florence, he founded the church of San Lorenzo (then outside the walls) and made St. Zenobius the most famous of its early bishops.
Florence’s ‘Really Dark Ages’
Only a decade later, the Florentines would awaken, for the first time in their history, to find barbarians at the gates. Pillaging Goths surrounded the city, but the Florentines managed to hold out. They did so thanks to the help of the Roman general Stilicho, himself half Roman and half Vandal, whose entire army, interestingly, was made up of Goths and Huns.
Throughout the whole of the fifth century, the Italian peninsula was ravaged by one wave after another of invading armies. In 476, the traditional year of the fall of Rome, Odoacer became the first barbarian King of Italy. But his rule lasted hardly a dozen years before he was replaced in turn by Theodoric the Ostrogoth in the next transalpine invasion.
Gothic Florence
This was the same Theodoric who famously condemned Boethius (one of Dante’s favorite writers) to death. He established his royal capital in Ravenna, where the Western Roman Empire had already set up an effective bureaucracy. Unlike the generations of Germanic marauders before him, Theodoric genuinely wished to set up a functioning government for the benefit of his new subjects, and he succeeded in bringing a certain degree of peace to the region.
The Byzantine Empire looks west
A year after Theodoric’s death in 526, Justinian (whom you may remember from his appearance as a spirit in the sixth canto of Paradiso) assumed the crown of the Byzantine Empire. Having already made up his mind to reunite the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian immediately put his plan into action in Italy.
The Byzantines fought two successful campaigns. The first, from 535 to 540, ended with Justinian’s conquest of Ravenna. The second, from 540 to 553, sought to destroy the counterattack led by Totila, king of the Ostrogoths.
Totila
It was during this second campaign that Totila (whom Dante and the chroniclers consistently confuse with Attila) finally overwhelmed Florence and nearly wiped it off the map. Dante puts him in the boiling river of blood with other ruthless tyrants for that.
(Above: Stradanus’ painting of Inferno 12)
Totila was killed by Narses in 552 and Justinian added Florence to the Byzantine Empire, which reached its maximum extension at about that time. By the time the emperor died a decade later, the Byzantines had already entered a period of financial difficulties and decline that limited their ability to have much effect upon Florence.
Florence’s ‘Dark Ages’
After seeing twenty years of constant battles, up and down the Italian peninsula, Florentines were facing quite a bleak existence. They simply eked out a living as best they could until the arrival, that is, of a new band of foreign invaders, this time the Lombards.
New arrivals
The Lombards were a pre-Viking Germanic tribe who had begun their migration southward from Scandinavia hundreds of years earlier. By the early sixth century they established a powerful kingdom in what is now Hungary.
In about 568, Alboin, King of the Lombards, crossed the eastern Alps at the head of an army that included not only his own Lombards but also warriors from Saxon, Bulgar and Ostrogothic tribes. In less than a year, the Lombards had taken nearly all of Northern Italy, including Florence.
New masters
By the time the Lombards had settled themselves in, the Eastern Empire had lost its appetite for war. Even though they probably could have defended their gains in Italy for some time, the Byzantines decided instead to withdraw again to the other side of the Adriatic. In fact, the Empire went so far as to sign a non-aggression pact with the Lombards, who used it to legitimize all their territorial claims.
New Catholics
The Lombards were Arian Christians and they used that fact to their advantage when jockeying for power with the Franks at one end of the Alps and the Bavarians at the other.
Their Italian subjects considered anything but Catholicism to be heresy, however. So, with their typical cavalier attitude, the Lombards renounced Arianism. This decision allowed them to tighten their grip on practically the entire Italian peninsula in no time.
The guy with the foot
The Lombard Kingdom reached its height under King Liutprand who assumed the throne at their capital in Pavia in 712. He sought to modernize his kingdom in a variety of ways, but his most enduring contribution came from his foot. In other words, Liutprand established a standard unit of measurement that was accepted throughout Italy (enduring in some places even into the 1800s), and he based it on the length of his foot. On the marble column to the right of the Baptistry’s south door (below), you can still see the codified pes Liutprandi (Liutprand’s foot), a rectangular box whose unvarying height provided an agreed-upon standard.
New neighbors
Using armies and opportunism in varying doses, Liutprand not only defended Friuli from Slavic invaders, but also took control of Ravenna and Rome, as well as large areas of Southern Italy.
During Lombard rule, Tuscany enjoyed a period of relative serenity. Nonetheless, their kingdom came to an end in 774, the year Charlemagne, supported by Pope Stephen, swept into Italy and took their capital of Pavia.
The Roman Empire
After the fall of the Roman Empire, traditionally dated 476, the term “empire” was used to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantines. There was no longer a Western, or Roman, Empire. For three centuries, the term lay dormant. But, things changed on one sunny Christmas day in Rome in the year 800, when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III.
That act simultaneously transformed his kingdom, by definition, into the Roman Empire (its coat of arms is presented below), which kept this name until Frederick Barbarossa added the adjective “Holy” to it in 1157. The imperial administration of Florence and nearby territories fell to Boniface I, whose ancestors had arrived a few generations earlier from Bavaria and had already collected a number of nearby Tuscan fiefdoms.
The Kingdom of Italy
Charlemagne died in 814 after having constructed an authentic empire in name and in reality. His heir, Louis the Pious, divided that empire into kingdoms and gave them to his own sons, and it all became official in the Treaty of Verdun (843). Florence was contained in the new Kingdom of Italy, ruled by Lothar I, who was the only son to retain the title of Roman Emperor.
In 855, Lothar I entrusted his lands in Italy, and his title, to his eldest son, Louis II. These lands stretched from near the modern Italian borders in the north all the way to Molise in the south. A large bit of that area was occupied by the Papal States, though.
Chaos
After the Empire was split among brothers, the descendants of each struggled against the others for control. Florence and other cities became flashpoints of dynastic rivalries. After King Charles, known as the Fat, died without heirs in 887, the Carolingian dynasty came to its end.
Florence and the March of Tuscany bounced among a series of Frankish and Provençal dukes for a number of years after that.
The Ottonian dynasty
Otto I of Saxony took advantage of this instability and moved south in 951, arriving virtually unopposed in the Kingdom of Italy. The famous Iron Crown of the kingdom was officially placed upon his head the same year in Pavia. Nobles of numerous cities then spontaneously pledged their loyalty to him, including Florence. A year later, Otto I returned home to Saxony to put down a rebellion.
In the summer of 961, he marched again over the Alps and into Italy. The agreement made between Otto I and pope John XII was not too dissimilar to that envisioned and promoted by Dante: the emperor would rule the secular world and the papacy would be its spiritual leader. Otto spent the fall in Pavia and arrived in Rome in January of 962. There, he reenacted Charlemagne’s coronation by having himself crowned emperor by the pope.
Hugh of Tuscany
Otto I had become both Duke of Saxony and King of Germany at the age of 23. Not only that; he also had to deal with the Hungarians and Slavs in the east. The last thing he needed to think about was Tuscany, which was then contained practically within the same borders it has today, so he entrusted it to Hugh of Tuscany, whom Dante calls “the Great Baron” (Paradiso 16.128)
This turned out to be an excellent choice. Hugh, who is buried in the Badia, was a modernizer. He moved his capital from Lucca to Florence and restructured the administration of the entire region. He is perhaps best remembered, though, by the families of those Florentines who received from him titles and power. Hugh, who was one of Florence’s most beloved rulers, died in the year 1001.
Coat of arms of Hugh of Tuscany