The problem with popes
At the beginning of the new millennium, Florence was ruled by the Saxon-Ottonian line of German emperors, which died together with Henry II in 1024. The imperial crown passed then to Conrad II, the first of the Franconian line. Though Conrad II was not especially interested in Italy or the papacy, his son Henry III traveled through all of the Kingdom of Italy and was concerned about confusion in the Papacy.
At the time, ever since the death of Pope John XIX, pontiffs were still chosen by a combination of ecclesiastical and lay constituencies in elections whose results were not uncommonly contested with fists and knives. The chaos was so great in 1046, for instance, that there were three popes at the same time.
Who’s pope?
Henry was asked to judge which of the three principal claimants was the authentic pope. One of these, Gregory VI, thought he was pope for a year and a half before he realized that you can’t just get the job by paying somebody (he was only 21 years old).
The other two belonged to rival Roman noble families. One of them, Benedict IX, had just turned 20 when he started and was twice expelled for debauchery before finally abdicating. The other, Sylvester III, was around forty and had been kicked out once already by Benedict IX before going back to being a bishop.
Henry’s solution
About a week before Christmas in 1046, Henry met with the claimants and it was decided that none of these three was the authentic pope. Instead, Henry supported another man, the one who became pope Clement II on Christmas 1046, amid the scent of incense and scandal.
Clement’s first official act was the crowning of Henry III as Emperor of the Roman Empire in a ceremony that was astutely similar to those of Charlemagne and Otto I before him. Clement died two years later (poison can’t be ruled out). Over the 26 years following Clement’s death in 1047, there would be seven more popes in rapid succession, including Nicholas II, whom Dante sees buried upside down in Hell for the sin of simony (Inferno 19, see Doré’s depiction above).
Hildebrand
In the meantime, a guy named Hildebrand (a bold clergyman from southern Tuscany) was making a name for himself in papal circles for his intelligence and cunning. Intent on reshaping the papacy from the inside before the emperors could do even more from the outside, he established the conclave system we still have today.
Hildebrand’s strategy lay in making it impossible for future secular entities, imperial or otherwise, to have any influence whatsoever on the papal elections. By the time Hildebrand himself became Pope Gregory VII in 1073, his administrative prowess and religious zeal had come together to produce a reform movement that left the Church in a position of real power.
Investiture
Henry IV, who had been emperor for about ten years after Henry III’s death, considered Gregory VII’s changes (known afterwards as the Gregorian reforms) to be a threat to his father’s legacy. The emperor and pope clashed with one another over questions of lay investiture for a few years afterwards. One of that controversy’s lasting effects was the creation of a binary power struggle (pope vs. emperor) that came to characterize the politics of the next few centuries and to occupy Dante’s mind. He wrote about it at length in his De monarchia.
Matilda of Canossa
Meanwhile, back in Tuscany, power was invested in the emperor’s margrave, just as it had been since the times of Hugh of Tuscany. In a fortuitous combination of births and deaths, the role and power of margrave passed in 1069 to the Countess Matilda of Canossa, after her husband, Godfrey the Hunchback, was assassinated while pooping.
Although a woman and officially an underling of the emperor, she so skillfully played the emperor and the pope against one another that for nearly five decades she was able to maintain a thriving region that stretched from Tuscany all the way to the Alps.
The humiliation of Henry IV
After innumerable conflicts between the pope and emperor, Henry IV finally succumbed to the yoke of excommunication in 1077. After waiting for days in the snow outside Matilda’s castle, the emperor was finally permitted to enter so that he could ask forgiveness from Gregory VII. Henry is shown below seeking Matilda’s assistance (Cod. Vat. lat. 4922). (This episode provided the historical background for Pirandello’s drama Enrico IV, or Henry IV.)
Like Hugh of Tuscany before her, Matilda concentrated her power in Florence, which remained ever faithful to her, although other cities in Tuscany occasionally switched alliances, preferring to side with Henry IV. In this fact, we already see a phenomenon that will become crucially significant in future centuries: the tendency of small Tuscan city-states to entertain the idea of siding with the emperor or with Matilda (who represented the pope’s interests generally), depending upon potential immediate benefits. In 1097, Henry IV finally left the Kingdom of Italy for the last time, his forces having been beaten back by Matilda’s armies.
Growth and change
To appreciate Florence’s position at this time, one has to consider it against the backdrop of previous years. Before the year 1000, Tuscany’s main source of wealth was agricultural production. By the end of the eleventh century, that title had passed to commerce.
Unlike many other regions, Tuscany had been relatively well-protected during the various barbarian invasions and Florence consistently remained its center of innovation and trade, beginning in the times of Hugh of Tuscany. Consequently, commerce and small-scale industry grew here better than elsewhere, leading in turn to the need for money-changing, which eventually inspired the invention of banks.
Merchants and nobles
Merchants, the title of all those who made money in the marketplace, began trying their hand at all kinds of entrepreneurship, including everything from buying and selling foods in local rural areas, to trade in international textiles, money-changing and even money-lending, despite its immorality. For the first time, the feudal system, which derived its power and money from landholders, was being challenged by a new system based in cities. This was the birth of the medieval commune or city-state.
Old feudal nobility didn’t care much for this business. Their hegemony and system of privileges were being challenged by quick-thinkers and risk-takers. They fought back through the power of their ancient institutions and by organizing themselves into allied families and clans, called consorterie.
Of course, the nascent middle class realized they were in the crosshairs and defended themselves as well as possible. They too banded together for self-defense, usually forming groups of similar professional interests, which would eventually turn into guilds, or arti, during the next century.
Walls
In the meantime, the Florentines realized that the continual raids of the emperors in the north and the pressure of the popes from the south meant they needed better protection. In 1078, they finally managed to complete a set of city walls worthy of its times. It stretched around the city center from the Baptistry to the Duomo in width and from there to the Arno and the castle of Altafronte, where the Galileo Museum is, and along the river past Ponte Vecchio a bit and back again.