Rome Falls, Italy Divides (Dedication, Preface and Book One)

To the Most Holy and Blessed Father, Our Lord Clement VII

After I was charged by Your Holiness, while still in lesser fortune, to write the things done by the Florentine people, I used all the diligence and art that nature and experience gave me to satisfy you. Having now finished writing up to the time when, with the death of the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici, the form of Italy changed, I bring them to you, so that you may taste the fruit of the seeds you sowed.

In reading them, Your Holiness will see first how, after the Roman Empire began to lose its power in the West, Italy changed its rulers and its states over many centuries; how the Pontiff, the Venetians, the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan took the first places in that province; and how your own country, having freed itself from obedience to the Emperors, remained divided until it began to be governed under the shadow of your house.

And because I was particularly charged by Your Holiness to write of the things done by your ancestors in such a way that one could see I was far from all flattery — for as you like to hear true praise of men, so feigned praise displeases you — I greatly fear that in describing the goodness of Giovanni, the wisdom of Cosimo, the humanity of Piero, and the magnificence and prudence of Lorenzo, it may seem to Your Holiness that I have gone beyond your commands. I excuse myself to you, and to anyone else these descriptions may not please as being untrue: finding that the memoirs of those who have written of them at different times are full of their praises, I was obliged either to describe them as I found them or to say nothing of them out of envy. And if under those admirable works there lay hidden some ambition contrary to the common good, as some say, I who do not know of it am not bound to write it. For in all my narrations I have never wished to cover a dishonest deed with an honest cause, nor to obscure a praiseworthy deed as if it had been done for a contrary end.

Preface

When I first decided to write the things done at home and abroad by the Florentine people, my intention was to begin in the year of the Christian religion 1434, when the Medici family, through the merits of Cosimo and his father Giovanni, gained more authority than any other in Florence. For I thought that Messer Leonardo d'Arezzo and Messer Poggio, two excellent historians, had told everything in detail from before that time.

But having read their writings diligently, I found that in describing the wars made by the Florentines with foreign princes and peoples, they had been very careful, but of the civil discords and internal enmities and their effects, they had either kept silent about one part or described it so briefly that it gave no use or pleasure to readers. I believe they did this either because these actions seemed to them so slight that they judged them unworthy of being recorded in writing, or because they feared to offend the descendants of those they would have had to slander. Both reasons, may they forgive me, seem to me altogether unworthy of great men. For if anything in history is pleasing or instructive, it is what is described in detail; and if any lesson is useful to the citizens who govern republics, it is the one that shows the causes of the hatreds and divisions of a city, so that, having become wise through the dangers of others, they may maintain themselves united.

Most other republics have been content with one division, through which, according to events, they have sometimes grown and sometimes been ruined. But Florence, not content with one, made many. In Rome, as everyone knows, after the kings were driven out, disunion arose between the nobles and the people, and on that Rome stood until its ruin. So it was in Athens, and in all the other republics flourishing in those times. But in Florence, first the nobles divided among themselves; then the nobles and the people; and finally the people and the plebs. And it happened many times that the winning side divided into two. From these divisions came as many deaths, as many exiles, as many destructions of families as ever arose in any city of which we have memory. And truly no other proof seems to me to show the power of our city so well as that which derives from these divisions, which would have been enough to destroy any great and very powerful city. Nonetheless ours seemed always to grow greater from them. So great was the virtù of those citizens, and the power of their spirit and of their mind to make themselves and their country great, that those who remained free from so many evils could exalt it more with their virtù than the malice of those accidents that had diminished it could cast it down.

So I decided to go back to the beginning of our city and to write fully of its divisions up to 1434. And because the things of Florence cannot be understood without those of Italy, the first book will tell of the fall of the Roman Empire and of all the accidents of Italy until that year.

Book One

The peoples who live in the northern parts beyond the Rhine and the Danube, being born in a healthy and fertile region, often multiply so much that part of them must abandon the lands of their fathers and seek new countries to live in. When one of those provinces wished to relieve itself of inhabitants, it divided itself into three parts, and drew lots, so that each part had its share of nobles and commoners, rich and poor; and the part on which the lot fell went to seek its fortune. These are the peoples who destroyed the Roman Empire. The occasion was given to them by the Emperors themselves, who, having abandoned Rome, the ancient seat of the Empire, and gone to live in Constantinople, had made the western part weaker, because they watched it less and left it more exposed to their ministers and enemies.

First the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome. Then came the Vandals, the Huns under Attila, who was turned back from Rome by the prayers of Pope Leo; then Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who was the first barbarian to make himself king of Italy and take the title from the Emperors. After him Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, ruled Italy for thirty-eight years. He was a man excellent in war and in peace, who brought Italy to such greatness that her old afflictions were no longer recognised; and if his virtù had not been stained at the end of his life by some cruelties caused by his suspicions, his memory would deserve every honour.

Then the Emperor Justinian sent Belisarius and afterward Narses to drive the Goths out of Italy, and they did so. But Narses, insulted by the Empress Sophia, who sent him word that he should come home and spin wool with the women, answered that he would spin her such a thread that she would not be able to unravel it; and in his anger he invited the Lombards into Italy. The Lombards held it for more than two hundred years, divided into thirty-six dukedoms, which was the reason they never occupied the whole of Italy and could never establish a kingdom strong enough to resist outsiders.

In these times, which were truly miserable, there arose not only changes of rulers and of governments, but of laws, customs, ways of life, religion, language, dress and names. Each of these things alone, let alone all together, would make the stoutest heart afraid to think of them, let alone to see and endure them. Many cities were ruined, others founded or grew. New languages arose, mixed from the native and the Roman. Men who before had been called Caesar and Pompey were now called Peter, John and Matthew.

Among so many changes, the change of religion was not of less moment. For between the custom of the ancient faith and the miracles of the new, the gravest discords arose among men; and if the Christian religion had been united, it would have caused fewer disorders. But the Greek Church, the Roman Church and the Church of Ravenna fought one another, and the heretical sects with the Catholics, and afflicted the world in many ways.

The power of the Popes began to grow. At first they were obeyed out of reverence for their life and teaching; then, when the Lombards pressed them, they turned to the kings of France for help. Pepin and then Charlemagne came down, destroyed the Lombard kingdom, and Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in Rome by the Pope. So it was that almost all the wars made by the barbarians in Italy after this time were caused by the Popes, and almost all the barbarians who invaded her were called in by them. And this way of proceeding still continues in our times; this is what has kept and keeps Italy disunited and weak.

There followed centuries of confusion: the Emperors of the German nation coming down to be crowned and to claim their rights; the Popes resisting them; the Normans taking the South; the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany growing rich and claiming their freedom. Venice, founded by those who fled to the islands of the lagoon from Attila's fury, grew strong at sea, rich and well ordered, and for a long time did not trouble itself with Italy, until it took cities on the mainland and became feared.

The quarrels between the Popes and the Emperors divided all Italy into two parties, the Guelfs who followed the Church and the Ghibellines who followed the Empire. The Emperor Frederick II made war on the Church all his life. To destroy his heirs, the Popes called in Charles of Anjou, the French king's brother, and gave him the Kingdom of Naples. Afterward the papacy moved to Avignon, and the Popes were for seventy years in France, while Rome fell into disorder, so that a man named Cola di Rienzo could make himself tribune and for a time master of the city. Then came the Great Schism, with two and three Popes at once, until the Council of Constance made one.

So by about the year 1434, Italy was divided chiefly among these powers: in the South, the Kingdom of Naples; in the middle, the Church, and the republics of Florence and Siena; in the north, the Duchy of Milan and the republic of Venice; and many lesser lords between. None of these had arms of their own. Their wars were made by hired captains — Braccio, Sforza and their successors — who had no interest in ending any war, and who were content to make war in such a way that both sides lost and neither won. Of these arms, and of the things done with them, the following books will be full.