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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The immediate occasion for the hostilities which broke out in 1375 between Florence and the church was the plundering activity of the English mercenary company under John Hawkwood. This ‘santa compagnia’, employed by the church during its struggle with the Visconti, was now without income and consequently moved into Tuscany, plundering and robbing. The costs of ransoming Florentine territory by a series of payments to Hawkwood were met by loans forced partly from the clergy of Florence and Fiesole.
To carry out this task of collecting taxes from reluctant citizens and clergy, the government appointed a balia, or commission, of eight men.
1 A. Gherardi, ‘La guerra dei Fiorentini con Papa Gregorio xi, detta la guerra degli Otto Santi’, in Arch. Stor. Ital., s.3, VI (1867), 217 f. For the latest account of the war, cf. Brucker, G., Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton, 1962), pp. 297–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also Becker, M., ‘Church and State in Florence on the Eve of the Renaissance (1343-1382)’ in Speculum xxxvii (1962), 509–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Gherardi, v, 55.
3 The essentials are printed in Raynaldus, Annales Ecclesiastici (Lucca, 1752), a. 1376, I.
4 Printed under the name of his son Piero, , Istoria Fiorentina (Florence, 1580), pp. 572–573.Google Scholar
5 On the contemporaries, cf. Gherardi's preface to the ‘Diario d'Anonimo Fiorentino’ in Cronache dei Sccoli XIII e XIV (Florence, 1876), p. 212. Of the non-Florentine chroniclers and historians, I have found the use of the term only by Giovanni Scrcambi, Cronache in Fonti per la Storia d'Italia, 1, 513. Cf. infra, n. 9.
6 Rodolico, N., La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (Bologna, 1905), p. 441.Google Scholar
7 Raynaldus, 1376, 1. His source is: Vatican Archive, Reg. Vat. 290,c. 5ff. (A copy is in State Archive of Florence [ASF] Dipl. Riformagioni, Atti pubblici, Mar. 31, 1376; the original papal citation of Feb. 11, 1376 is in Bibl. Natl. Paris MS. Latin 1428, p. 767.)
8 ASF, same provenience, same date. Other documents containing a reference to eight ‘Saints’ have proved to be of a much later period. It is possible that the MS. Bibl. Naz. Firenze, Fondo princip. II—II—3 55,c.70, misidentifying the ‘saints’, was written as early as 1421. The priorate extending to the year 1386 in the ASF, Manoscritti 222 and utilized as contemporary by Brucker (p. 320 and passim) also errs in identifying the ‘Saints’. With good reason: the writer postdated and copied Buoninscgni. Cf. p. 14: ‘a nostri tempi che siamo ncl 1463 …’.
9 This confusion of the two groups is almost as old as the events themselves. The Luccan historian, Giovanni Sercambi, writing ca. 1400, speaks of the ‘Octo della guerra, che si nomorón li octo santi… . Essendo stati electi li soprascripti nomati, il primo acto che i decti octo ciptadini ferono, si fenno a tucta la chiericia di Firenze e di tucte le terre a loro sottopostc pagare la somma de denari che pagati aveano al dicto Johanni Aguto e assai più …’ Sercambi, p. 214. The confusion of the two groups is obvious. It is possible, but improbable, that Sercambi is the source for the later confusion in Florentine historiography.
10 For modern hagiography on this subject, cf. M. Becker, ‘Florentine “Libertas”: Political Independents and “novi cives” (1372-1378)’ in Traditio xviii (1962), 393-407.
