The papacy, newly returned to Rome following…
1378 CE
The papacy, newly returned to Rome following three years of successful administration of Florence by the “Eight Saints,” supports reimposition of repressive rule by the Guelph party.
The ciompi, wool carders who rank among the poorer workers, forbidden to form a guild and thus barred from political power, stir up the lower classes, including shopkeepers in minor guilds, in an effort to institute a democratic government.
Members of the Medici family, whose origins lie in the agricultural Mugello region, north of Florence, had risen to some prominence in the early fourteenth century in the wool trade, especially with France and Spain.
Despite the presence of some Medicis in the city's government institutions, they are still far less notable than outstanding families such as the Albizzi or the Strozzi.
One Salvestro de' Medici, a cousin of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, founder of the Medici dynasty, is a member of the patrician class and an adversary of the noble Guelphic faction, who have been pursuing a policy of attempting to exclude the lesser guilds through admonitions.
Salvestro, drawn as Gonfaloniere in the summer of 1378, pursues an anti-Guelph policy, reviving laws which place restrictions on the nobility, reducing the power of the Capitani di Parte, and recalling the ammoniti (those who had been admonished).
These laws encounter much opposition from the nobles, which lead to their being threatened and in some cases their homes burnt in the beginning of the insurrection of the ciompi.
Salvestro, along with sixty-three other citizens, is on July 21, 1378, created a knight and soon afterwards is given the revenue of shops on the Old Bridge by the newly interred Gonfaloniere of Justice, the wool comber Michele di Lando, a privilege later removed from Salvestro by the ciompi, suspicious of di Lando's perceived favor for citizens of the middle classes.
The lower classes, having assumed control of the Florentine government, raise the ciompi to the status of a guild, but deteriorating economic conditions resulting from the political turmoil soon prompt the minor guilds to disallow the new status of the ciompi and join the major guilds in ousting the new government and returning to a more conservative social order, dominated by a new oligarchy.
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