Florence first rose into importance during the papacy of Innocent III.  Up to this date she had been a town of second-rate distinction even in Tuscany.  Pisa was more powerful by arms and commerce.  Lucca was the old seat of the dukes and marquises of Tuscany.  But between the years 1200 and 1250 Florence assumed the place she was to hold thenceforward, by heading the league of Tuscan cities formed to support the Guelf party against the Ghibellines.  Formally adopting the Guelf cause, the Florentines made themselves the champions of municipal liberty in Central Italy; and while they declared war against the Ghibelline cities, they endeavoured to stamp out the very name of noble in their State.  It is not needful to describe the varying fortunes of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the burghers and the nobles, during the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth centuries.  Suffice it to say that through all the vicissitudes of that stormy period the name Guelf became more and more associated with republican freedom in Florence.  At last, after the final triumph of that party in 1253, the Guelfs remained victors in the city.  Associating the glory of their independence with Guelf principles, the citizens of Florence perpetuated within their State a faction that, in its turn, was destined to prove perilous to liberty.

When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself henceforth untrammelled by imperial interference, the people divided themselves into six districts, and chose for each district two Ancients, who administered the government in concert with the Potesta and the Captain of the People.  The Ancients were a relic of the old Roman municipal organisation.  The Potesta who was invariably a noble foreigner selected by the people, represented the extinct imperial right, and exercised the power of life and death within the city.  The Captain of the People, who was also a foreigner, headed the burghers in their military capacity, for at that period the troops were levied from the citizens themselves in twenty companies.  The body of the citizens, or the popolo, were ultimately sovereigns in the State.  Assembled under the banners of their several companies, they formed a parlamento for delegating their own power to each successive government.  Their representatives, again, arranged in two councils, called the Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, under the presidency of the Captain of the People and the Potesta, ratified the measures which had previously been proposed and carried by the executive authority or Signoria.  Under this simple State system the Florentines placed themselves at the head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles of the Church, asserted their sovereignty by issuing the golden florin of the republic, and flourished until 1266.

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