gained.  Before the date 1282, which may be fixed as the turning-point in Florentine history we hear of twelve Anziani, two chosen for each Sestiere of the city, acting in concert with a foreign Podesta, and a Captain of the People charged with military authority.  At this time no distinction was made between nobles and plebeians; and the town, though Guelf, had not enacted rigorous laws against the Ghibelline families.  Towards the end of the thirteenth century, however, important, changes were effected in the very elements of the commonwealth.  The Anziani were superseded by the Priors of the Arts.  Eight Priors, together with a new officer called the Gonfalonier of Justice, formed the Signoria, dwelling at public charge in the Palazzo and holding office only for two months.[2] No one who had not been matriculated into one of the Arti or commercial guilds could henceforth bear office in the state.  At the same time severe measures, called Ordinanze della Giustizia, were passed, by which the nobles were for ever excluded from the government, and the Gonfalonier of Justice was appointed to maintain civil order by checking their pride and turbulence.[3] These modifications of the constitution, effected between 1282 and 1292, gave its peculiar character to the Florentine republic.  Henceforward Florence was governed solely by merchants.  Both Varchi and Machiavelli have recorded unfavorable opinions of the statute which reduced the republic of Florence to a commonwealth of shop-keepers.[4] But when we read these criticisms, we must bear in mind the internecine ferocity of party-strife at this period, and the discords to which a city divided between a territorial aristocracy and a commercial bourgeoisie was perpetually exposed.  If anything could make the Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would be a cool perusal of the Chronicle of Matarazzo, which sets forth the wretched state of Perugia owing to the feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the Baglioni.[5] Peace for the republic was not, however, secured by these strong measures.  The factions of the Neri and Bianchi opened the fourteenth century with battles and proscriptions; and in 1323 the constitution had again to be modified.  At this date the Signoria of eight Priors with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the College of the twelve Buonuomini, and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the companies—­called collectively i tre maggiori, or the three superior magistracies—­were rendered eligible only to Guelf citizens of the age of thirty, who had qualified in one of the seven Arti Maggiori, and whose names were drawn by lot.  This mode of election, the most democratic which it is possible to adopt, held good through all subsequent changes in the state.  Its immediate object was to quiet discontent and to remove intrigue by opening the magistracies to all citizens alike.  But, as Nardi has pointed out, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the burghers, who, when their names were once included