habens potestatem Imperatoris in hac parte.  This institution only served at the moment to inflame and imbitter the resistance of the Communes:  but the title of Podesta was subsequently conferred upon the official summoned to maintain an equal balance between the burghers and the nobles.  He was invariably a foreigner, elected for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life and death, and disposing of the municipal militia.  The old constitution of the Commune remained to control this dictator and to guard the independence of the city.  All the Councils continued to act, and the Consuls were fortified by the formation of a College of Ancients or Priors.  The Podesta was created with the express purpose of effecting a synthesis between two rival sections of the burgh.  He was never regarded as other than an alien to the city, adopted as a temporary mediator and controller of incompatible elements.  The lordship of the burgh still resided with the Consuls, who from this time forward began to lose their individuality in the College of the Signoria—­called Priori, Anziani, or Rettori, as the case might be in various districts.

The Italian republics had reached this stage when Frederick II. united the Empire and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  It was a crisis of the utmost moment for Italian independence.  Master of the South, Frederick sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire in Lombardy and Tuscany; nor is it improbable that he might have succeeded in uniting Italy beneath his sway but for the violent animosity of the Church.  The warfare of extermination carried on by the Popes against the house of Hohenstauffen was no proof of their partiality for the cause of freedom.  They dreaded the reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy and be the rival of their own authority.  Therefore they espoused the cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da Romano.  In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable force.  All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed by them.  The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the friends of democratic expansion.  The Ghibelline party included the naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with disfavor.  That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of comparatively superficial moment.  The true strength of the war lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted