drank out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets.  Ghibellines wore white, and Guelfs red, roses.  Yawning, passing in the street, throwing dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other.  So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he turned his face to the Guelf shoulder.  Every great city has a tale of love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into the region of romance and legend.  Florence dated her calamities from the insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a broken marriage.  Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei’s corpse.  The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the ineffectual efforts of the Podesta to curb the violence of party warfare.

    [1] The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that of
    any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in
    politics at this epoch of the civil wars.

    [2] This is the sting of Cacciaguida’s scornful lamentation over
    Florence Par. xvi.

        Ma la cittadinanza, ch’ e or mista
      Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine,
      Pura vedeasi nell’ ultimo artista.

        Tal fatto e fiorentino, e cambia e merca,
      Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti,
      La dove andava l’ avolo alia cerca.

        Sempre la confusione delle persone
      Principio fu del mal della cittade,
      Come del corpo il cibo che s’ appone.

So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter the exhaustion, that the distracted Communes were fain at last to find some peace in tyranny.  At the close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohenstauffen, the Popes called Charles of Anjou into Italy.  The final issue of that policy for the nation at large will be discussed in another portion of this work.  It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da Romano introduced despotism in its worst form as a party leader of the Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou became a typical tyrant in the Guelf interest.  He was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was conferred upon him as the price of his dictatorship.  The republics almost simultaneously entered upon a new phase.  Democratized by the extension of the franchise, corrupted, to use Machiavelli’s phrase, in their old organization of the Popolo and Commune, they fell into the hands of tyrants, who employed the prestige of their party, the indifference of the Vigliacchi, and the peace-loving instincts of the middle class for the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.[1] Placing himself above the law, manipulating the machinery