In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, the legendary tyrant, we obtain the earliest specimens of two types of despotism in Italy.  Their fame long after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the people, worked itself into the literature of the Italians, and created a consciousness of tyranny in the minds of irresponsible rulers.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we find, roughly speaking, six sorts of despots in Italian cities.[1] Of these the first class, which is a very small one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing from long seignioral possession of their several districts.  The most eminent are the houses of Montferrat and Savoy, the Marquises of Ferrara, the Princes of Urbino.  At the same time it is difficult to know where to draw the line between such hereditary lordship as that of the Este family, and tyranny based on popular favor.  The Malatesti of Rimini, Polentani of Ravenna, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli, Chiavelli of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might claim to rank among the former, since their cities submitted to them without a long period of republican independence like that which preceded despotism in the cases to be next mentioned.  Yet these families styled themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled; and in many instances they obtained the additional title of Vicars of the Church.[2] Even the Estensi were made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the supremacy of the Papacy.  There was in fact no right outside the Empire in Italy; and despots of whatever origin or complexion gladly accepted the support which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or the People might give.  Brought to the front amid the tumults of the civil wars, and accepted as pacificators of the factions by the multitude, they gained the confirmation of their anomalous authority by representing themselves to be lieutenants or vicegerents of the three great powers.  The second class comprise those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of imperial right in Lombardy.  Of these, the Della Scala and Visconti families are illustrious instances.  Finding in their official capacity a ready-made foundation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in defiance of the Empire constituted dynasties.  The third class is important.  Nobles charged with military or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestas, by the free burghs, used their authority to enslave the cities they were chosen to administer.  It was thus that almost all the numerous tyrants of Lombardy, Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and Correggi at Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth, first erected their despotic dynasties.  This fact in the history of Italian tyranny is noticeable.  The font of honor, so to speak, was in the citizens of these great burghs.  Therefore, when the limits