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The 'War of the Eight Saints' (1375-1378) was a war between Pope Gregory XI and a coalition of Italian city-states led by Florence, which contributed to the end of the Avignon Papacy.

Contents

Causes

The War

Resolution

The Eight Saints

See also

Notes

References

Causes

The causes of the war are rooted in interrelated issues: Florentine opposition to the expansion of the Papal States in central Italy (which the Avignon Popes had set as a condition for their return) and antipathy toward the ''Parte Guelfa'' in Florence.^[1] Specifically, Florence feared in the autumn of 1372 that Gregory XI intended to reoccupy a strip of territory near Lunigiana, which Florence had conquered from Bernabò Visconti, and that the Ubaldini might switch from Florentine to Papal allegiance.^[2]
Gregory XI also harbored various grievances against Florence for their refusal to directly aid him in his war against the Visconti of Milan. When Gregory XI's war against Milan ended in 1375, many Florentines feared that the pope would turn his military attention toward Tuscany; thus, Florence paid off Gregory XI's main military commander, English ''condottiere'' John Hawkwood, with 130,000 florins, extracted from local clergy, bishops, abbots, monasteries, and ecclesiastical institutions, by an eight-member committee appointed by the Signoria of Florence, the ''otto dei preti''.^[3] Hawkwood also received a 600 florin annual salary for the next five years and a lifetime annual pension of 1,200 florins.^[4]
The transalpine mercenaries employed by Gregory XI against Milan, now unemployed, were often a source of friction and conflict in papal towns.^[5]

The War

Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of Florence during the war

Florence formed an alliance with Milan in July 1375, immediately prior to the outbreak of the war, and the prosecution of the war was entirely delegated to an eight-member committee appointed by the Signoria of Florence: the ''otto della guerra''.
Florence incited a revolt in the Papal States in 1375. Florentine agents were sent to more than forty cities in the papal states—including Bologna, Perugia, Orvieto, and Viterbo—to foment rebellion, many of which had only been re-submitted to papal authority by the efforts of Cardinal Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz. Humanist Chancellor of Florence Coluccio Salutati disseminated public letters urging the cities to rebel against the "tyrannical" and "corrupt" papal rule, instead urging a return to ''all'antica'' Republicanism.
Gregory XI excommunicated all members of the government of Florence and placed the city under interdict in March 1376, banning religious services in Florence and legalizing the arrest of Florentines and the confiscation of their property throughout Europe. Initially, rather than attempting to disobey the interdict, Florentines organized extra-ecclesiastical processions (including flagellants) and confraternities, including the re-emergence of groups such as the Fraticelli, who had previously been deemed heretical. The edifice of the Florentine inquisition was destroyed and the Signoria roled back legal restrictions on usury and other practices frowned on by the (now defunct) ecclesiastical courts.^[6]
However, on October 1377, the government of Florence forced the clergy to resume religious services causing the Bishop of Florence, Angelo Ricasoli and the Bishop of Fiesole, Neri Corsini, to flee Florentine territory. The heavy fines and confiscations issued by the Signoria on prelates who left their posts, the "most extensive liquidation of an ecclesiastical patrimony attempted anywhere in Europe before the Reformation," may have been motivated to pay for the increasingly expensive conflict. The total cost of the war for Florence would reach approximately 2.5 million florins.^[7]
As a result of Gregory XI's economic sanctions, merchants of the Florentine "diaspora" were hurt economically throughout Europe, particularly the Alberti bankers in Avignon, although the interdict was ignored by many, including Charles V of France.
Hawkwood honored his agreement with the Florentines not to make war in Tuscany, limiting himself to putting down the various rebellions within the papal states; in 1377 Hawkwood abandoned Gregory XI entirely and joined the anti-papal coalition. Gregory XI's other ''condottieri'' also limited their acitivities to Romagna, notably sacking Cesena in February 1377. In the spring of 1377, papal mercenaries recaptured Bologna, which up until that point had been a key Florentine ally.
In 1377, Cardinal Robert of Geneva (future Avignon Pope Clement VII) led the army of Gregory XI in an attempt to quell the revolt, and Gregory XI himself returned to Italy to secure his Roman possessions, ''de facto'' ending the Avignon Papacy. Gregory XI arrived in Rome in January 1377, after a difficult journey (including shipwreck), and died there in March 1377.

Resolution

The war ended with a peace treaty concluded at Tivoli in July 1378, negotiated with Pope Urban VI following the death of Gregory XI (who had demanded an indemnity of 1,000,000 florins) and the beginning of the Western Schism.

The Eight Saints

The Eight Saints (Italian: ''otto santi'') could refer to two eight-member ''balias'' appointed by the Signoria of Florence.^[8] First, there was an eight-member commission, the ''otto dei preti'', appointed July 7, 1375 to carry out taxation of the clergy:

★ Matteo Malefici

★ Antonio di Forese Sacchetti

★ Bardo di Guglielmo Altoviti

★ Salvi Filippo Salvi

★ Giovanni d'Angiolo Capponi

★ Antonio di Filippo Tolosini

★ Recco di Guido Guaza

★ Michele di Puccio
Second, there was an eight-member war council (Italian: ''otto della guerra''), appointed August 14, 1376, composed of:

★ Alessandro de' Bardi

★ Giovanni Magalotti

★ Tommaso Strozzi

★ Matteo Soldi

★ Giovanni Dini

★ Andrea Salvati

★ Guccio Gucci

★ Giovanni di Mone

Pope Gregory XI's bull of excommunication referred to the ''otto dei preti'' as the "Eight Saints".

Bardi, Magalotti, Salvati, and Strozzi were members of elite Florentine families; Dini and Gucci were representatives of major Guilds, spice and woolen-cloth manufacturing, respectively; and Soldi and Mone were representatives of minor Guilds, wine retail and grain manufacturing, respectively.
However, the first historical reference to the ''otto della Guerra'' as the ''otto santi'' occurs in 1445 with the account of Florentine historian Domenico Buoninsegni; it does not appear in the accounts of contemporaries of the war such as Leonardo Bruni and Giovanni Morelli. Buoninsegni may have erroneously applied the appellation—used in August 1378 to refer to an eight-member group (''Gli Otto Santi del Popolo di Dio'') fromed by the Ciompi revolt, which ensued immediately after the War of the Eight Saints—to the ''otto della guerra''. The moniker is used in the March 31, 1376 bull of excommunication to refer to the ''otto dei preti''.

See also

★ Catherine of Siena

Notes

1. Peterson, David S. 2002. "The War of the Eight Saints in Florentine Memory and Oblivion." In ''Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence'', Ed. William J. Connell.
2. Lewin, Alison Williams. 2003. ''Negotiating Survival: Florence and the Great Schism, 1378-1417''. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0838639402. pp. 39-56.
3. Najemy, John M. 2006. ''A History of Florence 1200-1575''. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1405119543. pp. 151-155.
4. Caferro, 2006, p. 175.
5. Holmes, George. 2000. ''Europe: Hierarchy and Revolt, 1320-1450''. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0631213821. p. 131.
6. Becker, Marvin B. 1959. "Florentine Politics and the Diffusion of Heresy in the Trecento: A Socioeconomic Inquiry." ''Speculum''. '34', 1: 60-75.
7. Procacci, Giuliano. 1970. ''History of the Italian People''. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 48.
8. Trexler, R.C. 1963. "Who were the Eight Saints?" ''Renaissance News''. '16', 2: 89-94.

References

★ Caferro, William. 2006. ''John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy''. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801883237.