| 6. The Thirteenth Century |
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 The speed with which the new walls were built is a sign of the
prosperity that reigned in Florence. The city had become the
principal center of continental Tuscany, with a population that
at this point must have been around 30,000 inhabitants, and which
clearly showed signs of continued growth thanks to the arrival of
immigrants from the countryside. This immigration from the
contado, consisting prevalently of the more well-to-do classes,
gave rise to a new middle class, an important factor in the
tensions which accompanied the struggles between the nobles who
held the power and all those others who were excluded, including
the majority of commoners. In 1193 the tensions flared up and
some of the important noble families (including the Uberti) which
up to then had been kept at a distance from the consulate, backed
by the favor of the emperor, took over the government. Basically
the new ruling group was not unlike the old group, from a social
point of view. The difference was
mainly rappresented by the passage to a regime centered on a
podestà, in which the executive power was entrusted to a
single magistrate known as "Podestà". But with
the death of Henry VI (1197), the families who had been ousted
returned to favor and the consular system was reestablished. But
not for long, for under the joint pressure of the social
categories that were still excluded from power (shopkeepers,
artisans), the regime of podestà was definitely installed
in 1207, with the Podestà a foreigner (the first was
Gualfredotto da Milano) so as to guarantee impartiality in the
application of the law. The Podestà was flanked by a small
council which replaced the Collegio dei Consoli, and by a
Consiglio Generale, which included representatives of the
merchants, so that the new system of government, which balanced
the opposing tendencies of the noble ruling classes, was also
accessible in part to the middle classes. The Commune thus
experienced a period of peace during which the economic basis of
the city continued to expand. The merchants, who had begun to
organize in corporate association (the Arte dei Mercanti) in
1182, on the example of the Society of Knights, multiplied and
spread well beyond the limits of their region. Around the turn of
the century Florence thus became an international economic
center, with its operators in the principal fairs of the West.
The development of the economy went on at such a rate that in a
few years the associations multiplied among the other categories
of tradesmen and artisans, whose number increased considerably.
The Arte dei Mercanti or Merchants' Guild in particular became
more important. It began to be called Arte di Calimala, from the
name of the stretch of street where the shops specialized in
refinishing and dying the woolen cloths that had been imported in
unfinished form from the other side of the Alps were located.
These woolens were then resold in all the main markets of the
West. The city still preserves some of the buildings which served
as headquarters for the Guilds. Generally they are buildings
which date back to the 14th century, such as the headquarters of
the Wool Guild (Arte della Lana), built in 1308 by restructuring
an extant tower, and restored with integrations in style in the
19th century, or the residence of the Arte dei Beccai (Butchers'
Guild), in the Via Orsanmichele. In various cases howeve the
ancient seats of the Guilds were destroyed, especially with the
demolition of the old city center: this is what happened for
instance to the residence of the Arte dei Rigattieri e Linaioli
and that of the Albergatori.
The increase in size and population, due not to a natural
increment but to the accellerated immigration from the
countryside, lay at the basis of this economic expansion. The
immigrants, members of a rural middle class that had been formed
in consequence of the general economic development, settled in
the city district which corresponded to the part of the contado
from which they came. This was why the Oltrarno, on which the
populous southern regions converged, increased enormously and
this was why a new bridge in wood on stone piers (called Ponte
alla Carraia) was constructed (1128) downstream from the extant
bridge which then took the name of Vecchio. A few years later
(1237) a third bridge was built upstream, taking its name from
the Podestà in office at the time, Rubaconte da Mondello
from Milan. This bridge, completely in stone, was set across the
widest point of the Arno. Originally it
consisted of as many as nine arches but two were closed in 1347
so as to enlarge the Piazza dei Mozzi. Later its name was changed
to Ponte alle Grazie, after the small church which was built on
one of its piers in the middle of the 14th century, and which was
then flanked by various small shops and a number of small houses
in which cloistered nuns lived. The pressing needs of trade and
commerce between the cities, the result of the urban expansion,
led to the construction in 1952 of still another bridge across
the Arno: the Ponte a Santa Trinita. The four bridges served the
city's needs up to the 19th century, although in 1317, the
construction of a fifth bridge was begun in honor of King Robert
of Naples and in expectation of further growth on the part of the
city (which did not occur). The bridge, known as Ponte Reale and
situated somewhat downstream from the present Ponte San
Niccolò, was never finished and in 1532 Duke Alessandro
de' Medici used its foundations for the erection of a fort on the
Arno. With the exception of the Ponte alle Grazie, all the other
bridges were destroyed in the disastrous flood of 1333. Even so,
after their reconstruction, they maintained their typically
medieval character with small buildings serving a variety of
purposes erected on their structures.
The concentration of population in Florence and the profound
religious sense of its inhabitants obviously attracted the
mendicant orders, the expression of the renewed 13th-century
spirituality. The new religious orders (Franciscan, Dominican,
Augustinian, Servite, Carmelite) played a leading role in the
structuralization of the late medieval city. Since their
apostolates required densely populated areas and large spaces
where they could meet with the citizenry, they erected vast
convent complexes and became poles of attraction which grew up
side by side with the linear routes of the suburbs in organizing
the activity and life of entire sectors of the urban area. The
history of the architecture of the mendicant orders in Florence
can be divided more or less into two periods. The first, from the
origins up to the middle of the 13th century, witnessed the
foundation of the communities and the construction of the first
churches, all buildings of modest size as counselled for example
by the Dominican Constitutions of 1240, cited almost integrally
by the Franciscans: "Mediocres domos et humiles habeant
fratres nostri...".  Later, when the
mendicant orders had acquired prestige within the 13th-century
society, the increasingly intense activity in the field of
preaching and religious instruction of the people necessitated
enlarging the first small constructions. This was the beginning
of the second period in Franciscan and Dominican architectural
history, as well as that of all the other mendicant orders, which
witnessed the ex-novo construction, often in grandiose form, of
most of the original buildings. The Dominicans, who had
established themselves in Florence in 1221 in the small church of
Santa Maria delle Vigne, which had been donated by the cathedral
chapter, enlarged the original heart of their monastery for the
first time in 1246 and then in 1278 began the present structure.
The first church of the Franciscans, dedicated to the Holy Cross (Santa Croce) dates to
the second quarter of the 13th century. At the end of the century
(1295) it was rebuilt as we see it today. And the same thing
happened with the Agostinians of Santo
Spirito, who established themselves in the heart of the
Oltrarno in 1259 and a few years later (1296) enlarged their
monastery; with the Carmelites of Santa Maria del Carmine; the
Servites of the Santissima
Annunziata, a mendicant order which originated in Florence.
Even in the diversity of their formal solutions, the religious
structures of the new orders were all characterized by the
grandness of their buildings, due in part to the religious
requirements (the need for large spaces to house the faithful and
instruct them with the Word, and with the frescoed images on the
large well-lit walls) and in part to the fact that the churches
were considered real public buildings, built by the people and
for the people "ad utilitatem animarum et decorum civitatis
expedit". In addition to restructuring the precedent
churches, the new religious organism created vast convent
complexes, full of cloisters and rooms for study and work; they
organized the communitarian life of the urban population, playing
a role in political and cultural as well as religious life.
Together with the new cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore, whose construction began in 1294, the large
churches erected by the mendicant orders in the last decades of
the 13th century (S.Maria Novella, S.Croce for example) constituted
the principal examples of Gothic religious architecture in
Florence. The new forms, imported into Italy by the Cistercians
(who had built the Badia a Settimo, at the gates of the city, in
the first half of the 13th century), fused on the Arno with the
classicizing taste and geometric twocolor decoration which
characterizes the tradition of Florentine architecture. The
result was an original interpretation of the Gothic, in which the
accentuated asending movement of the churches north of the Alps
was moderated in a more measured and perfectly finished concept
of space.
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