The growing dissensions in the Guelf Republic came
to a head in 1300, the famous year of jubilee in which
the Pope was said to have declared that the Florentines
were the << fifth element." The rival factions of Bianchi
and Neri, White Guelfs and Black Guelfs, which were
now to divide the whole city, arose partly from the
deadly hostility of two families each with a large follow-
ing, the Cerchi and the Donati, headed respectively
by Vieri dei Cerchi and Corso Donati, the two heroes
of Campaldino ; partly from an analogous feud in Pistoia,
which was governed from Florence ; partly from the

43



The Story of Florence

political discord between that party in the State that
clung to the (modified) Ordinances of Justice and sup-
ported the Signoria, and another party that hated the
Ordinances and loved the tyrannic^ Parte Guelfa.
They were further complicated by the intrigues of the
** black" magnates with Pope Boniface VIIL, who
apparently hoped by their means to repress the burgher
government and unite the city in obedience to himself.
With this end in view, he had been endeavouring to
obtain from Albert of Austria the renunciation, in
favour of the Holy See, of all rights claimed by
the Emperors over Tuscany. Dante himself, Guido
Cavalcanti, and most of the best men in Florence either
directly adhered to, or at least favoured, the Cerchi
and the Whites ; the populace, on the other hand, was
taken with the dash and display of the more aristocratic
Blacks, and would gladly have seen Messer Corso —
^*il Barone,'' as they called him — lord of the city.
