It would, however, be a great mistake to think that this period of virtuous patriarchal customs, sobriety, and simple living was free from disturbance. This people of Florence was a passionate race who had not yet passed through two centuries of revolution, nor yet experienced the paternal and enervating despotism of the Medicis, nor seen the armies of Charles V. The state of the town was far from being a calm one, and whether, because judiciary affairs had increased to too great an extent, or because the consuls were lacking in requisite authority, it soon became necessary, in order to maintain order and justice in the town, to follow the example of the other republics and call in a foreign podesta. “Vice increasing in the town,” says Malaspina,[n] “and cases of ill-will and disputes becoming more frequent among the citizens, it was decided in the interest of the republic, in order to facilitate the punishment of crime and to prevent all interception, bribery, or intimidation of justice, that a foreigner of gentle birth should be appointed to the office of podesta for one year, to decide all trials with his judges, to render justice, pronounce condemnation of wealth and body, and to carry out the laws of the republic of Florence. Nevertheless the government of the consuls did not cease, since it kept the direction of all other business, and in this manner the town was governed till the period when the first nation of Florence was formed.”[m] As the two famous names of Guelf and Ghibelline originated in these two rival houses of Bavaria and Franconia, and by their pernicious influence destroyed Italian prosperity and happiness, a short account of them will not here be irrelevant, especially as they were the principal though remote source of that inveterate disunion which has left the peninsula a constant prey to transalpine ambition. For many ages these factions prowled over Italy like lions seeking whom they could devour; they divided city from city, house from house, family from family; they tore asunder all domestic ties, undermined the dearest affections, and scattered duty, obligations, and humanity to the winds. But these fatal appellations were originally nothing more than the distinctive names of two princely German families whose chiefs were rivals in personal ambition and feudal power. The enmity of one to the popes was reason sufficient for the other’s determined adherence to the holy see; and though mere leaders of a petty feud, their names became from circumstances the rallying cry of two great opinions which, penetrating with the wonted subtilty of religious and political rancour into the smallest branches of national life, affected Italy and Germany to the quick.