The more exemplary death of Charles of Aujou took place on the 7th of January, then, 1285; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve; and that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between French, Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South Italy, and Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction. She had been inflamed and pacified through continual paroxysms of civil quarrel during the decline of Charles's power; but, throughout, the influence of the nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and insolence; while the people, though with no small degree of folly and insolence on their own side, keep hold of their main idea of justice. In the meantime, similar assertions of law against violence, and the nobility of useful occupation, as compared with that of idle rapine, take place in Bologna, Siena, and even at Rome, where Bologna sends her senator, Branca Leone, (short for Branca-di-Leone, Lion's Grip,) whose inflexible and rightly guarded reign of terror to all evil and thievish persons, noble or other, is one of the few passages of history during the middle ages, in which the real power of civic virtue may be seen exercised without warping by party spirit, or weakness of vanity or fear. 266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse living by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically excluded all idle persons from government, and determined that the priors, or leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its arts and productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the French formed their noun 'bonte.' The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas, standard-bearer of justice; then of his military captain; then of his lictor, or executor; then of the twelve priors of arts and liberties--properly, deliberators on the daily occupations, interests, and pleasures of the body politic;--and, finally, of the parliament of "kind men," whose business was to determine what kindness could be shown to other states, by way of foreign policy. 267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest Master of labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised in true understanding of the faith of Christ;--Orcagna, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico, Botticelli, and Michael Angelo.