Capital Rome Government Republic
City-state Established 1144 Founded 1144 | Languages Italian Historical era Medieval Disestablished 1193 | |
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Commune of rome newsreel
The Commune of Rome (Italian: Comune di Roma) was established in 1144 after a rebellion led by Giordano Pierleoni. Pierleoni led the revolt due to the increasing powers of the Pope, and the entrenched powers of the nobility at the time. The goal of the rebellion was to organize the government of Rome in a similar fashion to that of the previous Roman Republic. Pierleoni was named the "first Patrician of the Roman Commune", but was deposed shortly after in 1145.
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Commune of rome
Papal Relationship
In a pattern that was to become familiar in the communal struggles of Guelfs and Ghibellines. The commune declared allegiance to the more distant power, the Holy Roman Emperor, and initiated negotiations with the newly elected Pope Lucius II. The commune demanded that he renounce temporal power and take up his office with the functions of a priest. Lucius gathered a force and assaulted Rome, but the republican defenders repulsed his army and he himself died from injuries received when a thrown stone hit him in the head.
Lucius's successor, Pope Eugene III, could not be consecrated in the city due to the resistance. However, he eventually came to an agreement with the new civil authority, who had deposed Pierleoni, and returned to Rome on Christmas Day 1145. In March 1146 he again had to leave. He returned in 1148 and excommunicated Arnold of Brescia. Brescia was a political theorist who had joined the commune and who was its intellectual leader.
The Pope lived in Tusculum beginning in 1149 and was not installed as pope in Rome until 1152. The existence of the Republic was precarious. Eugene's successor, Adrian IV, convinced Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to lead an army against the city. Arnold was arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged, in 1155. His body was burnt and the ashes cast into the Tiber.
In 1188, shortly after his accession, Pope Clement III succeeded in allaying the half-century old conflict between the popes and the citizens of Rome with the Concord Pact; by which the citizens were allowed to elect their magistrates with power of war and peace, the Prefect was named by the Emperor and the Pope had the sovereign rights over his territories.
From 1191 to 1193, under a radical reduction of the number of senators to a single one, the city was ruled by a certain Benedetto called Carus homo (carissimo) as summus senator, and Rome had the first municipal statute.
After this, though the city was again under papal control, the civil government was never again directly in the hands of the higher nobles or the papacy.
A later attempt to restore a Republican form of government in Rome is associated with the revolutionary leader Cola di Rienzo.