Early Middle Ages
The seat of a bishopric from around the beginning of the 4th century CE, the city was alternatingly under Byzantine and Ostrogothic rule as the two powers fought each other for control of the city, taking it by siege only to lose it again later.
Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Conquered by Charlemagne in 774, Florence became part of the March of Tuscany, which had Lucca as its capital. The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854 Florence and Fiesole were united in one county.
Read more about this topic: History Of Florence
Famous quotes containing the words early, middle and/or ages:
“We do not preach great things but we live them.”
—Marcus Minucius Felix (late 2nd or early 3rd ce, Roman Christian apologist. Octavius, 38. 6, trans. by G.H. Rendell.
“I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)