Thus a true political importance was regained for the time-honored factions; and in the distracted state of Italy they were further intensified by the antagonism between exiles and the ruling families in cities.

If Cosimo de'Medici, for example, was a Ghibelline or Spanish partisan, it followed as a matter of course that Filippo Strozzi was a Guelf and stood for France.

Paul III.

managed to maintain himself by manipulating these factions and holding the balance between them for the advantage of his family and of the Church.
He thus succeeded in creating the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for his son, Pier Luigi Farnese, that outrageous representative of the worst vices and worst violences of the Renaissance.

It will be remembered that Julius had detached these two cities from the Duchy of Milan, and annexed them to the Papal States, on the plea that they formed part of the old Exarchate of Ravenna.