Cesena Bloodbath

War of the Eight Saints
Date 1375–July 1378 Location Italian peninsula Result Peace treaty concluded at Tivoli
Belligerents
Papal States	Coalition of Italian city-states: Republic of Florence Milan Republic of Siena
Commanders and leaders
John Hawkwood α Robert of Geneva β	Otto della Guerra
αUntil 1377 βFrom 1377

The War of the Eight Saints (1375–1378) was a war between Pope Gregory XI and a coalition of Italian city-states led by Florence, which contributed to the end of the Avignon Papacy.

The causes of the war were rooted in interrelated issues, Florentine opposition to the expansion of the Papal States in central Italy (which the Avignon Popes had set as a condition for their return), and antipathy toward the Parte Guelfa in Florence. Specifically, Florence feared in the autumn of 1372 that Gregory XI intended to reoccupy a strip of territory near Lunigiana, which Florence had conquered from Bernabò Visconti, and that the Ubaldini might switch from Florentine to Papal allegiance.

Gregory XI also harbored various grievances against Florence for their refusal to aid him directly in his war against the Visconti of Milan. When Gregory XI's war against Milan ended in 1375, many Florentines feared that the pope would turn his military attention toward Tuscany; thus, Florence paid off Gregory XI's main military commander, English condottiere John Hawkwood, with 130,000 florins, extracted from local clergy, bishops, abbots, monasteries, and ecclesiastical institutions, by an eight-member committee appointed by the Signoria of Florence, the Otto dei Preti. Hawkwood also received a 600 florin annual salary for the next five years and a lifetime annual pension of 1,200 florins.

The transalpine mercenaries employed by Gregory XI against Milan, now unemployed, were often a source of friction and conflict in papal towns.

Florence formed an alliance with Milan in July 1375, immediately prior to the outbreak of the war, and the prosecution of the war was entirely delegated to an eight-member committee appointed by the Signoria of Florence: the Otto della Guerra.

Florence incited a revolt in the Papal States in 1375. Florentine agents were sent to more than forty cities in the papal states—including Bologna, Perugia, Orvieto, and Viterbo—to foment rebellion, many of which had only been re-submitted to papal authority by the efforts of Cardinal Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz.Humanist Chancellor of Florence Coluccio Salutati disseminated public letters urging the cities to rebel against the "tyrannical" and "corrupt" papal rule, instead urging a return to all'antica Republicanism.

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