Pasquale Villari

“ It is Lorenzo’s lasting glory to have been the initiator of this movement. Without being—as some have maintained—a poet of genius, he was certainly a writer of much finish and eloquence, and one of the first to raise popular poetry to the dignity of art. ”

“ The younger, the gentler and less ambitious of the pair, was quickly removed from the world. Lorenzo, on the contrary, at once seized the reins of state with a firm grasp, and was, chronologically, the second of the great men bestowed upon Italy by the house of Medici. In literary talent he was immensely superior to Cosimo, but greatly his inferior in the conduct of the commercial affairs of the house. In politics he had nobler conceptions and higher ambitions, but he was more easily carried away by his passions, less prudent in his revenge, and more disposed to tyranny. ”

“ Piero dei Medici, Francesco’s brother, murdered his wife Eleonora of Toledo from the same motive. Still louder scandal was caused by the duke’s own conduct. He was already a married man, when, passing one day through the Piazza of St Mark in Florence, he saw an exceedingly beautiful woman at the window of a mean dwelling, and at once conceived a passion for her. She was the famous Bianca Cappello, a Venetian of noble birth, who had eloped with a young Florentine named Pietro Buonaventuri, to whom she was married at the time that she attracted the duke’s gaze. ”

“ As soon as a balía favourable to Cosimo was formed, he was assured for five years of having the government in the hands of men devoted to his interests. He had comprehended that the art of politics depended rather upon individuals than institutions, and that he who ruled men could also dictate laws. His foreign policy was no less astute. ”

“ The measure most injurious to Tuscany was the fiscal system of taxes, of which the sole aim was to extort the greatest possible amount of money. The consequent damage to industry, commerce and agriculture was immense, and, added to the devastations caused by the Sienese War, led to their utter ruin. Otherwise Cosimo did not neglect useful measures for the interior prosperity of his state. He was no Maecenas; nevertheless he restored the Pisan university, enlarged that of Siena, had the public records classified, and also executed public works like the Santa Trinita bridge. ”

“ When Giuliano and Lorenzo died, the pope appointed the cardinal to the government of Florence. In that post, restricted within the limits imposed by republican institutions, and acting under the continual direction of Rome, he performed his duties fairly well. HeCardinal Giulio (Clement VII.) . caressed the citizens with hopes of extended liberties, which, although never destined to be fulfilled, long served to keep men’s minds in a pleasant flutter of expectation; and when the more impatient spirits attempted to raise a rebellion he speedily quenched it in blood. ”

“ Lucca, however, was an insignificant state making no pretence of rivalry, whereas Siena was an old and formidable foe to Florence, and had always given protection to the Florentine exiles. It was now very reluctantly submitting to the presence of a Spanish garrison, and, being stimulated by promises of prompt and efficacious assistance from France, rose in rebellion and expelled the Spaniards in 1552. Cosimo instantly wrote to the emperor in terms that appealed to his pride, asked leave to attack Siena, and begged for troops to ensure the success of his enterprise. ”

“ Notwithstanding these tastes, when in Rome he knocked off the heads of some of the finest statues of the age of Adrian, an act by which Clement VII. was so incensed that he threatened to have him hanged. Thereupon Lorenzino fled to Florence, where he became the friend of Duke Alessandro, and his partner in the most licentious excesses. They went together to houses of ill-fame, and violated private dwellings and convents. They often showed themselves in public mounted on the same horse. All Florence eyed them with disgust, but no one foresaw the tragedy that was soon to take place. ”

“ Cardinal Giovanni, the head of the family, resided in Rome, playing the patron to a circle of litterati, artists and friends, seeking to increase his popularity, and calmly waiting for better days. The battle of Ravenna wrought the downfall of the fortunes of France in Italy, and led to the rise of those of Spain, whose troops entered Florence to destroy the republic and reinstate the Medici. ”

“ On the death in 1631 of the last duke of Urbino, the pope was allowed to seize the duchy without the slightest opposition on the part of Tuscany. As a natural consequence the pretensions of the Roman curia became increasingly exorbitant; ecclesiastics usurped the functions of the state; and the ancient laws of the republic, together with the regulations decreed by Cosimo I. as a check upon similar abuses, were allowed to become obsolete. On the extinction of the line of the Gonzagas at Mantua in 1627, war broke out between France on the one side and Spain, Germany and Savoy on the other. ”

“ Even the condition of the peasantry was far more prosperous than elsewhere. Lorenzo’s authority was not confined to Tuscany, but was also very great throughout the whole of Italy. He was on the friendliest terms with Pope Innocent VIII., from whom he obtained the exaltation of his son Giovanni to the cardinalate at the age of fourteen. This boy-cardinal was afterwards Pope Leo X. From the moment of the decease of Sixtus IV., the union of Florence and Rome became the basis of Lorenzo’s foreign policy. ”

“ They were on the point of inheriting the large property of Giovanni Borromeo when Lorenzo hurriedly caused a law to be passed that altered the right of succession. The hatred of the Pazzi was thereby exasperated to fury. And in addition to these things there ensued a desperate quarrel with Pope Sixtus IV., a man of very impetuous temper, who, on endeavouring to erect a state on the frontiers of the Florentine republic for the benefit of his nephews, found a determined and successful opponent in Lorenzo. ”

“ The Albizzi speedily saw that they had done either too much or too little. While seeking to keep the government entirely in their own hands, they beheld the continual growth of the Medici party. When it was necessary to make a campaign in Romagna against the mercenary captains commanding the forces of the duke of Milan, it was plainly seen that in banishing Cosimo the republic had lost the only citizen banker in a position to assist it with considerable loans. ”

“ He gained the love of his subjects by his great goodness; and, whenFerdinand II. Florence and Tuscany were ravaged by the plague in 1630, he showed admirable courage and carried out many useful measures. But he was totally incapable of energy as a statesman. When the pope made bitter complaints because the board of health had dared to subject certain monks and priests to the necessary quarantine, the grand-duke insisted on his officers asking pardon on their knees for having done their duty. ”

“ When the leading Florentine families realized not only that the republic was destroyed, but that they were reduced to equality with those whom they had hitherto regarded as their inferiors and subjects, their rage was indescribable, and hardly a day passed without the departure of influential citizens who were resolved to achieve the overthrow of their new ruler. They found a leader in Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici, who was then in Rome,Cardinal Ippolito. embittered by the preference given to Alessandro, and anxious to become his successor with the least possible delay. ”

“ On the 4th of April 1532 a parliament was convoked for the last time in Florence, and, as usual, approved every measure proposed for acceptance. Accordingly a new council was formed of two hundred citizens elected for life, forty-eight of which number were to constitute a senate. Alessandro, as duke of the republic, filled the post of gonfalonier, and carried on the government with the assistance of three senators, changed every three months, who took the place of the suppressed signory. ”

“ At the commencement of his reign he opposed the popes in order to maintain the independence of his own state; but later, to obtain help, he truckled to them in many ways, even to the extent of giving up to the Inquisition his own confidant, Piero Carnesecchi, who, being accused of heresy, was beheaded and burnt in 1567. In reward for these acts of submission, the popes showed him friendship, and Pius V. granted him the title of grand-duke, conferring the patent and crown upon him in Rome, although the emperor had always withheld his consent. ”

“ His great wealth enabled him to supply money not only to private individuals, but even to foreign potentates. Philippe de Comines tells us that Cosimo frequently furnished Edward IV. of England with sums amounting to many hundred thousand florins. When Tommaso Parentucelli was still a cardinal, and in needy circumstances, Cosimo made him considerable loans without demanding guarantees of payment. On the cardinal’s accession to the tiara as Nicholas V. he was naturally very well disposed towards Cosimo, and employed the Medici bank in Rome in all the affairs of the curia. ”

“ They emerged from private life and rose to power by means of a very subtle policy that was persistently pursued from generation to generation. The origin of the family is buried in obscurity. Some court historians indeed declare it to have been founded by Perseus, and assert that Benvenuto Cellini’s bronze Perseus holding on high the head of Medusa was executed and placed in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence to symbolize the victory of the Medici over the republic. ”

“ The improvement of Leghorn had been first projected by Cosimo I., and was carried on by all the succeeding Medici. Francesco was a slave to his passions, and was led by them to scandalous excesses and deeds of bloodshed. His example and neglect of the affairs of the state soon caused a vast increase of crime even among the people, and, during the first eighteen months of his reign, there occurred no fewer than one hundred and sixty-eight murders. ”

“ By his endeavours to trick all the world, he frequently ended in being tricked himself. In 1525 he was the ally of the French, who then suffered a terrible defeat at Pavia, where their king Francis I. was taken prisoner. The armies of Charles V. triumphantly advanced, without Clement being able to oppose any effectual resistance. Both Rome and Florence were threatened with a fearful catastrophe.
Thus far we have had no occasion to speak of the younger branch of the Medici, descended from Lorenzo, brother to Cosimo the elder. ”

“ For this reason he was in favour of the so-called law of catasto, which, by assessing the property of every citizen, prevented those in power from arbitrarily imposing taxes that unjustly burdened the people. ”

“ Besides his palace in the city, he constructed noble villas at Careggi, Fiesole and other places. He built the basilica of Fiesole, and that of St Lorenzo in Florence, and enlarged the church and monasteryCosomo’s Patronage
of Art. of StMark. Even in distant Jerusalem he endowed a hospice for the use of pilgrims. The artists of the day comprised men like Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and many others, and Cosimo’s magnificent commissions not only developed their powers but stimulated other men of wealth to the patronage of art. ”

“ Leo X. He accordingly removed to Rome, leaving his brother Giuliano with his nephew Lorenzo in Florence, and accompanied by his cousin Giulio, who was a natural son of the Giuliano murdered in the conspiracy of the Pazzi, and was soon destined to be a cardinal and ultimately a pope. Meanwhile his kinsmen in Florence continued to govern that city by means of a balía. And thus, being masters of the whole of central Italy, the Medici enjoyed great authority throughout the country and their ambition plumed itself for still higher flights. ”

“ This period witnessed the rise of many charitable institutions of a religious character under the patronage of the grand-duke, as for instance the congregation of San Giovanni Battista. But these could not remedy the general decay.
Cosimo’s dominant anxiety regarded the succession to the throne. His eldest son Ferdinand died childless in 1713. The pleasure-loving Giovan Gastone was married to Anna Maria of Saxe-Lauenburg, widow of a German prince, a wealthy, coarse woman wholly immersed in domestic occupations. ”

“ In his Ambra, his Caccia del falcone and his Nencia da Barberino, he gives descriptions of nature and of the rural life that he loved, with the graphic power of an acute and tasteful observer, joined to an ease of style that occasionally sins by excess of homeliness. ”

“ His constant associate in this disgraceful routine was his distant kinsman Lorenzo, generally known as Lorenzino dei Medici. Of the younger branch of the Medici, the latter was second cousin of the Cosimo already mentioned as the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He had much culture and literary talent, but led an irregularLorenzino dei Medici. life, sometimes acting like a madman and sometimes like a villain. ”

“ This shows the estimation in which Cosimo was now held. He punished with death all who dared to resist his will. By 1540 sentence of death had been pronounced against four hundred and thirty contumacious fugitives, and during his reign one hundred and forty men and six women actually ascended the scaffold, without counting those who perished in foreign lands by the daggers of his assassins. He reduced the old republican institutions to empty forms, by making the magistrates mere creatures of his will. ”