Sixteen years after the departure of Eugenius, another Pope came to Florence—another man, with other plans and thoughts. On April 25, 1459, Pius II. came hither from Siena on his way to the conference of princes assembled at Mantua to organise a crusade against the Turks. Florence was by no means well inclined towards her Sienese neighbours, and the last Neapolitan war, favoured by Siena, had not exactly improved the feeling. The Sienese priest, raised to the highest dignity of Christendom, and desirous of setting a limit to the threatening progress of Islam, was, however, most honourably received. Several princes and lords had repaired to the city before the Pope, to welcome him. Galeazzo Maria Visconti, son of the Duke of Milan, sixteen years old, appeared with a troop of 350 horse and Cosimo de’ Medici, although ill, could not be induced to neglect the duty of hospitality towards the son of his ally and friend; Sigismondo Malatesta, an Ordelaffi of Forli, a Pio of Carpi, one of the Feltrieri of Urbino, and others rode out with the young Sforza to San Casciano, where, eight miles from the city, the road descends into the valley of the Arno, and where the solemn reception took place. The Gonfaloniere, Agnolo Vettori, led Pius II. to Sta. Maria Novella, the usual residence of the Pope. The lover of learning and art delighted in the many beautiful things which the city, then exceedingly rich, offered to him; business, with the exception of a new election of bishops, does not seem to have been attended to. Cosimo de’ Medici was hindered from being present by indisposition which could not have been feigned.
During the ten days’ visit of the Pope there died on May 2, Archbishop Antoninus, who was already called a saint, before Pope Adrian VI. canonised him. Sound common sense, great goodness of heart, piety, and well-directed benevolence, which founded several institutions still standing, reformatory zeal and firmness in defending the rights of the Church, had made him, who was also learned in science, appear the model of an excellent pastor to the people during the fourteen years which he dedicated to the office of archbishop, in a time full of suffering and sudden revolutions of fortune. Such a model he has remained to the present day, when his writings have been collected, and a beautiful marble statue has been erected to his memory among those of distinguished Florentines. The pageantry of the days immediately preceding and following his decease suited but ill with the loss of a man so honourable and excellent, which was heavily felt by all the people. Splendid games and festivals were arranged for the princes of Milan and the other lords. To a tourney succeeded a festival on the New Market Place, where the most beautiful women were assembled; then a hunting-party on the Piazza before Sta. Croce, where, besides the usual forest animals, a lion and a giraffe were exhibited. A triumphal procession took place in the evening. A silver table-service, weighing 125 pounds, was presented to the youthful Sforza. It was a custom to entertain princely personages at the cost of the Commune.
On November 10, 1461, Charlotte of Lusignan, consort of Prince Louis of Savoy, arrived at Florence[95] on her way to Rome, whither she was going to entreat the aid of Pius II. against her illegitimate step-brother Jacob. The latter had possessed himself of the supremacy over Cyprus, belonging to her of right, and held her husband besieged in Nicosia. The Signoria, with the Gonfaloniere, Alessandro Machiavelli, at their head, went to meet her, and conducted her under a canopy to the house of Cambiozzo de’ Medici, in the Borgo San Lorenzo, which was prepared for her reception. During her seven days’ visit she went up to the basilica of San Miniato, which towers above the city, to visit the grave of the cardinal of Portugal, brother of Juan of Coimbra, her first husband, who had died here in 1459, on an embassy from Pius II. Pope Pius has described in his memoirs the last of the Lusignans, who in the summer of 1487, after more than a quarter of a century spent in exile, found in St. Peter’s church in the Vatican that rest which had been denied to her in this life.
CHAPTER VIII.
COSIMO DE’ MEDICI’S LAST DAYS.
As the year 1464 approached, Cosimo de’ Medici’s life drew to a close. He had long suffered from gout, which now became more violent, and attacked more sensitive parts. Often he could not quit the house for months together. He had experienced the fulness of joy and of sorrow, especially in his own family. His brother Lorenzo, his junior by six years, had always been of one mind with him, had eagerly furthered his interests and those of his sons in the critical moments of 1433, and had drawn upon himself the enmity of those in power. He had afterwards been an active and vigilant administrator of money matters for the Papal curia, and had rivalled his elder brother in collecting literary treasures. He was only forty-five years old when he died in the autumn of 1440, at his villa at Careggi, leaving a son, Piero Francesco, who at first had a share in the mercantile business of his uncle, then parted from him, and lived aloof from all political matters in his native city, superintending the management of his large property. This Lorenzo was the founder of two lines which both fell into enmity with the elder branch. One of them ended with the murder of the first duke, the last illegitimate descendant of Cosimo’s line, while the other gave to Tuscany one of her most valiant warriors and seven rulers. Cosimo had two sons by Contessina de’ Bardi, Piero and Giovanni. The former was born in 1416, and carefully educated. At first there was an intention of giving him the daughter of the Count of Poppi, Francesco de Guidi, in marriage. But his father seems to have been fearful of allying himself with this old noble family, which would have brought him into connection with the lords of Romagna and Umbria, as well as with the house of the Roman prefects; connections which might have injured his position in a democratical community, not to mention the alliance of the Count of Poppi with the Visconti and Albizzi, which led to his ruin in 1440.
Piero de’ Medici married Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni, of a distinguished Florentine family, a woman of extraordinary endowments, who will be often mentioned in the course of this history. As Cosimo’s elder son, who was sickly from his earliest youth, seemed to be incapable of taking his eminent and arduous position in city and state, the father built all his hopes on the younger son. He lost him, however, at the age of twenty-two, in the beginning of November 1463, not a year after he had buried his little son Cosimo, whom Maria Ginevra degli Alessandri had borne to him, and the loss of whom is said to have broken his father’s heart. The old man wandered inconsolable through the rooms: ‘This is a large house,’ he lamented, ‘for so small a family.’ Among those who addressed expressions of sympathy to him was Pope Pius II. ‘Not the departed one is the loser,’ replied Cosimo; ‘for what we call life is death, and that beyond is the true life; but who needed him are the losers.’[96] Thus there only remained to him the family of Piero, who, besides his two sons, had two daughters, Bianca and Nannina, who, the eldest in her grandfather’s lifetime, married into two Florentine families, the Pazzi and Rucellai. Besides his legitimate children, Cosimo had a natural son, Carlo, probably by Maddalena, a Circassian whom Giovanni Portinari had bought at Venice in the summer of 1427.[97]
He maintained great reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter of a century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but he never assumed the show of his dignity. Many works of art and virtù were to be seen in his house; but in style of living, retinue and horses, he was modest. The ruler of the Florentine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and merchant. In his appearance and bearing there was nothing which distinguished him from others; he was simple, moderate, accessible, friendly and familiar with the common people. ‘He understood agriculture thoroughly,’ remarked Vespasiano da Bisticci, ‘and talked about it as if he had never occupied himself with other matters. He laid out the garden of the brethren of San Marco, which had been waste land, and created something really beautiful. Thus it was with his own possessions; he everywhere superintended the planting, grafted and pruned with his own hand. When residing at Careggi, on account of a pestilence, he dedicated the hours of the morning to two worthy employments. Hardly was he up than he went into the vineyard, where he worked for two hours, just as Pope Boniface IX. did in the Vigne at the palace of the Vatican. When he returned home he read the moral writings of Gregory the Great. In the midst of all his employments he remembered every single plantation on his estates, and when his peasants came to him he conversed with them about them.’