Thus was Piero de’ Medici’s family composed. Other connections of equal importance belonged to them. Foremost of all were the two Soderini, Niccolò and Tommaso.[115] Their ancestors are said to have been Counts of Gangalandi, and heads of the Ghibelline party, but they are found as a Florentine plebeian family in the second half of the twelfth century. They attained importance only 200 years later. Tommaso Soderini, like so many of his countrymen, spent a great part of his life in business matters at Papal Avignon, and returned in 1370 to his home, where, as a member of the magistracy of the Guelph party, he took so violent a part in the proscriptions, that in the insurrection of 1378 he was one of the first to have his house plundered and burnt. He went into exile to Tarascon, on the Rhône, but returning home after the victory of the oligarchy, he again attained to office and influence. In 1395, seven years before his death, he was Gonfaloniere. His two sons, Francesco and Lorenzo, went separate ways. Francesco, the son of Elisabetta Altoviti whom Tommaso had married after his return to Avignon, passed through the usual career of distinguished Florentines who attained to civic offices and embassies as soon as they reached the legal age. One of his missions took him to Mantua to celebrate the marriage of Ludovico Gonzaga with Barbara of Hohenzollern, the granddaughter of Frederick I., elector of Brandenburg. Like his father, he belonged to the party of the Albizzi, and had one of the daughters of Palla Strozzi as his wife. When Cosimo de’ Medici went into exile he was one of the magistracy of eight that escorted him to the frontiers. He was not expelled when the Medici gained the victory, but his influence was at an end, and he only became Podestà in towns of Umbria and Romagna, and for a time he lay in prison on suspicion of having shared in the movements of his partisans. Niccolò da Uzzano destined him to be the rector of his university, and Donatello has given us his portrait in one of the statues which are to be seen on the front of the bell-tower of Sta. Maria.[116] It is the figure standing next to the church called that of St. John the Baptist, and in its natural free bearing reminds one of the famous St. George of Or San Michele.
Lorenzo, Tommaso’s other son, passed through a stormy career. Born at Avignon, of a woman of Auvergne, he endeavoured to cover his want of legitimacy by the diplomas of a Count Palatine and of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. After having been enrolled by King Charles V. of France in an order of knighthood, and married in Florence to Ghilla Cambi, he conceived the unfortunate idea, after his father’s death, of proving the legality of his birth and his right to more wealth by means of forged documents. The severity, of the laws sentenced him to death, which he suffered in 1405. His two sons, Niccolò and Tommaso, born, the former in 1401, the latter in 1403, became eager partisans of Cosimo de’ Medici on the sole ground of hatred of their uncle, to whom they attributed a participation in the tragical end of their father, and who took the other side. Niccolò received the dignity of Gonfaloniere in 1451, Tommaso in 1449 and 1454. The latter, by far the most distinguished, filled various offices in the provincial towns at an early age; when thirty-five he sat in the magistracy of the Priori. By his marriage with Dianora Tornabuoni, Lucrezia’s sister, he was riveted to the Medicean interests, which no one supported with greater zeal and success, or with more statesmanlike ability. To no one did Piero or Lorenzo owe so much as to this man. We have already mentioned other families with whom the Medici were connected. Further mention will be made of them in the course of this history.
CHAPTER II.
LORENZO’S YOUTH. CONSPIRACY OF DIOTISALVI NERONI AND HIS COMPANIONS.
Lorenzo de’ Medici grew up. He was seventeen years old when his father sent him to Pisa to welcome Don Federigo of Aragon, King Ferrante’s younger son, who set out from Naples, March 18, 1465, and having received the golden rose at Rome, was on his way to Milan with the most brilliant suite, no less than six hundred horse, to escort to Naples Francesco Sforza’s intellectual and beautiful daughter Ippolita Maria, the bride of his elder brother, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.[117] On April 17, Don Federigo entered Florence, accompanied by the Prince of Salerno, the Duke of Amalfi, the Bishop of Gaeta, and many other lords, and was received by the Signoria on the Ringhiera of the palace, after which he rode to Sta. Maria Novella, where the Papal lodgings were prepared for him, and where, entertained at the public cost, he stayed five days amid mutual expressions of politeness. The Prince, then only thirteen years old, wore mourning, with all his suite, in consequence of the death of the Queen his mother, which had happened shortly before.[118]
Florence had had much cause to complain of the Aragonese, even in later years, and had long remained true to her sympathies with Anjou; but Cosimo de’ Medici was too diplomatic not to see that the house of Spain had gained a firmer footing than that of France in southern Italy, and that peace was better secured by an alliance with the former, if the interests of the State made it possible. Cosimo always held fast to Francesco Sforza, even when he believed that he had cause of complaint against him; for Sforza, who had once encouraged his Florentine friend in the belief that after he was Duke of Milan he would aid him with his power in the subjection of Lucca, let the matter entirely drop when he had attained his end. Cosimo had more than anyone the conquest of Lucca at heart, for, unlike the Albizzi, who had enlarged the territory of the Republic by Pisa, he had nothing to show but trifling annexations by purchase, such as the Borgo San Sepolcro, in the valley of the Tiber, and he complained of the ingratitude of a man to whose grandeur he had so much contributed, though he still kept up a close connection with him.
The meeting with Federigo d’Aragona was afterwards of great use to Lorenzo; he met him again when he undertook a journey which led him to Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, and Milan. A letter addressed to him during this excursion is a proof of the interest which the gifted youth had long excited, even if we take into account the dependent position in which the writer stood towards the family. This was Luigi Pulci. The name of the author of the most celebrated heroic poem of the fifteenth century, which will be mentioned in the consideration of the literary movement, is inseparable from that of his constant patron and friend. Luigi Pulci belonged to a family of Provençal origin, which was ranked among the oldest in Florence, but did not rise, because when the popular element prevailed it was characterised as noble, and excluded from all share in public offices. A street was once named after the residence of the Pulci, which was pulled down in the sixteenth century when the Uffizi was built. Jacopo Pulci had by Brigida de’ Bardi three sons, of whom Luigi was the second: all three were poets, and had better success in poetry than in pecuniary affairs. Luigi was born on August 15, 1432, in Florence. He was still unmarried at the time now under consideration, and one of the confidants of the Medici, who employed him in various commissions. Piero’s wife was especially well-disposed towards him, and we shall find him later as her escort on a journey. ‘You have left us,’ he writes to Lorenzo, April 27, 1465, ‘so disconsolate at your departure that I do not know how to hold the pen to write this letter to you. Through Braccio, I am informed of your journey, and assume that you are now in Venice; and in order to begin my correspondence well, I inform you that I am lonely, forsaken, and sad without you. On the other hand, I rejoice in your journey, which seems to me a piece of good fortune for many reasons. You will see many remarkable things, which will delight your mind, superior, I consider, to all, with one only exception. What promotes your interests can only be a pleasure to me.’[119]
Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, was his companion on this journey, which was connected with the marriage of Francesco Sforza’s daughter, who soon afterwards came through Tuscany on her wedding tour.