The house of Medici seemed to be blind to the gravity of the situation, to judge by their outward behaviour. The days were passed when an experienced man like Cosimo weighed everything with anxious deliberation, and was afraid to show how high he stood in city and State, or when his son was led to a retired life by illness and inclination. A young man, brilliant, talented, self-conscious, early called into active life, and who had grown up in a prominent position, stood at the head of the State, and was determined to enjoy life. A second was growing up, perhaps less gifted, but yet a genuine son of a house in which intellectual capacities and the wish not to hide his light under a bushel already appeared hereditary, powerful, splendid, a born leader of youth. It was only natural that the youth of Florence thronged around Lorenzo and Giuliano. The house and household in the Via Larga were already grown beyond the modesty of the citizen. The large income of the family derived from banks, trade, farming, estates, made great expenditure possible; and if expenses of the most various kinds, for public and private ends, perhaps began to exceed the income, no one troubled himself about that. Lorenzo once expressed himself concerning the considerable sums which were expended, especially in his grandfather’s time, for churches and convents, for houses and villas, on scientific and artistic objects, for household and social expenses, in such a manner as to show how high he placed the gain resulting from it. ‘I find,’ he says in his notices,[185] in an extract of the accounts, ‘that we have spent a large sum of money from 1434 to the end of 1471. This sum appears incredible; it amounts to 663,755 gold florins for benevolent purposes, buildings and taxes, not to mention the other expenses. I will not complain of it. Although many may think it would be better for us to have a part of it in our purse, I feel satisfied that this outlay does great honour to our position, and the money is well spent, so that I am quite content.’ No house in Florence was furnished with objects of art, antiquities, and luxury like that of the Medici. When princes arrived in Florence for whom the quarters of the popes in the convent of Sta. Maria Novella seemed too austere, or when illustrious ladies came on a visit, they generally alighted at the house of the Medici. In Florence men were accustomed to see them do the honours; the Signoria needed only to provide for the suite, which was then exceedingly numerous, even with princes of the second rank.
Of Lorenzo’s daily intercourse with scholars and artists, and of their share in his domestic life, we shall speak further on. A learned education was, however, so common in Florence, and the citizens, who divided their time between commerce, State business, and literary or scientific pursuits, were so numerous, that beside those who made learning their calling as teachers, authors, collectors, there existed a whole class of men whose learning, especially in ancient literature, was as profound, while their views were much widened by active business life, and by missions that carried them beyond the narrower circle of the philologists and book-learned. Many of these have been already mentioned; others we shall meet hereafter. Nearly all belonged to the Medicean circle. It is evident that from such a centre a powerful influence must be exercised over the whole of society. It also contributed to raise Lorenzo into the princely position which he assumed more and more, and to establish him there. It effected also at the same time the dissemination of that higher culture, the combination of intellectual with material interests, which have spread a glory which cannot be pronounced deceptive over a state of things which had its dark side, and over tendencies which were dangerous in many ways.
The Italian princes had already accustomed themselves to reckon the Medici among their own class. The greater ones regarded them almost as their equals, while the smaller ones looked up to them. Great and small, the Aragonese and Sforza not excepted, needed Florentine money, and knew that they could not obtain it without their intervention, either from the State or from the banks. Even the Medici did not always succeed in obtaining grants from the State; as in the spring of 1471, when a loan requested by King Ferrante of 20,000 gold florins, not a very large sum, was not granted, on account of the opposition of the Gonfaloniere Bardo Corsi, who drew upon himself thereby the ill-will of those in power. This, however, was an exceptional occurrence. Most of the petty princes and Signori depended on the protection of the Republic, as we have said, or took mercenary service under her, so that they naturally sought to retain the favour of the heads of the Government. From all sides and in affairs of every kind, recommendations, proposals, requests and representations were sent to Lorenzo and his brother.[186] Most numerous of all are the letters of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who never ceased to address to Lorenzo recommendations for the transfer of offices which were filled by foreign nobles. When the command of the Milanese troops was granted to the Marquis of Montferrat at the beginning of 1474, he hastened to notify it to Florence. ‘I consider it my duty to inform Your Magnificences of the matter, as I am convinced that you take interest in all pleasant and honourable things which befall me, as becomes the fraternal sympathy and friendship which have always existed between us.’ When the same marquis sends his seneschal and councillor, Pietro de Tebaldeschi, to Rome, he recommends him to the Medici. Ercole of Este and his consort, Lodovico, Federigo, Rodolfo Gonzaga, Leonello Pio of Carpi, Jacopo Appiani, the Sanseverini, with King René and his son, Duke John, all turn to the Medici; King Edward IV. of England applies to them in mercantile affairs; Ferdinand of Aragon and Sicily recommends to them a nobleman who had conducted the administration of Corsica, and who wished to be Podestà in Florence. Numerous are the letters of Federigo of Montefeltro, whether they concern the settlement of his pecuniary affairs, or his recommendation to offices, or the like. ‘I know well,’ he writes in a letter addressed in April 1476 to Lorenzo, on behalf of M. Francesco da Sassatello, ‘that it is unnecessary to recommend to you such as your friends and servants, especially when I also am interested in them.’
Most numerous of all, however, are the communications with King Ferrante and his family, after the year 1471. There are requests of every kind, recommendations of Florentine merchants settled in Naples, or Jews from Nola and Salerno, imprisoned in Florence, for whose loyalty the king pledges himself. We find also intercessions for Madonna Selvaggia, wife of Piero Gambacorta, of the family who formerly ruled in Pisa, but had removed to Florence on account of a lawsuit; for Raffaello Acciaiuoli, Agnolo’s son, who, like his father, was sentenced to banishment in consequence of Diotisalvi Neroni’s conspiracy, for the Abbot of St. Paul’s at Rome, and for numerous Neapolitans, who had interests or business in the territory of the Republic. ‘If we,’ writes the king to Lorenzo on July 12, 1476, ‘wish to obtain any kind of favour from the illustrious Republic, we long for no other mediator and representative than Your Magnificence, as your great authority is known to us, and we have always known by experience how readily you fulfil our wishes.’ In September 1473, Ferrante begs him to charge his business correspondents in Lyons and Vienne to forward the despatches of the Neapolitan ambassador at the court of King Louis XI. with their own communications. And so one letter follows another. The same relations continued with the king’s sons, especially the two eldest, Alfonso and Federigo. We have already spoken of the personal connections of both with Lorenzo, and their repeated meetings; their epistolary correspondence answered to this friendly relation, and the sons added their recommendations to their father’s.
The Duchess of Calabria, Ippolita Maria, always counted on the friendship which united the Medici with the house of Sforza. That intellectual and highly cultivated woman who once greeted Pope Pius II. at the Congress of Mantua with a Latin speech, always kept up communication with Lorenzo. Even in the lifetime of Piero de’ Medici, in 1468, when she, three years after her marriage with the Aragonese prince, was on a visit to Milan, she was already corresponding with Lorenzo, and recommended to him a knight well known to her for the office of Podestà in Florence. In 1473 she wrote to him concerning Florentine merchants who had had a great quantity of coarse woollen cloth (it was called Perpignano after the town where this kind was first made) woven at Capua, and sought permission to import it. On March 8, 1478, shortly therefore after the outbreak of the eventful dissensions of which we shall speak in the course of this history, she interceded with Lorenzo for the liberation from prison of Lorenzo Cavalcanti, a man of an old noble family, describing to him the poverty and distress of his family. Four years before, she had requested of him a loan; her letter is a characteristic proof of the position which the citizen and banker held towards the princes, to whose circle he indeed belonged without the external insignia. ‘Illustrious and mighty and paternally respected lord,’ so wrote Ippolita Maria d’Aragona Visconti on July 10, 1474, from the Castle of Capuano, then the residence of the Neapolitan heir-apparent,’the old existing kindness and intimate friendship between the family of Your Magnificence and our late illustrious parents, and your especial affection for our most illustrious brother, the Duke of Milan, assure us, and fill us with the certain hope, that you will support us in our great embarrassment, for which we shall ever owe you gratitude. We beg you, therefore, to lend us 2,000 ducats gratis for a time to be fixed by yourself, we promising its punctual repayment on the word of an honourable woman (“a fede de leale madama”). For the sake of the affection that Your Magnificence cherishes for us, as well as the dear remembrance of our parents, and your friendly relations with our brother, we hope that you will readily fulfil our request. Should you, however, not have the sum ready to hand, we beg you to use your influence with your friends and adherents to procure it for us. As deposit we will send some of our jewellery corresponding in value to the sum mentioned, and be ever grateful to you for this service, according to our own character and our hereditary custom. When Your Magnificence sends the sum we will deliver the jewels to the messenger, or send a special messenger to you with them, in case you should prefer it. So we beg you to send a kind and speedy answer by the messenger who brings this, and recommend ourselves to you as always ready for your service.’ We shall speak further of later communications between the Duchess and Lorenzo, who received perfumed waters from the Castle of Capuano.
If the Neapolitan Crown-Princess thus wrote, it is no wonder that one of the victims of Mohammedan conquest and Christian feud which the East then sent to Italy, Caterina, Queen of Bosnia—the most unhappy of queens (‘omnium reginarum infortunatissima’), as she called herself—adopted a yet humbler tone. From Rome, where the unfortunate princess had found refuge in 1466, and, like so many princely exiles before and after, lived by the Pope’s support, till, after twelve years, she was buried in Sta. Maria Araceli, she turned on January 28, 1472, to Lorenzo and Giuliano, with whom she had already been in communication for two years. The Medici bank in Rome was charged with the payment of her annual pension; she begged for cash, instead of being obliged, as frequently happened, to take payment in kind. She also appealed to old connections of the Medici with her family, which might have been through the mediation of Mathias Corvinus, and to the universally famed magnanimity of the brothers, which befitted their position. At the same time she recommended herself and her interests to their mother, ‘the illustrious lady whom she loved as a sister’—expressions which the Duchess of Milan, Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza, had employed seven years before in a letter to Madonna Lucrezia.
While Italian and other princes stood on this footing with the Medici, their clients must have been numerous in Florence itself. It is a proof of the tact with which they understood how to manage their fellow-citizens, that while making use of them they never forgot their equality of rank, but treated them as confidants as well as friends. In the first rank of these was Luigi Pulci, whom we have already known as court-poet and protégé of their mother. In the autumn of 1470 he accompanied Madonna Lucrezia to Fuligno, from whence he proceeded to Camerino, lying in the mountains between Umbria and the border land, to execute a commission given him by Lorenzo to Giulio Cesare Varano, lord of the little town and state. The Varani had risen in the latter times of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, and had gradually, as usual, by the administration of civil offices, attained a lordship restricted by the church, and often endangered by quarrels and insurrections. From the fourteenth century they had repeatedly entered the Neapolitan service.
In the Malatesta war, the lord of Camerino had fought on the Papal side; he had an intention of breaking with the Florentines. When Lorenzo sent Luigi Pulci to him, with what commission is not known, he received him with the greatest deference. ‘He assured me,’ wrote Pulci to his patron,[187] ‘that there was no one in all Italy for whom he would do what he would for you. Your father had once procured him a Florentine condotta, and he was much indebted to yourself.’
From Umbria the poet and man of business repaired to Naples, proclaiming on the way, as he writes, ‘from Monterotondo, and in Rome and Bracciano and wherever there were Orsini, the wonders of Madonna Clarice, so that her picture will be hung up everywhere.’ When Lorenzo needed a man of heart and tongue to be with the king and duke, he might rely upon him. ‘All the world speaks here of you, your position, your demeanour, and holds you and us in high honour. In especial, you are a favourite of the king.’ The king sent Lorenzo two beautiful horses, and a third to Guglielmo de’ Pazzi; the Duke of Calabria wished much that the Medici would set up a bank in Naples, like the Strozzi, &c. True, Florentine affairs were not quite satisfactory. ‘They are arming here with all their might against the Turks, but the ambassador of the king announces that little assistance is to be expected from you. I hope God may convert you during this Lent, and that you also may wish to be Christians’ (1471). But more serious affairs ensued. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, of whom more will be said presently, tried to use his familiarity with Lorenzo to obtain his assistance in a treacherous attack on the lord of Piombino, and it is not to Lorenzo’s honour that he consented to give it. The intrigue failed, but it created discontent both at Naples and at Venice. The intimacy between the Duke of Milan and the Medici continued. In the month of March 1471, Galeazzo Maria paid a visit to his Florentine friends. He was in every way dissimilar to his father, who had been fully acquainted with the serious side of life before attaining to sovereignty over a large city. As he was of a coarse sensual nature, and regarded neither right nor law where it concerned the gratification of his desires, so he also showed a childish love of pomp and splendour, even far beyond his means and those of his country, although he oppressed the inhabitants with taxes. However much we must guard ourselves in judging of the luxury and expenses of former days, from giving implicit faith to the complaints of contemporaries (the Milanese complained, for instance, of the heavy burden laid upon them by the paving of the streets), yet the details which we possess respecting Galeazzo Maria’s and his consort’s journey to Florence, show that all reasonable measure was exceeded. Never had Florence witnessed similar pomp. The duke’s suite was endless. Vassals and councillors accompanied him, all clothed in gold and silver cloth, and with numerous servants, the courtiers in velvet and brocade, the chamberlains in rich embroidery, forty of them with gold chains of honour, the least of which was worth a hundred gold florins. Fifty grooms appeared in costumes of cloth of silver, partly of silk brocade; even the kitchen-boys glittered in velvet and silk; fifty war-horses with saddles of gold brocade, gilded stirrups and silk embroidered bridles, each one led by a groom in rich livery with the Sforza-Visconti arms on his doublet. The guard was formed of a hundred heavily-armed knights, each with the rank of captain, and 500 select foot. No less splendid was the suite of the Duchess Bona. Fifty palfreys with gold and silver saddles and trappings were led by richly clad pages; twelve transport waggons, with coverings of gold brocade, adorned with coats-of-arms, contained mattresses and cushions covered with crimson silk and gold embroidery, and were brought over the mountains by mules. The entire suite needed 2,000 horses and 200 mules, whose drivers wore new liveries. On all sides only gold and silver cloth, velvet and silk, were to be seen. The ducal party was followed by a numerous troop of hunters, with dogs, falcons, sparrowhawks, forty trumpeters and pipers, musicians and merrymakers. The cost of the equipment was calculated at 200,000 gold florins. No emperor had travelled as did the son of a condottiere of Romagna, who called himself duke of the Imperial fief of Milan, in defiance of the powerless emperor and empire.
When the procession approached the Porta San Gallo—it was on March 15—many distinguished men and youths went to meet it, accompanied by various bands of young men in various costumes, with women and maidens singing songs in praise of the eminent guests. The duke rode in front, the duchess slightly behind him, and on they went through the crowded and decorated streets to the square of the Signoria, who awaited them at the Ringhiera, in company with many illustrious citizens. When the duke drew near he dismounted, while his consort did the same, and the Signori, the Gonfaloniere, Gino Capponi, Neri’s son at their head, came to meet him, and all gave one another their hand. The Gonfaloniere said a few words bidding them welcome, which Galeazzo Maria answered, upon which the ducal pair mounted again, and the Signori returned to the palace. The new-comers now rode to the church of the Annunziata, to perform their devotions in the chapel built by Piero de’ Medici, and from thence by the square of San Marco to Via Larga, where they were lodged in the house of the Medici. They had chosen to reside here, while their suite was provided for in the city, and entertained at the public cost, which was no trifle. Whatever splendour Sforza might be accustomed to, he was yet astonished at the immense wealth of the house where he lodged—at the number of paintings, sculptures, antiques, and the large and rare vases and other objects of precious kinds of stone, partly from distant countries, at the medals, carved stones, jewels, rare and rich manuscripts—in short, at a quantity of things he had never seen before in such abundance, as he confessed. Everyone flocked to do the guests honour, and as Galeazzo Maria showed himself friendly and conciliating, displayed great liberality, remembering the long-standing connection of his father with the city and the Medici, and had enjoined his followers to avoid everything which could excite displeasure, affairs went off to the general satisfaction.