Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 2 of 2)

by Alfred von Reumont

The reform in the constitution made in the summer of 1480, whereby the decisive part in the affairs of the State was concentrated in the Council of Seventy, had now held its ground for ten years. These ten years, added to the fifty during which the house of Medici had risen to the head of the State, necessarily excluded all families which maintained not only a hostile, but even an independent position. Amongst the ruling portion of the aristocracy, including many popular but not therefore liberal elements, there were men who, in their hearts, detested both the system and its most illustrious supporter; but the majority were attached to it both from interest or from necessity. Others silently accepted what they could not alter without resorting to a great revolution and outward shock which, doubtless, few desired. The lower classes were so much influenced by the arts of those in power, and the governments preceding that of the Medici had oppressed them to such an extent, popular revolutions had been of so tumultuous a character, and had always so speedily paved the way for despotism, that there could be no serious thought of change. The upper class of citizens, who had a share in the government in the wider sense, who were represented in the councils and admitted to office, contented themselves with the measure and appearance of authority, influence, and other advantages given them by the constitution. All the hostile families of rank were ruined by exile, confiscation, and taxes; their old chiefs were either dead or in banishment, they had completely lost their influence and were no longer to be feared; or they had allowed themselves to be gained over in one way or another, and now acted in concert with their former opponents.

According to the time of their fall these families may be divided into three groups: the Albizzi and their adherents fell in 1434, the partisans of Diotisalvi Neroni in 1466, the Pazzi in 1478. Lorenzo had no need to trouble himself about any of them. In the first part of this history we pointed out the extent of the misery into which the Albizzi of Messer Rinaldo’s line had sunk. Forty-four years after their banishment the rights of citizenship were restored to Alessandro, a great-grandson of the former head of the Republic, for having, when far away from Florence during the war which broke out after the Pazzi conspiracy, discovered to the Signoria a plot whereby the town of Pistoja was to be betrayed into the hands of the Duke of Urbino.[367] The descendants of Rinaldo’s brothers remained friendly to the Medici. The Neroni party were become powerless since the Colleone affair. Piero de’ Medici himself had some idea of becoming reconciled with Agnolo Acciaiuolo, more than one of whose relatives were among his own warmest adherents; so the disunion was not likely to continue between their posterity. But for the Pazzi affair Agnolo’s descendants, favoured by the Aragonese, would doubtless have been taken back into favour long before 1482. The enmity between the Medici and the Soderini ended with the death of Niccolò Soderini in 1474, though it came to life again later under different circumstances in the sons of that Tommaso who was so closely connected with Piero and Lorenzo. The Pazzi were thoroughly put out of the way; the scaffold and the prison of Volterra swallowed up both guilty and guiltless; and even when, in consequence of agreements with the Pope and Naples, the survivors were set free in 1482, they were still subjected to many restraints which lasted till the revolution of 1494. Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo, after a long confinement in a house in the country, was sent to Faenza, where Galeotto Manfredi kept him in custody at Lorenzo’s disposal, as is shown by a letter of Galeotto’s dated February 25, 1483. Three days later he received orders for the liberation of his prisoner, and this decision was announced by Lorenzo to his sister Bianca, who had remained in Florence, and to his brother-in-law himself. In the autumn of the following year Guglielmo was in Rome, and in friendly intercourse with the Medici and Bernardo Rucellai.[368] After the revolution of 1494 he was re-admitted to political offices; but he showed little capacity for the work, and his son Alessandro (eleven years old when his uncle Lorenzo died), notwithstanding his sagacity and experience, was better fitted for scholarly work than for public life. Of the other families who arrayed themselves against the Medici in the attack before referred to, some never again played any important part in politics; others let themselves be chained to the victor’s chariot. Thus it was with the Peruzzi, the Gianfigliazzi, the Pitti, and others. The first-named—old, rich, and illustrious—were excluded from office after the return of Cosimo de’ Medici. The two branches of the Strozzi, whose influence had formerly been considerable, were now in some degree estranged, and the most famous of the two was just rising to the height of its splendour.

Lorenzo, as he looked around him, had no need to fear the recurrence of such opposition as had endangered the authority of his grandfather and father. There seemed no room for even attempts at violence, and the tendencies which sprang forth after his death were at this time hardly perceptible even in the germ. Francesco Guicciardini described the situation in a few sentences: ‘The city was in perfect peace. The citizens in whose hands was the administration held firmly together; the government, carried on and supported by them, was so powerful that no one dared contradict it. The people were daily entertained with festivals, spectacles, and novelties; to their profit the city abounded in everything; trade and business were at the height of prosperity. Men of talent found their proper place in the great liberality with which the arts and sciences were promoted and those who practised them were honoured. This city, quiet and peaceful at home, enjoyed also high esteem and great consideration abroad, because she had a government whose head had full authority; because her dominions had lately been extended; because the deliverance of Ferrara and that of King Ferrante were mainly owing to her; because she had complete sway over Pope Innocent; and because, in alliance with Naples and Milan, she in some measure kept all Italy in equilibrium.’

Amid this happy state of things, however, symptoms showed themselves which decidedly pointed out something insecure in the foundations. From a moral point of view there were drawbacks whose influence on the general development and final determination of affairs was inevitable. Anyone who looked below the glittering surface must have felt yearly increasing care about the political situation. Putting aside foreign politics, the home affairs gave extra cause for anxiety. It was becoming more and more evident that everything, present and future, depended on one man alone. It could hardly therefore go unperceived that the necessary consequences of this man’s position and career furnished a prospect, perhaps not a distant one, of a radical change in the constitution.

Alessandro de’ Pazzi graphically described the difficulties of his uncle’s position:[369] ‘When Lorenzo came to the head of the party after Piero’s death he found a serious task before him, and, young as he was, he had need of great prudence to keep together and govern this party; so much the more because the citizens who were then powerful thought they could retain their commanding position, without allowing Lorenzo to usurp the same authority that his grandfather and father had enjoyed. In my opinion this was a mistake; discord would soon have parted them. But his exertions were great, and it was owing to him that no division occurred at that time. His patience with his adherents deserves as much praise as his prudence, activity, and liberality; and I know from my mother that in these first years he thought day and night of nothing but gaining over his friends for his own objects.’

Again, after referring to the dangers and consequences of the years 1478-1480, he says: ‘By dint of skill and luck, without which nothing is to be attained in human affairs, he consolidated his position and maintained it all his life long, not merely as his grandfather had done, but a step higher and with fuller powers. He was in more danger than Cosimo, but he stood so high that the danger was outweighed. Nevertheless, with all his good fortune and the favour of circumstances, with his superhuman intellect and his great number of trustworthy friends, he gave himself an immense deal of trouble. He went to work with the greatest caution, with many arts and secret allies who knew nothing of each other, with inexhaustible patience and endurance. He was assisted, moreover, by his wonderfully acute judgment of foreign affairs, which he understood how to direct and balance better than any other living man in Italy. Herein also fortune favoured him, that he lived at a time when forces were more equally divided than usual, and there was little danger of foreign interference. Above all it was a happy circumstance that Cosimo had preceded him as founder of the position of the family, and for many years past no other and in some sense no more popular form of government had been known in Florence. His merits, however, were his own; vigilance, patience, perseverance, splendour combined with elegance, whereby he made himself a great name among the Italian princes and in other lands, while at home he attracted and gained over all to himself. This also is to be highly esteemed in him, that he influenced his friends into moderation and kept their hands clean, so that it may be said that, with a few exceptions, there occurred no cases of rapine. In truth he directed the State and his party in the best manner possible under the circumstances. With all his good fortune and his uncommon qualities, however, it cost him great exertions, for he never spared himself, but took a personal share in all that occurred, whether in the square or in the palace.’

Although business was transacted not in the house of Medici but in the palace of the Signoria, where Lorenzo passed many hours as a member of councils and committees, still the government was becoming more and more a personal one. The constant change in the members of the Signoria, intended to prevent the authority of individuals from increasing, necessarily promoted this personal government; so much the more as a regular and consistent treatment became necessary for the direction of foreign affairs, ever increasing in continuity and importance. Only in this manner could Florence maintain her position against the larger Italian and foreign states—all monarchic except Venice, who preserved her constitution almost unchanged. Naturally, however, such a personal government had the grave defects of all political arrangements where legal right and hereditary prescription are not the fundamental principles, and whose internal nature is a negation of their external form. This State, apparently constituted on a broad basis, was in reality ruled by a comparatively small party with a recognised chief at their head. Lorenzo’s contemporaries said that he had greater authority and more personal power than any despotic ruler.[370] Nothing was done without his initiative and approval. Popes, kings, and princes applied to him; ambassadors corresponded with him; thousands besieged him with petitions for offices, posts of honour, favours, remission of taxes and imposts, and personal interests of all kinds both at home and in the neighbouring states. Each found him willing to listen; the letters he wrote were innumerable, many of them written by his own hand, to different parties of high and low rank, some personally known to him, others quite strangers. He would willingly help merchants, stewards, farmers, countrymen, and people of all sorts and positions in life. Besides the countless clients of the family there were those recommended by them—as he called them, ‘my good old friends.’ He applied to the Duke of Ferrara on behalf of the money-changers in the Prato, ‘these Jews, my friends.’[371] His correspondence contains the strangest medley of subjects, events, and persons; contraventions of the toll-regulations at the passage of the flocks coming down for the winter from the Casentino and the Pistojan hills to the Sienese Maremma; frauds by merchants; thefts from Florentine subjects; differences with the administration of salt; deeds of violence and murder, are all mixed up with recommendations for judicial offices, especially the office of Podestà, judge of the court of appeal, capitano, &c., and for spiritual dignities and benefices; settlement of boundary disputes; concessions about the corn trade; mediation on the passage of troops; and the affairs of the petty dynasties seated around the Siena district, the Sforzas of Santafiora, the Orsini of Pitigliano, and many others. His constant desire was to oblige as many as possible at home and abroad, and to have the influence of his personal position felt and understood on all sides.

This position was becoming year by year very glaringly exceptional, not only to the eyes of foreign sovereigns but to those of Italian princes as well. The authority which Lorenzo was believed to possess with Innocent VIII., ‘because,’ as he wrote to Lanfredini on August 26, 1489, ‘I am extremely devoted to his Holiness and obliged to him for many favours,’ caused him to be applied to by all parties whenever a petition to Rome was to be presented. Almost simultaneously Guid’Antonio Arcimboldo begged his recommendation to obtain the archbishopric of Milan, and the Duke of Britanny sent a messenger to request his support for the nomination of one of the Duke’s secretaries to the see of Nantes. Lodovico il Moro applied to him to procure the Sienese bishopric of Pienza, and Charles, Duke of Savoy, to have his uncle—that Francis so well known in connection with the episcopal troubles at Geneva—advanced to the cardinalate. When Federigo Sanseverino, Monsignor de’ Grassi, the Archbishop of Auch, and others desired the cardinal’s hat, he was asked to help them to procure it. It was he who recommended to the Pope the young Alessandro Farnese, who in 1489 was studying at Pisa and sought to obtain one of the posts of Apostolic Secretary created by Innocent at the end of 1487. ‘I wish you to know,’ wrote Lorenzo to Lanfredini on April 10,[372] ‘that this gentleman, besides coming of such a noble family (oltre allo esser nato della casa che è) has many distinguished qualities, among them unusual learning and excellent morals, being at once very accomplished and a model of virtuous conduct. For these reasons, the weight of which with me you know, I recommend him to you as if he were my own son, and beg you to present him to his Holiness, for which I shall be very grateful.’ This is perhaps the first testimony, and certainly a most honourable one, on behalf of Pomponio Leto’s former pupil, then one-and-twenty, and destined forty-five years later to succeed a Medici on the Papal throne. When the Duke of Ferrara and the lord of Camerino wanted help at Rome, they applied to Lorenzo; when the Duke of Savoy sent an ambassador thither, he recommended him to Lorenzo. King John of Portugal wrote from Santarem, Charles VIII. from Amboise, the Duchess Blanche from Savoy, Anne de Beaujeu and her husband Pierre de Bourbon from Moulins, to the ‘Seigneur Laurens.’ His friendly relations with Matthias Corvinus have been repeatedly mentioned; they seem to have been none the worse for the fact that Matthias was for a long time on bad terms with the Sforza, having, for the sake of his brother-in-law Don Federigo of Aragon, accepted among the conditions of the treaty with Kaiser Frederic in 1477 the proceedings against the ruling house of Milan, which was not recognised by the Empire. To the Pope Lorenzo often commended his own subjects, as, for instance, Giovanni Savelli, ‘to whom I have especial goodwill because he is in the service of our army, and to whom I am bound by a friendship of many years’ standing,’ and the distinguished priest Francesco de’ Massimi. Everyone considered a matter secured in Rome if once Lorenzo took it in hand; and perhaps the secret of his great success in many things arose from the shrewdness of his calculation as to what lay within the limits of possibility.

Lorenzo was surrounded by numerous friends and adherents, some of whom had inherited distinction, while others had been raised by him. It was only by their help that he could maintain his position at home and keep up his connections abroad. He was well and skilfully supported by the Acciaiuoli, the Pandolfini, the Vespucci, the Soderini, the Pucci, the Guicciardini, the Capponi, the Vettori, the Lanfredini, the Alamanni, the Ridolfi, the Gaddi, &c. They and their families had a corresponding share in the administration, in honours and privileges, and held a prominent position; the consequence of which was that when circumstances were altered there remained a powerful Medicean party which at last gained the victory through external political circumstances; for the family which had risen to greatness with their support naturally seized the lion’s share. But Lorenzo, while advancing his adherents in power, never allowed them to become too independent of him. For this purpose the means he chiefly employed was that of placing on the same level with citizens who had long been great others who had risen solely by help of the Medici; in matters which required entire devotion to his interests he rather gave a preference to the latter. The most active and influential of the Florentine diplomatists, Giovanni Lanfredini, sprung from a family originally Roman and which became extinct in the last century in the person of a cardinal, had become a business-partner of the Medici as early as Cosimo’s time. Lorenzo’s policy was to let one person keep another in check. He was probably suspicious by nature, a quality which developed as years went on, for he often employed the chancery-officers who accompanied the ambassadors to Rome, Naples, and Milan to send him special reports,[373] while his creatures in Florence, especially Ser Piero of Bibiena and Piero Michelozzi, kept up a correspondence in various other quarters. We have remarked before that Bartolommeo Scala, the chancellor of the Signoria, was in very intimate relations with him. The chancellors of the other government offices, the only really stable officials in whom the traditions of business survived, were all in his interest, most of them having attained their influential posts through him. Thus he let no family and no individual gain an influence inconvenient to himself, and kept his eyes on all. He even meddled in family affairs: hindered marriages if they seemed to him dangerous, furthered them if he thought them likely to prove useful. Those whom some special circumstances had unusually elevated, even when he himself profited thereby, he always kept in check; as exemplified in the case of Tommaso Soderini, and, after the Pazzi conspiracy, Girolamo Morelli. Of the former, indeed, there is nothing more to add, save that he was a member of the Council of Seventy and died as Capitano at Pisa in 1485. Lorenzo overlooked many things in his adherents, but he kept them under his control and took care that they should feel that their position and advantages were derived from him. A man who was, indeed, ill-disposed towards him on account of an event which concerned his family, remarked:[374] ‘The great citizens raised and supported Lorenzo in his youth; in later years he would not have as companions, but used as servants, those who had been like fathers to him.’

The event alluded to is characteristic of the political power and position of Lorenzo with regard to the official representatives of the State. It made no difference to him if the man on whom his resentment fell[375] had his cause defended by others in power. When Neri Cambi degli Opportuni was Gonfaloniere in 1488, and at the end of the year the Signoria were to be elected for the following January and February, it was found that the legal number of members of the colleges was not complete, many having absented themselves without leave and gone to the chase. To the great irritation of the people assembled in the square the election could not take place till one of the missing members was fetched from his country-house, from whence he came booted and spurred to the palace, and the election then proceeded. Indignant at what had occurred, the outgoing Signoria determined to punish the delinquents, and condemned four of them to exclusion from office for four years. Lorenzo was in Pisa at the time. ‘To him,’ says Guicciardini, ‘and to all the heads of the party it was a very disagreeable affair; for it seemed to them that if a Signoria could use the right of ammonire without previous deliberation with those in power, their own government was hanging in the air by a thread (lo stato loro fussi a cavallo in su uno baleno), and they might one fine morning be driven out of Florence by only six beans (votes). So, after that Signoria had gone out of office, the matter was again brought up before the Magistracy of Eight and the Council of Seventy; the decree against the four citizens was revoked, and Neri Cambi was declared ineligible for office for the rest of his life. The council was by no means unanimous, but Lorenzo’s will carried the day.’