In the Italian republics of the middle ages we find the age of Greece revived, though on a smaller scale and with diminished splendour. They exhibit, in the same colours the results of multiplying small independent states, where every citizen may feel that he has an individual as well as a general interest in public affairs, and every city that she is concerned in the domestic quarrels of her neighbours. The effects of such a system are manifest alike in either country: the good, in the remarkable number of distinguished men produced by them; the bad, in the prevalence of external aggression and internal discord, signalised alike by political acuteness, unblushing profligacy, and revolting cruelty. Above all, Florence and Athens are naturally associated by their kindred eminence in art and literature; they were alike distinguished for the mercurial temper and lively imagination of their citizens, and political resemblances are not wanting to complete the comparison. The early changes in the Florentine constitution, the gradual depression of the nobles, by the rise of the commons to wealth and importance, their exclusion from public offices and honours, the elevation of a plebeian aristocracy upon the ruins of the feudal nobility, and the division of the commons into an oligarchical and a democratical party, are briefly and clearly related in Perceval’s History of Italy, and may not inaptly be compared to the gradual subversion of the Athenian Eupatridæ. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, the oligarchy, headed by the family of Albizzi, succeeded in obtaining possession of the government, which it held for fifty years with a mild and undisturbed sway. But their opponents, though silent, were not crushed: as new families gained wealth by trade, they grew impatient of political inferiority and exclusion: and the Medici, one of the most distinguished houses of the popular nobles, who had long ranked in opposition to the Albizzi, were naturally regarded as the stay of the democratic cause. It was at this time that Cosmo de’ Medici appeared in public life. The characters and adventures of this distinguished man and of his immediate descendants offer a singular number of coincidences with those of Pisistratus and his family.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Giovanni, the father of Cosmo, was the most distinguished person of his house and party. The great wealth which he had acquired by commercial adventure was set off by generosity and unblemished integrity: and though hereditarily opposed to the ruling faction, his own disinclination to interfere in politics, and the moderation of his opponents, left him in undisturbed possession of his riches and influence. To these his son Cosmo succeeded, and being possessed of greater talents and a more stirring ambition, he took an active part in public life, and became the recognised leader of the popular party. The older heads, under whose temperate guidance Florence had enjoyed a long interval of tranquillity, were now deceased, and Rinaldo degl’Albizzi, a young man of inferior judgment and stronger passions, had succeeded to their influence. He observed and endeavoured to check the growing spirit of discontent, and thereby hastened a crisis which he was unprepared to meet. By his machinations Cosmo was brought to trial upon a frivolous and unfounded charge, and though his life, which was aimed at, was preserved by a judicious bribe, he was convicted and sentenced to banishment for ten years. He quietly submitted to the decree, and retired to Venice, where he was received with distinguished honour: but Rinaldo had miscalculated his strength; the next year a set of magistrates came into office who were attached to the Medici, and by them the dominant family was overthrown and expelled, and Cosmo triumphantly recalled.
The youth then of Pisistratus and of the Florentine commenced under the same political aspect, and was marked by the same adventures; but the advantage thus far is clearly on the side of the latter, who owed his first elevation to hereditary distinction and to his own merit, and his recall to the voice of his countrymen constitutionally expressed. And the resemblance of their youth holds good through their maturer years: they alike retained their sway to the end of a prosperous life, and alike employed it with beneficence and moderation; for though the triumph of Cosmo was not unstained by blood, and he hesitated not to ensure its stability, when threatened, by the exile of his opponents and the retrenchment of popular rights, yet his measures seem dictated by prudence, not by revenge: they are unpolluted by the atrocious cruelties so common in Italian party contests, and Florence prospered, and was respected under his administration. He avoided, even more than Pisistratus, the ostentation of that power which it would have been nobler not to have possessed; and presented to the world the spectacle of a merchant raised to the head of a powerful state, pursuing his original profession with industry and success, and declining the alliance of sovereigns to marry his children among his fellow–citizens, whom he treated as if they were in reality, no less than in appearance, his equals. No superior magnificence distinguished his establishment or his table; but his wealth was profusely employed in distributing favours to all around him, until there was scarce a man of his party who was not bound to him by some personal tie. To this happy temper, and to the simplicity of his tastes and manners, he owes the enviable reputation which he has gained. Had he assumed the ostentation of a prince, which his riches and power might well have warranted, the obligations which he dispensed would have carried with them the impress of servitude. But men forgive injuries more easily than mortifications, and his fellow–citizens reconciled themselves to the unconstitutional superiority of one who treated them in every–day life as his equals, or displayed his elevation only in the extent of his generosity, and a freer cultivation and patronage of all that is fascinating in art and literature.
We have described Cosmo de’ Medici as exercising a power little less than regal in a republic whose magistrates were changed every two months, and in which he neither possessed ostensible office and authority, nor that armed support which has often enabled usurpers to dispense with all other title. The reader, therefore, may be at a loss to understand the nature of his influence; it is explained in the following passage. “The authority which Cosmo and his descendants exercised in Florence, during the sixteenth century, was of a very peculiar nature, and consisted rather in a tacit influence on their part, and a voluntary acquiescence on that of the people, than in any prescribed or definite compact between them. The form of government was ostensibly a republic, and was directed by a government of ten citizens, and a chief executive officer, called the gonfaloniere, or standard–bearer, who was chosen every two months. Under this establishment the citizens imagined they enjoyed the full exercise of their liberties; but such was the power of the Medici, that they generally either assumed to themselves the first offices of the state, or nominated such persons as they thought proper to those employments. In this, however, they paid great respect to popular opinion. That opposition of interests, so generally apparent between the people and their rulers, was at this time scarcely perceived at Florence, where superior qualifications and industry were the surest recommendations to public authority and favour; and, satisfied that they could at any time withdraw themselves from a connexion that exacted no engagements, and required only a temporary acquiescence, the Florentines considered the Medici as the fathers, and not the rulers of the republic. On the other hand, the chiefs of this house, by appearing rather to decline than to court the honours bestowed upon them, and by a singular moderation in the use of them when obtained, were careful to maintain the character of simple citizens of Florence, and servants of the state. An interchange of reciprocal good offices was the only tie by which the Florentines and the Medici were bound, and perhaps the long continuance of their connexion may be attributed to the very circumstance of its being in the power of either of the parties at any time to have dissolved it.”[180] The state of things described in a former part of this passage corresponds with what the Greeks called tyranny, and in the same sense in which Pisistratus was tyrant of Athens, Cosmo and Lorenzo de’ Medici were tyrants of Florence. But in his remarks upon the nature of their power, Mr. Roscoe’s partialities appear to have led him astray. The Medici, from their brilliant qualities, were possessed of the affections of a large portion of their countrymen, and it so chanced, therefore, that the one were as ready to submit as the other to command. But it will scarcely be believed that the connexion with a family which had usurped the entire command of the state, the sole disposal of the magistracies, could have been dissolved at any time; or indeed that it could ever have been dissolved, except by force of arms: and the praise of moderation, however applicable to the two elder Medici, is scarcely due to Lorenzo, who abolished even the shadow of a popular magistracy, and asserted the dependence of all functionaries upon himself,[181] whose expenditure was upon a scale of regal extravagance, and who made his country bankrupt to prevent the bankruptcy of his house. For he carried on the vast commercial establishment by which his grandfather Cosmo had acquired wealth; but with such different success, that he was compelled to debase the national currency to raise means for meeting his mercantile engagements.
Cosmo, resembling Pisistratus in the elegance of his taste, lived, like him, at a time which enabled him to confer singular benefits upon society. To the Athenian we probably owe the preservation of Homer’s poems in a connected form; to the Florentine and to his family we are mainly indebted for those treasures of ancient literature which time has spared; which, four centuries ago, were rapidly decaying in obscurity, or, by a more ignoble fate, were defaced to make room for lying legends and scholastic quibbles, until, early in the fifteenth century, a few enlightened spirits eagerly devoted themselves to rescuing what still remained. The vast wealth of Cosmo and his extensive correspondence were ever ready to be employed in the service of learning; at the request of the men of letters, by whom he loved to be surrounded, his agents were continually charged to buy or to have copied whatever manuscripts could be found in Europe or Asia; he founded public libraries, and among them that which is still named after his grandson, the Laurentian, and supported the cause of literature by affording countenance to all who cultivated it with success. His mansions were filled with gems, statues, and paintings, the master–pieces of ancient and modern art, and he was the friend no less than the protector of Donatello and Masaccio, to whom sculpture and painting respectively are much indebted for their rapid advance. Nor was he so much absorbed by these tastes, or by affairs of state, as to neglect his domestic concerns, and the flourishing condition of his estates of Careggi and Caffagiuolo bore witness to his skill and attention to agriculture, as did his foreign dealings to his mercantile knowledge and success.
Architecture, however, was his favourite pursuit. Like Pisistratus, he spent vast sums in ornamenting his city, and if his glory as a patron of the art be inferior to that of Pericles—if he cannot boast, like Augustus, that he found Florence of brick, and left it of marble, he has one claim to our praise which neither they nor probably any other public improver of ancient or modern times has possessed, namely, that the expenses of his works were defrayed from his private fortune. It appears from a memorandum of his grandson, Lorenzo, that in thirty–seven years their house had spent in buildings, charities, and contributions to the state, no less than 663,755 golden florins, equivalent to more than 1,300,000l. of the present day. The magnificent edifice known as the Riccardi palace was built by Michelozzi for Cosmo’s residence; under his patronage the dome of the Florentine cathedral was reared; he built churches and convents, the enumeration of which would be tedious, and erected a palace upon each of his four country estates. To these retreats he betook himself in his declining years, and, estranged from politics and surrounded by men of letters, he passed the evening of his life in tranquillity, unmolested by any enemy except the gout. Its close alone was clouded by the death of his younger son, whom he regarded as the destined supporter of his name and grandeur, for the bad health of the elder incapacitated him for an active life; and the aged statesman, as he was carried through the vast palace which he had no longer strength to traverse on foot, exclaimed with a sigh, “This house is too large for so small a family.” He died within a year of his son, in 1464, loved by his friends, and regretted even by his enemies, who dreaded the rapacity of his partisans when restrained no longer by the probity and moderation of their chief; and Florence bore the best witness to his virtues, when she inscribed on his tomb the title of Father of his Country.
Piero de’ Medici, his eldest son, in name succeeded to his father’s influence; but owing to his infirmities he resided chiefly in the country, while, under shelter of the respected name of Medici, a few citizens monopolized the administration of justice and the management of the state, and converted both to their own private and corrupt emolument. He died in 1469, leaving two sons, Lorenzo, named the Magnificent, and Giuliano; the former being less than twenty–one years of age, and the latter five years his junior. Had the Florentines still been animated by their ancient spirit, there was now a most favourable opportunity for the recovery of liberty: but, under various pretexts, most of the distinguished families under whom the people might have ranked themselves had been driven into exile, and the personal virtues of Cosmo, and his unquestioned pre–eminence as a party leader, had laid the foundations of an hereditary influence, and prepared a way for the entire change of the constitution. So fully was the predominant party aware of this, that the men who had ruled Florence in the name of Piero, but without reference to his will, and who had embittered the close of his life by their profligacy and corruption, instead of profiting by the youth of his sons to shake off this nominal subjection, were eager to ascribe to them a power which they did not possess. They took measures to continue, under an empty name, a junto which assured to them the distribution of all places and the disposal of the revenue. The ambassadors who had been used to treat with Thomas Soderini, the citizens who had long been aware that their fortunes depended on his favour, hastened to visit him, upon the death of Piero. But Soderini feared to rouse the jealousy of his associates, and to weaken his party by accepting these marks of respect. He sent the citizens who waited on him to the young Medici, as the only chiefs of the state; he assembled the men of most importance, and presenting Lorenzo and his brother, advised them to preserve to those young men the credit which their house had enjoyed during thirty–five years, and suggested that it was far easier to maintain a power already strengthened by time than to found a new one.
The Medici received with modesty the marks of attachment and respect which were paid to them in the name of the commonwealth, and for several years they did not endeavour to assume an authority which ostensibly was centred in the magistrates alone, and which could not be exerted in secret, except by men whose long services and known abilities ensured attention. For seven years Florence enjoyed domestic peace; the Medici, divided between their studies and the tastes of youth, at one time entertained men the most distinguished in art and letters, at another amused the people with brilliant spectacles. But as they advanced to manhood, and took the administration into their own hands, their rule became more absolute, and their innovations on the constitution more obvious. They appointed a body of five electors, who named the magistracy without any reference to the people: they converted the balia[182] into a permanent council, in whose hands they placed the legislative, the administrative, and judicial power; and by its means they got rid of their enemies without legal proceedings, imposed new taxes at pleasure, and diverted the revenue to the maintenance of their commercial credit and the support of their luxury. Unwilling that any should enjoy consideration, excepting as it was derived from his own influence and favour, Lorenzo excluded from office, and depressed to the utmost of his power, all those whose rivalry seemed most to be feared, but especially the Pazzi, one of the noblest and most powerful families of the state. At this period it contained nine men of mature age, and of the first rank in the city: yet since the death of Piero, but one of its members had been admitted to the magistracy. This exclusion was the more offensive because one of them had married Bianca, the sister of the Medici. Giuliano, whose temper was less ambitious, as his talents were inferior to his brother’s, expressed his dissatisfaction at this conduct, and said to his brother, that he feared they should lose what they had by grasping at too much. It was believed also that Lorenzo had interfered with the course of justice to deprive Giovanni de’ Pazzi of a rich inheritance which was justly his due; and Francesco, one of the brothers–in–law of Bianca, a man of violent and haughty temper, withdrew from Florence, and established a bank at Rome.
Sixtus IV., the reigning Pope, nourished also an inveterate hatred against the Medici, and under his auspices a conspiracy was formed to murder them and place Florence under the power of the Pazzi, in which Francesco Pazzi and Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, were the chief actors. [183] “The design of the conspirators was to assassinate both the brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano, at the same instant, for the murder of one would otherwise only have the effect of putting the other on his guard.[184] The Pope therefore wrote to the Cardinal Riario, nephew of Count Girolamo, a youth of only eighteen years of age, whom he had just admitted into the sacred college, and who was then studying at the University of Pisa, to desire him to obey whatever directions he should receive from the Archbishop of Pisa; and Salviati accordingly carried him to a seat of the Pazzi near Florence. The conspirators knew that the new Cardinal must be welcomed with public entertainments, at which they hoped that the Medici might be found present together, and despatched while unsuspicious of danger. Jacopo de’ Pazzi gave a fête, to which both the brothers were accordingly invited: Lorenzo, however, alone came, for Giuliano was indisposed. But Lorenzo, as had been foreseen, made sumptuous preparations to receive the Cardinal at his villa at Fiesole; and there the conspirators fully resolved to execute their purpose. The entertainment took place, but still Giuliano was absent; and the Pazzi, thus again disappointed, and despairing of securing the presence of the younger Medici, at a second festival to be given by his brother, resolved to defer their enterprise no longer than the following Sunday, when the Cardinal was to be present at high mass at the cathedral of Florence; an occasion at which it was thought that neither of the Medici could with decency absent himself. There it was determined that, in the midst of the most solemn offices of religion, the crime of assassination should be perpetrated; that the elevation of the host, as the kneeling victims bowed their heads, should be the signal of murder; and that at the moment of the sacrifice, the Archbishop Salviati and others should seize the palace of the signiory, while Jacopo de’ Pazzi was to raise the city by the cry of liberty. Francesco de’ Pazzi charged himself, together with Bernardo Bandini, a daring and devoted partisan of his house, with the assassination of Giuliano. Giovanni Battista Montesecco, a condottiere in the papal service, had boldly engaged with his single hand to despatch Lorenzo, while he understood that the murder was to take place at a festival. But when Montesecco found that it was before the altar of God that it was intended he should shed the blood of a man whose hospitality he had enjoyed, his courage failed him. The soldier declared that he dared not add sacrilege to murder and perfidy; and his office was committed to two ecclesiastics, who had not the same scruples.
“When the appointed morning arrived, the Cardinal Riario and Lorenzo de’ Medici were already at the cathedral, the church was rapidly filling with people, and still Giuliano de’ Medici did not appear. The conspirators began to dread another disappointment, and Francesco de’ Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini left the cathedral to seek for him, and to persuade him that his absence would be insidiously remarked. Every feeling which revolts at murder and treachery is strengthened, when we learn the terms of familiarity on which these men had just been living with him whom they were hurrying to death. They passed their arms round his waist, as if to draw him in playful violence towards the church, but in reality to feel whether he had put on his cuirass, which he wore with habitual timidity under his garments. But Giuliano was indisposed; he had discarded his armour; and so unsuspicious was he at that hour of impending evil, that he even left at home the dagger which usually hung at his side. As he entered the church and approached the altar, the two conspirators kept close to him; the two priestly assassins had also fixed themselves in the throng beside Lorenzo; and when the host was raised, and every knee was bending in adoration, Bandini struck his dagger into the breast of Giuliano. The victim staggered and fell, and Francesco de’ Pazzi threw himself upon him, with such blind fury, that besides inflicting on him several blows with his dagger, the least a death, he grievously wounded himself in the thigh. At the same moment the two priests attacked Lorenzo. One of them struck at his throat, but missed his aim; and the blow, which grazed the intended victim’s neck, merely startled him to his defence.[185] Rapidly throwing his cloak about his left arm for a shield, he drew his sword and courageously defended himself until his attendants came to his aid. The priests then lost courage and fled: but Bandini, his dagger reeking with the blood of Giuliano, now endeavoured to rush upon Lorenzo, and stabbed one of his train to the heart, who interposed to defend him. Lorenzo, however, was by this time surrounded by his friends, who hastily sought refuge with him in the sacristy, and closed its brazen doors. Meanwhile the whole church was filled with consternation; and the first moment of surprise and alarm had no sooner passed, than the friends of the Medici collected from all quarters, and conveyed Lorenzo in safety to his palace.