Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times

by Elbridge S. Brooks

But his banter changed to solicitude as he noticed the troubled face of his son. "Who, then, is in fault, my Giovanni?" he asked. "'T was well for thee that Pietro sallied out in such hot haste; else, from all I hear, the Black Brothers of the Miserecordia might even now be bearing to Santa Maria, or the tomb, a prince of Holy Church, a son of the house of Medici, slain in a vile street brawl."

"Nay, hear, my father, I pray, the whole truth of the matter," Giovanni replied; and, as he relates, in presence of that brilliant and listening company, the story of the carnival fight as we already know it, let us, rather, read hastily the story of the great house of the Medici of Florence, whose princely head now stands before us—he whom the people call "il gran magnifico," Lorenzo the Magnificent, the father of the boy cardinal.

Four hundred years, and more, ago there lived in the beautiful Italian city of Firenze, or Florence, a wealthy family known as the Medici. They were what we now call capitalists—merchants and bankers, with ventures in many a land and with banking-houses in sixteen of the leading cities of Europe. Success in trade brought them wealth, and wealth brought them power, until, from simple citizens of a small inland republic they advanced to a position of influence and importance beyond that of many a king and prince of their day. At the time of our sketch, the head of the house was Lorenzo de Medici, called the Magnificent, from his wealth, his power, and his splendid and liberal hospitality. All Florence submitted to his will, and though the fair city was still, in form, a republic, the wishes and words of Lorenzo were as law to his fellow-citizens. A man of wonderful tact and of great attainments, he was popular with young and old, rich and poor. From a glorious romp with the children, he would turn to a profound discussion with wise old philosophers or theologians, could devise means for loaning millions to the king of England, sack a city that had braved the power of Florence, or write the solemn hymns or gay street songs for the priests or for the people of his much loved city. Princes and poets, painters and priests, politicians and philosophers, sat at his bountiful table in the splendid palace at the foot of the Via Larga, or walked in his wonderful gardens of San Marco; rode "a-hawking" from his beautiful villa at Careggi, or joined in the wild frolic of his gorgeous street pageants. Power, such as his could procure or master any thing, and we therefore need not wonder that the two boys whose acquaintance we have made had been pushed into prominence to please the house of Medici. Look well at them again. The boy, who, with face upturned toward his father's kindly eyes, is telling the story of the street fight, is the second son of Lorenzo, Giovanni (or John) de Medici, Abbot of Passignano, and now, though scarcely fourteen, an unproclaimed cardinal of the Church of Rome—the future Leo X., the famous pope of Martin Luther's day. His companion is the young Giulio (or Julius) de Medici, nephew of Lorenzo, and already at thirteen Grand Prior of Capua and Knight of the Holy Order of St. John of Jerusalem. He, too, is to be in future years both cardinal and pope—that Clement VII., of whom you may read in history as the unfortunate prisoner of San Angelo, the antagonist of bluff King Henry VIII. of England. And this other lad, this Buonarotti, who is he? A protégé of Lorenzo, the companion of his sons and a favored guest at his table, his name is to last through the ages high above priest or prince or pope, more illustrious than all the Medici, the wonderful Michael-Angelo, the greatest of all the artists.

"So, so," Lorenzo said, as Giovanni concluded his story; "the matter is graver than I thought. 'T is another yelp from the Albizzi kennel. The Signory must look to it. Young Messer Francesco's tongue wags too freely for the city's good. But back to Pisa must ye go, my lads, for it ill beseems such as you, prelates and grave students of theology as ye are, to be ruffling with daggers drawn in any wild street-brawl that these troublous malcontents may raise against us."

And so back to the quiet University of Pisa went the boys Giovanni and Giulio to pursue their studies in "theology and ecclesiastical jurisprudence." Think how you feel, boys and girls, when, after a particularly jolly vacation, or an entrancing evening at the circus or the pantomime, you go back to what seem to you dull school studies, and then consider whether this boy cardinal, after all the glitter and parade and excitement of the carnival days, could be expected to fully relish his tasks of dry and laborious study. I imagine his solemn old biographer tells but half the truth when he writes: "The splendid exhibitions, the freedom and the songs with which the spectacles of Florence were accompanied, could scarcely have failed to banish at intervals that gravity of carriage which the young cardinal was directed to support";—all of which is a very dry and roundabout way of saying that "boys will be boys," and that young Giovanni de Medici, cardinal though he was, loved mischief and excitement and frolic quite as much as have all healthy young fellows since the days of the very first boy.

Spending his time thus, between his stately Florentine home, his noble old castle of an abbey at Passignano, and the University of Pisa, Giovanni's three years of probation were passed. For a cardinal of thirteen was something out of the common even in those old days of intrigue and bribery, and Pope Innocent the Eighth, in making the appointment, had insisted that the ceremony of investment should not take place until Giovanni's sixteenth year.

"Whither so fast, my Maddalena?" asked young Francesco Albizzi, stopping a dark-haired flower-girl, as on a bright March morning he rode into the city. "What's astir, cara mia, that thou and all the world seem crowding to meet me, here, at San Gallo's gate?"

"Thou, indeed?" and the flower-girl laughed a merry peal. "Why, brother of the mole and lord of all the bats, where hast thou been asleep not to know that to-day our young Messer Giovanni is to be proclaimed a cardinal?"

"So—the little Medici again?" exclaimed the wrathful Albizzi. "May the marzoccho eat his heart! Must he be always setting the city upside down? Where is 't to be, Maddalena?"

"Why, where but at the altar of Fiesole? But do not thou keep me longer," she said, breaking away from the indignant young patriot. "All Florence goes forth to meet my lord cardinal at the Bridge of Mugnone, and my flowers will sell well and rarely to-day. But, hark thee, Messer Francesco," she added, with warning finger, "we are all palleschi[Y] to-day, and 't were best for thee to swallow thy black words. See, yonder rides young Messer Pietro, and the Medici lances are ready and sharp for such as thou."