Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous condottieri, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his marriageable daughter Bianca Maria.
We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence. The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as Gonfaloniere of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing constitution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers (the Ciompi) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the government passed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso degli Albizzi, and Niccolò da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely. They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples (under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it their policy to maintain the balance of power in Italy. Under this oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renaissance, or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we joyfully proceed; only remembering that at this period Italy has these main political divisions,—the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples (the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence, the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EARLY RENAISSANCE (1400-1450)
By Renaissance, new birth, we mean the rapid, many-sided, intellectual development which started forward in Italy at this time. It was really a stage in the movement which began a hundred years earlier, but the textbooks confine the term Renaissance to the period which began at the opening of the fifteenth century; and just as the first beginning took place in Florence, so this fresh start, like a stream of energy issuing at a divine touch, also burst out of the city of Florence. The simplest way to get an idea of this period, known as the Early Renaissance, will be to notice a few of the men, leaders in their several spheres, in whom that energy became incarnate.
We must not let ourselves think that the Renaissance was a merely artistic movement. A few men are known to us, and we think of them as wandering about in artistic isolation, as if they were hermits in a Thebaid. But, in reality, only a slight fraction of even the deeper feelings and interests take artistic or literary form; the great majority are put into life. The celebrated Florentine artists of those days were merely representative of their fellows; they were surrounded by crowds of neighbours, all crammed full with ardour for living, for expression, for discussion, for money-making, for glorifying their city. In recognition of this fact, and of the great service rendered to the arts throughout the Renaissance by men who were not artists, but potent signors of wealth and cultivation, whether merchants, dukes, or cardinals, I take Cosimo dei Medici (1389-1464) as the first figure in this brief account of the Early Renaissance.
Cosimo's father, the richest banker in Italy, and one of the chief citizens of Florence, had been active in politics, and chief of the party which was opposed to the ruling oligarchy. Cosimo succeeded to his father's position, and when the oligarchy fell became the actual head of the city, though he always affected the rôle of private citizen. His quick intelligence and his broad cultivation gave him keen sympathy with the fermenting intellectual life about him, and his great wealth enabled him to express that sympathy in most substantial ways. He got his first schooling from a Florentine humanist, and then went abroad, travelled in Germany and France, and visited the Council of Constance then in session. After that his attention was devoted to business and to political affairs. His position in Florence during early manhood was always precarious, for the sharp-witted Florentines were not easily hoodwinked and saw whither Cosimo's masterfulness was tending. For a time he was in exile, but after a tussle he won his place and banished his enemies. Wealth was his great instrument. He lent and gave lavishly. In later life he used to say that his chief error had been that he had not begun to spend money ten years sooner than he did. He was a serious man, given to intellectual matters, and averse to buffoons and strolling players, so popular then; by virtue of wide experience in the conduct of large affairs, of extensive reading, of a retentive memory, and a natural gift for language, he was both an interesting talker and good company. He talked literature with men of letters, but he was equally ready to talk divinity, in which he was well read, or philosophy, or astrology in which he believed although some men did not. He liked gardening, and enjoyed going out of town to his country-place; there he would prune the vines for two hours in the morning, and then go indoors to read. His connection with the arts of the Renaissance, however, is our chief concern. He employed the famous architect Michelozzo to build his palace, now known as Palazzo Riccardi, his villa, and also the Dominican convent of San Marco. He employed the still more famous Brunelleschi to rebuild the abbey of Fiesole. He was fond of sculptors, especially of Donatello, and had statues by the best masters of the day in his palace. He employed Fra Angelico to paint in the convent of San Marco, and Benozzo Gozzoli in his private chapel. Benozzo painted a procession of the Three Wise Men, with Cosimo, his son, and his grandson, young Lorenzo the Magnificent, riding in their train. Cosimo's greatest interest, however, was in the humanities. He built several buildings for libraries in Florence, and one in Venice, and interested himself greatly in the preservation and increase of the libraries themselves. For the library in the abbey at Fiesole he employed a man of letters (Vespasiano da Bisticci, his biographer), who hired forty-five copyists, and in twenty-two months finished the two hundred volumes deemed necessary for a good library. His list included the Bible and concordances and commentaries, beginning with that by Origen; the works of St. Ignatius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrysostom, and all the works of the Greek fathers which had been translated into Latin; St. Cyprian, Tertullian, and the four doctors of the Latin Church; the mediæval masters St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Anselm, St. Isidore of Spain; the scholastic philosophers, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura; Aristotle, and commentaries; books of canon law; the Latin prose classics, Livy, Cæsar, Suetonius, Plutarch, Sallust, Quintus Curtius, Valerius Maximus, Cicero, Seneca; the Latin poets, Virgil, Terence, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Plautus; and "all the other books necessary to a library." One wonders if this clause includes Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, or whether the humanists did not regard them as necessary or appropriate to culture.
Taken altogether Cosimo may stand as an heroic model of the Florentine burgher, such as one sees in the frescoes of the time, shrewd, prudent, thoughtful, cautious in plan and prompt in action, interested in the best things of this world, and in a measure generous, but wholly without romance, chivalry, or idealism. At the close of his life he used to stay hours at a time, wrapt in thought, without speaking a word. One of the women of the house asked him the reason of this. He answered: "When you have to go out of town, you spend a fortnight all agog to prepare for going; and now that I have to go from this life to another, doesn't it seem to you that I have something to think about?" The last book he is reported by his biographer to have read was the "Ethics" of Aristotle.