Alinari
THE BIRTH OF VENUS
Supposed portrait of Simonetta Cattaneo—mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici.
Detail from the picture by Sandro Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Sanzi has thus rendered Lorenzo's spirited address to his fellow citizens, when struck by excommunication and menaced with war:—
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"Hear me! fair Florence' worthy denizens, Thus called to choose betwixt my house and peace. If 'tis your will our race to sacrifice, Behold me ready, manacled and bound; The fatal doom to suffer lead me forth! Oh! that my blood the Pontiff might appease, And sate the vengeance of yon bloody Count. Oh! that, as metal by the fire refined, You'd in the furnace cast me, from yourselves To parry discipline not less severe. But well I warn you that such woe to us For you were still more fatal, and our foes, My doom once sealed, your freedom straight would curb." |
The appeal was not vainly made. The Lateran thunders fell harmless on a people who, rallying round their favourite leader, appealed to a general council, and meanwhile compelled their clergy to disregard the censures hurled at them. Spiritual weapons being thus foiled, the Pontiff had recourse to temporal arms.
The war which ensued, though limited in its field, included many parties. Sixtus was supported by the Dukes of Calabria and Urbino, the latter acting as generalissimo. The Medici, strengthened at home and abroad by the failure of a conspiracy equally atrocious and unprovoked, had for allies France and Venice, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, with the Marquis of Mantua. Sismondi justly observes that the Pope was prepared to take advantage of an explosion which he had premeditated, whilst the Florentines were surprised at a moment of confidence and repose. The ecclesiastical troops were accordingly first in the field, and having united with those of Naples, entered Tuscany by the Val di Chiana early in July. But on the do-little system which then constituted warfare, the Dukes of Calabria and Urbino, though met by no effectual opposition, lingered away the summer, countermarching in plains where malaria was ever rife, and signalising themselves by forays upon townships incapable of defence. Leaving on the left Siena, their faithful and effective ally, they reduced Radda on the 24th of August; but instead of then pushing forward to the Arno, they consumed the autumn, attacking in detail many surrounding places, of which Monte Sansovino alone offered a serious resistance.
The exact sciences, which were encouraged at the court of Urbino, took there, as elsewhere, the tendency most easy in an age of prevailing superstition. Maestro Paolo, a noted German adept, was accordingly retained by the Duke, and taught him astrology along with the kindred branches of geometry and arithmetic. Yet Cortesio tells us that, although he always had about him a number of soothsayers, and, in deference to the notions current among his soldiery and subjects, pretended to rely upon their prognostics, he utterly despised all kinds of divination. The only notice of the subject I have discovered among his letters is contained in one addressed to Ant—— Nar——, which may have been written during the siege of Monte Sansovino, or possibly from the leaguer of Colle, eleven months later. The reader will judge how far it ought to be received with the gloss suggested by Cortesio.