Your Lorenzo.[149]
In the autumn of 1469 Piero de’ Medici was very ill, partly no doubt from anxiety about the state of Florence, “grievously troubled by her own citizens.” He summoned the chief burghers to his bedside, reproached them in the bitter words cited by Machiavelli, and threatened that he would cause them to repent. Fair words in plenty they gave him, but never changed their evil courses. “Whereupon,” continues Machiavelli, “Piero called Agnolo Acciaiuoli secretly to Caffagiuolo and conferred at length with him about the condition of the city. There is no doubt that had he not been prevented by death he would have reinstated all those who had been banished in order to put a stop to the robbery of the others. But death put an end to these most praiseworthy intentions. Tormented by increasing infirmity and anguish of mind, he died in the fifty-third year of his age. His country could not fully recognise his worth and his goodness, because until nearly the end of his life he was associated with his father Cosimo, and the few years during which he survived him were passed in civil contests and constant illness.” Piero died at Careggi on December 2, 1469, and was buried in S. Lorenzo, near his father.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] Delle Istorie Fiorentine, Niccolò Machiavelli, pp. 410 et seq. Milano, 1823.
[88] Cosmi Vita, op. cit. ii. 286.
[89] This document is undated, but was in all probability given in 1464.
[90] Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita, Angelo Fabronio, ii. 117. Pisis, 1784.
[91] Palatina Codex 204. The volume bound in white vellum contains 622 pages. There is no title-page. Lorenzo’s letter occupies the first six and a half pages, and without any division or new paragraph follows the Life of Dante by Boccaccio, in the same handwriting. At page 63 the writing changes and continues the same for forty pages. The poems were evidently copied by various scribes, as the writing so often differs.
[92] Codex 2723. A far smaller volume in modern wooden binding. The title-page is: Rime del Poliziano, di Lorenzo de’ Medici, di Dante e d’altri. The famous letter begins on page 71 (really 142, as only the right-hand page is numbered) and above it is written in a different and more modern hand in red ink, Epistola di M. Angelo Poliziano al S. Federigo insieme con raccolto volgare mandatogli dal Magco. Lorenzo. The same scribe has written the names of the various poets in the margin of the letter where they are mentioned in red ink. The Life of Dante by Boccaccio and many of the poems that are in the Palatina Codex are wanting. At page 78 (i.e. 156) the handwriting changes, and at the end of the volume is inserted a Latin autograph letter from Poliziano to Philippu Beroaldus. In 1814 the Abbate Vincenzo Nannucci and Luigi Ciampolini published a collection of Poliziano’s poems and at the end printed Lorenzo’s letter, attributing it to Poliziano. They were evidently misled by the anonymous annotator of this codex. The attribution to Poliziano is absurd, as he was then barely fourteen years of age, and only knew Lorenzo in 1470, when he sent him a translation of part of the Iliad (see p. [157]).
[93] Renaissance in Italy, J. A. Symonds, iv. 323. Smith, Elder, & Co., London, 1898.