“Quant’ è bella giovanezza
Che si fugge tuttavia.”
Lorenzo’s sonnets are many, and some are worthy to rank with those of the most famous poets; indeed Muratori, in the specimens of perfect poetry appended to his treatise, cites four of them, together with the finest of Dante, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, and other great poets. In the Laudi, and the sacred play S. Giovanni e Paolo, can be traced Lorenzo’s early bringing up under his mother, herself no mean poetess, and the good Bishop Gentile. The play was written in later life for his children who acted it. It is said that Lorenzo himself took the part of Constantine. Already ill, and oppressed with cares, the Emperor’s address to his sons describing the duties of a ruler, and the lines
“Spesso chi chiama Costantin felice
Sta meglio assai di me e’l ver non dice,”
have a sad autobiographical ring.
Lorenzo, the one great statesman of Italy, had no easy part to play. As prudent as he was dexterous, the preservation of peace in Italy was his constant aim, to be attained by a maintenance of the balance of power so that no one State should become pre-eminent. His violent and unscrupulous enemy Sixtus IV. used every arm against him. When assassination failed he tried excommunication, and the laying of Florence under an interdict. The Florentines answered by appointing twelve citizens as a bodyguard to Lorenzo, and bidding the clergy to celebrate the sacraments. His sagacity, not only as a Tuscan but an Italian, was shown by the able way in which he traversed French schemes for interfering in Italy, although the fortune of his house was largely dependent on the well-being of the bank at Lyons. So quietly and unostentatiously was this done that French ambassadors were instructed to act according to his advice, and he became the intermediary between Rome and Paris.[155] “Lorenzo,” writes Dr. Creighton, “had striven to identify the Medici family with Florence, and had been himself the representative and expression of the desires and aspirations of Florentine life and culture. He had also learned that the existence of Italy depended upon the maintenance of internal peace, and his efforts for that end had, for the last ten years of his life, been unceasing. His early experience had taught him how difficult was the position which he had to maintain, that of chief citizen of a free city, whose fortunes and whose very existence depended on exercising absolute power without seeming to do so. It is easy to accuse him of insidiously destroying Florentine liberty; but the policy of Sixtus IV. left him no choice between such a course and retirement from Florence, and he may be pardoned if he doubted whether his abdication would conduce to the welfare of the city. He has been accused of abetting the moral enervation and corruption of his people; but the causes of this corruption are to be found in the general character of Italian life, and Lorenzo did no more than follow the prevailing fashion in lending his refinement to give expression to the popular taste. Lorenzo did what all Italian statesmen were doing; he identified his city for good and ill with his own house. He worked craftily and insidiously, not by open violence, and in the midst of his self-seeking he retained the large views of a statesman and embodied the culture of his age.”[156]
The Marquess Gino Capponi in his History of Florence writes: “The Medici palace was a museum, a school, and a place of meeting for all the learned men who flocked thither, from it proceeded grave counsel and intellectual teaching as well as shows and festivals, and a general corruption of manners. Two popes passed their childhood there, and the Platonic Academy, intended to raise the standard of life and thought, was founded within its walls. Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, one of the greatest men of his time, were constant visitors. There the first chips flew off the marble under the chisel of Michelangelo, and there Luigi Pulci read the Morgante aloud. Such exuberance of life, such magnificence, such gaiety, has probably never been witnessed in any other age, and the name of Lorenzo towers above it all.”[157]
Ricordi of Lorenzo the Magnificent, son of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici
A brief narrative of the course of my life and of some other important things worthy of remembrance for the guidance and information of those who will succeed me, and especially for my sons. Begun this day, the 15th March 1472.