LORENZO DE’ MEDICI

VOL. I.

LORENZO DE’ MEDICI

THE MAGNIFICENT

BY

ALFRED VON REUMONT

TRANSLATED from THE GERMAN by ROBERT HARRISON

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1876

[All rights reserved]

TO

CINO CAPPONI

THE HISTORIAN OF HIS NATIVE CITY

WITH

RESPECTFUL HOMAGE AND

FRIENDSHIP

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

I am bound to confess that it has been no easy task to interpret for English readers the admirable biography of Lorenzo which Herr von Reumont has given to the world. His extraordinary talent for research seems to have spent itself freely over every scrap of paper or parchment written or printed on the subject of the Medici and their times that has come within his reach. If these volumes convey to their readers the vivid impression of the Medicean age which may be derived from the original work my humble but laborious duty will not have been undertaken in vain.

R. H.

London Library: June 1876.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

The second half of the fifteenth century exhibits, in the development of the Renaissance in Italy, the singular spectacle of a transformation of the modern world under the influence of ancient classical culture in conjunction with the opening out of a new intellectual horizon. In a state the importance of which cannot be measured by its circumference or material strength, we see a struggle between form and spirit among a community that had stood there alone from the Middle Ages. This struggle was the exciting cause of a new growth, of the production of fresh branches and new foliage on a tree that had become incurably rotten and hollow. The Christian world has only once taken up a position like this in the fruitful interpenetration and transmutation of real and ideal elements. It shows us a man, the product and consummation of these circumstances and conditions, at once the child and the pioneer of his age, an age which was filled with the most joyous and elevated existence both in material and spiritual things. A man like him could only be born and grow up under such circumstances, in the ferment and strife of events and of the moral forces of the time. Family and civic influence as well as the temper of the people and of the century contributed to this result.

A justly popular life of Lorenzo [by Roscoe] was written when the knowledge of Italian history was limited and its sources confused and difficult of access. If a similar attempt is now made eighty years later, it is under altered circumstances and with expectations greatly enhanced. The supply of original materials, then very small, however skilfully arranged, has increased in our day to a degree almost beyond management. At that period the insight of the historian, not informed as to the internal politics of Florence, reached no great depth below the dazzling surface of Lorenzo’s magnificence. At the present day deep places are exposed to view which had been kept only too dark. A flood of light envelops the personality of the man who was distinguished by so many things that charm and attract. If the sum-total of his history conveys a graver impression and comes upon us with a feeling of pain, our interest in it is scarcely less keen because of the obstacles through which this brilliant spirit made its own way, or of the entanglements and dangers against which he had to struggle. Should I succeed in describing truthfully him and the surroundings from which he was never separated and without which it is difficult to imagine him, I shall have completed a thank-offering due for a past full of varied enjoyment and for many friendly aids, received during the preparation and composition of this book from the countrymen of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

I am indebted to scholars and art-critics, to keepers of archives and museums, to librarians, and above all to the man whose name rendered famous by the history of his native city stands in the front of this book, which attained its present form for the most part under his roof. To him do I owe it especially that after a deep and critical change in my own life, Florence remained to me a second home.

Bonn: Palm Sunday, 1874.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

FIRST BOOK.

FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI TO THE DEATH OF COSIMO THE ELDER.

SECOND BOOK.

PIERO DE’ MEDICI. FIRST YEARS OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT.

THIRD BOOK.

CONSPIRACY OF THE PAZZI. WAR WITH ROME AND NAPLES.

FOURTH BOOK.

THE MEDICI IN RELATION TO LITERATURE AND ART.

First Part.

HUMANIST AND POPULAR LITERATURE TO THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

FIRST BOOK

FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI TO THE
DEATH OF COSIMO THE ELDER

CHAPTER I.

THE HOUSE AND FAMILY OF THE MEDICI—DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLORENTINE DEMOCRACY.

At the entrance of the Via Larga in Florence there rises to view, at the corner of one of the cross streets leading to the church of San Lorenzo, one of the most magnificent palaces of that rich and beautiful city. The recent enlargement of the passage to the neighbouring cathedral square—the Via de’ Martelli—has exposed to view the southern aspect of the palace, and displays the harmony of its proportions on a side that formerly was not to be seen. The traditions of mediæval life are still manifest in the building, notwithstanding the modification introduced by the large windows on the ground-floor, and by the additional wing that prolongs the façade. Huge blocks of stone, rough-hewn, with deep incisions, lend to the basement of the edifice the appearance of a fortress. They recall to mind the fortified palaces of the ancient nobles who, when transplanted from the country to the town, found themselves associated, willingly or unwillingly, with the burghers, and before long under the control of men who vied with them in the erection of towers and strongholds that overawed their own. The great town-hall was as solid a structure as any castle, even at a time when milder manners had subdued, if not the violence of party spirit, at least the fury of street riots, and had proscribed the towers which once by hundreds dominated the narrow streets, with their heavy iron chains ready for a barricade. The progress of civic life may be traced in other parts of the building—in the bow windows of the upper stories, divided by slender pilasters, in the renaissance decoration, and in the Corinthian pillars which ornament the quadrangle of the courtyard. Inscriptions and antiques introduced at a later period adorn the walls of the portico of the courtyard; but the statue of David has disappeared from the centre, and although fountains still exist in the second court—once a garden—the figure of Alessandro de’ Medici, yet visible, indicates a century later. Though much altered in modern times, the original plan of the interior, which was regular and commodious, can be traced. Such a design was uncommon in days when the comparatively small area of the houses made a large suite of rooms a matter of rare occurrence, and when generally one story rose above another, with steep stairs and narrow passages into which a scanty supply of light was admitted from courtyards deep as wells.

The house was built by Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, then forty years old, for Cosimo de’ Medici, in the first half of the fifteenth century. Filippo Brunelleschi, the greatest architect of modern Italy, had made a design for the palace of the rich and art-loving citizen, who was one of his best friends. It was the plan of a vast building, unenclosed on all sides, and fronting towards the square of San Lorenzo, where stood the church, the restoration of which had been begun by the same artist for Cosimo’s father. But cautious, calculating Cosimo, fearing that a house on so magnificent a scale as that designed by Brunelleschi, even if not beyond his means, would exceed the ordinary dimensions of a citizen’s dwelling, and might excite popular jealousy, gave the preference to Michelozzo’s more limited design.[1] Brunelleschi took offence at this neglect of himself, and destroyed his model. Yet Cosimo acted more prudently than did, at a later period, a countryman of his, who began to build from the design of the same master the largest edifice that perhaps a private citizen ever undertook, and who consequently lost much in public estimation and respect.

In the second half of the fourteenth century the Medici had removed into the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo’s church, where their residence occupied the ground adjoining Cosimo’s palace on the north, and remained in the possession of his brother Lorenzo, the founder of the subsequent ducal line.[2] Their original dwelling-place was in the centre of the old town, on the market-place, inside the first wall. Many of the foremost families were once settled here, and even now the lover of history and antiquity will find among the damp stalls of the butcher, fishmonger, and dealer in vegetables, sparse remains of past and, so far as concerns this part of the town, better days. The little church of San Tommaso in this place was in the patronage of the Medici from time immemorial.

The Medici did not belong to the historic families of the city on the Arno. The first trace of them is to be found about the end of the twelfth century in Giambuono, of whose extraction nothing is known. The coat of arms exhibits red balls in a gold field, whose number and arrangement were different at different times, until, under Cosimo’s son, the coat of arms assumed the form which it has ever since retained. From these balls (palle) the dependents of the family bore the name of Palleschi. From whence the Medici came, what was the meaning of the coat of arms, no one knew. Genealogical dreams have gone as far back as Perseus and the apples of the Hesperides, whilst modest historians have contented themselves with the time of Charlemagne, and the mountainous land north of Florence, known by the name of Mugello, where the family had always held important possessions, designated as their home.

The only dispute now is whether they descend from a knight who in days of yore received on his shield the blows of a giant’s iron flail, or from a physician who chose for his sign, in his small beginnings, three pills or cupping-glasses.

Giambuono’s son Chiarissimo sat in the Council of the Commune in 1201, when an alliance was formed with the town of Siena for the purpose of attacking the castle Semifonte in the Elsethal, which lay between the territories of the two towns, and was soon after destroyed. This was the first step towards the extension of territory and the overthrow of the landed aristocracy. The thirteenth century, at the beginning of which the Medici first stand forward in history, was the period in which the community of Florence, after many vicissitudes, received its definitive form. Just at the time of the first attempts of the Florentines to acquire an independent self-government do we meet with the first of that race which three centuries later strove successfully to transform what had become a powerful republic into a monarchy.

The province of Tuscany, divided into two duchies, in the time of the Longobards formed, first under dukes, then under margraves, a part of the Roman Teutonic kingdom, whose dependence on the later powerful emperors, and also on margraves ruling over wide stretches of land to the north of the Apennines, was more nominal than real, yet still existed according to right.

In the summer of 1115, after the death of the great Countess Mathilda—daughter and heiress to the last Margrave Bonifacius, who lived mostly in Lucca—first began the freer movement of the Tuscan Commune. At this time the men who afterwards attained to the lordship over the greater part of the country occupied anything but a prominent position. The great changes in the strength and extent of the imperial power in Italy as it was under the last of the Franconians, under Lothair of Saxony, and the two first Hohenstaufen, necessarily affected the position of these Communes. Their form of government under consuls changed just as their dependence or independence of the imperial authority was affected by the prevailing political condition of the empire. The landed nobility, of Germanic origin for the most part, were supported by Frederic Barbarossa against the Commune of Florence, with which several great families, headed by the Uberti, had engaged in a bloody and protracted feud on account of their claims to an authority which was not compatible with consular government. Henry VI. exercised his imperial rights and privileges in Tuscany still more vigorously than his father had done. His brother Philip, invested with this province as a dukedom, maintained a command such as, perhaps, no other vice-emperor had possessed. In a part of the country claimed by the Popes as the patrimony of Mathilda, Philip’s power overcame the Guelfic element which was so much opposed to the ‘Imperium,’ and which in most of the towns was the predominant principle.

Suddenly, however, all was changed, when the Emperor died in the prime of his manhood, leaving behind him an infant son, three years old, and a distracted kingdom, which never fully resumed its ancient greatness. In the Papal chair, on the other hand, sat one of the most aspiring and successful of the Pontiffs—Innocent III., who at once assumed that authority in the legations which Henry VI. had taken so much pains to put down. The Tuscans, however, were not more disposed to submit patiently to the Papal sovereignty than they had been to that of the Emperor, and this the Pope was not slow to perceive. But while he avoided all direct assertions of sovereign power over the towns, he made use of his influence to form a Tuscan Union, that should be closely allied with the ecclesiastical government at Rome, and firmly opposed to the Imperial authority. In 1198 a Union was formed at San Genesio, which lies at the foot of the hills in the lower valley of the Arno, and within sight of the venerable towers of San Miniato. The negotiators on this occasion were two Cardinals representing the Pope on one side, and on the other deputies elected by the several towns interested. Pisa, which was Ghibelline, alone of the great towns held aloof. The federation was intended to form a bulwark against Imperial encroachments, and all matters of internal administration and municipal government were left untouched. The supremacy of the Papacy was felt to be a lighter yoke than that of the Empire.

It is worthy of remark that this practical protest against Imperial domination should have its starting-point in a spot where the Guelfs, especially the Florentines, were reminded that their liberties depended on the pleasure of the Emperors. For the lofty towers that from the hill of San Miniato look down upon the Val d’Arno, and across the well-watered plain that stretches to the borders of Lucca, formed part of the palace of Barbarossa, and from it his high decrees were sent forth in the name of the Arch-chancellor of the Empire, the Archbishop of Cologne. Here tarried Henry VI. and Frederick II., and here the Vicar of the Empire, under Rudolf of Hapsburg, received the oath of allegiance. At a later period, in March 1355, Charles IV. revived the ancient dignity by stopping at San Miniato both before and after his coronation. The deputies of the place, called from these circumstances San Miniato the German (al Tedesco), had gone to Pisa to pay their obeisance to Charles.

Events like those enumerated above were favourable to the territorial extension of the Florentine Commune. Their progress would have been greater, had not an ancient feud among the nobles come to a bloody outbreak in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The effect of this factious contest, which was embittered by religious animosity and the quarrel of Frederic II. with the Pope, was to enfeeble the nobility, and react mischievously on the people. The murder of Messer Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti at the entrance of the old bridge in 1215 is celebrated in history and poetry as the presumed origin of the hostile factions of Guelf and Ghibelline. A stone cross in the small square, called, from the junction of three streets, the Trebbio, commemorates the victory of the orthodox citizens, led by Peter Martyr of Verona, against the Patarian heretics. About 1247 the most violent civil war raged. Although the Ghibelline faction had the upper hand at first, and Frederick of Antioch, the Emperor’s son and Imperial Vicar in Tuscany, drove out the Guelf nobility, the tables were turned when heavy losses overtook Frederick in Lombardy and were followed by his death. The year of Frederick’s death, 1250, marks the victory of the Guelfic cause in Florence, for although their adversaries had a momentary triumph they could not hold out, and the city so famous under the Salieri for its devotion to the Emperor, became the stronghold of the Guelfs. This decisive change, which brought constitutional changes with it, took place towards the end of October 1250, a little before the Emperor’s death.

Up to that time, from the beginning of the twelfth century, the city had been governed by a magistracy consisting of first four and then six consuls, assisted by a council of one hundred good men (Buonuomini). From 1207 the administration was entrusted to a foreign knight, learned in the law, and called the Podestà. After the fashion of the Lombard cities, he was elected for six months, then for twelve, and had the assistance of a general council. Encouraged by the factiousness and weakness of the nobility, who had till then been supreme in the place, the citizen class banded together in an organised insurrection, and initiated great political reforms. The town was divided into sixths, (Sestieri), each sixth into twenty militia companies (the number being subject to change, under different standard-bearers, or gonfaloniers, each of whom had a distinguishing mark). At the head of all, in place of the Ghibelline Podestà, who was done away with, was a captain of the people (Capitano del Popolo), assisted by a council of twelve elders, two for every sixth, and six and thirty corporals. At a later period these institutions developed into the small and the great councils. The standard of the people, put into the hands of the captain, was half red, half white, and was subsequently replaced by one bearing a red cross on a white ground. The banner of the Commune, displayed by the Podestà, bore first a white lily on a field of red, then a red lily on white ground. The civic militia were called to arms by the tolling of a bell from the Lion’s Tower, which has long disappeared, but stood probably near the palace of the Capitano, on the site of which the palace of the Signoria, now the Palazzo Vecchio, was erected in the sixteenth century. The country districts also received a military organisation. To the Capitano was attributed authority over both the civil and criminal administration, with the co-operation of the elders, but the Podestà subsequently resumed his criminal jurisdiction. The latter also occupied the palace, built originally in 1255 as a council-chamber for the Capitano and his assessors, but much enlarged in the following century. It is still called after the Podestà, and, restored after long neglect to somewhat of its ancient dignity, now looks down in lofty grandeur upon the bustle of modern life going on around its walls.

Though not free from factious disturbance the city continued to prosper for years after the revolt against the nobility. Its commerce was extended and its influence over neighbouring communes strengthened either by treaty or by force of arms. No better witness of this prosperity can be cited than the number of buildings erected for the public good about this time. Besides this, many religious houses arose at the time when the order called the Humiliates were manifesting extraordinary activity. In the year 1252 also was coined the golden florin which, exercising a patent influence on the currency of mediæval and modern times, contributed largely to the influence of Florence among men of commerce, and shadowed forth her subsequent supremacy. As yet the two hostile factions of the city, though coming frequently into jealous collision, dwelt near together. In the summer of 1258 an attempt was made to overthrow the Constitution as settled by the Guelfs, and bind Florence to the Imperial interests, to which Pisa and Siena were already attached. The promoters of this revolution were the family of the Uberti, champions of the Ghibelline cause, in alliance with King Manfred, the Emperor Frederick’s son.

It was plain that the triumph of the Imperialists in the South of Italy would be incomplete without the acquisition of Tuscany. The attempt miscarried and the natural consequences ensued. All the great Ghibelline families were sent into exile, and they took refuge for the most part in Siena. The refusal on the part of the conquerors to respect any obligations that had been previously entered into with the banished families led to a war in 1260. On September 4 in that year the Tuscan Guelfs suffered a severe defeat at Montaperti on the Arbia, in view of the walls of Siena, whose inhabitants, assisted by the horsemen of Manfred, were the victors. The effect in Florence was instantaneous. Without waiting for the return of their enemies, the principal Guelf families, patrician and plebeian, at once quitted the city and sought shelter in Lucca. The Guelfs of the dependent towns soon followed this example, and in three days the Ghibellines were installed in Florence, with Giordano of Anglona, a captain of Manfred’s, at their head, as the king’s vicegerent. Guido Novello, of the race of the Palsgrave of Tuscany, assumed the office of Podestà. The Guelfs were compelled to abandon Lucca and retire to Bologna, leaving the Ghibellines masters of the whole of Tuscany. Affairs continued in this state for six years, when King Manfred overthrew at Benevento the army of Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, who had been called in by the Pope, and who was assisted by many Tuscan Guelfs.

An attempt at compromise between the two factions and a settlement of the differences of the nobility and the burghers was made by appointing two Knights of the Order of the Virgin Mary to the joint exercise of the office of Podestà. With these fratres gaudentes was associated a Council of thirty, selected from the trading classes. The arrangement was made with the consent of Pope Clement IV., and accepted by the threatened Ghibellines as an expedient. It was soon discovered, however, that a real reconciliation was impossible, and that the Pope was pursuing extensive political schemes that were agreeable to no party.

On November 11, nearly nine months after the battle of Benevento, an insurrection against a tax, forced the Ghibellines and Germans to evacuate Florence. The Knights of Mary were replaced by two knights from Orvieto, who were respectively appointed Podestà and Capitano. Again efforts were made at a reconciliation by the recall of the more moderate among the exiles, and by offers of family alliances, but without success.

Charles of Anjou, now King of Sicily and Naples, was striving, like Manfred, to strengthen his influence in Tuscany, and being secretly incited by Guelf leaders he sent a troop of 800 armed men to Florence, under Guy de Montfort, in 1267. The Ghibellines proved irreconcileable, and left the city on the night of Good Friday in that year. Further endeavours at pacification were alike unavailing. The party spirit was too strong, and resisted the authority of Pope Gregory X. in the spring of 1273, as steadily as that of Cardinal Latino Malabranca (a nephew of Pope Nicholas III.), in February 1279. Nor was the influence of the two holders of supreme power of much avail even after the accession of Rudolf of Hapsburg to the throne of Germany had altered the relations between Church and State.

Meanwhile two changes occurred in the internal government of the city of great, if unequal, importance. The first was the vice-regency of foreign princes, who now held in the Commune the position formerly belonging to the chief of the empire, with this difference, that the Commune awarded the dignity to foreign princes on certain conditions, and for a certain number of years. The supremacy of King Manfred was followed in 1267 by that of Charles of Anjou, which the city bore for ten years. The authority of these princes and their representatives was limited. A committee of twelve good men selected from the municipal nobility sat as assessors to the viceroy. Besides this there were both the council-boards already named, to which was now added a third body, the secret council of the Guelf burghers, making together a general or common council. The statutes introduced by the viceroy were sent to the united councils as to a court of general jurisdiction, before they were definitively accepted by the Council of Three Hundred. The limits of the viceroy’s authority were not easily fixed. In the first half of the ensuing century, when the city was unable to hold out against the arms of the Ghibellines without the aid of Charles of Anjou, this part of the Constitution was remodelled more than once. The Anjou viceroyalty, in concert with the Guelfs, thoroughly rooted out the suspected Ghibellines. In 1268-69 some three thousand were banished, many of whom went to the south of France. Their goods were sold, and the profits devoted to the interests of the victorious party. A special Commission was appointed to manage the ‘capitani di parte Guelfa,’ and was assisted by a committee of the Council, composed of nobles and burghers. In the course of years this body acquired almost dictatorial power in the State.

The second fact alluded to above was of far more importance in its social and political bearing than the position of the vice-kings of Tuscany. It was the enfranchisement of the lower class of Florentine citizens. The population of the city was divided into three classes: 1, the feudal nobility; 2, the municipal nobility, or wealthy burgher families; 3, the common people. The influence of the first, who were never very numerous, was based on their landed possessions in the provinces; that of the second on their wealth in money and their trade; while the third class were held in no consideration, and up to the middle of the thirteenth century had no share in the government of the State. When Frederic II. died a democratic spirit manifested itself in union with the Guelfic feeling of opposition to the Imperial authority, and made rapid progress. The old and new nobility united to resist the popular movement; but the people, who had increased in numbers and in substance by the free exercise of their skill in arts, manufactures, and commerce, aspired to a share in the civil government, and made an effort to attain it. The discords of the nobility and the confusion of the government in 1250 gave the people an opportunity of forming an independent body, half political, half military. While the Podestà remained at the head of the administration of justice, the ‘Capitano del Popolo’ was military chief of the third or lower class, who, set on securing their own rights, paid little attention to the quarrels of the factions. After the overthrow of King Manfred and the Ghibelline party the third class advanced a step forward by the definite formation of guilds. The object of the organisation of 1250 was mainly military; the end now in view was to give a more solid form and more popular character to the civil relations. An excellent means for the attainment of this was at hand in the corporations, already large, to which the richest and most respectable members of the third class already belonged.

The industrial and commercial societies, the origin of which is traceable to Roman times, kept pace in development with the Commune of the twelfth century. We shall presently see how, at the end of this century, their influence extended abroad, and at the beginning of the next was felt through their delegates in matters of state. They gave themselves statutes and exercised influence before they assumed that form which erelong enabled them to take the chief share in the executive as well as in the legislative power. They consisted principally of professional men, traders, and the higher class of artisans, and these represented the whole class of lower citizens. There were seven guilds: the lawyers, merchants, money-changers, weavers, silkworkers, doctors and apothecaries, and the furriers. These were the grand guilds which always retained exceptional privileges. Each one had a first and a second delegate or consul elected every four months, and representing severally two quarters of the town. There was a syndic and other officers with jurisdiction over all the members of the guild. They bore arms and banners, and were commanded by a gonfalonier or captain, thus forming a complete society, having its own residence or guild-hall. Supreme over all the seven guilds was a proconsul, whose place was among the highest officers of the Commune, and who was chosen from the first, or lawyer’s guild. He superintended the general interests of these incorporated societies, decided questions of competency and the like. The presidents and officers formed a council, called the ‘Consiglio delle Capitudini delli Maggiore,’ to which were referred the enactments which had previously been laid before the ‘Consiglio del Popolo.’ There is still in Florence much that wears the stamp of the power of these city liveries of the Middle Ages. The architecture of the guildhalls bears witness to the greatness of the institution which, soon exceeding its original purpose, was blended with the powers of the State. Coats of arms and names of streets and other things give similar testimony. In the course of sixteen years fourteen guilds—called the smaller—were added to the original seven; and, with slight modifications, the same number has been preserved in the same relative position.

It is natural that an institution like this should grow stronger with the increasing strength of the people and the decay of the nobility. In 1279, when Cardinal Latino first extinguished the strife of the leading Guelfs, tormented by continual intestine discords, and then reconciled them to the Ghibellines, a supreme magistracy of fourteen Buonuomini was instituted, consisting of eight Guelfs and six Ghibellines, both nobles and citizens. This harmony lasted but a short time. In 1282, the Sicilian Vespers having given a heavy blow to the house of Anjou, the Ghibelline party raised its head once more, but was again defeated. Hereupon the guilds resolved to take the government into their own hands, and that they were able to do so without serious opposition shows to what a height their power had risen. The new administration was styled ‘The Priors of the Guilds,’ the chief being the Captain of the People, who was called ‘Defender of the Guilds.’ At first three, then six priors were elected from the Grand Guilds—being one for every sestieri, or sixth part of the city. The term of office was two months, except for those of the Lawyer Guild, who took part in the administration in any other way. Subsequent changes made the number of priors eight, two for each quarter of the city. The magnates, or grandi, as they were called, might belong to the administration if they became members of a guild. This gave a powerful check to the popular tendencies which were already so far advanced. The nobility made no difficulty of entering the guilds; and before long two jealous classes stood face to face and threatened the destruction of the government, by corporations which the people had set up as a defence against the aristocracy.

The reform of 1293, when Guelfism was in the ascendant, was carried by Prior Giano della Bella, a respected popular tribune, who, with the consent of his colleagues, and of the higher magistracy, did the work very thoroughly. It was declared essential to everyone who desired to take part in the administration that he must really practice the art or craft of the guild he belonged to. This declaration was tantamount to an exclusion of the nobles, so tenacious of their dignity, from all civil offices. Stringent orders, called ‘Orders of Justice,’ were issued against the noble class,[3] the execution of which was entrusted to a newly made officer, called the gonfalonier of justice, who, at his pleasure, could summon to his banner, the red cross on the white field, 1,000 or 2,000 of the popular militia. The office of gonfalonier, who, in conjunction with the priors, formed the Signoria, afterwards became the highest in the community. In 1306 the special application of the penal laws against the aristocrats was committed to the ‘esecutore degli ordini di giustizia,’ whose attributes resembled those of a Roman tribune. This new addition to the number of upper magistrates increased the evils arising from a conflict of jurisdiction, and, like the number and frequent changes of the larger council-boards, became a source of confusion and weakness in the State. The age of the gonfalonier was to be not less than forty-five, that of the prior thirty, the term of office two months. The elections to the new Signory were originally left to the retiring members, the president of the guilds, and a number of deputies, summoned from different parts of the town by the priors. But electoral practices were subject to change according to the pleasure of the ruling faction. At the time when the fortune of the family which deprived the city of its freedom was at the highest the whole business of the elections was a mere pretext, as only the names of supporters found their way into the bag, while the drawing by lot depended on commissaries chosen from among the adherents of the actual chief of the State. The Signory held its sittings in the beginning, and for some time after, in the convent (Badia) opposite the palace of the Podestà. Later on, a magnificent palace was erected, worthy of the first magistracy of a large community, and with its prominent tower indicative of a stormy period replete with heroic deeds.

There was vested in the Signory the highest deliberative, legislative, and executive power, spite of many modifications and changes more or less illusory. In connexion with the Signory under the name of Colleges were the gonfaloniers of the militia companies, now sixteen in number, with the Captain of the People, and after 1312 a magistracy of twelve Buonuomini, without whom nothing of importance was decided. The projects of law finally went to the General Council. The exercise of authority thus came into the hands of the people who formed the great guilds—the fat people, as they were called—popolo grasso. In course of time, it is true, the latter had to share political power with the smaller guilds; but the nobility was shut out, as well as the common people who paid no taxes nor belonged to any guild. Citizens pronounced guilty of any civil or political offence (ammoniti) were excluded from the franchise and from office for life or for a certain period, as were also persons marked in the register as negligent in the payment of dues. This ostracism was a weapon of great power in the hands of the factions during the fourteenth century, by which they kept the road to office clear for their own followers. The Balia was another and effective means to the same end. When a signory or party dreaded any hostile influence they called the people together by means of a great bell. Assembled in the square in front of the palace, the signory came out to them on the tribune, or ringhiera and asked them if they would like to grant power to a certain number of citizens to change the laws and constitution. The square being surrounded by armed men a refusal of this request was not to be expected. The select few, invested thus with discretionary power, nominated a second group to the task of naming citizens eligible for office. The privileges of these accoppiatori, as they were called, sometimes lasted for years, so that freedom of election to the magistracy and other offices became illusory in respect to many citizens who were eligible. It will presently be seen what resulted, in the second half of the fourteenth century, from the abuse of the Ammonire and the Balia. When the citizens of Florence reformed their constitution they had a twofold object in view. They wanted first to have the chief power in their own hands, and secondly to prevent internal dissensions by a wide distribution of places among the citizens, which was to be effected by short terms of office and frequent changes. The first of these objects was attained, but the endeavour to accomplish the second was not successful. The rigour of the suspensive laws augmented the opposition of the class who suffered by them, and the Guelf faction shook the city to its very foundations. The quarrel of the Neri and Bianchi, made famous by the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, induced consequences that were fatal to the Liberal and popular party, and restored for a time the nobles to power. But again the lapse of a few years was sufficient to show their weakness. This brought disorder and violence into the town, and led to the recovery of political power by the citizen class at the very moment when the efforts of the Imperialists to reconquer their old position in Italy more than ever demanded strength in the popular element of the governing power.

CHAPTER II.

THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY—RULE OF THE ALBIZZI—GIOVANNO D’AVERARDO DE’ MEDICI.

The sanguinary conflict of Campaldino was fought, in 1289, in the plain on the Arno which is overlooked by Poppi, the principal place in the Tuscan valley of the Casentino, where stood the stronghold of those Counts Guidi, who were the protectors of the Guelf cause when brought to its lowest ebb by the war of the Vespers. Two years after the battle, in 1291, Ardingo de’ Medici first sat among the Priors of Florence, and in 1296, when the office was still a new one, he was appointed Gonfalonier, as also was his brother Guccio three years later. Of the last-named there exists a memento, the oldest relating to the family, in the sarcophagus that once held his bones and was immured in the outer wall of the Baptistery. This antique, which is carved in relief with a representation of the chase in Calydon, was placed in the courtyard of the Medici palace, and bears on its modern cover the arms of the family, as well as those of the Guild of Woolstaplers, to which the Medici belonged. Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century we see members of the family in a position of respectable burghers in the enjoyment of civic honours.

Nothing remarkable is heard of them until the middle of the fourteenth century. They formed part, in their numerous branches, of the large family of the people who were increasing more and more their trade and manufactures, and shared on an equal footing in the government of their city.

In the second half of the century two of them became remarkable in different ways, Averardo, called Bicci, son of Salvestro, called Chiarissimo, and Salvestro, son of Alamanno, two cousins in the fourth degree. Of the first we shall speak presently. Salvestro played the chief part in a transaction that shed a lurid light on the history of Florence of that period, but which was the beginning of that influence which ended in the sole supremacy of the Medici.

The heroic age of Florence terminated with the first decade of the fourteenth century. The city, at the head of the Tuscan league, which bound together the Anjous and the Guelfs of Rome and Upper Italy, had manfully resisted Henry of Luxemburg, but succumbed to Louis of Bavaria and the Ghibellines, spite of the aid of foreign auxiliaries. At the same time the rulers from Naples, as well as the foreigners who were appointed to enforce established ordinances, were in a certain measure above the law, and in the exercise of arbitrary power. Fortune smiled on none of their undertakings, nor was the State guided to any better state of things by what the poet of the ‘Divine Comedy’ called ‘the new people and the sudden gains.’ Strength in arms began to decline, and an undue preponderance of material interests to prevail. No period of Florentine history is so poor in men distinguished by arms or policy as that which followed the repulse of Henry VII. Material interests even were not adequately protected. For although the springs of gain had yielded copiously, and still continued partially to flow, the cost of war and the taxes pressed with proportionate weight; and in the third decade of the century began the failures of the great banking houses, from which they did not recover for a long time, if they ever did completely. To this must be added distressing losses occasioned by inundations and epidemics. Confusion in the government, due on the one hand to the resentment of the aristocracy, on the other to the ill-feeling of the lower classes, brought matters at length to a crisis in 1342. A foreign adventurer, closely connected with the house of Anjou, Walter de Brienne, Count of Lecce and Duke of Athens, was enabled by the assistance of the lowest class of artisans, and some adherents of the nobler families, to make himself for a short time absolute master of Florence. The tyranny, indeed, was overthrown in the following year by a union of the upper and lower classes, who were not, however, long in falling out again, to the great detriment of the nobility. On the pretext of purging the Guelf party the system of Ammonirism—i.e. exclusion from public offices—was put in practice. It was directed against the decaying nobility on the one hand, and on the other against certain suspected persons in the lower classes. In this way, some thirty years after the expulsion of the Duke, the supreme power was vested in an oligarchy, at the head of which was the Captain of the Guelf faction. They had the whole machinery of government under their control, and were mainly supported by a few families of the wealthier burghers.[4] Among these were the Albizzi, who, originally from Arezzo, having acquired great riches and a high position, stood first in the city of Florence.

Salvestro de’ Medici, who in 1370 had held the office of Gonfalonier, sought to put an end to the tyranny of party when he was again appointed Gonfalonier in the spring of 1378. The reigning faction, though mistrusting him, dared not oppose him, for fear of the multitude, who were in his favour. His attempt to diminish the authority of the Capitano and re-open the way to office to the excluded ones (Ammoniti) brought on a violent insurrection of the common people. This ‘tumulto dei ciompi,’ as it was called, placed Florence for a time under mob-rule, and would have degenerated into the wildest anarchy but for the energy of one poor man, Michele di Lando, the woolcomber, whom the infuriated populace had raised to the chief magistracy, and who, with remarkable instinct, steered the State safely through the storm which threatened its ruin. This state of things lasted three years, during which the all-powerful mob became the tool of designing men, who wreaked their vengeance on the party that had so lately been supreme. The latter, however, in their turn seized the opportunity when the better sort among the populace were disgusted with the tyranny of their fellows, and overthrew the mobocracy, setting up in its place a conservative government, formed of the Optimates, or better citizens, under the lead of the Albizzi. Salvestro de’ Medici, the original author of the revolt, contributed nothing to its suppression. It was, perhaps, beyond his power to do anything. He died in 1388, and the name of the Medici became identical with that of representatives of the interests of the people. Five years later, when the oppressions of the Albizzi had excited general discontent, an armed body of the people marched to the house of Vieri de’ Medici, and asked him to be their leader. He was of the same branch of the family as Salvestro, but he prudently declined the proposed honour, and appeased the revolters.

Averardo, styled Bicci, was the founder of the line that came to be talked of in the world. Little more is known of him than that in 1357 he was employed on behalf of the Republic in the Mugello. His grandfather, of the same name, was Gonfalonier in 1314, when Florence, to escape from the pressure of the Ghibellines, submitted to the Anjous. He was, it is said, the first of the family that amassed wealth by trade, and laid the basis of that prosperity which was a potent factor in the political transactions of his successors. The real splendour of the family, however, began with his son Giovanni d’Averardo, commonly called Giovanni di Bicci, who was born in 1360, and was in the bloom of manhood when the Albizzi held undisputed sway over Florence. The position of the Medici was a difficult one, for the favour they enjoyed among the people exposed them to the suspicion and dislike of the upper class. An attempt made in 1397 to restrict the power of Maso degli Albizzi, head of his family and of the State, ended in the exile and execution of the ringleaders, among whom were found some of the Medici. The prudence and foresight which Giovanni exhibited not only preserved his authority among his friends, but extorted respect from his opponents.

There were stirring times in Giovanni’s maturer years. The government of the conservative party was burdensome on the people and their friends, who were heavily taxed, but it was a successful government in the conduct of foreign affairs, and in the production of public works at home. Florence increased in political importance. The war against the Visconti of Milan, who were extending their power, and aiming at the establishment of a kingdom in Italy, was very costly and not always fortunate to the Guelf republic. Among the vicissitudes undergone by the latter was the defeat of their German champion, King Ruprecht of the Palatinate, whom they had summoned across the Alps. Nevertheless, the ultimate issue was favourable to Florence, which at this time enjoyed a brilliant and comparatively quiet existence. The death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402, relieved her of an enemy who had already set foot in Tuscany, and in 1406 she took possession of Pisa, which, weakened by centuries of war and internal commotion, surrendered after an heroic resistance. With varying fortune, Florence made war against Ladislaus, King of Naples, with whom expired in 1414 the male branch of that house of Anjou with whom she had once been so closely allied. She also extended her political influence to Umbria, took Cortona in 1411, and, ten years later, Livorno. With all this her trade and manufactures expanded and matured, increasing her resources and preparing her for other emergencies. The republic which had been the most steadfast friend of the Holy See, was in bitter dispute with it during the later period of the Avignon Papacy. Actively desirous for the restoration of ecclesiastical unity, Florence, in the midst of the great schism, witnessed in her newly acquired territory of Pisa an attempt to reunite the adherents of both Popes, the one at Avignon and the one at Rome. The attempt was a failure, and only added to the confusion by setting up a third Pope, but it gave occasion to the next General Council of Constance, which brought the rupture to a close in 1417.

Notwithstanding so large a military expenditure the wealth of the republic continued to flourish. There was a discrepancy, indeed, in the account of private wealth and public revenue. Two hundred thousand gold guilders were promised for Pisa, sixty thousand were paid to King Ladislaus for Cortona, and a hundred thousand to the Genoese for Livorno. In this way the balance of income and revenue was seriously disturbed. An attempt was made in 1411 to avoid the risks of large grants of money by increasing the number of courts that had to consider the projects of law laid before the Signory. In the fourteenth century was manifested the canker in the finances of Florence that was never quite eradicated. It is true the income of 1328 amounted to more than 300,000 gold guilders, while the regular expenditure was only 40,000, showing a surplus of more than 260,000. The sum was raised in great part by the excise or other indirect taxes, detailed statistical accounts of which still exist.[5] This surplus was so far inadequate to meet the oppressive military expenditure, the pay of the Anjou and other leaders hired by the republic, the cost of fortifications, the purchase of new territory, and the outlay on public works, that by degrees a considerable State debt was contracted, which we hear of under the name of Monte Comune. The growth of this debt is made intelligible by the fact that in the twenty-nine years from 1377 to 1406, eleven and a half million guilders were spent in war, while the sojourn of Duke Charles of Calabria in the city, cost 900,000, and that of the Duke of Athens 400,000. In the wealth of families great changes had taken place. The fourteenth century exhibited remarkable peculiarities in the matter of private property. Shortly before the middle of the century, the insolvency of England had brought to the ground most of the Florentine bankers, some of them for ever. Immediately after that, famine and the Black Death produced a change, which was intensified by the measures taken against the families of those nobles and the ruling party who were hated or suspected. Most of the old families became poor, while a crowd of small folks grew into importance; and the haste to grow rich, infinitely greater than it was in the time of the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ whose admonishing voice we have heard, augmented the recklessness and corruption which greatly contributed to the great revolution of 1378. In spite of considerable fluctuation an aristocracy of wealth was formed consisting chiefly of members of the seven great guilds, in whose hands, after the close of the thirteenth century, lay the government of the State. The guilds of the money-changers and of the woolstaplers were the principal, for the first gave the law to all foreign banks, the last, to which smaller societies were subject, governed all foreign markets.

Giovanni di Bicci was one of those who knew how to avail himself skilfully of the favourable opportunities offered by the conclusion of peace at the beginning of the fifteenth century. At the time of the Council of Constance, which agitated the world to an unusual degree, all the great monetary affairs in which Italy was concerned passed through Giovanni’s hands. He is said to have gained enormous sums of money, which were increased when the acquisition of Livorno afforded an advantageous outlet to the commerce of Florence. The advantage would have been lasting, but for the war with Milan, which broke out a few years later, and caused grave troubles. If Giovanni gained much, he was generous with his gains. Where need was, he showed no stint, and for public works his contribution was always ready. Having promised a chapel and sacristy for San Lorenzo, when the enlargement of the whole church was taken in hand (1419) he prompted Filippo Brunelleschi to design a grand plan for its entire reconstruction, which was begun in 1421, and in which the Medici and seven other families took an especial interest. Giovanni, though he did not seek offices in the State, never refused any to which he was called. He conducted negotiations with Ladislaus, King of Naples, went to congratulate Alexander V. on his election as Pope by the Council of Pisa, and accompanied Martin V. when the latter, on his return from Constance, passed through Florence to Rome. Giovanni was elected to the office of Podestà in Pistoja, and in 1421 was chosen Gonfalonier in Florence. The choice was not quite agreeable to the ruling party, for popular traditions were associated with the name of Medici, and Giovanni stood so high in the favour of the multitude that he could, if he had wished, easily have stirred up an insurrection against the oligarchy. Niccolo Uzzano, a prudent and moderate man, who, after Maso degli Albizzi’s death in 1417, shared with Rinaldo the leadership of the conservative party, opposed the election of Giovanni, but did not push his opposition to extremes, for he saw there was a struggle coming on. Giovanni, on his side, made no attempt during his term of office at anything that would disturb the peace.

Ere long external causes placed the party in danger. The antagonism between Florence and Milan could not be removed by mere treaties of peace. Gian Galeazzo’s only remaining son, Filippo Maria, was treading in his father’s steps. He had not only recovered the dominion which, at his father’s death, fell to pieces, but had added Genoa to it. He now stretched out his hand to the Romagna, where he came into collision with the interests of Florence, for the small gentry of that province, hitherto in connection with the republic, were in danger of being subjected to the will of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. Out of this arose the war of 1423, which was far from being successful. As in earlier times, the Florentine forces in 1424 were unable to cope with the Milanese, whom they encountered, first in the Romagna and afterwards in their own territory. The fault lay not so much in the men and their officers as in the absurd system of directing the movement of troops by a committee of civilians, called the Board of War, seated at home. Rinaldo degli Albizzi succeeded in calming the agitation of the people after the severe defeat of Zagonara on July 24th, but the damage done to his party only increased the ascendancy of Giovanni di Bicci. At the beginning of the war he had advised that the Duke of Milan should not be followed into the Romagna, but should be waited for on this side of the Apennines, but his advice was overruled.

In the beginning of 1426 Florence succeeded in forming an alliance with Venice, which, though a rival in mercantile interests, was as sensitive about the encroachments of Milan in the north as was the sister republic about his encroachments in the centre of the peninsula. The lords of Ferrara, Mantua, and others joined the alliance. The disasters of the war and increase of expenditure gave rise to much dissatisfaction, more loudly expressed among the higher than by the lower classes, the fear of whom led the administration to press their fiscal measures most heavily on the richer citizens. Rinaldo degli Albizzi thought to effect a change by weakening the democratic element in the Council. At a meeting of the heads of his party in the Church of Sto. Stefano, near the old bridge, he proposed that the number of lesser guilds should be reduced one half, and the votes of the smaller citizens diminished correspondingly. Changes in the relative numbers of the guilds had always been the means employed by either party for securing political preponderance; for the relative position of the parties was not strong enough to make manœuvres of this kind superfluous. Besides the twenty-one guilds, there was a number of smaller corporations representing branches of the different trades. No less than twenty-five such societies were the offspring of the largest of the guilds, that of the woolstaplers. They had their delegates too, but were dependent on the greater guilds, who represented them in the State. On one occasion, in 1300, the representatives of seventy-two companies, were gathered together in council. The Duke of Athens, who relied on the lower classes, made the smaller companies independent, and put their consuls on a level with the others, but this did not last. The same thing happened at the insurrection of 1378, but the members of the small companies were again unable to keep their independence long. The diminution of the small companies, proposed by Rinaldo degli Albizzi, was at this time a question of some delicacy. Nicolò da Uzzano remarked that before anything was proposed against the people it would be advisable to come to an understanding with their friends. On this Rinaldo conferred with Giovanni di Bicci, whom, of course, he found opposed to the innovation. Had he wished to see a new insurrection he might have agreed to the project, but his native prudence had increased with years. Anyhow, he reaped this advantage, that, as the matter could not remain secret, to him would be ascribed the merit of thwarting a scheme intended for the oppression of the lower classes. Ere long they had to face another great undertaking.

The distribution of the public burdens among individual contributors was for a long time connected with serious evils, that were the more conspicuous in proportion to the severity of the taxation. The scale was furnished by the estimo or assessment of real and personal property,[6] which was in use as early as the eleventh century, and resembled the colletta that prevailed in the Two Sicilies after the time of King Roger. The tax-system of Florence, where Neapolitan rulers had often exercised power, bore the mark of Southern Italy. At the time of its fullest application, when the Anjou Viceroys were supreme the estimo attached to land, capital and personal income. It extended from the city to the country, where its operation was regulated in districts. The framework underwent frequent revisions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly in the latter, when the example of Naples increased the rigour of the fiscal authorities and gave rise to frequent complaints and petitions for a reform of the taxation. The arbitrium was often called into play before 1346, when the Government of the Duke of Athens ordered a register of all estates. The estimo was the standard on which the public loans were based. These, with the excise and other indirect taxes—which, in the palmy days of commerce, were very productive—served to cover the public expenditure. Loans were made in the first half of the thirteenth century, and before its close the taille was introduced by the Viceroy of Anjou for the maintenance of the French and other mercenaries. There were two methods of raising a loan. By the first, the treasurers of the commune made an agreement with one or more of the great banking-houses, who, on an assignment of the custom duties to them, advanced the money and distributed the loan among their customers and friends.[7] By the second method, the government itself announced the loan and allotted it to the citizens according to their income, as recorded on the estimo, the security being in this case also the customs duties for a certain definite period. Instead of a percentage the contributors received a monopoly of salt, with the privilege of selling it to the retail dealers at an enhanced price.

As the necessities of the State increased, other sources of revenue were looked for. In 1343 the hearth or fire tax was adopted (fumanti or focatico). Before that attempts had been made to tax the clergy. In the war against Mastino della Scala, Lord of Verona, which ended in 1339, the loans amounted to 350,000 gold guilders, and exceeded the annual revenue from the excise by 50,000 guilders. The accumulation of the debt after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens necessitated the continuance of the monte comune, already mentioned, for the administration of the public debt. In the previous century, when payment of the debt due to the citizens became impossible, a ‘great book’ was opened, which in the course of forty years was superseded. During the war of 1325, against Castruccio Castracane, resort was had to similar means for raising money, and the Republic, being unable to pay the debt without borrowing again, established the monte comune. The interest paid was at the rate of five per cent., though at other times it reached as high as twenty-five.[8]

At the beginning of the fifteenth century the taxation was continually rising, and in the war with King Ladislaus the whole of the income registered on the estimo was charged with a tax of five per cent. for three years. Nonpayment of the tax was punished by exclusion from office. The defaulter’s name was entered in a register called the ‘looking-glass’ (specchio), whence the expression netto di specchio applied to a man eligible for office. According to a regulation of 1421 no man was so eligible unless he, his father, or grandfather, had been regular in paying his taxes for thirty years.

Of course there were manifold murmurs at these extraordinary proceedings. The real evil, however, and cause of discontent was not only the high rate of taxation, but its arbitrary and partial distribution. When the partition of the burdens was made an arm of offence against which the citizens rose to defend themselves by violence it was necessary to find some other basis, if the State economy were to be preserved from ruin. The regulation of the cadastre in 1427 had a twofold object in view, namely, first to raise the public income by putting together the property tax, the income tax, and the interest on the national debt (paghe or luoghi di monte); secondly, to make the distribution of the imposts independent of personal and political opinions. This financial reform, which changed nothing in the nature of the tax, but only established a better partition of it, was not a new thing. At bottom it was but a complement of the estimo, and the expression catasto for census, from accatastare, to pile together, was used in Florence a century earlier. That it was brought forward with a view to adjust more equally the incidence of taxation may be gathered from the preamble of the ordinance of May 22, 1427: ‘It is hard to express in speech or writing how much the citizens have suffered in their goods and their liberty by the inequality of the public burdens. They have been robbed and driven to desperation. How many, who would gladly have returned to their homes, have been kept back in doubt and uncertainty, exposed to all the ills that flow therefrom.’

A commission of ten members was appointed to make within the year a register of property. Arranged methodically, it was to specify the various families in each quarter of the town, the name and age of the several members of the family, the estimated value of each one’s property, real and personal, in town and country, and in foreign parts. In the estimate were reckoned the domestic animals of value, merchandise, ready cash, money in the funds, and all good debts. The rent of houses was specified, and in the case of land cultivated by the owner the average crop was taken. The mezzeria, or lands let out to farm, were valued according to the market-price of produce, allowance being made for the working material furnished to the farmer by the proprietor. The capitalised value of property was estimated at 100 for 7 per cent. produce, and on this capital half a guilder, that is, one-half per cent., was levied. In casting up the various elements of personal property and income the same principle prevailed as when it was capitalised. Both sources of revenue united furnished the total of what was called the sostanza, according to which the quota of taxes was fixed. Certain deductions were allowed by law, so that the tax-paying portion of the income was only the surplus over the sum required for the strict necessaries of life. Among these deductions was the rent of the dwelling-house, and of the warehouse, stall, or booth used in the way of business. The fiscal legislation adhered to the principle of burdening the old nobility of the city, nor did it spare the magnates of the provinces, many of whom, up to the time of the French Revolution, preserved an exceptional position. They had to pay twice, nay, three and four times, as much in taxes as other people, and were charged with rates from which the ordinary inhabitants of the country were free. The valuation held good for three years. Five registers were opened. The first was for the burghers; the second for country-people of various shades and degrees, including the peasantry; the third for the clergy; the fourth for guilds and corporations holding land, such as the woolstaplers’, silkmercers’, and money-changers’ guilds; the fifth and last for persons not belonging to the State, yet possessed of territory or engaged in commerce.

An examination of the first cadastre for the years 1427-30 gives a clear insight into the condition of property in town and country. The gross income of the citizens of Florence, then 90,000 to 95,000 in number, was estimated in round numbers at 620,000 gold guilders, which, allowing for the triple value of money, would be equal to 5,000,000 thalers (750,000l. sterling) at the present day. The town duties produced 25,300 guilders, those of the country 18,500. Thirty-two families paid upwards of a hundred guilders in taxes, two hundred paid in all more than 12,800 guilders. The highest tax—that paid by Palla Strozzi—was 507 guilders, which presupposes a fortune of 101,400 guilders, or, in present currency, 820,000 thalers (123,000l.). Second in the list of rich contributors is Giovanni de’ Medici, who pays 397 guilders. Then come two branches of the Panchiatichi, Francesco Tornabuoni, Niccolò da Uzzano, and Bernardo Lamberteschi, with more than 200 others. The landed property belonging to the clergy, to most of the benevolent institutions, and to the guilds within the jurisdiction of the Republic, was valued at 1,577,000 guilders, while the revenues of the clergy and the charities were put down at 130,000 guilders. The value of the untaxed monasteries was registered at 152,000 guilders. A few years later than this Cosimo de’ Medici, with his sons and relatives, were charged with a tax of 428 guilders for his business transactions. Seventy guilders of this amount were paid by the bank at Florence, as much by the branches at London and Bruges, 96 by those of Avignon and Geneva, 65 by that of Venice, and the rest by the partners in the firm.

Undoubtedly the new mode of taxation distributed taxation more equally than before. All those—some 3,000 in number—who, divested of property, lived only by the labour of their hands, were valued pro formâ, and counted by heads; but the payment of rates was not strictly enforced on them. They constituted a particular class, known as miserabili. Another class, one degree better off than these, and numbering more than 5,000, came to terms with the revenue officers for the payment of a small quota of taxes. If, however, the poorer classes were very lightly burdened, the charges on the rich were enormously heavy. Many among them paid the estimo ten and twenty times over, and could not as formerly obtain exemption from any charge on the plea of expenses incurred in the public service by the discharge of official duties confided to them. Malcontents were numerous. Those who owned land and capital, which are easy to get at and to tax, complained of the favour extended to trade and commerce. The lower classes, however, still dissatisfied, demanded political power, and a revision of the old payments. Giovanni di Bicci, by acting as mediator between the classes, did more than anyone in keeping off injudicious demands and maintaining peace. To him is generally ascribed the merit of the measure which aimed at a more just distribution of the public burdens. But in the deliberations on the subject that took place after 1426 he played but a secondary part, and at the last sitting declared that his adhesion to the measure was due not to his confidence in its success, but to his feelings of deference for the many citizens who had recommended it.[9] Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Niccolò da Uzzano were, for political reasons, both secret and avowed, foremost in supporting the proposal, although, as it happened, they and their friends were the most seriously affected by the new mode of taxation. There were insinuations against Medici that he profited by the embarrassments of his country in time of war, as he did by the distresses of individuals in time of panic, for all came to him for advances. It must be remembered, however, that his business extended far beyond Italy to all parts of France, and to Flanders especially, and that his trading interests would be best promoted by the peace of his country and the prosperity of his neighbours. With Pope Martin V., as with his predecessor, John XXIII., Di Bicci was on the best terms. The former made him Count of Monteverde, in the province of Fermo, on May 8, 1422.

Giovanni di Bicci lived to be sixty-nine. Only two sons remained to him, the children of his wife Piccarda, daughter of Odoardo Bueri. She survived her husband three years. He, on feeling his end approach, called his sons to him, and bade them follow his example—to be prudent, benevolent, and on friendly terms with those who wished them well. ‘Do nothing,’ he said, ‘against the wish of the people, and if they wish what they ought not, endeavour to turn them from it by friendly remonstrance rather than by arrogant dictation. Do not make the government-house your workshop, but wait until you are called to it, then show yourselves obedient, and avoid big swelling words. Strive to keep the people at peace, and the strong places well cared for. Engage in no legal complications, for he who impedes the law shall perish by the law. Do not draw public attention on yourselves, yet keep free from blemish as I leave you. Take care of my wife, your mother, and let her keep the place she now has.’[10] He expired on February 20, 1429, and was carried to San Lorenzo on an open bier. His remains were followed by his two sons, and twenty-eight members of the family, accompanied by the ambassadors of Venice and of King Sigismund, with many other persons, including the magistrates. The obsequies cost more than 3,000 guilders, and Cosimo and Lorenzo presented to the chapter a sum of 800 guilders for the institution of an annual festival in memory of the departed, to be held on the day of his death.[11] There, in the sacristy built at his own cost, lies Giovanni di Bicci, with his spouse, in a sarcophagus worked by the hand of Donatello, with genii holding the coat-of-arms carved in semi-relief on the cover, and inscriptions cut on the lower parts.[12] The contemporary already mentioned has described the personal appearance of Giovanni.[13] ‘He was tall and strong in figure, and broad in the face, with a dark, sallow complexion. His sense of humour was greater than anyone would have imagined from his melancholy expression. In business transactions he was straightforward, though not exactly eloquent, for nature had not endowed him with the graces of speech. Yet in public he was always ready with a good argument and sound advice. No one spoke ill of him. Niccolò da Uzzano, who passed for his rival, said to his sons, with tears in his eyes, “Your excellent father has left you in favour with the people, and beloved by the burghers, with splendid and improving pecuniary prospects.” He loved the good, and pitied the bad. The wicked, he said, existed for their own misfortune, and the good by the grace and good providence of God. He never complained of other citizens, nor they of him. The poor excited his compassion, and the rich enjoyed his friendship and support. He strove against misery, and promoted the happiness of mankind, when he could do so without injury to the Commonwealth. His hands were clean, and not seldom he neglected his own interests in the service of others. For others, too, he would often ask favours of the Government, never for himself. Yet, the fewer the pretensions he had, the more did the duties of State devolve upon him.’

CHAPTER III.

THE CITY OF FLORENCE UP TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

During the two centuries that laid the foundation of the power of the Medici the city of Florence had reached the size which it has retained to our day, and presented much the same internal appearance as it did down to a very recent period. The site was a favourable one. About midway between its source and its mouth the Arno issues from the narrow valleys of the Casentino, Aretino, and the upper Arno, and flows down the western slope of Tuscany towards the Mediterranean. On a spot where there rises a group of low hills, close to the left bank of the river, the city was founded. On the right bank a semicircle of hills, crowned with the tower and ruined walls of the ancient Etruscan city of Fiesole, recedes in gentle declivities. Not long before the decline of the Roman Republic the community was formed which was destined in the course of centuries to be the ruling power in Tuscany, to promote the revival of literature and art, and to recall to life the culture of the ancients, under the influence of Christianity.

Many circumstances combined to promote the prosperity of the city. Although the river had neither any great volume nor steadiness in its flow it afforded a means of communication, and its course lay through flowery meadows which, watered by brooks descending from the sunny hillsides, were well fitted for the cultivation of the vine and olive, inexhaustible sources of wealth to the inhabitants of those southern regions. The pure air of the mountains, which glistened with the snow upon them until late in spring, together with the powerful influence of the sun, removed all fear of the malaria incident to such low-lying districts. These advantages seem to have attracted settlers from Fiesole, who established here a fair for the convenience of trade. A Roman military colony augmented the population and importance of the settlement; and although the ancient inhabitants of the city were proud of their Roman descent, their posterity attributed the inflexibility of the popular character, ‘which still retains its stony and rocky nature,’ to the admixture of their blood with that of the mountaineers of Fiesole. The oldest traditions speak of the special veneration in which the God of War was held; and if the opinion that the baptistery built on the northern boundary of the original city was his temple be false, at all events the figure of Mars was to be seen on the old bridge, until it was swept away by one of the frequent inundations of the Arno.

Moreover, in the Roman town there are reminiscences of the Capitol in fragments of the amphitheatre which have been dug up at different times, and have been used in edifices of later date. Evidences of the same are said to have existed in the church of Santa Maria di Campidoglio, once standing in the old market-place. The circuit of the walls of the Roman town, which was connected with the opposite shore by the bridge above mentioned, may be roughly traced by following the direction of the narrow streets of the crowded quarter between the river and the cathedral square, and the Piazza of Santa Trinità and Santa Firenze. When the declining Roman Empire could no longer resist the pressure of the northern nations Florence was besieged by the wild hordes of Radagaïs. They were, however, utterly destroyed by the general Honorius Flavius Stilicho, when the city was relieved. The storm of Gothic and Lombard war subsequently swept over the country, until at length Charlemagne, who in legends is called the Restorer of Florence, established peace, and set up a form of government, founded on Lombard institutions, which, with various changes, was maintained until the uprising of the free Communes.

Towards the latter end of the eleventh century the portion of the city on the right bank of the river had been considerably enlarged, so that it extended eastward as far as the piazza of Santa Croce, northward to that of San Lorenzo, and westward to where subsequently the Carraia bridge was built. The city enclosed also within its walls, which not long afterwards withstood an assault of the Emperor Henry IV., that portion of the left bank of the river which extends as far as the Piazza de’ Pitti. This was the city that was seen in his youth by the author of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ who was born in 1265, a year before the Guelfs obtained supreme authority. But Dante beheld it already changed in its internal aspect, and in the character of its population, hurried along as they were on the path of conquest, with which this change in character was closely connected. He has described the manners and customs of the ancient citizens, ‘when they were still purely reflected in the lowest artisan,’ that is, before peasants and men of the lower classes had immigrated from the subjugated villages of the neighbourhood, attracted both by the protection they enjoyed in a powerful city and the promise of gain from the daily increasing value of their industry. This was, to use the poet’s words, before citizens of Roman descent had to endure the stench of peasants from Aguglione and Signa, whom avarice alone had allured to Florence.[14] Dante Alighieri lived to see likewise the commencement of the great architectural transformation. Numerous churches had long adorned the city, which reverenced in Zanobi a saintly bishop, and had numbered among its illustrious citizens St. John Gualbert, the founder of the Order of Vallombrosa. Beside the church of St. John, the supposed Temple of Mars, there had arisen in the first half of the eighth century Santa Reparata, the subsequent cathedral, and in the tenth and eleventh Santa Felicità, San Martino, Sant’Ambrogio, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Remigio, San Salvi, San Lorenzo, San Piero Scheraggio, San Romolo, Santa Trinità, etc., in and near the city, were either newly founded or rebuilt. Nothing now remains of the original structure of any of these churches, many of which have quite disappeared. Specimens of the Roman style are still preserved in the city and its environs, in the octagon of San Giovanni, the little Basilica of Sant’Apostolo, that of San Miniato on a neighbouring eminence,[15] and the façade of the Abbey-church at the foot of the hill of Fiesole. These buildings all belong to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and were probably completed before the end of the latter, and the conception and finish of this architecture serve to explain how Gothic architecture, which arose in the following century, was never entirely free from reminiscences of the older style, and, notwithstanding its more graceful characteristics, declined before attaining the same degree of perfection.

The architectural industry of the thirteenth century was very great, and was exercised as much for ecclesiastical as for secular purposes. Before that period narrow streets and small, irregular squares made the city gloomy.

On every side rose lofty square brick towers without any break or ornament whatever, sometimes so close together as to be within arm’s length of one another. The dwelling-houses, which were built of freestone, were small in size and built with a view to purposes of defence and attack as much as for habitation. The streets were first paved in 1237, in which year the Milanese knight, Rubaconte da Mandello, Podestà of the corporation, built over the Arno, at that spot within the city where the river is at its broadest, the bridge named after him, but generally known by the name of the chapel of Sta. Maria delle Grazie. Bricks placed on end were used for the purposes of paving as well as for the bridges. About the middle of the century a partial demolition of the towers became necessary. This, however, by no means put an end to the civil conflicts, or even deprived them of their ferocious character. Stones were used for building the city walls, particularly on the left bank of the river. At the present day many towers, both in the oldest portion of the city between the old bridge and that of the Trinity, and also by San Pier Maggiore, and in the quarter beyond the Arno, recall the bloody feuds of the irreconcilable factions of the nobility. In these conflicts the strife was carried on from tower to tower, from house to house; streets were barricaded with heavy chains, and homes made desolate with fire and sword.

At this period the construction of those great buildings began, some of which still impart to the city its peculiar aspect, and of these some have already been named in the introduction to this history. Amongst the first were the original bridge of Sta. Trinità, the Oratory of Confuggio, out of which grew the brilliant Servite church of the Annunziata, the old Town-hall, afterwards enlarged and named after the Podestà, the Carmelite church beyond the Arno, and the magnificent Sta. Maria Novella, which is, perhaps, the purest and most graceful example of the so-called Tuscan Gothic.

The Dominicans, who are said to have come to Florence in 1219 and who at first lived in hospitals, were presented two years later by the Bishop and Chapter with the little church of St. Mary, which was extended in size till it became one of the largest houses of Divine worship, with the addition of a spacious cloister. Not long after the arrival of the Dominicans the order of the Franciscan Minorites was established in Florence, and about the middle of the century they rebuilt their great church of Sta. Croce, situated by the wall on the east side, and transformed it into the majestic temple we behold at the present day.[16] The corporation had already purchased pieces of ground and also houses in various places, to make room for widening the older streets and laying out others. In this way space was found for the Hall of Or San Michele, which was built about the middle of the century, and which took its name from a church of the Archangel, pulled down to make room.[17] Similarly space was obtained in 1282 and following years in the quarter of the city beyond the Arno and in the west suburb, for laying out the older square by Sta. Maria Novella.[18] About the same time the final enlargement of the city was commenced by laying out the line of wall which those now living have seen still perfect with its gates and towers. But of all this nothing more remains on the right bank of the river, since Florence, which for centuries had been content with its mediæval boundaries, was extended as far as the foot of the hill of Fiesole, and numerous conventual and other gardens were transformed into squares and streets, while fields and meadows were enclosed within the city. The character of its circuit has thus been materially altered, although remains of the ancient style of architecture are still visible here and there. The great work of the new boundary wall is ascribed to the two Dominican brothers, Fra Sisto and Fra Ristoro, who built Sta. Maria Novella and were employed in Rome in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, and to Arnolfo, who stands in the first rank of the historical architects of Florence. Arnolfo, the son of Cambio, a native of Colle in the valley of the Elsa, was named after his master Arnolfo di Lasso, who was a German by origin, and known as architect of the castle of Poppi and the Palazzo del Podestà.

The development of the political power of Florence, now fully conscious of its importance, was coincident with an increase in material wealth and with an awakening of intellectual life. Arnolfo had the good fortune to be born in the period when that great movement began, which, furthered rather than hindered by the animosity of civil strife, led to a remarkable revival in Italy of literature and art. It must be remembered that the way to it was paved by the age of the Hohenstaufen.

The great poet who is so much identified with this eventful time[19] saw the foundations laid for the palace of the Signory and the new Cathedral, Sta. Maria del Fiore, Sta. Croce, and Sto. Spirito; he witnessed the construction of the Corn Exchange of Or San Michele, and the gloomy prison which still recalls the memory of party-strife.[20] In his banishment he thought of his beautiful San Giovanni, and in order to picture the steep ascent in Purgatory drew a comparison with the straight path, that now no longer exists, leading to the church of San Miniato, which looked down on the Rubaconte bridge, and commanded a view of the city.[21] Beside it in his time Bishop Andrea de’ Mozzi had begun to build the first embattled episcopal palace, which was completed by his successor, Antonio d’Orso, the same who instigated the populace to rise against the Emperor Henry IV. Dante was a witness of the indefatigable zeal with which corporation and citizens emulated each other in the erection of churches, great public buildings, the city-wall and defensive castles for the environs. No will was held valid unless a legacy was left by it towards the expenses of building the wall, while immunity from taxes was granted to the architect of the cathedral in gratitude for his excellent work. Benevolence had long been engaged in relieving human misery, and now with increase of means it was still more displayed. Folco Portinari, the father of him whose name has become celebrated far and wide through Dante Alighieri, founded the hospital of Sta. Maria, now one of the largest in any country, by extending a charitable institution commenced by Mona Tessa, a servant of his house. The corporation built the hospital at the Porto al Prato and took under their superintendence the one long since founded by a pious citizen at Porta San Gallo. The hospital of San Jacopo and that of Sta. Maria della Scala were annexed later. Contributions were everywhere given for churches and convents, for that of the Camaldulensians in the Angeli, the Servites in Cafaggio, the Silvestrines in San Marco, and others. An especial magistrate was appointed for the care of the streets and sewers, and the Carraia bridge was rebuilt.

In the midst of this activity, in June 1304, a conflagration laid a great part of the city in ashes, during a violent feud between the populace and the nobility. It is said that 1,700 noblemen’s palaces, towers, and houses of citizens were destroyed, besides incalculable wealth, and many monuments of the old town. The prior of San Piero Scheraggio, Ser Freri Abbati, was the incendiary. As an example of the ferocity of the manners of the times it may be here mentioned that in the year 1307 the belfry of the Benedictine abbey was partially demolished because the monks had rung the alarm-bell during a quarrel which had arisen respecting taxation of the clergy. Activity in construction was not, as we have said before, confined to the defence and adornment of the city itself, for at this period the building of numerous forts was determined upon for the protection of the environs, the completion of which was afterwards vigorously carried on. Such defences were necessary in times of perpetual warfare, like the feuds of the communes; and the marches upon Rome led by Henry of Luxembourg and Louis of Bavaria, with the enterprises of Uguccione della Faggiuola and Castruccio Castracane, in connection with these, gave immediate occasion for them. In much later times they were still an effectual protection, for the art of besieging was still in its infancy when the art of defence had already made important progress, and armies under celebrated generals were stayed for months by inconsiderable villages, as the history of the second half of the fifteenth century will show.

The style of palaces and houses remained faithful to the older traditions. The public palaces were like castles. For centuries those of the Podestà and the Signory, for example, had been carefully strengthened and kept in a state of defence. From the towers, the bells of which summoned the citizens, there was a wide prospect over the city and its environs. The battlements, of the square form customary among the Guelfs, were adapted for defensive purposes. The windows on the ground storey were few and narrow, the gates were strengthened by double doors. The building material, consisting of heavy stones, or macigni, was furnished by the neighbouring stone-quarries of the hills of Fiesole and Golfolina on the Arno, at the spot where the river forces a narrow passage from the Florentine to the broad lower valley.[22] Great blocks of freestone, rough-hewn and gradually blackened by exposure to the air, formed those massive walls that seemed as though built for eternity. These walls have stamped their character on the later Florentine architecture; for the fifteenth and even the sixteenth century remained faithful to this opus rusticum, which has been transmitted down to our own days—modified, it is true, in its harsher features, but essentially unchanged. The windows of the upper storeys, divided first by slender marble columns, and then by various ornaments in the spaces of the pointed arch, relieve the gloominess of the fortress. The halls of the guilds and the palaces of the nobility exhibit the same style, though in them the embossments are partly or entirely smoothed away, and the windows are quite plain. Many of them are still preserved in the older quarters of the city, in the Borgo Sant’Apostolo, in the Via delle Terme, in the Mercato Nuovo, in the Via de’ Cerchi and Condotta, in the narrow streets behind the Old Palace in Via de’ Neri and de’ Rustici, and in Piazza Peruzzi, where they have even nestled in the Roman amphitheatre and elsewhere. The former palace of the Spini, between the Arno and the Piazza of Santa Trinità, the restoration of which has been undertaken by the present municipal authorities, presents, with its massive crown of battlements, the severe character of a fortress. The houses of the Mozzi at the south end of the Rubaconte bridge, and those of the Manelli on the Ponte Vecchio, among others, represent, in spite of change, the age of Dante; some, indeed, are now, after a lapse of six centuries, occupied by descendants of the very families that then possessed them.[23] The ground floors often show the traces of walled-up loggie, an indication of more peaceful days, for this style of building was continued even when party quarrels were fought out more by change of constitution and by proscription than by force of arms.

The numerous religious institutions show of themselves how important a field was offered to ecclesiastical architecture. At the most flourishing period of German architecture, Sta. Maria Novella furnishes the first example of the endeavour to obtain as wide and slight an arching to the vault as possible, by employing antique pilasters, composed of semi-columns and pillar corners. This attempt has met with comparative success in Sta. Maria del Fiore, in which plain pillars adorned with more developed capitals composed of acanthus leaves have been used, while for the gigantic central nave of Sta. Croce the vaulting is relinquished, and the open principle of the Christian basilica of Rome adopted. The same plan is also to be seen in San Miniato al Monte. If, however, the management of the material in Sta. Maria del Fiore exhibits extraordinary skill, a certain baldness was, on the other hand, scarcely to be avoided; and this forms a contrast with the awkwardly set cupola of the choir and transept—a fault, perhaps, less to be charged upon the first architect than is generally assumed. The exterior marble facing of the first two of these churches was similar to that of San Giovanni, but displayed a greater tendency to picturesque effect, which was increased by the additions of later times. The marble was supplied from native quarries, those of Prato and the Maremma, and after 1343 particularly from Carrara.[24] The craft of the painter was and remained combined with that of the architect, as a fine art, distinguished in fact only by the employment of different materials. That same painter, to whom art history—which in the fifteenth century was just awakening, and in the next, although not yet critical, reached descriptive perfection—has given, following tradition, a higher position than belongs to him, painted both with the brush and with coloured pastilles, and his most distinguished pupil adorned the city with its most graceful architecture. Dante has extolled them both, the one as a setting and the other as a rising star. The legend derives the ancient family name of Borgo Allegri from the popular rejoicing which accompanied Charles of Anjou on his way to inspect the great Madonna picture in the studio of Giovanni Cimabue, which now adorns the church of Sta. Maria Novella. It was Giotto di Bondone who broke through the narrow circle of typical painting in the Byzantine style, and, both in single figures of Madonnas and Saints and in grand historico-allegorical compositions, opened a way to freer spiritual development, in which he was followed by a large school. Although, as was natural, considering the large number of its followers, its original principles did not continue unmodified, this school in all essentials became the authority for the fourteenth century. No new creative peculiarity, however, was evinced, and constant repetition of the same motive can be observed in form of face, drapery, architecture, and colouring. The admiration that Giotto’s works, which adorned all Italy, had excited in his native city, the talents that were ascribed to him outside the art to which he had especially devoted himself, are shown by a decree passed by the Signory on April 12, 1334,[25] in concert with the Buonuomini—an act redounding no less to the honour of the State than of the painter. By this decree Giotto was nominated architect of the Sta. Maria del Fiore, of the boundary wall, and of the other architectural undertakings of the Corporation. ‘Let it be done,’ so it ran, ‘in order that the public works may progress effectually and in fitting manner, which can only be the case if a practised and celebrated man conduct the management of them, and for this purpose no one can be found in the whole world able to do more excellently in this, as in many other things, than Master Giotto di Bondone of Florence, painter, whom, as a great artist, his native city will lovingly receive and honour.’ Giotto lived two years after his praises were thus proclaimed. After death he was honoured with the erection in the cathedral, with the building of which he had been entrusted, of a monument adorned by one of the finest inscriptions of the Renaissance period.

During the time that the façade of this church, which was destined to undergo many a change, was building, together with its side-walls, doors, and the walls and gates of the quarter Oltr’arno; and while the belfry of the cathedral, the most graceful, rich, and perfect work of its style, arose, great efforts had to be made to clear away the last traces of the fire of 1304, and the ravages of the great inundation of November 1, 1333. Three bridges were broken up; the old bridge, with those of Santa Trinità and Carraia, and even the column before the Baptistery, which had been raised in memory of St. Zanobi, was thrown down. Every nerve was strained to the work of restoration. One of the most active among the artists was Giotto’s pupil, Taddeo Gaddi, who, in the summer of 1337, began building the new Hall of Or San Michele, on the site of the one burnt down, which was, however, no longer destined to serve the former purpose, but to be used as an Oratorium, while two upper stories were to be employed for the garnering of corn. So arose this magnificent edifice, which forms one of the most remarkable ornaments of Florence, and, seen from the neighbouring hills, towers above the clustering houses. It forms a quadrangle, of which the sides are of unequal length. The character of a hall is still visible in the ground-floor, with its wide tripartite arched windows, which are richly panelled, and in the two upper stories with their arched windows, in groups, alternately, of two and three, divided by columns; the whole being surmounted by a moulded cornice. In this cornice are niches with statues and groups of marble, which had been built at the cost of the guilds, and set on the pilasters of the older hall; and here, as on the middle storey, are placed the arms of these guilds with those of the commonwealth.[26] Two years later Taddeo Gaddi began rebuilding the old bridge in essentially the same form as at present. The palace of the Podestà had been already considerably enlarged and beautified when in 1326 it served Duke Charles of Calabria, the son of King Robert of Naples, as a residence; but in February 1332 it had suffered by fire, and in the year following by the inundation, so that a thorough restoration was necessary. The Carraia bridge was finished in 1337; that of the Trinità required several years more; the belfry of the Benedictine abbey had been rebuilt in 1330. The short reign of the Duke of Athens caused no cessation in the process of construction. A new front was built to the palace of the Signory, in which the Duke took up his residence, which did not, however, protect him from the resentment of the populace; and in the palace of the Podestà, of which the picturesque courtyard was then building, with arcades running round three sides of the ground-floor, his coats of arms bear witness to his activity. The following years were so restless and disturbed, owing to the peril the country was in from the swarms of freebooters, who, towards the middle of the century, laid all Italy under contribution, and from the fearful ravages of the Black Death, that architecture was rather called into requisition for the safety of the city than for its adornment.

The brigandage and pestilence that prevailed might well cripple constructive progress for a time, but it was soon aroused to renewed activity. If the last fearful calamity led to immorality among the lower orders, it yet induced many to relinquish the bustle of the world for grave meditations and pious works. The means of charitable institutions were considerably increased by alms and legacies. In 1349 was decreed the erection of a chapel to St. Anne, in the hall of Or San Michele, in commemoration of the expulsion of the Duke of Athens on the day of that saint. The work was conducted by Neri de’ Fioravante, who, on the occasion of that event, superintended the erection of the barricades at the Place of the Signory, and by Benci di Cione of Como. Three years later Andrea Orcagna began in the same place the rich chapel of the Madonna, which may be considered as the best work of architectural sculpture belonging to this period. The graceful loggia which, in the year 1351, were commenced opposite San Giovanni, as frontage to the Oratorium, are probably by the same artist. This Oratorium originally belonged to the brotherhood of the Misericordia, a society formed after the plague in 1326, and still in meritorious activity. It came later into the hands of another benevolent society, that of the Capitani del Bigallo.[27] The building of the Certosa, which was commenced by Nicola Acciaiuoli, in the year 1341, on the neighbouring hill of Montaguto, was carried on with vigour, and the mausoleum containing the beautiful monuments of the family belongs likewise to these years. In 1360 the building of Santa Maria del Fiore, which had been so continually interrupted, was fairly proceeded with, and four years later the cupola was commenced. In the neighbourhood of the palace of the Signory the site for the new Mint was obtained in 1361. Several churches were altered or rebuilt, and the façade of the church opposite to Or San Michele—now named after St. Charles Borromeo, but formerly dedicated to the archangel—is a monument of the graceful style of the period, though of small dimensions, and sparely ornamented. An endeavour was made in 1351 to fill the voids left by the plague in the ranks of the artists, by granting permission to strangers to carry on both sculpture and architecture. The tendency of the period towards the formation of guilds had manifested itself in the year previous by the institution of the Society of Painters, under the patronage of St. Luke, which, altered and enlarged, exists at the present day.

The Hall of the Signory, which, since the 16th century, has been generally called the Loggia de’ Lanzi, is the most important architectural work of the latter part of the 14th century. In the architecture of this building the spirit of the Renaissance breaks boldly through the barriers of the Gothic style, without entirely renouncing it. A hall in which the whole members and friends of a family could meet was looked upon as a necessary distinction of the high rank of the owner, and, indeed, no house of any importance was without such an adjunct. This hall was afterwards gradually converted into a separate and public building. Even in the middle of the following century Leon Battista Alberti wrote thus: ‘Streets and markets will be adorned by halls in which older people may assemble to avoid the heat and discuss their business, while their presence will act as a restraint upon the young in their games.’ Even private family affairs were transacted here, and it is related of Giovanni Rucellai, a rich citizen of the 15th century, who built a new loggia opposite his house, that he arranged his daughter’s wedding there. None of these loggias are at present in complete preservation,[28] for even where the exterior form has been preserved the arches have been walled up, and the building has been diverted to other uses, the original destination being uncalled for by altered customs. Numerous traces of them, however, still exist, notably of the Loggias of the Cerchi, the Agli, the Buondelmonti, the Cavalcanti, the Tornaquinci, the Peruzzi, the Alberti, the Canigiani, Burdi, Frescobaldi, Guiccardini, in the quarter of Oltr’arno, and, of later origin, those of the Albizzi and Rucellai.

A commodious hall was naturally desired for the Signory in view of the public nature of the business transacted by them, and the unsuitableness of the Tribune of Ringhiera, which was added to the façade of their palaces in 1349 and pulled down during the domination of Napoleon. Notwithstanding, however, the utility of such a building and the practice of annexing loggias to private dwellings, when the square of the Signory was enlarged in 1356, to make room for the hall, by pulling down the church of San Romolo, a part of the Mint, and several houses, the general opinion was, that a great public hall was better fitted for a despotism than for a free city.[29]

As already mentioned, it was not until twenty years later that the hall of the Signory was commenced.[30] Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti were the architects. The former was an artist much in request, and was not only incessantly engaged in the architectural works of the city, but also in the construction of the fortifications. His death happened in 1388. The superintendence of this building was entrusted likewise to the directors of Sta. Maria del Fiore, their funds exceeding their necessities. Although the building of the loggia of the Signory is ascribed to Orcagna in error, seeing that he had died eight years before, and had not lived even to see the square cleared, the way for it was prepared by the hall of the Bigallos, which was undoubtedly by his hands. The Gothic style had, even at the end of the previous century, displayed great boldness in the treatment of the pointed arch. The circular arch was now adopted, which in bold sweeps forms three openings on the façade, and one at each side. An architrave rises above the capitals of lofty but strongly built pillars, surmounted by a boldly projecting cornice, with wide cross-vaulting inside. Antique tradition was nowhere so perceptible as in this building, the unsurpassed, nay, unattainable, model for all later ones of the kind until the present day. In the year 1380, in which Antonio di Puccio, the ancestor of the yet flourishing family of the Pucci, executed the third vaulting, the building seems to have approached its completion, but eleven years longer sculptors and painters were occupied with its adornment by numerous sculptures in high and low relief, in which mosaic and colouring were employed to heighten the effect.[31]

Florentine sculpture of the latter part of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries followed essentially the bent of Giovanni Pisano, who endeavoured to unite the decided tendencies of his father Nicolò towards the antique with those of the Gothic style, which then began to assert itself; and he thus traced out for his followers the way which they have long pursued. Andrea Pisano, the son of one Ugolino of Pontedera, was the chief representative of Giovanni’s school during the first half of the fourteenth century. If there is any question as to whether the design of the bronze door of the Baptistery, worked by him in 1330, being Giotto’s, the great influence exercised by Giotto on the sculpture of his time is undoubted. Neither Orcagna, whose most important work, the altar to the Virgin in Or San Michele, has already been mentioned, and who displays both in painting and in sculpture the greatest originality in conception and in form of any artist of this epoch, nor Andrea Pisano’s pupil, Alberto di Arnoldo, to whom the grave and noble group of the Virgin with Angels in the Oratorium of Bigallo is owing, was able to escape the influence of Giotto. The decoration of the façade of the cathedral, of the belfry and interior of the baptistery, as also of the side doors of the cathedral, with sculpture, statues, reliefs, and ornaments, gave employment, irrespectively of others, to numerous artists from foreign parts, but much of their work has unfortunately been destroyed or mutilated. Meanwhile the churches were being adorned with numerous frescoes and altar panels, particularly Sta. Croce, so rich in chapels, which was only completed in the following century, Sta. Trinità, which was enlarged in 1383, Sta. Maria Novella, Ognissanti, and others, in which work Agnolo Gaddi, Orcagna, Giovanni da Milano, Jacopo del Casentino, and many others were employed. Before the middle of the century the great chapter hall of Sta. Maria Novella, commonly called Capellone degli Spagnuoli, which contains the mural paintings ascribed, without ground, to the Siennese painter, Simon Martini, and Taddeo Gaddi, had been built by a citizen of Florence, named Buonamico di Lapo Guidalotti. The frescoes from the history of St. Benedict, by Spinello of Aretino, in San Miniato al Monte, date after the year 1380, and those from the New Testament in the Rinuccini chapel, probably by Giovanni da Milano,[32] somewhat earlier. Orcagna, who next to Giotto possessed the most catholic spirit of the century, had breathed a fresher and more original life into the school then dominant. He was followed pre-eminently by the two last-named masters, who, notwithstanding the duration of the Giottoesque traditions, herald in the coming epoch.

Not alone the end of the thirteenth, but the onward marching fourteenth century likewise beheld the establishment of great charitable institutions. In the year 1377 the building of the hospital was commenced, which Bonifacio de’ Lupi of Soragna, from Parma, formerly Podestà and Capitano del Popolo, dedicated as a mark of attachment to the city which had bestowed its freedom on him. In the course of centuries it has been much changed, but still exists as the Spedale di Bonifazio. Seven years later Lemmo Balducci, of Monticatini, founded the hospital of San Matteo, on the site now occupied by the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1400 the hospital Sta. Maria dell’Umiltà (San Giovanni di Dio) was erected by Simone Vespucci, near the houses of his family. Churches and monasteries followed one another, and, as the enlargement of the square of the Signory necessitated the demolition of a church, it was rebuilt in another place. In 1394 Bishop Onofrio Visdomini consecrated the magnificent charter-house of the Acciaiuoli, which was established at the public cost. In 1392 the convent Il Paradiso, before Porta San Nicolò, on the slope of the hill of Arcetri and Miniato, was founded by Messer Antonio degli Alberti, under the influence of the excitement created in the ecclesiastical world, then distracted with the great schism, by the report of the prophecies and piety of Bridget of Sweden, whose fame extended far beyond Rome, where she passed so many years of her life. This period showed itself grateful towards men of merit. In 1393 the directors of San Maria del Fiore received permission to raise a monument to John Hawkwood, who, as a commander under the name of Giovanni Aguto, had the thanks of the Republic for his faithful services. A year later it was resolved to erect in the same church a monument to the learned and useful public servant, the Augustine monk Luigi Marsigli. By a decree passed in the year 1396 it was intended to perpetuate in the same manner the memory of the lawyer Accursio, Zanobi da Strada, also Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The decree was, however, never carried out.

The power of the aristocracy, at the head of which were the Albizzi, now approached its height. After the unfortunate attempt of 1397 to obtain some popular balance to this domination, a less violent state of affairs came gradually about, one manifestation of which was the great expenditure of money, both by the State and private individuals, in the prosecution of important and valuable works. This activity renders the period worthy to be compared with the end of the previous century, and formed a new epoch in the history of art. It was formerly the custom to associate the name of the Medici with the outburst of the Italian Renaissance, and likewise with the height of its perfection at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They had, however, only followed in the footsteps of their predecessors the Albizzi, and Pope Julius II.

The stages of the progress of the Renaissance are visible, in following the history of art, from Benci di Cione, to Brunellesco, from Orcagna and Alberto d’Arnoldo to Ghiberti and Donatello, from Orcagna again, Spinello, and Nicolò di Pietro, to Masolino and Masaccio. In the province of architecture, classical art entered again upon its rights under the influence of the new spirit. Brunellesco, who, while in his native town, had fixed his attention on Roman edifices, accustomed his eye when in Rome to the large dimensions and simple yet harmonious forms of ancient art. The Italian Gothic, which is not of one cast, but more or less dependent upon the older forms of art, must, in comparison with the latter, appear arbitrary in its character. Yet the classical principle obtained by no means an easy victory. The greatest work of the period, the dome of Sta. Maria del Fiore, is the result of a compromise, which under the circumstances was unavoidable, between the traditions of two epochs, and between the characters of two different tendencies. The requirements both of a strict division and demarcation of masses, and the perception of grand beauty and ample space had also to be reconciled. So in other branches of art the Gothic style asserted itself for a length of time by the side of the new tendency.

In February 1393 a commission was first appointed for the building of the dome, the sacristy, and the canonica of the cathedral.[33] But it was a full quarter of a century before the work was fairly begun. On August 19, 1418, the famous competition, which has since been celebrated in a novel, was invited for models of the dome. On November 14, 1419, a commission of ‘Officiales Cupolæ’ was appointed, consisting of four of the principal citizens. April 16, 1420, the office of Proveditores was conferred on Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Battista d’Antonio; and on August 12, 1434, it was resolved that the lantern with which the dome was to be closed should be built after Brunellesco’s model. The lantern was, however, only completed in 1462, sixteen years after the great artist’s death.[34] The greatest and most complex work of modern architecture belongs consequently to the time when the Albizzis held power. Meanwhile many other buildings were undertaken. In 1411 an illustrious citizen, Nicolò Davanzati Bostichi, began the construction of the convent S. Michele of Doccia, near Fiesole, which, built against the dark background of the wooded hillside, can be seen far and wide. In 1416 the plan for the rebuilding of San Lorenzo was sketched out; in 1421 the great foundling hospital of the Innocents, with its beautiful portico on the Piazzi of the Annunziata, was begun; and twelve years later Sto. Spirito, the two latter after Brunellesco’s designs. Notwithstanding some defects, owing chiefly to the difficulty, imperfectly surmounted, of continuing the colonnade from the nave through the transept and choir, and to the unsuitability of the dome to this form, Sto. Spirito is the finest example of the independent adoption of the Roman basilica style for modern ecclesiastical architecture. Sta. Maria Novella was consecrated September 8, 1420, by Pope Martin V., for whom a part of the adjoining convent had been converted into a dwelling the year before. This was followed the next day by the consecration of Sta. Maria Nuova (Sant’Egidio) by Cardinal Antonio Correr, Bishop of Bologna, to which ceremony the frescoes refer with which Bicci di Lorenzo, who superintended the building, adorned the façade under the modern portico of the present day.

Filippo degli Scolari, who, under the name of Pippo Spano, had been influential in Hungary in the days of King Sigismund, ordered upon his death, in 1426, the construction, by Brunellesco, of a great central building for the Camaldolensians of the Angeli, but it went no further than a portion of the vast octagon, which was vulgarly called Il Castellaccio.[35] The Place of the Signory was still too small, and the wish to procure more space for the palace on the south side occasioned the demolition in 1410 of a side-aisle of San Piero Scheraggio. This church, after being gradually more and more mutilated, made way a century and a half later for the edifice of the Uffizi, by whom this quarter of the city, in which streets and houses were crowded together down to the river-side, was completely transformed.

The splendour and beauty of the public buildings necessarily influenced the construction of private dwellings. The narrow houses, lofty in proportion to their base, fell gradually into disuse, the more as the city, which had been considerably enlarged, afforded greater space. The beginning of the fifteenth century, which reached its climax in the Florentine palaces, turned the scale in this respect; but, as already remarked in the introduction, the mediæval traditions were here more faithfully adhered to than in ecclesiastical architecture. Moreover, a sense of timidity in passing certain limits existed in this case, which was connected with the circumstances of a free republic. This feeling has been recognised in Cosmo de’ Medici, and will be found again in Filippo Strozzi. We are reminded of the same fact even in the following century by the history of the Bartoline house on the Piazza Sta. Trinità, the door and window frames of which were considered unsuitable for a private dwelling, though they were soon to appear simple enough. In earlier times, too, there were large private houses, but their number appears to have been inconsiderable. In the first decade of the fifteenth century several were erected, which we still behold essentially in their original form. The house of Nicolò da Uzzano in Via de’ Bardi, already mentioned, built probably about 1420, is of large proportions, but perfectly plain, and without any sign of the modern spirit. The palace of the Bardi family in Via del Fosso indicates, both by its straight-sided façade and by the square courtyard with the antique arrangement of the columns, the innovations of the new style; while the broad, projecting, wooden roof and the plain windows recall an earlier time. On the Trinity bridge the houses of the Capponi and Gianfigliazzi retain something of the ancient style. In the seventeenth century the interior of the house of the Albizzi, the residence of Piero, Maso, Rinaldo, was rebuilt. This building is in the street named after them, in which palace follows palace, though the full effect is lost, owing to the narrow space. The exterior bears, however, decidedly the mark of time, which is still more the case with the neighbouring palace of the Alessandri.

The streets were mostly paved with flagstones (lastrico), even in the suburbs—a custom which gradually replaced the causeways of tiles (ammattonato) or of small stones (selciato); and when adopted in the smaller Tuscan towns contributed to give them a clean and well-to-do appearance. Even before the end of the thirteenth century this kind of pavement is said to have been used. The stones were procured from the hill of San Giorgio, adjoining the city on the left bank of the river, and the immediate neighbourhood, as well as from the quarries of Fiesole and Golfolina, already mentioned. For a long time the stones were left in their polygonal quarry form, until in recent times it was preferred to hew them square. The laborious and costly work required by a strong and perfectly uniform embankment to the sewers of the city would progress but slowly. It was placed under the careful superintendence of the commissariat officials (officiales grasciæ), to whom was especially entrusted the charge of those streets in which the Barbary-horse races took place.[36] The paving of the Place of the Annunziata—the centre of which remains, however, at the present day unpaved, like those of Sta. Maria Novella, San Marco, and others—was first undertaken, in 1421, by the Servite monks, who solicited subsidies for the purpose, in consideration of the crowds which thronged to the miraculous image in their church.

It is comprehensible that the noticeable revolution in architecture should likewise affect the sister arts. Here, however, we encounter in the first rank two artistic characters essentially differing from one another. With Lorenzo Ghiberti the influence of the school of Giotto is very perceptible, and in the reliefs, his master-pieces, he allows the picturesque principle to predominate to a certain extent, and with a careful calculation of the effect, which to some degree surpasses the ability or courage of the painter so active in his youth. The attitudes and drapery, however, of Ghiberti’s figures are in harmony with the spirit of antiquity which had inspired Nicolò Pisano more than a century and a half earlier. The full outbreak of realism in conception and form is displayed in the somewhat younger Donatello, who, unpoetical and less imaginative than Ghiberti, depends for models rather upon real, if even less beautiful, nature, than upon works of antiquity, of which, indeed, Rome afforded him but scanty and doubtful specimens. Both were goldsmiths, whose art had at that time reached a high degree of perfection, and was distinguished by the production of great works. It was the profession which Brunellesco had originally followed, and for centuries remained connected with that of the sculptor. In 1408 Ghiberti, then only twenty-two, received the commission for his first bronze door of the Baptistery, the completion of which required more than twenty years. In 1414 he executed the statue of St. John, and six years later that of St. Matthew, for two niches on the exterior of the ground-floor of Or San Michele, the sculptural adornment of which, at the cost of the guilds, had been determined upon in 1406. In 1424 the execution of the second door of the Baptistery was entrusted to him, which was finished twenty-eight years after, three years before his death. One work of less importance remains from the year 1428—the bronze chest executed for the brothers Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici for the reception of the relics belonging to the Camaldulensian convent of the Angeli.[37] In 1411 Donatello began the statue of St. Mark, which he produced, together with that of St. Peter, for Or San Michele; about 1420 he began the monument for Pope John XXIII.; and in 1427 he was commissioned by the Medici to execute the monument of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci for Naples. His most excellent work in respect to lightness and grace, and which is without a touch of the heaviness so often characteristic of him, is the statue of St. George for Or San Michele. The date of the production of this work can as little be determined as that of the excellent figures of the Prophets which adorn the niches on the belfry of Sta. Maria del Fiore.

In painting the spirit of realism gained the victory much more slowly, and to a far less extent. Even when this victory had been obtained in Florence, the softer feeling and typical form derived from Giotto prevailed in other parts of central and upper Italy in peculiar and flourishing schools. Not long before Masaccio had begun his frescoes in the Brancacci chapel in the Carmine, which was consecrated in 1422, the Camaldulensian Don Lorenzo had painted his beautiful pictures, which still represent the tendency of the previous century, although with a freshness and freedom far superior to the later Giottesque style. And Fra Angelico da Fiesole, who in 1407 entered the Dominican cloister of the little town whence he derived his name, remained his whole life long true to the tradition to which he has given the consecration of gentle poverty, pious fervency, religious sensibility, and at the same time, naïve simplicity. Not even Gentile da Fabriano, a son of the Anconite border, who was gifted with a more lively natural feeling and graceful freshness and serenity, and in 1421 had himself inscribed in the list of Florentine painters, succeeded in breaking through this narrow circle, which did not afford sufficient scope to the creative power of the new spirit of art. Masaccio has given expression to this spirit in a manner which has served as example to the most highly developed periods, by uniting the most true, lifelike, and varied expression with free but nobly naturalistic form. The artists who stand more or less under the influence of Masaccio, and also of the modern plastic art, belong chiefly to the period which we shall contemplate further on.

Thus had the city of Florence, when the fifteenth century entered on its fourth decade, developed in both severe and graceful beauty, under the influence of an art which, notwithstanding foreign traditions, was, nevertheless, in its peculiarity and luxuriance, the growth of its own soil. In external appearance, likewise, Florence was the city of a rich, active, sovereign republic, which sought its honour rather in the grandeur and brilliancy of its public buildings, both for ecclesiastical and secular purposes, than in the luxury of private houses. The city was at once munificent and thrifty, and, through all change, however precipitate, held firmly by old tradition, as was expressed by the prevailing similarity of the character of the architecture, notwithstanding the development of successive styles. Most of the streets were and remained narrow, the number of large squares was inconsiderable, but these streets were well paved, when in Rome people waded for years longer in the deep mire and dust of streets provided only with a tile causeway on each side. The greater number of houses were built of massive stone. The number of projecting upper storeys which darkened the streets had lessened more and more in the course of years. Some restriction was put on this mode of building by the imposition of a tax, which in Giovanni Villani’s time brought in 7,000 florins. Subsequently, however, it was expressly forbidden by law, and under the first Duke many of the projecting storeys were pulled down, so that their number is now proportionally small. A greater evil was the projection of the roofs over the street, but this was not removed till 1766. Although no fortress was assigned to the chief magistrate of the city, he was provided with a secure residence, and one befitting the dignity of his position. The boundary wall of Florence was a remarkable work. It enclosed the foremost height on the left bank of the river, and was fortified with towers. The gates were magnificent, among which that of St. Nicolò, with its projecting double storey, offers an example of its kind as the only one in complete preservation since the transformation undertaken in the sixteenth century.

The frame to the beautiful picture was afforded by the environs. As at the present day, so in late mediæval times, the city seemed to extend on every side into the plain, as well as up into the neighbouring mountains which skirted the flowery plain watered by the Arno. At the gates were hospitals and lazarettos for the sick and for pilgrims, particularly for all whose residence in the city seemed unadvisable, such as lepers and other sufferers from skin diseases. These charitable institutions were founded chiefly in the fourteenth century, and owe their origin to the benevolence of wealthy citizens and the companies. There were, moreover, convents, which were increased in number and extent from year to year, some of them situated immediately before the walls, some on the hills by the bridges leading across the streams and brooks of Mugnone, Terzolle, Mensola, Ema, and Greve. Celebrated names are connected with the history of many of these foundations. We may mention that of Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, who founded in 1260 the nunnery of Monticelli, opposite the Porta Romana; also that of his relative, the saintly Chiara, who was its first abbess. We may likewise allude to the family of the Acciaiuoli, who, both in politics and in Church history, played so great a part in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even in Dante’s time numerous villas had risen, and one of these reminds us of the poet himself—the one in possession of his family before Porta Pinti, where the ground rises towards Fiesole; while the graceful narrator of the fourteenth century brings country life in the Florentine environs in bright pictures before us. The number of villas already foreshadowed the time in which Ludovico Ariosto sang; they would exceed a twofold Rome if enclosed by a wall. The necessities of the period converted many convents and villas into fortresses, and many have retained their castellated character, as San Miniato, the Charterhouse, and Passignano, the villa of Petraja, the former villa of Salviati at the base of the hill of Fiesole, Castle Pulci on the left bank of the Arno below the town, and Torre del Gallo on the hill of Arcetri; not to speak of the mountain fortresses of a more ancient period, as Castle Vincigliata on the eastern hills, which has been restored in modern times. Such fastnesses rendered good service when, in 1363 and 1364, the Pisans pressed up to the walls with their foreign mercenaries, and stormed the gates. While the German mercenaries under the lord of Bongard, and the English under Hawkwood, at that time an adversary, saw the villas on the hills of Montughi, Bellosguardo, Arcetri, and Pozzolatico perish in flames, they could not touch the Charterhouse; and from the strong tower of Petraja the Brunelleschi, the possessors of the villa, courageously repulsed the attack of the English. In March 1397, the Abbot of Passignano withstood the troops of Alberigo of Barbiano, who had come to Pisa in the service of the Visconti, and laid waste the Florentine territory. Even in later times security from surprise was as much considered in the construction of a villa as picturesque effect and artistic adornment.

CHAPTER IV.

INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND LIFE IN FLORENCE.

The large sums which were continually expended by the Government as well as the citizens of Florence, from the middle of the thirteenth century, for public objects—such as the enlargement, fortification, and embellishment of the city, for palaces and the residences of officers of the State, bridges and streets, churches and convents, hospitals and charitable institutions—would lead us to infer pecuniary means apparently out of proportion with the extent and resources of the territory and the site of the town, excluded as it was from the unrestricted use of the sea route till far into the fifteenth century. The great industrial activity and unusual intelligence of the inhabitants profited by favourable and conquered unfavourable circumstances so far, that while the Pisans still commanded the port which bore the name of their town, and was afterwards replaced by that of Leghorn—while Lucca possessed the harbour of Motrone, and Siena that of Talamone, and could thus shut out the inland state from the sea—the trade and industry of Florence had long surpassed theirs. The political importance attained by the great guilds so soon after their institution shows how firmly rooted was their power, even at the commencement of their existence, and that they really represented the most respected and affluent part of the community. We are vividly reminded of these corporations when we stand before the magnificent building of Or San Michele, or, at the eastern end of the Piazza della Signoria, gaze upon the arms graven in stone upon the residence of the Magistrate of Trade, who had to decide in all disputes and questions of competition between the magistrates of the different guilds. Four of these guilds come under consideration when we treat of industrial and commercial activity on a large scale—viz., the cloth-weavers, merchants or traders in foreign cloth, silk-weavers, and money-changers.

The woollen manufacture arose perhaps earliest of all, to satisfy one of the most important demands; and though it is doubtful whether native productions are spoken of in a Lucchese document of the year 840 respecting woollen and silk goods, we certainly do not err in the inference that Florence knew and practised this branch of industry at least from the time of her political rise, after the death of the Countess Matilda. In the beginning of the following century, a corporation of cloth-weavers existed, whose consuls signed a treaty of peace between their fellow-citizens and Siena in the year 1202. Thirty-seven years later, this branch of industry received an important accession from the Lombard order of the Humiliates, founded by Bishop Pietro Manadori. They settled first in the neighbourhood of the city, where the extensive buildings and gardens of the Villa San Donato are now to be seen, and finally, removed in 1256, to the monastery of Ognissanti, where they were long actively employed in their own interests and the welfare of the community who protected them, and did much to promote and perfect the woollen manufacture. On the neighbouring banks of the Arno arose workshops, houses for dyeing and washing wool, warehouses and booths of these brethren, who also aided essentially in the draining and cultivation of a somewhat marshy district. By the time the useful activity of the order slackened (about 1330 it entirely ceased), the Florentines had learnt all they could teach, and the city was full of cloth-weavers, as the names of several streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than two hundred convents.[38]

In close and varied connection with the Arte della Lana was that of the Mercatanti, usually called Arte di Calimala, the oldest statutes of which date from 1339. As the native cloth manufacture did not suffice for the demand, and at first only supplied ordinary kinds, French and Flemish cloth was imported from abroad in great quantity, in a raw state, to Florence, where it was dyed, shorn and dressed, and returned to foreign countries, often to the place whence it had come. The skill of the dyers and other workmen in Florence, whose processes long remained a carefully guarded secret, made this profitable trade a monopoly until the rise of manufactures in the western countries of Europe. The guild had its representatives, couriers, settlements, and hostelries in France. It is clear that only the most conscientious honesty could sustain their credit, wherefore the strictest statutes respecting the different qualities of the cloth, the dyeing, and all other things to be taken into consideration, regulated the manufacture as well as the sale. The dyers formed a special guild, which, however, was subordinate to the consuls of Calimala, to whom also, rather singularly, the gold and silver smiths were subject. Another guild belonging to that of the Arte della Lana was that of the washers and combers of wool, which still exists as Compagnia dei Battilani, and has its meeting-place in Via delle Ruote, near Via San Gallo. Its church, whose sacristy is adorned by the portrait of Michele di Lando, was publicly exhibited every year on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the high festival of the company. That such subordinate connections gave rise to misunderstandings in troublous times, and that new guilds arose without being able to maintain themselves permanently, has been already stated.

In the year 1338 the number of workshops (botteghe) of the clothiers’ guild amounted to more than 200, which supplied from seventy to eighty thousand pieces of cloth at the price of 1,200,000 gold florins, the third of which sum at least remained in the city as workmen’s wages, not to mention the profits of cloth merchants. The number of workmen amounted to 30,000. In the first years of this century the number of workshops had been a third more, and that of the pieces of cloth above 100,000; but the quality and price were lower, as they had not then the excellent English wool. The number of the magazines (fondachi) of the Calimala guild amounted to twenty. These imported yearly more than 10,000 pieces of foreign cloth, to the worth of 300,000 gold florins, for sale in the city itself, besides those which were again exported.[39] Among the proprietors of such magazines, we find the names Acciaiuoli, Alberti, Albizzi, Bardi, Buonaccorsi, Capponi, Corsini, Peruzzi, Pucci, Ricci, Ridolfi, Rinuccini—names which are mentioned a hundred times in the annals of the city, and which mostly are still heard there. Even in the second half of the thirteenth century, and therefore some time before their political power, these two guilds were very active in France, and we find their agents in 1281, beside those of the Genoese in Nismes, where, fifteen years later, we meet with the representatives of the trading companies of the Cerchi, Mozzi, Spini, Scali, and Folchi. In 1325, Filippo Villani and Cione di Lapo Ghini conducted the business of the Peruzzi and the Scali as Florentine consuls at Paris. The great fairs of Beaucaire and Forcalquier, with those of Provins, Lagny, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, etc., were of the greatest importance for this branch of industry.[40] In Italy, Venice was an important emporium for this trade, for Germany and Hungary as well as for the Levant. Till a few years ago, the extensive barn-like building which served for the dyeing and washing of the wool was still to be seen on the Lung’arno above the Uffizi; and on several palaces we still see the rings for holding the wooden staves on which the woollen fabrics were hung out as an indication that the houses belonged to the guild. The guild-hall of the Arte della Lana was the present Canonica of Or San Michele, where the coat of arms—the lamb with the flag, and the comb with the lily above it, in a blue field—still reminds one of its former destination, as well as an inscription of the date of 1308. The guild-hall of the Calimala, which had as a device a golden eagle standing over a ball of wool in a red field, stood in the little street leading from the Piazza della Signoria to the New Market, which is now called Calimaruzza: though it was converted into private houses after the abolition of the guild, the old devices may still be seen upon them. The street leading from the New to the Old Market still preserves the name Calimala, respecting the origin of which only untenable conjectures exist, and which in its present aspect reminds us as little as does any part of the whole centre of the old city of the former flourishing state of the trade.[41]

Of no less importance, and perhaps hardly less ancient than the cloth manufactures, was the weaving of silk, which, after its introduction into Sicily by King Roger, had been in a short time transplanted to Central Italy, if, indeed, it was not previously cultivated in Lucca. Of all the great branches of industry of the Middle Ages, this is the only one which has preserved a certain importance down to our day. The Arte della Seta was usually called the Por Sta. Maria, after the St. Mary’s Gate, or Porta Regina, opposite the Ponte Vecchio, at the entrance of the street still called Via di Por Sta. Maria (usually Mercato Nuovo), where the former guild-hall still stands, near the church of Sta. Maria sopra Porta, in the Via di Capaccio, distinguished by the coat of arms, a closed red door in a white field. The silk-weavers appear already, in the twelfth and oftener still in the thirteenth century, as a corporation in public acts and treaties, in the conclusions of peace and other compacts. In the list of the masters of the guild in the year 1225 their number is given as more than 350, and probably they had even then statutes; but the oldest still extant date from 1335, and therefore from a time when this industry seems to have attained considerable importance under the Guelfs from Lucca, who had emigrated to Florence in great numbers in 1316. The dyeing of silk was pursued here with great skill, and in particular the crimsoned tissue stood in high reputation in the fourteenth century. We shall speak later of the most brilliant epoch, the fifteenth century. The Vicolo della Seta, in the vicinity of the former hall, and the Via de’ Velluti, on the left bank of the river, near Via Maggio, where numerous silk-weavers and other mechanics originally lived, and where the still flourishing family of the Velluti took its rise, remind us of their former great activity.[42]

Though the branches of industry we have mentioned contributed much to increase the wealth of the Florentine people, and make their name famous in foreign lands, they were not the chief source of national wealth. The business of money-changing seemed thoroughly at home here, and it is not surprising that the invention of bills of exchange, which we first meet with in 1199 in the relations between England and Italy, should be ascribed to Florence. The money trade seems to have flourished as early as the twelfth century, towards the end of which a Marquis of Ferrara raised money on his lands from the Florentines. In 1204 we find the money-changers as one of the corporations. In 1228, and probably from the beginning of the century, several Florentines were settled in London as changers to King Henry III.; and here, as in France, they conducted the money transactions of the Papal chair in conjunction with the Sienese. Their oldest known statute, which established rules for the whole conduct of trade (Statuto dell’Università della Mercatanzia) drawn up by a commission consisting of five members of the great guilds, is dated 1280. Their guild-hall was in the Via Calimaruzza, opposite that of the Calimala, and was later included in the buildings of the post-office, on the site of which, after the post-office had been removed to what was formerly the mint, a building was lately erected, similar in architecture to the Palazzo of the Signoria, which stands opposite. Their coat of arms displayed gold coins laid one beside another on a red field. At the end of the thirteenth century their activity, especially in France and England, was extraordinarily great. But if wealth surpassing all previous conception was attained, it not seldom involved loss of repute, and those who pursued the calling ran the risk of immense losses from fiscal measures to the carrying out of which they themselves contributed, as well as those which were caused by insolvency or dishonesty. These losses would indeed have ruined the trade and credit of the Florentines in the fourteenth century, had not their resources been so varied, and their intelligent activity so great. The names of Tuscans and Lombards, and that of Cahorsiens in France, no longer indicated the origin, but the trade of the money-changers, who drew down the ancient hatred upon themselves which the fœneratores had incurred from too frequently confounding usury with rightful gains. It is this which the Divina Commedia describes where it speaks of shadows sitting mournfully shielding themselves from the glow of vapours with their hands, and with bags round their necks on which they feed their eyes.[43] France possessed at this time the greatest attraction for the Florentine money-makers, although they were sometimes severely oppressed, which is sufficient proof that their winnings were still greater than their occasional losses. In 1277, they, with other Italians, were obliged to compound for a sum of 120,000 gold florins, when King Philip III. took advantage of a decree of the Council to proceed against the usurers, a manœuvre which Philip IV. the Fair repeated fourteen years later.

If Florentines suffered among those prosecuted by this king for ‘money coining on the Seine,’[44] Florentines certainly aided him in other extortions and dishonesties in France and in Flanders, and it was the bank of the Peruzzi which paid the sum by means of which the constables of Philip the Fair, and chief among them the Tuscan knight and financier Musciatto Franzesi, accomplished the attempt on Pope Boniface VIII. in 1303 at Anagni.[45] New oppressions arose under Philip VI., in whose person the line of Valois ascended the French throne. He not only again debased the coinage for the necessities of the English war, but also extorted a heavy forced loan from all foreign merchants and bankers, and furthermore assisted the Duke of Athens, after his expulsion, in his reprisals against the Florentine trade. But notwithstanding all partial losses, and the great catastrophes which befell the Florentine trade in the same century, it remained, even in the following, mistress of the French money transactions, and, in certain respects, of French trade.

The Florentine money market suffered the severest blow from England. At the end of the twelfth century there were already Florentine houses of exchange in London, and if Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians managed the trade by sea in the times of the Crusades, it was the Florentines mostly who looked after financial affairs in connection with the Papal chair, as we have seen. Numerous banks appeared about the middle of the thirteenth century, among which the Frescobaldi, a family of ancient nobility, and as such attainted by the prosecutions against it, took the lead, and were referred to the custom-house of the country for re-imbursement of the loans made to the kings Edward I. and II. Later, the two great trading companies of the Bardi and Peruzzi came into notice, and with their money Edward III. began the French war against Philip of Valois. But even in the first year of this war, which began with an unsuccessful attack upon Flanders, the king suspended the payments to the creditors of the State by a decree of May 6, 1339. The advances made by the Bardi amounted to 180,000 marks sterling, those of the Peruzzi to above 135,000, according to Giovanni Villani,[46] who knew only too well about these things, since he was ruined by them himself to the extent of ‘a sum of more than 1,355,000 gold florins, equivalent to the value of a kingdom.’ Bonifazio Peruzzi, the head of the house, hastened to London, where he died of grief in the following year. The blow fell on the whole city, for, as may be supposed, numerous families were interested in the business of the great houses, which not only counted a number of partners or shareholders, but had also money from all sides, from the city and from foreign countries, to keep as deposits or to invest profitably. The injury to credit was very threatening. In the year 1326, the fall of one of the oldest and most important of the banking companies, that of the Scali, Amieri, and Petri, had occurred just as the war against Castruccio, the lord of Lucca, took an evil turn. But the position of affairs was now far more critical. Both houses began at once to liquidate, and the prevailing disturbance contributed not a little to the early success of the ambitious plans of the Duke of Athens. The real bankruptcy ensued, however, in January 1346, when new losses had occurred in Sicily on account of the measures of the French Government which we have already mentioned. The banks of the Acciaiuoli, Bonaccorsi, Cocchi, Antellesi, Corsini, da Uzzano, Perendoli, and many smaller ones, as well as numerous private persons, were involved in the ruin. ‘The immense loans to foreign sovereigns,’ adds Villani, ‘drew down ruin upon our city, the like of which it had never known.’ There was a complete lack of cash. Estates in the city found no purchasers at a third of their former value; those in the country were disposed of at two-thirds their value, and fell even lower than this. The chronicler who gives us this sad information was imprisoned for debt on account of the failure of the Bonaccorsi, whose partner he was.

As the first result of these misfortunes was the impoverishment of numerous families, the community at large was soon involved in it; as the revenues diminished quickly with the public affluence, money was only to be obtained at unheard-of usurious interest, and the prestige of the Florentine trade lost considerably in foreign countries. The famine and pestilence of 1347 and 1348, the oppressions of the mercenary bands and the heavy expenses caused by them, the cost of the war against Pope Gregory XI., and finally the tumult of the Ciompi, left Florence no peace for a long time. The aristocracy, which came into power in 1382, at last succeeded in restoring the equilibrium, opening new resources to industry and trade, and rendering the old connections again secure. Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century industry was again flourishing in all its branches in Florence, financial operations were extended, and foreign countries filled with Florentine banks and mercantile houses. After the fall of Pisa the last restrictions on navigation were removed, and it was no longer necessary, as in past times, to hire French vessels in Aiguesmortes for conveyance to the insecure and small roadsteads of Motrone or Pietrasanta, or to conclude treaties with the Sienese for the use of the bad and pestilential harbour of Talamone. The number of Florentine settlements and offices had been already very considerable a century earlier. In London the most important firms had their representatives, Bruges was the chief place for Flanders, and we shall see how these connections lasted to the time of the greatest splendour of the Medici. France is frequently mentioned. The official representatives of the Florentine nation resided in the capital, while numerous houses established themselves in Lyons, in Avignon (since the removal of the Papal chair to this town), in Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Marseilles, &c. Large transactions were made in Upper Italy at Venice and Genoa, at Castel di Castro in Sardinia, in Apulia, Barletta, and at Palermo in the island of Sicily; Rome and Naples saw in the fifteenth century the greater part of the banking business and a considerable portion of other trade in Florentine hands. There were Florentine colonies in Majorca, at Tunis, at Chiarenza in the Morea, in Rhodes under the supremacy of the Knights of St. John, and in Cyprus under that of Guy de Lusignan; while Florentine merchants carried trade into Asia Minor, Armenia, the Crimea, far into Central Asia and Northern China. The house of the Peruzzi alone had sixteen counting-houses in the fourteenth century, from London to Cyprus.

The prudence and careful calculation which were in general characteristic of the Florentine trade prevailed in everything relating to the transmission and receipt of money and the term of payments. Not only have we general rules from Balducci Pegolotti, in the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, as to how they should proceed in calculating the money to be paid abroad, but detailed notes on the fluctuations of the money market in consequence of fairs, expeditions of galleys, regular proceedings of the State, purchase of wool, etc., in the most important places, as Naples, Genoa, Bologna, Venice, Avignon, Paris, Bruges, Barcelona, etc. The Papal court, with which such extensive business was pursued—whether Rome or Avignon, or for the time another town, were its residence—seemed to the experienced Florentine to deserve especial remark. ‘Wherever the Pope goes, money is dear, because from all sides one has to pay so much to him. When he goes away, an ebb sets in, because the members of his court, if they are not rich, must borrow.’ The times when the bills fell due were regulated generally by the distance. An order drawn at Florence on Pisa or Venice was due on the fifth day after the money was paid in; in Rome and Genoa it was the fifteenth day; in Naples the twentieth; in Provence, Majorca, and France, the sixtieth; in Flanders the seventieth; in England the seventy-fifth; and in Spain, after three months. The contracting parties could, however, make arrangements at will.[47] According to the report of an annalist,[48] seventy-two exchange houses and tables were counted in Florence, in the Mercato Nuovo and its vicinity, in the year 1422, and the sum of money in circulation was calculated at two millions of gold florins; while the value of the wares, the letters of credit, and other property defied calculation.

While industry and trade had accumulated great wealth in Florence, the spirit of the community accorded well with it. In spite of the many wars and other disturbances the city rose to such prosperity in the first decades of the fourteenth century (when its territory included only Pistoja, Colle, and Arezzo, and therefore scarcely a third of Tuscany in later times) that Giovanni Villani could remark in 1336-1338 that her revenues exceeded those of the kings of Naples, of Sicily, and of Aragon. With all the changes after the rise of the new wealthy families at the beginning of the century the style of living had remained simple, and even continued so after the luxury of the court of Anjou, partly supported by Florentine money, had affected Florentine manners unfavourably; yet there was no stinting for public works. The citizens were in general beneficent: the number and importance of the charitable institutions prove it. As with the Government, so with the corporations, a lively sense was always displayed of the dignity and grandeur of the city and community. And even if that oft-mentioned decree of the republic of the year 1294,[49] according to which the architect Arnolfo shall be charged to design the model of a cathedral church ‘of such splendour that human power should be unable to invent anything grander or more beautiful, in consideration that a people of noble origin ought so to arrange its affairs that even in the exterior works a wise and lofty mind may be recognised’—even if this decree appears to be a production of the sixteenth instead of the thirteenth century, there are not wanting reliable records which announce the same spirit, and, still more, works which testify to it. In the year 1296, legacies in aid of this church were made a duty for every one; notaries were obliged to enjoin them in drawing up wills, and omissions were punished.[50] In 1338 the community granted subsidies for this same building, ‘that a work so beautifully and honourably begun might be continued and completed still more beautifully, and the grants made by the community appear liberal and considerable.’ When a pavement for the Piazza della Signoria was ordered in June 1351 it was especially insisted upon that the dignity and importance of the whole town were concerned, as well as the stateliness and beauty of the palace of the chief magistrate of state. When in August 1373 the public reading and exposition of the Divina Commedia was applied for and permitted, the petitioners assigned as the ground of their request the wish that, even if otherwise unlearned, they themselves, their fellow-citizens, children, and posterity, be instructed in eloquence, guided to virtue, and warned against vice. When in 1409 the fabrication of the bronze gates of the shrine of St. Zanobius was entrusted to Lorenzo Ghiberti, it was said that he must have regard to the ancient veneration for the saint, as well as to the high dignity of the community, and respect to the cathedral in which this work was to have the most honourable place possible allotted to it. At the first mention of the building of the Foundling Hospital, begun in 1421 at the expense of the silk-weavers’ company, it is remarked that ‘this beautiful building is destined for the reception of those whose father and mother have maliciously forsaken them, contrary to the rights of nature.’ As the silk guild here, so was the woollen guild in Sta. Maria del Fiore entrusted with the guidance of the works, beside the regular building committee (Opera del Duomo). The share of the companies in the building and decoration of Or San Michele is repeatedly mentioned. As a matter of course, all that concerned the adornment of the city, the churches not excepted, must be subordinate to the requirements of safety and defence. In 1353, when the people were fighting against Giovanni Visconti, and afterwards, when the enterprise of Cardinal d’Albornoz for regaining Romagna for the Holy See gave a prospect of unsettled times, and the disorder of the freebooters led by the Knight of St. John of Montreal (Fra Moriale) began, the money held in readiness for the bell-tower was employed in enlisting men. As late as October 1368, when the city fell to bickerings with the Emperor Charles IV., which were then, as usual, made use of by the Visconti for the extension of their own power over Tuscany, and when their mercenary bands penetrated to the gates of Florence, a decree was passed that the sums destined for the completion of Sta. Maria del Fiore should be employed for strengthening and repairing the walls. The architects of the church were soon afterwards commanded to build a wall along the river, from the Castell Altafronte, which is still in partial preservation, and which joins the Uffizi, built in the sixteenth century, to the Rubaconte bridge, and to level the road ‘as should appear most suitable to the adornment of the city.’

A people which accomplished such great things must have possessed unusual civic virtues, apart from their more brilliant intellectual qualities, and spite of the weaknesses and faults which the greatest of the sons of Florence has scourged in angry love and loving anger. A despot can in a short time heap splendour on splendour; the activity of spirit of a popular commonwealth is different and more steady. The two free States in which we meet with the most perfect expression of this, Venice and Florence, show that this is not dependent on the form of government, but on a firm will and clear conception. The Florentine people combined these in a high degree. In the midst of political troubles and civil disturbances they constantly advanced; the final gain was greater than the losses through momentary retrogression, however violent. The people were contented, frugal, industrious, and attached at all times to ancient customs. That great changes were gradually made in customs and modes of life was according to the law of all ages, and of natural development, though some aspects of it did not seem the most pleasing. Manners and feelings of those days, which the Paradiso in the ‘Divina Commedia’ describes with such incomparable beauty and at the same time with such melancholy, when ‘in the old encircling walls, Florence was peaceful, moderate, and modest,’ the ‘civic life so calm, so beautiful, the society so reliable,’—a state of things which the poet closes with the time ‘before Frederic had fought out his quarrel,’[51]—they indeed lay far behind him who has lent to their memory form and duration for all future time. But the greatest change was to come after his death. The influence of the numerous foreigners, especially the French and Frenchified Neapolitans who came with the Angevins and their regents, was by no means beneficial; and the various sumptuary laws which were to restrain the women point especially to the example set in 1326, by Charles Duke of Calabria and his consort, Marie of Valois, the parents of the unhappy Joanna I., with their whole court. Then came the times of the Duke of Athens; soon after, the pestilence with its evil results, which are open to all in the stories of the ‘Decamerone.’ Giovanni Villani, who died in the year 1348, says once that the Florentines of the thirteenth century in their simple life and poverty achieved more than those of his time in the midst of their wealth and luxury.

Nevertheless, the age was in many respects simple, and remained so even after communication had been rendered easier in all directions, wealth accumulated, and more connections formed. The houses were simple, with their windows closed, not yet by panes of glass, but by wooden shutters, with their steep staircases and narrow courtyards; the furniture and the meals were simple, even of the foremost citizens and high magistrates; the clothing of the men was simple—and all this lasted to the fifteenth century, and during a part of it. The loggie have been already spoken of, in which, about the middle of this century, important family affairs were still despatched. At weddings and other family festivals, those who were invited assembled before the house, which often had not space to hold them all—as may be easily comprehended, when we find that the statutes of 1415 decreed that the number of the guests on both sides should not exceed two hundred. Notwithstanding Dante’s complaint that a father, at the birth of a daughter, thought with terror on the time of her marriage, the dowry was still, a century after his time, small in comparison with the wealth of the family. They saved at home, in order to gain means for public purposes, for ecclesiastical buildings and endowments, for beneficent institutions and patriotic festivals. The building of churches and hospitals came before the expenses for decorating town-house and villa. The public festivals were brilliant, and united spiritual and worldly interests. First in rank were those on the day of John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, to which all the towns, villages, and protégés of the territory brought votive offerings, and races were held in the afternoon, a custom which dated from 1288, when the Florentines had besieged Arezzo on that day. Races were customary on other festivals also, either with riders or free horses (barberi), as in the present day in Florence and other towns of Italy. The prizes consisted of large pieces of gold and silk brocades, called palio. Beside the feast of St. John, in which the whole city with the signoria and other magistrates took a part, and that on St. Peter’s day, various others celebrated patriotic events. Thus the feast on St. Romulus’ day commemorated deliverance from the threatening hordes of Radagaïs; that on St. Barnabas’ day the victory over the Ghiellines on Campaldino in 1279; that on St. Anne’s day the expulsion of the Duke of Athens; St. Victor’s day the victory over the Pisans in 1364. Church festivals were frequently united with mysteries in Carmine, Sto. Spirito, San Felice, &c.; representations which we find shared in by the highest classes, and customary even in the second half of the fifteenth century. Various kinds of amusements took place in the open air; and the history of the Carraia bridge tells of the accident which occurred on May 1, 1304, when the bridge fell in, during a representation of the infernal regions by means of a grand apparatus.

May 1, the Calendimaggio, was the high day for the people, and the green branches on the door-posts have preserved the name of May in Italian as well as in German (and in English). It was on this day that Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari at an entertainment for children. Among the popular festivals were the Epiphany (Befana), celebrated by processions and masquerades, which are still carried on; and the Ferragosto, the Roman August holidays, where a donkey-race took place, with a buffalo-race as counterpart. Public games in which physical strength and, still more, agility were brought into play, delighted high and low. Among these were calcio and maglio: the first of which was played on the large oblong square, afterwards shut in by rows of houses which bears the name of Prato d’Ognissanti; the latter in the vicinity of the Piazza San Marco, where the Via del Maglio still reminds us of it. In the one game the feat consisted in throwing a ball with the hand; in the other it was propelled by a wooden hammer weighted with iron. We shall speak farther on of the tourneys, exercises, and festivals of the high, and the merry popular gatherings of the potenze. There was never a lack of music. The trumpeters and other musicians of the Signoria were never absent from any procession, and cheerful tunes accompanied every festival. Boccaccio’s tales and the frescoes in the Camposanto of Pisa show how music formed an integral part of social life. The most renowned instrumental performer who flourished in the second half of the fourteenth century, Francesco Landino, enchanted all by his delicate performances on the harpsichord, even in his old age and blindness.

Such were life and manners in the times preceding the rise of the Medici to power. The original simplicity no longer existed, and could no longer exist; but, in the tone and conduct of public as well as private life, the good old traditions still retained their influence. When the Romans and Neapolitans mocked at the frugal habits of the Florentines, the Florentine, seeing the anarchy and degeneracy of the former, and the effeminacy and instability of the latter, could point to his beautiful city, and the order in his private life, in which, though everything was conducted with the most scrupulous economy, the necessaries of life, and, in many cases, its luxuries, were always to be found. In Florence we find no Roman and no Neapolitan in trade and industry; but in both Naples and Rome, the principal business was in the hands of the Florentines, whose gains were profitable to their native city. Among these, in the fourteenth century, none was so conspicuous as Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who became a great and influential man at the court of Anjou, and lord of extensive possessions in Apulia and Greece, but whose heart belonged to his native city, in the neighbourhood of which he prepared his family vault. The heroic times of the Farinata, Cavalcanti, and Donati were past; but the Florentine of the later times combined the citizen and the great lord, the merchant, statesman, and patron of art, in a harmonious whole, to a degree never surpassed by the denizen of any other country.

CHAPTER V.

THE ALBIZZI AND COSIMO DE’ MEDICI.

Cosimo de’ Medici was a man of mature age when his father died. Born on September 27, 1389, the day of the saints Cosmo and Damian, he was christened after the former; and a Florentine expression blended veneration for the sacred martyrs with veneration for the ruling family, who had chosen them as patrons: ‘Per San Cosmo e Damiano ogni male fia lontana.’ His education was excellent; and, although he was intended for a mercantile life, he studied the Latin language thoroughly, and under the guidance of masters such as the grammarians Niccolò of Arezzo,[52] and Roberto de’ Rossi, acquired a taste for literature and science which remained with him, and even increased, during the whole of his long life. He was, perhaps, twenty-four years old when he married Contessina de’ Bardi. Her father, Alessandro, Count of Vernio, belonged to a family which is of note among the Florentines from the eleventh century; and from which the principal street on the left bank of the Arno, between the old bridge and that of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, derived its name. The Bardi were originally a plebeian family, but were afterwards counted among the nobility. They, with other nobles, had aided the people to break the tyranny of the Duke of Athens, but were defeated a year later in valiant strife with the same people, who would no longer suffer ‘the great’ to have any share in the government, and set on fire the houses of those who had shortly before fought beside them. Piero de’ Bardi, Contessina’s great-grandfather, then withdrew to his castle of Vernio, situated in the Apennines to the north of Prato, which had been purchased ten years before by his brother from the Alberti, and recognised by the Emperor Charles IV. as a fief held under him. The enmity between the castellans and the Florentine people grew so violent, that Sozzo, Piero’s son, was condemned by the commune in contumaciam to death by fire, under the seemingly false accusation of having coined false money in Vernio.[53] Sozzo’s son was the father of Contessina, whose mother, Milla Pannocchieschi, was descended from the ancient Sienese dynasty of the Counts of Elci, which has lately become extinct. The name of Contessina (Contessa, Tessa), which we so frequently meet with in earlier times in Tuscany, calls to mind the great Countess Matilda, whose memory was preserved by a grateful people. The enmity between the great and the plebeians, though it still prevailed, and was used as a pretext when the question of political rights arose, never at that time interfered with family alliances.

We hear nothing of Cosimo till the time when Pope John XXIII., on his eventful journey to the Council of Constance, halted in Florence. The relations between the republic and the Pope were to be traced from the time when the latter was all-powerful under his predecessor, Alexander V., as Cardinal Baldassar Cossa. When John XXIII. called upon the Florentines to send plenipotentiaries to Constance, and the counsellors were undecided, Filippo Corsini observed that they must not say ‘No’ to the Pope. He it was who had first originated the Council of Pisa, through which the way had been paved to the new assembly, and without his active assistance Florence would not have been able to resist King Ladislaus. The Pope had been already in connection with the Medici when he was legate of Bologna, and during his reign the money matters of the Curia were chiefly in the hands of Giovanni di Bicci. After John XXIII., yielding to King Sigismund’s urgency, had consented to the Council of Constance, in spite of his disinclination to a council on German soil, he was for a time in Florence, where he resided in the convent degli Angeli of the Camalduli. It was here that the Medici, with many respected citizens, visited him, and entered into negotiations with him. Here, too, he addressed to Bartolommeo Valori, in whom he had great confidence, upon his warning of the danger of holding this council in a foreign country, the remarkable words: ‘I own that this council is not to my advantage; but what can I do if my fate compels me to it?’[54] When the Pope set out for the Lake of Constance in the autumn of 1414, Cosimo de’ Medici was among his escort; not, as has been supposed, overrating the position as an aid to him in his own affairs, but simply to manage the money matters of the Holy See.

In these matters the Medici, who always remained true to John XXIII., were helpful to him even after his fall. On December 6, 1418, the deposed and imprisoned Pope drew up a bond in the Castle of Heidelberg for 38,500 Rhenish florins, which Giovanni de’ Medici and Niccolò da Uzzano, with the consent of Pope Martin V., paid by a bill on the Nuremberg house of Romel, as ransom to Duke Louis of Bavaria. When, after many difficulties, the liberated man had by means of his Florentine friends come to terms with his persecutor and obtained a safe-conduct from him, the Medici received him in Florence, where they undoubtedly aided in his reconciliation with Pope Martin. When the afflicted man, who in his misfortunes assumed a far more dignified attitude than formerly in the times of his greatness, made his last will on December 22, 1419, he appointed Giovanni di Bicci and three other distinguished Florentines as executors. That the first enriched himself with the legacy was a calumny which has long been disproved, for Baldassar Cossa left scarcely enough for his legatees to be paid.[55] The beautiful monument which the Medici erected to the deceased stands in the baptistery; the reclining figure was cast in bronze by Donatello, and in the marble portions Michelozzo assisted. ‘Johannes quondam Papa XXIII.’ says the significant inscription.[56]

Their friendship with the late Pope did not prevent the Medici from coming to a good understanding with the new one. The mark of favour to Giovanni di Bicci already mentioned tells of friendly relations even at a time when Martin V. was not well disposed towards the city, on account of disagreeable occurrences during his residence in Florence in 1420. We have seen how Cosimo accompanied John XXIII. to Constance, where, in the words of a contemporary, the whole world was assembled. On the flight of his patron he left the town in disguise, and resided for some time in Germany and France, till he returned home after about two years’ absence. In 1426, having been entrusted with embassies in Milan, Lucca, and Bologna, he stayed for some months in Rome, employed in State affairs at the time that the tedious strife with Filippo Maria Visconti had, by the conquest of Brescia, taken a favourable turn for the allied Florentines and Venetians; and it was important to persuade the Pope to act as umpire, since all parties, and especially the Florentines, longed for peace. This peace was actually signed at Venice on December 30, the Bishop of Bologna, the excellent Niccolò Albergati, representing Martin V.; and when the duke broke the treaty, which had only just been concluded, new and heavy misfortunes in arms forced him to appeal to the same mediation which he had so lately scorned. But it was only in the spring of 1428 that terms were agreed upon advantageous to Venice, which retained Brescia, but offered no compensation to the Florentines for their enormous expenses, thus justifying the prudence of old Giovanni di Bicci, who had counselled against the war. In gratitude to the Pope for his support, the Florentines, in 1427, bestowed the freedom of their city on his relations, the Colonna family.

At the death of his father, Cosimo was forty years old. In all business, public as well as private, he had proved himself skilful, active, and prudent. All who did not belong to the party which guided affairs since 1380 regarded him as their natural leader. The number of these opponents of the ruling faction was great, not only among the people—in whom more or less indistinct hereditary traditions were instinctively hostile to a government which had now existed for fifty years, and which, though it originated with the people, had from the first been tinctured with the character of an oligarchy—but also among the higher classes, many of whom were considerably oppressed by this faction. Giovanni di Bicci had always avoided appearing as the actual head of a party, perhaps from prudence, perhaps also for fear of exposing himself to the risk of catastrophes such as he had experienced in his youth. It was to be proved whether his son shared this feeling, and Cosimo’s behaviour hitherto implied that he did. It was a question, however, whether the oligarchy would find it advisable to suffer a man beside them whose reputation and wealth daily increased, and who, even without wishing it, must be dangerous to them if misfortune or blunder should arouse discontent. Since the death of Maso degli Albizzi, his son Rinaldo, Niccolò da Uzzano, and Palla Strozzi stood at the head of the party.

The Albizzi, who, as we have said, derived their origin from Arezzo, were at first of the Ghibelline faction, and appeared in Florence about the middle of the thirteenth century. They soon obtained repute among the plebeian families. From 1282 ninety-eight of their family sat in the magistracy of the priors, and fourteen attained to the office of Venner or Gonfalonier. Piero son of Filippo, the first Gonfalonier, was he who in a short time raised the authority of his family above that of all others. He led an active life at a time when the republic claimed much of the time and pecuniary means of the principal citizens, but in return afforded them opportunities of satisfying their ambition, and attaining to a height of power which might become dangerous to the commonwealth. He had repeatedly been charged with embassies to princes and republics; had been present at coronations; concluded treaties, among them those with the plundering mercenary bands, and with Bernabò Visconti; had been sent with congratulatory messages, as in 1367, when Pope Urban V., summoned by all the Italian patriots, returned from Avignon to Rome, unfortunately only for a time. Jealousy of his rising authority induced the heads of the Ricci, a rival family to his own, and their friends, to propose the exclusion from office of all such as were suspected of Guelphism. This measure was directed principally against the Albizzi; but Piero, cleverer than his opponents, helped to carry it through, while they had counted on his opposition. He knew how to make use of them. In 1357, being chosen president of the tribunal entrusted with this political inquisition of the Parte Guelfa, it was he who, with his friends, began that proscription which united all power in the city and government in his hands and those of his adherents, but also created that unendurable condition of affairs against which the rebellion of 1378 broke out. In the following year Piero, banished at first from Florence, having returned to one of his estates, fell a victim to the summary justice executed by the aristocratic leaders of the mob. A false accusation brought him to the scaffold; at a time when no law was respected, he paid the penalty of having himself made the laws subservient to political ends.

The family retired into exile; their houses were plundered and burnt. One of the branches, in a quarrel with relations, had discarded the name and altered the coat of arms, and flourishes still under the name of the Alessandri. The reaction of the year 1381 brought the exiles back, and they were soon more powerful than ever. Maso (Tommaso), Piero’s nephew, had been first banished to Barletta, on the Apulian coast, and then made a ‘Grande,’ i.e. disqualified for holding communal offices. He now attained almost dictatorial power, and exercised it with political insight, and a consistency which essentially aided in raising the republic to that height of power and repute on which it remained thenceforward, and long after his own faction was destroyed, till the revolution in Italian affairs at the end of the fifteenth century. If he acted intolerantly in home affairs; if proscriptions did not cease, and the prosecution of the Alberti, who were concerned in the insurrection of 1378 and in the execution of Piero degli Albizzi, showed cruelty in the enactment which commanded their houses to be razed to the ground, their coats of arms to be destroyed, and their property confiscated; a law that punished alliances by marriage and commercial transactions with them, extended even to their posterity;[57] it is less the fault of the man than of the spirit which had prevailed in the republics for centuries, and which led even the most discerning to make the commonwealth ever subservient to party policy, and to look upon their own faction as the State. Embassies to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, to King Rupert of the Palatinate, Pope Gregory XII., &c., alternated for Maso with a continuous series of the most important offices. Even when he was out of office, nothing was done without him. When the republic manfully resisted the progress of Gian Galeazzo in Central Italy, enlarged and secured her own territory by the conquest of Pisa, actively contributed to ecclesiastical union, and brought the dangerous war with King Ladislaus to a successful end, it was all really due to Albizzi. He was a rich man; the street outside the oldest district of the town, still named after his family, was almost entirely occupied by their houses and those of the Pazzi; and in our time, the palace belonging to his descendants, as well as that of the Alessandri, the half-ruined tower, the walled-up loggia, the passage to the market of San Piero, with the portico of the demolished church built by a descendant of Maso, remind us of the brilliant days of the family, whose coat of arms is still to be seen on the buildings—two concentric golden circles on a black field, and above it on a silver field the cross of the German order granted to Maso. In the lower valley of the Arno, on the right bank of the river, where a low range of hills stretches between the Lake of Bientina, reaching to the foot of the mountains of Pisa, and the green level of the marshes of Fucecchio, lies the large Villa Montefalcone, which came into the possession of the family in the second half of the fourteenth century. It was formerly a castle (destroyed by Castruccio) with a splendid view over the valley, strewn with villages lying mostly on low hills, and the beautiful wooded heights of Monte Albano, behind which the fertile Pistojan plain joined the Florentine valley of the Arno, which, while more varied, rivalled it in fertility.

Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417, aged seventy-four. His eldest son, Rinaldo, was the heir to his position in the Senate. He was a boy eight years of age when his relations fell in the tumult of Ciompi, had grown up in the traditions of his house, and from the year 1399 was active in affairs of State. No citizen was employed so much as he in embassies and commissions of all kinds. We meet with him in great and small matters; for the statesmen of the free city as little thought of declining small matters, as the greatest artists thought it beneath their dignity to paint shields and domestic implements, or to carve coats of arms on door-posts and chimney-pieces. Fifty different commissions were entrusted to Rinaldo, some in the vicinity, and some to the Popes, King Sigismund, to Naples, Lombardy, Genoa, Ferrara, Romagna, &c. The hard-working man left careful and detailed notes of all, which, with the documents and letters relating thereto, he first collected in 1423, and afterwards continued. They are models of a natural, pure, perspicuous, and always appropriate diction, at a time when the Tuscan dialect was threatened with an overgrowth of learned affectation and distortion, and was losing its popular simplicity. These notes are a source of the amplest knowledge of details for any one who earnestly studies the history of this period, remarkable in so many ways.[58] While he was so frequently employed in foreign service—for the year before his exile we find him at Rome—his opponents laboured at home for his ruin. It is as if Gino Capponi, Neri’s son, had thought of him when he wrote the advice intended for his son: ‘He who wishes for a great position in his native city, should not leave it too often, except in important cases.’ ‘Messer Rinaldo,’ says Giovanni Cavalcanti, a contemporary and adherent of the Medici, ‘knew not what fear is. He had clean hands, was well read in the sciences, was full of perseverance and love of justice, so that the multitude accused him of being hard and cruel. He lived only on simple fare, and hated feastings, and was accustomed to say that he who wished to keep in health must be no gormandizer; which his enemies interpreted as meanness. Would to God that we could not have said of this man that he was proud! for else he would have excelled many others in good qualities. But his pride clouded his own virtues, and misjudged those of others.’[59]

Beside the two Albizzi, none exercised greater influence in the guidance of affairs in the half-century of the oligarchy than Niccolò da Uzzano. The name of the family, extinct in the second half of the seventeenth century, was Miglioretti; but they were generally named after a little castle, now a gentleman’s villa, lying south of Florence, in the Greve valley, the environs of which are renowned for their excellent wine. The Da Uzzano appeared first in Florence in the days of the Emperor Henry VII. Niccolò, the son of Giovanni and Lena de’ Bardi, born about the middle of the fourteenth century, represented the moderate principle in the ruling party, as Giovanni di Bicci did among the opposition. He wished for an oligarchy, but did not desire the supremacy of a single family. As long as he lived, a restraint was laid upon the Albizzi; nay, he was even reported to have said, that, if he must live to see one stand at the head of affairs, he would sooner endure Cosimo than Rinaldo. For he feared the violent ambition of the latter more than the crafty calculation of his rival, and said of Rinaldo, that he would see no citizen by his side, but all beneath him, and did not think so much of destroying the Medici as of acquiring unlimited authority over his own party.[60] Niccolò did not, however, trust to its unity, and sought, therefore, to hold and preserve matters equally balanced. His repute was so high, that the faction was indeed named after him, and his beneficence equalled his wealth. In the Via de’ Bardi we still see the great palace which he is said to have had built by the painter Bicci di Lorenzo, and which, as he had no sons, passed with his daughter Ginevra to a branch of the Capponi, which still possesses it.[61] The severe unadorned façade of Opus rusticum still represents the simplicity of the time, which was soon replaced by the greater richness of form of the Medicean epoch; and his statue in marble, said to be a work of Donatello’s, is still shown in the house; whereas another likeness, painted by Masaccio, and once in one of the houses of the Corsican,[62] is said to have disappeared.

But Niccolò wished to leave his native town a memorial of his affection, and began building a lyceum for young men after a design by the same Bicci. By his last will he left a considerable sum invested in the national funds for completing the work and endowing lectureships; but the State expended the money for other purposes, and in the present day only the name of the broad Via della Sapienza, leading from the Piazza di San Marco to the Annunziata, reminds us of Niccolò da Uzzano’s patriotic intention. ‘He who wishes to be of use to the world, and to found of himself an honourable memory,’ remarks Giorgio Vasari, ‘must work himself as long as he lives, and not trust to posterity and heirs.’

Palla Strozzi was not made for the strife of factions; his heart belonged to study. ‘Messer Leonardo of Arezzo,’ remarks the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci,[63] ‘who has left us a whole gallery of interesting portraits of remarkable and meritorious men, used to say of him, that he was the happiest man he had known; for he possessed all that is requisite for human happiness, in intellectual as well as physical gifts. He was very useful to his native city, and obtained all the honours in the home and foreign administration which could be granted to a citizen. As ambassador he received honourable commissions, and, at the same time, always promoted the welfare of his country. With these gifts he united the strictest sense of honour, and was personally the most cultivated and respected burgher of the city. His modesty extended from his private life to his public position. He sought to avoid envy as much as he could, well knowing what harm is wrought by it to the commonwealth, and how it pursues deserving men. He did not like to be seen in public; he never appeared on the square of the Signoria, or the new market-place, except when he was summoned thither. If he went to the Piazza, he took the way past Sta. Trinità, through the Borgo Sant’Apostolo, stayed there only a short time, and then repaired to the palace. He was sparing of time, never wandered about the streets and squares, and scarcely had he arrived at home than he studied Greek and Latin, and lost not an hour.’ He was a rich man. In the registers of 1427 he opened the list of the tax-payers with a sum exceeding the valuation of Giovanni di Bicci by more than a fifth. A great part of his income he employed in the purchase of manuscripts and for scientific purposes. The origin of his family is unknown: the name occurs towards the end of the thirteenth century. That the Strozzi were Guelphs and plebeians is shown by their whole position; that they were popular, we see from the circumstance that the names of more than a hundred of their family occur among the priors of the corporations, while not less than sixteen attained the office of Venner. Their wealth increased rapidly, as did the branches into which they were divided, and in the territory they possessed lands and castles. One of them, Tommaso, was among those of higher rank who turned the popular insurrection of 1378 to their own purposes, and had to esteem himself fortunate in escaping the victorious reaction by a flight to Mantua, where he founded a branch of his family, which is still flourishing. Onofrio (Noferi), Palla’s father, who had died in 1417, seventy-two years old, was one of the most respected men of the republic. He was twice elected Gonfaloniere, and, beside other offices, he filled that of superintendent of the Mint; while embassies led him to the Popes Gregory XII. and Alexander V., when Florence tried her best to restore unity in the Church. It was he who determined on building the beautiful chapel in Sta. Trinità which now serves as sacristy, a building which was completed by his son, and the exterior of which is adorned with the three crescents, the arms of the Strozzi. The epoch of their greatest brilliancy had not yet begun, but they were approaching it rapidly.

As long as the different elements which formed the political parties held the balance of power, peace remained intact at home. The city had never been so rich or so splendid, trade and industry never so flourishing as then; the great burghers had never shown more lively common feeling, or created more beautiful public works, or devoted more helpful interest to science. It was felt that any inconsiderate step, from whatever side it might come, would disturb this peace; but it was this very consciousness of responsibility which enforced prudence. Niccolò da Uzzano used to say that he who summoned a parliament—i.e. who would bring about any decided change in the existing state of things—would dig his own grave.[64] Many respected burghers shared his views. It was natural however that an event should at last occur to cause open discontent in the city, and a more hostile position of the parties. The conquest of Pisa had not satisfied Florentine ambition; Lucca, with which Florence had so often quarrelled, remained a thorn in her side. When, a hundred and twenty six years after the time of which we are treating, Giorgio Vasari was employed in painting the great hall in the former palace of the Signoria with representations from the history of Florentine conquests, he was visited by the Lucchese ambassador at his work, and on his question, what he intended to portray on the remaining space, gave the bold answer, ‘The conquest of Lucca.’ This is only an insolent expression of the popular wish. In the Milanese war, Lucca, where, for nearly thirty years, a citizen, Paolo Guinigi, had ruled with almost absolute power, had taken sides for the Visconti, and thereby certainly placed Florence in some danger. Rinaldo degli Albizzi stood at the head of those who demanded that their neighbours should be chastised. But division arose in his own party; Niccolò da Uzzano, Palla Strozzi, Agnolo Pandolfini, and others, opposed him. The attitude of Cosimo de’ Medici was ambiguous. The reproach of having agreed to the plan of war in order to ruin the hopes of his rival, cleaves to him in spite of its being contradicted.[65] The war party, supported by Neri Capponi, one of the most influential burghers, and son of him who had taken Pisa, prevailed. In the Council the opponents were scarcely allowed to speak; a pretext was easily found, and the determination was taken at the end of 1429. Rinaldo degli Albizzi undertook the guidance of affairs as Commissary of the Republic, with extensive authority.

It was an undertaking as unsuccessful as it was unjust, notwithstanding the guilt of the Lucchese. The Florentines accomplished nothing from a military point of view; their great architect, Filippo Brunellesco, forfeited his fame as an engineer; the land was as cruelly as uselessly desolated; and the Duke of Milan was drawn into the war. Venice, Genoa, even Siena, took sides for or against; and after the leadership of Guinigi, by no means to the advantage of the Lucchese, had been lost by it, a peace was concluded in April, 1433, which was to restore every one his own—in what condition no one ventured to ask. The unsuccessful campaign had already caused much disturbance in Florence from the beginning, and given abundant material for evil speaking. Rinaldo degli Albizzi had returned from the camp without leave of absence: he was accused of having acted as a trader, and employed rations and booty for his villa of Montefalcone. His successor, Messer Giovanni Guicciardini, did not fare much better; the least offence he was accused of was, that he had sold the bread intended for the camp to the Lucchese.[66] Every one was in an ill-humour and at enmity when the costly and fruitless war was ended. Rinaldo could not conceal from himself the fact that his authority had suffered a dangerous blow. He thought to re-establish it more firmly by drawing the reins tighter. The one man of his party who had always dissuaded him most decidedly from this was no more: Niccolò da Uzzano had died during the war, in 1432. The void created by his death was soon visible to all.

The bitter enmity between Cosimo and Rinaldo seems first to have arisen at this time, for the two men do not appear to have been personal opponents till then. In the autumn of 1430 Cosimo had repaired to Verona on account of a sickness prevailing in Florence; at Ostiglia, on the Po, he heard of the loss suffered before Lucca. Appointed with Francesco Tornabuoni as ambassador at Venice, he had, on what grounds is unknown, declined the commission, but had gone, in March 1432, with Palla Strozzi to Ferrara, to make an agreement with Milan in the affair of Lucca, which, however, as we have said, was not carried out till a year later.[67] What had kindled such irreconcilable hatred between Rinaldo and Cosimo—who, hitherto, whatever might be their private feelings, had frequently worked together—is not known. The rival party reproached both Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo, who had for some time resided at Milan as Florentine ambassador, with having taken part in intrigues against the State, in order to prolong the war. But accusations of this kind usually rest on one-sided testimony, and it is much more likely that both the Medici quietly waited for a change at home, which public discontent, and the loss of reputation to the reigning party in consequence of the failure in war, seemed to announce. Cosimo did not deceive himself respecting the prevailing opinion against him. He kept himself aloof from the eminent men of the ruling faction, and appeared seldom in the palace; but it availed him little, for it was said he wished to lull the suspicions of the rulers, and his relations to the lower orders, which he could not, and perhaps would not, conceal, were made out a crime. The large loans which at different times he had been making to the public finances, as well as those to private citizens for whom he procured access to office by paying their arrears of taxes, had made him a popular favourite, but at the same time had increased the number of his political adversaries. It became more and more plain that things could not remain as they were. Rinaldo had tried, through Niccolò Barbadore, to persuade Niccolò da Uzzano to mediate shortly before his death, but had been repulsed. He now determined to act. He could reckon all the more on support because Cosimo, if he relied on popular favour, was suspected by the decided Guelphs from his connections with the old nobility—being a brother-in-law of the Bardi and Pannocchieschi, and through his brother Lorenzo related to the Cavalcanti and Malaspina, families of the Lunigiana; while he was united by friendship to the Buondelmonti and other nobles. Rinaldo had attempted to secure the consent of many partisans to violent measures against Cosimo and his adherents, when the election of a Signoria decidedly favourable to his plans, which entered on office with the gonfaloniere Bernardo Guadagni on September 1, 1433, seemed to offer the favourable moment. Bernardo Guadagni belonged to a distinguished family, the name of which occurs in various offices since the beginning of the thirteenth century; he was opposed to the Albizzi in the political movements of 1378, but afterwards became attached to them. Bernardo had not been eligible because he owed taxes, but Rinaldo cancelled the debt, and made him his tool.[68]

On September 7 Cosimo de’ Medici was summoned before the Signoria.[69] He had been at his villa in Mugello, from whence he was recalled to town under the pretext that his counsel was desired, and he was in fact appointed a member of a commission (pratica) for affairs of the commonwealth. As he passed the Or San Michele, Alamanno Salviati warned him that evil was intended, but he replied that he must obey the Signoria. Arrived at the palace, he was confined as a prisoner in a chamber of the upper storey called La Berberia. The principal accusation concerned treasonable machinations in the Lucchese war. That his life was aimed at is scarcely to be supposed, though certainly possible: that the prisoner feared it, is certain. The waves of party feeling ran so high, tongues were so sharp, and even the assemblies held in churches, ostensibly for purposes of Divine worship, were so openly employed for political ends, and for manœuvring against the Government, that it was not difficult by inquisitorial proceedings to justify the severest measures. The city was in the power of the opponents of the Medici; Lorenzo, his brother, who was in the country, seems to have tried in vain to bring about a rising. Niccolò da Tolentino, the general of the Republic, and a friend of Cosimo’s, rode with a squadron from Pisa to the village of Lastra, on the Arno, seven miles from the city, but hesitated to proceed farther, and declared that he appeared in support of the public peace. It was an anxious time of suspense.

The Signoria summoned the people to a parliament on the Piazza, surrounded by armed friends of the Albizzi. The result at first was favourable; but when the newly-appointed Balia had to decide on Cosimo’s fate, the differences of opinion showed themselves. The prisoner had found means to employ his money, and had bribed the Gonfaloniere, among others, with 1,000 gold florins. He has himself remarked that the people did not understand their own advantages; if they had wished for 10,000 gold florins, he would have paid the sum to save himself from the danger. There was no lack of representations of many kinds, even from foreign countries. The end was, that all the Medici, with the exception of Vieri’s descendants, were excluded from office. Cosimo was banished on September 29 to Padua for ten years, his brother for five years to Venice, and others of the family to Naples, Rimini, Ancona, and other towns. On the evening of October 3, as Ormanno degli Albizzi held the Piazza, guarded with his people, and an attack upon Cosimo was feared if the latter left his prison in the palace, the Gonfaloniere caused him, after the penalty had been announced to him, to be brought into his own lodgings under a safe-guard. Here he partook of some supper, left the city by the Porta San Gallo, and rode through Pistoja to the village of Cutigliano, on the road leading over the Apennines to Modena, where he arrived on October 4, the day of St. Francis d’Assisi. ‘On the 11th,’ so he relates, ‘I reached Venice, where many nobles with Lorenzo came to meet me, and I was not received like an exile, but as an ambassador. On the following day I visited the Signoria, to thank them for their influential mediation in my favour. The Signoria received me with kindness and honour, expressed regret at what had happened to me, offered residence and money supplies to whatever extent I wished. Many nobles came to visit me. On the 13th I repaired to Padua, as I had been enjoined, accompanied by Messer Jacopo Donato, who placed his beautiful house, provided with everything, at my disposal.’

While Cosimo de’ Medici thus resided, partly in Padua and partly in Venice, where he was allowed to go, honoured and loved for his well-calculated liberality, in personal connection with some of his friends and in correspondence with others, affairs in Florence rapidly approached another crisis. Other banishments had followed: that of the brothers Pucci, the eldest of whom, Puccio, was one of the most eager adherents of Cosimo, and one who had circulated the gold florins of his patron, when in prison, most skilfully; and Agnolo Acciaiuoli, whose correspondence with the exiles had been discovered. The fortune of war, already unfavourable to the Albizzi, now entirely forsook them. When new quarrels broke out in the Romagna between the Florentines and the Duke of Milan, the former were defeated. The excitement in the city increased to an alarming degree. Rinaldo soon perceived that he was no longer master of the situation. When, towards the end of August 1434, came the election of the Signoria, who were to take office on September 1, Rinaldo perceived that he must use force if he would prevent his enemy’s return. When neither the attempt to force new elections nor the endeavours to attract the old nobility succeeded, and the new Signoria expressed itself without reserve in favour of the Medici, while representations on the other side were useless, the Albizzi began to arm their followers, and to draw a number of discharged warriors to their service, in the hope of having the majority of the city with them, and dictating the law to the highest magistrate. But they calculated wrongly; even the heads of their own party, like Palla Strozzi and Giovanni Guicciardini, did not all flock to them. The city remained divided.

At the news of the warlike preparations which threatened them, and relying upon the support of the majority of the people, the Signoria determined to be beforehand with their opponents. On September 26, they caused the Piazza to be lined with armed men, and invited Rinaldo and some of his most eminent friends to appear before them; when, however, instead of obeying, the latter came to Sant’Apollinare, and advanced to the Piazza, with more than 600 men, the gates of the palace were hastily closed. Had the assailants proceeded vigorously, their cause would have prevailed—at least for the moment; but instead of advancing, they condescended to bargain, and then they were lost. While Ridolfo Peruzzi, one of the leaders of the party, was parleying in the palace with the Signori, who did not spare fair words, Rinaldo allowed himself to be persuaded to repair to the convent Sta. Maria Novella, to Pope Eugene IV., who, having fled before the insurrectionary Romanists, had reached Florence not long before, and now wished to play the peace-maker. As the adherents and people of Albizzi in vain awaited their leader, whom the Pope delayed with long speeches, the crowd dispersed, some going here, some there. The Signori gathered courage as they saw the crowd of opponents diminish, and ordered the alarm to be rung. Armed burghers hastened from all sides, and country people flocked into the city.[70] Messer Bartolommeo Orlandini caused the entrances to the Piazza to be guarded: Papi di Medici came at the head of the peasants. The Signori appeared on the balcony of the palace, and summoned the people to a parley. About three hundred and fifty voices gave the Signoria full power to appoint a Balia, after the usual manner, to proceed to urgent measures. With the Pope it was easy to come to an agreement by means of his confidant, Giovanni Vitelleschi, then Bishop of Recanati, the same whom Rinaldo had withheld from advancing. The revolution had succeeded without bloodshed. The speedily chosen extraordinary commission, more numerous than any before, conjointly with the colleges, recalled with one voice, Cosimo and his companions from banishment, into which they sent Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and with him more than seventy of his most distinguished partizans. ‘Oh, Pope Eugenius,’ said the knight to him, who now sought to console him with words, as he had before put him off with words, ‘I am not surprised at the destiny which befalls me, but I blame myself for having trusted to the promises of one who could not help himself; for he who is powerless in his own affairs cannot help others.’ Rinaldo degli Albizzi never saw his home again.

Cosimo de’ Medici had set out from Venice, September 26, accompanied by his brother, on the news of the first favourable events in Florence. On October 1 they learned the victory of their party; on the 5th they reached the territory of the Republic—on the same date, and at the same spot in the Pistojan mountains, where they had quitted it. ‘I have noted this,’ he observes in his ‘Ricordi’ above mentioned, ‘because at our expulsion several good and devoted persons said not a year would pass before we should again be in Florence. On the way several burghers met us, and in Pistoja the whole population flocked out of the gates to see us so armed. We did not enter the city. On the 6th we dined at our villa at Careggi, where a number of people had assembled. The Signori informed us that we should not enter Florence till they had sent us word. This happened after sunset, and we set out with a numerous escort. As it was expected that we would repair to our house, the whole street was filled with men and women. Lorenzo and I, accompanied by a servant, rode, however, along the wall, and so we passed the Santissima Annunziata and the back of the cathedral, the palace of the Podestà and that of the executors, to the palace of the Signoria, almost without being observed, for every one was in the Via Larga and at our house. The Signori had arranged it so in order to avoid excitement. They received us kindly, and I thanked them as was fitting, and at their wish we remained with them. We heard that, before our arrival, Messer Rinaldo and Ormanno his son, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and several other citizens, had been banished. The city was quiet, but, nevertheless, for security, the square and palace were guarded by a number of armed men.’

Florence had now a master. On January 1, 1435, Cosimo de’ Medici entered upon office as Gonfaloniere.

In an early work, unfortunately incomplete, and unknown till a few years ago, which relates the history of Florence from the return of Cosimo de’ Medici to the League of Cambray, Francesco Guicciardini[71] thus condenses his views on the government of the Albizzi: ‘After various disorders, a firm order of government was at last introduced by Parliament in 1393,[72] when Maso degli Albizzi held the office of Gonfaloniere. He, in order to avenge his uncle Piero, expelled almost all the Alberti, and the government remained in the hands of clever and sensible men, who conducted it in great harmony and safety till towards the year 1420. One cannot be astonished at this, for the people were so tired of the preceding disturbances that, when an orderly state of things began, every one adapted himself gladly to it. At this time it was plainly shown how great the power of our city is when unity prevails in her. For twelve years she maintained the war against Gian Galeazzo with infinite expense, and with Italian or foreign armies, for they often summoned a duke of Bavaria, a count of Armagnac, or a King Rupert over the Alps, to their aid. Scarcely was this war at an end, and, as was thought, the city exhausted and without means for some time, when she began the undertaking against Pisa which cost heavy sums in buying as well as in the siege. Then followed the war with King Ladislaus, in which she not only defended herself bravely, but also gained Cortona, though certainly at a heavy price. In short, the city attained such important success, preserved her freedom under the guidance of capable and honest men, warded off powerful enemies and enlarged her territory so considerably, that it was rightly said to be the wisest, most glorious, and successful government which Florence had ever had. The years from 1420 to 1434 were occupied with the war against Duke Filippo Maria, and the division of the city into two parties. At the head of one stood Niccolò da Uzzano, a man respected by all as wise and a lover of freedom; at the head of the other, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, and then his son Cosimo. Disunion and various excitements were introduced by the year 1433, after Niccolò had departed this life—first, Cosimo’s exile, then his return and the fall of his opponents; and as both changes, that of 1433 as well as of 1434, were brought about by the Signoria which entered on office on September 1 (it was usually elected on the day of the decapitation of St. John, August 29), it was decreed that the drawing of the lots should no longer take place on this day, but on the preceding, as has happened since, with the exception of a few years at the time of Fra Girolamo Savonarola.’

When the government of the Albizzi came to an end, the domain of the Republic had, with the exception of some smaller territories and villages in the mountainous regions of the Casentino and the valley of the Tiber, attained pretty nearly the same extent which she preserved up to the union of the Sienese State with that of Florence, and the consequent formation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The enlargement of this territory had proceeded of course gradually, but constantly. Dante Alighieri says once it would have been far better for Florence had the inhabitants of Campi, Figline, and Certaldo remained her neighbours, instead of becoming her fellow-citizens, and corrupting the pure Latin blood of her old families. Two centuries after the writer of the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the most famous statesman of modern Italy expressed pretty nearly the same opinions. ‘Venice and Florence’—such are Niccolò Machiavelli’s words in his reflections on the first ten books of Titus Livius—‘were far weaker when the first had attained the supremacy over Lombardy the latter over Tuscany, than when Venice was content with the sea and Florence with six miles of territory.’ The increase of subjects by the absorption of other communities is certainly of small advantage: when it once exceeds due measure it is ruinous. While it cannot contribute to the strength of warlike States, it has a most hurtful influence on unwarlike ones, of which the Italian republics give evidence: an opinion which would sound paradoxical if we did not consider that he who expressed it had before his eyes the spectacle of a State, without unity in itself, consisting of the most different elements, united only by an outward bond, whose laws, founded on systematic oppression of the nobles, appeared to him as the reason of its evident helplessness in the second half of the fourteenth century.

With the aid of many hundreds of documents in the Tuscan archives[73] we can closely follow the history of the growth of the Florentine territory, as it increased in all directions above the valley of the Arno, often with difficulty and with the most violent struggles, beyond Prato, Pistoja, on the shore of the Mediterranean towards Leghorn, through the Elsa and Chiana valley, where the conflicts took place with Siena, beyond Arezzo; finally, by way of Cortona, to the upper valley of the Tiber, and towards the Umbrian frontier, as along the Apennines to that of Romagna, including, on the other side, Volterra and the long-contested Pisa. The forms under which the villages and territories were annexed were very various. First of these, was the submission (submissio), a result generally of war, but which sometimes was brought about by compacts with other commonwealths and rulers, and at times occurred spontaneously. The submitting commune assembled in such case a parliament to appoint a syndicus, who repaired to Florence to settle affairs with the Signoria, after which the Chapter was consulted, and a commissary of the Republic was sent to the place in question to receive homage, and complete the so-called act of taking bodily possession. These things were very simple in small communes. They expressed to the Signoria by their syndics and procurators the hope that they might be well governed by them, and live in peace; promised faith and obedience—appointing a fine in case of a breach of this promise; received a podestà and judge from Florence; retained free choice of their presidents from their own citizens; stipulated conditions in respect to markets, customs, weights and measures, etc., as well as observance of their own statutes, such as even the smallest communes possessed. For if, with the decline of the imperial power towards the time of the Swabian emperors, the legal power once pertaining to the empire might be considered as having passed actually to princes and commonwealths, the case now occurred that princes and larger towns claimed the former rights of the empire over little towns, which defended themselves as far as they could by reservations. In such cases the statute of the chief town represented towards the subject communes the common law, to which there was an appeal from the separate municipal statutes where appeal to the Roman law was not stipulated. After the subjection of Pisa, the Pisan statutes remained valid for all the dependencies of this town; but in Florence such dependencies had always a hearing if they appealed to the Florentine statute law. But where there was a special fortress in the stipulating place (Rocca, Cassero), the garrisoning of it was decided by the ruling commune.

The different conditions are as different as the nature of the community was varied. Larger cities naturally made their importance felt. A whole series of treaties were concluded with Pistoja, beginning with the peace made after the death of Castruccio Castracane on May 11, 1329, at the time of the confusion caused by Louis the Bavarian’s Roman expedition. In the summer of 1331 the Florentine Signoria received full powers for a year for ‘the security of freedom’ and the government of city and territory. These temporary powers were repeatedly prolonged: commissions of Florentine citizens were appointed for the revision of statutes; the powers of the sovereign Signoria, and those of the magistrates of the subject town, were carefully limited in such a way that the actual decision in local government remained to the latter, which limited the supreme government. Volterra, which acknowledged the supremacy of the Duke of Athens, but had asserted its own independence after his fall, preserved it nominally up to the end of the fourteenth century; but the Republic of Florence had attained to such extensive rights that scarcely more independence remained to the commune than to subject States, especially after a rebellion excited by the introduction of the Cadastre had ended to the disadvantage of the people of Volterra. As can easily be understood, quite peculiar circumstances followed, when places were obtained through agreement with foreign powers. By the repeated interference of the Neapolitan Angevin princes in Tuscan affairs, and the increasing military weakness of the communes, this occurred only too frequently. Prato, in the midst of the wars of the Ghibellines and Guelphs, in the times of the emperors of the houses of Bavaria and Luxembourg, powerless to protect itself, had acknowledged King Robert of Naples as its Signore in 1313, and remained under the rule of Neapolitan viceroys till Robert’s granddaughter Johanna gave up the town to the Republic of Florence, in the year 1350, for the sum of 13,500 gold florins, which a citizen of Florence, Francesco Rinuccini, advanced without interest. Florence thus succeeded to the king’s rights, and appointed the superior officers, while the town retained her own municipal government. It had happened most strangely of all with Arezzo. Unable to assert herself against the superior powers of the Guelphs, she had acknowledged the supremacy of Florence in 1337, and while retaining her own territories, statutes, and privileges, received only the higher magistrates, Podestà and Capitano, from Florence, to whom she promised fidelity and assistance in peace and war. The oppressions, and especially the building of fortresses, by which the ruling community here, as elsewhere, sought to secure itself, went so far, that when, after the fall of the Duke of Athens, the majority of the larger towns revolted from Florence, Arezzo also regained her independence, which she preserved till 1380, when she fell into the power of Duke Charles of Durazzo, in his expedition against Queen Johanna. Four years later the town was taken by the French army under Duke Louis of Anjou, marching to the assistance of the queen; and the commander, Enguerraud de Coney, sold it four years afterwards to the Florentines for 50,000 gold florins.

But there were other political connections beside that of subjection. The Accomandigia, or assumption of a protectorate, was an act, more or less solemn, by which a possession, either of the Church or the commune, was recommended to protection, that might extend to the person of the possessor, who was then called Raccomandato. It was a very old connection, which united Florence with other communes, as for instance with Siena. As in the earliest times of the commonwealth, the distinguished family of the Buondelmonti recommended their castle, Montebuoni, to the Florentine bishop for protection, so did numerous and powerful lords of the commune recommend themselves afterwards. A kind of homage was always combined with the Accomandigia; it usually consisted of a pallium or banner of brocade or gold and silver cloth, presented on St. John’s day. Those recommended for protection promised to be friendly to the commune, to assist it at its summons in its feuds, to share friendship and enmity with it, to grant free passage through their territories, not to hinder the transport of provisions and merchandise, and to grant refuge to none who had been banished by the commune. The commune, on the other hand, allowed the Raccomandati law of arms on their own territory, promised defence or compensation for loss, and empowered the planting of the Florentine banner on their castles. The second half of the fourteenth century and the first of the following were exceedingly rich in such Accomandigie, because the smaller landowners felt themselves more and more weakened and threatened in their independence, in consequence of the great diminution of the number of independent communes, and thereby the accession of power to those still remaining, as Florence, Siena, and Lucca. Florence had begun by drawing the nobles in the nearer vicinity of the Arno valley into such a connection with herself, and also to absorb the smaller communes. Then the Accomandigia expanded more and more, till all the great noble families, so to say, for the most part originally free, imperial and Ghibellines, had lost their independence in the higher sense of the word. At last the turn came to others, even distant, where the relation of protection was essentially altered, as with the Grimaldi of Monaco, the Genoese Campofregoso, the Appiani of Piombino, the Marchese of Monte Sta. Maria, the numerous Malaspine, who resided at their imperial fiefs in the Lunigiana, but naturally looked more to Florence and Genoa, to the Visconti and the Esti, than to the empire. Even Roman barons entered into connections of this kind. In 1395 the Colonna of Palestrina placed themselves, with all their castles, for five years under the protection of the Republic, whose service they entered. The Orsini of Savona whose relations, the Counts of Pitigliano, stood in the same relation to Siena, had preceded them. More important for Florence was the protection of many dynasties of Romagna and Umbria, of which we shall speak farther on. With regard to the landowners settled in Tuscany, if we except a few independent imperial vassals, who remained so up to the French time, the Counts Bardi of Vernio and Barbolani of Montanto, as well as the Macchesi of Monte Sta. Maria (Bourbon de Monte), whom we have just mentioned, the Accomandigia led to their subjection. In the States of the Church the Papal sovereignty prevailed, as might be expected.

CHAPTER VI.

SUPREMACY OF COSIMO DE’ MEDICI UP TO LUCA PITTI’S REFORM OF THE ADMINISTRATION.

The time at which Cosimo de’ Medici attained to a position in his native town, such as a citizen had never yet held, promised neither rest nor peace to Italy.

We have already mentioned how, in the decisive crisis when Rinaldo degli Albizzi sought to carry the citizens along with him, and to destroy the Medicean party with one blow, Pope Eugenius IV. was a fugitive in the same convent of Sta. Maria Novella which his predecessor had inhabited on his way from Constance to Rome. Martin V. had died February 20, 1431, at the moment when the war of the Florentines with the Duke of Milan had brought the armies of the latter over the Apennines. His successor, descended from a Venetian family, did not understand how to preserve the quiet which Martin’s skill and policy had established. While he fell into disputes with the relations of the latter, the Colonna—disputes which threatened the city of Rome itself—the eventful complication began with the council opened at Basle on July 23rd of the same year, which was to complete the reform of the Church, which the Council of Constance had not thoroughly effected. Eugenius had united with Florence and Venice in order to overthrow the Colonna family, but had thereby embittered Filippo Maria Visconti, who now, when the violent strife raged between Pope and Council, ranged himself on the side of the latter, and in May, 1434, even assisted to excite a revolt in Rome, which forced the Pope to fly. In the autumn of the same year, although the Pope saw the city of Rome return to its allegiance, he still lingered on in Florence, at strife with the Council, which was pursuing the policy of striving to diminish the authority of the head of the Church, while the surrounding country was desolated by the Duke’s mercenaries, till the Pope at last succeeded in coming to terms with his oppressor. Meanwhile, the intrigues began at Naples which for a century were the curse of that country, and finally of all Italy. The last of the Anjous, Ladislaus’ sister, Johanna II., died on February 2, 1435, and left to the country, in consequence of her fickleness, a contest for the throne between Renè, Count of Provence, and Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, whom she had successively adopted as sons, while the Pope showed an inclination to claim Naples as a relapsed fief of the Church. Alfonso, defeated and taken prisoner at the Ponza Islands by the Genoese, allied with Renè, was restored to liberty by Filippo Maria Visconti, then ruler over the Sigurian harbour, but this generosity was regarded as detrimental by the victors, and excited an insurrection in Genoa against the supremacy of Milan, which found support from the republic of Venice, the ancient enemy of the Visconti. Hereupon the Duke, not to have to cope with too many enemies at once, entered into the alliance with the Pope which has just been mentioned. As far as the resistance to Filippo Maria was concerned, the Venetians were hand-in-hand with the Florentines; as soon as Cosimo had returned, the Senate congratulated the Signoria. But Florentine plans of winning still independent parts of Tuscany, and the Venetian intentions on Romagna, upon which, for the sake of the safety of their own frontiers, the eyes of the Florentines were always directed, could not but endanger the harmony of the two republics. The whole of the remaining lifetime of Cosimo de’ Medici was occupied with the endeavour to support and secure his position at home, and his connection with foreign countries, each reciprocally aiding the other.

He found favourable soil in Florence. His partizans had prepared the way for him. All the heads of the opposite faction were exiled, and most of them ruined. Many were dead. It was easy for him to boast in his memoirs, that during his administration not one individual was banished or injured in any way. It was not lenity on his part, for he had no more horror of violence or bloodshed than the majority of his contemporaries where political ends were at stake, but it was prudent calculation. He knew that he could allow others to give the laws an interpretation which secured him, without being himself taxed with using hard measures. He did this by the execution of penal laws, and by making changes in the constitution. He first put forward Puccio Pucci, who showed such zeal, and attained such authority, that the Hotspurs of the party were named after him Puccini. When it was an object to further the aims of this party even by the most sanguinary measures, or to raise money, Puccio, otherwise an able man, and proved to be such in office and in embassies, knew no scruples. Cosimo employed the services of Luca Pitti even more frequently than those of Pucci. The family came originally from Semifonte, in the Elsa valley, a castle the conquest and destruction of which, as has been mentioned, plays a part in the oldest annals of the development of the commonwealth. Maffeo Pitti sat as early as 1283 in the magistracy of the Priors. Buonaccorso was a man much employed about the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. His activity partakes somewhat of the character of an adventurer, and he seems to have been equally versed in political and mercantile affairs. No one was so successful as he in obtaining foreign assistance against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and it was chiefly he who, on the part of Florence, persuaded Rupert of the Palatinate to undertake the unsuccessful march into Lombardy, particulars of which are given in his instructive memoirs.[74]

Buonaccorso’s son was the principal tool of Cosimo. ‘Luca Pitti,’ says Francesco Guicciardini, ‘was not a man of remarkable capabilities, but vivacious, liberal, courageous; one who ventured more for his friends than any one in Florence; a man who might safely be allowed to carry out everything, while he had not head enough to become formidable.’

Cosimo had friends of another kind than these two. At their head stood Neri Capponi. His father Gino, descended from a family which appears in the second half of the thirteenth century among the most distinguished, had won a good name for himself by the capture of Pisa in 1406, and by the judicious and reasonable administration of the severely tried city, while his history of the popular rebellion of 1378 is one of the most important aids to a right understanding of this important occurrence.[75] Neri belonged to those who before 1433 formed a kind of moderate party, but after the death of Niccolò da Uzzano he inclined more and more to Cosimo, and if unable to prevent his exile, he aided essentially in his recall. He was for the Medicean party what Niccolò had been for the Albizzi, the mediating element, but he never attained to the position which the latter held, because Cosimo was of a different nature from Maso, and still more unlike Rinaldo, and because in many cases Neri rather complemented him than represented a different principle. Neri Capponi certainly aided essentially in restraining the Medicean party government within certain limits; yet the measures which most confirmed their government were effected under his eyes. Cosimo, who required him because he enjoyed general confidence, and was skilled alike in peace and war, always found means to counteract his influence when it was inconvenient to himself. ‘Neri,’ says Francesco Guicciardini,[76] ‘well knew the means employed against him. As he saw, however, that Cosimo’s position was impregnable, and that to break with him would be to run his own head against the wall, he pretended, intelligent as he was, not to observe anything that passed, and waited patiently for time and opportunity.’ But it is evident that this waiting, which we cannot but attribute to weakness of character or selfish indirect motives, established Cosimo’s position more and more firmly; Neri’s influence did not, however, increase, notwithstanding the great services accomplished by him, which will be more fully dwelt upon as we proceed.

Agnolo Acciaiuoli held a position scarcely inferior to that of Neri Capponi. In the preceding century, his family, which rose with the majority of the plebeian races, attained to unusual splendour. When we descend the high road, leading southward from Florence to Siena, we perceive, three miles from the town, on an isolated height on the banks of the river Ema, the Certosa of Montacuto, convent and fortress at the same time, with towers and pinnacles, with grand colonnades and monuments of sculpture and painting in the splendid church. If we wander farther, quitting the high road to descend to the right into the valley of the Pesa, a tributary of the Arno, we see before us, on a low hill rising from the midst of a green valley, an imposing building, rather resembling a castle than a villa, the extensive mass of building surmounted by a tower resembling the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio—Monte Gufoni, once a splendid country seat, now, after the extinction of the family of its possessors, deprived of its glory, and inhabited by poor peasants. Niccolò Acciaiuoli built convent and villa in the first half of the fourteenth century, when he wished to leave his native country monuments of his affection and piety. Like so many of his fellow-countrymen, having been originally attracted to the south by commercial business, he had become, by talent and good fortune, all-powerful at the court of the Neapolitan Anjous, who made him grand seneschal of the kingdom, and afterwards a mighty ruler in Greece, where his relations became dukes of Athens and Corinth. Agnolo’s grandfather Donato, in former years governor in Corinth for his brother the seneschal, was one of those who put an end to the ochlocracy of the Ciompi, but his attempts to moderate the supremacy of the Albizzi resulted in the exile in which he died. Agnolo had inherited his spirit. He wished, indeed, for the supremacy of a party in Florence, since Florence could no longer exist without the preponderance of one or the other, but he resisted the entire subjection to one family or one man. This opinion, which was held by a number of influential citizens, explains the frequent internal disturbances, the history of which, and consequently that of the whole State, is but half understood, if we do not take into consideration the great number of eminent men who exercised a secondary but yet important influence on the conduct of affairs, as was the case especially under Cosimo de’ Medici, not to speak of later times, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico and during the last years of the Republic. Agnolo Acciaiuoli had during Cosimo’s exile engaged in transactions which would have cost him his head if his brother-in-law had not, in the moment of danger, burned the incriminating correspondence, which did actually bring him to the torture, and to banishment to Cephalonia. That he, an active and capable man, afterwards attained to influence and dignity is easily explained: embassies and honours were heaped upon him, and he remained among the foremost of the Medicean party, although there were not wanting misunderstandings between him and Cosimo, which were revealed after the death of the latter.[77]

Together with Agnolo Acciaiuoli rose into eminence his cousin Donato, whose great-uncle, the celebrated and active cardinal-vice-chancellor, also bore the name of Agnolo, and was the first Duke of Athens. At Cosimo’s return, Donato was only six years old, but under the guidance of a sensible mother, Palla Strozzi’s daughter, he developed rapidly, and we shall meet him repeatedly in later years engaged in important matters. Among those who held to the Medici there was no one who enjoyed the general confidence in a higher degree, while he, although State affairs claimed so much of his time, took a lively interest in scientific pursuits.[78]

If Diotisalvi Neroni, who attained in Cosimo’s later years the reputation of great acuteness and skill, was involved in the misunderstandings to which we have alluded, other causes weighed in the opposite scale; for as the father of this man essentially contributed in 1434 to the prevention of Rinaldo degli Albizzi’s elevation to power, so did he, as long as Cosimo lived, act as his clever and willing tool. To the most estimable partisans of the Medici belonged Bernardo Giugni, who was constantly employed on diplomatic embassies, and Agnolo Pandolfini, with his sons Carlo and Giannozzo. Whoever enters the Church of the Benedictines (Badia), which spite of repeated alterations even now recalls the old times of the Republic, may see the beautiful monuments, which were erected to Giugni and Giannozzo Pandolfini, whom the commonwealth honoured with a funeral at the public expense. The Giugni belonged to the oldest Guelph plebeian families, and took part in the administration at its beginning. The Pandolfini stood with them in the ranks of the Guelphs on the bloody field of Montaperti, and streets of the city are yet named after both families, which still flourish; while a palace built long after the time of which we are now treating, which, if not one of the largest, is one of the most beautiful in Florence—a work of Raffael Sanzio’s—keeps alive the remembrance of the Pandolfini even in the history of art. Alamanno Salviati would have been recommended by the talents of his father Jacopo, one of the most eminent citizens of the oligarchical time, even if he had not made himself remarkable by his talents and activity. No one could anticipate in those days that, a generation later, his relations would be involved in the most sanguinary catastrophe of the Medicean history. The Guicciardini,[79] a family from the Pesa valley, which had risen by trade, had stood on the side of the Albizzi. Of Luigi’s two sons, who in 1378 filled the office of Gonfalonier when the popular tumult broke out, in which he displayed no great energy, only one, Giovanni, remained true to his colours, and though he did not go into banishment at the return of his old enemy Cosimo, he was still excluded with his descendants from all share in the administration. The other son, Piero, went over to the Medicean party, was one of the most active in bringing about Cosimo’s recall, and laid the foundation of the subsequent high position of his family, among whom his great-grandson gained immortal fame as statesman and historian, but as citizen of a free city he has left a name not free from censure.

It is evident that Cosimo de’ Medici, powerful as he was, had no freedom of action. He had to contend with different elements, fulfil many obligations, and humour much sensitiveness. He understood it. Scarcely any one has ever guided a great party as he did, and placed himself so little in the foreground. His means were of different kinds. When he returned he found the political power in the hands of a Balia appointed by the Signoria of September, 1434, which had already freed the city from his most decided or most powerful opponents. He only needed to let them continue their work, and so their extraordinary power was prolonged from one period of five years to another. The ballot-boxes were of course only filled with the names of partisans or unsuspected persons, for all in any way disaffected to the faction were excluded, or, according to the expression then in vogue,’messi a sedere.’ But even this did not satisfy the party leaders, and instead of allowing the magistrates to be drawn by lot, they caused them to be appointed, at their own pleasure, by the Accoppiatori from among the eligible. While all offices thus fell to his confidants, Cosimo meditated another and most peculiar means of excluding those of whom he was not perfectly certain from any share whatever in the administration. He annulled the statutes which disqualified the old nobility and the so-called ‘grandi’ from holding office, and declared these families to have equal rights with the citizens. It was regarded as an important concession, as Cosimo was connected with many of them, but in practice the matter proved otherwise. The names of the families in question were not found in the ballot-box, and, besides, they lost the offices to which they had hitherto been admissible, such as legations, ministries of war, &c. It was said that the pride of the old families was a thorn in the eyes of the upstart, who had never trusted them.

That Cosimo promoted a number of people of the lower order evinces equally his intention of weakening the opposition, as the cynical answer which he gave to those who remonstrated with him on the subject expresses his unmitigated selfishness. For when it was observed to him that he did not do well to ruin so many noble families, and that the town must suffer by the loss of many of her most excellent citizens, he answered that a few ells of fine scarlet cloth would fill Florence again with distinguished citizens. A ruined city, he said, was better than a lost one, and one could not rule a state with Paternosters. So he showed himself unmerciful to all who had once opposed him, and while such as left the places of exile (confine) assigned to them, were declared rebels and lost their property, those who observed the decree of banishment had their exile prolonged when the time of penalty had expired. Thus it was with Palla Strozzi. He had shown himself weak at the decisive moment of 1434, instead of supporting Rinaldo degli Albizzi. It did not save him; he was banished to Padua for ten years. When the ten years were over, he, who had only lived for science, kept himself within the prescribed limits, and never allowed any one to speak ill of Florence before him, hoped to see home again, but Cosimo condemned him to ten more years. It was very painful to him, for he was seventy-two years old, and loved Florence. He lived eighteen years longer in banishment, and his descendants never returned to his native city. His relations experienced the like hard fate with him. His daughter-in-law, Alessandra de Bardi[80] was, as a girl and young wife, a model of modesty and beauty: that did not save her. She saw her own father as well as her father-in-law go into exile, and die in exile. She saw her husband, Lorenzo, who could no longer bear the scorn, ill-treatment, and oppression to which the families of the exiles were exposed, and who went to Gubbio to earn his bread by teaching, die beneath a murderer’s hand. She saw one portion of her property vanish after the other, and her life pass away joylessly in constant change of residence, and constant anxiety for her children. Numerous families, once affluent, were reduced to misery; fathers and husbands wandered about in foreign lands, and their property was confiscated. Noble ladies begged alms. The poverty to which many were reduced by merciless party spirit, even more than by losses in war and bad harvests, incited the saintly Archbishop Antoninus in 1441 to found the charitable institution which still exists under the name of Buonuomini di San Martino, and which, managed by a society of trustworthy citizens, has for its object to soften misery, especially when undeserved and borne in silence.

The sad fate of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and his nearest relations is the most striking example of the ruin impending over great families in those days from party spirit. On October 2, 1434, the Balia appointed in the Medicean interest gave orders to the Captain of the People, Messer Jacopo de’ Lavagnoli of Verona, to proceed against the originators of the tumult which had taken place near Sant’Apollinaris. The sentence passed against Messer Rinaldo and his eldest son, Ormanno, was eight years of banishment, during which the exiles should remain at least a hundred miles distant from the Florentine frontiers, and present themselves every three days to the magistrates of their chosen place of residence, which must be certified by a notary’s act. The bail for Rinaldo amounted to 4,000, and for Ormanno to 2,000 gold florins; but all their moveable and immoveable property, including that of the sons and wives, was made security for their proceedings. Of course the exiles were made incapable of all offices. Father and son presented themselves, according to order, in the towns of the district of Ancona, whither they first repaired, Matelica, Montalboddo, Yesi. On November 3, Naples was assigned to the former as his place of exile, Gaeta to the latter, and the banishment prolonged by ten years. Before Rinaldo could reach Naples his destination was changed to Frani, on the Apulian coast, with the command to repair thither in the space of a month. Thus the homeless ones were hunted like wild animals. They of course understood that even the most conscientious observation of the commands given them would never re-open the gates of Florence to them. That they then, driven by rage and despair, disregarded these commands, left the places indicated (it was called ‘rompere il confine’), and sought to return by force of arms, is to be explained, if not to be justified. In the law that had fallen on them they recognised only violence, which they on their side determined to oppose by violence. When Filippo Maria Visconti undertook his last campaign against Florence, the Albizzi and several of their fellow-sufferers were in the Milanese army. The day of Anghiari destroyed their hopes. Eight days after the battle, on July 6, 1440, the penalty was pronounced against the rebels, for that they were now. Rinaldo and Ormanno degli Albizzi, Messer Niccolò and Baldassarre Gianfigliazzi, Ludovico de’ Rossi, Lamberto de’ Lamberteschi, Bernardo Barbadori, and Stefano Peruzzi, all men of distinguished families, were declared to have forfeited their honour, and their portraits were painted on the wall of the Palazzo del Podestà, with insulting verses beneath, according to custom. Andrea del Castagno, an artist of reputation, painted the pictures, as Stefano, named Giottino, did before, and Andrea del Sarto after him. The official poet and jester of the Signoria (the Araldo or herald), Antonio di Meglio, to whose office it belonged to recite something to the Signori during their meals, and to compose eulogies or satires on public occasions, wrote the doggerel verses which indicated the character and crime of each. The painter obtained from his pictures the name of Andrea degli Impiccati.[81]

Rinaldo degli Albizzi resigned himself to his fate. Francesco Filelfo, the humanist, whom hatred against Cosimo de’ Medici united to him, informed him from Milan that nothing was to be hoped for from thence. It was probably shortly after the lost battle that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in fulfilment of an old vow. Returned from thence, he stayed at Ancona, where he died, an aged man, on February 2, 1442, on the marriage-day of a daughter.[82] Seven years later, Ormanno, then more than fifty years old, turned to Cosimo’s younger son, Giovanni, to beg him to obtain a favour in family affairs.[83] The letters from Mantua, where the Albizzi resided with the Margrave Ludovico Gonzaga, have the tone of old friendly connections; but how painfully clear is the fallen condition of the once rich and powerful family! How terrible it was we perceive from the narrative of a simple and trustworthy man, a friend and client of the Medici.[84] Messer Rinaldo’s younger son Maso, married to a Gianfigliazzi, saw himself involved with his family in his father’s misfortunes. He had a son, also called Rinaldo, who, in order to earn a livelihood, entered the service of Antonio Cicinello, the influential councillor of King Alfonso of Aragon, and attained his confidence and affection in a high degree. When Rinaldo was going to Ancona one day to visit his mother, who lived there, he was plundered on the way, and appeared in the doublet of a wretch whom he had seen hanging by the wayside on a tree. The young man died not long after, and Cicinello sent the unhappy woman, who had lost her husband also, and lived in extreme want at Ancona, a sum which he had been able to obtain from the property of the deceased, and which was part of what he had helped her son to gain. When the widow returned to Florence some time afterwards, Cicinello repaired thither on affairs of state, and took with him the remainder of the money. We will let our authority speak for himself: ‘One morning Messer Antonio repaired to Sta. Trinità, and sent to the widow of Maso degli Albizzi (whose parental house joined the church) with the request to come to him, as he wished to speak with her. But the poor woman lay ill in bed, so that Messer Antonio sent her the thirty ducats which he had by him, with the words, he had once procured this money for her son, and now wished that it should be of use to her. When the poor woman received the money, and remembered the kindness which the sender of this money had shown her son, she said, weeping, ‘It is now nearly thirty-five years since my husband was banished from Florence. I have wandered miserably about many parts of Italy, and during my husband’s lifetime, as afterwards when I lost him, no one regarded me or helped me in my distress, but I have been forsaken by all. Messer Antonio has shown greater sympathy with me and my son than has been evinced all this time by the whole world, in the midst of all the strokes of fate.’

Cosimo de’ Medici did not content himself with rendering his old opponents harmless; he took care also that none of his adherents should become too powerful and dangerous to him. Therefore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, he retained the Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand, in order to be able to promote or oppress individuals at will. In other things the citizens enjoyed greater freedom and acted more according to their own pleasure than later, in the days of his grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he was only sure of his own position. It was just in this that his great art lay, to guide things according to his will, and yet to make his partisans believe that he shared his authority with them. It was necessary, however, that there should be one against the others, as was the case with Neri Capponi. To weaken the respect in which the latter was held when his name was in all mouths after the great victory over the Duke of Milan in 1440, Cosimo is said to have commanded the murder of the captain, Baldaccio da Anghiari, who remained in the service of the Republic, and was an intimate friend of Neri. The sanguinary deed was executed in the palace, whither the unsuspecting man had been summoned by command of the Gonfaloniere Bartolommeo Orlandini. Thus the share of Cosimo and his motives are veiled in obscurity, but the suspicion has never been removed from him.[85] The name of the Casa Annalena still recalls Baldaccio’s widow, of the family of the Malateste of Rimini, who founded here a convent for destitute women and girls, the extensive buildings and gardens of which were employed for other purposes at the dissolution of the monastic orders in 1808.

When Neri Capponi, who still acted as a counterbalance, though a very weak one, to the Medicean authority, died, November 22, 1457, at the age of sixty-nine, the prevailing party had already begun to divide. The old opponents were entirely annihilated, most of their chiefs dead and their families impoverished; the anxieties in which the long wars, first with the Visconti, then with Venice, had kept the government and the people, had been ended by the peace of 1454, which we shall mention later. Those who had held together in the face of danger, relaxed after safety had been gained. Cosimo’s supremacy was burdensome to the aristocratic partizans of the Medici. They demanded that the extraordinary powers with which he had governed since 1434 should be terminated. Cosimo consented. The Balia, renewed only two years ago, was declared extinct in the summer of 1455, and the members of the Signoria were again drawn by lot like other magistrates. Giovanni Rucellai, a deserving man, was the first who thus received the office of Gonfaloniere. The people, who hated every appearance of arbitrary power, desired a return to the old forms as much as those who had caused the changes, but the latter soon perceived that the greater freedom was more apparent than real; for when the ballot-boxes were filled with the names of such as held to Cosimo, the latter attained his ends without appearing on the stage. The revision of the registers revealed this. Then, according to the decree laid down when these were instituted, a revision ought to have been held every three years, but this had only happened in 1433. One of the restrictions put upon the extraordinary commission (Balia) of that year had been that it neither had power to change the ballot-boxes nor to abolish the registers, but at Cosimo’s return no such limits were put to the authority of his partisans, and they returned indeed to the ancient arbitrary system which the law of 1427 had been meant to do away with. Instead of a firm base of taxation, party spirit and party manœuvres prevailed. The measures resorted to had the double aim of ruining antagonists, or such as were suspected, and of gaining the lower classes. The most offensive of these measures, one which had been in contemplation during the mob-government of 1378, was the adoption of a progressive scale, which, by dividing the citizens into fourteen classes, ascended from a trifling imposition to fifty per cent of the supposed income, which was fixed by arbitration. Moreover, taxation was not limited as to time, but depended entirely on the want of means alleged by Government. The continuous wars which led the enemy at times into the interior of the country, caused a constant drain upon the revenue. One war-tax after another was proclaimed, and the results by no means corresponded always with the demand. In the summer of 1442 no less than 180,000 gold florins were paid as a reward to Francesco Sforza for his support of René of Aragon against Alfonso of Aragon—a vain expenditure, since Alfonso took besieged Naples, and established himself so firmly that all the enterprises of Anjou against him, and his son and successor Ferrante, were frustrated. The distribution of the taxes was a perpetual means for the faction to oppress those whom they disliked. Many people were entirely ruined. A number of considerable citizens had left the city and retired to villas, to escape the immoderate exactions, as the country had less to pay than Florence, but it availed them little. It was said of Cosimo de’ Medici, that instead of the dagger, the usual weapon, he employed the taxes to rid himself of his enemies. He retained the instrument, or, as Francesco Guicciardini says, the dishonesty of the taxes, in his own hands, in order to ruin those in whom he saw declared opponents, to bring down to poverty others whom he mistrusted or who were inconvenient to him, and to favour partisans. The members of the commission entrusted with laying on the taxes were either his creatures or dependent on him. Lightening the burdens of the lower classes was only the pretext, and the humiliation of the independent burghers the real aim. This aim was attained by Cosimo, his son, and his grandson. ‘It is well known,’ remarks the statesman and historian just mentioned, in his reflections on the Florentine administration, ‘how much nobility and wealth were destroyed by Cosimo and his descendants by taxation. The Medici never allowed a fixed method and legal distribution, but always reserved to themselves the power of bearing heavily upon individuals according to their pleasure. Had they only employed this weapon to protect themselves against enemies and suspicious persons, they would have been to a certain extent excusable; but as they did not succeed by other means, or by appealing to their ambition and vanity, in attaching to themselves peaceful citizens more intent on their own business than on affairs of State, they made use of the taxes to win them over, and to set themselves up as lords of all, while they forced the people to seek to divine their will even in trifles.’ The most striking example of the abuse of the power of taxation is the history of Giannozzo Manetti. After a life spent in the service of the State and of science, the veneration shown him both at home and abroad, as well as his inclination for Venice, brought on him the disfavour of Cosimo and his adherents, and he saw himself reduced to beggary by taxes which reached the incredible height of 135,000 gold florins. Abandoning house, property, and State-papers he went into voluntary exile, to drag out the few days still remaining to him, by means of first a Papal, and later a Neapolitan pension.

The shameless enrichment of many of Cosimo’s personal adherents, and the discontent evinced in the city, made it at last appear advisable to many of the ruling party to make an end of the system which had lasted since 1434. It was asserted of Puccio Pucci that he had acquired 50,000 gold florins of the public moneys by usury and dishonest administration. It was calculated that a certain Giovanni Corsini, who began with scarcely the necessary means of life, had cheated Government of 20,000 florins. Florence was rife with evil tales of dishonest upstarts, of theft at the public cost, of dirty actions and extortion.[86] With Cosimo’s silent consent (without this nothing could have been done), the Signoria at last commanded, on January 11, 1458, a revision of the registers, indicating, as far as it seemed advisable to them, the prevailing evils.[87] Scarcely was the measure decreed than many of Cosimo’s party, and precisely those who had sought to fetter him by withdrawing the former extraordinary powers, were seized with a violent terror. For they saw themselves not merely obliged to declare the increase on moveable and immoveable property, which in a quarter of a century was immense with many of them, but the progressive scale employed in the new declaration threatened them with a double weight. Only from Cosimo could they expect assistance. The same people who had attempted to weaken his authority three years before, now entreated him to resume it, and proceed to action—that is, summon a parliament, and cause extraordinary powers to be granted by it. They had already formed the plan of doing away with the ballot-boxes, in order to effect new elections more favourable to them, but Cosimo declined to do their will. It suited him that those for whom his power was too great should perceive that they not only gained nothing by the independence more apparent than real of the Government, but sacrificed their authority while his own remained undiminished. He had ready the convenient explanation that extraordinary measures were only permissible in the case of highest need and danger, that now the heavy debts contracted in the long wars would be paid, the numerous changes in property taken into account, the irregularities in the valuation of movable property done away with, and the regular payment of the interest of the national debt be re-established. As long as Alfonso of Aragon lived, who never lost sight of Tuscany, it did not seem advisable to undertake alterations which might arouse displeasure among the people. For Cosimo was never certain of this people, and in times of dearth, bad harvests, storms, contagious disease, which repeatedly occurred, or under oppressive war-taxes, the easily moved crowd was not to be trusted. It was by no means always on Cosimo’s side. His measureless riches aroused much envy and evil-speaking. If he built much, and expended large sums in particular on churches and convents, it was said, We pay for his hypocrisy, which is, moreover, full of spiritual pride, by emptying our own purses. Even the secret cells of the brethren in the cloister he fills with the balls of his coat-of-arms! His palace might bear a comparison with the Colosseum. Who would not build splendidly could he but employ other people’s money for it? It was said that the money-boxes at the city gates were emptied in the house of the Medici. When Cosimo, says a contemporary, advanced to the commune far greater sums than he took, nothing was remarked upon it. He did this certainly, but he kept an exact account of it, and it could hardly be said that the partnership between the State and the Medici was solely to the advantage of the former. One morning the doors of Cosimo’s palace were found stained with blood.[88]

Such things occurred long before the time we are now considering. Cosimo had meanwhile no wish to remain passive after his haughty partisans had received a wholesome lesson. The license to which the lower classes inclined more and more, might have risen to such a point that his own authority would be endangered. He himself did not appear, but the tool was readily found. On July 1, 1458, Luca Pitti undertook the office of Gonfalonier. Three days before, King Alfonso had died; from his son—Ferrante—who had a difficult position in Naples on account of his illegitimate birth, and who did not, like his father, command the powers of Sicily and Aragon—there was for the time nothing to fear. Neither reform of registers nor drawing the magistrates by lot were to the taste of the new Gonfalonier; and urged by his friends, but with consideration for Cosimo, who wished to avoid open violence, he sought to induce priors and colleges to proceed to new elections, and choose new magistrates. When he met with opposition in this, he determined to employ the usual violent means. On August 9 he caused the palace and square to be surrounded by mercenaries, had the neighbouring streets secured, and summoned the people by ringing the great bell. That the Gonfalonier could do this in opposition to the priors, or at least to the majority of them, is an evident sign how weak the laws were. The Parliament, however it might be composed, granted to the Senate, and 250 of the burghers proposed by the party, the extraordinary powers demanded. These now proceeded to the new elections, and appointed a commission of eight citizens to preside at all elections for the future. It is easily understood that all actual authority was now more than ever in the hands of the heads of the faction, who filled the offices at their pleasure, and when the priors of the guild were after this called priors of freedom, it was in bitter irony. All opponents of the measures, several of whom endured torture, and a number of people who were either not trusted, or of whom one or other of the new wielders of power had to complain, were banished. In the months next following, exile and exclusion from office were but too common, and if in this way justice was sometimes done, as on the dishonest tax officials in Florence, Pisa, Arezzo, yet this made but a poor show in the presence of so many deeds of violence. According to the reform of taxation, the mercantile order was to be obliged to show their account books; an agreement was then made with them, agreeably to which a fixed sum of movable capital was declared, which was not the means to find out the real amount, or to ensure the just distribution of the burdens. Luca Pitti became a great man. The Signoria granted him the dignity of knighthood, and Cosimo made him rich presents, in which others imitated him. His momentary splendour eclipsed that of Medici; not he, but Luca seemed to stand at the head of the State, and if his nature inclined generally to pomp and power, he now allowed it free scope. His arbitrary and unjust administration was to find its punishment years after.

In the last years of his life, Cosimo had no longer the guidance of his party in his hands, as formerly. What he had always feared and long managed to prevent, now happened: his most distinguished adherents grew too strong for him. He had always feared to place himself in a clear light; what would once have aided him, when it was a question of arousing no envy, now injured him, as others employed it to outshine him. His continual illness combined to render his share in affairs more difficult. He allowed much to pass that he could not hinder, but, crafty and accustomed to rule as he was, he would not confess that he could not hinder it. Thus, as people like Luca Pitti and his companions stood far below him, and knew nothing of that kind of prudent and calculated moderation which lay in his character, a grasping and unconscientious party-government was formed, such as Florence, with the exception of transient periods of disturbances and passion, had never known.

It is easy to conceive that, with such a government, and with men at its head ever ready to infringe or to corrupt the laws and constitution, the magistrates of the Republic enjoyed but a small measure of authority, which was allowed to them by the chiefs on whom they depended. The machinery of government remained the same as it had been in former days, but real power rested elsewhere. The oligarchy, which obtained a firm footing in Cosimo’s last years, which tried to overthrow his son, and yielded to his grandson’s consummate skill, kept in its hands the reins even when its own independence was most doubtful. The thirst for public offices continued immoderate. These offices preserved ostensibly their dignity, and secured advantages of various kinds; but they no longer, as such, had any influence upon politics. The majority of them had been established between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; some had been added during the fifteenth. The upper magistracy, generally called the Signory, was the College of Priors of the Guilds, or of Freedom, as they were called after 1458. It had been established in 1282, and though afterwards transformed, was originally composed of eight members chosen every two months, with the Gonfalonier (vexillifer justitiæ) at their head.

In him was vested the highest power, which he, apart from the executive, shared with the colleges, with the Buonuomini appointed in 1312, with the assessors of the priors, and with the sixteen bannerets of the militia companies, at whose head was the Capitano del Popolo.

There has been a question raised as to the original military character of this institution. The projects of law agreed to by the Signory and the colleges were carried to three councils; first to the council of the people, which consisted of a hundred members, chosen originally only from the higher class of citizens, the popolo grasso. Then they went to the council of the ‘Credenza,’ which was formed of the same number of members, and in which sat all the consuls and other officials of the guilds; lastly, to the Podestà’s council, composed of the judges and legal functionaries, nobles and citizens, ninety in number. When a bill had passed through these three courts, it was brought before a General Assembly of them all, and not until then became law.

Forms, indeed, were duly observed, but these forms did not prevent the adoption of laws which fatally attacked the constitution from within. For the consideration of bills relating to foreign affairs, to peace and war, two other consultative bodies were established after 1411, when greater care seemed to be necessary, on account of the heavy burdens caused by the dissensions of the great Schism. The one was the Council of Two Hundred, to which only those could be elected who had occupied the highest offices of State, and to which legislative proposals were sent before they came to the Council of a Hundred and Thirty-one—in which sat the members of the Signory and of the colleges, the ‘Capitani di parte Guelfa’, the ‘War Ten,’ the six councils of the craftsmen, the consuls of the guilds, and forty-eight other citizens. The bills had to be accepted in these two assemblies before they reached the first-mentioned councils. From such a mass of incongruous materials was the machine of State compiled.

The chief judicial functionary, and until Luca Pitti’s reform the first dignitary, was the Podestà, assisted as he was by the Capitano del Popolo—whose rights and privileges were often changed—and by the executor of legal ordinances. All three were strangers: the first two noble personages learned in the law, the third a man of the people, of Guelfish family, holding office for one year. The Podestà’s court included several adjuncts who took turn with the chief. The armed guard of the latter were under the chief bailiff or Bargello. Attached to these were the Magistracy of Eight (Otto di Guardia), who were nominated by the Signory, and installed in office for four months. They had to try criminal and police cases, and were conservators of the law—a sort of appeal court for the revision of the decisions of the Podestà’s court. Much of their time, however, was spent in detecting the artifices and evasions of the tax-payers. The uncertain line of demarcation between the jurisdiction of the several co-existing law courts has always been one of the most serious evils of the constitution of Florence. For the separate branches of the constitution different functionaries were appointed. Foreign affairs and war were in the hands of the ‘Peace and War Ten,’ who were appointed in 1423 during the campaign against Milan. There had indeed been, half a century earlier, a similar magistracy, nicknamed by popular wit, the ‘Eight Saints,’ because they conducted warlike operations against Pope Gregory XI. It was as secretary of the ten that Niccolò Machiavelli manifested that activity which, together with the literary talents which he afterwards developed, made the ‘Segretario fiorentino’ so celebrated. The influence exercised by this committee upon military operations was often most unfortunate, and in the peaceful times of 1480, we see it replaced by the ‘Otto di Pratica.’

The office of Capitani di parte Guelfa, to whom was entrusted, by the statutes of 1267, the control of the property of the rebels—an office open also to the nobility—had long lost the political importance it acquired in the second half of the fourteenth century. To the magistracy of custom-dues, established in 1352, and in which always sat one of the nobility, was given the control of the indirect taxation; to the Uffiziali del Monte, the direction of the state debt; to the consuls, appointed after the acquisition of Leghorn, the management of navigation and of commerce beyond the seas. The assessment of loans was managed by special commissions. The tribunal of commerce (Mercanzia) was composed of six members of the large corporations and six foreigners learned in the law. The chief of the affairs of the guilds, the proconsul, who ranked immediately after the Signory and colleges, belonged to the first guild, that of the lawyers. In a town and commonwealth where a strong principle of beneficence prevailed, all charities had to be well arranged. The officials of the widow and orphan fund, whose premises are now occupied by the Society of Brethren of Mercy, on the Cathedral square; the Capitani di Sta. Maria, who were originally appointed to oppose the Patarian heresy, but subsequently devoted themselves to the care of orphans, and survive in the Uffizio del Bigallo opposite the Baptistery; the Buonuomini di San Martino, founded by St. Antoninus with their domicile in the dwellings of the Alighieri—all these belong properly to the municipality. All the courts and committees had their chancellors or secretaries, whose importance depended on circumstances, but was enhanced by the fact that they were permanent officials, while the members were constantly changing. The Signory and other assemblies had many subordinate officers besides. The salaries were insignificant, and the only persons who received them were the foreign judges, chancellors, secretaries, subordinate officers, and servants; as also the officers in the towns of the district, the commissaries of the troops, and the ambassadors abroad, while the acting magistrates at home were unpaid.

This form of government and councils continued, with slight modifications, until the month of December 1494, when the overthrow of the Medici was the signal of events which materially altered the constitution of the Republic.

CHAPTER VII.

FOREIGN RELATIONS. WAR AND PEACE. COUNCIL OF UNION.

While these things were going on at home, the exigencies of war for many years made serious demands on the State and its resources, and more than once the contest was carried into the territory of the Republic. To the dangers which arose from the fact that two ambitious and warlike princes governed the north and south of Italy, was added the unfavourable circumstance, that a Pope sat in St. Peter’s chair who was constantly drawn into the din of war, less, perhaps, from his own restlessness, than from the hopeless confusion in the States of the Church. The principal scene of the war was Romagna, a country which, by its distracted condition, by the number of its petty lords, and the violent character of its inhabitants—still more by its geographical position and the vicinity of powerful States—seemed destined to be the general battle-field.

The hereditary enmity of Filippo Maria Visconti was aggravated by the hatred of the Florentine exiles, who, despairing of a return to their country on peaceful terms, stirred up the Duke of Milan to strife with her, under the usual pretext that it was not a war against their country, but against a faction. The want of success which attended the troops of Visconti in the territory of Lucca, under Niccolò Piccinino, was an enticement for Cosimo de’ Medici to strive to obtain possession of this town, as he did six years later, but with no greater success than before. The war, begun in the Lucchese territory, was continued in the Romagna, where Florence and Venice, with the aid of Pope Eugenius IV., resisted Visconti. The Milanese army did indeed once again cross the Apennines, but only to suffer a decisive defeat, on June 29, 1440, at Anghiari, between Arezzo and the valley of the Tiber. This defeat led to peace in the following year, and enlarged the Florentine territory by the mountain region of the Casentino, where the supremacy of the counts Guidi, allied with Milan, who, since the days of imperial power in Italy, had had dominion here, came to an end. Scarcely was the Milanese war at an end than Florence, like Venice, was drawn into the contest with Naples which Renè of Anjou was carrying on against King Alfonso of Aragon; both representatives of the dualism which the fall of the Hohenstaufen had bequeathed to South Italy. The Sienese country, the territory of Volterra and the Pisan Maremma, were the scenes of a struggle which might have been dangerous to the Republic, if the king had not been detained by besieging smaller places—though he was not unskilled in war; he suffered moreover from the malaria of the plains, and wasting the years 1447 and 1448 in inglorious and fruitless undertakings, was obliged for a while to lay down his arms without concluding peace, with the intention of taking them up again under more favourable circumstances. The opportunity was not long delayed.

In the midst of the feud between Florence and the Aragonese, Filippo Maria Visconti died, the last of a race which, more than any other, had represented the arbitrariness and cruelty of mediæval tyranny. He had appointed Alfonso of Aragon his heir, with a view perhaps that the weapons which he had wielded all his life long without stirring from the walls of his castle, might not rest even after his death. But the dukedom of Milan was in danger of dissolution. The capital, with Como, Novara, and Alessandria, cried out for a republic; Lodi and Piacenza threw themselves into the arms of Venice, which, engaged in ceaseless strife with Visconti, was just now pressing him hard. Duke Charles of Orleans, Filippo Maria’s nephew, prepared to support the rights of inheritance by force of arms; while the Duke of Savoy turned his eyes towards the rich Lombardy which his successors never again lost sight of. But there was another competitor—not a prince, but more able and skilled in arms than all the princes of the time: Francesco Sforza, the son of a valiant and successful condottiere, who had risen from the ranks of the peasantry. He had been at the age of twenty-three leader of the victorious mercenary troops of his father, who gave his name to a famous school of warriors. He had served Florence and Venice in war against the Visconti and Alfonso of Aragon; striven for and against Pope Eugenius IV. in Romagna and the frontiers; and in the midst of rapid changes of fortune and party, preserved relations with Florence which proved more lasting than those of the condottieri generally were. Now attracted by Filippo Maria, again repelled by suspicion even after the latter had bestowed on him the hand of his natural daughter, Bianca Maria, he was about to come to his assistance, when the victorious Venetians had already crossed the Adda. The duke died, and the new republic, threatened by so many foes, chose him to be their general. Three years later he became Duke of Milan. Francesco Sforza possessed himself of the supreme power by treachery and force of arms, but he saved for half a century the independence of a State which, after 170 years of tyranny, was no longer capable of life as a commonwealth, and furthered its prosperity, while he powerfully contributed to the formation of a political system which, however great its weakness, was the most reasonable under existing circumstances.

Without the aid of Florence and Cosimo de’ Medici, he would not have attained his ends. Cosimo had recognised his ability in the war with Visconti, and made a close alliance with him. In order to retain him in his service, when Filippo Maria offered him as a bait the hand of his daughter, Cosimo had gone in 1438 to Venice, in order to obtain more favourable conditions for him from the Republic, friendly to himself, in which, however, he failed. During the distress of Sforza on the frontiers, he had supported him as much as he could. His son Piero was present at Sforza’s marriage. Now it was necessary to choose between Sforza and Venice, for there was only one alternative; either the condottiere would make himself Duke of Milan, or the Republic of San Marco would extend its rule over all Lombardy. In Florence several voices declared in favour of the old ally on the Adriatic, who, however she might seek her own advantage with unscrupulous zeal, had yet ever been faithful at critical moments. Cosimo de’ Medici gave the casting-vote in Sforza’s favour. Perhaps it was hard to think of his old personal connections and obligations, but political expediency gained the day. Without Florentine money, Sforza would never have been able to maintain the double contest—on the one side against Milan, which he blockaded and starved out; and on the other against the Venetians, who sought to relieve it, and whom he repulsed. And when, on March 25, 1450, he made his entry into the city which proclaimed him ruler, he was obliged to maintain himself with Florentine money till he had established his position and re-organised the State. A Florentine embassy went to congratulate him—Piero de’ Medici, Neri Capponi, Luca Pitti, Diotisalvi Neroni. The Venetians were exceedingly irritated, as was natural. They judged rightly that the Sforza owed his success essentially to the favour of their former friends. Their indignation became fiercer when Florence entered into negociations (June 29) with King Alfonso, with whom they were still at war. Common animosity to Florence and Sforza drew Venice and the king nearer to one another, and at the end of 1451 an alliance, offensive and defensive, was concluded against them, which Siena, Savoy, and Montferrat joined. It was at first directed against the Duke of Milan; the Florentines had the choice of joining it, for form’s sake. But when they replied that, as peace prevailed in Italy, new alliances were not necessary, the Venetians banished all the Florentine merchants from their territories, refused a hearing to Otto Niccolini, who was entrusted with an embassy, and persuaded the king to adopt like measures. On May 16, 1452, the Republic and, four weeks later, King Alfonso declared war, which the Emperor Frederick III., then in Italy, and Pope Nicholas V., successor to Eugenius IV. since 1447, in vain endeavoured to prevent.

The Venetians began the war in Lombardy, the Neapolitans in the valley of the Chiana. Ferrante, Duke of Calabria, the king’s son, commanded the latter; Sigismundo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, the Florentines, who sent only foreign mercenaries to the field this time. The persistency with which the democracy had borne down the ancient nobility, who were trained to bear arms, had, in conjunction with the preponderance of the industrial and mercantile interests, completely annihilated the former warlike skill of the people, and though the Republic, in reliance on her pecuniary power, tried to hold her ground by means of mercenaries, she was far from being able to compete with States like Venice, Naples, and Milan, who, partly in consequence of their political form, attained greater unity in the conduct of war, and also had more men at their command, from their greater territorial power. The Florentines achieved some brilliant successes, but most of their campaigns were unfortunate, and the ability of individual citizens employed as military commissaries could not outweigh the disadvantages which sprung from general strategic incapacity and the want of unity in the commanders. The tactics of the condottieri were on the decline throughout Italy, while the art of fortification and besieging was still in its infancy. The fertile though unhealthy plain which stretches on both sides of the sluggish Chiana, between Arezzo, Cortona, and Montepulciano, was desolated by the enemy, who, however, lay for thirty-six days before the little castle of Fojano, which was only defended by 200 people. They had to retire from Castellina, another weakly-fortified place between Siena and Florence, without having effected anything, and only owed to the cowardice of the commander of Bada, in the Maremma, the capture of this unimportant fortress, before which a fleet of twenty galleys and other vessels cruised. So low had Italian strategy fallen, that they were only able to reduce even slightly defended places by hunger, while even the more practised generals feared to venture a battle, and the principal method of war was unsparing devastation of the land. The Florentines, destitute of good soldiers, sought to give another turn to affairs by inviting once more into Italy Alfonso’s old rival, René, and then his son, John of Anjou, who also bore the title of Duke of Calabria, as his father retained that of King of Naples. They thus sought to relieve the Duke of Milan, and free themselves from the incursions of the Neapolitans, who once advanced to within six miles of the town, and did great damage. In the summer of 1453 their enemies were driven back upon the Sienese territory. But a foreign event contributed more than all to terminate this miserable war, and put an end to the petty squabbling of the Italian powers.

On May 29, 1453, Mohammed II. stormed Constantinople. The West was threatened, more especially Venice, which had such great and wealthy possessions in the Levant, and Naples. This time the excellent Pope Nicholas V. did not exert himself in vain. On April 9, 1454, Venice concluded a tolerably favourable peace with Francesco Sforza at Lodi, in which King Alfonso, Florence, Savoy, Montferrat, Mantua, and Siena, were to be included. The king, who had made considerable preparations for war, did not ratify the compact till January 26 of the following year. The States of Northern and Central Italy then joined in an alliance, and a succession of peaceful years followed, which were only momentarily interrupted in the case of Florence by the freebooting expedition of Jacopo Piccinino, a son of the Niccolò who was conquered at Anghiari. Dismissed from the Venetian service, he attacked the Sienese territory in 1455, on his own account, but was defeated and compelled to set sail for Naples from Orbetello. In the confusion which broke out in Naples after king Alfonso’s death neither Florence nor Venice was involved. The ancient Florentine friendship with the house of Anjou had to yield to other influences. At the same time, when the Turks conquered the Morea, and thus approached nearer and nearer to the coasts of Italy, the Angevin party in the kingdom attempted a new rising against Ferrante of Aragon, who in 1460 suffered a defeat from Duke John, which would have driven him from the throne had his opponents been more united and more powerful. Assistance from Milan and from Rome, where Pius II. now occupied the Holy See, after the short reign (not quite three years) of Calixtus III., combined with his own energy and skill, facilitated the King’s restoration to power; and not long after, he saw the Anjou expelled from the kingdom by the decisive victory at Troia, and the insurrectionary barons, among whom were several of his near relations, given into his power. Thus Florence, like Venice, which had then little time to think of anything except danger from the Turks, was appealed to for assistance by Ferrante on the ground of the alliance concluded in consequence of the peace of Lodi; but Florence refused, from a consideration of the late King’s double dealing in the affair of Piccinino.

In the midst of the civil disputes and confusion above described, of repeated foreign troubles, and an immense exertion of material power to secure her political position, Florence in the times of Cosimo de’ Medici was still the harbour of refuge for all Italy, and, in consequence of an event important in the history of the world, the haven of Christendom. The ever-memorable movement in the intellectual world will be mentioned later; the occurrence which forms an important epoch in ecclesiastical history must be considered here.

Pope Eugenius IV. had, as we have seen, to battle at once with a double opposition, which, different in origin as in significance, united for a time, and clouded a considerable part of his reign of sixteen years. The attempt to restrain within reasonable limits the Colonna, the relations of his predecessors, who had been immoderately favoured and had grown insolent, excited agitation in Rome, and kindled a strife which extended through the greater part of the States of the Church. The course pursued by the council at Basle, opened not much more than four months after the elevation of Eugenius, necessarily led to irreconcilable dissension with the pontificate, because the new assembly, instead of considering the altered position of affairs since the termination of the great schism, and confining itself firmly and with wise moderation to what was truly edifying and necessary (as exemplified, for instance, in the new Frankish-Germanic countries), raised its pretensions so high, that if they had prevailed, the Papacy would have become a cipher. The simultaneous occurrence of the ecclesiastical contest at Basle with the ambitious plans of Filippo Maria Visconti, had filled Romagna and the frontiers, the patrimony—nay, even the Campagna—with the din of war; and on June 4, 1434, the Pope was obliged to take flight from Rome. As early as the end of January affairs had assumed such an aspect in the States of the Church, especially in Bologna, that Florence deemed it necessary to arm, foreseeing that the Pope would be forced to leave Rome, and Rinaldo degli Albizzi had then expressed his opinion that it would be advantageous and honourable for the State if Eugenius IV. should choose Florence as his residence.[89] Received honourably in the city, where he had already found support in his feud with the Colonna, and residing in the convent of Sta. Maria Novella, he was witness of the revolution which brought Cosimo de’ Medici to the helm of affairs, and he remained at Florence till April 1436, when he repaired to Bologna. As the controversy with the fathers assembled at Basle became hotter every year, and he himself was cited before their tribunal, he transferred the council to Ferrara on October 1, in the following year.

While, early in 1438, the fathers at Basle were pronouncing the suspension of the Pope, the latter opened, in the capital of the house of Este, a council, at which appeared shortly afterwards the Greek Emperor, John Palæologus, in whom the distress of his crumbling empire had aroused the hope of securing the assistance of the West by a union with the Church. A pestilence which broke out in Ferrara caused the removal of the synod to Florence, where in January 1439 it began its sittings, and on July 6 proclaimed the reunion of the two churches,[90] six weeks after the deposition of Eugenius IV. had been decreed by the council at Basle, which had degenerated into a conciliabulum, and which a few months later elected Duke Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, a powerless anti-Pope, under the name of Felix V. The bronze doors of the church of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the work of two Florentine artists, though not the best specimen of the Florentine sculpture of that age, commemorate these events in the reliefs. The reconciliation between East and West could not be of long duration; the schism, a double one, as it was a question of doctrine as well as supremacy, and was deeply rooted in the feelings of the people, broke out again immediately afterwards. But for Florence, where also a reconciliation of the Armenians with the Church of Rome took place, the council formed an epoch in the world’s history.

Eugenius IV. resided for four years in the city, while powerful regents, entrusted with full power, governed Rome. First, the cardinal-patriarch Giovanni Vitelleschi, for a time Archbishop of Florence, and involved in the catastrophe of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, as Luca Pitti was, six years later, in that which ended in his violent death; then Cardinal Ludovico Scarampi, likewise Archbishop of Florence at a time when this see needed a more worthy pastor than these prelates, wearing coat-of-mail and sword. It was precisely during these years that the Pope was more involved than suited his pastoral dignity in that endless confusion in the Romagna and the frontiers which occupied the last years of Filippo Maria Visconti, nor did his Holiness hold himself quite aloof from a share in Florentine party divisions. It would have been better for him if he had appeared there less as a temporal prince than as Pope. On March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, with which the year began, according to Florentine custom, he consecrated Sta. Maria del Fiore, where the solemn proclamation of union in the Church followed: two occurrences recorded on the large marble tablets which are to be seen on each side of the entrance to the new sacristy. After the consecration, the Gonfaloniere, Giuliano Davanzati, received the honour of knighthood. The church of Sta. Croce was consecrated in 1442, in the presence of the Pope, by Cardinal Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicæa, one of the few Greeks who remained in communion with the Latin church. Another memorial of this Pope is the Collegium Eugenianum, founded in the year 1435, an institution for young priests, which now occupies the former locality of the Florentine university in the street named after it, Via dello Studio, where the antique modest building speaks of former days.

The contest for the Neapolitan throne almost produced a serious rupture between Eugenius IV. and Florence. The Pope had once recognised the claims of René of Anjou, and granted him the investiture which Cosimo de’ Medici received February 23, 1435.[91] He afterwards inclined to the side of his opponent, who, after the conquest of the capital, forced René to evacuate the kingdom. In the summer of 1442 the latter had come to Florence, with the hope of regaining the Pope’s favour, and also of inducing the Republic to give active support to Francesco Sforza, who, as we have seen, had fought on his side, but was now hard pressed in Romagna and on the frontiers. The King, without a kingdom, was honourably received by the Gonfaloniere, Giovanni Falconi; one of the houses of the Bardi was assigned to him as residence, and twenty-five gold florins a day granted him for his maintenance. But Eugenius IV. was not to be won over, and the Florentines seem also to have despaired of any favourable result, after Sforza’s contest had cost, and continued to cost, them such heavy sums. When René saw that he was wasting his time, he embarked at Leghorn in a Genoese ship, which brought him back to Provence.

At last, March 7, 1443, the Pope quitted Florence. The mistrust felt towards him on account of his supposed understanding with the exiles, had declared itself so openly, that advice was sent from Venice rather to hinder his departure than to let him go with anger and evil intentions in his heart. Leonardo Aretino, the chancellor, and other judicious citizens spoke against it. Venice herself, he said, would take care not to act so in a similar case. He was right, for the Pope was a power not to be despised. Vespasiano da Bisticci describes the impression which he made on the people.[92] When Eugenius, surrounded by the cardinals, stood on the scaffolding erected at the entrance to the cloisters of Sta. Maria Novella, to dispense his blessing, not a sound was to be heard in the Piazza, which with the adjoining streets was filled with people, and as he pronounced the ‘Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini,’ sobs and cries of ‘Misericordia’ were heard on every side. At such moments he really appeared to be the Deity, whose vicegerent he was. The way in which Eugenius IV. departed from the city which had afforded him hospitality so many years, is a strange picture of the confused state of things. ‘During the whole night before the day on which the Pope took his departure,’ relates Vespasian again,[93] ‘there had been a contention as to whether he should be allowed to go or not. After all the influential citizens had come to an agreement, they commissioned Messer Agnolo (Acciaiuoli) to go to the Pope early in the morning, and to inform him he could go whither he pleased. The Pope and his suite waited for this announcement. When Messer Agnolo entered Sta. Maria Novella, Messer Francesco of Padua (Cardinal Condulmer, nephew of Eugenius) came to meet him outside the Pope’s chamber, and asked if they were prisoners. Messer Agnolo answered that, had they been prisoners, he would not have been charged with the commission, but another citizen who had voted in that sense. When the Pope heard it, he thanked him and the Signoria many times, instantly mounted and rode with his suite to Siena.’

In the Augustinian convent of Lecceto, before the Fontebrand, a gate of this city, where Eugenius IV. resided several months before returning to Rome, which had become more and more anarchical during his nine years’ absence, he granted the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily to Alfonso, on July 15,[94] and thus began the uninterrupted though often threatened reign of the Aragonese line, which lasted till the oft-revived question of the succession ended in the violent overthrow of the whole political system for which the Medici had laboured in a different way and in another sense.

Sixteen years after the departure of Eugenius, another Pope came to Florence—another man, with other plans and thoughts. On April 25, 1459, Pius II. came hither from Siena on his way to the conference of princes assembled at Mantua to organise a crusade against the Turks. Florence was by no means well inclined towards her Sienese neighbours, and the last Neapolitan war, favoured by Siena, had not exactly improved the feeling. The Sienese priest, raised to the highest dignity of Christendom, and desirous of setting a limit to the threatening progress of Islam, was, however, most honourably received. Several princes and lords had repaired to the city before the Pope, to welcome him. Galeazzo Maria Visconti, son of the Duke of Milan, sixteen years old, appeared with a troop of 350 horse and Cosimo de’ Medici, although ill, could not be induced to neglect the duty of hospitality towards the son of his ally and friend; Sigismondo Malatesta, an Ordelaffi of Forli, a Pio of Carpi, one of the Feltrieri of Urbino, and others rode out with the young Sforza to San Casciano, where, eight miles from the city, the road descends into the valley of the Arno, and where the solemn reception took place. The Gonfaloniere, Agnolo Vettori, led Pius II. to Sta. Maria Novella, the usual residence of the Pope. The lover of learning and art delighted in the many beautiful things which the city, then exceedingly rich, offered to him; business, with the exception of a new election of bishops, does not seem to have been attended to. Cosimo de’ Medici was hindered from being present by indisposition which could not have been feigned.

During the ten days’ visit of the Pope there died on May 2, Archbishop Antoninus, who was already called a saint, before Pope Adrian VI. canonised him. Sound common sense, great goodness of heart, piety, and well-directed benevolence, which founded several institutions still standing, reformatory zeal and firmness in defending the rights of the Church, had made him, who was also learned in science, appear the model of an excellent pastor to the people during the fourteen years which he dedicated to the office of archbishop, in a time full of suffering and sudden revolutions of fortune. Such a model he has remained to the present day, when his writings have been collected, and a beautiful marble statue has been erected to his memory among those of distinguished Florentines. The pageantry of the days immediately preceding and following his decease suited but ill with the loss of a man so honourable and excellent, which was heavily felt by all the people. Splendid games and festivals were arranged for the princes of Milan and the other lords. To a tourney succeeded a festival on the New Market Place, where the most beautiful women were assembled; then a hunting-party on the Piazza before Sta. Croce, where, besides the usual forest animals, a lion and a giraffe were exhibited. A triumphal procession took place in the evening. A silver table-service, weighing 125 pounds, was presented to the youthful Sforza. It was a custom to entertain princely personages at the cost of the Commune.

On November 10, 1461, Charlotte of Lusignan, consort of Prince Louis of Savoy, arrived at Florence[95] on her way to Rome, whither she was going to entreat the aid of Pius II. against her illegitimate step-brother Jacob. The latter had possessed himself of the supremacy over Cyprus, belonging to her of right, and held her husband besieged in Nicosia. The Signoria, with the Gonfaloniere, Alessandro Machiavelli, at their head, went to meet her, and conducted her under a canopy to the house of Cambiozzo de’ Medici, in the Borgo San Lorenzo, which was prepared for her reception. During her seven days’ visit she went up to the basilica of San Miniato, which towers above the city, to visit the grave of the cardinal of Portugal, brother of Juan of Coimbra, her first husband, who had died here in 1459, on an embassy from Pius II. Pope Pius has described in his memoirs the last of the Lusignans, who in the summer of 1487, after more than a quarter of a century spent in exile, found in St. Peter’s church in the Vatican that rest which had been denied to her in this life.

CHAPTER VIII.

COSIMO DE’ MEDICI’S LAST DAYS.

As the year 1464 approached, Cosimo de’ Medici’s life drew to a close. He had long suffered from gout, which now became more violent, and attacked more sensitive parts. Often he could not quit the house for months together. He had experienced the fulness of joy and of sorrow, especially in his own family. His brother Lorenzo, his junior by six years, had always been of one mind with him, had eagerly furthered his interests and those of his sons in the critical moments of 1433, and had drawn upon himself the enmity of those in power. He had afterwards been an active and vigilant administrator of money matters for the Papal curia, and had rivalled his elder brother in collecting literary treasures. He was only forty-five years old when he died in the autumn of 1440, at his villa at Careggi, leaving a son, Piero Francesco, who at first had a share in the mercantile business of his uncle, then parted from him, and lived aloof from all political matters in his native city, superintending the management of his large property. This Lorenzo was the founder of two lines which both fell into enmity with the elder branch. One of them ended with the murder of the first duke, the last illegitimate descendant of Cosimo’s line, while the other gave to Tuscany one of her most valiant warriors and seven rulers. Cosimo had two sons by Contessina de’ Bardi, Piero and Giovanni. The former was born in 1416, and carefully educated. At first there was an intention of giving him the daughter of the Count of Poppi, Francesco de Guidi, in marriage. But his father seems to have been fearful of allying himself with this old noble family, which would have brought him into connection with the lords of Romagna and Umbria, as well as with the house of the Roman prefects; connections which might have injured his position in a democratical community, not to mention the alliance of the Count of Poppi with the Visconti and Albizzi, which led to his ruin in 1440.

Piero de’ Medici married Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni, of a distinguished Florentine family, a woman of extraordinary endowments, who will be often mentioned in the course of this history. As Cosimo’s elder son, who was sickly from his earliest youth, seemed to be incapable of taking his eminent and arduous position in city and state, the father built all his hopes on the younger son. He lost him, however, at the age of twenty-two, in the beginning of November 1463, not a year after he had buried his little son Cosimo, whom Maria Ginevra degli Alessandri had borne to him, and the loss of whom is said to have broken his father’s heart. The old man wandered inconsolable through the rooms: ‘This is a large house,’ he lamented, ‘for so small a family.’ Among those who addressed expressions of sympathy to him was Pope Pius II. ‘Not the departed one is the loser,’ replied Cosimo; ‘for what we call life is death, and that beyond is the true life; but who needed him are the losers.’[96] Thus there only remained to him the family of Piero, who, besides his two sons, had two daughters, Bianca and Nannina, who, the eldest in her grandfather’s lifetime, married into two Florentine families, the Pazzi and Rucellai. Besides his legitimate children, Cosimo had a natural son, Carlo, probably by Maddalena, a Circassian whom Giovanni Portinari had bought at Venice in the summer of 1427.[97]

He maintained great reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter of a century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but he never assumed the show of his dignity. Many works of art and virtù were to be seen in his house; but in style of living, retinue and horses, he was modest. The ruler of the Florentine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and merchant. In his appearance and bearing there was nothing which distinguished him from others; he was simple, moderate, accessible, friendly and familiar with the common people. ‘He understood agriculture thoroughly,’ remarked Vespasiano da Bisticci, ‘and talked about it as if he had never occupied himself with other matters. He laid out the garden of the brethren of San Marco, which had been waste land, and created something really beautiful. Thus it was with his own possessions; he everywhere superintended the planting, grafted and pruned with his own hand. When residing at Careggi, on account of a pestilence, he dedicated the hours of the morning to two worthy employments. Hardly was he up than he went into the vineyard, where he worked for two hours, just as Pope Boniface IX. did in the Vigne at the palace of the Vatican. When he returned home he read the moral writings of Gregory the Great. In the midst of all his employments he remembered every single plantation on his estates, and when his peasants came to him he conversed with them about them.’

He was a grave man, temperate in all enjoyments. Players, rioters, and jugglers found as little favour with him as those who displayed a luxury unsuited to their position. This, however, did not prevent him from granting free course at the banquets of the learned men who were about him, members of the Platonic Academy and others, to the hilarity and wit which the Florentines of that period were apt to flavour with licence as well as with Attic salt.

Of games he indulged in chess only, and this rarely, and not till after dinner. In his latter years he was very silent, and remained several hours without speaking. When his wife asked him the reason one day, he replied,’When you remove to your villa, you consider for a fortnight what you have to see about. Do you think I have not much to think of when about to exchange this life for another?’ In his speech he was witty, but cautious, and it was said of him that he liked to give ambiguous answers. He shrank from boasting, and said that there was a weed called envy, which must not be watered, but left to wither. But when he chose he could give sharp answers. When Rinaldo degli Albizzi, at the time of Visconti’s warlike preparations, on which the exile fixed his hopes, said to him that the hen was brooding, he answered, ‘It is difficult to brood outside the nest.’ And on the warning of other exiles, that he ought to take care, for they were awake, he replied that he believed it, for he must have banished sleep from them. His remarks were always to the purpose. When Pius II. was arming for the crusade, he said the Pope was an old man, and was attempting a youthful feat. He reproved many without using a hard expression. His counsels in political and personal affairs were always moderate and prudent. When one of his partisans, a man of small capabilities, was going to a foreign town as Podestà, and asked him for advice, he only answered: ‘Dress according to your position, and speak little.’ In this way he maintained his position and that of the State for so many years in the midst of difficult circumstances. As has been already said, there was something cynical in him. Nothing characterises him so much as the words which he once addressed to an influential man, who, differing in opinion, quarrelled with him, and complained of Cosimo’s being in his way. ‘You,’ he said, ‘pursue the infinite; I the finite. You plant your ladder in the air; I on the ground, in order not to fall instead of flying. If I am anxious for the honour and advantage of my house, if I wish that it may retain pre-eminence over yours, there is nothing in that which is not honourable and just, and no one will blame me because I prefer my interests to yours. You and I are like two great dogs, who spring upon one another, but then pause and sniff. As they both have teeth, each goes his own way. I advise you to look after your business; I will attend to mine.’

He did not deceive himself as to the difficulties which surrounded him, or as to the still greater hindrances with which his descendants would have to contend. The example of the heads of parties who had preceded him was not lost upon him. He knew, says Vespasian, that he owed his recall from exile to powerful friends, who did not intend to give up their position, and that it was not easy to keep on good terms with them except by temporising and making them believe that they were as powerful as he. Here he proved his great art. In all that he wished to carry out he managed to make it appear that it proceeded from others, not from him. He said that the greatest fault which he had been guilty of was not having begun to expend money ten years earlier; for now that he knew the character of his fellow-citizens, he foresaw that nothing would remain of his family and his house after fifty years except, the little that he had built; for after his death his descendants would find themselves in the midst of greater troubles than any that he had seen. He never spoke ill of others, and was very impatient when any one did so in his presence. His promises could be relied on, for he did more than he promised. His immense wealth enabled him to oblige many. His position was such a one that it was a proverbial expression to boasters, ‘So you think you are Cosimo de’ Medici?’ From his father he had inherited a fine property, which he considerably increased by industry, acuteness, and good fortune. He ruled the money market, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe. He had banks in all the western countries, and his experience and the excellent memory which never failed him, with his strong love of order, enabled him to guide everything from Florence, which he never quitted after 1438 except to go to the country. While he watched over his own advancement, all who were in business connection with him and conducted his banks abroad, enriched themselves also. Thus it was with the Tornabuoni in Rome, with the Portinari in Bruges, with the Benci, Sassetti, Spini, &c. Besides this, numerous citizens had money from him in their possession, as was revealed after his death. How much he was capable of in financial affairs was seen when Venice and King Alfonso united against Florence. By withdrawing credit from them, he forced them to peace, notwithstanding their superior power. Pope Eugenius IV. mortgaged the castle of Assisi to him for the considerable sums advanced to him. The mutual relations into which he brought the finances of the State with those of his house by advances and repayments, laid the foundation, it is true, of those evils which assumed the most serious form under his grandson, when Cosimo’s mercantile insight and success were wanting.

His conscience was not at peace. ‘In the arrangement and administration of affairs of the city,’ says the honest Vespasiano, with the straightforward naïveté and conscientiousness which he never lays aside, even when speaking of a man for whom he has great respect and admiration, ‘it could not fail that his conscience was loaded with many things, as is usually the case with those who govern states and rule others. He perceived that if he wished to preserve himself in his position and obtain the mercy of God, works of piety were necessary. As it now appeared to him that a part of his possessions, I know not how, had been obtained in a doubtful manner, he wished to roll off this burden from his shoulders, and poured out his heart to Pope Eugenius IV., who was then in Florence, begging him to tell him how he could lighten his conscience.’

The building of churches and convents was a principal means of paying this debt, according to the ideas of the time; Duke Gian Galeazzo, not to mention a thousand others, built the cathedral of Milan and the Certosa of Pavia, and the citizen of Florence, whatever his sins may have been, was certainly no Visconti. But he built, in spite of dukes and kings, in Florence and out of it. It was his special passion, and he understood this art. He had always architects around him; Michelozzi accompanied him into his exile, and Brunellesco was among his intimate friends. He executed great works in the city, not to mention his magnificent house, which must have been completed in 1440. We have already spoken of many of these works, and they will be treated of more in detail subsequently; here they may be enumerated in succession. San Lorenzo and San Marco are for the greater part due to him. The Vallombrosan cloister of Sta. Verdiana, founded at the end of the fourteenth century by Ser Niccolò di Buonagiunta, was restored by him. In the cloister of Sta. Croce, he built the novitiate, with the adjoining chapel and choir. He enriched with altars and adornments many churches. The Canonica of San Lorenzo is said to have cost him 40,000 gold florins, that of San Marco 70,000, and the palace 60,000. At the foot of the hill of Fiesole he built a church and abbey for the canons of the Augustinians, whom Pope Eugenius IV. transplanted thither in 1439; and higher up, not far from the little town, the church of San Girolamo, on the site where the congregation of the Jeromites was founded, about the end of the last century, by Carlo, of the family of the Counts Guidi, where the villa Ricasoli is now to be seen. The villa at Careggi, in the most beautiful situation, scarcely two miles from the city, and the favourite residence of himself and his sons, received its present form from him, as well as the villa now named after the Mozzi, on the Fiesolan hill, and that of Cafaggiuolo, in the thickly-wooded country on the slope of the Apennines, on the road leading to Bologna. He built a Franciscan convent in the midst of the woods in the neighbourhood of the latter. Nor far from thence he enlarged the villa of Trebbio, the castellated building of which reminds us of Cosimo, the first Grand Duke, who resided there in his youth. In Assisi he enlarged the cloister of St. Francis, and had the road paved which leads up to the town from the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, lying at the foot of the hill. This church, the large marble fountain of which he caused to be built by Michelozzo for the benefit of the pilgrims, still bears his name and arms. The palace in Milan, presented to him by Francesco Sforza, he caused to be rebuilt by Michelozzo, and painted by Vicenzo Zoppa and others. He restored the collegium built by a Florentine cardinal for his countrymen in Paris. In Jerusalem he erected a pilgrims’ house for the Florentines on the spot where, according to tradition, the Holy Ghost descended on the Apostles, and where a building stood, which he restored by appointing regular payments for its maintenance. He used to say that whatever he had given to God, he in his balance of accounts had never found Him to be his debtor. His connection with artists and scholars will be mentioned when we come to the description of his extraordinary services to art and his active interest in learning.

Such was Cosimo de’ Medici—certainly, with all his faults, a remarkable man, who more than anyone contributed to keep alive not only the forms, but much of the spirit of civil equality and dignity, after it had become impossible to avoid a party government, leading sooner or later to the preponderance of one family. A spirit, which lay at all events in the character of the people, but also in the character of a race which had sprung from the people, which at last attained to power, and even in arbitrary times, preserved something of that which distinguishes it from other princely families. The people, those who disliked Cosimo not excepted, observed with anxiety his increasing ill-health. They said to each other that his influential adherents were infinitely inferior to him in goodness, consideration, and prudence, and feared that his son would not be able to restrain them. In the spring of 1464 he caused himself to be brought, with much suffering, to Careggi, where his wife and son were with him. When Francesco Sforza heard of his condition, he sent him a skilful physician, who, however, could effect as little as the others. On July 26, Piero de’ Medici addressed the following letter to his two sons, who were residing at Cafaggiuolo:[98] ‘The day before yesterday I gave you news of Cosimo’s increasing illness, which, as it seems to me, is exhausting his strength. He himself feels it, so that on Tuesday evening he would have no one but Monna Contessina and myself in his room. He began to speak of his own life, then passed to the government of the city, family, his trade connections, and the state of his property. At last he came to speak of you, and encouraged me, as you have good intellectual endowments, to give you a careful education, that you might make many things easier for me in life. He said two things grieved him—first, that he had not done so much as he wished to do and might have done, and that he left me in bad health in the midst of many difficulties. He had not wished to make a last will even in Giovanni’s lifetime, as he had always seen us united and affectionate. When God should take him to Himself, he wished for no pomp at the funeral; he then reminded me of what he had already said concerning his interment in San Lorenzo. He said all this so calmly and sensibly that it seemed wonderful to me, adding that he had lived long, and was content to leave the world at God’s pleasure. Yesterday morning he rose and had himself fully dressed, in presence of the priors of San Lorenzo, San Marco, and the monastery. He confessed to the former, and then had mass said, repeating the responses with a strong voice. He afterwards pronounced the Creed, said the Confiteor, and devoutly received the sacrament after entreating the forgiveness of all. All this strengthened my hope and confidence in God, and although, according to human feelings, I am not free from sorrow, I am yet contented, having seen his strength of soul and pious frame of mind, to see him attain that end to which we must all come. He felt well yesterday, and also to-day, but at his advanced age no recovery is to be hoped for. Let the brethren in the forest (the Franciscans at Cafaggiuolo) pray for him, and distribute alms at your good pleasure. Pray yourselves to God that He may leave him to us for a little time, if it be for his good. And take your example by him; accept your share of toil as God wills while still young, and become men, for circumstances demand it. But above all, consider that which may bring you honour and advantage, for the time is at hand when you must be tried. Live in the fear of God, and hope. I will let you know how Cosimo is. We expect hourly a doctor from Milan, but I trust more to God than to men.’

In his memorandum-book Piero de’ Medici wrote a few days later as follows:[99] ‘On August 1, 1464, about half-past the twenty-second hour, Cosimo, son of Giovanni, the son of Averardo de’ Medici, departed this life, after he had been long tortured with pains in the limbs, although otherwise in health, with the exception of the last month of his life, when a complaint of the bladder, with some fever, reduced his strength much. He was 77 (75) years old, a tall and handsome man, and, excepting the complaints mentioned, of an excellent constitution. A man of great ability and yet greater kindness, the most respected and influential citizen, who had long ruled the city, possessed more confidence than all others, and was beloved by the whole people. No one can be remembered who stood in greater favour or better repute, or whose death awakened more general sympathy. This was deservedly the case, inasmuch as no one had to complain of him, while he promoted and assisted many; for his great pleasure consisted in well-doing, not only where relations and friends were concerned, but also in the case of strangers and even opponents, difficult of belief as this may appear and hard to carry out. In this way the number of those who wished him well was always increasing. He was liberal, benevolent, merciful; his alms were numerous, in behalf of churches and convents, not merely in town and country, but even in distant lands. On account of his wisdom he enjoyed the respect and confidence of all the lords and powers of Italy, and of foreign countries. All honourable offices in the city were bestowed on him; he would undertake none abroad. The most honourable embassies fell to him. He enriched many citizens by his mercantile connections, not to mention the great fortune which he left, for he was a merchant as skilful as he was successful. He died at our house in Careggi, after having received all the sacraments of the holy Church with piety and reverence. He would not make a will, but left everything at my free disposal. On the following day he was interred in the church of San Lorenzo, in the vault previously chosen by him, without pomp of burial, in the presence of the canons and priests of the aforesaid church, and the regular canons of Fiesole, with neither more nor fewer tapers than are used at ordinary obsequies, as he had commanded with his last words, saying, one should give alms during life, then they were of more use than after death. I did what was my duty, and gave the orders for alms-giving and Divine worship, as my books will show.’[100]

Marsilio Ficino, the confidant of the family for four generations, and witness of Cosimo’s last days, wrote the following to the grandson of the latter, and his own pupil, Lorenzo, then sixteen years of age:[101] ‘A man intelligent above all others, pious before God, just and high-minded towards his fellow-men, moderate in everything that concerned himself, active in his private affairs, but still more careful and prudent in public ones. He did not live for himself alone, but for the service of God and his country. None surpassed him in humility or magnanimity. More than twelve years I had philosophic conversations with him, and he was as acute in disputation as he was wise and strong in action. I owe Plato much, to Cosimo I owe no less. He showed me in practice those virtues which Plato presented to my mind. He was as covetous of time as Midas of gold; he measured days and hours, and complained even of the loss of minutes. After he had occupied himself with philosophy all his life, and in the midst of the gravest matters, he devoted himself, after Solon’s example, more than ever to it in the days when he was passing from darkness to light. For as you know, who were present shortly before his departure, he still read with me Plato’s book “On the One Reason of Things and Highest Good,” as though he would in reality now go to enjoy the good which he had tasted in conversation.’

The Signoria ordered a commission of ten citizens, Luca Pitti at their head, to make a proposal as to the manner in which the State could honour the memory of Cosimo de’ Medici, and express its gratitude. Donato Acciaiuoli made a speech, in which the determination to grant him the title of father of his country was announced.[102] In San Lorenzo, before the high altar, above the place in the crypt where stands the tomb inscribed with his name, the words may be read on the marble pavement:

COSMUS MEDICES
HIC SITUS EST
DECRETO PUBLICO
PATER PATRIÆ.
VIXIT ANNOS LXXV. MENSES III.
DIES XX.

SECOND BOOK.

PIERO DE’ MEDICI.
FIRST YEARS OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT.

CHAPTER I.

PIERO DE’ MEDICI, HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

At the death of Cosimo de’ Medici, his descendants, besides his natural son Carlo, who once more entered the ecclesiastical order, consisted of Piero, surnamed the Gouty (il Gottoso), and his four children. Piero was born in 1416, and was now forty-eight years old. He was a youth when the swift change of fortune in his father’s life took place, which, at first threatening his house with ruin, had suddenly raised it to supreme power, and his manhood passed during the envied but not seriously disputed exercise of that power. His health was feeble, yet this did not hinder him from undertaking various civil offices, and may, perhaps, have been of service to him by covering his mediocre character and intellect, and enabling him to preserve that middle course which is so difficult for the head of a party filled with great and ambitious men. He was a sensible, quiet man, experienced in business, with a sound judgment and far more kindliness of heart and sincerity than his father, but without his political acuteness, knowledge of men, and talent for steering safely among the numerous rocks that beset his position.

A clever wife stood beside him. At a time when Florence had no lack of distinguished women, Lucrezia, the daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni, surpassed most in intellectual gifts and domestic virtues. Her family was a branch of an ancient and noble Florentine race, which, since the democratic reforms of 1293, had been excluded from holding civic offices, yet without losing importance. Like many others, Simon Tornaquinci, a hundred years later, had altered his coat-of-arms, enrolled himself among the plebeian families under the name of Tornabuoni, and attached himself to the Medicean party, in which his son Francesco took a not unimportant position. Tornaquinci and Tornabuoni possessed considerable landed property in the western part of Florence. A gate of the second wall, since called San Pancrazio, was once named after the former, and a street still bears the name of the latter.[103] Lucrezia de’ Medici never experienced the anguish of exile; neither, separated from an exiled husband, had she to remain at the head of a ruined household, like so many noble ladies in those days of magnificence so often changing into misery. She beheld three generations in the possession of power, with its charge of care and sorrow. While conducting her household, which never lost its simple character, she paid homage to the muse in lyric poems and translations of Biblical histories. We shall speak later of her intercourse with Luigi Pulci (whom she encouraged to complete his poem on the legends of Charlemagne), with Politian and others. Lucrezia possessed great influence over her eldest son, whose youth she guided, and she lived to enjoy the period of his highest greatness.

Lucrezia gave birth to seven children, four of whom, two sons and two daughters, survived. Lorenzo was born January 1, 1449.[104] Nature had given him strength, but not beauty. To judge from his exterior, one might have prophesied him a long life, but not a brilliant one. He was above the middle height, broad-chested, powerfully built, and agile of limb. His features were, however, unpleasing; the sight weak, the nose flattened, the chin sharp, with a pale complexion. He was entirely destitute of the sense of smell, and his voice was harsh.[105] These natural defects he conquered with equal skill and perseverance, but the advantages of his bodily health and strength did not last long. His early education was confided to Gentile de’ Becchi of Urbino, afterwards canon at Florence and Pisa, and finally Bishop of Arezzo, a man of great ability and deeply attached to the family, an attachment which, at an important epoch in the life of his pupil and in Florentine history, led him to exaggerations which did not suit the ecclesiastical dignity.

Cosimo had attracted Gentile[106] and entrusted him with the education of his grandson. This learned man, who was connected with the most famous scholars of his time, such as Francesco Filelfo, Marsilio Ficino, Cardinal Ammanati, Giovan. Antonio Campano, Politian, and others, certainly spared no pains in the education of the richly-gifted boy. Under his guidance and that of Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, and John Argyropulos, one of the Greek fugitives received by Cosimo, the youth amassed an amount of knowledge not often possessed even at that time, when learned culture was so general among the rich. He developed his excellent talents in many directions. A letter addressed by his tutor to Piero de’ Medici, June 3, 1454,[107] with its assertion that the boy of sixteen excited the admiration of the whole city, is a pattern of that courtly style which began to be practised by the dependants of powerful families. It is worth mentioning here, because it speaks of a visit the boy paid to the Duke John of Anjou, who was then staying in Florence. ‘On the day before your departure, Lorenzo assumed the French costume, which suited him so well that we had scarcely set out when we were surrounded by a crowd of children and adults, who followed us on the way to King René’s son, whom we intended to visit. The Duke received him with great pleasure, as if he had been a little Frenchman fresh from his native country, and kept him the whole day in his presence. But not many were deceived by him, for his gravity, so little suited to the French character, betrayed his individuality.’

His education was serious according to the custom of the time. Several hours were devoted to religious exercises, especially in the evening, when a fraternity of St. Paul was visited. His mother was especially particular in this respect, as she was also in inculcating on the youth habits of benevolence, by appointing dowries for poor girls, supporting poor convents, giving abundant alms to the needy, and pursuing every noble stratagem that would lead to popular favour. In bodily exercises Lorenzo soon surpassed most of his companions, and he early displayed that love for beautiful horses which he preserved all his life; he was also an accomplished rider. He was highly delighted when, just out of his boyhood, a valuable horse was sent him from Sicily. He made a rich present in return, and upon its being suggested to him that it would be better under such circumstances to buy the horse than receive it as a gift, he replied, ‘Do you not know that it is a royal gift, and does it not seem royal not to be conquered in liberality?’[108]

Piero’s younger son, Giuliano, was born in 1453. He was not permitted to arrive at maturity. Compared with his brother, he was rather in the shade, yet he promised to rival him in many things, as he certainly did in knightly exercises. He was tall, handsome, and strong, according to Angelo Politian’s description,[109] who was intimately associated with him; had lively dark eyes, dark complexion, black hair falling on his shoulders, excelled in all bodily exercises, and was an eager huntsman. His expression and bearing were commanding. He was fond of poetry, and took a lively interest in the fine arts. Giuliano did not, however, equal his brother in versatile talents; his character rather resembled his father’s than his grandfather’s.

The elder of the two daughters, Bianca, was married in Cosimo’s lifetime to Guglielmo de’ Pazzi. The great influence which the Pazzi family had on the fortunes of the Medici and of the State makes it necessary to dwell awhile upon their history.[110] Their origin is veiled in obscurity. Some have considered them as identical with the lordly family of the same name in the Arno valley, which was connected with the Donati, frequently mentioned in the heroic days of Florence, and related to Dante Alighieri. Others have traced them from Fiesole, whence the old family arms are said to be derived—six moons, alternately blue and red, in a silver field, a device which they exchanged in 1388 for that granted by the dukes of Bar, two golden barbs in a blue field, and at present changed into dolphins with four small double crosses. According to unauthenticated tradition, Pazzo de’ Pazzi went to Jerusalem in Godfrey de Bouillon’s army, and the people of Florence preserved a fragment of stone which he is said to have brought home from the Saviour’s tomb. At one time placed in Sta. Maria del Fiore, and then in Sant’Apostolo, this stone was used to strike the sparks from which the tapers were lighted, and in Sta. Maria del Fiore, during the mass, it set alight the Columbina, a squib in the shape of a dove, which ignited a cart full of rockets and other fireworks exploded between the church and baptistery. This cart, called the Carro de’ Pazzi, drives round a part of the inner town, and stops at the entrance of the Borgo degli Albizzi, named after the family, where one of their palaces forms the corner. About the middle of the twelfth century we meet with the name of the Pazzi in documents; towards the close they became divided into three principal branches. In the bloody battle of Montaperti, Jacopo de’ Pazzi bore the banner of Florence, which, when the traitor Bocca degli Abati hewed his hands off, he pressed to his breast with the stumps till he sank down dead. His son Pazzino stood at the head of the Black party in the desolating party strife which preceded the Roman expedition of the Emperor Henry of Luxemburg. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the still flourishing line was strictly aristocratic, and only passed over to the plebeian families in 1434. This change arose out of the circumstance that so many of the families hitherto admitted to hold office were proscribed by being ranked among ‘the great,’ so that Cosimo feared to increase their numbers and consequently their power. He therefore caused the old noble families, if they did not exactly oppose him and his family, to be ranked among the plebeians. Thus it happened with Andrea de’ Pazzi, who was born in 1372, and with whom the importance of the family in civic affairs commences. He was already experienced in embassies, and had treated with Pope John XXIII. When, as has been already related, King René resided in Florence in 1442, Andrea de’ Pazzi was assigned to him as escort, and obtained the favour of that prince, who, though neither skilful nor successful in things political or military, had talents and was amiable. He made Andrea a knight, and stood godfather to one of his children, who was called Renato after the King. He erected the beautiful chapel of Sta. Croce and the palace at the Canto de’ Pazzi, which, rebuilt by his son Jacopo, is still a monument of a style uniting severity with elegance, and is, moreover, the witness of an occurrence which has made the name of the family historical.

Andrea de’ Pazzi left several sons by his wife Caterina Salviati, two of whom, Piero and Jacopo, played an important part. Piero was one of the most brilliant and cultivated persons of his time. Niccolò Niccoli, to whom so many of his countrymen were indebted for mental culture, roused in him an interest in scholarship. ‘Piero de’ Pazzi,’ relates Vespasiano da Bisticci,[111] ‘was a most beautiful youth, and pursued his pleasures without thinking of graver employments, while his father, a wealthy merchant, who cared little for literature, which he did not understand, thought to dedicate him to his own pursuits. As he one day passed the Palazzo del Podestà, Niccolò Niccoli, another Socrates, saw him. Impressed by his exterior, he called him to him, and asked whose son he was and what he was doing. The youth, not unaware of the respect paid to the excellent man, replied that he was the son of Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi, and passed his time as he best might. Niccolò continued, “As you are the son of such a highly placed citizen, and yourself of such favourable appearance, it is a shame that you do not study Latin literature, which would be a great accomplishment for you. If you do not learn it, you will reap no honour, and remain without inward resources when the bloom of youth has vanished.” Piero was struck, and answered that he would willingly follow the good advice if Niccolò would procure him a suitable teacher.’ Thus he began his studies under the guidance of Pontano, and soon made so much progress that he was a pattern for all the youths in the city. When he went with the Archbishop of Pisa, Filippo de’ Medici and Buonaccorso Pitti, in October 1461, to France, to congratulate King Louis XI. on his accession,[112] he displayed extraordinary pomp and princely liberality, as well as skill and political address, and he was knighted by the King. When he returned he met with a brilliant reception. ‘At his entry,[113] the whole city seemed to rejoice, for he was beloved by all on account of his kindness and liberality. All the streets and windows were filled with people who awaited him. He came with a suite in attire completely new, with costly pearls on their hats and sleeves. In the memory of man no knight had entered Florence as he did, which was a great honour for his family. He rode to the palace of the Signory, dismounted at the great door, and went in to fetch the banner, like those who returned home as knights. He then mounted again and rode to the palace of the principal men of the Guelph party, to receive the party badge. Here Messer Piero Acciaiuoli welcomed him in the presence of many, with a well-composed speech in the vulgar tongue. Upon this he received the badge, took the banner in his hand, and rode with a great suite home again, where for some days open house was kept. If a reproach could be cast upon him, it was that of excessive liberality. Only the man who asked for nothing received nothing from him. At the death of his father it was found that he had spent 12,000 gold florins, of which there was no account. To be sure, he had spent all, or nearly all, on things which, according to worldly ideas, sufficed for his honour and distinction.’

We know that Andrea de’ Pazzi formed a friendship with King René. Piero attached himself to that king’s son when he came to Florence in 1454. The connection served Duke John when he made war against the Aragonese, and the money of Florence and of Florentine citizens, especially of the Medici and Pazzi, was of great assistance. Had the Angevin been fortunate, Piero would undoubtedly have become a great lord like Nicola Acciaiuoli in older times. His friendly connections with Piero de’ Medici led to the marriage of Medici’s daughter Bianca with Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, Piero’s nephew. Piero attained to the office of Gonfaloniere in 1462, and died not long afterwards, a little over forty-six years old. ‘Had he,’ remarks Vespasiano da Bisticci, ‘who surpassed all his family in good sense, lived longer, they would not have fallen into the disorders which brought ruin to them and to the city.’ His brother Jacopo, who was involved in these troubles, was nevertheless a clever man, and seemed to stand as high in the popular favour as Piero. After he had administered the office of Gonfaloniere in the beginning of 1469, the dignity of knighthood was accorded to him by a public vote, and bestowed on him by Messer Tommaso Soderini. He went twice as ambassador to the Emperor Frederick III. After his tragical end, his widow, Maddalena Serristori, retired into the cloister of the Franciscan nuns of Monticelli, before the Porta Romana. Here also the veil was taken by Jacopo’s natural daughter Caterina, whose tutor had been a man who played a sad part in the tragedy of 1478. Caterina, after her death in 1490, was venerated as a saint. Of Antonio, a third son of Andrea, who died in 1459, there is not much to say; the three sons whom Cosa degli Alessandri bore him, Guglielmo, who married Bianca de’ Medici, Giovanni, whose wife was Beatrice Borromeo, and Francesco, will often be mentioned again.

In the year 1466, Bianca’s younger sister, Nannina, married Bernardo Rucellai. His family,[114] which has been supposed to come from Germany, was called Alamanno. They are first met with in the second half of the thirteenth century as members of the woollen guild, having risen to their position by industrial activity, as the name itself intimates; for Rucellai is nothing but a corruption of Oricellari, and at the present day one of the streets of a new part of Florence is called from the Latin name of the turnsole Oricella, or Roccella Tinctoria. The Florentine tradesman discovered in the East that the dye of this plant, treated with acids, gives a beautiful violet. The dyeing-works of Alamanno brought him and his descendants rich gain. His well-earned wealth was speedily followed by civic honours, and after 1302 a share in the highest offices of state. The fourteenth century witnessed the rise and fall of several of the Rucellai, till they attained the highest respect and great wealth at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Giovanni Rucellai, the grandson of a man who had played some part in the times of the Duke of Athens, was born in 1403. His mother, Caterina Pandolfini, a widow after three years of wedlock, brought the boy to Palla Strozzi, who assigned him a post in his bank, and grew so fond of him that he gave him his daughter Jacopa in marriage when he had attained the age of twenty-four. The events which expelled Palla and his sons did not leave his son-in-law unmolested. Though Giovanni Rucellai was not banished, he was excluded from all offices, and remained out of the administration up to the last days of Cosimo, when the latter deemed it advisable to procure adherents in the family he had until then oppressed. This did not, however, prevent him from increasing his wealth and making use of it for the general good, in which he was aided by the genius of Leon Battista Alberti. He completed the marble façade of Sta. Maria Novella, on which his name may still be read. He erected a chapel near the church of San Pancrazio, with an exact imitation in marble of the Saviour’s tomb, as measured and copied by his orders in Jerusalem. This is still to be seen, though the church has long been disused for Divine worship. His family palace, already mentioned, in the Via della Vigna Nuova, with the Loggia opposite, now unfortunately walled up, is the most graceful example of the transition style from the ancient severity of the immense freestone façade to the antiquated ornaments of the Renaissance. He and his son will be mentioned later. The latter was born in 1448, a few months before Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose grandfather, by becoming his sponsor, gave public expression to the reconciliation of the two families. Near relationship, however, could not make him feel attached to the family whose blood flowed in the veins of his children.

Thus was Piero de’ Medici’s family composed. Other connections of equal importance belonged to them. Foremost of all were the two Soderini, Niccolò and Tommaso.[115] Their ancestors are said to have been Counts of Gangalandi, and heads of the Ghibelline party, but they are found as a Florentine plebeian family in the second half of the twelfth century. They attained importance only 200 years later. Tommaso Soderini, like so many of his countrymen, spent a great part of his life in business matters at Papal Avignon, and returned in 1370 to his home, where, as a member of the magistracy of the Guelph party, he took so violent a part in the proscriptions, that in the insurrection of 1378 he was one of the first to have his house plundered and burnt. He went into exile to Tarascon, on the Rhône, but returning home after the victory of the oligarchy, he again attained to office and influence. In 1395, seven years before his death, he was Gonfaloniere. His two sons, Francesco and Lorenzo, went separate ways. Francesco, the son of Elisabetta Altoviti whom Tommaso had married after his return to Avignon, passed through the usual career of distinguished Florentines who attained to civic offices and embassies as soon as they reached the legal age. One of his missions took him to Mantua to celebrate the marriage of Ludovico Gonzaga with Barbara of Hohenzollern, the granddaughter of Frederick I., elector of Brandenburg. Like his father, he belonged to the party of the Albizzi, and had one of the daughters of Palla Strozzi as his wife. When Cosimo de’ Medici went into exile he was one of the magistracy of eight that escorted him to the frontiers. He was not expelled when the Medici gained the victory, but his influence was at an end, and he only became Podestà in towns of Umbria and Romagna, and for a time he lay in prison on suspicion of having shared in the movements of his partisans. Niccolò da Uzzano destined him to be the rector of his university, and Donatello has given us his portrait in one of the statues which are to be seen on the front of the bell-tower of Sta. Maria.[116] It is the figure standing next to the church called that of St. John the Baptist, and in its natural free bearing reminds one of the famous St. George of Or San Michele.

Lorenzo, Tommaso’s other son, passed through a stormy career. Born at Avignon, of a woman of Auvergne, he endeavoured to cover his want of legitimacy by the diplomas of a Count Palatine and of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. After having been enrolled by King Charles V. of France in an order of knighthood, and married in Florence to Ghilla Cambi, he conceived the unfortunate idea, after his father’s death, of proving the legality of his birth and his right to more wealth by means of forged documents. The severity, of the laws sentenced him to death, which he suffered in 1405. His two sons, Niccolò and Tommaso, born, the former in 1401, the latter in 1403, became eager partisans of Cosimo de’ Medici on the sole ground of hatred of their uncle, to whom they attributed a participation in the tragical end of their father, and who took the other side. Niccolò received the dignity of Gonfaloniere in 1451, Tommaso in 1449 and 1454. The latter, by far the most distinguished, filled various offices in the provincial towns at an early age; when thirty-five he sat in the magistracy of the Priori. By his marriage with Dianora Tornabuoni, Lucrezia’s sister, he was riveted to the Medicean interests, which no one supported with greater zeal and success, or with more statesmanlike ability. To no one did Piero or Lorenzo owe so much as to this man. We have already mentioned other families with whom the Medici were connected. Further mention will be made of them in the course of this history.

CHAPTER II.

LORENZO’S YOUTH. CONSPIRACY OF DIOTISALVI NERONI AND HIS COMPANIONS.

Lorenzo de’ Medici grew up. He was seventeen years old when his father sent him to Pisa to welcome Don Federigo of Aragon, King Ferrante’s younger son, who set out from Naples, March 18, 1465, and having received the golden rose at Rome, was on his way to Milan with the most brilliant suite, no less than six hundred horse, to escort to Naples Francesco Sforza’s intellectual and beautiful daughter Ippolita Maria, the bride of his elder brother, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.[117] On April 17, Don Federigo entered Florence, accompanied by the Prince of Salerno, the Duke of Amalfi, the Bishop of Gaeta, and many other lords, and was received by the Signoria on the Ringhiera of the palace, after which he rode to Sta. Maria Novella, where the Papal lodgings were prepared for him, and where, entertained at the public cost, he stayed five days amid mutual expressions of politeness. The Prince, then only thirteen years old, wore mourning, with all his suite, in consequence of the death of the Queen his mother, which had happened shortly before.[118]

Florence had had much cause to complain of the Aragonese, even in later years, and had long remained true to her sympathies with Anjou; but Cosimo de’ Medici was too diplomatic not to see that the house of Spain had gained a firmer footing than that of France in southern Italy, and that peace was better secured by an alliance with the former, if the interests of the State made it possible. Cosimo always held fast to Francesco Sforza, even when he believed that he had cause of complaint against him; for Sforza, who had once encouraged his Florentine friend in the belief that after he was Duke of Milan he would aid him with his power in the subjection of Lucca, let the matter entirely drop when he had attained his end. Cosimo had more than anyone the conquest of Lucca at heart, for, unlike the Albizzi, who had enlarged the territory of the Republic by Pisa, he had nothing to show but trifling annexations by purchase, such as the Borgo San Sepolcro, in the valley of the Tiber, and he complained of the ingratitude of a man to whose grandeur he had so much contributed, though he still kept up a close connection with him.

The meeting with Federigo d’Aragona was afterwards of great use to Lorenzo; he met him again when he undertook a journey which led him to Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, and Milan. A letter addressed to him during this excursion is a proof of the interest which the gifted youth had long excited, even if we take into account the dependent position in which the writer stood towards the family. This was Luigi Pulci. The name of the author of the most celebrated heroic poem of the fifteenth century, which will be mentioned in the consideration of the literary movement, is inseparable from that of his constant patron and friend. Luigi Pulci belonged to a family of Provençal origin, which was ranked among the oldest in Florence, but did not rise, because when the popular element prevailed it was characterised as noble, and excluded from all share in public offices. A street was once named after the residence of the Pulci, which was pulled down in the sixteenth century when the Uffizi was built. Jacopo Pulci had by Brigida de’ Bardi three sons, of whom Luigi was the second: all three were poets, and had better success in poetry than in pecuniary affairs. Luigi was born on August 15, 1432, in Florence. He was still unmarried at the time now under consideration, and one of the confidants of the Medici, who employed him in various commissions. Piero’s wife was especially well-disposed towards him, and we shall find him later as her escort on a journey. ‘You have left us,’ he writes to Lorenzo, April 27, 1465, ‘so disconsolate at your departure that I do not know how to hold the pen to write this letter to you. Through Braccio, I am informed of your journey, and assume that you are now in Venice; and in order to begin my correspondence well, I inform you that I am lonely, forsaken, and sad without you. On the other hand, I rejoice in your journey, which seems to me a piece of good fortune for many reasons. You will see many remarkable things, which will delight your mind, superior, I consider, to all, with one only exception. What promotes your interests can only be a pleasure to me.’[119]

Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, was his companion on this journey, which was connected with the marriage of Francesco Sforza’s daughter, who soon afterwards came through Tuscany on her wedding tour.