Medici ~ Ascendancy

by Matteo Strukul

  Long, long ago, something inside her had broken, so the duke’s drool, his semen, his rotten smell felt like nothing but the bizarre pranks of a jester who never missed an opportunity to mock her. Laura let her right arm fall to her side while, above her, Filippo Maria began to thrust.

  She looked over at the closed door and smiled. She knew that nobody would come in.

  And then she stuck her nails into the duke’s back and matched his mad, furious movements with her own hips.

  February 1439

  43

  A Difficult Choice

  Lorenzo stared at his brother in disbelief.

  ‘Do you realize that we have footed the bill for seven hundred Greek prelates and intellectuals to travel from Ferrara to Florence just so as to transfer an episcopal council? I hope you have a good explanation, because I tell you, I am struggling to understand. In my opinion, we’ve shown our hand too clearly this time.’ Lorenzo’s voice betrayed incredulous anger. ‘And for what? Don’t tell me that you really believe in the reunification of the Churches of Rome and of Constantinople!’

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ said Cosimo.

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles! I went all the way to Ferrara to petition the Pope and conduct negotiations which were bizarre to say the least, with an offer even a madman would have accepted: tell me that you have a more serious project in mind than that! Let me in on your secrets, even if I am only your brother!’

  Cosimo sighed.

  ‘Lorenzo, I beg your forgiveness. I didn’t explain more clearly for the simple reason that I felt it was important to act as quickly as possible. We couldn’t risk wasting an opportunity like this, don’t you see? We are talking about uniting the Catholic and the Orthodox Church – bringing Greek doctrine and culture closer to the Roman Ecclesia. And yes, you’re right! Men like Bessarion are the last intellectuals at the gates of the Eastern Roman Empire, and Constantinople risks falling into the hands of the Ottoman infidels, so this meeting of Churches will be an attempt to bridge the gap between cultures and allow us to save the history of which we are all children. At least in part.’

  Lorenzo shook his head.

  ‘Sometimes I think you have too much faith in culture and art. Even this madness of collecting manuscripts, ancient codexes, lining our shelves with parchments and rolls of paper, creating a library larger than any ever seen – I don’t understand it. You seem to love studying and art more than anything else. I’m not saying you should give it up, because I know how much prestige and power the restoration and conservation of buildings and churches have brought our family... But damn it all, Cosimo, seven hundred people – seven hundred people is an army!’

  ‘Well said, my brother! So why spend that money on financing a war and lodging soldiers? Must we invest our florins only in death and destruction? Why not make Florence home to something which will go down in history? Have you any idea how much closer this initiative will bring us to the Pope? You know that Martin V never made the task an easy one, but our relations with Eugene IV are excellent.’

  ‘Of course they are – look at what we have given him!’

  ‘Should we have left the council in Ferrara after the plague had broken out there?’

  ‘I never said that! I’m not an imbecile – don’t treat me like one!’

  Cosimo raised his hands. ‘Very well, very well. You are right. So, think about this...’ he urged. ‘Do you have any idea of how much the money spent now will multiply in benefits over the next few years? Try to think not only about the indulgences but about how important it will have been, in a year, or maybe two, to have welcomed not only the Pope to our city but also the highest officials of the Greek Church, and to have facilitated the meeting of these two cultures and the peaceful carrying out of the council! Do you know what that will mean? I’ll tell you, brother! When it is time to wage war against the Duke of Milan – who, let me remind you, has set Niccolò Piccinino and Rinaldo degli Albizzi to burning and looting the countryside – not only will Sforza be with us, not only Venice, but so will the pontifical troops. And given the state to which that accursed Filippo Maria Visconti has reduced our Republic, the support of Pope Eugene IV will be essential. So forgive me if I was cryptic, for that I apologize – but as you can see, there wasn’t a moment to lose.’

  ‘I doubt it will be enough...’ replied Lorenzo.

  ‘You are right, and in fact that is only the first advantage it will bring us. Try and imagine who at this moment derives most benefit from the routes that lead to Byzantium and therefore from trade with the East.’

  ‘Venice and Genoa,’ said Lorenzo without hesitation.

  ‘Exactly! Merchants. Or rather, pirates. Men so cunning and unscrupulous that they bleed the entire region! And are we going to just stand there and watch them do it? No, we are not. Our city exercises sufficient hegemony over Pisa that we finally have the opening on to the Mediterranean we have struggled so hard for. Do you think that connections with the Far East will harm our business? And do you think that leaving Byzantium in the hands of the Ottoman Sublime Porte and allowing the Muslims to take control of the straits is the right way to preserve the world we have worked so hard to create? The real problem is that the kingdoms, lordships, duchies and monarchies of the West are fragmented, and that is why we need unity.’

  And so saying, Cosimo looked into his brother’s eyes, challenging him to disagree.

  Silence fell in the library.

  For a few moments Lorenzo said nothing. He saw now that what his brother had done had been not only for the benefit of the family but had also required great promptness. One thing struck him especially: France and England were emerging from a war that had lasted a hundred years, Germany was so broken up into kingdoms that it did not represent a force upon which it was possible to rely, and all Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples did was fight for supremacy among themselves without ever actually succeeding. In short, they were all so committed to waging war that they hadn’t even considered that the Ottoman threat could sweep them all away if it managed to break down the walls of Constantinople.

  ‘So?’ he asked his brother. ‘What are you going to do? Support a crusade?’

  ‘If that turns out to be necessary, yes. But for the moment I simply want to guarantee the Pope’s support in the war against Milan and the appointment of a friendly bishop in Tuscan territory: someone who can represent a spiritual link between Florence and Rome. Do you have a better idea?’

  Lorenzo took a deep breath.

  ‘Very well. I understand,’ he said, smiling and holding out his hand. ‘You acted well. It’s just... I like being involved in our decisions. You know how much I believe in what you do and how hard I too work to increase our fortunes, so please – keep me informed of your plans. I trusted you while I conducted the negotiations and I would trust you again, but next time, explain your motives to me more clearly.’

  Cosimo embraced him.

  ‘You have no idea how relieved I am to receive your forgiveness,’ he said. ‘It was never my plan to exclude you from the decision. Things just happened so suddenly that I simply didn’t have time to speak to you. You did an excellent job in Ferrara – I know very well how great your commitment has been in this affair.’

  ‘Even when you have been off talking to your favourite artists,’ said Lorenzo with a smirk.

  ‘Even when I have been off talking to my favourite artists,’ agreed his brother.

  ‘And now?’ Lorenzo asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, now that the council is going to be held in Florence...’

  ‘We will attend, when possible.’

  ‘B-but... I know nothing about this kind of thing!’

  ‘That’s not true. And anyway Marsilio Ficino will be with us. His knowledge of Greek and Latin is little short of extraordinary.’

  ‘If I remember, you too know Latin.’

  ‘Certainly not as well as he does.’

  ‘Very well
, I give in. I understand – I’ll be watching.’

  *

  Niccolò Piccinino rode as if he had the Devil at his heels. His sword gleamed in the air as, a cruel grimace on his face, he struck his opponent, sending him crashing to the ground to be trampled under the hooves of his horse. The man was a true soldier of fortune, thought Reinhardt Schwartz, watching.

  What struck him most was the readiness with which his men obeyed him and the dedication they showed. After he had escaped from the siege of Verona, Piccinino had managed to make his men build a bridge of boats connecting the Veronese shore with the Mantua shore of the Adige over the course of a single night. That way he would more easily be able to escape or, alternatively, await reinforcements and supplies.

  And now he was slaughtering the Venetian sailors who found themselves at the mercy of his company because of the ice banks in the river. With their short-range cannons, the galleons, stranded further back and unable to manoeuvre, had no hope of setting up covering fire for their men. Luck? Luck smiled upon the audacious, and Piccinino was nothing if not audacious. When necessary, he was the kind who jumped straight in and stared death in the face. And his men stayed with him, sated by the spoils their captain often managed to get his hands on.

  The lead shot of the culverins was exterminating the sailors in the boats and now Piccinino intended to use the cavalry to finish off the others on the banks of the Adige. He had ordered a few of them to be left alive while the cold waters of the river grew red with blood.

  Reinhardt heard the hiss of an arrow near him. He saw the archer who had tried to catch him with his guard down and, swinging his sword, rode at him and severed the arm with which the man grasped his bow. A fountain of blood gushed from the stump as the Venetian shrieked in desperation. Schwartz raced on, and then yanked on the reins and halted his horse. The beast reared up, kicking out with its forelegs, and as soon as they were back on the swampy shore, Schwartz turned it around and spurred it into a gallop.

  The Venetian was on his knees holding the stump in his left hand when he saw Schwartz coming back towards him. He closed his eyes, waiting for death.

  The horse increased its speed until it was alongside the kneeling man, and Schwartz swung a diagonal blow that opened up a gash in the man’s neck.

  The Venetian soldier fell forward, spraying more blood into the frozen, clear waters of the Adige. Around him, the desperate cries of the dying made an obscene contrast to the bloodthirsty yells of the men flying banners bearing Filippo Maria Visconti’s biscione, which flapped horribly in the cold wind of the February afternoon.

  44

  The Archbishop of Nicaea

  Cosimo had set off early in the morning. In those cold winter days, the streets of Florence buzzed with a special energy. Only a few weeks before, on 21 January, the pontiff had arrived from Ferrara with a part of his retinue, and the day had been declared a public holiday so as to allow all citizens to participate in the sumptuous celebrations.

  For Eugene IV, it had been a grand return to the city that for years had been his second home. Florence had given the Pope a triumphal reception and was now preparing to acclaim Joseph, the Greek patriarch who would be arriving a few days later escorted by thirty bishops and the entire papal court with over five hundred knights. After him, it would be the turn of the basileus to arrive: John VIII Palaiologos, the Emperor of Constantinople. Leonardo Bruni was composing magnificent welcome speeches in Greek to ensure them an appropriate reception.

  Thanks to the Pope’s intercession, though, Cosimo had managed to obtain an appointment with one of the illustrious Greek scholars of religion already in town, and was thus at that moment hurrying towards San Lorenzo.

  He entered the church and went straight to the sacristy, where his father and mother lay at rest. Whenever possible, he always held discussions there, because he felt he could hold on to the past despite the wearying passage of time.

  A few years earlier, Cosimo had feared that the passing of the days would weaken his recollections, making his memories of his father and mother grow fainter, but he could now say with certainty that they had not. He had not forgotten them, not at all, and the sacristy and the family tomb beneath the altar had played an important role in preserving their memory.

  When he reached the sacristy, he saw that the person he was to meet had already arrived.

  Cosimo was surprised by the appearance of the man before him. He had been expecting a refined intellectual, a man of the Church, and had therefore imagined someone tall and thin, but Giovanni Bessarion was an imposing man, strong and muscular, with broad shoulders. He wore a dark robe, edged with embroidery in gold and precious stones. A long, thick beard ending in two sharp points like knife blades adorned his chin, and his eyes were as black as shards of onyx, and flashed whenever something captured his interest.

  Pope Eugene IV had brought Cosimo to the high priest, introducing him as a lord of Florence, a man of letters and patron of the arts, and emphasizing how it had been his generosity that had allowed the council to be held in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

  For Cosimo de’ Medici, this man represented one of the last heralds of the Byzantine knowledge and culture of the Eastern Roman Empire. Bessarion was the Archbishop of Nicaea and he had come to Ferrara the year before, accompanied by Cardinal Cusano. He was said to be one of the proponents of the so-called party of union, that handful of men of faith who still dreamed of a reconciliation between the Latin and Byzantine Churches, even though, back at home, the monks and much of the Greek Church took a dim view of the idea.

  The moment had arrived. Since the archbishop seemed perfectly willing to stare him in the eye without saying a word for the next two hours, Cosimo attempted to break the ice.

  He spoke in Latin.

  ‘Your grace,’ he began, ‘your presence here is an immense honour for me and for our humble city. I am a passionate supporter of the cause that is so close to your heart and I hope very much that this council will bring our two Churches closer together.’

  Bessarion smiled and there was a sincere light in his dark eyes.

  ‘My friend,’ he replied, ‘I am happy to meet a Latin supporter of this union. Unfortunately, I regret to say that reunification between Rome and Byzantium still seems distant.’

  Cosimo was sorry to hear the hint of bitterness in the Archbishop of Nicaea’s words. Perhaps if he could learn more it would be possible to find a thread of hope.

  ‘Why do you say that, if I may ask, your grace?’

  ‘In truth, the issue of separation is not so closely linked to matters of doctrine. The problem behind the dispute is not the filioque – the expression added by the Romans in the Credo to that qui ex Patre procedit which confirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.’

  ‘Really?’

  Cosimo knew little about it but through his informants had followed all the proceedings of the council of Ferrara, and had understood it was precisely the Holy Spirit proceeding from Father and the Son and the inclusion of that double origin in the Creed that represented the principal cause of the dispute between the Latin and Greek Churches.

  ‘The truth is that nobody actually intends to contest that point, provided that the formal conciliar expression of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol is not violated. The real causes of the conflict between the two Churches, my friend, are the underlying political and cultural questions which are rooted in the oceans of time.’

  Cosimo was confused, and expressed his bemusement openly.

  ‘I had thought the reasons for the dispute unrelated to politics.’

  ‘My friend, it is evident that the doctrinal dispute has its own weight. Especially since there is another question: if the Church of Rome can unilaterally modify a common Credo which has been approved by ecumenical councils by inserting the expression “filioque”, it thus affirms a de facto primacy, which is clearly intolerable. But what should we say about the abandonment and the massacres that the
West, and especially the crusaders, have committed in Byzantium over the centuries, without even managing to save it from the clutches of the Ottomans? Is that not, in your opinion, more than enough reason to justify the feelings of anger if not outright hatred of many of the monks, prelates and archons of our land? And he who speaks to you now is among those who most ardently desire a return to union. Certainly, Byzantium has made mistakes: isolating itself and claiming an autonomy which over the centuries became presumption, without even mentioning the unbridled corruption that has pervaded the place in recent times and the ineptitude of some of its emperors. These are no small failings. But when the crusaders repeatedly stripped her of her treasures and when the Genoese and Venetian merchants plundered her for their commercial trafficking, well, autonomy and isolationism looked like the only way to survive. And despite this, the basileus of Constantinople has today arrived in person in your city to ask for help from the West, which for centuries has abandoned and robbed us, and stripped us of our dignity. As you can well imagine, my heart bleeds to tell you this. And therefore the hope of a reunification is also linked to ensuring the survival of an entire culture which risks being lost under the Ottoman yoke.’

  As he listened to Bessarion’s words, Cosimo sensed the great archbishop’s profound sadness and realized that this council was not simply a question of unification for ecclesiastical communities but was also perhaps the only means of keeping alive the last spark of Christianity in the East. Otherwise it would not only mean the end of Rome, but also the destruction of a memory – the annulment of a thousand years of history.

  ‘Your grace, what you say is so sad that I struggle to find words. I acknowledge how great our failings have been, and I know that the many divisions into which the West is split, the many lordships and duchies which compose it, certainly do not help in the construction of a single, shared vision which might bring about a reconciliation. Yet such is the purpose of this council and I am committed to forging an alliance that, through our good pontiff, can bring together the two sides so that, together with the Christian sovereigns and lords, he can despatch a new crusade – one to bring Constantinople under his protection and guardianship and to preserve the roots of a culture which is so much more precious because we are its children. Look at our churches, our palazzos; visit our libraries. God is my witness as to how deep our commitment here in Florence is to reaching such a goal. Like that of the many other intellectuals who have come to our city, your presence here will be a precious guide to promoting this belief and this sensibility.’