Death in Florence: the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City

by Paul Strathern

  Well understanding the fickleness of his popularity, Lorenzo decided the time was ripe for him to make a number of changes to the city’s constitution, which would consolidate his power, though in a largely covert manner. Just five weeks after his triumphant return from Naples, under the guise of reforming the constitution and the tax system in order to make them more just and efficient, Lorenzo suggested to the Council of One Hundred that they allow their powers to be superseded by a more streamlined Council of Seventy. Despite considerable opposition to this move, the Council of One Hundred eventually passed this constitutional ‘reform’ by a single vote. The Renaissance historian Lauro Martines justifiably asks, ‘Were bribes paid out, favours promised, or heads banged in private and in the corridors? We are unlikely ever to know.’ Lorenzo now appointed a large majority of ambitious citizens who were sympathetic to the Medici cause to sit on his new Council of Seventy. He had staged what ‘was tantamount … to a constitutional coup d’état.’ However, there were more than a few – even amongst the Medici faction and members of the Council of Seventy – who remained uneasy about jettisoning the last vestiges of democratic process. Indeed, over the coming years even the Council of Seventy would not always prove reliable in supporting Lorenzo’s intended policy. Lorenzo would then find it necessary to attend their meetings in person, his intimidating presence – and the fact that he could see for himself who was for, and who was against, his proposed measure – being enough to sway the vote.

  Lorenzo could not afford to lose control of his brainchild: the powers of the Council of Seventy were formidable indeed. Its members were to remain in office for five years (this would later be extended to life). They would choose each new gonfaloniere and his Signoria. And they would also be the main ‘advisory’ council to the gonfaloniere and the Signoria with regard to the passing of laws, as well as on foreign-policy matters and internal affairs, especially in the criminal and financial sphere. The Council of Seventy had to all intents and purposes superseded the gonfaloniere as ruler of the city, with elections for this post (and indeed all senior posts in the government) being reduced to little more than a merry-go-round of Medici puppets, with Lorenzo himself in complete control. Even so, the elections were duly held, and the results duly recorded, as if everything was above board: it may have been a charade, but the appearance of democratic constitutional rule had to be maintained.

  Lorenzo’s dash to Naples had been viewed by all as a valiant action, unprecedented in the treacherous world of contemporary Italian politics, and from now on the man who had selflessly risked his life in this noble fashion would become known throughout the land as Lorenzo the Magnificent. In the coming years he would play a leading role in keeping the peace in Italy; and his cultural influence would help spread the Renaissance through the Italian states. From now on, Florence’s great artists would be loaned out to exercise their talents in the service of Italian leaders, acting as cultural ambassadors, promoting the good name of their native city and establishing it as the cultural centre of Italy, the paragon of European civilisation. Thus, in 1481 Lorenzo despatched Botticelli to Rome to appease Sixtus IV; and a year later, Leonardo da Vinci would be sent to Milan to win over the new ruler, Ludovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza. Meanwhile back home Lorenzo maintained civil peace and his own popularity with a calendar of spectacular events and festivals. The settings for these were designed by his finest artists, and the pageants performed at them were scripted by his most talented poets. He even put his talent to use on these occasions, composing humorous bawdy ballads. We now only have the words of these ballads, and snatches of the music that accompanied them; but it is not too difficult to imagine the knowing gestures of the actors as they sang their roles. Here, for instance, is a passage from Lorenzo’s ‘Song of the Peasants’:

  We’ve all got cucumbers, and big ones too.30

  They may look old and knobbly to you,

  But they’re great for opening up pipes that are closed.

  Use both hands to pluck ’em, then expose

  The top, peeling back the skin,

  Open wide your mouths and suck ’em in.

  The citizens may have delighted at such entertainments, yet unbeknown to them it was they who were actually paying for all this. Such was the city of Florence in May 1482, when an earnest young monk called Savonarola arrived to take up a post at the monastery of San Marco.

  fn1 Several first-hand sources attest to this talent. However, the mature Lorenzo was known to have a flattened nose, with no sense of smell, and a curiously high-pitched nasal voice. This discrepancy has been ascribed to a riding accident, perhaps in the course of jousting, which may have occurred some time during his teenage years.

  fn2 To place such sums into perspective: a moderately successful merchant in Florence could support a large household, including his entire family and servants, for 200 florins a year. Meanwhile a worker at one of the many dyeing mills in Florence could expect to earn the equivalent of 15 florins a year at most.

  fn3 As a result of Luca Pitti’s cowardly behaviour he would become an object of derision. Even the craftsmen working on his palace downed tools in disgust. His palace remained uncompleted in his lifetime, and he was despised throughout the city until his death four years later.

  fn4 Florentine florins and Venetian ducats were the most widely used currencies in Italy at the time. Exchange rates between the two fluctuated slightly over the years, but around this period 5 ducats was usually worth around 6 florins.

  fn5 condottiere: literally ‘conductor’ (i.e. leader or general) of his own army of mercenary soldiers, which he would contract or hire out under his leadership to whichever city-state was willing to pay best for their services. When the contract expired, he was free to offer his services elsewhere.

  fn6 Lorenzo was in fact twenty at the time, and most translations give this figure – yet the Italian version copied by Roscoe from a (now lost) original document, which he claimed was in Lorenzo’s hand, quite plainly stated ‘cioè di anni 21’.

  fn7 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici’s full name includes the first name of his father, and I have used this form throughout to distinguish him from his cousin, the ruler of Florence, whose full name – including that of his father – would in fact have been Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici.

  2

  ‘Blind wickedness’

  GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA HAILED from the northern provincial city state of Ferrara, whose territory straddled the Po delta and its hinterland south of Venice. He was born on 21 September 1452, making him just three years younger than Lorenzo the Magnificent. He too had been exposed to genius at an early age, in the form of his paternal grandfather Michele Savonarola, who had been employed at the flamboyant court of the d’Este family, the rulers of Ferrara. Michele was one of the leading physicians of his age, and wrote numerous works, including The Practice of Medicine from Head to Toe, a comprehensive study that claimed to include all medical knowledge extant at that period. He also made a study of children and childcare that was way ahead of its time. In the light of such knowledge, Michele Savonarola could well be regarded as a pioneer of humanistic thought. Ironically, in real life he was very much the opposite. Spiritually he remained strictly a man of the era in which he had grown up – namely, the late 1300s. In this respect, Michele was a dyed-in-the-wool medievalist, and ‘certain of the minor works he wrote in his old age have the quality of being written by a learned anchorite rather than a doctor of the d’Este court, being as they are so full of pedantry and moralising’.1 Such was the dominant personality who, on his retirement, would devote himself to educating the five-year-old Savonarola, instilling in his eager pupil all the rigid principles of an age that in parts of Italy was already passing into history. Indeed, this was very much the case in Ferrara, which was ruled by the sophisticated Duke Borso d’Este, scion of one of Europe’s most aristocratic families, who as patrons of the arts would during this period become second only to the Medici.fn1

  At the age o
f seven Savonarola would witness a formative historical event, when the new pope, Pius II, passed through Ferrara on his triumphal procession across northern Italy. (It was earlier on this very journey that the pope had been entertained in Florence by a pageant featuring the ten-year-old Lorenzo de’ Medici.) Pius II was accompanied by:

  a cortège of incredible pomp, with ten cardinals, sixty bishops and many secular princes in his train … At Ferrara the Pope made his entrance under a canopy of gold brocade; the streets through which he passed were carpeted with cloth and sprinkled with flowers; rich tapestries hung from the windows, and the city echoed with music and song. On reaching the cathedral, Guarino [a renowned humanist scholar] read him a long Latin oration, crammed with learned allusions and praise of the Holy Father. For a whole week Pius II was detained in Ferrara by a succession of festivities.2

  During his visit the worldly Pius II’s penchant for fine dining and entertainment by courtesans would certainly have been indulged by his generous host. Although this would have taken place amidst circumstances of the strictest privacy, gossip concerning such events would have spread amongst families who retained close court connections, such as the Savonarolas. Even after the retirement of Michele Savonarola, his son Niccolò continued to hold an unspecified minor post at the d’Este court.

  Pius II may have been flattered by the magnificent welcome accorded him in Ferrara, but he had few illusions about his host, recording in his memoirs: ‘Borso was a man of fine physique and more than average height with beautiful hair and pleasing countenance. He was eloquent and garrulous and listened to himself talking as if he pleased himself more than his hearers. His talk was full of blandishments mingled with lies.’3 Borso was a homosexual and his frivolous squandering had hardly endeared him to Michele Savonarola, who secretly voiced the opinion that ‘the giving of robes, horses, possessions and money to buffoons and unworthy men diminishes the love of the people’.4 Such opinions were best kept to oneself, as anyone who had attended Borso’s court knew only too well, for beneath the castello were:

  subterranean dungeons guarded by seven gratings from the light of day. They were full of immured victims, and the clanking of chains and groans of human beings in pain could be heard from their depths, mingling with the strains of music and ceaseless revelry going on above, the ringing of silver plate, the clatter of majolica dishes, and clinking of Venetian glass.5

  Despite the need for secrecy, Michele Savonarola’s views on such matters would certainly have been passed on to his grandson, who was said to have been taken to court only once, by his father, and to have sworn never to repeat the experience.

  Michele Savonarola would die around 1468, when his grandson was sixteen.fn2 By now young Girolamo Savonarola was exhibiting the precocious mental brilliance that his grandfather had doubtless detected at an early age, causing him to be singled out from his six siblings. By this time he had already learned by heart entire books of the Bible, and had absorbed as the Holy Writ the oft-repeated maxims of his ascetic grandfather, such as ‘That which God has ordered, the Popes and their Vicars cannot rule otherwise.’6 Such sentiments were not unusual at the time; there was indeed a widespread understanding throughout the secular educated classes in Italy that the Church was corrupt, and many discerning Italians maintained a sincere religious belief that remained separate and personal, paying little more than lip-service (and unavoidable financial contributions) to the hierarchy that claimed to represent their religion on Earth.

  However, Michele Savonarola had not seen life this way, and had instilled in his grandson a more unaccommodating attitude. As a result, young Girolamo was filled with outrage at what he saw, and such laxity and corruption only served to spur him to a more urgent conception of life. Either religion meant saving one’s soul – the most overriding and vital task on Earth – or it meant nothing at all.

  But Girolamo’s grandfather had also instructed him in philosophy – and here he learned to embrace Aristotelianism, rather than the fashionable new Platonism so favoured by the humanists. Savonarola took to heart the ideas of Aristotle as interpreted by St Thomas Aquinas, which over the years had become the orthodoxy of medieval scholasticism. This applied some Ancient Greek philosophy and Aristotelian logic to the Bible in order to explain the doctrine and mysteries of the Christian religion. It was an attempt to give religious belief and theology a more philosophical foundation, though over the years this had ossified into something of a rigid orthodoxy. Religious and philosophical argument had to proceed by appealing to the authority of the Bible or Aristotle. The recently rediscovered works of Plato, which had come to western Europe after the fall of Constantinople, as well as the classical works of Ancient Greece and Rome now so favoured by the humanists, were dismissed as pagan heresies.

  All this the young Savonarola had taken to heart, and he spent many hours in precocious reading on such matters. During his adolescent years, it was said of him that ‘he was in the habit of speaking little with others, and was always withdrawn and solitary’.7 Despite this, it seems that at some stage following his grandfather’s death Savonarola did in fact embark upon a course of liberal studies under Battista Guarino at the University of Ferrara. Savonarola’s father Niccolò persuaded him to embark upon this course so that he could obtain a Master of Arts degree, as a prerequisite for studying medicine. Niccolò placed great hopes in his son’s future, which he believed would bring the boy fame and fortune like that of his grandfather Michele. But Niccolò also had other motives for persuading his son to try and emulate his famous grandfather. Niccolò had come into a generous inheritance from his father, and in order to supplement his income as a minor functionary at the d’Este court he had used his inheritance to finance a sideline as a banker. Possibly in the attempt to raise his status at court, he had stood surety for loans to various courtiers who had then defaulted. Niccolò Savonarola was desperate for money, and the pressure he exerted on Girolamo to enter the university must have been considerable: when he became a successful doctor he would be expected to provide for the entire family, as well as help his father maintain appearances at court.

  Girolamo’s studies under Guarino gave him a wide knowledge of humanism and the classical philosophers from whom it derived its ideas. As a result, when Savonarola later attacked humanism so vehemently, his adversaries would often be surprised at how well informed he was about their ideas and the attitude that they encouraged. Indeed, at some stage Savonarola himself even succumbed to the excitement of this new outlook on life, going so far as to learn how to play the lute and write poetry. Yet even here, amidst the melancholy so natural to any young poet, he often focused on the deeper concerns imbued in him by his grandfather:

  In the sadness of my heart I spoke8

  With the ancient Mother who never changes,fn3

  And weeping, her eyes modestly lowered,

  She led me to her beggar’s cave.

  With his verse exhibiting such Freudian undertones, it comes as no surprise that around this time the young poet fell in love. The object of his intense affections was a girl called Laodamia, an illegitimate daughter of the distinguished Strozzi family, then in exile from Florence, whose house was next door to the Savonarola family home. A narrow alleyway separated the two houses, making it possible to converse between them from the opened windows of the overhanging upper storeys, and it seems that Savonarola and Laodamia got to know each other in this way. Soon he was serenading his inamorata with his lute. However, Savonarola evidently misjudged the situation, for when he asked Laodamia to marry him she scornfully turned down his proposal, telling him that no Strozzi would ever stoop to marry a mere Savonarola. Stung by this rejection, Savonarola at once retorted that no legitimate male Savonarola would ever condescend to marry a Strozzi bastard.

  This story only came to light some three centuries later, amongst the papers of Fra Benedetto of Florence, Savonarola’s colleague and early biographer.9 Even so, the story was dismissed as a legend. However, subsequent resear
ch has revealed that the Savonarola house in Ferrara did indeed stand next door to the Strozzi mansion; and that according to the records, Roberto Strozzi had an illegitimate daughter called Laodamia, who lived in Ferrara at the time. Fra Benedetto received most of his information at first hand from Savonarola himself, indicating that this incident must have lodged in Savonarola’s mind long after he foreswore the ways of the world. Such a sexual rejection, especially with its social overtones, may well have been formative. Some years after this incident, Savonarola would write that even before he took holy orders he had ‘not had desire for a woman’. Given his passion for truth-telling, Savonarola must consciously have believed this at the time.10 Yet according to Fra Benedetto’s account, in his later years Savonarola would recall the story of his rejection by Laodamia. The sexual and social implications of this incident may have become all the stronger as a result of this memory being repressed during the intervening years. His detestation of ‘lustfulness [and the] lusts of the flesh’11 and his hatred of class privilege would become integral to his religious drive.

  Such inclinations were now to be reinforced in the raw. In 1471 Duke Borso d’Este fell mortally ill, either as a result of his dissipation or by poisoning. As he lay at death’s door in his residence at Belfiore, forty miles north of Ferrara, civil war broke out in the city between his younger brother Ercole and his nephew Niccolò, who – in the absence of any declared succession – both claimed to be his rightful heir. Niccolò took over the castello, appealing to Milan and Mantua to back his claim; meanwhile Ercole called on nearby Venice for support. Opposing groups of supporters took to the streets, and the result was what Savonarola would later refer to as ‘the bloody Saturnalia of Ferrara’.12 Desperately barricaded into their house on one of the main streets leading to the castello, the Savonarola family could only watch terrified as: