It was evident that Savonarola was unwilling to make any accommodation with Lorenzo’s authority. There would be no compromise on his behalf, and Lorenzo was forced to the realisation that although he respected Savonarola, he could not allow him any further concessions. It was time to assert his authority. Lorenzo could still have banished Savonarola without further ado, as he had Fra Bernardino three years previously; and he was certainly capable of savage reprisal when he felt his political power was under threat. A decade or so earlier, Lorenzo had become suspicious that a pilgrim begging for food at the gate of his country villa was in fact a hired assassin. The pilgrim had been arrested and interrogated, the soles of his feet held over a fire until the fat dribbled, spitting in the flames. When still no confession was forthcoming, the pilgrim was made to walk on his charred, bloodied feet over coarse salt, an excruciating ordeal that resulted in his death. As Machiavelli, who lived through these events, would later write in his characteristically sardonic fashion of Lorenzo, ‘all his enemies met with an unhappy end’.5
Yet once again Lorenzo hesitated from taking an absolute and final step against Savonarola: he would exercise his authority indirectly. Some days later, five of Florence’s leading citizens arrived at San Marco and demanded to see Savonarola. This delegation consisted of members of some of the most respected families in the city: Guidantonio Vespucci, Paolantonio Soderini, Francesco Valori, Domenico Bonsi and Bernardo Rucellai.
The ensuing meeting took place in the sacristy, and was reported by a number of contemporary sources, each of whom left a remarkably similar account of Savonarola’s sensational behaviour. To begin with, the citizens explained to Savonarola that they had come of their own accord to warn him against persisting in his current behaviour, which was putting both himself and his monastery in some danger. But Savonarola soon cut them short, interjecting: ‘I know that you have not come of your own free will, but have been sent by Lorenzo. Bid him to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons, and does not even spare the princes of this earth from his judgement.’6 The citizens then repeated their warning, insisting that if he continued to behave in this fashion he was liable to be banished from Florence.
Savonarola replied: ‘Only people like you, who have wives and children, are afraid of banishment. I have no such fear, for if I did have to leave, this city would become no more than a speck of dust to me, compared with the rest of the world. I am not frightened, let him do as he pleases. But let him realise this: although I am a mere stranger to this city, and Lorenzo is the most powerful man in Florence, it is I who will remain here, and he who will depart. He will be gone, long before me.’
The citizens were amazed; they realised that Savonarola was in fact predicting that Lorenzo was going to die. Collating the contemporary reports, Savonarola’s biographer Pasquale Villari described what happened next: ‘[Savonarola] began to speak about the city of Florence and the political state of Italy, displaying a depth of knowledge in these matters which astonished his listeners. It was then that he predicted, in front of the many witnesses who were present in the sacristy of San Marco, that great changes would soon take place in Italy. He then specifically prophesied that Lorenzo the Magnificent, Pope Innocent VIII and King Ferrante of Naples would all soon die.’ Whispers of these sensational prophecies soon began to spread around Florence.fn1
Lorenzo the Magnificent was aware of the vital power slipping from his grasp. Physically he was reduced, and as a consequence he could no longer stand centre-stage politically. Yet he was not one to make excuses for his misfortunes. As he had written on an earlier occasion:
So great was the persecution I endured at that time, from both Fortune and from men. Even so, I am inclined by nature to rise above such things, to mention them but briefly, in order to avoid the charge of being proud and vain, since reporting one’s own serious dangers cannot be done without the presumption of vainglory.7
Congenital gout was reducing his charismatic physical presence to a shell. The champion jouster and insatiable lover, filled with such inspirational physical and intellectual joie de vivre, who had so enchanted Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, whose charm had won over King Ferrante of Naples and Innocent VIII, was now a crabbed, irritable and weak forty-two-year-old invalid, his mind clouded with pain. A ghost of his former self, he would spend hours on end shivering in his cloak by the fire, attempting to melt the icy crystalline needles of pain in his joints. By this stage he had become desperate, willing to resort to all manner of quack remedies. Even his famous collection of jewels was brought to bear on the problem. The physician Petrus Bonus Avogarius wrote advising him:
To prevent the return of these pains, you must get a stone called sapphire, and have it set in gold, so that it should touch the skin. This must be worn on the third finger of the left hand. If this is done the pains in the joints, or gouty pains, will cease, because that stone has occult virtues, and the specific one of preventing evil humours going to the joints.8
Lorenzo’s jewels remained his pride and joy – it was, after all, on them that he had left evidence of his deepest, most secret ambition: LAU.R.MED, Lorenzo de’ Medici – king, or the father of future kings. This was his prediction, far more likely than the prophecies of some ranting priest. His oldest son Piero would succeed him as ruler of Florence. All this had been settled with the leading Medici lieutenants – the likes of Soderini, Vespucci and Valori, who could be relied upon to do his bidding. Lorenzo himself had only been invited by the Signoria to take over the reins of power out of respect for his father Piero, but during the twenty-two years of Lorenzo’s rule things had changed: from now on the succession would be a Medici right.
At the same time, the Medici family would extend its power beyond Florence and into the Church, by means of Giovanni’s rich benefices and his coming cardinalate. But Innocent VIII had driven a hard bargain for the cardinalate, leaving Lorenzo’s finances under strain and only adding to his overall debt.
A portion of this debt had been to cover the education of Giovanni, who in 1490 had been sent to study at the celebrated university that Lorenzo had recently re-established at Pisa. It had quickly become clear to Lorenzo that Giovanni should not be exposed to Savonarola’s inflammatory sermons, and he hoped that a scholastic university education would give him a more suitable theological grounding. However, Giovanni’s education had proved rather more costly than his father had anticipated. Although he had shown high intelligence, combined with a certain indolence, the chubby, likeable teenager had at the same time inherited his father’s inclination towards hedonistic extravagance. As a result, the cash-strapped Lorenzo had been obliged to order the Medici bank to cover Giovanni’s debts in Pisa. According to some sources, these amounted to the astonishing sum of 7,000 florins.9
As if all this were not enough, some time towards the end of 1491 Lorenzo had received a request from Innocent VIII for the equivalent of 10,000 florins as a ‘final’ down payment on Giovanni’s cardinalate, which was due to be confirmed and made public in a few months’ time. Lorenzo knew that he could not refuse this ‘request’ if he wished the pope to confirm Giovanni’s appointment. He had been forced once again to turn to Miniati and his underhand manipulations of the Florentine exchequer. This was a desperate last resort, as the latest financial reform undertaken by Lorenzo – with the connivance of Miniati – had provoked considerable unrest. During the previous year there had arisen a problem over the coinage circulating in Florence. The city’s role as a centre of trade, especially in commodities such as wool, alum and fine cloth, had resulted in a large number of foreign coins entering circulation. These coins mostly originated from nearby cities that issued their own currency, such as Bologna, Siena or Lucca, and were similar to the Florentine quattrini (or pennies), for which they were frequently exchanged. The foreign coins were known as ‘black quattrini’. In order to resolve this anomaly, Lorenzo set up a committee, which decided to call in the ‘black quattrini’ and replace the old Florent
ine quattrini with similar new ‘white quattrini’, which were worth 25 per cent more. The old coins would be melted down, and only the ‘white quattrini’ would be accepted for payment of taxes, duties and other contributions to the city exchequer. This caused little complaint amongst the citizens, until it was discovered that instead of melting down the old Florentine quattrini, the authorities were reintroducing these selfsame coins as equivalent to ‘white quattrini’, thus making 25 per cent on any transaction involving these old coins (which could not then be used to pay taxes, and thus effectively reverted to their old call-in rate).
To exacerbate the problem, Lorenzo’s sudden unexpected need for the equivalent of 10,000 florins to pay Innocent VIII led him to a rash embezzlement, which would not be exposed until after his death. This involved the public fund known as the Monte delle Doti, a public deposit account that had been established in 1424 by Cosimo de’ Medici for the provision of dowries for the daughters of the poor, who would otherwise not have been able to get married. Anyone paying into this fund received a 5 per cent interest on their savings, which could all be withdrawn after an agreed number of years to become a daughter’s dowry. The establishment of the Monte delle Doti (Dowry Fund) had proved a highly popular move, and it had soon accumulated a considerable sum, as payments into the fund greatly exceeded withdrawals. Thus when the Florentine exchequer found itself short of assets, instead of repayments it would issue the citizen with shares in the Dowry Fund, which also rose by 5 per cent annually and could be withdrawn at a future date to provide a dowry. This enforced form of saving was not popular, but was tolerated. Even this measure only made small inroads into the Dowry Fund, which had continued to increase over the years.
However, by 1485 a downturn in trade had cut the tax revenue, leaving the Florentine exchequer heavily indebted. In an effort to rescue the city’s finances, and his own, Lorenzo had ordered Miniati to expropriate a sizeable sum from the Dowry Fund. (The precise figure remains unclear, owing to the Medici family’s subsequent destruction of all ledgers relating to these years, but this too may be a candidate for at least part of the 74,948 florins later demanded from the Medici family in compensation for money taken by Lorenzo ‘without the sanction of any law and without authority’.) In order to cover this embezzlement, Lorenzo had issued Miniati with orders to explain that, owing to the harshness of the economic downturn, only one-fifth of anyone’s savings could be withdrawn from the Dowry Fund at one time, but in compensation the interest on the remaining savings would be increased to 7 per cent. Inevitably this restriction proved highly unpopular. For three generations the poorer families of Florence had taken to depositing their meagre savings in the Dowry Fund. Indeed, over the decades the fund had proved so popular that by now a majority of the population had stakes in it. In mitigation for Lorenzo, this raid on the Dowry Fund may well have been his only hope for restoring the city’s finances. Had the city gone bankrupt, this would probably have meant the end of Medici rule; yet as far as the populace was concerned, the city’s bankruptcy would also have resulted in considerable hardship – starvation even – and the inevitable civil strife would have torn it apart. Under such circumstances, Florence would inevitably have lost its independence to one of the other major powers in Italy.
Lorenzo would certainly have been mindful of such dangers, lending an altruistic, or at least pragmatic, element to this appropriation. On the other hand, he almost certainly used some of this appropriation to cover his own expenses. Yet the distinction between Medici expenses (often for civil entertainments and such) and the city’s exchequer had by now become hopelessly blurred. This makes it difficult to assess the rights and wrongs of the preceding restriction on Dowry Fund payouts. As it was, Lorenzo’s embezzlement may well have played a significant role in saving the city, and more. During the ensuing years there was a boom in trade from which Florence was well placed, financially, to benefit.
However, there would seem to be no mitigating circumstances with regard to Lorenzo’s later dealings with the Dowry Fund. Faced with Innocent VIII’s request for 10,000 florins before Giovanni could be confirmed as a cardinal, Lorenzo once again turned to Miniati, and this time the Dowry Fund was ransacked to the tune of 10,000 florins purely for Lorenzo’s use, leaving it seriously depleted. To cover this, it was announced that the interest accruing to deposits would be reduced from 7 to 3 per cent. Not unnaturally, this move too proved highly unpopular.
Savonarola tapped into this unpopularity when he preached during the period, and was well aware of what he was doing. Indeed, some later commentators go so far as to claim that he specifically mentioned this appropriation from the Dowry Fund during his Lenten sermons in 1492, ‘accusing Lorenzo of stealing the dowries of poor girls to line his own pocket’.10 Savonarola kept himself well informed about what was taking place in Florence, and would certainly have heard the rumours about Lorenzo dipping into the Dowry Fund that began circulating at this time. Whether he took the inflammatory step of actually mentioning this is less clear. However, we do know from the Latin notes that Savonarola made for his 1492 Lenten sermons that he certainly denounced Lorenzo in more general terms: ‘These great men, as if unaware that they are just men like anyone else, want to be praised and blessed by everyone. But he who preaches the truth must attack these vices …’11 Did he elaborate on this theme when he actually spoke? Either way, Savonarola’s congregation would have known in their own minds, from their own experience, a good part of what these ‘vices’ involved.
At long last, in March 1492, the news came through from Rome, confirming the sixteen-year-old Giovanni’s appointment as a cardinal. This event was marked by a solemn ceremony on 10 March in the Badia (the eleventh-century abbey) at Fiesole, outside Florence, during which Giovanni received his cardinal’s red hat. The following day Cardinal Giovanni, accompanied by his older brother Piero, entered Florence in a grand procession. A contemporary chronicler described the scene:
the whole city, nay, the whole territory, was gathered together, as one man, from which it may be judged how earnestly this dignity had been desired for one of the citizens of Florence.12
Following the celebration of high Mass in the cathedral, Cardinal Giovanni proceeded with all due ceremony through the streets to visit the Signoria, where he received gifts of more than ceremonial value, which the contemporary diarist Luca Landucci detailed as:
30 loads of gifts carried by porters. These included silver plate, bowls, jugs, and dishes, and all kinds of silver utensils which can possibly be of use to a great lord. So everyone said, all this must have cost over 20 thousand florins, though this hardly seems possible to me. But this is what people were saying, so I wrote it down. There is no doubt that it was an expensive magnificent gift. Praise be to God!13
Rumour may indeed have exaggerated the value of the gift, but its sheer size must have been impressive, and there is no denying that this was seen by the watching citizens of Florence as Cardinal Giovanni proceeded across the centre of the city from the Palazzo della Signoria to the Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga. All this would seem to indicate that although rumours of Lorenzo’s financial chicanery fomented a certain unrest in the city, which was further augmented by Savonarola’s sermons, the Medici still remained to a certain extent popular as rulers. The chubby young Giovanni was undoubtedly likeable, and the citizenry spontaneously responded to him and his great parade, as well as to the honour that he brought to the city.
However, by the time of Giovanni’s installation as a cardinal, Lorenzo had become too incapacitated with gout to attend any of the ceremonies, let alone appear in reflected glory at his son’s side as he paraded through the streets. Yet he certainly saw Giovanni when he arrived back at the Palazzo Medici that day. Here the new cardinal presided over a ceremonial banquet in the main hall attended by sixty guests, consisting of foreign ambassadors and leading citizens. Whether Lorenzo actually put in an appearance at this banquet remains uncertain. Some suggest that at one stage he came, or was a
t least assisted, into the hall, where his crippled body and gaunt features shocked the guests. They had not realised that he was so ill, and only now understood that he was dying. Other reports suggest that Lorenzo had himself carried on a litter onto a balcony overlooking the hall, where – unseen – he gazed down at his son, who in the eyes of his proud father had assumed a new maturity with his office and seemed ‘to have changed since yesterday’.14 Despite this, Lorenzo remained worried about his son’s character; and next day, after Cardinal Giovanni had set off to take up his post in Rome, Lorenzo began writing a letter of advice to his son. The composing of this long letter must have taken considerable effort for Lorenzo, but he was determined that the Medici legacy should prosper, so that one day the family would fulfil his dream. Like father, like son: just as Lorenzo’s father Piero, when he was incapacitated with gout, had worried about Lorenzo’s ‘exuberance’ when he had sent him abroad to represent him at the courts of Italy, so in turn Lorenzo had worried about the behaviour of his oldest son Piero, and would now worry about his son Giovanni’s ‘extravagance’:
I recommend that on feast days you should celebrate less than others, rather than more … In keeping with your position, be sparing when wearing jewels and fine silks. Far better to have a few fine antiques and learned books … Eat plain food and take regular exercise, for those who wear the habit are prone to illness if they are not mindful of their health.15
After this homely advice, evidently so necessary in Giovanni’s case, his father moved on to more serious matters. It is clear that Lorenzo shared at least some of Savonarola’s views of the Church, for he refers to Rome as a ‘sink of all iniquities’ where Giovanni will be regarded with great envy by ‘enemies that had striven to prevent your appointment, who will do their best to denigrate little by little, your public reputation, attempting to drag you down into the very ditch into which they themselves have fallen’. But unlike Savonarola, Lorenzo believed that the city had its redeeming features, containing ‘many good and learned men who lead exemplary lives’, and he advised his son to behave likewise. Moving on to more practical matters, he advised Giovanni to:
Death in Florence: the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City Page 15