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

by Paul Strathern

  be sure that your conversation with all people avoids giving offence … As this is your first visit to Rome, I think it would be much better for you to use your ears more than your tongue … devote yourself entirely to the interests of the Church, and in doing so you will not find it difficult to aid the cause of Florence and that of our house … Remain close to the pope, but ask of him as few favours as possible.

  Despite advice on such weighty matters, the anxious Lorenzo could not refrain from returning to his original theme, admonishing the lazy Giovanni that whatever else he did: ‘One rule above all others I urge you to observe most rigorously: Get up early in the morning.’

  There is nothing exceptional in this advice from father to son, yet it is its very lack of originality or insight that makes it interesting. Lorenzo’s mind may have been dulled by pain when he was writing (or, more likely, dictating) this letter, but the fact remains that he was one of the finest intellects of his time, he felt that he was nearing death, and he was passing on his final advice to the young man he believed to be his most talented son. (Of Piero and Giovanni, Lorenzo had said: ‘one is foolish, one is clever’.16) Lorenzo was passing on the fruits of a lifetime of statesmanship, the wisdom gained by ‘the needle of the Italian compass’, no less. Yet his most insistent advice to Giovanni was with regard to his behaviour, his personality. Lorenzo had perhaps tried to follow the commonplace wisdom that he passed on; it had probably been the guidance passed on to him by his own father. Yet for the most part he had surpassed this advice, if not simply contravened it. His greatness as a statesman, and his flaws, had come about through his seemingly rash decisions, his impulsiveness, his belief in his own brilliance: the dash to King Ferrante in Naples, the catastrophe at Ferrara, his decision to raid the Dowry Fund in order to further the Medici cause, his insistence on giving refuge to his friend Pico after he had fallen foul of Innocent VIII, his gesture in allowing Pico to write in his name to Savonarola inviting him back to Florence. Lorenzo knew that Giovanni too was possessed of such qualities – the precocious young cardinal well understood how to conduct himself, knew how to charm others, how to win over the crowd. He needed little advice here. What he had to be protected from was the one flaw that might destroy these qualities: sloth. Get up early in the morning – and the rest would follow. How Lorenzo must have been aware of the irony of this, now that he (never the sluggard) was confined to his bed.

  Writing this letter to Giovanni had been a heroic effort. By now Lorenzo had become so ill that he was unable to conduct the business of running the state. The Milanese ambassador, representative of Florence’s most powerful ally, was forced to wait a fortnight for an audience with him. His personal physician Piero Leoni had exhausted all the remedies he knew, and it was at this stage that the Milanese ambassador conveyed to his master Ludovico Sforza of Milan the gravity of Lorenzo’s condition, causing him to order the famous physician Lazaro da Ticino to travel to Florence at once to treat his friend. Despite such measures, the physician Leoni still insisted that there was no cause for alarm. Lorenzo may have been ill, but his complaint was far from being fatal, so he assured Lorenzo’s oldest son Piero, who was becoming highly agitated at his father’s incapacity and Leoni’s unwillingness to inflict any further painful remedies on the old man. Part of Piero’s agitation appears to have been caused by the prospect of taking over the reins of power. Now just twenty years old, he had developed into an arrogant young man, but growing up under the shadow of his father’s dominant personality had left him with deep inner uncertainties as to his own abilities.

  On 21 March, some days after Lorenzo completed his letter to his son Cardinal Giovanni, he was carried on a litter from Florence to his villa at Careggi, in the countryside a couple of miles north of the city walls. This seemed to many an ominous sign: it was here that both Lorenzo’s grandfather and his father had retired to die.

  On 5 April 1492 news reached the Medici villa at Careggi that two of the city’s famous lions had mauled each other to death in their cage. This was taken as an extremely bad omen by all who heard of it. These mascots were the living emblem of the city’s heraldic symbol, the lion. The significance appeared obvious: evil events lay in store for Florence. The Florentine apothecary Luca Landucci, who kept a diary covering these years, would record the event that took place in the city that night:

  5th April.17 At about 3 at night (11 p.m.)fn2 the lantern on top of the dome of Florence Cathedral was struck by a thunderbolt and was split almost in two. As a result, one of the marble niches and many other pieces of marble on the side by the door leading to the Servi [that is, on the north of the building], were broken off in a miraculous way. No one had ever seen lightning have such an effect before … Many pieces of marble fell around the building, outside the door leading to the Servi; one piece even fell on the paving-stones of the street, split the stone, and buried itself underground.

  Amidst such a climate, even the great humanist Lorenzo the Magnificent found himself succumbing to the old superstitions. When he heard news of the lightning bolt striking the cathedral, he immediately demanded to know which side of the cathedral the shattered marble had fallen. As soon as he was told that it had fallen on the north side, he is said to have declared: ‘That is the side facing this house. It means that I shall die.’

  Another commonly reported story connected with the lightning incident concerns Savonarola, whose biographer Ridolfi reports: ‘That night Savonarola was not able to sleep, and stayed up late trying without success to prepare the sermon he was to deliver next day.’18 Savonarola had then experienced a striking vision of how the world was to be scourged by God. Next morning he had included this vision of God’s scourge in his sermon, and the congregation had immediately associated it with the thunderbolt. However, Savonarola’s original texts in his Compendio di Rivelazioni (‘Compendiom of Revelations’) make it clear that he had this vision ‘on the night before the last of my Advent sermons’.19 This would place Savonarola’s vision just before Christmas 1492, around nine months later, giving it no reinforcing coincidence with the thunderbolt.

  Despite Leoni’s protestations to the contrary, it was now evident to all in attendance on Lorenzo the Magnificent that he was dying. The celebrated physician Lazaro da Ticino, recently arrived from Milan, took over from the ineffective Leoni, administering his elixirs of ground pearls and the like. At some point Lorenzo called in Piero, and in accordance with the family tradition passed on to him the secret of the Medici ambitions. The enormity of these ambitions must have seemed staggering at the time: the plans laid for them to become royalty and ascend to the papal throne. These were indeed unprecedented aspirations – yet, astonishingly, all of them would take place within fifty years. Such momentous events do not happen by accident: the precise details of how they would come about must have been relayed during this deathbed exchange.

  Lorenzo was also to have another fateful encounter on his deathbed. Amazingly, this would prove to be of even greater significance to the city of Florence in the immediate future. This meeting would be the only known face-to-face encounter between Lorenzo the Magnificent and Savonarola.

  Precisely how and why Lorenzo invited Savonarola to his bedside at Careggio is not known. All we do know is that he extended this personal invitation to the man he regarded as the only ‘honest friar’, and that Pico della Mirandola may well have encouraged him in this. Exactly how and why Savonarola accepted this invitation is also unclear. It seems likely that Pico della Mirandola, or maybe Poliziano, acted as messenger. Both are known to have been at Careggio during these last days, and either could easily have travelled across the fields to the city walls and in to San Marco. Either one’s known admiration for Savonarola could well have proved the deciding factor that persuaded him to visit Lorenzo.

  There are several contemporary accounts of this personal encounter between Savonarola and Lorenzo the Magnificent. The most vivid is that of Poliziano:

  Pico arrived to see Lorenzo and sat do
wn beside his bed, while I sank to my knees nearby so that I could hear what Lorenzo was saying, for his voice was by now so frail that it could hardly be heard … Pico had only just left when Savonarola came into the bedroom. He exhorted Lorenzo to keep the faith (to which Lorenzo replied that he held firmly to his belief), he must live a blameless life from now on (Lorenzo replied resolutely that he would be sure to do this), he must endure death, if this should now prove unavoidable, with due equanimity. To which Lorenzo replied, ‘Nothing would be more pleasant, if God has decreed that this must happen.’ Just as Savonarola was leaving, Lorenzo called to him, ‘Father, give us your benediction before you depart.’ After simultaneously bowing his head and composing his features in an attitude of suitable piety, he gave the responses to the preacher’s words and prayers, replying each time correctly and from memory, not at all disturbed by all the weeping and wailing of his family and close friends which could no longer be contained.20

  Poliziano’s description was written down just over a month later, on 18 May, in a long letter to his friend Jacopo Antiquari in Milan. There is no doubt that Poliziano was deeply distressed during his attendance at Lorenzo’s bedside on these last days. He speaks of ‘turning away from [Lorenzo] and trying to hide my emotions’, and how on occasion he would ‘rush to the nearby inner chamber where I could give vent to my grief without restraint’. Poliziano’s emotional state may account for his version of Savonarola’s three demands differing in detail from the version described in the Prologue at the opening of this book, which came down to us from Savonarola’s followers (who probably heard the story from Savonarola himself). As we have seen, according to this version Savonarola asked Lorenzo whether he repented of his sins and believed in the one true God – to which Lorenzo replied that he did. Next, he demanded that if Lorenzo’s soul was to be saved, he would have to renounce his ill-gotten wealth ‘and restore what has wrongfully been taken’.21 To this, Lorenzo replied, ‘Father, I will do so, or I will cause my heirs to do it if I cannot.’ Finally, Savonarola demanded that he should restore to the people of Florence their liberty, which Savonarola believed could only be guaranteed by a truly republican government. To this last demand Lorenzo refused to reply, finally turning his face away. This version of events would seem to be more appropriate to the characters of the two protagonists.

  Yet this was not all. Later evidence suggests that there may have been an even more sensational element to the exchange between the two men. This is mentioned in no sources, and would appear on the surface to be utterly unlikely, were it not for the fact that what was agreed on this occasion would play an unmistakable role in ensuing events, its details gradually emerging as these events unfolded. Astonishingly, it would seem that Lorenzo asked Savonarola to back the succession of his son Piero, and to support his rule over Florence. And even more astonishingly, this was precisely what Savonarola must have agreed to do. Lorenzo’s reasons for this request are evident; Savonarola’s motives were at the time less clear. Yet why did no source mention this pact? Those of Lorenzo’s circle who were at his bedside, including Poliziano, may well have connived to keep this agreement secret – understanding that if it came out, Savonarola would certainly repudiate it, leading him to a more vigorous opposition to Medici rule. Yet why should Savonarola agree to support the continuance of Medici rule, when his preachings had been so opposed to it? Ironically, his motive was his wish to increase his power, and that of his monastery, within the city. As prior of San Marco, Savonarola was beginning to understand that not everything could be accomplished by straightforward preaching, even when this was reinforced with prophetic visions. If he was to achieve his aims, there would have to be a political element to his strategy: the achieving of power could not be done by spiritual means alone. For the time being, power remained inextricably linked with politics, and without power he would achieve nothing.

  This was the first clear indication of Savonarola’s conscious ruthlessness in his pursuit of his theological ambitions. It is possible to view this as unscrupulous, hypocritical or simply pragmatic. Previously Savonarola’s will to impose himself, and his theological vision, on the people of Florence had not strayed from the path of determined righteousness – at least not in his own eyes, and not in any conscious form. Even so, this ruthlessness had certainly expressed itself in an unconscious form. Savonarola was not aware of what drove him to his prophetic visions; he neither questioned them, nor their motive. Here there was no unscrupulousness, no hypocrisy: he believed in what he experienced in his mind and saw before his mind’s eye. There seems little doubt that he did indeed ‘see’ his visions, and was utterly sure of their ‘prophecies’. Convinced that they were not his doing, he felt that they came from outside him, and they came with such force – so where else could they have come from, but from God?

  Now, in pursuance of God’s will, he was prepared to sacrifice even his integrity. If he was required to seek accommodation with the Devil, this too he would do. Like Lorenzo the Magnificent, he too had his secret long-term agenda. And for the time being it so happened that these two agendas were the same: focusing on the need for a Medici to succeed as ruler of Florence.

  fn1 Ridolfi even goes so far as to claim: ‘With such words he prophesied that Lorenzo would soon die, and to those closest to him he even went so far as to predict the very date.’ The latter claim was certainly made around this time, but after the event. This was typical of the mythologising that grew up around Savonarola’s name, even during his lifetime. The celebrated claims regarding Italy, together with the deaths of Lorenzo, Innocent VIII and King Ferrante, are more definitely verifiable, and their grounds will be examined later.

  fn2 The hours of the Florentine day were counted from the ringing of the Angelus bell at sunset, which at this time of year would have been around 8 p.m. our time.

  8

  The End of an Era

  LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT died on the night of 8 April 1492 at the age of forty-three.1 All those around him at the Villa Careggi were distraught. During that night and the following days all manner of omens were said to have been witnessed in and around Florence. Poliziano mentions some of them:

  On the night of Lorenzo’s death, an unusually large and bright star was observed in the night sky above the villa [Careggi] in which he lay dying. This fell from the sky and was extinguished at the very time when it was subsequently learned that he had died. As well as this, for three consecutive nights torches were witnessed racing down the hills around Fiesole, all night long. These torches ended up over the sanctuary where the Medici family are buried; here they flickered for a while and then vanished.

  Almost all contemporary sources refered to these omens. Guicciardini recorded how ‘people heard wolves howling, and a woman became possessed in Santa Maria Novella and cried out that a bull with horns of fire would burn down the entire city’.2 And even the level-headed Machiavelli spoke of how ‘there were many signs from the Heavens that this death would lead to the greatest calamities’.3 Lorenzo’s late eighteenth-century biographer William Roscoe remarks perceptively:

  Besides these incidents, founded perhaps on some casual occurrence, and only rendered extraordinary by the workings of a heated imagination, many others of a similar kind are related by contemporary authors, which, whilst they exemplify that credulity which characterises the human race in every age, may at least serve to shew that the event to which they were supposed to allude, was conceived to be of such magnitude as to occasion deviation from the ordinary course of nature.4

  The people of Florence – from the humble cloth-dyers of the slum quarters to the proud intellectuals of the Palazzo Medici – seem to have been particularly susceptible to such ‘events’ (as Savonarola was becoming aware). However, we can be sure that another of the ‘events’ described at this time did in fact take place, though in aptly ambiguous circumstances. When Lorenzo’s personal physician Piero Leoni learned of the death of his master he became deeply troubled, blaming himself for what h
ad happened. Despite all his renowned medical expertise, he had been unable to do anything to prevent this catastrophe. So great was his anguish that he fled from Careggio, hiding himself away in the remote village of San Gervasio, up in the hills some thirty miles west of Florence, and here he committed suicide by throwing himself down a well. However, whispers soon began to circulate that Leoni’s demise was not all that it seemed, and some time later these rumours would surface in a work by the well-known Neapolitan humanist poet Giacopo Sannazaro, which openly stated that Leoni had been murdered on orders from Piero de’ Medici. Apparently the suspicious Piero had become convinced that Leoni’s seeming ineffectiveness was part of a plot to kill Lorenzo, and even got it into his head that Leoni had poisoned his father. If this was so, it was an ominous indication of the character of Florence’s new ruler.

  Historians of such repute as Guicciardini and Machiavelli, as well as the diarist Landucci, all seem to have recognised – even at the time it happened – that Lorenzo the Magnificent’s passing marked the end of an era. Landucci, who ran a small apothecary’s shop and was in many respects no more than a chronicler of events, certainly recognised at once the historical significance of what had taken place, writing in his entry recording Lorenzo’s death:

  In the eyes of the world, this man was the most illustrious, the most healthy, the most statesmanlike, and the most renowned among men. Everyone declared that he ruled Italy; and truly he was possessed of great wisdom and all his undertakings prospered. He had succeeded in doing what no citizen had been able to do for many years: that is, getting his son made a cardinal; which was not only an honour for his house, but for the whole city.5