The House Of Medici

by Christopher Hibbert

  In his absence his enemies spread rumours in Florence that he was using his enormous wealth to overthrow the government by hiring condottieri to invade the Republic. There were those who believed these rumours; and there were many more who, while not believing them, were prepared to use them as an excuse for ridding Florence of an over-successful rival. A deputation of disgruntled Grandi and Magnati called upon the elderly Niccolò da Uzzano, the most respected statesman in Florence, to seek his advice and enlist his support in their proposed attack on Cosimo. Niccolò received the deputation at his palace in the Via de’ Bardi; he listened to them politely, but was wary and discouraging: even if it were possible to get rid of the Medici, would it really be desirable to increase thereby the power of the Albizzi who might even become tyrants like the Visconti of Milan? Besides, it might very well not be possible to get rid of them. If it came to a contest between the adherents of the two families, it was doubtful that the Albizzi would get the best of it. The Minuto Popolo, grateful for past favours, were still on the Medici’s side. They had other supporters too: several of the most prominent families in the city, the Tornabuoni and the Portinari amongst them, were closely associated with them in various business undertakings; other families were indebted to them for loans and gifts; yet others were linked to them by marriage – the Bardi by Contessina’s marriage to Cosimo, the Cavalcanti and Malespini by his brother, Lorenzo’s, marriage to Ginevra Cavalcanti.2 Moreover, in the close-knit circle of the humanists, Cosimo had numerous friends, whereas Rinaldo degli Albizzi – an outspoken not to say bigoted critic of the new classical learning as being inimical to the Christian faith – had many enemies.

  Niccolò Niccoli, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni and Ambrogio Traversari were all close friends of Cosimo and each one of them was already an influential figure in Florentine society. They were all remarkable men. Niccolò Niccoli, the handsome, aesthetic son of a rich Florentine wool merchant, was at sixty-six the oldest. A most fastidious, exquisitely dressed and almost excessively neat dilettante, he had never cared for trade and had exhausted his inherited fortune on a beautiful house and a magnificent collection of books and manuscripts, medals, coins, intaglios, cameos and vases which ‘no distinguished visitor to Florence ever failed to inspect’. He had begun this collection when Cosimo, twenty-five years younger than he, was a child; and, as Cosimo grew up, he had been inspired by it to make a similar collection of his own. They had once planned to go to the Holy Land together in search of Greek manuscripts; but a journey for such a purpose had not commended itself to Giovanni de’ Medici, who had packed off his son into the bank before he caught any other fanciful ideas from Niccolò. For Niccolò’s devotion to classical antiquity was an obsession. He eventually amassed eight hundred books, by far the largest library of his day, and was adding new volumes to his shelves up to the day of his death, selling off land and borrowing money from Cosimo in order to do so. He never wrote a book himself, since he never managed to finish a paragraph that wholly satisfied his exacting taste; but he did develop a cursive script which enabled his scribes to copy out manuscripts quickly, neatly and elegantly and which became the basis for the italic type used by the early Italian printers. He became an object of curiosity to visitors to Florence, who looked out for his dignified figure as he passed gracefully down the street but who were warned that he could be very brusque, ill-tempered and dismissive. The only person of whom he himself appeared to be in awe was his termagant of a mistress whom he had taken over from one of his five brothers, much to the annoyance of the rest of the family. One day two of these brothers, enraged by the girl’s brash ill-temper, bundled her out of the house and gave her a good thrashing. Niccolò, to whose sensitive ears even the ‘squeaking of a trapped mouse’ was intolerable, burst into tears at her screams.

  Many of Niccolò’s manuscripts were discovered for him by his friend Poggio Bracciolini, who was to achieve lasting fame as a scholar, orator, essayist, historian, satirist and author of a collection of humorous and indecent tales, the Facetiae. Born in a village near Florence in 1380, he was the son of an impoverished apothecary, and came to the city as a boy with only a few coins in his pocket. He contrived to get a place at the Studio Fiorentino,3 the university which had been founded in 1321 after the Pope’s excommunication of Bologna and which Cosimo, as one of its trustees, had helped to extend by pressing for the employment of professors of moral philosophy, rhetoric and poetry in addition to those already teaching grammar, law, logic, astrology, surgery and medicine. Poggio studied law, entered the guild of notaries and obtained employment as a writer of apostolic letters at the Curia. He went with Pope John XXIII to the Council of Constance and, some years later, accompanied Cosimo on a holiday to Ostia where they made an archaeological study of the area. Resourceful, charming, cheerful, convivial, humorous, highly intelligent and not above bribing monks whose assistance could not otherwise be procured, he was immediately and remarkably successful as Niccolò Niccoli’s agent in seeking out manuscripts in Germany, France and Switzerland. He brought all manner of treasures to light, discovering whole masterpieces long since lost and the full texts of what had previously been known only in mutilated copies. In the library of one Swiss monastery, for instance, which was housed in a dingy, dirty dungeon at the bottom of a tower, he found Lucretius’s De rerum natura, a history by Ammianus Marcellinus, a book on cookery by Apicius and an important work on Roman education by Quintilian.

  Texts which could not be purchased he copied out in an exquisite, easily-read and well-spaced hand, using as his model the eleventh-century Carolingian script rather than the tiresome, clumsy Gothic handwriting which had superseded it. When Cosimo de’ Medici saw Poggio’s script he decided to have all his own books copied in a similar manner. It was also admired by the early Italian printers who used it as a basis for their Roman type, just as they had used Niccolò Niccoli’s cursive script for their italic. In Poggio’s script lay the origins of modern handwriting and of modern printing.

  Poggio, however, was not one of those humanists who became so involved in study they lost their taste for life. He loved eating and drinking, making jokes and making love. Ideally he liked to work in the company of pretty girls. He told Niccolò Niccoli how one day, when he was copying an inscription, he had broken off to feast his eye on two girls who were watching him. Niccolò had been rather shocked; but Poggio replied that whenever he was working he would always choose to have well-shaped girls beside him ‘rather than a long-horned buffalo’. He had several mistresses and, by his own admission, fourteen illegitimate children for whom he could afford to care well; with his business sense, and through his connection with the Curia, he had been able to make a great deal of money. It was not until he was fifty-five that he decided to get married. Then, characteristically, he chose a pretty girl of eighteen who brought him a handsome dowry with which he purchased a palazzo where, in due course, six more of his children were born.

  Like Poggio, Leonardo Bruni, another of Cosimo’s humanist friends, had come to Florence as a poor young boy, had studied law at the Studio Fiorentino and, having obtained employment at the Curia, had amassed a fortune. But he was far more intense and earnest than Poggio, sharp-nosed, alert, inclined to be arrogant and, so a fellow humanist said of him, ‘unbelievably eloquent’. He strongly disapproved of Niccolò Niccoli’s having a mistress; and Poggio he considered to be really depraved. He himself had abandoned the idea of a career in the Church in order to marry a respectable, and extremely rich, young woman. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, translating, and to playing his due part in the civic life of Florence, a city which he urged men to consider as the successor of the ancient republics and of which he was to become – and tenaciously to remain – Chancellor. So exalted was his reputation that an envoy from the King of Spain was once seen to fall on his knees before his magnificently red-robed figure.

  An equally honourable but far more modest and saintly man was Ambrogio Traversari, to whom
Cosimo was devoted. A little monk who never ate meat, Traversari had come to Florence from the Romagna, where his family owned large estates, and had entered the austere Camaldolite Order of which he had just become Vicar-General. He was a formidable scholar who had taught himself Hebrew, and was as much at his ease in translating Greek as Latin. So rapidly, indeed, could he translate Greek into the most polished Latin that Niccolò Niccoli, who could write as quickly as any man in Florence, could not keep up with his dictation. For Cosimo, who was just three years older than he was, he translated all of Diogenes Laertius’s works overcoming his modesty to include the most impure passages with the rest. Cosimo was a frequent visitor to his rooms at Santa Maria degli Angeli, and was soon to have cause to feel deeply grateful for his firm friendship in his imminent clash with the Albizzi.

  Also seen frequently at the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli was Carlo Marsuppini, a scholar from a noble family of Arezzo, who had been appointed lecturer in rhetoric and poetry at the University. At the age of thirty-two he was the youngest of Cosimo’s humanist friends; but his learning was already renowned – during the course of one single celebrated lecture he contrived to quote from every known Greek and Latin author. He was considerably less prolific than Bruni but, not as fastidious as Niccolò Niccoli, he did manage to produce one or two Latin translations from the Greek, some epigrams and poetry, and a funeral oration for Cosimo’s mother.

  Marsuppini’s bitter rival at the University was a young man of his own age, Francesco Filelfo, who was born at Tolentino near Ancona where his parents, both Florentines, were then living. Before he was twenty he had already gained a reputation as a classical scholar that enabled him to obtain an important diplomatic appointment in the Venetian service at Constantinople. Here he married the pretty daughter of his Greek tutor, John Chrysoloras, whose brother, Emmanuel Chrysoloras, had been Professor of Greek at the University of Florence. Filelfo himself came to teach in Florence at the invitation of Niccolò Niccoli who was, at first, delighted by his versatility and energy. Filelfo rushed from lecture to lecture, talking from dawn to dusk and with equal facility about Cicero and Terence, Homer and Livy, Thucydides and Xenophon. He also lectured on moral philosophy, and once a week in the Cathedral gave a public discourse on Dante. In addition to these activities he found time to write numerous epigrams and odes, speeches and histories, and to undertake translations whenever these promised to be sufficiently profitable. But after a time Niccolò Niccoli began to regret ever having asked the bustling young man with the Byzantine beard to come to Florence. Filelfo proved to be vain, ill-tempered, insolent, avaricious, prodigal and spiteful. Cosimo’s friends took to avoiding him, and in his quarrels with Carlo Marsuppini they took his rival’s side. Filelfo then courted the Albizzi and offered them his services as a master of invective. Cosimo, who had greeted him warmly on his arrival in Florence and had offered to pay his rent, was to become the most virulently savaged of all his victims.

  Yet so long as the other humanists in Florence remained his friends and, what was even more important, so long as Niccolò da Uzzano was alive, Cosimo had no reason to fear that the Albizzi could mobilize forces strong enough to ruin him. Even though he was generally sympathetic towards the political views of the Albizzi, Niccolò da Uzzano had always respected the Medici and had actually been moved to tears at the funeral of Cosimo’s father. But in 1432 Niccolò himself died and, thereafter, Rinaldo degli Albizzi’s anti-Medicean plot quickly matured. Malicious stories about Cosimo, many doubtless inspired by Filelfo, began to circulate in the streets of Florence: he dressed so plainly, it was said, only the more easily to avoid accusations about his ill-gotten riches; his supposed sympathy for the people was no more than the calculated duplicity of the self-seeker; had he not been heard to say that the people never did anything honest except for their own advantage or out of fear? His well-publicized donations to religious charities and building funds were utter hypocrisy, the conscience-money of a usurer, given with an eye to his family’s glory and nothing more; did he not always make sure that the Medici insignia were prominently displayed on any building that he had paid for? Why, he had emblazoned ‘even the monks’ privies with his balls’! One night in the early months of 1433 the doors of Cosimo’s palace were smeared with blood.

  Once again, as in the autumn of 1430 when he had gone to Verona, Cosimo withdrew from Florence, this time to his estate il Trebbio in the Mugello where he stayed for several months.4 Meantime, he discreetly transferred huge sums of money from his bank in Florence to his branches in Rome and Naples, giving orders for bags of coins to be desposited for safe keeping with the Benedictine hermits of San Miniato al Monte and the Dominican friars of San Marco, where they would be safe from confiscation should the Albizzi move against him.

  While Cosimo was away in the country, Rinaldo degli Albizzi set about manipulating the elections to the new Signoria which was due to meet in September. He completed the work with unobtrusive skill. Of the nine Priori chosen, seven were definitely prepared to support him, while only two, Bartolommeo Spini and Jacopo Berlinghieri, were believed to be possible Medici adherents. The man elected as Gonfaloniere was Bernardo Guadagni whose debts Rinaldo had settled in order to render him eligible for office.5

  During the first week in September, Cosimo who was still in the Mugello, received an urgent summons from Guadagni to return to the city immediately. There were, he was told, ‘some important decisions to be made’. He decided to face them.

  Cosimo arrived back in Florence on 4 September 1433. That afternoon he went to the Palazzo della Signoria to see the Gonfaloniere, Bernardo Guadagni, who was evasive and uncommunicative: the ‘important decisions’ which had necessitated Cosimo’s return from the Mugello would be discussed when the Signoria met in council three days later; in the meantime there was no way of accounting for the rumours of impending trouble which had been circulating in the city for the past few days.

  After leaving the Gonfaloniere, Cosimo went to see one of the Priori whom he believed to be a friend and from whom he received the same kind of vague reassurance. He then went to his bank, no doubt to arrange for the transfer of further sums from Florence. After that he could do nothing but await the imminent meeting of the Signoria.

  When he arrived at the Palazzo della Signoria on the morning of 7 September the session had already begun. As the captain of the guard escorted him up the stairs, he passed the shut door of the Council Chamber. Soon after being locked inside his little cell he was told that he had been ‘arrested on good grounds, as would be soon made clear’.

  Two days later, on 9 September, the huge Vacca boomed in the belfry above his head to call the citizens of Florence to a Parlamento in the Piazza. As the low, mooing notes of the bell sounded through the city, crowds of people began to converge upon the Piazza in response to its summons; but armed supporters of the Albizzi halted them at the entrances to the square and all those who were known to be, or suspected of being, Medici adherents were denied entry. Looking down from the window of his cell, Cosimo afterwards claimed to have counted no more than twenty-three heads in front of the ringhiera, the ground-floor stone terrace upon which the Priori were standing. In the name of the Signoria these few citizens were asked by the Notaio delle Riformagioni if they agreed to the establishment of a Balìa, a committee of two hundred members ‘to reform the city for the good of the people’. Obediently they gave their approval and a Balìa was accordingly appointed.

  Although Rinaldo degli Albizzi now seemed to be in full control of the government, the Balìa could not be persuaded to recommend the execution of Cosimo as he strongly urged it to do. Its discussions were apparently stormy and indecisive, some members supporting the proposal that Cosimo should be beheaded, others arguing that banishment would be punishment enough, one or two suggesting that the prisoner ought to be released. It was clear that many members of the Balìa were reluctant to go to the extremes advocated by the Albizzi not only for fear of the violent disapproval of th
ose thousands of Florentines who, though for the moment intimidated, still looked to the Medici as their champions, but also because his arrest had already called forth strong protests from abroad. The Marquis of Ferrara, a customer of the Medici bank, had intervened on Cosimo’s behalf. The Venetian Republic, also financially indebted to him, had immediately dispatched three ambassadors to Florence who did all in their power to secure his release; and if, after a heated talk with Rinaldo, they failed to do so, their arrival in Florence, as Cosimo said himself, had ‘a great effect on those who were in favour of executing’ him. Rinaldo also had a visit from Cosimo’s old friend, Ambrogio Traversari, Vicar-General of the Camaldolite Order, and supposedly the representative of an even more influential customer of the Medici bank, Eugenius IV, the austere son of a Venetian merchant, who had succeeded Martin V as Pope two years before. By this time Rinaldo had succeeded in bringing a charge of treason against Cosimo by having two of his supporters tortured on the rack. One of these, Niccolò Tinucci, a celebrated notary and occasional poet, had been forced by the city rackmaster to confess that Cosimo had intended to enlist foreign help in bringing about a revolution in the city. Neither Traversari nor the Venetian ambassadors believed in this confession; nor did most of the citizens of Florence. Rinaldo, indeed, was gradually being forced to conclude that he would have to be content with a sentence of banishment rather than the death penalty which his henchman Francesco Filelfo was so insistently demanding.