Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  She also understood that the Florentine Republic was an unsustainable pretence, a dream that had never really existed as the mirror of classical democracy that the priors told each other they were presiding over. The system of checks and balances that they had built into the rules two hundred years before had always acted as a constraint on effective government to the point of stifling good administration. And while they told themselves that the city state maintained itself financially, proudly refusing to allow any one individual to bear the burden of expenditure for fear he should become ‘a Great Prince’, the truth was that during his lifetime Cosimo had spent 660,000 Florins (today worth £75 million) on great municipal projects and propping up the city’s finances, and secretly they all knew it.

  Lucrezia could see that, generous a gift as Lorenzo’s Gold might be, the task Cosimo was implicitly asking his grandson to achieve with it was an impossible one. Instead she used all her power openly to make him Lorenzo the Magnificent, a Great Prince; one who forced through change and who, by blurring the boundaries between personal and state expenditure, progressively pushed the burden back where it belonged. Unfortunately, much of that blurring had questionable legality. And at the same time, between them, they were letting the family bank go to the dogs.

  Yet in addition to all her temporal abilities, Lucrezia was also a very devout woman. As she approached the end of her life she began to worry about the legality – and perhaps as important – the morality of what she had led Lorenzo to become. She had acted in what she thought was the appropriate manner – guiding her son to pursue reality not dreams, but in the process, what had she created? How would she finally be remembered? What would be her epitaph when finally her life was over?

  And then there was her son. Lorenzo the Magnificent himself. What would be the outcome of his life after she was gone? How would he be remembered? As a great leader, who guided Florence through adversity to eventual triumph? Or as a domineering ogre who would stop at nothing to get his own way? Would Lorenzo regret his actions as he too approached the end of his life? And would he, in those dying days, thank her for what she had led him toward?

  Only time would tell. But that, as they say, is another story; a story told by The House of Medici – Decline and Fall.