Magnifico

by Miles J. Unger

  If Lorenzo found his peacetime duties onerous, he discovered that the burdens of managing the nation’s affairs in time of war was almost more than he could bear. To some extent he was the victim of his own success. Having arranged it so that only his loyal followers were elected to office and having packed the councils with his closest friends, there were few now willing or able to take independent responsibility. Lorenzo had achieved unprecedented authority in the state, but at a high cost to his own peace of mind. Never had the responsibilities of office weighed so heavily or provided so little satisfaction. Given the rudimentary nature of the bureaucracy, Lorenzo himself had to handle much of the diplomatic paperwork aided only by a few personal assistants.* At a time when he could most have used the advice and support of his brother he had to face a seemingly endless list of troubles alone. Where once, according to the testimony of Marsilio Ficino, he toiled late into the night over his philosophical studies, now he stayed at his desk in the Palazzo della Signoria to attend to official business, often copying out correspondence himself by candlelight as his secretaries stumbled back to bed exhausted. “For the love of God, Girolamo,” he implored his ambassador in Milan, “have compassion on the infinite problems that beset me, so many that I marvel that I have not lost what little sense I have left. I have written to you only briefly because I know that with you there is no need of words and because I am so exhausted that I can do no more.”

  The burden was particularly heavy because this was in a real sense his war. Though he had not picked this fight, Florentines knew that it was for his sake that they bore so many hardships. From the beginning the pope believed that the easiest, if not the quickest, path to victory was to force the people of Florence to abandon Lorenzo. This could be achieved by making the cost to each Florentine citizen so high that he began to question whether continued loyalty to Lorenzo was worth the price. Even as Ferrante presented his declaration of war to the Priors he made this policy explicit, his herald “tell[ing] us that the king and the Holy Father were ready to oblige us in every way, if we sent away Lorenzo de’ Medici.” In fact the entire assault on Lorenzo, beginning with the attack in the cathedral and continuing through the current battles, was predicated on the notion that he was a hated tyrant and that the citizens of Florence were only awaiting the right moment to rise against him. This strategy explains in part why the pope’s generals seemed in no hurry to push home their advantage. A war of attrition, they believed, would achieve their ends with minimal dangers to themselves and their troops. “The Duke of Urbino is said to have quipped,” Guicciardini related, “that in the first year of the war, Florentines were lively and energetic; in the second, they were mediocre; and in the third, done for. He was waiting for that third year.”

  By the time the two armies retired to their winter quarters after a season of unproductive mayhem, the war had already settled into a routine of small-scale skirmishes, mutual atrocities, and tactical maneuvers more calculated to avoid a pitched battle with the enemy than to win a decisive victory.* Thrown back on the defensive, however, Lorenzo felt the pressure much more than his opponents. As the days of misery lengthened and with no end in sight, the pope’s blandishments fell on more receptive ears. “And at this Christmas-time,” Luca Landucci records, “what with terror of the war, the plague, and the papal excommunication, the citizens were in a sorry plight. They lived in dread, and no one had any heart to work. The poor creatures could not procure silk or wool, or only very little, so that all classes suffered.”

  How long would the people stand by Lorenzo while their fortunes dwindled and their families starved? With fighting taking place largely on Florentine territory the people’s suffering depended less on whether battles were won or lost than on whether they were fought at all, since victory and defeat alike destroyed the farms, fields, and orchards surrounding the city. In the markets the price of basic foodstuffs rose alarmingly, a particularly dangerous development for Lorenzo whose popularity in the city’s poorer neighborhoods was largely due to his efforts to keep the price of bread down. And it was not only the poor who felt the pinch of hunger: The well-to-do could no longer count on their country estates to supply them with fresh fruit and meat as their properties were overrun by marauding bands. The mercenary captain Rodolfo Gonzaga observed in the summer of 1478 that the war destroyed “many fine palaces belonging to citizens, to such an extent that much damage has been and is being done.”

  For a man accustomed as Lorenzo was to leavening business with pleasure, the daily routine of governing was oppressive. Adding to the pressure he felt, those excursions to the countryside that were crucial to his mental health had to be cut short or abandoned altogether. This disruption to the rhythms he had known since childhood was made all the more painful by prolonged absences from his family. Shortly after Giuliano’s murder, Clarice and the children were spirited out of Florence. With the faithful Poliziano in tow, they led an itinerant life in one or the other of the many family villas or under the protection of friendly lords like the Panciatichi of Pistoia. Rumors of assassins, as well as various outbreaks of disease, continued to stalk them, forcing the family to pick up stakes every few weeks and keeping the household in a state of perpetual disarray. Poliziano painted a gloomy picture of their life in exile for Lorenzo’s mother, who had stayed behind with her son in Florence: “I remain in the house [at Cafaggiolo] by the fireside in slippers and a greatcoat, were you to see me you would think I was melancholy personified…. Ser Alberto di Malerba mumbles prayers with these children all day long, so I remain alone, and when I am tired of study I ring the changes on plague and war, on grief for the past and fear for the future.” In June of 1479 the family was forced to flee to the out-of-the-way villa of Gagliano where, as Clarice complained to her mother-in-law, “there is nothing but bare walls.” Lorenzo got away when he could but often his plans had to be scrapped at the last minute. “I thought I would come this evening,” Lorenzo wrote to his wife in Cafaggiolo, “and had sent word to put everything in order; in the meantime so much work has piled up that I have been forced to remain here, and I am writing this note so that you won’t wait for me.”

  The constant anxiety took its toll. Clarice was often ill, exhibiting early signs of consumption, a condition that could hardly have been improved by extended stays in drafty villas meant for summer living. Fulfilling her wifely duties also proved exhausting. On those occasions when Lorenzo did manage to get away his time in the matrimonial bed was productive: in 1478 alone Clarice gave birth to two girls, Luisa and Contessina, and in 1479 she gave Lorenzo his third son, Giuliano. Small wonder, then, that Clarice, usually the mildest and most obedient of wives, lost her temper. It was during these trying months that she and Poliziano quarreled, leading to the poet’s banishment from her presence.

  Bad news from the battlefield was accompanied by bad news on the financial front as Lorenzo’s enemies tried to undermine the foundation of his power. “The news I have received from Naples,” Lorenzo explained to Girolamo Morelli, “is that the King hopes to destroy my affairs by insisting I be forced to pay without allowing me to collect. I have no doubt that the Pope, as soon as he hears of this attempt to absolve everyone of their obligations towards me, will seek by similar means to move against my business in Rome.” Lorenzo’s concern was justified: shortly after the beginning of the war, Sixtus repudiated his massive debt and seized the assets of the Roman bank.

  Even before April 1478 Lorenzo’s finances had been in a parlous state. The bad news contained in his secret ledgers was so well known that during the months leading up to the murders in the Duomo, Renato de’ Pazzi had advised his cousin Francesco against the assassination attempt because he believed that they would achieve everything they wanted by simply standing on the sidelines while the Medici bank crumbled of its own accord. In addition to troubles with the two vital branches in southern Italy, heavy losses sustained in London and Bruges, the latter precipitated by the recklessness of Tommaso Portinari, were causin
g public loss of confidence in the Medici firm. By the first months of the war the situation had become so dire that Lorenzo, usually a creditor to the great courts of Europe, requested an emergency loan of 12,000 ducats from Bona, Duchess of Milan. In March 1479, with depositors again nervous about the safety of their accounts, he tried to borrow from her an additional 30,000 to 40,000 ducats in an effort to restore his faltering credit. A year after the war began, Lorenzo confessed that he was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

  It was in these desperate circumstances that Lorenzo resorted to the unscrupulous practices that have forever tarnished his reputation. First he dipped into the inheritance of his cousins Giovanni and Francesco de’ Medici, the children of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, his embezzlement aided by his position as executor of their father’s will. This bit of sharp practice ultimately netted him a total of more than 53,000 florins.* The second stratagem he employed to stave off financial ruin opened him up to the charges of corruption that dogged him the rest of his days and caused no end of troubles for his heirs. With the connivance of his cronies, he managed to divert some public funds for his private use, making repeated raids into the Monte dei Doti, the state-funded debt used to provide dowries to the daughters of the poor.† Though Medici partisans tried to scrub the records clean, a few pertinent documents escaped their attention. According to one of them, dated three years after Lorenzo’s death, the government sought to recoup from his heirs the amount of 74,948 florins that he had taken “without the sanction of any law and without authority, to the damage and prejudice of the Commune.”

  There is little doubt that Lorenzo illegally took public money to shore up his teetering financial empire, but it was less a matter of expedience than of sheer necessity. Lorenzo was faced with a stark choice between ruin and malfeasance. It is hard not to agree with Bernardo del Nero who, as a character in Guicciardini’s Dialogue on the Government of Florence, deplored “the money that Lorenzo drew from public funds for himself and to benefit a few friends,” but concluded that “the situation was such that his collapse would inevitably have damaged the public interest, so he was advised to do so by all the leading citizens.” Lorenzo was sufficiently aware of his own value to the nation not to agonize unduly over what must have seemed a necessary evil.

  It is also important to remember that the boundaries between public and private were much more porous in Renaissance Florence than they are today. Public officials like Lorenzo received no salary; in fact they absorbed enormous out-of-pocket expenses as they wined and dined visiting dignitaries and staged magnificent spectacles for the greater glory of the republic. Ironically, the ideal of public service encouraged corruption as amateur citizen-politicians tried to recoup some of their losses by using their office for private gain.

  As moral purists like Savonarola were quick to point out, peculation was a way of life for Florentines, from evading taxes to using the law as an instrument to profit at a rival’s expense. The rich, in turn, atoned for their many sins by expending huge sums on the beautification of their city and for the greater glory of God. Much of the money Lorenzo and his forebears gained through questionable practices was returned to the public in the magnificent buildings and works of art they paid for. And while he was far from saintly in the conduct of his business, one can hardly make the claim that the net effect of Lorenzo’s political activity was to enrich himself at the public expense. On the contrary: if politics did not ruin him financially, it was only by dint of the greatest exertion that he avoided disaster.

  As roads that had been turned to mud by the winter rains began to firm up in the spring sunshine, the mercenary armies once again unlimbered and prepared to fight it out over the rolling hills of Tuscany. The second season of the war began on a high note with a victory by Florentine forces near Lake Trasimene, where more than 1,500 years earlier Hannibal had decimated the Roman legions. But the army that had barely held together in the first season of the war now threatened to come apart at the seams. Following the successful battle, Mantuan soldiers under Federico Gonzaga and the Ferrarans under Ercole d’Este came to blows over the distribution of booty, creating such bad blood that the Ten was forced to reorganize the two contingents into separate armies. Both of Lorenzo’s principal allies remained distracted, Venice by the advance of the Ottomans in the Aegean, Milan by a simmering rebellion in Genoa. Desultory attempts to broker a peace agreement were scuttled by Sixtus, who remained opposed to any deal that would leave Lorenzo in power. Lorenzo even agreed to go to Rome and beg the pope’s forgiveness if it would bring a speedy end to hostilities, but this offer led to nothing.

  In Florence the situation grew more desperate as summer approached. Rats and other vermin multiplied along the marshy banks of the Arno, spreading plague among the poorer neighborhoods of the city. “I hear the plague is committing more ravages in Florence than usual,” wrote a worried Clarice to her husband. “Your wife and children pray with all their might that you will take care of yourself, and if you can, with due precaution, come here [to Trebbio] and see the festival we should be greatly consoled.” The threat of epidemic was increased by the fact that many of those accustomed to spending the summer months in their country villas were driven back inside city walls by the fighting, making the overcrowded, overheated streets a breeding ground for pestilence. In the crowded tenements where the wool-workers lived it was the malnourished who were struck down first, but in a city where rich and poor lived and worked in close proximity no one was spared. “To make matters worse, the plague continues to spread,” Lorenzo reported to Girolamo Morelli, “and we have all been exposed: this morning a victim was buried in the cemetery of this church, and we, not knowing this, walked around and over the grave for more than an hour. But this is the least of our worries.”

  In August 1479, Lorenzo fell ill with a high fever that neither of his personal physicians, Moses the Jew and Stefano della Torre, could cure. Fortunately, the illness was not the plague but the less lethal malarial fever. On September 18, when he again wrote to Morelli, he had still not recovered: “I have written you a long discourse and since I still have a little fever, it isn’t strange if I talk a little nonsense.”

  With no end to the war in sight, morale in the city sank ever deeper. The majority of Florentines continued to back Lorenzo, but not without growing murmurs of discontent. “The citizens accused one another freely and without respect,” wrote Machiavelli: “they brought out the errors committed in the war; they showed the expenses made in vain, the taxes unjustly imposed. Such things were spoken of not only within the circles of private individuals but spiritedly in the public councils. And there was one so bold as to turn to Lorenzo de’ Medici and say to him: ‘This city is weary and wants no more war.’”

  One event, while throwing the alliance into temporary turmoil, held out some hope for the future. On September 7, 1479, Lodovico Sforza secretly entered Milan to meet with his sister-in-law, the Duchess Bona, and to hammer out an agreement that would end months of near civil war. Bona agreed to step aside as regent in favor of Lodovico in return for a promise that he would ultimately honor his nephew GianGaleazzo’s claim to the ducal throne. Both got what they wanted most from the bargain: Bona security for her son, who would now enjoy the protection of his uncle; Lodovico effective rule over the duchy of Milan until his sickly nephew reached the age of maturity. The only one unhappy with the result was Bona’s chief minister, Cicco Simonetta, who upon hearing of the bargain his mistress had struck, lamented “You have taken a decision that will take my life from me and your state from you.” These words proved prophetic as Lodovico quickly disposed of his rival by chopping off his head.

  Shortly after Lodovico—known as il Moro (the Moor) because of his swarthy complexion—took power, Lorenzo wrote an optimistic note to his ambassador in the city: “I cannot believe that the Lord Lodovico being all-powerful and an absolute ruler will consent to our undoing, because it would be against his interest. He is by nature kindly and has never
received any injury from us either public or private…. Therefore as soon as you can it would be well to see His Lordship and demonstrate to him that on account of ancient friendship we expect nothing but good from him.”

  In the meantime, however, the military situation had deteriorated. Early in September, Alfonso, the duke of Calabria, routed Florentine forces at Poggio Imperiale, driving them back to San Casciano, only eight miles from Florence. The war might have ended then and there had Alfonso pursued the defeated army to the city gates. Instead he decided to secure his lines by laying siege to the little town of Colle Val d’Elsa. This village, whose loyalty to Florence was directly proportional to her enmity toward her neighbor Siena, mounted a surprisingly stiff resistance. Alfonso finally succeeded in subduing Colle on November 12, but with winter approaching he proposed the usual seasonal truce—an offer the demoralized Florentines quickly accepted.