Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Lorenzo de' Medici - Alfred von Reumont - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Cosimo de’ Medici was a man of mature age when his father died. Born on September 27, 1389, the day of the saints Cosmo and Damian, he was christened after the former; and a Florentine expression blended veneration for the sacred martyrs with veneration for the ruling family, who had chosen them as patrons: ‘Per San Cosmo e Damiano ogni male fia lontana.’ His education was excellent; and, although he was intended for a mercantile life, he studied the Latin language thoroughly, and under the guidance of masters such as the grammarians Niccolò of Arezzo,[52] and Roberto de’ Rossi, acquired a taste for literature and science which remained with him, and even increased, during the whole of his long life. He was, perhaps, twenty-four years old when he married Contessina de’ Bardi. Her father, Alessandro, Count of Vernio, belonged to a family which is of note among the Florentines from the eleventh century; and from which the principal street on the left bank of the Arno, between the old bridge and that of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, derived its name. The Bardi were originally a plebeian family, but were afterwards counted among the nobility. They, with other nobles, had aided the people to break the tyranny of the Duke of Athens, but were defeated a year later in valiant strife with the same people, who would no longer suffer ‘the great’ to have any share in the government, and set on fire the houses of those who had shortly before fought beside them. Piero de’ Bardi, Contessina’s great-grandfather, then withdrew to his castle of Vernio, situated in the Apennines to the north of Prato, which had been purchased ten years before by his brother from the Alberti, and recognised by the Emperor Charles IV. as a fief held under him. The enmity between the castellans and the Florentine people grew so violent, that Sozzo, Piero’s son, was condemned by the commune in contumaciam to death by fire, under the seemingly false accusation of having coined false money in Vernio.[53] Sozzo’s son was the father of Contessina, whose mother, Milla Pannocchieschi, was descended from the ancient Sienese dynasty of the Counts of Elci, which has lately become extinct. The name of Contessina (Contessa, Tessa), which we so frequently meet with in earlier times in Tuscany, calls to mind the great Countess Matilda, whose memory was preserved by a grateful people. The enmity between the great and the plebeians, though it still prevailed, and was used as a pretext when the question of political rights arose, never at that time interfered with family alliances.

We hear nothing of Cosimo till the time when Pope John XXIII., on his eventful journey to the Council of Constance, halted in Florence. The relations between the republic and the Pope were to be traced from the time when the latter was all-powerful under his predecessor, Alexander V., as Cardinal Baldassar Cossa. When John XXIII. called upon the Florentines to send plenipotentiaries to Constance, and the counsellors were undecided, Filippo Corsini observed that they must not say ‘No’ to the Pope. He it was who had first originated the Council of Pisa, through which the way had been paved to the new assembly, and without his active assistance Florence would not have been able to resist King Ladislaus. The Pope had been already in connection with the Medici when he was legate of Bologna, and during his reign the money matters of the Curia were chiefly in the hands of Giovanni di Bicci. After John XXIII., yielding to King Sigismund’s urgency, had consented to the Council of Constance, in spite of his disinclination to a council on German soil, he was for a time in Florence, where he resided in the convent degli Angeli of the Camalduli. It was here that the Medici, with many respected citizens, visited him, and entered into negotiations with him. Here, too, he addressed to Bartolommeo Valori, in whom he had great confidence, upon his warning of the danger of holding this council in a foreign country, the remarkable words: ‘I own that this council is not to my advantage; but what can I do if my fate compels me to it?’[54] When the Pope set out for the Lake of Constance in the autumn of 1414, Cosimo de’ Medici was among his escort; not, as has been supposed, overrating the position as an aid to him in his own affairs, but simply to manage the money matters of the Holy See.

In these matters the Medici, who always remained true to John XXIII., were helpful to him even after his fall. On December 6, 1418, the deposed and imprisoned Pope drew up a bond in the Castle of Heidelberg for 38,500 Rhenish florins, which Giovanni de’ Medici and Niccolò da Uzzano, with the consent of Pope Martin V., paid by a bill on the Nuremberg house of Romel, as ransom to Duke Louis of Bavaria. When, after many difficulties, the liberated man had by means of his Florentine friends come to terms with his persecutor and obtained a safe-conduct from him, the Medici received him in Florence, where they undoubtedly aided in his reconciliation with Pope Martin. When the afflicted man, who in his misfortunes assumed a far more dignified attitude than formerly in the times of his greatness, made his last will on December 22, 1419, he appointed Giovanni di Bicci and three other distinguished Florentines as executors. That the first enriched himself with the legacy was a calumny which has long been disproved, for Baldassar Cossa left scarcely enough for his legatees to be paid.[55] The beautiful monument which the Medici erected to the deceased stands in the baptistery; the reclining figure was cast in bronze by Donatello, and in the marble portions Michelozzo assisted. ‘Johannes quondam Papa XXIII.’ says the significant inscription.[56]

Their friendship with the late Pope did not prevent the Medici from coming to a good understanding with the new one. The mark of favour to Giovanni di Bicci already mentioned tells of friendly relations even at a time when Martin V. was not well disposed towards the city, on account of disagreeable occurrences during his residence in Florence in 1420. We have seen how Cosimo accompanied John XXIII. to Constance, where, in the words of a contemporary, the whole world was assembled. On the flight of his patron he left the town in disguise, and resided for some time in Germany and France, till he returned home after about two years’ absence. In 1426, having been entrusted with embassies in Milan, Lucca, and Bologna, he stayed for some months in Rome, employed in State affairs at the time that the tedious strife with Filippo Maria Visconti had, by the conquest of Brescia, taken a favourable turn for the allied Florentines and Venetians; and it was important to persuade the Pope to act as umpire, since all parties, and especially the Florentines, longed for peace. This peace was actually signed at Venice on December 30, the Bishop of Bologna, the excellent Niccolò Albergati, representing Martin V.; and when the duke broke the treaty, which had only just been concluded, new and heavy misfortunes in arms forced him to appeal to the same mediation which he had so lately scorned. But it was only in the spring of 1428 that terms were agreed upon advantageous to Venice, which retained Brescia, but offered no compensation to the Florentines for their enormous expenses, thus justifying the prudence of old Giovanni di Bicci, who had counselled against the war. In gratitude to the Pope for his support, the Florentines, in 1427, bestowed the freedom of their city on his relations, the Colonna family.

At the death of his father, Cosimo was forty years old. In all business, public as well as private, he had proved himself skilful, active, and prudent. All who did not belong to the party which guided affairs since 1380 regarded him as their natural leader. The number of these opponents of the ruling faction was great, not only among the people—in whom more or less indistinct hereditary traditions were instinctively hostile to a government which had now existed for fifty years, and which, though it originated with the people, had from the first been tinctured with the character of an oligarchy—but also among the higher classes, many of whom were considerably oppressed by this faction. Giovanni di Bicci had always avoided appearing as the actual head of a party, perhaps from prudence, perhaps also for fear of exposing himself to the risk of catastrophes such as he had experienced in his youth. It was to be proved whether his son shared this feeling, and Cosimo’s behaviour hitherto implied that he did. It was a question, however, whether the oligarchy would find it advisable to suffer a man beside them whose reputation and wealth daily increased, and who, even without wishing it, must be dangerous to them if misfortune or blunder should arouse discontent. Since the death of Maso degli Albizzi, his son Rinaldo, Niccolò da Uzzano, and Palla Strozzi stood at the head of the party.

The Albizzi, who, as we have said, derived their origin from Arezzo, were at first of the Ghibelline faction, and appeared in Florence about the middle of the thirteenth century. They soon obtained repute among the plebeian families. From 1282 ninety-eight of their family sat in the magistracy of the priors, and fourteen attained to the office of Venner or Gonfalonier. Piero son of Filippo, the first Gonfalonier, was he who in a short time raised the authority of his family above that of all others. He led an active life at a time when the republic claimed much of the time and pecuniary means of the principal citizens, but in return afforded them opportunities of satisfying their ambition, and attaining to a height of power which might become dangerous to the commonwealth. He had repeatedly been charged with embassies to princes and republics; had been present at coronations; concluded treaties, among them those with the plundering mercenary bands, and with Bernabò Visconti; had been sent with congratulatory messages, as in 1367, when Pope Urban V., summoned by all the Italian patriots, returned from Avignon to Rome, unfortunately only for a time. Jealousy of his rising authority induced the heads of the Ricci, a rival family to his own, and their friends, to propose the exclusion from office of all such as were suspected of Guelphism. This measure was directed principally against the Albizzi; but Piero, cleverer than his opponents, helped to carry it through, while they had counted on his opposition. He knew how to make use of them. In 1357, being chosen president of the tribunal entrusted with this political inquisition of the Parte Guelfa, it was he who, with his friends, began that proscription which united all power in the city and government in his hands and those of his adherents, but also created that unendurable condition of affairs against which the rebellion of 1378 broke out. In the following year Piero, banished at first from Florence, having returned to one of his estates, fell a victim to the summary justice executed by the aristocratic leaders of the mob. A false accusation brought him to the scaffold; at a time when no law was respected, he paid the penalty of having himself made the laws subservient to political ends.

The family retired into exile; their houses were plundered and burnt. One of the branches, in a quarrel with relations, had discarded the name and altered the coat of arms, and flourishes still under the name of the Alessandri. The reaction of the year 1381 brought the exiles back, and they were soon more powerful than ever. Maso (Tommaso), Piero’s nephew, had been first banished to Barletta, on the Apulian coast, and then made a ‘Grande,’ i.e. disqualified for holding communal offices. He now attained almost dictatorial power, and exercised it with political insight, and a consistency which essentially aided in raising the republic to that height of power and repute on which it remained thenceforward, and long after his own faction was destroyed, till the revolution in Italian affairs at the end of the fifteenth century. If he acted intolerantly in home affairs; if proscriptions did not cease, and the prosecution of the Alberti, who were concerned in the insurrection of 1378 and in the execution of Piero degli Albizzi, showed cruelty in the enactment which commanded their houses to be razed to the ground, their coats of arms to be destroyed, and their property confiscated; a law that punished alliances by marriage and commercial transactions with them, extended even to their posterity;[57] it is less the fault of the man than of the spirit which had prevailed in the republics for centuries, and which led even the most discerning to make the commonwealth ever subservient to party policy, and to look upon their own faction as the State. Embassies to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, to King Rupert of the Palatinate, Pope Gregory XII., &c., alternated for Maso with a continuous series of the most important offices. Even when he was out of office, nothing was done without him. When the republic manfully resisted the progress of Gian Galeazzo in Central Italy, enlarged and secured her own territory by the conquest of Pisa, actively contributed to ecclesiastical union, and brought the dangerous war with King Ladislaus to a successful end, it was all really due to Albizzi. He was a rich man; the street outside the oldest district of the town, still named after his family, was almost entirely occupied by their houses and those of the Pazzi; and in our time, the palace belonging to his descendants, as well as that of the Alessandri, the half-ruined tower, the walled-up loggia, the passage to the market of San Piero, with the portico of the demolished church built by a descendant of Maso, remind us of the brilliant days of the family, whose coat of arms is still to be seen on the buildings—two concentric golden circles on a black field, and above it on a silver field the cross of the German order granted to Maso. In the lower valley of the Arno, on the right bank of the river, where a low range of hills stretches between the Lake of Bientina, reaching to the foot of the mountains of Pisa, and the green level of the marshes of Fucecchio, lies the large Villa Montefalcone, which came into the possession of the family in the second half of the fourteenth century. It was formerly a castle (destroyed by Castruccio) with a splendid view over the valley, strewn with villages lying mostly on low hills, and the beautiful wooded heights of Monte Albano, behind which the fertile Pistojan plain joined the Florentine valley of the Arno, which, while more varied, rivalled it in fertility.

Maso degli Albizzi died in 1417, aged seventy-four. His eldest son, Rinaldo, was the heir to his position in the Senate. He was a boy eight years of age when his relations fell in the tumult of Ciompi, had grown up in the traditions of his house, and from the year 1399 was active in affairs of State. No citizen was employed so much as he in embassies and commissions of all kinds. We meet with him in great and small matters; for the statesmen of the free city as little thought of declining small matters, as the greatest artists thought it beneath their dignity to paint shields and domestic implements, or to carve coats of arms on door-posts and chimney-pieces. Fifty different commissions were entrusted to Rinaldo, some in the vicinity, and some to the Popes, King Sigismund, to Naples, Lombardy, Genoa, Ferrara, Romagna, &c. The hard-working man left careful and detailed notes of all, which, with the documents and letters relating thereto, he first collected in 1423, and afterwards continued. They are models of a natural, pure, perspicuous, and always appropriate diction, at a time when the Tuscan dialect was threatened with an overgrowth of learned affectation and distortion, and was losing its popular simplicity. These notes are a source of the amplest knowledge of details for any one who earnestly studies the history of this period, remarkable in so many ways.[58] While he was so frequently employed in foreign service—for the year before his exile we find him at Rome—his opponents laboured at home for his ruin. It is as if Gino Capponi, Neri’s son, had thought of him when he wrote the advice intended for his son: ‘He who wishes for a great position in his native city, should not leave it too often, except in important cases.’ ‘Messer Rinaldo,’ says Giovanni Cavalcanti, a contemporary and adherent of the Medici, ‘knew not what fear is. He had clean hands, was well read in the sciences, was full of perseverance and love of justice, so that the multitude accused him of being hard and cruel. He lived only on simple fare, and hated feastings, and was accustomed to say that he who wished to keep in health must be no gormandizer; which his enemies interpreted as meanness. Would to God that we could not have said of this man that he was proud! for else he would have excelled many others in good qualities. But his pride clouded his own virtues, and misjudged those of others.’[59]

Beside the two Albizzi, none exercised greater influence in the guidance of affairs in the half-century of the oligarchy than Niccolò da Uzzano. The name of the family, extinct in the second half of the seventeenth century, was Miglioretti; but they were generally named after a little castle, now a gentleman’s villa, lying south of Florence, in the Greve valley, the environs of which are renowned for their excellent wine. The Da Uzzano appeared first in Florence in the days of the Emperor Henry VII. Niccolò, the son of Giovanni and Lena de’ Bardi, born about the middle of the fourteenth century, represented the moderate principle in the ruling party, as Giovanni di Bicci did among the opposition. He wished for an oligarchy, but did not desire the supremacy of a single family. As long as he lived, a restraint was laid upon the Albizzi; nay, he was even reported to have said, that, if he must live to see one stand at the head of affairs, he would sooner endure Cosimo than Rinaldo. For he feared the violent ambition of the latter more than the crafty calculation of his rival, and said of Rinaldo, that he would see no citizen by his side, but all beneath him, and did not think so much of destroying the Medici as of acquiring unlimited authority over his own party.[60] Niccolò did not, however, trust to its unity, and sought, therefore, to hold and preserve matters equally balanced. His repute was so high, that the faction was indeed named after him, and his beneficence equalled his wealth. In the Via de’ Bardi we still see the great palace which he is said to have had built by the painter Bicci di Lorenzo, and which, as he had no sons, passed with his daughter Ginevra to a branch of the Capponi, which still possesses it.[61] The severe unadorned façade of Opus rusticum still represents the simplicity of the time, which was soon replaced by the greater richness of form of the Medicean epoch; and his statue in marble, said to be a work of Donatello’s, is still shown in the house; whereas another likeness, painted by Masaccio, and once in one of the houses of the Corsican,[62] is said to have disappeared.

But Niccolò wished to leave his native town a memorial of his affection, and began building a lyceum for young men after a design by the same Bicci. By his last will he left a considerable sum invested in the national funds for completing the work and endowing lectureships; but the State expended the money for other purposes, and in the present day only the name of the broad Via della Sapienza, leading from the Piazza di San Marco to the Annunziata, reminds us of Niccolò da Uzzano’s patriotic intention. ‘He who wishes to be of use to the world, and to found of himself an honourable memory,’ remarks Giorgio Vasari, ‘must work himself as long as he lives, and not trust to posterity and heirs.’

Palla Strozzi was not made for the strife of factions; his heart belonged to study. ‘Messer Leonardo of Arezzo,’ remarks the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci,[63] ‘who has left us a whole gallery of interesting portraits of remarkable and meritorious men, used to say of him, that he was the happiest man he had known; for he possessed all that is requisite for human happiness, in intellectual as well as physical gifts. He was very useful to his native city, and obtained all the honours in the home and foreign administration which could be granted to a citizen. As ambassador he received honourable commissions, and, at the same time, always promoted the welfare of his country. With these gifts he united the strictest sense of honour, and was personally the most cultivated and respected burgher of the city. His modesty extended from his private life to his public position. He sought to avoid envy as much as he could, well knowing what harm is wrought by it to the commonwealth, and how it pursues deserving men. He did not like to be seen in public; he never appeared on the square of the Signoria, or the new market-place, except when he was summoned thither. If he went to the Piazza, he took the way past Sta. Trinità, through the Borgo Sant’Apostolo, stayed there only a short time, and then repaired to the palace. He was sparing of time, never wandered about the streets and squares, and scarcely had he arrived at home than he studied Greek and Latin, and lost not an hour.’ He was a rich man. In the registers of 1427 he opened the list of the tax-payers with a sum exceeding the valuation of Giovanni di Bicci by more than a fifth. A great part of his income he employed in the purchase of manuscripts and for scientific purposes. The origin of his family is unknown: the name occurs towards the end of the thirteenth century. That the Strozzi were Guelphs and plebeians is shown by their whole position; that they were popular, we see from the circumstance that the names of more than a hundred of their family occur among the priors of the corporations, while not less than sixteen attained the office of Venner. Their wealth increased rapidly, as did the branches into which they were divided, and in the territory they possessed lands and castles. One of them, Tommaso, was among those of higher rank who turned the popular insurrection of 1378 to their own purposes, and had to esteem himself fortunate in escaping the victorious reaction by a flight to Mantua, where he founded a branch of his family, which is still flourishing. Onofrio (Noferi), Palla’s father, who had died in 1417, seventy-two years old, was one of the most respected men of the republic. He was twice elected Gonfaloniere, and, beside other offices, he filled that of superintendent of the Mint; while embassies led him to the Popes Gregory XII. and Alexander V., when Florence tried her best to restore unity in the Church. It was he who determined on building the beautiful chapel in Sta. Trinità which now serves as sacristy, a building which was completed by his son, and the exterior of which is adorned with the three crescents, the arms of the Strozzi. The epoch of their greatest brilliancy had not yet begun, but they were approaching it rapidly.

As long as the different elements which formed the political parties held the balance of power, peace remained intact at home. The city had never been so rich or so splendid, trade and industry never so flourishing as then; the great burghers had never shown more lively common feeling, or created more beautiful public works, or devoted more helpful interest to science. It was felt that any inconsiderate step, from whatever side it might come, would disturb this peace; but it was this very consciousness of responsibility which enforced prudence. Niccolò da Uzzano used to say that he who summoned a parliament—i.e. who would bring about any decided change in the existing state of things—would dig his own grave.[64] Many respected burghers shared his views. It was natural however that an event should at last occur to cause open discontent in the city, and a more hostile position of the parties. The conquest of Pisa had not satisfied Florentine ambition; Lucca, with which Florence had so often quarrelled, remained a thorn in her side. When, a hundred and twenty six years after the time of which we are treating, Giorgio Vasari was employed in painting the great hall in the former palace of the Signoria with representations from the history of Florentine conquests, he was visited by the Lucchese ambassador at his work, and on his question, what he intended to portray on the remaining space, gave the bold answer, ‘The conquest of Lucca.’ This is only an insolent expression of the popular wish. In the Milanese war, Lucca, where, for nearly thirty years, a citizen, Paolo Guinigi, had ruled with almost absolute power, had taken sides for the Visconti, and thereby certainly placed Florence in some danger. Rinaldo degli Albizzi stood at the head of those who demanded that their neighbours should be chastised. But division arose in his own party; Niccolò da Uzzano, Palla Strozzi, Agnolo Pandolfini, and others, opposed him. The attitude of Cosimo de’ Medici was ambiguous. The reproach of having agreed to the plan of war in order to ruin the hopes of his rival, cleaves to him in spite of its being contradicted.[65] The war party, supported by Neri Capponi, one of the most influential burghers, and son of him who had taken Pisa, prevailed. In the Council the opponents were scarcely allowed to speak; a pretext was easily found, and the determination was taken at the end of 1429. Rinaldo degli Albizzi undertook the guidance of affairs as Commissary of the Republic, with extensive authority.

It was an undertaking as unsuccessful as it was unjust, notwithstanding the guilt of the Lucchese. The Florentines accomplished nothing from a military point of view; their great architect, Filippo Brunellesco, forfeited his fame as an engineer; the land was as cruelly as uselessly desolated; and the Duke of Milan was drawn into the war. Venice, Genoa, even Siena, took sides for or against; and after the leadership of Guinigi, by no means to the advantage of the Lucchese, had been lost by it, a peace was concluded in April, 1433, which was to restore every one his own—in what condition no one ventured to ask. The unsuccessful campaign had already caused much disturbance in Florence from the beginning, and given abundant material for evil speaking. Rinaldo degli Albizzi had returned from the camp without leave of absence: he was accused of having acted as a trader, and employed rations and booty for his villa of Montefalcone. His successor, Messer Giovanni Guicciardini, did not fare much better; the least offence he was accused of was, that he had sold the bread intended for the camp to the Lucchese.[66] Every one was in an ill-humour and at enmity when the costly and fruitless war was ended. Rinaldo could not conceal from himself the fact that his authority had suffered a dangerous blow. He thought to re-establish it more firmly by drawing the reins tighter. The one man of his party who had always dissuaded him most decidedly from this was no more: Niccolò da Uzzano had died during the war, in 1432. The void created by his death was soon visible to all.

The bitter enmity between Cosimo and Rinaldo seems first to have arisen at this time, for the two men do not appear to have been personal opponents till then. In the autumn of 1430 Cosimo had repaired to Verona on account of a sickness prevailing in Florence; at Ostiglia, on the Po, he heard of the loss suffered before Lucca. Appointed with Francesco Tornabuoni as ambassador at Venice, he had, on what grounds is unknown, declined the commission, but had gone, in March 1432, with Palla Strozzi to Ferrara, to make an agreement with Milan in the affair of Lucca, which, however, as we have said, was not carried out till a year later.[67] What had kindled such irreconcilable hatred between Rinaldo and Cosimo—who, hitherto, whatever might be their private feelings, had frequently worked together—is not known. The rival party reproached both Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo, who had for some time resided at Milan as Florentine ambassador, with having taken part in intrigues against the State, in order to prolong the war. But accusations of this kind usually rest on one-sided testimony, and it is much more likely that both the Medici quietly waited for a change at home, which public discontent, and the loss of reputation to the reigning party in consequence of the failure in war, seemed to announce. Cosimo did not deceive himself respecting the prevailing opinion against him. He kept himself aloof from the eminent men of the ruling faction, and appeared seldom in the palace; but it availed him little, for it was said he wished to lull the suspicions of the rulers, and his relations to the lower orders, which he could not, and perhaps would not, conceal, were made out a crime. The large loans which at different times he had been making to the public finances, as well as those to private citizens for whom he procured access to office by paying their arrears of taxes, had made him a popular favourite, but at the same time had increased the number of his political adversaries. It became more and more plain that things could not remain as they were. Rinaldo had tried, through Niccolò Barbadore, to persuade Niccolò da Uzzano to mediate shortly before his death, but had been repulsed. He now determined to act. He could reckon all the more on support because Cosimo, if he relied on popular favour, was suspected by the decided Guelphs from his connections with the old nobility—being a brother-in-law of the Bardi and Pannocchieschi, and through his brother Lorenzo related to the Cavalcanti and Malaspina, families of the Lunigiana; while he was united by friendship to the Buondelmonti and other nobles. Rinaldo had attempted to secure the consent of many partisans to violent measures against Cosimo and his adherents, when the election of a Signoria decidedly favourable to his plans, which entered on office with the gonfaloniere Bernardo Guadagni on September 1, 1433, seemed to offer the favourable moment. Bernardo Guadagni belonged to a distinguished family, the name of which occurs in various offices since the beginning of the thirteenth century; he was opposed to the Albizzi in the political movements of 1378, but afterwards became attached to them. Bernardo had not been eligible because he owed taxes, but Rinaldo cancelled the debt, and made him his tool.[68]

On September 7 Cosimo de’ Medici was summoned before the Signoria.[69] He had been at his villa in Mugello, from whence he was recalled to town under the pretext that his counsel was desired, and he was in fact appointed a member of a commission (pratica) for affairs of the commonwealth. As he passed the Or San Michele, Alamanno Salviati warned him that evil was intended, but he replied that he must obey the Signoria. Arrived at the palace, he was confined as a prisoner in a chamber of the upper storey called La Berberia. The principal accusation concerned treasonable machinations in the Lucchese war. That his life was aimed at is scarcely to be supposed, though certainly possible: that the prisoner feared it, is certain. The waves of party feeling ran so high, tongues were so sharp, and even the assemblies held in churches, ostensibly for purposes of Divine worship, were so openly employed for political ends, and for manœuvring against the Government, that it was not difficult by inquisitorial proceedings to justify the severest measures. The city was in the power of the opponents of the Medici; Lorenzo, his brother, who was in the country, seems to have tried in vain to bring about a rising. Niccolò da Tolentino, the general of the Republic, and a friend of Cosimo’s, rode with a squadron from Pisa to the village of Lastra, on the Arno, seven miles from the city, but hesitated to proceed farther, and declared that he appeared in support of the public peace. It was an anxious time of suspense.

The Signoria summoned the people to a parliament on the Piazza, surrounded by armed friends of the Albizzi. The result at first was favourable; but when the newly-appointed Balia had to decide on Cosimo’s fate, the differences of opinion showed themselves. The prisoner had found means to employ his money, and had bribed the Gonfaloniere, among others, with 1,000 gold florins. He has himself remarked that the people did not understand their own advantages; if they had wished for 10,000 gold florins, he would have paid the sum to save himself from the danger. There was no lack of representations of many kinds, even from foreign countries. The end was, that all the Medici, with the exception of Vieri’s descendants, were excluded from office. Cosimo was banished on September 29 to Padua for ten years, his brother for five years to Venice, and others of the family to Naples, Rimini, Ancona, and other towns. On the evening of October 3, as Ormanno degli Albizzi held the Piazza, guarded with his people, and an attack upon Cosimo was feared if the latter left his prison in the palace, the Gonfaloniere caused him, after the penalty had been announced to him, to be brought into his own lodgings under a safe-guard. Here he partook of some supper, left the city by the Porta San Gallo, and rode through Pistoja to the village of Cutigliano, on the road leading over the Apennines to Modena, where he arrived on October 4, the day of St. Francis d’Assisi. ‘On the 11th,’ so he relates, ‘I reached Venice, where many nobles with Lorenzo came to meet me, and I was not received like an exile, but as an ambassador. On the following day I visited the Signoria, to thank them for their influential mediation in my favour. The Signoria received me with kindness and honour, expressed regret at what had happened to me, offered residence and money supplies to whatever extent I wished. Many nobles came to visit me. On the 13th I repaired to Padua, as I had been enjoined, accompanied by Messer Jacopo Donato, who placed his beautiful house, provided with everything, at my disposal.’

While Cosimo de’ Medici thus resided, partly in Padua and partly in Venice, where he was allowed to go, honoured and loved for his well-calculated liberality, in personal connection with some of his friends and in correspondence with others, affairs in Florence rapidly approached another crisis. Other banishments had followed: that of the brothers Pucci, the eldest of whom, Puccio, was one of the most eager adherents of Cosimo, and one who had circulated the gold florins of his patron, when in prison, most skilfully; and Agnolo Acciaiuoli, whose correspondence with the exiles had been discovered. The fortune of war, already unfavourable to the Albizzi, now entirely forsook them. When new quarrels broke out in the Romagna between the Florentines and the Duke of Milan, the former were defeated. The excitement in the city increased to an alarming degree. Rinaldo soon perceived that he was no longer master of the situation. When, towards the end of August 1434, came the election of the Signoria, who were to take office on September 1, Rinaldo perceived that he must use force if he would prevent his enemy’s return. When neither the attempt to force new elections nor the endeavours to attract the old nobility succeeded, and the new Signoria expressed itself without reserve in favour of the Medici, while representations on the other side were useless, the Albizzi began to arm their followers, and to draw a number of discharged warriors to their service, in the hope of having the majority of the city with them, and dictating the law to the highest magistrate. But they calculated wrongly; even the heads of their own party, like Palla Strozzi and Giovanni Guicciardini, did not all flock to them. The city remained divided.

At the news of the warlike preparations which threatened them, and relying upon the support of the majority of the people, the Signoria determined to be beforehand with their opponents. On September 26, they caused the Piazza to be lined with armed men, and invited Rinaldo and some of his most eminent friends to appear before them; when, however, instead of obeying, the latter came to Sant’Apollinare, and advanced to the Piazza, with more than 600 men, the gates of the palace were hastily closed. Had the assailants proceeded vigorously, their cause would have prevailed—at least for the moment; but instead of advancing, they condescended to bargain, and then they were lost. While Ridolfo Peruzzi, one of the leaders of the party, was parleying in the palace with the Signori, who did not spare fair words, Rinaldo allowed himself to be persuaded to repair to the convent Sta. Maria Novella, to Pope Eugene IV., who, having fled before the insurrectionary Romanists, had reached Florence not long before, and now wished to play the peace-maker. As the adherents and people of Albizzi in vain awaited their leader, whom the Pope delayed with long speeches, the crowd dispersed, some going here, some there. The Signori gathered courage as they saw the crowd of opponents diminish, and ordered the alarm to be rung. Armed burghers hastened from all sides, and country people flocked into the city.[70] Messer Bartolommeo Orlandini caused the entrances to the Piazza to be guarded: Papi di Medici came at the head of the peasants. The Signori appeared on the balcony of the palace, and summoned the people to a parley. About three hundred and fifty voices gave the Signoria full power to appoint a Balia, after the usual manner, to proceed to urgent measures. With the Pope it was easy to come to an agreement by means of his confidant, Giovanni Vitelleschi, then Bishop of Recanati, the same whom Rinaldo had withheld from advancing. The revolution had succeeded without bloodshed. The speedily chosen extraordinary commission, more numerous than any before, conjointly with the colleges, recalled with one voice, Cosimo and his companions from banishment, into which they sent Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and with him more than seventy of his most distinguished partizans. ‘Oh, Pope Eugenius,’ said the knight to him, who now sought to console him with words, as he had before put him off with words, ‘I am not surprised at the destiny which befalls me, but I blame myself for having trusted to the promises of one who could not help himself; for he who is powerless in his own affairs cannot help others.’ Rinaldo degli Albizzi never saw his home again.

Cosimo de’ Medici had set out from Venice, September 26, accompanied by his brother, on the news of the first favourable events in Florence. On October 1 they learned the victory of their party; on the 5th they reached the territory of the Republic—on the same date, and at the same spot in the Pistojan mountains, where they had quitted it. ‘I have noted this,’ he observes in his ‘Ricordi’ above mentioned, ‘because at our expulsion several good and devoted persons said not a year would pass before we should again be in Florence. On the way several burghers met us, and in Pistoja the whole population flocked out of the gates to see us so armed. We did not enter the city. On the 6th we dined at our villa at Careggi, where a number of people had assembled. The Signori informed us that we should not enter Florence till they had sent us word. This happened after sunset, and we set out with a numerous escort. As it was expected that we would repair to our house, the whole street was filled with men and women. Lorenzo and I, accompanied by a servant, rode, however, along the wall, and so we passed the Santissima Annunziata and the back of the cathedral, the palace of the Podestà and that of the executors, to the palace of the Signoria, almost without being observed, for every one was in the Via Larga and at our house. The Signori had arranged it so in order to avoid excitement. They received us kindly, and I thanked them as was fitting, and at their wish we remained with them. We heard that, before our arrival, Messer Rinaldo and Ormanno his son, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and several other citizens, had been banished. The city was quiet, but, nevertheless, for security, the square and palace were guarded by a number of armed men.’

Florence had now a master. On January 1, 1435, Cosimo de’ Medici entered upon office as Gonfaloniere.

In an early work, unfortunately incomplete, and unknown till a few years ago, which relates the history of Florence from the return of Cosimo de’ Medici to the League of Cambray, Francesco Guicciardini[71] thus condenses his views on the government of the Albizzi: ‘After various disorders, a firm order of government was at last introduced by Parliament in 1393,[72] when Maso degli Albizzi held the office of Gonfaloniere. He, in order to avenge his uncle Piero, expelled almost all the Alberti, and the government remained in the hands of clever and sensible men, who conducted it in great harmony and safety till towards the year 1420. One cannot be astonished at this, for the people were so tired of the preceding disturbances that, when an orderly state of things began, every one adapted himself gladly to it. At this time it was plainly shown how great the power of our city is when unity prevails in her. For twelve years she maintained the war against Gian Galeazzo with infinite expense, and with Italian or foreign armies, for they often summoned a duke of Bavaria, a count of Armagnac, or a King Rupert over the Alps, to their aid. Scarcely was this war at an end, and, as was thought, the city exhausted and without means for some time, when she began the undertaking against Pisa which cost heavy sums in buying as well as in the siege. Then followed the war with King Ladislaus, in which she not only defended herself bravely, but also gained Cortona, though certainly at a heavy price. In short, the city attained such important success, preserved her freedom under the guidance of capable and honest men, warded off powerful enemies and enlarged her territory so considerably, that it was rightly said to be the wisest, most glorious, and successful government which Florence had ever had. The years from 1420 to 1434 were occupied with the war against Duke Filippo Maria, and the division of the city into two parties. At the head of one stood Niccolò da Uzzano, a man respected by all as wise and a lover of freedom; at the head of the other, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, and then his son Cosimo. Disunion and various excitements were introduced by the year 1433, after Niccolò had departed this life—first, Cosimo’s exile, then his return and the fall of his opponents; and as both changes, that of 1433 as well as of 1434, were brought about by the Signoria which entered on office on September 1 (it was usually elected on the day of the decapitation of St. John, August 29), it was decreed that the drawing of the lots should no longer take place on this day, but on the preceding, as has happened since, with the exception of a few years at the time of Fra Girolamo Savonarola.’

When the government of the Albizzi came to an end, the domain of the Republic had, with the exception of some smaller territories and villages in the mountainous regions of the Casentino and the valley of the Tiber, attained pretty nearly the same extent which she preserved up to the union of the Sienese State with that of Florence, and the consequent formation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The enlargement of this territory had proceeded of course gradually, but constantly. Dante Alighieri says once it would have been far better for Florence had the inhabitants of Campi, Figline, and Certaldo remained her neighbours, instead of becoming her fellow-citizens, and corrupting the pure Latin blood of her old families. Two centuries after the writer of the ‘Divina Commedia,’ the most famous statesman of modern Italy expressed pretty nearly the same opinions. ‘Venice and Florence’—such are Niccolò Machiavelli’s words in his reflections on the first ten books of Titus Livius—‘were far weaker when the first had attained the supremacy over Lombardy the latter over Tuscany, than when Venice was content with the sea and Florence with six miles of territory.’ The increase of subjects by the absorption of other communities is certainly of small advantage: when it once exceeds due measure it is ruinous. While it cannot contribute to the strength of warlike States, it has a most hurtful influence on unwarlike ones, of which the Italian republics give evidence: an opinion which would sound paradoxical if we did not consider that he who expressed it had before his eyes the spectacle of a State, without unity in itself, consisting of the most different elements, united only by an outward bond, whose laws, founded on systematic oppression of the nobles, appeared to him as the reason of its evident helplessness in the second half of the fourteenth century.

With the aid of many hundreds of documents in the Tuscan archives[73] we can closely follow the history of the growth of the Florentine territory, as it increased in all directions above the valley of the Arno, often with difficulty and with the most violent struggles, beyond Prato, Pistoja, on the shore of the Mediterranean towards Leghorn, through the Elsa and Chiana valley, where the conflicts took place with Siena, beyond Arezzo; finally, by way of Cortona, to the upper valley of the Tiber, and towards the Umbrian frontier, as along the Apennines to that of Romagna, including, on the other side, Volterra and the long-contested Pisa. The forms under which the villages and territories were annexed were very various. First of these, was the submission (submissio), a result generally of war, but which sometimes was brought about by compacts with other commonwealths and rulers, and at times occurred spontaneously. The submitting commune assembled in such case a parliament to appoint a syndicus, who repaired to Florence to settle affairs with the Signoria, after which the Chapter was consulted, and a commissary of the Republic was sent to the place in question to receive homage, and complete the so-called act of taking bodily possession. These things were very simple in small communes. They expressed to the Signoria by their syndics and procurators the hope that they might be well governed by them, and live in peace; promised faith and obedience—appointing a fine in case of a breach of this promise; received a podestà and judge from Florence; retained free choice of their presidents from their own citizens; stipulated conditions in respect to markets, customs, weights and measures, etc., as well as observance of their own statutes, such as even the smallest communes possessed. For if, with the decline of the imperial power towards the time of the Swabian emperors, the legal power once pertaining to the empire might be considered as having passed actually to princes and commonwealths, the case now occurred that princes and larger towns claimed the former rights of the empire over little towns, which defended themselves as far as they could by reservations. In such cases the statute of the chief town represented towards the subject communes the common law, to which there was an appeal from the separate municipal statutes where appeal to the Roman law was not stipulated. After the subjection of Pisa, the Pisan statutes remained valid for all the dependencies of this town; but in Florence such dependencies had always a hearing if they appealed to the Florentine statute law. But where there was a special fortress in the stipulating place (Rocca, Cassero), the garrisoning of it was decided by the ruling commune.

The different conditions are as different as the nature of the community was varied. Larger cities naturally made their importance felt. A whole series of treaties were concluded with Pistoja, beginning with the peace made after the death of Castruccio Castracane on May 11, 1329, at the time of the confusion caused by Louis the Bavarian’s Roman expedition. In the summer of 1331 the Florentine Signoria received full powers for a year for ‘the security of freedom’ and the government of city and territory. These temporary powers were repeatedly prolonged: commissions of Florentine citizens were appointed for the revision of statutes; the powers of the sovereign Signoria, and those of the magistrates of the subject town, were carefully limited in such a way that the actual decision in local government remained to the latter, which limited the supreme government. Volterra, which acknowledged the supremacy of the Duke of Athens, but had asserted its own independence after his fall, preserved it nominally up to the end of the fourteenth century; but the Republic of Florence had attained to such extensive rights that scarcely more independence remained to the commune than to subject States, especially after a rebellion excited by the introduction of the Cadastre had ended to the disadvantage of the people of Volterra. As can easily be understood, quite peculiar circumstances followed, when places were obtained through agreement with foreign powers. By the repeated interference of the Neapolitan Angevin princes in Tuscan affairs, and the increasing military weakness of the communes, this occurred only too frequently. Prato, in the midst of the wars of the Ghibellines and Guelphs, in the times of the emperors of the houses of Bavaria and Luxembourg, powerless to protect itself, had acknowledged King Robert of Naples as its Signore in 1313, and remained under the rule of Neapolitan viceroys till Robert’s granddaughter Johanna gave up the town to the Republic of Florence, in the year 1350, for the sum of 13,500 gold florins, which a citizen of Florence, Francesco Rinuccini, advanced without interest. Florence thus succeeded to the king’s rights, and appointed the superior officers, while the town retained her own municipal government. It had happened most strangely of all with Arezzo. Unable to assert herself against the superior powers of the Guelphs, she had acknowledged the supremacy of Florence in 1337, and while retaining her own territories, statutes, and privileges, received only the higher magistrates, Podestà and Capitano, from Florence, to whom she promised fidelity and assistance in peace and war. The oppressions, and especially the building of fortresses, by which the ruling community here, as elsewhere, sought to secure itself, went so far, that when, after the fall of the Duke of Athens, the majority of the larger towns revolted from Florence, Arezzo also regained her independence, which she preserved till 1380, when she fell into the power of Duke Charles of Durazzo, in his expedition against Queen Johanna. Four years later the town was taken by the French army under Duke Louis of Anjou, marching to the assistance of the queen; and the commander, Enguerraud de Coney, sold it four years afterwards to the Florentines for 50,000 gold florins.

But there were other political connections beside that of subjection. The Accomandigia, or assumption of a protectorate, was an act, more or less solemn, by which a possession, either of the Church or the commune, was recommended to protection, that might extend to the person of the possessor, who was then called Raccomandato. It was a very old connection, which united Florence with other communes, as for instance with Siena. As in the earliest times of the commonwealth, the distinguished family of the Buondelmonti recommended their castle, Montebuoni, to the Florentine bishop for protection, so did numerous and powerful lords of the commune recommend themselves afterwards. A kind of homage was always combined with the Accomandigia; it usually consisted of a pallium or banner of brocade or gold and silver cloth, presented on St. John’s day. Those recommended for protection promised to be friendly to the commune, to assist it at its summons in its feuds, to share friendship and enmity with it, to grant free passage through their territories, not to hinder the transport of provisions and merchandise, and to grant refuge to none who had been banished by the commune. The commune, on the other hand, allowed the Raccomandati law of arms on their own territory, promised defence or compensation for loss, and empowered the planting of the Florentine banner on their castles. The second half of the fourteenth century and the first of the following were exceedingly rich in such Accomandigie, because the smaller landowners felt themselves more and more weakened and threatened in their independence, in consequence of the great diminution of the number of independent communes, and thereby the accession of power to those still remaining, as Florence, Siena, and Lucca. Florence had begun by drawing the nobles in the nearer vicinity of the Arno valley into such a connection with herself, and also to absorb the smaller communes. Then the Accomandigia expanded more and more, till all the great noble families, so to say, for the most part originally free, imperial and Ghibellines, had lost their independence in the higher sense of the word. At last the turn came to others, even distant, where the relation of protection was essentially altered, as with the Grimaldi of Monaco, the Genoese Campofregoso, the Appiani of Piombino, the Marchese of Monte Sta. Maria, the numerous Malaspine, who resided at their imperial fiefs in the Lunigiana, but naturally looked more to Florence and Genoa, to the Visconti and the Esti, than to the empire. Even Roman barons entered into connections of this kind. In 1395 the Colonna of Palestrina placed themselves, with all their castles, for five years under the protection of the Republic, whose service they entered. The Orsini of Savona whose relations, the Counts of Pitigliano, stood in the same relation to Siena, had preceded them. More important for Florence was the protection of many dynasties of Romagna and Umbria, of which we shall speak farther on. With regard to the landowners settled in Tuscany, if we except a few independent imperial vassals, who remained so up to the French time, the Counts Bardi of Vernio and Barbolani of Montanto, as well as the Macchesi of Monte Sta. Maria (Bourbon de Monte), whom we have just mentioned, the Accomandigia led to their subjection. In the States of the Church the Papal sovereignty prevailed, as might be expected.