Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Lorenzo de' Medici - Alfred von Reumont - Страница 11

Table of Contents

The time at which Cosimo de’ Medici attained to a position in his native town, such as a citizen had never yet held, promised neither rest nor peace to Italy.

We have already mentioned how, in the decisive crisis when Rinaldo degli Albizzi sought to carry the citizens along with him, and to destroy the Medicean party with one blow, Pope Eugenius IV. was a fugitive in the same convent of Sta. Maria Novella which his predecessor had inhabited on his way from Constance to Rome. Martin V. had died February 20, 1431, at the moment when the war of the Florentines with the Duke of Milan had brought the armies of the latter over the Apennines. His successor, descended from a Venetian family, did not understand how to preserve the quiet which Martin’s skill and policy had established. While he fell into disputes with the relations of the latter, the Colonna—disputes which threatened the city of Rome itself—the eventful complication began with the council opened at Basle on July 23rd of the same year, which was to complete the reform of the Church, which the Council of Constance had not thoroughly effected. Eugenius had united with Florence and Venice in order to overthrow the Colonna family, but had thereby embittered Filippo Maria Visconti, who now, when the violent strife raged between Pope and Council, ranged himself on the side of the latter, and in May, 1434, even assisted to excite a revolt in Rome, which forced the Pope to fly. In the autumn of the same year, although the Pope saw the city of Rome return to its allegiance, he still lingered on in Florence, at strife with the Council, which was pursuing the policy of striving to diminish the authority of the head of the Church, while the surrounding country was desolated by the Duke’s mercenaries, till the Pope at last succeeded in coming to terms with his oppressor. Meanwhile, the intrigues began at Naples which for a century were the curse of that country, and finally of all Italy. The last of the Anjous, Ladislaus’ sister, Johanna II., died on February 2, 1435, and left to the country, in consequence of her fickleness, a contest for the throne between Renè, Count of Provence, and Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, whom she had successively adopted as sons, while the Pope showed an inclination to claim Naples as a relapsed fief of the Church. Alfonso, defeated and taken prisoner at the Ponza Islands by the Genoese, allied with Renè, was restored to liberty by Filippo Maria Visconti, then ruler over the Sigurian harbour, but this generosity was regarded as detrimental by the victors, and excited an insurrection in Genoa against the supremacy of Milan, which found support from the republic of Venice, the ancient enemy of the Visconti. Hereupon the Duke, not to have to cope with too many enemies at once, entered into the alliance with the Pope which has just been mentioned. As far as the resistance to Filippo Maria was concerned, the Venetians were hand-in-hand with the Florentines; as soon as Cosimo had returned, the Senate congratulated the Signoria. But Florentine plans of winning still independent parts of Tuscany, and the Venetian intentions on Romagna, upon which, for the sake of the safety of their own frontiers, the eyes of the Florentines were always directed, could not but endanger the harmony of the two republics. The whole of the remaining lifetime of Cosimo de’ Medici was occupied with the endeavour to support and secure his position at home, and his connection with foreign countries, each reciprocally aiding the other.

He found favourable soil in Florence. His partizans had prepared the way for him. All the heads of the opposite faction were exiled, and most of them ruined. Many were dead. It was easy for him to boast in his memoirs, that during his administration not one individual was banished or injured in any way. It was not lenity on his part, for he had no more horror of violence or bloodshed than the majority of his contemporaries where political ends were at stake, but it was prudent calculation. He knew that he could allow others to give the laws an interpretation which secured him, without being himself taxed with using hard measures. He did this by the execution of penal laws, and by making changes in the constitution. He first put forward Puccio Pucci, who showed such zeal, and attained such authority, that the Hotspurs of the party were named after him Puccini. When it was an object to further the aims of this party even by the most sanguinary measures, or to raise money, Puccio, otherwise an able man, and proved to be such in office and in embassies, knew no scruples. Cosimo employed the services of Luca Pitti even more frequently than those of Pucci. The family came originally from Semifonte, in the Elsa valley, a castle the conquest and destruction of which, as has been mentioned, plays a part in the oldest annals of the development of the commonwealth. Maffeo Pitti sat as early as 1283 in the magistracy of the Priors. Buonaccorso was a man much employed about the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. His activity partakes somewhat of the character of an adventurer, and he seems to have been equally versed in political and mercantile affairs. No one was so successful as he in obtaining foreign assistance against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and it was chiefly he who, on the part of Florence, persuaded Rupert of the Palatinate to undertake the unsuccessful march into Lombardy, particulars of which are given in his instructive memoirs.[74]

Buonaccorso’s son was the principal tool of Cosimo. ‘Luca Pitti,’ says Francesco Guicciardini, ‘was not a man of remarkable capabilities, but vivacious, liberal, courageous; one who ventured more for his friends than any one in Florence; a man who might safely be allowed to carry out everything, while he had not head enough to become formidable.’

Cosimo had friends of another kind than these two. At their head stood Neri Capponi. His father Gino, descended from a family which appears in the second half of the thirteenth century among the most distinguished, had won a good name for himself by the capture of Pisa in 1406, and by the judicious and reasonable administration of the severely tried city, while his history of the popular rebellion of 1378 is one of the most important aids to a right understanding of this important occurrence.[75] Neri belonged to those who before 1433 formed a kind of moderate party, but after the death of Niccolò da Uzzano he inclined more and more to Cosimo, and if unable to prevent his exile, he aided essentially in his recall. He was for the Medicean party what Niccolò had been for the Albizzi, the mediating element, but he never attained to the position which the latter held, because Cosimo was of a different nature from Maso, and still more unlike Rinaldo, and because in many cases Neri rather complemented him than represented a different principle. Neri Capponi certainly aided essentially in restraining the Medicean party government within certain limits; yet the measures which most confirmed their government were effected under his eyes. Cosimo, who required him because he enjoyed general confidence, and was skilled alike in peace and war, always found means to counteract his influence when it was inconvenient to himself. ‘Neri,’ says Francesco Guicciardini,[76] ‘well knew the means employed against him. As he saw, however, that Cosimo’s position was impregnable, and that to break with him would be to run his own head against the wall, he pretended, intelligent as he was, not to observe anything that passed, and waited patiently for time and opportunity.’ But it is evident that this waiting, which we cannot but attribute to weakness of character or selfish indirect motives, established Cosimo’s position more and more firmly; Neri’s influence did not, however, increase, notwithstanding the great services accomplished by him, which will be more fully dwelt upon as we proceed.

Agnolo Acciaiuoli held a position scarcely inferior to that of Neri Capponi. In the preceding century, his family, which rose with the majority of the plebeian races, attained to unusual splendour. When we descend the high road, leading southward from Florence to Siena, we perceive, three miles from the town, on an isolated height on the banks of the river Ema, the Certosa of Montacuto, convent and fortress at the same time, with towers and pinnacles, with grand colonnades and monuments of sculpture and painting in the splendid church. If we wander farther, quitting the high road to descend to the right into the valley of the Pesa, a tributary of the Arno, we see before us, on a low hill rising from the midst of a green valley, an imposing building, rather resembling a castle than a villa, the extensive mass of building surmounted by a tower resembling the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio—Monte Gufoni, once a splendid country seat, now, after the extinction of the family of its possessors, deprived of its glory, and inhabited by poor peasants. Niccolò Acciaiuoli built convent and villa in the first half of the fourteenth century, when he wished to leave his native country monuments of his affection and piety. Like so many of his fellow-countrymen, having been originally attracted to the south by commercial business, he had become, by talent and good fortune, all-powerful at the court of the Neapolitan Anjous, who made him grand seneschal of the kingdom, and afterwards a mighty ruler in Greece, where his relations became dukes of Athens and Corinth. Agnolo’s grandfather Donato, in former years governor in Corinth for his brother the seneschal, was one of those who put an end to the ochlocracy of the Ciompi, but his attempts to moderate the supremacy of the Albizzi resulted in the exile in which he died. Agnolo had inherited his spirit. He wished, indeed, for the supremacy of a party in Florence, since Florence could no longer exist without the preponderance of one or the other, but he resisted the entire subjection to one family or one man. This opinion, which was held by a number of influential citizens, explains the frequent internal disturbances, the history of which, and consequently that of the whole State, is but half understood, if we do not take into consideration the great number of eminent men who exercised a secondary but yet important influence on the conduct of affairs, as was the case especially under Cosimo de’ Medici, not to speak of later times, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico and during the last years of the Republic. Agnolo Acciaiuoli had during Cosimo’s exile engaged in transactions which would have cost him his head if his brother-in-law had not, in the moment of danger, burned the incriminating correspondence, which did actually bring him to the torture, and to banishment to Cephalonia. That he, an active and capable man, afterwards attained to influence and dignity is easily explained: embassies and honours were heaped upon him, and he remained among the foremost of the Medicean party, although there were not wanting misunderstandings between him and Cosimo, which were revealed after the death of the latter.[77]

Together with Agnolo Acciaiuoli rose into eminence his cousin Donato, whose great-uncle, the celebrated and active cardinal-vice-chancellor, also bore the name of Agnolo, and was the first Duke of Athens. At Cosimo’s return, Donato was only six years old, but under the guidance of a sensible mother, Palla Strozzi’s daughter, he developed rapidly, and we shall meet him repeatedly in later years engaged in important matters. Among those who held to the Medici there was no one who enjoyed the general confidence in a higher degree, while he, although State affairs claimed so much of his time, took a lively interest in scientific pursuits.[78]

If Diotisalvi Neroni, who attained in Cosimo’s later years the reputation of great acuteness and skill, was involved in the misunderstandings to which we have alluded, other causes weighed in the opposite scale; for as the father of this man essentially contributed in 1434 to the prevention of Rinaldo degli Albizzi’s elevation to power, so did he, as long as Cosimo lived, act as his clever and willing tool. To the most estimable partisans of the Medici belonged Bernardo Giugni, who was constantly employed on diplomatic embassies, and Agnolo Pandolfini, with his sons Carlo and Giannozzo. Whoever enters the Church of the Benedictines (Badia), which spite of repeated alterations even now recalls the old times of the Republic, may see the beautiful monuments, which were erected to Giugni and Giannozzo Pandolfini, whom the commonwealth honoured with a funeral at the public expense. The Giugni belonged to the oldest Guelph plebeian families, and took part in the administration at its beginning. The Pandolfini stood with them in the ranks of the Guelphs on the bloody field of Montaperti, and streets of the city are yet named after both families, which still flourish; while a palace built long after the time of which we are now treating, which, if not one of the largest, is one of the most beautiful in Florence—a work of Raffael Sanzio’s—keeps alive the remembrance of the Pandolfini even in the history of art. Alamanno Salviati would have been recommended by the talents of his father Jacopo, one of the most eminent citizens of the oligarchical time, even if he had not made himself remarkable by his talents and activity. No one could anticipate in those days that, a generation later, his relations would be involved in the most sanguinary catastrophe of the Medicean history. The Guicciardini,[79] a family from the Pesa valley, which had risen by trade, had stood on the side of the Albizzi. Of Luigi’s two sons, who in 1378 filled the office of Gonfalonier when the popular tumult broke out, in which he displayed no great energy, only one, Giovanni, remained true to his colours, and though he did not go into banishment at the return of his old enemy Cosimo, he was still excluded with his descendants from all share in the administration. The other son, Piero, went over to the Medicean party, was one of the most active in bringing about Cosimo’s recall, and laid the foundation of the subsequent high position of his family, among whom his great-grandson gained immortal fame as statesman and historian, but as citizen of a free city he has left a name not free from censure.

It is evident that Cosimo de’ Medici, powerful as he was, had no freedom of action. He had to contend with different elements, fulfil many obligations, and humour much sensitiveness. He understood it. Scarcely any one has ever guided a great party as he did, and placed himself so little in the foreground. His means were of different kinds. When he returned he found the political power in the hands of a Balia appointed by the Signoria of September, 1434, which had already freed the city from his most decided or most powerful opponents. He only needed to let them continue their work, and so their extraordinary power was prolonged from one period of five years to another. The ballot-boxes were of course only filled with the names of partisans or unsuspected persons, for all in any way disaffected to the faction were excluded, or, according to the expression then in vogue,’messi a sedere.’ But even this did not satisfy the party leaders, and instead of allowing the magistrates to be drawn by lot, they caused them to be appointed, at their own pleasure, by the Accoppiatori from among the eligible. While all offices thus fell to his confidants, Cosimo meditated another and most peculiar means of excluding those of whom he was not perfectly certain from any share whatever in the administration. He annulled the statutes which disqualified the old nobility and the so-called ‘grandi’ from holding office, and declared these families to have equal rights with the citizens. It was regarded as an important concession, as Cosimo was connected with many of them, but in practice the matter proved otherwise. The names of the families in question were not found in the ballot-box, and, besides, they lost the offices to which they had hitherto been admissible, such as legations, ministries of war, &c. It was said that the pride of the old families was a thorn in the eyes of the upstart, who had never trusted them.

That Cosimo promoted a number of people of the lower order evinces equally his intention of weakening the opposition, as the cynical answer which he gave to those who remonstrated with him on the subject expresses his unmitigated selfishness. For when it was observed to him that he did not do well to ruin so many noble families, and that the town must suffer by the loss of many of her most excellent citizens, he answered that a few ells of fine scarlet cloth would fill Florence again with distinguished citizens. A ruined city, he said, was better than a lost one, and one could not rule a state with Paternosters. So he showed himself unmerciful to all who had once opposed him, and while such as left the places of exile (confine) assigned to them, were declared rebels and lost their property, those who observed the decree of banishment had their exile prolonged when the time of penalty had expired. Thus it was with Palla Strozzi. He had shown himself weak at the decisive moment of 1434, instead of supporting Rinaldo degli Albizzi. It did not save him; he was banished to Padua for ten years. When the ten years were over, he, who had only lived for science, kept himself within the prescribed limits, and never allowed any one to speak ill of Florence before him, hoped to see home again, but Cosimo condemned him to ten more years. It was very painful to him, for he was seventy-two years old, and loved Florence. He lived eighteen years longer in banishment, and his descendants never returned to his native city. His relations experienced the like hard fate with him. His daughter-in-law, Alessandra de Bardi[80] was, as a girl and young wife, a model of modesty and beauty: that did not save her. She saw her own father as well as her father-in-law go into exile, and die in exile. She saw her husband, Lorenzo, who could no longer bear the scorn, ill-treatment, and oppression to which the families of the exiles were exposed, and who went to Gubbio to earn his bread by teaching, die beneath a murderer’s hand. She saw one portion of her property vanish after the other, and her life pass away joylessly in constant change of residence, and constant anxiety for her children. Numerous families, once affluent, were reduced to misery; fathers and husbands wandered about in foreign lands, and their property was confiscated. Noble ladies begged alms. The poverty to which many were reduced by merciless party spirit, even more than by losses in war and bad harvests, incited the saintly Archbishop Antoninus in 1441 to found the charitable institution which still exists under the name of Buonuomini di San Martino, and which, managed by a society of trustworthy citizens, has for its object to soften misery, especially when undeserved and borne in silence.

The sad fate of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and his nearest relations is the most striking example of the ruin impending over great families in those days from party spirit. On October 2, 1434, the Balia appointed in the Medicean interest gave orders to the Captain of the People, Messer Jacopo de’ Lavagnoli of Verona, to proceed against the originators of the tumult which had taken place near Sant’Apollinaris. The sentence passed against Messer Rinaldo and his eldest son, Ormanno, was eight years of banishment, during which the exiles should remain at least a hundred miles distant from the Florentine frontiers, and present themselves every three days to the magistrates of their chosen place of residence, which must be certified by a notary’s act. The bail for Rinaldo amounted to 4,000, and for Ormanno to 2,000 gold florins; but all their moveable and immoveable property, including that of the sons and wives, was made security for their proceedings. Of course the exiles were made incapable of all offices. Father and son presented themselves, according to order, in the towns of the district of Ancona, whither they first repaired, Matelica, Montalboddo, Yesi. On November 3, Naples was assigned to the former as his place of exile, Gaeta to the latter, and the banishment prolonged by ten years. Before Rinaldo could reach Naples his destination was changed to Frani, on the Apulian coast, with the command to repair thither in the space of a month. Thus the homeless ones were hunted like wild animals. They of course understood that even the most conscientious observation of the commands given them would never re-open the gates of Florence to them. That they then, driven by rage and despair, disregarded these commands, left the places indicated (it was called ‘rompere il confine’), and sought to return by force of arms, is to be explained, if not to be justified. In the law that had fallen on them they recognised only violence, which they on their side determined to oppose by violence. When Filippo Maria Visconti undertook his last campaign against Florence, the Albizzi and several of their fellow-sufferers were in the Milanese army. The day of Anghiari destroyed their hopes. Eight days after the battle, on July 6, 1440, the penalty was pronounced against the rebels, for that they were now. Rinaldo and Ormanno degli Albizzi, Messer Niccolò and Baldassarre Gianfigliazzi, Ludovico de’ Rossi, Lamberto de’ Lamberteschi, Bernardo Barbadori, and Stefano Peruzzi, all men of distinguished families, were declared to have forfeited their honour, and their portraits were painted on the wall of the Palazzo del Podestà, with insulting verses beneath, according to custom. Andrea del Castagno, an artist of reputation, painted the pictures, as Stefano, named Giottino, did before, and Andrea del Sarto after him. The official poet and jester of the Signoria (the Araldo or herald), Antonio di Meglio, to whose office it belonged to recite something to the Signori during their meals, and to compose eulogies or satires on public occasions, wrote the doggerel verses which indicated the character and crime of each. The painter obtained from his pictures the name of Andrea degli Impiccati.[81]

Rinaldo degli Albizzi resigned himself to his fate. Francesco Filelfo, the humanist, whom hatred against Cosimo de’ Medici united to him, informed him from Milan that nothing was to be hoped for from thence. It was probably shortly after the lost battle that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in fulfilment of an old vow. Returned from thence, he stayed at Ancona, where he died, an aged man, on February 2, 1442, on the marriage-day of a daughter.[82] Seven years later, Ormanno, then more than fifty years old, turned to Cosimo’s younger son, Giovanni, to beg him to obtain a favour in family affairs.[83] The letters from Mantua, where the Albizzi resided with the Margrave Ludovico Gonzaga, have the tone of old friendly connections; but how painfully clear is the fallen condition of the once rich and powerful family! How terrible it was we perceive from the narrative of a simple and trustworthy man, a friend and client of the Medici.[84] Messer Rinaldo’s younger son Maso, married to a Gianfigliazzi, saw himself involved with his family in his father’s misfortunes. He had a son, also called Rinaldo, who, in order to earn a livelihood, entered the service of Antonio Cicinello, the influential councillor of King Alfonso of Aragon, and attained his confidence and affection in a high degree. When Rinaldo was going to Ancona one day to visit his mother, who lived there, he was plundered on the way, and appeared in the doublet of a wretch whom he had seen hanging by the wayside on a tree. The young man died not long after, and Cicinello sent the unhappy woman, who had lost her husband also, and lived in extreme want at Ancona, a sum which he had been able to obtain from the property of the deceased, and which was part of what he had helped her son to gain. When the widow returned to Florence some time afterwards, Cicinello repaired thither on affairs of state, and took with him the remainder of the money. We will let our authority speak for himself: ‘One morning Messer Antonio repaired to Sta. Trinità, and sent to the widow of Maso degli Albizzi (whose parental house joined the church) with the request to come to him, as he wished to speak with her. But the poor woman lay ill in bed, so that Messer Antonio sent her the thirty ducats which he had by him, with the words, he had once procured this money for her son, and now wished that it should be of use to her. When the poor woman received the money, and remembered the kindness which the sender of this money had shown her son, she said, weeping, ‘It is now nearly thirty-five years since my husband was banished from Florence. I have wandered miserably about many parts of Italy, and during my husband’s lifetime, as afterwards when I lost him, no one regarded me or helped me in my distress, but I have been forsaken by all. Messer Antonio has shown greater sympathy with me and my son than has been evinced all this time by the whole world, in the midst of all the strokes of fate.’

Cosimo de’ Medici did not content himself with rendering his old opponents harmless; he took care also that none of his adherents should become too powerful and dangerous to him. Therefore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, he retained the Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand, in order to be able to promote or oppress individuals at will. In other things the citizens enjoyed greater freedom and acted more according to their own pleasure than later, in the days of his grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he was only sure of his own position. It was just in this that his great art lay, to guide things according to his will, and yet to make his partisans believe that he shared his authority with them. It was necessary, however, that there should be one against the others, as was the case with Neri Capponi. To weaken the respect in which the latter was held when his name was in all mouths after the great victory over the Duke of Milan in 1440, Cosimo is said to have commanded the murder of the captain, Baldaccio da Anghiari, who remained in the service of the Republic, and was an intimate friend of Neri. The sanguinary deed was executed in the palace, whither the unsuspecting man had been summoned by command of the Gonfaloniere Bartolommeo Orlandini. Thus the share of Cosimo and his motives are veiled in obscurity, but the suspicion has never been removed from him.[85] The name of the Casa Annalena still recalls Baldaccio’s widow, of the family of the Malateste of Rimini, who founded here a convent for destitute women and girls, the extensive buildings and gardens of which were employed for other purposes at the dissolution of the monastic orders in 1808.

When Neri Capponi, who still acted as a counterbalance, though a very weak one, to the Medicean authority, died, November 22, 1457, at the age of sixty-nine, the prevailing party had already begun to divide. The old opponents were entirely annihilated, most of their chiefs dead and their families impoverished; the anxieties in which the long wars, first with the Visconti, then with Venice, had kept the government and the people, had been ended by the peace of 1454, which we shall mention later. Those who had held together in the face of danger, relaxed after safety had been gained. Cosimo’s supremacy was burdensome to the aristocratic partizans of the Medici. They demanded that the extraordinary powers with which he had governed since 1434 should be terminated. Cosimo consented. The Balia, renewed only two years ago, was declared extinct in the summer of 1455, and the members of the Signoria were again drawn by lot like other magistrates. Giovanni Rucellai, a deserving man, was the first who thus received the office of Gonfaloniere. The people, who hated every appearance of arbitrary power, desired a return to the old forms as much as those who had caused the changes, but the latter soon perceived that the greater freedom was more apparent than real; for when the ballot-boxes were filled with the names of such as held to Cosimo, the latter attained his ends without appearing on the stage. The revision of the registers revealed this. Then, according to the decree laid down when these were instituted, a revision ought to have been held every three years, but this had only happened in 1433. One of the restrictions put upon the extraordinary commission (Balia) of that year had been that it neither had power to change the ballot-boxes nor to abolish the registers, but at Cosimo’s return no such limits were put to the authority of his partisans, and they returned indeed to the ancient arbitrary system which the law of 1427 had been meant to do away with. Instead of a firm base of taxation, party spirit and party manœuvres prevailed. The measures resorted to had the double aim of ruining antagonists, or such as were suspected, and of gaining the lower classes. The most offensive of these measures, one which had been in contemplation during the mob-government of 1378, was the adoption of a progressive scale, which, by dividing the citizens into fourteen classes, ascended from a trifling imposition to fifty per cent of the supposed income, which was fixed by arbitration. Moreover, taxation was not limited as to time, but depended entirely on the want of means alleged by Government. The continuous wars which led the enemy at times into the interior of the country, caused a constant drain upon the revenue. One war-tax after another was proclaimed, and the results by no means corresponded always with the demand. In the summer of 1442 no less than 180,000 gold florins were paid as a reward to Francesco Sforza for his support of René of Aragon against Alfonso of Aragon—a vain expenditure, since Alfonso took besieged Naples, and established himself so firmly that all the enterprises of Anjou against him, and his son and successor Ferrante, were frustrated. The distribution of the taxes was a perpetual means for the faction to oppress those whom they disliked. Many people were entirely ruined. A number of considerable citizens had left the city and retired to villas, to escape the immoderate exactions, as the country had less to pay than Florence, but it availed them little. It was said of Cosimo de’ Medici, that instead of the dagger, the usual weapon, he employed the taxes to rid himself of his enemies. He retained the instrument, or, as Francesco Guicciardini says, the dishonesty of the taxes, in his own hands, in order to ruin those in whom he saw declared opponents, to bring down to poverty others whom he mistrusted or who were inconvenient to him, and to favour partisans. The members of the commission entrusted with laying on the taxes were either his creatures or dependent on him. Lightening the burdens of the lower classes was only the pretext, and the humiliation of the independent burghers the real aim. This aim was attained by Cosimo, his son, and his grandson. ‘It is well known,’ remarks the statesman and historian just mentioned, in his reflections on the Florentine administration, ‘how much nobility and wealth were destroyed by Cosimo and his descendants by taxation. The Medici never allowed a fixed method and legal distribution, but always reserved to themselves the power of bearing heavily upon individuals according to their pleasure. Had they only employed this weapon to protect themselves against enemies and suspicious persons, they would have been to a certain extent excusable; but as they did not succeed by other means, or by appealing to their ambition and vanity, in attaching to themselves peaceful citizens more intent on their own business than on affairs of State, they made use of the taxes to win them over, and to set themselves up as lords of all, while they forced the people to seek to divine their will even in trifles.’ The most striking example of the abuse of the power of taxation is the history of Giannozzo Manetti. After a life spent in the service of the State and of science, the veneration shown him both at home and abroad, as well as his inclination for Venice, brought on him the disfavour of Cosimo and his adherents, and he saw himself reduced to beggary by taxes which reached the incredible height of 135,000 gold florins. Abandoning house, property, and State-papers he went into voluntary exile, to drag out the few days still remaining to him, by means of first a Papal, and later a Neapolitan pension.

The shameless enrichment of many of Cosimo’s personal adherents, and the discontent evinced in the city, made it at last appear advisable to many of the ruling party to make an end of the system which had lasted since 1434. It was asserted of Puccio Pucci that he had acquired 50,000 gold florins of the public moneys by usury and dishonest administration. It was calculated that a certain Giovanni Corsini, who began with scarcely the necessary means of life, had cheated Government of 20,000 florins. Florence was rife with evil tales of dishonest upstarts, of theft at the public cost, of dirty actions and extortion.[86] With Cosimo’s silent consent (without this nothing could have been done), the Signoria at last commanded, on January 11, 1458, a revision of the registers, indicating, as far as it seemed advisable to them, the prevailing evils.[87] Scarcely was the measure decreed than many of Cosimo’s party, and precisely those who had sought to fetter him by withdrawing the former extraordinary powers, were seized with a violent terror. For they saw themselves not merely obliged to declare the increase on moveable and immoveable property, which in a quarter of a century was immense with many of them, but the progressive scale employed in the new declaration threatened them with a double weight. Only from Cosimo could they expect assistance. The same people who had attempted to weaken his authority three years before, now entreated him to resume it, and proceed to action—that is, summon a parliament, and cause extraordinary powers to be granted by it. They had already formed the plan of doing away with the ballot-boxes, in order to effect new elections more favourable to them, but Cosimo declined to do their will. It suited him that those for whom his power was too great should perceive that they not only gained nothing by the independence more apparent than real of the Government, but sacrificed their authority while his own remained undiminished. He had ready the convenient explanation that extraordinary measures were only permissible in the case of highest need and danger, that now the heavy debts contracted in the long wars would be paid, the numerous changes in property taken into account, the irregularities in the valuation of movable property done away with, and the regular payment of the interest of the national debt be re-established. As long as Alfonso of Aragon lived, who never lost sight of Tuscany, it did not seem advisable to undertake alterations which might arouse displeasure among the people. For Cosimo was never certain of this people, and in times of dearth, bad harvests, storms, contagious disease, which repeatedly occurred, or under oppressive war-taxes, the easily moved crowd was not to be trusted. It was by no means always on Cosimo’s side. His measureless riches aroused much envy and evil-speaking. If he built much, and expended large sums in particular on churches and convents, it was said, We pay for his hypocrisy, which is, moreover, full of spiritual pride, by emptying our own purses. Even the secret cells of the brethren in the cloister he fills with the balls of his coat-of-arms! His palace might bear a comparison with the Colosseum. Who would not build splendidly could he but employ other people’s money for it? It was said that the money-boxes at the city gates were emptied in the house of the Medici. When Cosimo, says a contemporary, advanced to the commune far greater sums than he took, nothing was remarked upon it. He did this certainly, but he kept an exact account of it, and it could hardly be said that the partnership between the State and the Medici was solely to the advantage of the former. One morning the doors of Cosimo’s palace were found stained with blood.[88]

Such things occurred long before the time we are now considering. Cosimo had meanwhile no wish to remain passive after his haughty partisans had received a wholesome lesson. The license to which the lower classes inclined more and more, might have risen to such a point that his own authority would be endangered. He himself did not appear, but the tool was readily found. On July 1, 1458, Luca Pitti undertook the office of Gonfalonier. Three days before, King Alfonso had died; from his son—Ferrante—who had a difficult position in Naples on account of his illegitimate birth, and who did not, like his father, command the powers of Sicily and Aragon—there was for the time nothing to fear. Neither reform of registers nor drawing the magistrates by lot were to the taste of the new Gonfalonier; and urged by his friends, but with consideration for Cosimo, who wished to avoid open violence, he sought to induce priors and colleges to proceed to new elections, and choose new magistrates. When he met with opposition in this, he determined to employ the usual violent means. On August 9 he caused the palace and square to be surrounded by mercenaries, had the neighbouring streets secured, and summoned the people by ringing the great bell. That the Gonfalonier could do this in opposition to the priors, or at least to the majority of them, is an evident sign how weak the laws were. The Parliament, however it might be composed, granted to the Senate, and 250 of the burghers proposed by the party, the extraordinary powers demanded. These now proceeded to the new elections, and appointed a commission of eight citizens to preside at all elections for the future. It is easily understood that all actual authority was now more than ever in the hands of the heads of the faction, who filled the offices at their pleasure, and when the priors of the guild were after this called priors of freedom, it was in bitter irony. All opponents of the measures, several of whom endured torture, and a number of people who were either not trusted, or of whom one or other of the new wielders of power had to complain, were banished. In the months next following, exile and exclusion from office were but too common, and if in this way justice was sometimes done, as on the dishonest tax officials in Florence, Pisa, Arezzo, yet this made but a poor show in the presence of so many deeds of violence. According to the reform of taxation, the mercantile order was to be obliged to show their account books; an agreement was then made with them, agreeably to which a fixed sum of movable capital was declared, which was not the means to find out the real amount, or to ensure the just distribution of the burdens. Luca Pitti became a great man. The Signoria granted him the dignity of knighthood, and Cosimo made him rich presents, in which others imitated him. His momentary splendour eclipsed that of Medici; not he, but Luca seemed to stand at the head of the State, and if his nature inclined generally to pomp and power, he now allowed it free scope. His arbitrary and unjust administration was to find its punishment years after.

In the last years of his life, Cosimo had no longer the guidance of his party in his hands, as formerly. What he had always feared and long managed to prevent, now happened: his most distinguished adherents grew too strong for him. He had always feared to place himself in a clear light; what would once have aided him, when it was a question of arousing no envy, now injured him, as others employed it to outshine him. His continual illness combined to render his share in affairs more difficult. He allowed much to pass that he could not hinder, but, crafty and accustomed to rule as he was, he would not confess that he could not hinder it. Thus, as people like Luca Pitti and his companions stood far below him, and knew nothing of that kind of prudent and calculated moderation which lay in his character, a grasping and unconscientious party-government was formed, such as Florence, with the exception of transient periods of disturbances and passion, had never known.

It is easy to conceive that, with such a government, and with men at its head ever ready to infringe or to corrupt the laws and constitution, the magistrates of the Republic enjoyed but a small measure of authority, which was allowed to them by the chiefs on whom they depended. The machinery of government remained the same as it had been in former days, but real power rested elsewhere. The oligarchy, which obtained a firm footing in Cosimo’s last years, which tried to overthrow his son, and yielded to his grandson’s consummate skill, kept in its hands the reins even when its own independence was most doubtful. The thirst for public offices continued immoderate. These offices preserved ostensibly their dignity, and secured advantages of various kinds; but they no longer, as such, had any influence upon politics. The majority of them had been established between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; some had been added during the fifteenth. The upper magistracy, generally called the Signory, was the College of Priors of the Guilds, or of Freedom, as they were called after 1458. It had been established in 1282, and though afterwards transformed, was originally composed of eight members chosen every two months, with the Gonfalonier (vexillifer justitiæ) at their head.

In him was vested the highest power, which he, apart from the executive, shared with the colleges, with the Buonuomini appointed in 1312, with the assessors of the priors, and with the sixteen bannerets of the militia companies, at whose head was the Capitano del Popolo.

There has been a question raised as to the original military character of this institution. The projects of law agreed to by the Signory and the colleges were carried to three councils; first to the council of the people, which consisted of a hundred members, chosen originally only from the higher class of citizens, the popolo grasso. Then they went to the council of the ‘Credenza,’ which was formed of the same number of members, and in which sat all the consuls and other officials of the guilds; lastly, to the Podestà’s council, composed of the judges and legal functionaries, nobles and citizens, ninety in number. When a bill had passed through these three courts, it was brought before a General Assembly of them all, and not until then became law.

Forms, indeed, were duly observed, but these forms did not prevent the adoption of laws which fatally attacked the constitution from within. For the consideration of bills relating to foreign affairs, to peace and war, two other consultative bodies were established after 1411, when greater care seemed to be necessary, on account of the heavy burdens caused by the dissensions of the great Schism. The one was the Council of Two Hundred, to which only those could be elected who had occupied the highest offices of State, and to which legislative proposals were sent before they came to the Council of a Hundred and Thirty-one—in which sat the members of the Signory and of the colleges, the ‘Capitani di parte Guelfa’, the ‘War Ten,’ the six councils of the craftsmen, the consuls of the guilds, and forty-eight other citizens. The bills had to be accepted in these two assemblies before they reached the first-mentioned councils. From such a mass of incongruous materials was the machine of State compiled.

The chief judicial functionary, and until Luca Pitti’s reform the first dignitary, was the Podestà, assisted as he was by the Capitano del Popolo—whose rights and privileges were often changed—and by the executor of legal ordinances. All three were strangers: the first two noble personages learned in the law, the third a man of the people, of Guelfish family, holding office for one year. The Podestà’s court included several adjuncts who took turn with the chief. The armed guard of the latter were under the chief bailiff or Bargello. Attached to these were the Magistracy of Eight (Otto di Guardia), who were nominated by the Signory, and installed in office for four months. They had to try criminal and police cases, and were conservators of the law—a sort of appeal court for the revision of the decisions of the Podestà’s court. Much of their time, however, was spent in detecting the artifices and evasions of the tax-payers. The uncertain line of demarcation between the jurisdiction of the several co-existing law courts has always been one of the most serious evils of the constitution of Florence. For the separate branches of the constitution different functionaries were appointed. Foreign affairs and war were in the hands of the ‘Peace and War Ten,’ who were appointed in 1423 during the campaign against Milan. There had indeed been, half a century earlier, a similar magistracy, nicknamed by popular wit, the ‘Eight Saints,’ because they conducted warlike operations against Pope Gregory XI. It was as secretary of the ten that Niccolò Machiavelli manifested that activity which, together with the literary talents which he afterwards developed, made the ‘Segretario fiorentino’ so celebrated. The influence exercised by this committee upon military operations was often most unfortunate, and in the peaceful times of 1480, we see it replaced by the ‘Otto di Pratica.’

The office of Capitani di parte Guelfa, to whom was entrusted, by the statutes of 1267, the control of the property of the rebels—an office open also to the nobility—had long lost the political importance it acquired in the second half of the fourteenth century. To the magistracy of custom-dues, established in 1352, and in which always sat one of the nobility, was given the control of the indirect taxation; to the Uffiziali del Monte, the direction of the state debt; to the consuls, appointed after the acquisition of Leghorn, the management of navigation and of commerce beyond the seas. The assessment of loans was managed by special commissions. The tribunal of commerce (Mercanzia) was composed of six members of the large corporations and six foreigners learned in the law. The chief of the affairs of the guilds, the proconsul, who ranked immediately after the Signory and colleges, belonged to the first guild, that of the lawyers. In a town and commonwealth where a strong principle of beneficence prevailed, all charities had to be well arranged. The officials of the widow and orphan fund, whose premises are now occupied by the Society of Brethren of Mercy, on the Cathedral square; the Capitani di Sta. Maria, who were originally appointed to oppose the Patarian heresy, but subsequently devoted themselves to the care of orphans, and survive in the Uffizio del Bigallo opposite the Baptistery; the Buonuomini di San Martino, founded by St. Antoninus with their domicile in the dwellings of the Alighieri—all these belong properly to the municipality. All the courts and committees had their chancellors or secretaries, whose importance depended on circumstances, but was enhanced by the fact that they were permanent officials, while the members were constantly changing. The Signory and other assemblies had many subordinate officers besides. The salaries were insignificant, and the only persons who received them were the foreign judges, chancellors, secretaries, subordinate officers, and servants; as also the officers in the towns of the district, the commissaries of the troops, and the ambassadors abroad, while the acting magistrates at home were unpaid.

This form of government and councils continued, with slight modifications, until the month of December 1494, when the overthrow of the Medici was the signal of events which materially altered the constitution of the Republic.