Death in Florence: the Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of the Renaissance City

by Paul Strathern

  fn1 The d’Este were a widespread aristocratic family, branches of which had already provided a thirteenth-century German king, as well as rulers of Bavaria and Carinthia. Later they would produce the Elector of Hanover, who in the eighteenth century became King George I of Great Britain.

  fn2 Some sources claim this event took place in 1466, others that it was even earlier. At any event, its effect on his youthful grandson was profound.

  fn3 That is, the eternal Mother Church, as distinct from the corrupted contemporary Church.

  fn4 The sceptre of course represented the papacy, which traced its lineage back to St Peter; Sixtus IV was widely said to have made his fortune as a pirate in his younger days, using this to enable his rapid advance in the Church hierarchy.

  fn5 In 1570 Ferrrara would be struck by a devastating earthquake, which demolished many of its fine buildings, a disaster from which it would not recover. Never again would it bear comparison with Florence. When Charles Dickens visited Ferrara in 1846 he wrote of its ‘long silent streets and the dismantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of banners, where rank weeds are creeping up the long-untrodden stairs’.25

  3

  Lorenzo’s Florence

  SAVONAROLA WOULD HAVE entered Florence in 1482 by the Porta San Gallo, the northernmost gate in the city walls, and less than half a mile down the main Via Larga he would have come to the monastery of San Marco.fn1 After pulling the bell beside the gate in the wall, he would have been admitted to the enclosed precincts.

  The monastery of San Marco, which stood just two blocks north of the Palazzo Medici, had been founded in the thirteenth century. However, it had been completely renovated and considerably expanded by Lorenzo the Magnificent’s grandfather Cosimo de’ Medici just thirty years previously. Cosimo had used his favourite architect Michelozzo Michelozzi, and incorporated the work of the resident monk Fra Angelico, one of the great early Renaissance artists. Michelozzi would be responsible for some of the finest early Renaissance architecture in Florence, including the renovation of the Palazzo della Signoria and the design of the Medici villa at Careggi. For his part, Fra Angelico’s ethereal paintings would heavily influence Michelangelo, whose depiction of God’s finger passing on life to Adam in the Sistine Chapel was directly inspired by the artist-monk. The work of Fra Angelico and Michelozzi came together at San Marco in the delightful shaded San Antonio cloister, whose delicate pillars and colourful frescoes enclosed a tranquil green garden in the midst of the monastery.

  Cosimo de’ Medici had undertaken the renovation of San Marco late in his life, intending it as absolution for the sin of usury, which had enabled him to accumulate his fortune as a banker. Yet there had also been a less manifest reason for Cosimo’s benevolence, one that explained why in particular he chose to lavish his wealth on San Marco, rather than other similarly prestigious monasteries in the city. Before the 1433 coup which had removed Cosimo from power in Florence, almost costing him his life, he had managed in the nick of time to transfer secretly to San Marco a large quantity of the funds held in the Medici bank in Florence. After Cosimo’s banishment into exile, his enemies had raided all Medici premises, as well as those of known supporters, but had been unable to discover the whereabouts of these funds, which had been held on trust, without a word, by the monks at San Marco.

  In consequence, Cosimo had spared no expense on the rebuilding of San Marco, which eventually cost 30,000 florins – an unprecedented sum at the time. The monastery had been furnished with a library, together with many hundreds of religious manuscripts, intended for public use – the first lending library in Europe. Instead of the usual communal dormitory, each monk was assigned his own cell, many of which contained frescoes painted by Fra Angelico and his assistants. These were mainly portrayals of angels and biblical scenes. A special double cell, sumptuously frescoed, had been created for Cosimo’s personal use, to which he would often retire for periods of contemplation. However, he had taken a more active role in the creation of the gardens across the street from San Marco: as a man who delighted in retiring to the countryside, he had done his best to create a pastoral space here within the walls of the city. These gardens would in turn become a favourite spot of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who began decorating the shady spaces with pieces of ancient classical sculpture. It was here, as he walked along the paths between the beds of greenery and marble relics, that according to legend Savonarola would first catch sight of Lorenzo the Magnificent from the window of his cell across the street.

  The monastery of San Marco was hardly the kind of religious institution to which Savonarola aspired, or indeed to which he had been accustomed. The Florentine Dominicans no longer lived in poverty, or depended upon the charity of their congregation. The cells of the individual monks were for the most part well furnished, and indeed the librarian and the prior lived in some luxury, with meals served privately in their cells, where on occasion they would entertain leading citizens with sumptuous meals served on dishes and plates bearing the Medici crest. All the food for the monastery was supplied by Lorenzo the Magnificent – with olives, wine, bread, fish, fruit, oil and eggs provided in abundance. By special dispensation from Lorenzo, all such produce for the monastery was imported into the city free of the usual customs charges. Even the monks’ robes and silk vestments were specially tailored by Lorenzo’s appointed haberdashers – the very ones who also ran up the costumes for his carnivals and popular entertainments.

  Savonarola saw these entertainments, when they were laid on for the high days and holy days, and quickly decided that they were not to his taste. Instead, we gather from remarks in his later sermons that he began taking long walks through the streets of the city. In those days one could walk from the Porta San Gallo, in the northern walls, right across the city to the southernmost Porta Romana at the limits of the Oltrarno district in half an hour, and Savonarola had soon explored all the various districts and neighbourhoods in between. He insisted that he was not overawed by the large piazzas, palaces and churches that he saw in the centre of the city – he was used to such buildings in his native Ferrara. But Florence’s larger population, and the commercial success of its leading families, produced greater contrasts between the palazzi of the rich and the backstreet tenements and narrow lanes of the slums occupied by the poor. These crowded dwellings mainly housed the families of the many dyers and cloth workers employed as day-workers in the textile industry for which the city was famous throughout Europe. Here, in the mean alleyways, Savonarola encountered the destitute: the haggard beggars who tugged at his sleeves and the blind with their pitiful cries. His regime of self-denial and abstinence had taught him what it was like to starve, yet as he would recount in his later sermons, he soon became heart-rendingly aware of the contrast between his Dominican ‘poverty’ and this genuine poverty, which he came across amongst the inhabitants of the squalid teeming slum districts. Worse still, he found that these people actually resented his presence when he walked amongst them in his distinctive black robes – the Dominicans were seen as ‘Lorenzo’s men’, their friars regarded as his spies, Lorenzo’s eyes and ears amongst the public. In Ferrara, the Dominican Black Friars had been regarded as friends of the poor.

  Yet there was an even more fundamental difference between the numerous poor of Florence and those of Ferrara. In Ferrara the poor had grown resigned to their lot. The d’Este ruled as tyrants, with every aspect of the administration under their strict control. There was no veneer of democratic government. But here in Florence things were different. The democratic process by which Lorenzo maintained power may have become a sham, but there was no denying that its ethos remained amongst the people. They still regarded themselves as equal citizens; quietly, they talked politics. Unlike in Ferrara, where dissenting voices were quickly despatched to the dungeons of the castello, the people of Florence were not afraid of airing their views, though for the most part only covertly and amongst themselves, especially in the case of the poor. Indeed, there remained a widesp
read feeling that one day things could change. As the little Black Friar passed alone through the back streets, he would have been aware of the odd catcall or insult called out behind his back.

  Meanwhile Lorenzo the Magnificent had more pressing things to do than stroll amongst the statuary in his garden under the beady eye of a Ferrarese friar. In fact, he was attempting to deal with the very situation that had brought Savonarola to San Marco, namely the war between Venice and Ferrara. By the midsummer of 1482 this had escalated to the point where it threatened Florence’s eastern trade route acoss the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea. But the situation was not entirely one-sided. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was married to Leonora d’Aragona, the eldest daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, and when the Venetians had invaded the duke’s territory he had immediately called upon his father-in-law to come to his rescue. Knowing of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s constant attempts to maintain the balance of power in Italy, Duke Ercole also appealed for aid to Florence. Lorenzo responded positively, calling in his ally Milan, at the same time joining forces with his friend King Ferrante of Naples.

  The troops of the allies were placed under the command of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, the son of King Ferrante. In a subtle move, Alfonso now requested formal permission from Sixtus IV to march his troops north from Naples across papal territory towards Ferrara. Sixtus IV refused permission, thus bringing into the open his secret support for Venice. Alfonso advanced into papal territory nonetheless, but was then defeated by the pope’s forces. In response to this setback, King Ferrante immediately played on Sixtus IV’s unpopularity amongst the Roman nobility by inciting the Orsini and other noble families to rise up against him. In order to guard Sixtus IV, Girolamo Riario and the pope’s forces had to return from the papal territories to Rome itself. Meanwhile, Lorenzo directed his mercenary commander Duke Federigo of Urbino to march east to prevent the Venetians from overrunning all the territory ruled by Ferrara, whose troops were hampered by the untimely illness of Duke Ercole.

  In September 1482 news reached Florence of the unexpected death of Duke Federigo of Urbino. Once again, it looked as if the Venetians were going to prevail. Girolamo Riario, who remained unable to fulfil his side of the secret pact with the Venetians by providing papal forces, sent word of this latest development to his ‘uncle’ Sixtus IV, who immediately realised the danger. If the Venetians took over Ferrara completely, and there was no military pact between them and his nephew, there would be nothing to stop them expanding to take over the papal territories ruled by Riario. In a lightning volte-face, Sixtus IV at once ordered the Venetians to halt their invasion, declaring that it had no just cause. The Venetians pressed forward nonetheless, and when news of this reached Rome the pope became so enraged that he excommunicated the entire Venetian Republic. But still the Venetians continued to advance, until finally by November 1482 they were laying siege to the city of Ferrara itself. At this stage Sixtus IV succumbed to a fever, his condition exacerbated by an incapacitating attack of gout.

  In an effort to remedy the situation before it was too late, Lorenzo called a conference of the anti-Venetian allies at Cremona. Besides Lorenzo, the conference was attended by Alfonso of Calabria, Ludovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza of Milan, Ercole of Ferrara and the pope’s respresentative in the form of Girolamo Riario. It was soon agreed that Ludovico Sforza should launch his Milanese troops in a diversionary attack on Venetian territory, while Alfonso of Calabria led his remnant troops north in an attempt to relieve Ferrara before it fell into Venetian hands. These moves soon persuaded the Venetians to withdraw, and all parties now agreed that peace negotiations should be opened. But with the prospect of negotiating territorial gains, the fragile pact between the allies fell apart. Girolamo Riario persuaded Alfonso of Calabria to back his claim to add Ferrarese territory to the papal territories that he now ruled, but unbeknown to these plotters, Ludovico Sforza had entered into a secret agreement with the Venetians. When news reached Rome that peace negotiations were to open, Sixtus IV immediately understood that things had now slipped beyond his control. He was liable to lose everything he had set out to gain, while his enemies stood to gain everything at his expense. According to the diplomatic representative for Ferrara, the pope was beside himself with fury: ‘He uses the most terrible language in the world, and says that he has been deceived and betrayed.’1 Such were the difficulties faced by Lorenzo the Magnificent in his attempt to maintain the balance of power in Italy. All he could do was prevail upon the interested parties to conclude a reasonably balanced peace, in the hope that this would last.

  Peace terms were finally agreed on 7 August 1484. Despite Lorenzo’s best efforts, these inevitably reflected the underhand pacts between the stronger of the negotiating allies. Although Venice had finished the war in retreat, it actually increased its territory at the expense of Ferrara, as did its covert ally, Milan; meanwhile Naples regained lost territory. At the same time Girolamo Riario gained nothing, and Duke Ercole of Ferrara had to be content with retaining just the city of Ferrara and a reduced surrounding territory. Sixtus IV, whose machinations had been responsible for the war, had not only lost any immediate prospect of adding to Riario’s papal territories, but was now distrusted by all – former allies and present allies alike. When news of the outcome of the peace negotiations reached Rome a few days later, the pope’s reaction was decidedly mixed. At a public audience with his cardinals he expressed, seemingly without qualm, his regret over the turn of events. ‘With great expense to ourselves have we carried on the war to save Ferrara, and to please the majesty of the King [of Naples] and the other allies, so we were ready to continue.’2 Yet when the ambassadors had withdrawn, his anger was such that he succumbed once more to his fever. He particularly blamed Ludovico Sforza of Milan for his ‘treachery’, since just a few months previously Sixtus IV had made his brother a cardinal, in the expectation of tying Milan to his cause. During the evening of 12 August Sixtus IV suffered a severe relapse and, in the words of the papal historian F. Ludwig von Pastor, drawing on a report by the Ferrarese ambassador: ‘That same night Sixtus died, denouncing the conditions of the peace with his last breath, declaring that Ludovico Sforza was a traitor.’3 As his contemporary Machiavelli drily remarked in his history of the period: ‘Thus at last this pope left Italy in peace, having spent his life ensuring that it was constantly at war.’4

  News of these historic events soon reached the thirty-two-year-old Savonarola in his monastic cell at San Marco in Florence. The death of Sixtus IV, whom he had so long despised, inspired Savonarola to write another of his impassioned poems about the Church, appealing to the Lord even as the cardinals gathered in Rome to elect another pope:

  Jesus, highest good and sweet comfort,5

  Of all hearts that suffer,

  Look upon Rome with perfect love …

  Save thy Holy Roman Church

  From the devil who tears it apart.

  Savonarola still entertained hopes that the Church might yet return to its original state, ‘that peace she knew when she was poor’. Such hopes appeared patently unrealistic. Italy was now moving inexorably away from the simple poverty and timeless way of life that had been the lot of most people during the previous medieval era: an existence that, amongst many levels of society, retained a recognisable rapport with the earliest days of Christianity – in Judaea, in the Levant, and later amongst the slaves of Ancient Rome. But now, despite the wars and political uncertainties that racked Italy as the fifteenth century drew to a close, the transformations brought about by the Renaissance were entering a new phase. Classical knowledge and pre-Christian ideas had by this stage begun to stimulate an entirely new spirit of enquiry and consequent originality. New discoveries were being made in fields ranging from architectural technique to mathematics and pictorial perspective. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Florence, where the man who epitomised this phase of the Renaissance more than any other was the artist Botticelli. After being loaned by Lorenzo the Magnificent to Sixtus IV and co
mpleting the first frescoes to adorn the pope’s new Sistine Chapel, Botticelli had returned to Florence in 1482, the very year in which Savonarola had taken up residence at San Marco.

  Botticelli once more renewed his contact with the intellectual circle associated with the Palazzo Medici, where he was particularly influenced by the Platonic idealism of the philosopher Ficino and the humanism of the poet Poliziano. As a result, Botticelli’s work underwent a spectacular tranformation. Instead of religious scenes, he began to depict pagan subjects from classical mythology. Typical of these was his Pallas and the Centaur, which depicts the goddess Pallas Athena grasping the hair of the mythical half-man half-horse, apparently restraining the repentant centaur. The scene is illustrative of how the Renaissance was beginning to emerge from its slavish mimicking of classical learning into an originality of its own. There is no classical legend involving Pallas Athena and a centaur, but Botticelli has used these two figures to suggest an encounter between wisdom (Pallas Athena) and lust (in the form of the half-man half-beast). It was intended to be an allegory depicting rational restraint overcoming animal sensuality.

  This painting was commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1482 as a gift to his nineteen-year-old cousin and ward, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, on the occasion of his marriage to Semiramide, daughter of Jacopo IV d’Appiano, Lord of Piombino. As was customary, this marriage had been arranged by Lorenzo, largely for political reasons. The city of Piombino occupied a strategic location on the coast seventy miles southwest of Florence, and its alliance to Naples during the war against Florence after the Pazzi conspiracy had represented a serious threat; with this marriage it would be permanently allied to Florence. As Jacopo IV was also a condottiere, it meant that his army would prove a useful addition to Florentine forces. On top of this, Jacopo IV’s territory included the island of Elba, which at the time contained the only iron-ore deposits being mined in the entire Italian peninsula. Medici control of this monopoly would represent a considerable income. The subject matter of Lorenzo’s wedding gift to his young cousin was intended as an exemplar of the benefits of marriage and the wisdom of restraint – a subtle hint that it was time for him to curb the wild behaviour in which he seems to have indulged.