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

by Paul Strathern

  Despite his chronic exhaustion after three days of passionate sermonising, during which he had often appeared to be on the point of a physical and mental breakdown, Savonarola could not bring himself to turn down Capponi’s request. His motives, as well as those of Capponi, are open to question here. Was Savonarola simply incapable of suppressing his lust for power? Was Capponi lining up Savonarola as scapegoat, in case things went wrong? The possibility of such mixed motives must inevitably be borne in mind during the ensuing events.

  The very next day, Wednesday 5 November, Savonarola and his fellow ambassadors left the city. Despite the urgency of the situation, as well as the need to create an impression at the French court, Savonarola insisted that he would only travel on foot. The others were forced to follow behind on their horses, which were decked out in the city’s livery in the customary fashion. Such protocol was not only intended to convey the importance of the ambassadors and the city they represented, but was also to be seen as a mark of respect for their hosts. Thus the determined friar in his threadbare robes, carrying only his usual breviary, led the somewhat uncertain Florentine delegation north-west of the city into the Tuscan countryside. It was unclear whether Charles VIII and his army were still in the region of Sarzanello, or had already set off south to take Pisa. The Florentine mission continued, enquiring on the latest news concerning the French army at each village through which it passed. It was hardly an auspicious start.

  The whereabouts of the French court was not the only thing of which the Florentine mission remained in ignorance. No sooner had it left the city than an advanced French detachment arrived in Florence, proceeding directly to the Palazzo della Signoria, where it demanded permission to start making billeting arrangements for the arrival of the French army. Impotently, the Signoria agreed, and French soldiers began making their way through the streets, marking chalk crosses on the doors of the houses that were to billet the French garrison. The town heralds with their trumpets preceded them through the city, announcing that anyone who rubbed off the chalk crosses on their doors would be liable to a draconian fine of 500 florins (more than twice the annual income of many merchants, let alone householders of lesser fortune).

  When Piero de’ Medici received news of the Florentine delegation approaching the French camp, he at once set off back to Florence, meeting up with Paolo Orsini and his 300 mercenaries on the way. On Saturday 8 November – just three days after Savonarola and his delegation had left – Piero arrived outside the city walls of Florence at the northern Porta San Gallo. Unprecedentedly, he found no official party at the gate to welcome him – an ominous portent. Nonethelesss, possibly out of tact for the citizens’ sensibilities, he ordered Orsini and the mercenaries to wait outside the city walls. Piero then rode on through the Porta San Gallo into the city, arriving at the Palazzo Medici to find a crowd of silent, curious onlookers gathered outside. Immediately after dismounting in the protected inner courtyard, Piero ordered that confetti (little sweet cakes and sugar-coated almonds) be scattered from the windows down to the waiting crowd below. In a further traditional homecoming gesture, he also ordered long tables to be set out in the street, where wine and bread could be served to the poor. But the sceptical onlookers seemed determined not to be won over, and there were none of the usual grateful loyal cries of ‘Palle! Palle! Palle!’fn1

  Next day being Sunday, Piero de’ Medici attended Mass, where he soon learned of the situation in the city. Accompanied by a group of armed men, he then proceeded to the Palazzo della Signoria, intending to deliver his official report on his mission. By now the members of the Signoria felt they had the backing of the majority of the population, with many convinced that Piero was personally responsible for the peril in which Florence found itself. Even so, the Signoria remained wary: they knew that Orsini and his 300 mercenaries remained camped outside the Porta San Gallo.

  By this stage further detachments of French troops had begun arriving in the city by way of the western gate, in order to seek out and chalk the doors of all possible available billets. Although the Signoria were conscious of the deep shame this inflicted upon the city, and aware that many blamed them for allowing it to take place, they soon saw how this French presence could be turned to their advantage. Piero de’ Medici would not dare to order Orsini and his mercenaries into the city to defend him if this was liable to lead to a clash with the armed French detachments. Such a move would have put the entire approaching French army against him. This meant that Piero was essentially on his own, and any move the Signoria made against him would help shift the blame for the presence of the French troops and their humiliating activities. By dissociating themselves from Piero de’ Medici they could redeem their own ineffectiveness and essential impotence, thus isolating him as the sole scapegoat for all that was happening.

  When Piero arrived at the Palazzo della Signoria, accompanied by his small band of armed guards, he was astonished to have the main door slammed in his face. A voice informed him that he could only enter the palazzo alone, without his armed men, by way of the sportello, the tiny side gate intended for servants and delivery boys. As Piero stood pondering this direct insult, unsure of what he should do to avoid loss of face, the Signoria took matters into their own hands. From high up in the castellated tower of the palazzo came the deep, resonant toll of the city’s famous bell, the Vacca (literally, ‘the cow’, so called because its booming tone resembled the mooing of a cow). The tolling bell resounding over the rooftops of the city was the traditional call to all citizens in time of danger or emergency, summoning them to gather in the wide stone-paved Piazza della Signoria in front of the palazzo. As the people hurried into the square and it began to fill, the mood of the crowd turned. Some began calling out insults at Piero as he stood uncertainly on the raised pavement outside the main door of the palazzo. As such sentiments began gathering momentum, people started throwing objects, refuse and then stones. Piero’s armed guard quickly persuaded him to leave, forcing a way for him through the increasingly antagonistic crowd, whereupon they set off back for the safety of the Palazzo Medici.

  Meanwhile Piero’s younger brother Cardinal Giovanni had begun taking his own measures, riding up and down the Via Larga with an armed entourage, attempting to rally support for the Medici cause with cries of ‘Palle! Palle! Palle!’ This drew a number of armed Medici supporters, who began spilling out of the nearby streets. Cardinal Giovanni then led his band of armed men and chanting Medici supporters towards the Piazza della Signoria. Yet as they approached the square they found themselves faced by a much larger hostile mob, and were forced to beat a hasty retreat through the streets back to the Palazzo Medici, where Piero and his men were confronting another armed gathering of opponents. For a while it looked as if there would be violent conflict between the rival groups, with blood shed; but when a crowd of further armed opponents of the Medici arrived on the scene, Giovanni reportedly declared to Piero, ‘We’re finished!’21 Whereupon the Medici brothers and their supporters withdrew through the gateway of the Palazzo Medici and barricaded themselves in behind its high walls.

  The point had now been reached where the city was on the brink of civil war, and the Signoria followed up their summoning of the people by taking decisive action, publicly issuing a decree ‘forbidding anyone on pain of death to aid or abet Piero de’ Medici’.22 This may have been opportunistic, but it was also irrevocable: if the Medici succeeded in retaining power, the Signoria’s decree would certainly be regarded as treason, punishable by death or at least permanent exile. But the Signoria’s gamble appeared to pay off. According to Landucci, ‘In consequence of this [decree], many abandoned Piero and laid down their arms. They dropped off on all sides, so that few remained with him.’

  Partly as a result of this decree, the crowd outside the Palazzo Medici began to disperse – few of them wishing to be mistakenly seen ‘to aid or abet’ the Medici cause, or to become involved in the bloody conflict that now seemed inevitable. As the crowd dispersed, Piero de
’ Medici, along with his wife and children, rode out of the Palazzo Medici protected by an armed escort and swiftly made his way up the deserted Via Larga, arriving at the Porta San Gallo, which was being held by Orsini and his men. Many sources claim that this escape took place under cover of darknesss, but Landucci’s eyewitness report states how later that same day (that is, the late afternoon of Sunday 9 November) he observed Cardinal Giovanni:

  The poor young cardinal stayed behind in the house and I saw him through a window, kneeling with his hands joined, praying to Heaven to have mercy. The sight of him moved me greatly, for he was in truth a good and upright character.

  Had Cardinal Giovanni been left behind by Piero because he hoped that the popular Giovanni might yet rally sufficient support for the Medici cause and reverse the situation? Indeed, the sight of Cardinal Giovanni praying at the window prompts all manner of questions. What precisely would Giovanni have been praying for? And why should he have done this so publicly, at the window of the palazzo for all to see, when surely the private chapel would have been the more appropriate venue for such an act of worship? This appearance at the window is not the act of a man praying for his own safety. Had he been worried on this score, he would surely have made every effort to join his departing brother and his armed party, thus demonstrating his loyalty to Piero. No, in all likelihood, if Giovanni’s prayers had any supplicatory object at all, it must have been a plea to God for the preservation of Medici rule. And the very public nature of this act must have been intended to elicit sympathy, which it certainly did in the case of Landucci, whose position as a mere shopkeeper surely rendered him representative of widespread popular feeling in the city. Giovanni’s public praying was the act of a man hoping to take advantage of his personal popularity and swing the crowd in his favour.

  Yet it must soon have become apparent to Cardinal Giovanni and his remaining supporters inside the palazzo that the crowd had irrevocably turned against the Medici. Doubtless the voices of the people outside made this clear. As a result, Cardinal Giovanni and his supporters made no further effort to court popularity, and now began a frantic, but thorough, attempt to rescue their situation in an entirely different manner. Hurriedly they started scouring all the rooms of the palazzo, collecting up as many portable valuables as they could carry. Amongst these were the jewels that Lorenzo the Magnificent had collected so avidly – those precious stones whose very nature was contradictory: easily transportable, in case Cosimo’s prediction that the Medici would be driven from Florence came true, yet bearing the marks of Lorenzo’s ultimate royal ambition for the family. Along with these jewels, Cardinal Giovanni is said to have collected up some 200,000 ducats: amongst the last remaining assets of the Medici bank in Florence. Other items included various statuettes, gold and silver medallions, as well as valuable books and rare ancient manuscripts from the Medici library.

  According to Landucci, some time after Piero de’ Medici left, Cardinal Giovanni ‘disguised himself as a monk and took his departure also’. This escape must surely have been made under cover of darkness, and with some stealth, considering the value of the treasure involved. Yet not all of this was taken directly up the Via Larga to the safety of the Porta San Gallo. Extraordinarily, it seems that the young Cardinal Giovanni stopped off en route at the monastery of San Marco, where he delivered the rare books and manuscripts from the Medici library, and perhaps some of the more religious treasures as well, to the safekeeping of the monks.

  This raises a number of intriguing questions. We know that, at the time, Savonarola was absent on the mission to Charles VIII – yet San Marco would have remained very much in the hands of his supporters. On the other hand, San Marco had long been considered by the Medici as ‘our’ monastery, and it is possible that some amongst its monks remained ardent, if clandestine, Medici supporters. Yet how could they have received Medici treasures from Cardinal Giovanni, disguised as a Dominican monk though he was, and have managed to conceal them, without other monks loyal to Savonarola being aware of this? A more credible scenario would have involved the disguised Giovanni delivering rare manuscripts and books from the Medici library with the full knowledge of the monks who supported Savonarola. Such a contingency could have been arranged by go-betweens such as Pico or Ficino. This gift could well have been a gesture to Savonarola, who would certainly have welcomed the addition of such items to the monastery collection. Was this by way of being a recompense to Savonarola for keeping his promise to Lorenzo on his deathbed and refraining from attacking Piero, or even directly denouncing Medici rule, in his sermons? Inevitably, such a theory is purely speculative – yet it seems difficult to account for Cardinal Giovanni’s gesture in any other way. Having deposited his gifts at San Marco, he hurried up the Via Larga to the safety of the Porta San Gallo, and Orsini’s waiting armed men.

  Landucci recorded how around this time the Signoria at last took even more drastic action, once again too little and too late:

  Another proclamation was publicly announced in the Piazza, promising that whoever slew Piero de’ Medici would receive a reward of two thousand ducats, and whoever slew the cardinal would receive a thousand ducats.23

  But the Medici were gone, galloping across the Apennine mountain passes towards the safety of the nearby territory of Bologna. Piero the Unfortunate had been forced into exile, and the rule of the Medici family in Florence was over.

  fn1 This was the traditional rallying cry of the Medici and their supporters, referring as it did to the palle (red balls) that featured on the Medici shield, the emblem that could be seen on the Palazzo Medici and so many other buildings in the city. According to one tradition, these represented the pills that had appeared on the signboard above the original Medici shop, when, as their name suggested, they had first begun as sellers of medicine in the city some three centuries previously.

  13

  Humiliation

  WHEN THE NEWS spread through Florence that the Medici had fled the city, a mob descended on the Palazzo Medici bent on pillaging the legendary treasures that it was rumoured to contain. However, they found the palazzo locked and barred by its new occupant, a French nobleman from the court of Charles VIII called ‘seigneur de Balsac’,1 who had taken up residence some days beforehand. On orders from Piero de’ Medici, he had been instructed to prepare the palazzo for when Charles VIII came to take up Piero’s offer of residence. Yet no sooner had the Medici fled than Balsac secured all possible modes of entry and ‘began pillaging the contents of the palace, claiming that the Lyons branch of the Medici Bank owed him a great sum of money’.2 Cardinal Giovanni had only been able to remove from the palace such valuables as he and his men could carry, leaving behind many treasures and works of art for Balsac. These included all manner of exotic items, and Commines recorded that ‘among other things he seized an entire unicorn’s horn worth six or seven thousand ducats’.fn1

  It seemed that all Medici properties throughout the city were now considered fair game. According to Commines, in no time:

  others were behaving in the same manner as [Balsac]. All that was most valuable had been stored in another house in the city. The people pillaged this too. The signoria managed to sieze some of the finest jewellery, as well as some twenty thousand ducats which remained in the premises of the local Medici bank, and several fine agate vases, a vast amount of beautifully cut cameos, as fine as any I had seen. They also seized three thousand gold and silver medallions weighing forty pounds: one would not have believed that there were so many fine medallions in the whole of Italy.4

  In order to protect the Palazzo Medici from the gathering mob, the Signoria sent a guard of armed men, and these together with Balsac and the French soldiers within the palace seem to have kept the would-be pillagers at bay. However, it appears that at one stage a number of Florentine citizens must have broken into the palazzo, starting a fire amongst the registry files, with the aim of destroying documents related to tax details and debts owed. Indeed, to this day ‘Black scorch marks
are still visible on the papers that survived.’5 Yet what is so surprising is that so many Medici treasures did in fact survive – other than those deposited at San Marco or removed from Florence altogether by Cardinal Giovanni. Many Medici paintings, both in the palazzo and elsewhere in Florence, including both family portraits and religious scenes (which often incorporated family portraits, such as Botticelli’s Adoration of the Magi) survive to this day. And the latter would not have been spared on account of their religious content. Far from it: in these first heady hours of liberation nothing was sacred where the Medici were concerned. Even the resplendent San Gallo monastery, reckoned to have been one of the finest early Renaissance works of architecture, was not spared. This may have been designed for the revered Augustinians, whose prior had once been Savonarola’s great rival preacher Fra Marianoda Genazzano, and built by none other than Brunelleschi himself, but it had been commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that was enough. The building was completely razed to the ground by the mob so that not even a ruin remained – today its former site is a green open space lined by trees just outside the Porta San Gallo, known as the Parterre.

  The seizure by the Signoria of the remaining assets hidden in the premises of the local branch of the Medici bankfn2 effectively marked the demise of this once-great financial institution. The precise ledger figures and imbalances remain unknown, since a large amount of the bank’s records were destroyed in the fire at the Palazzo Medici. However, de Roover makes it clear that by this stage the ruin of the Medici bank was probably inevitable. Even if there had been no French invasion in 1494 and Piero had not been deposed, ‘the Medici bank might have ended even more disgracefully in a financial crash of the first order’. Its entire organisation was already virtually bankrupt. ‘Most of its branches had been closed, and those still in existence were gasping for breath.’ This was particularly true of its main foreign agency, previously its chief source of income through handling papal dues, accounts with cardinals and the alum monopoly: ‘Even the Rome branch, for so long the pillar of the Medici Bank, was giving way because funds were immobilised in loans.’ And these loans even directly involved the Medici themselves: ‘the debt of the Medici family to the Rome branch exceeded their equity by 11,243 large florins. In addition, Messer Giovanni, the youthful cardinal … owed another 7,500 florins.’6