The House Of Medici

by Christopher Hibbert

  No one knew what to say any more, what to do or where to go. Some tried to escape, some to hide, some to seek refuge in the Palazzo della Signoria or in the churches. Most of them merely entrusted themselves to God and awaited resignedly, from one hour to the next, not just death but death amidst the most horrid cruelties imaginable.

  A week after Francesco Ferrucci’s death a deputation of Florentine citizens agreed to the terms of surrender demanded by the representatives of the Emperor and the Pope. They were forced to hand over fifty hostages as pledges for a huge indemnity, to give up the fortresses still held by Florence to the imperial army, and to release all Medici supporters who had been imprisoned. In return, the liberties of the city were to be guaranteed, and an undertaking was given that pardons would be available for ‘injuries received from all citizens’, whom His Holiness would treat with that ‘affection and clemency he had always shown them’. But neither side expected the Pope to consider himself bound by these promises, as, in fact, he did not.

  A week after the Emperor’s representatives had entered the city, those citizens prepared to vote for the creation of a Balìa were admitted to a Parlamento in the Piazza della Signoria. A Medicean Balìa was accordingly established. A faithful supporter of the Pope was appointed Gonfaloniere, and Francesco Guicciardini, who had left the city at the approach of the Imperial forces, was sent back to supervise further measures of ‘reform’ – and of revenge.

  When Guicciardini arrived on 24 September he found

  the people and their resources exhausted, all the houses around Florence destroyed for many miles, and in many towns of the Florentine dominion the peasant population immeasurably decreased, the common folk disappeared almost entirely.

  His own villas were in ruins. He decided immediately that, if the State were to be put on ‘a proper footing again, mild measures [were] useless’. Mild measures were certainly not employed. Francesco Capponi, the leader of the extreme anti-papal party known as the Arrabbiati (the Angry Ones), was tortured and executed. So were several of his supporters. Raffaele Girolami, the newly elected Gonfaloniere, was also condemned to death, though eventually sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Scores of other leading citizens were banished from Florence for ever.

  To replace them in the government of the city, the Pope dispatched the dark, frizzy-haired, now nineteen-year-old youth, Alessandro de’ Medici, for whom he had bought the Dukedom of Penne from Charles V and to whom he hoped to marry the Emperor’s natural daughter, Margaret.

  Having thus roughly and decisively settled the future of Florence, to which he himself never again returned – and having created Ippolito a cardinal, an honour to which that cheerful, gregarious, extravagant and sensual young man in no way aspired – the Pope now concentrated his attentions upon the family’s one remaining asset, the little Caterina de’ Medici, a pale, thin, rather plain but strong-willed girl of twelve. He had high hopes for her. Indeed, there were some who said he had made Ippolito a cardinal merely to remove him as a possible suitor, for she had shown signs of being unduly fond of the boy, and Clement had no mind to let her make a marriage so unprofitable both to the Medici and to himself as Pope. He wanted, in fact, to arrange for her a marriage with a son of the King of France.

  So ambitious a project needed extremely tactful handling. He must not appear too eager; nor must he act without the consent of the Emperor. He played his part extremely well. The Venetian ambassador, for one, was not at all convinced that the Pope had made up his mind about the match; while the Emperor evidently thought it so unlikely that the French court would agree to it that, when the Pope travelled to Bologna to seek his permission, Charles gave way as though it were a matter of not very much importance. To the Emperor’s surprise, however, the French were not at all averse to the match. And so it was that on 28 October 1533, the Pope himself conducting the ceremony in Marseilles, the fourteen-year-old Caterina de’ Medici, Duchess of Urbino, was married to Henri de Valois, Duke of Orleans, second son of Francis I.

  It was Clement’s last triumph. Already ill when he began his journey to Marseilles, accompanied by those lavish wedding gifts for which the taxpayers of Rome and Florence had yet to pay, he returned to the Vatican a dying man. He was pitiably thin and shrunken; he was almost blind in his right eye, which had always had a slight squint; his liver was diseased and his skin was consequently pale and yellowish. Exasperating problems faced him on every side: there was the quarrel with England over the supremacy of the Holy See; there was the growing enmity of the Emperor who, irritated by the recent Medici marriage, was making renewed demands for a General Council of the Church; there were – vexatious above all – the persistent quarrels between Ippolito and Alessandro and the danger that between them they would be responsible for their family losing Florence once again.

  When Benvenuto Cellini went to see the Pope on 22 September 1534 to show him some models he had designed for him, he found him in bed and failing fast.

  He ordered his spectacles and a candle to be brought, but nevertheless he could discern nothing of my workmanship. So he set to examine the models by the touch of his fingers, but after feeling thus for some length of time he fetched a deep sigh, and told one of the courtiers that he was sorry for me, but if it pleased God to restore his health, he would make me a satisfactory payment. Three days later he died.

  Cellini confessed that the tears filled his eyes as he kissed the dead Pope’s feet; but there was no one else to mourn for him. On the contrary, Rome rejoiced. As Francesco Vettori said of him, he had gone ‘to a great deal of trouble to develop from a great and respected cardinal into a small and little respected Pope’. Night after night St Peter’s was broken into; the corpse was transfixed by a sword; the temporary tomb was smeared with dirt; and the inscription beneath it, ‘Clemens Pontifex Maximus’, was obliterated and in its place were written the words, ‘Inclemens Pontifex Minimus’.3

  The news from Rome was received in Florence with glum foreboding. It was felt that, following the death of the Pope whom many supposed to be his father, Alessandro de’ Medici would impatiently throw off all restraint and institute that tyrannical government to which his own tastes seemed naturally inclined. So far he had behaved quite circumspectly. Nine months after his ceremonial entry into the city, he had been proclaimed hereditary Duke; but, so as to allay the outrage to republican susceptibilities which this proclamation caused, he was at the same time required to consult various councils of Florentine citizens and to heed their advice. For a time he had done so; the people had been gradually reassured; and it was grudgingly allowed that, ill-favoured and rude as he was, there might, when he grew older, be discovered some good in Alessandro after all.

  The Pope’s death brought all the old fears back, and before that winter was over they were seen to be justified. Even the pretence of consultation with the elected councils was abandoned as Alessandro indulged his young fancy for authoritarian rule and became ever more blatant in his sexual escapades. He outraged the citizens by having the great bell in the Palazzo della Signoria – which had been smashed in the Piazza to symbolize the death of the Republic – melted down and recast into medals glorifying his family; by having his coat-of-arms carved over the gateway of the recently enlarged fort at the Porta alia Giustizia;4 by impounding all weapons, even those hung as votive offerings in the churches; and by building a huge new fortress, the Fortezza da Basso,5 ‘a thing totally inappropriate to a free city, as the examples of Venice, Siena, Lucca and Genoa clearly show’. There was murmured talk of tyrannicide; but the memory of the recent long siege was still fresh in men’s minds, and the dissidents hung back from so violent a solution to their plight which might bring another imperial army to the gates of the city. For a time it was hoped that the jealous Ippolito might settle the Florentines’ problems for them; and Ippolito did, indeed, agree to present a case against Alessandro at Charles V’s court; but before he was able to do so he died on 10 August 1535 at Itri, either of malaria or of poisoning. H
is body was carried back to Rome by the handsome athletes – Moors, Tartars, Turks, Negro wrestlers and Indian divers – with whom it had been his extravagant fancy to go out upon his travels.

  The leading Florentine exiles then presented themselves to the Emperor with a long list of complaints against Alessandro. Their spokesman, Jacopo Nardi the historian, gave a horrifying account of the Duke’s misdeeds and of the miseries of Florence now being overawed by a ‘great fortress, built with the blood of her unhappy people as a prison and slaughter-house for the unhappy citizens’. But although the Emperor promised ‘to do what was just’, he preferred to set less store by Nardi’s charges than by the extremely cunning and wholly inaccurate rebuttal of them by Alessandro’s chief adviser, Francesco Guicciardini, who went so far as to conclude his peroration with the words, ‘One cannot reply in detail to the charges about women, rape and similar calumnies uttered in general; but His Excellency’s virtue, his fame, the opinion of him held throughout the city, of his prudence, of his virtuous habits, are a sufficient reply.’

  Thus assured of the excellent qualities of his prospective son-in-law, the Emperor declined to accept the exiles’ charges. Alessandro’s marriage to the fourteen-year-old Margaret accordingly took place, and the Duke returned to Florence in firmer control of the city than ever and evidently anxious to make the most of his good fortune. Within a few months, though, he was dead.

  There had arrived in Florence a thin, plain, sad-faced young man of eccentric habits and unwholesome reputation, Lorenzaccio de’ Medici, son of Pierfrancesco and cousin of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He had spent much of the past few years in Rome, but his habit of slashing off the heads of antique statues when drunk had led to his being asked to leave and to his coming to Florence where he had become a constant companion of his kinsman, Alessandro, who was just three years older. Together they went out drinking and whoring; they indulged a mutual taste for disguising themselves as women; they galloped through the streets on the same horse, shouting insults at the passers-by; sometimes they shared the same bed. Alessandro was obviously fond of Lorenzaccio, though he seems not to have known what to make of him. Intrigued by his mysterious smile and subtle, ambivalent remarks, he nicknamed him ‘the philosopher’. But it was equally clear that Lorenzaccio did not really like Alessandro, that he resented his power and rank, that he fancied himself in the role of hero, in any role, in fact, that would bring him fame or even notoriety. The role in which he eventually decided to cast himself was that of tyrannicide.

  He evolved a complicated plan. He had a good-looking cousin, Caterina Soderini Ginori, a rather supercilious woman who was celebrated for her virtuous demeanour and her affection for an elderly, boring husband. Lorenzaccio suggested to Alessandro that anyone who could get Caterina to bed was a seducer of uncommon distinction: if Alessandro wanted to try his luck he would arrange to bring her to him one night and leave them alone together. He suggested a Saturday evening, the night of Epiphany, a public holiday, when everyone in Florence would be out enjoying themselves, and when no one would take much notice of either Caterina or Alessandro entering Lorenzaccio’s house. Alessandro eagerly agreed and on the appointed evening went to Lorenzaccio’s house. Having left his bodyguard outside the door, he unbuckled his sword, took off his clothes and lay waiting for Caterina on a bed. He was almost asleep when the door of the bedroom opened to admit not Caterina but Lorenzaccio and a hired murderer, Scoroncolo. Lorenzaccio approached the bed and, murmuring ‘Are you asleep?’, lunged with all his power at Alessandro’s naked stomach. As Lorenzaccio pushed his hand over Alessandro’s screaming mouth, Alessandro bit one of his fingers to the bone. Scoroncolo stabbed Alessandro through the throat. Spattered with his blood, his bleeding, savagely bitten hand encased in a glove, Lorenzaccio ran out into the street and galloped off to Bologna by way of Scarperia, leaving the citizens of Florence to make what use of the assassination they could when the body was found.

  He had taken care to ensure that the body would not be found until he was safely across the frontier by taking the key of his room with him. He had also made it impossible for opponents of the government to take immediate advantage of the murder by keeping his plans dark from them. It was Benedetto Varchi’s belief that if a single man had come forward immediately to lead a revolution, the Medicean party might well have been overthrown. Realizing this, ‘Guicciardini, who without any doubt was the leader of the Palleschi, Cardinal Cibò and all Alessandro’s former courtiers trembled with fright…as the populace was most hostile and they themselves were without arms’ – the captain of the Duke’s guard, Alessandro Vitelli, together with several of his men, being away at Città di Castello.

  Cardinal Cibò was first made aware of his danger when, on Sunday morning, Alessandro’s bodyguard asked how long they were expected to stand on duty outside Lorenzaccio’s house. Cibò told them to stay there until further notice, ordering them not to breathe a word to anyone about their reason for being there. Then, having made sure that Alessandro had not returned to his own house, he gave it out that the Duke had had a particularly exhausting night and was now in bed resting. It was not until evening that he had the door of Lorenzaccio’s bedroom broken open to reveal Alessandro’s body. And it was not until the following day that the news of his murder became known to the opponents of the regime. By then it was too late for successful action. Vitelli had returned, and the Palleschi were in command of the situation. A group of would-be revolutionaries approached Francesco Vettori, the most prominent of those distinguished citizens supposed to be anti-Medicean. Vettori, however, while making some vague promises of support, recognized that the time for an uprising was now past. He immediately went to Guicciardini and threw in his lot with the Palleschi.

  The Palleschi met on Monday morning to discuss the succession at the Palazzo della Signoria, now renamed the Palazzo Vecchio. Cardinal Cibò suggested that Alessandro’s illegitimate son, Giulio, then four years old, should be created Duke with himself as Regent. But this suggestion was rejected by the others who proposed calling upon Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo was the son of the great Giovanni delle Bande Nere and of Maria Salviati, granddaughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico, a young man, politically inexperienced and morally unexceptionable, in no way compromised by the evils of Alessandro’s rule. In fact, Guicciardini, who had hopes not only of using Cosimo to win the government for himself but also of arranging a marriage between him and one of his daughters, had already sent an invitation to the seventeen-year-old boy to come to Florence without delay from his villa of II Trebbio in the Mugello.

  When the Council was asked to approve this solution the following day, however, not all its members agreed to do so. One of them, Palla Rucellai, bravely announced that he ‘wanted neither Dukes nor Lords nor Princes in the Republic’, and, picking up a white bean to toss into the urn on the table, added, ‘Here is my vote and here is my head!’

  Giucciardini riposted by declaring that he, ‘for one, would not endure that a mob of ciompi should ever again govern Florence’. He was not proposing that Cosimo should be created Duke but merely elected head of the Republic and subject to constitutional limitations as well as to what were to be known as ‘magnificent counsellors’. The discussion continued for hours and would have continued longer had not Vitelli, the captain of the guard, who had been promised the lordship of Borgo San Sepolcro for his support of Cosimo’s nomination, intervened decisively. Tiring of the wrangle in the council chamber, he contrived a noisy scuffle between his soldiers under its windows. There were shouts that ‘Cosimo, son of the great Giovanni, must be Duke of Florence! Cosimo! Cosimo! Cosimo!’ And an authoritive voice cried out, ‘Hurry up. The soldiers can’t be held any longer!’

  This settled the matter. Cosimo’s nomination was approved, and Guicciardini looked forward to the exercise of power in his name. Yet those who knew Cosimo took leave to doubt that Guicciardini would be able to control him in the manner he intended. As Benvenuto Cellini commented:

  They
have mounted a young man on a splendid horse – then told him you must not ride beyond certain boundaries. Now tell me who is going to restrain him when he wants to ride beyond them? You can’t impose laws on a man who is your master.

  PART FOUR

  1537–1743

  XX

  DUKE COSIMO I

  ‘There is little joy to be discerned in the faces of the people’

  COSIMO HAD been born in Florence, in the large and gloomy Palazzo Salviati, the family home of his mother, Maria, daughter of Giacomo Salviati who had married Leo X’s sister, Lucrezia. Leo X had stood as his godfather and had suggested that the baby should be christened Cosimo, ‘to revive’, so he had said, ‘the memory of the wisest, the bravest and most prudent man yet born to the house of Medici’.

  The mother had been fond of her uncle, the Pope, to whom she bore a strong resemblance. Her eyes were big and dark, her face pudsy and her skin unnaturally pale, the result of drastic cosmetic treatment she had undergone in order to render herself more attractive to her husband, whose unconcealed preference for other women at first distressed and finally embittered her. She had rarely seen him, for he had so often been away at the wars and his visits home to Florence had never been prolonged. On one of these brief visits, so a characteristic story of him went, he had come clattering down the Corso on his charger and, looking up to the windows of the Palazzo Salviati, had caught sight of his son in the arms of a nurse. ‘Throw him down!’ he had called out. The nurse had naturally been reluctant to obey. ‘Thrown him down,’ Giovanni had shouted again. ‘Throw him down. I order you to do so.’ The nurse had held out her arms, shut her eyes and let go. Giovanni had caught the boy and kissed him, and, delighted by the calm, uncomplaining way in which Cosimo accepted both the fall and the embrace, had declared, ‘Aye, you’ll be a prince! It’s your destiny.’