‘When my son inherited the opportunity to save the bank, in the form of the great sum Cosimo had put aside for him, I led him to reject that opportunity and instead I told him to use the money in support of his greater aim, to become a great prince.
‘With my son Lorenzo I have committed many further sins.’
Suddenly overcome by the magnitude of what she was about to say, she fell to her knees, and as she did so, the words started to spill out and once they started, she couldn’t stop them. They kept on flowing.
‘I confess that I have given birth to an ogre, a tyrant, a sadist, a monster. But now it is too late. If I am to prevent the collapse of the whole government of the city, which has become dependent upon him, I have to continue to support him, and to pray for his soul as well as my own.
‘Our sins are many. Together we neglected the bank, defrauded the bank, defrauding the cousins of their bags of gold, their inheritance from Pier Francesco.
‘When the people of Volterra rose up against his unwillingness to return the alum mines to them, I supported my son as, with inappropriate and excessive violence, he sacked the city, put down the people and cowed them into submission by building a great citadel in the heart of their ancient city.
‘I also allowed my son to commit revengeful dishonouring of many noble families, particularly the Pazzi, with vindictive pursuit of their families, until they feared for their very lives.
‘Together, we are guilty of the destruction of trust and respect, throughout the city, to be replaced by fear. We are guilty of bringing the Republic of Florence into unnecessary war, through pride, through deceitful misuse of the people, through the dissemination of false information and of the enslavement of the republic to the Dukedom of Milan, a treasonable act in the law of the Florentine republic.’
‘For these many sins, I ask forgiveness.’
For a moment she considered ending it there, but could she? Surely it was too late? Already God had seen her make her list and if she did not read them all out, she would have compounded the sin.
But yet? Antonio’s warning came back to her. This is not a man to be trusted.
Could she tell him? Dare she tell him? How could she find the words to describe such an event?
CAREGGI
16th April 1444
Lucrezia is in Careggi. She is seventeen years old and still reeling from the shock of being told, three days ago, that she will marry Piero. In six weeks she will be married. She has been brought to Careggi by her beloved Giovanni, Piero’s brother, to talk about the marriage. She assumes his role is to talk her round. But now this. Nothing prepared her for this.
‘Please don’t look at me like that, Lucrezia.’
She is finding it hard to speak. Even – perhaps especially, to the man she loves. The man she has loved for perhaps half her life. ‘I … I feel doubly deceived, Giovanni. Deceived by my husband-to-be, even before I am due to marry him, and at the same time, deceived by you – the one love I have had in my life. How can you both do this to me?’
He flaps his hands helplessly. ‘What can I say? I admit I have fathered a child with this woman. No, I don’t love her but she made herself available to me and she was …’
‘Attractive? You lusted after her? Despite all your soft words to me you were lusting after another woman?’
‘It was nothing. She was … available. That’s all.’
‘So you bed any woman who is available? Giovanni! How can you sink so low? Do you not realize how such actions diminish me? Me who loves you?’
The hang-dog expression and flapping hands show he has no excuses. She knows he knows her too well to attempt to divert her anger with clever speeches. ‘I cannot excuse myself. What is done is done. And I am not, even if I would wish to be with all my heart, betrothed to you.’
That’s one point she has to accept. The truth is, she has no hold over him now and he has no obligations to her. ‘But why Piero? Why should he pretend to be the father, when he is about to marry me? Why does he humiliate me that way?’
‘As I told you, because there is a very good chance I will be made a cardinal. And that will benefit the whole family. If I were to acknowledge a child now, my chances would be ruined. So generously, in my interests and for the sake of the family, Piero has agreed to tell the world the child is his. And by doing so before your marriage, he sought to avoid embarrassment to you. The child and the events that created it pre-date your announcement.’
He gives her the Giovanni special look – the puppy dog embarrassed ‘please help me’ grin. ‘Please understand. Please? We could delay the announcement until after your marriage, if you prefer?’
Exhausted, she nods. She can never beat Giovanni. He always talks her round. But she won’t give up completely. ‘Perhaps that might be better. But do we have to do everything for the family?’
His head tips from side to side. ‘It’s not just for the family. Our agreement, the agreement Piero and I have come to, has benefits for you and for me too. And, in truth, for him.’
She frowns. ‘Why? How? In what way?’
He takes her hand. ‘In the interests of parentado, Cosimo has chosen to marry you to Piero. But, and this is difficult to tell you … He can never give you children. Piero is impotent. He can’t even – you know – do it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh come on. Boys – brothers – we talk about such things.’
‘You mean I won’t have to …? With Piero?’
‘Exactly. Not only won’t have to, but from what I know, couldn’t even if you wanted to.’
She gasps, although whether with shock or relief she is not sure. The prospect of making love with Piero had been a part of the nightmare. ‘So I will never have children?’ He pulls an awkward face but doesn’t reply. ‘And if you are to be a celibate cardinal, the Medici male line will end here?’
Giovanni has his puppy face on again. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly say that, did I?’
‘She shakes her head. This is all beyond understanding. ‘What then?’
‘Listen. As head of the family, Piero needs sons, as you say, to continue the line. But as he has admitted, he cannot father children on you. So …’
‘So?’ She can almost but not quite guess what’s coming. After Giovanni’s last revelation, anything’s possible.
‘Well, as the child Maria shows, I can. So Piero and I have come to an agreement. What you might call a reciprocal agreement. That you and I will make children and that he as your husband and head of the household will publicly accept them as his own.’
She stares at him. She thought she understood the Medici. But this? She is speechless.
Giovanni smiles. ‘Neat eh?’
‘Neat? Is that what you call it? Almost incestuous adultery and you call it neat?’
‘Almost incestuous. But not actually. And anyway, nobody need know. Piero gets his children and you and I are, to all intents and purposes, married.’ He stands back and looks at her.
She blows her nose. ‘But it’s sinful.’
‘It’s not. Not really. Not if we all agree. It’s pragmatic. It works. It’s what you and I have always wanted.’ The head tips from side to side once again. ‘Well, almost.’ He waits, looking at her as she thinks. ‘If after a little time you both feel it’s wrong and sinful, you could always get a dispensation from the pope. On the grounds of impotence. It’s preferable to an annulment. I’m sure he’d agree.’ He takes hold of her elbow. ‘Put it this way. It’s better than being properly married to Piero isn’t it?’
It takes her some time to agree. But she does. And in the end and by the time the shock and surprise have worn off, not all that reluctantly.
Lucrezia realized she was biting her lip. She glanced at Savonarola’s face, trying to visualize herself looking up, trying to explain.
You see there was the possibility – indeed a strong possibility – that Giovanni would be made a cardinal, and then this child, Maria, came along. The problem was,
the mother was a noblewoman and related to the pope. It was too big a risk. So Piero agreed to declare the girl as his own and to promise to look after her as a Medici. He told me the truth at the time and I, shortly to marry him, and wishing to please, and still loving Giovanni and willing to do anything for him, agreed to bring her up as my own.
He might believe that.
It was only when he brought the matter up in the context of the pope’s dispensation, that I fully realized what my husband and his brother were telling me, that he knew he could not give me a child but that they believed his brother Giovanni could. Not only that, but in the interests of the family, they were both willing to be complicit in the deception. And it worked. Lorenzo was Giovanni’s son. And so was Giuliano. And so were the girls – all of them, although of course, Maria was not mine.
It was flimsy. Riddled with risks when you were talking to a priest. And a zealot priest at that.
It makes no difference. Lorenzo is a true Medici, of the same line and identical grandparents. And I am his true mother.
He wouldn’t swallow that, she was sure. It made no difference. She would have to do better than that. And then there was Piero’s position to consider. She couldn’t put that at risk. Suppose the monk began telling everyone?
Only Lorenzo and I and Giovanni knew the certainty of this. I never told Piero to his face that Lorenzo was not his, and he was careful never to ask me. But of course he knew. It could not possibly have been otherwise
She closed her eyes and heard her own words. How would they sound? How would he respond to them? Silently she tried to rehearse them.
And now, I must confess to one greater sin. With my brother-in-law I committed adultery. In my defence, I shall say that it was with the agreement of my husband, who knew he was unable to give me children. It began when we applied to the pope for a plenaria remissio. Piero told me he had sinned in saying that Maria was his.
Dare she say it? She would have to accompany this confession, more than any of the others, with a strict warning.
Now you share this information under the privilege of the confessional. On sufferance of excommunication and of death. For make no mistake, if ever word of this gets out, Lorenzo will know the source and he will take terrible revenge.
But would it work? Could he be trusted?
She opened her eyes and looked at Savonarola, her mind fighting against itself.
He was looking at her now, with an intensity that made her feel uncomfortable. What did Antonio say? In the name of religious penance, he almost tortured the young novices.
There was something wrong with that look, that stillness, that degree of concentration. She felt herself swallow, throat dry, afraid of him.
And then, like a great lizard, his tongue came out and he licked his lips.
This is not a man to be trusted.
She looked at Savonarola and she knew. She couldn’t do it.
‘This is my confession of the sins I have committed. For these, my many sins, I ask forgiveness.’
Drained of all emotion, she looked at him for a reaction. For some time he sat, absorbing all that she had said. And, perhaps, also, all that he sensed she hadn’t said. Even now she knew he was willing her to say more.
She dared not say more. She could not say more. She must end it now.
‘Tell me what I must do to save my soul?’
Now the moment had come she was afraid, and she was finding his silence intolerable. That lick of the lips, she had felt as if she was waiting to be devoured. Had she said too much over the weeks? Could he be trusted? The truth was, she didn’t know.
He licked his lips again and this time he swallowed hard.
And in that instant, she knew he had accepted that he had just lost.
Appearing beaten, he gave his pronouncement. ‘These are indeed many and great sins. I shall have to consider my reply. I will send you my judgement in writing, once I have had time to consider the matter more fully. In the meantime, try to counsel your son to mend his ways, continue in your religious writings and give generously to the poor.’
Epilogue
Early the following morning, Girolamo Savonarola left the Bagno à Morba and walked away, alone.
He followed the narrow lane to the main mountain road, turned right and began to climb up towards the pass, toward Montecerboli, on to Montecastelli, past Monteguidi, through Càsole d’Elsa, and then down the long slope to Colle di Val d’Elsa. From there he would follow the river past Poggio Imperiale before he began the second long climb over the hills to Tavarnelle and then finally down again to Florence, and his future.
He was grim-faced. His sandals were badly worn and he was not sure they would last the long walk. The mist he could see ahead of him would, he knew, soon soak through the rough material of his cassock and his shirt and hair shirt beneath. Before the day was out, the blood from his iron belt would surely be running down his legs, as had happened many times before. And when that happened, passers-by would look at him and start to consider whether he was an escaped criminal, or just, as many had thought in the past, another lunatic monk.
But none of those matters was the reason for his grim face. That was caused by the two questions, questions that niggled away at him as he began to climb.
The first was how to use the knowledge he had gained at the Bagno à Morba in God’s name?
Now, he felt, he was starting to understand the city he was returning to. Such deceits and vanities. Burning was the only answer. But how could he bring this about? It would need long and careful thought, and slow and careful action. It might take him years. But at least he knew who to talk to now. And what questions to ask them. And which of their answers to believe.
There was no rush. God was not in any hurry.
But at that moment, as he started to climb into the barren hills, the question that was really troubling him was the second one. How could he get all the way to the Monastery of San Marco in Florence without his secret being discovered?
His secret was a burden, both physically and mentally. If discovered, he would not last one day in front of Lorenzo. The very thought of it made his throat go dry. For in his leather satchel, beside his bible, wrapped in his now-bulging breviary and surrounded by his spare shirt, were pages and pages of detailed notes, each in his tiny spidery handwriting. Between them, they recorded everything that Mona Lucrezia had said.
Author’s Note
The rapid rise and the equally rapid collapse of the Medici Bank (which was effectively all over in less than a hundred years) is a remarkable story – not least because there are so many parallels with the banking crisis of the present period.
For those who wish to understand these issues in detail, I recommend Tim Parks’ Medici Money for an outstanding and clearly written overview and Raymond de Roover’s The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 for a detailed textbook analysis.
What I have tried to do in the series The House of Medici is to tell the story from a human point of view. What was it like to live through these great events, to face the great opportunities offered to successive Medici sons but also to manage the problems that regularly occurred in a rapidly changing world and to suffer the disappointments when people let you down?
And in all of this, to try to answer the question: ‘How did it all go so disastrously wrong?’
In the first book in the series, The House of Medici – Inheritance of Power, we saw how Cosimo de’ Medici faithfully passed on the rules given to him by his father, but at the same time allowed his own actions to break those rules more often than they reflected them.
First, the new partnership structure no longer protected the family from losses incurred within the widely spread branches. Second, Cosimo’s choice of managers broke all his father’s rules of promoting the best and not the family. Third, the new partnership agreements with the branches motivated the branch managers to act foolhardily and in their own local interests. And fourth, slippage in maintaining the bank�
�s originally strict systems of annual audit meant that the centre did not recognize problems until it was far too late.
It was this slippery slope that Piero inherited.
Unfortunately it was the same with politics. Cosimo had always presented the Medici as commoners, members of the popolani, but his true intentions were visible to those who took the trouble to put aside his words and instead to observe his deeds. He had married Contessina Bardi, the daughter of a count, and later he married his elder son Piero to Lucrezia Tornabuoni.
It turned out to be one of his greatest mistakes, as this second book, The House of Medici – Seeds of Decline , tries to show.
Cosimo tried to protect the family’s future from the weakness he could see all too plainly in Piero. First, he tried putting his second son Giovanni in charge of the bank. Second, he hid a fortune – Lorenzo’s Gold, 200,000 Florins (£24 million in today’s money) – deep beneath a convent in order to give his grandson the opportunity to salvage something from the mess he knew Piero would inevitably leave behind. And finally, in a feeble attempt to prop up his son’s weaknesses, he forced Lucrezia Tornabuoni to marry Piero.
Lucrezia was one of the outstanding women of her age, not only a poet but a successful businesswoman in her own right, owning shops and a hotel in Pisa and the medicinal baths at Bagno à Morba, south of Volterra, which she personally redeveloped into a thriving business. Uncomfortably for both of them, she was considerably brighter and more able than Piero. Not only that, but (as Cosimo was fully aware) she was in love with his younger brother – her childhood hero Giovanni.
What Cosimo was not to know was that in her resentment over her marriage, Lucrezia would bring up her precocious son Lorenzo in direct opposition to the Medici Creed. She could see through both facades. She understood partnership agreements, selection and recruitment of managers, contracts, motivation and financial controls. It was obvious to her that the bank was on the slide.
Seeds of Decline Page 20
