HIST30006_Readings_Week 7 (formerly Wk 6)

The Renaissance in Italy

SUBJECT READER 
 COMPILED BY CATHERINE KOVESI

WEEK 6

Florence under Lorenzo de’ Medici 6.1_Guicciardini Guicciardini, Francesco. ‘A Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici’. In The Portable Renaissance Reader, edited by J.B. Ross and M.M. McLaughlin, 267-278. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

6.2_Machiavelli Machiavelli, Niccolò. ‘On Lorenzo de’ Medici’. In History of Florence, Book 8, Chapter vii.

6.3_Bullard Bullard, M.M. ‘The Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici: between myth and history’.

In Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of H.G. Koenigsberger, edited by P. Mack and M.C. Jacob, 25-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

6.4_Kent Kent, F.W. ‘Patron-Client Networks in Renaissance Florence and the Emergence of Lorenzo as “Maestro Della Bottega”.’ In Princely Citizen: Lorenzo de’ Medici and Renaissance Florence, 199-225. Turnhout, Brepols Publishers, 2013.

6.5_Poliziano Poliziano, Angelo. ‘The Pazzi Conspiracy from his Coniurationis commentarium’. In Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History and Arts, edited by Ste-

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fano Baldassar and Arielle Saiber, 96-102. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. 96-102.

6.6_Rinuccini Rinuccini, Alamanno. ‘A Condemnation of Lorenzo’s Regime from his Dialogus de liberatate’. In Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History and Arts, edited by Stefano Baldassar and Arielle Saiber, 103-114. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000.

6.7_Brown Brown, A. ‘Lorenzo and Public Opinion in Florence: The Problem of Opposition’. In Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, edited by G. C. Garfagnini, 61-85. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.

6.8_Najemy Najemy, John M. ‘The Medici and the Ottimati: A Partnership of Conflict, Part 2: Lorenzo’. In A History of Florence, 1200-1575, 341-374. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

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SECTION 1

Francesco Guicciardini, A Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1509) The city was in a state of perfect peace, the citizens the state united and bound together, and the so powerful that no one dared to oppose it, Every day the populace delighted in spectacles, feasts, and novel diversions. The city was sustained both by its abundant supplies and its flourishing and well-established business enterprises; men of talent and ability were rewarded through the recognition and support given to all letters, all arts, all gifts. And finally when the city was in a state of profound tranquility and quiet within, and at the height of glory and reputation without - as a result of having a government and a head of the greatest authority, of having recently extended its dominion, of having been in great part responsible for the salvation of Ferrara and then of King Ferrante, of controlling completely Pope Innocent, of being allied with Naples and Milan, and of being a kind of balance for Italy as a whole - something happened which turned everything upside down, to the confusion not only of the city but all of of Italy. And this was the fact that in the said year, Lorenzo de' Medici, having had a long illness, but one which was at first diagnosed by the doctors as of slight importance, and perhaps not looked after with adequate care, but which nevertheless had secretly taken hold of him, finally on the ‌ day of April, 1492, passed from this life.

This death was marked out as one of the greatest consequence by many omens: a comet had appeared a short time before; wolves had been heard to howl; a mad woman in Santa Maria Novello had cried out that an ox with fiery horns was burning up the whole city; some lions had fallen into a fight and the most beautiful had been killed by the others; and finally a day or two before his death lightning had struck at night the lantern of the dome of Santa Liparata [Reparata] and knocked down some enormous stones, which fell toward the house of the Medici. And some also considered it a portent that Master Fiero Lione of Spoleto, by reputation the leading Italian physician, who had taken care of Lorenzo, threw himself as if in despair down a well and drowned there, although some say he had been thrown in.

Lorenzo de' Medici was forty-three years old when he died, and he had been in the government of the city twenty-three years, because when his father Piero died in 1469 he was twenty years old. And although he was so young and supposedly under the control of Messer Tommaso Soderini and other elders of the state, nevertheless, in a short time he gained such strength and reputation that he governed the city in his own way.

Since his authority multiplied every day and then reached its height through the politi410

cal crisis of 1478 and later on his return from his successful mission to Naples, he continued until his death to govern the city and to arrange matters entirely according to his own will, as if he were the sole and absolute master. And because the greatness of this man was of the highest order, and Florence never had a citizen equal to him, and his fame was very widespread both after his death and while he lived, it does not seem to me out of place but rather most suitable to give a detailed account of his habits and his character. Such a portrait I can draw not from experience, because I was a boy when he died, but from persons and places that are reliable and worthy of credence, and of such a kind that, unless I deceive myself what I write will be pure truth.

There were in Lorenzo many and most excellent virtues; there were also in him some vices, due partly to nature, partly to necessity. He possessed such great authority that one could say that in his time the city was not free although it abounded in all the glory and felicity that a city can have; free in name, but in fact and in truth tyrannized over by one of its citizens. His deeds, although they can be censured in part, were very great nonetheless, and so great that they win much more admiration from careful consideration of the facts than from mere hearsay, because they are lacking in those feats of arms and in that military art and discipline for which the ancients are so famous.

This was due not to any fault of his but to the age and the customs of the time. One does but to not read in his life about a single masterly defence of a city, not a single remarkable storming of a fortress, nor a stratagem in battle and victory over the enemy.

And yet, although his deeds do not shine with such brilliance of arms, there will certainly be found in him all those signs and evidences of ability which one can see and consider in civil life.

No one, even among his adversaries and those who maligned him, denies that there was in him a very great and extraordinary genius. To have governed the city for twenty-three years, and always with increasing power and glory, is such proof of it that anyone who denies it is mad; especially since this is a city most free in speech, full of the most subtle and restless talents, such a small dominion as to make it impossible to sustain all its citizens with its resources, making it necessary, after having contented a small number, to exclude the others. Proof also is the friendship and great reputation he enjoyed with many princes both inside and outside Italy, with Pope Innocent, with King Ferrante, with Duke Galeazzo, with King Louis of France, and finally with the Great Turk and with the Sultan, by whom in the last years of life he was presented with a giraffe, a lion, and some rams. This reputation sprang from nothing else than knowing how to keep the friendship of these princes with great dexterity and skill.

Proof also to those who heard him was his public and private discourse, full of acumen and subtlety, by which in many times and places, and especially in the Diet of Cremona, he gained very great advantage. Proof also are the letters dictated by him, 411

full of such art that one could not ask for more; these seemed the more beautiful inasmuch as they were accompanied by a great eloquence and a most elegant style.

He had the good judgement of a wise man, but nevertheless not of a quality comparable to his genius; and he was seen to commit various acts of rashness, such as the war with Volterra, which, through his desire to win out over the people of Volterra in regard to the alum mines, forced her to rebel and lit a fire capable of turning all Italy upside down, although in the end it turned out well. Also, after the revolt of 1478, if he had borne himself gently with the pope and king, perhaps they would not have broken out into war against him, but by wishing to act the injured one and not wishing to conceal the injury received, he precipitated a war which caused the greatest damage and danger to himself and to the city. Again, the mission to Naples was considered too heated and hasty an undertaking, considering that he put himself into the hands of a king who was most restless, faithless, and hostile to him. And if, indeed; the necessity for peace in which he and the city found themselves excused him, nevertheless it was believed he could have achieved it with greater security and not less advantage by staying in Florence.

He desired glory and excellence beyond that of anyone else, and in this he can be criticized for having had too much ambition even in regard to minor things; he did not wish to be equalled or imitated by any citizen even in verses or games or exercises, turning angrily against any who did so. He was too ambitious even in great affairs, inasmuch as he wished in every thing to equal or emulate all the princes of Italy, which was very displeasing to Lord Ludovico. In general, however, such ambition was praiseworthy and was responsible for making his renown celebrated everywhere, even outside Italy, because he strove to bring it about that in his time all the arts and talents should be more excellent in Florence than in any other city of Italy. Chiefly for the sake of letters he re-founded in Pisa a university of law and the arts, and, having been shown that for many reasons not so large a number of students could assemble there as in Padua and Pavia, he said it was enough for him that the College of Lecturers should surpass the others. And therefore there always taught in Pisa in his time, with the highest salaries, all the most excellent and famous men of Italy, whom he did not spare expense or trouble to secure. And similarly there flourished in Florence the studies of the humanities under Messer Agnolo Poliziano, of Greek under master Demetrios and later Lascaris, and the studies of philosophy and of art under Marsilio Ficino, Messer Giorgio Benigno, the Count of Mirandola, and other excellent men. He showed the same favour to vernacular poetry, to music, architecture, painting, sculpture, and all the fine and mechanical arts, so that the city was overflowing with all these graces. These arts developed all the more because he, being most versatile, could pass judgment on them and distinguish among men, with the result that all strove with one another in order to 412

please him the more. Of advantage also was the boundless generosity with which he showered pensions on talented men and supplied them with all the tools necessary to their arts. For example, when he wanted to create a Greek library, he sent Lascaris, a most learned man who taught Greek in Florence, as far as Greece to seek out ancient and good books.

This same liberality preserved his renown and his friendship with the princes outside Italy, since he neglected no show of magnificence, even at the greatest expense and loss, by which he might influence great men. And so, through such display and lavishness, his expenditures multiplied in Lyons, Milan, Bruges, and in the various centres of his trade and his company, while his profits diminished from being neglected by incompetent agents, such as Lionetto de' Rossi, Tommaso Portinari, and others. His accounts were not well kept because he did not understand commerce or pay enough attention to it, and as a result his affairs more than once fell into such disorder that he was on the point of bankruptcy, and it was necessary for him to help himself out both with money from his friends and with public funds.

In 1473, therefore, he borrowed from the sons of Pierfrancesco de' Medici sixty thousand ducats, which, not being able to return, he paid back gradually by turning over to them the villa of Cafaggiuolo with the property he owned in Mugello. He ordered that in the war of that year the soldiers should be paid at the bank of the Bartolini, in which he held shares; and by his order there was withheld from the payments such a large commission that it amounted to about eight per cent interest. This caused a loss to the commune because the condottieri were lacking so many men through defection, and the commune had to enter into so many more military contracts. And later at another time he availed himself of public funds to take care of his needs and necessities, which were often so urgent that in 1484, to avoid bankruptcy, he was forced to borrow from Lord Ludovico four thousand ducats and to sell for another four thousand a house he owned in Milan, which had been given by Duke Francesco to Cosimo, his grandfather. One can well believe that he did this with tears in his eyes, considering his nature, so generous and magnificent. When he found himself left behind by the changes in commerce, he tried to secure an income from landed property of fifteen or twenty thousand ducats; and he so expanded his earlier holdings in Pisan property that the income must have come to ten thousand.

He was very proud by nature, so much so that, besides desiring that men should not oppose him, he even wished them to understand him intuitively, using few and ambiguous words in important affairs. In ordinary conversation he was very witty and agreeable; in domestic life, refined rather than sumptuous, except in the banquets at which he honoured magnificently the many noble foreigners who came to Florence. He was licentious, and very amorous and constant in his loves, which usually lasted several 413

years. In the opinion of many this so weakened his body that it caused him to die relatively young. His last love, which lasted many years, was for Bartolomea de' Nasi, wife of Donato Benci, who was by no means beautiful but with a style and grace of her own. He was so infatuated with her that one winter when she stayed in the country he would leave Florence at five or six o'clock in the evening on horseback with several companions to go to her, departing, however, in time to be back in Florence in the morning before daybreak. When his companions, Luigi della Stufa and Butta de' Medici, complained, she, perceiving this, brought them into such disfavour with Lorenzo that to satisfy her he sent Luigi as ambassador to the Sultan and Butta to the Great Turk. What foolishness that one of such great reputation and prudence, forty years old, should be so taken with a woman, who was not beautiful and already well along in years, that he was led to do what would be disgraceful to any boy!

He was considered by some as naturally cruel and vindictive because of the harshness he showed in dealing with the Pazzi conspiracy, imprisoning the innocent young men of the family and not wishing the young girls to be married, after so much slaughter had taken place in those days. This event was so bitter, however, that it was no wonder he was extraordinarily angered by it. And it was seen later that, softened by time, he gave permission for the girls to be married and was willing for the Pazzi to come out of prison and go to live outside the territory of Florence. It was seen also in his other dealings that he did not employ cruelty and that he was not a bloodthirsty person.

But the trait in him which was more serious and annoying than anything else was suspicion. This came perhaps not so much from his nature as from the knowledge that he had to hold down a free city, and one in which what was done had to be done by magistrates and according to the laws of the city under the appearance and form of liberty. In the beginning, therefore, when he first began to gain a foothold, he set about holding down as much as possible all those citizens whom he knew to be commonly esteemed either because of noble birth, or wealth, or power, or reputation. And although these men, if they were of families and ancestry faithful to the state, were generously granted magistracies, embassies, commissions, and similar honours, nevertheless, not trusting them, he appointed as supervisors of the scrutinies [election lists] and taxes, and confided his intimate secrets to, men whom he convinced that they were of such quality that without his help they would not have succeeded.

This same suspicion led him to take care that many men powerful in themselves should not become related by marriage, and he did his best to arrange matches in such a way that they would not cause him any reason for suspicion; sometimes, in order to prevent these unions, forcing youths of rank to take as wives those whom they would not have chosen. And finally things reached the point where no marriage alliance at all, except the most unimportant, was established without his intervention and permission.

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This same suspicion accounts for the fact that in order to prevent the ambassadors who went abroad from passing beyond his control he ordered secretaries, paid by the state, to be established in Rome, Naples, and Milan, who were in the service of the resident ambassadors and from whom he received separate reports and was informed about current affairs.

I do not wish to attribute to suspicion the fact that he was escorted by a large number of armed guards, whom he favoured considerably, giving to some hospitals and places of refuge, because the conspiracy of the Pazzi was the reason for it. Nevertheless this was not a free city and a private citizen, but a city in servitude and a tyrant. And finally one must conclude that Îźnder him the city was not free, but, nevertheless, it would have been impossible for it to have had a better or more pleasing tyrant. From his inclination and natural goodness came infinite advantages, but through the necessity of tyranny some evils, although they were restrained and limited as much as necessity permitted; there were very few inconveniences through his intention and free will.

And although those whom he had held down rejoiced at his death, nevertheless it was a source of sorrow to men in the government and even to those who had sometimes been injured, not knowing what would happen to them. It caused great grief also to the city in general and to the common people, whom he had continuously kept in abundance, supplied with pleasures, delights, and festivals. It caused the greatest anguish to all men in Italy of excellence in letters, painting, sculpture, or similar arts, either because they had been encouraged by him with great rewards or because they had been the more esteemed by other princes who feared that if they were not caressed they would go over to Lorenzo.

He left three sons: Piero, the first, about twenty-one years old; Messer Giovanni the Cardinal, the second, who a few weeks before Lorenzo's death had received the hat and had been established in the dignity of the cardinalship; Giuliano, the third, still a boy. Lorenzo was of medium height, his countenance coarse and dark in colour and yet with an air of dignity; his pronunciation and voice were harsh and unpleasing because he talked through his nose.

There are many who seek to know which was more excellent, Cosimo or Lorenzo, because Piero, although superior to them both in piety and mercy, was beyond doubt inferior to them in the other virtues. In this inquiry it seems to be agreed that Cosimo had more firmness and judgment, because he created the state, and after he had created it he enjoyed it for thirty years, securely, one can say, and without opposition, handling equally well the Blacks and the others of whom he had some fear, without coming to a break with them, and nevertheless in such a way that he was not safe. And amid so many occupation of state he did not neglect the management of business and of his private affairs but governed them with such diligence and intelligence that his 415

wealth was always greater than that of the state, which was indeed very great indeed, and he was not constrained by need to manipulate the public income or to usurp private funds. In Lorenzo there was not such good judgment, although he had only the trouble of preserving the state because he found it already created; nevertheless he preserved through many dangers, such as the crisis of the Pazzi and the expedition to Naples. He did not have ability in business and in private affairs, so that when things went badly he was forced to avail himself of public funds, and perhaps in some cases of private funds, to his great shame and blame. But there abounded in him eloquence, cleverness, and universal capacity to delight in all virtuous things and to favour them.

In eloquence Cosimo was entirely lacking; he was said, as a youth especially, to be rather inept in speaking.

The magnificence of both was very great but in different ways. Cosimo built palaces and churches inside and outside the fatherland and things which were intended to be permanent and always witness to his fame. Lorenzo began at Poggio in Caiano a most magnificent fortification but did not finish it because of death; and although it was in itself a great thing, nevertheless, in comparison with the many great walls of Cosimo, one can say that Lorenzo was no great builder of walls, But he was a very great donor, and by his gifts and liberality he made great friendships with princes and with the men who were near to them. From such things I believe one can conclude that, all things considered, Cosimo was the more excellent man; and yet through ability and fortune both were so great that perhaps, from the decline of Rome to the present, Italy has never had private citizens like them. When the news of Lorenzo's death was heard in Florence, for he died in Careggi in his villa, immediately a great multitude of citizens thronged there to visit Piero, his. son, to whom, as the eldest, the state pertained by succession. And later his obsequies were celebrated in Florence without pomp and luxury, but with a coming together of all the citizens of the city, all with some sign of mourning, thus showing that there had died a father of the people and a protector of the city. As in his lifetime the city had been happy with everything under his control, so after his death it fell into such calamity and misfortune that both his reputation and the desire for him increased beyond measure.

From¡ Storie fiorentine, ed. R. Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza e figli, 1931); trans. J.B.R.

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SECTION 2

Niccolo Machiavelli, On Lorenzo de’ Medici History of Florence, Book Eight, Chapter VII The pope becomes attached to the Florentines—The Genoese seize Serezanello—They are routed by the Florentines—Serezana surrenders—Genoa submits to the duke of Milan—War between the Venetians and the Dutch—Osimo revolts from the church—Count Girolamo Riario, lord of Furli, slain by a conspiracy—Galeotto, lord of Faenza, is murdered by the treachery of his wife—The government of the city offered to the Florentines—Disturbances in Sienna—Death of Lorenzo de' Medici—His eulogy—Establishment of his family—Estates bought by Lorenzo—His anxiety for the defense of Florence—His taste for arts and literature—The university of Pisa—The estimation of Lorenzo by other princes.

The pope having observed in the course of the war, how promptly and earnestly the Florentines adhered to their alliances, although he had previously been opposed to them from his attachment to the Genoese, and the assistance they had rendered to the king, now evinced a more amicable disposition, and received their ambassadors with greater favor than previously. Lorenzo de' Medici, being made acquainted with this change of feeling, encouraged it with the utmost solicitude; for he thought it would be of great advantage, if to the friendship of the king he could add that of the pontiff.

The pope had a son named Francesco, upon whom designing to bestow states and attach friends who might be useful to him after his own death, saw no safer connection in Italy than Lorenzo's, and therefore induced the latter to give him one of his daughters in marriage. Having formed this alliance, the pope desired the Genoese to concede Serezana to the Florentines, insisting that they had no right to detain what Agostino had sold, nor was Agostino justified in making over to the Bank of San Giorgio what was not his own. However, his holiness did not succeed with them; for the Genoese, during these transactions at Rome, armed several vessels, and, unknown to the Florentines, landed three thousand foot, attacked Serezanello, situated above Serezana, plundered and burnt the town near it, and then, directing their artillery against the fortress, fired upon it with their utmost energy. This assault was new and unexpected by the Florentines, who immediately assembled their forces under Virginio Orsino, at Pisa, and complained to the pope, that while he was endeavoring to establish peace, the Genoese had renewed their attack upon them. They then sent Piero Corsini to Lucca, that by his presence he might keep the city faithful; and Pagolantonio Soderini to Ven417

ice, to learn how that republic was disposed. They demanded assistance of the king and of Signor Lodovico, but obtained it from neither; for the king expressed apprehensions of the Turkish fleet, and Lodovico made excuses, but sent no aid. Thus the Florentines in their own wars are almost always obliged to stand alone, and find no friends to assist them with the same readiness they practice toward others. Nor did they, on this desertion of their allies (it being nothing new to them) give way to despondency; for having assembled a large army under Jacopo Guicciardini and Pietro Vettori, they sent it against the enemy, who had encamped upon the river Magra, at the same time pressing Serezanello with mines and every species of attack. The commissaries being resolved to relieve the place, an engagement ensued, when the Genoese were routed, and Lodovico dal Fiesco, with several other principal men, made prisoners. The Serezanesi were not so depressed at their defeat as to be willing to surrender, but obstinately prepared for their defense, while the Florentine commissaries proceeded with their operations, and instances of valor occurred on both sides. The siege being protracted by a variety of fortune, Lorenzo de' Medici resolved to go to the camp, and on his arrival the troops acquired fresh courage, while that of the enemy seemed to fail; for perceiving the obstinacy of the Florentines' attack, and the delay of the Genoese in coming to their relief, they surrendered to Lorenzo, without asking conditions, and none were treated with severity except two or three who were leaders of the rebellion.

During the siege, Lodovico had sent troops to Pontremoli, as if with an intention of assisting the Florentines; but having secret correspondence in Genoa, a party was raised there, who, by the aid of these forces, gave the city to the duke of Milan.

At this time the Dutch made war upon the Venetians, and Boccolino of Osimo, in the Marca, caused that place to revolt from the pope, and assumed the sovereignty. After a variety of fortune, he was induced to restore the city to the pontiff and come to Florence, where, under the protection of Lorenzo de' Medici, by whose advice he had been prevailed upon to submit, he lived long and respected. He afterward went to Milan, but did not experience such generous treatment; for Lodovico caused him to be put to death. The Venetians were routed by the Dutch, near the city of Trento, and Roberto da S. Severino, their captain, was slain. After this defeat, the Venetians, with their usual good fortune, made peace with the Dutch, not as vanquished, but as conquerors, so honorable were the terms they obtained.

About this time, there arose serious troubles in Romagna. Francesco d'Orso, of Furli, was a man of great authority in that city, and became suspected by the count Girolamo, who often threatened him. He consequently, living under great apprehensions, was advised by his friends to provide for his own safety, by the immediate adoption of such a course as would relieve him from all further fear of the count. Having considered the matter and resolved to attempt it, they fixed upon the market day, at Furli, as 418

most suitable for their purpose; for many of their friends being sure to come from the country, they might make use of their services without having to bring them expressly for the occasion. It was the month of May, when most Italians take supper by daylight.

The conspirators thought the most convenient hour would be after the count had finished his repast; for his household being then at their meal, he would remain in the chamber almost alone. Having fixed upon the hour, Francesco went to the count's residence, left his companions in the hall, proceeded to his apartment, and desired an attendant to say he wished for an interview. He was admitted, and after a few words of pretended communication, slew him, and calling to his associates, killed the attendant.

The governor of the place coming by accident to speak with the count, and entering the apartment with a few of his people, was also slain. After this slaughter, and in the midst of a great tumult, the count's body was thrown from the window, and with the cry of "church and liberty," they roused the people (who hated the avarice and cruelty of the count) to arms, and having plundered his house, made the Countess Caterina and her children prisoners. The fortress alone had to be taken to bring the enterprise to a successful issue; but the Castellan would not consent to its surrender. They begged the countess would desire him to comply with their wish, which she promised to do, if they would allow her to go into the fortress, leaving her children as security for the performance of her promise. The conspirators trusted her, and permitted her to enter; but as soon as she was within, she threatened them with death and every kind of torture in revenge for the murder of her husband; and upon their menacing her with the death of her children, she said she had the means of getting more. Finding they were not supported by the pope, and that Lodovico Sforza, uncle to the countess, had sent forces to her assistance, the conspirators became terrified, and taking with them whatever property they could carry off, they fled to Citta di Castello. The countess recovered the state, and avenged the death of her husband with the utmost cruelty. The Florentines hearing of the count's death, took occasion to recover the fortress of Piancaldoli, of which he had formerly deprived them, and, on sending some forces, captured it; but Cecco, the famous engineer, lost his life during the siege.

To this disturbance in Romagna, another in that province, no less important, has to be added. Galeotto, lord of Faenza, had married the daughter of Giovanni Bentivogli, prince of Bologna. She, either through jealousy or ill treatment by her husband, or from the depravity of her own nature, hated him to such a degree, that she determined to deprive him of his possessions and his life; and pretending sickness, she took to her bed, where, having induced Galeotto to visit her, he was slain by assassins, whom she had concealed for that purpose in the apartment. She had acquainted her father with her design, and he hoped, on his son-in-law's death, to become lord of Faenza. A great tumult arose as soon as the murder was known, the widow, with an infant son, fled into the fortress, the people took up arms, Giovanni Bentivogli, with a condottiere of the 419

duke of Milan, named Bergamino, engaged for the occasion, entered Faenza with a considerable force, and Antonio Boscoli, the Florentine commissary, was also there.

These leaders being together, and discoursing of the government of the place, the men of Val di Lamona, who had risen unanimously upon learning what had occurred, attacked Giovanni and Bergamino, the latter of whom they slew, made the former prisoner, and raising the cry of "Astorre and the Florentines," offered the city to the commissary. These events being known at Florence, gave general offense; however, they set Giovanni and his daughter at liberty, and by the universal desire of the people, took the city and Astorre under their protection. Besides these, after the principal differences of the greater powers were composed, during several years tumults prevailed in Romagna, the Marca, and Sienna, which, as they are unimportant, it will be needless to recount.

When the duke of Calabria, after the war of 1478, had left the country, the distractions of Sienna became more frequent, and after many changes, in which, first the plebeians, and then the nobility, were victorious, the latter and length maintained the superiority, and among them Pandolfo and Jacopo Petrucci obtained the greatest influence, so that the former being distinguished for prudence and the latter for resolution, they became almost princes in the city.

The Florentines after the war of Serezana, lived in great prosperity until 1492, when Lorenzo de' Medici died; for he having put a stop to the internal wars of Italy, and by his wisdom and authority established peace, turned his thoughts to the advancement of his own and the city's interests, and married Piero, his eldest son, to Alfonsina, daughter of the Cavaliere Orsino. He caused Giovanni, his second son, to be raised to the dignity of cardinal. This was the more remarkable from its being unprecedented; for he was only fourteen years of age when admitted to the college; and became the medium by which his family attained to the highest earthly glory. He was unable to make any particular provision for Guiliano, his third son, on account of his tender years, and the shortness of his own life. Of his daughters, one married Jacopo Salviati; another, Francesco Cibo; the third, Piero Ridolfi; and the fourth, whom, in order to keep his house united, he had married to Giovanni de' Medici, died. In his commercial affairs he was very unfortunate, from the improper conduct of his agents, who in all their proceedings assumed the deportment of princes rather than of private persons; so that in many places, much of his property was wasted, and he had to be relieved by his country with large sums of money. To avoid similar inconvenience, he withdrew from mercantile pursuits, and invested his property in land and houses, as being less liable to vicissitude. In the districts of Prato, Pisa, and the Val di Pesa, he purchased extensively, and erected buildings, which for magnificence and utility, were quite of regal character.

He next undertook the improvement of the city, and as many parts were unoccupied by buildings, he caused new streets to be erected in them, of great beauty, and thus enlarged the accommodation of the inhabitants. To enjoy his power in security and re420

pose, and conquer or resist his enemies at a distance, in the direction of Bologna he fortified the castle of Firenzuola, situated in the midst of the Appennines; toward Sienna he commenced the restoration and fortification of the Poggio Imperiale; and he shut out the enemy in the direction of Genoa, by the acquisition of Pietra Santa and Serezana. For the greater safety of the city, he kept in pay the Baglioni, at Perugia, and the Vitelli, at Citta di Castello, and held the government of Faenza wholly in his own power; all which greatly contributed to the repose and prosperity of Florence. In peaceful times, he frequently entertained the people with feasts, and exhibitions of various events and triumphs of antiquity; his object being to keep the city abundantly supplied, the people united, and the nobility honored. He was a great admirer of excellence in the arts, and a patron of literary men, of which Agnolo da Montepulciano, Cristofero Landini, and Demetrius Chalcondylas, a Greek, may afford sufficient proofs. On this account, Count Giovanni della Mirandola, a man of almost supernatural genius, after visiting every court of Europe, induced by the munificence of Lorenzo, established his abode at Florence. He took great delight in architecture, music, and poetry, many of his comments and poetical compositions still remaining. To facilitate the study of literature to the youth of Florence, he opened a university at Pisa, which was conducted by the most distinguished men in Italy. For Mariano da Chinazano, a friar of the order of St. Augustine, and an excellent preacher, he built a monastery in the neighborhood of Florence. He enjoyed much favor both from fortune and from the Almighty; all his enterprises were brought to a prosperous termination, while his enemies were unfortunate; for, besides the conspiracy of the Pazzi, an attempt was made to murder him in the Carmine, by Batista Frescobaldi, and a similar one by Baldinetto da Pistoja, at his villa; but these persons, with their confederates, came to the end their crimes deserved.

His skill, prudence, and fortune, were acknowledged with admiration, not only by the princes of Italy, but by those of distant countries; for Matthias, king of Hungary, gave him many proofs of his regard; the sultan sent ambassadors to him with valuable presents, and the Turkish emperor placed in his hands Bernardo Bandini, the murderer of his brother. These circumstances raised his fame throughout Italy, and his reputation for prudence constantly increased; for in council he was eloquent and acute, wise in determination, and prompt and resolute in execution. Nor can vices be alleged against him to sully so many virtues; though he was fond of women, pleased with the company of facetious and satirical men, and amused with the games of the nursery, more than seemed consistent with so great a character; for he was frequently seen playing with his children, and partaking of their infantine sports; so that whoever considers this gravity and cheerfulness, will find united in him dispositions which seem almost incompatible with each other. In his later years, he was greatly afflicted; besides the gout, he was troubled with excruciating pains in the stomach, of which he died in April, 1492, in the forty-fourth year of his age; nor was there ever in Florence, or even in Italy, one so cele421

brated for wisdom, or for whose loss such universal regret was felt. As from his death the greatest devastation would shortly ensue, the heavens gave many evident tokens of its approach; among other signs, the highest pinnacle of the church of Santa Reparata was struck with lightning, and great part of it thrown down, to the terror and amazement of everyone. The citizens and all the princes of Italy mourned for him, and sent their ambassadors to Florence, to condole with the city on the occasion; and the justness of their grief was shortly after apparent; for being deprived of his counsel, his survivors were unable either to satisfy or restrain the ambition of Lodovico Sforza, tutor to the duke of Milan; and hence, soon after the death of Lorenzo, those evil plants began to germinate, which in a little time ruined Italy, and continue to keep her in desolation.

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SECTION 3

Melissa M. Bullard, The Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici: Between Myth and History We make certain historical figures into cultural heroes and grant them an afterlife ofttimes richer and filled with more rewards and recognition than their actual chronological lives. Lorenzo de' Medici is one of them. Mention his name, and vivid and striking images of the golden age of Florence and the Renaissance spring to mind. Lorenzo the Magnificent plays a double role for us. He is that historical person who lived in fifteenth-century Florence, and at the same time, he is a symbol of his age. As with many a figure from the past, historians can study his thought and actions through contemporary records, through his own copious correspondence and other primary sources, but those historical documents are hardly adequate sources for an analysis of his larger symbolic role.

Historical myths present special difficulties for the historian, first of all because it is not clear exactly what they are. They exist somewhere between myth and history. Like myth they are expressions of collective belief, but not disembodied belief devoid of connections to established fact. Rather they acquire significance precisely because they are beliefs about the past. The subjects of historical myths, men like Lorenzo de' Medici or George Washington, are the curious stepchildren of history because they combine elements of both myth and historical reality. They are similar to the ancient Greek demigods or Roman emperors who people believed were half-mortal, half-divine, neither entirely one nor the other. One common characteristic of historical myths is that they often attribute global significance to otherwise normal events, such as for example the rifle shot on a Concord, Massachusetts green, which, because of the American Revolution that followed, became the 'shot heard round the world'. A second characteristic is that they often include pseudo-historical material, usually in the form of stories or anecdotes which illustrate fundamental aspects of the myth. The famous anecdote recounted by Parson Weems in his biography of George Washington that as a boy the President could not tell a lie about the cherry tree he had chopped down illustrates Washington's fundamental honesty.(1) In the case of Lorenzo de' Medici, the apocryphal school for young artists he established in his garden illustrates his great interest in and patronage of Renaissance culture.(2) What precisely are the origins of these historical myths? Are they the product of a person's fame and reputation during his lifetime? Are they the deliberate, propagandistic fabrications of self-interested groups which then find a wider audience? Or do his423

torical myths contain a transcendent quality that reaches beyond specific circumstances and intentions by striking a concordant note deep within the collective memory of a culture? Until recently historians have confronted historical myths iconoclastically, treating them as impostors posing as reality, which should be exposed and shattered in the greater interests of revealing historical truth.(3) However, we need not dismiss historical myths as antithetical to reality in order to investigate them. Rather we can more profitably study them if we regard them as standing in a close and friendly proximity to historical reality in so far as they comprise the evolving process of human belief about history. This is perhaps the only way, case by case, in which we can hope to learn more about the mysterious process by which figures like Lorenzo de' Medici become mythologized and are awarded the transcendent qualities that transform them into symbols of their age.

Since historical myths do not lend themselves to investigation using traditional historical sources, we do not know precisely how they come into being, or why some figures from the past become mythologized and others not. We can be sure, however, that someone like Lorenzo de' Medici did not become the subject of historical myth by accident. The symbolic association between Lorenzo and the Renaissance that we know today is a post-Enlightenment development subsequent to elaborations by Voltaire and others of the idea of the Italian Renaissance as a special epoch of glorious intellectual and cultural achievement and of the Medici in particular as its exemplary patrons.(4) The modern identification of Lorenzo with the Renaissance draws primarily upon posthumous, sixteenth-century sources, the histories by Niccolo Valori, Guicciardini, Machiavelli and Vasari, in which the Medici myth was first codified. Lorenzo was singled out then for his remarkable genius as a statesman and peace-maker of Italy, his magnanimity as cultivator of the arts, and his grandeur as head of his family's regime in Florence. The early sixteenth-century historians who first wrote about his life and gave his biography historical interpretation established the outlines of a magnificent portrait that would be copied and embellished in literature and art in the centuries to come.

Twentieth-century historians who first became interested in historical views of the Medici as part of the phenomenon of the Renaissance and its place in the development of European historiography, have focussed almost exclusively on this sixteenth-century phase of the Medici myth and its subsequent modern developments.(5) The codification of the myth in the sixteenth century, however, was only an intermediate stage in a much larger myth-making process that had been underway while Lorenzo was still alive. The focus of the following discussion is upon the entire process of myth formation and especially upon its critical developments during Lorenzo's lifetime.

Three principal catalytic elements contributed to the myth-making process already in the fifteenth century. In the first place dozens of humanists and friends had been 424

singing Lorenzo's praises from the time of his birth. Most of them did not do so for the sake of posterity, but fixed their gaze firmly on their own terrestrial patronage requests.

But the language of epideictic rhetoric which they used lent a powerful idiom of eulogy and glorification to Lorenzo's virtues and deeds which would long outlast them.

The second crucial contemporary factor was Lorenzo's own exercise of a guiding hand in the myth-making process by consciously promoting an image of his own magnificence. To be sure, his image-making had immediate political ends, but this image, like the humanists' praise, survived him and projected itself through the centuries. The third contributing element to the Medici myth was the love of the Florentine people and the respect of-admirers from all over Italy and abroad which concretized those images and praise and thus awarded him a special, elevated place in history. No one of these factors by itself can adequately explain the development of Lorenzo the Magnificent's historical myth. The myth arose from the complex interaction over time of all of them. At its very heart, then, the historical myth of Lorenzo is best understood not as a static, codified product of belief which, like a literary piece, can be analyzed structurally or thematically. Rather it is a dynamic and fluid process that involves the continued interaction between the historical reality of Lorenzo's life and the leavening of belief about the nature and significance of that reality, whether in the minds of sixteenthcentury Florentines, some of whom remembered Lorenzo and wrote about him; of eighteenth-century Londoners who had read William Roscoe's popular biography; or of twentieth-century university students who have just emerged from a lecture on the Renaissance.(6) Our interest in Lorenzo the Magnificent is with the process of myth, and our emphasis lies on contemporary fifteenth-century contributions to his myth more than on its modern product. But in order to identify more clearly how the process gave shape to the myth, we must begin with that product and work backward through the sixteenth century.

LORENZO AND MYTHS OF THE RENAISSANCE The special historical significance attributed to Lorenzo the Magnificent today cannot be understood apart from other widely held beliefs about the Renaissance which Lorenzo is thought to personify. Ernst Gombrich pointed out the connection between what he appropriately labeled the 'Medici myth' and a more encompassing myth of the Renaissance as golden age, which, he wrote, 'makes the Medici in general, and Lorenzo in particular, directly responsible for a magic efflorescence of the human spirit, the Renaissance'.(7) Filling out the sizeable dimensions of Lorenzo's modern role as symbol of the Renaissance constitutes part of the mythopoeic process, and certain aspects of his character and many of his deeds became exaggerated over time.(8) In keeping with Lorenzo's Augustan role as evoker of the golden age, his patronage of the arts and learning has been specially emphasized. Even though it has been demonstrated 425

that claims for Medici patronage have been greatly exaggerated, and that, notably, the famous school Lorenzo supposedly founded for young artists to study the antique sculptures in his garden at S. Marco was a later Vasari invention aimed at encouraging Duke Cosimo I's patronage of the arts, that belief still persists down to the present day.(9) The other mainstay of the Medici myth, which is likewise associated with the Vergilian metaphor of a golden age, is that the Medici ushered in an era of peace in Italy lasting as long as Lorenzo was alive. That war did break out not long after his death confirmed to many that he had been solely responsible for the peace of Italy. Lorenzo's general wisdom and peacemindedness were praised by contemporaries, but over the centuries the significance of his diplomatic feats has grown to include links to the development of the modern state system and the 'concert of Europe' idea.(10) No matter that the publication of his correspondence now reveals that he never articulated a concept of balance of power diplomacy, or that the idea of the peace of Italy, so tightly bound with his name, turns out to be commonplace in the diplomatic writings of his day.(11) Another general myth about the Renaissance which has found specific focus in Lorenzo concerns the idea of the universal man. Here his historiographical portrait broadens beyond patronage and diplomacy to include his literary endeavors, his business activities, even his physical prowess. Samples of Lorenzo's writings and poetry are regularly represented in Renaissance anthologies even though literary scholars admit much of it is modeled on Petrarch or is pedantically Neoplatonic, implying that if taken by itself apart from Lorenzo's authorship, it might not receive such reverential treatment.(12) Lorenzo was also an international banker, and even though the Medici firm nearly went bankrupt during his lifetime, his activity in the financial affairs of his day constitutes an important facet of his posthumous image.(13) Aspects of his personal life complete the portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent as the well-rounded Renaissance individual. He is renowned for his hospitality in the Medici palace on the Via Larga where he hosted heads of state in elegance and carefully understated luxury. His banquets and entertainments were famous for their lavish inventiveness. In addition, he was a lively gamesman and tournament champion.(14) The charming story used to illustrate the special affinity between Lorenzo, the quasi-chivalric hero, and his steed concerns his favorite racehorse Morello who was reportedly so attached to his master that if Lorenzo did not come every day to feed him, the horse would lie down despondently and refuse to eat.(15) Since Lorenzo's name was linked to at least three aristocratic beauties, he even acquired a certain renown for his sexual appetite, but at the same time enjoyed a reputation as a loving and devoted father to his seven children.(16) To Lorenzo's association with the myth of the Renaissance as golden age and to the myth of the universal man must be added his identification with the special destiny of 426

Florence. Savonarola had linked his prophecies to the myth of Florence,(17) but an earlier identification of the destiny of the city with that of her most prominent citizen most certainly occurred with Lorenzo at the time of the Pazzi Conspiracy. Like the myth of the divine twins or the stories of Cain and Abel and Romulus and Remus, Lorenzo was the brother who survived to carry on the destiny of his people. The symbolic significance of the plot to assassinate him and his brother Giuliano was not lost either on contemporaries or on succeeding generations. The assassination was to take place at the high point of the mass on the holiest day of the year, Easter Sunday, in the ritual center of the city, the cathedral. That Lorenzo barely escaped with his life made his and Florence's salvation all the more dramatic.(18) In the face of defeat in the ensuing war against the papacy and Naples, Lorenzo decided to go to Naples and throw himself at the mercy of King Ferrante and sue for peace. That this feat met with success thereby restoring peace and saving Florence from a dishonorable defeat made him all the more easily identified with the fortunes of the city. The medal struck to commemorate his escape and his brother's murder depicts Lorenzo as salus publicus, salvation of the people, and Giuliano as luctus publicus, grief of the people.(19) By now the facts of Lorenzo's life are thoroughly impregnated with elements of myth, making his posthumous image larger than life. Many of the stories and anecdotes which have become a part of Lorenzo's mythicized biography are apocryphal, or exaggerations at best, and cannot be borne out by historical research. But what is interesting about the mythic aura surrounding Lorenzo is not so much that the importance of his deeds should have become puffed up over time, but rather how the mythopoeic process was set into motion and achieved literary form so rapidly. It is noteworthy that most of the marvellous stories attached to Lorenzo's life were already recounted within a generation of his death and had quickly found written expression in a number of histories and biographies dating from the early sixteenth century.

THE CRISIS OF ITALY The most widely supported explanation for the rapid idealization of Lorenzo which occurred in the generation after his death relates to the changing political situation in Florence at that time. Felix Gilbert has argued persuasively that the small but influential group of Florentine historians and political thinkers who attended the discussions in the Orti Oricellari sponsored by Bernardo Rucellai and his sons over the first two decades of the sixteenth century made a concerted, conscious effort to transform Lorenzo into an ideal leader and Laurentian Florence into an ideal age.(20) According to Gilbert their idealization of Lorenzo was not the result of a search for historical accuracy but rather a deliberate fabricating of an historical myth.(21) The myth was born out of their discontent with the changes in the government after Lorenzo's death and their attempts to press for reform. Rucellai and the conservative members of the Orti 427

gatherings sought an aristocratic regime for Florence in which the Medici would be primi inter pares, maintaining order and stability but without either kowtowing to the will of the masses or assuming too much independent control over the city. In their desire to cast a new image of Lorenzo, the Rucellai group reversed earlier opinion which had assessed Lorenzo's management of the Florentine state negatively. Leaving aside for the moment the question of contemporary opinion while Lorenzo was still alive, which had hardly solidified and was by no means uniformly critical, if the Rucellai group, meeting ten to twenty years after his death, was set upon revising a negative opinion of Lorenzo, it was the one Savonarola and his followers had been putting forth in the mid 1490s. In his sermons Savonarola had made scarcely veiled allusions to Lorenzo as the tyrant personified.(22) Such allusions accorded with Savonarola's republican views and his support of the more republican Great Council he had helped to introduce, which government, together with its chief proponent, Rucellai and the aristocrats meeting in the Orti heartily despised.

Politics undeniably played a determining role in shaping the main outlines of Lorenzo's idealized portrait in the early sixteenth century. This can be seen in the way images of him were periodically altered by highlighting now one, now another aspect of his character, depending upon which was appropriate comment on the successive changes in government. In the years before 1512 during the republican government of the Great Council, the aristocratic critics of the regime emphasized three themes, the peace and stability Florence had enjoyed under Lorenzo, the special favor he had bestowed on the arts and learning, together with the honor he had shown leading citizens such as themselves, all features of past times noticeably neglected by the then present republican regime.(23) In the period following the Medici's return from exile in 1512 when Lorenzo's grandson became too high-handed for their tastes, critics clad The Magnifico in republican garb and emphasized how he had been ever respectful of the city's vita civile and had always consulted leading citizens publicly on important matters.(24) The successive appropriations of different facets of Lorenzo's character continued through the period of the Medici dukes. The new Medici, not direct descendants of Lorenzo's line, adopted the historical Medici of the fifteenth century, and Lorenzo in particular, as their symbolic property. Together with their court iconographers such as Vasari, the later Medici used family history to enhance their own dynasticism.

The cycles of decorations in the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti Palace depicting Lorenzo consistently show him to be the learned patron of culture and the wise statesman who was arbiter of Italy. Absent is any reference to Lorenzo's respect for Florence's republican ways, no longer an appropriate theme in a city ruled by Medici dukes.(25) The changing portrait of Lorenzo in the early sixteenth century involved, however, more than the conscious manipulation of an historical person for limited political and 428

ideological purposes on the part of the Orti Oricellari group or the Medici family. Had this been the case, the resurrected image of Lorenzo probably would not have survived beyond the period of its political usefulness once the principate had been instituted or have passed beyond local dynasticism within the Medici family. The images of Lorenzo arose from a deeper psychological level of mythic consciousness.(26) To that generation of Florentines in the early sixteenth century, the memory of Lorenzo struck a much deeper resonance of response which included but reached beyond their immediate reaction to the political upheavals in their city. The sixteenth-century images of Lorenzo must also be understood against the broader background of the crisis of the whole period of the Italian wars which profoundly affected contemporary psycho-historical consciousness. The Italian wars, which began with Charles VIII's invasion in 1494 and lasted some forty years, saw repeated invasions of the Italian peninsula by French and Spanish armies. During that time the peace of Italy crumbled from within and without, and one after another the Italian states lost their independence to the more powerful European monarchies. For Rucellai, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and other of their contemporaries, the peace of Italy had died with Lorenzo de' Medici, and they drew a direct causal link between his death and the onslaught of the invasions. In his De bello italico Rucellai had been the first to articulate a connection between Charles VIII's coming and the disintegration of the diplomatic course Lorenzo had set during his lifetime, and Machiavelli implicitly accepted the same new periodization of history when he chose the death of Lorenzo as the ending point for his History of Florence.(27) The events of 1494 were especially pressing in Florentine minds because the invasion of Charles coincided with the exile of Piero de' Medici and the revolution that brought the government by the Great Council into the city. But once the dust had settled on the political debates in Florence, once aristocratic constitutional reform had failed and the Medici principate was firmly ensconced with its Spanish backers in the 1530s, still the death of Lorenzo and Charles VIII's invasion remained the critical dividing line in Florentine history. Conjunction of those two events did not fade away from the Florentine historical consciousness. In his masterful History of Italy,(28) written between 1537 and 1540, long after the Italian Wars were over, when his perspective on the crisis had clarified with the passage of time, Guicciardini perceived a sharp break in history between his own sorrowful times and the previous golden era of independence and relative peace in Italy while Lorenzo was still alive. Guicciardini perhaps more than any other of his contemporary historians realized the significance of the crisis for all of Italy, not just Florence, and consequently his portrait of Lorenzo, the departed peacemaker whom he characterized as the fulcrum (bilancia) of Italy, looms even larger in the History than it had in his earlier works dealing specifically with Florence.(29) In the History Guicciardini did not evaluate Lorenzo's policies in their own pre-invasion context, but retrospectively across the barrier of the invasions. The 429

impact of the crisis of the sixteenth century itself had helped produce the myth of Lorenzo as Italian peace-maker, which theme was repeated again and again in subsequent historical and biographical sketches of him and in the historical paintings adorning the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti Palace.

THE TRADITION OF PRAISE The crisis of Italy had sparked in Guicciardini and many of his contemporaries a heightened awareness of history. They had to understand the tragedy of their own times, and they sought explanation by reinterpreting the recent past and Lorenzo's role in shaping it. Consequently, Lorenzo's life was given literary form very rapidly. Rucellai's De bello italico and Guicciardini's Storie fiorentine both contained early historical appreciations, but it was not until Niccolo Valori wrote a substantial biography of the Magnifico that the significance of his life could be considered as a whole and stories of his youth used to prefigure the achievements of his maturity. Valori's biography was probably written soon after Leo X's election in 1513, although he claimed to have composed it shortly after Lorenzo's death.(30) Valori's family had had close ties to the Medici, and the biography included personal family recollections combined with elegiac exempla cloaked in Neoplatonic overtones, the latter probably the legacy of Marsilio Ficino, whom for many years the Valori had supported and the publication of whose works they had helped finance.(31) The biography contains nearly all of the marvelous anecdotes about Lorenzo which were to be repeated over and over again, the stories about his horse, the remarkable events surrounding the famous trip to Naples, illustrations of his erudition and practical wisdom, his passion for collecting, his entertainments, patronage and diplomatic skill. It even includes an extensive description of the series of extraordinary portents that prefigured or accompanied Lorenzo's death, calling to mind ancient models such as Suetonius' life of Caesar.

Valori projected a mythic aura around Lorenzo's life and classed him among the 'miracles of nature'.(32) According to Valori the course of Lorenzo's life was accompanied by a series of signs from the heavens, and he gave every indication of special election while still young. His wise counsel was noted at an uncommonly early age as well as his cleverness, when he saved his father from an assassination attempt by outwitting the assassins.(33) The Pazzi Conspiracy and war with Sixtus IV were, according to Valori, acts of God so that Lorenzo could prove himself in adversity.(34) Divine intervention saved him from a series of other assassination plots, and all would-be assassins, Valori notes, justly suffered violent deaths themselves.(35) It was only natural that all men should love Lorenzo when animals like his racehorse, inspired by natural intelligence, not reason, showed him a special, natural affection.(36) Under the guidance of Lorenzo's wisdom, Florence and her citizenry flourished in peace and prosperity and gained great fame. According to the biography, Lorenzo's last words were like 'divine 430

oracles', and his death which had been accompanied by such awesome portents was greeted by a great public outburst of grief, grief for the loss of so great a leader and for the-common misery of Italy.(37) In Valori's biography Lorenzo had achieved the status of a demigod or a Florentine saint. These overtones of sanctity were not lost upon the contemporary satirist, Giovanni di Domenico Mazzuoli known as lo Stradino Fiorentino, whose humorous note penned in his copy of the Italian version of Valori's biography to the effect that this was 'the life of the Magnificent, or rather of Saint Lorenzo de' Medici' (italics mine), had a ring of truth to it.(38) Valori's Vita belongs to the tradition of lives of illustrious men, a favorite Renaissance topos revived from Antiquity, which served to provide moral exempla from both recent and ancient history.(39) In the dedicatory preface to Leo X, Valori remembers that when the pope made his celebrated entrance to Florence in 1515, he had wept in front of the effigy of his father, and compares the event to Alexander's visit to the grave of Achilles and Caesar's to the grave of Alexander. This then became the ostensible reason for making Leo a gift of the Vita, and Valori felt that Leo would find there his own image in his father and that of his father in himself,(40) an idea reminiscent of Ficino's recognition of the spirit of Cosimo present in Lorenzo a generation earlier.(41) Valori's biography was well known to contemporaries. It seems to have been the major source for Guicciardini's portrait sketch of Lorenzo written between his Storie fiorentine and his History of Italy and of Machiavelli's sketch in his History of Florence.(42) Both the Latin and the Italian versions of the biography enjoyed repeated publications beginning in 1568 and continuing on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.(43) Together with Machiavelli's, Guicciardini's and Vasari's writings, the Vita of Valeri became the standard source for Lorenzo's life.

Eulogies of Lorenzo, of course, did not originate in the sixteenth century, but have their roots back in the fifteenth century in the humanist praise of him and other members of the Medici family. The culture of the Renaissance was steeped in classical rhetorical models and informed by ancient handbooks on rhetoric and oratory. The style of epideictic rhetoric itself encouraged lavish praise often in the form of metaphors replete with cosmic and mythological themes employed to illustrate and enhance the virtues of the person being praised.(44) In Poliziano's letters and verse, for example, Lorenzo became the 'man destined for the very summits';(45) 'Etruria's chief';(46) and 'the toast of every muse and nymph'.(47) This kind of eulogy was part of a tradition of praise of the Medici family that had been bestowed on his grandfather Cosimo and father Piero before him.(48) Many of the same images such as father and savior of the country, patron and protector of the people, promoter of culture and beneficent Maecenas that had been used with them were also attributed to Lorenzo. Sometimes humanist praise was no more than well431

aimed flattery designed to win favor or a position for its author.(49) In other instances, praise was used for the sincere purpose of evoking virtue. Marsilio Ficino was a great master of edificatory praise. In his letters and dedications he constantly held up to Lorenzo the example of Cosimo so that the younger Medici might learn to model his life according to the virtuous example of his grandfather. But Ficino's language was no less extravagant, and sometimes more so, than that of other eulogizers. He compared Lorenzo to the Phoenix rising and to the light in the rays of the sun.(50) Lorenzo was the one who would bring illumination to the Latin people and glory to the Florentine republic,(51) for he was the 'savior of his country'.(52) Much of this kind of epideictic writing of the second half of the fifteenth century showed strong Neoplatonic influence. This is evident not only in its reliance upon metaphor and poetic imagery but in the natural focus it found in the person of the 'prince' who symbolized the collective virtues of the people. The identification between Lorenzo and Florence flowed easily from such an idiom, illustrated in Poliziano's famous lines,

And you, Lorenzo, high born, under whose shadow Florence reposes happily in peace fearing neither winds nor threatening sky (53)

For Lippo Brandolini in the De laudibus Laurentii Medicis not only was Lorenzo the sole cause of the peace and prosperity enjoyed by Florence, but the Laurentian golden era surpassed even that of Augustus.(54) The very language of praise used by the humanists contributed considerably to the mythopoeic process, for it regularly employed mythicizing metaphors - comparisons with gods, heroes, and illustrious rulers of antiquity -which helped create for posterity a naturally lionized image of Lorenzo.(55) Niccolo Valori drew heavily upon this rhetorical language in his biography of Lorenzo as did Machiavelli and Guicciardini in their portrait sketches. Humanist history was closely allied with rhetoric and had as its purpose providing examples from the past of virtue in action.(56) Historical events could carry symbolic messages, such as did the Pazzi Conspiracy which for Valori became a divinely ordained test of Lorenzo's virtue, or the portents accompanying his death which signaled the departure of a great hero from this life. In the Renaissance, eulogy was a vital component of history, and little attempt was made to distinguish between them, which perhaps explains why Renaissance humanists, the greatest practitioners of both those arts, were such superb myth-makers.

The pervasiveness of the language of praise in the humanist culture of the fifteenth century raises the question to what extent Lorenzo was himself a passive recipient of the extravagant images being cast of him and to what extent he contributed to the process of making his own myth. Lorenzo had been weaned on humanist eulogy. His tutor Gentile Becchi, his secretary Bartolomeo Scala, and Marsilio Ficino never ceased urg432

ing him to follow in his grandfather Cosimo's footsteps,(57) and he seems to have genuinely desired to do so. His correspondence with Ficino indicates how fully he had absorbed this and other Neoplatonic teachings regarding ennobling the self through exercising the will, imitating edifying models, and experiencing the elevating powers of platonic love.(58) His desire to cultivate his own magnificence was sincere, and his Altercazione and other poetry pulses with a tension and a longing to better himself and lift himself towards union with the Divine.(59) The happy correspondence between the Neoplatonic values of his day and Lorenzo's own attempts to fashion himself accordingly constitutes one of the most important sources of the Medici myth, for contemporaries and especially later generations alike could more easily convince themselves that Lorenzo embodied those very ideals that the fifteenth-century Florentine Renaissance epitomized. For later historians, inheritors of the rhetorical tradition of writing history, Lorenzo became the historical exemplum of magnificence par excellence.

LORENZO'S IMAGE-MAKING Was eulogy itself a more powerful conduit of the myth than the force of events during Lorenzo's lifetime? The language of Renaissance praise certainly shaped the literary form which the myth assumed and facilitated its rapid expansion during the time of crisis in the sixteenth century and its survival into later centuries. The fact remains, however, that Lorenzo's fame was more than literary conceit. It was also a fact of life.

Both in Italy and abroad he was already widely recognized as a man of heroic proportions. His correspondence shows that popes and princes held him in the highest regard and sought his counsel and mediation on a wide range of political and personal matters.(60) When the King of France wanted to extract a favor from the pope, he wrote to Lorenzo, and when the pope wanted help in settling a dispute in the Papal States, he, too, asked for Lorenzo.(61) Medici accepted these requests precisely because they helped enhance his reputation as a power broker. The vastness of his correspondence itself indicates what a vigorous role he played in the affairs of his time. He devoted several hours a day to dictating letters, and the nearly two thousand of his letters which have survived represent only a fraction of the total.(62) The other side of his correspondence is even more impressive. Probably twenty thousand letters sent to him from all parts of the known world remain in the archives today.

If Lorenzo was fast becoming famous in his own time, information in his correspondence suggests that it was precisely because he consciously sought fame and reputation.

He had an intelligent grasp of both the limits and the possibilities inherent in his situation and the ability to make the most of the possibilities. He actively cultivated an image of his own magnificence, culture, wealth, and power and understood clearly how he might use his reputation to gain political advantage. He seems to have wanted to be 433

the arbiter of Italy and rarely refused an opportunity to involve himself in all manner of political and diplomatic negotiations inside and especially outside of Florence. He traded on his quick intelligence, wide-ranging humanist education, and on the fame of Florence to project an image of power and importance well beyond what his or his city's actual position in Italy merited. A contemporary, the Milanese ambassador Sacramoro Sacramori, marveled at Lorenzo's astuteness and ability to 'hoist his sails high at the right moment' and 'to reap the most benefit from a favorable wind'.(63) The Ferrarese ambassador made a similar keen observation that Lorenzo's reputation within Florence depended upon the esteem with which he was regarded by the potentates of Italy and foreign rulers. 'Without their esteem, he would not be so highly regarded at home'.(64) In Lorenzo's day, long before high-pressure public relations campaigns and mass political propaganda, cultivating a public image was a novel art whose possibilities he was quick to grasp, for a public image could make a powerful impact in an age when statecraft and diplomacy were highly personalized and political control rested mainly in the hands of powerful princes and rulers. Lorenzo was one of the earliest devotees and most skilled practitioners of the new art. He had already put into practice what Machiavelli was to recommend a generation later in The Prince, namely that in political affairs, what you seem to be in the eyes of others is far more important than what you actually are.(65) By mastering the techniques of projecting a powerful public image, Lorenzo greatly assisted in making his own myth, even though his immediate purposes were more limited in scope. His motivation for enhancing his image was both personal and political, personal, in so far as it accorded with his absorption of the humanist culture with its emphasis on self-enhancement and self-fashioning discussed earlier; political, in so far as it became the basis of his power within the Florentine state and the chief instrument of his diplomacy. As the ambassador from Ferrara had noted, his position in Florence and his reputation abroad were interrelated. And both depended upon the image he projected, which image was very complex, often shifting, depending upon which face he showed at any given moment.

Florence was still nominally a republic, and the Medici's position in the city was a bit self-contradictory. The Milanese ambassador reported that Lorenzo had commanded the city in all but name, that he was in fact like a signore a bachetta.(66) But Lorenzo, like his grandfather and father before him, prudently maintained an artful balance between the exercise of power and maintaining the appearance of being only the foremost citizen in a republic, not its prince. To this end he was careful to be seen consulting other citizens and he paid lip service to the Signoria's and the Ten's conduct of foreign affairs.(67) Given the unofficial, unconstitutional nature of his rule, appearances were that much more important, and it is not surprising that the foreign ambassa434

dors, who had frequent occasion to observe and comment on his ways, were sometimes puzzled but nonetheless impressed by his abilities. Lorenzo never in fact became that signore a bachetta the Milanese would have preferred to deal with, for the job of keeping up appearances involved considerable restraint upon his freedom of action, especially in the early years, and his political position in Florence in the end depended heavily upon the willing cooperation of the supporters of his regime.

But he knew how to use those restraints to political advantage. When it served his purpose Lorenzo could always hide behind Florence's republican institutions and disclaim responsibility for the actions of the Florentine government. At the same time he could exercise a guiding control. What has been aptly labeled his 'doublediplomacy'(68) is reflected in the fact that two sets of diplomatic correspondence were maintained, his own private letters and the official letters of the Signoria and the Ten. Florentine ambassadors, all hand-picked men, usually Lorenzo's close friends, such as Piero Alamanni and Giovanni Lanfredini, sent back two reports, one a more detailed account to Lorenzo in which all the significant public and private matters were actually discussed, and the other, official reports to the Florentine government which were usually bland and formularistic. Lorenzo sometimes had to remind his ambassadors to keep up the ruse.(69) The Janus-like face he presented to the world and his assiduous attention to appearances may have had their origins in an astute assessment on his part that, in reality, Florence's political position in Italy was that of a secondary power vis-a-vis the other major Italian states. His elaborate performances were perhaps partly attempts to compensate for the relative weakness of Florence. The balance of power diplomacy for which he later became so famous, is best understood as a diplomacy of expediency arising from need. The Milanese state of the Sforza to the north and the Kingdom of Naples to the south were both more powerful than Florence, and since the Peace of Lodi in 1454 a hinge-point of Florentine policy had been to act as a buffer between the Italian 'super powers'. The relative weakness of the Florentine state became all too clear in 1478 when that alliance was broken in the aftermath of the dispute over lmola and Citta di Castello which fuelled the Pazzi Conspiracy and the subsequent war with Sixtus IV allied with Naples against Florence. Experience showed Venice could not be counted on for help other than for promises, and the Neapolitan ambassador was doing all he could in Milan to prise a wavering Lodovico Sforza away from the Florentines.(70) Florentine territory was very vulnerable to attack along her long, difficult-to-defend borders, and the Florentines had to be vigilant against Neapolitan encroachments from the sea to the west and from Sienese territory to the south as well as against the forces that had pushed out of the Papal States to the south and east and had advanced into Florentine territory as far as the Mugello.(71) Nor was it easy for Lo435

renzo to persuade the Florentines with their stubborn merchant mentality to pay for expensive mercenary armies and fight a protracted war when the Florentine economy, dependent upon commerce and investments in Rome and other major European markets, needed peace to prosper. Because of these limitations inherent in Florence's geographical, economic and military position, Lorenzo was virtually helpless to pursue any other diplomatic course than a conservative one designed to maintain the status quo.(72) This situation required all of his image-making and diplomatic skills. In the absence of a dependable military or political base of operations, he had one tool within reach, statesmanship. He worked assiduously to involve himself in all manner of diplomatic maneuvers in order to enhance his image and that of the Florentine state as indispensable arbiter of Italy and by that means to increase the respect and regard of other potentates and avoid conflict. In 1487, for example, when he agreed to mediate a settlement between the pope and the rebellious condottiere Boccolino Guzzone of Osimo, he was not only willing to contribute financially to a settlement but to offer Boccolino a commission and refuge in Florence. When Boccolino's nephew, held prisoner in Rome, was not released in accordance with the terms of the agreement, Lorenzo complained bitterly to Giovanni Lanfredini, the ambassador in Rome, about this insult to his honor. He was adamant that his credibility be maintained 'so that others will continue to place their trust in me'.(73) Because Lorenzo's political and diplomatic strategy was so personal and because his personal image was so closely interwined with that of Florence, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the public and the private benefit produced by his actions. A few contemporary critics could complain about his conduct unbefitting a Florentine citizen such as his open dynasticism in arranging marriage alliances for his eldest son Piero with the powerful Orsini house and for his daughter Maddalena to Franceschetto Cibo, son of Innocent VIII. These marriages had the calculated effect of securing alliances with the pope and with Roberto Orsini, one of the most powerful condottieri in the late fifteenth century, for himself but also for Florence. Largely as a result of Lorenzo's personal rapprochement with Innocent, Florentine bankers in Rome began to play a more prominent role in the financial affairs of the papacy and to regain ground that they had lost as a result of the Pazzi War with Sixtus IV.(74) Personal aggrandizement, or statecraft, or both?

Lorenzo utilized two basic techniques to enhance his image: he mastered the art of the well-chosen gesture, and he traded upon Florence's growing reputation as the center of the new style of Renaissance art and culture and humanist learning, which reputation he in turn bolstered considerably. His correspondence is filled with examples of his astute performances. In 1479 when he embarked upon his famous trip to Naples to sue for peace, his position in Florence was shaky. The long and costly war was going 436

badly for Florence. Sixtus' clever propaganda calling for Lorenzo's expulsion, designed to drive a wedge between Lorenzo and the Florentines with the claim that his only quarrel was with the Medici and not with Florence, was having an effect on the warweary citizens.(75) In the letter Lorenzo wrote to the Signoria explaining the reasons for his trip, he cast himself in the role of the sacrificial lamb, the selfless citizen ready to risk his life for the greater cause of bringing peace to the patria: I have chosen to expose myself to some degree of danger rather than to allow the city to suffer longer under its present trials ... Since I am the one whom our enemies are pursuing primarily, by putting myself into their hands, I might be the means of bringing peace back to our city ... Perhaps God wills that this war which began with the blood of my brother and of myself, should be ended by my means.(76) Lorenzo's mission to Naples was in fact well-prepared in advance through private channels and the actual personal risk was minimal. The duke of Calabria had sent his galleys up from Naples to escort Lorenzo with all the honors due someone on an important state visit, and his reception in Naples was equally genial.(77) Nonetheless Lorenzo did not lose this opportunity to portray his actions in the most favorable light possible.

The letter was read aloud in public, and his noble words moved people to tears, winning him anew the admiration and support of the citizens who saw in him a patriotic martyr.(78) Though he had embarked on the trip as a private citizen, the Ten soon sent him a full mandate to negotiate a peace settlement for the republic, thus reaffirming the inextricable link between Lorenzo’s personal interests and those of Florence.(79) On another occasion Lorenzo even used his poetic abilities to good advantage. His reputation as the author of love poems probably explains why in 1487 a smitten Lodovico Sforza, regent of Milan, twice pleaded for Lorenzo's advice about the new love which had turned his life upside down. Lorenzo's reply was truly elegant in style and filled with references to Petrarchan sonnets and thoughtful reflections on the joys and pains of falling in love.(80) The letter was undoubtedly designed to gratify Lodovico, and with it Lorenzo recommended himself as a sensitive and cultured person to whom the Milanese ruler could turn for advice even on such delicate personal questions.

How Lorenzo used the commune's reputation is a more complex matter. In the area of art he actively sought to become a connoisseur and arbiter of taste.(81) He judged competitions and recommended many of the leading Florentine artists for commissions abroad. He sent Antonio da Pollaiuolo off to Rome preceded by a letter calling him 'the premier artist of this city in the common opinion of all'.(82) Whether or not other artists such as Verrocchio, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio who accepted commissions in Venice and Rome did so at Lorenzo's specific recommendation is of no importance.

The effect was the same. Florentine art was in great demand, and Lorenzo basked in the reflected glory. Cardinal Carafa, who had hired Filippino Lippi to work in one of 437

the chapels in S. Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome, reported to a friend that because the painter had been sent by the Magnificent Lorenzo, 'he would not have exchanged him for all the painters of ancient Greece'.(83) Lorenzo also kept a watchful eye on those he recommended to make sure they did not discredit him. His agent at the Medici bank in Rome was instructed to keep tabs on Lippi, and he reported: I understand what you say about Filippino the painter. I was very diplomatic with him the other day and am content that he will do what he promised me and work diligently and economically in such a way that I am sure the Cardinal will remain obliged to you and content with him. I will keep after him and remind him as I see fit.(84) The fact that Lorenzo commissioned few works of art himself would seem to indicate that he was less interested in patronizing art and artists than in seeing how Florentine art and Florentine artists might be used as ambassadors of Florentine culture abroad.

At home Lorenzo devoted himself to his expensive and private collections of gems, antiques, and rare manuscripts. But they, too, served to attract attention. Scholars and notables travelled great distances to admire them. In 1474 Christian, king of Denmark and Sweden, stopped in Florence to examine a rare Greek manuscript that had been brought from Constantinople.(85) A tour of the collections in the Medici palace formed a regular part of Medici entertainments for special visitors, even mercenary captains. In 1481 when the condottiere Costanzo Sforza, signor of Pesaro, made his entry into Florence to receive command of the Florentine forces, the Ferrarese ambassador reported that he toured the city, 'visiting churches and the palace of Lorenzo, who showed him his books, jewels and statues'.(86) A perhaps more appreciative visitor was the famous Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro on his way to Rome in 1490 as legate.

He was treated to dinner with the most noted humanists of Florence as guests, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Bernardo Rucellai, followed by the guided tour led by Piero de' Medici, since on this occasion his father was at the baths taking a cure.

After we had dined, I gave him a complete tour of the house, the medals, vases and cameos, in fact, everything including the garden in which he took great pleasure, although I do not believe he knows much about sculpture. He also liked the ancient medals and the information they contained. Everyone marvelled at the number of such excellent items etc.(87) Florence had gained a wide reputation as a city of culture and learning, and Lorenzo devoted considerable effort to building up the Florentine Studio.(88) Cristoforo Landino and Angelo Poliziano were among the prize lecturers there. Lorenzo also had the best professors brought in from outside at very high salaries to lend prestige to the 438

institution. The most famous physician, Pierleone of Spoleto, who was also Lorenzo's private doctor, received a stipend of one thousand florins, but this was topped by the noted jurist Bartolomeo Sozzini of Siena whose salary was so far above scale that it was determined by Lorenzo personally.(89) Students came from as far away as Portugal, Spain, and France to study at the university, and many a young Florentine product of the Studio, among them Francesco Guicciardini, the future historian, and Francesco Soderini, the future cardinal, carried a humanist education along with eloquent style and speech into public office or into the personal service of princes and prelates all over Italy and abroad. Education and culture became a trademark of Florence, and all the Florentine ambassadors whom Lorenzo hand-picked for the city were welleducated and learned men. They commanded great personal respect which reflected favorably on Lorenzo and on Florence. In 1488 Piero Alamanni the ambassador to Milan was even knighted by the duke.(90) Bernardo Rucellai, famous today for the seminars he held in his garden to which he invited Machiavelli and other young and promising humanists, was Lorenzo's brother-in-law and his ambassador to Milan and Naples.

Perhaps the best demonstration of how thoroughly Lorenzo had mastered the art of gesture and had understood the political importance of projecting a good image abroad can be found in the famous letter of advice he sent to his young fourteen-yearold son Giovanni who had just been made cardinal and was on his way to Rome to establish his residence: It is necessary now for you to become a good churchman. You must love the honor and estate of the Holy Church and Apostolic See more than anything in the world, and you must put these considerations before all else. But even with this reservation, you will not lack opportunity to help the city of Florence and our family ... You are the youngest cardinal in the College and in the whole history of the church. Therefore, when you have to make agreements with the others you should be the most solicitous and the most humble ... Keep to the side of moderation in your display, and I would rather you maintained an elegant, well-ordered and clean household and stable, than a rich and pompous one ... Jewels and silk do not become a person of your bearing. You are much better off gracing yourself with a few antiques and beautiful books and with maintaining a learned and well-trained staff rather than a large retinue.(91) Tournaments and public festivals provided another vehicle for carefully orchestrated display of Medici magnificence and form an important aspect of Lorenzo's cultural politics. His public gestures, movements and manner of dress attracted attention automatically.(92) Who could help but comment on his wedding banquet for 400 guests, each course of which was announced by a fanfare of trumpets, or the jewel encrusted outfits he and Giuliano wore for their tournaments, Lorenzo's emblazoned with his own golden-age motto le temps revient embroidered in pearls, his shield sporting a 439

huge Medici diamond and his cap a feather of gold?(93) The tournament of 1469 was the talk of Italy, and the brothers' feats were soon immortalized in the poetry of Pulci and Poliziano.(94) Foreign visitors liked to be in Florence for the celebrations on the feast day of S. Giovanni, patron saint of the city. Eleanor of Aragon, Ferrante's daughter, on her wedding trip to Ferrara, stopped in Florence for S. Giovanni. She was so well entertained by the Medici that Ferrante wrote in thanks that the hospitality shown Eleanor increased his own affection for Lorenzo,(95) which affection later served Medici well on his personal mission to the King in 1479.

PUBLIC VALIDATION Lorenzo could not single-handedly have created his own myth. There were other active participants, among them the humanists, who as we have seen, were the interpreters of his image, dressing it up in the language of praise and embellishing it with their intimate knowledge of the classical repertory of mythic images and rhetorical devices. Humanist panegyric together with Lorenzo's own efforts to create a public image helped mold contemporary perceptions of him and those we have inherited through the centuries. But the myth-making process involved more than just the deliberate fabrications of the small number of Medici propagandists whether in the fifteenth, or posthumously in the sixteenth century. It also involved the participation of a wider public to whom their messages were directed. The voice of the people in pre-modern Europe is notoriously difficult to detect; however, it seems clear that the Florentine citizenry accepted the images Lorenzo projected and generally supported him, or at least let him know on the occasions it did not. Apart from the outbursts of a few noisy opponents of the regime and the paeans of its many friends and supporters among the aristocracy, few letters or diaries of modest citizens like the druggist Luca Landucci and Bartolomeo Masi, a coppersmith, have survived to give written testimony to wider public opinion. 96 We must rely heavily on indirect evidence, much of it to be inferred from Lorenzo's actions themselves, which were not only his attempts to shape or influence public perceptions of him, but also more widely his reactions to the larger climate of public opinion in which he moved. The magnificent display and the festivities staged by the Medici in piazza were public events which involved the citizenry as eager spectators.(97) Without this public face, Medici gesturing might have become the sort of private palace ritual played out by Louis XIV and his nobles at Versailles. But in the same way those French nobles at Versailles by their very presence accepted the rules of the court game, so too, the Florentines by participating in Medici-sponsored events gave their tacit consent to the role he attempted to play in the life of the city.

Recently historians have focussed their attention on the reggimento, the group of those friends and members of the Medici regime, arid on the extent to which the Medici depended upon their support.(98) More fundamentally, however, Lorenzo's posi440

tion in Florence rested upon a broader base, not so much of active support in a political sense, but of general acquiescence on the part of the citizenry. Though passive most of the time, the popolo fiorentino did on occasion erupt in anger such as following the Pazzi Conspiracy. The Pazzi had been counting upon being able to arouse the people against the Medici, but their invocations of popolo and liberta were met with counter cries of Palle, for the Medici. Mob violence directed against the rotting remains of the Pazzi conspirators and fear that the mob would similarly attack Cardinal Riario, implicated in the plot and under house arrest in the Palazzo Vecchio, were all indicators of a strong pro-Medici undercurrent among the Florentine people.(99) The wax votive statues of Lorenzo that friends erected in several churches as objects for public devotion and expressions of thanksgiving for Lorenzo's safety, one clothed in the very suit he had worn the day of the attempt and positioned next to a crucifix with miraculous powers,(100) demonstrate how fully Lorenzo had come to embody the collective Florentine experience.

Lorenzo seems to have been very sensitive and reactive to Florentine public opinion.(101) It was the major factor behind his decision to make the trip to Naples in 1479. Once the Florentine people began to blame him personally for the war with the pope, he reasoned that only his departure would clarify for them that he was not the sole cause of Sixtus’ angry aggressions. The trip to Naples had the effect of consolidating support behind him, and upon his return he was able to institute reforms to strengthen his hand in the government almost without opposition.(102) Healthy respect for public sentiment would also explain why on another occasion, eight years later, he was so anxious to press for the expensive campaign against Sarzana, a strategically located fortress between Florentine and Genoese territory which Florence had lost to the Genoese during the Pazzi War and which had become since then a sore spot in Florentine civic pride and a point of Lorenzo's personal honor. Despite the lack of promised allied support, Lorenzo had the Florentine forces launch the attack, and went personally to Pisa to direct the final operations.(103) Valori understood the great symbolic value for the Florentines of the taking of Sarzana when he wrote in his biography that it seemed to many as though Lorenzo had personally brought victory with him.(104) And of course, the celebrations for S. Giovanni several days later must have been particularly jubilant.

Lorenzo's death, on 8 April 1492, like the Pazzi Conspiracy, provided the occasion for a great outpouring of public sentiment. Dressed in mourning, nobles and modest citizens alike came to the church of S. Lorenzo to pay their last respects. Bartolomeo Dei, who was there, said 'it was touching to see such manifest signs of sadness and of sorrow'.(105)

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The Signoria published an unusual official obituary praising Lorenzo's virtues and services to the city, and letters and representations of condolences began to pour in to the Signoria and to the family from all over Italy, all of them striking a common note of sadness and a heightened recognition of Lorenzo's remarkable accomplishments, 'not just for Florence, but for all Italy'.(106) Ferrante of Naples is reported to have made the prophetic statement: 'This man has lived long enough for his own immortal fame, but not for Italy. God grant that now he is dead men may not attempt that which they dared not do while he was alive.'(107) According to Valori and Guicciardini, Lorenzo's death was accompanied by miraculous portents. A comet appeared, wolves were heard howling, and in the church of S. Maria Novella a crazed woman screamed that a bull with horns of fire was burning the city. Caged lions set upon one another killing the most beautiful of their number. And just a few days before Lorenzo died, a great bolt of lightning struck the lantern atop the cupola of the cathedral, knocking out several huge blocks of marble which crashed down in the direction of the Medici palace. Valori claimed he witnessed some of the portents himself and heard of others from reputable sources, among them Marsilio Ficino, who together with several others, had seen giant shadows in the garden and heard eerie screams at the time of Lorenzo's death.(108) Ficino's Neoplatonic interpretation of the portents was that these disturbances of the natural order were verifications of the death of a truly illustrious person as had frequently happened in history when great men died.(109) These accounts of the portents were not just rhetorical fictions designed to enhance the importance of their subject. Other evidence indicates that the portents were widely believed in and commented upon, which again indicates how deeply Lorenzo dwelt within the collective consciousness of Florentines of all levels of society. Poliziano mentions them in his famous letter describing Lorenzo's death written shortly afterwards.(110) The druggist Landucci records them in his diary, and Johannis Burckard at the papal court in Rome judged them to be so significant as to recount them in great detail in his Liber notarum.(111) The events were interpreted again and again from the pulpits of the major Florentine churches in a rising tide of apocalyptic awareness.(112) The myth-making process had long been underway during Lorenzo's lifetime at least partially under his control, but his death noticeably intensified it. A great and talented man, sung by poets, who had captured the imagination and esteem of a whole generation had been carried away by an untimely death. With his death the posthumous elaboration of the myth could begin, first in little ways as stories about his death and his life were recounted, and then as their significance became clearer with the passage of time, anecdotal material was added to make their meaning that much more evi442

dent. Landucci, for example, has Lorenzo himself validating the portents. In the diary it says when Lorenzo was told about the lightning striking the cupola, he exclaimed, 'Alas! I shall die, because they [the stones] fell towards my house'.(113) It was not long before Savonarola and others began to 'remember' how the Dominican friar had previously predicted Lorenzo's death in one of his prophetic utterances.(114) Piero de' Medici lacked the charisma of his father and failed to fill Lorenzo's symbolic role in Florence. The Florentines' disillusionment with him led ultimately to his expulsion in 1494. Cut adrift from the guiding image of a Medici leader, they looked first to Charles VIII, whom Savonarola heralded as a divine agent sent to restore the city's lost liberties, and then to Savonarola himself as the symbolic leader of their city.(115) The early stages of Lorenzo's posthumous career as lived out in the mythohistorical imaginations of the Florentines were as rocky as the course of these events.

As Savonarola began to fill the void left by Lorenzo, he and his followers sought to validate their new positions by drawing out the dark or negative side of Lorenzo's character as tyrant of Florence. The old charges that Sixtus IV had used against him back in 1478 to alienate the citizens and which had begun to take hold in the city during the Pazzi War were dug up and invested with new meaning. Out of the pro-Savonarola, anti-Medici sentiment grew as well the freshly remembered accounts, oft-repeated in Savonarolian literature, of how Lorenzo had summoned the prior of S. Marco to hear his deathbed confession but that Savonarola had departed abruptly when the Magnificent refused to restore liberty to the city, leaving the dying man unabsolved.(116) The negative image of Lorenzo as tyrant began to fade following Savonarola's execution,(117) and it was only a matter of time under changed political circumstances before those who hated Savonarola and his legacy would recast Lorenzo's image in a golden light.

The human mind has infinite capacity to telescope historical events in the course of its larger search for meaning, even to 'remember' and reinterpret them differently as their relation to the present changes. This is how myth becomes history and how history becomes myth. The dramatic changes which occurred in the early development of Lorenzo's posthumous image make a fascinating chapter in Renaissance historiography by themselves, but these changes also comprise an important stage in the larger process of the formation of Lorenzo's historical myth. The historians of the early sixteenth century began to interpret the significance of Lorenzo's life in the light of history. They elaborated the richly ornamented images they had inherited from the fifteenth century and added new material to his biography. The larger-than-life portrait of Lorenzo that they codified provided ready substance for successive reinterpretations and enlargements which eventually made Lorenzo into a bona fide symbol of the Renaissance.

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The real ferment of the myth-making process, however, had already begun in the fifteenth century at the hands of Lorenzo's humanist eulogizers and through his own image-making efforts with the help of approving Florentines and foreigners. The contemporary images cast of him were by far the clearest and most compelling. They had been spawned in the midst of the drama of everyday life and mainly directed towards limited political and personal ends. But once the particular concerns and circumstances of the various myth-makers dropped away from memory or were obscured with the passage of time, the transcendent power of those images of Lorenzo emerged ever brighter and captured the imagination of subsequent generations of Renaissance devotees and Medici fanciers down to the present day. Looking back over the various constituent elements in the formation of Lorenzo's historical myth - the language of humanist praise, Lorenzo's deliberate crafting of his own magnificence, the validation of contemporaries, the codification of the myth in the early sixteenth century, and subsequent symbolic enlargements - it becomes evident that each stage of its history contained within it synchronic elements of human belief, the stuff of myth. The myth did not emerge at a certain point in time, during the dramatic events of the Pazzi Conspiracy, or immediately following Lorenzo's death, or during the crisis of Italy in the sixteenth-century. Elements of myth were present from the very beginning. Far from being opposed to one another, myth and history might best be considered two sides of the same coin. The remarkable survival of Lorenzo de' Medici into the late twentieth century with much of his mythic aura still intact certainly testifies to the power of the will to believe.

Notes 1. Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington, ed. Marcus Cunliffe (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p.

12.

2. Andre Chastel, 'Vasari et la legende Mediceenne: "L'Ecole du Jardin de Saint Marc'", Studi Vasariani (Florence, 1952), pp. 159-67. See also E. Barfucci, Lorenzo de' Medici e la societii artistica del suo tempo (Florence, 1957), pp. 181-217, who called the school 'The apotheosis of Lorenzo's patronage', p. 216.

3. Delio Camimori makes this implicit assumption in his criticism of the uncritical idolatry present in William Roscoe's late eighteenth-century biography of Lorenzo in his remarks before the 1955 meeting of the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome, Relazioni del X Congresso lnternazionale di Scienze Storiche, IV (Florence, 1955), p. 127 and cited in Ernst Gombrich, 'Renaissance and Golden Age', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXIV (1961), p. 306. Discussion at the Congress prompted the international sponsorship of the first critical edition of Lorenzo's letters, the preparation of which is still in progress. Since 1955 several monographs have appeared which treat myth in the Renaissance as a proper subject from a variety of perspectives, mostly notably, H. Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington, Ind., 1969); Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J., 1979); Giovanni Cipriani, Il mito etrusco nel rinascimetzto fioretztino (Florence, 1980); and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, N.J., 1981).

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4. Wallace K. Ferguson The Renaissance in Historical Thought. Five Centuries of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), pp. 78-94. Monsignor A. Fabroni shared this view in the first modern biography of Lorenzo, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici vita (Pisa, 1784). It was popularized subsequently by William Roscoe in his widely read Life of Lorenzo de' Medici Called the Magnificent (London, 1796) to which citations here are from the fifth edition in 1806.

5. Felix Gilbert, 'Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari: a Study on the Origin of Modern Political Thought' ,Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XII ( 1949), pp. 101-3 I and reprinted in History. Choice and Commitment (Cambridge, Mass, 1977), pp. 215-46; idem, 'Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Valori on Lorenzo Magnifico', Renaissance News, XI (1958), pp. 107-14; idem, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton, N. J., 1965), pp. 105-22; John R.Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance (London, 1954), passim; idem, 'Cosimoand Lorenzo dei Medici: Their Reputation in England from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth-Century', English Miscellany, VIII (1957), pp. 179-94; Andre Chaste!, Art et humanisme a Florence au temps de Laurent le Magnifique (Paris, 1959); Ernst Gombrich, 'Renaissance and Golden Age', pp. 306-9; and most recently Nicolai Rubinstein, 'The Formation of the Posthumous Image of Lorenzo de' Medici', in Edward Chaney and Neil Ritchie (ed.), Oxford, China and Italy. Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton on his Eightieth Birthday (London, 1984), pp. 94-106 in which is referenced yet another forthcoming article on this topic by E. Gusberti entitled 'Un mito del Cinquecento: Lorenzo ii Magnifico' for the Bullettino dell'Istiuto storico italiano per il Media Evo. 6. For a general definition of myth, I found helpful Ben Halpern's article on the distinction between myth and ideology using the writings of Sorel and Mannheim in which the origin of myth is defined as existing somewhere between non-rational drives and rational communication, as 'an area where beliefs arise and social consensus is established', "'Myth" and "Ideology" in Modern Usage', History and Theory, l (1961), p. 143. Historical myths, however, cannot profitably be studied in the abstract or in an historical vacuum. For this reason the currently popular theories of myth formulated by modern anthropologists are only of limited use here. Clifford Geertz sees myth, like art, language, and ritual, as a product of culture, one of the systems of significant symbols which provide 'models of emotion' and 'public images of sentiment', The Interpretation of Culture (New York, 1973), pp. 48, 82. His concern, however, is for the social function of myth as providing 'charters for social institutions and rationalizations of social privilege' (p. 88), not for its process of development. Nor does myth, when viewed as a dynamic process unfolding over time, lend itself to the sort of static structural analysis applied to texts. Claude Levi-Strauss recognized the double nature of myth, its being both historical and ahistorical, but his approach dictates that those elements stand in opposition to one another, rather than in synchronic harmony as argued here. See for example, his 'The Structural Study of Myth' in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Myth: a Symposium (Bloomington, Ind., 1955), pp. 81-106. What the semioticist Umberto Eco has to say about 'open works' and the creative role of the interpreter's interaction with a text would come closest in the field of literary criticism to my approach to historical myths as involving active, constant belief. See his The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), especially pp. 3-40 and 107-24 ('The Myth of Superman'). Eco's allowance for the role of the reader is an elaboration in modern terminology from the point of view of the reader of the Classical rhetorical rule in the introduction or exordium in which the orator should stimulate the interest and sympathy of his addressee by taking account of the latter's character and disposition towards the case to be discussed, as explained, for example, in Quintillian's Institutio Oratoria, IV: r. The emphasis here on the role of the believer in the myth-making process is particularly appropriate to the Renaissance since Classical theories of persuasion, especially Cicero's and Quintillian's, helped shape so much of Renaissance culture, and consequently Renaissance myths.

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7. Gombrich, 'Renaissance and Golden Age', p. 306.

8. A modern parallel exists in the mythicization of public figures by the mass media which often involves making their public characters conform to an ideal image. See the discussion by Andrew Greeley, 'Myths, Symbols and Rituals in the Modern World', The Critic, xx, no. 3 (Dec.-Jan. 1961-2), pp. 18-25.

9. Gombrich, 'The Early Medici as Patrons of Art', in E. F. Jacob (ed.) Italian Renaissance Studies (London, 1960), pp. 304-11; Chastel, 'Vasari et la Legende Mediceenne', pp. 159-67. The balance of opinion is now beginning to tip back in the other direction towards a greater appreciation at least of Lorenzo's architectural patronage. See Caroline Elam, 'Lorenzo de' Medici and the Urban Development of Renaissance Florence', Art History, I (1978), pp. 43-66.

10. L. von Ranke, History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494-1514, trans. Philip A. Ashworth (London, 1887), pp. 37-40; R. Palmarocchi, La politica italiana di Lorenzo de' Medici (Florence, 1933), pp. z29-46, 273-83; E.W. Nelson, 'Origins of Modern Balance of Power Diplomacy', Medievalia and Humanistica, I (1943), pp. 124-42.

11. To date four volumes of the letters have appeared, and research is underway up through 1488. Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, ed. R. Fubini and N. Rubinstein (Florence, 1977-81), I-IV. The first discussions of a general peace in Italy occurred in 1486 in the aftermath of the Barons' War when Milan, Venice, Florence, the papacy, and Naples all talked about the possibility of a general league, but the idea never advanced beyond tentative discussions. Lorenzo seems to have had little faith in a general league, preferring to secure Florence's traditional alliance with Milan and Naples first. His discussion of the idea must be placed within the context of his other purposes, namely to discourage the pope's separate negotiations with Venice and to promote his own private alliance with Innocent. Lorenzo's thinking on these matters is contained in his correspondence during December 1486 with Piero Alamanni, Florentine ambassador to Milan, Archivo Segreto Vaticano (ASV), Mss. Patetta, 1739, fos. 1-8. In the early sixteenth century Bernardo Rucellai introduced the term balance of power into political literature, and Guicciardini attributed it to Lorenzo, Gilbert, History. Choice and Commitment, pp. 216, 506-7.

12. A. Rochon, Lajeunesse de Laurent de Medicis (1449-1478) (Paris, 1963), pp. 148-59; 475-543; F. De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana (Mondadori: Milan, 1956), pp. 367-9.

13. N. Machiavelli, History of Florence, Eng. Trans. (New York, 1960), p. 405; Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 (New York, 1966), pp. 221-4; 358-75.

In his classic biography William Roscoe, himself a Liverpool banker and businessman and connoisseur of the arts, placed special emphasis on the mercantile origins of the Medici and their instrumental role in the revival of the arts, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, 1, 13-18, 179-84.

14. His tournaments were the talk of Italy. See the letters in J. Ross, Lives of the Early Medici as Told in Their Correspondence (London, 1910), pp. 124, 126, 160. Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza's visit in 1471 has become the subject of an anecdote, recounted first by Niccolo Valori and elaborated by Roscoe to emphasize Lorenzo's patronage. According to the story, the duke was so impressed by the fine collections of art and antiques at the Medici palace that he commented that all his own gold and silver were as nothing in comparison. Niccolo Valori, Vita del Magnifico Lorenzo de' Medici ii Vecchio, Ital. trans., published as an unpaginated preface to the Diario of Biagio Buonaccorsi (Florence, 1568); Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, 1, pp. 185-7.

15. The story was first recounted by Valori, Vita, p. 38 (my pagination) and as recently as 1974 in Hugh Ross Williamson, Lorenzo the Magnificent (New York, 1974), p. 224.

16. N. Machiavelli, History of Florence, p. 407; Rochon, Lajeunesse, pp. 88-99, 239-50.

17. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence, p. 132-84.

18. Poliziano's contemporary account of the Pazzi Conspiracy is filled with identifications of Lorenzo with 'the public safety', 'the well-being of the whole Florentine Republic', and 'the hope and 446

power of the people', Coniurationis commentarium published in Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, III, app. XXI, pp. 125-43 and in English translation by E. Welles in B. Kohl and R. Witt, The Earthy Republic. Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia, 1978), pp.

305-22.

19. The design of the medal has been attributed to Giovanni di Bertoldo, K. Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 3 vols. (Florence, 1981-3), 1, 27 and 11, 1168. On a later medal by Niccolo Fiorentino, the reverse shows Florence sitting under the shade of a laurel tree, signifying Lorenzo, with the inscription tutela patrie, guardian of the country, ibid., I, 30.

20. Gilbert, History. Choice and Commitment, pp. 234-8. 1501 is the earliest mention in Piero Parenti's Istoriefi orentine of widespread nostalgia for the way things had been in Lorenzo's day, in J. Schnitzer, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Savonarolas (Munich, 1904), IV, p. 299.

21. Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, p. 109.

22. According to Bartolomeo Cerretani, Savonarola's apocalyptic sermons began right after Lorenzo's death, Storiafiorentina, in Schnitzer, Quellen und Forschungen, III, pp. 6-7, but his vicious attacks on the Medici government did not commence until his return to Florence in November 1494 at the height of the crisis preceding Piero de' Medici's flight and Charles VIII's entrance into Florence. They culminated in his treatise on the Florentine government, the Tratto circa il reggimento e governo della citta di Firenze written shortly before his death.

23. Examples from the writings of Pietro Crinto, Giovanni Corsi, and Bernardo Rucellai can be found in Gilbert, History. Choice and Commitment, pp. 505-6.

24. 'For he had demonstrated such quality up to now that he has filled with good hopes all this city, and it seems that everybody finds in him happy recollection of his grandfather; because His Magnificence is attentive to business, liberal and pleasant in audience, slow and weighty in his answers. The method of his conversing differs so much from that of the others that no pride is seen in it ... He makes himself, in short, both loved and revered, rather than feared ... The management of his house is so arranged that, though we see there much splendor and liberality, nonetheless he does not abandon the life of a citizen', English translation in Allan Gilbert ( ed.), The Letters of Machiavelli (New York, 1961), pp. 138--9. Lodovico Alamanni in his Discorso sopra il fermare lo stato di Firenze nella devozione de' Medici likewise advised a return to the civilian ways of 'Lorenzo ii vecchio', praising 'his use of the customs and habits of a citizen, his conducting the affairs of government in the palazzo and his coming into the piazza everyday and giving audiences readily, such that to the citizens he seemed more of a brother than a superior, and for this they loved him and were all the more content and faithful', published as an appendix to R. von Albertini, Das florentinische Staatsbewusstsein im Ubergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat (Bern, 1955), p. 369. The revisionism that had occurred over a generation is clearly reflected in Guicciardini's writings from the early appraisal of Lorenzo in his History of Florence, to his post-1512 eulogy published in Scritti politici e Ricardi, ed. R. Palmarocchi (Bari, 1933), pp. 223-8. See Gilbert, 'Guicciardini, Machiavelli', pp. 107--9 and Rubinstein, 'The Formation', pp. 97-102.

25. Remarkably few contemporary portraits were made of Lorenzo compared to the number of idealized posthumous ones. For the artistic representations of Lorenzo and their reflections of his changing image, see K. Langedijk, The Portraits, especially 1, 26-68; n, n38-67 and Rubinstein, 'The Formation', pp. 102-5.

26. This accords with Halpern's distinction between myth and ideology in '"Myth" and "Ideology'", pp. 129-49.

27. Rucellai, De bello italico (London, 1733); Machiavelli, History of Florence. On Rucellai's contribution, see Gilbert, History. Choice and Commitment, pp. 2u-46; idem, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, pp. 112-13.

28. History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander (London, 1969).

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29. Guicciardini begins his History with a description of the peace and prosperity in Italy in 1490, credit for which he attributes to Lorenzo and his balance of power policy. For Guicciardini the tranquility of Italy ended abruptly with Lorenzo's death. 'His death was indeed most untimely for the rest of Italy, not only because efforts toward the continuation of the common security were carried on by hands other than his, but also because he had been the means of moderating, and practically a bridle, in the disagreements and suspicions which very often developed for diverse reasons between Ferdinand and Lodovico Sforza, princes of almost equal power and ambition', ibid., p. 9.

30. Recent attempts to date the manuscript place it after 1512 when many Florentines, like Machiavelli, who had participated in the Soderini government, were trying to ingratiate themselves anew with the Medici. Valori was himself in prison for complicity in an anti-Medicean plot and would have had every interest in trying to win Medici favor. The polished version of his biography was in fact dedicated and presented to Leo X around 1517. Mario Martelli argues that the Italian version Niccolo's son Filippo prepared and dedicated to another of Lorenzo's children, Leo's sister, Lucrezia Salvia ti, was based on a lost, earlier Latin version. see his 'Le due redazioni della Laurentii Medicei Vita di Niccolo Valori ', La bibliojilia, LXVI (1964), pp. 235-63. The dating of the Latin composition is discussed by Gilbert, 'Guicciardini, Machiavelli', pp. 112-13 and Rubinstein, 'The Formation', p. 98 note.

31. Valori places special emphasis on how Lorenzo had thoroughly absorbed the intricacies of Plato's philosophy under Ficino's guidance and had become convinced that without knowledge of Plato it was impossible either to be a good citizen or to understand Christian doctrine, Vita, p. 8.

32. Ibid., p. 2.

33. Ibid., p. 6.

34. 'I believe that without a doubt it happened by the command and will of God Almighty alone, so that in adversity he (Lorenzo) could better demonstrate his virtu and prudence', ibid., p. 14.

35. Ibid., p. 47.

36. Ibid., pp. 38-9.

37. Ibid., pp. 50-2.

38. 'La Vita de! Magnifico, anzi Santo Lorenzo de' Medici', published in Martelli, 'Le due redazioni', p. 239.

39. Numerous collections of biographies and painted portraits of famous persons survive from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Vespasiano da Bisticco, Bartolomeo Fazio, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Giovanni Caroli, and Paolo Cortesi, to name a few, all wrote anthologies of historical lives.

See Jacob Burckhardt's classical appreciation of the importance of biography and the elevation of classical virtues in the Renaissance in The Civilization of the Renaissance, trans. S. Middlemore, 2 vols. (New York, 1958), l, pp. 148-61; II, pp. 324-33. On Giovanni Caroli's less known Vitae fratrum, lives of famous Dominicans each prefaced with a dedicatory epistle to one of the author's friends, see Salvatore I. Camporeale, 'Giovanni Caroli e le "Vitae fratrum S. M. Novellae ".

Umanesimo e crisi religiosa (1460-1480)', Memorie Domenicane, new series, XII (1981), pp. 141267. Federigo da Montefeltro had decorated his swdiolo with portraits of famous men; Bernardo Rucellai placed busts of emperors, philosophers and poets from Antiquity along the paths of his garden, Gilbert, History. Choice and Commitment, p. 229. In the sixteenth century Ottaviano de' Medici made a portrait collection of leading members of the Medici family, and Paolo Giovio, who later wrote a series of lives of famous men including Lorenzo, had also wanted to furnish a room as a 'temple of virtue' with portrait busts of famous persons, Langedijk, The Portraits, I, pp.

65-8. Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists and his portrait of Lorenzo painted for Cosimo I in which he portrays Lorenzo as a model of virtue which has overcome vice, belong to this tradition of the lives of illustrious men serving as moral exempla.

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40. The text of the preface is published in M. Martelli, 'Le due redazioni ', pp. 238-40.

41. See note 50.

42. Gilbert, 'Guicciardini, Machiavelli', pp. 110-14.

43. In 1567 Valori's grandson Bacio presented a manuscript copy of the Italian Vita with a dedication to Cosimo I, and like his grandfather and father before him, hoped thereby to win Medici favor, in Martelli, 'Le due redazioni', pp. 240-1. The following year the Italian version was published, the Latin version in 1749, a French translation in 1761, and subsequently in 1847. The 1568 Italian Vita was most recently reprinted in 1973.

44. On epideictic rhetoric in the Renaissance, see 0. B. Hardison, Jr., The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill, 1962), especially chapt. 2, pp. 26-42. For specific applications, see Alison M. Brown, 'The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae' ,Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XXIV (1961), pp. 186-221; John W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome. Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450-1521 (Durham, N.C., 1979); John M. McManamon, 'The Ideal Renaissance Pope: Funeral Oratory from the Papal Court,' Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, xrv (1976), pp. 9-70, and his unpublished doctoral dissertation'" Ut crescat laudata virtus": Funeral Oratory and the Culture of Italian Humanism' (Univ. of North Carolina, Ph.D. Thesis, 1984).

45. 'Vir ad omnia summa natus ', Angelus Politianus Jacobo Antiquario, Opera Onznia, ed. Ida Maier, 3 vols. (Turin, 1970), r, p. 49.

46. 'Laurens Etruriae caput', ibid., II, p. 260.

47. 'Laurus omnium celebris/ Musarum choris/ Nympharum choris', ibid., ii, p. 275.

48. A. Brown, 'The Humanist Portrait', pp. 186-221.

49. For example, the humanist Benedetto Colucci da Pistoia in his quest for various patronage appointments addressed flowery letters to Lorenzo, his protector, benefactor and Maecenas, whom he compared in one instance to the Apostle Peter himself, letter of 17 Jan. 1480 quoted in Rochon, Lajeunesse, p. 315.

50. 'Agnosco nunc in isto adolescente penitus, agnosco totum ilium senem [Cosimo], phoenicem video in phoenice, in radio lumen', Marsili us Ficinus Nicolao Micheloctio, Opera Omnia, 2 vols.

(Basel, 1561, reprinted Turin, 1962), 1, p. 652.

51. 'Lumen ad revelationem, Gentium Latinarum, et Florentiae Reipublicae gloriam', ibid., p.

652.

52. 'Patronum eundem habemus ambo Magnanimum Laurentium, quern habet et patria servatorem', Marsilius Ficinus Bartholomeo Scala, in P. O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, 2 vols. (Florence, 1937), I, p. 60.

53. 'Et tu, ben nato Laur, sotto ii cui velo/ Fiorenza lieta in pace si riposa/ Ne teme i venti, o 'I minacciar de! cielo', Stanze, bk. I, st. 4, II. 1-3, Opera, III, p. 6.

54. Published in Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, III, app. L, pp. 272-86.

55. In the cycle of frescoes done for the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano in the early sixteenth century, episodes from ancient history were used as parallels to Lorenzo's and Cosimo's lives, Langedijk, The Portraits, I, pp. 60-3.

56. Nancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance. Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, N.J., 1970), passim.

57. For examples, see A. Brown, 'The Humanist Portrait', pp. 199-212. Bartolomeo Scala, who lived for many years in the Medici palace, collected a codex of writings in praise of Cosimo and presented it to Lorenzo. See Brown's Bartolomeo Scala, I 430-1 497, Chancellor of Florence. The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton, N .J., 1979 ), pp. 269-70.

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58. There are six extant letters of Lorenzo to Ficino, all from 1474. They reveal Lorenzo's devotion to the philosopher expressed in terms of Neoplatonic ideals of love and friendship; Lettere, I, pp. 496-507; II, pp. 35-9. See also P. O. Kristeller, 'Lorenzo de' Medici platonico', Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956), pp. 213-19.

59. L'Altercazione, ed Emilio Bigi in Scritti Scelti di Lorenzo de' Medici (Turin, 1965), pp. 51-88, especially chs. II-V, in which Lorenzo has Ficino give a whole poetical discourse on platonic love to which Lorenzo's response, in ch. V, 11. 1-3, is that his heart was so filled by the sweetness of Ficino's words that he felt himself drawn toward that highest Good. 'Era ii mio cor si di dolcezza pieno / che udendo mi pareva esser tirato / al Ben che le parole sue dicieno.' (p. 74). Many of his other poems reflect similar themes, such as the one in which he urges his slumbering genius awake to seek not tcrrestial, but heavenly things. 'Destati, pigro ingegno, da quel sonno ... / Pensa alla dignita del tu intelletto/ Non dato per seguir cosa mortale/ ma perche avessi ii ciefo per suo obietto' (p. 102). On the Renaissance idea of self-fashioning in literature, sec Thomas Greene, 'The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature', in Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (eds.), The Disciplines of Criticism. Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History (New Haven and London, 1968), PP¡ 241-64, and, more recently, Stephen Greenblatt's application of the idea to English Renaissance writers in his Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago and London, 1980). Strangely, neither author considers the rhetorical basis for the concept nor the considerable support for it to be found in Ficino's writings or in the poetry of Lorenzo.

60. Lorenzo's willingness to extend easy credit through the Medici bank helped solidify his personal relationships with foreign potentates and must be appreciated as an important underpinning to his reputation abroad. On the politics of high finance in the Renaissance, see my Filippo Strozzi and the Medici. Favor and Finance in Sixteenth Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge, 1980).

61. In 1487 when the king of France asked his help in securing an ecclesiastical appointment, Lorenzo instructed his ambassador in Rome to expedite the matter with the pope so that the King would know he had been responsible, and thereby bring him great honor ('et non solamente desidero la expeditione sua presta et bene, ma che intenda in qualche destro modo che per opera mia sia suto servito costi, la qua! cosa reputer6 assai per trovarmi a grandissimo mio honore et commodita, perche cosi e la speranza di quel Signore, el quale e di tanta auctorita et potra voltarmi tucte o la maggiore parte di quelle expeditioni di la'), Lorenzo de' Medici to Giovanni Lanfredini, Florence, 17 Aug. 1487, Archivio di State, Florence (ASF), MAP, LVII, 9r. That same summer Lorenzo agreed to arrange a crucial settlement between the condottiere Boccolino Guzzone of Osimo and the pope.

62. Pier Giorgio Ricci and Nicolai Rubinstein, Censimento delle lettere di Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (Florence, 1964).

63. 'Astute e de gran vedere e ello; ma troppo si reputa et troppo alza le vele per bonaza ', and 'molto alza le sue vele quando gli pare havere vento prospero', Archivio di State, Milan (ASMi), SPE Fir. 183, cited in Brown, Barrolomeo Scala, p. 610.

64. A. Cappelli, 'Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici detto ii Magnifico conservate nell'Archivio Palatino di Modena', in Atti e memorie della R. Depurazione di Storia patria per le provincie modonesi e parmensi, I (1863), p. 165.

65. The Prince, ch. XVIII (Modern Library edn., New York, 1950), p. 65; also repeated in the Discourses, book 1, ch. XXV, p. 182.

66. ASMi, SPE Fir, 283, cited in Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, p. 69n.

67. N. Rubinstein, 'Lorenzo de' Medici: The Formation of His Statecraft', Proceedings of the British Academy, LXIII (1977), pp. 76-81.

68. Ibid., pp. 88--90.

450

69. Lorenzo cautioned Piero Alamanni, 'When you write to the Eight, never mention writing to me about anything important', Lorenzo to Piero Alamanni, 26 Apr. 1487, ASV, Mss. Patetta, 1739, f. 31v.

70. Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, III, pp. 133-6; IV, pp. 213, 391.

71. Ibid., III, pp. 48, 76; IV, pp. 393-4.

72. These hard-won lessons from the Pazzi War stayed with Lorenzo and cropped up in his later correspondence. 'I do not have the means to defend myself that His Excellency [Lodovico Sforza] has. I do not want to have to risk my life and other things again like before.' Lorenzo to P. Alamanni, 6 Oct. 1487, BAV, Mss. Patetta, 1739, f. 63; 'The truth is that because we are nearer to the King [of Naples] and less powerful than [Milan], ... we have to be more cautious.' Idem., 18 Dec. 1487, ibid, f. 74.

73. 'Delibero per quanto posso conservarmi la fede et dare materia ad altri di fidarsi di me. Stimo questa cosa quanto alcuna altra che potessi achadermi', IO Aug. 1487, ASF, MAP L VII, 84.

74. An increase is evident from the lntroitus and Exitus accounts of the Apostolic Chamber in the Vatican, ASV, IE, vols. 511-22 for the period 1484-92. On Innocent's finances, see my 'Farming Spiritual Revenues: Innocent VIII's Appalto of 1486', Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth (Florence, 1985), pp. 238-51.

75. 'La bocce e ita che questa querra e fatta a me proprio', Lettere, III, p. 169. See also ibid., p.

III, and N. Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici 1434 to 1494 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 195-7. In the stinging language of his bull of excommunication against Lorenzo and his adherents, Sixtus called him 'son of iniquity and pupil of perdition'; published in Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, III, app. XXVI, pp. 156-66. As the war dragged on into late 1479, some anti-Medici handbills were found, and the people began to agitate for peace, Lettere, IV, p. 398, and Rubinstein,' Lorenzo de' Medici', p. 9m. Rinuccini's treatise Dialogus de libertate (1479), published in Atti e Memorie dell'Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere La Colombaria, xxn, new series VIII (1957), pp. 270-303, which repeats Sixtus's charge of tyranny against Lorenzo, reflects this discontent. The negative image of Lorenzo as tyrant of Florence resurfaced again, even more vividly, during the Savonarolian period.

76. Lettere, iv, pp. 265-9. The official letter elaborates the sentiments he had expressed to the Signoria in the summer of 1478; ibid., iii, p. 286; and in several private letters written just prior to his departure, ibid., IV, pp. 259-72.

77. Ibid., IV, pp. 250-1.

78. Ibid., IV, pp. 265, 273-4.

79. The document, composed by Bartolomeo Scala, assured Lorenzo that the Florentines would approve whatever he negotiated; ibid., IV, pp. 269-70, and A.¡ Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, pp. 913.

80. The exchange of letters was through Piero Alamanni, the ambassador. 'His excellency has insisted that I write you and tell you he has newly fallen in Jove and that in the space of a few days he seems truly to have become a different man ... [The experience l is a restorative and aid for all his disturbances, and he recommends you try the same remedy. He is caught up in sonnets and similar things.' ASF, MAP L, 31, 8 Mar. 1487. Lorenzo's reply of 11 Mar. 1487 is published in Scritti Scelti, pp. 658-9.

81. Gombrich, 'The Early Medici', pp. 307-11, and Chastel, L'Art et Humanisme, pp. 14-17.

82. Quoted in Langedijk, The Portraits, 1, p. 31.

83. ASF, MAP XLVI, 556, and in Alfred Scharf, Filippino Lippi (Vienna, 1935), doc. IX, p. 89.

84. 'Vegho quello mi dite di Filippino dipintore. Io li parlai destramente a questi di passati per modo che resto contento et vego che gli oserva quello mi promise di lavorare solecitamente et non ispendere [?] per modo che io sono certo che il Cardinale restera obrighato a voi et chontento di 451

lui. Non restero di tenerlo dipresso et recordarli quello che mi paria di bisognio', N. Tornabuoni to Lorenzo, Rome, 7 May 1490, ASF, MAP, XXVI, 544.

85. Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, I, pp. 213-14. In a letter of 1491, Poliziano pointed out how Lorenzo stood to gain greater reputation than anyone in recent times from his collecting manuscripts for his library and from the favor he showed to intellectuals. Ibid, III, app. LII, p.

289. Poliziano himself was, of course, an interested party.

86. Cappelli, Atti e memorie, p. 256.

87. 10 May 1490, ASF, MAP XLII, 59.

88. A Verde, Lo Studio Fiorentino 1473-1503. Richerche e documemi, 3 vols. (Florence and Pistoia, 1973-77), III, xxv; Rochon, La Jeunesse, pp. 304, 337; M. Martelli, Studi laurenziani (Florence, 1965), p. 187; Gene Brucker, 'A Civic Debate on Florentine Higher Education (1460)', Renaissance Quarterly, xxxiv, no. 4 (1981), pp. 525-6.

89. Verde, Lo Studio, II, pp. 100-3, 554-5. Then, as now, professors of rhetoric received much less. Poliziano was paid a top salary of 450 florins, and Landino 300 florins: ibid, pp. 26-8, 174-5.

90. Stephano de Castrocaro to Lorenzo, Milan, 2 Feb. 1489, ASF, MAP, L, 27.

91. The letter is printed in Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, III, app. LXVI, pp. 336--44, in Bigi (ed.), Scriui scelti, pp. 671-75, and an English translation in Ross, Lives, pp. 332-5.

92. A recent comprehensive study of the ritual significance of Lorenzo's public displays is R. Trexler's Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980), especially pp. 412-62. Trexler argues that Lorenzo had an iconic role as the charismatic centre of Florence 'with no previous parallel in Florentine history, except for religious images like [the Madonna of] Impruneta', p. 433. On Lorenzo's special significance in Florentine confraternal life, see R. Hatfield, 'The Compagnia de' Magi', Journal of The Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxiii (1970), pp. 107-61, especially pp.

135-44, and R. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), pp.

169-72.

93. The tournament and the wedding are described in documents in Ross, The Lives, pp. 123-6, 129-34. The Medici paid particular attention to their dress for public occasions. In 1489, when Piero de' Medici went to Milan for the wedding of the Duke, he dazzled the whole Milanese court with his outfit emblazoned with the broncone, a Medici insignia, and people came to admire it the next day. ASF, MAP, L, 27.

94. For letters from Rome and Naples reporting the gossip, see Ross, The Lives, pp. 123-6, 160.

Pulci composed La Giostra di Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano his Stanze per la giostra in honor of Giuliano.

95. Cited in C. Ady, Lorenzo de' Medici and Renaissance Italy (New York, 1962), p. 60.

96. Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary from 1450-1516, trans. A. Jervis (London, 1927); Ricordanze di Bartolomeo Masi calderaio fiorentino, dal 1478 al 1526, ed. G. Corazzini (Florence, 1906). On the elusiveness of the people and their culture, see Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978), pp. 64-87.

97. At Lorenzo's wedding, many of the gifts as well as quantities of food and wine were distributed to the Florentines; Ross, The Lives, pp. 129-32.

98. N. Rubinstein, The Government, passim.; Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici. Faction in Florence, 1426-1434 (Oxford, 1978), and idem, 'The Florentine Reggimento', Renaissance Quarterly, xxviii (1975), pp. 575-638.

99. Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, in Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, III, app., XXI, pp. 135-42; Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, IV, p. 275; Landucci, A Florentine Diary, pp. 1619.

100. The votive images are described by Vasari in his life of Verrocchio, Opere, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence, 1878), III, pp. 373-4, and quoted in Langedijk, The Portraits, I, pp. 27-8. Although Lo452

renzo was probably not as much of a Florentine religious icon as Trexler would have us believe, he certainly emerged from the crisis of the Pazzi Conspiracy having achieved a symbolic identification with the city that neither his father nor grandfather had had.

101. According to the Milanese ambassador Sacramoro, following his father's death Lorenzo was careful to conduct himself in a manner pleasing to the people, and he observed that 'most Florentines were behind him' ('gli animi dei piu sono per lui'). If there was any danger to his position, Sacramoro judged it would come not from the people but from the principal citizens; dispatches of 15 Dec. 1469 and 3 Jan. 1470, in G. Soranzo, 'Lorenzo Magnifico alla morte del padre e il suo primo balzo verso la Signoria', Archivio Storico Italiano, cx1 (1953), p. 50. Trexler argues that the Medici courted popular favor as evidenced by their support of certain plebeian confraternities; Public Life, pp. 412-15.

102. Rubinstein, The Government, pp. 197-203.

103. 'We hold this matter [of Sarzana] as dear as anything ever before. I have even come here myself specially, and it is of considerable personal honor.' Lorenzo to P. Alamanni, Serzanello, 21 June 1487, ASV, Mss. Patetta, 1739, f. 41.

104. Vita, p. 35. Lorenzo himself was clearly aware of the symbolic importance of his presence, for he had written to his secretary from Pisa on 6 June that he was anxious to come home but did not want to upset the Florentines by leaving, which might have an adverse effect on the campaign either in fact or in people's opinions, ('Io desiderei fra due o tre di partirmi di qui, ma non vorrei che costi dispiacessi o che in facto o in opinione la impresa peggiorassi di conditione'), Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Carte Ginori Conti, 29. 129. III. 105. His letter to his uncle, the chronicler Benedetto Dei, dated April 14, is published in Ludovico Frati, 'La Marte di Lorenzo de' Medici e ii Suicidio de Pier Leoni', A.S.I., ser. 5, vol. IV (1889), pp. 255-60, and translated in Ross, The Lives, p. 341-4. For Dei, Lorenzo's death was 'the great and bitter sorrow of the whole city; and with every reason, for no doubt we have lost the splendor not only of Tuscany but of all Italy', p. 341.

106. On the obituary, see Rubinstein, 'The Formation', p. 94. The letters of condolence are in ASF, Signori, Otto, Dieci, Legazioni e Commissarie, Missive, Responsive, 77, fos. 261-7. So many ambassadors came to pay their respects that the Signoria had to contribute 5,700 lire in quattrini to cover their expenses; ASF, Monte Comune, 1517, f. 74s.

107. Trans. Ross, The Lives, p. 343; also in Valori, Vita, P¡ 52.

108. Ibid., pp. 51-2; Guicciardini, History of Florence, p. 70.

109. See his letter to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, IS April 1492, Opera, I, pt. 2, p. 930.

110. Opera, I, p. 50.

111. Landucci, A Florentine Diary, pp. 52-4; Johannis Burkard, Liber Notarum, R.I.S., xxxii: I, pp. 347-8. The source of his account is probably Ficino, who had also written about Lorenzo's death to Francesco Valori, ambassador in Rome. Machiavelli devoted an entire chapter in the Discourses to portents, among which those accompanying Lorenzo's death figure prominently; book 1, ch. 56, pp. 257-8.

112. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence, pp. 126-7; also B. Cerretani, Storia Fiorentina, in Schnitzer, Quellen und Forschungen, III, pp. 6-9.

113. Landucci, A Florentine Diary, p. 54. Masi explained that the portentous lightning was caused

by Lorenzo releasing a spirit that had been imprisoned in his ring; Ricordanze, p. 17.

114. B. Cerretani, Dialogo della mutatione di Firenze, in Schnitzer, Quellen und Forsclmngen, m, pp. 97-8. See also P. Villari, Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, trans. L. Villari (London, 1896), p. 131 and note.

115. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence, pp. 135-7, 271-3; Trexler, 'Lorenzo de' Medici and Savonarola, Martyrs for Florence', Renaissance Quarterly, xxx1 (1978), p. 294.

453

116. Fra Placido Cinozzi's version is given in Ross, The Lives, p. 340. In his biography of Savonarola, Villari still defended the story as factual, Life and Times, pp. 168-72. Condivi recounts another story, this time how Lorenzo's ghost, clad only in a ragged black robe, appeared twice to a friend of Michelangelo's with a warning to Piero de' Medici of his coming exile; Asconio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, tr. A. Wohl (Baton Rouge, 1976), pp. 17-18. For Condivi, Lorenzo was the 'father of all virtu' (p. 12).

117. The image never entirely faded from political historiography. Sismondi picked it up in the nineteenth century in his History of the Italian Republics, where he compared Lorenzo's usurpations of power to those of a Napoleon III. It has also surfaced in more recent scholarly preoccupation with the collapse of the Florentine Republic and the origins of the Medici principate.

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SECTION 4

Kent, F. W. Patron-Client Networks in Renaissance Florence and the Emergence of Lorenzo as ‘Maestro Della Bottega’.

Originally published in volume 13 of Studies in Italian Culture, ed. by Bernard Toscani and titled Lorenzo de' Medici: New Perspectives (New York: Lang, 1993), pp. 279313.

I Lorenzo de' Medici was called many things by his contemporaries. A tyrant according to Alamanno Rinuccini; to Ugolino Verina he was a wise 'Caesar among his leading citizens'. Other Florentines described Lorenzo as their Maecenas, their 'common father', as 'our God on earth, the Magnificent Lorenzo', and so one might go on.(1) There was also in currency another cluster of descriptions, with one exception - patronus, protector - not drawn from classical or Christian sources as were the familiar ones above, but rather from an amalgam of the commercial language and political jargon of Quattrocento Florence. When his intimates and partisans mentioned Lorenzo in their informal correspondence, they tended to describe him as the 'boss', as a 'big shot' or pezzo grosso as a modern Italian would say. Luigi Pulci told the young Lorenzo in 1471 that already he was reputed in Naples to be agran maestro, great master, a ubiquitous phrase in fifteenth-century Italy for a very powerful man.(2) A decade later, for some contemporaries Lorenzo had become - in an almost untranslatable expression the maestro della bottega.

According to the standard dictionaries, this graphic phrase is first used in a figurative sense by Niccolo Machiavelli in one of his Legazioni, where Cesare Borgia is reported as so describing the king of France in 1502.(3) In fact, however, as was so often the case, Machiavelli was drawing on the rich and changing political vocabulary of his Florentine youth, for as early as 1470 or so, Benedetto Dei in his Cronaca had used the phrase 'maestro della bottega' of the head of the Medici family. In the 1480s, it appears several times in the correspondence of the Dei circle, applied not only to Lorenzo but to the princely lords of other cities.4 If earlier usages cannot be found, and if its Florentine origin may be assumed, one is tempted to argue that the phrase was minted in the changing domestic circumstances - to be discussed in this essay - during Lorenzo's lifetime, when his increasingly informal authority as a patron made the whole city his concern. Earlier Quattrocento Florentine writers had anticipated such a usage, as when Leon Battista Alberti allows one of his characters in Della Famiglia to criticize a citizen who treats the stato, the regime, as if it were 'mia bottega',(5) his own commercial estab455

lishment. Lorenzo was also described as the maggiore,(6) another commercial term, while his secretaries came to refer to and address him as padrone, boss, a word which was not confined exclusively to Lorenzo, but was certainly used sparingly by his contemporaries.(7) This Lorenzo, the boss or the maestro della bottega, is the Lorenzo who exerted influence in Florence and far beyond largely, if not entirely, by informal and private means: by writing and reading scores of letters of recommendation every day; by listening to dozens of petitioners; and by asking his agents and secretaries to attend to the bewildering array of requests, demands, and complaints which rained in upon him, 'more of them than there are days in the year', as he wrote exasperatedly in April 1485.(8) He is a Lorenzo historians have either ignored or have so much taken for granted that they in effect omit him from their analyses of the great man's complicated talents and subtle methods of control. If contemporaries expected a man such as Lorenzo to dispense favours and largesse, and admired and even revered him for so doing, and if would-be clients positively pressed him to interfere in government and administration (presenting wine, fish, and game by way of persuasion), some modern scholars seem to find it disconcerting that Lorenzo acted in this way and was treated in this fashion, as if one demeans him and his political role by describing him, as his own friends did, as maestro della bottega, maggiore, or padrone. There seem to be two intertwined assumptions behind this view. Firstly, that to emphasize Lorenzo's patronage of his friends or amici, to place many of his activities in the context of recent scholarship on the social bonds created by amicizia, friendship, is to reduce him to a sort of Chicago ward boss (not to say precinct captain!) avant la lettre, to make of him nothing more than a party chieftain and thereby to diminish or even deny his multifaceted and subtle talents -the force of his intellect and his mastery of diplomacy - and to ignore his other methods of control, above all by constitutional means.(9) Or, and this is the second assumption, patronage of the sort Lorenzo, or any great oligarch or lord, exercised is seen as 'jobs for the boys', jobbery in a word; a process, moreover, taken as read by contemporaries and one which tells historians little or nothing about how party allegiances were formed and political authority maintained.(10) To draw attention to Lorenzo as a boss, as the grandest of the Florentine gran maestri, is not for a moment to suggest that one should ignore all other contemporary descriptions of him as irrelevant or misleading. Nor is it to imply that one might find some magical key to his complicated character and career in such everyday activities.

Nevertheless, a gran maestro was a traditional Florentine figure who could play a more crucial and more honourable civic role than one might believe; as could a Chicago ward boss, by the way.(11) Indeed, much of Lorenzo's appeal to broad sections of the city's populace may be explained by his notable success in his patronal role: as a media456

tor or broker of power and influence and as an arbiter, with a reputation for wisdom and judgement, in disputes between people of every social class. His well-documented interventions in so many artistic commissions and in the building programmes of important citizens and institutions - his very position as an 'arbiter of taste' in Ernst Gombrich's celebrated formulation - can all be considered attributes of his activities as maestro della bottega.(12) In some cases, it is hardly necessary to distinguish his artistic from his political patronage, as the operai, the works committee, of the church of San Iacopo in Pistoia implied in a letter of early 1477 when asking Lorenzo, whom they called their 'protectore', to choose between two models for a tomb, 'because in such matters, and indeed in everything else, you have the fullest understanding'. It comes as no surprise to learn that Lorenzo, like his ancestors and other prominent Florentines before him, was early active in Pistoian affairs and social networks.(13) It can also be unwise to make too rigid a distinction between Lorenzo's political patronage (defined over-narrowly as 'jobs for the boys') and his domestic political control, for knowledge of the first can and must inform our understanding of the second. We know, thanks to Nicolai Rubinstein and others, how in technical and constitutional terms the Medici and their regimes contrived to put their friends into office.(14) A further question we must ask, as Rubinstein implied in 1966, is how and why Lorenzo and his associates could persuade or cajole citizens to take advantage of the newly instituted electoral controls to appoint Mediceans, and how and why, once in office, such men more often than not did what they were told. We must enquire why, to take one example among hundreds, the comparatively undistinguished Cipriano Sernigi was emboldened to request Lorenzo on 5 July 1479 that he be promoted 'to the dignity of the office of the Accoppiatori', a politically very sensitive electoral office; by what means Sernigi was quickly satisfied - as he was - and how we are to understand the expectations of the petitioner, and petitioned, as to the way Cipriano should comport himself in it?(15) 1here is more than one way of approaching such questions. However, a profitable line of enquiry is to take Lorenzo's activities as maestro della bottega, the ideology and practice of friendship and patron-client relationships, as seriously as he and his contemporaries did. And these activities one can only understand by devoting some time to discussing the gran maestri and client networks of pre-Laurentian, indeed preMedicean, Florence, by injecting (in Anthony Molho's words) 'a temporal dimension into the study of patronage'.(16) My evidence with which to do so is drawn above all from letter collections which - to adapt Francesco Guicciardini's statement in the preface of his Memorie di famiglia - 'have held up a mirror in which I can see not only the things done' by the Florentines 'but indeed their characters and way of life'.(17)

457

II It is only when, broadly speaking from the second half of the Trecento onwards, there survive numerous diaries, or ricordanze, referring to friends and friendships and private and public letter collections showing those bonds of amicizia in action that we can talk at all confidently about patron-client relationships in late medieval Florence.

In so far as these were extensions of bonds of kinship and neighbourhood - and in my view in most cases they complemented and supplemented such older collective ties rather than, as some scholars would have it, replacing them - one would expect them long to have been part and parcel of urban life and politics, as well as to have been active in the countryside where, indeed, historians such as Charles de la Ronciere and Chris Wickham have discovered clienteles in the thirteenth century.(18) City magnates in Dante's Florence attracted clients among the citizens, thereby creating the vertical social ties which the chronicler Dino Compagni takes for granted (along with the upper class, so to speak horizontal, factional bonds forged from kinship and economic dependence, friendship, and enmity) in his account of early fourteenth century politics.(19) For this generation, Brunetto Latini in his Tresor had already provided a handy reminder of classical concepts of friendship. He paraphrased Cicero in explaining frankly to his fellow citizens both the practical and emotional rewards of friendship - 'well being, advantage and delight' - which was 'one of God's virtues, and mankind's'. Citizens should revere and co-operate with their powerful friends, who in turn had need of those 'from whom they receive service, honour and grace'.(20) By the end of the fourteenth century, richer evidence brings to life individual gran maestri and the friends and clients with whom they dealt. When he wanted to make a politically advantageous marriage, the young Buonaccorso Pitti knew to go to Guido del Palagio, whom he described in his diary as 'the most respected and influential man in the city', and was duly allotted as wife a daughter of Luca degli Albizzi, whose mother was Guido's own first cousin.(21) At other times, an individual is described as dominant in a particular quarter of the city, as when Farese Sacchetti told Rinaldo degli Albizzi in 1424 that 'leaving aside [Niccolo da Uzzano ], no man in the Oltrarno area is more prominent' than Neri Capponi who also had, Rinaldo elsewhere tells us, a strong following in the Pistoian mountains.(22) Indeed, as recent research has shown, such prominent Florentines frequently had special relationships with provincial centres or were friends of a particular faction within a country town.(23) Not just urban neighbourhood or rural locality defined the territory of agran maestro. A man's place within a large, ancient, and powerful family - neither del Palagio nor da Uzzano can be said to have enjoyed such a position - could be what attracted clients. In 1396, Andrea Peruzzi was described to a comparatively humble man who had contrived to marry into that distinguished house as 'more highly regarded than anyone in the Peruzzi family, a 458

great and noble citizen and a generous and excellent relative to be able to count on, and it would be a fine and very wise thing to know how to consider him a relation'.(24) Andrea Peruzzi, another man wrote, 'is considered to be Florence's best and most well mannered man'.(25) Some years later, another Peruzzi client, Francesco Riccialbani, recommended Bartolommeo Peruzzi to Farese Sacchetti, explaining, 'it's true that I'm very close to the Peruzzi family, who have always been active on my behalf, especially Verano's sons, of whom today there is left: only Bartolommeo, more than a brother to me and a very fine young man as you must know.'(26) As this passage, in which an erstwhile dependent seeks to become his master's patron, reveals, there was in pre-Medicean Florence no immutable hierarchy of command or influence, there was no patronal 'system' or 'chain'. Rather, as Molho has put it, patronage was 'a lubricant of sorts'(27) - a process one might say - by which men and women, rich and poor, individuals and institutions, got into contact with each other. Or, to change the image, within the city and throughout the countryside there was a series of circuits of influence, which could be made to intersect and overlap and through which the current could run in both directions. An influential patron, or 'friend' in contemporary parlance, might be a lofty figure dispensing favours or largesse from on high, but was just as likely to be a man (and very occasionally a woman) with the ability to put individuals and institutions in touch with others who might help them. Quite ordinary citizens, without wealth or political authority in the strict sense, could make themselves powerful brokers if their acquaintance were wide, their characters at once generous and discreet, and their instincts for city life sound. There was, for one, ser Lapo Mazzei, whose friendship with Francesco Datini has been well analysed

by Richard Trexler, and for another Bartolommeo Cederni, a quintessential gobetween or intromettitore of the mid-fifteenth century.(28) A more imposing intermediary, but still hardly a Capponi or da Uzzano, was Forese Sacchetti, a man active in the early fifteenth century and the first patronage broker whose activities are known in detail, thanks to a groundbreaking essay by Gene Brucker.(29) In an archetypal letter of recommendation, one of scores Sacchetti received, Currado Panciatichi formally requested Forese that, on behalf of two of his own clients having 'something to ask of the Magnificent Priors[ ... ], for love of me you should be pleased to raise the matter in the Palazzo Vecchio with some friend of yours'; Sacchetti should particularly decide whether this letter itself should be sent to Bernardo Guasconi, 'whom I hear is sitting in the College'.(30) Citizens were always eager to know who had been newly elected to office, and even an obscure Florentine might become an influential figure for the brief period during which he held a communal post. However, it was the very rapid turnover of government and administrative offices that gave a certain permanence and stability to the position of the eminences grises of the world of patronage.

459

Sacchetti's correspondence shows him to have been almost a 'professional' broker, very active on behalf of numerous raccomandati, clients, from very various social classes; and it richly reveals, too, the protocol and rhetoric of friendship, so familiar to readers of the later Medici letters. One man recommended his poor clients to Niccolo Sacchetti as 'very much mine' and urged him to serve them 'for the sake of the friendship that has always existed between you and our house'; they would be his 'servidori e schiavi', his servants and slaves, should things turn out well.(31) On the other hand, in these letters such humble clients might as well be described as their protector's friend; or a social equal of Sacchetti's, such as Battista Lanfredini, might write to him not so much fraternally, as had Panciatichi, as submissively, asking that Forese 'include me in the number of your other servants if you have not yet done so, since I regard and trust you as if you were my father in the flesh and my one and only superior, and so beg you to want me as a son and loyal servant'.(32) In the rhetoric if not always in the practice of amicizia, then, there was often expressed a rough and ready fraternity and equality, despite social differences between friends, even at times a reversal of roles, as when agran maestro might describe himself as 'serving' his humble friends and petitioners.(33) 1he language of this rhetoric drew above all on images from family life or domestic service, for all that sacred metaphors to become much more prominent from the mid-Quattrocento - were not unknown to Sacchetti's circle, one member of which wrote that were Forese able to help him with a tax deduction, he would regard his benefactor as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.(34) 'Friendship', the process by which Florentine men and women helped each other and got so many things done, while more than just the practical and informal expression of social bonds such as kinship, god parenthood, or neighbourhood, found its essential source, and very often its modus operandi, in such strong loyalties. If a man such as Cederni, without family or neighbourhood backing, found it necessary to work assiduously to make friends whom he then regarded as relatives, still for most well-to-do Florentines kinship and neighbourhood, foremost among other social bonds, were almost always the indispensable first points of reference from which they spun elaborate webs of friendship - using 'friends of friends' to do so - which at their most extensive crisscrossed the whole society and city.

Two precise examples will illustrate the process and its social context. On 5 March 1452, an impoverished member of the Alberti family wrote to thank Piero di Cosimo de' Medici for an offer, made through the miniaturist Filippo Torelli, to help him marry off his daughters. It emerges that Torelli had spoken to Piero, his 'dear friend', after Francesco Alberti had confided his position to him. Alberti was, after all, godfather of Torelli's son, and that family had 'a farm a stone's throw away from mine, and every day we are there we are in each other's company, and he knows my situation very well'.

460

This was a particularly welcome neighbourly intervention since, as Francesco admitted, 'in order to survive I've already had to have recourse to relatives and friends for some years'.(35) The existence of such friendship as this could itself become the reason why, and the means by which, help was extended to people down the social scale and far beyond the city walls. In another letter of two years later, written to Piero de' Medici by Michele del Giogante, a neighbour and intimate of the Medici well known to historians, we see Michele most impressively marshalling his friendly resources in a cause dear to him. Using as middleman the celebrated bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, who worked with his own friend Messer Giannozzo Pandolfini - both men were in their own right Medici friends Michele sought to procure through Medicean influence the release from the Venetian army of his Florentine protege, a teenager blessed with a beautiful singing voice, whose brother, sole support of his plebeian family, worked for Vespasiano himself.(36) Now it is true that Florentines negotiated cannily with each other in this allimportant business of doing and receiving favours, and it goes without saying that, despite protestations of eternal friendship and fealty from both sides, numerous transactions were once-off and business-like in nature. Even when a more long-lived relationship was established or sought, clients were not slow to imply to a patron that there were other brokers or gran maestri to whom they might resort were they not to be satisfied. Powerful men, in turn, actively sought out potential clients and friends, who then carefully pondered what they should do, precisely because the decision could have serious and enduring consequences. As Alessandra Strozzi realized - and she was speaking of Giannozzo Pandolfini - 'when a man puts himself in the hands or seeks the advice of the gran maestri, he had better do what they want, for better or for worse.'(37) Early in January 1447, for instance, Bartolommeo Cederni found himself discussing with his friend Salvestro del Cica whether or not to accept offers of help and protection made by two influential men, del Cica's friends, from a quarter other than his own. Salvestro's advice to Cederni was to 'place yourself freely under their protection because they are, as is said, most prudent (and) possess power, knowledge and will'. Elsewhere, del Cica's letter reveals that one of these grandees had already made him certain 'proferte' (offers), namely a large interest-free loan,(38) a practice which a number of other contemporary witnesses regard as a crucial test of sincere and durable friendship. His banker had done him a certain service 'out of grace and love alone without any advantage to himself, as they say', Giovanni Chellini noted in his diary.(39) What Ronald Weissman has aptly called 'the personal characteristics of the Renaissance economy',(40) among which the giving of loans and the waiving of interest between friends and patrons and clients are important examples, very much need further study.

461

For if, as Weissman has also suggested, the 'letter of recommendation' was in a sense a 'letter of credit',(41) it could also be much more than the ephemeral documentation of a single social or political transaction between two Florentines. As one reads the familiar and friendly correspondence, witness to many years of co-operation in some cases, of Bartolommeo Cederni and his friends, as one ploughs rather more reluctantly through the repeated declarations of loyalty and thanks for services rendered, recorded by generations of fifteenth-century Florentines in their letters to the Medici, one is impressed by the general family resemblance these carefully preserved (if not legally binding) documents seem to bear to the notarial acts by which outsiders enrolled as kinsmen in Genoa's patrilineages (alberghi) or even to the indentures post-feudal English or French knights signed on joining a lord's retinue.(42) For there could be something solemn and binding about two Florentine men's plighting their friendly troth, with or without a letter of recommendation, and a sense of betrayal remained when things did not work out over the years. In an almost loverlike way, Benedetto Dei, from a family of new men, had bound himself to the powerful Medicean Bongianni Gianfigliazzi in 1467, after his twin brother, Miliano, had married into the aristocratic Gianfigliazzi. Bongianni had sought him out in Pisa, Benedetto reported to his brother, 'making pleasantries to me as if to his own brother, offering and proffering himself[ ... ] on Saturday morning he told me many secrets, and I, too, opened my heart to him, and he kissed and embraced me repeatedly'.(43) Upon Gianfigliazzi's death fifteen years later, Benedetto, while politely and prudently lamenting to Gino Capponi, another of his protectors, the irreplaceable loss of 'my dear and beloved father Bongianni Gianfigliazzi',(44) confided his deep sense of disappointment to his brother Miliano: 'I've heard about your Bongianni, because by God's truth he was never mine, though I knew him during your travails and hardships [ ... ] For my part, I never had from him more than a fly's pride's worth of favour or profit, and if I was asked to dine in his house, I always paid the price.'(45) This particular friendship did not work out, but, as Dale Kent has demonstrated in her classic analysis of the formation of Cosimo de' Medici's faction in the 1420s and 1430s, in Florence, friendships and patron-client relationships could be as enduring as they were also dynamic.(46) And while they expressed allegiances which sprang spontaneously from the urban soil, still they could be trained and pruned, in a sense formalized, to become an important means by which a strong man maintained a more or less permanent following, and this setta or party could come to dominate civic government.

III The young Lorenzo de' Medici took absolutely for granted this old civic process by which things were done and his family's increasingly dominant role in its workings. Not only had his grandfather, Cosimo, owed much of his informal authority after 1434 to 462

his ability to mediate between the other powerful men of the regime and to his being (as contemporaries said) a font of patronage,(47) he had been very energetically helped by his sons, Piero and Giovanni, whose correspondence shows them to have handled much of the day-to-day business of responding to recommendations sent them by others. Upon Picro's taking over in 1464, his wife Lucrezia became and remained a formidable clearinghouse for such business - hundreds of letters of recommendation addressed to her remain - as a patron in her own right, with a special clientele among clerics, women, and the poor, and as an influential means of gaining access to her husband or, increasingly, to her elder son, Lorenzo. When upon her death in 1482 the latter lamented that his mother had been 'an instrument that saved me from many chores', he in part would have had in mind Lucrezia's role as a patron and go-between.(48) Lorenzo started very young indeed to emulate her and his other kin. His earliest surviving letter, of 18 November 1460, was addressed to the captain of Anghiari on behalf of one 'ser Chalumato [ ... ] my dearest friend', while in his second of almost a year later he begged his father, on behalf of other friends, to honour an earlier undertaking to help ser Griso Griselli become notary of the Signoria, a recommendation which duly bore fruit. However, Lorenzo was not alone, and may not even have been decisive, in pulling off this small coup for ser Griso, who was also supported by Donato Acciaiuoli and his other intellectual friends, 'the entire Academy' as it was said, for whom indeed Lorenzo had been in fact the intermediary with his father. Rather, at the age of twelve, the youth was learning the patronage ropes, was already beginning to appreciate how complicated and time-consuming such essential matters could be, for he had earlier spoken to the formidable Luca Pitti (with his father's express permission he makes clear) and intended to discuss the matter, too, with Luigi Ridolfi, a second senior oligarch and electoral official (accoppiatore) from Griselli's quarter.(49) Already, and throughout his teens, Lorenzo was receiving hundreds of letters of recommendation, which may well represent the mere surviving tip of a lost iceberg of requests, reports, and complaints made to him verbally - at his father's house, at parties held by his rather rakish friends, in the meeting places of the religious confraternities to which he belonged, and in the streets and piazzas of the city - for every Florentine knew that words counted for far more than letters. 1he elder Medici also gave more formal audiences to petitioners and, at seventeen, when Piero was 'so afflicted by catarrh that he could hardly give audience',(50) Lorenzo was required to stand in for his father, perhaps the first of countless such occasions he came almost to dread. Whether he liked it or not -and despite the sense of him some scholars have as almost an innocent in domestic politics when young- Lorenzo de' Medici was as thoroughly trained in the 1460s to be a gran maestro, to make himself indispensable and honoured in the sphere of internal politics and patronage, as he was carefully prepared for his later roles as diplomat and poet.(51) 463

It was as well that this was so. Throughout his life, he was to handle an astounding volume of patronage (his other preoccupations and responsibilities aside), as one can quickly grasp by considering that not only is his own surviving correspondence extensive, but that there exist some 20,000 letters written to him. When one also takes into account his strangely neglected Protocolli, the brief minutes - by no means complete of Lorenzo's tens of thousands of written responses to letters and verbal petitions he had received, it is clear that he was asked constantly to do a truly astonishing range of things for correspondents and their friends and clients. These people came from every social group, and most institutions, in the city and the Florentine countryside. From outside the Florentine domain, his frequent correspondents and petitioners included the greatest men and women in Italy and, among others, sundry knights, academics, and ecclesiastics looking for positions in Tuscany or seeking Lorenzo's influence with other lords.(52) lt goes without saying that Lorenzo's Italian-wide contacts, carefully nurtured by his parents from his very infancy, provided him with both the prestige and, often, the means with which to be an effective patron at home in Florence. On the other hand, his family's firm grip on its domestic friends enabled Lorenzo to satisfy many non-Tuscan clients who had business in the city.

1his is hardly the place to demonstrate in detail how frequently Lorenzo acted on letters of recommendation, how faithfully he attended to even minor matters touching humble people, and how often his intervention was decisive, even if the sheer volume of this correspondence, and the complexity and often obscurity of its contents, did not make the task an almost unmanageable one. One may suggest, however, that while Lorenzo obviously did not support all petitions he received (which were anyway frequently in conflict one with another), did not pursue others in anything but a perfunctory way, and was by no means infallible when he did exert himself, even when young he was still able to prevail when he really put his mind to it, when his or the vital interests of his intimates or friends needed to be served. Even allowing for a tendency among his supporters to attribute any grace or office given them to the great man's direct intervention, too many informed Florentines thank him, in specific terms, for favours requested and duly received, in some cases even for honours bestowed on them without their having to ask (a rare sign of grace, this), for us to think otherwise. One has only to pore over the remarkable volumes dedicated by Armando Verde to the history of the university at Pisa to find scores of carefully documented examples of Lorenzo's acting as the successful maestro of this, perhaps his pet, bottega. On behalf of Florentine citizens and of foreign doctors and students alike, he was tireless - on his own initiative or at their request - in pursuing their interests, all to the greater glory of Lorenzo's academic enterprise.(53)

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So very active did Lorenzo have to be, indeed, in this and so many other spheres of influence, that at times he became understandably weary of it all: of balancing one claim on him against another, of receiving visits - in mid-1482 he told ser Niccolo Michelozzi that he was very reluctant to return to Florence from the country, unless absolutely necessary, lest it appear he had come 'for the filling of the electoral purses, and so have all Florence at my house to no end'54 - and above all of the letter-writing and dictating, which exhausted his hand and his patience: 'And having dictated for more than five hours', he wrote to Pierfilippo Pandolfini on 15 December 1489, he would say no more because Tm tired: please excuse me'.(55) On occasions, he asked lieutenants such as Michelozzi and Francesco Nori, or his brother Giuliano and son Piero, to act for him - Tm handing the matter over to you, so that in that way you know you can relieve me of the burden', he wrote to the young man concerning a minor benefice in May 1490(56) - but he knew (something Piero, fatefully for his own ascendancy, failed to grasp) that, by whatever means, friends and clients had to be helped or, if not, mollified. A good deal of Lorenzo's prestige and authority, his ability to get his friends into office and keep them friendly and to disarm or discredit his critics and rivals, depended upon this never-ending round of attending to raccomandazioni. And if he were to cut a figure among the princes of Italy, with whom his family's future was to lie, he had to be sure of himself at home by becoming boss of the Florentine shop.

For, to return in more detail to a point made earlier, in Florence itself Lorenzo was attending to more than people's material well-being in expending so much energy on bread and butter matters, in seeking to extract humble people from prison or to have them treated leniently in provincial courts, on his own initiative or at the behest of other citizens, or in trying to get clients or their dependents salaried jobs (utili), ecclesiastical benefices, tax deductions, and so on. Just as public offices were known both as onori e utili, that is as conferring honour and profit, there was much more than mere place-seeking in this Burry of activity. 1he very sense of self-esteem and honour of the traditional governing and administrative class was inseparable from office-holding, as Lorenzo's correspondents make clear. Citizens commonly say that by helping them to win office Lorenzo will 'revive' or 'resuscitate' them for, as one man wrote in seeking preferment, 'life without honour is a living death'.(57) Bernardo Cambini, writing to the cardinal of Pavia early in 1476 asking him to intervene with Lorenzo to have him made a prior, advanced the argument that since his ancestors had held that office, he did not wish by comparison to appear 'a wooden man'. (Lorenzo was to be Geppetto to the writer's Pinocchio.) And, as so many petitioners did, Cambini goes on to say that 'this dignity will help me marry off my daughters'.(58) Nothing is more difficult in civic life than marrying daughters well, Francesco Guicciardini later observed,(59) and every citizen knew the importance of holding high office, which brought not only honour but often a welcome cash Bow, when the time came to do so. Furthermore, marriage alli465

ances or parentadi had always been brokered by connections of the two parties and by prominent citizens. Cosimo de' Medici, well known for his pre-eminent role in this politically sensitive matter, provided a model for his grandson whom - even had Guicciardini not gone so far, perhaps too far, as to say that 'no marriages other than those of the middling sort were contracted without his participation and permission' - we know to have been an indefatigable matchmaker, coming almost to monopolize a marriage market in which traditionally a number of oligarchs had operated.(60) His powers of judgement and persuasion Lorenzo exercised far beyond the arranging of marriage alliances. His was a society in which much arbitration in civil legal cases and in private disputes was left: in citizen hands, increasingly so, in fact, as the fifteenth century went on, according to Thomas Kuehn. There is not the time to cite detailed evidence of Lorenzo's pre-eminent role as an arbiter between parties in conflict or as a common friend once an outside judgement was required - as 'arbiter and amicable arranger and common friend', in the words of a notarial document of 1489(61) but it is everywhere in the record. Asked by petitioners to intervene, as well as imposing himself upon them, he negotiates peaces between warring peasants, settles disputes, and acts as a go-between amongst his patrician friends - 'intervene with your authority or have a word with these Ridolfi', urged Guidantonio Vespucci whose nephew was in dispute with that family in 1482(62) - he becomes a family elder in a division of property between his Medici kinsmen, all on a scale none of his associates, who of course went on doing these things, could emulate.63 Writ large to be sure, Lorenzo as arbiter and broker (and as procurer of jobs) was fulfilling contemporary expectations of what a good and wise leader should be like and in that sense was a traditional gran maestro.

IV Even in the first decade of his ascendancy, however, there surfaces in some of the letters of recommendation addressed to Lorenzo a formality, bordering at times on the obsequious, which anticipated his emergence by the 1480s as the almost undisputed head of a hierarchy of patronage such as the city appears not to have known before.

This changed tone could be light and almost flirtatious when adopted by an intimate such as the miniaturist Francesco d'Antonio, who in a letter on behalf of another man written on 7 September 1476, ended by hoping that so 'base a little man' as himself had not been presumptuous in approaching 'so sublime a man' as Lorenzo.(64) If such a letter tacitly acknowledged, perhaps, that Lorenzo was still a very young man so to be addressed (for such elaborate formalities were hardly in themselves new, especially in courtly circles), other correspondents of high social status solemnly said such things as these: 'I am and will always remain Your Magnificence's dog and slave'; 'with one word purchase a slave in these matters'.(65) It is true that in the 1470s a number of Florentine citizens, older men especially, still addressed Lorenzo in the fraternal or fatherly 466

way more traditional among prominent citizens and could be very forthright in asking him, using the familiar tu form, for favours or in rejecting his considerable attempts to influence the judicial process in provincial courts. In such letters, Lorenzo appears in the patronage context as a very influential but not absolutely dominant figure, just as the diplomatic correspondence of this early period often refers to him as one of several leading citizens, principali, of the regime and not always even as the first of them. As time passed, however, more particularly after Lorenzo successfully survived the turbulent period between 1478 and 1480 and subsequently imposed more refined constitutional controls which gave him and his friends bigger domestic patronage spoils to distribute, neither foreign observers nor Florentine supplicants could doubt his surer control of both the regime and the social processes which in part sustained it. By the end of that decade, after his recently established close connections by marriage with the Papacy yielded him not only a son-cardinal but ready access to the vast pool of Roman ecclesiastical patronage which had been denied him on account of his poisoned relations with Sixtus IV, he had emerged as a very considerable patron not just by Tuscan, but by Italian, standards.(66) From the early 1480s onwards, almost no Florentine letter-writer addressed Lorenzo as tu, a usage which, if under threat throughout the peninsula in the latter part of the Quattrocento, some Florentines still preserved among intimates or equals in accordance both with traditional practice and classical prescription.(67) The whole rhetoric of friendship, with its traditionally fraternal undertones, became more about hierarchy, Lorenzo's 'friends' becoming more his partisans or followers than his allies. A great oligarch such as Piero di Gino Capponi, the descendant of a proud Santo Spirito family which had always considered itself an ally and not a follower of the Medici (and himself a man whose relations with Lorenzo appear to have been as uneasy as they were close), found himself constrained to end a letter of 16 October 1490 by saying that 'I had Giuliano [his son] write this letter in his own hand so that in his boyhood he should understand what Piero [himself] prizes, to be in the magnificent Lorenzo's good graces, and that [both his sons] should remember they are born of Capponi and Guicciardini blood'.(68) This last phrase was, perhaps, a subtle assertion of aristocratic pride in the face of Medicean pretensions, which other correspondents had been for some time rather at pains to encourage and, so to speak, ratify. Clerical (and, it has to be confessed, professorial) correspondents of Lorenzo rather led the way in addressing him in terms of their own abject subordination, as if their habits and conventions of humility and respect for authority and hierarchy found full play in this rather different context. A Strozzi abbess wanted her convent to be 'under [Lorenzo's] wing'; a Bolognese professor assured him he was 'your dog and servant'.(69) In 1477, Baccio Ugolini, who significantly enough had been in the service of the princely Gonzaga before becoming close to Lorenzo, addressed him as 'patrone optime', a term which was al467

ready common among Lorenzo's learned secretaries and retinue, who seem selfconsciously to have employed patronus and its Italian equivalent padrone in a classical sense.(70) (At the same time, the twin usage cliens, client, or even clientulo emerges, though these words were never to be as ubiquitous as patronus.)(71) Such men as these saw themselves as in personal service to Lorenzo: Tm yours', Ugolini assured Francesco Gaddi, another agent of Lorenzo's, on 16 April 1481, 'and every other Laurentian's.'(72) Another such 'Laurentian' was Lorenzo's intimate Matteo Franco, who saw himself as the 'lap dog' of the padrone into whose arms he had 'thrown himself.'(73) Those citizens and provincials who were not in this direct sense 'Laurentians' still knew that Lorenzo had become the maestro della bottega, the central figure to whom they and their own patrons had increasingly to look. Under Lorenzo, a more formalized hierarchy of patronage command was emerging, as if the overlapping and intertwined circles and lines of friendship and obligation of earlier, pre-Medicean days were taking firmer shape as a pyramid. Occasionally one glimpses this actually happening, as when - in a letter of 30 December 1473 to Lorenzo - Bernardo di Chimenti, superintendent of the Cittadella at Arezzo, spelled out the elaborate grounds on which the Medici leader might decide to make of him a follower, sending a handsome gift and putting at his disposal his present post by way of supporting argument: This letter because my ancestors and I have always been servants of the house of Serristori, and Giovanni d'Antonio di Salvestro [Serristori] put me in this office. I know that you [and the Serristori] are one and the same thing. And the prior of Ruota is very much your friend [he's my paternal first cousin]; and I know too that Piero di Fioralizo is a friend of your house [his wife is my blood sister]. Furthermore, I inform you that I'm the person who, when you took a wife, furnished the house of Giovanni Serristori at Figline with those flowers, and I fashioned those heraldic devices from branches and painted those coats-of-arms and all those adornments. Therefore on that account, being as I am Giovanni's servant, I beg you to be pleased to accept me as yours.(74) Bernardo's master, the Florentine Giovanni Serristori, was, it needs to be emphasized, not only a powerful figure in Arezzo and the upper Valdarno but was also a trusted Laurentian, several times an accoppiatore, and a foundation member of the Settanta, the Council of Seventy, in 1480.(75) A sure conduit leading to Lorenzo, such a man as Serristori acquired further influence by this very fact. A number of Lorenzo's correspondents repeat what Marquis Gabriele Malaspina wrote to him in recommending a third party: that Lorenzo's love for the writer caused many clients to have recourse to him in order to gain Lorenzo's ear.(76) The ample correspondence of Lorenzo's relations - such as the Tornabuoni and Bernardo Rucellai - and of some of his colleagues - for instance, Giovanni Lanfredini, Pierfilippo Pandolfini, and Guidantonio 468

Vespucci - reveals not only how much they relied on him but also how confidently they could win favours on their own and others' behalf, sometimes even against Lorenzo's own better judgement. For much of 1484, to take just one example, Vespucci conducted an epistolary campaign from Rome to persuade Lorenzo to have his brother, Simone, made a member of the Otto and of the Scrutiny Council. Why Lorenzo so long resisted the first appointment, given Guidantonio's importance to him as a skilled ambassador, later events suggest. Having been duly appointed to the Eight, Simone Vespucci was soon found guilty of embezzlement while in office, much to his brother's disbelief and for all one knows Lorenzo's secret, self-justified satisfaction! Simone's appointment had been engineered by the politician Pierfilippo Pandolfini and by the bureaucrat ser Giovanni Guidi because, as the former explained to Lorenzo, 'it is effort well spent to keep Messer Guidantonio happy'.(77) A good deal of the hard and detailed work of political and patronage management was done by such trusted lieutenants as these two: Guidi and Pandolfini. When Lorenzo was away from Florence in the 1480s, Pandolfini seems usually to have minded the shop for its master, reporting in detail on events and asking for advice or decisions.

Pierfilippo was the leading citizen in the city in 1488, according to the Ferrarese ambassador, and 'the Magnificent Lorenzo's heart in the Council (of Seventy)'.(78) 'This morning Iacopo Ventura was appointed to the Seventy', Pandolfini reported to Lorenzo in September 1485, though other proposals had not yet been passed, 'because your absence does much harm, and some are emboldened to say what they think, which they wouldn't dare do when you are here.'(79) At this time of illness for Lorenzo, when he was also in some conflict with his closest associates, Pandolfini may have slightly exaggerated how very much he was missed in order to induce him to come home. Yet, as much as Lorenzo often succeeded during the 1480s in satisfying his longing to absent himself from the city - above all at the several villas he was building - he and his associates knew that his physical presence, the exertion of his personal authority, was still at times necessary if he were to get his way, for not even his incisively argued and eloquent letters could always be relied upon, and, tragically, there was no longer a younger brother to hold the fort. On the one hand, when Lorenzo was absent from Florence there was a sense that nothing could be quite settled- in February 1482, when her husband was in Cremona, Clarice reported that 'on all sides Lorenzo's return is desired and, according to what I'm told, the Ten do nothing and there's no action at all'(80) - while, on the other, as Pandolfini had pointed out, even hand-picked allies might rediscover a taste for independent judgement. It was during the difficult summer of 1485 that Lorenzo complained that 'the love and loyalty of my friends last only so long as I'm no more than ten miles from here (Florence)'.(81)

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Lorenzo's methods of control, at once still very personal and yet increasingly formalized and hierarchical, clearly came to arouse resentment among some of his own supporters, such as the men who, during the electoral scrutiny of late 1484, without his knowledge set up an illegal and secret pressure group (intelligenza) to lobby for votes; so causing a very angry Lorenzo, or so he claimed, to establish a cabal of his own, whose one hundred members met separately and secretly in distinct sub-committees convened by his oligarchic lieutenants, such as Piero Corsini and Ruggieri Corbinelli.(82) Benedetto Dei, anxious that his immediate family find success in this scrutiny, was apparently content to use the approved Medicean channels. He sent warm greetings through his nephew Bartolommeo to another Laurentian lieutenant, 'my Lorenzo Carducci', who was an accoppiatore and member of the Seventy, instructing the younger man: 'to him [Carducci] you will say that I have elected, made, and appointed him to take the place of messer Bongianni (Gianfigliazzi), so be sure to visit him [ ... ] because I know it will be greatly to your advantage as he has become the boss of the shop in his quarter, so rely on him during this electoral scrutiny.'(83) Benedetto knew, now that the disappointing Gianfigliazzi was dead, that Carducci was the new 'boss of the shop' in the Santa Maria Novella quarter and how to approach him for favours. Other quarters and other districts of the city had their own masters, other great families and interest groups their representatives, more or less close to Lorenzo. Around him, secretaries such as ser Niccolo Michelozzi and the Dovizzi da Bibbiena brothers controlled the flow of paper, people, and recommendations, and confidants such as the goldsmith Francesco orafo, 'who handles Lorenzo's affairs', and ser Giovanni Guidi, of whom another contemporary said that in the scrutiny of 1484 'now he manages everything', were his agents; increasingly so and to the annoyance of some more aristocratic Laurentian managers.(84) Nevertheless, if late Laurentian Florence was hardly the union of friends an earlier Medicean had held up to Piero di Cosimo as the ideal,(85) still a stringent critic of the Medici could observe that after their downfall in 1494 it had only been wise to exercise clemency towards their followers: 'having it in mind not to divide or destroy the city should we have decided to act too severely, since the Medici, that is to say Cosimo's successors, had during their more than sixty years of rule made so many friends by various means that it would have been necessary to punish too many people.'(86) If ever the social process of Florentine patron-client relations came near to being a hierarchical 'system' - as a French historian has put the point, more a society of 'veritables fidelites' than of looser clientelist bonds(87) - then perhaps it was under the late Quattrocento Medici. Ser Lorenzo Violi gives a vivid impression of this carefully layered Medicean world in a letter of 10 September 1494 to Francesco Minerbetti, a Florentine canon of good family. The notary formally begged Minerbetti to be his new master, in place of the recently dead Puccio Pucci, his 'friend, lord and patron'. When 470

the occasion arose, his new patron should recommend him to the 'Magnificent Piero [di Lorenzo de' Medici], whose born slave and servant I truly am', as it happens no mere rhetorical flourish since Lorenzo Violi was named for his godfather, who had been Lorenzo de' Medici himself. Another 'protector', Violi earnestly assured the canon, was the Medici secretary ser Piero Dovizzi da Bibbiena, of whom he was also a 'partisan'.(88) If the recently dead Puccio Pucci or Bongianni Gianfigliazzi could be replaced by their clients, the forcible removal of the Medici maestro della bottega from the scene in late 1494 caused panic and confusion among the Florentines. On Piero di Lorenzo's overthrow, two months after Violi's letter was written, a minor Medici partisan such as Piero Vaglienti came to regret the renewed proliferation of competing bosses, gran maestri, in the city, because it left a man unclear as to whom he might have ultimate recourse: 'here a man doesn't know whom he has to go and see [ ... ] because a lord is one person and in Florence in the present circumstances there's always a hundred such, each pulling in a different direction'.(89) To enter Florentine politics at this time, observed Savonarola, also critically but from a diametrically opposed viewpoint, 'a citizen enslaves himself to twenty-five persons'.(90) Among the Savonarolans themselves, however, despite the Dominican's vigorous condemnation of the often morally perilous claims of civic friendship, networks proliferated around citizens or friars close to him, such as fra Pandolfo Rucellai and his circle.(91) Over some twenty years, Lorenzo de' Medici had made more systematic, and then fine tuned, social processes to which his fellow Florentines had long been accustomed with such success and to such a degree that even after he was dead many of them looked, as it were instinctively, for a new maestro della bottega.

Notes 1. Rinuccini is cited by Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, p. 219. For Verina's description (in context hardly an uncritical one), see Lazzari, Ugo!hw c A1ichele Verino, pp. 85, 88-89. Lorenzo Lippi, a professor at the Pisan Studio, repeatedly called Lorenzo 'our Maecenas', cited by Verde, Lo studio fiorentino, 1473-1503, iv ( 1985), pp. 198, 219, 223, and passim.

The last two quotations are cited in Kent and Simons, 'Renaissance Patronage: An Introductory Essay', pp. 15-16. My thanks to Bernard Toscani for inviting me to give this paper in New York and to the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities of Brooklyn College for financial assistance. I am grateful to the Australian Research Grants Scheme, and to Monash University, for the financial support given my Laurentian research. As ever, Gino Corti has provided expert advice and Carolyn James editorial and other help.

2. Pulci, Morgante e lettere, ed. by de Robertis, p. 969.

3. Niccolo Machiavelli, 'Legazioni al Duca T1zlentino', in Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. by Marcelli, p. 490; Battaglia, Gmnde Dizionario clella Lingua ltaliana, IX ( 1975), 413.

4. Dei, La cronica dall'anno 1400 all'anno 1500, ed. by Barducci, p. 114; on 31 July 1474 Dei used the expression, apparently of the Duke of Milan, in a letter to Lorenzo himself: sec the facsimile in Autografi dell’archivio mediceo avanti il Principato, ed. by Fortuna and Lunghetti, pp.

74-75. For the Dei papers, see Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 317, fols 184, 191, 247, 261; Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiosc sop471

pressc dal Governo Francese, 78, 318, fols 279, 372. (Henceforth, all references to unpublished manuscripts are to collections in the Florentine State Archives, unless otherwise indicated.) 1he Bolognese Andrea Bentivoglio refers to 'vostro maestro dela botega' - meaning Lorenzo or possibly the duke of Milan - in a letter to Dei of 22 April 1488: BL, MS Additional 24, 213, fol. 61.

5. Alberti, Opere volgari, ed. by Grayson, I, 181; Battaglia, Gmnde Dizionario clella Lingua ltaliana, ii (1962), 330.

6. Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiosc soppressc dal Govcrno Francese, 78, 316, fol.

323, letter of Iacopo Giannotti to Barcolommeo Dei, 3 February 1492: 'ii maggiore [Lorenzo] va migliorando, ma in questi stretti freddi non si puo fare chosi tosto'.

7. For the secretarial use of patron11s, see n. 70, below; see Verde, Lo studio fiorentino, 14731503, III. 1 (1977), 89 and IV. I (1985), 61, for non-Laurentian examples.

8. '[piu] che non sono di nell'anno': published by Martelli, Studi laurenziani, p. 198.

9. Brown, The Medici in Florence, p. 151. See too Gombrich, 'Renaissance and Golden Age: p.

308.

10. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, p. 12. For a more positive analysis of amicizia in the early Cinquecento, see Butters, Governors and Government, p. 11-16. Hook. Lorenzo de' Medici is briefly suggestive on Lorenzo as a party chief.

11. Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago 1,1odel; Addams, The Social Thought of Jane Addams, ed. by Lasch, pp. 124-33; Royko, Boss: Richard] Daley of Chicago, references I owe to Graeme Davison.

12. Gombrich, 'The Early Medici as Patrons of Art', p. 306; Elam, 'Art and Diplomacy in Renaissance Florence'; Kent, 'Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth Century Florence: pp. 68-69.

13. 'perche di simile cose et d'ogni alrra, n'avete pienissima intelligentia': published in Gaye, Carteggio inedito cl'artisti clei secoli xiv, xv, xvi, i ( 1839), 257. See too Connell, 'Clientelismo e stato territoriale'.

14. Rubinstein, 77Je Government of Florence under the Medici, passim; Kent, The Rise of the Medici.

15. 'alla degnitadello adchopiatore': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXII, 499; Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, p. 241.

16. Molho, 'Patronage and the State in Early Modern Italy', p. 241.

17. 'mi sono state specchio a conoscere non solo le case fatte etiam le qualita ed e' costumi loro': Guicciardini, Scritti autobiografici e rari, ed. by Palmarocchi, p. 3.

18. de la Ronciere, Un changeurflorentin du trecento, pp. 211-12; Wickham, 'Rural Communes and the City of Lucca'.

19. Compagni, Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne' tempi suoi, ed. by Isidoro del Lungo, above all pp. 70-72, where he describes how the city was divided 'once more between the powerful middling and those of no account'. See now for this whole theme, Lansing, The Florentine Magnates, pp. 168-76, with up-to-date bibliography.

20. 'bien, proufit, et delit'; 'Amisties est une des vertus de Dieu et de I'homme [ ... ] a qui ii recoivent service et honour et grace': Latini, Li Livres dou Th!sor, ed. by Carmody, pp. 209-10.

21. Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence, ed. by Brucker, p. 46.

22. 'dall'.Auzano in fuori non ha oggi uomo che gli vada innanzi Oltr'Arno': Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, ed. by Guasti, n (1869), 263; Kent, 771e Rise of the Medici, p. 201.

23. Connell, 'Clientelismo e stato territorialc'. See Black, 'Lorenzo and Arezzo' and Milner, 'Lorenzo and Pistoia: Peacemaker or Partisan?'.

24. 'tenuto et e ii dapitu di chasa Peruzzi, et grande cittadino dabene, libero et bonissimo parente et da poterne fare chonto et farebe benc e grande senno sapervclo ritenere per parcnte': Firenze,

472

Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppressc dal Governo Francese, 78, 315, fol. 211, 'Rosso tuo' to Piero Chiarini, 6 September 1396.

25. 'e tenuto ii migliore e'l piu chostumato vomo di Firenze': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 315, fol. 245, Francesco di Piero to Chiarini, 2 September 1396.

26. 'egl'e vero che sono molto alla famigla de' Peruzi, e senpre si sono operati per me, e inn ispezialita i figliuoli di Verano, che oggi none rimaso altro che solo Bartolomeo, ii quale ene a me piu che fratello ed e bonisimo giovane chome debi sapere': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 325, fol. 278, 15 August 1404. On the Peruzzi, see Kent and Kent, 'A Self-Disciplining Pact Made by the Peruzzi Family'.

27. Molho, 'Patronage and the State in Early Modern Italy: p. 242. See too Bertelli, 'Potere e mediazione'.

28. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, Chapter 4, pp. 131-58; Kent, Bartolommeo Cedemi and his Friends.

29. Brucker, 'The Structure of Patrician Society'; Brucker, Renaissance Florence, Chapter 3, pp.

89-127, and also Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence, pp. 279-82.

30. 'anno certo bisogno de' nostri Magnifici Signiori [ ... ] vi piacia per amore di me parlare della facenda in palagio a qualche vostro amico'; '(Guasconi) che odo e de' Collegio': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 326.

31. 'molto mia chosa; [ ... ] per amore della amista che e stata senpre fra voi et la chasa nostra': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 326, fol. 173, Filippo degli Albizzi to Niccolo Sacchetti.

32. 'rimettermi in del numero coll'autri vostri servidori, se omisso l'aveste, impero che vi riputo e o fede in voi come in mio padre carnale e singular maggiore, e cosl pregho voglate avere me in figluolo e servidore fidele': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 325, fol. 479, without date.

33. For this point and the rhetoric of amicizia, see Kent and Simons, 'Renaissance Patronage: An Introductory Essay', pp. 11-17, and other essays in the same volume; Kent, Bartolommeo Cederni and his Friends, pp. 3-47. See, too, Ilardi, 'Crosses and Carets'.

34. Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 78, 325, fol.

334, without date or clear signature: 'se questo mi farai, potro dire che tu sia per me ii padre, el figlio e llo spirito santo, ea tte saro senpre ea ttua famiglia fedeli e obrigato io e mia famiglia; ea niun'altra famiglia non mi racomando seno' a tte'.

35. 'un podere apresso a me a 2 gittate di mano, e ogni di quando ci e pratichiamo insieme, e assai a chonpreso Io stato mio: [ ... ] o avuto per vivere a richiedere parenti e amici gia e parccchi anni': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XVI, 88, a reference kindly provided by Richard Sherr.

36. Letter dated 24 May 1454 published by Flamini, La lirica toscana del Rinascimcnto, pp. 60001. On Michele, see now Kent, 'The Buonomini di San Martino', pp. 66-67; and on Vespasiano and Pandolfini, see Kent, Bartolommeo Cederni and his Friends, pp. 24-33.

37. 'guando l'uomo si remettc nellc mani o va per consiglio a gran maestri, ti convien fare guello che vogliono, o bene o male che si sia': Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina, ed. by Guasti, p. 101, letter to Filippo Strozzi, 6 December 1450.

38. 'libcramcnte rimctiti nelc braccia loro, perchc sono, com'e dctto, discretisimi; [ ... ] i'loro e potere e sapcre e vole re': del Cica to Cederni, published in Kent, Bartolommeo Cederni and his Friends, p. 60: 'del'altro o da lui auto proferte e piu d'una volta, dicho di danari, e di buona soma, e quegli voleva ch'io tenesi piu mesi e sanza alchuno chosto'.

39. 'solo per gratia e amore senza niuno suo utile come detto e': Chellini, Le ricordanze, ed. by Sillano, p. 108, and see the comments of Christiane Klapisch on a similar passage in Lapa Nicco473

lini's ricordi: Klapisch, "'Parenti, amici c vicini'", pp. 969-70. For other examples of men ignoring the usual financial rules in the name of friendship, see the ricordi of Tommaso Guidetti (Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Carte Strozziane, IV, 418, fol. 40') and of Cristofaro Rinicri (Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese, 95, 220, fol. 17').

40. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, p. 25.

41. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence.

42. Hughes, 'Kinsmen and Neighbors in Medieval Genoa'; Dean, 'Lords, Vassals and Clients in Renaissance Ferrara'. Durand, 'Clienteles et fiddites dans le temps et dans l'espace' distinguishes between feudal bonds and tics of clientelism and fidelity on the grounds that for the former there are written texts, for the latter not (p. 3).

43. 'mi fecic uno mottozzo chom'a suo fratel propio e ofersimi e profcrsimi [ ... ] Lo sabato mattina mi disse moltc chose segrete e anchor'io l'avisai di chose che l'ebbe chare, e abbraccommi e bacommi pit1 volte': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppressc dal Governo Francese, 78, 318, fol. 314, 4 December 1467. Bullard, 'Marsilio Ficino and the Medici: emphasizes the intensely personal and reciprocal (if ambivalent) nature of Ficino's relations with his patron, Lorenzo.

44. 'mio dilctto e car padre Bongianni Gianfigliazzi': cited by Orvicto, 'Un esperto orientalista del'400: Benedetto Dei', p. 223.

45. 'io o 'nteso de! cuo Bongianni, che mmio non fue mai, per Dio verace, che lo conobbi ne' tuoi alE¡urni o bisogni [ ... ] Io per me non ebbi mai canto favore nc canto utile da llui, che non sia piu uno cazzo di mosca, e ss'io o disinato in sua casa, io l'o pagato sempre a 50 per cento': Orvieto, 'Un esperto orientalista del'400: Benedetto Dei', p. 223.

46. Kent, The Rise of the Medici; Kent, 'The Dynamic of Power in Cosimo de' Medici's Florence'.

47. Sec Kent, 'The Dynamic of Power in Cosimo de' Medici's Florence'; Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, pp. 133-35; Molho, 'Cosimo de' Medici'; and the essays in Ames-Lewis, Cosimo 'il Vecchio' cle' Medici. For Cosimo as patron in several senses, see Brown, 'The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae'.

48. ‘uno instrumento chc mi lcvava di molte fatiche': letter by Lorenzo to Ercole d'Este, 25 March 1482, published in Cappelli, 'Lettcre di Lorenzo de' Medici', p. 244; see, too, more generally Tornabuoni de' Medici, Lettere, ed. by Salvadori.

49. Medici, Lettere, I ( 1977), ed. by Riccardo Fubini, pp. 3-6.

50. 'si noiato dalla scesa, che puo dare pocha udientia': letter by Gentile Becchi to Lorenzo, 26 September 1466, published in Martelli, 'II Giacoppo di Lorenzo'. p. 104, n. 4.

51. See Kent, '1he Young Lorenzo, 1449-1469', republished in the present volume.

52. Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. by del Piazzo; Ricci and Rubinstein, Censimento delle lettere di Lorenzo di Piem de' Medici.

53. Verde, Lo studio fiorentino, 1473-1503.

54. 'p[er] la imborsatione et have re tutto Firenze a chasa sanza frutto': letter of 23 August 1482, published in Zanato, 'Gli autografi di Lorenzo ii Magnifico', p. 179.

55. 'Et per haver hoggi dectato piu di 5 hore sono stanco: habbiatemi per excusato': Firenze, Bib. Naz., Autografi Palatini, VI, 59. However, according to Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il 1vfagnijico, ed. by del Piazza, see p. 405, Lorenzo despatched only four letters on this day.

56. 'rimettolo ate perche in quel modo che saprai me lo levi dadosso': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XVIII, 14, 4 May 1490. For Nari's being asked to do the legwork on behalf of a poor client recommended to Lorenzo by a friar, see XXIII, 539, 14 July 1473. See, too, n. 81 below.

474

57. 'la vita sanz'onore e un vivermorto': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXVIII, 393, Piero Capponi to Lorenzo, 10 August 1472; Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence, p. 83.

58. 'uno huom di legnio; [ ... ] qucsto honore mi sara utile al maritare le mie fi.gliole': published in Flamini, La liriCfl toscana de! Rinascimento, p. 592.

59. Guicciardini, Selected Writings, ed. by Grayson, p. 29.

60. 'non si faceva parentado alcuno piu che mediocre sanza participazione e licenzia sua’: Guicciardini, Storie Fiorentine, ed. by Palmarocchi, p. 79. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. by Cochrane, pp. 192-93.

61. 'arbitrator et amicabilis compositor et amiem comunis': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Notarilc Antecosimiano, M 484, (ser Michele da S Croce, anni 1486-89), fols 315'-318', an arbitration between members of the Bonsi and Portinari families. See Kuehn, 'Arbitration and Law in Renaissance Florence'.

62. 'interponiate l'auccorica vostra o qualche parola con decti Ridolfi': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXVIII, 420, Vespucci to Lorenzo, 29 March 1482.

63. The notarial protocols of Lorenzo's secretary, ser Niccolo Michelozzi, contain numerous such arbitrations, often given in the Medici palace: Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Notarile Anrecosimiano, M 530 (anni 1468-1515 ). On 9 June 1473, Lorenzo decided a property division between two Medici brothers, the sons of Bernardo d'Alamanno: Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Notarile Antecosimiano, M 571 (scr Piero Migliorclli, anni 1473-78), fols 7-11.

64. 'vile homiciuolo'; 'lmomo canto sublime': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXIII, 744.

65. 'sono e senpre saro cane e schiavo di Vostra Magnificcnzia': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXII, 234, Marsilio Vecchietti to Lorenzo, 4 June 1475; 'conprasi uno schiavo in questi chasi chon una parola': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXVIII, 393, Piero di Giovanni Capponi to Lorenzo, 10 August 1472.

66. See Bullard, 'Raising Capital and Funding the Pope's Debt' and Bullard, 'In Pursuit of honore et utile'. See, too Bizzocchi, Chiesa e potcre nella Toscana del Quattrocento.

67. For Pius II's dislike of the polite plural, see Pope Pius II, Selected Letters, ed. and trans. by Baca, pp. 1-3, 76-77.

68. 'a [ ... ] Giuliano fo scrivere questa letera di suo mano perch'egli intenda in sua pueritia quello che stima Piero, la grazia del Magnificho Lorenzo, e che si ricordino essere nati de' Capponi e de' Guicciardini': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XU, 544. On Piero and his family, see Kent, Ho11sehold and Lineage in Renaissance Florence, especially pp. 86-87, 195-97, 199-201, 221-25, and passim.

69. 'sotto l'alie d'essa': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXVII, 348, Domitilla Strozzi, abbess ofS Chiara, to Lorenzo, 21 May 1479; 'vostro cane e scrvitorc': Floriano Dolfo to Lorenzo, 31 January 1474, published in Verde, Lo studio fiorentino, 1473-1503, II ( 1973 ), p. 211. For the sacred language increasingly used of the Medici, see Kent, "'Lorenzo[ ... ] amico degli uomini da bene"', republished in the present volume.

70. Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXI, 406, Ugolini (on whom see Medici, Lettere, II ( 1977), ed. by Riccardo Fubini, p. 268, n. 1) to Lorenzo, 13 August 1477. Lorenzo is already described as the patronus in the Michelozzi-Becchi correspondence of 1474 (see Isenberg, 'Una corrispondenza inedito di Niccolo Michelozzi: pp. 151-53, and passim, and later examples abound).

71. See, for example, Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXIX, 144; Verde, Lo studio fiorentino, 1473-1503, III. 1 ( 1977), 423, and III. 2 (1977), 767.

72. 'sono vostro e d'ogni altro Laurentiano': published in De Marinis and Perosa, Nuovi documenti per la storia del Rinascimento, p. 29.

73. Franco, Lettere, ed. by Frosini, pp. 72, 128-29.

475

74. ‘Qesta per chag[i]one ch'io sono stato senpre, io e miei passati, servidori della chasa de' Serristori, c Giovanni d'Antonio di Salvestro mi missc in questo luogho. Io so che voi setc una mcdesima chosa. E'I priore di Ruota e vostro grande amicho, egl'e mio frarello chugino; e anchora Piero di Fioralizo so ch'e amicho della chasa vostra, la donna sua e mia sirochia charnale. E piu v'aviso ch'io son quello che quando voi menasti la donna, achonc[i]ai la chasa di Giovanni Serristori a Ffigline, di quegli adornamenti di fiori e ffeci quelle divise di cimature e dipinsi quell'arme e tutti quegli adornamenti. Siche pertanto, sendo io servidore di Giovanni, io vi priegho che vi sia di piacere d'accettarmi per vostro servidore': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXI, 435. I have been able to learn nothing more of this Bernardo.

75. Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the 1Weclici, pp. 239-43, 309. See Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXIII, 56 and 71, for two letters of 1466 revealing Serristori's influence in and near Arezzo. On 18 August 1468, Bartolo Tcdaldi wrote to Lorenzo concerning his desire to be a prior: 'ordina qucsto fatto a Giovanni di Antonio di Salvestro, che non manchi' (XXI, 69).

76. Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXIII, 641, 26 March 1476.

77. 'e buona spesa contentare Messer Guidantonio': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXIX, 374, 5 November 1484. Filza XXXIX of MaP contains dozens of letters from Guidantonio to Lorenzo on the subject of Simone (for a strongly worded example, see Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXIX, 245, 21 July 1484), whose official disgrace Guidantonio mentions in Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXXIX, 420, 25 March 1485; see for the accusation Otto di Guardia (Rcpubblica), Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, LXX, fols 27'-28', 2 April 1485. On the importance of such men to Lorenzo, see Mallett, 'Diplomacy and War in Late Fifteenth-Century Italy'. pp. 284-88.

78. 'in Consiglio e ii cuore del Magco Lorenzo': published in Cappelli, 'Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici dctto ii Magnifico', p. 301.

79. 'Stamani fu aprovato Iacopo Ventura del numero de' 70'; 'che l'absentia vostra nuoce a piu cose, ct ci c chi arebbe animo di parlare secondo il gusto suo, chi quando ci siate non ardisie fallo': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XXVI, 442, 17 September 1485, and Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, p. 226.

80. 'ciascuno si dcsidera la tornata di Lorenzo et, secondo mi e decto, e Dieci non fanno nulla et ogni cosa dorme': Firenze, Bib. Naz., Fondo Ginori Conti, 29, 38 bis, fol. 31, Clarice to Niccolo Michclozzi, 21 February 1482.

81. 'l'amore e la fede degli amici non dura quando io sono absente di costi piu che dieci miglia': Lorenzo to Niccolo Michelozzi, 14 May 1485, published in Martelli, Studi laurenziani, p. 205, who discusses the strained relations within the oligarchy at this time. Lorenzo explicitly mentions how he had relied on Giuliano in a letter to Piero, his son, of 1484: published in Medici, Scritti scelti, ed. by Bigi, p. 638.

82. Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, pp. 217-18, 320-21.

83. 'a llui direte chom'io l’o cletto e facto e messo nel luogho del nostro mcsscr Bongianni, e fate di vicitarllo [ ... ] che sso vi giovcra assai, perche e rimasto ii maestro dela bottegha nel suo quartiere, e fondatevi cho'llui in questo isquittino': Benedetto to Barrolommeo Dei, 28 November 1484, Firenze, Bib. Medicea Laurenziana, Manoscritti Ashburnham, 1841, summarized in Mazzi, 'Le carte di Benedetto Dei nella Medicca Laurenziana', p. 134.

84. The two quotat10ns – ‘che fa e fatti di Lorenzo’ and ‘nora fa il tutto’ - come, respectively, from Pagliai, 'Da un libro di ricordi del monastero di S. Benedetto' and Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, p. 321. On Lorenzo's entourage, see Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, pp. 115-19 and passim.

476

85. Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, XVII, 459, Filippo Arnolfi to Piero de' Medici, 12 September 1465: a Medici-Pitti alliance would be 'the most important friendship of this city'.

86. 'havcndo rispctto di non dividere o guastare la citta; se noi fussimo proceduti troppo rigorosamcnce, imperoche havendo e Medici, cioe e successori di Cosimo, tenuto piu che 60 anni ii governo, si havcvano facti tanti amici per diversi accidcnti accaduti, che si sarebbe hauuto a punirc troppo numero di huomini': Firenze, Bib. Naz., Codici Panciatichiani, 134, Ricordanze of Niccolo Valori, fol. 12'.

87. Sec Durand, 'Clienteles et fidelites clans le temps et dans I'espace: pp. 3-5.

88. 'amico, s[ignore] et padrone'; 'M.co Piero, dello qualc io sono nato vero schiavo e servitore': Firenze, Arch. di Stato, Archivio MaP, LXXXXVIII, 15; see too Violi's letter to ser Piero Dovizzi, CXXIV, 137, 21 August 1493. For Lorenzo as Violi's compare, see Del Lungo, 'Fra Girolamo Savonarola', p. 16.

89. qui uomo non sa a chi s’abbi a caprcare ... pero ch’uno signore e uno so o e a quesco modo sempre in Firenze n'e un cencinaio, e chi la tira a un modo e chi a uno altro': Vaglienci, Storia dei suoi tempi, 1492-1514, ed. by Berti and ochers, pp. 32-33, 84; see, too Brown, The Medici in Florence, pp. 238-39.

90. 'un ciccadino [ ... ] si fa schiavo di venticinque persone': Savonarola, Prediche sopra i Salmi, ed. by Vincenzo Romano, I (1969), 145.

91. Riscori, 'Un mercante savonaroliano: Pandolfo Rucellai'; Kent, 'A Proposal by Savonarola for the Self-Reform of Florentine Women'.

477

SECTION 5

Angelo Poliziano, The Pazzi Conspiracy Poliziano wrote his account of the Pazzi conspiracy within three months of the actual event. His text which explicitly celebrates the Medici as the defenders of civic liberty and deliberately omits details about the social and political factors behind the conspiracy - is part of an extensive program devised by the Medici to counter the propaganda issued by the papal Curia. Pope Sixtus IV supported the conspiracy, which on April 26, 1478, injured Lorenzo the Magnificent and caused the death of Giuliano, his younger brother, while the two were attending Mass inside the cathedral of Florence. The Medici's response to the Curia was to have lawyers declare the pope's excommunication of the family invalid. Lorenzo also sought the help of his former tutor; Gentile Becchi, and of the chancellor of the republic, the humanist Bartolomeo Scala, to write in his support; which they did, respectively producing the Synodus Florentinus and the Excusatio Florentinorum. All the prominent intellectuals of the Medici faction, Poliziano included, attempted to serve the ruling family in whatever way they could during this moment of extreme crisis.

One of the main purposes of Poliziano's text is to show how, the Florentines played a decisive role in these tragic events by bravely and steadfastly defending the Medici. Poliziano reports that the citizens of Florence assaulted the conspirators who, immediately after murdering Giuliano and wounding Lorenzo, tried to get the populace to overthrow the Medici. The author names the Pazzi involved in the plot, describes their traits, both physical and moral, and compares them to the most notorious conspirators of classical times. He punctuates the whole account with passages after the style of famous excerpts from Tacitus and Sallust. Poliziano presents the dismemberment of the conspirators' bodies by the Florentines, although horrifying in its cruelty, as an act of justice. The people of Florence, Poliziano explains, could not leave unpunished any attempt to destroy the harmonious social order the Medici had constructed. Once the tumult was over, the citizens and the subjects from the surrounding countryside paid homage to Lorenzo, rejoicing in his safety and celebrating him as the legitimate ruler of the Florentine state. The excerpt we have translated reports the conspirators' tragic fate and the Florentines' testimonial if loyalty to the ruling house.

Meanwhile, people flocked to the Medici palace with incredible passion and love, demanding that the traitors be executed and that they be shown no mercy until they had been dragged to their punishment. The house of Jacopo Pazzi was barely saved from looting, and Piero Corsini's men, overcome by fury, took the naked and wounded Francesco Pazzi off to be hanged. Francesco was nearly dead before he reached the gallows, for it was impossible to curb the wrath of the multitude. Soon afterward, they 478

hung the Pisan leader(1) from the same window as Francesco Pazzi, right above the latter's corpse. Once his body was lowered, something occurred which I think must have astonished every one; it became known throughout the city almost immediately. Either by chance or out of rage, Francesco Salviati sank his teeth into Francesco's corpse, and even after the rope had choked him, he held on with his teeth to the other's chest, eyes frozen in an angry stare. After that, ropes broke the necks of the two Jacopos of the Salviati family.

By the time the situation had quieted down, I went to the square myself, and I remember seeing many corpses strewn about,(2) bearing signs of the contemptuous abhorrence of the furious crowd. Florentines loved the Medici house and condemned the murder of Giuliano, saying it was an outrage. They claimed that these men, who had no reason for such a heinous act, had resorted to crime, deceit, and treason to murder a most worthy young man, the favorite of all Florentine youth. A miserable and sacrilegious family, they said, abominable to both God and men, had committed this offense.

The memory of his [Giuliano's] worth inflamed the people's hatred. A few years earlier, Giuliano had shown his remarkable valor in a jousting tournament; he had won it, and this is a deed that usually endears one to the multitude.(3) The outrageous nature of the crime added to all of this, for they said that it was impossible either to describe or to conceive of such a wicked, atrocious act. They trembled with rage at the thought of a pious and innocent lad being cruelly slain inside a church, during Mass, right before the altar. They considered it most hideous that hospitality(4) and religion had been violated, that a sacred place had been polluted with human blood, and that the very same Lorenzo - on whom alone the whole Florentine Republic depended and in whom lay all the hopes and the power of the people - had been attacked by armed men.

From all the villages of the surrounding countryside, large crowds of armed men began to gather in the main square, in the city streets, and especially at the Medici palace,(5) all of them eager to show their support. Citizens brought their children and acquaintances to offer their service and riches, saying that both the private and public welfare of Florence depended on Lorenzo alone. Day after day, weapons, meat, bread, and all sorts of provisions were brought to Lorenzo's residence. Neither the wound nor fear nor the profound grief he felt at his brother's death prevented him from performing his duties. He welcomed all citizens, thanking them one by one. At times, he appeared at the window so that the crowd below, anxious to know about his health, could see him. The people would sing his praises and wave their hands, rejoicing and celebrating his well-being.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Giovanni Francesco da Tolentino, the prefect of Forli, had invaded our territory, crossing the border with a troop of specially trained horsemen. At the same time, numerous letters and dispatches informed us that Lo479

renzo Giustini had left Citta di Castello and was about to attack us from the border which divides Florentine territory from that of Siena. Our troops, however, forced them both to retreat. Sentries were posted at night throughout the city; Lorenzo's house was diligently guarded, and armed men were stationed at the crossroads, in the main square, and all over the city. The following day, Giovanni Bentivoglio, a knight of Bologna and that region's lord, closely linked to the Medici family, came to the Mugello offering several squadrons of horsemen and infantry divisions. The city was soon filled with foot soldiers, but the Committee of Eight (6) - fearing that the soldiers, who were eager for booty, might start a riot - appointed men to guard the city and then ordered everyone else who arrived in the city either to return home or to go wherever he thought he would be of use.

In the meantime, Renato Pazzi, who the day before the conspiracy had retreated to his villa in the Mugello and had gathered soldiers there, was captured along with two brothers, Giovanni and Nicola. Giovanni Pazzi, Guglielmo and Francesco's brother, was caught in a garden near his house. The pursuers captured Jacopo, who was now abandoned by all his men, in the village of Castagna. The first one to reach him was a certain Alessandro, a farmer who was about twenty years old. As soon as he caught him, Jacopo offered him seven pieces of gold, pleading with him to let him kill himself then and there, but he did not manage to persuade him. Since he continued and even increased his pleas, Alessandro's brother hit him with a stick. The fearful man then understood the truth of the saying: "Fate guides the willing man and drags the unwilling."(7) He was later escorted to Florence and brought to the signoria by a patrol provided by the Committee of Eight to prevent the crowd from tearing him apart. He confessed his crime without the application of torture, and a few hours later he was hanged. Even as he neared the moment of his death, Jacopo never abandoned his raging and furious nature, shouting that he was giving his soul over to the devil. After that, Renato's death sentence was pronounced, and his brothers were bound in chains. The youngest of them, Galeotto, still an adolescent, was seized with terror and tried to flee, disguised as a woman. He was immediately recognized and thrown into prison with the others. Shortly afterward, Andrea Pazzi, Renato's brother, was caught while trying to escape, and imprisoned as well.

During his flight, Bandini met Giustini and succeeded in escaping to Siena by joining his troops. With the help of the knight Piero Vespucci, meanwhile, Napoleone Franzesi saw to his own escape. A few days later, Giovanni Battista Montesecco was executed. Antonio of Volterra, the one who had wounded Lorenzo, and Stefano(8) remained hidden for several days in a Florentine monastery. As soon as the hiding-place was discovered, the people gathered at the monastery, barely restraining themselves from assaulting the monks who, in accordance with the rule of their order, had not re480

ported the men's presence. They [ the crowd] caught the murderers and began viciously to tear them apart. Having confessed their crime, they were finally dragged to the gallows with their noses and ears cut off, after already having received countless blows. The herald later announced that rewards had been set by the government for any one who could either kill Bandini and Napoleone or capture them alive. Guglielmo Pazzi, relying on their family tie,(9) had rushed to take shelter in Lorenzo's house, but was sent with his children into exile between five and twenty miles outside the city.

When the Florentines discovered that Piero Vespucci had helped Napoleone, he, too, was immediately taken captive. Since his adolescence, he had squandered his father's patrimony, and his father had thus decided not to bequeath him anything in his will. As he was extremely poor, deeply in debt to people outside Florence, and dissatisfied with the present government, he was eager for a revolt. His nature was so impulsive and reckless that immediately after Giuliano's murder he started extolling the crime committed by the Pazzi. As soon as he realized, however, that all the people were on Lorenzo's side, he rushed to loot the Pazzi's palace. There he met soldiers greedy for loot, and he would have caused great danger to the whole city, to both its secular and religious institutions, had Piero Corsini, a worthy young man, not opposed this ferocious man. The violent and rabid Vespucci incited the crowd and all the soldiers to plunder. He, too, was finally thrown into jail, and his son Marco was sent into exile at least five miles outside the city.

Many more deaths followed. Of all the conspirators, some were killed, and the rest were either put in chains or banished. When the news reached Rome, there was great sorrow; embassies were sent from different places, and all rejoiced at Lorenzo's safety.

Giuliano was given a solemn funeral, the obsequies being celebrated in the Church of San Lorenzo. Many youths were in mourning. He had suffered nineteen wounds and died at the age of twenty-five.

A few days later, after heavy rains, people from all over the countryside began to arrive. They claimed that it was a despicable thing to have buried Jacopo Pazzi in sacred ground, and the reason it had rained so much was precisely that, contrary to all human and divine laws, such an evil man as he, who even at the time of his death had shown no respect for either religion or God, had been buried in a church. According to an old peasant superstition, such a burial was harmful to the grain crop, which was just then beginning to grow. As is bound to happen with these sorts of things, this belief started to spread among the citizens, and people swarmed over Jacopo's tomb to unearth the body, and bury it outside the city walls.

What happened the following day could be considered something of an abomination. It was as if a large crowd of children had been inflamed by the mysterious torches of the Furies. These children unearthed Jacopo's body once again, nearly stoning to 481

death a person who tried to stop them. Around the corpse's neck they re-tied the rope with which he had been choked, and proceeded to drag it through every street of Florence, insulting him the whole way. Some went ahead, in jest ordering the people they met to move aside to let the distinguished knight they were escorting pass; others, instead, hit the body with sticks and goads, urging him not to be late, as the citizens were waiting for him in the main square. Once they arrived at his house, they knocked on the door with his head, yelling "Is anyone in? Who will welcome the knight who has just returned home with his great escort?" Since they were not allowed to enter the main square, they went to the banks of the Arno River and deposited the body. As it floated along, a crowd of peasants followed, shouting obscenities. Someone said that Jacopo's dreams would have come true if, during his life, he had had the popular following he was now enjoying in death.

Recalling this momentous upheaval has often led me to think about the vagaries of fortune. I have been especially struck by the incredible sorrow everyone felt at the death of Giuliano, whose physical appearance, personality, and habits I shall briefly describe. He was tall and robust, with a large, muscular chest, shapely and brawny arms, strong joints, flat stomach, solid thighs, full calves, lively eyes with excellent vision, darkish skin, and thick, long black hair, which he combed back to keep his forehead visible.

He was an experienced rider and archer, excelling at sports of all kinds, and extremely fond of hunting. He was magnanimous and steadfast, pious and just, particularly versed in painting, music, and refined pursuits of every kind. He was a gifted poet, composing verses in the vernacular which were profound and rich in moral teachings. He also enjoyed love poetry and read it often. He was eloquent, prudent, and not at all impulsive. He loved wit, and he himself did not lack for it. He especially hated liars and men who bear grudges. Although he did not dress to excess, he was incredibly elegant and well groomed. He was agreeable, gentle, and respectful of his brother, and he admired strength and virtue. During his lifetime, these and other qualities made the Florentines and his relatives love him; they also make the memory of this distinguished youth sad and most bitter for us all. Still, we pray to Almighty God that he may grant "at least this youth to help a devastated age."(10) Source: Angelo Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, ed. Alessandro Perosa (Padua: Antenore, 1958), pp. 43-65.

1. Francesco Salvia ti, archbishop of Pisa, who took part in the conspiracy. His body and that of Francesco Pazzi were hung from a window of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of the Florentine government.

2. The corpses of the conspirators, which, as described in the preceding passages, were mutilated by the enraged Florentine multitude.

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3. Poliziano is referring to the well-known tournament held in 1475, which he celebrates in his Stanze per la Ciostra, an unfinished work precisely because of the young Medici's death in the Pazzi conspiracy.

4. At the beginning of his account, Poliziano relates how, before the conspiracy, the Medici family-"always splendid and magnificent in its style, ... especially in entertaining distinguished visitors" -had hosted some of the conspirators at their residence in Fiesole. 5. The palace (Figure 14) that Cosimo de' Medici, Lorenzo's grandfather, had Michelozzo, his favorite architect, build. 6.

For the "Committee ofEight," see Dati's description of the Florentine magistratures.

7. Sen., Epist., 107.11.

8. Stefano da Bagnone, a priest, who was also Jacopo Pazzi's secretary.

9. Guglielmo was Lorenzo's brother-in-law through marriage to his sister Bianca. He did not take part in the conspiracy.

10. Virg., Geo., r.500. By drawing on Virgil's famous passage, Poliziano replaces the pair Octavian-Julius Caesar with the pair Giuliano-Lorenzo de' Medici.

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SECTION 6

Alamanno Rinuccini, A Condemnation of Lorenzo’s Regime Born into a renowned family of merchants, Alamanno Rinuccini (1426-1499) rejected the mercantile career pursued by his brothers and chose to study the liberal arts, and philosophy in particular. Rinuccini was a pupil of the Byzantine scholar Johannes Argyropoulos, and a member of a philosophical academy that became the model for Ficino's later and more famous Neoplatonic group. Rinuccini was, moreover, the author of political speeches, religious sermons, and a famous funeral oration for the humanist Matteo Palmieri. He also translated Plutarch, Isocrates, and Apollonius into Latin and held many important offices in the Florentine government. He was elected prior in 1460 and a member of the Dodici two years later. In 1466, he participated in the balia created by Piero de' Medici to exile his opponents after the conspiracy of Luca Pitti. In 1472, Rinuccini became one of the trustees of the University of Florence, and three years later, when the relations between Florence and the papacy were particularly tense, he was appointed ambassador to Pope Sixtus IV. Rinuccini's most famous work is his dialogue On Liberty, written in 1479, one year after the Pazzi conspiracy. On Liberty bears witness not only to the deterioration of the author's relationship with Lorenzo de' Medici but, more generally, to the crisis of Florentine civic humanism as a whole.

The three interlocutors in this work - Alitheus, Eleutherius, and Microtoxus - discuss the nature of liberty by commenting on the last few decades of Florentine history. They complain about the present tyranny of Lorenzo de' Medici and praise the ideals and achievements of the previous generations of Florentines.

Florence - as Alitheus explains - extended its just rule over Tuscany and the neighboring regions, inspiring the Italian people with the principle of liberty and the necessity to do battle against tyranny.

This is why, Rinuccini believes, the Pazzi conspiracy should be deemed "a glorious act, worthy of the highest praise," undertaken by the members of that distinguished family "to restore their own liberty and that of the state." The work ends by condemning Lorenzo de' Medici as "the tyrant of Florence" who has usurped the liberty of his fellow citizens.

PREFATORY LETTER TO ALESSANDRO RINUCCINI I know full well, my dear brother, that when I took up this lifestyle - which, after all, is not so different from yours - some men, out of either envy or lack of wisdom, criticized my choice, despite the fact that you and several friends support it. I have resolved, in fact, to abandon all civic affairs and retire to this small house in the country. Here I shall care for the little estate as if I were in exile from the city, detached from political 484

life and the company of my fellow citizens. Although I could easily confute this criticism by bringing forth examples of famous men, you alone suffice to prove my case.

You work in the immense English city of London as a representative of the greatest trading company that can be found in that market. Your superiors hold you in the highest esteem and truly appreciate you. You have not amassed an incredible fortune through your work, simply because that was not your intention. You have preferred to lead a quiet life of honest leisure, disregarding all luxury, and, what is more, giving up a vast portion of your inheritance. As a married man and a father, I could not choose to do the same, and I thus resolved to come as close to it as possible by detaching myself from city life and its innumerable anxieties caused by greed and ambition.

I cannot avoid, however, my friends' kind reproaches, which I have answered at length. My reply, as you shall see, was such that, far from changing my way of living, I almost convinced them to take up this way of life themselves. After my only son's most tragic death, I withdrew for a while to the same villa where he himself had often spent time; I avoided company and lived alone with my deep sorrow. There, one day, two members of our academy(1) came to visit me and express their sympathy. I prefer not to say who they were in case anything said in that friendly conversation [which I shall be recounting here] would offend someone. [For this dialogue of mine], therefore, I have invented names in keeping with their characters and their thoughts, I believe, and if you happen to know them, I look forward to hearing what you think.(2) Even if you have nothing to say regarding my choice of names, I would still like to hear whether or not you agree with the ideas expressed in the dialogue.

This is how things went: [the two men] were returning from Casentino and decided to make a little detour to pay me a visit. They found me at home reading, and having exchanged those words which are customary when friends meet again, they offered me their condolences and spoke at length to comfort me. To distract me from my intense grief, Alitheus urged Microtoxus to report what they had been saying about me during their trip. He thus began as follows.(3) BOOK ONE ‌ Alitheus: I became acquainted long ago with this attitude of yours, Microtoxus; nothing seems to frighten you more than learning something new. Nonetheless, listen to what I have to say. I do not hold that a man forced to obey the laws of his country is deprived of his liberty, since, as Cicero wrote,(4) we obey laws in order to be free, and many things can be prohibited in a man's life without his being deprived of his liberty.

Likewise, I do not think that a man should be said to be deprived of his liberty if he is forbidden to hurt a fellow citizen, take away other people's property by force, or rape somebody's wife. Well-governed cities prevent the committing of such acts through the promulgation of laws and the enforcement of severe punishments. There are also 485

many things which, although not prohibited by law, are not permitted by either tradition or civil custom, as they appear to be acts of insanity. These things, in my opinion, do not limit liberty either. I would not say, for instance, that a person who dwells in Florence is less free because he is not allowed, if he wants to be considered sane, to speak in public in a pair of riding boots and a raincoat. If he is a newly arrived traveler, however, he may do so.(5) Our customs also prevent a man of quality from dancing and singing in the market square, although there is no law prohibiting it. And I think you will agree with me when I say that a man is no less free because, in order to maintain his reputation, he restrains himself from doing such things.

Microtoxus: I certainly agree, and I even admit that nothing can be truer than what you have just said. I now see how wrong I was in not realizing that the last points of your definition were as important as all the others.(6) Since you have clearly explained the first part of the topic of our discussion and carefully illustrated your stance, I am ready to hear you discuss the other part of the subject. Now that the sun is not blazing, this shade and pleasant breeze seem somehow to invite you to speak. I would thus like you to continue by telling us how our way of living differs from the liberty you have previously described, for I believe that it will be difficult for you to prove this point.

Alitheus: You invite me, distinguished friends, to discuss an important question, the very thought of which, not to mention actually speaking about it, causes me great sorrow. I cannot think about this topic without bursting into tears, for I am ashamed to see the people who once dominated not only most of Tuscany but also the neighboring regions ruled now according to the whim of a single young man. In this city today, so many men-estimable for their great intellect, their age, and their wisdom-are so oppressed by the yoke of servitude that they are hardly aware of their present situation, nor do they dare free themselves; worst of all, they unwillingly oppose those who try to liberate them. Our way of living has degenerated so much since the time of our virtuous ancestors that if they were to come back to life they would not acknowledge us as their descendants. They founded, maintained, and developed this republic through their customs, sacred laws, and institutions, created to promote upright living. Who, in fact, would deny that the old laws of our city were equal, if not superior, to the constitutions that Lycurgus, Solon, Numa, and all the other legislators wrote to protect the liberty of their people? The facts prove this to be so. When our city lived according to its laws, its wealth, dignity, and authority increased as well, so much so that it surpassed all other Tuscan cities and became an example of power and virtuous living.

I see that today all despise these very laws, and that it is the whim of a small group of unscrupulous citizens that has gained the force of law. Please tell me, who believes that liberty rests upon anything but civic equality? Equality is the first thing for which we must strive in order to prevent the rich from oppressing the poor and the poor from 486

attacking the rich, and everyone can feel secure about the safety of his own property.

Judge for yourselves how these things are now managed in our city. What can I say about the corruption of justice? It is shocking to recall how just our city's juridical system was at the time when Florence enjoyed freedom, by contrast with how corrupt it is today. I cannot relate without displeasure how no one dares to contest, by either word or vote, charges (usually supported by false denunciations) that are made in favor of a powerful citizen. It seems a great gift of Fortune to have an honest excuse for why you cannot be involved in judging a given case.

Florence was once so renowned for its justice that people from distant lands wanted to have their cases tried here. Today, by contrast, even for cases within Florence, a verdict is reached only after a long time, immense expense, all sorts of fraud, bribes, and plots by powerful men. It is now the richest man, not he who is right, who often prevails. This corruption is what has led many to complain about losing their houses and property or about having been dispossessed of the palaces in which their families have lived for generations or about being despoiled by force and fraud of their possessions and wealth. How can I compare the past freedom of speech in the senate and in public meetings with today's silence? In the past, the intelligence, the eloquence, and the in tense patriotism of every single citizen was evident. Wise men debated decisions by weighing the pros and cons in such a way as to easily discern the truth in each proposal. Consequently, they were seldom wrong in their decrees, and once they reached a decision, they did not immediately reverse it through a sudden change of mind. Today, on the contrary, our Catos(7) invite only a few select people to join their discussions on important matters, and we often see them reversing their decisions, perhaps following someone's advice the very day after they have rejected it.

Our city, therefore, lacks what Aristotle said was characteristic of a free statenamely, its unity: a single body with many heads, hands, and feet.(8) Lacking something is just as bad as having something but being unwilling to use it. At present, because of both the arrogance of a few shameless men and the indolence of other citizens, these few men have taken possession of what belongs to the people. Their blind greed and their ambition are so powerful that they have repressed the authority of the councils and the voice of the people. It is very seldom that in the assemblies one hears the voice of the herald - so praised by Demosthenes - inviting all citizens to participate in the debate after the government's ruling.(9) On the rare occasions when, for the sake of tradition, the herald summons them, everyone knows that it is a sound made in vain, for fear obstructs the citizens from participating.

Who does not know how important it is for a state to have the authority to punish criminals? The fear of being convicted and disciplined, in fact, deters wicked and nefarious men, whom neither shame nor love of virtue and honor would prevent from 487

breaking the law. Once these deterrents are removed, there is no monstrous crime that the greed of the wicked would fear to commit, for the lack of punishment is, for them, tantamount to the freedom to do wrong. Do criminals fear committing any crime these days? Why should they, since they enjoy protection and immunity for their crimes, thanks to bribery and the influence of corrupt citizens whose faction they support?

Why should they be kept from doing whatever they want, since men who have been sentenced to exile or death do not hesitate to walk freely in the city streets before everybody's eyes, relying on the immunity which is granted them not by a judge, but by a single private citizen? Men sentenced to life imprisonment by the Committee of Eight(10) have been released from jail in compliance with the desire of a private citizen-or should I say, tyrant.

Why, then, should I complain about the elections to public offices? We know that in free cities officers are usually chosen by drawing lots, a practice that is fully in accordance with liberty and justice, for whoever privately sup ports the state through the payment of taxes also shares in its benefits and advantages. Now, however, we see that the main officials, or whoever holds a post of some responsibility and importance in the city government, is chosen not by lot but by appointment. As a consequence, it is not worthy men, notable for their wisdom and probity, who are elected, but associates of the powerful those who indulge their whims and desires - whoever, in other words, is ready to serve them in the most humiliating ways. This is the reason officials have no authority whatsoever, or very little at best; for good men and all those who should take up posts in the government are justly irate and prefer not to be involved in the political life of the city. This gives a few wicked men even greater power to exploit and ruin the republic.

These facts incite such anger that I could continue to lament at length if grief, O God, and the atrocity of these crimes did not force me to end my speech. I cannot leave unmentioned, however, the most tremendous wrong of all, one so great that every citizen should flee it as one would death. What could be more outrageous than the things that have happened in our city in these last years? The payment of innumerable taxes has drained every man of all his wealth, while all Italy has been enjoying great peace. All the money thus collected, moreover, has been used to satisfy the whims of a single man, although it was said to have purchased extra wheat, or to have been spent on some other unlikely item. We need not wonder, then, where these wicked men get the money to construct numerous buildings both in the city and in the countryside, and to maintain the myriad horses, hounds, birds, actors, spies, and sycophants. To spend this much money in just a few months shows how false [Lorenzo de' Medici's] display of wealth is, and, as he openly asserts, how he is not obliged to pay his debts.

Moreover, he has always extorted money on any pretext from people with whom he 488

was acquainted as well as from strangers, thinking that his situation would never change and that he would always be in the position to use the property of others, either public or private, as his own.

Such things and others similar to them, Microtoxus, in my opinion greatly endanger liberty or, should I say, have already uprooted and destroyed it. Although these things are inherently wicked and despicable and should be avoided like the plague by any righteous man, they seem even worse and less tolerable when I am reminded (partly by listening to the accounts of elderly citizens, partly by reading the writings of historians) of how much effort our ancestors put into defending liberty, and how they devoted themselves to preserving civic equality. They used to hold assemblies, for example, to discuss the behavior of rebellious citizens or, to use legal terminology, citizens "who were involved in a scandal," eventually sending them into exile once they had been found guilty. This practice was employed by the Athenians and later by all free republics, since they understood that civic equality is the main way to preserve liberty. I think you know that Giorgio Scali, a knight noted for his noble birth and the offices he has held in the government of our city, was sentenced to death for having released one of his men, Scattizza, from the prefect's prison.(11) Vieri Cerchi, moreover, was sent into exile for acting as if he had more rights than the rest of the citizens.(12) Having married the daughter of Uguccione della faggiuola and become a relative of the tyrant, Corso Donati was forced to leave the city by an angry mob that suspected him of tyrannical aims; he was eventually killed in battle. The people of Florence greatly valued liberty, since, as is proper, they were the real rulers and leaders of the republic. Today, however, they seem to have lost all hope; they tolerate the whims of strangers(13) and are at their mercy. Not by choice or out of mere ignorance, but as a result of violence and threats, the Florentines do not dare exercise their rights, although in former times they spared neither their own lives nor their wealth to defend themselves from the attacks of powerful states and tyrants. Who does not know how valorously and with what military power and strategic ability they fought their neighbors, resisting their attacks or waging war against them in order to take revenge for the wrongs they had suffered? They fought Volterra, Pisa, Arezzo, and Pistoia until all were under their complete dominion. They battled so fiercely against Siena, Perugia, and Bologna that these cities considered it a blessing when Florence accepted their peace proposals. It is true that to speak about the war with Lucca is somewhat embarrassing; we have repeatedly conquered this city but we have never managed to keep it under our control. I do not know how this city, despite its frequent subjugation, has always found a way to slip out of our hands - it could rightly be considered an abyss that has swallowed up Florentine money and blood. It would take me too long to name all the tyrants and princes whom the Florentines have fought in violent wars in order to maintain liberty, if only in name. To this end, they first fought Manfredi by the River Arbia, and again at 489

Benevento, where he was defeated and killed.14 It was this same love of liberty that spurred our ancestors, who were always devout Christians and pious members of the Church, to wage war without hesitation against unjust popes, such as Gregory X, who excommunicated our city for three years.(15) They then battled Emperor Henry, who encamped his army as close as the monastery of San Salvi.(16) They likewise opposed Uguccione della Faggiuola and Castruccio of Lucca, who, despite the heavy losses they inflicted on the city, never succeeded in taking away our liberty.(17) The same was the case in regard to the tyrant of Arezzo, Guido Tarlati; and Louis of Bavaria himself tried in vain to deprive the Florentines of their liberty when he was on his way to be crowned Emperor of the Romans.(18) Moreover, Mastino, that treacherous despot, not only occupied Lucca - which, according to the agreement, should have been given to Florence - and kept it against all law and custom, but also waged war on the Florentines, who valiantly managed to protect themselves from his fraud and his army.(19) Following his example, the archbishop of Milan, a member of the Visconti family, tried to subjugate the Florentines with both deception and force. After a long and wearisome war, however, he was glad to make peace with them.(20) There followed that great and extremely expensive war against the unjust rulers of the Church who, disregarding both human and divine law, attempted to take away our liberty. They tried first through famine and then, finding this ineffectual, by force. Since Pope Gregory XI was in Avignon at the time, the Florentines, through the action of the eight officials specifically elected to conduct this war, managed to incite many papal cities to revolt against the Church.(21) Soon after, they faced that tremendous war against the tyrant of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The amount of money that the Florentines had to spend on that war was colossal. Having managed to resist for many years, they finally decided to summon Duke Robert of Bavaria into Italy with the promise of four hundred thousand gold pieces. The truce they had made with Gian Galeazzo, however, did not hold, as the Milanese duke disregarded the peace. He was, in fact, lying in wait for the Florentines, ready to resume the war with larger forces. The Florentine so hated the tyrant and so loved liberty and their city, that in just one night they gathered the necessary sum of money (and probably even more) and brought it to the government officials.

Likewise, they later showed great valor and might in their fight against the perfidious King Ladislas of Naples. Despite the heavy pecuniary losses caused by the conflict itself, and by the fact that the corrupt king had intercepted Florentine money, Florence managed to extend its dominion by purchasing the city of Cortona from Ladislas himself. (22) Afterward, the Florentines warred not only once but often with Filippo Visconti, duke of Milan, as this wicked man and sower of discord menaced our liberty with great force and every possible fraud. Our forebears opposed his attempts with such force that he was compelled to fear for the safety of his own state. Shall I also recall the struggles with King Alfonso of Sicily? Yielding to the requests of Pope Eugen490

ius IV and the Sienese, he first waged a cruel war on the innocent Florentines, who had no reason whatsoever to expect such an attack. He then conspired with the Venetians in expelling our merchants from both states. Finally, he invaded our territory with his son Ferdinand at the head of an impressive army. Without having looted on either of the two fronts, he shamefully returned to his kingdom with a starved, exhausted army.

As for the present conflict with Pope Sixtus IV and King Ferdinand, I have nothing to say, for they both openly assert in speech and writing that they are not fighting in order to deprive the Florentine people of their liberty but on the contrary to give them back the liberty that they have lost. Moreover, they say that this war is not against the Florentines, but against Lorenzo de' Medici, whom they call tyrant, rather than citizen, and have branded with all kinds of ecclesiastical censures. I therefore do not know whether those who oppose them should be considered to be fighting for liberty or for servitude.

I merely wanted to review these facts to show you the great care our forebears have always put into maintaining and defending liberty, for they protected it first with their own blood, as long as they fought themselves, and then through the expenditure of vast sums of money, once they started making use of mercenary troops. They were not satisfied with Italian forces, and thus made numerous agreements with powers north of the Alps. These powers became their allies: they summoned foreign kings into Italy, such as Charles of Bohemia, whose aid they requested to oppose the army of the bishop of Milan. Likewise, in the war against King Ladislas of Sicily, they summoned Louis of Anjou from France, with whom they became allies and friends after stipulating an agreement also involving Pope Alexander V With the promise of a large sum, moreover, they convinced the count of Armagnac to come to Italy and help resist the attacks of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Although they did so in vain, they also sent Robert, duke of Bavaria and pretender to the title of Emperor of the Romans, to fight Visconti.(23) In our time we have seen former King Rene of Sicily summoned to Italy from the south of France to help Francesco Sforza - with whom we had formed a close alliance - carry out the campaign against the Venetians. King Rene decided to keep a presence in Italy as long as need be, and thus left behind his son,John, duke of Calabria (who spent a long time in Florence), to punish Alfonso and Ferdinand for having tried to deprive the innocent Florentines of their liberty.(24) This is what I have to say regarding liberty, my excellent friends, and I hope that you have not found my speech too long. The subject, however, was such that I could not help pursuing it at length. Please forgive me if my discourse has been so wordy as to bore you. If instead it pleased you even slightly, you must thank liberty herself, whose name is a delight to hear.

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Source: Alamanno Rinuccini, Dialogus de libertate, ed. Francesco Adorno, in Atti e Memorie dell’ Accadcmia Toscana di scienze e lettere La Colombaria, n.s., 8 (1957), pp. 270-271, 281-290.

1. One of them (Alitheus) is the humanist Donato Acciaiuoli. It is not known who the other interlocutor in the dialogue might be.

2. The characters' names are Alitheus (the Truthful), Microtoxus (the Simpleton), and Eleutherius (the Lover of Liberty). As in many humanist dialogues, the ideas of the author are not necessarily expressed by a single interlocutor. Although Eleutherius seems most to resemble Rinuccini, Alitheus also acts as his mouthpiece at various points throughout the text. This need not surprise us either, for Acciaiuoli and Rinuccini had similar political views.

3. We have left out the section in which Microtoxus reports the conversation with Alitheus that afternoon. We begin with the point at which Microtoxus and Alitheus are speaking with Eleutherius.

4. See Cic., Par., 5.34.

5. Alitheus means to say that the expectation that people be properly attired for an official occasion is not a sign that a society sets limits on personal freedom.

6. Microtoxus is referring to the definition of liberty that Alitheus gave at the beginning of the dialogue, drawing on Cic., Par., 5.34: "Liberty is a kind of potential for enjoying freedom within the limits set by law and custom." Alitheus has stressed that liberty is a kind of fortitude, for the wise man is not induced by bribes or threats to give up his liberty. Like any human faculty, he explains, liberty is a natural gift that each man has the potential to develop and bring to perfection through study and education. What Microtoxus has not clearly understood is the last part of Alitheus' definition, namely, that liberty must be enjoyed "within the limits of law and custom."

7. Here "Catos" is said ironically, to indicate the Florentine officials. Cato the Censor (234-149 B.c.) and Marcus Porcius Cato (94-46 B.c.), in fact, were two Roman senators renowned for their integrity.

8. Arist., Pol., 3.1279a and 1281b.

9. Dem., Decor., 169-170.

10. For the function of this council, the Otto di Guardia, see Dati's description of the Florentine magistratures (document 8).

11. Giorgio Scali, the descendant of an ancient Guelph house, became a leader of the popular party at the time of the Ciompi revolution. He was executed in January 1382 for having released Bartolomeo Scattizza from the city prison. The tragic collapse of Scali's political career became proverbial in Florence; it is memorialized by various authors, including Machiavelli in his Istorie fiorentine, 3.20-21, and Principe, 9.

12. Vieri Cerchi (ca. 1240-ca. 1313) was one of the main political figures in late thirteenth century Florence. In 1295 he half-heartedly supported the nobles' revolt against the Ordinances of Justice of Giana della Bella. He was forced to flee the city in 1302, after the arrival of Charles of Valois and the return of numerous exiles of the Black Guelph faction.

13. The expression used by Rinuccini, alienam libidinem, is meant to underscore both the Medici's origin in the Mugello Valley and their estrangement from the Florentine people because of their tyrannical conduct.

14. At the battle of Montaperti, in the Arbia Valley, the Ghibellines of Florence and Siena defeated the Florentine Guelphs with the aid of Manfredi (September 4, 1260). Manfredi died in the Battle of Benevento (February 26, 1266).

15. From September 1273 to January 1276.

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16. Henry VII besieged Florence from early September 1312 until the end of October of the same year. The monastery of San Salvi lay just outside the city walls.

17. Uguccione, the Ghibelline lord of Pisa, defeated the Florentines at Montecatini on August 29, 1315, but was overthrown by Castruccio Castracani the following year. Castruccio, lord of Lucca, waged war against Florence from 1320 until his death on September 3, 1328.

18. Guido Tarlati was bishop and lord of Arezzo from 1321 until his death in 1328. Having allied himself with other Ghibelline forces, he expanded his dominion in Tuscany, thanks to the help of Louis of Bavaria, whom he crowned emperor. Emperor Louis repeatedly threatened Florence with Castruccio Castracani in 1328. After the latter's death, Louis was forced to abandon his hope of helping the Tuscan Ghibellines and conquering Florence.

19. Contrary to Rinuccini's account, Florence bought Lucca from Mastino della Scala, lord of Verona, who had conquered it in 1335. In 1342, however, Florence lost it to Pisa, then allied with Viscontean Milan.

20. Rinuccini refers to the long struggle against Archbishop Giovanni Visconti in the 1350s.

21. The so-called War of the Eight Saints, named after the eight officials mentioned by Rinuccini in this passage, was fought between 1375 and 1378.

22. Ladislas took Cortona, the southernmost outpost of Tuscany, in 1409. Florence purchased it from him in 1411.

23. In the 1390-1392 war against Milan, the Florentines called on Jean, count of Armagnac, to invade Lombardy from the west while they attacked the Visconti state from east and southeast and Duke Stephen of Bavaria from the north. In his Istoria, Gora Dati narrates that, after an initial success, the plan failed because of the count's reckless behavior. Against the same Gian Galeazzo Visconti, moreover, in the autumn of 1400 the Florentines summoned Robert of Bavaria, whose army, however, was quickly defeated by Milanese forces.

24. Rene of Anjou and his son John landed at Porto Pisano in 1438 on their way to fight Alfonso of Aragon for the kingdom of Naples. At the end of 1453 and for several months in 1454, John was in Florence to lead Florentine forces against Alfonso. He returned later in the autumn of 1459 on his way to fight Ferrante of Naples, a war that he ultimately lost in 1464. He died in 1470.

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SECTION 7

Alison Brown, Lorenzo and Public Opinion in Florence: The Problem of Opposition When Lorenzo died in April 1492, we are told by one of his intimates that «the whole of the city and the people, both great and small» streamed to the Medici palace in mourning, «so one saw nothing but black cloaks».(1) However, according to another contemporary, Piero Parenti, the lowest classes were happy when he died and the middle and upper-middle classes weren't particularly sad. The leading citizens were divided among themselves, those who were very intimate with Lorenzo and shared power with him were «extremely sad, thinking that they would lose their position and perhaps lose power altogether, others who weren't so close and were not involved in government instead rejoiced, thinking that the republic would recover its liberty and they would escape from servitude and enjoy a larger share in government». And so, he concluded, «the people at large secretly accepted his death, although no one gave any signs of this for the above reasons, and especially because of being oppressed, since under his control the city was nothing other than enslaved».(2) These two contrasting accounts of Lorenzo's death pose the problem we face in assessing opposition to Lorenzo. This is partly due to the difficulty of assessing public opinion in an age of no polls or opposition parties. Until 1480 it had been possible to express criticism openly in the councils and consultative meetings, to leave a record of dissenting votes in the Libri Fabarum - mostly against tax bills, as unpopular then as now - and dissenting voices in the Consulte e pratiche records. After 1480, however, discussions were normally confined to the Council of Seventy, whose members had to swear a strict oath of secrecy, and it was symptomatic of the new outlook that Lorenzo in 1491 expressly forbade any one to write about state matters outside Florence, whether to ambassadors or to individual citizens.(3) At the same time it became increasing dangerous to voice any criticism of Lorenzo or the government, since to do so could bring immediate imprisonment, exile or even death. During the Pazzi War, for example, two critics of the regime were given fiveyear sentences: Pierantonio Buondelmonti, from an old magnate family, was exiled, and the ruffian Giovanni Bartoli was imprisoned, «to restrain his loquacious and abundant invective against the government and especially its leader».(4) For conspiring against «a certain leading optimate» in 1481, three Florentines were summarily beheaded implying, as an amazed visiting ambassador commented, that anyone who com494

mitted, or might commit, an offence against this person Lorenzo de' Medici - would be guilty of lese-majesty, «which indeed attributes honour and respect to Lorenzo».(5) So criticizing Lorenzo was dangerous. Moreover, because of his persuasive charm and powerful patronal role in Florence, criticizing him was a difficult thing to do for more subtle reasons. For, according to his son Giovanni (later pope Leo X), Lorenzo often used to say: «Remember that those who speak ill of us don't love us» - and those who didn't love him, of course, received no favours.(6) To discover who «didn't love» Lorenzo is therefore not easy, because of the secrecy necessarily involved, and because of the consequent ambiguity of so much of the writing and imagery of the time. There is another problem, too, to do with the limitations of the political vocabulary of the day. Although «tyrant» was virtually the only term of condemnation available to contemporaries, it can be misleading, both as a description of Lorenzo's activities, and because of its many resonances in the liberal tradition. So I shall try to avoid it as far as possible. Instead I shall investigate the feelings of hostility powered by Lorenzo in Florence during his lifetime, the reverse side of his successful self-image we know so much more about.

The most open criticism was expressed through a continuous series of conspiracies against Lorenzo and the Medici regime.(7) Although they generally expressed old ottimate rivalries predating Lorenzo's lifetime and so do not necessarily reflect criticism of Lorenzo, they usually included some men alienated by insults and injuries received personally from him. The Pazzi Conspiracy, for example, included a Volterran cleric who resented Lorenzo's treatment of his city in 1472 as well as members of the Salviati and Pazzi families who had suffered loss of patrimonies and benefices at Lorenzo's hands, and were also banking rivals.(8) The 1481 attempt on Lorenzo's life included as one of the conspirators Battista Frescobaldi, who joined because «he wanted Lorenzo to understand» that he had not been repaid sufficiently for his expenses when he went to Constantinople to capture the last remaining Pazzi conspirator and that «there was no other way to vindicate himself».(9) According to rumour in the city, another conspiracy was plotted against Lorenzo in 1484 by one of his own relations, a Tornabuoni.(10) Others, however, were attributed to outside influences: in 1488 Lorenzo was discouraged from going to his villa in Poggio a Caiano for fear of being killed by Giovanni Bentivoglio, and in 1490 it was rumoured, «though without any evidence», that conspirators had been sent by the king of Naples or his son.(11) What amazed the foreign ambassadors on this occasion, as in 1481, was the fact that the interrogation was conducted in great secrecy by «leading citizens closely related to Lorenzo by marriage and friendship», who even denied that it had taken place.(12) Whatever their motives, these alienated optimates provided popular leadership after the fall of the Medici, and before that, a focus for malcontents in the city and outside, 495

especially in Rome, where the presence of Girolamo Riario kept alive the animosities engendered by the Pazzi Conspiracy and War. As late as 1487 Piero de' Medici got annoyed when his companions in Rome wanted to go on the round of cardinals accompanied by one of the Pazzi, having been ordered by Lorenzo «not to go around with a bunch of people who might give you something to talk about».(13) Old memories were kept alive in Florence by the painted portraits on the walls of the Bargello of all post1434 rebels, and on the walls of the Dogana those of the Pazzi conspirators, where they remained - despite papal protests - until they were all «cancelled» after the revolution in 1494. Intended as a warning memento, they may also have served as a visible martyrology, sustaining instead of deterring opposition.(14) Yet these optimate conspirators failed to form an effective opposition group as long as Lorenzo was alive, nor do they throw much new light on Lorenzo himself.

More revealing are two other expressions of discontent, the intimate diaries and writings of literate Florentines, and the illiterate voice of the people, expressed in gossip and tumults and especially in the popular reaction to Lorenzo after 1494. We know public opinion is a factor to be taken into account from the vocabulary of the day, which tantalisingly refers to «public outcry», «public or vulgar rumour», «voices abroad», «certain opinions more influenced by rumours than reason», «what was said in the city», «popular criticism on street corners».(15) For, as Florentines fondly admitted, their city was «extremely free in its speech, full of the most subtle and restless minds».(16) And although it was recognized that the people outside in the piazza were totally ignorant of what went on inside the government palace - cut off by «a dense fog or thick wall» that meant the people knew as little about what went on inside as they did about what happened in India (17) - increasing importance was being attributed to the views of these outsiders in the square, the masses who were capable of seeing but not touching you, as Machiavelli said.(18) Yet it is as difficult to probe their views as those of the literate, since they are silent, not from fear or discretion, but because they have left few records. Despite this, it is possible to evoke from existing sources, and even ex silentio, a sense of hostility towards Lorenzo and his regime felt by both groups of Florentines. *** The literate confided their thoughts to secret diaries or journals, or jotted down revealing asides and comments about the regime in protocols and account books as they went about their daily bureaucratic business.(19) Thanks to the famous accounting, or stock-taking, mentality of the Florentines, we have evidence of antagonism towards Lorenzo that is recorded in memoirs and account-books as scrupulously as the ups and downs of these men's finances. Others wrote dialogues or Thucydidean histories in which criticism could be concealed in fictitious speeches - as Machiavelli helpfully ex496

plains, (20) thanks to whom we are becoming better at reconstituting «the missing voice» of criticism lurking in literary as well as in archival texts. There are, for example, two occasions in his Florentine Histories when Machiavelli alerts us to criticism of Lorenzo through speeches, one during the Pazzi War, the other concerning Lorenzo's harsh handling of the Volterra revolt in 1472 (which resulted in the city being sacked by the duke of Urbino, who was widely acclaimed for his success).(21) In this instance, Machiavelli reports Tommaso Soderini's initial warning to Lorenzo, «Better a lean truce than a fat victory», and his subsequent response when Lorenzo chided him, «so what say you now that Volterra has been acquired?», that to him Volterra seemed lost, not won.(22) We know from other, contemporary, evidence that Soderini was deeply opposed to Lorenzo's policy, possibly because he had rival interests in alum there; so although it was easy for Machiavelli to be wise after the event, he is able to alert us to criticism that was still sensitive enough to make him change his reference to «Lorenzo» in the first draft of his Histories to «one of [Soderini's] most intimate friends» in the final version.(23) These literate critics came from many different professions. There were patrician bankrupts like the Alberti or the Panciatichi, immured in their palaces to escape arrest, where they expressed their discontent in acerbic poems.(24) There were alienated scholars and academics like Ficino and the schoolteacher Ugo lino Verina, who professed to be ashamed by the public displays organised by «Caesar».(25) There were merchants who fell foul of Medici interests in the Mercantile Court.(26) They included even his own family, as well as members of the regime, like Tommaso Soderini, who provided the most «knowing» opposition, since it was there that rivalry for power and honour was most intense.(27) And also the religious, such as the Vallombrosan chronicler, Bernardo del Serra, who was incensed by Lorenzo's unscrupulous hunt for benefices, and especially by his night-time eviction of the aged abbot of Passignano to make way for his son;(28) and also, of course, Savonarola, despite Lorenzo's efforts to win his favour.

Although his damning sermons were mostly delivered after Lorenzo's death, they provide one of the best accounts of Lorenzo's clientelismo, his tax and political fiddles, his banquets and his womanising, and his desire to be first in everything, poetry competitions as well as horse races.(29) The writings of these men betray resentment of Lorenzo's personal prepotenza, tempers and rages, and of his domineering and overpowering behaviour towards even his friends that would otherwise be difficult to document. Like the opposition of old optimate families, some of this resentment was predictable, stemming from conflict over patronage to benefices and rewards.(30) More interesting is the criticism that helps to clarify the delicate line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in this transitional period between republican and courtly government. For although Lorenzo's posi497

tion was tolerated by the political and financial oligarchy, since they had invited him to be their leader, there remained two grey areas to do with business and diplomacy where the line between public and private interest remained unclear, as we can see from the following examples.

Tommaso Guidetti began his chronicle in 1481 to record his anger at being arrested on his return from London, and later imprisoned, by sentence of the Mercanzia, for a debt «which Lorenzo de' Medici with his power (potenzia) cruelly made me pay against God and against justice».(31) Guidetti had been an employee of the Medici bank for seventeen years, working first in Bruges, where he became vice-director in 1471, then in charge of the London branch as a subsidiary of Bruges. When Lorenzo closed the Bruges branch under Tommaso Portinari, the London branch was also closed; hence Guidetti's return to Florence on 5 May 1481, to be arrested four days later, «as a welcome», for the sum of 3549 ducats claimed by Giovanni Lanfredini, manager of the Venice branch of the Medici bank, for a shipment of currants. Guidetti lost the case a year later and, after imprisonment in the Stinche, was forced to repay this sum to the bank of Bartolomeo Bartolini for the Medici. However, he never accepted the justice of the verdict, and after a series of attempts to recover this money - first from the Portinari, who promised to repay him in wool which he never received, then, after the fall of the Medici, from the Officials of the Rebels, who initially awarded it to him from the heirs of Lorenzo de' Medici, Tommaso Portinari and Co. and then annulled their sentence - he was finally given a farm as a compromise settlement in 1498.(32) His case, documented by his Ricordanze, must be typical of other business colleagues who felt they had been treated unfairly by Lorenzo and the regime - such as the Martelli family, who had been even more closely associated with the Medici bank.(33) Again we owe our knowledge of this to the private memoirs of one of the family, Ugolino Martelli, who records that he had been prevented from enjoying the office of communal Treasurer in 1481 by the Notary of the Riformagioni, Giovanni Guidi, «at the suggestion of, and in deference to, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici», and it is his son, as F. W. Kent reminds us, who - also in the intimacy of his diary - called Lorenzo a tyrant for preventing him from living in the Boni palace «by making an unjust demand».(34) Ugolino's brothers Antonio and Domenico were also unpopular with the regime, being associated in the 1470s with Pierfrancesco de' Medici's friends, not Lorenzo's, and as a result Antonio was discriminated against by not being repaid money owed to him by the Sea Consuls in 1475, causing him and, after his death in 1481, his sons Niccolo and Giuliano business losses and tax debts.(35) Emblematic of all such cases is Lorenzo's relationship with his own cousins, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco. The trouble began with Pierfrancesco's alienation from his uncle and guardian, Cosimo de' Medici, for taking unfair financial advan498

tage of him during his minority in the 1440s.(36) The situation was repeated after Pierfrancesco's death in 1476, when his young sons later claimed that Lorenzo as their guardian had deprived them of their inheritance (including thirteen bags containing 20,043 florins, which he retained in his own palace and then used during the Pazzi War), withheld interest on their capital, and prevented them from withdrawing money from the bank. All this was done against their will, since Lorenzo threatened them «in his study» that «if we didn't lend him what he wanted, as guardian of our income, he would take it from us».(37) As a result they later lost business investment possibilities and (unlike Lorenzo) political rights as well, subsequently becoming leading members of the opposition to his son. On their release from prison in April 1494 for conspiring against Piero, we are told - as evidence of their popularity well before the collapse of the regime - that «they were accompanied home by a great number of citizens to demonstrate their displeasure about their case».(38) As a partner in the Medici bank with Cosimo's son Giovanni, who was Director General, Pierfrancesco's problems may have reflected business as well as family rivalries within the 'corpus' of the Medici bank, as with Guidetti and the Martelli. They illustrate how difficult it is to separate finance from politics when discussing optimate opposition to Lorenzo. For when nonpayment of taxes and bankruptcy meant loss of political rights, financial disputes, as we have seen, were fought with political weapons and rapidly resulted in political alienation - hence Lorenzo's much-quoted saying, that «it's difficult to live affluently in Florence without being involved in politics».(39) Despite this, these predominantly business rivalries can be distinguished from others within the field of politics. Again, three examples will serve to illustrate the resentment aroused by Lorenzo's political prepotenza, when he attempted to overstep the delicate boundary between public and private interest.

The first example is Alamanno Rinuccini, whose trenchant criticism of Lorenzo in his 14 79 Dialogue on liberty, as well as in his family diary, have for a long time provided virtually our only evidence of opposition to Lorenzo in his lifetime.(40) Rinuccini was a trusted member of the regime and a Studio Official with Lorenzo in the newlyestablished University in Pisa, though not an experienced diplomat. Sent as a substitute ambassador to Rome in 1476 at a time of crucial importance for Florentine-papal relationships, he mishandled the situation by misinterpreting and publicizing papal comments that Lorenzo wanted reserved for himself, for which Lorenzo penalised him by preventing him from returning home or giving his version of events.(41) Hence his attack on Lorenzo's tyranny in his 1479 dialogue On liberty, where he inveighed against «that man» who «complained that I wrote publicly to the magistrate on great affairs of state rather than privately to him», refused to accept his private report and then «used the excuse that I came from plague-ridden parts to make the ... Eight [of Ward] bar 499

me from the city».(42) Despite being elected a member of the 1480 Balla and reelected a Studio Official, he celebrated Lorenzo's death in 1492 with a critical obituary in his diary of «the malignant tyrant... who tried to become lord of the republic like Julius Caesar».(43) Francesco Gaddi's criticism of Lorenzo is less declamatory than Rinuccini's and more interesting as evidence of Lorenzo's character. Francesco belonged to a family of merchant bankers trading in Rome and Florence, and he had been employed during the Pazzi War as Lorenzo's private emissary in France, or, as Francesco put it in the notebook he began at this time, «to follow his Majesty as man of the said Lorenzo».

Later he combined his private service to Lorenzo with public commissions as Florentine ambassador, as in 1486, when he was expected to negotiate Lorenzo's son's Orsini marriage during a public embassy to the League camp. Failing to reach the camp, he returned to Florence to find Lorenzo «extremely displeased on account of his private commission». When ordered by the Ten of War, on Lorenzo's orders, to set off again «by land or sea», Gaddi refused to do so, as he carefully recorded in his diary: having returned from Pisa disturbed with an extremely upset stomach. Lorenzo remained very displeased and got angry with me, fearing I had invented my sickness to refuse to serve him. And he sent his son Piero to me at home on the very same day to ask for the written commission he had given me, and the special cipher Lorenzo and I had made together secretly. So I handed both of them over to him.(44) Although not an overt critic, Gaddi enables us to see how Lorenzo's imperiousness, anger and distrust could be sufficient, as it was also with Rinuccini, to transform loyalty into alienation. For although Gaddi served Lorenzo once more in a joint public and private capacity, he later confined his activities to the public sector, being rewarded for his scrupulousness by being offered whatever office he wanted in the chancery after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. The careful distinction he always drew between his public and private duties in his journal suggests how important this boundary was for him, his journal serving· as a careful record of where it lay. His tiff with Lorenzo was evidently sufficient to upset the tightrope balance between his public and his private activities, tipping him on to the public side of the line, not Lorenzo's.

Neri di Stefano Cambi, my third example, was deprived of office by Lorenzo for abiding by the law when Gonfalonier of Justice in 1488. He and the priors were unable to draw the new Signoria at the end of their office because there were insufficient members of their advisory colleges (the Twelve and the Sixteen) in the city to form the necessary two-thirds'. quorum. The Signoria was extremely annoyed, since it had expressly forbidden them to leave the city without its permission, knowing that a hunting expedition had been organised during this holiday period by certain young sons of leading citizens (including Piero de' Medici), who were all members of a hunt called the Ruota.

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Since the Palace Officials unanimously agreed, when consulted, that it would be illegal to make the draw without a quorum, and Lorenzo - who was powerful enough to have acted at once without any outcry - was absent in Pisa enjoying himself, the Signoria, faced with an expectant crowd waiting in the piazza outside, eventually decided to recall the nearest missing member of the colleges, Piero Borghini. The following day it unanimously decided - after seeking the advice of the Otto di Pratka and with popular approval in the city - to punish the missing members of the Colleges by depriving them of office for three years. The outcome, however, was that it was Cambi who was deprived of office, not the missing members, some of whom had been out hunting with Piero and were able to use their influence with a lawyer and Lorenzo's secretary:, ser Piero da Bibbiena, to influence Lorenzo himself.(45) We owe this account to Giovanni Cambi, one of Neri's sons, who was author of one of the few surviving chronicles critical of Lorenzo and his regime. It seems that, like Rinuccini and Gaddi, Cambi was alienated by the injustice suffered by his father through Lorenzo's abuse of power. Although; Lorenzo is only implicated indirectly in this episode, in being worked on by an anonymous «bad» lawyer and his secretary, ser Piero da Bibbiena, and in discussing the affair with Neri's colleagues, he is guilty in Giovanni's eyes of believing the bad lawyer and only hearing half the story, «as Big Men always do».(46) Moreover he is the absent voice in the story in being responsible for the erosion of public institutions which brought about this injustice. For whereas Giovanni's father as elected head-of-state scrupulously respected the laws, by consulting the Palace Officials and the Otto di Pratica and by acting with the unanimous support of his colleagues in the Signoria, Lorenzo and the other leading citizens showed deliberate disrespect for them hunting in the countryside while the Signoria and the populace in the square patiently awaited their return, then trying to force entry to the Palace and influence the Signoria illicitly.(47) So when Lorenzo died, Giovanni condemned him in his chronicle for having made himself «Head of the City and Tyrant, more [powerful] than if he had been its Lord», accompanied always by ten armed retainers.(48) The alienation of these three writers was shared by others - such as Piero Parenti, who like his father used his history as a public statement about the Medici's abuse of power,(49) or Bernardo Rucellai, who became impatient with Lorenzo's seeming tyranny and «began to make caustic remarks about him».(50) But was it shared by the people at large, the «public opinion» in my title? We can feel their critical presence in 1471, when «they took it very badly, and quite openly on street corners criticized» Lorenzo's guests, the duke and duchess of Milan, for showing no interest in the traditional performance of the Annunciation, which had to be repeated three times before they went to see it.(51) We can feel them again in the piazza during their vigil from noon to sunset on 28 December 1488. That they were more than passive participants in the 501

election is suggested by their amazement when the draw was postponed, and their pertinacity in waiting until Fiero Borghini's dramatic arrival, clad in black cape and huge boots, which finally allowed the draw to take place.(52) And since «the city quite widely approved of» the Signoria's decision to punish the missing colleagues, the people - if we believe Cambi - disliked the regime's high-handed behaviour as much as the Signoria itself.(53) There is also good evidence that the people disliked another feature of the regime in this period, the hated police magistracy of the Eight of Ward, which with balia (special powers) could sentence criminals to death without appeal. In the same month in which Neri Cambi was punished, a riot broke out in the piazza in support of a young criminal, who was being taken through the streets before his execution outside the walls for killing a servant of the Eight of Ward. It was not only the crowd who supported him by urging him to «escape, escape!» but also the ambassadors of Genoa and the duke of Milan, as well as Lorenzo's cousins, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco, who pleaded for clemency. However, Lorenzo, who happened to be in the Palace at the time, brushed aside their pleas with good words, and personally ordered the young man to be hanged there and then in full public view in the piazza. He then ensured that four of the crowd who had urged him to escape were captured, tortured and exiled for four years, refusing to leave the square himself until the crowd had calmed down. No wonder the ambassador who witnessed the incident thought it «not the moment» to talk to Lorenzo about his business.(54) But when the people speak, it is usually to do with money and economic distress. As Gene Brucker argues in this volume, the economic situation was bad for many people at this time. Although Lorenzo had helped to undercut the price of grain in the 1470s, «to help the poor» and «to do good to the people», and had sold grain to the Abbondanza officials during the Pazzi War, the price continued to rise in the 1480s.(55) The exceptionally heavy taxation during the Pazzi War was blamed directly on Lorenzo, for whose sake the war as papal propaganda re-iterated - was being fought. This is the second occasion on which the speeches in Machiavelli's History provide us with a counteror oppositional voice, which is also supported by the more direct evidence of posters being «stuck up every night on street corners against Lorenzo, who is half stunned».(56) According to Machiavelli, reporting what one friend boldly told Lorenzo, the city was exhausted and not prepared to fight for his sake any longer, evidently alluding to Giovanni Morelli, who reputedly planned to overthrow the regime during Lorenzo's absence.(57) The reforms Lorenzo introduced on his return from his illicit journey to Naples to secure peace ensured the survival of his regime.(58) But although the reforms were approved «at the first vote» by the Council of the People, we are told in an exceptional comment in the Liber fabarum that «the minds of the citizens earlier seemed 502

to fluctuate».(59) After the creation of the Seventy and the absence of other recorded discussions, we know little more about what went on inside the Palace, now separated, in Guicciardini' s vivid image, by a dense fog from the piazza outside.

So it is tempting to believe that the people were content with Lorenzo's bread-andcircuses policies of subsidized grain and public shows.(60) Yet we know that taxpayers as well as the populace at large suffered economic hardship in the 1480s. In 1484 many taxpayers were imprisoned for debt,(61) and in 1488 there was widespread popular support for a Monte di Pieta, «to lend to the poor and needy in return for a pawn». When fra Bernardino da Feltre encouraged his followers to support it by attacking the Jews, the Eight of Ward captured him and later roughly manhandled him out of Florence, with the connivance - it was suggested - of Antonio di Miniato Dini, and probably of Lorenzo himself.(62) It was probably this incident, and others like it, that Parenti referred to years later, when he said that the Savonarolans' use of the Eight of Ward to control the Archbishop's authority in Florence angered the people, who judged it «an act of tyrants, not free men, following almost exactly what happened in Lorenzo de' Medici's day».(63) Things were brought to a head by the devaluation of the old quattrino in 1491, which - as one Florentine reported in May that year - «has upset the greater part of the people», while according to another critic, Giovanni Cambi, the regime's manipulations of the coinage, using the gain not for paying off dowries as promised but to «pay the debts of Lorenzo de' Medici» «generated scandal and great ill-will among the people».(64) These are the circumstances in which Parenti reports that «the lowest classes were happy» when Lorenzo died, «because of the new coinage and the taxes, which hit them very hard», and the middle and upper-middle classes were not particularly saddened by his death, «both for the same reasons and also because of the seven recent taxes imposed on them in addition to their assessed and arbitrary taxes, for because of the increased communal revenue, they had expected reductions».(65) Although Florence was not the only city to experience popular unrest at this time, the situation was exacerbated by the devaluation of the silver coins used by the people, but not by the international merchants, for which Lorenzo and Antonio Dini were specially responsible.

Lorenzo's direct role in the administration of justice must also have been clear to the populace, since they saw his intervention in the square with their own eyes, and they saw, too, the armed bodyguard that accompanied Lorenzo whereever he went. The very effectiveness of his law-and-order measures in silencing popular protest, however, makes it difficult to confirm Parenti's account of the people's reaction until after Lorenzo's death.

To discover the voice of the people, we must look at the situation after the revolution against the Medici regime two years later. The 1494 revolution is traditionally 503

blamed on Lorenzo's unfortunate son Piero and the French invasion, not on himself.

But we must remember how short a time Piero had been in control and how strongly the regime was stamped with the personality of Lorenzo and his henchmen. The emotions unstoppered on the day Piero was expelled on 9 November 1494, and in the legislation of the first weeks following the popular reforms on 23 December represent their suppressed reaction to Lorenzo's as well as Piero's regime.

It can be no coincidence that one of the first measures of the new popular government after the revolution was the abolition of the new coinage and return to the old «black money». Nor was it a coincidence that the first person to be attacked (and the only one to be ignominiously put to death by hanging from the Bargello windows) was Lorenzo's collaborator and mastermind in money - as in most other - matters, Antonio Dini. The ever-scrupulous Francesco Gaddi recorded in his priorista that Dini fell from grace for his dishonesty as a public official and for paying extraordinary sums of money to Lorenzo and Piero de' Medici; but it was also, as another Florentine noted, because his new money was responsible «for increasing the price of salt and all the other taxes by a quarter».(66) Another early measure passed by the popular government demanded the removal of a furnace used to refine silver: from the Mint, where it is today but used to be elsewhere, since the smoke from its chimney is constricting and destroys the seating in the Palace, especially when a certain wind is blowing.(67) Far from being a sound environmental measure against pollution, the law was clearly intended as a political gesture against Lorenzo's and Antonio Dini's smelting activities. These two men had not only collaborated intimately as members of the Seventeen Reformers to debase the coinage, but they had worked equally closely together as Palace Operai. After their appointment with three others in 1488 (for an exceptional period of four years, until Lorenzo's death), Lorenzo was made their banker and Dini was given absolute powers to supervise ad libitum the smelting down and remaking of all the Palace silver (as well as the new coinage), a somewhat dubious operation, we may suspect, evidently facilitated by having the furnace brought next door. No wonder then that the people wanted it removed.(68) The demand for a new scrutiny of the Mercantile Court of Six also implied criticism of the malpractices of Lorenzo's day, when Lorenzo was widely accused of controlling its scrutinies and of keeping his own man there as chancellor.(69) So too was the demand for a financial review of all the principal magistracies, for which private banks like Lorenzo's, as well as the closely-related Bartolini bank, acted as treasurers.

Although the indistinct boundary between public and private interest must have made 504

such a review difficult, Monte ledgers nevertheless reveal a massive attempt to account for all the money that passed through Dini's hands. Some 11,000 gold florins in cash and 600 lbs of worked silver were immediately recovered from the Medici, together with a collection of sacred objects, possibly from the Medici chapel, which were handed over to the Palace Operai a year later. Even so, the Syndics appointed to recover their debts were left with a deficit of over sixty-two-and-a-half thousand florins in grossi still owed to them in 1500.(70) The Syndics unearthed debts incurred by Lorenzo and his bank, as well as by Piero.

These ranged from sums of 6000 florins owed by the Bank to the Cardinal of San Malo and over 2000 florins to the Guelf Party as its treasurer, to 400 florins owed by Lorenzo personally to the foundling hospital of the Innocenti - for a farm bought for his new monastery at San Gallo, for which he had paid neither the purchase price nor any rent, as the Hospital bitterly complained.(71) In addition to these early and less familiar laws passed against the Medici regime's financial and administrative malpractices, there were many others against their electoral and political malpractices, which are far more familiar.(72) There was also an early law against sodomites, which may reflect - as Michael Rocke has suggested - a reaction to the leniency of Lorenzo's regime, which included at least two homosexuals among its leading chancery officials.(73) Another law reinstated an ancient palace servant, called «the Poet», who had been made cruelly redundant, it was said, during Lorenzo's regime; another prohibited the marriage of Florentines with foreigners (a clear gesture against Lorenzo and Piero's Orsini marriages); and another reversed the unjust laws against the Pazzi rebels, allowing them to replace their arms and perform again the Scoppio del Carro ceremony.(74) One last area of grievance which needs investigation concerns the possession of arms. The right to bear arms was an emotive issue closely associated with the thirteenth-century popular movement and its challenge to the nobles' monopoly of military power. The Balla that crushed the Ciampi revolt in 1378 destroyed its citizen militia and deprived its supporters of the right to bear arms, which it restricted to members of the Signoria. The Medici continued this policy, and although they granted the privilege to bear arms to their own supporters in the city (as members of Balle), they attempted to deprive all subjects in the territory of this right - and after the Pazzi Conspiracy, everyone in the city as well.(75) Only Lorenzo was exempted from this ban on arms, together with his nominees - a motley band of friends and toughs, including his heavy gang of four crossbowmen and ten «lackeys», among them Salvalaglio from Pistoia and the suggestively named Malfatto (Malformed), Martino Nero (Martin the Black), Morgante and Margutte, the Pulcian giants.(76) We know the resentment they caused from Giovanni Cambi's chronicle, which describes how Lorenzo was always ac505

companied by four friends and these ten lackeys, including Salvalaglio, with swords in hand.(77) After discovering a store of cash hidden by Salvalaglio in a church in Pistoia and bringing it back to Florence on 11 December,(78) one of the first of the laws to be passed by the popular government on 28 December restored the citizens' ancient right to bear arms. Since it was necessary to possess arms to attack and defend oneself against enemies of liberty, it declared, from now for next three years everyone in Florence is permitted to carry, for the public good, whatever type of arms he wants, on his body, his head, all his limbs and hands, of whatever type and kind he likes, offensive and defensive, without paying or having to pay a gabelle or transit duty of any kind.(79) The varied collection of laws passed in the four weeks between 28 December 1494 and 28 January 1495 reflects popular opposition to Lorenzo as well as to Piero. The fact that they followed the creation of the Great Council suggests that the Council helped to release resentment pent-up during Lorenzo's lifetime, especially to do with his financial and legal manipulations, his power and arms-bearing privileges. We know that people did show hostility to Lorenzo personally at this time from an incident described by Piero Parenti. «Because the citizens' hatred towards Lorenzo extended even towards his friends», he wrote, the Wool Guild in August 1495 ordered the night-time removal from the Duomo of the bust of Antonio Squarcialupi, the famous musician and organist «who had long played, to the amazement and wonder of all who heard him». When his marble head had been silently removed, the wall was smoothed over, «so that it seemed he had never been there».(80) For these reasons we can see that the 1494 revolution expressed popular and optimate opposition non only to the young Piero but also to Lorenzo and his cronies. It is clear that Piero lacked Lorenzo's intelligence and ability, as well as his personal charm, which left the city bereft of a father-figure as well as a head-of-state on Lorenzo's death. No one said of Piero what Giovanni Cambi said of Lorenzo, that despite his tyrannical ways, he always dressed in the same summer Zucco and winter scarlet cloak and hood as other citizens, and that when in the company of citizens older than himself, he «always put them on the right, or in the middle if he was with more than one».(81) Yet lacking - to paraphrase Machiavelli «direct experience of what he really was», have we, like so many of his contemporaries, been too influenced by Lorenzo's public image and appearance?

Notes 1. Ser Francesco di ser Barone to Piero Guicciardini (10 April 1492), Firenze, Archivio Guicciardini, Legazioni e Commissarie I, 113 (the reference to which I owe to F. W. Kent, with generous help from Prof. Gino Corti in consulting it): «tucta questa cicta et popolo et grandi & piccoli con grandissima unione et contenteza si monstrano uniti alla conservatione di Piero, et che e' succeda 506

pariter a Lorenzo. Che mai vedesti ii maggior concorso di cictadini et di ognuno, tucti a visitare Piero et tucti a bruno, che non ci si vede se non cappucci neri», cf. the later account of F. GUICCIARDINI, Storie fiorentine, Bari 1931, p. 82: «con concorso di tutti e' cittadini della citta, tutti con qualche segno di bruno».

2. P. PARENTI, Storia fiorentina, BNF, ms. II.IV.169, f. l6r (April 1492): «La citta variamente riprese la morte di Lorenzo. L'infima plebe se ne contentorono ... ... E' popolani & gentilotti non molto se ne contristorono ... E' principali divisi intra di loro, chi molto era intrinseco a Lorenzo & seco ii ghoverno havea nelle mani... forte se n 'astristorono, riputando doverne abassare et forse perderne Io stato. Chi non cosl era intento e del carico del ghoverno netto piu presto se ne rallegro, stimando la republica doverne rihavere la liberta & loro uscire di servitu, in maggiore parte participare del governo. In effecto segretamente nello umversale fu accepta [la sua morte add.], benche per nessuno si dimostrassi» [Parenti adds in the margin: «per le sopradette cagioni, si maxime per Ia oppressione della citta, la quale sotto la potentia sua non a Itnmentl era che serva», saying that the Italian powers were also «pleased», changed to «not displeased». I have not given other variants or additions]. Discussed more fully below at note 65 below. Cf. GUICCIARDINI, Storie fiorentine cit., p. 80.

3. A. BROWN, Bartolomeo Scala, Princeton 1979, pp. 148-149 (rev. edn. in Italian, Florence 1990, p. 108), note 38, and Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Refo1111ers in Lorenzo de' Medici. Studi, ed. G. C. GARFAGNINI, Florence 1992, p. 105 (=in A. BROWN, The Medici in Florence, Florence 1992, p. 153). An extract describing the Seventy's oath of secrecy is now published in Consorterie politiche e m11tamenti istit11zionali in eta la11re11ziana, eds. M. A. TIMPANARO, R. MANNO Tow and P. VITI, Milan 1992, p. 37.

4. ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 54, ff. 38v, 53r-v (11 and 27 December 1479); both men had spoken «contra et in dedecus boni regiminis et pacifici status civitatis Florentiae», Bartoli «maxime contra primates civitatis eiusdem», «homo turpis vitae et morum inhonestorum ideo ad ipsius loquacitatem refrenandam».

5. Ibid., 58, f. 66r (5 June 1481), condemning Battista Frescobaldi, Amorotto Baldovinet ti and Antonio Balducci to death for acting «contra presentem pacificum statum et libertatem civitatis Florentiae et contra aliquem ex primoribus et optimatibus civitatis eiusdem». Anto· nio da Montecatini's letter to Ercole d'Este of 9 June 1481 is ed. A. CAPPELLI, Lettere di Lorenzo, «Atti e Memorie delle R.R. Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie modenesi e parmensi», 1, 1863, p. 255, and is discussed by BROWN, Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Re· formers cit., p. 104 (=The Medici in Florence cit., p. 152): «che pure tribuisce onore e riguar· do a Lorenzo». According to A. RINUCCINI, Ricardi storici, ed. G. AIAZZI, Florence 1840, pp. cxxxrv-cxxxv, the conspirators had orders to «tagliare a pezzi Lorenzo di Piero di Cosimo de' Medici», cf. Lettere, V, pp. 226-228, and note 9 below.

6. F. GUICCIARDINI, Ricardi, ed. R. SPONGANO, Florence 1951, C. 75, p. 86: «Referiva papa Lione, Lorenzo de' Medici suo padre essere solito dire: 'Sappiate che chi dice male di noi non ci vuole bene'».

7. According to Machiavelli, conspiracy was the only solution for those unwilling to tolerate the constraints of the Medici regime after 1466 (N. MACHIAVELLI, Istorie fioren· tine, ed. F. GAETA, Milan 1962, VIII, 1, pp. 508-509). Like Guicciardini in the Dialogo de! Reggimento di Firenze (ed. R. PALMAROCCHI, Bari 1932, pp. 85-86), he warns that it rarely succeeds.

8. On the competition for ecclesiastical rank and patronage, sec R. B1zzocc11I, Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento, Bologna 1987, esp. pp. 167-168, 238-239, 264-268; cf. note 30 below. There are excellent profiles of the conspirators in A. POLIZIANO, Coniurationis commentarium, ed. A. PEROSA, Padua 1958, especially in the notes on pp. 4-6, 10-12, 14, 1625. On the conspiracy, see Lettere, III, esp. pp. 3-6.

507

9. Antonio da Montecatini to Ercole d'Este, letter of 6Junc 1481 (in CAPPELLI, ed. cit., p. 254: «e a lui non pareva che 'I Magnifico Lorenzo lo pagasse in tutto secundum eius rationem ... e vedendo non potersi vendicarc altrimcnti ... »). In his letter of 9 June (p. 255), he refers to the regime's suspicions that Neri Acciaiuoli and Girolamo Riario were also involved, which would have linked the attempt to the Pitti as well as the Pazzi Conspiracy; cf. RINUCCINI, Ricardi storici cit.

10. Alessandro di Filippo Tornabuoni, exiled for life «in tota insula Sicilic», ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 68, ff. 118r, 124r (21 October 1484); cf. L. LANDUCCI, Diario fiore11ti110 dal 1450 al 1516, ed. I. DEL BADIA, Florence 1883 (rcpr. 1985), p. 48: «E disscsi pcrche pcnsava contra a Lorenzo de' Medici, ch'cra suo parentc; e forse non fu, diciamo qucllo si diccva per la cit ta».

According to Alamanno Rinuccini, he was tortured «aspramcnte ... c confcsso avere fatto molte cattivita di furti e altre tristizie, ma non confesso pcro averc fatto alcuna cosa contra lo stato, benche avesse fatto alcune scrittc diffamatoric c altre spiaccvolczzc c cattivitati» (Ricardi storici cit., p. CXL).

11. Aldobrandino Guidoni to Ercole d'Este (17 August 1488), and Manfredo Manfredi to the same (18 May 1490): «Ii quali per quanta pubblicamente si e detto qua, sono stati presi perche volevano venire di qua per andare al bagno dove si ritrova al presente ii Magnifico Lorenzo, ed operare di velenarlo o ammazzarlo» (in CAPPELLI, ed. cit., pp. 303, 308).

12. Ibid. (letter of 18 May 1490, cit.), p. 308: «sparsa per Ii volgari vanamcntc, senza alcun fondamento ... II quale esame e stato fatto per Ii infrascritti cittadini primarii e congiunti di affinita e stretta amicizia con ii magnifico Lorenzo ... condotta questa cosa molto segrcta e negata per quelli primarii essere fatta». He lists them as Niccolo Ridolfi, Bernardo Rucellai, Giovanni Serristori, Bernardo de! Nero and ser Niccolo Michelozzi.

13. Jacopo Salviati to ser Francesco di ser Barone, 18 November 1487: «e Piero non se ne contento, havendo in commessione da L(orenzo) che non meni secho brigata di che gli potete fare un motto comodamente» (ASF, MAP 61, 24, cit.; A. BROWN, Between Curial Rome and Convivial Florence, «Renaissance Studies», 2, 1988, p. 214 = The Medici in Florence cit., p. 254).

14. J. NARDI, Istorie di Firenze, Florence 1858, I, p. 35. On the practice of pitture infamanti, see G. 0RTALLI, «Pillgatur in Palacio». La pittura infamante nei secoli XIII e XN, Rome 1979 and S. EDGERTON, Pictures and Punishment. Art and criminal prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance, Ithaca 1985.

15. G. CAVALCANTI, Istorie fiorenti11e, ed. G. Dr PINO, Milan 1944, pp. 174, 180, discussed

by D. KENT, The importance of being eccentric: Giovanni Cavalcanti's view of Cosimo de' Medici's Florence, «The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies», 9, 1979, p. 105: «per ii pubblico grido»; G. CAMIJI, Istorie, in Delizie degli eruditi toscani, XXI, Florence 1785, p. 67: «chavorono bode fuori»; F. Venturi, ASF, Consulte e Pratiche 55, £. 127r: «si vero hic rumor in vulgus emanet»; M. Manfredi to Ercole d'Este (note above): «sparssa per Ii volgari vanamente, senza alcun fondamento»; GurccrARDINI, Dialogo de! reggime11to cit., pp. 43, 45: «certe opinioni che andranno fuora senza fondamento ... con certi gridi, che con ragione», «co'gridi e con opinioni vane»; Zaccaria Saggi to Lodovico Gonzaga, 18 March 1471, ed. R. FUBINI, In margine all'edizione delle «Lettere» di Lorenzo, in Lorenzo de' Medici. St11di cit., p. 204: «questo Popolo ... incominciasi a sparlare per Ii canti assay publicamentc». See also Niccolo Martelli s later account of conspiracies springing from the gossip of old men with nothing better to do on the panche at S. Trinita, the Pupilli and at «el canto de' Tornaquinci», Discorso, ed. C. GUASTI, in Documenti della congiura fatto contra il cardinale Giulio de' Medici nel 1522, «Giornale storico degli archivi toscani», 3, 1859, p. 217.

16. GUICCIARDINI, Storie fiorentine cit., p. 74 «liberissima nel parlarc, picna di ingegni sottilissima et inquietissimi».

508

17. GUICCIARDINI, Ricardi cit., C. 141, p. 153: «spesso tr a 'l palazzo e la piazza c una nebbia sl folta o uno muro sl grosso che ... tan to sa el popolo di quello che fa chi govern a ... quanta delle case che fanno in India». Cf. P. VAGLIENTI, Storia dei moi tempi, 1492-1514, eds. G. BERTI, M. LUZZATI, E. TONGIORGI, Pisa 1982, pp. 161-162: «chi non ha lo 'ntrinsico de'ragionamenti e le pratiche del governo dell a citta ... male con verita par I are ne puo, ma per via di congietturazione».

18. N. MACHIAVELLI, Il Principe, ed. S. BERTELLI, Milan 1960, p. 74: «Ognuno vede quello che tu pari, pochi sentono quello che tu se': e quelli pochi non ardiscono opporsi all a opinione di molti che abbino la maesta dello stato chc Ii defencla»; cf. In., Lettere, ed. F. GAETA, Milan 1961, p. 229.

19. See, for example, the tiny eloquent note by a chancery scribe in the protocol of the Cento protesting about a by-pass of legislative procedures in 1491; the vital but omitted record about Lorenzo's special Monte privileges squeezed onto the bottom of a page in the register of the Seventeen Reformers, «so that everyone may be informed about them», in BROWN, Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Refomiers cit., pp. 109, 121, 147 (=The Medici in Florence cit., pp.

157, 168, 192); and the poems written in his praise cancelled in BNF, ms. Magi. VIII, 47 (A. SAVIOTTI, Pa11do!fo Colle1111ccio, umanista pesarese, Pisa 1888, p. 57, note 1).

20. According to Donato Giannotti to Antonio Micheli (30 June 1533), ed. L. A. FERRAI, Lettere ineditc di Do11ato Giannotto, «Atti del R. Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti», VI s., 1884-85, p. 1582: «Chi vorra intendere questo [the history of Florence from Cosimo's acquisition of power to Lorenzo's death] noti molto bene quello ch'io faro ai suoi avversari». Alamanno Rinuccini's dialogue De libertate, discussed below, was of this type.

21. Discussed by M. MARIETTI, Machiavel historiographe des Medicis, in A. RICUON ed., Les ecrivains et le pouvoir en Italie a l'epoque de la Renaissance, Paris 1974 (second series), pp. 140143. On Machiavelli's account of the Pazzi Conspiracy, see notes 56 and 57 below.

22. Istorie fiorentine cit., VII, ch. 30, p. 498.

23. As MARIETTI points out, Machiavel historiographe cit., p. 142. Cf. P. CLARKE, Lorenzo a11d Tommaso Soderi11i, in Lore11zo de' Medici. Studi cit., p. 93, who refers to Soderini's alum interests and also to the Milanese ambassador's rage at his opposition.

24. See L. MARTINES, Forced loans: Political and Social Strain in Quattrocento Florence, «Journal of Modern History», 60, 1988, p. 307. On the Alberti's exile in 1401, see S. F. BAXENDALE, Exile in Practice: The Alberti Family In and Out of Florence, 1401-1428, «Renaissance Quarterly», 44, 1991, pp. 720-756.

25. On Ficino, R. FumNI, Ancora su Ficino e i Medici, «Rinascimento», II s., 27, 1987, pp. 275291, developing the argument of Ficino e i Medici all'avvento di Lorenzo ii Magnifico, zbzd., 24, 1984, pp. 3-52. On Verino, A. LAZZARI, Ugolino e Michele Verina, Turin 1897, and on his changing attitude after 53 years in Medici service, pp. 85-90; M. MARTELLI, La politica culturale dell'ultimo Lorenzo, «II Ponte», 36, 1980, pp. 933-934; cf. BROWN, Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Reformers cit., p. 104 (=The Medici in Florence cit., p. 152); cf. Alamanno Rinuccini's reference to Caesar, note 43 below.

26. Eg. Guidetti, below, and Piero Capponi: GurccIARDINI, Dialogo del Reggimento cit., pp. 3132.

27. As FUBINI has recently said, In margine all'edizione cit., p. 178. On his cousins, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco, see below.

28. BIZZOCCHI, Chiesa e potere cit., pp. 162-163; cf. BROWN, Bartolomeo Scala cit., pp. 110112 (rev. ed., p. 65); C. ELAM and E. H. GOMBRICII, Lorenzo and a Fmstrated Villa Project at Vallombrosa, in Florence and Italy, eds. P. DENLEY and C. ELAM, London 1988, pp. 481-492.

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29. See especially his 8th sermon on Amos and Zaccaria on 24 February 1496, ed. P. GHIGLIERI, Rome 1971; D. WEINSTEIN, Savonarola and Florence, Princeton 1970, pp. 99111; R. C. TREXLER, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, New York 1980, p. 448, note 164.

On horseracing: «se corrono e' cavalli al palio, fa sempre qualche inganno per fare ch' e' sua sieno e' primi e per parere che abbia migliori cavalli»; see also LANDUCCI's Diario cit., p. 50, and now M. MALLETT, Horse racing, politics and the role of Lorenzo's stable, to be published by the Warburg Institute in the volume Lorenzo the Magnificent. C11ltme and Politics, forthcoming. On Lorenzo and Savonarola, see MARTELLI, La politica culturale cit., pp. 923-950, esp. p. 930.

30. See BIZZOCCHI, Chiesa e potere cit., esp. part. II. In his Discorso on how to establish a lordship, Niccolo Martelli said he would not create either Florentine prelates or cardinals, «che come una casa ha un cardinale, subito pensa a farsi signore dello stato» (ed. GuAsTI cit., p. 227).

31. Libra di Ricordanze di Tommaso di Jacopo Guidetti, ASP, Carte Strozziane, IV s., 418, f. 31v: «le quali Lorenzo de' Medici chon la sua potenzia chontro a Dio e chontro ragione a me crudelmente le fecie paghare»; cf. R. DE RoovER, Il Banco Medici dalle origini al declino (1397-1494), rev. ed., Florence 1970, pp. 514-515, and on his earlier career, pp. 135136, 138, 487, 490, 499501. Cf. following note.

32. Ricordanze cit., ff. Ir, 2v, 3lv-32v, 35v-36r. Lorenzo's 1471 Ricardo to him in Lettere, I, pp.

279-291, cf. 371, and his Ricardo to Rinieri da Ricasoli, whom he sent to investigate affairs in Bruges in 1479, in Lettere, IV, pp. 193-198. On 5 February 1483 Tommaso married the daughter of Rinicri da Ricasoli (who had provided a surety for Tommaso's release from prison in 1482), with a dowry of 1500 florins agreed with Lorenzo (f. 3v).

33. Five of the nine sons of Niccolo (1369-1422) played important roles as managers or deputy managers of branches of the Medici bank in Venice, Rome and Pisa. As managers of the Pisa branch, Antonio and Ugolino's capital equalled that of the Medici, DE ROOVER, Il Banco Medici cit., esp. pp. 82, 91, 361, 396-398. From 1460 to 1486 the Medici were apparently not present in Pisa, until in 1486 Lorenzo's name reappears as partner of a new company with a son of Bartolomeo, a former Medici partner in Fermo (pp. 85-86, 398). Another example is the sons of Berlinghiero Berlinghieri, who claimed to have been unfairly dispossessed of property by Lorenzo in 1486, for repayment of their father's alleged banking debt, (ibid., pp. 243-244); and also the Pazzi family, who were banking rivals of the Medici in Florence, Bruges and Rome.

34. U. MARTELLI, Ricordanze dal 1433 al 1483, ed. F. PEZZAROSSA, Rome 1989, pp.

296297 (12 July 1481): «Di poi, per intradotto di Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici e a sua chontemplazione, mi fu impedito ... »; F. W. KENT, Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century)' Florence, «I Tatti Studies», 2, 1987, p. 69, and in this volume, p. 60. I am grateful to Bill Kent for alerting me to these references.

35. The repayment and tax settlement was finally agreed on the last day in office of the Seventeen Reformers in 1491: ASF, Cento 3, f. 133v (29 July); cf. ASF, Monte Comune 1581, f. 714 left and right. On the brothers' political disagreements with Lorenzo in the 1470s, and later Niccolo di Antonio's, see A. BROWN, Pierfrancesco de' Medici 1430-1476: a radical altemative to elder Medicean supremacy?, «The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes», 42, 1979, p. 96 (=The Medici in Florence cit., pp. 92-93). Niccolo di Lorenzo Martelli later conspired against Giulio de' Medici, see his Discorso, ed. GUASTI cit.

36. This and what follows is described in detail in my article, Pie1francesco de' Medici cit., pp. 81103 (revised in The Medici in Florence cit., pp. 73-102). Cf. DE ROOVER, Il Banco Medici cit., pp. 89, 95.

37. Pierfrancesco de' Medici cit., pp. 99-100 and note 91 (=The Medici in Florence cit., pp. 9697); DE ROOVER, I! Ba11co Medici cit., pp. 532-533.

510

38. Antonio da Colle to Piero de' Medici, 3 May 1494, ASF, MAP 55, 177, reporting that the pope told him that on the brothers' release, «da gra(n) numero di cittadini erano stati acompagniati a casa come dimostratione d'havere dispiacere del caso loro». On the possible «attentato» on Piero's life by his cousins in 1494, see M. MARTELLI, Il «Libro di Epistole» di Angelo Poliziano, «Interpres», 1, 1978, pp. 190-193.

39. «a Firenze si puo mal viver ricco senza lo stato»: A. FABRONI, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici vita, Florence 1784, II, p. 42.

40. On Rinuccini, see V. R. GIUSTINIANI, Alama11110 Rinuccini, 1426-1499, Cologne-Gruz 1965; R. N. WATKINS, Introduction to the Dialogue, in Humanism and Liberty. Writings on Freedom in Fifteenth-Ce11t11ry Florence, Cambridge, Mass. 1978, pp. 186-191; and FUBINI, In margine all'edizione cit., pp. 178-191. The Dialog11e is ed. F. ADORNO, «Atti e Memorie dcll'Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere La Colombaria», 22, 1957, pp. 270-303, and tr. by Watkins, op. cit., pp. 193-224.

41. This is the recent interpretation of Riccardo Fubini, who argues that Rinuccini misinterpreted the pope's message, possibly through ineptitude, and for this reason was no longer regarded

by Lorenzo as trustworthy; in the Dialogue he reads the situation in 1478-79 into the earlier period of his embassy (In margine all'edizione cit., esp. pp. 190-191).

42. Dialogue, ed. ADORNO, pp. 300-301; tr. Watkins, p. 220.

43. Diario, pp. cxxxrv («per la insolenza e tirannia di Lorenzo de' Medici»), CXLVI-CXLVII («maligno tiranno ... alfine come Julio Cesare insignorirsi della repubblica»). His cousin, Giovanni di Neri di Cino, delivered an oration on justice on 15 July 1495, referring to the magistrates' new duty to administer justice better than in the past, «nelli quali la iustizia in tutto era sumersa e chonchulcatha». BNF, ms. Pane. 52, f. ll 9r-v. On his election to the Balla, cf. N. RumNSTEIN, The Government of Florence under the Medici, 1434-1494, Oxford 1966, p. 312, and as a Studio Official, cf. ASF, Tratte 904, f. 49r (August 1480 to October 1484), Tratte 905, f. l04r (25 November 1498, dying in office on 12 May 1499). In 1481 Alamanno had been accused of wounding his brother Francesco and absolved: ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 58, ff. 12v, 77v (19 March and 23 June).

44. BML, Ricardi, ms. Acquisti e Doni 213, ff. LXXXX («per seguire sua Maesta come huomo di dicto Lorenzo») - xcrr («A di xxi di g(i)ugno 1486 ritornai in Firenze, di che Lorenzo de' Medici fu malissimo contento per la sua particulare commissione et fecie instantia che Ii Signori Dieci mi rimandassino indrieto, o per mare o per term. II che io non pote' esequire, per essere tomato da Pisa assai alterato & maldisposto de! corpo per accidente di fluxo, per la qua! cosa rimanendo ma! satisfacto Lorenzo, si turbo assai meco, dubitando non fingessi ii male per ricusare di non lo servire. Et mando a dl decto Piero suo figluolo ad me ad casa ad chiedermi la commissione mi haveva data in scriptis et la cifra particulare havamo facta insieme Lorenzo et io secretamente. Et cosi Ii consegniai l'una cos a & l' altra». There is an excellent discussion of Gaddi and the public/ private issue in M. PHILLIPS, The Memoirs of Marco Parenti, Princeton 1987, pp. 268-270.

45. CAMBI, Istorie cit., pp. 38-47: Lorenzo «si sarebbe fatto quello avessi detto, e non sarebbe stato schandolo». The incident is also referred to by Alamanno Rinuccini, who describes the election taking place over two days, Neri' s ammunizione on 5 January being «grata a tutto ii popolo, perche oltre alli altri suoi vizi era sccleratissimo soddomito» (Ricardi storici cit., p. cxuv; cf.

Gu1cc1ARDIN1, Sto1ie fiorentine cit., pp. 69-70). Cambi was punished by the Otto di Pratka with the Seventy, one of whom (Maso dcgli Albizzi) managed to release the other members of the Signoria as well as Neri's sons from punishment.

46. Istorie cit., p. 45: «chome fanno sempre e' gran Maestri, per non volere appresso di loro chi dicha il vero, fanno di molte ingiustizie, come fecie detto Lorenzo, prestando fede a qucsto captivo e invidioso ciptadino».

511

47. Ibid., pp. 44-45, describing ser Piero da Bibbiena's attempted entry to the Palace to plead for the missing members of the colleges, after he «trovo la chatcna serrata».

48. Ibid., p. 65: «s'era fatto chapo di detta Cipta, et Tiranno, piu che se fussi stato Signore a bacchetta, e sempre mcnava secho quando andava fuori 10 staffieri colle spade ... »; cf. pp. 63 and 6 7, and below.

49. On Piero Parenti, see A. MATUCCI, Per l'edizione delta «Storia» def Parenti, «Rinascimento», II s., 30, 1990, pp. 257-269; on Marco, his father, see PHILLIPS, The Memoirs of Marco Parenti cit., esp. pp. 260-274.

50. According to GUICCIARDINI, Storie fiorentine cit., pp. 84: «ombra di tiranno», and 284285: «comincio a mordere le azioni sue, non pero publicamente»; Bernardo's son Cosimo was later involved in Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco's conspiracy against the regime (ibid., p.

90). Cf. GUICCIARDINI's Oratio accusatoria, ed. R. PALMAROCCHI in Scritti autobiografici e rari, Bari 1936, pp. 229-230, discussed by G. SASSO, Per Francesco GUICCIARDINI, Rome 1984, pp. 73, 168-170.

51. See FUBINI, In margine all'edizione cit., pp. 172, 204, 208.

52. CAMBI, Istorie cit., pp. 40, 41: «gia la piazza de' Signori era piena di popolo, maravigliandosi di tale chosm>, «con un chapperone nero, e stivali grossi ... e a quel modo lo meno a schavalchar al Palazzo, ch'era bene 23 hore, ed era piena la piazza di Ciptadini».

53. At least in CAMBI's account, Istorie, cit., p. 44: «fu assai commendato per la Cipta».

54. Aldobrandino Guidoni to Ercole d'Este, 19 January 1489, ed. CAPPELLI, Lettere di Lorenzo cit., p. 305, cit. BROWN, Pie1farncesco de' Medici cit., p. 101 (=The Medici in Florence cit., p.

99): «e mai non si volse partire fuori de la piazza ii Magnifico Lorenzo sin che non vide sedate tutto ii popolo. Io sempre stetti in palazzo ... e non mi parve tempo per quella mattina parlare al Magnifico Lorenzo».

55. Memorie of ser Giusto d' Anghiari, BNF, Magi. XXV, 496, ff. 107r (22 and 29 December 1474: «perche i poveri huomini ne potessino comperare»), lllv (11 March 1475: «per aiutare i poveri»). On 28 February 1479 Lorenzo's bank was repaid 7383 florins for grain sold to the Ufficiali della Abbondanza: ASF, Monte Comune 1491, f. 626, 1528, f. 752r. On the later price, see LANDUCCI, Diario cit., p. 47 (1 January 1484). Cf. G. BRUCKER, The Economic Fo1111datio11s of Laure11tia11 Florence, above, esp. pp. 14-15.

56. The Sienese ambassador Antonio Bichi to the Signoria of Siena: ASS, Concistoro 2421, f.

82r-v, 28 March 1479: «Ogni notte sonno apichate scripte ali cantoni di Firenze contra Lorenzo, el quale sta mezo sturdito». In addition to the friend's warning (below), Machiavelli also relates Giuliano de' Medici's reported words to Lorenzo regretting the law against the Borromei, «saying that he feared that by wanting too many things, all of them might be lost» (Istorie fiorentine cit., VIII, 2, p. 511); cf. MARIETTI, Machiavel historiographe cit., pp. 142-143, who also describes Lorenzo's reported speech on leaving for Naples as «un modele d, ambiguite».

57. MACHIAVELLI, Istorie fiorentine cit., VIII, 17, p. 539: «E prese tanto ardire alcuno che voltosi a Lorenzo de' Medici gli disse: Questa citta e stracca e non vuole piu guerra», named as Giovanni Morelli by Jacopo Nardi, who continues: «ne per difendere lo stato de' Medici stare interdetta e scomunicata» (Istorie di Firenze cit., I, p. 18). It is Guicciardini who says that Morelli headed this conspiracy (Storie fiorentine cit., p. 52, and BROWN, Lorenzo and Guicciardini, in the forthcoming Warburg Institute volume, Lorenzo the Magnificent cit., notes 17 and 18).

58. On 1 March 1480, Lorenzo was deprived of the office of cassiere communis to avoid the penalties for which he was liable by leaving for Naples without licence: ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 55, f. 2r; on the private nature of his mandate, see Lettere, IV, p. 270, note.

59. ASF, Libri fabarum 70, f. 168r (8 April 1480): «in primo partito obtentum cum tamen animi civium prius fluctuare viderentur».

512

60. Eg. GUICCIARDINI, Storie fiorentine cit., p. 80, on the «abondanzia ... piaccri, dilettazioni e feste assai» by which Lorenzo kept the people happy, cf. Dia logo de! Reggimento cit., p. 165, that if the tyrant has any intelligence, he will win the support of the plebs with «cura della abbondanzia, e la diletta spesso con feste e giostre e giuochi publici», and with «la magnificenzia dclla casa e corta sua, che sono le cose che pigliano le gcnte basse», cf. note 55 above.

61. LANDUCCI, Diario cit., pp. 46-47, and on Bernardo Del Nero's role in this signoria, cf.

BROWN, Lorenzo and Guicciardini cit., note 41.

62. ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 79, f. 12v (11 March 1488); LANDUCCI, Diario cit., pp.

53-54; T. DE' RossI, Ricordanze, in Delizie degli emditi toscani, XXIII, Florence 1786, pp. 238240; cf. V. MENEGHIN, Bemardino da Feltre e i monti di Pieta, Vicenza 1974, pp. 137-192: on Dini, p. 162, note 82; M. MARTELLI, Il «Giacoppo» di Lorenzo, «Interpres», 7, 1987, pp. 103124.

63. P. PARENTI, Historia fiorentina, ed. J. SCHNITZER, Quellen und Forschungen zur geschichte Savonarolas, IV, Munich 1910, p. 228 (February 1498): «molto dispiacque a molti cittadini, giudicandosi che acto da Tyranni, non da huomini di liberta, fussi, seguito etiam gia (quasi in simile forma) al tempo di Lorenzo de' Medici», referring to the use of the Otto to force the resigiiation of the Archbishop's Vicar, for trying, on papal instructions, to prevent the clergy attending Savonarola's sermons.

64. U. VERINO, Letters, Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2621, f. 210v (cf. ms. 915, f. 187rv in Latin): after referring to the arrival of Maximilian's ambassador on 6 May, «al presente per la instituzione della nuova moneta la maggior parte del popolo e perturbata. Et benche non sia cresciuta l'entrata delle gabelle da quello che soleva essere gia anni 20 fa, pure pare el contrario, perche e' propinqui potestati corrompendo la moneta e' nostri quel medeximo fec(i)ono, di che n'c nato danno generale all'entrate nostre e incommodo al presente a tutti gli abitanti della citta». Cf. CAMBI, Istorie cit., pp. 60-61: instead of devaluing to pay dowries, they instead «paghorono e' debiti di Lorenzo de' Medici, e non si spense e' quattrini neri, ma comincioronsi a spendere per cinque danari l'uno ... di che si chominciava a maladirgli e bestemiargli grandemente per ii Popolo ... ma la troppa fretta de! guadagnare ... permesse che la genera schandolo e malivolenza grande chol popolo in modo contro allo stato, che regniera pocho tale stato».

65. PARENTI, Storia fiorentina, ms. cit.: «l'infima plebe se ne contentorono rispecto alle nuove monete & ghabelle dalle quali forte erano offesi. E' popolani & gentilotti non molto se ne contristorono sl per atteso e' sopradetti rispecti, inoltre per le 7 gravezze di frescho postesi fuori di loro arbitrio et existimatione, perche mediante tale accrescimento della entrata de! comune riputavano dovere essere allegiriti». On these taxes, see E. CONTI, L'imposta diretta a Firenze nel Quattrocento (1427-1494), Rome 1984, pp. 294-297.

66. F. GADDI, Priorista, ASF, Tratte 62, f. 232v, also recording the return to the old coinage; NARDI, Istorie di Firenze cit., I, p. 35, cit. A. Moum, L'ammi11istrazio11e del debito pubb!ico a Firenze net Q11indicesimo secolo, in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana de! Q11attroce11to, Florence 1987, pp. 205-206, n. 40: «con cio sia cosa che la nuova moneta de' quattrini bianchi da loro consigliata, avesse fatto crescere la quart a parte piu ii pregio del sale e di tutte l' a!tre gabelle, la quale cosa dispiacque». Cf. CAMBI, Istorie cit., p. 79.

67. ASF, Provvisioni 185, ff. 42v-43v (26 January 1495): «ii fornello ... ii quale e oggi in decta Zeccha si soleva gia fare in altri lu(o)ghi della cipta piu comodi a decto exercitio et perchc per experientia s'e veduto che ii fummo, ii quale escie del camino di decto fornello, da inpedimento et guasta e' palchi al palagio, et maxime quando trahe cierto vento ... si prove de che in decta casa et sito della Zeccha non si possa per lo advenire exercitare tale fornello».

513

68. ASF, Operai di Palagio 4, f. llr (5 November 1489): Dini is given «res argenteas ... iam devastatas et consumptas ut de nova similes vel alie conficerentur ad libitum dicti Antonii Bernardi» (they were given to Bernardo Cennini). The Operai were also given authority to collect fines, as a result of which Dini, with the proveditor Giovanni Pelli, was later accused of seizing possessions quite illegally (ASF, Operai di Palagio 6, f. 6v, 19 September 1495).

69. GUICCIARDINI, Dialogo del Reggimento cit., pp. 26-27; cf. Guidetti's experience described above, and BROWN, Lorenzo and G11icciardini cit., note 22.

70. ASP, Carte Strozziane, I s., 10, ff. 190r-191r, 283r-284; Operai di Palagio 6, f. 10v (11 December 95). This figure stands as an index of the Medici's debt to the commune in the popular estimation.

71. ASP, Monte Comune 1782, f. 774 left; Capitani di Parte Guelfa, 9 rosso, ff. 18v-21v (12 May 1496); Provvisioni 187, £. 59v (17 August 1496).

72. See N. RUBINSTEIN, Politics and Co11stit11tio11 in Florence at the end of the Fifteenth Century, in Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. E. F. JACOB, London 1960, pp. 148-183; WEINSTEIN, Savonarola cit., pp. 247-288; S. BERTELLI, Constitutional Reforms in Renaissance Florence, «Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies», 3, 1973, pp. 139-164.

73. ASF, Provvisioni 185, f. 17r (28 December 1494); cf. M. ROCKE's forthcoming book, Male Homosexuality in late medieval Florence. The two chancery officials were ser Francesco di ser Barone and Simone Grazzini.

74. ASF, Provvisioni 185, ff. 37r-v (13 January 1495): «Francesco Cenni, vocato poeta», made redundant four years ago after serving as a donzello for 27 years or more and 8 years as a tavolaccino; 40v-4 lv and 53r-54r (26 January 1495).

75. The law to prevent «subditi iurisdictionis communis» carrying arms was defeated in the Council of the People on 3 October 1470: ASF, Liber Fabarum 69, f. 55v.

76. ASF, Otto di Guardia (Repubblica) 67, f. 5r (5 March 1484), listing «4 balistarii Laurentii de Medicis» and 9 stafferii; also KENT, LOl'enzo and the Oligarchy, above in this volume.

77. Istorie cit., pp. 65, 67: «e sempre menava secho quando andava fuori 10 Staffieri colle spade, e in chappa, e uno che ssi chiamava Salvalaglio di detti Staffieri andava inanzi colla spada per ischorta, ed era ciptadino Pistolese e uomo bella vita». He adds that although Lorenzo «mostro d'avere paura de' nimici», since he had uprooted them, it was rather «per aquistare riputatione si menava dirieto da principio 4 ciptadini cholle spade, in mantello, ma sanza chapuccio da tre anni...

E piu 12 staffieri».

78. LANDUCCI, Diario cit., p. 91: «venne in Firenze una soma di danari trovati a Pistoia, che gli aveva nascosti Salvalaglio negli Ingiesuati».

79. ASP, Provvisioni 185, f. 18r: «per bene publico ... da qui innanzi et pel tenpo d'anni 3 proximi futuri sia lecito a ciaschuno mectere nella cipta di Firenze qualunche generatione d'arme da dosso, capo et tucte le membra, et manesche, et sieno qualsivoglino et di qualunche generatione et cosl da offendere come difendere sanza pagare o havere a pagare ghabella o passaggio alcuno».

80. PARENTI, Storia, ed. SCHNITZER cit., pp. 72-73 (August 1495): «ii quale lungo tempo non sanza admiratione et stupore di tutti Ii auditori sonato lo havea ... II perche l'odio de' cittadini verso Lorenzo distesosi etiam verso e' suoi amici ... una nocte con ordine pero de' consoli dell'arte della Lana ... levata fu et rappianatosi el muro non altrimenti, che se mai stata non vi fussi».

81. Istorie cit., p. 65: «andava il verno in mantello, et chapuccio paghonazzo, chome gli altri ciptadini, e quando era con ciptadini di piu tempo di lui, sempre dava loro la mano ritta, e s'erano piu di due, metteva in mezzo chi aveva piu tempo; e la state andava in luccho chome gli altri». On Lorenzo's scruples about his family's clothing, see GUCCIARDINI,. Dialogo del Reggimento cit., p. 60.

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SECTION 8

John M. Najemy, The Medici and the Ottimati: Partnership of Conflict Lorenzo de' Medici long ago became a figure of legend. Easily the most famous member of a family that later produced popes and grand dukes, he personifies the so-called golden age of Florence and Italy before 1494. In his History of Italy Guicciardini made him the indispensable guardian of the concord, happiness, and balance of power among the Italian states, whose death opened the door to the invasions and wars that engulfed Italy. Even in his own time, court poets and humanists extravagantly lauded him as the "savior of his country," "born to reach all the heights," dear to the Muses, a new Maecenas, and much more. Mythmaking around Lorenzo abandoned the model of the ideal republican citizen, as the vogue of neoplatonism elevated him to the rank of philosopher-king. Sixteenth-century architects of another phase of Medici rule and dynastic legend crafted in retrospect an image of Lorenzo as the figure on whose sacral presence and salvific power Florence and even all Italy depended.(1) In later centuries Lorenzo came to symbolize the entire age. Voltaire identified fifteenth-century Italy as one of Europe's four great cultural epochs (together with Periclean Athens, Augustan Rome, and the France of Louis XIV) and made Lorenzo its defining personality.(2) Indeed, he was unlike any Florentine before him. Of the members of his family, and among all Florentine political leaders, only Lorenzo was a writer and poet of genuine merit, with an established place in the history of Italian literature. He was also the most innovative political leader in the republic's history. Whereas Cosimo remained in the role of a behind-the-scenes boss who, although no one doubted his power, represented himself as one of many leading citizens with whom he collaborated in governing, Lorenzo affected a far more visible, personal, and exclusive style of leadership and, moreover, did so from the very beginning, acting like a prince even before his father died in 1469. His unprecedented political style no doubt aimed at avoiding a repetition of the events of 1465-6. Seeing everything his family had built over decades nearly collapse must have been a frightening experience for the seventeen-year-old heir apparent.

From it he drew political lessons that shaped a style of governance whose central feature was to make himself the indispensable point of reference for every public decision, election, and policy, for every officeholder and bureaucrat, for all aspects of Florence's dealings with its subject territories and other states, and for its religious and ritual life.

Despite some reversals, he succeeded in making no one feel safe about doing anything in politics (and elsewhere) without his tacit or explicit approval. He thus placed himself, visibly, indeed ostentatiously, at the center of everything from elections and patronage 515

to ritual and culture, seeking to disabuse the Florentines of the illusion fostered by his father and grandfather that the Medici were citizens like others, only with greater responsibilities. In attempting to make himself the charismatic center that Florentines had tenaciously resisted for two centuries, he opened up an abyss between his methods and those of Cosimo and Piero.

There was of course resistance, albeit unsuccessful. Lorenzo's reputation among those not beholden to the regime was never as brilliant as that fashioned by poets, humanists, and some modern historians; it was, in fact, often unfavorable. Despite Poliziano's claim that Lorenzo and his family enjoyed the "willing support of all good men" and that the "whole city rejoiced" in his safety when it became known he had survived the Pazzi conspiracy,(3) Lorenzo was in many respects a distant and unpopular figure for many Florentines. In their private diaries some denounced his arbitrary and highhanded abuses of power. He was accused of preventing or forcing marriages against the wishes of families, of confiscating inheritances and manipulating the law courts to favor his friends and punish his enemies. Ottimati ambassadors sometimes complained about Lorenzo's private diplomacy and his insistence that they report to him first and only then say what he wanted them to say to the magistracies under whose authority they held their posts. Many grumbled about the lavishly expensive celebrations and state visits that more than once turned the city into a gigantic Medici theater. And those who knew of his interference in communal finances accused him of profiting at the public's expense. Giovanni Cambi recounted the injustice done to his father Neri, whom Lorenzo dismissed as Standardbearer of Justice because he had (quite legally) fined friends of Lorenzo whose absence had prevented the needed quorum for the election of a new Signoria. Cambi denounced Lorenzo, after his death, as "a greater tyrant than if he had been a ruler with formal authority [signore a bacchetta]." An offended member of the (Medicean) Martelli family also branded him a "tyrant." Alamanno Rinuccini called him "the malignant tyrant, who tried to become lord of the republic like Julius Caesar." Piero Parenti, son of Marco, recorded that at Lorenzo's death in 1492 "the lower classes were happy," and "the popolo and elite [gentilotti] not especially sad.

The leading citizens were divided in opinion: those who were close to Lorenzo and held power with him were extremely sad, thinking they would lose their position and perhaps lose power altogether; others who weren't so close and were not involved in government instead rejoiced, thinking that the republic would recover its liberty and they would escape from servitude and enjoy a larger share in government. The people secretly accepted his death, especially because of their having been oppressed, since under his control the city was nothing other than enslaved."(4) The myths of Lorenzo's magnificence and sacral presence may have been fashioned to cover this underlying dissatisfaction with his abuses of power and to mask the ever 516

more brittle nature of his support with a mystification of that power. A golden age it may have seemed in retrospect, but Lorenzo's more than two decades of leadership were in fact filled with crises whose root cause was the precariousness of the support behind him. Although by the 1480s he seemingly achieved uncontested power and complete control of government, elections, and institutions, the other side of the coin was that, by turning himself into a prince in all but name, yet without legal authority, he weakened the consensus that his grandfather had tried to build among the ottimati and gradually lost the cooperation of their class. Worsening relations with the ottimati made tighter political controls necessary, and the apex of Lorenzo's power thus reflected the regime's growing weakness as each crisis further narrowed the circle of those whom he could trust. His progressive isolation from the ottimati led to revolutionary transformations in the exercise of power, both in his generation and beyond.

Lorenzo’s Elders That Lorenzo was only twenty years old and already married to a non-Florentine when he "succeeded" his father already signaled the beginning of a new era, a cultural as well as a political turning point for a city in which, by long custom, leadership in both politics and family belonged to men of experience and maturity to whom younger men were expected to defer. Communal statutes prescribed minimum age requirements for offices, and, while there were of course no age requirements for marriage, it was assumed that men undertaking its responsibilities had left behind the impetuosity and wanderlust of youth. Lorenzo broke all these social rules in a matter of months and, with a good deal of impetuosity still about him, was being treated by both Florence's leading citizens and the governments of Italy as the city's de facto prince. He was the first of his family to be born after the regime's inception, and thus the first to grow up with the expectation from birth that he would one day assume the reins of leadership. He was, in a sense, prisoner of a destiny for which he had been carefully trained by his father and teachers.(5) While still a boy, he participated in ceremonies welcoming distinguished visitors and in diplomatic missions to Milan and Naples. In 1465 he held office in the Parte Guelfa and was appointed to the scrutiny committee.

Some sources report that he was sent to speak for his father to the Signoria and to negotiate with Luca Pitti in the decisive days of the confrontation, after which he was appointed to the Cento. He joined several confraternities and was already playing a role in the Medici patronage network as the recipient of letters from clients and favorseekers.

In 1469, as his father's health deteriorated, Lorenzo's quasi-anointed status was confirmed in two great public events that captured the attention of social and courtly elites all over Italy: a festive joust in February to celebrate the defeat of the exiles, but also to proclaim, by means of Lorenzo's staged triumph, his imminent assumption of leadership; and his lavish wedding in June to Clarice Orsini.(6) When Piero died in Decem517

ber and the moment of Lorenzo's "ascension" was at hand, the Ferrarese ambassador reported that some citizens were calling the Medici regime a "principato" and recognizing the necessity of a "signore e superiore" with control over all political matters.(7) In fact, however, reluctance persisted among ottimati at the prospect of a Medici dynasty, and the origins of Lorenzo's problems with them were not unlike those that pitted Piero against Cosimo's former lieutenants. Chief among those of Piero's high command who chafed at the prospect of recognizing his twenty-year-old son as their "superior" was Tommaso Soderini, who had remained loyal to Piero in the crisis of 1465-6 but now hoped to control the young Lorenzo to his own purposes. Yet, no doubt recalling the fate of his brother Niccolo and of the others who had challenged Piero, Tommaso was not about to risk an open break or attempt any restoration of "traditional" republican government. His strategy was more personal, and at the same time linked to foreign policy. Initially, he soothed Medici fears with a display of loyalty by organizing, on December 2, 1469, the same day Piero died, an unofficial but very public meeting in which 700 citizens proclaimed their support and confirmed Lorenzo in the "reputation and greatness" enjoyed by his father and grandfather. In Milan there was concern that Soclerini and other leading citizens might try to alienate Florence from the Sforza to diminish Lorenzo's prestige. Just before Piero died, Lorenzo wrote to Duke Galeazzo Maria acknowledging that, just as his father and grandfather owed "everything they had" to the duke and his father, he, Lorenzo, similarly knew the duke to be the "author of his every honor and benefit." Since the house of Sforza has been the "upholder of our stato and grandezza," Lorenzo now asked Galeazzo Maria to "undertake my protection and support," not to alter traditional Sforza benevolence toward his "house," and to "extend to me the same affection" previously shown to his forebears.(8) Within five clays the duke responded that his troops were ready to intervene to ensure the smooth transfer of power to Lorenzo.

Within a matter of months, however, Tommaso Soderini, Luigi Guicciarclini, and Antonio Ridolfi were competing for influence over Lorenzo. Soderini in particular began to chart an independent course in foreign affairs with the aim of detaching Florence from the Milanese connection and allying it with either Naples or Venice or both.

Otto Niccolini, a Soderini ally and Florentine ambassador to Naples in early 1470, sent detailed reports directly to Soclerini rather than to the Signoria, much as Lorenzo wanted envoys linked to the Medici to send them to him. Lorenzo was apparently slow to realize the danger of those favoring a closer alliance with Naples, and he had to be warned by the Milanese ambassador Sacramoro Mengozzi that at stake in the debate over foreign policy was his own pre-eminence in the regime. In April an attempted revolt in nearby Prato by exiled anti-Mediceans resulted in the execution of fifteen conspirators and heightened the anxiety of those first few months.(9) In June an awakened 518

Lorenzo rallied his supporters in a pratica convened to protect the Milanese alliance, but opposition among the ottimati had become evident.(10) In reports to Galeazzo Maria, the Milanese ambassador discussed this opposition and the apprehensiveness it aroused among both Mediceans and Milanese. Sacramoro urged Lorenzo to proceed more forcefully against his enemies and repeatedly invited Lorenzo, Soderini, and others to dinners during which he harangued Soderini, trying to persuade him to abandon policies or views that deviated from the Medici-Milan alliance. His frequent attempts to instruct Lorenzo in the art of recognizing ottimati machinations suggest that an uncertain and inexperienced Lorenzo was being guided by the duke's representatives.

Galeazzo Maria put on a lavish public display of his unwavering support for Lorenzo when he and hundreds of members of his court made a ten-day state visit to Florence in March 1471, an event criticized by many Florentines because of the expense but also because the Medici-Milan alliance was becoming unpopular.(11) Lorenzo tried to neutralize the opposition by reforming the Cento, the council entrusted in 1466 with electing the accoppiatori who in turn elected the Signoria. No longer trusting it to protect Medici interests, in July 1470 Lorenzo proposed removing the appointment of accoppiatori from the Cento and drawing future accoppiatori from among the forty or so persons who had held the office since 1434. The Cento rejected the idea, and, more surprisingly, the Medicean chancellor Bartolomeo Scala also criticized it. In January 1471 Lorenzo succeeded, this time with Soderini's support, in persuading the Cento to allow accoppiatori to be elected by their predecessors and the incumbent Signoria. Even so, Sacramoro and his duke were not happy with the occasional anti-Mediceans in the Signoria, and they urged Lorenzo to undertake a bolder reform of the regime's institutions. Sacramoro advised that "the security of the regime should outweigh the desire to appear too honourable."(12) Lorenzo acted quickly. In July 1471 a strongly pro-Medici Signoria won the councils' approval, but over substantial opposition, for a balia charged with making the Cento a more docile instrument of Medici (and Milanese) policy. Officially, the Signoria and accoppiatori selected the first forty members of the balia, with whom they then appointed the remaining 200 members. According to Sacramoro, however, who probably had his say in the matter as well, Lorenzo picked the forty, including himself, Tommaso Soderini, and Mediceans from Luca Pitti to Matteo Palmieri: "from first to last," according to Sacramoro, "well chosen men," who, once they appointed the rest of the balia, were made permanent members of the Cento, which thus became the malleable instrument that Lorenzo and his Milanese mentors desired. Now firmly under Medici control, the Cento received from the baBa exclusive authority to approve legislation on taxes, military matters, and elections. Two revolutionary changes occurred here: Lorenzo's forty handpicked permanent members of the Cento were in effect an unelected 519

senate with life tenure; and the Cento's exclusive competence to approve crucial laws deprived the old communal Councils of the Popolo and the Commune of the last vestiges of their former legislative sovereignty. The balia also held a general scrutiny, but the actual selection of officeholders was of course tightly controlled by accoppiatori, who mostly came from the handpicked forty and included Lorenzo himself. Although Lorenzo would find it necessary a decade later to perfect these reforms by instituting an entirely handpicked Council of Seventy, by 1471 the republican constitution was already an empty shell.

These reforms, however, could not prevent the rivalries and struggles for power that precipitated the worst moments of Lorenzo's period of leadership, the 1472 Volterra massacre and the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy and its violent aftermath. As shifting factions sought to detach Lorenzo from his Milanese protectors and undermine his influence, Lorenzo increasingly perceived any disagreement as a threat to his supremacy, causing him to react harshly and, in these two cases, with calamitous results. Both episodes show the underlying weakness and fundamental contradiction of the Medici system of governance. Because most Florentines were not ready to accept a principate and it was thus necessary to maintain the regime's republican trappings, Lorenzo had somehow to foster among the ottimati the illusion of a meaningful role in government. But what Lorenzo intended as window-dressing sustained among some ottimati a desire for a real share of power, something that Lorenzo (and his nervous Milanese backers) could never tolerate. Attempts to appease the ottimati regularly generated conflicts whose suppression only weakened their support for the regime. Moreover, the patronage system on which Medici power was built contained the seeds of instability in two senses. First, Lorenzo, even more than his grandfather, brooked no rivals as he sought to absorb the entire mechanism of patronage under his umbrella and become, in the suggestive expression of Benedetto Dei, "master of the shop, maestro della bottega."(13) Accustomed to wielding influence as patrons in their own right, leaders of elite families found themselves reduced to the status of clients, or at best go-betweens, whose social prestige and political capital were undermined by humiliating dependence on a would-be prince young enough to be their son or grandson. Resentments of this sort motivated men like Tommaso Soderini and Jacopo Pazzi.(14) The second weakness of the Medici patronage network was that it necessarily discriminated between "ins" and "outs," putting some individuals and families closer to Lorenzo and his good graces than others, because he could not distribute favors equally to all. The effectiveness of patronage networks depended on that discrimination as a way of demonstrating and enacting their power in separating the inner circle from those at the edges and beyond. Visible distinctions between who did and did not enjoy the regime's favor inevitably produced disaffected outsiders. Aiming at a monopoly of power, the Medici denied political influence 520

to anyone not in their favor and prohibited alternative patronage networks. Far from consolidating support for the regime, by marginalizing those who were not among Lorenzo's "friends" the patronage system forced them to look elsewhere, sometimes outside the city, for allies and friends. Once patronage became concentrated in one family, and indeed in a single "master of the shop" whose own major source of support lay outside the city, it began exporting internal rivalries and antagonisms, involving them in the riskier stakes of regional and Italian politics. Both the Volterra massacre and the Pazzi conspiracy had their origin in these dysfunctional aspects of the way the Medici used patronage as a means of holding power and trying to govern.

Lorenzo’s Volterra Massacre Although formally an autonomous commune, Volterra had long been under Florentine influence. A 1361 agreement gave Florence taxation rights and military control, including the office of captain, thereafter generally held by Florentine ottimati, who, as happened elsewhere in the dominion, developed patronage ties with prominent Volterrans, protected the city against infringements of rights or excessive taxes, and extended loans for tax debts. As these ties expanded, Florentine factional divisions were soon replicated in Volterran politics. When Volterra resisted the imposition of the Catasto in 1429, the Medici became its chief patrons and defenders, and after Cosimo achieved power the Florentine government cancelled all back taxes owed by the Volterrans. Volterra subsequently became a fertile field of patronage for several members of the family but also a site of rivalries that later developed within the regime.(15) In 1470 alum was discovered on land owned by the commune of Volterra.(16) Alum was used in a variety of manufacturing processes, in particular for the dyeing of woolen cloth. A group of investors petitioned the Volterran priors for a lease to mine and sell alum; it was granted, but then contested by a subsequent committee of priors who claimed that the vote to approve it had been tainted by corruption and that a resource on public land ought to be exploited for the general benefit, not the profit of a private company. Some years earlier, when alum was discovered in papal territory, the Medici bank secured exclusive rights to purchase papal alum and sell it throughout Europe at prices kept high by their monopoly. Opponents of the Volterran lease contended that Lorenzo had organized the company in his clients' hands in order to control the new source and prevent increased supply from driving down prices. Opposition to the lease drew increasing support, especially when it became known that among the company's partners were two prominent Volterran allies of the Medici and a Florentine Medicean, Antonio Giugni. Since it was widely believed that the company represented Lorenzo's, and the Medici bank's, interest in controlling the alum market, the dispute became a test of strength between Mediceans and anti-Mediceans in both Florence and Volterra.

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In June 1471 the Volterran government, now controlled by opponents of the lease, seized the mine and expelled its partners and workers. Florence's captain in Volterra, Ristoro Serristori, a Medici ally with two brothers in that year's balia, wrote letters to Lorenzo and the Signoria (the latter sent first to Lorenzo for his approval) vociferously defending the company and denouncing the Volterrans, calling them "donkeys to be thrashed [asini da bastonate]" who needed a stern lesson for their insolence. He alerted Lorenzo to the political implications of the dispute, warning him that, just after the seizure and Volterra's appointment of envoys charged with defending its actions before the Florentine Signoria, in Volterra it was being "publicly said that what [its government] did was done with the advice and encouragement of leading citizens in Florence, from whom they will always enjoy every favor. I write this to you so that you will know how to proceed. They say that everyone is on their side except you and some crazy people." Several weeks later he commended Lorenzo for having finally "opened his eyes" to the danger and urged him to "recognize friends as friends and enemies as enemies."(17) These warnings got Lorenzo's attention and convinced him that prominent Florentines were using the issue to undermine him. In fact, the seizure of the mine occurred when the Florentine Standardbearer of Justice was Bardo Corsi, an ally and client of Jacopo Pazzi and an outspoken critic of the Milanese alliance.(18) Lorenzo saw these simultaneous challenges in Florence and Volterra as no coincidence, and this no doubt confirmed in him the necessity for a balia, which came in July. After Lorenzo reinforced his control of key political institutions in Florence, Serristori punished four Volterrans for taking the alum mine.

Succeeding Serristori in October as captain in Volterra was Bernardo Corbinelli, who adopted a much more conciliatory approach. In fact, he was rebuked by the Signoria for failing to carry out its instructions and suspected of looking the other way when, in February 1472, angry Volterrans attacked and killed the two leading Volterran Mediceans among the company's partners. Their murder set in motion the recourse to a solution by force. The Volterrans introduced a militia into the city and appointed a committee for defense, which Corbinelli allowed and approved while also exiling several leaders of the local pro-Medici faction. Antonio Ridolfi, sent by the Florentine Signoria to restore order, sent back a reassuring picture of the situation denying that there was a crisis. Fearful of reprisals, the Volterran government dispatched emissaries to Florence to announce its willingness to restore the mine to the company. But Lorenzo had made up his mind, not only to recover the mine for his friends, but also to punish those who were using the dispute to weaken him politically. He rejected all appeals for compromise, both from the Volterrans, who even asked him to arbitrate the dispute, and from the Florentine bishop of Volterra, who wrote him several letters urging a peaceful settlement. What Lorenzo found intolerable was that leading Florentines were pursuing their own independent courses and policies in relations with the Volterrans, 522

and he thus opted for a military strategy, both to punish the Volterrans and to convey a warning to uncooperative Florentine ottimati.

On April 30, 1472, Lorenzo's revamped Cento authorized the appointment of a war balia. In order to mute criticism, Lorenzo carefully included among its twenty members, in addition of course to himself, Antonio Ridolfi, Bernardo Corbinelli, his occasional rivals Tornmaso Soderini and Jacopo Pazzi (who had also advocated a peaceful solution), and other loyal allies and members of leading families (Pitti, Guicciardini, Serristori, Canigiani, and Gianfigliazzi). Both Lorenzo and the Volterrans looked for allies beyond Tuscany, and he of course succeeded where they failed. Lorenzo engaged the services of the duke of Urbino and captain for hire, Federico da Montefeltro, who led a combination of his own forces and Florentine and Milanese troops against Volterra in May. To avoid a siege and possible sack, Volterra agreed on June 16 to a negotiated surrender that explicitly assured the town's safety with guarantees from Lorenzo and the Florentine government. But two days later, Federico's soldiers entered the city, massacred an unrecorded number of citizens, and sacked and plundered the town.

Some blamed Federico, others the Milanese soldiers, still others the Volterran militia for provoking the attack, but the Volterrans themselves blamed Lorenzo. Earlier in June he and the war balia had urged Federico and the Florentine commissioners to win the war at all costs, "with less regard for the safety of [Volterra] than for winning in whatever way it takes .... Be determined to conquer this town in any way, demonstrating with actions that, since they have been unwilling to have compassion for their patria, they do not deserve greater compassion from anyone else .... Make them understand their error in not having had greater fear of a sack."(19) Lorenzo wanted an unconditional surrender, with the safety of the town entirely at the discretion of Federico and the commissioners, and after the event many Volterrans were convinced they had been deliberately misled and betrayed, that the agreements had been merely a ruse to get Federico's forces into the city for the town's castigation. Federico claimed he was unable to control the soldiers, not all of whom were his, but the Volterrans found that difficult to believe given that he limited the sack to twelve hours and removed the army by the end of the awful day. When he heard the news, Lorenzo claimed to be saddened and disturbed, and, with the horror accomplished, he urged restraint. He decided that "we won't say anything more about the sack, in order to forget it as quickly as possible.

Perhaps [the Volterrans] merited this because of some sin of theirs. We must be content with our own conscience and the actions that we and this illustrious lord [Federico] took to prevent this evil from happening."(20) Chancellor Scala delivered an oration of praise and congratulation for Federico in front of the palace, but for decades thereafter chroniclers and poets wrote of the massacre in anything but a celebratory 523

mode. Francesco Guicciardini later defended the commissioners, because his grandfather Jacopo was among them, claiming that they tried to stop the violence and that the Florentines were as distressed by the sack as they could possibly be.(21) Still later, Machiavelli (Florentine Histories 7.30) wrote that the "news of this victory was received with great happiness by the Florentines; and because it had been entirely Lorenzo's undertaking [tutta impresa di Lorenzo], it greatly increased his reputation."

Pazzi Conspiracy and War Between 1472 and 1478 Lorenzo and his regime were on a collision course with the papacy of Sixtus IV and with enemies both in and beyond Florence, a conflict that produced the most traumatic event in the fifteenth-century history of the Medici. Tensions grew between Lorenzo and a variety of antagonists, but with no single source.(22) Traditional frictions between Florence and the papacy over spheres of influence on their common border and ecclesiastical benefices were complicated by fissures within the regime, resentments over Lorenzo's tightening control of politics, patronage, and the local church, and increasing volatility in his relationship with the ottimati. At the same time the family banking empire entered into decline. Already in the mid-1460s Piero's foreclosure on a number of loans gave evidence of shrinking assets and inaugurated a policy of retrenchment that even reduced loans to the Sforza. General manager Sassetti decentralized the bank and allowed branches to pursue ventures more independently. But falling profits caused branches to close in Venice (for two years from 1469 to 1471 and again in 1481), Milan (1478), Avignon (1479), Bruges (1480), and London (1480). Only the Florence, Rome, Naples, and Geneva-Lyons branches remained after 1480. Whether because of poor management by Sassetti or neglect by Lorenzo, who was said to have little interest in its operations, the bank no longer provided the family with the financial resources it produced in Cosimo's time. Its supremacy even among Florentine banks was challenged by, among others, Filippo Strozzi and the Pazzi. The latter, whose resentment toward Lorenzo went back to 1471 when he had them punished in the scrutiny after Bardo Corsi criticized the Milanese alliance,(23) vied with the Medici for influence at the papal court and sought to replace them as the pope's bankers. Lorenzo's need for cash, even to keep the bank going, forced him to sell land in the Mugello, to borrow money from, of all people, the former exile Strozzi, and, in the 1480s, to divert public monies for his private use.(24) Meanwhile, relations worsened with Sixtus IV (Francesco della Rovere), his nephew Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II), and Sixtus's nephews in the Riario family, to which the pope was related through his sister. Sixtus sought more effective papal control over the semi-autonomous towns and principalities of the papal states, many of which had agreements with Florence that kept them within a Florentine sphere of influence. When Florence assisted the ruler of Citta di Castello in Umbria in resisting papal 524

forces, Sixtus pointedly blamed Lorenzo. The pope was also determined to wrest control of Imola, northeast of Florence in the Romagna, from Milan, but when Galeazzo Maria offered to sell Imola to Florence, and Lorenzo agreed, Sixtus loudly protested that the city was within the papal states and threatened a series of spiritual and temporal penalties that persuaded Galeazzo Maria to yield Imola to the papacy for 40,000 ducats. Sixtus put Lorenzo, still the pope's banker, in an impossible position by asking him to lend funds for the purchase. Knowing he would be severely criticized if he financed a papal acquisition against Florentine territorial interests, Lorenzo replied that he lacked such funds (which, given the weakness of the bank, could have been true) and also asked the Pazzi not to give Sixtus the money. Not only did the Pazzi do so, they also revealed to Sixtus what Lorenzo had requested of them, and the pope retaliated by depriving the Medici of the office of Depositary of the Apostolic Camera, thus removing the pa pal account from their bank. As the Medici and their domestic rivals increasingly looked to foreign powers in their search for allies and friends in the larger world of Italian politics, local antagonisms became potentially explosive.

Disputes over church offices, another important arena of patronage, were also a source of tension. Florentine governments had always wanted men of proven loyalty in the dominion's seven bishoprics, Fiesole, Pistoia, Volterra, Arezzo, Cortona, Pisa, and above all Florence. Popular governments had earlier tried to prevent the elite from exploiting the powerful office by prohibiting the election of Florentines to the Florentine diocese, but by the fifteenth century the ban had been relaxed and popes appointed a mix of Florentines and foreigners. Giovanni Dietisalvi-Neroni, whose candidacy Eugenius rejected in 1445, finally became archbishop of Florence in 1462,(25) just in time to become an embarrassment to the regime when his brother emerged as a leader of the anti-Medici movement. Giovanni was hustled off to Rome and, although Pope Paul II refused to replace him, he never again set foot in his diocese. This awkward situation no doubt underscored for Lorenzo the importance of selecting bishops carefully.

Moreover, to protect his influence at the papal court and access to the favors crucial to Medici patronage, Lorenzo wanted a Florentine cardinal of his own choosing to safeguard his interests. He expressed this wish shortly after Sixtus IV's accession in 1471, but the pope politely brushed aside the suggested candidacy of Lorenzo's brother Giuliano. When Archbishop Neroni died in 1473, Sixtus appointed his nephew Pietro Riario to the Florentine see, but Riario died a year later. By then the rift between Lorenzo and Sixtus had become irreparable over Imola, where the pope installed as ruler his other Riario nephew Girolamo, who loathed Lorenzo for his attempt to thwart papal acquisition of the city. Sixtus then selected for the vacant Florentine archbishopric Francesco Salvia ti, a Florentine but a close curial ally of the Riario and first cousin to Jacopo Pazzi. Lorenzo had the Signoria refuse Salviati's appointment and champion instead the candidacy of Rinaldo Orsini, brother of his wife Clarice. Sixtus yielded and 525

appointed Orsini, but refused to make him a cardinal. If Lorenzo failed to get his cardinal, he at least got a brother-in-law archbishop. Orsini remained in the post for the next thirty years but hardly ever appeared in the city and left the administration of the see in the hands of Lorenzo and his inner circle.(26) Although Lorenzo succeeded in the appointment of Orsini, the defeat of Salviati's candidacy was yet another of the seeds of the conspiracy. Soon thereafter, the Medici bishop of Pisa died, and Sixtus, now openly at odds with Lorenzo, poked him in the eye by naming Salviati to the second most important episcopal see in the Florentine dominion. There was even some speculation that he would make Salviati a cardinal and destroy Lorenzo's hopes for a cardinal protector in Rome. But Lorenzo, again with the docile cooperation of the Signoria, refused for three years to allow Salviati to take possession of the Pisan see. When Lorenzo explained to the duke of Milan that the reason for this refusal was that Salviati had influential supporters in Florence, he acknowledged that at the heart of the dispute were divisions within the city and regime. Writing to Galeazzo Maria in December 1474 to ask for his support in the controversy, Lorenzo protested the "injustice and wrong" done to him by the pope, "who is offended, as far as I understand, for no other reason than that Francesco Salvia ti has been denied possession of the archbishopric of Pisa; and for this offence, if it is an offence, and which has been done by the entire city, [the pope] wants to take revenge against me alone." Lorenzo admitted that, if he had so wished, he could have pulled strings and put Salviati in office, "but I'm not inclined to permit such public humiliation for my own personal interest, for this city does not deserve such a thing from me." Lorenzo thus neatly reversed the relationship of public and private interests in the affair, for the government had in fact been acting on his determination to keep Salviati out of Pisa.

"What makes this even more difficult," he continued, "is that the pope loves a citizen of ours, as messer Francesco Salviati certainly is, who has deceived the city and acted against the wishes of our Signoria, more than he loves the honor of the whole city." He then came to the core of the matter: "what is especially important to me and to our entire regime [stato] is that there are some citizens here" (presumably Salviati's Pazzi inlaws) "who claim that this [campaign in Rome to secure Salviati in the Pisan see] is their own undertaking, and they've let the pope know that they'll keep on working, whether I like it or not," to bring about a resolution in Salviati's favor.

What troubled Lorenzo was less the prospect of Salviati as archbishop of Pisa than the fear that influential rivals within Florence might bring this about over and above his wishes. As he put it, again to the duke of Milan a few days later, the fact that the pope "received letters from many [Florentines] on Salviati's behalf seems to me the reason why, more than any other, he should be denied the possession [of the See]. For, since the Signoria and the men of the regime have determined that they do not want 526

this, those who do want it and have written [to the pope] about it must be men who do not see eye-to-eye with those who govern, and it would seem strange indeed in a city as untrustworthy as Pisa to have [a bishop] agreeable to the latter and not to [the men of] the government." How, he asked rhetorically, could he possibly "support Salviati, so powerfully protected by his friends and relatives, once the pope had been told, in order to get him to confer the benefice on Salviati, that he would get possession of the diocese whether other citizens [i.e., Lorenzo and the regime] liked it or not?" A year later he explained (still to Galeazzo Maria) his continuing resistance to pressures from Rome by observing that Salviati was "bound to the Pazzi by marriage ties and obligations of friendship" and was "very much their thing," and that, if he (Lorenzo) relented, "what seems most important to me is that this would enhance the prestige of the Pazzi and do the opposite for me."(27) It was thus another test of Lorenzo's strength: at stake in essence was his ability to impose his will on his domestic rivals. Lorenzo could not tolerate a prelate in Pisa whose Florentine supporters were challenging his own power and whose protectors in Rome were his ever more declared enemies.

In the end, Lorenzo relented and agreed to Salviati's appointment in return for promises, later disputed, that no bishops would be appointed within the Florentine dominions without the consent of the Signoria and that a Florentine cardinal would be forthcoming. Although Sixtus and Girolamo Riario got Imola, and Salviati got his bishopric, the coalescing resentments generated by Lorenzo's resistance to both produced the plot, apparently hatched in Rome as early as 1475, to kill Lorenzo and Giuliano and terminate the Medici regime. Galeazzo Maria sent Lorenzo a number of warnings that something was afoot (and then, ironically, himself fell victim to an entirely separate assassination plot in 1476). Initially, the Pazzi, or at least Jacopo, the family's leader, were reluctant to take part, but they may have been goaded into doing so by an inexplicable provocation from Lorenzo. One of the Pazzi was married to a Borromei woman whose father died without sons or a will; the Pazzi assumed that his estate would be inherited by his daughter and thus come under the control of her Pazzi husband. But in 1476 Lorenzo had a law passed, retroactively valid, affirming that, in the absence of male children and in cases of intestacy, other male relatives (in this case the father's nephews) would have priority over daughters as heirs. The enraged Pazzi joined the conspiracy, together with Francesco Salviati, Girolamo Riario, Riario's military captain Giovanbattista da Montesecco, Jacopo Bracciolini (son of former chancellor Poggio), Pope Sixtus (who insisted, however, that he wanted no bloodshed), and Duke Federico of Urbino,(28) who just a few years earlier had done Lorenzo's dirty work for him in Volterra. Lurking in the shadows of the plot was also King Ferrante of Naples. After rejecting several plans, they decided to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano at the family palace on Sunday April 26, 1478, but at the last moment, realizing that Giuliano would not be present, the assault was relocated to the cathedral. And when 527

Giovanbattista da Montesecco, designated as Lorenzo's assassin, changed his mind and refused to kill in church, he was replaced by two priests, one from Volterra, who, according to Poliziano, was motivated by the hatred that all Volterrans felt for Lorenzo.(29) Giuliano was killed; Lorenzo, slightly wounded, took refuge in the north sacristy and then fled back up via Larga to the family palace to rally his supporters. In an uproar of confusion, the city was "bewildered with terror," according to the diarist Luca Landucci, a non-elite apothecary with no connection to the regime.(30) Salviati tried to seize the palace of the priors, but the Signoria, informed just in time, fended him off and retained control. Jacopo Pazzi, realizing that a popular uprising was the only hope of saving the day, rode into the piazza to rally the crowd with cries of "popolo e liberta," but the ground had not been prepared for such an appeal, and when the city learned that Lorenzo was alive and that the conspirators had attempted to assault the government palace as well as the Medici brothers, no one dared side with failed conspirators who were already being mercilessly hunted down. Medici armed guards and pro-Medici mobs seized the plotters and began executing them on the spot. Guicciardini estimated that fifty people were killed that day, many hanged from the windows of the palace. "I do not believe," he commented, "that Florence had ever seen a day of such torment." The search for, and punishment of, the conspirators and anyone with any connection to them went on for weeks. Lorenzo even had one of those who escaped tracked down and returned from Constantinople to be hanged. Altogether more than eighty people were executed, many innocent of any involvement, some only because they were members of a family now damned in perpetuity. The Pazzi were destroyed, their property confiscated, the survivors forced to change their name, and daughters and sisters of the executed and exiled forbidden to marry for many years.

Writing thirty years later and after the fall of the regime, Guicciardini cheekily pointed to the irony in the conspiracy's outcome: although it nearly cost Lorenzo both his life and "lo stato," it nonetheless "gave him such a reputation and such advantages that one could say it was a most happy day for him. His brother Giuliano, with whom he would have had to share his wealth and compete for power in the regime, was dead.

His enemies were gloriously removed through the power of the state, as were the shadows of doubt and suspicion that had previously followed him. The people took up arms on his behalf, and on that day they finally recognized him as padrone of the city and gave him, at public expense, the privilege of going about with as many armed guards as he wished for his personal security. And in effect he so thoroughly took control of the regime [stato] that he thereafter emerged, freely and completely, as arbiter and almost as lord [signore] of the city. The great but insecure power that he had had until that day now became very great and secure." Guicciardini finished his account with some thoughts about "civil discords": they end with the elimination of one faction, the victor becomes lord of the city, "his supporters and companions become his 528

subjects, and the people and the multitude become enslaved. The stato is handed on as an inheritance and often passes from a wise man to a madman who pushes the city over the edge."(31) Sixtus and Ferrante immediately declared war. On June 1 Sixtus excommunicated Lorenzo for the execution of Archbishop Salviati, a crime against Holy Church, said the pope, and ordered the Signoria to deliver him to Rome. When it refused, he placed the city under an interdict on June 22. Ferrante sent troops into Florentine territory, commanded by his son Alfonso, duke of Calabria, and by Federico of Urbino, who quickly seized several towns. Lasting a year and a half, the war was fought both on the battlefield and on the turf of public opinion. In a letter of July 7 to the priors and people of Florence, Sixtus affirmed his love for the "Florentine community" and asserted that his only purpose was to punish Lorenzo and liberate Florence from his tyranny: since it was the "iniquity of Lorenzo and his accomplices" that disturbed the peace of Italy and made it impossible to unite against the common enemy (the Turks), Sixtus urged the Florentines to join him in restoring their liberty and ending the "tyranny of one man."(32) In other pronouncements Sixtus fulminated against the execution of Salviati as a crime that merited both the excommunication and the interdict. Among the Florentine government's responses were public letters written by chancellor Scala(33) and at least ten legal opinions (consilia) commissioned from Italy's most famous professors of law, who argued that it was the Signoria, not Lorenzo, that put Salvia ti to death, that the punishment was fully justified as an act of self-defense because Salviati was not dressed in ecclesiastical robes when he assaulted the palace, and that the pope's condemnations were invalid because he had acted arbitrarily and in violation of due process. In one of the earliest political uses of print technology, several of these texts, and at least one of Scala's letters, were printed and disseminated in a propaganda war for public opinion all over Italy.(34) Military operations came closer to Florence than any since the Milanese incursions into Tuscany in the 1390s. A war committee (the Dieci) was instituted, with Lorenzo as one of its members (his first executive office). Initial setbacks were followed by some successes, but by November 1479 enemy troops had occupied a good part of the southern portion of the dominion, including the important towns of Castellina in Chianti, Poggibonsi, Certaldo, and Colle Valdelsa. Florence sought help from Venice and Milan, but Venice was occupied with the Turks and Milan was in the throes of political crisis following Galeazzo Maria's assassination and no longer a stable ally. Even after Lodovico il Moro, the murdered duke's brother, seized power from Galeazzo Maria's widow and her chief minister Cicco Simonetta in the summer of 1479 and declared his support for the Florentines, Milanese military help was still ineager. Florence was largely alone in its war against Naples and the papacy, and, with territory being lost and treasure con529

sumed, some in Florence began to accept Sixtus's argument that the republic was fighting only to protect Lorenzo from papal wrath. Desire for peace was growing, and Lorenzo feared, as Guicciardini later put it, that "the citizens might deprive him of lo stato" in order to end the war. With Sixtus's enmity undiminished and Florence's allies unable or unwilling to help, the only solution was a separate deal with Naples. Lorenzo opened unofficial and secret negotiations with the dukes of Calabria and Urbino through personal emissaries, chiefly Giuliano Gondi and later Filippo Strozzi, whose ties in Naples forged over decades now helped to save the very regime that had kept him in exile there. By November, just when the military situation reached a low point for Florence, the outline of a settlement was reached.

Lorenzo then made the dramatic decision to go to Naples, with assurances of course that he would be welcomed and his personal safety guaranteed. On December 5 he had the Signoria and Dieci convene a pratica of forty leading citizens to inform them (without asking their opinion) that he was leaving the next morning for Naples. In Guicciardini's version of the speech, Lorenzo says that this was the only way to find out if the king and the pope were sincere in claiming that they were fighting him and not Florence: if it were so, they would have him, and the war would end; if not, he would find out what they really wanted and negotiate a settlement. He knew it would be dangerous, he said, but he was willing to take the risk because he placed the public welfare before any private good and because he recognized that the obligation that all citizens have to their patria was even greater in his case because of the greater benefits and status he enjoyed. He hoped that those assembled would not fail to "protect the stato and his position" in his absence and he "commended himself, his house, and his family" to them.35 Lorenzo was confessing his vulnerability and acknowledging his dependence on the ottimati's willingness to remain loyal to him even as opposition to the war was beginning to erode his power. The real risk he faced was less whatever danger might lurk in Naples than the possibility that in his absence sentiment, even within the regime, might turn against him.(36) Once outside Florence he wrote to the dukes of Calabria and Urbino to inform them of his movements, to Florence's allies, the duke of Ferrara and Marquis of Mantua, to the Venetian, Ferrarese, and Milanese ambassadors in Florence to explain what he knew would be cause for anger in Venice and Milan, and to the Florentine Signoria repeating what he had said to the pratica before his departure.(37) The Dieci wanted to confer upon him a formal mandate to go to Naples and negotiate peace as their legal representative and that of the "whole people and commune of Florence.'' Another version of the mandate, drafted by chancellor Scala, said that he "should give much greater preference to the public interest [than to his ow11 private interest]" and indeed "forget his own in order to consult the public interest."(38) Although Scala urged him to accept the mandate as the "honorable'' thing to do, Lorenzo declined and preferred to act in a private capacity, perhaps in or530

der to maintain a freer hand in the negotiations, perhaps also because he feared that the Cento, which ratified such mandates, might not approve this one in the face of growing opposition to him and "his" war.(39) While he was in Naples, members of the inner circle warned Lorenzo that there was talk of political change. "Many different thoughts and words,'' wrote Scala in January 1480, "are being expressed both by your friends and by all manner of people." In February Scala told him there was discussion of a change of regime and offered the advice that "it is essential for you to be here, so that in procuring peace down there you don't find yourself with a worse war on your hands here." Antonio Pucci similarly judged that "your departure has upset everything and made our situation here worse."(40) According to Guicciardini, what many saw as Lorenzo's rash act of "throwing himself into Ferrante's arms" and the possibility that he might not even return encouraged some to speak ill of the governing inner circle and to complain that political offices and taxes should not be controlled by such a small number. Even more ominously, "many members of families of the regime" were contemplating "new arrangements," even promoting Girolamo Morelli as an alternative to Lorenzo. Morelli, the grandson of a brother of Giovanni Morelli, is mentioned by Guicciardini among the men from outside the elite raised to prominence by Lorenzo. He was Florentine ambassador to Milan for much of 1479, lauded by the Milanese to Lorenzo as a "sincere, beloved, and cordial friend" whom they were very sorry to see leave his post,(41) and indeed, so says Guicciardini, "so powerful that Lorenzo feared him."(42) These tantalizing suggestions of gathering opposition to Lorenzo point to disaffection among both elite families and regime members of lower social status often resented by the elite. In early 1480 "friends of the regime" judged it difficult merely to keep it going without a revolution and did all they could to have loyal priorates placed in office until Lorenzo's return.

In Naples Lorenzo discovered that the settlement tentatively agreed to by his emissaries was not definitive for Ferrante, who dragged out the negotiations and kept his guest in Naples for longer than Lorenzo expected.(43) Ferrante had the problem of placating Sixtus, who wanted no peace that kept Lorenzo in power, and, according to Guicciardini, the king delayed a settlement in order to allow time for a change of regime in Florence. For this reason Lorenzo's friends urged him to conclude matters if possible but in any case to return without delay. Lorenzo pressed for three things: complete restoration of Florentine territories; protection from papal aggression for Florentine allies in the Romagna (even though their cities were formally papal territory); and cancellation of Sixtus's demand that Lorenzo go to Rome and humble himself before the pope.

Worried that matters in Florence were slipping from his control, Lorenzo came away with no guarantees on any of these points. But by February, Ferrante, now worried 531

about a possible Angevin expedition from France to reclaim Naples, was suddenly eager to wrap up negotiations by giving unofficial assurances that Florence would regain its territories and that the Romagna lords would be shielded. The peace treaty still required that Lorenzo beg the pope's forgiveness in person,(44) but when the Ottomans attacked and occupied the port of Otranto in Puglia in the summer of 1480, Ferrante withdrew his forces from Tuscany, allowing the Florentines to reoccupy most of their territory, and Sixtus, anxious for the support of all the Italian states against the Ottomans, agreed to receive a delegation of Florentines without Lorenzo and allowed them to ask forgiveness on behalf of the Florentine people.

The (Insecure) Prince in All but Name Although, as Guicciardini observed, the terms of peace more nearly resembled conditions usually imposed on those who lose wars, Lorenzo nonetheless returned in triumph in March 1480 to a city hungry for peace and a regime desperately glad to have him back. There had been no revolution, perhaps not even the beginnings of organized opposition during his absence. But Lorenzo was aware of the murmurings, and without delay he and his inner circle decided on yet another series of reforms to narrow the regime to the ever smaller group of those he trusted. In early April the priorate asked the councils for a balia which passed by only one vote in the Cento and narrow margins in the other councils. Instead of carrying out its assigned tasks in the areas of fiscal reform and elections (it never even held the promised general scrutiny), the balia strengthened the regime by creating a new council, the Seventy, to which it entrusted an unprecedented combination of executive, legislative, and electoral powers. The Seventy were given final say on proposals to be submitted to the councils, thus replacing the Signoria in this crucial executive function. From its own membership it elected two new executive committees, the Otto di Pratica, which replaced the Dieci in foreign policy, and the Dodici Procuratori, who oversaw finances and the Monte. Their deliberations required approval from the Seventy, which thus superseded the Cento as the most important legislative body. Also entrusted to the Seventy were a mano elections of the Signoria and the appointment of the security and police magistracy of the Otto di Guardia. The Seventy thus became the "supreme agency of control" and "the principal organ for all important decisions." Never before had the different functions of government been so exclusively concentrated in one body. Moreover, the Seventy were to remain in office for five years: Guicciardini called it a "consiglio a vita," a senate with life tenure. In 1484 the three older councils of the Popolo, Commune, and Cento renewed the Seventy and its powers for another five years by comfortable but not overwhelming margins. Subsequent renewals occurred in 1489 and 1493, but this last, after Lorenzo's death, encountered serious opposition and gained two-thirds majorities with only three votes to spare in the Popolo, eleven in the Commune, and one in the Cento: 532

clear evidence of the anti-Medici sentiment that was to erupt in the next year. But while Lorenzo was alive the Seventy governed with little opposition.(45) The Seventy consisted of the balla's first thirty members, selected by the Signoria, and forty others, all veduti Standardbearers of Justice, selected by the thirty. Sixty-five of the first Seventy had at one time or another served on a Medici balla. Lorenzo was of course among the first thirty, who also included Tommaso Soderini, members of elite families (Capponi, Guicciardini, Ridolfi, Davanzati, Gianfigliazzi, Tornabuoni) and several non-elite characterized by Guicciardini as those who "would have had no influence without [Lorenzo's] support": Bernardo Buongirolami, Antonio Pucci, Girolamo Morelli, and two powerful insiders from lower-class backgrounds, Bernardo de!

Nero and Antonio di Bernardo di Miniato Dini, the minor guildsman who administered the Monte. Among the forty they appointed were members of elite families (Capponi, Corsini, Vettori, Pitti, Salvia ti, Rucellai, Albizzi, Valori) and more non-elite Medici clients: Giovanni Bonsi, Pierfilippo Pandolfini, and relatives of influential Medici insiders Giovanni Lanfredini, Agnolo Niccolini, and Cosimo Bartoli. In 1489 the roster of Seventy shows a similar mix. Official sources do not of course reveal the extent of Lorenzo's influence in these selections. But because it was said (by the Milanese ambassador) that Lorenzo himself named the first forty members of the balia of 1471, and because, according to Piero Guicciardini, Lorenzo also handpicked the members of the regime's last scrutiny council in 1484, it seems probable that he, perhaps with his inner circle of advisers, also chose the Seventy.(46) Lorenzo's power in the 1480s was unprecedented in Florence and perhaps unmatched even by some of Italy's princes. No one held or even became eligible for important offices without his approval. No action or communication was undertaken by the foreign policy magistracy without his instructions. Lorenzo controlled fiscal policy through his "minister" of the Monte and placed himself on the powerful committee of the Seventeen Reformers both times it was appointed, in 1481-2 and 1490-1, with wide-ranging powers over finances and economic policy. With his influence on this committee, he took substantial public funds (by one calculation, over 50,000 florins) for his personal needs and got his hands on still more from various communal accounts, while his Monte officials withheld interest payments from citizens.(47) Elite families did not contract marriage alliances of which he did not approve. Intervening in the administration of justice, he compelled magistracies to carry out punishments on his orders. In 1488, for example, when a large crowd pleaded for mercy on behalf of a man sentenced to death by the Otto di Guardia for killing one of their staff, Lorenzo intervened on the spot and ordered that the execution take place immediately. He also ordered the seizure, torture, and exile of four people from the crowd who had encouraged the condemned man to escape.(48) These were the powers of a prince above the law.

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But he was also an insecure prince who trusted fewer and fewer people and needed ever more arbitrary and personal power to compensate for the increasing fragility of his support. In the early 1480s several members of elite families were accused of conspiring against the regime or trying to kill Lorenzo. In 1481 members of the Frescobaldi, Baldovinetti, and Balducci confessed to a plan to murder him and were hanged.

In 1484 a young Tornabuoni (Lorenzo's mother's family) was exiled to Sicily "because," as Landucci reported, "it was said that he had designs against Lorenzo .... Perhaps it wasn't so; I'm saying what people said in the city. "(49) Frequent rumors, accusations, and confessions of plots against him no doubt gave Lorenzo good reason to seek security in greater controls at every level: within his inner circle; within the regime as embodied by the Council of Seventy; in the scrutinies and elections of the Signoria; in the dominion; and in all the magistracies, courts, and councils of government. He sought such power because, among both old ottimati families and the popolo, acquiescence in Lorenzo's veiled principate was becoming more reluctant. Lorenzo knew that Alamanno Rinuccini, whose dialogue On Liberty, written after the Pazzi conspiracy and its bloody suppression, openly denounced him as a tyrant and detailed his abuses of power and corruption of communal institutions, was not the only member of the elite who thought he had gone too far.(50) He had fewer opportunities to hear or read the views of the popolo but was aware that the priorate of July 1482, whose proposal that the councils prohibit tax concessions to "private persons" was an obvious rebuke of Lorenzo's manipulation of the Monte, included Piero Parenti,(51) son of Marco. Piero was subsequently excluded from major offices for the remaining twelve years of the regime,(52) presumably for his part in this slap at Lorenzo. Growing resentment among ottimati and popolo toward Lorenzo's princely pretensions caused him to turn elsewhere and to ground his, his family's, and the regime's security in new foundations: in secretaries and bureaucrats from outside the elite, men beholden to him alone; in patronage networks in the cities and towns of the dominion; in a new politics of ritual and charisma directed at the lower classes; in marriage alliances with aristocratic families throughout Italy; and, not least, in the church. The most innovative dimensions of Lorenzo's style of governance lay in his cultivation of these new sources of power.

Guicciardini says Lorenzo favored "those from whom he believed he had nothing to fear because they lacked family connections and prestige," that he worried that men with great reputations and extensive family connections (his example is Tommaso Soderini) might become too powerful and prevent him from being "arbitro" of the city, and that he used to say that if his father had adopted a similar policy he would not have come so dangerously close to losing everything in 1466. Guicciardini, who belonged to the elite that Lorenzo increasingly mistrusted, thought that the most "oppressive and harmful" aspect of Lorenzo's character was suspicion and mistrust, which he attributed to his awareness of the need to "keep down a free city in which it was neces534

sary to conduct public business through the magistrates, according to the statutes, and with the appearance and form of liberty." For Guicciardini, ottimati were the natural guardians of this liberty, and he equated "keeping down a free city" with Lorenzo's attempts to "keep down as much as he could all those citizens who he knew were esteemed because of their nobility, wealth, power, or reputation." Although Lorenzo gave these men, provided they were loyal to the regime, offices, ambassadorships, and similar honors, he "nonetheless did not trust them." Thus it was to men who owed their reputation to him, and "who would have had no standing without his support, that he entrusted control of scrutinies and taxes and to whom he confided his innermost secrets." Guicciardini lists ten such men: Bernardo Buongirolami (who made his family's first appearance in the priorate in 1467); Antonio Pucci (whose family had hitched its wagon to Cosimo's star before 1434, when they were minor guildsmen and neighbors); Agnolo Niccolini; Bernardo de’ Nero (a minor guildsman, but powerful member of the inner circle, member of the Seventy in 1489, and Guicciardini's later choice as spokesman and defender of the Medici in his Dialogue on the Government of Florence); Pierfilippo Pandolfini (on the Seventy in both 1480 and 1489); Giovanni Lanfredini (director of the bank's Venice branch in 1471-80, among Lorenzo's most important emissaries, and on the Seventy in 1489); Girolamo Morelli, Piero Alamanni, Giovanni Bonsi (on the Seventy in 1480); and Cosimo Bartoli. Guicciardini saw them all as social parvenus, but he was even more irritated by the prominence of three others: Antonio di Miniato Dini, whose authority over the Monte was such that "one could say he governed two-thirds of the city," and who sat on the Seventy in 1489; the notary Giovanni Guidi ("son of a notary from Pratovecchio who enjoyed so much of Lorenzo's favor that, having held all the other offices ... he might have become Standardbearer of Justice"), who headed the chancery office that drafted legislation and was said to have selected the scrutiny committee of 1484 together with Lorenzo; and Bartolomeo Scala, "the son of a miller from Colle [Valdelsa]," who was made Standard bearer of Justice because he was chancellor, to the outrage and indignation of all "men of worth [uomini da bene]." Thus, Guicciardini concluded, although "men of worth" had some role in politics, there were so many "middling men [uomini mezzani]" in the councils and key offices that oversaw electoral and fiscal matters (and with whom Lorenzo had established secret understandings) that one could say that they, and not the old elite, were "lords of the game [signori del giuoco ]."(53) Behind even these newcomers there emerged under Lorenzo a new species of secretary, mostly notaries, who served as personal chancellors or secretaries to Lorenzo, occasionally accompanied ambassadors and even wrote their letters, engaged in unofficial, secret negotiations on Lorenzo's behalf (sometimes without the knowledge of the appointed ambassador), became secretaries to powerful committees like the Otto di Pratica, and were entirely and always Lorenzo's men. Niccolo Michelozzi, a humanist and 535

son of Cosimo's favorite architect, became Lorenzo's personal chancellor and adviser to his son Piero and remained a loyal Medicean through the years of their exile, eventually replacing Machiavelli in the chancery when the Medici were restored in 1512.

Most came from the subject territories, the best known being Piero Dovizi da Bibbiena and his brother Bernardo, the future cardinal and playwright. Piero Dovizi served as tutor to Lorenzo's children, and later became Piero de' Medici's chief secretary. Bernardo also began as secretary to Lorenzo and tutor to his son Giovanni, in whose service he remained as secretary and adviser when Giovanni became a cardinal. Lacking much connection to Florentine political traditions, loyal only to the masters they served, and perceived by the ottimati as ambitious, arrogant, and irreverent, these secretaries were among the earliest voices of an emerging view of politics in which fulfillment of their masters' personal ambitions was the highest goal. Lorenzo's confidence in them angered the ottimati, and several were reviled and exiled in the anti-Medici fervor of 1494.(54) Like other elite families, the Medici cultivated patronage ties with the provincial elites, ecclesiastical and philanthropic institutions, and governments of the dominion cities. Such ties developed when elite Florentines served as podesta or captains in the subject towns, presiding over courts, police, and defense. If several family members formed good relations over time with particular cities, its citizens came to regard them as protectors and patrons, typically appealing to them for tax relief, settlement of disputes, or appointment of officials to administrative posts. The Capponi, for example, were linked to Pistoia through Neri di Gino, who, between 1421 and 1456, served once as podesta, twice as captain, and four times on committees overseeing everything from taxes to revision of statutes, providing support and favors that earned him a loyal following and, at his death, the honorary title of "protector and father of the city."(55) Likewise prominent in Pistoia were the Medici, of whom seven held offices by midcentury. Giovanni di Bicci was podesta in 1407, and when he died Pistoia honored him (and sought favor with Cosimo) by bestowing its insignia and arms on the family. Donato de' Medici was bishop of Pistoia for almost forty years. And Pistoia honored Piero as "father of the city" in 1464 and the Medici family as its "protector" in 1476.(56) Until mid-century the Medici and Pitti exceeded other families in the range of their patronage connections, but after Luca Pitti's humiliation in 1466 the Medici and, after 1470, Lorenzo became the undisputed masters of dominion patronage, as shown by the voluminous correspondence from governments, institutions, and individuals seeking favors and help. Letters came to many family members, including Lorenzo's mother Lucrezia who typically passed on to her son the requests she received.(57) From just Pistoia and its district, more than a thousand letters sent to the Medici between 1400 and 1494 have survived, over 900 of them after 1460, and over 660 to Lorenzo 536

alone (even with the loss of most of the letters of the 1480s). Extant letters to Lorenzo from Pistoia are at least three times as numerous as the combined total of letters to Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo's uncle Giovanni, who until his death in 1463 was the chief Medici contact for Pistoia.(58) A similar story emerges from Arezzo, where Piero de' Medici displaced Luca Pitti as the most influential Florentine in local affairs, built a group of friends and clients (who offered military help in 1466), and introduced the young Lorenzo into Aretine patronage by letting him nominate Medici clients to offices. Lorenzo later strengthened the Medici presence in Arezzo by having his former tutor Gentile Becchi appointed bishop in 1473 and dominating more and more of the patronage channels to the point of excluding all rivals and becoming sole intermediary between Arezzo and Florence for fiscal matters, tax-exemptions for local markets and fairs, and appointments. Even if unable to fulfill all requests for tax reductions, he never failed when it came to recommendations for Medici clients, even when statutory regulations had to be ignored.(59) Lorenzo's involvement in Pisa was similarly extensive. In 1472 he pushed through the legislative councils a proposal defeated earlier in the year for the transfer of most of Florence's university (the Studio) to Pisa. By late 1473 the faculties of law and medicine were operating there (while the studia humanitatis remained in Florence). Lorenzo was among the Studio's governors who administered funding, much of it, ironically, from the income of Volterra's alum mines.(60) Lorenzo's influence and power were everywhere in the dominion, especially within local governments. Even with a major lacuna in the documents for the 1480s, over 1,300 pre-1494 letters addressed to the Medici by local governments have survived, 915 of them sent to Lorenzo from Pistoia (which leads the list), Arezzo, Prato, Volterra, Pisa, San Gimignano, Cortona, and altogether no fewer than 125 communities large and small. Some were generic declarations of loyalty occasionally accompanied by gifts, but the letters Lorenzo sent in return reveal that the majority of requests asked him to appoint persons of his choosing, often for as long as he wished, to administrative offices (chancellors, schoolteachers, notaries, administrators of hospitals) and ecclesiastical positions. Lorenzo's patronage was larger in volume, more extensive in reaching all corners of the dominion, and more exclusive and personal than that of any other Florentine: he permitted no one to exercise anything like the same degree of influence and was unwilling to delegate contacts even to members of his family, as his father and grandfather had done.(61) His patronage nonetheless occurred in the context of already complex relations between the Florentine government and the dominion communities, which often appealed to him for protection against Florentine fiscal demands. Lorenzo's intervention on behalf of clients was sometimes perceived by these same communities as interference and was occasionally resented and even resisted. Letting him pick their chancellors or hospital administrators gained them his good will and such appointments added to his network of clients. But promoting his friends and 537

favorites, his "creatures" as they were regarded, meant disappointing other candidates and embarrassing their local patrons or the governments in which they had served. In order to get or keep a client in office, Lorenzo did not hesitate to pressure the communities to overlook or annul their statutory prohibitions against re-election or extension of terms of office. A slow but steady erosion of local autonomies caused some grumbling and occasional anger but was generally accepted as the necessary cost of the benefits of being numbered among Lorenzo's friends and clients.(62) Lorenzo's intervention in the dominion also extended to the Florentine podesta, captains and vicars, the frequency of whose correspondence with him, despite their official status as officers of Florentine government, is extraordinary, Nearly 1,700 such letters have survived, and, since here too there is a lacuna for the 1480s, the original total was much greater. Officials sometimes wrote to defend the sentences of their district courts, in response to Lorenzo's requests (which local governments had asked him to make) for leniency or pardons. Although Lorenzo could not arbitrarily overturn convictions or reduce penalties, these officials would have thought twice about simply rejecting his wishes. Lorenzo mediated between local governments and Florentine administrators and judges, just as he did between the communities and Florentine tax officials. Thus the administration of justice in the subject territories became ever more dependent on his discretion and influence, as he applied more or less pressure or leaned in one direction or another, for reasons that could be political or personal but which did not necessarily reflect the merits of the case. Most dominion officials belonged to elite Florentine families and wanted of course to avoid giving the impression of being bullied or intimidated by Lorenzo and thus losing face vis-a-vis the towns they governed. But they sometimes agreed to reduce jail sentences, cancel a death sentence, or forego the use of torture. Dominion governance and the prospects for impartial justice or standardized administration were seriously compromised by these interventions and the always tense relations between Lorenzo and the ottimati. Dominion localities quickly became accustomed to the notion that parallel to, and often more powerful than, official justice was Lorenzo's "private" and politically motivated justice.(63) Building a Dynasty Lorenzo may never have seriously contemplated the transformation of the republic into a principate, but he did seek new kinds of personal power that he tried to bequeath to his children. Building a dynasty and protecting his family's future, both in and out of Florence, became the overriding objectives of his last years. Patronage and favors were the daily nuts and bolts of a system of unofficial governance that put Lorenzo and his wishes in the anxious expectations of every officeholder in and out of the city and of clients and notables throughout the dominion. But it was ritual, ceremony, and the appropriation of religion by which he sought to make himself the always visi538

ble, indispensable, and yet mysterious and charismatic center of Florentine life: to place himself, in effect, in the consciousness and emotions of thousands who would never meet him, speak with him, or write him a letter. It has been argued that Lorenzo was the author, or promoter, of a "ritual revolution" in Florence.(64) In the early 1470s he suppressed, or showed deadly indifference to, a variety of traditional Florentine rituals, as the government cut funding for the annual celebrations on the feast day of the Baptist, and the religious spectacles organized by confraternities for the feasts of the Annunciation, Ascension, and Pentecost all either lapsed or suffered from inadequate support.65 Even the festivals surrounding the cult of the Magi, so important to Cosimo, were terminated.

In the place of these now neglected traditional celebrations, Lorenzo himself became the organizing principle of new ritual spaces and forms. Observers noted precisely at what time, by what route, and in what company Lorenzo made his way around the city or into the countryside. His visits to churches, monasteries, and convents were eagerly awaited and well remembered events whose every detail was recorded by the flattered and entranced religious who believed (or gave to believe) they had been visited by a sacred person. Lorenzo continued his family's long-standing effort to claim patronage rights throughout the local church and to fuse the city's sacred spaces with the family's history and power. Although he lacked the funds that permitted Cosimo to rebuild churches and monasteries on a grand scale, he extended Medici patronage ties to a long list of ecclesiastical institutions in almost every religious order.

He made gifts of relics and had ex-voto images of himself placed near the altars of churches that benefited from his attention or largesse.66 He joined lay confraternities, several of which entrusted him with authority to settle disputes or rewrite their statutes, tasks that he delegated to others but which were remembered as the bestowal of his benevolence and wisdom. In the confraternity of San Paolo, whose membership included politically prominent citizens, Lorenzo played an active role over many years. His other confraternity memberships were usually honorary, although the honor was more often felt as Lorenzo's gift to them than theirs to him.67 Even as he limited his appearances to particularly significant occasions, he could have a powerful effect on these lay religious associations. Originally a popular neighborhood confraternity, Sant'Agnese in Drago Verde in the Oltrarno was radically transformed by what has been described as a "Medicean infiltration." Lorenzo joined in the early 1470s, and in the 1480s a long list of his closest associates, including his secretary Niccolo Michelozzi and the chancellor Scala, also joined and began monopolizing confraternal offices. Lorenzo dominated the association's charitable work, especially the annual distribution of bread to the poor, which henceforth became known as his own philanthropic gesture. In 1488 the company ignored its age requirements and elected Lorenzo's seventeen-year-old son Piero among its captains; the next year it bowed to Piero's wish to perform a Pentecost 539

play in the church of the Carmine, where Sant'Agnese met, declaring that, since his family was the confraternity's "benefactor," its captains "wished to provide him with every assistance," granting him "complete authority and power" to "make use of the said company and all its possessions" for the festival. 68 In such ways, Lorenzo coopted and controlled confraternities, once viewed with suspicion as potential sources of political intrigue but now docilely dependent on him for honor, subsidies, and favor.

Lorenzo's attention to youth confraternities and working-class festive associations marks a significant innovation in Medici strategy. Youth associations appeared in Florence early in the fifteenth century, and their increasing popularity induced Pope Eugenius to impose regulations and ecclesiastical supervision. Boys' confraternities, soon affiliated with church schools, engaged in prayer and laud singing, attended orations, and performed plays.(69) Increasing emphasis on youthful innocence in the community's self-representation merged with the cult of Lorenzo's own youthful persona. He participated in these associations, enrolled his sons, and even wrote a religious play, the Rappresentazione di San Giovanni e Paolo, performed by the company of San Giovanni Evangelista which included his youngest son, Giuliano.(70) Partly as a result of Lorenzo's support, boys' groups became perhaps the most prominent actors in Florentine processional life: a development that links Lorenzo's Florence with Savonarola's across the political boundary of 1494. Lorenzo also supported festive associations of workers, called potenze, some based in neighborhoods, others in occupational groups, and consisting mostly of textile laborers who had been driven from the political stage a century earlier and now reappeared in festive garb. In the early 1470s, Lorenzo permitted the potenze to emerge more openly and display their fanciful division of the city into festive "kingdoms" ruled by "emperors," "kings" and "nobles," such as the "Kingdom of the Millstone" and the "Grand Monarchy of the Red City.� Potenze exchanged elaborate ritualized visits and organized pageants that sometimes parodied the solemn representation of the social order enshrined in older communal rituals. The government authorized associations of both silk weavers (1481) and wool beaters (1488), who formed a company that was part confraternity, with a hospital for their poorer members, and part festive potenza. Lorenzo broke with two centuries of official repression of workers' associations in extending his patronage to these groups and allowing them a place on Florence's ritual stage. In 1489, for example, he made a loan of plates and table service (on which the Medici arms were of course prominently displayed) to the king of the potenza of Camaldoli in the Oltrarno for the group's May Day festivities.(71) As he restricted ritual for the political classes Lorenzo cultivated previously marginalized groups of youths and workers; another tacit admission of the precariousness of his hold on the upper classes. For a decade after the Pazzi catastrophe, Lorenzo suppressed most civic festivals, and when he cautiously permitted their resumption in the late 1480s their character had changed. In 1491 the San Giovanni festi540

val featured a re-creation, with fifteen wagons drawn by fifty pairs of oxen, of the triumph of the Roman general and consul Lucius Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Macedonia who returned to Rome with immense booty. Although Vasari attributes the design of the triumphal wagons to the artist Francesco Granacci 'a contemporary chronicler recorded that the whole pageant was Lorenzo's conception and that it was meant to highlight, through his identification With the Roman hero, Lorenzo's beneficence, popularity, and valor in protecting the republic against its enemies. It was, to say the least, a remarkably incongruous addition to the celebration of the feast day of the Baptist.(72) In place of the old community-based religious pageants, he promoted spectacles that marked the transition from festival to theater and sponsored scripted plays (including his own), saints' lives and Latin comedies, performed by youth companies instead of the adult confraternities that once staged traditional pageants. Lorenzo's direct involvement (reminiscent of his determination to control every aspect of patronage and politics) reveals an obsessive insistence on defining and controlling the city's festivals according to his tastes and interests, and probably also some apprehension about allowing people to manage them themselves.

Lorenzo's aim of elevating the Medici above all other Florentines required the one further crucial step of finally getting a cardinal who would give the family a power base independent of the vicissitudes of Florentine politics. To this end, and also to revive the bank's fortunes, he needed to re-establish good relations with the papacy, and the opportunity came with the election of Innocent VIII in 1484. After 1487, when Lorenzo married his daughter Maddalena to Innocent's son, Franceschetto Cybo, he regained some of the old Medici influence in Rome. Papal accounts and contracts were either restored or given anew to the Medici bank, which gave Lorenzo access to funds that he used in part to finance his new son-in-law's territorial ambitions.(73) That same year Lorenzo arranged Piero's marriage to Alfonsina of a Neapolitan branch of the Orsini. Since Lorenzo's wife was a Roman Orsini, and her brother was still Florence's archbishop, Piero's marriage solidified ties to a noble family with influence in both major states to the south.

But the greatest benefit of the alliance with Innocent was the pope's acquiescence in Lorenzo's ambition for his middle son Giovanni, who, in 1487, was only twelve years old. Even in an age in which the church was widely accepted as an arena for powerful families to pursue wealth and political aggrandizement, Lorenzo's zeal on behalf of so young a child raised eyebrows. Whether he believed that his family's ambition for princely status could only be realized through the church, or whether he thought, more modestly, that control in Florence would be strengthened by a family cardinal able to protect the bank and keep the friendship of successive popes, is a matter for speculation. In the early 1480s he tried to get Giovanni's foot in some ecclesiastical door: a 541

benefice that might be the first rung of a ladder leading to a cardinalate. In 1484 Lorenzo even had troops seize the abbey of Passignano in order to install Giovanni as abbot.(74) He got both his Neapolitan and Milanese allies to press Innocent to grant Giovanni possession of prestigious monasteries in their territories. By 1487 negotiations were underway for a cardinalate, linked to those for the marriage of Lorenzo's daughter to Innocent's son, and in 1489 Innocent finally consented to make the thirteen-year-old Giovanni a cardinal. Because of the boy's age, the pope wanted the appointment kept secret and insisted that he wait three years before being consecrated in the office. Lorenzo, craving the political benefit of immediate publicity, could not wait, much to Innocent's annoyance. When Giovanni went to Rome, his father wrote him a letter impressing upon him that this was "the greatest honor ever bestowed on our house," urging him "to become a good churchman" and "to love the honor and estate of the Holy Church and Apostolic See more than anything in the world," and adding: "But even with this reservation, you will not lack opportunity to help the city of Florence and our family."(75) In lavish celebrations the Florentines indulged Lorenzo's need to hear expressions of joy and reverence for the holy youth who now represented and protected Florence in Rome, despite the huge sums the deal with Innocent had cost and the well-founded suspicion that much of the money had come from the public treasury. No one knew exactly how much: according to Piero Parenti, after the Medici were exiled a review of communal accounts showed that Lorenzo had taken 100,000 florins for Giovanni's cardinalate;(76) Giovanni Cambi thought it was 50,000, and Alamanno Rinuccini 200,000.(77) Widespread anger after the expulsion over Lorenzo's misappropriation of communal funds suggests that not everyone was as deliriously happy as Lorenzo wanted to believe when he himself wrote about the 1489 celebrations that there had never been "a truer and more universal happiness" in Florence. But it was not a moment to spoil the party. After all, a Florentine cardinal could indeed do good things for his city. Three years later, when the still adolescent but now consecrated cardinal returned home six weeks after his father's death, he was given a triumphal entry of the sort usually reserved for noble foreigners.(78) No one knew, of course, that just two years later the Medici would be in exile, or that, when they returned in 1512, cardinal Giovanni would be just months away from becoming Pope Leo X. Whether he ever fulfilled Lorenzo's admonition to "help the city of Florence" was later much debated, but he certainly helped his family.

In the almost quarter-century of Lorenzo's leadership, relations between the regime and the ottimati lurched from crisis to crisis, in large part because Lorenzo sought a kind of power alien to their notions of aristocratic rule. Although the regime seemed to emerge stronger after each crisis, in the sense that controls became tighter and opposi542

tion voices weaker, its hold on the ottimati became more fragile. This underlying instability left the city deeply divided and ill-prepared to face the suddenly more dangerous world that began in 1494. Beneath the apparent pacification of the 1480s, many ottimati feared that things had gone too far, and two years after Lorenzo died they brought down the regime. What had taken sixty years to build, defend, and consolidate collapsed in a matter of days. Decades later, the pre-1494 generation came to be seen as a time of enlightened rule, domestic tranquility, and cultural splendor. The culture was indeed splendid, but behind the facade of tranquility was a brittle regime that did not trust its own citizens, and least of all the ottimati.

Notes 1. M. M. Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance (Florence, 1994), chap. 1, "II Magnifico Between Myth and History," pp. 3-41; N. Rubinstein, "The Formation of the Posthumous Image of Lorenzo de' Medici," in Oxford, China, and Italy: Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton on His Eightieth Birthday, ed. E. Chaney and N. Ritchie (London, 1984), pp. 94-106; F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de' Medici, pp. 1-9.

2. N. Rubinstein, "Lorenzo's Image in Europe," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. M. Mallett and N. Mann (London, 1996), pp. 297-312 (302-3).

3. Angelo Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, ed. A. Perosa (Padua, 1958); Poliziano, The Pazzi Conspiracy, trans. R. Watkins and D. Marsh, in H11111a11ism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. R. Watkins (Columbia, S.C., 1978), pp. 171-83, (171, 180).

4. A. Brown, "Lorenzo and Public Opinion: The Problem of Opposition," in Lorenzo ii Magnifico e ii suo mondo, ed. G. Garfognini (Florence, 1994), pp. 61-85 (translations of Parenti, pp. 60, 70, 73-5); Piero di Marco Parenti, Storia fiorentina, ed. A. Matucci (Florence, 1994), p. 23.

5. F. W. Kent, "The Young Lorenzo, 1449-69," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Mallett and Mann, pp. 1-22.

6. N. Carew-Reid, Les fetes florentines au temps de Lorenzo if Magnifico (Florence, 1995), pp.

24-6, 31-5.

7. Rubinstein, Government, p. 200n.

8. Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, vol. 1 (1460-1474), ed. R. Fubini (Florence, 1977), pp. 48-51.

9. Ibid., p. 155.

10. P. Clarke, Soderini and Medici, pp. 180-96; Clarke, "Lorenzo de' Medici and Tommaso Soclerini," in Lorenzo de' Medici: st11di, ed. G. Garfagnini (Florence, 1992), pp. 67-101.

11. R. Fubini, "In margine all'eclizione delle Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici," in Lorenzo de' Medici: studi, pp. 168-77.

12. Clarke, Soderini and Medici, p. 204.

13. Cronica, ed. Barducci, p. 114.

14. F. W. Kent, "Patron-Client Networks in Renaissance Florence and the Emergence of Lorenzo as 'Maestro Della Bottega'," in Lorenzo de' Medici: New Perspectiues, ed. B. Toscani (New York, 1993), pp. 279-313.

15. L. Fabbri, "Patronage and Its Role in Government: The Florentine Patriciate and Volterra," in Florentine Tuscany, ed. Connell and Zorzi, pp. 225-41.

16. For what follows: E. Fiumi, L'impresa di Lorenzo de' Medici contra Volterra (1472) (Florence, J 948); R. Fubini, "Lorenzo de' Medici e Volterra," in Fubini, Quattrocento fiore11ti110: politica, diplomazia, cultura (Pisa, J 996), pp. 123-39.

543

17. Fiumi, L'impresa, pp. 88-95.

18. Fubini, "Lorenzo de' Medici e Volterra," pp. 132-3.

19. Fiumi, L'impresa, p. 133.

20. Ibid., p. 142.

21. Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine, ed. A. Montevecchi (Milan, 1998), III, p. 112; The History of Florence, trans. M. Domandi (New York, 1970), p. 26.

22. The best overall treatment is L. Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (Oxford, 2003); see also J. Hook, Lorenzo de' Medici: An Historical Biography (London, 1984), pp. 73-117.

23. R. Fubini, "La congiura dei Pazzi: radici politico-sociali e ragioni di un fallimento," in Lorenzo de' Medici: New Perspectives, ed. Toscani, pp. 219-47.

24. De Roover, Medici Bank, pp. 358-75.

25. Peterson, "An Episcopal Election," in Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law, ed. Sweeney and Chodorow, pp. 300-25.

26. Fubini, "La congiura dei Pazzi," in Lorenzo de' Medici: New Perspectives, ed. Toscani, pp.

226-31.

27. Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, vol. II, ed. R. Fubini (Florence, 1977), pp. 58-9, 6971, 124; N. Rubinstein, "Lorenzo de' Medici: The Formation of His Statecraft," in Lorenzo de' Medici: st11di, pp. 54-6.

28. R. Fubini, Federico da Montefeltro e la congiura dei Pazzi: politica e propaganda alla luce di nuovi documenti (Rome, J 986); M. Simonetta, "Federico da Montefcltro contra Firenze: retroscena inediti della congiura dei Pazzi," ASI 16] (2003): 261-84.

29. Poliziano, Coniurationis commentarium, ed. Perosa; trans. Watkins and Marsh, in Watkins, Humanism and Liberty, pp. 171-83 (173).

30. Luca Landucci, Diario fiore11ti110 dal 1450 al 1516, ed. I. Del Badia (Florence, 1883; repr.

Florence, 1969), p. 20; trans. A. De Rosen Jervis, A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516 (London, 1927), p. 17.

31. Guicciardini, Storie fiore11ti11e, IV, pp. l 17-27 (124, 126-7); History of Florence, trans. Domandi, pp. 29-36 (34-6).

32. F. Di Benedetto, "Un breve di Sisto IV contra Lorenzo," ASI 150 (1992): 371-84.

33. Bartolomeo Scala, Humanistic and Political Writings, ed. A. Brown (Tempe, Ariz., 1997), pp.

195-202; Di Benedetto, "Un breve di Sisto IV," pp. 376-81.

34. K. Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200-1600 (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 238-68.

35. Guicciardini, Storie fiorelltine, VI, pp. 142-3.

36. N. Rubinstein, "Le origini della missione di Lorenzo a Napoli," in Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, vol. 4, ed. N. Rubinstein (Florence, 1981), pp. 391-400; Rubinstein, "Lorenzo and the Formation of His Statecraft," in Lorenzo de' Medici: st11di, pp. 56-66.

37. Lettere, vol. 4, pp. 249-69; English translation in C. M. Ady, Lorenzo dei Medici and Renaissance Italy (New York, 1962), pp. 74-5.

38. Lettere, vol. 4, pp. 367-8; Scala, Humanistic and Political Writings, ed. Brown, pp. 203-4.

39. A. Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton, N.J., 1979), pp. 90-3.

40. Ibid., pp. 95-6.

41. Lettere, vol. 4, p. 245, n. 9.

42. Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine, VI, p. 145; IX, pp. 179-80.

43. L. De Angelis, "Lorenzo a Napoli: progetti di pace e conflitti politici dopo la congiura dei Pazzi," AS! 150 (1992): 385-421.

44. Lettere, vol. 4, pp. 377-89 (381).

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45. Rubinstein, Government, pp. 228-30, 238-41.

46. Ibid., pp. 227-8, 233, 244, 255, 359-63.

47. A. Brown, "Lorenzo, The Monte and the Seventeen Reformers: Public and Private Interest," in Brown, The Medici in Florence, pp. 151-211.

48. Brown, "Lorenzo and Public Opinion," in Lorenzo ii Magnifico e il suo mondo, eel. Garfagnini, pp. 76-7.

49. Landucci, Diario, pp. 36, 38, 40, 48.

50. Ed. F. Adorno in Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Toscana di Sciellze e Lettere "La Colombaria" 22 (1957): 270-303; trans. Watkins, Humanism and Liberty, pp. 193-224.

51. Brown, "Seventeen Reformers," pp. 177-81.

52. See Matucci's introduction to Parenti's Storia fiorentina, p. xiii.

53. Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine, III, pp. 110-11; IX, 179-81; History of Florence, trans. Domandi, pp. 25, 74-5.

54. A. Brown, "Lorenzo de' Medici's New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence," Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 113-42.

55. W.J. Connell, La citta dei crucci: fazioni e clientele in uno stato repubblicano del '400 (Florence, 2000), pp. 83-7.

56. S. J. Milner, "Rubrics and Requests: Statutory Division and Supra-Communal Clientage in Fifteenth-Century Pistoia," in Florentine Tuscany, ed. Connell and Zorzi, pp. 312-32 (321-4).

57. See Lucrczia Tornabuoni, Lettere, ed. P. Salvadori (Florence, 1993).

58. Milner, "Rubrics and Requests," pp. 324-7.

59. R. Black, "Lorenzo and Arezzo," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Mallett and Mann, pp. 217-34.

60. J. Davies, Florence and Its University During the Earl)' Renaissance (Leiden, J 998), pp. 12542.

61. W.J. Connell, "Changing Patterns of Medicean Patronage: The Florentine Dominion During the Fifteenth Century," in Lorenzo ii Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. Garfagnini, pp. 87-107; Connell, Citta dei crucci, pp. 125-47.

62. P. Salvadori, "Florentines and the Communities of the Territorial State," in Florentine Tuscany, ed. Connell and Zorzi, pp. 207-24; and Salvaclori, Dominio e [Jatronato: Lorenzo dei Medici e la Toscana nel Quattrocento (Rome, 2000).

63. Salvadori, Dominio e fJatronato, pp. 97-132; Salvadori, "Gli ufficiali estrinseci fiorcntini c Lorenzo dci Medici," in Gli officiali degli Stati italiani def Quattrocento, ed. F. Leverotti, Annali delta Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Quaderni I (1997): 213-24.

64. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 428-62.

65. Newbigin, Peste d'Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-Centriry Florence, 2 vols. (Florence, 1996); see also N. Eckstein, The District of the Green Dragon, pp. 55-60.

66. K. Lowe, "Lorenzo's 'Presence' at Churches, Convents, and Shrines in and outside Florence," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Mallett and Mann, pp. 23-36.

67. L. Sebregondi, "Lorenzo de' Medici confratello illustre," ASI 150 (1992): 319-41; K. Eisenbichler, "Lorenzo de' Medici e la Congregazione dei Neri nella Compagnia clella Croce al Tempio," ibid., pp. 343-70; R. F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), pp. 169-73; Weissman, "Lorenzo de' Medici and the Confraternity of San Paolo," in Lorenzo de' Medici: Neru Perspectives, ed. Toscani, pp. 315-29.

68. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, pp. 205-24 (213); Newbigin, Feste d'Oltrarno, vol. 1, pp. 206-8.

69. I. Taddei, Fanciulli e giovani: crescere a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence, 2001); K. Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-1785 (To545

ronto, 1998); L. Polizzotto, Children of the Promise: The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence, 1427-1785 (Oxford, 2004).

70. N. Newbigin, "Politics in the Sacre rappresentazioni of Lorenzo's Florence," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Mallett and Mann, pp. 117-30.

71. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 368-87, 399-418 (411-13).

72. Ibid., p. 451; Carew-Reid, Les fetes florentines, pp. 91-2; P. Ventrone, "Lorenzo's 'politica festiva'," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Mallett and Mann, pp.114-15.

73. Bullard, Lorenzo, pp. 133-53.

74. G. B. Picotti, La giovinezza di Leone X (Milan, 1927); E. H. Gombrich, "The Sassetti Chapel Revisited: Santa Trinita and Lorenzo de' Medici," I Tatti Studies 7 (1997): 11-35.

75. Bullard, Lorenzo, p. 33; W. Roscoe, The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, 10th edn. (London, 1862), pp. 467-70.

76. Parenti, Storia, p. 198.

77. Brown, Medici in Florence, p. 177n.

78. Trexler, Public Life, pp. 456-7; Carew-Reid, Les fetes florentines, pp. 171-2.

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