The House Of Medici Page 6

  All was not, of course, as it seemed to be. Though the constitutional institutions and offices of the State remained as before, opponents of the Medici were conveniently excluded from election to the Signoria in times of political or military stress by the selection of candidates being entrusted to carefully chosen commissioners known as Accoppiatori. A majority of these Accoppiatori had links with the Medici party to which such prominent citizens as Agnolo Acciaiuoli, now recalled from exile, lent their support and of which the wily, eloquent Puccio Pucci, a brilliant organizer raised by Cosimo from the artisan class, was the acknowledged manager. The party was constantly enlarging its base. At Pucci’s suggestion the Grandi were now all declared Popolani which gratified the nobles, who were thus theoretically rendered eligible for election to office, while pleasing the Popolo Minuto who chose to interpret the measure as commendably democratic. The people were given greater satisfaction when it was seen that the most talented amongst them, despite their humble origins, were now considered, for the first time in the history of Florence, worthy of holding official positions in the State, though care was taken to ensure that this process did not go too far. The old noble families were still prevented from exercising any real power; and well over three-quarters of the population remained without any political rights at all. Of the 159 newly qualified citizens from the Santa Maria Novella quarter whose names were placed in the borse in 1453, no less than 145 were sons, grandsons or brothers of men who had been considered eligible for office in 1449.

  Within a few years the Medici party was so strongly rooted – if always loosely knit – and so firmly identified with the interests of Florence as a whole that Cosimo had no need to suppress the voices of opposition. His erstwhile friend, Neri Capponi, old-fashioned and staunchly republican, was permitted to give occasional utterance to his concern about Cosimo’s insidiously growing power. So was Giannozzo Manetti, a rich and scholarly merchant who was frequently employed on diplomatic missions. But neither of them had the backing of a party, and both soon departed from the scene: Capponi died in 1455, while Manetti, protesting that he was being ruined by the monstrously heavy taxes levied on his fortune, chose to leave Florence for Naples.

  Although the practice was not as widespread as his critics afterwards maintained, there seems little doubt that Cosimo’s party did on occasion use the Florence taxation system to break their enemies. Certainly the taxation officers – in the lists of whose names Puccio Pucci figures prominently – were not noted for their impartiality when assessing the taxes due from critics of the regime. Nor did the party managers – who were often used by Cosimo to do unpleasant work with which he did not want to be associated – shrink from buying up at bargain prices the estates of men banished from the Republic, or from making personal fortunes, as Puccio Pucci did, from buying and selling government stock.

  For such reasons, though outspoken opposition was rare, the Medici party was far from universally popular; and in troubled times its position was very precarious. In 1458, indeed, it seemed on the verge of dissolution. In January of that year, following a long period of economic stagnation, the merchants and landowners of Florence were horrified to learn that they were to be assessed for a new catasto. Then, in the early summer, there was talk of a change in the constitution; there were rumours, too, that opponents of the change had been arrested and tortured to elicit confessions of conspiracy. Feelings in Florence ran so high that Cosimo rented a house in Pavia through the Milanese branch of his bank and prepared to move there with his wife should the situation grow more menacing. His daughter-in-law took his grandchild to his villa at Cafaggiolo, which he had had surrounded by walls and towers for just such an emergency.

  On 10 August, the Gonfalionere, Luca Pitti, felt obliged to call a complaisant Parlamento into existence in the Piazza della Signoria which he prudently filled with mercenary troops and armed supporters of the regime. The members of the Signoria walked out of their palace, in their crimson, ermine-lined cloaks, to stand on the ringhiera. The Notaio delle Riformagioni read out the text of a law creating a new Balìa; then, following the ancient precedent, he asked the people in the square below whether they approved its creation. He ‘repeated the question three times; but since the Notaio had a very weak voice, only a few understood what he was saying and there

  re not many voices to answer yea’. Nevertheless the few were enough; the Balìa was approved; ‘the Signoria returned to the palace, the citizens to their workshops and the mercenaries to their billets’.

  The Balìa thereupon immediately introduced those measures which the Medici party had proposed. The powers of the Accoppiatori were confirmed for a further ten years, so that the drawing of lots for election to public offices continued to be a mere formality. The power of the Gonfaloniere was at the same time much increased. Luca Pitti, whose tenure of that office was shortly to expire, had himself elected one of the ten Accoppiatori, while Cosimo’s elder son, Piero de’ Medici, became another. As supporters of the Medici paraded through the streets, shouting slogans and waving banners, Cosimo’s family returned to Florence. The supremacy of their party was now assured and Cosimo himself recognized as the undisputed patriarch of Florence. He was now ‘master of the country’, in the words of Aeneas Silvius de’ Piccolomini who became Pope Pius II in 1458. ‘Political questions are settled at his house. The man he chooses holds office…He it is who decides peace and war and controls the laws…He is King in everything but name.’ Foreign rulers were advised to communicate with him personally and not to waste their time by approaching anyone else in Florence when any important decision was required. As the Florentine historian, Francesco Guicciardini, observed, ‘He had a reputation such as probably no private citizen has ever enjoyed from the fall of Rome to our own day.’

  V

  ARCHBISHOPS AND ARCHITECTS

  ‘Never shall I be able to give God enough to set

  him down in my books as a debtor’

  NOTHING CONTRIBUTED more lustre to Cosimo’s prestige in the early years of his power than the General Council of the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches which he helped to persuade his friend, Pope Eugenius IV, to transfer to Florence in 1439.

  Apparently irreconcilable differences, mainly doctrinal, had kept the two great Churches of Christendom at loggerheads for six centuries; and, within the last two centuries, ever since the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade had sacked Constantinople at the instigation of their Venetian paymasters, the quarrel had grown more bitter. But now that the Ottoman Turks, who had been gnawing at the Eastern Empire for generations, were almost at the gates of Constantinople, Pope Eugenius realized that the chances of reconciliation had never been better. The Eastern Emperor, John Paleologus, had appealed for help in the name of Christ, and was even prepared to make submission to the Pope if soldiers and seamen from the Catholic west would help to save Byzantium from impending calamity. The Pope accordingly decided to summon a Great Council to meet in Italy without further delay.

  He did not only have the unity of the Church in mind. There was already another Council in session at Bâle; and this Council, called into existence by the German Emperor, had proposed various reforms in the Church and propounded doctrines which the Pope was not prepared to accept. He had, therefore, attempted to dissolve it. Declining to disperse, the obstinate delegates at Bâle had proclaimed their intention both of making radical changes in the finances of the Curia and of coming to terms with the Eastern Church. But the Pope was not prepared to listen patiently to suggestions of a reduction in papal income; and as for any settlement with the Eastern Church, he was determined to make it himself. So, to put an end to the messages passing between Bâle and Constantinople, the Pope issued an invitation to the Eastern Emperor to come to meet him at Ferrara.

  Towards the end of 1437 John Paleologus sailed for Venice, accompanied by the Patriarch of Constantinople and their attendant bishops, theologians, scholars, interpreters and officials – a huge concourse of delegates, seven hun
dred strong. The great assembly began their deliberations at Ferrara on 8 January 1438. The town was overcrowded and very cold; there were disagreements about precedence; there were quarrels about rites. The Catholic bishop refused to allow the Greeks to celebrate Mass in their own way in his churches; the Patriarch expressed his strongest disapproval of the ban; the Pope was edgy and ill at ease. There were reports that his enemies were hatching plots against him in nearby Bologna, a city which theoretically formed part of the Papal States but which, after declaring itself independent, was now under the lordship of the Bentivoglio family. The Pope was further worried by his embarrassing shortage of money. He had to pledge his towering medieval castle at Assisi as security for the large sums he had borrowed. But even so, he was obliged to stop paying the expenses of his numerous Greek guests.

  Cosimo heard of the troubles at Ferrara with satisfaction. He had been much annoyed when that city had been chosen in preference to Florence as a meeting-place for the Council. Any city that acted as host to so important a conference would benefit not merely financially but politically and culturally too. If unity between the Churches were to be achieved this could not but reflect honour upon the place where Christendom was once again made whole. Besides, closer contact with the rulers of the Eastern Empire might well bring much new business to the bankers, traders and merchants of Florence, while conversation with the Greek scholars in the Emperor’s entourage would be a relaxation and a delight. When plague broke out in Ferrara towards the end of the year, Cosimo’s hopes were fulfilled. His brother, Lorenzo, arrived in the city with assurances that Florence was a much healthier place, that there was ample accommodation there for which no charge whatsoever would be made, and that the Council could avail itself of a loan of 1500 florins a month for as long as the delegates remained in session. Lorenzo’s offer was immediately accepted, and preparations were made for leaving Ferrara at once.

  The entry into Florence of the Eastern Emperor and his enormous train of attendants was not as impressive as the city’s officials had planned. A fierce winter storm of torrential rain drove the thousands of expectant observers off the streets and brought them down from the roof-tops where they had clustered to watch the great procession pass by. The banners and standards lay bedraggled beneath the window-sills; the sounds of the trumpet blasts were carried away by the wind. Cosimo, who had himself been elected Gonfaloniere for the occasion, confessed himself much relieved when the city’s guests were safely installed in their lodgings.

  The Pope and his suite were lodged in the monastery of Santa Maria Novella; the Patriarch was given apartments in the Palazzo Ferranti in the Borgo Pinti; the Eastern Emperor and his attendants moved into the palaces and houses of the exiled Peruzzi family where they were presented with wine and candles, crystallized fruits, marzipan and sweetmeats. The meetings of Council committees were held in Santa Maria Novella, while full sessions took place in Santa Croce.

  Attending these sessions as a spectator, Vespasiano da Bisticci was profoundly impressed by the learned speeches and the skilful manner in which the interpreters translated Greek into Latin and Latin into Greek. Yet, as the days passed, it became only too clear that little headway was being made and that tempers on both sides were becoming excessively frayed. A principal point at dispute concerned the origin and nature of the third Person of the Trinity, the Greek opinion in this matter being strongly contested by the Pope’s spokesman and his principal adviser, Ambrogio Traversari. Ancient texts were produced, and the Greeks’ arguments confounded when a nervous delegate, alarmed by a passage which he recognized as being unfavourable to their case, attempted to scratch it out but in his haste and anxiety scratched out a different one. The Emperor endeavoured to compose the uproar which this attempted fraud produced by suggesting that other and more authoritative manuscripts should be fetched from Constantinople, a proposal that brought forth from a Roman cardinal the magisterial rebuke, ‘Sire, when you go to war you should take your arms with you, not send for them in the middle of the battle.’

  To the Florentine citizens, however, the Council proved a delightful spectacle. The sight of the bearded men from Constantinople walking through the streets in their astonishingly opulent clothes and their bizarre head-dresses, attended by Moorish and Mongol servants and accompanied by strange animals, was a never-ending source of interest as well as an inspiration to many a Florentine painter from Gentile da Fabriano to Benozzo Gozzoli.

  Ultimately, after lengthy private discussions between Traversari and the patient and clever Johannes Bessarion, Archbishop of Nicaea, a compromise on the delicate subject of the Holy Ghost was reached; and this opened the way for agreement on other matters, including the partial authority of the Papacy over the Eastern Church. The crucial document setting forth the terms of the oecumenical compromise was solemnly signed on 5 July 1439; and the following day, during a ceremony in the Cathedral, this dramatic pronouncement was made: ‘Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult, for the wall which divided the Western and Eastern Churches has fallen. Peace and concord have returned.’

  The words were spoken by Cardinal Cesarini in Latin, and by Archbishop Bessarion in Greek. Then the Italian cardinal and the Greek archbishop embraced each other and, joined by all the other prelates and the Eastern Emperor, they knelt before the Pope. Afterwards their message to the Christian world, celebrating the triumph of reason, was inscribed on one of the great stone pillars which were to support the Cathedral dome.

  But the concord thus joyfully celebrated was of brief duration. No sooner had the delegates returned home to Constantinople than the agreement reached in Florence was so strongly denounced that it had to be abandoned; and the Emperor was to find that the protestations of sympathy and promises of help against the Turk which he had received in Italy were to count for little. Fourteen years later the Sultans janissaries were to clamber over the smoking walls of Constantinople and the severed head of its last Emperor was to be displayed to the jeers of its conquerors at the top of a column of porphyry.

  Yet for Florence, as Cosimo had foreseen, the Council had far happier consequences. As well as profiting the trade of the city, it was an important influence on what was already being spoken of as the Rinascimento. The presence of so many Greek scholars in Florence provided an incalculable stimulus to the quickening interest in classical texts and classical history, in classical art and philosophy, and particularly in the study of Plato, that great hero of the humanists, for so long overshadowed by his pupil, Aristotle. Bessarion, whose lodgings had been crowded night after night with Greek and Italian scholars, was prevailed upon to remain in Italy where he was created a cardinal and Archbishop of Siponto. Gemistos Plethon, the great authority on Plato, who had travelled from Constantinople with Bessarion, also agreed to remain in Florence for a time before going home to die in his own country.

  Cosimo, who had listened to Plethon’s lectures on Plato with the closest attention, was inspired to found in Florence an academy for Platonic studies and to devote much more time to these studies himself. Plethon’s return home and Cosimo’s subsequent preoccupation with other matters had led to his plans being postponed for a time; but, some years later, when Cosimo adopted the son of one of his physicians, a young medical student named Marsilio Ficino, they were revived. Ficino’s enthusiasm for Plato prompted Cosimo to pay for his further education and afterwards to offer to instal him in the villa known as Montevecchio where, in the peace of the country, the young man was to study Greek and to translate all Plato into Latin.1 Ficino eagerly accepted the offer and, as he grew older and more learned, Cosimo would call him over from Montevecchio to the nearby villa of Careggi, and either alone or with other friends, such as the Greek scholar, John Argyropoulos, whom Cosimo persuaded to come to Florence in 1456, they would discuss philosophical questions far into the night. From these foundations grew the Platonic Academy which was to have so profound an influence upon the development of European thought.

  As well as firing Cosimo wit
h the ambition to found a Platonic Academy, the Council of Florence had also enabled him to make several marvellous additions to his library, which was beginning to be recognized as one of the most valuable in the world. For years past, his agents all over Europe and in the Near East had been buying on his instructions rare and important books and manuscripts whenever they became available, particularly in German monasteries where the monks were supposed to have little idea of their worth. In 1437 the death of Niccolò Niccoli, who was deeply in Cosimo’s debt, placed eight hundred more volumes in his hands. The religious books he gave to the monastery of San Marco; the others he kept for himself. Open to all his friends who cared to study there, it was the first library of its kind in Europe, and a generation later served as a model for the Vatican Library in Rome. Constantly increased by Cosimo and his heirs, it was eventually to contain no less than ten thousand codices of Latin and Greek authors, hundreds of priceless manuscripts from the time of Dante and Petrarch as well as others from Florence’s remoter past.2