Magnifico (24 page)

Even before the citizens had assembled, the news came from Careggi that Piero had died. “At the twenty-third-and-a-half hour [about 4:30 in the afternoon] there came upon him a sudden fit of pain in his limbs and seizures that the Magnificent Piero passed from this life,” reported Sacramoro to Duke Galeazzo; “he showed with gestures and squeezings of the hand, since he could no longer speak—so impetuous was the onset of this catarrh—that he wished to place his sons in the care of Your Highness; he died with a great show of contrition and, like his father, ordered a funeral without pomp.”

It was thus with a heavy heart and fears for the future that the leading men of Florence made their way through darkened streets to the monastery close by the Porta Piacenza.
†

“
Messer
Tommaso Soderini took the word as eldest, and explained how Piero had left his sons already grown up and gifted with good judgment and intellect,” Niccolò Roberti reported the dramatic scene:

With Soderini’s statesmanlike speech and its endorsement by other powerful members of the regime, most in the hall quickly rallied behind the Medici until, according to Sacramoro’s report, a consensus quickly emerged that all would “work together for the good of the state and the preservation of the house of the Medici and the maintenance of the league.”

While many historians, including Machiavelli, have assumed that the outcome of this meeting was a foregone conclusion, subsequent events reveal that Soderini had at least considered briefly taking the opposite course. Indeed, in supporting Lorenzo’s claim, he had not renounced his personal ambition. As late as December 1, Sacramoro was fretting about the possibility that Soderini would betray the cause, concluding, however, that he lacked the popular following to strike out on his own: “The common people don’t believe he is so good as he is clever, and therefore I don’t think that he can expect all the spices to be sold at his house.” The colorful turn of phrase captures the shrewd calculation behind Soderini’s decision, which was based less on personal loyalty than on a clear-eyed assessment of his market value. He was smart enough to know that without a popular following he could never rally the leadership behind him, much less the city as a whole. Like the leaders of the Hill in 1466, he could only unseat the Medici by posing as the champion of democratic reform, a role to which his past history made him singularly unsuited and that might unleash forces he would be hard pressed to control. By standing before the assembled leaders of the state and urging them to throw their support behind Lorenzo and Giuliano he hoped to retain, and even to strengthen, his role as the éminence grise of the regime. It was a role to which he was eminently suited and, as subsequent events were to reveal, it is clear he now thought of himself as, in effect, the regent to the young and inexperienced Medici heir.

Thus it was that the following morning a delegation of “leaders, knights and citizens,” led again by Tommaso Soderini, called upon Lorenzo and Giuliano at the Via Larga, to pay their respects and to place control of the state into their hands.
*
Lorenzo, though outwardly unchanged from the youth of yesterday, would have grown enormously in their eyes. From the dutiful son ably helping his father he had become overnight the pater familias, the lord of his household with almost unlimited powers beneath his own roof. The palace through which these distinguished gentlemen walked—the most magnificent in all of Florence and filled to the rafters with works of art and antiques that would turn many a king green with envy—was now his personal property. Though only a youth of twenty, the riches at his disposal, the vast estates and far-flung business enterprises that he now commanded, gave him a gravitas that yesterday he lacked.

Lorenzo received the delegation dressed in mourning black in the great hall beneath the enormous canvases by Pollaiuolo representing the labors of Hercules, a hero to whom another great artist would one day compare him.
†
He responded to the delegation’s offer with words of admirable humility. Unworthy as he was of the honor, and aware of how much he would still have to rely on the wisdom of those older and wiser than he, he would, for the sake of his family and his country, accept what was so generously proffered:

The picture of the reluctant prince taking up the burden of rule with a heavy heart strikes many as disingenuous at best. His critics point out that days, and even years, before, Lorenzo had been preparing himself for this moment. His letters to the duke of Milan do not show someone taking up the scepter only grudgingly but, on the contrary, reveal someone who desperately sought power. It is also certain that Lorenzo was deeply involved in the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that culminated in the mass meeting at Sant’Antonio; his agents were heavily represented in the crowd and, like party bosses at a convention, labored diligently to ensure a successful outcome. Even before the crowd had dispersed Lorenzo knew he had prevailed.

But for all the hard work that had gone into assuring his succession, his reluctance to take up the burden was very real. To don the mantle once worn by Cosimo,
Pater Patriae,
and just lately slipped from the shoulders of his father, was the culmination of his ambitions, but he was under no illusions as to the difficulties he would face or the onerous daily pressures under which he would stagger. Already adult responsibilities had begun to squeeze out youthful pastimes; now those burdens would be infinitely multiplied.

The truth was that Lorenzo had no choice but to accept what was offered to him. His explanation that he did so “solely for the safety of our friends and of our possessions” is disarmingly candid. At the tender age of twenty, Lorenzo was now both the patriarch of his extended family and the father of his nation. From the peasants employed on their many estates to the workers in the various factories floating on capital from the Medici bank, there were literally thousands of souls counting on his wise and benevolent leadership. He was sufficiently versed in the ways of Florentine government to understand that he could hardly meet his obligations without a controlling hand on the spigots through which patronage flowed. “For it is ill living in Florence for the rich unless they rule the state,” he wrote, as pithy a critique of the political system as ever penned. But if he recognized the corruption inherent in this system of government, he had no thought of reforming practices hallowed by long usage. His Medici forebears were as adept as any in making sure their friends profited and their enemies suffered, and Lorenzo felt that duty demanded he do no less.

Similar factors motivated those who called on him that December morning. These were men who had prospered both politically and financially under Cosimo and his son and who stood to lose in the uncertainty accompanying a change of regime. Along with, perhaps, genuine sorrow at the loss of a trusted colleague and admiration for Lorenzo, one can sense their hard calculation. Lorenzo, while no doubt moved by their expressions of sympathy, was sufficiently realistic to understand that and self-interest, rather than bonds of affection, was what led these men to his door that day.

Piero’s funeral, like his father’s before him, was an understated affair, the coffin traveling the few blocks from the palace to the church draped in the simple black cloth of an ordinary citizen and escorted by a contingent of priests and monks of institutions blessed by Medici patronage. Ambassadors of both the king of Naples and the duke of Milan formed part of the procession, as did the
condottiere
Roberto di Sanseverino, but few other dignitaries accompanied Lorenzo, Giuliano, and their family to San Lorenzo. Once inside the church the few guttering candles dimly illuminating the great basilica added to the somber mood of the funeral mass. With the last echo of the concluding
Agnus Dei,
Piero was laid to rest beside his brother, Giovanni, in the family sacristy.
*

Donato Acciaiuoli, who had delivered the eulogy on the occasion of Cosimo’s death, was one of countless distinguished gentlemen who wrote Lorenzo consoling him on his loss: “When shall we find another so reasonable in council, so just, true, mild in character, so loving towards home, relations, friends, so worthy of respect, as your excellent father, who has been taken from us to our great sorrow.” Lorenzo’s comments on his father’s death are unrevealing; the letters he wrote in the following days are filled with conventional expressions of sorrow and a recognition of the heavy responsibilities under which he labored, but they are formal exercises and convey little of the emotional turmoil of the moment. A more vivid testament to Lorenzo’s feelings comes in a letter by Marco Parenti, who witnessed the funeral. Catching a glimpse of the new ruler in a rare moment of vulnerability, he reported that Lorenzo wept openly on his way back from church.

IN HIS PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE,
DISPUTATIONES
Camaldulenses,
the humanist Cristoforo Landino includes an idealized portrait of Lorenzo shortly before his assumption of power. The setting is the cloister of the Camaldoli, an isolated monastery on the wooded slopes of the Apennine foothills; the time is the autumn of 1468; and the conversation revolves around the rights and responsibilities of a citizen in a free republic.
*
The conversation, which involves many of Florence’s leading intellectuals—including both Lorenzo and Giuliano, the expatriate Leon Battista Alberti, Marsilio Ficino, Donato Acciaiuoli, and, intriguingly, Lorenzo’s secret enemy Alamanno Rinuccini—takes place in the kind of rural setting Lorenzo loved and often wrote about himself, a fragrant meadow shaded by a beech tree overhanging a clear spring. The idyllic surroundings provide a perfect foil for the ensuing debate over the relative merits of the active and contemplative life, though the attractions of this rustic spot might seem to tip the balance in favor of the latter.

Landino’s narrative does not pretend to provide a realistic portrayal of the young Lorenzo. His presence in this gathering is plausible enough since he often enjoyed such learned discourses and preferred to engage in them in the midst of natural beauty. But the real reason for his inclusion is to provide dramatic context for what might otherwise seem to be an abstruse philosophical debate. For someone about to take over the government of a powerful city-state, the question Landino raises is of more than academic interest. Should one retire from the hustle and bustle of civic life, with its perpetual quarrels and inevitable compromises, in order to attain true wisdom, as Alberti urges? Or, in the words Landino puts in Lorenzo’s mouth, is it one’s obligation to use the wisdom thus acquired for the benefit of one’s compatriots? For no one were these questions as pressing as they were for the young man on the verge of taking his place as the first citizen of the republic.

While Landino gives to Lorenzo the role of advocate for the active life, it is Alberti who strikes a balance between the two worlds more in keeping with Lorenzo’s own sense of himself:

In practice Lorenzo found it far more difficult to find the leisure necessary for intellectual growth in his increasingly hectic schedule. His long philosophical poem
The Supreme Good,
whose title echoes the second part of Landino’s dialogue, includes a passage in which his old friend and mentor, Marsilio Ficino, scolds him for frittering away the afternoon in the countryside when he should be in Florence attending to his duties. “It does amaze me greatly, though, to find you, Lauro, on this wooded mountain slope,” the philosopher gently chides his pupil,

To which Lorenzo responds:

In part Lorenzo is simply poking fun at himself. Despite his frenetic work pace, he liked to portray himself as a man addicted to indolence and only reluctantly shouldering the cares of state. But Lorenzo would never have exchanged his life of privilege for that of a simple shepherd, nor did he really expect his audience to believe him. Nonetheless, the poem reflects a genuine distress at the endless drudgery of his official duties. To exercise power was his birthright but not his passion. He still took his greatest pleasure in vigorous outdoor activities, composing verses on his favorite themes, and in pleasant conversation with his learned and witty friends. The oceans of official correspondence he was now required to wade through with the aid of only a few secretaries, the constant demands made on his time by foreign ambassadors, government officials, and humble petitioners, the obligation to entertain lavishly every visiting dignitary, all stole from him precious seconds that could be better spent on the things he loved. He must often have wondered if the glory of being his father’s son was worth the price.

As Lorenzo prepared to receive the distinguished delegation of leading Florentines the day after his father’s death, he was under no illusions as to the burdens he was assuming. But what, after all, were Tommaso Soderini and his colleagues offering him that December morning? He received no official title from their hands; after their departure he was, as he had been before, a simple citizen of Florence—a particularly rich and prominent one, but one whose name would not appear in the roll of any of the key positions of the government. If asked to name the current head of state, Florentines would have pointed not to Lorenzo but to Piero di Lutozzo Nasi, who, dressed in his ceremonial robes and living in pampered isolation in the
palazzo
as
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia,
presided over the deliberations of the
Signoria
for his two-month term of office.

In fact, as Marco Parenti pointed out, neither the assembly at Sant’Antonio, nor the delegation of
principali
who conveyed their decision to offer Lorenzo the preeminent role in the governing of the state, had any official standing. “It was merely a ceremony, of little weight.” But it was crucial nonetheless, for it provided Lorenzo a legitimacy his father had lacked. The absence of a similar consensus at the time of Cosimo’s death led directly to the crisis two years later, and it was in order to avoid such confusion that Tommaso Soderini and his fellow magnates had convened the meeting at Sant’Antonio. It was a clever move, for it bound Lorenzo to them even as it raised him to a position of authority. The agreement among the leading members of the regime to defer to Lorenzo was practically the sole basis of his power, and it imposed strict limitations on his freedom of action. Dependent as he was on their continued goodwill, his policies were likely to reflect the combined wisdom of the men who had eased his way to power.

Some observers even asserted that the city was returning to the kind of collective rule that had characterized Florentine government before Cosimo’s day. Six months after Lorenzo took power, Bartolomeo Bonatto reported to his boss, Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua: “Some say that this city is taking a republican path, acknowledging the authority of the
Signoria
in the
Palazzo Vecchio.
Not a soul goes to Lorenzo’s house, and he stays there behind locked doors, seemingly interested only in mercantile affairs, and he goes to the palace only when invited.” Bonatto’s comment recalls Marco Parenti’s description of Piero in 1465, but now, as then, the writer underestimated the resilience and resourcefulness of the Medici. Lorenzo knew that at this early stage of his career an appearance of humility was likely to succeed where a brazen display of power would merely offend. Like Cosimo, he was shrewd enough to know that authority was often most effectively wielded when least visible. Deferring to the duly elected authorities reassured those who had initially feared placing their fates in the hands of one so young and inexperienced.

How was it that a mere handful of men controlled a government that was almost without precedent in the thoroughness of its democratic impulse?
*
Though by the standards of modern democracies the franchise was restrictive—open only to those male citizens enrolled in one of the major or minor guilds—those eligible citizens were expected not only to vote but to participate actively in their own government. In theory the political class consisted of the entire citizen body, but by the time of the Medici ascendance the reality was far different. While small-scale merchants like Marco Parenti continued to participate in the political system, real power was closely held by the inner circle of the
reggimento.
According to Benedetto Dei, whose detailed survey of Florence in the year 1472 is an invaluable resource on issues of political, economic, and cultural concern, the effective government rested in the hands of thirty-four men, with Lorenzo’s and Tommaso Soderini’s names topping the list.
†

Some sense of the way a small number of leading citizens worked behind the scenes to run things in Medicean Florence is revealed in a letter written by the Ferrarese ambassador, Niccolò Roberti, a couple of days after Piero’s death: “They are agreed that the private affairs of the
Signoria
shall pass through Lorenzo’s hands in the same manner as previously through those of his father, for which purposes his friends will take care to procure him credit and reputation from the beginning. They can easily do so, for they have the government in their hands, and the ballot-boxes at their disposal.” Though this letter reflects the foreigner’s tendency to underestimate the difficulty of imposing order on the notoriously fractious Florentines, it accurately describes the manipulation of the electoral process by which the Medici and their partisans controlled the machinery of government.

Though nowhere officially acknowledged, the
reggimento
was a palpable reality to Florentines. They knew that real power resided within this somewhat ill-defined group whose function was to steer the ship of state that so often in the past had followed an erratic course. They accomplished this, in part, by agreeing amongst themselves upon a single captain, a position that from Cosimo’s day had been unofficially reserved for the head of the Medici household. While there was nothing inevitable about this choice—which, as we have seen, was often challenged by prominent men who felt they had a better claim—history would prove that only the magic of the Medici name could rally sufficient support. As Roberti reported, the consensus reached at Sant’Antonio was to acknowledge “one lord and superior” in the person of Lorenzo, a decision made more palatable to the ambitious because it was assumed that this inexperienced youth would place himself in their capable hands.

When describing Lorenzo’s rise to power it is always important to keep in mind that the alternative to Medici rule was not democracy as we understand it today, but rather a form of oligarchy in which the self-appointed “worthiest” citizens controlled the great mass of the disenfranchised. Many so-called republicans agreed with Giovanni Cavalcanti’s description of the common people as either “the stupid, crazy mob” or “the brutish masses,” and one of the complaints most frequently leveled at the Medici regime was that they tried to dilute the ranks of the aristocracy with common artisans and new men. In Guicciardini’s
Dialogue on the Government of Florence,
written a few decades after Lorenzo’s death, Piero Capponi states the case for the opposition: “Our intention was to remove the city from the power of one man and restore liberty, as has been done. It is true that we wanted to avoid giving the government absolutely to the people, but rather to place it in the hands of the leading and worthiest citizens, to make it a government of men of worth rather than a totally popular regime. We did not, however, want to restrict it to so few that it would not be free, nor to slacken the bridle so much that it came into the hands of the masses, with no distinction made between one person and another.”

In fact there is plenty of evidence that Medici rule actually encouraged social mobility as the
reggimento
co-opted members of the artisan class to serve as a counterweight to the older families who were their most intractable enemies. Bernardo del Nero, another speaker in Guicciardini’s
Dialogue,
makes the case for Medici rule: “I have enjoyed a very long friendship with the Medici and I am infinitely indebted to that family. Not being of noble birth nor surrounded by relations like you three, I have received favors from them and have been elevated and made equal to all those who would normally have preceded me in being awarded political offices and honors in the city.”
*
Piero Guicciardini, the historian’s father, analyzing the scrutiny of 1484, wrote that the most humble, having once made a respectable showing in one election, “in another gain something better, according to their ability, or their wealth, and in a short time…they ascend from the lowest level and proceed to the next, always rising, and in their place are succeeded by even newer men to fill up the lowest ranks, and thus continually new men make the grade, and in order to give them a place in the governing class it is necessary to eliminate from it long-established citizens; and that is what is actually done.” Indeed it is just this kind of social mobility that Medici critics found so distasteful, believing that under the current regime the social order had been stood on its head.