The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (28 page)

At first he was a far from effective preacher, as he himself well knew, confessing in the days when he could boast that ‘all Italy’ was moved by his preaching that in those early years he did not know ‘how to move a hen’. ‘His gestures and pronunciation pleased none, so that scarcely twenty-five women and children remained to hear him,’ wrote Cinozzi, one of his first biographers. ‘He was so discouraged that he seriously thought of giving up preaching altogether.’ It was not only that his voice was hard and his gestures violent and uncouth; he was a far from prepossessing figure. Small, thin and ugly, with a huge hooked nose and thick, fleshy lips, it was only his eyes that gave any impression of his remarkable personality. Green, intense
beneath heavy, black eyebrows, they ‘sometimes gave forth red flashes’.

Although most people in Florence were inclined to prefer the more graceful, cultured and polished sermons of the Augustinian monk, Fra Mariano, for whose order Lorenzo de’ Medici built a monastery outside the Porta San Gallo, the awkward Dominican gradually acquired a following of devoted supporters prepared to overlook all the faults of his delivery for the extraordinary content of his sermons and his passionate, urgent sincerity. By 1491 his congregations had increased so much that San Marco could no longer contain them; and his Lent sermons that year were delivered in the Cathedral.

They caused an uproar throughout Florence. Savonarola had convinced himself that he was gifted with foreknowledge of the future, that his words were divinely inspired and that to deny their truth was to deny the wisdom of God. ‘It is not I who preach,’ he said, ‘but God who speaks through me.’ After prolonged periods of fasting and meditation, visions of the future had been vouchsafed to him. He knew that the Church was to be scourged, then regenerated, and that ‘these things would quickly come to pass’. He knew, too, that unless the people of Italy and, in particular, the people of Florence mended their ways they would be dreadfully punished. Only a return to the simplicity of the early Christian Church could save them. They must turn their back on Aristotle and Plato, who were now rotting in hell; they must abandon the luxuries and sensual pleasures that were destroying their souls, abolish gambling and card games, dissolute carnivals and
palio
races, fine clothes and scent, powder and paint; and they must give the money they saved to the poor. They must blot out all those pictures so wantonly painted that they made ‘the Virgin Mary look like a harlot’. They must chastise prostitutes – those ‘pieces of meat with eyes’ – and burn sodomites alive. They must reform their political institutions. Cosimo de’ Medici had been quite wrong to declare that states were not ruled by paternosters; they could be governed well in no other way. ‘If you want to make good laws,’ Savonarola pronounced from the Cathedral pulpit, ‘first reconcile yourselves to the laws of God, since all good laws depend
on the Eternal Law.’ The Florentines had bartered their ancient liberties for the spectacles provided for them by a tyrant. They must frame a new constitution. ‘I believe the best constitution is that of the Venetians,’ he said. ‘You should copy it; but leave out the worst features, such as the office of Doge.’

To such criticisms of the Medicean regime, Lorenzo had listened with patience and toleration. His friend Pico della Mirandola had assured him that Savonarola was a great and godly man; other friends of his, Poliziano and Botticelli amongst them, had spoken of him with similar respect and awe; Michelangelo as an old man was to say that he could still hear the friar’s voice ringing in his ears. When the name of Savonarola had been put forward as Prior of San Marco, Lorenzo had raised no objection; nor had he shown any displeasure when Savonarola studiedly declined to acknowledge the Medici’s special connection with the monastery to which they had contributed so much. Once, it seems, some senior supporters of the Medicean regime called on Savonarola and suggested that he ‘should not preach such sermons’; but he had replied, ‘Go and tell Lorenzo to repent of his sins, for God will punish him and his.’ Yet Lorenzo on his deathbed had sent for Savonarola, as well as Fra Mariano, and, according to Poliziano, had been blessed by them both.

After Lorenzo’s death, Savonarola’s dire warnings of disaster and criticisms of the Medicean regime increased in intensity and became more explicit. In his sermons of 1492 he spoke of visions of the ‘Sword of the Lord’ hanging threateningly in a darkened sky over the city of Florence; of awful tempests, of plague and war, flood and famine; of a black cross, inscribed with the words ‘The Cross of God’s Anger’, rising from Rome, its arms reaching across the whole earth on which storms raged tumultuously; and of another cross, a golden cross, reaching up to the sky from Jerusalem, bathed in sunlight.

‘Repent, O Florence, while there is still time,’ Savonarola called to a congregation that sat as though petrified by the horror of his vivid images. ‘Clothe thyself in the white garments of purification. Wait no longer, for there may be no further time for repentance.’ He made it clear to them what his visions foretold: unless they
turned to the golden cross, disaster would befall them. There would, indeed, be pestilence and war; foreign enemies would pour across the Alps, like ‘barbers armed with gigantic razors’, bringing distress as bitter as a dish of borage and enforcing reforms as relentlessly ‘as a mill grinding out the flour of wisdom’.

‘The Lord has placed me here,’ Savonarola declared, ‘and He has said to me: “I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”’ The people listened in fear. The Prior of San Marco had foretold the death of Lorenzo; and Lorenzo was dead. He had predicted the death of Pope Innocent VIII and of King Ferrante of Naples; they, too, were dead. He had prophesied that within the lifetime of many of his congregation, the Turks would be converted to Christianity; and though they were still Mohammedans, their conversion would surely now be effected as Savonarola said. So, also, would the Sword of the Lord fall upon Florence, and the armies of a foreign king would pour across the Alps.

On hearing of Lorenzo’s death, Pope Innocent was said to have exclaimed, ‘The peace of Italy is at an end!’ The King of France, Louis XI, was also dead; and his death, too, caused men to think of war. For his successor, Charles VIII, was a young man of energy and ambition, who dreamed romantic dreams of rivalling the exploits of Roland and of gaining glory by brilliant use of that well-organized standing army which his father had raised to crush his enemies within the Kingdom of France. But Charles appeared ill cast for the role of knightly hero. Twenty years old when the Florentines were first warned of the coming of the ‘Sword of God’, he was very small, short-sighted and distressingly ugly with a nose even larger and more hooked than Savonarola’s and with thick, fleshy lips constantly open though partially concealed by the wisps of a scattering, reddish beard. His head and hands twitched convulsively; the few words that ever escaped him were muttered rather than spoken; he walked with a crouch and a limp; his feet were so big that he was rumoured to have a sixth toe; he was notoriously gluttonous and lecherous; he was
appallingly ill-educated. Yet there was something about his restlessness, his wayward, adventurous spirit that, for all his naïveté and uneasy affability, made men wary in his presence. His father, though he had enormously increased the area of France, had never been drawn into Italy to claim the Kingdom of Naples as inheritor by force of the rights of the House of Anjou; but it seemed more than probable that Charles would march across the Alps as soon as the opportunity was offered him. A young man who had paid court to the bright, good-looking Anne, Duchess of Brittany, when she was already engaged to Maximilian of Austria, and who had ridden off with her and married her, was not to be discounted.

Charles’s opportunity to go to war was presented to him by Lodovico Sforza, il Moro, uncle of the Duke of Milan. The Duke, Gian Galeazzo, had come of age in 1490, but il Moro had subsequently shown no inclination to give up the powers of Regent which he had assumed. This did not much concern Gian Galeazzo himself, for he was a lazy young fellow, interested more in dogs, horses and food than in his Duchy and disinclined to assert his rights even had he dared to do so. His wife Isabella, however, was a far more positive character. Repeatedly she complained to her grandfather, King Ferrante of Naples, asking him to put her husband’s uncle and his domineering wife in their proper places. King Ferrante at first seemed reluctant to do so, but eventually agreed to do what he could to help.

To forestall any trouble he might have with Naples and any move that might be made against him from elsewhere in Italy, il Moro decided to suggest to Charles VIII that he should reassert the Angevin claim to Naples and, when the claim was denied, lead an expeditionary force into Italy. The Duchy of Milan would lend him its support. Il Moro himself would raise in Italy any loan that might be required, and he did, in fact, succeed in borrowing 100,000 francs from a Genoese bank at fourteen per cent interest.

Charles needed little persuasion, and when King Ferrante died in January 1494 his mind was made up. Announcing his claim to the Kingdom of Naples, and to the Kingdom of Jerusalem which went with it, he prepared to invade Italy and to push Ferrante’s successor, Alfonso II, off his throne. In September the invasion began. A huge
army, over thirty thousand strong, marching behind white silk banners embroidered with the arms of France and the words ‘
Voluntas Dei
’, crossed the Alps and lumbered down into Lombardy where its vanguard was warmly welcomed by il Moro. King Charles then moved on to Pavia to pay his respects to his cousin, the ineffectual Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he found ill in bed suffering from some mysterious disease which his doctors could not diagnose. The Duchess knelt tearfully at the French King’s feet, begging him not to take his army on to Naples – but Charles had no mind to turn back now. Nor had il Moro. As Charles left Pavia, marching south towards Piacenza, the Duke’s illness took a sudden turn for the worse, a relapse which was naturally attributed to poison. A few days later, he was dead. Immediately his widow and their four children were arrested and imprisoned, and il Moro proclaimed himself Duke of Milan.

The immense French army and its straggling train of camp-followers, cooks, grooms, muleteers, farriers, musicians, sutlers, prostitutes and courtiers continued their ponderous advance unopposed. No efforts to halt it were made in the Papal States; Venice announced her neutrality. Charles drew nearer to the Tuscan frontier, sending envoys on to Florence to ask Piero de’ Medici to acknowledge the justice of the Angevin claim and to allow his army to march through Tuscany. After keeping the envoys waiting for his answer for five days, during which he promised the King of Naples his unqualified support, Piero declared that Florence would remain neutral. The French, however, would not allow Florence to remain neutral. They needed fortresses in Tuscany to give security to their rear while advancing further south. So, protesting grave displeasure at the discourteous way in which his envoys had been treated, Charles advanced on the Tuscan fortress of Fivizzano, sacked it and massacred the entire garrison with alarming brutality.

Suddenly displaying an energy that surprised his fellow citizens, Piero aroused himself to make what arrangements he could to prevent Charles advancing any further into Tuscany. Mercenaries were sent to the frontier forts;
condottieri
were summoned; Piero’s brother-in-law, Paolo Orsini, was sent to Sarzana with reinforcements; Piero himself prepared to leave for Pietrasanta. His own energy was not
matched, however, by any comparable determination on the part of most other leading citizens in Florence. While Savonarola gave vent to further prophecies, seeming to take a gloomy satisfaction in the verification of his predictions, a sense of fatality descended upon the city. ‘A Dominican Friar has so terrified all the Florentines that they are wholly given up to piety,’ the Mantuan envoy in Florence wrote to his master. ‘Three days in the week they fast on bread and water, and two more on wine and bread. All the girls and many of the wives have taken refuge in convents so that only men and youths and old women are now to be seen in the streets.’

‘Behold!’ cried Savonarola,

the Sword has descended; the scourge has fallen; the prophecies are being fulfilled. Behold, it is the Lord God who is leading on these armies… Behold, I shall unloose waters over the earth… It is not I but God who foretold it. Now it is coining. It has come!

Listening to his voice in the Cathedral, Pico della Mirandola felt a cold shiver run through him and his hair stand on end. Lorenzo Lenzi, the rich diplomat, soon to be appointed ambassador to France, was equally alarmed. When Piero de’ Medici asked for more money for the defence of Florence, Lenzi protested that the city would be ruined; resistance was useless. Piero’s cousins thought so too; and, anxious to dissociate themselves from his anticipated defeat, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici dispatched messages to the French camp assuring King Charles that, far from supporting Piero’s actions, they were completely in sympathy with the French invasion. They would lend their influence to promote a sympathetic attitude towards it in Florence and would, if required, advance money to support it. Their message being intercepted, the brothers were arrested and confined in Medici villas – Lorenzo at Cafaggiolo and Giovanni at Castello. Both, however, soon escaped and joined Charles’s headquarters at Vigetano where they assured him that if Piero were to be disposed of, the Florentines would readily join the French against the Neapolitans.

By the end of October Piero, deserted by most of the Medicean
party, had himself accepted the hopelessness of his position. No help was to be expected from the Pope or from Venice or from Naples, part of whose army had already been routed in the Romagna by the left wing of the invading forces under the Due de Montpensier. The French right wing, having bypassed Sarzana, were within a few miles of Pisa. So, without troubling to consult the
Signoria
, Piero left for King Charles’s camp at San Stefano, believing his only chance of saving Florence lay in endeavouring to win his friendship by offering his humble submission. No doubt he hoped to score the same sort of diplomatic triumph that his father had achieved in Naples during the Pazzi war. He sent back to Florence a letter modelled on that which his father had written on the road to Pisa.