The Story of Florence. Gardner Edmund G.

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СКАЧАТЬ omniscient and all-embracing tyrant, in that truly terrible picture by Vasari in the Uffizi, constructed out of contemporary materials–surely as eloquent a sermon against the iniquity of tyranny as the pages of Savonarola's Reggimento di Firenze. Giuliano was a kindlier and gentler soul, completely given up to pleasure and athletics; he lives for us still in many a picture from the hand of Sandro Botticelli, sometimes directly portrayed, as in the painting which Morelli bequeathed to Bergamo, more often idealised as Mars or as Hermes; his love for the fair Simonetta inspired Botticellian allegories and the most finished and courtly stanzas of Poliziano. The sons of both these brothers were destined to sit upon the throne of the Fisherman.

      A long step in despotism was gained in 1488, when the two great Councils of the People and the Commune were deprived of all their functions, which were now invested in the thoroughly Medicean Council of the Hundred. The next year Lorenzo's friend and ally, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, with his Duchess and courtiers, came to Florence. They were sumptuously received in the Medicean palace. The licence and wantonness of these Milanese scandalised even the lax Florentines, and largely added to the growing corruption of the city. The accidental burning of Santo Spirito during the performance of a miracle play was regarded as a certain sign of divine wrath. During his stay in Florence the Duke, in contrast with whom the worst of the Medici seems almost a saint, sat to one of the Pollaiuoli for the portrait still seen in the Uffizi; by comparison with him even Lorenzo looks charming; at the back of the picture there is a figure of Charity–but the Duke has very appropriately driven it to the wall. Unpopular though this Medicean-Sforza alliance was in Florence, it was undoubtedly one of the safe-guards of the harmony which, superficially, still existed between the five great powers of Italy. When Galeazzo Maria met the fate he so richly deserved, and was stabbed to death in the Church of San Stefano at Milan on December 20th, 1476, Pope Sixtus gave solemn utterance to the general dismay: Oggi è morta la pace d'Italia.

      But Sixtus and his nephews did not in their hearts desire peace in Italy, and were plotting against Lorenzo with the Pazzi, who, although united to the Medici by marriage, had secret and growing grievances against them. On the morning of Sunday April 26th, 1478, the conspirators set upon the two brothers at Mass in the Duomo; Giuliano perished beneath nineteen dagger-stabs; Lorenzo escaped with a slight wound in the neck. The Archbishop Salviati of Pisa in the meantime attempted to seize the Palace of the Priors, but was arrested by the Gonfaloniere, and promptly hung out of the window for his trouble. Jacopo Pazzi rode madly through the streets with an armed force, calling the people to arms, with the old shout of Popolo e Libertà, but was only answered by the ringing cries of Palle, Palle.17 The vengeance taken by the people upon the conspirators was so prompt and terrible that Lorenzo had little left him to do (though that little he did to excess, punishing the innocent with the guilty); and the result of the plot simply was to leave him alone in the government, securely enthroned above the splash of blood. The Pope appears not to have been actually privy to the murder, but he promptly took up the cause of the murderers. It was followed by a general break-up of the Italian peace and a disastrous war, carried on mainly by mercenary soldiers, in which all the powers of Italy were more or less engaged; and Florence was terribly hard pressed by the allied forces of Naples and Rome. The plague broke out in the city; Lorenzo was practically deserted by his allies, and on the brink of financial ruin. Then was it that he did one of the most noteworthy, perhaps the noblest, of the actions of his life, and saved himself and the State by voluntarily going to Naples and putting himself in the power of King Ferrante, an infamous tyrant, who would readily have murdered his guest, if it had seemed to his advantage to do so. But, like all the Italians of the Renaissance, Ferrante was open to reason, and the eloquence of the Magnifico won him over to grant an honourable peace, with which Lorenzo returned to Florence in March 1480. "If Lorenzo was great when he left Florence," writes Machiavelli, "he returned much greater than ever; and he was received with such joy by the city as his great qualities and his fresh merits deserved, seeing that he had exposed his own life to restore peace to his country." Botticelli's noble allegory of the olive-decked Medicean Pallas, taming the Centaur of war and disorder, appears to have been painted in commemoration of this event. In the following August the Turks landed in Italy and stormed Otranto, and the need of union, in the face of "the common enemy Ottoman," reconciled the Pope to Florence, and secured for the time an uneasy peace among the powers of Italy.

      Lorenzo's power in Florence and influence throughout Italy was now secure. By the institution in 1480 of a Council of Seventy, a permanent council to manage and control the election of the Signoria (with two special committees drawn from the Seventy every six months, the Otto di pratica for foreign affairs and the Dodici Procuratori for internal), the State was firmly established in his hands–the older councils still remaining, as was usual in every Florentine reformation of government. Ten years later, in 1490, this council showed signs of independence; and Lorenzo therefore reduced the authority of electing the Signoria to a small committee with a reforming Balìa of seventeen, of which he was one. Had he lived longer, he would undoubtedly have crowned his policy either by being made Gonfaloniere for life, or by obtaining some similar constitutional confirmation of his position as head of the State. Externally his influence was thrown into the scale for peace, and, on the death of Sixtus IV. in 1484, he established friendly relations and a family alliance with the new Pontiff, Innocent VIII. Sarzana with Pietrasanta were won back for Florence, and portions of the Sienese territory which had been lost during the war with Naples and the Church; a virtual protectorate was established over portions of Umbria and Romagna, where the daggers of assassins daily emptied the thrones of minor tyrants. Two attempts on his life failed. In the last years of his foreign policy and diplomacy he showed himself truly the magnificent. East and West united to do him honour; the Sultan of the Turks and the Soldan of Egypt sent ambassadors and presents; the rulers of France and Germany treated him as an equal. Soon the torrent of foreign invasion was to sweep over the Alps and inundate all the "Ausonian" land; Milan and Naples were ready to rend each other; Ludovico Sforza was plotting his own rise upon the ruin of Italy, and already intriguing with France; but, for the present, Lorenzo succeeded in maintaining the balance of power between the five great Italian states, which seemed as though they might present a united front for mutual defence against the coming of the barbarians.

       Sarebbe impossibile avesse avuto un tiranno migliore e più piacevole, writes Guicciardini: "Florence could not have had a better or more delightful tyrant." The externals of life were splendid and gorgeous indeed in the city where Lorenzo ruled, but everything was in his hands and had virtually to proceed from him. His spies were everywhere; marriages might only be arranged and celebrated according to his good pleasure; the least sign of independence was promptly and severely repressed. By perpetual festivities and splendid shows, he strove to keep the minds of the citizens contented and occupied; tournaments, pageants, masques and triumphs filled the streets; and the strains of licentious songs, of which many were Lorenzo's own composition, helped to sap the morality of that people which Dante had once dreamed of as sobria e pudica. But around the Magnifico were grouped the greatest artists and scholars of the age, who found in him an enlightened Maecenas and most charming companion. Amava maravigliosamente qualunque era in una arte eccellente, writes Machiavelli of him; and that word–maravigliosamente– so entirely characteristic of Lorenzo and his ways, occurs again and again, repeated with studied persistence, in the chapter which closes Machiavelli's History. He was said to have sounded the depths of Platonic philosophy; he was a true poet, within certain limitations; few men have been more keenly alive to beauty in all its manifestations, physical and spiritual alike. Though profoundly immoral, nelle cose veneree maravigliosamente involto, he was a tolerable husband, and the fondest of fathers with his children, whom he adored. The delight of his closing days was the elevation of his favourite son, Giovanni, to the Cardinalate at the age of fourteen; it gave the Medici a voice in the Curia like the other princes of Europe, and pleased all Florence; but more than half Lorenzo's joy proceeded from paternal pride and love, and the letter of advice which he wrote for his son on the occasion shows both father and boy in a very amiable, even edifying light. And yet this same man had ruined the happiness of countless homes, and had even seized upon the doweries of Florentine maidens to fill his own coffers and pay his mercenaries.

      But the СКАЧАТЬ