Christopher - The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici

There were to be many times during the next few years when Cosimo had good cause to wish that he could have been left to such a life himself. To assume power in many another Italian state, where executions rather than banishments were commonplace punishments and where the ruler was supported and protected by a powerful army, would have been comparatively simple. But executions and military dictatorships were not in the Florentine tradition, and Florentine tradition was not to be flouted. If Cosimo were to rule successfully, he must appear scarcely to rule at all; if changes in the political structure were to be made, they must be changes calculated to arouse the least offence. Had it been possible to control and expand his bank without political influence he might, perhaps, have been content to remain even further in the background than he actually contrived to do. For he derived the greatest satisfaction from his business, saying that even if it were possible to procure money and possessions with a magic wand he would still continue to work as a banker. But as his father had been forced to recognize, a rich merchant in Florence was ill-advised to try to avoid public office. Even so, Cosimo succeeded in remaining the most powerful man in Florence for years without ever appearing to be much more than an extremely prosperous, generous and approachable banker, prepared to undertake whatever political or diplomatic duties were imposed upon him, and to help direct the financial policies of the State. He acted with the greatest skill to preserve his power, his friend, Vespasiano da Bisticci the bookseller, wrote. ‘And whenever he wished to achieve something, he saw to it, in order to escape envy as much as possible, that the initiative appeared to come from others and not from him.’ Unable to disguise his enormous wealth, he paid tax at a far higher rate than anyone else in Florence; but, like all rich men of prudence, he kept special accounts which, by exaggerating bad debts, showed his taxable income to be much lower than it was. So no one was quite sure just how rich he was. He was Gonfaloniere no more than three times in his entire life; he never considered the possibility of assuming a more obviously permanent control over the government, nor of offending Florentine susceptibilities by attempting any basic reform of the far from satisfactory constitution, other than by establishing a new council known as the Consiglio Maggiore , which was intended to have absolute control over national security and taxation and which later developed into the Council of One Hundred, the Cento . He scrupulously avoided display and ostentation of any kind, riding a mule rather than a horse, and when it suited him to do so, allowing the vain and talkative, flamboyant and ambitious but not over-intelligent Luca Pitti to appear to be the most powerful man in the Republic.

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 Popohmi which gratified the nobles, who were thus theoretically rendered eligible for election to office, while pleasing the Popob Minuto who chose to interpret the measure as commend-ably 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 horse 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 were 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’.