Medici Money: Banking, metaphysics and art in fifteenth-century Florence

Cosimo supported the humanists and they him. Who else could fund them so generously? But who else funded the Church so generously? Pope Eugenius IV, who replaced Martin V in 1431, needed an efficient international bank. Cosimo advanced the cash for Martin’s burial and the funds for Eugenius’s coronation. Who wouldn’t deal with such a man? Money has this excellent quality: It can hold the most heterogeneous elements together. We meet our enemies in the account books of our banks, who, more often than not, are funding both of the political parties between which we are supposed to choose when we vote. Lavishing finance on such a wide range of clients, Cosimo knew he was putting himself in contention with a ruling faction that depended exclusively on the support of Florence’s old patrician families.

It’s the summer of 1433 and the road to power is blocked. Whoever makes the first move will be most in the wrong, most exposed to a public backlash, but also most able to deliver the killer blow. Cosimo retires to his stronghold in Trebbio to the north of the city. He stays there until the fall. Far from being the genius politician, he doesn’t seem to know how to proceed. Does he already consider himself indispensable? Is he waiting for the call to power, for an invitation to sort out the city’s finances? He has already lent the city a staggering 155,000 florins, as a result of which the Florence branch of the bank has been operating at a loss. Finally the call does come. Cosimo de’ Medici is requested to present himself at the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of government. Three days after returning to Florence, on September 7, 1433, Cosimo walks the couple of hundred yards from his house to the big central piazza and enters the massive building with its tall, solid tower. Even today, the place radiates a grim authority. And at once he is arrested.

Under Florentine law, a man couldn’t serve in government if he hadn’t paid his taxes. At the end of August, the name Bernardo Guadagni had been drawn from the bag that supplied the gonfaloniere della giustizia, the head of government. The officials checked his tax situation. Until shortly before that draw, Bernardo had been in arrears. But then Rinaldo degli Albizzi had paid his taxes for him. What a coincidence that his name was drawn! Rinaldo now has the city in his hands and Cosimo is in a trap. This is what all the banker’s money and genius have brought him to: a charge of treason, a sentence of exile or death.

THE GRAND TURNING points in the history of the Florentine Republic are marked by the summoning of a so-called parliament. At its most basic, the system of government is this: The eight priors and the gonfaloniere form the signoria, which initiates all legislation. In doing so, they consult two advisory bodies, the Twelve Good Men and the Sixteen Standard Bearers, who, like the priors, are chosen by lot. The laws proposed are then ratified or rejected by the Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, each about two hundred strong, and again chosen by lot, but this time for four- rather than two-month periods.

The system can be unwieldy. Since there is a well-established difference of wealth and class between those whose names are in the bags for drawing the priors and those in the bags for the two big councils, it is not surprising that sometimes the councils repeatedly refuse to ratify laws that successive governments insist are vital. So when an impasse is reached, or when some particularly momentous and difficult decision must be made rapidly, a parlamento is called, which is to say a gathering, in the open square outside the Palazzo della Signoria, of all Florentine males over the age of fourteen. The principle is not unlike that of the modern referendum. Sovereignty passes directly to the people. But, notoriously, modern governments call referendums only when they are sure that they can bully people into voting as they should.

So, in Florence on September 9, 1433, as the deep, old bell of the Palazzo della Signoria booms out to call the citizens to their political duty, armed men are already circling the square and controlling each point of entry. Medici supporters are discouraged from attending. Cosimo can see a corner of the scene from his cell window. Dutifully — and this is always the way at these parliaments — the men who do attend vote for the formation of a so-called balia. The word balia just means “plenary powers.” Basically, the proposal made at every parliament is that the people hand over their future to an ad hoc body of two hundred men chosen, of course, by the present signoria, thus bypassing the resistance of the Council of the People and the Council of the Commune. In 1433 the signoria meant Rinaldo degli Albizzi.