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

IN THE PAY of the newly formed Republic of Milan, Francesco Sforza was fighting Venice. He also received money from the Medici bank. But the people of Milan soon realized that the condottiere was actually planning to take the city for himself. To defend themselves against him, they made peace with the Venetians behind Sforza’s back. It wasn’t enough. Sforza besieged the town, cut off its food supplies, and starved it into surrender. Quite simply, he was the most powerful military phenomenon in the area. Cosimo then shocked both Florence and the rest of Italy by being the first to give this bastard upstart official recognition as duke of Milan. Did he do it to secure the large amounts of money the bank had lent Sforza? Many members of Cosimo’s own inner circle were angry and suspicious. Or was it because he honestly believed that further Venetian inroads into a weak Milanese republic would be a serious threat to Florence? Or for both reasons?

In any event, the Medici bank had already pulled its money and merchandise out of Venice before this momentous switch of alliances became known. There was nothing for the frustrated Venetians to seize in revenge. Outwitted, they sent agents to Florence to foment anti-Medici feeling. There was plenty of it. But when Venice allied itself with Naples for a joint attack on Florence and Milan, the Florentine people swung around behind Cosimo. The key to unity in Italy is always the presence of a common enemy. “Never did a winning faction remain united, except when a hostile faction was active,” says Machiavelli of the Florentines.

Ultimately, it was an enemy common to all of Italy that ended this new war just as it had begun to go rather badly for Florence. In May 1453, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople. Eastern Christendom had gone. At once the powerful Turks started to raid the Adriatic coast. It was a wake-up call of September 11 proportions. Time to stop quarreling. In 1454, the Peace of Lodi was signed and in 1455, with shameless rhetoric, a “Most Holy League” was declared, uniting Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, and Naples against the Infidel. It thus turned out to have been a stroke of luck for Cosimo that the Greeks had been so stubborn about the nature of the Holy Spirit and found themselves alone against the tidal wave of Islam.

WITH THIS SUDDEN, unexpected peace, the political showdown in Florence could no longer be avoided. Their economy exhausted by the conflict, by another bout of the plague in 1448, and by an earthquake in 1453, many Florentines were starving. The councils insisted on a return to the old election by lot without the interference of the regime’s accoppiatori. No sooner had they got what they wanted than a more neutral, less pro-Medici signoria introduced a property tax that seriously threatened the interests of the rich. Cosimo put on a brave face and said he approved of the tax. It was important for him to have support from the lower orders. His fellow travelers were not so pleased. Prominent men were having to sell property to pay the tax. Still unsatisfied, the councils now also wanted a new, free, and fair scrutiny, which would mean more anti-Medici names in the electoral bags. What would happen if the government were really chosen at random after an impartial assessment of those qualified to serve? Where would the Medici be then?

Nervous, the regime seized on the chance of a favorable signoria to ask the councils to grant unlimited powers again. They would not. Since members of the councils cast their votes (actually beans) secretly, it was hard to twist their arms. When the legislation was sent back for the nth time, the priors demanded that votes be cast openly. The signoria’s two-month term of office was running out. At this point, Archbishop Antonino got involved on the councils’ side and threatened the regime’s bullies with excommunication if they tried to alter the constitution in this way. Perhaps precisely because the Church had taken so much money from the Medici, it felt the need to declare its independence. Voting in secret, the Council of the Commune and the Council of the People again rejected the proposed legislation. They were determined to bring rhetoric and reality together. Florence must be governed as the constitution stipulated. They wanted freedom.