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Authors: Christopher Hibbert
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family were commended for their good behaviour during the time of their exile from which they were now formally recalled.
On the same day, 28 September 1434, Cosimo left Venice with an escort of three hundred Venetian soldiers; and a few days later, cheered by the peasants in the villages through which he passed, he arrived at his villa at Careggi in time for dinner. 8 The grounds were crowded with welcoming people. There were crowds, too, along the road leading into Florence, and in the city itself masses of people were waiting in the streets, hoping to witness the triumphal return of the Medici to their palace. For fear of uproar, the
Signoria
sent an urgent request to Cosimo not to enter the city that day, but to wait until nightfall. So, after sunset, accompanied by his brother, Lorenzo, one servant and a mace-bearer from the city, he re-entered Florence by a small gateway near the Balikrgello. He spent the night in a room which had been specially prepared for him in the Palazzo della Signoria; and the next morning, after visiting the Pope to thank him for all he had done for him, he returned to the Palazzo Bardi to the tumultuous cheers of the crowds gathered in the streets ‘as though he were returning from a great victory’.
Already sentences had been passed on his opponents. Rinaldo degli Albizzi, his sons and descendants were all banished from Florence – so were branches of several other families, and, in some cases, families in their entirety, in accordance with the custom of considering a crime as much a collective as a personal responsibility. Included in the decrees of banishment were members of the Peruzzi, Guasconi, Guadagni and Guicciardini families, Niccolò Barbadori, and Matteo Strozzi. Indeed, so many well-known names – over seventy in all – appeared in the list of exiles that someone complained to Cosimo that he was almost emptying Florence of its leading citizens. Histypically brusque and sardonic reply was, ‘Seven or eight yards of scarlet will make a new citizen.’
Rather than risk sharing the fate of the Albizzi upon Cosimo’s return, Francesco Filelfo had already fled to Siena where, in the service of the Visconti, he wrote a stream of slanderous abuse of the Medici, incited the Florentines to rise up against them, and even, so it seems, helped to hire a Greek assassin to murder Cosimo. Few regretted the departure from Florence of this tiresome, vain and cantankerous scholar. But many lamented the banishment to Padua of the revered and honest Palla Strozzi, who had never given his full support to the Albizzi and had ultimately abandoned them altogether. Cosimo, however, recognizing that his position in Florence would be more secure if Palla Strozzi, so enormously rich and so dangerously impressionable, were to be compelled to leave, decided not to risk his being pardoned. When asked to put in a good word for him for the sake of past friendship, he did so in a characteristically ambivalent manner, raising no protest when the decision to banish him was finally taken. He apparently comforted himself with the thought that Palla Strozzi would be much happier in Padua where, free from the temptation to meddle in politics, which were not his
métier
, he would settle down contentedly – as, in fact, he did – to a life of quiet study, conversation and bibliomania.
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
On the same day, 28 September 1434, Cosimo left Venice with an escort of three hundred Venetian soldiers; and a few days later, cheered by the peasants in the villages through which he passed, he arrived at his villa at Careggi in time for dinner. 8 The grounds were crowded with welcoming people. There were crowds, too, along the road leading into Florence, and in the city itself masses of people were waiting in the streets, hoping to witness the triumphal return of the Medici to their palace. For fear of uproar, the
Signoria
sent an urgent request to Cosimo not to enter the city that day, but to wait until nightfall. So, after sunset, accompanied by his brother, Lorenzo, one servant and a mace-bearer from the city, he re-entered Florence by a small gateway near the Balikrgello. He spent the night in a room which had been specially prepared for him in the Palazzo della Signoria; and the next morning, after visiting the Pope to thank him for all he had done for him, he returned to the Palazzo Bardi to the tumultuous cheers of the crowds gathered in the streets ‘as though he were returning from a great victory’.
Already sentences had been passed on his opponents. Rinaldo degli Albizzi, his sons and descendants were all banished from Florence – so were branches of several other families, and, in some cases, families in their entirety, in accordance with the custom of considering a crime as much a collective as a personal responsibility. Included in the decrees of banishment were members of the Peruzzi, Guasconi, Guadagni and Guicciardini families, Niccolò Barbadori, and Matteo Strozzi. Indeed, so many well-known names – over seventy in all – appeared in the list of exiles that someone complained to Cosimo that he was almost emptying Florence of its leading citizens. Histypically brusque and sardonic reply was, ‘Seven or eight yards of scarlet will make a new citizen.’
Rather than risk sharing the fate of the Albizzi upon Cosimo’s return, Francesco Filelfo had already fled to Siena where, in the service of the Visconti, he wrote a stream of slanderous abuse of the Medici, incited the Florentines to rise up against them, and even, so it seems, helped to hire a Greek assassin to murder Cosimo. Few regretted the departure from Florence of this tiresome, vain and cantankerous scholar. But many lamented the banishment to Padua of the revered and honest Palla Strozzi, who had never given his full support to the Albizzi and had ultimately abandoned them altogether. Cosimo, however, recognizing that his position in Florence would be more secure if Palla Strozzi, so enormously rich and so dangerously impressionable, were to be compelled to leave, decided not to risk his being pardoned. When asked to put in a good word for him for the sake of past friendship, he did so in a characteristically ambivalent manner, raising no protest when the decision to banish him was finally taken. He apparently comforted himself with the thought that Palla Strozzi would be much happier in Padua where, free from the temptation to meddle in politics, which were not his
métier
, he would settle down contentedly – as, in fact, he did – to a life of quiet study, conversation and bibliomania.
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
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