above another, with steep stairs and narrow passages into which a scanty supply of light was admitted from courtyards deep as wells.
The house was built by Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, then forty years old, for Cosimo de’ Medici, in the first half of the fifteenth century. Filippo Brunelleschi, the greatest architect of modern Italy, had made a design for the palace of the rich and art-loving citizen, who was one of his best friends. It was the plan of a vast building, unenclosed on all sides, and fronting towards the square of San Lorenzo, where stood the church, the restoration of which had been begun by the same artist for Cosimo’s father. But cautious, calculating Cosimo, fearing that a house on so magnificent a scale as that designed by Brunelleschi, even if not beyond his means, would exceed the ordinary dimensions of a citizen’s dwelling, and might excite popular jealousy, gave the preference to Michelozzo’s more limited design.[1] Brunelleschi took offence at this neglect of himself, and destroyed his model. Yet Cosimo acted more prudently than did, at a later period, a countryman of his, who began to build from the design of the same master the largest edifice that perhaps a private citizen ever undertook, and who consequently lost much in public estimation and respect.
In the second half of the fourteenth century the Medici had removed into the neighbourhood of San Lorenzo’s church, where their residence occupied the ground adjoining Cosimo’s palace on the north, and remained in the possession of his brother Lorenzo, the founder of the subsequent ducal line.[2] Their original dwelling-place was in the centre of the old town, on the market-place, inside the first wall. Many of the foremost families were once settled here, and even now the lover of history and antiquity will find among the damp stalls of the butcher, fishmonger, and dealer in vegetables, sparse remains of past and, so far as concerns this part of the town, better days. The little church of San Tommaso in this place was in the patronage of the Medici from time immemorial.
The Medici did not belong to the historic families of the city on the Arno. The first trace of them is to be found about the end of the twelfth century in Giambuono, of whose extraction nothing is known. The coat of arms exhibits red balls in a gold field, whose number and arrangement were different at different times, until, under Cosimo’s son, the coat of arms assumed the form which it has ever since retained. From these balls (palle) the dependents of the family bore the name of Palleschi. From whence the Medici came, what was the meaning of the coat of arms, no one knew. Genealogical dreams have gone as far back as Perseus and the apples of the Hesperides, whilst modest historians have contented themselves with the time of Charlemagne, and the mountainous land north of Florence, known by the name of Mugello, where the family had always held important possessions, designated as their home.
The only dispute now is whether they descend from a knight who in days of yore received on his shield the blows of a giant’s iron flail, or from a physician who chose for his sign, in his small beginnings, three pills or cupping-glasses.
Giambuono’s son Chiarissimo sat in the Council of the Commune in 1201, when an alliance was formed with the town of Siena for the purpose of attacking the castle Semifonte in the Elsethal, which lay between the territories of the two towns, and was soon after destroyed. This was the first step towards the extension of territory and the overthrow of the landed aristocracy. The thirteenth century, at the beginning of which the Medici first stand forward in history, was the period in which the community of Florence, after many vicissitudes, received its definitive form. Just at the time of the first attempts of the Florentines to acquire an independent self-government do we meet with the first of that race which three centuries later strove successfully to transform what had become a powerful republic into a monarchy.
The province of Tuscany, divided into two duchies, in the time of the Longobards formed, first under dukes, then under margraves, a part of the Roman Teutonic kingdom, whose dependence on the later powerful emperors, and also on margraves ruling over wide stretches of land to the north of the Apennines, was more nominal than real, yet still existed according to right.
In the summer of 1115, after the death of the great Countess Mathilda—daughter and heiress to the last Margrave Bonifacius, who lived mostly in Lucca—first began the freer movement of the Tuscan Commune. At this time the men who afterwards attained to the lordship over the greater part of the country occupied anything but a prominent position. The great changes in the strength and extent of the imperial power in Italy as it was under the last of the Franconians, under Lothair of Saxony, and the two first Hohenstaufen, necessarily affected the position of these Communes. Their form of government under consuls changed just as their dependence or independence of the imperial authority was affected by the prevailing political condition of the empire. The landed nobility, of Germanic origin for the most part, were supported by Frederic Barbarossa against the Commune of Florence, with which several great families, headed by the Uberti, had engaged in a bloody and protracted feud on account of their claims to an authority which was not compatible with consular government. Henry VI. exercised his imperial rights and privileges in Tuscany still more vigorously than his father had done. His brother Philip, invested with this province as a dukedom, maintained a command such as, perhaps, no other vice-emperor had possessed. In a part of the country claimed by the Popes as the patrimony of Mathilda, Philip’s power overcame the Guelfic element which was so much opposed to the ‘Imperium,’ and which in most of the towns was the predominant principle.
Suddenly, however, all was changed, when the Emperor died in the prime of his manhood, leaving behind him an infant son, three years old, and a distracted kingdom, which never fully resumed its ancient greatness. In the Papal chair, on the other hand, sat one of the most aspiring and successful of the Pontiffs—Innocent III., who at once assumed that authority in the legations which Henry VI. had taken so much pains to put down. The Tuscans, however, were not more disposed to submit patiently to the Papal sovereignty than they had been to that of the Emperor, and this the Pope was not slow to perceive. But while he avoided all direct assertions of sovereign power over the towns, he made use of his influence to form a Tuscan Union, that should be closely allied with the ecclesiastical government at Rome, and firmly opposed to the Imperial authority. In 1198 a Union was formed at San Genesio, which lies at the foot of the hills in the lower valley of the Arno, and within sight of the venerable towers of San Miniato. The negotiators on this occasion were two Cardinals representing the Pope on one side, and on the other deputies elected by the several towns interested. Pisa, which was Ghibelline, alone of the great towns held aloof. The federation was intended to form a bulwark against Imperial encroachments, and all matters of internal administration and municipal government were left untouched. The supremacy of the Papacy was felt to be a lighter yoke than that of the Empire.
It is worthy of remark that this practical protest against Imperial domination should have its starting-point in a spot where the Guelfs, especially the Florentines, were reminded that their liberties depended on the pleasure of the Emperors. For the lofty towers that from the hill of San Miniato look down upon the Val d’Arno, and across the well-watered plain that stretches to the borders of Lucca, formed part of the palace of Barbarossa, and from it his high decrees were sent forth in the name of the Arch-chancellor of the Empire, the Archbishop of Cologne. Here tarried Henry VI. and Frederick II., and here the Vicar of the Empire, under Rudolf of Hapsburg, received the oath of allegiance. At a later period, in March 1355, Charles IV. revived the ancient dignity by stopping at San Miniato both before and after his coronation. The deputies of the place, called from these circumstances San Miniato the German (al Tedesco), had gone to Pisa to pay their obeisance to Charles.
Events like those enumerated above were favourable to the territorial extension of the Florentine Commune. Their progress would have been greater, had not an ancient feud among the nobles come to a bloody outbreak in the second decade of the thirteenth century. The effect of this factious contest, which was embittered by religious animosity and the quarrel of Frederic II. with the Pope, was to enfeeble the nobility, and react mischievously on the people. The murder of Messer Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti at the entrance of the old bridge in 1215 is celebrated in history and poetry as the presumed origin of the hostile factions of Guelf and Ghibelline. A stone cross in the small square, called, from the junction of three streets, the Trebbio, commemorates the victory of the orthodox citizens, led by Peter Martyr of Verona, against the Patarian heretics. About 1247 the most violent