Vernio and Barbolani of Montanto, as well as the Macchesi of Monte Sta. Maria (Bourbon de Monte), whom we have just mentioned, the Accomandigia led to their subjection. In the States of the Church the Papal sovereignty prevailed, as might be expected.
CHAPTER VI.
SUPREMACY OF COSIMO DE’ MEDICI UP TO LUCA PITTI’S REFORM OF THE ADMINISTRATION.
The time at which Cosimo de’ Medici attained to a position in his native town, such as a citizen had never yet held, promised neither rest nor peace to Italy.
We have already mentioned how, in the decisive crisis when Rinaldo degli Albizzi sought to carry the citizens along with him, and to destroy the Medicean party with one blow, Pope Eugenius IV. was a fugitive in the same convent of Sta. Maria Novella which his predecessor had inhabited on his way from Constance to Rome. Martin V. had died February 20, 1431, at the moment when the war of the Florentines with the Duke of Milan had brought the armies of the latter over the Apennines. His successor, descended from a Venetian family, did not understand how to preserve the quiet which Martin’s skill and policy had established. While he fell into disputes with the relations of the latter, the Colonna—disputes which threatened the city of Rome itself—the eventful complication began with the council opened at Basle on July 23rd of the same year, which was to complete the reform of the Church, which the Council of Constance had not thoroughly effected. Eugenius had united with Florence and Venice in order to overthrow the Colonna family, but had thereby embittered Filippo Maria Visconti, who now, when the violent strife raged between Pope and Council, ranged himself on the side of the latter, and in May, 1434, even assisted to excite a revolt in Rome, which forced the Pope to fly. In the autumn of the same year, although the Pope saw the city of Rome return to its allegiance, he still lingered on in Florence, at strife with the Council, which was pursuing the policy of striving to diminish the authority of the head of the Church, while the surrounding country was desolated by the Duke’s mercenaries, till the Pope at last succeeded in coming to terms with his oppressor. Meanwhile, the intrigues began at Naples which for a century were the curse of that country, and finally of all Italy. The last of the Anjous, Ladislaus’ sister, Johanna II., died on February 2, 1435, and left to the country, in consequence of her fickleness, a contest for the throne between Renè, Count of Provence, and Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, whom she had successively adopted as sons, while the Pope showed an inclination to claim Naples as a relapsed fief of the Church. Alfonso, defeated and taken prisoner at the Ponza Islands by the Genoese, allied with Renè, was restored to liberty by Filippo Maria Visconti, then ruler over the Sigurian harbour, but this generosity was regarded as detrimental by the victors, and excited an insurrection in Genoa against the supremacy of Milan, which found support from the republic of Venice, the ancient enemy of the Visconti. Hereupon the Duke, not to have to cope with too many enemies at once, entered into the alliance with the Pope which has just been mentioned. As far as the resistance to Filippo Maria was concerned, the Venetians were hand-in-hand with the Florentines; as soon as Cosimo had returned, the Senate congratulated the Signoria. But Florentine plans of winning still independent parts of Tuscany, and the Venetian intentions on Romagna, upon which, for the sake of the safety of their own frontiers, the eyes of the Florentines were always directed, could not but endanger the harmony of the two republics. The whole of the remaining lifetime of Cosimo de’ Medici was occupied with the endeavour to support and secure his position at home, and his connection with foreign countries, each reciprocally aiding the other.
He found favourable soil in Florence. His partizans had prepared the way for him. All the heads of the opposite faction were exiled, and most of them ruined. Many were dead. It was easy for him to boast in his memoirs, that during his administration not one individual was banished or injured in any way. It was not lenity on his part, for he had no more horror of violence or bloodshed than the majority of his contemporaries where political ends were at stake, but it was prudent calculation. He knew that he could allow others to give the laws an interpretation which secured him, without being himself taxed with using hard measures. He did this by the execution of penal laws, and by making changes in the constitution. He first put forward Puccio Pucci, who showed such zeal, and attained such authority, that the Hotspurs of the party were named after him Puccini. When it was an object to further the aims of this party even by the most sanguinary measures, or to raise money, Puccio, otherwise an able man, and proved to be such in office and in embassies, knew no scruples. Cosimo employed the services of Luca Pitti even more frequently than those of Pucci. The family came originally from Semifonte, in the Elsa valley, a castle the conquest and destruction of which, as has been mentioned, plays a part in the oldest annals of the development of the commonwealth. Maffeo Pitti sat as early as 1283 in the magistracy of the Priors. Buonaccorso was a man much employed about the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. His activity partakes somewhat of the character of an adventurer, and he seems to have been equally versed in political and mercantile affairs. No one was so successful as he in obtaining foreign assistance against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and it was chiefly he who, on the part of Florence, persuaded Rupert of the Palatinate to undertake the unsuccessful march into Lombardy, particulars of which are given in his instructive memoirs.[74]
Buonaccorso’s son was the principal tool of Cosimo. ‘Luca Pitti,’ says Francesco Guicciardini, ‘was not a man of remarkable capabilities, but vivacious, liberal, courageous; one who ventured more for his friends than any one in Florence; a man who might safely be allowed to carry out everything, while he had not head enough to become formidable.’
Cosimo had friends of another kind than these two. At their head stood Neri Capponi. His father Gino, descended from a family which appears in the second half of the thirteenth century among the most distinguished, had won a good name for himself by the capture of Pisa in 1406, and by the judicious and reasonable administration of the severely tried city, while his history of the popular rebellion of 1378 is one of the most important aids to a right understanding of this important occurrence.[75] Neri belonged to those who before 1433 formed a kind of moderate party, but after the death of Niccolò da Uzzano he inclined more and more to Cosimo, and if unable to prevent his exile, he aided essentially in his recall. He was for the Medicean party what Niccolò had been for the Albizzi, the mediating element, but he never attained to the position which the latter held, because Cosimo was of a different nature from Maso, and still more unlike Rinaldo, and because in many cases Neri rather complemented him than represented a different principle. Neri Capponi certainly aided essentially in restraining the Medicean party government within certain limits; yet the measures which most confirmed their government were effected under his eyes. Cosimo, who required him because he enjoyed general confidence, and was skilled alike in peace and war, always found means to counteract his influence when it was inconvenient to himself. ‘Neri,’ says Francesco Guicciardini,[76] ‘well knew the means employed against him. As he saw, however, that Cosimo’s position was impregnable, and that to break with him would be to run his own head against the wall, he pretended, intelligent as he was, not to observe anything that passed, and waited patiently for time and opportunity.’ But it is evident that this waiting, which we cannot but attribute to weakness of character or selfish indirect motives, established Cosimo’s position more and more firmly; Neri’s influence did not, however, increase, notwithstanding the great services accomplished by him, which will be more fully dwelt upon as we proceed.
Agnolo Acciaiuoli held a position scarcely inferior to that of Neri Capponi. In the preceding century, his family, which rose with the majority of the plebeian races, attained to unusual splendour. When we descend the high road, leading southward from Florence to Siena, we perceive, three miles from the town, on an isolated height on the banks of the river Ema, the Certosa of Montacuto, convent and fortress at the same time, with towers and pinnacles, with grand colonnades and monuments of sculpture and painting in the splendid church. If we wander farther, quitting the high road to descend to the right into the valley of the Pesa, a tributary of the Arno, we see before us, on a low hill rising from the midst of a green valley, an imposing building, rather resembling a castle than a villa, the extensive mass of building surmounted by a tower resembling the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio—Monte Gufoni, once a splendid