ladies begged alms. The poverty to which many were reduced by merciless party spirit, even more than by losses in war and bad harvests, incited the saintly Archbishop Antoninus in 1441 to found the charitable institution which still exists under the name of Buonuomini di San Martino, and which, managed by a society of trustworthy citizens, has for its object to soften misery, especially when undeserved and borne in silence.
The sad fate of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and his nearest relations is the most striking example of the ruin impending over great families in those days from party spirit. On October 2, 1434, the Balia appointed in the Medicean interest gave orders to the Captain of the People, Messer Jacopo de’ Lavagnoli of Verona, to proceed against the originators of the tumult which had taken place near Sant’Apollinaris. The sentence passed against Messer Rinaldo and his eldest son, Ormanno, was eight years of banishment, during which the exiles should remain at least a hundred miles distant from the Florentine frontiers, and present themselves every three days to the magistrates of their chosen place of residence, which must be certified by a notary’s act. The bail for Rinaldo amounted to 4,000, and for Ormanno to 2,000 gold florins; but all their moveable and immoveable property, including that of the sons and wives, was made security for their proceedings. Of course the exiles were made incapable of all offices. Father and son presented themselves, according to order, in the towns of the district of Ancona, whither they first repaired, Matelica, Montalboddo, Yesi. On November 3, Naples was assigned to the former as his place of exile, Gaeta to the latter, and the banishment prolonged by ten years. Before Rinaldo could reach Naples his destination was changed to Frani, on the Apulian coast, with the command to repair thither in the space of a month. Thus the homeless ones were hunted like wild animals. They of course understood that even the most conscientious observation of the commands given them would never re-open the gates of Florence to them. That they then, driven by rage and despair, disregarded these commands, left the places indicated (it was called ‘rompere il confine’), and sought to return by force of arms, is to be explained, if not to be justified. In the law that had fallen on them they recognised only violence, which they on their side determined to oppose by violence. When Filippo Maria Visconti undertook his last campaign against Florence, the Albizzi and several of their fellow-sufferers were in the Milanese army. The day of Anghiari destroyed their hopes. Eight days after the battle, on July 6, 1440, the penalty was pronounced against the rebels, for that they were now. Rinaldo and Ormanno degli Albizzi, Messer Niccolò and Baldassarre Gianfigliazzi, Ludovico de’ Rossi, Lamberto de’ Lamberteschi, Bernardo Barbadori, and Stefano Peruzzi, all men of distinguished families, were declared to have forfeited their honour, and their portraits were painted on the wall of the Palazzo del Podestà, with insulting verses beneath, according to custom. Andrea del Castagno, an artist of reputation, painted the pictures, as Stefano, named Giottino, did before, and Andrea del Sarto after him. The official poet and jester of the Signoria (the Araldo or herald), Antonio di Meglio, to whose office it belonged to recite something to the Signori during their meals, and to compose eulogies or satires on public occasions, wrote the doggerel verses which indicated the character and crime of each. The painter obtained from his pictures the name of Andrea degli Impiccati.[81]
Rinaldo degli Albizzi resigned himself to his fate. Francesco Filelfo, the humanist, whom hatred against Cosimo de’ Medici united to him, informed him from Milan that nothing was to be hoped for from thence. It was probably shortly after the lost battle that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in fulfilment of an old vow. Returned from thence, he stayed at Ancona, where he died, an aged man, on February 2, 1442, on the marriage-day of a daughter.[82] Seven years later, Ormanno, then more than fifty years old, turned to Cosimo’s younger son, Giovanni, to beg him to obtain a favour in family affairs.[83] The letters from Mantua, where the Albizzi resided with the Margrave Ludovico Gonzaga, have the tone of old friendly connections; but how painfully clear is the fallen condition of the once rich and powerful family! How terrible it was we perceive from the narrative of a simple and trustworthy man, a friend and client of the Medici.[84] Messer Rinaldo’s younger son Maso, married to a Gianfigliazzi, saw himself involved with his family in his father’s misfortunes. He had a son, also called Rinaldo, who, in order to earn a livelihood, entered the service of Antonio Cicinello, the influential councillor of King Alfonso of Aragon, and attained his confidence and affection in a high degree. When Rinaldo was going to Ancona one day to visit his mother, who lived there, he was plundered on the way, and appeared in the doublet of a wretch whom he had seen hanging by the wayside on a tree. The young man died not long after, and Cicinello sent the unhappy woman, who had lost her husband also, and lived in extreme want at Ancona, a sum which he had been able to obtain from the property of the deceased, and which was part of what he had helped her son to gain. When the widow returned to Florence some time afterwards, Cicinello repaired thither on affairs of state, and took with him the remainder of the money. We will let our authority speak for himself: ‘One morning Messer Antonio repaired to Sta. Trinità, and sent to the widow of Maso degli Albizzi (whose parental house joined the church) with the request to come to him, as he wished to speak with her. But the poor woman lay ill in bed, so that Messer Antonio sent her the thirty ducats which he had by him, with the words, he had once procured this money for her son, and now wished that it should be of use to her. When the poor woman received the money, and remembered the kindness which the sender of this money had shown her son, she said, weeping, ‘It is now nearly thirty-five years since my husband was banished from Florence. I have wandered miserably about many parts of Italy, and during my husband’s lifetime, as afterwards when I lost him, no one regarded me or helped me in my distress, but I have been forsaken by all. Messer Antonio has shown greater sympathy with me and my son than has been evinced all this time by the whole world, in the midst of all the strokes of fate.’
Cosimo de’ Medici did not content himself with rendering his old opponents harmless; he took care also that none of his adherents should become too powerful and dangerous to him. Therefore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, he retained the Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand, in order to be able to promote or oppress individuals at will. In other things the citizens enjoyed greater freedom and acted more according to their own pleasure than later, in the days of his grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he was only sure of his own position. It was just in this that his great art lay, to guide things according to his will, and yet to make his partisans believe that he shared his authority with them. It was necessary, however, that there should be one against the others, as was the case with Neri Capponi. To weaken the respect in which the latter was held when his name was in all mouths after the great victory over the Duke of Milan in 1440, Cosimo is said to have commanded the murder of the captain, Baldaccio da Anghiari, who remained in the service of the Republic, and was an intimate friend of Neri. The sanguinary deed was executed in the palace, whither the unsuspecting man had been summoned by command of the Gonfaloniere Bartolommeo Orlandini. Thus the share of Cosimo and his motives are veiled in obscurity, but the suspicion has never been removed from him.[85] The name of the Casa Annalena still recalls Baldaccio’s widow, of the family of the Malateste of Rimini, who founded here a convent for destitute women and girls, the extensive buildings and gardens of which were employed for other purposes at the dissolution of the monastic orders in 1808.
When Neri Capponi, who still acted as a counterbalance, though a very weak one, to the Medicean authority, died, November 22, 1457, at the age of sixty-nine, the prevailing party had already begun to divide. The old opponents were entirely annihilated, most of their chiefs dead and their families impoverished; the anxieties in which the long wars, first with the Visconti, then with Venice, had kept the government and the people, had been ended by the peace of 1454, which we shall mention later. Those who had held together in the face of danger, relaxed after safety had been gained. Cosimo’s supremacy was burdensome to the aristocratic partizans of the Medici. They demanded that the extraordinary powers with which he had governed since 1434 should be terminated. Cosimo consented. The Balia, renewed only two years ago, was declared extinct in the summer of 1455, and the members of the Signoria were again drawn by lot like other magistrates. Giovanni Rucellai, a deserving man, was the first who thus received the office of Gonfaloniere. The people, who hated every appearance of arbitrary power, desired a return to the old forms as much as those who had caused the changes, but the latter soon perceived that the greater freedom was more apparent than real; for when the ballot-boxes were filled with the names of such as held to Cosimo, the latter attained his ends without appearing on the stage. The revision of