In the fourteenth century few could have imagined that Florence and the Medici would find themselves in such a fateful embrace. Around 1300, the Medici were among the more unruly elite families and, although not magnates, had marriage connections with magnates, including the Donati. Their first prior was in 1291, and, with fifty-two more by 1400, they could boast a political presence exceeded only by the Strozzi, Altoviti, and Albizzi. But throughout the century many of them resembled the worst of the old magnates in their frequently violent behavior, not only against others but within the family. No Medici were major players in the world of commerce and banking in mid-century. In the 1360s and 1370s, the family split between the Albizzi and Ricci factions, but the only one to play a leading political role in these years was Salvestro, whose open opposition to the Parte Guelfa, support for the war against the papacy, and leadership in the popular movement of 1378 caused his exile in 1382 and dimmed the family’s influence in the post-1382 oligarchy. In the 1390s, several Medici were accused of conspiring against the regime and banished; one was even executed. And in 1400 the discovery of another plot involving family members led to the disqualification from public office of the entire consorteria, except Giovanni di Bicci, his brother Francesco, and the descendants of Vieri di Cambio.324 This was hardly a position from which a rise to unprecedented power in the commune, in the space of only thirty-five years, could have seemed possible.
Vieri di Cambio, a distant cousin of Giovanni di Bicci but first cousin to Salvestro, ironically provided the opportunity for Giovanni to establish the financial foundations of his descendants’ political rise. In the years of revolution and counterrevolution, Vieri had sided with the Parte Guelfa and Albizzi, ensuring himself a place on the balia of 1382. He was also the only Medici in the second half of the fourteenth century to make a major fortune in trade and banking. Giovanni and Francesco began their careers as employees in the Rome branch of Vieri’s far-flung operations. In the mid-1380s, Giovanni became branch manager and then partner, and in 1393 founded his own company in Rome which inherited much of the business and assets of the now retired Vieri. Four years later he relocated the company’s main office to Florence, but kept a branch in Rome. He and his partners initiated the Florentine company with a capital investment of 10,000 florins; in 1402 they added a branch in Venice and the first of two wool manufacturing enterprises in Florence. But it was the Rome branch on which the great fortune, in both senses, of the Medici was built. Between 1390 and 1410 the dominant role in papal banking once enjoyed by the Alberti was shared by a number of Italian companies. Popes began the practice of appointing as Depositary of the Papal Chamber a single banker whose company received and kept on deposit church revenues from all over Europe, and paid out sums as ordered by the Curia, taking a percentage of the transactions as commission. This crucial and lucrative office was held by bankers from Lucca and Bologna until, sometime after 1403, the popes entrusted it to Florentines, first the Ricci and then the Spini.
During the Schism, with rival papacies in Rome and Avignon and endless discussions and plans for a council to settle the dispute and reunite the church, the Florentines maintained open working relations with both papacies, and in 1409 they hosted a gathering in Pisa of cardinals seeking to persuade both popes to resign in order to elect a new one.325 The Council of Pisa elected a new pope, but the two existing claimants refused to abdicate, leaving western Christendom with a scandal of three popes that was finally resolved at the Council of Constance (1414-18). But the Pisan papacy was recognized by most of Europe as possessing the legitimate headship of the church and consequently controlled the lion’s share of papal revenues. It was thus an event of the greatest significance for the Medici that in 1410, after the first pope of the Pisan obedience died, the conclave elected Giovanni’s friend, the ambitious Neapolitan cardinal Baldassare Cossa, as John XXIII, until then papal legate to, and de facto ruler of, Bologna since his recovery of the city for the Roman papacy in 1403. Exactly where and why they became friends is not known. Cossa was later accused of buying his cardinalate with funds (10,000 florins) lent him by the Medici, and Giovanni had been Cossa’s banker for at least a half dozen years before his election. In 1411 Cossa removed Doffo Spini as papal Depositary and installed two other Florentines who were in effect fronts for three Florentine banks, belonging to Giovanni de’ Medici, his nephew Averardo, and the Carducci, which supplied the funds with which the nominal depositaries made initial loans to Cossa. Into the coffers of these banks, through the hands of the depositaries, papal revenues began to flow. Large loans to the papal treasury in advance of the receipt of these revenues meant constant profits in the form of interest as well as commissions. Although Cossa happily took loans from a variety of Florentine companies as he was fighting alongside the Florentines against Ladislaus of Naples, Giovanni de’ Medici emerged as his biggest supplier of quick cash. Between July 1411 and January 1412, he extended loans to Cossa totaling 23,000 florins. When the pope signed an agreement with Ladislaus involving a payment of 95,000 florins, Giovanni’s bank collected the funds and transferred them to Naples. Apart from these very profitable loans, the volume of regular business was extensive: in a two-month period in 1413 the Medici bank received in its papal account almost 32.000 florins and disbursed 29,000, sums that steadily generated profitable commissions. This was the origin of the long-term Medici role in papal finances. Giovanni temporarily lost his privileged position at the Curia when Cossa was deposed by the Council of Constance in 1415, but he helped Cossa find safe haven in Florence, and when the ex-pope died in 1419 Giovanni (or possibly Cosimo) commissioned from Donatello and Michelozzo the great tomb with the pope’s effigy in the baptistery. Giovanni also assisted Cossa in reconciling with the pope elected at Constance, the Roman Martin V of the Colonna family, motivated no doubt by the aim of regaining a share in papal banking. Martin initially favored the Spini, but when the venerable company declared bankruptcy in 1420 he turned to the Medici and appointed their Roman branch manager, Bartolomeo de’ Bardi, as depositary. From then until the 1440s the position was controlled exclusively by Medici agents.326
More than half the profits of the Medici banking and commercial empire came from the bank’s Rome branch. Medici account books for the years 1397-1420 show astonishing overall profits of 151,820 florins (three-fourths to Giovanni and one-fourth to his one remaining partner), of which 79,195 came from the branch that followed the Curia wherever it resided. Giovanni retired in 1420, and a new partnership was formed by his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo and Giovanni’s former partner Ilarione de’ Bardi, with capital contributions of 16,000 from the brothers and 8,000 from their partner, to which their Florence, Rome, and Venice branch managers made additions that brought the total to 31,000 florins. This company remained operative until 1435, and thus through the years of the fiscal crisis and the political conflict of 1433-4, and produced total profits of 186,382 florins; average yearly profits of over 12.000 florins represented a 40% annual return on the original investments. Papal banking provided an even higher proportion of the profits - 63% - than before 1420. The two-thirds of the profits enjoyed by Cosimo and Lorenzo (124,255 florins) enabled them to expand Medici banking and trading activities between 1435 and 1450 with new branches in Ancona, Avignon, Basel, Bruges, London, Geneva, and Pisa, to supplement the two wool shops with a silk manufacturing operation, and, of course, to make the large cash loans to the government during the fiscal crisis that were the foundation of Medici political power. Profits in 1435-50 amounted to an astronomical 290,791 florins, 70% of which (203,702 florins) went to Cosimo. Lorenzo’s death in 1440 eliminated the prospect of a division of this huge patrimony. By the 1440s, the Rome branch no longer generated the same proportion of profits, but it still made more money than any other branch in the system: 88,511 florins in 1435-50, slightly more than 30% of the total.29
Underlying both the oligarchy’s acquiescence in Cosimo’s burgeoning influence in the early 1430s and its desperate attempt to rid itself of him in 1433 was the republic’s growing dependence on his wealth to pay its bills. In order to raise quickly the cash needed to pay mercenaries, war balie had often taken short-term loans from wealthy citizens with secure promises of prompt repayment and high interest. In 1425 the authority to contract such loans was transferred to the Officials of the Bank, who had broad discretionary powers to arrange loans, determine interest rates, and guarantee both repayment and interest with whatever communal revenues they chose. Bank Officials were themselves among the biggest lenders, deciding the terms of their own loans as of others; indeed, only lenders to the commune could serve as Bank Officials, perhaps because it was thought that only with control over their own loans (in effect, institutionalized and mandatory conflict of interest) would wealthy citizens be persuaded to put their money at risk. Loans were repaid usually within a few months when allocated revenues became available, with monthly interest rates between 21/2 and 4%, which translate to annualized rates of 30 to almost 50%. Bank Officials clearly wielded enormous power; their wealth allowed the government to meet military costs without waiting for the communal treasury to collect sufficient funds from forced loans and indirect taxes. Inevitably, the power to determine and shape foreign and fiscal policy fell into the hands of the wealthy men who served on these committees. Their names are known for the year from November 1427 through 1428 and for the two years and some months from December 1430 to early 1433: eighty-one citizens sat as Bank Officials in these two periods, of whom at least sixteen were either Medici or known allies, friends, and partisans of Cosimo and collectively held a quarter of the ninety-nine seats. Cosimo himself served three times, his cousin Averardo and more distant kinsman Bernardo d’Antonio each once. Four Medici friends appear more than once: Andrea de’ Pazzi four times, Antonio Serristori three times, Niccolo Valori and Puccio Pucci twice.
Other Medici friends from the Corbinelli, Carducci, Tornabuoni, Bardi, Benci, Capponi, Bartolini-Scodellari, and Davanzati families also served as Officials. By contrast, among the many exiled or otherwise punished by the victorious Medici in 1434, only two had been Bank Officials, including Palla Strozzi, and two others had relatives among them. The Medici and their friends dominated the committees of Bank Officials.327
In thirty-four non-consecutive months for which records survive, sixty-eight individuals, companies, or pairs of brothers from fifty-three lineages made loans to the commune through the Officials of the Bank totaling just over
561,000 florins. If these fragmentary data are typical of the entire period of crisis, the Bank Officials borrowed approximately 200,000 florins, and thus a hefty percentage of the communal budget, every twelve months. Forty-six percent came from ten persons who were either Medici family members or allies. Cosimo’s and Lorenzo’s loans amounted to 155,887 florins (in just these thirty-four months), or 28% of the total. Other “Medicean” lenders included Andrea de’ Pazzi (58,000), Antonio Serristori (26,000), and Cosimo’s cousin Averardo (5,500). Still other lenders friendly to the Medici, or whose families became solidly pro-Medici after 1434, were Donato Bonsi (26,000 florins); Antonio Pitti (26,000); the brothers Giannozzo and Filippo Manetti (15,000); three Alberti (a total of 9,300); Niccolo Cambini (3,000); and Bernardo da Uzzano (14,000), a Medici partisan in 1434 despite the prominence of his kinsman Niccolo among the anti-Mediceans. These bring the share of loans by the Medici, their allies, and friends to 353,000 florins, or 63% of the total. Opponents of the Medici were not absent from the lists of creditors, but their share was far smaller. Only three lenders to the Bank Officials were exiled by the Medici in 1434, and their loans were modest by comparison: Niccolo Barbadori (1,120 florins), Piero Panciatichi (1,721), and Ridolfo Peruzzi (2,831). Two close relatives of prominent exiles were also among the biggest lenders: Bernardo Lamberteschi (35,000 florins), and Lorenzo di Palla Strozzi (with loans of almost 34,000 florins). But it was Cosimo and his friends who dominated the business of short-term loans to the government.
In addition to influence over foreign and fiscal policy, Cosimo’s wealth also provided the means for building a patronage network, in the city and beyond, that was larger, more extensive, and more cohesive than other Florentine patrons could manage. He helped people directly with debts, dowries, and business dealings; and with his influence he secured political offices, assisted in court cases, and mediated disputes. These were traditional things that Florentine patrons had always done for their “friends” and clients. But Cosimo was able to do it on a much broader scale that crossed neighborhood boundaries and spread to every corner of the city. Again like most patrons, Cosimo cultivated ties outside the city as well; but whereas patrons of more limited means and ambitions confined their extra-urban networks to some portion of the contado, perhaps that from which their ancestors had emigrated or perhaps a town with which they had political ties, Cosimo spread his influence and sought friends and allies throughout the Florentine dominion. One dramatic example of this was the appeal to Cosimo by the entire city of Volterra, which rebelled against the imposition of the Catasto in 1429. One Volterran remarked: “We applied to Cosimo for aid and sympathy and advice, as our refuge and protector in every hour of need.”328
What made Cosimo unlike all other Florentine patrons was his unusual influence at the papal court, or Curia, the center of the vast legal, financial, administrative, and diplomatic machinery of church government. From all over Italy and Europe people looked to the Curia for favorable legal judgments in its courts, to its various offices and departments for assistance with matters ranging from marriage, wills, and the legitimization of children to disputes with local ecclesiastical institutions over property or patronage rights, and to this or that powerful cardinal or even to the pope himself for titles and privileges. Giovanni de’ Medici’s close ties to John XXIII and Martin V had been essential to the bank’s early success in Rome, and Cosimo continued that policy by cultivating even closer ties with Eugenius IV (1431-47), Nicholas V (1447-55) and Pius II (1458-64).329 His influence with the papacy made Cosimo the gatekeeper to papal favor: many who sought a pope’s ear or attention appealed first to Cosimo, knowing that a good word from the pope’s powerful banker could open many doors. A study of more than 1,200 extant letters written to Cosimo reveals that 70% were requests for favors of one sort or another: 20% of these asked for Cosimo’s intercession with Florentine committees or courts and 15% begged his intercession with the pope. As one petitioner put it in asking Cosimo to persuade Eugenius to consider a relative of his for an archbishopric, “you count for much with our Lord the Holy Father.”330 Cosimo’s patronage and influence were unprecedented in their scope. Indeed, his connections abroad, and especially in Rome, made him seem, in some eyes, more like a prince than a republican citizen.
At home the faction Cosimo assembled was unlike the loosely bound clusters of families and friends that had been typical within the elite. It was tighter and larger, had well-defined leadership and a chain of command from the top to an inner circle of advisers and lieutenants, and enjoyed the loyalty of rank-and-file who could be counted on to rally in moments of crisis.34 Its center was the family, where cousins and selected members of other branches played pivotal roles. Perhaps reacting to the spectacle of Medici disarray and disunity in the fourteenth century, Cosimo and his closest advisers maintained friendly contacts among the branches. He and his cousin Averardo, his chief lieutenant in the early days, corresponded with members of five of the six main branches of the Medici consorteria and won their recognition of Cosimo’s leadership. Beyond their kin, carefully considered marriage alliances cemented existing friendships and gained new allies. Two dozen Medici marriages between 1400 and 1434 were with families of their partisans. Three key lieutenants, Alamanno Salviati, Antonio Serristori, and Giannozzo Gianfigliazzi, married Averardo’s daughters. Several marriages, including Cosimo’s to Contessina, linked the Medici and the Bardi, thereby splitting the Bardi consorteria (some of whom sided with the Albizzi) and giving the Medici a foothold in the Oltrarno district. They pursued a similar policy of multiple marriages with the Tornaquinci and their non-magnate cousins, the Tornabuoni, culminating in the marriage of Cosimo’s son Piero to Lucrezia Tornabuoni. And similarly useful marriages linked the Medici to important allies like the Acciaiuoli and Pitti. The Medici always married into the families of allies from their own elite class. Their many supporters from lower down the social hierarchy were never invited to become in-laws. About half the Medici partisans were from the quarter of San Giovanni, slightly less than half of these from the Medici gonfalone of Lion d’oro. Most of these neighborhood allies did not belong to the elite, and it was on the traditional patronage turf of the neighborhood that the Medici established the vertical links to guildsmen and new families, whereas their elite allies came mostly from other quarters of the city.
The Medici faction was not the “popular” party described in some older accounts. Because the essence of political patronage resided in the elite’s cultivation of non-elite clients, and because the Medici offered such formidable inducements to clients seeking protection and favors, their patronage network gathered a visibly large number of non-elite families under its umbrella. Medici partisans were about evenly split between elite and non-elite. Within the elite they found allies among the recently repatriated Alberti, the Ricci (who were old foes of the Albizzi), and among magnate (or former magnate) families such as the Bardi, Pazzi, Gianfigliazzi, and Tornaquinci/ Tornabuoni. Most of their lieutenants came from elite families: Alamanno Salviati, Luca di Buonaccorso Pitti, Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Nerone Dietisalvi-Neroni, Piero Guicciardini, and Luca degli Albizzi, who broke with his brother Rinaldo, married the granddaughter of Vieri de’ Medici, and became a com-
For what follows: Kent, Rise, pp. 33-135.
Mitted Medici partisan. In the non-elite wing of the party were some new families, several from Lion d’oro who were in the process of establishing themselves politically and economically, like the Della Casa, Martelli, Ginori, Masi, and Cambini;331 families of, or descended from, notaries, like the Serristori; and the Pucci, minor guildsmen, one of whom, Puccio Pucci, achieved such prominence and notoriety that Mediceans were sometimes called the “Puccini.” Resentment among anti-Mediceans over the influence that Pucci and a few others of the artisan class achieved in the party, and thus in communal politics, may be the origin of the old myth that the Medici party represented “popular” interests against the oligarchy. In fact, the great majority of leading Mediceans were from the elite: half of their partisans belonged to the group of citizens who spoke most frequently in the pratiche between 1429 and 1434, and at least twenty of them belonged to the ruling group’s inner circle.332 Although the Medici did not represent popular interests, they did cultivate the support of selected guildsmen, notaries, and new families to enhance their power in the struggle against their opponents.
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