Unlike the balia of 1433, which left the results of earlier scrutinies in place, the Medici balia of 1434 destroyed the pouches of the 1433 scrutiny. Nullification of scrutinies was not unprecedented: it happened three times in the fourteenth century (1343, 1378, and 1382), all moments of a more or less violent overthrow of government and radical redefinition of the political class. But it had not happened since the elite returned to power in 1382 and made the continuity of its electoral institutions a cardinal feature of the regime’s legitimacy. That, no doubt, was a major reason why Rinaldo and his allies did not cancel the existing lists of eligible citizens. Although the Medici scrutiny of 1434 and those that followed at more or less five-year intervals did not substantially change the social composition of the office-holding class, eliminating the old lists and starting afresh allowed the regime to keep specific families and individuals out of the way and were meant to spare the Medici unpleasant surprises in the bimonthly extraction of name-tickets of the sort that had scuttled their opponents. They nonetheless protected their friends by having the accoppiatori select certain citizens approved in pre-1433 scrutinies for inclusion in the new pouches.
Like that of 1433, Medicean scrutinies continued to nominate and approve large numbers of citizens for high office. The results of the 1434 scrutiny have not survived, and for none of the next four, held in 1440, 1444, 1448, and 1453, have lists of approved candidates survived for all four quarters. Partial lists suggest city-wide totals of about 2,000 in 1440 and 1444, approximately 2,800 in 1448, and perhaps 2,500 in 1453. But a large proportion of approved candidates came from a fairly restricted group of some 100 to 120 families. For example, of 508 candidates approved in San Giovanni in 1440, 81% came from the major guilds, and 58% of these came from the 25 families in the quarter with five or more successful candidates. In the same year in Santa Croce, 78% of those approved were major guildsmen, and 69% of these came from only 32 families. Candidates approved for the first time were generally
Vespasiano, Vite, vol. 2, pp. 155-62; D. Kent, Rise, p. 343.
Between a fifth and a fourth of each year’s total; but 85 to 90% of the newly approved were sons or brothers of already approved citizens.349 Thus the Medici continued the policy, begun by the oligarchic regime, of making eligible for high office both the whole of the elite including many of its children (excepting of course marked political enemies) and a large majority of non-elite major guildsmen as well.
Elite families would have preferred to see eligibility restricted to members of their class and worried about the approval of too many non-elite citizens, although the latter of course were not actually placed in office in anything like the same proportion. Throughout the sixty years of Medici hegemony, elite Florentines frequently deplored the expansion of eligibility. Francesco Giovanni confided to his diary that the scrutiny of 1448 had qualified “many gente nuova who had no experience of government, to the great infamy of the leadership and displeasure of the good popolani accustomed to rule.” Four decades later Piero Guicciardini (father of the historian Francesco) commented more calmly, but with evident disapproval, that the scrutiny of 1484 confirmed that “continuously new men make the grade, and in order to give them a place in the governing class, it is necessary to eliminate from it long-established citizens.”350 In fact, however, “new men” were rather infrequent. Families entering the Signoria for the first time were almost as rare under the Medici as they had been before 1434. In the 25 years from 1409 to 1433, a total of only 69 new families (2.76 per year) had their first priors; in the first five years of the Medici regime, the annual totals of new families were a little higher (5, 9, 10, 7, and 11), but in the 25 years from 1440 to 1464, only 72 new families entered the Signoria (2.88 per year).8 In any case, in the eyes of most citizens Medici control of the extraction of name-tickets through their trusted accoppiatori negated any practical significance to the huge numbers of approved candidates and for the most part ensured that Medici favorites controlled the lion’s share of offices. Since the Medici were so careful to exclude those whom they did not trust, from whatever class, and to include non-elite clients and favorites, for the first time the office-holding class was defined more by the interests and needs of a ruling faction, or regime, than by class or family solidarities.
Actual elections were entrusted to the accoppiatori: the Medici did not repeat the mistake of their enemies in restoring sortition. They handpicked the regime’s first Signoria (of November-December 1434) and maintained close controls over the selection of priors uninterruptedly for the next five years through a committee of accoppiatori that remained unchanged.9 Never had the power to elect the Signoria remained in so few hands for so long. Eight of the nine accoppiatori of 1434-9 were from the inner circle of Medici partisans: Luca Pitti, Piero Guicciardini, Niccolo Cocco-Donati, Antonio Serristori, Giuliano Davanzati, Neri Bartolini-Scodellari, Nerone Dietisalvi-Neroni, and the minor guildsman Nero di Filippo Del Nero, whose son Bernardo later became a fixture of the regime under Lorenzo; the ninth, Simone Guiducci, had been on the priorate that approved Cosimo’s return. After their term expired, new committees of accoppiatori went on selecting the priors according to the wishes of the Medici high command for many years, with only brief (albeit important) interruptions. Unprecedented power and terms of office for accoppiatori whose domination of elections undermined sortition and emptied the scrutinies of any real significance were the cornerstone of the regime’s transformation of both the electoral system and the republic’s political culture. Accoppiatori had the authority to choose, from among the long lists of those approved in the scrutinies, a small numbers of names to be placed in purses for each bimonthly extraction of name-tickets: these were called “a mano” elections. No longer were the names of all approved candidates included in the purses. For the election of a Standardbearer of Justice, the accoppiatori put three or four names in a purse; for the priorate they selected a minimum of ten, and by 1438 only five, for each of two pouches, the regular purse and the borsellino, for each quarter of the city. Communal law still called for two minor guildsmen in each priorate, and for these as well the accoppiatori picked a small number of candidates for each election. A different selection of names occurred for each bimonthly election, and extraction by lot proceeded only from these very restricted pools of handpicked candidates: it was used merely to determine which two among the five or ten handpicked favorites for each quarter would hold the office. And by carefully mixing in the names of candidates temporarily disqualified by divieti or for other reasons, the accoppiatori could easily guarantee the election of specific candidates for any given term.
Where the regime encountered difficulties was in securing authorization for appointing or reappointing accoppiatori, which had to come from a constituted source. In 1434 the balia had done this with its extensive but temporary powers. Thereafter, proposals for extending the accoppiatori’s mandate had to be submitted to the legislative councils, which approved them by only narrow majorities as early as 1435, and later sometimes rejected them. Reluctance by the councils, especially that of the Popolo with its heavy representation of non-elite guildsmen, to authorize the accoppiatori was the regime’s most serious weakness in its first thirty years: a resistance that clearly shows that the regime was not perceived by the guild community as in any sense
Rubinstein, Government, p. 273.
“popular.” Continuation of a mano elections was justified with arguments about security: as necessary in times of crisis and especially war. In fact, the councils terminated them in 1440 after the Florentine victory over the Milanese at Anghiari finally eliminated the threat posed by Rinaldo degli Albizzi and the exiles. In 1443 the councils approved a partial restoration of the accoppiatori for three years, and the balia of 1444 created new ones who remained in office until 1449, a group that again included Luca Pitti and four members of the Medici inner circle: Tommaso Soderini, Alamanno Salviati, Manno Temperani, and Dietisalvi, the son of Nerone Dietisalvi-Neroni. Giovanni Cavalcanti, who had once considered the Medici faction, or at least Cosimo’s father, as a preferable alternative to the pre-1434 regime, regarded the resumption of electoral controls in 1444 as a sign of the regime’s “tyrannical method of rule.” “Even before the public extraction of name-tickets took place, these ten tyrants selected those who were to sit in high offices; and the result was that everything that the people and the balia had done was subordinated to the will of the ten tyrants. . . . They selected those whom they wanted, not those for whom the people had voted, and there was no need to hold a new scrutiny if they wanted to give so much authority to such a tyrannical way of governing.”351 352
Even within the regime’s inner circle, opinion was divided. In a 1446 pratica, termination of a mano elections was favored by eleven of twenty-nine speakers, including two pillars of the regime, Agnolo Acciaiuoli and Nerone Dietisalvi-Neroni; seven wanted a continuation of controls; and the remaining eleven either had no opinion or believed that, although it might be better to continue them, public clamor for a return to traditional elections was too strong to ignore. Cosimo, who participated in this debate, espoused this cautious view, and in a follow-up discussion a few days later most speakers agreed with him. How and when to end electoral controls was left to an ad hoc committee that included Cosimo, but a week later the committee’s report abruptly reversed the view he had expressed in the pratica and decided to retain a mano elections “for the preservation and security of the present status of the republic. . . and for avoiding dangers and discord.” In 1449, another pratica debated the question: again there were significant differences of opinion among the regime’s leaders, and again they decided for a continuation of controls. Matteo Palmieri, of all people, addressed and peremptorily resolved the issue of how to reconcile their decision with public opposition: “Although it seems more popular that the purses be closed [i. e., that the powers of the accoppiatori be terminated], in the end security is to be preferred to popularity.”11 Nonetheless, later that same year a mano elections were terminated and sortition restored, but with a new war in 1452 a new balia and the legislative councils reinstated controls. A year after peace finally came in 1454, the councils put both the balia and the accoppiatori out of business once again and did so with emphatic majorities of 218-22 and 169-7. Remarkably, fully twenty years after the regime’s inception, solid majorities in the councils, and no doubt within the city at large, still regarded a mano elections as an emergency measure and looked forward eagerly, indeed insistently, to the resumption of traditional elections.
To resolve the problem of popular opposition to electoral controls, the regime attempted to bypass the legislative councils by entrusting the authorization of accoppiatori either to the Signoria or to balie. Undermining the authority of the statutory councils did not begin with the Medici. The pre-1434 regime had moved in this direction by creating new assemblies, staffed with friends of the regime or limited in some way to those approved for the chief executive offices, and by giving these new bodies primary jurisdiction in key areas of war and finances. First was the council of 81 instituted by the balia of 1393 and authorized to approve forced loans and create future balie.353 New councils of 200 and 131 were created in 1411 with primary responsibility for military affairs. And beginning in the early 1420s and continuing beyond 1434, a council of 145, consisting of the Signoria, advisory colleges, various ex officio bodies and appointed members, was periodically convened to approve tax bills and elect the Bank Officials and war balie.354 It was in some respects a council (because it remained in force for many years) and in others a balia (because its authority had to be periodically renewed by the statutory councils). But apart from this hybrid body, after 1393 and until 1433 the oligarchic regime made no use of balie in the strict sense of plenipotentiary assemblies appointed for short periods with far-reaching powers to enact reforms. Both the anti-Medici balia of 1433 and the first Medici balia of 1434 were of this kind.
While the Medici did not invent the institution of the balia, the regime’s use of it was radically different from earlier practice: Medici balie were often of long duration and permanently weakened the authority of the statutory councils, especially concerning elections and taxes. In the regime’s first twenty years, there were three balie. The first was the “great council” of 1438, so-called because it consisted of 348 members, two-thirds of them appointed by the other one-third of ex-officio members. This too was a cross between a council and a balia: although created for an unprecedented period of three years, during which the appointed members were not replaced, it was not a permanent addition to the commune’s legislative assemblies. In fact, the Council of the Popolo approved the new body by only seven votes. All proposals regarding fiscal and military matters had first to come to this balia, and, if approved, were then sent to the statutory councils. The 1438 balia was also authorized to hold the next general scrutiny and approve a mano elections of the Signoria for the following three years. It did both, but once the scrutiny of 1440 was completed, the statutory councils voted for the restoration of traditional elections by lot; and when the balia’s term ended in 1441, it duly dissolved itself and reinstated sortition.
Clearly this was not the result the regime had hoped for. So in 1444 it tried again with the creation of another long-term balia, this one for five years; again the statutory councils approved it only by tiny majorities. It consisted of 238 members, two-thirds ex officio and only one-third appointed (who remained as permanent members for the entire period); two-thirds of its members had been in the balie of either 1434 or 1438 or both. Its powers were like those of its predecessor of 1438: authority over the next scrutiny and elections a mano, and first say on all fiscal legislation. Over the next couple of years the balia even regularly bypassed the statutory councils in approving tax bills, until the latter reacted sharply in 1446 by limiting the balia’s powers and reasserting their own constitutional prerogatives; in fact, in 1447 they tried to dissolve the balia before the conclusion of its five-year term. This balia carried out two general scrutinies, in 1444 and 1448, but the regime’s attempts to prolong its existence for another two years were repeatedly rebuffed in the Council of the Popolo, and the balia of 1444, like that of 1438, was dissolved on schedule the next year. The third attempt came in 1452, when a new balia was again narrowly approved in the statutory councils. Although initially instituted only for the duration of the war, in 1453 its projected term was expanded to five years. But with peace in 1454, the statutory councils quickly cancelled this latest Medicean effort to reform the conciliar branch of Florentine government. Francesco Giovanni commented that “to everyone who wanted the right way of life [il ben vivere] and a republican government [populare governo], the present balia was in every respect hateful.”14 The abolition of a mano elections followed the next year.
Twenty years of trying to persuade or cajole Florentines of middle social status, the guildsmen who filled the seats of the statutory councils, to accept a structural, if still de facto, modification of both electoral and legislative institutions thus met, at best, with mixed results. Balie did in fact conduct all the general scrutinies of these years, and the Signoria was elected by accoppiatori in all but six of the twenty-one years from 1435 to 1455. But the statutory councils regularly repudiated the attempts to extend or make permanent the
Rubinstein, Government, pp. 77-98 (89).
Powers of the balie, and by 1455 the regime faced an uncertain future. Having routinely supported extra-constitutional authority and electoral controls on the grounds that external dangers required tighter security at home, now that the wars were at an end the regime would need to find other and, as it happened, harsher means of persuasion in reimposing controls that were even more essential to its survival in peace than in war.
World History
