CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.POPE SIXTUS IV., KING FERRANTE, AND THE MEDICI.Pope SixtusIV. was disposed most favourably towards the Medici at the beginning of his reign. We have heard in Lorenzo’s own words how well he was received in Rome in 1471. The friendly relation was strengthened by concessions which afforded essential advantages to the Florentine mercantile house. The Pope was ready moreover to fulfil a wish which Lorenzo already cherished at that time; granting the cardinal’s purple to Giuliano. From a letter addressed by him to Sixtus on November 21, 1472,[198]we see that he had already spoken to the Pope of the matter, and that the latter had given him a promise. The whole plan gives us an insight into Lorenzo’s thoughts. To have a member of the family in the Sacred College was advantageous for a family which was on the road to princely power, especially in a city and a State which stood in a thousand connections with Rome; and what Lorenzo subsequently attained through a son he wished now to effect for and by a brother. To withdraw this brother from the circle of domestic and political affairs, to guide the State without a partaker if not rival in power, this was the principal thing. Giuliano was the born leader of the youth of Florence, eighteen years old, strong, lively, and a friend to pleasure; the matter might become serious, though hitherto, and indeed up to the death of the youngerbrother, the best terms existed between the two, as once between Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo.The first creation of cardinals of Sixtus IV. took place on December 15, 1471, four months after his election; only his two relations were elevated by it, Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovera. Lorenzo waited nearly a year before he reminded the Pope of his promise, and commissioned his uncle, Giovanni Tornabuoni with the affair, after Sixtus had in the meantime given him a fresh proof of his friendly feeling in the case of Volterra. On April 25, 1473, the cardinal of Pavia, Jacopo Ammanati, who had maintained various connections with the Medici and Tuscany in general from the days of Pope Pius II., wrote to him that they would at all events receive a cardinal’s hat; but he, Lorenzo, ought to consider whether he would not prefer to bestow it on some one else, for instance, the Bishop of Pisa, instead of his brother, who could not be immediately created one without passing through certain preliminary ecclesiastical dignities. Immediately afterwards, on May 7, ensued the second creation of eight cardinals, including Italians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. Eight days later Ammanati, after having consulted with Giovanni Tornabuoni, wrote again to Lorenzo. He gave him to consider that the entrance of his brother into sacred orders, if it promised advantages on the one side, might, on the other, greatly harm the position of the family and the party if God should call him away, and he should leave four children of tender age. If, however, he persisted in his intention, the matter could only advance by degrees. ‘It would be first necessary to appoint Giuliano as protonotary, and allow him to fill this office for at least a month. For to raise a layman directly to the dignity of cardinal none of us would consent. I would advise, however, that he should receive no ecclesiastical consecration before our object is attained, so that in case of failure he may return to his former position, as many have done in my days, without exciting censure. His household must then represent thehalf of a cardinal’s—that is to say, an escort of four to six chaplains, and eight grooms. For though he might develop greater splendour according to his position, a modest appearance here makes a favourable impression. For the rest, Messer Gentile (Becchi) and I would regard him as a son, and would so instruct him that he could only obtain praise. His creation is certain to me if the Pope remains alive, and I trust to be able to effect more than one. Be not offended that several cardinals have been appointed in these last days, for several must soon follow, for the Emperor and King Ferrante, for Rome and Florence.’ At the same time he advised him to sound the views of the Duke of Milan. From such a purely business point of view did even a grave and pious man like Ammanati regard the nomination of a member of the highest ecclesiastical senate; which indeed had long consisted of two classes—the learned and spiritual members, and the great lords and politicians. The Pope then promised the republic to appoint one of their fellow-citizens on the first opportunity; while the Cardinal of Pavia announced in his name that the granting of bishoprics in their territory could only take place after an agreement beforehand with the Signoria.The relations between the Pope and the Medici were still undisturbed when, after the death of Giovanni Neroni at Rome in 1473, the former appointed his nephew, Cardinal Riario, to the archbishopric of Florence. This young man suddenly became, from an obscure Franciscan monk, the all-powerful favourite of the supreme pontiff, and though not deficient in intellect and subtlety, was so devoid of moderation and sense of fitness that he gave scope to his love of luxury and extravagance, to a degree that was unusual even in Rome, notwithstanding the wealth of such cardinals as Guillaume d’Estouteville, Latino Orsini, Olivieri Carafa, &c. How far his foolish extravagance was carried is seen by the festival which he gave in the spring of 1473 at his palace near St. Apostoli to the newly-married Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonoreof Aragon, King Ferrante’s daughter, a festival which excited great displeasure everywhere. Florence also had to see something of the bridal procession of the Duchess. At the end of April the duke’s brother, Sigismondo d’Este, who went to fetch his future sister-in-law, arrived at the city with a suite which required no less than four hundred horses and seventy-seven mules; he stayed there two days, and then continued his journey towards Rome. He rewarded Florentine hospitality by circulating false money bearing the stamp of the Republic, and he was convicted of it, but allowed to escape. On June 22, Eleonore, who had left Naples on May 26, arrived at Florence. Duke Ercole, who had informed Lorenzo of his betrothal in the preceding November, had announced the arrival of his consort to him on June 4. She had passed the preceding night in San Casciano, on the Sienese road, only eight miles distant from the city. Her suite, consisting partly of Neapolitans and partly of Ferrarese, numbered no fewer than 1,400 men on horseback. She rode towards the Piazza, where the Signoria received her on the Ringhiera, she exchanged a few words with the Gonfaloniere, and then proceeded to the Medicean palace, where she lodged. Her whole suite was entertained at the cost of the commune; the expenses in the city and territory were reckoned at about ten thousand gold florins; ‘Money thrown away,’ Alamanna Rinuccini adds. The journey was continued through Marradi and Faenza.[199]Eleonore’s consort and father expressed their thanks for the reception. ‘Illustrious lord and beloved friend,’ wrote the king to Lorenzo on July 7,[200]‘through letters of our daughter, Duchess of Ferrara, and our ambassador, we have heard of the reception she met with from you, and of the proofs of friendship and festivals which you gave her with equal kindnessand magnificence. We must express our unbounded gratitude for this; and, although the love we bore you seemed as if it could have been little, if at all, increased, we assure you that it has been augmented in such a manner that we shall ever be under obligation to you. We shall endeavour in time to prove our gratitude for the pleasure you have given us.’Two months later Pietro Riario came to Florence. The ostensible aim of the journey was to take possession of the archbishopric, but it was more important to him and to the Pope to assure himself of the intentions of the Duke of Milan; in which he succeeded so well, that the story went that in Milan, where the Cardinal was in September, they had made an agreement about the royal title of Lombardy, to which the vain Sforza aspired, as the ambitious Visconti had done eighty years before. Pietro Riario’s presence in Florence was a new cause for festivals and expenses, at a time when the people were suffering from dearth. The eulogistic verses, exaggerated to the most excessive bombast and profanest idolatry, with which Angelo Poliziano (who was then certainly very young and very needy) celebrates the unworthy nephew of a pope, who was indulgent to culpable weakness towards his relations, are one of the numerous proofs which afford an insight into the public and moral conditions of the time. The early death of Pietro Riario, which happened in the beginning of 1474, put an end to various plans, and to a scandal which surpassed all that had been seen before. That there was no lack at the time of half ironical observations on the growing luxury in Florence, is shown by a letter addressed, on January 22 in the year just mentioned, to Duke Ercole d’Este by Niccolò Bendedei.[201]‘There is nothing new here, except that in the neighbourhood of Pisa, where the illustrious Lorenzo is hawking with King Ferrante’s men, two of the ten falcons sent by HisMajesty, and those the best, are lost. Your Excellence must not wonder that I speak of such things, for I only follow the example of others. Idleness has so gained the upper hand in Italy that, if nothing new happens, we shall have more to say about the slaughter of fowls and dogs than about armies and deeds of war. For the rest, I am of opinion that those who have to govern Italy in peace will not reap less fame than those who kept her at war. For the object of war is, after all, peace, and the only consideration is that it should be a permanent peace.’ But this never entered the minds of those who were all too ready to lavish the fruits of peace.The first cause of mutual distrust between Sixtus IV. and Lorenzo seems to have been the Pope’s endeavour to obtain estates for his relations in Romagna, a matter in which the Florentines were not free from blame. In contemplating the fate of this province, the family of the Manfredi, their disunion among themselves, and their connections with Florence, have already been mentioned (p. 207). From the proximity of the territories of Imola and Faenza, it was by no means indifferent to the Republic in whose hands they might be. After several changes and family feuds, Imola had fallen, in 1473, into the hands of the Duke of Milan, from whom the Florentines tried to obtain it. Their wishes were, however, thwarted both by the King of Naples and the Pope, naturally averse to the extension of the Florentine territory in Romagna, and at last Sixtus IV. bought Imola for 40,000 ducats, and bestowed it upon Girolamo Riario, the cardinal’s brother, to whom at the same time the hand of Caterina Sforza, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria, was promised.[202]The journey of the cardinal to Milan was undoubtedly connected with this affair. After the death of the latter, Girolamo took the first place in his uncle’s favour, and soon began to exercise an influence on affairs which could only be injurious, on account of his restless ambition andviolent nature, while it was to be foreseen that the constant dissensions, and often wild enmities in the neighbouring families—the Manfredi of Faenza, as well as the Ordelaffi of Forli—would afford material enough for new anxieties and troubles.Almost immediately afterwards another circumstance disturbed the good understanding even more seriously. Città di Castello, lying in the Upper Tiber valley, on the frontier between Umbria and Tuscany, and not wholly unimportant, shared the fate of all neighbouring towns and localities, which became the nurseries of excellent condottieri and soldiers, but at the same time the scenes of permanent civil disturbances, and often of the bloodiest family feuds. In 1440, Vitelozzo Vitelli, the head of a family frequently mentioned after the end of the twelfth century, had received from Pope Eugene IV. the vicegerency of his native town; but another family, that of the Giustini, disputed the pre-eminence of the Vitelli, and in the spring of 1468 occurred one of those scenes of horror which are by no means rare in the history of Umbria. Niccolò Vitelli, who had attained the upper hand after Vitellozzo’s death, managed to bring about a reconciliation with Pope Paul II., who invested him with the vicegerency in 1470; but in the beginning of Sixtus IV.’s reign, his accusers, especially Lorenzo Giustini, the head of the opposing party, influenced the Pope against him. As things were in Città di Castello we cannot blame the latter if he wished to set bounds to the violent state of things, which hindered every proper exercise of law and administration, and always allowed one part of the citizens to be oppressed by the other. But it was suspected that Sixtus IV.’s only object was to transfer the supreme power to a nephew. Events in other parts of Umbria followed. In Todi a violent feud had arisen between the factions which still called themselves Ghibellines and Guelphs. The inhabitants of Spoleto had joined in the dispute, and procured the preponderance for the anti-papal party. Cardinal Giulianodella Rovere had been sent with troops against both towns. He had pacified Todi and forced Spoleto to yield; on which occasion the same thing happened as at Volterra from want of discipline in the troops, all the more unfortunate because an ecclesiastical prince was at the head. Niccolò Vitelli was accused of having assisted the inhabitants of both the rebellious towns; and now his turn was come. Giovanni Antonio Campano, the statesman and historian, was sent to make terms with him; he refused to retire from the administration, or even to re-admit the exiles, well knowing that this would be the end of his own authority.As treaties were fruitless, the siege of Città di Castello began. Niccolò defended himself valiantly, and inflicted great injuries on his opponents, who, about six thousand men strong, far exceeded his forces. It was said that Florence and Milan had supported him in his opposition. It was certainly the interest of Florence not to let a State of doubtful proclivities rise up so immediately on her frontiers. In the middle of July the determination was taken to enlist 3,000 horse and as many foot for the protection of the territory, and to send Piero Nasi as commissary to the neighbouring Borgo San Sepolcro. At the first voting the resolution passed with a large majority. The Pope took the demonstration very ill. At last the Vitelli saw themselves obliged to come to an agreement, especially after Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom Sixtus IV. bestowed the title of Duke of Urbino, threw his great military authority into the scale in favour of the Pope, a movement to which King Ferrante assented. The conditions were extremely favourable to the town, but Niccolò Vitelli was obliged to quit it; and though he was honourably received in Rome, and obtained from Feltrier, a no less honourable position in Urbino, his power was at an end. An attempt made in the following year to regain it by force made his situation worse, as he was now obliged to flee, and his rival, Lorenzo Giustini, it is true under a papalgovernor, assumed the highest rank among the citizens.[203]The Cardinal della Rovera openly accused the Republic of Florence[204]of having assisted the Vitelli against the Pope, increased the vigour of his opposition, and thus led to a capitulation, of which Cardinal Ammanati, notwithstanding his attachment to Florence and the Medici, wrote that it was a disgrace for the victors, for not they, but the vanquished, dictated the terms.While Ammanati was at Siena, where Lorenzo de’ Medici visited him, he said to the latter that, by his openly favouring the Vitelli, he had himself made it impossible for the Pope to employ the mediation of the Republic instead of the Duke of Urbino in composing the difference. The Pope also complained in a brief addressed to Florence of the assistance which had been given to Vitelli, and of his remaining in the territory of the Republic, from whence a new attempt against Città di Castello might be easily made. Lorenzo de’ Medici answered that all had been done that was compatible with the freedom and honour of the State. With Niccolò it had been agreed that he should take up his residence in the neighbourhood of Pisa, and not seek to approach Città di Castello, and his Holiness might be as much at peace respecting him as if he were in the castle of St. Angelo. ‘Be assured, Holy Father,’ he added,’that I am going to work with perfect honesty, and the intention of deserving no just reproofs nor displeasure from you. I reckon the favour of your Holiness among the greatest of my treasures, and I have no desire to lose it for the sake of Messer Niccolò or anyone else.’[205]We shall see, however, how, at the time when the breach was complete, Sixtus IV. madetheir behaviour in these matters a crime on the part of the Florentines, and how they could only faintly defend themselves from such reproaches.That Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom the Republic believed they could rely, joined the Pope, was a heavy blow to them. Feltrier, a man of spirit and culture, and a good master of his little state, was too weak to pursue an independent policy, and followed the lead of circumstances, while the condottiere-nature preponderated in him. He had truly served the Republic in the Colleonic war, and opposed the Pope in the Malatesta feud; he now passed to the other side. King Ferrante, who well knew the military skill of Federigo, had attached him to himself, Sixtus having aided him. During the siege of Città di Castello, on August 23, 1474, the ducal dignity was conferred on him. It did not end here; the new duke was entirely attached to the Papal interest. By the acquisition of Imola, Sixtus IV. had begun to gain a firm footing with his relations in Romagna. He now smoothed the way for a connection with one of the oldest families in the province by obtaining from Federigo the promise of the hand of his eldest daughter, Giovanna, for his nephew, the brother of Cardinal Giuliano. The importance of this connection was evident. The duke had by his recently deceased wife, Battista Sforza of Pesaro, an only son, Guidubaldo, a delicate child only two years old. If he should not survive his father, the inheritance would pass to the daughters. Guidubaldo did survive his father, but was always sickly; he died childless in the time of a second Pope belonging to the Della Rovere family, and Montefeltro and Urbino, as Sixtus IV. had secretly hoped, came into the possession of a son of his sister who had married, in 1475, Giovanni della Rovere, on whom his uncle bestowed the vicegerency of Senegallia with Mondavio, and not long afterwards the dignity of a prefect of Rome. The Pope’s nephews were on the high road to greatness.Considering the intimacy between the King of Naplesand the Medici, it appears strange to find him thwarting their designs. The real ground was the leaning of the Florentines towards the Venetians, who were always mistrusted by the King, on account of their desire to extend their dominions on the coasts of the Adriatic, and to obtain complete possession of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro, the widow of the last of the Lusignans, was a mere vassal of the Republic, whilst the eyes of the Aragonese of Naples, as well as those of their Norman and Angevin predecessors, were always turned towards the East. The dangers Venice was threatened with on the Dalmatian side contributed to keep up a sort of outward understanding; but suspicion was growing on both sides, and the increasing friendship between the Pope and the King found its counterpoise in the alliance of Florence and Venice. On September 20, 1474, the alliance was proclaimed in Venice which the Republic had concluded with Florence—for whom Tommaso Soderini conducted the negotiations—and Milan. According to the form, it was a renewal of that of Lodi in 1454, and was to last for five-and-twenty years. Common defence against any attack whatever was the object; the Pope and the King of Naples were given the option of joining, though no one thought they would, and the Duke of Burgundy was summoned to take a share in the Turkish war. On the 4th of November the news of the alliance had already reached Florence, and was greeted with bonfires and great festivities. After the ratification, the solemn proclamation was made on the 20th amid banquetings and illuminations. The miraculous picture of the Madonna of Sta. Maria dell’ Imprimeta was on this, as on all occasions of joy or sorrow, brought into the city, and borne in procession. The joy of the citizens was indeed damped by a new tax. ‘They proceeded by such means,’ remarks Alamanno Rinuccini,[206]‘in a violent manner, and the heads of the civic governmentexcited hatred enough; but as the people were enervated, they were obliged to endure this and many other attacks that were worse.’ The Pope as well as the King refused to accede to the alliance, and concluded a close treaty with one another, under the promise to have the same friends and foes. As Rome celebrated the jubilee in the following year, it was a desirable opportunity for King Ferrante to draw the ties of friendship tighter by a personal interview with the head of the Church. On February 25, 1475, he entered Rome with a brilliant suite, where he showed himself more liberal than it was his nature to be. He resided in the palace of the Vatican, and had full time to discuss all political affairs of the day with a Pope who, grown to manhood in a convent, had been drawn, at the approach of old age, into a whirl of business and difficulties which have given a most unenviable reputation to his pontificate, otherwise not without its good sides. The history of the city of Rome preserves the memory of this visit of Ferrante of Aragon, who, by his observation to Sixtus IV. that he could not be master of Rome so long as it was impossible to move freely in the streets, is said to have induced the Pope to widen them by removing the balconies and outbuildings, which had sometimes also served military purposes.There were now two leagues, which divided Italy geographically into two halves; but for the present they stood rather beside than opposed to one another. The whole political state of the peninsula in the fifteenth century had the characteristics of condottiere war in it, in the motives as well as in the forms, in the rendezvous and the evolutions, in the mutually dubious and bargaining demeanour to friends as well as foes. They formed alliances to injure those with whom an old alliance still existed; ambassadors were with those against whom they went to war; private persons were attacked before the war had broken out; the leaders were enticed away alternately by this party and by that, even after they had taken pay. In November 1475the ambassadors of Venice, Florence, and Milan, went to Rome, summoned by the Pope, to take part in the congress convened on account of the Turkish danger. The imposing expedition of 1472, commanded in the Pope’s name by the Cardinal Olivieri Carafa, had obtained but slender results. The loss of Caffa, which had ensued in 1475, the ancient Genoese depôt on the Black Sea, was not only heavy in itself, but also because the connection with Persia, which alone still resisted, was threatened by it. The negotiations lasted for months; what they effected is seen by the fact that not long afterwards Turkish stragglers reached Friuli. While they thus remained in continual connection with the Pope, the friendship between the Medici and King Ferrante was outwardly undisturbed. In the summer of 1477 it would still have been held to be complete. The king, who had been for twelve years the widower of Isabella di Chiaromonte, and long a grandfather, determined to marry again. The ground was of a political nature. King Juan of Aragon and Sicily had never forgiven the separation of Naples from his brother’s dominions. Alfonso of Aragon had, indeed, thought he could proceed with Naples as with a conquered country; but on the side of Spain it was objected that Naples and Sicily were Hohenstaufen inheritance, and rightfully accruing to the house of Aragon through Manfred’s daughter, although in consequence of the Anjou usurpation it had long been lost to them. The mystery of Ferrante’s birth, who was said by some to be the son of a barber’s wife, and by others that of Alfonso’s sister-in-law, the consort of his brother the Grand Master of San Jago, was opposed to this in the king’s family. At the time we have mentioned, when the Neapolitan line of the Aragonese seemed fully secured by children and grandchildren as well as by investitures and alliances, new claims appeared, nevertheless, in Spain. The means of resisting these was a union of the two lines: Ferrante married his uncle’s daughter, Juana. On June 11, the Duke of Calabria quitted Naples to fetch his future stepmother.Several of the great barons of the empire accompanied him. Received at Rome with great splendour, he landed on the 29th at Piombino, where a wooden mole had been built, forty feet long, and covered with branches and flowers. On July 1 he reached Pisa. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who towards the end of May had received the Duchess of Ferrara at his house in this town—when she was on her way to her father, and, passing through Lucca, arrived here—and had splendidly entertained her till she embarked at Leghorn,[207]had come down the Arno in two great barques to meet the duke, and escorted him to a palace fitted up for him, where he resided for three days as the guest of the Republic. Lorenzo failed not to give rich presents on this as on all similar occasions. On July 9 the duke was in Nice, on the 25th in Barcelona, from whence, on September 11, the new queen reached Naples, where Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, as Papal legate, performed the marriage ceremony and the coronation.[208]Bongianni Gianfigliazzi and Pierfilippo Pandolfini presented the newly-married pair with the congratulations of the Republic. Not much above a quarter of a century later this queen shared the complete ruin of the house which she now entered, a ruin in which her own brother aided by lending a hand to the successor of him with whom King Ferrante had refused to ally himself, when he rejected the proposals made him by Louis XI. to the disadvantage of his Spanish relations.

CHAPTER VIII.POPE SIXTUS IV., KING FERRANTE, AND THE MEDICI.Pope SixtusIV. was disposed most favourably towards the Medici at the beginning of his reign. We have heard in Lorenzo’s own words how well he was received in Rome in 1471. The friendly relation was strengthened by concessions which afforded essential advantages to the Florentine mercantile house. The Pope was ready moreover to fulfil a wish which Lorenzo already cherished at that time; granting the cardinal’s purple to Giuliano. From a letter addressed by him to Sixtus on November 21, 1472,[198]we see that he had already spoken to the Pope of the matter, and that the latter had given him a promise. The whole plan gives us an insight into Lorenzo’s thoughts. To have a member of the family in the Sacred College was advantageous for a family which was on the road to princely power, especially in a city and a State which stood in a thousand connections with Rome; and what Lorenzo subsequently attained through a son he wished now to effect for and by a brother. To withdraw this brother from the circle of domestic and political affairs, to guide the State without a partaker if not rival in power, this was the principal thing. Giuliano was the born leader of the youth of Florence, eighteen years old, strong, lively, and a friend to pleasure; the matter might become serious, though hitherto, and indeed up to the death of the youngerbrother, the best terms existed between the two, as once between Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo.The first creation of cardinals of Sixtus IV. took place on December 15, 1471, four months after his election; only his two relations were elevated by it, Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovera. Lorenzo waited nearly a year before he reminded the Pope of his promise, and commissioned his uncle, Giovanni Tornabuoni with the affair, after Sixtus had in the meantime given him a fresh proof of his friendly feeling in the case of Volterra. On April 25, 1473, the cardinal of Pavia, Jacopo Ammanati, who had maintained various connections with the Medici and Tuscany in general from the days of Pope Pius II., wrote to him that they would at all events receive a cardinal’s hat; but he, Lorenzo, ought to consider whether he would not prefer to bestow it on some one else, for instance, the Bishop of Pisa, instead of his brother, who could not be immediately created one without passing through certain preliminary ecclesiastical dignities. Immediately afterwards, on May 7, ensued the second creation of eight cardinals, including Italians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. Eight days later Ammanati, after having consulted with Giovanni Tornabuoni, wrote again to Lorenzo. He gave him to consider that the entrance of his brother into sacred orders, if it promised advantages on the one side, might, on the other, greatly harm the position of the family and the party if God should call him away, and he should leave four children of tender age. If, however, he persisted in his intention, the matter could only advance by degrees. ‘It would be first necessary to appoint Giuliano as protonotary, and allow him to fill this office for at least a month. For to raise a layman directly to the dignity of cardinal none of us would consent. I would advise, however, that he should receive no ecclesiastical consecration before our object is attained, so that in case of failure he may return to his former position, as many have done in my days, without exciting censure. His household must then represent thehalf of a cardinal’s—that is to say, an escort of four to six chaplains, and eight grooms. For though he might develop greater splendour according to his position, a modest appearance here makes a favourable impression. For the rest, Messer Gentile (Becchi) and I would regard him as a son, and would so instruct him that he could only obtain praise. His creation is certain to me if the Pope remains alive, and I trust to be able to effect more than one. Be not offended that several cardinals have been appointed in these last days, for several must soon follow, for the Emperor and King Ferrante, for Rome and Florence.’ At the same time he advised him to sound the views of the Duke of Milan. From such a purely business point of view did even a grave and pious man like Ammanati regard the nomination of a member of the highest ecclesiastical senate; which indeed had long consisted of two classes—the learned and spiritual members, and the great lords and politicians. The Pope then promised the republic to appoint one of their fellow-citizens on the first opportunity; while the Cardinal of Pavia announced in his name that the granting of bishoprics in their territory could only take place after an agreement beforehand with the Signoria.The relations between the Pope and the Medici were still undisturbed when, after the death of Giovanni Neroni at Rome in 1473, the former appointed his nephew, Cardinal Riario, to the archbishopric of Florence. This young man suddenly became, from an obscure Franciscan monk, the all-powerful favourite of the supreme pontiff, and though not deficient in intellect and subtlety, was so devoid of moderation and sense of fitness that he gave scope to his love of luxury and extravagance, to a degree that was unusual even in Rome, notwithstanding the wealth of such cardinals as Guillaume d’Estouteville, Latino Orsini, Olivieri Carafa, &c. How far his foolish extravagance was carried is seen by the festival which he gave in the spring of 1473 at his palace near St. Apostoli to the newly-married Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonoreof Aragon, King Ferrante’s daughter, a festival which excited great displeasure everywhere. Florence also had to see something of the bridal procession of the Duchess. At the end of April the duke’s brother, Sigismondo d’Este, who went to fetch his future sister-in-law, arrived at the city with a suite which required no less than four hundred horses and seventy-seven mules; he stayed there two days, and then continued his journey towards Rome. He rewarded Florentine hospitality by circulating false money bearing the stamp of the Republic, and he was convicted of it, but allowed to escape. On June 22, Eleonore, who had left Naples on May 26, arrived at Florence. Duke Ercole, who had informed Lorenzo of his betrothal in the preceding November, had announced the arrival of his consort to him on June 4. She had passed the preceding night in San Casciano, on the Sienese road, only eight miles distant from the city. Her suite, consisting partly of Neapolitans and partly of Ferrarese, numbered no fewer than 1,400 men on horseback. She rode towards the Piazza, where the Signoria received her on the Ringhiera, she exchanged a few words with the Gonfaloniere, and then proceeded to the Medicean palace, where she lodged. Her whole suite was entertained at the cost of the commune; the expenses in the city and territory were reckoned at about ten thousand gold florins; ‘Money thrown away,’ Alamanna Rinuccini adds. The journey was continued through Marradi and Faenza.[199]Eleonore’s consort and father expressed their thanks for the reception. ‘Illustrious lord and beloved friend,’ wrote the king to Lorenzo on July 7,[200]‘through letters of our daughter, Duchess of Ferrara, and our ambassador, we have heard of the reception she met with from you, and of the proofs of friendship and festivals which you gave her with equal kindnessand magnificence. We must express our unbounded gratitude for this; and, although the love we bore you seemed as if it could have been little, if at all, increased, we assure you that it has been augmented in such a manner that we shall ever be under obligation to you. We shall endeavour in time to prove our gratitude for the pleasure you have given us.’Two months later Pietro Riario came to Florence. The ostensible aim of the journey was to take possession of the archbishopric, but it was more important to him and to the Pope to assure himself of the intentions of the Duke of Milan; in which he succeeded so well, that the story went that in Milan, where the Cardinal was in September, they had made an agreement about the royal title of Lombardy, to which the vain Sforza aspired, as the ambitious Visconti had done eighty years before. Pietro Riario’s presence in Florence was a new cause for festivals and expenses, at a time when the people were suffering from dearth. The eulogistic verses, exaggerated to the most excessive bombast and profanest idolatry, with which Angelo Poliziano (who was then certainly very young and very needy) celebrates the unworthy nephew of a pope, who was indulgent to culpable weakness towards his relations, are one of the numerous proofs which afford an insight into the public and moral conditions of the time. The early death of Pietro Riario, which happened in the beginning of 1474, put an end to various plans, and to a scandal which surpassed all that had been seen before. That there was no lack at the time of half ironical observations on the growing luxury in Florence, is shown by a letter addressed, on January 22 in the year just mentioned, to Duke Ercole d’Este by Niccolò Bendedei.[201]‘There is nothing new here, except that in the neighbourhood of Pisa, where the illustrious Lorenzo is hawking with King Ferrante’s men, two of the ten falcons sent by HisMajesty, and those the best, are lost. Your Excellence must not wonder that I speak of such things, for I only follow the example of others. Idleness has so gained the upper hand in Italy that, if nothing new happens, we shall have more to say about the slaughter of fowls and dogs than about armies and deeds of war. For the rest, I am of opinion that those who have to govern Italy in peace will not reap less fame than those who kept her at war. For the object of war is, after all, peace, and the only consideration is that it should be a permanent peace.’ But this never entered the minds of those who were all too ready to lavish the fruits of peace.The first cause of mutual distrust between Sixtus IV. and Lorenzo seems to have been the Pope’s endeavour to obtain estates for his relations in Romagna, a matter in which the Florentines were not free from blame. In contemplating the fate of this province, the family of the Manfredi, their disunion among themselves, and their connections with Florence, have already been mentioned (p. 207). From the proximity of the territories of Imola and Faenza, it was by no means indifferent to the Republic in whose hands they might be. After several changes and family feuds, Imola had fallen, in 1473, into the hands of the Duke of Milan, from whom the Florentines tried to obtain it. Their wishes were, however, thwarted both by the King of Naples and the Pope, naturally averse to the extension of the Florentine territory in Romagna, and at last Sixtus IV. bought Imola for 40,000 ducats, and bestowed it upon Girolamo Riario, the cardinal’s brother, to whom at the same time the hand of Caterina Sforza, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria, was promised.[202]The journey of the cardinal to Milan was undoubtedly connected with this affair. After the death of the latter, Girolamo took the first place in his uncle’s favour, and soon began to exercise an influence on affairs which could only be injurious, on account of his restless ambition andviolent nature, while it was to be foreseen that the constant dissensions, and often wild enmities in the neighbouring families—the Manfredi of Faenza, as well as the Ordelaffi of Forli—would afford material enough for new anxieties and troubles.Almost immediately afterwards another circumstance disturbed the good understanding even more seriously. Città di Castello, lying in the Upper Tiber valley, on the frontier between Umbria and Tuscany, and not wholly unimportant, shared the fate of all neighbouring towns and localities, which became the nurseries of excellent condottieri and soldiers, but at the same time the scenes of permanent civil disturbances, and often of the bloodiest family feuds. In 1440, Vitelozzo Vitelli, the head of a family frequently mentioned after the end of the twelfth century, had received from Pope Eugene IV. the vicegerency of his native town; but another family, that of the Giustini, disputed the pre-eminence of the Vitelli, and in the spring of 1468 occurred one of those scenes of horror which are by no means rare in the history of Umbria. Niccolò Vitelli, who had attained the upper hand after Vitellozzo’s death, managed to bring about a reconciliation with Pope Paul II., who invested him with the vicegerency in 1470; but in the beginning of Sixtus IV.’s reign, his accusers, especially Lorenzo Giustini, the head of the opposing party, influenced the Pope against him. As things were in Città di Castello we cannot blame the latter if he wished to set bounds to the violent state of things, which hindered every proper exercise of law and administration, and always allowed one part of the citizens to be oppressed by the other. But it was suspected that Sixtus IV.’s only object was to transfer the supreme power to a nephew. Events in other parts of Umbria followed. In Todi a violent feud had arisen between the factions which still called themselves Ghibellines and Guelphs. The inhabitants of Spoleto had joined in the dispute, and procured the preponderance for the anti-papal party. Cardinal Giulianodella Rovere had been sent with troops against both towns. He had pacified Todi and forced Spoleto to yield; on which occasion the same thing happened as at Volterra from want of discipline in the troops, all the more unfortunate because an ecclesiastical prince was at the head. Niccolò Vitelli was accused of having assisted the inhabitants of both the rebellious towns; and now his turn was come. Giovanni Antonio Campano, the statesman and historian, was sent to make terms with him; he refused to retire from the administration, or even to re-admit the exiles, well knowing that this would be the end of his own authority.As treaties were fruitless, the siege of Città di Castello began. Niccolò defended himself valiantly, and inflicted great injuries on his opponents, who, about six thousand men strong, far exceeded his forces. It was said that Florence and Milan had supported him in his opposition. It was certainly the interest of Florence not to let a State of doubtful proclivities rise up so immediately on her frontiers. In the middle of July the determination was taken to enlist 3,000 horse and as many foot for the protection of the territory, and to send Piero Nasi as commissary to the neighbouring Borgo San Sepolcro. At the first voting the resolution passed with a large majority. The Pope took the demonstration very ill. At last the Vitelli saw themselves obliged to come to an agreement, especially after Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom Sixtus IV. bestowed the title of Duke of Urbino, threw his great military authority into the scale in favour of the Pope, a movement to which King Ferrante assented. The conditions were extremely favourable to the town, but Niccolò Vitelli was obliged to quit it; and though he was honourably received in Rome, and obtained from Feltrier, a no less honourable position in Urbino, his power was at an end. An attempt made in the following year to regain it by force made his situation worse, as he was now obliged to flee, and his rival, Lorenzo Giustini, it is true under a papalgovernor, assumed the highest rank among the citizens.[203]The Cardinal della Rovera openly accused the Republic of Florence[204]of having assisted the Vitelli against the Pope, increased the vigour of his opposition, and thus led to a capitulation, of which Cardinal Ammanati, notwithstanding his attachment to Florence and the Medici, wrote that it was a disgrace for the victors, for not they, but the vanquished, dictated the terms.While Ammanati was at Siena, where Lorenzo de’ Medici visited him, he said to the latter that, by his openly favouring the Vitelli, he had himself made it impossible for the Pope to employ the mediation of the Republic instead of the Duke of Urbino in composing the difference. The Pope also complained in a brief addressed to Florence of the assistance which had been given to Vitelli, and of his remaining in the territory of the Republic, from whence a new attempt against Città di Castello might be easily made. Lorenzo de’ Medici answered that all had been done that was compatible with the freedom and honour of the State. With Niccolò it had been agreed that he should take up his residence in the neighbourhood of Pisa, and not seek to approach Città di Castello, and his Holiness might be as much at peace respecting him as if he were in the castle of St. Angelo. ‘Be assured, Holy Father,’ he added,’that I am going to work with perfect honesty, and the intention of deserving no just reproofs nor displeasure from you. I reckon the favour of your Holiness among the greatest of my treasures, and I have no desire to lose it for the sake of Messer Niccolò or anyone else.’[205]We shall see, however, how, at the time when the breach was complete, Sixtus IV. madetheir behaviour in these matters a crime on the part of the Florentines, and how they could only faintly defend themselves from such reproaches.That Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom the Republic believed they could rely, joined the Pope, was a heavy blow to them. Feltrier, a man of spirit and culture, and a good master of his little state, was too weak to pursue an independent policy, and followed the lead of circumstances, while the condottiere-nature preponderated in him. He had truly served the Republic in the Colleonic war, and opposed the Pope in the Malatesta feud; he now passed to the other side. King Ferrante, who well knew the military skill of Federigo, had attached him to himself, Sixtus having aided him. During the siege of Città di Castello, on August 23, 1474, the ducal dignity was conferred on him. It did not end here; the new duke was entirely attached to the Papal interest. By the acquisition of Imola, Sixtus IV. had begun to gain a firm footing with his relations in Romagna. He now smoothed the way for a connection with one of the oldest families in the province by obtaining from Federigo the promise of the hand of his eldest daughter, Giovanna, for his nephew, the brother of Cardinal Giuliano. The importance of this connection was evident. The duke had by his recently deceased wife, Battista Sforza of Pesaro, an only son, Guidubaldo, a delicate child only two years old. If he should not survive his father, the inheritance would pass to the daughters. Guidubaldo did survive his father, but was always sickly; he died childless in the time of a second Pope belonging to the Della Rovere family, and Montefeltro and Urbino, as Sixtus IV. had secretly hoped, came into the possession of a son of his sister who had married, in 1475, Giovanni della Rovere, on whom his uncle bestowed the vicegerency of Senegallia with Mondavio, and not long afterwards the dignity of a prefect of Rome. The Pope’s nephews were on the high road to greatness.Considering the intimacy between the King of Naplesand the Medici, it appears strange to find him thwarting their designs. The real ground was the leaning of the Florentines towards the Venetians, who were always mistrusted by the King, on account of their desire to extend their dominions on the coasts of the Adriatic, and to obtain complete possession of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro, the widow of the last of the Lusignans, was a mere vassal of the Republic, whilst the eyes of the Aragonese of Naples, as well as those of their Norman and Angevin predecessors, were always turned towards the East. The dangers Venice was threatened with on the Dalmatian side contributed to keep up a sort of outward understanding; but suspicion was growing on both sides, and the increasing friendship between the Pope and the King found its counterpoise in the alliance of Florence and Venice. On September 20, 1474, the alliance was proclaimed in Venice which the Republic had concluded with Florence—for whom Tommaso Soderini conducted the negotiations—and Milan. According to the form, it was a renewal of that of Lodi in 1454, and was to last for five-and-twenty years. Common defence against any attack whatever was the object; the Pope and the King of Naples were given the option of joining, though no one thought they would, and the Duke of Burgundy was summoned to take a share in the Turkish war. On the 4th of November the news of the alliance had already reached Florence, and was greeted with bonfires and great festivities. After the ratification, the solemn proclamation was made on the 20th amid banquetings and illuminations. The miraculous picture of the Madonna of Sta. Maria dell’ Imprimeta was on this, as on all occasions of joy or sorrow, brought into the city, and borne in procession. The joy of the citizens was indeed damped by a new tax. ‘They proceeded by such means,’ remarks Alamanno Rinuccini,[206]‘in a violent manner, and the heads of the civic governmentexcited hatred enough; but as the people were enervated, they were obliged to endure this and many other attacks that were worse.’ The Pope as well as the King refused to accede to the alliance, and concluded a close treaty with one another, under the promise to have the same friends and foes. As Rome celebrated the jubilee in the following year, it was a desirable opportunity for King Ferrante to draw the ties of friendship tighter by a personal interview with the head of the Church. On February 25, 1475, he entered Rome with a brilliant suite, where he showed himself more liberal than it was his nature to be. He resided in the palace of the Vatican, and had full time to discuss all political affairs of the day with a Pope who, grown to manhood in a convent, had been drawn, at the approach of old age, into a whirl of business and difficulties which have given a most unenviable reputation to his pontificate, otherwise not without its good sides. The history of the city of Rome preserves the memory of this visit of Ferrante of Aragon, who, by his observation to Sixtus IV. that he could not be master of Rome so long as it was impossible to move freely in the streets, is said to have induced the Pope to widen them by removing the balconies and outbuildings, which had sometimes also served military purposes.There were now two leagues, which divided Italy geographically into two halves; but for the present they stood rather beside than opposed to one another. The whole political state of the peninsula in the fifteenth century had the characteristics of condottiere war in it, in the motives as well as in the forms, in the rendezvous and the evolutions, in the mutually dubious and bargaining demeanour to friends as well as foes. They formed alliances to injure those with whom an old alliance still existed; ambassadors were with those against whom they went to war; private persons were attacked before the war had broken out; the leaders were enticed away alternately by this party and by that, even after they had taken pay. In November 1475the ambassadors of Venice, Florence, and Milan, went to Rome, summoned by the Pope, to take part in the congress convened on account of the Turkish danger. The imposing expedition of 1472, commanded in the Pope’s name by the Cardinal Olivieri Carafa, had obtained but slender results. The loss of Caffa, which had ensued in 1475, the ancient Genoese depôt on the Black Sea, was not only heavy in itself, but also because the connection with Persia, which alone still resisted, was threatened by it. The negotiations lasted for months; what they effected is seen by the fact that not long afterwards Turkish stragglers reached Friuli. While they thus remained in continual connection with the Pope, the friendship between the Medici and King Ferrante was outwardly undisturbed. In the summer of 1477 it would still have been held to be complete. The king, who had been for twelve years the widower of Isabella di Chiaromonte, and long a grandfather, determined to marry again. The ground was of a political nature. King Juan of Aragon and Sicily had never forgiven the separation of Naples from his brother’s dominions. Alfonso of Aragon had, indeed, thought he could proceed with Naples as with a conquered country; but on the side of Spain it was objected that Naples and Sicily were Hohenstaufen inheritance, and rightfully accruing to the house of Aragon through Manfred’s daughter, although in consequence of the Anjou usurpation it had long been lost to them. The mystery of Ferrante’s birth, who was said by some to be the son of a barber’s wife, and by others that of Alfonso’s sister-in-law, the consort of his brother the Grand Master of San Jago, was opposed to this in the king’s family. At the time we have mentioned, when the Neapolitan line of the Aragonese seemed fully secured by children and grandchildren as well as by investitures and alliances, new claims appeared, nevertheless, in Spain. The means of resisting these was a union of the two lines: Ferrante married his uncle’s daughter, Juana. On June 11, the Duke of Calabria quitted Naples to fetch his future stepmother.Several of the great barons of the empire accompanied him. Received at Rome with great splendour, he landed on the 29th at Piombino, where a wooden mole had been built, forty feet long, and covered with branches and flowers. On July 1 he reached Pisa. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who towards the end of May had received the Duchess of Ferrara at his house in this town—when she was on her way to her father, and, passing through Lucca, arrived here—and had splendidly entertained her till she embarked at Leghorn,[207]had come down the Arno in two great barques to meet the duke, and escorted him to a palace fitted up for him, where he resided for three days as the guest of the Republic. Lorenzo failed not to give rich presents on this as on all similar occasions. On July 9 the duke was in Nice, on the 25th in Barcelona, from whence, on September 11, the new queen reached Naples, where Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, as Papal legate, performed the marriage ceremony and the coronation.[208]Bongianni Gianfigliazzi and Pierfilippo Pandolfini presented the newly-married pair with the congratulations of the Republic. Not much above a quarter of a century later this queen shared the complete ruin of the house which she now entered, a ruin in which her own brother aided by lending a hand to the successor of him with whom King Ferrante had refused to ally himself, when he rejected the proposals made him by Louis XI. to the disadvantage of his Spanish relations.

POPE SIXTUS IV., KING FERRANTE, AND THE MEDICI.

Pope SixtusIV. was disposed most favourably towards the Medici at the beginning of his reign. We have heard in Lorenzo’s own words how well he was received in Rome in 1471. The friendly relation was strengthened by concessions which afforded essential advantages to the Florentine mercantile house. The Pope was ready moreover to fulfil a wish which Lorenzo already cherished at that time; granting the cardinal’s purple to Giuliano. From a letter addressed by him to Sixtus on November 21, 1472,[198]we see that he had already spoken to the Pope of the matter, and that the latter had given him a promise. The whole plan gives us an insight into Lorenzo’s thoughts. To have a member of the family in the Sacred College was advantageous for a family which was on the road to princely power, especially in a city and a State which stood in a thousand connections with Rome; and what Lorenzo subsequently attained through a son he wished now to effect for and by a brother. To withdraw this brother from the circle of domestic and political affairs, to guide the State without a partaker if not rival in power, this was the principal thing. Giuliano was the born leader of the youth of Florence, eighteen years old, strong, lively, and a friend to pleasure; the matter might become serious, though hitherto, and indeed up to the death of the youngerbrother, the best terms existed between the two, as once between Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo.

The first creation of cardinals of Sixtus IV. took place on December 15, 1471, four months after his election; only his two relations were elevated by it, Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovera. Lorenzo waited nearly a year before he reminded the Pope of his promise, and commissioned his uncle, Giovanni Tornabuoni with the affair, after Sixtus had in the meantime given him a fresh proof of his friendly feeling in the case of Volterra. On April 25, 1473, the cardinal of Pavia, Jacopo Ammanati, who had maintained various connections with the Medici and Tuscany in general from the days of Pope Pius II., wrote to him that they would at all events receive a cardinal’s hat; but he, Lorenzo, ought to consider whether he would not prefer to bestow it on some one else, for instance, the Bishop of Pisa, instead of his brother, who could not be immediately created one without passing through certain preliminary ecclesiastical dignities. Immediately afterwards, on May 7, ensued the second creation of eight cardinals, including Italians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. Eight days later Ammanati, after having consulted with Giovanni Tornabuoni, wrote again to Lorenzo. He gave him to consider that the entrance of his brother into sacred orders, if it promised advantages on the one side, might, on the other, greatly harm the position of the family and the party if God should call him away, and he should leave four children of tender age. If, however, he persisted in his intention, the matter could only advance by degrees. ‘It would be first necessary to appoint Giuliano as protonotary, and allow him to fill this office for at least a month. For to raise a layman directly to the dignity of cardinal none of us would consent. I would advise, however, that he should receive no ecclesiastical consecration before our object is attained, so that in case of failure he may return to his former position, as many have done in my days, without exciting censure. His household must then represent thehalf of a cardinal’s—that is to say, an escort of four to six chaplains, and eight grooms. For though he might develop greater splendour according to his position, a modest appearance here makes a favourable impression. For the rest, Messer Gentile (Becchi) and I would regard him as a son, and would so instruct him that he could only obtain praise. His creation is certain to me if the Pope remains alive, and I trust to be able to effect more than one. Be not offended that several cardinals have been appointed in these last days, for several must soon follow, for the Emperor and King Ferrante, for Rome and Florence.’ At the same time he advised him to sound the views of the Duke of Milan. From such a purely business point of view did even a grave and pious man like Ammanati regard the nomination of a member of the highest ecclesiastical senate; which indeed had long consisted of two classes—the learned and spiritual members, and the great lords and politicians. The Pope then promised the republic to appoint one of their fellow-citizens on the first opportunity; while the Cardinal of Pavia announced in his name that the granting of bishoprics in their territory could only take place after an agreement beforehand with the Signoria.

The relations between the Pope and the Medici were still undisturbed when, after the death of Giovanni Neroni at Rome in 1473, the former appointed his nephew, Cardinal Riario, to the archbishopric of Florence. This young man suddenly became, from an obscure Franciscan monk, the all-powerful favourite of the supreme pontiff, and though not deficient in intellect and subtlety, was so devoid of moderation and sense of fitness that he gave scope to his love of luxury and extravagance, to a degree that was unusual even in Rome, notwithstanding the wealth of such cardinals as Guillaume d’Estouteville, Latino Orsini, Olivieri Carafa, &c. How far his foolish extravagance was carried is seen by the festival which he gave in the spring of 1473 at his palace near St. Apostoli to the newly-married Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonoreof Aragon, King Ferrante’s daughter, a festival which excited great displeasure everywhere. Florence also had to see something of the bridal procession of the Duchess. At the end of April the duke’s brother, Sigismondo d’Este, who went to fetch his future sister-in-law, arrived at the city with a suite which required no less than four hundred horses and seventy-seven mules; he stayed there two days, and then continued his journey towards Rome. He rewarded Florentine hospitality by circulating false money bearing the stamp of the Republic, and he was convicted of it, but allowed to escape. On June 22, Eleonore, who had left Naples on May 26, arrived at Florence. Duke Ercole, who had informed Lorenzo of his betrothal in the preceding November, had announced the arrival of his consort to him on June 4. She had passed the preceding night in San Casciano, on the Sienese road, only eight miles distant from the city. Her suite, consisting partly of Neapolitans and partly of Ferrarese, numbered no fewer than 1,400 men on horseback. She rode towards the Piazza, where the Signoria received her on the Ringhiera, she exchanged a few words with the Gonfaloniere, and then proceeded to the Medicean palace, where she lodged. Her whole suite was entertained at the cost of the commune; the expenses in the city and territory were reckoned at about ten thousand gold florins; ‘Money thrown away,’ Alamanna Rinuccini adds. The journey was continued through Marradi and Faenza.[199]Eleonore’s consort and father expressed their thanks for the reception. ‘Illustrious lord and beloved friend,’ wrote the king to Lorenzo on July 7,[200]‘through letters of our daughter, Duchess of Ferrara, and our ambassador, we have heard of the reception she met with from you, and of the proofs of friendship and festivals which you gave her with equal kindnessand magnificence. We must express our unbounded gratitude for this; and, although the love we bore you seemed as if it could have been little, if at all, increased, we assure you that it has been augmented in such a manner that we shall ever be under obligation to you. We shall endeavour in time to prove our gratitude for the pleasure you have given us.’

Two months later Pietro Riario came to Florence. The ostensible aim of the journey was to take possession of the archbishopric, but it was more important to him and to the Pope to assure himself of the intentions of the Duke of Milan; in which he succeeded so well, that the story went that in Milan, where the Cardinal was in September, they had made an agreement about the royal title of Lombardy, to which the vain Sforza aspired, as the ambitious Visconti had done eighty years before. Pietro Riario’s presence in Florence was a new cause for festivals and expenses, at a time when the people were suffering from dearth. The eulogistic verses, exaggerated to the most excessive bombast and profanest idolatry, with which Angelo Poliziano (who was then certainly very young and very needy) celebrates the unworthy nephew of a pope, who was indulgent to culpable weakness towards his relations, are one of the numerous proofs which afford an insight into the public and moral conditions of the time. The early death of Pietro Riario, which happened in the beginning of 1474, put an end to various plans, and to a scandal which surpassed all that had been seen before. That there was no lack at the time of half ironical observations on the growing luxury in Florence, is shown by a letter addressed, on January 22 in the year just mentioned, to Duke Ercole d’Este by Niccolò Bendedei.[201]‘There is nothing new here, except that in the neighbourhood of Pisa, where the illustrious Lorenzo is hawking with King Ferrante’s men, two of the ten falcons sent by HisMajesty, and those the best, are lost. Your Excellence must not wonder that I speak of such things, for I only follow the example of others. Idleness has so gained the upper hand in Italy that, if nothing new happens, we shall have more to say about the slaughter of fowls and dogs than about armies and deeds of war. For the rest, I am of opinion that those who have to govern Italy in peace will not reap less fame than those who kept her at war. For the object of war is, after all, peace, and the only consideration is that it should be a permanent peace.’ But this never entered the minds of those who were all too ready to lavish the fruits of peace.

The first cause of mutual distrust between Sixtus IV. and Lorenzo seems to have been the Pope’s endeavour to obtain estates for his relations in Romagna, a matter in which the Florentines were not free from blame. In contemplating the fate of this province, the family of the Manfredi, their disunion among themselves, and their connections with Florence, have already been mentioned (p. 207). From the proximity of the territories of Imola and Faenza, it was by no means indifferent to the Republic in whose hands they might be. After several changes and family feuds, Imola had fallen, in 1473, into the hands of the Duke of Milan, from whom the Florentines tried to obtain it. Their wishes were, however, thwarted both by the King of Naples and the Pope, naturally averse to the extension of the Florentine territory in Romagna, and at last Sixtus IV. bought Imola for 40,000 ducats, and bestowed it upon Girolamo Riario, the cardinal’s brother, to whom at the same time the hand of Caterina Sforza, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria, was promised.[202]The journey of the cardinal to Milan was undoubtedly connected with this affair. After the death of the latter, Girolamo took the first place in his uncle’s favour, and soon began to exercise an influence on affairs which could only be injurious, on account of his restless ambition andviolent nature, while it was to be foreseen that the constant dissensions, and often wild enmities in the neighbouring families—the Manfredi of Faenza, as well as the Ordelaffi of Forli—would afford material enough for new anxieties and troubles.

Almost immediately afterwards another circumstance disturbed the good understanding even more seriously. Città di Castello, lying in the Upper Tiber valley, on the frontier between Umbria and Tuscany, and not wholly unimportant, shared the fate of all neighbouring towns and localities, which became the nurseries of excellent condottieri and soldiers, but at the same time the scenes of permanent civil disturbances, and often of the bloodiest family feuds. In 1440, Vitelozzo Vitelli, the head of a family frequently mentioned after the end of the twelfth century, had received from Pope Eugene IV. the vicegerency of his native town; but another family, that of the Giustini, disputed the pre-eminence of the Vitelli, and in the spring of 1468 occurred one of those scenes of horror which are by no means rare in the history of Umbria. Niccolò Vitelli, who had attained the upper hand after Vitellozzo’s death, managed to bring about a reconciliation with Pope Paul II., who invested him with the vicegerency in 1470; but in the beginning of Sixtus IV.’s reign, his accusers, especially Lorenzo Giustini, the head of the opposing party, influenced the Pope against him. As things were in Città di Castello we cannot blame the latter if he wished to set bounds to the violent state of things, which hindered every proper exercise of law and administration, and always allowed one part of the citizens to be oppressed by the other. But it was suspected that Sixtus IV.’s only object was to transfer the supreme power to a nephew. Events in other parts of Umbria followed. In Todi a violent feud had arisen between the factions which still called themselves Ghibellines and Guelphs. The inhabitants of Spoleto had joined in the dispute, and procured the preponderance for the anti-papal party. Cardinal Giulianodella Rovere had been sent with troops against both towns. He had pacified Todi and forced Spoleto to yield; on which occasion the same thing happened as at Volterra from want of discipline in the troops, all the more unfortunate because an ecclesiastical prince was at the head. Niccolò Vitelli was accused of having assisted the inhabitants of both the rebellious towns; and now his turn was come. Giovanni Antonio Campano, the statesman and historian, was sent to make terms with him; he refused to retire from the administration, or even to re-admit the exiles, well knowing that this would be the end of his own authority.

As treaties were fruitless, the siege of Città di Castello began. Niccolò defended himself valiantly, and inflicted great injuries on his opponents, who, about six thousand men strong, far exceeded his forces. It was said that Florence and Milan had supported him in his opposition. It was certainly the interest of Florence not to let a State of doubtful proclivities rise up so immediately on her frontiers. In the middle of July the determination was taken to enlist 3,000 horse and as many foot for the protection of the territory, and to send Piero Nasi as commissary to the neighbouring Borgo San Sepolcro. At the first voting the resolution passed with a large majority. The Pope took the demonstration very ill. At last the Vitelli saw themselves obliged to come to an agreement, especially after Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom Sixtus IV. bestowed the title of Duke of Urbino, threw his great military authority into the scale in favour of the Pope, a movement to which King Ferrante assented. The conditions were extremely favourable to the town, but Niccolò Vitelli was obliged to quit it; and though he was honourably received in Rome, and obtained from Feltrier, a no less honourable position in Urbino, his power was at an end. An attempt made in the following year to regain it by force made his situation worse, as he was now obliged to flee, and his rival, Lorenzo Giustini, it is true under a papalgovernor, assumed the highest rank among the citizens.[203]The Cardinal della Rovera openly accused the Republic of Florence[204]of having assisted the Vitelli against the Pope, increased the vigour of his opposition, and thus led to a capitulation, of which Cardinal Ammanati, notwithstanding his attachment to Florence and the Medici, wrote that it was a disgrace for the victors, for not they, but the vanquished, dictated the terms.

While Ammanati was at Siena, where Lorenzo de’ Medici visited him, he said to the latter that, by his openly favouring the Vitelli, he had himself made it impossible for the Pope to employ the mediation of the Republic instead of the Duke of Urbino in composing the difference. The Pope also complained in a brief addressed to Florence of the assistance which had been given to Vitelli, and of his remaining in the territory of the Republic, from whence a new attempt against Città di Castello might be easily made. Lorenzo de’ Medici answered that all had been done that was compatible with the freedom and honour of the State. With Niccolò it had been agreed that he should take up his residence in the neighbourhood of Pisa, and not seek to approach Città di Castello, and his Holiness might be as much at peace respecting him as if he were in the castle of St. Angelo. ‘Be assured, Holy Father,’ he added,’that I am going to work with perfect honesty, and the intention of deserving no just reproofs nor displeasure from you. I reckon the favour of your Holiness among the greatest of my treasures, and I have no desire to lose it for the sake of Messer Niccolò or anyone else.’[205]We shall see, however, how, at the time when the breach was complete, Sixtus IV. madetheir behaviour in these matters a crime on the part of the Florentines, and how they could only faintly defend themselves from such reproaches.

That Federigo of Montefeltro, on whom the Republic believed they could rely, joined the Pope, was a heavy blow to them. Feltrier, a man of spirit and culture, and a good master of his little state, was too weak to pursue an independent policy, and followed the lead of circumstances, while the condottiere-nature preponderated in him. He had truly served the Republic in the Colleonic war, and opposed the Pope in the Malatesta feud; he now passed to the other side. King Ferrante, who well knew the military skill of Federigo, had attached him to himself, Sixtus having aided him. During the siege of Città di Castello, on August 23, 1474, the ducal dignity was conferred on him. It did not end here; the new duke was entirely attached to the Papal interest. By the acquisition of Imola, Sixtus IV. had begun to gain a firm footing with his relations in Romagna. He now smoothed the way for a connection with one of the oldest families in the province by obtaining from Federigo the promise of the hand of his eldest daughter, Giovanna, for his nephew, the brother of Cardinal Giuliano. The importance of this connection was evident. The duke had by his recently deceased wife, Battista Sforza of Pesaro, an only son, Guidubaldo, a delicate child only two years old. If he should not survive his father, the inheritance would pass to the daughters. Guidubaldo did survive his father, but was always sickly; he died childless in the time of a second Pope belonging to the Della Rovere family, and Montefeltro and Urbino, as Sixtus IV. had secretly hoped, came into the possession of a son of his sister who had married, in 1475, Giovanni della Rovere, on whom his uncle bestowed the vicegerency of Senegallia with Mondavio, and not long afterwards the dignity of a prefect of Rome. The Pope’s nephews were on the high road to greatness.

Considering the intimacy between the King of Naplesand the Medici, it appears strange to find him thwarting their designs. The real ground was the leaning of the Florentines towards the Venetians, who were always mistrusted by the King, on account of their desire to extend their dominions on the coasts of the Adriatic, and to obtain complete possession of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro, the widow of the last of the Lusignans, was a mere vassal of the Republic, whilst the eyes of the Aragonese of Naples, as well as those of their Norman and Angevin predecessors, were always turned towards the East. The dangers Venice was threatened with on the Dalmatian side contributed to keep up a sort of outward understanding; but suspicion was growing on both sides, and the increasing friendship between the Pope and the King found its counterpoise in the alliance of Florence and Venice. On September 20, 1474, the alliance was proclaimed in Venice which the Republic had concluded with Florence—for whom Tommaso Soderini conducted the negotiations—and Milan. According to the form, it was a renewal of that of Lodi in 1454, and was to last for five-and-twenty years. Common defence against any attack whatever was the object; the Pope and the King of Naples were given the option of joining, though no one thought they would, and the Duke of Burgundy was summoned to take a share in the Turkish war. On the 4th of November the news of the alliance had already reached Florence, and was greeted with bonfires and great festivities. After the ratification, the solemn proclamation was made on the 20th amid banquetings and illuminations. The miraculous picture of the Madonna of Sta. Maria dell’ Imprimeta was on this, as on all occasions of joy or sorrow, brought into the city, and borne in procession. The joy of the citizens was indeed damped by a new tax. ‘They proceeded by such means,’ remarks Alamanno Rinuccini,[206]‘in a violent manner, and the heads of the civic governmentexcited hatred enough; but as the people were enervated, they were obliged to endure this and many other attacks that were worse.’ The Pope as well as the King refused to accede to the alliance, and concluded a close treaty with one another, under the promise to have the same friends and foes. As Rome celebrated the jubilee in the following year, it was a desirable opportunity for King Ferrante to draw the ties of friendship tighter by a personal interview with the head of the Church. On February 25, 1475, he entered Rome with a brilliant suite, where he showed himself more liberal than it was his nature to be. He resided in the palace of the Vatican, and had full time to discuss all political affairs of the day with a Pope who, grown to manhood in a convent, had been drawn, at the approach of old age, into a whirl of business and difficulties which have given a most unenviable reputation to his pontificate, otherwise not without its good sides. The history of the city of Rome preserves the memory of this visit of Ferrante of Aragon, who, by his observation to Sixtus IV. that he could not be master of Rome so long as it was impossible to move freely in the streets, is said to have induced the Pope to widen them by removing the balconies and outbuildings, which had sometimes also served military purposes.

There were now two leagues, which divided Italy geographically into two halves; but for the present they stood rather beside than opposed to one another. The whole political state of the peninsula in the fifteenth century had the characteristics of condottiere war in it, in the motives as well as in the forms, in the rendezvous and the evolutions, in the mutually dubious and bargaining demeanour to friends as well as foes. They formed alliances to injure those with whom an old alliance still existed; ambassadors were with those against whom they went to war; private persons were attacked before the war had broken out; the leaders were enticed away alternately by this party and by that, even after they had taken pay. In November 1475the ambassadors of Venice, Florence, and Milan, went to Rome, summoned by the Pope, to take part in the congress convened on account of the Turkish danger. The imposing expedition of 1472, commanded in the Pope’s name by the Cardinal Olivieri Carafa, had obtained but slender results. The loss of Caffa, which had ensued in 1475, the ancient Genoese depôt on the Black Sea, was not only heavy in itself, but also because the connection with Persia, which alone still resisted, was threatened by it. The negotiations lasted for months; what they effected is seen by the fact that not long afterwards Turkish stragglers reached Friuli. While they thus remained in continual connection with the Pope, the friendship between the Medici and King Ferrante was outwardly undisturbed. In the summer of 1477 it would still have been held to be complete. The king, who had been for twelve years the widower of Isabella di Chiaromonte, and long a grandfather, determined to marry again. The ground was of a political nature. King Juan of Aragon and Sicily had never forgiven the separation of Naples from his brother’s dominions. Alfonso of Aragon had, indeed, thought he could proceed with Naples as with a conquered country; but on the side of Spain it was objected that Naples and Sicily were Hohenstaufen inheritance, and rightfully accruing to the house of Aragon through Manfred’s daughter, although in consequence of the Anjou usurpation it had long been lost to them. The mystery of Ferrante’s birth, who was said by some to be the son of a barber’s wife, and by others that of Alfonso’s sister-in-law, the consort of his brother the Grand Master of San Jago, was opposed to this in the king’s family. At the time we have mentioned, when the Neapolitan line of the Aragonese seemed fully secured by children and grandchildren as well as by investitures and alliances, new claims appeared, nevertheless, in Spain. The means of resisting these was a union of the two lines: Ferrante married his uncle’s daughter, Juana. On June 11, the Duke of Calabria quitted Naples to fetch his future stepmother.Several of the great barons of the empire accompanied him. Received at Rome with great splendour, he landed on the 29th at Piombino, where a wooden mole had been built, forty feet long, and covered with branches and flowers. On July 1 he reached Pisa. Lorenzo de’ Medici, who towards the end of May had received the Duchess of Ferrara at his house in this town—when she was on her way to her father, and, passing through Lucca, arrived here—and had splendidly entertained her till she embarked at Leghorn,[207]had come down the Arno in two great barques to meet the duke, and escorted him to a palace fitted up for him, where he resided for three days as the guest of the Republic. Lorenzo failed not to give rich presents on this as on all similar occasions. On July 9 the duke was in Nice, on the 25th in Barcelona, from whence, on September 11, the new queen reached Naples, where Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, as Papal legate, performed the marriage ceremony and the coronation.[208]Bongianni Gianfigliazzi and Pierfilippo Pandolfini presented the newly-married pair with the congratulations of the Republic. Not much above a quarter of a century later this queen shared the complete ruin of the house which she now entered, a ruin in which her own brother aided by lending a hand to the successor of him with whom King Ferrante had refused to ally himself, when he rejected the proposals made him by Louis XI. to the disadvantage of his Spanish relations.

Back to IndexNext