CHAPTER VIII.DEATH OF LORENZO.WhenLorenzo wrote that letter to his son his condition might be called hopeless. From his youth up he had suffered from hereditary physical ailments. The attacks had increased with age, till they weakened his originally strong constitution. Gout made its appearance in various forms, and the waters, tried frequently and one after another, failed to give lasting relief, partly because he never gave them time to produce their full effect. He often joked about his sufferings. ‘Pain in my feet,’ he wrote to Lanfredini in August 1489, ‘has hindered my correspondence with you. Feet and tongue are indeed far apart, yet they interfere with each other.’ Towards the end of August 1491, he was so ill that he had to be carried to Spedaletto in a litter.[561]The waters of Morba had only a passing soothing effect; and at the end of the autumn a slow fever set in with grave symptoms. His whole system seemed attacked at once—bowels, limbs, and nerves. To the arthritic pains were added pains in the bones, which robbed him of rest by night and day; gout had attacked the higher organs: the physicians were at their wits’ end. When the year 1492 opened, he could see no one; all grave political business had to be set aside; a Milanese ambassador waited more than a fortnight for an audience. An improvement permitted him to leave the house again, but it was not lasting. ‘The illustriousLorenzo,’ wrote the Ferrarese ambassador on February 11,[562]‘has been again for some days greatly tormented with pains which attack the whole of his body except his head. At times he suffers so acutely that it is hard to understand how he can hold out. The doctors do not indeed consider the illness mortal; but his condition is getting very bad, because he enjoys very little rest. God grant him health again; for the accounts of his state are really such as to excite sympathy.’ On the 8th of the same month, King Ferrante wrote to his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli:[563]‘We have received many letters from you, but now we only reply concerning the long-continued sufferings of the illustrious Lorenzo, which have grieved and do grieve us to the depths of our soul. Would God we could procure him recovery, or even alleviation! Exhort his Magnificence to arm himself with patience and thus overcome the evil; more especially as we may now expect better weather, after these last days which have indeed been bad. Inform his Magnificence also that we congratulate him on the settlement of the dispute with his Holiness, which must be as pleasing to him as to ourself, he having had so great a share in it, as is known to us and all. May he, by God’s help, the advice of good doctors and prudence on his own part, recover his health, so that we may both enjoy peace, and especially peace of mind.’The king was not deceived in his estimate of how much depended on Lorenzo’s life and activity. In the middle of February an improvement set in, but again it was but transitory. The weather continued bad, and at the beginning of March the pains returned; no one was admitted to the invalid with the exception of his family and a very few intimate friends. We remarked before that he was unable to take part in the solemnities attending the proclamation of hisson’s cardinalate; his most ardent wish was now fulfilled, and his life was on the wane. He seems to have been aware of his condition, when the young Cardinal set out on March 12. He spoke thus to Filippo Valori, brother of his biographer, and Andrea Carubini, the former of whom was to accompany Giovanni to Rome, and the latter was attached to his household: ‘I entrust my son’s youth to you; me you will never see again.’ Who can tell what were his feelings as he wrote that beautiful letter!—There was again a slight improvement; but it was the last. The disease made rapid progress. On the 21st the invalid was taken to Careggi, his favourite abode, where he had planned and done so much, and where he could get more air and sunshine than in the city. Towards the end of March a physician was expected from Naples. At the beginning of April, Duke Ercole of Ferrara came to Florence[564]on his journey to Rome, whither he was going ostensibly for purposes of devotion, in reality for political objects, and to try to obtain the cardinalate for his son Ippolito. The boy was only thirteen, but he had already been Archbishop of Gran for six years; and if a Medici had won the purple at fourteen, why not an Este, a scion of one of the oldest families of Italy? If Innocent VIII. had lived longer he would have been unable to avoid giving this nomination also. The duke could not see Lorenzo, but the latter had already promised him his son’s vote in the future Consistory.The sufferer’s days were numbered. He made himself ready for the worst, set his house in order, and made what arrangements he could to secure for his son the position he had himself held. But he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the dangers which the old love of freedom and impatience under the long and ever-strengthening supremacy of a single family, together with Piero’s inexperience and haughty character, must bring upon him. Poliziano indeedrelates that Lorenzo had cherished an intention of retiring, and handing over the direction of affairs to his son. ‘About two years before his death,’ he says, ‘I was sitting with him in his bed-chamber, and we were talking, as usual, of philosophy and literature. He then said that he intended passing the rest of his days with Ficino, Pico, and myself, in study, far from the bustle of the city. To my objection that this would be impossible, as the citizens needed his counsel and authority more and more every day, he answered smiling: “I shall provide a substitute in the person of thy pupil, and entrust the burden to his shoulders.“‘ Then on Poliziano’s expressing a doubt whether Piero’s age was sufficient to render him competent, he praised his son’s mind and bearing, and the good foundations which Poliziano had laid. The story may be true, notwithstanding the writer’s visible tendency to over-rate his friend’s actions and sayings. But doubtless Lorenzo’s sole object was to hear what would be said to such an intention. He can hardly have had serious thoughts of retiring from public life, least of all at such a time.Looking back upon his own short but eventful career, he could see more clearly than ever what unceasing care and trouble, what knowledge of characters and calculation of humours and circumstances, had been necessary to govern parties, keep down opponents without driving them to extremity, and make use of and direct adherents without letting them outgrow his control. He knew but too well that a single false step might upset everything. In the depths of his own mind he felt the discords that ran through the general tone of thought and feeling in the state. He measured the force of the hardly-concealed moral and religious currents that were threatening to break forth. When he, the experienced statesman, looked around him and surveyed the political condition of Italy, he was alarmed at the weak foundations of the edifice which it had cost him so much exertion to support by his counsels and actions. But justnow he had put an end to the long and dangerous strife between the Pope and the King; and who was to answer for the future? And when the unstable Pope and the unprincipled King were gone, who could predict the former’s successor—who dared flatter himself with the hope that the latter’s heir, in every respect worse than himself, would keep even his own disaffected land at peace, and not foster the seeds, sown long ago, of dissensions with other countries? Perhaps Lorenzo’s death-bed was haunted even more by the consciousness of the preponderance of evil elements in the College, by the thoughts of Alfonso of Naples, of Lodovico il Moro, and of the hostility of Venice, than even by the dread of attempts at a change in Florence.In his religious views and his mode of expressing them Lorenzo had always been a true child of the age, which combined a secular temper with a tinge of unfeigned religious feeling, and amid all its grave intellectual errors was not without moral consciousness. That Lorenzo possessed this moral consciousness is proved by many of his expressions through his latter years. He had gained from his excellent and pious mother something more than a literary acquaintance with religious matters. He had inherited from his forefathers the traditions of a close and active connection with ecclesiastical foundations and ecclesiastical interests, which he furthered in a manner that cannot be attributed solely to political motives. His sensuous temperament, his early elevation to such authority as perhaps no private man has ever enjoyed in a city so full of genuine life, led him into many moral errors. But as he was at the same time the author of the lays of the Carnaval and the poet of philosophical and spiritual songs, even so, amid all his errors and notwithstanding the great influence exercised over him from his youth up by antique philosophy, he still adhered to the faith of Christianity practised and taught by his teacher Ficino and his friend Pico della Mirandola. All his life he had been attentive to the observance of religious ordinances; and hecontinued so when that life was near its close. His sister Bianca de’ Pazzi had accompanied him to Careggi; and it was she who told him of his imminent danger. ‘Brother,’ said she, ‘thou hast lived as a man of lofty mind; thou must quit this life not only bravely but piously. Know that all hope is over.’[565]He seemed somewhat distressed that hope had been encouraged too long; then he asked for the aid of the Church. It was late when the priest who was summoned from San Lorenzo reached the villa. The dying man would not receive him in bed: in spite of the remonstrances of those about him, he got up and had himself dressed: then, supported by his attendants, he entered the room, where he sank on his knees before the ciborium. Seeing how weak he was, the priest insisted that he should lie down again; and he was with difficulty induced to do so. He then received the viaticum with a devoutness which made an impression on all present.[566]His eldest son, his sister, and Angelo Poliziano were almost constantly near him. After the religious ceremony Piero remained alone by his bedside. Lorenzo comforted him, and gave him warnings and good advice as to his conduct in the city and the state when he himself should have departed. ‘The citizens,’ said he, ‘will, I believe, acknowledge thee, my son, as worthy to fill the position which I have occupied; and I doubt not that thou wilt have the same authority in the commonwealth as I have enjoyed until now. But as this commonwealth is, according to the common expression, a body with many heads, and it is impossible to please them all, remember that in all the varied circumstances of life the way to be kept is that which appears mosthonourable; and always prefer the general good to personal and party interests.’ Wise counsel this; if he who gave it had but followed it more strictly, it would have saved him from much bitter and but too well-founded reproach! He charged Piero to take a father’s place towards his young brother Giuliano; to the Cardinal he commended his nephew Giulio, then aged fourteen, and for whom he seems already to have had visions of an ecclesiastical career. He also spoke to his son about his funeral, ordering that it should be arranged after the pattern of his grandfather’s, and that the limits usual in the interment of a private man should not be overstepped.Meanwhile a famous Lombard doctor, Lazaro of Pavia, sent by Lodovico il Moro, had arrived at Careggi. The invalid asked the attendants what he was doing, and on being told that he was composing a draught of pulverised pearls, precious stones, and other costly substances, he exclaimed with eager voice and cheerful look to Poliziano, who was standing near the bed: ‘Dost thou hear, Angelo, dost thou hear?’ Then, stretching out his enfeebled arms, he seized his friend by both hands and held him fast, while the latter sought to turn away to hide the rising tears; at last Lorenzo, seeing his emotion, let him go, and he rushed to his own rooms to let his grief take its course. When he came back, Lorenzo asked why Pico did not come to see him; and being answered that probably Pico feared to trouble him, he remarked that he rather feared it was the distance from the villa to the city that troubled Pico. The latter, thus called for, came; and the invalid received him with the old cordiality. He begged him to excuse the trouble he was giving him, adding that it must be attributed to his affection, for he should die more content after having seen him once more. Then he spoke on many subjects, both general and particular, and said, looking at the two: ‘I would that death had spared me till I had been able to complete your libraries.’ Poliziano knelt downbeside the bed to catch the words, which were already becoming indistinct.Scarcely had Pico left Careggi when another man entered the chamber of death.[567]If Lorenzo summoned Girolamo Savonarola to him, it must have been because he was not easy in his conscience. The several versions of the interview, as related by those who were connected either with Lorenzo or the Dominican Prior, differ so widely as to the circumstances that only greater or less probability can decide between them. This is Poliziano’s story: Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, a man distinguished by his learning and godliness, and an excellent preacher of the Divine Word, entered the room, and admonished the invalid to hold fast to the Faith; to which Lorenzo replied that he continued immovable therein. Hereupon he exhorted him thenceforth to lead a virtuous life; to which the reply was that he would endeavour himself so to do. Thirdly, he recommended him to meet death, if it needs must be, with firmness. ‘Nothing,’ replied the invalid, ‘is sweeter to me, if it be God’s will.’ The monk was departing, when Lorenzo said to him: ‘Give me thy blessing, father, before thou partest from me.’ And with bowed head, and in the attitude of religious earnestness, he responded correctly, and with full consciousness to Savonarola’s words and prayers, undisturbed by the no longer concealed mourning of the household.So reports the friend of many years—he who knew the dying man better perhaps than anyone else. But another story stands in opposition to his. According to this version, Lorenzo wished to make one last confession to the Dominican. He accused himself of three things: the sack of Volterra, the squandering of the dower-moneys, and the blood shed at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. The dying man’s agitation was distressing. ‘God is gracious, God is merciful,’ said the monk to soothe him. Then, when he had done, Savonarolaspoke. ‘You have need of three things. First, true and lively confidence in the Divine grace.’ To this the invalid replied, ‘I am penetrated therewith.’ ‘Secondly, you must restore what you have wrongfully appropriated, and make restitution a duty for your sons.’ Lorenzo reflected a moment, then assented by a movement of the head. ‘Lastly, you must restore to the people of Florence their freedom.’ The invalid turned away his head without answering, and the monk left him unabsolved.Lorenzo’s death—to resume Poliziano’s report—was peaceful. It seemed that it was not he who was about to undergo the fate of all mortals, but rather those who stood around his bed. He did not refuse what the doctors prescribed, though he expected no effect from it. Even his old cheerfulness had not altogether deserted him. When after taking some food he was asked how he relished it, he answered: ‘Like a dying man.’ He embraced his relatives and friends and begged them to forgive him if he had offended them or shown impatience during his long illness. When he asked to have read to him from the Gospel the history of the Passion and Death of our Lord, at first he repeated the words of Scripture, then, getting weaker, only moved his lips and at last his fingers, in token that he still followed the sense. When death drew near, a crucifix was held out to him; he opened his eyes, kissed it and departed. This was on Sunday, April 8, 1492, about the fifth hour of the night.What a strange abundant variety of cares and pleasures, of labour and enjoyment, of thought and action, of poetry and realism, of danger and success, of evil and good, had been crowded together into that life of barely forty-three years!The tidings of his death naturally put all Florence in commotion. Almost simultaneously with it came the news that the physician Piero Leoni had thrown himself into a well at Francesco Martelli’s villa at San Gervasio by the Porta Pinti, whither he had been secretly taken because his life was threatened at Careggi, as he was suspected of an intentto poison. It was not known whether the unhappy man really perished by his own resolve or by another’s hand.[568]As usual, prodigies were believed to have presaged the event with which all minds were occupied. In Sta. Maria Novella a woman had started up in the middle of the sermon, crying out that she saw a raging bull, with burning horns, overthrowing the church. Three days before Lorenzo’s death a flash of lightning had struck the lantern of the Cathedral and hurled down some heavy blocks of marble on the north-west, the side towards the Medici’s dwelling; one fell in through the roof, another crushed the house of Luca Rinieri. On the night of the death a meteor was said to have been seen to shine over Careggi and then vanish.[569]Three hours after death the body was taken from Careggi to San Marco; there it remained in the chapel of a lay-brotherhood till the following evening, when the clergy of San Lorenzo came in solemn procession to fetch it away and carry it to the sacristy of the Basilica. The ceremony at church was simple, as he had wished it. The mourning was general. The upper ranks, almost entirely attached to the Medicean interest, felt deeply the loss of the man whose firm and practised hand had guided the helm for so long, and whose vices had been outweighed by his brilliant qualities. Who should tell them what might happen now? On April 10, wrote Bartolommeo Cerretani, the whole city went to Piero. The people lamented the loss of him who, at whatever cost, had procured them peace and comfort.[570]There were indeed some who rejoiced at his death and expected good from it; there is no lack of testimony to such feelings in memoirs not intended for the eyes of strangers. ‘As I know,’ writes Alamanno Rinuccini, when describing the merits and demerits of the Medici, ‘that many falsehoods about himhave been spread, in eye-service and deceit, by flatterers and perverters of the truth, mostly bought and corrupted by him by means of honours and enrichment at the public expense. I intend to give a brief account of his life and manners, with both of which I was intimately acquainted: not by way of detraction, nor from hatred towards him, from whom I have received divers marks of distinction, to which I had no claim, but in compliance with truth. The multitude regarded the signs before his death as prognostics of great evils; they would have been prognostics of great good, had the citizens known how to use their opportunity.’[571]On April 13, three days after the funeral, the assembled councils and the people, in conjunction with the Signoria, issued the following decree:[572]‘Whereas the foremost man of all this city, the lately deceased Lorenzo de’ Medici, did during his whole life neglect no opportunity of protecting, increasing, adorning, and raising this city, but was always ready with counsel, authority, and painstaking, in thought and deed; subordinated his personal interest to the advantage and benefit of the community; shrank from neither trouble nor dangers for the good of the State and its freedom; and devoted to that object all his thoughts and powers, securing public order by excellent laws; by his presence brought a dangerous war to a conclusion; regained the places lost in battle and took those belonging to the enemies;—whereas he furthermore, after the rare examples furnished by antiquity, for the safety of his fellow-citizens and the freedom of his country gave himself up into his enemies’ power, and, filled with love for his house, averted the general danger by drawing it all upon his own head; whereas, finally, he omitted nothing which could tend to raise our reputation and enlarge our borders; it hath seemed good to the Senate and peopleof Florence, on the motion of the chief magistrate, to establish a public testimonial of gratitude to the memory of such a man, in order that virtue may not be unhonoured among the Florentines, and that in days to come other citizens may be incited to serve the commonwealth with might and wisdom. But whereas the memory of Lorenzo needs no outward adornments, as it has struck deep root, and blooms fresher every day, it hath been determined to transfer to Piero, the eldest son of the deceased, the heir of his father’s dignity and successor to his fame, the public honour due to his father and his ancestors. So much the more, as Piero has already in his youth displayed the endowments of his father and is in some degree his image, and has already shown himself such that we may hope he will, by God’s assistance, tread in his father’s steps.’On April 10, before break of day, a special messenger brought to the Cardinal the fatal tidings which had been expected for several days. Giovanni, his attendants and servants, at once put on mourning, the house was hung with black, and all the Cardinals, headed by Francesco Piccolomini, paid visits of condolence to their youthful colleague. Four days after, a Requiem was sung in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva; Franceschetto Cybò and the Count of Pitigliano were present in coarse black mantles reaching to the ground, and also Onofrio Tornabuoni, the Medicean agent at the Roman Curia, and many prelates and gentlemen. The next day Innocent proclaimed the appointment of Giovanni de’ Medici to be legate in Tuscany, whither the boy wished to return in consequence of his father’s death, that he might consult on the condition of affairs with his brother, to whom he had already written many letters. The young Cardinal was so much moved that he had to retire for a while during mass.[573]Nothing is known of the remarks madeby the Pope (who sent an orator to Florence) on the loss of the man with whom he was so intimate, although throughout his pontificate he had never personally seen him. The case is otherwise with regard to King Ferrante. On the morning of April 11, being then in the neighbourhood of Palma, he learned from a letter of Marino Tomacelli that all hope was abandoned. He thereupon wrote to Gioviano Pontano at Rome that he should offer the Pope all the means at his command to prevent a disturbance of the peace of Italy, and place at his disposal the troops commanded by Virginio Orsini. To Virginio he wrote the same evening, after receiving news of the death (‘which has grieved us to the depths of our soul’), charging him to act without further orders from him according to the disposition of the Pope, in case the latter should have need of him.[574]To those around him the King is said to have thus spoken: ‘That man’s life has been long enough for his own deathless fame, but too short for Italy. God grant that now he is dead, that may not be attempted which was not ventured on during his life.’[575]That Innocent was entirely of one mind with Ferrante in considering the maintenance of the house of Medici in the position it had hitherto occupied as necessary for the preservation of the existing political system, may be judged from the answer addressed to the Pope, from Vigevano on April 20, by Lodovico il Moro in the name of his nephew Gian Galeazzo.[576]Whatever might be the real feeling of Sforza, who had already two months ago drawn up the instructions for that embassy to Charles VIII. which was the first step towards the ruin of Italy—at all events, his letter throws a favourable light on the Pope’s views of the matter: ‘Your Holiness could have written me nothing more welcome than what you have lately communicated to me as to yourdesire to keep Italy in peace, and maintain the sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici in their position. For I have nothing more at heart than the preservation of the peace of Italy, for which I have not shrunk from subjecting myself to intolerable burdens and struggles; and between me and the Medici family there is a bond of friendship both public and private. My memory recalls how the illustrious prince my grandfather (Francesco), aided by the pecuniary means of Cosimo de’ Medici, regained the state of our forefathers, which after his father-in-law’s death had been, so to say, lost. I likewise remember how since then Florence and the house of Medici have never been in a position to need our help without our placing arms and money at their disposal. I am therefore glad that amid the deep mourning occasioned by the death of the illustrious Lorenzo, your Holiness’s letter calls upon me to do that to which my own inclination prompted me, and which is as interesting to me as if it concerned my own personal welfare. For not only your Holiness, to whom my attachment to the Medici family is known, but all who know anything of Italian affairs must be convinced that I shall continue to act towards the sons of Lorenzo as my predecessors acted towards his father and grandfather. No one can imagine that I shall not tread as heretofore in the footsteps of my ancestors; for this friendship with the Medici has always been cultivated and confirmed by practical proofs on both sides, up to the present hour, and has not only never experienced a disturbance, but has been constantly strengthened, to the advantage and pleasure of both parties. Perseverance in this mind is made doubly my duty, by old and new relations with the Medici, and by the circumstance that I shall thereby suit the views of your Holiness.’Lorenzo de’ Medici was buried in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, the resting-place of his father, uncle, brother, grandparents, and other relatives. When Giovanni, who left Rome on May 11, 1492, to return home, stood here at hisfather’s grave, he little thought that more than twenty-three years later, on Advent Sunday, 1515, he was destined to kneel there in tears as the spiritual head of Christendom.[577]Amid all the splendour and greatness to which the Medici afterwards rose, not one of them seems to have thought of raising a monument to the most famous man of the family, though the greatest sculptor of the age helped to immortalise on their monuments two of its insignificant members. In 1559 Duke Cosimo I. caused the mortal remains of Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano to be laid in the porphyry sarcophagus which they had erected for their father and uncle.[578]The following poem,[579]set to music by Heinrich Isaak, was written by Angelo Poliziano on the death of the man to whom he had been through life so deeply attached:—MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!Laurus impetu fulminisIlla illa jacet subito;Laurus omnium celebrisMusarum choris,Nympharum choris,Sub cujus patula coma,Et Phœbi lyra blandiusEt vox dulcius insonat.Nunc muta omnia,Nunc surda omnia.Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!
CHAPTER VIII.DEATH OF LORENZO.WhenLorenzo wrote that letter to his son his condition might be called hopeless. From his youth up he had suffered from hereditary physical ailments. The attacks had increased with age, till they weakened his originally strong constitution. Gout made its appearance in various forms, and the waters, tried frequently and one after another, failed to give lasting relief, partly because he never gave them time to produce their full effect. He often joked about his sufferings. ‘Pain in my feet,’ he wrote to Lanfredini in August 1489, ‘has hindered my correspondence with you. Feet and tongue are indeed far apart, yet they interfere with each other.’ Towards the end of August 1491, he was so ill that he had to be carried to Spedaletto in a litter.[561]The waters of Morba had only a passing soothing effect; and at the end of the autumn a slow fever set in with grave symptoms. His whole system seemed attacked at once—bowels, limbs, and nerves. To the arthritic pains were added pains in the bones, which robbed him of rest by night and day; gout had attacked the higher organs: the physicians were at their wits’ end. When the year 1492 opened, he could see no one; all grave political business had to be set aside; a Milanese ambassador waited more than a fortnight for an audience. An improvement permitted him to leave the house again, but it was not lasting. ‘The illustriousLorenzo,’ wrote the Ferrarese ambassador on February 11,[562]‘has been again for some days greatly tormented with pains which attack the whole of his body except his head. At times he suffers so acutely that it is hard to understand how he can hold out. The doctors do not indeed consider the illness mortal; but his condition is getting very bad, because he enjoys very little rest. God grant him health again; for the accounts of his state are really such as to excite sympathy.’ On the 8th of the same month, King Ferrante wrote to his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli:[563]‘We have received many letters from you, but now we only reply concerning the long-continued sufferings of the illustrious Lorenzo, which have grieved and do grieve us to the depths of our soul. Would God we could procure him recovery, or even alleviation! Exhort his Magnificence to arm himself with patience and thus overcome the evil; more especially as we may now expect better weather, after these last days which have indeed been bad. Inform his Magnificence also that we congratulate him on the settlement of the dispute with his Holiness, which must be as pleasing to him as to ourself, he having had so great a share in it, as is known to us and all. May he, by God’s help, the advice of good doctors and prudence on his own part, recover his health, so that we may both enjoy peace, and especially peace of mind.’The king was not deceived in his estimate of how much depended on Lorenzo’s life and activity. In the middle of February an improvement set in, but again it was but transitory. The weather continued bad, and at the beginning of March the pains returned; no one was admitted to the invalid with the exception of his family and a very few intimate friends. We remarked before that he was unable to take part in the solemnities attending the proclamation of hisson’s cardinalate; his most ardent wish was now fulfilled, and his life was on the wane. He seems to have been aware of his condition, when the young Cardinal set out on March 12. He spoke thus to Filippo Valori, brother of his biographer, and Andrea Carubini, the former of whom was to accompany Giovanni to Rome, and the latter was attached to his household: ‘I entrust my son’s youth to you; me you will never see again.’ Who can tell what were his feelings as he wrote that beautiful letter!—There was again a slight improvement; but it was the last. The disease made rapid progress. On the 21st the invalid was taken to Careggi, his favourite abode, where he had planned and done so much, and where he could get more air and sunshine than in the city. Towards the end of March a physician was expected from Naples. At the beginning of April, Duke Ercole of Ferrara came to Florence[564]on his journey to Rome, whither he was going ostensibly for purposes of devotion, in reality for political objects, and to try to obtain the cardinalate for his son Ippolito. The boy was only thirteen, but he had already been Archbishop of Gran for six years; and if a Medici had won the purple at fourteen, why not an Este, a scion of one of the oldest families of Italy? If Innocent VIII. had lived longer he would have been unable to avoid giving this nomination also. The duke could not see Lorenzo, but the latter had already promised him his son’s vote in the future Consistory.The sufferer’s days were numbered. He made himself ready for the worst, set his house in order, and made what arrangements he could to secure for his son the position he had himself held. But he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the dangers which the old love of freedom and impatience under the long and ever-strengthening supremacy of a single family, together with Piero’s inexperience and haughty character, must bring upon him. Poliziano indeedrelates that Lorenzo had cherished an intention of retiring, and handing over the direction of affairs to his son. ‘About two years before his death,’ he says, ‘I was sitting with him in his bed-chamber, and we were talking, as usual, of philosophy and literature. He then said that he intended passing the rest of his days with Ficino, Pico, and myself, in study, far from the bustle of the city. To my objection that this would be impossible, as the citizens needed his counsel and authority more and more every day, he answered smiling: “I shall provide a substitute in the person of thy pupil, and entrust the burden to his shoulders.“‘ Then on Poliziano’s expressing a doubt whether Piero’s age was sufficient to render him competent, he praised his son’s mind and bearing, and the good foundations which Poliziano had laid. The story may be true, notwithstanding the writer’s visible tendency to over-rate his friend’s actions and sayings. But doubtless Lorenzo’s sole object was to hear what would be said to such an intention. He can hardly have had serious thoughts of retiring from public life, least of all at such a time.Looking back upon his own short but eventful career, he could see more clearly than ever what unceasing care and trouble, what knowledge of characters and calculation of humours and circumstances, had been necessary to govern parties, keep down opponents without driving them to extremity, and make use of and direct adherents without letting them outgrow his control. He knew but too well that a single false step might upset everything. In the depths of his own mind he felt the discords that ran through the general tone of thought and feeling in the state. He measured the force of the hardly-concealed moral and religious currents that were threatening to break forth. When he, the experienced statesman, looked around him and surveyed the political condition of Italy, he was alarmed at the weak foundations of the edifice which it had cost him so much exertion to support by his counsels and actions. But justnow he had put an end to the long and dangerous strife between the Pope and the King; and who was to answer for the future? And when the unstable Pope and the unprincipled King were gone, who could predict the former’s successor—who dared flatter himself with the hope that the latter’s heir, in every respect worse than himself, would keep even his own disaffected land at peace, and not foster the seeds, sown long ago, of dissensions with other countries? Perhaps Lorenzo’s death-bed was haunted even more by the consciousness of the preponderance of evil elements in the College, by the thoughts of Alfonso of Naples, of Lodovico il Moro, and of the hostility of Venice, than even by the dread of attempts at a change in Florence.In his religious views and his mode of expressing them Lorenzo had always been a true child of the age, which combined a secular temper with a tinge of unfeigned religious feeling, and amid all its grave intellectual errors was not without moral consciousness. That Lorenzo possessed this moral consciousness is proved by many of his expressions through his latter years. He had gained from his excellent and pious mother something more than a literary acquaintance with religious matters. He had inherited from his forefathers the traditions of a close and active connection with ecclesiastical foundations and ecclesiastical interests, which he furthered in a manner that cannot be attributed solely to political motives. His sensuous temperament, his early elevation to such authority as perhaps no private man has ever enjoyed in a city so full of genuine life, led him into many moral errors. But as he was at the same time the author of the lays of the Carnaval and the poet of philosophical and spiritual songs, even so, amid all his errors and notwithstanding the great influence exercised over him from his youth up by antique philosophy, he still adhered to the faith of Christianity practised and taught by his teacher Ficino and his friend Pico della Mirandola. All his life he had been attentive to the observance of religious ordinances; and hecontinued so when that life was near its close. His sister Bianca de’ Pazzi had accompanied him to Careggi; and it was she who told him of his imminent danger. ‘Brother,’ said she, ‘thou hast lived as a man of lofty mind; thou must quit this life not only bravely but piously. Know that all hope is over.’[565]He seemed somewhat distressed that hope had been encouraged too long; then he asked for the aid of the Church. It was late when the priest who was summoned from San Lorenzo reached the villa. The dying man would not receive him in bed: in spite of the remonstrances of those about him, he got up and had himself dressed: then, supported by his attendants, he entered the room, where he sank on his knees before the ciborium. Seeing how weak he was, the priest insisted that he should lie down again; and he was with difficulty induced to do so. He then received the viaticum with a devoutness which made an impression on all present.[566]His eldest son, his sister, and Angelo Poliziano were almost constantly near him. After the religious ceremony Piero remained alone by his bedside. Lorenzo comforted him, and gave him warnings and good advice as to his conduct in the city and the state when he himself should have departed. ‘The citizens,’ said he, ‘will, I believe, acknowledge thee, my son, as worthy to fill the position which I have occupied; and I doubt not that thou wilt have the same authority in the commonwealth as I have enjoyed until now. But as this commonwealth is, according to the common expression, a body with many heads, and it is impossible to please them all, remember that in all the varied circumstances of life the way to be kept is that which appears mosthonourable; and always prefer the general good to personal and party interests.’ Wise counsel this; if he who gave it had but followed it more strictly, it would have saved him from much bitter and but too well-founded reproach! He charged Piero to take a father’s place towards his young brother Giuliano; to the Cardinal he commended his nephew Giulio, then aged fourteen, and for whom he seems already to have had visions of an ecclesiastical career. He also spoke to his son about his funeral, ordering that it should be arranged after the pattern of his grandfather’s, and that the limits usual in the interment of a private man should not be overstepped.Meanwhile a famous Lombard doctor, Lazaro of Pavia, sent by Lodovico il Moro, had arrived at Careggi. The invalid asked the attendants what he was doing, and on being told that he was composing a draught of pulverised pearls, precious stones, and other costly substances, he exclaimed with eager voice and cheerful look to Poliziano, who was standing near the bed: ‘Dost thou hear, Angelo, dost thou hear?’ Then, stretching out his enfeebled arms, he seized his friend by both hands and held him fast, while the latter sought to turn away to hide the rising tears; at last Lorenzo, seeing his emotion, let him go, and he rushed to his own rooms to let his grief take its course. When he came back, Lorenzo asked why Pico did not come to see him; and being answered that probably Pico feared to trouble him, he remarked that he rather feared it was the distance from the villa to the city that troubled Pico. The latter, thus called for, came; and the invalid received him with the old cordiality. He begged him to excuse the trouble he was giving him, adding that it must be attributed to his affection, for he should die more content after having seen him once more. Then he spoke on many subjects, both general and particular, and said, looking at the two: ‘I would that death had spared me till I had been able to complete your libraries.’ Poliziano knelt downbeside the bed to catch the words, which were already becoming indistinct.Scarcely had Pico left Careggi when another man entered the chamber of death.[567]If Lorenzo summoned Girolamo Savonarola to him, it must have been because he was not easy in his conscience. The several versions of the interview, as related by those who were connected either with Lorenzo or the Dominican Prior, differ so widely as to the circumstances that only greater or less probability can decide between them. This is Poliziano’s story: Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, a man distinguished by his learning and godliness, and an excellent preacher of the Divine Word, entered the room, and admonished the invalid to hold fast to the Faith; to which Lorenzo replied that he continued immovable therein. Hereupon he exhorted him thenceforth to lead a virtuous life; to which the reply was that he would endeavour himself so to do. Thirdly, he recommended him to meet death, if it needs must be, with firmness. ‘Nothing,’ replied the invalid, ‘is sweeter to me, if it be God’s will.’ The monk was departing, when Lorenzo said to him: ‘Give me thy blessing, father, before thou partest from me.’ And with bowed head, and in the attitude of religious earnestness, he responded correctly, and with full consciousness to Savonarola’s words and prayers, undisturbed by the no longer concealed mourning of the household.So reports the friend of many years—he who knew the dying man better perhaps than anyone else. But another story stands in opposition to his. According to this version, Lorenzo wished to make one last confession to the Dominican. He accused himself of three things: the sack of Volterra, the squandering of the dower-moneys, and the blood shed at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. The dying man’s agitation was distressing. ‘God is gracious, God is merciful,’ said the monk to soothe him. Then, when he had done, Savonarolaspoke. ‘You have need of three things. First, true and lively confidence in the Divine grace.’ To this the invalid replied, ‘I am penetrated therewith.’ ‘Secondly, you must restore what you have wrongfully appropriated, and make restitution a duty for your sons.’ Lorenzo reflected a moment, then assented by a movement of the head. ‘Lastly, you must restore to the people of Florence their freedom.’ The invalid turned away his head without answering, and the monk left him unabsolved.Lorenzo’s death—to resume Poliziano’s report—was peaceful. It seemed that it was not he who was about to undergo the fate of all mortals, but rather those who stood around his bed. He did not refuse what the doctors prescribed, though he expected no effect from it. Even his old cheerfulness had not altogether deserted him. When after taking some food he was asked how he relished it, he answered: ‘Like a dying man.’ He embraced his relatives and friends and begged them to forgive him if he had offended them or shown impatience during his long illness. When he asked to have read to him from the Gospel the history of the Passion and Death of our Lord, at first he repeated the words of Scripture, then, getting weaker, only moved his lips and at last his fingers, in token that he still followed the sense. When death drew near, a crucifix was held out to him; he opened his eyes, kissed it and departed. This was on Sunday, April 8, 1492, about the fifth hour of the night.What a strange abundant variety of cares and pleasures, of labour and enjoyment, of thought and action, of poetry and realism, of danger and success, of evil and good, had been crowded together into that life of barely forty-three years!The tidings of his death naturally put all Florence in commotion. Almost simultaneously with it came the news that the physician Piero Leoni had thrown himself into a well at Francesco Martelli’s villa at San Gervasio by the Porta Pinti, whither he had been secretly taken because his life was threatened at Careggi, as he was suspected of an intentto poison. It was not known whether the unhappy man really perished by his own resolve or by another’s hand.[568]As usual, prodigies were believed to have presaged the event with which all minds were occupied. In Sta. Maria Novella a woman had started up in the middle of the sermon, crying out that she saw a raging bull, with burning horns, overthrowing the church. Three days before Lorenzo’s death a flash of lightning had struck the lantern of the Cathedral and hurled down some heavy blocks of marble on the north-west, the side towards the Medici’s dwelling; one fell in through the roof, another crushed the house of Luca Rinieri. On the night of the death a meteor was said to have been seen to shine over Careggi and then vanish.[569]Three hours after death the body was taken from Careggi to San Marco; there it remained in the chapel of a lay-brotherhood till the following evening, when the clergy of San Lorenzo came in solemn procession to fetch it away and carry it to the sacristy of the Basilica. The ceremony at church was simple, as he had wished it. The mourning was general. The upper ranks, almost entirely attached to the Medicean interest, felt deeply the loss of the man whose firm and practised hand had guided the helm for so long, and whose vices had been outweighed by his brilliant qualities. Who should tell them what might happen now? On April 10, wrote Bartolommeo Cerretani, the whole city went to Piero. The people lamented the loss of him who, at whatever cost, had procured them peace and comfort.[570]There were indeed some who rejoiced at his death and expected good from it; there is no lack of testimony to such feelings in memoirs not intended for the eyes of strangers. ‘As I know,’ writes Alamanno Rinuccini, when describing the merits and demerits of the Medici, ‘that many falsehoods about himhave been spread, in eye-service and deceit, by flatterers and perverters of the truth, mostly bought and corrupted by him by means of honours and enrichment at the public expense. I intend to give a brief account of his life and manners, with both of which I was intimately acquainted: not by way of detraction, nor from hatred towards him, from whom I have received divers marks of distinction, to which I had no claim, but in compliance with truth. The multitude regarded the signs before his death as prognostics of great evils; they would have been prognostics of great good, had the citizens known how to use their opportunity.’[571]On April 13, three days after the funeral, the assembled councils and the people, in conjunction with the Signoria, issued the following decree:[572]‘Whereas the foremost man of all this city, the lately deceased Lorenzo de’ Medici, did during his whole life neglect no opportunity of protecting, increasing, adorning, and raising this city, but was always ready with counsel, authority, and painstaking, in thought and deed; subordinated his personal interest to the advantage and benefit of the community; shrank from neither trouble nor dangers for the good of the State and its freedom; and devoted to that object all his thoughts and powers, securing public order by excellent laws; by his presence brought a dangerous war to a conclusion; regained the places lost in battle and took those belonging to the enemies;—whereas he furthermore, after the rare examples furnished by antiquity, for the safety of his fellow-citizens and the freedom of his country gave himself up into his enemies’ power, and, filled with love for his house, averted the general danger by drawing it all upon his own head; whereas, finally, he omitted nothing which could tend to raise our reputation and enlarge our borders; it hath seemed good to the Senate and peopleof Florence, on the motion of the chief magistrate, to establish a public testimonial of gratitude to the memory of such a man, in order that virtue may not be unhonoured among the Florentines, and that in days to come other citizens may be incited to serve the commonwealth with might and wisdom. But whereas the memory of Lorenzo needs no outward adornments, as it has struck deep root, and blooms fresher every day, it hath been determined to transfer to Piero, the eldest son of the deceased, the heir of his father’s dignity and successor to his fame, the public honour due to his father and his ancestors. So much the more, as Piero has already in his youth displayed the endowments of his father and is in some degree his image, and has already shown himself such that we may hope he will, by God’s assistance, tread in his father’s steps.’On April 10, before break of day, a special messenger brought to the Cardinal the fatal tidings which had been expected for several days. Giovanni, his attendants and servants, at once put on mourning, the house was hung with black, and all the Cardinals, headed by Francesco Piccolomini, paid visits of condolence to their youthful colleague. Four days after, a Requiem was sung in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva; Franceschetto Cybò and the Count of Pitigliano were present in coarse black mantles reaching to the ground, and also Onofrio Tornabuoni, the Medicean agent at the Roman Curia, and many prelates and gentlemen. The next day Innocent proclaimed the appointment of Giovanni de’ Medici to be legate in Tuscany, whither the boy wished to return in consequence of his father’s death, that he might consult on the condition of affairs with his brother, to whom he had already written many letters. The young Cardinal was so much moved that he had to retire for a while during mass.[573]Nothing is known of the remarks madeby the Pope (who sent an orator to Florence) on the loss of the man with whom he was so intimate, although throughout his pontificate he had never personally seen him. The case is otherwise with regard to King Ferrante. On the morning of April 11, being then in the neighbourhood of Palma, he learned from a letter of Marino Tomacelli that all hope was abandoned. He thereupon wrote to Gioviano Pontano at Rome that he should offer the Pope all the means at his command to prevent a disturbance of the peace of Italy, and place at his disposal the troops commanded by Virginio Orsini. To Virginio he wrote the same evening, after receiving news of the death (‘which has grieved us to the depths of our soul’), charging him to act without further orders from him according to the disposition of the Pope, in case the latter should have need of him.[574]To those around him the King is said to have thus spoken: ‘That man’s life has been long enough for his own deathless fame, but too short for Italy. God grant that now he is dead, that may not be attempted which was not ventured on during his life.’[575]That Innocent was entirely of one mind with Ferrante in considering the maintenance of the house of Medici in the position it had hitherto occupied as necessary for the preservation of the existing political system, may be judged from the answer addressed to the Pope, from Vigevano on April 20, by Lodovico il Moro in the name of his nephew Gian Galeazzo.[576]Whatever might be the real feeling of Sforza, who had already two months ago drawn up the instructions for that embassy to Charles VIII. which was the first step towards the ruin of Italy—at all events, his letter throws a favourable light on the Pope’s views of the matter: ‘Your Holiness could have written me nothing more welcome than what you have lately communicated to me as to yourdesire to keep Italy in peace, and maintain the sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici in their position. For I have nothing more at heart than the preservation of the peace of Italy, for which I have not shrunk from subjecting myself to intolerable burdens and struggles; and between me and the Medici family there is a bond of friendship both public and private. My memory recalls how the illustrious prince my grandfather (Francesco), aided by the pecuniary means of Cosimo de’ Medici, regained the state of our forefathers, which after his father-in-law’s death had been, so to say, lost. I likewise remember how since then Florence and the house of Medici have never been in a position to need our help without our placing arms and money at their disposal. I am therefore glad that amid the deep mourning occasioned by the death of the illustrious Lorenzo, your Holiness’s letter calls upon me to do that to which my own inclination prompted me, and which is as interesting to me as if it concerned my own personal welfare. For not only your Holiness, to whom my attachment to the Medici family is known, but all who know anything of Italian affairs must be convinced that I shall continue to act towards the sons of Lorenzo as my predecessors acted towards his father and grandfather. No one can imagine that I shall not tread as heretofore in the footsteps of my ancestors; for this friendship with the Medici has always been cultivated and confirmed by practical proofs on both sides, up to the present hour, and has not only never experienced a disturbance, but has been constantly strengthened, to the advantage and pleasure of both parties. Perseverance in this mind is made doubly my duty, by old and new relations with the Medici, and by the circumstance that I shall thereby suit the views of your Holiness.’Lorenzo de’ Medici was buried in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, the resting-place of his father, uncle, brother, grandparents, and other relatives. When Giovanni, who left Rome on May 11, 1492, to return home, stood here at hisfather’s grave, he little thought that more than twenty-three years later, on Advent Sunday, 1515, he was destined to kneel there in tears as the spiritual head of Christendom.[577]Amid all the splendour and greatness to which the Medici afterwards rose, not one of them seems to have thought of raising a monument to the most famous man of the family, though the greatest sculptor of the age helped to immortalise on their monuments two of its insignificant members. In 1559 Duke Cosimo I. caused the mortal remains of Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano to be laid in the porphyry sarcophagus which they had erected for their father and uncle.[578]The following poem,[579]set to music by Heinrich Isaak, was written by Angelo Poliziano on the death of the man to whom he had been through life so deeply attached:—MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!Laurus impetu fulminisIlla illa jacet subito;Laurus omnium celebrisMusarum choris,Nympharum choris,Sub cujus patula coma,Et Phœbi lyra blandiusEt vox dulcius insonat.Nunc muta omnia,Nunc surda omnia.Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!
DEATH OF LORENZO.
WhenLorenzo wrote that letter to his son his condition might be called hopeless. From his youth up he had suffered from hereditary physical ailments. The attacks had increased with age, till they weakened his originally strong constitution. Gout made its appearance in various forms, and the waters, tried frequently and one after another, failed to give lasting relief, partly because he never gave them time to produce their full effect. He often joked about his sufferings. ‘Pain in my feet,’ he wrote to Lanfredini in August 1489, ‘has hindered my correspondence with you. Feet and tongue are indeed far apart, yet they interfere with each other.’ Towards the end of August 1491, he was so ill that he had to be carried to Spedaletto in a litter.[561]The waters of Morba had only a passing soothing effect; and at the end of the autumn a slow fever set in with grave symptoms. His whole system seemed attacked at once—bowels, limbs, and nerves. To the arthritic pains were added pains in the bones, which robbed him of rest by night and day; gout had attacked the higher organs: the physicians were at their wits’ end. When the year 1492 opened, he could see no one; all grave political business had to be set aside; a Milanese ambassador waited more than a fortnight for an audience. An improvement permitted him to leave the house again, but it was not lasting. ‘The illustriousLorenzo,’ wrote the Ferrarese ambassador on February 11,[562]‘has been again for some days greatly tormented with pains which attack the whole of his body except his head. At times he suffers so acutely that it is hard to understand how he can hold out. The doctors do not indeed consider the illness mortal; but his condition is getting very bad, because he enjoys very little rest. God grant him health again; for the accounts of his state are really such as to excite sympathy.’ On the 8th of the same month, King Ferrante wrote to his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli:[563]‘We have received many letters from you, but now we only reply concerning the long-continued sufferings of the illustrious Lorenzo, which have grieved and do grieve us to the depths of our soul. Would God we could procure him recovery, or even alleviation! Exhort his Magnificence to arm himself with patience and thus overcome the evil; more especially as we may now expect better weather, after these last days which have indeed been bad. Inform his Magnificence also that we congratulate him on the settlement of the dispute with his Holiness, which must be as pleasing to him as to ourself, he having had so great a share in it, as is known to us and all. May he, by God’s help, the advice of good doctors and prudence on his own part, recover his health, so that we may both enjoy peace, and especially peace of mind.’
The king was not deceived in his estimate of how much depended on Lorenzo’s life and activity. In the middle of February an improvement set in, but again it was but transitory. The weather continued bad, and at the beginning of March the pains returned; no one was admitted to the invalid with the exception of his family and a very few intimate friends. We remarked before that he was unable to take part in the solemnities attending the proclamation of hisson’s cardinalate; his most ardent wish was now fulfilled, and his life was on the wane. He seems to have been aware of his condition, when the young Cardinal set out on March 12. He spoke thus to Filippo Valori, brother of his biographer, and Andrea Carubini, the former of whom was to accompany Giovanni to Rome, and the latter was attached to his household: ‘I entrust my son’s youth to you; me you will never see again.’ Who can tell what were his feelings as he wrote that beautiful letter!—There was again a slight improvement; but it was the last. The disease made rapid progress. On the 21st the invalid was taken to Careggi, his favourite abode, where he had planned and done so much, and where he could get more air and sunshine than in the city. Towards the end of March a physician was expected from Naples. At the beginning of April, Duke Ercole of Ferrara came to Florence[564]on his journey to Rome, whither he was going ostensibly for purposes of devotion, in reality for political objects, and to try to obtain the cardinalate for his son Ippolito. The boy was only thirteen, but he had already been Archbishop of Gran for six years; and if a Medici had won the purple at fourteen, why not an Este, a scion of one of the oldest families of Italy? If Innocent VIII. had lived longer he would have been unable to avoid giving this nomination also. The duke could not see Lorenzo, but the latter had already promised him his son’s vote in the future Consistory.
The sufferer’s days were numbered. He made himself ready for the worst, set his house in order, and made what arrangements he could to secure for his son the position he had himself held. But he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the dangers which the old love of freedom and impatience under the long and ever-strengthening supremacy of a single family, together with Piero’s inexperience and haughty character, must bring upon him. Poliziano indeedrelates that Lorenzo had cherished an intention of retiring, and handing over the direction of affairs to his son. ‘About two years before his death,’ he says, ‘I was sitting with him in his bed-chamber, and we were talking, as usual, of philosophy and literature. He then said that he intended passing the rest of his days with Ficino, Pico, and myself, in study, far from the bustle of the city. To my objection that this would be impossible, as the citizens needed his counsel and authority more and more every day, he answered smiling: “I shall provide a substitute in the person of thy pupil, and entrust the burden to his shoulders.“‘ Then on Poliziano’s expressing a doubt whether Piero’s age was sufficient to render him competent, he praised his son’s mind and bearing, and the good foundations which Poliziano had laid. The story may be true, notwithstanding the writer’s visible tendency to over-rate his friend’s actions and sayings. But doubtless Lorenzo’s sole object was to hear what would be said to such an intention. He can hardly have had serious thoughts of retiring from public life, least of all at such a time.
Looking back upon his own short but eventful career, he could see more clearly than ever what unceasing care and trouble, what knowledge of characters and calculation of humours and circumstances, had been necessary to govern parties, keep down opponents without driving them to extremity, and make use of and direct adherents without letting them outgrow his control. He knew but too well that a single false step might upset everything. In the depths of his own mind he felt the discords that ran through the general tone of thought and feeling in the state. He measured the force of the hardly-concealed moral and religious currents that were threatening to break forth. When he, the experienced statesman, looked around him and surveyed the political condition of Italy, he was alarmed at the weak foundations of the edifice which it had cost him so much exertion to support by his counsels and actions. But justnow he had put an end to the long and dangerous strife between the Pope and the King; and who was to answer for the future? And when the unstable Pope and the unprincipled King were gone, who could predict the former’s successor—who dared flatter himself with the hope that the latter’s heir, in every respect worse than himself, would keep even his own disaffected land at peace, and not foster the seeds, sown long ago, of dissensions with other countries? Perhaps Lorenzo’s death-bed was haunted even more by the consciousness of the preponderance of evil elements in the College, by the thoughts of Alfonso of Naples, of Lodovico il Moro, and of the hostility of Venice, than even by the dread of attempts at a change in Florence.
In his religious views and his mode of expressing them Lorenzo had always been a true child of the age, which combined a secular temper with a tinge of unfeigned religious feeling, and amid all its grave intellectual errors was not without moral consciousness. That Lorenzo possessed this moral consciousness is proved by many of his expressions through his latter years. He had gained from his excellent and pious mother something more than a literary acquaintance with religious matters. He had inherited from his forefathers the traditions of a close and active connection with ecclesiastical foundations and ecclesiastical interests, which he furthered in a manner that cannot be attributed solely to political motives. His sensuous temperament, his early elevation to such authority as perhaps no private man has ever enjoyed in a city so full of genuine life, led him into many moral errors. But as he was at the same time the author of the lays of the Carnaval and the poet of philosophical and spiritual songs, even so, amid all his errors and notwithstanding the great influence exercised over him from his youth up by antique philosophy, he still adhered to the faith of Christianity practised and taught by his teacher Ficino and his friend Pico della Mirandola. All his life he had been attentive to the observance of religious ordinances; and hecontinued so when that life was near its close. His sister Bianca de’ Pazzi had accompanied him to Careggi; and it was she who told him of his imminent danger. ‘Brother,’ said she, ‘thou hast lived as a man of lofty mind; thou must quit this life not only bravely but piously. Know that all hope is over.’[565]He seemed somewhat distressed that hope had been encouraged too long; then he asked for the aid of the Church. It was late when the priest who was summoned from San Lorenzo reached the villa. The dying man would not receive him in bed: in spite of the remonstrances of those about him, he got up and had himself dressed: then, supported by his attendants, he entered the room, where he sank on his knees before the ciborium. Seeing how weak he was, the priest insisted that he should lie down again; and he was with difficulty induced to do so. He then received the viaticum with a devoutness which made an impression on all present.[566]
His eldest son, his sister, and Angelo Poliziano were almost constantly near him. After the religious ceremony Piero remained alone by his bedside. Lorenzo comforted him, and gave him warnings and good advice as to his conduct in the city and the state when he himself should have departed. ‘The citizens,’ said he, ‘will, I believe, acknowledge thee, my son, as worthy to fill the position which I have occupied; and I doubt not that thou wilt have the same authority in the commonwealth as I have enjoyed until now. But as this commonwealth is, according to the common expression, a body with many heads, and it is impossible to please them all, remember that in all the varied circumstances of life the way to be kept is that which appears mosthonourable; and always prefer the general good to personal and party interests.’ Wise counsel this; if he who gave it had but followed it more strictly, it would have saved him from much bitter and but too well-founded reproach! He charged Piero to take a father’s place towards his young brother Giuliano; to the Cardinal he commended his nephew Giulio, then aged fourteen, and for whom he seems already to have had visions of an ecclesiastical career. He also spoke to his son about his funeral, ordering that it should be arranged after the pattern of his grandfather’s, and that the limits usual in the interment of a private man should not be overstepped.
Meanwhile a famous Lombard doctor, Lazaro of Pavia, sent by Lodovico il Moro, had arrived at Careggi. The invalid asked the attendants what he was doing, and on being told that he was composing a draught of pulverised pearls, precious stones, and other costly substances, he exclaimed with eager voice and cheerful look to Poliziano, who was standing near the bed: ‘Dost thou hear, Angelo, dost thou hear?’ Then, stretching out his enfeebled arms, he seized his friend by both hands and held him fast, while the latter sought to turn away to hide the rising tears; at last Lorenzo, seeing his emotion, let him go, and he rushed to his own rooms to let his grief take its course. When he came back, Lorenzo asked why Pico did not come to see him; and being answered that probably Pico feared to trouble him, he remarked that he rather feared it was the distance from the villa to the city that troubled Pico. The latter, thus called for, came; and the invalid received him with the old cordiality. He begged him to excuse the trouble he was giving him, adding that it must be attributed to his affection, for he should die more content after having seen him once more. Then he spoke on many subjects, both general and particular, and said, looking at the two: ‘I would that death had spared me till I had been able to complete your libraries.’ Poliziano knelt downbeside the bed to catch the words, which were already becoming indistinct.
Scarcely had Pico left Careggi when another man entered the chamber of death.[567]If Lorenzo summoned Girolamo Savonarola to him, it must have been because he was not easy in his conscience. The several versions of the interview, as related by those who were connected either with Lorenzo or the Dominican Prior, differ so widely as to the circumstances that only greater or less probability can decide between them. This is Poliziano’s story: Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, a man distinguished by his learning and godliness, and an excellent preacher of the Divine Word, entered the room, and admonished the invalid to hold fast to the Faith; to which Lorenzo replied that he continued immovable therein. Hereupon he exhorted him thenceforth to lead a virtuous life; to which the reply was that he would endeavour himself so to do. Thirdly, he recommended him to meet death, if it needs must be, with firmness. ‘Nothing,’ replied the invalid, ‘is sweeter to me, if it be God’s will.’ The monk was departing, when Lorenzo said to him: ‘Give me thy blessing, father, before thou partest from me.’ And with bowed head, and in the attitude of religious earnestness, he responded correctly, and with full consciousness to Savonarola’s words and prayers, undisturbed by the no longer concealed mourning of the household.
So reports the friend of many years—he who knew the dying man better perhaps than anyone else. But another story stands in opposition to his. According to this version, Lorenzo wished to make one last confession to the Dominican. He accused himself of three things: the sack of Volterra, the squandering of the dower-moneys, and the blood shed at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. The dying man’s agitation was distressing. ‘God is gracious, God is merciful,’ said the monk to soothe him. Then, when he had done, Savonarolaspoke. ‘You have need of three things. First, true and lively confidence in the Divine grace.’ To this the invalid replied, ‘I am penetrated therewith.’ ‘Secondly, you must restore what you have wrongfully appropriated, and make restitution a duty for your sons.’ Lorenzo reflected a moment, then assented by a movement of the head. ‘Lastly, you must restore to the people of Florence their freedom.’ The invalid turned away his head without answering, and the monk left him unabsolved.
Lorenzo’s death—to resume Poliziano’s report—was peaceful. It seemed that it was not he who was about to undergo the fate of all mortals, but rather those who stood around his bed. He did not refuse what the doctors prescribed, though he expected no effect from it. Even his old cheerfulness had not altogether deserted him. When after taking some food he was asked how he relished it, he answered: ‘Like a dying man.’ He embraced his relatives and friends and begged them to forgive him if he had offended them or shown impatience during his long illness. When he asked to have read to him from the Gospel the history of the Passion and Death of our Lord, at first he repeated the words of Scripture, then, getting weaker, only moved his lips and at last his fingers, in token that he still followed the sense. When death drew near, a crucifix was held out to him; he opened his eyes, kissed it and departed. This was on Sunday, April 8, 1492, about the fifth hour of the night.
What a strange abundant variety of cares and pleasures, of labour and enjoyment, of thought and action, of poetry and realism, of danger and success, of evil and good, had been crowded together into that life of barely forty-three years!
The tidings of his death naturally put all Florence in commotion. Almost simultaneously with it came the news that the physician Piero Leoni had thrown himself into a well at Francesco Martelli’s villa at San Gervasio by the Porta Pinti, whither he had been secretly taken because his life was threatened at Careggi, as he was suspected of an intentto poison. It was not known whether the unhappy man really perished by his own resolve or by another’s hand.[568]As usual, prodigies were believed to have presaged the event with which all minds were occupied. In Sta. Maria Novella a woman had started up in the middle of the sermon, crying out that she saw a raging bull, with burning horns, overthrowing the church. Three days before Lorenzo’s death a flash of lightning had struck the lantern of the Cathedral and hurled down some heavy blocks of marble on the north-west, the side towards the Medici’s dwelling; one fell in through the roof, another crushed the house of Luca Rinieri. On the night of the death a meteor was said to have been seen to shine over Careggi and then vanish.[569]Three hours after death the body was taken from Careggi to San Marco; there it remained in the chapel of a lay-brotherhood till the following evening, when the clergy of San Lorenzo came in solemn procession to fetch it away and carry it to the sacristy of the Basilica. The ceremony at church was simple, as he had wished it. The mourning was general. The upper ranks, almost entirely attached to the Medicean interest, felt deeply the loss of the man whose firm and practised hand had guided the helm for so long, and whose vices had been outweighed by his brilliant qualities. Who should tell them what might happen now? On April 10, wrote Bartolommeo Cerretani, the whole city went to Piero. The people lamented the loss of him who, at whatever cost, had procured them peace and comfort.[570]There were indeed some who rejoiced at his death and expected good from it; there is no lack of testimony to such feelings in memoirs not intended for the eyes of strangers. ‘As I know,’ writes Alamanno Rinuccini, when describing the merits and demerits of the Medici, ‘that many falsehoods about himhave been spread, in eye-service and deceit, by flatterers and perverters of the truth, mostly bought and corrupted by him by means of honours and enrichment at the public expense. I intend to give a brief account of his life and manners, with both of which I was intimately acquainted: not by way of detraction, nor from hatred towards him, from whom I have received divers marks of distinction, to which I had no claim, but in compliance with truth. The multitude regarded the signs before his death as prognostics of great evils; they would have been prognostics of great good, had the citizens known how to use their opportunity.’[571]
On April 13, three days after the funeral, the assembled councils and the people, in conjunction with the Signoria, issued the following decree:[572]‘Whereas the foremost man of all this city, the lately deceased Lorenzo de’ Medici, did during his whole life neglect no opportunity of protecting, increasing, adorning, and raising this city, but was always ready with counsel, authority, and painstaking, in thought and deed; subordinated his personal interest to the advantage and benefit of the community; shrank from neither trouble nor dangers for the good of the State and its freedom; and devoted to that object all his thoughts and powers, securing public order by excellent laws; by his presence brought a dangerous war to a conclusion; regained the places lost in battle and took those belonging to the enemies;—whereas he furthermore, after the rare examples furnished by antiquity, for the safety of his fellow-citizens and the freedom of his country gave himself up into his enemies’ power, and, filled with love for his house, averted the general danger by drawing it all upon his own head; whereas, finally, he omitted nothing which could tend to raise our reputation and enlarge our borders; it hath seemed good to the Senate and peopleof Florence, on the motion of the chief magistrate, to establish a public testimonial of gratitude to the memory of such a man, in order that virtue may not be unhonoured among the Florentines, and that in days to come other citizens may be incited to serve the commonwealth with might and wisdom. But whereas the memory of Lorenzo needs no outward adornments, as it has struck deep root, and blooms fresher every day, it hath been determined to transfer to Piero, the eldest son of the deceased, the heir of his father’s dignity and successor to his fame, the public honour due to his father and his ancestors. So much the more, as Piero has already in his youth displayed the endowments of his father and is in some degree his image, and has already shown himself such that we may hope he will, by God’s assistance, tread in his father’s steps.’
On April 10, before break of day, a special messenger brought to the Cardinal the fatal tidings which had been expected for several days. Giovanni, his attendants and servants, at once put on mourning, the house was hung with black, and all the Cardinals, headed by Francesco Piccolomini, paid visits of condolence to their youthful colleague. Four days after, a Requiem was sung in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva; Franceschetto Cybò and the Count of Pitigliano were present in coarse black mantles reaching to the ground, and also Onofrio Tornabuoni, the Medicean agent at the Roman Curia, and many prelates and gentlemen. The next day Innocent proclaimed the appointment of Giovanni de’ Medici to be legate in Tuscany, whither the boy wished to return in consequence of his father’s death, that he might consult on the condition of affairs with his brother, to whom he had already written many letters. The young Cardinal was so much moved that he had to retire for a while during mass.[573]Nothing is known of the remarks madeby the Pope (who sent an orator to Florence) on the loss of the man with whom he was so intimate, although throughout his pontificate he had never personally seen him. The case is otherwise with regard to King Ferrante. On the morning of April 11, being then in the neighbourhood of Palma, he learned from a letter of Marino Tomacelli that all hope was abandoned. He thereupon wrote to Gioviano Pontano at Rome that he should offer the Pope all the means at his command to prevent a disturbance of the peace of Italy, and place at his disposal the troops commanded by Virginio Orsini. To Virginio he wrote the same evening, after receiving news of the death (‘which has grieved us to the depths of our soul’), charging him to act without further orders from him according to the disposition of the Pope, in case the latter should have need of him.[574]To those around him the King is said to have thus spoken: ‘That man’s life has been long enough for his own deathless fame, but too short for Italy. God grant that now he is dead, that may not be attempted which was not ventured on during his life.’[575]
That Innocent was entirely of one mind with Ferrante in considering the maintenance of the house of Medici in the position it had hitherto occupied as necessary for the preservation of the existing political system, may be judged from the answer addressed to the Pope, from Vigevano on April 20, by Lodovico il Moro in the name of his nephew Gian Galeazzo.[576]Whatever might be the real feeling of Sforza, who had already two months ago drawn up the instructions for that embassy to Charles VIII. which was the first step towards the ruin of Italy—at all events, his letter throws a favourable light on the Pope’s views of the matter: ‘Your Holiness could have written me nothing more welcome than what you have lately communicated to me as to yourdesire to keep Italy in peace, and maintain the sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici in their position. For I have nothing more at heart than the preservation of the peace of Italy, for which I have not shrunk from subjecting myself to intolerable burdens and struggles; and between me and the Medici family there is a bond of friendship both public and private. My memory recalls how the illustrious prince my grandfather (Francesco), aided by the pecuniary means of Cosimo de’ Medici, regained the state of our forefathers, which after his father-in-law’s death had been, so to say, lost. I likewise remember how since then Florence and the house of Medici have never been in a position to need our help without our placing arms and money at their disposal. I am therefore glad that amid the deep mourning occasioned by the death of the illustrious Lorenzo, your Holiness’s letter calls upon me to do that to which my own inclination prompted me, and which is as interesting to me as if it concerned my own personal welfare. For not only your Holiness, to whom my attachment to the Medici family is known, but all who know anything of Italian affairs must be convinced that I shall continue to act towards the sons of Lorenzo as my predecessors acted towards his father and grandfather. No one can imagine that I shall not tread as heretofore in the footsteps of my ancestors; for this friendship with the Medici has always been cultivated and confirmed by practical proofs on both sides, up to the present hour, and has not only never experienced a disturbance, but has been constantly strengthened, to the advantage and pleasure of both parties. Perseverance in this mind is made doubly my duty, by old and new relations with the Medici, and by the circumstance that I shall thereby suit the views of your Holiness.’
Lorenzo de’ Medici was buried in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, the resting-place of his father, uncle, brother, grandparents, and other relatives. When Giovanni, who left Rome on May 11, 1492, to return home, stood here at hisfather’s grave, he little thought that more than twenty-three years later, on Advent Sunday, 1515, he was destined to kneel there in tears as the spiritual head of Christendom.[577]Amid all the splendour and greatness to which the Medici afterwards rose, not one of them seems to have thought of raising a monument to the most famous man of the family, though the greatest sculptor of the age helped to immortalise on their monuments two of its insignificant members. In 1559 Duke Cosimo I. caused the mortal remains of Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano to be laid in the porphyry sarcophagus which they had erected for their father and uncle.[578]
The following poem,[579]set to music by Heinrich Isaak, was written by Angelo Poliziano on the death of the man to whom he had been through life so deeply attached:—
MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.
Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!
Laurus impetu fulminisIlla illa jacet subito;Laurus omnium celebrisMusarum choris,Nympharum choris,Sub cujus patula coma,Et Phœbi lyra blandiusEt vox dulcius insonat.Nunc muta omnia,Nunc surda omnia.
Quis dabit capiti meoAquam? quis oculis meisFontem lachrymarum dabit?Ut nocte fleam,Ut luce fleam.Sic turtur viduus solet;Sic cygnus moriens solet,Sic luscinia conqueri.Heu miser, miser;O dolor, dolor!