It is a very grave mistake, when reading a political philosopher or theorist, not to take into consideration the world he lived in and his objective in writing.  Plato, in writing the Republic,  was expressing his complete disgust with the  democracy that had brought Athens to ruin, and he was seeking  to create a stable social order.  In his political writings, Machiavelli was confronting two not unrelated problems in Italy.  The first was the fact that Italy was periodically invaded by Germanic barbarians—German and French—who took over flourishing regions, raped and pillaged to their hearts' content, imposed stiff taxes, and controlled the Church.  One reason for this sad state of affairs was Italian disunity.  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, dozens of kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, and counties arose, all of them jockeying for power, both with each other and with the two great institutions that claimed universal in the West: the Roman Church and the German Empire.

While Charlemagne and his heirs had, to a large extent, cooperated with the Popes, later imperial dynasties were as often at war as at peace.  A strange came developed, in which an ambitious emperor, like Henry IV, would set up or encourage schismatic anti-popes, and the Popes themselves (like Gregory VII) would absolve subjects of their obedience and establish an anti-Emperor.  In the end, this policy was disastrous to the papacy, as the stories of Gregory VII and Boniface VIII illustrate all too well.

The second problem was the loss of liberty and power within Florence.  Florence, in conquering Tuscany had become a despotism run by the Medici, a family of neo-pagan bankers, who eventually bankrupted Florence.  Machiavelli believed that so long as Florence had been a republic, that is, a city-state/region governed by an elite class that included noble and very wealthy bourgeois families with participation from the better families of the middle classes, she had been strong enough to defend herself against ambitious Popes and foreign adventurers.  After a few decades of Medici tyranny—soft at first but increasingly hard—she was in dire straits.

Unfortunately, Machiavelli's two principles were often in conflict.  If Italy were to be strong and united, there would have to be a leader like Cesare Borgia; but if Florence were to regain her freedom, she would have to oppose such strong men.  Machiavelli was far from alone in being torn by this contradiction.  We can see some of the same thought at work, though in a more Catholic way, in Dante.

Thus to understand Machiavelli at all, we have to get to know the Florence that formed him, but also the one outstanding example of a great republican people that inspired him, namely, the Roman Republic.

Early History of Florence

Florence is the capital of the region known as Tuscany, the ancient land of Etruria or the land inhabited by Etruscans. Despite or because of their manifest  obsession with death, Etruscans were a fun loving people: funeral monuments typically display the deceased as a pot-bellied man with wine cup in hand reclining at banquet with a woman presumably his wife. They loved easy living, and despite their conflict with Greece, they absorbed much of Greek civilization, especially the arts of luxury. Many of the most beautiful Greek vases were discovered in Etruscan tombs. Luxuries require money, and these people were great merchants who created a commercial empire by trading and conquest.

Many of their qualities are absorbed into the Tuscan character. Modern Tuscans are proverbial for their good food and wine—as well as for a somewhat cruel sense of humor. They have been good businessmen for the most part, especially in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, famous for taking risks and for engaging in rivalries and feuds. The Etruscans were brave soldiers. but their failure to form a larger commonwealth may have made them easy pickings for the more disciplined Romans. Their enjoyment of luxury may also have been a contributing factor to their decline.

Of the origins and early history of Florence, very little is known, and most of what the Florentine chroniclers thought they knew is a mixture of naïve conjecture and fairy tale. What we do know is that Florence was settled by Romans in the late Republic but was never as important as nearby Fiesole, much less Lucca or Pisa.

When Tuscany, like the rest of Italy, was overrun by the Goths at the end of the 5^th century and later by the Lombards, it shared the fate of the rest of Italy. When the Franks, under King Pippin and his son Charlemagne, conquered Lombard Italy in the course of the 8^th century, there were no abrupt changes in governance. The top officials were now Frankish counts, but the Lombard nobility was not eliminated, and the two groups gradually merged and began to speak a vulgar Latin that was on its way to becoming Italian. Originally, the Lombard and Frankish capital in Tuscany was Lucca, but political and legal authority was transferred to Florence in the 9^th century, as Florence began her rise to power. In the 10^th century, after the empire of Charlemagne disintegrated, central Italy became a battle-ground for warring nobles who claimed the imperial title. Tuscan cities sided now with one and the other pretender, not so much out of loyalty or affection but as a means of gaining privileges and immunities.

Charlemagne is said to have built up Florence, which was fast becoming an important center of the wool industry, but the first important date in Florentine history is the attack on Fiesole, which was then incorporated into the Florentine state. Fiesole, though smaller, was older than Florence and well-fortified, and it had apparently become a place of refuge for Ghibelline—that is, imperialist noblemen—and their retainers. The principal families of the town were moved to Florence. This event, which took place in 1125, is used by Villani to explain the constant feuding in Florence.

Otto eventually came south like Charlemagne, defeated and captured "the pretender" Berengar (who died in 966), entered Rome where he was crowned emperor and reestablished the Empire. Henceforth, whoever was recognized as chief king of the Germans would be acknowledged, if invested by the Pope, as Roman Emperor of the West, eventually the title coming to be known as Holy Roman Emperor.

In Tuscany, Adalbert/Azzo, who had rescued Otto's future queen Adelaide, became even more powerful through his close connection with the emperor. At Canossa Azzo is said to have built the great fortress that would command central Italy. His son Boniface I married a sister of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty in France. His grandson, Count Boniface III, inherited a good deal of central and northern Italy, and he improved his position by marrying a wife (Beatrice of Lorraine), whose dowry included rich lands in France. Although Count Boniface’s power depended a good deal on the emperor, he found himself at odds with the powerful Emperor Henry III. Boniface seems to have been greedy, ambitious, and disloyal. His only surviving heir was his daughter Matilda, often called the Italian Joan of Arc because of her steadfast support of the Church and the papacy.

As Countess of Tuscany, Matilda was a staunch supporter of the papacy and the attempt to reform the church led by Pope Gregory VII. It was at her castle at Canossa that Emperor Henry IV had to humiliate himself before Gregory in 1077. It was she who arranged the famous meeting—touched, as she was, by the sufferings of Henry’s wife, who waited with the King out in the winter storm. Later, when Henry IV took Rome and the Pope fled with the Normans, Matilda tried to protect Gregory and took very active steps to put the defenses of Tuscany in order. In the conflict she repeated the victory of her youth, when she arranged a successful midnight attack on the German army.

In revenge, Henry stripped her of all her imperial privileges and possessions except the county of Tuscany. Although very devout, Matilda actually lived much of the time as a soldier, and she led her armies repeatedly against the Emperor. As a harbinger of things to come, Matilda’s second husband was Welf of Bavaria, whose family would challenge the emperor and support the Pope. The Welf family’s claims on the imperial throne eventually gave its name to the “Guelph Party.”

Matilda strongly supported Pope Urban II, a “Gregorian” reformer, against the imperialists’ anti-pope. She rescued Urban from Henry IV, when he took Rome. Some of Urban’s greatness of mind can be measured by the fact that he was on the run when he called the First Crusade. The Countess met Urban in Tuscany, and she and her ladies embroidered badges for the crusading knights who came by way of Lucca. Before leaving Tuscany, Urban obtained a will from Matilda, granting her estates to the Church.

Matilda in part held her position as feudal suzerain of Tuscany as a vassal of the emperor, but she also possessed great allodial estates in her own right. She had the right to will her own property to anyone she liked, and as a passionate admirer and disciple of Gregory VII, she left them to the Church, but she also left the county and title of Tuscany, which by right should have escheated to the Emperor. Her death in 1115 rekindled the struggle between Empire and Papacy. In the North, no one succeeded to her position—an incentive for northern cities to push for their independence—and Tuscany was to become the bear-pit in which the forces of Church and empire clashed until the Renaissance. Matilda’s death marked the beginning of the independence of Tuscan cities.

The Florentine Republic

In early Medieval Florence the functions of government would have been carried out by three overlapping authorities: The Count/Marquis of Tuscany, who represented the Emperor and acted as supreme judge, the Bishop of Florence, who with parish councils exercised social authority and might represent the city in foreign affairs, and various committees of church elders or neighborhood representatives who kept order in their district and kept the streets, bridges, and walls in repair. Out of this last group emerged an executive of 12 (of fewer) consuls elected annually from rich and powerful families. They were assisted by two other councils, one drawn from the Calimala Guild, the other from the societas militum, the knights. Recourse was also had to a grand council of 300 and a special Council of 90. This was the political system fought over by Guelphs and Ghibellines and overturned by the Popolo in 1250.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, Italy and the rest of Europe were dominated by the ongoing conflict between papacy and Empire that had erupted under Henry IV. In part, the conflict can be explained by the rivalries that always break out when ambitious men strive for power. But both sides also had a serious agenda: Supporters of the Empire—and the rulers of of the kingdoms of France and England—were working to establish states with centralized authority, and they were determined to prevent the Church from getting in the way; the Church, however, was in the midst of a reform movement, trying to strip the bishops of secular interests. This led the reformers to oppose Simony in every form, and under this heading they included the selection and/or investiture of bishops by emperors, kings, or princes.

In order to counter the influence of the papacy, the “Holy Roman” Emperors and the kings of France used the tactic of supporting or even inventing anti-popes, and a series of scandalous schisms divided the Church. But even during this great crisis, the Church was vigorous: It was in the midst of one such schism that Pope Urban II called the first Crusade, another movement that occupied much of the attention of Europe at this time. One fact to underscore is this: In all the competition for power, going back to the early 10th century, the Tuscan cities were able to gain de facto and even de jure independence from both Pope and Emperor, as the price for the support they gave to either side.

The Empire had been seriously disturbed by Henry IV’s quarrels with the Church and with his own sons, and imperial authority nearly disappeared until the election of the Hohenstauffen Frederick I, King of Germany (1152) and Emperor (1155). From his red beard, Frederick was known as Barbarossa, and he was the most aggressive emperor since Otto I. His project was nothing less than the restoration of the Roman Empire in the West, with all its privileges, and his lofty conception of imperial authority was strengthened by a revival of Roman law in Italy, especially at Bologna, whose learned lawyers argued for the primacy of the emperor over all other authorities. Barbarossa’s attempt to reassert control over northern Italy led to the formation of the Lombard League and to a series of wars that ended only with the Peace of Venice (1177). In Tuscany, he temporarily halted Florence’s movement toward independence, stripped the city of control over its contado (the countryside), and temporarily restored the marquisate of Tuscany.

When Emperor Fredrick I Barbarossa decided to restore imperial authority, which had decayed in Lombardia and lapsed in central Italy, he established an imperial deputy in nearby San Miniato (al Tedesco). In part Barbarossa was responding to complaints from nobles that they had been dispossessed by the Florentine republic, and that this was to the prejudice of the Empire. The Emperor took over direct control of Florentine territory, where his presence was a source of irritation and in the 13th century, civil war broke out between the factions.

But the international dimension must not obscure the local and personal nature of the struggle. In Florence the Guelph/Ghibelline feud was a means of organizing the continual conflicts between noble families, particularly the Buondelmonti and the Amidei. From the ensuing struggle between the clans and factions, Guelpf/Ghibelline feud in Tuscany took shape. In Florence, the Uberti—said to have entered Florence with Ottos—supported Imperial/Ghibelline side along with Guidi—though the Guidi quarreled among themselves and one branch became Guelf (Simon—Gudio di Battifolle—Guido Guerra. On the other side, the Buondelmonti, Donati et al were Guelfs, who defended Papal interests. Though Merchants were a bit more dominant among Guelphs and ancient nobility among Ghibellines, both parties were dominated by Grandi. While each city in Tuscany had both factions, some like Lucca and Florence were ruled by Guelfs, others like Pisa and Sienna by Ghibellines.

Barbarossa’s son Henry VI was married to Constance, the daughter of King Roger II of Sicily. Constance was heiress to the fabulously wealthy and powerful Norman state in Southern Italy and Sicily, and her son Frederick II (born in Jesi the day after Christmas!) was by right both king of Sicily and German Emperor, a combination of wealth and power that would have terrified the Popes even if it were held by a pious dimwit. In the hands of the brilliant, ruthless, and unchristian Frederick—the stupor mundi, as he was called—it threatened the independence of the Church, and in the renewed struggle between Church and Empire, all Tuscany (in the 1230’s) was divided between Guelphs, who in principle supported the Welf family’s claim to the imperial throne and thus the Church, and the Ghibellines, who supported the Hohenstauffen dynasty, whose ancestral castle, Weibling, gave the party its name. Florence had always been close to Rome, and her relationship with the Papacy would be encouraged by the war which broke out between Florence and Ghibelline Pisa and then with Ghibelline Siena.

War between Frederick and the Popes who opposed him was war to the knife, as Popes name anti-emperors and emperor supported anti-Popes. During the struggle, Frederick’s son arrived in Florence to support the Ghibellines and made the Uberti his deputies. In 1248 they with help of Frederick's cavalry expelled the Guelphs and destroyed their towers and forts. Uberti and his Ghibelline allies completely controlled the commune. The most energetic of the Ghibellines was Farinata degli Uberti, a man known both for his bold courage and his deep counsel.

During the Thirteenth Century, Florence experienced both an expansion of population, especially as people moved into the city from the contado, and an increase in prosperity and power. During this same period the new religious orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians—flourished and, in tandem with lay religious associations, contributed greatly to the city’s spiritual and social life.

But if one feature is characteristic of the 13^th century it is the emergence of the trade and craft guilds as a dominant political force. Originally there were 7 Arti maggiori (greater guilds), and the number was later expanded to 12, while the number of the Arti minori (the lesser guilds) later rose from the original 14 to 24. All the arti were organized as corporate states with councils, statutes, militias, magistrates. Each one—especially the Arti maggiori—constituted a state within a state, combing the functions of a trade association, lobbying group, benevolent and protective organization, political conspiracy, and—this is most important—with the powers of an American state or Swiss canton within a federal union. Ultimately what happened, when the arti maggiori gradually took control from the nobility, was that the wealthy leaders of the greater guilds created a super-corporation, the commune, which was a kind of political holding company that also had to recognize the power of the grandi in their neighborhoods. As Pasquale Villari puts it, “Thus the Florentine Commune resembled a confederation of Trade Guilds and Societies of the Towers.”

During the 1240’s Guelphs and Ghibellines clashed, especially as the latter group, though rooted in the imperial nobility, sought allies from the less wealthy merchant classes. In 1248 the Ghibellines, with help from Frederick II, expelled the Guelphs from the city and destroyed their defensive towers and fortified houses. Upon the death of Frederick II, however, the Guelphs came back and returned the favor.

Side by side, however, with the divided elite of Guelphs and Ghibellines, a new force had arisen: the Popolo (people) that represented the middling and sometimes even the lower classes. In 1250 their leaders had been holding meetings and agreed to establish their own government, one based more democratically on the sesti or sestieri (sixths or neighborhoods) rather than on the greater guilds alone. This government was later known as the Primo Popolo (First Government of the People). This was no democracy, but a middle-class government that excluded both the knights and the poor.

Although supposedly neutral in the Guelph/ Ghibelline struggle, the Primo Popolo took aggressive measures against the Ghibellines, who began leaving the city. In response, Siena and Pisa created a league of Ghibelline cities opposed to Florence, but by 1254—the "year of Victories" (as the chronicler Villani called it)—Florentine armies were triumphing over their enemies. The Guelphs began to reassume influence in the city, and the Ghibellines still in Florence, especially the Uberti, were accused of plotting with “the city’s” enemies and forced into exile along with 17 other Ghibelline families. Now it was the turn of the Guelph Donati and their allies to exult and despoil their Ghibelline enemies.

The crisis came to a head in 1260 as the Ghibellines resolved to make their last stand. Although they mustered a smaller army, they were better trained and organized. They were also united. Overconfident Guelphs with the Primo Popolo militias—whose leaders were not always in accord—were badly defeated at Montaperti, by a coalition of Ghibelline exiles led by Farinata degli Uberti, along with Sienese troops and a body of Germans sent by Frederick II’s illegitimate son Manfred under the command of Count Giordano. After their victory, Giordano, the Sienese and many others were all for destroying the city, but Farinata—brave and honorable man that he was—declared that he had not fought only to have his city destroyed. They knew Farinata meant business. Count Giordano acting for Manfred, entered the city and made Guido Novello the Podestà. The Uberti and their allies were back in the saddle and they were quick to exile their Guelph enemies, especially those who had held high positions in the Popolo.

The French-born Popes Urban IV and Clement IV were hostile to the Hohenstauffen dynasty, and, to counter the Ghibelline ascendancy in Italy, they had invited Charles of Anjou to depose Manfred and seize his throne. After Manfred, unsupported by the Tuscan Ghibellines he had saved, was killed in the battle of Benevento in 1266, the Guelphs began returning to Florence and put both Ghibellines and the Popolo in the shade.

To provide for non-partisan government, Italian cities had recourse to an institution known as the Podestà, the top legal authority, who was typically a foreigner and thus supposedly above the fray. Two Podestà were invited from Bologna, and they made an attempt at joint government by naming a group of 36 Boni Homines that included both parties, but the Guelphs were not in a mood for reconciliation, and, after the Ghibellines threatened the 36, Guido Novello and his troops were forced out of the city, and Charles of Anjou was given supreme command of Florence for 10 years. He exercised his authority through a vicar, who was assisted by 12 Good Men, who took the place of the previous republican executives, the Anziani (old men or senators). A popular council was also created and given veto power over legislation, and a new position was created, eventually to be known as Captain of the Guelph Party, whose main purpose was to keep the party together and to suppress the Ghibellines. Pope Clement IV, when he was asked what to do about the property of Ghibellines, divided it into three parts: one for the commune, one for individual Guelphs who had sustained losses, and another for the Guelph Party as a whole. Within a few short years after this massive thievery, several thousand Gibellines were proscribed—a great loss of talent and energy to the city.

The Guelph elite might have regained power permanently had the various families been able to work together in harmony, but the Donati, Adimari, and Tosinghi were constantly at odds. Pope Nicholas sent his nephew, Cardinal Latino Frangipani, backed by 300 knights, to make peace in Florence. After a promising beginning that included a kiss-and-makeup ceremony with the Ghibellines and among the Guelph factions and a promised restoration of sequestered goods, the most important Ghibellines (Uberti, Fifanti, Lamberti, Pazzi) were left out of the agreement, and the Guelphs did not keep to the bargain.

Unfortunately, a new struggle broke out between the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. The parties began in a family feud in Pistoia, but the conflict soon spread to Florence, where the Neri (Blacks), led by the Donati and their allies, tended to support the Guelph elite and the Bianchi (Whites), dominated by the Cerchi and the Cavalcanti, were open to support both from the less wealthy merchants and also from former Ghibellines—leading to the charge of treason against the Guelph Party. Pope Boniface VIII sent Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta to make peace—or rather, as it turned out, to support the Blacks—and he exiled representatives of both sides, in particular the outstanding leader of the Whites, the poet Guido Cavalcanti, who died in exile.

Corso Donati had, so it was learned, entered into secret correspondence with the powerful but sometimes rash Pope Boniface VIII. The Pope regarded Florence as a hotbed of rebellion against the church and a bad example to the cities under Papal jurisdiction. His plan appears to have been simple: Florentine merchants were not fighters but they needed to defend their city. If they recognized the Pope as their overlord, he would provide the troops. Dante knew something of the plot, because he blames Florence’s troubles on Boniface. It was during this struggle that Dante, a close friend of Forese Donati (brother of Corso Donati) and also of Guido Cavalcanti (a great poet and the most energetic of the Whites) was exiled by Corso Donati in 1302 on trumped-up charges of corruption.

Returning to the French strategy that had failed repeatedly in the past, the Pope invited the support of Charles of Valois, the brother of King Philip IV, for the Neri. Charles entered Tuscany in 1301, and both the Guelph Party and the Guilds welcomed him, along with Corso Donati, who with allies Rosso della Tosa, Pazzino dei Pazzi, and Geri Spini were now all-powerful, but Corso soon split with former allies who were outmaneuvering him. Corso was accused of going soft on the Whites, and his marriage to the daughter of Uguccione della Faggiuola—a prominent Ghibelline commander—smelled of treason. Rosso della Tosa, it is worth pointing out, was supported by the Medici, who were by now known as a turbulent and troublesome clan. In 1308 Corso made one last effort to defend his position, but he was preemptively expelled, condemned, and murdered by his rivals, who only survived him by a few years.

From the end of this struggle down to about 1340, the “Grandi” of the Guelph elite remained firmly in power. Without eliminating the Popolo or abrogating its authorities, they learned how to rig elections to insure their own hold on the government and by restricting access to Guild membership, they kept control of those fundamental institutions. In 1343, however, a revived Popolo undid all the electoral machinery that kept power in the hands of the elite and firmly in power turned to the serious problem of debts. They created a financial instrument known as the Monte, a metaphorical mountain of pooled debt.

Florence’s endless series of wars with Lucca, Pisa, and Verona were costly and demoralizing. In 1342 the Florentine elite, faced with social upheaval, decided once again to turn to a foreign nobleman, this time Walter of Brienne the titular “Duke of Athens,” who tried, unsuccessfully, to make himself the permanent dictator.  Walter’s ouster was followed by an elite attempt to regain their lost powers. This elite government, however, was too reactionary a move and only lasted six weeks. Andrea Strozzi, to the disgust of his powerful family, led a mob through the streets, denouncing excise taxes and the popolo grasso, that is the 'fat' people (in other words, wealthy non-elite Florentines). The 21 Guilds (the Dyers having been disestablished) formed a new popular government.

The resurgent lower strata of the Popolo again tried—with less than perfect success—to restrict the rights and privileges of the Grandi. This was the most popular government ever set up in Florence, and many of the Grandi, feeling the heat, withdrew to their country estates. Many of them renounced their noble status and enrolled themselves in the Popolo. The Florentine economic crisis was worsened by the collapse of major banks. To make matters worse, a severe plague struck Florence in 1348.

Outside of finances and plague, the government of the priors was concerned to restore Florentine control over the cities and towns that had revolted in the aftermath of the Duke of Brienne’s departure. At the same time, the Grandi of the Guelph Party were not idle. They returned to their favorite tactic of attacking anyone remotely connected to an old Ghibelline family. The Black Death of 1348, because it killed so many in the political class (half the population died in a few months), required a new scrutiny of potential office holders. The number—and the power—of the Minor Guilds was temporarily cut back. The Guelphs step by step assumed control over political institutions, by rigging elections, excluding enemies, and using ammonizioni (warning or threats issued against the “unpatriotic”).

Between 1375-78 Florence was at war with Pope Gregory XI, who was persuaded by St. Catherine of Siena to return permanently to Rome, which he did in 1377. At issue was control of central Italian territories that had belonged to the Church but had, during the Avignon Captivity, fallen out of the papal orbit. In the 1350’s Innocent VI had made an attempt to reestablish authority, and the Church’s success, by 1370, brought papal forces into border clashes with Florence.

When Gregory XI ended his war with the Visconti of Milan, Florence feared he could now turn his attention to Tuscany. As an opening move, the city hired the now unemployed condottiere, Sir John Hawkwood, away from the Pope. When peace negotiations broke down, Gregory put Florence under an interdict, but Florence responded by declaring the interdict to be null and void and the Churches were reopened to the tumultuous approval of the mob—to this sad state had Florentines, the banker of the Church and the Guelph defenders of the Papacy, fallen. Florentine jubilation was short-lived as one by one the cities (beginning with Bologna) grew weary of the war and made their peace with the Pope. Gregory’s death in March of 1378 only temporarily suspended peace negotiations, which were concluded a few months later under his successor.

Florence meanwhile was distracted by a conflict between the anti-papal popular leaders and the Guelph elite. After a series of coups and counter coups, mob uprisings and conservative reactions, in the end it was a narrow Guelph elite that gradually took power. The city was rife with conspiracies of every kind, and assassination became a commonplace political tool. Guelph leaders instituted a crackdown on the guilds and made sure their own people were in charge. They also instituted a police official in 1391 to hang or behead anyone who slanders lo stato. Adopting the techniques that had turned Venice into an effective police state, Guelph leaders began broadening the targets of their ammonizioni (admonitions) to include anyone suspected of harboring recalcitrant opinions.

Maso degli Albizzi rose to prominence as Gonfalone della Giustizia (1393), and he remained the most powerful man in Florence until, at his death in 1417, his place was taken by his son Raimondo. As nephew of the executed Piero, Maso had resentments both against those who had fomented the rebellion and the Grandi who had connived at his uncle’s murder. He did not actually rule the city by himself, as Lorenzo de’ Medici would, but he was content to head a coalition of elite families that included the Uzano, Soderini, Capponi, Pitti, Corsini Accaiuoli, Strozzi, Spini, Rucellai, Altoviti, and Medici. These last, who were to become so intertwined in the history of Florence, had only been moderately prominent for about a century, and being among the more troublesome clans they held a somewhat ambiguous position in Maso’s regime. While cooperating with the Albizzi, they had been on the other side and in 1400 were caught collaborating with “the enemy.”

By the time of his death in 1417, Maso degli Albizzi and his friends had centralized their power in Florence, partly by pulling the strings and rigging elections and partly by dint of the armed citizens who supported them. His son Rinaldo stepped easily into the father’s position, and he was ably supported by a group of wealthy lieutenants, the most important of whom was Palla Strozzi. Most of them, including Palla, had ambitions of their own, and it is not always clear who was making decisions. The Albizzi regime was more of an old-fashioned oligarchy than a Signoria of the type springing up all over Tuscany.

Rindaldo was not an incompetent ruler, but neither was he sufficiently brilliant or self-confident to be able to maintain his position against a powerful rival coalition headed by Cosimo de’ Medici, the wealthiest of Florentine bankers and an astute and resolute political plotter. Florence’s wars had been costly, and the regime was increasingly dependent on public debt, that is loans from the wealthiest merchants, to stay afloat. No remedy was enough to reduce the state’s dependence on wealthy creditors, the Medici in particular, and “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Not only the state generally but many important Florentines were indebted to Cosimo, a situation that only strengthened his influence.

The Medici

One last effort was made to resist the growing influence of Cosimo, who, upon returning from Rome, was exiled in September 1433. Cosimo’s exile did nothing to diminish the state’s growing debt to the banker, and the invitation to return in 1434 was an acknowledgment of defeat. Cosimo did not exercise power openly as a tyrant, but he got his way in most things, just the same. As Guiccardini observes, he used public taxes as others would have used a dagger. Confiscatory taxation was not used just against rivals. Cosimo ruined the non-political scholar and orator, Nanetto Gianozzo, simply because he was known to hold independent views.

Shrewd in foreign relations and prudently ruthless at home, Cosimo de’ Medici was one of the greatest of Italian signori. As banker to the Papacy, he was able to persuade the Pope to move the Council on Church reunion from Ferrara to Florence in 1439. Thus the arrival of the Pope and the principal Roman cardinals, the Byzantine Emperor and Patriarch and a host of learned Greek theologians. The Council was a propaganda triumph for Cosimo and the city. For a banker, Cosimo was a learned man and a great patron of arts and letters. Entranced by George Gemistus Pletho, the Neoplatonist/Neo-Pagan Greek philosopher who accompanied the Greek delegation, Cosimo set up the Platonic Academy and installed his young ward, Marsilio Ficino, as its director. Ficino would devote his life to the study and promotion of Plato and the Neoplatonism that would never escape its pagan anti-Christian orientation.

Although there was some resistance, even among Medici supporters, Cosimo had frequent recourse to the Balìa, emergency commissions with sweeping powers. His renewals of the Balìa—by which he had come to power—made him at times virtual dictator. The elite class was increasingly disenchanted, and by the 1450’s they were actively opposing Medicean policy, and they tried to reestablish traditional elections (including selection by lot) and to eliminate the role of the accoppiatori who rigged them by controlling the candidates’ entrance into the electoral pouches.

In 1458 an anti-Medicean Signoria took firm steps toward independence. Rather than crack down and risk losing everything, Cosimo sat tight, organized his little army, invited an armed force from Milan, then in 1458 staged a coup that left his opponents in dazed disarray. As he withdrew from public positions, Cosimo’s regime only strengthened his grip on the city, though he often preferred to let his ally Luca Pitti appear to be in charge.

Cosimo’s son Piero (the gouty), who succeeded him in 1464, shared much of his father’s prudence but lacked his brilliance. His five year reign was marked by plots and conspiracies, led by some of his father’s most wealthy and influential lieutenants. Nonetheless, Piero was able to divide the conspirators by befriending several of them, and Piero succeeded in unmasking the others as traitors and had them arrested, irrespective of guilt of innocence.

When Piero died in 1469, his sons Lorenzo (21) and Giuliano (16) succeeded to his position without opposition. The title Signore, which had been cautiously applied to Piero by sycophants and endangered rivals, now began to be used openly for the young men. Lorenzo was called “Magnifico”—a title somewhat less exclusive than it would be today, since it could be used to refer to anyone who made a big splash by his display of wealth, generosity, or beauty.

To consolidate his power, Lorenzo arranged for himself to be named one of the 10 Accopiatori, now chosen for life, who decided on the fitness of candidates for election. It goes without saying that his colleagues were loyal Medici supporters. The Accopiatori now had the power of controlling all the offices of the republic, making Lorenzo a Signore in fact as well as name. To narrow the political class, the number of the Minor Guilds was reduced to five. These moves were not regarded without disgust by Medici rivals like the wealthy Pazzi, some of whom were living in comfortable exile at Rome, where they displaced the Medici as papal bankers. Lorenzo, in a weak or foolish moment, made an enemy of his former ally Franceschino Pazzi, whom he deprived of his wife’s legacy through a legal chicane. Lorenzo also opposed the ambitions of Francesco Salviati, whom the Pope appointed archbishop of Florence. Although a Florentine and related to Lorenzo, he was an ally of the Medici’s enemies and the Signoria coerced the pope into naming Lorenzo’s brother-in-law instead. Salviati had to be consoled with the archbishopric of Pisa.

By 1477 Franceschino was the heart and soul of a conspiracy formed in Rome with the cautious approval of Pope Sixtus IV, who laid down the impossible condition that the Medici would be overthrown without bloodshed. The conspirators succeeded in killing Giuliano but not Lorenzo, who cracked down hard. He, nonetheless, preferred to rule by indirect means and without ostentation.

Lorenzo il Magnifico has gone down in history as a great ruler, but he was hardly that. Increasingly dictatorial in his methods, he showed little talent for business or diplomacy. In lavishing public and private money on splendid building projects and gorgeous art, he bankrupted the state and came close to impoverishing his own family. In his reign, the Florentine republic was finally extinguished and with it the creative spark that made Tuscany for so long the center of European civilization.

Piero d’ Medici, Savonarola, and the Restored Republic

Upon Lorenzo’s death, his spoiled and willful son (20 years old) succeeded to his authority, but Piero’s poor grasp of business, arbitrary methods, and political stupidity made him vulnerable to plots on all sides. One set of enemies, who wished to restore the republic, began listening to a number of prophetic preachers, especially Savonarola, a puritanical Dominican from Ferrara. Claiming to speak for God, Savonarola called doom upon the heads of the hedonist Florentines, who were told to sacrifice luxury items and art treasures in public bonfires, and predicted the expulsion of the Medici and restoration of the republic. Piero’s most serious problem lay in the leaders of the Grandi, who not only resented Medici power but despised Piero personally and resisted his attempts to weaken their class. The most competent member of the Medici family, Piero’s younger brother, the fat and dissolute Giovanni, was now a cardinal of the Church who spent most of his time outside the city.  When Charles VIII was invited into Italy as an ally of Milan, his side-trip to Florence (1494) resulted in the expulsion of the unpopular Piero.

Florence under Cosimo and Lorenzo was hardly a complete dictatorship, and the Medici had ruled largely by rigging elections and controlling the political institutions. The Grandi seemed to have assumed that they could simply restore the republic to its halcyon days before the return of Cosimo. Unfortunately, Florence was still beset by its old problems: quarrels among the Grandi and the envious resentments of the poor classes whose assent was needed for useful reforms and the levying of taxes.

Savonarola’s experiment in virtue ran its predictable course, and he was executed after a botched attempt was made by one of his colleagues who attempted a trial by fire, which had to be postponed when the Dominican insisted upon carrying a consecrated host into the fire. Florence’s losses on the battlefield and continued descent into anarchy lost the city much of its accumulated prestige. At their wits ends, the wiser heads gained grudging popular assent to a sweeping political reform, which included the election of a Gonfaloniere for life. The winner was Piero Soderini, a former boon companion of Piero de’ Medici, who had ingratiated himself with the masses. Soderini is a controversial figure. Guicciardini, who later sold out Florence to its enemies and served as one of the Medici hatchet-men, is almost entirely negative, but other chroniclers were quite favorable, and some modern have seen in Soderini the second most capable Florentine statesman—after Cosimo the old. Unlike Cosimo and Lorenzo, he did not stage-manage affairs from behind the scenes but held prominent public positions in which he astutely directed diplomacy—a field in which he had considerable experience—and prudently managed finances. Ambitious he may have been, but Soderini worked within the law. This sometimes worked to Florence’s disadvantage, when his rivals and colleagues interfered in the conduct of war.

The task faced by Piero Soderini was almost insuperable. Pope Julius, one of the most powerful men of the age, was hell-bent on restoring the Medici, and he was eventually supported by the Aragonese in Naples. Pisa and other subjugated towns had thrown off the Florentine yoke, and the city, bled dry by Lorenzo’s extravagances and civil strife, no longer had the resources to hire great mercenary armies. Soderini was a solid leader, though he may have overplayed his hand and alienated the elite. If we can believe Guicciardini, he proved himself more competent at playing politics than in governing the city or conducting war, though he did have the shrewdness to listen to his chief political advisor, Niccolò Machiavelli, who made a valiant attempt to restore a citizen army that would free Florence from dependence upon mercenaries, whose services were both costly and unreliable. Florence’s resistance to the Medici and their allies is one of the noblest pages in its history, though Machiavelli would later pay for his participation.

Piero de’ Medici and his family had never given up their hope of returning, and they plotted their restoration with the enemies of Florence. However in December 1503 he was drowned in a battle between French and Spanish forces over control of Naples. Lorenzo II, his young son (born the year of Lorenzo I’s death) became his heir, though the family was increasingly directed by Cardinal Giovanni, who was a strong supporter of Julius II.

The Return of the Medici Republican Reprieve, Archduchy

Pope Julius II (“il Papa terribile”), who mounted the throne of Peter a month before Piero’s death, was a terrible Pope in most ways but he was also a great man in the Time magazine sense of someone who dominates his age. His ten-year-long attempt to restore the power of the Church—and to elevate the wealth and power of the Rovere family—met with mixed results. His plot to frame an alliance against Venice had fruition (in 1508) in the Holy League or League of Cambrai, and although the League in its various transformations had some success, he managed to embroil all Italy in devastating and costly wars until his death in 1513.

Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici was an important diplomat for Julius, and in 1511 he was sent with a papal army of Spanish troops against his native city, but to no avail until the brutal sack of nearby Prato convinced the leaders of Florence to accept the inevitable (1512). Soderini left town and Cardinal Giovanni’s younger brother Giuliano entered to begin negotiations for the restoration. Giuliano had very modest political abilities, as he was to prove as Pope Clement VII, when his ineptitude was disastrous for both Florence and the papacy.

Giovanni’s elevation, in 1513, to the papacy clinched the Medici restoration, and Lorenzo di Piero (Piero’s son) was made Duke of Urbino (1516) and ruler of Florence. Lorenzo had even less political talent than his uncle Giuliano and his frequent absences from the city, combined with his arrogance and indifference to the feelings of the Florentine elite, made him neither successful nor popular. His regime depended on a stable status quo and on the power of the papacy and its allies. Medici power began unraveling with the accession of François I to the French throne (1515). The young king was ambitious beyond reason and a bitter foe of the Hapsburgs. Giuliano, elected Pope Clement VII (1524) vacillated in his loyalties between France and the Emperor Charles V. In 1526 the Emperor lost his patience and sent an army, consisting largely of Lutherans, into Italy to help the Pope make up his mind. The sack they inflicted on Rome was more destructive than the conquests of the Goths, and during the chaos in Italy the Florentines reestablished their republican liberty (1527-30).

In the end the Emperor agreed to send his dogs of war against the Pope’s native city, which surrendered after a prolonged war and siege. The Florentines resisted bravely, once again, but the imperial forces were too much for them. The end had come, and this time for good. Alessandro de’ Medici, the reputed son of Lorenzo di Piero (but more likely Pope Clement’s son) became head of state, though initially not duke: Charles V kept Tuscany on a tight leash for the time being, though in 1532 he made Alessandro the hereditary duke. When Alessandro died childless, the direct line from Cosimo died out, and a descendant of Cosimo’s brother asserted his claim to the throne, while the proponents of a restored republic were dithering.

The new ruler Duke Cosimo I was completely ruthless in seizing, holding, and exercising power. The old Florentine families were completely eclipsed, and no member of the old elite reached a high office under Cosimo. Nonetheless, he was not a ruler without merit, and he cleverly waited for a favorable opportunity to receive first a papal and then an imperial title as Archduke. He was an enlightened despot, who used the minimal necessary violence to achieve his objectives. He built roads and bridges, drained swamps, provided efficient and fair administration of justice, and patronized the arts. Cosimo, who took the Roman Emperor Augustus as his model, preserved many of the forms and symbols of the old republic. In resisting the temptation to rebuild Florence as a Renaissance city, Cosimo and his artistic advisor, Giorgio Vasari, preserved the city of Dante and Giotto for future ages.

Cosimo’s sons and successors, Francesco and Ferdinando, were decent enough mediocrities, but after the death his grandson Cosimo II, Tuscany fell under the control of his wasteful wife and daughter-in-law, who squandered the Medici treasures and gave the Jesuits carte blanche. In the generations to come, the Medici name would become synonymous with luxury and corruption. Lorenzo I’s son Giovanni, as Pope Leo X, was among the worst Popes ever to bring shame to the throne of Peter. His luxurious and depraved life, which so disgusted Martin Luther, is not only one of the motives for Luther’s revolt but also a factor in Leo’s feeble response. The collateral branch from which issued the Grand Dukes of Tuscany sputtered out in an enervating depravity that even an atheist might regard as divine punishment for the sins of such a family.