In Our Time - The Medici

Episode Date: December 26, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Medici family, who dominated Florence's political and cultural life for three centuries. The House of Medici came to prominence in Italy in the fifteenth century as a result of the wealth they had built up through banking. With the rise of Cosimo de' Medici, they became Florence's most powerful and influential dynasty, effectively controlling the city's government. Their patronage of the arts turned Florence into a leading centre of the Renaissance and the Medici Bank was one of the most successful institutions of its day. As well as producing four popes, members of the House of Medici married into various European royal families.With:Evelyn Welch Professor of Renaissance Studies at King's College, University of LondonRobert Black Professor of Renaissance History at the University of LeedsCatherine Fletcher Lecturer in Public History at the University of SheffieldProducer: Victoria Brignell.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1433, Cosimo de Medici, one of Florence's wealthiest citizens, was staying in his country villa just to the north of the city.

His enemies seized power and grasped the opportunity to have a Cosimo arrested on a charge of treason. He was ordered by the city's chief man. magistrate returned to Florence, where he was imprisoned in the dungeon of the town hall. But there was sooner dramatic reversed in Cosimo's fortunes, thanks to judicious bribery, who was released from jail and allowed to go into exile. Yet within a year, the Medici family was back in control of Florence's government, and Cosimo was able to return jubilantly to the city.

For the next three centuries or so, the House of Medici dominated Florence's political and cultural life. Through their patronage of learning and the arts, Florence developed into one of the great centres of the Renaissance, Four Medici men became Pope, and through strategic marriages, they formed connections with a number of major European royal families. With me to discuss the Medici are Evelyn Welsh, Professor of Renaissance Studies at King's College London, Robert Black, Professor of Renaissance History at the University of Leeds, and Catherine Fletcher lecturer in public history at the University of Sheffield. Evelyn Welsh, can you tell us about the origins of the Medici family? It's Cosmo's father, Giovanni DeBici, who really establishes the family's fortunes. and makes it the powerhouse that it is.

The family comes from the Mugelo, the countryside outside Florence, and is very involved in banking. Giovanni De Beechi really sets up the Medici bank. He uses his wife's dowry to establish his own branch of a bank and then expands it. He really integrates himself into the Roman politics of the papacy, lending money, helping in a very complex period to ensure that,

the right people become the right pope at the right time. Right for him. Right for him, right for the pope. Quite a complicated period there. How do you set up a bank? So you need capital. You need cash. And banking isn't the sort of banking that we understand today. It's a place where exchange takes place. So there are lots of different currencies. You need gold, you need silver, and you need trust. So that when somebody comes from London to Florence, They're able to pick up a letter of exchange and get the funds that they need to do business there. What was the Florence like in the early 15th century when the Medici really began to come into prominence? Well, Florence is a place of factional infighting, but it's also the most astonishing building site in Europe.

The Duomo is going up, the cathedral is going up, the baptistery drawers are being made. There's a shrine called Orsameekele, in which the different guilds of Florence are competing to, put up the most grand statues by some of the best artists in Italy at the time. And in its constitution? And in its constitution, Florence is a republic. So the Florentine government is not one that we would understand today. It's a rotational government. Names are drawn by lot from a bag.

And if your name is drawn, you will then govern Florence as part of a committee for around two to six months there. The idea is that while you're in government, you are looking after the city of Florence rather than your own parochial family interests. So, Robert Black, in the scheme of things, was it in the early 15th century when the Medici came there with their money? Was it an important place in Italy? Was it known to be of growing importance? Well, Florence was one of the leading cities of Italy. had been since the 13th century. It was certainly the most important

and the richest and the most powerful city in Tuscany. It then became a major player in Italian politics really from the 13th century. And Florence became one of the really key states, really, in Italy. It's often said that Florence was less

important than places like Milan, Venice, or Rome. This is really not true. Florence was an absolutely major power, one of the really major powers in Italy. Did the fact that it thought of itself as a republic having a deep bearing on its character, or was it an idea, a sort of cover for what was really going on oligarchs keeping control? No, the Republican ideology in Florence, and the Republican identity was one of the most powerful emotive issues and emotive feelings among all Florentines. The idea that they were a free republic, that they governed themselves, that they were independent, was key to their identity and something that they were absolutely determined not to lose. There were various brief episodes of loss of Republican power in the earlier

14th century, but these then were really put aside by the 15th century. and so Florence's identity as a republic was absolutely key. There was, of course, you mentioned the oligarchy. Florence's government and Florence became more and more restricted in the late 14th, early 15th century and became very, very narrow. Nevertheless, this never really, in the Florentine's mind, contradicted the fact that it was a republic. We've heard a bit about the banking,

but Cosimo moved in from, not exactly from nowhere, but from outside the city, with his money and began to infiltrate commuters, as I understand it, and become a powerful man in that, that's it, although not yet long way ahead in his family, an aristocrat. Can you give us a closer idea of the way his money influenced the influence he was allowed to, he took for himself? Well, I would put the money at a secondary level.

It was very, very important in order to gain a place among the leading, families of Florence. But there were other rich Florentines and there was lots of other money in Florence. Money could never buy in Florence political power. It had to be married to other things. And what the Medici were particularly astute at was patronage and how to gain a following of clients and a kind of network, a network of political power. That was the key to their actual success is this very powerful, close clientage basis, partly based on where they lived in the city,

but also extending further, that actually gave them a kind of root that was greater than any other family. Was this partly because you could lend people money? It had something to do with it, but it was also doing people favors when they did one person doing another person favor. It was a kind of almost,

it wasn't really a mafioso thing, But it was the way, in the sense, it wasn't illegal. Well, it was illegal, but it wasn't, it wasn't a criminal involved in violence. But it was something the way in which through personal connections, power can be achieved. Just as you see it as in the mafia, I mean, power is achieved not just by money, but by personal ties and links that people have with one another. Having said they were the mafia, you've slipped quite quickly into a complete, them directly with the mafia, Robert.

Well, I mean, this often does happen, and there was a famous article on Cosmo. Was he the father of the city, or was he the godfather of the city? And there are certain similarities, although it's very important to realize that the one similarity that they didn't have with the mafia

is that it was not based on violence, it was not based on a criminal network in that sense of all sorts of illegal activities but it was based on these very close personal ties that in that sense it's a similar to the mafia. Before I go to your county, can I come back to you for one moment of Lentock, just the banking, the money, I don't think people are going to be quite clear as how much,

how he dispensed it. Obviously a lot of these other families are rich and so on. What's he doing that they aren't doing or what's it doing that's better than what they are doing? So Cosimo, as Robert has said, is extremely astute at using his money, his favours, and I will use the word infiltrating the Republican systems. So he very rarely takes official power himself. He usually places people whom he trusts, who trust him, into places of power. He does finance things behind the scenes. So he lends money to the government. He pays for, some of the statuary that goes up.

He builds monuments on behalf of the city. So he certainly loans money to influential people outside of Florence. And he uses his money judiciously to oil the wheels on behalf of the Republic. So he is, from the very beginning, the Magis is saying, we are going to make Florence a great place. And it's Florence that we're working for. That's right. So this is not done simply on behalf of me as an individual,

Cosmo de Medici. not done for private, familiar reasons. It's done to make Florence the great city that everyone wants it to be. Catherine Fletcher, after Cosimo, can we get to Lorenza the Magnificent? Can you tell us how we get there and then talk about him? Well, yes, of course. One of the things that Cosimo had done was to expand the Medici Bank right across Europe. And this, of course, gives him access to a huge quantity of information that he can then wield in policymaking. And this is another source of influence for Cosimo is his source of information. Now, Pope Pais is second. When you say all across Europe, you mean London, Paris? We mean we have branches in London, Bruges,

Antwerp, in Basel, down right through Italy across many of the Italian cities. And so when Lorenzo the magnificent, Cosimo's grandson comes to power, he has at his fingertips this huge European network. However, this is also a time of some problems for banking. Now, Cosimo has done very well. But from the 1430s to the 1470s, there's quite a consolidation of the banking industry in Italy. And that's something that's going to hit the Medici. But putting that for one side to the moment, coming back to Lorenzo, there's a great quotation from Francesco Guicardini, the historian of Italy, saying that if Florence had to have a tyrant, she couldn't have a better or more delightful one than Lorenzo.

And I think that really sums up the two sides of his character. He's at once the politician, but he's on. also this great poet and a connoisseur of the arts. So can you develop his character a little? Because he was there for a long time, and the title The Magnificent does apply to the sort of things he did. Can you tell us more about him? Yes, of course.

He had done his first diplomatic missions while he was still a teenager. He'd had this great education in humanities, which I'm sure Robert will be able to tell us more about. He had been to Naples. He'd been to Pisa. He'd been to Rome on a diplomatic mission to congratulate the new Pope Paul, second, even as a child, he was already greeting dignitaries and reading poetry to them in

Florence, you know, when people arrived and made their grand entries. And that, you know, makes him into a great statesman when he has to take over running this game, the Medici run in Florence of the rhetorical republic, holding power behind the scenes and maintaining the myth. But he saw himself as a writer and did indeed write a lot of poetry. He wrote some beautiful poetry. He wrote love poetry. He wrote pastoral poetry. There's a great poem about about partridge hunting. He's a patronise people like Filipino Lippi,

Domenico Gilandaios, Sandra Botticelli. In 1475, when he puts on public entertainment, a great joust in honour of his brother Giuliano, it's Botticelli who designs the public entertainments for him. This is a bringing together of the politics and the art, which is very important in understanding the motivations for some of that art patronage in Florence. His magnificence was a great patron and so on,

but it wasn't much of a banker, by the sound of it. He wasn't much of a banker, although I'm not sure anybody could have entirely overcome the problems with banking in the period. The thing that gets the Medici Bank into trouble is when it starts making political loans for political reasons. And in Milan and in England, they do this. And they run up against a problem that is very familiar today, the problem of sovereign debt default.

The problem of governments not repaying their loans to the banks. Including the English kingdom, English king, including Edward the 4th. And they should have known with Edward the 4th because Edward III had done precisely the same thing with his Italian bank as a century earlier. So Edward the 4th defaults, the Duke of Milan ends up owing the bank

170, 9,000 ducats. And, you know, this is a phenomenal amount of money. This is an amount of money that could pay the salaries of, you know, six or seven thousand building workers for a year. I mean, these are very big sums. The London branch is probably overextended by four times. capital and the banks got into a mess and something that is quite familiar today. But did the decline of the banks mean that the Medici family influence also declined?

I think it meant that the Medici family had to rely more on the state and more on politics and more on political alliances and trying to find alternative sources of political power. Now one of those would be the church, putting strategically placing sons into church careers in order to gain access to church benefices. Other routes into power will be marriage alliances. So for example Lorenzo is the first of his family to marry outside Florence

and to go into the Roman aristocracy take a bride from there that's Clarice Orsini of one of the two great families of Rome. Evelyn, in 1478 and Lorenzo was attacked by the Patsy conspiracy. How did this plot come about him? What transpired? In April 1417,

Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano are attending Mass, along with a large number of Florentine citizens, and as the host is raised by the priest, that's the signal for conspirators to rush up and to attempt to stab them to death. Giuliano's killed almost immediately. Lorenzo flees into the sacristy, where luckily someone's built a rather beautiful and very strong bronze door there, closed behind him, and he survives there. The conspirators expect the citizens of Florence to rise. up and support them, but this doesn't happen. Instead, the Patsy family, and I'll come on to that in a moment, and their allies are hunted down, beheaded, hung, their arms are removed from every possible

visible place within the city, and they're exiled there. So it sounds like that this is a sort of local resurrection of republicanism or in an attempt to overthrow one clan, the Medici by another clan, as Robert says Florence is full of rich people there. But in fact, it's even more complicated than that because behind the scenes you have the Pope, 6thus the 4th and his nephews, king of Naples and even the Duke of Urbino all working, manipulating, in order to benefit from the fall of the Merici. And yet the Medici fight them off? The Marici fight them off.

Lorenzo survives. In fact, his power, if anything, is consolidated. Florence is placed under an interdict in the period. He has to make his apologies to the powers that be, but Lorenzo not only survives, he thrives. What are you apologising for? In the melee, he happens to arrange the death of the Archbishop of Pisa,

a member of the Salviati family, and this unfortunate death of an archbishop is taken rather badly by the Pope. Right. And we say, did you say it wasn't like the Mafia? Was it you who said that? No, no. This was a very extreme case of violence

done to the Medici and done in these very overt circumstances, and so I don't think it was... No, I was teasing you. Can you give us... Can you tell us about the... impact the Medici had on scholarship and education? Well, I think this is one of the most important, if not the most important, legacy and achievement to the Medici family. The word the Renaissance

really comes in here. The Renaissance was put very simply, was an attempt to revive the culture of antiquity of ancient Rome and Greece. Now, before the time of the Medici, it had been really Rome that had been most heavily and the Latin culture of Rome that had been favored in scholarship. And of course the Medici did tremendous amounts of patronage in this direction too. One of the great people

whom the Medici gave patronage and support to was Angelo Poliziano, who was the greatest Latin scholar of the 15th century, one of the greatest Latin scholars of all time. But the Medici also became highly interesting in Greek scholarship in the actual patronage of Greek. Because Greek had something that had not been known widely in the Middle Ages in the West.

It was not part of the education that people did not know Greek directly. Whatever Greek they knew, they read through translations. There were many Greek texts that were not known. Well, the Medici gave tremendous support to the revival of Greek. First of all, the revival of Plato and Plato's philosophy. Plato had been largely on the back burner in the Middle Ages. He was now brought forward, and Medici were responsible for giving patronage for the translation into Latin of all Plato's works, and also not just the Plato, but all the other

Platonic philosophers. And so this Greek scholarship was highly important, fundamental. It was really the greatest achievement of the Renaissance in many ways, was the actually opening up of Greece as well as Rome. But also the Medici gave a very important patronage to more contemporary. educational institutions. For example, the university. Florence had had a second-rate sort of university in the 14th and earlier 15th century, but it was always struggling and it was having periods when it didn't even have any teaching going on. It was in a virtual state of closure.

Lorenzo decided that this was really because Florence, the university, was in the wrong place, that in other great cities, for example, Venice or Milan had had had the their universities in, outside the city. Lorenzo decided it would be much better to have the university, not in Maine university seat, not in Florence, but in Pisa. And so he really established the University of Pisa as a major university in the, which it has remained so today. We seem to, we're going to swing between great achievements,

amazing achievement in the arts and culture and fairly based, basic politics anyway, because following the Pats of Conspiracy, a war broke out between Florence and the papacy, How did Lorenzo win that war? Catherine Pledger? As Evelyn said, Pope 6th IV had sequester the assets of the Medici Bank had excommunicated Lorenzo and 6th had also joined in alliance with Ferrante, who was the king of Naples. Now, Ferranti's son, Alphonse, the Duke of Calabria, went into battle against the Florentines. I say went into battle with a bit of caution because in fact there wasn't a great deal of fighting. mercenary commander was in fact Alfonso's brother-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, so they spent their time

maneuvering to make maximum income with minimum losses, as many mercenaries did in the period. And the war didn't go particularly well and make a great deal of progress. And in fact, it was down to Lorenzo the magnificent to settle this dispute in a remarkable piece of personal diplomacy. He actually took himself off to Naples. He spent a couple of months. They're really trying to charm. the King of Naples, charming him with his ability in poetry, with his love of hunting, and Batoos, with a great deal of money, he'd taken out a 60,000 florin mortgage on his own lands in an attempt to give out bribes and such like, and eventually he won Ferranti round. But I have to say he was helped in this and helped in settling the overall dispute by the Turks,

who very conveniently invaded the south of Italy in 1480, thus concentrating minds, and all the Italian powers said, okay, what we really don't want is to be fighting amongst ourselves when the Turks are invading, let's make peace again. And of course there were rumors inevitably went around that Lorenzo had put the Turks up to it, but I'm not sure there's a great deal of evidence for that. Roman Black. Of course I would agree with everything that Catherine has said, but I think it's important to realize that Florence and the Mediterranean did not win the war, that the war was going disastrously badly for the Medici, and Lorenzo's position in Florence before 1480 was absolutely collapsing. and this was a desperate measure this move to go down to Naples. And what he secured was the fact of not the absolute collapse of the Medici family. And the collapse of the Medici interest. And so he then returned to Florence.

And that, of course, that was a triumph because the Florentines were expecting a terrible defeat. And instead, he signed a peace. And that gave him this possibility of consolidating his power in Florence. Emily, can I come to something which our listeners will be reasonably very familiar with, which is the art that came out of France? Can you develop that a little more, the Medici support to the arts, and which persons were involved, which objects were involved? So if we go back to Cosmo, Cosmo the elder Parti, as he's sometimes known as,

his strongest relationships were artists such as Donatello. And that's quite interesting because Donatello is experimenting with classicism, Donatello is creating these monuments to Florentine republicanism there, things like this remarkable young David, figure of David, Judith and Holofenes. And Lorenzo, as we've heard, follows to some extent in his footsteps, but like his own father, Piero, sort of privatises the arts. The kinds of artwork that Cosimo, the elder is financing, are public monuments. By the time we get to Lorenzo, we're looking at Botticelli painting in the villas for the Medici's. Lorenzo does an astonishing thing. He acquires some of the most valuable cameos and gems and sardonic vases of the classical period.

And he inscribes his own name, his own initials on them. So that you look at this very beautiful second century AD Roman cameo, and it's got L-A-U-R written on it. But did it seem, as it seems in television versions of history, a place of the ferment of artists? So Lorenzo is less responsible for the ferment of artists than he takes advantage of it. So this is a period in the, let's say, 49thes, just before Lorenzo's own death there, where you have Leonardo, although he's working in Milan, you have young Raphael, you have Michelangelo there. So Florence is a kind of cradle of remarkable artistic achievement

is something that Lorenzo uses by essentially saying, if you want a great artist, come to me and I'll give you advice on whom to hire. I think it's just worth bearing in mind that some of the early art patronage is very much connected to the idea of expiating the sins that are involved in banking. All those beautiful chapels, they are about saying, I acknowledge that lending at interest, usury, is bad behaviour in terms of the Christian church beliefs in the time. And so I'm going to endow this beautiful chapel in order to help in my own salvation. Robert Black, after Lorenzo's death, that's 1492,

who succeeded by his son period in the majorche for a short amount of time, and then the majorities were exiled from Florence. How did that come about? That came about principally through a huge diplomatic and military crisis because Italy was invaded by the king of France

who had a dynastic claim to the Neapolitan throne and this put the Medici family in an impossible or virtually impossible situation. One of the things that we've heard about is that in 1480 there was a kind of

a major diplomatic realignment in Italy and for Florence. Florence, the closest ally up until 1480, had been Milan. But because of this way, the resolution of the Pazzi War, and Lorenzo's great diplomatic gesture going down to Naples, he had the real crux, the real heart, the hub of the Florentine diplomacy and the diplomatic support now became Naples.

And so when the King of France appeared on the scene and said, I'm the real king of Naples. These are just pretenders here and claimed his throne. This put the Medician into a huge position. Piero really didn't know where to turn. And so he sometimes went back. And so he continued really to favor Naples.

And so the French king then came down in the end with his army. And nobody really thought he would ever come. He did come. He came. And Piero went out to meet him. And he completely panicked. And he gave away all these fortresses, seven major Florentine fortresses. Of course he had no right to do that at all

because he wasn't the ruler of the way he didn't own them and when he came back to the city the very next day the all his supporters virtually all his support everybody turned against him he was

banished from the city he had to flee the city he was banished and the Medici were outlawed from the city and so that's it was mainly as a result of this diplomatic crisis but also behind that

there was another factor is that the Medici because they had taken so much power unto themselves. They had marginalized the traditional ruling families, and so there was a lot of resentment against the Medici, and so at that point, that combined with this diplomatic crisis. Catherine Fletcher, they were out from 1492 until 1512. How did they get back? They got back with a very impressive but extremely vicious military maneuver in 1512. Cardinal Giovanni de Medici, the future Pope Leo X, who by this time was in alliance

with the Spanish troops who were fighting in these Italian wars. Now, Italy, really by this time was a crucible of a war between the Holy Roman Empire and France. Karsal Giovanni, in alliance with the Spanish, wasn't sure whether they could defeat the citizen militia

that Machiavellian, his friends, had been drilling in Florence. So rather than attacking Florence directly, they attacked the smaller town of Prato, some 12 miles to the north way. And as Leo Giovanni said, not without some bloodshed, which consisted of about 2,000 deaths, mass rape, the torturous citizens to reveal where they'd hidden their valuables. And this was a piece of psychological warfare that, as the Cardinal put it, would be an example and deterrent to other cities who dared to resist Spanish troops. And the Florentines panicked.

And they came to terms and they agreed to the readmission of Medici. So the Medici had come in in the first. phase with money and they came in the second phase with blood really. Well, they came in certainly in a very different context, though in a context where alliances with foreign powers and European alliances with either the Spanish or the French were going to be increasingly important. And as we see going on into the 1520s and 30s,

it's Spanish backing that helps you get somewhere in Italy. But one of the things about the media, which is fascinating, they're moving into Italian aristocracy, then they're moving around by alliances into European aristocracy. they'll also make a big power grab for the papacy for Medici, for Medici's become popes. Why was that so important to them? So if we go back to the beginning, the origins of the Medici,

we remember that it was as papal bankers that they are really making their fortune. And it's a short leap from wanting to control the money of the papacy to wanting to control the papacy itself. But before you can become Pope, you need to become a cardinal. So the really smart thing that Lorenzo does is ensure that he places his children and his relatives into cardinalships. Even kids as young as 13 are placed into these positions of ecclesiastical authority. And then a huge amount of behind-the-scenes manipulation is done at conclaves to ensure that they then take authority.

They take control of the papacy. And did his second son Giovanni become Leo, the. and the Leo of the Tent in 1513. Well, I mean, it was just, it was the luck of the conclave, really. And it always... So it wasn't maneuvering. It was maneuvering, but it was always very dicey

whether you would win a conclave. No, but Evelyn's point that he'd seeded cardinals in his own family was obviously a big factor. It made a lot of them cardinals, so they were ready to be popes if... Well, there's only one cardinal. Well, Catherine can... Well, I think part of the point,

in 1513, Leo Giovanni, who then became Leo the 10th, was the only Medici Cardinal in the conclave. He was also very, very ill. And one of the things conclaves often like is to elect a Pope who they think probably won't last very long. I mean, he arrived late to the conclave, he had to be carried in on a litter. I just thought, this is a great compromise candidate, because this is the guy who, you know, we know is going to shuffle off the mortal coil not too far down the line. There will eventually be a number of cardinals because one of the things that Leo does in 1517,

is to make one of the biggest expansions of the College of Cardinals ever in history and pack it with his friends and supporters, with his cousin, who will then become Pope Clement the 7th, and from there on in you really have a Medici base of friends and family and supporters in the papacy, but that happens with Leo's manoeuvres once you need one cardinal to catch a papacy, and then once you've got the papacy, you can then use it, to embed your family, not only in ecclesiastical positions, but also in aristocratic positions.

But could I just come in that it wasn't by any means inevitable if the Medici would have a succession because, I mean, the Medici, in 1521, after the death of Leo on the 1st of December, the death of Leo the 10th, they lost the papacy. There was a northerner, Adrian the 6th. And so it was never inevitable that any family would control the papacy. Of course, you're quite right saying that the Medici were in a stronger position because of all Leo's patronage. But although you were right to say, obviously you're right, yeah, Lorenzo created one cardinal,

and the Medici has created quite a lot of cardinals. Well, yes. Right. But not of their family, exactly. I mean, you know. So we're back to this issue of networks, contacts, connections, but we're working at a very different level here. We're working at the international

elite level where they're not only creating cardinals or creating queens. But in one sense, Rob Blach, they seemed to have deserted Florence and moved a lot of their power and influence buildings to Rome? Well, this became a tremendous problem for the Medici

in this period because now they had, after the beginning of Leo the 10th pontificate in 1513, they now had two centers. They had Florence and Rome. And so it was really

quite difficult how to juggle these two things. And in fact, what really happened was that Florence became, went under the back burner. They gave much more attention to what was going on in Rome. And Florence, it was very difficult. They didn't know whom to place in Florence in order to rule the city because all the various brother, the brother, the nephews that they put in there weren't really very interested in Florence.

They were interested in building up a kind of principality more permanent for themselves elsewhere because Florence was just too much trouble to deal with these areas. aristocrats and people who just weren't, didn't, were very hostile to the Medici always. And so, and resentful of the Medici power. So it was a real problem how to deal with Florence at this time. And they had dealt with it by a series of absentee rulers and absentee governors and had secretaries and cardinals, people, other people from different families governing Florence for them

because they couldn't really have, they had no one really to put in there to rule or to run the city for them. What about the Alessandro who became ruler in France in 1531? Well, Alessandro was one of two illegitimate nephews of Pope Clement the 7th. Pope Clement the 7th had no legitimate male heirs for the Medici family. He had two bastard boys, Alessandro and Apollito, and a daughter, Catherine, who will go on to be Queen of France. And he places them very carefully in these different positions. He places Catherine in a marriage alliance with the French.

He places Ippolito into the church as a cardinal, and he makes Alessandro at the age of 19 in 1531 into ruler and then Duke of Florence with Spanish backing. Now, Alessandro is actually quite an interesting case for many people today because there's an increasing view that he was, in fact, the first black head of state in the modern West. his mother may well have been a slave. She was certainly a servant, as far as we can tell from the sources, in one of the Medici households. And from the look of the portraiture, it appears very clear that she was of African heritage and that Alessandra was therefore what we would now call a mixed-race child,

although that terminology wasn't used in a period. Where are the Medici's influence at that time then, Evelyn? Are they really abandoned, do they ever gain as big a foothold? again. So what happens is a whole series of, we go back to the bloodshed, assassinations, attempts to regain republicanism.

It's not time to really go into the complexities of this kind of decade between running up to 1537 when another Cosimo takes charge. It's really by chance that they find somebody who's got the same name as the great heir there.

He's a, I don't even know whether it's a second cousin once removed, but he shares the name of the great founder of the Medici family there. And he's put in power, Cosimo who will be Duke of Florence, Grand Duke of Tuscany there, he's put in power by people like Wichardini who think that they can control this young man, who will be a sort of puppet figure behind which Florence can gain its greatness again. quickly proved wrong there.

And Cosmo sets about transforming the Republic into an autocracy. Robert Black. I just want to just say that we've talked a lot about how the Medici was all the Medici's achievement to gain power in Florence. But I think we have to also realize that it was also the failure of the Florentines that allowed the Medici to do this. Because what happened was that the Florentine aristocracy, could never agree amongst themselves.

They were terribly divided. And then they were also very much divided from the middle classes in Florence. And there was all this tension. So there was this tremendous tension, and it was by no means clear that the Republican restorations of 1494 to 1512

and then 1527 to 1530 would fail. But it was really their failure that allowed the Medici to come in and take over. And it was by no means clear that either Clements, the Seventh or Leo of the 10th, really wanted to establish a preinket bit. This only really occurred in 1530 and 1531 after this, as a last measure, when they figured, well, Florence just cannot govern itself. And in order to protect our

position, we're going to have to establish a prank a bit. I think they did it quite, because they were always very cautious about this. What do you think of the, before I conclude we're asking about, are you all about the legacy of Florence, the remark in the third. man that it was partly the conjunction of the intense politics, often resulting in assassination, attempts and so on, which helped to produce the great art. Do you think there's anything in that, I think there is because the intense competition for power, the intense competition for authority, the early Medici said you needed to control Florence because that was the only way you could

protect your wealth from your enemies there. So you needed to demonstrate in both small-scale and large-scale ways that you were in control. And so you spent money lavishly to do so, because, as Roberts pointed out regularly, it was not inevitable that the Medici would win. But it's interesting the way they spent money, isn't it? They didn't go around not only offering bribes, but building great buildings, bringing great artists, building chapels, as Catherine said, and so on. Catherine. Well, yes, but they were also very famous for these great public entertainments, the jousts, the bullfighting, football in a piazza. Football was a Florentine institution.

Still is. They still play this historical football there. And this public spectacle was also extremely important in keeping the lower classes of Florence engaged and happy with the regime. It's very much a bred and circuses approach. Is it possible to encapsulate the legacy of the legacy, Robert? Well, I think this is a very controversial point among historians today

because on the one hand, there are those, historians who feel that the legacy of the Medici was the death of the Florentine Republic. They have this tremendously powerful Republican heritage in Florence and that what the Medici really did was to destroy and ultimately deliberately to sabotage that and to impose and destroy Florentine liberty. There are other historians who say that, well, the Florentines

really couldn't run the show themselves and that they that it was really, and what the Medici did was bring order, which is to some extent true. I mean, Cosimo and the regime set up from 1537 did bring a kind of political order and greater political tranquility, not complete political tranquil, but greater political tranquility than had had and raised Florence to the status of a second rate, but at least ultimately as good as independent,

power. So I think that, but the greatest heritage, of course, of the Medici, I think, without doubt, must be the intellectual and learned and, of course, artistic heritage. This was, I think, as great patrons of learning and nobody was better, greater patron of learning than the Medici and of the arts. This must be their greatest heritage. Would you like to develop that, Evelyn, and then find Newcastle?

So for me, the great legacy of the Medici is that they made spending money on beautiful things acceptable, not only acceptable but expected. So the way philanthropy works today is the notion that if you have great wealth, you actually owe it to your community to return it by building beautiful buildings, spending money on artistic monuments, certainly was established as a key principle of magnificence by the Medici. And finally, Catherine. And of course, the final legacy of the final legacy of the fact that,

final Medici person, Anna Maria, the last of the line, was to bequeath the art collection to the city with the provisor that it should never leave. And that has made Florence the art treasure it is today. Well, thank you very much. It was getting a quart into a symbol, but thank you very much for the elegant attempt. Catherine Fletcher, Evelyn Welsh, Robert Black. Next week, by happy coincidence, we'll be talking about Plato Symposium. Thanks for listening. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.uk slash radio 4.