INVESTIGATE HE MEDICI FAMILY IN ORDER TO DESCRIBE THE IMPORTANCE OF FLORENCE ITALY AND MEDICI FAMILY IN THE SPREAD OF THE RENAISSANCE
THE MEDICIS AND FLORENCE
During the eventful era of the Renaissance, many families rose to princely power over Italian cities. Most of them did so by force of arms, intrigue, assassination, or subterfuge, and the heads of these families made no attempt to disguise the absolute nature of their rule. The Medici of Florence were a notable exception. The most eminent of all in their princely patronage of art and literature, the Medici rose chiefly by their intelligent use of wealth derived from commerce and banking. For a century they maintained total authority in Florence behind the popular forms of a republic. Giovanni de’ Medici (1360–1429) was the real founder of the wealth and power of the family. His son Cosimo (1389–1464) conducted a vast banking and commercial business through his branch houses in Rome, Venice, Geneva, Brugge, London, and elsewhere. At the same time he ruled Florence by skillfully making certain that his favorites were elected to the chief offices in the city. His position was not unlike that of an American political party boss, who maintains control over a city or state by using all sorts of underhanded tricks and favors without ever taking office. But Cosimo was a generous patron of art and literature, and his palace provided a refuge for Greek scholars exiled by the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–92), the glory of the Medici reached its height. He escaped the fate of his younger brother Giuliano, who in 1478 was stabbed to death at high mass. This was the result of a plot of their Florentine enemies to which Pope Sixtus IV and the archbishop of Pisa were parties. After the assassination a follower of Lorenzo immediately had the archbishop hanged from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Crowds seized other conspirators and tore them limb from limb. Lorenzo forged an alliance with Ferdinand I of Naples and isolated the pope politically.
Lorenzo continued his father’s policy of disguised rule and even excelled him in the magnificence of his patronage of men of letters and artists. Probably the most distinguished of the many talented people he gathered around him was the youthful Michelangelo. Lorenzo himself was a man of learning and a poet of originality, but the subjects he chose for his verses were often scandalous. He was one of the leading statesmen among the Italian princes of his day.
Lorenzo’s influence in Rome made it possible for him to secure the election as cardinal, at the early age of 13, of his second son Giovanni. Later this son became pope, as Leo X (1513–21), and gained fame as one of the most liberal popes in the patronage of the fine arts. The religious revolt of Martin Luther in Germany took place during Leo’s tenure as pope (seeLeo, Popes). Leo’s cousin Giulio also became pope, serving from 1523 through 1534 as Clement VII.
After 1531 the later Medici abandoned the forms of a republic in Florence and assumed the title of duke of Florence. In 1537 Cosimo the Great succeeded to the duchy, annexed Siena to his domains, and received from Pope Pius V the title of grand duke of Tuscany. The Medici continued to rule under this title until 1737, when the family became extinct.
Catherine de’ Medici (1519–89), spelled Médicis in French, was the great-granddaughter of Lorenzo. She became the wife of one French king (Henry II) and the mother of three others—Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. She was ambitious to keep undiminished for her sons the power of the French monarchy. France was torn by religious wars. Catherine intrigued with the Catholic party and with the Huguenots and was chiefly responsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day on Aug. 23–24,
The 20th Century Medicis : The Kennedy Family
WEEBLY ITALIAN CITY-STATES
The Italian city-states were a political phenomenon of small independent states mostly in the central and northern Italian peninsula between the 9th and 15th centuries.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, urban settlements in Italy generally enjoyed a greater continuity than in the rest of western Europe. Many of these towns were survivors of earlier Etruscan and Roman towns which had existed within the Roman Empire. The republican institutions of Rome had also survived. Some feudal lords existed with a servile labour force and huge tracts of land, but by the 11th century, many cities, including Venice, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Siena, Lucca, Cremona and many others, had become large trading metropolises, able to obtain independence from their formal sovereigns.
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