CHAPTER VIII.

COSIMO DE’ MEDICI’S LAST DAYS.

AS the year 1464 approached, Cosimo de’ Medici’s life drew to a close.

He had long suffered from gout, which now became more violent, and

attacked more sensitive parts. Often he could not quit the house for

months together. He had experienced the fulness of joy and of sorrow,

especially in his own family. His brother Lorenzo, his junior by six

years, had always been of one mind with him, had eagerly furthered his

interests and those of his sons in the critical moments of 1433, and

had drawn upon himself the enmity of those in power. He had afterwards

been an active and vigilant administrator of money matters for the

Papal curia, and had rivalled his elder brother in collecting literary

treasures. He was only forty-five years old when he died in the autumn

of 1440, at his villa at Careggi, leaving a son, Piero Francesco, who

at first had a share in the mercantile business of his uncle, then

parted from him, and lived aloof from all political matters in his

native city, superintending the management of his large property. This

Lorenzo was the founder of two lines which both fell into enmity with

the elder branch. One of them ended with the murder of the first duke,

the last illegitimate descendant of Cosimo’s line, while the other

gave to Tuscany one of her most valiant warriors and seven rulers.

Cosimo had two sons by Contessina de’ Bardi, Piero and Giovanni. The

former was born in 1416, and carefully educated. At first there was an

intention of giving him the daughter of the Count of Poppi, Francesco

de Guidi, in marriage. But his father seems to have been fearful of

allying himself with this old noble family, which would have brought

him into connection with the lords of Romagna and Umbria, as well as

with the house of the Roman prefects; connections which might have

injured his position in a democratical community, not to mention the

alliance of the Count of Poppi with the Visconti and Albizzi, which led

to his ruin in 1440.

Piero de’ Medici married Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni,

of a distinguished Florentine family, a woman of extraordinary

endowments, who will be often mentioned in the course of this history.

As Cosimo’s elder son, who was sickly from his earliest youth, seemed

to be incapable of taking his eminent and arduous position in city

and state, the father built all his hopes on the younger son. He lost

him, however, at the age of twenty-two, in the beginning of November

1463, not a year after he had buried his little son Cosimo, whom Maria

Ginevra degli Alessandri had borne to him, and the loss of whom is said

to have broken his father’s heart. The old man wandered inconsolable

through the rooms: ‘This is a large house,’ he lamented, ‘for so small

a family.’ Among those who addressed expressions of sympathy to him

was Pope Pius II. ‘Not the departed one is the loser,’ replied Cosimo;

‘for what we call life is death, and that beyond is the true life; but

who needed him are the losers.’[96] Thus there only remained to him

the family of Piero, who, besides his two sons, had two daughters,

Bianca and Nannina, who, the eldest in her grandfather’s lifetime,

married into two Florentine families, the Pazzi and Rucellai. Besides

his legitimate children, Cosimo had a natural son, Carlo, probably by

Maddalena, a Circassian whom Giovanni Portinari had bought at Venice in

the summer of 1427.[97]

He maintained great reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter

of a century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but he

never assumed the show of his dignity. Many works of art and _virtù_

were to be seen in his house; but in style of living, retinue and

horses, he was modest. The ruler of the Florentine State remained

citizen, agriculturist, and merchant. In his appearance and bearing

there was nothing which distinguished him from others; he was simple,

moderate, accessible, friendly and familiar with the common people. ‘He

understood agriculture thoroughly,’ remarked Vespasiano da Bisticci,

‘and talked about it as if he had never occupied himself with other

matters. He laid out the garden of the brethren of San Marco, which had

been waste land, and created something really beautiful. Thus it was

with his own possessions; he everywhere superintended the planting,

grafted and pruned with his own hand. When residing at Careggi, on

account of a pestilence, he dedicated the hours of the morning to two

worthy employments. Hardly was he up than he went into the vineyard,

where he worked for two hours, just as Pope Boniface IX. did in the

Vigne at the palace of the Vatican. When he returned home he read

the moral writings of Gregory the Great. In the midst of all his

employments he remembered every single plantation on his estates, and

when his peasants came to him he conversed with them about them.’

He was a grave man, temperate in all enjoyments. Players, rioters,

and jugglers found as little favour with him as those who displayed a

luxury unsuited to their position. This, however, did not prevent him

from granting free course at the banquets of the learned men who were

about him, members of the Platonic Academy and others, to the hilarity

and wit which the Florentines of that period were apt to flavour with

licence as well as with Attic salt.

Of games he indulged in chess only, and this rarely, and not till after

dinner. In his latter years he was very silent, and remained several

hours without speaking. When his wife asked him the reason one day, he

replied,’When you remove to your villa, you consider for a fortnight

what you have to see about. Do you think I have not much to think of

when about to exchange this life for another?’ In his speech he was

witty, but cautious, and it was said of him that he liked to give

ambiguous answers. He shrank from boasting, and said that there was a

weed called envy, which must not be watered, but left to wither. But

when he chose he could give sharp answers. When Rinaldo degli Albizzi,

at the time of Visconti’s warlike preparations, on which the exile

fixed his hopes, said to him that the hen was brooding, he answered,

‘It is difficult to brood outside the nest.’ And on the warning of

other exiles, that he ought to take care, for they were awake, he

replied that he believed it, for he must have banished sleep from them.

His remarks were always to the purpose. When Pius II. was arming for

the crusade, he said the Pope was an old man, and was attempting a

youthful feat. He reproved many without using a hard expression. His

counsels in political and personal affairs were always moderate and

prudent. When one of his partisans, a man of small capabilities, was

going to a foreign town as Podestà, and asked him for advice, he only

answered: ‘Dress according to your position, and speak little.’ In

this way he maintained his position and that of the State for so many

years in the midst of difficult circumstances. As has been already

said, there was something cynical in him. Nothing characterises him so

much as the words which he once addressed to an influential man, who,

differing in opinion, quarrelled with him, and complained of Cosimo’s

being in his way. ‘You,’ he said, ‘pursue the infinite; I the finite.

You plant your ladder in the air; I on the ground, in order not to fall

instead of flying. If I am anxious for the honour and advantage of my

house, if I wish that it may retain pre-eminence over yours, there is

nothing in that which is not honourable and just, and no one will blame

me because I prefer my interests to yours. You and I are like two great

dogs, who spring upon one another, but then pause and sniff. As they

both have teeth, each goes his own way. I advise you to look after your

business; I will attend to mine.’

He did not deceive himself as to the difficulties which surrounded him,

or as to the still greater hindrances with which his descendants would

have to contend. The example of the heads of parties who had preceded

him was not lost upon him. He knew, says Vespasian, that he owed his

recall from exile to powerful friends, who did not intend to give up

their position, and that it was not easy to keep on good terms with

them except by temporising and making them believe that they were as

powerful as he. Here he proved his great art. In all that he wished to

carry out he managed to make it appear that it proceeded from others,

not from him. He said that the greatest fault which he had been guilty

of was not having begun to expend money ten years earlier; for now that

he knew the character of his fellow-citizens, he foresaw that nothing

would remain of his family and his house after fifty years except, the

little that he had built; for after his death his descendants would

find themselves in the midst of greater troubles than any that he had

seen. He never spoke ill of others, and was very impatient when any

one did so in his presence. His promises could be relied on, for he

did more than he promised. His immense wealth enabled him to oblige

many. His position was such a one that it was a proverbial expression

to boasters, ‘So you think you are Cosimo de’ Medici?’ From his father

he had inherited a fine property, which he considerably increased by

industry, acuteness, and good fortune. He ruled the money market,

not only in Italy, but throughout Europe. He had banks in all the

western countries, and his experience and the excellent memory which

never failed him, with his strong love of order, enabled him to guide

everything from Florence, which he never quitted after 1438 except to

go to the country. While he watched over his own advancement, all who

were in business connection with him and conducted his banks abroad,

enriched themselves also. Thus it was with the Tornabuoni in Rome,

with the Portinari in Bruges, with the Benci, Sassetti, Spini, &c.

Besides this, numerous citizens had money from him in their possession,

as was revealed after his death. How much he was capable of in

financial affairs was seen when Venice and King Alfonso united against

Florence. By withdrawing credit from them, he forced them to peace,

notwithstanding their superior power. Pope Eugenius IV. mortgaged the

castle of Assisi to him for the considerable sums advanced to him. The

mutual relations into which he brought the finances of the State with

those of his house by advances and repayments, laid the foundation, it

is true, of those evils which assumed the most serious form under his

grandson, when Cosimo’s mercantile insight and success were wanting.

His conscience was not at peace. ‘In the arrangement and administration

of affairs of the city,’ says the honest Vespasiano, with the

straightforward naïveté and conscientiousness which he never lays

aside, even when speaking of a man for whom he has great respect and

admiration, ‘it could not fail that his conscience was loaded with

many things, as is usually the case with those who govern states and

rule others. He perceived that if he wished to preserve himself in his

position and obtain the mercy of God, works of piety were necessary.

As it now appeared to him that a part of his possessions, I know not

how, had been obtained in a doubtful manner, he wished to roll off this

burden from his shoulders, and poured out his heart to Pope Eugenius

IV., who was then in Florence, begging him to tell him how he could

lighten his conscience.’

The building of churches and convents was a principal means of paying

this debt, according to the ideas of the time; Duke Gian Galeazzo,

not to mention a thousand others, built the cathedral of Milan and

the Certosa of Pavia, and the citizen of Florence, whatever his sins

may have been, was certainly no Visconti. But he built, in spite

of dukes and kings, in Florence and out of it. It was his special

passion, and he understood this art. He had always architects around

him; Michelozzi accompanied him into his exile, and Brunellesco was

among his intimate friends. He executed great works in the city, not

to mention his magnificent house, which must have been completed in

1440. We have already spoken of many of these works, and they will be

treated of more in detail subsequently; here they may be enumerated in

succession. San Lorenzo and San Marco are for the greater part due to

him. The Vallombrosan cloister of Sta. Verdiana, founded at the end

of the fourteenth century by Ser Niccolò di Buonagiunta, was restored

by him. In the cloister of Sta. Croce, he built the novitiate, with

the adjoining chapel and choir. He enriched with altars and adornments

many churches. The Canonica of San Lorenzo is said to have cost him

40,000 gold florins, that of San Marco 70,000, and the palace 60,000.

At the foot of the hill of Fiesole he built a church and abbey for

the canons of the Augustinians, whom Pope Eugenius IV. transplanted

thither in 1439; and higher up, not far from the little town, the

church of San Girolamo, on the site where the congregation of the

Jeromites was founded, about the end of the last century, by Carlo, of

the family of the Counts Guidi, where the villa Ricasoli is now to be

seen. The villa at Careggi, in the most beautiful situation, scarcely

two miles from the city, and the favourite residence of himself and

his sons, received its present form from him, as well as the villa now

named after the Mozzi, on the Fiesolan hill, and that of Cafaggiuolo,

in the thickly-wooded country on the slope of the Apennines, on the

road leading to Bologna. He built a Franciscan convent in the midst

of the woods in the neighbourhood of the latter. Nor far from thence

he enlarged the villa of Trebbio, the castellated building of which

reminds us of Cosimo, the first Grand Duke, who resided there in his

youth. In Assisi he enlarged the cloister of St. Francis, and had the

road paved which leads up to the town from the church of Sta. Maria

degli Angeli, lying at the foot of the hill. This church, the large

marble fountain of which he caused to be built by Michelozzo for the

benefit of the pilgrims, still bears his name and arms. The palace in

Milan, presented to him by Francesco Sforza, he caused to be rebuilt by

Michelozzo, and painted by Vicenzo Zoppa and others. He restored the

collegium built by a Florentine cardinal for his countrymen in Paris.

In Jerusalem he erected a pilgrims’ house for the Florentines on the

spot where, according to tradition, the Holy Ghost descended on the

Apostles, and where a building stood, which he restored by appointing

regular payments for its maintenance. He used to say that whatever he

had given to God, he in his balance of accounts had never found Him

to be his debtor. His connection with artists and scholars will be

mentioned when we come to the description of his extraordinary services

to art and his active interest in learning.

Such was Cosimo de’ Medici—certainly, with all his faults, a

remarkable man, who more than anyone contributed to keep alive not only

the forms, but much of the spirit of civil equality and dignity, after

it had become impossible to avoid a party government, leading sooner

or later to the preponderance of one family. A spirit, which lay at

all events in the character of the people, but also in the character

of a race which had sprung from the people, which at last attained to

power, and even in arbitrary times, preserved something of that which

distinguishes it from other princely families. The people, those who

disliked Cosimo not excepted, observed with anxiety his increasing

ill-health. They said to each other that his influential adherents were

infinitely inferior to him in goodness, consideration, and prudence,

and feared that his son would not be able to restrain them. In the

spring of 1464 he caused himself to be brought, with much suffering, to

Careggi, where his wife and son were with him. When Francesco Sforza

heard of his condition, he sent him a skilful physician, who, however,

could effect as little as the others. On July 26, Piero de’ Medici

addressed the following letter to his two sons, who were residing at

Cafaggiuolo:[98] ‘The day before yesterday I gave you news of Cosimo’s

increasing illness, which, as it seems to me, is exhausting his

strength. He himself feels it, so that on Tuesday evening he would have

no one but Monna Contessina and myself in his room. He began to speak

of his own life, then passed to the government of the city, family,

his trade connections, and the state of his property. At last he came

to speak of you, and encouraged me, as you have good intellectual

endowments, to give you a careful education, that you might make many

things easier for me in life. He said two things grieved him—first,

that he had not done so much as he wished to do and might have done,

and that he left me in bad health in the midst of many difficulties. He

had not wished to make a last will even in Giovanni’s lifetime, as he

had always seen us united and affectionate. When God should take him

to Himself, he wished for no pomp at the funeral; he then reminded me

of what he had already said concerning his interment in San Lorenzo.

He said all this so calmly and sensibly that it seemed wonderful to

me, adding that he had lived long, and was content to leave the world

at God’s pleasure. Yesterday morning he rose and had himself fully

dressed, in presence of the priors of San Lorenzo, San Marco, and

the monastery. He confessed to the former, and then had mass said,

repeating the responses with a strong voice. He afterwards pronounced

the Creed, said the Confiteor, and devoutly received the sacrament

after entreating the forgiveness of all. All this strengthened my hope

and confidence in God, and although, according to human feelings, I am

not free from sorrow, I am yet contented, having seen his strength of

soul and pious frame of mind, to see him attain that end to which we

must all come. He felt well yesterday, and also to-day, but at his

advanced age no recovery is to be hoped for. Let the brethren in the

forest (the Franciscans at Cafaggiuolo) pray for him, and distribute

alms at your good pleasure. Pray yourselves to God that He may leave

him to us for a little time, if it be for his good. And take your

example by him; accept your share of toil as God wills while still

young, and become men, for circumstances demand it. But above all,

consider that which may bring you honour and advantage, for the time is

at hand when you must be tried. Live in the fear of God, and hope. I

will let you know how Cosimo is. We expect hourly a doctor from Milan,

but I trust more to God than to men.’

In his memorandum-book Piero de’ Medici wrote a few days later as

follows:[99] ‘On August 1, 1464, about half-past the twenty-second

hour, Cosimo, son of Giovanni, the son of Averardo de’ Medici, departed

this life, after he had been long tortured with pains in the limbs,

although otherwise in health, with the exception of the last month of

his life, when a complaint of the bladder, with some fever, reduced

his strength much. He was 77 (75) years old, a tall and handsome man,

and, excepting the complaints mentioned, of an excellent constitution.

A man of great ability and yet greater kindness, the most respected

and influential citizen, who had long ruled the city, possessed more

confidence than all others, and was beloved by the whole people. No

one can be remembered who stood in greater favour or better repute, or

whose death awakened more general sympathy. This was deservedly the

case, inasmuch as no one had to complain of him, while he promoted

and assisted many; for his great pleasure consisted in well-doing,

not only where relations and friends were concerned, but also in the

case of strangers and even opponents, difficult of belief as this may

appear and hard to carry out. In this way the number of those who

wished him well was always increasing. He was liberal, benevolent,

merciful; his alms were numerous, in behalf of churches and convents,

not merely in town and country, but even in distant lands. On account

of his wisdom he enjoyed the respect and confidence of all the lords

and powers of Italy, and of foreign countries. All honourable offices

in the city were bestowed on him; he would undertake none abroad. The

most honourable embassies fell to him. He enriched many citizens by his

mercantile connections, not to mention the great fortune which he left,

for he was a merchant as skilful as he was successful. He died at our

house in Careggi, after having received all the sacraments of the holy

Church with piety and reverence. He would not make a will, but left

everything at my free disposal. On the following day he was interred

in the church of San Lorenzo, in the vault previously chosen by him,

without pomp of burial, in the presence of the canons and priests of

the aforesaid church, and the regular canons of Fiesole, with neither

more nor fewer tapers than are used at ordinary obsequies, as he had

commanded with his last words, saying, one should give alms during

life, then they were of more use than after death. I did what was my

duty, and gave the orders for alms-giving and Divine worship, as my

books will show.’[100]

Marsilio Ficino, the confidant of the family for four generations, and

witness of Cosimo’s last days, wrote the following to the grandson

of the latter, and his own pupil, Lorenzo, then sixteen years of

age:[101] ‘A man intelligent above all others, pious before God, just

and high-minded towards his fellow-men, moderate in everything that

concerned himself, active in his private affairs, but still more

careful and prudent in public ones. He did not live for himself alone,

but for the service of God and his country. None surpassed him in

humility or magnanimity. More than twelve years I had philosophic

conversations with him, and he was as acute in disputation as he was

wise and strong in action. I owe Plato much, to Cosimo I owe no less.

He showed me in practice those virtues which Plato presented to my

mind. He was as covetous of time as Midas of gold; he measured days

and hours, and complained even of the loss of minutes. After he had

occupied himself with philosophy all his life, and in the midst of the

gravest matters, he devoted himself, after Solon’s example, more than

ever to it in the days when he was passing from darkness to light. For

as you know, who were present shortly before his departure, he still

read with me Plato’s book “On the One Reason of Things and Highest

Good,” as though he would in reality now go to enjoy the good which he

had tasted in conversation.’

The Signoria ordered a commission of ten citizens, Luca Pitti at their

head, to make a proposal as to the manner in which the State could

honour the memory of Cosimo de’ Medici, and express its gratitude.

Donato Acciaiuoli made a speech, in which the determination to grant

him the title of father of his country was announced.[102] In San

Lorenzo, before the high altar, above the place in the crypt where

stands the tomb inscribed with his name, the words may be read on the

marble pavement:

COSMUS MEDICES

HIC SITUS EST

DECRETO PUBLICO

PATER PATRIÆ.

VIXIT ANNOS LXXV. MENSES III.

DIES XX.

_SECOND BOOK._

PIERO DE’ MEDICI.

FIRST YEARS OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT.