574. The Medici: Curse of the Mad Monk (Part 3)

0:10I announce this good news to the city, that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been. First, glorious in the sight of God and of men And you, O Florence, will be the reformation of all Italy And from here the renewal will begin and spread everywhere For this is the navel of Italy And your councils will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you Second, O Florence, you will have riches beyond number and God will multiply all things for you. And third, you will spread your empire and thus you will have power, both temporal and spiritual. And you will have so many blessings that you will say, we want nothing more.

1:00But if you do not heed what I have told you, then you will have none of it. Stirring stuff from the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, who is addressing the people of Florence. on the 10th of December, 1492. And Dominic, he begins there sounding very much like a late 15th century preacher. And he ends up sounding a little bit like Donald Trump. Everything's going to be great. You're going to have loads of money. Yeah, so much winning. So much winning, bigly. Yeah, right. So this is Savonarola's first appearance on the show. And actually, he sounds like a great man. You know, he's promising more power, more glory, more money, richest beyond number than people have ever known.

1:43Yeah, what's not to like? But anyone who knows anything about Savonarola will know that his prophecies of unlimited success were to end in scenes of fire and torture that even he, with his powers of prediction, could perhaps not have anticipated. So we're going to be looking at Savonarola today, Tom. He's one of the most controversial characters, I think, in Renaissance history, in all Italian history. Some people see him as a saint, as a sort of early Protestant. Some people see him as a Catholic martyr. But do you know who has a very strong opinion about Safonarola? The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.

2:21We both know. So he wrote a book called Monsters. Do you know what he said? He said Safonarola was one of the most evil men who ever lived. He said he presided over an intolerant, sanctimonious, and murderous reign of terror. His very name is a synonym for mad monks and the crimes of theocracy and misguided virtue. I think he sounds great. Well, we're going to find out whether that's actually true. And a spoiler alert, I think the story is a little bit more complicated. Really? Actually, it will amaze you to discover, Tom, I'm a little bit Team Savonarola. Are you? Yeah, that will amaze you. So you think John Lennon's a monster, but Savonarola's a saint.

3:02And Savonarola never laid hands on a woman in anger. And that is the difference between him and John Lennon. But anyway, I think the piquancy of Savonarola's story is that he's always contrasted with the man who precedes him. And that's the character who dominated our last episode. And that is the playboy head of the Medici family, Lorenzo the Magnificent. So Tom, you remember where we were last time? I do. We were in the dying weeks of 1479. We were. So people will remember that Lorenzo, who's 29 years old, has just survived an assassination attempt by the Patsy conspirators at the high altar of Florence Cathedral.

3:40And this had triggered a war with Pope Sixtus IV and his ally, the King of Naples, King Ferrante. And King Ferrante's son, Alfonso, has been fighting his way through Italy towards Florence. And at the beginning of December 1479, Lorenzo made this dramatic decision. He wrote to the Signoria of Florence, the council, and he said, I've decided to sail for Naples immediately and put myself in our enemy's hands. So that's where we ended. Now, what happens next? First of all, all the councillors apparently burst into tears. But they said, you know what, that's fair enough. This is probably the best way to save the Republic.

4:14Go for it. So the next day, Lorenzo sails from the port of Vada. And a few days before Christmas, he arrives in Naples. There, King Ferrante's second son, Federigo, is waiting to greet him on the sort of quayside. And Dominic, would it be fair to say that like so many rulers in the story, Ferrante is a bit of a character? He is a character, Tom. So King Ferrante belongs to the house of Alagon, who have ruled in Naples for a couple of decades. He is your classic kind of Renaissance humanist, which is to say he loves a bit of Latin, but also he is sallow, brooding, ruthless and vindictive. Nice.

4:48We are told by one account that he liked to have his critics and his opponents always close at hand, preferably dead and embalmed, and I quote, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime. So what would he do? He'd have them killed and then have them stuffed? Or what would he do? Yeah. I don't know. I haven't really looked into this, but I think you could easily. Let's imagine another Goalhanger podcast. Let's imagine Willie Dale Rumpel. You could have him killed, have him embalmed, and he could be with you right now when you're recording. Would you not enjoy that? No, I wouldn't want to kill Willy.

5:20I think I'd find that inspirational. Right. I think that's what's going on with King Ferrante. Okay. As a thought, it's a bit odd. That's all I'm saying. Well, Lorenzo actually gets on quite well with King Ferrante. He doesn't find this as unsettling as you do. He's been in secret communication with the Neapolitan court. He knows that King Ferrante is a bit worried about tensions with France in particular. Now we'll come back to this in the next episode. Which are brewing. They are brewing. and he knows that the Neapolitans ultimately would like the war over. They also have a lot in common, him and Ferrante.

5:52Not the embalming, but they like poetry and music. Ferrante was one of the first Italians to import printing technology. He's got a massive library and they both love the classics like you. So this is something you would bond with them about. They love sitting around talking about Ovid or something. I'd enjoy doing that, but I just wouldn't want kind of dead, snuffed people all around me. Right, okay, fair enough. That's all I'm saying. I'm just putting that on the record. Fair enough. Now, actually, Lorenzo cuts a great dash. She spends a lot of money. He buys the freedom when he arrives of the galley slaves on the ship.

6:23He makes a great show of doing this. So basically, he's just being magnificent. Yeah, what a tremendous fellow. He gives those money to poor Neapolitan girls. But actually, and this is an important theme of this episode, he is paying for the trip by mortgaging his country estate in the Mugello for 60 ,000 florins. So his act, his magnificence, well, it is just an act. It's just performative. It's smoke and mirrors. And this is going to run through this story. Anyway, it works. He gets a deal. Not a terribly good deal, I have to say. He has to give up a bit of territory. Florence has to pay a big indemnity.

6:54But he goes back to Florence in the following March. A great hero. There are kind of balls and fireworks, bells ringing. And he tosses out sweetmeats, doesn't he? This seems to be a big thing. Yeah, he's always tossing out sweetmeats. Exactly. In his slightly camp, hey nonny nonny kind of way. Yeah. So now he's come back to Florence and he's the hero of the hour. and he seizes his opportunity. So until now, Lorenzo has acted very much like his grandfather Cosimo, of whom you know I'm a big fan. He has hidden his power beyond a kind of pretense of constitutionalism, very much like Augustus. But now he thinks, you know, Florence is slightly up against it financially and I can't take any chances.

7:35And he calls an emergency assembly and he sets up a new council called the Council of Seventy that gives him basically the power to veto any legislation he doesn't like. It gives him control of Florence's foreign policy. And it basically means that now every single appointment to office, Lorenzo has to approve. And the Council of Seventy, it's a very sinister sounding institution, the kind of thing that would feature in a Jacobean tragedy. Exactly, exactly. So Lorenzo now, something has changed. He sort of still says, oh, I'm just a private citizen. You know, he doesn't hold any office. But in official documents, he is called the first man, the foremost man in the state.

8:18And there's a couple of very telling signs of this. So number one, actually, he's the only man in Florence allowed to carry weapons. And he goes around now with a personal bodyguard of armed mercenaries. And they actually sound like a splendid crew. There's Black Martin. There's Morgante the Giant. And there's also a man who's just called Mutant. So they sound great fun. Very kind of superhero. Yeah. But also, very tellingly, In the Palazzo della Signoria, there had always been sort of busts and stuff of great Roman Republican heroes. But now they are accompanied by kind of roundel portraits of Roman emperors.

8:56And I think that's indicative of a shift that the political culture has changed from one that's very much identified itself with the Roman Republic to one in which the Medici are now thinking of themselves as akin to, you know, the Julio Claudians or something. And isn't Cicero, who had been a great hero of the Republic, kind of rebranded as the man who had foiled the conspiracy of Catiline in the way that Lorenzo had foiled the conspiracy of the Patsy? That's exactly right. I'm just wondering, I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing that Augustus does in his great Temple of Mars, where he counterpoints people from his own family, the Julians, with the Republican heroes.

9:35Oh, that's interesting. Which I assume Lorenzo is aware of. And in one sense, he's kind of probably copying it because Augustus had done it. But of course, in another sense, he is learning from ancient history, isn't he? Yeah, he is. And that idea that classical history provides lessons from which people in Renaissance Italy can profit is one that will be most famously exemplified in the writings of Machiavelli, a Florentine, who at this point, I think, is just approaching his teens. Yes, he's a child at this stage. So a very impressionable age watching this. I mean, it must have had quite an impact on him.

10:19I think you're absolutely right. I think Machiavelli, yeah, he's steeped in that culture, undoubtedly. The one thing I'd say about Lorenzo and Augustus, Augustus, of course, we know from your translation of Suetonius, Tom. Nice bit of advertising there I've done for you. Cheers. Augustus projected an image, didn't he, of modesty. Yes. You know, he eats his cheese, plain clothes and all that kind of thing. Now, Lorenzo does not. Lorenzo projects an image of magnificence. And I think that definitely is a difference. And that reflects the kind of princely culture of 15th century Italy. And we'll come back to that in a second when we talk about art.

10:49There is, I have to say, a dark side to Lorenzo's Florence. And the fact that he's accompanied by a man called Mutant carrying a very large... It's not a good sign, is it? Yeah. So every few years, there are plots uncovered to assassinate him. And we can't tell whether these plots are real or imagined. And basically, if you're on the wrong side of one of these plots, the vengeance is pretty brutal. So there's an account of a hermit in 1480 who was accused of wanting to assassinate Lorenzo. Men said the souls were stripped from his feet, which were then put over the fire and held over the logs until the fat ran.

11:20Then they stood him up and made him walk over coarse, crusted salt so that he died of this. I mean, imagine the excruciating agony. But here's the crucial line. It was never really established whether he had sinned or not. Some said yes and some said no. So it's impossible for us at this distance to know whether this is score settling, whether this is making an example of somebody, whether there really had been a conspiracy. You know, what's the nature of this sort of quite repressive regime? I mean, imagine thinking up that, that kind of torture. Exactly. There is a sort of a sadism to Renaissance Florence that I think is sometimes lost.

11:58As Christopher Hibbert says in his very jolly popular history of this period, most Florentines obviously didn't really care. Quote, they had food, they had exciting public holidays, and they had justice. So bread and circuses. Bread and circuses. Now, they still had enemies. The Pope, Sixtus IV, he loathes Medici. But actually, Lorenzo is lucky throughout his career because so often what's happening in Florence is affected by what's happening elsewhere with actually bigger powers. So in 1480, the Ottomans landed in the south of Italy to Tranto, and there was panic across Italy. Everybody thought, my God, Mehmet the Conqueror, who's still in charge in Constantinople, he's going to add Naples and Rome to Constantinople.

12:40I mean, it's not implausible, right? It's perfectly possible he could do that. It's not. And also, just to say that the atrocities in Tranto, whether they're amplified or not, but the reports are very, very alarming because the Archbishop gets killed in front of his own altar. There's lots of soaring in the cathedral, which gets turned into a mosque. And it's said that 800 people of Otranto are martyred. And this, as we will see over the course of this episode and the next, feeds into a massive mood of apocalyptic panic. Yeah. Kind of prophecies of the end of the world were already swirling around, in which the prospect of the Turks conquering Italy is an absolute staple.

13:19It's all kicking off. Yeah, you're dead right. all this time there is this sort of looming anxiety about the ottoman advance and about the end of the world and a lot of what happens won't make sense unless people keep that at the back of their minds anyway basically because of this the pope says okay fine we're supposed we should make up with florence there's a sort of comical scene where florentine envoys go to rome they apologize but very inaudibly so nobody can hear them and then the pope accepts their apology but he also mutters it so no one can hear it because they're both so eaten up with with mutual loathing so he lifts all the sort of the interdict and stuff that he'd had on florence lorenzo sends some galleys to help against the ottomans but actually now another stroke of luck memet the conqueror dies in 1481 so the ottomans basically all go home to have a little succession crisis and italy is safe and then another great stroke of luck for lorenzo he's gone back to squabbling with the pope but then the pope drops dead unexpectedly the florentines are not sorry at all the florentine envoy in rome writes to lorenzo today at five o 'clock is holiness six just the fourth departed his life may god forgive him and his successor is a guy called innocent the eighth now people who have a low view of the renaissance papacy will be unsurprised to hear that innocent the eighth already had seven children so not so innocent not so innocent two of which he'd somehow managed to legitimize but he's a very everyone says he's actually not a bad guy he's very worldly he's kind of easygoing lorenzo is able to basically win him over by sending him loads of wine and fancy cloth so innocent loves all this he's delighted and as a result lorenzo is able to score two big diplomatic successes first of all he marries his daughter madelena to the pope's son francis ghetto i mean that's amazing isn't it that's something to boast about yeah i've i've married the pope's son who shouldn't exist and uh i mentioned christopher hibbert he's always very good at the pen portraits christopher hibbert he said uh matt elena was a plain sharp featured girl of 16 and franceschetto almost 40 a portly boring man reputed never to have made a single interesting remark in his life so that sounds like a brilliant marriage and then the other thing uh lorenzo again this is if thomas cromwell is listening he'll be loving this lorenzo persuades the Pope to name his second son Giovanni a cardinal.

15:45And in return, he lends him 100 ,000 ducats, which is a massive sum. Giovanni is only 13 years old, but the Pope says, yeah, he sounds great. I'm sure it'll be brilliant. And he names him a cardinal, but he's only allowed to put on the gear when he turns 16. That's something to look forward to, isn't it? Yeah, it is. What 13-year-old doesn't dream of putting on that cardinal's hat? He doesn't dream of that. A red robe. Yeah. So it's good to see that there are still standards in the Catholic Church in the late 15th century. So now you see, because the Cardinal is the Prince of the Church, isn't it?

16:19Lorenzo can say, well, we rank alongside the Princes of Italy. Now, this is, of course, something that Cosimo had not really dreamed of. Cosimo had just dreamed of basically piling up money. But Lorenzo really does fancy himself as the ideal Renaissance Prince. And that's the image that endures today. And do you know what? It would be tempting to say it's all a complete con and a fraud. But Lorenzo clearly does deserve that image. In some ways. I mean, when he goes to the country, he does surround himself with kind of intellectuals and writers and philosophers and things. As Cicero had done. Exactly.

16:52He has this bloke called Angelo Poliziano, who's one of the top scholars of the 15th century, 15th century Florence. He's one of his closest friends. Another really close friend is a philosopher called Pico della Mirandola. He wrote a book called The Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is often described as the kind of great Renaissance manifesto. And he's like Luther, isn't he? That he loves a thesis. Loves a thesis. I think he publishes, is it 900 theses or something? Yeah, 900 theses. Enormous number. And basically, he said, I can reduce all knowledge to 900 theses. And actually, he said, do you know what?

17:28All human knowledge, all philosophy is tending towards a single unified truth. That could be Jewish, the Kabbalah. It could be Arabic stuff. It could be everything. Like, put it all together and it all basically goes towards the same place. Very thought for the day. Yes, exactly. It is. Very ecumenical. Yeah. Ultimately, we're all human. We're all God's children. Yeah, we're all God's children. Now, a lot of people listening to this now are saying, that's lovely. But actually, at the time, a lot of people say, that's demented. That's mad. So he's quite controversial. Anyway, there are these guys.

18:00There are musicians. There are poets. Now, Lorenzo writes his own poetry. I know Tabby's a big fan of Lorenzo's poetry. She said we should definitely mention it. So he writes in Tuscan, not Latin. So like Dante had done and Boccaccio. So he's a fan of Dante and Boccaccio. And this is kind of part of what will make Tuscan become Italian, right? Become the dominant Italian. Exactly. Now, I thought you might like to read some of his poetry, Tom. I've chosen two examples for you. Thank you. Now, one was translated by Britain's poet laureate Ted Hughes in the 1990s. Would you like to read this poem, which I think is quite moving?

18:34How futile every hope is that we have. Our illusory. All our designs. And how cram this world with ignorance. We learn from our master. Grave. So I think that's quite profound. But I think this one is a little bit less profound. This is called The Song of the Peasants. Was this translated by Ted Hughes? No. You can do whatever accent you choose. Can I do it in a hey nony nony way? Do. We've all got cucumbers and big ones too. They may look old and knobbly to you. but they're great for opening up pipes that are closed. Use both hands to pluck them, then expose the top, peeling back the skin. Open wide your mouths and suck them in.

19:12So this is the slightly more bawdy side, I think it's fair to say. Seaside fun. Yeah, seaside postcard fun. All this stuff about big knobbly cucumbers. Brilliant. Yeah. However, much as we might laugh, I was thinking about comparing him with our top statesman. Renaissance prince. Renaissance man Keir Starmer. But Kirstama was interviewed by The Guardian and they said to him, what's your favourite book? And he said, well, I don't have a favourite book, actually. And he didn't have a favourite anything. He had no cultural interests whatsoever. Lorenzo would have had no trouble answering that question because he spent tons of money on the Medici library.

19:45He sent agents to the Ottoman Empire and they brought back 200 Greek books, many of which had been completely unknown. But I mean, just to stick up for Keir Starmer, he's not roasting the feet of hermits over fires and then making them walk on salt. No. So you win some, you lose some. I guess, but I think that would be a price worth paying to have a bibliophile prime minister. Would you? I would. Also, you see, Lorenzo gave a lot of money to universities, to humanities departments. And actually, the humanities are in crisis in Britain. Yeah, we approve of that. They're in crisis because of decades of philistinism in Westminster.

20:21The other thing, actually, so you've got this in common with Lorenzo, but not, I believe, with Keir Starmer. Lorenzo is a passionate collector of art and curios to quote, bronzes, medals, coins, ancient pottery, antique gems, and Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Venetian vases. So that's very much like you. You love a Venetian vase, don't you? I do. Yeah, I really do. I'm torn now. Yeah, I know. It's difficult, isn't it? I don't know whether I want Lorenzo the Magnificent to be prime minister or not. Yeah. I mean, he does blow all the Florentine's money, right? I mean, that's one issue. He does.

20:52We're going to come on to this. So he's remembered as the great Renaissance patron. And you know what? That is wrong. Because actually he commissioned much less art than his grandfather Cosimo and much less art than his cousin, who's confusingly called Lorenzo. So basically, when you go to Florence and you say, oh, this belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici, it's the wrong one. It's usually the other one. Because this other Lorenzo is the bloke who commissioned Botticelli's Primavera Mavera and his Birth of Venus, Botticelli's most famous works, not Lorenzo the Magnificent. But what he is good at, he uses art as part of Florence's soft power.

21:29And basically the way he does that is by pimping out his artists to other Renaissance monarchs. So he sends Botticelli and a guy called Domenico Ghilandallo to do the Sistine Chapel after he's made up with the Pope. And he's a talent spotter, to be fair, because he encourages the next generation of artists, including arguably the two biggest names of all so one of them is an illegitimate boy from tuscany from rural tuscany who was apprenticed to another lorenzo favorite verrocchio and ended up living in the medici palace for a time before going off to milan and this was somebody called leonardo da vinci and the other also from rural tuscany also apprenticed to another medici favorite Ghirlandaio.

22:12This bloke, Lorenzo in 1488, said to Ghirlandaio, I'm setting up a new art school because you recommend talented, promising young pupils. Ghirlandaio said, oh, this bloke's brilliant. And his name was Michelangelo. Well, do you know, Dominic, I reckon that if you're the guy who talent spots Leonardo Michelangelo, I reckon you can claim to be a great patron of Renaissance art. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. Don't you think? I suppose so. You may be not commissioning stuff but you're spotting people exactly like a scout yeah one of those guys who's like a scout from newcastle united who spotted alan shearer or something like that i was thinking more kind of you know a manager in the 60s going into clubs and spotting the beatles or the rolling stones okay fair enough brian epstein yeah whenever in doubt you reach for the beatles uh analogy well i did mention the stones as well on this yeah you did so anyway you can see why foreign courts think of Lorenzo as a worthy peer.

23:05Basically, they see him as like them. He's not just a merchant. He's not just a banker. He's gone beyond anything that Cosimo did. He's the rich ruler of a powerful state and he's treated accordingly. So now here's an interesting thing. I read in lots of books about the Medici that in 1487, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II sent him a menagerie that included a lion and to giraffe but tom moments before this recording you told me that these books were mistaken they are mistaken and i know all about this because lorenzo's giraffe is the single most interesting thing that happens in the entire history of the renaissance i have so much information about the giraffe it's a brilliant story and i wanted essentially to hijack your episode didn't i yeah just kind of go massively off piece and talk about giraffes But you then suggested in a magnificent tactical manoeuvre that actually we do this in a bonus.

24:00Yeah. So that's what we're going to do. And it will be going out if you are a member of the Rest of History Club in two days' time, if you're listening to this when it's come out. That's right. You'll be talking about this giraffe. You'll be talking about Renaissance animals, all of that. And your claim, Tom, I believe, is that this will be the most exciting, riveting, and sensational episode the Rest of History has ever done. If you don't sign up to the Rest of History Club and listen to restofhistory.com, you're mad. Okay, fair enough. So that's the draft. That's coming on Wednesday. Back to Lorenzo.

24:28Machiavelli. Now, you mentioned Machiavelli. Machiavelli's verdict on Lorenzo. So Machiavelli's in his 20s when Lorenzo dies. He said he was loved by fortune and by God. And as a result, all his enterprises came to a successful conclusion. His way of life, his prudence, and his fortune were known and admired by princes far beyond the borders of Italy. And I know this is reckless of me. I think Machiavelli was a fool. I think he was completely wrong. What? Yes. unbelievably Machiavelli is blind and has not seen the realities of politics Tom can you believe that I'm making that claim well while Lorenzo is alive everything goes well right right I mean it's not obvious that things are going to go disastrously he's the kind of the Angela Merkel of Renaissance Italy yes he is that's a very good comparison while he's in power everything looks brilliant the moment he leaves everyone says oh rubbish I want to eat the Tony Blair so basically the whole thing is based on spin and self-promotion and it's built on a mountain of debt.

25:24So unlike his predecessors, Lorenzo has totally and utterly mismanaged the Medici Bank. During his time, the offices in London and Bruges both collapsed because they had lost so much money. So for example, the London office had basically lent money, loads of money to Edward IV. And as we discussed before, Edward IV is the last man you want to lend loads of money to because he's just Elvis in Vegas. Well, generally, English king is called Edward. Yeah, exactly. Because Edward III had brought down a whole load of Florentine banks as well. Exactly. The Lyon branch, that runs into trouble. They have to send people from Italy to sort it out.

25:58The branches in Rome and Naples are actually losing money. And that really should not be happening. And part of the reason for this is that whereas Cosimo had been very good at lending money, Lorenzo is really only good at one thing, which is borrowing it. He basically starts dipping into his cousin's trust funds, which he's meant to be managing. he's their guardian and he's taking tens of thousands of florins from their trust funds and in 1485 they come of age and they say we'd like our money now and he says oh oh i don't actually have it not only that but when they were young he had blackmailed them into lending him money and he had said if you don't lend me like hundreds of thousands of florins i'll never let you have your trust funds i mean he'd behave very poorly they basically file suit against him and he has to pay them off a with land in the Mugello so his country estates but also he has to dip into the Florentine treasury public money to pay these guys off and in her book very caustic take on the Medici Mary Hollingsworth basically says he probably embezzled hundreds of thousands of Florins in public money to cover his debts she says Lorenzo's corruption is a sorry tale of greed and one that rarely makes it into the annals of Medici history.

27:13But I suppose, again, sticking up for Lorenzo, he could have just nicked the money from his cousins and then never paid them back. To that degree, he remains subject to the law. I suppose so, yes. I guess that's the point, isn't it? Florence is nothing like an absolute monarchy. Yeah, he can't just screw money out of people and spend it without there being legal ramifications. No, you're absolutely right. You're right. So it's not quite Vladimir Putin's Russia or something. You know, it's not an autocracy in that sense. Anyway, I think by the end of the 1480s, partly because of all this, you get a real sense of strain.