Doctora en Filosofia i Lletres
6. Segon acte: el poble i la bogeria prescient
When in 1537, Florentine Duke Alessandro de' Medici (the last of the Medici descending from the main branch of the family) was assassined, his seventeen years old cousin, Cosimo, was elected duke.Cosimo belonged to a younger branch of the Medici by his father, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, who descended from Cosimo il Vecchio's brother Lorenzo il Vecchio. Lorenzo's grandson and Cosimo's grandfather, Giovanni was called Il Popolano because he supported popular elements in Florence against autocratic ambitions of Piero, Lorenzo il Magnifico's son. Giovanni married Caterina Sforza, who bore a son Giovanni (delle Bande Nere), Cosimo's father, who married Maria Salviati, Lorenzo il Magnifico's granddaughter. Thus, the two Medici lines united and Cosimo appears to be not so illegitimate an heir to the throne, after all.[13] The Signoria believed that the young Duke would be easy to manipulate. Its members counted on Cosimo's inexperience as a statesman, hoping for the full restoration of the republican institutions, gravely disturbed by Duke Alessandro's constitutional changes that were in effect after 1532. On the other hand, as Cosimo was Il Popolano's grandson, it was somewhat expected that he would follow his footsteps and defend the Republic.7[14]
Cosimo's unstable position as the new ruler was shaken by the attempt of the Florentine exiles that were the Medici opponents (the so-called fuorusciti) to return to Florence and restore the Republic. In addition, the political authority of the day, Emperor Charles V (the one who bestowed the ducal title on the Medici) did not care to recognize Cosimo as duke on account of his illegitimacy. On the other hand, the agreement reached by Charles V and Clement VII concerning the status of Florence as a vassal city-state upon Alessandro's institution as the Duke of Florence, was not effective any more after Alessandro's death.[15]
Unrecognized and at the mercy of destiny, Cosimo understood the nature of the challenges he faced and responded to them fiercely. He proved worthy of his newly acquired social and political position by defeating the fuorusciti at the Battle of Montemurlo in the same year in which he assumed the power, in 1537.Again, his position as the capo of the state was unstable, particularly in relation to the Florentine Republican past. Although the Medicean rule had been effectively in place since 1530, the Battle of Montemurlo in 1537 had ended uncertainty over Florence's political destiny after Alessandro's assassination. The lingering memories of the Florentine
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republic and surviving republican exiles in Rome mounted a serious challenge to Cosimo's regime. The murderer of Duke Alessandro, Lorenzino, was celebrated as the new Brutus by the republican sympathizers. The exiles in Rome created literary counter-images of Cosimo as a "bloody tyrant". The rumors spread from Rome against Cosimo proved so disturbing for his accomplishments, especially the fact that the fuorusciti were soliciting the Emperor's support. Therefore, in response to these challenges, it was necessary for Duke Cosimo to develop an iconography that could neutralize his negative images. Charles obviously decided to see Cosimo's moves, knowing that both Florentine fractions (the republican one, and the one supporting the Medici) were equally strong. The Battle of Montemurlo represented a veritable turning point in Cosimo's political and military career.[16]
After winning the battle, Cosimo's ambition was to marry Margaret of Austria, Charles' illegitimate daughter and Alessandro's widow. However, this was not in accord with the Emperor's intentions, and, refused by the Emperor now for the second time, Cosimo was advised to look for a bride somewhere else. Nevertheless, he managed to marry into Habsburgs and strengthen his allegiance to the Emperor. He married Eleonora of Toledo, by proxy, in Naples to which he sent his emissaries.[17] However, another issue emerged:
Cosimo was not wealthy enough and his emissaries complained about the bad treatment they suffered at the Spanish court because the gifts they presented to their hosts and future Medici in-laws were not as rich as expected. In addition, Don Pedro of Toledo expressed his concern about the future life of his daughter in simple and poor Florence, which might not offer her suitable loggings.[18]
All these circumstances resulted in Cosimo's strong urge to create both his princely persona and an ambient in which his authority would be unquestionable. His social and political status was much lower than Eleonora's and he understood the need to do everything that was necessary to prove worthy of this alliance. He was minutely involved in the planning of the marriage set to capitalize on the propagandistic potential of the occasion, which offered him the opportunity to construct his own political and social identity by introducing the Medici lineage. This was not a typical genealogy, that emulated Ancient Roman model, but a selection of the members of the house of the Medici, that is, his ancestors Cosimo de' Medici il Vecchio, and Lorenzo il Magnifico, his father condottiere Giovanni delle Bande Nere, as well as the two Medici Popes, Leo X and Clement VII, and his predecessor, his cousin and friend, Alessandro de' Medici. This assembly, to which Cosimo
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belonged, would stand as guarantee to his own greatness, as it could stand worthy of imperial connections and equal to imperial authority. Choosing to represent the instances in the history of the family that most clearly signify its important position within the broader scope of European political history, as well as interests shared by, and the connections between the Medici and the Habsburgs during the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Cosimo represented his family as equal to the Spanish imperial house, and himself as equal to the Emperor.Cosimo's and Eleonora's wedding provided Cosimo with a visual imagery that reflected his status as a ruler of Florence. It was a highly orchestrated affair rich in allegorical representations, or better, symbolic possibilities.[19] Taking an active role in the designs and programme for the festivities, Cosimo even decided upon the number of Eleonora's bridesmaids.8 The most important issue, to start with, was, we believe, Cosimo's intention to set the date of Eleonora's departure from her native Naples on June 11, 1539, the very date of his own birthday and the date of the Battle of Campaldino in 1289, in which the Guelph, papal, party in Florence was secured, against the Ghibelines9 – the political message of which does not need further exploration here, given Cosimo's experience with the Imperial support. Cosimo's feelings towards Charles' authority, as opposed to his predecessor's, Alessandro's, need to exercise gratitude and vassalage,10 are expressed somewhat later, in 1545, in a letter he wrote to one of his ambassadors to the French king Francois I, "[W]e are a ruler who accepts the authority of no one apart from God and, but sole on account of our gratitude for benefits received, the Emperor [Charles V]… to whom we have never paid tribute nor offered vassalage..."11 There was much to be grateful for to the Emperor, in Cosimo's case, as he was acknowledged by Charles V in the end; but the Duke did not recognize the Emperor as his overlord.
Cosimo used the visual language in an ephemeral form, in a public spectacle, whose apparati were designed to negotiate his new political position within the constraints imposed on him (notably the dominant power of the Emperor). He manipulated the images that illustrated the Medici past in order to reconfigure his own subordinate position to the Emperor's – to prove equal, we believe, to the imperial authority and to stress the family's destiny stressed the family's destiny to constantly return to Florence after exiles, and retain its leading role in Florence.