William Tyler
The Medici: A Renaissance Family

William Tyler - The Medici: A Renaissance Family

- So whenever you’re ready, we are thrilled to have you back. I’m thrilled to be here and I’m thrilled to be on this timescale, actually. This is a great, 5:30 slot is brilliant. So, thanks William.

• My pleasure.

• So whenever you’re ready.

• Well, can I say welcome to everyone that’s joined us. It’s half past five here in Britain on a very, very grim, miserable sort of wintery day. I’m sure it’s better for some of you. And anyhow, wherever you are, whatever the weather is like, this is an hour in which we can indulge our love of history. And I’m talking about the Medicis. Now just mention the name Medici to friends, and they are immediately taken back in their mind’s eye to Renaissance Florence. The Medicis and Renaissance Florence go hand-in-hand. Just mention the name Medici to a banker, and he or she will think immediately of the Medici as one of the earliest of the modern banks established at the end of the 14th century and lasting until the end of the 15th century. Just mention the name Medici to a French friend and they will immediately think of the Queen, Queen Catherine de’ Medici, the wife of Henry II of France, and the mother of three French kings, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, and also the mother-in-law from hell for Mary, Queen of Scots. But a French person may also think of Marie de’ Medici, wife of the very, very interesting French king, Henri IV, the man who said that Paris was worth a mass, an abandoned Protestantism. And he was the mother and he was the, and he, sorry. And and she, that is St. Marie de’ Medici was the mother of Henrietta Maria of France who married King Charles I of England. The Medicis got going up the social ladder, two of them marrying kings of France, a daughter marrying the King of England. Three, three children of Catherine de’ Medici becoming kings of France.

And you mentioned the name Medici to a French or any Catholic priest, and they will think of four popes from the family. Leo the X, Clement the VII, Pius the IV, and Leo the XI. My goodness, producing, producing four popes in one family, and quite an incredible family are the Medici. Ask the Italian who the Medicis are and they will say they were the rulers of Tuscany. As Grand Dukes of Tuscany from 1569 when the Grand Dukedom was formed until it ended in 1737. Mention the name to a member of the British aristocracy and they will perhaps sneeringly reply, “Oh, the Medicis. They came from trade.” And indeed they did, because their first, their first acquisition of money came through the rag trade. That is to say, through textiles. I’m not sure if rag trade is a phrase that people outside of Britain know. It simply means textiles. That’s where their first money came. Ask the family themselves and they will claim to have funded the invention of the piano, to have funded the invention of opera as well as more mundanely, but really very importantly, double-entry bookkeeping. And I’ll say more about double-entry bookkeeping in my second talk next week about banking in the Middle Ages. Double-entry bookkeeping. Absolutely essential in modern banking. The Medicis used their money in the wider field for supporting the arts.

They were the great patrons of the Italian Renaissance. Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael. And so the story goes on. More and more people who were funded for the great art. And Cosimo de’ Medici in the first half of the 16th century, move the offices, that’s the administrative offices of Tuscany, to a building, to a building called the Uffizi Palace. And he established there, as well as the civil service for Tuscany, a small museum. And that museum today is, of course, Uffizi Gallery, the housing of these masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. And when we say Italian Renaissance, I’m sure everyone knows that the European Renaissance began in Italy and it spreads, it spreads northwards to France. It spreads even to this benighted island of Britain. The Renaissance began in Italy and it spread right across Europe and it changed, it changed Europeans forever.

And the Medicis had a major role to play in that. Cosimo de’ Medici, the man who founded Uffizi, is recorded as saying, “All those things have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they’re not only for the honour of God, but likewise for my own remembrance. For 50 years I’ve done nothing else but earn money and spend money. And it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it.” But of course, he wanted his own remembrance. He wanted his name in lights as the man who funded all these artists. Well, they’re one hell of a family, are the Medici. And many people would feel that the word hell was a rather good description as they were to use a kind word, wily. Wily politicians. But perhaps that is not the correct word to use. The correct word to use is perhaps a word that entered the English language for dodginess in political life. They were Machiavellian. And Nicola Machiavelli, who wrote the book “The Prince,” which outlined what we now today understand by Machiavellianism, did so, wrote the book at the request of the Medici family. If anyone was Machiavellian, then they certainly were. And I’m sure people know, just remind you of a definition of Machiavellian in, in English language today. Here is one such definition, “cunning, scheming and unscrupulous, especially in politics.” I think that could apply on both sides of the Atlantic to many of our current politicians, except of course, they weren’t so good at it as the Medici. Machiavellianism, when it works, people don’t worry about.

It’s Machiavellianism when it doesn’t work in the States or in Britain. Here’s another definition, “Machiavellianism connotes political deceit, deviousness and realpolitik.” Realpolitik. This family was deeply political. It was deeply interested in the arts. I mean, genuinely interested. Not just to have their name over the, over the museum portico as it were. But they were genuinely interested. They were genuinely interested in spending money. They are Renaissances princes, even though at their height they have no royal title. Machiavelli who wrote this book at their request was himself, of course, a Florentine born in 1469. He wrote the book between 1513 and 1514. And it was published after his death in 1532 and condemned by the papacy. He dedicated his book… It’s, it’s a slim volume. There it is. There’s a slim, a copied one. It’s a slim volume. And he dedicated it to Lorenzo II de’ Medici. And he dedicated to Lorenzo II because he was out of favour and his dedication is really quite over the top. He’s talk about creeping. This is, this is magnificent creeping. “Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious or in which they see him take most delight once one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes worthy of their greatness. Disarming therefore, to present myself to your magnificence with some testimony of my devotion toward you.”

I mean, for goodness sake, this is laying it on with a trowel “I have not found among my possessions, anything which I hold more dear than or value so much as the knowledge of the actions of great men acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs and a continual study of antiquity, which having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send digested into a little volume to your magnificence.” He goes on for another two pages and finishes by saying, “Take then, your magnificence, this little gift in the spirit which I send it wherein if it be diligently read and considered by you, you will learn my extreme desire that you should attain that greatness, which fortune in your other attributes, promise.” And then the, then the, the critical bit that right at the end, “Now and if your magnificence, on the summit of your greatness, you’ll sometimes turn your eyes to those lower regions, you will see how unmeritedly I suffer a great and continued malignity of fortune.”

In other words, cough up some money for me, says Machiavelli. We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Absolutely none that Lorenzo de’ Medici actually ever read “The Prince.” I think that’s fantastic. He, he all of this guff and when he gives it and, and I guess it was received by Lorenzo, “Oh, thank you so much. I will treasure this.” And as soon as, as soon as Machiavelli is out the room, he chucks it away, and he never reads it. Perhaps you might be cynical like me and say perhaps he didn’t need to read it. After all, he was Machiavellian enough and the book draws upon what the Medicis were. He didn’t need to learn about Machiavellianism. It was Machiavelli who studied him and his family and wrote the book based on them. Now that’s a little bit by way of introduction. I, I need to make two points now. One, I’m not going to talk today about the Medici Bank because I’m going to do that next week when I’m talking about mediaeval banking. Nor am I going to talk about Catherine de’ Medici or the Pope Clement VII who are very important members of the family because Trudy is going to talk to you about that at a later date. But even if I don’t talk about the bank, or Catherine de’ Medici, or Clement VII, it nevertheless, leave me with an enormous amount of material to try and cover in a short talk like this one.

Now, if you’ll just excuse me, because I threw my book away. I didn’t intend to do that little bit of drama, but I need it. Well, I’ve recovered the book and I want to read you this little passage. It just short circuits for those, it’s just a recap. You all know the history of Italy, of that I’m sure. But just to remind ourselves, “Renaissance Italy was not a single country, but a collection of city-states. Most of the land was divided between the cities in Milan, Florence, Naples, and Venice with the papacy at the heart in Rome.” And the papacy owned land, not just the Vatican, but the Papal states, a great chunk of land in the centre of Italy. “The city-states were under the leadership of powerful, dynastic families who also had considerable influence over the papacy.” And the Medicis fit that precisely. Why did they have influence over the papacy? Because of the Medici bank. Because the papacy had to borrow money.

And it hoped to borrow money at low interest. And so it went to the Medici Bank just in the same way as you might go to a bank today to borrow money, so did the papacy go to the Medicis. Mind you, I wouldn’t go to any, personally, I wouldn’t go to any bank run by a Medici. In fact, they opened one in London and there was a problem because when they sent the auditors in from Italy, they discovered that the Italian manager of the London branch had walked off with a very large sum of money. And in the end, the Medicis closed the bank in London. It, it, they just couldn’t control it at that distance. Let me just finish this. “The kings of France and Spain and the German Holy Roman Emperor all had interest and ambitions in Italy and made allegiances and assaults” throughout the Renaissance period.“ And indeed, further. And as I guess you all know, and I’m, I’m teaching grandmothers to suck eggs and grandfathers. It isn’t, it isn’t till the 1860s that Italy becomes one nation. Unified as, as a nation state. It was this extraordinary mixture. And the Medicis played a big part in the Renaissance in trying to keep these powerful kings out. Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.

They tried to keep them out by trying to pull those northern states of Italy into a coalition. If we were using a modern word. And they succeeded because they had money and because they were Machiavellian and because they married their children into various other leading families of the city-states of northern Italy. And they managed to keep it together. But you needed somebody strong. And when the Medicis weren’t strong, then that actually collapsed and they went back to fighting each other. But the Medicis were a force to be reckoned with in the, in the 15th and 16th centuries in Renaissance Italy. I think that point is now well made and you follow that. So, let’s start by, well, the obvious place to start, where did the Medici come from? Well, they came from Tuscany. They came from a little Tuscan village outside of Florence and they moved into Florence in the same way that many people were moving into the towns and cities in the, about in Italy it was early, it was in the 12th century. In England it’s much later. It’s in the sort of 14th century. People were moving from the countryside to the towns. Why? Because there was money to be made in towns. There’s money to be made from trade.

And remember in the Middle Ages, the Mediterranean means exactly that. The Middle Sea, it’s the middle of the world. And so the Italian, northern Italian states could trade east and west and north and south. It was an ideal place to go. And so the Medici family from their village moved into Florence, began as I said, with textiles and moved into banking and lots of other things as well. Not least the alum, A-L-U-M, the alum industry. And I’ll talk about the alum industry next week as well in connection with the banking. They had fingers in every pie, if you like. So, let me introduce you to two of the greatest members of this extraordinary family who rose to political power. The first is Cosimo de’ Medici, and the second is Lorenzo de’ Medici known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Now the problem with the Medicis is they tended to use the same first names. And so it gets very confusing when you read histories. Which Cosimo are you, are you talking about? Which Lorenzo are you talking about? These are the two great ones. Cosimo de’ Medici was born in 1389 and he died in 1464 at the great age for the 15th century of 75. Lorenzo was born in 1449 and died in 1492, aged only 43. But between them, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici dominated the Florence of the 15th century.

There was a gap between the two of them. And the gap was Piero with the unfortunate nickname Piero the Gouty. Nobody ever remembers Piero except that he had gout. Poor man. But these two, Cosimo and Lorenzo, are really not just important to Florence, not just important to Italy, but important in European terms, important perhaps not so much for the politics, although they, they, they were politically important, but because of the art, because of the Renaissance, because they enabled this to flourish and they enabled it to flourish because they were in trade and their trade was banking. And that produced money. You cannot have art without patrons. You cannot have art without people buying it. There needs to be disposable income. And there is disposable income in these Renaissance cities, city-states of Italy. And of course it doesn’t remain in Italy, it comes across, as I said, northern Europe. For example, Henry VII of England at the end of the, at the end of the 15th century, is employing an Italian architect Torrigiano. And his, his tomb in Westminster Abbey is Italian renaissance tomb, because it was built and designed by this Italian who was employed by Henry VII who the Tudors were always nouveau riche royal family.

And as a nouveau riche royal family, they had to have the very latest and the very latest was Italian in the Italian Renaissance. Lorenzo the Magnificent who died in 1492, was followed by two attempts in Florence to establish a republic. One by a very famous priest called Savonarola. And people will have heard of Savonarola. But they failed. And another Cosimo, usually known as Cosimo I, established hereditary monarchy in 1569 as Grand Duke of Tuscany. So, they established themselves finally, not just this aristocracy in a very Republican Florence, but they established themselves as a hereditary monarchy. They made it big time by 1569. So, let’s take a closer look at these two extraordinary members of the family. First of all, Cosimo. While both Cosimo and Lorenzo were effectively rulers of Florence. Now, we have to be careful when I say they were rulers of Florence. You’ll either think of them like kings, like the King of England or the King of France. They were not kings. You might think of them, and sometimes it’s written like that, and it’s wrong, as primus inter pares, the first among equals. As such as the Prime Minister in Britain and Australia. Primus inter pares in the Cabinet. No they weren’t that. They kept behind the scenes, behind the chair. They pulled the strings of the politicians. They weren’t openly ruling, but in fact, they were ruling. And how did they exercise that power then? Well, pretty, pretty cleverly. By use of money.

All the money they’ve made in their banks, they using that money. And so maybe there’s a project which benefits the Medici family. And they may need the votes in, we’ll call it a council or a parliament. It was called in Florence, a Signoria. But it’s like a parliament. It and, and they need the votes in that. So, they buy the votes. They buy the votes. Do you think Putin has studied Machiavelli’s "The Prince?” I bet he has. So, Napoleon did. Napoleon actually kept a small copy in, in his, well not in his pocket, in his pocket, but with him on his campaigns. So, the Medicis weren’t, Cosimo and Lorenzo at the beginning, were ruling Florence, but behind the scenes, pulling the strings, making money work for them, buying votes. I’ve written here money equals power. And the Medicis were the most powerful people in Florence because they were the richest people in Florence. But what is interesting about the Medici is they were not anti-intellectual. Cosimo himself, it’s said, spent over 600,000 gold florins as a patron of various artists. Today that would be roughly equivalent to 500 million American dollars. He funded, for example, Donatello’s David. And I suppose if you go onto a television quiz programme and you’re asked the question, “Why is Donatello’s David such an important work of art?” Well, the answer is it was the first male nude, since the ancient world of Greece and Rome. And if you are given that question in some competition in Australia, Israel, South Africa, America, or Britain, and you win a large sum of money, remember who told you the answer. I shall expect a cut. His power was real because money speaks.

He was, for a time, banned from, banished from Florence. Why was he banished? Well, what a surprise. He was arrested for election fraud. Doesn’t this sound terribly… doesn’t this sound terribly 21st century? If you sat listening to this talk in Washington or London. He was thrown out of Florence in 1433 on charges of electoral fraud. But he didn’t need to worry because he went to Padua and he went to Venice and most importantly, he went to Rome to meet the Pope. Because the rulers in Padua and in Venice, the Doges in Venice, and the Pope in Rome, were all clients of the Medici bank. And the last thing they want is for the Medici bank to fail, because if it fails, they lose their money. And his exile doesn’t last long, less than a year. And he’s back in Florence in 1434 at the head of an army. And basically, the Medicis rule in Florence, they rule in inverted commas, for 300 years. He had… Let’s expand that story a little bit. He had been tried and found guilty of election fraud, but he was in addition found guilty of making profit from a war, a war between Tuscany, Florence, and Lucca, another Italian city-state. And he was making a profit out of… everyone knows you can make profits out of war. And it is said he was accused of lengthening the war, refusing to make peace because he was making too much money out of it. In a book on the Medicis, it’s quite a heavy book called the, heavy in two ways, “The Family Medici” And I put on my blog this book along with others about the Medici.

This one’s by Mary Hollingsworth. And Mary Hollingsworth writes of Cosimo going into exile. This, “His journey to exile in Venice had more in common,” she writes, “with a triumphal progress than an enforced deportation. ‘I reached Modena, where the governor met me and presented me with gifts on behalf of his Lord,’ Cosimo said in his diary. Cosimo arrived in Venice and he was received ‘like an ambassador, not like an exile.’ Cosimo visited the Doge of Venice who embraced him warmly and greatly lamented his misfortune, adding, ‘I’m hardly able to describe the friendly affection which all these citizens have extended to him and to all our house.’” And I bet the Doge said privately afterwards, “And, and is my money safe?” “Cosimo intended to use the period of exile well. In fact, it would soon be evidenced,” says Mary Hollingsworth, “that the shrewd politician had engineered in his exile, his own advantage. Thanks to his foresight, most of his wealth was safe. He had the goodwill of the Venetian Republic and above all he had the support of the Pope.”

So, nothing changes, does it? This is the Pandora box that’s just opened on both sides of the Atlantic today. He squirrelled his money away. It wasn’t in Florence after all, it’s in Padua, it’s in Venice, and it’s in Rome. So he can say to the Doge, “No, your money’s quite safe, because most of it’s here.” It’s, it’s nothing changes, does it, in this world? Not really. Power is power. Money is power. It’s not what you know, but who you know. And who you know in terms of money means bankers and the Medicis are themselves the bankers, they’re not employ, well, they employ people, but they themselves are doing the job. They’ve moved their cash out of Florence. In the end, he returns to Florence because they need him. Because it’s the Florentines that need his money. The Medicis hold onto power. What it must have been like in the Florence of the 15th century to meet Cosimo must have been fantastic. I can’t, who would, thinking about who he might be today, a rather, a rather less, what shall I say? A rather less boorish version of Putin, probably. And don’t say he’s like Macron or Trump or Johnson. He’s far, far superior to that in terms of being a politician, let alone anyone else. No, he is more like Putin, I think. Putin with.. Putin, with, with manners.

Putin with a, a, a dash of je ne sais quoi. If you were doing an MA course in history, I think your question might well be, “Compare Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici with Putin.” Pope Pius II said of Cosimo, “Political questions are settled in his house. The man he chooses holds office. He it is who decides peace and war, he is king in all but name.” And then his grandson is Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent. What would you give to be given a nickname like that? Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was arguably the greatest Medici of them all. It was him, he who kept the northern league of Italian city-states together to see off the challenges from Vienna, from Paris, from Madrid, from Naples. But none of that really counts. His greatest achievement was he gave Florence the Golden Age, the Golden Age of the Renaissance, which gives us Florence today. And gives Florentine as a, as a basis for the spread of that Renaissance art and Renaissance thinking. Because the Renaissance isn’t, of course only about art, it gives rise to a whole range of ideas. After all, Machiavelli is not an artist.

Dante, at the beginning of the Renaissance, the great writer. And then of course, people begin to think for themselves, which gives rise to the challenge, of the Pope and the Catholic church and the rise of Protestantism. Also linked, of course, with growing trade and banking. Because as we shall see, next week, banking moves from Italy to northern Europe, to England, to the Netherlands, to Protestant countries. In 1471, Lorenzo the Magnificent made a calculation. He’s a banker, after all he, he likes figures. And he calculated that his family had spent 663,000 florins. The word florin itself, of course, comes from the city of Florence. That’s where our word florin comes from. 663,000 florins. The equivalent of 460 million American dollars today on charity, buildings, and taxes between 1434 and 1471. And he wrote in his diary, “I do not regret this, for though money, many would consider it better to have a part of that sum in their purse, I consider it doing me a great honour to our state. And I think the money was well expended and I’m well pleased.” There’s more to this family than just the accretion of power and wealth. They use their wealth. This is a very 19th century view of capitalism.

Either you make money and you give money. Perhaps not so much a 21st century view of capitalism, nor there’s another big essay topic there about the difference between 21st century America, Britain, the liberal West and the 19th century or if you like, with Florence in the 15th century. And Lorenzo ruled like Cosimo, his grandfather, not directly, but behind the scenes, bribing, buying votes. And you might say, well, that’s very undemocratic. Well, they, they wouldn’t have thought in democratic terms. If you pushed them, they would’ve been arguing that they were doing it for the good of the city and they were seeking good government. And so they were backing people they thought would provide good government. And if, if there’s a side effect of that, the family was to do all right, well, so be it. Their outlook is very different. We mustn’t judge them by the criteria of today, perhaps. They weren’t always popular. And indeed, in 1478 when Lorenzo and his brother were in the cathedral praying at a service, there was an attempt on their lives and his brother Giuliano was actually killed.

Whereas he escaped with just a blow by a knife to his neck. He managed to get out of it. And when he announced to the public that he just escaped death because of a plot against him, a plot in which there was an Archbishop of Pisa involved and the Archbishop had been backed by the Pope. Why would they want to get rid of a Medici? Because they owe him money. And the story of mediaeval banking is if you owe your bankers money, get shot of them. And that of course is the Jewish story of banking in the Middle Ages. And here in England, the story of the Blood libel. Because if we can get the Jews out, then we won’t be forced to repay all the debts we owe. And so it is here with the Pope backing the Archbishop in a plot to murder him during a service in the cathedral. Well, Lorenzo, and this shows his popularity, Lorenzo turned the populous, the mob if you like, in Florence, loose. And they went and they lynched and murdered the Archbishop. Well, good on them, I say. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say. But the interesting thing is that the mob, the ordinary people supported the Medici. And why? Because the Medici had opened hospitals and schools and had put money into their city.

So, they were in that sense, popular. They were in that sense, almost democratic because they turned the demos, the people, on those who wanted to replace the Medici. And those who wanted to replace the Medici would have been different. I don’t doubt it. But the papacy was so annoyed at the murder of the Archbishop and the failure of their plot against the Medici, that they seized all the assets of the Medici in Rome. They excommunicated Lorenzo himself, they excommunicated the entire government of Florence, and they put Florence under an interdict. Now that’s quite difficult because that meant you couldn’t marry, you couldn’t baptise, and with the prospect of hell, if you died without receiving last unction. All of this was very serious in the 15th century. But the Florentines took no notice. And then the Pope made a military alliance with the King of Naples. And the King of Naples’ son led an invasion of Florence and Florence couldn’t get any support from neighbouring states. And so, Lorenzo had to resort to diplomacy. And he personally went to Naples and negotiated peace. And they threw him into prison. However, ultimately he did negotiate a peace. And when he came back, his status, his standing had risen enormously. This is a man who had delivered peace, had been thrown into prison for his efforts on behalf of Florence. Nothing could stop him really now.

He still didn’t take par in his own name, but his influence was now unassailable. No one could challenge the Medici. And he began to open up further trade, particularly eastwards to the Ottoman Empire. Let me again remind you that these northern Italian states, Venice, Florence, all of them had this, Genoa, had this link to the east, a link to the west across the Mediterranean, linked northwest to Austria and links northwestwards to France. They are covering, they’re the centre of the world in the 15th century. Of course, all of that is going to change. It’s going to change in 1492. It changes in 1492 because Columbus sales across the Atlantic and the world changes and banking changes. As I shall say next week, Europe didn’t have enough silver and certainly not enough gold. And now silver and gold are there for the taking in Central and South America. And that floods into Europe. And no longer is the Mediterranean the centre of the world. The English had reached the Gold Coast of Africa, for gold, of course, in the reign of Edward IV, the last Lancastrian King before Richard III and the end of the dynasty. And the English were crossing the sea shortly, or indeed with Cabot, himself an Italian. were crossing the sea to North America and were going across the world by the end of the 16th century. The English are everywhere.

But so are the Dutch and the French. It shifted to the Atlantic seaboard nations and away from the Mediterranean. And Italy descends into a sort of, well, it’s among the strange country at that point, not one country, remember? It’s still all these different countries. Still fought over, of course, by Spain, by France. I’m sure lots of you been to Palermo, been to the Central Square Palermo in Sicily, and it’s surrounded by kings of Spain. I, I thought, I mean, I knew it was there, but when I first saw it for real, I thought, my goodness, this is Madrid. This isn’t Palermo, this is Madrid. This isn’t Italy, this is Spain. Well, Cosimo I, the great-great grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, became Duke of Florence in 1537 and in 1569, Grand Duke of Tuscany. And not just royalty, but this is the Europe of the 16th century. And so he is an absolute monarch, an absolute monarch. Power rests only with this one man, this Medici. They had long given up the idea of a parliament that’s genuinely elected, even if they pay people to vote the way they want. All of that’s gone. They now rule in an authoritarian way, no different than France, no different than Russia or Spain. This is an authoritarian regime.

And the cultural, and the cultural explosion of the Renaissance dies off. It dies off. And Italy is a backwater. And in the end, the Medici rulers ended with a man called Gian Gastone in 1737. The greater mighty Medici family ended in a whimper. He had no male heirs. And the great powers of Europe had been plotting what to do with Florence and with Tuscany when he finally died. And they sorted out the future of Tuscany without asking a single Tuscan, a single Italian of what to do. This is a book on the Medici by an Italian Franco Cesati. And he writes this, “Gian Gastone was 52 when he took his father’s place as grand Duke. His culture, intelligence, and charm had long vanished. He had grown old before his time, his sharp intellect and curiosity replaced by a melancholy veiled in sarcasm. He passed days on end, shrouded in smoke and alcohol, and bordered on a truly precarious state of health. Grossly obese, he was afflicted by an illness, probably diabetes, that reduced him to a state of near blindness. He no longer tried to hide his homosexual tastes and his court was populated with a harem of well-paid street boys.” And the great powers of Europe discuss, what do we do?

What do we do with Tuscany? Outside of Tuscany, Cesati writes, “The great European powers continued to quarrel over the succession of Tuscany. In 1728, a mild illness suffered by the Grand Duke gave rise to hopes his death was imminent. And the emperor in Vienna released an edict demanding that the citizens of Tuscany submit to the Austrians once he was dead.” But he didn’t die. But as as Cesati writes, “He almost never pulled himself out of bed. And many witnesses described him as a man who’d lost all sense of personal dignity. Even his hygienic conditions were deplorable. And finally, on the 9th of July, 1737, the last Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, expired in his pigsty of a bed to the general indifference of his subjects. By now, Florence was completely peripheral in the European chess match. The capitals that mattered lay elsewhere. London, Amsterdam, Paris. For the city of Dante and Brunelleschi, the present held only a bittersweet nostalgia for its glorious centuries past.” The great powers decided two years before Gian Gastone’s death that the Grand Duchy of Tuscany should go to Francis of Lorraine, who was betrothed to marry the heir to the Austrian empire, Maria Theresa. And so Tuscany finds itself embraced. Perhaps that’s not the right word. Captured by the Holy Roman Empire, later to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s lost its independence, but it has long since lost its greatness. Its power, it was over. The Medicis enter history along with the great Florentine age. But their legacy, their legacy endures.

As I began by saying, everyone has heard of the Medici. They’re like the Borgias. People have heard of these great Italian families. Mary Hollingsworth in her book on the Family Medici, towards the end of her book writes this, “The death of Grand Duke Gian Gastone in 1737 was not quite the end of the Medici story. Although his sister, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici could not, despite her father’s machinations, inherit the Grand Ducal throne.” Why not? Because it had the Salic law. The Salic law means that a woman cannot inherit. “She was nevertheless the sole heir to the magnificent collections of paintings, sculptures, books, jewels, and other valuables amassed by the family over the centuries. When she died in 1743, she bequeathed this priceless accumulation to the new Grand Duke, Francis of Lorraine, the husband of the Empress Maria Theresa on the condition that none of it should ever leave Florence. The Medici may have beggered the city by their greed. But this bequested much into reverse its economic stagnation because by the end of the 18th century, Florence was one of the high spots of the grand tour that was considered de rigueur for a young European aristocrat’s education.”

So, in England, we’re having, I’m having, I’m having afternoon tea with Wendy and we’re talking, and Wendy says to me, “Oh, William, when is your son going on his grand tour? He’s 18. Surely you’ve arranged it by now?” And I say, “Well, yes, we’re saying that next spring, I think, Wendy.” And Wendy says, “Well, where is he going, William?” Probably my first answer is, “Well, they’re going to make,” because he always went with the tutor. The tutor was sent not so much for educational purposes, but for moral purposes to make sure that the young, well, we won’t go there. And I would say, “Well, yes, they’re going to go to Florence.” Florence became the place to go as Florence is a place to go today. Florence became the centre of something new, you could say, of a European tourist industry. Now of a world tourist industry. And like many things in society, it began, that is to say tourism and holidays, with the aristocracy and came down until any of us can get on an aeroplane and fly to Florence tomorrow.

Well, if it wasn’t for Covid, and enjoy, and enjoy. But the very last Medici, Anna Maria Luisa, left as her legacy, the art, the sculptures, the books, the jewels. We can enjoy them and marvel at them and think what this family had achieved. Let me just finish this quotation. “By the end of the 18th century then Florence was one of the high spots, the grand tour. Above all, the Medici myth went on to become a central pillar of the city’s reputation as the cultural capital of Europe visited by the millions to see what the Baedeker Guide described around 1900 as "an amazing profusion of treasures of art, such as no other locality possesses.” And that was the Medici’s lasting gift. That was the Medici’s lasting gift to Europe and to the world. The Italian Renaissance. Da Vinci. Da Vinci. One of the greatest men that’s ever lived. Machiavelli, who enables us to understand the politics of the 21st century. The wonderful statue of David. It, it, it just goes on and on and on. It gives us an insight into beauty as well as an insight into politics. And Italy has to wait a long time to be awakened from its slumber. Florence and the rest of Italy. They’re awakened from slumber by a little man who was almost born Italian, but his island Corsica had moved from Italian possession to French possession just before his birth. And he of course was Napoleon Bonaparte. And when he takes his grande armee into Italy at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, he sets in motion a move that 60 years later is the lead to Italian unification. But that, as they say ladies and gentlemen, is a story for another day. Thank you very much indeed for listening. Judy, there’s probably people wanting to ask questions and things.

• [Judy] I can see that they are, if you want to go through them, William?

• Yes. What have I got here?

Q&A and Comments:

It’s all, they’re all answering your question, Wendy, about the phrase about the copies. Yes.

Q:Now, somebody said here, “Weren’t they the ones who made the Jews secondary in the money lending process? Also in the U.S., the rat trade associated with Jews in New York as it is here in Britain? In London?”

A: No, it’s not, it’s not a bad expression in Britain. There’s, I know there’s differences. It’s a difference of how we interpret the language. Language changes between the two. Yes, I’m going to talk about money. Your very clever question about money lending because it’s not just money lending, it’s banking. And there, there are differences and it is right. You’re are absolutely right. The Jews were first into it and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s complicated. It’s a very interesting, it all depends upon how Jews and Christians interpret two verses in the Book of Deuteronomy. And I’ll bring you that next week. I didn’t put a biography of Machiavelli on my website. I’ll, I’ll try and put one on.

Q: Oh, that’s a, that’s an important question. “Were the women in the Medici family well-educated?”

A: And the answer is yes, very much so. The Renaissance, that’s a really that, now that is a fascinating question because the Renaissance is important because we’re not talking about the general population in Europe as the general population. The peasants of Europe, whether male or female are illiterate in the main. But there is a change at the top of society. And women are well-educated, not just aristocratic women, but business women.

That is to say the wives and daughters of, let me tell you two stories. One, when we first started adult literacy training in adult education in Britain, I was working in Lancashire and I ran the first adult literacy classes in early 1970s in a town called Lytham St Annes, which is just outside Blackpool. Most people know Blackpool. It’s, it’s a gaudy place. It’s a holiday. It’s, it’s over the top. It’s a sort of British equivalent rather less, less jolly perhaps than Las Vegas. But I had a man turn up in a Rolls Royce, and he was hesitant at the entrance to the college. And so I went to ask him, “Can I help you?” I said. And he said, “I’ve come,” and he was very hesitant, so I guessed he’d come for adult literacy, which was being advertised a lot at the time. And I said, “Have you come for English?” trying to be, you know, careful. And he said, “Oh yes, I have.” And I got to know him quite well. Had coffee and stuff with him, and he was very rich. He made his money on the so-called Golden Mile out of slot machines at Blackpool. And I said, “Look, you, you, you own a Rolls Royce. You, you’ve got lots and lots of money. Why do you want to read and write?” And he said, “Well, I need, I need to do the accounts because the wife’s gone and got herself pregnant,” as though that had nothing to do with him. “And so she can’t do the accounts.” I said, “Well, you are stupid, naive.” I was quite young at the time. I said, “Well, surely you could employ an accountant?” He said, “Oh, I do. It’s not for that set of books. It’s the other set of books the accountant doesn’t see that I have to look at.” And in a sense that, that women did the books and they were doing the books in the Renaissance period. I come from the city of Bristol in, in England, and lots of women ran big merchant companies in Bristol. You were always okay as a woman provided you didn’t marry because if you married all your property immediately became the property of your new husband. So, if your first husband had died, you are left a widow, you can run the company, but if you marry, the whole lot goes up. So, you have to make do with the milkman or something and, and then you, then you are fine, you can run it.

But the point is, these women, middle class business women, aristocratic women, were very well-educated. The change comes for the working class, first men and then women largely through Protestantism, because Protestantism says you have to read the Bible for yourself so that you make your peace with God as an individual. And so people learn to read in order to read the Bible. But once they learnt to read, they read everything else. In 17th century London, it is said that the sale of pornography went through the roof because every, there’s the clergy teaching you to read and you are expected to read the Bible. And instead of which, you are buying and reading, pornography. It was ever thus, it was ever thus. So yes, you are right that, that women, that the role of women is changing. It’s really interesting.

Oh, don’t, don’t worry about my pronunciation. I’m like Churchill, I pronounce, I pronounce everything in, in a, in a very anglophone way. So don’t, don’t, don’t worry about that.

No, there wasn’t a medical connection with Medici as far as I’m aware.

Oh, I, I love it when someone asks a question and then somebody else answers it. That’s fantastic. Thank you very much, Steven, for answering a question there.

Yes, that’s a very good point, Jane says. Yeah, I think you may be right about Putin. He certainly seems to have invited the injunction to be ideally both loved and feared. Yeah, that’s that well done. I think you get a gold star for that.

No, somebody said, why were the Jews vilified for lending money at interest? No, they weren’t vilified for lending money at interest. They were vilified when people couldn’t pay the interest back. That’s the point. Because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s theologically complicated, both from a Jewish side and a Christian side. I will explain that, but they, the Jews were not vilified by Christians for lending with interest. They were vilified because if you vilified them and you banned them, then you didn’t have to pay what you owed them. It, it’s, it’s, it’s about money. Yeah. But yeah, basically the Christians said, I, I don’t know. My bank in Britain is called the National Westminster. And I get like all of you, you get, you read online your accounts, and there’s always a line which says “administrative charge” or whatever. Now that’s the way the Christians got away with it. And if you wanted to know what, how much to charge as an administrative charge, you asked the question, how much interest are the Jews at the moment charging in Bristol? I think they’re charging two and a half percent. Oh, are they? Right. Well then we were, our administrative charge will be two and a half percent. It’s the same thing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s all, it’s all financial double dealing.

Thank you. And a nice thanks. You’re very nice. Some people said thanks to see me back. Yeah. I’m pleased to be back.

Ah, that’s a very good point from Judith. The Accademia Platonica during Lorenzo el Magnifico was a great influence on Renaissance thinking in disseminating the antique writers. Yes. I, I obviously, I can’t talk about the whole of the Renaissance, but you’re absolutely right. It’s access to the works of Greece and Rome, not least with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, releasing a lot of material around the, around Europe. It, it, it’s, it’s the… what it does is enable people to think. It’s a huge event in world history as a renaissance.

Relationships between Medicis and Borgias. I can’t really go into that in, in a short space of time. It’s, it’s basically the relationships between the two cities and it’s the relationships which sometimes is in terms of, of family relationships.

Oh, one that, that was, people put nice things, I’m, I’m trying to find something that’s critical. Can’t somebody, “I thought you were dreadful.” Where? Oh, where’s that? No, I’m sorry.

Q: Oh, Michael, that’s an interesting thought. I’ve never heard that. “Many years ago,” says Michael, “I was told that two-thirds of the world’s art treasures reside in Italy. Is this correct?”

A: Well, probably the answer is no, because that was probably a European view and a view today would be that there are art treasures in Africa, in China, in Japan. But if you were talking about Europe, I don’t know, that’s probably, and you would have, you would have to define art treasures. But, but that’s being pedantic. Of course, Italy has an enormous amount of art treasures, but I, but two-thirds of the world’s art, I, I think we’d be in trouble with the wider globe of today.

Oh, I looked up the, this is Lawrence, I looked up the equivalent there. Their palace cost, it corresponds 12 million pounds. Well, when you do translate it into modern money, interestingly, you come up with figures which the rich today would be spending on some of these things. And so it, it’s, it’s much of a muchness. Oh, I’m talking about the exhibition at the Met. Yeah. Oh, I like that.

Oh, and, and it’s in French, Karen. Plus chansons. Yeah, absolutely. Gutenberg’s printing of course makes an enormous difference. And printing is the big development as the internet has been the big development in our lifetimes. Printing made all sorts of things possible, not least for individuals, talking about Christianity, to have copies of their own Bibles. Yeah. But also pornography and the rest of it. The Medicis were originally Jewish. I, I, I don’t think that’s actually true. I can’t, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to claim them. I’m, I’m trying.

Q: What was the lingua franca in Europe at the time?

A: Latin. If, if, if people wrote to each other, they wrote in Latin. And so if you take England in the 17th century, Milton was the Latin secretary in Cromwell’s government. You, you, you had someone who… yeah, always in Latin. Queen Elizabeth as an in, in her 70th year met the Venetian ambassador, and she spoke to him in Latin and she said, “Oh, I haven’t forgotten my…” She was “Oh, I haven’t forgotten my old Latin.” Of course she hadn’t. She was fluent. The, the Venetian ambassador was less impressed though because she wore decolletage. She was coming out. And at the age, well, he’d said it was not a pretty sight. One can imagine.

Q: How did they move their money from city to city?

A: Oh, well, that’s, yeah, we’ll come to that next week. Oh, yes. There were always illegitimacies in the, in the Medici family. One of them, Alessandro de’ Medici, who ruled in Florence, was actually partly black because he was illegitimate, but his mother was a black servant in his father Medici’s household. They don’t really seem to have been particularly racist about, oddly, they seem more concerned by his illegitimacy than they were by his colour. Yeah, things change.

And I think probably, have I got any more? I think I’ve come pretty well to the end of those questions. Yes.

Q: Did Savonarola clash with the Medici?

A: Yes, absolutely. Now that’s a good story. The Savonarola story is well worth reading. In one, any of the books I’ve recommended on the Medici and get that.

Hello, Wendy, I think I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve talked you all to a standstill, I think.

• William, thank you very, very much for a brilliant, brilliant presentation. I agree that there’s so much to cover in such a short period of time.

• Yes.

• I’m, I’m, I’m wondering if we could extend it. Well, I’ll talk to you, I’ll talk to Trudy offline. I’m actually meeting her tonight and we can discuss it, but I’ll say-

• Well, she’s going to be talking about Catherine de’ Medici and Clement VII-

• Right.

• and I’m going to be talking about the Medici Bank, and also the alum trade which people perhaps don’t know about, which is absolutely fascinating.

• Brilliant. Okay. Well, we look forward to that. Thank you very much.

• Thank you very much.

• Take care. Thanks a lot.

• Bye everyone.

• Bye-Bye everyone.