THE ROME TO which Michelangelo returned in 1505 had now taken over from Florence as the leading city of the Renaissance. This was a remarkable transformation, which was only partly assisted by the decline of Florence during the thirteen years since the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Just a century previously Rome had been little more than a medieval town of squalid alleys huddled amidst ancient ruins which were simply beyond the comprehension of most of its inhabitants. Indeed, popular local wisdom had it that the magnificent remains of the Claudia Aqueduct, with its 100-foot-high arches stretching more that forty miles south into the countryside, had been used for bringing olive oil from Naples. On winter nights wolves came down from the hills, howling amidst Rome’s darkened shacks, while the old aristocratic families and cardinals barricaded themselves in their palazzi, living in a style that remained inconceivable beyond their walls. Even so, there had long been sufficient opulence behind closed doors to attract a thriving community of bankers; Giovanni di Bicci and Cosimo de’ Medici both learned their trade here around 1400.
Though Rome remained officially under papal rule, during the fourteenth century the popes themselves (there was often more than one) tended to reside in Avignon or elsewhere. As we have seen, this situation was not resolved until the Council of Constance (1414–18), and it was not until 1420 that the new undisputed pope, Martin V, left Florence to resume permanent papal residence in Rome. The pope installed himself on the far side of the River Tiber in the Castel Sant’Angelo, which had first been constructed as Hadrian’s tomb in AD 135. After Martin V, the succeeding popes gradually began imposing order on the unruly population, and it was said that during this period there were so many rotting bodies of executed criminals hanging from the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo that the smell made the bridge across the Tiber all but impassable. Many of the more powerful cardinals who now took up residence in the city began building themselves increasingly grandiose palaces, often using stones vandalised from the Ancient Roman ruins. The seven hills of the ancient city had long since returned to vineyards and gardens, whilst the Forum was still used for grazing cattle; in a tradition that remained since the glories of Ancient Rome, the city had no industry. Rome now depended on pilgrims and tourists; and the footpads and cut-throats of previous centuries were supplemented by ragged monks and dealers in fake relics, who set up stalls along the wider streets that were now beginning to replace the labyrinthine medieval quarters. Yet such improvements to the landscape were only gradual; when Cosimo de’ Medici’s contemporary, the poet and philosopher Leon Alberti, lived in the city during the 1450s, he counted more than a thousand ruined churches.
Rome’s ascendancy over Florence as the centre of Italian culture is usually marked by the completion in 1498 of Cardinal Raffaele Riario’s magnificent Renaissance palazzo (the Cancelleria), which was funded from the proceeds of a single night’s gambling. The resurgent city of this period, where the exiled Piero the Unfortunate spent much of his last degenerate years, had doubled in population during the previous century to 50,000, equalling that of Florence. Yet beneath the veneer it remained business as usual; 7,000 prostitutes worked in a wide range of bordellos, all of which were required to pay a licence fee that ended up in the papal coffers. These houses and their inmates catered to the needs of the local clergy and the pilgrims who visited from all over Europe (thus ensuring that the so-called French Disease reached parts of Europe which had hitherto remained unaffected). Meanwhile a criminal underclass of similar numbers sought to relieve the populace of any remaining funds – or worse. Despite the continuing campaign to bring civil order to the city, the murder rate was around one hundred each week; many of those responsible were apprehended, though only the destitute ended up dangling from the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo. As Pope Alexander VI astutely observed: ‘Our Lord is not so much interested in the death of sinners, more that they are able to pay for their sins and continue living.’
This was the city in which Lorenzo the Magnificent’s second son, the exiled young Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, would make his home. The chubby, intelligent, but distinctly lazy child who had been educated by Poliziano had retained much of his teacher’s humanist hedonism; and this attitude to life had continued, despite his father’s efforts, even after Giovanni officially took up his cardinal’s red hat. The young Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici was fulfilling a role that may well have been prepared for him some generations previously. Cosimo de’ Medici had realised that Florence would one day tire of the Medici, but had ensured that the family would be remembered long after they had gone into exile, because of the buildings and churches he had erected. But Cosimo had not faced the question of what would actually happen to the Medici if or when they were forced into exile; it was either his son Piero the Gouty or his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who had come to a decision on the matter of the Medici fate. Florence would no longer be their centre of power, and with the decline of the Medici Bank they could no longer rely on money as their source of power – the only answer was to spread their power base and attempt to rise still further in the world. A crucial decision had been reached: instead of serving the Church as bankers, the Medici should now attempt to infiltrate it, and thus attain an even greater source of wealth and power. No record of such thinking survives, but the evidence suggests that those deathbed conversations, when the father passed on his advice to his son and heir, must have included such a strategy.
Lorenzo de’ Medici tried to secure a cardinal’s red hat for his beloved brother Giuliano, but Pope Sixtus IV was too busy filling any available senior posts with members of his own family. Only after Giuliano was murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy did Lorenzo transfer his hopes to his own second son Giovanni, whom he quickly perceived as being the more able of his offspring. Piero may have had good looks and presence, but Giovanni had brains; and though Giovanni was short-sighted, fat and lazy, Lorenzo noticed that he was quite the equal of his athletic older brother when they went riding together.
After Sixtus IV was succeeded in 1484 by the more amenable Innocent VIII, Lorenzo de’ Medici seized his opportunity. From the outset, he shamelessly cultivated Innocent VIII’s friendship, writing him regular cordial letters and sending him barrels of his favourite Tuscan wine. This was of course also part of his peacemaking policy as the ‘needle of the Italian compass’; as long as he could maintain the Milan–Florence–Naples axis, and keep the pope as his friend, peace in Italy was assured. In 1488, Lorenzo’s relationship with Innocent VIII was cemented by the marriage of the pope’s son Franceschetto to Lorenzo’s daughter Maddalena. Meanwhile, Lorenzo had made sure that his son Giovanni took the tonsure – signalling his intended vocation in the Church – at the early age of eight. Lorenzo soon began obtaining rich ecclesiastical benefices for his son, many in France where it was easier to procure such items (though this may also be taken as the first evidence of a secret long-term project involving the Medici family in France, which we will not see coming to fruition until the following century).
The Lyons branch of the Medici Bank was ordered to scour the land for suitable ‘Vacancies’; such posts were held in absentia and brought with them a considerable income, as well as status within the Church. Yet even here there could be the occasional slip-up, for several months after Lorenzo had embarked upon the process of purchasing for Giovanni the archbishopric of Aix-en-Provence, it was suddenly discovered that the aged incumbent was still alive! All this cost money, and there is no doubt that a good part of it came from the Florence exchequer; unbeknown to its citizens, Florence was now funding a Medici future that might not involve the city. Lorenzo was by this stage unable to obtain sufficient funds from elsewhere, for the Medici Bank was already sinking fast, with the liquidation of its branches in Milan (1478), Bruges (1480) and Venice (1481).
Finally in 1489 Lorenzo had managed to persuade Innocent VIII to make his thirteen-year-old son Giovanni a cardinal. Even during these lax times such a youthful appointment was without precedent – so much so that Innocent VIII made Lorenzo promise that this appointment would not be made public until Giovanni was officially installed at the age of sixteen. There followed three long anxious years; Innocent VIII was old and ill – if he died before Giovanni was sixteen, the new pope would certainly annul this exceptional appointment. Then it became clear that Lorenzo himself was dying. However, in the spring of 1492 Giovanni at last came of age, and the dying Lorenzo, now confined to his litter, looked down proudly from the balcony of the Palazzo Medici at the banquet celebrating his son’s appointment.
Immediately afterwards, the sixteen-year-old Cardinal Medici travelled to Rome to take up his appointment. Lorenzo, on his deathbed, wrote a long letter to his son, informing him of the seriousness of his position. His appointment was ‘the greatest achievement of our house’, and he reminded Giovanni that from his powerful position ‘it will not be difficult for you to aid the city and our house’. The youthful Giovanni was advised to remain close to the pope, but without pestering him; and he was to behave himself. Lorenzo was well aware of Giovanni’s character: growing up amidst Lorenzo’s brilliant and entertaining circle, Giovanni had already developed a premature taste for the finer things in life – fine books, fine pictures, fine wine and fine cuisine. Yet this was more than mere precocity: the company of his father’s exceptional companions meant that he had also developed a true appreciation of such things – though at the expense of some more priestly virtues. In Lorenzo’s final letter to Giovanni, he stressed in the strongest possible terms: ‘One rule above all others I urge you to observe most rigorously: Rise early in the morning.’
Lorenzo must have had an inkling that the future of the Medici fortunes now lay with the bright and slothful Giovanni in Rome, rather than with the arrogant and preening Piero, who was to succeed him in Florence, though he cannot have foreseen that disaster would strike so quickly. Months after Lorenzo’s death, Innocent VIII too would be dead, succeeded by the Borgia pope Alexander VI, causing the perceptive young Cardinal Medici to remark: ‘We are in the clutches of a wolf.’ Then Charles VIII marched into Italy, and Cardinal Medici rushed to Florence in an attempt to help his brother Piero, but in vain; they were both exiled, with a price on their heads.
The eighteen-year-old Cardinal Medici realised that it was not wise for him to return to Rome; instead, he embarked on an extended tour of Europe. He could afford such luxury: he now had a range of benefices, including that of the celebrated (and hugely wealthy) Abbey of Monte Cassino. Giovanni’s first visit was to Pisa to see his cousin Giulio, the illegitimate son of Lorenzo’s beloved brother Giuliano, who had been born just weeks before his father’s assassination in Florence Cathedral. Lorenzo had taken the infant Giulio into the Palazzo Medici, where he had been educated with his own sons; and like Giovanni, Giulio had been destined for the Church. The quiet young Giulio and the somnolent, slyly smiling Giovanni had long been close, sharing a sense of humour, as well as a love of learning and the good things of life. Giulio was now completing his education in the university at Pisa. There had been a university at Pisa since medieval times, but this had been considerably revived when Lorenzo the Magnificent had transferred most of the faculties of the University of Florence to Pisa in an attempt to cement the difficult relations between the two cities.
After a brief stay in Pisa, Giovanni left with Giulio for Venice. They then crossed the Alps into northern Europe, where they would spend another five years of travel. For the most part Cardinal Medici and his cousin Giulio travelled as private citizens, rather than as members of the Church, behaving much like any other wealthy young bachelors on a cultural tour. However, this was something of a front – it was what they wanted people, both in Europe and back in Italy, to think they were doing. In fact, their travels were not entirely dedicated to pleasure, and they certainly made sure they donned their Church robes when they visited the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I, who was so impressed by these two bright young churchmen that he gave them letters of recommendation to his son Philip, who was governor of the Low Countries. Cardinal Medici, and his young cousin Giulio, were making important friends who might prove useful political contacts for the future.
Later they would meet Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who owed his many appointments to having been a nephew of the celebrated nepotist Pope Sixtus IV; besides being a cardinal, he was also an archbishop and held no fewer than eight bishoprics. Like his uncle, Cardinal della Rovere had been brought up on the Ligurian coast near Genoa and remained a distinctly rough and ready character; he was stout, but physically tough and virile, and his long residence in Rome had already resulted in syphilis. He had little time for any kind of learning, and believed that a cardinal was better off being well versed in military tactics than in theology. He also enjoyed hunting and displaying his wealth. Such a powerful character had proved an evident threat to Alexander VI, and Cardinal della Rovere had chosen to absent himself from Rome before he was poisoned, or worse. The twenty-year-old Cardinal Medici visited the sixty-year-old Cardinal della Rovere at his estate in Savona on the Gulf of Genoa, and the two of them were soon commiserating about their common exile from Rome – discovering that they both, in their own very separate ways, had a love of beauty. Later they went hunting together, and the older cardinal was unexpectedly impressed at the tubby, short-sighted young cardinal’s fearless ability to outride him.
When Alexander VI crossed swords with Savonarola in 1495, Cardinal Medici made a tactical return to Rome, where he was welcomed by the pope as the enemy of his enemy. Cardinal Medici now settled in Rome, establishing a reputation as an intelligent and good-natured host to a wide social range of artists, humanists and church dignitaries. He did his best to rouse his exiled brother Piero the Unfortunate from his dissipated despair, and also participated in schemes for the Medici return to power in Florence. When Piero died in 1503, Cardinal Medici assumed the leadership of the senior Medici faction, continuing to maintain covert links with Medici sympathisers in Florence. Alexander VI died in the same year, and Cardinal Medici was a member of the conclave to elect the next pope, Pius III, where he witnessed at first hand the factionalism and horse-trading involved in the election of a pope. Cardinal Medici was a little more experienced when a second conclave was called a few months later following the death of Pius III. He made sure that he was openly seen as an enthusiastic supporter of Cardinal della Rovere, who emerged as the successful candidate and succeeded as Pope Julius II. It soon became clear that the powerful but ageing Julius II looked upon young Cardinal Medici as something of a protégé. When news of this growing Medici influence in Rome reached Florence, it was greeted with some suspicion and many began to wonder what precisely the Medici were up to now.