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season three

Episode 49: Duke

We leave the Medici papacy behind and look at the life and times of Alessandro de’ Medici, the first Medici de facto ruler of Florence and (possibly) a Black head of state in Renaissance Europe.

Agnolo Bronzino’s portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, dated 1531. Source: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
A portrait by Titian of Ippolito de’ Medici, dressed in a traditional Hungarian costume in honor of his mission as papal legate in Hungary. Dated 1532-1533. Source: Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

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Transcript

Last time we said goodbye to Clement VII. But I want to talk a little more about the impact he and Leo X had on the papacy, for better and for worse. Like I mentioned last time, we shouldn’t blame them, especially Clement for too much. No matter what they did or didn’t do, it’s almost certain no matter what that the papacy would have gone from being a fairly major Italian power with the ability to interfere in broader European politics to an institution with mostly spiritual and moral authority. The Papal States were created when European feudalism was in its childhood, and it seems inevitable that, as feudal political structures gave way to the modern nation-state, the papacy would have to adapt and change too. It definitely didn’t help that over the years more Popes would follow the example of Sixtus IV and Alexander VI and keep pruning off papal lands to create independent fiefdoms for their relatives.

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season three

Episode 48 – The Emperor and His Pope

Pope Clement VII sells his soul to Emperor Charles V to get back Florence. Part of the bargain includes Clement essentially signing off on the death warrant of the Republic of Florence.

After the Sack of Rome, Pope Clement stopped shaving and even trimming his beard as a gesture of mourning for the city of Rome. This portrait of Clement VII in his latter years was painted by Giuliano Bugiardini (c. 1532). Source: Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin.
Giorgio Vasari’s rendition of the Siege of Florence in 1529/1530, painted in 1558. Source: Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
Built to protect the new Medici Duke of Florence from any potential revolts, the building of the Basso Fortress was arguably the most tangible sign of the de facto end of the Republic of Florence. Source: Sailko.
Giulio Clovio’s “An Allegory of Charles V”, depicting all of Charles V’s vanquished rivals chained to his foot (date unknown). From left to right is Sultan Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire, Pope Clement VII, King François I of France, Duke John III of Cleves, Elector Johann of Saxony, and Landgrave Philipp of Hesse. Source: Margaret Aston, Panorama of the Renaissance (New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1997).

Transcript

When we last checked in on Florence’s old new or maybe new old republic, it was struggling. As the months piled up, the situation only got worse. Niccolo Capponi’s policy of reconciliation was a complete failure. Part of the problem is that wartime is a horrible time to build a new government. But I suspect even if Florence wasn’t caught up in an unpopular war there would still be problems. Democracies tend to run badly if most of the people don’t share some of the same basic premises. It wasn’t just a case of the pro-Medici and the anti-Medici. Instead among the anti-Medici factions you also had the radical republicans who were drunk on their own overidealized visions of the republics of ancient Greece and Rome and who despised the religious fanaticism of Savonarola and his followers as much as the pro-Medici camp did, the so-called Wailers who yearned to one day fulfill Savonarola’s plans for a democratic theocracy, the conservatives like Machiavelli who just wanted Florence to go back to the good old days of the Ordinances of Justice, and the moderate republicans, many of whom came from the ranks of the ottimati and wanted to make Florence more like a Venice-style oligarchy. United as they were by their rejection of the Medici regime, these were groups with such fundamentally divergent plans for the future of the city that there was no way they could be in the same room with each other, much less build stable coalitions.

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season three

Episode 47: The Old New Republic

Lorenzo the Magnificent’s granddaughter Clarice triggers a coup in Florence just by berating the man in charge. Meanwhile Pope Clement is driven to hide in a derelict palace in the mountains and receives an unwelcome visitor all the way from England.

A portrait of Pope Clement VII after the Sack of Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1531). Despite beards being unfashionable in Italy among the upper class at the time, Clement VII grew one as a sign of mourning for the Sack of Rome. Source: The Getty Center, Los Angeles, California.
An artist’s rendition of the Battle of Mohács (1526), which triggered the destruction of the independent Kingdom of Hungary and led to Hungary being split between the Ottoman Empire, Austria, and the Principality of Transylvania, along with the Hapsburgs claiming the crowns of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. The image is based on the testimony of a soldier who participated in the battle (1555). Source: Chronicle Commissioned by Johann Jacob Fugger.
A contemporaneous portrait of Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England. Artist unknown (c. 1520). The matter of the annulment of her marriage to King Henry VIII would turn out to be a far bigger issue than Clement VII probably ever realized. Source: Lambeth Palace, London.

Transcript

When Emperor Charles V learned that his unpaid troops had torn apart Rome, he ordered his court to dress in black, as if mourning the death of a member of the imperial family. I have no doubt that Charles was sincere. After all, he was a devout Catholic, and he had put some effort into avoiding this very outcome. However, he was still a ruler, and he had practical reasons to lament this outcome as well. In modern terms, the Sack of Rome was a massive PR disaster for the imperial cause. It galvanized the League of Cognac. The imperial army looked like a pack of heretical barbarians. Even Henry VIII of England, who at this point was still loyal to the Pope, joined the alliance against the emperor.

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season three

Episode 46 – The Sack of Rome

Pope Clement tries once more to loosen Emperor Charles V’s grip on Italy, another revolution in Florence is narrowly avoided through one man’s incompetence, and the stage is set for one of modern history’s most notorious war-time atrocities.

Dirck Volckertsz, “Sack of Rome in 1527 and the Death of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon” from The Victories of Charles V (1555/1556). Source: British Museum, London.
Francisco Javier Amérigo, The Sack of Rome (1884). Source: Victor Balaguer Museum & Library, Vilanova i la Geltrú, Catalonia, Spain.
The Castel Sant’Angelo or the Mausoleum of Hadrian, where Pope Clement VII had to spend a nightmarish month taking shelter with 3,000 Roman civilians during the sack. Source: 0x010c on Wikimedia.

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Transcript

The Florentine Luigi Guicciardini, the brother of the more famous historian Francesco, was an eye witness to one of the darkest chapters in the history of the city of Rome. In his account of what happened to the city, he wrote, “All the sacraments of the modern Church were scorned and vilified as if the city had been captured by Turks or Moors or some other barbarous and infidel enemy.” Another eyewitness, Marino Sanuto, more succinctly wrote in his diary, “’Hell itself was a more beautiful sight to behold.” This was the Sack of Rome of 1527. It was certainly worse than the four times Rome was sacked in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, including the infamous pillaging of the city by Vandals in 410. In those times, the marauders still followed prevailing rules of warfare. Either that or Rome was so depopulated it was little more than a village or a small town. 1527 was something different, more akin to the atrocities we read about in the annals of the 20th century history. In fact, arguably it wasn’t just pillaging at all; it was an outburst of mass rage directed at a civilian population that was allowed to go on for not just days or weeks, but months.   

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season three

Episode 45: The Edge of the Abyss

Clement VII brings back the artistic glories of Renaissance Rome, but disaster for himself, his family, and for Rome looms overhead. 

The Baptism of Constantine I (1517-1524) . It is part of a series of frescos started during the pontificate of Leo X and continued under Clement VII on the life and conversion of Emperor Constantine I by Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Panini. Pope Clement is included in the painting as Pope Sylvester. Source: The Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.
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Transcript

At first Giulio wanted to just use a version of his own name as a papal title, which would have made him Pope Julius III. It also would have kept with the tradition of Renaissance Popes adopting names that invoked the great heroes of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine history, like Alexander, Hadrian, and Leo. However, Clement was instead convinced by his advisors to choose a different papal name. I couldn’t find a source explaining exactly why Pope Clement chose the name that he did. One theory is that he did so to signal that he would be merciful to his enemies like Cardinal Soderini. In fact, despite Soderini’s involvement in the Cardinal Plot against Leo X, Clement did in 1521 allow Soderini to return to Rome, although perhaps it was at least in part a practical decision to stop him from getting up to too much mischief in Florence. Another, more likely theory is that Clement chose the name because at one point in his career climbing up the church hierarchy he was once the priest at the Church of Saint Clement in Rome. Personally I wonder if it might have been meant at least a little to be a sly if elaborate shot at Emperor Charles V, since Pope Clement I was according to legend imprisoned under the orders of the first century Roman Emperor Trajan. Even if it wasn’t intentional, later events would prove the connection to be ironic.

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season three

Episode 44: Interregnum

After Leo X’s sudden death, the Medici are briefly out of power in the papacy. In the meantime, Emperor Charles V changes the landscape of European politics by getting elected as Holy Roman Emperor, and the fate of the Medici family is put in the hands of an orphaned, illegitimate son.

A 1528 portrait of Giulio de’ Medici, Pope Clement VII, by Sebastiano del Piombo. Source: J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.

Transcript

Since I didn’t want to risk adding more to the overstuffed narrative, I did just slide over what I think was one of the most important political events of the sixteenth century: the election of King Charles of Spain as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. It might just seem like icing on the cake from Charles’ point of view. What, being Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, and king of Castile and Aragon wasn’t enough, you had to be Holy Roman Emperor too? But to be fair Charles himself believed that if didn’t gain the imperial title, it would have been a risky situation. After all, the Holy Roman Emperor had historic claims on many of Charles’ titles in the Netherlands, and having an unfriendly emperor would even threaten the Hapsburg ownership of their own heartland, Austria. That definitely would have been the outcome if that emperor also happened to be the king of France. With the encouragement of the Elector of Brandenburg and the Elector of Saxony, King Francois threw his own crown in the ring. France wasn’t part of the Holy Roman Empire, but in the past foreign princes had run for the office and had come very close to claiming it, like the English prince Richard of Cornwall who was elected King of the Germans, but was never actually crowned emperor, in the thirteenth century.

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season three

Episode 43: The Drunken German

While Pope Leo works with the artist Raphael toward the preservation of Roman antiquities and tries to steer Italy between the deadly rocks of France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, a little problem crops up to demand his attention. And that little problem had a name: Martin Luther. 

Michelangelo’s engravings with the tomb of Lorenzo “the Younger” in the New Sacristy at the Church of San Lorenzo, depicting Dusk and Dawn. Source: Romain Rolland, The Life of Michael Angelo (1912).
Michelangelo’s engravings with the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici in the New Sacristy at the Church of San Lorenzo, depicting Day and Night. Source: Romain Rolland, The Life of Michael Angelo (1912).
A contemporaneous portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Date: 1528. Source: Coburg Fortress Gallery.

Transcript

So with that, let’s go back to the year 1505, on a July afternoon…

A university student was returning home after visiting his parents. He found himself caught in the middle of a sudden thunderstorm. Lightning struck the ground near him. On the spot, Luther prayed to Saint Anne, vowing he would give up his studies in law and become a monk if he survived the thunderstorm. The young student did indeed survive and joined an Augustinian monastery. And that university student was Martin Luther.

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season three

Episode 42: The Orphan

A new Medici is born amidst tragedy, Pope Leo struggles with the threats posed by France, Spain, and the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires and a deadly conspiracy close to home, and an obscure monk and university lecturer in Germany starts to inspire a bit of controversy. 

A portrait possibly of Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne, the mother of Catherine de’ Medici and wife of Lorenzo “the Younger.” Date unknown. Source: Uffizi Gallery.

Transcript

The last we saw Pope Leo X he had just betrayed his mentor and predecessor, Pope Julius, by ousting Julius’ nephew Francesco Maria from the duchy of Urbino and giving the duchy instead to Leo’s own nephew Lorenzo. But a few modern historians and Leo’s contemporaries agreed that he had also betrayed Julius by not doing enough to, as Julius would say, drive the barbarians out of Italy. But honestly while taking Urbino from its rightful duke was an undisputable blunder, I don’t think Leo can really be blamed for the rest of his foreign policy. He was stuck between a French rock and an imperial hard place, especially now that Spain and the Holy Roman Empire was practically ruled by the same family.

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season three

Episode 41: The Prince

Pope Leo X goes through his own “annus mirabilis.” Meanwhile the next generation of Medici men come into their own: the wannabe aristocrat, Lorenzo “the Younger”, and the juvenile delinquent turned freelance mercenary, Giovanni of the Black Bands. 

A portrait of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, by Raphael (1518). Note the ostentatious dress in the style of a French nobleman in contrast to the more modest patrician clothing worn by his grandfather Lorenzo the Magnificent and his uncle Giuliano. Source: Private collection.
A portrait depicting Giovanni “of the Black Bands” painted after his death by Francesco de’ Rossi (1548). Source: Soprintendenza Speciale Per Il Polo Museale Fiorentino.

Transcript

1516 was a very bad year for Leo X. To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth II of England centuries later, 1516 was Leo’s annus mirabilis. His brother Giuliano died in March, which was not only a personal loss but a political one for the family, since he seems he might have been the most politically talented and popular member of the family since his father Lorenzo the Magnificent. Then, that summer, a monk named Bonaventura had declared himself the true, “Angelic Pope”, excommunicated the Pope and all his cardinals, and warned that the Ottoman Turks would invade Italy before converting to Christianity thanks to the King of France.

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season three

Episode 40: New World Order

We look at Pope Leo X’s reign, from how he got an edition of a pivotal Jewish text dedicated to him to the elaborate practical joke he engineered involving his pet elephant and an old-fashioned Roman triumph. But Leo also has to face the fact that  the fate of Europe now lays in the hands of three young, ambitious, and powerful monarchs. 

A portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici, duc de Nemours, who was Lorenzo the Magnificent’s youngest son (c. 1515) by Raphael’s workshop. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
King Henry VIII as a young man. Date and artist unknown. Source: National Portrait Gallery, London.
King François I of France (c. 1530) from the workshop of Joos van Cleve. Source: Private collection.
Portrait of Emperor Charles V as a young man by Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (1535). Source: Private collection.

Transcript

When last we left Giovanni de’ Medici, he had exceeded even his father’s wildest ambitions by becoming Pope Leo X. So, from here on out, we’ll start to refer to him as Leo. There’s too many Giovannis in the story of the Medici anyway.

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