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season one

Episode 7: Apocalypse

In the spring of 1348, the Black Death reaches Florence, devastating its population but also clearing new avenues for the non-rich. In the aftermath, a moderately affluent landowner, Salvestro de’ Medici, embarks on a political career. Just how far can Salvestro make it, between siding with the conservative establishment against his own family’s populist sympathies and the antics of his violently unstable brothers?

Titled The Holy Trinity (c. 1427), this is a fresco by Masaccio that lies in the Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The realistic depiction of human remains is characteristic of the art trends that emerged during the half century following the Black Death.
The routes taken by the Black Death around the West. From D. Cesana, O.J. Benedictow, and R. Bianucci, The Origin and Early Spread of the Black Death in Italy from here.

Transcript

Let’s start the story of one of the most catastrophic and decisive events in the history of Florence and the Medici family about 4,000 miles away from Florence, at a small cottage on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul [Izek-Kul] in modern-day Kyrgyzstan [Kergizstan]. There lived a woman named Magnu-Kelka and her husband Kutluk. We know very little about them except for two things, thanks to their grave inscriptions. They were Nestorian Christians, a sect of Christianity that developed in Syria and spread as far eastward as China. The other thing we know is that they died in 1339, very early victims of what we know as the Black Death.

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season one

Episode 6: King Walt

A fresco of St. Anne and the expulsion of Walter of Brienne, today in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Facing famine, plague, an unending war, and an economic recession, the Florentines resort to handing the keys over to a French nobleman with a glamorous but mostly empty title. Meanwhile the Medici, although still lurking in the shadows from our point of view, manage to establish themselves as populists during the chaos and violence to come.

Transcript

So I’ll fess up. The title of this episode is a bit of a flight of fancy. There never was a King Walter of Tuscany, although not from a lack of trying on Walter’s part. Walter started out as a signore of Florence, but he made a big push to become the lord of Florence. Quite possibly, his goal was to establish his own hereditary domain in Tuscany. Instead, Walter was sent packing, and Florence would never again experiment with inviting some foreigner to become signore.

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season one

Episode 5: Boom Town

A picture of the Mugello Valley in Tuscany. Source: Christian Lorenz

Sometime before the dawn of the fourteenth century, a family named the Medici moved from a small village in the Mugello Valley in the Apennines to the bustling city of Florence. Eventually, they became successful bankers and one member was elected to the republic’s top office. They also jumped right into the city’s latest violent class and factional civil war. 

Transcript

Once upon a time, there was a courageous knight named Averardo. He fought well for Emperor Charlemagne, freeing Italy from the tyranny of the Lombards. While traveling through the Mugello Valley, he caught word of a giant who was terrorizing the people who lived there. Averardo challenged this Goliath to one-on-one combat. The giant tried to brain Averardo with his mace, but he lifted his golden shield at the pivotal moment, holding the shield so strongly that the mace shattered against it. However, it left the shield dented with the iron balls off the mace. Even with his shield damaged, however, Averardo was able to overpower and kill the cruel giant. Impressed by his feats, Charlemagne himself granted Averardo the right to use the dented shield, iron balls and all, as his family insignia. With that, Averardo graciously accepted the invitation of the people he liberated to settle in the valley. There, his descendants became known as the Medici family.

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season zero

Episode 4: Republic of Guilds

With Florence free of foreign interference (for once), a medieval “class traitor” spearheaded reforms that severely weakened the nobility’s grip on the government and gave a lot of formal power to the city’s merchant and artisan guilds. In this episode, I delve into the nuts and bolts of how this guild regime operated. Also, I talk about whether or not we can talk about Florence as part of an “Italian nation”, even though a unified Italian nation state was still about 600 years from being born. 

Transcript

So the last time we checked in on the Florentines, they were finally free of the foreign control of the Holy Roman Emperors and Charles of Anjou. The feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines was finally over by 1267, with the Ghibelline cause lost for good with the downfall of the Hohenstauffen dynasty of Holy Roman Emperors. Well, at least, lost for good in retrospect. Not surprisingly, by 1300, the Guelphs split into two brand-new factions, the White Guelphs, who opposed papal influence, and the Black Guelphs, who supported the Pope, which provided a new excuse for infighting among the nobility.

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season zero

Episode 3: Gang War

Starting out as an ill-advised prank at a party, the feud between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines in Florence forever changed the city’s history. It would wrap Florence up in the struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, eventually toppling the city’s aristocratic republic and creating something rather new in its place, the Primo Popolo.

A map of Italy around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Source: Muir’s Historical Atlas via Fordham University’s Medieval History Sourcebook.
The Florentine Guelf flag, which became the official flag of the City of Florence.
The Bargello, formerly the Palazzo del Popolo. Source: VisitFlorence.com.

Transcript

Let’s go back in time to a humble little village called Campi, which is today a municipality in the Florentine metro area but was in the twelfth century six miles outside Florence. There two of the most powerful noble families in Florence, the Uberti and the Buondelmonti, were present to celebrate the knighting of a young nobleman. The Buondelmonti and the Uberti were rivals with their own networks of allies among the various noble families, many of whom were present, so tensions were high.  During the banquet, a jester, either on his own initiative or at someone’s malicious suggestion, grabbed a plate of food that Uberto dell’Infangati was just about to dig into. This caused a fight to break out, during which Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, who wasn’t even involved in the original altercation, stabbed Oddo Arrighi.

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Tangent Episodes

Tangent Episode #1: The Further Adventures of Liutprand of Cremona

In our first tangent episode, we spend some time with Liutprand of Cremona, everyone’s favorite caustic bishop from the Early Middle Ages. Join us for his account of Queen Willa’s disastrous love affair with a well-endowed priest and his ill-fated visit to Constantinople in the time of the Macedonian dynasty. 

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season zero

Episode 2: From the Grand Countess to the Revolt of the Communes

Matilda of Tuscany, also known as “The Grand Countess”, helped weaken the Holy Roman Empire’s grip on northern Italy even further. However, it would be the plucky, self-governing cities of northern Italy who would ultimately give a bloody nose to one of the greatest emperors western Europe ever saw and inaugurate the age of the Italian city-states. We delve into how a European economic boom helped make all this possible, plus some juicy gossip on Matilda’s unlucky love life. 

The theme music is “La Disperata”, composed by Vincenzo Ruffo (ca. 1510-1587) and performed by Jon Sayles.

Canossa Castle, the hereditary estate of Matilda of Tuscany where Emperor Heinrich IV entreated Matilda and Pope Gregory VII.
Emperor Heinrich IV pleading with Matilda of Tuscany. From Donizo’s Life of Matilda (early 12th century).
A map detailing the members of the Lombard Leagues. From Wikipedia.
An artist’s portrayal of the Battle of Legnano (May 29, 1176). Amos Cassioli, Battaglia di Legnano (1860).
Map of northern Italy. Source unknown.

Transcript

In 1052, at the age of only nine, Matilda of Canossa became Margravine of Tuscany, a title referring to the ruler of an imperial borderland. This was what Tuscany had become. You can see it in the map if you go to the site’s main page, but just to explain here, to the northeast was another imperial fiefdom, the  March of Verona and Aquiela, and to the northwest was Lombardy. Named for the now long extinct kingdom of the Lombards, it was technically under the direct control of the Holy Roman Emperors, who had claimed the Iron Crown of the Lombards (By the way, the Iron Crown wasn’t just some hardcore name; according to legend, one part of the crown was an iron band said to be forged from an iron nail used to crucify Jesus). Anyway, Lombardy was run by imperial representatives, who we’ll talk about more later.

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season zero

Episode 1: A Shattered Kingdom

In our inaugural episode and the first part of our prelude season, we look at how northern Italy went from being a single kingdom to a region full of small, rival states, a cutthroat environment in which families like the Medici would nonetheless thrive in. Join us as we look at how urban prosperity, a series of invasions, and a scandalous teenage pope all played a part in making northern Italy a shattered and divided kingdom under the weak sovereignty of a faraway emperor.  

King Totila of the Ostrogoths besieging Florence during the sixth-century Gothic War. From Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica (early 1300s).
Emperor Otto I accepting the submission of the just deposed King Berengar II of Italy. From The Chronicle of Bishop Otto of Freising (c. 1200)
A map of Italy circa 1154, more or less after most of the political changes discussed in this episode. Courtesy of undevicesimus whose work can be seen here.

Transcript

In the fall of 476, an honored prisoner arrived at a seaside fortress on the Bay of Naples, today called the Castel del’Ouvo, or in English, Egg Castle. The prisoner is well guarded, even though he’s only 16 years old, and he may have walked into his new home while dressed in silk robes. What he felt in that moment, we cannot say.

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prelude

Episode 0: Why The Medici?

In this no-frills introductory episode, I explain why I want to do a podcast on a family, rather than a nation, a time period, or topic. Also, I explain why the Medici undoubtedly played a role in the modern Western world. 

A still existing engraving of the Medici coat of arms in Florence.