We close out Season 1, “The Early Medici”, with a look at the life and death of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, whose descendants would become the branch of the family we usually mean when we talk about the Medici. Not only is he the first prominent member of the family, however, he also founded the dynasty in the sense that he started the tradition of sponsoring forward-thinking artists, writers, and architects and in how his apparent reluctance to be a public figure actually inspired a formula for political success that would carry his descendants to greater heights than even his more ambitious forebears could have imagined.
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While I talked about how Giovanni de Bicci dei Medici reaped the benefits from his relationship with the sketchy soldier turned rival pope John XXIII, the rest of the Medici family was not doing so well. The family remained committed to the populist cause. Unfortunately, the conservatives also remained firmly in power since the fall of Salvestro de’ Medici. As a result, various Medici along with members of other populist families were persecuted by the government, either barred from political office or exiled from the city. So, while we can’t know what his true political beliefs were, by making himself a low-key ally of the conservatives, Vieri de’ Medici was truly and literally saving himself and his family. Giovanni de Bicci would not follow in his cousin and fairy godfather’s footsteps. However, he would find his own savvy way of surviving the political whirlwind.
The Medici Podcast 