Tag: main narrative

Episode 12: The Founder of the Dynasty

Post author By chad
Post date May 8, 2021
No Comments on Episode 12: The Founder of the Dynasty

Portrait of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (c. 1563) by Cristofano dell’Altissimo. Source: Palazzo-medici.it.

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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Transcript

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.

Tags art, class conflict, economics, giovanni di bicci, main narrative, politics, renaissance

season one

Episode 10: The Duke’s Wife and God’s Banker

Post author By chad
Post date April 17, 2021
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A miniature depicting Valentina Visconti, Duchesse d’Orléans, with the symbols of Milan and the Visconti family, from a copy of Cicero’s De natura deorum, c. 1400. Source: anne-marie.eu.

Around the dawn of the fifteenth century, two developments unfolded that would sooner or later change the future of the Medici family forever. In one, Valentina Visconti enters a miserable marriage with a French royal. In the other, Giovanni de Bicci de’ Medici takes advantage of Europe being split between two and even three rival popes by (allegedly!) bankrolling the church career of a former soldier who hobnobbed with pirates and robbers that eventually sees him become Pope.

Transcript

This time, I’m going to have to zoom out a bit. I do try to keep this from turning into the northern Italy or the History of Florence podcast. But we’re at a point where two events that initially had absolutely nothing to do with the Medici would have ramifications that would completely shape the family’s future.

Tags economics, giovanni di bicci, main narrative, papacy, politics, renaissance

season one

Episode 8: Unholy War

Post author By chad
Post date February 14, 2021

The papal palace at Avignon. Source: about-france.com.

In a time of simmering class tensions and growing exploitation of the poor, Salvestro de’ Medici turns against his conservative comrades and declares he’s on the side of the downtrodden. On his political agenda? Backing an all-out war against the Pope.

Transcript

As you probably expect from living in the 21^st century, all those wages spiking up and workers getting the power to seek employment with different employers didn’t sit well with the rich. So, in the years following the original outbreak of the Black Death, there was a conservative retrenchment.

Tags black death, class conflict, main narrative, medieval, papacy, politics, salvestro de' medici

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.

Tags black death, main narrative, politics, salvestro de' medici, social

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.

Tags class conflict, economics, Guelphs and Ghibellines, main narrative, medieval, politics, social

season zero

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

Post author By chad
Post date September 26, 2020
No Comments on 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.

Tags holy roman empire, main narrative, matilda of tuscany, medieval, papacy