Cosimo de' Medici: Patron of Early Renaissance Art and Usury Fears, Monografías, Ensayos de Historia

¡Descarga Cosimo de' Medici: Patron of Early Renaissance Art and Usury Fears y más Monografías, Ensayos en PDF de Historia solo en Docsity! TO WHAT EXTENT WAS FEAR OF THE RELIGIOUS REPERCUSSIONS OF USURY COSIMO DE MEDICI’S PRINCIPAL MOTIVE FOR HIS COMMISSION OF THE REPARATIONS OF THE MONASTERY OF SAN MARCO? Victoria Verdeguer Pastor Index 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………... 3 2. 14th and 15th Century Florence and the Power of the Medici…………… 5 3. Usury in the 15th Century…………………………………………………... 7 4. Cosimo, il vecchio, di Giovanni de’ Medici………………………………… 9 5. The Monastery of Saint Marco…………………………………………….. 11 6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………... 18 7. Bibliography………………………………………………………………… 19 a. Books…………………………………………………………………. 19 b. Articles……………………………………………………………….. 19 c. Documentaries………………………………………………………. 19 d. Academic Journals……………………………………………….…. 20 e. Websites……………………………………………………………… 20 14th and 15th Century Florence and the Power of the Medici In order to understand the research question, one must firstly be situated in the location at the time period that will be discussed. Starting in the late 14th century, the city of Florence, located in the Italian region of Tuscany, “was increasingly taking on the profile of a city-state obliged to venture beyond its original and legitimate confines” (Chittolini 17) and was ambitious to become a great city-state of Italy. According to historian Pedro García Martín, shortly before the Renaissance began, there were many important religious disputes all over the country that could have prevented the development of the Renaissance era. For instance, one of them was during the 12th and 13th centuries, between the Guelphs, who supported the Papacy, against the Imperial Ghibellines, who, as their name suggests, supported the Holy Roman Empire since both institutions were at conflict at the time. However, even the opposition between these two parties, which persisted until the 15th century did not prevent “the first glimpses of high culture, from Giotto's frescoes to Boccaccio's Decameron, from the Gothic Cathedral of Santa María, which will finish off Brunelleschi's dome, to Dante's Divine Comedy” (García 55). Great pieces of literature, the substitution of traditional religious depictions in art in exchange for classical mythology, and monumental building projects all took place through the conflictive internal political climate of Italy. It was during this time, according to James Hankins, that Florence “exercised more power than any other time in history… The Florentines were riding high, and dreams of empire were in the air” (qtd. in Chittolini 19). Such an ambitious city needed a strong government in order to maintain order. Florence was a republic, but not a republic as we may think of today. Its constitution merely served to limit the power of the nobility and to ensure that no one could have complete political control over the government, and only a small number of people were permitted to vote. The Signoria was the ruling council of the city, which was elected by the gonfaloniere, a papal official who bore the standard of the Church, who was selected by the Signoria every two months (García 56). “Below were the figures of potestà, in charge of the administration of justice, and of the capitano del popolo, who, in theory, watched over the abuses of the powerful. A Council of Gonfalonieri advised on matters of war and a Council of Good Men did so on matters of peace. In extraordinary circumstances, power was assumed by a Balìa, a sovereign assembly that exercised a kind of provisional dictatorship” (García 56). This information is highly important because the Medici were one of the most influential members of the Signoria and they had gathered a colossal amount of power during the mid 1400s. “The ducal power of the Medici, with all its attributes of full sovereignty and power, was still defined by the substitution (subregato) of the “duke of Florence and Sienna for the aforementioned cities, which are among the most important in Italy” This indeed was the title borne by the Medici until the eighteenth century” (Chittolini 29). The family had a powerful hold on Florence and, by geographical and economical consequence, on the Papal States. This meant that the Medici could use their power to have someone elected as Pope and then have him name the Medicis the managers of the Papal States’ wealth, as they did for Baltassare Cossa. “With the help of the avid banker Giovanni de’ Medici (who financed the 10,000 ducats necessary for the procedure), he managed to acquire the papacy in 1402” (Ot), and adopted the name of John XXIII. Even after their slight decline after Cosimo’s death in 1464, the Medici had pulled every trick to consolidate their power economically as well as politically and it is even said that “if the Medici had tried to seize absolute power by force… they could have done so” (Ewart 187) if it would not have caused a great discontent within the city. Usury in the 15th Century The Oxford English Dictionary defines a usurer in 1410 as “one who charges an excessive rate of interest”, and, although it was not a part of the Seven Deadly Sins, it was still a highly important sin and crime. In The Divine Comedy, Dante describes usurers in the seventh ring of hell and how “the pain was bursting from their eyes; their hands went scurrying up and down to give protection here from the flames, there from the burning sands” (Dante 224-225). Dante mentioned the usurer’s hand movements specifically because usurers do not work or build anything. Instead, they gained their wealth by doing nothing, hence, their hands are always active in Hell. Usury was outlawed in all countries under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church given that “the worst way to use money is to bring it into any sort of association with usury, which was generally stated to be evil” (Jenkins 162) since, as Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, says, usury “offends against the goodness of God” (Graham-Dixon 0:05:54 - 0:06:01). Yet, this was the way the Medici gained their wealth. Giovani di Bicci de’ Medici, the first of the wealthy Medici line, obtained his wealth through wool and silk trading between the late 1300s and early 1400s with another branch of the family, Vieri de Cambio, who was the only Medici in the trade and banking business at the time (Terenzi 2016). Due to his profession, the family line was in constant threat of being branded usurers. To avoid this issue, they would patronage and commission works of art for the Church in order to increase their popularity and public image, since that aspect “was important in the case of the rich man who supported the churches and monasteries in the quarter of the city in which he lived, as, for example, Palla Strozzi and Niccolò da Uzzano” (Jenkins 164), two other Renaissance politicians, had done. Out of fear of being branded usurers, many wealthy families found themselves obligated to finance building projects on religious buildings as it says, in Book of Leviticus, to “take not usury of [somebody] nor Cosimo’s place in the changing of this practice was the spread of his reputation for generosity. This emerges from two letters from Venice appealing to him for money for building” (Jenkins 164). A religious group called the Confraternity of the Florentines wrote to Cosimo and Lorenzo in 1437 petitioning the brothers for money to build a chapel in Frari, Venice. It was no secret that the brothers were prone to spend great sums ‘in nonore dj dio’ (in honor of God). The chapel was finished in 1443 and to this day it is unknown if it had actually been commissioned by the Medicis or not, even though all evidence points to it. This is just one example of Cosimo’s unabashed generosity. “Cosimo was a political genius who turned the Medici into the most powerful family in Florence, but he also knew that the city was a Republic - in name at least - where everybody was supposed to be equal, so he dressed in the plainest clothes and even rode a donkey instead of a horse” (Graham-Dixon 00:12:15 - 00:12:30). Cosimo did everything within his power to present a humbled figure before the Florentine crowd so as to be absolved of his sin in their eyes. The banker was insistent on restoring his family to their former glory and he knew that in order to do so, he had to have the people of Florence by his side. “Cosimo, like all rulers who wish to be absolute, made it his aim to equalize as far as possible those whom he hoped to make his subjects” (Ewart 141). In order to do so, he would have had to destroy the distinction between the Grandi, the upper class, and the Popolani, the lower class, but the existence of the Grandi “was too convenient for the purpose of political proscriptions” (Ewart 141). Instead he opted to convert most of the Grandi into Popolani, breaking up the higher social class and making the newly made Popolani wholly dependent on him (Ewart 142). “It was natural that Cosimo, paterfamilias of the Medici lineage, numbering twenty-seven households in 1427, should extend his patriarchal protection and promotion of his kinsmen to include amici (friends or allies) and vinici (neighbors)” (Kent 222). This in turn led to a trustworthy Medici circle made up mostly of the city’s ruling members and Cosimo as their leader (Kent 222). In addition, Cosimo surrounded himself with what he denominated as “new men”, who were used to suppress the families who had been in power for a long time and had enjoyed a monopoly of government power, and at the same time they would fill in the vacant spaces left by the families demoted by Cosimo. The “new men” were completely and utterly dependent on Cosimo if they wished for advancement, as Cosimo said, “two yards of red cloth are enough to make a citizen” (Ewart 142). These men, which Cosimo had picked well, “made him independent of the upper classes for officials, and, possessing a hereditary hatred against those who had so long oppressed them, they were willing to execute any scheme for the suppression of Cosimo’s rivals” (Ewart 142). This also made him very popular among the lower classes, “whom it was his object to conciliate” (Ewart 143), because he was offering common men a way to rise in life as his father had done. He managed to do this by having shifted the power of the previously mentioned Balìa towards him, which he also used “to bring the control of superior criminal justice into the hands of his own party, a matter of great disturbance in the disturbed state of the city” (Ewart 145), from the Podestà, the chief magistrate of the city at the time. This was achieved because the Podestà had lost much of his reputation within the Balìa due to his commute of some rebels’ death sentences to life imprisonment. He was dismissed and Cosimo’s party took over the post. By the 1440s, Cosimo was the man with the most power in Florence. He was quite explicitly a political genius. The Monastery of Saint Marco The banker’s public image and endless commissions were not all carried out simply for the trust and support of the people of Florence. Raised a devout Christian, the banker was ever fearful of his eternal soul and did everything he could to rid the stain of usury from his family name. One way that usury was pardoned in the era was through charitable donations to the Holy Roman Church. Traditionally, these were in the forms of frescos or a single sculpture; however, Cosimo’s dread was such that he commissioned for a whole entire monastery to be built, the Monastery of San Marco. “This was a completely unprecedented act of private patronage. It seems that, as far as Cosimo, il vecchio, was concerned, when it came to the state of his eternal soul, money really was no object” (Graham-Dixon 00:13:10 - 00:13:22). Although some of the dates of the buildings known to have been commissioned by Cosimo are still disputed, it has been proven that “his first large work in Florence was certainly the convent of Saint Marco, begun in 1436” (Jenkins 164) and the reparations were designed by the famous architect, and a favorite of the Medicis, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, and it took two years to complete. “In the 1430s, the Pope promised Cosimo redemption if he would pay for its construction. A heaven-sent opportunity to launder his piles of dirty money. It was fairly standard practice for extremely rich people to endow a chapel or to commission a cycle of religious frescos, but here, the Medici had paid for the construction of an entire monastery.” (Graham- Dixon 00:12:46 - 00:13:10). The banker “spent over forty thousand florins to rebuild the church and convent, and then continued to financially sponsor the Observant Dominican friars resident at the site for the next twenty-seven years” (Terry-Fritsch 231). The mendicant Dominican Order of Friars Preacher was founded in 1216 (Munro 507) and during the 1400s, they were housed in San Marco, where “each monk had a tiny cell containing a single fresco by Fra Angelico and his assistants of Christ’s passion; a focus for their spiritual contemplation” (Graham-Dixon 00:13:30 - 00:13:45). But, in addition to having commissioned the monastery’s renovation, Cosimo had a cell built for himself. In it, “right over the door, there’s an inscription that makes official the nature of the exchange that’s taking place here [Figure 1]. It says that ‘The Pope Eugenius IV promises that Cosimo de Medici will be absolved all his sins in exchange for having built this monastery’. How A ER Figure 3, Unknown, “Cosimo de” Medici's cell at San Marco,” Florence Web Guide. 2015 http://www. florencewebguide,com/san-marco-museum. htmlgallery[pageGallery]/4/. Accessed May 15, 2021  Figure 4. Unknown. “Cosimo de* medici's cell in San Marco, Florence.” Wordpress.com, 2019, profamytfrench.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/san-marco -21.pg?w=3014h=8zoom-2. Accessed 4 June 2021. “The convent and the nearly fifty paintings by Fra Angelico contained therein remained largely inaccessible to the public during Cosimo’s lifetime” (Terry-Fritsch 233) other than intellectuals who were permitted access to San Marco’s famous library. The depictions were only for the contemplation of the members of the Dominican Order since “Fra Angelico himself was a member of the order at the time when he painted there in the late 1430s and 1440s” (Terry- Fritsch 234). This “would have had little influence in shaping a favorable public opinion for Cosimo and his family since there was no public audience to view it” (Terry-Fritsch 233), making this a completely selfless act of patronage on Cosimo’s part.