Part 4

If I thought that this my misfortune and terrible ruin might serve to bring peace to this blessed people, not only would exile be acceptable, but I should even welcome death, if I were sure that my descendants, O Signori, might pride themselves on my having been the cause of the wished-for union of your Republic. As you have decided that I am to go to Padua, I declare that I am content to go, and to stay wherever you command, not only in the Trevisian State, but should you send me to live amongst the Arabs, or any other people alien to our customs, I would go most willingly; and if your Lordships command me to discover the origin of the ill, as a beloved son is bound to obey his father’s wishes and a good servant the orders of his master, so would I obey you for the peace of your people. One thing I beg of you, O Signori, that seeing you intend to preserve my life, you take care that it should not be taken by wicked citizens, and thus you be put to shame. I do not so much fear the pain of death as the abominable infamy of undeserved assassination, for a violent death is the manifest sign and outcome of a bad life, and I have not led the life of a villain, but of an honest and good merchant. Even if I have not been faultless, I have always tried to merit the love of good men, because my actions were good. As, however, disaster comes to me by your orders, I accept it as a boon, and as a benefit to me and to my belongings. Have a care, O Signori, that those should not have their way who are in the Piazza with arms in their hands and anxiously desire my blood, without regard for my innocence. My pain would be small, because such a death being over in a short time cannot be very painful or hard to bear; nothing is so brief as death. But you would earn perpetual infamy by having made me a promise which was broken by villainous citizens: infamy is worse than an innocent death. If I go to the Trevisian State, I leave my heart and my soul with you, and shall only be happy when I can do something for the good of your people, as I pray you and every good citizen to do. Every trouble will be easy to bear as long as I know that my adversity will bring peace and happiness to the city. I know, and this is no small comfort to me, that I never permitted wrong to be done to any one. I never frequented the Palace[23] save when I was summoned; I never roused hatred of the Republic amongst your subalterns, because I never ill-treated them; I always declined to be nominated an official, which is often prejudicial to the body and hurtful to the soul; with no small pride I affirm that none can say my ill-behaviour ever caused a city to rebel or to be taken from you; on the contrary, our money bought several: ask your soldiers how many times they were paid by me for the Commune with my own money, to be returned to me when convenient to the Commune. Never have I been found wanting when the Commune could be enlarged, and although I am exiled, I shall ever be ready at the call of this people. In conclusion, O Signori, I pray God to keep you in his grace and in happiness in this fortunate Republic, and to give me patience to bear my unhappy life.

* * * * *

Balìa was given by the parliament to certain citizens and I was banished to Padua for ten years, Lorenzo to Venice for five, Averardo to Naples for ten, Orlando de’ Medici to Ancona for ten years, and Giovanni di Andrea di Messer Alamanno and Bernardo d’Alamanno de’ Medici to Rimini. My branch of the family were created Grandi (_i.e._ incapable of holding any magisterial office), with the exception of the sons of Messer Vieri, and the sons of Antonio di Giovenco de’ Medici, because Bernardetto was much beloved by the Captain of War, and in deference to the Captain, Averardo and his brothers were passed over. We were more rigorously dealt with, particularly in that I was forbidden to sell any possessions or to touch my money in the Monte, and I was kept in the Palace until the 3rd day of October.

When this was known in Venice three ambassadors were sent here, who left no means untried to procure my liberation, offering to keep me in Venice, and promising that I would do nothing against the Signory, and would obey all orders. Though they could not obtain my freedom yet their advent was most useful, for there were those who desired my death, and they secured a promise that no harm should be done to my person. In like manner the Marquess of Ferrara sent orders to the Captain of the Balìa, who was Messer Lodovico del Ronco of Modena, a subject of his, that if I were put in his hands he was to treat me as though I were Messer Lionardo his son, and that if he fled with me he was to fear nothing.

They kept me, as has been said, until the 3rd of October for two reasons; first, to obtain permission from the Balìa to rule the city according to their pleasure, threatening to kill me if it was not given; thus those of my friends and relations who were in the Balìa were fain to agree to all they wished. Secondly, they thought to ruin us by preventing me from making use of what was mine. But in this they failed, for we lost no credit, and many foreign merchants and gentlemen offered to us, and even sent to Venice, large sums of money. Finding at length that their plan of making us bankrupt did not succeed, Bernardo Guadagni (the Gonfalonier), being offered money by two persons, 500 florins by the Captain of War, and 500 by the treasurer of S. Maria Nuova, which were paid him in cash, and Mariotto Balduinetto being offered 800 florins by Baccio d’Antonio di Baccio, they took me out of the Palace and accompanied me beyond the Porta S. Gallo. They had small intelligence, for they might have had ten thousand or more for allowing me to escape from peril.

On the 4th October I arrived at Cutigliano in the mountains of Pistoja, being accompanied by two of the Eight of the guard. The mountaineers presented to me wax and grain as though I had been an ambassador. On the 5th I left and arrived at Fassano in the territory of the Marquess of Ferrara, accompanied by more than twenty of the mountaineers. On the 6th I reached Modena, and the governor met me on behalf of his lord, presented gifts, and next morning went with me as companion and guide. On the 7th I was at Bondeno and next day went by water to Francolino, where I waited two days for Antonio Uguccione de’ Contrari, who made me many offers of service from the Marquess. On the 11th I arrived at Venice, being met by many gentlemen, our friends, together with Lorenzo. I was received like an ambassador, not like an exile. Next morning I visited the Signori to thank them for all they had done for my welfare, saying that I owed my life to them. I was received with more honour and affection than I can describe; they pitied my sufferings and offered the Signoria, the city, and their treasure for my needs, and a house. Many gentlemen visited me and brought me gifts. On the 13th I left for Padua according to command, and Messer Jacopo Donato went with me and lodged me in his fine house, furnished with linen, beds, and eatables fit for the greatest personage, and he remained with me until I returned to Venice about the 20th. At Padua, by order of the Signoria of Venice, they offered to place at my disposal anything I wanted. I have recorded these honours that were paid to me in order not to seem ungrateful by not mentioning them, and also because it is incredible that, banished from home, I should yet be treated with so much honour; for generally one loses one’s friends with one’s fortune. Lorenzo was informed with what honour I had been treated by some merchants, and also by a servant of the Signoria who came to Padua with me, and who had been ordered not to speak about it.

Bartolommeo de’ Ridolfi being Gonfalonier of Justice, I asked leave of the Signori to be allowed to live at Padua, Venice, or elsewhere, in the Venetian territory, and the permission was given, but with orders not to approach within 140 miles of Florence. This was done to please the Signoria of Venice who, through their ambassador, Messer Andrea Donato, asked it. It is true that severe penalties were attached to the grace, as can be seen in the document.

After giving the names of the new Gonfalonier and Priors (who were elected every two months), Cosimo continues:

The people and all good citizens being discontented, Antonio di Ser Tommaso Nasi came to me at Venice and begged me to draw nigh to Florence, offering to escort us home in case we were attacked. Also many of our relations and friends wrote to us. We thought it better to first ascertain the intentions of the Signori, and replied we would do nothing against their wishes. For this we sent Antonio Martelli from Venice to learn what they wished. From him we got the good news that we were to come. On receiving the letter Lorenzo and I, Cosimo, left on the 29th of September; Averardo, being ill of fever, remained in Venice. On the 30th we reached Ponte a Lago and lodged in the house of the Magnificent Uguccione who, together with the Marquess, had collected at our request a large body of foot-soldiers in the mountains of Modena and Frigano, together with 200 horsemen he had in his pay, to accompany us as had been previously arranged. On the 1st October, while we were at mass, a courier arrived from Antonio Salutati with letters stating that the intentions of the Signori having become known in the city, and our arrival being expected, our enemies, that is to say Messer Rinaldo degl’ Albizzi, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and others had taken up arms on the 26th to the number of 600. But their heart failed them towards evening, and being persuaded by Messer Giovanni Vitelleschi, then Bishop of Recanati, and afterwards Archbishop of Florence and a Cardinal, who was my good friend, they went to S. Maria Novella, where dwelt the Pope.[24] Hearing that our friends were well provided with arms and with men, and being in fear for their lives, Messer Rinaldo, Ormanno his son, and Ridolfo Peruzzi remained there that night, and their companions dispersed and put away their arms. The Signori summoned a large force of infantry to come into the city, while from the Mugello, the Alps, and Romagna more than 3000 men came to our house. Niccolò da Tolentino was called with his company, and on the 29th, the day of S. Michael, a parliament was held on the Piazza, at which the people assisted fully armed. Their number was great, and good order was kept. Balìa was given to ... citizens and they annulled all that had been ordained the year before. First they decided that Cosimo and Lorenzo should be reinstated in their former positions--there were not four contrary votes--so we were pressed to come home with all speed. Having read the letter, we at once sent it to Venice, where it caused much rejoicing, and we then went to visit the Marquess, who showed even more pleasure than ourselves. After thanking him for all the favours he had shown us we left Ferrara on the 2nd and got to Modena next day. The Governor and the Podestà came out to meet us with many citizens, and we were received most honourably in the Marquess’s house. All our journey was at his expense, and everywhere we found men-at-arms who had been ordered to accompany us; but there being no need for them we dismissed them. On the 5th we reached Cutigliano and then Pistoja; and exactly at the expiration of a year, on the very same day, _i.e._ the 5th October, we again set foot in the Commune at exactly the same place. I record this because when we were banished some well-affected and kindly persons told us that before the year was out we should be recalled, and once more find ourselves in Florence. Many citizens came out to meet us on the road, and at Pistoja the whole population was at the gate to see us pass fully armed, for we would not enter the town. On the 6th we arrived at our own house, Careggi, to dinner, and found much people. The Signori sent to tell us not to enter the city until they told us, and this we did. At sunset they sent to bid us come and we set forth with a great following. But as the road we were expected to take was crowded with men and women, Lorenzo and I with one servant and a mace-bearer of the Commune rode round the walls. Going behind the Servi, and then behind S. Reparata and the Palazzo del Podestà, we entered the Palazzo de’ Signori without being seen, as every one was in Via Larga, waiting for us near our house. The reason why the Signori did not wish us to enter by daylight was lest we should be the cause of an uproar in the city. By the Signori we were received most graciously. We thanked them with fitting words, and they insisted on our remaining in the Palace with them and some other citizens. We did so. We found that before we arrived Messer Rinaldo and Ormanno his son, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and many other citizens had been banished. The city was quiet, though the people were always in the Piazza, and in the Palace were many armed men for security.

Cosimo gives the names of the Signory for November and December and continues:

They banished many citizens and set down (_i.e._ made _Grandi_ or nobles) many disloyal families and did many things favourable to the city. During their rule the Balìa given to various citizens expired, the Squittini, or Scrutinies, came to an end, and the borse, or ballot-bags, remained for five years in the hands of the Accopiatori, that is to say, the borse of the Priors, so that they could make whomsoever they would Priors and Gonfaloniers of Justice. In January my name was the first to be drawn from the borse as Gonfalonier, and in my time no one was banished nor was ill done to any one. I caused the sentence of death passed upon Francesco Guadagni, and upon some others whom I found in the hands of the Captain of the Balìa, to be commuted to perpetual imprisonment. Also I ordered the armed men who stood at the door of the Palace to be removed and the Palace and the Piazza to be kept as they were before the revolution, and I prolonged the league with the Signory of Venice for ten years.

“Seldom has a citizen returning triumphant from a victory,” writes Machiavelli, “been received by such a concourse of people and with such demonstrations of affection as was Cosimo on his return from exile, saluted by all as the benefactor of the people and the father of his country.”[25]

It was probably while at Venice that Cosimo bought the slave girl by whom he had a son, Carlo, who was brought up for the Church and recognised as belonging to the family. He inherited his father’s tastes, and was employed by him and by Piero to buy books, manuscripts, statues, &c., in Rome. He became a Canon of the cathedral in Florence and Arciprete at Prato, where he died. The number of female slaves imported into Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a most disturbing element in family life and the cause of much jealousy, as can be gathered from the novelists of the time. Nearly all came from Caffa (Theodosia in the Crimea) and from the mouth of the Tana. Caffa must have been practically a Genoese settlement, as the Genoese consul levied a tax on every slave that passed through the town, and they were many. Hundreds of Circassian, Tartar, Armenian, Georgian, Arab, Turkish, Russian, and Greek girls were shipped, chiefly to Genoa and to Venice, where the trade had existed since the eighth century. In Florence the duty paid on every slave that entered the city must have brought in a considerable sum to the Commune, as owners were obliged to register every newly-acquired slave within two months and to have him or her baptized, if the rite had not been already performed. One would have thought that good Catholics might have had some qualms of conscience about keeping a Christian as a slave, but Sacchetti writes:

“May a slave being born a pagan who becomes a Christian be sold? I say yes. None may be free who do not believe that Christ will come again. Even though I buy a slave who is then baptized, he or she is baptized as a servant and a subject and is like unto one in prison, who cannot give a bond or go bail, and most of them go to baptism like oxen. Baptism does not make them Christians, and no one is obliged to set them free even if they be Christians unless they wish. I do not say that if you perceive them to be good, and that they desire to be good Christians, you should not set them free, but you would commit a sin if your slave is like most, even if he or she be a Christian, to set them free, for you take the stick from off their backs and give them full scope to do every sort of evil.”[26]

The saintly Archbishop Antonino is of the same opinion as the novelist. He declares that baptism does not free a person from slavery, _quia servitus introducta est etiam de jure divino et per jus gentium et jus canonicum approbata_.

By a law of 1366 the flight of a slave was declared a serious offence; any one aiding or inciting a slave to run away was fined 200 florins (piccoli), half to go to the Commune, half to the owner. The seduction of a slave was still more severely punished, and the seducer was held responsible for her price if she died in childbirth. If the father was a free man the child was also free, and the father was bound to provide for it.

From 1366 to 1397, 259 Tartars, 27 Greeks (from Constantinople or from Rhodes), 7 Turks, 3 Slavonians, 3 Circassians, 2 Bosnians, 1 Arab, 1 Saracen, and 1 Candiote, nearly all girls from nine to twenty-four years of age, and 26 little boys or lads, are carefully described in the register. They cannot have been handsome, as many were marked with small-pox, others had scars (_margines_) which were probably tribal marks.[27]

They were sold either _sub jugo perpetue servitutis_, or for a certain number of years. Thus Rucellai bought a slave for eight years, but finding that she was with child he sent her back to her former owner; many were bought, or rather hired, for two or three years as wet-nurses. Baldovinetti in his _Ricordi_ or Memoirs notes: “On May 7, 1376, I bought a slave for thirty-five florins from Bartolommeo of Venice, named Tiratea, or Dorothea, a Tartar from Russia. She was about eighteen years of age, and Cieci the broker only put twenty-five florins into the bill of sale on account of the duty. With brokerage and duty she cost me one florin, and four florins for clothes, as she was almost naked when I bought her. I sold her in September 1379 for thirty-six florins.

“In 1380 I bought on November 28th a slave for forty-five florins, her name is Domenica, she is fair-skinned and comes from near Tartary. I bought her of Bartolommeo of Venice, who in writing declares her to be sound in all ways. With brokerage and other expenses she cost me before I got her home eleven golden florins, and as she was almost naked, altogether forty-seven florins.”[28]

[Illustration:

_Alinari_

COSIMO DI GIOVANNI DE’ MEDICI.

_By Jacopo da Pontormo. In the Convent of S. Marco, Florence._]

In the fifteenth century prices rose, as the Florentines insisted on having Russian or Circassian girls as being better-looking. Their reputation for honesty and morality did not stand high, and they were often brutally ill-treated and imprisoned in the dreaded prison of the Stinche for stealing, &c. Alessandra Strozzi, writing to her son Filippo at Naples in 1465, warns him about two he thought of buying.

“Thou tellest me in thy letter of the 28th that a slave is offered thee who was here with Lionardo Vernacci and that thou wouldest have taken her but for the old one thou hast in the house. I must tell thee that she is not fit for thee according to my ideas. Lionardo’s wife had her four or five years, and as she did not learn and was of a bad disposition they feared she might do some ill to herself or to others, so they got rid of her; she was also dishonest. They sold her to Antonio della Luna, with whom she remained but a short time, as he would not have her and sent her back; so she was sent down there [Naples]. Lionardo’s wife had her for sewing, but she had no aptitude for it. Had she been a good servant they would have kept her for themselves. Thou sayest thou hast one now who belonged to Filippo degl’ Albizzi; she was highly thought of and well treated, but was sold because wine began to affect her and made her extremely lively, and also she was immoral. Having a wife and children in the house he would not keep her. She is praised for loyalty and intelligence. Now do as thou wilt.... I have told thee what I know.”[29]

Towards the end of the fifteenth century the manumission of slaves begins to be mentioned in wills together with bequests to hospitals and convents. By the word _este civis romana_ the slave became a free man or woman, could own property, buy and sell, and act in all other respects as if free-born.[30]

Cosimo de’ Medici _to his son_ Piero de’ Medici _at Venice_

Send by the women who are returning the things mentioned in the list given to Ser G., and look closely yourself, as is but right, after what is sent here and what remains there.

Put the books that are in my desk into a small strong-box so that they should not be opened, and see that the others which we lent should be sent back in such a manner as not to spoiled.

It seems to me that thou shouldest remain at Venice this winter, for there is nothing doing here, and thus thou canst devote thyself to learning something of the affairs of the bank and of book-keeping. I have ordered a book which thou art to keep according to instructions which Antonio Martelli will send thee. In this way thou wilt learn book-keeping properly, and canst return here at Lent.