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Note: War and Peace
Tag(s): Italy, Medici
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COSIMO’S SUPREME importance as arbiter of Florence’s foreign policy had never been in doubt.
LOCATION: 1095

that they would be far better off with the Milanese as their friends even at the cost of antagonizing their traditional allies, the Venetians.
LOCATION: 1100

Florence had been thankful to have so powerful and rich an ally in her festering quarrel with Milan whose Duke, Filippo Maria Visconti, had been encouraged to make war on Florence by friends of the exiled Albizzi. This Visconti was widely believed to be mad
LOCATION: 1103

In Florence, Cosimo watched the crisis develop with an alert and anxious eye. He had met Francesco Sforza several years before, and had been deeply impressed by his manner and the force of his personality. The friendship then begun
LOCATION: 1144

And it was, in fact, largely through Cosimo’s endeavours that Sforza, after three years of warfare and diplomatic negotiations, triumphantly entered Milan as Duke in March 1450.
LOCATION: 1148

Cosimo argued that Venice could no longer be considered a reliable ally:
LOCATION: 1156

Its repercussions were widespread and immediate: the Venetians urged the German Emperor to break up the new alliance; the Eastern Emperor was induced to withdraw the privileges of all Florentine merchants who were simultaneously expelled from Naples and Venice; Venetian agents were paid to intensify anti-Medicean feeling in Florence. Cosimo countered by closing down the Venetian branch of his firm and opening a new branch in Milan.
LOCATION: 1167

In April 1452, at Montil-les-Tours, a treaty was signed: France undertook to come to the help of Florence and Milan should they be attacked; Sforza was recognized as Duke of Milan; and, in return, Charles VII was assured that there would be no interference from either Florence or Milan if he decided to move against Naples.
LOCATION: 1178

Provoked by this treaty – and anxious to break up the new alliance while France was still preoccupied with England – Venice and Naples both declared war on Florence and Milan;
LOCATION: 1181

Then, to the immense relief of the Medicean party, there came good news from France: Acciaiuoli had succeeded in persuading René of Anjou to come to the help of the alliance in exchange for reciprocal support of driving Alfonso’s Aragonese brood out of Naples. The intervention of a rough, marauding French army, which alarmed its allies even more than its enemies, followed by the Turks’ capture of Constantinople in May 1453,
LOCATION: 1191

Most Holy League formed to guarantee the status quo within Italy and to withstand aggression from without.
LOCATION: 1196

As both the acknowledged arbiter of Italian policy and the papal banker, Cosimo was one of the first recipients of the Pope’s appeal. He was asked to supply two galleys, equipped and manned, which were to be launched against the Turks in return for indulgences for the Florentines’ immortal souls.
LOCATION: 1209

Other Italian states replied to the Pope’s appeal with similar evasions. Only the Venetians, who stood to profit in this life as well as in the next by the successful outcome of a Holy War, were more forthcoming. Undeterred,
LOCATION: 1216

And with their help the business grew more rapidly than ever until the trade mark of the Medici bank the bank’s motto, ‘Col Nome di Dio e di Bona Ventura’, and Medici representatives could be found in almost every important capital and commercial centre in Europe: London, Naples, Cologne, Geneva, Lyons, Bâle, Avignon, Bruges, Antwerp, Lübeck, Ancona, Bologna, Rome, Pisa and Venice.
LOCATION: 1225

As Cosimo’s father had cultivated Baldassare Cossa, the future Pope John XXIII, so Cosimo himself had cultivated Tommaso Parentucelli, the Tuscan doctor’s son who became Bishop of Bologna and finally Pope Nicholas V.
LOCATION: 1235

Nicholas V’s friend Piccolomini, who was elected Pope in 1458 and chose the title Pius II, kept up the papal tradition of friendship with the Medici and continued to entrust them with the Curia’s financial affairs. When he came to Florence in 1469 he stayed as a matter of course at the Palazzo Medici, where he and Cosimo seem to have become quite intimate.
LOCATION: 1243

As well as undertaking all the customary services of a bank, the Medici houses undertook all manner of commissions for their customers, supplying tapestries, sacred relics, horses and slaves, painted panels from the fairs at Antwerp, choir boys from Douai and Cambrai for the choir of St John in Lateran, and even, on one occasion, a giraffe. They were also importers
LOCATION: 1249