----------------------------------
Note: Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici and the Friar from Ferrara
Tag(s): Italy, Medici
~~~~
AT TWENTY-TWO Piero had little of his father’s charm. Strong, healthy and athletic, with a mass of light brown hair which lay in a fringe on his forehead and fell to his shoulders, he was not unattractive; but his personality and manner were far from endearing. He had Lorenzo’s ruthlessness without his tact; he was equally unforgiving towards his enemies but did not remain loyal to his friends. His early letters give the impression of an indulged and rather
LOCATION: 2650

Piero’s reputation in Florence was also much damaged by his continual quarrels with his cousins, Lorenzo and Giovanni, the two sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, both of whom were older, and – despite their guardian’s misappropriation of part of their inheritance – richer than Piero, and neither of whom took any trouble to hide either their animosity towards the senior branch of the family or their intention to abandon it to its enemies in any future struggle for power that might arise. This struggle was not long to be delayed.
LOCATION: 2665

Ferrara, to Brescia, to Genoa, and many other towns in Tuscany and Lombardy. In 1481 he came to Florence where he was appointed lector at San Marco and asked to give the Lent sermons at San Lorenzo. In 1489 he settled permanently in Florence at the Monastery of San Marco.
LOCATION: 2687

the awkward Dominican gradually acquired a following of devoted supporters prepared to overlook all the faults of his delivery for the extraordinary content of his sermons and his passionate, urgent sincerity. By 1491 his congregations had increased so much that San Marco could no longer contain them; and his Lent sermons that year were delivered in the Cathedral.
LOCATION: 2697

He knew, too, that unless the people of Italy and, in particular, the people of Florence mended their ways they would be dreadfully punished. Only a return to the simplicity of the early Christian Church could save them. They must turn their back on Aristotle and Plato, who were now rotting in hell; they must abandon the luxuries and sensual pleasures that were destroying their souls, abolish gambling and card games, dissolute carnivals and palio races, fine clothes and scent, powder and paint; and they must give the money they saved to the poor. They must blot out all those pictures so wantonly painted that they made ‘the Virgin Mary look like a harlot’. They
LOCATION: 2703

Yet Lorenzo on his deathbed had sent for Savonarola, as well as Fra Mariano, and, according to Poliziano, had been blessed by them both.
LOCATION: 2720

On hearing of Lorenzo’s death, Pope Innocent was said to have exclaimed, ‘The peace of Italy is at an end!’ The King of France, Louis XI, was also dead; and his death, too, caused men to think of war. For his successor, Charles VIII, was a young man of energy and ambition, who dreamed romantic dreams of rivalling the exploits of Roland and of gaining glory by brilliant use of that well-organized standing army which his father
LOCATION: 2736

His father, though he had enormously increased the area of France, had never been drawn into Italy to claim the Kingdom of Naples as inheritor by force of the rights of the House of Anjou; but it seemed more than probable that Charles would march across the Alps as soon as the opportunity was offered him.
LOCATION: 2745

Charles’s opportunity to go to war was presented to him by Lodovico Sforza, il Moro, uncle of the Duke of Milan. The Duke, Gian Galeazzo, had come of age in 1490, but il Moro had subsequently shown no inclination to give up the powers of Regent which he had assumed.
LOCATION: 2749

To forestall any trouble he might have with Naples and any move that might be made against him from elsewhere in Italy, il Moro decided to suggest to Charles VIII that he should reassert the Angevin claim to Naples and, when the claim was denied, lead an expeditionary force into Italy. The Duchy of Milan would lend him its support.
LOCATION: 2755

King Charles then moved on to Pavia to pay his respects to his cousin, the ineffectual Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he found ill in bed suffering from some mysterious disease which his doctors could not diagnose.
LOCATION: 2762

a relapse which was naturally attributed to poison. A few days later, he was dead. Immediately his widow and their four children were arrested and imprisoned, and il Moro proclaimed himself Duke of
LOCATION: 2766

The French, however, would not allow Florence to remain neutral. They needed fortresses in Tuscany to give security to their rear while advancing further south. So, protesting grave displeasure at the discourteous way in which his envoys had been treated, Charles advanced on the Tuscan fortress of Fivizzano, sacked it and massacred the entire garrison with alarming brutality.
LOCATION: 2772

While Savonarola gave vent to further prophecies, seeming to take a gloomy satisfaction in the verification of his predictions, a sense of fatality descended upon the city. ‘A Dominican Friar has so terrified all the Florentines that they are wholly given up to piety,’ the Mantuan
LOCATION: 2778

how absurdly anxious he was to give way on every point, Piero immediately acceded to Charles’s terms and, on 8 November, returned to Florence to tell the Signoria what he had done.
LOCATION: 2803

At nightfall Piero, with his wife, their two young children and his cousin Giulio fled the city by the Porta San Gallo and made for Venice by way of Bologna, taking with them as many of the most valuable small items from the family collections as they could carry. Giovanni disguised himself as a Dominican monk in order to convey some of the treasures of the Medici library from the palace to San Marco; then he, too, fled from Florence.