The Medici by Paul Strathern Godfathers of the Renaissance
What's it about?
The Medici (2016), examines how one modest family became among the most powerful in Europe through banking innovation, political manipulation, and unprecedented cultural patronage. It explores their role in sponsoring the Italian Renaissance alongside their relationships with artists, scientists, and political figures who shaped Western civilization.
It is a mild, sunny day in April of 1478 as two favored sons of a prominent family make their way through the crowded streets to attend High Mass at Florence Cathedral. As the brothers kneel in prayer, assassins make a sudden, coordinated strike on them with daggers.
Within seconds, Giuliano de' Medici lies dying from nineteen stab wounds. Brother Lorenzo fights for his life, blood streaming from a knife wound on his neck. The attack was meant to end a dynasty that had risen from peasant farmers to unofficial rulers of Florence in just over a century.
But how did a family of agricultural workers transform themselves into bankers, politicians, and cultural kingmakers?
This lesson explores how the Medici family conquered Florence without an army. They purchased their power one strategic loan and artistic masterpiece at a time, building an empire that would eventually place their descendants on papal thrones and in royal courts across Europe.
At the height of their power, the Medici would recount the tale of their noble origins, claiming descent from a legendary knight called Averardo who fought for Charlemagne way back in the eighth century. According to family mythology, Averardo slayed a giant while passing through Mugello, which explained their origins in the region.
But the reality was far more ordinary. In the 1200s, the Medici were small farmers working land along the river Sieve in the hills about twenty five miles northeast of Florence. In the small town of Cafaggiolo, they were peasants, not knights, and part of the vast agricultural backbone of medieval Italy.
Italy at this time was not a unified nation but a patchwork of competing city-states, each fiercely protective of its trade routes and political independence. Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Milan jostled for dominance while smaller cities like Lucca and Siena fought to maintain autonomy. The Pope wielded enormous temporal power from Rome, and foreign empires circled like wolves, eyeing Italy's wealth.
Florence in the 1300s was far from the most powerful Italian city. Venice controlled Mediterranean trade routes, Milan boasted military might, and Rome held spiritual authority. But Florence discovered something more valuable than armies or ports. It figured out how to create wealth through textile production and financial innovation.
Florentine wool guilds mastered the art of transforming raw English fleece into luxury cloth that commanded extraordinary prices across Europe and the Levant. This economic engine would eventually fund a cultural explosion that transformed Western civilization.
Sometime in the early 1300s, the Medici abandoned farming and migrated to Florence, arriving as this commercial energy was being built. Wool and silk guilds controlled the economy, and merchant families competed ruthlessly for market share. Florence operated as a republic in name, governed by guild representatives rather than kings or emperors, but real power belonged to whoever controlled the money.
The Medici started small, running a modest money-changing operation. In an era before standardized currency, travelers needed to exchange the coins of dozens of different cities and kingdoms. A sharp eye for metal content and exchange rates could yield steady profits.
By the mid-1300s, Vieri di Cambio de' Medici had transformed this humble business into something more substantial. Vieri understood that real wealth came not from exchanging coins but from lending money at interest. The Catholic Church officially condemned usury, citing biblical prohibitions against profiting from loans. But clever bankers developed theological arguments to navigate this restriction.
They reasoned that interest compensated not for the loan itself but for the risk of loss and the opportunity cost of capital deployed elsewhere. They disguised charges as fees for currency exchange or penalties for late payment. These intellectual gymnastics satisfied enough clerics to allow banking to flourish.
Vieri built relationships with wool merchants who needed capital to purchase raw materials before their goods sold. He financed trade ventures where Florentine textiles commanded premium prices. He also grasped something crucial about Florentine politics: the city's guilds functioned as gatekeepers to power.
Only guild members could hold public office, and by positioning the Medici within the banking guild, Vieri secured not just wealth but political legitimacy. When he retired in 1393, he left behind a framework his successors would expand into an empire.
His cousin Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici inherited this foundation and transformed it into something far more ambitious. Giovanni opened his first bank in 1397, but his real breakthrough came in 1402 when he became the papal banker. The Catholic Church was the wealthiest institution in Europe, collecting tithes and taxes from every corner of Christendom.
Managing this river of gold required sophisticated financial infrastructure. Giovanni established branches in Rome, Venice, and eventually across Europe, moving papal funds between cities and kingdoms with remarkable efficiency.
The profits were staggering. Giovanni charged fees for every transaction, exchanged currencies at favorable rates, and loaned money to cardinals and bishops who lived far beyond their clerical incomes. He also financed secular rulers who needed cash for wars, building projects, and court expenses.
The key to his success was discretion. Other banking families like the Bardi and Peruzzi had collapsed spectacularly after lending too much to bankrupt kings. Giovanni spread his risk carefully and never overextended his capital.
But Giovanni understood that wealth alone would not secure his family's future in Florence's treacherous political landscape. The city's republican government rotated offices every few months to prevent any single family from dominating. The Signoria, Florence's governing council, selected members by lottery from eligible guild members. On paper, this system prevented tyranny. In practice, it created chaos as rival families competed for influence through networks of both patronage and intimidation.
Giovanni approached politics with the same calculated caution he brought to banking. He never sought high office himself, preferring to operate through proxies and carefully cultivated friendships. He made strategic loans to influential families, funded public works that burnished his reputation, and positioned himself as a moderate voice during factional conflicts. When Florence warred with Milan in the 1420s, Giovanni financed the military campaign while simultaneously lending money to both sides in the conflict. His goal was not ideological victory, but financial stability and social position.
By the time Giovanni died in 1429, the Medici were among the richest families in Europe. More importantly, they had translated that wealth into something money could not directly buy: respect, influence, and the goodwill of Florence's political class. Giovanni left his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo an empire built not on noble bloodlines or military conquest, but on careful calculation and an intuitive grasp of how power actually worked.
Cosimo de' Medici took control of the family business at age forty, and immediately faced a crisis that would have destroyed a less capable leader. Florence's traditional oligarchy viewed the Medici with suspicion. The Albizzi, who were long accustomed to dominating Florentine politics, orchestrated Cosimo's arrest in 1433 on fabricated charges of tyranny.
He was imprisoned in a tower cell, awaiting what seemed certain execution. But Cosimo understood that money could accomplish what force could not. He bribed his jailer, his guards, and key members of the Signoria. Instead of death, he received exile to Venice.
The exile lasted only one year. Cosimo's allies worked their connections to shift the political winds back in Florence, and by 1434 the Signoria voted to recall him. The Albizzi family fled, and Cosimo returned to a city he would control for the next thirty years. But his control was never official. He held no permanent title, commanded no army, and technically possessed no more authority than any other wealthy merchant. Instead, he perfected the art of ruling from behind the scenes.
Cosimo manipulated the lottery system that supposedly guaranteed democratic representation. He ensured that names of his supporters appeared more frequently in the bags from which officials were randomly drawn. He placed allies in key administrative positions, extended loans to families who might otherwise oppose him, and wielded tax policy as both reward and punishment.
Enemies found themselves assessed with crushing levies. Friends got favorable financing and investment. Florence remained a republic in form, but functioned increasingly as a Medici business.
Yet Cosimo grasped something his banking acumen alone could never achieve. Raw power bred resentment, but cultural patronage could transform wealth into legitimacy. He began commissioning art and architecture on a scale Florence had never before seen, funding projects that would reshape the city's physical and cultural landscape.
This was not mere vanity. Art served as propaganda, demonstrating Medici taste, piety, and commitment to Florentine glory. It announced that the Medici were not simply rich bankers but visionary leaders worthy of their unofficial throne.
The Black Death arrived in Italy in 1347, carried by merchant ships from China that docked in Sicilian ports. Within months, the plague swept northward through the peninsula, killing with terrifying speed and indiscriminate cruelty. Victims developed swollen lymph nodes, fever, and blackened skin before dying within days.
Florence lost nearly half its population in the initial outbreak. Bodies piled in streets faster than gravediggers could bury them. The city's social fabric disintegrated as families abandoned sick relatives and priests refused to administer last rites. By the end of this initial outbreak, it is thought that Europe lost about a third of its population.
With death counts like this, the plague did more than kill. It shattered the existing power structures and created opportunities for families positioned to exploit the chaos. Established merchant dynasties collapsed when their entire lineages died out or fled the city. Guild leadership fractured as masters and apprentices died together. Land values plummeted, and labor costs soared as workers realized their scarcity gave them unprecedented bargaining power. The old certainties of medieval hierarchy evaporated.
The Medici survived the initial outbreak and recognized what others missed. Catastrophe had redistributed wealth and influence in ways that careful planning never could. They purchased properties at depressed prices from desperate sellers. They extended credit to families struggling to maintain their positions. They filled administrative vacancies left by plague deaths with allies and dependents. While established powers fought to preserve what they had lost, the Medici built new networks among survivors eager for stability and patronage.
The plague returned repeatedly throughout the 1300s and 1400s, each outbreak triggering fresh political upheaval. Florence experienced major waves in 1363, 1374, 1383, and 1400. Venice, Milan, and other Italian city-states followed similar patterns. These recurring crises prevented any single family from consolidating permanent power through traditional means. Military strength meant nothing when disease killed nobles and soldiers alike. Ancient bloodlines offered no protection when entire aristocratic houses disappeared within weeks.
This volatility favored families like the Medici who understood that adaptability mattered more than tradition. Banking operations could continue even as personnel changed. Financial networks proved more resilient than feudal obligations. Money crossed plague boundaries that armies could not. Each outbreak weakened the old guard while strengthening those who controlled liquid capital and maintained functioning business relationships across disrupted trade routes.
By Cosimo's era, the plague had become a grim constant of Italian life. Outbreaks no longer destroyed society but rather punctuated it, creating windows of opportunity for political realignment. The Medici had learned to thrive in this environment of perpetual instability. Their wealth provided a cushion against economic shocks. Their banking expertise offered essential services when traditional institutions faltered. And their willingness to embrace cultural patronage gave them legitimacy that pure financial power could never achieve in a world where death reminded everyone that all earthly status was temporary.
Cosimo's grandson Lorenzo inherited power in 1469 at age twenty, and Florence had never seen anything like him. Where his grandfather operated through careful discretion, Lorenzo ruled with spectacular confidence. He hosted lavish festivals, wrote poetry that circulated throughout Italy, and surrounded himself with the greatest minds of the Renaissance. Philosophers like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola gathered at his table to debate Platonic ideals. Artists competed for his patronage and approval.
Lorenzo understood that art wasn’t decoration, it was statecraft. He commissioned Sandro Botticelli to paint masterworks like the Birth of Venus and Primavera, images that merged classical mythology with Christian symbolism in ways that legitimized Medici authority as divinely ordained and culturally inevitable.
He supported the young Michelangelo, bringing the teenage sculptor into his household and recognizing genius that would reshape Western art. Leonardo da Vinci worked under Medici patronage during these years, though Lorenzo failed to fully appreciate his talents.
The family's architectural ambitions matched their artistic ones. Cosimo had commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to design the Medici Palace, a structure that announced their status without appearing ostentatiously royal. Donatello created bronze sculptures for their private chapels. The Medici became synonymous with Florence's cultural explosion, and Florence became synonymous with artistic excellence that drew pilgrims and scholars from across Europe.
But cultural dominance bred enemies. The Pazzi family, rival bankers who resented Medici monopoly on papal finances, conspired with Pope Sixtus IV to eliminate Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano. The Pope wanted to install his own nephew in Florentine politics and needed the Medici removed. On April 26, 1478, during High Mass at Florence Cathedral, assassins struck. Giuliano died from nineteen stab wounds. Lorenzo, slashed in the neck, fought his way to safety behind the cathedral's massive bronze doors.
Florence erupted in fury. Citizens loyal to the Medici hunted down conspirators and hanged them from palazzo windows. The Archbishop of Pisa, who had blessed the plot, swung from the Palazzo della Signoria in his clerical robes. Lorenzo emerged not weakened but stronger, transformed from powerful merchant into nearly-martyred hero. He had survived assassination, proof that Florence's fate and Medici survival were inseparable.
The family's reach extended beyond Florence. Lorenzo's son Giovanni became Pope Leo X in 1513, giving the Medici direct control over the Church's vast wealth and spiritual authority. Another relative, Giulio, became Pope Clement VII. Medici daughters also helped to consolidate family power, as they became queens and duchesses across Europe.
The peasant farmers from Mugello had climbed higher than even Averardo's mythical giant-slaying could have imagined. Their power and prominence was secured not through noble inheritance, but through money, art, and an unshakeable will to survive.
The main takeaway of this lesson to The Medici by Paul Strathern is that…
The Medici rose from obscurity by recognizing that catastrophe redistributes power to those positioned to exploit it – buying properties during plague outbreaks, filling vacancies left by death, and extending credit when traditional powers faltered. They discovered that lasting influence comes not from holding official titles but from controlling financial systems, manipulating republican procedures from behind the scenes, and making themselves indispensable to the city's functioning. Their investment in art and architecture wasn't vanity but strategic statecraft, transforming mere wealth into cultural legitimacy that violence couldn't destroy. When assassins struck Lorenzo and Giuliano in 1478, they attacked not just two men but an entire system of influence built over generations through money, art, and an unshakeable will to adapt and survive.
The Medici (2016), examines how one modest family became among the most powerful in Europe through banking innovation, political manipulation, and unprecedented cultural patronage. It explores their role in sponsoring the Italian Renaissance alongside their relationships with artists, scientists, and political figures who shaped Western civilization.
It is a mild, sunny day in April of 1478 as two favored sons of a prominent family make their way through the crowded streets to attend High Mass at Florence Cathedral. As the brothers kneel in prayer, assassins make a sudden, coordinated strike on them with daggers.
Within seconds, Giuliano de' Medici lies dying from nineteen stab wounds. Brother Lorenzo fights for his life, blood streaming from a knife wound on his neck. The attack was meant to end a dynasty that had risen from peasant farmers to unofficial rulers of Florence in just over a century.
But how did a family of agricultural workers transform themselves into bankers, politicians, and cultural kingmakers?
This lesson explores how the Medici family conquered Florence without an army. They purchased their power one strategic loan and artistic masterpiece at a time, building an empire that would eventually place their descendants on papal thrones and in royal courts across Europe.
At the height of their power, the Medici would recount the tale of their noble origins, claiming descent from a legendary knight called Averardo who fought for Charlemagne way back in the eighth century. According to family mythology, Averardo slayed a giant while passing through Mugello, which explained their origins in the region.
But the reality was far more ordinary. In the 1200s, the Medici were small farmers working land along the river Sieve in the hills about twenty five miles northeast of Florence. In the small town of Cafaggiolo, they were peasants, not knights, and part of the vast agricultural backbone of medieval Italy.
Italy at this time was not a unified nation but a patchwork of competing city-states, each fiercely protective of its trade routes and political independence. Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Milan jostled for dominance while smaller cities like Lucca and Siena fought to maintain autonomy. The Pope wielded enormous temporal power from Rome, and foreign empires circled like wolves, eyeing Italy's wealth.
Florence in the 1300s was far from the most powerful Italian city. Venice controlled Mediterranean trade routes, Milan boasted military might, and Rome held spiritual authority. But Florence discovered something more valuable than armies or ports. It figured out how to create wealth through textile production and financial innovation.
Florentine wool guilds mastered the art of transforming raw English fleece into luxury cloth that commanded extraordinary prices across Europe and the Levant. This economic engine would eventually fund a cultural explosion that transformed Western civilization.
Sometime in the early 1300s, the Medici abandoned farming and migrated to Florence, arriving as this commercial energy was being built. Wool and silk guilds controlled the economy, and merchant families competed ruthlessly for market share. Florence operated as a republic in name, governed by guild representatives rather than kings or emperors, but real power belonged to whoever controlled the money.
The Medici started small, running a modest money-changing operation. In an era before standardized currency, travelers needed to exchange the coins of dozens of different cities and kingdoms. A sharp eye for metal content and exchange rates could yield steady profits.
By the mid-1300s, Vieri di Cambio de' Medici had transformed this humble business into something more substantial. Vieri understood that real wealth came not from exchanging coins but from lending money at interest. The Catholic Church officially condemned usury, citing biblical prohibitions against profiting from loans. But clever bankers developed theological arguments to navigate this restriction.
They reasoned that interest compensated not for the loan itself but for the risk of loss and the opportunity cost of capital deployed elsewhere. They disguised charges as fees for currency exchange or penalties for late payment. These intellectual gymnastics satisfied enough clerics to allow banking to flourish.
Vieri built relationships with wool merchants who needed capital to purchase raw materials before their goods sold. He financed trade ventures where Florentine textiles commanded premium prices. He also grasped something crucial about Florentine politics: the city's guilds functioned as gatekeepers to power.
Only guild members could hold public office, and by positioning the Medici within the banking guild, Vieri secured not just wealth but political legitimacy. When he retired in 1393, he left behind a framework his successors would expand into an empire.
His cousin Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici inherited this foundation and transformed it into something far more ambitious. Giovanni opened his first bank in 1397, but his real breakthrough came in 1402 when he became the papal banker. The Catholic Church was the wealthiest institution in Europe, collecting tithes and taxes from every corner of Christendom.
Managing this river of gold required sophisticated financial infrastructure. Giovanni established branches in Rome, Venice, and eventually across Europe, moving papal funds between cities and kingdoms with remarkable efficiency.
The profits were staggering. Giovanni charged fees for every transaction, exchanged currencies at favorable rates, and loaned money to cardinals and bishops who lived far beyond their clerical incomes. He also financed secular rulers who needed cash for wars, building projects, and court expenses.
The key to his success was discretion. Other banking families like the Bardi and Peruzzi had collapsed spectacularly after lending too much to bankrupt kings. Giovanni spread his risk carefully and never overextended his capital.
But Giovanni understood that wealth alone would not secure his family's future in Florence's treacherous political landscape. The city's republican government rotated offices every few months to prevent any single family from dominating. The Signoria, Florence's governing council, selected members by lottery from eligible guild members. On paper, this system prevented tyranny. In practice, it created chaos as rival families competed for influence through networks of both patronage and intimidation.
Giovanni approached politics with the same calculated caution he brought to banking. He never sought high office himself, preferring to operate through proxies and carefully cultivated friendships. He made strategic loans to influential families, funded public works that burnished his reputation, and positioned himself as a moderate voice during factional conflicts. When Florence warred with Milan in the 1420s, Giovanni financed the military campaign while simultaneously lending money to both sides in the conflict. His goal was not ideological victory, but financial stability and social position.
By the time Giovanni died in 1429, the Medici were among the richest families in Europe. More importantly, they had translated that wealth into something money could not directly buy: respect, influence, and the goodwill of Florence's political class. Giovanni left his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo an empire built not on noble bloodlines or military conquest, but on careful calculation and an intuitive grasp of how power actually worked.
Cosimo de' Medici took control of the family business at age forty, and immediately faced a crisis that would have destroyed a less capable leader. Florence's traditional oligarchy viewed the Medici with suspicion. The Albizzi, who were long accustomed to dominating Florentine politics, orchestrated Cosimo's arrest in 1433 on fabricated charges of tyranny.
He was imprisoned in a tower cell, awaiting what seemed certain execution. But Cosimo understood that money could accomplish what force could not. He bribed his jailer, his guards, and key members of the Signoria. Instead of death, he received exile to Venice.
The exile lasted only one year. Cosimo's allies worked their connections to shift the political winds back in Florence, and by 1434 the Signoria voted to recall him. The Albizzi family fled, and Cosimo returned to a city he would control for the next thirty years. But his control was never official. He held no permanent title, commanded no army, and technically possessed no more authority than any other wealthy merchant. Instead, he perfected the art of ruling from behind the scenes.
Cosimo manipulated the lottery system that supposedly guaranteed democratic representation. He ensured that names of his supporters appeared more frequently in the bags from which officials were randomly drawn. He placed allies in key administrative positions, extended loans to families who might otherwise oppose him, and wielded tax policy as both reward and punishment.
Enemies found themselves assessed with crushing levies. Friends got favorable financing and investment. Florence remained a republic in form, but functioned increasingly as a Medici business.
Yet Cosimo grasped something his banking acumen alone could never achieve. Raw power bred resentment, but cultural patronage could transform wealth into legitimacy. He began commissioning art and architecture on a scale Florence had never before seen, funding projects that would reshape the city's physical and cultural landscape.
This was not mere vanity. Art served as propaganda, demonstrating Medici taste, piety, and commitment to Florentine glory. It announced that the Medici were not simply rich bankers but visionary leaders worthy of their unofficial throne.
The Black Death arrived in Italy in 1347, carried by merchant ships from China that docked in Sicilian ports. Within months, the plague swept northward through the peninsula, killing with terrifying speed and indiscriminate cruelty. Victims developed swollen lymph nodes, fever, and blackened skin before dying within days.
Florence lost nearly half its population in the initial outbreak. Bodies piled in streets faster than gravediggers could bury them. The city's social fabric disintegrated as families abandoned sick relatives and priests refused to administer last rites. By the end of this initial outbreak, it is thought that Europe lost about a third of its population.
With death counts like this, the plague did more than kill. It shattered the existing power structures and created opportunities for families positioned to exploit the chaos. Established merchant dynasties collapsed when their entire lineages died out or fled the city. Guild leadership fractured as masters and apprentices died together. Land values plummeted, and labor costs soared as workers realized their scarcity gave them unprecedented bargaining power. The old certainties of medieval hierarchy evaporated.
The Medici survived the initial outbreak and recognized what others missed. Catastrophe had redistributed wealth and influence in ways that careful planning never could. They purchased properties at depressed prices from desperate sellers. They extended credit to families struggling to maintain their positions. They filled administrative vacancies left by plague deaths with allies and dependents. While established powers fought to preserve what they had lost, the Medici built new networks among survivors eager for stability and patronage.
The plague returned repeatedly throughout the 1300s and 1400s, each outbreak triggering fresh political upheaval. Florence experienced major waves in 1363, 1374, 1383, and 1400. Venice, Milan, and other Italian city-states followed similar patterns. These recurring crises prevented any single family from consolidating permanent power through traditional means. Military strength meant nothing when disease killed nobles and soldiers alike. Ancient bloodlines offered no protection when entire aristocratic houses disappeared within weeks.
This volatility favored families like the Medici who understood that adaptability mattered more than tradition. Banking operations could continue even as personnel changed. Financial networks proved more resilient than feudal obligations. Money crossed plague boundaries that armies could not. Each outbreak weakened the old guard while strengthening those who controlled liquid capital and maintained functioning business relationships across disrupted trade routes.
By Cosimo's era, the plague had become a grim constant of Italian life. Outbreaks no longer destroyed society but rather punctuated it, creating windows of opportunity for political realignment. The Medici had learned to thrive in this environment of perpetual instability. Their wealth provided a cushion against economic shocks. Their banking expertise offered essential services when traditional institutions faltered. And their willingness to embrace cultural patronage gave them legitimacy that pure financial power could never achieve in a world where death reminded everyone that all earthly status was temporary.
Cosimo's grandson Lorenzo inherited power in 1469 at age twenty, and Florence had never seen anything like him. Where his grandfather operated through careful discretion, Lorenzo ruled with spectacular confidence. He hosted lavish festivals, wrote poetry that circulated throughout Italy, and surrounded himself with the greatest minds of the Renaissance. Philosophers like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola gathered at his table to debate Platonic ideals. Artists competed for his patronage and approval.
Lorenzo understood that art wasn’t decoration, it was statecraft. He commissioned Sandro Botticelli to paint masterworks like the Birth of Venus and Primavera, images that merged classical mythology with Christian symbolism in ways that legitimized Medici authority as divinely ordained and culturally inevitable.
He supported the young Michelangelo, bringing the teenage sculptor into his household and recognizing genius that would reshape Western art. Leonardo da Vinci worked under Medici patronage during these years, though Lorenzo failed to fully appreciate his talents.
The family's architectural ambitions matched their artistic ones. Cosimo had commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to design the Medici Palace, a structure that announced their status without appearing ostentatiously royal. Donatello created bronze sculptures for their private chapels. The Medici became synonymous with Florence's cultural explosion, and Florence became synonymous with artistic excellence that drew pilgrims and scholars from across Europe.
But cultural dominance bred enemies. The Pazzi family, rival bankers who resented Medici monopoly on papal finances, conspired with Pope Sixtus IV to eliminate Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano. The Pope wanted to install his own nephew in Florentine politics and needed the Medici removed. On April 26, 1478, during High Mass at Florence Cathedral, assassins struck. Giuliano died from nineteen stab wounds. Lorenzo, slashed in the neck, fought his way to safety behind the cathedral's massive bronze doors.
Florence erupted in fury. Citizens loyal to the Medici hunted down conspirators and hanged them from palazzo windows. The Archbishop of Pisa, who had blessed the plot, swung from the Palazzo della Signoria in his clerical robes. Lorenzo emerged not weakened but stronger, transformed from powerful merchant into nearly-martyred hero. He had survived assassination, proof that Florence's fate and Medici survival were inseparable.
The family's reach extended beyond Florence. Lorenzo's son Giovanni became Pope Leo X in 1513, giving the Medici direct control over the Church's vast wealth and spiritual authority. Another relative, Giulio, became Pope Clement VII. Medici daughters also helped to consolidate family power, as they became queens and duchesses across Europe.
The peasant farmers from Mugello had climbed higher than even Averardo's mythical giant-slaying could have imagined. Their power and prominence was secured not through noble inheritance, but through money, art, and an unshakeable will to survive.
The main takeaway of this lesson to The Medici by Paul Strathern is that…
The Medici rose from obscurity by recognizing that catastrophe redistributes power to those positioned to exploit it – buying properties during plague outbreaks, filling vacancies left by death, and extending credit when traditional powers faltered. They discovered that lasting influence comes not from holding official titles but from controlling financial systems, manipulating republican procedures from behind the scenes, and making themselves indispensable to the city's functioning. Their investment in art and architecture wasn't vanity but strategic statecraft, transforming mere wealth into cultural legitimacy that violence couldn't destroy. When assassins struck Lorenzo and Giuliano in 1478, they attacked not just two men but an entire system of influence built over generations through money, art, and an unshakeable will to adapt and survive.
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