Free The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert

– if always loosely knit – and so firmly identified with the interests of Florence as a whole that Cosimo had no need to suppress the voices of opposition. His erstwhile friend, Neri Capponi, old-fashioned and staunchly republican, was permitted to give occasional utterance to his concern about Cosimo’s insidiously growing power. So was Giannozzo Manetti, a rich and scholarly merchant who was frequently employed on diplomatic missions. But neither of them had the backing of a party, and both soon departed from the scene: Capponi died in 1455, while Manetti, protesting that he was being ruined by the monstrously heavy taxes levied on his fortune, chose to leave Florence for Naples.
    Although the practice was not as widespread as his critics afterwards maintained, there seems little doubt that Cosimo’s party did on occasion use the Florence taxation system to break their enemies. Certainly the taxation officers – in the lists of whose names Puccio Pucci figures prominently – were not noted for their impartialitywhen assessing the taxes due from critics of the regime. Nor did the party managers – who were often used by Cosimo to do unpleasant work with which he did not want to be associated – shrink from buying up at bargain prices the estates of men banished from the Republic, or from making personal fortunes, as Puccio Pucci did, from buying and selling government stock.
    For such reasons, though outspoken opposition was rare, the Medici party was far from universally popular; and in troubled times its position was very precarious. In 1458, indeed, it seemed on the verge of dissolution. In January of that year, following a long period of economic stagnation, the merchants and landowners of Florence were horrified to learn that they were to be assessed for a new
catasto
. Then, in the early summer, there was talk of a change in the constitution; there were rumours, too, that opponents of the change had been arrested and tortured to elicit confessions of conspiracy. Feelings in Florence ran so high that Cosimo rented a house in Pavia through the Milanese branch of his bank and prepared to move there with his wife should the situation grow more menacing. His daughter-in-law took his grandchild to his villa at Cafaggiolo, which he had had surrounded by walls and towers for just such an emergency.
    On 10 August, the
Gonfalionere
, Luca Pitti, felt obliged to call a complaisant
Parlamento
into existence in the Piazza della Signoria which he prudently filled with mercenary troops and armed supporters of the regime. The members of the
Signoria
walked out of their palace, in their crimson, ermine-lined cloaks, to stand on the
ringhiera
. The
Notaio delle Riformagioni
read out the text of a law creating a new
Balìa
; then, following the ancient precedent, he asked the people in the square below whether they approved its creation. He ‘repeated the question three times; but since the
Notaio
had a very weak voice, only a few understood what he was saying and there were not many voices to answer yea’. Nevertheless the few were enough; the
Balìa
was approved; ‘the
Signoria
returned to the palace, the citizens to their workshops and the mercenaries to their billets’.
    The Balìa
thereupon immediately introduced those measures which the Medici party had proposed. The powers of the
Accoppiatori
wereconfirmed for a further ten years, so that the drawing of lots for election to public offices continued to be a mere formality. The power of the
Gonfaloniere
was at the same time much increased. Luca Pitti, whose tenure of that office was shortly to expire, had himself elected one of the ten
Accoppiatori
, while Cosimo’s elder son, Piero de’ Medici, became another. As supporters of the Medici paraded through the streets, shouting slogans and waving banners, Cosimo’s family returned to Florence. The supremacy of their party was now assured and Cosimo himself recognized as the undisputed patriarch of Florence. He was now