Cosimo de' Medici
Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici was an Italian banker and politician who became the de facto first ruler of Florence during the Italian Renaissance, establishing the Medici family as its effective leaders for generations. His power derived from his wealth as a banker and intermarriage with other rich and powerful families. He was a patron of arts, learning, and architecture. He spent over 600,000 gold florins on art and culture, including Donatello's David, the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity.
Despite his influence, his power was not absolute; he was viewed by fellow Florentine politicians as first among equals rather than an autocrat. Florence's legislative councils resisted his proposals throughout his political career, even sending him into exile from 1433 to 1434.
Biography
Early life and family business
Cosimo de' Medici was born in Florence to Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici and his wife Piccarda Bueri on 27 September 1389. At the time, it was customary to indicate the name of one's father in one's name for the purpose of distinguishing the identities of two like-named individuals; thus, Giovanni was the son of Bicci, and Cosimo's name was properly rendered Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici. He was born along with a twin brother Damiano, who survived only a short time. The twins were named after Saints Cosmas and Damian, whose feast day was then celebrated on 27 September; Cosimo would later celebrate his own birthday on that day, his "name day", rather than on the actual date of his birth. Cosimo also had a brother Lorenzo, known as "Lorenzo the Elder", who was some six years younger and participated in the family's banking enterprise.Cosimo inherited both his wealth and his expertise in banking from his father Giovanni, who had gone from being a moneylender to join the bank of his relative Vieri di Cambio de' Medici. Giovanni had been running Vieri's branch in Rome independently since the dissolution of the latter's bank into three separate and independent entities until 1397, when he left Rome to return to Florence to found his own bank, the Medici Bank. Over the next two decades, the Medici Bank opened branches in Rome, Geneva, Venice, and temporarily in Naples; the majority of profits was derived from Rome. The branch manager in Rome was a papal depositario generale who managed Church finances in return for a commission. Cosimo would later expand the bank throughout western Europe and opened offices in London, Pisa, Avignon, Bruges, Milan, and Lübeck. The far-flung branches of the Medici rendered it the best bank for the business of the papacy, since it enabled bishoprics in many parts of Europe to pay their fees into the nearest branch, whose manager would then issue a papal license, and the popes could more easily order a variety of wares – such as spices, textiles, and relics – through the bankers' wholesale trade. In fifteen years, Giovanni would make a profit of 290,791 florins.
In 1415, Cosimo allegedly accompanied the Antipope John XXIII at the Council of Constance. In 1410, Giovanni lent John XXIII, then simply known as Baldassare Cossa, the money to buy himself the office of cardinal, which he repaid by making the Medici Bank head of all papal finances once he claimed the papacy. This gave the Medici family tremendous power, allowing them, for instance, to threaten defaulting debtors with excommunication. But misfortune hit the Medici Bank in 1415, when the Council of Constance unseated John XXIII, thus taking away the near monopoly they had held on the finances of the Roman Curia; thereafter, the Medici Bank had to compete with other banks. However, after the Spini Bank of Florence went insolvent in 1420, they again secured priority. John XXIII, facing the enmity of a church council at which he was accused of a large variety of offenses against the Church, was confined by Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor to Heidelberg Castle until the Medici paid his ransom and granted him asylum.
In the same year as John's dethronement, Cosimo was named a ":it:Priore#Firenze|Priore of the Republic ". Later he acted frequently as an ambassador for Florence and demonstrated a prudence for which he became renowned.
About 1415, Cosimo married Contessina de' Bardi. The wedding was arranged by his father as an effort to reaffirm relations with the long-standing noble Bardi family, who had operated one of the richest banks in Europe until its spectacular collapse in 1345; they nevertheless remained highly influential in the financial sphere. Only part of the Bardi family were involved in this marriage alliance, for some of the branches considered themselves the opponents of the Medici clan. The couple had two sons: Piero the Gouty and Giovanni de' Medici. Cosimo also had an illegitimate son, Carlo, by Maddalena a Circassian slave, who would go on to become a prelate.
Giovanni withdrew from the Medici Bank in 1420, leaving its leadership to both of his surviving sons. He left them 179,221 florins upon his death in 1429. Two-thirds of this came from the business in Rome, while only a tenth came from Florence; even Venice offered better returns than Florence. The brothers would earn two-thirds of the profits from the bank, with the other third going to a partner. Besides the bank, the family owned much land in the area surrounding Florence, including Mugello, the place from which the family originally came.
Florentine politics
Cosimo's power over Florence stemmed from his wealth, which he used to control the votes of office holders in the municipal councils, most importantly the Signoria of Florence. As Florence was proud of its "democracy", he pretended to have little political ambition and did not often hold public office. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Bishop of Siena and later Pope Pius II, said of him:In 1433, Cosimo's power over Florence began to look like a menace to the anti-Medici party led by figures such as Palla Strozzi and the Albizzi family, headed by Rinaldo degli Albizzi. In September of that year, Cosimo was imprisoned in the Palazzo Vecchio for his part in the failure in 1429-30 to conquer the Republic of Lucca, but he managed to turn the jail term into one of exile. Some prominent Florentines, such as Francesco Filelfo, demanded his execution, a fate that may have been almost certain without the intervention of the monk Ambrogio Traversari on his behalf. Cosimo travelled to Padua and then to Venice, taking his bank along with him and finding friends and sympathizers wherever he went for his willingness to accept exile rather than resume the bloody conflicts that had chronically afflicted the streets of Florence. Venice sent an envoy to Florence on his behalf and requested that they rescind the order of banishment. When they refused, Cosimo settled down in Venice, his brother Lorenzo accompanying him. However, prompted by his influence and his money, others followed him, such as the architect Michelozzo, whom Cosimo commissioned to design a library as a gift to the Venetian people. Within a year, the flight of capital from Florence was so great that the decree of exile had to be lifted. Cosimo returned a year later, in 1434, to influence the government of Florence for the last 30 years of his life of 74 years.
Cosimo's time in exile instilled in him the need to quash the factionalism that resulted in his exile in the first place. In order to do this, he instigated a series of constitutional changes with the help of favourable priors in the Signoria to secure his power through influence.
Following the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, who had ruled the Duchy of Milan from 1412 until his death in 1447, Cosimo sent Francesco I Sforza to establish himself in Milan to prevent an impending military advance from the Republic of Venice. Francesco Sforza was a condottiere, a mercenary soldier who had stolen land from the papacy and proclaimed himself its lord. He had yearned to establish himself at Milan as well, an ambition that was aided by the fact that the current Visconti head lacked legitimate children save for a daughter, Bianca, whom Sforza ultimately married in November 1441 after a failed attempt at winning her hand from her father. The resultant balance of power with Milan and Florence on the one side and Venice and the Kingdom of Naples on the other created nearly half a century of peace that enabled the development of the Renaissance in Italy. However, despite the benefits to Florence from keeping Venice at bay, the intervention in Milan was unpopular among Cosimo's fellow citizens, primarily because they were called upon to finance the Sforza succession. The Milanese made a brief attempt at democracy before Sforza was finally acclaimed duke by the city in February 1450.
In terms of foreign policy, Cosimo worked to create peace in northern Italy through the creation of a balance of power between Florence, Naples, Venice and Milan during the wars in Lombardy between 1423 and 1454 and the discouragement of outside powers from interfering in Italian affairs. In 1439, he was instrumental in convincing Pope Eugene IV to move the Ecumenical Council of Ferrara to Florence. The arrival of many notable Byzantine figures from the Eastern Roman Empire, including Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, for this event further inspired the growing interest in ancient Greek arts and literature.