Magnifico Read Free Page B

champion of the people than as a Medici lackey. As Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (the Standard-Bearer of Justice, the head of state) in 1454 he was already an advocate of democratic reform, winning, according to one contemporary source “great goodwill among the people.” And in 1465 he had written to the duke of Milan that “the citizenry would like greater liberty and a broader government, as is customary in republican cities like ours.”
    For the most part, however, Neroni prospered as a loyal servant of the Medici regime. It is unclear when ideological differences combined with frustrated ambition to turn him against his former allies, but as early as 1463 the ambassador from Milan reported to his boss that “Cosimo and his men have no greater or more ambitious enemy than Dietisalvi [Neroni].” In spite of these warnings, at the time of Cosimo’s death in 1464 Neroni was still one of Piero’s closest advisors.
    Neroni’s first line of attack, recounts Machiavelli, was to engineer Piero’s financial collapse. He describes how Piero had turned to Neroni for advice following Cosimo’s death, but “[s]ince his own ambition was more compelling to him than his love for Piero or the old benefits received from Cosimo,” Neroni encouraged Piero to pursue policies “under which his ruin was hidden.” These policies included calling in many of the loans granted by Cosimo—often on easy terms and made for political rather than financial reasons—a move that caused a string of bankruptcies and added to the growing list of Piero’s enemies.
    Despite his rival’s best efforts, however, Piero weathered the financial crisis, and by 1466 Neroni was growing impatient with half-measures. Guicciardini gives to Neroni the decisive role in the attempted coup: “[It was] caused in large part by the ambition of messer Dietisalvi di Nerone…. He was very astute, very rich, and highly esteemed; but not content with the great status and reputation he enjoyed, he got together with messer Agnolo Acciaiuoli, also a man of great authority, and planned to depose Piero di Cosimo.”
    While Piero and his family headed to Careggi, Neroni and his confederates prepared to seize the government by force.
     
    For generations, Careggi, with its fields and quiet country lanes, had served the Medici household as a refuge from the cares of the city. Cosimo had purchased for the philosopher Marsilio Ficino a modest farm close by at Montevecchio so that his friend would have the leisure to complete his life’s work, the translation of Plato from Greek to Latin. “Yesterday I went to my estate at Careggi,” Cosimo once wrote to Ficino, “but for the sake of cultivating my mind and not the estate. Come to us, Marsilio, as soon as possible. Bring with you Plato’s book on The Highest Good. …I want nothing more wholeheartedly than to know which way leads most surely to happiness.” Lorenzo, too, enjoyed the philosopher’s company, and later in life would convene at Careggi those informal gatherings of scholars and poets that historians dignified with the somewhat misleading label “the Platonic Academy,” finding the country air a suitable stimulus to deep thought.
    Today, however, the villa at Careggi could provide no escape from the troubles of the city. The family had barely begun to settle in when the peace of the morning was shattered by the arrival of a horseman at the gates. * The messenger, his horse lathered from hours of hard riding, his clothes and skin blackened with dust, announced that he had come from Giovanni Bentivoglio, lord of Bologna, with an urgent message for the master of the house.
    The messenger’s point of origin was sufficient to set off alarm bells. The ancient university town of Bologna was strategically placed near the passes through the Apennines to keep a watchful eye on anyone coming from the tumultuous Romagna; from here, an army descending on Tuscany from the north would easily be spotted. Bentivoglio was but