The Borgias and The Family Medici

From The Wall Street Journal:

Readers of history, like all readers, love an engrossing narrative: a conquest triumphant or repulsed, a great man brought to ruin by his flaws. The story doesn’t have to have heroes and villains, but it doesn’t hurt.

The intertwining chronicles of the Borgia and Medici dynasties offer rich material for such a narrative. Two of the wealthiest families in Renaissance Italy vied for supreme power, seizing thrones royal and ecclesiastic by force and cunning. The traditional version makes the Medici the heroes, philanthropic bankers who fostered the rise of humanism and science, commissioning masterpieces of art by Donatello, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. The villains, the Borgias, have become a byword of evil, covering the full gamut of the deadly sins, spiced with rumors of incest and occasional applications of poison.

Such history, when it is presented on the stage and screen—one thinks of Donizetti ’s opera “ Lucrezia Borgia, ” based upon a play by Victor Hugo, or of “The Borgias,” the TV series starring Jeremy Irons —can omit nuance and tailor facts as the story requires. But historians who seek a wide readership, while giving their readers the drama they crave, must honor the historical record in all its complexity.

Paul Strathern ’s “The Borgias: Power and Fortune” and Mary Hollingsworth ’s “The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty” (first published in 2018 and soon to be issued in paperback) present just such nuanced accounts. And they are not their authors’ first forays into the period, each having earlier staked a claim in the other’s dynasty, so to speak. In 2016, Mr. Strathern published “The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance,” and Ms. Hollingsworth had previously published “The Borgias: History’s Most Notorious Dynasty” (2011). All four are fine books, authoritative and well-written, by independent scholars who know how to make the past come alive without turning it into pulp.

Both authors begin their Medici chronicles with a scene of high drama, then dial back to the beginning and progress chronologically, alternating between fully rendered scenes and brisk summaries. Mr. Strathern starts with the Pazzi conspiracy, one of the bloodiest passages in Italian history. In the late 15th century, the Medici ruled Florence as princes in all but name, led by young Lorenzo de’ Medici. In 1478, a rival clan, the Pazzi, plotted to seize control of the city. Mr. Strathern opens with a vivid scene of Lorenzo and his entourage riding to Mass. His younger brother, Giuliano, walks behind them, accompanied by his friends Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi.

When Mass begins, as Mr. Strathern relates, “two separate incidents take place simultaneously. By the door, Bernardo Bandini whips out a dagger, turns and plunges it into Giuliano de’ Medici’s head with such force that Giuliano’s skull is split open with a spray of blood.” Francesco de’ Pazzi joins in the brutal murder. Meanwhile, at the altar, two priests standing behind Lorenzo pull out knives from their robes to stab him, but the young lord springs away, receiving only a superficial wound, and scrambles to safety. The conspiracy fails.

. . . .

Mary Hollingsworth’s “The Family Medici” begins some 50 years later, with a graphic account of the siege of Florence by an army assembled by Pope Clement VII. Born Giulio de’ Medici, Pope Clement was the illegitimate son of Giuliano de’ Medici, born a month after his father’s assassination in the Pazzi conspiracy. Three years before the siege, a decisive majority of the Florentine people, weary of the Medici’s imperious ways, had voted to banish them. Clement, writes Ms. Hollingsworth, “was determined to reverse this quite lawful decision, whatever the cost.” He may have been the vicar of Christ, but his first loyalty was to his clan. “He did not regard Florence as an independent republic but as the personal fiefdom of his own family.”

She opens on the feast of St. John the Baptist and contrasts the somber mood in 1530, the year of the siege, with the gaiety of previous celebrations. “There were no banquets nor bullfights, no laughter nor music.” No banquets because there was no food: The horses and cats had all been slaughtered, and rats were selling for 16 soldi, a craftsman’s day wage in good times. All the gold and silver in the churches had been melted down to pay the mercenaries defending the city. By the time of Florence’s surrender, 10 months after the siege had begun, one third of the population had died, but it was once again under Medici control.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Sorry if you encounter a paywall)