MEDICI
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MEDICI
flict with Savonarola, but the legend of the latter re-
fusing him absolution on his deathbed unless he re-
stored liberty to Florence is now generally rejected by
historians. By his wife, Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo had
three sons: Piero, Giuliano, and Giovanni, of whom the
third rose to the papacy as Leo X. Although a man
of immoral life, his relations with his family show him
under a favoural>le as|i( ct, niid, in a letter from one of
the ladies of the JI.uii umi court, a charming account is
given of how, on his ^\;iy in iht- congress of Cremona in
liS'.i, Lorenzo visiteil the tionzaga children and sat
among them in their nursery.
Piero di Lorenzo, Lorenzo's eldest son, b. 1471, d. 1503, a licentious youth with none of his father's abil- ity, proved a most incompetent ruler, and, on the French invasion of 1494, he was expelled from Flor- ence by the people, led l\y the patriotic Piero Capponi. After several fruitless attempts to recover his position, he was drowned at the battle of the Garigliano while
Lorenzo de* Medici
Vasari, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
serving in the French aniiy. On the restoration of the Medici in l.')12, his son Lorenzo was made ruler of Flor- ence. With him, in 1,519, the legitimate male descent of Cosimo the Elder came to an end. By his wife, Madeleine de la Tour d'.\uvergne, he was the father of Caterina ile' Medici, afterw-ards (Juecn of France.
The Medici were again expelled from Florence, and the republic once more established, in 1,527. But in 1530, after the famous siege, the city was compelled to surrender to the imperial forces, and Charles V made Alessandro de' Medici, an illegitimate son of the younger Lorenzo, hereditary head of the Florentine government. All republican forms and offices were swept away, and Alessandro ruled as duke until, in 1537, he was as.sassinated by his kinsman, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, who fled to Venice without attempting either to assert his own claims to the suc- cession or to restore the republican regime.
Cosimo de' Medici, u.sually known as Cosimo I, b. 1519, d. 1574, was the descendant of a brother of Cos- imo the Elder and representative of the younger Medi- cean line. He was the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the great soldier, and Maria Salviati. On the
murder of Alessandro, he came into Florence, and was
formally recognized as head of the government both
by the citizens and by the emperor. At the outset,
with the aid of imperial troops, he crushed the last ef-
forts of the repul)licans, who were led by Baccio Valori
and Filippo Htrozzi. Various constitutional checks
were at finst put upon him, but these he soon dis-
carded, and openly used the title of Duke of Florence.
Although ruthless and implacable, he proved himself
the ablest Italian ruler of the sLxteenth century, and
gave a permanent form to the government of Florence,
finally developing the shapeless remains of the fallen
republic into a modern monarchical state. He thor-
oughly reorganized the laws and atlministration, cre-
ated a small but efficient fleet to defend the shores of
Tuscany, and raised a national army out of the old
Florentine militia. He married a Spanish wife, the
noble and virtuous Eleonora da Toledo, and in foreign
affairs leaned to a large extent upon Spain, by which
power, how-ever, he was prevented from accepting the
crown of Corsica. His great desire of absorbing the
neighbouring republics of Lucca and Siena into his
dominions was fulfilled only in the case of the latter
state; he conquered Siena in 1555, and in 1557 received
it as a fief from the King of Spain.
Tradition has invested Cosimo's name with a .series of horrible domestic crimes and tragedies, all of which have been completely disproved by recent research. After the death of Eleonora da Toledo in 1562, he ap- pears to have abandoned himself to vice. A few years later he married his mistress, Cammilla Martelli. In 1570 he was crowned in Rome by Pius V as Grand Duke of Tuscany, thereby taking place among the sov- ereigns of Europe. The title was confirmed to his son antl successor, Francis I, in 1575, by the Emperor Maximilian II. Cosimo's descendants reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany in an unbroken Kne until 1737, when, on the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, their dominions passed to the House of Austria.
C.\ppoNl, Storia delta RepubOHca di Firenze (Florence, 188S); Pellegrini, La Repubbtica Ficrentina a tempo di Cosimo it vec- chio (Pisa, 1899); Ewaht, Cosimo de' Medici (London, 1899); RoscoE, The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici (London, 1795, etc.); Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici it Magnifico (Leipzig, 1874); Opere di Lorenzo de' Medici detto it Magnifico (4 vols., Florenro. lS-25); Carducci, Poesie di Lorenzo de' Medici (Flor- enro. 1S5!)); Rossi, /( Quattrocento (Milan, 1900); Villari, La '• " Savonnroln (Flornncc, 1887); Galluzzi,
") /' o-.w. ?--M :!rjfn C.i'n MC'
. ' • .' ' ,';,.'". I '.irehi.
Storia del Granducato di To:
diet (Florence, 1781, etc.); N/
ed. MiLANESi (Florence, IN.^i, , ^
(London and New York, IS'.<. ■.
mestiche (Florence, 1898); F]-.im,i
1891); Gauthiez, V Italic du xv
The Medici (London, 1909); Ga
(London and New York, new ed.
- • aUcle (Paris, 1901); YoDNG.
RDNER, The story of Florence , 1910).
Edmund G. Gahdner.
Medici, M.\ria de'. Queen of France; b. at Florence,
26 April, 1573; d. at Cologne, 3 July, 1642. She was a
daughter of the Grand Duke Francis I of Tuscany and
the Archduchess Joan of Austria, and married Henry
IV of France, 5 October, 1600. In March, 1610,
Henry IV, who was preparing to lead an expedition
into Germany, against the .Spaniards and the Imperi-
alists, appointed Maria de' Medici regent, with a coun-
cil of fifteen; yielding to her insistence, he also caused
her to be crowned queen on 13 May, 1610. Two hours
after the assassination of Henry IV (14 May, 1610),
the Due d'Epernon went to the Parliament and had
Maria de' Medici declared regent, the little Louis XIII
being not yet nine years of age. The policy of Henry
IV, who, iiad he lived, would have striven more and
more to secure alliances with Protestant powers, was
replaced by a Catholic policy, aiming at a Spanish al-
liance. The first act m tliis direction was the be-
trothal of Louis XIII to the Infanta Anna (afterwards
known as Anne of .Austria), and of Elizabeth of France
to the Infant Philip (1612). There was agitation
among the princes and the Protestants. The States-
General, convoked by the queen regent in 1614, as a
