Death In Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, And The Battle For The Soul Of A Renaissance City, by Paul Strathern

At the end of this book (spoiler alert), the author reveals that the death in Florence does not just refer to one death, but for many deaths. That makes sense once one reads this book, as the author painstakingly discusses the death of several generations of the Medici family from their congenital difficulties with gout–Lorenzo “The Magnificent” being the son of Pietro “The Gouty.” This is followed by the equally painstaking discussion of the deaths of their associates by poison because they were suspected of disloyalty to the Medici, despite (or maybe because of) their brilliant humanism and immense talents. Towards the end of the book the author describes in immense detail the imprisonment, torture, and death by being burned at the stake that was suffered by the Florentine ascetic reformer Savonarola, that unsuccessful innovator in republican politics and the contradiction between freedom and fundamentalism that one can find in many diverse regimes, including that of the Iran of the Ayatollahs. This is a book which can be at points tough to read because of the author’s uncompromising attitude towards presenting what he views as the most plausible case of some events that are still immensely controversial in Italian history. Many people after the fact have blamed religious people like Savonarola for the destruction of the Renaissance in Florence, but many people contributed to its decline, including the fractious citizens of Florence themselves, the Medici who sought to retake power there (and would, eventually), as well as the corrupt Borgia pope Alexander VI himself. This book is a dark tale about dark times that seem all too relevant to our own.

This book is more than 350 pages and divided into 25 chapters that start from the period when the Medici first took power in Florence in order to defend their banking empire (likely covered more in one of the author’s other books about the Medici), and extending to the aftermath of the death of Savonarola and the destruction of Florentine cultural independence in the face of the rising power of France. In between is the tale of how first the Medici and then the unstable republican regime that replaced him sought to deal with the weakness of Florence in strictly military terms in an unstable equilibrium of mostly middle-sized and deeply divided Italian states as well as the political divisions within Florentine society at a time when there was deep division over the cultural changes that were going on as a result of the Italian Renaissance, which led to a certain crisis of morality that was viewed as liberating by some and as absolutely disastrous by others. The fact that this period of cultural and sexual permissiveness ended in complete and total disaster for Florence and many of the city’s citizens, which is discussed in great and often chilling detail in this book, ought to lead the reader to pause and reflect upon the tension in this book between what seems like a desire to celebrate political and intellectual and other forms of freedom while also being honest about the downsides of that freedom. This is a book about a time and a situation that ought to haunt contemporary readers who would otherwise be led to an uncritical praise of the Renaissance and to the beneficial nature of cultural and political change.

While people often celebrate the culture of the Renaissance for the effervescent freedom it brought from what is viewed as a straightjacketed medieval mindset, the dark side of the Renaissance is easy to see in these particular pages. The Medici rule over Florence depended upon able diplomacy, a certain degree of sleight of hand when it comes to celebrating and supporting art while also engaging delicately in financial embezzlement, and the ability to cope with division at home and abroad. When the Medici family abandoned banking for politics, their career took a much more dangerous turn because they lost control of the way to earn money that allowed them to gain power in the first place. Despite Lorenzo’s excellent grasp of power during most of his time in charge of Florence, his fraudulent handling of his cousins’ inheritance as well as Florentine civic funds was criminal, and his decision to invite the firebrand Savonarola to teach his sons how to take religion seriously was immensely misguided. Strangely, the author is perhaps most sympathetic of Savonarola among the people here, a sincere religious fundamentalist, the sort of person who history books tend not to view very highly, and although he is shown to be flawed, his political vision is apparently closer to what the author has in mind than most of the people that are talked about–only Machiavelli is praised as highly, and he is a much more minor character, whose career comes after the events of this particular book. This is the sort of book that focuses so much on the politics of the Florentines that it leads the reader to ponder the similar corrupt nature of contemporary politics and the way that no one can afford to safely neglect either the source of their income or their political power.