The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty by Hollingsworth Mary

Author:Hollingsworth, Mary [Hollingsworth, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Sebastiano del Piombo, Clement VII, 1526 (Naples, Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte).

After Raphael, The Donation of Constantine, early 1520s (Vatican Palace, Stanza di Costantino). The papal claim to secular power in Italy was based on a document, forged in the eighth century, according to which Constantine transferred the Papal States to Pope Sylvester I following the Emperor’s miraculous recovery from leprosy by baptism.

Clement VII may have shown ample political skill during Leo X’s pontificate; but he was unprepared for the maelstrom of the looming Habsburg–Valois conflict. In the interests of the papacy, he needed to remain neutral. However, Clement VII’s priority was the Medici, and to safeguard the future of his family in Florence he needed to find himself on the winning side – a tricky call.

In March 1524, Clement VII sent Nikolaus von Schönberg, a Dominican friar who was Archbishop of Capua, to France, Spain and England to try and negotiate a peace: he returned empty-handed. Schönberg went to Spain again in early September, while another legate travelled to the French court, but these efforts were also unsuccessful. That same month, Francis I invaded Italy, and Charles V followed suit. As the two foreign forces lined up on the Lombard plain, Clement VII still hoped that a peaceful solution could be found. But when news arrived in Rome on 28 October that the French had taken Milan, he changed his mind and began secret talks with Francis I. Prominent among his demands were French protection for the Medici in Florence and the betrothal of the five-year-old Caterina to the king’s eldest son.

Clement VII and Francis I announced their alliance on 5 January 1525, and their armies launched two simultaneous attacks on Charles V. A detachment of 10,000 troops went south to take Naples, while the rest of the army concentrated on the Imperial-held fortress at Pavia, just south of Milan. Giovanni delle Bande Nere joined the siege of Pavia with his 2,000 soldiers and 200 cavalry; but on 20 February he was badly wounded by gunshot, in his right leg, during a skirmish under the walls.

He was fortunate not to have been fighting four days later, when the Imperial troops, heavily armed with portable arquebuses, slaughtered Francis I’s army. Contemporary accounts of the Battle of Pavia suggest that more than 12,000 Frenchmen were killed or captured, with negligible losses on the Imperial side.4 There was a hideous sight in Venice that April: ‘many dead bodies have come by sea into the Lido perhaps a hundred or more thrown up by the sea, they were naked and some were wounded,’ it was reported; ‘they had been carried down the Po from the battlefield at Pavia [and] the corpses that were found were buried’.5 It was a disaster not only for Francis I, who was taken prisoner and sent to Spain, but also for Clement VII. He had picked the losing side. With a powerful Imperial army positioned just north of the Apennines, the survival of the Medici in Florence was under serious threat.

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