(Drivebycuriosity) - Florence (Firence in Italian) is a wonderful city. "The Florintines: From Dante to Galileo. The Transformation of Western Civilization" by Paul Strathern is a wonderful book ( amazon).
Strathern not only describes Florence´s struggles, rises & falls, he also narrates why & how the Italian Renaissance evolved and how the famous Florentines influenced history. The book follows the lives of people who had lived and worked in Florence and had not only shaped the development of this place, but also the history of economy & culture and so the spread of the Italian Renaissance and the advance of Western culture. The book is lively written, full with anecdotes, and reads almost like a novel.
Spoiler Warning: This is usually a spoiler free blog. But this about history, many facts are already well known. So below you could find some tidbits from the book. If you want to read it soon you may stop at this point.
The author covers approximately the time span between the birth of Dante 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642. Florence was a republic, one of the independent Italian cities which were not ruled by kings or dukes. The city competed - often military - with other powerful city states like Venice, Milan, Genoa or Naples (Napoli) and the Pope ruled Rome. Over the reported time span Florence was involved in frequent wars and often had the risk to be sacked and destroyed.
In the 13th century Florence had a population of approaching 80,000 - compared with 80,000 in London and 200,000 in Paris. The city was nominally a democracy but only a select number of its citizens had the right to vote - only males and members of the city`s guilds.
By around 1200, Florence was known as "the city of a hundred towers". Some of these where as much as 150 feet high (50 m) and contained occasional apertures in the upper stories. These towers were the home of family clans "who locked themselves as dusk felled and the streets were occupied by young hotheads". In the morning "the heavy doors at the foot of each tower would be unbarred, and the inhabitants would emerge to go about their business". Butchers, bakers and others set up their stalls. Similarly, in later years, the money lenders would set up their benches in front of their palazzi, which were attached to their towers (They were the first bankers, and took their name from the banca, or bench, at which they conducted their business).
Over the reported time span Florence was prone to civil war. In the 13th century, if one group took a shortcut, trespassing on another´s territory, they were liable to be confronted. Fights between rival gangs were frequent, scores settled and resettled. A contemporary chronicler reported: "Citizens fought against one another, from district to district, according as the factions were, and as they had fortified their towers, whereof there was a great number in the city". By the year 1200 Florence had a chilling rate of murder, followed by revenge, with feuds frequently persisting through generations. Florence also plunged "into the larger conflict which was raging throughout northern Italy and beyond". Some aristocratic families formed an alliance with those who followed the Holy Roman Emperors, others took side with the Popes, who weren`t on good terms with the Emperor. This led to large rival groups, which tore the city apart and caused continuing military conflicts.
Wealth, Freedom & Talent
In the 13th century Florence benefited from wool trade and manufacturing and entered an era of prosperity; and its banks began establishing branches in northern Europe to assist in financing the wool trade. The city´s currency, the fiorino dòro, began to establish itself as a reliable Europe wide currenca, further adding to Florence`s commercial success.
Florence`s rise to an epicenter of the Renaissance was based on wealth, freedom and talent, contrary to places which were ruled by autocratic rulers like kings & dukes. In the decade after Dante´s death (in 1321) "Florence has no less than six primary schools and foiur high schools, educating 600 pupils (including girls)".
Florence´s economical advance benefited from a man known as Fibonacci (born in 1170 in Pisa). In the age of 15 - while traveling to the East - he discovered the Arabian decimal system, which is used today, instead of the Roman system with I,II, III, IV, V, X, XX, XL .......... The decimal system proved to be superior for calculating, making financial transactions, accounting and made banking much more easier - and helped so the rise of banks in Florence and elsewhere (nicely and elaborately explained by Strathern - one of the many advantages of this book). Today Fibonacci is known for the Fibonacci sequence - 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 - where the next number in the series is generated by adding the tow previous numbers.
Florence gained a lot from the rise of her banks which transferred money to distant cities to finance the wool trade between Florence and Bruges. The banks also managed the huge tax payments to the Popes in Rome and they later financed Europe`s kings & cardinals, often with great losses when the mighty aristocrats did not repay.
In the 16th century the Medici became the most famous banking family, of course, but surprisingly, "they never attained the size of the Bardi or the Peruzzi, the giants of the fourteenth century". Anyway the Medici bank would be founded by the 37 year old Giovanni di Bicci de`Medici in the year 1397. Giovanni was a cautious banker, anxious to consolidate rather than indulge in risk. He had learned his caution when he had worked for a bank in Rome, which lend a lot money to cardinals. "The extravagant living of these cardinals meant that many of them ran up debts they could not repay".
The advance of banking gained from the introduction double-entry bookkeeping, which was widely practised before Luca Pacioli in the year 1494 set down his explanation of how this accounting method worked. Other financial innovations included bills of exchange & letters of credit.
Piracy, Rape, Sodomy, Murder & Incest
The Medici bank began benefiting from the new overseas trade from the new overseas trade links, opening branches or establishing agents as far afield as Brugen and even London, in Lyon and Avignon (for the big trade fairs), in Ancona (for enabling the shipment of fine Florentine cloth to the Levant), and in Naples and Gaeta for western Mediterranean trade. Giovanni`s years of running an international bank had led him to a deep understanding of the larger world of Italian and European politics. The Medici bailed out Pope John XXIII from charges of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest - accused by would-by Popes. The grateful Pope made the Medici Papal`s bankers, so they could manage the immense wealth the Popes amassed, who were as least as powerful as the Holy Emperors. Not only could Goivanny run the most lucrative and extensive banking network in Christendom, he could also take on as many accounts of cardinals and senior members of the Church in Rome as he wishes.
Whalebones & Sealskins
Early in the 15th century Cosimo de´ Medici, son of Giovanni, run the richest bank in Europe. Much of her profits came from facilitating the transfers of Papal dues (taxes payed to the Popes) to Rome from places as far afield as Greenland and Sicily. Such transfers often involved convoluted barter, as well as exchange between currencies. Greenland paid for instance with whalebones or sealskins.
The rise of the Medici gave them political power and finally the control over Florence which they sometimes abused and meddled their finances with the city finances. Their power and ruthlessness behavior caused of course backlashes and in some periods the Medici got exiled. But early in the 16th century "by means of a series of strategic marriages", the Medici family were recognized as a leading European aristocracy. In the early 1530s, Pope clement VII arranged for his young cousin Caterina de`Medici to marry the heir to the French throne, the leading power in Europe. Caterina`s husband would eventually become his queen. When Henry II died, Catherine de Medici`s (as she was now know) effectively become the ruler of France, a position she would hold for the next forty years.
According to Strathern Florence´s reputation also benefited from her culture: poets, sculptors, painters, scientists, writers & architects. I name here just a small selection of the many influential Florentines mentioned in the book, just the most famous of them.
Dante, a son of Florence, who became almost immortal by writing "The Divine Comedy", got exiled because he was involved into the notorious Emperors versus Popes conflicts.
Giotto di Bondone, known as Giotto, born around 1267, developed the art of painting by a "more measured and rational view of reality".
Boccacaccio `s erotical Decammarone became the counterpart to Dante´s spirituell "Divine Comedy".
It`s a pleasure to read Strathern´s description of how the architect Filippo Brunelleschi mastered the almost insolvable task to construct the dome for the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, today a landmark of Florcence (inspired by the Roman Pantheon). Brunelleschi also was a skilled mathematician and integrated the art of painting by introducing perspective, which had been neglected by the classics and their followers. "Early Renaissance artists such as Brunellschi were expected to be well practised in a wide range of skills. Their art could extend to everything from the cutting and setting of jewels, to painting and sculpture and architecture, as well as military and civil engineering. Spezialization in such matters hat not yet fully developed, and the rebirth of classical knowledge involved the heritage of an entire culture".
Amerigo Vespucci wasn`t an artist, but as explorer & writer he traveled south along the coast of South America and gave the Europeans a first impression of an unknown continent, which would be named after him. Before his travels he had worked as a clerk in a Medici bank.
Sandro Boticelly, today famous for his "Birth of Venus" and "Primavera", which became central images of the early Renaissance, got sponsored by the Medici family but fell in disgrace later, got neglected and became "grown old and useless".
Career As Military Engineer
Leonardo da Vinci was born illegitimate and spoke with a common rural accent. At the height of his artistic abilities, he would choose to give up paintings altogether, in order to pursue a career as a military engineer. In an era when the dissection of human bodies was forbidden, he would explore human anatomy at a level of detail unknown to his predecessors. All of his findings were hidden in his private notebooks, like flying machines, an underwater breathing apparatus, tanks, sluice gates, time and motion studies, a machine gun and so on and on.
Leonardo was well known in his time as both as a sculptor and an architect, though none of his sculptor has survived and no actual building can be attributed to him. When he applied for the job of a military engineer for the ruler of Milan he offered to create "mobile bridges, siege engines, cannons capable of raining a hail of stones on the enemy, tunneling devices, armoured vehicles, catapults...." At the time, Leonardo had a little more than a few speculative drawings in his notebooks. He had been commissioned by one ruler to waste his talent creating ephemera to entertain the court and its guests at various celebrations, banquets and other entertainments. These included elaborate ice sculptures, wondrous firework displays and ingenious theatrical devices. But apart from that he had largely been left to follow his own pursuits.
Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence on 3 May 1469 and grew up in troubled times for Florence. With the help of sponsors he started a career as a diplomat. Apparently his diplomatic missions in war times, especially a long stay at the French court, sharpened his analytic skills and gave him political insights - the basis for his famous publications like "The Prince". His services were soon neglected and Machiavelli was thrown into prison and died as an impoverished and disappointed man.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, today known just as Michelangelo, was born in 1475. He became early member of Medici household, dining at the table with Lorenzo di Medici (the Magnificent), then the leader of the Medici family. The artist needed 3m three years to complete his famous David.
Galileo Galilei, the first scientist of the modern era, promoted Kopernikus`s insight that the earth moves around the sun - challenging the orthodoxy - which got him the attention of Inquisition. When the brilliant mathematician was employed by universities his colleagues earned at least twice as much.
Valuable Help
The book has an index which spreads over 13 pages. When I click on one of the numbers behind the indexed names the Kindle version jumps to the respective chapter in the book. A very valuable help.
On takeaway is that geniuses like Dante, Boticelli, Machiavelli or Galileo where way underrated at their times and earned much less than contemporaries who are forgotten today. Often today´s celebrities finished their lives in poverty, a message I also got from a Mozart biography I read recently.
