Year: Day to Day Men: February 15
The Edge of the Known World
The fifteenth of February in the year 1472 marks the birth date of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was the eldest son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini, a daughter from the noble Roman house of Orsini. Piero was the lord of Florence from 1492 until his exile in 1494.
Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici was raised alongside his younger brother Giovanni, who would later be installed as Pope Leo X, and his cousin Giulio who later became Pope Clement VII. As the eldest son, he was educated to succeed his father as the head of the Medici dynasty. Piero studied under classical scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano and Catholic priest Marsillo Ficino, the head of the newly restored Florence Academy.
Piero de’ Medici was arrogant, disruptive and had an undisciplined character. He was constantly at odds with his older and richer cousins Lorenzo and Giovanni, the two sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Piero was also a suspect in his teacher Angelo Poliziano’s death by poisoning in September of 1494. .
In 1486, Piero’s uncle Bernardo Rucellai, a member of Florence’s social and political elite, arranged a political marriage between Piero and Tuscan noblewoman Alfonsina Orsini. The marriage took place with Rucellai standing as proxy for the groom; Piero finally met Alfonsina in 1488. Their union produce three children: two daughters Luisa and Clarice, and a son named Lorenzo who later became the Duke of Urbino. Baptism records show that Piero had a third daughter named Maria in February of 1492.
Upon the death of his father Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, Piero de’ Medici became the leader of Florence. The peaceful existence between the Italian states, established by his father, collapsed in 1494 with King Charles VIII of France’s decision to assert hereditary claims to the Kingdom of Naples. After settling issues with the city-state of Milan, King Charles VIII sent envoys to Florence to ask for support for his claims. After five days, Piero de’ Medici responded that Florence would remain neutral, an answer that was unacceptable to King Charles who subsequently threatened Florence.
Piero attempted to form a resistance but received little support from the Florentine elite who had fallen under the influence of the fanatical Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. Piero’s own cousins allied themselves with both pledges and funds to King Charles VIII. At the end of October in 1494, Piero, without consulting the governing Signoria of Florence, visited King Charles at his camp and acceded to all of the king’s demands by surrendering the cities of Pisa and Lvorno as well as four fortresses in the area.
Upon his return to Florence to report his actions to its Signoria, Piero de’ Medici encountered strong public outrage. King Charles VIII, following his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, made his entrance as ruler into Florence on the seventeenth of November. Because of his isolation and lack of allies, Piero de’ Medici had not sent an army to stop the invasion, thus fuelling the resentment of the Florentine people who finally forced him and his family into exile. Their palazzo was looted, and the Republic of Florence was re-established.
Piero and his family fled to Venice with the aid of French diplomat Philippe de Commines, a servant of King Charles VIII. They supported themselves by the sale of the Medici jewels. Piero tried several times to reinstate himself in Florence but he was rejected. After the French lost the Battle of Garigliano, Piero de’ Medici drowned in the Garigliano River on the twenty-eight of December in 1503 while attempting to flee the battlefield. He was buried in the Abbey of Monte Cassino.
A member of the Medici family would not rule Florence again until 1512, when Giovanni de’ Medici forced the city to surrender. In the next year, he was elected Pope Leo X which solidified the Medici’s power.