The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert Page B

monastery for which Pope Eugenius – having once been a friar there – had much affection, he announced that he would pay for a much-needed new library. 1 He commissioned a design from the young Florentine architect, Michelozzo Michelozzi, who had accompanied him to Venice, the buildings in Florence on which he was working for Cosimo having been brought to a temporary halt.
    While in Venice, Cosimo was kept fully and regularly informed of the changing situation in Florence where his supporters were continually plotting the downfall of the Albizzi. At the beginning ofFebruary 1434, the eloquent and highly cultivated Agnolo Acciaiuoli, 2 who had criticized the Albizzi’s dictatorial methods, was arrested and sentenced to ten years’ banishment to Cosenza. A few weeks later a distant relative of Cosimo, Mario Bartolommeo de’ Medici, who was suspected of trying to undermine the Albizzi’s foreign policy, was also arrested and banished for ten years.
    Cosimo himself warily avoided implication in these conspiracies. He knew that every month the Albizzi were becoming more and more unpopular in Florence and that both Venice and Rome favoured the return of the Medici. He was comforted to learn that since the Medici’s departure no other bankers could be found to supply the government ‘with so much as a pistachio nut’. By the late summer of 1434, after a decisive defeat by Milanese mercenaries of Florentine troops at Imola, feelings against the government had run so high that a majority of known Medici supporters were elected to the
Signoria
. One of these, Niccolò di Cocco, became
Gonfaloniere
.
    Had it not been for the objections of the immensely rich Palla Strozzi, who, since the death of Niccolò da Uzzano, had been the most respected and influential of the moderates in the oligarchy, Rinaldo would have used violence to prevent this new
Signoria
meeting; but he was persuaded to allow the members to enter into office on the understanding that they would be forcibly ejected from the Palazzo della Signoria at the first suggestion that the Medici should be asked to return. Determined not to be browbeaten, the
Signoria
took advantage of Rinaldo’s temporary absence from Florence in September to issue the invitation which he dreaded; and, upon his return to the city, they summoned him to their Palazzo. Suspecting that he would be arrested and thrown into the Alberghettino as Cosimo had been, and believing that he had the support of several prominent citizens – including Palla Strozzi, Giovanni Guicciardini, 3 Ridolfo Peruzzi 4 and Niccolò Barbardori 5 – Rinaldo ignored the summons, hurried to his palace, called his remaining adherents to arms and gave orders to the captain of his five-hundred-strong bodyguard to occupy the church of San Pier Scheraggio 6 opposite the Palazzo della Signoria and to prepare to take possession of the Palazzo itself The guard on the door of the Palazzo was offered as many ducats aswould fill his helmet to open the door for Rinaldo’s men should the
Signoria
instruct him to lock it.
    On the morning of 25 September, Rinaldo’s troops began to take up their positions. But the
Signoria
were not to be caught unawares. They brought their own troops into the Piazza, ordered others to march up and down through the streets, and made preparations to withstand a siege by having provisions brought into the Palazzo. They then shut and barricaded the gates, and summoned reinforcements from the surrounding districts. To gain time while these reinforcements were being assembled, they also sent two
Priori
to enter into negotiations with the Albizzi and called upon the services of another far more powerful intermediary who had now arrived in Florence, Pope Eugenius IV.
    Having quarrelled with the powerful Colonna family, to which his predecessor, Martin V, had belonged, Pope Eugenius had been driven from Rome by a rampaging mob and had fled to Florence where he was given shelter in the monastery of Santa