Among the genealogists who wasted their ingenuity to fabricate an
imposing pedigree for Lorenzo de Medici, some pretended to derive his
origin from the paladins of Charlemagne, and others to trace it to the
eleventh century. But it is well ascertained that his ancestors only
emerged from the inferior orders of the people of Florence in the course
of the fourteenth century, when, by engaging in great commercial
speculations, and by signalizing themselves as partisans of the populace
of that republic, they speedily acquired considerable wealth and
political importance.
Giovanni di Bicci, his great grandfather, may be regarded as the first
illustrious personage of the family, and as the author of that crafty
system of policy, mainly founded on affability and liberality, by which
his posterity sprung rapidly to overwhelming greatness. By an assiduous
application to trade he made vast additions to his paternal inheritance;
by flattering the passions of the lowest classes he obtained the highest
dignities in the state. He died in 1428, deeply regretted by his party,
and leaving two sons, Cosmo and Lorenzo, from the latter of whom
descended the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
Cosmo was nearly forty when he succeeded to the riches and popularity of
his father; and he had not only conducted for several years a commercial
establishment which held counting-houses in all the principal cities of
Europe and in the Levant, but had also participated in the weightier
concerns of government. The form of the Florentine constitution was then
democratical: the nobility had been long excluded from the
administration of the republic; and the citizens, though divided into
twenty-one guilds, or corporations of arts and trades, from seven of
which alone the magistracy were chosen, had, however, an equal share in
the nomination of the magistrates, who were changed every two months.
The lower corporations, owing principally to the manœuvres of Salvestro
de Medici, had risen in 1378 against the higher, demanding a still more
complete equality, and had taken the direction of the commonwealth into
their own hands; but after having raised a carder of wool to the supreme
power, and involved themselves in the evils of anarchy, convinced at
last of their own incapacity, they had again submitted to the wiser
guidance of that kind of burgher-aristocracy which they had subverted;
and that party, headed by the Albizzi and some other families of
distinction, had, ever since 1382, governed the state with unexampled
happiness and glory. The republic had been aggrandized by the important
acquisition of Leghorn, Pisa, Arezzo, and other Tuscan cities; its
agriculture was in the most prosperous condition; its commerce had
received a prodigious developement; its decided superiority in the
cultivation of literature, the sciences, and the arts, had placed it
foremost in the career of European civilization; and its generous but
wise external policy had constituted it as the guardian of the liberties
of Italy.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._