Botticelli, Venus and Mars, 1483

Humanities 3I. The Italian Renaissance

Lecture 3

Religion and Politics

Outline

• Florence under the Medici

• Florence: New Athens or New Jerusalem?

• The Rise and Fall of Savonarola

Florence under the Medici(1434-1492)

• Florence traditionally a republic: a free city-stategoverned by a constitution; citizens serve as legislators,chosen by lot or ballot.

• 1434 Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) returns from exileand seizes power in Florence; gradually erodes itsconstitution.

• 1464 Cosimo succeeded by his son Piero, and then hisgrandson Lorenzo (1469) as rulers of Florence.

• 1475 Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) begins a series ofpaintings under the patronage of the Medici family.

Botticelli,Adoration of

the Magi,1475

• 1478 Pope Sixtus IV is part of a plot (thePazzi conspiracy) to overthrow the Medici.Lorenzo escapes assassination attempt, buthis brother Guiliano is killed.

• 1479 Lorenzo excommunicated by Sixtus;armies of the pope and king of Naples moveagainst Florence. Sixtus excommunicatedby Tuscan bishops. Parties reconcile thefollowing year.

• 1492 Death of Lorenzo

Paradox of the Medici• Florence under the Medici is an oligarchy (rule of

the few), where power rest with a handful ofwealthy individuals connected to the Medici byties of blood and personal loyalty.

• Yet the Medici are responsible for much of whatwe admire about the Florentine Renaissance: therebirth of literature, philosophy, and art.

• The cultural program of the Medici is the revivalof the values and art forms of the classical (pagan)world.

Botticelli, Primavera, c. 1482

Part One• Venus, the goddess of love and marriage,

reigns in her garden, a place of eternalspringtime.

• With her is her son, Cupid, and his fatherMercury, who guards the entrance to thegarden and deflects the dark clouds.

• Venus’s attendants, the Graces, are virgins,symbols of purity, one of whom is about tobe struck by Cupid’s arrow.

Part Two

• According to another myth, the nymphChloris is carried off by Zephyr, whereuponshe is transformed into the goddess Flora.

• The two figures at the far right of Primaverarepresent a time prior to the appearance ofFlora, who has the poise and maturity of amarried woman. (Is she also pregnant?)

Mercury Graces Cupid/Venus Flora Chloris Zephyr

Part Three• Primavera was commissioned from

Botticelli by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (grandson of the brother of Cosimo)to commemorate his marriage toSemiramide d’Appiano in May 1482.

• It is meant to convey the idea that love leadsto a happy and fruitful marriage.

Pallas and theCentaur, 1482

Venus and Mars, 1483

Botticelli, Birth of Venus, c. 1485

The Platonic Academy• 1464 Cosimo provides Marsilio Ficino with

manuscripts containing all of Plato’s survivingworks and orders them to be translated into Latin(brought to Italy after the fall of Constantinople in1453)

• 1473 Lorenzo founds the Platonic Academy,whose members include the philosophers Ficinoand Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the poetAngelo Poliziano.

• 1486 Pico publishes Oration on the Dignity ofMan as the preface to a book of 900 theses, whichhe proposes to defend publicly in Rome. The bookis banned by the pope.

God: “We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no formof thy very own […] Thou canst grow downward into thelower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again growupward from thy soul’s reason into the higher natures,which are divine.” (from Pico’s Oration)

Pico’s Philosophy• Human beings are at the center of the cosmos,

midway between the bestial and divine.• Our nature is “plastic,” we can mold it as we

choose: we are “born in this state so that we maybe what we will to be.”

• Each of us has the potential for a spiritual“rebirth”: we can “grow upward… into the highernatures which are divine.”

Ascent to God

Bodily Experience(Sensation/Emotion)

Natural Philosophy(Reason)

Contemplation of Divine Things(Intellect)

Union with God(Peace, Happiness)

Illumination(wisdom)

Purgation(dialectic,moralphilosophy)

Perfection

Ancient WisdomThe same wisdom is found in many sources,which illuminate each other: Christianity,Judaism, and ancient pagan philosophy,especially Plato, who is understood to haveinherited his wisdom from the “thrice-greatHermes” (Hermes Trismegistus).

Cabala andthe Conversion of the Jews

• Cabala is the esoteric “true” meaning of thedivine law given to Moses.

• According to Pico, this meaning containsthe revealed truth of Christianity.

• This is illustrated through the interpretationof Genesis 1:1-27 in Pico’s book Heptaplus.

“When I had procured myself these books at nosmall expense and had read them through… Isaw in them… a religion not so much Mosaic asChristian…. In short, there is hardly anydispute between us and the Hebrews on thiswherein they cannot be so disproved and refutedfrom the books of the Cabalists that there is nocorner left in which they may hide.” (Oration)

Florence: New Athens orNew Jerusalem?

• Platonic philosophers such as Ficino andPico saw no contradiction between thewisdom of the ancients and Christianity.

• Others, following St. Paul and St.Augustine, saw the two worldviews asessentially at odds with each other.

• The conflict between these groups came to ahead in late 15th-century Florence (as it didlater during the Reformation).

The Rise and Fall of Savonarola

1481 Domenican friarGiorlamo Savonarola(1452-98) arrives inFlorence; stays for fiveyears.1490 Savonarola returnsto Florence and begins topreach against thedecadence of the city. Heprophesies divineretribution if theFlorentines do notcomply.

1491 Savonarola is electedprior of the monastery ofSan Marco.

Savonarola on Philosophers

• “Since they did not have true knowledge of theend of human life, the least child of the Christiansis better than them.”

• The big question: is the end of human life(salvation, blessedness) attained through art andphilosophy, or through faith in Jesus Christ?

The Savonarola Years, 1492-98

• April 1492 Lorenzo dies aged 43 and issucceeded by his son Piero.

• August 1492 Rodrigo Borgia attains the papacyby simony and takes the name Alexander VI. Hefathers seven children with two mistresses.

• Savonarola denounces the moral corruption of thepope, and preaches a return to a pious, biblicallybased Christian life.

Rodrigo Borgia, PopeAlexander VI

His mistress,Guilia Farnese

• 1494 Death of Pico, who is reported to haveconfessed his sins to Savonarola

• Under an agreement with Piero, Charles VIII ofFrance enters Florence and occupies Pisa. Thepeople rise up and drive the Medici from Florence.(This had been predicted by Savonarola: “Beholdthe scourge has fallen; the prophecies are beingfulfilled”).

• Savonarola proposes that Florence be governed asa republic under religious law (a populist reformthat rejected the Medici’s “rule of the few”).

• 1495 Legislation passed to expel all Jews fromFlorence.

• 1497 Savonarola excommunicated by the pope.Atmosphere of religious frenzy in Florence(“bonfire of the vanities”).

• 1498 Savonarola narrowly avoids “trial by fire,”but the people turn against him. He is hanged andburned for heresy on May 23, 1498.

• Pier Soderini reinstates the republic; Machiavelliemployed by the signoria.

“The people of Florenceseemed to be neitherilliterate nor rude, yet theywere persuaded that Godspoke throughSavonarola.”

Machiavelli

Botticelli, Mystical Nativity (1501)