September 27th Birthdays

Cosimo de' Medici
Cosimo de' Medici

The son of Giovanni de' Medici, who founded the family's legendary fortune, amassing enormous sums in trade and banking. After his father died in 1429, Cosimo continued the family's commercial and financial practices with great success. He brought goods of little weight and high value from the East and lent money to the princely houses of Europe.

Cosimo also adopted the policy, already traditional in his family, of supporting the lesser guilds and the poor against the wealthy aristocracy which ruled the city. These oligarchs became jealous of Cosimo's popularity and fearful of his democratic tendencies. Consequently they sought to destroy him and his family. In 1433, spurred on by Rinaldo degli Albizzi, the most influential of their number, they had Cosimo arrested with the intention of putting him to death. He was exiled instead when, from his place of imprisonment, he succeeded in buying the favor of Bernardo Guadagni, the gonfalonier of justice, for 1,000 ducats (about $25,000).

Cosimo employed the architectural skills of Michelozzo to build his palace and, in 1437, the Dominican convent of S. Marco. He commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to restore the church of S. Lorenzo, which was in dire need of repair. The cloisters of Fiesole owe their erection to Cosimo, who added to these monuments of his munificence country villas of contemporary style at both Fiesole and Careggi.

Along with the physical adornment of Florence and its environs, Cosimo provided for its cultural life. He sent his ships to the East to gather the precious manuscripts of ancient writers, and he hired scribes to copy what he could not buy. He added to this growing collection the private library of Niccolò Niccoli, an enthusiastic bibliophile who left his books to Cosimo in gratitude for generous loans which had saved him from financial ruin. These valuable manuscripts were distributed to the monastery of S. Marco in Florence and the abbey at Fiesole, except for some which Cosimo kept in his own home. These collections were open to the public.

Quote:

"All those things have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they are not only for the honor of God but are likewise for my own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done nothing else but earn money and spend money; and it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it."

Further Reading:

Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, 2002 by William Connell

http://www.aboutflorence.com/Itineraries-in-Florence/medici.html

King Louis XIII of France

The eldest son of King Henri IV and Marie de Médicis, Louis succeeded to the throne upon the assassination of his father in May 1610. The queen mother was regent until Louis came of age in 1614, but she continued to govern for three years thereafter. As part of her policy of allying France with Spain, she arranged the marriage (November 1615) between Louis and Anne of Austria, daughter of the Spanish king Philip III. By 1617 the king, resentful at being excluded from power, had taken as his favourite the ambitious Charles d’Albert de Luynes, who soon became the dominant figure in the government. Louis exiled his mother to Blois, and in 1619–20 she raised two unsuccessful rebellions. Although Richelieu (not yet a cardinal), her principal adviser, reconciled her to Louis in August 1620, the relationship between the king and his mother remained one of thinly disguised hostility.

Although Louis had displayed courage on the battlefield, his mental instability and chronic ill health undermined his capacity for sustained concentration on affairs of state. Hence Richelieu quickly became the dominant influence in the government, seeking to consolidate royal authority in France and break the hegemony of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs. Immediately after the capture of the Huguenot rebel stronghold of La Rochelle in October 1628, Richelieu convinced the king to lead an army into Italy (1629); but his campaign increased tensions between France and the Habsburgs, who were fighting the Protestant powers in the Thirty Years’ War. Soon the pro-Spanish Catholic zealots led by Marie de Médicis began appealing to Louis to reject Richelieu’s policy of supporting the Protestant states. During the dramatic episode known as the Day of the Dupes (November 10–12, 1630), the queen mother demanded that Louis dismiss Richelieu. After some hesitation, the king decided to stand by his minister; Marie de Médicis and Gaston, duc d’Orléans, Louis’s rebellious brother, withdrew into exile. Thereafter Louis adopted the cardinal’s merciless methods in dealing with dissident nobles.

In May 1635 France declared war on Spain; and by August 1636 Spanish forces were advancing on Paris. Richelieu recommended evacuation of the city; but Louis, in a surprising display of boldness, overruled him. The king rallied his troops and drove back the invaders. Late in 1638 he suffered a crisis of conscience over his alliances with the Protestant powers, but Richelieu managed to overcome his doubts. Meanwhile, Anne of Austria, who had long been treated with disdain by her husband, had given birth (September 1638) to their first child, the dauphin Louis (the future Louis XIV).

In 1642 Louis’s young favourite, the marquis de Cinq-Mars, instigated the last major conspiracy of the reign by plotting with the Spanish court to overthrow Richelieu; revelation of Cinq-Mars’s treason made Louis more dependent than ever on the cardinal. By the time Richelieu died in December 1642, substantial victories had been won in the war against the Spaniards, and Louis was respected as one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe. The king succumbed to tuberculosis five months later. He was succeeded by his son Louis XIV.