The Black Prince of Florence by Catherine Fletcher - Oxford University Press (2016)
My favorite period in European history ended before the birth of Shakespeare. In fact, if I were called upon to provide specific dates, it would begin with the ascension of Alexander VI to the papal throne in 1492, and end with the decapitation of Anne Boleyn in 1536. A mere forty-four years during which the face of European politics was ripped apart and stitched back together so many times that it emerged unrecognizable. A period during which ‘common’ men like William Tyndale, Thomas Cromwell, and Niccolo Machiavelli exerted unprecedented influence upon the ruling elite; in which Cesare Borgia flung aside his scarlet robes to pursue princely glory; in which the word ‘heretic’ inspired as much fear as the word ‘communist’ did in McCarthy era America; in which one king’s request for a divorce turned the Christian world upside-down and initiated the Protestant Reformation. A lot can happen in forty-four years, especially when armies and countries can be mobilized to fulfill the selfish whims of monomaniacal sovereigns bent on hoarding treasure and immortal fame. During this period of uninterrupted turbulence, a handful of powerful dynasties competed for dominance, formed alliances, and broke agreements throughout the European world.
This was the time of child brides, extravagant ceremonial processions, and the strategic dispensation of titles. This was also the time of fratricide, matricide, regicide, and nearly every other kind of ‘cide’ one might imagine. Tyrants loom large in our collective memory. Real men like Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More, and Rodrigo Borgia have been obscured by their mythical personas, constructed by guttering torchlight in the seediest taverns and brothels in Europe. One of the most notorious names in Renaissance Italy belonged to the Medici—an ancient Florentine family whose history reads like a endless loop of violent expulsions and triumphant returns. In her fabulous biography The Black Prince of Florence, Catherine Fletcher examines the spectacular rise (and violent murder) of Alessandro de’ Medici—illegitimate son of the Duke of Urbino and an unknown woman, who may very well have been a black slave. Born in 1510 and murdered in 1537, Alessandro’s life epitomizes the violent absurdity of the times. Fletcher’s scandalous, thrilling biography reads much like an episode of Game of Thrones and is equally addicting—albeit without the added entertainment provided by an army of ice zombies.
Catherine Fletcher is a notable Renaissance historian who has written extensively on the Borgia, Medici, and Tudor dynasties. Although she claims to be ‘not exclusively interested in the glitzy people at the top,’ her attraction to the despotic rulers of the 15th and 16th century is, in my opinion, completely understandable. One can never spend too much time in the presence of Henry VIII and his six wives, and historians are always anxious to rehabilitate the baddies and uncover new evidence. Just as we begin to tire of the Tudor reign, up pops A Man for All Seasons, or Hillary Mantel and her serpentine reincarnation of Thomas Cromwell. Fletcher has certainly done her part to shine a spotlight on the lesser players of the Renaissance stage. Her 2012 book Our Man in Rome picks apart the diplomatic puppetry of Gregorio ‘The Cavalier’ Casali, Henry VIII’s ambassador to Rome, and the man entrusted with finding a solution to the ‘King’s Great Matter.’ She also served as a historical advisor for the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall, and has participated in numerous academic radio discussions. Fletcher was named a BBC New Generation Thinker in 2015.
The process of scholarly rehabilitation can be seen in the history of research into the Medici family. Alessandro, twice-damned by his relatives and contemporary biographers for being a bastard and having a dark complexion, enjoyed his own cultural resurrection in the 1930s when African American historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg published an article about the ‘Negro Medici’ in The Crisis, the NAACP’s official magazine edited by founder W.E.B. Du Bois. Alessandro went on to become a kind of symbol for racial discrimination, and was featured in Augustus Rogers’ 1947 book World’s Great Men of Color. Despite his newly-minted celebrity status, Alessandro cannot be definitively categorized—a fact that Fletcher repeatedly insists upon. In her conclusion she writes,
The simplest explanation for the existence of a tradition that Alessandro was of African descent is that it was based on fact. The story that his mother was a slave may be true as well, or it may be an invention derived from the fact that Alessandro had dark skin…Beyond that I am reluctant to try to read the specifics of ethnicity from artworks. Race is not a scientific fact: it is a social construction. If there is one thing that Alessandro’s life teaches us, it is that ‘black’ is in the eye of the beholder.
The evidence of Alessandro’s ethnicity is paltry: a few scattered portraits and the imaginative accounts of contemporary biographers who sympathized with his assassin. Even these writers—who were undeniably interested in portraying Alessandro as a vicious tyrant whose dark skin was the visible manifestation of internal corruption—focused more on his illegitimacy than the color of his skin. The fact that his mother might have been a slave is damning because she was a mistress, not because she was black. Fletcher concludes many of her chapters with a warning against reading too much into historical accounts. At one such juncture she writes,
Reading the accounts of Alessandro’s lascivious behavior, we should bear in mind that most of them were written after his assassination. They fit the classical narrative of hubris, the idea that extreme pride or arrogance comes before a fall, in other words that Alessandro brought his murder upon himself. They reinforce an argument that Alessandro was unfit to rule, that his masculinity was compromised by the excessive influence of women. It is remarkable how hindsight can change a picture.
Due to her mistrust of Medici biographers (Alessandro’s assassin was also a cousin and the family had to excuse his behavior in order to maintain their Florentine dynasty) Fletcher finds her evidence elsewhere. A surprising amount of information can be found in Alessandro’s household documents, and Fletcher displays her genius in using inventories and transactions to extrapolate upon the Duke of Florence’s relationships with his treacherous cousin Ippolito, his Uncle Pope Clement VII, and Margaret of Parma—illegitimate daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Alessandro’s eventual wife. Fletcher uses an itemized description of the Duke’s closet to introduce a lesson on life in the Renaissance court:
While dressing up was sometimes a matter of fun, it could also be deeply political. During the Italian Wars, for example, the Spanish were subject to similar mockery by locals hostile to their troops’ presence in Italy. For Alessandro himself, masquerading was perhaps a brief distraction from weighty responsibilities, but it might also have had political overtones. As Castiglione had observed, for a prince to put on a mask and ‘mix with his inferiors as an equal’ could also help him show that ‘it is not being a prince that accounts for his worth’; this is one way Alessandro’s contemporaries might have perceived his dress.
At other points, Fletcher uses the content of Alessandro’s closet to comment on the threat of impending war (new purchases of armour and firearms) and his courtship of Margaret and her imperial father (elaborate gifts and theatrical props). Fletcher also lists Alessandro’s growing collection of art to imply his pride as a patron, and his commission of silver platters to suggest that he hosted regular feasts and was not as detested as Medici biographers would have readers believe. In fact, writes Fletcher,
…there is much to suggest that Alessandro fulfilled the expectations of a Renaissance prince rather well. By most accounts he was charming and popular, accomplished in sports, a patron of the arts. He kept his hands clean and left the less salubrious aspects of his rise to power to others. If the womanizing stories are true, it would hint at recklessness, but the limited contemporary documentation should lead us to wonder whether they are. Unlike his cousin Ippolito, he respected Pope Clement VII, the head of the family, and did what the house of Medici required of him. Had it not been for Lorenzino [his assassin], Alessandro and Margaret might well have founded a Medici-Habsburg cultural centre in Florence to outshine even the Glamorous court of Duke Cosimo and his wife Eleonora di Toledo.
In her examination of Alessandro de Medici, Catherine Fletcher depends more upon the dry, unembellished records of wardrobe supervisors and manservants than she does upon the official family biographies. When she does quote from contemporary historians, she begins with a brief analysis of the writer’s motives and relationship to the Medici family. More often than not, it becomes clear that the historian was a friend of Alessandro’s rivals, and his personal advancement depended upon a condemnation of the fallen Duke. Fletcher introduces positive accounts in a similar manner. This strategy leaves the reader with a feeling of helplessness when it comes to distilling the ‘truth’ from historical accounts. Pinning down an accurate understanding of events is, as it is with the Tudors and the Borgias, an impossibility. Such mythical men cannot be treated fairly. When they are finally laid to rest, the empires they leave behind must choose whether to celebrate or condemn their fallen leader. Was Alessandro de Medici a gracious prince, or a lecherous villain? Should his death be recorded as a murder, or a tyrannicide? When the contemporary biographer’s future (and life) depends upon which adjectives he employs, there can be no middle ground. In The Black Prince of Florence, Catherine Fletcher paints a rich picture of the Manichean world of Renaissance politics. It is luxurious, it is treacherous, it is hysterical. Perhaps this nervous energy is what draws readers to every resurrection.
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