Johann Burchard tells us pope Alexander VI held a consistory which all the cardinals except one attended. It lasted about two hours when it was decided Cardinal Ascanio Sforza should go to Florence and meet and settle things with the French King Charles who was soon to arrive there. Then the pope dined with this cardinal in the Vatican and afterward, Cardinal Giovanni Borgia saw him off as far as the Tiber by San Paolo in Rome. Cardinal Ascanio then boarded a ship that took him downstream to Ostia and then onwards to Florence.
This Cardinal Ascanio Sforza had been acting all summer as a diplomat between the French court and the papacy. As the son of Francesco he was brother to Ludovico, now the actual duke of Milan. Known to be acting reliably to work the advantage of his family and his brother, the pope still needed his counsel to get a sense of French intentions. There was still no word from Venice, from the Spanish king, or Emperor Maximillian. The French had landed at Ostia and taken control of it. Ascanio for his part had spent most of the year going to and fro discussing the various options with the central players. Undoubtedly after discussions with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal Ascanio had spread talk of establishing a General Council for reform of the Church and perhaps of ousting the Borgia pope.
When at last, in October, the French forces turned south in Tuscany and headed for Florence, Ascanio returned to Rome. Burchard's translator and annotator Geoffery Parker tells us that Ascanio in November, was able to offer ways for the pope to avoid the French coming to Rome. Then he returned to Florence with word from the pope. As papal master of ceremonies this is all Burchard tells us. Further events would manifest additional responses. [pp 90-1]
As the clouds seemed to gather all year in Rome, matters had grown dark for some time in Florence. The halcyonic glory days of Lorenzo Magnifico were over. In place of their devotions to him and his family, the passions of the people fell into factions and the minds of many were taking darker turns. Girolamo Savonarola, Dominican friar at San Marco, preaching the end of times, echoed the fears of too many that a terrible tyrant would be sent across the Alps to punish Florence. At times a foreign Cyrus, and at times the angel of reform, for years a great scourge, he proclaimed, was coming soon to lay low the once proud Florence. Now, the French were on the road and the only hope in stemming the prophesied destruction was in pleading for a greater reformation in the larger, thoroughly corrupted Church.
The theme of reforming the Church was a centuries old set of problems. The Council of Basel which ended in Lausanne in 1448 had succeeded in unifying the papacy but not reforming the Church. The notion of a Council reforming the papcy or the Church might itself be acceptable, but the direction that such reform might take was far from certain or agreed on. There were weighty issues of the relations between the orders, and issues involving jurisdiction for servants of the Church in the lands of the Holy Roman Emperor. There were many sovereignties demanding exceptions, and dispensations, as there were many who saw such activitities as scandalous. But reform was certainly not just a recent or merely local concern. It was far worse than that for Savonarola and his followers in wealthy Florence.
In Florence, there were the anti de Medici factions, those more favorable to them, and those still dedicated partisans. But after the loss of Lorenzo it seemed the spirit of the city had either left it, or was left shuttered behind closed doors for security. Christopher Hibbert quotes an unnnamed envoy from Mantua who described the people there as fasting three days a week, the women and girls all entered into convents, and only men, boys and old women seen on the streets [p. 152]. This was, in part, response to the preachings of Savonarola who equated the coming French armies with the approaching sword of God, descending to snatch the unwary.
When word had reached Florence of the 'settlement' that Piero d'Medici had come to with the French King, the streets filled up with protesters. Piero had expected upon returning to reassure the people, that he had saved the city from invasion. Armed with stones, embittered about the accumulation of wealth and power, they would hear none of it. Piero was able to sneak into the city, gather up his closest family members, and the next day, retire well away from the city of his birth, that his family had tried to benevolently lead. Other family members and partisans tried to remove as much of the de Medici treasure as possible, but in the mobs that engulfed the family palazzo, in the following days, much was lost. The Signoria elected to assign bounties for the capture of members of the de Medici clan. After a few more days, it was friar Savonarola who was selected to go and try to plead with the French King on behalf of the city.
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Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963
Hibbert, Christopher: Florence: The biography of a city; Penguin Books, London, renewed 2004
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