It was a week or ten days after the French King Charles VIII entered Florence that he departed with his train south for Rome. With Piero de Medici appealing to far off Venice for aid, friar Savonarola was elevated to a central deciding position in the center of Florence. This major turn in that city would have far reaching effects that would extend beyond the city, across the region for decades.
The forces of Ferdinand coming from Naples were wheeling around Italy but plainly failing in most places that they turned up. The various papal lands, numerous castles and other holdings found themselves as well, in many cases, increasingly closer to capitulation to the French. Pope Alexander VI remained in Rome but found himself in increasingly desperate straits. As Piero de Medici had gone to Venice to seek help and advice, the pope decided to ask for help from the Emperor in the German lands.
News arrived in Rome from Florence of the changes in the north, and that the French were again on the move. Johann Burchard, the pope's Master of Ceremonies gives us these details of the scene.
"When he learnt what had been happening, the pope, on Monday, November 24th, summoned to his presence His Magnificence Don Rudolf, the Prince of Anhalt, Count of Ascona and Lord of Berberg, to whom (through me as interpreter) he complained about the insolence shown to the Holy Roman Church by the King of France. His Holiness protested that the king was seeking not only to create a kingdom for himself from the cities and lands of Italy that rightfully belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, but also to usurp the title and authority of that Empire. This the pope would never submit to, even if a naked sword were held to his throat, and he therefore asked that His Highness Maximilian, the King of the Romans, as the only Advocate of the Holy Roman Church, should be informed of these things, and should be exhorted most earnestly to succour the Holy Roman Church, the Holy Roman Empire, and the whole of Italy with the aid essential for their honour and good. This commission the Prince of Anhalt humbly undertook to carry out." [p. 93]
Rudolf of Anhalt was a most distinguished noble in German lands, and a co-Prince with his brothers of the state of Anhalt, north of Liepzig, east of Berlin. Acting as Imperial ambassador to the pope, he had served both Maximilian and his predecessor Frederick III. But petitions for any ambassador of this magnitude - from pope to emperor - had their own complex set of histories. The Guelph or Ghibelline conflicts between those cities and powers - the supporting of either papal or imperial factions, respectively, and there were several, but mostly in Italy, but also elsewhere - had faded in large part. But these histories were part of the never ending conversation, about power and control and who could use it. These set of controversies often had been at the center of conflicts up and down the peninsula for centuries. But under direction and strict oath to the pope, Prince Don Rudolf, in his role as dutiful servant and sacred knight for his Emperor went speeding north, with his entourage and protection and servants, to find him.
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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
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