767 



STROZZI. 



STROZZI. 



?6S 



A collateral branch of the Strozzi lived at Ferrara in the 15th 

 century. Its progenitor was Nanni or Giovanni Strozzi, a Florentine, 

 who removed to Ferrara, and became a distinguished captain in the 

 service of the Marquis Nicholas of Este, was ennobled, and acquired 

 considerable wealth. Nanni left four sons, all of whom applied to 

 literature; but the most distinguished of them was TITO VESPASIANO 

 STBOZZI, who studied under Guarino da Verona, and became a distin- 

 guished scholar and Latin poet. Some of his ' Carmina ' were pub- 

 lished by Aldus Manutius, and they contain his own biography ; others 

 are still inedited, Tito Vespasiano filled several judicial and adminis- 

 trative offices at Ferrara. He was appointed by the duke president 

 of the Council of the Elders, and was sent ambassador to Rome in 

 1484. As an administrator however, it appears from some contem- 

 porary chroniclers that he was very unpopular. (' Diario Ferrarese,' in 

 Muratori, ' Rer. Ital. Script.,' xxiv.) He died about 1508, and his tonab 

 is in the church of Santa Maria del Vado at Ferrara. 



ERCOLE STROZZI, son of Tito Vespaaiano, rivalled and perhaps sur- 

 passed bis father as a poet. He wrote both Latin and Italian : some 

 of his Latin verses are published together with those of his father. 

 He began a poem in praise of Duke Borso of Eate, which he left 

 unfinished. He was a friend of Bembo, Giovio, and other illustrious 

 contemporaries, and Ariosto (' Furioso,' c. 42) has placed him among 

 the excellent poets of his age. The mode of his death was tragical. 

 He had just married Barbara Torella, of a noble family of Ferrara, 

 when, on the 6th of June 1508, he was murdered one evening as he 

 was returning home, and his body was found on the road with twenty- 

 two stabs, and wrapped up in his mantle. Giovio says that a personage 

 of high rank, whom he does not name, was through jealousy the author 

 of the murder. The Duke Alfonso of Ferrara was suspected. Some 

 of the Latin elegies of Ercole Strozzi resemble those of Ovid in ease 

 and pathos, and in one of them he seems to foretell his own death. 

 He was buried in the same church as his father. His widow, who was 

 also a poet, wrote a sonnet on his death, which is in the ' Raccolta dei 

 Poeti Ferraresi.' 



Of the main stock of the Strozzi family which remained at Florence, 

 the most celebrated was FILIPPO STROZZI, who figured at the period of 

 the fall of the republic. Filippo acted an ambiguous part ; he was 

 ambitious, and had great influence through his connections and his 

 great wealth, being possessed of large funds in various banking-houses 

 in several countries of Europe. He was at times the friend and at 

 others the rival of the Medici. He married Clarice, daughter of Piero 

 de' Medici and niece of Leo X., a haughty ambitious woman, who ill 

 brooked to see two illegitimate scions of the family Alessandro and 

 Cardinal Ippolito placed by Pope Clement VII. to rule over Florence. 

 ' Filippo and his wife were the instigators of the popular movement of 

 May 1527, in which the republic was restored and the two youug 

 Medici were reduced to a private condition. Filippo Strozzi was a 

 supporter of the new Gonfaloniere Capponi and of the moderate party, 

 in opposition to the violent men who wished to proscribe all the 

 friends of the Medici, and drive matters to extremities. In 1529, by 

 the treaty of Barcelona, between Charles V. and Pope Clement, it was 

 agreed to make Alessandro, the spurious and even dubious son of 

 Lorenzo, duke of Urbino, son of Piero, duke of the Florentine state, 

 and Charles V. agreed to give him in marriage his natural daughter 

 Margaret. An army of mixed Imperial and Papal troops was sent 

 against Florence, which was obliged to surrender, after an obstinate 

 resistance, in which several members of the Strozzi family distinguished 

 themselves, in August 1530, and Lorenzo Strozzi, brother of Filippo, 

 was one of the commissioners who signed the capitulation on the part 

 of the Florentines. Filippo, who was then at Rome, took part in the 

 various conferences held there by the friends of the Medici in the 

 presence of Pope Clement, concerning the sovereignty to be given to 

 Alessandro. Filippo Strozzi returned to Florence and appeared to be 

 on good terms with the new duke, to whom he even lent money to 

 build a citadel to overawe the city. But Strozzi and his family were 

 too wealthy and too ambitious to be long subservient to a young 

 upstart whose character was despicable. The sons of Filippo were 

 fiery and restive; and his daughter Luisa, who had married Luigi 

 Capponi, having been publicly insulted by one of the duke's courtiers, 

 the latter was assailed one evening and roughly handled by some 

 unknown men. Her brothers, being suspected, were arrested, but 

 afterwards liberated by an order from Pope Clement. The unfortunate 

 Luisa died soon after of poison. Filippo and his sons left Florence for 

 Rome, where Paul III., Clement's successor, felt not the same interest 

 as bis predecessor for the Duke of Florence. Cardinal Ippolito de' 

 Medici, an illegitimate son of Giuliano, duke of Ne'mours, being piqued 

 at having been set aside for his cousin Alessandro, encouraged the 

 Florentine malcontents, who assembled at Rome under his auspices, 

 and among whom Filippo Strozzi and his sons were conspicuous. 

 Cardinal Ippolito however died suddenly, not without suspicion of 

 poison. In the year 1535, when Charles V. landed at Naples on his 

 return from the Tunis expedition, Filippo Strozzi and other Florentine 

 emigrants appeared before him and complained of the tyrannical and 

 dissolute conduct of Duke Alessandro, who repaired to Naples with 

 his counsellor Guicciardini, in order to answer their charges. Filippo 

 Strozzi offered large sums of money to the courtiers of Charles, to 

 obtain the removal of Duke Alessandro. At last the emperor decided 

 that the duke should remain, but should give a complete amnesty to 



the political emigrants, who however resolutely refused the boon, and 

 dispersed themselves among various towns of Italy. Filippo Strozzi 

 repaired to Venice. 



In 1537 Duke Alessandro was murdered by his relative Lorenzino 

 de' Medici, who was a descendant of Lorenzo, the brother of Cosmo 

 the elder ; upon which the partisans of the Medici contrived to have 

 young Cosmo, another descendant of the same branch, elected prince 

 of Florence, with the approbation of Charles V. The Florentine 

 emigrants were now reduced to despair, and being excited by the 

 agents of France and of Pope Paul III., they resolved to try once 

 more the chance of arms. Filippo Strozzi repaired to Bologua, with 

 his son Piero, a young man of rash courage, who had served iu the 

 French armies, and with Baccio Valori, Anton Francesco degli Albizzi, 

 Prior Salviati, and others ; thence they made an irruption into the 

 Florentine territory with about 4000 French and Italiau mercenaries. 

 The attempt was badly conducted, and a party of the invaders who 

 had taken possession of the castle of Montemurlo, situated between 

 Prato and Pistoja, allowed themselves to be surprised by the soldiers 

 of Cosmo joined by Spanish troops in the emperor's service, and were 

 totally routed. Piero Strozzi was lucky enough to escape, but Filippo 

 and the other leaders were taken and carried to Florence, where most 

 of them were immediately behea,ded. Filippo Strozzi was imprisoned 

 in the very fortress which his money had helped to raise. He was 

 there kept as a prisoner of the emperor, under the care of his lieuteuaut 

 Don Juan de Luna. Charles V., although he hated Filippo Strozzi 

 and all his family as enemies and partisans of France, still hesitated 

 concerning his doom, as Pope Paul and other great personages inter- 

 ceded for him ; Duke Cosmo however was eager for his death. The 

 emperor told the pope that he would spare him if he could show that 

 he was innocent of the murder of Duke Alessandro. Filippo Strozzi 

 was at Venice when the murder was committed at Florence, and it 

 appears certain that he had no previous understanding with Lorenzino : 

 he was astonished and for a time incredulous when the latter told him 

 what he had done ; but when he was convinced of the truth, he 

 praised Lorenzino for his deed, and extolled him as another Brutus. 

 However, Filippo Strozzi was examined, and put to the torture in 

 presence of Cosmo's chancellor and of Don Juan de Luna ; but 

 although he suffered cruelly, being of a weak and sensitive frame, he 

 denied all participation in the murder, and Don Juan de Luna at la.-t 

 ordered the torture to cease. Duke Cosmo however seized upon 

 Giuliano Gondi, an intimate friend of Filippo, who, being under the 

 torture, said that he had heard from Filippo that he was privy to the 

 murder. The depositions were sent to the emperor, who ordered Don 

 Juan de Luna to deliver his prisoner into the hands of Cosmo. 

 Filippo, being informed of this, preferred killing himself to being put 

 to death by the executioner. He wrote a declaration of his motives, 

 inscribed ' Deo Liberatori,' in which he said that after having been 

 already cruelly tortured, and in order to avoid being induced, through 

 the violence of renewed torment?, to accuse some of his innocent 

 relations and friends, as had lately been the case with the unfortunate 

 Giuliano Gondi, he had determined to put an end to his existence, and 

 that he recommended his soul to God, begging of his mercy to give 

 him at least a place with Cato of Utica and other virtuous men who 

 had died in a like manner. He then requested his sons to fulfil his 

 testament, and to repay Don Juan de Luna, the Spanish commander 

 of the fortress, for the many accommodations he had granted him, 

 and to bury his body in Santa Maria Novello by the side of his wife, 

 if it should be permitted ; otherwise it might lie wherever they would 

 put it. And lastly, addressing the emperor, he entreated him to 

 inform himself better concerning the condition of poor Florence, and 

 to provide better than he had hitherto done for its weal, unless he 

 intended to ruin the city altogether. He signed this remarkable 

 paper, which was found in his bosom after his death, "Philippus 

 Strozzi jamjam moriturus," and added as an epigraph the line from 

 Virgil 



" Exoriaie aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor." 



He then seized a sword which had been left, perhaps by a friendly 

 hand, in his prison, and cut his throat. His end excited a feeling of 

 compassion, mixed with horror, all over Italy. Whatever judgment 

 we may form of the character of Filippo Strozzi, iu which ambition 

 and weakness were predominant ingredients, we cannot help com- 

 passionating him in his death. The mode of his trial was barbarous 

 and illegal : if he had been tried and executed, like his companions, as 

 a rebel or disturber of the public peace caught with arms in his handy, 

 the sentence would have been plausible ; but he was kept in prison 

 for a twelvemonth, and then tried for a deed of which he was innocent. 

 Strozzi was generous and accomplished, was well acquainted with 

 classical literature, and he translated Polybius's treatise On the mode 

 of forming Encampments,' and also some apophthegms of Plutarch. 

 Many have mistaken him for a real patriot, which he was not ; and 

 Charles V. had well judged him, as well as the other leaders of the 

 Florentine emigrants, when he said to Autouio Doria, who was plead- 

 ing their cause at Naples in the time of Duk Alessandro, " You little 

 understand these men, Antonio ; they do not wish the liberty of their 

 country, but their own greatness ; for if we were to remove the duke 

 they would become themselves lords of Florence, in spite of the other 

 citizens, who really love the liberty of their city, but who could not 



