This article reminds me I've been meaning to look up the Alessandro biography Mildred found at the Stabi, but I won't be able to do so until next month, due to being in Bamberg and busy otherwise.
No rush, you've given us all plenty to read. ;) And you did a Kiekemal write-up for us, which is the important thing!
cahn, remember when you wrote on some early Fritz post that
Clearly my purpose in life is now revealed: it is to encourage [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard and [personal profile] selenak to talk to me about Frederick the Great
?
Clearly my purpose is now revealed: to find books for Selena to read! Some turn out to be duds, but others are gold mines!
I... somehow COMPLETELY glossed over the part where you mentioned Alessandro's mom was a Nubian slave in your Margaret of Parma writeup, and when I read the article I was like WHAT?? (I am just... very good at eliding over things I don't expect, I guess! Also if I'd been reading your writeup more carefully I would have been like... whaaaaat happened there with Charles and Clement??)
That article sure is a lot more positive about him than the Margaret bio you read, though :P Interested to see what the Alessandro bio says, when you get around to it! (And like mildred says, no hurry, this reading list is... quite long... :) )
Well, I'm curious to learn the case for the defense from the biography; slander, both within one's lifetime and later, is certainly possible about most historical characters. (However, I would like to point out FW has his passionate defendants, too. :)
One thing that made me raise an eyebrow re: the article was listing his bastardy as a significant drawback to overcome. Well... kinda? But less so in that century and the one before than in most eras, if your parent was one of the top noble families, not least because the Popes (no matter whether della Rovere, Borgia, Farnese or Medici) were majorly invested in getting their kids titles, and most monarchs also wanted their illegitimate offsprings to have their own estates and titles. Alessandro, no matter whether his biological father was Lorenzo the Younger (Catherine de' Medici's Dad) or Clement when still Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, was far from the first and not the only one.
Some of the more prominent bastards who were dukes or duchesses before or during his life time: Cesare Borgia (and Dad Rodrigo, aka Pope Alexander, had even ensured Cesare would be a French Duke in addition to being an Italian one, i.e. one not reliant on any future Pope for keeping his title, by making that bargain with King Louis XII. for his annullment), Lucrezia Borgia (Duchess of Ferrara), Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond (bastard son of Henry VIII.). Then there was Caterina Sforza, bastard daughter of Duke Gaelezzo Sforza of Milan. Her rank wasn't higher than Countess, but she was one of the most fearsome warladies of the Renaissance and went mano a mano with Cesare Borgia. And that's not mentioning King Ferrante of Naples, who was born a bastard (since he was of the House of Aragon, that was one reason where Ferdinand, the male half of the Spanish Ferdinand and Isabella power couple, pounced with claims on Naples on his own behalf, but only after Ferrante's death - Ferrante was famous for mummifying his enemies and putting them at the table for other guests to see), and Giulio de' Medici, the later Pope Clement himself, who had been the bastard son of Giuliano de' Medici, adopted after his father's murder by Giuliano's brother Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" de' Medici. Basically: if in the Renaissance you could become Pope while being a bastard, becoming Duke wasn't anything to sneer at, hardly, but also not the most unusual achievement ever.
(Charles, as we've seen, also ensured Margaret would become a Duchess twice - once via Alessandro de' Medici, once via Ottavio Farnese, in both cases by marrying the illegitimate offspring/relation of a reigning Pope.)
Nor was Alessandro the first son of a slave born into the Medici family who was subsequently acknowledged and treated as one of theirs, complete with a career and titles - that would be Carlo de'Medici, son of Cosimo the Elder. Whether Carlo's mother had been a Circessian slave (i.e. white) or an African one is debated (for visual evidence see the wiki entry I linked), but she definitely had been a slave.
And thus concludes this day's Renaissance nitpicking.
And this is why I want you to be the one who reads the biography! You're the one qualified to determine whether this is more like defending Richard III, or FW. :D
Btw, the Kindle sample's case for the defense was along the lines of, "Look, I'm not saying he was a stellar human being. I'm saying he was the victim of bad PR, because his contemporaries with much better reputations did equally bad things, and yet he's the one who gets all the flak."
Me, lifelong fan of a gangster with good PR: *cough*
OTOH,
Preuss: FW was just a typical Prussian Hausvater!
Salon: Even the typical Prussian Hausvaters were horrified!
So I await your October verdict. Meanwhile, off to entertain myself with more Montefiore and Blanning.
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Clearly my purpose in life is now revealed: it is to encourage [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard and [personal profile] selenak to talk to me about Frederick the Great
?
Clearly my purpose is now revealed: to find books for Selena to read! Some turn out to be duds, but others are gold mines!
Alessandro de' Medici
That article sure is a lot more positive about him than the Margaret bio you read, though :P Interested to see what the Alessandro bio says, when you get around to it! (And like mildred says, no hurry, this reading list is... quite long... :) )
Re: Alessandro de' Medici
One thing that made me raise an eyebrow re: the article was listing his bastardy as a significant drawback to overcome. Well... kinda? But less so in that century and the one before than in most eras, if your parent was one of the top noble families, not least because the Popes (no matter whether della Rovere, Borgia, Farnese or Medici) were majorly invested in getting their kids titles, and most monarchs also wanted their illegitimate offsprings to have their own estates and titles. Alessandro, no matter whether his biological father was Lorenzo the Younger (Catherine de' Medici's Dad) or Clement when still Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, was far from the first and not the only one.
Some of the more prominent bastards who were dukes or duchesses before or during his life time: Cesare Borgia (and Dad Rodrigo, aka Pope Alexander, had even ensured Cesare would be a French Duke in addition to being an Italian one, i.e. one not reliant on any future Pope for keeping his title, by making that bargain with King Louis XII. for his annullment), Lucrezia Borgia (Duchess of Ferrara), Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond (bastard son of Henry VIII.). Then there was Caterina Sforza, bastard daughter of Duke Gaelezzo Sforza of Milan. Her rank wasn't higher than Countess, but she was one of the most fearsome warladies of the Renaissance and went mano a mano with Cesare Borgia. And that's not mentioning King Ferrante of Naples, who was born a bastard (since he was of the House of Aragon, that was one reason where Ferdinand, the male half of the Spanish Ferdinand and Isabella power couple, pounced with claims on Naples on his own behalf, but only after Ferrante's death - Ferrante was famous for mummifying his enemies and putting them at the table for other guests to see), and Giulio de' Medici, the later Pope Clement himself, who had been the bastard son of Giuliano de' Medici, adopted after his father's murder by Giuliano's brother Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" de' Medici. Basically: if in the Renaissance you could become Pope while being a bastard, becoming Duke wasn't anything to sneer at, hardly, but also not the most unusual achievement ever.
(Charles, as we've seen, also ensured Margaret would become a Duchess twice - once via Alessandro de' Medici, once via Ottavio Farnese, in both cases by marrying the illegitimate offspring/relation of a reigning Pope.)
Nor was Alessandro the first son of a slave born into the Medici family who was subsequently acknowledged and treated as one of theirs, complete with a career and titles - that would be Carlo de'Medici, son of Cosimo the Elder. Whether Carlo's mother had been a Circessian slave (i.e. white) or an African one is debated (for visual evidence see the wiki entry I linked), but she definitely had been a slave.
And thus concludes this day's Renaissance nitpicking.
Re: Alessandro de' Medici
Btw, the Kindle sample's case for the defense was along the lines of, "Look, I'm not saying he was a stellar human being. I'm saying he was the victim of bad PR, because his contemporaries with much better reputations did equally bad things, and yet he's the one who gets all the flak."
Me, lifelong fan of a gangster with good PR: *cough*
OTOH,
Preuss: FW was just a typical Prussian Hausvater!
Salon: Even the typical Prussian Hausvaters were horrified!
So I await your October verdict. Meanwhile, off to entertain myself with more Montefiore and Blanning.