Aka Catherine Fletcher's biography "The Black Prince of Florence". Overall: Fletcher comes across as pretty trustworthy, especially since she's good with the source referencing, is able to admit "we just don't know for sure one way or the other" about a key circumstance instead of adopting just one theory and treating it as fact ever after (why Alessandro's assassin killed him), and tries hard to provide contemporary context so her readers don't automatically go with their own assumptions. (For example re: race in the current day, specifically American sense vs how the 16th century attitudes, which weren't "race-blind" but weren't loaded with a lot of subsequent history, either.) Most importantly, her main claim re: Alessandro isn't that he was a misunderstood hero but that he was a fairly typical man of his time, both in his virtues and flaws, and that his subsequent bad press partially resulted from his assassin and enemies writing much of his history and partially from 19th century onwards racism (she provides the quotes to go with this). Since she doesn't out of hand reject all negative claims about Alessandro but sees one of the worst as entirely possible, she does not come across nearly as partisan as Nancy Goldstone or a great many Fritzian historians (in one direction or the other). All in all, her biography very much reminded me of the Borgia biographies I read a few decades ago, which also had this "yeah, they did some bad stuff, but no more so than the rest of the bunch, and were singled out for being "Catalans", then subsequently demonized" argument.
On to some key points:
1.) "Who's your daddy?" Catherine Fletcher goes with Lorenzo de' Medici (not the most famous one to bear that name, his grandson, cahn), father of Catherine de' Medici, over Giulio de' Medici, later Pope Clement as Alessandro's father. The arguments are these: on the one hand, Lorenzo never acknowledged Alessandro, and since he died just a few days after Catherine's birth - Catherine was his sole legitimate child and thus the last legitimate descendant of the older Medici line - , when Alessandro was just a toddler, we don't have any documents showing him doing something for the kid, either. Whereas Pope Clement's consistent favoring of Alessandro from the later's teenage days onwards provided fodder for the rumor that he was the Dad and simply said his cousin Lorenzo had been in order to provide a nod to propriety.
Whereas Fletcher argues that a) Renaissance Popes usually did not bother with this pretense, see also Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI) and later Alessandro Farnese (Paul III), so why would Giulio/Clement? (Here I disagree, because Giulio de' Medici had been illegitimate himself. As a Cardinal, he was therefore in a weaker position than your avarage Renaissance Cardinal, and more in need of at least pretending to observe propriety.
More worth considering is her second argument, b): there was no favoring of Alessandro during the later's early childhood. Alessandro does not show up in any records until Catherine de' Medici's Dad and mother died shortly after her birth, leaving her baby self, a girl, as the last legitimate of the line, and girls could not rule Florence. Thus, attention was given to two male bastards, Ippolito, who was the bastard son of Giuliano the younger, and Alessandro, now designed as her father's son. Both boys suddenly show up as possible heirs in records now, but Ippolito is the one clearly favored and assumed to rule Florence when he grows up, while Alessandro is treated as the spare to Ipppolito's heir, until Clement gets really sick, believes he will die, and in a hurry makes Ippolito enter the church and appoints him a Cardinal so the Medici will have another possible future Pope and will not lose their foothold in the upper Church hierarchy. Only Clement recovers against expectations. This leaves him with Ippolito now no longer available to function as secular future head of the Medici line, and only then does Alessandro get favored (which never stops).
2.) "Who's your mummy?" We don't know that, either. Not even what her name was, though possible candidates include "Simunetta" and "Senoera", or whether she was a servant or a slave (the terms were still used interchangeably a lot of the time), whether she had been of Black African or Arab descent (again, the term "Moro" wasn't just used for both but also for people without any North African heritage at all, like Ludovico Sforza). Alessandro's portraits, both the ones painted in his life time and postumously, are inconclusive in this regard, especially since Renaissance portraits are hardly photographs (for example, we know that Alessandro broke his nose during the Renaissance equivalent of a football match, and that's nowhere to be seen in any of the portraits). A letter claiming to be from her doesn't show up until 1882 and is most likely a forgery given what else the author who claims to have found it did. The earliest reference to her as a "negro" is in a chronicle by a French historian employed by Catherine de' Medici (where the take on Alessandro is largely sympathetic, btw), where it's said she was "half" of one. Interestingly, Ippolito when writing a letter to Charles (V.) as to why Charles should not marry his daughter to Alessandro but to himself, Ippolito (Ippolito really REALLY did not want to be a Cardinal and wanted to do what Cesare Borgia had done, quit the church for a secular careeer, for as long as he lived) uses as one of his arguments that Alessandro's mother was "a base peasant", no racial term mentioned. (Fletcher thinks the reason why Ippolito writes "peasant" rather than "servant" was that he was after Margaret himself, and of course Margaret's mother had been a servant, too.)
However, as mentioned before Fletcher considers it possible that the absolute darkest story re: Alessandro's mother might be true. On the one hand, this story comes from his assassin, Lorenzino de' Medici (aka Lorenzaccio), as part of his justication in his apologia where he writes of how Alessandro was totally the modern Caligula. Otoh, Lorenzino had been a friend and confidant of Alessandro's, and thus would actually have been in a position to know. And Lorenzino claims that when Ippolito wanted to present the "dirty peasant woman" who was Alessandro's mother to Charles in order to show how unsuitable a match for Margaret he was, Alessandro had her killed.
3.) Alessandro and women. Fletcher points out that the charges of tyrannical debauchery etc. are surprisingly vague. Alessandro had one consistent mistress, Taddea, from the time he was a late teenager onwards till his death. (He also had two children by her he acknowledged.) Doesn't mean he didn't have other affairs, but it's worth noting that aside from the story about his death (where Lorenzino claims he lured Alessandro to his doom by claiming a hot lady was awaiting him), there are no names other than Taddea's linked to his. There are several scandalous stories about various of his hangers-on and women where the ladies in question are named, and their fates detailed, but when it comes to Alessandro himself, there's only the general "he was debauched" claim by his enemies. Margaret, he seems to have treated very considerately. He met her for the first time when she was eleven and en route to Naples, and then later when she was 14 and the marriage was finally realised. He seems to have remembered what she told him on the earlier occasion because we have a letter from Alessandro himself asking a friend whose wife was a famous dog breeder for a puppy since Margaret had told him she wished for a little dog. He also gave her a lot of the standard presents of jewelry, fine clothing etc., not to mention the beautiful book of hours you saw in a vid, but the bit about the puppy is a personal touch that makes it sound as if he wanted her to like him and saw her as a person, not just a living connection to the most powerful man of Europe. Of course, he had plenty of motive - throughout the engagement years, the Medici (well, Clement and Alessandro) lived in fear Charles could still change his mind about the match, especially once Ippolito actively campaigned against it, and that Charles insisted that Margaret was to live in Naples first, not in Florence, and that the marriage wasn't to be consumed untl she was ready didn't calm their minds. But it's still a personal touch. As to whether Margaret liked or disliked him, Fletcher says any claim she disliked him is speculation based on his later reputation. She may have done, of course, but if so she hid it in her letters immediately following his assassination, where she signs as "Margarita la trista" , the sad Margaret. Something the Margaret of Parma biography I had read didn't include: the marriage was definitely consumated, since Margaret got pregnant, though she lost the baby in the third or fourth month or so. Let's hope Alessandro did it as gently as possible. (Fletcher observes re: the famous story about Margaret's second wedding night, with Ottavio Farnese, where he "only wet himself" according to her, that aside to whatever she thought about Ottavio Farnese, teen Margaret had a very good reason for not wanting to consumate the marriage - presumably she did not want another pregnancy until she was a few years older herself.)
4.) Alessandro and men. As boys, Alessandro gets compared to his disadvantage to Ippolito, who is described as prettier, and better educated (which feeds into Fletcher's theory that kid!Alessandro may have been raised as a servant until Catherine's Dad died, which suddenly made him a possible spare to the possible heir, and so had to catch up on his education), but from teenage days onwards he's your avarage athletic, swaggering and joking Renaissance Prince. He made a good impression on Charles when presenting himself to him in person and becoming part of Charles' entourage for months including a trip through various German territories, where one observer noted the Emperor didn't treat Alessandro as a future son in law but as a son. Since Ippolito (who as mentioned really did not want to remain in the church and saw himself as Cesare Borgia, only more successfully so) argued more and more with Uncle Pope Clement while Alessandro remained respectful and obedient, you might say Alessandro was a hit with older powerful men in general. The Ippolito vs Alessandro feud finally erupted into Ippolito attempting to have Alessandro killed (and failing) and Alessandro attempting to have Ippolito killed (and succeeding). (Via poison. One of the few times a murder by poison is really well documented and not just rumor. Note: it lasted four days. As opposed to the more fictional deaths which happen at once.) This one, Fletcher thinks Alessandro definitely did.
5.) Alessandro's opponents. Florence was still nominally a republic until Charles changed it officially into a dukedom, with Alessandro as the first Duke of Tuscany. Since the Medici had been in exile for 19 years after being kicked out under Savonarola, they had returned with added paranoia and propensity to crack down on opponents. Their individual popularity had varied - Giuliano the younger, Ippolito's father, had been fairly popular, Lorenzo the younger, Catherine's and Alessandro's father, had not been, which Ippolito had made much of in his "why I should be your son-in-law" letter to Charles, conveniently leaving out that Clement actually had made Ippolito himself regent of Florence for a while and that had resulted in a minor uprising, too, before Alessandro was put in charge - but they hadn't been offically named as Dukes. Alessandro was, and that itself caused much resentment. Which is why one of the explanations for his assassination is that cousin Lorenzino wanted to bring the Republic back, but if so, he went about it in a weird way, without any contact to the republican exiles who thus failed to act after Alessandro's death, which meant Florence simply got a new Duke, Cosimo, who came from the younger Medici line and was the ancestor of the Last Of The Medici we meet one and a half centuries later.
5.) So, what was it about Lorenzino the assassin? He also hailed from that younger Medici line and thus was a distant cousin to Alessandro and Catherine. As a late teenager, he managed to piss off Pope Clement by vandalizing the triumph arc of Titus which got him banished from Rome (and permantly disgruntled with Clement). Alessandro took him in, and the two got along famously for years. And then he killed Alessandro. Which left people guessing ever since. Was it:
a) Lorenzino having had the master plan to ingratiate himself with evil Alessandro until he could strike a blow for freedom? (His own explanation.)
b) Lorenzino having sincerely befriended Alessandro until the friendship went sour because while Alessandro favored him a lot, he had other friends, too? (This, more or less, was the explanation of Alessandro-friendly contemporaries.)
c) Lorenzino ingratiated himself with Alessandro as Ippolito's spy (he owed Ippolito, who'd financed his original getaway from Rome after having pissed off Clement), and then after Ippolito's death was left hanging, eventually deciding he'd better kill Alessandro before Alessandro found out about the Ippolito spying and killed him? (Catherine Fletcher's theory, but she emphasizes it's just that, and there's no proof.)
d) Lorenzino/Alessandro as an example of lovers falling out? This is the theory I'm amazed no one mentions. Well, it's a kind of subtext in Musset's drama Lorenzaccio, but Musset's drama is only very loosely based on history. (In it, Alessandro is a red head. Fletcher points out that interestingly, Alexandre Dumas, writing nearly at the same time as Musset, had Alessandro definitely as a mulatto, but then Dumas was mixed race himself.)
6.) Now Gods, stand up for bastards! Fletcher points out that this was definitely the era for them. Between both Ippolito and Alessandro as bastards, Margaret (of Parma) being one and of course her half brother Juan de Austria, not to mention Pope Clement, it showed that while illegitimacy was a taint, it wasn't an unsurmountable one as it would become once the reformation had really taken hold globablly. Of course, it all depended on your parent acknowledging you. Still, Alessandro's career - from son of a most-likely-black-servant to absolute ruler of Florence (for a while) would not have been possible in any later age.
Alessandro de Medici: The Defense
On to some key points:
1.) "Who's your daddy?" Catherine Fletcher goes with Lorenzo de' Medici (not the most famous one to bear that name, his grandson,
Whereas Fletcher argues that a) Renaissance Popes usually did not bother with this pretense, see also Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI) and later Alessandro Farnese (Paul III), so why would Giulio/Clement? (Here I disagree, because Giulio de' Medici had been illegitimate himself. As a Cardinal, he was therefore in a weaker position than your avarage Renaissance Cardinal, and more in need of at least pretending to observe propriety.
More worth considering is her second argument, b): there was no favoring of Alessandro during the later's early childhood. Alessandro does not show up in any records until Catherine de' Medici's Dad and mother died shortly after her birth, leaving her baby self, a girl, as the last legitimate of the line, and girls could not rule Florence. Thus, attention was given to two male bastards, Ippolito, who was the bastard son of Giuliano the younger, and Alessandro, now designed as her father's son. Both boys suddenly show up as possible heirs in records now, but Ippolito is the one clearly favored and assumed to rule Florence when he grows up, while Alessandro is treated as the spare to Ipppolito's heir, until Clement gets really sick, believes he will die, and in a hurry makes Ippolito enter the church and appoints him a Cardinal so the Medici will have another possible future Pope and will not lose their foothold in the upper Church hierarchy. Only Clement recovers against expectations. This leaves him with Ippolito now no longer available to function as secular future head of the Medici line, and only then does Alessandro get favored (which never stops).
2.) "Who's your mummy?" We don't know that, either. Not even what her name was, though possible candidates include "Simunetta" and "Senoera", or whether she was a servant or a slave (the terms were still used interchangeably a lot of the time), whether she had been of Black African or Arab descent (again, the term "Moro" wasn't just used for both but also for people without any North African heritage at all, like Ludovico Sforza). Alessandro's portraits, both the ones painted in his life time and postumously, are inconclusive in this regard, especially since Renaissance portraits are hardly photographs (for example, we know that Alessandro broke his nose during the Renaissance equivalent of a football match, and that's nowhere to be seen in any of the portraits). A letter claiming to be from her doesn't show up until 1882 and is most likely a forgery given what else the author who claims to have found it did. The earliest reference to her as a "negro" is in a chronicle by a French historian employed by Catherine de' Medici (where the take on Alessandro is largely sympathetic, btw), where it's said she was "half" of one. Interestingly, Ippolito when writing a letter to Charles (V.) as to why Charles should not marry his daughter to Alessandro but to himself, Ippolito (Ippolito really REALLY did not want to be a Cardinal and wanted to do what Cesare Borgia had done, quit the church for a secular careeer, for as long as he lived) uses as one of his arguments that Alessandro's mother was "a base peasant", no racial term mentioned. (Fletcher thinks the reason why Ippolito writes "peasant" rather than "servant" was that he was after Margaret himself, and of course Margaret's mother had been a servant, too.)
However, as mentioned before Fletcher considers it possible that the absolute darkest story re: Alessandro's mother might be true. On the one hand, this story comes from his assassin, Lorenzino de' Medici (aka Lorenzaccio), as part of his justication in his apologia where he writes of how Alessandro was totally the modern Caligula. Otoh, Lorenzino had been a friend and confidant of Alessandro's, and thus would actually have been in a position to know. And Lorenzino claims that when Ippolito wanted to present the "dirty peasant woman" who was Alessandro's mother to Charles in order to show how unsuitable a match for Margaret he was, Alessandro had her killed.
3.) Alessandro and women. Fletcher points out that the charges of tyrannical debauchery etc. are surprisingly vague. Alessandro had one consistent mistress, Taddea, from the time he was a late teenager onwards till his death. (He also had two children by her he acknowledged.) Doesn't mean he didn't have other affairs, but it's worth noting that aside from the story about his death (where Lorenzino claims he lured Alessandro to his doom by claiming a hot lady was awaiting him), there are no names other than Taddea's linked to his. There are several scandalous stories about various of his hangers-on and women where the ladies in question are named, and their fates detailed, but when it comes to Alessandro himself, there's only the general "he was debauched" claim by his enemies. Margaret, he seems to have treated very considerately. He met her for the first time when she was eleven and en route to Naples, and then later when she was 14 and the marriage was finally realised. He seems to have remembered what she told him on the earlier occasion because we have a letter from Alessandro himself asking a friend whose wife was a famous dog breeder for a puppy since Margaret had told him she wished for a little dog. He also gave her a lot of the standard presents of jewelry, fine clothing etc., not to mention the beautiful book of hours you saw in a vid, but the bit about the puppy is a personal touch that makes it sound as if he wanted her to like him and saw her as a person, not just a living connection to the most powerful man of Europe. Of course, he had plenty of motive - throughout the engagement years, the Medici (well, Clement and Alessandro) lived in fear Charles could still change his mind about the match, especially once Ippolito actively campaigned against it, and that Charles insisted that Margaret was to live in Naples first, not in Florence, and that the marriage wasn't to be consumed untl she was ready didn't calm their minds. But it's still a personal touch. As to whether Margaret liked or disliked him, Fletcher says any claim she disliked him is speculation based on his later reputation. She may have done, of course, but if so she hid it in her letters immediately following his assassination, where she signs as "Margarita la trista" , the sad Margaret. Something the Margaret of Parma biography I had read didn't include: the marriage was definitely consumated, since Margaret got pregnant, though she lost the baby in the third or fourth month or so. Let's hope Alessandro did it as gently as possible. (Fletcher observes re: the famous story about Margaret's second wedding night, with Ottavio Farnese, where he "only wet himself" according to her, that aside to whatever she thought about Ottavio Farnese, teen Margaret had a very good reason for not wanting to consumate the marriage - presumably she did not want another pregnancy until she was a few years older herself.)
4.) Alessandro and men. As boys, Alessandro gets compared to his disadvantage to Ippolito, who is described as prettier, and better educated (which feeds into Fletcher's theory that kid!Alessandro may have been raised as a servant until Catherine's Dad died, which suddenly made him a possible spare to the possible heir, and so had to catch up on his education), but from teenage days onwards he's your avarage athletic, swaggering and joking Renaissance Prince. He made a good impression on Charles when presenting himself to him in person and becoming part of Charles' entourage for months including a trip through various German territories, where one observer noted the Emperor didn't treat Alessandro as a future son in law but as a son. Since Ippolito (who as mentioned really did not want to remain in the church and saw himself as Cesare Borgia, only more successfully so) argued more and more with Uncle Pope Clement while Alessandro remained respectful and obedient, you might say Alessandro was a hit with older powerful men in general. The Ippolito vs Alessandro feud finally erupted into Ippolito attempting to have Alessandro killed (and failing) and Alessandro attempting to have Ippolito killed (and succeeding). (Via poison. One of the few times a murder by poison is really well documented and not just rumor. Note: it lasted four days. As opposed to the more fictional deaths which happen at once.) This one, Fletcher thinks Alessandro definitely did.
5.) Alessandro's opponents. Florence was still nominally a republic until Charles changed it officially into a dukedom, with Alessandro as the first Duke of Tuscany. Since the Medici had been in exile for 19 years after being kicked out under Savonarola, they had returned with added paranoia and propensity to crack down on opponents. Their individual popularity had varied - Giuliano the younger, Ippolito's father, had been fairly popular, Lorenzo the younger, Catherine's and Alessandro's father, had not been, which Ippolito had made much of in his "why I should be your son-in-law" letter to Charles, conveniently leaving out that Clement actually had made Ippolito himself regent of Florence for a while and that had resulted in a minor uprising, too, before Alessandro was put in charge - but they hadn't been offically named as Dukes. Alessandro was, and that itself caused much resentment. Which is why one of the explanations for his assassination is that cousin Lorenzino wanted to bring the Republic back, but if so, he went about it in a weird way, without any contact to the republican exiles who thus failed to act after Alessandro's death, which meant Florence simply got a new Duke, Cosimo, who came from the younger Medici line and was the ancestor of the Last Of The Medici we meet one and a half centuries later.
5.) So, what was it about Lorenzino the assassin? He also hailed from that younger Medici line and thus was a distant cousin to Alessandro and Catherine. As a late teenager, he managed to piss off Pope Clement by vandalizing the triumph arc of Titus which got him banished from Rome (and permantly disgruntled with Clement). Alessandro took him in, and the two got along famously for years. And then he killed Alessandro. Which left people guessing ever since. Was it:
a) Lorenzino having had the master plan to ingratiate himself with evil Alessandro until he could strike a blow for freedom? (His own explanation.)
b) Lorenzino having sincerely befriended Alessandro until the friendship went sour because while Alessandro favored him a lot, he had other friends, too? (This, more or less, was the explanation of Alessandro-friendly contemporaries.)
c) Lorenzino ingratiated himself with Alessandro as Ippolito's spy (he owed Ippolito, who'd financed his original getaway from Rome after having pissed off Clement), and then after Ippolito's death was left hanging, eventually deciding he'd better kill Alessandro before Alessandro found out about the Ippolito spying and killed him? (Catherine Fletcher's theory, but she emphasizes it's just that, and there's no proof.)
d) Lorenzino/Alessandro as an example of lovers falling out? This is the theory I'm amazed no one mentions. Well, it's a kind of subtext in Musset's drama Lorenzaccio, but Musset's drama is only very loosely based on history. (In it, Alessandro is a red head. Fletcher points out that interestingly, Alexandre Dumas, writing nearly at the same time as Musset, had Alessandro definitely as a mulatto, but then Dumas was mixed race himself.)
6.) Now Gods, stand up for bastards! Fletcher points out that this was definitely the era for them. Between both Ippolito and Alessandro as bastards, Margaret (of Parma) being one and of course her half brother Juan de Austria, not to mention Pope Clement, it showed that while illegitimacy was a taint, it wasn't an unsurmountable one as it would become once the reformation had really taken hold globablly. Of course, it all depended on your parent acknowledging you. Still, Alessandro's career - from son of a most-likely-black-servant to absolute ruler of Florence (for a while) would not have been possible in any later age.