The Black Prince of Florence Quotes

“He held out the prospect that if Alessandro’s regime fell, a more radical government might ally with the French. He, in contrast, was Charles’ ‘true and faithful servant’ who with Charles’ ‘prudence and authority’ could help avoid such problems. ‘No city,’ he went on, ‘seems more likely to disturb his holy design than Florence.’ Its citizens held Alessandro’s government in such hatred that most men of rank had resolved to leave. Only Ippolito was holding them back, but he could not do that for long.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Complementing these details from Alessandro’s own correspondence is a book written in the 1560s, by Alessandro Ceccherelli, about his ‘actions and sentences’. It was presented as an illustration of the Duke’s virtues for the benefit of”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“The wardrobe accounts note two bows and two quivers of arrows ‘in the Turkish style’ that had been given to Cardinal de’ Medici, as well as a pair of drums, also alla turchesca. The duke of Mantua’s agent reported that ‘many young noblemen’ were leaving Florence”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Today there was a great feast, and great triumphs and they ran the quintain and did beautiful moresche [Moorish dances] and more than two hundred horses raced, all jennets and Turkish, and it was a beautiful sight, and all the heralds of Lucca and Siena came to this triumph.’ He enclosed a copy of a poem in Alessandro’s praise that had been put up around Florence and on the walls of the Medici palace.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“The lords of Massa had suffered a setback when Alberico and his wife produced no sons and four daughters, but despite a supposed prohibition on women inheriting, first their eldest and then the second daughter, Ricciarda, had managed to hold the marquisate after their father’s death in 1519.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“The Turks, on the other hand, the army’s bravest, he had hunt, and used them day and night as excellent bodyguards.8 It is hard to escape the impression that this was something of a human zoo to entertain Ippolito and his friends. Ippolito’s papers are lost –”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Alessandro had a relatively low profile. The strict order of precedence meant he had to give way to higher-ranking noblemen. There were, nonetheless, ways for Alessandro to highlight his new status: through the luxury of his attendants’ dress, for example. His fifteen gentlemen wore a livery of pavonazzo – a shimmering peacock purple – and dark, fiery red. In an engraving of the coronation procession, though Alessandro is not named as an individual, his entourage features in a way no other nobleman’s does, on horseback, sleeves puffed and slashed, echoing German style, their caps extravagantly feathered.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Even two-year-olds might be taught their alphabet. One family memoir records how parents would carve letters out of fruit: if a child guessed correctly, he could eat the fruit as a reward.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Women from all three categories were easy prey for wealthy men. In a mid fifteenth-century survey of Florence over one-third of the bastard children whose mother was named were children of slaves. Another 20 per cent had a servant mother. Sexual violence against lower-status women was very common in this society, to the point that many probably saw it as ‘normal’.13 Whether or not there was violence in this case (and there was always a continuous threat of violence against runaway slaves) there was an enormous imbalance of power between Simunetta and the man whose child she bore.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici

“Simonetta may not have been a slave herself, but the descendant of an African who had arrived in Italy decades before.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“It seems to me unhelpful to insist on categorizing Alessandro’s mother as either black (sub-Saharan) African or North African, as if the people of these two groups never mixed. In reality they did, and for many centuries had mixed with Italians too.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“A long and fruitful marriage might have laid to rest some of the worst tales of sensual excess.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“How might Alessandro’s history have looked, if written by his friends? Among the hostility, there are little hints of the qualities they might have emphasised: intelligence, wisdom beyond his years, respect for law and justice.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“A few contemporaries referred to his mother’s slave status, but thanks to chance and contingency Alessandro was able to trump his illegitimate status and rise to the highest level of society, just as his relative Giulia de’Medici, Pope Clement VII, had done before him.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“Lorenzino featured in several stage plays, enchanting one by Alfred de Musset and another by Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Muskateers. His blow for republicanism found favour with nineteenth-century writers and audiences.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“Lorenzino's Apology for the murder made him famous, a celebrity killer of the Renaissance. Queen Marguerite of Navarre wrote a story about Alessandro's assassination. Versions of the tale featured on the London stage. It let itself to the genre of Jacobean revenge drama.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“While Alessandro’s arms were displayed hanging around Cosimo’s residences, Cosimo proved to slow to apprehend Lorenzo.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“Fiippo Strozzi was taken prisoner and held in the Fortezza da Basso (which no longer bore Alessandro’s name). He was tortured and pressured to confess to involvement in Alessandro’s murder. He died, probably by his own hand, leaving a suicide note that framed him as a defiant hero of Florentine liberty, though for most of his life he had been a loyal servant of the Medici.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“Alessandro was gone, but his regime lived on.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“The statue representing the body of the Duke stood on the funeral bier, amid numerous lights at the entrance to the Palazzo de’Medici, for as long as the procession took to pass. The mourners made their way through the city; past the churches of Santa Trinità, San Michele, and the great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Their destination, the church of San Lorenzo, was filled with candles.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“Whatever thier individual reasons, Ippolito’s presence in Rome created a focus around which all sorts of people discontented with Alessandro’s reign might coalesce to oppose the Duke.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“In the charged atmosphere of these months it was easy for exiles to gild insignificant grievances.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici

“The wealth of the Medici family was based on the wool trade but most importantly on banking. By the beginning of the fifteenth century they were one of the leading families in Florentine government. In 1421 Giovanni di Bicci de’Medici became gonfolaniere—literally, the standard-bearer of the republic, one of the most prestigious offices in the city. He was also a banker to the popes in Rome, and his bank has been called ‘the most successful commercial enterprise in Italy.’ It was the basis for his son Cosimo the Elder’s rise to power.”
― Catherine Fletcher, The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici