An imagined gathering
1478 · Florence, Italy
Lorenzo, wounded and grieving, gathers allies and observers at table and begins the diplomacy that will save Florence.
The conspiracy in the cathedral has killed Lorenzo's brother Giuliano and left Lorenzo himself with a wound in the throat. The city has answered with a fury of its own, and now Lorenzo must decide how to answer the pope and the king of Naples, who backed the plot.
He keeps a table because to withdraw would look like weakness. Caterina Sforza, a Sforza by birth and a ruler in her own right, is among the guests; Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia has come to observe on behalf of the Curia. Lorenzo is pale and speaks little, but he is already working, sending envoys and weighing concessions. Over lasagne, roast pheasant, and broad beans, he begins the long negotiation that will end with him sailing to Naples alone.
Host: Lorenzo de' Medici
Caterina Sforza — A Sforza of Milan, watching how Florence handles its crisis.
Pope Alexander VI — Rodrigo Borgia, a cardinal observing for the Curia that backed the plot.
First course
a period dish
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Cosimo de' Medici
Florence's republican institutions and the Medici art of controlling them from behind the scenes.
Lorenzo de' Medici
The Italian practice of playing the great powers against one another so that no single state could dominate the peninsula.
Pope Alexander VI
The territories the popes ruled directly, and the military and diplomatic power that came with them.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli's short book on how a new ruler should win and hold a state, and why it has been read as both a manual and a warning.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.