In June 1436, the scrutiny is finally ready but the Councils of the People and of the Commune are persuaded to pass, by a single vote, a law that allows the priors to extend, for a year at a time, the right of the accoppiatori to prepare electoral bags with just ten names. And they do. For one year. Then another. It seems these shady civil servants have a regular job. Accoppiatore was beginning to take on the meaning “fixer.” The priors extended their powers for a third year, at which point it was almost time for another scrutiny, though the names of the previous one have never really been used. But now there is a war on, and government finances are in desperate straits. This is not a time for the divisive business of scrutinizing the population and deciding who has a right to do what. Solidarity is at a premium. Month by month, election after fixed election, the podestà’s extractions of the priors’ names are recorded in the city archives exactly as they always were since the constitution was first written. It is important to understand that all this is perfectly legal.
With uncanny good luck, Cosimo is elected gonfaloniere della giustizia, head of government, first immediately after his return from exile, then precisely as the heads of the Eastern Church arrive in Florence for their famous council of 1439, then again at a particularly tense moment in 1445. In short, he knows how to have his name pulled from the bag when it matters. But for the most part, Cosimo is careful to keep in the background, never to make a display of his unconstitutional power. “He mixed power with grace,” Machiavelli tells us in his Florentine Histories. “He covered it over with decency.” “And whenever he wished to achieve anything,” says Vespasiano da Bisticci, “to avoid envy he gave the impression, as far as was possible, that it was they who had suggested the thing, not he.”
Of course what the majority of people are suggesting to Cosimo is what kind of state or bank appointment they or their sons and grandsons and nephews would like to have. Begging letters pour in for positions that are supposedly chosen by lot. Cosimo does his best. But you can’t please everyone. The Councils of the People and of the Commune are not happy. Is this Florentine republicanism? After the Battle of Anghiari in 1440, the defeat of Milanese troops and the consequent elimination of the Albizzi threat to the regime, the pressure of public opinion is such that the traditional system of truly random elections has to be restored.
But only for three years. In 1444 the ten-year sentence of exile on Cosimo’s enemies is coming to an end. To have seventy old enemies return at once would be dangerous. So the councils are bullied into accepting a balia, thus once again temporarily conceding unlimited powers. The sentences of exile are extended for a further ten years. The electoral “experiments” resume.
In 1447 Visconti dies. With wonderful caprice, the duke bequeaths his title to Milan and all its territories not to Francesco Sforza, now married to his bastard daughter Bianca, but to Alfonso of Aragon, who had become king of Naples on defeating the Angevin family in 1442. Since the idea that the king of Naples in the extreme south should also possess Milan five hundred miles away in the far north was unthinkable to everybody except the man himself, the only possible reason for Visconti’s doing this must have been to cause a maximum of confusion and resentment. And in fact, the people of Milan immediately reject the duke’s will, rebel, and form a republic. The city’s many subject towns take the opportunity of the ensuing power vacuum to declare independence. The Neapolitans march north into Tuscany with the intention of taking what is “legally” theirs. The Venetians march west toward Milan to capitalize on the chaos. Furious, Francesco Sforza, who feels cheated out of his inheritance, joins the new republic in the fight to recapture its subject territories (and revenues) but then starts to claim them for himself whenever he is victorious.
Lombardy fragments. Over the next two years, all the major players will change sides at least once. So it is easy for the Medici regime to go on insisting that this is no time for erratic, randomly chosen governments. “The power of the accoppiatori was instituted to preserve the independence of Florence,” Cosimo declares. Meantime, two questions obsess the endless consultative bodies (Cosimo’s allies) poring over the electoral issue. First: Is a return to the constitutional system of random election ultimately inevitable to placate public opinion and republican sentiment? Second: If it is inevitable, can the reggimento, the status quo, somehow be guaranteed? “The greatest attention must be paid to the technical aspects,” announces Cosimo to one meeting. Whenever, in a democracy, we see our rulers obsessed with “the technical aspects” of the electoral process, whenever we see them tinkering with the size of constituencies, or machinery for counting ballots, then we know we are getting close to “the secret things of our town,” the gap between respectable appearance and brutal reality. It would be rare for a banker not to be present.
THROUGHOUT THE 1440S and 1450s, draconian balias are instituted, made semi-permanent, then suddenly dissolved in the face of angry public reaction. New scrutinies are compiled with new rules. How many name tags are to be put in which electoral bags? How many members of the same family can serve on the same commission? Some people get only one tag in one bag and some get many tags in many bags. Some people are taxed out of business and some are hardly touched. “Whoever keeps in with the Medici does well for themselves,” writes Alessandro Strozzi bitterly to his exiled brother-in-law. Again and again, the Councils of the People and of the Commune are presented with the most ambiguous legislation. They reject it. The signoria reformulates it. The regime is determined to follow the letter of the law, if rarely its spirit. The process is exhausting. Some of Cosimo’s allies are calling loudly for a more drastic and definitive solution. They’re losing patience. Why can’t we have complete control and be done? But Cosimo has long since understood — and this is his modernity — that since power can no longer stem from a truly legitimate source, but is always at the end of the day “seized,” it will always be at best ad hoc, pro tem. Any drastic and definitive solution would thus be a fort waiting to be stormed by someone else equally drastic and determined. It is better to appear to be in constant negotiation, constantly ready to compromise. In the end, the key thing is to keep people, if not actually happy, then happy enough. To keep the lid on.
The figure of the so-called veduto was important. When the podestà pulled a name from an electoral bag — for prior perhaps, or for one of the Twelve Good Men — the electoral officials had to check whether the person chosen wasn’t in some way barred from holding office. Had he paid his taxes? Had he, or a member of his family, served in a similar office within the last two years? Was he presently resident in Florence? Was he, or any of his relatives, already sitting on another council or commission? In the old days, when the election really was an honest lottery, many names might be pulled from the bag before one was eligible. To be pulled from the bag was to be veduto: “seen.” Actually to take office was to be seduto: “seated.” Since the results of the scrutinies that decided which names were in which bags were kept secret, to be veduto for the position of prior — or, better still, gonfaloniere della giustizia—was a great honor. It meant you had passed the tough selection procedure, you were a respected citizen. When new consultative commissions were convened, being a veduto was often a criterion of eligibility.