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Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise), by Tim Parks
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“A swift and brilliant synthesis of finance, politics, and history.”―Ben Sisario, New York Times Book Review
Before they achieved renown as patrons of the arts and de facto rulers of Florence, the Medici family earned their fortune in banking. But even at the height of the Renaissance, charging interest of any kind meant running afoul of the Catholic Church’s ban on usury. Tim Parks reveals how the legendary Medicis―Cosimo and Lorenzo “the Magnificent” in particular―used the diplomatic, military, and even metaphysical tools at hand, along with a healthy dose of intrigue and wit, to further their fortunes as well as their family’s standing.
- Sales Rank: #723601 in Books
- Published on: 2006-05-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.40" l, .57 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The Renaissance, so often seen as a clean break with the medieval past, was really an age of creative ambivalence and paradox. In this marvelously fresh addition to the Enterprise series, Parks, author of the Booker-listed Europa and a literary observer of modern Italian life, turns to Florence and to a particularly compelling contradiction. The spirit of capitalist enterprise that fostered cultural originality and underpinned patronage was accompanied by a Christian conviction that money was a source of evil and that usury was a damnable spiritual offense. In the space where this cultural conflict plays out, sometimes as stylized as one of Lorenzo Il Magnifico's tournaments, sometimes as life-threateningly fiery as Savonarola's sermons against worldly vanities, we find a world both akin to our own and almost incomprehensibly distant. Parks is a clear-eyed guide to the ambiguities of Florentine culture, equally attentive to the intricacies of international exchange rates, the spiritual neurosis about unearned income, the shocking bawdiness of Lorenzo's carnival songs and the realpolitik of 15th-century power. His prose is swift and economical, cutting to the chase. Like the Medici-commissioned funerary monument for the anti-Pope John XXIII, the effect is startlingly vibrant, resembling "those moments in Dante's Inferno when one of the damned ceases merely to represent this or that sin and becomes a man or woman with a complex story, someone we are interested in, sympathetic towards." (May)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Parks displays a keen observance of people's complexities and malleable motives in this account of the fabled Medici dynasty of Renaissance Florence spanning 1397-1494. The Medicis rise in banking and dissipate as succeeding generations neglect the ledger book and devote themselves to art and politics; indeed, one of the last Medicis, Lorenzo, dubbed the Magnificent, should have been called the Bankrupt. Parks effects a worldly, shoulder-shrugging tone to his descriptions of passing subterfuges as the Medicis maneuver through the snake-pit of fifteenth-century Italy. Their prime problem was the church's prohibition of usury, but the Medicis' acumen in circumventing sin created a second dilemma--warding off political poaching of their fortune, which they surmounted by taking over the Florentine republic through chicanery. As rulers, they inherit a third difficulty: Florence's survival in international politics. But the Medicis come to grief in a French invasion. Is there anything new under the sun when money mixes with politics and religion? Parks' marvelously entertaining history suggests there might be. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Marvelously entertaining....Parks displays a keen observance of people's complexities and malleable motives in this account of the fabled Medici dynasty."
Fascinating . . . elegantly told.
A model for all economic historians. . . . Parks, who is skeptical about bankers, writes about them with pace, wit, and some passion. "
Marvelously entertaining. . . . Parks displays a keen observance of people s complexities and malleable motives in this account of the fabled Medici dynasty. --Gilbert Taylor"
Fascinating . . . elegantly told. "
Most helpful customer reviews
48 of 53 people found the following review helpful.
A well-written history book (for a change)!
By Nicholas Warren
The focus of the book is the rise, and fall, of the Medici bank, rather than the Medici themselves. However, the former explains a lot about the latter. It takes you through the founding of the business, as a not-wholly reputable business conducted by merchants and sailing very close to the winds of usury, to the over-stretching of the bank and its demise. However, by this time, the Medici had become indispensible to the financing of wars, which had enabled them to become politically very powerful. Ironically, they could now afford to neglect the very business that had initially been responsible for their power and concentrate on dynastic marriages among the nobility of Europe (by the sixteenth century, Marie and then Catherine de Medici had become queens of France).
Along the way, the reader is introduced to the scions of the Medici family, including the two best known, Cosimo (also styled pater patriae) and Lorenzo (il magnifico) and something about their patronage of the arts at the time of the Italian renaissance. Concentrating on the running of the bank, the book has fascinating insights, such the significance of natural cash imbalances in different parts of the banking empire and what thet meant for the business when it was highly risky to physically transport gold coin from one location to another in Europe.
Medici Money was well-written, easy to read and most enjoyable. Naturally, it was writen by an author, not a professional historian. Don't expect a dry, academic book with every statement footnoted to sources. Do expect the author to sometimes interject his opinions and to make statements without backing them up (we just have to trust that he has done his research thoroughly). That's a trade-off, of course, but one I would like to see occur more frequently. The non-specialist reader may well learn more about history in this way and, most importantly, be encouraged to explore history further.
Bravo, Tim Parks! It's made me want to explore your novels.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
A fascinating extended essay, not a history or a novel
By Aaron C. Brown
Reading the other reviews, I see three camps. Reviewers who wanted a serious history disliked the book for being derivative, unprofessional and jumping around among topics without covering any of them well. Reviewers who wanted a straightforward story were annoyed by the literary language and complex narrative line. Reviewers who wanted a literary evocation of the life and times of the Medici Bank liked this book a lot.
I fall into the last camp. The author sets out financial, metaphysical and artistic threads and weaves the story of the Medici from them. Unlike the historian, however, he does not pick the threads that explain most of the story, instead he picks the threads of most relevance to a modern reader. He invites us, to the extent it is possible, to understand why the Medici did what they did, and why it mattered, and why those same choices still matter.
The first thread is the financial imbalance in Europe, with luxury goods flowing from the East, through Italy and north to Europe. Something, trade or money, had to flow the other direction. The imbalance was exacerbated by payments to the Church in Rome. There was not enough gold and silver available to do the job, and shipping it was too dangerous. The Medici bank made large profits for three generations by working out solutions.
At the same time, Humanism is gaining force in Italy and the Dominican Order is evolving some of the changes that will give birth to the Reformation (and cause some Medici discomfort in the person of Savonarola). Urban elites are growing in wealth and power at the expense of hereditary rulers, and inequality within urban centers is turning Republican systems to autocratic ones. War is constant, chaotic and relatively benign. The lines between war, religion, commerce and politics are not only blurred, they're non-existent.
These changes are stimulating, and being stimulated by, a revolution in Art. This is not just a change in styles but a new place for Art in the economy and in social consciousness. The Renaissance is only an external social movment, individuals have to reinvent themselves in relation to family, God and State.
The author takes us through this time of exhilaration and uncertainty with a novelist's pen. But this is not a novel, it is tied to the history of the Medici. As bankers and elite churchmen, extraordinary collectors and patrons (and at least in the case of Lorenzo, talented poets), skillful players of politics both civic and feudal and above all, masterful schemers; they are perfectly placed to feel the colliding forces that made modern Europe. The conflicts they exploited for wealth, power, acclaim and beauty are with us today.
This is a wonderful book, but difficult to categorize. I sympathize with the reviewers who were looking for something more conventional. But taken on its own terms, this is a five-star book.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Solid summary of the Medici story
By F. B. Jeffery
Tim Parks once again demonstrates his ability to write an engaging story about things Italian. Following his revealing exploration of how soccer is played (on and off the field), he turns to an explanation of the rise and fall of the Medici banking dynasty. Bottom line: smart founders, arrogant successors, times change and one must change to survive. I have a better if not deeper understanding of Italy during the Renaissance. His final suggestion is correct: read Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy for a more thorough appreciation of our Italian forebears.
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