Alessandro de' Medici

This article is on the first Duke of Florence. For the Pope, see Pope Leo XI.

Alessandro de' Medici (July 22, 1510 - January 6, 1537) called "il Moro" ("the Moor"), Duke of Penne and also Duke of Florence (from 1532), ruler of Florence from 1530 until 1537), though illegitimate, was the last of the "senior" branch of the Medici to rule Florence and the first to be hereditary duke.

He was born to a black serving-woman in the Medici household, identified in documents as Simonetta da Collavechio, and recognized as the illegitimate son of Lorenzo II de' Medici (grandson of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent), but many scholars today believe him to be in fact the illegitimate son of Giulio de' Medici, later Pope Clement VII (see PBS link). The nickname derives from his features.

When Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, the Florentines took advantage of the turmoil in Italy to reinstall the republic, both Alessandro and Ippolito fled with the rest of the Medici and their main supporters. After Giulio succeeded in returning control to the Medici in 1530, after a lengthy struggle, he became pope as Clement VII. He assigned Florence to thirteen-year-old Alessandro, with a regent (Cardinal Silvio Passerini). Alessandro was made a hereditary duke, an appointment that was conferred by Emperor Charles, for Tuscany lay outside the Papal States.

His many enemies among the exiles, and resistance to the regency of Cardinal Passerini, established a contemporary assessment that his rule was harsh, debased and incompetent, accepted uncritically by later historians. One relic of his rule sometimes pointed out as a symbol of Medici oppression is the massive Fortezza da Basso, today the largest historical monument of Florence. In 1535 the Florentine opposition sent his cousin Ippolito to appeal to Charles V against some actions of the Duke, but Ippolito died en route; rumors were spread that he had been poisoned at Alessandro's orders.

In a late replay of the kind of medieval civil politics that had long revolved around pope and emperor, commune and lord, the Emperor supported Alessandro against the republicans. In 1533, he married his natural daughter Margaret of Austria to Alessandro. For his own inclinations, Alessandro seems to have remained faithful to one mistress, Taddea Malespina, who bore his only children.

Within months his distant cousin Lorenzino de' Medici, assassinated him. According to the declaration he later published, "Lorenzaccio" ("bad Lorenzino") claimed that he had executed Alessandro for the sake of the republic— and that he had entrapped him through the ruse of a promised arranged sexual encounter. When the anti-Medici faction failed to rise, Lorenzaccio fled to Venice. He was himself eventually murdered some twelve years later. The Medici supporters (called "Palleschi" from the balls on the Medici arms) ensured that power then passed to Cosimo I de' Medici, the first of the "junior" branch of the Medici to rule Florence.

Alessandro was survived by two natural children of Taddea's: a son, Giulio (age four at the time of his father's death), and a daughter, Giulia; their descendants include most of the royal houses of Europe.

External links

• Alessandro de Medici (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/medici.html) PBS online page discussing his ancestry, and his heirs