細節
[CAPPONI, Niccolò (1472-1529)] -- Letter by an anonymous writer to Pier Francesco Portinari(?), Florence, 19 April 1529, giving a detailed report of the final days leading to the fall of Niccolò Capponi as Gonfaloniere of Florence, 3 1/3 pages, 291 x 215mm, traces of seal, endorsed in a different hand ('Del casa di Niccolò Capponi'), (small tears in centrefold and lower margin).
Written only days after the downfall of Niccolò Capponi as Gonfaloniere of the Florentine Republic, the present letter documents the dramatic events of the previous several days. Following the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the subsequent imprisonment of Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the people of Florence expelled the Medici, and on 17 May 1527 declared a republic; Niccoló Capponi was elected Gonfaloniere. Anti-Medicean, Capponi was also a moderate and a realist who came, in his two terms in office, to believe that reconciliation with the Pope, who himself was attempting reconcilation with Charles V, would avert a later siege of the city by combined papal and imperial forces. Capponi had in fact maintained contacts with the papal court during his terms of office, and suspicion among his virulent anti-Medicean opponents that Capponi was involved in traiterous discussions with the Medici faction grew ever stronger. In a dramatic dénouement, a letter from Giachonotto Serragli in Rome to Capponi was intercepted by Iacopo Gherardi, one of his main opponents, on 15 April 1529. The intercepted letter itself contained little incriminating news, but it did mention negotiations with the Pope; the implication of complicity between Capponi and papal interests was clear, and Capponi was deposed. The event that he had hoped to forestall, the siege of Florence by imperial and papal forces, began 12 October 1529, and Capponi died less than one week later on 18 October 1529 while on a diplomatic mission to Charles V.
The author of the present letter does not identify himself, stating that he dare not sign his name for reasons of secrecy and security: 'Nomen scribentis non opposui quia manum agniosces'. His account is balanced but sympathetic to Capponi, and the sequence of events has been largely confirmed by modern scholarship of those turbulent few days. It is very probably addressed to Portinari, a papal ambassador, with whom Capponi had been in regular contact.
Written only days after the downfall of Niccolò Capponi as Gonfaloniere of the Florentine Republic, the present letter documents the dramatic events of the previous several days. Following the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the subsequent imprisonment of Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the people of Florence expelled the Medici, and on 17 May 1527 declared a republic; Niccoló Capponi was elected Gonfaloniere. Anti-Medicean, Capponi was also a moderate and a realist who came, in his two terms in office, to believe that reconciliation with the Pope, who himself was attempting reconcilation with Charles V, would avert a later siege of the city by combined papal and imperial forces. Capponi had in fact maintained contacts with the papal court during his terms of office, and suspicion among his virulent anti-Medicean opponents that Capponi was involved in traiterous discussions with the Medici faction grew ever stronger. In a dramatic dénouement, a letter from Giachonotto Serragli in Rome to Capponi was intercepted by Iacopo Gherardi, one of his main opponents, on 15 April 1529. The intercepted letter itself contained little incriminating news, but it did mention negotiations with the Pope; the implication of complicity between Capponi and papal interests was clear, and Capponi was deposed. The event that he had hoped to forestall, the siege of Florence by imperial and papal forces, began 12 October 1529, and Capponi died less than one week later on 18 October 1529 while on a diplomatic mission to Charles V.
The author of the present letter does not identify himself, stating that he dare not sign his name for reasons of secrecy and security: 'Nomen scribentis non opposui quia manum agniosces'. His account is balanced but sympathetic to Capponi, and the sequence of events has been largely confirmed by modern scholarship of those turbulent few days. It is very probably addressed to Portinari, a papal ambassador, with whom Capponi had been in regular contact.