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Politics in a City

by
June 1979, no. 11

The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426–1434 by Dale Kent

Oxford University press, $40 hb, 389 pp

Politics in a City

by
June 1979, no. 11

Few families in Italian history have enjoyed a fame greater than the Medici whose name has become inseparably linked with the Renaissance. It is paradoxical, therefore, how little has really been known, until recently, of how Cosimo, the founder of its predominance in Florence, paved the way for the establishment of the power it was to exercise over that city. Nicolai Rubinstein, some years ago in his Government of Florence under the Medici, showed how its ascendancy was maintained through a complex system of electoral controls, but it is only now, with the appearance of Australian historian Dale Kent’s study, The Rise of the Medici, that a clear picture is beginning to emerge of the process by which the Medici first issued from the ranks of the Florentine ruling class to the position of dominance which they gradually consolidated over the six decades following Cosimo’s triumphant return from exile in 1434.

The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426–1434

The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426–1434

by Dale Kent

Oxford University press, $40 hb, 389 pp

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