Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) [Paperback]

Tim Parks (Author)

Book Description

Series: Enterprise | Publication Date: May 17, 2006

“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.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (May 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393328457
• ISBN-13: 978-0393328455
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > History > Europe > Italy

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written history book (for a change)!, February 7, 2006

By 

Nicholas Warren (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

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.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging Read, May 6, 2005

By 

Ladyness "Booklover" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

I've only read two of Tim Parks books: "Italian Neighbors" and "Italian Education". I loved both of them. I like his nonchalant style which takes the reader right to the point.
"Medici Money" was a good surprise. I had never read anything about the most famous family in Florence, so this book was a good introduction to the fortunes and misfortunes of the power and money hungry Medicis. Because I don't have a background in economics, some parts were a little more difficult to grasp for me, but otherwise it was a witty account of the Medici's bank rise and fall. I only wished it had more on the metaphysics aspect of Renaissance life and how it related to banking. I also think the book would benefit if it had more illustrations and a better genealogy table (some dates were different from the text). Overall it was a pleasant and informative read. I specially liked his suggestions in the bibliography. In sum, I enjoyed the book very much and if you're interested in learning a bit more about Renaissance and the Medici, it's a good start.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing & Cynical, January 14, 2006

By 

David Mullet (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) (Hardcover)

I enjoy reading about the Italian Renaissance, especially about Florence and its history. While I have read a number of good books, I would not count "Medici Money" among the best of them.

Tim Parks relates the rise and fall of the Medici family's banking business through the fifteenth century in a cynical, sarcastic tone. While he is to be given his due for not producing a fairy-tale profile of one of the most important families in Italian history, I get the impression that Parks finds very little to like about the Medici and would very much like us to share his low opinion of Lorenzo and Company.

His writing style, perhaps intended to be conversational, is littered with rhetorical questions and incomplete sentences that I found distracting ("For me or against me. Your fate. What could a banker do?"). Parks provides neither footnotes nor endnotes, and routinely quotes unnamed sources. As a result, I sometimes found it difficult to separate historical fact from author's conjecture.

Perhaps "Medici Money" is intended as a realistic counterbalance to less-critical accounts of the Medici, but I would rank it below other works on the period, such as "April Blood" and "Brunelleschi's Dome".