Francesco Soderini
Francesco di Tommaso Soderini (born June 10, 1453 in Florence , † May 17, 1524 in Rome ) was an Italian cardinal and one of the brothers of Piero Soderini .
Life
Francesco Soderini was born as one of four brothers in the Gonfalone Drago, in the Oltrarno district of Florence. His mother, Dianora di Francesco Tornabuoni, was a sister of Lucrezia Tornabuoni and thus an aunt of Lorenzo de 'Medici .
The family alliance of the Soderini and the Medici was formative in the decades up to 1494. Francesco was trained from 1472 at Studio Fiorentino and from 1473 at Studio Pisano and in March 1478 was appointed Bishop of Volterra . After Innocent VIII had increased the number of Apostolic Secretaries from six to thirty, Soderini took up the position of auditor in this district on January 1, 1488 . Rinaldo Orsini, the Archbishop of Florence, had left this office.
The overthrow of the Medici on November 9, 1494 and the beginning of the Italian wars were a turning point for the Soderini: They belonged to the circle of leading leaders who could be identified with the republic that was set up against the expelled tyrants. Since the alliance with France was vital, Francesco Soderini was first sent to the royal court at the end of December 1495. Soderini has anecdotal evidence for the most important local event of the following years, the day of the storming of the convent of San Marco. While the angry people overran the monastery on April 7, 1498 and worked towards the end of Girolamo Savonarola , a mob also turned against the city palace of Paolantonio Soderini . Francesco allegedly threw on his choir shirt, gained authority and averted the disaster. The political background to the unrest was the leadership of the ruling Frateschi party , which had used the monk's authority on a spiritual level. The decline was, however, only temporary, with a return of French power in Italy within a few weeks.
When the army of Louis XII. carried the war back to Italy in the late summer of 1499, Soderini witnessed in Lombardy the hours of the flight of Lodovico Sforza . He himself set out from Milan a few days later, on September 4th, under the promise of safe escort southwards. In the period of French hegemony and patronage that followed, he took part in retrospectively very prominent, richly handed down events: In September 1501, he returned to France. Returning in June 1502, he immediately joined the question of the Val di Chiana rebellion of the summer of that year and the question of the threat to Florence from Cesare Borgia . He was promptly the leading head of the embassy, in whose assistance Niccolò Machiavelli first met the Pope's son in Urbino at the end of June . Soderini stayed at Borgia for a few days and had to play on behalf of the republic for a while.
When the brother Piero Soderini was elected to the post of gonfaloniere for life in September 1502 and finally became head of the republic, there was something of a counterpart in Francesco's career. He was again in France when he was appointed cardinal priest of Santa Susanna on May 31, 1503 and was thus a higher church hierarch. On September 15, 1508 he moved to the titular church of Santi XII Apostoli and on October 29, 1511 he was raised to Cardinal Bishop of Sabina .
After the fall of the Florentine Republic in late summer 1512, the Soderini fell out of favor with the returned Medici. However, Cardinal Giovanni de 'Medici, Pope Leo X elected in March 1513, pronounced an amnesty. On July 18, 1516, Soderini was appointed cardinal bishop of the suburbicarian diocese of Palestrina . Later, Francesco Soderini was in danger again because he was involved in the so-called cardinal conspiracy in the summer of 1517 and had to flee Rome after the murder plot was discovered.
When the Italian wars were on the knife's edge between France and Spain after the death of Leo X in December 1521, Francesco Soderini returned to Rome with a spectacular and polemical appearance. After Hadrian VI. Having emerged from the conclave as the new Pope, he continued to try, with the help of the French party, to conspire against the rule of the Medici in Florence. A few days after the failure of this conspiracy, the brother Piero died in June 1522. Francesco survived in Rome, but was sometime later - Hadrian VI. had meanwhile ordered from Spain to Italy - arrested on April 26, 1523 after an audience with the Pope.
Elected on November 19, 1523, Clement VII , the second Medici pontiff , rehabilitated Soderini immediately and appointed him Cardinal Bishop of Porto e Santa Rufina on December 9, 1523 and Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri on December 18 of the same year . However, the cardinal survived this by only a few months; he died on May 17, 1524 in Rome. The cause of death may have been the plague. The burial in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo was only allowed to attend high church officials due to the epidemic that was spreading in the city. The funeral speech was given by the scholar Battista Casali with special reference to the aspects of fortuna and virtus in the life of Francesco di Tommaso Soderini.
literature
- Kate JP Lowe: Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy. The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini (1453-1524). Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0521421039 .
Web links
- Soderini, Francesco. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed November 18, 2016.
- Entry on Francesco Soderini on catholic-hierarchy.org ; Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Publications on Francesco Soderini in the Opac der Regesta Imperii
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Machiavelli, Discorsi, I / 54.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Soderini, Francesco |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Soderini, Francesco di Tommaso |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian cardinal, brother of Piero Soderini |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 10, 1453 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Florence |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 17, 1524 |
| Place of death | Rome |