What the rise of the Medici tells us about social networks and political action

The House of Medici is a paragon of our conception for what it meant to be power-brokers during the Renaissance. They were bankers, politicians, and patrons of the arts as well as of clients operating in a very competitive economic and political dynamic. They rose to control a city that may have otherwise been ungovernable. Their rise to power is instructive but not in the way you may expect. The history of the Medici in Florence shows just how influential network dynamics are on political and economic life.

This essay was part of a paper I submitted today that studied the development of Italian city-states during the Renaissance. This draws heavily on the scholarship of Paul McLean, John Padgett, and Christopher Ansell. If you are interested in social networks, or the history of the client-patron relationship (business folks), then you should read what these professors have so graciously contributed to the study of history.

During the fourteenth century, the Florentine elite managed to acquire power at the expense of the guilds that had governed the city during the thirteenth century. The decline in the power of the guilds resulted in additional intra-elite competition. One’s ability to influence associates would have a direct result on one’s status and prospects. The consequences of not having influence within these patronage networks could be dire; one could be held liable for high tax assessments, or unable to arrange marriages. Achieving high political office would also often enable one to obtain larger amounts of credit and therefore enjoy richer profits.

Neighborhoods in Florence were often focal points of power for an elite family. During the settlement and expansion of the city, nobles from different parts of the countryside tended to aggregate in the same neighborhood, and they tended to marry their progeny with those of the elites of their own neighborhood. Neighborhoods were also the centers of fiscal and administrative activity of the city-state, with neighborhood tax assessors working within their own neighborhoods. The patronage networks within these neighborhoods were complex, overlapping and vital to the conduct of daily life.

The Ciompi Revolt in the summer of 1378 shocked the political system of the city. Wool-workers, who were not allowed to form a guild and thus had no voice in the government, protested violently and seized power. Counter revolt led by other guilds restored the normal political order, but, the episode would have a significant impact on the psychology of Florentine leaders for decades. The elites increased the total number of eligible people for office, but in practice those elected to higher office came from only a small portion of those eligible. Paul McLean and other scholars have contended that the transition from guilds to politics of consensus, guided by the machinations of elite factions, encouraged the clientelism that would take control of Florence’s fate in the fifteenth century.

Researchers often have looked for advantages in the Medici strategy during this period. However, John Padgett and Christopher Ansell have produced an analysis of the Florentine patronage networks in play during this time, comparing the Medici family to the powerful oligarchy in the city that took control after the Ciompi were put down. Their analysis spans the turbulent period from the Ciompi Revolt until the ascendancy of the Medici more than fifty years later. The overarching implication of their thesis is that political centralization can coalesce quickly from social networks, but can also be undone by shifts in networks over time. The steps that ultimately lead to the centralized control of an emergent group may not have been intentionally pursued by that group. The decisions of the members of that group could be constricted by and competing with other networks. When a network becomes ascendant and gains political control over other networks, it often begins to strive toward its own reproduction. “Reproduction ensues when rules induce roles… which lock in patterns of collective action” (Padgett & Ansell p. 1259-1260) Control by the dominant agent in the network develops with these locked in patterns ensuring “a flow of collective behavior that just happens to serve [that agent’s] interests” (Padgett & Ansell p. 1259-1260).

Padgett and Ansell plot the network ties of the Medici faction and note that the Medici partisans had very few network connections among one another. Elites that were part of the oligarch network that came to dominate Florence after the Ciompi Revolt, on the other hand, had numerous ties to other elites. In terms of a network assessment, Medici partisans “were structurally impoverished” and so were dependent upon the powerful family at the center of their factional network which was arrayed like “spokes” of a bicycle wheel (Padgett & Ansell p. 1278). The more powerful elites ironically had the looser network within the city. When confrontation did finally occur, the oligarchy network featured individuals with numerous sources of information and guidance, and it was not clear in that network who the most powerful agents were. Urgent, collective action among these elites proved difficult.

How did the oligarchy’s overall network come to be so unmanageable? After the Ciompi Revolt, Padgett and Ansell find a shift among the marriage strategy of the dominant oligarchs. Oligarchs sought marriage ties across the city as opposed to within the same neighborhood. They also sought to curtail the patrician families who supported the revolt, like the Medici, by isolating them from these marriage ties. The goal of this strategy, according to Padgett and Ansell, was to combine the oligarchs into an interconnected network and minimize the chance that patrician groups could compete against other patrician factions during an uprising. The class warfare of the Ciompi Revolt seems to have had a lasting effect on the oligarchs. Asserting elite control throughout the city and minimizing the options of elites who had joined the rebels resulted in the alteration of the marriage networks of the oligarchs. This process would span more than a generation of marriages and result in a larger — although less easy to govern — network of inter-married elites across neighborhoods.

This isolation of formerly rebellious patrician families forced those families to pursue marriages outside of their neighborhood due to the limited number of status appropriate eligible patricians as well. So, while both factions began to expand into city-wide marriage networks due to the isolation of sympathizers of the Ciompi revolt, the sympathizers had fewer options due to their smaller numbers and therefore were more likely to marry outside of their neighborhood. The Medici, therefore, expanded their marriage network across the entire city more rapidly than the oligarchs. For this reason, Padgett and Ansell believe the Medici were not contemplating a strategy of power aggrandizement at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. Instead, the complicated network of oligarch marriages, both within and outside of neighborhoods, and the Medici’s more centralized network of marriages were part of the same social network “each reflexively and asymmetrically structuring the other” (Padgett & Ansell p. 1297-1298). If anything, the Medici followed a conservative strategy after the Ciompi Revolt was put down. They maintained marriage ties only within the patriciate in order to maintain their claim on status, and they sought to ingratiate themselves with the oligarchs by actively working to maintain the status quo.

The Medici also tended to avoid conducting business with family groups that they were already linked to with marriage ties, which contrasts with the oligarchic block. Medici economic ties were focused on their neighborhood but importantly also included the rising class of new men, another source of distinction from the oligarchic network. As the new men were unlikely to interact with patricians, and were from different neighborhoods than the Medici marriage network, the members of the overall Medici network were less inclined to interact with one another. The oligarchic network avoided any economic ties to the new men, even as the patrician class saw some of its members decline in economic standing. In terms of patronage and personal loans, the Medici had links to both their fellow patricians in their marriage network as well as the new men in their economic network.

The constituent parts of these patronage networks which came to control state functioning were stressed during the fifteenth century, when the city of Florence attempted to adjust tax assessments to support defense and expansion. McLean describes the innovations in tax assessment as “modernizing” developments (p. 171). Florence used its citizen’s considerable experience with accounting to attempt to fund the needs of the state. In response to these increased tax burdens, however, citizens used their personal connections to try and minimize their individual obligations. The frustration of tax collection by the patronage networks lead to new tax assessments, which citizens also tried to avoid. These patronage networks, which McLean calls a “game of deference and demands,” were not new to Florence, but they did become increasingly influential in conjunction with the state’s increased attempt to extract revenues in the first half of the fifteenth century (McLean p. 189-190). As the burdens of state expense increased and were passed on to the elite through the tax system, a “frantic scramble… to escape ruinous tax assessment” was initiated (Padgett & Ansell p. 1305). The neighborhood remained the administrative block for tax assessment and collection, and so elites facing serious financial stress felt compelled to turn to those with influence to alleviate the burdens. As patrician families now had expansive marriage networks across neighborhoods, they could exert influence in more parts of the city than previously. Patricians also sought to extract wealth from the merchant class, which lead to secret societies among the rising class — another example of group organization in order to counter exploitation from a rival faction. This led to patrician suppression of these organizations. But, these new men were also sometimes the business partners of the Medici.

The reordering of the patrician oligarchy after the Ciompi Revolt meant that patricians, already disinclined to assist the mercantile class, were now further disconnected from this part of society. Only the Medici had extensive economic connections with the mercantile class. When the oligarchs demanded Medici support in repressing the mercantile class, it seems Giovanni de’ Medici equivocated. The oligarchs responded by further shutting out the Medici block, while at the same time merchants were pleading with the Medici for support. Padgett and Ansell believe that at this point the Medici switched from a conservative strategy of patrician appeasement to a more aggressive strategy viewing their faction as a potential political entity during the crucial decade of the 1420s. The Medici network, moreover, had been forced into a spoke like structure by the combination of limited patrician appropriate marriage candidates and associations with merchants from their neighborhood. This network was tightly structured and only the Medici could arrange different parts of the network to cooperate. Ostracized in the late fourteenth century, the Medici were now the focal point of a combined network of merchants and patricians perfectly suited for the fiscal and political unrest of the 1420s.

During the first part of the fifteenth century, the city of Florence tried different tax systems in an attempt to meet the financial obligations of the government. Patronage networks responded in support of not only dyadic relationships but also to assist third-parties that were facing an untenable tax burden. It was not just the Medici that were doing this by the 1420s. Well off patrician families gradually assumed more and more responsibility for the financial management of their clients, and developed strategies to mask wealth from the government. This process gradually consolidated power around the strongest of the patricians and made the state less capable of extracting revenues.

McLean observes, “Friendship and citizenship, patronage and the state — these were inextricably connected in a variety of ways in the Renaissance Florentine polity” (McLean, p. 171). This had been the case well before the Ciompi Revolt or the tax assessments in the fifteenth century. What those key moments did was to stress the social ties and competitive animus of Florentines that had been funneled through the guilds and commune. The elites viewed themselves as the state’s custodians and sought the honor of serving the state, for status, recognition and profit. However, the state’s need to extract revenue threatened many of the elite with the loss of status. Their response was to rely on the other institution in Florence — the personal network. The most powerful Florentine patricians gained clients through this process, the oligarchs in a diversified network and the Medici in a spoke-like network with the capacity to direct the group’s action more coherently. When confrontation did come between the oligarchs and the Medici, the Medici had the stronger and more disciplined network.

Extensive research of the history of Renaissance Florence is possible due to the great deal of extant records. The city’s fractious political history can teach us a great deal about social networks. Some lessons include:

Networks are in a state of flux and not static. Individuals change their minds and circumstances change individuals over time.

A weaker network may have more options available to it than the supposedly strong network.

A homogeneous network is not always the most capable for dealing with some problems. Coherent action may be easier to achieve in a network with competing interests if there is a source of control within the network.

Keep in mind that networks overlap and influence each other. The same individual can be a part of multiple networks and have different roles in each one.

Take the long view on network analysis. Very rarely does a complex and persistent network come completely undone.

Further Reading:

Alfani, G. and Gourdon, V. (2012) Entrepreneurs, Formalization of Social Ties, and Trustbuilding in Europe. Economic History Review, 65 (3), 1005-1028

McLean, P.D. (2007) The Art of the Network. Durham: Duke University Press.

Padgett, J. F. and Ansell, C. K. (1993). Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434. America Journal of Sociology, 98 (6), 1259-1319