6 - The Medici and the youth Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin, 1434–1506

Summary

Much has been written on the manipulation of Florentine confraternities and of the whole Florentine confraternal structure by interest groups, families, and individuals since the appearance of the pioneering articles of Rab Hatfield on the Compagnia dei Magi and of Richard Trexler on adolescent confraternities in 1970 and 1974 respectively. Most subsequent studies on Florentine confraternities have broached the subject and have provided valuable if restricted information on it. Notwithstanding their usefulness, we still lack specific analyses of the changes wrought by these manipulations on the internal lives and activities of the affected confraternities. We also do not have a clear understanding of the reasons which prompted such interest groups to seek to control confraternities; nor, finally, are we fully conversant with the means they employed to do so. This paper addresses some of these issues by analyzing the youth confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin both before and after its takeover by the Medici. It concentrates on the first eighty years of the confraternity's life and on two only of its five incarnations.

In the process, it also considers, albeit indirectly, two larger, related issues. These are, first, the nature of patronage; patronage understood as a carefully calculated exchange between patron and client, in this case the Medici and the confraternity of the Purification. Secondly, the reasons for Florence's preoccupation with youths.