5 - Depositor general of the Apostolic Chamber

Summary

Clearly Filippo's career as a papal banker is one of the most significant parts of his life, but one which historians who have concerned themselves with Strozzi have consistently ignored. Rather, they have been content to regard Filippo in terms of his Florentine experiences culled exclusively from Florentine sources. They have ignored this other side of his life and have been unaware of the wealth of evidence in the Vatican and other Roman archives which recalls not only Strozzi's financial activities, but the financial involvement of other Florentines in Rome as well. For too long historians of Florence have been somewhat chauvinistic when it comes to recognizing important influences on the city's history which have come ab extra. They have never fully appreciated that in our period, for two decades after the election of Leo X in 1513, decisions on Florentine political life were taken from the papacy at Rome. We have already noted how in the area of the city's finances Leo X (and later Clement VII) regarded Florence's resources as a supplementary fund for papal wars and diplomacy. Filippo Strozzi was the central figure in this Rome–Florence connection, but even the fact that he ran the depositories of both Florence and Rome at the same time and manipulated and transferred funds between the two cities has gone virtually unnoticed.