4 - Rise to favor

Summary

For Filippo, the conclusion of his marriage to Clarice de'Medici despite the opposition of Soderini was a personal victory. He had gained for himself a rich wife and for his family an important alliance with the Medici. He had escaped the clutches of the Quaranta and received a relatively light punishment at the hands of the Otto. The Signoria had lessened his sentence by allowing him to come back to Florence, and he was permitted to remain there under probation.

But he had been back in Florence barely a year when his new-found security was seriously threatened. His boyhood friend, Prinzivalle della Stufa, with whom he had staged the Dovitia mime in 1506, tried to involve him in a plot to murder Soderini and overthrow the government to reinstate the Medici. One night, a week before Christmas 1510, Prinzivalle arrived in Florence from Bologna where he had frequently visited Cardinal Medici, papal legate to that city. He came straight to the Strozzi palace to confide in Filippo, who he supposed would be sympathetic to the plot, since Strozzi was a Medici parente and had ample reason to dislike Soderini. Prinzivalle informed Filippo that their mutual friend and childhood companion Marco Antonio Colonna, now a condottiere in the pay of the pope, was waiting outside the city's gates with a band of loyal men ready to enter Florence and strike down Soderini at some public event during the holidays. Filippo flatly refused to participate in the plot.