1 Prime pagine ok.indd - accademia degli intronati

162
John Koenig
On the other hand, this was a standard wartime division of labor – noncombattants
at prayer while the soldiers fought. The government also
on 30 July ordered the printing of a supplicatory prayer commencing
“Maria, beneficent mother, advocate of Florence,” which was the work
of Brother Alessandro da Brescia of the Ognissanti order 239 . This may
have been material for the prayer devotion introduced on 2 November,
which required Florentines, during a battle announced by the sounding
of the Ave Maria, to pray for victory.
But, then, the government moved, if only momentarily, in another
policy direction, when on procession Sunday, the pratica dispatched
Bernardo Castiglione on a peace mission to Orange, which was abandoned
the following day. There was also more war bravado at this and the
subsequent pratica of 2 August, though at the latter meeting an interest
in justice as a means of avoiding God’s anger dramatically resurfaced. It
was expressed forcefully for Santa Maria Novella by Francesco Carducci
(who, representing the Ten, had at the 25 April pratica dismissed the
call to “far giustizia” as a job for the appropriate officials): because God
was punishing Florence for its sins, justice had to be their overriding
concern (“bisogna far giusticia maxime”). Francesco Davanzanti for the
Sixteen went further, making, ominously, the previous republic’s failure
to provide justice the cause of its demise in 1512 (when the official
explanation, as we know, was ingratitude); and now in untimely fashion,
in the republic’s final hours, he urged his colleagues to learn from this
mistake. He also stressed (as he had done the day before) the necessity
of keeping faith with God their king: “the oath made to God must be
kept.”
On the next day, 3 August, at the Battle of Gavinana (outside Pistoia),
Ferruccio Ferrucci, who held the title Defender of the Republic, and his
badly outnumbered army were defeated. This defeat, which claimed the
life of Ferrucci himself, spelt the end of the republic, which capitulated
on 12 August.
239 ROTH, Last Florentine Republic, 219-20n. 97.