People, Locations, Episodes

Fri, 07.22.151022

Alessandro de Medici, Ruler born

This date marks the birth of Alessandro de Medici in 1510. He was a Black Italian ruler during the 16th century.

The son of a Black, indigenous African servant woman named Simonetta da Collavechio and the 17-year-old Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who later became Pope Clement VII of the Catholic church.  The young Alessandro’s father, Cardinal Giulio de Medici, was the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Alessandro de Medici was the first Black head of state in the modern Western world.  On being elected Pope in 1523, Cardinal Giulio was forced to relinquish the lordship of Florence but appointed a regent for his 13-year-old son Alessandro, who had just been created Duke of Penna.  A title also went to a nephew, Ipollito. Even though both were illegitimate births, they were the last of what has come to be referred to as the elder line of the family.

Republicanism had grown in Florence under the regent.  When Emperor Charles V sacked Rome in 1527, the Florentines took advantage of the situation to install a more democratic form of government, and both de Medici and Ipollito fled. When peace was finally made two years later between the Papal and the Imperial factions, Charles V agreed to restore Florence to the Medici.  After a siege of 11 months, de Medici was brought back as the Emperor's designated head of state.  In 1532, the new Florentine constitution declared him the hereditary Duke of the republic.  With the death of his father, the Pope, in 1534, the exiles attempted to oust the Duke de Medici from Florence.  But the Emperor decided to uphold him and, in an apparent show of support, gave de Medici his illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Austria, as his wife.

Despite the security, Lorenzaccio de Medici, a distant cousin who had ingratiated himself to win his confidence, assassinated Alessandro de Medici a few months after his wedding in 1537.  De Medici’s African heritage is rarely, if ever, mentioned.  He wielded great power as the first Duke of Florence.  He was the patron of some of the era's leading artists and is one of the two Medici princes whose remains are buried in the famous tomb of Michelangelo.