The name of Albizzi appears for the first time in the annals of Florence in 1251, when Benincasa di Albizzo was an Elder. In 1282 Ser Compagno was the first of the long list of ninety-eight Priors of the house of Albizzi who sat in the Palazzo de’ Signori. Piero, the son of Filippo, the first Gonfalonier of Justice of thirteen the family gave to Florence, became immensely rich and by his prudence and sagacity obtained such preponderance in the affairs of the city that he was the recognized head of the nobili popolani. Acute rivalry between the Ghibelline Albizzi and the Ricci, who were Guelphs, had always existed; and Uguccione de’ Ricci, thinking to crush his rivals, advocated the revival of the magistrature of the Captains of the Guelph party, proposing at the same time that all who professed themselves Ghibellines should be admonished, i. e. excluded from all offices of state. Piero di Albizzo, to hide his Ghibelline tendencies, not only made no opposition, but took a foremost part in the doings of the tribunal, which became odious to the Florentines under his presidency. The Ciompi revolt was the direct consequence of the tyranny of the Captains of the Guelph party, Piero was beheaded and the other members of the Albizzi family were banished, only to return more powerful when the old system of government was revived in 1381. According to Passerini it was to the wise administration of Maso, Piero’s nephew, that the prosperity and the greatness of Florence, feared and respected by the other Italian Republics, were due. “He formed political relations apt to preserve the prosperity of the Republic, built great public edifices, protected nascent studies and arts and promoted the foundation of the Florentine University, the basis of the literary glory afterwards culled by the Medici family. The wars against the Visconti were prosecuted with constancy and without losses; indeed the state was enlarged, a thing which could not have happened amid such conflicting opinions as then reigned in Florence, if the man at the head of affairs had not been a politician of the first order.”9 Maso degl’Albizzi died in 1417 and his son Rinaldo inherited part of his father’s vast wealth and his ambition, but not his caution. The oligarchy of the nobili popolani became odious under his leadership, and the strong party led, but not ostensibly, by Cosmo de’ Medici, divided the city into two hostile factions. The death of that wise old citizen Niccolò da Uzzano, who had kept Rinaldo in check was, writes Machiavelli, “a misfortune for Florence, as Messer Rinaldo, thinking now to be head of the party, never ceased entreating and worrying all the citizens he thought might become Gonfaloniers, to rise and liberate the country from the man destined, through the malignity of some and the ignorance of the many, to enslave it.” Albizzi’s friend, Bernardo Guadagni, whose debts he paid in order to enable him to become Gonfalonier of Justice in September, 1433, confined Cosimo de’ Medici in the Palazzo de’ Signori and then exiled him for ten years. “Meanwhile,” writes Machiavelli, “in Florence, widowed of a citizen so great and so universally beloved, everyone was confounded. Conquerors as well as conquered were afeard;” and Rinaldo and his friends were beginning to realize “that great men should not be assailed, but so be they are assailed they should be done away with.” They attempted to retrieve their mistake by proscribing many of Cosimo’s party, and the government, occupied with private quarrels and enmities, became futile and uncertain. In September the following year, a Signoria devoted to the Medici was elected, and Rinaldo degl’Albizzi urged his party to take up arms. Whereupon the Gonfalonier summoned him and others of the Grandi to appear before him. Instead of obeying the order they collected their followers and with a strong armed force invaded the Piazza. The old palace of the Signori was at once closed and barricaded, and civil war seemed imminent.

It was averted only by the intervention of Eugenius IV. then living as a refugee in Florence. He sent Giovanni Vitelleschi, Bishop of Recanati, to beg Rinaldo degl’Albizzi to come to him and assured him there was no question of recalling Cosimo de’ Medici, and that if he went quietly home all would be well. Rinaldo was kept so long that his followers got tired and dispersed, leaving the Signoria masters of the situation. Sentences of banishment against Albizzi, his son Ormanno, Ridolfo Peruzzi, Palla Strozzi and many others of the Grandi were passed, and before they left the city Eugenius sent once more for Rinaldo and “told him,” writes Machiavelli, “that he blamed himself for the evil that had befallen him through trusting his word; exhorting him to have patience and to hope for a change of fortune. To which Messer Rinaldo replied, the small confidence shewn by those who ought to have trusted me, and the too great faith I put in you, have been the ruin of myself, of my party. But above all do I blame myself for believing that you, who were driven out of your own country, could keep me in mine. I have had ample experience of the tricks of Fortune; prosperity I never trusted much, so adversity does not affect me. I know that when Fortune pleases she will be kinder, but should she continue unkind, I care not to live in a city where men are above the law. For a country in which riches and friends can be enjoyed in security, is preferable to one in which you can easily be deprived of the former, and where your friends, for fear of losing their all, abandon you in your direst need. It was ever less hard for discreet and good men to hear tell of their countries’ woes, than to see them, and an honourable rebel is more esteemed than an enslaved citizen. So, full of ire, he left the Pope, thinking how fruitless his counsels had been and how cold his friends, and went into exile.” He died at Ancona in 1452.

His brother Luca, on the contrary, was an ardent adherent of the Medici and his descendants filled important posts under the Republic. The stern, grey palace, now divided into many houses, at the eastern end of Borgo degl’Albizzi, under which passes a small street was, I believe, built by him for one of his sons. The Albizzi arms, two golden rings one inside the other under a cross of the Teutonic order, are still to be seen on the façade. The Marquess Vittorio degl’Albizzi, to whose memory there is an inscription on the great family palace, was the last of his race.