Visdomini

   Così facean li padri di coloro
che, sempre che la vostra chiesa vaca,
si fanno grassi stando a consistoro.

(Paradiso XVI.112-14)

   So too behaved the ancestors of those
who, whenever your church is vacant,
grow fat upon the consistory.

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The Visdomini (or Bisdomini) were a Florentine family whose origins were so ancient that no one really knows where they came from. Legend has it that Charlemagne himself bestowed knighthood and nobility upon the first of their name, Cerrettieri Visdomini.

The Visdomini’s properties were located not far from the Duomo, here in Via delle Oche 22, where one of their towers still stands, and it’s still named after them.

The verses on this plaque refer to the Visdomini’s privileged position within the administration of the city’s ecclesiastical hierarchy. In other words, they skimmed enormous sums from the church, especially after one bishop died and his successor hadn’t yet been appointed. In the thirteenth century, the family sided with the Guelph party.

In fact, the Visdomini belonged to the White Guelphs, like Dante. But when Corso Donati managed to exile all the important White Guelphs in 1301, the Visdomini were saved by their relationship with the bishop. Well, all but a man called Guido who was banned forever for being a habitual lawbreaker.

About a block west of here, at Via de’ Calzaiuoli 81r, there was a particularly vicious murder, and it’s remembered on a plaque that most people never notice. It marks the spot where another man named Cerrettieri Visdomini used to live. When Walter VI, Count of Brienne, became podestà of Florence in 1342, Cerrettieri became his counselor and had Walter’s coat of arms put above his own front door.

This act of monumental brown-nosing turned fatal, however, because Walter was chased out of town a few months later, barely escaping with this life. An angry crowd gathered there under that coat of arms, growing with size and anger, until everybody went crazy and broke into Cerrettieri’s house. The mob found him upstairs and dragged him outside where they tore him to pieces.

Above: the coat of arms of Walter VI of Brienne, Duke of Athens

Below: the plaque on Via de’ Calzaiuoli marking the spot where Cerrettieri was murdered. The sculptor deviates from the traditional image by showing a more sinister lion and making it double-queued. The marker reads: “It was with this, the coat of arms of Walter Duke of Athens, that a man called Cerrettieri Visdomini, driven by evil ambition, defiled his houses in contempt of the oppressed city, but the act did not go unpunished.”

Coat of arms of the Visdomini (Bisdomini) family, in the historically correct version