The Big Four

11

GET READY TO DANCE

Conflicting interests in Big Four taxation services

Optimisation

Secrecy underpinned the Medici Bank’s success, especially in its ecclesiastical dealings. Through patronage and opportunism, most senior churchmen accumulated savings and investments, such as grand estates within and beyond Italy’s borders. Cardinal Hermann Dwerg, a friend of Pope Martin V, lived in ‘a spirit of evangelical poverty’ – while simultaneously holding 4000 florins, at a time when, according to author and banker Chris Skinner, ‘thirty-five florins would have paid a year’s rent on a small townhouse’. With each change of pope, the clerics faced the danger that their investments would be arbitrarily taxed or even confiscated by a new and unsympathetic ...