Opera a ben vivere (Guide to Good Living)
Opera a ben vivere
Dechi che vuoi ben vivere, abbi sempre dinanzi agli occhi la passione di Cristo.
Our renderingLet whoever desires to live well always hold the Passion of Christ before his eyes.
What it is
A vernacular Italian spiritual guidebook composed c. 1454 by Saint Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence and former Prior of San Marco — the convent rebuilt and patronised by Cosimo de' Medici — written explicitly for Dianora Tornabuoni Soderini and then copied for her sister Lucrezia Tornabuoni, wife of Piero de' Medici and mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. It prescribes a daily practice combining prayer with meditation on the Passion of Christ, regulation of the senses (especially vision and speech), and virtue formation through the contemplation of sacred images. Antoninus was a close associate of Cosimo de' Medici in establishing San Marco; description of him as Cosimo's personal confessor is traditional but not confirmed by surviving primary documentation.
Why it still matters
The Opera's daily discipline — examining conscience, meditating on the Passion, controlling speech and sight, and using sacred images as prompts for prayer — is immediately applicable today and reflects the same formation programme that shaped the women who raised Lorenzo the Magnificent and, through him, the Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII.
Kept alongside
The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi)
De imitatione Christi
The most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, composed c. 1418–1427 by Thomas à Kempis at the Augustinian monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle. Hundreds of printed editions appeared across Europe before 1600; French translations were in print from 1488 (Toulouse) and 1493 (Paris), and the text was standard reading in every Jesuit novitiate, including those that trained the French royal confessors Coton and Caussin. Its four books counsel contempt of worldly vanity, interior self-knowledge, spiritual consolation, and sacramental devotion — an architecture that moves the reader systematically from self-examination to union with Christ. While no single documented ownership record for either Medici queen has been identified, its universal penetration of Catholic court culture across two centuries makes its presence in any royal household effectively certain.
Prison Meditations on Psalms 51 and 31
Savonarola composed these meditations on Psalm 51 (Miserere, known as 'Infelix ego') and Psalm 31 (In te, Domine, speravi) in Latin while imprisoned in the Palazzo della Signoria in 1498 awaiting trial and execution, his right hand temporarily spared from further torture so he could sign his confession. Approximately 15 Italian editions appeared by 1500, making them among the most rapidly disseminated devotional texts of the early print era and ensuring pan-European reach within a decade. Savonarola had preached at San Marco — the monastery Cosimo de' Medici built and patronized — from 1482 and was the friar summoned to Lorenzo de' Medici's deathbed in 1492, giving these works an indirect but real connection to the Medici devotional world. The Miserere meditation (Infelix ego) became one of the most reprinted Latin spiritual texts of the sixteenth century.
Infelix ego (Meditation on Psalm 51 / Miserere)
Infelix ego, omnium auxilio destitutus
A profound Latin meditation on Psalm 51 (Miserere) composed in his Florentine prison cell by the Dominican friar Savonarola shortly before his execution on 23 May 1498. Despite being the Medici's principal political opponent, his text circulated in fifteen Italian editions by 1500 in the very city where Giovanni de' Medici (future Leo X) and Giulio de' Medici (future Clement VII) were formed; Martin Luther endorsed it in 1523. Josquin des Prez, Cipriano de Rore, and William Byrd set versions to polyphony, securing its place across a century of European devotional music. Its connection to Medici piety is environmental rather than by commission or documented use.