The social disparity between the Medici and the families they married into was not evident in the children’s early years. The Medici lacked noble status and came originally from the Mugello – the area north of Florence in the foothills of the Apennines, where they always retained possessions. Although some of the family were to be found in Florence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were there as moneylenders, participating in the city’s government as members of the Cambio, or Moneychangers’ Guild. Only a few members of the clan became wealthy – messer Averardo (called Bicci) in the first half of the fourteenth century and Veri di Cambio in the latter half of the century – and despite making good marriages, many of the family retreated to the Mugello after the economic downturn in the mid-fourteenth century. Those who remained became overbearing and litigious, including messer Salvestro de’ Medici, Veri’s cousin, who happened to be Gonfalonier of Justice at the beginning of the Ciompi uprising in 1378. Cosimo and his cousin Averardo descended from two sons of Bicci, Giovanni and his elder brother Francesco. Because Francesco died in 1402 when Giovanni was first elected a prior, Giovanni and his descendants were able to overtake Averardo politically, even though as cousins Averardo and Cosimo remained close allies. Giovanni worked for Veri di Cambio in Rome until 1397, when he returned to Florence to establish his own banking company.1