ON THE DAY after Christmas 1476, as Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, entered church, he was stabbed by three noblemen. The population rallied to the support of his wife Bona of Savoy, but ongoing intrigues amongst Galeazzo’s surviving brothers rendered the situation highly unstable; Florence’s main ally was in disarray and could not be relied upon. Meanwhile Sixtus IV had launched his campaign to secure the papal territories in the Romagna. This was the man of whom it was said that he ‘elevated nepotism into a political principle’; in need of a trustworthy army, he arranged for one of his nephews to marry the oldest daughter of Montefeltro, Lord of Urbino, who was rewarded by being promoted to ducal status. It was understood that from now on the new Duke of Urbino would use his mercenary army in the service of the pope, rather than Florence. At the same time, Sixtus IV embarked on his programme of appointing his relatives as cardinals; with little thought for the feelings of Lorenzo de’ Medici or the citizens of Florence, he made his degenerate twenty-five-year-old nephew Piero Riario a cardinal and appointed him Archbishop of Florence. The new archbishop’s quaint habit of presenting his mistresses with gold chamberpots was soon the talk of the city, though alas for the gossips, within three years he had dissipated himself into an early grave.
More serious were the machinations involving Archbishop Riario’s brother Girolamo, who was strongly suspected of being the pope’s son rather than his nephew. As part of his campaign to extend papal power, Sixtus IV sought to buy the city state of Imola and install Girolamo Riario as its lord. This city belonged at the time to Milan, and its owners demanded the equivalent of 40,000 florins, whereupon Sixtus IV approached Tornabuoni at the Medici Bank in Rome for a loan to cover this sum. Tornabuoni contacted Lorenzo, who was hesitant, with good reason: not only did Sixtus IV already owe 10,000 florins on his personal account, but Imola was strategically important to Florence, commanding its trade route over the mountains to the Adriatic. On the other hand, Lorenzo had no wish to offend the pope, so he decided to play for time, and hedged. Unused to being thwarted, Sixtus IV flew into a rage and withdrew the papal account from the Medici Bank; instead, in what may well have been a prearranged move, he turned to the Medici’s main rivals, the Pazzi Bank. Francesco de’ Pazzi, their manager in Rome, readily agreed to the pope’s request for a loan.
The Pazzi were of a distinguished Florentine lineage, and had been one of the city’s leading families for almost 500 years. An early member of the family had returned from the First Crusade in the eleventh century with several flints chipped from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and these had been housed in the church of Sant’Apostoli, becoming Florence’s most revered holy relics. The Pazzi had formerly been of aristocratic rank, which they had set aside only to enter the bankers’ guild in the fourteenth century. The bank they had established soon thrived, to the point where it was the only bank in Florence which could be considered as remotely rivalling the Medici Bank. They had commissioned Brunelleschi to design a family palazzo, and the catasto tax returns show that by 1457 the Pazzi had become the second-wealthiest family in Florence. Piero de’ Medici had taken note of this, and had arranged for Lorenzo’s favourite older sister Bianca to marry Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, the younger brother of Francesco. This had united the two families so that they now maintained only a friendly rivalry; Guglielmo had become a close friend of Lorenzo, spending time in his house and going hunting with him.
Francesco de’ Pazzi, on the other hand, harboured a bitter grudge against the Medici. An arrogant and pretentious man, he resented the airs put on by the Medici, as well as their power and their money; but now he had succeeded in delivering a serious blow to the Medici wealth, by securing the papal account. In his view, it was only Medici money that had managed to balk the Pazzi from political power in Florence. Now was the time to strike, before the Medici could recover.
Francesco de’ Pazzi was well aware that the Medici had several powerful enemies, who would be willing to assist in any move against them. To begin with he approached the coarse and aggressive Girolamo Riario, the new Lord of Imola, who had already shown signs of wishing to extend his power; and Riario agreed that he would be only too pleased to see Lorenzo de’ Medici assassinated. Next Francesco de’ Pazzi approached Francesco Salviati, a bitter opponent of Lorenzo who had been appointed Archbishop of Pisa by Sixtus IV. Salviati had been aptly described by Lorenzo’s friend, the poet Angelo Poliziano, as ‘an ignoramus, contemptuous of both human and divine law, steeped in crime and disgrace of all kinds’. Lorenzo had opposed Salviati’s appointment in Pisa, and for three years had refused him permission to cross Florentine territory to take up his post, thus depriving him of the vast financial benefits that accrued to his office. Archbishop Salviati enthusiastically agreed to take a leading role in the plot.
Next Francesco de’ Pazzi hired the condottiere Gian Battista da Montesecco, who was given orders to station his troops at Imola and other strategic points along the mountainous eastern border of the Florentine Republic. They were to wait until the conspirators struck, and then march upon Florence. There would be confusion after the downfall of Lorenzo, but the people would be only too pleased to see the end of the Medici tyranny and would rise up in support of the conspirators; there would be no opposition to his troops, who would not be required to shed any blood. Pazzi and Montesecco both knew that Florence could no longer rely on the supreme skills of Montefeltro, now happily Duke of Urbino.
The conspirators travelled to Rome, where Sixtus IV gave them his blessing, characterising Lorenzo as ‘evil and contemptible trash, who shows no respect’. Then, adopting a hypocritically pious air, he warned the conspirators that there should be no bloodshed, for the pope could not possibly sanction the taking of human life. But the conspirators knew that they could not accomplish their aim without bloodshed, so according to Montesecco, who was present at the meeting, they continued to press the pope, eventually demanding: ‘Holy Father, are you content that we steer this ship? And that we steer it well?’ Finally he nodded. ‘I am content.’ Montesecco, as well as the other conspirators, was in no doubt that the pope was fully aware of the deed to which he was giving his assent.
Francesco de’ Pazzi travelled to Florence with his plan to murder Lorenzo de’ Medici, together with his brother Giuliano, his only likely successor. Pazzi now sought the support of the fifty-seven-year-old head of his family, Messer Jacopo de’ Pazzi (the title messer, or ‘master’, was the equivalent of ‘sir’), a distinguished banker and silk merchant, who had spent several years abroad, mainly in France; on his return he had even served a term as gonfaloniere, and had been knighted by the Signoria for his services to the city. In the words of Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa: ‘When we have him in our side, the deed is as good as done.’ Yet as soon as Francesco de’ Pazzi and the condottiere Montesecco revealed to Jacopo de’ Pazzi the details of the conspiracy, his manner turned ‘as cold as ice’; he insisted that it would never work. Montesecco then revealed the details of the conspirators’ conversation with the pope, and on hearing this Jacopo was finally persuaded, agreeing to back the conspiracy.
After several delays, the conspirators finalised their plot, spreading the word amongst trusted friends who could be relied upon to take part. Two priests (one an embittered citizen of Volterra) were chosen to stab Lorenzo. An aristocratic ne’er-do-well named Bernardo Bandini (sometimes known as Baroncelli), who had money invested in the Pazzi Bank, was brought in to stab Giuliano, with the assistance of Francesco de’ Bardi himself. They would strike when Lorenzo and his brother were attending Mass at the cathedral, and the signal for the assassination would be the raising of the Host by the priest. It would take place on the fifth Sunday after Easter, 26 April, though in later years a myth grew up that this was in fact Easter Sunday, a story encouraged by the Medici to make the deed appear even more infamous, for taking place on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.
Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano would in the event be assassinated, but otherwise the plot would fail, with many of the conspirators meeting a gruesome fate, though none more so than Messer Jacopo de’ Pazzi. When news reached him in the Palazzo Pazzi that the plot had failed, he is said to have succumbed to a paroxysm of anguished despair; after he had recovered, he fled the city on horseback, accompanied by a number of armed retainers. Lorenzo sent bands of armed men in pursuit to search for him, as news of what had happened in Florence spread through the countryside. Several of Jacopo’s men were killed in a violent clash, but Jacopo himself managed to flee into the mountains, ending up at the remote hamlet of Castagno di San Godenzo. Here he was recognised by some peasants, who managed to capture him and hand him over to the pursuing Medici men; they then brought him back to Florence, where he was cast into a dungeon in the Bargello and tortured.
Next day, more dead than alive, Jacopo de’ Pazzi was dragged down the street to the Palazzo della Signoria and hauled upstairs; here he was humiliatingly stripped to his underwear and bundled out of a north window with a rope around his neck, where his writhing body swung beside those of the other four conspirators. When the hanged men were finally cut down, Jacopo’s corpse was taken to be buried at Santa Croce, the Pazzi family church. But worse indignities were to come for Messer Jacopo de’ Pazzi. During the following days Florence and the surrounding countryside were inundated with a succession of heavy rainstorms that washed away most of the cereal harvest; this misfortune was blamed on the Pazzi, and an angry crowd threatened to break open the tomb of Jacopo de’ Pazzi, so the friars exhumed his body, which was then buried in unconsecrated ground outside the city near the public gallows. But two days later, according to Machiavelli, a ‘great throng of boys’ dug up his body, and his cadaver was then ‘pulled by the noose with which he was hanged, and he was dragged naked through the whole city’. The leaders of the mob preceded him, crying out: ‘Make way for the great knight!’ When they arrived at the Palazzo Pazzi, his remains were subjected to further mockery; the cadaver’s rotting head was rapped against the door like a knocker, to cries of: ‘Open up! The great knight is here!’
Finally, with a rousing cheer, the stinking remains were thrown into the Arno from the bridge at Rubinconte, upstream of the city centre. Crowds rushed to the embankment to watch as the cadaver floated downstream past the Ponte Vecchio, through the city. Yet even this was not the end, for the decaying corpse floated on down the river, where it was washed up onto a mud bank, and here it was discovered by a group of urchins, who began parading the skeletal remains. Next they tied a rope around the skeleton’s neck and enacted a mock hanging, hauling the body up over the branch of a willow tree; then they beat the tatty hanging remains with sticks until the bones fell apart, before finally throwing them back into the river.
According to Machiavelli, this was ‘an extraordinary instance of the fury of the people’. Poliziano, who also describes these events, merely states that the mob were ‘driven by the Furies’. But what was the real reason for the extreme feelings that surfaced here? This grotesque sequence of events seems indicative of the seething tensions that lay beneath the surface of everyday life in Florence. Here was an occurrence in which eventually more than just a ‘throng of boys’ could legitimately vent their pent-up anger; on this occasion the despised ‘snivellers’ were able to get away with expressing their deepest feelings for their would-be rulers. These macabre scenes were the occasion for much jeering, vicious ridicule and execration; notably absent from all accounts are any mention of cheers for the Medici, cries of ‘Palle! Palle’ or shouts of approval for the proud victors. This perhaps is the key to such savagery, rather than any ‘extraordinary ... fury of the people’ or their being ‘driven by the Furies’. When overt wealth existed cheek by jowl with the perpetual poverty of the popolo minuto within the confines of a walled city, such an explosion becomes understandable. Rather than coming as an inexplicable surprise, it is more likely that the fate of Jacopo de’ Pazzi’s corpse gives a rare insight into the fraught social reality over which the Medici godfathers ruled.
When news of the failed conspiracy reached Rome, Pope Sixtus IV is said to have become apoplectic with rage; the hanging of one of his archbishops in full ceremonial robes was deemed nothing less than a sacrilege, for this was a direct insult to the Church! The fact that there had been a conspiracy, in which he had been one of the prime movers, was quickly forgotten. Sixtus IV issued a papal bull excommunicating Lorenzo de’ Medici, together with all the citizens of the Florentine Republic. Encouraged by the pope’s wrath, his hot-headed ‘nephew’ Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola (who had decided against joining his fellow conspirators in Florence), marched on the Florentine Embassy; backed by 300 soldiers of the papal guard, he arrested the Florentine ambassador. Sixtus IV now despatched a papal delegation to Florence, ordering the citizens to hand over Lorenzo de’ Medici so that he could be tried for sacrilege, blasphemy, insulting the Church, murdering the Archbishop of Pisa and a list of other misdemeanours. Lorenzo was declared ‘culpable, sacrilegious, excommunicated, anathematised, infamous, unworthy of all trust and spiritually disqualified from making a will’. At the same time, the gonfaloniere and Signoria of Florence were condemned in similar overheated terms ‘to have all their property confiscated by the Church, their houses levelled to the ground, their every dwelling place rendered unfit for habitation of any kind. May everlasting ruin accompany their eternal disgrace.’ In a separate, less publicised edict, the pope ordered the seizing of all Medici assets in Rome, including the Medici Bank, with all debts to this bank being declared null and void (thus at a stroke saving himself 10,000 florins).
The citizens of Florence greeted news of the papal bull of excommunication with wary scorn, and made it clear that they had no intention of handing over Lorenzo de’ Medici to the pope. The bishops of Tuscany were also none too pleased to discover themselves excommunicated en masse, and summoned a congregation in the cathedral at Florence, which was attended by all leading citizens. Here they defiantly announced that the Signoria had been justified in their defence of the republic against the conspirators, and afterwards issued a decree of their own excommunicating the pope. This they had printed on the first printing press in Florence, which had been established just a year previously, and the decree was then distributed around Tuscany, with the result that many more read of this excommunication than of the one issued by the pope himself.
But then came more serious news: in his fury, Sixtus IV had declared war on Florence, and had now drawn in King Ferrante of Naples as his ally: Florence soon found that it was standing virtually alone. The Orsini set about rallying the family army, but this was little more than a gesture, while Milan was still involved in its own internal power struggle and sent only a token force. Venice was keen to protect northern Italy, but considered Florence a lost cause: it too despatched only a token force. As a last resort, Lorenzo managed to secure the Duke of Ferrara, and his small mercenary army, to lead the Florentine forces.
The pope summoned the papal forces under their new commander Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, now recognised as the supreme military commander in all Italy; and these were joined by a large army from Naples under the Duke of Calabria, son of King Ferrante. While the Duke of Urbino stood by with reinforcements, the Duke of Calabria advanced into Florentine territory. In reply, the Duke of Ferrara executed a series of tactical responses – according to his despatches to Florence, he was ‘outmanoeuvring’ the enemy; in practice, however, this merely involved a series of retreats. The worried Signoria in Florence despatched messages remonstrating with their commander, demanding what he was being paid for if he refused to fight. Meanwhile the Duke of Calabria continued his advance, eventually reaching the town of Colle, thirty miles south of Florence, where he met with unexpectedly stout resistance from the local citizens, who refused to surrender their town. Finally, after a siege lasting two months, Colle fell to the Neapolitan army; but already it was November and the cold weather had begun to set in, so the Neapolitan army retired to winter quarters in Siena. On learning this news, the Duke of Ferrara retreated to Ferrara, and his Milanese troops decided that they too would return home.
By now civil order was beginning to break down all over Tuscany. Bands of armed brigands, passing themselves off as advanced scouting parties for the enemy, had begun descending from the mountains and terrorising the countryside. In Florence itself, the people were frightened and angry; food stocks from the countryside were running low, and they were being taxed to the limit to pay for the war, yet no one was defending them. To make matters worse, there had been a recent economic downturn in the wool trade, which had affected everyone, from the traders to the ciompi; with new taxes to pay for the war, many traders were now facing ruin, while the laid-off ciompi and their families faced destitution. Then panic set in as news spread that cases of bubonic plague had been reported in the Santa Croce district. And still the war dragged on and on.
At the end of 1479 Lorenzo de’ Medici took stock of the situation: he concluded that the citizens of Florence were being made to suffer largely on his behalf, for the enemy was really only interested in the overthrow and destruction of the Medici. In December, he decided to take a desperate gamble: having ensured that the loyal Tommaso Soderini was elected gonfaloniere, Lorenzo slipped out of the city and rode for the port of Pisa. On the way, he stopped to write a letter to the Signoria, in which he explained:
I have decided, with your approval [sic], to set sail for Naples at once. I am convinced that the action of our enemies is mainly directed by hatred against me, and that by giving myself up to them I may be able to restore peace to our city . . . Because it has been chosen that I have greater honour and responsibility than other private citizens, I feel more bound to serve our country, even if it means risking my life . . . I desire that by my life or my death, my fate or my fortune, I may contribute to the welfare of our city.
According to a contemporary report, by the time Lorenzo’s letter had been read through, many members of the Signoria were in tears, and there is little reason to suspect that this was an exaggeration.
However, it has been suggested that Lorenzo over-dramatised the situation: he had already been secretly in touch with Ferrante, King of Naples, who had in fact sent a galley to Pisa to collect him. On the other hand, others have pointed out that Ferrante was notoriously unpredictable in temperament, and it might well have been to his advantage to have Lorenzo assassinated aboard ship, or confined permanently to the dungeons on his arrival at Naples. Yet neither event happened, and as soon as Lorenzo set foot on the quayside at Naples he was embraced by Ferrante’s son Federigo. Lorenzo’s valiant mission appealed to Ferrante, and its sheer drama was appreciated far further afield; amongst Italy’s recent history of devious and untrustworthy leaders, here at last was a hero.
There is no doubting that Lorenzo was in real danger, for Ferrante was volatile and vicious; it was said of him: ‘No one could tell whether he would be furious or amused.’ In the event, Ferrante welcomed Lorenzo, but refused to be hustled into any decisions; an accord with Florence meant a rupture with Sixtus IV, who had already made one of Ferrante’s sons a cardinal – a rare appointment indeed for anyone outside the family. Lorenzo lodged in the quarters of the Medici Bank, and went to call upon King Ferrante. The result was a courteous stalemate. Beneath the diplomatic niceties, a game of cat-and-mouse began; Ferrante insisted that Lorenzo could not leave, explaining that he wished to have more time to enjoy Lorenzo’s inspiring company.
Lorenzo must have sensed that Ferrante would prevaricate, and came prepared. He launched a charm offensive on the people of Naples and their king, and began distributing largesse in the most extravagant fashion. The hundred galley slaves who had rowed his flotilla from Pisa to Naples all had their freedom purchased by Lorenzo, who also gave them each ten florins and a new set of clothes to replace their wretched rags. He started dispensing dowry money amongst the poor, so that their daughters could make good marriages, gave lavishly to charities, and sponsored festivals. One of the officials who ‘looked after’ him reported that by day he appeared ‘composed, confident and gracious’; but at night Lorenzo frequently descended into grim despair. The poetry he wrote would often reflect this juxtaposition of light and darkness in his character:
Orange blossom seen at dawn is bright,
Yet seen at dusk it holds the first of night.
As the months passed, Lorenzo continued with his lavish spending – a strategy that was surely compensation for his nightly anxieties, as much as a matter of policy. Yet where did all the money come from? The Medici Bank had suffered badly from the recent economic downturn in Italy and throughout Europe; restrictions in the English wool trade had plunged the London branch even further into debt. The Bruges branch was also heavily in debt, a situation that was exacerbated by the recklessness of the local manager Tommaso Portinari (brother of the Milan manager). In contravention of his contract, Portinari had invested considerable sums in various maritime ventures, including a large but disastrous Portuguese trading expedition to Guinea on the west African coast. Portinari had also paid 8,000 florins for the purchase and refurbishment of the Hotel Bladelin as the Medici Bank’s new premises (even today, this remains one of Bruges’s more substantial historical buildings). Examining the figures in war-torn Florence during 1479, Lorenzo had discovered that between them the London and Bruges branches owed the colossal sum of 70,000 florins, which led him to comment sarcastically: ‘These are the great profits which are accruing to us through the management of Tommaso Portinari.’ In slight mitigation of Portinari, the stories of Lorenzo’s earlier pageants and extravagances in Florence must surely have had their effect; if the Medici could afford such munificence at home, surely their premises abroad should reflect this wealth. And now Lorenzo was in Naples, once again spending as if his life depended upon it (which for once had more than an element of truth). The question of how and where Lorenzo obtained this money is crucial to any assessment of his financial probity.
The Florentine authorities certainly knew that he was spending heavily and made money available to him: ‘I herewith send you the mandate,’ the clerk to the Signoria wrote to him, ‘and the letter of credit you asked for.’ Before leaving Florence, Lorenzo had raised 60,000 florins by mortgaging the castle-villa of Cafaggiolo and his estates in the Mugello. Was this for use in Naples, or to cover the bank’s debts? Many commentators have asserted that now, and at other times, Lorenzo embezzled large amounts from the Florence exchequer. The separation between the financial dealings of Florence and those of the Medici had already become blurred during Cosimo’s time – mostly to Florence’s advantage. Did Lorenzo consider that it was time the Medici benefited from this arrangement? One surviving document shows that at some time during his reign Lorenzo diverted 74,948 florins to his account ‘without the sanction of any law and without authority’. It is impossible to tell what this was for – a later generation of the Medici destroyed all relevant documents relating to these years. However, the historical expert on Medici financial affairs, Raymond de Roover, asserts quite plainly: ‘It is likely, therefore, that bankruptcy after the Pazzi conspiracy was averted only by dipping into the public treasury.’ It would appear just as likely that Lorenzo considered this was to the advantage of both the Medici and Florence; and pragmatism, if not morality, would seem to support this view.
The longer Lorenzo was detained in Naples, the more it became clear that Ferrante was having difficulties of his own. The Turkish fleet was becoming an increasingly menacing presence along the coasts of southern Italy; and the King of France had ominously reasserted his claim to the throne of Naples. Ferrante finally agreed to a peace treaty with Florence. Sixtus IV was infuriated, but having little alternative, he decided to sign up to this treaty; he would bide his time.
Lorenzo returned to Florence a hero, and once again took advantage of this opportunity to strengthen his hold on the government. A new council of seventy men was created, which would hold office for five years, and the election of members was duly organised by the Medici party; this council even had powers to overrule the Signoria. An element of more permanent political stability had been created in Florence, and to cement this Lorenzo began acting less impetuously and more in the stealthy manner of his grandfather. The loyal Tommaso Soderini was used as Lorenzo’s roving ambassador, representing him at various foreign court functions, to avoid the possibility of him building up a political power base within the city he had presided over during Lorenzo’s absence.
In 1480 the Turkish sultan Mehmet the Conqueror landed troops in southern Italy and occupied the port of Otranto. Mehmet had already overrun the whole of Greece and occupied most of the Balkans; Italy appeared to be the next step in the extension of the Ottoman Empire. Sixtus IV issued a desperate appeal for all to rally in the defence of Christendom, an appeal that was quickly answered by the Italian states, including Florence. The pope decided that he was willing to forget his differences with Lorenzo: there was no point in further scheming under such circumstances. Then, just as suddenly as they had arrived, within a year the Turks withdrew; Mehmet had died, and a new sultan had taken over: there would be peace for the time being. Equally surprisingly, the pan-Italian peace also held through the following years. During this period Lorenzo would play an increasingly influential diplomatic role; although still only in his early thirties, his actions in defence of Florence and his attempts to maintain peace meant that he was now respected as a statesman throughout Italy. When difficulties arose, his advice would prove crucial, and as a result he became known as ‘the needle of the Italian compass’; he was the one who could be relied upon to point the way forward. Apart from a couple of lesser outbreaks of hostility, Italy would remain at peace for the rest of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s life.