Magnifico (73 page)

* Their name has the unfortunate meaning in Italian of “madmen,” not altogether inappropriate given their history of violence and irrationality.

* The White and Black Guelfs were distinguished not by any ideological differences but by family rivalries. The Cerchi family led the Whites, the Donati the Blacks. Dante, an adherent of the Whites, was exiled when the Blacks took over.

* From the 1450s through the 1470s the Pazzi had ten members among the “Three Majors,” the top offices of Florentine government. This was a marked improvement over the previous century. From 1300 to 1420 only one Pazzi had been so honored. In the 1440s, their name appears four times, a sign that even before Cosimo made it official in 1458, the Pazzi were well on their way to respectability. But compared with the Medici the yield was still meager. From 1280 to 1470 various Medici held high office 158 times, while over the fifty years from 1430 to 1480 the name Medici crops up forty-two times (see the online
Tratte of Office Holders
). Thus even during the high-water mark of Pazzi political influence, they could not compete with the reigning family. Serving in one of the so-called Three Majors was not the same as wielding real political power, but it was a fairly accurate measure of a family’s social and political prominence.

† The Salviati palace can still be seen in Florence on Via Vigna Vecchia, around the corner from the Pazzi Palace and a couple of blocks from Santa Croce.

* The building, completed in 1461, well after both Andrea de’ Pazzi’s and Brunelleschi’s deaths, may well have been completed by Giuliano da Maiano, the architect credited as well with the Pazzi palace.

* Benedetto Dei’s
Cronica
lists both the Pazzi chapel and the Medici tombs as among the few sites that made Florence “a new Rome”(see Dei,
Cronica,
33r).

* In 1473 and 1474 Jacopo served as one of the twelve Good Men (
Buonuomini
), one of the so-called Three Majors, a sign that whatever Lorenzo’s reservations, he was still included within the inner circle of the regime.

* See
The Rise and Decline of the Medizi Bank,
de Roover, chapter 8. In 1467, the duke’s personal debt to the Medici bank was 179,000 ducats. In 1472, right before their final rift, Sixtus’s debt to the Medici bank stood at 107,000 florins. Allowing such reckless borrowing could only be justified on political grounds.

* “The Count [Girolamo], who regarded Lorenzo as his great and secret enemy, was at the time on the most intimate terms with Francesco de’Pazzi,” Valori wrote (
Vita di Lorenzo de’ Medici
, chapter 2), “wherefore he explained to him what he had in mind.” Guicciardini’s account of the origins of the conspiracy is as follows: “Francesco, who resided in Rome almost permanently (and who was called Franceschino because of his small stature), began to plot with Girolamo ways of removing Lorenzo from power. He reminded the count that Lorenzo was his arch enemy, and that as soon as Pope Sixtus died, Lorenzo would hound him until he deprived him of the Romagna”(
The History of Florence,
IV). It is important to note that most of the contemporary or near contemporary accounts tended for diplomatic reasons to minimize the involvement of various heads of state—of the king of Naples, the duke of Urbino, and the pope himself. This, in turn, created the distorted impression that a small cabal was responsible for the entire conspiracy. Whatever the origins of the plot, it soon grew into a large-scale undertaking involving many of the most powerful statesmen in Italy.

† By the fifteenth century the older divisions of the city—into sixteen
gonfaloni
and, later, into sixths—had been superseded for administrative purposes largely by a division into quarters, each identified with a major shrine: that of San Giovanni (the Baptistery); Sta. Maria Novella; Sta. Croce; and, in the Oltrarno, the district on the south bank of the river, Sto. Spirito. The Medici
gonfalone
of the Golden Lion fell within San Giovanni.

* Their solidly middle-class status is revealed by the number of times a member of the family held a position in one of the Three Major offices of government. From 1282 to 1500 the Salviati name appears 154 times, a record bettered by only a few families. By comparison, the noble Pazzi only appear twenty times over the same period, while the Medici name appears 173 times (see online
Tratte of Office Holders
).

* Ficino also befriended another of the plotters, Jacopo Bracciolini, son of the distinguished humanist Poggio Bracciolini.

† Despite the income from his many benefices, Pietro Riario died leaving a debt of 60,000 gold florins.

* The list included Gentile Becchi, Lorenzo’s old tutor, on whose behalf Lorenzo lobbied unsuccessfully. The
Signoria
also recommended either Donato de’ Medici or Antonio Agli, bishops respectively of Pistoia and Volterra.

* Salviati had made himself unpopular in Florence by his role in the sale of Imola to the Riario, having been entrusted with conveying the money borrowed from the Pazzi to Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza.

* Not everyone immediately grasped the implications of Salviati’s appointment. Of those close to Lorenzo, Giovanni Tornabuoni and Marsilio Ficino showed themselves to be the most naive. Shortly after learning of the appointment—in fact it may well have been through his uncle’s letter that Lorenzo first heard of it—Tornabuoni wrote to his nephew, “I cannot tell you how much the Archbishop is disposed to be your servant…and though I know that my writing is superfluous, I did not want to remain silent knowing how great is the desire of the Archbishop to be all yours, hoping in this and in everything to do as you would wish” (see
Lettere,
ii, chapter 3). Marsilio Ficino congratulated his protégé on his success, writing, “It is still pleasant and right for me to prophesy like this, for when divine providence created you Archbishop of Pisa, it proclaimed me a prophet…. I wish you good fortune, and pray you take the greatest care of your health, for through you I see that the priesthood in Florence, long since dead, will shortly be renewed to life.”(Ficino,
Letters
, 87, chapter 5.)

* It was not only the duke of Milan who was concerned. Gentile Becchi also expressed concern, warning him of “new Dietisalvis” who wish to do him harm.

* Giustini had become an intimate of Girolamo Riario and was among those who accompanied him to Milan to solemnize his wedding to Caterina Sforza. He was also involved in the negotiations over Imola (see
Lettere,
ii, Notes). Meanwhile, Vitelli, as a signatory of the triple alliance, had placed himself under the protection of the great powers of Italy.

* Florence hurried six thousand troops to nearby Borgo San Sepolcro, from which point they could cause the papal forces some concern but do little real damage.

* The Pazzi were not immediately given the papal accounts. For a brief period they were transferred to Bartolomeo Maraschi, the pope’s majordomo, and to the Genoese banker Meliaduce Cigala. But the transfer to the Pazzi was only a matter of time, since, as Sacramoro noted, they “have always aspired to the office of the Depository” (
Lettere,
ii, 18). The alum concession went to the Pazzi only in 1476 at the expiration of the Medici contract. If the delay was supposed to conceal the Pazzi role as the pope’s errand runners, it fooled no one.

* During their years in power, many a propagandist sought a more distinguished genealogy for the family, but none is convincing. In one colorful history, the red balls of the Medici escutcheon derive from the dents put in the shield of a knightly forebear by a giant he slew in mortal combat.

* One of the chief sticking points was Milan’s and Florence’s close ties to the royal family of France, the Anjou, which had dynastic claims on the throne of Naples. More trivial matters also continued to keep the pot boiling, like Duke Sforza’s habit of luring the best singers in the king’s choir to Milan.

* Castiglione praised him as “the light of Italy,” attributing to him the virtues of “prudence, humanity, justice, generosity and unconquerable spirit.” He praised his military prowess, “which was brilliantly attested by his many victories, his ability to capture impregnable places, his swift and decisive expeditions, his having routed many times with few troops great and formidable armies, and his never having lost a single battle.” (Castiglione,
The Book of the Courtier,
chapter 2). Federico’s involvement in the Pazzi plot, while always assumed, was confirmed by a newly deciphered message (see Marcello Simonetta, “Federico da Montefeltro contro Firenze. Retroscena Inediti della Congiura dei Pazzi,” in
Archivio Storico Italiano, n.
596, a. CLXI, 2003 II). The decoding of the letter led to the overstated headline in the
New York Times
(March 6, 2004): “1478 Assassination Solved. The Humanist Did It.”

† It helped that as the ruler of Urbino in the Romagna, Montefeltro was technically Sixtus’s vassal.

* So many falconers accompanied the king that, according to one eyewitness, the birds exterminated the entire owl population of Rome.

* Though this fact is largely forgotten, Lorenzo’s joust marked the end of hostilities with Colleoni after the attempted coup of 1466.

† Giuliano’s joust was dedicated to the beautiful Simonetta Cattaneo, wife of Marco Vespucci, cousin of the explorer who gave his name to the New World. Modern audiences can still judge whether Florentines were right to celebrate her beauty; her long, golden tresses, pale complexion, and delicate features are familiar through the many famous paintings that contain her image
.
Simonetta’s face is said to be the model for Flora in Botticelli’s
Primavera
and the goddess Venus in his
Venus and Mars
(with Giuliano said to be the model for the sleeping god of war). She may also be the model for Piero di Cosimo’s portrait of a young woman in the guise of Cleopatra.

* The laurel bush (
lauro
in Italian), sacred to the god Apollo, was often used as a pun on Lorenzo’s name. Paintings of the time often refer obliquely to the ruler of the city through the use of its distinctive foliage.

* Octaves 99–101 (Book One) could almost serve as a blueprint for
The Birth of Venus
: “a young woman with nonhuman countenance, is carried on a conch shell, wafted to shore by playful zephyrs; and it seems that heaven rejoices in her birth.” For
Primavera
, octave 68 offers the closest parallel: “to the realm where every Grace delights, where Beauty weaves a garland of flowers about her hair, where lascivious Zephyr flies behind Flora and decks the green grass with flowers.”

* For example, this sermon preached by the humanist Cristoforo Landino at the company of the Magi, the confraternity most closely associated with Medici patronage, could have come from the mouth of Savonarola himself: “And we, vilest men, stooped and filthy in the mire of all vices in such measure that each may say of himself ‘Vermis sum et non homo’…do not deign to show the slightest bit of gratitude; we do not deign, most ungrateful men—nay, beasts—for his love (and not for his but for our own benefit) to cast away a couple of sighs and shed four teardrops so that they may be the wind and water to put out the fire prepared for the punishment of our sins” (quoted in Hatfield, “The Compangia dé Magi,” chapter 7).

† These lines were written after Simonetta Cattaneo’s untimely death in 1476.

† Piero’s cousin Pierfrancesco de’ Medici’s ambiguous role in the same conflict could have been predicted by consulting his family tree; he was caught between loyalty to his blood relatives and his father-in-law, Agnolo Acciaiuoli.

* December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen, dedicated to the life and violent death of the first Christian martyr.

* His widow, Bona, was deeply concerned, since her husband had died before receiving last rites. She knew, she said, that he had been guilty of numerous sins but she hoped the pope would pray for his soul to shorten his stay in Purgatory.

† After the assassination, Cola Montano fled Milan. In 1482 he was captured while traveling through Florentine territory. Papers were found on him implicating him in a plot against Lorenzo and he was hanged from a window in the Bargello.