Magnifico (74 page)

* Rinuccini no doubt would have agreed with Thomas Jefferson that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

* Galeazzo Maria had five brothers: Filippo Maria, Sforza Maria, Ascanio Maria, Ottaviano Maria, and Lodovico Maria. The last of these, Lodovico—still only twenty-four at the time of his brother’s assassination—was the most formidable. We will hear much of him in the following chapters.

† It is impossible to mention this incident without remarking on the coincidence of the date and the tragic events that took place on the same day two years later. If astrologers had determined April 26 to be a particularly inauspicious day for the Medici, they apparently failed to bring it to the attention of either Lorenzo or Giuliano.

* Much of our knowledge of the plot comes from Montesecco’s confession. This invaluable document, dated May 4, 1478, has both the virtues and drawbacks of firsthand testimony. It provides an essential eyewitness account of the conspiracy from the inside, but it is also subject to distortions and omissions. Frustratingly, though Montesecco provides much telling detail, he fails to provide crucial dates for various conversations and events. The conversations he reports likely took place in the summer of 1477.

* Most of what follows is the dialogue as reported by Montesecco himself in his confession.

* Another plausible explanation is that in his confession Montesecco was simply lying to protect his lord and master from the universal condemnation that would follow were it known that he had conspired to kill his rivals. Another possibility, for which there is some supporting evidence in contemporary documents, is that between the time Montesecco—under duress and facing certain execution—spilled his heart out and the time his words saw the light of day, the Florentine magistrates made certain alterations in the text to tailor it to the diplomatic exigencies of the moment. Not only did the authorities delete all references to the roles played by Ferrante and Montefeltro (see Simonetta, “Federico da Montefeltro contro Firenze,”
Archivio Storico Italiano,
chapter 14), but they deliberately minimized the role played by the pope. Why would Lorenzo wish to conceal the fact that his archenemy had tried to have him killed? His motive is revealed in a letter by Cicco Simonetta written a couple of weeks after the attempted assassination. In it he urged Lorenzo to “keep silent and maintain the greatest secrecy possible and to wait before revealing the part played by the Pope so as not to make him desperate, rather counting on his cowardice” (Simonetta, chapter 14). In the dark, uncertain days following the attempt on his life, Lorenzo still believed that there was a chance to avoid all-out war by omitting most of the references to the vital part played by outside powers. By slanting the evidence so that it exaggerated the importance of his domestic rivals and minimized that of the formidable coalition of the pope, the king of Naples, and the duke of Urbino, he hoped to contain a dangerous situation.

† One method used to mask their intentions was to incorporate the troops into the ongoing siege of Montone, but as Montesecco himself noted, it was difficult to conceal their presence for long.

† Florence’s population reached a peak of nearly 100,000 in the middle of the fourteenth century, but after the Black Death of 1348 was reduced to less than half that. In the fifteenth century, her population probably never reached 50,000. The fields and open spaces that remained inside the city walls throughout Lorenzo’s lifetime testify to the fact that it took centuries for the population to recover.

* For Cosimo’s funeral in 1464, Piero provided mourning clothes for four female slaves, named Chateruccia, Cristina, Catrina, and Zita. Cosimo fathered an illegitimate son, Lorenzo’s uncle Carlo, by one of his female slaves; it is not known if she was one of these four. Slaves in Florence were usually women employed as domestic servants—though there are records of slaves being used in the building industries—and a large percentage of babies in foundling hospitals were the children of slaves and (presumably) the master of the house. Many of these children, however, were acknowledged by their fathers, like Lorenzo’s uncle Carlo. Most slaves were of Middle Eastern or Slavic origin, shipped from Alexandria or other ports on Venetian ships to serve in the houses of rich Italian merchants. Few in number compared with the tens of thousands of impoverished workers, they remained economically insignificant. Unlike ancient Athens, Renaissance Florence was not built on the labor of slaves.

* The nineteen-year-old Cardinal Riario was the son of Girolamo’s sister Violante. His recent appointment as cardinal was but the latest example of Sixtus’s irrepressible nepotism.

* The cathedral, or Duomo, was often referred to by native Florentines as Santa Reparata or Santa Liperata, a reference to the obscure martyr to whom a church on that same site was originally dedicated.

* The belief that Giuliano feigned illness as part of a deliberate policy on the brothers’ part to avoid being seen in public together for fear of assassination appears to be contradicted by the ease with which the two were brought together on the following day.

* It has always been assumed that Cardinal Raffaele Riario was an innocent dupe in the affair. His behavior at the time suggested as much and his treatment afterward at the hands of the authorities, while not of the kid-glove variety, seems to indicate that they, too, believed in his innocence. But it is difficult to believe that the cardinal was kept entirely in the dark. The mood at Montughi must have approached something close to desperation that evening, and even the most obtuse young man would have sensed the tension in the air as the conspirators hurriedly revised their plans.

* The choir, one of the finest in Europe, was largely the product of Medici patronage. The cathedral’s musical director, Antonio Squarcialupi, one of the most famous organists and composers of the age, was Lorenzo’s particular friend and frequent collaborator, setting many of Lorenzo’s songs to music.

† Eyewitness accounts vary, but the majority recall this as the moment when the assassins struck. The most valuable account, because it seems the most objective, comes from the diary of the apothecary Luca Landucci. Among the other useful accounts are those by Filippo Strozzi, the Milanese ambassador (who believed the attack coincided with the
Agnus Dei
), one by the Medici partisan Giusto Giusti, and that of Angelo Poliziano, though, as has been pointed out, his narrative is marred by its propagandistic function. The memoir of Philippe de Commynes, emissary of the French king in Italy, also provides a useful contemporary account though he himself was not an eyewitness to the day’s events. The diary of the apothecary Luca Landucci, while giving no details of the attacks themselves, offers invaluable insight into the reaction of the average Florentine. The narratives of both Machiavelli and Guicciardini, while based in part on eyewitness testimony, add little new information to contemporary accounts.

* These doors, completed in 1466, were the work primarily of Luca della Robbia, one of the artists most beloved by the Medici. In fact the room where Lorenzo now took refuge, which was used to house the vestments worn during the Mass, was filled with reminders of his family’s past generosity, including an inscription that read “con Piero di Cosimo” (with Piero son of Cosimo), an indication that his father had been prominent among those who had paid for and overseen its decoration.

* Known as
La Vacca
(the cow) for its great mooing sound, the bell was sounded in moments of greatest peril.

† The old Republican Alamanno Rinuccini noted that no one cried out
Marzocco!
the lion that was the traditional emblem of the state. The fact that the citizens declared their loyalty to the Medici family rather than the republic was for him a source of shame, revealing how thoroughly the people of Florence had been corrupted (see
Ricordi Storici,
cxxviii).

* Rinuccini gives his most cogent critique of Lorenzo’s government in his “Dialogue on Liberty,” written in secret the year following the Pazzi conspiracy. Among other things he praises the Pazzi for their principled stand: “[F]or to me it is clear than an honorable death is preferable to a life of disgusting shame. This truth did not escape the truly magnanimous mind and noble character of Jacopo and Francesco de’ Pazzi and of the various heads of that family. Though they were flourishing, possessed ample wealth, had intimate connections with the most eminent citizens, and enjoyed popularity and the good will of the people as a whole, they scorned all these advantages in the absence of liberty. Thus did they undertake a glorious deed, an action worthy of the highest praise. They tried to restore their own liberty and that of the country.”

* Luxury in the fifteenth century meant something rather different from what it does today. In an age before machine production, items like clothing—even for a family as wealthy as the Medici—were scarce and precious commodities. Garments were sumptuously produced, with intricate patterns picked out in gold and silver thread, fur lining, and colors created from dyes derived from products halfway around the world. But the Medici possessed fewer items than even an average middle-class family today. In 1456 Piero made an inventory of Lucrezia’s clothing and listed only thirteen garments. Presumably she possessed additional garments too ordinary and inexpensive to be listed, but this is far from the closetfuls of designer clothing any modern socialite would possess. Clothes were expected to last for years and were mended rather than discarded.

* The letter, dated April 26, 1478, is addressed to “Bona and Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan,” but it was Bona and her chief minister, Cicco Simonetta, who were the real power in the state.

* Vasari, in his “Life of Andrea Verrocchio” confirms the incident, if not the exact words. Friends and relatives commissioned the artist to create effigies of Lorenzo in wax to be set up around the city in thanksgiving for his deliverance from the assassin’s dagger. One of these, set up in the nunnery of San Gallo, was described by Vasari as “clothed exactly as Lorenzo was, when, with his wounded throat bandaged, he showed himself at the window of his house before the eyes of the people, who had flocked thither to see whether he were alive, as they hoped, or to avenge him if he were dead” (Vasari, “
Lives…,
I, 556).

† Some have seen Lorenzo’s speech as disingenuous, but there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his calls for calm. His desire to see the guilty punished was real enough, but he had no desire to see an explosion of indiscriminate violence engulf the city. Many times in the coming days he tried to douse the flames his brother’s murder had kindled.

* Thomas Harris re-creates this gruesome scene in his book
Hannibal
when Francesco’s distant relative, a police inspector, undergoes a similar fate at the hands of Hannibal Lecter.

* Among the latter was Renato de’ Pazzi, Francesco’s cousin, who though not directly implicated, was executed for having failed to inform authorities of the plot.

† Guglielmo was placed in effect under house arrest. He retired to his villa and was required to remain within a zone of from five to twenty miles from Florence (see Landucci,
Florentine Diary,
chapter 1).

* Sacramoro describes the “demonstrations of love shown by everyone towards Laur. o” in a letter to the duke and duchess of Milan, April 27, 1478 (
Lettere di Lorenzo de’ Medici
, iii, 4). Poliziano recorded: “Since the public was anxious about his health, he had to appear often at the windows of the palace. Thereupon the whole people would acclaim him, cheer and wave, rejoice in his safety and revel in their joy.” (Poliziano, “The Pazzi Conspiracy” in
Humanism and Liberty,
chapter 9.)

* The line, appropriate to the occasion, was “Fate guides the willing man, and drags the unwilling”(Poliziano,
The Pazzi Conspiracy,
in
Humanism and Liberty,
chapter 9).

* One of the eyewitnesses to Bandini’s execution was Leonardo da Vinci, who sketched the gruesome scene, including notations on such details as the color of his leggings.

† “Son Bernardo Bandini, un nuovo Giuda / Traditore micidiale a chiesa io fui. / Ribello per aspettare morte piu cruda.” When Lorenzo wrote these verses Bandini had yet to be captured. Botticelli depicted him upside down, the traditional mode of depicting a criminal who had yet to be appehended.