The Men Who Would Kill the Medici, Part 1

Scots and having a lot of fun. So that's over on the Patreon, where we also have episode scripts and a seasonal sticker club, so once a season you get an exclusive sticker. That's over on the Patreon. I think that's pretty much all I have to say. Oh, I'm teaching a horror writing workshop this fall, So if you've ever wanted to hone your fiction writing skills, be in a fiction writing workshop. We will be reading short stories, taking what we've learned and applying it to our own writing.

It is a virtual class over zoom, so it does not matter where you're located. But if that interests you at all, I've put it on my Instagram. The link is in the bio of my instagram Danish Schwartz with three z's on Instagram, and I'll also put it in the show notes an episode description. Okay, let's get started. The two men in front of him were so excited, so passionate, that it was making Giovanni Battista, Count of

monte Seco nervous. Monte Seco was a career soldier, a practical man, a captain who actually worked for one of the men in front of him, Gilimo Riario. There were three of them that day, meeting in Rome. Monte Seco had been invited over to the fine house of the Archbishop Francesco Salviati, where Geralimo and Salviati had sat the captain down and told him something extraordinary. They were planning an overthrowing Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence. With the help

of another conspirator, Francisco de Pazzi. They would assassinate both Lorenzo and his brother and claim the city, freeing it from the tyranny of its Medici overlords. Girolimo had rightly recognized that for what they were planning, they would need military expertise, which is why they brought Montesecco into the fold. But the thing about a lifetime spent as a military man was that monte Seco knew a hair brained scheme.

When he heard it, monte Seco brought up his concerns, you know, he said, from what I've heard, Lorenzo the Magnificent is pretty beloved in Florence. Salviati and Girolimo both scoffed. You've never been to Florence, they said, trust us, no matter what you've heard on the ground, things are different. Salviati was from an old Florentine family, and it was

true monte Seco had never been to Florence. Maybe they were right, after all, from what they said, the conspiracy was happening in coordination with another old Florentine family, the Pazzis. The Pazzis were even older than the Medicis. Still, monte Seco was unconvinced. This was the fourteen seventies, and so he had, of course not seen the twenty first century television program The Wire. He had never heard the phrase, if you come at the King, you best not miss.

But still he surely understood the sentiment. The Medici were powerful once a humble banking family that had extended their tendrils throughout central Italy and beyond. Lorenzo, their patriarch at this point, was a celebrated humanist and poet who kept the government of Florence in his back pocket while bankrolling universities and promoting local artists. Yes, he was the single power in what was supposed to be a republic, but there was a reason the Medici had become so powerful

in the first place. Lorenzo was good at making friends and allies, for better or for worse. He had Florence wrapped around his finger, and Montesecco was well aware that if they tried to take him down and failed, they would be staring down a grisly death. The stakes in this game were win or be destroyed. Monteseco wanted to be sure he was on the winning side, or at least a side with a fighting chance. If they were going to come for a king, he wanted to make

sure that they had a king behind them. He turned to Geralimo, his boss. What does your uncle say about this, he asked. Geralimo smiled, Let's do our next meeting at his place, and so that was how Monteseco found himself inside the Papal Palace, surrounded by a thousand years of finery and a cum related wealth, Sitting down with Pope

Sixtus the Fourth. The Pope began the meeting, recounting all of the many wrongs that Lorenzo de Medici had done to them, the threat that he posed to them, their family. The papal states Italy as a whole, but Monticeco didn't need to know the Pope's philosophical position on the Medici. He needed to know if he the Pope was sanctioning

his nephew's bloody plan. Interrupting the Pope as he waxed poetic about how much better Italy would be without Lorenzo's tyranny, Monticeco said, Holy Father, it is difficult to execute such an intention without the death of Lorenzo and Giuliano and several others. Perhaps. The Pope replied, it is not my office to cause the death of a man. Lorenzo has behaved unworthily and badly towards us, but I will not hear of his death, though I wish for a revolution

in the state. Now it was Jeralimo's turn to speak to his uncle. Will do our best that no one fall victim, he said, and this next part I'll paraphrase, but if it did, you know, end up being an assassination, your Holiness would pardon whoever did it. Right. The Pope's reply here is fascinating, a masterclass in saying everything that needed to be said without actually saying it. Quote. I will have no one die, but only the government overthrown.

I wish this revolution to proceed in Florence and the government to be taken out of the hand of Lorenzo, for he is a violent and bad man who pays no regard to us. If you were expelled, we could do with the republic as it seemed best, and that would be very pleasing to us. End quote. The men were satisfied, They thanked the Pope, maybe asked about the progress on the new Sistine Chapel he was building, and

left Monte Seco. The grizzled soldier, who had been on the fence about the whole endeavor, was finally convinced he would join Geralimo Salviati and Francesco Pazzi in their assassination plot, satisfied that they were in fact acting on behalf of the Pope, or with the Pope's approval. Murder is wrong, of course, but nothing is really a sin if it's

endorsed by the Pope. If you heard the Pope's statement and thought, well, wait a minute, he wasn't actually saying that they should murder Lorenzo de Medici, this is a classic case of written words not really communicating everything that the words meant at the time. Sixtus was not a

naive man. He was cunning and intelligent, surely not stupid enough to believe that there could be revolution in Florence that didn't involve the death of the Medici brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano and Monteeseco was a practical man who had needed the Pope's go ahead before joining the conspiracy. The fact that he left that meeting fully on board is

the historical context clue. We need to understand that when the Pope said, of course, I can't condone the bloodshed, but those Medici really need to go, what he was really saying was do what you have to do. It was a statement delivered with a wink. The Pope was not only aware but in full support of their mission. Even if he said he hoped it wouldn't be too bloody in the end, regardless of the Pope's warning, it would be. This attempt to assassinate two men would lead

to more than eighty deaths. Bodies would swing from the Palazzo Vecchio in the main square of Florence. Corpses would be dismembered and thrown throughout the city. What history now knows as the Pazzi Conspiracy would become a gruesome spectacle, weeks of bloodshed that would eventually give rise to the entire city government being excommunicated and Florence itself placed under

papal interdict. But that would all come later. For now, there was just a trio of passionate men, so indignant at the abuses of Lorenzo de Medici that they had worked themselves into a fervor until they convinced themselves that killing him was the only possible course of action. The reasons why their petty grievances boiled into bloodlust are fascinating. The actual assassination attempt, which would be in the Cathedral of Florence under Bruno Leeschi's famous dome during Sunday mass,

would make this conspiracy the stuff of legend. They would come for the king, their souls be damned, and when spoiler alert they did in fact miss, it would lead to more destruction than they could have possibly imagined. I'm Danish Schwartz, and this is noble blood. I could spend a few minutes here describing the government system of Florence

in the fifteenth century. I could tell you about how it was a republic run by a council of nine men called the Signoria, with representatives from the major guilds of the city, and then more councils would be called into service should the need arise. I could talk about term length, about how each member of the government was chosen. I could, but that would be a waste of both of our time. For most of the second half of the fifteenth century, the government was one man Florence was

Lorenzo de Medici. The Medici family was not particularly old or noble, but over generations of building banking power, they became the undisputed heart of Florentine politics and culture. It had been Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo, who first elevated their family

over the nominal power of just being rich. Lorenzo's father, known unfortunately as Piero the Goudi was you guessed it, suffering from gout, but he was also clever and academic, a lover of arts and literature with a passion he tried to pass on to his own two sons, Lorenzo and Giuliano. From a young age, Lorenzo knew he would be taking over the family business. He was fifteen when his venerated grandfather Cosimo died, and he spent his adolescence

going on diplomatic missions across Italy. He made friends with the son of the King of Naples, he attended the weddings of Milanesi princesses, and he made appearances in Bologna, Ferrara, Rome, all promoting the interests of Florence and the Medici. When he was twenty, Lorenzo married for duty a woman named Clarice Orsini from a powerful Roman family. His mother had gone down to examine the girl to see if she

passed muster. And while this isn't quite relevant to the subject matter of the episode, I find her letter back funny enough that I think it's worth including. She wrote quote her hair is not blonde, which side note was considered the ideal for nobility at the time. Her face is somewhat round, yet it does not displease me. Her bosom was invisible, for it is the fashion here to cover it, but it appears to be ample. Altogether, we

consider her above the average good enough. Lorenzo no doubt understood that his marriage was a diplomatic prospect, not a romantic one, But in his writing he could barely conceal his distaste for the fact that he would have preferred a more cultured Florentine bride. I have taken a wife, he wrote, or rather she was given to me. Now. Usually when we describe weddings on this podcast, they are elaborate affairs, dresses with trains the lengths of city blocks,

and feasts with sugar sculptures and stuffed peacocks. And so when you hear the phrase Medici wedding, you might be expecting another list of finery beyond the wildest imagination of anyone who has ever sublet a studio apartment. But note rich as they were, the Medici wedding was a simple occasion. One guest noted quote as an example of moderation to others. On such occasions, there was never more than one roast.

The Medici were rich, yes, but above all they were prudent, and they understood the power of having positive standing in their commune. There were a series of banquets to commemorate Lorenzo's weddings, But unlike kings who used their wealth to show off the fact that they were gods anointed on earth, the Medici didn't want anyone to see them as superior. It was advice from Lorenzo's grandfather that he also heeded. Well,

never have the people be jealous of you. They were doing the fifteenth century equivalent of what people today call quiet wealth no visible labels. In case you were wondering, Lorenzo and Claire's marriage was, to borrow a phrase from Lorenzo's mother, probably just about above the average, to quote a historian, affection grew with habit, but he never fell in love with his wife. It was Lorenzo's younger brother, Juliano, who was the romantic. He unburdened by the responsibility of

being the eldest boy. Julianu relished in the rituals of courtly love and romance. The two of them, Lorenzo and Giuliano, the two Medici brothers, were the powerful beating heart at the center of Florence, the city in the center of Renaissance Italy. When it comes to the series of events that would eventually lead a group of men to want to kill the Medici brothers in cold blood, the place we start is with the death of an old pope. Pope Paul the Second, who was Venetian, died in fourteen

seventy one. There wasn't too much love lost. Pope Paul the Second was obsessed with the finer things in life. He collected antique bronzes and jewels. At night, he would bring rubies and sapphires into bed with him. Apparently it was because of a superstition, and people didn't like it because it read as pagan personally. To me, it calls to mind a cartoon dragon. When he died, the idea was that the next Pope should be a more modest man, or at least someone from a not too powerful family

with an unimpeachable reputation. The choice was Francesco of Savona, who adopted the last name Riveri, meaning Oak, and he became Pope Sixtus the Fourth. Of course, Lorenzo de Medici, born diplomat, was sure to pay his respects, and it seemed as though the two men would get on. In fact, Lorenzo was given such a warm reception by the new pope that it actually made the Duke of Milan jealous.

It was important that the Medici and the papal relationship was strong, because the Medici were the Vaticans major banker. Lorenzo tried to advocate to make his younger brother Giuliano a cardinal, but the Pope demurred. Giuliano was just twenty. There's plenty of time for that, and he's a little young. Of course, age wouldn't stop the pope later on from making one of his nephews a cardinal at seventeen years old.

The new Pope, Sixtus the Fourth, wasn't going to bring gems into his bed, but he wasn't going to let the position of being pope pass him by without trying to establish a family dynasty. And so he got started on a practice so common it actually gave rise to the word nepotism, the practice of a pope giving his nephews or nipotes, positions of power. Two of his nephews immediately became cardinals off the bat, and for another of his nephews, a layman named Gialimo Riario, the Pope purchased

the tiny town of Imola, making Duralimo a lord. Immola is small, but it was an important stronghold, about fifty miles outside of Florence. An important thing for you to remember is that in the fourteen hundreds the Vatican wasn't just a tiny little pocket in Rome that you could

line up to visit to see Michelangelo's Pieta. The Papal states were a kingdom and fighting for supremacy and power on the Italian peninsula, just like their neighbors, only with the added bonus that their quote unquote king happened to be, you know, the pontiff with holy authority. If you have an incredibly good memory for names, you might remember Duralimo, the new Lord of Immola from our introduction. He's about

to become a major player here. The challenging thing about discussing this conspiracy is there isn't a simple a to be to see narrative of how the conspirators came together and how they all collectively and individually built up enough vitriol toward the Medici family to be motivated enough for an incredibly risky coup. But if you bear with me, we'll walk through a few of those factors and inciting

incidents and introduce the major conspirators at play. One of the big conflict points was the sale of Imola itself. Remember how the Pope bought the town for his nephew, Well, the Duke of Milan who sold it, had originally agreed to sell it to Lorenzo de Medici. Of course, Lorenzo wanted it, it was a really strategic and important town

right on the edges of his territory. But the Duke of Milan was enticed by papal power, so much so that if the Pope agreed to have Geralimo marry one of his illegitimate daughters, he would sell the town for far less than the number Lorenzo had agreed to pay. Lorenzo naturally was furious, and he refused to have his bank fund the sale, and so the Pope went through another Florentine banking family, the Pozzis, who did agree to

front most of the cash. This is a good opportunity to introduce our next conspirator, representing the family that gives the Pozzi conspiracy its name. Francesco de Pozzi. Geralimo, lord of Emmila, was new money who wore his uncle's new found power and wealth on his person with silk and gems. Pozzi was old money, the scion of an old Florentine family who had seen their wealth and power dwindle while

the media outmaneuvered them at every turn. Francesco de Pazzi was tired of having to grovel for scraps of dignity while the Medici sat comfortably in their seat of power. When Francesco de Pazzi and Geralimo got together, they lathered each other up, bolstering each other's confidence and bravery, until assassination seemed not only noble but inevitable. Pozzi had seen

his family dwindle begging for Medici scraps. Jeralimo was the lord of a tiny state that could easily be squeezed out of existence between the real powers of Milan and Medici Florence. And as Jeralimo also understood with a creeping awareness, his newfound power was entirely dependent on his uncle, the Pope, who was getting up there in years. Jeralimo had seen

the promise of power. It was just there glistening in the distance, and if he didn't act, it would flicker and disappear, like a candle flame on a damp night. He wanted power, he wanted to secure that power, and so Lorenzo de Medici had to go. One writer, Nicolo Valori, writing only a few decades after the assassination attempt, claimed the entire thing was Jeralimo's idea first, and that he came to Pozzi with the idea to kill Lorenzo. Another

writer says it was Pozzi's idea. Macchiavelli sort of splits the difference when he recounts the event writing quote. And since Francesco to Pozzi was very friendly with Count Geralimo, they often complained to one another of the Medici. So after many complaints, they came to the reasoning that it was necessary if one of them was to live in his states and the other in his city securely to change the state of Florence, which they thought could not

be done without the deaths of Giuliano and Lorenzo. But here's the thing. Geralimo and Pozzi knew that they were both outsiders and not particularly popular in Florence. Even though Pozzi was a born Florentine, he had spent most of his life living abroad. If the two of them were going to overthrow the Medici, they needed to be seen as liberators, not foreign assassins. They wanted to spearhead a Florentine revolution, and so they needed to bring someone else

into their conspiracy. The third man in was an archbishop named Francesco de Salviati. Salviati was about twenty years older than both Jai and Pazzi. He was middle aged when he should have outgrown flights of romantic heroism, but he had his own reasons to hate the Medici. Like the Pazzi, the Salviati were an old Florentine family that had fallen on hard times, and he blamed their descent on the rising Medici. In some ways that might have been justified.

It was under certain financial policies by Lorenzo's dad that the Salviati were forced to give up a wool business they owned in Pisa. But it wasn't just pride or a nebulous sense of family dignity that would drive Salviati into joining the conspirators. No, for him, it was very personal. Salviati was cousins with the Pazzi, but he was also the right hand man of Jeralimo's brother, Pietro I E, another pope who was made a cardinal and then Archbishop

of Florence. But then in fourteen seventy four Archbishop Pietro died. He was only twenty nine years old, and so of course there were whispers of poison, but the more likely culprit is a few years of very very hard living what historians in the books I've read like to call over indulgence. Anyway, Salviati was a Florentine and the right hand man of the late Archbishop of Florence. He was ready to get the job. Lorenzo de Medici put his

brother in law in the position. The Pope felt bad and more or less informally promised that Salviati would get the next open slot, and so a few months later, when Filippo Dimidici, Archbishop of Pisa, died, the Pope gave Salviati the job. But there was a problem. It's worth noting here that at this point in the fifteenth century, Pisa was controlled by Florence. The Signoria in Florence was supposed to have been consulted about who filled the archbishop position.

The Pope hadn't done that. They had provided the Pope a list of acceptable candidates, and Salviati wasn't on it. The Pope didn't pull back, he doubled down and said that as pope, he's entitled to put whoever he wants into the position of archbishop. Well, Florence responded, you're allowed to put whoever you want in the position, but we are allowed to say who can and cannot set foot

in our territory. And so, even though Salviati was Archbishop of Pisa, Florence refused to let him actually physically take the position. Salviati was forced to spend a humiliating year in Limbo in Rome until he was finally allowed into Pisa, and the entire time he was stewing about Lorenzo de Medici, the man wielding power that wasn't even his right, like

a tyrant. So those are the three major conspirators worth knowing. Geralimo, the Pope's nephew and Lord of Imola, Francesco de Pazzi, the family allying themselves with the Pope, and Francesco Salviati Archbishop of Pisa, another papal loyalist who resented Lorenzo and the power he wielded in Florence, brought in as some

additional hometown muscle. Unfortunately for Jeralimo and Pozzi, in the words of historian Miles Hunger quote, it's a measure of how out of touch they were with public opinion in Florence that the second native son drawn into the web was almost as unpopular in his native land as Francesco de Pazzi himself. But out of touch or not, these were the core conspirators who would then go on to enlist Geralimo's captain Monteseco, the man we followed in the

introduction the man with military experience. Over the next couple of years, there were a number of other slights between the Papal states and the Medici that would continue to

exacerbate their relationship. Like the Pope would try to help another of his nephews secure a small town in Perusia the Chita de Castello, and the nephew would ask Lorenzo de Medici for help, but Lorenzo had made an alliance with the family that was in charge of that town, and he refused the Pope would move his accounts from the Medici and do more banking with the Pazzi. Geralimo, on behalf of the papal treasury, would do an audit of the Medici bank. That's sort of thing, tensions building

until they would in the end erupt. There's one more slight that's so petty, I do feel like it's worth mentioning in some depth. In fourteen seventy seven, an incredibly rich Florentine man named Giovanni Borromeo died without any male heirs, only a daughter. Under Florentine law, his inheritance would go to the daughter, but the male cousins who wanted that money petitioned Lorenzo to change the law so that the

inheritance would go to surviving male relatives instead. And Lorenzo had the laws changed, which would have been fine, except the daughter, the one set to inherit the windfall, was married to Francesco de Pazzi's brother. It's a slight, so petty, and a law changed so specifically just to screw over the Pazzi that you almost understand their murder fantasies. Anyway, that's the scene set a number of interweaving players with

various reasons for hating Lorenzo de Medici. They knew that as long as he lived, and as long as his brother Juliano lived, florent would be under the Medici thumb. Wasn't it supposed to be a republic. Weren't they supposed to be done with tyrants, especially tyrants that they had petty gripes with. Something had to be done, and they would be the ones to do it. The Medici knew they had a target on their back, and they were careful to some degree when Gialimo invited Lorenzo to visit

him in Rome. Lorenzo was smart enough to refuse that invitation, but the Medici were completely unaware as to the extent of the plot forming against them. The Medici brothers continue to live their life, celebrate art and poetry and Florentine culture. In fourteen seventy five, Giuliano de Medici had a magnificent jout that served as a coming out party for him.

The streets were transformed into a fantasy scape, with artisans tasked with transforming buildings into fairy castles with banners, tapestries, and pennants. When young Giuliano, twenty one years old at this point, rode out in full armor, carrying a banner painted by Bodicelli. He must have looked resplendent. He must have looked beautiful, full of the promise of youth and wealth and power. Of course, now that the relationship between the Medici and Sixtus the Fourth had soured, there were

no more conversations about turning Giuliano into a cardinal. But still at that moment, I'm sure no one gave it a second thought. Our gallant knight Juliana had the favor of the lovely Semonetta of Vespucci, celebrated as the most beautiful woman in Italy at the time. It was her image on his banner, along with a French inscription meaning the unparalleled one. Giuliano's men trailed behind him, also gleaming

in custom armor. Looking out at that scene, it would have been impossible for Lorenzo to predict that in a year, the lovely Semonetta would be dead of illness, and two short years after that Giuliano would be dead himself. His limbs contorted as the blood seeped from his body onto

the cold floor of the cathedral, in Florence. That's the end of part one of this story of the Pazzi conspiracy, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about how Giuliana's lover cemented her place in art history. Simonetta Vespucci, considered the most beautiful woman in Italy, quickly became a fixture at court with

Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici. With Giuliano especially, he held a banner carrying her likeness during the joust of his coming out, and when he won, he declared Simonetta the Queen of Beauty. Though some historians dismiss their romance as mere courtly love, she was, after all, a married woman. Her husband happened to be a cousin of the famed cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.

But in my opinion, looking at the evidence, it seems apparent that Simonetta's relationship with Juliano was more intimate than just social niceties. After Simonetta died of illness at just twenty two years old, her father in law sent Giuliano some of her dresses. But Juliano wasn't the only man who fell in love with Semonetta at least not esthetically. The artist Bodicelli painted her face on Giuliano's banner that day of the joust, and he also snuck her into

some of his most famous paintings. A woman with a long nose and light strawberry blonde hair recurs in his work. One of the graces in Bodicelli's Primavera, possibly the central figure herself, and some say Simonetta Vespucci was immortalized arriving to shore balanced on a seashell, naked with her hair winding around her, a goddess in Bodicelli's painting, The Birth of Venus. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and

Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwort, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

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