June 20, 2023 • 38 mins
Lorenzo de Medici was the center of power in Florence. Three men—Girolomo Riario, Francesco de Pazzi, and Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa—were determined to take him down. They just needed the authority of a Pope behind them.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hey, this
is Danish sports. Quick bit of housekeeping just before we
get started. We are back with Rain on Me on
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(00:26):
my friend and television writer extraordinaire, are going through every
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(00:48):
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,
(01:08):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:35):
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.
(02:56):
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.
(03:21):
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
(03:44):
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
(04:04):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:52):
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
(05:15):
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
(05:35):
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
(05:58):
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
(06:21):
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
(06:45):
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
(07:09):
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
(07:34):
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,
(07:56):
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
(08:17):
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,
(08:39):
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
(09:01):
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
(09:25):
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
(09:47):
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.
(10:08):
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
(10:30):
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
(10:50):
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
(11:12):
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
(11:32):
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
(12:04):
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.
(12:28):
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
(12:51):
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,
(13:12):
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
(13:32):
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
(13:56):
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
(14:19):
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
(14:44):
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.
(15:06):
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
(15:30):
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,
(15:55):
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.
(16:17):
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
(16:41):
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
(17:03):
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
(17:27):
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.
(17:51):
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
(18:13):
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,
(18:37):
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.
(19:01):
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.
(19:21):
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
(19:46):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:52):
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
(21:15):
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,
(21:37):
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
(21:59):
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
(22:24):
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
(22:45):
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
(23:09):
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
(23:31):
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,
(23:51):
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.
(24:15):
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
(24:36):
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
(24:57):
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
(25:21):
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
(25:43):
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
(26:03):
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.
(26:25):
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.
(26:50):
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.
(27:10):
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
(27:32):
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,
(27:53):
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.
(28:16):
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
(28:39):
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
(29:02):
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,
(29:24):
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
(29:49):
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
(30:12):
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
(30:32):
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,
(30:54):
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
(31:15):
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
(31:38):
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,
(32:02):
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
(32:24):
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,
(32:48):
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
(33:09):
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
(33:31):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:13):
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
(34:36):
limbs contorted as the blood seeped from his body onto
the cold floor of the cathedral, in Florence. That's the
(34:58):
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
(35:25):
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.
(35:45):
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
(36:08):
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
(36:30):
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
(36:55):
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
(37:25):
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
(37:49):
Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised, Hey, this
is Danish sports. Quick bit of housekeeping just before we
get started. We are back with Rain on Me on
the Patreon. You asked, we answered, We being me and Caramadankua,
(00:26):
my friend and television writer extraordinaire, are going through every
episode of the CW series Rain. I say about Mary,
Queen of Scots, but very loosely about Mary Queen of
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
(00:48):
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,
(01:08):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:35):
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.
(02:56):
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.
(03:21):
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
(03:44):
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
(04:04):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:52):
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
(05:15):
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
(05:35):
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
(05:58):
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
(06:21):
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
(06:45):
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
(07:09):
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
(07:34):
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,
(07:56):
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
(08:17):
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,
(08:39):
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
(09:01):
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
(09:25):
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
(09:47):
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.
(10:08):
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
(10:30):
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
(10:50):
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
(11:12):
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
(11:32):
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
(12:04):
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.
(12:28):
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
(12:51):
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,
(13:12):
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
(13:32):
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
(13:56):
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
(14:19):
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
(14:44):
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.
(15:06):
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
(15:30):
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,
(15:55):
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.
(16:17):
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
(16:41):
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
(17:03):
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
(17:27):
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.
(17:51):
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
(18:13):
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,
(18:37):
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.
(19:01):
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.
(19:21):
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
(19:46):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:52):
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
(21:15):
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,
(21:37):
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
(21:59):
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
(22:24):
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
(22:45):
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
(23:09):
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
(23:31):
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,
(23:51):
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.
(24:15):
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
(24:36):
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
(24:57):
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
(25:21):
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
(25:43):
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
(26:03):
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.
(26:25):
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.
(26:50):
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.
(27:10):
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
(27:32):
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,
(27:53):
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.
(28:16):
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
(28:39):
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
(29:02):
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,
(29:24):
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
(29:49):
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
(30:12):
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
(30:32):
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,
(30:54):
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
(31:15):
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
(31:38):
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,
(32:02):
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
(32:24):
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,
(32:48):
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
(33:09):
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
(33:31):
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
(33:53):
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
(34:13):
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
(34:36):
limbs contorted as the blood seeped from his body onto
the cold floor of the cathedral, in Florence. That's the
(34:58):
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
(35:25):
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.
(35:45):
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
(36:08):
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
(36:30):
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
(36:55):
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
(37:25):
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
(37:49):
Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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