June 27, 2023 • 25 mins
The men knew they needed to get rid of Lorenzo de Medici, they just didn't know how. In the end, they decided the right place would be High Mass, on a Sunday, in the Cathedral of Florence. When the archbishop raised the host, the assassins pulled the blades from their cloaks.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Quick reminder before we start. This episode is part two
of a two part series on the Pozzi conspiracy, so
if you haven't listened to last week's episode, you should
probably start there. The conspiracy to kill Lorenzo de Medici
and his brother Juliano was in full motion. Girolimo Pozzi
(00:32):
and Salviati had enlisted the help of the Captain Monteseco,
and once the Pope gave his tacit wink of approval,
things were moving ahead full speed, with the men gathering
troops and making their plans. Monteseco went to Florence twice
to help prepare for the assassination, first to meet with Lorenzo,
(00:58):
and then to meet with Yacopo de Pazzi, the Pozzi
family patriarch, to ensure that he was fully on board.
The problem with Monteiceco meeting with Lorenzo de Medici was
that Medici was actually a very lovely host. Monticeco found
himself charmed by the humble and generous man that he
(01:20):
knew in a few short months he would be tasked
with sinking a dagger into like Monticecco had been. Yakapo
de Pazzi was hesitant at first when approached with the
plan to take down the Medici. He understood all too
well how powerful the Medici family was, how well liked
(01:42):
they were in Florence, how razor thin the margin for
error was in an assassination in which they would need
to kill both Lorenzo and Giuliano. The irony was the
Medici finances were precarious. Poe was almost certainly aware that
(02:02):
should they choose to wait him out, Lorenzo would be vulnerable,
possibly even over in a few years. But the thing
about young men is they want the glamour of violence
and action. No one becomes a hero waiting for loans
to default. So once the conspirator's minds had been made
(02:25):
up that it would be a tyrant's death, they were
committed to their plan with a fervor that no logic
or patience would penetrate. In the end, Yakopo came around
and promised to help with the plan when the time came,
probably because he understood that they were going to do it,
(02:46):
whether or not he supported them, and if they failed,
he and the entire Potzi family would be ruined. Anyway,
the stakes were high, and it was time to pick
a side for the Potzi They were betting on themselves.
I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. The logistics
(03:15):
of planning the dual assassination would prove to be challenging
because Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici were rarely together in
the same place, and when they were, they were well guarded.
But the conspirators had an idea. Pope Sixtus the Fourth
had just appointed another of his nephews, a seventeen year
(03:37):
old named Raphaeli, as a cardinal. The new cardinal would
need to be celebrated, and so, as a sign of
false goodwill, a gesture of pretending to mend fences between
the Medici and the Pope, Geralimo wrote to Lorenzo de
Medici and suggested that Medici might want to invite the
(04:00):
young new cardinal to his estate and hold a banquet
in his honor. The banquet would be a perfect cover
because the dinner being in the young cardinal's honor meant
that his retinue of papal loyalists and family members would
have an excuse to be there. Meanwhile, men from Perusia
(04:21):
and surrounding regions had begun to sneak into Florence so
that they would be ready to help lead the revolutionary charge.
When the assassinations had finally been carried out, the dinner
was set up. Lorenzo was there, unguarded and without armor,
but something was wrong. The conspirators looked around. Where's uh Giuliano,
(04:46):
someone probably asked casually, Is he coming soon?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
No?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Giuliano would not be coming that evening. He was in
bed with an attack of sciatica, which meant that the
assas asassination was off. If they couldn't get both of
the Medicis in one fell swoop, it would never work.
The conspirators met out on the back patio to come
up with an emergency contingency plan. Lorenzo would be hosting
(05:15):
a dinner the next night, but every minute they waited
was another minute that could compromise their plan. Their soldiers
were already infiltrating the city, and Medici's spies were everywhere.
Sooner or later the Medici would hear about the plot
to assassinate them and destroy them all. Giuliano might not
(05:38):
even be at dinner the next night. Time was running
out and they needed to act quickly. It was too
late to back out, and tomorrow night might be too
late to carry out the assassinations. Instead, they would attack
tomorrow morning, April twenty sixth, forteen seventy eight. It was
(06:01):
a Sunday, the Sunday before Ascension Day, and Lorenzo and
Giuliano would both be at Mass. It was a holy day,
and so there would be throngs of people there. The
assassins would be able to squeeze their way through the
crowd and kill both brothers as they were praying in
the cathedral. At this point, Monteseco bulked. He had been
(06:29):
hesitant from the beginning for logistical reasons, but now the
thought of stabbing a man on a holy day in
church was a bridge too far. It's also possible that
by this point he sort of liked Lorenzo de Medici,
and so he was out. He wasn't going to go
through with the assassination, and so they replaced him. Two
(06:54):
priests who didn't have monte Seco's Christian qualms were brought
in to do the deed in his place. The next morning,
Lorenzo de Medici arrived early to the Cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiori, standing in the shadow of the magnificent
red brick dome, the miracle of engineering masterminded by Brunelleschi
(07:17):
only a few decades prior. At this point, it was
the largest dome since the Pantheon in Rome, which had
been constructed out of a concrete whose formula had been
long since lost to history. The final piece of Brunelleschi's dome,
a copper ball done by Verocchio to be placed atop
(07:39):
the lantern, had only been done in fourteen sixty nine,
less than a decade earlier. At this point, ever, the
attentive host, when Lorenzo heard that the teenage cardinal, the
man of Honor, Cardinal Raphaeli, had actually come to his
home expecting them to go to Mass together. Lorenzo returned
(08:01):
home so that he and Cardinal Raphaeli could come back
to the cathedral together arm in arm. The delay gave
the assassins the upper hand more time to establish the
scene and get into position. They were ready. Two priests
for Lorenzo and for Giuliano Francesco de Pazzi, and another
(08:25):
assassin named Bandini. Archbishop Salviati would go to the palace
of the Signoria, the town hall now known as the
Palazzo Vecchio. Jacobod Pazzi would ride throughout the city to
try to rally Florentine citizens to their side. They were
ready for the moment of truth, but once again the
(08:48):
assassins found themselves looking around. Giuliano was nowhere to be found.
I'm sure Pozzi looked around, maybe tried to act casual
as he asked asked people around him, where's Giuliano. Giuliano
was still sick in bed. He wanted to come to
(09:09):
Mass that morning, but he just didn't seem up to it.
Pozzi was determined to get him there. Frantic realizing that
time was running out, he raced the palace where Giuliano
was lying in bed. Pozzi begged him to come to
Mass that morning for the sake of their distinguished guest,
(09:30):
the young cardinal. I'll carry you if I have to,
he joked. He walked with Giuliano all the way back
to the cathedral, joking and smiling all the way. It
seems you've been eating well, Giuliano, Pozzi said, patting the
Medici brother's stomach. Really, he was feeling to see if
(09:52):
Giuliano was wearing any protection. He wasn't. The cathedral was
crowded that day, and the assassins waited nervously for the
signal they had agreed upon. The two priests were behind
Lorenzo and Pozzi and the assassin Bandini were primed to
(10:14):
take down Giuliano. Finally, a bell rang in the church,
signaling the elevation of the host. It was the signal.
Bandini was the first to stab, plunging his knife deep
into Giuliano. Pozzi began stabbing him in the chest once
he fell, so crazed with rage and adrenaline that Giuliano's
(10:39):
body would have nineteen total stab wounds. Allegedly, Potzi was
stabbing so frantically that he stabbed himself in the leg.
By mistake, Giuliano's servants, in their fear and confusion, had
abandoned him, scrambling away to safety. The two priests had
(11:02):
tried to stab Lorenzo, but they lacked the experience that
Monteseco would have brought. One of the assassins grabbed at
Lorenzo's sleeve, thinking that he would turn toward him. Instead,
Lorenzo spun around the other way, whirling his cape and
drawing his own sword to fight off the assassins. The
(11:24):
assassin only managed to get a scratch on him before
Lorenzo's friends jumped into action behind him and helped protect
Lorenzo as he raced toward the security of the high altar.
One of Lorenzo's friends was stabbed fatally in the stomach.
As the assassins tried desperately in vain to follow their target,
(11:48):
it was chaos in the cathedral, screaming and shouting. Someone
cried that Bruno Leeshi's dome, that miracle of physics, was
collapsing above them. Lorenzo and a small group of his
friends managed to secure themselves behind the heavy bronze doors
of the sacristy. One of Lorenzo's friends began sucking at
(12:11):
the shallow wound the assassin had managed to make on Lorenzo,
sucking and then spitting the blood onto the floor in
case the assassin's blade had been poisoned. Where is Giuliano,
Lorenzo said, where is my brother? Is my brother safe?
Where is Juliano? No one answered. The people had stampeded
(12:33):
out of the cathedral, The room was silent. One member
of Lorenzo's group of friends was able to climb the
organ loft so that he could look down at the
scene to make sure that more enemies weren't waiting outside
the bronze doors. He saw Giuliano's body, covered in blood,
(12:54):
lying on the floor. Lorenzo's friends surrounded him a human
shield on their way out of the cathedral, not to
protect him from assassins, but so that Lorenzo wouldn't have
to see the mangled body of his little brother. Meanwhile,
Archbishop Salviati and yakapod Pazzi were trying their best to
(13:16):
uphold their side of the revolution, attempting to take control
of the Palazzo Vecchio and rally the people. On a horse,
Yakapo de Pazzi rode through the streets trying to rally
the people. People and liberty. He shouted, people and liberty.
He tried to start a chant, but the people of
Florence were silent. And then their answer came softly, a
(13:40):
murmur from the crowd that became a shout. Polly, They said, Polly.
They repeated it, and it became louder, Polly, Polly. It
drowned out yakapod Pazzi's words. Polly, Polly Pollay is ball
the simbull on the Medici sigil. In almost no time,
(14:05):
Lorenzo's men had the upper hand at the Palazzo Vecchio.
The assassination attempt had succeeded in killing one out of
two of its targets, but this was an all or
nothing game. They had failed and there would be hell
to pay. What the conspirators hadn't quite grasped was how
(14:32):
unpopular they were and how terribly their message would be received.
Lorenzo de Medici didn't even really need to do anything.
The people of Florence were outraged at these foreign invaders,
these traders who came in with thugs from foreign territories
into their city, who killed their golden Prince, Giuliano. There
(14:57):
was outrage at Lorenzo and the media family at the time.
There were people in Florence who saw them as tyrants.
But as historian Miles Unger wrote, quote, no matter how
compelling the message, the Pazzi were the wrong messengers. These
conspirators were mad at the Medici for their own selfish,
(15:20):
petty reasons. They were the wrong harbingers of revolution. They
weren't there to free Florence from oppression. They were there
to get rid of a guy who had been thwarting
their own personal political ambitions. And they were more loyal
to the Pope than they were to Florence. And the
people saw that there was a writer in Florence named
(15:43):
Alamano Renuccini. A year after the assassination attempt, he would
write a book called on Liberty, in which you would write, quote,
it shames me, indeed, who was born in this city
and in this age, to see the people who once
dominated most of Tuscany, as well as regions nearby, led
(16:03):
about in circles by the whim of this one youth
referring to Lorenzo de Medici. He was not a Medici fan.
He had been there during the assassination, and even he
preferred to protect his own neck rather than join in
the Pozzi conspiracy. And the consequences of that failed conspiracy
(16:26):
were incredibly grisly. The men captured at the Palazzo Vecchio
were hanged from the window. Archbishop Salviati was still in
his vestimens. The mob took care of justice, quite literally,
ripping the Pozzi men to pieces and piling the body
(16:46):
parts on Lorenzo's doorstep as a tribute, along with piles
of weapons and other provisions they gathered as a sign
of strength and solidarity Lorenzo. When he had recovered from
his shock, Polo lightly greeted the Florentine citizenry and assured
them that as grieved as he was for his brother,
he would be strong enough to carry on with state affairs.
(17:10):
He thanked them for their support and for his life,
and told them there was no need for violence. Quote.
I commend myself to you, he said from a second
story window. Control yourselves and let justice take its course.
Do not harm the innocent. My wound is not serious.
End quote. It was a nice thought, but it didn't
(17:32):
do much to reign in the mob. Lorenzo de Medici
was able to protect a Pozzi brother in law and
have him merely banished from Florence, and he was able
to protect the teenage Cardinal Rafaeli, who hadn't actually been
involved in the plan at all, aside from being unwitting bait,
(17:52):
but for everyone else well. The historian Harold Acton describes
what happened next as a quote orgy of mutilation, bodies
hanged from windows like Christmas ornaments, heads bobbed down the
streets on pikes. One member of the Pozzi family tried
(18:13):
to escape the town dressed as a beggar, but he
was recognized and hanged. Old Yakapo da Pazzi, the patriarch
of the family, who knew all along it had been
a mistake, almost made it out, and when he was
captured by guards, he tried to bribe them with gold
to just kill him then and there. Once again, his
(18:33):
instincts were right, because the guards refused, and when they did,
he was dragged naked by a horse through the square.
And after Yakapo da Pazzi was tortured and hanged, he
was buried. But then it started raining and people thought
that they were being punished for burying a trader on
(18:54):
consequented ground, so he was dug up and buried again
near the city wall. Then he was dug up again
by a group of boys who dragged his corpse around
the city and tied his head to the doorbell of
his former home, the old Potzi mansion, which of course
(19:14):
would be raised and looted. They sang dirty songs about
him and finally threw his body into the Arno River.
It's difficult to imagine a plan to try to regain
power going worse. The Patzis weren't just beaten, they were demolished.
(19:37):
All of the Potzi symbols were destroyed from the city,
and any Potzi left were forced into exile or forced
to change their names. Anyone even married to a Patzi
wouldn't be allowed to hold office. Eventually, every conspirator was
tracked down and killed, with the exception of Juralima, that
(20:00):
Lord of Immola, the nephew of the Pope, who had
made sure to keep himself actually out of physical harm's
way by not being in the city at the time
of the actual assassination. But even he would be killed
a few years later in an apparently unrelated assassination scheme.
But everyone else was hunted down and eliminated. The two
(20:24):
bumbling priests who had botched lorenzo stabbing made it to
a monastery, but eventually even the monks realized that they
had to give them up in order to assuage the
mobs outside. When Montesecco was captured, he gave a full confession,
which might be why he got a slightly more dignified
(20:46):
death than public hanging. He was beheaded in the courtyard
of the Bargello, which had been a prison and is
now a lovely sculpture museum. The final conspirator caught was
actually the one who made the first strike, Bandini, the
assassin whose stab had taken down beautiful young Giuliano de Medici.
(21:10):
Bandini had made it all the way to Constantinople, but
even he couldn't escape his fate. He was arrested by
Sultan Mohammed the Second and at the request of the
Florentine ambassador, who happened to be a Medici cousin, he
was returned to Florence, where he was hanged from the
window of the Bargello, still wearing his Turkish outfit. Why
(21:35):
had they kept him in his costume, his cap and
vest and turquoise jacket. Well, it sent a message, no
matter how far you run, to Constantinople or beyond, you
can't escape the Medici. After the dust had cleared and
the blood had been swept from the streets, there was
(21:56):
still the business of private mourning to be done. Lorenzo
was breathed at the loss of his brother Giuliano, But
there was one small glimmer of hope and of joy.
After Juliana's death, Lorenzo learned that his brother, ever the Playboy,
had actually fathered an illegitimate child just a few months old.
(22:20):
Lorenzo would see that the child was educated alongside his
own children, and while Giuliano had never been made a cardinal,
his son was, And that illegitimate son, whose father was
killed with the tacit approval of the Pope, would eventually
go on to become the Pope himself, Clement the seventh.
(22:47):
That's the story of the Pazzi conspiracy. But if you
want to hear a little bit more about one a
list cameo in the saga, stick around after a brief
sponsor break. If you were interested in how we knew
(23:09):
so much about Bandini's hanging as in what exactly he
was wearing, it's because there was an artist who just
happened to be there taking notes. Though the artist did
draw the hanging body, he seemed to be more interested
in the exotic constantinople clothing Bandini was wearing than the
grotesquery of the execution itself. The artist described in his
(23:33):
notes that Bandini wore a quote tawny cap, black satin vest,
turquoise blue jacket lined with fox. The journal that the
artist wrote in is still at the Louver. But the
artist was actually from Florence, Well, he was from a
small town nearby Vinci. The artist's name was Leonardo. Noble
(24:09):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild
from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by
me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
(24:33):
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Attatatatatata
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Quick reminder before we start. This episode is part two
of a two part series on the Pozzi conspiracy, so
if you haven't listened to last week's episode, you should
probably start there. The conspiracy to kill Lorenzo de Medici
and his brother Juliano was in full motion. Girolimo Pozzi
(00:32):
and Salviati had enlisted the help of the Captain Monteseco,
and once the Pope gave his tacit wink of approval,
things were moving ahead full speed, with the men gathering
troops and making their plans. Monteseco went to Florence twice
to help prepare for the assassination, first to meet with Lorenzo,
(00:58):
and then to meet with Yacopo de Pazzi, the Pozzi
family patriarch, to ensure that he was fully on board.
The problem with Monteiceco meeting with Lorenzo de Medici was
that Medici was actually a very lovely host. Monticeco found
himself charmed by the humble and generous man that he
(01:20):
knew in a few short months he would be tasked
with sinking a dagger into like Monticecco had been. Yakapo
de Pazzi was hesitant at first when approached with the
plan to take down the Medici. He understood all too
well how powerful the Medici family was, how well liked
(01:42):
they were in Florence, how razor thin the margin for
error was in an assassination in which they would need
to kill both Lorenzo and Giuliano. The irony was the
Medici finances were precarious. Poe was almost certainly aware that
(02:02):
should they choose to wait him out, Lorenzo would be vulnerable,
possibly even over in a few years. But the thing
about young men is they want the glamour of violence
and action. No one becomes a hero waiting for loans
to default. So once the conspirator's minds had been made
(02:25):
up that it would be a tyrant's death, they were
committed to their plan with a fervor that no logic
or patience would penetrate. In the end, Yakopo came around
and promised to help with the plan when the time came,
probably because he understood that they were going to do it,
(02:46):
whether or not he supported them, and if they failed,
he and the entire Potzi family would be ruined. Anyway,
the stakes were high, and it was time to pick
a side for the Potzi They were betting on themselves.
I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. The logistics
(03:15):
of planning the dual assassination would prove to be challenging
because Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici were rarely together in
the same place, and when they were, they were well guarded.
But the conspirators had an idea. Pope Sixtus the Fourth
had just appointed another of his nephews, a seventeen year
(03:37):
old named Raphaeli, as a cardinal. The new cardinal would
need to be celebrated, and so, as a sign of
false goodwill, a gesture of pretending to mend fences between
the Medici and the Pope, Geralimo wrote to Lorenzo de
Medici and suggested that Medici might want to invite the
(04:00):
young new cardinal to his estate and hold a banquet
in his honor. The banquet would be a perfect cover
because the dinner being in the young cardinal's honor meant
that his retinue of papal loyalists and family members would
have an excuse to be there. Meanwhile, men from Perusia
(04:21):
and surrounding regions had begun to sneak into Florence so
that they would be ready to help lead the revolutionary charge.
When the assassinations had finally been carried out, the dinner
was set up. Lorenzo was there, unguarded and without armor,
but something was wrong. The conspirators looked around. Where's uh Giuliano,
(04:46):
someone probably asked casually, Is he coming soon?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
No?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Giuliano would not be coming that evening. He was in
bed with an attack of sciatica, which meant that the
assas asassination was off. If they couldn't get both of
the Medicis in one fell swoop, it would never work.
The conspirators met out on the back patio to come
up with an emergency contingency plan. Lorenzo would be hosting
(05:15):
a dinner the next night, but every minute they waited
was another minute that could compromise their plan. Their soldiers
were already infiltrating the city, and Medici's spies were everywhere.
Sooner or later the Medici would hear about the plot
to assassinate them and destroy them all. Giuliano might not
(05:38):
even be at dinner the next night. Time was running
out and they needed to act quickly. It was too
late to back out, and tomorrow night might be too
late to carry out the assassinations. Instead, they would attack
tomorrow morning, April twenty sixth, forteen seventy eight. It was
(06:01):
a Sunday, the Sunday before Ascension Day, and Lorenzo and
Giuliano would both be at Mass. It was a holy day,
and so there would be throngs of people there. The
assassins would be able to squeeze their way through the
crowd and kill both brothers as they were praying in
the cathedral. At this point, Monteseco bulked. He had been
(06:29):
hesitant from the beginning for logistical reasons, but now the
thought of stabbing a man on a holy day in
church was a bridge too far. It's also possible that
by this point he sort of liked Lorenzo de Medici,
and so he was out. He wasn't going to go
through with the assassination, and so they replaced him. Two
(06:54):
priests who didn't have monte Seco's Christian qualms were brought
in to do the deed in his place. The next morning,
Lorenzo de Medici arrived early to the Cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiori, standing in the shadow of the magnificent
red brick dome, the miracle of engineering masterminded by Brunelleschi
(07:17):
only a few decades prior. At this point, it was
the largest dome since the Pantheon in Rome, which had
been constructed out of a concrete whose formula had been
long since lost to history. The final piece of Brunelleschi's dome,
a copper ball done by Verocchio to be placed atop
(07:39):
the lantern, had only been done in fourteen sixty nine,
less than a decade earlier. At this point, ever, the
attentive host, when Lorenzo heard that the teenage cardinal, the
man of Honor, Cardinal Raphaeli, had actually come to his
home expecting them to go to Mass together. Lorenzo returned
(08:01):
home so that he and Cardinal Raphaeli could come back
to the cathedral together arm in arm. The delay gave
the assassins the upper hand more time to establish the
scene and get into position. They were ready. Two priests
for Lorenzo and for Giuliano Francesco de Pazzi, and another
(08:25):
assassin named Bandini. Archbishop Salviati would go to the palace
of the Signoria, the town hall now known as the
Palazzo Vecchio. Jacobod Pazzi would ride throughout the city to
try to rally Florentine citizens to their side. They were
ready for the moment of truth, but once again the
(08:48):
assassins found themselves looking around. Giuliano was nowhere to be found.
I'm sure Pozzi looked around, maybe tried to act casual
as he asked asked people around him, where's Giuliano. Giuliano
was still sick in bed. He wanted to come to
(09:09):
Mass that morning, but he just didn't seem up to it.
Pozzi was determined to get him there. Frantic realizing that
time was running out, he raced the palace where Giuliano
was lying in bed. Pozzi begged him to come to
Mass that morning for the sake of their distinguished guest,
(09:30):
the young cardinal. I'll carry you if I have to,
he joked. He walked with Giuliano all the way back
to the cathedral, joking and smiling all the way. It
seems you've been eating well, Giuliano, Pozzi said, patting the
Medici brother's stomach. Really, he was feeling to see if
(09:52):
Giuliano was wearing any protection. He wasn't. The cathedral was
crowded that day, and the assassins waited nervously for the
signal they had agreed upon. The two priests were behind
Lorenzo and Pozzi and the assassin Bandini were primed to
(10:14):
take down Giuliano. Finally, a bell rang in the church,
signaling the elevation of the host. It was the signal.
Bandini was the first to stab, plunging his knife deep
into Giuliano. Pozzi began stabbing him in the chest once
he fell, so crazed with rage and adrenaline that Giuliano's
(10:39):
body would have nineteen total stab wounds. Allegedly, Potzi was
stabbing so frantically that he stabbed himself in the leg.
By mistake, Giuliano's servants, in their fear and confusion, had
abandoned him, scrambling away to safety. The two priests had
(11:02):
tried to stab Lorenzo, but they lacked the experience that
Monteseco would have brought. One of the assassins grabbed at
Lorenzo's sleeve, thinking that he would turn toward him. Instead,
Lorenzo spun around the other way, whirling his cape and
drawing his own sword to fight off the assassins. The
(11:24):
assassin only managed to get a scratch on him before
Lorenzo's friends jumped into action behind him and helped protect
Lorenzo as he raced toward the security of the high altar.
One of Lorenzo's friends was stabbed fatally in the stomach.
As the assassins tried desperately in vain to follow their target,
(11:48):
it was chaos in the cathedral, screaming and shouting. Someone
cried that Bruno Leeshi's dome, that miracle of physics, was
collapsing above them. Lorenzo and a small group of his
friends managed to secure themselves behind the heavy bronze doors
of the sacristy. One of Lorenzo's friends began sucking at
(12:11):
the shallow wound the assassin had managed to make on Lorenzo,
sucking and then spitting the blood onto the floor in
case the assassin's blade had been poisoned. Where is Giuliano,
Lorenzo said, where is my brother? Is my brother safe?
Where is Juliano? No one answered. The people had stampeded
(12:33):
out of the cathedral, The room was silent. One member
of Lorenzo's group of friends was able to climb the
organ loft so that he could look down at the
scene to make sure that more enemies weren't waiting outside
the bronze doors. He saw Giuliano's body, covered in blood,
(12:54):
lying on the floor. Lorenzo's friends surrounded him a human
shield on their way out of the cathedral, not to
protect him from assassins, but so that Lorenzo wouldn't have
to see the mangled body of his little brother. Meanwhile,
Archbishop Salviati and yakapod Pazzi were trying their best to
(13:16):
uphold their side of the revolution, attempting to take control
of the Palazzo Vecchio and rally the people. On a horse,
Yakapo de Pazzi rode through the streets trying to rally
the people. People and liberty. He shouted, people and liberty.
He tried to start a chant, but the people of
Florence were silent. And then their answer came softly, a
(13:40):
murmur from the crowd that became a shout. Polly, They said, Polly.
They repeated it, and it became louder, Polly, Polly. It
drowned out yakapod Pazzi's words. Polly, Polly Pollay is ball
the simbull on the Medici sigil. In almost no time,
(14:05):
Lorenzo's men had the upper hand at the Palazzo Vecchio.
The assassination attempt had succeeded in killing one out of
two of its targets, but this was an all or
nothing game. They had failed and there would be hell
to pay. What the conspirators hadn't quite grasped was how
(14:32):
unpopular they were and how terribly their message would be received.
Lorenzo de Medici didn't even really need to do anything.
The people of Florence were outraged at these foreign invaders,
these traders who came in with thugs from foreign territories
into their city, who killed their golden Prince, Giuliano. There
(14:57):
was outrage at Lorenzo and the media family at the time.
There were people in Florence who saw them as tyrants.
But as historian Miles Unger wrote, quote, no matter how
compelling the message, the Pazzi were the wrong messengers. These
conspirators were mad at the Medici for their own selfish,
(15:20):
petty reasons. They were the wrong harbingers of revolution. They
weren't there to free Florence from oppression. They were there
to get rid of a guy who had been thwarting
their own personal political ambitions. And they were more loyal
to the Pope than they were to Florence. And the
people saw that there was a writer in Florence named
(15:43):
Alamano Renuccini. A year after the assassination attempt, he would
write a book called on Liberty, in which you would write, quote,
it shames me, indeed, who was born in this city
and in this age, to see the people who once
dominated most of Tuscany, as well as regions nearby, led
(16:03):
about in circles by the whim of this one youth
referring to Lorenzo de Medici. He was not a Medici fan.
He had been there during the assassination, and even he
preferred to protect his own neck rather than join in
the Pozzi conspiracy. And the consequences of that failed conspiracy
(16:26):
were incredibly grisly. The men captured at the Palazzo Vecchio
were hanged from the window. Archbishop Salviati was still in
his vestimens. The mob took care of justice, quite literally,
ripping the Pozzi men to pieces and piling the body
(16:46):
parts on Lorenzo's doorstep as a tribute, along with piles
of weapons and other provisions they gathered as a sign
of strength and solidarity Lorenzo. When he had recovered from
his shock, Polo lightly greeted the Florentine citizenry and assured
them that as grieved as he was for his brother,
he would be strong enough to carry on with state affairs.
(17:10):
He thanked them for their support and for his life,
and told them there was no need for violence. Quote.
I commend myself to you, he said from a second
story window. Control yourselves and let justice take its course.
Do not harm the innocent. My wound is not serious.
End quote. It was a nice thought, but it didn't
(17:32):
do much to reign in the mob. Lorenzo de Medici
was able to protect a Pozzi brother in law and
have him merely banished from Florence, and he was able
to protect the teenage Cardinal Rafaeli, who hadn't actually been
involved in the plan at all, aside from being unwitting bait,
(17:52):
but for everyone else well. The historian Harold Acton describes
what happened next as a quote orgy of mutilation, bodies
hanged from windows like Christmas ornaments, heads bobbed down the
streets on pikes. One member of the Pozzi family tried
(18:13):
to escape the town dressed as a beggar, but he
was recognized and hanged. Old Yakapo da Pazzi, the patriarch
of the family, who knew all along it had been
a mistake, almost made it out, and when he was
captured by guards, he tried to bribe them with gold
to just kill him then and there. Once again, his
(18:33):
instincts were right, because the guards refused, and when they did,
he was dragged naked by a horse through the square.
And after Yakapo da Pazzi was tortured and hanged, he
was buried. But then it started raining and people thought
that they were being punished for burying a trader on
(18:54):
consequented ground, so he was dug up and buried again
near the city wall. Then he was dug up again
by a group of boys who dragged his corpse around
the city and tied his head to the doorbell of
his former home, the old Potzi mansion, which of course
(19:14):
would be raised and looted. They sang dirty songs about
him and finally threw his body into the Arno River.
It's difficult to imagine a plan to try to regain
power going worse. The Patzis weren't just beaten, they were demolished.
(19:37):
All of the Potzi symbols were destroyed from the city,
and any Potzi left were forced into exile or forced
to change their names. Anyone even married to a Patzi
wouldn't be allowed to hold office. Eventually, every conspirator was
tracked down and killed, with the exception of Juralima, that
(20:00):
Lord of Immola, the nephew of the Pope, who had
made sure to keep himself actually out of physical harm's
way by not being in the city at the time
of the actual assassination. But even he would be killed
a few years later in an apparently unrelated assassination scheme.
But everyone else was hunted down and eliminated. The two
(20:24):
bumbling priests who had botched lorenzo stabbing made it to
a monastery, but eventually even the monks realized that they
had to give them up in order to assuage the
mobs outside. When Montesecco was captured, he gave a full confession,
which might be why he got a slightly more dignified
(20:46):
death than public hanging. He was beheaded in the courtyard
of the Bargello, which had been a prison and is
now a lovely sculpture museum. The final conspirator caught was
actually the one who made the first strike, Bandini, the
assassin whose stab had taken down beautiful young Giuliano de Medici.
(21:10):
Bandini had made it all the way to Constantinople, but
even he couldn't escape his fate. He was arrested by
Sultan Mohammed the Second and at the request of the
Florentine ambassador, who happened to be a Medici cousin, he
was returned to Florence, where he was hanged from the
window of the Bargello, still wearing his Turkish outfit. Why
(21:35):
had they kept him in his costume, his cap and
vest and turquoise jacket. Well, it sent a message, no
matter how far you run, to Constantinople or beyond, you
can't escape the Medici. After the dust had cleared and
the blood had been swept from the streets, there was
(21:56):
still the business of private mourning to be done. Lorenzo
was breathed at the loss of his brother Giuliano, But
there was one small glimmer of hope and of joy.
After Juliana's death, Lorenzo learned that his brother, ever the Playboy,
had actually fathered an illegitimate child just a few months old.
(22:20):
Lorenzo would see that the child was educated alongside his
own children, and while Giuliano had never been made a cardinal,
his son was, And that illegitimate son, whose father was
killed with the tacit approval of the Pope, would eventually
go on to become the Pope himself, Clement the seventh.
(22:47):
That's the story of the Pazzi conspiracy. But if you
want to hear a little bit more about one a
list cameo in the saga, stick around after a brief
sponsor break. If you were interested in how we knew
(23:09):
so much about Bandini's hanging as in what exactly he
was wearing, it's because there was an artist who just
happened to be there taking notes. Though the artist did
draw the hanging body, he seemed to be more interested
in the exotic constantinople clothing Bandini was wearing than the
grotesquery of the execution itself. The artist described in his
(23:33):
notes that Bandini wore a quote tawny cap, black satin vest,
turquoise blue jacket lined with fox. The journal that the
artist wrote in is still at the Louver. But the
artist was actually from Florence, Well, he was from a
small town nearby Vinci. The artist's name was Leonardo. Noble
(24:09):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild
from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by
me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The
show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima
(24:33):
Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers
Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Attatatatatata
Host
Dana Schwartz
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