Thus it was that as their plans ripened they brought a new figure into their confidence. In some ways this new addition to the inner circle appeared ideally suited to the task. Not only was he a Florentine from a distinguished family but, as a powerful figure in the curia, aide to Cardinal Pietro Riario and cousin of Francesco de’ Pazzi, his loyalty was never in doubt. In addition to his ties with both of the principal plotters, he had his own reasons to hate Lorenzo. It is 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.
Born in 1425, Francesco Salviati was older than his fellow conspirators. He was already well into middle age and with a distinguished ecclesiastical career behind him by the time he joined with Girolamo Riario and Francesco de’ Pazzi in their perilous undertaking. (Girolamo, born in 1438, was eighteen years his junior, while Francesco, born in 1445, was twenty years younger.) Like his partners, Salviati was unhappy with the current state of affairs, believing he had been denied the ecclesiastical appointments he coveted most through the malicious interference of the First Citizen of Florence. But while he certainly had good reason to resent Lorenzo, it seems curious that a man of his mature years, with everything to lose and perhaps little time to enjoy the fruits of his victory, should have allowed himself to become involved with a couple of young hotheads with a taste for mayhem.
It is unclear how far back Francesco Salviati’s hatred for Lorenzo and his family went. The Salviati were an old and respected Florentine clan, but during Francesco’s lifetime they had seen a decline in their fortunes.* The Salviati palace still stands, around the corner from that of the Pazzi, with whom they were allied by ties of marriage, but in Francesco’s day it was one of the few remaining assets of a family that had fallen on hard times. The worst blow to the Salviati came in the economic depression of 1466, a disaster for which many people still blamed Lorenzo’s father. Francesco Salviati had particular reason to be bitter. Piero’s retrenchment following the death of his father, in which he tightened the liberal credit extended by Cosimo, contributed to the failure of a wool shop in Pisa owned by the Salviati family.
But if Salviati harbored resentment toward those responsible for his family’s descent into poverty it was not immediately apparent. Indeed it was in Cosimo’s Florence that, as an ambitious young man, Salviati first distinguished himself, aided in his efforts by many within the ruling elite. He belonged to the circle gathered around the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, an impressive group that included not only Angelo Poliziano but also Giuliano and Lorenzo. Poliziano later wrote that Salviati was “devoid of knowledge of and also respect for the law, divine as well as human…lost in sensuality and disgraceful intrigues.” He also attributed to him the sins of gambling at dice, flattery, and vanity, though this standard catalogue of vices was compiled only after his treachery was revealed. In fact at one time the two had been on friendly terms. As a young man Poliziano had written Salviati some flattering letters in hopes of obtaining a position.
Like many a youth with more education than money Salviati pursued a career in the Church. It was his cousin Jacopo de’ Pazzi (Jacopo’s mother, Caterina Salviati, was Francesco’s aunt) who bankrolled Salviati’s fine humanist education, a necessity for one seeking employment in the papal courts. After completing his schooling he proceeded to Rome, where he joined such intellectual luminaries as Bartolomeo Platina and Leon Battista Alberti, who were determined to place the latest humanist scholarship at the service of a modernized Church. With his Pazzi connections, his drive to succeed, and his Florentine education, Salviati rose through the hierarchy, becoming in time the indispensable right-hand man of Cardinal Pietro Riario.
That Salviati was more than the list of vices attributed to him by Poliziano is revealed in his correspondence with Marsilio Ficino, though the latter was clearly a better philosopher in the abstract than he was a judge of humanity in the flesh.* The philosopher’s affection for Salviati is attested to by the fatherly advice he was wont to bestow on his fellow humanist when, as often seemed to be the case, Salviati felt thwarted in his ambitions. “I wanted something important in your affairs to happen, which would prompt me to write a congratulatory letter to you, and I expected it every day,” Ficino wrote. “I see that nothing has yet happened worthy of my desire and your deserts. Trust in God, Salviati. I know you were not born for small or commonplace purposes. So be of good heart and, as is usual to you, strong in spirit. You will achieve great things if you are strong in spirit.” Urging patience on Salviati, however, was a futile effort. For all their kindly advice, Ficino’s letters betray the frustration of their recipient, who already seemed to feel he had been cheated of the stellar career to which his abilities entitled him.
Salviati’s great break came in December of 1473 when his boss, Cardinal Pietro Riario, died suddenly in Rome. As always occurs with the unexpected deaths of powerful men there were the inevitable rumors of poisoning. A more likely explanation is that Cardinal Riario was a victim of his own excesses. Debauchery is never the most healthy of lifestyles, and Riario was the epitome of the dissolute Renaissance prelate. “Our delightful feasts all came to an end, and everyone lamented the death of Riario,” went one contemporary’s facetious obituary.†
Cardinal Riario’s passing had many consequences beyond the losses suffered by the procureresses, vintners, and pastry chefs of Rome, not least of which was that it unhinged his uncle, who seems to have lost what little sense of proportion he once possessed. Indeed Sixtus was so grief-stricken that many feared for his sanity. Nothing could replace the indispensable Pietro, either in the pope’s heart or in the more practical role as his chief financial and political advisor, but the void was eventually filled to the best of his somewhat limited abilities by his younger brother, Count Girolamo. The contrast between the two was striking. Both, it is true, possessed the burning ambition common to all the Riario, but Pietro had been a man whose intelligence was placed at the service of an expansive vision of papal power. Girolamo, by contrast, could hardly see beyond the narrow horizons of his own immediate advantage. After Pietro’s death papal policy grew increasingly violent and erratic as Girolamo lunged first this way and then that in a desperate attempt to secure his uncertain future.
As for Salviati, the death of his patron cleared the path to greater things. Of all the titles held by the deceased cardinal, the one Salviati coveted most was that of archbishop of Florence. In the end his bid to become the chief prelate of his native land was unsuccessful, but somewhere in the obscure negotiations that led to the appointment of Lorenzo’s brother-in-law Rinaldo Orsini to the vacancy, the pope seems to have promised Salviati that he would be named to the next available position. The opportunity to make good on this pledge came later that year. On October 7, 1474, Filippo de’ Medici, archbishop of Pisa, died. Seven days later the pope issued a bull announcing Salviati as his replacement.
The nomination of Francesco Salviati as archbishop of Pisa touched off a new crisis in the already strained relations between Lorenzo and the pope. It also put Sixtus on a collision course with the Florentine Signoria, which had not been consulted in the matter as tradition dictated and as the pope had earlier promised. Even before Filippo de’ Medici’s death the Signoria had placed before the pope a list of acceptable successors. Salviati’s name was, pointedly, not among them.* It is understandable, then, that when the government of Florence learned of Salviati’s appointment they reacted with outrage and indignation. Not only had the pope failed to consult them, but he had chosen a candidate whose activities on behalf of the pope and his family made him obnoxious to all patriotic Florentines.* Worse still, it was clear that the pope was grooming Salviati for the cardinalship, filling that vital office with the one native son unacceptable to his own people. On October 18 a special committee of leading members of the reggimento resolved to oppose this insult to the dignity of the republic with all the means at th
eir disposal. Noting that the Holy Father was entitled by law to select whomever he chose to be his bishop, they also pointed out that only the government of Florence had the right to determine who could set foot on their territory. Thus while they could not stop Salviati’s appointment, they could effectively bar him from claiming his prize by preventing him from crossing the border into Tuscany.
It has often been claimed that Lorenzo was wholly responsible for his government’s defiance of the pope. This was certainly the assumption of Sixtus, who denounced Lorenzo’s “depraved and malignant spirit,” calling him a “usurping tyrant.” It was a charge Lorenzo vehemently denied, explaining that he was merely carrying out the wishes of the Signoria whose honor had been besmirched by the pope’s high-handed refusal to consider its wishes. He set out his defense in a letter written to Duke Galeazzo on December 14, 1474. “The matter is of utmost importance,” Lorenzo began,
and it seems to me that I have been done a grave injustice and wrong, because His Holiness cannot complain of anything of me, nor…should offense be taken over messer Francesco Salviati’s being denied possession of the archbishopric of Pisa; and this offense, if offense there be, comes from the entire city, yet he wishes to avenge himself on me alone. It is true that for the grace of God and the warmth and favor of Your Excellency, I believed that I would have control of the said archbishopric, but it did not seem to me right to acquiesce in such a humiliation of the entire public for the sake of my own interests, which the city does not deserve from me.
To some extent Lorenzo’s letter is disingenuous, since the Signoria would surely follow his lead in this matter. But it was true as Lorenzo said that the appointment of Salviati against the express wishes of the Florentine government set a dangerous precedent. Salviati did not make matters easier by loudly trumpeting his own status as a client of the papal family, signing his correspondence d. Franciscus Salviati de Riario.*
The appointment was all the more disturbing because Pisa was a particularly tender spot in the Florentine empire. As recently as 1405, Pisa had been an independent republic, and many of its citizens still yearned to reclaim their lost autonomy. Lorenzo, as we have seen, worked hard to reconcile its citizens to Florentine rule, spending lavishly on its university and much of his free time in the vicinity. Lorenzo voiced his concerns to Duke Galeazzo:
And while in the letter of the said Count [Girolamo] he wrote that His Holiness had received letters from many citizens in favor of Salviati, it seems to me all the more reason to prevent him taking possession of his see; since the Signoria and leading citizens are not well disposed towards him, those who are reveal themselves to be men who do not wish the government well, and it would seem all the stranger that in a city as unreliable and sensitive as Pisa that this man should be acceptable to some who is so objectionable to the government. Does Your Excellency think that you would easily accept having in Pavia or another one of your lands a man who had gained his place through the good offices of your enemies?
Those “men who do not wish the government well” were the Pazzi and their clients, who had orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to convince the pope that there was a groundswell of support in Florence for his nominee. Not only was the pope challenging Lorenzo’s authority on an important matter of international diplomacy, but he was doing so by exploiting divisions within the Florentine ruling class.
Despite the growing rift with the pope, Lorenzo continued to downplay the seriousness of the situation. His enemies in the Vatican could cause him a good deal of trouble but he dismissed any thought that they might pose a threat to his life. This was not for lack of warning. Though the conspirators tried to maintain strict secrecy, the courts of Italy were abuzz with rumors. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, perhaps catching some faint whiff of what was afoot through his connection to the Riario family, had urged Lorenzo to “keep himself safe and his eyes on what is happening inside [the city].” Lorenzo’s response to repeated admonitions to protect himself was, typically, to dismiss most of the rumors as “fantasies” cooked up by a group of malcontents with little standing in the community.* He assured Sacramoro that “those who wish to engage in machinations are weak and few in number.” His attitude, as in 1466, reflects the overconfidence of youth. The frequent complaints he made to Sforza show a concern for his pocketbook but none for his life. In his letter to the duke, written in September of 1475, he belittles his opponents, even as he begs him to intervene on his behalf in Rome:
I find that all of this comes from the same source, that is these Pazzi, my relatives, who because of their nature and because they have been put up to it by His Majesty the King and the duke of Urbino, seek to wrong me in every way possible; and in this they forget their debt, because as perhaps Your Excellency has been informed, everything they have achieved in this city they owe to our house, towards which they show themselves ungrateful. I shall arrange it so that they can do little to harm me and will keep my eyes open, though I believe it is all a fantasy since they have little prestige and are despised by everyone…. I think with little effort all will workout…. [T]he new Archbishop of Pisa belongs very much to them, bound to those Pazzi by ties of marriage and of friendship. I am more than ever harassed in Rome to force me to allow him to take possession of Pisa, which, it seems to me, would give the Pazzi great prestige and me the reverse…. I pray that Your Excellency would speak with such heat to count Girolamo, in such a manner as to make it clear to him that you object to my being humiliated in this way, as much as if it were done to you yourself, I being a faithful servant of yours. This should have two effects: one, that it will perhaps cause him to stop harassing me; the other, that in Rome all will know that I am truly loved by Your Excellency, which, as I have written at other times, is enough to lift me up and draw the malice from the minds of every man.
This letter reveals that Lorenzo continually underestimated both the determination and the imagination of his opponents, lulled into a false sense of security by his belief in his own powers and his faith in the loyalty of his people.
In the end neither Lorenzo nor the Signoria could defy a pope determined to have his way. Francesco Salviati formally took possession of his bishopric on October 30, 1475, though only after a humiliating one-year exile in Rome during which his hatred for Lorenzo had ample opportunity to ripen. Once again Lorenzo had publicly defied the pope and emerged with little to show for it. To a friend he confided, “if it could be done without scandal, it would be better to have three or four popes rather than one.”
As for the one pope who actually sat on the throne of St. Peter, Lorenzo’s difficulties with him were just beginning. Even as the two tussled over the appointment of Salviati, a new diplomatic quarrel was brewing. It concerned a small city on the border between Tuscany and the pope’s domain known as Città di Castello. Città di Castello was one of those innumerable dependencies, like Imola, Urbino, Rimini, Bologna, and Perugia, to name a few, that made up the territory that went under the hopeful heading of the Papal States. It had long been Vatican policy to bring order and obedience to this fractious territory. As part of this wider program, and in order to find employment for his bellicose nephew, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, Sixtus had already sent him at the head of an army to reassert papal authority in the towns of Spoleto and Forli. Città di Castello, nominally within papal territories but usually regarded by the government of Florence as within its sphere of interest, was next on his list of conquests.
Sixtus was aided in his purpose by internal divisions within the town. For decades rule over Città di Castello had been contested by the Giustini and Vitelli families, a matter that seemed to have been settled in 1440 when Pope Eugenius IV made Vitelozzo Vitelli his vice-regent. But nothing is ever settled as long as the aggrieved party is still around to argue his case. While Vitelozzo’s son, Niccolò Vitelli, placed himself under the protection of the Medici and the Florentine government, becoming in effect a client of the Signoria, Lorenzo Giustini made his way to the Vatican, where h
e filled the pope’s ears with complaints about Vitelli and his Florentine patrons.* Dubious though Giustini’s claims were, Sixtus used them as an excuse to tighten his control over the strategic town that he hoped to use as “an example to all the lands of the Church.”
Thus it was that on June 24, 1474, troops under Giuliano della Rovere arrived before the walls of Città di Castello and began laying siege to the town. Girolamo Riario wrote to Lorenzo in the mildest of tones urging his cooperation in the matter: “If you would have me see that I am loved by you, and that my friendship is agreeable to you, and would also have our Master perceive that you are towards his Holiness all that I have ever declared you to be, then deal with me in this matter as you wish me to deal with you and your affairs.” Lorenzo was not moved by these friendly words. Though it was clear he was risking further reprisals from Sixtus, he refused to abandon his longtime ally, knowing that to do so would be to guarantee the creation of a formidable papal enclave on the very borders of Tuscany.
Under the circumstances it was natural for Lorenzo to turn to his allies in the triple alliance, all of whom had obligations to Vitelli because he had a contract to serve as a mercenary captain on their behalf. Unfortunately the alliance, already strained by the rivalry between Sforza and King Ferrante of Naples, splintered further under the pressure of events. While Lorenzo and the government of Florence advocated a bold response, Sforza not wishing to offend the pope, equivocated as he was prone to do when faced with a difficult choice. The duke’s vacillation was all the more disappointing since Florence could expect no help from Naples. Since the beginning of his reign Sixtus had been courting the king of Naples in hopes of detaching him from the tripartite alliance, a task rendered simpler by his rivalry with Duke Sforza. Now the pope’s policy of reconciliation with his southern neighbor paid its first dividends. Not only did Ferrante refuse to act in concert with Florence and Milan, but he committed his forces alongside those of Sixtus in the siege. Diplomatically and militarily isolated, Lorenzo and the Republic of Florence could do little more than nip at the heels of the mighty host that had descended upon the small town.*
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