After a few minutes of confusion in which the battle hung in the balance, the palace staff managed to overwhelm the Perugians and secure the building. Still fearing an assault from outside, Petrucci, along with the other Priors and those men not assigned to guarding the prisoners, climbed to the fortified galleries on the top floor, where they barricaded themselves against attack. Petrucci ordered the tolling of the great bell in the tower, alerting the citizens that their government was in danger and that they should assemble in the square below.*
It was not long before those defending the palace heard the clamor of marching men. Friend or foe, they wondered? The answer came quickly as the cry “Popolo e Liberta!” rose from the surrounding streets. About sixty armed men poured into the piazza led by old Jacopo de’Pazzi on horseback, who raised the ancient cry of Florentine revolution. Approaching the palace—which they hoped by now was in the hands of Salviati and his Perugians—they found the doors barred against them. They tried to force their way inside, but Jacopo and his men were quickly scrambling for their lives as lances, stones, and other heavy objects rained down on their heads, a pretty good indication that Salviati and his companions had failed to take their objective. For some minutes the Pazzi patriarch kept up a brave show, wheeling about on his horse and calling on the people of Florence to rise up against their oppressors. At first, Jacopo’s exhortations were met with stony silence, but then the response came, faintly at first but growing louder with each passing minute: Palle! Palle! More joined the chorus as Medici partisans gained their courage and their voice. Soon the cry went from street corner to street corner, drowning out the feeble Popolo e Liberta!† Turning his horse back into the narrow streets Jacopo made his way toward home. Here he was met by his brother-in-law Giovanni Serristori, who confirmed his worst fears: all attempts to rouse the people of Florence had been in vain. Realizing all was lost, Jacopo—no doubt cursing his nephew who had gotten him into this fix—fled the city by the gate nearest the church of Santa Croce.
Thus the most concerted effort to topple Lorenzo and his regime was over almost as soon as it began. As Jacopo himself had prophesied, lack of popular support doomed the rebels’ cause. Such opposition as there was to Lorenzo and his government was scattered, disorganized, and demoralized. Nor had the conspirators done anything to rally support among old-line republicans. Men like Alamanno Rinuccini may have secretly prayed for a violent overthrow of the tyranny they believed Lorenzo had imposed on the city, but they would not lift a hand, or endanger their necks, to help. Rinuccini’s epitaph on the Pazzi family is revealing: “[A]nd so for the most part ended the great attempt to transform the state, begun by the family of the Pazzi; whom, to tell the truth, showed themselves to have a spirit both manly and generous, and not being able to tolerate the many injuries and indignities at the hands of Lorenzo de’ Medici; but although the undertaking to liberate their fatherland was just and honest, nonetheless it amounted to little, but for the ruination in the space of a few days of one of the most noble, richest, and most powerful families.” Had the men now facing the hangman’s noose learned of Rinuccini’s secret admiration they would have derived little comfort from it.*
No matter how compelling the message, the Pazzi were the wrong messengers. They represented no legitimate alternative to Medicean rule in Florence but, as their compatriots well knew, and as even Rinuccini implies, they were proud, disdainful men whose enmity toward the Medici stemmed from personal grievance rather than a love of freedom. Worse, the Pazzi always looked to their own interests first and to the pope’s second. Neither cause was one that any Florentine would lay down his life for. Had they managed to kill both brothers, and had Salviati seized the seat of government, it is likely that the coup would have succeeded, at least in the short run; a confused and traumatized people might well have acquiesced for a time in a fait accompli. But even had all gone as planned, Salviati and Francesco de’ Pazzi would not have been acclaimed as heroes. The vast majority of their compatriots would revile them as traitors who had handed the state over to foreign occupation. How long would Florentines tolerate papal garrisons on their territory, and how long could those lifted to power on their shoulders hope to maintain themselves against an angry populace? With Lorenzo still alive and with the resourceful Petrucci showing his mettle, almost all chance of a success was gone. The one glimmer of hope remaining to the conspirators was that the 1, 500 or so troops marching toward the city under the banners of Giovan Francesco da Tolentino and Federico da Montefeltro—these latter led in person by Lorenzo Giustini—would be able to storm the city gates before forces loyal to the Medici could organize.
From the Medici’s vantage point on the Via Larga, the first hours following the attack in the Duomo were filled with anxiety and confusion. Lorenzo himself had little time to dwell on his loss, busy as he was trying to stave off disaster: “Neither his wound nor his fear nor his great sorrow for his brother’s death prevented Lorenzo from overseeing his affairs,” wrote Poliziano. Amid the uproar of his household, Lorenzo dashed off a brief note to Bona, Duchess of Milan:*
My Most Illustrious Lords. My brother has just been killed and my government is in the gravest danger. Thus, My Lords, the time is now that you can come to the aid of your servant Lorenzo. Send as many men as you can with all speed, as you are, always, the shield of my state and the guarantee of her health.
Florence, XXVI of April
—your servant Lorenzo de’ Medici
Help from that quarter would take days to arrive. In the meantime, Lorenzo prepared for the worst. Poliziano recalled the chaotic scene at the Medici palace: “There, armed men were everywhere and every room resounded with the cries of supporters, the roof rang with the din of weapons and voices. You saw boys, old men, youths, clergy and laymen all arming themselves to defend the Medici house as they would the public welfare.”
The palace’s well-stocked armories were emptied and, as in 1466, the building quickly became a bristling fortress. Before long the streets of the Golden Lion were filled with men chanting Palle! Palle! and waiting for the counterattack that never materialized. Typical of those willing to lend a hand was Giusto Giusti:
I was in Santa Liperata just then, and when I saw Giuliano de’ Medici dead, I ran to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s house to help as much as I could, and I went up to the room for storing arms…here too came many of his partisans to take arms. I helped to arm quite a few of them, and I also armed myself with a cuirass, helmet, shield, and a sword, and I stood on guard at the second street exit, along with some of Lorenzo’s other supporters…. There I stayed on an empty stomach till 21 hours [5:00 P.M.]. Then I disarmed beside the room of the kitchen maid, leaving [the arms]…with her, and she gave me back my cloak, hood, and gown, and I went home to eat.
The most dramatic moment came when, pale and with bandaged throat, Lorenzo appeared at a second-floor window.* “I commend myself to you,” he told the expectant throng. “Control yourselves and let justice take its course. Do not harm the innocent. My wound is not serious.” But despite his statesmanlike pleas for calm, the crowd, emboldened by the knowledge that their leader was not seriously injured, filled the street with menacing cries.
The situation had already spun from Lorenzo’s control. Whether he wished it or not, the people of Florence, thoroughly aroused by the threat to their liberty and enraged by the murder of one of their favorites, would not be mollified by prospect of justice patiently and impartially applied.† They demanded blood and nothing Lorenzo could say would appease them. In fact the reprisals had already begun. The apothecary Luca Landucci describes one of the day’s more gruesome incidents: “amongst others a priest of the bishop’s was killed [in the piazza], his body being quartered and the head cut off, and then the head was stuck on the top of a lance, and carried about Florence the whole day, and one quarter of his body was carried on a spit all through the city, with the cry of: ‘Death to traitors!’” This act of savagery was not an isolated event; over the next few days
Florence indulged in butchery on a scale not seen in the city for over a century. Ghastly trophies in the form of assorted body parts began to appear outside the Medici palace as if it were the home not of the leader of the most civilized city in the world but the abode of a cannibal king.
Often it was difficult to distinguish between mob passion and official justice. As violent pro-Medici gangs raged through the streets seeking out those with ties to the Pazzi and Salviati families, Petrucci and his colleagues, the Priors and the officers of the Eight, meted out summary justice to their prisoners. In the square before the palazzo crowds gathered to watch as one by one the Perugians were hurled from the upper-story windows, their bodies piling up in broken heaps on the platform upon which the Signoria sat to receive foreign dignitaries. Before long armed men appeared at the Pazzi palace and dragged Francesco from his bed, naked and weak from loss of blood. Officers of the Eight could barely prevent the mob from tearing him apart on the short walk to the Palazzo della Signoria, where an improvised gibbet had been erected in an upper-story window. Given the certainty of his guilt there was not even the pretense of a trial. Francesco remained defiant as his hands were bound behind his back and a noose placed around his neck. To the cheers of the mob in the piazza below, he was shoved from the window, his naked body left to twitch and dangle in the air.*
It was not long before the archbishop, still in his clerical vestments, was dangling alongside his associate. Numerous bodies, including that of Jacopo Bracciolini and Jacopo Salviati (Francesco’s brother), now hung from windows in the facade like grim Christmas tree ornaments. Poliziano provides us with a vivid description of Salviati’s death that, more than five centuries later, brings home the violence and terror of that April day:
The Pisan leader was soon dangling from the same window as Francesco Pazzi, and his body hung above the other’s lifeless corpse. When he was lowered, by chance or in mad fury he sank his teeth into the corpse of Francesco Pazzi (a marvel seen, I think, by everyone there and soon reported throughout the city), and even after the rope had choked him he kept his teeth fixed in the other’s breast while his eyes stared madly.
That evening, Sacramoro sent a letter to his bosses in Milan in which he noted, “all the signs are in favor of Lorenzo.” But the violent reprisals continued even after it was clear that the Medici were no longer in imminent danger. Landucci recorded over three days—April 26 through April 28—more than seventy summary executions and lynchings by angry mobs. Among the victims were some completely innocent as well as many who were only distantly implicated.* The bloodshed, which continued sporadically for weeks, was prompted as much by fear as by rage. On the twenty-ninth, four days after the attacks in the cathedral, the people were, Landucci declares, “still bewildered with terror,” though it is not clear whether it was the initial attacks or the violent reprisals that were the more traumatic. Even after the slaughter had ended the usually busy streets were deserted as armed soldiers patrolled the city.
Lorenzo’s role in the reprisals is hard to discern. After the few words addressed to the crowd in the hours after the attack he made little attempt to intervene one way or another. Only in the case of his brother-in-law Guglielmo de’Pazzi—who some believed must have had at least some fore-knowledge of the plot—did he take a stand on behalf of one of the suspects. After his sister Bianca came to plead for Guglielmo’s life, Lorenzo persuaded the authorities to impose a lighter sentence of exile.† For the most part, however, Lorenzo stood on the sidelines while the executions were carried out in the name of the Signoria and the Eight, bodies that while stocked with Medici partisans were fully capable of acting on their own initiative.
Many, both at the time and later, accused Lorenzo of excessive vindictiveness, but the charge isn’t entirely fair. Lorenzo was certainly enraged by what he felt was an unprovoked attack and had no inclination to spare the guilty; Poliziano recalls that minutes after the attack Lorenzo “made angry threats and lamented that his life had been endangered by people who had hardly any reason to attack him.” Under the circumstances, anger and self-pity, two emotions with which Lorenzo was well acquainted, were perfectly natural. Even in less stressful situations his angry outbursts struck fear into those closest to him, but there is no indication that he was particularly bloodthirsty in this matter. The one area where we can detect Lorenzo’s hand in the reprisals was in the government’s pursuit of financial and political penalties against the Pazzi. This was the kind of vengeance that Lorenzo understood and pursued with relish. In the months following the attack, the Pazzi family’s assets and properties were liquidated and laws passed penalizing anyone who married into the disgraced clan. Even distant relatives were imprisoned at least briefly and questioned by authorities using the none-too-gentle techniques of the era. Such was Lorenzo’s rage at the Pazzi that he tried to have the despised name all but obliterated from the public consciousness. Lorenzo never agonized about the violence perpetrated in his name, but in the context of that less squeamish age, when brutal punishments were meted out for minor crimes and where torture was a routine means of interrogation, the mass executions and dismemberments did not seem excessive given the enormity of the crimes.
Less concerned with the tribulations of the guilty than with the survival of his family and his regime, Lorenzo’s spirits were buoyed by the demonstrations of loyalty.* Periodically, the crowds camped out below his window would demand he make an appearance, at which they would let out a raucous cheer of Palle! Palle! But despite these gratifying indications of public support, Lorenzo worried about the rumors of foreign armies on the march. The morning after the murder, Lorenzo held an audience in his palace with many of the leading citizens who wished to extend their condolences for Giuliano’s death and to pledge their loyalty to his regime. There he received word that two hundred knights in the pay of Girolamo Riario who had been riding toward Florence had been turned back by angry citizens at the nearby village of Firenzuola. Two days later a force of five hundred soldiers commanded by Lorenzo Giustini was routed by peasants from San Vitale, while an even larger force—three hundred cavalry and one thousand infantry—under the banner of Giovan Francesco da Tolentino retreated when confronted by pro-Medici forces arriving from Bologna.
In the end the military operation organized by Montesecco and Riario proved even more feeble than the efforts within Florence itself. To be fair, the troops, so carefully assembled and cunningly concealed, had never been adequate to take the city by force; they were intended only to prop up an already successful coup. The ease with which these professional armies were beaten back by peasants wielding scythes and pitchforks merely confirmed how little support the conspirators had. Within a day or two these citizen militias were stiffened by troops from Milan, whose response had been so prompt and vigorous that, according to their ambassadors in Rome, the pope and his supporters were thrown into utter confusion.
Even as the city was secured from invasion, authorities continued to tease out the threads of the vast conspiracy and track down the guilty parties. Jacopo was captured on the twenty-ninth by a patriotic farmer in the village of San Godenzo. Knowing the humiliating and painful death that awaited him in Florence, he begged the farmer and his brother to kill him on the spot. When they refused, Jacopo quoted Seneca to the puzzled pair, demonstrating that a Florentine gentleman could face death with the dignity of a Roman senator.* Taken by ox cart to Florence, he, like his nephew, was strung up before the facade of the palazzo. The two priests, Bagnone and Antonio, managed to elude authorities for a couple of days before being discovered hiding in the monastery of the Badìa. At first the monks refused to give up the fugitives but changed their minds when the crowd threatened to storm the building. Having seized them, the crowd showed no mercy, cutting off their noses and ears before dragging them to join their colleagues on the gallows.
Montesecco, who had also gone into hiding, was captured on May 4. Interrogated by the Eight he offered a full confession. Perhaps because he had cooper
ated with the authorities or because of his status as a soldier in the pope’s employ, his death was more dignified: he was beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello. Of all the principal conspirators—except for those like Girolamo, who never put himself at any risk—Bernardo Bandini managed to evade justice the longest. Eventually he made his way to Constantinople, far enough, he believed, that the long arm of Lorenzo could not reach him. He was mistaken. Writing personally to the sultan, Lorenzo managed to have Bandini shipped back in chains to Florence where, a year after the murders, he was hanged from the palazzo.*
The blood that flowed in the wake of the Pazzi conspiracy exposes the sinister undercurrent flowing beneath the civilized crust of this most cultured metropolis, but the worlds of violence and art were not as distinct as one might imagine. In a peculiarly Florentine synergy, Botticelli was commissioned to paint what were in effect glorified mug shots of the condemned men on the walls of the chief magistrate’s palace. Lorenzo himself appended suitable verse inscriptions, including one beneath Botticelli’s portrait of Bandini that read, “I am Bernardo Bandini, a new Judas / A Traitor and killer in a church was I. / A rebel awaiting a more cruel death.”† Lorenzo’s two favorite sculptors also commemorated the traumatic events: as an offering of thanksgiving for Lorenzo’s miraculous survival, Andrea del Verrocchio modeled a series of lifelike effigies in wax that were displayed in sacred locations throughout the city, and Bertoldo di Giovanni struck commemorative medals that included on one side portraits of the two brothers and, on the other, scenes of the attack in the cathedral.*
The fiercely competitive atmosphere of the Florentine Republic accounted for both its cruelty and its genius, a fact nowhere more in evidence than in the Pazzi conspiracy and its aftermath. The pride that led Andrea de’ Pazzi to build a family chapel to rival that of the Medici themselves was the same pride that led his descendants to commit acts of violence against the leaders of the state. His chapel was also the setting for the macabre scene that closes out this sanguinary chapter in the history of Renaissance Florence. After Jacopo’s execution, his body was laid to rest in the family crypt at Santa Croce. Soon, the usually fine May weather turned unseasonably cold and wet, destroying crops in the field and generally making life miserable. The superstitious Florentines claimed that the rain was divine retribution for the sin of burying a traitor in consecrated ground. Thus on May 15, Jacopo’s body was dug up and buried near the city wall like a common criminal. Two days later, Landucci recorded,
Magnifico Page 35