The Pazzi Conspiracy
On 26 April 1478 the attempted coup against Florentine tyrant Lorenzo de’ Medici ended in disaster.
It was the morning of 26 April 1478. Francesco de’ Pazzi and Bernardo Baroncelli, members of two of Florence’s oldest banking families, knocked at the Medici Palace. Lorenzo de’ Medici, whom many thought a tyrant, was already in the Duomo. But Giuliano, his younger brother and right-hand man, lay ill in bed.
It was time for High Mass. Giuliano dragged himself out. Walking to the cathedral Francesco gave his friend a playful squeeze. ‘Your illness seems to have made you fat’, he said. Francesco was indeed thinking about Giuliano’s wellbeing. He was checking if he wore armour under his clothes. He did not.
Guiliano waited in the crowds some yards from the high altar for the 11am bell that signalled the elevation of the host. That day it signalled something else, too. The moment it struck, Baroncelli pulled a blade and thrust it into Guiliano. ‘Here, traitor!’ he cried. So frenzied was Francesco’s assault that he cut himself in the thigh. Nineteen stab wounds were found in Guiliano’s body.
Beside the altar two priests drew knives as the bell rang out. One grabbed at Lorenzo, the principal target that morning, but he broke free. Friends swarmed around him. Together they ran for the new sacristy and bolted the door. One priest had cut Lorenzo in the neck. Fearing poison, a Medici ally sucked the blood from the wound and spat it to the floor.
This was more than attempted murder: it was a coup. Elsewhere in the city, unaware that Lorenzo’s assassination had been bungled, Francesco Salviati, archbishop of Pisa, led a group of soldiers to the Palazzo Vecchio to seize control of the city’s government. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, the elderly head of the family, rode through the streets with more armed men shouting ‘Popolo e Liberta!’ They were met with silence. And then a counter cry began to ring through the city: ‘Palle, Palle.’ It referred to the Medici family emblem. It meant ‘balls’.
Did the conspirators underestimate Lorenzo’s popularity? Perhaps. They certainly underestimated his reach. The last to be executed was Baroncelli, who made it as far as Constantinople. Mehmed II shipped him back to Florence in chains as a personal favour to the Medici.
