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Terms apply. Citizens of San Gimignano, heed well my words.
You must repent. Repent and seek forgiveness, for your wicked ways have incurred the wrath of a demon. Summoned by your sins, he now walks our world, cloaked in shadow and darkness.
And everywhere he treads, death follows.
Why, you ask? Because you have strayed and sacrificed your liberty to that wretch Lorenzo de Medici.
You are puppets, enslaved by purse strings, won over by poisonous words.
You have lost your virtue, you have lost your dignity, you have lost your faith.
And this draws the demons in to feed.
And feed they will." So that was a priest called Antonio Maffei addressing the people of San Gimignano in Tuscany, and it is a speech that follows one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Renaissance, perhaps indeed in all Italian history, and that is the Pazzi conspiracy, which was a plot to murder Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is head of the Medici family, during high mass in the cathedral, the Duomo, in Florence, on the 26th of April 1478.
And people alert to the nuances and rhetorical rhythms of Florentine rhetoric in the 15th century may be wondering whether that speech was actually made by Antonio Maffei or whether it was made up very possibly for a computer game.
So Dominic, what's the answer?
Because that doesn't sound genuine to me.
It's not genuine, Tom.
It's a scene from the video game Assassin's Creed 2, which I heartily to the listeners, a brilliant game set in Medici, Florence.
In reality, Maffei, who definitely existed and plays a big part in this story, he was in no condition to give such a speech since he had just gone under the knife in a peculiarly excruciating way.
Oh, so this is delivered after he's gone under the knife.
No, I think they cut in the game him going under the knife.
Oh, okay, because in which case, I should've done it in a slightly higher pitched voice.
You should indeed, but we'll give that moment to you, Tom, don't worry.
Okay. Something for listeners to look forward to.
Exactly. The fact that this moment plays a part in a best -selling video game tells you, I guess, something about the enduring reputation of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
You know, by any historical standards, he is a figure of extraordinary glamour and romance.
He is the embodiment of Renaissance Florence at its peak.
Now, last time, in the last episode, we looked at the foundations of Medici power in Florence, in particular, Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo.
And today we're going to look Lorenzo himself, behind the myths of his magnificence.
And we will concentrate particularly on the story of the Pazzi conspiracy, this amazing kind of godfather 2 -style conspiracy that almost destroys him.
So, shall we start with Lorenzo himself?
Why not? Yeah, I know you'd love that.
So he was born on the first of January 1449 in Florence.
His father was Piero de' Medici, who was the son of Cosimo, who we talked about last time, and Piero is being groomed to succeed his own father as head of the Medici political network.
Lorenzo's mother, now we haven't actually had any women in the story really at all.
So it's nice to have one.
His mother is called Lucrizia Tornabuoni, and she came from a rich patrician family.
And she was a remarkable person actually.
She's very religious.
She's very keen on the arts.
She is a poet in her own right.
She writes hymns, she writes first translations of the Bible.
She sounds brilliant.
Yeah, she is brilliant.
Everybody said Lucrezia Tornaburni is a very, very accomplished and impressive woman.
There was the other one who was jolly and fat in the previous episode.
Contesina, who's his grandmother.
Fat and capable and cheerful, I think was the description.
So what about Lucrezia?
Is she… She's not fat, she's capable… Is she jolly?
I think if you're writing first translations of the Bible, by definition you're not jolly.
Surely. So, Lorenzo has three sisters and he has a younger brother called Giuliano. And Giuliano will return in this story in a thrillingly bloodstained way.
So Lorenzo is said to be a very ungainly boy, but he's good at sports, Tom, which will please you.
And he's very clever.
And he has a classic kind of mid -15th century humanist education from his private tutors.
Classical, you might say.
Classical education, loads of Latin, loads of Aristotle, loads of Plato now, because people are getting really excited about Plato, and by the time he's 15, his family are already training him for a life in politics, he's being sent on diplomatic missions to Pisa, to Milan, of course Florence's big ally, to Bologna, to Naples and so on.
When he's 17 in 1466 he goes to meet the Pope Paul II, to Rome to discuss something that is going to again play a part in this story, something that matters a lot to the Medici Empire, which is they have a concession for alum mines in a place called Tolfa.
Alum is a kind of mineral.
Mineral salts you use for dying.
And you make a lot of money from it, and this mine is really important for the Medici.
And as you will see, its importance has consequences.
And why is the Pope into this?
The alum mines at Tolfa are in the Papal States, so they're under the Pope's jurisdiction, and he's granted the Medici a concession.
Right. Now, by this time, his life has already changed because his grandfather, Cosimo, the godfather of the family business has died of his gout.
So that's where we ended last time.
Now Cosimo as people will remember is not a Duke, he's not a Prince or a King.
He is the de facto ruler of Florence because he's the head of the bank and he's the head of the political network.
So when he dies Cosimo it's not actually guaranteed that Medici influence will continue.
Because I guess, I mean we compared him to Augustus in the previous episode.
Yes, and Augustus has this kind of officially voted raft of powers doesn't he, but Cosima doesn't have that no It's much more shadowy for him.
Yes, and so it's a question of can he maintain The bonds the dues the networks exactly the person who succeeds is Lorenzo's father Piero is accepted pretty smoothly as the new head of the family, but is he really up to it?
You know Piero is 48 years old at this point, and he's a bit of a wreck to be honest He has massive eczema, he has arthritis, and he of course, he has this gout.
So actually people call him Il Gottoso, the Gouty.
He's known as Piero the Gouty.
He looks very unappealing.
He has massively swollen glands.
His eyelids droop, so he appears to be constantly asleep.
But actually, he's a smart guy.
You see I'd always kind of imagined him as Jeremy Strong.
No! And I realize that that's because he's playing a role slightly analogous to Jeremy Strong's character in Succession.
No, he's much more impressive than Kendall Roy.
He looks very sleepy, but he's always thinking.
And he's a famously methodical banker.
So actually, I think he's a reasonably impressive person.
So he's underplayed in the historical record. I think he's underplayed.
Exactly. Because he's head of the family for only four and a half years.
So he's easily forgotten.
And it's not smooth sailing, actually.
So when he takes over, he asks for a report.
He says, right. I want to have a report on the family finances on the state of the medicei bank.
And he is shocked to find out that they have overextended themselves a bit.
There's a lot of turbulence in Northern Europe, and they basically loan too much money.
And he says, right.
We should cut back on credits, some of these big spenders, actually people like Edward IV, king of England, god, he's a massive spender, isn't he?
Massive spender, very extravagant or the dukes of Burgundy.
And he says, we've also loaned too much money to the Florentine elite.
Let's call in some of these loans, but actually calling in the loans means that some of the Florentine elite go bankrupt, and this triggers a bit of a crash in Florence itself.
So there's an economic crash.
There's then a split in the Medici party.
Some of the old guards say, oh Piero, what's he cancelling all the loans for?
This is terrible. And this comes to a head in the summer of 1466.
Actually, you mentioned succession.
It's a very succession scene.
So the sort of hangers -on of Roy family in succession.
They're all called Carl or whatever.
Those, these kind of old guys.
These people in the Medici story say Piero is not up to it and they call for an end to Medici domination and they say, let's go back to the old free Republican system.
And Piero shows that despite his gout, he does have the backbone.
He does have his father's ruthlessness because he immediately spends a load of money bringing in troops from Milan.
He raises a private army of mercenaries.
He brings them into the centre of the city the day before the Signoria elections.
And the opposition kind of panic and crumble, the elections go his way, they're banished from Rome and Piero is able to cement his power.
I mean, you've got to say that being a senior banker in the 15th century Florence sounds a lot more dramatic and fun than maybe being one today.
Yeah. It's not just sort of VIP tickets to Wimbledon.
No, it's eliminating your enemies by bringing in paid mercenaries.
Who doesn't want to do that?
Everyone loves that.
But actually, this is the side of the Medici story, you see, that we often miss.
Because people think it's all kind of fantasy palaces and Renaissance paintings, like a thousand and one different versions of the Annunciation.
But actually what you miss is the armed intimidation, the election rigging, the sort of political gangster -ers, the sort of mafia politics, I think, to some degree.
And that's the aspect you admire?
That's the aspect I like.
I can take or leave some of these paintings of, you know, the Annunciation, and they're all the same ultimately.
What have you got against the Annunciation?
I just think there's so many of them.
Oh, you can never have too many.
Or indeed the Adoration of the Magi.
They were very keen on that as well.
Yeah, exactly. So I was in Florence a few months ago and Tabie, our assistant producer, said, how's it going?
And I just said, listen up.
Let's see another painted Annunciation.
I'm going to go mad.
But what if it's an Adoration of the Magi with a giraffe?
Well, we'll come onto the giraffe later on.
But the art is part of the story because like Cosimo, Piero was very keen on artistic patronage, he spent a lot of money on coins and stuff for churches.
Brilliant. I love him.
On manuscripts, he was a big fan of Donatello.
We talked about Donatello last time, the sculptor, when he died, Piero paid for him to be buried next to Cosimo, next to his father.
Wasn't Donatello a teenage mutant ninja turtle?
He absolutely was. That would mean nothing to most of our listeners who are all under the age of 15.
No, but it means something to me, Tom.
And it's Piero who actually promotes a young painter called Sandro Botticelli.
So, he was a tanner's son and he gets Botticelli to actually come and live in the Palazzo Medici and treats him as one of the family.
And if you go to the Uffizi Gallery, they mention the adoration of them H .I., Botticelli's painting of that, in the painting are Cosimo and Piero and one of the young men on the right is the young Lorenzo the magnificent.
And you know what this reminds me of?
What our appearance as donkeys.
Oh yeah. Malcolm prices, novel, the Welsh noir novels of Malcolm price.
So anyway, Lorenzo, so Piero, the Gauti is the boss, his new Godfather and he's pushing Lorenzo forward. And one of the elements of pushing him forward is they have to get him a wife.
so he's 18 and Piero and Lucrecia are looking for a wife for him the fact that they're looking for a wife when he's only 18 which is young by Florentine standards it's a sign that they are beginning to rank themselves alongside the kind of the princes and the aristocratic families of Europe because princes get married young but to remind a point made in the previous episode in Florence if you Is this starting to change by this point?
I mean are the Medici have reaching a point where they don't have to worry about this or what's going on?
They can't become aristocrats.
They want to live like aristocrats and they want aristocrats abroad to treat them like aristocrats.
So it's very telling.
Lorenzo's bride will be a foreign noble woman.
A young woman called Calice Orsini.
She's 16 years old, she's an heiress from Rome.
Her family have big estates near Naples.
Lucrecia goes off to Rome to meet her and inspect her at mass at St Peter's and she reports back.
She says to Clarice, she's alright.
She's got a round face and red hair.
And I quote, she's tall and not unattractive.
Her face is not pretty, but it is not common and her figure is good.
Altogether, I think the girl is a good deal above the average.
So it's kind of 15th century hinge.
Yeah. Now what about Lorenzo?
Is Lorenzo a catch?
Well, people say Lorenzo looks a little bit unconventional.
He has long dark shoulder -length hair.
Does he? He has a long broken looking nose, he has a kinda jutting jaw and a kinda glowering angry brow and his voice we're told is nasal and high -pitched.
And when I read those words Tom, you know who I thought of?
I know exactly who you thought of and he's listening in as we record this right now.
I thought of Theo Young -Smith, the producer of The Rest Is History, because of course we're also told that Lorenzo was very charming, and energetic and clever.
And the parallels are uncanny!
It is, Theo! They really are.
Although, Lorenzo has slightly grander taste in clothes than Theo, doesn't he?
You don't rate Theo's jewelry and stuff?
No. Oh, tars! Theo looks like he's just coming off the street, whereas you'd never say that of Lorenzo.
I can't believe you've gone there, Tom, but you have. Theo, please remember who it was who said it was charming, clever, and who said you look like somebody off the street.
So anyway, Lorenzo marries this cariche.
It's not a great love affair, although they do have 10 children.
But he's not faithful.
He has mistresses, whatever.
Well, he's magnificent, doesn't he?
Yeah. Do what he likes.
That's the kind of thing - If you call them magnificent, that's gonna happen.
What does he like doing?
How does he spend his time?
He loves a bit of sport.
He plays a kind of football.
So again, like Theo, who's very good at football.
Yeah, but he plays a Calcio Fiorentino, which is 27 players on each team.
I think it's too many.
He plays a kind of fives called Paoloni.
Now, he loves a prank and a joke.
Not quite the standard we're used to on the show, though.
Peter the Great or, sort of, Augustus the Strong or Charles the Twelve standard. Yeah.
But you see, the thing is, I think that their Japes are quite menacing.
You wouldn't want to be caught up in, you know, something involving bellows or bears or anything like that.
No, that's not in the race in this fight.
But tell me what you think of this tasteful prank.
So they were all out drinking with some friends like Theo with Paul rouse in Dublin.
One of their friends who was a doctor got absolutely wasted.
And basically they were, he passed out, they bundled him off to the country.
They locked him in a farmhouse and they went back to Florence and spread a rumor that he was dead.
And when he escaped and went home, his wife shrieked, thought he was a ghost wouldn't let him in.
What do you think of that?
I see. I think that's great.
That's great banter.
Well, I think it's very, very Renaissance, Florence appropriate because it's like a short story from Boccaccio or something.
Yeah, it is. Exactly.
It is. Whereas if. They had kind of mated him with a bear or something like that.
That would be inappropriate.
I don't think we've ever had a moment of, of human bear relations in that way on the show.
Have we? I mean, that's obviously where it's heading.
Yeah. So I like that.
I like that. Anyway, Lorenzo also liked there, he loves music.
He loves songs and poems. I think this is unlike theory.
dabble's in architectural drawing, which I'm not aware of as a youngsmith hobby.
On the downside, actually very likely, he's really competitive.
Whenever he loses to something, he has a massive tantrum, so I think that's a black mark.
But he loves a party.
So the most famous is, they had this massive tournament in the Piazza Sante Croce in 1469 to celebrate his betrothal to Clerici.
It was the most glamorous tournament anyone could remember.
It cost 10 ,000 They all have these fancy helmets.
He was wearing a white scarlet and silk cape, a velvet surcoat, a silk scarf embroided with roses, and a black velvet cap, and he wore a helmet with three tall blue feathers.
I mean that is not Theo.
He looked very camp, I would think.
Theo does not dress in a camp manner?
No. But he was declared the winner.
He was actually not very good at fighting, but he was declared the winner anyway because he bought the title.
And then they have the wedding which is a gigantic blowout remember we did the episode with John Dicky about Italian food yes mad Italian food there all kind of weird combinations right so it's been like calfs -liver stuffed with marzipan a jelly made of a goose all this kind of like weird sugared lamb or something like that they have all this that's what they're having at this yeah 300 barrels of wine however there is a bad omen it rains so heavily on the wedding morning that everybody gets completely soaked and all their lovely dresses are ruined.
What about Lorenzo's feathers?
Droopy? Probably drooping, disconsolate.
Could this be an omen of disaster?
Maybe. Because Piero the gout, his health, a few weeks afterwards takes a turn for the worse.
And on the second of December, 1469, Piero dies at his country villa in the hills above Florence.
So he's done a solid job Piero.
He's only been there four and a half years, but he's weathered, the kind of, a bit of protest is strengthened the family's links with Milan and with Naples.
But the question is what will happen to the Medici bank and the Medici network now?
Cause I would say he's done more than a solid job cause what effectively he's done is to establish the idea of heredity in the context of, you know, a Republic.
That's pretty impressive I think.
I agree with you. And the proof of that is what happens next.
So the night before Piero's funeral, the Medici Loyalists hold a meeting at the convent of San Antonio, and it's a very godfather scene because they all gather, and the chief voice is this elderly Medici crony called Tommaso Soderini.
I say, brother, Tommy!
Tommy! Tommy Soderini is going to give his verdict.
He's an old associate of Cosimo's.
And he says, give the boy his chance.
That's so good. And everybody kind of agrees.
And they say to Lorenzo, will you take on the care of the state?
And he says, oh, I'm very reluctant.
I would hate to do it.
But obviously, he's gagged me to do it.
He says he'll do it.
And he wrote later on, he said, I did it solely to protect my friends and possessions but it fares ill in Florence for anyone who is rich and does not control the state.
I mean, that's such a telling phrase, isn't it?
Yeah. So there might be an element of truth in that.
You're a target. And if you're not in charge, they will come for you.
You'll be brought down.
You'll be brought down.
Now, he's already written to the Duke of Milan to secure his support.
that gives him the muscle that he needs.
And so, at the age of not yet 21, Lorenzo de' Medici assumes control of the bank, of the family, and of the fortunes of Florence.
But Tom, in the shadows, the knives are glinting.
Oh my goodness, Dominic.
And if the knives are glinting, then that suggests that after the break, conspirators will be striking.
but which conspirators and who will they be striking at?
We will find out after the break.
And this week, we are stepping into the devastation of the 9 -11 terror attacks to understand how Osama bin Laden was able to carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA. It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states toward hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them.
We will then go into the decade -long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, which culminated in a dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011, which killed the world's most wanted terrorist. So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.
Hello, welcome back to the Restless History and Dominic, it is December 1469 and Lorenzo de Medici, only 20 years old, has become head of the Medici family and therefore the master of Florence.
But I suppose the huge question is, is he up to it?
Well, Cosimo and Piero are much older and more experienced when they took power.
They were famously cautious in calculating.
Everybody says about Lorenzo, he's inexperienced but he's also impulsive.
He has absolutely no interest in banking and this is a problem and it will become a bigger problem for his successors.
that basically they've inherited a family business in which they are no longer terribly interested.
He's good at writing poetry, he's good at playing football, he's good at playing music and playing pranks, but he's never actually run anything.
And in the long run, as we will see, this is a problem for him and for the Medici family.
And this is, again, it's a kind of classic business story, isn't it?
Of course it is. Yeah, absolutely, it is.
The grandfather, the father, very calculating.
And then the son, who kind of blows it all, you know, has an expensive education and can't be bothered with what's actually made the money.
And actually the tone is set right away.
So right away, there's a sort of, a lot of feasting and dancing.
I think there's a slightly camp -side to Lorenzo, as we discussed before.
You've written Lorenzo's slightly camp, hey, no -ne -no -ne way.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of capering.
Do you know what I think?
Yeah. To elute. Yeah.
There's a lot of loop work and a lot of capering and laughing.
A lot of tights. Yeah, laughing excessively at slightly amusing jokes.
I think there's a lot of that.
And there's all these horse races and mock battles.
Lorenzo particularly enjoys a jape with an animal, which is a real theme of history, as we've discovered on this podcast. So he turns the Piazza della Signoria into this sort of circus.
So they'll have people attacking boars with lances.
They'll try to stage fights between lions and dogs.
And the weirdest one, I think, is basically they filled the square with stallions, and then they would set loose a mayor in the square, and the stallions all went absolutely berserk.
And a diarist writing at the time said, and I quote, "'It was the most marvelous entertainment for girls to behold.'" So I don't know whether Tabi would agree with that.
I mean, again, there's an obvious kind of slight Roman echo there.
Oh definitely. The pillar work in Florence that is going into the Medici palace and so on is drawn from the Colosseum, And the Coliseum obviously serves no purpose because they're not staging beast fights.
But it's obviously on the Medici radar.
So perhaps there's something like that going on.
I think so. And again, just to flag up what I think is the single most exciting event in the whole story of the Medici, is the arrival of a Giraffe.
But I think that's in the next episode, isn't it?
I think that's in the next episode.
But that's coming. So that's also part of this Roman -style obsession with animals and things.
If you're a member of the Reste's History Club and you're into giraffes you can skip rest of this episode about the conspiracy go straight to the giraffe but most people obviously should listen to this episode first so why is lorenzo so extravagant i think because unlike his father and his grandfather he is desperate to be considered a prince now his nickname ill magnifico the magnificent we think that's because he was so great he was so glorious no that is wrong it is a standard honorific that was given to rich merchants and to the heads of families.
Right. So he's not a Prince, Jay pay?
No. So every time he is caught it'll magnifico.
That is a reminder of his sort of subordinate status.
He's silver class, not gold class.
Exactly, exactly. And here's the thing, this is the big difference in him in his father and grandpa.
They lent money. He borrows it.
He trades on the bank's reputation to start borrowing money, to fund his lifestyle.
So he borrowed 61 ,000 Florence from his cousin.
He borrowed 10 ,000 florins from the Duke of Milan.
And remember, the whole thing with the alliance with Milan was that the Medici Bank was bankrolling Milan.
Now it's the other way round.
He's borrowing money.
Now he said later on, I don't regret it.
I think the money was well spent, and I'm well pleased.
But more caustic historians of the Medici family, like Mary Hollingsworth in her book, say, this is when the rot started.
I mean, she basically paints him.
It's a great book, actually, her book.
She paints him as this arrogant, spoiled, super -rich kid who blew his inheritance.
She says, quote, A depressing tale of greed and inexperience from which the Medici brand never really recovered.
Just to present the counter -argument, I mean, the fact that he is still thought of as the embodiment of Renaissance prints right up to the present day and the fact that, spoiler alert, the Medici in due course will establish themselves as the dukes of Florence, yeah, surely that suggests that to a degree he's right in saying that by presenting himself as a princely figure he's able to elevate his descendants to the actual rank of princes possibly although there are an awful lot of twists and turns before we get to that point I mean there are a couple of generations there are periods of exile and whatnot I
mean you could argue that in the long run would have been better for them to be remained in the shadows and piled up the money that's what I would have done Tom I don't need a fancy helmet you know with feathers on it, I'd rather have the money.
This is perhaps where you and I differ.
All I will say is that, um, we're going to be doing a series on American of Scots at a Medici will be featuring in that story as a queen of France.
So, so they did do well in the end, they do do, well, now some listeners may be a bit surprised to hear anybody criticizing Lorenzo, because basically as in the assassin's creed video game, he's usually treated as thoroughly admirable, but of course you're not fairly admirable if you're wielding power in Renaissance, Italy, you know, a saint doesn't wield such power.
And his Chief Ally, I mean it's a really good example of this, his Chief Ally is the Duke of Milan, Gagliazzo Maria Sforza.
He's a patron of the arts, he's a complete renaissance man but he's also a complete psycho.
Is this the son of the guy who was bending iron bars in the previous episode?
It is his son, Francesco's son and Gagliazzo Maria Sforza.
He's a pungent character I think it's fair to say Tom, do you want to know what he got up to?
Yeah I'd love to. I quote, He raped the wives and daughters of numerous Milanese nobles.
He took sadistic pleasure in devising tortures for men who offended him.
He supervised these tortures himself and pulled their limbs apart with his own bare hands.
And he delighted in the moans of dying men and the sight of corpses.
So this is very much the English Renaissance sense of what Italian princes are getting up to, isn't it?
Exactly, yeah. The black legend of the Italian Renaissance if such a thing existed.
And actually you may say, well, obviously this is exaggerating propaganda.
But to be a Renaissance, magnets, you have to behave in pretty grim ways.
And Lorenzo himself is a good example.
Remember we talked about that alum mine.
Oh yes. So in 1472, Lorenzo becomes involved with another alum mine.
This is in Volterra, just south of Florence.
Now, this is a town that is under Florentine control where the locals have discovered a load of alum and they've developed a mine.
The problem for Lorenzo is that Volterra's alum is cheaper than the alum made by the Medici -controlled mine near Rome.
And so, basically, there's a big dispute about control of the Volterra consortium.
He uses Florentine troops to go in and teach Volterra a lesson and bring it into his orbit.
And the Volterrans are completely helpless and the result is an unbridled massacre.
Lorenzo's mercenaries run amok in Volterra, they rampage through the town for 12 hours, They loot all the shops, they kill hundreds of people, there is mass rape, it is a horrendous story.
Now afterwards Lorenzo says, oh, that's such a shame I'm so sad that that went a little bit too far.
I feel so guilty about it.
But actually I think even at the time people thought this is very disingenuous of him.
You know, he basically unleashed his mercenaries on this town for his own financial gain.
And also to enhance his reputation as a man, it's dangerous to cross, I assume.
Right. But the problem with doing that is that if there are other powerful people, they may say you've crossed a line and now we're going to move against you.
And there are other powerful people in Florence, because the Medici are not the only powerful banking family.
There is another family called the Pazzi.
Now, the Pazzi are an older and more prestigious family than the Medici.
So one of their ancestors, Tom, this will appeal to you, had gone on the first crusade and he brought back some stone flints from the altar of the Holy Sepulcher.
Oh, I'm definitely Team Patsy.
Right, well the Patsy trade on this, they bring them out, I think something like, every Easter and kind of parade around the city with them and people are weeping with joy and all this.
I don't want to sound dismissive, but you know, my views run relics.
The Patsy have got a big banking network of their own.
They've got officers in Florence and in Rome and in Avignon, Valencia and all these places.
And the head of the Pazzi family is not like Lorenzo at all.
He's called Jacopo de Pazzi.
He's in his mid -fifties.
He's simultaneously, I think an interesting combination, he's both a miser and a gambler.
He's very competitive, and you get this sense, I think, maybe this is my sort of romantic imagination, that he is watching Lorenzo with the cold eyes of a predator all the time.
I like the sound of him.
He's got relics. He's in his mid -fifties, intensely competitive.
Yeah, he's like you.
He's quite like me.
Cold eyes of a predator.
Cold eyes of a predator, exactly.
But let's see who this man reminds you of.
There's another ruthless character who's watching Lorenzo very closely.
And this is a man called Francesco del Rovere, or rather, Pope Sixtus IV.
So Pope Sixtus IV came from a fishing town in Liguria.
He's a bit of a self -made man.
He has climbed the ecclesiastical ladder to win the papacy.
He's very clever, but he's a complete bruiser.
So Christopher Hibbert, who's very good at these pen portraits, calls him a big, gruff, toothless man with a massive head, a small, squashed nose, and an intimidating expression.
Goodness, I can't think who that reminds me of.
I think he's a bit like the Emperor of Vespasian.
A bit, yeah. Now he's incredibly corrupt even by Papal standards.
So I can now bring out my inner Thomas Cromwell.
He's handing out offices to his family.
He makes six of his nephew's cardinals.
But if he genuinely thought that they were worthy of it, I don't see what the problem is.
I'm sure he did think that.
Yeah, I'm sure they're genuinely really kind of upstanding religious people.
Now at first he confirmed the Medici as the papal bankers, and he actually sent Lorenzo some presents.
He sent him busts of Augustus and Agrippa.
No better present than that.
You know, those choices are a sign of Lorenzo.
Lorenzo is following in Cosimo's footsteps at this point, right?
Yeah. Cosimo admired Augustus, but then they have a massive falling out in 1473.
Sixtus had a favourite nephew who he hadn't made to Gardnauld yet, called Girolamo Riario, who is described as, and I quote, a fat, uncouth, rowdy young man.
And everybody says, this bloke Riario is actually the Pope's son.
It's not really his nephew, it's his son.
Right. Riario wanted to buy the town of Imola.
He's a fan of Formula One.
Formula One, exactly.
Has a key strategic location on the road from Bologna and Sixtus to the Medici bank, could you lend us the money please, to buy this town of Imola.
Now Lorenzo was horrified at this.
He wanted Imola for Florence.
There was no way he was going to let it fall into somebody else's hands.
And he turns down the loan.
The pope is furious.
Who does the pope turn to for the money?
He turns to the patsy bank and Jacopo gave him the money.
A year later in the summer of 1474, Sixtus got his revenge on the Medici.
He stripped them of the Papal account and gave it to the Pazzi.
And then as the new Archbishop of Pisa, which was in Florentine control, he appointed Jacopo de Pazzi's cousin, Francesco Salviati.
Remember him, this boat, Salviati.
Lorenzo was obviously very offended by this.
He could see that this was a massive snub that the Pazzi were being advanced.
And Lorenzo, how old is he at this point?
He's born in 1449 so he's 27, Tom, because we're now approaching the end of 1476.
Now there's a sense in which things are turning against him, the Pope has turned against him.
And then on Boxing Day, he gets terrible news from Milan.
His friend, Galiazzo Maria Sforza, a psycho, he has been assassinated on his way to mass.
And his son is only seven and there's a massive succession crisis in Milan.
So Milan is now effectively out of the game, Lorenzo's biggest ally.
and a few weeks later three men meet in secret in Rome.
One of them is Girolamo Riario, so he's the fat, rowdy, papal nephew -stroke -son.
One of them is Francesco Salviati, the Pazzi cousin who has just been made the Archbishop of Pisa, and the other man is Francesco de 'Pazzi, and he is the manager of the Pazzi Bank in Rome.
And he is described as a, quote, a young man of great arrogance and pretension.
And these three men have met to discuss one thing and one thing only, and that is how to get rid of Lorenzo de' Medici.
God, it's so mafia, isn't it?
So they have this meeting.
Soon after that, Francesco de' Pazzi, the bank manager, who's basically brains behind all this, he asks for a meeting with one of Rome's most hard bitten mercenary commanders.
and this is a man called Monte Seco, who has done a lot of dirty work for the papacy over the years.
And Francesco de Patzi says to him, and Francesco de Patzi says to him, I would like to hire you for an operation against the Medici.
And Monte Seco says, And Monte Seco says, I'm not gonna do anything without the Pope's approval, And Monte Seco says, And Francesco says, Great, cause the Pope is already on board. Now, Monte Seco doesn't believe him, so they organize a meeting with Sixtus IV himself.
And the pope says, he's quite elliptical, he says, obviously the last thing I would like to see is any killing.
Heaven befriend. But might be really sad if you killed.
I'd be awful. If you killed Lorenzo de' Medici, I actually hate bloodshed, and if Lorenzo was dead, I'd be very, very upset.
However, I'd really like to see the back of Lorenzo.
I really strongly desire to see this change.
I want to see Lorenzo disappear from the picture in Florence.
And obviously, Montaseko gets the message.
You know, Lorenzo has got it going but Pope probably doesn't really mind that much. So there's only one link in the chain left and that is Jacopo de 'Patsy, the head of the family.
Because he's a chill calculating man, isn't he?
Exactly, now he's a banker and he knows the costs of failure.
When Monte Seco, the mercenary, goes to see him he says, I think this is a bad movie, he says, quote, they're going to break their necks.
I understand what is going on here better than they do, I don't want to hear any more about this.
And Monte Seca says, look, the Pope is on board with this.
We've got the money, we've got the muscle, we can do it.
And Jacopo says, you know, it's so godfather part II.
He says, fine. Do it, but you can't just kill Lorenzo.
You must kill his brother Giuliano. And you must do it at the same time.
You know, no slip ups.
We have to get this.
Because the lesson from the previous episode is that if you're striking at the Medici, you've got to get rid of all of them.
Exactly! So the months pass while they're negotiating all this and finally we get to early 1478.
They've toyed with various different schemes, but now they have what they think is the right opportunity.
Another relative of the Pope, who's a young Cardinal called Raffaele Riario, is going to visit Florence.
Completely unrelated.
And Lorenzo has organised a banquet for him and they're like, right, the banquet is the time to strike.
They make their plans and Montaseco basically stations his mercenary company in the villages outside Florence, ready to pour into the city at the crucial moment.
But then they hear bad news.
Giuliano, the brother, has an eye infection and he's probably not going to go to the banquet, so they can't do it there after all.
They meet, hurriedly, to discuss the position.
They say look, we've told so many people now, word is leaking out.
Monteserco has brought his men to Tuscany, like really now or never.
And then one of them says, look, there is actually one more possibility.
On Sunday, the 26th of April, the Medici brothers are bound to go to high mass in the cathedral with this young Cardinal Liario.
This is the chance.
This is the one place where the brothers are bound to be together.
Why don't we strike there?
The plan is to cut them down at mass in front of the altar in a church in front of all the assembled clergy.
How would the Pope react to this?
We'll find out. I think the Pope could live with it.
I mean God's watching wherever they do it, Tom, let's be honest, it doesn't make any difference to God where it happens.
I think it does make a difference to God where it happens.
I don't think God would at all approve of people being murdered in front of the altar of the church. But you think God will be all right with it with a public toilet or something?
Fine, yeah. Crack on.
It's an interesting theological question.
But I just generally think murdering people in cathedrals at high mass is probably not… You don't approve of it.
Not whether I approve of it, whether God approves of it.
I just don't think that God would approve of that.
Going out on a theological limb there.
Okay. Let's talk through the details of the plan.
So, Francesco de 'Pazzi, the young arrogant bank manager.
He will kill Giuliano. And he will be helped by an adventurer called Baroncelli who owes the patsy lots of money and wants to basically wipe away the debt So that's how they do with Giuliano now the Renzo the hard -bitten mercenary captain Monticello will kill him But actually Monticello is like you he's in a terrible funk about doing this in a cathedral He says I can't do it.
Actually he says explicitly.
I can't do it because god will see it So he agrees with me God wouldn't see it in a public toilet, but he would see it at the cathedral I don't think that's what he's saying.
Domino. But there are two other candidates on hand, which is good news, and these are, and I quote lean, embittered priests, the best kind of priests and the best kind of lean embittered people.
And these are called bagnoni and ife, so the person who began with the person from Assassin's Creed two bagnoni is a patsy tutor.
Maffei is the thing is from Volterra, the place with the alarm mine.
Yeah. Well, they've all been massacred.
He hates Lorenzo for what he did to his town.
And this is what they agree, the signal will be when the sacristy bell rings at the point in the service where the priest elevates the host before communion.
God, this is just getting more and more sacrilegious.
It's brilliant. So this is an unmissable signal.
And crucially at that moment when the bell rings, the whole congregation, including the Medici brothers, will have bowed their heads in reverence.
So they'll kill them then and then the bloke is the archbishop of Pisa, Salviati, he will seize the Palazzo della Signoria with the armed mercenaries.
He'll take the Florentine government prisoner, he'll crush resistance and the Pazzi will control the city.
It's a great plan. I mean, this is not good arch episcopal behavior.
It's not, but it is a fun plan.
I suppose it is. I suppose that's the genius of it.
It's the last thing they would expect from an archbishop.
Exactly. From an archbishop and two embittered priests.
Brilliant. Who'd have thought it?
So we get to the morning of Sunday the 26th of April 1478.
About 11 o 'clock Lorenzo sets off from the Medici palace with his guest Cardinal Riario.
It literally takes them, I've actually checked it on Google maps, it takes them three minutes to walk from the Palazzo to the Duomo.
And they are joined on the walk by Archbishop Salviati, the snake.
And when they to the cathedral the archbishop says oh I actually have to skip mass because my mother is feeling ill so I'll leave you here.
God so not only is he going to launch a massacre as the host is being razed but he's lying yeah that's poor isn't it so no limit to his iniquity.
So Lorenzo goes into the cathedral with the cardinal they go to the high altar and then Lorenzo leaves the car and goes off to chat to some friends with some sort of medice cronies now important for people to picture this you don't sit down there are no chairs in the cathedral and there are pews, people are standing, and they're standing in groups, chatting and mingling and moving about, which they would do during the service.
Giuliano, however, has not arrived.
Where is he? Francesco di Pazzi and the adventurer Baricelli, they go to the Palazzo Medici to fetch him.
It's quite like Julius Caesar not going to the Senate house on the day he's murdered.
Exactly. I mean, obviously, they are kind of classical cosplaying in the Renaissance, but the kind of the rhythms and rhymes, it's nice to see.
Giuliano is feeling ill and he was actually thinking about skipping mass, but they persuade him, again, very Julius Caesar, to change his mind.
They say, come on, there'll be great fun.
They walk with him to the cathedral, and on the way, I love this detail, Francesco de' Pazzi puts his arm around him and gives him a squeeze and says, ''ha -ha, you're getting fat.'' But actually, the reason Francesco does that is to check if he's wearing armor under his clothes and he's relieved to find that he isn't.
So they're now into the cathedral.
It's midday. The service is about to start.
Giuliano is on one side of the choir, the north side, with his assassins standing around it.
Lorenzo is on the other side of the altars in the ambulatory, whatever that is, I don't even know what it is, some cathedral thing.
So there's lots of his friends nearby, but the two killer priests.
The lean, murderous ones.
Are standing right behind him.
The service starts, you know, a lot of chanting, whatever.
we reach we reach the crucial moment right the priest at the altar lifts up the host and the congregation bow their heads and the bell rings and the priests draw their daggers and the guy from Valterra Maffe he puts his hand gently on Lorenzo shoulder sort of to steady himself for the thrust and there end zone turns at that point and he feels the dagger on his neck and just Just at the point when Maffei is digging it in, he pulls away.
So what happens is the dagger slices into his neck, but it doesn't kill him.
So there's a spurting of blood.
Blood, Lorenzo pulls off his cloak, he wraps it round his arm and he uses it as a shield to kind of ward off the blows, then he reaches for his sword, it's carrying a sword, he reaches for his sword, he unsheathes it, he slashes at the priests, and then he turns and he runs and he leaps over the rail of the altar and then he sprints for the bronze doors of the sacristy which might offer some refuge because there were a lot of bronze doors in the driveway.
Aren't the the Florentines love a bronze door.
While that's happening, what's happened to Giuliano when the bell rang?
Giuliano about his head as Lorenzo had and the guys on his side were much more efficient.
Baron Celli, the adventurer struck first, he shouted take that you traitor slashed at his head so fiercely, he almost spit it in two apparently.
And then Francesco de Pazzi was on him.
He stabbed him in the chest again and again.
Giuliano fell to the floor with blood everywhere, Francesco, like a madman, stabbing furiously, 19 wounds in all.
So a puddle of blood spreading over the Holy Altar.
Exactly. They're two killers look up, they can see Lorenzo running for the doors, they run after him, they want to cut him off before he gets to the doors.
But at that point, a very unappreciated man, a man called Francesco Nori, who's a partner in the Medici Bank, mate of Lorenzo's.
He rushes in to intervene.
A crucial moment actually in the whole story Medici dynasty.
Nori threw himself in their path.
Barancelli plunged his dagger in and stabbed him and killed him, but in doing so, they lost vital seconds.
Lorenzo and a couple of his friends were able to get through the sacristy doors, slam them shut and jam them behind them so now he's safe.
So now the cathedral, a scene of total chaos and uproar.
There are people running and screaming, there's this puddle of blood from Giuliano's body spreading everywhere.
It was said that the high altar Cardinal Riario who knew nothing about this was standing there like gaping in shock and was rushed to safety, but it was said afterwards that his face never lost the pallor that it had had at that moment at the altar.
I can well believe it.
Yeah he wasn't expecting it.
I think it's fair to say Tom.
The day had not unfolded as he imagined.
Now. Meanwhile, what's happened to Lorenzo Lorenzo's friends kind of bustle him out of the back door of the cathedral to the Medici palace.
The great crowd assembles outside the Medici palace and he comes out and he's kind of bleeding from his neck, but he's still very clearly alive.
And he says, you know, there's a coup.
We must fight back against the conspirators.
Now, meanwhile, what happened to the Archbishop Salviati, he had marched on the Palazzo della Signoria with his mercenaries, but he was taken aback.
He thought the councillors would be, you know, he'd be able to kind of steamroll with but no, they fought back.
The standard bearer of Florence, the Gonfalonieri, apparently grabbed a cooking spit and fought back against the archbishop personally.
The councillors start ringing the big bell, La Vaca calling for aid.
Loads of people pour into the square.
They completely outnumber the plotters and the mercenaries and they're chanting, splendidly, Vivano La Palle.
Long live the balls!
Hurrah for the balls!
So that's from the Medici symbol.
The coat of arms. Yeah, exactly.
So these people chanting about balls, they end up slaughtering all of the archbishop's mercenaries, they cut off the heads and then they rampage around the city with these heads on lances.
The archbishop, he was cornered, they tied a rope around his neck, and then they threw him out of an upper window of the Palazzo de la Signoria and they left him to dangle there.
I think that's fair enough.
And now Francesco de Pazzi, the bank manager, they found him, they stripped him naked.
They did the same thing to him.
Would you like a gory fact?
Go for it. These two blokes dangling from the ropes and kind of writhing in agony and the archbishop it was said while he was writhing at the end of his rope about to die, for some peculiar reason I don't understand!
He took a massive bite out of Francesco de Paz's chest and sank his teeth into his torso.
You know what it's like something out of Dante's Inferno. It is a bit, isn't it?
A hideous scene. Yeah well, it actually is a hideous scene because it turns into a massive riot and about Lorenzo managed to calm things down.
So what happened to the other plotters?
So we mentioned that bloke Maffei, who you began with, had an appointment with the knife.
He did indeed. He and the other priests, they were caught, they were castrated and then one of them was hanged and one of them was beheaded.
So that was the end of them.
Montesecho, the sort of hard -bitten mercenary captain, he was interrogated under torture.
That's how we know the details the story.
And then he had a slightly more benign end in that he was beheaded with the sword in the courtyard of the Bargello, which is now a very famous art sculpture museum.
But if he revealed all the details, I mean, he's not that hard bitten, is he.
Don't forget he had been worried that God would see him in the cathedral.
That's true, yeah. So he clearly had doubts the whole time.
And then the adventurer Barancelli who killed Giuliana, he escaped as far as Constantinople, but he was recognized somehow in Constantinople and the sultan agreed to extradite him to Florence and he ended up being beheaded in the bargello as well.
So that was what happened to him.
Now what about the godfather of the patsy Jacobo?
He fled to a village.
People recognized him.
He was dragged back to Florence.
This is a very gory end actually.
He was tortured. He was stripped naked.
He again was hanged from a window of the Palazzo della Signoria.
So that's the style of execution of choice.
Very much so. Very much the vibe.
His body was thrown into the river Arno, but some children then fished it out and children hung it from a willow tree and to amuse themselves, you used to go and beat it and flog it.
It's more innocent times.
How long was it hanging there?
I don't know, but it's better than being stuck inside in a PlayStation.
No. I mean, I think it's good to get outside and have some fun and the course of all his head came off people took it people took it to the palazzo pats and they used to amuse themselves by banging it on the door like using it as a door knocker oh god so he should have gone with his original instincts shouldn't he he should have gone with his instincts it's a sign never go against your instincts the patsy family were banished forever from florance their property confiscated the symbol which was the dolphin was erased from the city even if you'd married a patsy You were banned forever from holding
office." Actually Botticelli painted a lovely mural at the Bargello, where the executions had taken place, a lovely mural of the Pazzi with ropes around their necks dangling to their deaths.
So that's nice. Now, actually across Europe, the Pazzi conspiracy was a great story.
Everyone was very shocked by it.
The King of France, Louis XI.
He wrote to Lorenzo saying, gosh, what a terrible story.
Unbelievable to do it at mass.
I mean, he's not wrong.
I find that very shocking.
No, I think you should pay more he to the Pope.
The Pope said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, and the real miscreants here are the meditrix.
Do you know what he did?
When he heard about the failure of the plots, he promptly excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire Signoria of Florence.
He said, for killing the two priests and the Archbishop.
He thought that was absolutely disgraceful.
You hear Catholics complaining about, I don't her and say, Francis or whatever woke Popes, woke Popes.
And you have to say, I mean, Sixtus is a more robust Pope.
I think it looks pretty feeble compared to this, the fourth fourth is a very robust Pope.
Now Lorenzo said to the counselor France, look, you know, we're up against it with the Pope against us.
I could go into exile.
He knows that they'll say no, but he says, I could go into exile and everybody said, Oh no, don't do that.
We're all stand together.
We'll defend the house of Medici as we will defend our own republic.
But at the end of June 1478, Sixtus placed Florence under interdict, which I believe Tom means that no one can take the sacraments and they can't take communion in Florence.
Yeah and they're not allowed to be born or die or anything like that.
Right and he actually then issued like George W.
Bush and the Axis of Evil or something, he said I call on all the other Italian states, let's stage a liberal intervention against the excommunicated and heretical Lorenzo de Medici.
Now God wants us to basically punish him for his wickedness.
The Medici Bank was expelled from Rome and from Naples.
Its assets were seized.
And a few weeks later, heeding the Pope's call, the heir to the throne of Naples, who is Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, left Naples with the big army, heading for Florence.
So things are looking a bit desperate now for Lorenzo.
He really needs money to raise an army.
but actually he's blown all his money on fancy helmets and stuff with stallions and alterpieces and all of this.
Annunciations. Yeah exactly so he has to send messengers across Italy to beg for cash, especially to Milan, he sends his family to the Medici Castle at Caffagiolo which is in the mountains north of Florence for safety.
The months go by and Alfonso makes very slow progress basically grinding his way through central Italy, take town by town, castle by castle, heading for Florence.
The war drags on. It blows a hole in the Florentine economy.
People start running out of food.
There are bread riots.
Alfonso and the Neapolitan Army with the pope's backing is getting closer and closer.
In the late summer of 1479, a friend writes to Lorenzo and says, you know, Florence is exhausted.
People just want this to end.
There are bread riots now, something has to change.
And then Lorenzo comes to a really extraordinary decision.
Is it a bombshell? It is a bombshell.
We haven't had a bombshell in this episode but now we have. On the 5th of December 1479 he sends a message to the Signoria, he says, I made my mind up.
I'm going to make the ultimate sacrifice for peace.
He says, given the dangerous circumstances in which our city is placed, the time for deliberation is over.
It is time for action.
I have decided to sail for Naples immediately.
I am the chief target of our city's enemies, so I have decided to surrender myself into their hands, and perhaps that way we will have peace.
The war began with the blood of my brother and of myself, and perhaps it is the will of God that this is how we will end it." So Tom, an incredible gamble.
Lorenzo, the playboy, the patron of the arts, is going to risk his freedom, perhaps even his life, to save the people of Florence.
Goodness. Stunning stuff.
If you want to know what happens, you can find out right now by joining the Rest Is History Club at the rest of his history .com and not only will you find out what happens to Lorenzo, but you will get to hear about his giraffe.
Which is for me, the highlight of the whole series.
And of course you'll get episode four as well.
The last in the series, Savonarola, Bonfire of the Vanities, all of that.
But if you want to wait, that's fine.
It will be coming out next Monday and next Thursday, episodes three and four.
So thank you, Dominic.
Fantastic stuff. Thanks everyone for listening and bye -bye.
Grazie arrivederci.
I'm Gordon Carrere and I'm David McCloskey.
Together we're the co -hosts of another Go -Hanger show called The Rest is Classified.
Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.
When I look back on it now you still see there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications.
all these things, but they're never actually executed.
They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?
I'm a little bit of two minds on this, because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9 -11.
But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us in particular, after the East Africa bombings.
There is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of al Qaeda pretty significantly.
I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period.
There's a lot more technical collection.
Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people.
There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on al Qaeda that hadn't existed before.
I mean, interestingly, there's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks.
So there's a lot of strategic warning.
I think you could say about what al Qaeda is up to.
And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and just stop Al Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9 -11.
If you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.
