Advantage was taken of the presence at Pisa of Riario’s nephew,
Raffaello, who had just been created a Cardinal. He was summoned to
Florence, and Lorenzo, as was his wont, invited him to an entertainment
at the Medici villa at Fiesole. The conspirators then determined to
murder the two brothers, but Giuliano, being ill, did not go, so the
attempt was postponed. Cardinal Raffaello expressing a desire to
hear mass in the cathedral of Florence, Lorenzo invited him to go on
Sunday, 26th April, and to dine at his palace in Via Larga afterwards.
The conspirators then settled, that at the elevation of the Host,
when it is customary for all to kneel, the deed should be done. Their
design was nearly frustrated by the refusal of Captain Montesecco to
commit a murder “where Christ would surely see him.” His place was
hastily filled by Stefano da Bagnoni, parish priest of Montemurlo, and
secretary to Jacopo de’ Pazzi, and by Antonio Maffei of Volterra, an
Apostolic notary, who were to kill Lorenzo; while Francesco de’ Pazzi
and one of his braves, Bernardo Bandini, were to fall on Giuliano.
Montesecco’s scruples proved fatal to the success of the plot, as the
two ecclesiastics blundered and only wounded Lorenzo slightly in the
neck. Francesco de’ Pazzi did his work with such fury that he inflicted
nineteen stabs on Giuliano, and wounded himself on the thigh. While
this was going on in the cathedral, the Archbishop Salviati went to
the Palazzo della Signoria, which he intended to seize, while Jacopo
de’ Pazzi was to incite the people to revolt. Cesare Petrucci, the
Gonfalonier, a shrewd man devoted to the Medici, was struck by the
Archbishop’s embarrassed manner and confused speech; so he suddenly
left the room, locked the door behind him and went to look out on
the Piazza. There he saw Jacopo de’ Pazzi and his followers shouting
“Liberty! liberty!” and at once ordered the gates of the palace to
be closed. Citizens came running with the news of the assassination
of Giuliano, and without a moment’s hesitation Petrucci seized the
Archbishop and hung him from the column of a window overlooking the
Piazza. Some of his followers, including Jacopo Poggio, son of the
historian, were hung beside their leader, the rest were cut down on the
staircase or in the courtyard. Francesco de’ Pazzi was seized in bed
at his own house, and naked and bleeding from the wound in his thigh
was hung by the side of the Archbishop, in whose shoulder he is said to
have fixed his teeth in his death agony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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