But to return from the melodramatic horrors of modern Italian politics. Confessions by subordinate agents traced the origin of this disgraceful plot of the Pazzi to the Roman court, and Sixtus, so far from repelling the charge, adopted the attitude of a partisan, by excommunicating Lorenzo and all Florence. The manifesto by which he sought to justify this measure affords no sufficient defence, nor any satisfactory contradiction of his privacy to the designs of the Pazzi; indeed, when hard names are substituted for facts, and mixed up with transparent evasions or detected falsehoods, the cause which they defend naturally becomes suspected. The official documents by which the Pontiff must be judged are accessible to English readers in the Appendix to Roscoe's _Life of Lorenzo_.[188] Giovanni Sanzi, whose ample details were unknown to that accomplished biographer, confirms generally his account of the conspiracy, but mentions a report that when imparted to his Holiness he refused his consent, and dissuaded its leaders from their design. This, if proved, would still leave him under scandal as an accessory after the fact. We learn from the same chronicle that Duke Federigo, when asked to share the plot, scouted it as utterly revolting to his honour, and calculated to overwhelm its authors with eternal infamy, adding that, during his own long struggle with Sigismondo Malatesta, similar expedients had been repeatedly suggested to him, but that by God's grace he had been enabled to resist them all: at the same time he expressed his readiness to take the field against the Medici, and try the fortune of war in open campaign. Lorenzo having subsequently sent to demand why he concealed the conspiracy thus brought to his knowledge, he denied the necessity of offending a good friend by imparting to an enemy an attempt which he disapproved and abhorred, adding, that he would soon be in Tuscany to settle all differences in honourable warfare. [Footnote 188: See also in FABRONIO, _Laurentii Medicis Vita_, ch. ii., p. 130, a letter from Sixtus to Duke Federigo, explanatory of his policy, but curious rather from the eccentricity of its illiterate style, in which barbarous Latin forms a strange medley with uncultivated Italian. Likewise, at p. 136, a protest of the Florentine clergy to the Pope.] [Illustration: _Alinari_ THE BIRTH OF VENUS _Supposed portrait of Simonetta Cattaneo--mistress of Giuliano de' Medici._ _Detail from the picture by Sandro Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence_] Sanzi has thus rendered Lorenzo's spirited address to his fellow citizens, when struck by excommunication and menaced with war:--