573. The Medici: Lorenzo the Magnificent (Part 2)

Speaker 1 If you want more from the show, join the Rest is History Club. And with Christmas coming, you can also gift a whole year of access to the history lover in your life.

Speaker 1 Just head to therestishistory.com and click gifts.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by the American Revolution on PBS. The American Revolution is usually staged like theater.

Speaker 1 Washington centre stage, red coats marching in step, liberty delivering its lines on queue. In reality, it was messy and uncertain, shaped by arguments over what kind of country America might become.

Speaker 1 Ken Burns' new series shows it in that light, not as polished legend, but as lived experience.

Speaker 1 Rank-and-file soldiers, women, enslaved people, and Native Americans may not have signed the Declaration, but their decisions carried weight in the struggle for independence.

Speaker 1 What makes this story gripping isn't only the speeches or the battles, it's how the questions that gave birth to the United States continue to shape American life two and a half centuries on.

Speaker 1 The revolution was never frozen in time. It was restless, conflicted, unfinished, which is precisely why it still matters.

Speaker 1 As the United States nears its 250th year, the revolution is not a relic under glass, but a mirror, still reflecting the soul of a country back at itself.

Speaker 1 The American Revolution premieres Sunday, November 16th on PBS and the PBS app.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Believe it or not, history isn't just in textbooks.
It comes to life every day on TikTok.

Speaker 1 Millions of people are exploring the history of music, fashion, food, and art and discovering new facts about the things they love.

Speaker 1 One scroll could take you from the roots of jazz to the flavors of ancient kitchens. And the next might reveal a quirky fact about how modern traditions came to be.

Speaker 1 Discover the past in new ways on TikTok where curiosity never gets old.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no.
At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no.

Speaker 1 No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS.

Speaker 1 Just premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network. Make the switch at mintmobile.com/slash history.
Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 per month.

Speaker 1 Limited time, new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.
Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

Speaker 1 Citizens of San Giuminiano, heed well my words. You must repent.
Repent and seek forgiveness. For your wicked ways have incurred the wrath of a demon.

Speaker 1 Summoned by your sins, he now walks our world, cloaked in shadow and darkness. And everywhere he treads,

Speaker 1 death follows.

Speaker 1 Why, you ask?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You have lost your virtue, you have lost your dignity, you have lost your faith, and this draws the demons in to feed.

Speaker 1 And feed they will.

Speaker 1 So that was a priest called Antonio Maffei addressing the people of San Gimignano in Tuscany.

Speaker 1 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 Patsy.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 recommend to the listeners.

Speaker 1 A brilliant game set in Medici, Florence.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay, because in which case I should have done it in a slightly higher pitched voice. You should indeed, but we'll give that moment its due, Tom.
Don't worry.

Speaker 1 Okay, something for listeners to look forward to. Exactly.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Now, last time, in the last episode, we looked at the foundations of Medici power in Florence, and in particular, Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo.

Speaker 1 And today, we're going to look at Lorenzo himself behind the myths of his magnificence.

Speaker 1 And we will concentrate particularly on the story of the Patsy conspiracy, this amazing kind of godfather two-style conspiracy that almost destroys him.

Speaker 1 So, shall we start with Lorenzo himself? Why not? Yeah. I know you'd love that.
So, he was born on the 1st of January 1449 in Florence.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 Lucrezia Tornabuoni. And she came from a rich patrician family.

Speaker 1 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 verse translations of the Bible.

Speaker 1 She sounds brilliant. Yeah, she is brilliant.
Everybody said Lucrezia Tornaboni is a very, very accomplished and impressive woman.

Speaker 1 There was the other one who was jolly and fat in the previous episode. Contessina.
Yes. Who's his grandmother? Fat and capable and cheerful, I think was the description.
So what about Lucrezia?

Speaker 1 Is she... She's not fat.
She's capable. Is she jolly?

Speaker 1 I think if you're writing verse translations of the Bible, by definition, you're not jolly, surely. Not necessarily.
So Lorenzo has three sisters and he has a younger brother called Giuliano.

Speaker 1 And Giuliano will return in this story in a thrillingly blood-stained 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.

Speaker 1 And he has the classic kind of mid-15th century humanist education from his private tutors. Classical, you might say.
Classical education, loads of Latin.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He's been sent on diplomatic missions to Pisa, to Milan, of course, Florence's big ally, to Bologna, to Naples, and so on.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Alum is a kind of mineral, a mineral salt that you use for dyeing. And you make a lot of money from it.
And this mine is really important for the Medici.

Speaker 1 And as we 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 kind of jurisdiction.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So that's where we ended last time.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 so when he dies cosimo it's not actually guaranteed that medici influence will continue because i guess

Speaker 1 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 yeah but cosimo doesn't have that no it's much more shadowy for him.

Speaker 1 Yes. And so it's a question of can he maintain the bombs, the dues, the networks.
Exactly. The person who succeeds is Lorenzo's father, Piero.

Speaker 1 He 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.

Speaker 1 He has arthritis, and he, of course, has this gout. So actually, people call him Il Gotoso, the gouty.
He's known as Piero the Gouty.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You see, I had always kind of imagined him as Jeremy Strong. No.

Speaker 1 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. Yes.

Speaker 1 He looks very sleepy, but he's always thinking. And he's a methodical, he's a famously methodical banker.
So actually, I think he's a reasonably impressive person.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 Medici Bank.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he says, right, we should cut back on credit to some of these big spenders, actually people like Edward IV, King of England. God, he's a massive spender, isn't he?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 There's then a split in the Medici party. Some of the old guards say, oh, Piero's, what's he cancelling all the loans for? This is terrible.
And this comes to a head in the summer of 1466.

Speaker 1 Actually, you mentioned succession. It's a very succession scene.
So the sort of hangers-on of the Roy family in succession, they're all called Carl or whatever, these kind of old guys.

Speaker 1 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, you know, 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 center of the city the day before the signoria elections and

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 No, it's eliminating your enemies by bringing in paid mercenaries. Who wasn't want to do that? Everyone loves that.
But actually, this is the side of the Medici story, you see, that we often miss.

Speaker 1 Because people think it's all kind of fancy palaces and Renaissance paintings, like a thousand or one different versions of the Annunciation.

Speaker 1 But actually, what you miss is the kind of armed intimidation, the election rigging, the sort of

Speaker 1 political gangsterism, a sort of mafia politics, I think, to some degree. And that's the aspect you admire.
That's the aspect I like.

Speaker 1 I can take or leave some of these paintings of, you know, the Annunciation and whatnot. They're all the same ultimately.
What have you got against the Annunciation?

Speaker 1 I just think there's so many of them. Oh, you can never have too many.
Or indeed, the Adoration of the Magi. They're very keen on that as well.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So I was in Florence a few months ago and Tabia, our assistant producer, said, how's it going? And I just said, listen, if I see another painting of the Annunciation, I'm going to go mad.

Speaker 1 But what if it's an adoration of the Magi with a giraffe? Well, we'll come on to the giraffe later on. But the art is part of the story, because like Cosimo, Piero was very keen on artistic patronage.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 When he died, Piero paid for him to be buried next to Cosimo, next to his father. Wasn't Donatello a teenage mutant mutant ninja turtle? He absolutely was.

Speaker 1 That'll 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And if you go to the Uffizi Gallery, you mentioned the adoration of the Magi.

Speaker 1 Botticelli's painting of that

Speaker 1 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 in

Speaker 1 Malcolm Price's novel the Welsh noir novels of Malcolm Price yeah so anyway Lorenzo

Speaker 1 so Piero the Gauti is the boss is the 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 18 and Piero and Lucrezia are looking for a wife for him.

Speaker 1 The fact that they're looking for a wife when he's only 18, which is young by Florentine standards, is 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.

Speaker 1 But to remind a point made in the previous episode, in Florence, If you're a member of the aristocracy, you can't run for office. Right, exactly.
So is this starting to change by this point?

Speaker 1 I mean, the Medici have reaching a point where they don't have to worry about this, or what's going on?

Speaker 1 They can't become aristocrats, but they want to live like aristocrats, and they want aristocrats abroad to treat them like aristocrats. Right.
So, it's very telling.

Speaker 1 Lorenzo's bride will be a foreign noblewoman, a young woman called Carice Orsini. She's 16 years old.
She's an heiress from Rome. Her family have big estates near Naples.

Speaker 1 Lucrezia goes off to Rome to meet her and inspect her at mass at sain peter's and she reports back she says to clarice she's all right 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 it is now what about lorenzo is lorenzo a catch well

Speaker 1 People say Lorenzo looks a little bit unconventional. He has long, dark, shoulder-length hair.
Does he? He has a long broken looking nose.

Speaker 1 He has a kind of jutting jaw and a kind of 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Although Lorenzo has slightly grander tastes in clothes than Theo, doesn't he? You don't rate Theo's jewelry and stuff. No.

Speaker 1 Oh, Tosh. 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.

Speaker 1 Theo, please remember who it was who said, who praised you as charming and clever and who said you look like somebody off the street. So anyway, Lorenzo marries this Clarice.

Speaker 1 I was about to say 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 the magnificent, isn't he? Yeah, do what he likes.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of thing. If you're called the munificent, that's going to happen.
What does he like doing? How does he spend his time? He loves a bit of sport. He plays a kind of football.

Speaker 1 So again, like Theo, who's very good at football. Yeah, but he plays a Calcio Fiorentino, which has 27 players on each team.
I think it's too many. He plays a kind of fives called Palloni.

Speaker 1 Now he loves a prank and a joke, not quite at the standard we're used to on the show, though, Peter the Great or sort of Augustus the Strong or Charles XII standard.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 No, that's not the race that's fire. 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.

Speaker 1 One of their friends, who was a doctor, got absolutely wasted. And basically, when he passed out, they bundled him off to the country.
They locked him in a farmhouse.

Speaker 1 Then 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, and wouldn't let him in.
What do you think of that?

Speaker 1 I see, I think that's great. Yeah, it's great banter.
Well, I think it's very,

Speaker 1 very Renaissance Florence appropriate because it's like a short story from Boccaccio or something. Yeah, it is.
Exactly. It is.

Speaker 1 Whereas if they had kind of mated him with a bear or something like that, that would be inappropriate.

Speaker 1 I don't think we've ever had a moment of human-bear relations in that way on the show, have we? Yeah, but you know, I mean, that's obviously where it's heading. Yeah.
So I like that. I like that.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Lorenzo also, like Theo, he loves music. He loves songs and poems.
I think this is unlike Theo. He dabbles in architectural drawing, which I'm not aware as a Young Smith hobby.

Speaker 1 On the downside, actually very like Theo, he's really competitive. Whenever he loses to something, he has a massive tantrum.
So I think that's a black mark. Yeah, that is like Theo, isn't it?

Speaker 1 But he loves a party. So the most famous is

Speaker 1 they had this massive massive tournament in the piazza santa croce in 1469 to celebrate his betrothal to clarice it was the most glamorous tournament anyone could remember it cost 10 000 ducats they all had these fancy helmets he was wearing a white scarlet and silk cape a velvet surcoat a silk scarf embroidered with roses and a black velvet cap and he wore a helmet with three tall blue feathers.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is not Theo. He looked very camp, I would think.
Theo does not dress in a camp manner. No, but but he was declared the winner.

Speaker 1 He was actually not very good at fighting, but he was declared the winner anyway, basically, because he bought the title. And then they have the wedding, which is a gigantic blowout.

Speaker 1 Remember, we did that episode with John Dickey about Italian food. Yes.
Mad Italian food. Yeah, all kind of weird combinations.
Right.

Speaker 1 So it's been like calf's 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and 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.

Speaker 1 What about Lorenzo's feathers? Droopy? Probably drooping, disconsolate. Could this be an omen of disaster? Maybe.
Because Piero the Gaut's health, a few weeks afterwards, takes a turn for the worse.

Speaker 1 And on the 2nd of December, 1469, Piero dies at his country villa in the hills above Florence. So he's done a solid job, Piero.

Speaker 1 He's only been there four and a half years, but he's weathered the kind of a bit of protest. He's strengthened the family's links with Milan and with Naples.

Speaker 1 But the question is, what will happen to the Medici bank and the Medici network now?

Speaker 1 Because I would say he's done more than a solid job, because what effectively he's done is to establish the idea of heredity in the context of

Speaker 1 a republic. That's pretty impressive, I think.
I agree with you. And the proof of that is what happens next.

Speaker 1 So the night before piero's funeral the medici loyalists hold a meeting at the convent of sant antonio and it's a very godfather scene because they all gather and the chief voice is this elderly medici crony called tommaso sodorini

Speaker 1 tommy tommy tommy sodorini is going to give his verdict he's an old associate of cosimo's and he says give the boy his chance

Speaker 1 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 gagging to do it.

Speaker 1 And he says he'll do it. And he wrote later on, he said, I did it solely to protect my friends and possessions, for it fares ill in Florence for anyone who is rich and does not control the state.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's such a telling phrase, isn't it? Yeah. 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 We will find out after the break.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by the Swedish clothing brand Asket.

Speaker 1 Now, Dominic, in our episode on tailoring and the history of the suit, one of the most salient things you get a real sense of while stood in a tailor's on Savile Row is that historically clothes were made with love and care so that they would last for a very long time indeed.

Speaker 1 And I think it's a shame in today's age of fast fashion that it is hard to come by clothes that stand the test of time.

Speaker 1 But Tom, honestly, you don't have to go to the lengths of getting a bespoke suit tailor-made to own clothes that are made with that same sense of love and pride.

Speaker 1 There are very few companies left that have that real focus on quality and longevity, but one of them is Asket.

Speaker 1 They work almost exclusively with organic and natural materials milled in Italy and Portugal and made in factories built on generations of craftsmanship.

Speaker 1 Every product is worn for months by the two founders, stress testing every stitch and seam before it's approved for production. And as a result, they have just one single permanent collection.

Speaker 1 It's around 50 garments offered in three lengths for every regular size that are meant to be around forever. And there are no discounts ever.
If you don't need anything, don't buy.

Speaker 1 If you're considering something though, visit rsket.com or go to their recently opened store on Brewer Street in London.

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by ATT.

Speaker 1 America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable.

Speaker 1 Based on Root Metrics United States Route Score Report 1H2025 tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types.

Speaker 1 Your experiences may vary. Root Metrics rankings are not an endorsement of ATT.
When you compare, there's no comparison. ATT.

Speaker 1 Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.

Speaker 2 And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist.

Speaker 1 Together, we're the co-hosts of another goal hanger show called The Rest is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies.

Speaker 2 We have just released a series on the decades-long battle between the CIA and Osama bin Laden.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.

Speaker 1 Hello and welcome back to The Rest is 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.

Speaker 1 But I suppose the huge question is, you know, is he up to it? Well, Cosimo and Piero were much older and more experienced when they took power. They were famously cautious and calculating.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But basically, they've inherited a family business in which they are no longer terribly interested.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And in the long run, as we will see, this is a problem for him and for the Medici family. And this is again, is a kind of classic business story, isn't it? Of course it is.
Yeah, absolutely it is.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And actually, the tone is set right away.

Speaker 1 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 nonny non-y way yeah i think there's a lot of capering do you not think yeah to a loot yeah there's a lot of loot work and a lot of capering and 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So they'll have people attacking boars with lances. They'll try to stage fights between lions and dogs.

Speaker 1 And the weirdest one, I think, is basically they filled the square with stallions and then they set loose a mare in the square. And the stallions all went absolutely berserk.

Speaker 1 And a diarist writing at the time said, and I quote, it was the most marvelous entertainment for girls to behold. Nice.
So I don't know whether Tabi would agree with that.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, there's an obvious kind of slight Roman echo there. No, definitely.
The pillar work in Florence that is going into the Medici Palace and so on is drawn from the Colosseum. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the Colosseum 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If you're a member of the Restors History Club and you're into giraffes, you can skip the rest of this episode about the conspiracy and go straight to the giraffe.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Now, his nickname, Il Magnifico, the magnificent, we think that's because he was so great, he was so glorious. No, that is wrong.

Speaker 1 It is a standard honorific that was given to rich merchants and to the heads of families. Right.
So he's not a Principe?

Speaker 1 No. So every time he is called Il 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.

Speaker 1 This is the big difference between him and his father and grandfather. They lent money.
He borrows it. He trades on the bank's reputation to start borrowing money to fund his lifestyle.

Speaker 1 So he borrowed 61,000 florins from his cousin. He borrowed 10,000 florins from the Duke of Milan.

Speaker 1 And remember, the whole thing with the alliance with Milan was that the Medici bank was bankrolling Milan. Now it's the other way around.
He's borrowing money.

Speaker 1 Now, he said later on, you know, I don't regret it. I think the money was well spent and I am well pleased.

Speaker 1 But more caustic historians of the Medici family, like Mary Hollingsworth Hollingsworth in her book, say this is when the rot started. I mean, she basically paints him.

Speaker 1 It's a great book, actually, her book. She paints him as this arrogant, spoiled, super-rich kid who blew his inheritance.

Speaker 1 She says, quote, a depressing tale of greed and inexperience from which the Medici brand never really recovered. Just to present the counter-argument.

Speaker 1 I mean, the fact that he is still thought of as the embodiment of Renaissance Prince 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Possibly, although there were 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, you could argue that in the long run, it would have been better for them to remain in the shadows and piled up the money. That's what I would have done, Tom.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 All I will say is that we're going to be doing a series on Mary Queen of Scots. Erda Medici will be featuring in that story as a Queen of France.

Speaker 1 So they did do well in the end. They do do well.

Speaker 1 Now, some listeners may be a bit surprised to hear anybody criticising Lorenzo because basically, as in the Assassin's Creed video game, he's usually treated as thoroughly admirable.

Speaker 1 But of course, you're not thoroughly admirable if you're wielding power in Renaissance Italy. You know, a saint doesn't wield such power.

Speaker 1 And his chief ally, I mean, it's a really good example of this. His chief ally is the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza.
He's a patron of the arts.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 It is his son, Francesco's son, and Galeazzo Maria Sforze. He's a pungent character, I think it's fair to say to him.
Do you want to know what he got up to? Yeah, I'd love to.

Speaker 1 I quote, he raped the wives and daughters of numerous Milanese nobles.

Speaker 1 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 sight of corpses.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And actually, you may say, well, obviously, this is exaggerating propaganda. But to be a Renaissance magnate, you have to behave in pretty grim ways.
And Lorenzo himself is a good example.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And also to enhance his reputation as a man it's dangerous to cross, I assume. Right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And there are other powerful people in Florence because the Medici are not the only powerful banking family. There is another family called the Patsy.

Speaker 1 Now the Patsy are an older and more prestigious family than the Medici.

Speaker 1 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 Sepulchre. Oh, I'm definitely Team Patsy.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't want to sound dismissive, but you know my views and Ron Relics.

Speaker 1 So the Patsy have got a big banking network of their own. They've got offices in Florence and in Rome and in Avignon and Valencia and all these places.

Speaker 1 And the head of the Patsy family is not like Lorenzo at all. He's called Jacopo de Pazzi.
He's in his mid-50s. He's simultaneously, I think an interesting combination.
He's both a miser and a gambler.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I like the sound of him. He's got relics.
He's in his mid-50s, intensely competitive. Yeah, he's like you.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And this is a man called Francesco del Roveri, or rather, Pope Sixtus IV.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So I can now bring out my inner Thomas Cromwell. He's handing out offices to his family.
He makes six of his nephews cardinals.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Sixtus had a favourite nephew, who he hadn't made the cardinal yet, called Girolamo Riario, who is described as, and I quote, a fat, uncouth, rowdy young man.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Formula One, exactly. It has a key strategic location on the road from Bologna.
And Sixtus said to the Medici Bank, could you lend us the money, please, to buy this town of Imola?

Speaker 1 Now, Lorenzo was horrified at this. He wanted Immola 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He stripped them of the papal account and gave it to the Pazzi.

Speaker 1 And then, as the new Archbishop of Pisa, which was in Florentine control, he appointed Giacoppo de Pazzi's cousin, Francesco Salviati. Remember him, this boat, Salviati.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 He's born in 1449, so he's 27, Tom, because we're now approaching the end of 1476.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 His friend Galeazzo Maria Schwarza, the 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.

Speaker 1 So Milan is now out of, effectively out of the game, Lorenzo's biggest ally.

Speaker 1 And a few weeks later, three men men meet in secret in Rome. One of them is Girolamo Riario.
So he's the fat, rowdy papal nephew stroke's son.

Speaker 1 One of them is Francesco Salviati, the Patsy cousin who has just been made the Archbishop of Pisa.

Speaker 1 And the other man is Francesco di Pazzi,

Speaker 1 and he is the manager of the Patsy Bank in Rome. and he is described as and I quote a young man of great arrogance and pretension

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So they have this meeting, and soon after that, Francesco di Pazzi, the bank manager, who's basically the brains behind all this, he asks for a meeting with one of Rome's most hard-bitten mercenary commanders.

Speaker 1 And this is a man called Monte Secco. who has done a lot of dirty work for the papacy over the years.
And Francesco di Pazzi says to him, I would like to hire you for an operation against the Medici.

Speaker 1 And Montesecco says, I'm not going to do anything without the Pope's approval. And Francesco says, great, because the Pope is already on board.
Now, Montesecco doesn't believe him.

Speaker 1 So they organise 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 forfend.

Speaker 1 It would make me really sad if you killed. That'd be awful.
If you killed Lorenzo de' Medici. I actually hate bloodshed and if Lorenzo was dead, I'd be very, very upset.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And obviously Montesecco gets the message, you know, Lorenzo has got to go and

Speaker 1 probably doesn't really mind that much.

Speaker 1 So there's only one link in the chain left, and that is Giacoppo di Pazzi, the head of the family. Because he's a chill, calculating man, isn't he? Exactly.

Speaker 1 Now, he's a banker and he knows the costs of failure. When Montessecco, 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.

Speaker 1 I understand what is going on here better than they do. I don't want to hear any more about this.
But Montesecco says, look, the Pope is on board with this. We've got the money.
We've got the muscle.

Speaker 1 We can do it. And Jacopo says,

Speaker 1 you know, it's so godfather part two. He says, fine, do it.
But you can't just kill Lorenzo. You must kill his his brother Giuliano, and you must do it at the same time.
You know, no slip-ups.

Speaker 1 We have to get this right. 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Another relative of the Pope, who's a young cardinal called Raffaele Riario, is going to visit Florence, completely unrelated. And Lorenzo has organized a banquet for him.

Speaker 1 And they're like, right, the banquet is the time to strike.

Speaker 1 They make their plans and Montesecco 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They meet hurriedly to discuss the position.

Speaker 1 They say, look, we've told so many people now, word is leaking out. Montesecco has brought his men to Tuscany.
Like it's really now or never.

Speaker 1 And then one of them says, look, there is actually one more possibility.

Speaker 1 On Sunday, the 26th of April, the Medici brothers are bound to go to high mass in the cathedral with this young cardinal Riario. This is the chance.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 at mass in front of the altar yeah in a church yeah in front of everybody 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.

Speaker 1 But you think God would be all right with it like a public toilet or something? Fine, yeah, crack on.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Not whether I approve of it, whether God approves of it. I just don't think God would approve of that.
Going out on a theological limb there. Okay, let's talk through the details of the plan.

Speaker 1 So Francesco de Pazzi, a young, arrogant bank manager, he will kill Giuliano.

Speaker 1 And he will be helped by an adventurer called Barroncelli, who owes the Patsy lots of money and wants to basically wipe away the debt. So that's how they'll deal with Giuliano.

Speaker 1 Now, Lorenzo, the hard-bitten mercenary captain Montesecco, will kill him. But actually, Montessecco is like you.
He's in a terrible funk about doing this in a cathedral. He says, I can't do it.

Speaker 1 And actually, he says explicitly, I can't do it because God will see it. See, he agrees with me.
God wouldn't see it in a public toilet, but he would see it at the cathedral.

Speaker 1 I don't think that's what he's saying, Dawin. But there are two other candidates on hand, which is good news.
And these are, and I quote, lean, embittered priests. The best kind.

Speaker 1 The best kind of priests. And the best kind of lean embittered people.
And these are called Bagnone and Mafei. So the person we began with, the person from Assassin's Creed II.

Speaker 1 Bagnone is a Patsy tutor. Mafei,

Speaker 1 here's the thing. He is from Volterra, the place with the alum mine.
Yeah, where they've all been massacred. He hates Lorenzo for what he did to his town.
And this is what they agree.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, 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.

Speaker 1 So they'll kill them then. and then the bloke is the Archbishop of Pisa, Salviati.

Speaker 1 He will seize the Palazzo della Signore with the armed mercenaries, they'll take the Florentine government prisoner, you'll crush resistance and the Pazzi will control the city. It's a great plan.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is not good archepiscopal behaviour.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If we're an archbishop and two embittered priests. Brilliant.
Who'd have thought of it? So we get to the morning of Sunday, the 26th of April, 1478.

Speaker 1 About 11 o'clock, Lorenzo sets off from the Medici Palace with his guest Cardinal Riario.

Speaker 1 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're joined on the walk by Archbishop Salviati, the snake.

Speaker 1 And when they get 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.

Speaker 1 God, so not only is he going to launch a massacre as the host is being raised, but he's lying. Yeah, that's poor, isn't it? Is there no limit to his iniquity?

Speaker 1 So Lorenzo goes into the cathedral with the cardinal. They go to the high altar.
And then Lorenzo leaves the cardinal and goes off to chat to some friends, some sort of Medici cronies.

Speaker 1 Now, important for people to picture this. You don't sit down.
There are no chairs in the cathedral. There are pews.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Francesco de Pazzi Pazzi and the adventurer Baroncelli 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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, it'll be great fun.
And

Speaker 1 so they walk with him to the cathedral. Along 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The service is about to start.

Speaker 1 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 altar. He's in the ambulatory, whatever that is.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what it is. Some cathedral thing.
There's a lot of his friends nearby, but the two killer priests

Speaker 1 are standing

Speaker 1 right behind him. The service starts, you know, a lot of chanting, whatever.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And the priests draw their daggers. And the guy from Volterra, Mafei, he puts his hand gently on Lorenzo's shoulder, sort of to steady himself for the thrust.

Speaker 1 And Lorenzo turns at that point and he feels the dagger on his neck. And just at the point when Mafei is digging it in, he pulls away.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He wraps it around his arm and he uses it as a shield, kind of ward off the blows. Then he reaches for his sword.
It's carrying a sword.

Speaker 1 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 are a lot of bronze doors in the duo aren't there the florentines love a bronze door while that's happening what's happened to giuliano when the bell rang giuliano bowed his head as lorenzo had and the guys on his side were much more efficient.

Speaker 1 Baroncelli, the adventurer, struck first. He shouted, take that, you traitor, slashed at his head so fiercely that he almost spit it in two, apparently.
And then Francesco di Pazzi was on him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So a puddle of blood spreading over the holy altar. Exactly.
The two killers look up. They can see Lorenzo running for the doors.
They run after him.

Speaker 1 They want to cut him off before he gets to the doors.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 A crucial moment, actually, in the whole story of the Medici dynasty. Norri threw himself in their path.
Barrancelli plunged his dagger in and stabbed him and killed him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 A 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.

Speaker 1 And he says, you know, there's a coup, we must fight back against the conspirators. Now, meanwhile, what happened to the Archbishop, Salviati?

Speaker 1 He had marched on the Palazzo della Signoria with his mercenaries, but he was taken aback.

Speaker 1 He thought the councillors would be, you know, he'd be able to kind of steamroll with them, but no, they fought back.

Speaker 1 The standard-bearer of Florence, the Guon Falonieri, apparently grabbed a cooking spit and fought back against the Archbishop personally.

Speaker 1 The councillors start ringing the big bell, Lavaca, calling for aid. Loads of people pour into the square.
They completely outnumber the plotters and the mercenaries, and they're chanting splendidly.

Speaker 1 Vivano la palle. Long live the balls.
Hurrah for the balls. So that's from the Medici symbol, the coat of arms, yeah.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 So these people chanting about balls, they end up slaughtering all of the archbishop's mercenaries. They cut off their heads, and then they rampage around the city with these heads on lances.

Speaker 1 The archbishop, he was cornered, they tied a rope round 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.

Speaker 1 I think that's fair enough. And now Francesco di Pazzi, the bank manager, they found him, they stripped him naked, they did the same thing to him.
And would you like a gory fact? Go up, go for it.

Speaker 1 These two blokes are dangling from the ropes and kind of writhing in agony.

Speaker 1 And the Archbishop, it was said, while he was writhing at the end of his rope, about to die, for some peculiar reason that I don't understand,

Speaker 1 he took a massive bite out of Francesco de Pazzi's chest and sank his teeth into his torso.

Speaker 1 You know what? It's like something out of Dante's Inferno. It is a bit, isn't it? Hideous scene.

Speaker 1 Well, it actually is a hideous scene because it turns into a massive riot and about 80 people, many of them completely innocent, were lynched until Lorenzo managed to calm things down.

Speaker 1 So what happened to the other plotters? So we mentioned that that bloke, Mafei, who you began with, had an appointment with the knife. He did indeed.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Montesecco, the sort of hard-bitten mercenary captain. He was interrogated under torture.
That's how we know the details of the story.

Speaker 1 And then in a sort of, he had a slightly more benign end in that he was beheaded with a sword in the courtyard of the Bargello, which is now a very famous art sculpture museum.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So he clearly had doubts the whole time. And then the adventurer Baroncelli, who killed Giuliani, he escaped as far as Constantinople.

Speaker 1 But he was recognised 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.

Speaker 1 Now what about the godfather of the Patsy Jacobo?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 His body was thrown into the river Arno, but some children then fished it out and children

Speaker 1 hung it from a willow tree and to amuse themselves used to go and beat it and flog it. It's more innocent times.
How long was it hanging there?

Speaker 1 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. I suppose so.
And in the course of all this, his head came off.

Speaker 1 People took it.

Speaker 1 People took it to the Palazzo Patsy. They used to amuse themselves by banging it on the door, like using it as a door knocker.
Oh, God.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The Patsy family were banished forever from Florence. Their property confiscated.
Their symbol, which was the dolphin, was erased from the city.

Speaker 1 Even if you'd married a Patsy, you were banned forever from holding office.

Speaker 1 And actually, Botticelli painted a lovely mural at the Bargello, where the executions had taken place, a lovely mural of the Patsy with ropes around their necks kind of dangling to their deaths. Nice.

Speaker 1 So that's nice. Now, actually, across Europe, the Patsy conspiracy was a great story.
Everyone was very shocked by it.

Speaker 1 The king of France, Louis XI, he wrote to Lorenzo saying, gosh, what a terrible story. I'm, you know, unbelievable to do it at mass.
I mean, he's not wrong. I find that very shocking.

Speaker 1 No, I think you should pay more heed to the Pope. The Pope said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this.
And the real miscreants here are the Medici. Do you know what he did?

Speaker 1 When he heard about the failure of the plot, he promptly excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire signoria of Florence.

Speaker 1 He said, for killing the two priests and the archbishop he thought that was absolutely disgraceful you hear catholics complaining about i don't know francis or whatever woke popes woke popes

Speaker 1 yeah i have to say i mean sixtus is a more robust pope i think it looks pretty feeble compared to yeah sixthus the fourth sixth the fourth is a very robust pope now lorenzo said to the council of florence look you know we're up against here 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.

Speaker 1 And everybody said, oh, no, don't do that. We'll all stand together.
We'll defend the House of Medici as we would defend our own republic.

Speaker 1 But at the end of June, 1478, Sixtus placed Florence under interdict, which I believe, Tom, means that no one can take the sacraments. They can't take communion in Florence.

Speaker 1 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 in the Axis of Evil or something.

Speaker 1 He said, I call on all the other Italian states, let's stage a liberal intervention against the excommunicated and heretical Lorenzo de' Medici.

Speaker 1 You know, God wants us to basically punish him for his wickedness. The Medici Bank was expelled from Rome and from Naples.
Its assets were seized.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 things are looking a bit desperate now for Lorenzo.

Speaker 1 He really needs money to raise an army, but actually he's blown all his money on fancy helmets and stuff with stallions and altarpieces and all of this. Pronunciations.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So he has to send messengers across Italy to beg for cash, especially to Milan. He sends his family to the Medici castle at Caffaggiolo, which is in the mountains north of Florence for safety.

Speaker 1 The months go by and Alfonso makes very slow progress, basically grinding his way through central Italy, town by town, castle by castle heading for Florence. The war drags on.

Speaker 1 It blows a hole in the Florentine economy. People start running out of food.
There are bread riots. You know, Alfonso and the Neapolitan army with the Pope's backing is getting closer and closer.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 stunning stuff. If you want to know what happens, you can find out right now by joining the Rest is History Club at the restishory.com.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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. God see Rivadchi.

Speaker 2 I'm Gordon Carrera, and I'm David McClarski.

Speaker 1 Together, we're the co-hosts of another Gohanger show called The Rest is Classified.

Speaker 2 Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.

Speaker 1 When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things,

Speaker 1 but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA

Speaker 2 understand that Osama bin Laden is

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on Al-Qaeda that hadn't existed before.

Speaker 2 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 U.S. Aircraft and Other Attacks.

Speaker 2 And 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

Speaker 2 practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and to stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11.

Speaker 1 If you want to hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.