AN EASTER MURDER Chapter Two

I don't believe the rumors of a plan to poison Lorenzo and Guiliano de Medici in their family villa  (above) on the sun warmed slopes of Fiesole, four miles above Florence. First, how was the poison to be administered? If a member of the Medici staff had been subverted, why wait for the banquet in honor of Cardinal Raphael Riario, when everyone was on high alert, with enemies in their home? And poison was an uncertain weapon. It might merely sicken the victims. It seems likely to me the banquet was used to lull the Medici into complacency, and set the stage for the actual assassination to take place the next day, Easter Sunday, 26 April of 1478, inside the Basilica of Maria del Fiore,

There has been a church on this spot out side the city walls since the fifth century, earning it the Italian title “duomo”, meaning 'the bishop's former house.” By the end of the thirteenth century the Florence duomo was too small and decrepit for the growing city, so the council approved a new cathedral, the Church of Saint Mary of the Flowers, 500 feet long, 124 feet wide, with walls supported by Gothic arches soaring 75 feet above the floor, and capable of holding upwards of 12, 000 faithful. The first stone was laid in 1296. Delayed by the Black Death, the red dome was not finished until 1436. Wars would slow work on the facade, which would not be completed for another 500 years. And the decision to murder the two oldest Medici males in this sacred place, on this sacred day, was an act of the Pope's arrogance and desperation.

Cardinal Raphael Riario entered the church with the man the Medici had preferred as archbishop of Florence, Rinaldo Orsini, and with Pope Sixtus' original choice for that chair, the visiting archbishop of Pisa,  Francesco Salviati.  Accompanying them was Lorezo de Medici and his close friend Frecesco Nori. Lorenzo took a pew in the front, and since his brother Guiliano had not appeared, Nori sat next to him.  The cardinal would officiate at the mass, assisted by priests, and the two archbishops sat next to each other, in chairs near the alter. Before them the great space of the cathedral filled with 10,000 penitents.

At about noon priest Francesco de Pazzi and Bernardo Bandi appeared at Guiliano de Medici's home, seeking to accompany Guiliano to the service, arguing their joint entrance would show unity on this holy day. Perhaps Guiliano ( above) was still ill, or perhaps the visitors plied the rakish young man with wine, or perhaps their argument took time to be effective. In any case the three men left together and were late in arriving at the duomo. They were forced to take seats near the rear of the cathedral, with Guiliano sitting directly in front of Francesco and Bernardo. This late arrival separated the intended victims, but it also separated the assassins.

Cardinal Riaro began the mass at one in the afternoon, with the blessing in Latin, “May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips, that you may proclaim his paschal praise worthily and well, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” While the mass continued, other pieces of the conspiracy were falling into place. Outside of the city, the Duke of Urbano (above) and an in-law to Pope Sixtus, had gathered 600 mercenaries, prepared to storm the city at word of the assassinations.  Missing from the ceremony in the cathedral, if any Medici had taken note, was the old man, Jocopo Pazzi.  He had gathered about 150 supporters , mostly members of the Perugia clan, in the surrounding streets. These forces were primed to murder the mayor and seize the city hall. But everything had to wait until after the murders about to take place during the Easter Service.

Slowly, the mass progressed toward its climax, as Riaro raised the host to be blessed. This motion was a signal for the bells to be set off in the tower. And also for Archbishop Salviati.to rise silently from his chair and quickly move toward an exit, and, in the back of the cathedral. And for Francesco de Pazzi to pull a knife from his priestly robes.  He stood. He raised his arm, screaming, “Take it, traitor!" And with all the force he could muster he drove the blade deep into the top of Guiliano de Medici's skull (above). In its first instant the Pazzi conspiracy had achieved half of its goals.

Despite the loud tolling of the bells, there were screams and shouts of murder heard from the rear of the great cathedral. The two who had been assigned to murder Lorenzo de Medici, the priest Setefano da Bagnone and the vicar-in-training Antonio Maffei de Volterra, must have thought since Guiliano was absent the assignation had been postponed again. But now, as Lorenzo turned to investigate the clamor, one of them drew his dagger. Lorenzo saw the movement and staggered to his feet. The blade swept across his throat, slicing into the skin and drawing blood. Lorenzo fell backwards into the aisle, where he could draw his own knife.

In the center of the insanity, and blocking the main entrance door, Francesco de Pazzi had thrown himself upon Guiliano Medici in such a hysteria of fear and frenzy , he stabbed himself in the leg,  Bernardo Bandi did little more than ward off any who might be inclined to intervene. None were and Guiliano suffered 19 separate knife wounds before Francesco paused to catch his breath.

At the front of the sacred hall, Frecesco Nori drew his own knife and moved to block the attackers, as other Medici allies hustled Lorenzo from the nave and into the sacristy, where the priests put on their robes. The Medici supporters blockaded the only door, and the two attackers, Stefano and Antonio had to satisfy themselves with cutting down Lorenzo's friend, Frencesco .

Parishioners were climbing over pews to escape the church, and were now streaming out every exit they could find. Families huddled to protect their children. The old and blind were abandoned in the general panic. The bewildered Cardinal Riaro was pinned against the alter by pro-Medici priests who a moment before had been assisting him. They would later insist he made no attempt to take part in the violence.

Archbishop Francesco Salviati, still dressed in his robes, walked quickly from the duomo, Together with Jocopo Pazzi and his 150  supporters, they marched the less than a quarter mile south to the city hall, the old Palazzo Vecchio palace. By the time they arrived, the bloodshed at the cathedral had already ended, and Francesco Pazzi, bleeding from his self inflicted leg wound, and realizing that Lorenzo was still alive, was himself staggering after them. 

Entering the palace by the Sala dei Duecento, the hall of the two hundred (above), Jacopo and Salviati, in front of 150 angry looking men, demanded the guards take them to Cesare Petrucci, the Gonfloniere, or mayor, who lived in the palace. It was an unusual request for a Sunday morning, particularly from Salviati, who was supposed to be at the Easter Services. His guard already up, Mayor Cesare, a Medici supporter, agreed to speak only with Salviati. 

The problem, for the Pazzi, was that the hall had originally been the Signoria, or the city council meeting room, and the interior doors originally only led to rooms were ballots were counted. Because of this the door handles were cleverly recessed and hidden. And once Salviati entered the palace proper, he was cut off Jacopo and his soldiers, who could not find a door they could open.

Trying to convince Cesare to step outside to speak to Jacopo,  Salvati suddenly found words difficult. He was excited, and clearly worried, and Cesare responded by having his guards put the archbishop under arrest. 

At about the same time, the blood stained Francesco had made it to the Palazzo, and gave his uncle the bad news -  the young Guiliano Medici was dead, but Lorenzo de Medici still lived. The conspirator's  only hope left was the 600 soldiers waiting outside the city under the Duke of Urbano.   Francesco, weak from blood loss, decided to return home. Jacopo decided to leave town. And the Pazzi and Pergia supporters who had done nothing but follow orders, were abandoned to fend for themselves. No one gave word to the Duke, to enter Florence. So he waited outside the city walls, for word that never came.

The Pazzi Conspiracy, backed and funded by Pope Sixtus, had collapsed after murdering one unarmed man in the middle of a holy Easter service. And now the bill for that murder had to be paid.

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AN EASTER MURDER Chapter One

 

I believe the bloody Easter Sunday murder was set in motion twenty-five years earlier,  in 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman empire. The loss of Byzantine middle men tripled the price Christians had to pay for a volcanic rock called alunite, used in tanning animal skins and fixing dyes into cloth. The resulting inflation threatened to blow up the entire European economy. 

So the Catholic church was overjoyed, when eight years later, a huge source of alunite (above) was discovered in the Tolfa Mountains, just 50 miles north of Rome. Pope Pius II quickly annexed the mountainous region into his own Papal States, and immediately leased the mineral rights to the people who could pay him the most, the clever Vatican bankers, the House of Medici.

It was Cosimo de Medici who firmly established the family fortune by courting members of the 51 guilds who held the public political power in the Republic of Florence; 

...The Guild of Wool, the Guild of Silk, The Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries, the Guild of Ferrirers and Skinners, Masters of Stone (above) and Wood, etc. But behind the scenes Cosimo actually controlled the city by following a simple motto: “Envy is a plant you must not water.” As his biggest fan Niccolo Macchiavelli noted, “Never did he exceed the modest behavior of a citizen.” What others in Florence spent on personal luxury, guards and body armor, Cosimo de Medici spent on charity and bribes and gifts of public art by Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli. He depended on the loyalty of the guilds and masses to support and protect his family's massive fortune.

But when Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (above), became head of the family in 1469, the empire seemed in decline. In five short years Lorenzo's father "Piero the Gouty", had emptied the family coffers of the modern equivalent of $460 million. True, along with his younger brother Giuliano, Lorenzo still guided a sprawling financial empire, with bank branches in Rome, Florence, Pisa, London, Bourges and Constantinople. But Lorenzo was only twenty years old and not that interested in banking, He had already acquired the look of a man who smelled something unpleasant.

In 1471 a bank in the Medici client town of Volterra, about twenty miles south west of Florence, refused to invest in the Medici alunite mines. So in June of 1472 an army of Medici mercenaries laid siege to Volterra, murdering, raping and looting the town for three days. They were stopped before any permanent damage was done, and once the smoke had cleared, Lorenzo publicly apologized and paid “blood money” to the survivors. But behind the scenes the offending bank now reversed itself and invested in the Medici mines. And that was what mattered in Florence.

A more difficult problem developed in Rome when 57 year old Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, also in 1471. The ambitious man adopted the name of Sixtus IV, and quickly began promoting his family members to positions of money and power. He made six of his nephew's cardinals, and in 1472, married one of them, Giovanni della Rovere, to the lovely and wealthy Giovanna da Montefeltro, of Urbano. 

Her dowry was the fortress town of Imola (above), about forty miles northeast of Florence. And Sixtus decided to match it with a title and local office for his nephew, asking his banker, Lorenzo de Medici, to loan him 40,000 Florintine ducats, so he could live in the style his new title demanded.

Except Lorenzo was not so foolish as to willingly help the Pope extend his power into Florence's backyard. It was like asking him to pay for his own execution. After getting promises of support from the 32 other banking families in Florence, Lorenzo turned the Pope down. Then, unexpectedly - at least to Lorenzo - one of those bankers pulled a double cross; Jacopo Pazzi.

In Italian the word “pazzi” means madman, and it was said the family patriarch earned that title in 1099 by being one of the first soldiers over the walls in the capture of Jerusalem in the first Crusade. True or not we do know this 11th century lunatic brought back to Florence a stone from the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. For this feat of fidelity the family received their new surname and a title, and the right to provide the spark used to reignite the cities' flame every Easter Sunday. Some of the luster went out of the honor in the 12th century when laws blocked nobility from holding elective office, and the Pazzi were forced to renounce their title. They kept their land and money, and never stopped trying to get the title back. Which made it all the more insulting when Cosimo de Medici pushed through taxes on the wealthiest citizens of the Republic to help feed and cloth the poor. In response, the Pazzi took a self imposed exile from their city. Like all who see themselves as entitled, the Pazzi were offended when titles came with obligations.

The aging Jacopo Pazzi, head of family bank in the winter of 1472, was still sharp enough to seize an opportunity by the throat. He had finally returned to Florence after the death of Piero, but his hatred of the Medici had not abated. . So he had no compunction about betraying his promise to Lorenzo. And even though it went against his penny pinching nature, and it almost bankrupted his bank, he now granted Pope Sixtus the 40,000 ducats denied him by the House of Medici. The grateful Sixtus transferred all the Papal Curia accounts from the Medici to the Pazzi bank, reinvigorating Jacopo's fortune. Sixtus also granted the Pazzi a monopoly for refining the alunite clawed out of the Medici mines, cutting even further into Medici profits.

Lorenzo responded by supporting anyone willing to resist the Pope. When Sixtus sent an army under another of his nephew cardinals, Giuliano della Rovere, to force a Medici ally, Niccolo Vitelli, out of his stronghold in the village of Citta di Cadello, about 40 miles south east of Florence, Lorenzo began to assemble mercenaries to lift Guiliano's siege. The threat of open warfare was ominous, his nephew was not a soldier, and Sixtus was forced to order Guiliano's army to return to Rome, for the time being.

And then there was the matter of religious appointments  Sixtus chose a favorite, Francesco Salviati,, as the new archbishop of Florence. But Lorenzo was not willing to have a Papal spy in his own city, and signed an allegiance with Venice and Milan, making it clear Salviati's appointment would mean open war. Sixtus was again forced to back down. As a consolation prize, he named Salviati the Archbishop of Pisa, 40 miles west of Florence.   

But Pisa was also a Medici client city, and Lorenzo ordered the city gates locked against Salviati, preventing him from presiding over his new parish for almost a year. After contemplating these insults, and a dozen others real and imagined, Sixtus decided he needed to remove the Medici entirely. There is no record Sixtus ever actually ordered Lorenzo's or Giuliano's de Medici's murder.  In fact he was on  record as saying he supported a plot - “as long as no one is killed.” But no one in Italy could have believed the Medici would be stopped, short of their deaths.

The conspiracy now passed to the younger, more active hands of Jacopo's nephew  the priest Francesco Pazzi, and Jacopo's sons Andea and Poero Pazzi., and the young handsome Guflielmo Pazzi, who was also married to Bianca de' Medici, yet another peace offer made to the Pazzi.  

Francesco's first plan was for the Pope to invite both of the Medici brothers to the Holy City for reconciliation talks. In Rome (above), isolated from friends and allies, both brothers would be murdered. At the same time in a coup d'etat, Pazzi conspirators back in Florence would seize the city hall, the Plaza del Vecioo, and execute any of the remaining Medici family who were still a threat. The plan failed because Lorenzo made the trip, but the younger intended victim, Giuliano Medici, excused himself because of illness.

But at the winter meetings in Rome, the 17 year old Raphael Riario (above), another of Sixtus' nephews, had engaged Lorenzo in a discussion about their shared passion for the arts. Although made a Cardinal the year before, Raphael was not yet ordained as a priest, and was tightly controlled by his mother Catherine, who rarely let him out of her sight. 

But this day, Raphael managed to have a private conversation with Lorenzo (above), and confided he had heard of the art collection the Medici kept hidden in their a villa in Fiesole, just outside of Florence. Raphael pointed out he would be in Florence in the spring, to deliver the Easter Mass in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore (Church of Saint Mary of the Flowers). Could he impose on Lorenzo to show him the paintings? Charmed by the young man's innocence, and seeking to smooth things over with the boy's uncle, Lorenzo offered to not only to welcome Raphael into his home, but to throw him a banquet. In gratitude the boy spontaneously invited both Medici brothers to attend the Easter Mass as his personal guests.

And thus, almost by accident, the focus of the conspiracy to murder the Medici shifted back to Florence, the Medici home court. And in the end, that would make all the difference.

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APRIL FOOLS

I don’t approve of practical jokes. I see nothing humorous in having my shoes set afire while I am  wearing them. And dribble glasses are not only not practical they are also not funny - especially on “April Fools Day”, when every glass is a dribble glass and every shoe is a potential combustion chamber. 

It turns out that this celebration of sociopathic behavior was invented by the French, a nation without humorous inclinations since Moliere slipped on a banana peel in 1673. But the story of April Fool’s Day began over a century before that comedic-tragic event, when in 1564 King Charles IX decided to follow Pope Gregory’s suggestion and begin the calendar on January rather than April. Why the French originally celebrated New Years Day on April 1st, I have no idea. But the guy who first thought up moving the date to January was pointedly dealt with at the time.

Now, in the 16th century, France had only one road. It came out of Paris, turned left, looped all the way around the city and re-entered on the other side of town. This tragic design error,(the world’s first Traffic Circle) made communication with the majority of the nation difficult (and introduced the phrase “Out-of-the-Loop”), and when combined with the French telephone system - which was in no better shape in the 16th century than it is today - meant that a lot of peasants never got the King’s memo concerning the calendar adjustment.

So as they had every year, thousands of these ill-informed peasants journeyed to Paris during the last week of March and on what they thought was New Year’s Eve, gathered in Bastille Square to say bonjour to 1565 and watch the guillotine drop on 1566. In unison they gleefully chanted, “Cing, quartre, trios, deux, un” and…No guillotine. No satisfying plop of a head into the basket. No Champagne corks popping. No red faced Anderson Cooper.  Instead of cheers and shouts of glee, mass ennui broke out among the masses. Now anyone who has experienced the Parisian version of “good manners” can imagine what came next; the locals mocked the bewildered peasants and made them feel like complete Americans,…ah, I mean, fools. But the way they did it makes the word “odd” seem inadequate.

For reasons beyond understanding the Parisians snuck up behind their confused country cousins, surreptitiously stuck a paper fish to the bumpkin’s backs and then shouted in a loud voice, “Poisson d’Avril!”, which translates as “April Fish!”, and then collapsed in raucous laughter and shouts of “tres bien.”

Why would they shout “April Fish!”? I have no idea. But, perhaps the first Parisian to label his victim an "April Fool” immediately received a mouth full of fist, while calling the victim an "April Fish” confused him just long enough so that the prankster could escape.

I have long thought that this uncharacteristic outbreak of French “humor” was actually inspired by Charles’ Italian Queen, Catherine de Medici, who was already famous throughout Europe for her gastronomical gags,  such as her duck a la cyanide with a hemlock sauce. Only a Medici could see the humor in humiliating the people who handled your food.

But however it started, the Parisians knew a good time when they saw it and they sent peasants on “fool’s errands”, and tricked peasants with “fool’s tales”, until every April first France reverberated with gales of laughter and shouts of “Poisson d’Avril!”  Ah, good times. But eventually the Parisian bullies grew bored with taunting the unresponsive peasants and in 1572 they shifted their attentions to the Huguenots. But by then the tradition of humiliating people for your own amusement on the first day of April had become generally popular. And like Disco music and Special Federal Prosecutors, once invented such institutions have proven impossible to dis-invent.

This holiday for the humor-impaired spread around the globe with the new calendar like a fungus, infecting and evolving a little in each newly afflicted nation. The Germans added the “Kick Me” sign, and a second day which they called “Taily Day”, to further enjoy the frivolity of bruised buttocks. Ahh, those Germans.

In Portugal, today’s innocent victim is hit with flour, sometimes while it is still in the bag - the flour not the victim.  In Scotland the target is humiliatingly referred to as an “April Gawk” (?!), in England as a “Noodle” and in Canada as an “American.”  I would have expected mental health professionals to call for a stop to this public insanity but evidently they are too busy setting their patients’ shoes on fire.

Not even a war could snap the world out of this cruel insanity. In what may have been the first time a practical joke qualified as a war crime, on April 1, 1915 a French pilot buzzed the German trenches and dropped a huge bomb, which bounced. Four years later the citizens of Venice awoke on April 1, to discover their sidewalks littered with cow manure, the "gag" of a visiting Englishman, Horace de Vere Cole, with too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets. But then what can you expect from a man who would honeymoon on April Fool's day? Bad humor moved into the electronic age in 1957 when BBC Television News broadcast a report about that year's successful and bountiful Swiss harvest of spaghetti.  On April Fool's Day in 1992, National Public Radio in the United States, broadcast the announcement that Richard Nixon was coming out of retirement to run again for President, under the slogan, "I didn't do anything wrong and I won't do it again."

Some years later the Australian Broadcasting Company, carried a report that the nation was about to switch to "Metric Time". The next morning would begin at midnight, but each minute would be made up of 100 milidays, each hour of 100 centedays, and each day would consist of 20 decadays. It is alleged that  the following morning nobody in Australia showed up for work on time, but it is unclear if that was because the April Fools joke worked, or merely because everybody in Australia still had a hangover, mate  

Admit it; there is no defense against April Fool tomfoolery, except a preemptive strike. So button up your top button, zip up your pants, tie your shoes and look out for that cat. Load up your water gun, warm up your fart cushion and repeat after me; “Poison d’Avril, sucker!”

Funny, huh?

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