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.  No, it seems far more likely 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 the younger 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 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) 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 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 that, 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 door, Francesco de Pazzi had thrown himself upon the wounded Guiliano de 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 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 (above, center).  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, the elder de Medici,  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, leading 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, where he gave his uncle the bad news -  the young Guiliano de Medici was dead, but Lorenzo de Medici was still lived. The conspirator's might have called upon the 600 soldiers waiting outside the city under the Duke of Urbano.   But, Francesco, weak from blood loss, decided to return home. And at that key moment, Jacopo decided to leave town. And the 150 Pazzi and Pergia supporters who had been told only to follow orders, were abandoned to fend for themselves. No one gave word to the Duke, to enter Florence. So he continued to wait outside the city walls, for a summons which 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 must be paid.

                                       - 30 -  

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 dye colors into cloth. The resulting inflation threatened to blow up the entire European economy. 

So the Catholic church was overjoyed, when eight years later, in 1461, a huge source of alunite (above) was discovered in the volcanic 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 mining 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 Cosimo's 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 and 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.

- 30 -

BLOODY JACK Chapter Nineteen

 

I think the tipping point came on Monday, 1 October, 1888 when even the staid Times of London bowed to the pressures from their advertisers and customers. On that date the story went the 19^th century equivalent of “viral”  The Times story that day read, “In the early hours of Yesterday morning two more horrible murders were committed in the East of London... No doubt seems to be entertained by the police that these terrible crimes were the work of the same fiendish hands...”

“In the first mentioned case", said The Times,  "the body was found in a gateway, and although the murder...may be regarded as of almost ordinary character – the unfortunate woman only having her throat cut – (there is) little doubt...that the assassin intended to mutilate...The murder in the City...(had) indescribable mutilations...some anatomical skill seems to have been displayed...At Three O'clock yesterday afternoon a meeting of nearly a thousand persons took place in Victoria Park...a resolution was unanimously passed that it was high time (Home Secretary Henry Matthews and Scotland Yard head Charles Warren) should resign...”

The un-staid London Evening News was a little free-er with their facts. “On Sunday morning a woman was found with her throat cut and her body partially mutilated in a court in Berner street...the deed was done in the short period of twenty minutes...in the time which the police surgeon said a medical expert would take to do it...Having been disturbed in his first attempt...the murderer seems to have made his way towards the City, and to have met another "unfortunate”,...He...cut her throat...then proceeded to disembowel her. He must have been extremely quick at his work...the City beats being much shorter than those of the Metropolitan Police.”

The News editorialized, “Successive editions of the Sunday papers were getting a marvelous sale yesterday...The police yesterday afternoon took possession of Mitre-square and kept out the people... There was also a crowd of perhaps a couple of hundred persons outside the gateway in Berner-street during the day, and at ten o'clock last night there were perhaps 150 assembled in the roadway...”

The Evening News noted that on Monday, “A TERRIBLE PANIC has taken possession of the entire district, and its effects are to be seen in the wild, terrified faces of the women, and heard in the muttered imprecations of the men...WHERE WERE THE POLICE?...It seems incredible that, within the short space of twelve minutes, a man and woman should have entered the deserted precincts of Mitre-square, that the man should have murdered his victim, disemboweled her with the same unerring skill...and should have made his escape...He must, when he hurried away...have been reeking with blood”.

The News reporter noted the increased police presence at the murder scenes and suggested it reminded him of “the old adage about locking the stable door after the steed has been stolen.” He described the crowd in Berner Street as being made up of, “nearly all classes. Clubmen from the West-end rubbed shoulders with the grimy denizens of St. George's-in-the-East: daintily dressed ladies...elbowed their way amid knots of their less favored sisters, whose dirty and ragged apparel betokened the misery of their daily surroundings”

The London Evening News offered its readers one tidbit of real information - “The body found in Berner-street has been identified as that of Elizabeth Stride.” But then returned to building  hysteria “....the murder... grows bolder by impunity. One victim for one night was his former rule. He now...cuts off two within an hour...It is impossible to avoid the depressing conviction that the Police are about to fail once more, as they have failed with CHAPMAN, as they have failed with NICHOLLS, as they have failed with TABRAM... The Police have done nothing, they have thought of nothing, and in their detective capacity they have shown themselves distinctly inferior.”

The Irish Times knew just who to blame. “Sir CHARLES WARREN (above, right)...appears at last to understand that it will be fatal to men in his position if those murders are not traced.”  The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews (above, left), was described on the floor of Parliament as “helpless, heedless, useless”, and The Daily Telegraph urged his resignation. Many already suspected the conservative British government of Lord Salisbury was responsible for disinformation and dirty tricks political campaigns against Irish self government movement. They were right, but not knowing details of the Home Office's Irish Section – Section D – they could not know that Charles Warren had no responsibility over these political black ops. So he got the blame for it all.

Under a Monday evening column titled “What We Think”, The Star said the killer had again, “got away clear; and again the police...confess that they have not a clue. They are waiting for a seventh and an eighth murder, just as they waited for a fifth...Meanwhile, Whitechapel is half mad with fear. The people are afraid even to talk with a stranger.... It is the duty of journalists to keep their heads cool, and not inflame men's passions...” The "Star" then proceeded to do just that. “Two theories are suggested to us,” warned The Star a few sentences further down, “that he may wear woman's clothes, or may be a policeman.”

“The police, of course, are helpless,” continued The Star. “We expect nothing of them. The Metropolitan force is rotten to the core, and it is a mildly farcical comment on the hopeless unfitness of Sir CHARLES WARREN (above)...there must be an agitation against Sir CHARLES WARREN, who is now...detaching more men from regular police and detective duty to political work....”  But the Star did get one piece of information right. In that same Monday evening edition they mentioned, “After committing the second murder, the man seems to have gone back towards the scene of the former. An apron, which is thought by the police to belong to the woman found in Mitre-square, as it was the same material as part of her dress, was found in Goldstar Street. It was smeared with blood, and had been evidently carried away by the murderer to wipe his hands with.”

The Star's reporter returned to Berner Street in the afternoon and found that “Blue helmets were as thick as bees in a clover field...Prominent among those on the spot...was Superintendent Foster, of the City Police. He personally...paid a visit to the scene of the Berner street tragedy, to compare the two cases...As he came out of Berner street, a man in a tweed suit was seen walking by his side, and someone in the crowd shouted out: "There they go. The super's got him. I told you he was a toff." This silly remark was enough to turn the tide of attention in the direction of the officer and his companion ..their unsought retinue followed...till they met the tide from the other direction, and then the side streets swallowed up the surplus and the officials escaped.” 

That night another reporter for The Star saw, “little groups of ill-clad women standing under the glare of a street lamp or huddling in a doorway talking..."He'll be coming through the houses and pulling us out of our beds next," says one. "Not he," says another; "he's too clever for that."

On that same Monday, the Central News dropped a bombshell – the killer had written a letter, in red ink (above), and dated the previous Tuesday, 25 September. It read - in part - , "Dear Boss - I keep on hearing the police have caught me...I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me rare fits. I am down on whores, and I shan't quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work...I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger-beer bottle...but it went thick like glue, and I can't use it. Red ink is fit enough, ha, ha, ha!...My knife is so nice and sharp, I want to get to work right away, if I get the chance. Good, cock, "Yours truly, JACK THE RIPPER."  There was a post script - “Don't mind me giving the trade name. Wasn't good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. They say I'm a doctor. Ha! ha! ha! ha!"

So there it was – that iconic name – Jack the Ripper – its first appearance in print. And, added the Central News Service, that very morning they had received a post card, this written in red chalk, but smeared with blood. “"Double event this time," it read. "Number One squealed a bit...JACK THE RIPPER." Added the News Service, “..it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the cool, calculating villain who is responsible for the crimes has chosen to ...convey to the Press his grimly diabolical humor.”

Neither missive was actually written by the killer, of course. The letter had been written, mailed and received during the two week lull in the case, before the murders of 30 September. It was an attempt to keep the story going, to generate additional newspaper sales. And the post card was merely another ploy, feeding the horror machine which had become Jack the Ripper. On that same Monday, the News printed a letter from builder and self made man George Akin Lusk (above),  naming himself as Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and encouraging Home Secretary Matthews to offer a reward for the capture of the killer. Volunteers from the committee were already patrolling the streets and pubs of Whitechapel, which might explain why the killer had moved outside his usual hunting fields..

But the most important development from the the double event weekend was that at last, Jack the Ripper was a going financial concern. There would be legal, sociological and political effects of  Bloody Jack. But the murderer and his victims had become of secondary importance.

- 30 -