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Coat of arms of the Pazzi family

The Pazzi family were an ancient, noble Tuscan family who had given up their titles so that members could be elected to public office. Their main trade, during the 15th century was banking. They are linked to the "Pazzi conspiracy"—to assassinate Giuliano de' Medici and simultaneously attempt murder of his brother, Lorenzo de' Medici on 26 April 1478. Andrea de' Pazzi was also the patron of the chapter house for the Franciscan community at Florence's Santa Croce church, often known as the Pazzi Chapel. After the conspiracy, the remaining Pazzi were rehabilitated and returned to Florence although they suffered the indignity of not being allowed to serve in government or take part in some of the more prestigious religious festivals.

The family name was likely derived from Pazzo ("the madman"), one of the first soldiers over the walls in the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, who brought away with him and returned to Florence a stone from the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. A member of the Pazzi family was accorded the privilege of striking a light from this stone on Holy Saturday when all fires in the city were extinguished, from which the altar light of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore would be annually rekindled, and from it all the domestic fires of Florence. The following day, Easter Day, a dove-shaped rocket would slide on a wire from above the high altar to an oxcart loaded with fireworks in the piazza. From the fireworks' explosion (the scoppio del carro or cart of the holy fire), sparks would be carried to the hearths of the city.

The conspiracy[link]

1479 drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of hanged Pazzi conspirator Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli

Less powerful than, and rivals of, the Medici, the Pazzi were caught up in a conspiracy to replace the Medici as rulers of Florence.

The Pazzi family were not the only instigators - the Salviati, Papal bankers in Florence, were at the center of the conspiracy. Pope Sixtus IV was an enemy of the Medici. He had purchased from Milan the lordship of Imola, a stronghold on the border between Papal and Tuscan territory that Lorenzo de' Medici wanted for Florence. The purchase was financed by the Pazzi bank, even though Francesco dei Pazzi had promised Lorenzo they would not aid the Pope. As a reward, Sixtus IV granted the Pazzi monopoly at the alum mines at Tolfa — alum being an essential mordant in dyeing in the textile trade that was central to the Florentine economy — and he assigned to the Pazzi bank lucrative rights to manage Papal revenues. Sixtus IV appointed his nephew, Girolamo Riario, as the new governor of Imola, and Francesco Salviati as archbishop of Pisa, a city that was a former commercial rival but now subject to Florence. Lorenzo had refused to permit Salviati to enter Pisa because of the challenge such an ecclesiastical position offered to his own government in Florence.

Salviati and Francesco de' Pazzi put together a plan to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici. Riario himself remained in Rome. The plan was widely known: the Pope was reported to have said, "I support it — as long as no one is killed." In 2004, an encrypted letter in the archives of the Ubaldini family was discovered by Marcello Simonetta, a historian then teaching at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and decoded. It revealed that Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, a renowned humanist and condottiere for the Papacy, was deeply embroiled in the conspiracy and had committed himself to position 600 troops outside Florence, waiting for the moment.

On Sunday, 26 April 1478, during High Mass at the Duomo before a crowd of 10,000, the Medici brothers were assaulted. Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed 19 times by Bernardo Bandi and Francesco de' Pazzi. As he bled to death on the cathedral floor, his brother Lorenzo escaped with serious, but non life-threatening wounds. Lorenzo reappeared shortly after, locked safely in the sacristy by the humanist Poliziano. A coordinated attempt to capture the Gonfaloniere and Signoria was thwarted when the archbishop and head of the Salviati clan were trapped in a room whose doors had a hidden latch. The coup d'état had failed, and the enraged Florentines seized and killed the conspirators. Jacopo de' Pazzi was tossed from a window. To finish him off, the mob dragged him naked through the streets, then threw him into the Arno River. The Pazzi family were stripped of their possessions in Florence, every vestige of their name effaced. Salviati was hanged on the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio. Although Lorenzo appealed to the crowd not to exact summary justice, many of the conspirators, as well as many people accused of being conspirators, were killed. Lorenzo did manage to save the nephew of Sixtus IV, Cardinal Raffaele Riario, who was almost certainly an innocent dupe of the conspirators, as well as two relatives of the conspirators. The main conspirators were hunted down throughout Italy and the fortunes of the various Pazzi companies across Europe were despoiled. The Pazzi crest and all references to their name were banned. In 1494, however, with the overthrow of Piero de' Medici, the Pazzi family, and many other political exiles, returned to Florence to participate in the popular government.

In the aftermath of the "Pazzi" conspiracy, Pope Sixtus IV placed Florence under interdict, forbidding Mass and communion, for the execution of the Salviati archbishop. Sixtus enlisted the traditional Papal military arm, the King of Naples, Ferdinand I, to attack Florence. With no help coming from Florence's traditional allies in Bologna and Milan, Lorenzo was faced with dire prospects and adopted an unorthodox course of action: he sailed to Naples and put himself in the hands of Don Ferrante (the king), in whose custody he remained for three months. Lorenzo's courage and charisma convinced Don Ferrante to support Lorenzo's attempts at brokering a peace and intercede, albeit ineffectually, with Sixtus IV.^[1]

The conspirators, Francesco de' Pazzi, Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli, Archbishop Salviati, Renato de' Pazzi, Messer Jacopo de' Pazzi, Antonio Maffei and Stefano de Bagnone, were depicted in a painting by Sandro Botticelli on either a wall of the Bargello or a wall of the Dogana, part of the government-complex. The Pope Alexander VI pressured Florence to remove these lifelike pictures, and they were eventually destroyed in 1494.^[2]

The Pazzi were able to return to Florence and participated in its public life, holding various political offices. One of the most famous members of the Pazzi family after the events surrounding the conspiracy and exile was Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, who became a Carmelite nun.

Pazzi Chapel[link]

Interior of the Pazzi Chapel

On another level, perhaps the greater mark on history left by the Pazzi is the Pazzi Chapel built under the direction of Filippo Brunelleschi in a discreet cloister of the Franciscan church, Santa Croce. After some early agreements, the chapel was begun in 1442. It is one of the incunabula of Renaissance architecture: severely restrained, made of pietra serena and white plaster, and unrelieved by color. A hemispherical dome (completed after Brunelleschi's death following his plans) caps a cubical sacristy for the Franciscan church: within it the Pazzi family were permitted to bury their dead.

Palazzo Pazzi (Palazzo Pazzi-Quaratesi)[link]

Palazzo Pazzi, showing the yellow-ochre sandstone pietra forte and stucco-surfaced architecture.

The main seat of the family, at canto Pazzi, where Borgo degli Albizi crosses the via del Proconsolo was rebuilt 1462–1472 for Jacopo de' Pazzi to designs by Giuliano da Maiano, the sculptor-architect favored by the family. Above its wholly traditional rusticated ground floor of the yellow-ochre sandstone Florentines call pietra forte it has a stuccoed facade in a new taste, with delicate designs round the windows in the manner associated with Brunelleschi. The central court is surrounded on three sides by round-headed arcading, with circular bosses in the spandrels.

Next to it is the smaller 16th-century three-story Palazzo Pazzi-Ammannati, rebuilt for Antonio Ramirez di Montalvo, housing Florence's small museum of natural history and host to temporary exhibitions. Its design is attributed to Bartolomeo Ammanati.

In fiction[link]

Works in Italian

Two members of the Pazzi family are placed in hell in Dante's Inferno, both in the circle of the traitors; The Divine Comedy's reference has nothing to do with the Pazzi Conspiracy, since it was written nearly 200 years earlier.

Vittorio Alfieri's drama La congiura de' Pazzi (first performance 1787, first published 1789) is a version of the story of the conspiracy as is Lorenzo Antonini's historical novel of 1877 with the same title.

Works in English

A Tabernacle for the Sun (2005), the first volume of Linda Proud's Botticelli Trilogy, tells the story of the Pazzi Conspiracy from the point of view of Tommaso de' Maffei, half-brother of one of the conspirators. After the sack of his native Volterra, Tommaso lives and works in the Palazzo de' Medici, hating Lorenzo but devoted to Giuliano. As his Roman relations begin to sound out his loyalties, Tommaso becomes embroiled in events which will tear him apart.

Thomas Harris's 1999 novel Hannibal features a character named Rinaldo Pazzi, a corrupt policeman descended from the Pazzi family. He is murdered and disemboweled by Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and then hung from the balcony of the Palazzo della Signoria, just as his famous ancestor was. In the 2001 film adaptation, he is played by Giancarlo Giannini.

A fictionalized version of the Pazzi conspiracy was the basis for the DC Comics Elseworlds story "Black Masterpiece" in Batman Annual #18, which features a Renaissance-era Batman and Leonardo da Vinci.

The Pazzi Conspiracy is the foundation for the book I, Mona Lisa, by Jeanne Kalogridis.

Primavera, a young adult novel by Mary Jane Beaufrand, tells the story of the Pazzi Conspiracy from the point of view of the youngest Pazzi daughter, Lorenza.

The 2009 video game Assassin's Creed II features a semi-fictional version of the Pazzi family and the Pazzi conspiracy, acting as early adversaries to the main character Ezio Auditore with an important role in the plot of the game. Unlike the historical account, only Francesco de' Pazzi was killed at the time of the coup's failure: Vieri had been killed during an invasion of San Gimignano by Auditore-aligned condottiero, and the rest (Jacopo de' Pazzi, de Bagnone, di Bandino Baroncelli, Maffei and Salviati) escaped Florence only to be hunted down and killed by Ezio over the next two years. After the death of Jacopo de' Pazzi, the fate of any remaining Pazzi relatives is left unmentioned, though five years later Rodrigo Borgia referred to the Pazzi as "destroyed." Also, for gameplay and technical reasons the assassination attempt was set outside the cathedral instead of inside.

Works in other languages

In 2007, the Spanish writer Susana Fortes wrote her sixth novel, Quattrocento, drawing on the recent discovery of the Duke of Urbino's involvement in the conspiracy.

The Czech writer Karel Schulz depicted members of the Pazzi family in his novel Kámen a bolest (The Stone and the Pain), which describes the Pazzi conspiracy.

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Tim Parks' review of Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici: a sketch of the subtleties and contradictions in the background to the "Pazzi conspiracy"
• Italy's Medici Murder Plot Solved: discusses a recently discovered piece of evidence showing the scale of the conspiracy
• Great Buildings on-line: Pazzi Chapel
• Pazzi Chapel: Brief description, with clear and evocative photos
• Susan and Joanna Horner, Walks in Florence and Its Environs (London 1873): Chapter xvii
• Narrative account, part of an on-line history of Quattrocento Florence
• Description of the Easter assassinations and other famous murders of the period
• Marcello Simonetta, The Montefeltro Conspiracy: A Renaissance Mystery Decoded: Doubleday website with slideshow of paintings and documents related to the Pazzi Conspiracy