The Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE CHURCH OVER-TRIUMPHANT

In the week before Easter 1478, a group of would-be assassins arrived in Florence: their intended victims were two of the Medici family: Lorenzo - already called the Magnificent - and his younger brother Giuliano. The plotters included the Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, and two leading bankers of Florence, Francesco de’ Pazzi and Bernardo Baroncelli. And in Rome, providing moral support for the plot, was the pope, Sixtus IV.

The notion of a pope and an archbishop being involved in a murder plot strikes us as startling: in the fifteenth century it was almost commonplace. The pope was, in effect, the Roman emperor, the Caesar. With enormous revenues flowing in from all over the civilised world, he built palaces, employed great artists, hired armies, poisoned rivals, fathered bastards and gave away important Church appointments to members of his family. Italy was full of rival cities that tried to gobble up all the small towns in their area; the popes made sure that Rome did her share of the gobbling. This is partly what had caused the present coolness between the pope and Lorenzo de’ Medici. They both wanted a little town called Imola, which happened to be under the protection of the duke of Milan; the duke had promised it to Lorenzo. Then the pope bribed the duke with an advantageous marriage between his own nephew and the duke’s bastard daughter; so Imola became part of the Papal States. Lorenzo took it philosophically - he was that kind of a man. But he got his own back when the Archbishop of Florence died and the pope wanted to appoint one of his favourites, Francesco Salviati. Lorenzo blocked the appointment and gave it to his own brother-in-law; Salviati had to be contented with a second best - Pisa.

The Medicis were, of course, the leading family of bankers in Florence, although their chief rivals were the Pazzis. The Pazzis were popular with the common people of Florence, but not quite as popular as the Medicis, who were naturally friendly and democratic. When the pope was trying to raise the cash to buy Imola, Lorenzo de’ Medici asked the Pazzis not to lend him any money. He thought he could trust their loyalty. Instead, Francesco de’ Pazzi went straight to the pope and told him what Lorenzo had suggested. As a result, the pope got his money, and the papal bank account was transferred from the house of Medici to that of Pazzi.

Lorenzo now made the mistake that almost cost him his life. He was young and impulsive, and irritated by Francesco’s treachery. A rich man called Giovanni Borromeo was on his death bed; he had no sons, but his daughter was married to a Pazzi. Lorenzo quickly passed a law that said male heirs should be preferred over females; the result was that his own nephews inherited Borromeo’s fortune. And it was at this point that the pope and his nephews (the Riario family, who also hated the Medicis) and

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