Eastertide flows with blood as Renaissance rivalries turn deadly
26 APRIL 1478
On Easter Sunday 1478, the citizens of Florence gathered inside the city’s Duomo for High Mass. Among those present were the scions of the city’s foremost banking family, the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici. But as the congregation bowed their heads, two assassins sensed their opportunity and pounced.
Over the next few, frantic minutes, Francesco de Pazzi and Bernardo Baroncelli attacked the Medici siblings with daggers, leaving Giuliano dying on the floor with 19 separate injuries. Meanwhile, Lorenzo – though wounded – managed to flee the pandemonium and escape to safety.
The roots of the attack lay in the complex politics of Renaissance Italy. Made up of several rival city states, the peninsula was a hotbed of economic and political intrigue, with numerous dynasties manoeuvring to consolidate their powerbases. Among them was the Medici, who used their wealth to strengthen their control over the Republic of Florence.
Yet the accession of Sixtus IV to the papacy in 1471 put the initial stages of an anti-Medici conspiracy into motion. After installing his relatives as cardinals and bishops, the pontiff aspired to expand his Papal States by purchasing the town of Imola from the Duchy of Milan. To do this, he realised he would have to engineer a marriage between his nephew, Girolamo Riario, and Caterina Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan.
But when the Medici Bank
