Reprisals
The outrage of the blood spilled in the cathedral and reaction to the failed coup d'etat came quickly ...
The Signoria formed the conclave of the feared "Eight" - a government body responsible for investigating and prosecuting political crimes - Lorenzo de' Medici was summoned and was the first sworn into this office. It was decided that the ordinary rule of law was suspended - there would be no trials. Justice would be swift, severe and would be carried out by the Signoria and the Eight.
Archbishop Salviati's men, trapped within the room on the main floor of the government palace were taken to the tower and thrown out of windows, their bodies smashing onto the flagstones below. Their corpses were stripped of their clothes and hacked apart by the gathering crowd of infuriated Florentines.
Armed friends of the Medici broke open the doors of the Pazzi Palace and dragged a naked Francesco de' Pazzi to the Palazzo della Signoria where he was questioned along with Archbishop Salviati and Jacopo Bracciolini by the Eight.
Shortly thereafter, Bracciolini was tossed out a tower window with a noose around his neck, his body left there on view. An hour later, Francesco de' Pazzi, still naked and bleeding was also hanged from a government tower window. After making a full confession, Archbishop Salviati and his brother, Jacopo Salviati were also thrown from tower windows to strangle at the end of ropes for their crimes. As he twisted and struggled in his noose beside the body of Francesco de' Pazzi, Archbishop Salviati sunk his teeth into the chest of his co-conspirator and clung there even after death - a surreal and macabre act of a desperate dying man that was talked about in Florence for years afterward
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Sixty to eighty conspirators, mercenaries, and soldiers where hanged that day at either the Palazzo della Signoria or the Bargello - the fortress housing Florence's Chief Magistrate and Police Official.
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Lorenzo appeared at a second story window and appealed to his fellow citizens for calm. He had sent a letter to the Duke of Milan, appealing for help and informing him of Giuliano's murder and his own survival.
As the evening wore on, Lorenzo received a visit from his sister Bianca who begged that her husband, Guglielmo de' Pazzi's life be spared. Lorenzo gave Guglielmo and his sister sanctuary in the Medici Palace until the Signoria sent an order that the Pazzi husband be banished from Florence. This same order expelled Jacopo Bracciolini's two brothers.
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The young Cardinal, Raffaele Sansoni Riario was taken into custody and questioned. Considering that so many conspirators had come from his "entourage", the legitimacy of the Signoria and the Eight to only punish the guilty was proved in that the Cardinal's life was spared. He was innocent, but the mood of the populace of Florence was such that to release him would have risked he be injured or murdered, judged by popular opinion to be guilty by association.
The Cardinal remained in custody until he was released on June 4, and discretely escorted out of Florence and then to Rome.
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On Monday, April 27, Giovan Battista's crossbowmen and several of his knights were hung from government windows. Once dead, their bodies were cut down, stripped naked and displayed outside the shops of notaries at the palace of the Podesta - a warning to all who may harbour criminal ideas.
Also on April 27, Messr Jacopo de' Pazzi and his armed men were surrounded by the citizens of Castagno di San Godenza . Jacopo was captured after a bloody encounter and offered his captors seven gold Florin to let him commit suicide. The citizens denied him this mercy and instead beat him so badly he could not walk. Turned over to the guardsmen of the Eight, he was returned to Florence on April 28 where he made a full confession, lamenting his choice to side with his nephew in the conspiracy. He was then hung from the same window as Francesco de' Pazzi and Archbishop Salviati. But instead of his body being cut down and thrown to the piazza below to be desecrated like his nephew and the Archbishop, Jacopo was given the dignity of a proper burial at Santa Croce.
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Caught on April 28, while fleeing Florence, Giovan Battista wrote a confession of the entire plot, including highly detailed accounts of the meetings he attended with the Pazzis, Archbishop Salviati, Count Riario, and the Pope. This confession and his earlier refusal to take part in a murder within the cathedral, was seen by the Signoria and the Eight as evidence that he was a man of honour and respect. He was therefore saved the indignity of a public hanging in the piazza and instead was beheaded on May 4th at the doors of the Bargello.
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Antonio Maffei and Stefano da Bagnone, the two priests who attempted to murder Lorenzo, had found refuge with the Benedictine monks of the Badia Fiorentina across the street from the Pazzi Palace. They were arrested by city guardsmen on May 3, and turned over without ears or noses to the Signoria and the Eight who summarily hung them from the Palazzo della Signoria tower.
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The reprisals against the Pazzi family did not end at the swift justice meted out by the Signoria and the Eight against the main conspirators. All Pazzi assets were seized, and declarations made that all who the Pazzi owed money to were to present their accounts to the Eight for reimbursement. The Pazzi heraldic device was smashed or removed wherever it was found. The traditional Pazzi family Easter "sacred fire" ritual was decreed by the Signoria to be banned forthwith and forever. Surviving Pazzi men were sentenced to life imprisonment in the tower prison of Volterra; others were sent into permanent exile; no man related to the Pazzi through marriage could hold public office and was considered persona-non-grata. To further the shame against the Pazzi and their co-conspirators, Sandro Botticelli was commissioned by the Eight to paint life-sized portraits of the hanged "traitors" on the Dogana, including Messr Jacopo, Francesco, and Renato de' Pazzi, Archbishop Salviati, Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, and Jacopo Bracciolini among others.
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As for Lorenzo, right on the heels of almost losing his life and having to mourn the loss of his younger brother amidst the sudden madness of government investigations and hangings, his troubles were just beginning. Despite his firm statements that he'd wanted "the death of no man". Pope Sixtus IV raged when he learned that Lorenzo yet lived.
Next: The Pope's Fury