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The Pazzi family were not the instigators. The Salviati , Papal bankers in Florence, were at the center of the Florentine conspirators. Sixtus was an enemy of the Medici. He had purchased the lordship of Imola, a stronghold on the border between papal and Tuscan territory that Lorenzo 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 granted the Pazzi a 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 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 ordered Pisa to exclude Salviati from his see.
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 at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and decoded. It revealed that Federico da MontefeltroFederico da Montefeltro ( 1422 1482) was one of the most successful condottieri of the Italian Renaissance, a fighter for hire who created one of the great libraries, perhaps the largest of Italy after the Vatican, with his own team of scribes in his scri, Duke of UrbinoUrbino is a city in the Marche in Italy, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site with a great cultural history during the Renaissance as the seat of Federico da Montefeltro. It has retained some of its picturesque medieval aspect on steep sloping groun, a condottiere for the Papacy who was deeply embroiled in the conspiracy, promised to have 600 troops outside Florence, waiting for the moment.
On April 26, during High MassUntil the changes effected by the Second Vatican Council, a High Mass (as distinct from a Low Mass) was one celebrated by a priest, assisted by a Deacon and Subdeacon, with all the solemnity of chant, incense and full ceremonial. The distinction between t at the DuomoSanta Maria del Fiore (also known as the Duomo is Florence's cathedral, noted for its distinctive dome. Its name (which translates as "Saint Mary of the Flower") refers to the lily, symbol of Florence. The cathedral complex includes the Duomo, the baptist, Giuliano de' MediciGiuliano de' Medici ( 1453 26 April, 1478), second son of Piero de' Medici (the Gouty). As the opening stroke of the Pazzi Conspiracy, he was assassinated in the Duomo of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, by Franceso de' Pazzi and Bernardo Baroncelli. was stabbed by a gang that included a priest, and bled to death on the cathedral floor, while his brother Lorenzo escaped with a wound, locked safely in the sacristy by the humanist Poliziano . A coordinated attempt to capture the GonfaloniereA Gonfaloniere is a government post in medieval and renaissance Florence. He is one of the nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, which forms the government, the Signoria. He is the temporary standard-bearer of the Republic of Florence a and SignoriaThe Signoria was the government of medieval and renaissance Florence. Its nine members, the Priori, were chosen from the ranks of the guilds of the city: six of them from the major guilds, and two from the minor guilds. The ninth became the Gonfaloniere. was thwarted when the archbishop and the head of the Salviati clan were trapped in a room whose doors had a hidden latch. The coup d'etat failed. The enraged Florentines seized and killed the conspirators. Jacopo de' Pazzi was tossed from a window, finished off by the mob, and dragged naked through the streets and thrown into the Arno River. The Pazzi family were stripped of their possessions in Florence, every vestige of their name effaced. Salviati, though he was an archbishop, was hanged on the walls of the Palazzo della Signoria. 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 also killed. Lorenzo did manage to save the nephew of Sixtus IV, Cardinal Raffaele Riario , who was almost certainly an innocent dupe of the plotters, as well as two relatives of plotters. The main conspirators were hunted down all over Italy, but a wider retribution of Lorenzo, including hundreds of killings, is a myth.
In the actual aftermath of the so-called "Pazzi" conspiracy, the Della Rovere Pope 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, Ferrante, to attack Florence. With no help coming from Florence's traditional allies in Bologna and Milan, only skillful personal diplomacy by Lorenzo himself saved the day. He sailed to Naples and put himself in the hands of Ferrante, who held him captive for three months before releasing him with gifts. Lorenzo's courage and his Macchiavellian realpolitik showed Ferrante how the pope would turn against him if he were too successful in the north.