The Tigress of Forli by Elizabeth Lev Page A

hatred of the Medici family of Florence. Thus began the plot that would notoriously go down in history as the Pazzi conspiracy.
    Relations between Florence and the papacy had begun auspiciously, but by the time Caterina arrived in Rome, Lorenzo de' Medici, leader of the Medici clan, had earned the displeasure of the pope and his family. Following the election of Sixtus IV, the Medicis had held the lucrative position of papal bankers, and Lorenzo was angling for a cardinal's hat for his brother Giuliano, still a teenager. The relationship soured at the time of Girolamo's betrothal to Caterina, when the sale of Imola, the principal part of the Sforza bargain, almost fell through as a result of Lorenzo de' Medici's refusal to underwrite a loan for the pope. The infuriated pontiff turned to the other great banking family, the Pazzis, who promptly produced three quarters of the price. Both the pope and Girolamo realized that Lorenzo would be an obstacle to Girolamo's plan to form a state in Romagna, a region bordering on Tuscany. To thwart this expansion, Lorenzo further stoked the papal ire by providing armies to towns resisting Girolamo's mercenaries in that region.
    From Caterina's first days in the Riario household, Francesco de' Pazzi had been a familiar face in the master's apartments. The head of the Roman branch of the Pazzi bank, "Franceschino," as he was called, and his aristocratic family held a long-standing grudge against the Medicis. Envious of this upstart family, with no ancient nobility lending importance to their name, the Pazzis competed with the Medicis at every turn. By 1478, the Pazzis had convinced themselves, not without grounds, that Lorenzo was using his authority to block their endeavors. Franceschino was certain that if only the Medici brothers could be eliminated, Florence would turn to the Pazzi family for leadership. To that end, he had allied himself with an even more arriviste family, the Riarios, probably assuming that his new ally's power would disappear as soon as Girolamo's papal patron was deceased; therefore Riario would not be a serious menace for long.
    The third and most unsavory member of this conspiratorial trio was Archbishop Francesco Salviati. He also loathed the Medicis, and Salviati offered himself as a willing participant in any scheme that would undermine their rule. Pope Sixtus had appointed Salviati as archbishop of Pisa, home to a flourishing new university, despite numerous protests from the Florentines. At Pisa, the corrupt prelate would be able to foster anti-Medici support among impressionable students. The crafty Florentines, however, accepted the inevitable appointment but then invented enough obstacles to prevent the new archbishop from taking possession of his diocese for three years. Salviati spent that time in Rome, nursing his resentment, indulging his vices, and poisoning the papal court against the Medicis. Through his efforts, Giuliano's hopes for becoming a cardinal were definitively shelved.
    By early 1478, the plot was organized. The Pazzis would see to the assassination of the Medici brothers, and Girolamo would muster an army in Imola to put down any insurrection against the rule of the Pazzis. The plan now needed one final approval: that of the Pazzi family members in Florence. The go-ahead was slow in coming, for Jacopo de' Pazzi, head of the clan, was decidedly against the scheme. His son Guglielmo had married Lorenzo's sister Bianca and he thus had hopes of defeating the Medici family from within.
    The conspirators faced yet another stumbling block: their quarry. It was one thing to talk of killing Lorenzo and his brother, another to do so. Although Lorenzo was given to intellectual rather than physically robust pastimes, everyone in Florence remembered that he had single-handedly fought off an ambush and that his swift reflexes rendered him deadly with a sword. It would take a true professional to do away with him.
    The very man was already in Girolamo's