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brother-emperors · 1 year

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i fully consider you the italian renaissance guy so i am going to ask you this because i’m genuinely curious <3 do you have Thoughts on the pazzi conspiracy…… i have sooo many tbh it makes me really crazy <333 i read this book about caesar’s assassination a while back and it said something along the lines of “Why were the conspirators apparently surprised by the panic their deed caused in the city?” and i think about that every time i think about the pazzi conspiracy…. the parallels between classical/late republican conspiracies and the ones present in the italian renaissance era…… aughhhh it’s. 😵‍💫

thank you, but I am merely standing on the shoulders of the work of all the other italian renaissance guys (gender neutral) who came before me!!

that said I have so many thoughts about the Pazzi conspiracy, the Pazzi conspiracy my beloved, my best friend, my most ardent love, I'm obsessed with it. hashtag Francesco de' Pazzi apologist etc etc

It has EVERYTHING it shows that people did not sit idle in the shadow of Medici power, the politics of banking and generational humiliation, it has cannibalism, it has such hate that the act of retaliation cannot simply be exile and death their memory must be wiped out too, faces removed from portraits, it has a private affair (conspiracy) being made public (the assassination) and the failure to control the immediate aftermath (everything is an echo of the Ides of March assassination but worse, and also the Pazzi conspiracy in a larger discussion of renaissance assassinations and conspiracies? Stefano Porcari, I'm sending you flowers), there's the whole thing with churches as a bloody theatre for spectacles of violence: Galeazzo Maria Sforza, killed on a feast day, the Pazzi planning assassination during a High Mass, the way potential assassins cower under the eye of God and refuse to spill blood on sacred ground but a priest has no such fear.

it's also got that dramatic and tragic foreshadowing, like god, it has it all, I think about this part out of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories constantly

Lorenzo, flushed with youth and power, would assume the direction of everything, and resolved that all transactions should bear an impress of his influence. The Pazzi, with their nobility and wealth unable to endure so many affronts, began to devise some means of vengeance. The first who spoke of any attempt against the Medici, was Francesco, who, being more sensitive and resolute than the others, determined either to obtain what was withheld from him, or lose what he still possessed.

it's all or nothing, baby! (admittedly this overlaps into an adjacent category into a larger discourse on morality and personality with political slander in pro-Medici works regarding the Pazzi, Pontano has a similar line about Orsini, but I think it's fun! bite chomp kill away, Francesco)

this is not to imply that Machiavelli was a pro-Medici writer (imo it's a lot more complex than that), Poliziano attributes this Do or Die trait to Francesco, and Machiavelli was writing after Poliziano. Machiavelli and conspiracies is a whole topic on it's own, it's just that Machiavelli's writings live rent free in my head and I'll always reference them first. like. every time I think about failed conspiracies that cycle to tragedy, I think about Machiavelli's commentary on power in Discourses on Livy, about how one must slay the sons of Brutus too, and how inevitably, this genre of conspirators always opt for less bloodshed, which always leads to their own demise.

there's this fascinating topic of Greek narratives as a mold for Roman biographies in regards to Plutarch's Lives, and there's something similar going on with the Pazzi, Sallust and Suetonius, and Poliziano's Commentarium that compels me too, ngl.

on the topic of the Commentarium, tho

Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy, Marta Celati

the Pazzi conspirators 🤝 the Ides of March conspirators

In a larger historical dialogue, I think Medici retaliation for the assassination really highlights the later violence that the Medici will inflict on a much larger scale in the 1530 siege of Florence. it's like, the Pazzi are the most obvious crack in the Medici facade.

April Blood, Lauro Martines

The Medici, Mary Hollingsworth

oh boy, this is getting out of hand, but to go back to what you mentioned about Caesar and failed conspiracies, I'm thinking again about Machiavelli (this time his chapter on Conspiracies in Discourses in addition to the You Must Kill The Sons Of Brutus line. Like, you must also slay the sons of Brutus, but no one wants to do it!!!!). time is a flat circle for real, tragic repetitions all the way down 😔

#ask tag #long post #like oh my god did this get long good grief #italian renaissance tag

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