Summary Of Constitutional Conspiracies: Rise And Fall Of The Medici

The Consequences of Constitutional Conspiracies
Rise and Fall of the Medici- Spring 2015
Marina Tanimoto
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Four significant and devastating conspiracies haunted Italy in the mid 15th century. The chapters ‘Conspiracy’ and ‘April Blood’ in the book April Blood by Lauro Martines cover the murder of Count Girolamo Riario in Forli, the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan, the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, and the attempted assassination of Lorenzo de’ Medici along with the successful murder of Giuliano de’ Medici. Each conspiracy occurred for different reasons, however despite the differences of the circumstances, each resulted in similarly bloody and horrendous deaths and conditions. Surprisingly,
The two men, Olgiati and Visconti, were gruesomely executed in the castle on January 2. They were torn apart alive, and later various body parts including the heads were displayed around the city. The heads remained until the 1490’s (Martines, 19). The conspiracy of Stefano Porcari “ended with a lesser show of blood than the butchery of Milan and Forli” (Martines, 21). Before the plan was actually put in motion, the Curia heard rumors of it and surrounded the house of the conspirators, hoping to arrest them and bring them to justice (Martines, 23). Porcari was found in his hiding spot and taken into captivity. After being questioned, he confessed to his entire plan and “on 9 January, clad entirely in ceremonial black, this would-be Tribune of the People was hanged from the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo” (Martines, 23). Unlike the other conspiracies, in the case of the attempted assassination of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the successful murder of Giuliano de’ Medici, the brain behind the
The scale of the destruction of course depends on the conspiracy. After the murder of Count Girolamo Riario in Forli, the poor father of Orsi brothers suffered in their place. The eighty-five year old man was captured, tied to the back of a horse and dragged around, face down, in the main piazza, then quartered. This happened after he was forced to watch his house be looted and then burned (Martines, 11). The destruction after the murder of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was considerably worse. The three men hadn’t thought about what to do after the murder. They knew the Milanese people had strong, negative feelings against the reign of Galeazzo Maria, but they were unsure if whether or not the Milanese people would defend them (Martines, 17). The men hadn’t planned well. They were simply driven by intense hatred as well as the desire for Milan to return to a Republic that they imagined a miracle resulting (Martines, 18). Giovanni Andrea, one of the conspirators’s servants was taken and tortured in order to tell who the conspirators were (Martines, 18). The members of each family were targeted by the city, arrested, accused of being apart of the conspiracy (Martines, 19). Even friends of the conspirators, eight of them, were hanged on January 8th (Martines, 20). After the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, many deaths took place similar to the other conspiracies. After