Pazzi family
On Holy Saturday a dove whizzes from the altar of the cathedral in Florence, down the nave and into the ox-drawn 'carro', laden with fireworks, waiting outside. Legend has it that the resulting explosions commemorate the sparks created by stones brought back from the Holy Sepulchre by a Pazzi knight who had accompanied the First Crusade. Certainly family hauteur contributed to the animosity felt by this always noble and, since c. 1400, prosperous banking family towards the Medici. Fortified by the tacit support of the most important client of their bank, Pope Sixtus IV, who was also anxious to see the fall of Medicean ascendancy, Francesco and Girolamo in 1478 organized a plot to assassinate Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano in front of that same altar after Mass. Though Giuliano was stabbed to death, Lorenzo escaped; the Florentines paid no heed to the urging of the conspirators towards revolt and the Pazzi were virtually submerged by a wave of executions and sentences of exile. Though individual members of the family acquired some prominence again in the 16th century, 1478 ended their prominence as a clan.
