tioning the Riarii
and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia,
quae circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It
was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused
Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of
abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year.

The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the
Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the
Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year
1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi
family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had
driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his
banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with
Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political
reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy
the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in
Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their
views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a
plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private
foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well
affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was
to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the
young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then
proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed
in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of
blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate
Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1]
The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place
selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was
to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced
Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat
of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen,
arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before
the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the _religio loci_
dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such
silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was
found, who, _being a priest_, was more accu