The Life of Pope Leo X in Four Books

Nothing was more atrocious than that spectacle, for since the frequent windows of the Curia were not enough for tying the nooses, so that there might be a more ready place for the punishments of those following, the ropes of those previously thrown down and dying were cut, so that the Magistrate left the corpses of the parricides in place of supreme punishment to be dragged by hooks by the angry multitude and thrown into the flowing river Arno. Laurentius, in the bitterness of such a sudden event, was most solicitous for the safety of Cardinal Riarius and scarcely obtained that he, who had fled to the high altar, should be spared, because he judged that on account of his youth and simplicity of nature the counsel of such a great thing had by no means been entrusted to him, and at the same time so that in the name of that benefit he might eventually redeem the will of the very hostile Pontiff. Two days later, by the equal zeal and diligence of the men of the mountains, they were pulled back from flight on the highest ridges of the Apennines. Montesecco and Iacobus Pazzi, the princes of that family in dignity and wealth, who, upon the opening of the conspiracy, were subjected to the examination of the question, bore the same fortune of the foulest punishment and all indignities. Only Montesecco, who had been destined for the slaughter of Laurentius, earned a milder form of punishment and burial because he had entirely denied that he would strike a man endowed with divine virtue in the sight of the immortal Gods before the altars. Indeed, Laurentius had a little earlier softened the spirit of Montesecco with very humane and liberal speech, and had promised him his industry and wealth so kindly if he wanted to redeem certain castles in the Apennines that had been of the Monteseccos, so that he, having changed his will, had gone away bound to him in a wondrous way. Whence it is now established, according to a famous precept in every action of life, that nothing is more wholesome in a prince, and more outstanding for praise, than to have dismissed even men of the lowest fortune from oneself with humane responses. Finally, the funeral of Iulianus was celebrated with the greatest mourning of the whole people, who cursed the name of the Pazzi and the Salviati at the same time. For there was in that youth a singular humanity joined with outstanding liberality, by which he had acquired incredible benevolence for himself from men of all ages and orders. About the thirty-second day, a posthumous son was born to him named Iulius, not only in the lines of his face but in his whole bodily habit very similar to him. Who later, having received the name Clemens Septimus, after the death of Adrianus, attained the supreme pontificate. So that we may think the fortune of mortals is dispensed and ruled by divine reason and justice rather than by any force or the unfair lot of a more hidden Fate, since the Gods themselves compelled not only those whom no power of men, no shame of posterity, no respect for sacred things could retard from a conceived nefarious crime to pay the deserved penalties of punishment, but also willed the children of those very brothers who were sought with drawn daggers before the altars to be born for the pinnacle of supreme dignity. Not long after, Laurentius, with his wound still bound, held a long speech to the citizens, in which he abundantly testified to his innocence by recalling the duties of his perpetual leniency, modesty, and liberality toward all.