1514 Birth of an assassin
The Medici family dominated the political life of Florence for centuries, sometimes well, sometimes not so well. At times they were beloved by Florentines and other occasions they were expelled for their misrule. The family produced some great rulers such as Cosimo, the dynasty’s founder, and Lorenzo the Magnificent as well as a host of popes; it also gave history notable losers such as Alessandro “il Moro” and his killer Lorenzino.
Lorenzino was a member of a lesser branch of the family and was raised outside of Florence in a Tuscan villa and Venice. As a teenager he was involved in a serious act of vandalism in Rome and his character was not improved when he moved to Florence and became a companion of Alessandro de Medici, the young Duke of the city. Both became known for riotous living and both came to be unpopular figures in the eyes of influential Florentines. At some point the two quarreled and Lorenzino decided to murder his cousin.
On the evening of Epiphany, 1537 Alessandro was lured to a palace apartment under the impression that Lorenzino had arranged a sexual encounter with his aunt Caterina Soderin “a young woman of marvelous beauty, no less chaste than beautiful”. Unarmed and unsuspecting, Alessandro was knifed to death by Lorenzino and an accomplice, despite nearly biting off one of his assailant’s fingers. Lorenzino fled and wrote a book which declared that he had murdered the duke in order to restore republican government to Florence.
Some hailed him as a virtuous tyrannicide and compared him to Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. Others were bent on revenge, forcing Lorenzino to spend the rest of his life in exile looking over his shoulder, as a contemporary explained, “dying neither night or day, he died a thousand times both night and day, not of a dagger or poison, but of remorse and shame.” In February 1548 he was killed by two thugs commissioned by no less a figure than Emperor Charles V, whose daughter was the widow of Alessandro.