Treasures from the Archive – Following the Tracks of a Medici Murder - December 2009

Following the Tracks of a Medici Murder

Who concocted the plan to murder Lorenzino de’ Medici? Who gave the order to kill him, and why? After stabbing Duke Alessandro de’ Medici to death in 1537, Lorenzino---also known as “Lorenzaccio”---fled Florence and was eventually tracked down and murdered in Venice in 1548. For centuries historians have assumed that Cosimo I de’ Medici was behind the deed. My investigation of archival documents led me on a journey which uncovered a very different story. This journey began with the Medici Granducal Archives.

When Lorenzino was found dead, stabbed by two hired killers, everybody assumed that the murder had been commissioned by Duke Cosimo to avenge his predecessor. Giovan Francesco Lottini, a ruthless agent of Cosimo’s, had just arrived in Venice and was considered to be in charge of this operation. While reading the volume of correspondence from Venice to Cosimo that was written before and after Lorenzino’s murder, I noticed a number of contradictions. Above all, there was no evidence that Lottini was involved with the Lorenzino affair. It was no simple task to make sense of the numerous missives arriving from Venice, especially since all the envoys wrote in cipher. Finding the code used by Venetian agents to cipher and decipher the letters was my only solution.

I was lucky. In another section of the Archivio di Stato in Florence, I found the codes used by the three Florentine envoys from that period. This was not so straightforward since every agent in Europe working for the Duke utilized different codes, whose numerical sequence was changed constantly. Once these codes were cracked, everything became clear. Giovan Francesco Lottini had nothing to do with this murder, despite what historians had been stating for five centuries.

If Lottini was not responsible, who was? I first directed my attention to other Medici envoys in Venice, since nobody had ever challenged the Duke’s culpability for the murder. In order to gain a broader picture, aside for examining letters from Venice during this period, I also studied the correspondence with other courts from 1537 to 1548.

It was hard work, but it proved worthwhile. I ran across unknown documents, which painted a very different picture of the political relationships behind the scenes. Cosimo was no longer the pitiless avenger depicted by later historians. While numerous letters urged the Duke to have Lorenzino killed, Cosimo did almost nothing. The man tirelessly seeking revenge for the murder of Alessandro was the same man who had both Cosimo and the destiny of Europe under his thumb: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V von Habsburg.

Charles V had one very strong motive to eliminate Lorenzino. Alessandro was his son-in-law, through his marriage to the Emperor’s daughter Margaret. The extant (and abundant) correspondence indicated that the Emperor was outraged by Lorenzino’s act. As Cosimo ignored Charles V’s commands, it became apparent to me how the Emperor decided to take matters into his own hands.

Having ascertained that Cosimo was not implicated, I set out to prove Charles V’s guilt. This archival impasse could not be resolved at the Archivio in Florence. After following a number of leads that took me to Milan, Mantua, and Venice, I needed to find the dispatches between the Emperor and his envoys in Italy. I immediately jumped on a plane to Spain.

The Archivo General in Simancas, located in a fairytale castle near Valladolid, houses a wealth of Spanish imperial documents. It was not easy to find my way around a new archive and to sift through thousands of letters written in Spanish. However, I managed to find the correspondence between Charles V and his ambassador in Venice, uncovering traces of an indefatigable manhunt for Lorenzino. It was clear that the Emperor started to pursue the killer soon after the 1537 murder. Eleven years later, he gave the final order for the assassination of the fugitive.

I had found the ‘smoking gun’ proving the Emperor’s responsibility. Now the story of Cosimo’s vendetta and Lottini’s involvement has to be completely rewritten. The man behind Lorenzino’s death was not Alessandro’s successor Cosimo, but Alessandro’s father-in-law. The real culprit had been hiding in clear view for five centuries. Thanks to documentary evidence, I can safely say the case is closed.

Stefano Dall’Aglio is a Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena Fellow at the Medici Archive Project. His book Il filosofo tirannici da: esilio e morte di Lorenzino de’ Medici (1537-1548) as well as the English translation of his Savonarola e il Savonarolismo will be published in 2010.