573. The Medici: Lorenzo the Magnificent (Part 2)

Citizens of San Germiniano, heed well my words. You must repent, repent and seek forgiveness, for your wicked ways have incurred the wrath of a demon. Summoned by your sins he now walks our world, cloaked in shadow and darkness. And everywhere he treads, death follows. Why, you ask?

Because you have strayed and sacrificed your liberty to that wretch, Lorenzo de' Medici. You are puppets, enslaved by purse strings, won over by poisonous words, you have lost your virtue, you have lost your dignity, you have lost your faith, and this draws the demons into feed, and feed they will. So that was a priest called Antonio Maffei addressing the people of San Germiniano in Tuscany, and it is a speech that follows one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Renaissance, perhaps indeed in all Italian history. And that is the Pazzi conspiracy, which was a plot to murder Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is head of the Medici family, during high mass in the cathedral, the Duomo, in Florence on the 26th of April, 1478.

And People alert to the nuances and rhetorical rhythms of Florentine rhetoric in the 15th century may be wondering whether that speech was actually made by Antonio Maffei or whether it was made up very possibly for a computer game. So Dominic, what's the answer? Because that doesn't sound genuine to me. It's not genuine, Tom.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (56 minutes, 10,271 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.