The Medici Didn't Just Lend To Popes. They BECAME Them, And Christendom Paid The BILL

The Medici Didn't Just Lend To Popes. They BECAME Them, And Christendom Paid The BILL The official story is a pleasant one. A family of Florentine bankers grew rich, loved beautiful things, paid for the Renaissance, and gave the Church two popes. The ledgers tell it differently. In fourteen nineteen, a deposed pope knelt in Florence after years in a German prison, and a quiet banker named Giovanni di Bicci had arranged the ransom. When the man died, the Medici oversaw a tomb by Donatello in the Baptistery and let the marble call him pope. Fifty-nine years later, on Easter Sunday, a pope's nephew and an archbishop sent killers into Florence Cathedral. Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed nineteen times at the altar. His son, born a month later, grew up to sit on the papal throne. By then the bank was gone, and the family no longer lent to popes. It produced them. One word on that first tomb still says what the Church spent five hundred years deciding. Chapters: 00:00 — A Pope on His Knees 02:35 — ACT I — THE RISE 07:11 — ACT II — THE FACADE 11:22 — ACT III — THE CRACK 17:33 — ACT IV — THE RECKONING 21:09 — ACT V — THE AFTERMATH Source Material Visual material used in this production is obtained from publicly accessible archives, including Wikimedia Commons, Europeana and the Deutsche Fotothek. Copyright & Fair Use Notice This channel incorporates copyrighted material under the principles of Fair Use as recognized by U.S. law. Under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, certain uses of copyrighted works such as for analysis, commentary, educational purposes, research, and reporting are permitted without prior authorization from the copyright holder. Sources Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 — https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monog... Tomb of Antipope John XXIII, Florence Baptistery — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of... Britannica, Pazzi conspiracy — https://www.britannica.com/event/Pazz... Britannica, Sack of Rome (1527) — https://www.britannica.com/event/Sack... Pope John numbering and the 1958 conclave — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Jo... #documentary #history #Medici #Renaissance