After Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated and Lorenzo de' Medici narrowly escaped with his life, the Pazzi family and its backers quickly moved. The reigning pope, Sixtus IV, had the Salvidia family manage the papal bank and excommunicated Lorenzo and all the Florentines who supported him, confiscating all the Medici family's property.
Also in 1478, this same pope approved Queen Isabella of Castile's establishment of the Inquisition.
According to Malfoy's records, the Church's main income at the time, aside from taxes such as tithes, came from alum and the sale of indulgences. Its expenses included the salaries of clergy, the costs of various ceremonies, the Sistine Chapel, and military spending on the Reconquista.
Yes, that very Sistine Chapel later used for papal elections and where Michelangelo painted the ceiling. However, Sixtus IV had built it according to the standards of a papal sanctuary.
Italians and the Ottomans had always done business, and Lorenzo did not conceal this after regaining power in Florence. It was precisely because of this connection that, after the murderer who stabbed Giuliano fled to Istanbul, the Sultan had him trussed up and sent back to Florence, where he was hanged. Leonardo da Vinci even sketched the scene.
According to historical records, Leonardo da Vinci had already begun dissecting human bodies while studying in Verrocchio's workshop. Or rather, human dissection was no longer anything new in Florence at the time.
Yet compared with such heretical acts, what angered Pope Sixtus IV even more was Lorenzo's opposition to his appointment of a cardinal surnamed Salvidia as Pisa's cardinal. Though Pisa was an independent republic, it lay within Florence's sphere of influence.
The pope's threats included stripping Florence of its ecclesiastical authority, but because the Florentine citizens and monks collectively refused, the threat was never carried out.
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