Patterns of Conspiracy and Assassination in Renaissance Italy

The consequences of a subtle, or indeed unsubtle blade have, throughout history, been as telling as any declaration of war or the rise of a specific institution or philosophy: not least to the person in to whom that blade was plunged. This is certainly true for Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Described by recent commentators as ‘an age of conspiracy’ and the ‘golden age of the conspirator’, it seems clear that contemporaries also noted the recurrence of, and probably the apparent similarities between, conspiracies and assassination attempts. This book discusses some of the commonalities and themes between several assassinations which took place in Renaissance Italy.