Savannah's Europe News

"Murder at the Vatican." History Today, Oct. 2017, pp. 56-67.

“Murder at the Vatican” describes the alleged poisoning of the pope by five cardinals, and the speculation about whether the allegations or true or the cardinals were framed. Some think that the pope unfairly took advantage of his attempted murderer. The pope became ill not long after the Medici family fell. This spurred accusations of the cardinals because they supposedly had the motive that they resented losing the Medici family. One of these cardinals, Alfonso Petrucci, was strangled in his cell as execution. The other cardinals were not executed because their families were able to convince the prison not to. Although Petrucci confessed, the confession was only a result of torture and there is evidence to show that his words were spun a certain way to depict his guiltiness. This magazine excerpt relates to what we learned in class because we learned about the rise and fall of the Medici and how much power they had because of their banking business. We also learned about the power of the pope, which is definitely shown in this article through his demonstration of judicial power. Along with this, the article shows how historians have trouble in cases like this where there is no hard evidence to show if a person was guilty or not, and they can only make speculations about what truly happened. This is more evidence to show that history can be based on a person’s interpretation, which we learned about in class.