As bankers, the Pazzi were noted for their enterprise generally, and for
their competition with the Medici in particular. They had agencies in
all the chief cities of Europe and the East, but their reputation for
avarice and sharp dealing was proverbial. Perhaps no family was quite so
unpopular in Florence. Their traditions were aristocratic, whilst the
Medici were champions of the people.

This distinction was referred to by Madonna Alessandra Macinghi di
Matteo degli Strozzi, in one of her letters to her son Filippo, at
Naples. "I must bid you remember," she wrote, "that those who are upon
the side of the Medici have always done well, whilst those who belong
to the Pazzi, the contrary. So I pray you be on your guard."

The growing importance of the Pazzi gave Piero and Lucrezia de' Medici
much uneasiness, and it is quite certain that the marriage of their
eldest daughter, Bianca--"Piero's tall daughter" as she was called--to
the eldest of the three brothers, was a stroke of domestic policy by way
of controlling the race for wealth and power.

Lorenzo, very soon after his accession to the Headship of the State,
"took the bull by the horns" and excluded the Pazzi from participation
in public office. It was an extreme measure and not in accordance with
his usual tact and circumspection, and of course it produced the
greatest ill-will and resentment against him and his administration in
every member of the proscribed family.

The situation became greatly embittered when, in 1477, Lorenzo
interfered in a law-suit which concerned the marriage dower and
inheritance of Beatrice, the daughter of Giovanni Buonromeo. By