Medici

Episode 1

Survival

Fri, May 1, 202051 mins

Pope Sixtus IV, instigated by his ambitious, warlike cousin Girolamo Riario , has an army ready to invade Florence, where moral is shattered by collective excommunication, which the Tuscan bishops dare not overrule. Lorenzo refuses to go beg in Rome for peace and papal absolution, fearing imprisonment, but enables a crucial prisoner exchange by releasing cardinal-nepote Raffaele, yet when Carlo de' Medici is released form papal jail, horsemen murder him on the way home. Meanwhile Lorenzo relaxes his initial doubts about the boy being accepted by his female household kin as Giulio, bastard of the late Giuliano who escaped by clerical help the murder of his mother by Riario's henchmen. Little notice is taken of Florentine 'prophet' Savonarola, while pious charity declines and misery mounts.