2 papal staffs
i finally got around to trying the smash attack approach to get the papal staff:
http://www.thehiddenblade.com/how-wield-papal-staff-against-rodrigo-borgia
http://www.thehiddenblade.com/disarming-rodrigo-borgia-papal-staff
i used a different technique to get a smash weapon that is very easy. here are the instructions:
poison a brute (i like the 2nd one on the right) and climb back to the room entrance above. wait for the brute to fall to the ground and drop his weapon (but not die). then quickly leave area to stop modelling the room before the brute dies. when you return, the room is reinitialized, and the poisoned brute is restored as if nothing happened. since the brute never died, the civilians all remain in place. now you can just blend with the crowd and pick up the heavy weapon that was left behind from the previous incarnation of the brute. walk to the front of the room and kill borgia (with a gun for example). the heavy weapon will be on the floor after the cutscene. use the charged smash attack and get the staff. after fighting borgia, you can grab the staff again and work your way to the vault, just like stab shows at the end of the video.
if you approach the pit from the right location, you can get all the way to the rim of the pit before the cutscene starts. in the cutscene, ezio is teleported into the pit without the staff, but the staff falls into the pit, too, since ezio was at the edge of the pit when he teleported. fight borgia again, but try to keep an eye on the floor to see if you can find the staff. since your feet can kick the staff around while its on the floor, try to avoid fighting in that area. after the last cutscene with borgia, a new staff is spawned in the middle of the pit. find the original staff on the floor and kick it around until you get it next to the new one. (you'll need to be careful since the staff can get stuck at the edge of the pit if you kick the wrong way.) take a picture! woohoo! 2 staffs!
sorry - you cant pick up the staff when you are in the pit.
based on some comments from others, i had originally thought you needed to pick up the brute's weapon in order to use it after the cutscene. now that i think about it some more, i dont think thats necessary. you can prob just poison a brute, wait for him to drop the weapon, and then shoot/stab borgia. i suspect the dropped weapon will still be available after the cutscene... this make for a very easy way to get a heavy weapon for disarming.
yup. it works. very easy.
Haha, very interesting, Ian! Too bad you can't dual wield. Or single wield in the pit, for that matter 
Lol, I can't believe Ubi never foresaw disarming.
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."- Winston Churchhill
"Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you