Sixtus IV., however, might probably have maintained his rancour for some time longer had not an alarming historical portent taken place which threw all Italy into commotion. Mahomet II., the conqueror of Constantinople, who had threatened to replace the cross by the crescent on the summit of Saint Peter, and to make his horse eat oats upon its altar, after having failed to capture Rhodes by a sudden coup de main, took possession of Otranto; and his soldiers ravaged the adjoining Neapolitan dominions with that horrible cruelty for which Turkish troops have ever been remarkable. This untoward event happened at a crisis so seemingly singular and so fortunate for his own affairs, that Lorenzo was accused of having had some share in its contrivance. For such a supposition, however, there were no grounds, although friendly messages had on a former occasion been interchanged between himself and the Sultan. Pope Sixtus IV. is said, on the first shock of the news of the Turkish descent, to have meditated again transferring the seat of the Papacy to Avignon. What is more certain is, that Ferrante immediately withdrew his son, the Duke of Calabria, from the Sienese district, where he was evidently scheming to establish for himself an independent principality, and sent round among all the states and princes of Italy for assistance; and the Pope also intimated to the Florentines that he was willing to grant them peace and absolution if they would plead for it with proper submission. The end was that the Florentines obtained an honourable peace, and, as Machiavelli relates, The citizens praised Lorenzo extravagantly, declaring that by his prudence he ' had recovered in peace what unfavourable events had taken 'from them in war, and that by his discretion and judgment ' he had done more than the enemy with all the force of their ' arms.'

Not long afterwards Sixtus IV. died. The conclusion of the peace was said to have killed him.

'Audito tantum nomine pacis obit.'

The turbulent Pope, however, ended his days amid scenes of violence and confusion which might have gratified him with endless prospects of civil war at home. The citizens divided into two hostile camps between the Colonna and the Orsini ; palaces and shrines were stormed and sacked, the streets flowed with blood, and it was with difficulty arrangements were made to hold the conclave which elected Giovan Battista Cybò, cardinal of Malfetto, who took the title of Innocent VIII. This change of popes was a happy circumstance for the peace

of Italy as well as for the security of Lorenzo. The new Pope was of a Genoese noble family and of a peaceful disposition when compared with Sixtus IV. He was the father of several illegitimate children, of whom Franceschetto Cybò was the favourite, and as he was only fifty-five years of age he might reasonably hope for a long pontificate. The opening years of the pontificate, however, by no means answered to the anticipations of Lorenzo: for the barons of Naples having broken out in revolt against their sovereign, the Pope, notwithstanding his peaceful inclinations, was unable to resist the influence of the traditional ambition of the Papacy, ever set upon the acquisition of Naples. Innocent VIII. therefore supported the barons in their rebellion, hoping in this way to get possession of the kingdom. The duration of the rebellion between the sovereign and his nobility in the Neapolitan dominions gave a peculiar complexion to the political condition of that portion of the Peninsula. The feudal system had been implanted there by the Normans more deeply than in any other portion of Italy. The reigning king was continually held in check by the aristocracy, and would indeed have been altogether powerless had not family and private feuds rendered it easy for the sovereign to take advantage of their divisions. A party of Aragon perpetuated the remembrance of civil wars and of the massacres of the Sicilian Vespers. Alfonso, the father of Ferdinand, a magnanimous prince, overcame a revolution of the rebellious barons and suppressed with a strong hand the party who had withstood him in the field; but as soon as the contest was over adopted a policy of conciliation towards both friends and foes. The dark and vindictive spirit of Ferdinand, his natural son, who succeeded him, viewed both the rival factions with suspicion and jealousy, and aimed at the aggrandisement of the monarchy by the suppression of the feudal spirit and feudal privileges. The cruelty and perfidy of the father and that practised under his authority by his son, the Duke of Calabria, drove at last the barons into open revolt, in which they sought for the alliance of the Pope. It was to Lorenzo that Ferdinand turned for assistance while thus tried by both foreign and domestic enemies, and he despatched to him an envoy to recall to the Florentine chief how he had not long ago been released from danger by his own instrumentality. Lorenzo was out of health at the baths of San Filippo when news of the perilous situation of the King of Naples reached him, he hastened at once to Florence and assured the king's envoy that he should have his heartiest support.

The political authority of Lorenzo in the affairs of Italy was always exercised in maintaining the various states of the Peninsula in a complicated state of equilibrium. The principle of the balance of power, which subsequently became the basis of the political system of Europe, was that by which he regulated his political action. His apprehensions were ever on the watch to prevent any power from being sufficiently strong to override the rest. On the present occasion he considered that the addition of the Neapolitan dominions to that of the Papal See by conquest would raise up a preponderant power to Italy with which the lesser States would find it impossible to cope; and his motives for defending the King of Naples on this consideration were strengthened also by some sense of gratitude. It is significant of the influence which Lorenzo exercised over his fellow-citizens that he was enabled to persuade them to accept his views of the policy which Florence ought to adopt at this critical moment. Both the King of Naples and the Duke of Calabria were heartily hated at Florence, and the majority of the citizens were evidently opposed to a war in their behalf. Lorenzo, therefore, lost no time in calling the principal citizens together and in expounding his views. His political arguments, expressed in eloquent language, carried conviction to the hearts of his hearers. When he commenced,' writes Niccolò Valori, 'the majority were opposed to his way of thinking. In the 'midst of a peace, they said, which they had desired so much, 'Lorenzo was about to plunge them into war. Had he for'gotten into what danger the arms and censure of the Pope had formerly brought upon him? How would it be if Venice 'took part in the war? How was it possible to assist the king, 'who was thus at once assailed by a civil as well as a foreign war? He should be careful not to attract the war away from Ferrante towards his own country.' Lorenzo, however, expounded the necessity of intervention with such eloquence that he encouraged the timid, and in the end carried away his audience to his own conclusions. The oration,' Valori adds, 'as committed to writing by some of his hearers, I have myself 'perused, and it is impossible to conceive any composition more 'copious, more elegant, and more convincing.' Lorenzo at the same time did not spare of advice to the Neapolitan envoy -advice which shows how much he was in point of morality in advance of most of the little cruel despots of his time. 'It 'grieves me to the soul,' he wrote to Albino, the Neapolitan envoy, that the Duke of Calabria should have acquired even undeservedly the imputation of cruelty. At all events, he

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ought to endeavour to remove every pretext for the accusation by the most scrupulous regard to his conduct. If the people 'were displeased with the late impositions it would be advisable to abolish them, and to require only the usual payments: for one carlino obtained with goodwill and affection is better than ten accompanied with dissatisfaction and resentment.'

Such advice, however, was little to the taste of either Ferrante or his son, and though their wily and able policy enabled them finally to dissever the alliance of the Pope and their insurgent barons, yet the cruel treachery which they displayed in the treatment of their conquered subjects, and the oppressive exactions by which they distressed their people, proved ultimately as destructive of their power as it was fatal to the independence of Italy. During the war between the King of Naples and his barons, Lorenzo had never ceased being in correspondence with the Pope, and endeavouring to convince him of the wisdom of his own political views, both with respect to the welfare of the Papacy and to the maintenance of the balance of power in Italy. In this he completely succeeded. He not only contrived to disengage the Pope from his alliance with the barons, but secured the assistance of the Pope, a Genoese himself, in the acquirement for the Florentines of the town of Sarzana, a strong place on the Genoese frontier. He also brought about a marriage between his daughter Maddalena and Franceschetto Cybò, the eldest son of the Pope, and gencrally maintained, amid the complicated entanglements of Italian affairs, such political relations with the Papacy up to the time of his death that the Pope was said to be completely under his influence. The private relations of Lorenzo and Innocent VIII. are a curious study and characteristic of the times. Lorenzo had, as we have seen, married his daughter to Franceschetto Cybò. He had also a son, whom he had destined to an ecclesiastical career, and he urged the interests of both his relatives with the hesitating Pope in as eager and passionate language as it was possible for him to venture upon. Pope Innocent VIII., a weak-minded man, of feeble health, did not possess the spirit of nepotism in anything like the usual intensity. Consequently the Pope could not catch a cold or have the slightest of ailments without those of his relatives, for whom he had not provided, falling into an agony of terror, lest the old man should drop off and leave them without an establishment. The exhortations of Lorenzo on this head are edifying to read.

'Others,' he wrote to Innocent VIII., 'have not so long postponed their efforts to attain the papal chair, and have concerned themselves

little to maintain that retiring delicacy so long evinced by your Holiness. Thus is your Holiness not only exonerated before God and man, but this honourable conduct may cause you to incur blame, and your reserve may be attributed to less worthy motives. Zeal and duty urge my conscience to remind your Holiness that no man is immortal. Be the Pontiff as important as he may in his own person, he cannot make his dignity and that importance hereditary-he cannot be said absolutely to possess any but the honours and emoluments he has secured to his kinsmen.'

The son-in-law of Lorenzo urged on his father-in-law to write still stronger letters of admonition, saying, filially, ‘like 'an ox he requires the goad.'

Still more impatient was Lorenzo in his conduct of the assiduities by which he contrived to obtain the cardinal's hat for his son Giovanni, destined to leave a name in the annals of the Papacy equal to his own in the history of Florence. Giovanni was born on December 11, 1475, and was nine years of age when Innocent VIII. became Pope. He had received the tonsure at seven years of age, and in the following year he was made abbot of Font Doulce by Louis XI., and of Passignano by Sixtus IV., and the importunity of his father was such that the weak Pope, who felt some shame in making a boy a cardinal, gave him at last the red hat at the age of fourteen. The nomination of Giovanni de' Medici to the dignity of Cardinal was the last of the triumphs of Lorenzo his father, who died on April 8, 1492, very shortly after he had sent him a letter of congratulation and advice which still exists. He died early in the forty-third year of his age, after twentythree years of virtual sovereignty. His death was not unexpected even at that early age, for the family malady, the gout, had afflicted him with almost intolerable violence.

The well-known scene of the presence of Savonarola at his death-bed appears to have been quite misrepresented. Savonarola had become merely a famous preacher in the days of Lorenzo. It appears from the account of Politian to be true that Lorenzo had Savonarola summoned to his bedside. The ordinary story is that Savonarola refused to give him absolution because he refused to restore the liberties of Florence. But according to the account of Politian, an eye-witness, no such dialogue took place. Fra Girolamo of Ferrara,' relates Politian, a man esteemed for his learning and fear of God, ' and a splendid preacher of the Divine word, stepped into the 'sick room and invited the sick man to hold fast by faith, to 'which he replied, he did so steadfastly. Thereafter he ex'horted him to lead a virtuous life; he answered he would

VOL. CXLV. NO. CCXCVII.

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