The Life of Pope Leo X in Four Books

A large decorative drop cap 'L' features an intricate floral and scrollwork design.We have heard that your grandfather, Laurentius Medicus, a man of great spirit, O noble Hippolytus, who advanced your house through happy virtue to that amplitude of most majestic dignity which we venerate with just religion, was accustomed to say that no inheritance in all the business of human life could be left to children more opulent and excellent than virtue and glory. The former, he said, is easily acquired by diligent education, liberal discipline, and especially by domestic examples. The latter, as if born from these most certain seeds, grows of its own accord and coalesces into immensity. By this noble statement, that wisest man of his age intended to show that almost all wealth, principalities, and the fleeting and unstable gifts of Fortune are ephemeral. The possession of outstanding virtue and praise, however, is not only the firmest, but also the most lasting for the use of all posterity. Nor has Fortune, in her powerlessness, yet been able to deceive that judgment of so great a man, although she has afflicted the name of your family so insolently and bitterly, having stripped away all subsidies and ornaments, that nothing at all remained except the inborn pursuit of excellent virtue in your invincible spirits. By this, we have often seen that which was almost extinguished recalled from destruction and restored to its former dignity for the certain salvation of the human race. Indeed, this light of ardent and revived virtue, accepted from hand to hand by Laurentius from Cosmus and Petrus, just as the ancient Greeks were accustomed to pass the torch to those following in a race, he handed down to Leo and Clemens, so that it might finally be passed in the widest succession to you, who are most adorned with all the gifts of nature and fortune. Therefore, because it was owed to you alone by the best right, I have expressed as widely as possible the image of your uncle Leo with true likeness, as much as could be achieved by a faithful pen. In this, I have not ineptly (as I think) followed the custom of painters, who ambitiously include in the same painting the faces of one’s ancestors, vividly breathing that virtue which you happily emulate, so that they may be observed in passing. With these proponents of august virtue proposed as models, I would easily hope that you, by the greatness of your high and burning spirit, will not only equal the praises of your ancestors, but will fly much higher and more happily toward glory. Since in your total natural endowment, at the very first blooming of youth, you have gathered with rare happiness the individual flowers of the various virtues that shone in your ancestors, you have so advanced your studies of the most noble disciplines and arts with spectacular works, and with a certain incredible fertility of genius, that already the most flourishing talents, which you liberally nourish at home, do not view you as a wonder—