The Life of Pope Leo X in Four Books

A large ornamental drop cap 'M' depicts a landscape scene with figures.Although the name of the Medici family had been quite illustrious in Etruria for many years before, it attained a certain and stable brightness through the virtue of the great COSMUS. For Silvester, who strenuously delayed the attack of the Duke of the Insubrians Milanese in the Apennines, and Averardus and Johannes, who were once flourishing in wealth and urban grace, never exceeded the dignity of the equestrian order or the ordinary honors of a free city among many equal patricians. Now, COSMUS was the great-grandfather of Leo X, Supreme Pontiff, whose life we are about to write. They say that from an early age he had such a serious and lofty mind that the most perceptive citizens (of whom that age was quite fertile) judged that the young COSMUS was born for all the highest things. For he had cultivated himself with persistent labor in all those arts and disciplines which are accustomed to make men blessed and godlike in the glory of true virtue. He competed primarily in exceptional piety with priests of the most approved life, and he was accustomed to contend in temperance of life, honesty, and learning with the best philosophers, while in greatness of spirit, magnificence, and liberality he was equaled even by the most opulent kings. Although by these character traits he had early on gathered singular favor from men of all orders, he could nevertheless barely resist envy, even when relying on the subsidy of such great virtues. For he was surrounded by enemies and by those who, under the guise of honesty, feared his excessive power, as if it would soon be harmful to public liberty, and he was cast into prison. But upon the danger to the life of such a great man, with the greatest part of the city distraught, it was obtained by many votes and suffrages against the cruelty of a few powerful men that his virtue and innocence should be spared. Then, when he had gone into exile in Venice, he acted with such fortitude of mind and industry among everyone that he not only excellently preserved his fame and fortune everywhere in the world—which his enemies, led by the most bitter malice, wished to see disturbed and utterly uprooted—but also became much wiser and more admirable to his own fellow citizens and to the most prudent Venetian Senators than he had been before. Finally, not even a year having passed, a wonderful tranquility followed in the Florentine Republic as the most equitable men succeeded to the magistracy, so that COSMUS, who had been cast into foreign land by the force and audacity of the most turbulent citizens of the Republic, was brought back to his fatherland by the incredible zeal and modesty of the entire city.