The Life of Pope Leo X in Four Books

Then, indeed, the Republic was renewed and established, and with pernicious or suspected citizens removed or expelled from the Senate, a most worthy place was opened for probity and the good arts. For from that time, the Florentines, by the counsel of that same divine man, often successfully handled arms for the common peace, for the liberty of the fatherland, and for the amplitude of their empire; they increased private wealth and illustrated their city with the excellent ornaments of all the arts. COSMUS himself, as he was a man of incomparable gravity of judgment and infinite prudence, above all other things, desired with a certain glorious greed for the immortality of letters by favoring studious and excellent writers of history. This was because he said that the citizens upon whom he had bestowed many benefits of money and honors would either be ungrateful at some time or would perish entirely. Likewise, he believed that the praetorian houses, villas, and temples built by him at royal expense could be undermined and utterly consumed not long after by the injury of time or of men. In his private affairs and domestic expenses, he was by nature and custom content with very little, as one who had lived with civic cultivation and used a frugal table filled with neatness rather than luxury. But when famous guests, and especially strangers distinguished by virtue, arrived, he thought that no expense, however great, should be spared, but rather that by receiving them most splendidly and being generous, he would turn the entire use of money and all his faculties toward splendor and glory. He lived almost to extreme old age with unimpaired authority and ever-flourishing glory in the rightly and happily administered Republic, and he was blessed in that part of his life also, in that he left behind not only Petrus, his son, who was outstanding in probity and singular prudence, but also his grandsons, boys conspicuous for the ancestral character of the highest virtues. Dying, COSMUS was called FATHER OF THE FATHERLAND by public decree, and this was inscribed on his marble tomb for the sake of everlasting honor. With COSMUS finished with life, Petrus, his son, took the reins of governing the Republic, which his father had handed over from his hand while teaching many things from experience, with everyone favoring him from the beginning. But not long after, internal and hidden hatreds erupted from the darkness of the most hostile minds against him. The rivals of the Medici, who were quite powerful in authority and fortune, had suppressed these with various dissimulation while COSMUS was alive, as they feared the strength and deep-seated prudence of the most cautious and excellent old man. For Petrus had a character of rectitude and constancy rather than one of sharpness and vehemence, and because of this they thought him opportune for injury, as he seemed to have lost a great part of his innate vigor, having become slower than himself due to long-standing and most savage pains in his joints. Therefore, many who were desirous of new things, or burning with inexpiable malice, intent on changing the state of the Republic, excited two factions of citizens as if in jest, namely those who inhabited the mountainous or the flat parts of the city. By these names