[19] Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 61.
[20] Matteo Villani, vi. 1.
[21] The Paduan passport office about the middle of the fourteenth century is referred to by Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 117, in the words, ‘quelli delle bullete.’ In the last ten years of the reign of Frederick II., when the strictest control was exercised on the personal conduct of his subjects, this system must have been very highly developed.
[22] Corio, Storia di Milano, fol. 247 sqq. Recent Italian writers have observed that the Visconti have still to find a historian who, keeping the just mean between the exaggerated praises of contemporaries (e.g. Petrarch) and the violent denunciations of later political (Guelph) opponents, will pronounce a final judgment upon them.
[23] E.g. of Paolo Giovio: Elogia Virorum bellicâ virtute illustrium, Basel, 1575, p. 85, in the life of Bernabò. Giangal. (Vita, pp. 86 sqq.) is for Giovio ‘post Theodoricum omnium præstantissimus.’ Comp. also Jovius, Vitæ xii. Vicecomitum Mediolani principum, Paris, 1549. pp. 165 sqq.
[24] Corio, fol. 272, 285.
[25] Cagnola, in the Archiv. Stor., iii. p. 23.
[26] So Corio, fol. 286, and Poggio, Hist. Florent. iv. in Murat. xx. col 290.—Cagnola (loc. cit.) speaks of his designs on the imperial crown. See too the sonnet in Trucchi, Poesie Ital. ined., ii. p. 118:
“Stan le città lombarde con le chiave
In man per darle a voi ... etc.
Roma vi chiamo: Cesar mio novello
Io sono ignuda, e l’anima pur vive:
Or mi coprite col vostro mantello,” etc.
[27] Corio, fol. 301 and sqq. Comp. Ammian. Marcellin., xxix. 3.