[115] Corio, fol. 422. Allegretto, Diari Sanesi, in Murat. xxiii. col. 777. See above, p. 41.
[116] The enthusiasm with which the Florentine Alamanno Rinuccini (b. 1419) speaks in his Ricordi (ed. by G. Aiazzi, Florence, 1840) of murderers and their deeds is very remarkable. For a contemporary, though not Italian, apology for tyrannicide, see Kervyn de Lettenhove, Jean sans Peur et l’Apologie du Tyrannicide, in the Bulletin de l’Académie de Bruxelles, xi. (1861), pp. 558-71. A century later opinion in Italy had changed altogether. See the condemnation of Lampugnani’s deed in Egnatius, De Exemplis Ill. Vir., Ven. fol. 99 b; comp. also 318 b.
Petr. Crinitus, also (De honestâ disciplinâ, Paris, 1510, fol. 134 b), writes a poem De virtute Jo. Andr. Lamponiani tyrannicidæ, in which Lampugnani’s deed is highly praised, and he himself is represented as a worthy companion of Brutus.
Comp. also the Latin poem: Bonini Mombritii poetæ Mediol. trenodiæ in funere illustrissimi D. Gal. Marie Sfor (2 Books—Milan, 1504), edited by Ascalon Vallis (sic), who in his dedication to the jurist Jac. Balsamus praises the poet and names other poems equally worthy to be printed. In this work, in which Megæra and Mars, Calliope and the poet, appear as interlocutors, the assassin—not Lampugnano, but a man from a humble family of artisans—is severely blamed, and he with his fellow conspirators are treated as ordinary criminals; they are charged with high treason on account of a projected alliance with Charles of Burgundy. No less than ten prognostics of the death of Duke Galeazzo are enumerated. The murder of the Prince, and the punishment of the assassin are vividly described; the close consists of pious consolations addressed to the widowed Princess, and of religious meditations.
[117] ‘Con studiare el Catalinario,’ says Allegretto. Comp. (in Corio) a sentence like the following in the desposition of Olgiati: ‘Quisque nostrum magis socios potissime et infinitos alios sollicitare, infestare, alter alteri benevolos se facere cœpit. Aliquid aliquibus parum donare: simul magis noctu edere, bibere, vigilare, nostra omnia bona polliceri,’ etc.
[118] Vasari, iii. 251, note to V. di Donatello.
[119] It now has been removed to a newly constructed building.
[120] Inferno, xxxiv. 64.
[121] Related by a hearer, Luca della Robbia, Archiv. Stor. i. 273. Comp. Paul. Jovius, Vita Leonis X. iii. in the Viri Illustres.
[122] First printed in 1723, as appendix to Varchi’s History, then in Roscoe, Vita di Lorenzo de’ Medici, vol. iv. app. 12, and often besides. Comp. Reumont, Gesch. Toscana’s seit dem Ende des Florent. Freistaates, Gotha, 1876, i. p. 67, note. See also the report in the Lettere de’ Principi (ed. Venez. 1577), iii. fol. 162 sqq.