[*159] 24 January, 1472. Cf. Ugolini, op. cit., vol. I., p. 497. Cf. infra, [p. 282].
[160] Berni, the annalist of Gubbio, says the names were Ubaldo Girolamo Vincenzio.
[161] The tract by Ivano (? Hyvanus), printed in vol. XXXIII. of Muratori, is diffuse and unsatisfactory, although he was an official of Volterra. I prefer the contemporary narratives of Porcellio and Vespasiano, Vat. Urb. MSS. Nos. 373 and 941. I have also consulted the epics of Sanzi and Naldo, Rinuccini's Ricordi, and a number of unimportant narratives and documents in the public library of Volterra, as well as the standard Italian histories.
[162] There is in the Albani library at Rome a MS. by Giunta, where I found it stated that the Count asked and obtained this Bible of the magistracy, in exchange for the standards taken at Volterra.
[163] Sanzi tells us its crest was Hercules trampling on a griffin (the device of Volterra), which lay wounded, plucked of its pinions, and chained by the neck. How often has it happened that art, capable of ennobling the meanest materials, is lost to the world from being employed on those whose intrinsic value is a temptation to ignorant cupidity. This helmet might now bring tenfold the price for which it probably was broken up!
[164] It may not be inappropriate here to glance at the territorial limits which, under him, were erected into the duchy of Urbino, and their gradual increment from the petty holding of Montefeltro, which was at first narrow in extent and poor in all but defence. Lying in the furthest highlands of Umbria, its soil and climate yielded nature's bounties but sparingly, though its fastnesses bred bold hearts and stout sinews. The township of Urbino, over which its counts extended their authority, added little to their limited territory. Those of Gubbio, Cagli, and Cantiano, which next came under their rule, lay many miles from their mountain home, separated by an Apennine rampart, and the valleys of the Foglia and Metauro, as well as by the Brancaleoni fiefs. These scattered domains were concentrated by Federigo's first marriage, which gave him all Massa Trabaria from the Foglia to the Cantiano. His purchase of Fossombrone and his conquests from the Malatesta extended his frontier to the Vicariat of Sinigaglia, which he lived to see conferred on his daughter's husband. His long struggles with Sigismondo Pandolfo were further compensated by Tavoleto, Sassocorbaro, S. Leo, Sta. Agata, and Castel d'Elce, establishing his sway over what had been hitherto at best debatable land, to the extreme northern boundary of the state. Although precise limits cannot now be defined, it would seem that Count Federigo nearly trebled the territory which had obeyed his brother, and the only important addition subsequently made consisted of the sea-board brought to it by his grandson Francesco Maria I.
[165] The first of the letters here introduced was addressed to his allies, the magistrates of Siena, in the archives of which city I found the Italian original. The next, without address, but probably for the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, and the two following extracts, are copied from the volume of his Latin letters already quoted. Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 1198. Muzio and Baldi by mistake place Battista's death in 1474.
[166] Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 324, 373, 727, 1193, 1236, 1272.
[167] See ante, [p. 39], for Battista the elder.
[168] A relic of like strange perversion of childhood still obtains at Rome, in the displays at the Aracœli Church from Christmas to Epiphany, where girls of five years old are elevated on a table and spout to assembled crowds the events of the Nativity.