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For a time the Milanese were amused by the fêtes provided for them, and dazzled by the sight of all this splendour; but retribution came in time, and on the Feast of St. Stephen in the winter of 1476, Duke Galeazzo was assassinated at the doors of the church of S. Stefano by three courtiers whom he had wronged.
The times were troublous in Lombardy. The assassination, in 1476, of Gian Galeazzo was followed by commotions and unrest little conducive to the cultivation of the humanities, and which provoked an exodus of humanists and their disciples.
Under his auspices printing was introduced, and the first book ever produced in Italy, the Grammar of Lascaris a Greek professor who had taken refuge at the court of the Sforzas on the fall of Constantinople appeared at Milan in 1476. The splendour of his court surpassed anything that had been yet seen.
About 1476 the second Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid picture of the same subject which is in the Uffizi. With this he established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. It was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella.
William Caxton, the first English printer, learned the art in Cologne. In 1476 he set up his press and sign, a red pole, in the Almonry at Westminster. Just before the introduction of printing the demand for MS. copies had grown very active, stimulated, perhaps, by the coming into general use of linen paper instead of the more costly parchment.
John was reminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of the decrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally a twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand when he dropped exhausted in the square with the word "Victory!" on his lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat, where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold.
After being exiled with his two brothers, Philip who died of poison in 1479, and Ascanio who became the cardinal, he returned to Milan some days after the assassination of Galeazzo Maria, which took place on the 26th of December 1476, in St. Stephen's Church, and assumed the regency for the young duke, who at that time was only eight years old.
And thus I end my prologue. He translated "The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy" between 1469 and 1471, and, on account of the great demand for copies, was led to have it printed the first English book to be reproduced by this means. The date was about 1474; the place, probably Bruges. In 1476, Caxton came back to England, and set up a press of his own at Westminster.
The legitimacy of such a contract the trinus contractus, as it was called was maintained by Carletus in the Summa Angelica, which was published about 1476, and by Biel.
When Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to demand the accustomed tribute, he said, "Go tell your master the kings who pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our mints coin nothing but sword-blades now." The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his own answer to this challenge. The infatuated King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult by capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara.
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