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Updated: June 18, 2025
Guicciardini relates how he met Piero de' Medici that day in the camp, and how his old friend's son, anxious to ingratiate himself with the powerful duke, made excuses for not having given him an official welcome into Florentine territory, saying that he had ridden out to meet him, but had missed his way.
It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment; insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons by any means: of these there were many, and among them in order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting his vicious schemes one not less detestable in any way than his father. St. d'It. vol. i. p. 9.
Ludovico Guicciardini, a Florentine nobleman, the author of an excellent work on the Netherlands printed in Antwerp in the sixteenth century, says that there was hardly a man or woman in Zealand who did not speak French or Spanish, and that a great many spoke Italian.
This terrible doctrine coming to the knowledge of the Signory, they caused the magistrates of the Arts and their Syndics to be brought before them, and Luigi Guicciardini, the Gonfalonier, addressed them in the following words: "If these Signors, and I with them, had not long been acquainted with the fate of this city, that as soon as external wars have ceased the internal commence, we should have been more surprised, and our displeasure would have been greater.
At last, in June, 1585, he was exchanged, on extremely rigorous terms, for Egmont. During his captivity in this vile dungeon, he composed not only his famous political and military discourses, but several other works, among the rest; Annotations upon Plutarch and upon the Histories of Guicciardini.
The pope remained alone with Lucrezia for three days and nights; then he reappeared in public, outwardly calm, if not resigned; for Guicciardini assures us that his daughter had made him understand how dangerous it would be to himself to show too openly before the assassin, who was coming home, the immoderate love he felt for his victim.
Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves, and are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their way they will seek them of themselves. You will certainly lay me under the censure that Montaigne throws upon Guicciardini.
Those who wish for the strongest evidence which the best authorities offer us, can find it in the famous passages of Machiavelli's 'Discorsi, and in the unmutilated edition of Guicciardini. Outside the Roman Curia, some respect seems to have been felt for the best men among the bishops, and for many of the parochial clergy.
Men of letters were at the same time also prominent in public affairs. When, for instance, the exiles of 1529 sued Duke Alessandro before Charles V. at Naples, Jacopo Nardi drew up their pleas, and Francesco Guicciardini rebutted them in the interest of his master. Machiavelli learned his philosophy at the Courts of France and Germany and in the camp of Cesare Borgia.
At Ischia itself "he had a fresh trial to make," says Guicciardini, "of his courage and of the ungrateful faithlessness displayed towards those whom Fortune deserts." The governor of the island refused to admit him accompanied by more than one man.
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