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In addition, Fossombrone was taken by the Sforzas from the Malatesta. The principality belonged, as we have seen, for a long time to the Church, then to the Malatesta, and later to the Sforza, who, under the title of vicars, held it as a hereditary fief, paying the Church annually seven hundred and fifty gold ducats.
Giovanni Sforza made him state's advocate of Pesaro in 1492, and he enjoyed a brilliant reputation as a jurisprudent until his death in 1541. Lucretia, consequently, found this illustrious man in Pesaro and might have continued her studies under him and other natives of Greece if she was so disposed. A library, which the Sforzas had collected, provided her with the means for this end.
A man who does devilish deeds is necessarily a devil; and the evil Italian princes of the Renaissance, the Borgias, Sforzas, Baglionis, Malatestas, and Riarios appear, through the mist of horrified imagination, so many uncouth and gigantic monsters, nightmare shapes, less like human beings than like the grand and frightful angels of evil who gather round Milton's Satan in the infernal council.
Cries of Moro! Moro! began to be heard in the streets of Milan. Simonetta, becoming alarmed, threw Donato del Conte, one of the Ghibelline leaders, into prison, upon which Sanseverino and the Sforzas loudly demanded his release. Simonetta gave them fair words in return, and induced the dissatisfied chiefs to meet in the park of the Castello, where they agreed to lay down their arms.
The connoisseur had evidently confused the two Bianca Sforzas, but now that this mistake has been explained by a comparison of the Ambrosian portrait with genuine pictures and medals of the empress, there is no difficulty in accepting the remainder of his statement.
The hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made him like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. No one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm"; he is for the Sforzas, or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns.
The young duke became seriously ill, owing to a dangerous wound which he had received from an assassin, Bonifazio Visconti, twelve years before, and, after lingering through the summer months, he died on All Souls' Day, 1535, to the consternation of the whole Milanese, On the 19th of November the last of the Sforzas was buried with royal pomp in the Duomo of Milan, and his childless widow, the youthful Duchess Christina, retired to the city of Tortona, which had been given her as her marriage portion.
And this, without being in the same category with Cesare Borgia. The Sforzas, the Aragonese monarchs, and, later on, the agents of Charles V resorted to it whenever it suited their purpose. The imagination of the people at last became so accustomed to facts of this kind that the death of any powerful man was seldom or never attributed to natural causes.
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.
He lived on until the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dismemberment of the Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, and the Swiss. At the beginning of the century, while he was still a youth, the rich valley of the Valtelline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had been assigned to the Grisons.
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