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Updated: June 4, 2025
'All men nearly, says Vettori, 'are flatterers, and say what they believe will please great folk, although they think the contrary.
Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to the Commonwealth.
Stor. It. Appendice No. 22, vol. vl. Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice.
Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me! If Machiavelli, who in this very letter to Vettori quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they ought to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon his soul. But such was the debasement of the century that probably he would have only shrugged his shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. See familiar letter, June 10, 1514.
Taking this opinion of Lorenzo, it is possible for Vettori in another place to say of him that 'he governed Florence like a citizen; and on the occasion of his death in 1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his character. 'His death was a misfortune for Florence, which it would be difficult to describe. Though young, he had the qualities of virtuous maturity.
In the dedication of the Sommario della Storia d' Italia to Francesco Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he retired in 1527.
The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to the mutual hatred and jealousy of the Cardinals. He ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the Pope's want of interest in great affairs, adds his testimony to his private excellence and public incapacity, and dismisses him without further notice. Pp. 343, 347. What he tells us about Clement is more interesting.
The same principles on which, in the former work, the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied in the latter to the longer duration and more complex interest of a society. The political letters addressed to Francesco Vettori, at Rome, and intended probably for the eye of Leo X., were written in 1514.
Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten advised him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship of the Cardinal of Cortona. The remaining three, who were Ruberto Acciajuoli, Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of administering a free city through a priest who held his title from a subject town.
Since we are now approaching the most critical passage of Machiavelli's biography, it may be well to draw from his private letters a picture of the life to which this statesman of the restless brain was condemned in the solitude of the country. Writing on December 10 to his friend Francesco Vettori, he says, 'I am at my farm; and, since my last misfortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days.
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