s had penetrated the nation with
antique ideas of heroism, tyrannicide became a virtue. Princes were
murdered with frightful frequency. Thus Gian Maria Visconti was put to
death at Milan in 1412; Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1484; the Chiarelli
of Fabriano were massacred in 1435; the Baglioni of Perugia in 1500;
Girolamo Gentile planned the assassination of Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa
in 1476; Niccolo d'Este conspired against his uncle Ercole in 1476;
Stefano Porcari attempted the life of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1453;
Lodovico Sforza narrowly escaped a violent death in 1453. I might
multiply these instances beyond satiety. As it is, I have selected
but a few examples falling, all but one, within the second half of the
fifteenth century. Nearly all these attempts upon the lives of princes
were made in church during the celebration of sacred offices. There
was no superfluity of naughtiness, no wilful sacrilege, in this choice
of an occasion. It only testified to the continual suspicion and
guarded watchfulness maintained by tyrants. To strike at them except
in church was almost impossible. Meanwhile the fate of the
tyrannicides was uniform. Successful or not, they perished. Yet so
grievous was the pressure of Italian despotism, so glorious was the
ideal of Greek and Roman heroism, so passionate the temper of the
people, that to kill a prince at any cost to self appeared the crown
of manliness. This bloodshed exercised a delirious fascination: pure
and base, personal and patriotic motives combined to add intensity of
fixed and fiery purpose to the murderous impulse. Those then who, like
the Medici, aspired to tyranny and sought to found a dynasty of
princes, entered the arena against a host of unknown and unseen
gladiators.

XVII

On his deathbed, in 1492, Lorenzo lay between two men--Angelo
Poliziano and Girolamo Savonarola. Poliziano incarnated the genial,
radiant, godless spirit of fifteenth-century humanism. Savonarola
represented the conscience of Italy, self-convicted, amid all her
greatness, of crimes that called for punishment. It is said that when
Lorenzo asked the monk for absolution, Savonarola bade him first
restore freedom to Florence. Lorenzo, turned his face to the wall and
was silent. How indeed could he make this city in a moment free, after
sixty years of slow and systematic corruption? Savonarola left him,
and he died unshriven. This legend is doubtful, though it rests on
excellent if somewhat partial aut