ne" had been seized by the royal officers, he had not
the heart to visit Paris. The parliament was summoned to meet him at
Senlis. He ordered it to register the treaty without comment, and
hastened southward to hide his mortification in his favorite castles of
Touraine.

[Footnote 1: By Burgundians in 1466.]

LORENZO DE' MEDICI RULES IN FLORENCE

ZENITH OF FLORENTINE GLORY

A.D. 1469

OLIPHANT SMEATON

During the twelfth century several of the Italian cities--especially
Florence and Venice--rose to great wealth and power. Venice, through her
favorable situation, became preeminent in commerce, while Florence was
coming to be the most important industrial centre of Europe. In the
thirteenth century Florence was the scene of continual strife between the
Guelfs and Ghibellines, but she not only continued to develop in material
prosperity, but also attained to intellectual activities whereby in the
next century she gained a higher distinction. She took the foremost
part in the Renaissance, and was the birthplace or the home of Dante,
Boccaccio, and other leaders of the modern movement.

In the fifteenth century Florence reached a still loftier eminence under
the Medici, a family celebrated for the statesmen which it produced and
for its patronage of letters and art. Its most illustrious members were
Cosmo (1389-1464) and his grandson Lorenzo, surnamed the "Magnificent."
Lorenzo was born January 1, 1449, when the second great period of the
Renaissance was nearing its close. That was the "period of arrangement
and translation; the epoch of the formation of the great Italian
libraries; the age when, in Florence around his grandfather Cosmo,
in Rome around Pope Nicholas V, and in Naples around Alfonso the
Magnanimous, coteries of the leading humanists were gathered, engaged in
labors which have made posterity eternally their debtors."

Conjointly with his younger brother Giuliano, Lorenzo, on the death of
his father Piero, in 1469, succeeded to the vast wealth and political
power of the family. In 1478 the death of Giuliano left Lorenzo sole
ruler of Florence.

To few men has either the power or the opportunity been given to
influence their epoch, intellectually and politically, to a degree so
marked as was the lot of Lorenzo de' Medici. One of the most marvellously
many-sided of the many-sided men who adorned the Italy of the fifteenth
century, he did more to place Florence in the forefront of the world's
cult