tender
years lessons in grammar, which, through the excellence of his
understanding, he quickly learned. His father died, however, when he who
was to come to such eminence was but nine years old, leaving two sons,
our Maestro Tomaso, and Maestro Filippo, who later was Cardinal of
Bologna. Now Maestro Tomaso fell sick at that time, and his mother,
seeing him thus ailing, being a widow and having all her great hope in
her sons, was in the greatest anxiety and sorrow, and prayed God
unweariedly to spare her little son. Thus intent in prayer, hoping that
he would not die, she fell asleep about dawn, when One called to her and
said: 'Andreola (for that was her name), doubt nothing that thy son
shall live.' And it seemed in her vision that she saw her son in a
bishop's robe, and One said to her that he would be Pope. Waking then
from this dream, immediately she went to her little son and found him
already better, and to all those in the house she told the vision she
had had. Now, when the child was well, because of the steadfast hope
which the vision had given her, she at once begged him to pursue his
studies; which he did, so that when he was sixteen he had a very good
knowledge of grammar and the Latin tongue, and began to work at logic,
in order later to come at philosophy and theology. Then he left Sarzana
and went to Bologna, so that he might the better pursue his studies in
every faculty. At Bologna he studied in logic and in philosophy with
great success. In a short time he became learned in all the seven
Liberal Arts. Staying at Bologna still he was eighteen, and Master of
Arts, lacking money, it was necessary for him to go to Sarzana to his
mother, who had remarried, in order to have money to furnish his
expenses. She was poor and her husband not very rich, and then Tomaso
was not his son, but a stepson: he could not obtain money from them.
Determined to follow his studies, he thought to go to Florence, the
mother of studies and every virtue at that time. So he went thither, and
found Messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi, a most exceptional man, who carried
him off to instruct his sons, giving him a good salary as a young man of
great virtue. At the end of a year Messer Rinaldo left Florence, and
Maestro Tomaso wishing to remain in the city, he arranged for him to
enter the service of Messer Palla di Nofri Strozzi; and from him he had
a very good salary. At the end of another year he had gained so much
from these two citizen