The Duchess of Calabria, Ippolita Maria, always counted on the friendship which united the Medici with the house of Sforza. That intellectual and highly cultivated woman who once greeted Pope Pius II. at the Congress of Mantua with a Latin speech, always kept up communication with Lorenzo. Even in the lifetime of Piero de’ Medici, in 1468, when she, three years after her marriage with the Aragonese prince, was on a visit to Milan, she was already corresponding with Lorenzo, and recommended to him a knight well known to her for the office of Podestà in Florence. In 1473 she wrote to him concerning Florentine merchants who had had a great quantity of coarse woollen cloth (it was called Perpignano after the town where this kind was first made) woven at Capua, and sought permission to import it. On March 8, 1478, shortly therefore after the outbreak of the eventful dissensions of which we shall speak in the course of this history, she interceded with Lorenzo for the liberation from prison of Lorenzo Cavalcanti, a man of an old noble family, describing to him the poverty and distress of his family. Four years before, she had requested of him a loan; her letter is a characteristic proof of the position which the citizen and banker held towards the princes, to whose circle he indeed belonged without the external insignia. ‘Illustrious and mighty and paternally respected lord,’ so wrote Ippolita Maria d’Aragona Visconti on July 10, 1474, from the Castle of Capuano, then the residence of the Neapolitan heir-apparent,’the old existing kindness and intimate friendship between the family of Your Magnificence and our late illustrious parents, and your especial affection for our most illustrious brother, the Duke of Milan, assure us, and fill us with the certain hope, that you will support us in our great embarrassment, for which we shall ever owe you gratitude. We beg you, therefore, to lend us 2,000 ducats gratis for a time to be fixed by yourself, we promising its punctual repayment on the word of an honourable woman (“a fede de leale madama”). For the sake of the affection that Your Magnificence cherishes for us, as well as the dear remembrance of our parents, and your friendly relations with our brother, we hope that you will readily fulfil our request. Should you, however, not have the sum ready to hand, we beg you to use your influence with your friends and adherents to procure it for us. As deposit we will send some of our jewellery corresponding in value to the sum mentioned, and be ever grateful to you for this service, according to our own character and our hereditary custom. When Your Magnificence sends the sum we will deliver the jewels to the messenger, or send a special messenger to you with them, in case you should prefer it. So we beg you to send a kind and speedy answer by the messenger who brings this, and recommend ourselves to you as always ready for your service.’ We shall speak further of later communications