Gualbert; and in Camaldoli in the Casentino, which St. Romualdo of Ravenna founded in the days of the Emperor Otto III. and Henry II. Of the visit of the last-mentioned a literary trace has remained in the Camaldulensian conversations of Cristoforo Landino. It is unnecessary to say that the members of his family shared in the honours shown to him. In the spring of 1472 Madonna Clarice visited her Roman relations, and among her escort was Luigi Pulci, who had also resided in Umbria shortly before. One of his letters to Lorenzo[192] describes most delightfully the visit which Clarice made in May at Fuligno to the daughter of the despot of Morea, Zoe Palæologus. This man’s father, Thomas, a brother of the last Greek emperor, after unhappy quarrels in his own family, not silenced by the threatened danger from the Turks, had lost his possessions to Mohammed II. In the spring of 1461 he came to Rome, where a tabernacle, with the statue of the Apostle Andrew, in the vicinity of the Milvian bridge, indicates the spot on which Cardinal Bessarion, in the name of Pope Pius II., received the head of the saint from his hands. Thomas died four years later at Rome, where his three children were educated under Bessarion’s superintendence, as their mother, Caterina Centurione, of a Genoese family transplanted to the Levant, had died before him. There was abundant opportunity in Italy of becoming acquainted with distinguished Levanters; and yet their appearance and demeanour always appeared singular to the Italians, as is shown, among others, by Pope Pius II.’s description of Charlotte of Lusignan, who yet appears to have been very much Europeanised in comparison to the Princess Palæologus. ‘I saw a mountain of fat before me,’ writes Pulci. ‘Never should I have thought that there was the like in Germany or Sardinia. Her two eyes might do duty for four, and a little mouth lay between fat red cheeks.’ The figure was equally striking to our Florentine. This Oriental beauty married not long afterwards a Muscovite grand duke, who promised to reconquer the Morea for her brothers, one of whom died in Rome, and the other escaped from the executioners of his imperial uncle. A few days later Pulci wrote from Rome as follows: ‘We have spent some time at Monterotondo, where we were truly received most brilliantly. Yesterday (June 5) we arrived at Rome with about eighty horses. Our Madonna Clarice has done you honour everywhere, and has not herself been neglected. I go in two days to the frontiers, and then back to you. The residence of your wife here will be short, for there is no wedding taking place just now, and the little Lucrezia and Pierino are strong magnets for their mother.’