All these men, small and great, found in Lorenzo their Mæcenas. But he showed very early that he invested the position of patron with more serious importance than his predecessors had done. When scarcely three-and-twenty he brought about the restoration of the University of Pisa, which was not only an act of justice, but, apart from its literary importance, a token of ripe political insight that helped to counterbalance in some degree the miseries inflicted on Volterra in the same year (1472). The university, formed in the fourth decade of the fourteenth century out of the existing public schools, and confirmed in 1343 by Clement VI., fell into decay from political causes later in the century, and finally succumbed to Florentine enmity. The mutual animosity of the two cities is only to be paralleled in the history of antiquity. Twenty-five years after the subjection of Pisa, the Ministry of War at Florence wrote to Averardo de’ Medici, their commissioner in the subject town:[89] ‘According to general opinion here, the most effectual means of securing the town is to empty it entirely of Pisan citizens and peasants, concerning which we have written to the Captain of the People till we are tired. He answers that he is hindered by the soldiery and officers. We now command thee to go to him and persuade him to spare no harshness or severity, as we perceive that no other remedy will avail. We have confidence in thee that thou wilt at once set everything to work, for thou couldst do nothing more pleasing to this whole people.’ The efficacious result was that the city was ruined, the marshy neighbourhood left fallow to become the home of fever, and the fleet vanished. So rooted was this hatred that when Pisa had freed herself amid the confusion which followed on Lorenzo’s death, Bernardo del Nero—a usually moderate man of the Medicean party—declared that against the Pisans nothing availed save force; all prisoners of war must be slain after the example of the Genoese, who let the Pisan captives taken at Meloria languish to death in prison.[90]