In the life of Duke Federigo we have seen personal merit accompanied by a remarkable continuance of good fortune. The mystery of his birth was no bar to his enjoying unquestioned a sovereignty to which he could not have established any clear right. The popular outbreak which had cut off his predecessor shook not the stability of his dynasty. To the fief he thus peaceably acquired he added important territories by marriage and purchase. He transmitted to a hopeful son an important and flourishing state, and with it the highest title compatible with his station, obtained by his personal merits. Among competitors and opponents of great military renown he was ever conspicuous, and almost uniformly victorious. In an age when letters and arts began their rivalry with arms he retained, as the Maecenas of a cultivated court, the fame he had gained as a successful general. The biographers of Guidobaldo[*215] have justly ascribed to him no inferior merit, while they have strongly contrasted the persecutions of fortune which he endured; and they have established the probability that, with equal years and equal advantages, his memory might have not been less glorious than that of his father. Those portents attending the Prince's birth, to which a miraculous character was assigned by the gratitude or superstition of the people, have been mentioned in a preceding chapter. It took place at Gubbio on the 17th or 24th of January, 1472, and on the 2nd of February he was baptized Guido Ubaldo Girolamo Vincenzo;[*216] the first pair of these names, given in memory of the old counts of Urbino, and of the patron saint of that city, was commonly used by him in its contracted form GUIDOBALDO. The court of his father, ever attractive to eminent men, was soon after visited by the venerable Cardinal Bessarion, who, after being twice within a vote or two of the triple tiara, was returning from his last diplomatic mission to England a few months before his death. Federigo availed himself of this opportunity to obtain for the infant the rite of confirmation, though but three months' old. In two months more, the condition with which Battista had accompanied her prayers for a male heir was fatally fulfilled,[217] and Guidobaldo was deprived of a mother's care long ere he could be sensible of the sad bereavement. [Footnote *215: For the life of Guidobaldo, see BALDI, _Vita e fatti di Guidobaldo I. di Montefeltro_ (Milano, 1821); ZACCAGNINI, _La Vita e le opere edite e inedite di B. Baldi_ (Modena, 1903); CASTIGLIONE, _Epistola ad Sacratissimum Britanniae Reg. Henricum de Guidobaldo Urb. Duce_; BEMBO, _De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetta Gonzagia Urbini Ducibus liber_ (Cod. Vatic. Urbin., 1030), and Ugolini, _op. cit._, II., lib. VIII. and IX.; see also MADIAI _Commentari dello Stato di Urbino_, in _Arch. Stor. per le Marche e per l'Umbria_, vol. III., pp. 419-464.]