this amid these privations, and exiled in a manner from myself.
For verily I am neither at Venice nor Padua, as your Ladyship
supposes, but at my church of Gubbio, a very wild place to say the
truth, and offering few conveniences." He died at Rome six years
after, in his seventy-seventh year, and was buried in the church of
the Minerva, between his patrons Leo X. and Clement VII., where a
modest flag-stone is all the memorial that his natural son and heir,
Torquato, bestowed on one of the most famous men of his age.
* * * * *
At the town of Bibbiena, in the upper Val d'Arno, there were born
about 1470, of humble parentage, two brothers, whose business talents
procured them remarkable advancement. The elder, Pietro Dovizi,
became a secretary of Lorenzo de' Medici, into whose family he
introduced his brother BERNARDO. There this youth gained
for himself so good a reputation, that he was allowed to share the
instructions bestowed upon his patron's younger son Giovanni. A close
intimacy gradually sprang up between these fellow students, which
the similarity of their talents, their tastes, and their pursuits
ripened into lasting friendship. Identifying himself with the
Medici, he followed their fortunes into exile, and attended Giuliano
to Urbino, where he was received with the welcome there extended to
all who, like him, combined the scholar and the gentleman. But this
hospitality met with a very different return from these two guests.
Of Giuliano's generous forbearance to second the evil designs of his
brother, the Pope, against the state which had sheltered him, we have
lately spoken. When we come to narrate the usurpation of the duchy by
the Medici in 1516-17, we shall find in command of their invading army
"That courteous Sir, who honours and adorns
Bibbiena, spreading far and high its fame,"
and who had adopted that town as a substitute for his own
undistinguished patronymic. This ingratitude was the more odious if,
as it was probable, he owed to Guidobaldo, or his nephew, the favour
of Julius II., who first brought him forward in the public service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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