Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A Domestic Chaplain Of The Medici One of the most original figures in the brilliant court of Lorenzo de' Medici was Matteo Franco.1 Born in Florence of poor parents of the name of Della Badessa in 1447, he simply adopted his father's Christian name of Franco, as was often done in the fifteenth century, and called himself Matteo di Franco, which soon became plain Matteo Franco. As a lad he entered the Church, and some of his first efforts in poetry are sonnets addressed to the Archbishop of Florence, begging in the name of St. Peter for a cloak. In others he states that his income is but three lire a month, and that never a crumb of bread remains on the table after meals. His poverty was rendered more irksome when, after the death of his parents, he took his young sister Ginevra and an old maid to live with him. Ginevra, however, soon married a Doctor Leopardi, a converted Jew, known in Florence as " il medico della barba," or the bearded doctor, and Matteo made friends with Angelo Polizano who probably introduced him to his patrons theMedici. The witty, clever, kind-hearted Matteo became indispensable to Lorenzo the Magnificent, with whom he was on such terms of intimacy as to write the following letter, rather a curious picture of the times as coming from a penniless young priest of twenty-seven to the ruler of Florence. 1 See d.rchivio Storico Italiano. Serie Terza. Tomo IX., Parte I., 1869; also Florentia. Isidoro del Lungo. Firenze, G. Barbera, 1897. " Lorenzo mine, have mercy. God well knows how and in what attitude I write to you. A chopping-board on my bed whereon lies my paper, my arm bare with upturned sleeve, I am as a dead man laden with bricks, with a head like a big onion on an arid mass of cappelline I seem to be all east wind. With trembling voice and hands...