NOTES TO THE DEDICATORY LETTER
Having become duke in 1508, he was married on Christmas Eve of that year. In the following spring he commanded the papal forces in the League of Cambray, and despite the obstacles put in his way by his colleague Cardinal Alidosi (see note 268), he soon reduced the Romagna towns, the recovery of which from Venice was Julius II's chief object in forming the league. In a later campaign against the French, Bologna was lost to the Church (1511) through the treachery of Alidosi, who craftily contrived to have the blame fall upon Francesco, and was murdered by the latter at Ravenna. After a long trial before six cardinals, in which ample proof of the dead man's treason was presented, and an eloquent appeal made by Beroaldo (see note 235), — the young duke was acquitted and restored to the pope's favour.
Although both Francesco and his predecessor had generously befriended the Medici during their exile from Florence (1494-1512), Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) seized his duchy in 1516, to bestow it on a nephew, Lorenzo de' Medici. It is needless to speak here of Francesco's restoration in 1521, of his failure to relieve Pope Clement VII when Rome was sacked in 1527, or of his later life.
While small in person, Francesco was active and well formed. His manners were gentle and his character forgiving, in spite of his fiery temper. Strict in religious observances and an enemy to blasphemous language, he was also creditably intolerant of those outrages upon womanly honour with which war was then fraught. He was famous chiefly as a soldier, and by so competent a judge as the Emperor Charles V was regarded as master of the military science of his day.
Note 4, page 1. This disclaimer of careful authorship is not to be taken too literally. At least a draft of Books I-III seems to have been made at Urbino between April 1508 and May 1509, while Book IV was probably written at Rome in the earlier part of the interval between September 1513 and March 1516. Castiglione apparently continued to revise his work until 1518, when he sent his MS. to Bembo. See Silvestro Marcello's pamphlet, "La Cronologia del Cortegiano di Baldesar Castiglione." Pisa, 1895.
Note 5, page 1. As has been seen, Castiglione resided at the Spanish court from 1524 until his death in 1529.
Note 6, page 1. Vittoria Colonna, (born 1490; died 1547). was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna (grand-nephew of Pope Martin V) and Agnese di Montefeltro, a sister of Duke Guidobaldo. At the age of four she was betrothed to the Marquess of Pescara, whom she married in her nineteenth year at Ischia (the fief and residence of his family), and who afterwards became a famous soldier. During his long absences in the field, she consoled herself with books, and after his death in 1525, her widowhood was spent in retirement and finally in semi-monastic seclusion at Rome. The time spared from pious exercises she devoted to study, the composition of poetry, correspondence with illustrious men of letters, and the society of learned persons. Although she never became a convert to Protestantism, the liberality of some of her
