Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

despotic House of Carrara; next
of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty. Subsequently, during the
long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in
good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland. Then
she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely
Italian politics. The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the
Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard
dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward. Her Italian neighbors
were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua,
and the Duchy of Ferrara. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Venice was
still more tempted to pursue this new policy of Italian aggrandizement.
Meanwhile her growing empire seemed to menace the independence of less
wealthy neighbors. The jealousy thus created and the cupidity which
brought her into collision with Julius II. in 1508, exposed Venice to
the crushing blow inflicted on her power by the combined forces of
Europe in the war of the League of Cambray. From this blow, as well as
from the simultaneous decline of their Oriental and Levantine commerce,
the Venetians never recovered.

When we turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494,
their ancient republican constitution had been fatally undermined by the
advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici,
who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise
diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash
young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had
previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but
with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni,
received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to
compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of
eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency
on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence,

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

Wycieczki Egipt ubezpieczenie samochodu kraków