Author: Rafael Sabatini

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13:

'Half god, half beast, ' the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man. Aware of this, the anonymous chronicler who has preserved it for us goes on to comment that the Princess said at once too much and too little. He makes phrases in his turn-which I will spare you-and seeks to prove, that, if the moieties of divinity and beastliness are equally balanced in a man, that man will be neither good nor bad. Then he passes on to show us a certain poor swineherd, who rose to ultimate eminence, in whom the godly part so far predominated that naught else was humanly discernible, and a great prince-of whom more will be heard in the course of this narrative-who was just as the beasts that perish, without any spark of divinity to exalt him. These are the extremes. For each of the dozen or so intermediate stages which he discerns, our chronicler has a portrait out of history, of which his learning appears to be considerable. From this, from his general manner, from the fact that most of his illustrations are supplied by Florentine sources, and from the austerely elegant Tuscan language in which he writes, a fairly definite conclusion is possible on the score of his identity. It is more than probable that this study of Bellarion the Fortunate (Bellarione Il Fortunato) belongs to that series of historical portraits from the pen of Niccolò Macchiavelli, of which 'The Life of Castruccio Castracane' is perhaps the most widely known. Research, however, fails to discover the source from which he draws. Whilst many of his facts agree completely with those contained in the voluminous, monkish 'Vita et Gesta Bellarionis, ' left us by Fra Serafino of Imola, whoever he may have been, yet discrepancies are frequent and irreconcilable.