Hello, I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipscombe, and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Berlin to the Aztecs,

from Holbine to the Huguenoes, from Shakespeare to Summarise.

Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage, and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the tutors. Who would you think of if I were to ask you to define a Renaissance man?

Someone whose talents and skills span multiple fields of human endeavor, including art, literature, history, obviously, science, philosophy, economics, music, possibly even athletics, someone with an insatiable curiosity and a desire to constantly learn and

expand their knowledge. There aren't so many of them around today. Perhaps Stephen

Fry? No, not the athletics. Well, perhaps not surprisingly, giving the epithet during the Renaissance in Italy,

there were quite a few Renaissance men around, Leonardo da Vinci, for example, Michelangelo,

and perhaps none more so Len Lorenzo de medichy.

One Florentine diplomat, Nicola Valeri, wrote that

Lorenzo possessed talents not only admirable but truly amazing,

his mind was always present and never wandered. He had

vast powers of memory. His eloquence was peerless and he was endowed with

consummate prudence. He was an accomplished writer of verses and had a wide

knowledge of history. He was so well a wide knowledge of history he was so

well versed in philosophy that he was esteemed another Pythagoras he was a

connoisseur of music and composed the words as well as the melodies of many songs

but not quite everyone was so complimentary about Lorenzo de Medici.

Machiavelli, while admiring Lorenzo's effectiveness, portrayed him as a cunning and

ambitious ruler, purely self-serving in pursuit of personal power.

So what should we make of Lorenzo de Medici, whose lives and achievements left such an indelible

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