Quotes from Christopher Hibbert

I f you sound your trumpets, we will ring our bells.

Yet, although many priests were extremely poor, the Church as an institution was not only very rich but also powerful. It paid no taxes, voluntarily contributing instead a grant to the state every five years, and, as the amount of this grant was decided in the quinquennial Church Assemblies, the clergy were able to exercise a considerable influence over the policies of the Government.

I do not deny my past. I have been a great wanderer from what is right, but at least I know it and hope that the knowledge has not come too late.

Francesco de Pazzi thereupon stabbed him with such frenzy, plunging the blade time and again into the unresisting body, that he even drove the point of the dagger through his own tigh. Giuliano fell to his knees while two assailants continued to rain savage blows upon him, slashing and stabbing until the corpse was rent by nineteen wounds. The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall