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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: House of Medici (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07) |
 | | Born 1389, died 1 August, 1464, the founder of their power and so-called "Padre della Patria", was the son of Giovanni di Averardo de' Medici, the richest banker in Italy. |
 | | Posterity has agreed to call Lorenzo "the Magnificent", but this is, in part, a misunderstanding of the Italian title "magnifico", which was given to all the members of his family, and, indeed, during the fifteenth century, applied to most persons of importance in Italy to whom the higher title of "Excellence" did not pertain. |
 | | But in 1530, after the famous siege, the city was compelled to surrender to the imperial forces, and Charles V made Alessandro de' Medici, an illegitimate son of the younger Lorenzo, hereditary head of the Florentine government. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/10120a.htm (1478 words) |
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