The latter had also had
a lawful wife, herself an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso I of Naples
by an African woman. The bastards were often admitted to the succession
where the lawful children were minors and the dangers of the situation
were pressing; and a rule of seniority became recognized, which took no
account of pure or impure birth. The fitness of the individual, his
worth and capacity, were of more weight than all the laws and usages
which prevailed elsewhere in the West. It was the age, indeed, in which
the sons of the Popes were founding dynasties. In the sixteenth
century, through the influence of foreign ideas and of the counter-
reformation which then began, the whole question was judged more
strictly: Varchi discovers that the succession of the legitimate
children 'is ordered by reason, and is the will of heaven from
eternity.' Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici founded his claim to the
lordship of Florence on the fact that he was perhaps the fruit of a
lawful marriage, and at all events son of a gentlewoman, and not, like
Duke Alessandro, of a servant girl. At this time began those morganatic
marriages of affection which in the fifteenth century, on grounds
either of policy or morality, would have had no meaning at all.
But the highest and the most admired form of illegitimacy in the
fifteenth century was presented by the Condottiere, who whatever may
have been his origin, raised himself to the position of an independent
ruler.
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