The latest volume of Lorenzo de’ Medici's Letters is edited by Marco Pellegrini, the first of a generation of younger scholars who, under the direction of F. W. Kent, will see the edition through to the end. Pellegrini is the author of an impressive two-volume biography of cardinal Ascanio Sforza (2002) and a short but pithy book on Lorenzo's role in the double tyrannicide in Forlì and Faenza in 1488, Congiure di Romagna (1999), so he is eminently well qualified to lead us through the events covered by the letters in this volume, which culminate in the tyrannicides he has already written about. It consists of eighty-four letters (a little more than half the number in the previous volume), written between February and July 1488, with an even greater preponderance of letters to the Florentine ambassador in Rome, Giovanni Lanfredini. This is partly due to the vagaries of conservation, since not even all the letters to Lanfredini have survived, but even so the balance between Lorenzo's interest in Rome and elsewhere is marked: only two surviving letters to the ambassador in Milan, two to Pope Innocent VIII (not III [513]) and only one to a new name in the Letters, the Dalmatian Archbishop of Sebenico (Šibenik), Luca de’ Tolenti (55–56).The four pages of introduction to this short letter provide an early illustration of Pellegrini's editorial skill in using a much later letter (from Lanfredini to Lorenzo) to throw “a shaft of light” on its contents; without it, it would be difficult to guess from Lorenzo's few opaque words that he was secretly planning to use an offer of mediation between rival French and imperial candidates for the Archbishopric of Tournai to win it for his son (56).

Since so many of the letters are similarly allusive (“sibylline,” or “cryptic”), the commentary and notes are more essential than ever for understanding them. Most of the themes are familiar from earlier volumes, such as Lorenzo's family strategies and the hunt for benefices. The new situation in this volume is Lorenzo's changed relationship with the pope after Maddalena finally married the pope's son at the end of January 1488 (when the volume opens), which both improved Lorenzo's situation and made it more difficult. He was now expected to act as intermediary for other benefice hunters (including the King of France) at a time when he wanted the benefices for his own family and compatriots. At the same time he incurred increased hostility in the curia because of his new intimacy with the pope, as well as embarrassment (qualche erubescentia) in having to ask the pope to provide for his son financially (45). These pressures led him to declare to Lanfredini in April 1488 that “we don't enjoy the standing with the pope that we used to” (186, decoded). Piero's marriage to Alfonsina Orsini at this time also limited his freedom of movement by increasing the influence over him (and subsequently over Piero) of Virginio Orsini and Ferrante of Naples. Despite all this, Lorenzo scored two personal diplomatic successes, or triumphs: reconciling Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (“Vincula”) to the pope and establishing political dominance in the Romagna after the murders of the lords of Forlì and Faenza, first by isolating Lodovico il Moro and Giovanni Bentivogli and then through secret private diplomacy winning them back, while at the same time keeping the pope, Venice, and especially Ferrante of Naples in equilibrium. In both cases, his success was due to his ability to perform political acrobatics in holding a precarious balance of power between the opposing players in the game — something Francesco Guicciardini later famously praised him for doing but is here demonstrated through Pellegrini's close attention to the nitty-gritty of politics and ability to draw out the significance of Lorenzo's sibylline hints and brief postscripts.

For those less gripped by politics, the letters offer fleeting references to the cultural icons of Renaissance Florence: for “my Poliziano,” the benefice of Gropina; for Marsilio Ficino, permission to hold three incompatibles; for Pico della Mirandola, belated support after his heresy charges (as I have recently described in Rinascimento, 2006); and for Pomponio Leto — “one of the leading, indeed the leading scholar in Rome and … very fond of me and all our family” (153) — a favor for one of his household. They also offer glimpses of a more intimate Lorenzo, often “worn out,” unable to prepare a house for his son-in-law's arrival because he was “alone, with so much to do” (316–17), or asking for a dispensation for himself and three friends to eat meat in Lent, because apart from his gout, Lenten food was very hard on his urinary gravel (renelle) (34).

So, once again, we have reason to celebrate the publication of another volume of the Letters and to thank its new editor, who must be urged to provide its sequel as quickly as possible before we lose the threads of this complex but enthralling narrative.