Pietro de’Medici, a fifth of Cosimo’s sons, had rendered himself notorious in Spain and Italy by forming a secret society for the most revolting debaucheries.[219] Yet he married the noble lady Eleonora di Toledo, related by blood to Cosimo’s first wife.  Neglected and outraged by her husband, she proved unfaithful, and Pietro hewed her in pieces with his own hands at Caffaggiolo.  Isabella de’Medici, daughter of Cosimo, was married to the Duke of Bracciano.  Educated in the empoisoned atmosphere of Florence, she, like Eleonora di Toledo, yielded herself to fashionable profligacy, and was strangled by her husband at Cerretto.[220]

[Footnote 216:  I refer, of course, to Galluzzi’s Storia del Gran Ducato, vol. iv. pp. 241-244.  Botta’s Storia d’Italia, Book xiv., and Litta’s Famiglie Celebri under the pedigree of Medici.]

[Footnote 217:  See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iii. p, 25, and Botta, op. cit. Book xii.]

[Footnote 218:  See above, p. 381.]

[Footnote 219:  Litta may be consulted for details; also Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. v. p. 174.]

[Footnote 220:  It maybe worth mentioning that Virginio Orsini, Bracciano’s son and heir, married Donna Flavia, grand niece of Sixtus V., and consequently related to the man his father murdered in order to possess Vittoria Accoramboni.  See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 72.]

Both of these murders took place in 1576.  Isabella’s death, as I have elsewhere related, opened the way for the Duke of Bracciano’s marriage with Vittoria Accoramboni, which had been prepared by the assassination of her first husband, and which led to her own murder at Padua.[221] Another of Cosimo’s daughters, Lucrezia de’Medici, became Duchess of Ferrara, fell under a suspicion of infidelity, and was possibly removed by poison in 1561.[222] The last of his sons whom I have to mention, Don Giovanni, married a dissolute woman of low birth called Livia, and disgraced the name of Medici by the unprincely follies of his life.  Eleonora de’Medici, third of his daughters, introduces a comic element into these funereal records.  She was affianced to Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir of the Duchy of Mantua.  But suspicions, arising out of the circumstances of his divorce from a former wife, obliged him to prove his marital capacity before the completion of the contract.  This he did at Venice, before a witness, upon the person of a virgin selected for the experiment.[223] Maria de’Medici, the only child of Duke Francesco, became Queen of France.

[Footnote 221:  See above, pp. 361-369.]

[Footnote 222:  Galluzzi, vol. iii. p. 5, says that she died of a putrid fever.  Litta again inclines to the probability of poison.  But this must counted among the doubtful cases.]

[Footnote 223:  See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iv. pp. 195-197, for the account of a transaction which throws curious light upon the customs of the age.  It was only stipulated that the trial should not take place upon a Friday.  Otherwise, the highest ecclesiastics gave it their full approval.] The history of her amours with Concini forms an episode in French annals.