Before Great Events Occur in a City or a Province, Signs Come which Foretell them, or Men who Predict them

Whence it arises I do not know, but from ancient and modern examples it is seen that no great event ever takes place in a City or a Province that has not been predicted either by fortune tellers, by revelations, by prodigies, or by other celestial signs. And in order for me not to go distant from home in proving this, everyone knows how the coming of King Charles VIII of France into Italy was predicted by Brother Girolamo Savonarola, and how in addition to this it was said throughout Italy that at Arezzo there had been seen in the air men-at-arms battling together. In addition to this, everyone knows how, before the death of Lorenzo De’Medici the elder, the Duomo was hit in its highest part by a bolt from the skies which very greatly damaged that edifice. Also everyone knows how, a little while before Piero Soderini, who had been made Gonfalonier for life by the Florentine people, had been driven out and deprived of his rank, ............