Note 153 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Her mother having been then married but eleven years, Berni is palpably wrong in calling the bride nineteen. Three years appear to have intervened between this betrothal and the nuptials, that the bride might attain the age of puberty. Roberto Malatesta had from his contemporaries the appellation of Magnifico, in common with others of like station. The authorities quoted by Roscoe (ch. ii., note 49), as proving this distinction to have been special to Lorenzo de' Medici, are comparatively modern, and do not countervail repeated instances of its adoption by personages of much less mark. Neither is Sismondi correct in considering it a generic title of such princes as possessed no other.