“Giano della Bella was condemned and banished for contumacy,⁠ ⁠… and all his possessions confiscated,⁠ ⁠… whence great mischief accrued to our city, and chiefly to the people, for he was the most loyal and upright popolano and lover of the public good of any man in Florence.”

And finally Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine , Book II , calls him “a lover of the liberty of his country,” and says, “he was hated by the nobility for undermining their authority, and envied by the richer of the commonalty, who were jealous of his power”; and that he went into voluntary exile in order “to deprive his enemies of all opportunity of injuring him, and his friends of all opportunity of injuring the country”; and that “to free the citizens from the fear they had of him, he resolved to leave the city, which, at his own charge and danger, he had liberated from the servitude of the powerful.” ↩