# CHAPTER 56 — Before Important Events Happen in a City or a Province, Signs that Foretell Them or Men Who Predict Them Appear

How this comes about I do not know, but both ancient and modern examples demonstrate that no serious event ever occurs in a city or a province that has not been predicted either by fortune-tellers, revelations, extraordinary events, or by other celestial signs. And so as not to stray far from home to prove this, everyone knows that Brother Girolamo Savonarola had foretold before it happened the coming of King Charles VIII of France into Italy, * and that, besides this, throughout all of Tuscany people were said to have seen and heard soldiers fighting against each other in the sky above Arezzo. Everyone knows, besides this, that before the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici the elder, * the highest part of the Duomo was struck by a celestial thunderbolt, with very great damage to that edifice. Everybody knows as well that a short time before Piero Soderini, who had been made gonfaloniere for life by the Florentine people, was driven out of the city and stripped of his rank, the palace itself was struck by lightning. * More examples of this could be cited, which I shall pass over to avoid tedium. I shall only recount what Livy says about the situation before the Gauls invaded Rome: namely, that a certain plebeian named Marcus Caedicius reported to the senate that, while he was passing through Via Nuova at midnight, he had overheard a superhuman voice warning him to tell the magistrates that the Gauls were coming to Rome. * The cause of such occurrences, I think, must be discussed and interpreted by men who have the knowledge of things natural and supernatural, which we ourselves lack. It may be, however, as some philosophers maintain, that the air is filled with intelligences, who by means of natural abilities foresee future events and, having compassion for men, warn them with similar signs so that they can prepare their defences. Whatever the case may be, however, it is evidently true, for after such events, extraordinary and unusual things always happen in every province.