Now came the turning-point in his life.

Fourteen hundred and ninety is the date which determined his public action as a man of power in Italy.

Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the instrument of his recall in this year to Florence.

Lorenzo, who, if he could have foreseen the future of his own family in Florence, would rather have stifled this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and bring him to S.Mark's, the convent upon which his father had lavished so much wealth.

He hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching of the most eloquent friar in Italy.