The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

2
MEDICI S ELECTION ASSURED. 59
name of the future Pope that Montebello and PaUano should
be entrusted to the sequestrator of the Apostohc Camera until
the settlement of the dispute, and that the Pope, in union
with Duke Cosimo, would apply to Philip II. in favour of
Carafa. Antonio Carafa allowed himself to be won over,
and now influenced his son Alfonso in the sense desired by
Cosimo.^ By this a most important victory had been won
for Medici.
On the morning of Christmas Day, Vitelli prepared himself
for another attack on Alfonso Carafa. This time he laid
before him a letter of recommendation of Medici which Duke
Cosimo had addressed to the Cardinal of Naples two months
before, but which Vitelli had intercepted and kept back.
In this letter the Duke recommended his candidate with great
urgency and many promises, though he did not go beyond
mere generalities.^ When Vitelli showed his want of satis-
faction with this, Cosimo 's ambassador, Bartolomeo Concini,
had recourse, on Vitelli 's advice, to similar measures to those
used by Vargas. He drew up, in the name of the Duke, a
letter of four pages to Vitelli,'* in which a promise was made that
all the possessions of the Carafa should remain under the care
of the Apostolic Camera until Philip II. had arranged an
equivalent for them, and Fabrizio di Sangro, a conclavist of
Carlo Carafa, was to repair as the ambassador of the new
Pope to Madrid immediately after the election, there to work
in the interests of the Carafa.^ It was not generally known
that Philip II. had already, two months previously, decided
^ SusTA, Pius IV., 150. Sebastiano Gualterio received special
instructions from Vitelli on December 23, as to how he was to
influence the hesitating Marquis. Susta, Kurie, I., Ixxii n.
" Farnese
^ Concini wrote to Cosimo as early as December 2 :
me fait dire que toute 1' affaire de Medici c' est d' arranger celle
de don Antonio Carafa ;
" in Petrucelli, 153.
^ Panvinius, 582.
4 lUd.
* SusTA, Pius IV., 150. Cf. Vargas to Philip II., on December
29, 1559, in DoLLiNGER, Beitrage, I., 325. See also Caro, III.,
'271.