Benedetta Reguardati of Nursia (1398-1469).

BENEDETrO REGUARDATI was a physician and a diplomat.' His medical skill, shared by his younger son, Dionisio, was an inherited calling, for he came from the stock of the Norcini, medicine men, renowned throughout the ages for traditional skill in magic and healing. In his own lifetime Reguardati is said to have 'greatly increased the glory of his family' acquired in the past by his ancestors in the city of Nursia' (ac domus sue splendorem quem in Nurisina civitate vetustis temporibus comparatum a suis maioribus, ipse plurimum auxit, Cicco Simonetta, 1 September 1464). He himself bore the proud name ofhis more famous compaesano, St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543), whose mother had been Abbondanza Reguardati. Reguardati's diplomatic career deserves consideration in any detailed study of Renaissance diplomacy, a neglected field to which the late Garrett Mattingly has drawn attention. To the Reguardati family this also was a traditional vocation. Benedetto's brother, Marino, his son Carlo, both lawyers, became Roman Senators. Carlo served the court of Milan at Urbino (M.A.P. IX, 276, 14 March 1462)2 and at Pesaro. He was at Florence when Benedetto died there in 1469. Another diplomat, Giovanni Reguardati, described by Professor Babinger as 'Venetian' ambassador to Ladislaus, King of Hungary in 1444,3 was probably a kinsman, one of the many Norcini in the pay of Venice. Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) in a letter to Niccolo Ceba, dated 26 February 1450, recalls that Benedetto Reguardati himself went on an embassy to Venice as Sforza's representative to the Republic.4 Pietro Reguardati, Benedetto's nephew, also a lawyer, was one of the Cavalieri in attendance on Francesco Sforza in March 1450, on his entry into Milan.5 Later, when Pietro was Advocate General of the Mark of Ancona (1464), and Sforza's representative in Rome, he hoped for promotion as Ducal Auditor, but Sforza, to whom the new Pope, Paul II, was hostile, decided on retrenchment, so the office was allowed to lapse on the death ofthe previous occupant, Angelo da Rieti (Reguardati's letter to Sforza, 9 November and the reply, 28 November 1464). Benedetto Reguardati signed his letters miles et physicus. In the early quattrocento these terms reveal the dual status of military-medical practitioners, such as those