Chapter 7
Nosce te ipsum – Know yourself
(Socrates)
Lucia’s meeting with Bernardino Manuzi, the printer, happened by chance on a hot and sultry midsummer day in 1517. That August afternoon, in an almost deserted Piazza del Palio, a falconer was training his peregrine falcon. The man was almost motionless in the centre of the square, the hooded bird of prey resting on his gloved arm. At his feet, a rabbit inside a cage, and three small dogs with a tiger coat, slender and fast, with a tapered body, suitable for that kind of hunting. With slow and studied movements, the man freed the bird from the hood and, lifting a little the arm, made it hover in flight. The way he looked at it, he seemed to want to entrust even his innermost thoughts to the falcon, so that they could reach heights far
