"The second son of Lucretia Borgia, Ippolito d'Este loved gambling, hunting, tennis and women. He became Archbishop of Milan at the age of nine but he had to wait another twenty years to acquire his coveted cardinal's hat, the route to power and wealth in sixteenth-century Europe and one which had little to do with piety." "This is the story of how he achieved his ambition, a story involving family squabbles and private feuds, and the political agendas of the Pope, the Emperor and the King of France. Through Ippolito's eyes we experience the sophistication of the French court, the pleasures of hunting in the Loire valley, the excitement of battle in Picardy, the glamour of an international peace conference at Nice and the discomforts of mountain travel." But The Cardinal's Hat is not just a story of political ambition. From the astonishing quantity of account books and letters preserved in the archives at Modena, we are given glimpses into the lives of ordinary people: cooks and stable boys, butchers and painters, bargemen and beggars. The ledgers deal not only with the trappings of power - gold and silver, silks and velvets, banquets and balls - but also with the stuff of everyday life. We learn how much soap and candles cost, what happened when the drains got blocked and why tipping was so important." "Above all, these records are a fitting testament to one of the major preoccupations of the period, and something much loved by Ippolito - money."--BOOK JACKET.