In the days when that great captain of the Gauls, Brennus, led his forces through Italy and Greece, there were in his troop two French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who seeing the wicked designs of Brennus to invade and desecrate the temple of Delphos, after his great conquests, withdrew their forces and passed into Asia with their ships and followers.
They pushed on until they entered the sea of Medes, which is near Lydia and Persia.
Thence, after gaining many victories and obtaining many conquests, they retired, and while returning through Italy on their way to France, Felsinus stopped on the site of what is now Florence, beside the river Arno, a place which he saw was beautiful and commanding and situated much as another place which had pleased him much in the country of the Medes.
There he built the city which to-day is Florence.
His companion, Bono, built a second, and neighboring city which he called Bononia, the modern Bologna.
Henceforth Felsinus was called Medicus by his intimates, in commemoration of his victories and conquests among the Medes, a name that became the family name, just as we read of Paulus being surnamed Macedonicus, on account of his conquest of Macedonia from Perseus, and of Scipio being called Africanus for doing the like in Africa.
I do not know from what source M. de Beaune got his history, but it is very probable, that, speaking as he did before the King and such an august assembly, there convened for the funeral of the Queen, M. de Beaune would not have made the statement without good authority.
This descent is very different from the modern story invented and attributed without cause to the Medici family, according to that lying book on the life of the Queen, which I have mentioned.
Furthermore, continues the aforementioned Sieur de Beaune, one reads in the chronicles that a certain Everard de Medici, Sieur of Florence, many years afterwards, went with many of his subjects to the assistance of Charlemagne in his expedition in Italy against Didier, king of the Lombards, and having courageously succoured and assisted him was granted and invested with the lordship of Florence.
Many years later, one Anemond de Medici, also a Sieur of Florence, accompanied, with many of his subjects, Godefroy de Bouillon to the Holy Land, where he died at the siege of Nicæa in Asia.