CREDENTIALS.
SERENISSIMO PRINCIPI ET EXCELLENTISSIMO DOMINO ANDREÆ GRITTI, DEI GRATIA DUCI VENETIARUM PATR. OBSERV.

We send to your Serene Highness our citizen Niccolo Machiavelli, who will relate to you in our name the extortion and violence beyond all expectation, and done in contempt of what is due to the friendship existing between your illustrious republic and ours, by a man in a port and town of your most illustrious dominion, against three of our young men who were coming from Ragusa with a sum of money which they brought from the Levant as is usual.

We beg your Serene Highness to put full faith in all that our envoy will explain to you in our name. And most earnestly do we entreat you to receive his reclamation favorably, and to cause restitution to be made to our merchants of what has so violently been taken from them. This is what we hope from the integrity and consummate justice of your most illustrious Serene Highness, to whom we recommend ourselves most humbly, and whom we pray the Almighty most happily to preserve.

Consules Artis Lanæ et Cons. Reip. Florentinæ in Romania } Civitatis Florentiæ.
Dat. Florentiæ ex officio nostro die 19 mensis Augusti 1525.