In the mid-fifteenth century, the medici were not members of the highest social class. Shrewd Cosimo's success would have inspired myriad ambitious bumpkins like Ser Piero from little Vinci. Indeed, Ser Piero lived in the first period of history in which there was some secular class mobility – so long as one could find a place in the familial, political patronage system that Cosimo had founded and his progeny perfected. In Della famiglia, Alberti confidently declared that “men are themselves the source of their own fortune and misfortune.” In those heady, optimistic days, self-proclaimed poets recited in the street verses that celebrated the self-made man who ascends from the lower ranks to aristocracy, loudly voicing the prevalent humanist view that knowledge and virtue conferred nobility beyond that of inherited wealth. Cosimo cleverly exploited this aspirant, bourgeois notion. He frequently hired humble individuals from rural villages such as Vinci, knowing that he would receive fierce loyalty and gratitude in return. Moreover, such dislocated people were less likely to have connections with his rivals in the city, the Pazzi family and other, old-money gentry. His namesake, the equally tough-minded and calculating Cosimo I, continued this effective strategy in the next century and became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.