In 1446 the dominant faction in Bologna, bereft of a head by the murder of Annibale Bentivoglio, invited Sante, an illegitimate scion of the house, to throw up his post in the Florentine wool-trade and assume the leadership of the city. For the next sixty years Sante and his successor Giovanni II exercised an ascendancy in Bologna which entitles them to a place among the more famous despots of the Italian Renaissance. The Bentivoglio Signoria is in essentials a typical outcome of the nation and age. Constitutionally, the position of its holders was even more ambiguous than that of the majority of their contemporaries. Like the Medici, they were in law, not despots but private citizens. The system by which their ascendancy was maintained mingled terrorism with beneficence. The coming of Sante followed upon a faction fight which brought death and exile upon the rival family of Canetoli, and in the course of years fresh rivals arose to suffer a like fate.