VITELLI, VITELLOZZO ( Italian dottiere. Together with his father, Niccolo, tyrant of Citta di Castello, and his brothers, who were all soldiers of fortune, he instituted a new type of infantry armed with sword and pike to resist the German men-at-arms, and also a corps of mounted infantry armed with arquebuses. Vitellozzo took service with Florence against Pisa, and later with the French in Apulia (1496) and with the Orsini faction against Pope Alexander VI. In 1500 Vitelli and the Orsini made peace with the pope, and Vitelli entered the service of Cesare Borgia. But, thwarted by Borgia in
his desire for vengeance on the Florentines, he conspired against him with other captains. They were captured by Borgia's agents, and Vitelli was strangled (Dec. 31, 1502).
See vol. iii. of E. Ricotti's Storia della compagnie di ventura (Turin, 1845), in which Domenichi's ms. Vita di Vitellozzo Vitelli is quoted; C. Yriarte, Cesar Borgia (Paris, 1889) ; P. Villari, Life and Times of N. Machiavelli (English ed., London, 1892) ; see also under ALEXANDER VI. and CESARE BORGIA.