WELCOME TO HIGH RENAISSANCE ITALY: The age of Michelangelo and Leonardo, of Machiavelli and Raphael - a belle epoque for warrior popes, prelates, princes, poets and the realpolitik. But even as the philosophers claim that 'man has come of age, ' Europeans once again arm for war and march on Italy. Into this inferno of intrigue and bloodletting, the knights of Rhodes send Hugh de Erpingham to assassinate his hero, Marcantonio Vendramin,...