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Table of Contents

Intricacy of the Subject—Division into Four Periods—Place of Florence—Social Conditions favourable to Culture—Palla degli Strozzi—His Encouragement of Greek Studies—Plan of a Public Library—His Exile—Cosimo de' Medici—His Patronage of Learning—Political Character—Love of Building—Generosity to Students—Foundation of Libraries—Vespasiano and Thomas of Sarzana—Niccolo de' Niccoli—His Collection of Codices—Description of his Mode of Life—His Fame as a Latinist—Lionardo Bruni—His Biography—Translations from the Greek—Latin Treatises and Histories—His Burial in Santa Croce—Carlo Aretino—Fame as a Lecturer—The Florentine Chancery—Matteo Palmieri—Giannozzo Manetti—His Hebrew Studies—His Public Career—His Eloquence—Manetti ruined by the Medici—His Life in Exile at Naples—Estimate of his Talents—Ambrogio Traversari—Study of Greek Fathers—General of the Camaldolese Order—Humanism and Monasticism—The Council of Florence—Florentine Opinion about the Greeks—Gemistus Pletho—His Life—His Philosophy—His Influence at Florence—Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Academy—Study of Plato—Pletho's Writings—Platonists and Aristotelians in Italy and Greece—Bessarion—His Patronage of Greek Refugees in Rome—Humanism in the Smaller Republics—In Venice.

The great difficulty with which a critic desirous of rendering a succinct account of this phase of Italian culture has to deal, is the variety and complexity of the subject. It is easy to perceive the unity of the humanistic movement, and to regard the scholars of the fifteenth century as a literary community with well-defined relations to each other. Yet when we attempt to trace the growth of scholarship in all its branches, the peculiar conditions of political and social life in Italy present almost insuperable obstacles to any continuity of treatment. The republics, the principalities, and the Church have each their separate existence. Venice, Florence, Naples, Milan, Rome, Ferrara, form distinct and independent centres, imposing their own specialities upon the intellectual activity of citizens and aliens. The humanists, meanwhile, to some extent efface these local differences, spreading a network of common culture over cities and societies divided by all else but interest in learning. To these combinations and permutations, arising from the contact of the scholars with their patrons in the several States of Italy, is due the intricacy of the history of the Revival. The same men of eminence appear by turns in each of the chief Courts and commonwealths, passing with bewildering rapidity from north to south and back again, in one place demanding attention under one head of the subject, in another presenting new yet not less important topics for investigation. What Filippo Maria Visconti, for instance, required from Filelfo had but little in common with the claims made on him by Nicholas V., while his activity as a satirist and partisan at Florence differed from his labour as a lecturer at Siena. Again, the biography of each humanist to some extent involves that of all his contemporaries. The coteries of Rome are influenced by the cliques of Naples; the quarrels of Lorenzo Valla ramify into the squabbles of Guarino; political animosity combines with literary jealousy in the disputes of Poggio with Filelfo. While some of the most eminent professors remain stationary in their native or adopted towns, others move to and fro with the speed of comets. From time to time, at Rome or elsewhere, a patron rises, who assembles all the wandering stars around himself. His death disperses the group; or accidents rouse jealousy among them, and cause secessions from the circle. Then fresh combinations have to be considered. In no one city can we trace firm chronological progression, or discover the fixed local character which justifies our dividing the history of Italian painting by its schools. To avoid repetition, and to preserve an even current of narration amid so much that is shifting, is almost impossible.

Some method may be introduced by sketching briefly at the outset the principal periods through which the humanistic movement passed. Though to a certain extent arbitrary, these periods mark distinct moments in an evolution uniform in spite of its complexity.

The first, starting with Petrarch, and including the lives and labours of those men he personally influenced, has been traced in a preceding chapter. This was the age of inspiration and discovery, when the enthusiasm for antiquity was generated and the remnants of the classics were accumulated. The second may be described as the age of arrangement and translation. The first great libraries were founded in this period; the study of Greek was pursued in earnest, and the Greek authors were rendered into Latin. Round Cosimo de' Medici at Florence, Alfonso the Magnanimous at Naples, and Nicholas V. in Rome the leaders of the Renaissance at this time converge. The third is the age of academies. The literary republic, formed during the first and second periods, now gathers into coteries, whereof the Platonic Academy at Florence, that of Pontanus at Naples, that of Pomponius Lætus in Rome, and that of Aldus Manutius at Venice are the most important. Scholarship begins to exhibit a marked improvement in all that concerns style and taste. At the same time Italian erudition reaches its maximum in Poliziano. Externally this third period is distinguished by the rapid spread of printing and the consequent downfall of the humanists as a class. In the fourth period we notice a gradual decline of learning; æsthetic and stylistic scholarship begins to claim exclusive attention. This is the age of the purists, over whom Bembo exercises the sway of a dictator, while the Court of Leo X. furnishes the most brilliant assemblage of literati in Europe. Erudition, properly so called, is now upon the point of being transplanted beyond the Alps, and the Revival of Learning closes for the historian of Italy.

Although the essential feature of this subject is variety, and though each city of Italy contributed its quota to the sum of culture, attention has now to be directed in a special sense on Florence. Nothing is more obvious to the student who has mastered the first difficulties caused by the intricacy of Italian history, than the fact that all the mental force of the nation was generated in Tuscany, and radiated thence, as from a centre of vital heat and light, over the rest of the peninsula. This is true of the fine arts no less than of Italian poetry, of the revival of learning as well as of the origin of science. From the republics of Tuscany, and from Florence in particular, proceeded the impulse and the energy which led to fruitful results in all of these departments. In proportion as Florence continued to absorb the neighbouring free States into herself, her intellectual pre-eminence became the more unquestionable. Arezzo, Volterra, Cortona, Montepulciano, Prato, and Pistoja were but rivulets feeding the stream of Florentine industry.

What caused this superiority of the Tuscans is a problem as difficult to solve as the similar problem with respect to Athens among the states of Greece. Something may no doubt be attributed to ethnology, and something to climate. Much, again, was due to the purity of a dialect which retained more of native energy and literary capacity, and which had suffered less from barbarian admixtures than the dialects of northern or of southern Italy. The conquest of the Lombards passed the Tuscans by, nor did feudal institutions take the same root in the valley of the Arno which they struck in the kingdom of Naples. The cities of Tuscany were therefore less exposed to foreign influences than the rest of Italy. While they pursued their course of internal growth in comparative tranquillity, they were better fitted for reviving the past glories of Latin civilisation upon its native soil. The free institutions of the Florentine commonwealth must also be taken into account.

In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the conditions under which a republic of letters and of culture could be formed. The aristocracy of Naples indulged the semi-savage tastes of territorial seigneurs; the nobles of Rome delighted in feats of arms and shared their wealth with retinues of bravi; the great families of Umbria, Romagna, and the March followed the profession of condottieri; the Lombards were downtrodden by their Despots and deprived of individual freedom; the Genoese developed into little better than traders and sea-robbers; the Sienese, divided by the factions of their Monti, had small leisure or common public feeling left for study. Florence meanwhile could boast a population of burghers noble by taste and culture, owing less to ancestry than to personal eminence, devoting their energies to civic ambition worthy of the Romans, and to mental activity which reminds us of the ancient Greeks. Between the people and this aristocracy of wealth and intellect there was at Florence no division like that which separated the Venetian gentiluomini from the cittadini. The so-called nobili and popolani did not, as in Venice, form a caste apart, bound to the service of a tyrannous state-system. The very mobility which proved the ultimate source of disruption and of ruin to the commonwealth, aided the intellectual development of Florence. Stagnation and oppression were alike unknown. Here, therefore, and here alone, was created a public capable instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars who knew that their labours could not fail to be appreciated, and a class of patrons who sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on those arts and sciences which dignify the life of man. The Florentines, moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest sense of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. Like the Athenians of old, they had no warmer passion than their love for their city. However much we may deplore the rancorous dissensions which from time to time split up the commonwealth into parties, the remorseless foreign policy which destroyed Pisa, the political meanness of the Medici, and the base egotism of the ottimati, the fact remains that, æsthetically and intellectually, Florence was 'a city glorious,' a realised ideal of culture and humanity for all the rest of Italy, and, through Italian influence in general, for modern Europe and for us.

What makes the part played by Florence in the history of learning the more remarkable is, that the chiefs of the political factions were at the same time the leaders of intellectual progress. Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici, while opposed as antagonists in a duel to the death upon the stage of the republic, vied with each other in the patronage they extended to men of letters. Rinaldo was himself no mean scholar; and he chose one of the greatest men of the age, Tommaso da Sarzana, to be tutor to his children. Of Palla degli Strozzi's services in the cause of Greek learning I have already spoken in the second chapter of this volume. Beside the invitation which he caused to be sent to Manuel Chrysoloras, he employed his wealth and influence in providing books necessary for the prosecution of Hellenic studies. 'Messer Palla,' says Vespasiano, 'sent to Greece for countless volumes, all at his own cost. The "Cosmography" of Ptolemy, together with the picture made to illustrate it, the "Lives" of Plutarch, the works of Plato, and very many other writings of philosophers, he got from Constantinople. The "Politics" of Aristotle were not in Italy until Messer Palla sent for them; and when Messer Lionardo of Arezzo translated them, he had the copy from his hands.'[125] In the same spirit of practical generosity Palla degli Strozzi devoted his leisure and his energies to the improvement of the studio pubblico at Florence, giving it that character of humane culture which it retained throughout the age of the Renaissance.[126] To him, again, belongs the glory of having first collected books for the express purpose of founding a public library. This project had occupied the mind of Petrarch, and its utility had been recognised by Coluccio de' Salutati,[127] but no one had as yet arisen to accomplish it. 'Being passionately fond of literature, Messer Palla always kept copyists in his own house and outside it, of the best who were in Florence, both for Greek and Latin books; and all the books he could find he purchased, on all subjects, being minded to found a most noble library in Santa Trinità, and to erect there a most beautiful building for the purpose. He wished that it should be open to the public, and he chose Santa Trinità because it was in the centre of Florence, a site of great convenience to everybody. His disasters supervened, and what he had designed he could not execute.'[128]

The calamities alluded to by Vespasiano may be briefly told. Palla degli Strozzi, better fitted by nature for study than for party warfare, was one of the richest of the merchant princes of Florence. In the catasto of 1427 his property was valued at one-fifth more than that returned by Giovanni, then the chief of the Medicean family; and the extraordinary tax (gravezza) imposed upon it reached the sum of 800 florins.[129] During the conflict for power carried on between the Albizzi and the Medici he strove to preserve a neutral attitude; but after Cosimo's return from exile, in 1434, the presence of so powerful and rich a leader in the State seemed dangerous to the Medicean party. It was their policy to annihilate all greatness but their own, and to reduce the Florentines to slavery by creating a body of dependents and allies whose interests should be bound up with their own supremacy.[130] Palla degli Strozzi was accordingly banished to Padua for ten years, nor, at the expiration of this period, was he suffered to return to Florence. He died in exile, separated from his children, who shared the same fate in other parts of Italy, while Florence lost the services of the most enlightened of her sons.[131] Amid the many tribulations of his latter years Palla continued to derive comfort from study. John Argyropoulos was his guest at Padua, where the collection of books and the cultivation of Greek learning went on with no less vigour than at Florence.

The work begun by Palla degli Strozzi at Florence was ably continued by his enemy Cosimo de' Medici. Though the historian cannot respect this man, whose mean and selfish ambition undermined the liberties of his native city, there is no doubt that he deserves the credit of a prudent and munificent Mæcenas. No Italian of his epoch combined zeal for learning and generosity in all that could advance the interests of arts and letters, more characteristically, with political corruption and cynical egotism. Early in life Cosimo entered his father's house of business, and developed a rare faculty for finance. This faculty he afterwards employed in the administration of the State, as well as in the augmentation of the riches of his family by trade. As he gained political importance, he made it his prime object to place out monies in the hands of needy citizens, and to involve the public affairs of Florence with his own commerce by means of loans and other expedients. He not only attached individuals by debts and obligations to his person, but he also rendered it difficult to control the State expenditure without regard to his private bank. Few men have better understood the value of money in the acquisition of power, or the advantage of so using it that jealousy should not be roused by personal display. 'Envy,' he remarked, 'is a plant you must not water.' Accordingly, while he spent large sums on public works, he declined Brunelleschi's sumptuous project for a palace, on the score that such a dwelling was more fitted for a prince than a citizen. In his habits he was temperate and simple. Games of hazard he abhorred, and found his recreation in the company of learned men. Sometimes, but rarely, he played at chess. Contemporaries recorded how, like an ancient Roman, he rose early in the morning to prune his own pear trees and to plant his vines. In all things he preferred the reality to the display of power and riches. While wielding the supreme authority of Florence, he seemed intent upon the dull work of the counting-house. Other men were put forward in the execution of designs that he had planned; and this policy of ruling the State by cat's-paws was followed so consistently, that at the end of his life his influence was threatened by the very instruments he had created. At the same time he exercised virtual despotism with a pitiless tenacity unsurpassed by the Visconti. The cruelty with which he pushed the Albizzi to their ruin, prolonged the exile of Palla degli Strozzi, reduced Giannozzo Manetti to beggary, and oppressed his rivals in general with forced loans—using taxation like a poignard, to quote a phrase from Guicciardini—is enough to show that only prudence caused him to refrain from violence.[132] A cold and calculating policy, far-sighted, covert, and secretive, governed all the measures he took for fastening his family on Florence. The result was that the roots of the Medici, while they seemed to take hold slowly, struck deep; you might fancy they were nowhere, just because they had left no part unpenetrated. The Republic, like Gulliver in Liliput, was tied down by a thousand threads, each almost imperceptible, but so varied in quality and so subtly interwoven that to escape from the network was impossible.

Much of the influence acquired by Cosimo, and transmitted to his descendants, was due to sympathy with the intellectual movement of the age. He had received a solid education; and though he was not a Greek scholar, his mind was open to the interests which in the fifteenth century absorbed the Florentines. He collected manuscripts, gems, coins, and inscriptions, employing the resources of his banking house and engaging his commercial agents in this work. Painters and sculptors, no less than scholars and copyists, found in him a liberal patron. At the death of his son Piero the treasures of the Casa Medici, not counting plate and costly furniture, were valued at 30,000 golden florins.[133] The sums of money spent by him in building were enormous. It was reckoned that, one year with another, he disbursed from 15,000 to 18,000 golden florins annually in edifices for the public use.[134] Of these the most important were the Convent of S. Marco, which altogether cost about 70,000 florins; S. Lorenzo, which cost another 40,000; and the Abbey of Fiesole. On his own palace he expended 60,000 florins, while the building of his villas at Careggi and Cafaggiuolo implied a further large expenditure. Not a shilling of this money was wasted; for while Cosimo avoided the reproach of personal extravagance, he gave work to multitudes of labourers, who received their wages regularly every Saturday at his office. To this free use of wealth in the employment of artisans may be ascribed the popularity of the Medici with the lower classes, which was more than once so useful to them at a perilous turn of fortune.

Comprehending the conditions under which tyranny might be successfully practised in the fifteenth century, Cosimo attached great value to this generosity. He used, in later life, to regret that 'he had not begun to spend money upon public works ten years earlier than he did.'[135] Every costly building that bore his name, each library he opened to the public, and all the donations lavished upon scholars served the double purpose of cementing the despotism of his house and of gratifying his personal enthusiasm for culture. Superstition mingled with these motives of the tyrant and the dilettante. Knowing that much of his wealth had been ill-gotten, he besought the Pope, Eugenius, to indicate a proper way of restitution. Eugenius advised him to spend 10,000 florins on the Convent of S. Marco. Thereupon Cosimo laid out considerably more than four times that sum, adding the famous Marcian Library, and treating the new foundation of the Osservanza, one of the Pope's favourite crotchets, with more than princely liberality.[136]

Of his generosity to men of letters the most striking details are recorded. When Niccolo de' Niccoli ruined himself by buying books, Cosimo opened for him an unlimited credit with the Medicean bank. The cashiers received orders to honour the old scholar's drafts; and in this way Niccolo drew 500 ducats for his private needs.[137] Tommaso Parentucelli was treated with no less magnificence. As Bishop of Bologna, soon after his patron Albergati's death, he found himself with very meagre revenues and no immediate prospect of preferment. Yet the expenses of his station were considerable, and he had occasion to request a loan from the Medici. Cosimo issued a circular letter to his correspondents, engaging them to supply Tommaso with what sums of money he might want.[138] When the Bishop of Bologna assumed the tiara, with the name of Nicholas V., he rewarded Cosimo by making him his banker; and the Jubilee bringing 100,000 ducats into the Papal treasury, the obligation was repaid a hundredfold.[139]

The chief benefit conferred by Cosimo de' Medici on learning was the accumulation and the housing of large public libraries. During his exile (Oct. 3, 1433—Oct. 1, 1434) he built the Library of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, and after his return to Florence he formed three separate collections of MSS. While the hall of the Library of S. Marco was in process of construction, Niccolo de' Niccoli died, in 1437, bequeathing his 800 MSS., valued at 6,000 golden florins, to sixteen trustees. Among these were Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, Ambrogio Traversari, Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, and Franco Sacchetti. At the same time the estate of Niccolo was compromised by heavy debts. These debts Cosimo cancelled, obtaining in exchange the right to dispose of the library. In 1441 the hall of the convent was finished. Four hundred of Niccolo's MSS. were placed there, with this inscription upon each: Ex hereditate doctissimi viri Nicolai de Nicolis de Florentiâ. Tommaso Parentucelli made a catalogue at Cosimo's request, in which he not only noted the titles of Niccoli's books, but also marked the names of others wanting to complete the collection. This catalogue afterwards served as a guide to the founders of the libraries of Fiesole, Urbino, and Pesaro, and was, says Vespasiano, indispensable to book-collectors.[140] Of the remaining 400 volumes Cosimo kept some for his own (the Medicean) library, and some he gave to friends. At the same time he spared no pains in adding to the Marcian collection. His agents received instructions to buy codices, while Vespasiano and Fra Giuliano Lapaccini were employed in copying rare MSS. As soon as Cosimo had finished building the Abbey of Fiesole, he set about providing this also with a library suited to the wants of learned ecclesiastics. Of the method he pursued, Vespasiano, who acted as his agent, has transmitted the following account:[141]—'One day, when I was in his room, he said to me, "What plan can you recommend for the formation of this library?" I answered that to buy the books would be impossible, since they could not be purchased. "What, then, do you propose?" he added. I told him that they must be copied. He then asked if I would undertake the business. I replied that I was willing. He bade me begin at my leisure, saying that he left all to me; and for the monies wanted day by day, he ordered that Don Arcangelo, at that time prior of the monastery, should draw cheques upon his bank, which should be honoured. After beginning the collection, since it was his will that it should be finished with all speed possible, and money was not lacking, I soon engaged forty-five copyists, and in twenty-two months provided two hundred volumes, following the admirable list furnished by Pope Nicholas V.' The two libraries thus formed by Cosimo for the Convents of S. Marco and Fiesole, together with his own private collections, constitute the oldest portion of the present Laurentian Library. On the title-pages of many venerable MSS. may still be read inscriptions, testifying to the munificence of the Medici, and calling upon pious students to remember the souls of their benefactors in their prayers[142]—Orato itaque lector ut gloria et divitiæ sint in domo ejus justitia ejus et maneat in sæculum sæculi.

Cosimo's zeal for learning was not confined to the building of libraries or to book-collecting. His palace formed the centre of a literary and philosophical society, which united all the wits of Florence and the visitors who crowded to the capital of culture. Vespasiano expressly states that 'he was always the father and benefactor of those who showed any excellence.'[143] Distinguished by versatility of tastes and comprehensive intellect, he formed his own opinion of the men of eminence with whom he came in contact, and conversed with each upon his special subject. 'When giving audience to a scholar, he discoursed concerning letters; in the company of theologians he showed his acquaintance with theology, a branch of learning always studied by him with delight. So also with regard to philosophy. Astrologers found him well versed in their science, for he somewhat lent faith to astrology and employed it on certain private occasions. Musicians in like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he much delighted. The same was true about sculpture and painting; both of these arts he understood completely, and showed great favour to all worthy craftsmen. In architecture he was a consummate judge, for without his opinion and advice no building was begun or carried to completion.'[144]

The discernment of character, possessed by Cosimo in a very high degree, not only enabled him to extend enlightened patronage to arts and letters, but also to provide for the future needs of erudition. Stimulated by the presence of the Greeks who crowded Florence during the sitting of the Council in 1438, he formed a plan for encouraging Hellenic studies. It was he who founded the Platonic Academy, and educated Marsilio Ficino, the son of his physician, for the special purpose of interpreting Greek philosophy. Ficino, in a letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, observes that during twelve years he had conversed with Cosimo on matters of philosophy, and always found him as acute in reasoning as he was prudent and powerful in action. 'I owe to Plato much, to Cosimo no less. He realised for me the virtues of which Plato gave me the conception.' Thus the man whose political cynicism is enshrined in such apophthegms as these:—'A few ells of scarlet would fill Florence with citizens;' 'You cannot govern a State with paternosters;' 'Better the city ruined than the city lost to us'—must, by his relations to scholars and his enthusiasm for culture, still command our admiration and respect.

Among the friends of Cosimo, to whose personal influence at Florence the Revival of Learning owed a vigorous impulse, Niccolo de' Niccoli claims our earliest attention.[145] The part he took in promoting Greek studies has been already noticed, and we have seen that his private library formed the nucleus of the Marcian collection. Of the eight hundred volumes bequeathed to his executors, the majority had been transcribed by his own hand; for he was assiduous in this labour, and plumed himself upon his skill in cursive as well as printed character.[146] His whole fortune was expended long before his death in buying manuscripts or procuring copies from a distance. 'If he heard of any book in Greek or Latin not to be had in Florence, he spared no cost in getting it; the number of the Latin books which Florence owes entirely to his generosity cannot be reckoned.'[147] Great, therefore, must have been the transports of delight with which he welcomed on one occasion a manuscript containing seven tragedies of Sophocles, six of Æschylus, and the 'Argonautica' of Apollonius Rhodius.[148] Nor was he only eager in collecting for his own use. He lent his books so freely that, at the moment of his death, two hundred volumes were out on loan;[149] and, when it seemed that Boccaccio's library would perish from neglect, at his own cost he provided substantial wooden cases for it in the Convent of S. Spirito. We must not, however, conclude that Niccolo was a mere copyist and collector. On the contrary, he made a point of collating the several MSS. of an author on whose text he was engaged, removed obvious errors, and suggested emendations, helping thus to lay the foundations of modern criticism. His judgment in matters of style was so highly valued that it was usual for scholars to submit their essays to his eyes before they ventured upon publication. Thus Lionardo Bruni sent him his 'Life of Cicero,' calling him 'the censor of the Latin tongue.'[150] Notwithstanding his fine sense of language, Niccolo never appeared before the world of letters as an author. His enemies made the most of this reluctance, averring that he knew his own ineptitude, while his friends referred his silence to an exquisite fastidiousness of taste.[151] It may have been that he remembered the Tacitean epigram on Galba—omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperâsset—and applied it to himself. Certainly his reserve, in an age noteworthy for arrogant display, has tended to confer on him distinction. The position he occupied at Florence was that of a literary dictator. All who needed his assistance and advice were received with urbanity. He threw his house open to young men of parts, engaged in disputations with the curious, and provided the ill-educated with teachers. Foreigners from all parts of Italy and Europe paid him visits: 'the strangers who came to Florence at that time, if they missed the opportunity of seeing him at home, thought they had not been in Florence.'[152] The house where he lived was worthy of his refined taste and cultivated judgment; for he had formed a museum of antiquities—inscriptions, marbles, coins, vases, and engraved gems. There he not only received students and strangers, but conversed with sculptors and painters, discussing their inventions as freely as he criticised the essays of the scholars. It is probable that the classicism of Brunelleschi and Donatello, both of whom were among his intimate friends, may be due in part at least to his discourses on the manner of the ancients.[153] Pliny, we know, was one of his favourite authors; for, having heard that a complete codex of the 'Natural Histories' existed at Lübeck, he left no stone unturned till it had been transferred to Florence.[154]

Vespasiano's account of his personal habits presents so vivid a picture that I cannot refrain from translating it at length:—'First of all, he was of a most fair presence; lively, for a smile was ever on his lips; and very pleasant in his talk. He wore clothes of the fairest crimson cloth, down to the ground. He never married, in order that he might not be impeded in his studies. A housekeeper provided for his daily needs. He was above all men the most cleanly in eating, as also in all other things. When he sat at table, he ate from fair antique vases; and, in like manner, all his table was covered with porcelain and other vessels of great beauty. The cup from which he drank was of crystal or of some other precious stone. To see him at table—a perfect model of the men of old—was of a truth a charming sight. He always willed that the napkins set before him should be of the whitest, as well as all the linen. Some might wonder at the many vases he possessed, to whom I answer that things of that sort were neither so highly valued then, nor so much regarded, as they have since become; and Niccolo having friends everywhere, anyone who wished to do him a pleasure would send him marble statues, or antique vases, carvings, inscriptions, pictures from the hands of distinguished masters, and mosaic tablets. He had a most beautiful map, on which all the parts and cities of the world were marked; others of Italy and Spain, all painted. Florence could not show a house more full of ornaments than his, or one that had in it a greater number of graceful objects; so that all who went there found innumerable things of worth to please varieties of taste.' What distinguished Niccolo was the combination of refinement and humane breeding with open-handed generosity and devotion to the cause of culture. He knew how to bring forward men of promise, and to place them in positions of eminence. Yet, in return for benefits conferred, he exacted more compliance than could be expected from the haughty and unbending temper of distinguished scholars. Opposition and contradiction roused his jealousy and barbed his caustic speech with sarcasm. Chrysoloras and Guarino, Aurispa and Filelfo, after visiting Florence at his invitation, found the city unendurable through the opposition raised by Niccolo against them.

Among the men of ability who adorned Florence at this period, no one stands forth with a more distinguished personality than Lionardo Bruni. In his boyhood at Arezzo, where his parents occupied a humble position, he used, as he tells us in his 'Commentaries,'[155] to gaze on Petrarch's portrait, fervently desiring that he might win like laurels in the field of scholarship. At first, however, being poor and of no reputation, he was forced to apply his talents to the study of the law. From these uncongenial labours the patronage of Salutato and the influence of Chrysoloras[156] saved him. Having begun to write for the public, his fame as a Latinist soon spread so wide that he was appointed Apostolic Secretary to the Roman Curia. After sharing the ill fortunes of John XXIII. at Constance, and serving under Martin V. at Florence, he was appointed to the Chancery of the Republic in 1427, a post which he occupied until his death in 1443. His biography, therefore, illustrates all that has been said concerning the employment of humanists in high offices of Church and State. His diplomatic letters were regarded as models in that kind of composition, and his public speeches, carefully prepared beforehand, were compared with those of Pericles. Florence was crowded with the copyists who multiplied his MSS., dispersing them all over Europe; and when he walked abroad, a numerous train of scholars and of foreigners attended him.[157] He moved with gravity and majesty of person, wearing the red robes of a Florentine burgher, using few words, but paying marked courtesy to men of wealth. Among the compositions which secured his reputation should first be mentioned the Latin 'History of Florence,' a work unique in its kind at that time in Italy.[158] The grateful Republic rewarded their chancellor by bestowing upon him the citizenship of Florence, and by exempting the author and his children from taxation. The high value at which Bruni rated his own Latin scholarship is proved by his daring to restore the second Decade of Livy in a compilation entitled 'De Primo Bello Punico.' His mediæval erudition was exercised in the history of the Gothic invasion of Italy, while his more elegant style found ample scope in Latin Lives of Cicero and Aristotle, in a book of Commentaries on his own times, and in ten volumes of Collected Letters. These original works were possibly of less importance than Bruni's translations from the Greek, which passed in his own age for models of sound scholarship as well as pure Latinity. The erudition of the fifteenth century had to thank his industry for critical renderings of Aristotle's 'Ethics,' 'Politics,' and 'Economics.'[159] The 'Politics' were dedicated to the Earl of Worcester, and the autograph was sent to England. Some delay in the acknowledgment of so magnificent a tribute of respect caused the haughty scholar to transfer the honour of his dedication to Eugenius IV. He cancelled his first preface, substituted a new one, and received the praise and thanks he sought, in plenty from his Holiness.[160] Of Plato Bruni translated the 'Phædo,' 'Crito,' and 'Apology,' the 'Phædrus' and the 'Gorgias,' together with the 'Epistles.' To these versions must be added six Lives of Plutarch and two Orations of Demosthenes. Nor have we thus by any means exhausted the list of Bruni's Latin compositions, which included controversial writings, invectives, moral essays, orations, and tracts on literary or antiquarian topics. If we consider that, in the midst of these severe labours, and under the pressure of his public engagements, he still found time to compose Italian Lives of Dante and Petrarch, we shall understand the admiration universally expressed by his contemporaries for his comprehensive talents, and share their gratitude for services so numerous in the cause of learning. When Messer Lionardo died in 1443, the priors decreed him a public funeral, 'after the manner of the ancients.' His corpse was clothed in dark silk, and on his breast was laid a copy of the Florentine History. Thus attired, he passed in state to S. Croce, where Giannozzo Manetti, in the presence of the Signory, the foreign ambassadors, and the Court of Pope Eugenius, pronounced a funeral oration, and placed the laurel crown upon his head.[161] The monument beneath which Messer Lionardo's bones repose is an excellent specimen of Florentine sepulchral statuary, executed by Bernardo Rossellino.

Facing Bruni's tomb in S. Croce is that of Carlo Aretino, wrought with subtler art and in a richer style by Desiderio da Settignano. Messer Carlo, who succeeded Bruni in the Chancery of the Republic, shared during his lifetime, as well as in the public honours paid him at his death, very similar fortunes. His family name was Marsuppini, and he was born of a good family in Arezzo. Having come to Florence while a youth to study Greek, he fell under the notice of Niccolo de' Niccoli, who introduced him to the Medicean family, and procured him an engagement at a high salary from the Uffiziali dello Studio. At the time when he began to lecture, Eugenius was holding his Court at Florence. The cardinals and nephews of the Pope, attended by foreign ambassadors, and followed by the apostolic secretaries, mingled with burghers of Florence and students from a distance round the desk of the young scholar. Carlo's reading was known to be extensive, and his memory was celebrated as prodigious. Yet on the occasion of this first lecture he far surpassed all that was expected of him. 'Before a crowd of learned men,' says Vespasiano, 'he gave a great proof of his memory, for neither Greeks nor Romans had an author from whom he did not quote.'[162] Filelfo, who was also lecturing in Florence at the time, had the mortification of seeing the larger portion of his audience transfer themselves to Marsuppini. This wound to his vanity he never forgave. Through the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici (Cosimo's younger brother), Carlo Marsuppini was first made Apostolic Secretary, and then promoted to the Chancery of Florence. He was grave in manner, taciturn in speech, and much given to melancholy. His contemporaries regarded him as a man of no religion, and he was said to have died without confession or communion.[163] This did not prevent his being buried in S. Croce with ceremonies similar to those decreed for Messer Lionardo. Matteo Palmieri pronounced the funeral oration, and placed the laurel on his brows. Marsuppini's contributions to scholarship were chiefly in verse; among these his translations of the 'Batrachomyomachia' and the first book of the 'Iliad' were highly valued.

Matteo Palmieri, who pronounced the funeral oration of Messer Carlo Aretino, sprang from an honourable Florentine stock, and by his own abilities rose to a station of considerable public influence. He is principally famous as the author of a mystical poem called 'Città di Vita,' which, though it was condemned for its heretical opinions, obtained from Ficinus for its author the title of Poeta Theologicus. To discuss the circumstances under which this allegory in the style of Dante was composed, the secresy in which it was involved until the poet's death, and the relation of Palmieri's views to heresies in vogue at Florence, belongs to a future section of my work.[164] He claims a passing notice here among the humanists who acquired high place and honour by the credit of his eloquence and style.

Giannozzo Manetti belonged to an illustrious house, and in his youth, like other well-born Florentines, was trained for mercantile affairs.[165] At the age of five-and-twenty he threw off the parental control, and gave himself entirely to letters. So obstinate was his industry in the acquisition of knowledge, that he allowed himself only five hours of sleep, and spent the rest of his life in study. During nine whole years he never crossed the Arno, but remained within the walls of his house and garden, which communicated with the Convent of S. Spirito. Being passionately fond of disputation, he sought his chief amusement there in the debating society founded by Marsigli. Ambrogio Traversari was his master in Greek. Latin he had no difficulty in acquiring, and soon gained such facility in its exercise that even Lionardo Bruni is said to have envied his fluency. He was not, however, contented with these languages, and in order to perfect himself in Hebrew he kept a Jew in his own house.[166] When he had acquired sufficient familiarity with Hebrew, he turned the arms supplied him by his tutors against their heresies, basing his arguments upon such interpretations of texts as his superior philology suggested to him. The great work of his literary leisure was a polemical discourse 'Contra Judæos et Gentes,' for, unlike Marsuppini, he placed his erudition solely at the service of the Christian faith. Another fruit of his Hebrew studies was a new translation of the Psalms from the original.

Manetti was far from being a mere student. During the best years of his life he was continually employed as ambassador to the Republic at Venice, Naples, Rome, and other Courts of Italy. He administered the government of Pescia, Pistoja, and Scarparia in times of great difficulty, winning a singular reputation for probity and justice. On all occasions of state his eloquence made him indispensable to the Signory, while the lists of his writings include numerous speeches upon varied topics addressed to potentates and princes throughout Italy.[167] There is a curious story related in his Life, which illustrates the importance attached at this time to public speaking. After the coronation of the Emperor Frederick III., the Florentines sent fifteen ambassadors, including Manetti, attended by the Chancellor Carlo Aretino, to congratulate him. Manetti was a Colleague of the Signory, and on him would therefore have naturally fallen the fulfilment of the task, had not this honour been conferred, by private machinations of the Medicean family, on Carlo. The Chancellor duly delivered a prepared oration, which was answered by Æneas Sylvius in the name of the Emperor. Some topics raised in this reply required rejoinder from the Florentines; but Messer Carlo declared himself unable to speak without previous study. To be forced to hold their tongues before the Emperor and all his suite was a bitter humiliation to the men of Florence. How could they return home and confess that the rhetoric of their Chancellor had been silenced by a witty secretary? In their sore distress they besought Manetti to help them; whereupon he rose and delivered an extempore oration. 'When it was finished,' says Vespasiano,[168] 'all competent judges who understood Latin, and could follow it, declared that Messer Giannozzi's extempore speech was superior to that which Messer Carlo had prepared.'

The Latin Life of Manetti contains innumerable instances of the miracles wrought by his rhetoric.[169] Yet we should err if we imagined that the speeches pronounced upon solemn occasions, by even such illustrious orators as Manetti or Pius II., were marked by any of the nobler qualities of eloquence.[170] They consist of commonplaces freely interspersed with historical examples and voluminous quotations. Without charm, without originality, they survive as monuments of the enthusiasm of that age for classic erudition, and of the patience with which popes and princes lent their ears for two or three hours at a stretch to the self-complacent mouthings of a pompous pedant.

Giannozzo Manetti became at last so great a power in Florence that he excited the jealousy of the Medicean party. They ruined him by the imposition of extravagant taxes, and he was obliged to end his life an exile from his native land.[171] Florence never behaved worse to a more blameless citizen; for Manetti, by his cheerful acceptance of public burdens, by his prudence in the discharge of weighty offices, by the piety and sobriety of his private life, by his vast acquirements, and by the single-hearted zeal with which he burned for learning, had proved himself the model of such men as might have saved the State, if safety had been possible. He retired to the Court of Nicholas V., who had previously named him Apostolic Secretary; and on the death of that Pope he sought a final refuge with Alfonso at Naples.[172] There he devoted himself entirely to literature, translating the whole of the New Testament and the ethical treatises of Aristotle into Latin, and carrying his great controversial work against the Jews and Gentiles onwards to completion.

Few men deserve a higher place on the muster-roll of Italian worthies than Manetti. He was free from many vices of the Renaissance; his piety and morality remaining untainted by the contact with antiquity. Nor did he sink the citizen in the student. His learning was varied and profound. Instead of applying himself to Greek and Latin scholarship alone, he mastered Hebrew, and sought to acquire a comprehensive grasp of all the knowledge of the ancient world. At the same time he lived in constant sympathy with his age, sharing its delight in rhetorical displays and wordy disputations, and furthering the diffusion of knowledge by his toil as a translator. It may well be wondered how it happens that a man in many points akin to Pico should have fallen so far short of him in fame. The explanation lies in this: Manetti was deficient in all that elevates mere learning to the rank of art. His Latin style was tedious; his thoughts were commonplace. When the influence of his voice and person passed away, nothing remained to prove his eloquence but ill-digested facts and ill-applied citations. Still the work which he effected in his day was good, and the place he held was honourable. Posterity may be grateful to him as one of the most active pioneers of modern culture.

A man of different stamp and calling claims attention next. Ambrogio Traversari was far from sharing the neopagan impulse of the classical revival; yet he owed political influence and a high place among the leaders of his age to humanistic enthusiasm. Born in Romagna, and admitted while yet a child into the Convent degli Angeli at Florence, he gave early signs of his capacity for literature. At a time when knowledge of Greek was still a rare title to distinction,[173] Ambrogio mastered the elements of the language and studied the Greek Fathers in the original. His cell became the meeting-place of learned men, where Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, the stately Bruni and the sombre Marsuppini, joined with caustic Niccoli and lively Poggio in earnest conversation. His voluminous correspondence connected him with students in all parts of Italy; nor was there any important discovery of MSS. or plan for library or university in which he did not take his part among the first.

It seemed as though he were destined to pursue a peaceful student's life among his books; and for this career nature had marked out the little, meagre, lively, and laborious man. To be eminent in scholarship, however, and to avoid the burdens of celebrity, was impossible in that age. Eugenius IV., while resident in Florence, was so impressed with his literary eminence and strength of character that he made him General of the Camaldolese Order in 1431; and from this time forward Traversari's life was divided between public duties, for which he was scarcely fitted, and private studies that absorbed his deepest interests. He presented the curious spectacle of a monk distracted between the scruples of the cloister and the wider claims of humanism, who showed one mind to his Order and another to his literary friends. He made a point of never citing heathen poets in his writings, as though the verses of Homer or of Virgil were inconsistent with the sobriety of a Christian; yet his anxiety to round his style with Ciceronian phrases, and to bequeath models of pure Latinity in his epistles to posterity, proved how much he valued literary graces. Having vowed to consecrate his talents to the services of ecclesiastical learning, he undertook the translation of Diogenes Laertius, at Cosimo's request, with reluctance, and performed the task with bitter self-bemoaning. In his person we witness the conflict of the humanistic spirit with ecclesiastical tradition—a conflict in which the former was destined to achieve a complete and memorable victory.

These men—Niccoli, Bruni, Marsuppini, Manetti, and Traversari—formed the literary oligarchy who surrounded Cosimo de' Medici, and through their industry and influence restored the studies of antiquity at Florence. While they were carrying on the work of revival, each in his own sphere, with impassioned energy, a combination of external circumstances gave fresh impulse to their activity. Eugenius IV., having been expelled from Rome in 1434, had fixed his headquarters in Florence, whither in 1438 he transferred the Council which had first been opened at Ferrara for negotiating the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The Emperor of the East, John Palæologus, surrounded by his theologians and scribes, together with the Pope of Rome, on whom a train of cardinals and secretaries attended, now took up their quarters in the city of the Medici. A temporary building at Santa Maria Novella was erected for the sessions of the Council, and for several months Florence entertained as guests the chiefs of the two great sections of Christendom. Unimportant as were the results, both political and ecclesiastical, of this Council, the meeting of the Eastern and the Western powers in conclave vividly impressed the imagination of the Florentines, and communicated a more than transient impulse to their intellectual energies. Italy was on the eve of becoming not only the depositary of Greek learning, but also the sole interpreter of the Greek spirit to the modern world. Fifteen years after the closing of the Council, the thread which had connected Byzantium with Athens through an unbroken series of historical traditions, was snapped; already it was beginning to be felt in Europe that nothing but the ghost of Greek culture survived upon the shores of the Bosphorus, and that if the genius of antiquity was to illuminate the modern world, the light must dawn in Italy.[174]

The feelings with which the Florentines regarded their Greek guests were strangely mingled. While honouring them as the last scions of the noblest nation of the past, as the authentic teachers of Hellenic learning and the masters of the Attic tongue, they despised their empty vanity, their facile apostasy, their trivial pedantry, their personal absurdities. The long beards, trailing mantles, painted eyebrows, and fantastic headgear of the Byzantine sophists moved the laughter of the common folk, accustomed to the grave and simple lucco of their own burghers. In vain did Vespasiano tell them that this costume descended from august antiquity through fifteen centuries of unchanged fashion.[175] The more educated citizens, again, soon discovered that the erudition of these strangers was but shallow, and that their magnificent pretensions reduced themselves to the power of speaking the emasculated Greek, which formed their mother tongue, with fluency. The truth is that, however necessary the Byzantines were at the very outset of the Revival of Learning, Greek studies owed less to their traditional lore than to the curiosity of Italian scholars. The beggarly elements of grammar, caligraphy, and bibliographical knowledge were supplied by the Greeks; but it was not Chrysoloras even, nor yet Argyropoulos, so much as Ficino and Aldo, Palla degli Strozzi and Cosimo de' Medici, who opened the literature of Athens to the comprehension of the modern world.

Some exceptions must be made to these remarks; for it is not certain that, without guidance, the Florentines would have made that rapid progress in philosophical studies which contrasts so singularly with their comparative neglect of the Attic dramatists. Gemistos Plethon in particular stands forth as a man who combined real knowledge with natural eloquence, and who materially affected the whole course of the Renaissance by directing the intelligence of the Florentines to Plato. Inasmuch as Plethon's residence in Italy during the session of the Council formed a decisive epoch in the Revival of Learning, to pass him by without some detailed notice would be to omit one of the most interesting episodes in the history of the fifteenth century. At the same time, his biography so well illustrates the state of thought in the Greek Empire at the moment of its fall, as well as the speculations which interested philosophic intellects at that period in Italy, that I trust the following digression will be judged excusable.

Georgios Gemistos was born of noble parents at Byzantium about the year 1355.[176] During a long lifetime, chiefly spent in the Morea, he witnessed all the miseries that racked his country through its lingering agony of a hundred years, and died at last in 1450, just before the final downfall of the Greek Empire. Of his early life little is known beyond the fact that he left Constantinople as a young man in order to study philosophy at Brusa. Brusa and Adrianopolis, at that time the two Western seats of the Mahommedan power, out-rivalled Byzantium in culture, while the mental vigour of the Mussulmans was far in advance of that of their effete neighbours. The young Greek, who seems already to have lost his faith in Christianity, was attracted to the Moslem Court by Elissaios, a sage of Jewish birth. From this teacher he learned what then passed for the doctrines of Zoroaster. After quitting Brusa, Gemistos settled at Mistra in the Peloponnese, upon the site of ancient Sparta, where with some interruptions he continued to reside until his death. The Greek Emperor was still nominally lord of the Morea, though the conquests of Frankish Crusaders and the incursions of the Turks had rendered his rule feeble. Gemistos, who enjoyed the confidence of the Imperial House, was made a judge at Mistra, and thus obtained clear insight into the causes of the decadence of the Hellenic race upon its ancient soil. The picture he draws of the anarchy and immorality of the peninsula is frightful. He also professed philosophy, and at the age of thirty-three became a teacher of repute. The views he formed concerning the corruption of the Greek Church and the degradation of the Greek people, combined with his philosophical opinions, inspired him with the visionary ambition of reforming the creed, the ethics, and the political conditions of Hellas on a Pagan basis. There is something ludicrous as well as sad in the spectacle of this sophist, nourishing the vain fancy that he might coin a complete religious system, which should supersede Christianity and restore vigour to the decayed body of the Greek Empire. In the dotage of Hellenism Gemistos discovered no new principle of vitality, but returned to the speculative mysticism of the Neoplatonists. Their attempt at a Pagan revival had failed long ago in Alexandria, while force still remained to the Greek race, and while the Christian Church was still comparatively ill-assured. To propose it as a panacea in the year 1400 for the evils of the Empire threatened by the Turks was mere childishness. Perhaps it is doing the sage injustice to treat his system seriously. Charity prompts us to regard it as a plaything invented for the amusement of his leisure hours. Yet nothing can be graver than his own language and that of his disciples.

The work in which he embodied his doctrine was called 'The Laws'—ἡ τῶν νόμων συγγραφή, or simply νόμοι. It comprised a metaphysical system, the outlines of a new religion, an elaborate psychology and theory of ethics, and a scheme of political administration. According to his notions, there is one Supreme God, Zeus, the absolute and eternal reality, existing as homogeneous and undiscriminated Being, Will, Activity, and Power. Zeus begets everlasting Ideas, or Gods of the second order; and these gods, to whom Gemistos gave the name of Greek divinities, constitute a hierarchy corresponding to the abstract notions of his logic. With the object of harmonising the double series of immortal and mortal existences they are subdivided, by a singularly clumsy contrivance, into genuine and spurious children of Zeus. First among the genuine sons stands Poseidon, the idea of ideas, the logical summum genus, who includes within himself the intellectual universe potentially. Next in rank is Hera, the female deity, created immediately by Zeus, but by a second act, and therefore inferior to Poseidon. These two are the primordial authors of the world as it exists. After them come three series, each of five deities, whereof the first set, including Apollo, Artemis, Hephæstus, Dionysus, and Athena, represent the most general categories. The second set, among whom we find Atlas and Pluto, are the ideas of immortal substance existing for ever in the world of living beings. The third, which reckons among others Hecate and Hestia, are the ideas of immortal substance existing for ever in the inanimate world. Next in the descending order come the spurious offspring of Zeus, or Titans, two of whom, Cronos and Aphrodite, are the ideas respectively of form and matter in things subject to decay and dissolution; while Koré, Pan, and Demeter are the specific ideas of men, beasts, and plants. Hitherto we have been recording the genealogy of divine beings subject to no laws of time or change, who are, in fact, pure thoughts or logical entities. We arrive in the last place at deities of the third degree, the genuine and the spurious children, no longer of Zeus, but of Poseidon, chieftain of the second order of the hierarchy. The planets and the fixed stars constitute the higher of these inferior powers, while the dæmons fill the lowest class of all. At the very bottom of the scale, below the gods of every quality, stand men, beasts, plants, and the inorganic world.

It will be perceived that this scheme is bastard Neoplatonism—a mystical fusion of Greek mythology and Greek logic, whereby the products of speculative analysis are hypostasised as divine persons. Of many difficulties patent in his doctrine Gemistos offered no solution. How, for example, can we ascribe to Zeus the procreation of spurious as well as genuine offspring? It is possible that the philosopher, if questioned on such topics, would have fallen back on the convenient theory of progressively diminished efficacy in the creative act; for though he guards against adopting the hypothesis of emanation, it is clear, from the simile of multiplied reflections in a series of mirrors, which he uses to explain the genealogy of gods, that some such conception modified his views. To point out the insults offered to the ancient myths, whereof he made such liberal and arbitrary use, or to insist upon the folly of the whole conceit, considered as the substance of a creed which should regenerate the world, would be superfluous; nothing can be more grotesque, for instance, than the personification of identity and self-determining motion under the titles of Apollo and Dionysus, nor any confusion more fatal than the attribution of sex to categories of the understanding. The sole merit of the system consists in the classification of notions, the conception of an intellectual hierarchy, descending by interdependent stages from the primordial cause through pure ideas to their copies and material manifestations in the world of things. Dreams of this kind have always haunted the metaphysical imagination, giving rise to hybrids between poetry and logic; and the system of Gemistos may fairly take rank among a hundred similar attempts between the days of Plato and of Hegel.

Such as it was, his metaphysic supplied Gemistos with the basis of a cult, a psychology, a theory of ethics, and a political programme. He founded a sect, and was called by his esoteric followers 'the mystagogue of sublime and celestial dogmas.'[177] They believed that the soul of Plato had been reincarnated in their master, and that the new creed, professed by him, would supersede the faiths existing in the world. Among the most distinguished of these neophytes was the famous Bessarion, who adopted so much at any rate of his teacher's doctrine as rendered him indifferent to the points at issue between the Greek and Latin Churches, when a cardinal's hat was offered as the price of his apostasy. Bessarion, however, was too much a man of the world to dream that Gemistos would triumph over Christ and Mahomet.[178] While using the language of the mystic, and recording his conviction that Plato's soul, released from the body of Gemistos, had joined the choir of the Olympian deities,[179] it is probable that he was only playing, after the fashion of his age, with speculations that amused his fancy though they took no serious hold upon his life. It was a period, we must remember, when scholars affected the manners of the antique world, Latinised their names, and adopted fantastic titles in their academies and learned clubs. At no time of the world's history has this kind of masquerading attained to so much earnestness of rather more than half-belief. The attitude assumed by Gemistos and his disciples is, therefore, not without its value for illustrating the intellectual conditions of the earlier Renaissance. Practical religion had but little energy among the educated classes. The interests of the Church were more political than spiritual. Science had not yet asserted her real rights in any sphere of thought. Art and literature, invigorated by the passion for antiquity, meanwhile absorbed the genius of the Italians; and through a dim æsthetic haze the waning lights of Hellas mingled with the dayspring of the modern world.

The most important event of Gemistos's life was the journey which he took to Italy in the train of John Palæologus in 1438. Secretly disliking Christianity in general, and the Latin form of it in particular, he had endeavoured to dissuade the emperor from attending the Council. Now he found himself elected as one of the six champions of the cause of the Greek Church. For the subtle Greek intellect in that dotage of a doomed civilisation, no greater interest survived than could be found in dialectic; and to dispute about the filioque of the Christian creed was fair sport, when no chance offered itself of forcing rationalistic Paganism down the throat of popes and cardinals. Therefore it is probable that Gemistos did not find his position at the Council peculiarly irksome, even though he had to listen to reasonings about purgatory and the procession of the Holy Ghost, and to suggest arguments in favour of the Eastern dogma, while in his inmost soul he equally despised the combatants on either side.

The effect he produced outside the Council was far more flattering than the part he had to play within the walls of Santa Maria Novella. Instead of power-loving ecclesiastics and pig-headed theologians, anxious only to extend their privileges and establish their supremacy, he found a multitude of sympathetic and enthusiastic listeners. The Florentines were just then in the first flush of their passion for Greek study. Plato, worshipped as an unknown god, whose rising would dispel the mists of scholastic theology, was upon the lips of every student. Men were thirsting for the philosophy that had the charm of poetry, that delighted the imagination while it fortified the understanding, and that lent its glamour to the dreams and yearnings of a youthful age. What they wanted, Gemistos possessed in abundance. From the treasures of a memory stored with Platonic, Pythagorean, and Alexandrian mysticism he poured forth copious streams of indiscriminate erudition. The ears of his audience were open; their intellects were far from critical. They accepted the gold and dross of his discourse alike as purest metal. Hanging upon the lips of the eloquent, grave, beautiful old man, who knew so much that they desired to learn, they called him Socrates and Plato in their ecstasy. It was during this visit to Florence that he adopted the name of Plethon, which, while it played upon Gemistos, had in it the ring of his great master's surname.[180] The devotion of his Greek disciples bore no comparison with the popularity he acquired among Italians; and he had the satisfaction of being sure that the seed of Platonic philosophy sown by him would spring up in the rich soil of those powerful and eager minds. Cosimo de' Medici, convinced of the importance of Platonic studies by his conversations with Gemistos, founded the famous Florentine Academy, and designated the young Marsilio Ficino for the special task of translating and explaining the Platonic writings.[181] When we call to mind the influence which the Platonic Academy of Florence, through Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, exerted over the whole thought of Italy, and, through Reuchlin and his pupil Melanchthon, over that of Germany, we are able to estimate the impulse given by Gemistos to the movement of the fifteenth century. It may be added that Platonic studies in Italy never recovered from the impress of Neoplatonic mysticism which proceeded from his mind.

While resident in Florence he published two treatises on Fate and on the differences between Plato and Aristotle. The former was an anti-Christian work, in so far as it denied the freedom of arbitrary activity to God as well as men. The latter raised a controversy in Italy and Greece, which long survived its author, exercising the scholars of the Renaissance to some purpose on the texts and doctrines of the chief great thinkers of antiquity. Gemistos attacked Aristotle in general for atheism and irreligious morality, while he proved that the Platonic system, as interpreted by him, was deeply theological. Without entering into the details of a dispute that continued to rage for many years, and aroused the bitterest feelings on both sides, it is enough to observe that Aristotle had for centuries been regarded as the pillar of orthodoxy in the Latin Church, while Plato supplied eclectic thinkers with a fair cloak for rationalistic speculations and theistic heresies. The opponents of Aristotle were undermining the foundations of the time-honoured scholastic fabric. The opponents of Plato accused his votaries of drowning the Christianity they pretended to maintain, in a vague ocean of heretical mysticism. It is indeed difficult to understand how Ficino, who worshipped Plato no less fervently than Christ, could avoid reducing Christianity to the level of Paganism, while he attempted to demonstrate that the Platonic system contained the essence of the Christian faith. This was, in fact, nothing less than abandoning the exclusive pretensions of revealed religion and the authority of the Church.

Before the year 1441 Gemistos had returned to Mistra, where he continued to exercise his magistracy. His old age was embittered by the fierce attacks directed by Gennadios,[182] afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople, against the esoteric doctrines of the Νόμοι. Gennadios accused him roundly of Paganism, continuing his polemic against the book long after the death of its author. That event happened in 1450. Gemistos was buried at Mistra; but five years later Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, moved by ardent love of learning and by veneration for the philosopher, exhumed his bones, and transferred them to the Church of S. Francesco at Rimini, which Leo Alberti had but recently built for him.[183]

Of Bessarion I shall have to speak elsewhere; but, in order to complete the review of Greek studies in Florence at this epoch, mention must now be made of two Greeks who filled the chair of the University with distinguished success.

That John Argyropoulos, a native of Byzantium, visited Italy before the fall of the Greek Empire, appears from Vespasiano's account of his residence with Palla Strozzi at Padua during the first years of his exile.[184] In 1456 Cosimo called him to Florence, secured him good appointments from the studio pubblico, and installed him as public and private teacher of Greek language and philosophy. Argyropoulos laboured at Florence for a space of fifteen years, counting the most distinguished citizens among his pupils. From Florence he removed to Rome, where Reuchlin heard him lecture upon Thucydides in the pontificate of Sixtus IV. Reuchlin's scholarship, if we may trust Melanchthon, was rated at so high a value by this master that, on his departure from Rome, he exclaimed, 'Now hath Greece flown beyond the Alps!' A more commanding personage than Argyropoulos was Georgios Trapezuntios, who came to Italy as early as 1420, and professed Greek at Venice, Florence, Rome, and other cities. His temper was proud, choleric, and quarrelsome; but the history of his disputes belongs to the next chapter, which will treat of Rome. I may here mention that, during the residence of the Papal Court at Florence, he gave instruction both public and private,[185] without, however, entering into intimacy with the Medicean circle. After Manuel Chrysoloras, it can be said with certainty that the revival of Hellenism in the fifteenth century at Florence was due to the three men of whom I have been speaking—Georgios Gemistos, Joannes Argyropoulos, and Georgios Trapezuntios. Of the labours of the last in Rome, as well as of Theodoros Gaza, Demetrius Chalcondylas, Andronicus Callistus and the Lascari, is not yet time to speak in detail. Each deserves a separate commemoration, since to their joint activity in teaching, Europe owes Greek scholarship.[186]

Before passing from Florence to Rome, which at this time formed the second centre of Italian humanism, something should be said about the state of learning in the other republics. The causes that decided the pre-eminence of Florence have been already touched upon. It is enough to observe here that, while the Universities of Bologna, Siena, and Perugia engaged professors of eloquence at high salaries, the literary enthusiasm of those cities was in no way comparable to that of Florence. Their culture depended on the illustrious visitors who fixed their residence from time to time within their walls. Genoa remained almost dead to learning. At Venice the study of the classics engaged the attention of a few nobles, without permeating the upper classes or giving a decided tone to society at large. Though the illustrious Greek refugees made it their custom to halt for a season at Venice, while nearly all Italian teachers of note lectured there on short engagements, it is none the less true that the Venetians were backward to encourage literature. They opened no public libraries, made no efforts to retain the services of scholars for the State, and regarded the pretensions of the humanists with cold contempt. In letters, as in the fine arts, Venice waited till the rest of Italy had blossomed. Bembo succeeded to Poliziano, as Titian to Raphael. Much good, however, was done by men like the Giustiniani and Paolo Zane, who furnished young students with the means of visiting Constantinople, and who provided them with professorial chairs on their return. The gentiluomini could also count among their number Francesco Barbaro, no less distinguished by his knowledge of both learned languages than by the correspondence he maintained with all the scholars of his time. While yet a young man, he had imbibed the Florentine spirit in the house of Cosimo de' Medici. On his return to Venice he studied under the best masters, and soon attained such excellence of style that Poggio compared his treatise on marriage to the 'De Officiis' of Cicero. The Republic of Venice, however, demanded more of patriotic service from her high-born citizens than the commonwealth of Florence; and Barbaro had to spend his life in the discharge of grave State duties, finding little leisure for the cultivation of his literary talents. It remained for him to win the fame of a Mæcenas, who, had he chosen, might have disputed laurels with the ablest of the scholars he protected.