Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 4

[Footnote 62: See Manetti's _Life_, Mur. xx. col. 531. Other references will be found in Vespasiano's _Lives_. Boccaccio's library was preserved in this convent.]

[Footnote 63: _Poggii Opera_, p. 271.]

It is my object in this chapter to show how humanistic scholarship, starting from Petrarch, penetrated every department of study, and began to permeate the intellectual life of the Italians. We have now to notice its intrusion into the sphere of politics. Petrarch died in 1374, Boccaccio in 1375. The latter date is also that of Coluccio de'

Salutati's entrance upon the duties of Florentine Chancellor.

Salutato, the friend of Boccaccio and the disciple of Marsigli, the professed worshipper of Petrarch and the translator of Dante into Latin verse, was destined to exercise an important influence in his own department as a stylist. Before he was called to act as secretary to the Signory of Florence in his forty-sixth year, he had already acquired the learning and imbibed the spirit of his age. He was known as a diligent collector of ma.n.u.scripts and promoter of Greek studies, as a writer on mythology and morals, as an orator and miscellaneous author.[64] His talents had now to be concentrated on the weightier business of the Florentine Republic; but his study of antiquity caused him to conceive his duties and the political relations of the State he served, in a new light. During the wars carried on with Gregory XI. and the Visconti, his pen was never idle. For the first time he introduced into public doc.u.ments the gravity of style and melody of phrase he had learned in the school of cla.s.sic rhetoricians.

The effect produced by this literary statesman, as elegant in authorship as he was subtle in the conduct of affairs, can only be estimated at its proper value when we remember that the Italians were now ripe to receive the influence of rhetoric, and only too ready to attribute weight to verbal ingenuity. Gian Galeazzo Visconti is said to have declared that Salutato had done him more harm by his style than a troop of paid mercenaries.[65] The epistles, despatches, protocols, and manifestoes composed by their Chancellor for the Florentine priors, were distributed throughout Italy. Read and copied by the secretaries of other states, they formed the models of a new State eloquence.[66] Elegant Latinity became a necessary condition of public doc.u.ments, and Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned among the indispensable engines of a diplomatic armoury. Offices of trust in the Papal Curia, the courts of the Despots, and the chanceries of the republics were thus thrown open to professional humanists. In the next age we shall find that neither princes, popes, nor priors could do without the services of trained stylists.

[Footnote 64: Salutato's familiar letters, _Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati Epistolarum Pars Secunda, Florentiae_, MDCCx.x.xXI., are a valuable source of information respecting scholarship at the close of the fourteenth century. See especially his letter to Benvenuto da Imola on the death of Petrarch (p. 32), his letter to the same about Petrarch's _Africa_ (p. 41), another letter about the preservation of the _Africa_ (p. 79), a letter to Petrarch's nephew Francesco da Brossano on the death of Boccaccio (p. 44), and a letter to a certain Comes Magnificus on the literary and philosophical genius of Petrarch (p.

49).]

[Footnote 65: 'Galeacius Mediolanensium Princeps crebro auditus est dicere non tam sibi mille Florentinorum equites quam Colucii scripta nocere.' _Pii Secundi Europae Commentarii_, p. 454.]

[Footnote 66: 'Costui fu de' migliori dittatori di pistole al mondo, perocche molti quando ne potevano avere, ne toglieano copie; si piaceano a tutti gl'intendenti: e nelle corte di Re e di signori del mondo, e anchora de' cherici era di lui in questa arte maggiore fama che di alcuno altro uomo.' From the Chronicle of Luca da Scarparia.

These epistles were collected and printed by Josephus Rigaccius, Bibliopola Florentinus Celeberrimus, in 1741. Among the letters written for the Signory of Florence, that of congratulation to Gian Galeazzo Visconti on his murder of Bernabo (p. 16), that to the French Cardinals (p. 18), to Sir John Hawkwood, or Domino Joanni Aucud (p.

107), to the Marquis of Moravia (p. 110), and to the Romans (p. 141) deserve to be read.]

While concentrating attention upon this chief contribution of Salutato to Italian scholarship, I must not omit to notice, however briefly, the patronage he exercised at Florence. Both Poggio Bracciolini and Lionardo Bruni owed their advancement to his interest.[67] Giacomo da Scarparia, the first Florentine who visited Byzantium with a view to learning Greek, received from him the warmest encouragement, together with a commission for the purchase of ma.n.u.scripts. To his activity in concert with Palla degli Strozzi was due the establishment of a Greek chair in the University of Florence. Nor was this zeal confined to the living. He composed the Lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, translated a portion of the 'Divine Comedy' into Latin for its wider circulation through the learned world, and caused the 'Africa' of Petrarch to be published.[68] When the ill.u.s.trious Chancellor died, in the year 1406, at the age of seventy-six, he was honoured with a public funeral; the poet's crown was placed upon his brow, a panegyrical oration was recited, and a monument was erected to him in the Duomo.[69]

[Footnote 67: See the letter of Lionardo Bruni, quoted in _Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati Epistolae_, p. xv. Coluccio's own letter recommending Lionardo to Innocent VII., ib. p. 5, and his numerous familiar letters to Poggio, ib. pp. 13, 173, &c.]

[Footnote 68: 'Certe cogitabam revidere librum, et si quid, ut scribis, vel absonum, vel contra metrorum regulam intolerabile deprehendissem, curiosius elimare et sicut Naso finxit in aeneida, singulos libros paucis versiculis quasi in argumenti formam brevissime resumere, et exinde pluribus sumptis exemplis, et per me ipsum correctis et diligenter revisis, unum ad Bononiense gymnasium, unum Parisiis, unum in Angliam c.u.m mea epistola de libri laudibus destinare, et unum in Florentia ponere in loco celebri,' &c.

_Epistolae_, part ii. p. 80.]

[Footnote 69: Among the other _laureati_ who filled the post of Florentine Chancellor may be mentioned Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, and Benedetto Accolti, of whom more hereafter.]

What Salutato accomplished for the style of public doc.u.ments, Gasparino da Barzizza effected for familiar correspondence. After teaching during several years at Venice and Padua, he was summoned to Milan in 1418 by Filippo Maria Visconti, who ordered him to open a school in that capital. Gasparino made a special study of Cicero's Letters, and caused his pupils to imitate them as closely as possible, forming in this way an art of fluent letter-writing known afterwards as the _ars familiariter scribendi_. Epistolography in general, considered as a branch of elegant literature, occupied all the scholars of the Renaissance, and had the advantage of establishing a link of union between learned men in different parts of Italy. We therefore recognise in Gasparino the initiator, after Petrarch, of a highly important branch of Italian culture. This, when it reached maturity, culminated in the affectations of the Ciceronian purists. It must be understood that neither Salutato nor Gasparino attained to real polish or freedom of style. Compared even with the Latinity of Poggio, theirs is heavy and uncouth; while that of Poggio seems barbarous by the side of Poliziano's, and Poliziano in turn yields the palm of mere correctness to Bembo. It was only by degrees that the taste of the Italians formed itself, and that facility was acquired in writing a lost language. The fact that mediaeval Latin was still used in legal doc.u.ments, in conversation, in the offices of the Church, and in the theological works which formed the staple of all libraries, impeded the recovery of a cla.s.sic style. When the Italians had finally learned how to polish prose, it was easy to hand on the art to other nations; while to sneer at their pedantry, as Erasmus did, was no matter of great difficulty. By that time their scrupulous and anxious preoccupation with purity of phrase threatened danger to the interests of liberal learning.

Hitherto, with the exception only of Boccaccio's Greek studies, I have had to trace the rise of Latin letters and to call particular attention to the cult of Cicero in Italy. It is now necessary to mention the advent of a man who played a part in the revival of learning only second to that of Petrarch. Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine of n.o.ble birth, came to Italy during the Pontificate of Boniface IX., charged by the Emperor Palaeologus with the mission of attempting to arm the states of Christendom against the Turk. Like all the Greeks who visited Western Europe, Chrysoloras first alighted in Venice; but the Republic of the Lagoons neither understood the secret nor felt the need of retaining these birds of pa.s.sage. After a few months they almost invariably pa.s.sed on to Florence--the real centre of the intellectual life of Italy. As soon as it was known that Chrysoloras, who enjoyed the fame of being the most accomplished and eloquent h.e.l.lenist of his age, had arrived with his companion, Demetrios Kydonios, in Venice, two n.o.ble Florentines, Roberto de'

Rossi and Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarparia, set forth to visit him. The residence of the Greek amba.s.sadors in Italy on this occasion was but brief; they found that, politically, they could effect nothing. But Giacomo da Scarparia journeyed in their society to Byzantium; while Roberto de' Rossi returned to Florence, full of the impression which the erudite philosophers had left upon him. The report he made to his fellow-citizens awoke a pa.s.sionate desire in Palla degli Strozzi and Niccolo de' Niccoli to bring Chrysoloras in person to Florence. Their urgent appeals to the Signory resulted in an invitation whereby Chrysoloras in 1396 was induced to fill the Greek chair in the university. A yearly stipend of 150 golden florins, raised afterwards to 250, was voted for his maintenance. This engagement secured the future of Greek erudition in Europe. The merit of having brought the affair to a successful issue belongs princ.i.p.ally to Palla degli Strozzi, of whom Vespasiano wrote: 'There being in Florence exceeding good knowledge of Latin letters, but of Greek none, he resolved that this defect should be remedied, and therefore did all he could to make Manuel Grisolora visit Italy, using all his influence thereto and paying a large portion of the expense incurred.'[70] We must not, however, omit the share which Coluccio Salutato,[71] by his influence with the Signory, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, by the interest he exerted with the Uffiziali dello Studio, may also claim. Among the audience of this the first true teacher of Greek at Florence were numbered Palla degli Strozzi, Roberto de' Rossi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo Bruni, Frances...o...b..rbaro, Giannozzo Manetti, Carlo Marsuppini, and Ambrogio Traversari--some of them young men of eighteen, others old and grey-haired, nearly all of them the scholars in Latinity of Giovanni da Ravenna. Nor was Florence the only town to receive the learning of Chrysoloras. He opened schools at Rome, at Padua, at Milan, and at Venice; so that his influence as a wandering professor was at least equal to that exercised by Giovanni da Ravenna.

[Footnote 70: _Vite d'Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_, p. 271.]

[Footnote 71: Cf. the letter quoted by Voigt (p. 130) to Giacomo da Scarparia, which shows Coluccio's enthusiasm for Greek.]

The impulse communicated to the study of antiquity by Chrysoloras, and the n.o.ble enthusiasm of his scholars for pure literature, may best be understood from a pa.s.sage in the 'Commentaries' of Lionardo Bruni, whereof the following is a compressed translation:[72]--'Letters at this period grew mightily in Italy, seeing that the knowledge of Greek, intermitted for seven centuries, revived. Chrysoloras of Byzantium, a man of n.o.ble birth and well skilled in Greek literature, brought to us Greek learning. I at that time was following the civil law, though not ill-versed in other studies; for by nature I loved learning with ardour, nor had I given slight pains to dialectic and to rhetoric. Therefore, at the coming of Chrysoloras, I was made to halt in my choice of lives, seeing that I held it wrong to desert law, and yet I reckoned it a crime to omit so great an occasion of learning the Greek literature; and oftentimes I reasoned with myself after this manner:--Can it be that thou, when thou mayest gaze on Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes, together with other poets, philosophers, and orators, concerning whom so great and so wonderful things are said, and mayest converse with them, and receive their admirable doctrine--can it be that thou wilt desert thyself and neglect the opportunity divinely offered thee? Through seven hundred years no one in all Italy has been master of Greek letters; and yet we acknowledge that all science is derived from them. Of civil law, indeed, there are in every city scores of doctors; but should this single and unique teacher of Greek be removed, thou wilt find no one to instruct thee. Conquered at last by these reasonings, I delivered myself over to Chrysoloras with such pa.s.sion that what I had received from him by day in hours of waking, occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.'

[Footnote 72: Mur. xix. 920.]

The earnestness of this paragraph is characteristic of the whole period. The scholars who a.s.sembled in the lecture-rooms of Chrysoloras, felt that the Greek texts, whereof he alone supplied the key, contained those elements of spiritual freedom and intellectual culture without which the civilisation of the modern world would be impossible. Nor were they mistaken in what was then a guess rather than a certainty. The study of Greek implied the birth of criticism, comparison, research. Systems based on ignorance and superst.i.tion were destined to give way before it. The study of Greek opened philosophical horizons far beyond the dream-world of the churchmen and the monks; it stimulated the germs of science, suggested new astronomical hypotheses, and indirectly led to the discovery of America. The study of Greek resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in art and literature. It subjected the creeds of Christianity, the language of the Gospels, the doctrine of S. Paul, to a.n.a.lysis, and commenced a new era for Biblical inquiry. If it be true, as a writer no less sober in his philosophy than eloquent in his language has lately a.s.serted, that, 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin,' we are justified in regarding the point of contact between the Greek teacher Chrysoloras and his Florentine pupils as one of the most momentous crises in the history of civilisation. Indirectly, the Italian intellect had hitherto felt h.e.l.lenic influence through Latin literature. It was now about to receive that influence immediately from actual study of the masterpieces of the Attic authors. The world was no longer to be kept in ignorance of those 'eternal consolations'

of the human race. No longer could the scribe omit Greek quotations from his Latin text with the dogged snarl of obtuse self-satisfaction--_Graeca sunt, ergo non legenda_. The motto had rather to be changed into a cry of warning for ecclesiastical authority upon the verge of dissolution--_Graeca sunt, ergo periculosa_: since the reawakening faith in human reason, the reawakening belief in the dignity of man, the desire for beauty, the liberty, audacity, and pa.s.sion of the Renaissance, received from Greek studies their strongest and most vital impulse.

CHAPTER III

FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Condition of the Universities in Italy -- Bologna -- High Schools founded from it -- Naples under Frederick II. -- Under the House of Anjou -- Ferrara -- Piacenza -- Perugia -- Rome -- Pisa -- Florence -- Imperial and Papal Charters -- Foreign Students -- Professorial Staff -- Subjects taught in the High Schools -- Place a.s.signed to Humanism -- Pay of the Professors of Eloquence -- Francesco Filelfo -- The Humanists less powerful at the Universities -- Method of Humanistic Teaching -- The Book Market before Printing -- Mediaeval Libraries -- Cost of Ma.n.u.scripts -- _Stationarii_ and _Peciarii_ -- Negligence of Copyists -- Discovery of Cla.s.sical Codices -- Boccaccio at Monte Ca.s.sino -- Poggio at Constance -- Convent of S. Gallen -- Bruni's Letter to Poggio -- Ma.n.u.scripts discovered by Poggio -- Nicholas of Treves -- Collection of Greek Ma.n.u.scripts -- Aurispa, Filelfo, and Guarino -- The Ruins of Rome -- Their Influence on Humanism -- Dante and Villani -- Rienzi -- His Idealistic Patriotism -- Vanity -- Political Incompetence -- Petrarch's Relations with Rienzi -- Injury to Monuments in Rome -- Poggio's Roman Topography -- Sentimental Feeling for the Ruins of Antiquity -- Ciriac of Ancona.

Having so far traced the quickening of a new sense for antiquity among the Italians, it will be well at this point to consider the external resources of Humanism before continuing the history of the Revival in the fifteenth century. The condition of the universities, the state of the book trade before the invention of printing, and the discovery of ma.n.u.scripts claim separate attention; nor may it be out of place to inquire what stimulus the enthusiasm for cla.s.sical studies received from the ruins of Rome. A review of these topics will help to explain the circ.u.mstances under which the pioneers of culture had to labour, and the nature of the crusade they inst.i.tuted against ignorance in every part of Europe.

The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century.[73] Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct of the princ.i.p.al professors, who, when they were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult in an age when what we have to call an university, consisted of masters and scholars, without college buildings, without libraries, without endowments, and without scientific apparatus. The technical name for such inst.i.tutions seems to have been _studium scholarium_, Italianised into _studio_ or _studio pubblico_.[74] Among the more permanent results of these secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the high school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circ.u.mstances in 1215; the great University of Padua first saw the light in consequence of political discords forcing the professors to quit Bologna for a season.[75]

[Footnote 73: Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol.

iv. p. 42 _et seq._, vol. v. p. 60 _et seq._ Large quarto, Modena, 1787.]

[Footnote 74: See Muratori, vol. viii. 15, 75, 372. Matteo Villani, lib. i. cap. 8.]

[Footnote 75: 'Hoc anno translatum est Studium Scholarium de Bononia Paduam.' Mur. viii. 372.]

The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the foundation of these _studi_ in considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in 1228, the munic.i.p.ality providing two certified copyists for the convenience of students who might wish to purchase text-books.[76] In 1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy owed a precocious eminence in literature, established the University of Naples by an Imperial diploma.[77] With a view to rendering it the chief seat of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of the Regno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University of Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard League, defied the emperor, and refused to close the schools, which numbered at that period about ten thousand students of various nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and internal vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities at this period, interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples. In the middle of the thirteenth century Salerno proved a dangerous rival; but when the House of Anjou was established in the kingdom of the Sicilies, special privileges were granted, restoring the high school of the capital to the first rank. Charles I. created a separate court of jurisdiction for its management. This consisted of a judge and three a.s.sessors, one for the control of foreigners, another for the subjects of the Regno, and the third for Italians from other states.

[Footnote 76: They were called 'Exemplatores.' See Tiraboschi, vol.

iv. lib. i cap. 2.]

[Footnote 77: Muratori, vii. p. 997. Amari, _Storia dei Mussulmani di Sicilia_, vol. iii. p. 706.]

In 1264 we find a public school in operation at Ferrara. By its charter the professors were exempt from military service. The University of Piacenza came into existence a little earlier. Innocent IV. established it in 1248, with privileges similar to those of Paris and Bologna. An important group of _studi pubblici_ owed their origin to Papal or Imperial charters in the first half of the fourteenth century. That of Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V.

That of Rome dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave it a const.i.tution by a special edict; but the translation of the Papal See to Avignon caused it to fall into premature decadence. The University of Pisa had already existed for some years, when it received a charter in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in 1321.[78] In 1348 a place for its public buildings was a.s.signed between the Duomo and the Palazzo Pubblico, on the site of what was afterwards known as the Collegium Eugenianum. A council of eight burghers was appointed for its management, and a yearly sum was set apart for its maintenance. In 1349 Clement VI. gave it the same privileges as the University of Bologna, while in 1364 it received an Imperial diploma from Charles IV. The same emperor granted charters to Siena in 1357, to Arezzo in 1356, and to Lucca in 1369. In 1362 Galeazzo Visconti obtained a charter for his University of Pavia from Charles IV., with the privileges of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna.

[Footnote 78: See Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, vol. i. p. 521.]

It will be observed that the majority of the _studi pubblici_ obtained charters either from the Pope or the emperor, or from both, less for the sake of any immediate benefit to be derived from Papal or Imperial patronage, than because supreme authority in Italy was still referred to one or other of these heads. It was a great object with each city to increase its wealth by attracting foreigners as residents, and to retain the native youth within its precincts. The munic.i.p.alities, therefore, accorded immunities from taxation and military service to _bona fide_ students, prohibited their burghers from seeking rival places of learning, and in some cases allowed the university authorities to exercise a special jurisdiction over the motley mult.i.tude of scholars from all countries. How miscellaneous the concourse in some of the high schools used to be, may be gathered from the reports extracted by Tiraboschi from their registers. At Vicenza, for example, in 1209 we find the names of Bohemians, Poles, Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as of Italians of divers towns. The rectors of this _studio_ in 1205 included an Englishman, a Provencal, a German, and a Cremonese. The list of ill.u.s.trious students at Bologna between 1265 and 1294 show men of all the European nationalities, proving that the foreigners attracted by the university must have formed no inconsiderable element in the whole population.[79] This will account for the prominent part played by the students from time to time in the political history of Bologna.[80]

[Footnote 79: In 1320 there were at least 15,000 students in Bologna.]

[Footnote 80: See Sismondi, vol. iii. p. 349.]

The importance attached by great cities to their universities as a source of strength, may be gathered from the chapter in Matteo Villani's Chronicle describing the foundation of the _studio pubblico_ in Florence.[81] He expressly mentions that the Signory were induced to take this step in consequence of the depopulation inflicted by the Black Death of 1348. By drawing residents to Florence from other States, they hoped to increase the number of the inhabitants, and to restore the decayed fame and splendour of the commonwealth.[82] At the same time they thought that serious studies might put an end to the demoralisation produced in all cla.s.ses by the plague. With this object in view, they engaged the best teachers, and did not hesitate to devote a yearly sum of 2,500 golden florins to the maintenance of their high school. Bologna, which owed even more than Florence to its university, is said to have lavished as much as half of its revenue, about 20,000 ducats, on the pay of professors and other incidental expenses. The actual cost incurred by cities through their schools cannot, however, be accurately estimated, since it varied from year to year according to the engagements made with special teachers. At Pavia, for example, in 1400, the university supported in Canon Law several eminent doctors, in Civil Law thirteen, in Medicine five, in Philosophy three, in Astrology one, in Greek one, and in Eloquence one.[83] Whether this staff was maintained after the lapse of another twenty years we do not know for certain.

[Footnote 81: Lib. i. cap. 8.]

[Footnote 82: 'Volendo attrarre gente alla nostra citta, e dilatarla in onore, e dare materia a' suoi cittadini d'essere scienziati e virtudiosi.']

[Footnote 83: Cf. Corio, p. 290. He gives the names of the professors who attended at the funeral of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.]

The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and Civil Law, Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, important for the professional education of the public, formed the staple of the academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Astronomy were added according to occasion, the last sometimes including the study of judicial astrology. If we inquire how the humanists or professors of cla.s.sic literature were related to the universities, we find that, at first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank.

The permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who enjoyed life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the Latinists and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary occupation of the Chair of Rhetoric, with salaries considerably lower than those of lawyers or physicians. The cause of this inferiority is easily explained. It was natural that important and remunerative branches of learning like law and medicine should attract a greater number of students than pure literature, and that their professors should be better paid than the teachers of eloquence. Padua, Bologna, and Pavia in particular retained their legal speciality throughout the period of the Renaissance, and remained but little open to humanistic influences. At Padua we find from Sanudo's Diary[84] that an eminent jurist received a stipend of 1,000 ducats. A Doctor of Medicine at the same university, in 1491, received a similar stipend, together with the right of private practice. At Bologna the famous jurist Abbas Siculus (Niccolo de' Tudeschi) drew 800 scudi yearly; at Padua Giovanni da Imola in 1406, and Paolo da Castro in 1430, drew a sum of 600 ducats.[85] About the same time (1453) Lauro Quirino, who professed rhetoric at Padua, was paid at the rate of only forty ducats yearly, while Lorenzo Valla, at Pavia, filled the Chair of Eloquence with an annual stipend of fifty sequins. The disparity between the remuneration of jurists and that of humanists was not so great at all the universities. Florence in especial formed a notable exception.

From the date of its commencement the Florentine _studio_ was partial to literature; and it is worth remarking that when Lorenzo de' Medici transferred the high school to Pisa, he retained at Florence the professors of the liberal sciences and _belles-lettres_. The great reputation of eminent rhetoricians, again, often secured for them temporary engagements at a high rate. Thus we gather from Rosmini's 'Life of Filelfo' that this humanist received from Venice the offer of 500 sequins yearly as remuneration for his professorial services.

Bologna proposed an annual stipend of 450 sequins when he undertook to lecture upon eloquence and moral philosophy. At Florence his income amounted to 350 golden florins, secured for three years, and subsequently raised to 450. With Siena he stipulated for 350 golden florins for two years. At Milan his Chair of Eloquence was endowed with 500 golden florins, and this salary was afterwards increased to 700. Nicholas V. offered him an annual income of 600 ducats if he would devote himself to the translation of Greek books into Latin, while Sixtus IV. tried to bring him to Rome by proposing 600 Roman florins as the stipend of the Chair of Rhetoric.

[Footnote 84: Mur. xxii. 990.]

[Footnote 85: See Voigt, p. 447.]

The fact, however, remains that while the special study of antiquity preoccupied the minds of the Italians, and attracted all the finer intellects among the youth ambitious of distinction, its professors never succeeded in taking complete possession of the universities.