Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 10

The profuse liberality of Nicholas brought him thus into relation with the whole learned world of Italy. Among the humanists who resided at his Court in Rome, mention must be made of Lorenzo Valla, who was appointed Apostolic Scriptor in 1447, and who opened a school of eloquence in 1450. Piero Candido Decembrio obtained the post of secretary and overseer of the Abbreviators.[198] Giovanni Tortello, of Arezzo, the author of a useful book on the orthography of Greek words, superintended the Pope's library. Piero da Noceto, whose tomb in the cathedral at Lucca is one of Matteo da Civitale's masterpieces, was private secretary and comptroller of the Pope's affairs. Of the circle gathered round Bessarion I shall have occasion to speak later on. Our present attention must be concentrated on a man who, more even than Nicholas himself, might claim the right to give his own name to this age of learning.

[Footnote 198: The more complete notices which Valla and Decembrio deserve will be given in the history of scholarship at Naples and at Milan.]

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini is better known in the annals of literature as Poggio Fiorentino, though he was not made a burgher of Florence until late in life. Born in 1380 at Terranova, a village of the Florentine _contado_, he owed his education to Florence. In Latin he was the pupil of John of Ravenna, and in Greek of Manuel Chrysoloras. During his youth he supported himself by copying MSS. for the Florentine market. Coluccio Salutato and Niccolo de' Niccoli befriended the young student, who entered as early as the year 1402 or 1403 into the Papal Chancery.[199] Though Poggio's life for the following half-century was spent in the service of the Roman Curia, he refused to take orders in the Church, and remained at heart a humanist. With the Florentine circle of scholars he maintained an unremitting correspondence, sending them notices of his discoveries in the convents of Switzerland and Germany, receiving from them literary gossip in return, joining in their disputes, and more than once engaging in fierce verbal duels to befriend his Medicean allies. His duties and his tastes alike made him a frequent traveller, and not the least of the benefits conferred by him upon posterity are his pictures of foreign manners. At the Council of Constance, for example, he saw and heard Jerome of Prague, in whom he admired the firmness and intrepid spirit of a Cato.[200] At Baden in Switzerland he noticed the custom, strange to Italian eyes, of men and women bathing together, eating, drinking, and playing at chess or cards upon floating tables in the water, while visitors looked down upon them from galleries above, as they now do at Leukerbad.[201] In England he observed that the gentry preferred residence in their country houses and secluded parks to the town life then, as now, fashionable in Italy, and commented upon the vast wealth and boorish habits of the great ecclesiastics.[202] Concerning his discoveries of MSS. I have had already occasion to write; nor need I here repeat what I have said about his antiquarian researches among the ruins of ancient Rome.

Poggio was a man of wide sympathies, active curiosity, and varied interests--no mere bookworm, but one whose eyes and mind were open to the world around him.

[Footnote 199: Of his debt to Niccolo de' Niccoli Poggio speaks with great warmth of feeling in a letter on his death addressed to Carlo Aretino: 'Quem enim patrem habui cui plus debuerim quam Nicolao? Hic mihi parens ab adolescentia, hic postmodum amicus, hic studiorum meorum adjutor atque hortator fuit, hic consilio, libris, opibus semper me ut filium et amic.u.m fovit atque adjuvit.'--_Poggii Opera, Basileae, ex aedibus Henrici Petri_, MDx.x.xVIII. p. 342. To this edition of Poggio's works my future references are made.]

[Footnote 200: 'Stabat impavidus, intrepidus, mortem non contemnens solum sed appetens ut alterum Catonem dixeris.'--_Opp. Omnia_, p. 301.

This most interesting letter, addressed to Lionardo Bruni, is translated by Shepherd, _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_, pp. 78-88.]

[Footnote 201: _Opera Omnia_, p. 297. See Shepherd, pp. 67-76, for a translation of this letter to Niccolo de' Niccoli.]

[Footnote 202: Cardinal Beaufort had invited him to England.]

In literature he embraced the whole range of contemporary studies, making his mark as a public orator, a writer of rhetorical treatises and dialogues, a panegyrist of the dead, a violent impeacher and impugner of the living, a translator from the Greek, an elegant epistolographer, a grave historian, and a facetious compiler of anecdotes and epigrams. He possessed a style at once easy and pointed, correct in diction and varied in cadence, equally adapted for serious discourse and witty trifling, and not less formidable in abuse than delicate in flattery. This at least was the impression which his copious and facile Latin, always fluent and yet always full of sense, produced on his contemporaries. For us its finest flights of rhetoric have lost their charm, and its best turns of phrase their point. So impossible is it that the fashionable style of one age should retain its magic for posterity, unless it be truly cla.s.sical in form, or weighted with sound thought, or animated with high inspiration. Just these qualities were missed by Poggio and his compeers. Setting no more serious aim before them than the imitation of Livy and Cicero, Seneca and Caesar, they fell far short of their originals; nor had they matter to make up for their defect of elegance. Poggio's treatises 'De n.o.bilitate,' 'De Varietate Fortunae,' 'De Miseria Humanae Conditionis,'

'De Infelicitate Principum,' 'An Seni sit Uxor ducenda,' 'Historia Disceptiva Convivialis,' and so forth, were as interesting to Italy in the fifteenth century as Voltaire's occasional essays to our more immediate ancestors. His controversial writings pa.s.sed for models of destructive eloquence, his satires on the clergy for masterpieces of sarcastic humour, his Florentine history for a supreme achievement in the n.o.blest Latin manner. Yet the whole of this miscellaneous literature seems coa.r.s.e and ineffective to the modern taste. We read it, not without repugnance, in order to obtain an insight into the spirit of the author's age.

Two important points in Poggio's biography will serve to ill.u.s.trate the social circ.u.mstances of the humanists. The first is the att.i.tude adopted by him toward the churchmen, with whom he pa.s.sed the best years of his life in close intimacy; the second, his fierce warfare waged with rivals and opponents in the field of scholarship. Though Poggio served the Church for half a century, no one exposed the vices of the clergy with more ruthless sarcasm, or turned the follies of the monks to ridicule with more relentless scorn. After reading his 'Dialogue against the Hypocrites,' his 'Invective against Felix the Antipope,' and his 'Facetiae,' it is difficult to understand how a satirist who knew the weak points of the Church so intimately, and exposed them so freely, could have held high station and been honoured in the Papal Curia. They confirm in the highest degree all that has been written in the previous volume about the division between religion and morality in Italy, the cynical self-satisfaction of the clergy, and the secular indifference of the Papacy, proving at the same time the proudly independent position which the talents of the humanists had won for them at Rome. At the end of the 'Facetiae'--a collection of grossly indecent and not always very witty stories--Poggio refers to the meetings with which he and his comrades entertained themselves after the serious business of the day was over.[203] Their place of resort was in the precincts of the Lateran, where they had established a club which took the name of 'Bugiale,' or Lie Factory.[204] Apostolic secretaries, writers to the Chancery, protonotaries, and Papal scribes here met together after laying down the pens they had employed in drafting Bulls and dispensations, encyclical letters and diplomatic missives. To make puns, tell scandalous stories, and invent amusing plots for novelettes was the chief amus.e.m.e.nt of these Roman wits. Their most stinging shafts of satire were reserved for monks and priests; but they spared no cla.s.s or profession, and made free with the names of living persons.[205]

Against the higher clergy it might not have been safe to utter even the truth, except in strictest privacy, seeing that preferment had to be expected from the Sacred College and the Holy Father. The mendicant orders and the country parsons, therefore, bore the brunt of their attack, while the whole tone of their discourse made it clear how little they respected the religion and the inst.i.tutions of the Church.

Such fragments of these conversations as Poggio thought fit to preserve, together with anecdotes borrowed from the 'Cent Nouvelles nouvelles' and other sources, he committed to Latin, and printed in the later years of his life. The t.i.tle given to the book was 'Facetiarum Liber.' It ran speedily through numerous editions, and was read all over Europe with the same eagerness that the 'Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum' afterwards excited. Underneath its ribaldry and nonsense, however, there lay no serious intention. The satires on the clergy were contemptuous and flippant, arguing more liking on the part of their author for scurrilous jests than any earnest wish to prove the degradation of monasticism. Not a word of censure from the Vatican can I find recorded against this marvellous production of a Papal secretary's pen. Here, by way of ill.u.s.tration, it may be mentioned that Filelfo, on his way through Rome to Naples, placed his satires--the most nauseous compositions that coa.r.s.e spite and filthy fancy ever sp.a.w.ned--in the hands of Nicholas V. The Pope retained them for nine days, read them, returned them with thanks, and rewarded their author with a purse of 500 ducats.

[Footnote 203: _Poggi Florentini Facetiarum Libellus Unicus_, Londini, 1798, vol. i. p. 282.]

[Footnote 204: 'Mendaciorum veluti officina' is Poggio's own explanation of the phrase.]

[Footnote 205: 'Ibi parcebatur nemini, in lacessendo ea quae non probabantur a n.o.bis.']

The 'Dialogue against the Hypocrites' contains less of mere scurrility and more that bears with real weight on the vices of the clergy. Begging friars, preachers, confessors, and aspirants to the fame of holiness are cited by name and scourged with pitiless impartiality, while the worldly ambition of the Roman churchmen is unmasked. The 'Fratres Observantiae,' who flourished under Pope Eugenius, receive stern castigation at the hands of Carlo Aretino.

Shepherd remarks, not without justice, on this dialogue that, had the author 'ventured to advance the sentiments which it contains in the days of Eugenius, he would in all probability have expiated his temerity by the forfeit of his life.[206] Nicholas V., who appreciated the pungency of its satiric style, instead of resenting its free speech, directed his friend Poggio's pen against his rival Felix.

Raised to the Papacy by the Council of Basle in 1439, Amadeus, the ex-Duke of Savoy, still persisted in his Papal t.i.tle after the election of Nicholas; and though the Sovereign of the Vatican could well afford to scorn the hermit of Ripaille, he thought it prudent to discharge the heavy guns of humanistic eloquence against the Antipope.

A ponderous invective was the result, wherein Poggio described the unfortunate Felix as 'another Cerberus,' 'a rapacious wolf,' 'a golden calf,' 'a perverter of the faith and foe to true religion,' 'a high priest of malignity,' 'a roaring lion'--stigmatising the Council to whom he owed his election as 'that sink of iniquity the Synagogue of Basle,' 'a monstrous birth,' 'conventicle of reprobates,' 'tumultuary band of debauched men,' 'apostates, fornicators, ravishers, deserters, men convicted of most shameful crimes, blasphemers, rebels against G.o.d.'[207] To such amenities of controversial rhetoric did even Popes descend, subst.i.tuting sound and fury for sense, and trusting to vituperation in the absence of more valid arguments.

[Footnote 206: _Life of Poggio_, p. 423.]

[Footnote 207: _Opera Omnia_, pp. 155-164.]

Poggio, next to Filelfo, was the most formidable gladiator in that age of literary duellists. 'In his invectives he displayed such vehemence,' writes Vespasiano,[208] 'that the whole world was afraid of him.' Even Alfonso of Naples found it prudent to avert his anger by a timely present of 600 ducats, when Poggio complained of his remissness in acknowledging the version of Xenophon's 'Cyropaedia,'[209]

and hinted at the same time that a scholar's pen was powerful enough to punish kings for their ingrat.i.tude. The overtures, again, made to Poggio by Filippo Maria Visconti, and the consideration he received from Cosimo de' Medici, testified to the desire of princes for the goodwill of a spiteful and unscrupulous pamphleteer.[210] The most celebrated of Poggio's feuds with men of letters began when Filelfo a.s.sailed the character of Cosimo, and satirised the whole society of Florence in 1433. The full history of Filelfo's animosity against the Florentines belongs to the biography of that famous scholar. It is enough here to mention that he ridiculed Cosimo under the name of Mundus, described Poggio as Bambalio, Carlo Aretino as Codrus, and Niccolo de' Niccoli as Outis,[211] accusing them of literary imbecility, and ascribing to them all the crimes and vices that disgrace humanity. Poggio girded up his loins for the combat, and, in reply to Filelfo's ponderous hexameters, discharged a bulky invective in prose against the common adversary. This was answered by more satires, Poggio replying with new invectives. The quarrel lasted over many years; when, having heaped upon each other all the insults it is possible for the most corrupt imagination to conceive, they joined hands and rested from the contest.[212] To sully these pages with translations of Poggio's rank abuse would be impossible. I must content myself with referring readers, who are anxious to gain a more detailed acquaintance with the literary warfare of that age, to the excerpts preserved by Shepherd and Rosmini.[213] Suffice it to say that he poured a torrent of the filthiest calumnies upon Filelfo's wife and mother, that he accused Filelfo himself of the basest vice in youth and the most flagrant debauchery in manhood, that he represented him as a public thief, a professed cut-purse, a blasphemous atheist, soiled with sordid immoralities of every kind, and driven by his exposed felonies from town to town in search of shelter for his hated head. Filelfo replied in the same strain. All the resources of the Latin language were exhausted by the combatants in their endeavours to befoul each other's character, and the lowest depths of human nature were explored to find fresh accusations. The learned world of Italy stood by applauding, while the valiant antagonists, like gladiators of the Roman arena, plied their diverse weapons, the one discharging darts of verse, the other wielding a heavy club of prose.[214]

Unhappily, there was enough of scandalous material in both their lives to give some colour to their accusations. Yet the virulence with which they lied against each other defeated its own object. Raking that literary dunghill, it is now impossible to distinguish the true from the false; all proportion is lost in the ma.s.s of overcharged and indiscriminate scurrility. That such encounters should have been enjoyed and applauded by polite society is one of the strangest signs of the times; and that the duellists themselves should have imagined they were treading in the steps of Cicero and Demosthenes is even more astounding.

[Footnote 208: P. 422.]

[Footnote 209: _Ibid._ p. 423.]

[Footnote 210: See the correspondence between Filippo Maria and Poggio, _Opp._ pp. 333-358. Letter to Cosimo, p. 339.]

[Footnote 211: 'The World, the Stammering Simpleton, the Execrable Poet, and the n.o.body.' See _Auree Francisci Philelphi Poete Oratorisque Celeberrimi Satyre_. Paris, 1508. Pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 212: _Opp. Omn._ pp. 164-187. The first invective is the most venomous, and deserves to be read in the original. The last, ent.i.tled 'Invectiva Excusatoria et Reconciliatoria,' is amusing from its tone of sulky and sated exhaustion.]

[Footnote 213: _Life of Poggio_, pp. 263-272, 354. _Vita di Filelfo._]

[Footnote 214: The language of the arena was used by these literary combatants. Thus Valla, in the exordium of his _Antidote_, describes his weapon of attack in this sentence:--'Haec est mea fusana, quandoquidem gladiator a gladiatore fieri cogor, et ea duplex et utraque tridens,' p. 9.]

The dispute with Filelfo was rather personal than literary. Another duel into which Poggio entered with Guarino turned upon the respective merits of Scipio and Julius Caesar. Poggio had occasion to explain, in correspondence with a certain Scipione Ferrarese, his reasons for preferring the character of Scipio Africa.n.u.s. Guarino, with a view to pleasing his pupil Lionello d'Este, a professed admirer of Caesar, took up the cudgels in defence of the dictator,[215] and treated Poggio, whom he called Caesaromastix, with supreme contempt. Poggio replied in a letter to the n.o.ble Venetian scholar Frances...o...b..rbaro.[216] Hard words were exchanged on both sides, and the antagonists were only reconciled on the occasion of Poggio's marriage in 1435. Rome, however, was the theatre of his most celebrated exploits as a disputant. It chanced one day that he discovered a copy of his own epistles annotated by a Spanish n.o.bleman who was a pupil of Lorenzo Valla.[217] Poggio's Latinity was not spared in the marginal strictures penned by the young student; and the fiery scholar, flying to the conclusion that the master, not the pupil, had dictated them, discharged his usual missile, a furious invective, against Valla. Thus attacked, the author of the 'Elegantiae' responded in a similar composition, ent.i.tled 'Antidotum in Poggium,' and dedicated to Nicholas V.[218] Poggio followed with another invective; nor did the quarrel end till he had added five of these disgusting compositions to his previous achievements in the same style, and had drawn a young Latinist of promise, Niccolo Perotti, into the disgraceful fray.[219]

What makes the termination of the squabble truly comic is that Filelfo, himself the worst offender in this way, was moved at last to write a serious letter of admonishment to the contending parties, exhorting them to consult their own dignity and to lay down arms.[220]

Concerning the invectives and antidotes by which this war was carried on Tiraboschi writes, 'Perhaps they are the most infamous libels that have ever seen the light; there is no sort of vituperation which the antagonists do not vomit forth against each other, no obscenity and roguery of which they are not mutually accused.'

[Footnote 215: See Rosmini, _Vita di Guarino da Verona_, vol. ii. p.

96.]

[Footnote 216: _Poggii Opera_, p. 365.]

[Footnote 217: 'Adolescens quidam auditor meus,' says Valla in the _Antidotum_, p. 2. The story is told at length, p. 151. I quote from the Cologne edition of 1527: 'Laurentii Vallae viri clarissimi in Pogium Florentinum antidoti libri quatuor: in eundem alii duo libelli in dialogo conscripti.']

[Footnote 218: See Shepherd's _Poggio_, pp. 470, 471, for specimens of the scurrility on both sides.]

[Footnote 219: The invectives against Valla fill from p. 188 to p. 251 of Poggio's collected works. Part of them is devoted to a defence of his own Latinity, and to a critique of Valla's _Elegantiae_. But by far the larger part consists of vehement incriminations. Heresy, theft, lying, forgery, cowardice, filthy living of the most odious description, drunkenness, and insane vanity--such are the accusations, supported with a terrible array of apparent evidence. As in the case of Filelfo, Poggio does not spare his antagonist's father and mother, but heaps the vilest abuse upon everyone connected with him. Valla's _Antidote_ is written in a more tempered spirit and a purer Latin style.]

[Footnote 220: Shepherd, _Life of Poggio_, p. 474.]

The inconceivably slight occasions upon which these learned men rushed into the arena, and flung dirt upon one another, may be imagined when we find Lorenzo Valla at feud on the one side with Georgios Trapezuntios because the one preferred Cicero and the other Quintilian, and on the other with Benedetto Morando because that scholar doubted whether Lucius and Aruns were the grandsons of Tarquinius Priscus. Sometimes private incidents aroused their wrath, as in the curious rupture between Lionardo Bruni and Niccolo de'

Niccoli at Florence. The story, since it is characteristic of the time, may be briefly told. Niccolo had stolen his brother's mistress Benvenuta, and made her his concubine.[221] His relatives, indignant at the domestic scandal, insulted Benvenuta in the street, and Niccolo bemoaned himself to all his friends. Lionardo, to whom he applied for sympathy, very properly observed that a student ought to be better occupied than with the misfortunes of a kitchen wench. This tart reply roused Niccolo's bile, and set his caustic tongue wagging against his old friend; whereupon Lionardo Bruni launched a fierce invective _in nebulonem maledic.u.m_ against him, and the learned society of Florence indulged in a free fight on both sides.

[Footnote 221: Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, called her 'fidelissima foemina.']

Such quarrels were not always confined to words. There is no doubt that the dagger was employed against Filelfo by the Medicean party, while it now and then happened that the literary gladiators came to actual fisticuffs. A scene of this sort occurred at Rome in public.

Georgios Trapezuntios complained that the credit of Poggio's translations from Diodorus and Xenophon really belonged to him, since he had done the work of them. Poggio shrieked out, 'You lie in your throat!' Georgios retorted with a box on Poggio's ears. Then Poggio came to close quarters, catching his adversary by the hair; and the two professors pommelled each other till their respective pupils parted them.[222] Such anecdotes might be multiplied indefinitely. Nor would it be unprofitable to give some account of the vehement warfare waged in Italy between the Platonists and Aristotelians, were it not that enough has already been said to ill.u.s.trate the acrimonious temper of the times.

[Footnote 222: Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. ii. cap. 2, sect. 15.]

The animosity displayed by scholars in these disputes may be taken as a proof of their enthusiasm for their studies. Men have always quarrelled about politics, because politics furnish matter of profound interest to everyone. Theology, for a similar reason, never fails to rouse the deepest rancours, hatreds, and hostilities of which the human breast is capable. Science, as we know from the annals of our days, sets the upholders of antagonistic theories by the ears; and at times when politics have been dull, theology dormant, and science undemonstrative, even music has been found sufficient to excite a nation. In the fifteenth century scholarship was all-absorbing. It corresponded to science in our age, since it engaged the talents of the strongest workers and supplied the sources of progressive intellectual discovery. Moreover, it included both philosophy and theology, and formed the most attractive topic in all conversation. No wonder, therefore, that the limpid fountains of cla.s.sical erudition were troubled by the piques and jealousies of students.

It is pleasant to turn from Poggio's wrangling to more honourable pa.s.sages in his biography. Since the year 1434 he had owned a farm not far from Florence. Here he built a country residence, vying, if not in splendour, at least in elegance, with the villas of the Florentine burghers. He called it his Valdarniana, and adorned it with the fragments of antique sculpture, inscriptions, and coins, collected by him partly in person on the Roman Campagna and partly by purchase from Greece. In the following year (1435) Poggio, then a man of fifty-five, married a girl of eighteen, named Vaggia, of the n.o.ble Buondelmonte blood. In forming this connection he had to separate from a mistress who had borne him fourteen children, four of them then living. His biographer, Shepherd, indulges in some sentimental reflections upon the pain this leave-taking must have cost him. Yet the impartial critic will hardly be brought to pity Poggio, seeing that he cancelled the brief whereby he had previously legitimised his natural children, and responded with raptures to the congratulations of friends upon his new engagement. He had already been admitted to the burghership of Florence, and exempted from its taxes in consideration of his literary services; so that, on the death of his friend Carlo Aretino, in 1453, no one was found more fitting for the post of Chancellor to the Republic. As an increase of dignity, Poggio fulfilled the office of Prior, and sat among the Signory. The 'History of the Florentine Republic,' written in continuation of Lionardo Aretino's, occupied the closing years of his life. He left it still unfinished in the year 1459, when he died, and was buried in the Church of Santa Croce. I cannot find that his funeral was accompanied by the peculiar honours voted in the case of his two predecessors. The Florentines, however, erected his statue on the facade of Santa Maria del Fiore, and placed his picture by Antonio dal Pollajuolo in the hall of the Proconsolo.

The fate of this statue, a work of Donatello's, was not a little curious. On the occasion of some alterations in 1560, it was removed from its first station, and set up as one among the Twelve Apostles in another part of the cathedral.

Any survey of the Court of Nicholas V. would be incomplete without some notice of the Cardinal Bessarion. Early in life he rose to high station in the Greek Church, and attended the Council of Florence as Archbishop of Nicea. Eugenius IV., by making him a cardinal in 1439, converted him to the Latin faith; and, as it so happened, he missed the Papacy almost by an accident thirty-two years later.[223] His palace at Rome became the meeting-place of scholars of all nations,[224] where refugee Greeks in particular were sure of finding hearty welcome. In obedience to the reigning pa.s.sion for book-collecting, he got together a considerable library of Greek and Latin authors, the number of which Vespasiano estimated at 600 volumes, while Platina reckoned their total cost at 30,000 scudi. In 1468 he offered this collection to the Church of S. Mark at Venice.

The Republic accepted his gift, but showed no alacrity to build the library. It was not until the next century that Bessarion's books were finally housed according to their dignity.[225] The Cardinal's own studies lay in the direction of theological philosophy. We have already seen that in his youth he was a pupil of Gemistos, and he now appears as the defender of Plato. Georgios Trapezuntios had published a treatise in the year 1458, in which, on the pretence of upholding Aristotle, he vilified Plato's moral character, accused him of having ruined Greece, and maintained that Mahomet was a far better legislator. Bessarion replied by the oration 'In Calumniatorem Platonis,' vindicating the morality of the philosopher and supporting him against Aristotle. This book was printed by Sweynheim and Pannartz in the infancy of the Roman press. Theodoros Gaza,[226] who, on his settlement in Rome in 1450, had been received into Bessarion's household, entered the lists with a critique of Gemistos; to which Bessarion replied: and so the warfare begun by Gennadios at Byzantium was continued by the Greek exiles at Rome. The t.i.tles of the works issued in this contest, among which we find 'De Natura et Arte,'

'Utrum Natura Consilio Agat,' 'Comparationes Philosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis,' sufficiently indicate the extent of ground traversed.

The chief result was the rousing of Italian scholars to weightier points of issue in philosophy than had at first been raised by mystical Neoplatonists and pedantic Peripatetics.

[Footnote 223: Vespasiano, p. 146.]

[Footnote 224: See Platina's panegyric, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi.

lib. i. cap. 3, 22. Platina and Perotti were among his Italian _proteges_.]

[Footnote 225: A striking instance of the want of literary enthusiasm at Venice.]