Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 8

'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, subst.i.tuted a new one, and received the praise and thanks he sought, in plenty from his Holiness.[160] Of Plato Bruni translated the 'Phaedo,' 'Crito,' and 'Apology,' the 'Phaedrus' 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed in state to S. Croce, where Giannozzo Manetti, in the presence of the Signory, the foreign amba.s.sadors, and the Court of Pope Eugenius, p.r.o.nounced 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.

[Footnote 155: Muratori, xix. p. 917. 'Erat in ipso cubiculo picta Francisci Petrarchae imago, quam ego quotidie aspiciens, incredibili ardore studiorum ejus incendebar.']

[Footnote 156: See above, pp. 77, 80.]

[Footnote 157: See Vespasiano, p. 436.]

[Footnote 158: See Vol. I., _Age of Despots_, pp. 216-218.]

[Footnote 159: These last were then thought genuine.]

[Footnote 160: Vespasiano, p. 436.]

[Footnote 161: _Ibid._ _Vita di Manetti_, p. 452. Manetti was himself a prior at this time.]

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 amba.s.sadors, 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 surpa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced the funeral oration, and placed the laurel on his brows. Marsuppini's contributions to scholars.h.i.+p were chiefly in verse; among these his translations of the 'Batrachomyomachia' and the first book of the 'Iliad' were highly valued.

[Footnote 162: _Vita di Carlo d'Arezzo_, p. 440.]

[Footnote 163: See Tiraboschi, tom. vi. p. 1094.]

Matteo Palmieri, who p.r.o.nounced 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 princ.i.p.ally famous as the author of a mystical poem called 'Citta di Vita,' which, though it was condemned for its heretical opinions, obtained from Ficinus for its author the t.i.tle of _Poeta Theologicus_.

To discuss the circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sing notice here among the humanists who acquired high place and honour by the credit of his eloquence and style.

[Footnote 164: See Vespasiano, p. 500. Tiraboschi, vol. vi. p. 678.

App. iii. to vol. v. of this work.]

Giannozzo Manetti belonged to an ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sionately fond of disputation, he sought his chief amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Judaeos 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.

[Footnote 165: The sources for Manetti's Life are Vespasiano and an anonymous Latin biography in Muratori. Besides the small Life of Vespasiano in his _Vite d'Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_, I have had recourse to his _Comentario della Vita di Gianozo Manetti_, Turin, 1862.]

[Footnote 166: 'Tenne in casa dua Greci et uno Ebreo che s'era fatto Cristiano, et non voleva che il Greco parla.s.se con lui se non in greco, et il simile il Ebreo in ebreo.'--_Comentario_, p. 11.]

Manetti was far from being a mere student. During the best years of his life he was continually employed as amba.s.sador 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 ill.u.s.trates the importance attached at this time to public speaking.

After the coronation of the Emperor Frederick III., the Florentines sent fifteen amba.s.sadors, 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 aeneas 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.'

[Footnote 167: 'Se ignuna cosa difficile o cura disperata, la davano a Messer Gianozo.'--_Ibid._ p. 22.]

[Footnote 168: _Vita di Gianozo Manetti_, p. 462. Compare Burckhardt, p. 182. There is another story, told in the _Comentario_, of Manetti's speaking before Alfonso at Naples. The King remained so quiet that he did not even brush the flies from his face. P. 30.]

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 p.r.o.nounced upon solemn occasions, by even such ill.u.s.trious orators as Manetti or Pius II., were marked by any of the n.o.bler 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 cla.s.sic 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.

[Footnote 169: Muratori, vol. xx.]

[Footnote 170: For Pius II.'s reputation see Burckhardt, p. 182.]

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.

[Footnote 171: Vespasiano, p. 465. Muratori, xx. 600.]

[Footnote 172: Alfonso gave him a pension of 900 scudi. He wrote a history of his life and deeds.]

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 scholars.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.sical 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 t.i.tle 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.

[Footnote 173: Niccolo de' Niccoli, it must be remembered, was not a Grecian. Ambrogio used to insert the Greek words into his transcripts of Latin codices.]

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 scholars.h.i.+p, 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 impa.s.sioned energy, a combination of external circ.u.mstances 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 Palaeologus, 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 sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus, and that if the genius of antiquity was to illuminate the modern world, the light must dawn in Italy.[174]

[Footnote 174: See the emphatic words of Poliziano, quoted by Voigt, p. 189, on the revival of extinct h.e.l.lenism by the Florentines, and on their fluent command of the Attic idiom.]

The feelings with which the Florentines regarded their Greek guests were strangely mingled. While honouring them as the last scions of the n.o.blest nation of the past, as the authentic teachers of h.e.l.lenic 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 fas.h.i.+on.[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.

[Footnote 175: See the curious pa.s.sage in the _Vita di Eugenio IV., Papa_, p. 14.]

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 pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 h.e.l.las on a Pagan basis. There is something ludicrous as well as sad in the spectacle of this sophist, nouris.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.lenism 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-a.s.sured. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt of his leisure hours. Yet nothing can be graver than his own language and that of his disciples.

[Footnote 176: I owe the greater part of the facts presented in this sketch of Gemistos to Fritz Schultze's _Geschichte der Philosophie der Renaissance_, vol. i.]

The work in which he embodied his doctrine was called 'The Laws'--[Greek: he ton nomon syngraphe], or simply [Greek: nomoi]. 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 G.o.d, Zeus, the absolute and eternal reality, existing as h.o.m.ogeneous and undiscriminated Being, Will, Activity, and Power. Zeus begets everlasting Ideas, or G.o.ds of the second order; and these G.o.ds, to whom Gemistos gave the name of Greek divinities, const.i.tute 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, Hephaestus, 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 t.i.tans, two of whom, Cronos and Aphrodite, are the ideas respectively of form and matter in things subject to decay and dissolution; while Kore, 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 ent.i.ties. 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 const.i.tute the higher of these inferior powers, while the daemons fill the lowest cla.s.s of all. At the very bottom of the scale, below the G.o.ds of every quality, stand men, beasts, plants, and the inorganic world.

It will be perceived that this scheme is b.a.s.t.a.r.d Neoplatonism--a mystical fusion of Greek mythology and Greek logic, whereby the products of speculative a.n.a.lysis 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 G.o.ds, 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 ident.i.ty and self-determining motion under the t.i.tles of Apollo and Dionysus, nor any confusion more fatal than the attribution of s.e.x to categories of the understanding.

The sole merit of the system consists in the cla.s.sification 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 t.i.tles 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 att.i.tude a.s.sumed by Gemistos and his disciples is, therefore, not without its value for ill.u.s.trating the intellectual conditions of the earlier Renaissance. Practical religion had but little energy among the educated cla.s.ses. The interests of the Church were more political than spiritual. Science had not yet a.s.serted her real rights in any sphere of thought. Art and literature, invigorated by the pa.s.sion for antiquity, meanwhile absorbed the genius of the Italians; and through a dim aesthetic haze the waning lights of h.e.l.las mingled with the dayspring of the modern world.

[Footnote 177: See Schultze, p. 53.]

[Footnote 178: See Schultze, p. 77, note.]

[Footnote 179: _Ibid._ p. 107.]