The Renaissance. S7 



to Florence. Ths Florentines seized the opportunity and gave him an 

 appointment at the University. The whole of educated Florence listened 

 to him. He produced the first Greek grammar, which was the one used 

 by Erasmus when teaching at Cambridge-. The second period was started 

 in a small way by Petrarch and Boccaccio ; manuscripts were mostly 

 found in monasteries, and once a few discoveries had been made, the fas- 

 cination of it seized princes and scholars alike. Great families like the 

 Medici employed agents all over Europe to help in the search. The two 

 most famous libraries were those at Florence and Rome. Niccolo de 

 Niccoli had formed a magnificent collection of 800 manuscripts. These 

 he bequeathed to Cosimo de Medici and other Trustees, and they formed 

 the nucleus of the present world-famous Laurentian Library. In 

 Rome the Papal Library was re-organised by Nicholas V, and increased 

 by Sixtus IV, who appointed the Humanist Platina as Librarian, 

 and he it was who catalogued it, and arranged it in its present building. 

 The Church wisely recognised that the new learning had come to stay, 

 and the Papacy, seeking temporal power, took up the patronage of letters. 

 Nicholas V, by temperament a litterateur, seriously set before himself 

 the collection of a library and the employment of Humanists on a com- 

 plete set of Latin translation of Greek authors. Leo X. was a typical 

 Humanist and belonged to the period of the zenith of the Renaissance, 

 and devoted himself to the promotion of intellectual progress and real 

 learning. 



In the third period, the age of criticism, the Renaissance reached its 

 high-water mark in literary scholarship. There was now no longer the 

 undiscriminating admiration of the antique. Its place was taken by the 

 systematic study of what had been collected, and this was chiefly done by 

 literary groups called Academies, which met for the study and discussion 

 of learned questions ; the four most important of them being those at 

 Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice. The Roman Academy was pre- 

 dominantly antiquarian, and was founded about 1460 by Piero, who pre- 

 ferred to call himself with classical affectation Pomponius. The Academy 

 undertook the study of Roman Archaeology. The members adopted an 

 anti-papal attitude and were imprisoned by Paul II, who subsequently 

 dissolved the Academy. It was revived by Sixtus IV, was brilliant under 

 Leo X, and died a natural death about 1530. The Neapolitan Academy 

 was the least important of the four. They studied the Latin language 

 especially and acquired a complete mastery of its style. After a time its 

 character changed and it degenerated. The Florentine Academy was the 

 most brilliant of all, and flourished under the patronage of the Medici ; 

 and under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, perhaps the 

 greatest patron of arts of the period, it pursued a really brilliant career. 

 Plato was its patron Saint and ph'losophy was thus its main feature. 

 The Academy was suppressed in 1522, but was subsequently revived when 

 its interests became rather Italian than Platonic. The Venetian Academy 

 differed from the others in being mainly engaged in editing and printing 

 the Greek classics. It was founded in 1500 by Aldus Manutias who 

 supervised distinguished Humanists in selecting, collating and printing 



