Note 132 page 66. The Apollo Belvedere was discovered in 1503, the Laocoön group in 1506, and other famous antique statues only a few years earlier.

Note 133 page 66. The comparative merits of painting and sculpture were a frequent subject of discussion during this period. The Renaissance writers had inherited from antiquity a fondness for seeking superiority or inferiority in matters between which there exists such a diversity of character as to render comparison unprofitable. According to Vasari, Giorgione maintained “that in one picture the painter could display various aspects without the necessity of walking round his work, and could even display, at one glance, all the different aspects that could be presented by the figure of a man, even though the latter should assume several attitudes,—a thing which could not be accomplished by sculpture without compelling the observer to change his place, so that the work is not presented at one view, but at different views. He declared, further, that he could execute a single figure in painting, in such a manner as to show the front, back, and profiles of both sides at one and the same time.... He painted a nude figure, with its back turned to the spectator, and at the feet of the figure was a limpid stream, wherein the reflection of the front was painted with the utmost exactitude: on one side was a highly burnished corselet, of which the figure had divested itself, and wherein the left side was reflected perfectly, every part of the figure being clearly apparent: and on the other side was a mirror, in which the right profile of the nude form was also exhibited. By this beautiful and admirable fancy, Giorgione desired to prove that painting is, in effect, the superior art, requiring more talent and demanding higher effort.”

In one of his letters, Michelangelo wrote: “My opinion is that all painting is the better the nearer it approaches to relief, and relief is worse in proportion as it inclines to painting. And so I have been wont to think that sculpture is the lamp of painting, and that the difference between them might be likened to the difference between the sun and moon.... By sculpture I understand an art which operates by taking away superfluous material; by painting, one that attains its result by laying material on. It is enough that both emanate from the same human intelligence, and consequently sculpture and painting ought to live in amity together, without these lengthy disputations. More time is wasted in talking about the problem than would go to the making of figures in both species.”

Note 134 page 68. In his “Treatise on Painting,” Leonardo da Vinci says: “The first marvel we find in painting is the apparent detachment from the wall or other plane, and the cheating of keen perceptions by something that is not separate from the surface.”

Note 135 page 68. “Grottoes,” i.e. the Catacombs. Speaking in his autobiography of the remains of ancient art found in the Catacombs, Benvenuto Cellini says: “These grotesques have received this name from the moderns because they were found by scholars at Rome in certain subterranean caverns, which had anciently been rooms, chambers, studios, halls and the like. Since these scholars found them in these cavernous places (which had been built by the ancients on the surface and had become low), and since such low places are known at Rome by the name Grottoes, for that reason they received the name grotesques.” Cellini here tries to explain the origin of the name applied to ornaments (such as the arabesques of the Renaissance) in which figures, human to the waist, terminate in scrolls, leafage, etc., and are combined with animal forms and impossible flowers. In this sense the word was used as early as 1502 in a contract between the Cardinal of Siena and the painter Pinturicchio. It had of course not yet reached its modern signification, so fully discussed in the appendix to Volume IV of Ruskin’s “Modern Painters.” In Castiglione’s time it was not known that the catacomb decorations were Christian, and in any case they were founded on pagan models.

Note 136 page 69. Demetrius I of Macedon, (died 283 B.C.), was the son of Antigonus, who was one of Alexander’s most illustrious generals and succeeded to the Macedonian throne.

Note 137 page 69. Of Metrodorus, nothing more is known than Pliny’s account of the incident recorded in our text.

Note 138 page 69. Lucius Æmilius Paulus, (died 160 B.C.), was a Roman general, Consul, and statesman of the aristocratic party. The incident mentioned in the text occurred after his victory over King Perseus of Macedon in 168 B.C.

Note 139 page 70. Campaspe, according to Pliny, was the name of the beautiful slave given by Alexander to Apelles, as narrated at page 68.

Note 140 page 70. Zeuxis, (flor. 400 B.C.), belonged to the Ionian school of Greek painting, which was characterized by sensuous beauty and accurate imitation of nature. He lived at Athens, and his idealism is said to have been rather of form than of character. The picture referred to in the text represented Helen of Troy, was regarded as his masterpiece, and was probably identical with a picture mentioned as being at Rome. The story of the five maidens is said to have been cited by Tintoretto in support of his maxim, “Art must perfect Nature.”

Note 141 page 71. The Marquesses Febus and Gerardino di Ceva were sons of the Marquess Giovanni (who was living as late as 1491), and belonged to one of the most illustrious families of Piedmont and indeed of all Italy. They were born towards the close of the 15th century and died about the third decade of the 16th, having obtained the investiture of their fief in 1521. They sided sometimes with the Emperor and sometimes with France, as best suited them, and left rather a bad name. To escape punishment for killing a cousin, Gerardino stabbed himself, and Febus also died “disperato,” leaving two daughters in grief and shame.

Note 142 page 71. Ettore Romano Giovenale was a cavalier of whom little more is known than that he was in Francesco Maria’s service, fought successfully as one of the thirteen Italian champions at Barletta, was afterwards in the service of the Duke of Ferrara, who dismissed him for an act of treachery.

Note 143 page 71. Collo Vincenzo Calmeta of Castelnuovo, (died 1508), was a courtly poet and prose writer, who had been secretary to the Duchess Beatrice d'Este of Milan. Later he enjoyed the especial favour of this lady’s sister, the Marchioness Isabella d'Este of Mantua, and also of the Duchess of Urbino, who protected him from the displeasure of her brother the Marquess of Mantua, and at whose court he improvised verse somewhat after the manner of the Unico Aretino. In a letter (1504) from Urbino to Isabella d'Este, Emilia Pia wrote: “Of news here there is none that is not known to you, except that Calmeta is continually composing songs and divers other things, and this carnival has written a new comedy, which he would have sent you if he had thought it would give you pleasure.” Among Calmeta’s works were a verse compendium of Ovid’s Ars Amandi, and a biography of his friend and fellow improvisatore, Serafino Ciminelli d'Aquila (see note 255). As known to us, his poetical writings do not rise above mediocrity, and wholly fail to explain the esteem in which they were held.

Note 144 page 71. Orazio Florido was a native of Fano, one of the Adriatic coast towns nearest to Urbino. Having been chancellor to Duke Guidobaldo, he became secretary to Duke Francesco Maria. When Francesco was combating the usurper Lorenzo de' Medici in 1517, he sent one of his officers with Florido under protection of a safe-conduct to challenge Lorenzo to personal combat. In spite of the safe-conduct, Florido was detained and sent to Leo X at Rome, where he was basely tortured in the hope of extorting political secrets from him. He remained steadfastly faithful to his master, and afterwards made a tour of the courts of Europe seeking aid for his lord.

Note 145 page 73. Margarita Gonzaga was a niece of the Duchess of Urbino, being a natural daughter of the Marquess Gianfrancesco of Mantua. She was for many years one of the ornaments of the Urbino court. Various mentions of her in contemporary letters show her as a woman of unusual beauty, sprightly wit and gay disposition. She had several suitors, apparently including Filippo Beroaldo, who is mentioned later in The Courtier (page 139).

Note 146 page 73. Of Barletta nothing more is known than what is contained in this and another shorter mention of him in The Courtier (page 87).

Note 147 page 73. The original reads: havendo prima danzato una bassa, ballarono una Roegarze. The danza bassa was of Spanish origin and is believed to have consisted of sliding steps and of posturing, in which the feet were not lifted. The verb ballare seems to be derived from the low Latin balla, a ball. In the Middle Ages the game of ball was accompanied with dance and song, and we may well believe that a class of dances, thus originating and denominated generally balli, were more animated than the danza bassa. Although a Greek derivation has been ascribed to the word roegarze, Cian affirms that the dance thus named was of French origin. The earliest French translator of The Courtier renders the word by rouergoise, which is apparently derived from Rouergue, the name of an ancient French province to the south-west of Lyons.

Note 148 page 75. This passage reflects the medico-philosophical theories which the Renaissance inherited from antiquity, and which regarded “the vital spirits” as something far more tangible and material than what we call the principle of life or vital spark. Compare the early conception of electricity as a fluid substance. “Complexion” is of course here used to mean temperament or constitution, and not the mere colour and texture of the skin.

Note 149 page 77. Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, (born 1391; died 1447), was the son of Giangaleotto and Caterina Visconti, and brother of Giovanni Maria Visconti, whom he succeeded as Duke of Milan in 1412. He married Beatrice di Tenda (widow of Facino Cane), who brought him nearly a half million of florins dowry, besides her husband’s soldiers and cities, and thus enabled him gradually to win back the Lombard part of his father’s duchy, which his brother had lost. He was very ugly in person, and so sensitive that he rarely appeared in public. Wily but unstable, he was continually plotting schemes that seemed to have no object, and he mistrusted his own generals, even Francesco Sforza, who turned against him, forced him to a ruinous peace, and after his death was soon able to seize his duchy. In him the cruel selfishness of the Renaissance tyrant did not degenerate into mad thirst for blood, as in the case of his terrible brother. He read Dante, Petrarch and French romances of chivalry, and even dallied with the Latin classics, but genuine learning was neglected and despised at his court.

Duke Borso d'Este, (born 1413; died 1471), like his brother and predecessor, was a natural son of Duke Niccolò III. Kindly and just, he was idolized by the Ferrarese and especially by the women. He patronized letters and art and was fond of splendid living, yet in spite of the luxury of his court, he left a treasure of about a million pounds sterling. The art of printing was established at Ferrara shortly before his death. He appears to have been himself ignorant of Latin, and encouraged the literary use of Italian and the study of French romance. Histories of Ferrara, as well as the writings of contemporary humanists, are full of his generous deeds. His mild sway passed into a proverb, and the time of “the good Duke Borso” was long remembered as a kind of golden age.

Note 150 page 77. Niccolὸ Piccinino, (born 1380; died 1444), was so humbly born as to possess no other surname than that conferred on him in ridicule of his small stature. Having served under the famous Braccio da Montone, he married the latter’s niece, and achieved such distinction as a soldier as to share with Francesco Sforza the fame of being the first condottiere of his day. He became the friend and general of Duke Federico of Urbino. His rough wit was highly esteemed.

Note 151 page 77. This consciousness of the corruption then prevailing in Italy is even more frankly expressed by Machiavelli: “It is but too true that we Italians are in a special degree irreligious and corrupt.” (Discorsi, I, 12.)

Note 152 page 78. The reference here is to Plato’s Phædo, c. 3. Socrates is said to have turned Æsop’s fables into verse.

Note 153 page 83. The Italian noun fierezza (rendered “boldness”) and the adjective fiero (more anciently fero, the epithet applied by Petrarch to Achilles, see note 120) are derived from the Latin ferus (wild, untamed, impetuous), the root of which we see in our English word ferocious. While retaining its etymological signification, fiero was used to mean also: haughty, intrepid, strong, sturdy.

Note 154 page 87. “Brawls” (Italian, brandi; French, branles) were a kind of animated figured dance, said to be of Spanish origin and to have resembled the modern cotillon. A letter by Castiglione mentions this dance as having been performed by figures dressed as birds in one of the interludes when Bibbiena’s Calandra was first presented at Urbino. This and other passages suggest that the use of masks was even more common in Italian society of the author’s time, than at the present day.

Note 155 page 88. Castiglione’s letters show that he possessed and played upon a variety of musical instruments, and it is known that in Duke Federico’s time, the palace of Urbino was well supplied with instruments and musicians.

Note 156 page 88. Viol is the generic name for the family of bowed instruments that succeeded the mediæval fiddle and preceded the violin. Invented in the 15th century, it differed from a violin in having deeper ribs, a flat back, and a broad centre-piece on which the sound post rested. Its neck was broad and thin; it had from five to seven strings, and was made in four sizes, of which the lowest pitched (the violone or double bass) is still in use. The tone of the instrument is said to have been penetrating rather than powerful.

Note 157 page 89. Wind instruments, and especially the flute, are here referred to. According to Plutarch, Alcibiades maintained that they were regarded with disfavour by Pallas and Apollo because the face is distorted in playing upon them.

Note 158 page 90. The Pythagoreans supposed the intervals between the heavenly bodies to be determined by the laws of musical harmony. Hence arose the celebrated doctrine of “the music of the spheres” (already referred to by Castiglione in the text, page 63); for in their motion the heavenly bodies must each occasion a certain sound or note depending on their distances and velocities, which notes together formed a musical harmony, inaudible to man because he has been accustomed to it from the first and has never had an opportunity to contrast it with silence, or because it exceeds his powers of hearing. Pythagoras himself (died about 500 B.C.) taught his disciples to sing to the accompaniment of the lyre, and to chaunt hymns to the gods and to virtuous men.

Note 159 page 90. As the Italian commentator, Count Vesme, suggests, the author may have meant to say, “shave twice a day.” A weekly visit to the barber may, however, have been usually regarded as sufficient at this time.

Note 160 page 93. In the beginning of his Encomium on Folly (which was well known in Italy when Castiglione wrote The Courtier), Erasmus pretends that, “although there has been no lack of those who, at great cost of oil and sleep, have exalted ... the fourth-day ague, the fly, and baldness, with most tedious praise,” Folly is languishing without a eulogist. Among the works of Lucian (flor. 160 A.D.) there is a brief humourous book in praise of the fly; the philosopher Favorinus (flor. 120 A.D.) is said to have written a eulogy on the fourth-day ague; and there is another on baldness by the early Christian writer, Synesius (flor. 400 A.D.). The men of the Renaissance delighted in similar displays of wit.

Note 161 page 94. The Italian procella (rendered ‘fury’) primarily means a tempest, and is so translated in the earliest French and English versions of The Courtier (estourbillon, storm). The still earlier Spanish version has pestilencia.

Note 162 page 95. The Italian impedito (rendered ‘palsied’) literally means entangled as to the feet.

Note 163 page 96. St. Luke, iv, 8 and 10.

Note 164 page 97. In Æsop’s fable, Asinus Domino Blandiens, an ass receives a sound cudgelling for his efforts to win his master’s favour by caresses that he was ill fitted to bestow.

Note 165 page 100. Titus Manlius,—called Torquatus from the chain (torques) that he took from the body of a gigantic Gaul whom he had slain in single combat,—was a favourite hero of Roman story. The incident referred to here occurred shortly before a Roman victory over the Latins at the foot of Vesuvius. Manlius and his colleague in command had proclaimed that no Roman might engage a Latin singly on pain of death, but a son of Manlius accepted a challenge from one of the enemy, slew his adversary, and bore the bloody spoils in triumph to his father, who thereupon caused the young man to be put to death before the assembled army. Manlius was Consul in 340 B.C.

Note 166 page 101. Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus was Roman Consul in 131 B.C. According to Livy, the incident narrated in the text occurred during an unsuccessful campaign against Pergamus, which ended in Crassus’s voluntary death.

Note 167 page 103. Rome was sacked only the year before The Courtier was first published. Italy had become the plaything of foreign conquest.

Note 168 page 103. Darius III was King of Persia 336-330 B.C. This story about his sword seems to be founded on the following passage in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s History of Alexander the Great: “At the beginning of his reign, Darius ordered his Persian scabbard to be altered to the form which the Greeks used; whereupon the Chaldeans prophesied that the empire of the Persians would pass to those whose arms he had imitated.”

Note 169 page 104. It will be remembered that Bembo was a Venetian.

Note 170 page 104. The coif (cuffia) here mentioned seems to have been a kind of turban made of cloth wound about the head, with the two ends hanging at the ears.

Note 171 page 105. These unfortunate creatures still abound near Bergamo.

Note 172 page 106. Pylades and Orestes, like Pirithous and Theseus, are the famous friends of Greek legend. The historical and no less tender love between Scipio and Lælius forms the subject of Cicero’s De Amicitia. See note 102.

Note 173 page 109. The fellow’s reward is said to have been a measure of the peas.

Note 174 page 109. The Italian phrase here rendered ‘goes against the grain’ is non gli avrà sangue (more usually non ci avrà il suo sangue), and might be more precisely translated ‘will not suit his humour.’ The ‘as we say’ suggests that the idiom was of recent origin in Castiglione’s time.

Note 175 page 113. Giacopo Sannazaro, (born 1458; died 1530), was a native of Naples, and the son of Giacopo Niccolò and Masella di San Magno. His boyhood was spent with his mother at San Cipriano, near her birthplace Salerno. He soon made such progress in Latin and Greek that he was admitted to the academy of the famous Pontormo, of whom he became the close friend. Their effigies may be seen together in the Neapolitan church of Monte Oliveto. He received a villa and a pension from the scholarly Aragonese dynasty, to which he remained faithful with pen and sword, following Federico III into exile (see note 401) in 1501, and returning to Naples only after his king’s death in 1504. He seems to have had a peaceful and honourable old age, active in works of piety and charity, and employing his leisure in study and in the society of a certain noble lady for whom he had formed a lasting Platonic friendship. His writings include marine eclogues, elegies, etc., in Latin, but his best known work is L'Arcadia, an Italian prose romance interspersed with verse, of which sixty editions are said to have appeared before 1600. It is regarded by Mahaffy as having originated the idea that the Greek Arcadia was the especial home of pastoral poetry, and probably served Sidney as a model for his poem of the same name. Hardly less famous were Sannazaro’s anti-Borgian epigrams, to which Symonds ascribes no small part of the gruesome legend of Lucrezia’s crimes. He was buried in a church built by him near the so-called tomb of Virgil, and his monument behind the high altar bears the Latin inscription by Bembo, in which he is described as “near alike to Virgil’s muse and sepulchre.”

Note 176 page 113. Motet is “a term which for the last three hundred years has been almost exclusively applied to certain pieces of church music, of moderate length, adapted to Latin words (selected, for the most part, either from Holy Scripture, or the Roman office-books), and intended to be sung at high mass, either in place of, or immediately after, the Plain Chaunt Offertorium of the Day.“ (Grove.) The motet was sometimes founded on the air of some non-sacred song, as in the case of Josquin’s Stabat Mater, which was based upon the ballad Comme Femme. (Ambros.)

Note 177 page 113. Josquin (more properly Josse) de Près, (born about 1450; died 1521), seems to have been a native of St. Quentin, Hainault, Belgium, and was one of the celebrated musicians of the Renaissance. Having been the pupil of Ockenheim, the greatest composer of the day, he was at the papal court of Sixtus IV, and successively in the service of Lorenzo de' Medici, Louis XII of France, and the Emperor Maximilian I. He returned to Italy about 1503 and lived at the court of Ferrara. He is the earliest composer whose works are preserved in such quantity as adequately to present his power, and was called “the father of harmony” by Dr. Burney. Music began to be printed (1498) when Josquin was in his prime.

Note 178 page 114. Other contemporary evidence amply confirms this account of the occasional grossness that marked the table manners of the period.

Note 179 page 115. The two princes here referred to are Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain (see note 392) and Louis XII of France (see note 250).

Note 180 page 116. Paolo Niccolò Vernia, called Nicoletto (little Nick) from his shortness of stature, (died 1499), was a native of Chieti, near the Adriatic. He probably studied at Padua, and remained there teaching physics, although in 1444 he took his degree in philosophy, and fourteen years later in medicine. He wrote chiefly on philosophy, but was noted also as a wit.

Note 181 page 116. “When Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the rebellious Lombard cities in the common interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a foreign judge, called ‘Podestà,’ quasi habens potestatem Imperatoris in hac parte.... The title of ‘Podestà’ was subsequently conferred upon the official summoned to maintain an equal balance between the burghers and the nobles.” Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” ed. 1883, i, 61.

Note 182 page 117. This was the battle of Fornovo (6 July 1495), in which the Italian forces under the Marquess Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Mantua failed to prevent the retreat of Charles VIII towards France. Both sides claimed a victory, and the marquess even went so far as to have it commemorated by Mantegna in a picture, “The Madonna of Victory” (Louvre), which contains his portrait. Castiglione’s father died from the effect of wounds received in this battle.

Note 183 page 117. The reference here is plainly to Leonardo da Vinci (see note 96). His contemporaries would naturally regard as chimerical such devices as steam cannon, paddle wheels for boats, and flying machines, or such hints as that contained in his Codex Atlanticus, where he suggests the possibility of steam navigation. “He was the first to explain correctly the dim illumination seen over the rest of the surface of the moon when the bright part is only a thin crescent. He pointed out that when the moon was nearly new, the half of the earth which was then illuminated by the sun was turned nearly directly towards the moon, and that the moon was in consequence illuminated slightly by this ‘earthshine,’ just as we are by moonshine. This explanation ... tended to break down the supposed barrier between terrestrial and celestial bodies.” Arthur Berry’s “Short History of Astronomy” (London, 1898), p. 91.

Note 184 page 118. Suetonius mentions this characteristic of Cæsar.

Note 185 page 119. This is one of the few passages in The Courtier that are plainly reminiscent of Dante, who says: “To that truth which hath the face of falsehood, man must ever close his lips” (Sempre a quel ver che ha faccia di menzogna, De' l’uom chiuder la labbra). Inferno, xvi, 124-5.

Note 186 page 121. The translator admits being at a loss to find an adequate equivalent for the Italian argusie. Our unfamiliar English adjective ‘argute’ suggests that kind of pungent and witty conceits which Castiglione is describing.

Note 187 page 121. Bibbiena’s reputation as a wit was well established, while Canossa seems also to have deserved the same epithet, if we may judge from a story that has been preserved of him. The count had at Rome a fine collection of silver plate, including a flagon with a lid in the form of a tiger. A friend having borrowed this flagon and kept it for two months, returned it only on demand and with the request that the count lend him a certain salt-cellar, which had a crab for a cover. Ludovico sent word that if the tiger, which is the swiftest of beasts, had been two months coming home, the crab, being slower than all others, would by the same rule be absent for years, and that on this account he was unwilling to let it go.

Note 188 page 122. The allusion is of course to Bibbiena’s early baldness.

Note 189 page 122. Cardinal Galeotto della Rovere, (born about 1477; died 1508), was the favourite nephew of Julius II, being a son of the pope’s sister Luchina by her first husband Gianfrancesco Franciotti, a patrician of Lucca. Like all his mother’s other children, he was adopted as of the della Rovere name. Having been made Bishop of Lucca, he was created a cardinal on his uncle’s election as pope, appointed pontifical vice-chancellor, and soon given a great number of benefices. Generous and amiable, and a patron of artists and authors, he was much beloved at the court of Urbino, as is shown by several documents, among which is a letter by Emilia Pia mentioning two sonnets of his, in one of which (written the day before his last illness) he foretold his early death.

Note 190 page 123. Giacomo Sansecondo, a noted musician who flourished between the years 1493 and 1522 at the courts of Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino and Rome, where he attained a wide celebrity in the pontificate of Leo X. He seems to have ended his days in adversity, in some degree relieved by his friend Castiglione, whose letters contain several affectionate mentions of him.

Note 191 page 124. Democritus, (flor. 400 B.C.), was the atomistic philosopher of Abdera in Thrace. He possessed an ample fortune, and his cheerful disposition led him to look on the bright and humourous side of things, a fact taken by later writers to mean that he laughed at the follies of mankind.

Note 192 page 125. The phrase ‘served her in love’ and the conventional relation that it denoted, were drawn from mediæval life and literature north of the Alps, and with some changes survived in Italy during the Renaissance, until the cavalier servente became in the 18th century a recognized institution. Attendance upon the lady at church was a characteristic feature of the cavalier’s service.

Note 193 page 126. Pius III, Francesco Todeschini, (born 1439; died 1503), was a native of Siena and a nephew of the illustrious Æneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II). The suddenness of his predecessor Alexander VI's death took the sacred college by surprise, and they unanimously elected their weakest member as pope. His short pontificate of twenty-six days was filled with disturbances, and he was believed to have died from poison.

Note 194 page 126. Antonio Agnello, (died after 1527), belonged to one of the most noted families of Mantua, and seems to have been the son of Giulio Agnello and Margarita Crema. Besides being an able man of affairs (employed by the Palæologus rulers of Montferrat), he was a graceful poet, and became the friend of Bembo and Castiglione.

Note 195 page 126. The poet Caius Valerius Catullus, (born about 87 B.C.), was a native of Verona and a friend of Cæsar and Cicero. His extant works include one hundred and sixteen poems, lyric, epigrammatic, elegiac, etc. His 69th Ode is a dialogue between the author and a door.

Note 196 page 127. Pope Nicholas V, Tommaso Parentucelli, (born 1398; died 1455), was a native of Pisa, whence his family were exiled in his infancy. Although his father died when he was nine years old, and in spite of great poverty, he contrived to study at the University of Bologna. Later he served as tutor in the Albizzi and Strozzi families at Florence, thus earning enough money to return and take his theological degree at Bologna. He then entered the service of the archbishop of the latter city, whom he accompanied to Florence, and there became a friend of Cosimo de' Medici and a member of the literary society of the place. In 1443 he was made Bishop of Bologna, and four years later was elected pope, an elevation that he owed solely to his reputation for learning and to the comparatively small esteem in which the office was then held. The humanists were delighted at the election of one of their own number. As pope, he devoted his revenues to maintaining a splendid court, to the rebuilding of the fortifications and palaces of Rome, and to the enrichment of scholars. During his pontificate the city became a work-shop of erudition. He founded the Vatican Library, for which he collected five thousand volumes, and the list prepared by him for Cosimo de' Medici to use in beginning the Library of San Marco, was followed also by Duke Federico of Urbino. He was a small, ugly man.

Nihil Papa Valet, ‘the Pope is good for nothing.’nothing.’