In the Middle Ages, the cities were proud of their saints and of the
bones and relics in their churches. With these the panegyrist of Padua
in 1450, Michele Savonarola, begins his list; from them he passes to
'the famous men who were no saints, but who, by their great intellect
and force (virtus) deserve to be added _(adnecti) _to the saints'--just
as in classical antiquity the distinguished man came close upon the
hero. The further enumeration is most characteristic of the time. First
comes Antenor, the brother of Priam, who founded Padua with a band of
Trojan fugitives; King Dardanus, who defeated Attila in the Euganean
hills, followed him in pursuit, and struck him dead at Rimini with a
chessboard; the Emperor Henry IV, who built the cathedral; a King
Marcus, whose head was preserved in Monselice; then a couple of
cardinals and prelates as founders of colleges, churches, and so forth;
the famous Augustinian theologian, Fra Alberto; a string of
philosophers beginning with Paolo Veneto and the celebrated Pietro of
Abano; the jurist Paolo Padovano; then Livy and the poets Petrarch,
Mussato, Lovato. If there is any want of military celebrities in the
list, the poet consoles himself for it by the abundance of learned men
whom he has to show, and by the more durable character of intellectual
glory, while the fame of the soldier is buried with his body, or, if it
lasts, owes its permanence only to the scholar.
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