Pope Nicholas V, when only a
simple monk, ran deeply into debt through buying manuscripts or having
them copied. Even then he made no secret of his passion for the two
great interests of the Renaissance, books and buildings. As Pope he
kept his word. Copyists wrote and spies searched for him through half
the world. Perotto received 500 ducats for the Latin translation of
Polybius; Guarino, 1,000 gold florins for that of Strabo, and he would
have been paid 500 more but for the death of the Pope. Filelfo was to
have received 10,000 gold florins for a metrical translation of Homer,
and was only prevented by the Pope's death from coming from Milan to
Rome. Nicholas left a collection of 5,000 or, according to another way
of calculating, of 6,000 volumes, for the use of the members of the
Curia, which became the foundation of the library of the Vatican. It
was to be preserved in the palace itself, as its noblest ornament, the
library of Ptolemy Philadelphus at Alexandria. When the plague (1450)
drove him and his court to Fabriano, whence then, as now, the best
paper was procured, he took his translators and compilers with him,
that he might run no risk of losing them.
The Florentine Niccolo Niccoli, a member of that accomplished circle of
friends which surrounded the elder Cosimo de' Medici, spent his whole
fortune in buying books.
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