Not only in these two courts, but generally throughout Italy, the
education of the princely families was in part and for certain years in
the hands of the humanists, who thereby mounted a step higher in the
aristocratic world. The writing of treatises on the education of
princes, formerly the business of theologians, fell now within their
province.
From the time of Pier Paolo Vergerio the Italian princes were well
taken care of in this respect, and the custom was transplanted into
Germany by Aeneas Sylvius, who addressed detailed exhortations to two
young German princes of the House of Habsburg on the subject of their
further education, in which they are both urged, as might be expected,
to cultivate and nurture humanism. Perhaps Aeneas was aware that in
addressing these youths he was talking in the air, and therefore took
measures to put his treatise into public circulation. But the relations
of the humanists to the rulers will be discussed separately. We have
here first to speak of those citizens, mostly Florentines, who made
antiquarian interests one of the chief objects of their lives, and who
were themselves either distinguished scholars, or else distinguished
_dilettanti _who maintained the scholars. They were of peculiar
significance during the period of transition at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, since it was in them that humanism first showed
itself practically as an indispensable element in daily life.
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