Under Pietro Medici, Ficino was
already at the head of a school; to him Pietro's son and Cosimo's
grandson, the illustrious Lorenzo, came over from the Peripatetics.
Among his most distinguished fellow-scholars were Bartolommeo Valori,
Donato Acciaiuoli, and Pierfilippo Pandolfini. The enthusiastic teacher
declares in several passages of his writings that Lorenzo had sounded
all the depths of the Platonic philosophy, and had uttered his
conviction that without Plato it would be hard to be a good Christian
or a good citizen. The famous band of scholars which surrounded Lorenzo
was united together, and distinguished from all other circles of the
kind, by this passion for a higher and idealistic philosophy. Only in
such a world could a man like Pico della Mirandola feel happy. But
perhaps the best thing of all that can be said about it is, that, with
all this worship of antiquity, Italian poetry found here a sacred
refuge, and that of all the rays of light which streamed from the
circle of which Lorenzo was the centre, none was more powerful than
this. As a statesman, let each man judge him as he pleases; a foreigner
will hesitate to pronounce what in the fate of Florence was due to
human guilt and what to circumstances, but no more unjust charge was
ever made than that in the field of culture Lorenzo was the protector
of mediocrity, that through his fault Leonardo da Vinci and the
mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli lived abroad, and that Toscanella,
Vespucci, and others remained at least unsupported.
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