He was not, indeed,
a man of universal mind; but of all the great men who have striven to
favour and promote spiritual interests, few certainly have been so
many-sided, and in none probably was the inward need to do so equally
deep.
The age in which we live is loud enough in proclaiming the worth of
culture, and especially of the culture of antiquity. But the
enthusiastic devotion to it, the recognition that the need of it is the
first and greatest of all needs, is nowhere to be found in such a
degree as among the Florentines of the fifteenth and the early part of
the sixteenth centuries. On this point we have indirect proof which
precludes all doubt. It would not have been so common to give the
daughters of the house a share in the same studies, had they not been
held to be the noblest of earthly pursuits, exile would not have been
turned into a happy retreat, as was done by Palla Strozzi; nor would
men who indulged in every conceivable excess have retained the strength
and the spirit to write critical treatises on the Natural History of
Pliny like Filippo Strozzi. Our business here is not to deal out either
praise or blame, but to understand the spirit of the age in all its
vigorous individuality.
Besides Florence, there were many cities of Italy where individuals and
social circles devoted all their energies to the support of humanism
and the protection of the scholars who lived among them.
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