No importance was attached to a man's home or origin. Of the four great
Florentine secretaries who filled the office between 1427 and 1465,
three belonged to the subject city of Arezzo, namely, Leonardo (Bruni),
Carlo (Marzuppini), and Benedetto Accolti; Poggio was from Terra Nuova,
also in Florentine territory. For a long period, indeed, many of the
highest offices of State were on principle given to foreigners.
Leonardo, Poggio, and Giannozzo Manetti were at one time or another
private secretaries to the popes, and Carlo Aretino was to have been
so. Biondo of Forli, and, in spite of everything, at last even Lorenzo
Valla, filled the same office. From the time of Nicholas V and Pius II
onwards, the Papal chancery continued more and more to attract the
ablest men, and this was still the case even under the last popes of
the fifteenth century, little as they cared for letters. In Platina's
'History of the Popes,' the life of Paul II is a charming piece of
vengeance taken by a humanist on the one Pope who did not know how to
behave to his chancery--to that circle 'of poets and orators who
bestowed on the Papal court as much glory as they received from it.' It
is delightful to see the indignation of these haughty gentlemen, when
some squabble about precedence happened, when, for instance, the
'Advocati consistoriales' claimed equal or superior rank to theirs.
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