Characters like St. Louis are rare at all times, and his was favored by
the rare good fortune that a sincere and naive observer caught the
spirit of all the events and actions of his life, and represented it
admirably. From what scanty sources are we left to guess at the inward
nature of Frederick II or of Philip the Fair. Much of what, till the
close of the Middle Ages, passed for biography, is properly speaking
nothing but contemporary narrative, written without any sense of what
is individual in the subject of the memoir.
Among the Italians, on the contrary, the search for the characteristic
features of remarkable men was a prevailing tendency; and this it is
which separates them from the other western peoples, among whom the
same thing happens but seldom, and in exceptional cases. This keen eye
for individuality belongs only to those who have emerged from the
halfconscious life of the race and become themselves individuals.
Under the influence of the prevailing conception of fame an art of
comparative biography arose which no longer found it necessary, like
Anastasius, Agnellus, and their successors, or like the biographers of
the Venetian doges, to adhere to a dynastic or ecclesiastical
succession. It felt itself free to describe a man if and because he was
remarkable. It took as models .
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