But inasmuch as it entered into the consciousness of a
wider public, it is necessary for us to say a few words respecting it.
The fourteenth century was chiefly stimulated by the writings of
Cicero, who, though in fact an eclectic, yet, by his habit of setting
forth the opinions of different schools, without coming to a decision
between them, exercised the influence of a skeptic. Next in importance
came Seneca, and the few works of Aristotle which had been translated
into Latin. The immediate fruit of these studies was the capacity to
reflect on great subjects, if not in direct opposition to the authority
of the Church, at all events independently of it.
In the course of the fifteenth century the works of antiquity were
discovered and diffused with extraordinary rapidity. All the writings
of the Greek philosophers which we ourselves possess were now, at least
in the form of Latin translations, in everybody's hands. It is a
curious fact that some of the most zealous apostles of this new culture
were men of the strictest piety, or even ascetics. Fra Ambrogio
Camaldolese, as a spiritual dignitary chiefly occupied with
ecclesiastical affairs, and as a literary man with the translation of
the Greek Fathers of the Church, could not repress the humanistic
impulse, and at the request of Cosimo de' Medici, undertook to
translate Diogenes Laertius into Latin.
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