reign. His fine
collection of manuscripts was at the service of scholars, and is still
at their service, in St. Mark's library at Venice. The fall of
Constantinople drove several fugitives to seek a refuge in Italy, and
some brought their books with them, which were more scarce and more
needful than men. For by that time Greek studies were well
established, and suffered only from the extreme scarcity of
manuscripts. The third important event was the election of
Parentucelli, who became Pope Nicholas V. On that day the new
learning took possession of the Holy See, and Rome began to be
considered the capital of the Renaissance.

It was not in the nature of things that this should be. For the new
men, with their new instrument of intellectual power, invaded
territory which was occupied by the clergy. In the Middle Ages the
Church, that is to say, first the cloister, then the universities
founded under the protectorate of the Church, had the civilising of
society, and, apart from law, the monopoly of literature. That came
to an end when the clergy lost the superiority of knowledge, and had
to share their influence with profane laymen, trained in the classics,
and more familiar with pagan than with Christian writers. There was a
common presumption in favour of the new point of view, the larger
horizon, of opinions that were founded on classical as well as on
Christian material. The Humanists had an independent judgment and
could contemplate the world they lived in from outside, without
quitting it, standing apart from the customary ways. As Pater said:
"The human mind wins for itself a new kingdom of feeling and sensation
and thought, not opposed to, but only beyond and independent of the
spiritual system then actually realised."

This is one of many causes operating at the time to weaken the notion
of ecclesiastical control. It was the triumphant return of an exile,
with an uproarious popularity and a claim to compensation for arrears.
The enthusiasm of those who were the first to read Homer, and
Sophocles, and Plato grew into complaint against those by whose neglect
such treasures had been lost. Centuries of ignorance and barbarism
had been the consequence. There was not only a world of new ideas,
but of ideas that were not Christian, which the Christianity of the
West had discarded. They began to recover the lost power, and the
ages in which they had been unknown became the ages of darkness. As
they we