cording to the various humours of the successive
pontiffs, the papal capital drew within its walls eminent scholars
from all the states of the Italian peninsula. Rome was the world-city,
a centre from which radiated honours, distinctions, and fortune. Gifts
of oratory, facility in debate, ability in the conduct of diplomatic
negotiations, a masterly style in Latin composition, and even
perfection in penmanship, were all marketable accomplishments, for
which Rome was the highest bidder. If classical learning and the
graces of literature received but intermittent encouragement from the
sovereign pontiffs, both the secular interests of their government and
the vindication of the Church's dogmatic teaching afforded the most
profitable exercise for talents which sceptical humanists sold, as
readily as did the condottieri their swords--to the best paymaster,
regardless of their personal convictions. There consequently came into
existence in Rome a new _ceto_ or class, equally removed from the
nobles of feudal traditions and the ecclesiastics of the Curia, yet
mingling with both. Literary style and the art of Latin composition,
sedulously cultivated by these brilliant intellectual nomads, shed an
undoubted lustre on the Roman chancery, giving it a stamp it has
never entirely lost. They fought battles and scored victories for an
orthodoxy they derided. They defended the Church's temporalities from
the encroachments of covetous princes. Their influence on morals was
frankly pagan. Expatriated and emancipated from all laws save those
dictated by their own tastes and inclinations, these men were genially
rebellious against the restraints and discipline imposed by the
evangelical law. From the Franciscan virtues of chastity, poverty, and
obedience, preached by the _Poverello_ of Assisi, they turned with
aversion to laud the antipodal trinity of lust, license, and luxury.
The mysticism of medieval Christianity was repugnant to their
materialism, and the symbolism of its art, expressed under rigid,
graceless forms, offended eyes that craved beauty of line and beauty
of colour. They ignored or condemned any ulterior purpose of art as a
teaching medium for spiritual truths. To such men, a satire of Juvenal
was more precious than an epistle of St. Paul; dogma, they demolished
with epigrams, the philosophy of the schoolmen was a standing joke,
and a passage from Plato or Horace outweighed the definitions of an
Ecumenical Council.

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