Florence was well off, for though the foreigners whom she had invited to be protectors against Castruccio Castracane and others were rather detrimental than useful, and though there were signs of a new struggle between the _Grandi_ and the Burghers, her commerce prospered, her dominion spread over the towns round about, and her luxury grew so fast that the troubled elders passed all sorts of sumptuary laws to prescribe what should be worn and what not, by both fashionable and simple. In the northwest, now Piedmont, there were, besides the Counts of Savoy, several struggling claimants who severally asserted titles to their own and other strips of territory. In the northeast, Venice, which had acquired a footing on the mainland destined to grow into the province of Venetia, was prosperous. And between Piedmont and Venice the successful Visconti of Milan, soon to receive the keys of Genoa, were likewise well satisfied. The political situation may now be dismissed, and we may turn to the distinguishing mark of the century, the classical revival. The distinction which Italy enjoys as the most famous country in Europe is due to three ages,--first, the ancient epoch of Augustus Caesar and Trajan, when the Roman Empire imposed the _pax romana_ on a grateful world; second, the mediaeval epoch of Hildebrand and Innocent III, when the Papacy, following its great prototype with unequal steps, imposed its _pax romana_ on both troubled souls and angry hands; and third, the epoch of the Renaissance, when Italy took the lead in the intellectual development of modern Europe. It would be as absurd to subordinate intellectual life to politics in the period of the Renaissance as it would be to subordinate the religion of the era of Hildebrand to its art, or the politics of the Augustan age to its religion. The highest life of Italy, the life which gives importance to the history of this coming period, is its intellectual life, and, though we must not forget politics entirely, we should lay the chief stress on intellectual rather than on political matters. Since the date of the Pisan pulpit, prosperity had increased fast, and curiosity, the desire to investigate, the wish to know, had grown lustily. There were still the same two stores of knowledge,--nature and the classics,--but the first, for many reasons, seemed vague, intangible, when compared to the second, in which the demi-gods (so they appeared then) of the ancient world had garnered the rich harvest of their thoughts. The classical heritage, the record of a higher civilization, seemed a lay Bible, the revelation of truth, the means of salvation; and the young generation emerging in the dawn of intellectual light turned thirstily to this newly found inheritance. The leader of this pilgrimage to the land flowing with intellectual milk and honey was Francis Petrarch (1304-74).