It was under the fostering care of the Medici that Florence, more than any of the other Italian states, became the home of the intellectual Renaissance, from which the ‘New Learning’ was to radiate out across the world. This intellectual movement was twofold. Still under mediaeval influence, it began at first by finding its inspiration in the past, and so introduced a great classical revival, in which manuscripts of Greek and Latin authors and statues of gods and nymphs were almost as much revered as relics of the saints in an earlier age. Rich men hastened on journeys to the East in order to purchase half-burned fragments of literature from astonished Greeks, while in the lecture-halls of Italy eager pupils clamoured for fresh light on ancient philosophy and history. So great was the enthusiasm that it is said one famous scholar’s hair turned white with grief when he learned of the shipwreck of a cargo of classical books. Cosimo de Medici had been a ‘friend and patron of learned men’; but it was in the time of his grandson, Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’, that the Renaissance reached its height in Florence. It was Lorenzo who founded the ‘Platonic Academy’ in imitation of the old academies of Greek philosophers, an assembly that became the battle-ground of the sharpest and most brilliant intellects of the day. Here were fought word-tournaments, often venomous in the intensity of their partisanship, between defenders of the views of Plato and of Aristotle: here were welcomed like princes cultured Greeks, driven into exile by Mahometan invasion, certain of crowded and enthusiastic audiences if only they were prepared to lecture on the literary treasures of their race. The enthusiasm recalled the days when Abelard held Paris spellbound by his reasoning on theology, but showed how far away had slipped the age of dialectics. The last great name amongst the schoolmen is that of Duns Scotus, a Franciscan of the thirteenth century, who raised the process of logical reasoning to such a fine art that it has been said of him, ‘he reasoned scholasticism out of human reach’. Ordinary theologians could not dispute with him, since it made their brains reel even to try and follow his arguments, so at last they snapped their fingers at him, crying, ‘Oh, Duns! Duns!’ Thus by his excessive skill in intellectual juggling he reduced himself and his subject to absurdity, and ‘Dunce’ has passed down to posterity as a fitting name for some one unreasonably stupid. Scholasticism, the glory of mediaeval lecture-halls, held no thrill or charm for men of the Renaissance, and though Aristotle was still revered and a great deal of labour expended on trying to make his views and those of Plato match with current religious beliefs, yet the spirit that underlay this attempt was wholly different to the efforts of mediaeval minds.