And it was here, in the libraries and monasteries, that was preserved that precious heritage of Greek thought and Greek genius, which, at a later age, was to be transferred to Western Europe, and which, through the activity of Byzantine scholars, was to be the foundation of the Renaissance. During the period immediately preceding the Conquest of Constantinople there was, declares Gibbon, “more books and more knowledge within the walls of Constantinople than could be dispersed over the extensive countries of the West.”[61] “When the arms of the Turks pressed the flight of the Muses” from the Queen City of the East, Greek learning sought an asylum on the banks of the Arno and the Tiber. Among the first of Greek scholars to find a congenial home in the land of Dante and Petrarch were Janon Lascaris and Manuel Chrysoloras. They were received with open arms in the universities of the Peninsula and lectured with signal success to vast numbers of eager and enthusiastic students of every age and condition. But nowhere were they and others of their countrymen of a later date[62] accorded a more cordial welcome than in the palaces of the Medici and at the courts of Leo X and Nicholas V. Under such illustrious patrons, Greek letters flourished amazingly and quickly prepared the way for the great humanistic movement that culminated in the literary triumphs of Politian, Reuchlin, and Erasmus. But the fall of Constantinople was epoch-making not only in its relation to the Humanistic Renaissance but also in its effect on the economic and commercial development of Europe. Before the Ottomans achieved the conquest of the Græco-Roman Empire of the East, this region constituted what has happily been designated as “the nerve-center of the world’s commerce.” But no sooner had it passed into the hands of the Ottomans than the great trade routes between the Orient and Europe were completely blocked “by a power inimical to commerce and still more inimical to those Christian nations for whose benefit intercourse between the East and West was mainly carried on.”