Lorenzo’s example did not fail to bring forth fruit in his own house. Leo X. laboured all his life to follow it, with a zeal in collecting which showed that his father’s spirit survived in him. Piero, with his tutor Poliziano, superintended the arrangement and enrichment of the library, sending reports about it to his father, when the latter was ill at the baths. We learn from one of his letters[113] that the Medici, in the interests of their library, took advantage of the death of King Matthias Corvinus (April 4, 1490) to secure a number of his copyists and agents who were then thrown out of employment. That monarch vied with the book collectors of his time, and spent more than 30,000 gold florins yearly on the increase of his library at Ofen. In 1488 he sent an agent to Florence with full power to make purchases and superintend the taking of copies. The efforts made by this active and high-minded ruler of a people still half barbarous, however capable of development, were always assisted by Lorenzo, as became his friendly relations with Matthias. Long before the days of Matthias Corvinus there had been a literary and artistic connection between Florence and Hungary through Filippo Scolari, commonly called Pippo Spano by his countrymen, from his title of Count Palatine (_Obergespann_) of Temesvar; he held an influential position under Sigismund of Luxemburg. The connection with the Italian literary world had been actively kept up by the powerful Archbishop of Gran, Johann Vitez, who founded a high school at Ofen; still more by his nephew, Janus Pannonius, Bishop of Fünfkirchen, who studied at Padua under Guarino, and visited Cosimo de’ Medici at Careggi. From his youth Lorenzo had extended his attention beyond what are called literary treasures in the narrower sense. In another field, bordering at once on the study of antiquity and on that of history, his name must also be mentioned with distinction. The range of classical studies was extended to ancient monuments. Rome, for centuries active only in destruction, began to be ashamed of the bad name which such barbarism had brought upon her. The time of Sixtus IV., with all its sins, was the turning-point. Like his successor and namesake, Sixtus V., the Pope did not entirely refrain from demolishing ancient monuments; but works of art and inscriptions were safe. The Roman Academy strove to wipe out the blot pointed at in an epigram by Pius II.