trammelled by penal fetters: it regarded the use of such weapons as proof that the spiritual armoury contained none more serviceable, and learned to demur to an ecclesiastical despotism it already loathed. Succeeding pontiffs disavowed the policy of Paul: but the old respect for the papacy was shaken; doubts arrayed themselves against dogmas, cavilling superseded blind faith, until the dissolute example set by the courts of Innocent, Alexander, and Leo, converted scepticism into infidelity, apathy into open aggression. It is impossible to contemplate the great talents, the unwearied application, absorbed by these rival systems of philosophy, without a sigh that they should have been wasted on inquiries so purely speculative; yet, it cannot be denied that the controversy prepared weapons that have since done good service in many a better cause; that it developed mental energies, and matured intellectual discipline, from which the world continues largely to benefit. [Footnote *67: Not Plato, but Plethon. He refused the name of Plato with which he was hailed by Cosimo de' Medici. Cf. Ficino in preface to his _Plotini Epitome_ (Firenze, 1492). "Magnus Cosimus, quo tempore concilium inter Graecos et Latinos, sub Eugenio pontefice Florentinæ tractabatur, philosophum Graecum, nomine Gemistum cognomine Plethonem, quasi Platonem alterum de mysteriis Platonicis disputantem frequenter audivit; e cujus ore ferventi sic afflatus est protinus, sic animatus, ut inde Academiam quandam alta mente conceperit, hanc opportuno primum tempore pariturus." Marsilio Ficino had a poor understanding of Plato.] [Footnote *68: Cf. GEORGIOS TRAPEZUNTIOS, _Comparatio Platonis et Aristotelis_.] * * * * * Although the revival of letters had been advancing during several generations ere the chiefs of Montefeltro sought other laurels than those of the battle-field, it was reserved for these princes to contribute no mean aids towards their full development in that golden harvest which the fifteenth century saw gathered in. Indeed, the concurrent testimony of all writers has claimed for the sovereigns of Urbino a foremost place among the friends of literature. In the words of the general motto of this work, which well condense the prevailing opinion, "it is notorious beyond question even of the malignant, that the house of Montefeltro and della Rovere has for a long time past been that which [most] shed a lustre upon Italy by letters, arms, and every sort of rare worth, and that the court of Urbino may be termed a Pegasean spring, in the language of historic truth rather than of poetic hyperbole." It was to the successive reigns of Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo I. that such expressions were generally applied, and to them our attention will now be directed; but in a future portion of this work we shall endeavour to maintain for their della Rovere successors a similar reputation.