Not only was the secretary required to be a competent Latinist, but conversely, only a humanist was credited with the knowledge and ability necessary for the post of secretary. And thus the greatest men in the sphere of science during the fifteenth century mostly devoted a considerable part of their lives to serve the state in this capacity. No importance was attached to a man’s home or origin. Of the four great Florentine secretaries who filled the office between 1427 and 1465,[528] three belonged to the subject city of Arezzo, namely, Lionardo (Bruni), Carlo (Marsuppini), and Benedetto Accolti; Poggio was from Terra Nuova, also in Florentine territory. For a long period, indeed, many of the highest officers of state were on principle given to foreigners. Lionardo, Poggio, and Giannozzo Manetti were at one time or another private secretaries to the popes, and Carlo Aretino was to have been so. Blondus of Forli, and, in spite of everything, at last even Lorenzo Valla, filled the same office. From the time of Nicholas V. and Pius II. onwards,[529] the Papal chancery continued more and more to attract the ablest men, and this was still the case even under the last popes of the fifteenth century, little as they cared for letters. In Platina’s ‘History of the Popes,’ the life of Paul II. is a charming piece of vengeance taken by a humanist on the one Pope who did not know how to behave to his chancery--to that circle ‘of poets and orators who bestowed on the Papal court as much glory as they received from it.’ It is delightful to see the indignation of these haughty and wealthy gentlemen, who knew as well as the Pope himself how to use their position to plunder foreigners,[530] when some squabble about precedence happened, when, for instance, the ‘Advocati consistoriales’ claimed equal or superior rank to theirs.[531] The Apostle John, to whom the ‘Secreta cœlestia’ were revealed; the secretary of Porsenna, whom Mucius Scævola mistook for the king; Mæcenas, who was private secretary to Augustus; the archbishops, who in Germany were called chancellors, are all appealed to in turn.[532] ‘The apostolic secretaries have the most weighty business of the world in their hands. For who but they decide on matters of the Catholic faith, who else combat heresy, re-establish peace, and mediate between great monarchs? who but they write the statistical accounts of Christendom? It is they who astonish kings, princes, and nations by what comes forth from the Pope. They write commands and instructions for the legates, and receive their orders only from the Pope, on whom they wait day and night.’ But the highest summit of glory was only attained by the two famous secretaries and stylists of Leo X.: Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto.[533]