But, at a time and among a people where ‘listening’ was among the chief pleasures of life, and where every imagination was filled with the memory of the Roman senate and its great speakers, the orator occupied a far more brilliant place than the letter-writer.[538] Eloquence had shaken off the influence of the Church, in which it had found a refuge during the Middle Ages, and now became an indispensable element and ornament of all elevated lives. Many of the social hours which are now filled with music were then given to Latin or Italian oratory; and yet Bartolommeo Fazio complained that the orators of his time were at a disadvantage compared with those of antiquity; of three kinds of oratory which were open to the latter, one only was left to the former, since forensic oratory was abandoned to the jurists, and the speeches in the councils of the government had to be delivered in Italian.[539] The social position of the speaker was a matter of perfect indifference; what was desired was simply the most cultivated humanistic talent. At the court of Borso of Ferrara, the Duke’s physician, Jeronimo da Castello, was chosen to deliver the congratulatory address on the visits of Frederick III. and of Pius II.[540] Married laymen ascended the pulpits of the churches at any scene of festivity or mourning, and even on the feast-days of the saints. It struck the non-Italian members of the Council of Basel as something strange, that the Archbishop of Milan should summon Æneas Sylvius, who was then unordained, to deliver a public discourse at the feast of Saint Ambrogius; but they suffered it in spite of the murmurs of the theologians, and listened to the speaker with the greatest curiosity.[541] Let us glance for a moment at the most frequent and important occasions of public speaking.