untroubled by moral scruples, had faithfully represented the new epoch in which he lived. Pius II., enthusiastic, gloomy, and passionate, seems to be the ghost risen from the Middle Ages, which were dead. The pontificate of Paul II. was short and comparatively uneventful. He belonged to the Venetian family of the [Sidenote: Paul II., 1464-71.] Barbi, and his election seemed likely to cement that alliance between the papacy and the maritime republic on which Pius II. had ultimately relied for resistance to the Turkish advance. But Paul acquiesced without much protest in the failure of his predecessor’s plans; and by urging Hungary into war with the heretical George Podiebrad of Bohemia, he rendered impossible even a league of eastern princes against the infidel. Paul’s name is also associated with a so-called persecution of the humanists, because he imprisoned some members of the Roman academy who had talked vaguely and irresponsibly of a restoration of the republic. But it is absurd to treat a simple measure of internal police as evidence of a definite and far-reaching policy, or as marking a reaction from the patronage of letters by Nicolas V. The whole episode has attracted more attention than it deserves through the interested emphasis of the chronicler, Platina, who has exaggerated both his own sufferings and his own importance. Paul II. was a true Pope of the Renaissance, looking at affairs from an intellectual rather than from a spiritual point of view, and exulting both in his own handsome figure, which led him to desire the name of Formosus, and in the beauty of the jewels and carvings of which he was an industrious and intelligent collector. But he was free from the grosser vices and crimes which have given notoriety to his successors.