[Footnote 567: As everywhere else in the Middle Ages, interest at Florence was high, varying from ten to thirty per cent. Pignotti, _Hist. of Tuscany_, Eng. tr. 1823, iii, 280. Cp. Hallam, _Middle Ages_, 11th ed. iii, 337.] [Footnote 568: Bartoli, _Storia della letteratura italiana_, 1878, tom. ii, cap. vii.] [Footnote 569: Sismondi, _Literature of the South of Europe_, Eng. tr. i, 61, 85, 86, 87, 89; Bouterwek, _History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature_, Eng. tr. 1823, i, 22, 23; Bartoli, i, 94.] [Footnote 570: Sismondi, as last cited, i, 74, 76, 80, 242; Bartoli, tom. ii, cap. i, and p. 165.] [Footnote 571: "The union of Provence, during two hundred and thirteen years, under a line of princes who ... never experienced any foreign invasion, but, by a fraternal government, augmented the population and riches of the State, and favoured commercial pursuits ... consolidated the laws, the language, and the manners of Provence" (Sismondi, as last cited, i, 75).] [Footnote 572: See above, p. 135 _sq._, as to the theory of the culture-value of the despot.] [Footnote 573: Sismondi, _Républiques_, xii, 38-41. The land was already cultivated on the _métayer_ system, half the crop going to the tenant--a state of things advantageous all round. Villari (_Two First Centuries_, p. 315) pronounces that the Florentines looked sagaciously to trade, but harassed agriculture. This does not seem to be true of Italian polity in general.] [Footnote 574: As to these, consult M'Crie, _History of the Reformation in Italy_, ed. 1856, pp. 23-25.] [Footnote 575: See Sismondi, _Républiques_, xii, 39, as to the utter ruin of the Pisan territory by Florence.] [Footnote 576: J.A. Symonds, _The Age of the Despots_, ed. 1897, pp. 61-62.] [Footnote 577: Sismondi, _Républiques italiennes_, iv, 174-77.] [Footnote 578: Villari, _Two First Centuries_, p. 239. So Perrens: "Its glory belonged to the democratic period" (_Histoire de Florence_, Eng. trans. of vol. vii, p. 171).] [Footnote 579: Cp. Zeller, _Histoire d'Italie_, 1853, p. 309.] [Footnote 580: Roscoe (_Life of Leo X_, ii, 318) attributes to the rivalry of Leonardo and Michel Angelo at Florence (in 1500, while the Medici were in exile, and the city was self-governed) the kindling of the art life of the greatest period. And see Perrens (_Histoire de Florence_, Eng. trans. of vol. cited, p. 457, also as cited below, p. 249) on the decay of architecture and the check to art through the policy of Lorenzo. "Art under the grandfather," he declares (p. 434), "_completed_ a remarkable evolution which has no equivalent under the grandson." Previously (p. 200) he had noted that "many works of which the fifteenth century gets the glory because it finished them, were ordered and begun amid the confusion and terrible agitation of the demagogy." As to Cosimo's expenditure on building see p. 166, and on letters p. 168.]