[445] Gaye, Carteggio, i. p. 164. A letter of the year 1455 under Calixtus III. The famous miniature Bible of Urbino is written by a Frenchman, a workman of Vespasiano’s. See D’Agincourt, La Peinture, tab. 78. On German copyists in Italy, see further G. Campori, Artisti Italiani e Stranieri negli Stati Estensi, Modena, 1855, p. 277, and Giornale di Erudizione Artistica, vol. ii. pp. 360 sqq. Wattenbach, Schriftwesen, 411, note 5. For German printers, see below.
[446] Vespas. Fior. p. 335.
[447] Ambr. Trav. Epist. i. p. 63. The Pope was equally serviceable to the libraries of Urbino and Pesaro (that of Aless. Sforza, p. 38). Comp. Arch. Stor. ital. xxi. 103-106. The Bible and Commentaries on it; the Fathers of the Church; Aristotle, with his commentators, including Averroes and Avicenna; Moses Maimonides; Latin translations of Greek philosophers; the Latin prose writers; of the poets only Virgil, Statius, Ovid, and Lucan are mentioned.
[448] Vespas. Fior. p. 129.
[449] ‘Artes—Quis Labor est fessis demptus ab Articulis’ in a poem by Robertus Ursus about 1470, Rerum Ital. Script, ex Codd. Fiorent. tom, ii. col. 693. He rejoices rather too hastily over the rapid spread of classical literature which was hoped for. Comp. Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathématiques, ii. 278 sqq. (See also the eulogy of Lor. Valla, Hist. Zeitschr. xxxii. 62.) For the printers at Rome (the first were Germans: Hahn, Pannartz, Schweinheim), see Gaspar. Veron. Vita Pauli II. in Murat. iii. ii. col. 1046; and Laire, Spec. Hist. Typographiæ Romanae, xv. sec. Romæ, 1778; Gregorovius, vii. 525-33. For the first Privilegium in Venice, see Marin Sanudo, in Muratori, xxii. col. 1189.
[450] Something of the sort had already existed in the age of manuscripts. See Vespas. Fior. p. 656, on the Cronaco del Mondo of Zembino of Pistoia.
[451] Fabroni, Laurent. Magn. Adnot. 212. It happened in the case of the libel. De Exilio.
[452] Even in Petrarch the consciousness of this superiority of Italians over Greeks is often to be noticed: Epp. Fam. lib. i. ep. 3; Epp. Sen. lib. xii. ep. 2; he praises the Greeks reluctantly: Carmina, lib. iii. 30 (ed. Rossetti, vol. ii. p. 342). A century later, Æneas Sylvius writes (Comm. to Panormita, ‘De Dictis et Factis Alfonsi,’ Append.): ‘Alfonsus tanto est Socrate major quanto gravior Romanus homo quam Græcus putatur.’ In accordance with this feeling the study of Greek was thought little of. From a document made use of below, written about 1460, it appears that Porcellio and Tomaso Seneca tried to resist the rising influence of Greek. Similarly, Paolo Cortese (1490) was averse to Greek, lest the hitherto exclusive authority of Latin should be impaired, De Hominibus Doctis, p. 20. For Greek studies in Italy, see esp. the learned work of Favre, Mélanges d’Hist. Liter. i. passim.
[453] See above p. 187, and comp. C. Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 323 sqq.
[454] The dying out of these Greeks is mentioned by Pierius Valerian, De Infelicitate Literat. in speaking of Lascaris. And Paulus Jovius, at the end of his Elogia Literaria, says of the Germans, ‘Quum literæ non latinæ modo cum pudore nostro, sed græcæ et hebraicæ in eorum terras fatali commigratione transierint’ (about 1450). Similarly, sixty years before (1482), Joh. Argyropulos had exclaimed, when he heard young Reuchlin translate Thucydides in his lecture-room at Rome, ‘Græcia nostra exilio transvolavit Alpes.’ Geiger, Reuchlin (Lpzg. 1871), pp. 26 sqq. Burchhardt, 273. A remarkable passage is to be found in Jov. Pontanus, Antonius, opp. iv. p. 203: ‘In Græcia magis nunc Turcaicum discas quam Græcum. Quicquid enim doctorum habent Græcæ disciplinæ, in Italia nobiscum victitat.