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 THE SACK OF ROME

Tommaso Parentucelli, the son o a Ligurian physician, continued the passionate humanistic studies of his early years after he had become Nicholas V (1447-1455). He had served as a teacher in the Flor- entine families of the Strozzi and Albizzi and had been Cosimo de Medici's librarian at San Marco. He was from the beginning eager to spend whatever money he had for books and building. A tireless collector of manuscripts from all the world, he was the founder of the Vatican Library. His hope was that the Roman See might by foster- ing culture win the affection of the peoples; and so the court of this amiable scholar, who personally led the simplest of lives, became in all truth a Court of the Muses. Fra Angelico painted for him; Leo Battista Alberti spent his universalistic genius on countless plans drawn up for the Pope. And among the host of literati who swarmed about there were also such critical spirits as Laurentius Valla, who proved that the long disputed "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery and escaped the Inquisition thanks to the Pope and the King of Naples. Churches fallen into ruin were restored, and buildings serving practical or ornamental uses were erected. To be sure the price exacted was a wholesale destruction of the memorials of antiquity. The waters of the Fontana Treve sparkled anew as the symbol of a fresh and vig- orous Roman life. Bulwarks and castles arose throughout the city and the Papal States by order of a Pope who spent his days and nights reading parchments but did not fathom the runic handwriting on the wall of the future. A treaty with Germany, the Viennese Concordat of 1448, conferred many an advantage on the Roman See which a stronger Imperial power would not have conceded; but it also increased German resentment, which expressed itself with increased vigour in the Gravamina nationis Germanica against the methods of Roman ad- ministration. Legates of the Curia who journeyed throughout Eu- rope to proclaim the jubilee of 1450 and to introduce reforms were able to do little even though they possessed gifts of mind and character similar to those which Nicholas of Cusa, so creative a spirit in that time of intellectual change, manifested in Germany. Here, under the much too prolonged and far too inactive rule of Frederic III, on whom the Pope had in 1452 conferred the last Imperial crown that was to be bestowed in Rome, traditional bonds with the ecclesiastical centre had been loosened. The failure of such advocates of reform made a

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