Note 405 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

For particulars we must refer the reader to Roscoe, Lorenzo Mag. and Leo X., as well as to Voigt, Enea Silvio (Berlin, 1856-63); to the works of Reumont and to Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter.

To form a conception of the extent which studies at the beginning of the sixteenth century had reached, we cannot do better than turn to the Commentarii Urbani of Raphael Volatterranus (ed. Basil, 1544, fol. 16, &c.). Here we see how antiquity formed the introduction and the chief matter of study in every branch of knowledge, from geography and local history, the lives of great and famous men, popular philosophy, morals and the special sciences, down to the analysis of the whole of Aristotle with which the work closes. To understand its significance as an authority for the history of culture, we must compare it with all the earlier encyclopædias. A complete and circumstantial account of the matter is given in Voigt’s admirable work, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums oder Das erste Jahrhundert der Humanismus, Berlin, 1859.