the North. Many of their descendants believe half contemptuously that the
difference has not even yet been overcome.

Italy at this time held clearly the intellectual supremacy of the western
world, and Florence under the Medici, Cosmo and then Lorenzo, held the
supremacy of Italy.[2] Not only in thought, but in art, was there an
outburst brilliant beyond all earlier times. A friend and pupil of Cosmo
de' Medici was made pope at Rome, and under the name of Nicholas V
originated vast schemes for the rebuilding and beautifying of his city of
ruins.[3] Modern Rome with all its beautiful churches and wonders of art
rose from the hands of Nicholas and his immediate successors. It was
their idea that the city should no longer be remembered by its heathen
greatness, but by its Christian splendor; that the sight of it should
impress upon pilgrims not the decay of the world, but the glory and
majesty of the Church. Nicholas also continued the work of Petrarch,
gathering vast stores of ancient manuscripts, refounding and practically
beginning the enormous Vatican Library. He established that alliance of
the Church with the new culture of the age which for a century continued
to be an honor and distinguishment to both.

In his pontificate occurred the fall of Constantinople, bringing with
it the definite establishment of the Turks in Europe and the final
extinction of that Roman Empire of the East which had originated with
Constantine. For this reason the date of its fall (1453) is also employed
as marking the beginning of modern Europe. It was at least the closing of
the older volume, the final not undramatic exit of the last remnant of
the ancient world, with its long decaying arts and arrogance, its wealth,
its literature, and its law.[4]

Greek scholars fleeing from the sack of their city brought many