Pontifical Letters during the time of three Popes";-"Poggium ...
qui Secretarius Apostolicas tribus quondam Romanis Pontificibus
dictarat Epistolas";--and though Aeneas Sylvius does not mention
the names of the Pontiffs, he must have meant Martin V. (1417),
Eugenius IV. (1431) and Nicholas V. (1447). Nevertheless, as one
of the writers of the Apostolic Letters, Bracciolini was in a
position to have seen a great deal that left a lasting impression
on his mind of the wickedness of a corrupt court, the Papal one at
this period being thus described by Leonardo Bruni, to Francis,
Lord of Cortona:--"full of ill-designing people, too apt to
suspect others of crimes, which they themselves would not scruple
to commit, and some, out of love for calumny, taking delight in
spreading reports, which they themselves did not credit"; so that
when Innocent VII. died suddenly of apoplexy, the rumour gained
belief that he had been poisoned, a violent death seeming quite a
natural end to a life of leniency to murder.

Not one star of light shone across the long and dreary gloom of
the papal court experiences of Bracciolini. On the deposition of
Gregory XII. for that Pope's duplicity and share in the intrigues
and dissensions which disgraced the Pontifical palace for three
years, Bracciolini seems to have retired from Rome, and to have
remained a resident in Florence during the greater part of the ten
months' reign of the mild, pious and philosophical Alexander V.,
the only able and virtuous divine, who sat in those dark times on
St. Peter's throne.

IV. For losing that one glimpse of light in public life,
Bracciolini was more than compensated by a beam of beneficent
Fortune in his private career, which threw such lustre on his