Lastly, Frederick established the precedent of a court formed upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans, in which chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of hereditary nobles, and functions of state were confided to the body-servants of the monarch.

This court gave currency to those habits of polite culture, magnificent living, and personal luxury which played so prominent a part in all subsequent Italian despotism.

It is tempting to overstrain a point in estimating the direct influence of Frederick's example.

In many respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in advance of his age; and what we may be inclined to ascribe to him personally, would have followed in the natural evolution of events.

Yet it remains a fact that he first realized the type of cultivated despotism which prevailed throughout Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.