At the same time the rhetorical taste of the nation inclined the more adventurous and passionate natures to seek glory by dramatic exhibitions of personal heroism.

The Greek ideal of [Greek: _to ealon_], the Roman conception of _Virtus_, agitated the imagination of a people who had been powerfully influenced by professors of eloquence, by public orators, by men of letters, masters in the arts of style and of parade.

Painting and sculpture, and that magnificence of public life which characterized the fifteenth century, contributed to the substitution of aesthetic for moral or religious standards.

Actions were estimated by the effect which they produced; and to sin against the laws of culture was of more moment than to transgress the code of Christianity.

Still, the men of the Renaissance could not forget the creed which they had drawn in with their mothers' milk, but which the Church had not adjusted to the new conditions of the growing age.