A nation in which the ruling class had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who after having run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every known fountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the best by which to live! It was an easy task for the Medici to control the policy, as they did for generations, of such simple barbarians.
Italy presents a strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century: All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging over her like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzo de' Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual currents of Europe; Angelo and Raphael creating the world's sublimest masterpieces in art; her great Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere; Savonarola, like an inspired prophet of old, calling upon men to "repent, repent, while there is yet time"; Machiavelli instructing the nations of the earth in villainy as a fine art; and Alexander VI., the basest man in Europe, poisoner, father of every crime, claiming to be Vicegerent of Christ upon earth! But the currents were moving swiftly toward a crisis which was to change all this.

One more pope, that magnificent patron of art, Julius II., creator of the Vatican Museum, with the recently found Apollo Belvedere, and the Laocooen as a splendid nucleus, and projector and builder of St.Peter's.

And then Leo X.( Medicean Pope) and Luther! The year 1492 contained three important events: the discovery of a new world, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death of Lorenzo de' Medici.

Spain's crusade of seven hundred years was over.

We must search in vain for any struggle to match this in singleness and persistence of purpose.