--as it
eventuated--vastly better. His father had a brother, a man of
erudition for his time, who had studied for the Church. This learned
uncle, Georgio Antonio Vespucci, was then a Dominican friar, respected
in Florence for his piety and for his learning. About the year 1450,
or not long before Amerigo was born, he opened a school for the sons
of nobles, and in the garb of a monk pursued the calling of the
preceptor. His fame was such that the school was always full, yet when
his brother's child, Amerigo, desired to attend, having arrived at the
age for receiving the rudiments of an education, he was greeted
cordially and given a place in one of the lower classes. It may be
imagined that he would have been favored by his uncle; but such seems
not to have been the case, for the worthy friar was a disciplinarian
first of all. He had ever in mind, however, the kind of education
desired by his brother for Amerigo, which was to be commercial, and
grounded him well in mathematics, languages, cosmography, and
astronomy. His curriculum even embraced, it is said, statesmanship and
the finesse of diplomacy, for the merchants of Vespucci's days were,
like the Venetian consuls, "very important factors in developing
friendly international relations."

There was then a great rivalry between Venice, Florence, Genoa, and
Pisa for the control of trading-posts in the Levant, which carried
with them the vast commerce of the Orient, then conducted by way of
the Mediterranean, the Black, and the Caspian seas, and overland by
caravans with India and China. At the time our hero was growing into
manhood, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, Florence, "under
the brilliant leadership of the Medici and other shrewd merchant
princes, gained control of strategic trading-posts in all parts of the
[then known] world, and secured a practical monopoly in the trade
through Armenia and Rhodes.... It was from banking, however, that
Florence derived most of her wealth. For some time her bankers
controlled the financial markets of the world. Most of the great loans
made by sovereigns during this period, for carrying on wars or for
other purposes, were made through the agency of Florentine bankers.
Even Venetian merchants were glad to appeal to her banks for loans. In
the fifteenth century Florence had eighty great banking-houses, many
of which had branches in every part of the world."[2]

It is evident, therefore, that the sagacious Anastasio Ve