ce, then at the height of its
renown under the brilliant despotism of Cosimo dei Medici, was the scene
where the great events of the life of Antonino took place. There he had
seen within the city walls, three Popes, a Patriarch of Constantinople,
the Emperors of East and West, and the most eminent men of both
civilisations. He had taken part in a General Council of the Church, and
knew thinkers as widely divergent as Giovanni Dominici and AEneas Sylvius
Piccolomini. He was, therefore, more likely than most to have heard
whatever theories were proposed by the various great political statesmen
of Europe, whether they were churchmen or lawyers. Consequently, his
schemes, as we might well expect, are startlingly advanced.

He begins by attacking the growing spirit of usury, and the resulting
idleness. Men were finding out that under the new conditions which
governed the money market it was possible to make a fortune without
having done a day's work. The sons of the aristocracy of Florence, which
was built up of merchant princes, and which had amassed its own fortunes
in honest trading, had been tempted by the bankers to put their wealth
out to interest, and to live on the surplus profit. The ease and
security with which this could be done made it a popular investment,
especially among the young men of fashion who came in, simply by
inheritance, for large sums of money. As a consequence Florence found
itself, for the first time in its history, beginning to possess a
wealthy class of men who had never themselves engaged in any profession.
The old reverence, therefore, which had always existed in the city for
the man who laboured in his art or guild, began to slacken. No longer
was there the same eagerness noticeable which used to boast openly that
its rewards consisted in the consciousness of work well done. Instead,
idleness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon a man's
reputation. No city can long survive so listless and languid an ideal.
The Archbishop, therefore, denounced this new method of usurious
traffic, and hinted further that to it was due the fierce rebellion
which had for a while plunged Florence into the horrors of the
Jacquerie. Wealth, he taught, should not of itself breed wealth, but
only through the toil of honest labour, and that labour should be the
labour of oneself, not of another.

Then he proceeded to argue that as upon the husband lies the labour of
trade, the greater portion of his da