berty for the material advantages which might accrue from
the sovereignty of her bishop. How the Roman burghers may have felt upon
this point we gather from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the
administration of Nicholas: 'The city had become a city of gold through
the jubilee; the dignity of the citizens was respected; all reasonable
petitions were granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, no new
taxes. Justice was fairly administered. It was the whole care of the
Pontiff to adorn the city.'[1] The prosperity which the Papal court
brought to Rome was the main support of the Popes as princes, at a time
when many thinkers looked with Dante's jealousy upon the union of
temporal and spiritual functions in the Papacy.[2] Moreover, the whole
of Italy, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was undergoing a
gradual and instinctive change in politics; commonwealths were being
superseded by tyrannies, and the sentiments of the race at large were by
no means unfavorable to this revolution. Now was the proper moment,
therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill-defined authority into a
settled despotism, to secure themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to
subdue the States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction.

[1] See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.).

[2] Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation of
Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas,
contained these reminiscences of the 'De Monarchia': 'Ut Papa
tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Caesaris ... tune Papa et
erit et dicetur pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesae.'

The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who ascended the Chair of S.
Peter, as Nicholas V., in 1447. One part of his biography belongs to the
history of scholarship, and need not here be touched upon. Educated at
Florence, under the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed those
principles of deference to princely authority which were supplanting the
old republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the
Catholic Church were healed; and finding no opposition to his spiritual
power, he determined to consolidate the temporalities of his See. In
this purpose he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a
Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republican enthusiasm in the
city at the moment of the Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted
against his liberty, if