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406 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE to Pavia, thence to Venice, and finally to Eome, and every- where was well attended. Aroused by his teaching, some of his pupils went to Constantinople to increase their knowledge of Greek and to acquire books and manuscripts. In that city, between 1400 and 1453, the libraries and monasteries were freely opened to the Italian students. The libraries were still stocked with the treasures of Greek learning and literature, and every effort was made by Italian scholars to draw upon their stores. The trading agents of the Medici and other great Florentine houses were instructed to buy manuscripts with- out regard to cost and to send them to Florence. The best credentials that a young Greek could bring from Constanti- nople was a manuscript. The discovery of an unknown manuscript, says Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. Aurispa, one of the pupils of Chry- soloras, returned to Venice in 1423, with two hundred and thirty -eight volumes. The Florentines had led the way in the acquisition of Greek and the collection of manuscripts. The chiefs of the political factions were also the leaders of intellectual progress and vied with each other in the noble rivalry of encouraging the new studies as much as they did in building libraries. Cosimo, the head of the Medici, carried out a well- organised plan for encouraging the revived learning. The leaders of his school in Florence were Niccolo di Nicolo and Lionardo Bruni, the latter of whom died in 1443. The chief ecclesiastics were hardly less eager than other scholars. The popes themselves threw their influence into the new movement. In 1434 Eugenius the Fourth took up his residence in Florence when he was expelled from Eome. Amid his own serious troubles, with refractory Councils, a hostile capital, the Bogomil and Hussian heresies, and the ever vexed question of the reunion of the Churches, Eugenius found time to encourage the study of Greek and to give a welcome to all Greek priests and students who brought with them their precious manuscripts. He appreciated the pro- found learning of Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, who had come to take part in the council at Ferrara and afterwards,