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NOTES TO THE SECOND BOOK OF THE COURTIER Note 244, page 140. Of Sallaza dalla Pedrada nothing seems to be known beyond the mention of him in the text. Note 24s, page 140. Palla degli Strozzi, (born 1372; died 1462), was a wealthy and cultivated Florentine patrician. Having honourably filled high offices of state, he was banished by Cosimo de' Medici in 1434 for ten years to Padua. Himself an enthusiastic scholar and patron of classical studies, he caused many Greek MSS. to be brought into Italy (including works of Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch), and was the first Italian to collect books for the express purpose of founding a public library, in the execution of ^which design he was prevented by his exile from anticipating Cosimo. He employed learned Greeks to read to him, and was instrumental in inducing Chrysoloras to teach at Florence, — an engagement regarded by Symonds as having secured the future of Hellenic study in Europe. The story narrated of him in the text is else- where told of an exile belonging to the Albizzi family. Note 246, page 140. COSIMO DE' Medici, Pater Patrice, (born 1389; died 1464), was a Florentine banker, statesman and patron of literature and art. In his father Giovanni's house of business he cultivated the rare faculty for finance that he afterwards employed in public administration and private commerce. He inherited his father's vast fortune in 1429, and made it a practice to lend money to needy citizens and at the same time to involve the affairs of Florence with his own, — thus not only attaching individuals to his interests, but ren- dering it difficult to control state expenditures apart from his own bank. He understood also how to use his money without exciting jealousy, and while he spent large sums on public works, he declined the architect Brunelleschi's plans for a residence more befitting a prince than a citizen. He was an early riser, and temperate and simple in his life. While ruling Florence with despotic pow^er, he seemed intent on the routine of his counting-house, and put forward other men to execute his political schemes. Despite occasional checks, he so firmly established the influence of his family as the real rulers of Florence that they were not permanently expelled until the nineteenth century. Much of his power was due to. sympathy with the intellectual movement of the age, and although he was not a Greek scholar, he had a solid education, and collected MSS., gems, coins and inscriptions, employing his commercial agents in the work. During a year of exile, he built a library at Venice, and later he built one at Florence and another at Fiesole. His house was the centre of a literary and philosophical society, w^hich included all the wits of Florence and the strangers who flocked to that capital of culture. Note 247, page 140. CAMILLO PoRCARO, or PoRZio, (died 1517), was a brother of the Antonio Porcaro already mentioned in The Courtier (at page 138; see note 233). He was a professor of rhetoric at Rome, and a canon of St. Peter's. Leo X made him Bishop of Teramo, a town near the Adriatic north-east of Rome. He was a member of the Roman Academy, and some of his Latin verse has survived. 370