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At the cry which broke from Lorenzo dei Medici when he saw him disappear, Ermolao, Poliziano, and Pico delta Mirandola, who had heard all, returned into the room, and found their friend convulsively clutching in his arms a magnificent crucifix which he had just taken dawn from the bed-head. In vain did they try to reassure him with friendly words.

These lines, composed at the duke's request by Ermolao Barbaro, the learned Venetian scholar, who was a personal friend of his, and represented the republic at his court, record how Lodovico, the son of one Sforza Duke of Milan, and uncle and guardian of another, brought water to fertilize this barren province, and was the builder of this fair house, "villaque amenissima a fundamentis erecta."

If, however, we look through the history of Venetian literature which Francesco Sansovino has appended to his well-known book, we shall find in the fourteenth century almost nothing but history, and special works on theology, jurisprudence, and medicine; and in the fifteenth century, till we come to Ermolao Barbaro and Aldo Manuzio, humanistic culture is, for a city of such importance, most scantily represented.

Shortly before Erasmus's arrival Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples had returned from Italy, where he had visited the Platonists, such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Ermolao Barbaro, the reviver of Aristotle. Though theoretical theology and philosophy generally were conservative at Paris, yet here as well as elsewhere movements to reform the Church were not wanting.

The agents he employed travelled through Italy, Greece, Europe, and the East Hieronymo Donato, Ermolao Barbaro, and Paolo Cortesi being the names of some of his most trusted "commissioners."

The first of these three men, sitting at the foot of the bed, and half hidden, that he might conceal his tears, in the gold-brocaded curtains, was Ermolao Barbaro, author of the treatise 'On Celibacy', and of 'Studies in Pliny': the year before, when he was at Rome in the capacity of ambassador of the Florentine Republic, he had been appointed Patriarch of Aquileia by Innocent VIII.

This word 'Entelechy' apparently takes its origin from the Greek word signifying 'perfect', and hence the celebrated Ermolao Barbaro expressed it literally in Latin by perfectihabia: for Act is a realization of potency. And he had no need to consult the Devil, as men say he did, in order to learn that.

Ermolao Rubieri, who discovered the legend under a coat of paint. Its vicissitudes are traceable from the time when Sig. Salviati gave it to the convent of San Vincenzo at Prato, from which place Sig. Rubieri purchased it in 1810.

And the Moro's accomplished friend, Ermolao Barbaro, the young Venetian patriarch, who had been once more sent as envoy to Milan, composed a wonderful Latin epigram in honour of the occasion, praying Pallas not to avert her face in sorrow at the sound and tumult of war, which is after all but a mimic display, and calling upon her, the goddess whose wisdom Lodovico honours above all the thunders of Jove, to bless the great house of Sforza, illustrious alike in the arts of war and peace.

In the fifteenth century, Politian and Ermolao Barbaro made a conscious and deliberate effort to form a style of their own, naturally on the basis of their 'overflowing' learning, and our informant of this fact, Paolo Giovio, pursued the same end.