CHAPTER III.

THE COUNCIL OF UNION AND PLATONISM. COSIMO DE’ MEDICI’S LATER YEARS. LEARNED studies were at their height in Florence when Pope Eugenius IV. arrived on June 23, 1434, and soon afterwards saw his court assembled around him. It was, as we have said, the time when Rinaldo degli Albizzi felt the ground unsafe beneath his feet, when he hoped to secure power to himself by proceeding against Cosimo de’ Medici, and had been urged to the violent attempt which ended in his own ruin. Except in the removal of Francesco Filelfo…