An Important Issue in the study of fifteenth-century Florentine humanism is whether or not later Quattrocento humanists advocate a withdrawal from public life and abandon the “civic” humanism of Salutati, Bruni, and the early Quattrocento humanists. There is no lack of studies on this question using the categories of vita activa and vita contemplativa. In broad terms, the early fifteenthcentury Florentine humanists, reacting against the medieval scholastic world view, are seen as advocating the supremacy of the vita activa though still valuing the vita contemplativa, while the midfifteenth- century humanists, under the influence of the Medici and Marsilio Ficino's Platonic studies, are considered to have reversed the earlier emphasis on the “civic” outlook for the supremacy of the contemplative life and a withdrawal from public affairs.

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.

Georgette de Montenay has been the object of enduring scholarly interest, not only as the first woman author of an emblem book, but also as the creator of a new literary and artistic genre: the religious emblem. Most probably converted to Protestantism under the influence of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre (to whose court she was attached after her marriage to Guyon de Gout, c. 1562), de Montenay composed a series of one hundred militant Christian octets in the mid-i56os and closely supervised their illustration by a gifted Lyonnais etcher, Pierre Woeiriot, who was also of the reformed persuasion.

On 10 August 1584 Four Japanese emissaries arrived in Lisbon. Strictly speaking, they were not the first Japanese to arrive in Europe, but they were the first official delegates sent by Japanese feudal lords. And they were the first to return to Japan after a European sojourn.’ Some historians have argued that “no Japanese emissaries, before or since, aroused comparable interest or enthusiasm” among Europeans.

Much has been written about this visit, both in the sixteenth century and closer to our own, but while there is no doubt about the warmth of the welcome, judgments about its meaning and importance have differed sharply. In the late nineteenth century, Guglielmo Berchet reluctantly concluded that despite European enthusiasm and the triumph of the travelers over enormous obstacles during the journey, the embassy was of no consequence because by the time it returned to Japan in 1587, it encountered a hardening of attitudes against Europeans.

At its Annual Meeting in April 1995, the Renaissance Society of America will be honoring the career of Paul Oskar Kristeller, whose international reputation as a Renaissance scholar is well known to this audience. We are all in debt to Kristeller for what he would proudly entitle his “contributions.” These include, among innumerable others, studies on Marsilio Ficino and the classical and scholastic origins of humanism, a multi-volumed catalogue of the uncatalogued manuscripts in European collections (more than a life work all by itself), and reminders in the form of essays, articles and lectures of the need to adjust our theories and our inclinations to what used to be called, in a simpler age, facts.