[Sidenote: City tyrants fostered humanism and started court schools.]
=The Court Schools and Vittorino da Feltre.=--A powerful support for the work of these humanists resulted from the rivalry of the Italian cities. The princes at the head of these centers were often usurpers, and depended largely upon city pride to maintain their power. To appeal to the classical enthusiasm of their people, they did everything possible to propagate the humanistic movement and make their cities illustrious. Probably the most typical examples of these humanistic tyrants are found among the Visconti at Milan and the Medici at Florence. In some instances these court circles promoted the new learning informally, but often, where a scholar had been taken into the family of a prince as private tutor, children of the neighboring aristocracy were associated and a regular school was started. ‘Court schools’ of this sort soon existed at Florence, Venice, Padua, Pavia, Verona, Ferrara, and several other cities, but the best known of all was that organized by Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446) at Mantua.
[Sidenote: The aim was harmonious development of mind, body, and morals.]
=The Court School at Mantua.=--Vittorino undertook this school at forty-five, when he had received the best possible education of the times in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and had greatly distinguished himself as a teacher and a man of piety. He received into the school not only the royal princes and the scions of the leading Mantuan families, but, by special permission, the sons of his personal friends and promising boys of every degree. He dwelt with his pupils, and was most strict in his selection of masters and of attendants, that the morals of his pupils might be of the highest. Likewise, ‘the father of his pupils,’ as Vittorino held himself to be, looked out for their food, clothing, and health, and shared in their games, interests, and pleasures. It was his intention to secure for his pupils that harmonious development of mind, body, and morals that the old Greeks had known as a ‘liberal education,’ but he emphasized the practical and social side of the individual’s efficiency, and wished to prepare his pupils for a life of activity and service rather than to create mere rhetoricians and pedants.