ABSTRACT
The scholarly counterpart of confraternities, in which the learned met to discuss literary matters in an informal atmosphere, academies were inspired by the example of Plato's school at Athens. A similar 'academic' environment was to be found in the meetings of Florentine intellectuals in the Orti Oricellari in the early sixteenth century. It was led by Antonio Beccadelli, the most important humanist in fifteenth-century Naples. The deeply entrenched nature of Christian scholasticism in the universities of northern Europe, together with the greater availability of Christian rather than pagan classical texts in that region have resulted in Christian humanism. The attractions of antiquit were felt most profoundly in Italy, divided as it was into city-states which resembled in size and constitution those of the ancient world, but also because the ruins of classical Rome were at hand. The migration of Greek scholars to Italy in the fifteenth century introduced western philosophers to much of the Platonic corpus for the first time.
