Summary

Poggio was not allowed to take the poem with him forcing him to hire a scribe to copy it. He sent the copy off to Niccoli in Florence asking him to make another copy. Initially, fifty copies of the poem were copied over by scribes. After being hidden away for 1,000 years, the poem was being distributed around and read with great interest. Many of those copies have been lost or are greatly fragmented.

There was chaos in Rome after Cossa’s arrest and incarceration. The power struggle among those claiming to be head of the church still went on. Due to Poggio’s refusal to reject Cossa, he was having difficulty finding suitable work. In 1419, he accepted the position of secretary to Henry Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester. Although the move to England turned his life upside down, he looked forward to continuing...