One thing that I found interesting was the curses. On page 30, it states “On occasion monasteries tried to secure their possession by frightening their precious manuscripts with curses”. This was interesting to me because if there were manuscripts that had curses on them nowadays, that wouldn’t stop anyone from taking something like that. Another thing that was interesting to me was how Poggio did not like monks. On page 36 it states “… on the whole he found the superstitious, ignorant, and hopelessly lazy”. This was interesting to me because monks are usually respected by many people because of how they give up their whole lives for their religion, they help others and they worship god.
One connection I had while reading the chapter was a text to world connection between the curiosity of the past. For example, renaissance scholars were driven by the desire to learn about ancient wisdom. And nowadays, there are thousands of people who try and search and explore old things from the past as well. The connection I made was how even though the times are changing and there is a large difference between how things are now compared to back then but the need for knowledge continues to grow.
Something I was curious about was how he got so much money for his travels? In the book on page 33 it states, “Even if he had banked some funds from his years in the papal bureaucracy, Poggio is very unlikely to have been able to pay these costs on his own”. So I am confused on why/ how people gave him the money to do this.
