Closely connected with the political illegitimacy of the dynasties of the fifteenth century was the public indifference to legitimate birth, which to foreigners--for example, to Comines--appeared so remarkable. The two things went naturally together. ... In Italy ... there no longer existed a princely house where ... bastards were not patiently tolerated. ... The fitness of the individual, his worth and capacity, were of more weight than all the laws and usages which prevailed elsewhere in the West. It was the age, indeed, in which the sons of the Popes were founding dynasties.
-- Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Phaidon, 1945), 12.
