 Vespasiano is a panegyrist of Nicholas V, the great book-lover; he is severe to the point of injustice against Pope Callistus III, the indifferent lender of books, which, however, he did not give over to pillage, as Vespasiano accuses him of doing.His manuscripts, which he thought of as rough notes for a more polished series of Latin "Vitae", remained unknown until they were discovered by Cardinal Angelo Mai, who first published them in 1839.A reading of them in Mai's edition in 1847 inspired Jacob Burckhardt to commence his magisterial "Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (1860).