Roman academies refers to associations of learned individuals and not institutes for instruction. Such Roman Academies were always connected to larger educational structures conceived during and following the Italian Renaissance, at the height of which (from the close of the Western Schism in 1418 to the middle of the 16th century) there were two main intellectual centers, Florence and Rome. Scientific, literary, and artistic culture attained there a development as intense as it was multiform, and the earlier Roman and Florentine academies were typical examples of this variety.