HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

INTRODUCTION

THE LITERARY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY AND THE CHURCH

WITH the exception of the period which witnessed the transformation of the Pagan into the Christian world, the history of mankind hardly offers one more striking than that of the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. One of the most powerful elements in this epoch of marked contrasts was the exhaustive appreciation and extension of the study of the ancient world, commonly known as the Renaissance, or the new birth of classical antiquity. This movement naturally began in Italy, where the memory of the classic past had never been wholly effaced, and with it opens a new epoch.

The object of this work is not to demonstrate the origin and development of this revolution, effected in science, poetry, art, and life. The historian of the Popes is only concerned with the Renaissance, in so far as it comes in contact with the Church and the Holy See.

To thoroughly and correctly appreciate this relation, we must bear in mind that in this movement which began in the realm of literature, there were from the first two conflicting currents, discernible, more or less, in its gifted founders, Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Like the author of the Divine Comedy, Petrarch took his stand upon the Church, and succeeded in combining enthusiastic admiration for classical antiquity with devout reverence for Christianity. His passionate love for the antique did not make him forget the sublimity of the Christian mysteries. On the contrary, the poet repeatedly and energetically declared that he looked on the Gospel as higher than all the wisdom of the ancients. “We may”, he writes to his friend Giovanni Colonna, “love the schools of the philosophers, and agree with them only when they are in accordance with the truth, and when they do not lead us astray from our chief end. Should anyone attempt to do this, were he even Plato or Aristotle, Varro or Cicero we must firmly and constantly despise and reject him. Let no subtlety of arguments, no grace of speech, no renown, ensnare us; they were but men, learned, so far as mere human erudition can go, brilliant in eloquence, endowed with the gifts of nature, but deserving of pity inasmuch as they lacked the highest and ineffable gift. As they trusted only in their own strength and did not strive after the true light, they often fell like blind men. Let us admire their intellectual gifts, but in such wise as to reverence the Creator of these gifts. Let us have compassion on the errors of these men, while we congratulate ourselves and acknowledge that out of mercy, without merit of our own, we have been favoured above our forefathers by Him, who has hidden His secrets from the wise and graciously manifested them to little ones. Let us study philosophy so as to love wisdom. The real wisdom of God is Christ. In order to attain true philosophy, we must love and reverence Him above all things. We must first be Christians—then we may be what we will. We must read philosophical, poetical, and historical works in such manner that the Gospel of Christ shall ever find an echo in our hearts. Through it alone can we become wise and happy; without it, the more we have learned, the more ignorant and unhappy shall we be. On the Gospel alone as upon the one immoveable foundation, can human diligence build all true learning”.

In justification of his love for the philosophers and poets of antiquity, Petrarch repeatedly appeals to St. Augustine, whose “tearful Confessions” were among his favourite books. “So great a Doctor of the Church”, he says, “was not ashamed to let himself be guided by Cicero, although Cicero pursued a different end. Why, indeed, should he be ashamed? No leader is to be despised, who points out the way of salvation. I do not mean to deny that in the classical writers there is much to be avoided, but in Christian writers also there are many things that may mislead the unwary reader. St. Augustine himself, in a laborious work, with his own hand rooted the weeds out of the rich harvest field of his writings. In short, the books are rare that can be read without danger, unless the light of Divine Truth illuminates us, and teaches us what is to be chosen and what to be avoided. If we follow that Light, we may go on our way with security”. Petrarch never flinched from expressing his devout sentiments; he repeatedly showed himself the apologist of Christianity, and on the occasion of his solemn crowning at the Capitol, went to the Basilica of St. Peter to lay his wreath of laurels on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles.

Yet Petrarch did not escape the leaven of his age or the influence of the dangerous elements of antiquity. He often succumbed to the sensual passion so faithfully depicted in his work, On Contempt of the World; his inordinate love of preferment is another blot upon his stormy life, and we discover in him not a few traits at variance with his devout Christian intuitions. Among these are his scornful attitude towards scholastic theology, which had, indeed, much degenerated, and his craving for fame. On this point we shall judge him the more leniently, if we reflect that even the heart of a Dante, whose immortal poem upholds the Christian view of the nothingness of human glory, was not impervious to this weakness. Still it is sad to see a man so eminent in intellectual gifts as Petrarch, yearning after crowns of laurel, royal favours, and popular ovations, and pursuing the phantom of glory in the courts of profligate princes. Undoubtedly this ardent passion for renown, to which the Christian conscience of the poet opposed such an inefficacious resistance, must be considered as a taint of heathenism. In the old classical authors, especially in Cicero, this ideal of human fame was so vividly presented to the mind of Petrarch, that at times it entirely eclipsed the Christian ideal.

But he has one uncontested excellence: never does a wanton or sensual thought mar the pure silver ring of his sonnets. In this respect, the most marked contrast exists between him and his friend and contemporary Boccaccio, whose writings breathe an atmosphere of heathen corruption. The way in which this great master of style and delineation of character sets at naught all Christian notions of honour and decency, is simply appalling. His idyll, Ameto, reeks with the profligacy of the ancient world, and preaches pretty plainly the Gospel of free love; and his satire, Corbaccio, or The Labyrinth of Love, displays the most revolting cynicism. A critic of no severe stamp declares that even the modern naturalistic writers can hardly outbid the defilement of this lampoon. And the most celebrated of all Boccaccio’s works, the Decameron, is a presentation of purely heathen principles, in the unrestrained gratification of the passions. A modern literary historian says, that the provocative, sensuous style of the stories may find its explanation—without the possibility of excuse—in the prevalent immorality of the times, and the unchaining of all evil passions, caused by the plague; their effect is all the more dangerous, from the genuine wit, with which the writer describes the triumph of cunning, whether over honest simplicity or narrow-minded selfishness.

In his stories Boccaccio takes especial delight in heaping ridicule and contempt on ecclesiastics, monks and nuns, and with polished irony, represents them as the quintessence of all immorality and hypocrisy.

And yet Boccaccio was no unbeliever or enemy of the Church. His insolent language regarding ecclesiastical personages is by no means the outcome of a mind essentially hostile to the Church, and none of his contemporaries considered it as such. A preacher of penance, who visited Boccaccio in the year 1361, reproached him bitterly with the immorality of his writings, but not with their disloyalty. The compiler of the Decameron was never, even in his most careless days, an unbeliever, and in later life, after his conversion, the childlike piety of his nature reasserted itself. He eagerly embraced every opportunity of manifesting his faith, and of warning others against the perusal of the impure writings, which caused him such deep regret. The dalliance of former days with the old classic gods was quite at an end, and we have his assurance that he did not look upon learning as antagonistic to faith, but at the same time, he would rather renounce the former than the latter. His will also bears witness to his piety. Boccaccio hereby leaves the most precious of his possessions, his library, to the Augustinian Friar and Professor of Theology, Martino da Signa, on condition that he should pray for his soul; and after Martino’s death he desires that the books should become the property of the monastery of Santo Spirito, and be always accessible to the monks. He wishes that his last resting place should be in the Augustinian Church of Santo Spirito, at Florence, or if death should overtake him at Certaldo, in the Augustinian Church of Saints Philip and James in that town.

The position taken up by these two founders and pioneers of the Renaissance in regard to the Church was, therefore, not by any means a hostile one, and accordingly the attitude of the Popes towards them was throughout friendly. Boccaccio went three times as Ambassador from the Florentines to the Papal Court, and was always well received there. All the Popes from Benedict XII to Gregory XI showed Petrarch the greatest favour, and Clement VI delivered the great poet from pecuniary embarrassments and procured for him the independence needed for his intellectual labours. It is, therefore, not correct to look on the movement, known as the Renaissance, the literary manifestation of which is Humanism, as, in its origin and its whole scope, directed against the Church. On the contrary, the true Renaissance, the study of the past in a thoroughly Christian spirit, was in itself a legitimate intellectual movement, fruitful in fresh results, alike for secular and spiritual science.

The many-sided and methodical study of the intellectual works of former days, with its tendency to deliver men's minds from the formalism of the degenerate scholastic philosophy, and to make them capable of a fresher and more direct culture of all sciences, especially of philosophy and theology, could not but be approved from a strictly ecclesiastical point of view. In the eyes of the Church, everything depended on the method and the aim of the humanistic studies; for the movement could only be hostile to her, if the old ecclesiastical methods were forsaken, if classical studies, instead of being used as means of culture, became their own end, and were employed not to develop Christian knowledge, but rather to obscure and destroy it.

So long, then, as the absolute truth of Christianity was the standing ground from which heathen antiquity was apprehended, the Renaissance of classical literature could only be of service to the Church. For, just as the ancient world in all its bearings could only be fully manifested to the spiritual eye, when viewed from the heights of Christianity, so Christian faith, worship, and life, could not fail to be more amply comprehended, esteemed, and admired from a clear perception of the analogies and contrasts furnished by classic heathenism. The conditions imposed by the Popes and other ecclesiastical dignitaries upon the revived study of antiquity could but serve, as long as this study was pursued in a right spirit, to promote the interests of the Church, and these conditions corresponded with the old ecclesiastical traditions.

Proceeding from the principle that knowledge is in itself a great good, and that its abuse can never justify its suppression, the Church, ever holding the just mean, from the first resisted heathen superstition and heathen immorality, but not the Graeco-Roman intellectual culture. Following the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who had read the Greek poets and philosophers, most of the men who carried on his work esteemed and commended classical studies. When the Emperor Julian endeavoured to deprive Christians of this important means of culture, the most sagacious representatives of the Church perceived the measure to be inimical and most dangerous to Christendom. Under the pressure of necessity, books on science were hastily composed for teaching purposes by Christian authors, but after the death of Julian the old classics resumed their place.

The danger of a one-sided and exaggerated interest in heathen literature, regardless of its dark side, was never ignored by Christians. “For many”, writes even Origen, “it is an evil thing, after they have professed obedience to the law of God, to hold converse with the Egyptians, that is to say with heathen knowledge”. And those very Fathers of the Church, who judged the ancient writers most favourably, were careful from time to time to point out the errors into which the young may fall in the study of the ancients, and the perils which may prove their destruction. Efforts were made by a strict adherence to the approved principles of Christian teaching, and by a careful choice of teachers, to meet the danger which lurked in classical literature. Thus, history tells us, did the Church succeed in obviating the perils to moral and religious life attendant on its perusal. Zealots, indeed, often enough arose declaring, “In Christ we have the truth, we need no other learning”; and there were not wanting Christians who abhorred classical learning, as dangerous and obnoxious to Christian doctrine. But the severity, with which Saint Gregory Nazianzen blames these men, proves this party to have been neither enlightened nor wholly disinterested. In espousing the cause of ignorance, they were mainly seeking their own advancement, regardless of the great interests of science and intellectual culture in Christian society, which they would have left to perish, if they had got the upper hand. The most clear-sighted of those who watched over the destinies of the Church, were always intent on the protection of these interests, as were also the great majority of the eastern and western Fathers.

“The heathen philosophy” writes Clement of Alexandria, “is not deleterious to Christian life, and those who represent it as a school of error and immorality, calumniate it, for it is light, the image of truth, and a gift which God has bestowed upon the Greeks; far from harming the truth by empty delusions, it but gives us another bulwark for the Truth, and, as a sister science, helps to establish Faith. Philosophy educated the Greeks, as the law educated the Jews, in order that both might be led to Christ”. “He, therefore, who neglects the heathen philosophy”, says Clement in another passage, “is like the fool who would gather grapes without cultivating the vineyard. But as the heathen mingle truth with falsehood we must borrow wisdom from their philosophers as we pluck roses from thorns”.

In like manner spoke St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and other celebrities of the early Church. They all manifested a clear perception of, and a warm susceptibility for, the beauties of classical literature. Without closing their eyes to the disadvantages and dark shadows of heathenism, they also saw the sunshine, the rays of the eternal light, which beamed forth from these glorious achievements of the human intellect; they heard the prophetic voices which rose from their midst, and sought to bring them into unison with the language of Christendom. They discriminated between the common human element contained in classical literature, and the heathen element which enfolds it; the latter was to be rejected, and the former to take its place within the circle of Christian ideas. They constantly repeated, that everything depends on the manner in which the heathen classics are read and employed in education. These expressions of disapprobation are not directed against the classics in themselves, but against a wrong spirit and a perverted method in their use; they agree in this respect with St. Amphilochius, who gave the following advice with regard to the perusal of these works: “Be circumspect in dealing with them, collect the good that is in them, shun whatever is dangerous; imitate the wise bee which rests upon all flowers and sucks only sweet juices from them”. In the same sense, and with true Attic elegance, St. Basil the Great wrote his celebrated Discourse to Christian youths, on the right use of the heathen authors. In opposition to the unjust attacks which treated heathen books without exception as vain lies of the Devil, this great Doctor of the Church, whose fame is still fresh in the Basilian Order, dwells with manifest affection on the value and excellence of classic studies as a preparation for Christian science. The writings of St. Gregory Nazianzen furnish proof of even greater esteem, love, and enthusiasm for the literature of the ancients. “It has cost me little”, he says in one of his discourses, “to give up all the rest: riches, high position, influence, in short all earthly glory, all the false joys of the world. I cleave to but one thing, eloquence and I do not regret having undergone such toils by land and sea to acquire it”.

The necessity of combining classical culture with Christian education, henceforth became a tradition in the Church, especially as the scientific development of the period to which most of the above-mentioned Fathers belong, has had an enduring influence on the ages which have followed.

Amidst the storms of later times, the Church preserved these glorious blossoms of ancient culture, and endeavoured to turn them to account in the interest of Christendom. Monasteries, founded and protected by the Popes, while the genuine spirit of the Church yet lived within them, rendered valuable service in guarding the intellectual treasures of antiquity. With all their enthusiasm for classical literature, the true representatives of the Church were, nevertheless, firmly convinced, that the greatest and most beautiful things antiquity could show came far short of the glory, the loftiness and the purity of Christianity. No exaggerated deification of the heathen writers, but their prudent use in a Christian spirit; no infatuated idolatry of their form, but the employment of their substance in the interest of morality and religion, the combination, in short, of classical learning with Christian life—this was the aim of the Church.

This utilization for Christian ends of the ancient writers was eminently fruitful. "The direct use, which the Fathers made of these writings in their warfare against idolatry and vain philosophy, is obvious”. “But”, Stolberg adds, “who can estimate all that Origen, the Sts. Gregory, St. Basil, St. Chrysostom and others gained indirectly in the way of culture and grace, and—more important still—in intellectual energy from the ancients?”

The discourses and treatises of those Fathers of the Church who had studied the classics, furnish ample proof that the simplicity of the Faith is far from being impaired by the ornaments of rhetoric. Their poems, as amongst others, St. Gregory Nazianzen's tragedy, The Suffering Saviour, render the conceptions of the Patristic, as clearly as Dante's immortal poem does those of the scholastic theology. The efforts of Julian the Apostate to dissolve this Alliance between Christian faith and Graeco-Roman culture are a clear indication of the increase of strength which Christianity was then deriving from this source.

In regard to the reaction towards antiquity, which was the almost necessary consequence of a period of decay of classical learning, the attitude to be adopted by the representatives of the Church was clearly defined. Their promotion of the newly-revived studies certainly in some sense denoted a breach with the later Middle Ages, which had unduly repressed the ancient literature, and, in consequence, fallen into a most complete and deplorable indifference as to elegancies of form, but it involved no breach with the Middle Ages as a whole, far less with Christian antiquity in general.

But this reaction in the Renaissance took a special colouring and shape from the circumstances of the time in which it occurred. It was a melancholy period of almost universal corruption and torpor in the life of the Church, which from the beginning of the fourteenth century had been manifesting itself in the weakening of the authority of the Pope, the worldliness of the clergy, the decline of the scholastic philosophy and theology, and the terrible disorders in political and civil life. The dangerous elements, which no doubt the ancient literature contained, were presented to a generation intellectually and physically over-wrought, and in many ways unhealthy. It is no wonder, therefore, that some of the votaries of the new tendency turned aside into perilous paths. The beginnings of these defections can already be traced in Petrarch and Boccaccio, the founders of the Renaissance literature, though they never themselves forsook the Church.

The contrasts here apparent became more and more marked as time went on.

On the one side the banner of pure heathenism was raised by the fanatics of the classical ideal. Its followers wished to bring about a radical return to paganism both in thought and manners. The other side strove to bring the new element of culture into harmony with the Christian ideal, and the political and social civilization of the day. These two parties represented the false and the true, the heathen and the Christian Renaissance.

The latter party, whose judgment was sufficiently free from fanatical bias to perceive that a reconciliation between existing tendencies would be more profitable than a breach with the approved principles of Christianity and the development of more than a thousand years, could alone produce real intellectual progress. To its adherents the world owes it, that the Renaissance was saved from bringing about its own destruction.

Not a few Humanists wavered between the two streams. Some sought to find a happy mean, while others were in youth carried away by the one current, and in mature age by the other.

No one has better expressed the programme of the radical heathenizing party than Lorenzo Valla in his book On Pleasure, published in 1431.

This treatise, in some ways a very remarkable one, is divided into three dialogues, in which Lionardo Bruni represents the teaching of the Stoics, and Antonio Beccadelli that of the Epicureans, while Niccolò Niccoli maintains the cause of “the true good”. These personages are well chosen. The grave majestic Bruni had really, as one of his unprinted works proves, endeavoured to effect a union between Christian Ethics and the Stoic philosophy. Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed Panormita from his native city, Palermo, was his direct Antipodes. He was the author of Hermaphroditus, a collection of epigrams far surpassing in obscenity the worst productions of ancient times. Niccolò Niccoli, the reviver of Greek and Latin literature in Florence, was, in a certain sense, a type of the Christian Humanist; his fundamental principle was, that scientific investigation and Christian sentiment must go hand in hand. Even from friends such as Poggio and Marsuppini he would not tolerate words of disrespect for his faith; he detested all materialists and unbelievers. The errors of his life were atoned for by a most edifying death. (When this great scholar felt the approach of death, he had an altar erected in his sick room on which his friend Ambrogio Traversari said mass daily. The dying man received the Holy Viaticum with such devotion that all present were moved to tears)

We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the conclusion of the Dialogues; their purpose is simply to cast ridicule upon the Stoic morality, as used by the party of conciliation as a bond of union between heathen and Christian views, and that with the ulterior aim of casting ridicule on the moral teaching of the Church.

Cautiously, but yet clearly enough and with seductive skill, the Epicurean doctrine was put forward as defending a natural right against the exactions of Christianity. The gist of this doctrine is summed up by Beccadelli, the exponent of Valla's own views, in the following sentences: “What has been produced and formed by nature cannot be otherwise than praiseworthy and holy”; “Nature is the same, or almost the same as God”.

It has been remarked by a judge, who is far from severe, that the last of these propositions, placing the creature on a footing of equality with the Creator, strikes at the very foundations of Christianity; the first demolishes those of morality, substituting for virtue pleasure, for the “will or love for what is good and the hatred of evil”, pleasure, “whose good consists in gratifications of mind or body, from whatever source derived”

Beccadelli, the mouthpiece of Valla, further teaches, with perfect consistency, that the business of man is to enjoy the good things of nature, and this to their fullest extent. The “gospel of pleasure” demands the gratification of every sense; it completely ignores the barriers of chastity and honour, and would have them abolished, where they still exist, as an injustice. No sense is to be denied its appropriate satisfaction. The individual, says Valla, plainly, may lawfully indulge all his appetites. Adultery is in the natural order. Indeed, all women ought to be in common. Plato's community of women is in accordance with nature. Adultery and unchastity are to be eschewed only when danger attends them: otherwise all sensual pleasure is good.

Pleasure, pleasure, and nothing but pleasure! Sensual pleasure is, in Valla’s eyes, the highest good, and therefore he esteems those nations of heathen antiquity happy, who raised voluptuousness to the rank of worship. Vice becomes virtue, and virtue vice. All his indignation is called forth by the voluntary virginity ever so highly esteemed in Christendom. Continence is a crime against “kind” nature. “Whoever invented consecrated Virgins” he said, “introduced into the State a horrible custom, which ought to be banished to the furthest ends of the earth”. This institution has nothing to do with religion; “it is sheer superstition”. “Of all human things, none is more insufferable than Virginity. If we were born after the law of nature, it is also a law of nature that we should in turn beget. If you must have women consecrating their whole lives to the service of religion, choose married women and, indeed, those whose husbands are priests. Observe, however, that all the Divinities, with the sole exception of Minerva, were married, and that Jupiter, so far as in him lay, could not endure virgins. Those who profess themselves to be consecrated virgins are either mad, or poor, or avaricious”.

The new Gospel of a life of pleasure, in opposition to the Scriptural law, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread”, is indeed put forward only by way of argument, but this is done in a manner which gives the reader easily to understand that Valla himself agreed with it.

An able modern historian observes: “It is not surprising that these discussions earned for Valla the reputation of maintaining pleasure to be the chief good; that the form of disputation was looked upon as a simple precaution, and the triumph of Christian Ethics as a mere show of justice, the poisonous theory of life had been promulgated, it mattered little whether it was defended or not. Moreover, that which was known of the author’s life said but little for his morality”.

Valla was not alarmed by the attacks of theologians on his daring opinions, for King. Alfonso of Naples was his firm protector. On the contrary, he now betook himself to the realm of theology, and eagerly sought opportunities of encountering his ecclesiastical opponents. His dialogue on religious vows, the first of his works to become known in recent times, here comes under our notice. It is of special interest, as in its pages Valla goes far beyond the previous attacks of the Humanists on the monastic life. His predecessors in this field had assailed the externals of the religious state; they had, under the guise of stories, held up the excesses of individuals to scorn. Valla, in this work, treats the subject quite differently. His attack is of a more radical character; he assails the monastic life in itself, combating the proposition, which has always been upheld by the Church, that by the same course of moral life, a man bound by religious vows attains higher merit and gains a greater reward than does one who belongs to no religious order. The acrimonious remarks in regard to the clerical and monastic states, with which this book abounds, are of trifling importance in comparison with this, its main intent and purpose, which strikes at the very root of the religious life in general.

With equal audacity and venom, Valla turned his arms against the temporal power of the Papacy, in his pamphlet, On the falsely credited and invented Donation of Constantine. Considerations affecting the genuineness of this document had been put forward some years previously by the learned Nicholas of Cusa, in his Catholic Concordance; and, independently of Valla and Cusa. Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, in the middle of the fifteenth century, showed by a careful sifting of the historical evidence the untenable character of this long-credited document. But Valla, in his work, went a great deal further than these writers. In his hands the proof that the document was a recent forgery became a violent attack on the Temporal Power of the Popes. If Constantine’s Donation be a forgery of later times, he concluded, then the Temporal Principality of the Popes falls to ruin, and the Pope has nothing more urgent to do than to divest himself of the usurped power. The Pope is all the more bound to do this, because, according to Valla's view, all the corruption in the church and all the wars and misfortunes of Italy are the consequence of this usurpation.

The virulence of Valla’s denunciations against “the overbearing, barbarous, tyrannical Priestly domination” has scarcely been surpassed in later times. “The Popes”, he says, “were always filching away the liberties of the people, and therefore when opportunity offers the people rise. If at times they willingly consent to the Papal rule, which may happen when a danger threatens from some other side, it must not be understood that they have agreed to continue slaves, never again to free their necks from the yoke, and that their posterity has no right of settling their own affairs. That would be in the highest degree unjust. We came of our own free will to you, O Pope, and asked you to govern us; of our own free will we go away from you again, that you may no longer govern us. If we owe you anything, then make out the debit and credit account. But you wish to rule over us against our will, as if we were orphans, although we might perhaps be capable of governing you with greater wisdom. Moreover, reckon up the injustices, which have so often been inflicted on this State by you or the magistrates you have appointed. We call God to witness that your injustice constrains us to rise against you, as Israel of old rose against Jeroboam. And the injustices of those days, the exaction of heavy tributes, how trifling were they in comparison with our disasters! Have you enervated our State? You have. Have you plundered our churches? You have. Have you outraged matrons and virgins? You have. Have you shed the blood of citizens in our towns? You have. Shall we bear this? Or shall we, perhaps, because you choose to take the place of a father, forget that we are children? As a father, O Pope, or, if the title suits you better, as a lord, we have called you hither, and not as an enemy or an executioner. Although the injuries we have suffered might justify us, we will not imitate your cruelty or your impiety, for we are Christians. We will not raise the avenging sword against your head, but after we have dismissed and removed you, we will appoint another father and lord. Sons are permitted to flee from evil parents who have brought them up, and shall we not be allowed to flee from you, who are not our real father, but only a foster-father who has treated us extremely ill? Attend to your priestly office, and do not set up a throne in the regions of night, thence to thunder forth and hurl the hissing lightnings against this and other nations. The forgery of Constantine's gift has become a reason for the devastation of all Italy. The time has come to stop the evil at its source. Therefore I say and declare—for if I put my trust in God I will not be afraid of men—that during the years of my life, not one true and prudent steward has occupied the Papal Chair. Far from giving food and bread to the family of God, the Pope declares war against peaceful nations, and sows discord between States and Princes. The Pope thirsts after foreign possessions, and exhausts his own. He is what Achilles called Agamemnon, ‘a king who devours the people’.”

It will be seen that it is Valla, not Machiavelli, who started the often-repeated assertion that the Popes are to blame for all Italy's misfortunes. Like the Florentine historian, Valla knows not, or else forgets, that the Church and her rulers preserved the most valuable elements of the ancient culture for humanity, civilized the barbarians, and created mediaeval international law—that the Primate as head of the one Church founded by Christ must necessarily have fixed his seat in the capital of ancient power and civilization, and in order perfectly to fulfil his high office, must be a monarch and not a subject.

As to the important question, in what light the more recent gifts of territory to the Holy See were to be regarded, Valla proceeds very simply. He maintains that, being renewals of Constantine’s ancient gift, they could not constitute a new right! The objection that, failing Constantine's document, the temporal possessions of the Popes rested on the right of prescription, he meets with the assertion that, in the case of unauthorized dominion over men, the right of prescription has no existence, and that, even if it had, it would long since have been forfeited by the tyranny of the Popes. This tyranny was all the more crying because the exercise of temporal power was quite inconsistent with the duties of a spiritual Head.

In the above-mentioned pamphlet, which is a caricature of the government of the Popes, and openly calls the Vicars of Christ “tyrants, thieves, and robbers”, the author of the Dialogue on Pleasure frequently assumes the air of a pious Christian. He endeavours to speak in an edifying manner of “the loftiness and grandeur” of the spiritual office of the Popes, and brings forward a number of quotations from Holy Scripture. In strange contrast with these passages in his work are the oft-repeated passionate appeals to the Romans, urging them to revolt against the temporal power of the Holy See. Valla also addresses the Princes; paints in the darkest colours the grasping ambition of Rome, and pronounces them to be justified in depriving the Pope of the States of the Church. He concludes this menacing libel with a formal declaration of war against the Papacy. “If the Pope refuses” he says, “to quit the dwelling, which does not belong to him, and return to his own, and to take refuge from the angry waves in the haven of his own vocation, I will set about a second discourse, which will be much more violent than the present one”

In order to form a correct estimate of Valla's anti-papal pamphlet, the circumstances under which it appeared must be taken into consideration. According to his own account, he wrote it six years after the insurrection of the Romans against Eugenius IV. This Pope, who, as feudal Lord of Naples, favoured the claims of the House of Anjou, was at the time in open conflict with King Alfonso, who, on his side, supported the schismatics of Basle. This state of affairs explains how Valla, living under the protection of the King, could venture thus to declare war against the head of the Church and the spiritual power. The sincerity of his convictions as to the unrighteousness of the temporal power of the Holy See soon became apparent. After the reconciliation of the Neapolitan Monarch with Eugenius IV, he made every possible effort to enter the Papal service. In a humble letter addressed to the Pope, whom he had so lately abused as a tyrant, he retracted his former writings, and expressed his willingness in future to devote himself to the service of the Apostolic See.

“The treatise regarding Constantine’s grant”, says an author who occupies almost the same position as Valla, "was the boldest attack on the temporal power ever ventured on by any reformer; was it then strange that a new popular tribune—a Stefano Porcaro—should arise?” In zealously prosecuting the pamphlet the Papacy merely acted in self-defence. Any other Government would have done the same, for Valla called on the Romans to drive the Pope from Rome, and even intimated that it would be lawful to kill him. That the ideas, expressed with such unexampled audacity, fell on a fruitful soil is evidenced by the attempt of Stefano Porcaro on the life of Nicholas V, and also by the fact that later on, in the time of Pius II, the Papal Secretary, Antonio Cortese, brought out an “Anti-Valla”. Unfortunately, only a fragment of this unprinted work is preserved in the Library of the Chapter at Lucca, which also contains another work against Valla and in defence of the temporal power of the Holy See.

Valla’s audacious attack on Christian morals in his dialogue “On Pleasure” was far surpassed by Antonio Beccadelli Panormita (d. 1471). Repulsive though the subject be, we must speak of his Hermaphroditus or collection of epigrams, because the spirit of the false Renaissance is here manifested in all its hideousness. The Book, says the Historian of Humanism, “opens a view into an abyss of iniquity, but wreathes it with the most beautiful flowers of poetry”. The most horrible crimes of heathen antiquity, crimes whose very name a Christian cannot utter without reluctance, were here openly glorified. The poet, in his facile verses, toyed with the worst forms of sensuality, as if they were the most natural and familiar themes for wit and merriment. “And moreover, he complacently confessed himself the author of this obscene book, justified it by the examples of the old Roman poets, and looked down upon the strict guardians of morality as narrow-minded dullards, incapable of appreciating the voluptuous graces of the ancients”. Cosmo de' Medici accepted the dedication of this loathsome book, which is proved by the countless copies in the Italian libraries to have had but too wide a circulation.

Beccadelli’s disgraceful work did not, unfortunately, stand alone, for Poggio, Filelfo and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini have much to answer for in the way of highly-seasoned anecdotes and adventures. No writing of the so-called Humanists, however, equals Beccadelli’s collection of epigrams in impurity. The false heathen Renaissance, culminates in this repulsive Emancipation of the Flesh, sagaciously characterized by a modern historian as the forerunner of the great Revolution, which in the following centuries shook Europe to its centre.

The representatives of the Church, who in later times were often too indulgent towards the manifold excesses of the Humanists, happily did their duty on this occasion, and met this “appalling fruit of faith in the infallibility of the ancients” with decision. Pope Eugenius IV forbad the reading of this work under pain of excommunication. Cardinal Cesarini, a zealous friend of Humanism, destroyed it, wherever he could get possession of it. The most celebrated preachers of the day, St. Bernardine of Siena and Roberto da Lecce, earnestly warned their hearers against such vile literature, and burned Beccadelli’s Epigrams in the open squares at Milan and Bologna. Counter publications were also circulated by the ecclesiastical party. The manuscript of a long indictment against Beccadelli, composed by the Franciscan, Antonio da Rho, is preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. The Carthusian, Mariano de Volterra, composed a poem against him, and the learned Minorite, Alberto da Sarteano, wrote a letter of warning to the young men of Ferrara, and also a larger work, with a view of counteracting the influence of this impure poet

The sensation caused by this vile book was so great that even Poggio, who was certainly by no means over-particular in such matters, advised Beccadelli in future to choose graver subjects, inasmuch as “Christian poets are not allowed the license enjoyed by the heathen”. Beccadelli had the insolence to defend himself against this slight reproof, which was not very seriously meant, by an appeal to the authority of the ancients. A great many “learned, worthy, holy Greeks and Romans had”, he said, “sung of such things; and yet the works of Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Juvenal, Martial, Virgil, and Ovid were universally read; the very Prince of Philosophers, Plato himself, had written wanton verses”. Beccadelli then gives a list of Greek philosophers and statesmen, who had indulged in writings of this description, and yet been virtuous. Similarly in his epigrams he had been careful to declare, that although his writings were immodest his life was spotless. If Beccadelli really believed what he said, daily experience should have taught him another lesson. The horrible crimes which had been the curse of the ancient world, and which were the theme of his elegant verses, raged like a moral pestilence in his time in the larger towns of Italy, especially among the higher classes of society. Florence, Siena, and Naples were described as the chief seats of these excesses; in Siena, indeed, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, it had been found necessary, as in ancient Rome, to legislate against the prevailing celibacy of men. Lucca and Venice also bore an evil name in regard to the prevalence of those vices, which had no small share in bringing about the downfall of Greece.

The corrupting effects of the false, profligate Humanism represented by Valla and Beccadelli made themselves felt to an alarming extent in- the province of religion, as well as in that of ethics. The enthusiasm for everything connected with the ancient world was carried to such an excess, that the forms of antiquity alone were held to be beautiful, and its ideas alone to be true. The ancient literature came to be looked upon as capable of satisfying every spiritual need, and as sufficing for the perfection of humanity. Accordingly its admirers sought to resuscitate ancient life as a whole, and that, the life of the period of the decadence with which alone they were acquainted. Grave deviations from Christian modes of thought and conduct were the necessary consequences of such opinions.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century Cino da Rinuccini brought forward a list of serious charges against the adherents of the false Renaissance. “They praise Cicero’s work De Officiis”, he says, “but they ignore the duty of controlling their passions and regulating their life according to the rules of true Christian chastity. They are devoid of all family affection, they despise the holy institution of marriage, and live without rule. They avoid all labour for the State—either by word or action—saying that he who serves the community serves nobody. As to theology, they give undue praise to Varro's works, and secretly prefer them to the Fathers of the Church. They even presume to assert that the heathen gods had a more real existence than the God of the Christian religion, and they will not remember the wonders wrought by the saints”.

There may be, perhaps, some exaggeration in these charges, but it cannot be denied, that enthusiastic admiration for the ancients exercised a most deleterious influence on the Christian conscience and life of the representatives of the false Renaissance. Even Petrarch lamented the fact, that to confess the Christian faith and esteem it higher than the heathen philosophy was called stupidity and ignorance, and that people went so far as even to deem literary culture incompatible with faith.

It is recorded of the celebrated Florentine Statesman, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, that he held a disputation with a physician versed in philosophy, on the question whether science is in opposition to Christian faith. Like Pietro Pomponazzo, a century later, Albizzi maintained the affirmative, supporting his opinion by quotations from Aristotle. Carlo Marsuppini, of Arezzo, the State Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, openly manifested a great contempt for Christianity and an unbounded admiration for the heathen religion. He adhered to these sentiments to the end, and a contemporary says, “He died without confession or Communion, and not as a good Christian”.

Few, however, went to such lengths; most of these men, when the reality of death drew near, abandoned their empty speculations, and a penitent return to the dogmas of the faith took the place of their former vagaries. Even such men as Codro Urceo and Machiavelli, before their end, sought the aid of the Church, from which their lives and opinions had estranged them, and whose graces and blessings their writings had contemned; they died after making their confession, fortified with the consolations of religion.

The adherents of the false Renaissance, with scarcely an exception, were, during life, indifferent to religion. They looked on their classical studies, their ancient philosophy, and the faith of the Church as two distinct worlds, which had no point of contact. From considerations of worldly prudence or convenience they still professed themselves Catholics, while in their hearts they were more or less alienated from the Church. In many cases, indeed, the very foundations of faith and morals were undermined by the triumph of false Humanism. The literary men and artists of this school lived in their ideal world of classic dreams; theirs was a proud and isolated existence. The real world of social and, yet more, that of moral and religious life, with its needs, its struggles, and its sacrifices, was far too common and too burdensome for their notice; and they only condescended to take part in it, in so far as was necessary in order to bring themselves into view and to share in its advantages.

Overweening self-esteem was a characteristic of all these men; they never thought themselves sufficiently appreciated. Some of them, as for example, Filelfo, cherished a fixed idea that they were the geniuses of their age, and that the whole world must give way to them because they spoke Greek and wrote Latin with elegance. Notwithstanding all the Stoical phrases, which adorned their discourses and writings, these Humanists were fond of money and good cheer, desirous of honour and admiration, eager to find favour with the rich and noble, quarrelsome amongst themselves, ready for any intrigue, calumny, or baseness, that would serve to ruin a rival.

Poggio Bracciolini may be taken as a genuine representative of this false Humanism. This gifted writer, “the most fortunate discoverer the world has ever known in the field of literature”, is, as a man, one of the most repulsive figures of the period. Almost all the vices of the profligate Renaissance are to be found combined in his person, and it would be hard to say whether his slanderous disposition or the gross immorality of his life is most worthy of condemnation.

Notwithstanding occasional expressions of another kind in his writings, there can be no doubt that Poggio’s point of view was more heathen than Christian. Christianity and the Church were entirely outside his sphere. To quote the words of the biographer of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, “he was such a worshipper of heathen antiquity, that he would certainly have given away all the treasures of dogmatic theology for a new discourse of Cicero”. A remarkable example of his heathen, or rather indifferent, state of mind is furnished by his well-known letter to the Council of Constance on the occasion of the burning of Jerome of Prague. Poggio speaks with the greatest enthusiasm of Jerome, from which, however, it is not to be inferred that he approved of his opinions. On the contrary, the conception of a martyr to any faith was as foreign to the mind of this follower of the false Renaissance as to that of a heretic. The thing which he admired in Jerome was of a very different kind. The courage with which this man met death reminded him of Cato, and of Mutius Scevola, and he considered the eloquence of his address to the Council as approaching that of the ancients. The decision of the ecclesiastical authority is scarcely noticed by Poggio; he only regrets that so noble an intellect should have turned to heresy; “If”, he adds, “the accusations brought against him are true”. This doubt is, however, disposed of by the cool observation, “it is not my business to judge of the matter; I contented myself with the opinion of those who are considered wiser than I am”.

Almost all the writings of Poggio are offensively obscene and coarse. The worst in this respect, after his “Facetiae”, are his shameless and immoral letter on the license which prevailed at the baths of Zurich, and his libels on Filelfo and Valla. “Like the lowest boy out of the streets”, says the Historian of Humanism, “Poggio assails his adversary with the coarsest abuse and the basest calumny”. He accuses these two Humanists of every kind of turpitude, and the greater part of the work is unfit for translation.

The impression produced is a strange one, when a writer, whose own life was so far from respectable, sets himself up as a censor of the depraved morals of the monks and clergy. Poggio cannot find words sufficiently stinging with which to brand the hypocrisy, cupidity, ignorance, arrogance, and immorality of the clergy. The monks, however, are everywhere the especial object of his sarcasm, often, indeed, in discourses, letters, and treatises, where such sentiments might least have been looked for. Violent attacks upon them are to be found, as in his dialogues on Avarice and on Human misery, and in his book against hypocrites. “There are monks”, he says, “who call themselves mendicant friars, but it seems rather that they bring others to beggary, being themselves idle and living by the sweat of other men. Some of these assume the name of Observantines. I do not know what good all these can be said to do; I only know that most who call themselves Minorites and Observantines are rude peasants and idle mercenaries, who aim not at holiness of life, but at escaping from work”. Even in their preaching, according to Poggio, the object of the monks is not the healing of sick souls, but the applause of the simple folk whom they entertain with buffooneries. They indulge their boorish loquacity without restraint, and are often more like apes than preachers.

In order to understand how unjustifiable is this caricature of the monks, we must remember that the Religious Orders gave to Italy in the fifteenth century a line of preachers whose devotion to their calling and whose power and earnestness have, even after the lapse of ages, commanded the esteem of those who differ from them. The limits of this work do not permit us to enter into a detailed account of all the brilliant and truly popular orators who produced the remarkable and copious pulpit literature of the age of the Renaissance. The most celebrated preachers of the d. 1456), Antonio di Rimini (about 1450), Silvestro di Siena (about 1450), Giovanni di Prato (about 1455), Antonio di Bitonto (d. 1459), Roberto da Lecce (d. 1483), Antonio di Vercelli (d. 1483)

In his celebrated work on the Renaissance, Burchkhard admirably describes the meaning of these Italian preachers of penance. “There was”, he says, “no prejudice stronger than that which existed against the mendicant friars; the preachers overcame it. The supercilious Humanists criticized and mocked; when the preachers raised their voices they were entirely forgotten”. With his usual sagacity, this scholar remarks that the men, who bore within them this mighty fervour and this religious vocation, were, in the north, of a mystical and contemplative stamp, and in the south, expansive, practical, and imbued with the national taste for eloquence. And here we may mention that St. Bernardine of Siena is said to have studied oratory from the ancient models, and that Alberto da Sarteano, one of his most distinguished disciples and followers, certainly did so.

Too little attention has as yet been bestowed on the action of these preachers of penance, who were highly esteemed and sought after by the people, and even by worldly-minded princes, and zealously supported by the Popes, especially by Eugenius IV and Nicholas V. When the History of Preaching in Italy at the period of the Renaissance is written, it will be seen that the free and fervent exercise of this office is one of the most cheering signs, in an age clouded with many dark shadows. It became evident that a new spirit had begun to stir in ecclesiastical life. Many proofs are before us that in Italy and in the other countries of Christendom the words of censure and warning were not spoken in vain. No age, perhaps, offers such striking scenes in the conversion of all classes of the people, of whole towns and provinces, as does that, whose wounds were so fearlessly laid bare by Saints Vincent Ferrer, Bernardine of Siena, John Capistran, and by Savonarola.

“An age”, as a modern historian observes, “which thus perceives and acknowledges its faults, is certainly not among the worst of ages. If in the individual the recognition of a fault is the first step to amendment, it cannot be otherwise in regard to whole classes of men, to nations, and to the Church itself. No one who bestows even a superficial glance on the literature of the period, can deny that this recognition existed in the Church in the time of the Renaissance. The first and most essential step towards amendment had been taken, and there was well grounded hope that further energetic measures would follow”.

From this point of view, the general unfavourable judgment of the religious and moral condition of the Renaissance period may be essentially modified. At all events, as the first German authority on Italian history has lately observed, it is a mistake to suppose from the numerous testimonies of Pagan tendencies furnished by the Italian Humanists, that these were absolutely general. This gifted nation—and this is especially true of Florence, the intellectual home of the Renaissance—still retained its warm religious feeling in the midst of all party struggles, excommunications, and external conflicts. The numerous confraternities of laymen, to which high and low belonged, kept all classes in constant and salutary contact with the Church which had never ceased to be national, as did also the mystery-plays, in which, until the end of the fifteenth century, distinguished poets and poetesses took part. Thus the religious dispositions of the people held many things together, which threatened to fall to pieces, and explains much that would otherwise be difficult of solution; it was often very touchingly manifested. When Gregory XI, the last of the Avignon Popes, laid an interdict upon Florence, crowds of citizens used to assemble in the evenings before the images of the Madonna, at the corners of the streets, and endeavour by their prayers and hymns to make up for the cessation of public worship. Vespasiano da Bisticci, in his life of Eugenius IV, relates that when the Pope, during his sojourn in Florence, blessed the people from a balcony erected in front of the church of Sta. Maria Novella, the whole of the wide square and the adjoining streets resounded with sighs and prayers; it seemed as if our Lord Himself, rather than His Vicar, was speaking. In 1450, when Nicholas V celebrated the restoration of peace to the Church by the publication of a Jubilee, a general migration to the Eternal city took place; eye-witnesses compared the bands of pilgrims to the flight of starlings, or the march of myriads of ants. In the year 1483 the Sienese consecrated their city to the Mother of God, and in 1495, at the instigation of Savonarola, the Florentines proclaimed Christ their King.

The magnificent gifts, by which the pomp and dignity of religious worship were maintained, the countless works of Christian art, and the innumerable and admirably organized charitable foundations also bear testimony to the continuance of “heartfelt piety and ardent faith” in the Italy of the fifteenth century.

Side by side with these evidences of religious feeling in the Italian people, the age of the Renaissance certainly exhibits alarming tokens of moral decay; sensuality and license reigned, especially among the higher classes. Statistics on this subject, however, are so incomplete, that a certain estimate of the actual moral condition of the age or a trustworthy comparison with later times is impossible.

But if those days were full of failings and sins of every kind, the Church was not wanting in glorious manifestations, through which the source of her higher life revealed itself. Striking contrasts—deep shadows on the one hand, and most consoling gleams of sunshine on the other—are the special characteristics of this period. If the historian of the Church of the fifteenth century meets with many unworthy prelates and bishops, he also meets, in every part of Christendom, with an immense number of men distinguished for their virtue, piety, and learning not a few of whom have been by the solemn voice of the Church raised to her altars. Limiting ourselves to the most remarkable individuals, and to the period of which we are about to treat, we will mention only: the saints, and holy men and women given by Italy to the Church.

The first of this glorious company it is St. Bernardine of Siena, of the Order of Minorites, whose eloquence won for him the titles of trumpet of Heaven and fountain of knowledge, and whom Nicholas V canonized about the middle of the century. Around him are grouped his holy brothers in religion: Saints John Capistran, Jacopo della Marca, and Catherine of Bologna, a Sister of the same Order (d. 1463). Among the Blessed of the Franciscan Order are Tommaso Bellaci (d. 1447), Gabriele Ferretti (d. 1456), Arcangelo di Calatafimi (d. 1460), Antonio di Stronconio (d. 1471), Pacifico di d. 1482), Pietro di Moliano (d. 1490), Angelo di Chivasso in Piedmont (d. 1496), Angelina di Marsciano (d. 1435, Angela Caterina (d. 1448), Angela Felice (d. 1457), Serafina di Pesaro (d. 1478), Eustochia Calafata (d. 1491), etc.

The Dominican Order was yet richer in saints and holy persons. Blessed Lorenzo da Ripafratta (d. 1457) laboured in Tuscany, and under his direction the apostolic St. Antoninus (d. 1459) grew up to be a pattern of self-sacrificing charity, and the glorious talent of Fra Angelico da Fiesole (d. 1455) soared heavenward, leading men's hearts to the Eternal by the language of art, as the mystics had done by their writings. St. Antoninus, whose unexampled zeal was displayed in Florence, the very centre of the Renaissance, had for his disciples Blessed Antonio Neyrot of Ripoli (d. 1460) and Costanzio di Fabriano (d. 1481). Blessed Giovanni Dominici (d. 1420) and Pietro Geremia da Palermo (d. 1452) were celebrated preachers and reformers. Then follow Blessed Antonio ab Ecclesia (d. 1458), Bartolomeo de Cerveriis (d. 1466), Matteo Carrieri (d. 1471), Andrea da Peschiera (d. 1480), the Apostle of the Valteline, the recently beatified Cristoforo da Milano (d. 1484), Bernardo Scammaca (d. 1486), Sebastiano Maggi da Brescia (d. 1494), and Giovanni Licci, who died in 1511, at the extraordinary age of one hundred and fifteen. The Dominicaness, Chiara Gambacorti (d. 1420), had held communication with the greatest saint of the later mediaeval period, St. Catherine of Siena; and, together with Princess Margaret of Savoy (d. 1407), also a Dominicaness, was subsequently beatified. In the Order of St. Augustine we have to mention the following who have been beatified:—Andrea, who died at Montereale in 1479, Antonio Turriani (d. 1494), Rita of Cascia (d. 1456), Cristina Visconti (d. 1458), Elena Valentino du Udine (d. 1458), and Caterina da Pallanza (d. 1478). Blessed Angelo Mazzinghi de Agostino (d. 1438) belonged to the Carmelite Order; that of the Gesuati had Giovanni Travelli da Tossignano (d. 1446), the Celestines, Giovanni Bassand (d. 1455); and the Regular Canons the Holy Patriarch of Venice, St. Lorenzo Giustiniani (d. 1456). Blessed Angelo Masaccio (d. 1458) was of the Camaldolese Order, and finally the great Cardinal Bishop of Bologna, Albergati (d. 1443) was a Carthusian. St. Frances (d. 1440), the foundress of the Oblates, was working in Rome. The labours of another founder, St. Francis of Paula (born 1416, d. 1507), belong in part to the period before us. These names, to which many more might easily be added, furnish the most striking proof of the vitality of religion in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Such fruits do not ripen on trees which are decayed and rotten to the core.

Though it is an error to consider all ranks of italian society in the fifteenth century as tainted with the spirit of Paganism, we must admit that the baneful element in the Renaissance took fearful hold on the upper classes. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? The seductive doctrines of Epicurus, and the frivolous, worldly wisdom of the Rome of Augustus, were far more attractive than Christian morality. To a pleasure-loving and corrupt generation, the vain mythology of heathenism was infinitely more congenial than the Gospel of a crucified Saviour, and the religion of self-denial and continence. Many ecclesiastical dignitaries also unhappily show undue favour to the false Humanism. Startling as this may at first sight appear, it is by no means difficult to account for it.

In the first place we must consider the wide-spread worldliness among the clergy, which was a result of the Avignon period of the Papacy, and the subsequent confusion of the schism. Secondly, Humanism soon became such a power that a struggle with it under existing circumstances would have been very hazardous. The chief reason, however, that the Church and the false Renaissance did not come into open conflict, was the extreme care taken by almost all the adherents of this school to avoid any collision with the ecclesiastical authorities. The race of dilettanti and free-thinkers looked upon the doctrinal teaching of the Church as a thing quite apart from their sphere. If in their writings they invoked the heathen gods, and advocated the principles of the ancient philosophers, they also took pains from time to time to profess their submission to the Creeds, and were skilful in throwing a veil over the antagonism between the two. However vigilant the rulers of the Church might be, it was often very hard to determine when this toying with heathenism became really reprehensible.

The strange medley of heathen and Christian words, ideas and thoughts, that prevailed in the age of the Renaissance is notorious. The Church authorities were not severe on transgressions of this kind; and as far as literature was concerned, there can be no doubt that their leniency was thoroughly justified. If the Humanists, in their horror of sinning against Ciceronian Latinity, endeavoured to express Christian ideas in antique phrases, the fashion was certainly an absurd, rather than a dangerous, one. “What need” says Voigt, with reason, “to cry out, if a lively orator should introduce a Roman asseveration into his discourse. Who would charge him with polytheism, if, instead of calling on the one God, he should on some occasion say: 'Ye Gods!' Or if a poet, instead of imploring Divine grace, should beg the favour of Apollo and the Muses, who would accuse him of idolatry?”. Accordingly, when Ciriaco of Ancona chose Mercury for his patron saint, and on his departure from Delos addressed a written prayer to him, his contemporaries were not the least scandalized, but contented themselves with laughing at his enthusiasm, and singing of him as “the new Mercury and immortal as his Mercury”. The indulgence, which the ecclesiastical authorities showed towards the false Renaissance, is intelligible enough, if we remember that its obviously dangerous tendencies had much to counterbalance them.

From the beginning, the true Christian Renaissance existed side by side with the false.

Its followers were equally enthusiastic in their admiration for the treasures of antiquity, and they recognized in the classics a most perfect means of intellectual culture, but they also clearly perceived the danger attendant on the revival of the old literature, especially under the circumstances of the time. Far from relentlessly sacrificing to heathenism that Christianity, which had permeated the very life of the people, they deemed that safety lay in the conciliation of the new element of culture with its eternal truths; and in this opinion they had the support of Dante, and were in accord with Petrarch's highest aspirations. They were justly alarmed at the radical tendency, which aimed at doing away with all existing sanctions and influences. They saw with dismay that all national and religious traditions were threatened, and that therefore a salutary result from the movement was very doubtful. The programme of these men, the most clear-sighted and sober-minded of the Humanists, was the maintenance of religious and national traditions, the study of the ancients in a Christian and national spirit, the reconciliation of the Renaissance with Christianity.

The chief representatives of the Christian Renaissance were Giannozzo Manetti, Ambrogio Traversari, Lionardo Bruni, Gregorio Carraro, Francesco Barbaro, Maffeo Vegio, Vittorino da Feltre, and Tommaso Parentucelli, afterwards known as Pope Nicholas V.

Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459), the friend of Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Nicholas V, was most deeply convinced of the truth of the Christian Religion. This noble-minded and distinguished scholar used to say that the Christian Faith is no mere opinion, but an absolute certainty, that the teaching of the Church is as true as an axiom in mathematics. However much occupied Manetti might be, he never went to work without first having heard Mass. He placed all his learning at the service of the Church, and although a layman, was well versed in theology and literature, and translated the New Testament and the Psalms. He had studied three books so indefatigably, that he may be almost said to have known them by heart; these were the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Augustine’s City of God, and the Ethics of Aristotle. Manetti was the first, and, for a long time, the only Humanist in Italy, who turned his attention to the Oriental languages. To defend the cause of Christian truth, he learned Hebrew and began to write a work against the Jews, whom he meant to combat with their own weapons. This great scholar was a man of exemplary life; his friend and biographer, Vespasiano da Bisticci, affirms that, during an intercourse of forty years, he had never heard an untruth, an oath, nor a curse, from his lips.

Manetti’s teacher was the pious Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order from 1431, a man whom the Protestant historian, Meiners, declares to have been a model of purity and holiness; a superior, admirable for his strictness and prudent gentleness; an author of great industry and learning, and an ambassador whose talents, courage, and statesmanship won for him a high position amongst the most distinguished of his contemporaries. This eminent scholar was the first to introduce Humanist influences into the ecclesiastical sphere. A mixed assembly of clerics and laymen, the élite of the Florentine literary world, used to meet in his convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, to hear him lecture on the Greek and Latin languages and literature, and explain philosophical and theological questions. The biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici speaks enthusiastically of those days when a brilliant intellectual radiance shone forth from this convent, enlightening the dwellings of the Florentine patricians and, through them, the whole world. “Never”, he says, “was there seen among clerics and laymen so much real and solid learning devoted to the Church and State, while also ministering to the charm of daily life and the promotion of good morals”. Tommaso Parentucelli, who had witnessed this Florentine literary life, which, although not faultless, was on the whole so rich and noble, was unable, even when he had attained the highest dignity in Christendom, to create in Rome anything that could compare with it.

Traversari’s unceasing labours in the reform of his Order, and all the harassing toils attendant on his office as Papal Envoy, never interfered with his interest in Greek and Roman literature. Notwithstanding the heavy pressure of necessary business, he contrived to find time to ransack libraries for rare manuscripts and copy them, to visit literary celebrities, to investigate ecclesiastical and heathen antiquities, and by various letters to promote the study of science. His learned works relate chiefly to the Greek writers of the Church, and he was undoubtedly the first authority on the subject and the possessor of the richest collection of books. In his scrupulous conscientiousness, Traversari thought the translation of profane authors unsuitable to his office. Nevertheless, at the request of his friend, Cosmo de Medici, he consented to translate Diogenes Laertes on the Lives of the Philosophers, consoling himself with the thought that this work might serve the interests of the Christian religion, “inasmuch as when the doctrines of the heathen philosophy are better known, the superiority of Christianity will be the more clearly understood”.

The celebrated Lionardo Bruni (1369-1444), Apostolic Secretary under Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Alexander V, and John XXIII, and afterwards Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, was also sincerely attached to the Church. His love for the classical did not hinder him from recommending “sacred studies”, which, from their very nature, must be the sweetest of “sweet toils”. What a contrast there is between Valla and this good man, who, though not himself a monk, esteemed the religious life, and refused to support a monk who wished to leave his convent. Bruni was greatly looked up to, and people came from all parts to see him; a Spaniard even went so far as to fall on his knees before him. When this noble scholar departed this life on the 9th March, 1444, the Priors determined to pay him extraordinary honour; his corpse was clad in dark silk, and on his breast lay the History of Florence, as the richest gift of the Chancellor to the Republic. Manetti pronounced the funeral oration, and crowned the dead with the laurel of the poet and the scholar, “as an immortal testimony to his wonderful wisdom and his surpassing eloquence”. He was then buried in Santa Croce, where an epitaph composed by Marsuppini, and a monument sculptured by Bernardo Rossellino, mark his resting place.

Among the Christian Humanists we must reckon Gregorio Corraro, the highly cultured kinsman of Pope Gregory XII, and Francesco Barbaro, who, like him, belonged to a patrician family of Venice. Barbaro enjoyed the friendship of almost all the learned Italians of his day, and was, by family tradition and personal feeling, devoted to the cause of the Church. In the negotiations with the Councils of Basle and of Florence he sought, with equal zeal, to promote the interests of the Papal power, and to provide for the spiritual wants of his clients. He furnishes a remarkable example of the union of the Humanist and ecclesiastical tendencies in an age when the latter had begun to lose its power.

Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458), the worthy explorer of the ancient Christian monuments of Rome, must not be passed over. That “tender and eloquent book”, the Confessions of St. Augustine, made a deep impression on his mind, as also on that of Petrarch. It brought about Vegio’s complete conversion, and induced him to devote himself entirely to ecclesiastical literature. Without transcribing the splendid list of his works, we must mention his widely-read book on Education, inasmuch as it represents an endeavour to combine the wisdom of the Classics with the Bible and the teaching of the Church. He strongly recommends the work of Virgil, Sallust, and Quintilian, as means of culture, but objects to the Elegiacs on account of their indecency, and would have the comic authors reserved for the perusal of grown-up men. In the time of Eugenius IV, Vegio came to Rome, where he filled the offices of Datary, Abbreviator, and Canon of St. Peter’s, and finally became an Augustinian Canon. He died in 1458, and was buried in Sant Agostino, in the very chapel where, thanks to his efforts, the bones of St. Monica had found a fitting place of rest, when brought from Ostia in 1430. Vegio's pure life and piety were honoured beyond the limits of his own order. An enthusiastic notice of him is to be found among the writings of the Florentine Vespasiano da Bisticci.

The most attractive and amiable of the representatives of the Christian Renaissance is Vittorino da Feltre, the greatest Italian Pedagogue of his age. “He was one of those men who devote their whole being to the end for which their capacities and knowledge specially fit them”. The honour of having introduced this excellent man “to his proper sphere of work” belongs to the Marquess Gian Francesco Gonzaga, who summoned him to Mantua in 1425, to take charge of the education of his children and direct the court school. Vittorino began his labours by a thorough cleansing of the Casa Giocosa, the new educational Institution, which was pleasantly situated on the borders of the lake of Mantua. At his command the gold and silver plate, the superfluous servants, vanished, and order and noble simplicity took the place of pomp and show. The hours of study were punctually observed, but they were constantly varied by bodily exercise and recreation in the open air. Vittorino encouraged his pupils to expose themselves to cold and heat, to wind and rain, for he believed that a soft and idle life was the origin of many maladies; but there was nothing of Spartan harshness in the education, and individual idiosyncrasies were sufficiently respected. In the fine season he used to take his pupils on long excursions to Verona, to the Lake of Garda, and into the Alps. In regard to decency and good manners, Vittorino was rigid; swearing and blasphemy were always punished, even if the offender were one of the Princes. Corporal punishments were reserved for the worst cases; in general the penalties inflicted were of the nature of disgrace. The moral and religious conduct of the scholars was most carefully watched over, for Vittorino held that true learning is inseparable from religion and virtue. A bad man, he used to say, can never be a perfect scholar, far less a good orator.

His method of teaching was simple and concise; he guarded carefully against the evil subtleties of the day. “I want to teach them to think”, he said, “not to split hairs”. The classics naturally formed the groundwork of higher education, but with a careful selection fitted for the young. Mathematical Science, Logic, and Metaphysics, were not neglected; special attention was devoted to composition, and every encouragement given to originality. Vittorino was always ready to help those, who were backward in their studies. Early in the morning he was among his scholars, and when all around had betaken themselves to rest, he worked on with individual boys. “Probably”, to use the words of a modern author, “the world had never before seen such a schoolmaster, who was content to be a schoolmaster and nothing else, because in this calling he recognized a lofty mission; one who, just because he sought nothing great for himself, found all the richer reward in the results of his labour”. When a monk asked permission from Pope Eugenius IV to enter Vittorino’s Institution, the Pontiff answered, “Go, my son. We willingly give you up to the most holy of living men”. Vittorino’s fame was widely spread; eager disciples flocked around him from far and near, even from France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Many of these youths were poor, and such were received by the good man with particular affection; they were not only freely instructed, but also fed, lodged, clothed, and provided with books at his expense, and his generosity often extended even to their families. For these scholars, whom he received for the love of God (per Pamore di Dio), he founded a special institution in association with the Princes' School. Here he lived like a father in his family, giving to it all he possessed, for his own wants were very easily satisfied. It is no wonder that the scholars looked up to such a master with love and respect. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, one of the noblest among them, a man distinguished by his courage, cultivation, and large-mindedness, placed Vittorino’s portrait in his palace with the inscription: “In honour of his saintly master, Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example instructed him in all human excellence, Federigo places this here”.

The secret of this great schoolmaster’s immense influence is to be found principally in his religious and moral qualities, his disinterestedness, his humility and simplicity, and the charm of his virginal purity. All his contemporaries speak with respect of his piety. Vespasiano da Bisticci says that “he daily recited the Divine Office like a priest; he strictly observed the Fasts of the Church, and insisted on his scholars doing the same. He said grace before and after meals like a priest, constantly approached the sacraments, and accustomed his scholars to go monthly to confession to the Observantine Fathers. He also wished them to hear Holy Mass every day; his house was a very sanctuary of good morals”. Vittorino’s example shows that a good man may be immersed in classical studies, without making shipwreck of his faith. His liberality equalled his piety; no monk or beggar, who sought his aid, was sent empty away. Notwithstanding his unremitting labours as a teacher and educator, he always found time to visit widows and orphans, the poor, the sick, and even prisoners, and wherever he went, he bore with him comfort, instruction, and help. It was said of him, that the only people who received nothing from him were those, whose needs were unknown to him. Almsgiving on so large a scale would not have been possible, but for the generous support of the Marquess of Mantua and some of his wealthy scholars. All that he received from them was given away to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow men. When he died on the 2nd February, 1446, at the age of sixty-nine, his property was so deeply in debt, that his heirs declined the inheritance, and the corpse had to be buried at the Prince's expense. He left instructions that no monument should be raised to his memory.

The position occupied by the representatives of the Christian Renaissance in relation to the ancient world was the only true one, and they have in some degree solved the problem how justly to appreciate antiquity. Their enthusiasm for the intellectual treasures of the past never went so far as to endanger their devotion To the Christian religion. Unlike the extreme Humanists, they held fast the principle, that the works of the heathens are to be judged by a Christian standard. They saw the danger of so idealizing the moral and religious teaching of Heathenism, as to make it appear that by its means alone the highest end of life could be attained, thus ignoring the necessity of Christian doctrines and morality, of remission of sin and grace from on high.

In the light of Christianity alone can the ancient world be fully and justly estimated, for the pagan ideal of humanity, as exhibited in its heroes and divinities, is not, as a modern philosopher justly observes, a full or complete one. It is but a shadowy outline, wanting the colour and life which something higher must supply—a fragmentary form, which has yet to find its complement in a more perfect whole. This higher Image of human perfection is the Incarnate Son of God, the Prototype of all-creatures; no creation of fancy or product of human reason, but the Truly and the Life Itself. The ideals of Greece grow pale before this Form, and only vanity and folly could ever turn from It to them. This folly was perpetrated by the adherents of the false Renaissance, by those Humanists who, instead of ascending from the Greek Poets and Philosophers to Christ, turned their backs on the glory of Christianity to borrow their ideal from the genius of Greece.

The twofold character of the Italian Renaissance renders it extremely difficult justly to weigh its good and evil in relation, to the Church and to religion. A sweeping judgment in such cases would generally be a rash one, even were the notices of the individuals concerned less scanty than those which are before us; here, as elsewhere, human penetration is baffled in the endeavour to appreciate all its bearings.

A modern Historian has forcibly remarked that every genuine advance of knowledge must in itself be of advantage to religion and to the Church, inasmuch as Truth, Science, and Art are alike daughters of heaven. From this point of view we must contemplate the encouragement given by ecclesiastics to the revival of classical literature. A distinction should evidently here be drawn between the two schools of the Renaissance, and judgment pronounced accordingly. Those members of the Church, who promoted the heathen view, acted wrongly, and were, if we look at their conduct with a view to the interests of the Church, blameworthy. Impartial inquiry will, however, lead us to temper this blame by a consideration of all the attendant circumstances, and to bear in mind the difficulty of avoiding the abuse, to which the ancient literature, like all other good things of the intellect, is liable.

The common impression that the dangerous tendencies of the Renaissance were not recognized by the Church is very erroneous. On the contrary, from the beginning, men were never wanting, who raised their voices against the deadly poison of the false Humanism. One of the first in Italy to indicate its pernicious influence on education was the Dominican Giovanni Dominici. This preacher, who laboured ardently for the reformation of his Order, enjoyed the favour of Pope Innocent VII, and was raised to the purple by Gregory XII. In his celebrated Treatise on the order and discipline of Family Life, written very early in the 15th century, he denounces, with all the energy of his ardent nature, the system “which lets youth and even childhood become heathen rather than Christian; which teaches the names of Jupiter and Saturn, of Venus and Cybele rather than those of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; which poisons minds that are still tender and powerless by sacrifice to the false Gods, and brings up wayward nature in the lap of unbelief”.

In yet stronger terms does Giovanni Dominici express himself in a writing which has but recently been brought to light, and which is dedicated in courteous language to the celebrated Chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutato. Its primary object was to warn him against being seduced by the charms of the false Renaissance; but at the same time, it aimed at protecting youth in general from the questionable elements contained in the classic literature, and at counteracting its perversion and misuse. The Dominican condemns those, who give themselves up with blind and deluded zeal to heathen learning, and are thus led to depreciate the Christian Religion. Looking at the subject from an ascetic point of view, he is at times blind to the ancient literature. In his horror at the new heathenism, which was rising before his eyes, he is even betrayed into the utterance of such paradoxes as, that it is more useful to a Christian to plough the ground than to study the heathen authors! Exaggerations of this kind provoked exaggerations from the opposite party, and in this way it became more and more difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to arrive at a clear understanding in regard to the proper use of the ancient classics.

The Franciscans, as well as the Dominicans, distinguished themselves by their opposition to the Humanists, or Poets, to use the name by which they were commonly called. It cannot be denied that most of these men were full of holy zeal for the interests of Christianity, and that their courageous efforts were of real advantage to the Church, at a time when many other dignitaries, from a spirit of worldliness, favoured the false Humanist tendencies. Still, it is much to be regretted that the majority of the opponents of the Poets went a great deal too far. Correctly to understand the position, we must bear in mind the furious attacks on the Religious Orders and their scholastic teaching by Poggio, Filelfo, and other elegant and well-known Humanist authors. The new movement had gained strength so fast, that the monks were left almost defenceless against the ribaldry of these men. Further, the alarming errors and excesses of the extreme admirers of antiquity justified the worst apprehensions for the future. Consequently, most of those, who withstood the false Renaissance, lost sight of the fact that these errors had their origin, not in the revival of classical studies, but in their abuse, and in the deplorable social, political, and ecclesiastical conditions of the times. Corrupt intellectual elements, struggling for complete emancipation, had gathered round the banner of the Renaissance, and they often led the great Humanist movement into crooked paths. Thus it came to pass, that the larger number of the monks, in their zeal, overlooked the distinction between the true and the false Renaissance, and made Humanism in general responsible for the excesses of the most extreme of its votaries. Against such attacks the Humanists could most justly appeal to the works of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, and other Fathers of the Church, which are full of quotations from the Poets and of classical reminiscences. The monks often waged war in a very unskilful manner, as, for instance, when they treated Valla’s attacks on Priscianus and the mediaeval grammarians as heretical.

The partial and short-sighted view, which condemned the whole Renaissance movement as dangerous to faith and morals, cannot be considered as that of the Church. At this time, as throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, she showed herself to be the Patroness of all wholesome intellectual progress, the Protectress of all true culture and civilization. She accorded the greatest possible liberty to the adherents of the Renaissance, a liberty which can hardly be comprehended by an age, which has lost the unity of the Faith. Once only in the period of which we are about to treat, did the Head of the Church directly attack the false Renaissance, and this censure was called forth by a shameless eulogy of heathen vices, which the Pope, as the chief guardian of morals, could not pass over in silence.

Otherwise the Church gave liberal encouragement to Humanist studies, fully endorsing the beautiful words of Clement of Alexandria, that the learning of the heathens, as far as it contains good, is not to be considered heathen, but a gift of God. And, indeed, the speedy degeneracy of the Renaissance in Italy was not the fault of the ancient literature, but rather of its abuse. That the many irreconcilable enemies of the Renaissance, who are to be found in the Religious Orders, are not the true representatives of the Church, is evident from the fact that the greater number of the Popes adopted a very different attitude towards the new movement.

The friendly relations which, existed between the Popes and the two founders of the Renaissance literature, Petrarch and Boccaccio, have already been mentioned; these relations were not impaired by the passionate language, used by these two great writers in denouncing the corruptions which had made their way into ecclesiastical affairs during the Avignon period. No less than five times was Petrarch invited to fill the office of Apostolic Secretary, but the poet could not make up his mind to undertake the charge, fearing that it would compel him to give up literature, his special vocation. But he gladly employed himself, at the desire of the learned Pope Clement VI, in the collection of early manuscripts of Cicero's works for the Papal Library. When the tidings of the death of Petrarch, whom he had once invited to Avignon by an autograph letter, reached Pope Gregory XI, he commissioned Guillaume de Noellet, Cardinal Vicar of the Church in Italy, to make diligent inquiries after his writings and to have good copies made for him, especially of the Africa, the Eclogues, Epistles, Invectives, and the beautiful work, On the Solitary Life.

Gregory XI, whom a modern writer has justly characterized as the best of the Avignon Popes, showed a notable interest in the half-forgotten heritage from the ancient world. When he heard that a copy of Pompeius Trogus had been discovered at Vercelli, he at once sent a letter to the Bishop of that city, desiring him immediately to look after this book and to have it conveyed to the Papal Court by a trusty messenger. A few days later the same Pope charged a Canon of Paris to make researches in the Sorbonne Library regarding several works of Cicero's, to have them transcribed as soon as possible by competent persons and to send the copies to him at Avignon. It might, at first sight, have seemed likely that the storms which burst over the Papacy after the death of Gregory XI would have deterred the Popes from showing favour to the Renaissance, which was now asserting its power in the realm of literature, and yet it was actually at this very period that a great number of the Humanists found admission into the Roman Court.

A closer study of this time, in connection with which the previous years of the residence of the Popes at Avignon must also be considered, will bring to light the causes of the gradual and, in some respects, hazardous influx of Humanism into the Papal Court. A review, of the History of the Popes from the beginning of the Exile to Avignon until the end of the great Schism seems all the more necessary, as without an intimate acquaintance with this period of peril to the Papacy, the latter course of events cannot be understood.

In the progress of the following work we shall show that the Renaissance gradually took root in Rome under Martin V and Eugenius IV; that Albergati, Cesarini, and Capranica, the most distinguished among the wearers of the purple in the fifteenth century, encouraged Humanism in its best tendencies; that the sojourn of Eugenius IV in Florence, and the General Council held there, produced marked effects in the same direction; until at last, in the person of Nicholas V, a man mounted the Throne of St. Peter, who, full of confidence in the power of Christian Science, ventured to put himself at the head of this great intellectual movement. This circumstance was the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Papacy, as well as in that of science and art —an epoch which reached its climax in the reigns of Julius II and Leo X.

It has often been said that the Renaissance itself ascended the Papal Throne with Nicholas V, yet it must not be forgotten that this great Pontiff was throughout on the side of the genuine and Christian Renaissance. The founder of the Vatican Library, like Fra Angelico whom he employed to paint his study in that Palace, knew how to reconcile his admiration for the intellectual treasures of the past with the claims of the Christian religion: he could honour both Cicero and St. Augustine, and could appreciate the grandeur and beauty of heathen antiquity without being thereby led to forget Christianity.

The leading idea of Nicholas V was to make, the Capital of Christendom the Capital also of classical literature and the centre of science and art. The realization of this noble project was, however, attended with many difficulties and great dangers. If Nicholas V overlooked or underestimated the perils which threatened ecclesiastical interests from the side of the heathen and revolutionary Renaissance, this is the only error that can be laid to his charge. His aim was essentially lofty and noble and worthy of the Papacy. The fearlessness of this large-hearted man, in face of the dangers of the movement—“a fearlessness which has in it something imposing”—strikes us all the more forcibly, when we consider the power and influence which the Renaissance had at this time attained in Italy. The attempt to assume its guidance was a great deed, and one worthy of the successor of the Gregories and Innocents.

To make the promotion of the Renaissance by the Holy See a matter of indiscriminate reproach, betrays total ignorance of the subject. For, deep and widespread as was the intellectual movement, excited by the resuscitation of the antique, it involved no serious danger to Christian civilization, but rather was an occasion of new activity and energy, as long as the unity and purity of the Christian faith were maintained unimpaired under the authority of the Church and her head. If in later days, in consequence of the undue influence obtained by the heathen Renaissance, a very different development ensued; if the intellectual wealth, won by the revived study of the past, was turned to evil purposes, Nicholas V, whose motives were of the highest and purest, cannot be held responsible. On the contrary, it is the glory of the Papacy that, even in regard, to the great Renaissance movement, it manifested that magnanimous and all-embracing comprehensiveness which is a portion of its inheritance. As long as dogma was untouched, Nicholas V and his like-minded successors allowed the movement the most ample scope; the founder of the Vatican Library had no foreboding of the mischief which the satire of the Humanists was preparing. The whole tenor of his pure life testifies that his words proceeded from an upright heart, when he earnestly exhorted the Cardinals assembled around his death-bed to follow the path he had chosen in labouring for the welfare of the Church —the Bark of Peter, which, by the wonderful guidance of God, has ever been delivered out of all storms.