BOOK IX. 

FROM THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE TO THE END OF THE FIFTH COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN, A.D. 1418-1517.

CHAPTER II.

EUGENIUS IV.—THE COUNCILS OF BASEL AND FLORENCE. A.D. 1431-1447.

 

IMMEDIATELY after the death of Martin, the feeling of the cardinals towards him, which had been suppressed during his lifetime, began to show itself in a significant form. The first day of the conclave, which met in the church of St. Mary sopra Minerva, was spent in drawing up certain terms to which the future pope was to bind himself by oath, and which he was to confirm by a special bull after his election. By this compact every cardinal promised, in case of his being chosen pope, to reform the court in head and members, and to undertake such reformation whenever he should be required by the cardinals; not to remove the seat of the papacy from Rome, except with the consent of the cardinals; to celebrate a general council at the place and time which the cardinals should recommend, and in it to reform the whole church, including the monastic and military orders, in faith, life, and morals; to make no cardinals except according to the rules of the council of Constance, unless a majority of the college should judge otherwise; to admit freely the advice of the cardinals, to respect their privileges, to preserve the rights of the Roman church, and in his letters to name those cardinals who had counselled him, as had been the practice until the time of Boniface VIII.

Although under the late pope the Italians had regained their old predominance in the college—which now, in defiance of the reforms of Constance, consisted of eleven or twelve Italian cardinals, and only eight of all other nations—a French and a Spanish bishop were put forward as the most likely to be chosen; but, by one of those unexpected turns which have often decided the result of elections to the papacy, the choice fell on Gabriel Condolmieri, cardinal of St. Clement, who took the name of Eugenius IV. The new pope was a Venetian, a nephew of Gregory XII, and had attained the age of forty-eight. He had distinguished himself in early life by giving at once twenty thousand ducats to the poor, and by entering, with his cousin Antony Corario, a society of canons which they founded under the title of St. George in alga, on one of the islands of Venice. He had been advanced to the dignity of cardinal by his uncle, and under the late pope had been employed as legate for the reduction of Bologna. Both his virtues and his faults were chiefly those of a monk. In his own person he was abstinent and severe, although his household expenses were equal to the dignity of his station; he loved and encouraged men of letters, although his own learning was but moderate; he was obstinate, narrow-minded, possessed by an ambition which refused to consider the limits of his power, little scrupulous in the pursuit of his objects, open to flattery, filled with a high idea of the papal greatness, and implacably hostile to all deviation from the established doctrines of the church. Under him the Romans found reason to look back with regret on the prosperous government of Martin; and to his mistaken policy are chiefly to be ascribed the troubles by which the church was agitated throughout his pontificate.

Eugenius had been assisted by the influence of the Orsini, and showed himself hostile to the great rival family of which his predecessor had been a member. He demanded from Martin’s nephews, cardinal Prosper Colonna, the prince of Salerno, and the count of Celano, the treasures which the pope had collected for a religious war against the Turks, and he refused to be content when they gave up a part as if it had been the whole. The prince of Salerno surrendered the castle of St. Angelo; but Eugenius was still unsatisfied, and demanded the restoration of other places which Martin had put into the hands of his kindred. The Colonnas, with their allies, gathered a force in the Campagna, assaulted Rome, and penetrated into the heart of the city, where Stephen Colonna fortified himself in his palace. But they did not find the expected support among the people. Although for more than a month the prince of Salerno held possession of the Appian gate, they were compelled to retire, and the pope, in alliance with the Orsini, took from them all the strong places which they held in Umbria and the ecclesiastical states. Martin’s treasurer was tortured, in the hope of drawing from him information as to concealed wealth. A bull was issued, setting forth the offences of the Colonnas, and ordering that all their possessions should be confiscated; that their houses should be pulled down, and should never be rebuilt; that their arms should be erased from buildings, and that they should for ever be incapable of ecclesiastical or secular office : and this was carried into effect by the destruction of the late pope’s palace, and of all monuments of his pontificate. Two hundred Romans of the Colonna party, who had been employed in office under Martin, were put to death on various charges. Joanna of Naples deprived the prince of Salerno of his principality, which was held under the Neapolitan crown; and at length, with aid from Naples, Florence, and Venice, Eugenius reduced the Colonnas to an unreserved submission, and to a surrender of all their fortresses, with so much of pope Martin’s wealth as they had until then retained.

The time had now arrived for the meeting of the general council at Basel; but, although men looked anxiously to an assembly which was expected to determine whether the papal authority should continue in the fullness which it had attained, or should be reduced within more reasonable bounds, the gathering of the members was slow and gradual. The opening had been announced for the month of March, but the abbot of Vezelay was the only one who had then appeared, and two months later he had been joined by hardly any others, except some representatives of the university of Paris. It seemed as if the council of Basel might have no greater result than that of Siena. The late pope, who disliked and dreaded such meetings, had shown no alacrity to forward it; but he had authorized cardinal Julian Cesarini to preside, and the commission was renewed by Eugenius, who at the same time charged the cardinal to attend to the affairs of Bohemia if he did not find the fathers assembled at Basel. But Julian was more deeply interested in Bohemia than in the council. He begged that he might be excused from presiding at Basel; he wrote to stir up princes, prelates, and others to the holy war; and, while the members of the council were slowly arriving, he zealously preached the Bohemian crusade along the course of the Rhine, and even as far as Liege and Flanders. In the meanwhile he sent two Dominicans—John of Palomar, auditor of the sacred palace, and John of Ragusa, procurator-general of the order, to act as his deputies at Basel, and to entreat that the assembled fathers would await the issue of affairs in Bohemia; and by these commissioners the council was opened on the 23rd of July. At the same time Julian and others were active in endeavouring by urgent letters to procure a fuller attendance at Basel.

The danger with which the Bohemians were again threatened became, as in former instances, the means of uniting their factions. All were animated by a common zeal to withstand the invaders of their native land. Those who were engaged in expeditions into the neighbouring countries were recalled, and Procopius the Great was for a time invested with an almost absolute authority.

A diet was held at Eger in May, under the presidency of Sigismund. Some representatives of the Bohemians appeared, and endeavoured by negotiation to avert the threatened crusade; but the emperor was persuaded by John of Ragusa and others, who had been sent to him by cardinal Julian, to refuse all further treaty with them, unless on condition that they should submit in all their opinions to the determination of the church and the general council. To their request that they might be heard at Basel, Sigismund replied that this would interfere with the council’s freedom; whereupon the Bohemians put forth an indignant letter, addressed to kings, princes, and Christians of all classes, stating the four articles of Prague as the points on which they insisted, protesting against the emperor’s behaviour to them, denouncing the clergy severely, and declaring themselves determined, with the help of the Lord of hosts, to repel any invasion of their country.

Before resorting to arms cardinal Julian addressed to the Bohemians a letter, in which he declared himself earnestly desirous of their good, and even ready to give his life for them. He denies that the crusading force is intended for the destruction of their country; he sets forth the outrages and excesses which the Bohemians had committed in their own land and in those around it, and tells them that the crusaders are not to be regarded as aggressors, but as having taken arms for the deliverance of the pious, for their defence against the lovers of confusion and anarchy. They offer peace, and if war should follow, the guilt of it will lie on the other party. As to the great mass of the Bohemians, he expresses confidence that they are not in favour of disorder. He ridicules the notion that a few uneducated men—soldiers, artisans, peasants, and the like—could be wiser than the church, or than her multitude of trained preachers, both in past generations and now. The church has received from Christ the promise of the Holy Spirit to lead her into all truth, to protect her and to abide with her for ever; she is ready to receive the Bohemians, like the repentant prodigal; to bring forth the new robe, to kill the fatted calf, to call together the friends and neighbours that they may rejoice over the recovery of the lost.

The Bohemians rejoined in a letter which was mostly, if not wholly, the work of the “great” Procopius. In this letter the articles of Prague are set forth as principles founded on Scripture and held by the ancient church. To the restoration of these, which had in later ages been suppressed by a corrupt clergy, the Bohemians had devoted themselves for years, and for this cause they had borne labours, insults, expenses, and even the danger of their lives. They profess to refer all questions to Scripture, and to the ancient doctors who are agreeable to Scripture; they protest against force as a means of conversion, and tell the cardinal that St. Peter’s manner of visiting Cornelius might have supplied him with an example of a better method.

The crusading army, which ought to have been ready at midsummer, was, as in former expeditions, behind its time. The enterprise was inaugurated with great solemnity in the church of St. Sebald, at Nuremberg; where the emperor, kneeling before the altar, presented his sword to the legate, by whom it was delivered, together with the consecrated banner of the empire, to Frederick, elector of Brandenburg, who had been appointed to the chief command. The whole force is estimated at from 90,000 to 130,000 men, and on the 1st of August it entered Bohemia. But the same ignominious fate which had attended the earlier armaments of the same kind was now more signally repeated. Many of the invaders, scared by the mere sight of the Hussite manner of fighting, were seized with panic and fled at the approach of the Bohemians; and in an engagement near Tauss, the legate, who had ascended a hill in order to see the combat, was compelled to witness the utter rout of his army. By extraordinary efforts he succeeded in rallying a few of them as they were about to plunge into a forest; but it was only that they might be cut to pieces or driven back by the advancing enemy. The troops fled in utter confusion, hurrying the cardinal along with them; while the Hussites pressed on them, and slew great numbers without resistance. The spoil taken was very great; and the Hussites were especially elated by the capture of the legate’s silver crucifix, of his bell, the ensigns of his dignity as cardinal, and the papal bull which had given authority for the crusade. Julian himself was in danger from the fury of some of the crusaders, who threw on him the blame of the disaster; and he was obliged for safety to disguise himself as a common soldier in the train of the bishop of Wurzburg. The other divisions of the great crusading host fell utterly to pieces.

The Hussites had now attained their greatest height of success and reputation. For twelve years they had not only held their ground against the united efforts of Latin Christendom, but had carried the terror of their arms far into the countries which bordered on Bohemia. Their enthusiastic courage, directed by the genius of Ziska and Procopius, had defeated the most famous generals of the age; and vast armies, collected under the highest religious sanction from almost every nation which acknowledged the spiritual authority of Rome, had fled before them without awaiting their onset. And among the multitudes who openly or secretly rejected that authority, sympathy was widely felt with them. Thus we meet with casual mention of a community (probably Waldensian) among the mountains of Dauphiny which is said to have shared their opinions, and to have raised a tribute for their aid. But from the time of their greatest triumph disunion began to work its mischiefs. The several parties, being no longer banded together against a common enemy, fell asunder, and sought for foreign alliances in order to subdue each other. And this was the effect rather of political than of religious differences. The democratic spirit, which had been strongly developed in connexion with the reforming doctrines—a spirit which had been fostered by John of Selau and by Ziska, and had displayed itself in the disregard of family influence, and of everything but personal merit, in the choice of generals and officers—alienated the higher nobility, and tended to throw them back into the arms of the Roman church.

Cardinal Cesarini, on making his escape from the country which he had so confidently entered, repaired to the emperor at Nuremberg, and complained to him loudly of the German princes as wanting in spirit and enterprise. The legate had now been convinced by experience that negotiation was more hopeful than force as a means of reducing the Hussites; and his observations in Germany had taught him that the cause of the church was lost in that country unless a reform were carried out. He looked to the general council as the instrument of such a reform, and as the best remaining hope of a solution of the Bohemian difficulties; and to it he referred the emperor and the German nobles, who, in indignation at the late behaviour of their princes, urged the undertaking of a new crusade, in which the princes should not be admitted to share, and the leader should be one chosen by themselves for his capacity and experience.

On the ninth of September the legate arrived at Basel, where he was received with great solemnity, but found that only three bishops and seven abbots were as yet assembled. In order that the council might become, more worthy of its pretensions, he addressed many letters to princes, bishops, and others, urging them to send representatives. And agreeably to the resolution of a congregation of the council, he wrote in its name to the Bohemians, professing great affection for them, exhorting them to peace and unity, and inviting them, with a view to these objects, to appear at Basel, with an assurance that they should have unrestrained liberty of speech, and a full safe-conduct for their stay as well as for their journeys. This letter was sent by the council to the emperor, and by him was forwarded to Bohemia.

To Eugenius the idea of inviting to a free conference those who had been condemned as heretics at the councils of Constance and Siena, and who had since appeared in arms against the church, was altogether intolerable; and on the 12th of November he wrote to the legate, desiring him to break up the council of Basel, and to announce another general council, which was to meet at Bologna after an interval of a year and a half. But Cesarini, unwilling that the schemes on which he had set his heart should be ruined through the pope’s mistaken action, ventured, instead of obeying, to send a canon of Besançon to report the state of affairs to Eugenius, and addressed to him a long and forcible letter of remonstrance.

After having entreated that the critical position of affairs may excuse his freedom, the legate relates the recent events in Bohemia, so far as he had been concerned in them. He expresses his belief that a conference between the council and some representatives of the Bohemians would be the most hopeful expedient for the pacification of Bohemia; and that such a council is urgently needed as a means of reformation. He speaks of his late experience as having shown him the deep disgust which had been produced in the minds of the German laity by the dissoluteness and disorders of the clergy; so that, unless these would reform themselves, it seemed likely that the laity would attack them in the manner of the Hussites; nay, unless these evils were remedied, the extinction of the Hussite heresy would probably be followed by the rise of some other. If the council should be dissolved, it would appear as if the church were afraid to meet the Hussites, who had been invited to it—as if the clergy were incorrigible, and were mocking God and man; the pope will risk the discredit of his name and incur dangers to his soul. A dissolution would involve political difficulties, which would surely redound to the disadvantage of the clergy. For himself, the legate is resolved to vindicate his honour by placing himself in the hands of the secular nobles. The apprehensions of danger to the pope’s power, whether spiritual or temporal, are chimerical; nor is any danger to his temporal power to be put in comparison with the peril to souls. The temper of the assembled fathers is alarming, and suggests the likelihood of a schism if the dissolution be carried through. The pretence of difficulty of access to Basel on account of a war between the dukes of Burgundy and Austria is vain; inasmuch as a truce has been concluded between these princes. The hope of gaining the Greeks (on which the pope had insisted) is no sufficient reason for risking the loss of Germany. The legate expresses his willingness to be superseded in his office, but earnestly begs that his engagements may be kept, and that the council may be continued—that the pope, as he had acted on insufficient knowledge, would now, after fuller information, revert to the original design.

Without waiting for the papal sanction, the council held its first session on the 14th of December, when mass was said by Philibert, bishop of Coutances. The subjects for discussion were defined as being three—the extinction of heresy; the restoration of peace and unity among Christians; and the reformation of the church. The system of voting by nations, which had been established at Constance, was now set aside,—partly, it would seem, on account of the jealousies which had there arisen between the Spaniards and the English, and partly because the separation of the cardinals, as a body distinct from the nations, had rendered them eager for the pope’s authority rather than for the general good of the church. Instead of this arrangement, the council was divided into four “deputations,” each composed of members belonging to all degrees of the hierarchy, from patriarchs and cardinals down to monks and secular clergy. These deputations were severally charged with the consideration of— (1) General business; (2) Reformation; (3) The Faith; and (4) Peace. They met thrice a-week, and no subject could be proposed in a general congregation until after it had been discussed in the deputations.

The council was increased considerably in numbers; but of prelates there were comparatively few, nor did the representatives of universities form so important an element as at Constance. Italy had sent but a small number of members; England had as yet sent none. The mass of the council was drawn from the two nations which were nearest to Basel: the French and the Germans.

Eugenius, alarmed by the opening of communications with the Bohemians, issued, on the 18th of December, and on the 12th of February in the following year, fresh documents for the dissolution of the council, alleging, as before, the difficulties of access to Basel on account of the war between Austria and Burgundy, the state of his own health, which must prevent his attendance, the smallness of the numbers assembled, and the expiration of the seven years which had been fixed as a term at the council of Siena; and again he announced another council, to be held at Bologna. But the council, remembering that the meeting at Siena had been rendered ineffectual through the late pope’s contrivances, and inferring from the proceedings of Martin and of Eugenius that the papacy was hostile to such assemblies, resolved to continue its sessions. On the 5th of June, Cesarini addressed a second letter of remonstrance to the pope. He reports the hopeful state of his negotiations with the Bohemians, who had agreed to send deputies to Basel. He dwells on the immeasurable superiority of spiritual over temporal interests. He speaks of the growing numbers and influence of the council. He rests its legitimacy on the same foundation with the papacies of Martin and Eugenius—the general council of Constance. He exposes the futility of the pretence as to the expiration of the appointed seven years from the time of the last council. He represents the views of persons who deny that the pope had power to dissolve a council, in contradiction to the decree of Constance, and he intimates that he himself agrees in that opinion.

But although the legate expressed himself thus plainly, he thought it well, out of regard for the papal authority, to resign the presidency of the council, to which Philibert, bishop of Coutances, was elected in his room and in a synodal letter, addressed to all faithful Christians, the assembled fathers declared their resolution to remain at Basel until the purposes of their meeting should be accomplished.

About this time Sigismund suddenly announced an intention of going to Rome for the purpose of receiving the imperial crown. It would seem that the difficulties, disappointments, and reverses which he had experienced, both in his secular and in his ecclesiastical policy, had suggested the idea of endeavouring by this means to render his authority more venerable in the eyes of men; and perhaps he may have thought more especially that in the general council a crowned emperor would have greater influence than a king of the Romans. But circumstances were greatly changed from the times when earlier emperors had repaired to Rome for coronation. Italy, which had formerly been regarded by the imperialist lawyers as the special domain of the crown, was no longer subject to it except in name; and the necessities by which Sigismund had been cramped throughout his life—necessities chiefly caused by the alienations and other improvident expenses of his predecessors—prevented his appearing with such a force as might have overawed the princes and the republics of Italy. At Milan, where he had been led to expect from the duke, Philip Mary Visconti, not only a welcome, but supplies of money and a force sufficient to make his authority respected by the Italians, he found himself treated with outward ceremony indeed, but with mortifying coolness and distrust. The duke absented himself from the solemnity of his receiving the iron crown, and altogether avoided a meeting with him. Eugenius, fearing that the title of emperor would render Sigismund more powerful as against the papacy, deferred July the Roman coronation under one pretext after another, and for ten months Sigismund fretted in impotent expectation at Siena, where the cost of his maintenance pressed heavily on the citizens. At length he was allowed to go on to Rome, after having sworn by his ambassadors that he would never forsake the interest of Eugenius; and on Whitsunday, 1433, he received the imperial crown in St. Peter’s from the hands of the pope. But there was little of splendour in the ceremony, and, as Sigismund was suffering from gout, the pope was obliged to consent that his mule should be led only three steps by the emperor—a symbol rather than a performance of the traditional homage of Constantine.

After a short stay at Rome, Sigismund set off for his northern dominions, where, in the meanwhile, his subjects had been tending to a state of anarchy. On the 11th of October he reached Basel. He had throughout been earnest for the council, which, after the failure of the crusade, he had regarded as the only means of pacifying Bohemia; he had written to assure it of his support; he had urged on the pope, both by letters and by ambassadors, the expediency of allowing it to continue; and he had requested all Christian princes to aid it by their influence. An assembly of the French clergy at Bourges, under Charles VII, had also taken up the cause of the council, and had petitioned the king to send an embassy to the pope, in order to procure his consent to its continuance. Sigismund, as we have seen, had forwarded the invitation of the council to the Bohemians in October 143i, and he had exerted himself to procure their appearance by deputies at Basel. But much of the distrust caused by the fate of Hus still remained; and, while the Calixtines and even the Orphans were willing to negotiate, the Taborites declared that it would be a folly to submit to their enemies as judges. The opinions of this party were set forth in a letter addressed to the council at Martinmas 1431, and supposed to be chiefly the work of Procopius. The letter dwells on the corruptions of the ecclesiastical system—the faults of the clergy, the mischievous effects of wealth on them, their pomp, luxury, incontinence, and rapacity; on the use of lying legends, on the prohibition of Holy Scripture, on the abuses of private mass and of confession, on the breach of the Saviour’s commands as to administration of the Eucharist in both kinds, as to the persecution of the reformers, and other such matters. To this the council replied on the 28th of December; and it continued its attempts to conciliate the Bohemians. At length, after conferences at Eger between representatives of the two parties, it was agreed that the Bohemians should send deputies to Basel. One of them had bluntly said, “Lo, you have laws which allow you to break all promises and oaths; what security then can you give us’”. The safe-conduct was therefore elaborately drawn up, so as to allow no repetition of the treachery to which Hus had fallen a victim, and it included permission for the Bohemians to hold their services in their own fashion within their lodgings at Basel. The pope at last gave a qualified assent to the attempt which the council desired to make at reconciliation.

On the 4th of January 1433, Bohemian deputies, thirty in number, arrived at Basel, where their foreign dress, with the wild and fierce looks of some among them, produced a great excitement. Procopius the Great was regarded with peculiar interest and awe for his combined character of priest and general—as the skilful and terrible commander before whom so many thousands had fallen. The strangers were received with much respect by the council and by the magistrates of the city; and notwithstanding the utter unlikeness of the men, a friendly relation was speedily established between Cesarini and Procopius, who was often a welcome guest at the legate’s table.

On the Epiphany, the various sections of the Bohemians celebrated their religious services, and the curious spectators who were admitted to witness those of the Taborites and Orphans were astonished at the absence of an altar (for which a table covered with a towel was the substitute), of special vestments, and of the usual ceremonies. For some days there was so much curiosity as to these services, that the legate thought of forbidding all resort to them; but the interest in them declined, when their novelty had passed away.

On the 10th of January, the deputies were formally received by the council, when Cesarini, who had resumed the presidency, addressed them in an eloquent speech which lasted two hours, and by the pathos with which, in the name of the mother church, he entreated them to unity, drew tears from the eyes of many on both sides. Rokyczana, who for some years had been regarded as the leader of the Calixtines, replied by expressing thanks for the kindness with which he and his companions had been received, and by requesting an opportunity of setting forth their opinions.

On the 16th of January the discussion began. The Bohemians had agreed to insist upon four points, which were substantially the same as the four articles of Prague; and when these were stated, some members of the council expressed their surprise that the differences which had produced so much agitation were not more considerable.

The disputation which followed, between four champions on each side, was of enormous length—some of the speeches extending to eight or nine days, and the whole occupying not less than fifty days. For the Bohemians, who spoke first, appeared Rokyczana, Procopius, a Taborite bishop named Nicolas, and Peter Payne, who took up time by relating the troubles which he had undergone in his own country, and was frequently contradicted by English members of the council. On the part of the council the argument was begun by John Stojkovic, of Ragusa, the Dominican already mentioned, who spoke from the 1st to the 11th of February, and was followed by Giles Carlier, dean of Cambray, Henry Kalteisen, a Dominican and inquisitor of Mainz, and John of Palomar. Rokyczana then extorted the right of replying to John of Ragusa, and discoursed from the 2nd to the 10th of March, with the exception of two days. John of Ragusa wished once more to rejoin, and his opponent did not object to this; but the council had heard enough, and at last the debate came to an end. The parties had throughout had different designs; for the Bohemians hoped that their articles might be accepted and generally enforced, while the council had no thought of any further concession than possibly that of allowing the Bohemians to hold their peculiarities by way of indulgence and exception.

In the course of these discussions, Rokyczana excited much admiration by his eloquence, and by a readiness of wit which often enlivened the more serious arguments. Procopius, although he showed much knowledge of Scripture, excited frequent laughter by the roughness of his manner. Thus, when the legate mentioned that some Hussites were reported to have ascribed the origin of the mendicant orders to the devil, Procopius started up and exclaimed that this was quite true; “for,” said he, “if neither the patriarchs nor Moses, our Lord nor his apostles, instituted the mendicants, what can they be but the work of the devil and of darkness?” The enormous length at which John of Ragusa spoke, and his frequent divergences into irrelevant subjects, provoked (as he himself candidly informs us) complaints on the parts of the Bohemians. He was also charged by Rokyczana with unfairness in his quotations; although against this charge he defends himself. But the chief offence which John gave was by using the word heretic sixteen times within a few minutes. The Bohemians took this as an insult to themselves. Procopius, with furious contortions of his face, and his eyes suddenly bloodshot, exclaimed that it was a violation of the safe-conduct; that he and his companions would not have come to Basel if they had expected to be branded as heretics. It was in vain that the legate attempted to restore peace. The Bohemians absented themselves during the remainder of John’s discourse; and the matter was carried further after the meeting had broken up. John disavowed, even with imprecations, any intention of offending the Bohemians, and his apologies were admitted; but Procopius still refused to meet him at the legate’s table.

The great debate was followed up by the appointment of committees, in which the discussion of the Bohemian differences was continued; and it was agreed that the council should send envoys into Bohemia. After a solemn leave-taking, therefore, on the 13th of April (Monday after Easter), the Bohemian deputies set out homewards on the following day, with Philibert of Coutances, the bishop of Augsburg, Palomar, Carlier, an English archdeacon, named Alexander, and some others, as representatives of the council. These representatives were secretly instructed to work on the differences which existed between the Bohemian parties; and they found the task easy. They drew into their interest Meinhard of Neuhaus, a powerful baron, who from that time was the leader of the Bohemian catholics, and entered into an agreement with other nobles to rescue the management of public affairs from the hands of the democratic and tyrannical faction, whose interests were all on the side of war.

The proposals of the council were embodied in four articles, which afterwards became known by the name of Compactata, and, after much discussion and some modifications, were agreed on as terms of peace on the 30th of November :—

(1.) The clergy were allowed to administer the Eucharist in both kinds to such adults as should desire it; but always with the explanation that under each kind is the Saviour whole and perfect.

(2.) The punishment of sins is declared to belong, not to private persons, but to those who are in authority—clergy over clergy, and laymen over laity; and regard must always be had to right and justice.

(3.) As to the demand for free preaching, it is said that preachers must be authorized by their superiors, and that the power of the bishops must be regarded.

(4.) The church may possess lands and temporal property, and may have private and civil lordship over them. The clergy are bound to administer its property faithfully, and others may not invade or detain such property.

These terms were granted on condition that in all other points the Bohemians should conform to the church as to faith and ceremonies. But although the more moderate among them were willing to agree to this, the Taborites continued to hold out. The discords between the various parties became more open and more violent; and on Sunday, the 30th of May 1434, they came to a head in a great battle at Lipan. The fight lasted all day, and even through the night until dawn. The slaughter was immense, and among those who fell were both the Great and the Lesser Procopius. No quarter was given; and it is said that, after the battle, Meinhard of Neuhaus—by proclaiming that the war was to be carried on until the neighbouring nations should be reduced, and that for this purpose the veteran followers of the Procopii were invited to serve with increased pay—induced a large number of Taborites and Orphans to enter some barns, as if by way of separating themselves from the less experienced soldiers; after which the doors were closed, the buildings were set on fire, and the victims of the treachery were burnt alive. By this defeat and its consequences, the Taborites and Orphans were greatly reduced in numbers, and their power was effectually broken.

 

NICOLAS OF CUSA.

 

During the emperor’s absence in Italy, the council of Basel had risen more and more decidedly into an attitude of opposition to the pope, and had manifested a desire, not only to triumph over Eugenius personally, but to humble the Roman see. In this course they were urged on by the influence of two cardinals—Branda and Capranica—who had special grievances against Eugenius, and had hurried to Basel in the hope of making the council an instrument of their vengeance. But still more important than these cardinals was Nicolas Chryfftz or Krebs, who, from his birthplace, Cüs, on the Moselle, is generally known by the name of Cusanus. Cusanus, born in 1401, had raised himself from a very humble station; he was now dean of St. Florin’s, at Coblentz, and enjoyed a great reputation for character, ability, and learning. In his treatise “Of Catholic Agreement”, sent forth during the sitting of the council, he strongly maintains the superiority of general councils over popes; he holds that the decrees of councils do not derive their force from the papal sanction; that the pope has no such superiority over other bishops as was supposed by the extreme papal party; that infallibility is not promised to one member of the church, but to the whole; that the council may depose a pope, not only for heresy but for other causes; that the church has the power freely to choose its own chief; and that, if the archbishop of Treves should be so chosen by the assembled church, he, rather than the bishop of Rome, would properly be the successor of St. Peter’s principality. Cusanus also, after investigating the alleged donation of Constantine and the story connected with it, declares them to be fabulous; he expresses an opinion that some of the decretals had been forged for the exaltation of the Roman see to the detriment of the church; he denies the truth of the belief that the empire had been transferred from the Greeks to the Germans by the authority of the pope; and, with regard to the convocation of councils, he is decidedly opposed to the papal pretensions.

The council, at its second session, renewed the decree of Constance, by which general councils were declared to have their power immediately from Christ, and to be superior to all other authority, even that of the pope.

At the third session, the fathers declared that the dissolution of the council by Eugenius was null; they prayed him to recall it, to appear at Basel within three months, if his health would allow, or otherwise to send representatives with full power; and they added that, if this should be neglected, they would, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, take care for the necessities of the church.

At the fourth session (besides writing to the Bohemians) they decreed that, if the papacy should become vacant during the continuance of the council, the succeeding pope must be chosen in the place where it was assembled. They forbade the promotion of any new cardinals during the existence of the council. They appointed a cardinal to be governor of Avignon and of the Venaissin, where a nephew of Eugenius had been unable to get himself acknowledged in that character and they ordered a special seal to be prepared, with the symbolical dove on one side and the title of the council on the other.

Eugenius had endeavoured to treat with the council by sending to Basel the archbishops of Rhodes and Taranto. These prelates, in speeches addressed to the assembly, dwelt on the necessity of harmony and cooperation with a view to the reconciliation both of the Greeks and of the Hussites; and on the superior convenience of Bologna as a place of meeting, whereas they represented Basel as at once exposed to the Hussites and inaccessible for both the Greeks and the pope. But the council, in a written reply, vindicated their course with regard to the pope, and their negotiations with the Bohemians. They combated the objections which had been made to the position of Basel, and prayed that the pope would not grieve the Holy Spirit by interfering with the important work which was before them as to the Greeks, the Hussites, and the reform of the church.

At the sixth session, the promoters of the case against the pope requested that, as having failed to appear, he should be pronounced contumacious and obstinate; he was thrice cited at the high altar of the cathedral, and thrice at the principal door; but, as might have been expected, no response was made.

At the eighth session, sixty days were granted “ex abundanti cautela” to the pope, within which time he was required to revoke the bull of dissolution, and entirely to join the council.

At the twelfth session, the term was extended by sixty days more, within which time any promotions or other exercises of patronage which the pope might make were to be null; and at the end of it, if he should not have obeyed the order, the cardinals and clergy were required to leave the Roman court within thirty days.. In the meanwhile Eugenius, on his part, was employed in preparing two bulls for the dissolution of the council, denying the validity of all its acts, and forbidding all obedience to it.

At the thirteenth session, it was again proposed that, inconsequence of his disregard of citations, the pope should be declared contumacious. But duke William of Bavaria, as the emperor’s representative, with the local magistrates and others, intervened, and obtained a further delay of thirty days, as Sigismund was expected at Basel. The emperor (who had been formally acknowledged by the council as its protector) had repeatedly written from Italy, for the purpose of moderating its proceedings, and had also endeavoured, although vainly, to persuade the pope to concession. On the day after his arrival, he presented to some deputies of the council a document which he had at length obtained from Eugenius, revoking the dissolution, and acknowledging the council. But this was not considered sufficient.

At the fourteenth session, where Sigismund appeared in state, ninety days more were granted to the pope, and three forms were proposed to be submitted to him, that he might choose which he would subscribe—all of them, however, containing a declaration that he annulled his bulls of dissolution, and acknowledged the beginning and continuation of the council as valid.

In the meantime the intrigues of the duke of Milan, the arms of the rival condottieri, Sforza, Piccinino, and Fortebraccio, and the hereditary factions of the Colonna and Orsini families, distracted Italy, and endangered the temporal dominions of the pope, who felt himself insecure even in his capital. By these distresses Eugenius was disposed to seek a reconciliation with the council. By a bull dated on the 15th of December 1433, and amended from that which the emperor had formerly produced, he revoked his bulls for dissolution and all sentences which he had uttered against the council; and this revocation was accepted by the council at its sixteenth session, on the 5th of February 1434. At the seventeenth session, where the emperor was arrayed in all the ensigns of his dignity, the pope’s legates were incorporated with the council, and admitted to the presidency of it, on swearing, in their own names, that a general council has its authority immediately from Christ, and that all men, including even the pope, are bound to obey it in matters relating to faith, to the extinction of schism, and to the reform of the church in head and members. By this adhesion Eugenius was supposed to sanction all the former proceedings of the council, as they did not fail afterwards to remind him.

Sigismund, although he had throughout been friendly to the council, found many things to offend him when brought into personal intercourse with it. He shrank from the idea of a new schism, and declared that he would die rather than allow the church to be divided. He was disappointed at finding that a body of pretensions so imposing was so scanty in numbers. He felt himself slighted by its entering into negotiations with other potentates without due reference to him for his approval; and especially he was disgusted by the dis­position which it showed to meddle with the politics of Germany, as in a case of an appeal from him by the duke of Lauenburg. On the 19th of May 1443, the emperor left Basel.

The troubles by which Eugenius had been induced to submit to the council were soon after increased by an insurrection of his own subjects. On the 29th of May, a multitude of the Romans, provoked by the contempt with which their complaints had been received by his nephew, cardinal Francis Condolmieri, rushed to the Capitol with shouts of “Liberty!” and demanded that Eugenius should make over the government to bannerets who should be chosen by the people. On his refusing to give up his nephew as a hostage, the cardinal was torn from his side. Eugenius himself was placed under the care of a guard at St. Mary’s in the Trastevere, but escaped in the disguise of a monk, with one companion, to the Tiber, where they found a boat ready to receive them. But the speed with which the boat was urged down the stream excited suspicion, and multitudes both on horseback and on foot made their way direct along the Ostian road to St. Paul’s, while the pope’s progress was delayed by the windings of the river. Showers of arrows, javelins, and stones were aimed at his boat from the bank, and attempts were made to pursue and to intercept it on the water. Eugenius, however, reached Ostia in safety, and thence, by way of Leghorn and Pisa, he made his way to Florence, where he was lodged in the monastery of Santa Maria Novella. Among the reforms which he undertook in the monastic system during his residence at Florence was a restoration of discipline in that convent, which he transferred to the Friars Observant of St. Dominic.

The council, after its reconciliation with Eugenius, had greatly increased in numbers; and for a time it devoted itself to questions of reform, with a diligence which has missed somewhat of its due estimation on account of the assembly’s later proceedings. Decrees were passed for entire freedom of elections in churches; against simony, expectancies, usurpations of patronage, reservations, annates, and many exactions by which the Roman court drained the wealth of western Christendom; against frivolous appeals, against the abuse of interdicts, the concubinage of the clergy, the burlesque festivals and other indecencies connected with the service of the church. Rules were laid down as to the election of popes, and as to their conduct in office. The pope was to make his profession with some additions to the form prescribed at Constance; and at every celebration of his anniversary, it was to be read over to him by a cardinal during the service of the mass. The number of cardinals was limited to twenty-four: they were to be taken from all Christian countries, and to be chosen with the consent of the existing cardinals. A very few of royal or princely families might be admitted, but the nephews of the pope were to be excluded from the college.

But it was natural that measures of reform which touched the privileges and the income of the papacy should excite alarm and jealousy in Eugenius. He sent envoys to beg that the decree against annates—a payment which he ventured to describe as of immemorial antiquity, and as sanctioned by the general council of Vienne—might be suspended, or that by some other means he might be enabled to support his dignity, and to bear the many charges to which he was liable; but, although his suit was strongly urged on the council, the answer was that no provision could be made for him until he should have submitted himself to its authority. On this point Cesarini separated himself from the other legates, by speaking and voting with the majority of the assembly. Eugenius vented his grievances against the council in letters and messages to kings and princes; among other things he complained that, with a view to meeting the costs of an expected mission from the Greek church, it had taken on itself to issue an indulgence resembling those which had been usual for crusades.

The Greeks had been invited into the west both by the council and by the pope, with a view to confer on the reunion of the churches; but as to the place of the conference it was impossible to come to any agreement. The pope was resolved that it should be south of the Alps, while the council, at a very stormy session, pronounced, by a majority of more than two-thirds, in favour of Basel, Avignon, or some town in Savoy. But at the same session the minority of the council, headed by the legates, passed a decree in recommendation of Florence, Udine, or some other safe place in the south; and while the decree of the majority was being published from the pulpit of the cathedral, one of the other party in a distant part of the building read out that of the minority, which, through the contrivance of the archbishop of Taranto, was fortified with the seal of the council (as the decree of the majority had also been), and was forwarded to the pope. Eugenius gave his sanction to the decision of his partisans, and on the 18th of September he issued a bull for transferring the council of Basel to Ferrara, although he allowed a stay of thirty days more at Basel for the purpose of conferring with the Hussites.

But before this his relations with the council had become such as to provoke a resumption of the proceedings against him. At the twenty-sixth session Eugenius was charged with many offences, and was summoned to appear, in person or by proxy, within sixty days. At the following session his promotions of cardinals were annulled; and, as it was reported that he intended to sell Avignon and the Venaissin, in order to pay for the expected visit of the Greeks, the council forbade this alienation of property belonging to the Roman see. At the twenty-eighth session his neglect of the citations was reported, and he was declared to be obstinately contumacious. A renewal of the schism appeared to be at hand, and Sigismund was labouring to avert such a calamity, when his efforts were cut short by death, at Znaym, in Hungary, in the beginning of December 1437.

The pope’s council opened at Ferrara on the 8th of January 1438; but from among the fathers of Basel the only defections to it were those of Cesarini, Nicolas of Cusa, and two others. Cesarini found it impossible to remain at Basel, as the council became more entirely antipapal, and seemed likely even to fix on himself as the head of a new schism. He had ceased to attend the sessions of the council since that at which the proceedings against Eugenius had been resumed; and in the beginning of 1438 he left Basel.

The council, however, held on its course, undeterred by the condemnations uttered against it by the pope and by the rival assembly, who declared the men of Basel to be excommunicate and deprived, and all their acts to be annulled. At the thirty-first session, it pronounced that the pope was suspended, and that his powers both in spiritual and in temporal things had devolved on itself; and it forbade all obedience to him. The next meeting pronounced the assembly at Ferrara to be a schismatical conventicle, and cited all its members to appear at Basel within thirty days. In these proceedings the leaders were Lewis Allemand, cardinal-archbishop of Arles (the only cardinal who still remained at Basel)—a man who combined in a rare degree eloquence, temper, firmness, and tact; and Nicolas de Tudesco, archbishop of Palermo (Panormitanus), the most famous canonist of the age.

In the vacancy of the empire it was natural that the rival ecclesiastical parties should endeavour to gain the favour of the German electors. With this view the archbishop of Palermo was sent on the part of the council to Frankfort, where he was confronted with representatives of the pope. The electors, however, declared themselves resolved to stand neutral for the time; and March 7, when Albert of Austria, a son-in-law of Sigismund, had been chosen as his successor, the neutrality was continued, notwithstanding the exertions of further missions from both sides. But in another way the council was able to draw encouragement both from Germany and from France. Charles of France refused to send representatives to Ferrara. In an assembly of the French estates, held at Bourges under the presidency of the king, the reforms of Basel were adopted, and were embodied in a document known as the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges; and at a great diet at Mainz, in March 1439, where envoys both from the pope and from the council appeared, the reforming decrees of Basel were accepted by the Germans, while those which related to the process against the pope were set aside.

The resolutions of these assemblies were evidently guided by a wish to secure the benefits of reform, and at the same time to avoid the danger of a new schism. But the council, misconceiving their effect, began to overestimate its strength, and to flatter itself with the hope that the French and the Germans would soon formally array themselves on its side. And thus it continued (as it had before done) to disregard the intercessions, the warnings, and even the threats, of princes and others who endeavoured to persuade it to moderation in its proceedings against the pope.

Bishops, in alarm at the headstrong course on which the council appeared to be resolved, for the most part stayed at home, or absented themselves from its meetings; but the members of lower rank went on without hesitation. In April 1439, the question was discussed whether Eugenius, in consequence of having disregarded the council’s citations, and of having made a second attempt to dissolve it, were a heretic. Some were for voting him so simply; some thought that his heresy was aggravated by relapse, while others were for acquitting him; but at length, after a stirring debate, the matter was compromised by the ingenious device of voting him a heretic prolapsed. A violent discussion took place on the question whether presbyters should have the right of voting. Many of the bishops, from a wish to gain the assistance of the other order as allies against the papacy, were disposed to allow this. But the archbishop of Palermo maintained that they had only a consultative voice; he spoke of the great body of the council in very contemptuous terms, and inveighed against the president, the cardinal of Arles, as wishing, with the assistance of such a rabble, and of two or three titular bishops, to do away with the rights of the prelacy. At the thirty-third session, on the 16th of May, the more moderate part of the council, backed by strong representations from the ambassadors of various powers, was able to obtain that, of eight articles which had been brought forward against Eugenius, three only, which bore on the relations of a pope and a council, should be affirmed, and that the others, which were of a personal nature, should be withdrawn.

The thirty-fourth session of the council, on the 25th of June, was fixed for the final act. As the attendance of bishops was expected to be scanty, the cardinal of Arles caused all the relics of noted sanctity which could be found in Basel to be collected, and, after having been carried in solemn procession about the streets, to be placed on the vacant seats; and such is said to have been the effect of this strange device, that, when the invocation of the Holy Spirit was pronounced, the whole assembly burst into tears. The number of mitred prelates was small; but the clergy of inferior dignity amounted to more than three hundred, and their de­meanour was marked by a gravity and a decorum which had not appeared in the late meetings. Eugenius was once more cited by two bishops; and, as he made no answer, the decree of the council was pronounced—declaring him to be deposed as notoriously, manifestly, and obstinately contumacious, a violator of the canons, guilty of scandal to the whole church, as simoniacal, perjured, incorrigibly schismatic and obstinately heretical, a dilapidator of the church’s rights and property, and unfit to administer his office. All faithful Christians were forbidden to adhere to him, and were discharged from all obligations to him. And after the delivery of this sentence, the council chanted a jubilant Te Deum.

A few days later, at a general congregation, the ambassadors of the emperor and of the French king, to the surprise of the council, expressed their concurrence in the acts of the late session, and made excuses for having absented themselves from it.

In the meantime the temporal affairs of Eugenius had been prosperous. Within a very few months after having expelled him, the Romans found that the government which they themselves had set up was more intolerable than that of the pope; that without him their city was a desert; and having put down the republican magistrates, they requested Eugenius to resume his authority. For the time he preferred to remain at Florence, although they entreated him to return in person; and he employed as his lieutenant John Vitelleschi, bishop of Recanati, whom, in reward of his military services, he afterwards raised to the dignities of cardinal-archbishop of Florence, and titular patriarch of Alexandria. But, notwithstanding these high spiritual preferments, Vitelleschi was little else than a mere condottiere—rough, ferocious, lustful, cruel, treacherous. In order to establish the pope’s authority by depressing the hostile family of Colonna, he laid the Campagna desolate, reduced Palestrina to a ruin more entire than that which had befallen it in earlier destructions, and compelled the inhabitants to seek a refuge elsewhere. Yet the Romans, over whom for five years he exercised a despotic power, willingly bore with his vices and his oppression in consideration of the blessings of peace and steady government, to which they had long been unaccustomed.

At length, however, Vitelleschi’s enemies, by representing him as guilty of ambitious designs for himself, succeeded in awakening the pope’s suspicions; and by orders from Florence the soldier-cardinal was treacherously arrested on the bridge of St. Angelo. In attempting to escape, he received severe wounds; and it is possible that his death, which took place in prison a fortnight later, may have been caused by these, although he himself suspected poison, and public opinion charged the crime on Eugenius. The patriarch’s body, half-naked, was exposed for a time to the insults of the populace in the church of St. Mary sopra Minerva; but it was afterwards removed for burial to Corneto; and the Romans, whose gratitude had outlasted his death, erected a statue to him as a new founder of their city. Eugenius afterwards disavowed all share in Vitelleschi’s death, on the ground that his orders had been misunderstood. Scarampo, who had been the agent in the arrest of the patriarch, succeeded him in his power, and carried on the administration with severity.

In 1443, after an absence of nine years, Eugenius himself returned to Rome. A late increase of taxation, and especially the imposition of a duty on wine, had called forth cries of “Death to the new taxes, and to those who invented them!”, and although these cries were not heard as the pope proceeded from the Flaminian Gate towards the Vatican, the silence of the streets gave token of the popular discontent. Eugenius, on being informed of this feeling, caused it to be announced that the taxes were repealed; and at once he was greeted from all sides by acclamations which accompanied him as far as his palace.

The council of Basel, at its next session after pronouncing the sentence on Eugenius, resolved to allow an interval of sixty days before proceeding to a new election. In the meanwhile a plague broke out in the town, and carried off many of the members, who are said to have professed in their last moments, while holding the holy Eucharist in their hands, their firm adherence to the cause of the council, and their conviction that, in order to salvation, it was necessary to abandon the deposed pope. The cardinal of Arles was urged to withdraw from Basel for a time, as the pestilence had shown itself among his household; it was represented to him that he ought to consult his safety for the sake of the interests which depended on his life; but he was resolved “to save the council at the peril of his life, rather than his life at the risk of the council.”

After a few weeks the violence of the plague diminished and those who had left Basel on account of it gradually returned. On the 17th of September was held a session, which is remarkable as having passed a decree in favour of the immaculate conception; although, as the council’s authority has been disallowed in the Roman communion, that doctrine was not established as necessary until more than four centuries later.

At the thirty-seventh session, it was resolved to form an electoral college by associating with the cardinal of Arles thirty-two other members of the council, to be chosen out of all the nations and from all classes—bishops, abbots, doctors of theology, canonists, and ordinary clergy. England, which had transferred itself to the rival council, was the only country unrepresented; but Thomas, abbot of Dundrennan, a Cistercian house in the Scottish diocese of Candida Casa, was one of three who were named by the council, and to whom the choice of the rest was entrusted. In order to an election, a majority of two-thirds was required. The arrangements for the conclave were carefully made, and, while the election was in suspense, holy relics were displayed, and solemn processions moved about the streets, in order to implore a successful issue.

On the first day seventeen candidates were brought forward : and on the sixth day the choice of the electors fell, by a majority which had increased in the successive divisions until it included all but seven, on Amadeus, ex-duke of Savoy. This prince, after having for thirty-eight years governed his state with a high reputation, had in 1434 made over the administration to his son, although he still retained a control over the younger duke; and, under the title of dean of St. Maurice, he had become the head of a brotherhood of aged knights, which he founded at Ripaille, on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva. The character of Amadeus, both as prince and as hermit, is highly extolled by Aeneas Sylvius; and, although it is probable that the discipline of Ripaille was of no very ascetic kind, the charges of luxury and voluptuousness which have been brought against the society appear to be exaggerations, unsupported by contemporary authority, and swollen by hatred of him as an antipope before they were eagerly turned to account by sceptical writers. There can be no doubt that the council was guided in its choice by a consideration of the duke’s powerful connexions, and of the private means which would enable him to support in some degree the papal dignity, although deprived of the territorial revenues and of the other resources which had been commonly attached to it; indeed, these recommendations had been impressed on the electors by the cardinal of Arles, who had also expressed a hope that the new pope might be able, by his power as a secular prince, to recover the possessions of the Roman see. And, although wonder was generally felt that a man of such eminent position should undertake the burden of a contested papacy, it was supposed by some, even in his own time, that his withdrawal from the government of his hereditary state, and his assumption of the character of a hermit, had been prompted by a desire of the doubtful spiritual dignity which he had now attained.

 

FELIX V

 

Amadeus, on receiving a report of his election from a deputation headed by the cardinal of Arles, professed, with tears in his eyes, that he was unwilling to leave his quiet life. But his reluctance, whether real or affected, was at length overcome. He was enthroned in the church of St. Maurice; and, after having gone through other customary formalities, he was crowned at Basel on the 23rd of July 1440. The ceremony was very splendid. The tiara, which was of great magnificence, was placed on the antipope’s head by the cardinal of Arles; four other cardinals, who had been promoted by Amadeus himself, assisted, and eight bishops officiated as proxies for cardinals who were absents The knightly hermits of Ripaille were present to do honour to their chief; but the most remarkable feature in the ceremony was the appearance of the new pope’s sons, the duke of Savoy and the count of Geneva, who stood on either side of him, and assisted him at the mass. Although he had stipulated that he should be allowed to retain his own name, and the beard which adorned him as a hermit, he had afterwards yielded to papal precedent in both respects, and styled himself Felix V.

It soon appeared, however, that the council could expect but little aid in the daring course on which it had ventured. It had already been deserted by many of its most important members; and, although it continued to proceed in disregard both of the violent censures which were denounced against it by Eugenius with his rival council, and of the visible decrease of its own authority, its supporters were limited to Savoy, Switzerland, queen Elizabeth of Hungary (widow of the emperor Albert), a few German princes and towns, a part of the Carthusian order, and the Franciscans of Germany, with some universities of Germany, France, and Poland. The duke of Milan, who had married a daughter of Felix, made overtures for an alliance, but the terms which he proposed were exorbitant, and nothing came of the negotiation. Alfonso of Aragon, who, after much politic hesitation, had given in his adhesion to the council, sided with it for a time in the hope of making good his claim to Naples through its influence . The countenance which the imperial and the French ambassadors had professed to give to the deposition of Eugenius was found to be fallacious. The emperor had written to the council, strongly reprobating the measure, and desiring them to refrain from any attempt to choose a successor; and among the Germans in general the deposition and the election were regarded as acts done in contempt of their own neutrality. The king of France, on receiving at Bourges a missive from the council, expressed disapproval of its late proceedings; he spoke of Felix by his secular title, and exhorted both him and the council to study the peace of the church. Yet he did not disown the council, nor adhere to the rival assembly of Ferrara. The popularity of the council was not increased in France by its imposing a tax of a fifth for five years, and a tenth for the following five years, on all ecclesiastical benefices which should become vacant; for in this way it was intended to provide Felix with an official income until he should recover the patrimony of the church.

 

FREDERICK III, EMPEROR

 

The emperor Albert died on the 5th of November 1439, and in his room was elected, as king of the Romans, his cousin Frederick, duke of Styria, a prince of dull and unenterprising character, whose reign extended to fifty-three years. Before his promotion Frederick had been favourable to the council, so that both the members of it and pope Felix had hopes of drawing him into their interest by the offer of the imperial crown. The question between the pope and the council was discussed at three German diets by representatives of the opposite parties. At the second of these diets, in 1441, the archbishop of Palermo exerted himself with all his powers to show that the council was still of full authority, and that it had been justified in all its measures. But Nicolas of Cusa asserted the cause of Eugenius with great force. Only seven bishops, he said, had voted for the deposition of the pope, whereas not less than twelve were requisite to depose a simple bishop. And he was able to allege the success of Eugenius in reconciling the Greeks and other orientals—a success which, however unsubstantial and transitory (as we shall see hereafter), told powerfully for the time as a token of the Divine favour. It was proposed that another general council should be summoned and in the meantime Germany was to persevere in its neutrality.

The council continued to decline in numbers and in authority. The members wasted much of their time in discreditable squabbles. At the forty-third session, where Felix presided, a decree was passed for celebrating the Visitation of the blessed Virgin (July 2)—a festival which had been instituted by Urban VI and confirmed by Boniface IX, but had never been sanctioned by the popes of the Avignon line. As a motive for this decree, it was said that the Virgin’s inter­cession was especially needed in the disunited condition of the church.

On the 11th of November, Frederick appeared at Basel. He was received by Felix (with whom he had before had an interview at Susa), and by nine of his cardinals; but, although he behaved with great respect to the antipope, his treatment of him was marked by an avowed reserve. Instead of the titles of Holiness and Beatitude, the bishop of Chiemsee, who spoke in the emperor’s name, was instructed to address Felix as Your Clemency and Your Benignity; and he explained that the emperor refrained from showing the usual marts of reverence, in order that he might preserve his neutrality, and so might be better fitted to act as a mediator and a peacemaker. To this Felix replied that he took all in good part, and he protested that he had not accepted the papacy from motives of ambition, but solely in the hope of comforting the church in her affliction.

Felix, under the plea of illness, withdrew from Basel to Lausanne, promising to return in the following spring; but he never fulfilled this promise, nor perhaps was he ever asked to fulfil it.

The council continued to sink, and was specially weakened by losing the support of Alfonso of Aragon. Joanna II. of Naples, at her death, in February 1435, had left her kingdom to René, the brother of Lewis of Anjou, who had died in the preceding year. The pope, who had affected to treat Naples as a fief which had lapsed to the Roman see, was disposed to favour René’s interest; while Alfonso still maintained his pretensions, and advanced fresh claims as the heir of king Manfred and of the Hohenstaufen. But in 1443 Eugenius found it expedient to abandon René, who, through want of sufficient means, had been unsuccessful in his attempts. After stipulations on both sides, Alfonso received from Rome a bull of investiture in the Neapolitan kingdom  and in consideration of this he agreed to forsake the council of Basel, and to withdraw his bishops from it—among them the formidable Nicolas of Palermo, who thereupon gave up the insignia of the cardinalate, to which he had been promoted by Felix.

The forty-fifth session was held on the 16th of June 1443, when Lyons was chosen as the place of the next general council; and, although the council of Basel de­clared itself to be still in existence, it never met again.

The authority of this assembly has been variously estimated within the Roman communion. The more moderate divines in general acknowledge its ecumenical character as far as the twenty-sixth session—i.e., until the time when Eugenius proposed to transfer it to Ferrara. But the advanced Gallicans maintain its authority throughout; and by the more extreme Romanists it is altogether disavowed.

We may now turn to the history of the council which had been summoned by Eugenius with a view to the union of the Greek and the Latin churches. Although the old dislike of the Greeks for the Latins had rather been increased than lessened by all earlier negotiations for this purpose, their danger from the Turks, which continually became more urgent, compelled them to fresh attempts to gain assistance from the west throughout the reign of Manuel. His son, John Palaeologus II, who succeeded to the throne in 1425, had been advised by him to look towards the west for support, and endeavoured to act on this policy. He had visited western Europe in 1423, for the purpose of begging assistance, and he appears to have even entertained the idea of succeeding Sigismund as emperor of the west, and of thus reuniting both the empire and the church.

In the course of his communications with pope Martin, the emperor signified his readiness to attend a general council (although his father had warned him against such a measure), and, in consequence of an invitation from the council of Basel, some representatives of the Greeks, headed by the protovestiary Demetrius Palaeologus, appeared at Basel in 1434. The council, in return, sent John of Ragusa and others to Constantinople; but, besides the necessary difficulties of the case, it was found that the breach between the pope and the council—authorities which the Greeks had supposed to be in unison with each other—introduced an extraordinary perplexity into the negotiations.

There was much discussion as to the place where the intended council should meet. The Greeks at Basel objected to that city as being too remote for the attend­ance of their countrymen, who supposed it to be beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They desired that some more accessible place in Italy or elsewhere should be fixed on; and the emperor urged this especially on the ground of the patriarch’s age and infirmity, while the fathers of Basel (as has been related) suggested Avignon by way of compromise.

An indiscreet expression, that the council had endeavoured to put down the old separation of the Greeks as well as the new separation of the Bohemians, was studiously circulated in exaggerated terms, with the intention of exasperating the Greeks. The envoys of the council at Constantinople threw the blame on the mistake of a scribe; but the Greeks would not accept this explanation. The emperor, however, interposed by remarking that it did not matter what the Latins might say or boast among themselves, if they would forward the pacification of the church; that he hoped to see the expression in question, and any other faulty language, amended in the general council; and at length the Latin envoys appeased the outcry by withdrawing the offensive words.

The project of a conference with the Greeks afforded Eugenius (as we have seen) a pretext for ordering the translation of the council from Basel to Ferrara; and, as the breach became wider, each party used the most strenuous efforts to secure the expected visitors. Missions were sent by both to the emperor and to the patriarch; rival funds were raised to meet the expenses of the Greeks, and for this purpose the council engaged in a sale of indulgences; rival fleets were hired at Venice and Marseilles, and were despatched for their convey­ance; and it was not without difficulty that the emperor was able, by threats and absolute prohibitions, to prevent these from fighting within sight of Constantinople, as the pope’s admiral, his nephew cardinal Francis Condolmieri, declared that he was instructed to sink and destroy the ships of the council’s fleet. The two legates vied with each other in offers of money, although the patriarch Joasaph protested that, if the Latins were allowed to pay the expenses of the Greeks, these would be unable to maintain their independence. But the pope’s emis­saries (among whom was Nicolas of Cusa) were perhaps less scrupulous in intrigue than their opponents, and succeeded in gaining their object. On the 29th of November 1437, the emperor and the patriarch, with twenty-two bishops and a great train of ecclesiastics, set sail on board the Venetian ships provided by the pope. The patriarch, in defiance of the remonstrances of his clergy, took with him the precious gold and silver vessels of St Sophia’s; the emperor and his court were splendidly equipped at the cost of the church’s treasures, which he had seized for the purpose; and, with a view to contro­versial use, the theologians were furnished with a large collection of books. By those who expected no good result from the expedition, an earthquake which occurred immediately after the emperor’s embarkation, two days earlier, had been regarded as a token of the Divine anger. After a tedious voyage, varied by occasional landings and residences on shore, the Greeks—more than 500 in all—arrived at Venice on the 8th of February, and were received with much splendour, although the ceremony was somewhat marred by rain. The magnificence of the great trading city appears to have impressed them as deeply as in an earlier age the companions of Henry Dandolo had been impressed by the glories of Constantinople: “Of it,” says a Greek, “I suppose the prophet to speak, ‘God hath founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods’.” The riches of St. Mark’s church were seen with a strong and peculiar interest, as being derived in great measure from the plunder of the Byzantine sanctu­aries in that crusade which for a time had subjected the east to Latin emperors. On the other hand, a Greek tells us that the Venetians crowded to the religious services of the strangers, declaring that, so long as they had not seen Greeks, they had supposed them to be barbarians, but that they now knew them to be the first­born of the church, and that the Holy Spirit spoke in them. At Venice, the Greeks became fully informed of the hostility which had arisen between the pope and the council of Basel. Their first inclination was to join the council, while the doge advised them to remain at Venice, so as to hold the balance between the parties. But at length they decided on accepting the pope’s invitation, partly in consequence of the advice of cardinal Cesarini, who happened opportunely to pass through Venice after having forsaken Basel for Ferrara. The emperor wrote to the council of Basel, exhorting its members to join the new assembly.

On reaching Ferrara, it was found that there were deep questions of etiquette to be settled, as, indeed, the Greeks had in some degree been already apprised. The emperor was received by Eugenius standing, and, after having kissed his hand, was about to throw himself at his feet, when the pope prevented the act, and seated him at his own left hand, which the emperor reverently kissed. But the patriarch, who had declared at Venice that he would deal with the pope only as an equal in rank—as a father, a brother, or a son, according as their respective ages might determine,—was told, both on the way and by a deputation which greeted him on his arrival, that he would be required to kiss the pope’s foot. His natural indignation at this was increased by the fact that the members of the deputation were not, in his opinion, of sufficient dignity to be employed by the pope on such a commission. Long and lively discussions arose; but at length the patriarch, by firmly refusing the degrading obeisance, was able to get himself excused. More, however, remained behind. The patriarch was told that he could not be allowed a higher rank than that of the cardinals, who (it was said) took precedence even of the western emperor; and, although he had hoped that his own sovereign might receive from the spectacle of the pope’s grandeur a wholesome lesson as to the relations of the spiritual and the secular powers, he was not prepared for this. At the solemn reception in the church of St. George, and afterwards at the sessions of the council, while the pope occupied the central seat, the emperor of the Romaeans (as he was styled), who had supposed the place of highest dignity to be due to himself, was seated at a lower level, in a chair corresponding to the vacant chair of the western emperor, and the patriarch was on an equality with the cardinals. At every possible point, and on every possible occasion, the battle of ceremony was renewed, to the irritation both of the eastern clergy and of the emperor.

The council had been opened by the cardinal-legate Albergati on the 8th of January, and the pope had been at Ferrara from the 27th of that month. But the Greeks were much disappointed by the scanty numbers of the assembly, and it was agreed that an interval of four months should be allowed to pass before the beginning of the formal sessions, in the hope that, by dispatching envoys to the princes of the west, the council might induce these to send representatives. The Greeks, in the meanwhile, indulged in the fancy that the fathers of Basel were to be added to those of Ferrara.

While waiting for the result, the emperor withdrew to a monastery some miles from the city, where he devoted himself to sporting in a style which both injured the cultivators of the soil and disgusted the owner, the marquis of Ferrara.

During this delay the ecclesiastics who were at Ferrara engaged twice a week in skirmishes on the points in dispute between the churches, and for these encounters twelve champions were selected on each side. Among the Greeks, the most eminent were Marcus Eugenicus, archbishop of Ephesus, and proxy for the patriarch of Antioch, and Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea—both lately promoted to the episcopate, with a view to the discussion with the Latins.

Contrary to the usual custom of the Greeks, the emperor would not allow laymen of high rank to take any part in the disputation,—professing that such matters were for ecclesiastics only, but really from a wish to keep the management in his own hands, and to make the clergy answerable for any failure. Among the Latins, the most conspicuous disputants were cardinal Julian Cesarini and John, provincial of the Dominicans in Lombardy. It is said that the saintly Bernardine of Siena, by prayer for the Divine assistance, was enabled to dispute fluently in Greek, without any previous knowledge of the language. The roughness of Mark of Ephesus contrasted so unfavourably with the graceful and persuasive oratory of Cesarini, that it was sometimes necessary for the Greeks to substitute Bessarion as their advocate; yet Cesarini’s copiousness was sometimes found to be wearisome, and Syropulus (who probably expresses the opinion of his countrymen) tells us that, although the cardinal was the more eloquent, the arch­bishop of Ephesus was the stronger and the more solid. Cesarini endeavoured, as at Basel, to employ hospitality as a means of conciliation and persuasion, but when the patriarch became aware of this, he forbade his clergy to accept the cardinal’s invitations. The difficulties of language were smoothed by the skill of Nicolas Secondino, a native of Negropont, who interpreted the speeches on both sides.

The Latins supposed the Greeks to be heretical on no less than fifty-four points; but the chief subjects of discussion were limited to four—(1) The procession of the Holy Ghost; (2) purgatory; (3) the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist; and (4) the primacy of the pope. But the Greeks felt that they were not at liberty. The emperor, in his zeal for union (or rather for the material gain which he expected from union) kept a strong hold over them. No one was allowed to leave the town without a passport; and measures were taken to prevent them from privately returning to Constantinople, and for the severe punishment of any who should make the attempt. A plague broke out, and alarmed them greatly, although the sufferers were almost exclusively either Latins or followers of the patriarch of Russia, Isidore, a Greek by birth, who reached Ferrara in August, with a great train of horses. A rumour that the sultan Amurath was about to attack Constantinople excited them to press for immediate aid; but all that the emperor’s importunity could obtain from the pope was a promise of two small vessels—a promise which was never fulfilled.

But more than all other distresses, that of subsistence pressed heavily on the Greeks. They had been annoyed by finding that, instead of an allowance in money for this purpose, rations were doled out to them; but now the supply became irregular, and the reason of this was not to be mistaken. The allowance fell more than four months into arrear, and applications or complaints were treated with rudeness. Many were obliged to sell their property, and even to pledge their clothes, for the sake of food. The pliant were supplied, while the more stubborn were reduced to misery by hunger, and when they had thus been brought to concession, they were rewarded with money and provisions.

The first question which was debated was that of purgatory. As to this, the Latins maintained that, while souls free from stain, such as those of the saints, go immediately after death into bliss, and while the souls of those who die in mortal sin go into eternal torments, the intermediate class—the souls of those who have repented, and have died in the enjoy­ment of the church’s rites, yet whose sins, committed after baptism, have not been fully done away with in this life,—must undergo a cleansing by purgatorial fire, which will be longer or shorter according to the character of their guilt; that in this state they may be assisted by masses and alms; and that, having been thus purified, they will enter into the happiness of the saints. The Greeks, on the other hand, held that purgatory is not a place of fire, but that its suffering consists in darkness, gloom, and exclusion from the Divine presence.

On this subject the discussion was long protracted, and the arguments of Mark and Bessarion, on the Greek side, were fused into a treatise by Gemistius, under whom both the archbishops had formerly studied.

The first regular session of the council was on the 8th of October, when disputants were chosen by each side, and Bessarion made a long speech, to which the archbishop of Rhodes replied at similar length at the next meeting. At the third session, the subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit was brought forward. The discussion turned mainly on the question whether the article of the procession from the Son were an addition to the creed, of such a kind as to contravene the decree of the general council of Ephesus, which had forbidden the making of any new creed other than that of the Nicene council—or whether (as the Latins contended) it were merely a legitimate explanation. On this question the dispute was carried on until the fifteenth session (Dec. 8), without any approach to agreement. The Latins were unable to trace the interpolation higher than the age of Charlemagne, although, they produced a canon of a council at Toledo, anathematizing all who should refuse it; and they wished to discuss the article on its merits. To this the Greek emperor was willing to agree, as were also Bessarion and the primate of Russia; and the great majority of the assembly voted for it, although the patriarch objected that, as the Latins were obstinate on the question of the verbal addition, they would probably be found yet more intractable on the question of the truth of doctrine.

At the fifteenth session, the pope signified his intention of transferring the council to Florence. For this the prevailing sickness gave a pretext, although it had already begun to subside. But the Greeks, supposing that the translation was intended as a means of bringing them more under the pope’s control, made vehement objections; some of them, among whom was Mark of Ephesus, attempted to abscond. The emperor endeavoured to soothe them; the pope told them that in consequence of the occupation of his territory by Piccinino, he was deprived of the means of entertaining them, but that they might be assured of receiving splendid hospitality from the Florentines. As their allowance was now five months in arrear, this argument told powerfully on them; and when they consented to the removal of the council, they were rewarded by the payment of a part of what was due to them. On the 16th of January 1439, the pope left Ferrara in state—the marquis of Ferrara holding his rein; the Greeks followed, although unwillingly; and, after having been exposed to some dangers on the way, through the disturbed state of the country, they reached Florence on the 13th of February, and were received with great demonstrations of honour.

Early in March the debates as to the procession of the Holy Ghost were resumed; and the question was now discussed on its merits. The decision, however, was to rest on the authority of the Greek fathers only, as the Greeks refused to know anything of the Latin ecclesiastical writers. But there was much suspicion as to some of the authorities which were produced on the Latin side. And a fierce dispute was carried on as to a passage of St. Basil; for the Greeks asserted that this was corrupt in the copies used by the Latins, and, although they admitted that the text was the same in some copies at Constantinople, they said that the best manuscripts were without the words on which the Latins relied.

While the Latins were united among themselves, differences of opinion became manifest among the Greeks, and a jealousy which had early appeared between the arch­bishops of Ephesus and Nicaea broke out into violent quarrels. Mark of Ephesus was vehement in the assertion of the Greek doctrine, and declared that all who held the double procession were not only schismatics but heretics. Bessarion was more artful and more conciliatory, maintaining that the difference between the churches was one of expression only—not of doctrine,—and drawing distinctions of meaning between the prepositions which had been used in speaking of the procession. The two became excited. Bessarion spoke of Mark as possessed and mad—an imputation which was seconded by a rumour industriously spread; while the archbishop of Ephesus retorted by styling his opponent a bastard and an apostate, and at last withdrew from the sessions.

The pope reproached the Greeks for wasting their time. The emperor exerted himself in all possible ways to put a pressure on the divines of his church. The system of withholding supplies was employed anew and with increased effect; money, skilfully given when the receivers had been reduced to actual hunger, exercised a powerful influence on their opinions; nor was more direct bribery wanting. Under these various influences, the labours of the council for union made progress. The twenty-fifth and last session was held on the 24th of March, when the emperor summed up the discussion on the question of the procession by saying that the Greeks had their creed from Scripture and the ecumenical councils, without addition or diminution, but that the Latin addition was agreeable to the teaching of the Scriptures; that, as the Greeks would not receive the addition, and the Latins refused to alter it, he would leave the pope to devise terms of union; otherwise the Greeks would return home.

Ten representatives of each side were appointed to draw up a form of union; and after much lively argument and the rejection of many proposed schemes, a definition was at length agreed on—being framed in Latin by Ambrose Traversari, head of the Camaldolite order, and rendered into Greek by Bessarion. (1.) The question as to the procession of the Holy Ghost was compromised on the ground that the Greeks, by speaking of Him as proceeding from the Father, did not exclude the Son, but only intended to guard against the opinion which they had supposed the Latins to entertain, of the Spirit’s proceeding as if from two Principles; and that, as the Latins disavowed this, the two churches really held the same truth under different forms of expression. (2.) As to the question of leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, it was decreed that the sacrament may be consecrated in either kind, and that each of the churches may retain its own custom. (3.) It is affirmed that souls whose sins have not been fully expiated in this life are purified by purgatorial pains after death, and that they may be aided by masses, prayers, alms, and other works of piety; but as to the nature of purgatory nothing is defined against the opinion of either church. (4.) The Roman pontiff is declared to have the primacy of the whole world, as being the successor of St. Peter, who was chief of the apostles and true vicar of Christ; and that to him, in St. Peter, was given by the Saviour “full power of tending, directing, and governing the church, according as is contained both in the acts of the ecumenical councils and in the sacred canons.” The other patriarchal sees—Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—were to hold the same order as of old, “to wit, with all their privileges and rights preserved.”

Although, however, the substance of the definition was settled, there remained irritating questions of form. Was the name of the emperor or that of the pope to stand first? Was the pope alone to be mentioned, or were the other patriarchs to have a like honour? And for two days the conclusion was delayed by a dispute whether the word “all” should be inserted in the reservation of the rights of oriental patriarchs. The pope was able to carry the question of precedence over the emperor, and the word “all” was at length conceded to the Greeks.

The patriarch Joasaph, who had throughout exerted himself in favour of union, died after a long illness on the 10th of June; and the Greeks became more eager than before to return to their own country.

By degrees all the Greek bishops were brought over with the exception of Mark of Ephesus, who had procured, through the emperor’s brother, a promise that he should not be compelled to sign the definition, and should be sent home in safety. “Then we have done nothing at all,” was the pope’s remark, on being informed of this exception.

Some important ecclesiastical officers were compelled, after much reluctance, to subscribe—a compulsion which they felt as an especial hardship, because they had not been allowed to vote. Among these was the chronicler of the council, Syropulus, “great ecclesiarch” (or chief sacristan) of the church of Constantinople, who satisfied his conscience by resolving to do penance, or to retract at some future opportunity. At last the definition, which ran in the name of pope Eugenius, with the “consent” of John Palaeologus and of the representatives of the eastern patriarchs, was completed by the subscriptions.

On the 6th of July—little more than a week after the day on which the council of Basel had pronounced Eugenius to be deposed,—his triumph over the Greek church was celebrated in the magnificent cathedral which he had lately consecrated. All Florence kept holiday in honour of the great occasion. A vast multitude thronged the building, and looked with curiosity and reverence on the rich attire of the Greek prelates—unaltered from the early ages of the church. The definition of the council was read in Latin by Cesarini, and in Greek by Bessarion, and was received with general acclamations. The representatives of the churches embraced each other; the Greeks kissed the pope’s knees and hand, and the act of reconciliation was followed by a solemn mass, at which the Greeks were astonished to see the pope drink the eucharistic wine through a tube.

But very soon fresh differences arose. Varieties as to ritual and other matters—among them, as to the practice of divorce—were brought forward and discussed. It was found impossible to solve in a satisfactory manner the question as to the invasion of eastern sees by Latin bishops. The Latins, having secured the victory, treated the Greeks with contempt, and when it was proposed that they should in their turn attend a Greek mass, the pope insulted the Greeks by requiring that the service should previously be rehearsed before himself or the cardinals. Moreover the Greeks still found themselves annoyed and distressed by delays and hindrances as to the payment of their allowance.

The pope wished to have the refractory archbishop of Ephesus made over to him for correction; he desired that the Greeks should elect a patriarch at Florence, and recommended for their choice the Latin patriarch, as a man who, in addition to other qualifications, was wealthy, and so far advanced in years that his riches might be expected to fall in no long time to the church. But the emperor replied that the Latins had nothing to do with the case of Mark, who, if faulty, ought to be judged by his Greek brethren; and that the patriarch must be chosen in the imperial city by the votes of the whole province, and must be consecrated in the church of St. Sophia.

On leaving Florence, the Greeks found fresh cause of complaint as to the manner in which they were conveyed homewards; for as to this the pope’s engagements were very imperfectly observed. At Bologna some of them lodged in the same inn with some English envoys, who were on their way to the papal court. The Englishmen asked what had been done in the council; and on being informed of the result, they remarked, to the disgust of the Greeks, who had been boasting of its entire success, that, if there were no agreement as to the words of the creed, as to the doctrine of the procession, or as to the use of the eucharistic bread, the pretended union did not deserve the name. Already some of those who had conformed began to show repentance and shame. At Venice, where the bishop of Heraclea was compelled by the emperor to celebrate a Greek mass in St. Mark’s, the words of the double procession and the prayer for the pope were omitted. At Corfu and elsewhere there were displays of the dissatisfaction which had been called forth by the late concessions; and at Constantinople a storm of execration and reproach arose, such as in an earlier age had greeted the representatives of the eastern church on their return from the second council of Lyons. The churches were deserted, although, in compliance with the popular feeling, the prayer for the pope and all mention of the union were suppressed. Even the emperor’s own name was in some churches omitted from among those commemorated in the diptychs. The vacant patriarchate was refused by the bishops of Heraclea and Trebizond, who, with professions of deep remorse, retracted their late compliances with the Latins. There was an attempt to elect the stubborn champion of eastern orthodoxy, Mark of Ephesus, to the vacant see, although he himself refused to concur. Metrophanes, bishop of Cyzicus, who accepted the office, found that the people turned their backs on his benediction. The emperor’s brother Demetrius, who had refused to subscribe the union at Florence, and had withdrawn from that city in anger, raised against John the standard of earlier orthodoxy. Bishops and others withdrew from the patriarch’s commu­nion, and high officials of the church—among them the “great ecclesiarch” Syropulus—resigned their offices, while Metrophanes endeavoured by violent means to enforce the union, ejecting bishops and others who opposed it, and even invading the jurisdiction of other patriarchs.

In 1443 the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem held a council, at which, by a slight change in his name, Metrophanes was stigmatized as a murderer of his mother, the church. They denounced the council of Florence, and declared the patriarch, with all metropolitans, bishops, and others intruded by him, to be deposed; and, emboldened by living under the rule of Mahometan sovereigns, they threatened the emperor with the extreme censures of the church if he should continue in his heterodoxy. Some of the Greek prelates went so far as to address a friendly letter to the Hussites, urging them to union with the Greek church, as the means of withstanding the common enemy.

The attempt to unite the churches by such sacrifices as those to which the Greeks had submitted at Florence, had drawn forth no effective help from the west; and the increased alienation which resulted from its failure tended to accelerate the ruin of the Byzantine empire.

The primate of Russia and the archbishop of Nicaea had been promoted to the cardinalate, in order at once to reward their past services and to secure their influence for the maintenance of the union. But the hopes which were thus rested on them were disappointed. Isidore, on returning to Russia, found that the prince, Basil, upbraided him at the public service of the church as a traitor to the orthodox cause, and that the clergy rejected him. He was even imprisoned in a monastery, and was glad to make his escape to Rome, whence he was afterwards sent to Constantinople as representative of pope Nicolas V. The more prudent Bessarion, declining either to resume his Asiatic see or to accept an appointment by the emperor and the synod to the patriarchate of Constantinople, remained in the west to enter on a new and brilliant career.

From Florence Eugenius, in April 1443, translated the council to Rome; and, about a fortnight after his return to that city he reopened the sessions in the church of St. John Lateran. Before leaving Florence he had received into communion some representatives of the Armenian church, and, to complete the supposed reunion of Christendom, he now received deputies (real or pretended) of the Copts, the Jacobites, the Maronites, and the Chaldeans, even Prester John, whose seat had been fancifully transferred to Ethiopia, was reported by the pope to have ambassadors on their way to the council. But in the case of these remoter Christians, as in that of the Greeks, it soon appeared that the reconciliation was unsubstantial.

Eugenius had projected an expedition against the Turks in favour of his imperial ally. The Germans, English, and French were so deeply engaged in their discords at home, that no help could be expected from them as nations, although adventurers both from France and from Germany joined in the enterprise. Julian Cesarini, who had been promoted to the episcopal cardinalate of Frascati, was commissioned to exert his eloquence for the sacred cause in Hungary and Poland, and readily gained Ladislaus, an ambitious young prince, who reigned over both of these countries. A great army was collected; and at its head, under Ladislaus, was John Huniades, a general already famous for his skill in war; while arrangements were made for the co-operation of the Byzantine emperor, of the famous George Castriot, or Scanderbeg, and of fleets from Venice and Genoa. The crusaders (on whom the cardinal was careful to impress the religious character of their expedition by regular masses, preaching, and other exercises) advanced as far as Sophia, the Bulgarian capital, and gained two considerable victories, which were celebrated by a triumph at Buda. The Turks sued for peace on terms highly favourable to the Christians; and Ladislaus concluded with them a ten-years’ truce, which was ratified by oaths on the sacred books of both parties. During these negotiations the cardinal had kept silence, although visibly annoyed by the course which they took. But before the conference was ended, he received tidings of the expected allies, which seemed to open a prospect of greater successes. Carried away by enthusiasm, he urgently represented to the king that the Turks had not fulfilled all their stipulations; that an engagement made with infidels without the papal sanction was of no force. He declared that, by the pope’s authority, he absolved the crusaders from their oaths; and he vehemently reproached a Polish bishop who opposed the breach of faith. To these unhappy suggestions Ladislaus listened; and, with a force greatly weakened by the withdrawal of the French, the Germans, and others, who had supposed the campaign to be at an end, he again, in defiance of warnings, advanced into Bulgaria. But on reaching Varna, where the auxiliary fleets had been expected, it was found that, instead of these, sultan Amurath appeared at the head of an overwhelming force, which had been conveyed into Europe by Genoese ships; furious on account of the late perfidy, and even, (it is said) calling on the Saviour to avenge the dishonour done by His worshippers to His name. In the engage­ment which followed, the victory seemed for a time to incline to the side of the crusaders; but their impetuosity proved fatal to them. About 10,000 were slain—among them, king Ladislaus, who fell while charging the janissaries. The fate of Cesarini is more mysterious, and is related in various ways. The most probable story seems to be, that, in fleeing from the field, he stopped to give his horse water, and, while so employed, was killed by robbers, who stripped his body naked, and left it to be recognized by some of his followers.

In Bohemia, the result of the battle of Lipan had thrown the chief power into the hands of the Calixtines, among whom Rokyczana was now the most prominent leader. The Orphans were broken up as a party, and the remains of them were divided between the Calixtines and the Taborites, while the Taborites, although weakened, were still considerable, and continued their extreme opposition to the Roman system, both in doctrines and in the externals of religion.

During the years which immediately followed, we read of frequent conferences between various Bohemian parties, between Sigismund and the Bohemians, of com­munications with the council of Basel, of contests as to modifications of opinion, and of formularies drawn up with a view to peace. The national feeling was strongly displayed in the terms which the Bohemians wished to prescribe to Sigismund as a condition of receiving him for their king; and, not content with the compromise by which the use of the Eucharist in both kinds had been allowed to such adult persons as should desire it, they wished to enforce this manner of reception throughout the kingdom, and insisted on the necessity of administer­ing the sacrament to infants.

In October 1435, Rokyczana was elected archbishop of Prague by a body of persons chosen as representatives of all classes. But Sigismund refused to confirm the election unless on terms to which Rokyczana would not submit; and the discord became worse than before.

On the 5th of July 1436, the compactata were accepted by the Bohemians in a great assembly at Iglau, where all estates of the kingdom appeared in the presence of Sigismund, who was seated on a lofty throne in the market-place. On the conclusion of the agreement, Philibert of Coutances, as chief legate of the council of Basel, intoned the Te Deum; there were loud acclamations of joy from the multitude, while Sigismund and many others expressed the same feeling by tears; and the general rejoicing was displayed in bell-ringing, bonfires, and feasting. All ecclesiastical censures were remitted, and the emperor agreed to accept Rokyczana as archbishop of Prague. But on the following day, when a service of thanksgiving was performed, the peace was again disturbed by Rokyczana’s administering the communion in both kinds at an altar of a church where the bishop of Coutances was at the same time celebrating mass in the usual Roman fashion. This act, done in a building which did not belong to the utraquists, was alleged to be in excess of the liberty allowed to them by the late agreement, and fresh differences arose in consequence.

In the same month Sigismund, after a formal negotiation, was accepted by the Bohemians as their king. But he was not disposed to fulfil loyally some of the conditions which had been imposed on him. He refused to confirm the election of Rokyczana unless he would submit to the church in all things, including the question of the chalice. The bishop of Coutances, who had been requested to remain while the other legates returned to Basel, acted as administrator of the vacant see, performing the episcopal functions and zealously exerting himself to re-establish the Roman system. The old priests returned, and refused to give the sacrament to the laity except in one kind; the canons were restored in the cathedral, and the orders of monks and friars began to reappear. On the other hand, Rokyczana was reported to have said that he would not accept institution from the legate, forasmuch as every priest had the same authority with bishops. On both sides there were complaints that the late agreement was not observed. Rokyczana, irritated at the course which things were taking, denounced the monks in a sermon as devils, and talked of shedding blood. On being informed of this, the emperor, who had been already provoked against Rokyczana by other stories of violent language, and by unfounded suggestions of treasonable designs, burst out into words which seemed to threaten the preacher’s life; and Rokyczana for a time withdrew from Prague.

The council of Basel refused to sanction the election of Rokyczana, whom it regarded as the author of the late troubles; it also refused to allow the communion of infants, as being contrary to the compactata, and the use of the vernacular language in the epistles, gospels, and creed. But at the thirtieth session a decree was passed by which, while it is declared that the faithful laity, or clergy other than the consecrator, are not required by the Lord’s command to receive the eucharistic cup; that under each kind Christ is contained whole and entire, and that no one ought without the church’s sanction to change the traditional custom of communicating in one kind only—the council yet allows that the mode of administration is left to the church’s discretion, and that to those who worthily communicate in either way, the sacrament is profitable for salvation.

The death of Sigismund, in December 1437, left Bohemia in confusion. His endeavours to get Albert of Austria elected as his successor had been fruitless; and when Albert was now chosen, on condition that he should observe the articles of Prague, the compactata, and all Sigismund’s other engagements, the more violent Hussites set up in opposition to him a boy of thirteen—Casimir, brother of the king of Poland. Bohemia was invaded by a Polish army, in concert with Casimir’s Bohemian supporters; but the battle of Zelenic, in July 1438, established Albert on the throne. Within little more than a year, however, the death of Albert plunged Bohemia into a long anarchy. About four months later, the emperor-king’s widow gave birth to a son, who received the name of Ladislaus. The Bohemians, unwilling to have an infant for their sove­reign, offered the crown to duke Albert of Bavaria and to the emperor Frederick; but both declined it, and by Frederick’s advice the young Ladislaus was acknowledged. After the death of the prince’s mother, in De­cember 1442, Frederick undertook to act as his guardian and as regent of the kingdom; but Bohemia continued to be distracted by the rivalries of religious and political factions. The breach between the council of Basel and the pope added to the discords of the Bohemians. The chapter of Prague adhered to Eugenius, while bishop Philibert was with the council, to which he owed his commission as legate. The Bohemians were angry because the council had done nothing for the vindication of their orthodoxy, and because Rokyczana and other elected prelates were unable to obtain consecration. When Philibert had been carried off by pestilence, in June 1439, the antipope Felix and the council nominated Nicolas von der Leiter, a native of Prague, as archbishop; but he failed to gain an entrance to the see. On the other hand, Roky­czana, although on the death of Albert he returned to Prague and recovered his power, was unable to obtain the pope’s acknowledgment as archbishop; and in his exasperation at this, he behaved with great violence towards the partisans of Rome—even denying them Christian burial.

At a meeting at Kuttenberg, in October 1441, where about three hundred priests were present, Rokyczana produced a confession of twenty-four articles. In this document the administration of the eucharist in both kinds, the communion of infants, the use of the vernacular language in divine service, and the lawfulness of marriage for the clergy, were maintained; while at the same time it acknowledged seven sacraments, transubstantiation, the elevation of the host, and other points of Roman doctrine and ritual. In opposition to this, the Taborites (who had refused to attend at Kuttenberg) produced at a conference in 1443 a confession of fifteen articles, in which two sacraments only were acknowledged, and they condemned the doctrine of purgatory and the use of images, with all belief of a spiritual presence in the eucharistic ele­ments, which they regarded as mere signs, unentitled to any reverence. At this conference, which was opened at Prague, and was afterwards continued at Kuttenberg, Przibram, who had been reconciled with Rokyczana, vehemently attacked the Taborites, whose opinions were more and more tending to what was styled picardism—a denial of all sacramental grace. The conference (in which Nicolas the bishop and Coranda were prominent on the Taborite side) was the last public disputation in which the Taborites took part. The result of it was to disclose more clearly than before the width of the difference between the parties. In the following year, a diet at Prague declared for the eucharistic doctrine of Rokyczana and Przibram, and rejected that of the Taborites, who found that their influence rapidly sank. The towns which had been theirs gave themselves up, one by one, to clergy of the Calixtine party, and a few years later the Taborite doctrine was confined to Tabor itself. 

As the council of Basel declined, Eugenius rose higher in his pretensions. The French king had acknowledged him in 1441, and in 1444 the alliance was cemented by the appointment of the dauphin, Lewis, to be the standard bearer of the church. To the request of the Germans that a new general council might be called, the pope answered that there was no need of such an assembly, as a general council was already sitting under his own presidency at Rome, to which he had translated it from Florence, and to deny its authority was to attack the catholic faith. He offered, out of complaisance to the emperor, to ask this venerable body whether a new council were needed; but with the Germans he could settle nothing until they should have given up their neutrality—a thing unknown to the faith of Christ.

It seemed as if a decided breach were near; but Frederick hoped to come to an understanding with the pope by means of a new agent whom he had lately taken into his service, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini.

Aeneas Sylvius was born at Corsignano, in 1405, of a Sienese family, which could trace its nobility to a great antiquity, but had become grievously impoverished, so that in early life he was obliged to take a share in the labours of the field. He had studied law at Siena, but without becoming fond of it, as he preferred the classical literature of Greece and Rome, in which the famous scholar Filelfo was his teacher. He attended the council of Basel, at first as secretary to cardinal Capranica, from whose service he afterwards passed into that of other masters. He had been employed by the council in important affairs; among them was a mission to Scotland, in the course of which he went through some adventures which curiously illustrate the state of Great Britain in those days. He had also cultivated literature, and had produced, among other things, a Latin tale of adulterous intrigue, in which he has imitated the moral tone of Boccaccio perhaps more successfully than his skill in narrative. His manner of life had been lax; but he excused this on the plea that he was not yet in the higher orders of the ministry.

At Basel his abilities, and his determination to make his way by means of them, became conspicuous. After the return of his last patron, cardinal Albergati, to Italy, his eloquence won for him an important position in the council, and he displayed much zeal in its cause and in that of the antipope Felix. His diplomatic skill was employed in persuading the Hungarians to release Albert of Austria from an oath by which he had pledged himself that he would not accept the empire. He became secretary to the antipope, and in that character was sent to the emperor Frederick, who flattered his literary vanity by the title of laureate, and invited him to become his secretary. Having with difficulty obtained a release from the anti­pope’s service, Aeneas accepted the office, and, professing to have overcome the levities of his former years, he was now ordained as subdeacon, deacon, and priest. In politics he became for a time a pupil of Caspar Schlick, one of the most eminent men of the age, who filled the office of chancellor under three successive emperors; and in no long time he found himself able to direct the policy of Frederick.

In 1445 Aeneas was employed by Frederick on an important mission to the pope. His enmity to Eugenius had been notorious; and as he was believed with reason to be especially obnoxious at Rome,—indeed, the pope had forbidden his approach,—his kinsmen at Siena entreated him to venture no further. But Aeneas went on to Rome, and was able to gain an interview with the pope, to whom he addressed himself very skilfully. He avowed his past hostility to Eugenius, but pleaded ignorance as his excuse for an offence in which he said he had shared with cardinal Cesarini, with the archbishop of Palermo, and other eminent persons. He professed to have learnt at the imperial court to take truer views than before, and to have welcomed his mission to Rome as holding out a hope of reconciliation with the pope. He entreated forgiveness, and at the same time intimated an opinion that his value was such as to make it expedient to treat him with consideration. Eugenius saw the importance of attaching to himself a man so able and so full of resources; and, although he did not welcome the emperor’s request that he would summon a council in some German city, he skilfully impressed on the envoy that his position was one in which he might do much for the protection of the truth and for the good of the church.

In the same year, Eugenius, supposing himself to have nothing to fear from the emperor, issued orders for the deposition of the archbishops of Treves and Cologne, who had taken part with the council of Basel, and as electors of the empire had supported the neutrality of Germany; and in their stead he nominated two ecclesiastics of the Burgundian connexion. But instead of awing the Germans, this proceeding against prelates so high in dignity, and so powerful both by their office and by their family connexions, endangered his hold on Germany. The archbishops kept possession of their sees, and in March 1446 met their brother-electors at Frankfort, where a general spirit of defiance was manifested. The electors declared that unless Eugenius would withdraw the deposition of the archbishops, accept the decrees of Constance and Basel as to the authority of general councils, and appoint a council to be held in some German city in the spring of the following year, they would conclude that he wished to suppress for ever the holding of general councils, and they would thereupon summon one by their own authority, or join the party of the antipope. An oath of secrecy was taken as to these terms; but the emperor, who had been informed of them without being bound by an oath, disclosed them to his secretary, who saw in the circumstances of the case an opportunity for exerting his political skill. The emperor had told the envoys of the Frankfort meeting that he disapproved of the deposition of the archbishops, but that the princes had done wrongly in assuming judgment over the pope and in threatening to forsake him. He now sent Piccolomini and others to the Roman court, with instructions to bring the pope, if possible, by peaceful means to revoke the deposition.

Of the secretary’s colleagues in this mission, the most remarkable was Gregory Heimburg, who is described as the most eminent among the Germans for eloquence and legal learning—a man of fine person, but rough in manner and careless of his appearance, whose sturdy German patriotism regarded the Italians with dislike and contempt. The bearing of Gregory, and the tone of his language in expressing the resolution of the German princes to hold together in opposition to the papal assumptions, were new to the Roman court; while in Gregory his acquaintance with that court excited feelings of strong aversion and of injured national pride. But his more politic Italian companion used his opportunities differently, and privately assured the pope that, if he would reinstate the archbishops and would accept the decree of Constance as to the regular assembling of general councils, all Germany would abandon its neutrality. The pope, instead of giving the ambassadors a reply, dismissed them with a promise that he would answer by letter; and Piccolomini was followed in his return to Germany by an invitation to become papal secretary.

At Ulm, Piccolomini joined Caspar Schlick and others, who had been sent by the emperor to a meeting of the German princes at Frankfort. The council of Basel had sent representatives, headed by the cardinal of Arles, but the imperial ambassadors interfered to prevent the cardinal from having his cross carried before him as legate, and from pronouncing his benediction. On the pope’s side were Nicolas of Cusa and Carvajal; but Thomas of Sarzana, bishop of Bologna, who had been expected as the chief representative of Eugenius, was unable to appear until later. Six of the seven electors were resolved to declare for Felix, if Eugenius would not consent to an agreement; but the emperor’s policy aimed at dividing the electoral college.

The story of the late mission to Rome was told by Gregory Heimburg, who, according to Aeneas Sylvius, reported all the harsher part of the pope’s sayings, and left out all that was more favourable. He represented Eugenius and the curia as irreconcilably hostile to the Germans, and indulged in strong and telling sarcasms on the cardinals, especially Bessarion, whom, on account of his beard, he spoke of as an old he-goat. In order to correct the exaggerations of his colleague, Piccolomini addressed the assembly; and when taunted with the inconsistencies of his past career by the cardinal of Arles and another of the Basel party, he replied that it was not he, but the council, that had changed. The secretary, however, did not trust to his eloquence alone, but made large use of bribery in the emperor’s interest; and, although the archbishop of Mainz was not to be personally corrupted, a distribution of 2000 florins among his counsellors proved effectual. The archbishop expressed to Piccolomini the difficulties which he felt as to the manner of withdrawing from his engagements with the prelates of Treves and Cologne and with other electors; whereupon Piccolomini took the statement of terms which had been drawn up on the part of the electors, and by “squeezing out all the venom” (as he expresses it) skillfully reduced them to such a form that they might give no offence to the pope, while they might yet be subscribed by the electors as expressing their intentions. The document thus ingeniously altered was readily accepted by the majority of the electors, while the duke of Saxony, the archbishop of Treves, and the archbishop of Cologne, although dissatisfied, made no opposition.

On reaching Rome with these proposals, the German ambassadors found that the clergy of the papal court were against them. It was said that the church was sold, that the Romans were led, like buffaloes, by a ring through the nose. The cardinals in general (although profuse in their hospitalities to the strangers) objected to the sacrifice of annates and of patronage of ecclesiastical dignities, and to the scheme for assembling general councils at regular intervals. The pope, they said, ought to be rich and powerful, in order that he may be able to protect prelates, to make peace between princes, to combat unbelief, and to extirpate heresy; there had never been so many heresies as in the time before Sylvester, because then the papacy was poor, and therefore disregarded. To this the Germans replied that they did not wish to reduce the pope to poverty, but to provide for him by less objectionable means; and Eugenius found it necessary to overpower the opposition of the cardinals by threatening to add to their body. Four new cardinals were actually created—among them, Thomas of Sarzana, bishop of Bologna, and John Carvajal, a Spaniard, who had been among the pope’s chief agents in the late negotiations.

In the meantime the state of the pope’s health, which had long been weak, became so alarming that the ambas­sadors hesitated to treat with him in the condition to which he was reduced. But Piccolomini urged on his colleagues that their obedience should be professed to Eugenius, as another pope might be less favourable, and even a new schism might break out; and John of Lysura said that it would be enough if there were life in the smallest toe of the pope’s left foot, although all his other members were dead. The ambassadors were admitted to his bedchamber, where they found him still wearing an air of dignity, but evidently dying. The terms were agreed on—chiefly that the pope should accept the decrees of Constance in general, and especially that which related to the assembling of general councils; that he should sanction such of the Basel decrees as had been accepted by the Germans under the emperor Albert, until a legate who was to be sent into Germany should be able to make other arrangements; that the archbishops of Cologne and Treves should be reinstated on acknowledging Eugenius as the true vicar of Christ; and that all who had taken part in the proceedings of Basel should be forgiven on submission. On these terms the Germans consented to give up their neutrality, and adhered to Eugenius; they undertook that the emperor should withdraw his safe-conduct from the council of Basel, and should bring other potentates to do the like.

The result of the negotiations was proclaimed at a great public assembly, and there were demonstrations of joy such as were usual for the celebration of an important victory. Rome enjoyed a general holiday; bells were rung, bonfires blazed, music resounded about the streets, relics of especial sanctity were displayed; the mitre said to have been given by Constantine to Sylvester, which Eugenius had lately acquired, was carried in procession from St. Mark’s to the Lateran, and at night there was a brilliant illumination. But on the day after the conclusion of the peace the pope’s illness increased. He had executed four bulls for the purpose of carrying out the agreement; and by a fifth, which was grounded on the impossibility of fully considering all things in his sickness, he declared that nothing in the agreement should infringe on the privileges of the church.

It is said that Eugenius, in reliance on a prophecy made to him in early life by a mysterious hermit, believed that the end of his papacy was at hand; but he resolutely held out against the approach of death, and when the last sacraments were offered to him by Antoninus, archbishop of Florence, he said that the time was not yet come, and that he would give notice when it arrived. He took leave of the cardinals in a long speech, expressing satisfaction at the reconciliation of the church, and urging that the work should be carried out. The safety of the church, he said, would depend on their agreement among themselves. But when asked to recall the cardinal of Capua, whom he had banished, he refused : “Ye know not what ye ask; it is best for you that ye should be without him, and for him that he should be in exile.” One of the pope’s chamberlains, who has left an account of his last hours, speaks much of the humility and penitence which he displayed. Among his latest sayings was the expression of a regret that, instead of becoming cardinal and pope, he had not died in the safer condition of a simple monk. His death took place on the 23rd of February 1447, sixteen days after the conclusion of his agreement with the Germans.

 

 

CHAPTER III.

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE NICOLAS V TO THE DEATH OF PAUL II.

A.D. 1447-1471.