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 VIII. SUPPLEMENTARY.

             

The Hierarchy.

 

THE councils of Constance and Basel, by asserting the supremacy of general councils, and by endeavouring to reestablish the independence of the episcopate, appeared to overthrow the power which the popes had gradually built up; and by the rules which they laid down for the regular meeting of general councils at short intervals, it seemed as if the right of control which they had asserted over the papacy were secured. But in the event, these apparent victories proved nugatory. The popes were always ready to act, and able to take advantage of all circumstances, while councils must in any case have been rare and unwieldy. The pope chosen at Constance, Martin V, from the very time of his election asserted the claims of his office in a manner which reduced much of the council’s acts to a nullity. The council of Basel, by its imprudent assumptions and its mismanagement, allowed its adversary Eugenius to triumph over it. The decrees for periodical councils were never carried into execution; the appeals which were frequently made to future general councils were fruitless; for the popes always found some pretext for eluding not only the decree of Constance, but the solemn promises which they .themselves had made on this subject at their election. And against the councils of Constance and Basel they were able to set those of Florence and the Lateran, by the last of which the pragmatic sanction of Bourges, the only result of the council of Basel which had remained until then, was abolished. The fathers of Basel, indeed, in their attempts to reduce the papacy to its proper limits, felt themselves hampered by the system in which they had been trained, and were unable to rid themselves of its restraints, as a larger acquaintance with Christian antiquity would have enabled them to do.

The critical spirit of Valla and others had opened men’s eyes to the spuriousness of such documents as the donation of Constantine and the false decretals. Yet these exposures seem to have as yet had less effect than might have been expected, and to have been little urged to their consequences as affecting the authority of the church in whose interest the forgeries had been executed. At Basel the pope had been spoken of as the “ministerial head of the church”—a term by which it was meant that he was not entitled to give laws to the church, but that these ought to proceed from councils. But in opposition to such doctrines, some writers in the papal interest now vented extravagances even greater than those which we have had occasion to notice in earlier ages. It was maintained that the pope was infallible and absolute.1All power, temporal as well as spiritual, was ascribed to him; it was said that he might not only depose emperors and kings, but might extinguish empires and kingdoms, even without cause; that, as being the source of all spiritual power, he was entitled to do, by his immediate authority, whatever the local bishop might do in any diocese; that appeals ought to be carried, not from a pope to a council, but from a general council, to the pope. It was asserted that Constantine’s sup­posed donation was not a gift, but a partial restitution, inasmuch as the pope is rightly lord of all and while in France such opinions were condemned by parliaments, and universities, the sovereigns of other countries some­times found their account in admitting them—as the Spaniards and Portuguese were glad to avail themselves of the papal sanction for their conquests in the countries which they had discovered.

Popes now began to bestow complimentary titles on kings as tokens of their favour. Thus, after the repeal of the pragmatic sanction, Lewis XI of France was styled by Pius II (or, according to some authorities, by Paul II) “Most Christian”. Alexander VI was disposed to trans­fer this title to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, but at the request of his cardinals he bestowed on them instead of it the epithet of “Most Catholic”. Julius II conferred on James IV of Scotland the title of “Protector of the Christian Faith ; and as is well known, Henry VIII of England was rewarded for his book against Luther by being styled “Defender of the Faith”.

The secular power of the popes entered during this time on a new stage of its development. This advance began, as we have seen, with Sixtus IV, and it was carried further by his successors. The dominion which Caesar Borgia had gained for himself by the acquisition of the Romagna, and by the subjugation of the unruly barons, fell, on the collapse of his power, to the Roman church; and Julius II further extended the temporal sovereignty of the papacy. Thus, in addition to his spiritual pretensions, the pope became a great Italian prince; and, as Italy was now the chief subject of con­tention between the greatest sovereigns of the continent, his alliance in that character was very important, and he acquired much political influenced

While the papacy was thus for a time triumphing over all hindrances, the empire continued to sink. Sigismund, indeed, had been enabled by circumstances to assert his office as advocate and protector of the church at Constance and at Basel; but he was unable to maintain throughout the elevation which he had thus attained. The long and inglorious reign of Frederick III reduced the imperial dignity to the lowest point; and Maxi­milian’s attempts to restore it were foiled by his want of means for carrying them out, and by his own rash and inconstant character. The emperors were without any adequate provision for the expenses of their position. The crown lands, the tolls of the Rhine, and other sources of revenue had been alienated by capitulations with the electoral princes, or by other improvident grants. The taxes on Jews and on the cities of the em­pire had been redeemed. For the means of supporting his dignity, and for the expenses of war, the emperor was obliged to rely on the diet of the empire; and thus he found himself in an unseemly condition of dependence. At the same time the other chief sovereigns of Europe—the kings of France, England, and Spain—by the union of territories, by the subjection of great feudatories and nobles, or otherwise, had become much stronger than before; so that the emperor, although bearing a far loftier title, although it was for him to bestow royal and ducal dignities, was really inferior in power to them, and even to his vassal duke Charles of Burgundy, or to the trading republic of Venice. Yet while his real authority and importance were thus waning, the theory of his grandeur was elaborated more than ever by jurists, whose invention was stimulated by the doctrines of canonists as to the papacy. The empire, according to the jurists, was “holy” and independent of the ecclesi­astical power; the emperor was lord paramount and “monarch” of all the world, so that from him all secular dominion was supposed to be derived.

The popes continued to interfere with ecclesiastical patronage of all sorts, and their interference was often resented. In England, by appointing resident legates a latere, and by inducing the archbishops of Canterbury to accept the office, they acquired a new power over the church, as the government of it appeared thenceforth to be exercised by delegation from the Roman see. In Scotland there were some demonstrations of independence; but the popes at their own will erected the sees of St. Andrew’s and Glasgow into archbishoprics, and granted such exemptions from the archiepiscopal authority as they thought fit. James IV is found expressing great thankfulness to Julius II for having appointed his ille­gitimate son, Alexander Stuart, while yet a boy, to the primacy of Scotland, and requesting that a bishopric may be bestowed on a Dominican who was employed in the administration of the province during the archbishop’s minority. There were continual endeavours on the part of sovereigns to prevent the occupation of benefices in their dominions by alien and non-resident incumbents, whom the pope took it upon himself to nominate. But the same argument from practical results by which Frederick Barbarossa had endeavoured to show that the disposal of bishoprics was better placed in the hands of sovereigns than of chapters, was used by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini in behalf of the papal patronage. And when raised to the papacy he introduced the new abuse of charging preferments with the payment of pensions to cardinals, or to officials of the Roman court.

As the crown became stronger in various countries, the sovereigns showed a disposition to limit the power of the church in various ways. Thus they forbade appeals to Rome, and the introduction of Roman documents into their dominions, except with their previous knowledge and licence. Old grievances are found continually recurring; as when the popes and the English clergy complain of the statutes of praemunire, and the popes complain that their collectors are arrested and imprisoned. The immunities claimed by the clergy, and the boundaries of secular and spiritual jurisdiction, are also frequent subjects of contest. Thus we find that spiritual courts are forbidden to meddle with the suits of laymen, that the secular affairs of the clergy are brought before secular tribunals, and that such courts exercise criminal jurisdiction over ecclesiastics. The parliament of Paris took it on itself to commit bishops to prison. The control exercised by the Venetian republic over its clergy has appeared in the course of our story. Henry VII of England enacted that clerks convicted of crimes should be burnt in the hand; and for this he was afterwards denounced by Perkin Warbeck as an invader of the rights of holy church.

But where the popes were masters, the clerical im­munities were jealously preserved. Thus, on Ascension day 1487, the gonfaloniere and another magistrate of Bologna did penance in St. Peter’s at Rome, for having exceeded their jurisdiction by hanging a Franciscan and a secular priest. The gonfaloniere was deprived of all office and dignity. He and his companion were flogged by the penitentiaries of the church while the psalm Miserere was chanted, and after this they were solemnly rebuked by the pope. The deposed chief magistrate was required to build and endow a chapel at Bologna, and on every . Sunday and holy-day to attend mass in it, kneeling from the beginning to the end of the service with a burning taper in his hand, and to pray for the souls of the ecclesiastics on whom he had presumed to execute justice.

Complaints as to the defects of the clergy are as loud and as frequent as before. We read of the greed and corruption of the Roman court, of simony in all quarters, of neglect of spiritual duties, of the ignorance and rudeness of the lower clergy, of their seeking to eke out their income by farming, keeping shops or taverns, and other unsuitable occupations; and the effects of enforced celibacy were scandalously evident. As the church would not relax its rules on this point, notwithstanding the opinion of some of its most enlightened members, the great mass of the clergy lived in a state of concubinage. It was in vain that the councils of Constance and of Basel forbade this, and that their decrees were echoed by provincial councils. The example of the popes, in openly bringing forward their illegitimate children, in heaping church-preferment or lands on them, and in labouring to connect them by marriage with reigning families, could not but produce an effect. The contagion of evil spread to the lower clergy, and from the clergy to the laity, so that a general demoralization ensued. Yet after all the over­whelming evidence which experience had afforded as to the mischievous effects of compulsory celibacy, it is remarkable that, when the authorities of the Roman church were driven by the success of the protestant movement to attempt an internal reformation, this point of discipline was one as to which no reform or modification was introduced.

 

Monasticism.

 

Of the orders which arose in the fifteenth century, the most remarkable was that of Eremites of St. Francis, or Minims, founded, as we have already seen, by St. Francis of Paola, and approved by Sixtus IV in 1474. It was a branch of the Franciscan community, and was distinguished by extraordinary strictness—as that the members were to observe the severity of Lenten diet throughout the whole year. There were sisters and tertiaries attached to the order—the last under a milder rule in respect of food. From the founder’s native Italy, and from France, where his last years were spent, this order spread into Spain, and it is said to have numbered about 450 houses in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The mendicant orders continued to enjoy much popularity, and endeavoured, as before, to supplant the secular clergy utterly in the respect and affection of the laity. They were thoroughly devoted to the papacy, except, indeed, when it failed to favour them; and this it seldom ventured on with such resolute and valuable allies. Alexander VI is reported to have said that it was safer to offend any powerful king than a Franciscan or a Dominican. The mendicants did not scruple to use pretended visions, miracles, and other such tricks for the furtherance of their purposes. For a time the Fran­ciscans were ordered to refrain from setting forth their founder’s stigmata, and the Dominicans were forbidden to represent St. Catharine of Siena with similar marks. But the flights of the Franciscans in honour of their great saint became, if possible, more extravagant than before; and, if more active than other orders, they directed most of their labours to the advancement of popular super­stitions and of papal assumptions, or to the exclusive glorification of their own brotherhood. It was believed that Paul II was about to publish letters, drawn up by Calixtus III, depriving the mendicants of all their special privileges; but nothing came of this, and Sixtus, by bulls of 1474 and 1479, granted the Dominicans and the Franciscans a confirmation of all former favours.

The Carmelites even outdid the Franciscans in their pretensions, asserting that the blessed Virgin every Saturday released from purgatory all those who had died in the scapulary of the order during the preceding week. For this they professed to have the authority of bulls of John XXII and of Alexander V; and, although both these bulls were forgeries, the persistent audacity of the Carmelites extorted confirmations of the privilege from later popes.

The chief check to the pretensions of the mendicants was opposed by the university of Paris, which condemned their invasion of the rights of the secular clergy, compelled them to conform to its terms, and would not allow any of them to teach until he had gone through a course of study prescribed by its own authority. And when the friars procured bulls in their favour from Eugenius IV and Nicolas V, they were required to swear that they would make no use of these documents.

Complaints of a decay in monastic discipline, and attempts at a reformation, are found throughout the period. The council of Constance projected a large scheme of reform; but it remained without effect. The council of Basel was more successful in this respect.

In northern Germany a reformation was begun by the regular canons of Windesheim, and was so satisfactory that these were employed, under a commission from the legate Nicolas of Cusa, to carry out a similar work elsewhere. But in this they met with much difficulty. Monks were not more seriously in need of reform than determined to resist any attempt to reform them. In some places they had recourse to violence. One monk threatened to stab the visitor, John Busch, with a knife; another, to cut his throat with a pair of scissors; and it was sometimes necessary to put down opposition by the help of the secular power. Some communities appealed to Rome against the visitors, but met with no success. The nuns (as to whose morals and discipline the report is usually very unfavourable) were yet more intractable than the men. In one place, although the visitors were supported by the authority of the duke of Brunswick, the nuns repeatedly declared that they had sworn not to reform, and that they would not become perjured. They threw themselves down on the pavement of the choir, with their limbs stretched out in the form of a cross, and shrieked out the anthem, “In the midst of life we are in death!”. They arranged the images of the saints in order, and placed lights between them, as if by way of defence against the supposed profanation. At another convent the sisters not only sang the same ominous strain, but hurled their burning tapers at the commissioners and pelted them with earth and stones. Even miracles were alleged in opposition to reform, while on the other side there are stories of judgments which befell the refractory.

The English Benedictines underwent a reform under Henry V about the year 1421. A reform of those of Germany was begun at the monastery of Bursfeld, and was carried out elsewhere in imitation of the model which had been there established. But these reforms were only partial; and sometimes, when monasteries which had accepted a reform found that their order in general held out against it, they formed themselves into separate congregations.

Reforms were sometimes forced on reluctant commu­nities by princes or bishops, and sometimes by distress consequent on the extravagance of some gay young abbot, who had wasted the revenues of his church, and thus indirectly became the means of bringing his brethren to a better mind.

Among the greatest obstacles to reform was the practice of dividing the monastic income—a practice utterly con­trary to the principle of monachism, but recommended by the independence and freedom from discipline which it encouraged. At the council of Constance a Cistercian failed in an endeavour to get this system acknowledged as lawful but it was too firmly rooted to be easily extirpated.

 

Rites and Usages.

 

The increase of festivals and ceremonies, of pil­grimages, relics, and fabulous legends, was not to be checked by the protests of those who had succeeded to the opinions of Gerson and his associates. The alleged miracles of bleeding hosts, in particular, became more frequent, because they now served not only to prove the doctrine of transubstantiation in its coarsest form, but to justify the withdrawal of the eucharistic cup from the laity. In some cases, however, these miracles seem to have been produced merely for the sake of gain; and hence cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, when legate in Germany, forbade the display of such hosts, and ordered that they should rather be consumed by the priests at mass. But this superstition was not to be so readily put down. Occasion was not uncom­monly taken from stories of outrages done by Jews to the consecrated host to set on foot a persecution against that people.

Indulgences became more frequent than before, although the council of Constance had endeavoured to mitigate the abuse of them. They were now offered for a great variety of objects: for the crusade against the Turks, which the popes continually dangled before the eyes of western Christendom, although without ever carrying it out; for any other expeditions, whether against heathens or against Christians, to which the popes, might give the character of a crusade; for the jubilee, for visiting certain places, for performing certain devotions, for celebrating festivals, and for the rebuilding of churches, especially for that of St. Peter’s at Rome, which was undertaken by Julius II in 1506. The indig­nation which these indulgences naturally provoked in the more discerning, was swelled by the impudent pretensions of the preachers who set them forth; and this, on the occasion of the indulgence for St. Peter’s, when renewed by Leo X became the immediate occasion of Luther’s defiance of Rome.

That indulgences were applicable to souls departed, had been maintained by some of the schoolmen,—as Alexander of Hales, and Aquinas. The doctrine received a practical application from Sixtus IV in 1477, and from Innocent VIII in i49o. But the most remarkable exemplification of it was in the bull issued by Alexander VI for the jubilee of 1500, when the faithful were invited to pay money towards the repair of St. Peter’s, in order that indulgences might be bestowed on the souls of their friends in purgatory, by the way of suffrage. And this was imitated by Julius II in his bull of 1510, for the rebuilding of the great church.

The reverence for the blessed Virgin, which had already been excessive, was in this time carried yet further. It was now that the fable of the “holy house” took form, and attracted multitudes of pilgrims to Loreto. The festival of the “Compassion of the Blessed Virgin”, in remembrance of her sufferings at the cross, was insti­tuted on account of the outrages of the Hussites. The festival of her Visitation was sanctioned by the council of Basel, which also decreed in favour of the immaculate conception. But this decree, as it was passed after the breach between the council and the pope, was not re­garded as authoritative. Sixtus IV, after having in earlier life written in defence of the immaculate conception, sent forth as pope two bulls in favour of the doctrine. Yet the Franciscan pope was so far influenced by a regard for the power of the Dominicans that he did not venture to proscribe their contrary doctrine, but contented himself with forbidding the partisans of either opinion to denounce their opponents as guilty of heresy or of mortal sin, forasmuch as the matter had not yet been determined by the Roman church and by the apostolic see.

Some universities, however, took a more decided line as to this matter. At Paris, a doctor named John le Ver (or Véry), in consequence of having preached at Dieppe against the immaculate conception, was required to retract; and it was resolved that in future no theological student should be admitted, and no degree should be given, except on condition of swearing to maintain the immaculate conception. This example of Paris was followed by similar decrees of the universities of Cologne and Mainz.

The Dominicans, while they opposed the doctrine of the immaculate conception, were yet unwilling to lose the credit of devotion to the blessed Virgin. They therefore instituted the brotherhood of the Rosary, the members of which were bound to perform certain de­votions in her honour while telling their beads. But towards the end of the period the Dominicans attempted to support their doctrine by the help of an audacious imposture. The occasion grew out of a quarrel which took place at Frankfort between a member of the order, named Wigand Wirth, and the chief secular priest of the town; but the Dominicans resolved that Berne should be the scene of their intended operations, as at Frankfort they had reason to fear the opposition of the archbishop of Mayence, whereas they reckoned on finding at Berne a people simple enough to be deceived and strong enough to maintain any opinion which they might embrace. A young man of weak and credulous character, who had lately forsaken the trade of a tailor to enter into the order, was deluded by pretended visions, in which figures personating the blessed Virgin and other saints appeared to him, and professed to entrust him with revelations. Among other things, the representative of St. Mary charged him to inform pope Julius that she had been conceived in sin; and by way of a token, she impressed the stigma on one of his hands with a nail. At length the dupe’s eyes were opened; and on his threatening to publish the deceits which had been practised on him, the Dominicans attempted to poison him. The bishop of Lausanne and the magistrates of Berne interfered in the matter. A commission, composed of two bishops and the provincial of the Dominicans, was sent by the pope to investigate it; and the prior and three other monks of the convent at Berne, who had been most active in the imposture, were convicted, degraded, made over to the secular arm, and burnt. The detection of this abominable trick gave a triumph to the opposite party, and redounded to the advantage of the doctrine against which the Domini­cans had employed such discreditable means.

             

Arts and Learning.

 

Although the highest perfection of pointed architecture had passed away before the time with which we are now concerned, a development of the style continued to prevail in the countries north of the Alps, and was displayed in many splendid and celebrated works,— among them a great part of the church of St. Ouen, at Rouen, and the chapel of King’s College at Cambridge. To this time are due many of the loftiest and most majestic towers—such as the spires of Chartres and Antwerp, and, in the very end of the period, the central tower of Canterbury. In our own country the fifteenth century produced a multitude of buildings of all classes, from the abbey or cathedral (although in these the work of this age was mostly limited to alterations and additions) down to humble parochial churches and chapels. Where architects were at liberty to indulge their fancy, they became more and more disposed to overload their work with ornament, as in Henry VII’s chapel at West­minster, and in the church of Brou in Bresse, erected by Margaret of Austria in memory of her husband, Philibert of Savoy. A comparison of these typical examples is said to show that the faults of the late Gothic style were exaggerated far more in France than in England.

But south of the Alps an entire change came over the prevailing taste in architecture. In the great cathedral of Milan, indeed, an attempt was made to borrow Gothic art from Germany; but the result, however wonderful in itself, is something greatly vitiated from the purity of the pointed manner. The revolution which took place in literature had its parallel in art. Brunelleschi, a Florentine, is regarded as the great connecting link between the earlier and the later architecture. In company with his countryman Donatello, who holds a similar place in the history of sculpture, he lived among the ruins of Rome, both supporting themselves by working as gold­smiths, while each, with a view to his own art, was deeply studying the remains of classical antiquity. Brunelleschi applied mathematical science to architecture in a degree unknown to his predecessors; and, discarding the use of buttresses, which had been necessary and characteristic features in the buildings of the middle ages, he completed the work of Arnulf by raising into the air the vast cupola of the cathedral at Florence. In this there is still much of the Gothic element; but from the date of it Italian architecture bears the character of the “renaissance”—an eclectic style, in which the details are taken from Greek and Roman models, while the general design is not closely imitative, but, disregarding the bondage of ancient rules, is accom­modated to the actual purpose of the building.

At Rome, where the pointed architecture had never taken root, the victory of the new manner was easy. All the popes, from Martin V to Leo X, were more or less engaged in building and restoration, while many cardinals and others followed their example by erecting churches and palaces. Baccio Pontelli, of Florence, the architect employed by Sixtus IV, was the chief agent in the transition between the medieval style of Rome and the fully-developed modern architecture of which Bramante was the most famous master. Although a rebuilding of the venerable basilica of St. Peter had been projected, and even begun, by Nicolas V, the greatness of the enterprise seems to have deterred his successors from prosecuting it; and the decaying walls underwent a continual process of repair, until at length Julius II, partly with a view to provide a fitting shrine for the monument which he had commissioned Michael Angelo to prepare for him, began the erection of the new St. Peter’s under the superintendence of Bramante.

While the architecture of the middle ages had a perfection and completeness of its own, the art of paint­ing was still in a far less mature stage; but in this time it reached the greatest excellence which it has ever attained. The study of the antique was introduced, and was encouraged by the discovery of such masterpieces of ancient art as the Apollo, the torso of the Belvedere, and the Laocoon. The study of the anatomical structure of the body, and various technical discoveries, contributed to the advancement of art; and the object proposed was to employ these elements of improved culture on Christian themes.

The first impulse to a new manner was given by Masaccio, of Florence, who was born in 1402 and died in i443. Florence was, in art as in literature, the head-quarters of the movement of the age; but schools of painting grew up in all parts of Italy. Rome itself did not produce any great master in any branch of art, but sought to draw to itself the most eminent talents from other quarters—from Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria, or wherever genius and skill might be found. Sixtus IV, having resolved to decorate his chapel in the Vatican with paintings, employed the Tuscans Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio, with the Umbrians Perugino and Pinturicchio, and others; but their works in that place were afterwards eclipsed by the grander creations of Michael Angelo Buonarroti. Fresh from the religious lessons of Savonarola, the great Florentine appeared at Rome in 1496, at the age of twenty-one, and four years later he executed the group of the Virgin-mother with the dead Saviour, which now adorns one of the chapels in St. Peter’s. Julius, struck with his ability, invited him to return to Rome about 1505, and entrusted him with the preparation of a monument for himself, which was designed on a vast and magnificent plan, but, after having for many years been the cause of infinite vexation to the artist, was so dwarfed and marred in the execution (which is chiefly by other hands), that it may be said to have resulted in little beyond the awful figure of Moses.

At the age of thirty-three Michael Angelo began his labours on the roof of the Sixtine Chapel. It is said by Vasari that he undertook the task unwillingly, as one alien from what he regarded as his true profession of sculptor, and even that it was imposed on him by the pope through the unfriendly influence of Bramante, who expected the result to be a failure. The same writer tells us that, although Michael Angelo had to overcome the difficulties of fresco-painting, which was new to him, and dismissed all assistants on finding that they were unequal to his requirements, this gigantic work was executed by him between the 10th of May 1508 and the 1st of November in the following year. But the story is incredible, and the truth appears to be that, although on All Saints’ day 1509 the artist allowed the scaffolding to be removed so that his impatient patron might see the amount of his progress, the labour which gave being to “the most ma­jestic forms that painting has yet embodied”, continued to occupy him during the following three years.

In the meantime Raphael Sanzio, of Urbino, eight years younger than Michael Angelo, was introduced by his kinsman Bramante to the papal court, and at twenty-five began his series of pictures in the chambers of the Vatican, where, while the doctrine of the church is represented by the Miracle of Bolsena and the Dispute on the Sacrament, the revived classicism of the age appears in the School of Athens and the Parnassus. At the time of Julius’s death Raphael was engaged on his Heliodorus, a work intended to symbolize the expulsion of the “barbarians” from the sacred soil of Italy, and under Leo he continued to paint subjects which have a like reference to the history of his new patron. Thus the Attila, which again signified the repulse of the barbarian invaders, the Fire of the Borgo, the Defeat of the Saracens at Ostia, the Coronation of Charlemagne, were all commemorative of older popes who had borne the same name with their reigning successor.

Admirable as were the advances of this time in art, they were too commonly accompanied by a decay of that religious feeling which had animated the older Christian painters, and which the statutes of the artistic guilds in some places had enjoined their members to cultivate. Of Angelico of Fiesole, who, although he lived in the days of the classical revival, remained unaffected by it, it is said that he never took up his brush without prayer; but in many of those who came after him the influence of the paganizing opinions and of the corrupted society which surrounded them is only too evident. The spiritual qualities which are expressed in their works came in too many instances from the power of the artist’s mind and hand, rather than from any kindred elements in himself.

In German and Flemish art the influence of the classical revival was as yet hardly felt. Albert Durer, although his works excited the admiration of Raphael, remained to the last intensely German, and his Christianity has little in common with the new spirit which had transformed the art of Italy.

The invention of printing coincided, in a manner which cannot fail to suggest a variety of reflections and speculations to every mind, with that revival of ancient literature to which the new art lent itself as a powerful agent The first complete book produced by the press is supposed to be the Bible published by Gutenberg and Schoffer at Mayence, in 1455—a vast effort for an art which was as yet only in its birth. From Mayence the great discovery was carried, chiefly by Germans, into other countries, and within a few years it was widely diffused. The Jews took advantage of it to produce a complete edition of the Old Testament at Soncino (a little town of Lombardy), in 1488, some portions of their Scriptures having already appeared in a detached form; but it was not until nearly thirty years later that the New Testament was published in the original language. Cardinal Ximenes, whose zeal for the promotion of religion and learning contrasts brightly with the intolerance which led him to persecute the Jews and the Moors of Spain, conceived the idea of publishing, as an antidote to heresy, a Bible which should contain the original Scriptures with the chief ancient versions. With a view to this he collected manuscripts, including some which were supplied from the papal library; he employed a band of scholars in editing the book, and imported type-cutters and founders from Germany; and, after fifteen years of labour, he had, shortly before his death, the satisfaction of witnessing the completion of the great work, on which he had expended enormous sums, and which he had watched in its progress with unremitting interest and care. The printing was executed at Alcalá de Henares, where the cardinal’s munificence had founded an university; and from the Latin name of the city, Complutum, the book is known as the Complutensian Polyglott. Its six volumes, dedicated to pope Leo contain the Old Testament in Hebrew, with the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch; the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the New Testament in Greek, and the Latin Vulgate translation of the whole, with literal Latin versions of the Septuagint and of the Chaldee, a Hebrew dictionary, and other supplementary matter.

The Complutensian New Testament was finished in 1514; but as the publication of the Polyglott was delayed by the death of Ximenes, in November 1517, and the copies were not sent forth until 1522, the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, published at Basel in 1516, was the first edition in which the original text of the Christian Scriptures was given to the world.

The press was largely employed in producing vernacular translations of the Scriptures. It is remarkable that in England the labours of Wyclif, instead of promoting such works, deterred men from undertaking them on account of the obloquy which was attached to his name, so that no printed English Bible existed until the time of the Reformation. But in Germany there were many complete editions in various dialects before the end of the fifteenth century, besides separate publications of particular books. There was also a complete Italian translation; and portions of the Scriptures had been printed in French, Bohemian, and other languages. All these were rendered from the Latin Vulgate.

It is supposed that such translations found their circulation in great part among persons of a mystical tendency or of suspected orthodoxy. The ecclesiastical authori­ties, in alarm at the operations of the press, endeavoured to control them by establishing a censorship. The first attempt of this sort was made in i486, by Berthold of Henneberg, archbishop of Mayence, who forbade the printing and sale of books without a licence, and complained of the translation of works on “Divine offices and the high points of our religion” in German,—a language which he considered inadequate to express the higher religious matters, and likely to expose them to disgrace. In 1501, Alexander VI sent forth a bull with special reference to the provinces of Cologne, Mayence, Treves, and Magdeburg, denouncing the printing of books “containing various errors and pernicious doctrines, even hostile to the Catholic faith”, and ordering that for the future nothing should be printed except with archiepiscopal licence, and that the obnoxious books already in existence should be destroyed. In 1502, a censorship was established in Spain, at first under royal authority, from which it was afterwards transferred to the inquisition; and the Lateran council, at its tenth session, approved a bull by which a censorship was instituted for the prevention of publications dangerous to faith or morals.

In addition to Alcalá, several universities were founded during this time,—among them, Wittenberg, in Saxony, which was soon to become famous in con­nexion with the Reformation; Buda, Copenhagen, St. Andrew’s, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. By thus bringing home the opportunities of academical education to various countries, the great mass of students were spared the cost, the labour, and perhaps something of the moral temptations connected with a resort to Paris, Bologna, or Oxford; but on the other hand there was a disad­vantage in the decrease of intercommunication between the nations of Europe.

The university of Rome, after having been dormant during the great schism, was refounded in 1431 by Eugenius IV. Alexander VI erected new buildings for it, and was a benefactor to it in other ways; and it was more fully organized under the patronage and by the bounty of Leo X.

In England, this period was marked by many founda­tions for the purpose of education. Among them were the royal school of Eton, the colleges founded at Cam­bridge by Henry VI and his queen, by the mother of Henry VII, and by Alcock, bishop of Ely, with those of archbishop Chichele, and bishops Fleming, Waynefleet, Smith, and Fox at Oxford. Yet learning, at least during the earlier part of the time, made little progress. Poggio, who visited this country about 1420, finds fault with the barbarous and obsolete nature of our university studies. There are great complaints as to the decay of Oxford, which was such that at one time Paris suspended corre­spondence with the English university. This decay was in part traced to the uncertainty of ecclesiastical promo­tion, in consequence of which the universities are found petitioning archbishop Chichele and others, that in the disposal of patronage a regard may be had to the claims of graduates in such matters. Erasmus, in 1513, speaks of a great revival and extension of studies as having taken place at Cambridge within the last thirty years, so that the university might then “compete with the first schools of the age” ; and there can be no doubt that Oxford had shared in the improvement.

At Paris the university was for a time distracted by a continuation of the old feuds between mendicants and seculars, between nominalists and realists; but these were now superseded by a change which furnished new subjects and causes of dispute.

From Italy, where the revival of Greek learning began, it spread into the countries north of the Alps. The first German who distinguished himself in the new study was Rudolf Haussmann (or Agricola), who, under the patronage of a bishop of Worms, lectured there and at Heidelberg. In France the cultivation of Greek was encouraged by Lewis XI, who was favourable to all progress which did not conflict with his despotism; and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Budé taught with great fame at Paris. In England, where the Greek language was introduced by Sellyng, prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, after a visit to Italy in 1480, there soon grew up a band of zealous scholars, among whom Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, Colet, and Thomas More were conspicuous.

In Italy, the merits of Aristotle and Plato were dis­cussed by their respective partisans, both Greek refugees and Italians, with the same eagerness which had marked the contests between the nominalists and the realists. Platonism—or rather the later Alexandrian philosophy which was mistaken for it—was taught at Florence by Marsiglio Ficino, who, although a canon of the cathedral and an admired preacher, is said to have been so devoted to the Greek sage that the only image admitted into his study was one of Plato, before which a lamp was continually burning. This eclectic system associated Orpheus with Moses, Plato with the Saviour, classicism with Christian faith, while it contained much admixture of superstition and mysticism; and by such doctrines it was that Ficino proposed to overcome the repugnance which the men of letters of his day too commonly felt for Christianity—that as they had been led away by philosophy from the Christian faith, they might by a truer philosophy be brought back to it. The Florentine Academy founded by Cosmo de’ Medici, and patronized by Lorenzo, celebrated the festival of Plato’s birth and death on the 29th of November; and we have already met with the similar association at Rome, over which Pomponio Leti presided, and which perhaps deserved the suspicions of pope Paul II in a greater degree than Platina would allow. Leti and others of the Italians, provoked by the exclusiveness of the votaries of Greek literature, and regarding themselves as representatives of the ancient conquerors of the world, betook themselves in opposition to asserting the claims of Latin; and some of them, discarding the free and expressive, although inelegant, Latinity of the middle ages, made it their study to imitate the purity and graces of Cicero. The absurdi­ties which resulted from this pedantic affectation were exposed at a somewhat later date by the keen satire of Erasmus, who defined the true Ciceronianism to be that the modems should speak as Cicero would have spoken in their circumstances. Erasmus does not spare the pagan tendencies which found a shelter under the profession of Ciceronianism, and which in many places showed themselves in a strange mixture of heathen with Christian ideas. The classical revival had, indeed, produced much unbelief, and many of the worst corruptions of heathen morality. Even in the papal court, a light and sceptical tone prevailed; nay, as we have seen, even some popes were not above the suspicion of disbelieving the very elements of Christian faith.

In Germany the “humanist” movement took a different course; for, as the cultivation of the new learning had begun in such institutions as the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, it was brought into the service of religion, and issued, not in a contempt for the Christian faith, but in a desire of reform. In Germany, however, as elsewhere, the old academics, far from origi­nating or welcoming the classical movement, looked down with the contempt of superior knowledge on those whom they styled grammarians or poets, while these in turn regarded the doctors of the earlier school as antiquated and barbarous.

The most eminent humanists of Germany were Reuchlin and Erasmus. Reuchlin, who was born in 1465, at Pforzheim, studied at the new university of Freiburg, and through the patronage of Eberhard, count of Wurtemberg, was enabled to continue his studies at Paris, and to travel in Italy, where, according to the fashion of the age, he grecised his name into Capnio. He became an advocate, was much employed by count Eberhard in political missions, and enjoyed the favour of the emperor Frederick; and after Eberhard’s death, in 1496, he settled at Heidelberg, where he found a new patron in Philip Count Palatine. By Reuchlin the study of classical lite­rature was greatly promoted in Germany; but he is more especially noted as the first of his countrymen who culti­vated Hebrew learning. Unfortunately he took up from his Jewish teachers much of the mysticism which was prevalent among them; he dabbled in astrology, and endeavoured to reconcile Judaism and Christianity by means of the Cabbala. Reuchlin, although he had been appointed advocate of the Dominican order, had already offended the monastic party by a satirical comedy, when he was involved in a quarrel with John Pfefferkorn, a Jew of Cologne, who, at the age of fifty, had professed Christianity. Pfefferkorn had published sundry writings for the purpose of converting his brethren, without success; when, finding argument useless, he petitioned the emperor Maximilian that all Jewish books except the Bible might be destroyed, in order to deprive the Jews of support for their unbelief.

By this petition he obtained an imperial order, authorizing the destruction of Jewish books which attacked the Christian religion; but Pfefferkorn proceeded to confis­cate all Hebrew writings without distinction, and the archbishop of Mayence, Uriel of Gemmingen, suggested to the emperor that Reuchlin and other competent authorities should be consulted on the subject. With the emperor’s sanction, Reuchlin was requested to state his opinion; and he replied by an argumentative treatise.

He distinguished the books of the Jews into seven classes; among the lighter sort, he said, might be a few in mockery of the Christian religion, but these were condemned by the Jewish doctors themselves as false and calumnious. The rest ought not to be destroyed, but might be studied by Christians, as Moses, Solomon, and Daniel had studied the wisdom of the heathen. He insisted on the utility of Hebrew for Christian theologians, and recommended that during the next ten years it should be taught in universities, as a means of furnishing them with better weapons against the Jews than those which Pfefferkorn wished to employ.

Pfefferkorn furiously assailed Reuchlin in a book to which he gave the name of ‘Handspiegel’ (‘Hand-glass’); to which Reuchlin rejoined with vehemence in one entitled ‘Augenspiegel’ (‘Eye­glass’), professing to convict his adversary of thirty-four untruths. The matter was taken up by the Dominicans of Cologne, who frightened Reuchlin into an apology; but when they went on to require that he should retract, he refused, and stood on his defence. The inquisitor of the province of Cologne, James Hoogstraten, or Hochstraten (who had already written against Reuchlin), went to Mayence, and there, although beyond his jurisdic­tion, set up a court, by which Reuchlin, notwithstanding his protestations on the ground of irregularity, was condemned for the publication of the ‘Eye-glass.’ But the proceedings were stayed by the archbishop of Mayence, and Reuchlin appealed to the pope. The matter was referred by Leo to the bishop of Spires, who appointed a commission of doctors to investigate it; and these condemned Hoogstraten to pay Reuchlin damages for the irregularity and injustice of his proceedings towards him. Meanwhile, the Dominicans at Cologne had publicly burnt the ‘Eye-glass’ and had obtained opinions in their favour from. Paris and other universities. Again the case was carried before Leo, and Reuchlin’s cause was supported by the recommendations of a multitude of princes and prelates. Leo, at once unwilling to condemn the humanists and to provoke Dominicans, committed the investigation to cardinal Grimani and, although the Dominicans were greatly annoyed, Reuchlin was but imperfectly satisfied by the issue of a mandate which, instead of pronouncing for either party, superseded the suit.

In 1519, however, the quarrel was decided after the manner of the age and country. Francis von Sickingen, a gallant but somewhat lawless noble, threatened that unless the judgment of Spires were carried out within a month, he would lay waste the territory of Cologne. In consequence of this threat, Hoogstraten and his party paid the damages, and although they made underhand attempts to excite the Roman court against Reuchlin, and even procured a fresh condemnation of his book, it appears that he suffered no actual molestation until his death in June, 1522.

In this controversy Reuchlin was supported by the friends of intellectual progress throughout Europe, who, indeed, learnt from it to acknowledge a common interest, so that some of them even spoke of themselves as Reuchlinists. There were writings on both sides, both serious and satirical; and of these by far the most effective was the collection of letters entitled ‘Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum’, of which the first part appeared in 1515 and the second in 1517. The chief authors of these letters are supposed to have been John Jager, a professor of Erfurt, who styled himself Crotus Rubianus, and Ulric von Hutten, a young literary adventurer of noble family and brilliant talents, of loose morality and strong reforming zeal.

The title of this famous satire was suggested by the ‘Letters of Illustrious Men’ to Reuchlin, which some of his friends had published in 1514, with the intention of supporting him in his contest with the Dominicans. To these is opposed a set of ‘Letters of Obscure Men’, addressed to Ortuinus Gratius (Ortwin von Graes), of Cologne, who was supposed to have helped Pfefferkorn in his Latin, and was obnoxious to the Reuchlinists from having taken the side opposite to that on which, as a pupil of the school of Deventer and as a professor of “humane” literature, he might have been expected to range himself. The ‘Obscure Men’ display, with an air of entire unconsciousness, the characteristics of the vulgar monkish party—their stupidity, narrowness, and igno­rance, their hatred of improvement and enlightenment, their intolerance, their obtuse self-satisfaction, their absurd pedantry, their coarse and shameless sensuality. They dispute in scholastic form about nonsensical questions; they look down with the contempt of professed theologians on Reuchlin, as a lawyer who had irregularly intruded into their province; they would prohibit Greek and the “new Latinity”; and their barbarous Latin has an air of verisimilitude which is irresistibly comical. The audacity of the book is astounding; the writers are not restrained by any considerations of decency or reverence, and the liberties taken with Ortwin, with Pfefferkorn and his wife, with Hoogstraten and others, must appear to a modern reader outrageous. Among the letters of imaginary persons, whose vulgar German names are rendered more ridiculous by Latin terminations, are some which are impudently ascribed to Ortwin, to Arnold of Tongres, who had been concerned in the affair of Reuchlin, and to the formidable Hoogstraten himself, whose adventures in pursuing the suit against Reuchlin at Rome are represented as having ended in the exhaustion of his purse, so that he had to plod his way homewards on foot, exposed to all the inclemency of the seasons.

The effect of these letters was immense, and was not to be counteracted by any publications on the other side. It is indeed said with apparent seriousness (although we may find it difficult to believe the statement) that the imitation of the monkish style was so successful as to deceive some of the satirized party, who lauded and circulated the book as a precious contribution to the cause of orthodoxy. But those against whom it was more immediately directed applied at Rome for a condemnation of it; and in March 1517 Leo issued a prohibition, which, however, had no other result than to increase the celebrity and the effect of the work.

The fame of Erasmus was more popular and more widely extended than that of Reuchlin. He was born at Rotterdam in 1465, the offspring of a connexion which had become unlawful because the paternal grandfather had determined that one of his many sons should become a monk, and on this account refused to allow his son Gerard to marry the object of his affections. Gerard, who had gone to Italy, was persuaded to enter into the priesthood by information sent by his parents that the mother of his son was dead; and when the irrevocable step had been taken, he discovered that the story was false. Erasmus received the greater part of his early educa­tion under the Brethren of the Common Life at Deven­ter. At the age of thirteen he lost both his parents, and was left to the care of guardians, who made away with his property and endeavoured to cover their dishonesty by persuading him to enter a cloister. The influence of his teachers at Deventer was used for the same purpose; but he withstood all solicitations until at length he was overcome by the importunity of a pretended friend, who represented in delusive colours the advantages of the monastic life, and whose treachery and worthlessness he afterwards discovered. At the age of seventeen or eighteen he became a novice; after a year of probation he made his profession among the Augustinian canons of Stein, and in 1492 he was ordained a priest. The circumstances of his history were not likely to impress him with a favourable opinion of the monastic system, and his experiences of the conventual life were repulsive. We cannot wonder that his tainted birth, his solitary position, the frauds of which he had been the victim, the hard­ships and uncertainty of a scholar’s profession, the pretensions of patrons and the slackness of their performance, with his nervous temperament and the delicate health which was partly the effect of the monastic diet, tended to produce in him a spirit of distrust and caution, which even resulted in something of selfishness.

After having been drawn from his monastery by the bishop of Cambray, he pursued his studies at Paris; and there he met with a pupil, Lord Mountjoy, by whom he was invited to England. His first visit to this country, in 1498, was followed by others in 1505, 1511-14, and 1515, during which, (although he disdained to learn the language, and on that account resigned a benefice be­stowed on him by archbishop Warham), he became acquainted with many eminent men—among them Warham, Wolsey, Fisher bishop of Rochester, Tonstal, afterwards bishop of London and of Durham, Linacre, and the young king Henry VIII, of whose early promise he speaks in extravagant terms. But his chosen associates were John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s and founder of St. Paul’s School, by whom his opinions were not a little affected, and Thomas More. With these two he lived on terms of familiar intimacy and in a close sympathy of thought. He resided at both the universities, and during his third and longest visit was professor of Greek at Cambridge.

In 1508 he was able to fulfil a long-cherished desire to see Italy, where he was received by scholars and by high ecclesiastical personages with flattering respect. His ‘Adagia’, first published in 1500, and afterwards much enlarged, had laid the foundation of a great reputation for ability and learning. His ‘Praise of Folly’, meditated during his return from Italy to England, and completed in the house of Sir Thomas More, acquired a vast popularity,—twenty-seven editions, at least, having been published during his lifetime. In this, after a long exordium, in which pedantry is perhaps more conspicuous than wit, he keenly attacks the pre­vailing follies of all classes, but especially the faults of the clergy and the superstitions which they fostered. His ‘Colloquies’, of later date (1527), were so eagerly received that in one year 24,000 copies were sold; and in these he again assailed with especial force the mistaken devotions which the monks inculcated, with the intrusiveness and rapacity of the mendicants in connexion with death-beds, wills, and funerals.

In addition to his original writings, Erasmus, who about the year 1515 established himself at Basel, where his works were printed by Froben, was diligently employed on labours of other kinds—editions of classical works, of St. Jerome, and other fathers; and in 1516 he produced his Greek New Testament, with a corrected Latin version—the earliest edition, as we have seen, in which the original of the Christian Scriptures was offered to the world.

His old associates at Stein had chosen one of his friends as abbot, and were induced by the renown which Erasmus had acquired to attempt to regain him for their society; but he had been released by the pope from his monastic’ obligations, and expressed in his answer an inflexible resolution to be no more ensnared in a way of life which his reason, his feelings, and his experience condemned.

A career so brilliant, and at the same time so contrary to the common ecclesiastical manner of thinking, could not be without opposition. His New Testament was attacked: why should the language of the schismatic Greeks interfere with the sacred and traditional Latin? How could any improvement be made on the Vulgate translation? There was a college at Cambridge, especi­ally proud of its theological character, which would not admit a copy within its gates; and from many other quarters there was an outcry against the dangerous novelty. But the editor was able to shelter himself under the name of pope Leo, who had accepted the dedication of the volume.

At the time which we have reached, Erasmus was acknowledged as the chief among scholars and men of letters. He had been patronized, invited, pensioned, tempted with offers of promotion, by all the chief princes of Europe, and by prelates innumerable. And thus far he was regarded by the opponents of innovation as a dangerous reformer. A different state of things was to follow, when, finding himself unable to advance with the movement of popular opinion—unable, from his critical and somewhat indecisive temper, to take part thoroughly either with the reformers or with their adversaries, because he saw, as he believed, the errors of both parties—reproached by those who had left him behind, and distrusted by those wh6m he had once opposed, but to whose interest he had fallen back,—he spent his last years in disquiet and in the turmoil of bitter controversy, a mark for obloquy from both sides, and at last left as his epitaph the melancholy words, “The Lutheran tragedy loaded him with intolerable ill-will; he was torn in pieces by both parties, while he endeavoured to consult the good of both.”

Powerful as scholarship had been in preparing the way for a reformation, the great change which was actually at hand—a change which not only rent from the papacy a large portion of its dominion, but compelled it to undertake new and vigorous measures of internal reform—was not to be accomplished by the efforts of scholars or men of elegant learning, but by ruder and perhaps more earnest labourers.