CHAPTER I.

THE ELECTION OF PAUL II

 

The Cardinals in attendance on Pius II had hastened to Rome as soon as it was decided that the election should be held in that city. The period of the vacancy of the Holy See was one of great disquiet, as it had often been before. The Sienese in Rome suffered much, and were assailed by a hostile crowd wherever they appeared.

Cardinal Roverella returned from his Mission to Naples on the 23rd August, and Cardinal Gonzaga reached Rome on the 24th. The Sacred College assembled in the morning of the 25th in the house of Cardinal Scarampo. In this preliminary meeting, doubts were expressed as to the prudence of holding a Conclave in the Vatican while Antonio Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi, still kept possession of the Castle of St. Angelo, and many Cardinals advised that the Election should take place in the Minerva or at the Capitol.

The Duke of Amalfi, who was at this time absent from Rome, seems to have been an object of suspicion, principally because of the close relations which existed between him, the Orsini, and King Ferrante of Naples. Some of the Cardinals feared that, in the event of a Pope being chosen who was not agreeable to the King, he might make difficulties about giving up St. Angelo. On the other side, it was maintained that Antonio Piccolomini had given the most positive assurances, and that regard for his brothers, one of whom was a member of the Sacred College, would deter him from doing anything that could interfere with the liberty of the Conclave. This consideration prevailed, and it was determined that the Election should be held in the Vatican.

On the evening of the 28th August, the Cardinals went into Conclave. We have a graphic account of the proceedings from the Duke of Mantua's Envoy. The little Chapel of the Palace was chosen for the actual Election. The doors and windows were walled up. The chambers to be occupied during the election were like monks' cells; they were twenty-five feet square, and were so dark that artificial light was almost constantly necessary. The cells were marked with a letter of the alphabet, and assigned to the different Cardinals by lot. Each Cardinal had his meals brought to him at regular hours by his servants, in a coffer called a cornuta, adorned with his coat of arms. These coffers had to pass three sets of guards who surrounded the Conclave. The first was composed of Roman citizens, the second of Ambassadors, and the third of Prelates; they carefully examined the contents of the coffers, so that no letters should be introduced with the provisions.

Bessarion was invested with the dignity of Dean, and for a long time it seemed likely that the tiara would fall to his share. After him the most notable among the Cardinals were, d'Estouteville, the head of the French party; Carvajal, with his untiring zeal; Torquemada, who was looked upon as the first theologian of his time; and the two antipodes, Scarampo and Barbo. Of the more youthful members of the Sacred College, Roderigo Borgia was distinguished by his position of Vice-Chancellor. His private life, like that of Francesco Gonzaga, was anything but edifying. Cardinals Filippo Calandrini, Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, Juan de Mella, Angelo Capranica, Lodovico Libretto, and Bartolomeo Roverella, by their irreproachable conduct formed a great contrast to Borgia and Gonzaga. In Ancona, Roverella had, like Capranica, Carvajal, and Calandrini, been named as a candidate for the papacy. On the other hand, even in June, 1464, when the condition of Pius II had become worse, Cardinal Barbo's prospects had been highly thought of. The Milanese Ambassador advised his master at that time to make a friend of this Cardinal.

On the 27th August, one of the Ambassadors then in Rome wrote as follows: “The negotiations regarding the Papal Election are being carried on in every direction in secret, and with great zeal. God grant that the Holy Spirit, and not human passions, may preside! Some few persons conclude, from certain predictions, that Cardinal Torquemada will be Pope, but he is very suffering, and this morning was said to be dead, which, however, I do not believe. Others are of opinion that the choice will fall on one who is not a member of the Sacred College, and, in virtue of some prophecies, Battista Pallavicini, Bishop of Reggio, is named”.

The statements regarding Cardinal Torquemada's prospects of election are confirmed by one of the Duke of Milan's Envoys. On the 29th August he informed his master of the general impression that Cardinal Torquemada, who had that morning been carried into the Conclave, would never return to his own dwelling, but would either become Pope or die, as he was so old and feeble. After Torquemada, Scarampo was thought by many likely to be the favoured candidate.

The discourse pronounced by Domenico de' Domenichi, the eloquent Bishop of Torcello, in St. Peter’s, before the Conclave began, gives a picture of the general state of affairs, and describes the disposition of the Electors. The preacher took for his text the words of Jeremias, “To what shall I equal thee, O virgin, daughter of Sion? For great as a sea is thy destruction: who shall heal thee?”, and applied them to the state of Christendom. He re­called the fall of Constantinople, and the Christian losses, in the East, which followed on that deplorable event. Things had now, he said, reached such a point that tidings of defeat were frequently, indeed almost daily, received; and yet the Princes took no heed, and were, as had been evident during the life-time of Pius II, deaf to the exhortations of the Supreme Head of Christendom.

After an affecting picture of the dangers from without, Domenichi turned to the contemplation of the ills which the Church had to suffer from her own sons. The clergy, he said, are slandered, the goods of the Church plundered, ecclesiastical jurisdiction impeded, and the power of the keys despised. He frankly blamed the Popes for their compliance with the unjust demands of Princes, and attributed the sad condition of the times to the fact that those in authority had sought their own interests, and not those of Jesus Christ. Help, he maintained, could be looked for only from a Chief Pastor who would give back to the Church her former liberty, and would not fear the power of Princes. He pointed out that the relations between the Pope and the Bishops had also been impaired. “Burdened by you”, exclaimed the Orator, addressing the Cardinals, “the Bishops favour your enemies; oppressed by the Princes, they turn, not to the Mother who appears to them in the guise of a step-mother, but seek the favour of those into whose power they have been allowed to fall”.

Finally, Domenichi declared that the position of the Sacred College itself was not what it had been. “Where”, he asked, “is the former splendour of your authority? where is the Majesty of your College? Once, whatever was to be done, was first laid before your Senate, hardly anything was determined without your counsel”. Domenichi concluded by lamenting the complete change that had taken place, and pronouncing the existing state of things to be insupportable, inasmuch as the authority, dignity, and splendour of the Sacred College had well-nigh disappeared.

These last words were hailed with delight by those Cardinals who sought as much as possible to limit the Papal authority. On the first day of the Conclave this party framed an Election Capitulation, which all the Cardinals, except Scarampo, signed, and swore to observe.

The provisions of this document would necessarily have involved a transformation of the monarchical character of the Church’s Constitution, and have reduced the Pope to the position of the mere President of the College of Cardinals.

The Capitulation began by binding the future Pope to prosecute the Turkish war, and to devote to this purpose all the revenue derived from the Alum quarries. He was, moreover, to reform the Roman Court, was not to remove it to any other Italian city without the consent of the majority of the Cardinals, nor to any place out of Italy without the consent of the whole body. A General Council was to be summoned within three years’ time. This Council was to reform Ecclesiastical affairs, and to summon the temporal Princes to defend Christendom against the Turks. It was further decided that the number of the Cardinals should never exceed four and twenty, and that one only should be of the Pope's kindred; no one was to be admitted into the Sacred College under the age of thirty, and also no one who did not possess the requisite amount of learning. Creations of new Cardinals, and nominations to the greater benefices, were only to be made with the express consent of the Sacred College. The Pope was further to bind himself not to alienate any of the possessions of the Church, not to declare war, or enter into any alliance without the consent of the Cardinals; to confer the more important fortresses in the Patrimony of St. Peter exclusively on Clerics, who, however, were not to be his kinsmen; no relation of his was to occupy the position of Commander-in-Chief of his troops. In State documents, the formula, “after consultation with our Brethren”, was only to be used when the Cardinals had actually been summoned together in Council. Every month these resolutions were to be read to the Pope in Consistory, and twice in the year the Cardinals were to examine whether he had faithfully observed them; should this not be the case they were, “with the charity due from sons towards their parents”, to remind him three times of his promise. What was to take place, in the event of these warnings being unheeded, is not stated. Schism was the only course open.

The arrangement of the Election Capitulation was followed by the Election, which, on this occasion, was very rapidly concluded. The first scrutiny took place on the 30th August. Scarampo had seven votes, d'Estouteville nine, and Pietro Barbo eleven. The last-named Cardinal, who, six years before, had almost obtained the tiara, now at once received three more votes by way of accessit. His election was accordingly secured. The other Cardinals also agreed, invested him with the Papal robes, and did him homage. Thus the high-born but needy Sienese Pope was succeeded by a rich Venetian noble. The populace assembled in front of the Vatican received the news with joy. The Pope was then carried to St. Peter’s, where the throng was so great that it was most difficult to find a passage through it.

The unusual rapidity of Cardinal Barbo’s Election was looked upon by many as a miracle, for an Election preceded by less than three scrutinies had not occurred within the memory of man; but a little consideration enables us to understand the motives for the haste of the Cardinals. The first of these was the anxious state of public affairs, together with fear of the King of Naples and of the Duke of Amalfi, the latter of whom had his troops encamped on the frontiers of the States of the Church; moreover, Torquemada, Scarampo, and Barbo were very ailing, and Rodrigo Borgia had not yet recovered from his illness; he appeared in the Conclave with his head bound up. The confinement and privations of the Conclave must necessarily have been doubly irksome to these invalids, and made them desirous to get through the Election without delay.

Cardinal Ammanati says that Barbo at first wished to take the name of Formosus; the Cardinals, however, objected, on the ground that it might seem to be an allusion to his good looks. Barbo, who had been Cardinal Priest of St. Mark's, then thought of selecting Mark, but this was the war-cry of the Venetians, and was therefore deemed unsuitable. Finally, he decided to be known as Paul II.

The new Pope was, as Ammanati in a confidential autograph letter informed the Duke of Milan, indebted for his elevation to the elder Cardinals, that is to say, to those who had been members of the Sacred College before the time of Pius II; they were of opinion that the late Pope had shown so little regard to the Cardinals, because his own experience as a member of the Sacred College had been very short. Some of the younger Cardinals, and amongst them Ammanati, joined the party of the elders.

The Prelate so quickly elevated to the Supreme dignity of Christendom was at this time in the 48th year of his age. His pious mother was sister to Eugenius IV, and the youth, originally destined for a mercantile career, had been very carefully brought up, and owed his education, as well as his ecclesiastical advancement, to that Pope. The teachers selected by Eugenius IV for his nephew were men of ability, yet the progress of the latter was but slow; he took no interest in Humanistic studies, History and Canon Law had more attraction for him. Barbo’s favourite pursuit at that time was the collection of coins, gems, and other antiquities.

As early as 1440, Barbo was, together with his rival Scarampo, raised to the purple; he also became Cardinal Deacon of S^ta Maria Nuova (now S^ta Francesca Romana), which Church he afterwards exchanged for S. Marco. Under Nicholas V and Calixtus III, he continued to occupy the same influential position as he had enjoyed during the pontificate of his uncle. His relations with Pius II were not of so agreeable a character. The Cardinal of S. Marco derived a princely income from his numerous benefices, and made a most generous use of it, sometimes for the benefit of less wealthy colleagues, such as Cusa and Aeneas Sylvius. A lover of splendour, like all Venetians, he began in 1455 to build a great palace, and in 1458 undertook the restoration of his titular Church. He was also a diligent collector of antiques and artistic treasures, and in this respect, rivalled even the Medici.

The Cardinal of Venice, as Barbo was also styled, was one of the most popular personages in the Court and City of Rome. His generosity, liberality, affability, and gentleness, soon won all hearts. His devotion to his friends was manifested on the occasion of the fall of the Borgia. Any one who enjoyed his patronage was deemed fortunate. He used to visit the sick in his neighbourhood with kindly solicitude, and had a little pharmacy from which he dispensed medicines gratis. The poor were loud in their praises of the open-handed and tender-hearted Prince of the Church, and strangers were delighted with the kindness of his welcome and his readiness to serve them. Any one who had matters of business at the Roman Court, might reckon on success if Barbo took an interest in him. Genial wit and good humour reigned at his table, and he used to say in jest that when he became Pope each Cardinal should have a beautiful villa, to which he might retire during the heat of summer.

Cardinal Barbo added to his amiable qualities the charm of an imposing appearance; he was tall, well-made, and his bearing was dignified, advantages which have always been greatly valued by the Italians. For half a century, says a chronicler, a handsomer man had not been seen in the Senate of the Church. The weak points in his character were his jealousy, his vanity, and an overweening love of pomp, which betrayed his Venetian and mercantile origin.

According to the rude custom of the age the Romans used to plunder the abode of a new-made Pontiff; even Cardinals who had not been elected, frequently suffering on these occasions, Barbo and Scarampo had taken the precaution of placing military guards in their Palaces. An attack made on Scarampo’s Palace, when a report of his election had been circulated, was repulsed. After Barbo's elevation became known, his Palace, which was full of treasures and works of art, was besieged by the rabble. Nothing but a haystack, however, fell into their hands. Some of the marauders then rushed to the Convent of S^ta Maria Nuova, under the erroneous impression that property belonging to the newly-elected Pope was hidden there. Defensive preparations had, however, been made, and the mob returned to the Palace. They seemed about to storm it, but were pacified by a present of 1300 ducats.

Extensive preparations for the Pope’s Coronation were undertaken by three Cardinals chosen for the purpose. Even before this solemnity took place, he was delivered from the anxiety which had beset the first days of his reign in regard to the Duke of Amalfi. After the Election, the Castle of St. Angelo and the fortresses of Tivoli, Spoleto, and Ostia, were still held by Sienese captains in the Duke's name; the garrisons' declared that they would not give up these strongholds until the sum of 30.000 ducats, which he said he had advanced to the Roman Church, had been repaid. In order to guard against the recurrence of such a danger, the Pope entrusted St. Angelo, which was finally given up to him on the 14th September, to the learned Spaniard, Roderigo Sancio de Arevalo. In compliance with the stipulations of the Election Capitulation, the Pope also arranged that for the future the governors of all the fortresses in the States of the Church should be Prelates.

The Pope's Coronation took place on the 16th September. Cardinal Borgia, as the senior of the Cardinal Deacons, was entitled to perform the ceremony, but, as he was indisposed, Cardinal Forteguerri acted in his stead. The ceremony took place on a tribune erected in front of St. Peter's. It was observed that Paul II did not, like other Popes, get a new tiara made for himself, but used the old one, which is said to have belonged to Pope St. Sylvester.

After his Coronation the Pope took possession of the Lateran. It was long since the Romans had witnessed more splendid festivities. More than 23,000 florins were spent on this occasion, according to the accounts of the Apostolic Treasury. The Pope rode from St. Peter's to S^ta Maria Nuova on a palfrey adorned with crimson and silver, which had been presented to him by Cardinal Gonzaga. Ancient custom gave the Roman populace a claim to the horse ridden by the Pope to the Lateran; and, after the Coronation of Pius II, as well as on many other occasions, a riot had been the result. To avoid this, Paul II dismounted at the Convent of S^ta Maria Nuova, leaving the palfrey there, and having himself carried in a litter the rest of the way. The function in the Lateran was followed by a banquet. The Pope spent the night in the Palace of S^ta Maria Maggiore, and on the following morning, after he had heard Mass, returned to the Vatican.

Many Embassies soon arrived to pay homage to the new Pontiff. The first was from the King of Naples, which was admitted to an audience two days after the Coronation, when Paul II reminded the Envoys of the benefits received by King Ferrante from the Apostolic See. The Neapolitan Embassy was followed by others from Lucca, Siena, Mantua, Milan, and Florence, this latter being remarkable for its magnificence. All these were received in public, but the Embassies from the States of the Church in Secret Consistories; which furnished an opportunity for making complaints and asking for favours. Paul II, who, especially at the beginning of his reign, appeared to think a good deal of his own importance, was not very ready to comply with these requests, and disputes with the Bolognese arose in consequence. Some of the speeches made by the Ambassadors were masterpieces of Humanistic eloquence, filled with quotations from the ancient authors. That of the Jurist, Francesco Accolti, who was attached to the Milanese Embassy, was specially admired. On the 2nd December the Ambassadors of the Emperor Frederick III arrived; they were commissioned to treat also of the affairs of Bohemia.

Some of the Articles of the Election Capitulation were so obnoxious that even a Pope less imbued with a sense of his own importance than Paul II would have been driven to resist this fresh attempt to introduce an oligarchical character into the government of the States of the Church, and, as a necessary consequence, into that of the Church itself. As a Venetian, the Pope was only too well-acquainted with the defects of this system, and was firmly resolved not to allow himself to be reduced “to the helpless position of a Doge, controlled by Committees of the Nobles”. He was encouraged in this resolve, if we may believe Ammanati, by two Bishops who were aspiring to the purple.

The Pope, himself, prepared the Ambassadors for an alteration in the Election Capitulation. To one of them he bitterly complained that its stipulations tied his hands so that he could hardly do anything without the consent of the Cardinals. “I perceive”, wrote the Duke of Milan’s Ambassador on the 21st September, “that His Holiness will endeavour, if he possibly can, to mitigate the Election Capitulation”.

One of the reasons which, from Paul II's point of view, compelled him to take this course was, that, under existing circumstances, any limitation of the Monarchical power of the Pope in the States of the Church would necessarily interfere with the free exercise of that power in matters purely ecclesiastical.

According to the Catholic Doctrine, the Constitution of the Church is, by Divine appointment, monarchical; any attempt, therefore, to alter it was unlawful, and the oath to observe the Election Capitulation invalid. It is, moreover, an article of Faith that each Pope receives the plenitude of power as directly from God as when it was first conferred by the Divine Founder of the Church. Prescriptions of limitation, therefore, whether contained in an Election Capitulation or in the enactments of a predecessor, can only affect the new Pope as counsels or directions, not as binding obligations.

According to trustworthy contemporaneous testimony, the intentions of many of the Cardinals in framing the Election Capitulation were far from disinterested. In reality, their aim was, not the removal of prevailing abuses, but an unlawful elevation and extension of the authority of the Sacred College. At the head of this party was the worldly-minded Cardinal d'Estouteville, who would have had much to apprehend from a genuine reform. A very well-informed Ambassador, writing on the 11th September, 1464, says that the stipulation regarding the Council was not made in good faith by the Cardinals, but adopted by them as a means of keeping the Pope in fear, and inducing him to comply with their demands. Paul II, who thoroughly understood these designs, soon made it clear how much this resolution displeased him.

The Pope was required to publish a Bull, confirming the Election Capitulation, on the third day after his Coronation; but the Bull did not appear and, instead of framing it, Paul II was occupying himself in devising means of recovering the free exercise of the Monarchical power. He caused several legal authorities to draw up opinions on the question, whether the articles to which he had sworn in the Conclave were binding on him. These authorities answered in the negative, and the Pope then laid a document, differing very essentially from the Election Capitulation, before the Cardinals, and persuaded, or constrained, them to sign it. All yielded, with the exception of the aged Carvajal, who was immovable in his opposition.

The excitement in the Sacred College reached such a height that Cardinal Alain, brother of the Admiral of France, told the Pope to his face that his whole life for twenty-four years had been nothing but a plot to deceive them. Cardinal Gonzaga, whose relations with Paul II were in general friendly, and who had received many favours from him, wrote word to his father, on the 4th September, that the Pope was very much taken up with his dignity, and was proceeding in a most dictatorial manner. “Possibly”, he added, “the council which is to take place in three years may humble him”. Even in October, it was reported at the French Court that a schism had begun.

Happily this danger was averted, but the relations between the Pope and the Cardinals continued for a long time far from friendly. No improvement took place, even though he granted pensions to the poorer members of the Sacred College, and to all Cardinals in general the privilege of wearing the red biretta, and a large mitre of silk damask, embroidered with pearls, such as had hitherto been worn only by the Popes.

Cardinal Ammanati, who now fell into complete disgrace, was the most bitter in his complaints of Paul II. “All”, he wrote, “is suddenly changed, affability has given place to harshness, friendliness to a distant and repellent behaviour, a happy commencement to an evil progress”.

The estrangement was aggravated by the Pope’s inaccessibility, induced by his peculiar manner of life. Changes, which he considered necessary for the sake of his health, were made in the arrangements of the Court; day was turned into night, and night into day. Audiences were only granted at night. A German Ambassador writes : “His Holiness gives no more audiences by day, and, as mine was the first, I sat all night in the Pope's chamber until 3 o'clock in the morning”. Other accounts say that even good friends of the Pope had to wait from fifteen to twenty days before they could see him. To obtain an audience, the Envoy from Breslau writes, has now become quite an art. He had recently spent as much as five hours in the Palace, and had then been put off till the following evening. “It has now become three times as difficult to have an audience as it was under Papa Pio”, says this same Ambassador, adding that he had often seen even Cardinals obliged to go away, after waiting two hours, without having obtained their object. It is not astonishing to find that business was greatly delayed and continued to accumulate.

The progress of affairs was further hindered by the slowness, indecision, and distrustfulness which were natural to Pope Paul II. In many cases he went so far as to instruct the Chancery not to accept authentic copies of documents, but to require the originals.

The Ambassadors also lamented the difficulties which the Pope made in granting dispensations and important favours. All these causes tended seriously to diminish the incomes of the officials, and discontent soon prevailed amongst them. This dissatisfaction led to the expression of unfavourable opinions regarding the Pope, which have not always been received with due caution.

There is certainly no foundation for the charge of parsimony so often made and repeated against Paul II. Cardinal Ammanati, who originated it, must have had many opportunities of witnessing the Pop’s generosity. He granted 100 florins a month to Cardinals whose income was under 4000 golden florins; he was most liberal in assisting Bishops who were poor or exiled from their Sees. Impoverished nobles, destitute widows and orphans, the weak and the sick, and especially the members of the dethroned families from the East, who had taken refuge in Rome, were all partakers of his princely beneficence.

Almost every page of the account books of his reign furnishes documentary proof of his magnificent benevolence. Entry after entry records alms bestowed on needy widows and maidens, on nobles, on invalids or fugitives from the countries which had fallen under Turkish domination, from Hungary, and from the East. He made admirable arrangements for the care of the poor of Rome, and by his orders the Apostolic Treasury, every month, "for the love of God" (amore Dei), distributed 100 florins to those in want.

Fixed sums were also received at regular intervals by a number of poor Convents and Churches in Rome; as, for example, S. Agostino, S. Marcello, S^ta Maria sopra Minerva, S^ta Maria Ara Celi, S^ta Maria del Popolo, S^ta Sabina, S. Martino ai Monti, S. Giuliano, S. Clemente, S. Onofrio, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, S^ta Susanna, S. Alessio, S. Francesco in Trastevere, S. Cosimato and S. Pietro in Vincoli; but his bounty was not confined within the limits of the Eternal City; the Hospital of S. Matteo at Florence looks upon Paul II as, after Leo XI, one of its chief benefactors.

From the beginning of his Pontificate, Paul II devoted much care to the concerns of the City of Rome, a care rendered all the more necessary on account of the series of calamities, floods, tempests, and earthquakes by which it had then been visited. These were followed by pestilential epidemics, which raged in the autumn of 1464 to such a degree that one of the Ambassadors says that all the Cardinals' houses had become hospitals. This Plague lasted on into the colder months, and returned in the following years. Paul II rightly judged that the sanitary condition of the city could only be improved by a greater attention to cleanliness; he accordingly caused the streets to be purified, and sewers and aqueducts to be repaired.

A great benefit was conferred on Rome by Paul II, in the revision of its Statutes, which was completed in 1490, and had for its object the better and more rapid administration of justice. The revised Statutes were printed in the time of this Pope, probably in the year 1471. They are divided into three books: Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Administrative Law. This reform did not materially alter the principles of the Statutes of 1363, and the external and internal rights of the city remained unaltered.

Paul II took great pains to win the affection of the Roman people. In 1466 he gave them the Golden Rose, and the precious gift was borne in triumph through the streets. But they appreciated still more the variety and splendour with which the popular festivals, and especially the Carnival, were now celebrated.

Hitherto the Carnival had been confined to the Piazza Navona, the Capitol, and Monte Testaceio. In 1466, Paul II allowed the races to be held in the principal street of Rome, which from that time came to be called the Corso. The triumphal Arch of Marcus Aurelius, near S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was the starting point, and the Palace of S. Marco was the goal. Games and prizes were multiplied.

“In order”, writes Canensius, in his Life of Paul II, “that none of the elements, out of which Roman society was formed, might be left out, he instituted races for Jews, for boys, for grown men, and, finally, for old people, each with its suitable prize. The palls which it was customary to bestow as prizes on the successful race-horses were, by his directions, made of more costly materials”.

The great banquets, in the Square of S. Marco, to which the Pope invited the magistrates and the people, formed a new feature in the festivities. From a window of his Palace, Paul II looked down upon these entertainments, and at their conclusion money was distributed amongst the people. To give greater variety to the scene, donkey and buffalo races were added. Amusement of a higher grade was provided in the magnificent processions “which represented the triumphs of the ancient Roman Emperors, a favourite theme of the imagination of the period”. No doubt these “pictures of old Roman days were, in all archaeological simplicity, clad in the brightest colours of the style of the early Renaissance, but that only gave more life and variety to the scene”. These worldly proceedings were even at the time condemned by some, but Paul II paid no heed. He counted much on these popular amusements for counteracting the evil influences of the revolutionary demagogues. How much the festivities were generally appreciated may be gathered from the detailed and enthusiastic descriptions given by different chroniclers.

The care with which Paul II promoted the better supply of provisions for the City, and his measures against the robbers who infested its neighborhood, gave him a further title to the gratitude of the Romans. The Pope likewise endeavoured to check the vendettas and blood-feuds, to which so many lives were sacrificed in Rome and in all the Italian cities.

Paul II hated violence, and made it his special object to ensure the preservation of peace in the City. His government displayed a happy combination of firmness and gentleness. No malefactor escaped punishment, but the sentence of death was hardly ever carried out. The Pope met remonstrances against this great leniency by asking whether it were indeed a small thing to take the life of so wonderful a work of God as is man,—and a being upon whom Society has for many years expended so much pains. Criminals who had deserved death were generally sent to the galleys, but he gave express orders that they should not be treated with cruelty. The Pope was so tender-hearted and compassionate that he could not bear to see beasts led to the slaughter, and often bought them back from the butchers. It is said that he had great difficulty in refusing any request, and was obliged to shun doubtful petitioners lest he should, against his own better judgment, grant what they asked.

Paul II was a true friend and benefactor, not only to the Romans, but to all his other subjects. He was zealous in the promotion of all useful public works. In poor places such as Cesena and Serra San Quirico, he contributed towards the repair of the harbours and the city walls. He repeatedly took measures to protect the Bolognese territory from being flooded by the Reno. In the second year of his reign, he issued very salutary regulations for the better organisation of the Mint in the States of the Church. For a long time the rule prevailed that money should be coined nowhere but in Rome; afterwards, however, the privilege was extended to the cities of Fermo, Ancona, Ascoli, and Recanati, with the stipulation that the conditions previously laid down should be exactly observed. In 1471 the Senate of the City of Rome was strictly enjoined to be diligent in proceeding against all who coined false money, or clipped the silver from the Papal mint.

A very wholesome Decree of this Pontiff forbade all Legates, Governors, and Judges to receive presents, and their conduct in this matter was closely watched. In grateful recognition of his excellent government the inhabitants of Perugia determined, in the year 1466, to erect a bronze statue of the Pope in their city.

 

 

CHAPTER II.

 

THE CONSPIRACY OF 1468.—PLATINA AND POMPONIUS LAETUS

 

The great intellectual movement of the Renaissance was at the time of Paul II, still expanding and developing. Through each one of its phases the two currents of heathen and Christian tendency are always clearly discernible, but the attentive observer cannot fail to recognise a considerable difference between its condition under Nicholas V and under Paul II.

In the time of Nicholas V the genuine and noble Renaissance, which had grown up on Christian principles, and, while embracing classical studies with enthusiasm, had made them subordinate and subservient to Christian aims and ideas, still thoroughly held its own against the other tendency. Subsequently, a change took place, and the school which inclined to substitute the heathen ideal of beauty for the central sun of Christianity, became predominant. In the second generation of Humanists that one-sided devotion to classical antiquity, which led to a completely heathen view of life, gained considerably in extent and importance.

Opposition on the part of the highest ecclesiastical authority was inevitable. Even before the accession of Paul II the Church and the heathen Renaissance would already have come into collision, had it not been so extremely difficult to lay hold of this tendency by any external measures. A formal heresy might be condemned, but it was much harder to discern the many byways into which this new, and, in itself, lawful and salutary form of culture had strayed, and any interference with its course would almost necessarily have destroyed not only that which was evil, but also much that was excellent. Moreover, the partisans of the heathen Renaissance carefully avoided any appearance of conflict between their learning and theology, and altogether contrived to assume such an innocent air of dilettantism that it would have seemed ridiculous to attempt to deal seriously with them.

If, however, a case arose which did not admit of being excused as mere harmless classicism, the Humanists at once made the strongest professions of submission to the dogmas of the Church, and either altered or abandoned the theories which had been called in question. Thus, by their very frivolity and utter want of principle, the Literati were able to avoid any serious conflict with authority.

But however complaisant the Literati might be in matters of this kind, it was quite another affair wherever their material interests were concerned. Any one who failed to treat them in this respect with the greatest indulgence and consideration must be prepared for the most violent attacks. Neither age nor rank were any protection against the envenomed tongues and pens of the disciples of Cicero. Lies and slanders pursued Calixtus III and Pius II, even to their graves. And the same fate in a yet greater degree befell Paul II.

A measure passed in the very beginning of his Pontificate gave occasion to a calumny which has not even yet completely died out, and which represents him as a barbarous enemy of classical studies and of all intellectual activity, in fact a “hater of learning”.

The measure in question affected the College of the Abbreviators of the Chancery. In November, 1463, Pius II had made a Decree that this body should be composed of seventy members, of whom only twelve were to be appointed by the Vice-Chancellor. The work and the pay were to be distributed only amongst these seventy, and not directly by the Vice-Chancellor. In May, 1464, Pius II, reorganised the College; the former officials were suppressed, and a number of Sienese, chosen from the Humanist party, were appointed, some by favour and others by purchase. Paul II, who had always kept up friendly relations with the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor, re­instated him in his former powers, and reversed the arrangements made by his predecessor. Thus the Abbreviators, who had enjoyed the favour of Pius II, lost both their places and their means of living. This was undoubtedly a hardship to those who had bought their positions, although an order was given that the purchase money should be refunded.

The indignation of those affected by this change was extreme. The secretaries, poets, and Humanists at the Roman Court really considered themselves the most important persons in the world; they seriously believed that they “conferred on the Papal Court as much honour as they received from it”, and were firmly persuaded that “men of their stamp were absolutely necessary to the Pope, and that he must seek them out from all parts of the world, and attach them to himself by the promise of rich rewards”.

The distress of these self-important men was equal to their astonishment. They resolved, in the first instance, to have recourse to friendly representations; and even the lowest members of the Papal Court were importuned for assistance to obtain them an audience. For twenty consecutive nights they besieged the entrance to the Palace without gaining access to the presence of Paul II.

One of their number, Bartolomeo Sacchi da Piadena (a small place between Cremona and Mantua), known as an author by the name of Platina, the Latin form of Piadena, then resolved on a desperate measure. He wrote a pamphlet in the form of a letter, and, by his own confession, addressed the Pope in the following terms:— “If it is permissible for you to despoil us, without a hearing, of that which we had justly and fairly purchased, it must be allowable for us to complain of so undeserved an injury. Since we find ourselves contemptuously repulsed by you, we will address ourselves to the Kings and Princes, and urge them to assemble a Council, before which you will be constrained to justify yourself for having robbed us of our lawful possession". The letter concluded with the subscription :—"Servants of Your Holiness, if the new regulations are cancelled”.

Platina gave this letter sealed to the Bishop of Treviso, the Pope's most confidential Counsellor, remarking that it was written by the Humanist, Ognibene da Lonigo.

Hitherto Paul II had kept silence; now he acted. Platina was summoned to the Papal Palace, where he appeared with a defiant air, and, when the Bishop of Treviso called him to account for his conduct, answered very insolently. He was committed to St. Angelo, where, notwithstanding the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga, he had that same evening to undergo an examination by torture, “I am very anxious on his account”, wrote one of the Ambassadors, then in Rome, on the 15th of October, “for the Pope has spoken very violently about him to many, and no one ventures to take the part of a man guilty of so great a crime”. On the following day another writer mentions that Paul II had talked of having him beheaded. “As Platina is an excellent author”, he adds, “every one laments this mischance, more particularly Cardinal Gonzaga, in whose service he was at one time; but he is unable to help him in this matter. It is true, however, that when the Pope spoke to the Cardinal, he excused Platina as a madman. This deed of folly, indeed, proves him to be such”.

In the cold solitude of St. Angelo, Platina had full time for reflection. When, after four months of confinement, Cardinal Gonzaga’s persevering intercession procured his release, he could hardly stand. He was obliged to promise that he would not leave Rome. The Papal enactment was never repealed, and the ejected Literati, and more especially, their ill-starred leader continued to meditate vengeance.

The meeting of these malcontents, and of the heathen-minded Humanists, took place in the house of a scholar well know throughout Rome for his intellectual gifts and for his eccentricity. Julius Pomponius Laetus was an illegitimate scion of the princely house of Sanseverino, had come to Rome at an early age from his home in Calabria, and had become Valla’s disciple, and afterwards succeeded him as Professor in the University. “Of all the worshippers of antiquity, whose exclusive ideal was ancient Rome and the oldest words of the Latin tongue, he was the most extreme”. No scholar, perhaps, ever lived so completely in the heathenism of the past; “the present was to him a mere phantom; the world of antiquity was the reality in which he lived and moved and had his being”.

Pomponius Laetus lived in antique style, in haughty poverty, like a second Cato. In the cultivation of his vineyard he followed the rules of Varro and Columella. He would often come down, with buskined feet, before daybreak to the University, where the hall could hardly contain the crowd of his eager scholars. The vivacious little man might frequently be seen wandering alone through the ruins of ancient Rome, suddenly arrested, as if in a rapture, before some heap of stones, or even bursting into tears. He despised the Christian religion, and passionately inveighed against its adherents. As a deist, Pomponius believed in a Creator, but, as one of his most devoted disciples tells us, as an antiquarian he revered the “Genius of the City of Rome”, or what would, in modern language, be called “the Spirit of Antiquity”.

His house on the Quirinal was filled with fragments of ancient Architecture and sculpture, inscriptions and coins. Here, in an atmosphere charged with the spirit of heathen Rome, he assembled his disciples and friends. Disputations were held on ancient authors, and philosophical questions, discourses and poems were read, Comedies of Plautus and Terence were sometimes performed, and an infatuated admiration for the old Republic was cherished.

Such was the origin of a "literary society”, called the Roman Academy, whose object was the cultivation of pure Latinity, and of the ancient national life of Rome. “Pomponius, the founder of the Society, went so far as to refuse to learn Greek, lest he should injure the perfection of his Latin pronunciation”.

Around Pomponius, the representative of pagan Humanism, soon gathered a number of young freethinkers, semi-heathen in their views and morals, who sought to make up for their lost faith by a hollow worship of antiquity.

The members of the Academy looked upon themselves as a Confraternity; they laid aside their ordinary names, and adopted ancient ones instead. The original name of Pomponius, who was venerated by all as their leader and teacher, is not even known. Bartolomeo Platina and Filippo Buonaccorsi, who was called Callimachus, are the most noted of the other members. We also hear of Marcantonio Coccio of the Sabine country, called Sabellicus; Marcus Romanus, or Asclepiades; Marinus Venetus, or Glaucus; a certain Petrus or Petrejus; Marsus Demetrius, Augustinus Campanus, &c.

It may be admitted that this use of heathen names was a mere fancy, for which a parallel may be found in the increasing preference for such names, and even those which were of evil repute, in baptism. But other practices of the Academicians cannot be thus explained. The fantastic “enthusiasm of the adherents of the old Calabrian heathen” found vent in religious practices which seemed like a parody of Christian worship. The initiated constituted their learned Society into “a formal Antiquarian College of Priests of the ancient rite, presided over by a pontifex maximus, in the person of Pomponius Laetus”. The sentiments and the conduct of these “pantheistic votaries of Antiquity” were certainly more heathen than Christian. Raphael Volaterranus, in his Roman Commentaries, dedicated to Julius II, plainly declared that the meetings of these men, their antique festivities in honour of the birthday of the City of Rome and of Romulus, were "the first step towards doing away with the Faith."

There was certainly some ground for the charges brought against the Academicians of contempt for the Christian religion, its servants and its precepts, of the worship of heathen divinities and the practice of the most repulsive vices of ancient times. Pomponius Laetus was the disciple of Valla, and was certainly an adherent and disseminator of the destructive doctrines of his master. A heathen idea of the State, hostility to the clergy, and the dream of substituting for the existing government of Rome a Republic of the ancient type, prevailed in this circle, together with Epicurean and materialistic views of life. “Experience had already sufficiently shown that the enthusiastic veneration of the old Roman commonwealth was not unlikely to have practical consequences”.

This heathen and republican secret society seemed all the more dangerous in the increasingly excited state of the Roman populace. Many of the youths of the city were ready for any sort of mischief, and numerous exiles lurked on the Neapolitan frontiers. In the June of 1465, when Paul II went to war with Count Everso of Anguillara, there was a decided movement in favour of the tyrant. A year later, many adherents of the Fraticelli were discovered; their trial revealed the opposition of their rites and doctrines to those of the Church. Further inquiry showed that the partisans of this sect were at work not only in the March of Ancona, but also in the Roman Campagna and in Rome itself. There is no proof of any connection between these heretics and the Roman Academy. It is, however, certain that various fanatical demagogues, and some of the angry Abbreviators, held intimate relations with the Academicians, and that in their assemblies strong language against the Pope was freely indulged in. Thus “all the hostile elements of Heathenism, Republicanism and Heresy seemed to have their centre in the Academy”.

In the last days of February, 1468, the inhabitants of Rome suddenly learned that the police had discovered a conspiracy against the Pope, and had made numerous arrests, chiefly among the Literati and members of the Roman Academy.

Disquieting reports of various kinds had, for some time, been prevalent in the city, and predictions of the Pope's speedy death had been circulated. Paul II had attached no importance to these rumours, but, after receiving a warning letter from a temporal Prince, he looked on the matter in a more serious light. His anxiety increased, and his determination to act was confirmed, when some of the Cardinals also made communications of an alarming character. On the same night an order was issued for the arrest of the ringleaders of the Conspiracy. Four members of the Roman Academy, viz., Callimachus, Glaucus, Petrejus, and Platina, had been named to the Pope as the chiefs. The first three, having received intimation of the danger which threatened them, succeeded in making their escape. Callimachus, himself, in a letter subsequently written for his own justification, declares that he had at first remained hidden in Rome, and then fled secretly to Apulia.

Others who had been connected with the Academicians were, together with Platina, incarcerated in St. Angelo, and afterwards examined by torture. “Every night some one is arrested”, wrote the Milanese Ambassador, Johannes Blanchus, on the 28th February, “and every day the matter is better understood; it is not, as Cardinal Ammanati supposed, a dream, but a reality. The plan would have succeeded if God had not protected the Pope”.

It is most interesting to observe the manner in which Paul II himself took the whole affair. Hitherto, we have had little save the somewhat scanty account of his biographer, Canensius, to guide us. He informs us that the Pope had taken measures to make an example of an infamous band of young Romans of corrupt morals and insolent behaviour. They had maintained that the Christian religion was a fraud, trumped up by a few Saints, without any foundation in facts. Hence, it was allowable to copy the Cynics, and give themselves up to the gratification of their passions. “These persons”, Canensius goes on to say, “despise our religion so much that they consider it disgraceful to be called by the name of a Saint, and take pains to substitute heathen names for those conferred on them in baptism. The leader of this Sect, whom I will not here name, was a well-known teacher of Grammar in Rome, who, in the first instance, changed his own name, and then those of his friends and disciples in this manner. Some abandoned men associated themselves with him: as, for example, the Roman, Marcus, who is called Asclepiades; the Venetian, Marinus, who is called Glaucus; a certain Petrus, who has styled himself Petrejus; and Damian, a Tuscan, who is known as Callimachus. These had bound themselves to murder the Pope”.

This account enables us to look at the affair from the point of view of the Pope’s position as “Guardian of Faith and Morals”, and recently discovered Reports of the Milanese Ambassadors serve yet more clearly to elucidate its significance in this respect. Their independent character, and the direct nature of their testimony, entitle them to be considered as documents of the greatest importance.

It was not easy for the Ambassadors of the League, then in Rome, to obtain really authentic information regarding the events which had just taken place there, for the most varied and fantastic accounts were circulated.

Many different statements were made as to the day fixed upon for carrying the plot into effect. Some said that Paul II was to have been murdered on Ash-Wednesday, at the Papal Mass, others that the crime was to have been perpetrated on Carnival Sunday, when all the people, and even the Papal Guards, would have gone to Monte Testaccio for the accustomed festivities. Others again declared Palm Sunday to be the day selected. It was further reported that the conspirators had, with a view to the accomplishment of their purpose, associated with themselves Luca de Tocio, a banished Roman, belonging to the party of the Orsini, who was a member of the Council at the Court of Ferrante I at Naples. This man was believed to be in league with other banished persons. Four or five hundred of them were to enter the city secretly, and to hide themselves in the ruins of the houses which had been pulled down in order to enlarge the Papal Palace. On the other side, forty or fifty partisans were to join the conspirators, and begin an attack on the attendants of the Cardinals and Prelates, who would be waiting in the Square in front of the Palace. By this means the Pope's small Guard would be occupied, and the conflict was to serve as a signal to the hidden outlaws, who would then make their way into the Church and murder the Pope and those about him. General pillage was to ensue, and Luca de Tocio was to establish a new Constitution.

Even more alarming than the plot itself was the reported extent of its ramifications. The King of Naples was accused of taking part in it, and some were of opinion that the King of France was also engaged, while others declared Sigismondo Malatesta to be one of the conspirators.

These varied accounts led the Ambassadors of the League to seek from the Pope himself more accurate information, and, at the same time, to express their sympathy and offer assistance on behalf of their several masters. An account of the Audience was drawn up by the Milanese Ambassadors personally, and in duplicate. This document makes it perfectly evident that, from the very first, the Pope clearly distinguished between the Anti-Christian and immoral life of many Academicians, or their heresy, as the Ambassadors shortly style it, and the Conspiracy against his person.

On the first of these points Paul II made some very important statements, representing the Academicians as complete heathens and Materialists. They deny, he said, the existence of God, they declare that there is no other world than this, that the soul dies with the body, and that, accordingly, man may give himself up to the indulgence of his passions without any regard to the law of God; all that is needed is to avoid coming into collision with the temporal power.

Paul II had much more to tell of the evil deeds of these Epicureans, who seem, indeed, to have adopted the doctrines promulgated by Valla in his book “on pleasure”. They despised the commands of the Church, he said, ate meat on fast-days, and reviled the Pope and the Clergy. They said that the priests were the enemies of the laity, that they had invented fasting and forbidden men to have more than one wife. Moses, they taught, deceived the Jews, his law was a forgery, Christ was a deceiver, Mahomet a great intellect, but also an impostor. They were ashamed of their Christian names and preferred those which were heathen, and they practised the most shameful vices of antiquity. Some of these free-thinkers are said to have contemplated an alliance with the Turks. Predictions of the speedy death of the Pope were circulated by them; then there would be a new Election and a complete change in the state of affairs.

Paul II named Callimachus, Petrejus, Glaucus, and Platina as the ringleaders of the Conspiracy. He deeply regretted that the first three had escaped beyond the reach of justice. He evidently considered the matter to be most important, and expressed to the Ambassadors his determination to root out this “heresy”, and his regret that he had not sooner become aware of its existence.

In regard to the Conspiracy against his person, the Pope said he had heard the prevalent reports, but added that he could form no decided opinion as to whether they were well-founded or not, because those believed to be the leaders in the plot had escaped. According to the report of one of the Ambassadors, Paul II had, at first, a suspicion that Podiebrad, the Hussite King of Bohemia, might be implicated; it appeared to him not improbable that one heretic might help another.

The Pope was particularly disquieted by the rumour about Luca de Tocio, who had taken part in the troubles in the time of Pius II. He at once sent a courier to Naples to ascertain whether he had really left that city. As it was also affirmed that Tocio had given 1000 ducats to the guards of St. Angelo, as a bribe to induce them to deliver up the fortress, the Pope caused searching enquiries to be made, but very little information was obtained. Even at the time, it was suspected that these reports had been set afloat by persons whose interest it was to raise a cloud of dust as a stratagem to escape punishment.

A reward of 300 ducats was offered for the discovery of the whereabouts of Callimachus, Glaucus, and Petrejus, and 500 for that of Luca de Tocio. The Pope hoped to get hold of some, if not all, of the conspirators. On the 29th February, it was believed that a clue to Callimachus' abode had been found; he was considered next in importance to Luca de Tocio.

The houses of the fugitives were, of course, searched, and the licentious poems which were found furnished fresh proof of the immorality of the Academicians.

“We cannot wonder that the Pope did not consider the existence of such a Conspiracy as in itself incredible. He had incurred the bitter hatred of the aggrieved Abbreviators. Stefano Porcaro, the head of the conspiracy against Nicholas V, had also been a Humanist, and had dreamed of the restoration of the ancient Republic. The Giibelline bands in Rome were still in existence, and their alliance with the party-chiefs of the city, and with the fugitives and exiles beyond its limits, constituted an abiding danger. Again, in the days of Pius II, young Tiburzio, at the head of a similar Catiline band, had stirred the people up to cast off the priestly yoke, and revive the ancient liberty of Rome. By his decided action, Paul II, at any rate, repressed disorder, and provided himself with material for investigation”.

Until the official documents are brought to light, it will be impossible to give an exact account of these proceedings, which were conducted by Cardinal Barbo, and watched with the greatest interest by Paul II. They would furnish us with the means of checking the detailed relation of Platina, whose participation in the events renders it necessary to receive his statements with the greatest caution. In many cases they are, moreover, at variance with facts otherwise established.

He certainly is guilty of gross misrepresentation in his Life of Paul II, when he affirms that, in his examination, he had shown the indolent Callimachus to be incapable of independently originating a Conspiracy. In Platina’s letters, written during his imprisonment, we find him, on the contrary, laying the whole blame on the blustering folly of Callimachus. “Who”, he asks, in one of these letters, “would believe that the drunken dreams of this man, whom we mocked at and despised, could have brought us into such trouble? Alas! for us, poor wretches, who must pay for the silly temerity of another! That crazy bestower of treasures and kingdoms roams about freely, drunk with wine and glutted with food, while we, for being imprudent enough not to reveal his mad dreams, are tortured and shut up in dungeons”. In almost all the other letters of this period Platina reiterates these accusations.

The constancy with which Platina claims to have undergone examination and endured torture must also be relegated to the domain of fiction.

The letters written during his imprisonment also testify against him. Anything more abject than his petitions addressed to the Pope can hardly be imagined. His error, in not showing up the drunken Callimachus, had been one of negligence, not of malice. For the future, however, he promised, whenever he hears anything against the name or the welfare of the Pope, even from a bird of the air, at once to report it to His Holiness. He approves of the measures taken for the repression of Humanistic license, inasmuch as it is the duty of a good shepherd to preserve his flock from contagion. He confesses that, when turned out of his office, he accused God and man; he repents of this, and will not again so far forget himself. Finally, he promises, if restored to liberty and secured from want, to become the Pope’s most ardent panegyrist, to celebrate in prose and verse “the golden age of his most happy Pontificate”; he is even ready to abandon classical studies and devote himself entirely to Holy Scripture and Theology. The Humanist, however, again comes out when he reminds the Pope that poets and orators confer immortality on Princes: Christ was made known by the Evangelists, and Achilles by Homer. The prevailing tone of the letter is expressed in its concluding words: “Only give hope to us who, with clasped hands and bended knees humbly await your mercy”.

Utterly broken and crushed, Platina in his distress built much on the assistance of Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo, Bishop of Calahorra and Prefect of St. Angelo, and besieged him with elegant letters. Rodrigo had the courtesy to grant Platina’s request that he would refresh him with a letter. This led to a brisk correspondence between the two Humanists, one of whom was a representative of the Christian and the other of the heathen Renaissance. Rodrigo sought to calm and elevate Platina's mind by presenting to him religious motives of consolation. It is curious to see how difficult the latter found it to respond to the Bishop's thoughts. In spite of some convulsive snatches after Christian reminiscences, the antique element is the one that predominates in his letters, and certain fatalistic observations which escaped from his pen, induced Rodrigo to enlighten him as to the manner in which a Catholic ought to speak of Fortune and of Fate.

The letters in which Platina invoked the intercession of a number of the Cardinals and Prelates are as deplorable as the “abject and fulsome flatteries” with which he overwhelmed his gaoler. All these letters are full of the praises of those to whom they are addressed, and of Paul II and Sanchez de Arevalo. In one of them Platina confesses that he contemplated suicide. In answer to the accusation of irreligion, he maintains that, as far as human frailty permitted, he had always fulfilled his religious duties, and denies that he had ever impugned any article of Faith. He is conscious of no crime save his silence regarding the babble of Callimachus.

Pomponius Laetus, who was delivered up to the Pope by Venice, during his detention at St. Angelo’s showed little of the ancient Roman stoicism which he had so ostentatiously professed. At first he seems to have given some sharp answers to his examiners; but he soon followed the example of his friend Platina, and sought by obsequious flattery to win the favour of his gaoler and of the Pope. He protested in the strongest terms that he was innocent, and, at the same time, begged for some books to read in his solitude. Instead of Lactantius and Macrobius, for which Pomponius asked, Rodrigo de Arevalo sent him his treatise on the errors of the Council of Basle. Pomponius was little gratified by the substitution, but thanked him in an offensively fulsome letter. This was meant to pave the way for another petition, and, on the same day, he expressed a wish for a cheerful companion, with whom he might interchange ideas. In support of his request, he quoted the words of Scripture : “Bear ye one another’s burthens, and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ”. This application was granted.

The Apology drawn up by Pomponius Laetus, while in prison, is also a pitiful production. He meets an accusation, in regard to his relations with a young Venetian, by an appeal to the example of Socrates. He had withdrawn from all intimate intercourse with Callimachus from the time he had become aware of his wickedness. Everywhere, and especially in Venice, he had extolled Paul II. He confesses with regret that he had spoken strongly against the clergy; he had said these things in anger because he had been deprived of his maintenance; he begs to be forgiven for the sake of the sufferings of Christ. He brings forward witnesses to prove that he had fulfilled his Easter duties, explains his disregard of the law of fasting by the state of his health, and declares that he had received the necessary dispensation. Finally, in evidence of his Christian sentiments, he refers to the verses which he had composed on the Stations of the Cross, to his discourse in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and his treatise on the Immortality of the Soul. He concludes by a penitent admission that he has done wrong, and prays that, for the sake of the Risen Saviour, mercy may prevail over justice.

This pitiful document seems to have decided the fate of Pomponius. Paul II came to the conclusion that the writer of such a letter was incapable of originating a Conspiracy, and, with regard to the other charges against him, he probably considered that the severe lesson which he had received was sufficient to reform him. The reason of Platina’s far longer detention in prison was evidently that the suspicions against him were stronger, owing to his former conduct.

Paul II still hoped that the ringleaders of the Conspiracy would fall into his hands, and, if we may believe Platina, Petrejus was actually apprehended, but confessed nothing.

That the affair had a political side is evidenced by the fact that, immediately on the discovery of the plot, the Pope transferred his residence from St. Peter's to S. Marco, “in order to remove from the neighbourhood of the Orsini and place himself near the Colonna”. “But”, as the Ambassador, from whom we learn of this change, remarks, “danger is everywhere”."

Things, however, did not now seem so alarming. The report of the departure from Naples of Luca de Tocio, the partisan of the Orsini, and of his participation in the Conspiracy, proved to be mistaken. Paul II, nevertheless, considered it well to surround himself with a strong guard. The Carnival amusements, as Augustinus de Rubeis, on the 4th March, informed the Duke of Milan, took place just as usual. “Regarding the Conspiracy against the Pope’s person”, writes the same Ambassador, “enquiries have been most carefully made, but as yet nothing has been discovered but some blustering talk of murdering the Pope, which may easily have arisen in the way I have already described. As the populace and the whole Court are discontented, it was only necessary for some one to make a beginning in order to carry all with him”.

The obscurity in which this Conspiracy is involved will never be completely cleared away. Platina and Pomponius Laetus, “with touching unanimity concur in laying all the blame on the cunning of the fugitive who was not there to defend himself”. Even in distant Poland, where he hoped to find sure refuge with Paul II's enemy, King Casimir, Callimachus had good cause to guard his lips, for the Pope made great, though ineffectual, efforts to get him into his power. Again, in the year 1470, the Papal Legate, Alexander, Bishop of Forli, urged the General Diet at Petrikau to deliver up the conspirator, who only escaped through a combination of favourable circumstances.

Although enquiries regarding this Conspiracy were finally abandoned in Rome for want of evidence, yet the prosecution of what was designated as the “heresy” of the Academicians, was carried on, and this with all the more reason, inasmuch as Platina himself had not ventured to deny the charge of heathen practices. Unfortunately, trustworthy information on this subject is but scanty. From many sources, however, we learn that Paul II meditated measures of extreme severity against the heathen and philosophical extravagances of the Professors and Literati.

“If God preserves my life”, said the Pope to one of the Ambassadors very soon after the discovery of the plot, “I will do two things; in the first place, I will forbid the study of these senseless histories and poems, which are full of heresies and blasphemies, and, secondly, I will prohibit the teaching and practice of Astrology, since so many errors arise thence”. “Children”, continued the Pope, “when hardly ten years old, even without going to school, know a thousand villanies. What, then, must they become when, later on, they read Juvenal, Terence, Plautus, and Ovid? Juvenal certainly makes a show of blaming vice, but he leads his readers to the knowledge of it”. “There are many other books”, he added, “through which a sufficient amount of learning may be attained; it is better to call things by their true names and to avoid poetical circumlocution. These Academicians are worse than the heathen, for they believed in God, while these deny Him”. The Ambassadors expressed their agreement with the Pope, especially Lorenzo of Pesaro, who delighted him by demonstrating the faith of the ancients with a great display of learning. The Ambassadors also considered it very advisable to forbid Ecclesiastics to study Poetry and Astrology. The Pope concluded by declaring that he also meant to take measures against the Roman habit of spreading false reports.

In the consultations, which were held during this time, to devise the best means of attacking the false Renaissance, the Pope may have had in his mind a treatise which Ermolao Barbaro, the excellent Bishop of Verona, had dedicated to him in 1455. This author, looking at the matter exclusively from a moral point of view, vehemently protests against the undue estimation in which the ancient poets were commonly held, and in some places altogether condemns the whole of the old heathen poetry. He goes through the whole series, first of the Greek, and then of the Latin poets, and cites a number of extracts from the writings of the Fathers, in which immoral poets are condemned. In his opposition to the fanatical admirers of ancient poetry, Barbaro sometimes flies to the other extreme, and completely condemns the art in itself. The conclusion which he deduces is, that if the study of these heathen writers, even by the laity, requires much circumspection, this must be still more necessary in the case of religious and priests.

One of the Ambassadors expressly states that, in the middle of March, 1468, all the teachers in Rome were, on account of the danger of heresy, forbidden to make use of the old poets; further details are wanting. It is, however, probable that the Papal prohibition was confined to the schools. At any rate, it did not apply to all poets, but only, as the Pope clearly explained to the Ambassadors of the League, to those who were objectionable on the score of morals. Every one must admit that the moral aspect was the one which a Pope was bound to consider in forming a judgment on the Classics. The vindication of the Christian moral law in this domain was, therefore, a most salutary act. Poison is poison still, even if contained in crystal vials.

As regards the issue of the trial, we have only Platina’s report, and it cannot be looked upon as trustworthy. According to him, the Academicians were acquitted from the charge of actual heresy, nothing more than flippancy and undue licence in language being proved against them. Accordingly, the prisoners were now no longer shut up, but merely detained in the Papal Palace, then within the precincts of the Vatican, and finally, at the intercession of some of the Cardinals, especially Bessarion, only in the City of Rome; but the Academy was dissolved, and certain limitations were imposed upon classical studies.

The severe lesson given by Paul II to the wanton insolence of the Humanists, was no doubt a salutary one. No one can deny that the Pope was acting within his rights when he took measures against the practical heathenism of the Academicians. Platina, himself, in a letter to Pomponius Laetus, confessed that the heathenish practices of the Academy must, necessarily, give offence. “And so”, he adds, “we must not complain if the Pope defends himself and the Christian religion”.

The action of Paul II towards the Roman Academy has received a remarkable justification from recent investigations in the Catacombs.

Until the 15th century the subterranean necropolis of the early Christians had, with the exception of the Catacomb of St. Sebastian, been completely forgotten. Traces of visitors begin to reappear from the year 1433. First, we have names of Monks and Pilgrims, led there by devotion. “I came here”, writes Brother Laurentius of Sicily, “to visit this holy place, with twenty companions of the Order of the Friars Minor, on the 17th January, 1451”. Then, suddenly, we come upon the autograph scratches (Graffiti) of Humanists and Roman Academicians : of Pomponius, Platina, Volscus, Campanus, Pantagathus, Ruffus, Histrius, Partenopaeus, Perillus, Calpurnius, &c. They call themselves “a company of venerators and students of Roman antiquity, under the leadership of the pontifex maximus, Pomponius”. Pantagathus describes himself as “Priest of the Roman Academy”. These men were in search, not of Christian, but of heathen, antiquity. In his large collection of inscriptions Pomponius inserted but one which is Christian, and this one because it was metrical, and its polished form had a flavour of heathenism. Even more characteristic is the fact that these “modern heathens” ventured, in the venerable vaults of the Catacombs, where the very stones preach the Gospel, to scrawl flippant inscriptions on the walls! With this evidence before us, therefore, we cannot wonder that, even after their liberation from prison, the contemporaries of the Academicians should persist in maintaining that they were heathens rather than Christians.

Of all the Academicians no one had been treated with more severity than Platina. After his release he cherished the hope that his cringing flattery would, at least, have secured him some appointment from the Pope. Paul II. however, did not see any necessity for employing the pen of this violent and immoral man. This disappointment intensified the hatred of the Humanist. He swore that he would have his revenge, and took it, after the death of Paul II, in his widespread Lives of the Popes.

In this work he describes his enemy as a monster of cruelty, and a barbarian who detested all learning. This “biographical caricature” has for centuries imposed itself on history. Even scholars, well aware of Platina’s bias, have not succeeded in avoiding the influence of the portrait, drawn with undeniable skill and in a bright and elegant style. Some few over-partial attempts to vindicate his character have only served to increase the confusion, until, at length, recent critical investigation of the Archives has brought the truth to light.

It must always be remembered that Paul II was not an opponent of the Renaissance in itself, yet he is not to be looked upon as a Humanist, like Nicholas V. The boastfulness and conceit of its adherents repelled him : he preferred men of practical knowledge and practical tendencies. Poetasters had little to expect from him, and, in view of the pseudo-classical rhymes of a Porcello or a Montagna, this was not much to be regretted.

The favours which Paul II granted to the Roman and other High Schools, as well as his generosity to a number of learned men, prove him to have been no enemy of culture and learning. While still a Cardinal he repeatedly visited Flavio Biondo in his last sickness, gave him assistance, and promised to provide for his children. As Pope, he fulfilled this promise by giving the charge of the Registers to Gasparo Biondo, in recognition of his father's deserts. When the pious and enthusiastic scholar, Timoteo Maffei, fell ill, Paul II sent him a present of money and a skilful physician, and, on his recovery, he conferred on him the Bishopric of Ragusa. Bishoprics were also bestowed on the three former preceptors of the Pope, and one of them, Amicus Agnifilus, was even raised to the purple. Learned men, like Perotti, were promoted to positions of some importance in the States of the Church. Niccolò Gallo, Professor of Jurisprudence, when seriously ill, asked for a Confessor furnished with faculties to absolve from every sin; the Pope granted his request, and added a present of 20 ducats. He summoned to Rome many scholars whose acquaintance he had made while a Cardinal; for example, Domizio da Caldiero and Gasparo da Verona, who was subsequently his biographer. The Florentine, Lionardo Dati, was made Bishop of Massa, and Sigismondo de' Conti and Vespasiano da Bisticci bear witness to the Pope’s affection for him; the latter declares that, if the life of Paul II had been prolonged, Dati would have been a Cardinal. In the year 1470, Paul II showed the interest he took in historical studies by causing some Chronicles to be copied for him.

Among the scholars advanced by Paul II to the Episcopal dignity, was Cardinal Cusa’s intimate friend, Giovan Andrea Bussi of Vigevano, a man who deserves the highest praise for his labours in the diffusion of printing throughout Italy. The numerous books dedicated by this Prelate to the Pope prove the interest taken by Paul II in the introduction of the newly discovered “divine art”. “Your pontificate, most glorious already, will never be forgotten”, says Bussi, “because this art has been taken up to your Throne”.

It is impossible to say, with certainty, who it was that summoned the first German printers—Conrad Schweinheim from Schwanheim, opposite Hochst on the Maine, Arnold Pannartz from Prague, and Ulrich Hahn from Ingolstadt—to Italy. Cusa was deeply interested in the important discovery, but he died before these Germans arrived in Italy. There can be no doubt that to Subiaco, “the Mother House of the Benedictine Order, which has done so much for the cause of learning, is due the honour of having given a home to the first German printers”. Constant relations between this great seat of Western culture and Germany had been maintained ever since the days of the excellent Abbot Bartholomaus III (1362, &c.), who, in his zeal for the improvement of the monastic spirit, had invited from beyond the Alps many German monks, remarkable alike for their learning and their austerity of life. Again, also, in the middle of the 15th century there were many German Benedictines at St. Scholastica.

In the retirement of Subiaco, Schweinheim and Pannartz printed, first the Latin Grammar of Donatus, which was extensively used in the Middle Ages, then Cicero’s work on Orators, and the Instructions of Lactantius against the Heathen. The last of these books was completed on the 29th October, 1465. Two years later, an edition of St. Augustine’s City of God issued from the Convent printing press at Subiaco. The States of the Church may therefore claim, after Germany, the honour of first producing printed books.

Of Ulrich Hahn’s labours at Subiaco no trace now remains. The learned Cardinal Torquemada induced him to come to Rome, and here, in 1467, Hahn, who is generally known by the name of Gallus, finished printing the "Contemplations" on the picture in the Court of Sta Maria sopra Minerva, which his patron had composed. In the September of the same year, 1467, Schweinheim and Pannartz had also migrated to the Eternal City. Here in the Massimi Palace, near the German National Hospice, they established their printing press. Its first production was the Letters of Cicero to his Friends. In the course of a few years this was followed by two editions of Lactantius, a second edition of Cicero’s Letters, St. Augustine’s City of God, the works of St. Jerome, the Holy Scriptures, St. Cyprian’s Letters, the Catena of St. Thomas, and, amongst other classical works, those of Caesar, Livy, Virgil, Ovid, Pliny, Quintilian, Suetonius, Gellius and Apulius.

The corrector, or, as we should now say, the editor, of these works was the indefatigable classical scholar, Bussi. Almost all the books we have mentioned had fervid dedications to the Pope from his pen, and contained verses written by him. On one occasion he thus alludes to the names of his typographers, which had to the ears of his countrymen a barbarous sound :—

The harsh-sounding German names awaken a smile :

Let the admirable art soften the unmelodious tones.

The friendly attitude of the Pope towards the new art and the extraordinary liberality with which he allowed Bussi to make use of the precious Manuscripts in the Vatican Library, greatly contributed to promote the success of the Bishop’s efforts.

The important post of Corrector—with whom scientific textual criticism had its beginning—was also filled at Hahn's printing-house by a Bishop, Giantonio Campano, a fact which shews the esteem in which typography was held at this period.

After the death of Torquemada, Caraffa became a warm patron of the art of printing; nor did he stand alone among his colleagues in this respect. In 1469 Bussi writes, “We have as yet found no one in the Sacred College of Cardinals who has not been favourable to our efforts, so that the higher the dignity the greater has been their zeal in learning. Would that we could say as much for other orders”. As time went on, the Roman clergy maintained an unflagging interest in the “sacred art” which, in the dedication to Paul II prefixed to the letters of St. Jerome, is said to be “one of the most auspicious of all the Divine gifts bestowed during his pontificate on the Christian world, enabling even quite poor men at small cost to procure books”.

The account-books of Paul II’s pontificate, which have lately been brought to light, show how little he can be charged with systematic hostility towards classical antiquity. They lead us to the conclusion that this so-called barbarian watched over the preservation of ancient remains even more carefully than the scholarly Pius II. The triumphal arches of Titus and Septimius Severus, the Colossus of Monte Cavallo, and the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius were restored by his desire, and many forgotten and neglected relics of antiquity were brought to the Palace of S. Marco.

The magnificent collection of antiquities and works of art, which Paul II had brought together in this Palace while yet a Cardinal, contained the most important treasures of this kind from the time of the destruction of the Roman Empire. It contained numerous rare and most precious examples of antique Cameos and engraved gems, medals, and bronzes. From Byzantium there were pictures with golden backgrounds, little domestic altars with mosaics, reliquaries, ivory carvings, and gorgeously embroidered vestments. To these objects, whose value was enhanced by their age or their origin, was added a splendid selection of more recent works of art, such as Flemish tapestries, Florentine work in gold, vases and jewels. An inventory of this collection, taken in 1457, while Barbo was still a Cardinal, is one of the most interesting documents in the Roman State Archives, and is of great value in connection with the history of art and civilisation in the Renaissance period. A comparison of the objects here mentioned with those in the Museums of the present day, enables us to realise the wealth of the Collection at S. Marco's. The Museum of Vienna contains about 200 ancient Cameos, and the Paris Library about 260; the inventory of Barbo’s collection mentions 227. The Cardinal collected about a hundred ancient gold, and a thousand ancient silver, coins. He had twenty-five domestic altars with mosaics, a number greater than that now possessed by all the Museums of Europe together.

But all these ancient, modern, and Eastern treasures were not sufficient to satisfy the soul of a collector like Paul II. On the contrary, now that the means at his disposal were greater, his schemes assumed yet larger proportions. He seems to have seriously entertained the idea of transferring the whole of the library of Monte Cassino to his palace, and he is said to have offered to construct a new bridge for the inhabitants of Toulouse in exchange for a Cameo.

The Pope, however, was not merely an enthusiastic collector, but also an expert in matters of art. His memory was so extraordinary that he never forgot the name of a person or a thing, and he was able at a glance to tell where an ancient coin came from, and give the name of the Prince whose image it bore.

The Churches of the Eternal City shared the care which he bestowed on the ancient monuments; works of restoration, of a more or less extensive character, were carried on at the Lateran, S. Lorenzo in Piscibus, S^ta Lucia in Septemviis, S^ta Maria in Araceli, S^ta Maria Maggtore, S^ta Maria sopra Minerva and the Pantheon. The bridges, gates, walls, and many of the public buildings in Rome were repaired by his command. Similar benefits were conferred upon Tivoli, Ostia, Civitavecchia, Terracina, Viterbo and Monte Cassino.

The progress of Architecture, under Paul II, was most remarkable, and in this branch of creative art the Pope appears as the champion of the Renaissance. In the erection of the magnificent Palace of S. Marco he was the first to apply the theories of Vitrubius and definitely to break with the Gothic style. The splendid and extensive buildings at the Vatican secured the triumph of the new style in Rome. The fact that Paul II reverted to Nicholas V's grand scheme for the reconstruction of St. Peter's, and proceeded with the erection of the Tribune, is of the highest interest. A medal and a couple of lines in Canensius’ Biography of the Pope were, until lately, our only sources of information on this subject, and, accordingly, it came to be supposed that only works of restoration were alluded to. The accounts preserved in the Roman State Archives, however, furnish absolute proof of the magnificent projects entertained by the Pope. A passage, unfortunately very laconic, in a letter from Gentile Becchi to Lorenzo de' Medici, confirms this statement.

The transportation of the Obelisk on St. Peter’s square— another scheme of his great predecessor’s—was also taken in hand by Paul II. The distinguished architect, Ridolfo Fioravante degli Alberti, one of the first men of his day, had prepared the plans, and the work had already been commenced when the Pope died.

The Palazzo di S. Marco, now Palazzo di Venezia, is the most magnificent creation of Paul II. Recent investigations of the Archives have thrown some light on the history of this gigantic work, but many questions regarding it are still unanswered. Medals struck on this occasion, and frequently found during restorations in earthenware caskets, together with an inscription on the façade, bear witness that these extensive works were begun in the year 14554 This magnificent building was designed in truly Roman proportions. A whole quarter had to be pulled down in order to make room for it, and, although the works went on during the whole of Paul II’s pontificate, the Palace “within which the newly decorated Basilica of St. Mark was contained like a chapel” was not completed at the time of his death. But even in its unfinished state it is one of the grandest of Roman Monuments, and, in a remarkable manner, exhibits the transition from the mediaeval fortress to the modern Palace, and from the Gothic to the Renaissance style. In the Palace proper, the character of a fortress predominates. “It is”, to quote the words of a gifted historian of art, “a speaking monument of an age of violence, presenting to the mob a stern and imposing aspect, devoid of all grace or charm, jealously concealing all the beauty of its spacious and decorated halls, destined to be the home of a luxurious life, and the scene of many a gorgeous spectacle”. The grand unfinished court, with its portico ornamented with pilasters in the Doric-Tuscan style below and Corinthian above, the Palazzetto, begun in 1466, joining it at the right-hand corner, and the vestibule of S. Marco, connected with the Palace, are all in the Renaissance style.

From 1466, Paul II had, during a great part of the year, taken up his abode in this stupendous Palace, which was situated in the middle of the City, at the foot of the Capitol and in the domain of the friendly Colonna family. The Apostolic Treasury was also transferred there. Subsequent Popes frequently, as their Bulls bear evidence, lived there. Just a century after the Election of Paul II, this grand building was given by Pius IV to the Republic of Venice. Afterwards, when Venice fell into the hands of Austria, it became the property of that Empire, whose Ambassadors now occupy it.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE WAR AGAINST THE TURKS.—SKANDERBERG IN ROME.

 

 

The death of Pius II inflicted a heavy blow upon the Church, more especially because its effect was to arrest the movement for the defence of Christendom against Islam, which had then just commenced. Cardinal Bessarion, one of Greece’s noblest sons, gave expression to his sorrow in touching words. The Crusade was, for the time, at a stand­still, but the idea lived on in the minds of the Popes. Paul II had, even while a Cardinal, taken a deep interest in the Turkish question, and his friends hoped great things from him.

The first steps taken by the new Pope in no way disappointed these expectations. In the letters by which he informed the Italian Princes of his election, he gave expression to his zeal for “the defence of the Christian Faith against the fury of the Turks”. One of the principal hindrances in the way of Pius II's magnificent schemes had been his constant financial difficulties. Paul II, the practical Venetian, sought to remedy this state of things, by removing the charge of the revenue derived from the Alum monopoly, and, in virtue of the Election Capitulation, destined for the Holy War, from the Apostolic Treasury to a Commission composed of Cardinals Bessarion. d'Estouteville and Carvajal. These Cardinals, who were styled “Commissaries General of the Holy Crusade”, were to deliberate on all measures necessary for the prosecution of the war, and to report accordingly. “Also the income from Indulgences and from the tithes paid by the clergy for this purpose, as far as it had hitherto been at the disposal of the Camera Apostolica, was now, for the most part, directly handed over to the Commission, or expended according to its decision”. The magnificent support afforded by the Commission to the brave Hungarians has won for it an abiding and honourable remembrance.

In the autumn of 1464, when the Envoys of the Italian States came to Rome to do homage, the Pope took the opportunity of bringing forward the Turkish question. Special negotiations were set on foot with the splendid Embassy of the Venetian Republic. They proceeded to treat with the Commission of Cardinals, and a fresh scheme was proposed for the Italian States, according to which the Pope and Venice were each to contribute 100,000 ducats, Naples 80,000, Milan 70,000, Florence 50,000, Modena 20,000, Siena 15.000, Mantua 10,000, Lucca 8,000 and Montferrat, 5,ooo.

The plan was by no means well received by the Italian powers. The Pope, who declared himself ready to pay the 100,000 ducats, even if he should have to take it out of his household expenditure, had great difficulty in obtaining a promise to let the matter be again brought under discussion in Rome. The deliberations lasted for six months. No one was prepared to pay the appointed contributions, which the Pope intended to devote to the assistance of the Hungarians. Each sought to diminish his own share, and the more powerful States attached onerous conditions to their compliance. Venice, Florence and Milan demanded the remission of the Papal tax of the tenth, twentieth and thirtieth, and the King of Naples the complete remission of the tribute which he owed to the Holy See. In order to enforce his request, Ferrante informed the Pope that the Sultan had made offers of alliance to him, with a sum of 80,000 ducats, if he would stir up a war in Italy. Subsequently, when the relations between Rome and Naples had become still more unfriendly, he openly threatened to ally himself with the Turks.

The Ambassadors assembled in Rome displayed a true Italian talent for evasion and procrastination. It was evident that not one amongst them would do anything. This hopeless state of things induced Paul II to lift the veil, and let all the world know whose fault it was that, after six months of deliberation, not a single step in advance had been made. The just displeasure of Paul II found vent in bitter complaints. “The outcry against the burdens imposed is only raised in order to avoid giving support to the Venetians. May it not prove that, in thus forsaking the Venetians, people are forsaking themselves and all the faithful”. They desire to discharge their obligations with the money of the Church, and thus to render it impossible for her to assist the Hungarians. The consequence will be that Hungary will be compelled to make peace with the Turks. What is left for the Venetians but to take the same course, especially as Mahomet has offered them tolerably favourable conditions? When both these champions are removed, the way to Italy by land and sea lies open to the enemies of Christendom.

These complaints were as powerless to rouse the Italian powers from their lethargy as the tidings of the immense naval preparations of the Turks, which reached Rome in May, 1465, denoted immediate danger to Italy. Yet at this very time Florence refused the payment of a yearly contribution for Hungary demanded by the Pope.

Even in the States of the Church the Pope encountered obstinate opposition to the payment of the Turkish tithes. Not only the smaller towns, like Viterbo, Toscanella and Soriano, but even the wealthy city of Bologna had to be seriously admonished to fulfil the obligation. Tivoli and Foligno begged for a remission of the tax; Ferentino lay for a long time under an Interdict for resisting the claims of the Apostolic Treasury; the Counts of Conti in the Campagna were utterly recalcitrant. Ecclesiastical penalties proved useless, and in the end it was necessary to resort to force.

Meanwhile, Paul II maintained the war against the enemies of the Faith as well as his own resources permitted, making great sacrifices, especially on behalf of Hungary. A modern historian, after mentioning 42,500 (or 40,000) ducats given to Matthias Corvinus at Ancona, speaks of “some smaller” sums of money sent by Paul to Hungary. This statement is directly contradicted by the testimony of the Pope’s contemporary, Vespasiano da Bisticci, who says that Paul II sent about 80,000 ducats to Hungary in 1465, and also promised an annual contribution. The account-books preserved in the Roman State Archives shew that on the 23rd May, 1465, the Commissaries General of the Crusade paid 57,500 golden florins to the Ambassadors of King Matthias of Hungary from the proceeds of the Alum monopoly alone, and, on the 28th April, 1466, a further sum of 10,000 Hungarian ducats. The expense of the mercenaries meanwhile was so heavy that the Hungarian Monarch felt obliged to give up all offensive warfare against the Turks. Venice, also, at this time thought of making peace with the enemy. The deplorable policy of the Italian States, which Paul II had vainly endeavoured to gain to the common cause, explains this universal discouragement. “Naples and Milan kept on good terms with the Porte, Genoa and Florence hankered after the reversion of the commerce of Venice in the Levant”. Under these circumstances, it was well that the heroic Skanderbeg and the war in Asia Minor, “by which the feudatory kingdom of Caramania was annexed in 1466”, fully occupied the Turkish forces.

To prevent the conclusion of a peace with the Turks, Paul II. made large offers of money, and resolved to send Cardinal Carvajal, the most distinguished member of the Sacred College, to Venice. This prelate, who had through life ardently espoused the cause of the Holy War, was of all others the best fitted to accomplish so difficult a mission. His appointment as Legate for Venice took place on the 30th July, 1466; he left Rome on the 20th August, and did not return till the autumn of the following year.

In November, 1466, a Diet, energetically promoted by Paul II, was held at Nuremberg to consider the Turkish question. The despatch of an army to the assistance of Hungary was discussed at great length, but neither this Assembly nor those which followed had any definite result.

In July, 1466, the Pope invoked the assistance of the European Princes on behalf of Skanderbeg. For two years had this hero resisted all the attacks of the Turks, who had been repeatedly defeated by him. To avenge this disgrace, the Sultan determined on an expedition against Albania. In the spring of 1466 a Turkish force, 200,000, or, as some few writers say, 300.000 strong, began its march against Croja, the capital city. At the end of May a messenger reached Ragusa with the news that Skanderbeg had been defeated by treachery, and that a number of Christians had been slain; a second Turkish army was also said to threaten Hungary. The Italians were panic-stricken. Piero de' Medici shed tears over the fate of Albania and promised help. The Pope, who had already aided Skanderbeg, again sent money, and lost no time in calling on the Christian powers to bestir themselves. He spoke in moving terms of the affliction of Christendom, of the terror of the nations on the Adriatic coast, and of the fugitives who were constantly arriving from the East. “One cannot without tears behold those ships that flee from the Albanian shore to take refuge in Italian harbours; those naked, wretched families, driven from their dwellings, who sit by the sea, stretching out their hands to heaven and filling the air with lamentations uttered in an unknown tongue”. The account-books of his pontificate bear witness to the magnificent liberality with which Paul II succoured these unhappy creatures. The Pope might indeed say that he had done what lay in his power; the Hungarians alone had in the preceding year received 100,000 golden florins, but he could not do everything; effectual support from the Christian powers was more than ever a necessity.

Happily the apprehensions regarding the fate of Albania were not realised. The heroic valour of its champion rendered Croja invincible. “Skanderbeg pursued his ancient, well-tried tactics, and from the woodlands of Tumenistos he ceaselessly harassed the besiegers, inflicting so much loss and disgrace on the Turkish army, that the Sultan, finding corruption and force alike useless, left Balaban with 80,000 men to continue the siege of Croja and starve it into submission, and himself retired with the bulk of his troops into winter quarters at Constantinople”.

The fate of Albania depended on the deliverance of Croja, which Balaban had encircled with a girdle of fortresses, and the task was beyond the unassisted powers of the Albanians and Venetians. Skanderbeg, therefore, resolved to go in person to Italy to beg for money and arms from Rome and Naples.

In the middle of December, 1466, the Albanian champion reached Rome, where he was received with honours. “He is”, to quote the words of an eye-witness, “an old man in his sixtieth year; he came with but few horses, in poverty; I hear that he will ask for help”. It has been again and again falsely asserted that, in consequence of his “too Venetian sympathies”, Skanderbeg obtained nothing from the Pope beyond the Indulgence and the Proclamations addressed to the deaf ears of Western Christendom, together with some pious exhortations and the renewal of the never fulfilled promise of the crown of Epirus and Macedonia.

His biographer, on the contrary, not only relates the honourable and friendly reception of the hero in Rome, but expressly observes that the Pope, like the Cardinals, had generously responded to his requests. “With many presents, and with a considerable sum of money”, says Barletius, “Skanderbeg returned cheered and encouraged to his people”. Other authentic documents give fuller particulars as to the results of the journey to Rome. In the account-books of Paul II we find that first of all Skanderbeg received for his maintenance on one occasion 250, and on another, 200 ducats, and that furthermore on the 19th April, 1467, 2700, and on the 1st September 1100 ducats were paid to him. Regarding the Secret Consistory of January 7th, 1467, in which the assistance to be given to the Albanian hero was considered, we have the testimony of Cardinal Gonzaga, who took part in it. He says that the Pope at once declared his readiness to pay 5000 ducats; the necessity of protecting his own country was his reason for not contributing yet more largely; Cardinal Orsini, who was hostile to Paul II, ventured to observe that the Pope had nothing to apprehend from any quarter. This remark greatly angered the Pope, and provoked some interesting disclosures as to his relations with Naples. He said that he knew with certainty that Ferrante was eager to attack the States of the Church. One of the King's five confidants on this matter had given information to Rome. It is evident that, under these circumstances, the Holy See could not do more for the champion of Albania. A Secret Consistory of the 12th January, 1467, determined that in any case Skanderbeg should have 5000 ducats. Not only Venice, but also Ferrante, whose relations with Skanderbeg had long been of an intimate character, received him and sent money, provisions and munitions. On his return to his beloved country he soon won fresh laurels; in April, 1467, the Turks were defeated and Balaban's brother taken prisoner. A second victory quickly followed, in which Balaban fell and his troops took to flight. Croja was saved. The danger, however, was not at an end; a second Turkish army appeared, and Skanderbeg had to keep the field throughout the whole year. In the midst of these conflicts, death overtook the Albanian champion; on the 17th January, 1468, Skanderbeg succumbed at Alessio to the effects of a fever.

No greater loss had befallen Christendom since the death of Hunyadi and St. John Capistran. This was but too plain to the enemies of the Faith. It is said that when the Sultan heard the news, he exclaimed, “At last Europe and Asia are mine. Woe to Christendom! she has lost her sword and her shield!”

The effect of the blow was felt at once by the hard-pressed Albanians. The Turks overran their country—"in the whole of Albania we saw nothing but Turks”, says a contemporary account—8000 unhappy creatures were sent away as slaves within a few weeks. But Albania was not yet completely vanquished : Scutari and Croja, whose garrisons were strengthened by Venetian troops, continued to hold out. The enthusiastic honour paid by the afflicted people to the memory of their departed chief was most touching. “Choirs of Albanian maidens”, Sabellicus informs us, “though surrounded with the din of battle and the clang of barbarian arms, assembled regularly every eighth day in the public squares of the cities of the principality to sing hymns in praise of their departed hero”. The valour with which the little nation resisted the overwhelming power of Mahomet for more than a decade is a proof that the spirit of Skanderbeg still survived amongst them, though he himself had passed away.

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

STRUGGLES AGAINST THE DOMINEERING POLICY OF THE VENETIANS AND LOUIS XI OF FRANCE  

 

the independent attitude which the island city of Venice maintained towards the other Italian States is equally marked in the domain of ecclesiastical politics. In no portion of the Appenine Peninsula do we meet with such early and persistent efforts for the extension of the authority of the State at the expense of the liberty of the Church. The Popes were the natural opponents of these efforts, and more than once found themselves under the sad necessity of inflicting the sharpest ecclesiastical penalties on the proud Republic.

The great piety of the Venetians, to which their numerous churches still bear silent witness, seems to contrast strangely with these efforts to subjugate the Church to the State. A deeply religious spirit no doubt existed among the people, and of this the rulers of the Republic, who loved to call it by the name of St. Mark, were obliged to take some account. Yet this St. Mark was almost constantly in conflict with the Holy See, because it strove in every way to degrade the freeborn Church into the position of handmaid to the State. Further contests with Rome were also occasioned by the efforts of the Republic to obtain possession of the Romagna. In 1441 the Venetians had gained a footing in Ravenna, and ever since that period they had been constantly bent on the extension of their dominion to the detriment of the States of the Church. These more external disputes, however, were driven into the background, by the contests which arose from the pretensions of the Venetian oligarchy to absolute dominion over the whole life of its subjects, even in regard to ecclesiastical matters.

Even while a Cardinal, Paul II had come into collision with the government of his native city. In 1459, on the death of Fantin Dandolo, Bishop of Padua, Pius II had conferred the See on Cardinal Barbo. By this appointment he intended to please both the Cardinal and the Republic, which had always been glad to see her Bishoprics occupied by the sons of her noble families. The Venetian government had, however, on this occasion selected another candidate, Gregorio Correr, and now made every effort to give effect to their choice. It was resolved that, unless the Cardinal should within twenty days renounce his Bishopric, all his revenues derived from Venetian territory should be sequestrated. Moreover, Paul Barbo was to put pressure on his brother in the same direction, and if he failed to induce him to resign, was to be banished from the Venetian territory and deprived of his possessions! Soon afterwards, the Signoria wrote many urgent letters on the matter to the Pope and to various Cardinals. As Cardinal Barbo did not yield, the Venetian Ambassador was strictly charged not to visit him. So firmly did the Signoria adhere to their purpose that the Cardinal was at last obliged to give way. Jacopo Zeno, however, not Gregorio Correr, became Bishop of Padua. He was required to pay 2000 ducats yearly to Cardinal Barbo, and the resolutions against Paul Barbo were rescinded.

Great was the embarrassment of the Venetian statesmen when, a few years later, the Cardinal who had been treated in this manner was elevated to the Papal throne. No election could have been less agreeable to them. They were, however, prudent enough carefully to conceal their vexation. Arrangements for public rejoicings were made immediately, and an Embassy of surpassing splendour was sent to Rome to proffer obedience to Paul II. The usual number of Envoys on such occasions was four. In the case of Eugenius IV, who was a Venetian, this number was doubled; but now ten were sent. The Pope perfectly understood the value of these outward tokens of honour. Even before the arrival of the Mission he spoke in bitter terms to the Milanese Ambassador about the arrogance and the personal hostility of certain Venetian statesmen, and expressed his opinion that before the Envoys had been a fortnight in Rome, disputes would break out. In fact, unpleasant explanations began almost immediately, and the tension kept on growing from day to day, for no European power was viewed in Venice with such jealousy as the Roman See. At the end of 1465, Paul II poured forth a whole list to the Milanese Ambassador of charges against his fellow-countrymen. In the Turkish matter, he said, they had, by a simple act of arbitrary power, imposed a tithe on the clergy. They claimed tribute from Cardinals visiting Venice, a thing which no Christian Prince had ever done. They were perpetually incurring reprimands for contemptuous conduct towards their Bishops. They had forbidden the Archbishop of Spalatro to enter his See. They were seeking to take possession of the Morea, which belonged to Thomas Palaeologus. The Venetian Merchants, by buying alum from the Turks, put Christian money in the pockets of their enemies. The penalty of Excommunication would have to be pronounced against them. Assuming the position of mistress of the Adriatic, Venice oppresses Ancona; she holds wrongful possession of Cervia and Ravenna. The Knights of St. John at Rhodes, and the Emperor, complain of the Republic, and indeed every one has some grievance against her. The law which prohibits any one who has a relation among the clergy from being a member of the Council is absolutely intolerable; the infidels themselves could not do worse; this measure must be repealed.

Nothing of the kind was contemplated in Venice; the remonstrances of the Pope were utterly unheeded. In the following spring the appointment to the Patriarchal Throne gave occasion for further conflicts with Rome, which were aggravated in the summer, when the Signoria took advantage of the scare about the Turks again arbitrarily to impose taxes on ecclesiastical property. Many in Rome were of opinion that this was done with the object of concealing a secret understanding with the Sultan. It is quite certain that a powerful party in Venice favoured a peace with the Porte; some few Venetians, according to the report of the Milanese Ambassador, even went so far as to say that it would be well, not merely to make peace with the Turk, but also to open the way to Rome for him, that he may punish these priests!

In the summer of 1466 the Republic raised the question of the Council. This so incensed Paul II that he spoke of excommunicating them, and laying them under Interdict. Several Consistories took place, in which these extreme measures were seriously considered. Two grave motives weighed against a breach with Venice: in the first place, the necessity of previously securing the support of an Italian Power, and secondly, the fear that the Signoria might actually conclude peace with the Infidels. Even in July the Milanese Ambassador was persuaded that, notwithstanding the threats which had been pronounced, the Pope would in the end endeavour to come to an amicable understanding. This difficult undertaking was entrusted to Cardinal Carvajal, who, however, was empowered, in case of necessity, to pronounce the Interdict. What has transpired of the instructions given to him, makes it evident that the Pope sincerely endeavoured to bring about a satisfactory understanding. Cardinal Gonzaga believed Paul II to have contemplated an alliance with Venice, as a protection against the animosity of the King of Naples. Details regarding the protracted negotiations carried on by the distinguished Cardinal are unfortunately wanting. He is, however, said to have admirably discharged his arduous mission. If he was not successful in bringing all questions between Rome and Venice to a solution, he at any rate prevented the conclusion of a peace with the Porte, and prepared the way for better relations between Paul II and the Republic. The question of the tithes having been settled in 1468, in a manner which contented the Venetians, in the May of the following year the Pope and the Signoria entered into an alliance directed chiefly against the treacherous Roberto Malatesta. The double game which the Venetians subsequently played, and fresh disputes regarding the Turkish tithes, again caused discord between the allies. When Paul II died, things had reached such a pass that there was no Venetian Ambassador at the Roman Court.

Paul II had repeated differences with Florence on matters connected with the liberty of the Church, and in 1466 and 1469 about the arbitrary taxation of ecclesiastical property. The obstinacy of the opposition encountered by the Pope may be estimated by the frequency of his remonstrances. One was published but a few days before his death. Beyond the Italian frontier the appointment to the See of Brixen also gave rise to a conflict.

The omnipotence claimed by the State was also the occasion of considerable tension in the relations between the Pope and the French King. Louis XI wished to reign alone, alike in State and Church; his will was to be in all things supreme. Even in the beginning of November, 1464, fresh anti-Roman measures of the King were reported in Rome. It was said that Louis XI had announced that the publication of Apostolic Bulls throughout the whole of his kingdom must depend on his permission, and had also prohibited expectances. “These things”, wrote the Milanese Ambassador, “are poor tokens of obedience; these measures are worse than the Pragmatic Sanction, which formerly prevailed in France”. No wonder that Paul II distrusted the French Monarch, whose tyrannical and ambitious disposition was well known to him.

A treatise, written by Thomas Basin about the end of the year 1464, shows the state of feeling which then prevailed at the court of Louis XI. He twisted the words in which homage was paid to Louis XI so as to deduce from them that this document only bound the King to Pius II personally. By the death of that Pope, Louis XI was freed from all further obligation. Basin also insisted on the necessity of speedily convening a French National Synod.

Evil counsels of other kinds came to the French King from Milan. In March, 1466, an Envoy from that State was charged to advise Louis XI to defer his profession of obedience as long as possible, on the ground that, while this matter was in suspense, the Pope would be obliged to show himself pliable. The French Monarch, however, did not take this view; his honour, he thought, allowed of no further delay, and that which had already taken place had been injurious to him. When, however, the representative of Milan again brought forward his request, the King consented to procrastinate as long as possible. “As the French fear the heat and the Plague”, adds the Milanese Envoy, “the Embassy which is to do homage in the usual form will not start before September. The Archbishop of Lyons, Charles of Bourbon, will be its leader; Cardinal Jouffroy, who is to accompany and support the Envoys, will not, his people say, begin his journey before September”.

This last piece of news was untrue, for Jouffroy reached Rome on the 4th October, 1466. The great Embassy, however, did not leave Lyons until the end of the month. In a letter to the Pope the King excused his tardiness on the plea of the troubles in his kingdom.

The instructions given to the Envoys seemed to promise a favourable change in the ecclesiastical policy of France. They were desired, in the first place, to express the sincere devotion of the King to the Holy See, of which the decree abrogating the Pragmatic Sanction, in spite of the opposition of almost all the kingdom, was a token. Besides making the profession of obedience in the form which, since the days of Martin V, had been in use, the Ambassadors were charged to apologise in Louis’s name for the anti-Roman ordinances of 1464; and to explain that they were not the act of the King, but due to the Bishop of Bayeux and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The King would be an obedient son of the Holy See; in return he asked for the right of appointing to twenty-five Bishoprics.

Paul II was not deluded by these fair words, for he was well aware that the Bishop of Bayeux had acted by the directions of the King. The Ambassadors obtained nothing. At this time, Jean de La Balue, Bishop of Evreux, and afterwards of Angers, another favourite of Louis, took part with Cardinal Jouffroy in the negotiations concerning the ecclesiastical policy of France. This designing man, who was exactly of the same stamp as Jouffroy and his apt pupil, sought, like him, to win the purple by means of the question of the Pragmatic Sanction. For a while Paul II resisted the admission of such a man into the Senate of the Church, but the hope that Louis XI would now really suppress the Pragmatic Sanction induced him at last to yield. “I know the faults of this priest”, he is reported to have said, “but I was constrained to cover them with this hat”.

In return for the red hat conferred upon his favourite, Louis XI issued a declaration against the Pragmatic Sanction of a more stringent nature than those which had preceded it. When La Balue, on the 1st October, 1467, appeared in Parliament with this document, the Procurator-General refused to register it. In order to work upon the mind of the King, much stress was laid upon the abuse of commendams, and the large sums of money sent to Rome from France.

The University of Paris, like the Parliament, declared against the abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction. An appeal to a future Council was even issued. Now, how­ever, the Procurator-General resigned his post, and the Royal Declaration remained in full force, although not registered. The ecclesiastical policy of France, nevertheless, remained as unsatisfactory and disquieting as ever, for the King never relaxed his efforts to bind the Church fast within the toils of the State. His favourites, Jouffroy and La Balue, turned the position of affairs to their own advantage. His acceptance of the anti-Roman project of a Council, put forward by the Hussite King of Bohemia, enables us to estimate the value of the “filial obedience” to the Holy See so often spoken of by his Envoys in Rome. In 1468, when the French demand for a general Council was again mentioned to Paul II, he said that he would hold one that very year, but that it should be in Rome.

Meanwhile, in the person of the new Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, the King encountered so dangerous a political adversary, that ecclesiastical affairs were again for a time completely in abeyance. Ever since the subjugation of Liege, Charles had reigned more absolutely than any of his predecessors, and his immense financial resources gave him a great advantage over the French King. Louis fought his enemy with the weapons of treachery and corruption. He had an interview with him at Péronne, during which tidings arrived of a fresh rising of the Liegeois, excited by the agents of Louis. The Duke of Burgundy was furious, and, it is said, contemplated the murder of the King, who was in his power. The demands which the Duke now made would have appeared to a high-minded man worse than death: Louis was to proceed in person against Liege, which he had himself incited to revolt. Utterly destitute of every feeling of honour, he made no difficulty, and at once consented to join the Duke in his expedition against the Netherlands, and thus witness with his own eyes the barbarous sack of Liege.

The immediate consequence of these events was the downfall of La Balue, by whose advice the meeting at Péronne had taken place. His good fortune was short-lived, and the King thought that he had before him evidence of a treacherous understanding between the Cardinal and the Duke of Burgundy. He resolved to take signal vengeance on the man whom he had raised from nothing to be the first of his subjects. La Balue was despoiled of his possessions and imprisoned. A like fate befell the Bishop of Verdun, who was believed to be in league with him. Even a tyrant like Louis XI saw that a Cardinal could not be tried without the Pope, and two Envoys were charged to enter into negotiations on this subject with Rome. The conditions which the Pope laid down for the trial were perfectly in accordance with the prescriptions of the Canon law, but they were not to the King's taste. Under these circumstances, it was deferred, and La Balue remained in prison.

The hostility of Louis XI to the Holy See was further evinced by the efforts which he made, in the year 1470, to induce the Pyrenean Princes, as well as those in the Appenine Peninsula, to support his Conciliar projects, which were aimed directly against Paul II. All these anti-Roman machinations, however, led to no definite result.

Paul II was a steadfast defender of the privileges of the Holy See, not only against the temporal power, but also against ecclesiastical encroachments. On the 1st June, 1466, he strictly prohibited the use of the Tiara by the Archbishop of Benevento, and reserved the right of consecrating the Agnus Dei to the Holy See. In 1469 a stop was put to the loss inflicted on the Apostolic Treasury by the frequent practice of uniting benefices to each other which were subject to Annates. It was decided that henceforth all ecclesiastical Corporations were, every fifteenth year, to contribute what were called “Quindennium”, instead of Annates, for the benefices united by them.

This last measure, and the great delight which the Pope took in pomp and splendour, have been made the subject of severe strictures. It cannot be said that these reproaches are altogether unfounded; but, on the other hand, the surrounding circumstances must be taken into account. In a time of such general magnificence as the period of the Renaissance, the Papacy could not, without a loss of dignity, be clothed in Apostolical simplicity. Paul II was firmly persuaded that the Pope ought to appear in a style befitting the highest position on earth. His private life was as simple as his appearance in public was sumptuous. He always went in state from the Vatican to his Palace at S. Marco, scattering money amongst the crowd. All Church Festivals in which he took part were celebrated with exceptional magnificence. His coronation and the ceremony of taking possession of the Lateran had given the Romans a foretaste of future glories. The following Christmas the Pope appeared in gorgeous vestments and wore the Tiara. It was then reported that a new Tiara, more costly and splendid than any that had yet been seen, was to be made. At the Easter of 1465 the Pope wore this work of art, which was the wonder of his contemporaries. Holy Week and Easter were always celebrated with great pomp and solemnity. Thousands of foreigners crowded on these occasions to the tombs of the Apostles. The Pope had a new litter made for the Christmas of 1466, and it must have been a marvel of workmanship. It is said to have cost more than a palace.

At these great festivals all beholders were deeply impressed by the noble figure and countenance of the Pope, the magnificence of his vestments, and his majestic bearing. Even on the lesser festivals the ceremonial was very carefully carried out. The love of splendour which belonged to his artistic temperament led him to surround the person of the Vicar of Christ with corresponding magnificence. We have already mentioned the measures taken at the beginning of his reign to give greater external dignity to the Cardinals. Another change was made at the same time. Any one who has seen the Papal leaden seals will be able to recall the ancient type : the heads of SS. Peter and Paul are on one side, and on the reverse the name of the Pope of the day. In the time of Paul II, we find on the face of the seal the Pope himself enthroned and dispensing graces, with two Cardinals by his side, and in the foreground a number of other persons; on the reverse are the full-length figures of the Princes of the Apostles, seated. This alteration, however, was not maintained, and the ancient type reappears under Sixtus IV.

The necessity of reforms, especially in Rome, had been insisted on by Paul II, immediately after his election, and soon the question as to the manner in which they were to be accomplished arose. In the very first Consistory the matter was seriously considered, and a number of wholesome regulations were framed. It was on this occasion that several Cardinals declared themselves in favour of the abolition of reservations; no less a personage, however, than the excellent Carvajal adduced such weighty reasons against this measure that it was abandoned. It is certain that Paul II was anxious to introduce a thorough reform amongst the officials of the Court, and also that, at the very outset of his reign, he opposed the simoniacal and corrupt practices which prevailed there.

If, in the sequel, the Venetian Pope did not prove such a zealous reformer as the sad state of affairs perhaps required, he cannot be charged with absolute inaction. “The abuse of the commendams and expectances was, if not removed, yet practically much restrained; simoniacal practices were combated, the receiving of gifts by Legates, Governors and Judges was forbidden, and also the alienation of Church property, or leasing it for more than three years; and the interests of benevolent foundations were protected”. In the matter of refusing presents, the Pope himself set a good example. When the Ambassadors who came to congratulate him on his elevation offered the customary gifts, he steadfastly declined them all, whatever their value might be. He desired nothing, he said, but perfect fidelity to the Holy See. During the whole of his reign he adhered to this practice. In the spring of 1471, the Archbishop of Treves sent him an ornament composed of diamonds and rubies, and the Pope, who did not think it possible to refuse the present, at once sent in return a cross adorned with similar stones, adding that it was not his habit to receive gifts.

The high and fixed principles on which Paul II. acted in making appointments to ecclesiastical offices was greatly calculated to improve the condition of the Church. In other matters, he is reported to have said, the Pope may be a man, but in the choice of Bishops he must be an Angel, and in that of members of the Sacred College, God. Canensius expressly informs us that he conferred ecclesiastical dignities only after mature and impartial deliberation, having strict regard to the merits of the recipients, and he adds that many excellent men were appointed Bishops without their previous cognisance and in their absence.

Paul II did much to promote monastic reform, particularly in Lombardy, Modena, Ferrara and Venice as also in Western and Southern Germany, especially in Cologne, Bavaria and Würtemberg. In 1469 he issued a Bull for the better regulation of the Augustinian Congregation in Lombardy. A few months before his death the Pope exhorted the Patriarch of Venice to proceed against all clergy and monks who led irregular lives, without respect of persons, and also took measures for raising the standard of education amongst the clergy in the Diocese of Valencia. The evil star which presided over the Briefs of Paul II has consigned much interesting information on this subject to unmerited oblivion.

The fact that Paul II was always surrounded by men of worth is one that speaks well for his own character. In the autumn of 1466 the Milanese Ambassador mentions the Archbishop of Spalatro, Lorenzo Zane, who became Treasurer; Stefano Nardini, Archbishop of Milan; and Teodorode Lelli, Bishop of Feltre and, after the 17th September, 1466, of Treviso, as possessing much influence with the new Pope. The Bishop of Aquila, who had been his preceptor, is also named amongst those who occupied positions immediately about him. Lelli, as it was at once surmised, took the first place. No letter, or decree of importance, was issued until it had been examined by this excellent man. On his death in 1466, the Pope took his nephew Marco Barbo, and Bessarion into his confidence. Agapito Cenci de' Rustici Bishop of Camerino, who had been greatly valued by both Pius II and Paul II, had passed away in October, 1464. Giovanni Barozzi, Patriarch of Venice from the year 1465; the learned Angelus Faseolus, Lelli’s successor in the See of Feltre; Valerius Calderina, Bishop of Savona; Pietro Ferrici, Bishop of Tarasona, afterwards a Cardinal; and Corrado Capece, subsequently Archbishop of Benevento, were also in the Pope’s confidence. Most of the Sienese had left Rome; many of them were called to account by the Pope for extortion or embezzlement. Even Platina bears witness to the strict order and discipline which he maintained in his Court and among his dependents. Moreover, at the very beginning of his pontificate it was observed that Paul II engaged no Venetians among his guards.

The disorders of the Fraticelli (fraticelli de opinione) were, like the abuses at the Court, energetically repressed by Paul II. In the summer of 1466 it became evident that the partisans of this sect had gained a footing, not only in the March of Ancona and the adjacent district of Romagna, but also in the Campagna, and even in Rome itself. The headquarters of these dangerous heretics were Assisi and the little town of Poli near Palestrina, where Stefano de' Conti was accused of being in league with them. The Pope caused this Baron and all the rest of the accused to be confined in St. Angelo, where they were tried. Five Bishops were appointed to conduct the enquiry. Many statements made by the accused are extant, but as most of them were extorted by the rack their value may be questioned. One of their principal doctrines seems to have been, that of all the successors of St. Peter, no one had really been the Vicar of Christ who had not imitated the poverty of his Chief; from the time of John XXII, who spoke against the poverty of Christ, in particular, all Popes had been heretics and excommunicate, as also had all Cardinals, Bishops and Priests consecrated by them. Paul II was no true Pope. These heretics were, moreover, charged with immoral practices in their assemblies, and other crimes. In the record of the trial, mention is made of a small codex found in the possession of a priest of this sect, which confirmed the truth of these allegations. A Fraticelli bishop is named in this, thus a formal Church must have been contemplated. The Hussite principle, that unworthy priests lose their powers, was also a part of their teaching. It is certain, at any rate, that the movement was one which threatened great danger to the Papacy, and which had for a long time been making progress in the locality we have named. One of the women accused said that St. Jacopo della Marca had converted her, and that she had again relapsed into error. All these heretics, Platina says, were punished: those who continued obstinate, with the greatest severity. Such as acknowledged their errors, and sought for pardon, were treated more leniently.

The extent to which these doctrines had spread, and the serious manner in which they were viewed in Rome, may be estimated from the numerous refutations which at once appeared, although the Franciscan, St. Jacopo della Marca, had already published a work dealing thoroughly with the subject. Nicholas Palmerius, Bishop of Orte, one of the prelates who took part in the enquiry, composed a treatise on the poverty of Christ, and dedicated it to Cardinal Jouffroy. Rodericus Sancius of Arevalo offered his work on the same subject to the Pope himself; in this treatise he shows that there is no contradiction between the statements of Nicholas III and John XXII in regard to the poverty of Christ. There are also treatises on this subject from the pens of Torquemada and of Fernando of Cordova.

At this time tidings reached Rome of the discovery in Germany of a sect similar to that of the Fraticelli. The copy of a letter, addressed to Bishop Henry of Ratisbon by Rudolf of Rudesheim, Bishop of Lavant and the Papal Legate, on the 11th June, 1466, contains details regarding these dreamy fanatics, whose chiefs were Brothers John and Livin of Wirsberg. A member of this sect called himself John of the Eas he was to be the forerunner of the anointed Redeemer, the One Shepherd of whom Christ had spoken. These heretics declared the Pope to be Anti­christ, and all Catholics who did not believe in the “anointed Redeemer” to be members of Antichrist. John of Wirsberg promulgated his doctrines in Eger as well as in the country, and even in the Bishopric of Eichstatt; his most zealous adherent, however, was his brother Livin, who died in prison in 1467, after having abjured his errors.

It is very probable that Paul II also took measures against these sectaries. Direct evidence, however, is wanting, for the Secret Archives of the Vatican only contain Briefs belonging to the second half of the seventh year of his pontificate. These Briefs shew that he proceeded against heretics in the Diocese of Amiens, and afterwards in Bologna.

The solicitude of Paul II for the spiritual welfare of the faithful committed to his charge is manifested by his decision that the Jubilee should, for the future, be celebrated once in every twenty-five years. The Bull on this subject was published on the 19th April, 1470. “The thought of all that the Church had suffered from schism at two periods, and all that it had cost her to end it; the terror of Western Christendom when, by the fall of Constantinople, the Turks gained a footing in Europe; the alarming outbreaks of devastating maladies; finally, the ruin which ceaseless wars had wrought in the very life of the Western kingdoms, led men to turn their eyes to Heaven, and showed that, in order to avert the strokes of the chastening hand of God, it was needful that all should tread the paths of penance”. Moved by considerations such as these, and by the fact that, under the former regulations, but few could partake of the Jubilee Indulgence, the Pope made the Decree we have mentioned, which was at once solemnly announced throughout Christendom. But Paul was not destined to see the beginning of the new Jubilee year.

Towards the end of this pontificate a remarkable effort was made to prepare the way for the union of the Russian with the Roman Church, and also to gain the Grand Duke Ivan III as a champion against the Turks. The idea originated with Bessarion, and found great favour with Paul II, who had just at that time expressed to the Maronites his wish that they should conform more closely to the Roman ritual. An Ambassador was sent to Moscow to propose a marriage between the Grand Duke and Zoe (Sophia), the daughter of the unfortunate Thomas Palaeologus. Ivan entered into the project, and the Ambassadors were at once sent back to Rome to bring a portrait of the bride. After a time things were so far settled that a Russian Embassy was sent to Rome to conduct Zoe to her new home. When this Embassy, bearing letters to Bessarion and to the Pope, reached Italy, Paul II had ceased to live. His successor, however, took up the matter with equal zeal.

 

CHAPTER V.

 

THE NEW AND THE OLD CARDINALS.—CHURCH QUESTION IN BOHERMIA

 

 

The appointment of new Cardinals was spoken of in the earliest months of Paul II's pontificate. At the Christmas of 1464, or, at the latest, in the following Lent, he seems to have contemplated an increase of the members of the Sacred College. Marco Barbo, Bishop of Vicenza, and Stefano Nardini, Archbishop of Milan, were named as candidates. No nomination, however, according to Canensius, actually took place until the second year of his reign, and Teodoro de' Lelli, Bishop of Treviso, and Giovanni Barozzi, Patriarch of Venice, the only Prelates then elevated to the purple, both died before their publication. A creation of Cardinals was positively announced for December, 1466; but it did not take place. The consent of the Sacred College probably could not be obtained. At last, in the beginning of the fourth year of his reign, on the 18th September, 1467, Paul II was able to create a large number of Cardinals. Three of the eight then admitted to the Sacred College were foreigners: Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury; Stephan de Varda, Archbishop of Colocsa, and Jean de La Balue, Bishop of Angers. The last-named prelate, who, “by his cleverness and cunning”, had risen from a very obscure position, was at this time Louis XI’s Ambassador to Rome, and was engaged in negotiations regarding the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction; this explains his appointment.

Of the five Italians promoted, one of the most distinguished was Olivieri Carafa, Archbishop of Naples. He was a jurist, a theologian, an antiquarian, and a statesman; he had even taken part in warfare as Admiral against the Turks. Highly esteemed and influential in his own country, he was remarkably popular in Rome. His popularity was due to the use which he made of his ample income and to his affability. He was generous in supporting learning and learned men; many youths were won by him for the Church and for serious studies. Paulus Cortesius praises his great discretion, his uprightness, and his blamelessness.

The character of Paul II’s nephew, Marco Barbo, Bishop, first of Treviso (1455-64) and afterwards of Vicenza, was still more admirable. A singular sweetness of disposition and deep piety were in his case united with a rare capacity for business and great learning. He was absolutely disinterested. During his lifetime he gave almost all his income to the poor, to whom he afterwards bequeathed what remained, “for”, he said, “the goods of the Church are, according to the teaching of the Fathers, the inheritance of Christ’s poor”. His fine library was the only gratification he allowed himself. Of all the Pope's relations, he was the one most closely united with him; his “inexhaustible power of work and his consummate prudence” were of great use to Paul II.

Amicus Agnifilus, the third of the Cardinals nominated on the 18th of September, 1467, had been a member of the household and a friend of Domenico Capranica, and subsequently tutor to Paul II. When raised from low estate to be Bishop of Aquila, he had chosen, for his armorial bearings, a lamb and a book. His epitaph praises his generosity to the poor, his discretion, and his thorough knowledge of Canon Law. Little has been handed down concerning the fourth Cardinal, the Protonotary, Marquess Theodore of Montferrat, and even less concerning Francesco della Rovere, the General of the Franciscans, on the occasion of whose elevation to the purple Paul II is said to have observed that he had chosen his successor.

On the 19th September, the Red Hat was conferred on those among the newly-created Cardinals who were at the time in Rome. On the 2nd October, the mouth of Cardinal Barbo was opened, and S. Marco assigned to him as his titular Church. On the 22nd of the month, Agnifilus reached Rome; the Cardinal's Hat was at once given to him in a Public Consistory, and, on the 13th November, he received the Church of S^ta Balbina, which, on the 13th October, 1469, he exchanged for that of S^ta Maria in Trastevere. S. Pietro in Vincoli was the titular Church of Francesco della Rovere, and SS. Pietro e Marcellino that of Carafa, who arrived in Rome on the 3rd December, 1467. Cardinal Theodore of Montferrat did not make his entry into Rome until the 21st April, 1468, when S. Teodoro was assigned to him.

On the 21st November, 146S, Paul II created two more Cardinals, who, like Marco Barbo, were of his own kindred : these were Battista Zeno and Giovanni Michiel, the sons of two of his sisters. They received the Red Hat, and the Churches of S^ta Maria in Porticu and S^ta Lucia, on the 22nd Nov., and the ceremony of the opening of their mouths took place on the 9th December. The Pope’s nephews were both men of unblemished character. None of the Cardinals were excessively wealthy or influential.

Towards the end of his reign, Paul II created four other Cardinals. This was done in a secret Consistory, and with the proviso that, in the event of his death, they were to be considered as published. They were Johann Vitez, Archbishop of Gran, Pietro Foscari, Giovan Battista Savelli, and Francesco Ferrici.

Between the Cardinals created by Paul II, who were called the Pauleschi, and the Puscli, who owed their elevation to his predecessor, a certain opposition existed. Of the latter number, Ammanati fell into complete disfavour, while Forteguerri, Roverella, and Eroli enjoyed the good graces of Pope Paul II, and the first of these three Cardinals enjoyed great influence with him. At the beginning of the pontificate, Richard Longueil, who, on the 1st October, 1464, was sent as Legate to Perugia, was also at the French Court believed to have considerable influence. Cardinals Borgia and Gonzaga also received marked favours; the latter, however, was not a friend of the Pope. On the 18th February, 1471, he was appointed Legate at Bologna, possibly with the object of removing him from the Court.

The relations which existed between the Pope and Cardinal Scarampo were of a peculiar character. The latter, whose contemporaries deemed him remarkable for his cunning, had, shortly after his rival’s elevation, made peace with him. The reconciliation seems to have been tolerably complete, for, in September, 1464, the Pope had no hesitation in granting to Scarampo the full exercise of his post of Cardinal-Camerlengo. “Neither Calixtus III, nor Pius II, nor even Nicholas V, would have done this”, observed a secretary in Cardinal Gonzaga’s service. The fact that, after the death of Cardinal Pierre de Foix, Paul II conferred the Bishopric of Albano upon Scarampo shows that some degree of friendly feeling existed. That there was, however, a certain amount of friction in the relations between the former rivals, is far from improbable. For instance, in answer to a pointed remark of the Cardinal's regarding the cost of the Palace of S. Marco, the Pope is said to have declared that it was far better to spend his money in buildings than to play it away.

At the beginning of March, 1465, Scarampo fell ill, and, on the 22nd, he died. He was a thoroughly worldly man, and was known at the Roman Court by the name of Cardinal Lucullus. As a Prince of the Church, his example was bad. As a statesman and politician, however, by restoring regular government in Rome, by promoting employment, and looking after the welfare of the people, by his consummate skill in the conduct of the negotiations with the Italian Princes, as well as by his care for the army and fleet, he did good service to the restored Papacy at a critical period.

The close of Scarampo’s career was followed by a somewhat painful episode. He had availed himself of the right conceded to him of making testamentary dispositions to bequeath his whole property, amounting to 200,000, or, according to some accounts, to 400.000 golden florins, to his nephews. Scarcely anything was left to the Church in whose service he had amassed these riches. To the general satisfaction, Paul II set aside this will and devoted the whole of the property to charitable purposes, such as churches, the poor, and refugees from the countries which had been conquered by the Turks. The nephews of the deceased were also remembered; even Platina here admits the kindness of the Pope.

His friendship for Cardinal Bessarion speaks well for Paul II. The dispute about the Election Capitulation had temporarily estranged them, but, in the year 1468, the Duke of Este’s Ambassador spoke of Bessarion as enjoying more consideration than all the other Cardinals, and, in the following year, he wrote word that Barbo and the Greek Cardinal were much in the Pope’s confidence, and were the only men trusted with the most secret affairs. In fact, “in the history of this period Bessarion stands forth almost like a father of the Church; his majestic presence, his noble Greek profile with his long flowing beard, also contributed to enhance the esteem and deference which were everywhere accorded to him”.

Bessarion, who was an ardent patriot, not only took the deepest interest in the proposed Crusade, but also endeavoured in every way to awaken the compassion of Western Christendom on behalf of his exiled countrymen. The unselfishness with which he assisted the scattered fugitives, and his “noble efforts to preserve and render profitable whatever it had been possible to rescue from a vanishing civilisation, call upon us to deal leniently with his weaknesses”.

The Greek Cardinal's state of health became so much worse during Paul's reign that, in 1466, he caused the simple tomb, which is still well-preserved in the Church of the SS. Apostoli, to be prepared. In the following year he stayed for a considerable time at Viterbo, where he had on former occasions taken the baths. In spite of his bodily sufferings he devoted himself as zealously as ever to study; his celebrated work in defence of Plato appeared at this time. He was also in constant intercourse with the Humanist Scholars in Rome. His house at SS. Apostoli was common ground for the most noted Greeks and Italian Hellenists, where all were welcomed by their learned host with the most winning kindness. “Here Andronikos Callistos, Constantine Laskaris, and Theodore Gaza held brilliant and genial converse with the Cardinal in friendly rivalry with his pupil and favourite, Niccolo Perotto, who translated Polybius, and composed a metrical poem”. Francesco della Rovere, afterwards Sixtus IV, Domizio da Caldiero, Johannes Müller Regiomontanus, the great astronomer and geographer, and many others, also frequented his house, and Bessarion took part in their learned disputations with unfailing interest.

As Protector of the Basilian Order, the Greek Cardinal's labours were both extensive and important. The reforms which the Order at this time required, and which Martin V had already attempted, were energetically taken in hand. Persuaded that the extent of the malady demanded a comprehensive remedy, Bessarion began by drawing up a Rule in Italian and in Greek, which he strictly imposed upon the Monasteries in Italy and Sicily. He increased their revenues by recovering lands which had been alienated, and by regulating their household expenses, and endeavoured to give new splendour to the Order by beautifying its ancient buildings and by constructing on the old lines skilfully arranged additions. Bessarion everywhere insisted on serious study; he encouraged the monks to apply themselves to the Greek classics, to transcribe and collect Manuscripts and to establish good schools. Among these, the Gymnasium of Messina acquired a great reputation. Laskaris, whom Bessarion appointed Professor at this Institution in 1467, soon attracted scholars from all parts of Italy.

In recognition of these important services Pius II, in August 1462, nominated Bessarion Commendatory Abbot of Grottaferrata. This celebrated Abbey, which had long been considered as a link uniting East and West, had, at the period of which we are speaking, fallen into a state of dilapidation. Bessarion at once devoted himself most ardently to the work of restoration, and quickly succeeded in effecting a thorough renovation, both material and spiritual, in this interesting spot, so rich in classical associations and Christian memories. His chalice, his famous Inventory (Regestum Bessarionis), and some valuable Manuscripts, presented by him to his Abbey, are still preserved at Grottaferrata.

The Vatican Basilica, the Camaldolese Abbey at Avellana, and the Church of the Holy Apostles in Rome, were also generously enriched by Bessarion. The last-named Church, which Eugenius IV had assigned as his title, was the special object of his paternal solicitude. In the beginning of Paul II’s pontificate the Cardinal caused the Chapels of the Archangel Michael, of St. John the Baptist, and of Saint Eugenia, at the left of the High Altar, to be completely restored and decorated by the painter Antonazzo Romano. In the centre of the vaulting appeared the figure of Our Lord, enthroned and surrounded with nine choirs of Angels, in a blue firmament strewn with stars and encircled by a frieze. In the corners were the four Evangelists, with a Latin and a Greek Father of the Church writing in his cell beside each. On the upper part of the wall behind the Altar was the apparition of the Archangel Michael on Monte Gargano, and beneath this the birth of St. John the Baptist. On the side walls, between two real and two painted windows, stood two Archangels above, and the third with St. John the Baptist below. From half-way up the wall down to the ground, curtains ornamented with patterns in flowers and gold were painted. On each of the six pilasters was the figure of a Saint under a canopy. The framing-arch was adorned with a frieze, and three shields with the arms of the founder.

Amongst the nearest and dearest of Bessarion’s friends was Juan de Carvajal, the most devoted of all the sons of the Church. His motto was “To suffer all things for Christ and His Church!”. In consequence of his extreme modesty, and utter disregard of fame, the memory of this distinguished man has not been honoured as it deserves. The student of history can discover but scanty records of the life of this saintly Cardinal, who proved his fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of the Church in twenty-two Legations and “from all his journeys brought back nothing but the reputation of an unspotted priesthood”.

Since the autumn of 1461 Carvajal had again been living in Rome. The vigorous man, whom Pope Calixtus had sent to Hungary at the time when Belgrade was threatened by the Turks, had grown old and feeble in that severe climate, amid the turmoils of the Court and camp, and the fatigues of travel. His teeth were so loose in his mouth that he could only use them with the aid of artificial appliances. Yet it was political reasons rather than considerations of health, which at last induced him to abandon this bleak country of moorlands and marshes. He left behind him the memory of a pure and beneficent life, and his merits, which have never been questioned by any historian, met with an honourable appreciation in Rome. No other Cardinal, it was justly observed, did so much and endured such sufferings as Carvajal in the six years during which he was Legate for Hungary, while championing the Church's highest interest, the purity of her faith.

Extreme simplicity and exemplary order prevailed in his modest dwelling near S. Marcello. His ascetic manner of life enabled him to be very liberal to the poor, and to provide for needy churches. He was never absent from any great ecclesiastical function or from a Consistory. In Consistory he expressed his opinion freely, but in a conciliatory manner. In their brevity, simplicity, and clearness, their strict logic and their utter absence of rhetoric, his discourses form a striking contrast to the bombastic and artificial productions of the literary men of his day; his Reports while a Legate have the same “restrained and impersonal character”.

Though always genial in his intercourse with others, there was a something about Carvajal which inspired a certain awe in all who saw much of him. Cardinal Ammanati observed of him: “our age may rightly place him by the side of the ancient Fathers of the Church”, and these words expressed the general opinion of the members of the Sacred College. It might be said that Rome did not contain a single man who had not done homage to “the height and depth of his character”. Pomponius Laetus, “who admired nothing in ruined Rome but the heroic grandeur of its earliest founders; who hardly deigned to bestow a glance on the Barons and Prelates of the Papal City,—the proud Platonist, the cynic scorner of all flattery and of every kind of dignity, who never uncovered his head, or bowed to any one, made but one exception, and that was the aged Cardinal of S. Angelo”.

Subsequent historians have unanimously endorsed the esteem and admiration of his contemporaries for Carvajal. The latest biographer of Pius II, who is generally disposed to believe the worst of men, speaks of Carvajal with the greatest reverence. Even the Hussite historian of Bohemia says of him : “Not only in zeal for the Faith, in moral purity and strength of character, was he unsurpassed, but he was also unequalled in knowledge of the world, in experience of ecclesiastical affairs, and in the services which he rendered to the Papal authority. It was chiefly due to his labours, prolonged during a period of twenty years, that Rome at last got the better of Constance and Basle, that the nations returned to their allegiance, and that her power and glory again shone before the world with a splendour that had not been seen since the time of Boniface VIII. Carvajal’s colleagues knew and acknowledged this, and in all important matters were guided by his counsels. Paul II himself feared him, and yielded to all his wishes. Thus, his personal influence, and his opinion regarding King George and the doctrine of the Hussites, had great weight in Rome”.

As a member of the Commission appointed by Paul II to consider the state of ecclesiastical affairs in Bohemia, Carvajal was associated with Bessarion and d'Estouteville. From the beginning he advocated stern measures. The ill-advised conduct of the King of Bohemia, who omitted to send any one from his Court to offer the congratulations usual from Princes to a new Pope, had confirmed the Cardinal in the conviction “that it would be absolutely necessary to employ the knife in the case of wounds which admitted of no other remedy, and to guard against fatal corruption by severing the decayed members from the body of Holy Church”.

The Pope at first hoped that gentleness might be successful with George Podiebrad. The proceedings which Pius II had commenced were at once suspended. Paul II declared that, if the Bohemian King fulfilled his promises, he would be to him not a Pope, but a loving brother. It soon became evident that the double-tongued monarch had no thought of keeping his oath. When all Christian Princes sent Ambassadors to Rome, none appeared from Bohemia. Fresh complaints were constantly made by the Catholics. The “pacific inclinations” of Paul II gradually vanished. The letter which the King of Bohemia sent to Rome on the 7th March, 1465, only apologises in a passing way for the delay of the Embassy; its main purpose is to explain the reasons why George did not think it well to comply with the Pope's desire, and raise the siege of the fortress of Zornstein, which belonged to the Catholic Heinrich von Lichtenburg. Paul II's reply to this letter was not addressed to the King himself, but to the Bohemian Prelates and Barons (13th May, 1465), a fact which shews the change in his feeling. By the middle of the summer of this year the stern views of Carvajal had completely prevailed, and from henceforth guided the Pope in all his decisions. On the 2nd August, Podiebrad was summoned by Cardinals Bessarion, Carvajal and Eroli, who were entrusted with the management of the Bohemian affair, to appear at Rome within 180 days to answer charges of heresy, of relapse into heresy, of perjury (in regard to the breach of his coronation oath), of spoliation of churches, and of blasphemy. “In order, however, to guard against a further outbreak of heresy during the trial, and to protect the oppressed Catholics”, the Pope, on the 6th August, empowered the Legate Rudolf, Bishop of Lavant, to inflict ecclesiastical censures on all George's adherents, and to declare all engagements entered into with him null and void.

Meanwhile George’s position had become much worse, the chief lords of Bohemia, dissatisfied with his arbitrary government, having become more and more hostile to him. He therefore made new proposals of accommodation with Rome; but Rome was weary of these endless negotiations.

“Long years of prevarication had destroyed all confidence in George, so that even those who had once depended upon his word now turned from him with feelings embittered by disappointment, and firmly resolved never again to be deceived by him”. As early as the 8th December, 1465, Paul II had released George's subjects from their oath of allegiance; on the 6th February, 1466, the proposals made through Duke Louis of Bavaria in favour of the King of Bohemia were absolutely rejected.

In order to understand the severe language of this document, we must remember the shameful manner in which George had trifled with Calixtus III and Pius II regarding the Turkish question. It is strange to find the King now bringing forward this question, and demanding to be rewarded beforehand for his return to the Church, and his participation in the Crusade, by the title of Emperor of Constantinople for himself, and the Archbishopric of Prague for one of his sons. Is a relapsed heretic, a perjured man, Paul II remarks, to ask, instead of penance and punishment, for a reward such as could hardly be granted to the most Christian Princes, who had rendered the greatest services to religion? He desires to traffic with his conversion to the Faith, and sell his conscience for gain. His feigned obedience would indeed be a precious boon to the Church, while the old leaven would still ferment throughout the kingdom. Is the Apostolic See to beg for this, while he reserves to himself the right to accept or reject what is offered? The proposed Archbishop is a youth, scarce twenty years of age, who has grown up in the midst of his father’s crimes and deceits, in ignorance of all law, either human or Divine; he has but just ceased to be a heretic, and is now to be made a Bishop! Equally obnoxious is the request that the Archbishop should have as assistant an Inquisitor who will prosecute all “heresies outside the Compact”. That is very cunningly devised : is it not equivalent to a covert demand that the Compacts should be re-established? Again, what is the meaning of the petition for the Imperial Crown of Constantinople? Evidently its object is only to secure an easier passage from one Confession of Faith to another (the Greek). But the dominion of the Infidels, who have never known the truth, is a lesser evil than the rule of a heretic and schismatic, who has apostatised from that which he professed. The Church has not yet fallen so low as to be compelled to seek the protection of heretics and robbers of churches.

The fact that Podiebrad, in the summer of 1466, took the excommunicated Gregor Heimburg into his service is a proof that the Pope had not judged him too severely. His connection with this unscrupulous man, who, “for twenty years, had been at the head of every opposition offered outside the limits of Bohemia to the restoration of the Papal power”, was equivalent to a renunciation of all idea of reconciliation with the Church. Even on the 28th July, Heimburg, who had formerly made a parade of his German sympathies, published a manifesto in defence of the “honour and innocence” of the Czech monarch, who had been treated by Rome worse “than the fratricide Cain and the Sodomites!”. George, he said, was no private individual whom the Pope might summon to Rome at his pleasure, but a King, and a King of great merit. This advocate found excuses for everything, even for the imprisonment of Fantinus, which was a breach of the law of nations. The Pope was accused of credulity, and his conduct characterised as hasty, as an offence against Divine and natural law, and opposed to reason and Scripture. He further insisted that a Diet should be summoned, at which the Envoys of the temporal Princes should, in the presence of a Legate, deliberate on the ecclesiastical affairs of Bohemia. As this manifesto was at once sent, not only to all the German Courts, but also to the King of France and the other Princes of Christendom, it was impossible for the Papal party to be silent. The autumn had not passed before letters in answer appeared from Rudolf von Rudesheim, Bishop of Lavant, and from Cardinal Carvajal. The former sought to surpass his opponent in violence of language, and lost himself in prolix explanations, while Carvajal, in his brief, simple and logical style, exposed the treacherous arts of the Czech monarch and of his advocate. In particular, he brought forward the sacrilegious manner in which George had violated the right of nations by his conduct towards Fantinus and the double-faced policy by which he had trifled with the Holy See. What Rome now commanded was the result of mature deliberation, and was in accordance with justice. George's intrigues are unmasked, the axe is laid to the roots; he must prove his innocence or else experience the rigour of justice.

Heimburg soon wrote a second apology for King George, in which he gave vent to his violent hatred of the two heads of Christendom and for the Cardinals. All manner of false charges were here made against both Pope and Emperor, and amongst others that of immorality. The “very violence and indecency of these accusations destroyed their effect”. The only result of this letter was entirely to put an end to the friendly relations which had existed between George Podiebrad and Frederick III. The action of George’s counsellor was certainly not that of a states­man.

The decided measures advocated by Carvajal did not meet with universal approval at the Roman Court. Looking at the matter from a merely human point of view, some urged that there was no one who could carry into effect the sentence of the Holy See. Nothing was to be expected from the irresolute Emperor, and Poland also displayed little inclination to be of use. King Matthias of Hungary had, indeed, given the best assurances of good­will, but it was generally desired that he should reserve his forces for the Turkish war. It was doubtful whether the power of the Bohemian nobles was equal to the occasion. In the face of these grave difficulties, Carvajal remained unmoved in his opinion that justice ought to take its course, and that there was a duty to be accomplished. God would, he believed, provide for all.

After Carvajal had left Rome as Legate to Venice, on the 20th August, 1466, Cardinals Ammanati and Piccolomini were the chief advocates of strong measures. After long deliberations their opinion finally prevailed. On the 23rd December a Consistory was held, in which George Podiebrad was deposed from his dignities of King, Marquis and Prince, his posterity declared disqualified for any honour or inheritance, and his subjects absolved from their oath of allegiance.

The Papal Bull announcing this decision made a deep impression on loyal Catholics, and in order to lessen its effect, Podiebrad, on the 14th April, 1467, published a solemn appeal to a General Council, which ought properly, he said, to have been assembled before this time, and had been put off only by the Pope’s negligence. This document, which attacked the Pope personally, was drawn up by Heimburg. It was immediately sent to all the German Princes. At the same time an Ambassador was despatched from Prague to the Court of the French King. He was to propose the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance between Louis XI and Podiebrad, into which the Poles and a number of the German Princes were to be drawn, especially the rulers of Saxony and Brandenburg, whose sympathies were with Bohemia. The immediate object of the allies was to be the humiliation of Burgundy. When this was accomplished, Louis XI was to summon a Council, “which should be held by the nation”, and which should put down all strife and all arrogance, especially the pretensions of the Pope and the Emperor, who were to be brought low and punished!

At the French Court the Ambassador maintained that the Pope was endeavouring “to get both swords into his hands, and thus subject all rulers to himself, so that the clergy might have their way in everything”. Words like these found a ready access to the ear of a tyrant like Louis XI. He promised to exert himself in Podiebrad’s favour in Rome, and also to use his influence to maintain the Compacts of the Holy Council of Basle in force; he further advised that the German Princes should be persuaded to advocate the assembling of the Council. George’s efforts in this matter were unsuccessful, and complications in his own dominions, and with England, so fully occupied the French King, that he was unable to pursue his anti-Roman project of the Council. The close relations which continued to exist between Louis XI and the Bohemian monarch is evidenced by the fact that when, in the following year, Paul II wished to have the Bull of Maundy Thursday, in which Podiebrad was mentioned by name, published in France, the French King at once raised objections, and the Duke of Milan did the same.

While Podiebrad was somewhat unsuccessfully labouring to elevate his personal contest with Rome into a matter of general importance to all the temporal powers, the opposing party within his kingdom did not remain idle. Nothing decisive, however, was done, even after the formation of a great Catholic League in the December of 1467. It became more and more evident that the League could only hope to prevail against George if assisted by some powerful Prince. All efforts to obtain such aid proved fruitless, and accordingly in the end no alternative remained to the Pope and the League, save to listen to the overtures made to them by the King of Hungary.

The adversaries of George greatly rejoiced when Matthias Corvinus (1468, March 31) declared war against Bohemia. Cardinal Ammanati’s letters to Paul II and Carvajal bear witness to their satisfaction. The necessary interruption of the war with the Turks was looked upon as a lesser evil. The Apostolic Faith was deemed to be in imminent danger unless the Bohemian King should voluntarily abandon his schismatic position, or be forcibly deprived of the power of doing harm. On the 20th April, 1468, the Pope had again pronounced the severest ecclesiastical penalties on all the adherents and abettors of George, and had moreover promised a number of Indulgences to those who should either personally, or by pecuniary contributions, take part in the war against him. Lorenzo Roverella, the Bishop of Ferrara, who had but lately returned to Rome, was again sent to Germany to publish these Indulgences, and furnished with fuller power.

During the year 1468 the fortunes of war favoured the King of Hungary. In the following February, Matthias advanced into Bohemia, but was completely shut in by Podiebrad in the defiles near Wilimow, and his case seemed hopeless. He then began to negotiate for a truce, and promised to obtain from the Pope the toleration of the Compacts for the Bohemians. On the 24th March, the two Kings purposed to meet at Olmütz, and conclude a permanent peace. The Papal Legate, Roverella, hastened to the spot to prevent this, and succeeded in doing so.

In July, 1469, the war broke out afresh, Matthias having been two months previously solemnly elected King of Bohemia. No decisive advantage was gained by either party during that year or the next. The war was one of mutual devastation, and seemed likely to be endless. Notwithstanding all the efforts of his opponents, George held his ground, paying his partisans out of the spoils of the Church. He failed, however, to accomplish his plan of founding a Czech dynasty by securing the succession to one of his sons.

Meanwhile, the “greatest, and, in regard to his moral character, the most estimable, of the enemies of Bohemia in the Sacred College”, Juan Carvajal, had died in Rome (6th December, 1469). At the same time it was reported that one of the Cardinals had advocated a pacific arrangement with Podiebrad; this induced the latter to express to the Cardinal in question, whose name is unfortunately unknown, his desire for reconciliation with Rome. He declared that he had never intended to injure the Holy Father, and yet had undeservedly to endure his severe displeasure. He had never believed himself to be outside the Holy Church, in which alone is salvation. If in any way he had departed from the unity of the Faith, he had done it in ignorance. Although he had already entrusted his reconciliation with Rome to King Casimir of Poland, he now sent another Ambassador, whom he hereby accredited to the Pope.

If these endeavours at reconciliation were really sincere, the increasing danger from the Turkish power gave them a prospect of success. But when matters had gone so far a higher Hand intervened. On the 22nd February, 1471, Rokyzana, “the soul of all the anti-Catholic efforts of the Utraquists”, died in Prague, and on the 22nd March George Podiebrad followed him. The opinion that the King was, before his death, reconciled to the Church is erroneous. It is, however, certain that Gregor Heimburg, the man who had exercised so potent an influence on his anti-Roman policy, did, before his death (1472), make his peace with the Church.

The struggle about the Compacts, which were not really observed in any of the Utraquist Churches, was not terminated by the deaths of the spiritual and temporal chiefs of the party; the Polish Prince Wladislaw, when elected by the Bohemians in May, 1471, as their King, was obliged expressly to bind himself to uphold them. The hopes cherished by the father of the newly-elected sovereign, that the Bohemian position would be recognised by Rome were accordingly without foundation; for this was no mere question of externals, but a deep-seated and essential separation which might be for a time concealed by a formula of union, but could not be conclusively settled by any such means.

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

THE PEACE OF 1468. SECOND JOURNEY OF FREDERICK III TO ROME

 

 

Paul II, who was by nature anything but warlike, was in the early part of his reign more successful in his conflicts with tyrants in the States of the Church than in his expeditions against the Turks and Hussites. The robber Knights of Anguillara were the first to claim his attention.

The cruel Count Everso of Anguillara had already given great trouble to his immediate predecessors. During the Pontificate of Pius II he had taken possession of all the territory formerly held by the Prefects, and there in his mountain fortresses securely guarded the spoils gathered from the plunder of towns, pilgrims, and merchants. Like Malatesta, he had been the ally of all the enemies of the Pope. Cardinal Ammanati says that he despised God and the Saints and yet made pious foundations. Much has lately been heard of the portion of his Palace which still exists, a gloomy tower in Trastevere, which was in danger of falling a sacrifice to a destructive work of restoration. Happily this interesting building, which commands a splendid view of the City, has for the present escaped; who can say, however, how long it may be spared?

Count Everso, who had to the last defied Pius II, died on the 4th September, 1464. His two sons, Francesco and Deifobo, began by making the fairest promises to the Pope, but soon betrayed a disposition to follow in the footsteps of their father, and ruin the peace of the whole neighbourhood. Paul II then determined to make war upon this race of tyrants, who had braved the authority of four successive Popes, and were a scourge to that portion of the States of the Church. His prudence and caution enabled him to take the Counts completely by surprise.

At the end of June, 1465, the sentence of Excommuni­cation was pronounced against them, and Cardinal Niccolo Forteguerri, Federigo of Urbino, and Napoleone Orsini at once advanced with an armed force. They were joined by troops from the King of Naples, who had a personal quarrel with Deifobo. Thirteen castles, some of which had been deemed impregnable from their position and fortifications, were taken almost without a blow. In these robbers' nests were found implements for coining Papal money, correspondence of a compromising character, and numbers of unhappy captives, doomed by the tyrants to perpetual imprisonment. Deifobo escaped to Venice; Francesco was imprisoned, together with his children, but was soon liberated at the instance of Stefano Colonna. Twelve days sufficed to break the power of the Anguillara; the conquered towns and fortresses came under the immediate rule of the Holy See.

The year 1465 also witnessed an extension of Papal authority in the Romagna. By virtue of the treaty concluded in 1463 with Pius II, the towns possessed by the Malatesta were, on the extinction of their line, to revert to the Holy See. Malatesta Novello, Lord of Cesena, dying childless on the 20th November, 1465, his nephew, Roberto, sought to occupy Cesena and Bertinoro. His efforts were, however, frustrated by the loyalty with which these cities adhered to the promise given to the Holy See. The inhabitants had good reasons for preferring immediate dependence on the government of the Church, which allowed them far greater liberty, and did not harry them with oppressive taxation. In order to conciliate and win over the warlike Robert, Paul II. invested him with the fiefs of Meldola, Sarsina, and some other small places, and took him into his service as a captain of mercenaries.

Not long after the downfall of the Anguillara, the Pope came into conflict with the King of Naples, “the terrible and faithless Ferrante”.

The unreasonable demands of the King, and his prevarications about the payment of his tribute, had, even at the beginning of the Pontificate, caused some estrangement between Naples and the Pope. Although, according to the Bull of Investiture granted by Pius II, the severest penalties—such as Excommunication, Interdict, deposition from the throne, and forfeiture of his fief—were to be incurred by non-payment of the tribute, Ferrante steadily neglected it. When called upon to pay, he never failed to find some excuse; at one time he pleaded the great difficulties occasioned by internal troubles, at another the expenses in which he had been involved by his share in the war against the Anguillara. The tension constantly increased. When Ferrante, who already owed the Pope 60,000 golden ducats, sent the customary palfrey, but not a farthing with it, the Pope returned it. The King went so far as to threaten that, if the claim were still insisted upon, he would enter into alliance with the Turks, whereupon the Pope answered that he would provide for having Ferrante driven from his kingdom, and the Turks expelled from the Christian dominions.

The complicated relations which existed between Naples and the Apostolic See made it possible for the King to keep the Pope in perpetual alarm, by constantly making fresh demands. The real ground of Ferrante’s hostility was the jealousy with which he viewed the consolidation of the Papal power in the States of the Church, and accordingly he harassed the Pope in every way that he could.

The energetic measures of Paul II against the lawless Barons in the Roman territory had not perfectly restored peace; feuds were constantly breaking out amongst them, as well as amongst the lesser nobles, while bloody and barbarous revenges were of frequent occurrence. Yet much had been gained. The Pope laboured unremittingly, by means of his Cardinals and Prelates, to bring about reconciliations. At the same time he did what he could to maintain among the Italian powers that peace which the danger of Turkish invasion rendered so necessary. His prompt action at the critical moment of the death of Francesco Sforza, which occurred on the 8th March, 1466, after an illness of but two days, was specially judicious and effective. This unexpected event caused the greatest consternation at the French Court, as well as in Florence and in Rome, where the news arrived on the 16th March. A Consistory was at once held, in which, at the Pop’s suggestion, it was determined that the Holy See should use every possible means for the maintenance of peace. Paul II forgot all previous differences with Milan, and sent a special Ambassador to express his sympathy, and declare his intention of standing by the Duchess and her children. He also addressed Briefs to all the Italian Governments, informing them of his determination to maintain peace in the Peninsula, and earnestly exhorting them to avoid all disturbances. The warning was needed, especially in regard to the Republic of St. Mark, whose policy had given the Pope just cause for dissatisfaction. Many exiles from Florence had at this time betaken themselves to Venice to hatch in safety conspiracies against the rule of the Medici. The Signoria, ever ready to fish in troubled waters, while avoiding any open breach of the peace, by no means discouraged these plots. The old grudge against Florence, on account of the defeat of their schemes against Milan by Cosmo, revived. The resentment of the banished Florentines was to be turned to account to establish a government there, which should be dependent on the support of Venice, and to overthrow the Sforzas in Milan. Bartolommeo Colleone, an ambitious and avaricious Condottiere, was to be the instrument employed for the accomplishment of these designs. In order to enable the exiled Florentines to avail themselves of his services, the Signoria dismissed him with promises of money.

In face of the threatening attitude of Colleone, the Ambassadors of Florence, Naples and Milan, on the 4th January, 1467, entered into a defensive alliance at Rome, under the protection of Paul II, with a view of securing the peace of Italy. This was a time of great anxiety for the Pope; he placed no confidence in Ferrante, who showed symptoms of meditating an attack on the temporal possessions of the Holy See. In the month of March the Ambassador of Modena was of opinion that Ferrante would declare war on the Pope.

Besides Colleone, the Florentine exiles took Ercole of Este, Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro, Pino degli Ordelassi, Lord of Forli, the Lords of Carpi and Galeotto de' Pici della Mirandola into their pay. An army, 14,000 strong, was assembled. The Republic of Florence engaged the services of the Count of Urbino, while Ferrante sent auxiliary troops, and Galeazzo Maria himself hurried to the front, at the head of 6000 men. The two most famous Italian Generals of the day, Colleone and Federigo of Urbino, thus stood opposed to one another, each at the head of a considerable force. On the 23rd July, 1467, they met at La Molinella, in the territory of Imola; but the battle led to no decisive result.

After this action, more than half a year was spent in useless marches and entrenchments, and in wrangling, recriminations and negotiations. At last Paul II determined, on the Feast of the Purification, 1468, after Mass at Araceli on the Capitol, to proclaim peace by his own authority. The Bull published on this occasion first insists on the necessity of peace in face of the danger from Turkey, then relates the efforts made by the Pope for the restoration of tranquillity, and requires Venice, Naples, Milan, and Florence, within the space of thirty days, to come to terms. Colleone was named General of the Christians, with a salary of a hundred thousand florins, to which all the Italian States were to contribute, and he was to carry on the war with the Turks in Albania; the territory which he had won from the Florentines, and from Taddeo Manfredi of Imola, was to be restored within fifty days.

Milan and Naples, however, would not do anything towards paying Colleone. A chronicler sums up their reply in the following words : “We desire peace, but as to Colleone, we will not give him even a biscuit”. Other difficulties were also raised; and for some time it seemed as if the war must break out again. Paul II was obliged to give up the stipulation regarding Colleone. On the 25th April peace was proclaimed in Rome, and soon afterwards in Florence, and celebrated everywhere with brilliant festivities. Some fresh obstacles were now created by Venice, but finally these, too, were happily overcome, and on the Feast of the Ascension peace was proclaimed in the territories of the Republic. By the 8th May the conditions had been officially drawn up in Rome in the Pope’s presence.

On Ascension Day there was a magnificent procession, in which Paul II himself took part on foot. Hymns were composed for the occasion by Lionardo Dati and an eloquent discourse was pronounced by Domenico de' Domenici.

Paul II’s satisfaction at the advent of peace was enhanced by the hope which it encouraged that Italy would now offer a serious resistance to the Turks. For this object he had already expended no less than the sum of two hundred thousand florins, and his disappointment, when clouds again overspread the political horizon, must have been in proportion to his interest in the cause.

Ferrante of Naples was the disquieting element. In the summer of 1468, when Paul II had attempted to occupy the important fortress of Tolfa, which commanded the alum mines, he had been prevented by the Neapolitan troops, who not only supported the Orsini, who were the lords of the soil, in their resistance, but even threatened Rome itself. The Pope was so much alarmed that he meditated flight. His most valuable property had already been hidden in St. Angelo, when the Neapolitan army turned against Sora.

During the contest for the throne of Naples, Pius II had become Sovereign of this important Duchy, and he had maintained his rights over it against all the efforts of Ferrante. On the accession of Paul II, the King had again endeavoured to recover Sora. He now deemed the moment to have arrived for the forcible accomplishment of his object, and certainly the opportunity seemed favourable. Paul II, who always shrank from outlay for military purposes, was almost defenceless; in vain did he reproach the faithless Monarch with ingratitude towards the Holy See, to whose favour he owed his crown. Fortunately for him, Cardinal Roverella was successful in persuading Ferrante not to advance any further. In October, 1468, the Pope gave orders that fresh troops should be levied, to occupy the frontier between the States of the Church and Naples, which shows how little confidence he had in his neighbour. Paul II was unsuccessful in his attempts to obtain possession of Tolfa; subsequently, an amicable arrangement was arrived at, and in June, 1469, the Apostolic Treasury purchased the place for 17,300 golden ducats.

Ferrante was also the Pope's chief opponent in regard to the territory of Malatesta.

In the October of 1468, Sigismondo Malatesta, who had not long returned from the Turkish war, died without leaving any legitimate heir, and accordingly, in virtue of the treaty which had been made, Paul II justly claimed Rimini. Sigismondo’s wife, Isotta, however, assumed the government of the city. Roberto Malatesta, who was at the time in Rome, promised the Pope, by oath and in writing, that he would deliver up Rimini to him. Upon this he was at once commissioned to take possession of the city on behalf of the Holy See. But no sooner had he succeeded, with the assistance of the inhabitants, and by means of the subsidies granted by Paul II, in getting rid of the Venetian garrison and making himself master of the citadel, than he informed the Pope that he did not consider himself bound by the promise he had given. A secret alliance with the King of Naples encouraged him to venture on this step. “The Pope, finding himself thus betrayed, collected an army, and in a short time nearly all the Italian States were involved in the war about Rimini”.

Such was the political situation of the Italian Peninsula when Frederick III determined to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome, in fulfilment of a vow which he had made in 1462, while a prisoner in the Castle of Vienna, and of which he had repeatedly postponed the accomplishment. The Emperor's suite was not a large one; it consisted of fourteen Princes and Counts, and a number of knights, and amounted altogether to 700 horsemen. All were in mourning garb on account of the death of the Empress.

Frederick travelled by the same route as that which he had followed sixteen years before; it led through Treviso to Padua, where the Venetian Ambassadors met him and paid their respects, then by Rovigo to Ferrara. At Francolino on the Po, Borso d'Este welcomed his noble visitor. From Ferrara the pilgrims continued their journey by Ravenna along the coast to the Sanctuary of Loreto. The gates of Rimini were closed by Robert Malatesta, who distrusted the Emperor. This obliged him to alter his route, but the swampy character of the ground compelled him again to approach the city. The inhabitants at once armed themselves and hastened to the walls, where they remained until the travellers were out of sight. He met with even greater rudeness from the Ambassadors of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who, when informed by Frederick that he looked upon Milan as belonging to the Empire, had, we are told, the audacity to reply, that Galeazzo’s father had won the Duchy by the sword, and that his son would not lose it save by the sword.

Paul II looked forward with some apprehension to the Emperor s arrival. He took precautions against possible disturbances in Rome by bringing large bodies of troops into the city. Special Briefs were sent to all the officials of the States of the Church, desiring them to receive Frederick III with honour, and to entertain him at the expense of the Holy See. The Governor of the March of Ancona, by order of the Pope, accompanied the Emperor to Rome, and a number of members of the Papal Court were appointed to meet him. On Christmas Eve Frederick approached the walls of Rome. He had proceeded by water from Otricoli to Castell Valcha, where Cardinals d'Estouteville and Piccolomini met him with a numerous escort.

He was met at Ponte Molle by the Vice-Camerlengo, the City Prefect, the Conservators, and the rest of the municipal authorities, with the Roman nobles, by command of the Pope. The Sacred College had a long time to wait at the Porta del Popolo. The late hour at which Frederick arrived made it difficult to carry out the order of the procession, every detail of which had been arranged by Paul II.

At this gate of the city, Bessarion made a speech, and he and Cardinal d'Estouteville then took their places, one on each side of the Emperor. They then proceeded fir.st to S. Marco, all the streets through which they passed being richly decorated. The Emperor, clad in black, rode with the Cardinals under a baldacchino of white silk damask, embroidered with gold, and bearing the Papal and Imperial arms. One of Frederick's suite estimated the number of torches in the procession at 3000.

The Imperial pilgrim was met in front of St. Peter's by the clergy of the city bearing a cross and relics. At the fifth hour of the night he entered the venerable Basilica, and, going at once to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, knelt for a long time in prayer. The Pope, who was very exact in matters of the kind, had most minutely arranged the ceremonial to be observed at the meeting of the two chief powers of Christendom. This appeared to their contemporaries so significant as a token of the relations then existing between them, that Augustinus Patritius, the Papal Master of Ceremonies, carefully transcribed the whole in a special note-book.

“As soon”, Patritius says, “as the Emperor beheld the Pope upon his throne, he bent the knee before him, and repeated this act several times during his approach. When he had got up to the Pope, he did homage to the Vicar of Christ by kissing his feet. Paul II bent his eyes upon Frederick with an expression of great benevolence, put his arms round him, and permitted him to kiss both his knees; then he rose a little and embraced him warmly. He pointed out to him the place he was to take on his right hand above the Cardinals. The Emperor's seat, which had a back, was covered with green cloth, embroidered with gold; the Papal throne was so placed that the Emperor's seat was at the same height as the feet of the Pope”. After the conclusion of the ceremonies in St. Peter's, which were accompanied with chanted psalms, “the Emperor departed to a noble palace, hung with cloth of gold and precious tapestry, wherein he was to have his abode, and every one of his people, according to his rank and dignity, was conducted to a well-appointed chamber therein”.

The Christmas festival was celebrated with great splendour. “When it came to the holy Gospel”, says Wilwolt von Schaumburg, “the Emperor put on a dalmatic. The Pope gave him, as was fitting, a costly hat; they say that it must have been worth 8000 ducats. And when the Emperor was to begin singing the Gospel, one of the highest of his servants, who was appointed for the purpose, took the hat from his head, and put the naked sword, which was commonly carried before him, into his hand. The Emperor held it solemnly aloft, and ever and anon, while he sang the Gospel, he brandished the sword lustily”.

After the Offertory, the Emperor was incensed next after the Pope; Paul II, having given him Holy Communion with his own hand, bestowed on him the kiss of peace. The Pope administered the Blessed Sacrament to the Emperor, Deacon and Sub-Deacon, under the species of Bread only, although it was usual to give the Chalice in such cases to all who communicated with him. On this occasion the practice was discontinued on account of the erroneous teaching of the Hussites.

After the conclusion of Mass, the Pope and the Emperor venerated the veil of St. Veronica. Then Paul II solemnly imparted his Blessing, and an Indulgence was proclaimed. After the customary form, the words, and for our Emperor Frederick, that the Lord God may grant him victory over the heretical Bohemians, the Turks, and the other enemies of the Christian name, were added.

Throughout these solemnities, and during the days which followed them, Frederick III behaved towards the Pope with the utmost respect and deference. When Paul II returned his visit, he accompanied him back to his chamber, and, on New Year’s Eve, when they quitted the Lateran together, Frederick sprung forward to hold the Pope’s stirrup. The Pope, however, declared that he would not allow this, and refused to mount until the Emperor had dispensed him from receiving, and himself from rendering, this service. “The Pope’s affability”, Patritius observes, “was thought all the more of, because the credit of the Papacy is no less than in former times, and its power is far more considerable; for God has so disposed things, that the Roman Church, through the sagacity of her Pontiffs, and especially of the present Pope, has so increased in power and wealth, that she can hold her own by the side of kingdoms of the first rank. The Roman Empire, on the other hand, has fallen into such deep decay, that nothing but the name is left to its chief. Under these altered circumstances, the smallest mark of honour comes to be very highly regarded”. In the sequel he lays much stress on the Pope’s courtesy towards the Emperor, and says that he treated him in all points as an equal.

The ceremony at which, in presence of the Pope, the Emperor conferred knighthood on 125 Germans in the middle of the bridge over the Tiber, provided an imposing pageant for the Romans. On this occasion Frederick III also declared Galeazzo Maria to have forfeited the Duchy of Milan, and granted investiture of this fief to his grandson.

The first point to be discussed between Frederick III and the Pope was the war against the Turks and the Hussites. A Public Consistory for this purpose was held but four days after Christmas. The Emperor began by declaring, through his spokesman, that it was not merely his vow which had brought him to Rome, but also his concern for the general good, and that he desired to learn the views of the Holy Father in regard to the measures to be adopted against the Turks. Paul II caused all the efforts of the Holy See for this great object to be related, saying that his resources were now exhausted, and it had become the duty of the Emperor to counsel and to act. When Frederick explained that he had come to receive, and not to give, counsel, the Pope repeated what he had already said.

The Emperor then, with his Counsellors and all the Ambassadors who were present, withdrew into an adjoining hall to deliberate on the subject, and remained there for an hour. As the result of their consultation, he proposed that a general assembly should be held at Constance, in the presence of the Emperor and the Pope. Afterwards, Ammanati informs us, most of those who were accustomed to weigh matters at that period doubted whether the proposal had originated from the Emperor, who might have been anxious to show his zeal for the Faith, or from the politic Venetians. The Pope and the Cardinals, however, were agreed that the existing state of affairs did not demand such a measure, which past experience had shown to be dangerous. It was at last settled that the Ambassadors of all the Christian Princes should be invited, in the name of the two heads of Christendom, to a Congress, to be held in Rome in September, and that the Venetians should be allowed to levy a tenth part from the clergy, the twentieth part from the Jews, and the thirtieth from the laity, in their dominions.

It is equally hard to ascertain the exact nature of the claims which Frederick at this time made on the Pope, and the special purpose of the Imperial pilgrimage. According to Dugoss, he sought, but did not obtain, from the Holy See the confirmation of the succession in Hungary and Bohemia to himself and his son Maximilian. He would seem also to have tried unsuccessfully to procure the transfer of the electoral vote belonging to the Crown of Bohemia to the house of Austria. The Court of Rome looked upon King Matthias as its principal champion in Christendom, and would consent to nothing that would be distasteful to him. In reference to the Crown of Bohemia, moreover, its views differed wholly from those of the Emperor, as it desired the suppression of this dignity. The Emperor, on the other hand, obtained the confirmation of the Order of St. George, as also the commencement of the process of canonisation of Margrave Leopold of the house of Babenberg, and the erection of two Bishoprics, one at Vienna and one at Wiener-Neustadt. This last measure fulfilled a desire which had been ardently cherished by Rudolf of Hapsburg.

On the 9th January, 1469, the Emperor left Rome, enriched with many Indulgences, relics, precious stones, and pearls. The Pope had borne all the expenses of his suite. Cardinals Capranica and Borgia escorted him as far as Viterbo. Here, as well as in Rome and throughout his return journey, Frederick III conferred many honours.

Soon after the Emperor’s return, the war, which Roberto Malatesta’s treacherous usurpation of Rimini had rendered inevitable, broke forth. The Pope and the Republic of Venice, formerly rival claimants for the possession of the city, now united against Roberto, who had deceived them both. On the 28th May, 1469, an alliance was concluded, by which Venice undertook to assist the Pope energetically, both by land and sea. Paul II made haste to collect troops, and took Napoleone Orsini and Alessandro Sforza into his service. Lorenzo Zane, Archbishop of Spalatro, was appointed Legate for the Papal army. The war began in the month of June, and it seemed as if the crafty Malatesta was doomed to destruction.

Things, however, took a different turn. Roberto’s escape was principally due to Federigo of Montefeltre, an ancient enemy of his house, who unexpectedly became his friend and helper. Federigo, the most powerful feudal lord in the States of the Church, looked upon the Pope's zealous and successful efforts to diminish the number of feudal potentates in his territory as a danger to himself. For the same reason, not only the King of Naples, who was almost always more or less at variance with the Pope, but also Milan and Florence, declared against him. All these powers were agreed that any increase of the authority of the Popes in their temporal principality, at the expense of its feudal nobility, was to be strenuously resisted. The element of weakness, caused by the partition of the States of the Church among a number of feudal nobles, must be retained.

The support of these allies emboldened Roberto Malatesta to command his General, Federigo of Montefeltre, to assume the offensive. On the 30th August, just when Rome was celebrating the sixth anniversary of Paul II's elevation to the Chair of St. Peter, he attacked the Papal army, and completely routed it. Three thousand prisoners, a number of guns and other booty from the enemy's camp, were seized by the victors. Amongst the spoils was all the Legate’s silver plate.

The consequences of this victory might have been serious, but Federigo of Montefeltre shrank from attacking the actual territory of the Holy See. He contented himself with subjugating thirty castles and the territories of Rimini and Fano to the authority of Roberto Malatesta, and then, in November, 1469, disbanded his troops.

The cooperation of Florence and Naples, which had made this successful resistance on the part of his rebellious vassal possible, deeply incensed the Pope. Before the assembled Consistory he broke forth into bitter complaints of the Medici and of Ferrante. “The King”, he said to the Milanese Ambassador, “immediately after my elevation, demanded the surrender of Ascoli and other things so preposterous that I can never be his friend. He is so crafty and malignant that no one can trust him. Moreover, he is no son of King Alfonso's; Pope Calixtus told me the names of his real parents”.

The confederates were in no way intimidated either by Paul II’s complaints or by the warlike preparations which he carried on with much energy. On the contrary, in July, 1470, Naples, Milan, and Florence renewed their alliance, and determined, with their united forces, to protect Malatesta against the Pope, not only in the possession of Rimini, but also in that of all the conquests which he had since made in the States of the Church or might yet make, unless within two months the Pope should agree, on his restoration of these spoils, to be reconciled to him and to invest him with the remainder of his family dominions playing a very double game, more intent on the extension of their own power in the Romagna than on the support of the Papal government. A yet more decisive influence was exercised by an event which now filled Christendom in general and Italy in particular with fear: Negropont was taken by the Turks.

 

CHAPTER VII.

THE FALL OF NEGROPONT.— SEDDEN DEATH OF THE POPE

 

 

Ever since the naval fortunes of Venice had under the command of Niccolò Canale (1468), taken a more favourable turn, Sultan Mahomet, with the energy which was his characteristic, had laboured to increase and improve his fleet. Many new ships of war were built, and numerous Jews and Greeks, then deemed the best seamen, were engaged to man them. In the spring of 1470, he thought that the favourable moment had arrived for avenging his former defeat and dealing a crushing blow to the Venetian power. Mahomet himself set out for Greece at the head of an army more than 100,000 strong, while Mahmoud Pasha, with a fleet of about 400 vessels, 1000 which were men-of-war, put to sea. In the latter half of June the tidings that this great expedition was on the way reached Venice, and from thence passed on to Rome. It was not yet known for certain that Euboea, the pearl of the Italian dominions in Greece, was its goal, but the greatness of the peril was manifest.

A Consistory was at once summoned in an unusual manner by the Pope; Cardinal Gonzaga informs us that he was prepared, for the sake of restoring peace in Italy, to renounce his claim to Rimini and the other places taken from him in the war, and that a Congregation of Cardinals was appointed to take counsel regarding further measures. In view of the confusion prevailing in the whole of Europe, and more particularly in Italy, and the failure of all former attempts at combination against the ancestral enemy of Christian civilisation, the task was somewhat hopeless.

Yet Paul II at once issued an urgent general appeal for help. King Ferrante of Naples, who, next to Venice, seemed the most immediately threatened, declared his readiness not only to join a general alliance of all the Christian powers, but also to enter into a special agreement with Venice and Rome. As the bitter enmity which existed between Venice and Milan left little prospect of a general alliance among the Princes of Christendom, Paul II, forgetting the injuries which he had received from the Neapolitan monarch, accepted his second proposal. He gave orders that eight of the Cardinals, postponing all other business, should assemble once in every four days to take counsel regarding the measures to be adopted. Their first meeting was held on the 8th August, at which time no answer had yet been received from either Milan or Florence to the Papal Briefs despatched to them at the same date as that to Naples. From the outset it was evident to all experienced persons that the negotiations were likely to be extremely protracted. On the 3rd of August a fresh Brief had been addressed to Florence, and also to Milan, insisting on the imminent danger with which the siege of Negropont threatened Italy, and exhorting these powers to despatch Envoys.

Meanwhile, the growing power of Islam had again given proofs of its strength; on the 12th July, after a desperate resistance on the part of the besieged, Negropont, which had been accounted impregnable, had fallen into the hands of the Turks. The terrible tidings caused the greatest consternation throughout Italy, and nowhere was the feeling more intense than in Venice. The Milanese Ambassador to that city, in a despatch of the 7th August, said that he had seen the proud nobles weep as if their own wives and children had been slain. “All Venice”, he added, some days later, “is struck with dismay; the inhabitants, half-dead with fear, say that the loss of all their possessions on the mainland would have been a less disaster”. “The glory and credit of Venice are destroyed”, wrote the chronicler Malipiero, “our pride is humbled”.

The conquest of Euboea by the Turks was in fact an event of such importance that the latest historian of Greece considers it as the close of an epoch. All the Greeks, with the exception of a small fraction, were now in the clutch of the Sultan. Venice was driven back into Crete and a few small islands and fortresses on the outer rim of Greece.

The alarm of the Venetians was increased by the strained relations which existed between them and the Pope, the Emperor and the King of Hungary, as well as by the openly hostile attitude of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who was the centre of a party which sought to take advantage of the misfortunes of the Republic, and recover the territory surrendered in 1454. In Bergamo, Crema, and Brescia an immediate invasion of Milanese troops was apprehended; guards were doubled, and the work of strengthening the defences was carried on day and night. Happily, the King of Naples declared to the representative of Milan that, in presence of the actual danger from Turkey, he would take no part in any attack upon Venice. The attitude of the King of Hungary, on the other hand, was by no means reassuring. Paul II, however, with a true sense of his high position, laid aside all resentment against Venice, and laboured earnestly for the restoration of peace and the conclusion of an alliance against the Turks.

On the 25th August he informed all the Christian powers of the fall of Negropont, drew a vivid picture of the danger which lowered from the East, and urgently implored assistanc : prompt action on their part, he said, would give him the greatest consolation. The Pope earnestly entreated the Duke of Milan, who had attacked the Lords of Correggio, to lay down his arms, and urgently admonished the Venetians to desist from the works they had begun on the Mincio, which were a menace to the Marquess of Mantua, and were calculated to excite fresh troubles. Paul II himself set a good example, by determining to waive his rights regarding Rimini, and to refrain from punishing the Neapolitan King. On the 18th of September an invitation was addressed to all the Italian powers, calling upon them to send Ambassadors as soon as possible to Rome, in order to consult on measures for the general defence and the preservation of their own liberties.

The Pope had no more zealous supporter in his labours than Cardinal Bessarion, who addressed several long circular letters to the Italian Princes and people, vividly representing the magnitude of the common peril and the necessity for unanimous action against their cruel foe. With the impression of his soul-stirring words fresh on their minds, the Italian Envoys commenced their deliberations in Rome. There were apprehensions to be removed and disputes to be settled, but at length the efforts of Paul II, were crowned with success. On the 22nd December, 1470, a general defensive alliance of the Italian States against the Turks was concluded, on the basis of the League of Lodi, Roberto Malatesta being included among its members. Public thanksgivings were offered and bonfires kindled throughout the States of the Church by desire of Paul II.

But this time again the hopes of the Pope were far from being realised. Sforza did not ratify the treaty, ostensibly because his wishes were disregarded in some unimportant points in the draft of the document, but in reality because he disliked committing himself to a war against the Turks. Although the Florentine Signoria sent their ratification, Guicciardini put it aside, because Lorenzo, who desired to hold with Milan, and, like his grandfather, not to break with the Sultan, had secretly instructed him not to sign.

In France and Germany the prospect was not any brighter. The Pope sent special envoys to both countries. Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini, the Legate for Germany, left Rome on the 18th March, 1471, to proceed in the first instance to Ratisbon, where a Diet was to open at the end of April.

Piccolomini was chosen for this mission, first, on account of his distinguished personal qualities, and secondly, because he could speak German, and was a nephew of Pius II, whose memory was still warmly cherished at the Imperial Court.

He entered Ratisbon on the 1st May, where all his energies had first to be applied to the allaying of the ill- feeling occasioned by the prolonged delay of the Emperor. His position was by no means an easy one: he desired and was even bound to defend the Emperor, and yet he could not altogether deny the justice of the complaints made by the impatient Assembly. At last, on the 16th June, Frederick III arrived, and the great Christian Diet began on the 24th. During the deliberations which ensued, the zeal displayed by Cardinal Piccolomini fully justified the repeated commendations of the Pope. But neither his acknowledged eloquence, nor the urgent entreaties of the unhappy victims of the Turkish invasion from Croatia, Carniola, and Styria, sufficed to remove the manifold obstacles in the way of unanimous and energetic action.

“The question of aid against the Turks proceeds so slowly”, wrote an Italian Ambassador on the 7th July, “that the Cardinal Legate is wearied to death, and looks for little result from this Diet, on which he had built such great hopes!”. After fully four weeks of negotiations, no decisive resolution binding all the states of the Empire had been arrived at. All went well till it came to the determination of the amount to be contributed by each power, because, up to that point, general promises and offers sufficed; but when definite engagements were to be set down in black and white, difficulties of all kinds were raised, absurd pretexts invented, conditions imposed, and fresh proposals made to escape the obnoxious task" For a little while, to the delight of the Cardinal, things seemed again to take a more favourable turn; but the issue of this Diet, the largest within the memory of man, was no better than that of those which had preceded it. Private interests on all sides outweighed the general interests of the Empire. Only two among the Princes—Ernest, Elector of Saxony, and Albrecht of Brandenburg, who had made his peace with the Pope at Ratisbon—sent troops to the threatened frontiers; none of the others stirred.

“O the blindness of men!” exclaims Rodericus de Arevalo. “The Catholic Princes see the blazing torch of the infidel at their very doors, ready to set fire to all the kingdoms of Christendom, while they are squabbling each one for his portion. With their own eyes they behold the destruction of the Faithful, while every heathen jeers at their struggles to conquer each other, without thinking of saving themselves”.

Besides the threatened danger from Turkey, the year 1471 had brought many other troubles to Paul II. At its very outset, disturbances had broken out in the Bolognese territory; in Florence, as well as in Venice, there had been troublesome discussions about the contributions for the Turkish war, and scarcely anywhere, either in Italy or elsewhere, was any genuine zeal for the defence of Christendom to be found. Tidings of a very anxious nature had come from the Knights of St. John at Rhodes. It would appear that, for some time past, the Christians in that island had completely lost heart. Paul II hastened to encourage the Knights to stand firm, promised assistance, and exhorted them to put the fortifications of the island into a state of thorough repair. A serious attack of the Turks might, under the actual circumstances of the island, have been successful. Happily, no such attempt was made, the attention of Mahomet being at that time much engaged by the Turcoman Prince Usunhassan.

Of all the Italian Princes, no one was on more friendly terms with Paul II than Duke Borso of Modena; there was much intellectual sympathy between them, both were warm patrons of Art, and had a taste for external splendour, which the Duke, as well as the Pope, believed to have a great effect on the popular mind. Borso’s most ardent desire was to add the ducal title of Ferrara to that of Modena; during the pontificate of Pius II he had vainly laboured for the realisation of this wish. Under Paul II further negotiations were carried on, and, in the spring of 1471, they were brought to a successful conclusion.

Borso came to Rome to receive his new dignity. On the 13th March he left Ferrara with an almost royal train. The Lords of Carpi, Correggio, Mirandola, and Scandiano formed part of the company, and a host of nobles and knights; there were more than 700 horses and 250 mules, all adorned with costly trappings, and some of them bearing the arms of Este. Paul II sent his friend, the Archbishop of Spalatro, to welcome the Duke, who, on his arrival in Rome, was received by Cardinals Barbo and Gonzaga, all the great Barons, the Ambassadors, the Senate, and all the other city dignitaries. A contemporary informs us that, in the opinion of the Romans, no such honours had ever been accorded to any King or Emperor as were now paid to Borso. Festal music resounded through the richly-decorated streets which he traversed on his way to the Vatican. Shouts of “Paulo, Paulo! Borso, Borso!” from the crowd mingled with the clang of the trumpets. The Pope received his visitor seated on a throne adorned with gold and ivory, and the Palace of Cardinal Castiglione, which adjoined the Vatican, was assigned to him as his residence. The rest of his followers were provided for, at the expense of the Apostolic Treasury, in the numerous inns which then existed in Rome.

On Palm Sunday, after Mass, Paul II assembled the Cardinals and informed them of his intention regarding Borso. They all approved of the Pope’s decision, and the Duke was then called in. Paul II told him what had passed, and Borso warmly expressed his gratitude.

Easter Sunday (14th April) was the day fixed for Borso’s solemn investiture with the title of Duke of Ferrara. All the Cardinals, Bishops, and Prelates then in Rome, together with all the members of the Court, were assembled in the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles, where Borso was in the first place made a Knight of St. Peter. The Pope himself handed him a naked sword, saying: “Take this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and use it for your own defence and that of God’s Holy Church, and for the destruction of the enemies of the holy Cross and of the Faith”. The High Mass then began, the music being rendered by the Papal Choir. When the Epistle had been sung, Borso took the oath of allegiance to the Pope. After the Communion, he and his followers received the Sacred Host from the hands of Paul II, who then bestowed on Borso the Ducal robes and the other insignia of his new dignity. The veneration of the Veil of St. Veronica, the Papal Benediction, and the proclamation of a Plenary Indulgence closed this imposing function, which was witnessed by an immense multitude gathered from far and near. When Borso sought to accompany the Pope back to his apartments, his Holiness desired the Cardinals to pay that token of respect to the Duke, who was enchanted with the distinctions heaped upon him. He wrote to his Secretary: “We have been treated as we were a King or an Emperor”.

On the following day Borso accompanied the Pope to St. Peter’s, and there received the Golden Rose. From there he rode, carrying the Rose, to the Palace of S. Marco, where a great banquet was prepared. During the ensuing days the same pomp and ceremony were displayed in various other entertainments provided for the new Duke, especially at a grand hunting-party, in which many of the Cardinals took part.

After all these festivities were over, the Duke still lingered in Rome. The extraordinary honours of which he was the object, and his frequent interviews with the Pope, had, from the time of his arrival, attracted general attention. Even the Cardinals were kept in the dark as to the subjects of these conversations. With a view of obtaining some information, Cardinal Gonzaga told Borso of the pleasure which it had given him to hear it said at the Court that the Pope meant to accompany the Duke back to Ferrara; and further expressed his opinion, that, considering the dispositions of Germany and the perpetual demands of France for a Council, such an Assembly might with advantage be held in that City. Borso replied that the Cardinal’s view was most reasonable, adding: “Would to God that everyone thought the same”. “These words”, wrote the Cardinal to his father, “make me think that something of the sort may be in the wind”. In a second conversation the Duke expressed his confident hope of bringing the Pope to Ferrara. Cardinal Battista Zeno, the Pope’s nephew, at this time said that it would be wise to hold a Congress at some suitable place in Italy, for that by doing so in time, and of his own accord, the Pope would avoid the danger of having it forced upon him, when also some undesirable place would probably be selected.

The learned Bishop of Calahorra, Rodericus Sancius de Arevalo, had some years previously, in a treatise dedicated to Cardinal Bessarion, declared against the holding of a Council, the demand for which had always been the war-cry of the opposition. Nothing of the sort was required to deal with either the Turkish question or that of Reform. Hard fighting, not a Congress, was the means by which the Infidels must be repelled. From the outset of his pontificate, Paul II had done everything in his power to protect Christendom against them. The example of the Synod of Basle was not one to encourage another attempt of the kind. And as to the Congress of Mantua, it had been utterly fruitless, and even prejudicial, for it had made the disunion of Christendom patent to the Turks.

Another project to which Paul II had turned his mind seemed far more likely to prove beneficial than the meeting of a Congress. This was an alliance with the enemies of the Sultan in the East, and especially with the Turcoman Prince, Usun Hassan, who was now at the summit of his power. Following the example of the Venetians and of his predecessors, Calixtus III and Pius II, Paul I, leagued himself with this Prince, the only one among the Oriental rulers who could venture to measure swords with Mahomet. Usun Hassan indeed made such solemn promises of co-operation against the common foe, that powerful aid from the East seemed a certainty. At this crisis Paul II suddenly died.

The Pope, whose constitution was naturally strong, had appeared to be in excellent health. At the beginning of his reign he had suffered from the dangerous Roman fever; in 1466, and again in 1468, he had been ill, but had quite recovered; at this moment there seemed no cause for apprehension.

On the morning of the 26th July the Pope was perfectly well, and had held a Consistory lasting for six hours; he then dined bare-headed in the garden and freely indulged his taste for melons and other indigestible food. At the first hour of the night he felt ill, and his chamberlain advised him to postpone the audiences usually granted at that time, and to rest for a while. Paul II was suffering from a sense of oppression and lay down on a bed, while the chamberlain left the room to dismiss those who were waiting without. After an hour had passed, he heard a knocking on the door of the bed-chamber, hurried in, and found the Pope half-insensible and foaming at the mouth. With difficulty he lifted the sick man on to a bench and rushed out to summon assistance. By the time he returned the Pope had expired, having died of a stroke. Cardinal Barbo was at once called, and the corpse, accompanied by a few torches, was borne to St. Peter's. Here the obsequies for the departed took place; the mortal remains of Paul II were deposited in an imposing monument erected by Cardinal Barbo in the Chapel of St. Andrew. It was the work of Mino da Fiesole, an artist who exercised a very important influence on sepulchral decoration, and with whom began a new and brilliant epoch in monumental art. Fragments of the tomb are still to be seen scattered about in the Grotto of St. Peter's.

“Pope Paul”, says the chronicler of Viterbo, “was a just, holy, and peaceable man; he established good government in all parts of his dominions”.

His labours, as a practical ruler, to strengthen and consolidate the authority of the Holy See throughout the States of the Church, may indeed be considered one of the chief characteristics of his reign. A modern historian sums up his judgment of the Pope in the following words: “Paul II was certainly a born ruler, and one animated by the most noble intentions”. It may be regretted that the mitre was compelled to give way too much to the tiara, and that his pontificate displayed an excess of worldly splendour, but it cannot be said that ecclesiastical interests suffered in any direct way from this. In many matters he was a zealous reformer.

Witnesses who are above suspicion attest his determination in opposing all simoniacal practices. If, weighed down beneath the burden of affairs, he was not always successful in accomplishing the good he desired, we must not be harsh in our judgment of one whose uprightness is admitted even by his enemies. The nepotism from which he was not free, never took the offensive and mischievous form which we have to lament in his immediate successor. Even his enemies do not venture to say that it was ever hurtful to the Church.

In opposition to Platina's calumnies, it must be remembered that Paul II opposed only that heathen abuse of learning which seemed dangerous to religion; apart from that he encouraged it. It was not the learning of the Humanists that he hated, but that tendency which Dante characterised as the stench of heathenism. All Platina’s other charges against the Pope are merely insinuations, not facts. “How virtuous”, concludes a non-Catholic scholar, “must he have been when so diligent and malicious an enemy as this Humanist could bring forward so little against him”.

The statement that Paul II did not realise the Turkish danger is also unjust. It is true that this war was not the one all-engrossing object of his life, as it had been with Pius II, but the silence of those who hated him most is in itself a proof that no cause of complaint can be found against him on this head. Recent investigations, moreover, have brought to light many facts which are much to his credit. It is impossible that a conclusive judgment can be formed until our information is completed by further examination of the Archives.

We have, as yet, before us but scanty particulars as to the negotiations which took place in 1471 for the purpose of organising defensive measures against the Osmanli. A newly-discovered letter of Cardinal Gonzaga, written on the 17th of January in that year, shows that Paul II was prepared to devote 50,000 ducats, the quarter of his annual income, to the expenses of the Turkish war. This sum does not include the revenue derived from the Alum monopoly, which, from the beginning of his reign, he had assigned to the objects of the Crusade. Subsidies and pensions were provided out of these funds for all the unfortunate exiles who had been driven by Turkish conquests to take refuge in the States of the Church. The account-books of his pontificate are full of entries of this description, sometimes reaching the annual amount of 20.000 to 30,000 ducats. The name of Thomas, the dethroned Despot of the Morea, appears as the recipient of a monthly pension of 300 florins. After the death of Thomas, the Pope continued this allowance to his children, who were brought up under the care of Cardinal Bessarion. Catherine, Queen-Mother of Bosnia, who migrated to Rome in 1466, from that time received 100 florins a month, and in the following year a further annual allowance of 240 florins was made to her for the rent of her house. To the Despot Leonard of Arta, were granted, as assistance in the war against the Turks, 1000 golden florins on the 12th March, 1465, 1200 on the 18th July, 1466, and another 1000 on the 2nd April, 1467. Monthly pensions were likewise bestowed on Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, Prince John Zacharias of Samos, Nicolaus Jacobus, a citizen of Constantinople, Thomas Zalonich, and many others. From the year 1467 the Archbishop of Mitylene and the Despot of Servia also received regular allowances, which were supplemented by occasional presents. These facts prove the princely liberality of Paul II.

It is also worth noting that now, as on many subsequent occasions, possession of the States of the Church enabled the Holy See to offer an asylum to the persecuted and exiled, and to succour the oppressed and unfortunate. The dominions of the Church have a characteristic which distinguishes them from all other kingdoms; in contradistinction to the exclusiveness of other States, they partake of the Catholicity of the Church. They form a separate realm; but as their Monarch is the Supreme Head of Christendom, this realm is the common patrimony of all Christians. No nationality is excluded from its offices and dignities, and its educational institutions and Convents are open to all races.

 

BOOK VII POPE SITUS IV.PAUL II, A.D.1472-1484