INTRODUCTION
THE
LITERARY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY AND THE CHURCH
WITH the
exception of the period which witnessed the transformation of the Pagan into
the Christian world, the history of mankind hardly offers one more striking
than that of the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. One of the
most powerful elements in this epoch of marked contrasts was the exhaustive
appreciation and extension of the study of the ancient world, commonly known as
the Renaissance, or the new birth of classical antiquity. This movement
naturally began in Italy, where the memory of the classic past had never been
wholly effaced, and with it opens a new epoch.
The object of
this work is not to demonstrate the origin and development of this revolution,
effected in science, poetry, art, and life. The historian of the Popes is only
concerned with the Renaissance, in so far as it comes in contact with the
Church and the Holy See.
To thoroughly
and correctly appreciate this relation, we must bear in mind that in this
movement which began in the realm of literature, there were from the first two
conflicting currents, discernible, more or less, in its gifted founders,
Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Like the author
of the Divine Comedy, Petrarch took
his stand upon the Church, and succeeded in combining enthusiastic admiration
for classical antiquity with devout reverence for Christianity. His passionate
love for the antique did not make him forget the sublimity of the Christian
mysteries. On the contrary, the poet repeatedly and energetically declared that
he looked on the Gospel as higher than all the wisdom of the ancients. “We may”,
he writes to his friend Giovanni Colonna, “love the schools of the
philosophers, and agree with them only when they are in accordance with the
truth, and when they do not lead us astray from our chief end. Should anyone
attempt to do this, were he even Plato or Aristotle, Varro or Cicero we must
firmly and constantly despise and reject him. Let no subtlety of arguments, no
grace of speech, no renown, ensnare us; they were but men, learned, so far as
mere human erudition can go, brilliant in eloquence, endowed with the gifts of
nature, but deserving of pity inasmuch as they lacked the highest and ineffable
gift. As they trusted only in their own strength and did not strive after the
true light, they often fell like blind men. Let us admire their intellectual
gifts, but in such wise as to reverence the Creator of these gifts. Let us have
compassion on the errors of these men, while we congratulate ourselves and
acknowledge that out of mercy, without merit of our own, we have been favoured
above our forefathers by Him, who has hidden His secrets from the wise and
graciously manifested them to little ones. Let us study philosophy so as to
love wisdom. The real wisdom of God is Christ. In
order to attain true philosophy, we must love and reverence Him above all
things. We must first be Christians—then we may be what we will. We must read
philosophical, poetical, and historical works in such manner that the Gospel of
Christ shall ever find an echo in our hearts. Through it alone can we become
wise and happy; without it, the more we have learned, the more ignorant and
unhappy shall we be. On the Gospel alone as upon the one immoveable foundation,
can human diligence build all true learning”.
In justification
of his love for the philosophers and poets of antiquity, Petrarch repeatedly
appeals to St. Augustine, whose “tearful Confessions” were among his favourite
books. “So great a Doctor of the Church”, he says, “was not ashamed to let
himself be guided by Cicero, although Cicero pursued a different end. Why,
indeed, should he be ashamed? No leader is to be despised, who points out the
way of salvation. I do not mean to deny that in the classical writers there is
much to be avoided, but in Christian writers also there are many things that
may mislead the unwary reader. St. Augustine himself, in a laborious work, with
his own hand rooted the weeds out of the rich harvest field of his writings. In
short, the books are rare that can be read without danger, unless the light of
Divine Truth illuminates us, and teaches us what is to be chosen and what to be
avoided. If we follow that Light, we may go on our way with security”. Petrarch
never flinched from expressing his devout sentiments; he repeatedly showed
himself the apologist of Christianity, and on the occasion of his solemn
crowning at the Capitol, went to the Basilica of St. Peter to lay his wreath of
laurels on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles.
Yet Petrarch did
not escape the leaven of his age or the influence of the dangerous elements of
antiquity. He often succumbed to the sensual passion so faithfully depicted in
his work, On Contempt of the World;
his inordinate love of preferment is another blot upon his stormy life, and we
discover in him not a few traits at variance with his devout Christian
intuitions. Among these are his scornful attitude towards scholastic theology,
which had, indeed, much degenerated, and his craving for fame. On this point we
shall judge him the more leniently, if we reflect that even the heart of a
Dante, whose immortal poem upholds the Christian view of the nothingness of
human glory, was not impervious to this weakness. Still it is sad to see a man
so eminent in intellectual gifts as Petrarch, yearning after crowns of laurel,
royal favours, and popular ovations, and pursuing the phantom of glory in the
courts of profligate princes. Undoubtedly this ardent passion for renown, to
which the Christian conscience of the poet opposed such an inefficacious
resistance, must be considered as a taint of heathenism. In the old classical
authors, especially in Cicero, this ideal of human fame was so vividly
presented to the mind of Petrarch, that at times it entirely eclipsed the
Christian ideal.
But he has one
uncontested excellence: never does a wanton or sensual thought mar the pure
silver ring of his sonnets. In this respect, the most marked contrast exists
between him and his friend and contemporary Boccaccio, whose writings breathe
an atmosphere of heathen corruption. The way in which this great master of
style and delineation of character sets at naught all Christian notions of
honour and decency, is simply appalling. His idyll, Ameto, reeks with the profligacy
of the ancient world, and preaches pretty plainly the Gospel of free love; and his satire, Corbaccio, or The Labyrinth of Love, displays the most
revolting cynicism. A critic of no severe stamp declares that even the modern
naturalistic writers can hardly outbid the defilement of this lampoon. And the
most celebrated of all Boccaccio’s works, the Decameron, is a presentation of purely heathen principles, in the
unrestrained gratification of the passions. A modern literary historian says,
that the provocative, sensuous style of the stories may find its
explanation—without the possibility of excuse—in the prevalent immorality of
the times, and the unchaining of all evil passions, caused by the plague; their
effect is all the more dangerous, from the genuine wit, with which the writer
describes the triumph of cunning, whether over honest simplicity or
narrow-minded selfishness.
In his stories
Boccaccio takes especial delight in heaping ridicule and contempt on
ecclesiastics, monks and nuns, and with polished irony, represents them as the
quintessence of all immorality and hypocrisy.
And yet
Boccaccio was no unbeliever or enemy of the Church. His insolent language
regarding ecclesiastical personages is by no means the outcome of a mind
essentially hostile to the Church, and none of his contemporaries considered it
as such. A preacher of penance, who visited Boccaccio in the year 1361,
reproached him bitterly with the immorality of his writings, but not with their
disloyalty. The compiler of the Decameron was never, even in his most careless days, an unbeliever, and in later life,
after his conversion, the childlike piety of his nature reasserted itself. He
eagerly embraced every opportunity of manifesting his faith, and of warning
others against the perusal of the impure writings, which caused him such deep
regret. The dalliance of former days with the old classic gods was quite at an
end, and we have his assurance that he did not look upon learning as
antagonistic to faith, but at the same time, he would rather renounce the
former than the latter. His will also bears witness to his piety. Boccaccio
hereby leaves the most precious of his possessions, his library, to the
Augustinian Friar and Professor of Theology, Martino da Signa, on condition
that he should pray for his soul; and after Martino’s death he desires that the
books should become the property of the monastery of Santo Spirito, and be
always accessible to the monks. He wishes that his last resting place should be
in the Augustinian Church of Santo Spirito, at Florence, or if death should
overtake him at Certaldo, in the Augustinian Church
of Saints Philip and James in that town.
The position
taken up by these two founders and pioneers of the Renaissance in regard to the
Church was, therefore, not by any means a hostile one, and accordingly the attitude
of the Popes towards them was throughout friendly. Boccaccio went three times
as Ambassador from the Florentines to the Papal Court, and was always well
received there. All the Popes from Benedict XII to Gregory XI showed Petrarch
the greatest favour, and Clement VI delivered the great poet from pecuniary
embarrassments and procured for him the independence needed for his
intellectual labours. It is, therefore, not correct to look on the movement,
known as the Renaissance, the literary manifestation of which is Humanism, as,
in its origin and its whole scope, directed against the Church. On the
contrary, the true Renaissance, the study of the past in a thoroughly Christian
spirit, was in itself a legitimate intellectual movement, fruitful in fresh results,
alike for secular and spiritual science.
The many-sided
and methodical study of the intellectual works of former days, with its
tendency to deliver men's minds from the formalism of the degenerate scholastic
philosophy, and to make them capable of a fresher and more direct culture of
all sciences, especially of philosophy and theology, could not but be approved
from a strictly ecclesiastical point of view. In the eyes of the Church,
everything depended on the method and the aim of the humanistic studies; for
the movement could only be hostile to her, if the old ecclesiastical methods
were forsaken, if classical studies, instead of being used as means of culture,
became their own end, and were employed not to develop Christian knowledge, but
rather to obscure and destroy it.
So long, then,
as the absolute truth of Christianity was the standing ground from which
heathen antiquity was apprehended, the Renaissance of classical literature
could only be of service to the Church. For, just as the ancient world in all
its bearings could only be fully manifested to the spiritual eye, when viewed
from the heights of Christianity, so Christian faith, worship, and life, could
not fail to be more amply comprehended, esteemed, and admired from a clear
perception of the analogies and contrasts furnished by classic heathenism. The
conditions imposed by the Popes and other ecclesiastical dignitaries upon the
revived study of antiquity could but serve, as long as this study was pursued
in a right spirit, to promote the interests of the Church, and these conditions
corresponded with the old ecclesiastical traditions.
Proceeding from
the principle that knowledge is in itself a great good, and that its abuse can
never justify its suppression, the Church, ever holding the just mean, from the
first resisted heathen superstition and heathen immorality, but not the
Graeco-Roman intellectual culture. Following the great Apostle of the Gentiles,
who had read the Greek poets and philosophers, most of the men who carried on
his work esteemed and commended classical studies. When the Emperor Julian
endeavoured to deprive Christians of this important means of culture, the most
sagacious representatives of the Church perceived the measure to be inimical
and most dangerous to Christendom. Under the pressure of necessity, books on
science were hastily composed for teaching purposes by Christian authors, but
after the death of Julian the old classics resumed their place.
The danger of a
one-sided and exaggerated interest in heathen literature, regardless of its
dark side, was never ignored by Christians. “For many”, writes even Origen, “it
is an evil thing, after they have professed obedience to the law of God, to
hold converse with the Egyptians, that is to say with heathen knowledge”. And
those very Fathers of the Church, who judged the ancient writers most
favourably, were careful from time to time to point out the errors into which
the young may fall in the study of the ancients, and the perils which may prove
their destruction. Efforts were made by a strict adherence to the approved
principles of Christian teaching, and by a careful choice of teachers, to meet
the danger which lurked in classical literature. Thus, history tells us, did
the Church succeed in obviating the perils to moral and religious life
attendant on its perusal. Zealots, indeed, often enough arose declaring, “In
Christ we have the truth, we need no other learning”; and there were not
wanting Christians who abhorred classical learning, as dangerous and obnoxious
to Christian doctrine. But the severity, with which Saint Gregory Nazianzen
blames these men, proves this party to have been neither enlightened nor wholly
disinterested. In espousing the cause of ignorance, they were mainly seeking
their own advancement, regardless of the great interests of science and
intellectual culture in Christian society, which they would have left to
perish, if they had got the upper hand. The most clear-sighted of those who
watched over the destinies of the Church, were always intent on the protection
of these interests, as were also the great majority of the eastern and western
Fathers.
“The heathen
philosophy” writes Clement of Alexandria, “is not deleterious to Christian
life, and those who represent it as a school of error and immorality,
calumniate it, for it is light, the image of truth, and a gift which God has
bestowed upon the Greeks; far from harming the truth by empty delusions, it but
gives us another bulwark for the Truth, and, as a sister science, helps to
establish Faith. Philosophy educated the Greeks, as the law educated the Jews,
in order that both might be led to Christ”. “He, therefore, who neglects the
heathen philosophy”, says Clement in another passage, “is like the fool who
would gather grapes without cultivating the vineyard. But as the heathen mingle
truth with falsehood we must borrow wisdom from their philosophers as we pluck
roses from thorns”.
In like manner
spoke St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and other
celebrities of the early Church. They all manifested a clear perception of, and
a warm susceptibility for, the beauties of classical literature. Without
closing their eyes to the disadvantages and dark shadows of heathenism, they
also saw the sunshine, the rays of the eternal light, which beamed forth from
these glorious achievements of the human intellect; they heard the prophetic
voices which rose from their midst, and sought to bring them into unison with
the language of Christendom. They discriminated between the common human element
contained in classical literature, and the heathen element which enfolds it;
the latter was to be rejected, and the former to take its place within the
circle of Christian ideas. They constantly repeated, that everything depends on
the manner in which the heathen classics are read and employed in education.
These expressions of disapprobation are not directed against the classics in
themselves, but against a wrong spirit and a perverted method in their use;
they agree in this respect with St. Amphilochius, who
gave the following advice with regard to the perusal of these works: “Be
circumspect in dealing with them, collect the good that is in them, shun
whatever is dangerous; imitate the wise bee which rests upon all flowers and
sucks only sweet juices from them”. In the same sense, and with true Attic
elegance, St. Basil the Great wrote his celebrated Discourse to Christian youths, on the right use of the heathen authors.
In opposition to the unjust attacks which treated heathen books without
exception as vain lies of the Devil, this great Doctor of the Church, whose
fame is still fresh in the Basilian Order, dwells with manifest affection on
the value and excellence of classic studies as a preparation for Christian
science. The writings of St. Gregory Nazianzen furnish proof of even greater
esteem, love, and enthusiasm for the literature of the ancients. “It has cost
me little”, he says in one of his discourses, “to give up all the rest: riches,
high position, influence, in short all earthly glory, all the false joys of the
world. I cleave to but one thing, eloquence and I do not regret having
undergone such toils by land and sea to acquire it”.
The necessity of
combining classical culture with Christian education, henceforth became a
tradition in the Church, especially as the scientific development of the period
to which most of the above-mentioned Fathers belong, has had an enduring
influence on the ages which have followed.
Amidst the
storms of later times, the Church preserved these glorious blossoms of ancient
culture, and endeavoured to turn them to account in the interest of
Christendom. Monasteries, founded and protected by the Popes, while the genuine
spirit of the Church yet lived within them, rendered valuable service in
guarding the intellectual treasures of antiquity. With all their enthusiasm for
classical literature, the true representatives of the Church were,
nevertheless, firmly convinced, that the greatest and most beautiful things
antiquity could show came far short of the glory, the loftiness and the purity
of Christianity. No exaggerated deification of the heathen writers, but their
prudent use in a Christian spirit; no infatuated idolatry of their form, but
the employment of their substance in the interest of morality and religion, the
combination, in short, of classical learning with Christian life—this was the
aim of the Church.
This utilization
for Christian ends of the ancient writers was eminently fruitful. "The
direct use, which the Fathers made of these writings in their warfare against
idolatry and vain philosophy, is obvious”. “But”, Stolberg adds, “who can
estimate all that Origen, the Sts. Gregory, St.
Basil, St. Chrysostom and others gained indirectly in the way of culture and
grace, and—more important still—in intellectual energy from the ancients?”
The discourses
and treatises of those Fathers of the Church who had studied the classics,
furnish ample proof that the simplicity of the Faith is far from being impaired
by the ornaments of rhetoric. Their poems, as amongst others, St. Gregory
Nazianzen's tragedy, The Suffering
Saviour, render the conceptions of the Patristic, as clearly as Dante's
immortal poem does those of the scholastic theology. The efforts of Julian the
Apostate to dissolve this Alliance between Christian faith and Graeco-Roman
culture are a clear indication of the increase of strength which Christianity
was then deriving from this source.
In regard to the
reaction towards antiquity, which was the almost necessary consequence of a
period of decay of classical learning, the attitude to be adopted by the
representatives of the Church was clearly defined. Their promotion of the
newly-revived studies certainly in some sense denoted a breach with the later
Middle Ages, which had unduly repressed the ancient literature, and, in
consequence, fallen into a most complete and deplorable indifference as to
elegancies of form, but it involved no breach with the Middle Ages as a whole,
far less with Christian antiquity in general.
But this
reaction in the Renaissance took a special colouring and shape from the
circumstances of the time in which it occurred. It was a melancholy period of
almost universal corruption and torpor in the life of the Church, which from
the beginning of the fourteenth century had been manifesting itself in the
weakening of the authority of the Pope, the worldliness of the clergy, the
decline of the scholastic philosophy and theology, and the terrible disorders
in political and civil life. The dangerous elements, which no doubt the ancient
literature contained, were presented to a generation intellectually and
physically over-wrought, and in many ways unhealthy. It is no wonder,
therefore, that some of the votaries of the new tendency turned aside into
perilous paths. The beginnings of these defections can already be traced in
Petrarch and Boccaccio, the founders of the Renaissance literature, though they
never themselves forsook the Church.
The contrasts
here apparent became more and more marked as time went on.
On the one side
the banner of pure heathenism was raised by the fanatics of the classical
ideal. Its followers wished to bring about a radical return to paganism both in
thought and manners. The other side strove to bring the new element of culture
into harmony with the Christian ideal, and the political and social
civilization of the day. These two parties represented the false and the true,
the heathen and the Christian Renaissance.
The latter
party, whose judgment was sufficiently free from fanatical bias to perceive
that a reconciliation between existing tendencies would be more profitable than
a breach with the approved principles of Christianity and the development of
more than a thousand years, could alone produce real intellectual progress. To
its adherents the world owes it, that the Renaissance was saved from bringing
about its own destruction.
Not a few
Humanists wavered between the two streams. Some sought to find a happy mean,
while others were in youth carried away by the one current, and in mature age
by the other.
No one has
better expressed the programme of the radical heathenizing party than Lorenzo
Valla in his book On Pleasure, published in 1431.
This treatise,
in some ways a very remarkable one, is divided into three dialogues, in which Lionardo Bruni represents the teaching of the Stoics, and
Antonio Beccadelli that of the Epicureans, while
Niccolò Niccoli maintains the cause of “the true good”.
These personages are well chosen. The grave majestic Bruni had really, as one
of his unprinted works proves, endeavoured to effect a union between Christian
Ethics and the Stoic philosophy. Antonio Beccadelli,
surnamed Panormita from his native city, Palermo, was
his direct Antipodes. He was the author of Hermaphroditus,
a collection of epigrams far surpassing in obscenity the worst productions of
ancient times. Niccolò Niccoli, the reviver of Greek
and Latin literature in Florence, was, in a certain sense, a type of the
Christian Humanist; his fundamental principle was, that scientific
investigation and Christian sentiment must go hand in hand. Even from friends
such as Poggio and Marsuppini he would not tolerate
words of disrespect for his faith; he detested all materialists and
unbelievers. The errors of his life were atoned for by a most edifying death.
(When this great scholar felt the approach of death, he had an altar erected in
his sick room on which his friend Ambrogio Traversari said mass daily. The dying man received the Holy
Viaticum with such devotion that all present were moved to tears)
We must not
allow ourselves to be deceived by the conclusion of the Dialogues; their
purpose is simply to cast ridicule upon the Stoic morality, as used by the
party of conciliation as a bond of union between heathen and Christian views,
and that with the ulterior aim of casting ridicule on the moral teaching of the
Church.
Cautiously, but
yet clearly enough and with seductive skill, the Epicurean doctrine was put
forward as defending a natural right against the exactions of Christianity. The
gist of this doctrine is summed up by Beccadelli, the
exponent of Valla's own views, in the following sentences: “What has been
produced and formed by nature cannot be otherwise than praiseworthy and holy”; “Nature
is the same, or almost the same as God”.
It has been
remarked by a judge, who is far from severe, that the last of these
propositions, placing the creature on a footing of equality with the Creator,
strikes at the very foundations of Christianity; the first demolishes those of
morality, substituting for virtue pleasure, for the “will or love for what is
good and the hatred of evil”, pleasure, “whose good consists in gratifications
of mind or body, from whatever source derived”
Beccadelli, the mouthpiece of
Valla, further teaches, with perfect consistency, that the business of man is to
enjoy the good things of nature, and this to their fullest extent. The “gospel
of pleasure” demands the gratification of every sense; it completely ignores
the barriers of chastity and honour, and would have them abolished, where they
still exist, as an injustice. No sense is to be denied its appropriate
satisfaction. The individual, says Valla, plainly, may lawfully indulge all his
appetites. Adultery is in the natural order. Indeed, all women ought to be in
common. Plato's community of women is in accordance with nature. Adultery and
unchastity are to be eschewed only when danger attends them: otherwise all
sensual pleasure is good.
Pleasure,
pleasure, and nothing but pleasure! Sensual pleasure is, in Valla’s eyes, the
highest good, and therefore he esteems those nations of heathen antiquity
happy, who raised voluptuousness to the rank of worship. Vice becomes virtue,
and virtue vice. All his indignation is called forth by the voluntary virginity
ever so highly esteemed in Christendom. Continence is a crime against “kind”
nature. “Whoever invented consecrated Virgins” he said, “introduced into the
State a horrible custom, which ought to be banished to the furthest ends of the
earth”. This institution has nothing to do with religion; “it is sheer
superstition”. “Of all human things, none is more insufferable than Virginity.
If we were born after the law of nature, it is also a law of nature that we
should in turn beget. If you must have women consecrating their whole lives to
the service of religion, choose married women and, indeed, those whose husbands
are priests. Observe, however, that all the Divinities, with the sole exception
of Minerva, were married, and that Jupiter, so far as in him lay, could not
endure virgins. Those who profess themselves to be consecrated virgins are
either mad, or poor, or avaricious”.
The new Gospel
of a life of pleasure, in opposition to the Scriptural law, “In the sweat of
thy face shalt thou eat thy bread”, is indeed put forward only by way of
argument, but this is done in a manner which gives the reader easily to
understand that Valla himself agreed with it.
An able modern
historian observes: “It is not surprising that these discussions earned for
Valla the reputation of maintaining pleasure to be the chief good; that the
form of disputation was looked upon as a simple precaution, and the triumph of
Christian Ethics as a mere show of justice, the poisonous theory of life had
been promulgated, it mattered little whether it was defended or not. Moreover,
that which was known of the author’s life said but little for his morality”.
Valla was not
alarmed by the attacks of theologians on his daring opinions, for King. Alfonso
of Naples was his firm protector. On the contrary, he now betook himself to the
realm of theology, and eagerly sought opportunities of encountering his
ecclesiastical opponents. His dialogue on religious vows, the first of his
works to become known in recent times, here comes under our notice. It is of
special interest, as in its pages Valla goes far beyond the previous attacks of
the Humanists on the monastic life. His predecessors in this field had assailed
the externals of the religious state; they had, under the guise of stories,
held up the excesses of individuals to scorn. Valla, in this work, treats the
subject quite differently. His attack is of a more radical character; he
assails the monastic life in itself, combating the proposition, which has
always been upheld by the Church, that by the same course of moral life, a man
bound by religious vows attains higher merit and gains a greater reward than
does one who belongs to no religious order. The acrimonious remarks in regard
to the clerical and monastic states, with which this book abounds, are of
trifling importance in comparison with this, its main intent and purpose, which
strikes at the very root of the religious life in general.
With equal
audacity and venom, Valla turned his arms against the temporal power of the
Papacy, in his pamphlet, On the falsely
credited and invented Donation of Constantine. Considerations affecting the
genuineness of this document had been put forward some years previously by the
learned Nicholas of Cusa, in his Catholic
Concordance; and, independently of Valla and Cusa.
Reginald Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, in the middle
of the fifteenth century, showed by a careful sifting of the historical
evidence the untenable character of this long-credited document. But Valla, in
his work, went a great deal further than these writers. In his hands the proof
that the document was a recent forgery became a violent attack on the Temporal
Power of the Popes. If Constantine’s Donation be a forgery of later times, he
concluded, then the Temporal Principality of the Popes falls to ruin, and the
Pope has nothing more urgent to do than to divest himself of the usurped power.
The Pope is all the more bound to do this, because, according to Valla's view,
all the corruption in the church and all the wars and misfortunes of Italy are
the consequence of this usurpation.
The virulence of
Valla’s denunciations against “the overbearing, barbarous, tyrannical Priestly
domination” has scarcely been surpassed in later times. “The Popes”, he says, “were
always filching away the liberties of the people, and therefore when
opportunity offers the people rise. If at times they willingly consent to the
Papal rule, which may happen when a danger threatens from some other side, it
must not be understood that they have agreed to continue slaves, never again to
free their necks from the yoke, and that their posterity has no right of
settling their own affairs. That would be in the highest degree unjust. We came
of our own free will to you, O Pope, and asked you to govern us; of our own
free will we go away from you again, that you may no longer govern us. If we owe
you anything, then make out the debit and credit account. But you wish to rule
over us against our will, as if we were orphans, although we might perhaps be
capable of governing you with greater wisdom. Moreover, reckon up the
injustices, which have so often been inflicted on this State by you or the
magistrates you have appointed. We call God to witness that your injustice
constrains us to rise against you, as Israel of old rose against Jeroboam. And
the injustices of those days, the exaction of heavy tributes, how trifling were
they in comparison with our disasters! Have you enervated our State? You have.
Have you plundered our churches? You have. Have you outraged matrons and
virgins? You have. Have you shed the blood of citizens in our towns? You have.
Shall we bear this? Or shall we, perhaps, because you choose to take the place
of a father, forget that we are children? As a father, O Pope, or, if the title
suits you better, as a lord, we have called you hither, and not as an enemy or
an executioner. Although the injuries we have suffered might justify us, we
will not imitate your cruelty or your impiety, for we are Christians. We will
not raise the avenging sword against your head, but after we have dismissed and
removed you, we will appoint another father and lord. Sons are permitted to
flee from evil parents who have brought them up, and shall we not be allowed to
flee from you, who are not our real father, but only a foster-father who has
treated us extremely ill? Attend to your priestly office, and do not set up a
throne in the regions of night, thence to thunder forth and hurl the hissing
lightnings against this and other nations. The forgery of Constantine's gift
has become a reason for the devastation of all Italy. The time has come to stop
the evil at its source. Therefore I say and declare—for if I put my trust in
God I will not be afraid of men—that during the years of my life, not one true
and prudent steward has occupied the Papal Chair. Far from giving food and
bread to the family of God, the Pope declares war against peaceful nations, and
sows discord between States and Princes. The Pope thirsts after foreign
possessions, and exhausts his own. He is what Achilles called Agamemnon, ‘a
king who devours the people’.”
It will be seen
that it is Valla, not Machiavelli, who started the often-repeated assertion
that the Popes are to blame for all Italy's misfortunes. Like the Florentine
historian, Valla knows not, or else forgets, that the Church and her rulers
preserved the most valuable elements of the ancient culture for humanity,
civilized the barbarians, and created mediaeval international law—that the
Primate as head of the one Church founded by Christ must necessarily have fixed
his seat in the capital of ancient power and civilization, and in order
perfectly to fulfil his high office, must be a monarch and not a subject.
As to the
important question, in what light the more recent gifts of territory to the
Holy See were to be regarded, Valla proceeds very simply. He maintains that,
being renewals of Constantine’s ancient gift, they could not constitute a new
right! The objection that, failing Constantine's document, the temporal
possessions of the Popes rested on the right of prescription, he meets with the
assertion that, in the case of unauthorized dominion over men, the right of
prescription has no existence, and that, even if it had, it would long since
have been forfeited by the tyranny of the Popes. This tyranny was all the more
crying because the exercise of temporal power was quite inconsistent with the
duties of a spiritual Head.
In the
above-mentioned pamphlet, which is a caricature of the government of the Popes,
and openly calls the Vicars of Christ “tyrants, thieves, and robbers”, the
author of the Dialogue on Pleasure frequently assumes the air of a pious Christian. He endeavours to speak in an
edifying manner of “the loftiness and grandeur” of the spiritual office of the
Popes, and brings forward a number of quotations from Holy Scripture. In
strange contrast with these passages in his work are the oft-repeated
passionate appeals to the Romans, urging them to revolt against the temporal
power of the Holy See. Valla also addresses the Princes; paints in the darkest
colours the grasping ambition of Rome, and pronounces them to be justified in
depriving the Pope of the States of the Church. He concludes this menacing
libel with a formal declaration of war against the Papacy. “If the Pope
refuses” he says, “to quit the dwelling, which does not belong to him, and
return to his own, and to take refuge from the angry waves in the haven of his
own vocation, I will set about a second discourse, which will be much more
violent than the present one”
In order to form
a correct estimate of Valla's anti-papal pamphlet, the circumstances under
which it appeared must be taken into consideration. According to his own
account, he wrote it six years after the insurrection of the Romans against
Eugenius IV. This Pope, who, as feudal Lord of Naples, favoured the claims of
the House of Anjou, was at the time in open conflict with King Alfonso, who, on
his side, supported the schismatics of Basle. This state of affairs explains
how Valla, living under the protection of the King, could venture thus to
declare war against the head of the Church and the spiritual power. The
sincerity of his convictions as to the unrighteousness of the temporal power of
the Holy See soon became apparent. After the reconciliation of the Neapolitan
Monarch with Eugenius IV, he made every possible effort to enter the Papal
service. In a humble letter addressed to the Pope, whom he had so lately abused
as a tyrant, he retracted his former writings, and expressed his willingness in
future to devote himself to the service of the Apostolic See.
“The treatise
regarding Constantine’s grant”, says an author who occupies almost the same
position as Valla, "was the boldest attack on the temporal power ever
ventured on by any reformer; was it then strange that a new popular tribune—a
Stefano Porcaro—should arise?” In zealously prosecuting the pamphlet the Papacy
merely acted in self-defence. Any other Government would have done the same,
for Valla called on the Romans to drive the Pope from Rome, and even intimated
that it would be lawful to kill him. That the ideas, expressed with such
unexampled audacity, fell on a fruitful soil is evidenced by the attempt of
Stefano Porcaro on the life of Nicholas V, and also by the fact that later on,
in the time of Pius II, the Papal Secretary, Antonio Cortese, brought out an “Anti-Valla”.
Unfortunately, only a fragment of this unprinted work is preserved in the
Library of the Chapter at Lucca, which also contains another work against Valla
and in defence of the temporal power of the Holy See.
Valla’s
audacious attack on Christian morals in his dialogue “On Pleasure” was far
surpassed by Antonio Beccadelli Panormita (d. 1471). Repulsive though the subject be, we must speak of his Hermaphroditus or collection of
epigrams, because the spirit of the false Renaissance is here manifested in all
its hideousness. The Book, says the
Historian of Humanism, “opens a view into an abyss of iniquity, but wreathes it
with the most beautiful flowers of poetry”. The most horrible crimes of heathen
antiquity, crimes whose very name a Christian cannot utter without reluctance,
were here openly glorified. The poet, in his facile verses, toyed with the
worst forms of sensuality, as if they were the most natural and familiar themes
for wit and merriment. “And moreover, he complacently confessed himself the
author of this obscene book, justified it by the examples of the old Roman
poets, and looked down upon the strict guardians of morality as narrow-minded
dullards, incapable of appreciating the voluptuous graces of the ancients”.
Cosmo de' Medici accepted the dedication of this loathsome book, which is
proved by the countless copies in the Italian libraries to have had but too
wide a circulation.
Beccadelli’s disgraceful work did
not, unfortunately, stand alone, for Poggio, Filelfo and Aeneas Sylvius
Piccolomini have much to answer for in the way of highly-seasoned anecdotes and
adventures. No writing of the so-called Humanists, however, equals Beccadelli’s collection of epigrams in impurity. The false
heathen Renaissance, culminates in this repulsive Emancipation of the Flesh, sagaciously characterized by a modern
historian as the forerunner of the great Revolution, which in the following
centuries shook Europe to its centre.
The
representatives of the Church, who in later times were often too indulgent
towards the manifold excesses of the Humanists, happily did their duty on this
occasion, and met this “appalling fruit of faith in the infallibility of the
ancients” with decision. Pope Eugenius IV forbad the reading of this work under
pain of excommunication. Cardinal Cesarini, a zealous friend of Humanism,
destroyed it, wherever he could get possession of it. The most celebrated
preachers of the day, St. Bernardine of Siena and Roberto da Lecce, earnestly
warned their hearers against such vile literature, and burned Beccadelli’s Epigrams in the open squares at Milan and
Bologna. Counter publications were also circulated by the ecclesiastical party.
The manuscript of a long indictment against Beccadelli,
composed by the Franciscan, Antonio da Rho, is preserved in the Ambrosian
Library at Milan. The Carthusian, Mariano de Volterra, composed a poem against
him, and the learned Minorite, Alberto da Sarteano,
wrote a letter of warning to the young men of Ferrara, and also a larger work,
with a view of counteracting the influence of this impure poet
The sensation
caused by this vile book was so great that even Poggio, who was certainly by no
means over-particular in such matters, advised Beccadelli in future to choose graver subjects, inasmuch as “Christian poets are not
allowed the license enjoyed by the heathen”. Beccadelli had the insolence to defend himself against this slight reproof, which was not
very seriously meant, by an appeal to the authority of the ancients. A great
many “learned, worthy, holy Greeks and Romans had”, he said, “sung of such
things; and yet the works of Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Juvenal, Martial,
Virgil, and Ovid were universally read; the very Prince of Philosophers, Plato
himself, had written wanton verses”. Beccadelli then
gives a list of Greek philosophers and statesmen, who had indulged in writings
of this description, and yet been virtuous. Similarly in his epigrams he had
been careful to declare, that although his writings were immodest his life was
spotless. If Beccadelli really believed what he said,
daily experience should have taught him another lesson. The horrible crimes
which had been the curse of the ancient world, and which were the theme of his
elegant verses, raged like a moral pestilence in his time in the larger towns
of Italy, especially among the higher classes of society. Florence, Siena, and
Naples were described as the chief seats of these excesses; in Siena, indeed,
in the beginning of the fifteenth century, it had been found necessary, as in
ancient Rome, to legislate against the prevailing celibacy of men. Lucca and
Venice also bore an evil name in regard to the prevalence of those vices, which
had no small share in bringing about the downfall of Greece.
The corrupting
effects of the false, profligate Humanism represented by Valla and Beccadelli made themselves felt to an alarming extent in-
the province of religion, as well as in that of ethics. The enthusiasm for
everything connected with the ancient world was carried to such an excess, that
the forms of antiquity alone were held to be beautiful, and its ideas alone to
be true. The ancient literature came to be looked upon as capable of satisfying
every spiritual need, and as sufficing for the perfection of humanity.
Accordingly its admirers sought to resuscitate ancient life as a whole, and
that, the life of the period of the decadence with which alone they were
acquainted. Grave deviations from Christian modes of thought and conduct were
the necessary consequences of such opinions.
In the beginning
of the fifteenth century Cino da Rinuccini brought forward a list of serious charges against the adherents of the false
Renaissance. “They praise Cicero’s work De Officiis”,
he says, “but they ignore the duty of controlling their passions and regulating
their life according to the rules of true Christian chastity. They are devoid
of all family affection, they despise the holy institution of marriage, and
live without rule. They avoid all labour for the State—either by word or
action—saying that he who serves the community serves nobody. As to theology,
they give undue praise to Varro's works, and secretly prefer them to the
Fathers of the Church. They even presume to assert that the heathen gods had a
more real existence than the God of the Christian religion, and they will not
remember the wonders wrought by the saints”.
There may be,
perhaps, some exaggeration in these charges, but it cannot be denied, that
enthusiastic admiration for the ancients exercised a most deleterious influence
on the Christian conscience and life of the representatives of the false
Renaissance. Even Petrarch lamented the fact, that to confess the Christian
faith and esteem it higher than the heathen philosophy was called stupidity and
ignorance, and that people went so far as even to deem literary culture
incompatible with faith.
It is recorded
of the celebrated Florentine Statesman, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, that he held a disputation with a physician
versed in philosophy, on the question whether science is in opposition to
Christian faith. Like Pietro Pomponazzo, a century
later, Albizzi maintained the affirmative, supporting
his opinion by quotations from Aristotle. Carlo Marsuppini,
of Arezzo, the State Chancellor of the Florentine Republic, openly manifested a
great contempt for Christianity and an unbounded admiration for the heathen
religion. He adhered to these sentiments to the end, and a contemporary says, “He
died without confession or Communion, and not as a good Christian”.
Few, however,
went to such lengths; most of these men, when the reality of death drew near,
abandoned their empty speculations, and a penitent return to the dogmas of the
faith took the place of their former vagaries. Even such men as Codro Urceo and Machiavelli,
before their end, sought the aid of the Church, from which their lives and opinions
had estranged them, and whose graces and blessings their writings had
contemned; they died after making their confession, fortified with the
consolations of religion.
The adherents of
the false Renaissance, with scarcely an exception, were, during life,
indifferent to religion. They looked on their classical studies, their ancient
philosophy, and the faith of the Church as two distinct worlds, which had no
point of contact. From considerations of worldly prudence or convenience they
still professed themselves Catholics, while in their hearts they were more or
less alienated from the Church. In many cases, indeed, the very foundations of
faith and morals were undermined by the triumph of false Humanism. The literary
men and artists of this school lived in their ideal world of classic dreams;
theirs was a proud and isolated existence. The real world of social and, yet
more, that of moral and religious life, with its needs, its struggles, and its
sacrifices, was far too common and too burdensome for their notice; and they
only condescended to take part in it, in so far as was necessary in order to
bring themselves into view and to share in its advantages.
Overweening
self-esteem was a characteristic of all these men; they never thought
themselves sufficiently appreciated. Some of them, as for example, Filelfo,
cherished a fixed idea that they were the geniuses of their age, and that the
whole world must give way to them because they spoke Greek and wrote Latin with
elegance. Notwithstanding all the Stoical phrases, which adorned their
discourses and writings, these Humanists were fond of money and good cheer,
desirous of honour and admiration, eager to find favour with the rich and
noble, quarrelsome amongst themselves, ready for any intrigue, calumny, or
baseness, that would serve to ruin a rival.
Poggio Bracciolini may be taken as a genuine representative of
this false Humanism. This gifted writer, “the most fortunate discoverer the
world has ever known in the field of literature”, is, as a man, one of the most
repulsive figures of the period. Almost all the vices of the profligate
Renaissance are to be found combined in his person, and it would be hard to say
whether his slanderous disposition or the gross immorality of his life is most
worthy of condemnation.
Notwithstanding
occasional expressions of another kind in his writings, there can be no doubt
that Poggio’s point of view was more heathen than
Christian. Christianity and the Church were entirely outside his sphere. To
quote the words of the biographer of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, “he was such a
worshipper of heathen antiquity, that he would certainly have given away all
the treasures of dogmatic theology for a new discourse of Cicero”. A remarkable
example of his heathen, or rather indifferent, state of mind is furnished by
his well-known letter to the Council of Constance on the occasion of the
burning of Jerome of Prague. Poggio speaks with the greatest enthusiasm of
Jerome, from which, however, it is not to be inferred that he approved of his
opinions. On the contrary, the conception of a martyr to any faith was as
foreign to the mind of this follower of the false Renaissance as to that of a
heretic. The thing which he admired in Jerome was of a very different kind. The
courage with which this man met death reminded him of Cato, and of Mutius Scevola, and he considered
the eloquence of his address to the Council as approaching that of the
ancients. The decision of the ecclesiastical authority is scarcely noticed by
Poggio; he only regrets that so noble an intellect should have turned to
heresy; “If”, he adds, “the accusations brought against him are true”. This
doubt is, however, disposed of by the cool observation, “it is not my business
to judge of the matter; I contented myself with the opinion of those who are
considered wiser than I am”.
Almost all the
writings of Poggio are offensively obscene and coarse. The worst in this
respect, after his “Facetiae”, are his shameless and immoral letter on the
license which prevailed at the baths of Zurich, and his libels on Filelfo and
Valla. “Like the lowest boy out of the streets”, says the Historian of
Humanism, “Poggio assails his adversary with the coarsest abuse and the basest
calumny”. He accuses these two Humanists of every kind of turpitude, and the
greater part of the work is unfit for translation.
The impression
produced is a strange one, when a writer, whose own life was so far from
respectable, sets himself up as a censor of the depraved morals of the monks
and clergy. Poggio cannot find words sufficiently stinging with which to brand
the hypocrisy, cupidity, ignorance, arrogance, and immorality of the clergy.
The monks, however, are everywhere the especial object of his sarcasm, often,
indeed, in discourses, letters, and treatises, where such sentiments might
least have been looked for. Violent attacks upon them are to be found, as in
his dialogues on Avarice and on Human misery, and in his book against
hypocrites. “There are monks”, he says, “who call themselves mendicant friars,
but it seems rather that they bring others to beggary, being themselves idle
and living by the sweat of other men. Some of these assume the name of Observantines. I do not know what good all these can be
said to do; I only know that most who call themselves Minorites and Observantines are rude peasants and idle mercenaries, who
aim not at holiness of life, but at escaping from work”. Even in their
preaching, according to Poggio, the object of the monks is not the healing of
sick souls, but the applause of the simple folk whom they entertain with
buffooneries. They indulge their boorish loquacity without restraint, and are
often more like apes than preachers.
In order to
understand how unjustifiable is this caricature of the monks, we must remember
that the Religious Orders gave to Italy in the fifteenth century a line of
preachers whose devotion to their calling and whose power and earnestness have,
even after the lapse of ages, commanded the esteem of those who differ from
them. The limits of this work do not permit us to enter into a detailed account
of all the brilliant and truly popular orators who produced the remarkable and
copious pulpit literature of the age of the Renaissance. The most celebrated
preachers of the d. 1456), Antonio di Rimini (about 1450), Silvestro di Siena
(about 1450), Giovanni di Prato (about 1455), Antonio di Bitonto (d. 1459), Roberto da Lecce (d. 1483), Antonio di Vercelli (d. 1483)
In his
celebrated work on the Renaissance, Burchkhard admirably describes the meaning of these Italian preachers of penance. “There
was”, he says, “no prejudice stronger than that which existed against the
mendicant friars; the preachers overcame it. The supercilious Humanists
criticized and mocked; when the preachers raised their voices they were
entirely forgotten”. With his usual sagacity, this scholar remarks that the
men, who bore within them this mighty fervour and this religious vocation,
were, in the north, of a mystical and contemplative stamp, and in the south,
expansive, practical, and imbued with the national taste for eloquence. And
here we may mention that St. Bernardine of Siena is said to have studied
oratory from the ancient models, and that Alberto da Sarteano,
one of his most distinguished disciples and followers, certainly did so.
Too little attention
has as yet been bestowed on the action of these preachers of penance, who were
highly esteemed and sought after by the people, and even by worldly-minded
princes, and zealously supported by the Popes, especially by Eugenius IV and
Nicholas V. When the History of Preaching in Italy at the period of the
Renaissance is written, it will be seen that the free and fervent exercise of
this office is one of the most cheering signs, in an age clouded with many dark
shadows. It became evident that a new spirit had begun to stir in
ecclesiastical life. Many proofs are before us that in Italy and in the other
countries of Christendom the words of censure and warning were not spoken in
vain. No age, perhaps, offers such striking scenes in the conversion of all classes
of the people, of whole towns and provinces, as does that, whose wounds were so
fearlessly laid bare by Saints Vincent Ferrer, Bernardine of Siena, John Capistran, and by Savonarola.
“An age”, as a
modern historian observes, “which thus perceives and acknowledges its faults,
is certainly not among the worst of ages. If in the individual the recognition
of a fault is the first step to amendment, it cannot be otherwise in regard to
whole classes of men, to nations, and to the Church itself. No one who bestows
even a superficial glance on the literature of the period, can deny that this
recognition existed in the Church in the time of the Renaissance. The first and
most essential step towards amendment had been taken, and there was well
grounded hope that further energetic measures would follow”.
From this point
of view, the general unfavourable judgment of the religious and moral condition
of the Renaissance period may be essentially modified. At all events, as the
first German authority on Italian history has lately observed, it is a mistake
to suppose from the numerous testimonies of Pagan tendencies furnished by the
Italian Humanists, that these were absolutely general. This gifted nation—and
this is especially true of Florence, the intellectual home of the
Renaissance—still retained its warm religious feeling in the midst of all party
struggles, excommunications, and external conflicts. The numerous
confraternities of laymen, to which high and low belonged, kept all classes in
constant and salutary contact with the Church which had never ceased to be
national, as did also the mystery-plays, in which, until the end of the
fifteenth century, distinguished poets and poetesses took part. Thus the
religious dispositions of the people held many things together, which
threatened to fall to pieces, and explains much that would otherwise be
difficult of solution; it was often very touchingly manifested. When Gregory
XI, the last of the Avignon Popes, laid an interdict upon Florence, crowds of
citizens used to assemble in the evenings before the images of the Madonna, at
the corners of the streets, and endeavour by their prayers and hymns to make up
for the cessation of public worship. Vespasiano da Bisticci, in his life of Eugenius IV, relates that when the
Pope, during his sojourn in Florence, blessed the people from a balcony erected
in front of the church of Sta. Maria Novella, the whole of the wide square and
the adjoining streets resounded with sighs and prayers; it seemed as if our
Lord Himself, rather than His Vicar, was speaking. In 1450, when Nicholas V
celebrated the restoration of peace to the Church by the publication of a
Jubilee, a general migration to the Eternal city took place; eye-witnesses
compared the bands of pilgrims to the flight of starlings, or the march of
myriads of ants. In the year 1483 the Sienese consecrated their city to the
Mother of God, and in 1495, at the instigation of Savonarola, the Florentines
proclaimed Christ their King.
The magnificent
gifts, by which the pomp and dignity of religious worship were maintained, the
countless works of Christian art, and the innumerable and admirably organized
charitable foundations also bear testimony to the continuance of “heartfelt
piety and ardent faith” in the Italy of the fifteenth century.
Side by side
with these evidences of religious feeling in the Italian people, the age of the
Renaissance certainly exhibits alarming tokens of moral decay; sensuality and
license reigned, especially among the higher classes. Statistics on this subject,
however, are so incomplete, that a certain estimate of the actual moral
condition of the age or a trustworthy comparison with later times is
impossible.
But if those
days were full of failings and sins of every kind, the Church was not wanting
in glorious manifestations, through which the source of her higher life
revealed itself. Striking contrasts—deep shadows on the one hand, and most
consoling gleams of sunshine on the other—are the special characteristics of
this period. If the historian of the Church of the fifteenth century meets with
many unworthy prelates and bishops, he also meets, in every part of
Christendom, with an immense number of men distinguished for their virtue,
piety, and learning not a few of whom have been by the solemn voice of the
Church raised to her altars. Limiting ourselves to the most remarkable
individuals, and to the period of which we are about to treat, we will mention
only: the saints, and holy men and women given by Italy to the Church.
The first of
this glorious company it is St. Bernardine of Siena, of the Order of Minorites,
whose eloquence won for him the titles of trumpet of Heaven and fountain of
knowledge, and whom Nicholas V canonized about the middle of the century.
Around him are grouped his holy brothers in religion: Saints John Capistran, Jacopo della Marca,
and Catherine of Bologna, a Sister of the same Order (d. 1463). Among the
Blessed of the Franciscan Order are Tommaso Bellaci (d. 1447), Gabriele Ferretti (d. 1456), Arcangelo di Calatafimi (d. 1460), Antonio di Stronconio (d. 1471), Pacifico di d. 1482), Pietro di Moliano (d. 1490), Angelo di Chivasso in Piedmont (d. 1496),
Angelina di Marsciano (d. 1435, Angela Caterina (d.
1448), Angela Felice (d. 1457), Serafina di Pesaro (d. 1478), Eustochia Calafata (d. 1491),
etc.
The Dominican
Order was yet richer in saints and holy persons. Blessed Lorenzo da Ripafratta (d. 1457) laboured in Tuscany, and under his
direction the apostolic St. Antoninus (d. 1459) grew
up to be a pattern of self-sacrificing charity, and the glorious talent of Fra
Angelico da Fiesole (d. 1455) soared heavenward, leading men's hearts to the
Eternal by the language of art, as the mystics had done by their writings. St. Antoninus, whose unexampled zeal was displayed in Florence,
the very centre of the Renaissance, had for his disciples Blessed Antonio Neyrot of Ripoli (d. 1460) and Costanzio di Fabriano (d. 1481).
Blessed Giovanni Dominici (d. 1420) and Pietro Geremia da Palermo (d. 1452) were celebrated preachers and
reformers. Then follow Blessed Antonio ab Ecclesia (d. 1458), Bartolomeo de Cerveriis (d. 1466), Matteo Carrieri (d. 1471), Andrea da Peschiera (d. 1480), the Apostle
of the Valteline, the recently beatified Cristoforo da Milano (d. 1484),
Bernardo Scammaca (d. 1486), Sebastiano Maggi da
Brescia (d. 1494), and Giovanni Licci, who died in
1511, at the extraordinary age of one hundred and fifteen. The Dominicaness, Chiara Gambacorti (d. 1420), had held communication with the greatest saint of the later
mediaeval period, St. Catherine of Siena; and, together with Princess Margaret
of Savoy (d. 1407), also a Dominicaness, was
subsequently beatified. In the Order of St. Augustine we have to mention the
following who have been beatified:—Andrea, who died at Montereale in 1479, Antonio Turriani (d. 1494), Rita of Cascia
(d. 1456), Cristina Visconti (d. 1458), Elena Valentino du Udine (d. 1458), and
Caterina da Pallanza (d. 1478). Blessed Angelo Mazzinghi de Agostino (d. 1438) belonged to the Carmelite
Order; that of the Gesuati had Giovanni Travelli da Tossignano (d. 1446),
the Celestines, Giovanni Bassand (d. 1455); and the
Regular Canons the Holy Patriarch of Venice, St. Lorenzo Giustiniani (d. 1456). Blessed Angelo Masaccio (d. 1458) was of the Camaldolese Order, and finally the great Cardinal Bishop of Bologna, Albergati (d. 1443) was a Carthusian. St. Frances (d. 1440), the foundress of the
Oblates, was working in Rome. The labours of another founder, St. Francis of
Paula (born 1416, d. 1507), belong in part to the period before us. These
names, to which many more might easily be added, furnish the most striking
proof of the vitality of religion in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Such
fruits do not ripen on trees which are decayed and rotten to the core.
Though it is an
error to consider all ranks of italian society in the
fifteenth century as tainted with the spirit of Paganism, we must admit that
the baneful element in the Renaissance took fearful hold on the upper classes.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise? The seductive doctrines of Epicurus, and
the frivolous, worldly wisdom of the Rome of Augustus, were far more attractive
than Christian morality. To a pleasure-loving and corrupt generation, the vain
mythology of heathenism was infinitely more congenial than the Gospel of a
crucified Saviour, and the religion of self-denial and continence. Many
ecclesiastical dignitaries also unhappily show undue favour to the false
Humanism. Startling as this may at first sight appear, it is by no means
difficult to account for it.
In the first
place we must consider the wide-spread worldliness among the clergy, which was
a result of the Avignon period of the Papacy, and the subsequent confusion of
the schism. Secondly, Humanism soon became such a power that a struggle with it
under existing circumstances would have been very hazardous. The chief reason,
however, that the Church and the false Renaissance did not come into open
conflict, was the extreme care taken by almost all the adherents of this school
to avoid any collision with the ecclesiastical authorities. The race of
dilettanti and free-thinkers looked upon the doctrinal teaching of the Church
as a thing quite apart from their sphere. If in their writings they invoked the
heathen gods, and advocated the principles of the ancient philosophers, they
also took pains from time to time to profess their submission to the Creeds,
and were skilful in throwing a veil over the antagonism between the two.
However vigilant the rulers of the Church might be, it was often very hard to
determine when this toying with heathenism became really reprehensible.
The strange
medley of heathen and Christian words, ideas and thoughts, that prevailed in
the age of the Renaissance is notorious. The Church authorities were not severe
on transgressions of this kind; and as far as literature was concerned, there
can be no doubt that their leniency was thoroughly justified. If the Humanists,
in their horror of sinning against Ciceronian Latinity, endeavoured to express
Christian ideas in antique phrases, the fashion was certainly an absurd, rather
than a dangerous, one. “What need” says Voigt, with reason, “to cry out, if a
lively orator should introduce a Roman asseveration into his discourse. Who
would charge him with polytheism, if, instead of calling on the one God, he
should on some occasion say: 'Ye Gods!' Or if a poet, instead of imploring
Divine grace, should beg the favour of Apollo and the Muses, who would accuse
him of idolatry?”. Accordingly, when Ciriaco of Ancona chose Mercury for his
patron saint, and on his departure from Delos addressed a written prayer to
him, his contemporaries were not the least scandalized, but contented
themselves with laughing at his enthusiasm, and singing of him as “the new
Mercury and immortal as his Mercury”. The indulgence, which the ecclesiastical
authorities showed towards the false Renaissance, is intelligible enough, if we
remember that its obviously dangerous tendencies had much to counterbalance
them.
From the
beginning, the true Christian Renaissance existed side by side with the false.
Its followers
were equally enthusiastic in their admiration for the treasures of antiquity,
and they recognized in the classics a most perfect means of intellectual
culture, but they also clearly perceived the danger attendant on the revival of
the old literature, especially under the circumstances of the time. Far from
relentlessly sacrificing to heathenism that Christianity, which had permeated
the very life of the people, they deemed that safety lay in the conciliation of
the new element of culture with its eternal truths; and in this opinion they
had the support of Dante, and were in accord with Petrarch's highest
aspirations. They were justly alarmed at the radical tendency, which aimed at
doing away with all existing sanctions and influences. They saw with dismay
that all national and religious traditions were threatened, and that therefore
a salutary result from the movement was very doubtful. The programme of these
men, the most clear-sighted and sober-minded of the Humanists, was the
maintenance of religious and national traditions, the study of the ancients in
a Christian and national spirit, the reconciliation of the Renaissance with
Christianity.
The chief
representatives of the Christian Renaissance were Giannozzo Manetti, Ambrogio Traversari, Lionardo Bruni,
Gregorio Carraro, Francesco Barbaro, Maffeo Vegio, Vittorino da Feltre, and Tommaso Parentucelli, afterwards
known as Pope Nicholas V.
Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459), the friend of Pope Eugenius IV and Pope Nicholas V, was most
deeply convinced of the truth of the Christian Religion. This noble-minded and
distinguished scholar used to say that the Christian Faith is no mere opinion,
but an absolute certainty, that the teaching of the Church is as true as an
axiom in mathematics. However much occupied Manetti might be, he never went to work without first having heard Mass. He placed all
his learning at the service of the Church, and although a layman, was well
versed in theology and literature, and translated the New Testament and the
Psalms. He had studied three books so indefatigably, that he may be almost said
to have known them by heart; these were the Epistles of St. Paul, St. Augustine’s
City of God, and the Ethics of Aristotle. Manetti was
the first, and, for a long time, the only Humanist in Italy, who turned his
attention to the Oriental languages. To defend the cause of Christian truth, he
learned Hebrew and began to write a work against the Jews, whom he meant to
combat with their own weapons. This great scholar was a man of exemplary life;
his friend and biographer, Vespasiano da Bisticci, affirms that, during an intercourse of forty
years, he had never heard an untruth, an oath, nor a curse, from his lips.
Manetti’s teacher was the pious Ambrogio Traversari, General of
the Camaldolese Order from 1431, a man whom the
Protestant historian, Meiners, declares to have been a model of purity and
holiness; a superior, admirable for his strictness and prudent gentleness; an
author of great industry and learning, and an ambassador whose talents,
courage, and statesmanship won for him a high position amongst the most
distinguished of his contemporaries. This eminent scholar was the first to
introduce Humanist influences into the ecclesiastical sphere. A mixed assembly
of clerics and laymen, the élite of the Florentine literary world, used
to meet in his convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, to hear him lecture on the Greek and Latin
languages and literature, and explain philosophical and theological questions.
The biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici speaks enthusiastically of those days when
a brilliant intellectual radiance shone forth from this convent, enlightening
the dwellings of the Florentine patricians and, through them, the whole world. “Never”,
he says, “was there seen among clerics and laymen so much real and solid
learning devoted to the Church and State, while also ministering to the charm
of daily life and the promotion of good morals”. Tommaso Parentucelli, who had
witnessed this Florentine literary life, which, although not faultless, was on
the whole so rich and noble, was unable, even when he had attained the highest
dignity in Christendom, to create in Rome anything that could compare with it.
Traversari’s unceasing labours in
the reform of his Order, and all the harassing toils attendant on his office as
Papal Envoy, never interfered with his interest in Greek and Roman literature.
Notwithstanding the heavy pressure of necessary business, he contrived to find
time to ransack libraries for rare manuscripts and copy them, to visit literary
celebrities, to investigate ecclesiastical and heathen antiquities, and by
various letters to promote the study of science. His learned works relate
chiefly to the Greek writers of the Church, and he was undoubtedly the first authority
on the subject and the possessor of the richest collection of books. In his
scrupulous conscientiousness, Traversari thought the
translation of profane authors unsuitable to his office. Nevertheless, at the
request of his friend, Cosmo de Medici, he consented to translate Diogenes
Laertes on the Lives of the Philosophers, consoling himself with the thought
that this work might serve the interests of the Christian religion, “inasmuch
as when the doctrines of the heathen philosophy are better known, the
superiority of Christianity will be the more clearly understood”.
The celebrated Lionardo Bruni (1369-1444), Apostolic Secretary under
Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Alexander V, and John XXIII, and afterwards
Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, was also sincerely attached to the
Church. His love for the classical did not hinder him from recommending “sacred
studies”, which, from their very nature, must be the sweetest of “sweet toils”.
What a contrast there is between Valla and this good man, who, though not
himself a monk, esteemed the religious life, and refused to support a monk who
wished to leave his convent. Bruni was greatly looked up to, and people came
from all parts to see him; a Spaniard even went so far as to fall on his knees
before him. When this noble scholar departed this life on the 9th March, 1444,
the Priors determined to pay him extraordinary honour; his corpse was clad in
dark silk, and on his breast lay the History of Florence, as the richest gift
of the Chancellor to the Republic. Manetti pronounced
the funeral oration, and crowned the dead with the laurel of the poet and the
scholar, “as an immortal testimony to his wonderful wisdom and his surpassing
eloquence”. He was then buried in Santa Croce, where an epitaph composed by Marsuppini, and a monument sculptured by Bernardo Rossellino, mark his resting place.
Among the
Christian Humanists we must reckon Gregorio Corraro,
the highly cultured kinsman of Pope Gregory XII, and Francesco Barbaro, who, like him, belonged to a patrician family of
Venice. Barbaro enjoyed the friendship of almost all
the learned Italians of his day, and was, by family tradition and personal
feeling, devoted to the cause of the Church. In the negotiations with the
Councils of Basle and of Florence he sought, with equal zeal, to promote the
interests of the Papal power, and to provide for the spiritual wants of his
clients. He furnishes a remarkable example of the union of the Humanist and
ecclesiastical tendencies in an age when the latter had begun to lose its
power.
Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458), the worthy explorer of the ancient Christian monuments of Rome,
must not be passed over. That “tender and eloquent book”, the Confessions of
St. Augustine, made a deep impression on his mind, as also on that of Petrarch.
It brought about Vegio’s complete conversion, and
induced him to devote himself entirely to ecclesiastical literature. Without
transcribing the splendid list of his works, we must mention his widely-read
book on Education, inasmuch as it represents an endeavour to combine the wisdom
of the Classics with the Bible and the teaching of the Church. He strongly
recommends the work of Virgil, Sallust, and Quintilian, as means of culture,
but objects to the Elegiacs on account of their indecency, and would have the
comic authors reserved for the perusal of grown-up men. In the time of Eugenius
IV, Vegio came to Rome, where he filled the offices
of Datary, Abbreviator, and Canon of St. Peter’s, and finally became an
Augustinian Canon. He died in 1458, and was buried in Sant Agostino, in the
very chapel where, thanks to his efforts, the bones of St. Monica had found a
fitting place of rest, when brought from Ostia in 1430. Vegio's pure life and piety were honoured beyond the limits of his own order. An
enthusiastic notice of him is to be found among the writings of the Florentine Vespasiano da Bisticci.
The most
attractive and amiable of the representatives of the Christian Renaissance is Vittorino da Feltre, the greatest Italian Pedagogue of his
age. “He was one of those men who devote their whole being to the end for which
their capacities and knowledge specially fit them”. The honour of having
introduced this excellent man “to his proper sphere of work” belongs to the
Marquess Gian Francesco Gonzaga, who summoned him to Mantua in 1425, to take
charge of the education of his children and direct the court school. Vittorino began his labours by a thorough cleansing of the
Casa Giocosa, the new educational Institution, which
was pleasantly situated on the borders of the lake of Mantua. At his command
the gold and silver plate, the superfluous servants, vanished, and order and
noble simplicity took the place of pomp and show. The hours of study were
punctually observed, but they were constantly varied by bodily exercise and
recreation in the open air. Vittorino encouraged his
pupils to expose themselves to cold and heat, to wind and rain, for he believed
that a soft and idle life was the origin of many maladies; but there was
nothing of Spartan harshness in the education, and individual idiosyncrasies
were sufficiently respected. In the fine season he used to take his pupils on
long excursions to Verona, to the Lake of Garda, and into the Alps. In regard
to decency and good manners, Vittorino was rigid;
swearing and blasphemy were always punished, even if the offender were one of
the Princes. Corporal punishments were reserved for the worst cases; in general
the penalties inflicted were of the nature of disgrace. The moral and religious
conduct of the scholars was most carefully watched over, for Vittorino held that true learning is inseparable from
religion and virtue. A bad man, he used to say, can never be a perfect scholar,
far less a good orator.
His method of
teaching was simple and concise; he guarded carefully against the evil
subtleties of the day. “I want to teach them to think”, he said, “not to split
hairs”. The classics naturally formed the groundwork of higher education, but
with a careful selection fitted for the young. Mathematical Science, Logic, and
Metaphysics, were not neglected; special attention was devoted to composition,
and every encouragement given to originality. Vittorino was always ready to help those, who were backward in their studies. Early in
the morning he was among his scholars, and when all around had betaken
themselves to rest, he worked on with individual boys. “Probably”, to use the
words of a modern author, “the world had never before seen such a schoolmaster,
who was content to be a schoolmaster and nothing else, because in this calling he
recognized a lofty mission; one who, just because he sought nothing great for
himself, found all the richer reward in the results of his labour”. When a monk
asked permission from Pope Eugenius IV to enter Vittorino’s Institution, the Pontiff answered, “Go, my son. We willingly give you up to the
most holy of living men”. Vittorino’s fame was widely
spread; eager disciples flocked around him from far and near, even from France,
Germany, and the Netherlands. Many of these youths were poor, and such were received
by the good man with particular affection; they were not only freely
instructed, but also fed, lodged, clothed, and provided with books at his
expense, and his generosity often extended even to their families. For these
scholars, whom he received for the love of God (per Pamore di Dio), he founded a special institution in
association with the Princes' School. Here he lived like a father in his
family, giving to it all he possessed, for his own wants were very easily
satisfied. It is no wonder that the scholars looked up to such a master with
love and respect. Federigo da Montefeltro,
Duke of Urbino, one of the noblest among them, a man distinguished by his
courage, cultivation, and large-mindedness, placed Vittorino’s portrait in his palace with the inscription: “In honour of his saintly master, Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example instructed him
in all human excellence, Federigo places this here”.
The secret of
this great schoolmaster’s immense influence is to be found principally in his
religious and moral qualities, his disinterestedness, his humility and
simplicity, and the charm of his virginal purity. All his contemporaries speak
with respect of his piety. Vespasiano da Bisticci says that “he daily recited the Divine Office like
a priest; he strictly observed the Fasts of the Church, and insisted on his
scholars doing the same. He said grace before and after meals like a priest,
constantly approached the sacraments, and accustomed his scholars to go monthly
to confession to the Observantine Fathers. He also
wished them to hear Holy Mass every day; his house was a very sanctuary of good
morals”. Vittorino’s example shows that a good man
may be immersed in classical studies, without making shipwreck of his faith.
His liberality equalled his piety; no monk or beggar, who sought his aid, was
sent empty away. Notwithstanding his unremitting labours as a teacher and
educator, he always found time to visit widows and orphans, the poor, the sick,
and even prisoners, and wherever he went, he bore with him comfort,
instruction, and help. It was said of him, that the only people who received
nothing from him were those, whose needs were unknown to him. Almsgiving on so
large a scale would not have been possible, but for the generous support of the
Marquess of Mantua and some of his wealthy scholars. All that he received from
them was given away to alleviate the sufferings of his fellow men. When he died
on the 2nd February, 1446, at the age of sixty-nine, his property was so deeply
in debt, that his heirs declined the inheritance, and the corpse had to be
buried at the Prince's expense. He left instructions that no monument should be
raised to his memory.
The position
occupied by the representatives of the Christian Renaissance in relation to the
ancient world was the only true one, and they have in some degree solved the
problem how justly to appreciate antiquity. Their enthusiasm for the
intellectual treasures of the past never went so far as to endanger their
devotion To the Christian religion. Unlike the extreme Humanists, they held
fast the principle, that the works of the heathens are to be judged by a
Christian standard. They saw the danger of so idealizing the moral and
religious teaching of Heathenism, as to make it appear that by its means alone
the highest end of life could be attained, thus ignoring the necessity of
Christian doctrines and morality, of remission of sin and grace from on high.
In the light of
Christianity alone can the ancient world be fully and justly estimated, for the
pagan ideal of humanity, as exhibited in its heroes and divinities, is not, as
a modern philosopher justly observes, a full or complete one. It is but a
shadowy outline, wanting the colour and life which something higher must
supply—a fragmentary form, which has yet to find its complement in a more
perfect whole. This higher Image of human perfection is the Incarnate Son of
God, the Prototype of all-creatures; no creation of fancy or product of human
reason, but the Truly and the Life Itself. The ideals of Greece grow pale
before this Form, and only vanity and folly could ever turn from It to them.
This folly was perpetrated by the adherents of the false Renaissance, by those
Humanists who, instead of ascending from the Greek Poets and Philosophers to
Christ, turned their backs on the glory of Christianity to borrow their ideal
from the genius of Greece.
The twofold
character of the Italian Renaissance renders it extremely difficult justly to
weigh its good and evil in relation, to the Church and to religion. A sweeping
judgment in such cases would generally be a rash one, even were the notices of
the individuals concerned less scanty than those which are before us; here, as
elsewhere, human penetration is baffled in the endeavour to appreciate all its
bearings.
A modern
Historian has forcibly remarked that every genuine advance of knowledge must in
itself be of advantage to religion and to the Church, inasmuch as Truth,
Science, and Art are alike daughters of heaven. From this point of view we must
contemplate the encouragement given by ecclesiastics to the revival of
classical literature. A distinction should evidently here be drawn between the
two schools of the Renaissance, and judgment pronounced accordingly. Those
members of the Church, who promoted the heathen view, acted wrongly, and were,
if we look at their conduct with a view to the interests of the Church,
blameworthy. Impartial inquiry will, however, lead us to temper this blame by a
consideration of all the attendant circumstances, and to bear in mind the
difficulty of avoiding the abuse, to which the ancient literature, like all
other good things of the intellect, is liable.
The common
impression that the dangerous tendencies of the Renaissance were not recognized
by the Church is very erroneous. On the contrary, from the beginning, men were
never wanting, who raised their voices against the deadly poison of the false
Humanism. One of the first in Italy to indicate its pernicious influence on
education was the Dominican Giovanni Dominici. This
preacher, who laboured ardently for the reformation of his Order, enjoyed the
favour of Pope Innocent VII, and was raised to the purple by Gregory XII. In
his celebrated Treatise on the order and discipline of Family Life, written
very early in the 15th century, he denounces, with all the energy of his ardent
nature, the system “which lets youth and even childhood become heathen rather
than Christian; which teaches the names of Jupiter and Saturn, of Venus and
Cybele rather than those of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; which
poisons minds that are still tender and powerless by sacrifice to the false
Gods, and brings up wayward nature in the lap of unbelief”.
In yet stronger
terms does Giovanni Dominici express himself in a
writing which has but recently been brought to light, and which is dedicated in
courteous language to the celebrated Chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutato. Its primary
object was to warn him against being seduced by the charms of the false
Renaissance; but at the same time, it aimed at protecting youth in general from
the questionable elements contained in the classic literature, and at
counteracting its perversion and misuse. The Dominican condemns those, who give
themselves up with blind and deluded zeal to heathen learning, and are thus led
to depreciate the Christian Religion. Looking at the subject from an ascetic
point of view, he is at times blind to the ancient literature. In his horror at
the new heathenism, which was rising before his eyes, he is even betrayed into
the utterance of such paradoxes as, that it is more useful to a Christian to
plough the ground than to study the heathen authors! Exaggerations of this kind
provoked exaggerations from the opposite party, and in this way it became more
and more difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to arrive at a clear
understanding in regard to the proper use of the ancient classics.
The Franciscans,
as well as the Dominicans, distinguished themselves by their opposition to the
Humanists, or Poets, to use the name by which they were commonly called. It
cannot be denied that most of these men were full of holy zeal for the
interests of Christianity, and that their courageous efforts were of real
advantage to the Church, at a time when many other dignitaries, from a spirit
of worldliness, favoured the false Humanist tendencies. Still, it is much to be
regretted that the majority of the opponents of the Poets went a great deal too
far. Correctly to understand the position, we must bear in mind the furious
attacks on the Religious Orders and their scholastic teaching by Poggio,
Filelfo, and other elegant and well-known Humanist authors. The new movement
had gained strength so fast, that the monks were left almost defenceless
against the ribaldry of these men. Further, the alarming errors and excesses of
the extreme admirers of antiquity justified the worst apprehensions for the
future. Consequently, most of those, who withstood the false Renaissance, lost
sight of the fact that these errors had their origin, not in the revival of classical
studies, but in their abuse, and in the deplorable social, political, and
ecclesiastical conditions of the times. Corrupt intellectual elements,
struggling for complete emancipation, had gathered round the banner of the
Renaissance, and they often led the great Humanist movement into crooked paths.
Thus it came to pass, that the larger number of the monks, in their zeal,
overlooked the distinction between the true and the false Renaissance, and made
Humanism in general responsible for the excesses of the most extreme of its
votaries. Against such attacks the Humanists could most justly appeal to the
works of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, and other Fathers
of the Church, which are full of quotations from the Poets and of classical
reminiscences. The monks often waged war in a very unskilful manner, as, for
instance, when they treated Valla’s attacks on Priscianus and the mediaeval grammarians as heretical.
The partial and
short-sighted view, which condemned the whole Renaissance movement as dangerous
to faith and morals, cannot be considered as that of the Church. At this time,
as throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, she showed herself to be the
Patroness of all wholesome intellectual progress, the Protectress of all true
culture and civilization. She accorded the greatest possible liberty to the
adherents of the Renaissance, a liberty which can hardly be comprehended by an
age, which has lost the unity of the Faith. Once only in the period of which we
are about to treat, did the Head of the Church directly attack the false
Renaissance, and this censure was called forth by a shameless eulogy of heathen
vices, which the Pope, as the chief guardian of morals, could not pass over in
silence.
Otherwise the
Church gave liberal encouragement to Humanist studies, fully endorsing the
beautiful words of Clement of Alexandria, that the learning of the heathens, as
far as it contains good, is not to be considered heathen, but a gift of God.
And, indeed, the speedy degeneracy of the Renaissance in Italy was not the
fault of the ancient literature, but rather of its abuse. That the many
irreconcilable enemies of the Renaissance, who are to be found in the Religious
Orders, are not the true representatives of the Church, is evident from the fact
that the greater number of the Popes adopted a very different attitude towards
the new movement.
The friendly
relations which, existed between the Popes and the two founders of the
Renaissance literature, Petrarch and Boccaccio, have already been mentioned;
these relations were not impaired by the passionate language, used by these two
great writers in denouncing the corruptions which had made their way into
ecclesiastical affairs during the Avignon period. No less than five times was
Petrarch invited to fill the office of Apostolic Secretary, but the poet could
not make up his mind to undertake the charge, fearing that it would compel him
to give up literature, his special vocation. But he gladly employed himself, at
the desire of the learned Pope Clement VI, in the collection of early
manuscripts of Cicero's works for the Papal Library. When the tidings of the
death of Petrarch, whom he had once invited to Avignon by an autograph letter,
reached Pope Gregory XI, he commissioned Guillaume de Noellet,
Cardinal Vicar of the Church in Italy, to make diligent inquiries after his
writings and to have good copies made for him, especially of the Africa, the
Eclogues, Epistles, Invectives, and the beautiful work, On the Solitary Life.
Gregory XI, whom
a modern writer has justly characterized as the best of the Avignon Popes,
showed a notable interest in the half-forgotten heritage from the ancient
world. When he heard that a copy of Pompeius Trogus had been discovered at Vercelli, he at once sent a
letter to the Bishop of that city, desiring him immediately to look after this
book and to have it conveyed to the Papal Court by a trusty messenger. A few
days later the same Pope charged a Canon of Paris to make researches in the
Sorbonne Library regarding several works of Cicero's, to have them transcribed
as soon as possible by competent persons and to send the copies to him at
Avignon. It might, at first sight, have seemed likely that the storms which
burst over the Papacy after the death of Gregory XI would have deterred the
Popes from showing favour to the Renaissance, which was now asserting its power
in the realm of literature, and yet it was actually at this very period that a
great number of the Humanists found admission into the Roman Court.
A closer study
of this time, in connection with which the previous years of the residence of
the Popes at Avignon must also be considered, will bring to light the causes of
the gradual and, in some respects, hazardous influx of Humanism into the Papal
Court. A review, of the History of the Popes from the beginning of the Exile to
Avignon until the end of the great Schism seems all the more necessary, as
without an intimate acquaintance with this period of peril to the Papacy, the
latter course of events cannot be understood.
In the progress
of the following work we shall show that the Renaissance gradually took root in
Rome under Martin V and Eugenius IV; that Albergati,
Cesarini, and Capranica, the most distinguished among
the wearers of the purple in the fifteenth century, encouraged Humanism in its
best tendencies; that the sojourn of Eugenius IV in Florence, and the General
Council held there, produced marked effects in the same direction; until at
last, in the person of Nicholas V, a man mounted the Throne of St. Peter, who,
full of confidence in the power of Christian Science, ventured to put himself
at the head of this great intellectual movement. This circumstance was the
beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Papacy, as well as in that of
science and art —an epoch which reached its climax in the reigns of Julius II
and Leo X.
It has often
been said that the Renaissance itself ascended the Papal Throne with Nicholas
V, yet it must not be forgotten that this great Pontiff was throughout on the
side of the genuine and Christian Renaissance. The founder of the Vatican
Library, like Fra Angelico whom he employed to paint his study in that Palace,
knew how to reconcile his admiration for the intellectual treasures of the past
with the claims of the Christian religion: he could honour both Cicero and St.
Augustine, and could appreciate the grandeur and beauty of heathen antiquity
without being thereby led to forget Christianity.
The leading idea
of Nicholas V was to make, the Capital of Christendom the Capital also of
classical literature and the centre of science and art. The realization of this
noble project was, however, attended with many difficulties and great dangers.
If Nicholas V overlooked or underestimated the perils which threatened
ecclesiastical interests from the side of the heathen and revolutionary
Renaissance, this is the only error that can be laid to his charge. His aim was
essentially lofty and noble and worthy of the Papacy. The fearlessness of this
large-hearted man, in face of the dangers of the movement—“a fearlessness which
has in it something imposing”—strikes us all the more forcibly, when we
consider the power and influence which the Renaissance had at this time
attained in Italy. The attempt to assume its guidance was a great deed, and one
worthy of the successor of the Gregories and
Innocents.
To make the
promotion of the Renaissance by the Holy See a matter of indiscriminate
reproach, betrays total ignorance of the subject. For, deep and widespread as
was the intellectual movement, excited by the resuscitation of the antique, it
involved no serious danger to Christian civilization, but rather was an
occasion of new activity and energy, as long as the unity and purity of the
Christian faith were maintained unimpaired under the authority of the Church
and her head. If in later days, in consequence of the undue influence obtained
by the heathen Renaissance, a very different development ensued; if the
intellectual wealth, won by the revived study of the past, was turned to evil
purposes, Nicholas V, whose motives were of the highest and purest, cannot be
held responsible. On the contrary, it is the glory of the Papacy that, even in
regard, to the great Renaissance movement, it manifested that magnanimous and
all-embracing comprehensiveness which is a portion of its inheritance. As long
as dogma was untouched, Nicholas V and his like-minded successors allowed the
movement the most ample scope; the founder of the Vatican Library had no
foreboding of the mischief which the satire of the Humanists was preparing. The
whole tenor of his pure life testifies that his words proceeded from an upright
heart, when he earnestly exhorted the Cardinals assembled around his death-bed
to follow the path he had chosen in labouring for the welfare of the Church
—the Bark of Peter, which, by the wonderful guidance of God, has ever been
delivered out of all storms.
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