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 THE 
 
 AGE OF THE RENASCENCE 
 
 AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 
 
 FROM THE RETURN FROM AVIGNON TO THE 
 
 SACK OF ROME (1377-1527) 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL VAN DYKE 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 
 (tleto Tgorft 
 Coffee ^v';n6tter'8 |&m«
 
 Copyright, 1896, 1897, bt 
 THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CO. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 Bf 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE
 
 AN INTRODUCTION. 
 
 HEN the writing of this book was pro- 
 posed to me, some years ago, I under- 
 took it with alacrity, on account of the 
 interest in the subject which I had long 
 cherished, and yet with some grave mis- 
 givings lest the pressure of other work, already prom- 
 ised, but not performed, should rob me of the time 
 needed to accomplish this task with thoroughness and 
 precision. For I knew the Age of the Renascence 
 well enough, through previous studies from the lit- 
 erary, artistic, and philosophic points of view, to see 
 that a man could not hope to make even an outline 
 sketch of the Church in this complex period without 
 much labor and steady thought. 
 
 The very brevity of the book proposed was an 
 added difficulty. It is hard to be concise without be- 
 coming inaccurate. To make the results of study clear 
 when the lack of space compels the omission of its 
 processes; to justify conclusions without giving au- 
 thorities; to condense volumes of reading into a 
 chapter of writing, and that chapter again into a 
 paragraph, and that paragraph into a single sentence; 
 to select the characters of men who really embody 
 
 vii-
 
 viii An Introduction. 
 
 the tendencies of their age ; and to find adjectives 
 which shall be equivalent to biographies, distinct and 
 vivid, without being unjust or violent; — in short, to 
 draw a convincing picture, not of a single generation 
 only, but of a movement which pervaded many gen- 
 erations and races, and to do this within the compass 
 of a few hundred pages, is an enterprise not to be 
 effected without serious toil. 
 
 Facing such a task as this, realizing its difficulties 
 more and more sharply as the plan of the book took 
 shape, and feeling at the same time the ever-increas- 
 ing demands of other duties and literary engage- 
 ments, I sought and gratefully welcomed the consent 
 of my brother to make this volume a joint labor of 
 fraternal authorship. Together we surveyed the 
 field, marked out its limitations, rejoiced in the rich- 
 ness of its promise, and groaned a little, yet not de- 
 spondently, at the prospect of the many hard places 
 and obstacles. 
 
 On this preliminary journey of exploration we 
 found ourselves in the full harmony of intellectual 
 comradeship. The purpose, the method, the guiding 
 principles of such a book as we wished to write 
 seemed to us plain and self-evident. Abstract theo- 
 ries of the nature of the Church troubled us little. 
 Special pleading for or against the Papacy disturbed 
 us even less. The question of absorbing interest was 
 not, What ought the Church to be in a correct scheme 
 of doctrine ? but, What was the Church in the actual 
 unfolding of human life? What part did the eccle- 
 siastical institution play in the conflicts of the Renas- 
 cence ? What did the idea of the Papacy mean as a
 
 An Introduction. ix 
 
 positive force, cooperating or conflicting with the 
 other forces of the age? How far did it affect, and 
 how far was 'it affected by, the influences which pro- 
 duced the great awakening of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries? What was the real relation of 
 the Church as an organization to Christianity as a 
 spiritual life? How potently did that spiritual life 
 make itself felt in the progress of the world ? 
 
 The answer to these questions was not a matter of 
 theory, but of fact. 
 
 We felt sure that it was not to be found in the 
 books of dogmatic theology or ecclesiastical history, 
 nor in the decrees of councils, nor in the bulls of 
 Popes, nor in the theses of reformers — except in so 
 far as all of these were veritable details in the great 
 panorama of life. Their value lay, not in what they 
 professed or claimed, but in what they actually rep- 
 resented. They were worth precisely what they 
 expressed, reduced to the terms of reality. 
 
 The answer to our questions must be sought chiefly 
 in the character of men and the history of nations. 
 The type of ecclesiastical society produced by the 
 contests between Pope and Antipope, the fashion of 
 moral amelioration effected by the Reforming Coun- 
 cils, the style of humanity in which the spreading tree 
 of Humanism bore its fruit — these were the things 
 which we were drawn to study, and from which we 
 hoped to derive some real and definite knowledge, to 
 clarify our conception of the past, to broaden our 
 judgment of the present, and to enlighten our vision 
 of the future. 
 
 But as the work proceeded it became evident that
 
 An Introduction. 
 
 the lion's share of it must fall to my brother. And 
 of this, for several reasons, I was very glad ; chiefly 
 because I was sure that his leisure, his industry, and 
 his long previous studies in the special department of 
 ecclesiastical history fitted him for the more careful 
 and complete accomplishment of our design. More- 
 over, there was a mortgage of other engagements, 
 particularly in connection with the Lectures on 
 Preaching at Yale University, in 1896, which more 
 than covered all my time and strength. 
 
 To his hands, therefore, the final execution of our 
 plan was committed. The collection of materials, the 
 workmanship, the filling in of the outline, are all his. 
 Such consultations as we have held in regard to the 
 work are not to be considered as in any sense edi- 
 torial or executive. The book as it stands belongs 
 altogether to him. Whatever credit it deserves for 
 scholarship, for clearness, for candor (and I hope that 
 is not small), must be given entirely to him. 
 
 For myself, it remains only to add this brief intro- 
 duction, which I gladly do at his request, in order 
 that the formative ideas of the work may not be mis- 
 understood, nor its limitations overlooked. 
 
 It is a serious misfortune for a book when people 
 come to the reading of it without a perception of what 
 it offers to them. But it is a still greater misfortune 
 when they come with an expectation of finding what 
 it was never meant to offer; for in the latter case 
 they are inclined to lay upon the author the blame 
 of a disappointment which belongs more properly to 
 the reader, and to criticise as defects those necessary 
 omissions which belong to a consistent plan.
 
 An Introduction. xi 
 
 Let it be understood, then, at the outset, that this 
 was not intended to be a small church history in the 
 technical sense, nor even a fragment of a larger 
 church history. The plan of the book was of a dif- 
 ferent nature. It was to give as graphic a view as 
 possible of a single act in the great life- drama of 
 humanity. 
 
 This act was the crisis of the Papal Church in that 
 period of intellectual and social reconstruction called 
 the Age of the Renascence, which transformed the 
 mediaeval into the modern world. 
 
 The scene opens with the return of the Pope from 
 Avignon to Rome in 1377. It closes with the sack 
 of Rome by the Spanish-German army, under the 
 Due de Bourbon, in 1527. Between these two points 
 lies the dramatic story of a corrupt ecclesiastical 
 body stubbornly resisting all attempts at reform from 
 within and without, and at last succumbing to the 
 pressure of great social and moral world-forces, which 
 it was too prejudiced to comprehend, too proud to 
 acknowledge, except for brief intervals, and too im- 
 potent to withstand, save with the fatal obstinacy of 
 inherent weakness. 
 
 In sketching this story it was not intended to give 
 full details of the various events and the manifold 
 conflicts between nations and dynasties and parties 
 and schools which entered into it. The exigencies 
 of space would not permit this, even if the nature of 
 the plan demanded it. Nor was it intended that the 
 book should present references and lists of authori- 
 ties to support its conclusions. Much as this might 
 have been desired, it would be manifestly impossible
 
 xii An Introduction. 
 
 in such a brief compass. Not even all of the great 
 features of the Age of the Renascence could be in- 
 cluded. The development of university life has been 
 barely touched; the artistic revival has been alto- 
 gether passed over — to my own regret, but doubtless 
 for good reasons. 
 
 This wholesale process of omission was necessary 
 in order to make room on the small canvas for the 
 picture which we had in mind. Details which were 
 not essential must be left out, lest they should ob- 
 scure the vital features. A process of negative ex- 
 aggeration must be used to arrive at a clear view of 
 the positive truth. 
 
 It would be better, for example, to omit the ar- 
 ticles of many treaties, and the chronicles of many 
 dynastic wars, and the records of many synods and 
 councils, than to fail to give a vivid presentment of 
 such men as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Poggio, and Filelfo, 
 in Italy; Pierre d'Ailly, John of Gerson, and Faber 
 Stapulensis, in France ; Wiclif, Colet, More, and 
 Tyndale, in England ; Reuchlin and Ulrich von Hut- 
 ten, in Germany ; and Erasmus, that great intellec- 
 tual cosmopolite. These men, and others like them, 
 were, in fact, the makers of a new world in letters, in 
 morals, in manners. It is impossible to know any- 
 thing about the Age of the Renascence without get- 
 ting at least a glimpse of these men as they lived and 
 moved and had their intellectual being. 
 
 Nor can the varying and tragic fortunes of the 
 Papacy during that eventful period be understood 
 without a clear, though swift, glance into the interior 
 life and personality of such popes as Nicholas V., the
 
 An Introduction. xiii 
 
 first Humanist Pontiff; Pius II., the clever litterateur 
 and diplomatist ; Sixtus IV., the terrible man with 
 many nephews'; Alexander VI., the Pontifex Maximus 
 of gallantry, whose patron goddess was Venus ; Julius 
 II., who ruled and fought under the sign of Mars; 
 and Leo X., whose tutelary deity was Pallas Athene. 
 From the first conception of this book it was intended 
 to give more space to the graphic depiction of these 
 and other like typical figures than to the formal 
 narration of what is ordinarily called ecclesiastical 
 history. 
 
 But it was foreseen at the outset that the actors 
 in the drama would be found divided, by the crisis 
 of events, into two classes, antagonistic, irreconcilable, 
 and often apparently incapable of understanding each 
 other. And so, in fact, it has proved to be in the 
 writing of the book. 
 
 Here they stand, distinctly marked — the two great 
 parties that have always contended for the guidance 
 of mankind : the men of institutions, and the men of 
 ideas; the men whose supreme allegiance binds them 
 to an organization, and the men whose ultimate loy- 
 alty is to the truth ; Wiclif and Huss and Savonarola 
 and Hutten and Luther and Zwingli, against the 
 Roman Curia and its defenders. Many of the men 
 whose intellectual sympathies drew them to the party 
 of ideas were bound by the deeper links of character 
 to the party of institutions. To this class belong 
 Reuchlin and Erasmus, Colet and More, Gerson and 
 d'Ailly, and most of the elder Humanists. They 
 were too fond of ancient order, too timid of change 
 and confusion and possible misrule, ever to break with
 
 xiv An Introduction. 
 
 the Church, which obstinately resisted the reforming 
 influence of ideas. But their personal hesitations 
 were impotent to prevent the inevitable results of 
 their work. Reuchlin might plead with his nephew 
 Melancthon to beware of friendship with the heret- 
 ical Martin Luther, but the affectionate solicitation 
 went for nothing against the irresistible impulses of 
 an awakened reason, a new-born scholarship, and a 
 liberated conscience. 
 
 The younger Humanists, almost to a man, de- 
 serted the party of institutions for the party of 
 ideas. The Bible was set free from the bondage 
 of tradition and given to the common people — in 
 German by Luther (1522), in French by Faber 
 Stapulensis (1523), and in English by William Tyn- 
 dale (1525). Thus the issue was clearly defined: 
 Must a man believe what the Church teaches, no 
 matter what the Bible says? or must the Church 
 teach what men really believe, reading the Bible anew 
 in the light of reason and the moral sense? Around 
 this point the warfare of the Reformation was waged. 
 It was the chief service of the Renascence as an in- 
 tellectual and social movement that it brought this 
 point of irrepressible conflict into distinct view, made 
 it plain and distinct, and produced, in the service of 
 literature and philosophy, the weapons which were at 
 last used for the emancipation of faith. 
 
 In tracing the preliminary skirmishes of this mighty 
 conflict, and describing the preparation of the arma- 
 ment with which it was to be fought, it was intended 
 that this book should be impartial without being in- 
 vertebrate. Our intention was to lay aside prejudices,
 
 An Introduction. xv 
 
 but not to conceal convictions; to do justice to the 
 character of men like Hadrian of Corneto, and the 
 Cardinal Ximenes, and Adrian VI., without justify- 
 ing their position. For, both in its conception and 
 in its execution, this book proceeds from the stand- 
 point that ideas are above institutions, and that lib- 
 erty of reason and conscience is more precious than 
 orthodoxy of doctrine. 
 
 Glancing forward over the contents of the volume 
 as my brother has written it, I see that the composi- 
 tion of the picture, under his hands, has taken such 
 a simple and natural form that it may be easily de- 
 scribed in a few paragraphs. 
 
 First we have a brief review of the three forces 
 which had changed the face of the world when the 
 Pope came back to Rome from the Babylonian Cap- 
 tivity in France. The new patriotism, the new de- 
 mocracy, and the new learning — these were the 
 equipollent and inseparable factors of the Renascence, 
 now fully in action ; and with these the Catholic 
 Church had to reckon, if she would maintain her su- 
 premacy, or even her existence. 
 
 Then we have an account of the earnest efforts 
 which were made to reform the Church from within. 
 These efforts proceeded from four chief springs : 
 
 1. The revivals of religion in Italy, under the lead- 
 ership of such enthusiasts as St. Catherine of Siena 
 and Savonarola. 
 
 2. The national movement for reform in England, 
 inspired by the teaching and influence of Wiclif and 
 the Lollards. 
 
 3. The powerful after-echo of this movement in
 
 XVI 
 
 An Introduction. 
 
 Bohemia, under the guidance of John Huss and Je- 
 rome of Prague. 
 
 4. The party of Conciliar Supremacy in the 
 Catholic Church, resisting the encroachments of 
 Papal absolution, and demanding, through men like 
 Gerson and d'Ailly, " the reform of the Church in 
 head and members." 
 
 At the Council of Constance we see the last two of 
 these forces falling foul of each other; and in the 
 stories of Huss and Savonarola and the followers of 
 Wiclif we read the fate of the men who dreamed that 
 the Papacy could be reformed without the shedding 
 of blood. 
 
 The four movements for the purification of the 
 Church from within failed because they were essen- 
 tially ecclesiastical. The tremendous momentum of 
 the corrupt machine was too great to be checked by 
 any resistance, save one which should have a firm 
 foothold outside of the body to be checked, and abun- 
 dant sources of independent strength. The ground 
 for such a resistance was being prepared in Germany, 
 in France, and in England during all the years of 
 turmoil and shame and despair while the Papacy was 
 punishing the passionate endeavors of the best mem- 
 bers of the Church to reform it, and rewarding the 
 successful conspiracies of its worst members to dis- 
 grace it. 
 
 The instrument of this preparation was the Re- 
 nascence. It was not so much a mechanical alteration 
 of the structure of human thought and society as it 
 was a chemical change in the very elements of their 
 composition. It transformed the scattered fragments
 
 An Introduction. xvii 
 
 of knowledge into the solid rock of scholarship. It 
 metamorphosed the thoughts and feelings of men 
 with the ardent heat of the love of learning, and 
 crystallized their imaginations by the introduction of 
 the historic spirit. It loosened, at least for a time, 
 the solidarity of European Christendom ; but it 
 substituted for the treacherous debris of the failing 
 sentiment of universal brotherhood, which no longer 
 afforded a trustworthy footing, new points of coher- 
 ence and support, in the sentiments of nationality 
 and the patriotic enthusiasms which were begotten 
 and intensified by the spread of historic knowledge 
 and by the increase of once barbarous countries in 
 wisdom, wealth, and power. 
 
 The book traces this process — hastily, of course, 
 and in mere outline, and yet, it seems to me, with a 
 true comprehension of its deep significance and far- 
 reaching results. The endeavor of the writer is not 
 to show what the Reformation added to the Renas- 
 cence ; that is another story, and belongs to a later 
 volume. But this book is an attempt to exhibit what 
 the Renascence did for the Reformation. 
 
 There can be no question whatever, and I think it 
 can be seen from this book, that the two movements 
 which were actually crowned with some measure of 
 success in the purification of Christian faith and life 
 — namely, the Protestant Reformation under Luther 
 and Zwingli and Calvin, and the Catholic Reaction in 
 the latter half of the sixteenth century — were both 
 the legitimate offspring of the Renascence. If there 
 had been no liberty of scholarship there never would 
 have been an open Bible. If there had been no re-
 
 xviii An Introduction. 
 
 vival of patriotism the Germans never would have 
 backed Luther against the world to defend his right 
 of interpreting the Scriptures. 
 
 And so if the book is to have a lesson drawn from 
 it, it must be this: The fortunes of the Church as an 
 institution depend upon the same laws which God 
 has implanted in all human society, and through which 
 He continually manifests His presence and power. 
 There is no ecclesiastical history apart from secular 
 history. The Church which rests upon authority 
 alone must take its chances with the other dynasties. 
 No appeal to the supernatural can shield its preten- 
 sions from the searching tests of reason and conscience. 
 The Christianity which is to survive and maintain its 
 claims in the face of the world must be in harmony 
 with the primal moral forces, love of liberty, love of 
 truth, love of real goodness. 
 
 Henry van Dyke. 
 
 New York, July 32, 1897.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 From the Return from Avignon to the Accession of Nicholas V. 
 
 0377-1447). 
 
 Introductory Retrospect. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. — The Growth of Patriotism or the Sense of 
 Nationality i 
 
 CHAP. II. — New Theories of the Seat of Sovereignty 
 and the Rising Tide of Democracy u 
 
 CHAP. III. — The New Learning — Petrarch, the Pro- 
 totype of the Humanists 20 
 
 CHAP. IV — The Condition in which the Returning Pope 
 Found Italy and the Patrimony of St. Peter — The 
 Beginning of the Great Schism — Two Vicars of 
 Christ Fight for the Tiara 35 
 
 CHAP. V. — John Wici.if of England, and his Protest 
 
 against Papal War 46 
 
 CHAP. VI. — Pope and Antipope — The White Penitents 
 at Rome — The Siege of Avignon — The Followers of 
 Petrarch, the Humanists, or Men of the New 
 
 Learning 59 
 
 xix
 
 xx Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. VII.— Orthodox Demands for Union and Re- 
 form : (i) Catherine of Siena and the Ascetic Pro- 
 phets of Righteousness; (2) The Party of Conciliar 
 Supremacy 69 
 
 CHAP. VIII. — The Council of Pisa Makes the Schism 
 
 Triple — The Protest of John Huss of Bohemia 79 
 
 CHAP. IX. — The Council of Constance and Triumph of 
 the Party of Conciliar Supremacy: (i) They Depose 
 the Popes and Force Union; (2) They Repudiate 
 the Bohemian Protest and Burn Huss; (3) They 
 Fail to Determine the Reform of the Church in 
 Head and Members 90 
 
 CHAP. X. — The Papal Reaction — The Struggle for the 
 Patrimonium — Martin V. and Eugenius IV. Reestab- 
 lish the Papal Supremacy without Granting Re- 
 form — The Protest and Abortive Schism of the 
 Council of Basle m 
 
 CHAP. XI. — The Spread of Humanism 122 
 
 PERIOD n. 
 
 From the Accession of the First Humanist Pope to the French 
 Invasion of Italy (J447-J494). 
 
 CHAP. XII. — Nicholas V., the First Humanist Pope, 
 Makes Rome the Home of the Muses — The War of 
 the Monks and the Humanists 151 
 
 CHAP. XIII. — Calixtus III., the Old Spaniard, his 
 Family Pride and his Zeal against the Infidel — 
 Pius II., the Cultured Man of the World who Died 
 a Crusader — Paul II., the Splendor-loving Vene- 
 tian Nepot 164 
 
 CHAP. XIV. — The New Learning Crosses the Alps — 
 Its Spread in France — The Forerunners of German 
 Humanism 1 76 
 
 CHAP. XV. — The Man of the Renascence on the 
 Throne of St. Peter— Sixtus IV., the Terrible 193 
 
 CHAP. XVI.— Innocent VIII., the Sultan's Jailer- 
 Alexander VI., the Handsome Spanish Nepot — The 
 French Invasion 206
 
 Contents. xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. XVII. — Savonarola and Freedom 317 
 
 PERIOD m. 
 
 From the French Invasion to the Sack of Rome (1494-1527), 
 
 CHAP. XVIII.— The Household of Alexander VI.— The 
 Prophet of Righteousness and the Vicar of Christ 299 
 
 CHAP. XIX. — The Fall of the House of Borgia 248 
 
 CHAP. XX. — Humanism in Europe from the Accession 
 of slxtus iv. to the death of alexander vi. (147i— 
 1503) — The Florentine Academy and the Oxford 
 School — Faber Stapulensis and his Pupils at Paris 
 — John Reuchlin and the Older Humanists of Ger- 
 many — Erasmus 262 
 
 CHAP. XXI. — Julius II. and Leo X. — The Nephew of 
 slxtus iv. and the son of lorenzo the magnificent 
 become Popes 286 
 
 CHAP. XXII. — Transalpine Humanism under Julius and 
 Leo — (1) The Battle of the Books about John 
 Reuchlin ; (2) The Three Disciples of the Philosophy 
 of Christ; (3) The Pupils of Faber Stapulensis; (4) 
 Ulrich Zwingli 302 
 
 CHAP. XXIII. —The Court of Leo X.— Humanism in 
 
 Italy and Spain — The Three Boy Kings 321 
 
 CHAP. XXIV. — The North Loses Patience with the 
 Papacy — The Leaders of Revolt in Germany, 
 Switzerland, France, and England 339 
 
 CHAP. XXV. — Adrian VI., the Honest Orthodox Ec- 
 clesiastic — The Older Humanists of the North 
 Stand by the Church — The Younger Appeal to the 
 New Testament — Clement VII., the Heir of the 
 Medici 356 
 
 CHAP. XXVI.— The Sack of Rome 366 
 
 A List of the Popes and Antipopes 379 
 
 A List ok the Humanists Mentioned 380
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 FROM THE RETURN FROM AVIGNON TO THE 
 ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS V. (1377-1447).
 
 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT. 
 
 (CHAPTERS I., II., III.) 
 
 THE FORCES THAT HAD CHANGED THE CONDI- 
 TIONS OF POWER DURING THE SEVENTY 
 YEARS OF THE PAPAL ABSENCE FROM ROME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF PATRIOTISM OR THE SENSE OF 
 
 NATIONALITY. 
 
 N the 17th of January, 1377, all Rome 
 was early afoot, and a great crowd 
 streamed across the fields of Mount 
 Aventinus to the gate of St. Paul, open- 
 ing toward the sea. There the clergy of 
 the city were gathered in festal array to receive the 
 Pope. Landing from his galley, which had ascended 
 the river from Ostia and lain at anchor all night just 
 below the great Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls, 
 Gregory XI. heard mass, and the festal procession 
 started to enter the gate. Two thousand men-at- 
 arms, commanded by his nephew, Raymond. Vicomte
 
 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of Turenne, guarded the gorgeous train. Behind the 
 great banner of the Church, borne by the gray-haired 
 Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, came the 
 Pope, riding on a splendidly caparisoned palfrey be- 
 neath a baldachin carried by Roman nobles. Around 
 him moved a glittering cavalcade of cardinals and 
 bishops, and a company of white-robed clowns and 
 tumblers, the usual companions of all stately proces- 
 sions, heralded his approach. In the gate stood the 
 Senator of Rome in full armor, with the councillors 
 and captains, waiting to put into Gregory's hands the 
 keys of the city. As he passed on his long journey 
 through the fields and streets to the other side of the 
 circle of walls, the entire population greeted him with 
 shouts of joy. Every bell was ringing, and from the 
 crowded roofs and windows of the houses wreaths 
 and flowers were showered into streets hung with 
 tapestry and banners. It was evening before the 
 slow procession reached St. Peter's, brilliant with 
 eighteen thousand lamps, and the exhausted Pope 
 could at last kneel by the tomb of the apostles to 
 give thanks to God for his return to the city of the 
 Church. So after a willing exile of seventy years the 
 successor of St. Peter came back from the huge new 
 palace on the banks of the Rhone to the ancient 
 Vatican on the banks of the Tiber. 
 
 It was the end of the alliance of the Papacy with 
 the house of France, called by all but those who 
 caused and profited by it the " Babylonian Captivity 
 of the Church." Five successive Popes, each bishop 
 of the bishops because he was Bishop of Rome, had 
 never entered their cathedral of the Lateran, and
 
 Introductory Retrospect. 
 
 Christendom rejoiced when Gregory had returned to 
 his first duty. 
 
 But while the Popes had been neglecting their own 
 city to become the allies and then the vassals of the 
 kings of France, three generations had made a new 
 world, and the opportunities and conditions of power 
 were changed. Old institutions were decayed, and 
 new social, political, and religious forces were finding 
 expression. 
 
 The first of these great forces limiting the power 
 of the Papacy was the newly developed sense of na~ 
 tionalit j^ In order to appreciate the bearing of this 
 new force on problems of the government of the 
 Church we must recall by suggestion the past rela- 
 tions of the Papacy to the political organization of 
 Europe. When Christianity was made the religion of 
 the Roman Empire under Constantine it became part 
 of an ideal in which all nations were to form a single 
 social organism holding one faith and obeying one 
 government. And even when the barbarian inva- 
 sion had broken the wall of Trajan and overrun Gaul, 
 Spain, Italy, and Africa, men still mistook memories 
 for hopes and looked to see order brought out of 
 chaos by the reestablishment of the law of the empire. 
 The very conquerors gazed with awe upon the mighty 
 social organization they had overthrown. Able to 
 destroy, but not to create, they respected the Roman 
 law and the Roman Church, and permitted their sub- 
 jects to be judged by the one and consoled by the 
 other. And as successive waves of invasion poured 
 in till it seemed as if the richest and most civilized 
 lands of the ancient world were to become the desolate
 
 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 possessions of predatory tribes, the thoughts of men 
 turned with increasing desire toward the unity and 
 peace which had been the ideal of the empire. So 
 when the Franks had beaten back the Saracens from 
 the plain of Tours, saving Europe, like the Greeks 
 before them, from slavery to Asia, they aspired to 
 the yet greater task of reestablishing the Empire of 
 the West to give peace and justice from the Medi- 
 terranean to the Baltic and from the ocean to the 
 Danube. Charles the Great, perhaps the one most 
 necessary and indispensable man in the history of 
 the Western races, gathered together all the forms 
 of law and religion in which there seemed a pos- 
 sibility of life, and on Christmas day of the year 
 800 was crowned by Pope Leo III. Emperor of the 
 West. The ideal which this ceremony expressed is 
 clearly shown in a mosaic designed by order of the 
 Pope. Christ appears in it twice : above, as Saviour, 
 surrounded by the apostles, whom he is sending forth 
 to preach ; below, seated as ruler of the world. On 
 his right kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the Em- 
 peror Constantine ; to the one he is handing the keys 
 of heaven and hell, to the other the banner of the 
 Cross. In the opposite arch the Apostle Peter sits, 
 with Leo and Charles kneeling on either hand to re- 
 ceive the pallium of an archbishop and the banner of 
 the Church militant. The circumscription is, " Glory 
 to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all men 
 of good will." The makers of that mosaic hoped 
 they had founded a divine institution with two heads, 
 one supreme in spiritual, the other in temporal things, 
 and both holding their power of God.
 
 The Church and the Empire. 
 
 But the double eagle of Russia is not more impos- 
 sible in the animal kingdom than the realization of 
 this ideal in the realm of practical politics. The 
 mediaeval Church was so much of an empire, and the 
 mediaeval empire so much of a church, that neither 
 seems to have been able to maintain its power for 
 any long period without the aid of the other. But in 
 spite of this common need it is difficult to find any 
 pair of a great Pope and a great emperor who could 
 dwell together in peace. 
 
 When the empire was weak the undefended Papacy 
 became the prey of the fierce factions of the Roman 
 nobility, and Popes who disgraced the throne of St. 
 Peter sank to every conceivable depth of infamy. 
 When a strong emperor defended by Teutonic sol- 
 diers the purity of elections and placed upon the 
 throne a man worthy the office, he or his successor 
 began a desperate struggle to secure those rights 
 of appointing or investing bishops and abbots which 
 the Emperor claimed for himself. In this struggle 
 the Papacy had two favorite weapons: first, to stir 
 up rebellion in the empire by means of the interdict 
 and excommunication ; and second, to create out- 
 side of the bounds of the empire a system of states 
 whose rulers were willing to acknowledge, what the 
 successors of Charles always denied, that the Popes 
 not only consecrated, but conferred their authority 
 and crowns. This policy, begun under Sylvester II. 
 (999-1003), created, by direct gift of the crown 
 through the Pope as the Vicar of Christ and ruler of 
 rulers, a tier of kingdoms between the borders of the 
 Eastern and Western empires: Hungary, 1000, Po-
 
 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 land soon after, Croatia, 1076, Servia and Bulgaria in 
 the thirteenth century. Then the Popes turned to 
 the south and west to create the kingdoms of Naples, 
 Aragon, Portugal, the Island of Man, the kingdoms 
 of Scotland, Norway, the double kingdom of Corsica- 
 Sardinia, and the kingdom of Trinacria. The Eng- 
 lish King became a feudal vassal of the Pope, and 
 some of his successors paid tribute in a subjection 
 considered so complete that a legate who took off his 
 cap in the presence of the King was much blamed 
 at the Papal court. Clement VI., going out into 
 the unknown, even created (1344) for Louis of Castile 
 a kingdom of the yet undiscovered Fortunate Isles. 
 The swords of the vassals of the Papacy and the 
 power to give the sanctions of religion to every re- 
 bellious vassal of the empire made the Popes too 
 strong for the emperors. The last members of the 
 imperial house of Hohenstaufen died in a vain attempt 
 to maintain their power over the kingdom of Sicily, 
 which the Popes had given to Charles of Anjou to be 
 held as a fief of the Church. For sixty years there 
 was no emperor, and when Henry VII., half by force 
 and half by entreaty, received the crown at the Lat- 
 eran from the hands of a cardinal in a ceremony 
 shorn of many of its ancient rites, his rebellious 
 Italian subjects held St. Peter's, and the bolts of their 
 crossbows fell among the guests at the imperial 
 banquet. 
 
 The end and aim of the Papal policy was clearly 
 shown when Boniface VIII. changed the ancient 
 mitre for the modern triple Papal crown and appeared 
 before the pilgrims of the jubilee of 1300 one day in
 
 Papal Servitude to France. 
 
 the Papal, the next in the imperial robes, shouting 
 aloud, " I am Caesar — I am Emperor ["■}/ 
 
 But in destroying the empire and trusting their 
 defence to the system of Papal States they had cre- 
 ated, the Popes had prepared a weapon that could be 
 turned against themselves. Kings, once grown 
 strong, were as unwilling as emperors to submit to 
 Papal control. France, from whom came the blow 
 which revealed the hollowness of this Papal politics, 
 was not, indeed, a member of the system of Papal 
 States. Her kings had grown great without becom- 
 ing vassals of the throne of St. Peter. But as against 
 the empire she had always been closely allied to it, 
 and the brother of King Louis had done homage to 
 Clement IV. (1265) f° r the kingdom of Sicily, and 
 become the protagonist in the fight against the em- 
 pire which extinguished the race of Hohenstaufen. r 
 Philip the iHa«ry> however, cared little for past A 
 alliances, and his final answer to the pretensions of 
 Boniface was to assault him in his own palace at 
 Anagni (1303) by a band of mercenaries — a degrada- 
 tion so bitter to the proud old man that he died in a few 
 weeks. His successor ruled a little more than a year, 
 and after a conclave of nine months, the lobbying of 
 Philip elected a Pope who transferred the chair of St. 
 Peter to the banks of the Rhone. During the seventy 
 years it remained there the preponderance of French 
 
 1 There is some doubt as to the exactness of this anecdote, but none 
 about the bull Unam Sanctam, which in 1302 asserted: " There are 
 two swords, the temporal and the spiritual ; both are in the power of 
 the Church, but one is held by the Church herself, the other by kings 
 only with the assent and by sufferance of the Sovereign Pontiff. Every 
 human being is subject to the Roman Pontiff, and to believe this is 
 necessary for salvation."
 
 8 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 influence became steadily more evident. The pro- 
 portion of Frenchmen in the College of Cardinals in- 
 creased. Now it was thirteen out of eighteen, now 
 it rose to twenty-five out of twenty-eight, and again 
 to nineteen out of twenty-one. In one short space 
 of a few years the Papacy and the Pope's brother lent 
 3,500,000 florins (probably equal in purchasing power 
 to $40,000,000) to the French court. 
 
 From a Vicar of Christ who had abandoned the 
 ancient capital of the world to become the tool of a 
 French king men turned instinctively to the eternal 
 King he represented, and the victorious English sol- 
 diers at Poictiers showed the error of the Papacy and 
 the drift of events when they sang: 
 
 " If the Pope is French, 
 Christ is English." 
 
 In England this Papal subservience to the interests 
 of France strengthened the ancient opposition to the 
 interference of the Pope in English affairs. And in 
 particular Englishmen resented the sale of ecclesias- 
 tical offices to foreign incumbents, who without ever 
 visiting their charges drew the rents and incomes by 
 proxies and spent them in the luxurious Papal court 
 at Avignon. England had thrilled at the letter of 
 good old Robert of Lincoln protesting against the 
 order of the Pope bestowing a canonry in his cathedral 
 upon an Italian, Frederick of Lavagna (1^3). He 
 declined to obey it as unapostolic, declaring it to be, 
 " not a cure, but a murder of souls," " when those 
 who are appointed to a pastoral charge only use the 
 milk and the wool of the sheep to satisfy their own
 
 English and German Patriotism. 9 
 
 bodily necessities." And one hundred years later 
 the Parliament (1351-53) forbade by statute the in- 
 troduction into England of provisors or Papal bulls 
 which interfered with the filling of English ecclesias- 
 tical offices by Englishmen, and forbade appeals to 
 Rome by which causes involving the persons or prop- 
 erty of ecclesiastics could be freed from the law of 
 England. It was that revol t jpf^pa triot ism against 
 ecclesi astical encroachment, often felt by those en- 
 tirely faithful to the spiritual teaching of the Catholic 
 Church, which found its classic expression, eight 
 generations later, in the words which Shakespeare 
 put into the mouth of King John : 
 
 " No Italian priest 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 
 But as we under Heaven are supreme head, 
 So under him, that great supremacy, 
 Where we do reign we will alone uphold, 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand. 
 So tell the Pope ; all reverence set apart, 
 To him and his usurped authority." 
 
 Even in Germany, a prey to the greed of rapacious 
 princelings whose people were to wait five hundred 
 years for national unity, the assumptions of a Pope 
 who seemed to use temporal control as a tool of the 
 French King called out the spirit of patriotism with- 
 out the form thereof. Pope John XXII. (1316-34) 
 longed to free Italy from foreign influence and unite 
 the entire peninsula under the political headship of 
 the Papacy. He endeavored to accomplish this by 
 diplomacy, and as a move in his deep and dangerous 
 game of politics it became needful to depose Lewis 
 of Bavaria from the kingship of Germany. Taking
 
 io The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 advantage of the party strifes of the German princes, 
 the Pope drove him by ban and interdict to the 
 utmost straits. But when Lewis, in despair, was 
 on the point of surrendering his claim to the crown, 
 the publication of a single fact put all Germany 
 for the moment behind him. His rival had secretly 
 agreed to pledge the ancient kingdom of Arelat 
 to France as security for costs incurred by the 
 King in acting as mediator between the empire 
 / and the Pope. A storm of wrath denounced the 
 bargain. Then the Pope issued a bull separating the 
 Italian lands of the empire from all connection with 
 the kingdom of Germany. All Germany rose at the 
 insult, and for the first time in generations almost 
 every German city and prince and bishop joined in 
 common action. By the vote of six of the great 
 princes, confirmed by a Reichstag at Frankfort, dis- 
 ordered and disunited Germany declared that " the 
 imperial dignity and power proceeded from of old 
 directly through the Son of God. . . . Because, 
 nevertheless, some, led by ambition and without 
 understanding of Scripture, . . . falsely assert that the 
 imperial dignity comes from the Pope, . . . and by 
 such pestiferous dogmas the ancient enemy moves 
 discord . . . and brings about seditions, therefore 
 we declare that by the old right and custom of the 
 empire, after any one is chosen emperor ... he is 
 in consequence of the election alone to be called true 
 king and emperor of the Romans, and ought to be 
 obeyed by all subjects of the empire."
 
 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NEW THEORIES OF THE SEAT OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 AND THE RISING TIDE OF DEMOCRACY. 
 
 HIS political change, by which during the 
 thirteenth century the peoples became 
 conscious of their national aspirations, 
 found expression in theories concerning 
 the seat of authority and the nature of 
 power. Literature, which in the hands of the school- 
 men had become the advocate of Papal claims, be- 
 gan to express the strongest and most searching 
 criticism of them. About the court of the Emperor 
 gathered a little knot of men of different nations, 
 whose brilliant polemic writings attracted attention 
 by the boldness and skill with which they attacked 
 the whole logical edifice of the scholastic theory of 
 Papal Supremacy. The English Franciscan, William 
 of Occam, the most distinguished philosopher of his 
 day; the Fleming, Jean of Jandun, celebrated dia 
 lectician of the Paris schools; the Italian, Michael 
 of Cesena, General of the Franciscans ; Brother Bona- 
 gratia, the distinguished theologian and jurist ; the 
 German, Henry of Thalheim, and others, formed the 
 strongest literary coterie of the age, with Marsilius 
 
 ii
 
 1 2 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of Padua, a well-known lawyer and physician, as 
 their brightest star. His book, " The Defender of 
 Peace against the Usurped Jurisdiction of the Roman 
 Pontiff," was a daring arraignment and reversal of 
 traditional judgments about the source of authority 
 in Church and State. For instance, he asserts that 
 " church " in its apostolic use means the entire body 
 of Christian men, and that all Christians, be they 
 clergy or laymen, are churchmen. Temporal pains 
 and penalties do not belong to the law of the Gospel, 
 which is not a law at all, but a doctrine. "Bishop" 
 and "priest" are used interchangeably in the New 
 Testament. The popedom, a useful symbol of the 
 unity of the Church, is an institution begun later 
 than the apostolic age, whose historical growth is 
 clearly traceable. The bishops of Rome gained pre- 
 eminence, not as St. Peter's successors, but from 
 the connection of their see with the ancient capital of 
 the Roman Empire. The sovereignty of the State 
 rests with the people. By them the laws are properly 
 made, and their "validity comes from the people's 
 sovereignty. The community of the citizens, or their 
 majority, expressing its will by representatives, is 
 supreme. Government requires a unity of office, not 
 necessarily of number. But if, as is usually wisest, 
 a king be chosen, he must be supported by enough 
 force to overpower the riotous few, but not the mass 
 of the nation. In the ecclesiastical organization, also, 
 the authority rests not with the hierarchy, but is 
 derived from the whole Church, and the priestly class 
 are only their executives, responsible to a General 
 Council formed of clergy and laity alike. The clergy
 
 The Tide of Democracy. 13 
 
 are the executives of the Church only in spiritual 
 affairs. Their property and incomes are as much 
 subject to the civil law as those of their lay brethren. 
 His office does not change the responsibility of a 
 clergyman to the civil law, for if he should steal or 
 murder, who would say that these were to be re- 
 garded as spiritual acts? These opinions were 
 formally condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities, 
 and Marsilius was denounced as a radical innovator 
 who would destroy Church and State. 
 
 Such bold denials of the theories which had been 
 formed to support the social and ecclesiastical insti- 
 tutions of the middle ages had but little direct effect 
 outside of the circle of clerks and theologians to 
 whom they were addressed, but they were dimly 
 felt and half-unconsciously formulated during the 
 fourteenth century in political changes by which 
 the feudal power and privileges of civil and ecclesi- 
 astical lords were in some places checked, in others 
 destroyed, by the efforts of a middle class of 
 burgher merchants or manufacturers and small landed 
 freeholders. And behind and beneath these politi- 
 cal changes there could be heard the half-articulate 
 murmur of the r ising tide of democracy, with its 
 claim that men are equal before God and the laws, 
 and its hope of a society so organized and governed 
 that none should ever want but the idle and vicious. 
 
 It has been well said that mediaeval man was 
 chiefly occupied with the acquisition or defence 
 of privileges. Feudal society was divided into 
 very strictly separated classes, and the unwritten 
 principle at its foundation was that all rights not ex -
 
 14 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 pressly granted to a lower class were reserved for the 
 higher. Time had been when the enjoyment of these 
 privileges meant the performance of certain necessary 
 duties. The castle of the lord, around which the 
 wattled mud huts of the peasants clung like swallows' 
 nests, may have been the abode of tyranny, but it 
 was also a refuge from robbery. To be unbound to 
 any community, large or small, which thus possessed 
 a leader and the means of self-protection, was to be 
 exposed to unlimited outrage in a time when every 
 man did that which was right in his own eyes to all 
 who did not belong to his own community. And it 
 came to pass that to be a landless^ man was to be 
 thpjught_an_outlaw, and to be a lordiess man a thief. 
 But as society became more orderly and private war 
 less incessant, these privileges became oppressive to a 
 people no longer bound to their superiors by perils 
 shared, or grateful for defence against danger. And 
 peasant and burgher, chafing under the bondage of 
 those to whom they were compelled to render ser- 
 vices without service in return, began everywhere to 
 long passionately for legal equality or freedom. 
 A single circumstance gave force to this long- 
 cherished desire. Misery alone is sterile, and the 
 dead weight of injustice will either crush a people 
 to a servile temper or provoke a despair that 
 perishes by its own ferocity. The conscious- 
 ness of power is needed to animate a useful revo- 
 lution. And during the fourteenth century this 
 consciousness was diffused among the common people 
 in some parts of western Europe by the demonstration 
 of the irresistible force on the battle-field of a properly
 
 The Flemish Burghers. 15 
 
 drilled and handled infantry. So long as the knight, 
 with a couple of esquires and a score of professional 
 men-at-arms cased in steel, mounted on heavy horses, 
 and trained to ride and fence, was more than a match 
 for the men of a dozen villages who had never learned 
 how to march or to hold the simplest formation, re- 
 volt among the lower classes meant only the treach- 
 erous and useless murder of some isolated oppressors. 
 
 It was just at the turn of the thirteenth century 
 (1302) when the shock of Courtrai sounded through 
 the world. Twenty thousand Flemish artisans were 
 brought to bay in a great plain by the much larger 
 army of France. The few dispossessed nobles who 
 were their military leaders killed their horses and 
 knighted thirty merchants as a sign of fellowship, 
 and shouting their war-cry of " Shield and friend!" 
 the solid mass of men stood stoutly with boar-spears 
 and iron-shod clubs against the French charge. In 
 two hours fifteen thousand fallen men-at-arms choked 
 the ditch which guarded their front, or were scattered 
 over the plain. They covered the walls of the ca- 
 thedral of Courtrai with the gilded spurs of the 
 knights, and the roll of the dead sounds like a mus- 
 ter of the nobility of France — " fallen," as the chroni- 
 cler laments, " by the hands of villeins." This con- 
 sciousness of power gave hope, and from hope came 
 effort. Therefore the fourteenth century is marked in 
 many parts of the world by desperate struggles for 
 liberty on the part of the peasant and artisan classes 
 rising out of a half-servile condition. 
 
 The relation of this struggle to religion, and to 
 the social and moral conditions with which religion
 
 1 6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 {is concerned, may best be illustrated by the English 
 
 (peasant revolt of 1 38 1 , which, long misjudged through 
 the reports of its enemies, apparently a failure, is now 
 
 jrecognized as one of the most remarkable and success- 
 ful of revolutions. In the middle of the century the 
 
 ipowerof the English peasant was suddenly increased 
 by a singular cause. The black death, starting in 
 those crowded cities of Asia which have always been 
 the homes of pestilence, spread slowly but steadily 
 over Europe. It is difficult to appreciate the horror 
 of its visit in an age when the simplest rules of sanitary 
 science were unknown and medical practice little more 
 
 1 than superstition. Cautious judges concede that 
 twenty-five millions of people perished. In England 
 alone a conservative estimate allows that eight hun- 
 dred thous^nd^eoj>lc^j^thi^^ of the_lotai jpopula- 
 
 1 tio n, died by a ." foul death.," which smote the children 
 of the king and the children of the slave, so that there 
 was not a house where there was not one dead. As 
 a consequence labor became so scarce that the price 
 of it rose at once. The noble whose crop cost to 
 harvest £$ 13s. gd. the year before the plague had 
 to pay £12 igs. lod. the year after. This situation 
 hastened the process of freeing the nativi, or serfs, 
 which had begun years before. For those personal 
 services, such as ploughing one day every week in the 
 year, gathering the lord's nuts, making the lord's 
 park walls over against his land, carrying the lord's 
 corn home every fortnight on the Saturday, which 
 reminded the tenants of their descent from bondsmen 
 and thralls, were then quite largely commuted by 
 the impoverished lords for money payments. 
 
 But the landowners who farmed by bailiffs were
 
 The English Peasants. 1 7 
 
 not disposed to see their profits impaired and their 
 rents lowered without a struggle. And as soon as 
 the cessation of the plague enabled Parliament to 
 meet, they passed the Statute of Laborers, which 
 stood on the books for two hundred and fifty years. 
 It provided that every able-bodied man or woman 
 under sixty must work for any employer who sought 
 him for suitable service at the wages of the year 
 1347, prohibited him from leaving his employer be- 
 fore the end of his term of service, forbade his em- 
 ployer to pay him higher wages, and provided 
 penalties of fine or imprisonment for disobedience. 
 It even forbade the employer to fulfil contracts for 
 higher wages made before the passing of the act. 
 
 This law was met by the establishment of a vast 
 secret combination of artisans and peasants, — the 
 first trade-union, — which was so successful that 
 twenty years after the plague the price of harvest 
 labor was double that enforced by the statute. Then 
 the lords, in despair, attempted to reverse the com- 
 mutations to their ancient equivalents in forced labor. 
 The result was to them a tremendous astonishment. 
 The villeins of all England rose in revolt. For this 
 they had been partly prepared by preaching, which 
 gave the sanction of religion to their demand for 
 justice. Men like John Ball, a priest of Kent, out 
 of whose sermons were made such popular rhymes as : 
 
 " When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman? " 
 
 had for years been denouncing the wickedness of 
 the rich and the injustice of social and political con- 
 ditions. They were now reinforced by priests armed
 
 1 8 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 with the new knowledge of the Bible which was 
 spreading rapidly from the teaching of the friends 
 and pupils of Wiclif. And many a hamlet heard 
 the stern appeals of the prophets from tyranny to 
 God applied to their own times. So it was that 
 when the southern force of the insurgents, entering 
 London by the help of their sympathizers among the 
 citizens, fired the palace of the Duke of Lancaster, 
 they flung a plunderer caught with a silver cup back 
 into the flames saying " they were seekers of truth 
 and justice, not thieves." It was this moral and 
 religious basis of the rising which made the northern 
 army of insurgents, when London lay at their mercy, 
 receive the simple promise of their boy King to " free 
 them and their lands forever, that they should be no 
 more called serfs," with shouts of joy, and to quietly 
 disperse to their homes with charters which, before 
 the ink was dry, their King was secretly promising 
 his councillors to wash out in blood. But though 
 the insurrection was conquered by treachery, and its 
 leaders died by hundreds on the gallows, it did not 
 fail. Parliament revoked the concessions of the King 
 and professed a willingness to perish all together in 
 one day rather than grant " liberties and manumis- 
 sions to their villeins and bond-tenants," but the 
 peril had been too great for a second risk. From 
 that day to this many English-speaking men have 
 ground the face of the poor; but since 1381, when 
 the peasants were taught by the Poor Priests l to use 
 
 1 It is not established that Wiclif gave any personal encouragement 
 to the rising, but rather the contrary. There is, however, an unmis- 
 takable spiritual resemblance between it and his teaching.
 
 The Tide of Democracy. 19 
 
 their power in the demand for the rights of humanity 
 in the name of God and justice, no one has attempted 
 to make serfs of the English laborers. And this 
 spirit of democracy, the desire for freedom or equal 
 rights before God and the laws, appealing against 
 every caste and privilege in Church or State to con- 
 science and the Bible, had during the seventy years 
 of the Papal absence from Rome become a force 
 which had everywhere to be reckoned with.
 
 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NEW LEARNING. 
 PETRARCH, THE PROTOTYPE OF THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 HE general movement of the human spirit 
 during the fourteenth century, producing 
 patriotism, new theories of the seat of 
 authority, and the desire for freedom, 
 found a special expression for itself in 
 Italy in the beginnings of the New Learning or the 
 movement of the Humanists. This used, by a nar- 
 rowness of thought and diction, to be called the 
 Renascence, but is now rightly regarded as only the 
 intellectual centre of that broad movement which 
 affected every side of life. 
 
 To define so complex a movement as the New 
 Learning is impossible. It can best be made clear in 
 a sketch of the work and character of Petrarch, the 
 prophet and prototype of Humanism, who died at 
 Arqua, near Padua, three years before the return of 
 the Papacy from Avignon. 
 
 His father was a Florentine notary, banished by 
 the same decree with Dante, who finally settled at 
 
 Avignon to practise his profession in the neighbor- 
 
 20
 
 Petrarch and Virgil. 21 
 
 hood of the Papal court. In the jurists' library 
 were some manuscripts of Cicero, and as soon as 
 Petrarch could read he loved them. Doubtless his 
 father, who destined the lad for the law, smiled 
 approval at such appropriate tastes. But he soon 
 found out his mistake. This youngster with a voice 
 of extraordinary power and sweetness, who loved to 
 play his lute and listen to the song of the birds, was 
 not seeking in the works of the great Roman lawyer 
 legal information. It was the majestic swing, the 
 noble music, of the Ciceronian Latin which charmed 
 him, and as the years went on he suffered the pangs 
 which have been common in all ages to the lovers of 
 the Muses held by parental worldly wisdom to the 
 study of the law. Bad reports came back from the 
 tutors of Montpellier and Bologna. Reproaches and 
 excuses ended in a parental raid, which discovered 
 under the bed a hidden treasure of tempting manu- 
 scripts. They were promptly condemned to the 
 flames, and only the tears of the lad saved a Virgil 
 and one speech of Cicero, to be, as the father said, 
 smiling in spite of himself at the desperate dismay of 
 the convicted sinner, one for an occasional leisure 
 hour, the other a help in legal studies. And Virgil 
 and Cicero became to Petrarch lifelong companions. 
 The copy of the yEneid thus saved from the flames 
 had been made by his own hand, and he wrote 
 in it the date of the death of his son, his friends, 
 and the woman he loved. It was stolen from him 
 once, and returned after ten years, and he wrote 
 in it the day of its loss and the day of its return. 
 To Petrarch Virgil was " lord of language," a chai-
 
 22 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 acter noble as his genius, half poet and half saint, a 
 divine master. But to say this was only to repeat 
 Dante, and Petrarch did little for the influence of 
 the Mantuan — could not, indeed, escape from that 
 habit of allegorical interpretation which thought of 
 a poet as a riddle- maker whose object was not to 
 make truth clear and beautiful, but obscure. 
 
 But Petrarch may with truth be called the modern 
 discoverer of Cicero. Not, indeed, that Cicero's name 
 was before unknown, but that Cicero's works were 
 little read and still less understood. Many of his 
 finest pieces had not been seen for generations. And 
 from his youth up Petrarch followed like a sleuth- 
 hound every possible trace of a lost manuscript. 
 When, riding along the roads, he caught sight of an 
 old cloister, his first thought was, " Is there a Cicero 
 manuscript in the library?" In the midst of a 
 journey he suddenly determined to stop at Liege, 
 because he heard there were many old books in the 
 city, and his reward was two unknown speeches of 
 Cicero. He not only hunted himself, but as his 
 circle of friends and his means increased, he spread 
 his efforts to Germany, Greece, France, Spain, and 
 Britain — wherever any chance of a find was suggested. 
 Of course he had his disappointments. Once he 
 imagined he had secured the lost " Praise of Philos- 
 ophy " ; but though the style was Cicero's, he could 
 read nothing in it to account for Augustine's enthu- 
 siasm, which had first put him on the track. At last 
 the doubt was ended, for he found a quotation in 
 another writing of Augustine's which was not in his 
 manuscript. He was the victim of a false title. And
 
 Petrarch and Cicero. 23 
 
 when he discovered that what he had was an extract 
 of the " Academica," he always afterward rated it 
 as one of the least valuable of Cicero's works. Then 
 he thought that he had found the treatise on 
 " Fame." He loaned the volume which contained it, 
 and neither he nor the world has ever seen it since 
 — surely the costliest book loan on record. 1 
 
 But no disappointment damped his enthusiasm. 
 When the manuscript of Homer was sent to him as 
 a present from Constantinople, though he could read 
 no word of Greek, nor find any one who could, he 
 knew that this was the book beloved of Horace and 
 Cicero. He took it in his arms and kissed it. How 
 great must have been his joy when, in the cathedral 
 library of Verona, he unexpectedly stumbled on an 
 old half-decayed manuscript of some of Cicero's let- 
 ters! He was sick and tired, but he would trust his 
 frail treasure to no copyist. He announced his find 
 to Italy in an epistle to Cicero himself, and hence- 
 forth he enriched literature by a stream of citations 
 whose source, warned by experience, he never trusted 
 out of his own hands. Why he never allowed it to 
 be copied during his lifetime can best be explained 
 by those collectors who dislike to have replicas made of 
 their pictures. Nor was he content with the writings of 
 antiquity. The portraits of Roman emperors on coins 
 excited his imagination. Others had collected coins 
 and medals as rarities, but he was the first modern 
 to understand their value as historical monuments. 
 
 1 Voigt says there is no proof that it really was the treatise on 
 " Fame." Rut his douht seems based only on the general principle 
 that a lost fish increases in size — which is not always true.
 
 24 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 From the great men of the past he learned to ex- 
 ercise a common-sense criticism on the methods and 
 results of the traditional learning of his time. In 
 scorn and enthusiasm he flung himself with all his 
 powers on the scholastic system of instruction, and 
 denounced the universities as nests of ignorance, 
 adorning fools with pompous degrees of master and 
 doctor. In particular he objected to the division of 
 disciplines. If he were asked what art he professed 
 he would answer that there was but one art, of which 
 he was a humble disciple : the art of truth and virtue, 
 which made the wisdom of life. But he was not 
 content with vague denunciation. The professors of 
 every discipline — history, arithmetic, music, astron- 
 omy, philosophy, theology, and eloquence — heard 
 his voice accusing them of an empty sophistry with- 
 out real relation to life. 
 
 The objects of his first and bitterest attacks were 
 astrology and alchemy, whose pretensions then flat- 
 tered the ear of princes and dazzled the hopes of 
 peasants. He denounced astrology, stamped with 
 the authority of a teacher's chair at Bologna and 
 Padua, as a baseless superstition, and, in the very 
 spirit of Cicero toward the augurs, related with glee 
 how a court astrologer of Milan had told him that, 
 though he made a living out of it, the whole science 
 was a fraud. He accused the physicians also of being 
 charlatans. When Pope Clement VI. was ill, Petrarch 
 wrote a letter warning him against them. He was 
 wont to say that no physician should cross his thresh- 
 old, and when custom compelled him to receive them 
 in his old age, wrote with humor of his persistence in
 
 Petrarch the Critic of Scholasticism. 25 
 
 neglecting all their orders and his consequent return 
 to health. But he made far more effective attacks 
 than any mere witty expression of a personal mood. 
 To his friend the distinguished physician Giovanni 
 Dondi he gave strong reasons for his scorn of the 
 ordinary practitioner. He did not deny that there 
 might be a science of medicine. He suggested that 
 the Arabs had made the beginnings of it. But he 
 denied to the empirics and pretenders who were 
 imposing on the people by wise looks and long 
 words every title of real learning. And he pointed 
 out as the path to a science of health and disease 
 the entirely different method of modern medicine. 
 The lawyers so hated in his youth felt the lash of 
 his invective. He called them mere casuists, split- 
 ting hairs in a noble art once adorned by the learn- 
 ing and eloquence of Cicero, but sunk to a mere way 
 of earning bread by clever trickery in the hands of 
 men ignorant and careless of the origin, history, and 
 relations of the principles of law. And he took a keen 
 delight in pointing out the blunders in history and 
 literature made by the greatest jurist of his time. 
 But it was in philosophy that he came into sharp- 
 est conflict with the scholastic method, which hung 
 like a millstone around the neck of leamine. To 
 make dialectics an end instead of a means he called 
 putting the practice of boys into the place of the fin- 
 ished wisdom of men. Logic was only an aid to 
 rhetoric and poetry, and ideas worth far more than 
 the words which the schoolmen put in their place. 
 When they hid behind the shield of Aristotle, Petrarch 
 was not dismayed. In the pamphlet " Concerning
 
 26 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 his Own Ignorance and that of Many Others " he 
 
 dared to say that Aristotle was a man and there was 
 
 much that even he did not know. And he finally 
 
 asserted that, while no one could doubt the great- 
 
 /-.ness of Aristotle's mind, there was in all his writings 
 
 v no trace of eloquence — a word which took as much 
 
 | courage to cast as the stone from the shepherd's sling 
 
 P that freed Israel. 
 
 It was the word of an independent. And this in- 
 dependence, this assertion of his personal individual 
 judgment, marks the second service of Petrarch. 
 _He was _notj3nly a critic of scholastic methods and an 
 instaurator of learning, but he threw a high light on 
 t he valu e of the Individual. 
 
 We have seen why the mediaeval man instinctively 
 regarded himself as one of a class. The serf or bur- 
 gher, noble or ecclesiastic, was a member of a great cor- 
 poration, and his chances and duties were limited not 
 only by circumstances and abilities, but by obligations 
 joining him to his fellows in every direction. The ne- 
 cessities of a half-barbarous condition had made the 
 social unit, not the man or his family, but the com- 
 munity. And the ideal of the feudal system was a 
 single great organization, ruled in ascending stages 
 by a civil hierarchy of overlords, with every detail 
 of life guided and directed by the spiritual hier- 
 archy of the clergy, who bound or loosed the oaths 
 that held society together, directed consciences by 
 the confessional, and, by denying the means of grace 
 in the sacrament, could cast any man out from the 
 fellowship of God and man in this world and the 
 next. Hence mediaeval society lacked the mobility
 
 Petrarch and Individuality. 27 
 
 and freedom needed to develop individuality. In those 
 days travelling was difficult. For the most part a man 
 expected to die where he was born, and do his duty in 
 that rank of life to which God had called him, unless, 
 indeed, his relation to the social corporation drew him 
 from his home on war or pilgrimage. As against 
 the overwhelming pressure of this corporate sense 
 there was little to develop the consciousness of the 
 ego. Even if the man of the middle ages went to 
 the university, travelled, and mingled with his fel- 
 lows, his mind was still confined. He found there 
 no chance or impulse to measure the heights and 
 depths of his own nature, or to investigate freely the 
 world without. The authority of tradition defined 
 the objects and methods of study, and in every uni- 
 versity of the middle of the thirteenth century the 
 " freedom of academic teaching " was limited with a 
 strictness from which even the narrowest denomi- 
 national institutions of learning would shrink to-day. 
 The organized discipline of study had largely sunk 
 into a base mechanic exercise, a mere gymnastic of 
 the mind. In this social and intellectual atmosphere 
 it was difficult for man to know himself. 
 
 The literary instinct of Petrarch has presented in 
 dramatic form the moment when he first broke 
 these bonds and realized the value of self. That 
 love of nature which appears in his sonnets in 
 such close connection with his power of self-analysis 
 gave the occasion. So far as we know, Petrarch was^ 
 the first modern man to climb a mountain for the/\ 
 sake of looking at the view. About the year 1336, 
 when he was thirty-two years old, he and his brother
 
 28 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Gerard set out from Vaucluse to climb Mount 
 Ventoux. Gerard was evidently very much bored, 
 and remained all day in that state of subacute ir- 
 ritation common to men who have been seduced 
 by the enthusiasm of a friend into a tiresome ex- 
 pedition for which they have no taste. But Petrarch 
 wrote : " I stood astonished on the top. Under my 
 feet floated the clouds ; before my eyes the snow- 
 covered heads of the Alps towered over the beloved 
 plains of Italy. I knew them, alas! far from me, 
 and yet they seemed so near that I could almost 
 touch them. Then I remembered the past. I ran 
 over in thought my student years in Bologna, and 
 saw how wishes and tastes had indeed changed, but 
 vices and faults remained unchanged or were grown 
 worse. Again I turned my gaze on the wonderful 
 spectacle of nature that had drawn me to the top of 
 the mountain, saw round about me mountains and 
 valleys, land and sea, and rejoiced at the view. 
 Thus gazing, now singling out some single object, 
 now letting my sight range far into the distance, now 
 raising eyes and soul to heaven, I unconsciously drew 
 out of my pocket Augustine's ' Confessions,' a book I 
 always carry with me, and it opened at this passage : 
 ' Men go to wonder at the peaks of the mountains, 
 the huge waves of the sea, the broad rivers, the great 
 ocean, the circles of the stars, and for these things 
 forget themselves.' I trembled at these words, shut 
 the book, and fell into a rage with myself for gaping 
 at earthly things when I ought to have learned long 
 ago, even from heathen philosophers, that the soul is 
 the only great and astonishing thing. Silent I left
 
 Petrarch the Poseur. 29 
 
 the mountain and turned my view from the things 
 without me to .that within." 
 
 And this dramatic announcement marks the be- 
 ginning of the modern habit of introspection. Nat- 
 urally he developed the defects of his qualities, and 
 complains constantly of a spiritual malady he calls 
 acedia. Melancholy, the mood of heavy indifference 
 to all objects of thought and feeling, — the malaria 
 of the soul, — had long been known. The early 
 fathers denounced it, and the mediaeval theolo- 
 gians, who saw much of it in the cloisters, ranked it 
 among the deadly sins. But a single trait of Pe- 
 trarch's character developed this old-fashioned mel- 
 ancholy into the modern Weltschmerz. He was the 
 victim of a ceaseless appetite for fame which no 
 praise could satisfy — a passion which tormented most 
 of the early Humanists and spread from them to the 
 whole society of Italy during the fifteenth century. 
 This passion led him constantly to do things he de- 
 spised and made such a gulf between his knowledge 
 of what he was and his ideal of what he ought to be 
 that he despaired at times of himself and the world. 
 
 For no sketch of Petrarch is complete which fails 
 to show him not only as an instaurator of learning 
 and an asserter of individuality, but also as a hum- 
 bug. Even Napoleon, with the resources of France 
 to help him, could not pose with the ceaseless sub- 
 tlety and variety of Petrarch. Every strong and 
 true passion of his soul was mingled with self-seeking 
 and self-consciousness. He was a lover of nature 
 and of solitude ; but he always took care to se- 
 lect an accessible hermitage and to let all the
 
 30 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 world know where it was. When lie dwelt in his 
 house by the fountain of Vaucluse, with an old house- 
 keeper and two servants to look after him, and an old 
 dog to lie at his feet, he describes his life among the 
 simple peasants as that of one busily content with 
 watching the beauties of nature and reading the 
 words of the mighty dead, who was willing to let the 
 striving world wag on as it will. But in reality it 
 was that of a scholar listening eagerly to every echo 
 of his fame which reached him from the outer world, 
 and counting the pilgrims drawn to his solitude by 
 his growing reputation. He was fond of beginning 
 his letters, " In the stillness of dusky night," or, " At 
 the first flush of sunrise," and perfectly conscious of 
 the interest aroused by the suggested figure of the 
 pale student bent over his books in mysterious and 
 noble loneliness. With that curious weakness which 
 leads inveterate vanity to find pleasure in betraying 
 itself, Petrarch has written that when he fled from 
 cities and society to his quiet houses at Vaucluse or 
 Arqua, he had done it to impress the imaginations of 
 men and to increase his fame ; which, like all the acts 
 and words of a pose?tr, was probably about half true 
 and half false. 
 
 One who thus enthroned and adored his own 
 genius demanded, of course, tribute from his friends. 
 And in all the letters he exchanges with his inti- 
 mates we find that the topic is never their concerns, 
 but always the concerns of Petrarch. He is fond 
 of decorating his epistles to them with Ciceronian 
 phrases on the nobility of friendship. All the great 
 men of antiquity had friends. But he who stepped
 
 Petrarch Serving Two Masters. 3 1 
 
 aside from the part of playing chorus to Petrarch's 
 role of hero did so at his peril. To criticise his writ- 
 ing even in the smallest was to risk a transference to 
 the ranks of his enemies. 
 
 His love for Laura was undoubtedly genuine. 
 There is a breath of real pain in his answer to a teas- 
 ing friend : " Oh, would that it were hypocrisy, and 
 not madness!" But Petrarch was not unaware that 
 all the world loves a lover. No one felt more 
 acutely than he did the patient dignity conferred by 
 a hopeless passion for an unattainable woman. As 
 his fountain of Vaucluse became more beautiful to 
 him because he had made it famous, so he loved 
 Laura more because he had sung his love for all the 
 world to hear. 
 
 Petrarch was religious, and in spite of his admira- 
 tion for Plato and Cicero, wrote that he counted the 
 least in the kingdom of heaven as greater than they. 
 He is continually denouncing the profligacy of the 
 Papal court at Avignon, whose members deserted 1 
 their duties at home to live in luxury on the income 'I 
 of benefices they never visited. But Petrarch him- 
 self was priest, canon, and archdeacon without ever [ 
 preaching a sermon or saying a mass, residing near 
 his cathedral, or caring for the poor. And no man 
 of his time was more persistent in the attempt to I 
 increase his income by adding new benefices to the 
 ones whose duties he already neglected. He who 
 runs may read this in a mass of begging letters, where 
 pride and literary skill ill conceal the eagerness of the 
 request and the wrath and bitterness of disappoint- 
 ment. He was a lover of freedom, whose praises he
 
 3 2 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 sang with all his skill. But he shocked even his most 
 faithful friends by accepting the hospitality and mak- 
 ing gain of the favor of the Visconti, whose unscrupu- 
 lous power was threatening every free city of North 
 Italy. 
 
 His devouring ambition, the appetite for success 
 as symbolized by fame or wealth, appears perhaps 
 most plainly in his attitude to the memory of Dante. 
 This became so notorious that it was openly ascribed 
 to envy, and his friend Boccaccio bravely wrote to tell 
 him of the slander, expressing in the letter his own 
 boundless admiration for the great dead. Petrarch's 
 reply is cold. He does not use Dante's name. It is 
 the charge of envy which troubles him. How could 
 he be charged with envy of one who had written 
 nobly, indeed, but in the common speech and for 
 the common people, while he had only used it in his 
 youth and half in play? How could he who did not 
 envy even Virgil envy Dante? 
 
 This egotism was fed by such a banquet of admi- 
 ration as has been spread for few men. The cities 
 of Italy did not wait for his death to rival each other 
 in honoring him. A decree of the Venetian Senate 
 said that no Christian philosopher or poet could be 
 compared to him. The city of Arezzo greeted him 
 with a triumphal procession and a decree that the 
 house of his birth might never be altered. Florence 
 bought the confiscated estates of his father and pre- 
 sented them to the man " who for centuries had no 
 equal and could scarcely find one in the ages to 
 come," " in whom Virgil's spirit and Cicero's elo- 
 quence had again clothed themselves in flesh."
 
 Petrarch Crowned at Rome. 33 
 
 Wherever he went men strove who should do him most 
 honor. An old schoolmaster made a long journey to 
 Naples to see him, and, arriving too late, followed over 
 the Apennines to Parma, where he kissed his head 
 and hands. Letters and verses in basketfuls brought 
 admiration from every part of Italy, from France, 
 Germany, England, and even from Greece. Per- 
 haps the most prized of all these symbols of admira- 
 tion was the bestowal of the poet's crown — a re- 
 vival of a traditional and seldom-practised rite. At 
 the age of thirty-six two invitations to receive it 
 reached him on the same day : one from the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, and one from the Roman Senate 
 He chose Rome as the inheritor of imperial dig- 
 nity, the true centre of Christendom. Led by a 
 stately procession through the city to the Capitol, 
 he received the crown from the hand of a Senator, 
 delivered a festal speech, and went in procession 
 to St. Peter's, where he knelt before the altar of 
 the apostles and laid his wreath upon it. The day 
 closed with a great banquet in the house of the 
 chief of the Roman nobles. And these distinctions, 
 sentimental as was their form, exaggerated as was 
 the rhetoric in which they were phrased, were the 
 tributes for great service to humanity. Not that 
 Petrarch discovered anew classic literature, the rights 
 of criticism, or the value of the individual. He ac- 
 complished little that was definite in criticism or 
 history. Roger Bacon was a more original reformer 
 of the methods of science, and there were men before 
 Petrarch. But he came in the fulness of time, and 
 by the force of genius gathered together and ex- 
 c
 
 34 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 pressed the tendencies of his own age in a work 
 and a personality strong enough to break the road 
 which was to be followed by four generations of 
 the New Learning. And they were to be the spirit- 
 ual centre of the great social movement of the 
 Renascence, and the strongest of those forces which 
 were to limit the new opportunities and duties of 
 the Papacy, returned to the dignity of its ancient 
 seat in the Eternal City.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CONDITION IN WHICH THE RETURNING POPE 
 FOUND ITALY AND THE PATRIMONY OF ST. 
 PETER — THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT 
 SCHISM — TWO VICARS OF CHRIST FIGHT FOR 
 THE TIARA. 
 
 HE Pope had come back to Rome not 
 simply out of veneration for the ancient 
 seat of the Papacy, but because he was 
 forced to defend to the utmost his tem- 
 poral authority in Italy. 
 During his absence the cities of Italy had been 
 ^exposed to two dangers. The first was the 
 presence of great bands of mercenary soldiers 
 with just discipline enough to hold together and 
 fight. The loosely ruled kingdom of Naples, swarm- 
 ing with brigands, was the regular school of leaders 
 for these bands, and their ranks were recruited by 
 adventurers from France, Germany, and England. 
 When unemployed they plundered, and when hired 
 for war they were equally dangerous to friend and 
 foe. Werner of Urslingen, one of the earliest of 
 their commanders (1348), had this inscription on his 
 sword : " I am Duke Werner, leader of the Great 
 
 35
 
 36 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Company, the enemy of God, of mercy, and of 
 pity." 
 
 The second danger which threatened the Italian 
 cities was the power of tyrants, who, with the help 
 of mercenaries, absorbed or seized the rights of many 
 municipalities and turned them into personal posses- 
 sions. These men everywhere refused to pay their 
 tributes to the Pope as their feudal overlord. And 
 to defend its own rights and answer the cry of the 
 suffering cities the Papacy had, in 1353, sent the 
 Spaniard Gil d'Albornoz as legate to Italy. The 
 situation taxed even his abilities, for the Free Com- 
 panies roamed like human locusts, devouring what 
 the tyrants spared. Bernabo Visconti, the greatest 
 of these tyrants, serves as their type. He was the 
 nephew of that Giovanni Visconti who, as Arch- 
 bishop of Milan, completed the long process of usur- 
 pation by which his family had become lords of the 
 city and a great tributary territory. Bernabo's 
 power was unlimited, his wealth enormous, and he 
 used both in a way which suggests the worst of the 
 old Roman emperors. The central object of the 
 administration of home affairs was the Prince's hunt- 
 ing, and his people were compelled to keep five 
 thousand boar hounds and be responsible for their 
 health. To interfere with the savage brutes meant 
 death by torture ; and the unfortunates upon whose 
 hands one of these unwelcome guests died ran no 
 small danger of being fed to the rest of the pack. 
 He it was who gave a Papal messenger carrying a 
 bull of excommunication the choice of being thrown 
 off the bridge into the river or swallowing his owic
 
 The Unjust Stewards. i>7 
 
 parchment ; and answered the Archbishop of Milan, 
 who refused hjs commands : " Know you not that I 
 am Pope, emperor, and king in my country, and that 
 God himself can't do anything in it against my will ? " 
 
 Against this big tyrant Albornoz could do little, 
 even with the help of Florence, the type and ideal of 
 those cities that were struggling to maintain their 
 ancient privileges as chartered municipalities of the 
 Holy Roman Empire. But the horde of little tyrants 
 felt his hand, and at his death in 1367 a large num- 
 ber of the cities of the Papal States, defended by new 
 citadels filled with Papal garrisons, enjoyed some 
 measure of local privilege as vassals of the Pope. 
 But he found no successor. And his death let loose 
 on Italy a horde of hungry legates who used his 
 citadels for oppression and plunder. For the most 
 part Frenchmen, they trampled not only on the 
 chartered liberties, but also on the feelings, of their 
 cities and provinces. 
 
 Gerard von Puy, for instance, Abbot of Montma- 
 jeur and Legate of Perugia, held the city by the 
 terror of his mercenaries as with a hand of iron. He 
 himself banished and killed and extorted money. 
 His nephew and favorite openly carried off two noble- 
 women of the city. The Governor answered the 
 protests of the burghers in the first case with an in- 
 decent jest, and in the second by condemning his 
 nephew to death unless he returned the woman in 
 fifty days. And the facts would seem to justify the 
 words of that ardent lover of the Church, St. Cather- 
 ine of Siena, who, in a letter to Gregory XL, called 
 his legates " incarnate demons."
 
 38 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 The year before Gregory started to return to 
 Rome, the city of Florence, which through the long 
 strife with the empire had been a faithful ally of the 
 Popes, raised a blood-red banner with the word 
 Libertas in silver letters, and united eighty cities 
 of Tuscany in a League of Freedom against " the bar- 
 barians who have been sent to Italy by the Papacy 
 to grow fat on our goods and blood." 
 
 City after city rose at the call of the League. 
 Citta di Castello, Montefiascone, and Narni were up 
 in November. Viterbo threw open her gates to the 
 Florentine Prefect, and the burghers joined his troops 
 in storming the citadel. The first week in Decem- 
 ber the streets of Perugia rang with shouts: "The 
 people! the people! Death to the abbot and the 
 pastors!" In quick succession, Spoleto, Assisi, 
 Ascoli, Forli, Ravenna, all the cities of the Mark, 
 the Romagna, and the Campagna caught the flame 
 of enthusiasm, drove the garrisons from their cita- 
 dels, and raised the red banner of the League. And 
 finally in March, Bologna, mightiest of the Papal 
 vassals, rose, crying, " Death to the Church! " Al- 
 most all Italy, except the great maritime states of 
 Genoa and Venice, stood united against the Pope in 
 a league whose watchwords were " Freedom " and 
 "Italy for the Italians." From Avignon the 
 alarmed Gregory struck with all his power at the 
 head of the League. He thundered at Florence the 
 sternest anathema on the Papal records. It declared 
 every single burgher of Florence outlawed in goods 
 and person, bade every Christian country banish all 
 Florentines, and gave the right to any one who
 
 A Dangerous Conclave. 39 
 
 wished to seize their property and make slaves of 
 them and their families. But Florence would not 
 give way. When the bull was read in full conclave 
 to their ambassador, he fell on his knees before a 
 crucifix in the audience-room, and appealed to Jesus 
 Christ, the Judge of the world, against this sentence 
 of his Vicar. It was this spirit that had brought 
 Gregory back to Italy to save the patrimony of St. 
 Peter. And he found himself at once plunged in a 
 miserable and desperate game of war and diplomacy. 
 For he could put no dependence except on brutal 
 mercenaries whose plundering and massacres under 
 his banners foretold the miseries which Italy was to 
 suffer from their kind for a hundred and fifty years. 
 Gregory sickened under the anxieties and horrors 
 of his position, and on the 27th of March, 1378, he 
 died, longing for France and regretting his return. 
 The dangerous position of the Papacy at once be 
 came apparent when the cardinals met to elect his 
 successor. The lack of any true political basis for its 
 governmental authority over Rome exposed it con- 
 stantly to the danger of mob violence ; and the house 
 thus shaken by storm from without was divided 
 against itself. For the Papacy was not even in 
 theory a despotism, but an oligarchy of ecclesiastical 
 princes. And the Pope was supposed to seek con- 
 stantly the advice and assistance of those whom 
 Urban V. (1362-70), in a letter to the Roman people, 
 called "our brothers the cardinals." The cardinals 
 were the leaders of the Roman clergy, and bore the 
 titles of the principal bishoprics, parish churches, and 
 deaconries in and around Rome. In the election of
 
 40 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the Bishop of Rome, as in that of every other bishop, 
 there had been originally, according to the ancient 
 phrase, three elements : the will of God, the choice of 
 the people, the vote of the clergy. The choice of the 
 turbulent Roman populace had no weight for centuries ; 
 but now they were determined to exert their power 
 at least far enough to prevent the choice of any one 
 born out of Italy. Sixteen cardinals went into the 
 palace of the Vatican to hold the election. Four 
 were Italians, one a Spaniard, and the rest French- 
 men. Already an embassy from the city magistrates 
 had represented to the College their need of a Roman, 
 at least of an Italian, Pope, that the city might not 
 be again sunk into poverty and dishonor by the 
 withdrawal of the Papacy. They had promised a 
 quiet election, but they either could or would not 
 keep their promises. The great square in front of 
 St. Peter's was filled with a mob, and as the cardinals 
 entered the Vatican the Roman populace entered with 
 them. For there was a report that the cardinals were 
 bringing in French troops, and suspicious eyes 
 searched every room from garret to cellar, and even 
 poked halberds and swords under the beds to make 
 sure that no soldiers were hidden there. At last 
 they left, but only to pass the night in the square 
 drinking, sounding trumpets, and calling for a Pope. 
 The next morning, after mass, the cardinals began 
 to vote. Instantly the bells of the city rang storm ; 
 and again the whole populace, in arms, flooded the 
 square and surged against the very doors of the pal- 
 ace. Under these auspices twelve votes were cast 
 for the Archbishop of Bari, a good canonist, who had
 
 The Ciirial Machine. 41 
 
 for a time served as vice-chancellor at Avignon. 
 Ten days later, for the first time in ninety years, a 
 Pope was crowned in Rome. 
 
 The new Pope, who took the name of Urban VI., 
 was a man of strict personal morals and stern ideas 
 of the duty of ecclesiastical princes, and he had 
 his work cut out for him. St. Bridget, a highly 
 honored ascetic reformer, in a letter to his prede- 
 cessor, Gregory XL, thus concisely expressed the 
 prevalent opinion of the Papal court: "To be 
 sent to the court of Avignon is like being sent to 
 hell. There rules the greatest pride, an insatiable 
 greed, the most horrible voluptuousness. It is a 
 dreadful sink of awful simony. A house of ill fame 
 is already more honored than the Church of God." 
 
 And making due allowance for the exaggerations 
 usual both in the compliments and invectives of the 
 time, the statement is probably a fair one. But, 
 after all, the men of the Papal court were only the 
 results of a system of abuses so inveterate that they 
 regarded its wrongs as rightful privileges. The ad- 
 ministration of the Church, steadily centralized by the 
 great Popes from Hildebrand to Boniface for pur- 
 poses of reform and to humble the empire, had dur- 
 ing the Babylonian Captivity grown into a great 
 ecclesiastical bureau, the profits of whose patronage 
 were enormous and its corruption notorious. The 
 Papal court was to a great extent flooded by the 
 scions of noble houses spending the incomes of accu- 
 mulated benefices in luxury, and finding in the pur- 
 ple of a prince of the Church only the opportunity to 
 advance the fortunes of their friends by ecclesiastical
 
 42 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 politics. The reformer Urban was forced without 
 supporters upon this corrupt old machine by an 
 uprising of the people, and the stout, red-faced little 
 man, with his rash temper and his unforgiving mood, 
 honest and brave as he was, possessed neither the 
 breadth nor the self-control for his task. 
 
 Within a week of the day when he set the crown 
 on his head Urban publicly called the Cardinal 
 Orsini a " ninny." He fell upon the Cardinal La 
 Grange in full conclave, accusing him of having be- 
 trayed France for gold and of trying to betray the 
 Church. Finally La Grange rose. " You are Pope 
 now," he said, " and I cannot answer you. But if you 
 still were what you were a few days ago, a little Arch- 
 bishop of Bari, I would say to you, ' Little Archbishop,' 
 you are a shameless liar.' " And turning on his 
 heel, he left the room. " Holy Father," said Robert 
 of Geneva, " you show little honor to the cardinals, 
 which is against the customs of your predecessors. 
 Perhaps our turn will come to show little honor to 
 you." 
 
 It seemed an evil hour for dissension, when Urban 
 had to guide the ship of St. Peter through so great 
 a storm. The war with the League of Freedom still 
 dragged along its fruitless horrors. And yet this 
 outward danger seemed greater than it was. For 
 the centre of the revolt was broken when the Pope 
 came back to Rome. The power of the splendid 
 ideal of the Papacy over the minds of men could 
 only be obscured by the most pressing abuses, and 
 the return from Avignon had changed the Domini- 
 um Temporale itself from 3 =vmbol of French tyranny
 
 The House Divided against Itself. 43 
 
 into a centre and visible expression of that moral and 
 religious headship of Rome which was a pride to 
 every Italian. The people of the Italian cities had 
 neither the patience nor the self-control to be worthy 
 of freedom. They would not accept military disci- 
 pline and could do nothing but street fighting; and 
 their local hatreds were so strong that nothing but the 
 pressure of unbearable suffering could unite them. 
 When the chief cause of their revolt was thus re- 
 moved, religious feeling, jealousy, and diplomacy 
 began to break the League. Urban did not play his 
 part badly, and three months after his coronation he 
 made peace with Florence, the last antagonist of the 
 Church. 
 
 But civil war was breaking out in the Curia. By 
 the end of June all but the four Italian cardinals 
 were assembled in Anagni, and the Papal treasurer 
 joined them with the tiara and the crown jewels. 
 Negotiations were in vain. On the 9th of August 
 the thirteen non-Italian cardinals announced that the 
 election of Urban was forced and uncanonical. And 
 on the 31st of October, 1378, having been joined by 
 three of the Italians, they elected and crowned a new 
 Pope, who took the name of Clement VII. He was 
 the Cardinal Robert of Geneva, a little pale-faced 
 man of distinguished manners and a defect in gait 
 which he strove sedulously to hide. The second son 
 of the Duke of Savoy, he was connected by blood or 
 marriage with many of the greatest houses of 
 Europe, understood four languages, spoke eloquently, 
 and dressed magnificently. 
 
 The impending schism had everywhere horrified
 
 44 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the faithful churchmen, who hoped for better days. 
 St. Catherine of Siena wrote beseeching Cardinal 
 Pedro de Luna to avert the danger of a quarrel be- 
 tween "the Christ on earth and his disciples." 
 " Everything else, war, shame, sorrows of all kinds, 
 were only a straw and a shadow compared to this 
 misfortune." 
 
 But the schism once made, in spite of its horror, 
 the world promptly chose sides. Flanders, England, 
 the greater number of the states of the German 
 Empire, and all North Italy renewed their allegiance 
 to Urban. But France, Savoy, Scotland, Spain, and 
 Naples received the legates of the Antipope. And 
 two Vicars of Christ waged pitiless war with mer- 
 cenary troops around the walls of Rome. 
 
 To sustain his falling cause, Urban, deserted by 
 all the Princes of the Church, appointed twenty-nine 
 cardinals at one creation, of whom twenty-two were 
 Italians. But five refused the dignity ; and the rest 
 could hardly bear the harsh temper of the Pope who 
 made them. In the winter of 1385 Urban was in 
 the strong castle of Lucera, 1 perched among the great 
 chestnuts of the hills between Salerno and Naples. 
 Seven cardinals suspected of conspiracy languished 
 half clad and fed in the cold dungeons. One of 
 them, broken by disease and age, was brought into 
 the great arched hall and tortured until the Papal 
 secretary who has left the description, unable to bear 
 the sight, begged permission to leave the castle 
 because of a pretended headache. But Urban, 
 walking up and down on the terrace below, read 
 
 1 Now Noccra.
 
 The Popes Revenge. 45 
 
 aloud the office for the day, that the execution- 
 ers, reminded gf his presence by the sound of his 
 voice, might not be slack in their work. When a 
 Neapolitan army camped among the vineyards 
 around the castle, the besiegers might see how the 
 fierce old Pope, his face flaming with impotent rage, 
 hurled out every day another anathema that devoted 
 them to perdition, even as the lights borne at his 
 side were hurled into darkness at the end of the 
 curse. 
 
 Freed by a sudden attack of mercenaries collected 
 by his allies, Urban sought refuge in Genoa. One 
 of his wretched captives, unable to bear the rapid 
 journey, was put out of the way on the road. An 
 Englishman among them owed his freedom to the 
 intercession of his King. Five others were carried 
 into the gates of the building of the Knights of St. 
 John, assigned by the city for Urban's residence. 
 One tradition says they were sewn up alive in sacks 
 and cast into the harbor by night ; another that they 
 were starved or strangled and buried in the cellar. 
 It is only certain that men never saw them come 
 out of those gates into the light of day.
 
 / 
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 JOHN WICLIF OF ENGLAND, AND HIS PROTEST 
 AGAINST PAPAL WAR. 
 
 HE scandal of open war for the Papal 
 crown, between a ruthless tyrant and a 
 jaded man of the world who loved the 
 game of ecclesiastical politics, aroused in- 
 dignant protest in the hearts of all lovers 
 of religion. And one great churchman was driven 
 by the shock of it to change his lifelong demand for 
 reform into an attack on the organization of the Church 
 and the theory of the Papacy. 
 
 John Wiclif, a doctor of Oxford, was acknowledged 
 to be the most learned man of England, and his 
 fame abroad would probably have ranked him in the 
 international guild of scholars as the most distin- 
 guished university teacher of his day. In addition 
 to this fame as a scholar he possessed great popular 
 influence as a bold and powerful preacher in the 
 mother tongue. In each of these two characters he 
 had protested against the abuses of the Papacy at 
 Avignon. As a scholastic he expressed his protest 
 in the treatises " De Dominio Civili " and " De 
 
 Dominio Divino," which were probably intended, 
 
 4 6
 
 WicCif the Scholastic. 47 
 
 under the single title " De Dominio," to form 
 the introduction to his great work, " Summa in 
 Theologia." 
 
 The prologue to the treatise "De Dominio Divino" 
 announces his intention of beginning a course of di- 
 vinity by an exposition of the doctrine of Lordship 
 based upon Scripture proofs ; and the author at once 
 proceeds, with unlimited learning, to seek a base for 
 his doctrine in scholastic metaphysics. He discusses, 
 in passing, the nature of being; the relation of uni- 
 versal to sensible objects; the different stages of 
 being, such as essentia and esse, pro se esse, esse Intel- 
 ligibile, and esse actuate, and their mutual relations ; 
 the possibility of demonstrating faith, and the right 
 of free inquiry; the eternity of the world, with a 
 criticism of various opinions on the subject; the 
 question of necessity and free will, and the relation of 
 the persons of the Trinity; and the demonstration 
 of such ideas as " The process by which the primary 
 ens is specificated is substantiation, rendering it capa- 
 ble of acquiring accidents " makes it rather difficult 
 reading for these degenerate days. It is only in the 
 last chapter that he becomes practical and to us 
 readable. For he then develops the idea that God 
 being the immediate Lord of all things, human prop- 
 erty and authority are always held as vassals of God 
 by a tenure tested by due service to him. When this 
 conclusion was again fed into the mill of scholastic 
 logic there was ground out the conclusion that prop- 
 erty and authority were forfeited by sin — a conclusion 
 which, when applied, not as a practical judgment to 
 any given unendurable wrong, but held as an abstract
 
 48 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 principle, was fatal to the existence of every institu- 
 tion of human society. 
 
 But when Wiclif stepped out of his study he showed 
 the man behind the great scholastic. The traditional 
 logic of his class bore him at times, with the clumsy 
 gallop of an animated hobby-horse, whither he would 
 not. But when he dismounted he could give effect to 
 the keen common sense of his practical judgment in 
 phrases which spoke to the noble and the ploughboy 
 — phrases which smote spiritual wickedness in high 
 places like winged arrows of the wrath of God. What 
 gave point to these weapons was the knowledge of the 
 Bible which he was spreading among the common 
 people of England. The art of preaching had sunk 
 very low. Large numbers of the parish priests had 
 given it up altogether, and those who practised it were 
 apt to inflict upon their hearers the linked dulness, long 
 drawn out, by which syllogism gave birth to syllogism 
 in the endless genealogies of scholastic discussion. 
 The popular begging friars, on the other hand, amused 
 and demoralized their hearers by coarse jests and old 
 wives' fables, drawn from the legends of the saints, 
 from the Gesta Romanorum, or even from the dis- 
 torted stories of Greek and Roman mythology. 
 These abuses were flagrant, and known of all men ; 
 and Wiclif, the most celebrated teacher in England, 
 ex-memberof Parliament and royal ambassador, volu- 
 minous author and faithful parish priest, who had 
 voiced, amid the applause of a people, the nation's 
 protest against Papal aggression, set himself to the 
 task of showing a better way. He was too much a 
 child of his age to be free in the pulpit from some of
 
 Wiclif and the Bible. 49 
 
 the very faults he condemned. But beneath the 
 rhetorical ornaments and cumbrous construction of 
 the celebrated scholastic, his parishioners and the 
 chapels of Oxford heard a new tone of manly direct- 
 ness denouncing sin and calling them to the life of 
 faith. And from chapel and lecture- room went an 
 organized band of " Poor Priests," clad in coarse red 
 garments, barefoot, and staff in hand, to carry the 
 sacred fire now into a town market-place, now to the 
 village church of a friendly rector, and, when that 
 was closed, standing upon some convenient tomb to 
 preach to the living among the graves of the dead. 
 
 Selecting the best of these friends and pupils, 
 Wiclif began and, by their help, finished a transla- 
 tion of the Latin Bible. The noble who read Nor- 
 man French had long known the Bible in that 
 tongue ; so long as the churl had spoken Anglo- 
 Saxon he could read much of it ; but now for gener- 
 ations there had been no version intended for the 
 men and women of England who worked with their 
 hands. And Wiclif, laying aside the hindrance of 
 a Latinized style formed in the practice of the subtle 
 hair-splitting of his traditional metaphysics, made or 
 inspired one which, together with the poems of 
 Chaucer, exerted on Middle English the same crea- 
 tive power that Shakespeare and the King James 
 version had on Modern English. 
 
 To the man who was thus passing from the dis- 
 cussion of the Church to the truth she symbolized, 
 behind the official to the idea of his duty, through 
 worship and theology to religion as a new life, the 
 fires of war blazing between two cursing Popes 
 
 D
 
 50 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 seemed the very blast of hell. He had hailed with 
 joy the election of Urban as a " Catholic head, an 
 evangelical man, a man who, in the work of reform- 
 ing the Church, follows the due order by beginning 
 with himself and the members of his own household. 
 From his works, therefore, it behooves us to believe 
 that he is the head of our Church." But when 
 Urban, going from bad to worse, called England to 
 arms for his cause, and the Bishop of Norwich used 
 the authority of the Vicar of Christ to urge all 
 Christians to bring fire and sword among the mea- 
 dows and cities of Flanders, Wiclif poured out pam- 
 phlets of protest in Latin and English. And his wrath, 
 slowly gathering head and finding ever sterner and 
 clearer expression, bore him where his logic had 
 never carried him, through indignant appeal to the 
 Pope to obey Christ, to the total rejection of the 
 whole system which made such a perversion possi- 
 ble, and, finally, to a denunciation of the Papacy as 
 Antichrist. 
 
 For this revolt made by Wiclif the man, Wiclif 
 the scholar had been slowly preparing by progressive 
 changes in theology. Not that these changes ever 
 carried him entirely outside the limits of mediaeval 
 thought in regard to the teaching of the Bible. The 
 great system of Catholic theology had come into 
 being, to use the mixed metaphor of Paul, as a 
 growth and a building, owing much to the uncon- 
 scious logical development which led the thoughts of 
 men from age to age, as the novelty of one genera- 
 tion became the orthodoxy of another, and much to 
 the labor of the great thinkers who served the Church.
 
 Wiclifs Heresy, 5 1 
 
 Wiclif was led to criticise parts of this edifice, but 
 he never rejegted the chief corner-stone — the idea 
 that Christ was a second Moses, a divine Lawgiver, 
 and the Gospel a new law. Of the three elements of 
 the relation of the soul to God, knowledge, trust, and 
 obedience, he emphasizes the first and last, but 
 scarcely touches the second. He does not image sal- 
 vation as a gift of God's love, coming to whosoever 
 will receive it in the childlike confidence which gives 
 to all life a filial character, but is fain to regard it as 
 given by God in some sort as an exchange for the 
 effects wrought in a man's thought, feeling, and deeds 
 by faith. He ought not, therefore, to be ranked ac- 
 cording to our modern nomenclature among " Prot- 
 estants." For, disregarding the isolated heresies 
 ultimately condemned by the Church, his theological 
 system as a whole is to be classified as " Catholic." 
 
 His most important attack upon the theology 
 of his time was in that point where the doctrines of 
 God as the Author, man as the object, Christ as the 
 Mediator, of salvation, and the Church as his visible 
 representative, meet — the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. Stripped of technical language, the process 
 which led him to this may be briefly indicated as 
 follows. So far as that department of theology 
 which discussed the Church was concerned, the 
 Catholic theory had its logical base in the idea that 
 clergy were a distinct order of men. They might 
 differ among themselves in honor through all the 
 ascending scale of a complex hierarchy, but between 
 all of them and the laity there was a great gulf fixed. 
 The impulse which developed this idea, and de-
 
 52 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 fended it by the practice of celibacy and the doctrine 
 of the sacrament of ordination, was the desire to give 
 to the clergy a superior sanctity because they were 
 priests ministering at the altar of God in the sacrifice 
 of the eucharist, in which they made sacrifice for the 
 sins of the people and were the mediators of the 
 grace needed for daily living. Upon the clergy the 
 Church rested, not, indeed, in the fully and clearly 
 developed doctrines of Catholic theology, but in those 
 phrases and conceptions which were popularly taught 
 and accepted as representing that theology. In 
 opposition Wiclif taught that the centre of gravity 
 of the Church was not in earth, but in heaven, in the 
 counsel of God; for the Church consisted of "the 
 whole body of the elect." So, while he nowhere 
 uses the Pauline phrase, " the universal priesthood of 
 believers," he asserts the duty of believers to rebuke 
 an unworthy priest, nay, if need be, to judge and 
 depose him ; and he defended this assertion by such 
 precedents from the canon law as the order of Greg- 
 ory VII. that congregations should not hear mass 
 from married priests. He even asserts, " Nor do I 
 .'see but that the ship of Peter may be filled for a time 
 with laity alone." It is easy to understand that one 
 who wrote thus for the early chapters of his " Sum- 
 mary of Theology " should be led, just before the 
 end of his life, to criticise the doctrine of the sacra- 
 ments. 
 
 In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as Wiclif 
 received it from the Church, were involved a practice 
 and two ideas not found in the New Testament: 1 the 
 
 1 This is, of course, denied by Roman Catholic apologists.
 
 Wiclif and Transubstantiation. 53 
 
 withholding of the cup from the laity, transubstan- 
 tiation, and >the sacrifice of the mass. And he was 
 the first of three successive protesters, each of 
 whom rejected one of these things. John Huss 
 (burned 141 5) was to bequeath to his followers a pro- 
 test against the withholding of the cup. Martin 
 Luther (protested 151 7), passing for the first time 
 entirely outside of mediaeval theology, was to attack 
 the fundamental conception of the mass, as a repeti- 
 tion of the death of Christ — to deny that the sacra- 
 ment was a sacrifice offered to God to make continually 
 renewed propitiation for those sins by which the peo- 
 ple break the law of salvation. Wiclif attacked the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation. This doctrine was 
 formed by the schoolmen, and can only be stated in 
 the technical terms of their logic. It asserts that 
 after the words of consecration the bread and wine 
 are changed, not in their accidents, but in their sub- 
 stance, into the body and blood of Christ. The 
 accidents of a thing are the phenomena by which it 
 is perceived, such as taste, smell, hardness. The 
 substance is a non-sensible something, only to be laid 
 hold of by the mind, which is behind all accidents. 
 And the doctrine of transubstantiation asserts that, 
 while the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper taste 
 and look like bread and wine, they are actually and 
 substantially the flesh and blood of Christ. Before 
 the Papal schism Wiclif certainly accepted this teach- 
 ing, as when, for instance, he wrote of Christ, " He 
 was a priest when in the supper he made his own 
 body." But the mood induced by what seemed to 
 him a flagrant reductio ad absurdum of the Papal
 
 54 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 theory, led him to reexamine and reject the doctrine 
 oi transubstantiation on threefold grounds : of Scrip- 
 ture, which never suggests the idea and by implica- 
 tion several times denies it ; of tradition, because it 
 originated in the later and corrupt ages of the Church 
 and was unknown to Jerome and Augustine ; of rea- 
 son, because it assumes ideas which, tested by the 
 very logic it employs, are false and self-contradictory. 
 And he drew his argument to a point in a stern 
 denunciation of the " idolatry of the priests of Baal, 
 who worship gods they have made," and the pre- 
 sumption of attributing to " synners the power to 
 make God." 
 
 Members of the Church were, as in the Roman 
 communion they still are, trained by the whole 
 drift of the usual discipline and by every act of 
 their public worship to centre the expression of 
 belief and religious feeling in this sacrament. And 
 her apologists instinctively feel that it is the means 
 by which the mediaeval theology summarized by 
 Thomas Aquinas passes over into the religious life 
 of the people. It is easy to understand, there- 
 fore, that all who reverenced the ancient and ac- 
 cepted forms of learning and piety felt a shock of 
 horror at this attack and the words in which it was 
 expressed. And all the hirelings and greedy place- 
 men who had fought Wiclif so long were quick to 
 take advantage of this revulsion of honest religious 
 feeling. When he had been summoned before the 
 Bishop of London for resisting Papal aggression 
 upon the rights of England, he had walked into court 
 between the Grand Marshal of the realm and the
 
 The Defenders of Orthodoxy. 5 5 
 
 King's uncle, and they could do nothing against him, 
 because the people held him for a prophet. When 
 a bull from Rome had summoned him to trial on a 
 charge of heresy based on nineteen theses drawn from 
 his writings, the organized scholarship of England, as 
 represented by Oxford University, rose in his defence, 
 the burghers of London filled the court-room with 
 menacing murmurs, and Sir Henry Clifford, in the 
 name of the Princess of Wales, peremptorily de- 
 manded a suspension of judgment. But from the time 
 when he passed beyond demands for the reform of 
 abuses to an attack upon the organization of the 
 Church, his enemies and her defenders began to gain 
 upon him. Groan as men might under ecclesiastical 
 abuses, peremptory as were the demands for reform 
 from every quarter of Europe, the love of the ancient 
 mother was still strong and tender, and the power of 
 the great ideal of a visible Vicar of Christ still un- 
 broken over the human heart. There was as yet no 
 social institution whose ruling powers were willing 
 to defend any one whose protest involved a clear 
 denial of any essential or fundamental element of 
 Church doctrine or organization. William Courtenay, 
 Bishop of London, fourth son of the Earl of Devon- 
 shire, and on his mother's side a great-grandson of 
 Edward I., had been made Primate of England after 
 the murder of the mild Sudbury by the insurgent 
 peasants. He was an able, stern, and zealous ec- 
 clesiastic, and a court under his presidency, in the 
 spring of 1382, condemned ten theses as heretical. 
 One, " that God ought to obey the devil," was prob- 
 ably only Wiclif's statement, in the form of one of
 
 56 The Age of the Rcnasce?ice. 
 
 those paradoxes loved by the schoolmen, that God 
 permitted evil and Christ suffered himself to be 
 tempted. The rest related, directly or indirectly, to 
 the sacrament of the altar. Armed with this general 
 condemnation, which mentioned no names, the Arch- 
 bishop silenced first Wiclif's scholars. By the help 
 of the young King he repressed the itinerant preach- 
 ing, and with the aid of the conservative minority of 
 Oxford, frightened, arrested, or silenced the ablest 
 of Wiclif's friends. He was too cautious to attack 
 Wiclif himself, who, defended by the gratitude of 
 the people, the power of a skilful appeal to Parlia- 
 ment, and their jealousy of the abuse of the royal 
 prerogative in the proceedings, remained untouched 
 in his rural parish of Lutterworth. The net was 
 drawing round him, and he lectured no more at Ox- 
 ford. But in the English speech, to which he had 
 given form, he spoke by sermon and tract to the 
 people of England. And then he passed suddenly 
 from strife to peace. His assistant has told how a 
 stroke of paralysis, falling on him at the moment of 
 the elevation of the host, while he was hearing mass 
 in his own church, lamed that powerful tongue and, 
 three days later, stilled the brain and heart. 
 
 It is impossible to say how numerous his followers, 
 who came to be called Lollards, were. At all events, 
 though spared for nearly twenty years by most of 
 the bishops, and protected by a party in Parliament, 
 they never gained cohesion and power enough to 
 make any effective move for the reforms demanded 
 by their teacher. The accession of the house of 
 Lancaster to the throne seems to have been accom-
 
 Dead, yet Speaketh. 57 
 
 panied by an ecclesiastical reaction, strengthening 
 the conservative hierarchy. In 1401 Parliament 
 passed the statute De Haeretico Comburendo, which 
 for the first time made all heretics guilty of death by 
 the law of England. And under its pressure Lollardy 
 rapidly sank out of sight, emerging dimly behind the 
 abortive revolt for which Sir John Oldcastle suffered 
 death in 1414. After that its doctrines, practices, 
 and protests may have lived secretly among the 
 peasants, but it never appears again as a recognized 
 force in life or an effective power in Church or State. 
 
 It was Wiclif the scholar whose work lived on most 
 clearly from age to age. His English Bible was a 
 lasting appeal from all tradition back to the earliest 
 records of the source of Christianity, an assertion that 
 the knowledge of religion belongs to the common 
 people, and that its plainest and most direct appeals 
 must always be submitted to the common judgment 
 and conscience of mankind. His other writings also 
 lived when he was dead. Adalbert Ranconis, a great 
 teacher of the recently founded University of Prague, 
 bequeathed a foundation for travelling scholarships, 
 to enable Bohemian students to visit Oxford and 
 Paris. Their transcriptions of Wiclif s later manu- 
 scripts are still in existence, and through them his 
 ideas became the source of the first truly national 
 reform, the first demand for the abolition of ecclesi- 
 astical abuses which united a whole people in willing- 
 ness to resist the authority of Rome to determine 
 doctrine and rule the conscience. 
 
 Five years later Urban died, fighting to the last 
 for the possessions of the Church and his own au-
 
 58 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 thority. Theodoric of Niem, the vivid chronicler of 
 the schism, says, " He had a hard heart," and quotes 
 upon him the proverb, " Sudden honor always makes 
 a poor man over-proud." He took up with rash and 
 obstinate self-confidence the tremendous burden of 
 the Papacy, before which the good have always 
 shrunk and the strong and wise trembled. And he 
 died hated even by those who obeyed him. The 
 proud puritan, with narrow sympathies and intolerant 
 temper, was not large enough for his opportunity. 
 Because he could not distinguish between his per- 
 sonal animosity and zeal in the cause he fought for, 
 he brought upon the Church evils greater than those 
 from which he tried, with the sternest honesty of 
 intent, to save her.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POPE AND ANTIPOPE — THE WHITE PENITENTS AT 
 ROME — THE SIEGE OF AVIGNON — THE FOL- 
 LOWERS OF PETRARCH, THE HUMANISTS, OR 
 MEN OF THE NEW LEARNING. 
 
 HE death of Urban did not check in the 
 least the struggle for the Papal tiara, which 
 was to drag its slow length along amid 
 treachery, bloodshed, and bribery for 
 forty years. The Popes on either side 
 are distinguished by nothing but their names and the 
 varying degrees of skill with which they avoided 
 yielding to the growing demand of Christendom for 
 a General Council to allay the schism. The record 
 of their intrigues is dull and unprofitable, and even 
 the steady discharge of their mutual anathemas has 
 a stereotyped and unreal tone, like stage thunder. 
 About the only things in the story of the Papacy 
 during these years which the muse of history can 
 record without yawning are, perhaps, the scattered 
 evidences of the deep religious feeling of Europe, 
 and the firm attachment of men to the institu- 
 tions and customs of the Church, which remained 
 unshaken through all confessed abuse, and un- 
 
 59
 
 6o The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 rebuffed by the steady refusals of the demand for 
 reform. 
 
 Boniface IX. proclaimed, in 1390, a jubilee pil- 
 grimage to Rome, and the gifts of the pilgrims from 
 Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and England 
 filled up the empty treasury. In advance his agents 
 had sold all over the world vast numbers of indul- 
 gences, which secured to the purchasers all the 
 spiritual benefits of the pilgrimage for the price the 
 journey would have cost. Ten years later the cen- 
 tury jubilee brought crowds of pilgrims, some even 
 from France, which obeyed the other Pope. 
 
 More remarkable evidences of attachment to relig- 
 ion were the processions of the White Companies of 
 Flagellants. The habit of flagellation grew up in the 
 cloisters as a means of keeping the flesh under, an ex- 
 pression of penitence for sin, and a method of prepay- 
 ing the penalties of purgatory. It was strongly de- 
 fended as a useful discipline and a pious exercise by 
 the celebrated Peter Damiani in the eleventh century. 
 Mutual public flagellation by companies of laity had, 
 however, been discountenanced by Church and State. 
 But when the black death desolated Europe in the 
 middle of the fourteenth century such companies had 
 appeared, journeying through the cities of Germany, 
 beating one another in the market-places, and reading 
 a letter from Christ, which they said had dropped 
 from heaven. Nine thousand of them passed through 
 the city of Strassburg in three months. At first the 
 clergy were powerless to stop the custom, but in six 
 months the hysteric excitement was repressed by the 
 civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and before the end
 
 The White Flagellants. 61 
 
 of the year a Papal bull forbade it as schismatic. It 
 thus became' a method of expression for heretic and 
 anti-hierarchical spirits, and a number of its secret 
 practisers perished at the stake. But in the year 
 1397 there suddenly appeared in Genoa companies 
 of people clothed in white and wearing great masks 
 with holes cut for the eyes. They marched in pro- 
 cession, singing hymns, and beating each other in 
 pairs with scourges. The habit spread over all Italy. 
 The Flagellants of Florence were reckoned at forty 
 thousand. Some cities forbade their entrance, and 
 when they approached Rome the Pope sent four 
 hundred lancers to turn them back. But the Captain 
 and all his men joined the procession, which included 
 also many priests and bishops, and as they marched 
 forward the inhabitants of Orvieto, ten thousand in 
 number, joined them. The day after their entry 
 into Rome most of the inhabitants put on the white 
 robe. All the prisons were opened and the prisoners 
 set free. The most precious relics of the city were 
 exposed in special services, and the Pope gave the 
 apostolic benediction to an immense multitude crying 
 out, " Mercy ! Mercy ! " while he was moved to tears. 
 Two contemporaries wrote that all Italy prayed and 
 took the sacrament, while everywhere injuries were 
 forgiven and deadly feuds healed. But these effects 
 passed as swiftly as they had come. The opening 
 of the prisons, the enormous crowd of strangers in 
 the city, the intense excitement, brought their natural 
 evils. The Pope forbade the flagellation processions. 
 The leader of a new train of pilgrims was arrested 
 and afterward executed for frauds, and the move-
 
 62 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ment dissipated itself, leaving behind a bad outbreak 
 of the plague. 
 
 The Antipope, Benedict XIII., was facing a dif- 
 ferent sort of pilgrimage. Marshal Boucicault led 
 the royal army against the castle of Avignon in 
 the summer of 1398. But the huge pile that still 
 towers on its rock above the Rhone was not easy to 
 take, and the obstinate Spaniard, apparently giving 
 way in straits, and breaking his convention as soon 
 as he was reprovisioned, maintained his position 
 until 1403, when, in disguise, and carrying only the 
 consecrated host, " the prisoner of Avignon " escaped. 
 
 But meanwhile, in all stillness, the new intellectual 
 force whose first exponent was Petrarch was finding 
 broader expression. Its development may be briefly 
 indicated in the slow increase of the numbers and 
 influence of the Humanists, or followers of the New 
 Learning. Among the thousands of these men who 
 for several generations loved letters or sought the 
 glory of them there was every variation in character, 
 but marked common traits betray a secret law by 
 which they must have drawn their being from the 
 spirit of the age. They can be arranged, without 
 too much forcing, around groups of three in succes- 
 sive generations. 
 
 Boccaccio was a contemporary of Petrarch's, for 
 he was only nine years younger and died only one 
 year later; but he took toward his friend so entirely 
 the attitude of a disciple that he is always looked 
 upon as a follower and successor. He had neither 
 the greatness nor the meanness of his master. He 
 did not, because he could not, do as much, but he
 
 Boccaccio the Man. 63 
 
 did nothing for effect. He longed for fame, but 
 he scorned -riches, not in words alone, but with 
 the pride which several times refused to change 
 the independence of a scholar and a citizen of free 
 Florence to become the favorite of a court. Once 
 only he tried to sit at the table of Maecenas. When 
 the rich Florentine, Niccola Acciaijuoli, became 
 Grand Seneschal of Naples, Boccaccio accepted a 
 pressing invitation " to share his luck " and become 
 his biographer. But when he was given in the 
 splendid palace of his patron a room and service far 
 below that of his own simple house, the proud poet 
 resented the insult by leaving at once, and answered 
 a sarcastic letter from the Seneschal's steward by 
 the only invective which, in an age of quarrels, ever 
 came from his pen. The plump little man, with his 
 merry round face, and twinkling eyes never dimmed 
 by envy, and a clear wit untinged with malice, lived 
 all his life among the bitterest party and personal 
 strifes, he became a distinguished citizen, and con- 
 ducted with success three important embassies, but 
 he died without an enemy. His enthusiasms were 
 deep and self-forgetful. When he spoke of Dante, 
 whose poem, by a vote of the City Council, he ex- 
 pounded in the cathedral every Sunday and holy day, 
 his eyes moistened and his voice trembled with won- 
 der and love. He writes to Petrarch with a humble 
 and touching joy in his friendship to one so un- 
 worthy, which asks for no return. Petrarch used 
 this feeling, which he accepted as if it were a homage 
 due to him, as incense to burn on the altar of his 
 insatiable egotism ; but, after all, he loved the faith-
 
 64 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ful Florentine, and left him by will fifty gold florins 
 to buy a fur-lined coat to wear cold nights when he 
 read late. 
 
 Boccaccio is known to the untechnical reader 
 only as the author of the Decameron. The book 
 is the beginning and still a model of Tuscan prose, 
 and ranks him forever among the rarest masters 
 of the art men love best — the art of story- telling. 
 He took his material wherever he could, and it is 
 difficult to believe that to offer some of the ten- 
 der and pure stories of the collection to those who 
 were willing to enjoy some of the others was not 
 casting pearls before swine. But we must remember 
 that it was written for a princess by a man of the 
 world, who gives no sign that he is offending against 
 good manners. For there existed in that and for 
 succeeding generations an incredible freedom of 
 speech. Whether this of itself indicates a larger 
 license in living than that which prevails among the 
 idle and luxurious of this age, in which vice is spoken 
 of chiefly by double entendre, is hard to decide — at 
 least for those who know the vast distinction between 
 essential morality and soc al custom. But whatever 
 may be the truth of this comparison, it is certain that 
 Boccaccio had lived openly, after the fashion of the 
 age, the life of a libertine, and it is difficult to see 
 how any moral defense of the Decameron as a 
 whole can be accepted by a serious-minded per- 
 son. The only consolation under the brand-mark 
 of a Philistine which is certain to follow the confes- 
 sion of such a judgment is that Boccaccio himself 
 thought so ; for he begged an old friend not to give
 
 Boccaccio the Scholar. 65 
 
 the book to his wife, who would certainly judge him 
 unfairly by it ; or, if he insisted on doing it, at least 
 to explain that he wrote that sort of thing only in his 
 youth. In his vulgarity, and also to some extent in 
 his repentance, he is a representative of the Hu- 
 manists. In every generation, from Petrarch down, 
 many of their leaders were willing to use the utmost 
 skill of their pens in promoting the worship of the 
 goddess of lubricity amid the laughter and applause 
 of Italy. 
 
 Nothing could have astonished Boccaccio more 
 than to know that fame would come to him as the 
 writer of the Decameron, and not through his 
 great service to scholarship. Not, indeed, that 
 his work marks any real advance in scholarship. 
 Although he offered hints valuable to the future, like 
 the idea of correcting texts by collating manuscripts, 
 he lacked strength to cut out the paths to which he 
 pointed. He never shook himself free from reverence 
 for tradition and awe before all that was written. 
 When, for instance, he finds in Vincentius Bellova- 
 censis that the Franks were descended from Franko, 
 a son of Hector, he does not believe it, but he is un- 
 willing to denounce it as a fable, because " nothing 
 is impossible with God." His service was to give 
 the inspiration of an example and to spread by the 
 contagious influence of personality the enthusiasm 
 for letters. Petrarch, when he left his dying gift, 
 knew the real Boccaccio, the man who showed Italy 
 the image of the student happy in the companionship 
 of his books, a living picture of scholarship powerful 
 to hold and fire the imagination, like Diirer's beauti- 
 
 E
 
 66 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ful little etching of St. Jerome in his cell. When the 
 first teacher of Greek came to Italy Boccaccio has- 
 tened to meet him at Venice, took him to Florence, 
 and kept the dirty old cynic in his house, learning 
 from him the Greek letters and the elements of 
 grammar. He never seemed to get farther, and 
 knew Homer only in the stiff translation of the 
 master which he copied with his own hand, buried 
 under the extraordinary comments of the old man 
 as he read it. 
 
 Enthusiasm like this could not fail of a strong 
 impression among the Florentines, and soon after 
 his death we find his friends organized into a 
 learned club for stated discussion. The place of 
 meeting was in the convent of the Augustins, San 
 Spirito, to which Boccaccio had left all his books and 
 in whose church he wished to be buried. The soul 
 and leader of the association was Luigi de' Marsigli, 
 an Augustinian monk, son of a noble Florentine 
 family. At first a student of the University of Pavia, 
 he took his master's degree in theology at Faris. 
 But the meetings under his guidance used no scho- 
 lastic methods of discussion. It was more a free con- 
 versation between the finest spirits of Florence on 
 Livy and Ovid, Augustine, or some question of 
 archaeology as to the origin of Florence, or a histori- 
 cal personage like Ezzelin or Frederick II. We do 
 not know much about this club, except that in it for 
 the first time men could get the elements of educa- 
 tion and the tone of scholarship outside of the Church 
 and the university, still in bondage to the ghost of a 
 mediaeval Aristotle and a mediaeval theology.
 
 Coluccio Salutato. 67 
 
 The most striking of these younger men who formed 
 the centre of -learning in Florence for their generation 
 was Coluccio Salutato. Trained in the University of 
 Bologna as a notary, he spent two years as an under- 
 secretary of the Curia, and carried from the service 
 a lasting hatred for the corruptions of the Papal 
 court. Afterward he led for several years the wan- 
 dering life of a knight-errant of the pen seeking for 
 fortune, and finally settled in Florence as a clerk in 
 the service of the government. At the age of forty- 
 five he rose to be Chancellor of State, having charge 
 of the records and correspondence of the Republic. 
 And during all his life there streamed out from the 
 government house of Florence upon the eyes of a 
 weak and restless generation the light of a stead- 
 fast soul that loved liberty and feared only God. It 
 was his ideal for Florence that she should be a city 
 not only " hating and cursing tyranny within her own 
 walls, but always ready to defend with all her strength 
 the privileges of the other cities of Italy." He put 
 this eloquence of sincere and bold conviction into the 
 letters and proclamations of the Republic, clothed in 
 swinging rhetoric and ornamented by the phrases of 
 Seneca and Petrarch. They were copied and circu- 
 lated even beyond the Alps, while men wondered to 
 find life and beauty in State documents. Gian Gale- 
 azzo Visconti, the most dangerous enemy of the 
 Republic, who hid like a spider in the palace at Milan, 
 strove to draw all the cities of Italy into the meshes 
 of his crafty tyranny, said, " One letter of Salutato's 
 can do me more harm than a thousand Florentine 
 men-at-arms."
 
 68 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Salutato died in the harness at the age of seventy- 
 six, honored by all his neighbors ; for he had brought 
 up ten sons to be honest and honorable, and, except 
 forty-five florins and his collection of manuscripts, 
 this man, who had for thirty years dealt with the rich 
 tyrants of Italy and known all the secrets of the State, 
 left neither house nor property outside his paternal 
 inheritance. He has one lasting claim to the endur- 
 ing gratitude of posterity : he was the first man to 
 make an index to a book. Over his head as it lay on 
 the bier, wreathed by public order with the laurel of 
 the scholar and poet, the banners of the city and all 
 its guilds were dipped, and a marble monument told 
 to coming generations the gratitude of the Repub- 
 lic to the honest chancellor who had brought the 
 power of the New Learning into the service of the 
 State. He had to defend his love of letters against 
 ascetics, to whom all beauty was a snare, he was 
 accused of being a heathen philosopher by those who 
 could not reconcile piety with the continual quotations 
 of Seneca and Cicero, but his letters show the spirit 
 of one who loved religion. And therefore some of 
 the strongest of them denounce the party strife and 
 personal ambition which was degrading the ideal of 
 the Papacy, devastating Italy with wild mercenaries, 
 and threatening to destroy the liberties of Florence 
 and her allies.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ORTHODOX DEMANDS FOR UNION AND REFORM: 
 (i) CATHERINE OF SIENA AND THE ASCETIC 
 PROPHETS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS; (2) THE 
 PARTY OF CONCILIAR SUPREMACY. 
 
 HE corruption of the Curia, now so ap- 
 parent in the schism it caused, — this war 
 between two factions of the Princes of the 
 Church fiercely contending for wealth and 
 power, while the hungry sheep looked 
 up and were not fed, — aroused not only the root and 
 branch dissent of Wiclif, but also created two distinct 
 classes of protesters loyal to the Church and of an 
 orthodoxy never seriously questioned. 
 
 The prototype of the first class is Catherine of 
 Siena, canonized soon after her death. She was the 
 daughter of a dyer, and from her earliest youth began 
 to scorn delights and live days of prayer and praise, 
 visiting the prisoners, clothing the poor, and tending 
 the sick. Visions and dreams came to her. She had 
 seizures in which she lay without speech or feeling, 
 to awake and tell of conversations with Mary and the 
 angels, whether in the body or out of it she knew 
 not. At an early age she gained the privilege of 
 
 69
 
 70 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 wearing the robe of the order of St. Dominic as an 
 associate sister without a vow. She became an 
 ambassador of the Florentine Republic and a corre- 
 spondent of princes. When Gregory, largely at her 
 intercession, came back from Avignon and at once 
 began to answer the revolt of his misgoverned cities 
 by war, she poured out a flood of letters throbbing 
 with righteous wrath and grief. " Peace, peace, 
 peace, my sweet father," she wrote; " no more war; 
 war against the enemies of the cross by the sword of 
 the holy Word of God, full of love." In two things 
 she never wavered : her loyalty to the Pope as the 
 visible Vicar of Christ, and her readiness to rebuke 
 the sins and follies of Papal policy ; as when she told 
 Gregory to his face that she found in Rome " the 
 stench of intolerable sins." The holiness of her 
 life and the earnest piety of her intent, symbolized 
 in that extreme asceticism which, comparatively 
 uninfluential upon the mind and heart of Teutonic 
 peoples, has always appealed forcibly to the more 
 intense and artistic temperament of the South, gave 
 her enormous power. All Italy held her for a 
 prophet ; and a vigorous intellect and a strong com- 
 mon sense woven through all the mystic web of her 
 visions enabled her to use her influence well. She 
 died a few years before Urban, at the age of thirty- 
 three (1380), worn out by privations, labors, and the 
 griefs and ecstasies of a fervent spirit, exclaiming 
 with her last breath, " I come not because of my 
 merits, but through thy mercy — only through the 
 power of thy blood." And Italy did not lack in 
 any generation faithful witnesses in her likeness—
 
 Conciliar Supremacy. 71 
 
 ascetic, mystical, given to visions, mingling patriot- 
 ism with religion, denouncing sin with a fervid 
 eloquence that swayed the people like leaves in 
 the wind, or reasoning of righteousness, temper- 
 ance, and judgment to come with a courage before 
 which the most reckless tyrant or the greediest 
 ecclesiastical politician secretly quailed. Lack of 
 space compels the omission of the portraits of these 
 prophets fallen on evil days until we come to Savo- 
 narola, the most splendid of their line. 
 
 From the earliest days of the schism voices had 
 been heard calling for a General Council of the 
 Church to heal the schism and check the corruption 
 and demoralization which had followed in its train. 
 This demand created an unorganized party, and 
 the party formulated a theory of the church reject- 
 ing the Papal Supremacy, and maintaining that the 
 source of ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority was in 
 a General Council. They were, of course, at liberty 
 to do this without transgressing the bounds of ortho- 
 doxy, for, however strenuously the Infallibility and 
 Supremacy of the Pope were maintained by argument 
 and force, they were not dogmatically defined as a 
 portion of the Catholic faith until our own generation. 
 
 The party of Conciliar Supremacy can best be seen 
 in the centre where it found a voice, the University 
 of Paris. And its best spirit is incarnate in two 
 Rectors of that famous school, which had been the 
 alma mater of so many Popes and owed its income 
 and most of its privileges to the Curia. Pierre d'Ailly 
 was the son of an artisan, born in 1350. When he 
 came up to the University of Paris at twenty-two he
 
 72 The Age of the Renasce?ice. 
 
 was a pious and able youth, much given to the study 
 of the Bible. His ability was soon noted. The 
 students elected him a procurator, and the authorities 
 appointed him preacher to open a Synod at Amiens. 
 He chose as his theme the corruptions of the clergy, 
 and laid on the lash well. But the zeal of the youth 
 for reform went hand in hand with a zeal for ortho- 
 doxy, and the same year he published his " Letter to 
 the New Jews." It sternly rebukes those who dared 
 to question the finality of the Vulgate, the translation 
 of a holy man used by the infallible Church; and 
 concludes that if we question this translation we 
 might question any other and the Catholic would be 
 set afloat on a devil's sea of doubt. 
 
 It was in 1380 that he came up for his doctor's 
 degree, and his thesis discussed the Church. He 
 defended the whole hierarchical organization, but 
 claimed that the power of the Church was not mate- 
 rial, but spiritual. Christ answered before Pilate and 
 bade us give to Caesar the things that are Csesar's. 
 The foundation of the Church was Christ, and Peter 
 was a pillar of the great building, which consisted of 
 the fellowship of believers in Christ. These conclu- 
 sions he based on the Scriptures, which pointed to 
 Christ as the only foundation, and plainly taught in 
 Galatians ii. that Peter had erred. The new law of 
 Christ was therefore the law of God's kingdom. 
 But that new law of Christ recorded in the Holy 
 Scriptures was not to be understood by the human 
 intellect and accepted by the human will. The King- 
 dom of God could only enter into a man by the 
 supernatural gift of faith. To give this God had
 
 A n Intolerable Situation. 73 
 
 founded his visible Church, and without her none 
 could hear or obey the law of Christ. Outside the 
 Church, therefore, none could be saved. When he 
 came to define how the Church expressed the final 
 authority given her for salvation he fell into embar- 
 rassment. He mentions several opinions : that the 
 Universal Church cannot err, nor a General Council, 
 nor the Roman Diocese, nor its representative, the 
 College of Cardinals, nor a canonically elected Pope. 
 Of these he expresses approval only of the first. In 
 regard to the second he seems to be in doubt, and 
 the general impression of his thesis is that the infal- 
 lible Church has no infallible organ of expression. 
 But he rather indicates this conclusion as the abstract 
 result of a scholastic discussion than as a distinct 
 practical judgment. On the burning question of the 
 day, how to get rid of the schism, he showed himself 
 a man of compromise, standing half way between 
 the Papalists, who thought the Pope independent of 
 the Council, and the Conciliarists, who thought that 
 a General Council would be independent of the 
 Pope. 
 
 The demoralization of the schism was complete, 
 and the condition of the French Church was now 
 unbearable. The churches were empty, the hos- 
 pitals closed, parish priests begging in the streets, 
 while the hungry cardinals at Avignon consumed 
 the ecclesiastical funds. In 1 38 1 an assembly of 
 the University voted unanimously to demand a 
 Council. The Regent of France was enraged, and 
 imprisoned the delegates who presented the request. 
 The University protested, and appointed the young
 
 74 The Age of the Re?tascence. 
 
 Professor Pierre d'Ailly as their advocate before the 
 Duke. He did his dangerous duty like a man and 
 came off safe, but the plan for a Council was stifled at 
 its beginning. Then d'Ailly took to the pen and wrote 
 a Letter from Hell. It was signed by Leviathan, the 
 Prince of Darkness, ordering his vassals, the prelates, 
 to be careful for the maintenance of the schism. " I 
 had worked in vain," he writes, " to injure the Church 
 while her sons loved one another, when suddenly her 
 prelates brought the whole heavenly Jerusalem into 
 confusion and began to cry, ' I am for Clement,' ' I 
 for Urban,' ' I for the General Council,' ' I for a union,' 
 ' I for the resignation of both,' ' I for the Lord,' ' I 
 for the King,' ' I for the rich benefices I have got from 
 so-and-so.' Oh, what joy for all my true subjects to 
 see the city thus surrendered to me ! Therefore have 
 I crowned my true servants, the prelates of the 
 Church, with glory and honor, and made them rulers 
 of all the work of my hands, giving them all the 
 kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof. But 
 now, behold, a miserable remnant like mice crawling 
 out of their holes dare to challenge my prelates to 
 battle, and cry, 'General Council! let the people of 
 Christ come together.' If they do not recant, kill 
 them, my sons. Let no one take your crown. No 
 sympathy must soften your heart, no pity cause it 
 to tremble ; be hard as rock and let the whole earth 
 perish rather than give your honor to another. Stand 
 by your advantage till the last breath. I count on 
 you, for I know your obstinacy and stiff-neckedness. 
 Blessed be your wrath, that is so strong, and your 
 hate, that is so fixed. Make broad your phylacteries,
 
 The " Eagle of France" 75 
 
 and the borders of your garments great. Love the 
 first places at feasts and the chief seats in synagogues. 
 Tithe mint and anise and cummin, but neglect the 
 weightier matters of the law. Make proselytes that 
 are worse than yourself. Be wise in your own con- 
 ceits. Be strong and steadfast, for I am your shield 
 and great reward. Run, that ye may receive the 
 prize. Amen." 
 
 But these brave words were scarcely heard in the 
 storm of ecclesiastical politics. The University, de- 
 spairing of a Council, gave in its obedience to Clement 
 VII., and in 1384 d'Ailly became Rector of one of 
 its best colleges. There he soon gathered round 
 him a band of distinguished scholars who all loved 
 him and became Gilles Deschamps, the " Sovereign 
 Doctor of Theology," Jean of Gerson, " the Most 
 Christian Teacher," and Nicolas of Clemanges, the 
 " Cicero of his Age." D'Ailly's reputation as a wise 
 and forceful speaker grew, and in 1387 he was chosen 
 as head of a deputation to defend before the Pope the 
 action of the University in condemning as heretical 
 the theses of a Dominican applicant for a degree 
 who had attacked the Immaculate Conception of the 
 Virgin Mary. His mission was difficult, for Thomas 
 Aquinas had denied the Immaculate Conception and 
 Urban V. had approved Thomas as the teacher of 
 the Church. But, nevertheless, Clement condemned 
 the denial of Immaculate Conception as heretical, 
 and the Dominican transferred his obedience to the 
 other Pope. There was wide rejoicing at this 
 triumph. D'Ailly received the name of the " Eagle 
 of France," and at almost the same time the young
 
 j 6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 King chose him as confessor, and the University 
 elected him Rector. 
 
 He soon had a second mission to Clement. A 
 certain Prince Peter of Luxembourg, having been 
 made Bishop of Metz at fourteen, and Cardinal at 
 sixteen, died two years later, in 1387, and d'Ailly 
 was sent to advocate his canonization. He preached 
 twice to the Pope, once from the text, " Father, the 
 hour is come ; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may 
 glorify thee." The preacher proved Peter's holiness 
 by a catalogue of 2 1 28 miracles ; e. g., dead raised, 73 ; 
 blind healed, 57; cured of gout, 6, etc; his faith 
 was illustrated by the zeal with which he flung into 
 the fire a Dominican writing attacking the Immacu- 
 late Conception ; and it was suggested as the perora- 
 tion that God had given these wonderful powers to 
 show that Clement was the rightful Pope and thus 
 heal the schism. 
 
 In 1394 the University asked the written opinion 
 of all its members on the schism. The result was — 
 negotiations. And d'Ailly, being sent to the new 
 Pope, was made to believe he would resign in due 
 time and appointed Bishop of Cambrai. 
 
 He was succeeded in the rectorship of the Univer- 
 sity by his favorite scholar, John, born at Gerson in 
 1363. He had gained under his master a tendency 
 to mysticism, a good training in theology, a love of 
 the Scriptures, and a thorough devotion to the Church, 
 Catholic and visible. He added to these a deep 
 piety and an intense love of the young. The five 
 folio volumes of his works, moral, mystic, exegetic, 
 dogmatic, ecclesiastical, polemic and homiletic, show
 
 Jean Char Her of ' Gerson. 77 
 
 how laboriously he used his powers and how faith- 
 fully he followed the bent of his genius. There is a 
 practical turn to all his mystical and keenly critical 
 mind thinks and feels. This Chancellor of the Uni- 
 versity used to devote much time to hearing the con- 
 fessions of little boys. This learned theologian 
 thought that all learning was only to teach the clergy 
 to preach better. This skilful writer on ecclesiastical 
 law was a stern preacher against the sins of the 
 clergy, and his criticism and piety moved entirely 
 within the self-chosen limits of the Catholic orthodox 
 faith, which was to him a supernatural gift of God, 
 through the Church, to every man who was obedient 
 to God's servants. The system of faith the Church 
 preserved, the system of government by which she 
 preserved it, was more important to him than any 
 opinion or any reform. Hence, like d'Ailly, in spite 
 of the sceptical spirit he inherited with his nominal- 
 istic philosophy, he was always a safe theologian. 
 And he shared not only his master's reforming zeal, 
 but also his love for a " middle-of-the-road " policy, 
 " It is better," he wrote, " that many truths should 
 be unknown or concealed than that charity should be 
 wounded by speaking of them." He anxiously 
 warned every theological teacher to use the old forms, 
 even if, in his judgment, he could find better. He 
 even wished that, as the Church had one Head and 
 one faith, so it might have only one theological fac- 
 ulty and be kept "safe." Naturally this was to be 
 the faculty of Paris. He loved the Bible, but he op- 
 posed its translation into French, as full of danger of 
 spreading heresy among unlearned folk, " as an
 
 78 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 injury and a stumbling-block for the Catholic faith." 
 All these early utterances are prophecies of his trac- 
 tate written over Jerome of Prague, that, when it 
 comes to " obstinacy in heresy against the command 
 of the Church, the conscience must be laid aside." 
 
 While this able successor followed him as Rector 
 and first orator of the University, d'Ailly was inau- 
 gurating reforms in his new diocese. He found 
 need, for in his first synodical sermon he said that, 
 while in our Lord's day there was one devil among 
 the twelve apostles, to-day among twelve baptized 
 there were eleven. It was from this herculean task 
 of cleansing, which he sketches in his convocation 
 sermons, that he was summoned to try and persuade 
 both Popes to resign. The double embassy was a 
 double failure, and France withdrew obedience from 
 both. But only for a while. Five years later 
 d'Ailly was summoned to preach the sermon at the 
 celebration of the return of France to the obedience 
 of Benedict — an obedience which in five years was 
 again withdrawn.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF PISA MAKES THE SCHISM 
 TRIPLE — THE PROTEST OF JOHN HUSS OF 
 BOHEMIA. 
 
 HEN, on the death of Innocent VII. in 
 1406, the fourteen cardinals of the Italian 
 party met, they were evidently sincerely 
 touched by the desperate condition of 
 Christendom. The simple and honest 
 way to express this feeling was to refuse to elect a 
 Pope until it could be done by the representatives of 
 the whole Church. For this they were not large 
 enough. They feared lest their party should lose 
 some advantage in the union, and after a short hesi- 
 tation entered into conclave. But they bound them- 
 selves by a solemn agreement that if any of them 
 were elected Pope he would at once begin to nego- 
 tiate for union, and lay down the tiara whenever 
 the interests of the Church demanded it. Then 
 they chose the noble Venetian, Angelo Coraro. He 
 was nearly eighty years old, and they thought that 
 one so near death would not be tempted to forget 
 duty for self — a singular want of knowledge of human 
 nature, for all experience teaches that egotism is 
 
 79
 
 80 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 never so all-engrossing as in the few last years left 
 to an ambitious or avaricious man for the exercise of 
 passion. And the world soon became aware that 
 behind all the edifying and friendly messages sent to 
 his rival there was the fixed will of a crafty old man 
 neither to promote nor permit a union which did not 
 secure the gains of his party and leave him Pope. 
 When the pressure of France compelled both Popes 
 to agree to meet at Savona in September of 1408, 
 there began a double-sided comedy. Each ap- 
 proached the place of meeting, but neither would go 
 there, and by letters curiously mingled of piety and 
 malice each tried to lay the whole blame for the 
 schism at the door of the other. 
 
 Then the French authorities forbade any one to 
 obey either Pope unless the schism were ended by a 
 certain day. The enraged Benedict XIII., of the old 
 French faction, threatened excommunication, and the 
 Parliament of France and University of Paris declared 
 him deposed. Gregory, triumphing over the loss of 
 his rival's strongest supporter, seized the opportunity 
 for breaking his oath to create no new cardinals, by 
 naming two of his nephews and two of his partisans 
 for the scarlet hat. He already suspected his electors 
 and kept them surrounded by soldiers. Remember- 
 ing the fate of the cardinals of Urban VI., most of 
 them fled and appealed to a Council. Benedict 
 had already summoned one to his native place 
 of Perpignan, whither he fled for refuge. Greg- 
 ory called another to assemble near Ravenna. 
 Meantime some cardinals of both parties, Frenchmen 
 and Italians, met and called a Council, to be held at
 
 The Triple Schism. 81 
 
 Pisa, to arrange a basis of union and reform; and 
 Christendom/ which had so long asked for a Council, 
 found itself overwhelmed with three. 
 
 It was a brilliant assembly that convened at Pisa in 
 1409 : twenty-three cardinals, the prelates and ambas- 
 sadors of kings, princes, and nations, the representa- 
 tives of the universities, and one hundred doctors of law 
 and theology. But in spite of its splendor and author- 
 ity the councif knew that its assemblage against Papal 
 authority was an innovation, and hailed with gladness 
 the tractates of d'Ailly and Gerson, claiming that as 
 Christ was the corner-stone of the Church, she had 
 power to exercise her authority without any visible 
 Vicar if it were necessary to preserve her life. They 
 added the characteristic and wise advice not to run 
 the risk of adding schism to schism by electing a 
 Pope until they were sure that Christendom would 
 unanimously obey him. 
 
 The Council proceeded to depose and excommuni- 
 cate both Gregory and Benedict as schismatics and 
 heretics. The Cardinals then took oath that whoever 
 was made Vicar of Christ would not dissolve the 
 Council until the Church was reformed. And the 
 Conclave elected Pietro Filargo. He was seventy- 
 nine years old, came from the island of Candia, had 
 no living relatives, and, report said, had been a beg- 
 gar boy adopted by the monks to whose order he 
 belonged. He was crowned under the name of 
 Alexander V. ; and, to use the words of a contem- 
 porary pamphleteer, the world saw " that infamous 
 duality, now, indeed, become a trinity, not blessed, 
 but accursed, fighting in the Church of God." 
 
 F
 
 82 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 For the two Antipopes, each backed by his Synod, 
 returned with interest the excommunications of the 
 Council. Benedict was supported by Aragon and 
 Scotland, Gregory in Naples, Friauli, Hungary, and 
 Bohemia. Alexander could not conciliate them, and 
 he had no resources to crush them. For, as he said, 
 " I was rich as a bishop, poor as a cardinal, but a 
 beggar as Pope." 
 
 Baldassar Cossa, Cardinal Legate of Bologna, who 
 succeeded him under the title of John XXIII., was 
 popularly reported to have been a pirate in his youth 
 and to have poisoned Alexander. But these ought 
 probably to be regarded as mythical details suggested 
 by better authenticated facts of his career and char- 
 acter. For these the day of judgment was approach- 
 ing. Driven by the exigencies of the triple contest to 
 seek help from Sigismund, ruler of Germany, the Pope 
 had no resource but to join him as emperor elect in 
 calling a General Council at Constance in November, 
 1414. And at last the middle-of-the-road policy of 
 d'Ailly and his scholar Gerson triumphed in the call 
 for a General Council issued by a Pope. 
 
 Meanwhile in the opposite corner of Europe another 
 party of reform had been taking shape. It also was 
 national, headed by a university, and represented by 
 two protagonists, a master and his scholar. But 
 nation and university were new and feeble, and both 
 were divided on the question of reform into bitter 
 factions. 
 
 Bohemia was a section of the empire which, by 
 the force of the tendencies of the age, was fast ac- 
 quiring an independent national feeling and existence.
 
 A New Nation. 83 
 
 It was a bilingual land, whose original German popu- 
 lation, driven but in the eighth century by an irrup- 
 tion of Slavs, had since the thirteenth century been 
 returning and mingling with them. Germans formed 
 the bulk of the burghers, or city dwellers, engaged in 
 commerce, manufactures, and mining, while the peas- 
 ant farmers and the nobles were Slavs. In the middle 
 of the century the growing national feeling had re- 
 ceived, by the efforts of the King, two centres of ex- 
 pression. The Bohemian Church was freed from the 
 control of the Archbishopric of Mayence, whose seat 
 was on the Rhine, and given its own Primate by the 
 erection of a new Archbishopric in Prague ; and in 
 1348 Bohemia became a centre of learning by the 
 foundation of the University of Prague ; the first 
 university in Germany. 
 
 John Huss, born of a peasant family about 1369, 
 first appears in close connection with these two 
 organs of the national feeling. He gained no special 
 distinction at the University while a student, but rose 
 steadily through the academic grades till he became 
 a master of the liberal arts. As a lecturer and teacher 
 he won the respect of his fellows, and in 1402 was 
 chosen to act as Rector or chief executive of the Uni- 
 versity for the usual term of six months. In the same 
 year he was ordained a priest in order to take charge 
 of the Bethlehem Chapel, built some ten years before 
 by a wealthy merchant of Prague, and endowed by 
 one of the royal councillors, for the maintenance 
 of preaching to the common people in the Slavic 
 tongue. He soon showed himself a not unworthy 
 successor of the two great folks' preachers of Prague,
 
 84 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 dead about a generation before, Konrad and Miltitz. 
 Konrad, because there was no church large enough 
 to hold his congregation, had preached often in the 
 great open square of the city. He became, by the 
 appointment of the Bishop, pastor of the largest parish 
 in Prague, and preached repentance to the German 
 burghers and to the clergy, denouncing sin with 
 tremendous power. His successor was Miltitz, a 
 Slav, whose success was so great that he was some- 
 times compelled to preach five times a Sunday — 
 thrice in Slavic and once each in German and Latin. 
 He was so powerful in the truth that the worst street 
 of the city, known because of its houses of prostitution 
 as Little Venice, was abandoned by its inhabitants. 
 The King bought and gave it to him, and he tore 
 down the houses and built a Magdalen asylum named 
 Little Jerusalem. He did not hesitate in a great 
 assembly to point out the King, his friend, and after- 
 ward still more his friend, as an antichrist who needed 
 instant repentance. It is not to be wondered at that 
 one who preached in this apocalyptic strain got into 
 trouble in those days with his ecclesiastical superiors. 
 But he boldly went to Rome to meet his accusers. 
 After vainly waiting for a hearing he posted on the 
 door of St. Peter's the notice of a sermon on " The 
 Present Antichrist." Arrested by the inquisitor, he 
 lay for some time in prison ; but on the arrival of the 
 Pope was released, treated with honor, and sent home 
 in triumph. As a preacher Huss lacked the ability, 
 but not the courage, of these two men. 
 
 He formed his style and borrowed much of his 
 material from the works of Wiclif. He had already
 
 Huss the Preacher. 85 
 
 sat eagerly at the feet of the great scholastic, some 
 of whose tractates he copied with his own hand. 
 And now, following in the footsteps of Wiclif the 
 preacher, he began to call men to repentance by the 
 law of Christ, obedience to which was the only sign 
 of membership in the true church of God's chosen ones. 
 
 Wiclif, it will be remembered, passed through three 
 stages of thought in regard to the Church, which 
 would be labelled by the enormous majority of his 
 contemporaries reform, revolution, heresy. Huss fol- 
 lowed him in two of these stages. And while he 
 remained in the first stage, exhorting all ranks of the 
 church to do their duty and rightly use their au- 
 thority, he came into close connection with the second 
 centre of national feeling, the new Archbishopric. The 
 new incumbent, the descendant of a noble Slavic 
 family, and skilled in everything except theology, 
 was an honest man, for whose moral character Huss 
 kept until the end the highest respect. He at once 
 asked the new preacher's assistance in the reform of 
 his province, applauded Huss's sermon before the 
 Synod on the sins of the clergy, which did not spare 
 even himself, and appointed him one of the commis- 
 sion to investigate the miracles of the blood of Christ 
 at Wilsnach. Accepting the report upon that fraud, 
 he forbade all pilgrimages from his province to the 
 shrine of the alleged miracles. 
 
 But within six years, either because the Archbishop 
 began to grow more conservative, or because Huss 
 was becoming more radical in his criticism of the 
 Church, a coolness arose between the two which ere 
 until the Archbishop removed his favorite Irom the
 
 86 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 position of synodical preacher. But the final break 
 with the hierarchy came when, under the lead of Huss, 
 the Bohemian teachers and students of the University 
 stood against the Bishops, and with the King, in favor 
 of remaining neutral in the schism of the Church and 
 awaiting the decision of a Council. The three other 
 nations of the University voted, with the clergy, to 
 obey Alexander V., and the King issued a decree 
 giving hereafter three votes to the Bohemian nation, 
 and one to the Polish, Bavarian, and Saxon nations 
 together. Whereupon the German students aban- 
 doned Prague and founded the new University of 
 Leipzig, while the triumphant Bohemians elected 
 Huss as rector. Meanwhile the Archbishop had ob- 
 tained two bulls from Pope Alexander V., command- 
 ing the surrender of all writings of Wiclif's and 
 forbidding preaching in any places which had not 
 acquired the right by long usage. When these orders 
 were published, Huss, before a large assembly in the 
 Bethlehem Chapel, entered his protest against both 
 points, and appealed to the Pope. A month later the 
 Archbishop excommunicated Huss, and two months 
 later two hundred volumes of Wiclif's writings were 
 publicly burned. The students resented the first by 
 singing mocking songs about an " A B C archbishop 
 who burned books and didn't know what was in 
 them." And the people resented the condemnation 
 of their favorite preacher in sterner fashion. A 
 tumult in the cathedral broke up the high mass and 
 compelled the Archbishop to withdraw. And in St. 
 Stephen's Church six men with drawn swords fell 
 upon the priest as he read the excommunication of
 
 Huss Denounces Papal War. 87 
 
 Huss and drove him from the pulpit. Then the Arch- 
 bishop used.his last weapon, the dreaded interdict 
 that forbade baptism, burial, marriage, and the Lord's 
 Supper in the rebellious city of Prague. But Huss 
 stood by his post, and the sudden death of the Arch- 
 bishop, and the appointment of the King's physician 
 and trusted friend as his successor, brought peace. 
 A new cause for war soon followed. John XXIII. 
 proclaimed a crusade against Gregory XII., and an 
 agent of the Curia appeared in Prague to cause the 
 proclamation from every pulpit of a sale of indulgences 
 to raise funds, and an enlistment of soldiers for a holy 
 war in the name of the Vicar of Christ. Huss, like 
 Wiclif before him, sprang to his spiritual arms. His 
 pulpit rang with denunciations, and in university 
 disputation he and his friends, notably the eloquent 
 Jerome of Prague, attacked the crusade and the sale 
 of indulgences against the majority of the theological 
 faculty. The excitement spread. A mock proces- 
 sion, organized by a well-known nobleman, drew 
 through the streets a wagon on which sat a woman 
 of the town with the Pope's bull around her neck. 
 Halting for a while before the palace of the Arch- 
 bishop, the huge rude train went to the market-place, 
 where the bull was laid on a scaffold and publicly 
 burned. The King did not punish the act, but for- 
 bade all disorder in future, under pain of death. 
 Three young men of the common people, in spite of 
 this edict, interrupted the services of several churches 
 by denouncing the indulgence as a cheat and lie. 
 They were arrested by the magistrates and beheaded. 
 The people gathered the bodies, and in a procession,
 
 88 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 headed by a band of students chanting the song of 
 the breviary for the commemoration of the martyrs, 
 " Isti sunt sancti," bore them to the Bethlehem 
 Chapel for a solemn funeral service. The German 
 City Council endeavored to suppress Huss's preach- 
 ing by force, and his congregation appeared in arms 
 for his defence. Then, to relieve the city from the 
 interdict and avoid the chances of riot in the streets, 
 Huss, at the request of his King, withdrew to volun- 
 tary exile, leaving behind an open letter in which he 
 appealed from the Curia to Christ. 
 
 Soon after he was visited by two messengers from 
 Sigismund, who invited him, under promise of a safe- 
 conduct, to appear before the General Council at Con- 
 stance, where he might have an opportunity to clear 
 himself of the charge of heresy and save the ecclesi- 
 astical honor of Bohemia. Nothing could have 
 pleased Huss more. He had himself appealed from 
 the Pope to a Council, and his one desire had always 
 been to persuade the Church to accept his ideas, or 
 at least permit them. Nevertheless, forebodings of 
 evil haunted his prophetic soul. His letter to the 
 Emperor spoke of his desire to confess Christ, and if 
 need be suffer death for his true law. He wrote his 
 will and gave it to a favorite scholar, with directions 
 not to break the seal until he heard of his death. 
 And he left a farewell letter to his friends in Bohemia, 
 in which he asked for their prayers that he might 
 stand firm, and if need be suffer death without fear. 
 They shared his anxiety. A shoemaker of the city 
 bade him, " God-speed ; I think you will not come 
 back, dear, true, and steadfast knight. May the
 
 The Appeal to the Council. 89 
 
 heavenly King, not the Hungarian, give you the 
 eternal reward for the faithful care you have given 
 to my soul." 
 
 Sigismund appointed three Bohemian nobles as 
 imperial deputies to enforce the safe-conduct which 
 protected him against illegal violence, and Huss set 
 out for Constance.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE AND TRIUMPH OF 
 THE PARTY OF CONCILIAR AUTHORITY: (i) 
 THEY DEPOSE THE POPES AND FORCE UNION; 
 (2) THEY REPUDIATE THE BOHEMIAN PRO- 
 TEST AND BURN HUSS; (3) THEY FAIL TO DE- 
 TERMINE THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH IN 
 HEAD AND MEMBERS. 
 
 LMOST the first to arrive at the fair little 
 city by the lake was the Pope, who had 
 ridden up from Italy with a splendid train 
 of nine cardinals and many prelates. He 
 entered the gates in state, with two great 
 nobles walking at the bridle-reins of his palfrey, while 
 the burgomaster and rulers of the city carried the 
 glittering baldachin over his head. And for three 
 months the boys of Constance must have revelled in 
 the almost daily spectacle of some stately entry. The 
 legates of Gregory and Benedict, who had been 
 courteously invited to come to the Council, princes, 
 ambassadors, great nobles, archbishops and splendid 
 prelates, little companies of University doctors, all 
 with as many horses and servants in their train as 
 
 90
 
 The Method of Voting. 9 1 
 
 they could muster, straggled through the streets in 
 spasmodic parade. The Emperor came by torch- 
 light on Christmas eve. He was accompanied by 
 the Empress and several Princes of the Empire, and 
 followed by a thousand horses laden with articles of 
 luxury, from his service of table silver down to many 
 pack-loads of embroidered pillows, silk bolsters, and 
 carpets. Before midnight, clothed in the dalmatic 
 and with his crown on his head, he read the Gospel 
 for the day as deacon, while the Pope conducted mass 
 in the cathedral. 
 
 One meeting had already been held, but noth- 
 ing done, except formally open the Council, arrange 
 for proper secretaries, and discuss the order of busi- 
 ness. The first important question was the man- 
 ner of voting, and its discussion plunged the Council 
 into the troubled sea of curial politics. The Italian 
 prelates numbered almost half the voters, for Italy 
 was cut up into many petty bishoprics. If the Council 
 voted in a mass, the Pope held the balance of power. 
 The friends of union and reform therefore rejected 
 this usual custom, and it was decided that all present 
 should be divided into four nations, German, English, 
 French, and Italian. (The Spanish was added after- 
 ward.) Each nation was represented by a fixed 
 number of deputies, with a president, changed every 
 month. All questions were first discussed in national 
 assemblies. The results were communicated and 
 discussed in common meetings of the deputies. Any 
 point on which all agreed was then discussed in a 
 general congregation and, if adopted, solemnly 
 affirmed in the next General Session of the Council.
 
 92 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Armed with this conclusion, the friends of union 
 proceeded to deal with John. 
 
 They had no easy task to force him to face the situa- 
 tion. It was hard for such a man, an adventurer fight- 
 ing for his own hand, to whom the idea of duty was 
 unknown, to get any glimpse of what it meant to be 
 head and servant of a great institution. He knew 
 no better than to keep on as Pope doing what he 
 had done all his life — use every circumstance and 
 event as something to be squeezed for his own gain. 
 Nor was he without support. The cardinals probably 
 had no illusions in regard to him as a man, but it was 
 natural they should stand by him as Pope. For when 
 men have risen by work or fortune to the top of any 
 institution, it takes unusual greatness of mind or 
 character to be very much dissatisfied with it ; and 
 they are always apt to be disinclined to any changes 
 not absolutely necessary to its life. D'Ailly, there- 
 fore, stood almost alone among the Princes of the 
 Church in desiring thoroughgoing reform — reform 
 checked and guarded at every point, but reform 
 based, if need be, on amendment of the constitution. 
 He stood by his order, of course, but Gerson working 
 without and he within, soon forced upon John, in spite 
 of every subterfuge and attempt to dissolve the party 
 by personal diplomacy, the solemn declaration " to 
 give peace to the Church by the method of simple 
 cession of the Papacy whenever Benedict and Greg- 
 ory, either in person or by proper procurators, shall 
 do the same." But already the report was in the air 
 that John would break up the Council by flight. 
 Several princes warned the Archduke of Austria,
 
 The Flight of the Pope. 93 
 
 whose dynastic ambition would be flattered by hav- 
 ing a Pope to protect and control, to keep out of 
 any such plot, and Sigismund visited John and bluntly 
 told him of the current suspicions. It is even said 
 that the Bishop of Salisbury, who was in the Em- 
 peror's train, forbade the Pope to his face to dare 
 any such rebellion against the authority of the Coun- 
 cil. John promised " not to leave before the disso- 
 lution of the Council " ; which his party afterward ex- 
 cused by the statement that the absence of the Pope 
 ipso facto dissolved the Council. 
 
 Two days later the evasion was skilfully carried 
 out. By this time a crowd of one hundred thousand 
 strangers, with thirty thousand horses, was assembled 
 at Constance. It was a mixed assembly of members of 
 the Council and idle sight-seers, and was anxious to be 
 amused. Musicians and jugglers, estimated at seven- 
 teen hundred, ministered to the pleasure of the visitors, 
 and a great crowd of the victims and tempters of the 
 vices of society served its sins in a commerce of evil 
 which, to the great scandal of all honest men, even 
 involved some of the worldly prelates of the Church. 
 The princes, in the spirit of perpetual circus day which 
 was common to the time, vied with one another in 
 display at feasts and processions ; and when the Duke 
 of Austria gave his great tournament on the 20th of 
 March all Constance went to see. At nightfall the 
 Pope, dressed like a groom, mounted on a mean 
 horse with an arquebuse at the saddle-bow, and, 
 covered with a coarse gray cloak, coolly rode out of 
 the gates with only one boy in his train. Two hours 
 later a hungry traveller asked food of the village
 
 94 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 pastor of Ermatingen, and getting into a little boat, 
 was carried across the sea to Schaffhausen, where he 
 was joined the next day by the Duke, its Sovereign. 
 The news of this evasion, brought by a letter from 
 John to the Emperor, threw all Constance into panic. 
 The timid members of the Council prepared for in- 
 stant flight. The mob began to plunder, and rumor 
 reported an army at the gates. It seemed as if the 
 Council would break up at once. Sigismund first 
 rallied the terror-stricken city. Riding through the 
 swarming streets, he put down disorder with a strong 
 hand, scoffed at the idea of an assault, and bade every 
 one be of good cheer. He called two assemblies, 
 one of the German princes, and another of the four 
 nations. In the first he announced his purpose to 
 hold the Council together if it cost his life, and by 
 deputation obtained from the cardinals the promise 
 to join in conducting business, if necessary, without 
 the Pope. They even agreed to abandon him alto- 
 gether in case his continued absence prevented union 
 and reform. Meanwhile they asked that all action 
 against him be suspended until an embassy could 
 confer and report. 
 
 The Council itself was steadied by a sermon from 
 Gerson on John xii. 35, which maintained that the 
 Church might take counsel without the presence of 
 the Pope and, if need be, force him to close the schism. 
 The cardinals refused to be present at the sermon, 
 and the Council, after waiting in vain for their co- 
 operation, proceeded to a General Session without 
 them. Only two of them seemed to have been 
 aware of the danger. The Council at Pisa had
 
 The Pope Deposed. 95 
 
 met without a Pope, but here was the more fatal 
 innovation of a Council without cardinals. D'Ailly, 
 the most progressive, and Zabarella, one of the more 
 conservative of the body, were alike too old and 
 trained ecclesiastics to be so caught. It was bad to 
 be outvoted ; it was worse to be ignored. While 
 their brother princes sulked in their tents, they rushed 
 at once to the Hall, where one acted as President, 
 and the other read the conclusions of the Nations. 
 
 In the next two sessions, under presidence of the 
 cardinals, and after heavy debating carried on amid 
 a double fire of pamphlets, it was decided that the 
 Council of Constance, as a true Ecumenical Council, 
 held its power direct from God ; that every Christian, 
 even the Pope himself, was bound to obey it in all 
 that concerned faith, the destruction of the schism, 
 and reform in head and members; and therefore " it 
 was not dissolved by the blameworthy and scandalous 
 flight of the Pope, but remained in all its integrity 
 and authority, even though the Pope should declare 
 the contrary." Thus the party of union and reform 
 threw down the glove before the defenders of an 
 autocratic Papacy. Their victory was certain. As 
 long negotiations made plainer and plainer the un- 
 willingness of John to forget himself in his duty, even 
 the cardinals, who wanted to stand by him as long as 
 possible, yielded to the pressure of circumstances or 
 the logic of events, and in the eleventh sitting, on 
 the 29th of May, the President of the College of Car- 
 dinals added their placet to the decree by which John 
 XXIII. was solemnly deposed from the Papacy as a 
 notorious simoniac, a squanderer of the goods of the
 
 g6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Church, an evil steward, and a man whose horrible 
 life and indecent manners both before and after his 
 election had given scandal to the Church of God and 
 all Christian people. The first stumbling-block on 
 the way to union and reform was removed. 
 
 Then the Council proceeded to remove the second : 
 the heresy so wide-spread in Bohemia. For though 
 Huss hoped to appear at the Council as a man slan- 
 dered by a charge of heresy, but really representing 
 a great body of true Catholics desiring to persuade 
 the Church to necessary reforms, his Bohemian ene- 
 mies and the leaders of the other parties were too 
 clever to let him appear in any such light. They 
 did not propose to have a discussion, but a trial, and 
 they made up their minds that, in spite of the imperial 
 safe-conduct, Huss's first public appearance must be 
 as a prisoner. 
 
 The 2 1st of November, three weeks after his arrival, 
 two bishops appeared in Huss's lodgings to lead him 
 to an audience with the cardinals. Baron von Chlum, 
 as the representative of the royal honor, at once in- 
 terfered and declined to allow anything to be done 
 in Huss's case until Sigismund had arrived. The 
 Bishop of Trent replied that no harm was intended 
 to Huss ; the invitation was simply a friendly one. 
 Whereupon Huss at once agreed to go. They 
 took him to the palace of the Pope, where he had 
 an audience with the cardinals, and in the after- 
 noon the Baron von Chlum was informed that he 
 might withdraw whenever he desired, but Magister 
 Huss must remain. The knight at once demanded to 
 see the Pope, and using the respectful forms of ad-
 
 Huss a Prisoner. 97 
 
 dress due to his office, accused him of treachery and 
 falsehood. For he did not fail in duty or friendship. 
 Influential noblemen, prelates, and burghers of Con- 
 stance were shown the safe-conduct, and begged to 
 defend the royal honor. Then, unable to do more, 
 he nailed his public protest, in Latin and German, 
 on the door of the cathedral. Meanwhile Huss was 
 put into a cell of the Dominican cloister so unwhole- 
 some that in a short time he fell ill, poisoned by 
 sewer-gas. When Sigismund, met on the road to 
 Constance by John von Chlum, heard of Huss's arrest 
 without any legal process, he flamed into wrath and 
 sent an order for his instant release, with a threat to 
 break the doors of his prison and fetch him. But 
 before the resistance of the Curia his purpose melted, 
 and even when the flight of John put the keys of 
 Huss's prison into his hands, he simply sent them to 
 the Bishop of Constance, and the prisoner, worn by 
 illness, was thrust into the tower of the episcopal 
 castle at Gottlieben, near Constance, badly fed, com- 
 pelled to carry chains by day, and to sleep with his 
 hands fastened to the wall beside his bed. Mean- 
 time the Council had condemned forty- five proposi- 
 tions drawn from the works of Wiclif, and declared 
 him a hardened heretic whose body ought not to rest 
 in consecrated ground ; a sentence carried out twelve 
 years later by the Bishop of Lincoln, who dug up his 
 bones. Then, as soon as the Pope was deposed, Huss 
 was summoned before the Council for his first public 
 hearing. 
 
 Public rumor and the efforts of the emissaries of 
 the Bohemian clergy, the majority of whom were
 
 gS The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 contributors to a fund to pay the costs of Huss's 
 prosecution, had surrounded him with such an air of 
 heresy and violent revolution that in the minds of 
 the Council he was condemned before he appeared, 
 and they listened with scant patience at his first in- 
 formal hearing. He was interrupted by exclamations. 
 When he claimed that he had been misquoted they 
 cried, "Stop your sophistry; answer yes or no." 
 When he kept silence they said, " Silence gives con- 
 sent." And such an uproar finally arose that it was 
 thought best to dismiss the assembly. In future 
 hearings there was fair play, for the presence of 
 Sigismund kept order. But his words told strongly 
 against Huss ; for he declared that any single one of 
 the propositions from his books on which he was 
 arraigned was enough to prove him a heretic, and 
 demanded that if he did not recant he should be 
 burned. He warned them not even to trust his re- 
 cantation, for if he was not forbidden to preach or 
 see his friends he would resume his heresy on his 
 return to Bohemia. If there was any lingering doubt 
 about his fate this speech sealed it. 
 
 John von Chlum stood by him like a man, and as 
 he left the assembly seized him boldly by the hand 
 and bade him be of good cheer. There were others 
 who would have saved him if they could. He was 
 visited again and again in his prison, and the utmost 
 was done to frame a formula of adjuration he would 
 accept. The final result was skilful and fair, for it 
 .\imited his recantation to literal transcriptions of prop- 
 ositions from his books, and, embodying his denial 
 of utterances put into his mouth by witnesses, simply
 
 Huss Condemned to Die. 99 
 
 rejected them hypothetically. To lead him to accept 
 this formula- the leaders of the Council sought the 
 intercession of John von Chlum and his companion, 
 von Duba. John visited Huss in company with many 
 prelates, and said : " See, Magister John, we are lay- 
 men and cannot advise you. But if you are guilty 
 you must not be ashamed to be taught and recant. 
 If, however, you do not feel yourself guilty, you must 
 on no account disobey your conscience and lie before 
 God, but rather stand steadfast in the truth till death." 
 These words of honest friendship were good to the 
 prisoner who had written to the University of Prague 
 that he was determined to retract nothing unless it 
 were proved to be false by the Word of God, and fail- 
 ing acquittal, he would appeal from the Council to the 
 judgment-seat of Christ. Such an attitude, denying 
 the authority of the Church to determine belief and 
 rule conduct, was in itself heresy and, according to 
 the law, a sufficient ground of condemnation. 
 
 Huss was brought before the Council for sentence 
 the 6th of July, 141 5. He was clad in the garments 
 of a priest about to say mass, and the pieces were taken 
 from him by the bishops, according to the usual for- 
 mula. When they took from his hand the cup they 
 said, " Judas, who hast left the councils of peace and 
 joined thyself to the council of the Jews, we take 
 from thee the cup of salvation." To which Huss 
 answered with firm voice, " I trust in the Lord, the 
 Almighty God, for whose name's sake I patiently 
 bear these blasphemies. He will not take from me 
 the cup of salvation, and I hope to drink it with him 
 even to-day in his Kingdom."
 
 ioo The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Arrived at the place of execution, he fell on his 
 knees at sight of the stake, crying, " Lord Jesus 
 Christ, I will bear this horrible and shameful death 
 humbly and patiently for the sake of thy gospel and 
 for the preaching of thy Word." He was bound to 
 the stake, and wood and straw piled around him as 
 high as his chin. Pappenheim, the Marshal of the 
 Empire, begged him to recant and save his life. Huss 
 refused, and the fire was lighted. The smoke rolled 
 up, and before his Latin prayer, " Jesus Christ, Son 
 of the living God, have mercy upon me," could be 
 three times intoned he died. They gathered the 
 ashes from around the stake and cast them into the 
 Rhine. 
 
 Eleven months afterward Jerome of Prague, hav- 
 ing once recanted and anathematized the works of 
 Wiclif and Huss, was called to a second trial on new 
 charges. He closed his defence by declaring that 
 " the writings of his master were holy and right, like 
 his life," and, refusing to recant, was burned as " a 
 sharer in the errors of Huss and Wiclif." 
 
 Huss and Jerome died when they were condemned, 
 because heresy was as much a crime by the law as 
 stealing or murder. Their condemnation was inevi- 
 table, because, when they met d'Ailly and Gerson, 
 two types of men stood face to face. Huss and Je- 
 rome were not, indeed, wanting in reverence for 
 inheritance of the past and the institutions of society. 
 Their defence was full of quotations from the men of 
 old, and they came to Constance of their own free will, 
 because they loved the Church. But to them the 
 truth was greater than the symbol and religion more
 
 The Antagonists. 101 
 
 vital than any of its institutions. They felt that 
 Christ had left in the world a teaching, not a visible 
 authority, and it was the duty of every man to do 
 and believe what his mind and conscience told him 
 was in accord with that teaching. D'Ailly, Gerson, 
 and their followers were, on the other hand, not in- 
 different to truth. Gerson's mystic piety was deep, 
 and we may well believe that he would have died for 
 the truth as freely as the two Bohemians. But he did 
 not believe that the truth could continue to exist apart 
 from the visible authority of the institution he served. 
 Neither Huss nor d'Ailly were without personal am- 
 bition. The acute Frenchman tried to catch the 
 debate-loving Hungarian in a scholastic dilemma over 
 universals and prove him a heretic on the doctrine of 
 the Trinity. And Huss writes with unmistakable glee 
 to his friends how he escaped the subtle snare and 
 silenced "the chief Cardinal of them all." D'Ailly 
 was so well contented to be the chief Cardinal that he 
 was willing to give a despised heretic the last word. 
 But after all, both judge and prisoner, in spite of the 
 weakness of the flesh and the gandium ccrtaminis, 
 stood resolutely and honestly for their convictions. 
 Both believed in reason and conscience ; but the one 
 submitted his reason and conscience to the invisible 
 Christ, the other to the visible Christ, the Holy 
 Church. 
 
 What was expected of Huss had he been an ortho- 
 dox Roman Catholic has been plainly exemplified in 
 this generation by those prelates who, after combat- 
 ing the dogma of Infallibility at the Vatican Council, 
 afterward felt it their duty to accept it for the sake
 
 102 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of chanty and on the authority of the Church. The 
 Bohemians died for refusing this authority. They 
 indignantly asserted their fidelity to the entire re- 
 ceived doctrine of the mass. Jerome began his de- 
 fence by invoking the Virgin Mary and all the saints, 
 and when bound to the stake sang the creed as a 
 proof that he died in the true faith. 
 
 Huss was not a great thinker. The parallel column 
 has shown unmistakably that the chief of his new opin- 
 ions, and even the forms of their expression, were bor- 
 rowed from Wiclif. It has been mistakenly claimed 
 that he shared in the theological scheme afterward as- 
 serted by Luther, Xhesolafidcan. But his writings refute 
 the claim, and his dying assertion of faith in Jesus Christ, 
 a quotation from the prayer-book, is no more a proof 
 that theologically he was an " evangelical " than the 
 similar dying confession of St. Catherine of Siena, 
 or a score of other orthodox Roman Catholic worthies 
 of all ages. He did not possess the force or origi- 
 nality of intellect needed to express religious experi- 
 ence in new theological formulas. And this makes 
 clear his courage and illuminates the significance of 
 his death. He sealed his fate when he cried, " I ap- 
 peal from the Council to Christ." More plainly, per- 
 haps, than any man in the history of the Church, he 
 and his friend died for the dignity of the individual 
 soul and the idea that, in the last analysis, religion is 
 a personal matter between the Teacher sent from 
 God and every disciple. 
 
 The result of the death of Huss and Jerome was the 
 revolt of Bohemia against the commands of the Church
 
 Sigismund 's Dishonor. 103 
 
 and the Empire. When their King died the peasants 
 and nobles refused to receive his brother Sigismund 
 as King because he had broken his word and betrayed 
 Huss to death. He has never lacked for apologetes, 
 and they have a case, because the formal safe-con- 
 duct was not intended to protect against the law, 
 but only against violence. But the instant they step 
 outside of those formalities by which gentlemen of every 
 age and people have always declined to limit their 
 honor, Sigismund's defenders are in great embarrass- 
 ment. Huss came to Constance on reliance on his word. 
 The least Sigismund could have done was to secure 
 fair play, to defend him against being cast into a 
 noisome dungeon without due process of law, to 
 have stood by h m to the end, and not to have sealed 
 his fate even before he was condemned. Charles V., 
 when he was urged to permit the arrest of Luther, 
 who came to Worms under his protection, refused 
 because he did not care to blush like Sigismund. 
 For it is said that Huss, before he left the cathedral 
 on his way to the stake, turned and looked at Sigis- 
 mund, who looked down and colored. History finds 
 no basis for the anecdote, but the judgment of most 
 honest men is that if Sigismund did not blush he 
 ought to have blushed. 
 
 The war in Bohemia, animated by the two forces of 
 race hatred and religious zeal, soon took on a character 
 of singular ferocity. When the crusade was pro- 
 claimed against the heretics, adventurers of all na- 
 tions, led by the offer of indulgences and the promise 
 of plunder, joined the German army. The Bohemians
 
 104 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 met the cross, now become the sign of oppression and 
 cruelty, with the symbol of the cup. It signified their 
 habit of communing in both kinds. In the orthodox 
 Roman Catholic communion only the bread is given to 
 the people, and the wine is drunk by the priest. This 
 custom, originally caused by the fear lest the blood 
 of Christ should be spilled, had come to be associated 
 with the special privileges of the clergy as priests 
 needed to mediate between the people and God. 
 The habit of giving the cup to the laity started in 
 Bohemia during Huss's captivity. After some hesi- 
 tation it was approved by him as agreeable to the 
 example of our Lord and his apostles. It soon be- 
 came to the people the visible expression of that 
 appeal from the authority of tradition to the word of 
 Christ found in the Scriptures and interpreted by 
 reason and conscience, for which he had died. 
 Under this rallying signal they hurled back five 
 crusades in slaughterous defeat; and crossing the 
 borders, ravaged Germany almost to the Rhine with 
 fire and sword, so that the name Bohemian or Hus- 
 site remained for generations in German villages a 
 word to frighten children. It was eighteen years 
 before the Bohemians came back again to the fel- 
 lowship of the Church. 
 
 The Council, having thus decided that the centre 
 of ecclesiastical authority was in itself, having deposed 
 one Pope and received the resignation of another, hav- 
 ing cut off the heresy which denied the supreme au- 
 thority of the Church, was free to proceed to that task 
 for which all these things were only the preparation 
 — the reform of the Church in head and members.
 
 An Unconquerable Old Man. 105 
 
 The general good will for this work is suggested 
 in three sermons, preached in the end of August and 
 beginning of September, 14 16. The first one asserted 
 that the Roman Curia is diabolic and almost all the 
 clergy of the Church subject to the devil. The sec- 
 ond, by Professor Theobald, going into particulars, 
 accuses the clergy of open vices, and sums up the 
 situation in the phrase, " Praelati nutriunt tot mere- 
 trices quot familiares." The third, delivered by the 
 representative of the University of Vienna, on the 
 word of Christ to the leper, " Go show thyself to the 
 priests," cited the entire clergy, patriarch, archbishops, 
 bishops, etc., as being afflicted with the leprosy of 
 worldliness, dissoluteness, avarice, and simony, and 
 called on the Council to heal this foul disease. 
 
 They began with the deposition of Benedict XIII. 
 An embassy was sent to his mountain fortress of 
 Paniscola to announce it. The old Spaniard's will 
 was unbroken by isolation and the weight of over 
 ninety years. He received the embassy of assembled 
 Christendom in full regalia, and they began to read 
 the sentence of the Council. The words " her- 
 etic " and "schismatic" brought an outburst of 
 wrath. "It is not true; you lie. Here," he cried, 
 beating the arm of his chair with his hand, " here is 
 the. ark of Noah. I am the true follower of the 
 unity of the Church. Those at Constance are here- 
 tics and schismatics, not I." For eight years longer 
 the unconquerable graybeard held his empty state, 
 and bound his two remaining cardinals, under penalty 
 of his dying curse, to elect a successor. They sol- 
 emnly shut themseves into conclave and elected the
 
 106 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Canon Mugnos, who maintained the pomp and cir- 
 cumstance of the little mountain Papacy for four 
 years more and then resigned, A.D. 1429. 
 
 The evils which demanded reform at the hands of 
 the Council were of two kinds : the unworthy char- 
 acter and irregular lives of the clergy, and the exac- 
 tions and corruption of the administration of the 
 Church by the Roman Curia. To meet these evils 
 the party of which Gerson was the ablest spokesman 
 demanded the reform of the Church in head and 
 members. The cause of this corruption, so far as it 
 exceeded that measure of weakness and personal 
 ambition which may be expected in all institutions 
 managed by men, was the same as that which lies at 
 the root of the worst corruptions of our politics, the 
 temptations of an enormous patronage. The Church 
 was a very wealthy institution. Its property was not 
 dispersed by inheritances, and grew constantly by gift 
 and bequest. The ecclesiastical lands in England, for 
 instance, were reckoned at a third of the entire real 
 estate of the kingdom. Much of this wealth was 
 honestly spent in the care of the poor and the building 
 of those mediaeval churches which are among the 
 most beautiful things ever made by human hands. 
 Much of it was spent in luxury and display, by 
 which numbers of unworthy men were tempted to 
 enter the priesthood and the manners and morals 
 of the clergy corrupted. By steady usurpation of 
 privileges the Roman Curia had succeeded in im- 
 posing a heavy burden of complicated taxes on the 
 ecclesiastical salaries and incomes of the world. The 
 foundation of direct taxes was the so-called right of
 
 The Papal Taxes. 107 
 
 reservation, by which the Popes had acquired the 
 right to fill vacancies in a large number of bishoprics 
 and abbacies by direct appointment. All such ap- 
 pointees were compelled to pay heavy taxes — the 
 first year's income of the benefice, and various other 
 sums — to the Papal treasury. A second kind of tax, 
 direct and indirect, was indulgences; by which the 
 Pope, usurping the rights of local discipline, sold by 
 his agents all over the world dispensations from the 
 Church penance imposed upon various sins. The 
 right of appeal to Rome in all ecclesiastical causes 
 was another great source of revenue. For dispensa- 
 tions were sold through the dioceses of the world, 
 by which a clergyman of lower rank was freed from 
 some given claim or right of his superior, and made 
 secure of acquittal in the event of an appeal to 
 Rome. Then exemptions against these exemptions 
 were sold to the ecclesiastical overlord, until the 
 rights of some of the bishops were so tied up with a 
 tangle of Papal bulls that it would have puzzled the 
 shrewdest canonical lawyer to define just what power 
 remained to them in many cases. To these abuses 
 of the power of provisors and indulgence were at- 
 tached two scandals which everybody had denounced 
 and no one dared to defend for generations, and yet 
 which had steadily increased — plurality of benefices, 
 resulting in absenteeism and simony or the sale of 
 the offices of the Church. It was common for one 
 man to hold several offices and perform the du- 
 ties of none. There were bishops who knew noth- 
 ing of the state of religion in their dioceses, and 
 cared less, canons who had never seen the cathedral
 
 108 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 to which they belonged, and priests who had never 
 entered the bounds of their parishes. And the sale 
 of the salaried positions of the Church, from the 
 Papacy and the red hat of a cardinal down to door- 
 keepers of the churches, was notorious. 
 
 To drive out these tables of the money-changers 
 from the house of God the Council needed something 
 more than invective. The times demanded the 
 repression of the usurpations by which the Curia 
 had encroached upon episcopal rights, and the restora- 
 tion of local government throughout the dioceses ; 
 an absolute prohibition of pluralities, and rules 
 strictly regulating absenteeism ; the devising of some 
 means to convict simoniacs and enforce upon them 
 the stern penalties of the canon law, so long mere 
 dead letters. But ecclesiastical assemblies, always 
 apt to be cautious, are often cowardly. And against 
 the advocates of a thorough and sure reform, those 
 whose principles or whose interests led them to de- 
 fend the privileges of the Curia could appeal to the 
 fears of the conservatives that reform would become 
 revolution. They had two arguments to use. The 
 Papal States were in rebellion and but little income 
 came from them. If the Papal taxes were reduced, 
 how could the Church have any Pope and cardinals 
 at all? Secondly, though the Council had rightly 
 deposed the Pope for the preservation of the Church, 
 the Church was only rightly constituted when she 
 had a head, and reform ought to be preceded by the 
 election of a Pope. 
 
 After long discussion the twenty-three cardinals, 
 accompanied by six deputies from each of the
 
 The New Pope. 109 
 
 five nations, Spain, Italy, France, England, and 
 Germany, Went into conclave on the 4th of No- 
 vember, 141 7. The great hall of the merchants' 
 house had been divided into fifty-three little rooms 
 by canvas walls. All access to doors or windows was 
 shut off by guarded barriers, and no ship might ap- 
 proach within bowshot of the walls. Two bishops 
 sat before the door to inspect all food carried in, lest 
 notes might be concealed in it ; but the ancient rule 
 that after three days they were to receive only two 
 meals a day, and after eight more only one, was sus- 
 pended — perhaps out of consideration for the carnal 
 weakness of the deputies associated with the cardinals 
 in the conclave. On the third day the anxious city 
 learned that after a long strife between the five na- 
 tions, each of which wanted a Pope of its own tongue, 
 the unanimous choice had fallen upon the Cardinal 
 Deacon Otto, of the ancient Roman house of Colonna, 
 a man of ability and honorable record, with a fine 
 personal appearance and dignified manners. The 
 Emperor rushed into the conclave and kissed his feet, 
 hailing him as the morning star that at last had risen 
 out of darkness, and all Christendom rejoiced that 
 the schism was safely closed. Five months later the 
 Cardinal Deacon Raynald called out, " Domini ite in 
 pace," all answered, " Amen," and the great Council 
 was over. But the reform of the Church in head 
 and members was scarcely begun. For the curial 
 party, under the lead of Martin V., had but little 
 difficulty in foiling every attempt to unite the nations 
 in any plan of general reform. Amid distrust and 
 despair, each began to scramble for national privi-
 
 no The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 leges, secured to them in a series of concordats 
 signed by the Pope. And these compromise reforms 
 recognized the rights of the Pope in the matter of the 
 very usurpations and abuses they abated. 
 
 The Council of Constance has involved the ortho- 
 dox Roman Catholic theologian and canonist of this 
 century in considerable embarrassment. The Papal 
 succession depends upon its ecumenical authority, 
 for it deposed two Papal claimants as schismatics, 
 compelled a third to resign, and elected a new Pope 
 by an untraditional method. But the decree neces- 
 sary to its work, that the authority of a General 
 Council was greater than the authority of a Pope, is 
 of course a denial of that dogma by which the Vat- 
 ican Council of 1870 completed the Catholic system 
 and defended it against all change — the Infallibility 
 of the Pope. The judgment of the learned Bishop 
 Hefele, in his great " Conciliengeschichte," is char- 
 acteristic : " There can, therefore, be no doubt that, 
 according to the ecclesiastical law of to-day, which 
 considers the approbation of the Pope upon General 
 Councils necessary to constitute them such, all con- 
 clusions of Constance which do not prejudice the 
 Papacy are to be considered ecumenical, but all, on 
 the other hand, which infringe upon the privilege, 
 the dignity, the preeminence of the apostolic chair 
 are to be held for reprobated."
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PAPAL REACTION — THE STRUGGLE FOR THE 
 PATRIMONIUM — MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 
 REESTABLISH THE PAPAL SUPREMACY WITH- 
 OUT GRANTING REFORM — THE PROTEST AND 
 ABORTIVE SCHISM OF THE COUNCIL OF BASLE. 
 
 HE new Pope was face to face with a situa- 
 tion that might well have daunted a bolder 
 man. He entered Rome by streets almost 
 impassable, past ruined churches and 
 empty or fallen houses, through a crowd 
 as wild and miserable-looking as their city. The 
 States of the Church were all but dissolved into 
 strange or hostile municipalities and communes, while 
 petty tyrants and soldiers of fortune were striving to 
 make principalities for themselves out of the patri- 
 mony of St. Peter. And behind this was the task 
 of the reform of the Church in head and members, to 
 which he was solemnly pledged. 
 
 To meet his political difficulties he was fitted by 
 many characteristics. He was firm, clever, had an 
 engaging personality that inspired confidence, and 
 lived simply ; for he desired the reality and not the 
 shows of power. Rome began to become prosper- 
 
 iii
 
 1 1 2 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ous ; the citizens rebuilt their houses, streets and 
 bridges were repaired, and, led by his example, some 
 of the cardinals rebuilt their titular churches. Order 
 was restored around the walls of the city by the 
 destruction of robbers, and an annalist exclaims with 
 wonder that one could go through the country with 
 gold in the open hand. Teachers of religion began 
 to appeal with success to the people. Bernardino of 
 Siena, for instance, came to Rome three years after 
 Martin's return, preaching repentance. He was the 
 son of a noble family, who, feeling in his heart the 
 call to preach Christ, entered the order of St. Francis 
 while still a youth. He had acquired great influence 
 throughout various cities of Italy, and his success at 
 Rome was striking. Many blood-feuds were recon- 
 ciled by him. He was accustomed to denounce the 
 luxury of the times as a chief cause of sin, and on 
 the 25th of June, 142 1, he publicly set fire to a great 
 scaffold on which was piled false hair, cosmetics, in- 
 struments of music, worldly books, and many other 
 articles of luxury. Three days later another pyre 
 was lighted in the presence of all Rome, which was 
 crowned by a living woman, burned for witchcraft. 
 
 In the attempt to recover the Papal State lost to 
 tyrants and rebellious vassals, Martin's chief opponent 
 was Braccio Fortebraccio, a condottiere, or soldier 
 of fortune. For the Breton or German leaders of 
 the Free Companies of the fourteenth century were 
 now quite largely replaced by Italians trained in their 
 troops and rising from the ranks. The two most 
 celebrated of these were Jacopo Sforza and Braccio 
 Fortebraccio. Sforza, the son of a peasant, had run
 
 The Sins of Martin V. 113 
 
 away from home and enlisted at the age of thirteen. 
 Rising to fame, he had used his twenty brothers and 
 sisters to extend and hold his power. His frank 
 manners, strict honesty in all money engagements, 
 the care with which he protected the peasants from 
 pillage, and his reluctance to destroy conquered cities 
 made him respected even while feared, and he was 
 called "the common father of the men-at-arms." 
 His rival, Braccio, seems to have been a rougher 
 sort — a breaker of his word, a layer of plots, and a 
 burner of harvest-fields, who put the country-side in 
 terror. But he was firmly fixed in his usurpations, 
 and the Pope could only get into Rome by receiving 
 him at Florence and naming him Vicar for the rule 
 of some of his best cities. 
 
 Two traits prevented Martin from having a good 
 will for the reform of the Church — pride and the 
 greed of gold. The latter was so notorious that a 
 celebrated writer among the curial secretaries hesi- 
 tated to publish an essay " On Avarice," lest it 
 should be thought an attack on the Pope. No avari- 
 cious Pope could honestly desire reform. Nor would 
 the head of the Colonna consent to lessen the wealth 
 and power of the city which was the background of 
 the dignity of his race. His nepotism was as marked 
 as that of poorer Popes, who thought it neces- 
 sary to create great relatives for their own support. 
 And during his life the family of Colonna were 
 everywhere advanced and enriched. The sale of 
 benefices and the whole system of fees and perquisites, 
 which crushed all poor appellants to the justice of 
 the Papal court, increased, and the Papal usurpations 
 
 H
 
 1 1 4 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of episcopal rights on which these abuses were 
 founded were silently maintained, in spite of the pro- 
 tests and agreements of Constance. It was not to 
 be supposed that this was done without opposition. 
 It had been agreed at Constance that a new Synod 
 was to be assembled at Pavia within five years, but 
 its temper was so dangerous when it met that the 
 Pope adjourned it to Siena, and then closed it to 
 await the General Council which had been appointed 
 for the tenth year after Constance. Meantime he 
 pleased Christendom by appointing to the College of 
 Cardinals half a dozen men whose wisdom or piety 
 fitted them in the eyes of all for the dignity of Princes 
 of the Church. Then, just on the eve of the assembly 
 of an Ecumenical Council at Basle, he died (143 1). 
 
 Martin had in every way repressed the powers of 
 the cardinals, and before they proceeded to a new 
 election, the College, the most weighty and dignified 
 for many years, passed the first of the capitulations 
 which hereafter every Pope was compelled to accept. 
 It was an attempt to preserve the Papacy in the form 
 of an aristocratic oligarchy where the Pope was the 
 first of the cardinals, and to defend their rights as a 
 senate governing the Church with him. In practice, 
 however, it always failed of its purpose and never seri- 
 ously checked the growing absolutism of the Papacy. 
 
 The so-called rhythm of the Papacy, by which the 
 opposition party generally elects the new Pope, gave 
 the votes to the candidate of the Orsini, the Roman 
 family which rivalled the Colonna. Eugenius IV. was 
 forty-eight years old and had been made Cardinal by 
 his uncle, Gregory XII., in 1408. His appearance,
 
 The Generous Eugenius. 115 
 
 writes a chronicler, was so majestic that once, when 
 he appeared upon a platform to intone the prayer in 
 a service at Florence, the people who crowded the 
 great square were moved to tears before the figure 
 " of the Vicar of Christ, who seemed to be he whom 
 he represented." His pious habit never varied. 
 Amid all his business, four monks, two of his own 
 order, were always with him to conduct the proper 
 offices of day and night, in which he never failed to 
 join. He was free from nepotism and avarice. His 
 relatives, who flocked to him, received nothing from 
 the goods of the Church. He answered that he 
 could not give away what was not his. But many 
 stories are told of his generosity. Once he offered 
 to a poor Florentine who begged for help a purse of 
 gold pieces and told him to help himself. The 
 abashed man took only two or three. " Oh," laughed 
 Eugenius, " put your hand in. You are welcome to 
 the gold." 
 
 The nepotic and avaricious Martin had ruled Rome 
 in peace, but the generous and unworldly Eugenius 
 lived in the midst of civil war. For the sins of his 
 predecessor were visited on his head. The castles 
 and cities of the patrimonium were garrisoned by the 
 soldiers of the Colonnas ; the Papal jewels and a large 
 part of the treasure of St. Peter were in their hands. 
 When summoned they declined to surrender them to 
 a Pope who had been the candidate of the rival family 
 of Orsini. When Eugenius became peremptory they 
 assaulted the city, seized and held one of the gates, 
 and the slaughter and burning of civil war filled the 
 streets of a part of Rome for a month.
 
 1 1 6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Scarcely was this bloody trouble ended by the en- 
 tire submission of the Colonna and the surrender of 
 everything claimed by the Pope than the Council met 
 at Basle, and the Papacy had to face again that great 
 episcopal system whose rights it had so continuously 
 usurped. The prelates reaffirmed the decision of 
 Constance that the Council was independent, indis- 
 soluble, except by its own consent, and superior to 
 the Pope, and summoned Eugenius to appear within 
 three months for trial. These things strengthened 
 the local enemies of the Pope. Different bands of 
 condottieri, the chief of whom called himself General 
 of the Holy Council, besieged him in Rome. Thus 
 driven to a corner, Eugenius recalled the bulls dis- 
 solving the Council, acknowledged it as the highest 
 authority, and put himself under its protection. 
 By this time many prelates, including seven cardi- 
 nals, were assembled ; the Council was supported 
 by all the powers, and it seemed that the principle of 
 Conciliar Authority had obtained a second and lasting 
 victory over Papal absolutism. 
 
 But Eugenius could not make his peace with the 
 Romans. Wearied by the endless war which wasted 
 their lands, they rose with the old cry of " The folk, 
 the folk and freedom!" established the Republic, and 
 forced the captive Pope to renounce the worldly power. 
 Then Eugenius fled. A reformed pirate, Vitellius of 
 Ischia, had recently been taken into the Papal service, 
 and his galley lay at Ostia. Disguised as a Domini- 
 can monk, the Pope slipped out of the back door, 
 while some bishops appeared to wait his immediate 
 coming to the audience-chamber. A mule brought
 
 The Pope Flees. 1 1 7 
 
 him to the river-bank, and a servant of the ex-pirate 
 carried the Pope on his back through the shallow 
 water to a boat. But suspicion was aroused, for it 
 was full daylight, and a great crowd pursued. They 
 put the Pope in the bottom and covered him with a 
 shield, and the seamen of Vitellius rowed down the 
 river amid a storm of stones and arrows until they 
 distanced the cursing Romans and landed their pas- 
 senger on the galley. The Romans had often driven 
 the Popes from Rome and called them back again, 
 for they were a folk impatient of authority and in- 
 capable of self-rule; but it might have comforted 
 Eugenius, as he lay under the shield, could he have 
 known that none of his successors for four hundred 
 years would again be compelled to flee before an 
 insurrection of their own people. 
 
 In June, 1434, the Pope sought the protection of 
 the Republic of Florence and took up his residence 
 in that city. Every petty tyrant in the Papal States, 
 suppressed or appeased by the policy or strength of 
 the family of Martin, now seized the opportunity 
 given by the rebellious Colonna. And once more it 
 was evident that if the Vicar of Christ was to be 
 ruler of a kingdom of this world, the Church had 
 need of a prince who could hide the silk glove of a 
 cardinal in the gauntlet of a man-at-arms. He was at 
 hand in the person of Giovanni Vitelleschi, who began 
 life as the clerk of a condottiere, afterward went into 
 ecclesiastics, and had become Bishop of Recanati. 
 He had already been Papal legate in the march of 
 Ancona, where he had displayed skill in war and a 
 ruthless temperament. Eugenius gave him the task
 
 1 1 8 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of destroying petty tyrants, rooting out the condot- 
 tieri and subduing Rome. The terrible priest, who 
 had already shown himself not slow to shed blood, 
 fought fire with fire. One by one the fierce barons 
 were bribed or forced to peace. The Prefect of Vico, 
 descendant of a family which had been a thorn in 
 the side of the Popes for three hundred years, was 
 besieged, forced to surrender, and beheaded. Re- 
 bellious Rome, half frightened, longing for the money 
 spent by the Curia, and envious of the glory given 
 to Florence by the presence of the Pope, invited him 
 to return. And Vitelleschi, reporting his successes 
 to Eugenius, was made Archbishop of Florence and 
 Patriarch of Alexandria. Then he was sent back to 
 finish his work. He hung, beheaded, and strangled 
 the tyrants wherever he could lay hands on them, 
 and with patient destructiveness levelled the walls, 
 churches, and houses of some of the feudal strong 
 places whence the fierce nobility had for generations 
 threatened the supremacy of law and made stable 
 government all but impossible. The head of a second 
 conspiracy in Rome was drawn through the streets 
 on a hurdle, torn with red-hot pincers, and then 
 quartered. Thus a stern will made stillness rest upon 
 a land of wasted fields and the ruins of thirty de- 
 stroyed cities. The thoroughly cowed Roman 
 burghers voted him an equestrian statue on the 
 Capitol, inscribed to " Giovanni Vitelleschi, Patriarch 
 of Alexandria, the third father of the State after 
 Romulus." The Colonna were humbled to the very 
 dust, and of their family city fortress not one stone 
 was left upon another. Then the riches and power of
 
 The Fighting Bishop. 1 1 9 
 
 the man who had done this work excited suspicion. 
 Vitelleschi, now become a Cardinal, was on his way to 
 Tuscany, and crossed the bridge of San Angelo in the 
 rearof his army. The portcullis was suddenly dropped 
 on one end and a chain drawn across the other. The 
 men-at-arms from the castle of San Angelo fell upon 
 him, and, in spite of a desperate defence, carried him 
 a wounded prisoner into the castle. When his army 
 turned back in rage at the news, they were met by 
 the closed gates and cannon of the castle, while the 
 governor waved over the battlements the parchment 
 order for their general's arrest, stamped with the 
 Papal seal. A month later Vitelleschi was dead. 
 He was a striking representative of the class created 
 by the Dominium Temporale, the fighting priest 
 whose prototype was the fighting Pope Julius II., 
 who at the beginning of the next century was to set 
 up over the church door of a conquered city a statue 
 of himself cast from captured cannon. 
 
 Meanwhile, strengthened by the iron hand of his 
 servant, Eugenius had resumed resistance to the 
 Council of Basle with great success. At first the party 
 of reform had things all their own way. But for 
 reasons which seem not at all clear, their sweeping de- 
 crees for reform produced a powerful reaction. And 
 the Papacy found able and worthy defenders in Juan 
 Torquemada, who asserted its infallibility, Ambrogio, 
 Travasari, and the noble Cardinal Cesarini. Eugenius 
 had been in negotiation for union with the Eastern 
 Church, and had succeeded in procuring submission 
 to the Chair of St. Peter as a condition of the military 
 aid of Western Christendom in resisting the Turk.
 
 1 20 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 The necessity of having a meeting-place more con- 
 venient for the embassy of Constantinople enabled 
 him to carry off the most influential, though the 
 smaller, part of the Council to Ferrara and then to 
 Florence. There, in July, 1439, the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople kissed his hand, and the Emperor 
 formally acknowledged that the Patriarch of Rome 
 was the Vicar of Christ and the supreme head of the 
 entire Church. This reconciliation was merely a 
 political necessity, shortly after renounced by the 
 entire Greek Church, but for the time it strengthened 
 the cause of Eugenius. And when the Council of 
 Basle, having deposed him, elected a new Pope, Felix 
 V., in November, 1439, the powers of Europe, 
 shrinking in horror from a new schism, refused to 
 recognize him. France, indeed, had the courage to 
 adopt all the decrees of Basle in the Pragmatic Sane- 
 tion passed by a national Synod at Bourges, and to 
 compel from Eugenius as the price of her support 
 the recognition of the episcopal rights of the national 
 Church. Germany tried to do the same thing. She 
 declared her neutrality in the schism, and demanded 
 needed reforms before she would declare obedience 
 to Eugenius. The embassy from the princes and 
 prince bishops obtained an acknowledgment of the 
 preeminence of the Council and the promise of re- 
 forms ; but the Pope, before he handed the bulls to 
 the ambassadors from his death-bed, had signed a 
 previous bull providing that his concessions, which 
 were made at a time when his judgment was weak- 
 ened by illness, should be null if they in any way 
 injured the teaching of the fathers and the rights of
 
 A Weak Surrender. 121 
 
 the Holy Chair of St. Peter. But his successor did 
 not need to appeal to it. The jealous strife between 
 the petty German princes gave too broad an opening 
 for the diplomacy of clever legates. The Roman King 
 (title of the Emperor elect) had already sold his sup- 
 port for a paltry bribe in money and patronage ; the 
 princes and bishops were only too ready to be bribed, 
 and in the concordats of Aschaffenburg and Vienna 
 (1447-1448) they signed away the national rights 
 which the French episcopate had successfully de- 
 fended.
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE SPREAD OF HUMANISM. 
 
 HILE the Papacy, using an ecclesiastical 
 reaction and the skilful diplomacy which 
 surrendered individual aggressions to re- 
 serve the principle of Papal autocracy, had 
 resisted reform and weakened the power 
 both of the College of Cardinals and the advocates of 
 Conciliar Authority, the movement of the New Learn- 
 ing was finding broader and stronger expression. The 
 light centred in Florence by the three first followers 
 of Petrarch — Boccaccio, Marsigli, Salutato — and their 
 friends had been spread over all North Italy by the 
 efforts of a race of wandering teachers. These 
 pioneers of learning may be represented in short 
 sketches of two, the most characteristic of their 
 generation. 
 
 Giovanni di Conversino was a poor boy who won 
 distinction in the school of Donato at Venice, and 
 was sent to Petrarch to act as copyist. He left that 
 barren employment because he wanted to learn 
 Greek and see the world, and led henceforth a rest- 
 less life, whose hopes and pride were always larger 
 than its fortunes. The poor fellow never fulfilled his 
 
 122
 
 Ch rysoloras. 123 
 
 early ambition to learn Greek, but went to Florence, 
 to Rome, to Belluno, Padua, Ragusa, Udine, to Padua 
 again, and back to Florence. Now he was private 
 secretary, now notary, now lecturer on Cicero, now 
 master of a Latin school. He must have had some 
 of the elements of a great teacher, for we are told by 
 one of his scholars that he " led the way to virtue 
 not only by showing the examples of the ancients, 
 but by his own walk and conversation." Two of the 
 greatest teachers Italy ever had, Guarino and Vit- 
 torino, sat at his feet, and it is a pity to think of the 
 impossible man passing through so many good posi- 
 tions to earn the scanty bread of his old age as a 
 giver of lessons in Venice to any scattered pupils he 
 could pick up. 
 
 A still more striking figure is Chrysoloras, the 
 first of the line of learned men who were to flee 
 from Constantinople, then tottering to its fall be- 
 fore the assaults of the Turk. The Greek scholar- 
 ship of Constantinople does not seem to have had 
 within itself the seed of growth ; but it possessed by 
 inheritance the manuscripts in which were recorded 
 the origins of our poetry, our philosophy, and our 
 religion, and the knowledge of the language in which 
 they were written. Italy had long desired to know 
 Greek, and when news came that Chrysoloras, a dis- 
 tinguished teacher of rhetoric and philosophy, had 
 landed in Venice to seek aid for the Empire against 
 the Turk, two noble Florentines went at once to see 
 him. One of them returned with him to Constanti- 
 nople. The other brought to Florence so glowing a 
 report of his learning and personality that Salutato
 
 124 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 induced the city to call him for ten years as a 
 teacher of Greek, with a salary of one hundred 
 florins and fees. In 1396 he came. A great 
 crowd went to hear his instruction, but it is melan- 
 choly to find that none of the older men, like 
 Salutato, who had longed so earnestly for this trea- 
 sure, were able to master the difficulties of the tongue. 
 Chrysoloras formed in Florence some able young 
 scholars, and wandered to Pavia, then back again to 
 Byzantium, and returned once more to Venice and 
 Florence on his way to Rome. From thence he 
 visited France, Spain, and England, came back to 
 Rome, and was sent by the Pope on a mission to 
 Byzantium. Returned, he was despatched to Ger- 
 many, and finally died at the Council of Constance. 
 Thus the long beard and flowing garments of the 
 Greek reminded the students of the world that the 
 tongue of Homer, Plato, and John might be learned 
 and its lost treasures recovered. 
 
 A little army of such scouts of learning, most of 
 whose names are long forgotten, wandered from city 
 to city, seeking or giving knowledge. And through 
 their labors there were soon scattered over Italy knots 
 of men who loved to live laborious days in the pur- 
 suit of truth and beauty. 
 
 The leaders in this love of learning were of the 
 country of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and the 
 capital of their little state was not only the defender 
 of liberty, but the Athens of Italy. 
 
 Florence, like London to-day, was the centre of 
 trade and the financial exchange of the world. The 
 most remarkable of her merchant princes and rich 
 bankers was Cosimo de' Medici. His father, Giovanni
 
 Cos into de Medici. 125 
 
 de' Medici (died 1428), left to his two sons, Cosimo 
 and Lorenzo, a fortune acknowledged as 179,221 
 gold florins. This wealth was enormously increased 
 by Cosimo's skill as a merchant and banker. The 
 figures will indicate what this means. Lorenzo, who 
 died in 1440, left 253,000 florins. Piero, Cosimo's 
 son, who died in 1469, left 238,000; and, besides the 
 expenses of living, the family had spent between 1434 
 and 147 1 in taxes, benefactions, and public buildings 
 664,000 florins, of which Cosimo, who died in 1464, 
 paid 400,000. So that, besides the expenses of living, 
 the 180,000 florins of the grandfather had in less than 
 fifty years gained for his descendants 1,000,000 
 florins, or one half the total coined money circulating 
 in the Republic in 1422. J It was the rule, so well 
 illustrated in the historv of some American families, 
 that money skilfully handled breeds money ; but 
 more than two thirds of the increase of two gen- 
 erations of the Medici accrued to the public 
 benefit in taxes, charities, and gifts to learning or 
 the arts. 
 
 The relation of Cosimo to his city can be easily 
 appreciated by the Americans of to-day. He was 
 the boss of the little Republic of Florence, then a 
 city of about ninety thousand inhabitants. His 
 family were among the hereditary leaders of the 
 democracy against the party of millionaire manufac- 
 turers and middle-class merchants who desired to 
 retain power in order to control the tariff. And 
 they had been very influential in the uprising of 
 
 1 These figures do not mean much to the modern reader. The 
 florin was worth about $2.50. but thi id scale of living are dif- 
 
 ficult to estimate. In 1460 the Patriarch of Aquileja was called the 
 richest man in Italy. He left 200,000 florins.
 
 1 26 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 1378, which resulted in the extension of suffrage 
 to the working-man. Cosimo was simple in his 
 habits, given to hospitality, liberal in sharing the 
 enjoyment of the treasures of art and learning with 
 which his palace was filled, generous where it would 
 do the most good, reserved, but affable of speech. 
 Hiding his secrets behind an impenetrable veil of in- 
 variable courtesy, he gathered into his hands all the 
 wires that moved Florentine politics, and, seeking no 
 public honors for himself, was nearly always able to 
 control the City Council and quietly shape the policy 
 of the Republic. His hands were free from taking 
 bribes, though he did not scruple to handle for its 
 full value the patronage he controlled. And doubt- 
 less one great cause of his success as a money-lender 
 and merchant was his early and intimate knowledge 
 of political movements. His commercial correspon- 
 dents were scattered over all Europe, the Levant, 
 and even in Egypt. He had loaned money on the 
 security of the public income to the State of Florence 
 and to every burgher who wished to borrow of him. 
 And yet he used his power so gently that he con- 
 quered envy and received by public decree the title 
 of "Father of the Fatherland." 
 
 The Florentine merchant nobility had long been in 
 the habit of protecting and enjoying art and literature. 
 It was natural, therefore, that Cosimo should employ 
 his striking critical taste, trained by reading and dis- 
 cussion, his enormous wealth, his knowledge of men, 
 finished by travel and the conduct of affairs, his cor- 
 respondence, spread over all countries of the world, 
 in forming collections of books and manuscripts, in
 
 Niccolo de* Niccoli. 127 
 
 employing men of genius, and becoming the leading 
 patron of art and letters in Italy. The most efficient 
 of his friends and proteges in this work was Niccolo 
 de' Niccoli. He was the son of a small merchant of 
 the city, who, inheriting a very modest fortune, 
 abandoned business and gave himself up to the pro- 
 fession of a connoisseur and collector of manuscripts 
 and objects of art. The stout little man who 
 always dressed with scrupulous care was very 
 fond of society, and the soul of every company ; 
 but somewhat feared withal, because of a touch of 
 sarcasm in his irresistibly funny speeches. He was 
 a good deal of a beau in his younger days, and we 
 learn from letters that he and his friend Bruni used 
 to wait round the doors of the churches to see the 
 pretty girls come out. But he never married, be- 
 cause he knew that if he had a wife he must give up 
 collecting books. He was more than consoled by 
 forming out of his moderate income the best library 
 in Florence — eight hundred manuscripts, all rare, 
 some of them unique. When an over-enthusiastic 
 purchase, as, for instance, the library of Salutato, 
 had reduced him for the time to poverty, he hung 
 on to the books and economized until he could pay 
 for them. He had, besides, a small but good collec- 
 tion of gems, statues, coins, and pictures. But he 
 lived no comfortless life of the traditional old bachelor. 
 He loved to see a piece of fine linen, a crystal goblet, 
 an antique vase, some bits of choice pottery on his 
 table. 
 
 He was the centre of correspondence for the Hu- 
 manists of his day, and not to know Niccoli was to be
 
 128 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 unknown in the realm of letters. He was the great- 
 est living authority on manuscripts, with an infallible 
 eye for an old codex, and an extended practical 
 knowledge of the then unknown science of diplo- 
 matics. He was the first collector who let his uniques 
 be copied, and showed a liberality in regard to his 
 treasures absolutely unequalled. At his death it 
 was found that two hundred of his volumes were 
 loaned. His house was always open and was the 
 meeting-place of the literati and artists of Florence. 
 It was also a sort of free school, for sometimes there 
 were ten or twelve young men reading quietly in the 
 library, while Niccoli walked about the room, giving 
 instructions or asking now one and then another his 
 impressions of what he read. And yet he was no 
 easy man to get on with. His spirit was intensely 
 critical, and a friend writes that even of the dead he 
 never praised any but Plato, Virgil, Horace, and 
 Jerome. He was neglectful of formalities toward 
 others and exceedingly touchy in regard to himself, 
 and the later years of the peppery old man were 
 filled with quarrels. Cosimo did everything for him. 
 His word was law in regard to appointments and 
 dismissals at the High School of Florence. And it 
 was understood that whenever he was unable to pay 
 for a book he had only to send a note to Cosimo's 
 cashier, who had standing orders to discount it at 
 once — a graceful way of making a gift, for Niccoli 
 died five hundred florins in his patron's debt. He had 
 always been wont to rebuke the jests against religion 
 of the free-thinkers among his literary friends, 
 and he made an edifying end. His last words gave
 
 Book-hunting. 129 
 
 directions as to what was to be done with his 
 books. 
 
 Men like these — for Cosimo and Niccoli were only 
 the most skilful of many connoisseurs of art and let- 
 ters in Florence — searched the world for the remains 
 of classical antiquity. And there was no lack of 
 patient explorers who gladly gave their years to this 
 service. We have a suggestion of such toils and 
 pleasures in letters describing the book-hunts of three 
 young secretaries at the Council of Constance. One 
 day, for instance, they took boat to the Benedictine 
 abbey on the island of Reichenau. On another they 
 crossed to the north shore of the lake and rode 
 eighteen or twenty miles inland to the old abbey of 
 Weingarten. Sometimes they got much, sometimes 
 little ; but, like fishermen, they never let success suffer 
 in the telling of it. 
 
 Their best trip was to the abbey of St. Gall. This 
 abbey, founded in the seventh century, had been for 
 generations, through its convent school, a centre of 
 light, but the degenerate monks were so forgetful of 
 the ancient glories of their house that the library was 
 thrust into a dusty tower and left to worms and 
 decay. Doubtless much was already gone, but the 
 indignant friends found something to fill Florence 
 with joy — a^ perfect Institutes of Ouintilian, only 
 known to Italy in fragments. Poggio got permission 
 to carry it to Constance, and spent fifty-three days 
 copying it. Their net took other smaller fish. Some 
 books of Valerius, Flaccus, a commentary on five 
 speeches of Cicero, Statius's Woods, a book of 
 Manilius, and a short work A Priscian. And they
 
 130 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 copied these too. But it was the news of the 
 Quintilian that drew from Bruni, soon to be chosen 
 as the worthiest successor of Salutato in the Chan- 
 cellorship of Florence, the answer, " O vast gain ! O 
 unhoped-for joy ! " 
 
 Another very useful man in this book-collecting 
 was Giovanni Aurispa, not much of a scholar, but a 
 skilful buyer,particularly of Greek manuscripts. There 
 was great excitement in Florence when he landed in 
 Venice with two hundred and thirty-eight books in 
 his chests. To pay for them he had sold all he had 
 except the clothes he wore, and still owed fifty florins 
 for freight and other debts. Cosimo's brother im- 
 mediately advanced the money. But the shrewd 
 Aurispa would not visit Florence till, by sending an 
 occasional volume and an imperfect list of his trea- 
 sures, he had roused the appetite of the literati to 
 fever-heat. Then he doubtless came well out of his 
 speculation. 
 
 What these men and their patrons were doing for 
 the writings of antiquity Ciriaco of Ancona did for 
 its art. Having picked up Latin while clerk of har- 
 bor repairs in his native city, he was seized, while on 
 a visit to Rome, by the passion of the antiquary, and 
 gave his life to gratify it. Sailing in the Levant as 
 supercargo, he bought in a convent a manuscript of 
 the Iliad and learned Greek out of it. When he 
 came to Rome to visit Pope Eugenius his chests 
 were laden with interesting things : splendid bronze 
 vases with silver inlay, a complete Greek manuscript 
 of the New Testament, marble heads, cut gems, gold 
 coins of Philip and Alexander, Indian water-cans of
 
 Ciriacds Travels. 131 
 
 porcelain decorated in gold, and a long list of copies 
 of ancient inscriptions. He saw and was seen by the 
 literati of Rome, and went to Florence, where he 
 settled down in the library of Niccoli as the choicest 
 spot in the world. But he never stayed long in any 
 place. He visited every important ruin in Italy 
 merely in the intervals of journeys that carried him 
 to the limits of travel. He went to the pyramids, 
 where he copied an inscription in an unknown tongue 
 to send to his friend Niccoli. Then he turned back, 
 lingering, and longing to go farther up the mysterious 
 river. For his dearest plans always failed. At 
 Damascus he was very anxious to accompany the son 
 of a rich merchant to Ethiopia and India, but could 
 not. He was also obliged to give up a trip to Persia 
 with a Genoese merchant he met in Adrianople. 
 And he tried in vain to get money from the Pope 
 and Cosimo for a visit to the Atlas Mountains and 
 the Island of Thule at the end of the world. But 
 Cosimo did give him an open credit at the Medici 
 bank to invest in antiques. And Ciriaco must have 
 spent on his heavy chests more than he earned, for 
 he was no mere trader, but loved to give a gold coin 
 of Trojan to the Emperor, a bit of amber with a 
 fly in it to the King of Naples, drawings of temples 
 and copies of <nosaics to his friends. He was full of 
 pompositv and conceit, published an extraordinary 
 prayer made to Mercury on the way from Delos to 
 Mycenae, liked to tell everywhere how he once mys- 
 tified a stupid priest by the saying, " My art is to 
 sometimes waken the dead from the grave," and al- 
 together took himself too seriously. So they laughed
 
 132 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 at him a good deal, called him " Resurrectionist *' 
 and " Mercury of Ancona " ; but the ablest of the 
 brilliant circle of which he loved to rank himself a 
 member knew his real services to learning, and his 
 lost collections of carefully copied inscriptions would 
 doubtless fill many a gap in antiquarian knowledge. 
 These collectors and the patrons whose homes shel- 
 tered the inheritance of the past were surrounded by 
 a swarm of teachers and writers, and the wandering 
 masters found more dignified successors in the in- 
 cumbents of new schools founded in many parts of 
 Italy. The greatest of this generation of teachers 
 are Vittorino da Feltre (1 377-1446) and Guarino da 
 Verona (1370- 1 460). In his youth Guarino had gone 
 to Constantinople to learn Greek of Chrysoloras, and 
 when he was called to Ferrara as tutor to the princes 
 of the royal house he had taught in many cities and 
 was sixty years old. But, old as he was, the real labor 
 of his life, that was to make his name gratefully hon- 
 ored throughout Italy, was just begun. He was lec- 
 turer on poetry to the University, and the hearers 
 who soon filled the room included men as well as 
 youth, and not infrequently women. But his genius 
 as a teacher was best displayed in his private school. 
 And his house gathered scholars from all parts 
 of Italy, Dalmatia, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, 
 Poland, France, England, and the islands of the 
 Levant. It was a gentle discipline, that of the 
 learned and kindly man, who loved a joke as well as 
 the wildest lad among them. The pupils were 
 brought up with his own sons, who all grew up to be 
 scholars, and became the ancestors of a numerous
 
 Vittorino da Feltre. 133 
 
 race distinguished for ten generations in poetry and 
 the Humanities. He was very much opposed to the 
 use of the rod, saying that it enslaved boys and made 
 them hate learning. Nor was he a believer in " the 
 drilled dull lesson, forced down word for word." He 
 taught his pupils the elements of grammar, and then 
 threw them on their own resources, to read steadily 
 and continuously, with the help of a translation. 
 This method, for lack of which generations of Ameri- 
 can college students have wasted the best years of 
 their lives over Greek and Latin without learning to 
 read either with pleasure, had astonishing success. 
 There are recorded instances of men, young and old, 
 who, beginning Greek, could, after less than a year 
 in Guarino's house, read it freely and with pleasure. 
 At the age of ninety he called his sons around him, 
 blessed them, and crowned a life of gentle labor with 
 a peaceful death. 
 
 Even more beautiful is the personality and life of 
 Vittorino da Feltre. His parents were poor, and he 
 had to help himself to an education by tutoring and 
 studying at the same time. But in spite of his hard 
 work he was more than a mere dig, for he did well 
 in the sports of his fellows and sang the praises of his 
 sweetheart in Latin and Italian. He had a little 
 school at Venice for a while, and then lectured at 
 Padua, his alma mater, in rhetoric and philosophy. 
 His success brought him a call to Mantua in 1423. 
 The Duke, a great soldier, but a friend to learning, 
 had built for an academy a stately house in the 
 midst of a green meadow on the bank of a little lake 
 not far from the city. It was generously planned,
 
 1 34 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 for the halls were decorated with frescoes and the 
 courts with fountains. Here, and in the neighboring 
 house which Vittorino built from his profits, assembled 
 a strange medley of pupils, sons of princes and 
 noblemen side by side with poor scholars Vittorino 
 had picked up, who could bring nothing but their 
 love of learning. He had a large number of masters, 
 including teachers of painting and music, riding, 
 fencing, and ball-playing. He was always in debt, 
 for he never could resist taking promising lads who 
 were poor, or practise economy when it was possible 
 to improve his school. His own large salary he gave 
 away, and left so embarrassed an estate that his heirs 
 refused to accept it. But he had a ready resource, 
 for his noble master never could resist the smile with 
 which Vittorino was wont to confess that he had spent 
 several hundred gold pieces extra for the needs of 
 the school and hoped it would be supplied. He 
 himself never thought of money. He had no plea- 
 sures except those he shared with his boys, and the 
 only thing in the world he kept to himself was a tiny 
 house and garden on the hill where Virgil was said 
 to have been born. When his friends advised him 
 to marry and told of the joys of the family, he 
 pointed to his scholars and said he had children 
 enough already. The boys were brought up with 
 freedom, but under a stern law, and they feared his 
 rebuke. His special dislikes were lying, profanity, 
 laziness, and dandyism. The son of the Duke, al- 
 most a young man, blasphemed on the ball-field, 
 and Vittorino instantly called him and boxed his 
 ears. His piety was very deep, and he tau^Tit his
 
 The School at Mantua. 135 
 
 scholars the strict observance of the customs of 
 worship. At the school table prayer was made be- 
 fore and after meat. The older scholars heard mass 
 every morning, went to confession every month, and 
 kept honestly all the prescribed fasts of the Church. 
 But the asceticism of his system was based on clas- 
 sic rather than on monkish ideas, and endeavored 
 to subdue the body by training it. The boys had to 
 play and exercise every day in the open air in run- 
 ning, wrestling, swimming, riding, ball-playing, or 
 shooting with the bow. Sometimes they were di- 
 vided into two armies which fought battles. Some- 
 times they were sent hunting or fishing, or, in 
 summer, taken on long tramps to the Alps. 
 
 He never wrote anything, saying " the ancients 
 had written enough ; it was better to read them " — 
 probably only his excuse to himself for giving his 
 whole learning to his boys, for he always praised and 
 admired the writings of others. He had his reward 
 in the tears of joy that were seen in his eyes when 
 one did well in the crowning exercise of the school, 
 an elegant rendering of Greek into Latin, before 
 visitors, and in the universal love and respect which 
 came to him from all men in an envious and quarrel- 
 some age. The best medallist of the day gave to the 
 medal in his honor this legend : " Father of Classic 
 Learning." 
 
 Then also the three great Florentines around 
 whom we grouped the first generation of the follow- 
 ers of Petrarch in the ways of the New Learning 
 found worthy successors each in his kind. 
 
 Marsigli, the Augustinian monk, friend of Boccac-
 
 136 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 cio and Salutato, is represented by Traversari the 
 Camaldulensian. Abroad he was the churchman, 
 General of his Order, ambassador of the Pope, and 
 powerful advocate of the Papal authority at Basle. 
 But in Florence he was one of the little band who sat 
 at Cosimo's table for a feast of reason. He was a 
 sworn friend of Niccoli, who was forever urging him 
 to read less theology and more classics. When 
 Niccoli went on his travels he always left to Traver- 
 sari the keys of his iron-bound manuscript chests, 
 and his clothes, which, to please the dandy antiquary, 
 had to be shaken and brushed at regular intervals by 
 a brother of the order. He had a hard time between 
 the rules of his convent and his taste for heathen poets 
 and literary distinction. When he had translated for 
 Cosimo so apparently unsatanic a book as Diogenes 
 Laertius's Sketches of Distinguished Philosophers, he 
 could only quiet his conscience for not having spent 
 the time on Church fathers with the reflection that 
 even this work might help religion by its moral ex- 
 amples. 
 
 Leonardo Bruni, a poor orphan boy brought up 
 under the protection of Salutato, became, after serv- 
 ing as curial secretary, a worthy successor of his 
 patron as Chancellor of Florence. He was accounted 
 the best Grecian of his day, and left seventy-four 
 works in Greek and Latin. He seemed, as he strode 
 majestically through the streets in his long red 
 robe, one of those ancient Roman worthies whose 
 tongue he wrote so clearly and beautifully in letters, 
 or rolled out in the strong and stately phrases of his 
 festal orations. He was third of an illustrious roll of
 
 Poggio Bracciolini. 137 
 
 chancellors, which numbers between Salutato and 
 Machiavelli some of the chief names in the literature 
 of successive generations. 
 
 But it is in Poggio and Filelfo that we see the 
 typical figure of the Humanist, the successor of 
 Petrarch, a scholar and writer living by his knowledge 
 and his pen, not directly through teaching or the sale 
 of his books, but by the presents and sinecures offered 
 by admiring patrons. 
 
 Poggio Bracciolini (1 380-1459) walked into Flor- 
 ence, like Franklin into Philadelphia, with only a few 
 pieces of silver in his pocket. But he soon found a 
 friend in Salutato, who put him in the way of earning 
 a living as a copyist of classical manuscripts ; and his 
 beautiful handwriting brought him plenty of work. 
 Niccoli lent him books and money, and, guided by 
 the advice of both, he hammered out for himself 
 without teachers a mastery of Latin and a passable 
 knowledge of Greek. While still a youth he got a 
 position as secretary of the Papal Curia, which he 
 held for fifty years. But his heart was always in 
 Florence, where his treasure of books was, either 
 stored in his little villa, or under the care of his friend 
 Traversari. There he married, when over fifty, a 
 young girl of eighteen, a match which, to the amaze- 
 ment of all his friends, was the happiness of both. 
 He was forty before the discovery of the Quintilian 
 at St. Gall brought him anything like fame, and it 
 w as afterward that he was ranked among the first 
 scholars and stylists of his day. Poggio did not 
 serve Minerva for nothing. He wrote, it is true, 
 essays on " Avarice " and " The Greed of Gold," but
 
 138 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 both as curial secretary and litterateur he understood 
 perfectly the art of feathering his nest. His pride 
 was of the vulgar stripe which keeps constantly 
 asking for something, not the noble self-respect of a 
 Salutato, which is always content with its wages and 
 stands aside to watch, half in scorn and half in 
 amusement, the universal struggle for the almighty 
 dollar. Until the time when he gave it up and mar- 
 ried he was, like Petrarch, a patient hunter of bene- 
 fices, and no rich patron in Italy need despair of the 
 services of his pen, most skilled in eulogy. Nor did 
 he scruple to skilfully solicit this kind of business. 
 When he had translated the " Cyropaedia " of Xeno- 
 phon he hinted with increasing plainness to those in 
 the court of Alfonso of Naples his desire to dedicate 
 it to that generous Maecenas. When the bait was 
 not even nibbled at, he wrote a dedication in his 
 warmest tone and sent a splendidly bound copy of 
 the work. But Alfonso made no return and the in- 
 dignant scholar began to hedge violently in his opin- 
 ion of the King whom he had just lauded to the skies, 
 questioned his taste and the honesty of his devotion 
 to literature, and struck his name out of the copies 
 of his book so that the dedication might serve for 
 any prince. Then Alfonso sent him six hundred 
 florins, and begged him if he wanted anything else 
 not to be afraid to ask. Immediately the tide of 
 Poggio's admiration swelled to high-water mark, and 
 at the first opportunity he sent an open letter beg- 
 ging Alfonso to raise all Italy against the Turk, and 
 calling him a model of every royal virtue in peace 
 and war.
 
 Francesco File If o. 139 
 
 He was even more skilled in invective than in 
 eulogy. And woe betide the man who in the small- 
 est way crossed Poggio's path. He was pilloried in 
 Latin letters whose style spread them all over Eu- 
 rope. To this rule Guarino was the sole exception. 
 His character awed even the pen of Poggio, and 
 their dispute as to whether Caesar or Scipio was the 
 greatest man was carried on, if not with all the 
 courtesy of an old-fashioned village debating society, 
 yet with what for Poggio was decency. On the 
 other hand, in defending his patron Cosimo against 
 Filelfo he stopped at no personality. No member 
 of his adversary's family was left untouched by dirty 
 accusations. And there was scarcely a crime so 
 mean and unmentionable that he did not accuse his 
 opponent of it. Some allowance must be made, of 
 course, for the contemporary customs of dispute. 
 But even a tough-skinned generation shrank before 
 the poisoned bitterness of Poggio's darts. 
 
 Francesco Filelfo (1 398-1 481), when he landed in 
 Venice in 1427, had served for five years as secretary 
 to the Emperor John in Constantinople, whither he had 
 originally been sent by the Venetian State as secretary 
 of the trade-house — a sort of consul. Two years later 
 he brought his chest of Greek manuscripts and his 
 beautiful young Greek wife, the grand niece of Manuel 
 Chrysoloras, to Florence, to lecture in the employ of 
 the city on Cicero, Livy, Terence, Homer, Thucydides, 
 and Xenophon. He did not stay long. For it is not to 
 be supposed that continual peace brooded over the 
 Florentine garden of the Muses. Scholars and men 
 of letters are notoriously difficult, and petty jealousies
 
 140 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 and quarrels were as common in Florence as in a 
 modern college faculty. Then the immeasurable 
 vanity of Filelfo, who thought the street curiosity 
 that stared at his Eastern beard and robe a tribute to 
 his learning, struck like flint on steel against the 
 sarcastic humor of Niccoli. But the man who bore 
 the triple reputation of one of the first Latinists, the 
 ablest Greek scholar, and the most skilful poet of 
 Italy had no trouble in finding a new home. He 
 went to the High School of Siena, and the war of 
 words passed to knives; for after Filelfo's life had 
 twice been attempted by assassins, hired, as he 
 charged, by Cosimo and his friends, the great Grecian 
 joined with other exiles of the " noble " party of 
 Florentine politics to hire a band of murderers to kill 
 Cosimo and Marsuppini. Filelfo added a special 
 promise of twenty-five florins for the death of Mar- 
 suppini. But the assassin was caught, had both of 
 his hands cut off, and was driven from Florentine 
 territory ; and it was decreed that if Filelfo were 
 taken he should have his tongue cut out. Filelfo's 
 answer was to pillory the Medici in an invective, and 
 Cosimo, touched by the only spot on his good fame, 
 sought to make peace through Traversari ; an over- 
 ture to which Filelfo replied : " Cosimo has poison 
 and dagger against me. I have brains and pen 
 against him. I do not want his friendship and I 
 despise his hostility." But it was not many years 
 before he again sought Cosimo's patronage, promis- 
 ing to destroy all his invectives. And at the end of 
 his life, when he hoped to gain from Lorenzo, Cosi' 
 ido's grrandsoE. * tkositc^r a* f k» ce?" awversity at
 
 Learned Pagans. 1 4 1 
 
 Pisa, he planned a great eulogy of the Medici in ten 
 books, of which he sent a flattering preface as a sample. 
 And at eighty-three years he was actually recalled 
 to Florence, to die almost on reaching it. Mean- 
 while he had not suffered. He was always com- 
 plaining of poverty, even when he had six servants 
 or kept six horses and dressed in silk and fine furs. 
 And his measureless importunity supported this 
 state. For it was actually the belief of the age that 
 the key of the heaven of fame was the pen of the 
 Humanist, and the sale of their eulogies has been 
 well compared to the sale of indulgences by the 
 Church. We have seen how even Cosimo feared to 
 have his name mentioned with disrespect in Filelfo's 
 immortal letters, and to obtain honorable mention in 
 them many a prince was willing to fill his hands with 
 gold. 
 
 For the rest Filelfo and Poggio were pretty thor- 
 ough heathen. They did not quarrel with the 
 Church, for it was dangerous. The very fury with 
 which Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Salutato had attacked 
 ecclesiastical abuses showed their love of the Church. 
 But Filelfo and Poggio did little else but sneer at 
 her wrongs and weaknesses. A Bruni, a Niccoli, a 
 Guarino, a Vittorino showed by their attitude toward 
 her worship their faith in the great institution which 
 handed down the teaching of Christ. But these two 
 most typical Humanists, who sought the glory of 
 men through the glory of letters, and lived by pat- 
 ronage, looked upon the priests as Cicero on the 
 augurs. They dropped altogether the sense of sin 
 which Jesus of Nazareth brought into the world, and
 
 142 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 when they thus turned to the Greek ideal they did 
 not replace the penitence issuing in the love of God 
 and man of his doctrine by the stoic self-respect 
 which had produced an Epictetus and taught Marcus 
 Aurelius to write that " even in a palace life might 
 be well lived." A few of their successors in the 
 New Learning put on the simple garb of that philos- 
 ophy. But the typical Humanists of this genera- 
 tion, with most of their successors, set up nothing 
 in place of what they abandoned, and, borrowing 
 one of the worst traits of classic life, stamped with 
 the authority of culture and good taste those vices 
 which constantly threaten to rot society to the point 
 of dissolution. Filelfo's " De Jocis et Seriis " has 
 never been printed. His biographer (Rosmini, 1808) 
 was ashamed to quote it because of its " horrible 
 obscenity." Poggio tells how a knot of choice spirits 
 among the Papal secretaries, all of whom belonged to 
 the clergy, used to meet after work in a remote room 
 of the palace. They called their informal society 
 " Bugiale," or " The Forge of Lies," and he collected 
 and published the tales he heard there under the title 
 of " Facetiae." It went through twenty-six editions 
 in sixty years. Any one attempting to circulate an 
 English translation through the United States mail 
 could be sent to the penitentiary. Nor was this all. 
 The worship of lubricity became deliberate. In 
 Valla's dialogue, " De Voluptate," while the formal 
 victory remains with virtue, the freshness and strength 
 of argument are all on the side of the Greek view ; 
 and the conclusion, "Whatever pleases is permitted," 
 lies near to every reader.
 
 The Goddess of Lubricity. 143 
 
 ButinBeccadelli's "Hermaphroditus," by which the 
 author won instant fame at the age of thirty-one, the 
 astonished modern reader finds a veritable Priapean 
 orgy. The polished Latin verses, decorated with all 
 the skill of a poet and rhetorician, have for their sub- 
 ject those things which St. Paul says it is a shame 
 even to speak of. It was received with a perfect 
 storm of applause, and gained for Beccadelli the 
 laurel crown of a poet from the hand of the Emperor 
 Sigismund. Not, of course, without protest. For 
 the leading folks' preachers, Bernardino of Siena and 
 his associates the Franciscans, thundered against it 
 and publicly burned it with the picture of the author 
 in the market squares of Bologna, Ferrara, and Milan, 
 while the Pope excommunicated any who should 
 dare to read it. But the more it was attacked the 
 more it was read. And though in later life the 
 author mildly expressed his regret, it was the chief 
 support of his fame. The claim of apologetes that 
 Christianity has obliterated that shame of the classic 
 world has never been justified by facts in this or any 
 other age. But it is certainly a sign of additional 
 corruption to find a crime, now stamped as infamous 
 by every statute-book of Europe, and then punished 
 by death in France, openly praised with more than 
 Turkish cynicism amid the applause of men who 
 assumed to lead taste and learning. 
 
 The Laurentius Valla alluded to was born twenty- 
 seven years later than Poggio, and together with 
 Beccadelli formed the chief ornament of the cultured 
 court of Alfonso of Naples. He became one of the 
 ablest critics the world has ever seen. It was diffi-
 
 144 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 cult for any mythical humbug or traditional fraud to 
 escape his sharp eye and tongue. When Beccadelli 
 showed King Alfonso the skull of a dragon, Vallaproved 
 that it was nothing but a crocodile. No adherent of 
 the New Learning had yet struck such resistless blows 
 at the traditional methods of scholasticism, which en- 
 slaved so much of the teaching at the universities 
 and schools. Though it was two generations since 
 the death of Petrarch he made the beginnings of a 
 scientific Latin grammar and syntax. He denied 
 the right of the monks and nuns to their exclusive 
 title " religious," and the claim on which it was 
 based, that an honest monk could expect a higher 
 reward from God, simply because of his monkish 
 vow, than an honest layman. He exposed as a 
 forgery the letter of Abgar, King of Edessa, to 
 Christ, mistakenly quoted by Eusebius as an original. 
 He attacked the catechism of the Franciscans as false 
 because it said that the Apostles had in person com- 
 posed the different articles of the so-called Apostles' 
 Creed. He demanded that the Vulgate, or Jerome's 
 Latin translation of the New Testament, should be 
 compared with the original Greek and corrected. 1 
 These assertions are commonplaces now. They re- 
 quired the originality of genius then. But in the 
 moral courage to sustain his originality Valla was 
 absolutely deficient. When he was summoned before 
 an ecclesiastical court and confronted with a charge 
 of heresy he escaped by saying that " Mother Church 
 
 1 The manuscript containing this demand was never published until 
 Erasmus found it in Belgium and had it printed in 1505.
 
 The New Learning and Reformation. 145 
 
 did not know anything about it, but nevertheless he 
 thought in these matters entirely as Mother Church." 
 And when he wanted a sinecure on the staff of Papal 
 secretaries his letter to the Pope humbly retracted 
 every conclusion of his scholarship and promised 
 hereafter to write entirely in his interests. 
 
 It has seemed necessary to interrupt the account 
 of the attempted reform of the Church in head and 
 members by the three parties of the radicals (Wicliff 
 and Huss), the middle party of conciliar reform 
 (Gerson, d'Ailly, and the fathers of Basle), and the 
 orthodox, ascetic folks' preachers (Catherine of Siena, 
 Bernardino of Siena, etc.) by this long account of the 
 second generation of the men of the New Learning, 
 because the success of their movement finally brought 
 about the end of the drama in the triumph of reform. 
 Neither the protesting Reformation of Luther nor the 
 Catholic Counter-reformation of Trent would have 
 been possible but for the victory of the New Learning 
 over the traditions of scholasticism. And curiously 
 enough this relation, which it might be tedious to de- 
 monstrate abstractly, has been clearly suggested in a 
 letter from one of the Humanists we have described. 
 
 Petrarch, the founder of the New Learning, did 
 three things : he tested tradition by reason ; he awoke 
 self-consciousness — made man cease to be a member 
 of a class and an institution to become an indepen- 
 dent personality ; and he evoked the historical sense 
 and turned it to study the records of the past. We 
 have seen that John Huss, appealing from the 
 Council to Christ, died for the dignity and indepen-
 
 146 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 dence of the individual soul, in defence of the truth 
 that Christianity is in the last analysis a personal 
 matter between each disciple and his Master. And 
 Jerome died because he stood by Huss. Poggio, that 
 careless Gallio who cared for none of these things, 
 wrote, among the letters from Constance about his 
 book-hunts, one to Bruni, describing the trial and 
 death of Jerome. And the unheroic Humanist, not 
 himself the stuff that makes martyrs, cannot conceal 
 his intellectual sympathy for the man who stood in 
 the name of reason and conscience against Council 
 and Emperor, the combined traditional authority of 
 Church and State. The letter is so characteristic of 
 one type of Humanist, and so illustrative of the secret 
 and unseen interaction of the forces of history, that 
 it seems wise to give the reader a free and condensed 
 but true translation, one third the length of the 
 original. 
 
 " P°gg'° sends his best greetings to Leonardo. 
 When I had been several days at the baths I wrote 
 to our friend Nicolas a letter which I hoped you 
 would read. Then when I had returned to Constance 
 the case of Jerome was under discussion. I confess 
 I have never seen any one who approached more 
 nearly to the much-admired eloquence of the ancients. 
 The diction, the skill, the arguments, the expressive 
 countenance, the confidence with which he an- 
 swered his adversaries were wonderful. And it is a 
 pity that so noble an intellect should have turned to 
 heresy, if, indeed, those things are true of which he 
 is charged. Nor, indeed, is it my business to decide 
 so great a question. I yield to the judgment of
 
 Poggids Letter to Leonardo. 147 
 
 those who are accounted wiser. It would take too 
 long to give'you an account of the whole affair, but 
 I will touch on some of its more remarkable features. 
 " The charges were read from the pulpit, head 
 after head, and he was given an opportunity to de- 
 fend himself. It is impossible to tell you how calmly 
 he answered and how skilfully he defended himself. 
 Nothing came from his lips unworthy of a good man. 
 His answer to some was a witty saying, to others a 
 sarcasm ; he compelled many in the midst of this 
 sorrowful affair to laughter, returning their fierce 
 interruptions with a joke. To a Dominican crying 
 out bitterly against him he replied, ' Be silent, hypo- 
 crite.' To another swearing by his conscience, 
 'That,' he said, 'is the surest way to deceive.' A 
 certain chief among his adversaries he never ad- 
 dressed save as ass or dog. When at last, on the 
 third day, he was given permission to speak at length, 
 he began with praying God to grant him such a 
 mind and skill in speaking as should be for the gain 
 and salvation of his soul. Then he pointed out that 
 many excellent men, overwhelmed by false witnesses, 
 have been condemn d by unjust judgment ; referring 
 to Socrates, unjustly killed, the captivity of Plato, 
 the flight of Anaxagoras, the torture of Zeno, the 
 exile of Rutilius, the death of Boethius, and others. 
 Then he passed over to the history of the Hebrews ; 
 spoke of Moses, Joseph, Isaiah, Daniel, and almost 
 all the prophets, oppressed by unjust judgment as 
 despisers of the gods and seducers of the people. 
 Coming down to John the Baptist, our Lord, and all 
 the Apostles, he showed that they died by false
 
 1 48 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 accusation as evil-doers. His voice was sweet, full, 
 and resonant. There was great dignity in his ges- 
 tures either to express indignation or to excite pity, 
 although he did not ask pity. He stood intrepid 
 and unflinching, not only despising death, but even 
 seeking it. You might have called him a second 
 Cato — a man worthy of eternal memory among men 
 (I do not praise anything in him contrary to the in- 
 stitutions of the Church). Obstinate in his errors, he 
 was condemned as a heretic and burned. He ap- 
 proached death with a pleasant and smiling coun- 
 tenance. But this was a particular sign of a steadfast 
 mind. When the executioner would have started 
 the fire behind, that he might not see it, ' Come here, 
 he said, ' and light the fire in front. If I were afraid 
 of it I would never have come to this place, which I 
 could have escaped.' I saw this ending and watched 
 each act of this drama. And having leisure I wished 
 to tell you this affair a little like the stories of the 
 worthies of antiquity. For not Mutius himself suf- 
 fered his hand to be burned with so steadfast a spirit 
 as he the whole body. Nor did Socrates drink the 
 poison so willingly as he endured the fire. Farewell, 
 my dearest Leonardo."
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE FIRST HUMAN- 
 
 1ST POPE TO THE FRENCH INVASION OF 
 
 ITALY (1447-94).
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NICHOLAS V., THE FIRST HUMANIST POPE, MAKES 
 ROME THE HOME OF THE MUSES — THE WAR 
 OF THE MONKS AND THE HUMANISTS. 
 
 HE death of Eugenius in 1447 left the 
 Church in the care of a strong and repre- 
 sentative body of cardinals — eleven Ital- 
 ians, four Spaniards, two Greeks, a Ger- 
 man, an Englishman, a Pole, a Hungarian, 
 a Portuguese, and two Frenchmen. After a short 
 conclave they elected, to his own great astonishment, 
 the youngest, but one of the ablest of their number, 
 Tommaso Parentucelli, of Sarzana, Cardinal of Bo- 
 logna, who took the title of Nicholas V. There was 
 no churchman who represented more unmistakably 
 the training and ideals of the New Learning. After 
 attaining a master's degree at Bologna in philosophy 
 and the liberal arts, he lived for several years in 
 Florence as tutor in the houses of the Albizzi and 
 Strozzi, and breathed deep the air of the New Learn- 
 ing that filled the homes of their friends. A further 
 course of study gained a degree in theology, and 
 he became for twenty years the friend and helper 
 of the Bishop of Bologna, one of the most faithful 
 
 151
 
 152 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 prelates of his day, whose character earned the red 
 hat and nominated him to important legations. On 
 these missions Tommaso added the culture of travel, 
 distinguished conversation, and the conduct of great 
 affairs to the culture of books, and acquired such 
 readiness that he talked on any subject as if he had 
 given his whole life to its study. After he was made 
 a cardinal for closing the negotiations which brought 
 rebellious Germany to the bedside of the dying 
 Eugenius, he had been called the "Second Pope," 
 and his election was hailed with joy. 
 
 He was a little man of choleric temper, with con- 
 siderable power of self-control in emergencies, but 
 quick and impatient at small carelessness or stupidity. 
 He disliked ceremony intensely so far as personal in- 
 tercourse was concerned, and his manners were pleas- 
 ant and friendly. His conversation was always frank 
 and often merry. He never forgot old friends. And 
 his old friends at Florence sent a great embassy with 
 a hundred and twenty horses to congratulate the new 
 Pope. Among them was the bookseller Vespasiano 
 da Bisticci, and to him Nicholas confided his ideal: 
 " So long as I am Pope to use no weapon but that 
 which Christ has given for my defence, his Holy 
 Cross." For this the first Pope under whom Chris- 
 tendom had been united for seventy years was sin- 
 cerely resolved to do his duty as he understood it. 
 His understanding was that of a pious Humanist 
 whose dearest wish, next to the establishment of the 
 peace of the Church, was to ennoble religion and 
 worship by the services of literature and art. He 
 did this with a zeal born of the pleasure in being
 
 Nicholas the Book Collector. 153 
 
 connoisseur and patron, which was his strongest and 
 most active passion. 
 
 During the many years when he had accomplished 
 with dignity the hard task of living as a poor man 
 among intimates whose wealth gave wide range to 
 their cultured tastes, he had been distinguished for 
 his beautifully written and bound manuscripts, and 
 was wont to say in familiar moments, " If I were rich 
 I would indulge in two extravagances — building and 
 the collection of books." The literati of Florence 
 were accustomed to gather every morning at a cer- 
 tain corner in front of the palace of the Republic, to 
 discuss the literary and other gossip of the day. And 
 after he had done his duty of waiting on his master, 
 the Archbishop, Maestro Tommaso would ride down 
 the street clad in his blue gown, give his mule to the 
 two servants who followed him on foot, and join the 
 group. Whenever the subject of the arrangement of 
 a library was suggested among them, his opinion was 
 received as that of a leading expert. His plan for a 
 library, made for Cosimo de' Medici's foundation of 
 San Marco, was used by almost all those large-minded 
 patrons who followed that new example by founding 
 public libraries. It was natural, therefore, that as 
 Pope he should collect the scattered manuscripts that 
 were in the Papal buildings and become the real 
 founder of the Vatican library. His agents were 
 seeking manuscripts in all likely places, and he offered 
 the enormous reward of five thousand florins for a 
 copy of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. His chief 
 delight was to handle and arrange these volumes, and 
 his particular favorites were magnificently bound in
 
 154 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 crimson velvet with silver clasps. They included the 
 presentation copies of the translations from the Greek 
 he suggested and nobly rewarded. He delighted to 
 be hailed as a new Maecenas by the wandering 
 knight-errants of learning, who were finding that the 
 pen was as mighty as the sword to win fortune for 
 the skilful wielder of it. The Curia was almost 
 swamped by the swarm of secretaries who wore the 
 livery of the Church, but loved the shrine of the 
 Muses. As Nicholas pathetically remarked when he 
 was accused of neglecting some modest talent 
 unknown at his very doors, " Why, I reward even 
 the bad poets, if they only come and ask." 
 
 Many of these secretaries of Nicholas were heathen. 
 Not that they attacked the truths of Christianity or 
 refused the offices of the Church, but that the ideals 
 of the New Testament had little influence over their 
 thoughts, desires, or conversation, and the classic 
 authors a great deal. It was a rationalistic circle, 
 much more interested in the relation of human 
 thought and feeling to the world than in the relation 
 of the soul to God, secretly given to free thought, 
 and more or less openly to free living. They dis- 
 played a respect for the Church as a great institution 
 of society ; and doubtless they tried to preserve such 
 a measure of regard for religion in their hearts as 
 might be a comfort at death, without being too 
 troublesome while they were engaged in living. 
 
 Both their heathenism and the form of their Chris- 
 tianity led this circle and their correspondents to take 
 up the invective against the monks which two gen- 
 erations of Humanists had carried on. Petrarch,
 
 An Old Quarrel. 155 
 
 indeed, had been on very good terms with all the 
 orders of monks, and was pleased with their praise 
 of his book " On the Solitary Life." But Boccaccio 
 not only made monks the comic heroes of the very 
 worst of his tales, but wrote against them as ambi- 
 tious pretenders who opposed learning and dishonored 
 the house of God. In the second generation Bruni, 
 the Chancellor of Florence, took up the conflict in 
 his tractate " Against Hypocrisy," and draws such a 
 picture that there is little difficulty in recognizing a 
 caricature of the Franciscan Brothers of the Strict 
 Observance, the begging friars, with their distin- 
 guished folks' preacher, Bernardino of Siena. Filelfo 
 continued the attack, and gives a satiric picture of 
 the preaching of the revivalist monks. 
 
 Poggio was therefore taking up the quarrel of his class 
 in his lifelong enmity against the Strict Franciscans. 
 And there wasadded the hatred of acurialist of theop- 
 position party, who had felt the pressure of their 
 overwhelming influence during the latter part of the 
 administration of Eugenius IV. His letters and 
 pamphlets against them are written in his most bril- 
 liant and reckless style. He says they are recruited 
 among idle boys, who, having learned nothing and 
 being too lazy to earn their living, go into the order 
 to live without working. They put on a coarse and 
 dirty gown, hang down their heads, look pale and 
 thin, and think they have proved their holiness and 
 humility, but are leading astray silly women, con- 
 stantly begging privileges and immunities for their 
 order, and hunting bishoprics and cardinals' hats for 
 themselves. Since Bernardino has won such ap-
 
 156 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 plause, every stupid idiot in the order wants to imi- 
 tate him. They scream and whisper, stamp and 
 pound the pulpit, and in the end are bathed in per- 
 spiration, while their hearers remain stupider than 
 before. " Why," he asks, " do they always call the 
 Redeemer Jesus, and not, as other people do, Jesus 
 Christ? Why do they call themselves Jesusites 
 [Jesuits] and not, like others, Christians ? It is because 
 they want, by this trick of a new fashion of speech, 
 to appear to be a chosen and peculiar band, but really 
 they are filled with ambitions and all uncleanness." 
 
 That such bitter attacks did not mean separation 
 from the Church, or even war with all monks, is 
 illuminating for those Protestant readers, who find 
 it difficult to understand that, within certain fixed 
 limits of doctrine and certain practical rules of obe- 
 dience, the liveliest discussion and the freest per- 
 sonal criticism have always been possible in the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Poggio himself had intimate 
 friends among the monks. His eldest son, though 
 to his father's great grief, became a preacher of the 
 strictest order of St. Francis. He signed his will in 
 the cloister of San Croce, desired to be buried there, 
 and left money to furnish a new chapel and for a 
 hundred masses to be said by the monks for his soul. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the monks were si- 
 lent under such attacks. We have seen how Bernar- 
 dino denounced Beccadelli ; and a score of pulpits 
 thundered in reply to Poggio against the immorali- 
 ties and indecencies of the Humanist writings, charg- 
 ing that darker heathenism and heresy, denials of 
 God and the soul, were behind.
 
 Halting between Two Opinions. 157 
 
 One strange outcome of this conflict between those 
 who quoted the classics and practised worldliness, 
 and those who quoted the New Testament and prac- 
 tised other worldliness, was the appearance of men 
 who sympathized with both and spent their lives 
 halting between two opinions. Such a one was 
 Girolamo Agliotti, of the Benedictine cloister of 
 Arezzo, in whom the Zeitgeist was so powerful that 
 when he heard the " Gospel of Christ or the letters 
 of Paul or Augustine read, felt them so little that he 
 was inclined to doubt whether there ever had been 
 a Paul or a Christ or an Augustine." " He was much 
 more stirred by Virgil than by the Psalms, and pre- 
 ferred Livy and Quintilian to Ezekiel." In this 
 desperate condition he met Traversari, the Human- 
 istic General of the Camaldolites, and his sympathy 
 allayed the strife of the boy's spirit and gave him 
 peace in the resolve to take the dress of his order. 
 But his fellows regarded the study of anything but 
 the Bible and the lives of the saints as worse than a 
 waste of time for a monk, and he was sent out of the 
 cloister by his abbot. He spent his years in project- 
 ing books for which he could never find a patron ; 
 wrote one on the " Education of a Monk," but seems 
 to have pleased neither party ; and, though the Pope 
 finally gave him the abbacy of the little cloister from 
 which he had been driven, he made no career com- 
 mensurable with his ambitions or even his talents. 
 
 But Alberto da Sarteano, a begging friar who 
 brought the fruits of classic learning to his order, 
 found better service and reward. He was the most 
 distinguished disciple and successor of Bernardino,
 
 158 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 their great preacher. He had spent some time in his 
 youth in Florence, and was a friend of the circle of 
 literati centred about Niccoli. Thence he went to 
 the great schoolmaster Guarino to perfect himself in 
 Greek and Latin eloquence. They became sworn 
 friends. When the monk, a year later, preached at 
 a provincial assembly of his order in Latin sprinkled 
 with his new Greek, the teacher, always pleased with 
 his pupils' efforts, was delighted. Alberto soon laid 
 aside his Latin and his oratory to learn the art by 
 which Bernardino roused the common people to 
 great crises of religious excitement and enthusiasm. 
 Henceforth he became a pillar of his order. But in 
 the midst of his " trumpet preaching " he was still 
 willing, as his old master wrote with joy, to exhort 
 his hearers to the duty of study, and to support the 
 truths of religion not only by quotation from the 
 Bible, but also from the orators and poets. Nc 
 doubt this roused criticism and suspicion, just as 
 Wesley's habit of reading Shakespeare did three cen- 
 turies later. But in so distinguished and zealous a 
 servant of the strictest observance of the order, 
 things could be pardoned that would have been un- 
 bearable scandal in a weaker vessel. He was even 
 able to maintain, in spite of one or two half-playful 
 controversies, a friendly correspondence with Poggio. 
 And on his mission journeys the monk was keeping 
 a sharp and sometimes successful outlook for rare 
 books on behalf of the very Humanist who was 
 pouring out the vials of his bitterest satire on the 
 barefoot preachers. 
 
 Coming events cast their shadows before, and such
 
 Nicholas the Patron of Art. 159 
 
 a figure was a prophecy of those Jesusites (Jesuits) 
 who a century later, leading the Catholic Counter- 
 reformation by polished preaching to the higher 
 classes and the creation of a new system of Catho- 
 lic education, prepared novices for entrance into their 
 order by a long and laborious training in every de- 
 partment of classic and philosophic learning. 
 
 Nicholas spent large sums in filling his court 
 with Humanists, replacing by them the monks, the 
 traditional servants of the Papacy. But it was in the 
 arts that he used the bulk of those huge treasures 
 which were raising the Church from the poverty of 
 the schism. We catch a glimpse of the stream flow- 
 ing quietly from all parts of the world in the flood of 
 gold poured out before the altar of St. Peter by the 
 thronging jubilee pilgrims of 1450 — a sum so great 
 that it amazed all beholders. The shops of the gold- 
 smiths as far as Paris were filled with orders for the 
 Papal court, and the ceremonials gleamed with 
 wrought metal and precious stones, fine fabrics, 
 splendid tapestries and embroideries. He bade 
 painters cover the walls of the Vatican with frescoes, 
 and was fortunate in the service of Fra Angelico; 
 whose epitaph bids the passer-by praise him, not 
 because he was a second Apelles, but because he 
 gave all the rewards of his work to Christ's poor. 
 The restless energy of Nicholas turned to every kind 
 of building. The aqueduct was repaired and the 
 fountains of the city increased and adorned ; new 
 bridges were built and old ones put in order. The 
 walls were completed and made defensible, and new 
 fortifications rose in the weaker cities of the patrimo-
 
 1 60 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 nium. The palace of the senators was enlarged and 
 adorned, and a new one built for the magistrates. 
 The ruined churches and basilicas were restored. 
 For that part of the city which was called the Leo- 
 nina, and centred in the Cathedral of St. Peter, 
 the Pope formed a plan more magnificent than 
 anything since the days of the Roman Em- 
 perors. Three great arcaded streets, a huge 
 forum, a Papal palace as large as Nero's Golden 
 House, and a basilica that dwarfed the Pantheon 
 were the figures of this dream of marble magnifi- 
 cence. The first step toward realizing it was to de- 
 stroy a little basilica which for more than a thousand 
 years had preserved the graves of that Probus and 
 his wife who had been the friend of Ambrose and 
 Symmachus. For it is a strange contradiction in 
 the life of Nicholas that no one was ever a more 
 ruthless plunderer and destroyer of old buildings to 
 get space or stone than this son of Humanism in the 
 Chair of St. Peter. 
 
 The realization of his other ideal, the rule of peace 
 by peace, was perhaps impossible without a renunci- 
 ation of traditional Papal rights which would have 
 appeared the most violent of revolutions. The peo- 
 ple of Rome were a feeble folk, both in war and 
 peace — filled with great enthusiasms, but hysterical. 
 Nicholas shrank from the tyranny they needed. And 
 yet it was his fate to provoke conspiracy. Stefano 
 Porcaro, a member of one of the lesser noble fami- 
 lies, was a man of distinction, largely acquainted 
 among the leaders of the Humanists, and a corre- 
 spondent of the Florentine circle, who had filled
 
 The Fall of Constantinople. 1 6 1 
 
 several offices of State at home and abroad. Moved 
 either by enthusiasm or ambition, he bound a body 
 of men by oath to fire the Vatican, fall upon the 
 Pope and cardinals during the celebration of mass, 
 capture or kill them, and proclaim the Republic, with 
 himself as Tribune. The chiefs of this last important 
 plot to restore the ancient Republic ended on the 
 gallows, and it had no result except to embitter 
 Nicholas and increase his constitutional timidity ; but 
 it is interesting as a type of a class of conspiracies, all 
 appealing to the example of antiquity and choosing 
 the Church as a convenient place for assassinations, 
 which are scattered through the fifteenth century of 
 Italian history. Everywhere the power of the citi- 
 zens was decayed and the chartered liberties of the 
 cities of Italy usurped by tyrants who knew no law 
 save of their own making. As early as Boccaccio 
 Humanism had begun to adorn the maxim that the 
 murder of a tyrant is the praise of God. And when 
 Humanism had become the mode it was natural that, 
 since law had perished, envy, discontent, or devotion 
 should frequently imitate the examples of Brutus or 
 Catiline. 
 
 But Nicholas's love of peace was disturbed by 
 something far more tragic than a masquerading con- 
 spiracy. In the height of his splendid pontificate 
 the fall of Constantinople resounded through Europe. 
 Christendom ought not to have been surprised, be- 
 cause embassy after embassy had sought help, but a 
 great shock of wrath and fear ran through the nations 
 of the West. For a hundred years the walls of Con- 
 stantinople had stood as a bulwark against Asia. And 
 
 K
 
 1 62 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 when it fell the imaginations of men saw the ruthless 
 Turk swarming up the Danube, down the Rhine, and 
 along the Mediterranean to conquer Europe. The 
 Papacy, as from " the watch-tower of Christendom," 
 sounded the alarm, and the call for a crusade went 
 to every bishopric of Europe. But even fear, so long 
 as it remained vague and distant, could not unite the 
 Christian world to common action. Only a meagre 
 response came. The folks' preacher Capistrano wrote 
 from Germany to the Pope : " All princes and lords 
 say with one voice, ' Why should we set our lives 
 and our children's bread in hazard against the Turk, 
 while the chief priest lets the treasure he ought to 
 spend on the defence of the Holy Faith be wasted 
 on towers and walls, chalk and stone?'" And it 
 came to pass that the talented, once simple-living 
 and merry Tommaso of Sarzana, sickened of all his 
 splendors and artistic pleasures, and died, glad to be 
 released from the heavy burden of an office he had 
 taken with great anticipations. 
 
 He called his cardinals around his bed and, after 
 the fashion of antiquity, delivered to them a stately 
 speech, the apology for his pontificate. Even through 
 the rhetoric of his biographer we may see the real 
 feeling of the honest ecclesiastic and the mens sibicon- 
 scia recti of the dying Humanist. He told them he 
 had found the Holy Church rent by war and crushed 
 with poverty. He had healed her schisms, paid her 
 debts, won back her lost cities and secured them by 
 fortresses. He had made her magnificent with 
 splendid buildings, adorned her by the noblest forms 
 of art, and given her great store of books and car-
 
 The Dying Humanist. 163 
 
 pets, garments and silver utensils. And he had 
 gathered all these treasures, not by greed, simony, 
 or avarice, but rather had used a magnanimous lib- 
 erality in building, in book-collecting, in rewarding 
 men of science. All these treasures came from the 
 divine grace of the Creator and the continuous peace 
 of the Church. 
 
 It is perhaps the most characteristic thing in 
 Nicholas's life that this perfectly true eulogy — and 
 criticism — of his pontificate should have been uttered 
 by himself.
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CALIXTUS III., THE OLD SPANIARD, HIS FAMILY 
 PRIDE AND HIS ZEAL AGAINST THE INFIDEL 
 
 PIUS II., THE CULTURED MAN OF THE 
 
 WORLD WHO DIED A CRUSADER — PAUL II., 
 THE SPLENDOR-LOVING VENETIAN NEPOT. 
 
 T the death of Nicholas at least two of the 
 prominent candidates, Domenico Capra- 
 nica and Bessarion, the learned Greek 
 convert, were distinguished Humanists. 
 But the " rhythm of the Papacy " pre- 
 vailed. The Spaniard, Alfonso Borgia, seventy- 
 seven years old, a learned canonist, took the title of 
 Calixtus III. ; and the Vatican became at once the 
 hospital of an infirm old man, filled, as in Eugenius's 
 days, with monks. Two interests roused the Pope 
 from the weakness of age — the love of his nephews 
 and his zeal for the Turkish war. 
 
 Two of his sisters' sons, one only twenty-two 
 years old, were made cardinals, against the protest 
 of the best of the College ; a third became standard- 
 bearer of the Church, Duke of Spoleto, Regent of 
 Terracina, and was loaded with riches. A host of 
 
 Spanish poor relations and hungry adventurers flocked 
 
 164
 
 Calixtus III. 165 
 
 to Rome and filled the streets with Spanish dress 
 and speech. ' The police courts fell into their hands, 
 and the swaggering adherents of the Bullshead (the 
 weapon of the Borgias) terrorized the citizens and 
 made the name of the " Catalans " hated. One of 
 these lusty young voluptuaries thus foisted into the 
 highest offices of the Church was to become Alex- 
 ander VI. and the father of Caesar Borgia. 
 
 Into the Turkish war the old man flung himself 
 with the passionate zeal of a Spaniard. The two 
 hundred thousand florins left in the treasury were 
 expended on a fleet. To add to this sum he sold 
 the jewels and vessels of the Church, and even 
 ordered the silver clasps to be taken from Nicholas's 
 books and sent to the melting-pot. Many of the 
 precious Greek manuscripts he gave to a philistine 
 cardinal, whose household lost or destroyed them. 
 By his orders every church bell in Europe rang three 
 times a day, and a swarm of barefoot monks spread 
 everywhere, calling on all Christians to take the 
 Cross. But the defeat of Mohammed at Belgrade in 
 1456 by the Regent of Hungary relieved the imme- 
 diate pressure of danger, and Calixtus had small 
 satisfaction of his crusade, except to know that his 
 squadron of sixteen triremes was afloat and ready. 
 Then the hand of death came upon him, and he died at 
 eighty, afterapontificateof threeyears(August, 1458). 
 
 The Cardinal Enea Sylvio Piccolimini was elected, 
 and took the title of Pius II. He was the son of a 
 Sienese nobleman who had been educated in the 
 Hieh School of Siena and under Francesco Filelfo at 
 Florence. He began his career as a prelate's secre-
 
 1 66 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 tary at the age of twenty-seven in the service of 
 Cardinal Capranica, one of the leaders of the anti- 
 papal party of the Council of Basle, from which he 
 passed in quick succession to the households of sev- 
 eral other prelates. At the age of thirty he found 
 himself, in company with Tommaso of Sarzana 
 (Nicholas V.), in the service of Cardinal Albergati. 
 He travelled on several diplomatic missions, and 
 finally, after the split of the Council at Basle, became 
 a secretary in the Curia of the Antipope, Felix V. 
 (1440). In 1442 the clever arrangement and neat 
 style of a letter fom Felix to the German King at- 
 tracted the attention of a German prelate, and find- 
 ing that its author was present with the embassy, he 
 urged the King to offer him a position as royal sec- 
 retary. Enea was rejoiced, because he had re- 
 garded with dismay the increasing poverty of the 
 Antipope, who was saved from simony because no 
 one would buy his Church appointments. And be- 
 sides, he reflected with apprehension that if Eugenius 
 won in the schism his career was ruined. The ser- 
 vice of neutral Germany seemed to him, as he wrote 
 to a friend, secure for the present and most promis- 
 ing for the future. 
 
 He commended himself to his new master, and 
 it was only a short time before he became one of 
 the four deputies of the King to a Council of 
 representatives of the German priests and bishops 
 to discuss the schism. A double embassy carried 
 their conclusions to the Council at Basle and to 
 Eugenius IV. at Rome. Enea Sylvio was the 
 ambassador of the second message. He used the
 
 Old Travelling Companions. 167 
 
 audience with the Pope to make his own peace, and 
 became a secret tool of Papal politics to return the 
 German Church to obedience. In the Papal court he 
 met his old comrade, Tommaso of Sarzana, who at 
 first refused his hand, and, even when informed of 
 Enea's secret conversion, would have little to do 
 with him. It was not long after the secretary's re- 
 turn that the King sold his obedience in a secret 
 agreement for two hundred and twenty-one thousand 
 ducats. In the spring of 1446 the German princes 
 despatched an embassy to the Pope to insist upon 
 the rights of the German bishops. Frederick asked 
 that one of the Papal embassy then with him should 
 return at once to Rome. And the Bishop of Bo- 
 logna, once Tommaso of Sarzana, started. Hard on 
 his heels the King sent also his secretary, Enea 
 Sylvio. The two had a miserable time crossing the 
 Carinthian Alps, for the torrents had destroyed the 
 bridges ; and once, when they were eating together 
 at a little inn, the Bishop is said to have jokingly 
 urged the secretary to order something else, with the 
 words, " Why should we be economical, since we 
 are both to become Popes?" One other long jour- 
 ney across the Alps they made, not together, for 
 untimely sickness, first of one and 'hen of the other, 
 separated them ; and then, their work being done, and 
 Germany in obedience, they received their reward — 
 the Bishop of Bologna a cardinal's hat ; Enea Sylvio 
 the promise of the Bishopric of Trieste as soon as its 
 sickly incumbent had finished dying. Henceforth 
 his rise was rapid, although not as rapid as his old 
 acquaintance, Tommaso, who in one year became
 
 1 68 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 bishop, cardinal, and Pope; for it took him eleven 
 years to make the same career. 
 
 Pius's past embarrassed him when he ascended the 
 Papal throne, not simply because he had been the 
 secretary of an Antipope, but also because he had 
 lived so openly the life of a man of the world that 
 his literary fame was largely based on a highly colored 
 novel and a series of letters describing his social ex- 
 periences in a style more interesting than edifying. 
 He issued a retraction, in which he confessed his 
 sins and compared himself to Paul and Augustine. 
 He never had a trace of the persecuting bitterness or 
 missionary zeal of the Apostle, or one flame of the 
 mighty passion of Augustine either for sin or right- 
 eousness. But his confession and repentance seem 
 to have been honest. From the time when he re- 
 ceived ordination at forty, an age shown by experi- 
 ence to be more apt for moral breakdown than for 
 moral reform, he began to purge and live cleanly. And 
 there are plain evidences that, as this literary adven- 
 turer began to make his career, he was sobered and ren- 
 dered thoughtful by the responsibilities of his position. 
 
 When this wandering secretary, who made his liv- 
 ing by being a rhetorician and stylist, mounted the 
 Papal throne, what a thrill must have spread through 
 all the hungry Humanists of every court, whose am- 
 bitions had previously been bounded by the chance 
 of some little bishopric ! Nicholas V. had, after all, 
 been only an adopted son of Humanism. He had 
 made his doctor's degree in theology. But if Pius 
 set an enormous reward on a lost manuscript, every 
 one thought it would be, not a Hebrew Gospel, but
 
 Pius and the Humanists. 169 
 
 the vanished Livy. They were mistaken. He had 
 risen, to use the phrase of Tacitus, " quod par nego- 
 ties neque supra erat." But it was evident that he 
 felt some measure of the truth behind his rhetoric 
 when, in an oration over the coffin of the Doge of 
 Venice, he once said : " The divine gift of ruling can- 
 not be learned from the philosophers. It is only to 
 be found in those depths of the soul into which man 
 does not descend without God." 
 
 With the exception of Filelfo, most of the Human- 
 ists he had known in his youth were dead, and his 
 old teacher made himself impossible by his greedi- 
 ness for favors. After all, Pius was rather a writer 
 and speaker than a scholar. It was his own saying 
 that poets and orators must be extraordinary or they 
 are worth nothing, and he did not relish opening the 
 crib for every limping Pegasus. He seemed to be 
 aware that his own good wine needed no bush. A 
 confidence not disappointed ; for his writings are per- 
 haps more read and quoted than any of his genera- 
 tion. He was a patron of the arts, and his court was 
 visited by copyists, miniature-painters, goldsmiths, 
 painters, and architects. His birthplace of Corsig- 
 nano he called Pienza and decorated with a cathedral 
 and stately palace, strangely out of proportion to the 
 little town of a thousand inhabitants. But a cry of 
 disappointment went up when it was seen that Pius 
 was to imitate Nicholas only in his love of peace, 
 and, while he banished the monks of Calixtus, was to 
 inherit his zeal for the crusade. The old. Filelfo 
 voiced the feelings of the Humanists when, having 
 insulted the Pope during life in a most false and
 
 1 70 The Age of the Re?iascence. 
 
 scandalous anonymous invective, he wrote at his 
 death a " Gratulatio de Morte Pius II.," which held 
 him up to view as an ungrateful and envious foe of 
 poets and scholars. 
 
 Scarcely was Pius consecrated when he announced 
 the plan of a Peace Congress of all Christian princes. 
 But it met with little success, and meantime the vic- 
 torious arms of Mohammed,recovering from the check 
 at Belgrade, were pushed forward up the Danube 
 and along the coasts of the Mediterranean. The 
 Hungarians, the bulwark of Christendom by land, as 
 Venice and Genoa were by sea, were weakened by 
 war with the Emperor. The efforts of Pius's ambas- 
 sador, Cardinal Carvajal, brought peace, and finally, 
 in 1463, roused Venice and Hungary to the attack. 
 But the allies engaged to their support did not ap- 
 pear in arms, and the zeal of the Doge began to cool. 
 Pius himself took the Cross, and, sick unto death, was 
 carried in boat and litter across Italy to the seaport 
 of Ancona. The journey took a month, and before 
 he reached the goal he found the roads crowded with 
 volunteers from all parts of Europe, undisciplined 
 and unarmed, often starving and desperate. This 
 wild mass, finding no ships or organization at An- 
 cona, slowly dispersed, to every one's relief. At 
 last, nearly a month late, the Venetian sails hove in 
 sight. The Pope watched them from his window, 
 but in the morning he was too ill to see the Doge, 
 and the next day he died. The crusade died with 
 him. A medal shows the Pope seated in the bow of 
 a ship, holding in one hand the standard of the Cross, 
 and raising the other in prayer. The inscription
 
 Europe and the Turk. 171 
 
 runs, " Let God arise, and let his enemies be scat- 
 tered." The Image has impressed itself on the mem- 
 ory and imagination of men, and has linked together 
 Urban the inspirer and Pius the martyr of the War 
 of the Cross against the Crescent. 
 
 But it was a different age from the days of Urban. 
 Europe was incapable of large united action. The 
 feudal system was dying, and the throes of its agony 
 filled the world with misery and disaster. It was 
 only as against foes who spoke another tongue that 
 the sense of nationality was strong, and every land 
 was given up to strife which to the common sense of 
 the time did not appear civil, but only the natural 
 defence of inherited rights. No sooner was the 
 Hundred Years' War of France and England ended, 
 in 1453, than the French Crown and its great vassals 
 began a civil struggle, while in England the houses 
 of York and Lancaster flew at each other's throats. 
 Meantime, Aragon and Castile were fighting in Spain, 
 and the German cities and princes were plunging into 
 ceaseless feuds that wasted the strength of the Em- 
 pire for nothing. Not even the fear and hatred of 
 the Turk could bring Europe to concord. The jeal- 
 ousies of factions enabled him to gain a foothold in 
 Europe, even as the jealousy of nations now permits 
 him to sterilize his dominions with a feeble tyranny. 
 Hungary, Poland, Genoa, and Venice held him at 
 bay. Had they been backed by a small part of the 
 men-at-arms of France, the bowmen of England, the 
 landsknechts of Germany, the burghers of Flanders 
 and Switzerland, and the money of Italy, he would 
 soon have been sent back whence he came.
 
 172 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 It was a subtle and real prophecy of the dark days 
 when Italy was to be trampled by the feet of foreign 
 armies, making her riches and beauty the prize of 
 war, that, of nineteen cardinals assembled for an 
 election, six were Frenchmen and six Spaniards. 
 The Italian party was strong, and the Cardinal of San 
 Marco, Pietro Barbo, was elected at the first ballot. 
 Nicholas and Pius had been " new men" who, having 
 chosen to serve the Church, had risen without the 
 aid of family connection, by sheer force of ability. 
 But Pietro Barbo was one of the many nephews of a 
 Pope who attained to the tiara. He was the son of 
 the sister of Eugenius IV., and, following the custom 
 of the sons of the merchant nobles of Venice, was in 
 readiness to embark for a trading voyage to the East, 
 when, at the age of thirteen, he heard of the election 
 of his uncle to the Papacy. He at once went to him 
 in Ferrara, studied, took holy orders, and at the age 
 of twenty-two became a cardinal. He was a man 
 of very moderate intellectual abilities, but in- 
 herited the dignified bearing and personal beauty 
 of his family. So entirely conscious was he of 
 his advantages in this respect that nothing but the 
 protest of the cardinals prevented him from taking 
 the name of Formosus and induced him to finally 
 adopt the title of Paul II. Both before and after 
 election he signed the new capitulation, in which the 
 cardinals renewed their constant attempt to make the 
 Church an oligarchy instead of a monarchy. By this 
 agreement the Pope was pledged to carry on the war 
 against the Turk, to reform the Curia, to call a 
 Council in three years, to restrict the College to
 
 The Splendid Paul II. 1 73 
 
 twenty-four members, to name none under thirty 
 years old, none untrained in theology or jurispru- 
 dence, and not more than one of his own relatives. 
 The agreement disappeared after Paul's coronation. 
 Instead of it he presented a new agreement in con- 
 clave, covered it with his hand, and bade the cardi- 
 nals sign. Only one refused, the old Carvajal, though 
 Bessarion made a long resistance. 
 
 The successor of Pius and Nicholas was not with- 
 out some pretensions as a patron of art, but on very 
 different ground. His taste was rather that of the 
 noble Venetian merchant whose family had acquired 
 in the Oriental trade the love of plate, silks, and 
 jewels. He had a new tiara made with two hundred 
 thousand florins' worth of precious stones in it, and 
 was fond of displaying a superb emerald on his fin- 
 ger. He found a good opportunity of increasing his 
 collections in the death of Scarampo, the executioner 
 of Vitelleschi, who had succeeded him as commis- 
 sioned Judge Lynch in the Papal States. Eugenius 
 had rewarded the ruthless peacemaker with a cardi- 
 nal's hat by the same creation which gave it to his 
 nephew, and the two had hated each other ever since. 
 When the Cardinal died, leaving to his nephews a 
 treasure specially rich in plate and jewels, his old 
 enemy, now Pope, reversed the will and confiscated 
 the estate ; and all Rome rejoiced at this posthumous 
 plundering of the great plunderer. 
 
 The Pope was as generous as he was splendor- 
 loving. He presented his cardinals with purple man- 
 tles and scarlet saddle-cloths, insured each one whose 
 income fell below four thousand gold florins an addi-
 
 1 74 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 tion of one hundred florins a month, gave great feasts 
 to the city officers, and strange carnival sports — races 
 of buffaloes, asses, old men, and Jews — to the people. 
 In fact, except that he held himself aloof from foreign 
 politics and cared nothing for the game of diplomacy, 
 his court differed little from that of any other rich 
 prince of his time who understood the art of enjoy- 
 ing life and keeping his people content by flattery 
 and justice. He regulated the misuse of ecclesiasti- 
 cal funds and stopped a good deal of indirect bribery 
 and simony. He made an earnest effort to check the 
 incessant murders which arose from the vendetta or 
 custom of the avenger of blood — feuds bitter and 
 more constant than the old family quarrels of Ken- 
 tucky. He tried to regulate taxes, and destroyed 
 the robber nest of Count Eversus, bandit and coun- 
 terfeiter, who had long terrorized a part of the patri- 
 monium. It was as a matter of practical politics that 
 he came into conflict with the Humanists of the court 
 and city. The College of Abbreviators (cabinet sec- 
 retaries of the Papacy) had been filled by Nicholas 
 with his friends. And as the easily triumphant can- 
 didate of the aristocratic ecclesiastical party, himself 
 a nepot and supported by the younger and more 
 splendor-loving of the cardinals, Paul had no inten- 
 tion of continuing to pay salaries to seventy Human- 
 ists whom he regarded as learned fossils wasting the 
 patronage he wished to divide among those who had 
 been useful to him. 
 
 The displaced, losing the comfortable positions 
 they had expected to hold for life, raised a great 
 outcry, but made little by it. And when their leader, 
 Platina, sent a letter to the Pope, threatening to ap-
 
 Paul and the Roman Academy. 1 75 
 
 peal to a Council, he was cast into a hard imprison- 
 ment that soon brought him to his knees. 
 
 It was similar practical politics that led Paul to sus- 
 pend the Roman Academy. The younger poets and 
 scholars were formed into an Academy whose mem- 
 bers took Greek and Roman names and celebrated 
 the birthdays of Rome and Romulus ; at which cere- 
 monies Professor Pomponius Leto was Pontifex 
 Maximus. But Paul was mindful of Stefano Porcari, 
 with his dangerous enthusiasm for the liberty and 
 glory of antiquity, and his police suddenly swooped 
 down upon the Academy and lodged twenty mem- 
 bers in jail. Some of them paid on the rack for their 
 meetings ; but even the torture disclosed nothing 
 more serious than the boasting of a drunkard. An 
 accusation of heresy was not pressed very hard, and 
 in the end Pomponius resumed his lectures, and the 
 accused heretic became librarian of the Vatican and 
 historiographer of the Popes. 
 
 While the Pope thus absorbed himself in ruling 
 and enjoying Rome, the Turk was conquering. The 
 fall of Negroponte woke Italy to a pressing danger, 
 and united the five great powers, Venice, Naples, 
 Florence, Milan, and the Pope, in a league against 
 the common foe of Christendom. The signing of the 
 league was among the last things Paul did. Toward 
 the end of July, 147 1, he took supper in the garden 
 by his titular church. In the morning they found 
 him dead in his bed. He had given the red hat to 
 three of his nephews, but he gave none of them an 
 influence or duty in the government greater than his 
 abilities warranted ; for Paul was a ruler who needed 
 no favorites and suffered no counsellors.
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE NEW LEARNING CROSSES THE ALPS — ITS 
 SPREAD IN FRANCE — THE FORERUNNERS OF 
 GERMAN HUMANISM. 
 
 URING this generation (1440-71), in 
 which Humanism had furnished two 
 Popes and become the ruling spirit of 
 Italian society, it was making the first 
 faulty visible beginnings of spreading 
 beyond the Alps ; but not deliberately, for Humanism 
 showed at first a very provincial spirit, and nothing 
 could exceed the scorn with which the Italian man 
 of letters spoke of all the other nations of the world 
 except his own. Petrarch displayed, when he went 
 to Cologne, a naive astonishment at finding "a well- 
 built city, good manners, dignified men, and beauti- 
 ful and pure women." Paris was a centre of classic 
 learning, where lectures were given on the Latin 
 poets; a city of bibliophiles, which Richard of Bury 
 (born 1 281) named the " Paradise of the World " be- 
 cause of its rich book market; but Petrarch called 
 Frenchmen a nation of barbarians, and said one 
 must not look for orators or poets outside of Italy. 
 
 Boccaccio called the Spaniards half-barbarians, 
 
 176
 
 France and Humanism. iyy 
 
 Poggio could not endure the manners of the Lon- 
 doners, and wrote sarcastic letters on the intolerable 
 length of their feasts, at which he could only keep 
 awake by going out and dashing cold water on his 
 eyes. In the same spirit, Enea Sylvio, during the 
 days of his German secretaryship, made merry over 
 the gluttony and drunkenness of the Germans, who 
 had no intellectual life. He caricatured the nation in 
 the person of a certain count who had his boys waked 
 in the middle of the night and poured wine down 
 their throats because they must be thirsty ; and when 
 it made them sick fell into a passion and accused 
 his wife of infidelity. But the New Learning 
 which these scornful writers so brilliantly advanced 
 and defended began almost immediately to spread 
 among the transalpine peoples they despised. 
 
 The first faint beginnings of this spread of the 
 New Learning were perceived in France, which had 
 preserved a stronger intellectual life than any other 
 nation except Italy. Scarcely was Petrarch dead 
 before the stirrings of the movement of which he was 
 the apostle began to appear in the land on whose 
 borders he had spent so much of his life. Jean de 
 Montreuil (i 354—141 8), whose learning and Latin 
 style raised him to the position of Chancellor of 
 Charles VI., was a great reader and admirer of Pe- 
 trarch. He found a living model and teacher in 
 Salutato. Jean styled him the " Father of Latin 
 Eloquence," maintained a correspondence with him, 
 and expressed his admiration by sending presents to 
 his wife showing the skill of French workmen in the 
 fine arts. His great friend was Nicholas of Cleman- 
 
 L
 
 178 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ges, who formed his swinging Latin style on Cicero 
 and Quintilian so successfully that the Italians won- 
 dered to find a Frenchman so accomplished in elo- 
 quence and poetry. He was Papal secretary during 
 the years of the schism, and when he lost that posi- 
 tion lived from the income of Church benefices. In 
 the later years of his life he lectured on theology and 
 eloquence in Paris. Neither of these men knew 
 Greek, nor did any Frenchman among their contem- 
 poraries. And it was not until 1430, probably after 
 the death of both, that we find the first notice of the 
 study of that tongue at Paris — the record of a small 
 salary paid to certain masters who taught Greek and 
 Hebrew. This first beginning seems to have come 
 to nothing, and it was 1456 before an Italian who 
 had been in Greece was installed as teacher of rheto- 
 ric and the Greek tongue. The study does not seem 
 to have amounted to very much, for a whole gener- 
 ation later we are told by the most competent of 
 judges that the instruction in Greek was imperfect 
 and unsatisfactory. But the impulse which found 
 expression in such men as Jean of Montreuil and 
 Nicholas of Clemanges did not die. In the face of 
 the Sorbonne, the centre of traditional learning and 
 reactionary orthodoxy, there flourished at Paris a 
 little coterie of lovers and promoters of the New 
 Learning. 
 
 During these thirty years (1440-71) a generation 
 of German-speaking men, whom we may call, for the 
 sake of clearness, the " Forerunners of German 
 Humanism," must have been doing a quiet but 
 mighty work of preparation in their native land. At
 
 Humanism in Germany. 179 
 
 the end of the period (1471), when they were dead 
 or growing old, Humanism was still an exotic in 
 Germany. But by their labors the soil had been so 
 well prepared that before another generation had 
 passed, their successors, the Older German Human- 
 ists, were confessedly able to wrest the palm of 
 scholarship from Italy and carry it to the North. 
 
 The exact methods of this preparation would be 
 hard to trace and tedious to describe in detail. It is 
 better to suggest by a few striking examples the 
 processes by which the New Learning began to es- 
 tablish itself in Germany. 
 
 At the beginning of the fifteenth century the unity 
 of Europe was broken. The national sentiment had 
 everywhere rejected the old idea of the organization 
 of Christendom into one great civil institution. Be- 
 fore the middle of the century the strength of this 
 sentiment was demonstrated. The party of Conciliar 
 Reform used it at Constance to defeat the Papalists 
 by the plan of voting, not as a whole, but in nations. 
 And the Papalists in turn skilfully used it to defeat 
 the reform of the Curia by the granting of national 
 concordats. It was made absolutely plain by the 
 supineness with which Europe allowed Constantino- 
 ple to fall before the Turk. 
 
 But in spite of this change, three agencies operated 
 mightily to preserve a sort of unity of Christendom. 
 The Holy Roman Empire had broken down. Sig- 
 ismund was only in name the head of Europe. But 
 the institution which had been incorporated into 
 the creation of Charles the Great, the Holy Church 
 Catholic and Roman, survived. In the beginning of
 
 1 80 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the fifteenth century, corrupted as it was, weakened 
 by a hundred years of misrule, and shattered by the 
 conflict of two colleges of cardinals for its leadership, 
 it still kept intact its hierarchical organization and a 
 sense of unity. It was only by virtue of his title of 
 " Defender of the Church " that Sigismund could 
 appear at Constance presiding over the nations. In 
 such assemblies Humanism began to spread by con- 
 tagion, and German prelates who had met the young 
 Humanistic secretaries of their Italian brothers, or 
 been impressed at some banquet by the elegance of 
 their Latin citations, acquired a taste for the new 
 
 * 
 
 letters. This influence first appears plainly in the 
 Council of Basle. The Cardinal Cesarini, one of the 
 noblest men of the times and president of the Council, 
 was a distinguished representative of the New Learn- 
 ing. His graceful speaking and good style came out 
 of the study of Cicero, Augustine, and Lactantius. 
 The same strain of the eloquence of antiquity ap- 
 peared in the speeches of some of the scholars of 
 Vittorino da Feltre. Traversari of Florence broke 
 down, indeed, in his first speech, and had to pull his 
 manuscript out of his long sleeves; but he got him- 
 self in hand later, and even sprinkled his speeches 
 with quotations in Greek. The bitterest ecclesiasti- 
 cal politician, who had no understanding whatever of 
 the breadth and purity of Cesarini's love for the 
 Church, was impressed by the strength of his style 
 of speaking. And the most zealous monk saw a cer- 
 tain usefulness in Greek, after all, when Traversari 
 used it in defence of Papal authority. That the good 
 old Bishop of Chiemsee should be impressed with
 
 Gregor von Heimburg, ioi 
 
 Enea Sylvio's style, and advise the King to give 
 him a place- as secretary, is not surprising. And 
 it followed as a matter of course that the brilliant 
 Italian became the centre of a little circle of German 
 imitators. 
 
 This coterie met strong opposition. The works of 
 Enea and Poggio and the rest which found the 
 quickest circulation were those in which the new 
 style was devoted to the service of the goddess of 
 lubricity. And the conservatives at once began to 
 attack poetry as the servant of vice, and good Latin 
 as the sure mark of a desire to exchange honest old 
 German manners and morals for Italian falseness and 
 wickedness. Enea was not slow to answer " the 
 asses who thought little of poetry, the oxen who de- 
 spised the Muses, the swine who turned their backs 
 on the Humanities." And it did not take much such 
 fighting to show some defenders of righteousness that 
 they must have as good weapons as their opponents, 
 or lose. And so there arose a curious relation, half 
 fascination and half repulsion, between the Humanists 
 of Italy and this generation which we have called the 
 " Forerunners of German Humanism." It cannot be 
 better shown than in the story of the acquaintance 
 of Gregor von Heimburg and Enea Sylvio. 
 
 Gregor was at the Council of Basle as a young 
 doctor of canon law. He was called in 1435 to tne 
 service of the city of Nuremberg, and remained a 
 servant of princes and cities until his death in 1472. 
 He became a great patron of classic learning, and 
 delivered an oration in the castle at Vienna on the 
 " Study of the Humanities." A circle of learned
 
 1 82 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 friends gathered around him, clergymen and jurists. 
 Enea Sylvio, then Bishop of Trieste, addressed him 
 in a letter as one who had brought " Latium to Ger- 
 many, even as of old Greece had been brought to 
 Latium." But Gregor had a rough straightforward- 
 ness of speech, a sturdy faithfulness of opinion, that, 
 in spite of this flattery, brought him into deadly con- 
 flict with his old friend the Italian. It was in 1459, 
 when Enea was presiding as Pius II. over the 
 Peace Congress at Mantua, that Gregor was pre- 
 sented as the representative of several German 
 princes. His first appearance at the Papal reception 
 was surprising, for he failed to remove his hat, and 
 his speech was filled with ill-concealed sarcasms 
 against the finished style of the Pope, who knew so 
 well how to express the changes of opinions through 
 which he had passed in a career now so brilliantly 
 crowned. At the close of his address, in which he 
 carelessly showed the curialists by his learned allu- 
 sions how rhetorically he might have spoken had he 
 not chosen the blunt speech that was not of kings' 
 courts, but of loyal hearts, he excused himself for not 
 removing his hat. He had catarrh and wanted to 
 keep his voice from getting husky. And this Ger- 
 man who could be classic, but chose to be " barba- 
 rous," became the leader of the opposition which made 
 Pius's plans for enlisting the Congress in the crusade 
 a failure. The next year, when Gregor, in the 
 name of his master, the Duke of Austria, fastened on 
 the doors of the chief churches of North Italy an 
 appeal from the Pope to a General Council, Pius 
 promptly excommunicated him. He found shelter
 
 The Confederacy of Commerce. 183 
 
 in the service of several German princes, like himself 
 in rebellion .against the head of the Church, but it 
 was not till after Pius's death that the ban was re- 
 moved. This experience was the cause and result of 
 a reaction in Gregor against Humanistic rhetoric. 
 " The best sign of a noble spirit," he said, " is not to 
 make the style of this or that author our own, but 
 rather, as the fruit of our study of them, to develop 
 our own individual talent. The bee who collects 
 honey is not a good model for the orator. Rather, 
 like the silkworm, which spins silk out of its vitals, 
 he must be able to make speech out of himself." 
 
 Besides the Church another great agency was still 
 active to preserve the unity of Europe. Money 
 knows no country and trade no boundaries, and by 
 them the nations were drawn together in a sort of 
 commercial confederation. Florence had been for 
 years the centre of European finance, and Venice the 
 great market where Europe and Asia exchanged 
 products. But the free cities of the North had al- 
 ready gained riches and skill in commerce ; and in 
 particular Augsburg, the centre of trade between 
 Italy and Germany, was rapidly acquiring the wealth 
 and culture which made the daughters of its patri- 
 cians matches for princes. The greatest family of 
 their prince merchants, the Fuggers, had laid, by 
 commerce and mining, the foundations of that for- 
 tune which made them the Rothschilds of their age. 
 The exigencies of this commerce led the merchants 
 to the South. So Sigismund Gossembrot, a rich 
 patrician of Augsburg, brought back a taste for 
 classic literature, and, like his fellow-townsman, the
 
 184 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 leading physician, Hermann Schedel, gathered a li- 
 brary and patronized the arts. Gossembrot sent his 
 two sons to the school of Guarino, that they might 
 learn the Humanities. But such a taste for foreign 
 rationalism did not remain unrebuked. Conrad 
 Saldner, for twenty-five years professor of theology 
 at the University of Vienna, became involved in 
 public correspondence with Gossembrot, reproaching 
 him with neglecting the learned men of Germany to 
 honor a lot of half-baked poets who knew nothing of 
 the good old seven liberal arts. " Who are Bruni, 
 Vergerio, Barbaro, Valla, Poggio?" he asked. "I 
 never heard of one of them, except Poggio, and I 
 never heard anything that was good of him." As for 
 Guarino, whom Gossembrot hailed as a man raised 
 up of God, the old theologian gave his solemn word 
 that he had never heard the name mentioned in 
 Austria, Swabia, Bavaria, Hungary, or Bohemia. 
 But even the bitter truth in Saldner's reproaches 
 against the " poets " could not prevail before the 
 New Learning. Honest old Mrs. Partington and her 
 broom have always been helpless against the tide. 
 Italian letters and art began to become the mode 
 in Germany. And so it was that the Pfalzgraf 
 Frederick, a just and generous prince, having married 
 Clara Dettin, the daughter of an Augsburg patri- 
 cian, made his court a home of the Muses, and as 
 the liberal patron of the University of Heidelberg 
 was soon to do much for the spread of the New 
 Learning. 
 
 In one rparked particular trade made a free circuit 
 from North to South. But this time Germany sent
 
 The Republic of Letters. 185 
 
 out the current. In the early sixties two workmen 
 from the shop of Faust and Schoeffer in Mayence car- 
 ried their hand-press to Italy to seek their fortune. 
 They found a patron in Torquemada, the learned 
 Spaniard, then abbot of one of the monasteries of the 
 little mountain town of Subiaco,near Rome, where they 
 issued the first book printed south of the Alps — the 
 Latin grammar of Donatus. The new invention met 
 with scant favor at first from the wealthy connoisseurs, 
 to whom a printed book seemed to exhale that odor of 
 Philistinism which still hangs faintly around the 
 type-written letter. And so the first adventurers of 
 the press made no fortunes ; they only unlocked the 
 treasures of learning for the common people and 
 helped to give arms against tyrants to every friend 
 of truth and liberty in Europe. 
 
 But Germany was not only a part of the invisible 
 monarchy, the Church, and united by her merchants 
 to the confederacy of commerce. She was also by 
 her universities a member of the republic of letters. 
 The universities of the middle ages formed one body, 
 speaking one language, for all lectures were given 
 and all theses written in Latin. Students passed 
 freely from one to the other, and nothing could, 
 therefore, influence the universities of one land with- 
 out in time influencing those of other lands. The 
 new spirit and method of study were carried from 
 Italy to Germany, just as the new method of German 
 criticism in this century was brought from Germany 
 to England and America,by the students and younger 
 professors. So when Peter Luder, a wandering 
 scholar, a bcmoostes Haupt, who had been a long
 
 1 86 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 time acquiring a somewhat mythical degree from 
 some university whose name was not mentioned, 
 drifted back from Italy to Heidelberg in 1456, he 
 found things partly teady for him. It was not so 
 much that the Faculty of Arts had just purchased 
 fifty-six volumes of Latin classics and the works of 
 Petrarch as that the students had an inkling of some 
 new method in the air of learning. The professors 
 would not give the disreputable-looking man, whose 
 antecedents were unknown, any recognition. But 
 the Pfalzgraf granted him a small pension and the 
 right to lecture on the Humanities. Nobody came 
 to his course on Seneca. And so he struck another 
 note. One side of the writing of the Humanists, the 
 pagan feeling that whatever pleases is permitted, was 
 no new thing. It belongs to human nature, and the 
 rediscovery of classic literature only gave it free rein. 
 It had found expression already in poems which, 
 though written years before the birth of Petrarch, 
 " foreshadowed the mental and moral attitude which 
 Europe was destined to assume when Italy through 
 Humanism gave its tone to the Renascence." These 
 were the songs of the wandering scholars, some of 
 whose lineal descendants, more decently phrased, are 
 still to be found in the German Commercebiicher. 
 The spirit of Horace and Ovid had long ruled among 
 their lyrics, and when Luder announced a course on 
 Ovid's " Art of Love " he found hearers. It is little to 
 be wondered at, however, that the faculty turned the 
 cold shoulder on so scandalous a colleague, and after 
 borrowing from everybody who would lend him a 
 couple of florins, the poor apostle of poetry wandered
 
 New Schools and Universities. 187 
 
 off to other universities, turning up successively at 
 Erfurt, Leipzig, Padua, and Basle. It was at Leip- 
 zig that he seems to have had the most success. For, 
 though in his introduction to the course of three les- 
 sons that was to free his hearers from " kitchen 
 Latin " he put an accusative instead of a dative, a 
 band of young ne'er-do-weels with tastes for the New 
 Learning gathered round him half in joke. Among 
 them was Hartmann Schedel, nephew of the learned 
 physician of Augsburg. 
 
 But of course such vagabonds of Humanism as 
 Luder were only signs, not causes, of the times. And 
 a movement whose sources are too deep to be traced 
 was stirring in German education. In sixty years, 
 from 1348 to 1409, German states and cities had 
 founded seven universities. A century later a 
 similar movement began, in 1456, that founded 
 eight new universities in twenty years. Still more 
 remarkable was the activity in the founding and de- 
 velopment of city schools, which began in the middle 
 of the century, until Schlettstadt, Deventer, Miin- 
 ster, Emmerich, Alkmaar, Zwolle, had flourishing 
 high schools. The two largest of these were Schlett- 
 stadt and Deventer, one in the southern Rhine coun- 
 try and the other in the lowlands ; for the stream of 
 learning seems to have followed that river from the 
 Alps to its mouth. Under Hegius, Deventer rose to 
 two thousand scholars. The first master of Schlett- 
 stadt, which increased to nine hundred scholars, was 
 Ludwig Dringenberg, an old-fashioned Latinist, 
 capable of breaking several rules of syntax in a sin- 
 gle line, but a hard-working teacher with the knack
 
 1 88 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of making his scholars love learning, and withal a 
 conservative with an open mind. A man of piety as 
 well as wit, he took alarm, perhaps at such phenom- 
 ena of the spirit of the times as Luder's lectures on 
 the "Art of Love," and proposed to abandon letters 
 as unholy and enter a convent. He wrote to Gossem- 
 brot, the learned Augsburg merchant, about it, and 
 was won by the answer to work for a quarter of a 
 century more, until his death. It was among the 
 boys of such new schools that the New Learning 
 found its adherents. 
 
 This influence of the breath of a new spirit, whose 
 stirrings were faintly felt to the remotest confines of 
 the European republic of learning, can be seen in two 
 churchmen of similar name and not dissimilar char- 
 acter and labors, Johann Wessel (about 1420-89) and 
 Johann of Wesel (year of birth unknown, died an old 
 man in 1481). Johann Wessel was educated at the 
 city school of Zwolle, where as a poor scholar he 
 probably received the care of the inmates of the 
 neighboring convent of the Brothers of the Common 
 Life. 1 He entered the University of Cologne, where 
 he found some monks who had fled from Greece be- 
 fore the Turk. From them he took private lessons 
 in Greek, and, probably from learned Jews, lessons in 
 Hebrew. From Cologne he went to Paris, where he 
 stayed some sixteen years without official position, 
 but regarded as one of the ornaments of the Univer- 
 sity. He entered into correspondence with Cardinal 
 
 1 The common statement that the reform in methods of education 
 owed much to them, and especially to the influence of Thomas a 
 Kempis, rests on entirely insufficient evidence and does not accord 
 with his work or character.
 
 Johann Wessel. 189 
 
 Bessarion, and visited Rome in 147 1. Sixtus IV., 
 whom he had known in France as cardinal, is said to 
 have told him to ask any favor he would. To the 
 surprise of the court, he asked, not a bishopric or 
 other office, but a manuscript of the Greek and He- 
 brew Scriptures from the Vatican library. For 
 Wessel cared more for the Bible than for anything 
 else in the world, and declared that the Gospel was 
 the source of religion and theology. It was this 
 desire to return to the historical origins of Chris- 
 tianity, which he had gained from Humanism, joined 
 to a sense of the value of the individual soul, doubt- 
 less strengthened by his boyish intimacy with the 
 Brothers of the Common Life at Zwolle, which sug- 
 gested his criticism not only of the abuses of the 
 Church, but of the prevalent ideas of religion. His 
 writings maintain that religion consists, not in out- 
 ward ceremonies, but in faith. He emphasized the 
 inward marks of membership in the true Church of 
 God, the desire for holiness, love to one's neighbor, 
 obedience to Christ. For the Church, like religion, 
 rests on the Gospel, and therefore both Pope and 
 Council can err. Only as the Pope teaches and 
 commends the truth and law of the Gospel is he to 
 be obeyed. For, after all, he is only the defender 
 of order. In matters of faith he has no authority. 
 These ideas, which he had doubtless been commu- 
 nicating orally during the thirty years of his brilliant 
 academic life, he committed to writing during his last 
 ten years, which he spent in retirement at his native 
 place. The writings were passed around among the 
 large circle of friends, admirers, and scholars with
 
 1 90 The Age of the Renasce nee. 
 
 whom he stood in correspondence. Such a private 
 circulation aroused no special hostility on the part of 
 the orthodox party, who read little, and it was not 
 till after his death that his tractate against absolu- 
 tion and indulgences was attacked as heretical. 
 
 Very different was the fate of Johann of Wesel, 
 who first appears (1445-56) as a professor of philos- 
 ophy and theology at the University of Erfurt, where 
 his influence was so great that fifty years later young 
 Martin Luther wrote that he found his ideas and 
 writings still ruling the University. While in this 
 position he wrote, among other things, a tractate 
 against indulgences, which seems to have excited 
 little attention at the time. He was called in 1460 
 to become preacher in a city of the Upper Rhine, 
 and there his views, similar to those of Wessel, began 
 to make trouble for him. The words of the preacher 
 were heard by those who read little, and his nervous 
 phrases, meant for the common people, made his 
 meaning plain and offensive to the dullest and most 
 jealous supporter of things as they were or ideas as 
 they had been. It was a scandal to the orthodox 
 when he said, for instance, in preaching against put- 
 ting undue confidence in outward ceremonies, that 
 " if Peter advised fasting, he only did it to help the 
 sale of his fish," or that " consecrated oil [used in the 
 unction of the dying] is no better than the oil one 
 eats at the table." So it came to pass that in 1479 
 he was called before an ecclesiastical court to answer 
 a charge of heresy. He appeared leaning on a staff 
 and supported by two monks. He stood manfully 
 at first, asserting that " if every one should fall away
 
 Germany and Italy. 191 
 
 from Christ, I alone will honor Christ and be a Chris- 
 tian " ; but in the end he confessed his errors, sub- 
 mitted to the judgment of the Church, and asked for 
 mercy. Two years afterward he died in prison. 
 Forty years later a court met within a few miles of 
 the same place, and the refusal of another professor 
 to recant his errors began in Europe a hundred years 
 of religious war. 
 
 Thus through trade, the Church, and the institu- 
 tions of learning those first influences of Humanism 
 came in by which Germany was being prepared for 
 the rapid growth of the next thirty years. These 
 agencies were of course at work in other lands ; but 
 in all those matters Germany had especially intimate 
 relations with Italy. Her people were converted late 
 in European history by Papal missionaries, and her 
 metropolitans were canonically dependent on the 
 Pope. Her emperors were kings of Rome, and when 
 crowned at Aachen were expected to go to Italy to 
 receive two more crowns. Over the Brenner Pass 
 across Tyrol poured the steady stream of an old- 
 established traffic between the free cities of North and 
 South. And yet there is another reason which can 
 be imagined for the rapid assimilation of Humanism 
 by Germany and the quick moulding of the new im- 
 pulse into a new German Humanism with an original 
 national genius. The Germans, with all their love of 
 home, have always been ready to seek and to use 
 foreign things. They have never been seamen and 
 so they have not been given, like the French, Span- 
 iards, and English, to exploration ; but they are the 
 greatest travellers in Europe. More Germans visit
 
 192 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Switzerland and Rome than any other people, and 
 the increase of travel promises to make them in a 
 short time the most numerous foreign visitors to 
 Paris. This pleasure of travel finds expression in the 
 folk-songs that voice the energy, curiosity, and poetic 
 feeling which make the Wanderlust. And it may be 
 that the creation by German speech of this unique 
 word gives the key to the rapid assimilation of 
 Italian Humanism by the German race.
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE RENASCENCE ON THE THRONE 
 OF ST. PETER — SIXTUS IV., THE TERRIBLE. 
 
 r the death of Paul II. a new generation 
 of Popes began. Christendom had been 
 
 reunited at the death-bed of Eugenius, 
 and the policy of his successors had moved 
 within certain fixed limits. Nicholas, the 
 doctor of theology, who loved literature and the arts, 
 Calixtus, the friend of the monks, Pius, the classical 
 secretary and accomplished diplomat, had agreed in 
 limiting the activities of their pontificates within ec- 
 clesiastical lines ; for their crusading zeal belonged to 
 the duties which for generations men had assigned to 
 the Papacy. 
 
 Paul II., the splendor-loving nepot, though a 
 transition character, resembled the generation he 
 closed in that his interest in material things was 
 confined to the patrimonium. He displayed little 
 thought of gaining new cities or territories, and kept 
 aloof from all ambitious mingling in the politics of 
 Italy or the diplomacy of Europe. But these four 
 were succeeded by a line of Pontiffs who involved 
 the Church in foreign politics and brought on the 
 m 193
 
 1 94 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 closing catastrophy of the Renascence Papacy, the 
 sack of Rome by the Lutheran army of an orthodox 
 Catholic emperor. 
 
 These seven men are perhaps more visibly the 
 product of their times than the wearers of the tiara 
 of any age of Papal history. In spite of their marked 
 individuality, they show an unmistakable community 
 of traits. They were completely dominated by the 
 ideals of contemporary Italian society ; they drew 
 their income as successors of St. Peter; they used the 
 stately ceremonials of their office, and believed in the 
 doctrines of the Church after their fashion; but their 
 interest centred on their power as Italian princes, 
 and their virtues and vices were those of their class. 
 They were men of the Renascence on the throne of 
 the Papacy, and the office was to them only a means 
 to accomplish personal ends. Of the seven the 
 character of Leo X. was the least incongruous 
 with his title of Vicar of Christ, but the epigram of 
 Sarpi upon him is fair: " He would have been a per- 
 fect Pope if he had combined with his many fine 
 qualities some knowledge of the affairs of religion 
 and a greater inclination to piety, for neither of which 
 he manifested much concern." 
 
 In order to understand the policy of these Popes, 
 or do justice to their characters, it is needful to per- 
 ceive the animating motive of their age. It was 
 the passionate desire for a distinction entirely 
 personal. We have seen how in the writings of 
 Petrarch the self-consciousness of the individual 
 appears. The thirst for distinction became a means 
 and an effect of its development, and from the pres-
 
 The Love of Fame. 195 
 
 sure of political and social circumstances, the influ-* 
 ence of the classic writers, and the process by which 
 every class of characters moulded by the spirit of an 
 age tends to produce the extremest type possible, a 
 new passion was trained on the hearts of men — the 
 modern desire for fame. We do not know the names 
 of the architects of the mediaeval cathedrals, and they 
 took no precautions against that forgetfulness. When 
 Froissart wrote his account of the great knights of 
 his day he addressed it to their peers, and rightly 
 assumed their entire indifference to the opinion of 
 the mass of men, peasants and burghers. But in 
 Italy, by the second generation of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury there existed a common desire for admiration 
 which had no reference to tradition, was unlimited by 
 class feeling, and appealed to the age and to poster- 
 ity. Among the ancient Romans, where it sought 
 its models, this love of fame had been modified by 
 the pressure of a great legal system, working by its 
 own momentum, and the presence of institutions too 
 venerable to remain unfelt. Even Julius rejoiced 
 that he was a Roman; and the ideal of the judgment- 
 seat of Caesar awed at times the worst of the emper- 
 ors. But the corruption of politics in most of the 
 smaller states of Italy had gone so far in the fifteenth 
 century that the very idea of the commonwealth was 
 lost, liberty only the war-cry of a faction, and law 
 looked on as the will of those in power. Whole 
 sections of the Italian people were manifestly in- 
 capable of any stable government except tyranny. 
 
 Amid this environment the love of fame produced 
 strange results. In many otherwise noble and gen-
 
 196 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 *tle natures the sense of duty seems to have atrophied, 
 and, as a consequence of the paralysis of conscience, 
 the ideal of religion became in many minds divorced 
 from morality in a way difficult for us to understand. 
 There arose an ambition which, positing purely per- 
 sonal ends, disregarded, apparently without a pang, 
 every question of the right or wrong of its means : 
 and this, not under the impulse of passion, but as a 
 calm and reasonable assumption. Such an undefined 
 ambition produced among the best of the men it 
 dominated a many-sided development of personal 
 skill, a power and an independence of character sel- 
 dom matched. In the worst it bred a shameless and 
 bestial egotism. 
 
 Francesco Sforza, one of the models of Italian 
 ambition in the fifteenth century, is also one of its 
 most favorable representatives. He was the illegiti- 
 mate son of that peasant Jacopo Attendolo, nicknamed 
 Sforza, or " the Stubborn Fellow," who, at twelve 
 years of age, joined a company of free-lances and 
 became the most distinguished soldier of the day. 
 The boy was brought up in arms according to three 
 precepts : " Let other men's wives alone ; strike none 
 of your followers ; never ride a hard-mouthed horse." 
 At the death of his father, drowned in leading his 
 men through a river, Francesco was twenty-three. 
 He called together the soldiers, swore them to him- 
 self, and with their aid secured the inheritance of all 
 his father's castles. The Queen of Naples took him 
 into service, and in twenty-two victorious battles he 
 proved himself the first soldier of Italy. In 1441 he 
 was leader of the army of Venice against Filippo
 
 The Cynosure of Italy. 197 
 
 Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. The Duke's gene- 
 rals had Sforza penned up in a position where he 
 could neither fight nor retreat and ruin seemed near. 
 One night the curtain of his tent was raised, and a 
 messenger appeared to offer him the hand of the 
 Duke's daughter. The crafty tyrant feared lest too 
 complete a victory should deliver him, helpless, into 
 the power of his own mercenaries. Sforza accepted, 
 and when revolution followed the death of Filippo, 
 entered the service of the Republic of Milan. For 
 Venice would not consent to recognize the new sis- 
 ter Republic, except under hard conditions, and Milan 
 needed soldiers. He won two great victories, and 
 then entered into agreement with the Venetians to 
 make peace, on condition of their aid in becoming 
 Duke of Milan. The city, divided into bitter factions 
 which had been fighting to the death ever since the 
 Republic was proclaimed, made no long resistance. 
 Their burghers would not fight, except with each 
 other; and though Venice fell away from Sforza and 
 offered help, a sudden mob killed the ambassador 
 and opened the gates. In February, 1450, the ille- 
 gitimate son of a peasant became ruler of one of the 
 great states of Italy. Pius II. wrote that when 
 Sforza came to the Congress of Princes in Mantua, 
 nine years later, he was the most admired man in 
 Italy : " Calm and affable in conversation, princely 
 in his whole bearing, with a combination of bodily 
 and intellectual gifts unrivalled in our time, uncon- 
 quered on the battle-field." Such a man, whose power 
 rested on no institutions and recognized no laws, 
 a mercenary soldier who had made a brilliant career
 
 198 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 by strength, skill, and unblushing treachery, was for 
 Italy the glass of fashion and the mould of form. 
 
 When the Conclave met after the death of Paul II., 
 in August, 147 1, they chose Francesco della Rovere, 
 who took the title of Sixtus IV. He was born of 
 poor parents in 14 14, became a Franciscan monk 
 early in life, had been professor successively at Bo- 
 logna, Pavia, Siena, Florence, and Perugia, rose to 
 be General of his order in 1464, and by the favor of 
 Bessarion, the learned Greek, was made cardinal in 
 1467. 
 
 The influence to which he owed his election was 
 made plain by the fact that Cardinal Borgia, the 
 nephew of Calixtus III., Orsini, of the great Roman 
 family, and Gonzaga, of the noble house of Mantua, 
 were promoted and rewarded as soon as he became 
 Pope. But the new Pope kept his best rewards, not 
 for the people who made him, but for those he made. 
 At the first consistory he began to give red hats to 
 his nephews, six of whom became Princes of the 
 Church. The two first in whose favor he broke the 
 Capitulation of the Conclave, which all the Popes for 
 forty years had signed and promptly broken, were 
 Giuliano Rovere and Pietro Riario. Giuliano was 
 already Bishop of Carpentras, and he was made in 
 addition Archbishop of Bologna, Bishop of Lausanne, 
 Coutance, Viviers, and Mende, in Savoy and France, 
 and of Ostia and Velletri in Italy, Abbot of Nonantola, 
 Grottoferrata, and a few other places. Pietro Riario, 
 also a young man in the twenties, called the son of 
 the Pope's sister, but generally reported to be his 
 own son, was provided for even more thoroughly.
 
 The Luxurious Nepot. 199 
 
 He lost no time in using his good fortune, plunged 
 into every kind of debauchery, and displayed a lux- 
 ury that made even Rome wonder. When the 
 young daughter of the King of Naples came to Rome 
 on her way to her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, 
 Pietro received her in his palace. Every wall was 
 covered with costly tapestry ; nothing but was of 
 gold or silver, silk or satin. And the great banquet 
 he gave matched the feasts of Lucullus. The host 
 sat by the side of the Princess in his purple gown, 
 while under the command of a seneschal, who changed 
 his dress four times during the feast, a host of at- 
 tendants bore in on huge platters every beast of the 
 field and bird of the air cooked whole, from peacocks 
 in their feathers to a roasted bear in his skin with a 
 staff in his mouth. There were huge castles of con- 
 fectionery and ships of sweetmeats, tasted by the 
 guests and then broken and flung to the crowd that 
 filled the place in front of the palace. And a whole 
 flock of singers and musicians made merry for the 
 feast of this young monk of St. Francis who was a 
 prince of the Church. But in two years it was over. 
 The nepot died at twenty-eight, worn out by ex- 
 cesses. He had spent two hundred thousand florins 
 and left a great mass of debts. An unknown satirist 
 hung on his grave an epitaph bidding " every wick- 
 edness and all scoundrels depart now from Italy, for 
 the accursed pest of the Southland is dead." 
 
 But plenty of brothers and cousins were left to 
 rejoice the heart of Sixtus. Not all of these went 
 into the Church, and the Pope began to carve out 
 positions for them by politics and war. One was
 
 200 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 married to a daughter of the King of Naples in ex- 
 change for some feudal rights which the owner owed 
 the Chair of St. Peter. Another was married to the 
 daughter of the Duke of Milan and made Captain- 
 general of the Church. It was through this Girolamo 
 that the Pope became involved in bloody politics that 
 made all Italy hate him. Giuliano and Lorenzo de' 
 Medici, grandsons of Cosimo, were rulers of Florence 
 without the name. And some fanatic lovers of lib- 
 erty and haters of the house of Medici were ready 
 tools of the ambition of Girolamo and Sixtus ; for the 
 Medici stood against their plans to conquer great 
 possessions for the house of Riario in Romagna. A 
 conspiracy was planned in the Vatican itself, and the 
 two brothers were attacked by assassins in the cathe- 
 dral at Florence at the very moment of the elevation 
 of the host. Giuliano was killed on the spot. Lo- 
 renzo escaped into the sacristy, slightly wounded. 
 But there was no rising of the people for " liberty," 
 as the conspirators expected. Rather, the whole 
 city shouted the cry of the house of Medici and 
 strung up every one concerned in a row along the 
 windows of the Palace of Justice, among them the 
 Archbishop of Pisa. Sixtus was furious at the fail- 
 ure. When the news came, Girolamo insulted the 
 Florentine ambassador in Rome by bursting into his 
 palace and dragging him to the Vatican under arrest. 
 And the Pope excommunicated the Medici and the 
 Signory of Florence, because the people of the city 
 had laid violent hands on clergymen, to the great in- 
 sult of the Christian religion. He followed this by 
 the interdict and war. The Florentines compelled
 
 The Wars of Sixtus. 201 
 
 their clergy to say mass, and appealed to a Council 
 and the world. France and the leading states of 
 Italy entered into league with the Republic, and the 
 ambassadors of the Emperor protested to the Pope ; 
 but the fighting went on, and only the sudden land- 
 ing of the Turk in Italy forced Sixtus to peace. 
 
 An expedition from Rhodes had seized Otranto 
 on the 2 1st of August, and fear drove all the states 
 of Italy, France, Hungary, and the Emperor into a 
 great league against the infidel. It was needless, for 
 Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, died 
 in 1 48 1, and two of his sons began to fight for his 
 throne. Sixtus, disregarding the chance of laming 
 the foe of Christendom, allowed the allied fleet of 
 Italy and Spain to break up, and plunged once more 
 into his plans for the house of Rovere. He renewed 
 the attempt to increase his power in the Romagna, 
 and induced the Venetians to join him in trying to 
 conquer Ferrara, promising the city to them, but 
 plotting to keep it for his nephew. But all the rest 
 of Italy rallied to the side of Hercules, the Duke, 
 and the great faction of the Colonna rose in Rome 
 against the Pope, because he favored their foes, the 
 Orsini. The disappointed Sixtus, checkmated at his 
 own game, made peace within the year. But it was 
 scarcely a year later when a frightful civil feud broke 
 out between the Orsini, backed by Girolamo Riario, 
 and the Colonna. The streets of Rome were filled 
 with murder and plundering, while the fields of the 
 Campagna were wasted with fire and sword. Already 
 Rome had seen the Lateran filled with lounging sol- 
 diers, who played cards and dice in the sacristy, on
 
 202 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the top of the chest in which were packed the relics 
 of the saints and the vessels of the mass. And now, 
 when his nephew had sworn to lay every castle of 
 his foes level with the ground, the Vicar of Christ, in 
 the robes of his office, publicly blessed the cannons 
 of civil war. The death of the head of the Colonna 
 marked the triumph of the successor of St. Peter. 
 One annalist reports that his mother opened the 
 coffin in which the body, scarred with torture, was 
 borne to her, lifted by the hair the head which had 
 fallen under the axe, and cried aloud : " Behold the 
 faithfulness of Pope Sixtus. He promised me the 
 life of my son." 
 
 It must not be imagined that in all these wars to 
 make his family rich and powerful Sixtus was a fee- 
 ble old man, used as a tool by greedy nepots. On 
 the contrary, the will and craft of it were more his 
 than theirs. Everywhere the big tyrants were try- 
 ing to swallow up the little ones, who through all 
 Italy had overthrown the liberties of the cities ; and 
 Sixtus saw in the office of the Pope the chance to 
 establish the power and riches of the della Rovere. 
 
 Like all the other heads of dynasties in his day, he 
 sought to find glory in the patronage of letters and 
 art. The ex-university professor was a strong sup- 
 porter of the Roman Academy, persecuted by his 
 predecessor ; Pomponius Leto, its head, became one 
 of the most distinguished men of Rome. Even be- 
 fore he made his nephews cardinals Sixtus began to 
 build a library. When it was finished he appointed 
 as librarian that Platina, the historian, who had been 
 tortured by Paul to wring out the supposed secrets
 
 Sixtus and Rome. 203 
 
 of the Academy. He loved to collect books, for 
 which his favorite binding was ornamented by niello- 
 work. For he was a great patron of the workers in 
 gold, silver, and bronze, though he was equally fond 
 of the art of the decorator of majolica. He built 
 largely on bridges, aqueducts, walls, and palaces, 
 and some of his churches are among the ornaments 
 of Rome. Most noted of all is the Sistine Chapel, 
 for whose decoration he employed all the great mas- 
 ters of Tuscany. For though he himself liked the 
 pictures of Cosimo Rosselli because he used plenty of 
 gold in his coloring, he called to his court all the 
 best artists of the day. 
 
 How much the remark of that crafty tyrant, Fer- 
 rante of Naples, that narrow and crooked streets gave 
 great chances for insurrection, had to do with his plan 
 for Haussmannizing Rome ' is hard to say. At all 
 events, his building rules for the city made and kept 
 them wider, let in light by tearing down balconies, 
 and began to cure the worst of their filth by laying 
 pavements. He would not let the city of the della 
 Rovere be inferior to the residences of the other great 
 families of the day. 
 
 But though he widened the streets of Rome, he 
 did not improve what went on in them. The inten- 
 sity which Paul II. showed in policing the city Six- 
 tus used only in political wars. There was continual 
 riot and bloodshed in Rome. In January, 1483, 
 there died the Papal Chamberlain, one of the richest 
 and most learned of the cardinals. For more than 
 
 1 Baron Haussmann straightened the streets of Paris under Napo- 
 leon III. for looks and artillery.
 
 204 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 thirty years he had lived in Rome, a patron of art 
 and letters, adorning the city with many buildings, 
 and leading a life of stately hospitality, surrounded 
 by his illegitimate children, who passed for the sons 
 of his brother. When he was dying one of the noble 
 family into which his daughter was married came into 
 the palace by way of the church which was next to 
 it, packed up thirty thousand florins worth of silver 
 plate, and went off to Venice with his plunder. The 
 next day, when the body was being carried by the 
 clergy of one church to San Agostino, which he had 
 rebuilt, the bearers and the monks who were to re- 
 ceive the dead fought with the torches and candle- 
 sticks of the procession over the gold brocade which 
 covered the bier. Swords were drawn on both sides, 
 and with great difficulty the body was hastily gotten 
 into the sacristy while the fight went on. When the 
 trouble was over the corpse was found to be stripped 
 of its costly rings and every ornament worth carry- 
 ing away. 
 
 In the midst of his splendor and craft death came 
 to Sixtus without warning — popular report said from 
 a fever brought on by wrath that the peace which 
 had been made between Venice and the powers of 
 Italy had left his plans out of the reckoning. Rome 
 had suffered frightfully under his rule, and the Church 
 was filled with threats of appeal to a Council, before 
 which even Sixtus trembled. He knew his adminis- 
 tration could not bear investigation, for it had been 
 the foundation principle of his finance that " the Pope 
 needed only pen, ink, and paper to have any sum of 
 money he wanted."
 
 Joy over Sixtuss Death. 205 
 
 At the news of his death the city rose in wrath and 
 joy. The house of Girolamo Riario was plundered 
 of everything movable, and everything breakable, 
 down to the marble door-posts, was destroyed. The 
 magazines of the Genoese who had been partners of 
 the Pope in wheat speculations were sacked, and 
 others of his rich friends suffered from the mob. The 
 Papal army, besieging a small city, broke up in panic, 
 abandoning its camp-train. The banished Cardinal 
 Colonna came back with two thousand armed parti- 
 sans and filled the city with yet wilder confusion.
 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 INNOCENT VIII., THE SULTAN'S JAILER — ALEXAN- 
 DER VI., THE HANDSOME SPANISH NEPOT — 
 THE FRENCH INVASION. 
 
 |HEN the disorder had become wearisome 
 even to those who took part in it, the 
 Conclave met on the 26th of August, 
 1484, and by the skilful bribery and wire- 
 pulling of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, 
 Sixtus's ablest nephew, the Genoese Cardinal of 
 Molfetta was elected. He took the name of Inno- 
 cent VIII., apparently on the principle of lucus a non 
 lucendo, for the stately and handsome man, being in 
 Rome, had done as the Romans did. A satirist con- 
 gratulated the city that, after being depopulated by 
 the wars and slaughter of Sixtus, it was now to have 
 for ruler one who might indeed be called the father 
 of his people. 
 
 Giuliano della Rovere, the power behind the throne, 
 was not long in leading the new Pope into the paths 
 of his predecessor, and the Papacy backed the bloody 
 war of the feudal barons of Naples against their 
 King. Florence and Milan stood by the King; 
 Genoa and Venice were allies of the Pope. But in 
 
 206
 
 The Wicked City. 207 
 
 less than a year the opposition among the cardinals, 
 headed by Borgia, the defeated candidate for the 
 throne, forced the Pope to make peace, and his allies 
 the barons died by dozens in the hands of the exe- 
 cutioners. 
 
 Meantime the Papal rule had broken down com- 
 pletely, so far as any of the real purposes of govern- 
 ment were concerned. Rome was full of murder and 
 violence. The ambassador of the Emperor was 
 stripped to his shirt just outside the gates. It was 
 notorious that gold would do anything in the Curia. 
 Innocent made at a stroke fifty-two new secretary- 
 ships, which he sold for twenty-five hundred florins 
 apiece. He used up in retail trade three hundred 
 other new offices. Occasionally a few poor vagabond 
 criminals were hung by night, but public trials were 
 a farce and no one who had money need suffer. An 
 innkeeper who killed both his daughters got free for 
 eight hundred florins. The vice-chamberlain, being 
 asked why so few people were punished when crime 
 was so common, answered with a fine smile, " God 
 does not wish the death of the sinner, but that he 
 should live and pay." 
 
 The clergy set the worst example. Their houses 
 were filled with concubines. 1 The sacred vessels of 
 the churches were continually being stolen, and a 
 wide-spread conspiracy to sell forged Papal bulls was 
 discovered among the curial secretaries. Wickedness 
 was unabashed, for the rulers set the example of law- 
 
 l One diarist tells us that when the Papal vicar issued an edict forbid- 
 ding this, the Pope compelled its recall at once: " Propter quod talis 
 effecta est vita sacerdotum ut vix reperiatur qui concubinam non reti- 
 neat vel Saltern meretricem."
 
 208 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 lessness. The cardinals led in the dance. Their 
 houses were flanked by towers and raised on arches, 
 that the steep steps might be defended by their hun- 
 dreds of armed retainers. The store-rooms were well 
 stocked with powder and lead for the arquebuses. 
 When the princes of the Church went abroad they 
 ruffled it in silks and jewels, even wearing swords by 
 their sides, and were followed by a train of swagger- 
 ing fellows who stopped at nothing. The Pope's son 
 tried to storm the house of a burgher in broad day- 
 light in order to carry off his wife. One day he 
 burst into the Vatican in a rage. Cardinal Riario 
 had won forty thousand florins from him the night 
 before, and he accused him of cheating in play. The 
 Pope ordered Riario to return the money, but the 
 wily Cardinal answered that he had already paid it 
 over to the master builder of his new palace. 
 
 Roderigo Borgia, the richest man in the College, 
 stately and with a most persuasive manner, whose 
 dark eyes were said to fascinate the women " as a 
 magnet draws iron," lived for gallantry. His palace, 
 the finest in Rome, was splendidly furnished. The 
 entrance-hall was hung with tapestries representing 
 historical scenes. It opened into a little room, also 
 superbly hung, where stood a bed covered with red 
 satin under an alcove painted blue with stars. In 
 this room stood the great sideboard on whose shelves 
 and cornice were displayed the gold and silver plate, 
 a large collection of heavy and elaborate pieces. 
 Two little rooms opened off this, one being in satin, 
 with Turkish carpets on the floors, and a bed covered 
 with Alexandrian velvet. The other and richer one
 
 Some Cardinals Households. 209 
 
 had the bed covered with gold brocade, and a velvet- 
 covered table' in the middle surrounded by elabo- 
 rately carved chairs. Ascanio Sforza, on the other 
 hand, was the sportsman of the College, and aston- 
 ished Rome by the size of his stable, his huge pack 
 of hounds, and the variety of his superb falcons. A 
 supper he gave to the Prince of Capua was said to 
 have been like the feast in a fairy tale. Giuliano della 
 Rovere, while he did not despise gallantry and pat- 
 ronized art richly, was the politician of the College. 
 He did not scruple to seize a courier of the Duke of 
 Milan, in order to take away his papers by force, 
 and exercised such power that the ambassadors com- 
 plained : " One Pope was enough for them ; two 
 were too many." 
 
 Under these circumstances it is not to be won- 
 dered at that a sudden alarm of the Pope's death 
 threw the whole city into confusion. The shops 
 were closed and barricades sprang up everywhere. 
 The cardinals went to the Vatican and immediately 
 started an inventory. They found eight hundred 
 thousand florins in one chest and three hundred 
 thousand in another. Then the Pope recovered from 
 his swoon. When he heard what had been going on 
 he remarked, " I shall have the pleasure of going to 
 the funerals of these gentlemen of the College of 
 Cardinals before I die." 
 
 There were three great public excitements during 
 the rule of Innocent. The first was the finding of 
 the so-called daughter of Cicero. Workmen digging 
 in the Campagna opened a Roman grave, and in the 
 beautiful sarcophagus, covered by some preserving 
 
 N
 
 210 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 fluid, lay the corpse of a young girl, her long black 
 hair gathered into a golden net. She looked as if 
 just dead. And all Rome was filled with excitement 
 when the body was brought to the Capitol. That 
 enthusiasm for antiquity which was now the univer- 
 sal social mode seemed to be boundless. For fear of 
 the scandal which might spread from some open con- 
 fession of heathenism, the Pope had the body secretly 
 buried again in the night. 
 
 Another great excitement was the entry of Prince 
 Djem. This son of Mohammed, the conqueror of 
 Constantinople, fled from his brother, the Sultan, to 
 ask shelter from the Knights of Rhodes. They held 
 him as a pledge of peace, and exacted from the Sul- 
 tan thirty-five thousand florins a year for holding him 
 in prison. They sent him to France for safer keep- 
 ing. Innocent brought him from France, and on the 
 13th of March, 1489, he entered Rome beside the 
 Pope's son, with a long train of Moslems and Chris- 
 tians riding two and two behind. The precious pris- 
 oner lived for years in the Pope's care, while his 
 brother with one hand paid tribute to the Pope for 
 keeping him, and with the other hired assassins to 
 put him out of the way. A letter of Andrea Man- 
 tegna, the painter, describes this strange inmate of 
 the Vatican : " The brother of the Sultan lives here 
 in the palace. Sometimes he comes to dine where 
 I am painting, and for a barbarian he behaves very 
 well. His bearing is full of a majestic pride. He 
 does not uncover his head, so that everybody else 
 keeps on his hat before him. He eats five times a 
 day, and sleeps just as often. Before eating he
 
 The Pope and the Sultan. 2 1 1 
 
 drinks sugared water. His walk is that of an ele- 
 phant, his movements as elegant as those of a big Ve- 
 netian wine-cask. His servants praise him much and 
 brag about his riding. It may be true, but I have 
 never seen him mount. His eyes are often half 
 closed. He is of a very cruel nature, and they say 
 he has killed four people. One day he thrashed an 
 interpreter so hard that they had to carry the man 
 to the river to bring him to. He troubles himself 
 about nothing, and acts as if he did not understand 
 anything that is said or done. He sleeps in clothes, 
 receives his visitors like a tailor with his legs crossed, 
 and wears thirty thousand ells of linen on his head. 
 His trousers are so wide that he could hide inside 
 them. His pronunciation is horrible, especially when 
 he is angry." 
 
 It was in thankfulness for taking such good care 
 of Djem that the Sultan, having already paid one 
 hundred and twenty thousand ducats for three years, 
 sent an embassy in May, 1492, to bring the holy 
 lance which had killed Christ as a further gift. Rome 
 had celebrated in January the fall of Granada, by 
 which the Moslem had been driven out of Spain, and 
 they hailed this relic with a festival as splendid. 
 Bishops received the iron lance-head in a superb 
 crystal reliquary from the Turkish ambassadors, two 
 cardinals received it from the bishops, the Pope re- 
 ceived it from the cardinals, and in long procession 
 the whole city moved to St. Peter's, where the Pope 
 blessed the people, while Cardinal Borgia, standing 
 beside him, held the relic in the air. 
 
 It was less than two months after when death
 
 2 1 2 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 drew near to Innocent. A Jewish physician offered 
 to cure him by giving him a drink made of the blood 
 of three boys. They were hired for a florin apiece, 
 and the drink was mixed. But the boys and the 
 Pope died together. 
 
 Three candidates made an open bid for the Papal 
 crown in the conclave. Giuliano della Rovere, the 
 nephew of Sixtus, was backed by the French King 
 with two hundred thousand and by Genoa with one 
 hundred thousand florins. Ascanio Sforza, the great 
 hunter, brother of the Duke of Milan, backed him- 
 self. But Roderigo Borgia, who supported Sforza 
 to defeat della Rovere, came out a winner. It was 
 well known in Rome that he did it by bidding 
 highest. Only five cardinals out of twenty-three 
 refused the bribe; and it was noted that three of 
 them afterward obtained the Papacy. The gossips 
 even knew the price of each vote. Borgia sent to 
 Sforza's house four horse-loads of gold, gave him his 
 own palace with all it contained, and made him vice- 
 chancellor. He was the most costly. The others 
 tapered down to the ninety-five-year-old Patriarch 
 of Venice, who only got five thousand florins. 
 
 Alexander VI., the new Pope, was a man of im- 
 posing appearance, great practical skill in affairs, 
 persuasive and quick in argument. His crowning 
 was hailed by the poets. They called him Divus 
 Alexander. And one wrote : " Rome was made 
 great by Csesar, but now Alexander makes it far 
 greater. The first was a man, the second is a god." 
 Within a year of his crowning the first gold came to 
 Rome from the New World, and the Pope drew a
 
 Alexander VI. 213 
 
 line from pole to pole, dividing all the new West be- 
 tween Spain and Portugal. 
 
 Alexander was the handsomest Pope since Paul II., 
 andhadalwaysexercisedapeculiar powerover women. 
 The first notice we have of his life is a letter from 
 Pius II., written when the Cardinal was twenty-nine, 
 to rebuke him for a garden-party he attended in Siena, 
 which had become the scandal of the city and was a 
 " disgrace to the order and office of the clergy." In 
 the days of Paul, Sixtus, and Innocent, Borgia had for- 
 gotten even the need of concealment. His mistress, 
 Vannozza, daughter of a lesser noble of Rome, had 
 borne him four children, Juan, Caesar, Jofre, and 
 Lucrezia, who were openly acknowledged. But 
 Vannozza was now fifty years old, and scarcely was 
 Alexander Pope when all Rome was full of the name 
 of Julia Farnese, a young married noblewoman, 
 eighteen years old, whose relation to the Pope was 
 become so notorious that the King of Naples could 
 write of it to his ambassador in Spain. In 1492 she 
 bore a daughter, and in September, 1493, her brother 
 was made a cardinal. Before the end of the year 
 the Pope and his son Caesar were splendidly enter- 
 tained by the Farnesi at their castle near Rome. 
 
 But as compared with Innocent and Sixtus, Alex- 
 ander promised to be a good ruler. He did not seem 
 one to be feared. This is how an eye-witness de- 
 scribes him in a festal procession : ' He sits on a 
 snow-white horse, with clear brow and a dignity which 
 constantly compels respect. How wonderful is the 
 mild tranquillity of his mien, how faultless the nobil- 
 ity of his countenance, his look how generous! And
 
 2 1 4 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 how his stature and bearing of easy beauty, and the 
 air of boundless health around him, increase the 
 veneration he inspires!" Nor did the new Pope dis- 
 play the inactivity of Innocent. When he was 
 crowned he found that two hundred and twenty 
 murders had been committed in two months. He 
 reformed the courts, reestablished peace, and com- 
 pelled order. His foreign politics were not notably 
 dangerous. The great catastrophe which was to 
 come upon Italy could not be laid at his door. It 
 was the Duke of Milan who called the French King 
 over the Alps. 
 
 In order to understand the invasion which opens 
 the last act of the drama of the Renascence Papacy, 
 we must glance for a moment at the political condi- 
 tion of Italy. There were in the peninsula five great 
 powers : Florence, Milan, and Venice in the north, 
 the States of the Church in the centre, and Naples 
 in the south. Naples was a kingdom, Venice an 
 oligarchy. Milan and Florence had both lost their 
 liberties ; the first was called a duchy and the sec- 
 ond was nominally a republic, but really under the 
 rule of Piero de' Medici, the great-grandson of 
 Cosimo. A number of the smaller cities of Italy also 
 constituted independent states under the rule of 
 tyrants. Outside of Naples the municipality was, 
 by inheritance from the ancient days, the central 
 point of Italian government. Each one of these city 
 states, large and small, was anxious to cheat or con- 
 quer its neighbors. And as a consequence there 
 reigned a petty local jealousy and a besotted local 
 pride. And so when Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan,
 
 The French Invade Italy. 2 1 5 
 
 called the French to his help in 1494, almost all Italy- 
 was glad; for each state hoped to gain some advan- 
 tage over its neighbors from the presence of the for- 
 eigner, and the common people hoped that some 
 fortune might free them from the tyrants. Lodovico 
 called them because he was afraid. He had impris- 
 oned his nephew, the rightful Duke, and was killing 
 him by slow poison. The wife of his victim was call- 
 ing on her father, the King of Naples, to avenge her 
 wrongs, and Lodovico needed a strong ally. His 
 efforts to bring in the invader were seconded by 
 Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus 
 IV., now living in France for fear of Alexander. 
 
 It was not hard to rouse an enthusiasm for the 
 adventure in Charles VIII., the French King, an 
 ambitious boy of twenty-two, ugly, almost deformed 
 in body, of violent but weak will, surrounded by 
 flatterers as incapable as himself. Against the advice 
 of his barons he decided to lead an army into Italy 
 to reassert his claim to the throne of Naples, which 
 sixty years before had been held by the younger 
 branch of his family. And in the end of August lie 
 crossed the Alps with about forty thousand men. 
 He halted at the first town and plunged into such a 
 debauch that he had to wait a month before he was 
 fit to go on. And thus, with long feasts and short 
 marches, he made his way along the whole length of 
 the Italian peninsula until he reached Naples, in the 
 end of February. There was almost no fighting. 
 After the French had stormed two small towns and 
 put the whole population to the sword, all opposition 
 ceased.
 
 216 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 But in the midst of his feasting and triumph bad 
 news came to the conqueror. The Pope, Venice, the 
 Duke of Milan, the King of Spain, and the Emperor 
 had leagued against him and his retreat was cut off. 
 In idle recklessness he revelled two months longer in 
 the gardens of Naples, and started his long retreat, 
 with only twelve thousand men, about the end of 
 May. It took him six weeks to get to the north, 
 and in the passes of the Apennines he only saved 
 his artillery by five days of the most extraordinary 
 labor, in which the generals labored like the common 
 soldiers. But it was not until he was over the moun- 
 tains and safely down into the great plain of the Po 
 that the army of the League, outnumbering him 
 three to one, barred his way at the town of Fornovo 
 (July 6, 1495). The battle was won in less than an 
 hour, and the little French force made its way up 
 the Po and over the Alps without another sword- 
 stroke. 

 
 PERIOD II. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SAVONAROLA AND FREEDOM. 
 
 N the whole story of this dallying march 
 to the end of Italy and back with a hand- 
 ful of soldiers there are only two Italians 
 recorded who faced the boy invader like 
 men. These were the friar of San Mar- 
 co, and his friend, Piero de' Capponi, one of the 
 syndics of the city of Florence. It was on the 
 King's downward journey that Savonarola came into 
 his presence as ambassador of Florence. " O most 
 Christian King," he said, " thou art an instrument in 
 the hand of the Lord to relieve the woes of Italy and 
 reform the prostrate Church, as for many years I 
 have foretold. But if thou be not just and merciful, 
 if thou respect not the liberties of the city of Flor- 
 ence, the hand of the Lord shall smite thee with ter- 
 rible scourges. These things say I unto thee in the 
 name of the Lord." And the King and all his men 
 of war did honor to the monk. An alliance was 
 made, and the gates of the city opened to the army 
 of France. Charles rode through the narrow streets 
 with levelled lance, the symbol of a conqueror; but 
 he soon found his mistake ; for when he demanded 
 
 217
 
 218 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 too large a subsidy in exchange for his alliance, the 
 City Council demurred. Disputes arose, and Charles 
 bade his secretary read his ultimatum to the assembled 
 syndics. They refused to accept it, and the King 
 cried out in anger, " Then I will sound my trumpets." 
 Capponi sprang forward, snatched the paper from the 
 hands of the secretary, and tore it in fragments, cry- 
 ing out, " And we will ring our bells ! " And Charles 
 made a fair treaty with the only state in Italy he was 
 forced to respect. 
 
 In order to understand how this monk and his 
 friends had become leaders of the only free city in 
 Italy, we must go back some thirteen years to the 
 time (1481) when Brother Savonarola came from a 
 Dominican monastery of Bologna to San Marco in 
 Florence. He was twenty-nine years old, the grand- 
 son of a distinguished court physician and university 
 professor of Ferrara, whose son had degenerated 
 into a mere courtier. He had been a teacher of 
 novices and was assigned the same duty at San 
 Marco. His homilies soon stirred the spirits of the 
 young men under his care, and he was invited to 
 preach a course of Lenten sermons in the Church of 
 San Lorenzo. Like all his previous attempts to 
 preach in public, these sermons were notable failures. 
 At the last ones he only had an audience of twenty- 
 five, including women and children. And similar ill 
 success followed another effort two years later. The 
 reigning preacher of the day was a certain Fra Mari- 
 ano, whom all Florence flocked to hear. The liter- 
 ati praised him for his musical voice, chosen words, 
 and harmonious cadences, his lines from Plato, Aris-
 
 The Mission Preachers. 2 1 9 
 
 totle, and the poets. Savonarola was abrupt and 
 unstudied in voice and manner, and preached from 
 the Bible, which the learned Florentines of the age 
 would not read because the Latin of Jerome was bad. 
 It was just after this disappointment that he thought 
 he beheld the heavens opened and all the future 
 calamities of the Church passing before his eyes, 
 while a divine voice charged him to announce them 
 to the people. From that moment he felt elected to 
 a mission to cry to all nations, " Repent and return 
 to the Lord." 
 
 The next year he was sent as Lenten preacher to 
 San Gemignano, a little town among the Sienese 
 hills. 
 
 The sending of mission preachers has been as com- 
 mon in the Roman Catholic Church as the modern 
 Protestant use of evangelists, and at no time have 
 they met with more astonishing success than 
 during the last half of the fifteenth century in 
 Italy. We have the names of more than twenty men 
 who mightily stirred the cities in which they 
 preached. Robert of Lecce, for instance, in 1448 
 had fifteen thousand hearers in the city of Perugia, 
 who listened to him four hours amid sighs, tears, and 
 outcries of repentance. The whole city made a re- 
 nunciation of worldly pleasures, symbolized by a 
 "burning of vanities." Debtors were released, 
 blood foes were forgiven, and the entire population 
 apparently converted from evil to good. 
 
 Some such effect as this Savonarola produced in 
 San Gemignano when he first preached on the 
 theme of his life — the triple assertion which formed
 
 220 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the background of all his subsequent utterances: (i) 
 The Church will be scourged ; (2) she will be re- 
 generated ; (3) and that speedily. He did not yet 
 announce this as a direct revelation of God to him, 
 but supported it by reason and the Scriptures. The 
 audiences were moved almost to ecstasy. 
 
 In i486 he was sent to Brescia. He preached on the 
 Book of Revelation, and declared that the wrath of the 
 Lord was coming. The streets should be filled with 
 blood and fire. Let them repent, for the just shall 
 find mercy. A generation later, at the horrible sack 
 of Brescia by the French, the people recalled his 
 words. For three years he preached throughout 
 Lombardy, and his fame filled all Italy. 
 
 In 1489 he was summoned back to Florence, and 
 began to expound the Apocalypse in the convent 
 garden, standing by a rose-bush whose scions were 
 tended by his brethren for four hundred years. His 
 audiences grew until he had to preach in the church. 
 His three theses of judgment, regeneration, and that 
 speedily, roused an extraordinary excitement, and the 
 city began to be divided into the friends and foes of 
 Savonarola. He published treatises on philosophical 
 subjects to defend himself against the charge of igno- 
 rance, and to commend the teachings of the Church he 
 wrote tractates on "Humility," "Prayer," "The 
 Love of Jesus," "The Widowed Life." By these 
 writings, as well as by his sermons, it is plain that 
 his best equipment for his work was his knowledge 
 of the Bible. He knew the Bible thoroughly (and it 
 must be remembered he had neither a vernacular 
 version ncr a concordance), and by his method of
 
 Savonarola s Sermons. 221 
 
 exegesis he could find in it proofs for everything, big 
 and little. Here are specimens written on the mar- 
 gin of two of his Bibles that have survived. They are 
 from the opening verses of Genesis. The interpre- 
 tations are arranged under six heads. The division 
 of the waters means spiritually, the movement of the 
 passions and of errors possessing the intellect ; alle- 
 gorically in the Old Testament, the Gentiles separated 
 from the chosen people ; allegorically in the New 
 Testament, tribulations separating many from the 
 Church ; morally, the struggle of the passions against 
 duty ; anagogically, joy of the blessed when freed 
 from tribulation. 
 
 The fifth day (birds, fishes) means spiritually, the 
 contemplation of higher and of lower things ; alle- 
 gorically in the Old Testament, the Maccabees (who 
 always wavered) ; allegorically in the New Testa- 
 ment, the contemplative and active life ; morally, the 
 contemplation of things divine and of things human ; 
 anagogically, angels and men admitted into the an- 
 gelic choir. 
 
 Of course it was not such exegesis which crowded 
 the great church when he preached and stirred 
 his hearers to enthusiasm. This sort of thing ap- 
 pears in all his sermons, but it is shot through and 
 through with sudden flashes of invective against 
 gambling, against usury, against the temptation of 
 the clergy, appeals to abandon worldly things, and 
 praises of Jesus Christ. It was when he launched out 
 into these discharges that his eyes flashed and his 
 wonderful voice rolled. Especially did he sway the 
 hearts of his hearers when he spoke of his visions
 
 222 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 For the power in the man seems to have been his 
 conviction that he was directly inspired of God. He 
 felt that he must preach these things, for he writes 
 how, having determined not to mention his visions 
 in a certain sermon, he agonized all night, and at 
 dawn heard a voice say, " Fool, dost thou not see it 
 is God's will ? " " Whereupon I preached a terrible 
 sermon." He spared neither high nor low, and being 
 invited to preach before the Signory, rebuked tyrants 
 and bad rulers in terms that many present applied at 
 once to Lorenzo the Magnificent, grandson of Cosi- 
 mo, the uncrowned King of Florence. With Lorenzo, 
 Savonarola refused all intercourse, would not pay 
 the customary visit to the patron of the monastery 
 even when he was elected prior, and distributed 
 among the poor the great sum of money Lorenzo 
 sent to the convent, saying in the pulpit, " No good 
 dog stops barking because a bone is flung to him." 
 
 Soon after death came to Lorenzo, and he sent for 
 Savonarola to hear his last confession. " I know 
 no honest friar but this one," he said. With great 
 agitation he spoke of the sins that tormented him 
 — the sack of the city of Volterra, the robbery of the 
 funds of the institute for giving dowries to poor 
 girls, through which many had been driven on to 
 the streets, and the bloody vengeance for the Pazzi 
 conspiracy. Savonarola said many times, " God is 
 good, God is merciful " ; and when Lorenzo was 
 through and calmer, continued, " But three things 
 are needful." "What things, father?" "First, a 
 great and living faith in God's mercy." " I have it."
 
 Savonarola s Visions. 223 
 
 " Second, you must give back your ill-gotten wealth." 
 Lorenzo nodded assent. " Lastly, you must restore 
 liberty to the people of Florence." The dying man 
 turned his face to the wall ; and looking sternly at 
 him for a little, the friar left him unabsolved. 
 
 It was in this mood that Savonarola saw two visions 
 which, in medals and engravings, were spread through 
 Italy. The first was a sword suspended over a great 
 city, and on the sword, " Gladius Domini super ter- 
 rain cito et velociter." The second was a black cross 
 rising from the city of Rome and stretching its arms 
 over all the earth ; on it was written, " Crux Irae 
 Dei " ; while from Jerusalem rose a shining golden 
 cross, on which was " Crux Misericordiae Dei." 
 
 Scarcely was Piero de' Medici firmly established 
 in the seat of his father, Lorenzo, than he procured 
 from the Superior an order for Savonarola to preach 
 in other cities. It was to checkmate such designs 
 that Savonarola and his friends obtained a Papal brief 
 erecting the convent of San Marco into an indepen- 
 dent congregation, subject only to its own prior and, 
 of course, to the Pope. Savonarola's first step was to 
 reform his own house. He reduced living expenses 
 and founded schools for painting, sculpture, architec- 
 ture, and manuscript-making. He provided that the 
 brethren apt to teach should go out regularly on mis- 
 sions. Each was to be attended by a lay brother, who 
 worked for his support, that he might be not kept 
 from speaking the truth for fear of checking alms. 
 He revived in the monastery the study of theol- 
 ogy, philosophy, Greek, Hebrew, and the Eastern
 
 224 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 tongues. Under his rule the number of friars in- 
 creased so greatly that the building was not large 
 enough to hold them. 
 
 And now the true genius of Savonarola's oratory 
 began to appear. More and more plainly he spoke, 
 as one to whom God had given a secret word. He 
 was instant in threatening, prophesying, declaring 
 visions of judgment. " The princes of Italy," he 
 said, " are like men taking the back of a whale for 
 an island and building on it a great and wicked city 
 of oppression and blood. The whale plunges and 
 Babylon is destroyed." " Woe," he cried, " unto the 
 Church ! Once she had chalices of wood and prel- 
 ates of gold. Now she has chalices of gold and 
 prelates of wood." It was a series of sermons on 
 Noah's ark, where he explained each of the ten 
 planks with minute allegorical interpretation, that he 
 accompanied with prophecies of a new Cyrus who 
 should come in triumph to scourge and free Italy. 
 In September he began to preach on the deluge, 
 and on the 2 1st he found the Duomo filled with a 
 crowd that had waited from early morning. Like 
 the note of some strange trumpet his voice rang out 
 the words of his text, " Lo I will bring waters upon 
 the earth," and all stood trembling while for many 
 minutes he smote them with his stern eloquence. 
 For the night before news had reached Florence that 
 the army of France was pouring down the slopes of 
 the Alps. We have seen how supinely the princes 
 of Italy had watched this gathering storm. No 
 one prepared and it came to the people like an 
 earthquake. Savonarola had warned them and
 
 The Man for the Hour. 225 
 
 called them to be ready, and to Savonarola, as to a 
 prophet of God, the hearts of all turned in the hour 
 of fear. 
 
 Piero de' Medici was no man for the situation. 
 After a feeble attempt to fight, he went to Charles, 
 then hemmed into a position of the greatest military- 
 peril, and in a cowardly interview surrendered the 
 fortresses of his quadrilateral without a blow. When 
 the news reached Florence the streets filled, and ail 
 day a great mass of armed men drifted aimlessly 
 through the city. After sixty years of tyranny, the 
 folk were up, and no man knew where their wrath 
 would carry them. Then Savonarola entered the 
 pulpit, not now in the garb of the prophet of woe, 
 but with the gentle words of the Gospel, and he 
 stayed the storm till the Signory had resolved that 
 the Republic must " shake off this baby government 
 and care for itself." It was decided to arm the 
 citizens, to secretly fill every cloister with soldiers, 
 and then to send an embassy to offer peace to the 
 French. Savonarola, the one man whom Charles 
 respected and who had " the entire love of the peo- 
 ple," headed the embassy. And when the King was 
 gone at his commanding request, 1 Savonarola. " lover 
 of liberty and hater of disorder," was a tower of 
 strength to distracted Florence. " Woe to thee, 
 Florence, if thou desirest a head to dominate and 
 oppress all the rest. The sole form of government 
 suited to our needs is a civil and general government." 
 
 1 "Hearken now to the voice of God's servant. Pursue tliy 
 journey without delay. Seek not to bring ruin on this city and thereby 
 rouse the anger of the Lord against thee." 
 o
 
 226 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 And he suggested as the best plan a grand Council 
 after the model of Venice. 
 
 " A grand Council." It was the word that solved 
 the problem. The people caught it as it fell from 
 the pulpit, and the foundation of the government was 
 laid. By the time Charles left Italy (July, 1495) the 
 building of the new city was complete, and in all the 
 plan the master word came from the sermons of the 
 Prior of San Marco. It was not an entirely wise 
 government, nor what we should call a free govern- 
 ment, but it is considered by many of her historians 
 the best Florence ever had. Its unwisdom and lack 
 of freedom are plain in the war with the people of 
 Pisa, long ruined and insulted by the yoke of Flor- 
 ence. This foolish and cruel war to crush a sister 
 city was never rebuked by Savonarola, and it caused 
 the fall of the new Republic. But it is possible to 
 recognize that there was a very narrow and intoler- 
 ant strain in the puritan patriot without forgetting 
 that when the sword of her tyrants sank in terror the 
 voice of Savonarola awed the invader of Italy, and in 
 the cathedral of her only free city rang through 
 perilous days the praise of liberty.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH INVASION TO THE SACK 
 OF ROME (i 494-1 527).
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLD OF ALEXANDER VI. — THE PRO- 
 PHET OF RIGHTEOUSNESS AND THE VICAR OF 
 CHRIST. 
 
 HE year 1496 found Pope Alexander VI. 
 living peacefully in the Vatican with his 
 blooming family gathered around him. 
 Juan, who was Duke of Gandia in Spain, 
 where he had left his newly married wife, 
 lived in the Vatican. Lucrezia, Alexander's daugh- 
 ter, was married to a natural son of the younger line 
 of the great Milanese house of Sforza. They lived 
 in a palace of their own. The sixteen-year-old son, 
 Jofre, married to a daughter of the King of Naples, 
 resided in the palace of a cardinal. Caesar, who had 
 gone into the Church, was only a bishop, and lived 
 alone not far off. 
 
 It was a gay life with which these brides of six- 
 teen filled the Vatican quarter. They went to high 
 mass at St. Peter's, and crowded the cardinals so as 
 to be close to their father when he said prayers for 
 the world. The Pope himself was not much given 
 to the pleasures of the table, and the cardinals used 
 
 to invent excuses to escape his dinners of a single 
 
 229
 
 230 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 course. But he went often to the splendid festi- 
 vals of his daughters, and frequently received them in 
 the Vatican, with the glittering cavalcade of young 
 cardinals and courtiers who danced attendance upon 
 them. Rome had become used to seeing the 
 head of a celibate clergy living thus, but the public 
 talk of the city said that the life of the Pope and his 
 children was much worse than it looked, and the 
 ambassadors of foreign princes reported terrible 
 things of it in their letters home. The Cardinal of 
 Gurk, who had withdrawn to Perugia, told the am- 
 bassador of Florence : " When I think of the life of 
 the Pope and of some of the cardinals, the idea 
 of living at Rome fills me with horror. If God 
 does not reform his Church I will none of such a 
 life." 
 
 The satirists found plenty of material. Hear Pon- 
 tano, a contemporary Neapolitan poet : 
 
 " Can you tell me the name of that remarkable 
 old man, more decorated than a relique-box, smell- 
 ing of musk like a civet-cat, and stepping gingerly 
 as a young dancer, who hums a song and keeps 
 turning his head and winking as he walks? It is a 
 cardinal just landed from Valencia, who has only one 
 thought in his head — to please the ladies. Hear him 
 sing his love adventures. And how he ogles the 
 windows! How he smiles and bows gracefully! 
 Beautiful little grayhead, you will die younger than 
 on the day you were born." 
 
 In sterner strain wrote Baptista Mantuanus: 
 
 " You who would live well depart from Rome, 
 For all things are permitted there except to be good,"
 
 The Reform of the Carnival. 231 
 
 Already Alexander had become involved in con- 
 troversy with' Savonarola. Just as the French left 
 Italy a Papal letter invited the friar to Rome. It 
 was called forth by his strictures on the clergy, the 
 advice of Cardinal Sforza, brother of the Duke of 
 Milan, whose plans were blocked by the Republic of 
 Florence, and the furious attacks of the Arrabbiati 
 party of city politics. The letter was couched in 
 tones of affection, but Savonarola feared a snare. 
 He answered that his health was broken, his life 
 guarded against assassination even at home by armed 
 men, his presence necessary to the city. He begged 
 to be excused, and the Pope sent a message that he 
 need not come at present. But scarcely a month 
 was past when a second letter arrived, forbidding 
 Savonarola to preach, revoking the order which had 
 made San Marco an independent congregation, and 
 referring it to the Congregation of Lombardy. For 
 the desire of the Pope to aid his new politics by rein- 
 stating the Medici at Florence was now added to his 
 other motives for silencing this " pestilent fellow." 
 Savonarola protested, but obeyed the inhibition from 
 preaching. 
 
 He spent the next few months in writing letters and 
 planning the reform of the carnival. There were 
 two evil carnival habits common in the city. The 
 boys of Florence had a way of forming gangs, which 
 blocked the streets with long poles and levied toll on 
 all who passed, spending the money in debauchery. 
 The game of " stones " followed the bonfires at 
 night. It was so brutal that several players were 
 killed each year. People are very tenacious of such
 
 232 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 customs ; only a few years ago the law suppressing 
 the brutal eel-pulling raised the barricades in the 
 Dutch cities. And the Signory had in vain tried to 
 stop this beastly sport of " stones." The friar under- 
 took to try. He formed the youth of Florence into 
 bands, ordered and drilled, and bade them collect alms 
 for the poor. He wrote new songs for them to sing, 
 and asked his friend, the poet Bienveni, to write more. 
 He devised a great procession of the whole city, and 
 while working good the boys forgot to do evil. 
 
 Meantime the Pope had changed his policy. At 
 the request of the Florentine government he removed 
 the inhibition from Savonarola. He had given the 
 friar's sermons to a bishop who was a Dominican and 
 therefore free from the intense jealousy of the monk 
 against a member of a rival order. He reported that 
 the friar respected the dogmas and authority of the 
 Church, speaking only against simony and corruption, 
 and counselled the Pope to make friends, even, if 
 necessary, by offering the cardinal's purple. And so 
 a Dominican was secretly sent to Florence to offer 
 the red hat to Savonarola, on condition that he should 
 change the tone of his sermons. 
 
 This was in the winter of 1496, and in Lent of that 
 year Savonarola, protesting that he believed all that 
 is believed by the Roman Church and submitted to 
 her authority, was again swinging the lash of his 
 terrible invective on the sins of Italy. An extraor- 
 dinary effect followed his words. Everywhere he 
 was hailed as a prophet of God or an emissary of the 
 devil. And in Florence, while the Signory treated 
 him as the first citizen of the Republic, the Arrabbiati
 
 The Burning of the " Vanities." 233 
 
 laid daily plots to assassinate him as the most dan- 
 gerous opponent of their treason. 
 
 There was no enemy more bitter against the Re- 
 public and its first citizen than the Pope. But he 
 was too busy during the summer to attend to the 
 friar or the plots of the Medici to reconquer Florence. 
 For another plan was on foot. Italy was divided 
 into two parties : on the one side a league of Ven- 
 ice, Milan, Rome, Spain, the Emperor, and England ; 
 on the other Florence, Savoy, with other small states, 
 and France. And out of the desperate political 
 disorder the Pope proposed to draw lasting gain to 
 his house. The first thing was to resume the sys- 
 tem of Sixtus IV., to crush the small rulers in the 
 patrimonium, who had grown again from vassals to 
 tyrants. He began with the Orsini, the richest and 
 most powerful ; declared them rebels, — which was true 
 enough, for they were in the pay of France, — confis- 
 cated their lands and gave them to his son, the Duke 
 of Gandia, who in October, 1496, became Standard- 
 bearer of the Church. But it was an empty triumph. 
 On the 23d of January the Orsini defeated the Papal 
 troops in hopeless panic, and Gandia, wounded, fled 
 to the walls of Rome, where he remained the rest of 
 the winter. 
 
 Meantime at Florence, during Lent, the boys were 
 going from house to house to collect " vanities," and 
 when the last day had arrived a vast pile was arranged 
 in the piazza on a scaffold pyramid sixty feet high 
 and two hundred and fifty feet around the base. Then, 
 amid hymns and the ringing of bells, the pile was 
 fired and went up in smoke. Perhaps no act of
 
 234 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Savonarola has been so much discussed as this com- 
 paratively unimportant burning of the " vanities." 
 There was nothing new in it. The Florentine pile 
 was only one of many others before and after. Per- 
 haps, also, it was more valuable. When Lippi made 
 a practice of using the notorious features of his mis- 
 tress in pictures of the Madonna for chapels, and 
 Bartolommeo painted for a church a picture which 
 had to be removed, by the advice of those who heard 
 the confessions of the worshippers in it, there must 
 have been a number of burnable pictures in Florence 
 of considerable artistic value. But it is not probable 
 that the pile contained many works of art that decent 
 people would not willingly let die. Jerome Savo- 
 narola was a puritan, but he was no more a philistine 
 than John Milton. The man who had for disciples 
 and friends Bartolommeo, the Delia Robbia, Lorenzo 
 di Credi, Botticelli, and Michael Angelo would not 
 wantonly have destroyed innocent beauty. Nor 
 would that friar have burned any treasures of learn- 
 ing who, in the year of the "vanities," stripped his 
 convent of its last remaining lands and had it assume 
 a heavy debt, in order to save the library of the 
 Medici from being dispersed at public sale. 
 
 It was in the early spring of 1497 that Cardinal 
 Caesar, the Duke of Gandia, and Giovanni Sforza, of 
 Pesaro, two sons and a son-in-law of the Pope, stood 
 before the altar of St. Peter to receive the palms 
 from the hand of their father. But there was no 
 peace in their hearts one with another. Already 
 Sforza was a worn-out tool of Borgian ambition, and 
 they were secretly trying to force him to consent to
 
 The Borgia Mystery. 235 
 
 divorce, that the hand of Lucrezia might again be 
 used in their game. During Holy Week, on pretence 
 of going to service in a distant church, he flung him- 
 self on a swift horse and rode through the gates to 
 refuge in his own city of Pesaro. 
 
 And now the Pope turned his attention to Florence. 
 Piero de' Medici had been living in Rome, as most 
 pretenders have lived, in gambling and debauchery, 
 loaded with debts, pledging everything he could find 
 a pawnbroker to take, and already looked at askance 
 by the money-lenders. When he marched to Flor- 
 ence in April the Pope gave him good wishes. He 
 arrived before the city at daybreak, with the hope 
 that his partisans would rise and open the gates. But 
 no one stirred, except to sight the culverins, and he 
 withdrew as swiftly as he had come. 
 
 Within a month a Papal bull excommunicated Savo- 
 narola because he had refused to obey a command 
 to unite his convent with the Roman Congregation. 
 But scarcely was it sent when something happened 
 at Rome which shook the nerves even of Alexander. 
 Foiled in his attempt to make his son, the Duke of 
 Gandia, great at the expense of the Orsini, Alexan- 
 der had created him hereditary ruler of Beneventum, 
 Terracina, and Pontecorvo, nominally as a vassal of 
 the Church, really as an independent prince. A 
 week later, on the 14th of June, the new Prince and 
 his younger brother, Caesar, took supper with their 
 mother in a vineyard, and at the close of the feast 
 rode off together. Gandia soon left the party, at- 
 tended by one servant. In the morning he had not 
 returned, and his servant was picked up senseless
 
 2x6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 and dying in the street. They found a coal-seller on 
 the banks of the river who said that the night before 
 he watched two men who came cautiously down to 
 the Tiber and looked around. They went back 
 among the houses. Again they came out and 
 looked. They gave a signal. Then came a rider on 
 a white horse. Behind him was a body with head 
 and arms hanging on one side, the feet on the other. 
 He rode to the edge, and the servants threw it in. 
 The cloak floated, and the masked man stooped for 
 a large stone, threw it, and sank the cloak. Then all 
 went away. The police asked why he had not re- 
 ported the facts to them. He answered, " I did not 
 think it worth while ; I have seen in my time a good 
 hundred bodies thrown into the river there." All 
 night and morning they dragged the river, and at 
 midday drew out the eldest son of the Pope, pierced 
 with nine wounds. 
 
 Alexander almost went mad with grief. He shut 
 himself into his room and would not be comforted. 
 From Wednesday evening until Saturday morning 
 he neither ate, drank, nor slept. On the 19th 
 he called a consistory, and in an address filled 
 with penitence and zeal announced the appoint- 
 ment of a commission of six cardinals to draft 
 a plan for the reform of the Church. They drew up 
 a great bull for reform, of which two copies still sur- 
 vive in the Vatican archives. Its introduction an- 
 nounced that the wholesome ancient rules by which 
 councils and Popes had checked sensuality and ava- 
 rice were broken through. " An unbearable disso- 
 luteness has come into the Church. We propose, 
 therefore, to begin reform with the Roman court,
 
 The Pope's Contrition. 237 
 
 which ought to be an example of virtuous living to 
 all the Church." Excellent provisions followed for 
 regulating the scandalous worldliness and luxury 
 among the cardinals. No cardinal was to draw 
 more than six thousand florins yearly from benefices, 
 or have more than eighty servants and thirty horses 
 in his court ; nor were his heirs permitted to spend 
 more than fifteen hundred florins on his funeral. 
 Cardinals were to be forbidden to gamble at cards, 
 to give great public hunts, to attend the performances 
 of profane comedies, to employ clowns, jugglers, or 
 bands of musicians. Simony, with all its attendant 
 evils, was most sternly forbidden. 
 
 It was while the Pope was in this mood that the 
 excommunicated Savonarola wrote him a letter of 
 condolence. " The Lord in his mercy," he concluded, 
 " passeth over all our sins. I announce things of 
 which I am assured. But let your Beatitude turn a 
 favoring eye on the work of faith, for which I labor 
 without ceasing, and give ear no longer to the impious. 
 Thus the Lord will bestow on you joy instead of 
 grief, inasmuch as all my predictions are true, and 
 none that resisteth the Lord can ever know peace. 
 Charity moveth me to write these things, Most 
 Blessed Father, and the hope that your Beatitude 
 may receive true consolation from God ; for the 
 thunders of his wrath will ere long be heard, and 
 blessed will be those that have put their trust in him. 
 May the Lord of all mercy console your Holiness in 
 your tribulation." 
 
 The epigramist wrote differently of this " fisher 
 of men who drew out in his nets his own son." 
 
 The search of the police could not clear up the
 
 238 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 mystery of the murder. Many writers suspect that 
 their failure was due to suggestions from the highest 
 authority not to look too far. Whether this be true 
 or not, the historian is not called upon to make good 
 their lack of energy. The dark question, Who mur- 
 dered the Duke of Gandia? is useful to him only to 
 bring into his pages some touch of the perennial in- 
 terest of a strong detective story. But it is of the 
 greatest historical significance that within a few 
 months Rome and Italy came to believe that an 
 illegitimate son of the Vicar of Christ had killed his 
 brother out of jealousy, and that the father was un- 
 willing to punish the murder. This much only is 
 certain, that Caesar Borgia soon displayed in his open 
 deeds a jealous ambition, daring and cowardly, which 
 was quite capable of fratricide, and that through all 
 his career he remained the darling of his father's 
 
 heart. 
 
 The Pope's contrition lasted but for a little. That 
 fatal paternal passion which Balzac has pictured in 
 Pere Goriot seems to have replaced in his old age 
 the lust that had ruled him down to its very thresh- 
 old, and before the summer was over he was dis- 
 cussing plans by which Caesar, laying down the 
 purple, was to become a prince like his dead brother. 
 It was said that the first step suggested was that his 
 brother Jofre's wife, his adultery with whom was sus- 
 pected by all Rome, should be divorced and married 
 to him. If this plan was entertained, it was soon 
 abandoned, but the divorce of Lucrezia was accom- 
 plished at the end of December, 1497, by what all 
 Italy called open perjury.
 
 Savonarola Denounces the Curia. 239 
 
 Meantime Savonarola, fearing to draw the interdict 
 upon Florence, was silent, while the government was 
 using every effort to have his excommunication 
 annulled. But the wrath of Alexander was impla- 
 cable. So far from restoring Savonarola, he even 
 threatened to demand that he be surrendered for 
 punishment at Rome. Then Savonarola's patience 
 was exhausted, and on Christmas day, after six 
 months' silence, he said mass and gave communion 
 to a vast congregation. Soon after he announced 
 that he would preach, beginning on Septuagesima 
 Sunday (February II, 1498). The Vicar of the 
 Archbishop forbade any one to attend the sermon on 
 penalty of being denied confession, the sacrament, 
 and burial in consecrated ground. But the Signory 
 sent him word that it would be well for him to keep 
 quiet. The preacher discussed the authority of the 
 Pope, and, again protesting his orthodoxy and his 
 Catholicity, asserted the right of every honest con- 
 science to resist unjust commands. " When I re- 
 flect," he cried, "on the life led by priests, I am 
 constrained to weep. O my brethren and my chil- 
 dren, shed tears for the woes of the Church, so that 
 the Lord may call the priests to repentance, for it is 
 plain that terrible chastisement awaits them. The 
 tonsure is the seat of all iniquity. It begins in Rome, 
 where the clergy, who make mock of Christ and the 
 saints, are worse than Turks and Moors. Not only 
 do they refuse to suffer for the Lord's sake, but men 
 traffic with the sacraments. At this day there is a 
 trade in benefices, which are sold to the highest bid- 
 der! Think ye that Jesus Christ will any longer
 
 240 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 permit this ? Woe, woe to Italy and to Rome ! Come, 
 come, O priests! Come, my brethren, let us do our 
 best to revive a little the love of God ! ' O father, 
 we shall be cast into prison ; we shall be done to 
 death.' So let it be. They may kill me as they 
 please, but they will never tear Christ from my heart. 
 I am ready to die for my God. Thou hast been in 
 Rome and dost know the life of these priests. Tell 
 me, wouldst thou hold them to be pillars of the 
 Church, or temporal lords? Have they not courtiers 
 and grooms and horses and dogs ? Are not their man- 
 sions full of tapestries and silks, of perfumes and lack- 
 eys? Seemeth it to thee that this is the Church of 
 God? Their vainglory filleth the world, and their 
 avarice is equally vast. They do all things for gold. 
 O Lord, Lord, smite them with thy sword!" 
 
 This was war to the death, and the monk felt him- 
 self called of God to it. The last day of carnival he 
 gave the sacrament to a great crowd and went up 
 into a high pulpit in the open square. Holding the 
 host on high, he prayed, " O Lord, if my deeds be 
 not sincere, if my words be not inspired by thee, 
 strike me dead on the instant." Never had the re- 
 sults of his preaching been greater. Each new dis- 
 course was printed and carried over all Italy and the 
 world. The wrath of the Pope was intense. The 
 Florentine ambassador wrote from Rome how he had 
 burst out in a fury before many of the cardinals, 
 threatening to ruin the Republic and the friar to- 
 gether. Every enemy of the city was up in arms 
 against her, and civil discord was threatening within. 
 The friar was as much hated as loved. The Com-
 
 The Haunting Fear of the Popes. 241 
 
 pagnacci, the lewd fellows of the baser sort who dis- 
 liked puritan- laws and wanted back again the old 
 debaucheries of the carnival ; the Arrabbiati, who 
 wanted to overthrow the Republic and set up an 
 oligarchy of their own faction ; the Greys, or adher- 
 ents of the Medici, were united in only one thing, 
 their dislike of Savonarola and his followers, who 
 were called the Piagnoni or Snivellers. Their puri- 
 tan inquisition was doubtless very irksome to all who 
 did not share their exalted zeal. And so on the 1 7th 
 of March a new Signory inhibited Savonarola from 
 preaching. He obeyed, but turned to his last resort, 
 the General Council, threatened by many reformers, 
 feared by every Pope for two generations. 
 
 The theory of Conciliar Supremacy, victorious at 
 Constance, promulgated with greater emphasis and 
 clearness at Basle, had been buried when the dis- 
 credited remnant of that Council broke up in 1449. 
 But its spectre would not down, and rose threaten- 
 ingly amid the triumphs and feasts of the autocratic 
 Papacy. It was doubtless held by the great body 
 of the French clergy as a part of Gallicanism or the 
 local independence of the national Church under 
 its own hierarchy, which had been established by 
 the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438. Even in Ger- 
 many, whose princes weakly surrendered the con- 
 cordats of Constance and Basle in the Vienna con- 
 cordat of 1448, there were still many defenders of 
 the idea that the Pope was not the absolute mon- 
 arch of the visible Kingdom of God, but the consti- 
 tutional ruler of the Church. Every Pope since 
 Nicholas V. had taken pains directly or indirectly to 
 p
 
 242 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 deny the doctrine of Conciliar Supremacy and evade 
 the decrees of the Church which provided for the 
 regular assembly of a General Council. Pius II. ex- 
 pressly forbade any appeal from his authority to a 
 General Council. Almost every reformer that we 
 have mentioned, and many others, had reiterated the 
 demand and longing for a common meeting of Chris- 
 tendom to reform the Church. Every conclave of 
 cardinals had before the election of another Vicar of 
 Christ renewed the demand or agreement that the 
 decisions of former conclaves and councils in regard 
 to the calling of a new General Council for the re- 
 form of the Church in head and members should be 
 carried out. And every Pope had broken the agree- 
 ment or evaded the demand. In 1482 a Dominican, 
 Andreas, Bishop of Crain in Epirus, having first 
 vainly tried to persuade Sixtus IV. to summon a 
 Council, posted on the doors of the cathedral of 
 Basle a letter to the Pope and a call to Christendom 
 to meet in General Council for the reform of the 
 Church in head and members. He was arrested 
 and imprisoned for life. The banished Cardinal 
 Giuliano della Rovere had been trying for several 
 years to call Europe to a General Council to hear 
 his complaints against Alexander VI. Savonarola 
 himself had often hinted in vague and veiled terms 
 of a General Council, and written of it privately to 
 the King of France, and it was therefore no new or 
 heretical idea that he now determined to realize. 
 
 He made copies of a letter to the princes of 
 Europe, which had been ready for some time, and 
 prepared to send them by trusty messengers to the
 
 In the Hands of His Foes. 243 
 
 rulers of France, Germany, Spain, England, and 
 Hungary. They began : 
 
 " The moment of vengeance has arrived. The 
 Lord commands me to reveal new secrets and to 
 make known to the world the peril which threatens 
 the bark of St. Peter. . . . Now I hereby testify, in 
 the word of the Lord, that this Alexander is no 
 Pope, nor can be held as one ; inasmuch as, leaving 
 aside the mortal sin of simony, . . . and likewise 
 putting aside his other manifest vices, I declare that 
 he is no Christian and believes in no God, the which 
 surpasses the height of all infidelity." These charges 
 he offered to prove, not by argument and evidences 
 alone, but by signs and portents given by God to attest 
 his truth. Most of these letters were never sent, but 
 one of his messengers on the road to France was 
 robbed by Milanese bandits, and his despatches sold 
 to the Duke, who sent them to the Pope. 
 
 And at the very moment when he was betrayed 
 to his worst enemy abroad, Savonarola fell into the 
 power of his cruel foes at home. The Franciscans 
 had from the beginning opposed his work. And a 
 certain friar, Francesco of Puglia, of that order, after 
 denouncing him in the pulpit as a heretic and a false 
 prophet, challenged him to the ordeal by fire. 
 Domenico, who had taken Savonarola's place as 
 preacher, at once accepted the challenge in his mas- 
 ter's stead. It was a glorious opportunity for the 
 friar's enemies, and, though the Franciscan tried to 
 draw back, and Savonarola at first rebuked his friend's 
 zeal, the keen politicians soon gave such official 
 recognition to the affair that one side or the other
 
 244 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 had to publicly submit and withdraw. The whole 
 city fell into a fever of excitement, and after a long 
 discussion it was finally decided in the City Council 
 that the trial by fire should take place as the easiest 
 way of quieting the uproar; though one speaker 
 sarcastically suggested that the trial be by water, as 
 less dangerous, for if the friar could go through it 
 without getting wet, he would certainly join in ask- 
 ing his pardon. Savonarola had tried to prevent the 
 trial, but when it was determined he felt assured 
 that his champion would walk through unharmed. 
 The same enthusiasm spread to his followers, and the 
 brethren of San Marco addressed a letter to the 
 Pope, saying that three hundred of them, besides 
 many laymen, were willing to pass through the fire 
 in defence of their master's doctrines. The Francis- 
 can champion, a substitute for the original, had as- 
 serted from the first that if he entered the flames he 
 should perish, and when the day arrived, and all 
 Florence waited for the spectacle, he did not come. 
 After hours had been passed in unprofitable discus- 
 sion, darkness fell on a wearied and disappointed 
 city. The champion of San Marco had been ready 
 and eager for the trial, but the enemies of Savonarola 
 spread abroad the report that he had balked the 
 multitude of their miracle or their tragedy. It was 
 a crime unforgivable by the Florentines, and Savo- 
 narola was delivered into the hands of his enemies. 
 
 The afternoon of the next day a mob stormed the 
 convent. They found no easy task, for some lay 
 brethren had concealed arms in the cellar a few days 
 before. Savonarola wanted to bear all things, and
 
 Put to the Torture. 245 
 
 calling the brethren to the choir, intoned the chant 
 " Salvum fac populum tuum Domine." But there 
 was a stern resistance in many parts of the building. 
 A young German monk wrested a weapon from the 
 hands of one of the mob and laid about him mightily, 
 chanting at every stroke, " Salvum fac populum tuum 
 Domine." When they broke into the sacristy, the 
 praying monks beat them out again with the heavy 
 crucifixes and candlesticks. The steps of the choir 
 were stained with blood, and the church rang to the 
 shots of the arquebuse which two brethren had 
 planted by the side of the great crucifix on top of 
 the altar. In the midst of it all the police arrested 
 Savonarola by order of the Signory. 
 
 He was put to the torture. Just what he said we 
 do not know, for it is evident that the published con- 
 fessions were, like the published confessions of Joan of 
 Arc, garbled. But we know enough to believe that, 
 like Joan of Arc, he admitted that his voices and visions 
 were false. And in this he denied his own belief. 
 For he had always thought he was a prophet, for which 
 all the people at one time held him. It does not 
 appear, however, that there was anything in his pre- 
 dictions more supernatural than in those of Joan of 
 Arc, and his voices and visions were like those of 
 many men of his time. Columbus heard a voice 
 from heaven bidding him sail on. That most en- 
 gaging gossip and man of science, Cardano, had the 
 most implicit faith in his most extraordinary dreams, 
 and believed himself, like Socrates, to be directed by 
 a demon. Benevento Cellini tells us his father had 
 " a certain touch of prophecy, which was doubtless
 
 246 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 a divine gift," and that amiable scoundrel himself, 
 when shut up in prison with nothing else to do, had 
 vivid and splendid visions of the glory of God. 
 And visions are recorded in more than one biogra- 
 phy of our own century. Savonarola's confessions, 
 that through all his desires to reform the Church 
 there was the hope of " doing great things in Italy 
 and beyond the borders," " of preaching things at 
 the Council of which I might be proud," of thinking 
 himself " higher than any cardinal or Pope if he had 
 reformed the Church," were probably true enough. 
 For the last infirmity is found as commonly as else- 
 where in the noblest minds which labor with perfect 
 honesty for pure religion. 
 
 The failure of the miracle caused his downfall. 
 The false confession that he had deceived the people 
 by his visions brought death. For the multitude had 
 not followed him to learn truth, but to hear politics. 
 His rapid and violent reformations had in the popu- 
 lar heart no roots of true religion. The Florentines 
 were, after all, only better in degree than the rest of 
 the Italians. They lacked the first national quality 
 of patience, and would bear no yoke except the yoke 
 that tyranny held firm upon their shoulders. Even 
 the monks of San Marco wrote to the Pope asking 
 forgiveness for having followed Savonarola. " The 
 fineness of his doctrine ; the rectitude of his life, the 
 holiness of his manners ; his pretended devotion, and 
 the good results he obtained by purging the city of 
 immorality, usury, and every species of vice ; the 
 different events which confirmed his prophecies in a 
 manner beyond all human power and imagination,
 
 Rejected of Men. 247 
 
 and which were so numerous and of such a nature 
 that we could never have been able to renounce our 
 faith in him unless he himself had made retraction 
 declaring that his words were not inspired by God " 
 — these were the things they alleged in excuse for 
 having been his friends. 
 
 Savonarola's cup of bitterness was almost full, but 
 he still had to endure more tortures at a fresh trial 
 before two Papal commissioners, who were sent, ac- 
 cording to the talk of Rome, with instructions to put 
 him to death, " even if he were another John the 
 Baptist." On the 28th of May, 1498, with two of 
 his brethren, he was degraded and unfrocked by his 
 Bishop, handed over to the secular arm as heretic and 
 schismatic by the Papal commissioners, and hanged 
 and burned by the Signory of Florence.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA. 
 
 N order to understand the subsequent his- 
 tory of the family of Borgia, which had 
 bought the Papacy, we must remember 
 that such family histories were common 
 enough in Italy during the last half of the 
 fifteenth century. The spectacle of Alexander and 
 Caesar ruling in the name of Jesus of Nazareth over 
 his disciples is not an isolated phenomenon. The 
 Church did not breed this disease within herself. 
 Rather the weakness brought on by her own cor- 
 ruption was unable to resist the contagion of the 
 times. Just as the della Rovere (Sixtus IV., Julius 
 II.), terrible, sagacious, magnificent, patrons of art, 
 are a picture of the good tyrant of their generation, 
 so the Borgias are a perfect example of the bad 
 tyrant. For a certain character of wickedness was 
 common enough among the large and small tyrants 
 of the age to form the bearers of it into a distinct 
 type, monstrous, inhuman, incredible, only to be 
 matched in the pages of Suetonius and Tacitus. It 
 is needless to suggest illustrations. John Webster's 
 
 " Duchess of Malfi " or " White Devil " gives in 
 
 248
 
 Moral Condition of Italy. 249 
 
 classic form a clear impression ef the type, and it is 
 etched in Browning's little poem, " My Last Duchess." 
 The insult to humanity in such lives was made 
 more palpable by the smallness of the states they 
 ruled. While the Caesars filled the streets of Rome 
 with blood and their villas with lust, the cities of the 
 Empire.enjoying the justice of their municipal govern- 
 ments, heard of these crimes as distant rumors. But 
 the tyrants of Italy had raised their power on the 
 ruins of the ancient municipalities, and their move- 
 ments were talked over by every gossip of the little 
 cities of which they were masters. It does not seem 
 unhistorical to see in the flourishing growth of such 
 a type under such circumstances very strong evidence 
 that the social organism of Italy at the end of the 
 fifteenth century was rotted through and through. 
 When an indictment is drawn against a whole 
 people by historians, the bill of particulars is apt to 
 be made up of special instances of private or public 
 wickedness which have been recorded because they 
 were unusual, or else of vague lamentations by con- 
 temporaries over the degeneracy of the times. But 
 the future historian who should regard simply the 
 record of murders and lynchings in the United States 
 for the past ten years, or read only certain extracts 
 from Ruskin or Carlyle, would hardly get a fair view 
 of the morality of the Americans. It is possible to 
 collect many isolated notices which indicate a des- 
 perate condition of moral depravity in Italy at the 
 close of the fifteenth century. Venice had eleven 
 thousand courtesans, a proportion which would give 
 over one hundred thousand to New York. In the
 
 250 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 year 1459 seven princes received Pius II. at Florence. 
 All of them were bastards. Such facts as these seem 
 to be significant ; but who shall say whether they are 
 not offset by the abundant evidences of a beautiful 
 family life, the memories of gracious and gentle wo- 
 men, of noble bishops and pious teachers, the records 
 of the continuous foundation of hospitals, whose size 
 and care of the sick filled Luther with astonishment? 
 As Burckhardt suggests, " The ultimate truth with 
 respect to the character, the conscience, the guilt of 
 a people remains forever a secret." But surely the 
 political conditions of Italy in the fifteenth century 
 suggest very strongly that lust and luxury, or some- 
 thing else, had weakened among the people the 
 fundamental qualities of courage, patience, and self- 
 sacrifice. How else could the vile and monstrous 
 regiment of many of her tyrants have been borne, or 
 only broken by lawless revolts which made the last 
 state of the cities worse than the first? 
 
 An Italian tyrant of this most evil type was now 
 Vicar of Christ, and when the friar of San Marco was 
 dead he had nothing to fear. With Savonarola in 
 freedom, Alexander had cause to remember the fate 
 of John XXIII. Had a man of the same will, elo- 
 quence, and sincerity appeared in the north, farther 
 from Rome and amid a people of greater patience and 
 tenacity, he could not have been so silenced. For the 
 world was filled with fears and hopes of some great 
 catastrophe. On the banks of the Tiber and the 
 Rhine prophecies were circulated, dark and threaten- 
 ing as the Florentine monk's, of some awful judg- 
 ment 0/ God upon the degenerate Church. The
 
 Marriage of Casar. 251 
 
 King of France had a medal struck bearing the in- 
 scription, "I will destroy Babylon," and the rulers 
 of Spain and Germany threatened schism more than 
 
 once. 
 
 But when Savonarola was gone no man was left to 
 give point to the anger of the world, and the spectre 
 of a General Council being laid, Alexander could 
 devote himself to arranging a marriage for Caesar. 
 The King of Naples refused with indignation the 
 hand of his daughter, but finally promised the hand 
 of a bastard of his house to the divorced Lucrezia, 
 and they were married in July, 1498. The next 
 month Caesar publicly laid aside the cardinal's pur- 
 ple, and in December journeyed to France. The 
 money for his costly outfit had been obtained by 
 selling Church offices, confiscating the estates of ac- 
 cused prelates, and by the fines of three hundred 
 people absolved from sudden accusation of heresy. 
 The new King of France, who wanted the help of 
 the Pope for a second invasion of Italy, received him 
 with honor, made him Duke of Valence, and married 
 him to a sister of the King of Navarre. The Pope, 
 Venice, and France formed a league for mutual gain. 
 France was to have Milan ; Venice, Cremona ; and 
 Caesar, French troops to conquer the Romagna, sup- 
 press its petty tyrants, ancient vassals of the Papacy, 
 and form a principality for himself. 
 
 On the 6th of October, 1499, King Louis entered 
 Milan in triumph ; and a lot of Italian princelings 
 followed the invading army as jackals follow the lion. 
 
 Already the Pope had declared that the lords of 
 Romagna had forfeited their lands for failure to pay
 
 252 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 tribute, and the plan of the Borgia was openly de- 
 clared. Caesar possessed no mean resources for his 
 undertaking. In France he had become reconciled 
 to della Rovere, the only powerful cardinal who still 
 remained in opposition. And the truce was sealed 
 by the marriage of the Cardinal's nephew to a Papal 
 niece. The house of Este, the oldest in Italy, rulers 
 of Ferrara, backed all his undertakings, and the heir 
 of the house was soon to marry his sister Lucrezia. 
 He was in very friendly correspondence with the 
 Gonzaga of Mantua, and two years later they were 
 to betroth their daughter to his son. The King of 
 France gave him troops, including a thousand Swiss 
 mercenaries, and, with his own hired soldiers, he 
 mustered eight thousand men. The treasures of the 
 Church furnished the sinews of war. On the 1st 
 of December he took the town of Imola, and in Jan- 
 uary his army entered Forli. The gifts of the two 
 hundred thousand pilgrims who came to obtain the 
 blessing of Alexander VI. were timely, for Caesar's 
 expenses were over eighteen hundred ducats a day, 
 and a further gain was made by levying on all ec- 
 clesiastical incomes the " Turkish tenth " for a threat- 
 ened crusade. 
 
 At the end of February the sudden return of the 
 Duke of Milan compelled the French King to recall 
 the troops loaned to Caesar, and he returned to 
 Rome in triumph. All the cardinals received him 
 as he rode in at the head of his mercenaries, and the 
 city gave in his honor a great spectacle — the triumph 
 of Julius Caesar. He went at once to kneel at the 
 feet of his father. He was clad, Spanish fashion, in
 
 A Family Quarrel. 253 
 
 black, and greeted the old man in his own beloved 
 tongue. The Pope was hysterical for joy, weeping 
 and laughing in a breath, to see his family once more 
 united around him. Five months later, as Lucrezia's 
 husband, the young Neapolitan Prince, came out of 
 St. Peter's Church, assassins fell upon him with dag- 
 gers, left him for dead on the steps, and springing 
 upon the horses of some mounted men waiting in the 
 street, made off. The Prince dragged himself to the 
 Pope and accused Caesar of the deed. His wife and 
 his sister-in-law tended his sick-bed, and for fear of 
 poison cooked his food themselves. The Pope set a 
 guard of sixteen men for his defence. Caesar came 
 to see him, and as he went out turned and said, 
 " What does not happen at midday may happen at 
 night." A few days later he came again, drove 
 Lucrezia and Sancia from the room, called in his 
 hangman, and the wounded man was strangled in his 
 bed. There is uncertainty about the details of this 
 story, — accurate details of such occurrences would 
 probably be very difficult to obtain, — but there was 
 no mystery about this murder in the house of Borgia. 
 Alexander acknowledged that the final murderous 
 assault had been made by Caesar, but said he had 
 great provocation. There is no need to seek, like 
 the common talk of Rome, for strange and dark- 
 motives. It may have been the sudden flaming out 
 of personal hatred, or Caesar may have wanted to use 
 his sister's hand for the third time in his desperate 
 game of ambition. 
 
 Whether Alexander's attempts to defend the vic- 
 tim were real or feigned, he accepted the deed when
 
 254 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 it was done, and turned to the task of gathering gold 
 for Caesar's army. The next month twelve new 
 cardinals paid ten thousand florins apiece for their 
 red hats. And the winter campaign of Caesar was 
 so vigorous that in the spring the Pope named 
 him Duke of Romagna, with Imola, Forli, Pesaro, 
 Rimini, Faenza, Cesena, and Fano for his dominions, 
 and thirty-six thousand florins yearly income paid by 
 Florence to purchase peace. 
 
 Caesar became supreme in Rome, and the city 
 trembled before his will. His father smiled on his 
 pleasures enough to be present at a most scandalous 
 banquet, followed by a performance which was called 
 in the diaries and letters of the times " the dance of 
 the fifty courtesans." A Venetian who dared to 
 write a pamphlet on the Pope and his son was found 
 strangled in the Tiber. Alexander expressed his 
 regret to the ambassador, and explained that his son 
 was " a man of good disposition, but constitutionally 
 unable to bear an insult." 
 
 It must have been during this year that a letter 
 from a friend in Rome to a certain Sylvius de Sabel- 
 lis, a refugee at the imperial court, was printed in 
 Germany and spread over the world. It describes 
 the Pope as worse than Mohammed, an Antichrist, 
 than whom no more open enemy of God, opposer of 
 Christ, and subverter of faith and religion could pos- 
 sibly be imagined. " All things are for sale with 
 this Pontifex. One trembles to relate the monstrous 
 lusts, insulting both God and man, which are openly 
 practised in his house. His son Caesar goes about 
 surrounded, like a Turk, with harlots, and guarded by
 
 Instans Tyrannus. 255 
 
 armed men. At a word from him any one is killed 
 and thrown into the Tiber, or poisoned, and his 
 property, both in and out his house, seized. The 
 thirst and rapine of his servants are satiated with 
 human blood, and for fear of their cruelty the no- 
 blest families are leaving, the best citizens are hidden, 
 and, unless we are succored from such ills by the 
 Emperor as soon as possible, needs must that every 
 one take thought to abandon the city and flee." 
 
 In June the fishers found a group of dead bodies 
 in the Tiber, among them two young boys of eigh- 
 teen and fifteen. They were Astorre and Octavian 
 Manfredi, who had surrendered Faenza the year be- 
 fore, on solemn promise of freedom, and been lying 
 in the castle of San Angelo ever since. 
 
 Four days later Caesar marched on another cam- 
 paign. He took Urbino and Camerino by treachery, 
 plundered the empty palace of the first, and threw 
 the fratricidal tyrant of the second into prison. 
 Every little city trembled before his craft and a will 
 that feared nothing human or divine. Meanwhile, 
 at Rome, Alexander was providing the finances. 
 At this time died the Cardinal Ferrari, who had 
 amassed enormous wealth in the service of the Bor- 
 gia. The Pope seized his riches, and all Rome said 
 that the white powder of the Borgia had been his 
 death. No one pitied him much, for the satirists 
 decorated his grave with such epigrams as this: 
 " Here lies Ferrarius. The earth has his body, the 
 bull [crest of the Borgias] his goods, hell his soul." 
 
 In the midst of his greatest success a sudden dan- 
 ger shook Caesar's triumph. His mercenary captains.
 
 256 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 petty tyrants who had sought refuge in his service, 
 formed a conspiracy, revolted under the lead of the 
 Cardinal Orsini, raised twelve thousand men, and 
 utterly defeated Caesar's troops under the command 
 of two trusty Spanish captains. But Caesar, who 
 never accomplished very much with the sword in 
 pitched battle, was not at the end of his resources. 
 He skilfully played upon the jealousies and fears of 
 the confederates, and while negotiations were going 
 on his agents were quieting his rebellious cities. 
 One of them, Messer Ramiro, used in this work a 
 desperate cruelty, and in the end of December, when 
 he had successively blotted out all dangerous ele- 
 ments in the cities assigned to him, Caesar called him 
 to conference at Cesena. Four days later his dead 
 body was found in the market-place, cut in two pieces 
 — a broken tool. 
 
 Meantime, at Rome, the nervous Pope was plung- 
 ing into wild amusements. One night, according to 
 the diary of his master of ceremonies, he watched a 
 procession of indecent masks which halted long be- 
 fore his windows. 1 On others Cardinal Orsini, se- 
 cret head of the league against the Borgias, joined 
 him, according to reports from the Venetian ambas- 
 sador, at the gaming-tables in the Vatican, when 
 certain fair ladies sat among the prelates. Alexan- 
 der was anxiously awaiting news from Caesar, who 
 was trying to persuade the revolted generals to meet 
 him at Sinigaglia for a conference which should 
 
 1 Burchard hated the memory of Alexander VI., but that is no 
 good reason for doubting the accuracy of his unadorned reports of 
 such notorious occurrences as the above.
 
 Nothing Succeeds Like Success. 257 
 
 change the truce into lasting peace. Deluded at last 
 by his solemn pledges, they entered the town on 
 the 31st of December, leaving their troops scattered 
 in detachments at various distances from the walls. 
 The instant they entered the doors of the castle they 
 were seized and disarmed. Two of them were 
 strangled that night, one weeping, and the other 
 begging as a last favor that the Pope would absolve 
 him and bless his soul. 
 
 When Alexander received secret word of the suc- 
 cess of this treachery all his court marked the sudden 
 merriment of his manner. On the 3d of January 
 Cardinal Orsini was cast into prison, his palace seized, 
 and his eighty-year-old mother driven into the streets, 
 where she wandered long before any one dared to 
 aid her. A quick succession of arrests followed, the 
 house of each man being at once pillaged and its 
 contents of plate and other valuables carried to the 
 Vatican. On the 18th of January Caesar heard that 
 the Roman enemies were safely in hand, and at once 
 strangled the two remaining prisoners of Sinigaglia, 
 Paolo Orsini and the Duke of Gravina ; and on the 
 22d it was announced in Rome that the Cardinal 
 Orsini had died in prison. In the end of February 
 Caesar, having finished the reduction of the towns of 
 his duchy, entered Rome. He was the most noted 
 man in Italy. A clever diplomat like Machiavelli 
 wondered at his statecraft, the King of France called 
 the affair of Sinigaglia worthy of a Roman, and 
 Leonardo da Vinci was glad to be in his service as 
 engineer. 
 
 On the 29th of March the Venetian ambassador 
 Q
 
 258 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 wrote that eighty new offices had just been created 
 in the Curia and sold immediately for seven hundred 
 and sixty florins apiece. On the 10th of April 
 Cardinal Michiel died, after two days of sudden ill- 
 ness. Before dawn his house was stripped, and three 
 days later the Venetian ambassador, going to th>"< 
 Vatican, found the Pope superintending an inventor** 
 of his movable property in the hall. On the 18th o' 
 May the Pope's secretary, Troccio, fled from the city 
 He was overtaken by a ship at Corsica, brought back 
 and strangled by Micheletto in prison, while Caesai 
 looked on through a window. He was accused ol 
 betraying the Borgias to France. His estate was 
 confiscated. On the 8th of June the body of Jacopc 
 Santa Croce, with the head beside it, lay all day on 
 the bridge of San Angelo. His property was con- 
 fiscated and his wife and children left penniless. On 
 the 5th of August the Cardinal Monreale, nephew ol 
 the Pope, died suddenly. Alexander was his heir, 
 and the Venetian ambassador reported that Rome 
 estimated the estate at one hundred thousand florins, 
 and said, " The Cardinal has also been sent the way 
 that all the other well-fattened ones have gone." 
 These were violent or crafty men, but a great part 
 of their crimes had been committed to serve the 
 Borgias, and it is small wonder that a great fear 
 fell on Rome. No man of prominence could die 
 of the malignant malarial fever which raged that 
 summer that awe-struck gossip did not whisper, 
 " The poison of the Borgias " ; and all rich men be- 
 gan to tremble for their lives. 
 
 In the midst of triumph, when their feet were on
 
 The Full Cup. 259 
 
 the necks of their enemies and they had swept all 
 the gains of victory into their own coffers by de- 
 stroying the servants who knew its secrets, the end 
 suddenly came. On the night of his nephew's death 
 Alexander went with Caesar to sup in the garden of 
 Cardinal Hadrian of Corneto.and on the 12th of August 
 both fell ill. The next morning Alexander was bet- 
 ter and played cards a part of the day. It was only 
 a brief rally for the debauchee of seventy-three. 
 Whether the report is true that the Borgia had 
 drunk by mistake of the poison they had prepared 
 for their rich host, who was also violently ill, cannot 
 now be determined. Most probably they all caught 
 in the night air a malignant malarial fever. At all 
 events, Alexander's cup was full, and on the 18th of 
 August he died. All Rome spoke in joy and horror 
 of his death, of the awful appearance of the swollen 
 corpse, of the little black dog that ran ceaselessly to 
 and fro through the halls of the Vatican the night 
 before he died. The Marquis of Mantua wrote to his 
 wife that Alexander was heard in his last illness to 
 murmur, " I am coming. It is right ; only wait a 
 little." The bystanders remembered that he had 
 made a bargain with the devil to give his soul for 
 twelve years of the Papacy, and the bond was four 
 days overdue. The story was widely accepted, and 
 even among those who rejected it the pious every- 
 where felt with shuddering relief that the Pope must 
 have gone to hell. 
 
 Alexander really died after confession, the com- 
 munion, and extreme unction, and if he called on 
 any one, it was doubtless the Virgin Mary ; for he
 
 260 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 had always considered himself as under her special 
 protection. He had a picture painted of her, with 
 the face of his mistress, the beautiful young Julia 
 Farnese ; and three years before had presented her 
 altar with three hundred florins at a special service 
 of thanksgiving for saving his life when a fireplace 
 fell on him. For Alexander was not an atheist, and 
 in all probability never once thought of himself as an 
 unbeliever. 1 
 
 Caesar said afterward to Machiavelli that he had 
 made preparations for every possible contingency 
 except that he should be ill when his father died. 
 As it was, he could only be carried by the six Span- 
 ish cardinals into the Vatican. From his sick-bed he 
 issued orders to concentrate all his mercenaries at 
 Rome and keep them under arms. He was the first 
 to hear of his father's death, and his trusty hangman, 
 Micheletto, put a dagger to the throat of Cardinal 
 Casanova and compelled the surrender of the key of 
 the Papal treasure. Two chests full of gold pieces 
 were instantly carried off to Caesar's bedside. Even 
 before he had recovered, he held court, surrounded 
 by his six Spanish cardinals, as if he were a sovereign, 
 and finally promised the College of Cardinals to leave 
 Rome in three days, on condition of keeping the title 
 of General of the Church. 
 
 On the 22d of September, 1503, the Conclave 
 
 1 In this connection a section from the preface of Richardson's 
 " Clarissa Harlowe" (1749) might be pertinent: " It will be proper 
 to observe, for the sake of such as may apprehend hurt to the morals 
 of youth from the more finely written letters, that the gentlemen, 
 though professed libertines, . . . are not, however, infidels or 
 scoffers." Quoted in " Ten-Minute Sermons."
 
 How are the Mighty Fallen / 261 
 
 elected the nephew of Pius II., who took the title of 
 Pius III. He was broken in health, and died in less 
 than a month. 
 
 Meantime Caesar had come back to press his fortune. 
 But his foes among the Roman nobility demanded 
 his trial, his mercenaries began to fall away to richer 
 lords, and when Pius died Caesar was only saved 
 from death by the strong walls of San Angelo. For 
 the Pope's son was so hated that an enemy killed 
 one of his servants to wash in his blood. He still 
 remained, however, a power to be reckoned with, and 
 the Cardinal della Rovere visited him in the castle, 
 and they made a bargain. Caesar was to give the 
 votes of the six Spanish cardinals, and in return to 
 be named Standard-bearer of the Church. Della 
 Rovere bought the rest of the votes, and was unani- 
 mously elected Pope, taking the name of Julius II. 
 
 Then the fortunes of Caesar sank lower and lower. 
 The once haughty nepot begged an interview with 
 the Duke of Urbino, whose inheritance he had seized, 
 stood cap in hand before him, fell on his knees and 
 begged pardon, promised with many excuses to give 
 back all he had stolen from his palace, and even re- 
 ceived his chamberlain with a bearing as servile as it 
 had once been proud. He feared for his life. Vol- 
 unteering for the service of Spain, he was carried to 
 Madrid and thrown into prison. Escaping two years 
 later, he found refuge at the court of his brother-in- 
 law, King of Navarre, and in three months, at the 
 age of thirty-one, fell in petty battle with a rebellious 
 crown vassal.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 HUMANISM IN EUROPE FROM THE ACCESSION OF 
 SIXTUS IV. TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER VI. 
 (1471-1503) — THE FLORENTINE ACADEMY 
 AND THE OXFORD SCHOOL — FABER STAPU- 
 LENSIS AND HIS PUPILS AT PARIS — JOHN 
 REUCHLIN AND THE OLDER HUMANISTS OF 
 GERMANY — ERASMUS. 
 
 HREE chief tendencies are observable in 
 the history of Italian Humanism. They 
 can be traced from the first, but be- 
 come very distinct with each succeed- 
 ing generation. There were the pagan 
 Humanists, like Valla and Filelfo — the men who 
 lived in the moral atmosphere of heathenism and 
 practised not only the style, but the vices, of anti- 
 quity. We have seen in the person of Savonarola a 
 learned puritanism which desired to take from the 
 New Learning only what might help to renew reli- 
 gion and purify morals. We must now consider a 
 middle Humanism, which hoped to make the world 
 better by uniting the New Testament and the phi- 
 losophy of antiquity. 
 
 The origin of this party is plainly marked in the 
 
 262
 
 Gemistos Platon. 263 
 
 visit of Gemistos Platon to the Council of Florence 
 in 1438. He came in the train of the Greek Em- 
 peror, to arrange a union between the Greek and 
 Latin Church as the price of help against the Turks. 
 He was a native of Constantinople, eighty-three 
 years old, and reputed the most learned man who 
 spoke the Greek tongue. He did but little for the 
 cause of union, but much for that cause which lay 
 nearest his heart — the inauguration of a new religion, 
 founded on the teaching of Plato, which was to unite 
 East and West, Mohammedan and Christian. 1 
 
 Plato was then almost unknown in Italy, and the 
 charm of the old man's conversation carried away 
 Cosimo de' Medici. He determined to educate Mar- 
 siglio Ficino, the six-year-old son of his physician, 
 to become the translator and interpreter of Plato to 
 Western Christendom. Platon published in Italy 
 several works pointing out 'the superiority of Plato 
 over Aristotle. In these it appeared that Platon's 
 system of the world was antichristian, for his idea of 
 the eternal existence of an abstract, unchangeable 
 necessity seemed to leave no place for miracle, re- 
 sponsibility, or redemption. Such opinions awoke a 
 storm of opposition, and the defenders of Aristotle 
 used to the fullest the charge of heresy against the 
 assailer of the philosophy of all the orthodox. Pla- 
 ton returned to Greece, and died in the middle of 
 the century, nearly a hundred years old. Some ten 
 years later Sigismondo Pandelfo Malatesta, Lord of 
 Rimini and General of Venetian mercenaries against 
 the Turk, brought the bones of Platon to Rimini, and 
 1 As he is reported to have said in Florence.
 
 264 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 buried them in the Church of San Francesco, which 
 was his family tomb. 
 
 From Platon proceeded two schools of thought 
 which, despite their common origin, grew to diamet- 
 rical opposition ; even as the hierarchical tendency 
 which formed the Papal system, and the predestina- 
 tion theology which the Protestant Reformers 
 opposed to it, were both justly supported by the 
 authority of Augustine. Pomponius Leto, one of 
 Platon's scholars, became the founder of the Roman 
 Academy and the centre of the neopagans. Under 
 the patronage of Lorenzo, the grandson of Cosimo, 
 the Florentine Academy, led by Marsiglio Ficino, 
 became the centre of true Platonic influences. For 
 Ficino did not stop with the half-Platonism of Platon. 
 In the original he found the spiritual philosophy with 
 which he Platonized the New Testament, but did not 
 destroy it. The great festival of the Florentine 
 Academy on the birthday of Plato was usually held 
 in the beautiful villa Careggi, in whose rooms, open- 
 ing on one side into the shady porticoes of the court 
 with its gently running fountains, and looking out on 
 the other upon Florence and the Tuscan hills, Lo- 
 renzo entertained the little company with a dinner and 
 music, followed by reading and discussion of Plato's 
 works. In the summer heat they sought refuge in 
 the woods, and under the shade of the lofty planes 
 beside the mountain brook discussed the things of the 
 soul while their eyes traversed the vale of the Arno, 
 seeking vainly the gleam of the distant sea. 
 
 Ficino lectured on Plato from the pulpit of the
 
 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 265 
 
 cathedral, " discussing the religious philosophy of 
 our Plato here in the midst of the church, and medi- 
 tating in the holy places on the holy truth." For to 
 him the ideas of Plato were prophecies in philo- 
 sophic form of the teaching of Christ, and he found in 
 the life of Socrates types of the life of Jesus; such 
 as the cock he offered before death, the cup he 
 drank, and his last words. At the age of forty he 
 was ordained priest, and though he Platonized the 
 Gospel, there is little doubt that he ardently desired 
 to promote the influence of Christ in the world by 
 training men who, like Him, were followers of truth. 
 This personal relation to Christ, which grew upon 
 the head of the Florentine Academy in spite of the 
 mystic thinking and allegorizing interpretation that 
 made Jesus teach the theology of Plato, appears 
 very plainly in Giovanni Pico, Prince of Mirandola 
 (1463-94). From his youth he evinced great apti- 
 tude for study, and came to Rome at the age of 
 twenty-four, a heralded prodigy of learning. He 
 posted nine hundred theses for discussion, offering in 
 princely fashion to pay the expenses of any dispu- 
 tants who desired to come from a distance. But 
 Innocent VIII. was moved to prohibit the discussion, 
 and a theological commission pronounced thirteen of 
 the propositions heretical. Pico published an apol- 
 ogy written in twenty days, marked by wide learning 
 and a superficial subtlety. Rut he was not declared 
 free from heresy till just before his death. This ex- 
 perience was for the youth the end of licentious and 
 frivolous living. He turned to virtue, burned his
 
 266 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 book of wanton verses of love and other like fanta- 
 sies, and gave himself fervently to the study of Holy 
 Scripture. He undertook it under the burden of 
 profound erudition. He had read libraries of the old 
 fathers of the Church; he had mastered all the 
 cognition of philosophy both of the old teachers and 
 the new schools ; he knew many languages ; he was 
 very learned in all the subtle and cunning disputa- 
 tions of the Cabala. He became a master of alle- 
 gorical interpretation, and found all the philosophy 
 of Plato in the books of Moses. He made a cipher 
 system, apparently somewhat similar to that by 
 which a Western student has drawn the secret his- 
 tory of the times of Elizabeth from the plays c*f 
 Shakespeare. For by manipulations of the Hebrew 
 letters of the first word of Genesis he concludes that 
 Moses meant to say by it, " The Father, in the Son 
 and by the Son, the beginning and end, or rest, cre- 
 ated the supercelestial, the empyrean, and the sub- 
 lunary sphere, fitly joined together." 
 
 That he might be undiverted from his studies he 
 sold his princedom to his nephew and gave great 
 part of the price to the poor. He was content with 
 mean fare, but retained somewhat of his old state in 
 the use of silver plate. He prayed often, and gave 
 plenteously to relieve the miseries of such needy 
 people as he came by the knowledge of. In Holy 
 Week he scourged himself for the cleansing of his old 
 offences and in the remembrance of the great benefit 
 of the passion and death of Christ suffered for our 
 sake. To a man accustomed to vice, who sought 
 discourse with him on the nature of virtue, he said,
 
 England and Humanism. 267 
 
 " If we had ever before our eyes the painful death of 
 Christ which' he suffered for love of us; and then if 
 we would again think upon our own death, we should 
 surely beware of sin" ; and the man forsook his evil 
 ways. Pico once told his nephew, as they walked in 
 an orchard at Ferrara, that when he had finished 
 certain books he meant to give all his substance to 
 the poor, and with the crucifix in hand to walk bare- 
 foot about the world, preaching Christ. When he 
 came to die, in the flower of his youth, the priest, 
 holding up the crucifix, inquired whether he firmly 
 believed it to be the image of him that was very 
 God and very man, together with the other doctrines 
 that belong to the faith of the Church. Pico an- 
 swered that he not only believed, but certainly knew 
 it, and said he was glad to die, because death made 
 an end of sin. He lay then with a pleasant and merry 
 countenance, and in the very pangs of death spoke as 
 though he saw the heavens opened. He made the 
 poor of the hospital of Florence heir of all his lands. 1 
 About the close of the fifteenth century another 
 transalpine land began to feel the impulse of the 
 New Learning. It was carried to England by men 
 like Linacre, physician to Henry VIII., and Grocyn, 
 who, having studied Greek in Italy, was the first to 
 give good instruction in it at Oxford. Rut it was 
 first made widely effective by John Colet. He was 
 descended on both sides from gentlefolk and inherited 
 
 1 In this account of Pico T have borrowed the diction of Sir 
 Thomas More's translation of his " Life" by his nephew, Giovanni 
 Francesco Pico; published in the Tudor Library with an introduction 
 by J. M. Rigg, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, to which I am also indebted.
 
 268 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 a large fortune. On finishing his course at Oxford 
 he went to Italy in 1493, and came home in 1496. 
 We have no details of his travels and studies. He 
 returned apparently unimpressed by the arts of Italy, 
 except music, which he loved, and possessed of the 
 spirit which had mastered the Florentine Platonists — 
 the spirit of intense devotion to the Bible and per- 
 sonal loyalty to Christ. He settled at Oxford, where 
 he began to lecture on the Epistle to the Romans. 
 These expositions were very different from the scholia 
 in isolated texts, or the diffuse discussion of logical 
 distinctions unknown to the writers, which formed the 
 common method of interpretation of the books of the 
 Bible. His philological remarks are illustrated from 
 his reading, including patristic, classic, and contem- 
 porary writings. But he does not stop short with 
 such comments. He is continually turning aside into 
 practical applications ; no " threads of nine days long 
 drawn from an anti-theme of half an inch," but true 
 parentheses of passionate feeling. He had a keen 
 historical sense, also, and tries constantly to keep the 
 readers in touch with the personality, the thought, 
 and the feeling of Paul and the Romans, and thus 
 make the sentences vivid and potent. 
 
 A man of Colet's power and learning gathered 
 scholars round him, not only hearers, but friends. 
 The most noted of these was Thomas More, born in 
 1478. His father, Sir Thomas More, placed him in 
 the household of the Lord Chancellor, the Arch- 
 bishop Morton. There his wit soon distinguished 
 him, and his master was wont to say to his guests, 
 " This child here waiting at table will prove a mar-
 
 Thomas More. 269 
 
 vellous man." At Morton's wish he was sent to 
 Oxford, where Colet formed such a high opinion of 
 his powers that he was afterward accustomed to 
 speak of him as the one genius in England. More 
 was admitted to the bar in 1500, and began practice 
 in London. He used the right of teaching conferred 
 by his degree to give a course of lectures on Augus- 
 tine's " City of God " in the Church of St. Lawrence, 
 of which Grocyn was Rector. They attracted much 
 attention and were well attended, and at the age of 
 twenty-five he was sent to Parliament. When the 
 royal grant for the wars was about to be passed in 
 silence, young More, daring to attack it, so rallied 
 the House that the final vote was only a fourth of 
 the amount asked. Because of the King s displea- 
 sure, he found it wise to retire from public life. He 
 thought of a monastery, but by the advice of Colet, 
 who came up to London about this time to take the 
 duties of Dean of St. Paul's, he married and remained, 
 as the phrase was, "in the world." He occu- 
 pied his enforced leisure with study, being chiefly 
 attracted by the life and works of Pico della Miran- 
 dola. Thus he remained in obscurity, solacing him- 
 self with his family, his books, and his friends, until 
 the accession of Henry VIII. (1 509) set him free from 
 fear and idleness. 
 
 Of all the transalpine lands, France was the first 
 to begin the study of Greek — an unmistakable si 
 of the stirring of the spirit of the New Learning. 
 But the first Frenchman who learned enough Greek 
 to do anything with it seems to have been Faber 
 Stapulensis (Jacques Lefevre d' Etaples), \A^-\^lb-
 
 270 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Having acquired the title of Doctor at Paris, he 
 went to Italy in 1492, and probably spent two years 
 there, visiting Florence, Rome, and joining in the 
 circle of scholars who gathered round the printing- 
 house of Aldus Manutius in Venice. The knowledge 
 which he brought back he devoted more and more to 
 the study of the Bible, abandoning in its favor the 
 classic authors who had once been his favorites. He 
 was a frail little man, bent over by much study, with 
 a beautiful face, at once earnest and gentle. The 
 scholars who came to learn of him in Paris all loved 
 him, and of the opponents he soon aroused, none 
 seems to have felt anything but respect for the 
 purity and honesty of his life and the natural kindli- 
 ness of his disposition. For whether among poor 
 begging scholars, or with his friend, the scion of the 
 great house of Briconnet, whose forefathers had been 
 officers of State and Church for generations, or as 
 court chaplain to the princes of Navarre, Faber bore 
 himself " at manhood's simple level." He was firmly 
 devoted to the system and worship of the Church, 
 by principle opposed to schism, and by nature averse 
 to revolution. But the more he studied the Scrip- 
 ture the more it became evident to him that the 
 preaching of the clergy and the method of training 
 them needed reform, and during the closing years of 
 the fifteenth century, while he was teaching in Paris 
 or making a pious pilgrimage to Rome, his know- 
 ledge of the Bible and his convictions that the world 
 and the Church were ignorant of it grew steadily. 
 Very likely he may have already formed the hope of 
 giving the Bible to the people of France in their
 
 Education in Germany. 271 
 
 own tongue. At all events he was forming that 
 clearer method of exegesis which was the inheritance 
 of his spiritual descendants. Afterward, developed 
 by the genius of Calvin, it was the contribution of 
 the French to the Protestant Reformation, of univer- 
 sal influence even upon Anglicans, Lutherans, and 
 Arminians who rejected the characteristic French 
 theology. 
 
 But it was in Germany that Humanism was to 
 find its second home. Before the end of the fifteenth 
 century, while the New Learning in France and 
 England was scarcely more than the possession of a 
 little group of scholars at one university, the spirit of 
 Humanism was appearing here and there through 
 the cities, the universities, and the pulpits of the 
 whole north and centre of the German Empire. The 
 " forerunners " had, for the most part, brought it over 
 the Alps as a help in their efforts to promote the 
 better study of theology and the reform of religion. 
 But by the seventies it had become in Germany the 
 educational mode for all active spirits to train the 
 human mind, not according to the narrow rubrics of 
 the scholastic system, but to give it a liberal educa- 
 tion. How broad that ideal was may be seen by the 
 book which the Emperor Maximilian (born in 1459 
 and afterward the idol and patron of the Humanists) 
 caused to be made to describe his education. The 
 pictures of the Weiss Konig show the Prince study- 
 ing everything, from theology to magic and from 
 fortification to astrology. How prevalent the ideal 
 was is apparent in the single observation that this 
 first generation of German Humanists, men born
 
 272 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 about the middle of the fifteenth century, found at 
 Oxford, at Paris, and in the universities along the 
 Rhine and the Danube that impulse which the Fore- 
 runners had crossed the Alps to find in the valleys 
 of the Arno and the Tiber. 
 
 They were conscious also of a strong national and 
 patriotic feeling, and were worthy successors of 
 Gregor of Heimburg. This patriotic feeling began 
 to appear in a tendency to write in German and speak 
 to the common people. Yet it was not a polemic 
 age. Those of the Older German Humanists who 
 lived over into the sixteenth century were sum- 
 moned to range themselves in two great intellectual 
 wars ; but the last third of the fifteenth century was 
 a time of comparatively quiet labor, when the new 
 leaven was slowly leavening the whole lump. This 
 secret process appears plainly in two signs : the suc- 
 cessive creation at the more progressive universities, 
 like Erfurt, Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Basle, of the 
 new chair of " Eloquence and Poetry"; and in the 
 foundation of learned societies, which were either 
 local, uniting the Humanists of a single city, or of 
 wider range, like the two great societies of the Rhine 
 and the Danube. These societies kept alive their 
 common feeling by an extensive learned correspon- 
 dence, and expressed their common purpose by the 
 attempted publication of literary monuments of 
 classic antiquity or the ancient Latin chronicles of 
 Germany. 
 
 Among the Older Humanists of Germany the 
 three tendencies which we have observed among the 
 men of the New Learning in Italy make themselves
 
 Conrad Celtes. 273 
 
 apparent, but not in the same proportion. For, while 
 the pagan jtendency ruled almost absolutely at 
 Rome, and perhaps prevailed everywhere in Italy 
 except in Florence, it is much less prominent in 
 Germany. Its best representative is Conrad Celtes 
 (1459-1509). He finished the education he had 
 received at various German universities by six 
 months in Italy, and on his return received from the 
 city of Nuremberg the poet's crown. The next ten 
 years he spent in wandering over Germany, teaching 
 eloquence and poetry, now in one and now in an- 
 other university, until at last he received a longed-for 
 call to the University of Vienna, where he spent ten 
 years as head of the new College of Mathematics 
 and Poetry. There he died at the age of fifty, worn 
 out by the excesses of an evil life. He wrote oc- 
 casionally on theological themes, and even made pil- 
 grimages in hope of being cured of disease, but he 
 cared little for religion. He was a true epicurean, 
 bent on enjoying in this life, " which before was 
 nothing, and shall again become nothing," " sleep, 
 wine, friendship, and philosophy." Patriotism was 
 his master passion. His wanderings were partly 
 caused by the wish to see all parts of the fatherland, 
 and he divides his poem " Amores," which seems to 
 have been as promiscuously inspired as the love 
 poetry of Burns, into four books, named, indeed, 
 after four heroines, but arranged " according to the 
 four provinces of Germany." He advises his coun- 
 trymen not to flock over the Alps, and proudly calls 
 the Italians to come and study in that Germany 
 which had given to letters the glorious discovery of
 
 274 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 printing, was the seat of the Empire and therefore 
 the true home of laws, and would soon surpass Italy 
 in poetry and eloquence. The great unfinished 
 work of his life, " Germania Illustrata," an historical 
 and geographical description of the German Empire, 
 was the praise of the fatherland ; and his pleasure in 
 it never flagged. 
 
 The second tendency of Humanism, the ecclesias- 
 tical, whose carriers desired to use the New Learn- 
 ing as a better tool for the reform of morals and 
 religion, was more powerful in the first generation of 
 German Humanism than it ever was in Italy. It is 
 well represented by three men who lived as friends 
 in and about the city of Strassburg. Jacob Wim- 
 pheling (1450-1528) was educated at the University 
 of Erfurt, the first in Germany to establish a chair of 
 " Eloquence and Poetry." There he found the New 
 Learning in full tide, and received from the inscrip- 
 tion in a church of the city, " Noli peccare Deus 
 videt," an ineradicable impression. Returning to the 
 University of Heidelberg, he pursued the study of the 
 classics without direction from the professors ; and 
 when Johann von Dalburg, just returned from Italy, 
 was made Bishop of Worms (1482), and began to re- 
 form the discipline and instruction of the University, 
 Wimpheling became his right-hand man. He also 
 published a defence of the Elector Frederick, whose 
 efforts to reform the clergy of his state had brought 
 against him an accusation of disrespect to the Pope. 
 Soon after Wimpheling became cathedral preacher 
 at Speyer, where he attacked the sins of the clergy 
 and people, formed association and correspondence
 
 Geiler of Kaisersberg. 275 
 
 with all the men of the New Learning within reach, 
 and plunged into the long debate over the Virgin 
 Mary, as a defender of the Immaculate Conception. 
 From these labors he was called to the chair of Elo- 
 quence and Poetry at Heidelberg. He relinquished 
 his work there to fulfil his promise made to an old 
 friend to retire with him to a hermitage. But the 
 plan was stopped. His friend was suddenly elected 
 Bishop of Basle, and Wimpheling was persuaded to 
 settle in Strassburg to finish an edition of the works 
 of Gerson and promote the cause of letters and re- 
 ligion in South Germany. 
 
 The active persuader to this resolution was Geiler of 
 Kaisersberg (1445-15 10). He was educated at the 
 new University of Freiburg, where he seems to have 
 been too much of a dandy, for it is recorded that when 
 he became a magister he was obliged to solemnly swear 
 that for two years he would not wear either pointed 
 shoes or a certain kind of neckwear. When he had 
 finished his studies at Basle, having learned gravity as 
 well as theology, he became a preacher at the cathe- 
 dral, and soon after lectured on theology at Freiburg. 
 This position he relinquished to become cathedral 
 preacher at Strassburg. There he gave himself for 
 the rest of his life to the attempt to reform the 
 morals of the city. In his sermons, where language 
 so frank and popular as sometimes to shock even 
 that rude age is sprinkled with quotations from the 
 classics, he lashed every sort of sin and every rank 
 of sinner. The prince neglecting religion and plun- 
 dering the people; the small tradesman in the City 
 Council afraid to vote according to his conscience for
 
 276 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 fear of losing some one's custom ; the young nobles 
 who stroll into church with falcon on wrist and dogs 
 at their heels ; the big merchants who form trusts to 
 destroy weak rivals and raise prices ; the citizens who 
 live extravagantly and fail to pay their bills ; the 
 grocers who give short weight ; the artisans who glibly 
 promise work by a certain day and never intend to 
 keep their word ; the luxury of the rich who dine on 
 bears' claws or beavers' tails and let the sick poor 
 die in misery and hunger ; the bishops who are bish- 
 ops of purses, not of souls ; the priests who heap up 
 benefices and think only of usury; the canons who 
 gossip in the cathedral during mass, and wear fine, 
 clean linen, while the altar-cloth is dirty ; the monks 
 who keep the rule of mixing water with their wine 
 by pouring a drop of water into a cask, and the pen- 
 ance of flagellation by putting on a heavy jacket and 
 beating themselves with foxes' tails, or whose young 
 men give a banquet and a dance for the neighboring 
 convent in honor of their first celebration of mass — 
 all these are vigorously painted in his discourses. 
 He preached little but morality, for he shared in the 
 opinion that doctrine was not for the laity ; but he 
 was a fervently orthodox Catholic and a stern de- 
 fender of the rights and privileges of the Church. 
 It was to aid in this work of reformation that he 
 stopped Wimpheling on his way to a hermitage, and 
 secured the appointment of their common friend, 
 Sebastian Brant ( 1 45 7- 1 5 2 1 ), as Chancellor of the city 
 of Strassburg. Brant had for some years been pro- 
 fessor of Latin and semi-official poet of the city of 
 Basle, and all three, Gciler in the pulpit, Wimpheling
 
 The Ship of Fools. 277 
 
 by his efforts to improve the education of the clergy, 
 and Brant by his satiric writings, began a crusade for 
 the purification of society, the reform of ecclesiastical 
 abuses, and the renewal of religion. 
 
 Brant was the poet of the trio. Like his friends, 
 he was warmly devoted to the doctrine of the Im- 
 maculate Conception of the Virgin, and plunged 
 hotly into the controversy, which, in spite of the bull 
 of Sixtus IV. forbidding the two parties to accuse 
 each other of heresy because the point was one on 
 which the dogma of the Church was not explicit, 
 had reached a very high degree of bitterness. Brant 
 as a defender of the glory of the Virgin led all the 
 rest in zeal and wrath. The most influential of 
 Brant's writings was his satiric poem of the " Narren- 
 schiff," or "Ship of Fools." It is called a poem, 
 though it is of the kind of poetry which has been de- 
 scribed as only a more difficult way of writing prose. 
 It is an inchoate collection of separate pieces of 
 verse, imperfectly held together by the vague image 
 of a ship filled with fools and sailing without chart 
 or compass for the land of Cocagne. Passages from 
 the Bible, from Plutarch, from Latin authors, popu- 
 lar proverbs, sage reflections, sketches of character, 
 are thrown together with no regard to art. He 
 describes all kinds of fools. Book-collectors who 
 never read, adulterers, the proud, those who waste 
 their time in hunting, lovers of money, those 
 who cannot keep a secret, the sick who will 
 not obey their physicians, blasphemers and de- 
 spisers of the Holy Scriptures, drunkards, -luttons, 
 gamblers, and harlots, the envious, the mockers, the
 
 278 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 lazy, the ungrateful — all to whom God or a philos- 
 opher might say, " Thou fool," are sketched in a style 
 which appears now both rude and weak, but which 
 was very effective in its day. The book was pub- 
 lished at Basle in 1494, and in 1498 it had appeared 
 from the press of six cities in five original and three 
 stolen and interpolated editions. It was received 
 with a storm of applause by the Humanists, and the 
 Latin translation of it ran through three editions and 
 was translated twice into French within two years of 
 its appearance. Ten years later it was put into Eng- 
 lish verse by Alexander Barclay and into English 
 prose by Henry Watson. It was preached upon and 
 imitated until "The Fool" became a stock figure in 
 the literature of the early fifteenth century. 
 
 Between men like this trio of friends and the pagan 
 Humanists like Celtes stood the Middle Party, who 
 hoped to demonstrate the reasonableness of virtue and 
 religion. The core of the party was composed of men 
 who, like the Florentine Academy, strove to unite 
 the mystic philosophy of Greece and the New Tes- 
 tament. Their best representative is Johann Reuchlin. 
 He was educated at the city school of Pforzheim, his 
 birthplace, went to the University of Freiburg, and 
 afterward to Paris as the companion of the younger 
 son of his Prince. Paris was then the chief univer- 
 sity of the world, and her degrees conferred a special 
 distinction. She had appointed a Greek teacher, the 
 first north of the Alps, and Reuchlin was able to 
 make the poor beginnings of a knowledge of that 
 language. From Paris he went to Basle in 1475, 
 where, under the private instructions of a wandering
 
 Johann Reuchlin. 279 
 
 Greek, he learned enough to write a Greek letter to 
 a friend in Strassburg, who wrote to his fellow-stu- 
 dent Brant that he could understand, but could not 
 answer it. Reuchlin's education as a doctor of laws 
 being completed, he entered into the service of 
 Count Eberhard of Wurtemberg, an uneducated 
 prince with a love for learning, who kept scholars 
 employed in translating for him the chief works of 
 classic antiquity. Reuchlin was one of the retinue 
 that accompanied Eberhard to Rome, and until the 
 death of the good Prince he served as councillor and 
 ambassador in many affairs of State. He then passed 
 into the service of Philip of the Pfalz, also a patron of 
 the Humanists, for whom he made a third trip to 
 Italy. On his previous journey he had met Marsiglio 
 Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, and on this third 
 trip he completed in Rome the studies in Hebrew 
 which he had begun with a Jewish court physician 
 during an embassy to the Emperor Maximilian. It 
 was in 1 502 that he received an appointment as one 
 of the three judges of the Swabian League, a very 
 honorable post which he filled for twelve years. 
 
 But while he had been acquiring the reputation as 
 a clever jurist and able statesman which gained this 
 appointment, he had also been earning greater fame 
 as a scholar. His first work, at the age of twenty, 
 was a small Latin lexicon, which in thirty years 
 went through twenty-five editions. A succession of 
 translations from Greek into Latin showed his know- 
 ledge of Greek. His comedy of " Henno," written 
 for the students of Heidelberg, showed a clear Latin 
 style and held the boards of student theatricals for
 
 280 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 many years. And his work " On the Wonder-work- 
 ing Word " had made known his knowledge of 
 Hebrew and the mystic teaching of the Cabala. 
 For he followed Pico della Mirandola, whom he called 
 the most learned man of the day, in the exposition 
 of the Platonic and rabbinic mysticism, feeling that 
 in it was to be found the best illustration and de- 
 fence of Christianity. These labors had in the early 
 nineties brought such renown that the Emperor 
 Maximilian offered to ennoble his family, to make 
 him an imperial Pfalzgraf, with the power of acting 
 as judge on all imperial questions, and, further, of 
 conferring, on his own responsibility, ten doctor's 
 degrees. Reuchlin refused the title with thanks, in 
 which his younger brother, an honest scholar and 
 clergyman of moderate abilities, joined him. He 
 preferred not to disturb by material decoration that 
 spiritual dignity which by the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century was conferred upon him by the com- 
 mon consent of all who loved letters ; the leadership 
 of the learned men of Germany. From them he 
 received an affection and admiration whose honesty 
 cannot be hidden even by the overloaded compliment 
 of the reigning epistolary style. For by the new 
 century the Humanists of Germany were a large and 
 resolute body, conscious of their power, known to 
 one another, and needing only the call of a proper 
 leader to form a closed phalanx that would stand 
 firm against all forces of ignorance, tyranny, and 
 reaction. 
 
 Meanwhile, under the influences of a cosmopolitan 
 education, another northern student had come to the
 
 Desiderius Erasmus. 281 
 
 maturity of his powers, whose strength as a scholar 
 and whose genius as a w r riter were much greater than 
 those of Reuchlin. Desiderius Erasmus was born at 
 Rotterdam eleven years later than Reuchlin, in 1466. 
 He was educated at the school of Deventer, where 
 he had some teaching in Greek from Alexander 
 Hegius. He left at the age of thirteen, knowing 
 Terence by heart and able to read Horace easily. 
 The boy was soon after left an orphan, and fell on 
 evil days ; for one of his guardians lost the larger 
 part of the estate by careless investment, the second 
 died of the plague, and the third, an ignorant and 
 fanatic schoolmaster, was possessed with the idea of 
 forcing Erasmus into a monastery. After two years 
 of struggle he became an inmate of the Augustinian 
 house of Steyn. The monks were coarse men, car- 
 ing nothing for literature, and understanding by re- 
 ligion the discipline of their order, with its vigils and 
 fasts, which they varied by drinking-bouts. Eras- 
 mus's delicate constitution could not endure the fasts, 
 and his fastidious spirit shrank from the drinking- 
 bouts ; but in spite of every repugnance, the poor lad, 
 with no friend to turn to, was finally persuaded to 
 become a monk. He spent six years in the convent. 
 The example of the monks was bad, and he tells us 
 he was inclined to great vices; but he studied much, 
 and gained among all who knew him the report of 
 a very accomplished writer of verse and prose. It 
 was this private reputation which led the Bishop of 
 Cambray, then contemplating a journey to Italy, to 
 offer Erasmus the post of secretary. He accepted, 
 and was ordained priest in the following year. The
 
 282 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Bishop deferred his journey, and sent Erasmus to 
 study theology at Paris. There he settled, with the 
 idea of pursuing his studies and maintaining himself 
 as a private tutor to young gentlemen of fortune. 
 It was thus that he became acquainted with Lord 
 Mountjoy, one of those patrons whose gifts and pen- 
 sions became afterward a chief source of his income. 
 After five or six years at Paris, his skill in Latin 
 letter-writing having gained him much reputation 
 among " the men who know," he went to Oxford 
 with introductions to the head of St. Mary's College. 
 In England he fell in at once with the Grecians, of 
 whom Colet was leader. He met Thomas More, 
 then just of age. One of those stories which are 
 entirely true even if they never happened shows us 
 at a glance the position of the two men in the little 
 circle of elect spirits in which each moved. Having 
 conversed brilliantly for some time without knowing 
 each other's names, Erasmus suddenly cried, " You 
 are either More or nobody," to which the other re- 
 plied, "And you are either Erasmus or the devil." 
 But it was Colet who exercised the greatest influence 
 over Erasmus and in whose society he took the 
 greatest delight. They had much pleasant intercourse 
 and many discussions, scholarly and grave, but full 
 of fire. Erasmus has told how Colet's eye would 
 flash and his quiet countenance appear transfigured 
 as they discussed at dinner " why Cain's offering was 
 rejected," or some similar topic. His whole tone was 
 filled with vehemence as he finally broke in on Eras- 
 mus's commonplace praise of the " Aurea Catena" 
 of Aquinas with a denunciation of one who had
 
 The " Enchiridion" 283 
 
 " contaminated the whole doctrine of Christ with his 
 own profane philosophy." 
 
 It was doubtless the friendship of Colet, Platonist 
 and biblical student, that fixed Erasmus's bent to 
 the study of the New Testament rather than to the 
 classics, and formed in him the determination to 
 revive the "true philosophy of Christ." 
 
 When he had returned to his studies at Paris this 
 serious inclination of his mind appeared in the first 
 of his writings, which carried his fame outside the 
 circle of Humanistic students among whom his 
 letters and his praise had been circulated : the 
 " Enchiridion," or " Christian Soldiers' Dagger," 
 printed at Louvain in 1503. It was written at the 
 request of a wife to awaken her husband to a sense 
 of religion, and against " the error that makes re- 
 ligion depend on ceremonies and a more than Judaic 
 observance of bodily acts, while neglecting true 
 piety." It is a skilful mixture of the teaching of the 
 New Testament and the Platonic philosophy. The 
 end of life, he says, is Christ, and that is " no un- 
 meaning word, but love, simplicity, patience, purity, 
 in short, whatever Christ taught." He then refers 
 to the usages of religion, and exhorts to an effort to 
 find their spiritual meaning. "If you worship the 
 bones of Paul locked up in a casket, worship also the 
 spirit of Paul which shines forth from his writings." 
 " For it is not charity to be constant at church, to 
 prostrate yourself before the images of the saints, 
 burn candles, and chant prayers. What Paul rails 
 charity is to edify your neighbor, to rejoice at your 
 brother's welfare and help his misfortune as if it
 
 284 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 were your own, to instruct the ignorant, to comfort 
 the cast down, to do good in Christ to all to whom 
 you can do good, that, as he gave himself wholly for 
 us, so we also may serve our brothers' need and not 
 our own." He then shows how the life of the monks, 
 " who have set themselves apart for the service of 
 religion," is not lived in this happiness, being " filled 
 with Jewish superstitions and the vices of the world." 
 " And when they are grown gray in the observance 
 of the rules of their order you shall find that they 
 have nothing of the temper of Christ, but are alto- 
 gether unspiritual and unsocial, peevish, and scarce 
 supportable even to themselves ; cold in charity, hot 
 in anger, obstinate in hatred, ready to fight for the 
 most trifling cause, and so far from the perfection of 
 Christ that they have not even the natural virtues of 
 the heathen. Unteachable and sensuous, they turn 
 with disgust from the Scriptures. They never show 
 kindness, but are full of foul suspicion and vain con- 
 ceit." This attack upon the errors and vices of 
 monasticism did not in the least hinder his intimacy 
 with the Franciscan monk John Vitrarius, who urged 
 its publication. For the noble man, of whom Eras- 
 mus has left a pen-picture done with the skill of 
 affection, had suffered from these errors and vices of 
 his fellows. Having endeavored to reform a convent 
 of dissolute nuns, the Suffragan Bishop of Boulogne 
 laid a plot by which eight of the worst lured him into 
 a secret place and would have strangled him with 
 their handkerchiefs had they not been accidentally 
 interrupted. And at the risk of excommunication, 
 and in face of two citations from his Bishop, he had
 
 Humanism in the North. 285 
 
 denounced the sale of indulgences and " the silly 
 credulity of those who thought their sins would be 
 pardoned if they put their money in the box." 
 
 When the " Enchiridion " was published a witty 
 friend wrote, " There is more religion in the book 
 than in the author " ; but the friendship of Vitrarius, 
 who knew the writings of Paul by heart and though 
 " he preached seven times a day never lacked words 
 or learning when his theme was Christ," must have 
 still further increased the concentration of Erasmus's 
 studies upon the aim of promoting " the pure phi- 
 losophy of Christ." The "Enchiridion" went 
 through many editions with great rapidity. Twenty 
 years after its publication the Archdeacon of Alcor, 
 in Spain, wrote : " There is no other book of our time 
 which can be compared to the ' Enchiridion ' for the 
 extent of its circulation. There is not even a coun- 
 try inn that has not a copy of it in Spanish, and this 
 short work has made the name of Erasmus a house- 
 hold word." 
 
 Thus at the death of Alexander VI. (1503) a little 
 group of English scholars, represented by Colet, of 
 Frenchmen, represented by Faber Stapulensis, joined 
 in spiritual friendship by the citizen of the world of 
 letters, Erasmus, were bending all the resources of 
 the New Learning to the study of the Bible ; while 
 in Germany a large and resolute body of Humanists, 
 spread through the cathedral chapters and universi- 
 ties of the Empire, were giving unanimous homage 
 to John Reuchlin and applauding his labors to pro- 
 mote the study of Greek and Hebrew.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 JULIUS II. AND LEO X. — THE NEPHEW OF SIXTUS 
 IV. AND THE SON OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFI- 
 CENT BECOME POPES. 
 
 ULIUS II., the lifelong foe and now the 
 successor of Alexander VI., had the fiery- 
 temper and stern will of the " terrible " 
 Sixtus IV. But his ambition was higher 
 than his uncle's, for though he advanced 
 his nephews and made a great marriage for his nat- 
 ural daughter, his heart's desire was not to enrich his 
 family, but to make the Church State strong among 
 the powers of Italy. There were no luxurious nepots 
 at Rome in his day. He avoided even the appear- 
 ance of the riotous living of Alexander, and the ex- 
 penses of his household were only fifteen hundred 
 florins a month. The income of the Church (a single 
 monk brought back twenty-seven thousand florins 
 from the sale of indulgences) was spent in adorning 
 the city of Rome or maintaining his army. His 
 treasury was never allowed to be empty, and so good 
 was his financial management that, in spite of his great 
 outlays in the arts of peace and war, he left his suc- 
 cessor a treasure of seven hundred thousand florins. 
 
 286
 
 Julius Poliorcetes. 287 
 
 Julius had to face a difficult situation for one who 
 desired to make the patrimonium a strong and inde- 
 pendent state. France had seized Milan and Genoa 
 in the north, Spain had conquered the kingdom of 
 Naples in the south, and these two were ever threat- 
 ening to renew their long and deadly duel for the 
 spoils of Italy. Venice, the only really strong power 
 in the peninsula, sat aside, secure behind her lagoons, 
 and anxious only to draw her own gain out of the 
 general ruin. He who would play in such a game 
 must be strong, and in one of the first bulls of his 
 reign Julius announced that he felt it his duty to re- 
 gain the lost lands of the Church. But he waited 
 two years and a half before he moved from Rome, 
 with twenty-two cardinals and a long train of bishops 
 and prelates, to occupy the chief cities of Romagna, 
 Perugia and Bologna. The host was carried in front 
 of the Pope, and only five hundred men-at-arms 
 were at his back. The tyrant of Perugia, stained 
 with every crime, was awed by the cool will of 
 Julius, who came into the city, leaving his little army 
 outside. Instead of murdering or imprisoning the 
 Pope, which Machiavelli despised him for not doing, 
 he entered the Papal service as a mercenary sol- 
 dier. Then, with a larger army, to which eight 
 thousand French troops were joined, Julius turned 
 against Bologna. The Bentivogli fled, and the Pope 
 entered in triumphal procession under an arch in- 
 scribed "To Julius, the Expeller of Tyrants." A 
 still more splendid triumph awaited him in Rome. 
 
 But crafty Venice, who had so long drawn profit 
 from her neighbors' misfortunes, was now to suffer.
 
 288 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Spain claimed some conquered cities on the Apulian 
 coast; Austria demanded Friuli ; France the return 
 of Brescia, Cremona, and other cities of her Duke- 
 dom of Milan; the Empire, Verona; the Florentines 
 were promised Pisa. Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino 
 followed the Pope. And so in the spring of 1509 
 the Republic of San Marco saw all Italy and three 
 fourths of Europe in arms against her. It was Julius's 
 vengeance on the Venetians for the four cities of the 
 Church they had seized and their resistance to his 
 appointments of aliens to Venetian benefices. " I 
 tell you," he cried one day, in rage, to the Republic's 
 ambassador, " I will make Venice once more a little 
 fishing- village." " And we, Holy Father," he was 
 answered, " will make you once more a little priest." 
 The League was blessed by the Pope and Venice 
 cursed by the interdict. Two months laid the proud 
 Republic at his feet asking for mercy. Then Julius's 
 heart misgave him. He could not destroy the bul- 
 wark of Italy against the Turk, the only state as yet 
 unconquered by the foreigner. In January, 15 10, 
 while France and the allies still called for war, the 
 ambassadors of the Republic knelt before the Pope 
 as he sat on the steps of St. Peter's, in the presence 
 of all Rome, and lightly struck them with a rod at 
 every verse of the intoned Miserere. Then they 
 finished the penance by a pilgrimage to the churches 
 of the city. What the Venetian ambassador wrote 
 home was plain to all the world : " At sixty-five 
 years of age the Pope, suffering from gout and 
 other results of the free life of his youth, is still in
 
 A Fighting Pope. 289 
 
 the fullness of strength and activity, and wishes to 
 be lord and master of the play of the world." 
 
 Peace with Venice was followed by war with 
 France, and to carry it on Julius made a Holy 
 League with Spain and Venice to drive the French 
 over the Alps, hoping also for the aid of England 
 and the Empire. The Bishop of Sitten raised twelve 
 thousand Swiss to come down into the plain of the 
 Po for good pay, and Julius put into the field every 
 mercenary he could afford. At the siege of Miran- 
 dola he himself was seen in the trenches cheering on 
 the soldiers. He took up his quarters in the kitchen 
 of an old cloister, and when a cannon-ball killed two 
 of his servants while he slept, refused to abandon it. 
 When the town surrendered he could not wait for 
 the gates to open, but mounted by a scaling-ladder 
 over the breach. 
 
 It was this spectacle which caused Hutten to 
 write in vitriolic satire, bidding the world look at 
 Julius : " His terrible brow, hiding fierce eyes, with 
 threats of hell-fire blazing in his mouth. Behold 
 him, the author of such destruction and so much 
 crime, born a bitter pest of the human race, whose 
 work and whose recreation is death. Unlike Christ, 
 unlike Peter, what does he do or what is there about 
 him worthy the name of Roman Pontiff?" 
 
 By the spring of 15 12 the French, in spite of their 
 brilliant victory at Ravenna, had lost every foothold 
 in Italy and were almost overwhelmed by the simul- 
 taneous attacks of Spain, Germany, England, and the 
 Netherlands. The Pope had let slip the dogs of war
 
 290 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 to some purpose, and it is easy to believe that in the 
 pride of his victory he should have wished, as Vasari 
 says, to be painted with a sword in his hand. 
 
 Nor was Julius the only Prince of the Church who 
 took the sword. The Cardinal Ippolito of Este had 
 his brother's eyes put out because his mistress 
 praised their beauty ; and when the Pope's nephew, 
 the young Duke of Urbino, fell upon the Papal fa- 
 vorite, Cardinal Alidosi, and killed him with a dagger 
 in the streets of Ravenna, there were other cardinals 
 who said, "Well done." Some of those who ap- 
 proved the Papal policy of " thorough " gained by it. 
 In August, 15 12, the Spanish commander appeared 
 in Florentine territory by order of the Holy League. 
 He was accompanied by Cardinal Medici. Prato 
 was stormed and horribly sacked, and the frightened 
 Republic of Florence agreed to receive the Medici 
 once more within her walls. The government was 
 in their hands within a year. 
 
 France had not looked idly on while all Europe 
 was raised against her. Taking advantage of a 
 temporary disagreement between the Emperor and 
 Julius, she proposed a Council for reform, and in the 
 spring of 15 11 a call was issued from a Synod at 
 Lyons for a General Council of the Church, under 
 the protection of the Emperor and the King of 
 France. It was signed by three cardinals, and 
 claimed the unexpressed support of six others, 
 Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards. The call was 
 fastened on the doors of the chief cathedrals of Italy 
 and spread through Europe. But only eighteen 
 prelates met in Pisa, and even this poor assembly
 
 The Council of the Lateran. 291 
 
 began almost immediately to dissolve, as its members 
 sought, one by one, to make their peace with a Pope 
 who was too strong for them. 
 
 For Julius had met this move of French politicians, 
 using the desire for the revival of religion to check- 
 mate a hostile Pope and keep the patronage of the 
 French national Church in their own hands, by a 
 skilful counter-move. In the summer he called a 
 General Council to meet at the Lateran the following 
 spring. On the 21st of April, 15 12, the Council of 
 Pisa, now transferred for the sake of French protec- 
 tion to Milan, suspended Julius from the Papacy. 
 Ten days later the Pope opened the Council of 
 the Lateran with a solemn procession closed by a 
 company of men-at-arms and nine cannons. There 
 were almost none except Italian prelates present, but 
 England, Spain, and Germany were soon to declare 
 their allegiance to the decrees. The tone of them 
 was given in the sermons and orations which opened 
 the first sessions. 
 
 Egidius of Viterbo, General of the Augustinians, 
 spoke on the need of the reform of the Church. He 
 declared the defeat of Ravenna a sign from heaven 
 to turn the Church from the sword with which she 
 had just suffered defeat to her own weapons, piety, 
 prayer, the breastplate of faith and the sword of 
 light. " Hear," he cried, " O thou Head and De- 
 fender of the city of Rome, hear into what a deep 
 sea of evils the Church thou hast founded by thy 
 blood is fallen ! Dost thou behold how the earth has 
 drunk up this year more blood than rain ? Help us ! 
 Raise the Church! The people, men and women of
 
 292 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 every age — yea, the entire world — are praying and be- 
 seeching; the fathers, the Senate, the Pope himself, 
 beseech you to preserve the Church, the city of 
 Rome, these temples and altars, and to endow this 
 Lateran Synod with the aid of the Holy Ghost for the 
 healing of all Christendom. We beseech thee, teach 
 the Christian princes to make peace among them- 
 selves, and to turn their swords against Mohammed, 
 the open enemy of Christ, that the love of the Church 
 may not only survive these storms and waves, but, 
 through the merits of the Holy Cross and the power 
 of the Holy Ghost, may be cleared of every stain 
 and brought back again to its early purity and glory." 
 
 The next preacher spoke of the unity of the Church, 
 which consisted in the oneness of the members with 
 each other and their subordination to the head, the 
 Vicar of Christ ; whence arose the plain duty of 
 the Council to punish all schismatics who refused to 
 obey this head of the whole body. 
 
 The third sermon, by the General of the Domini- 
 cans, was on the Catholic doctrine of the Church and 
 her synods. Its conclusion condemned the opposi- 
 tion Council as from hell — no heavenly Jerusalem, 
 but rather an earthly Babel, full of strife and confu- 
 sion of tongues. The doctrine of Conciliar Supremacy 
 was denounced as an innovation no older than Con- 
 stance and Basle, and the preacher exhorted the 
 Pope to gird on his two swords of spiritual and tem- 
 poral power and set himself to the work of destroy- 
 ing heresy and schism. 
 
 All these utterances were emphasized and sum- 
 marized in the address of the Apostolic Notary,
 
 Julius the Patron of Art. 293 
 
 Marcello of Venice, who (December, 15 12) praised 
 the Pope for 'having borne heat and cold, sleepless- 
 ness, illness, peril, to defeat his enemies in a holy 
 war, to free Bologna, to conquer Reggio, Parma, and 
 Piacenza, to drive the Frenchmen from Italy. And 
 he prophesied that Julius would gain even greater 
 glory in the works of peace, the reform and glorifi- 
 cation of the Church, now threatened by foes from 
 without and stained by sin and treachery within. 
 "The Pope," he concluded, "must be physician, 
 helmsman, cultivator, in short, all in all, like a sec- 
 ond God on earth." 
 
 In this spirit the Council condemned all acts of 
 the schismatics at Pisa and Milan, laid France under 
 the interdict, condemned the Conciliar theory of the 
 constitution of the Church, suspended the Pragmatic 
 Sanction, and summoned the clergy of France to an- 
 swer for their conduct within sixty days. Julius 
 had not only founded by arms a Papal monarchy in 
 Italy, but secured the regular indorsement of the 
 Church for the theory and practice of that absolute 
 Papal Supremacy which the last two Councils had 
 denied. 
 
 During the years when he was thus bringing his 
 plans to triumph Julius was active in enlarging and 
 adorning his palace and cathedral. He determined 
 early in his pontificate to cover his rooms with 
 mural paintings, to complete the decoration of 
 the chapel of his uncle, to build a superb tomb for 
 himself, and to rebuild St. Peter's on its present 
 gigantic scale. For these works three of the great- 
 est artists of our race were at his command. Neither
 
 294 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Alexander, Caesar, nor Napoleon had such power to 
 adorn their achievements as the Pope to whom it 
 was given to immortalize his conquest of rebellious 
 vassals and his triumphant manipulation of the squab- 
 bling politics of Italy by the genius of Michael An- 
 gelo, Raphael, and Bramante. 
 
 There is no reason to suspect in Julius any artistic 
 ability. The learning which supplied the young 
 Raphael with the information for the wonderful pre- 
 sentation of the ideals of the Platonized Christianity 
 of the Florentine Academy in the pictures of the 
 Stanza della Segnatu a was certainly not his. But 
 there was a certain largeness and power about him 
 which encouraged great conceptions, and he had 
 been dowered with that first quality of a strong 
 ruler, the ability to recognize a servant of distinction 
 and to use genius without hampering it. He laid 
 the corner-stone of a new St. Peter's, in spite of the 
 opposition of all his counsellors, and inspired such 
 restless energy into the work on all his architectural 
 plans that he was said to demand of his contractors, 
 not to build, but to make buildings grow. With 
 ruthless haste he destroyed the monuments and 
 pillars of the old Basilica to make room for his new 
 creation, as if he felt himself to be racing with death, 
 which overtook him on the 16th of February, 15 13. 
 
 On the 6th of March, 15 13, Giovanni de' Medici 
 was elected Pope, and assumed the name of Leo X. 
 His appearance was not in his favor. His legs were 
 very weak and his body very heavy, and when say- 
 ing mass he was compelled to constantly wipe the 
 perspiration from his hands and neck; but he had a
 
 Leo X. 295 
 
 sweet voice and charming manner. He was thirty- 
 seven years oid, and this youngest of the Popes had 
 a precocious ecclesiastical career from the start, for 
 he was an abbot and an archbishop at seven, and a 
 cardinal at fourteen. He had been educated under 
 the care of his father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, in 
 the midst of the best thinkers, writers, and artists of 
 Italy, and his hereditary love of music, literature, and 
 art was guided by refined tastes. It was to these 
 he had always turned for his pleasures, and when he 
 said to his brother, " The Papacy is ours ; let us en- 
 joy it," he was thinking of the measureless opportuni- 
 ties to patronize the arts which were now in his hands. 
 The first act of his government made this plain. 
 So superb an inaugural procession had never been 
 seen. He spent on it one hundred thousand florins. 
 And all Rome was adorned to match. Festal deco- 
 rations in every street and house showed the joy of 
 the city and the wealth of the resident prelates. 
 Some of these were erected to honor the Pope, and 
 bore figures of the apostles or ecclesiastical mot- 
 toes ; but more were to please the new Maecenas, 
 the patron of classic art and literature. Whoever 
 had a beautiful bit of old marble, a statue of Venus 
 or Apollo, or the head of an emperor, placed it in 
 front of his palace. Agostino Chigi, the rich Papal 
 banker, had erected a huge arch covered with 
 mythological devices. It had this reference to the 
 two preceding Popes (Alexander and Julius): "Ve- 
 nus held rule before ; then came Mars ; but now 
 Pallas Athena mounts the throne"; and on the 
 other side of the street his neighbor put out the
 
 296 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 statue of Venus with this inscription : " Mars fuit ; 
 est Pallas; Venus semper ero." For the mode of 
 Rome was classic, not to say heathen. A poet 
 handed the Pope an elegy on the death of a friend, 
 in which he called on the dead " to beg the King of 
 Heaven and all the Gods to give Leo the years 
 which the Fates had cut from his life." Another 
 litterateur tells us how he madea funeral mound be- 
 side the sea for a drowned friend, and called thrice 
 on his manes with a loud voice ; and in a time 
 of pestilence a Greek actually offered a public sac- 
 rifice in the Colosseum to appease the demons of 
 death. 
 
 Leo wanted peace and the arts, but war was 
 forced upon him. Spain and France had already 
 begun their long struggle for the possession of Italy 
 and the leadership of the world, and Leo was drawn 
 into it. The league of Spain, England, the Empire, 
 and the Pope attacked Venice and France, and in 
 the battle of Novara (June 6, 15 13) France was 
 driven once more out of Italy. But the Pope longed 
 to make for his brother Giuliano a powerful princi- 
 pality in Central Italy, and the French King was will- 
 ing to meet him half way. The schism begun under 
 Julius was healed by the return of the French prelates 
 to obedience and the hand of a royal princess offered 
 to the Pope's brother. But Leo wanted two strings 
 to his bow, and at the very hour he was negotiating 
 with France he was considering a new secret league 
 with Spain and his old allies ; for it was said of him 
 that the only thing to which he ever remained true 
 was his own maxim that " to have made a treaty
 
 A Good Bargain. 297 
 
 with one side was the best of all reasons for begin- 
 ning negotiations with the other." 
 
 It was in the midst of these intrigues that Francis 
 I., a beautiful and talented young prince, full of ro- 
 mantic dreams of knightly glory, came to the French 
 throne. He married his aunt to Giuliano de' Medici, 
 and the Pope spent one hundred and fifty thousand 
 florins for presents to the bride and her entry into 
 Rome. (This was more than double the estimated 
 yearly income of the richest merchant banker in 
 Italy.) But when the Pope asked that a principality 
 be formed for his brother out of four cities on the 
 southern border of Milan, the King sharply refused ; 
 he wanted them for himself. And Leo joined the 
 old league of everybody against France. The 
 French army crossed the Alps by a forced march, 
 and in September, 15 15, a two days' fight at Mari- 
 gnano made the young King master of North Italy. 
 The Swiss, in spite of all the efforts of the Cardinal 
 of Sitten, were terribly defeated by the French artil- 
 lery, their hereditary formation in solid squares shown 
 to be useless in the new warfare, and their reputa- 
 tion as the first soldiers of Europe destroyed. Leo 
 and Francis met in Bologna. The young conqueror 
 kissed the Pope's foot and the two embraced. Their 
 treaty recognized all Francis's claims to the Duchy 
 of Milan, placed the States of the Church under his 
 protection, and divided the liberties of the French 
 Church, secured by the Pragmatic Sanction, between 
 the King, who was to name the bishops, and the 
 Pope, who was to draw the first year's income of all 
 vacancies.
 
 298 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 After the battle of Marignano a solemn peace was 
 signed between France, Spain, and the Empire ; and 
 the Pope seized the opportunity to create his nephew 
 Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, at the cost of the nephew 
 of Julius, who was driven into exile. But the pow- 
 ers really agreed on only one thing, suspicion of 
 the Pope, who had deceived each in turn ; and when 
 the exiled Duke of Urbino suddenly reentered his 
 dominions with five thousand mercenaries, all stood 
 by to watch Leo get out of the difficulty as best he 
 could. Money was scarce, and it was only by con- 
 tracting huge debts at enormous interest that he 
 could put an army into the field to defend his nepot. 
 
 And in the midst of this struggle internal troubles 
 came upon him. A conspiracy to murder the Pope 
 was formed among the cardinals. Its chief was Pe- 
 trucci, son of the famous tyrant of Siena. The Pope 
 had permitted the Cardinal's brother to be driven 
 from Siena in favor of a cousin who stood closer to 
 his plans and likings. The young Cardinal kept a 
 costly hunting retinue of dogs and horses, which 
 was limited by the loss of the family lands. He 
 swore vengeance against Leo, and at first meditated 
 killing him on a hunting-party. He even carried a 
 dagger into the consistory, hid under his cardinal's 
 robe. But he finally determined, in counsel with 
 Cardinal Sauli, to poison the Pope by means of a 
 physician recommended to him in the temporary 
 absence of his own. The plot was betrayed by the 
 capture of letters of Petrucci written to his secretary, 
 and it appeared that three other cardinals besides 
 the active conspirators had known of the plot and
 
 Murderous Cardinals. 299 
 
 kept silence. Riario, Dean of the College, of which 
 he had been a> member forty years, was disappointed 
 over his defeat by Medici in the last election. Ha- 
 drian of Corneto had been told by a fortune-teller 
 that Leo would die young and an old man of un- 
 known origin named Hadrian would succeed. So- 
 derini was angry because his brother Gonfalonier, of 
 the Republic, had been driven from Florence by the 
 Medici. The plot was betrayed and Petrucci con- 
 demned to death. The announcement of the sen- 
 tence raised such a storm of indignation in the 
 consistory that the dispute was heard in the streets 
 outside. Nevertheless he was strangled in prison. 
 Sauli was deposed. Hadrian fled to Venice and was 
 deposed for contumacy. The other two were hea- 
 vily fined. Afterward the Pope said high mass under 
 armed guard to protect him against the dagger of a 
 cardinal. 
 
 He also named thirty-nine new cardinals, and the 
 five hundred thousand florins thus brought in were 
 used to end the war of Urbino. After offering in 
 vain ten thousand ducats to one captain for the sur- 
 render of the Duke, alive or dead, Leo finally did 
 succeed in bribing all his generals to desert him, and 
 the Duke was compelled to give up the struggle in 
 consideration of the return of his personal property. 
 Lorenzo de' Medici, thus settled on a ducal throne, 
 was then married to a princess of France, and in 
 15 17 the Pope, with one nepot ruler of Florence, 
 another of Urbino, and the College of Cardinals filled 
 with his friends, held the balance of power in the 
 strife of the young kings of Spain and France so
 
 300 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 soon to break out, first in rivalry for the throne of 
 the German Empire, and then in war for the posses- 
 sion of Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile the Council of the Lateran had been 
 moving in the matter of the so long desired reform 
 of the Church. Leo proposed to establish it by a 
 bull, but the Council demanded detailed regulations 
 for bishops and all clergy, and Pico della Mirandola 
 sent a memorial suggesting that the Church needed 
 not better laws, but better men. The bishops of 
 the Council proposed to effect reform by reestablish- 
 ing, as against the privileges of the cardinals and 
 monastic orders, the ancient episcopal powers ; and 
 when a reform bill was introduced which failed to 
 reestablish these episcopal rights, they threatened to 
 withdraw from the Council. The Pope had to act 
 constantly as mediator, and several compromises 
 were introduced which attempted to establish re- 
 form while still retaining as much as possible of 
 the privileges and patronage which belonged to 
 each class of the clergy represented in the Council. 
 The ancient laws against immorality among the 
 clergy were reiterated with emphasis. " Ringing 
 resolutions " denouncing simony and abuses in the 
 bestowal of benefices were passed unanimously. 
 Discipline was made easier by the removal of cer- 
 tain exemptions from episcopal control enjoyed by 
 priests. Bishops were ordered to supervise clerical 
 education and see to it that the preaching in their 
 dioceses was strong and true ; and arrangements 
 were made for the holding of regular diocesan 
 synods. This last decree would have been really
 
 The Triumph of the Papacy. 301 
 
 influential for reform, but unfortunately it remained 
 almost a dead letter. 
 
 In 15 16 appeared a book by Pietro Pomponazzi, 
 a distinguished professor of Bologna, to prove that 
 the soul was mortal. And the Council thought it 
 wise, in view of the prevailing heathenism, to sol- 
 emnly decree that human souls are individual, im- 
 mortal, and unmaterial. 
 
 The closing ceremony in March was a triumph for 
 the Papacy. All the world was returned to obedi- 
 ence, and Cardinal Carvajal, once head of the schis- 
 matic Council at Pisa, conducted the mass and 
 closed a Council which had reaffirmed the entire 
 claim of the mediaeval Popes, condemned the asser- 
 tion of Conciliar Supremacy made at Constance, and 
 asserted the absolute Papal Supremacy. They sym- 
 bolized these decrees by calling all Christendom to 
 a crusade under the lead of the Pope, and laid a tax 
 for its expenses on all lands of the world. 
 
 Already a Papal messenger had written to Leo 
 (15 16): "In Germany they are only waiting until 
 some fellow once opens his mouth against Rome." 
 He was now sent back as Legate with a paper reform 
 and the demand for a new ecclesiastical tax.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 TRANSALPINE HUMANISM UNDER JULIUS AND LEO 
 — (i) THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS ABOUT 
 JOHN REUCHLIN ; (2) THE THREE DISCIPLES 
 OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRIST; (3) THE 
 PUPILS OF FABER STAPULENSIS ; (4) ULRICH 
 ZWINGLI. 
 
 |T is rather a suggestive division of the 
 history of German Humanism to desig- 
 nate its three periods as the Theological 
 (the Forerunners, ending 147 1), the 
 Teaching (the Older Humanists), and the 
 Polemic, which, beginning with the century, was 
 broken in the middle by the Protestant revolt. And 
 it implies a characteristic distinction between north- 
 ern and southern Humanism that across the Alps 
 the whole Humanistic body should have become so 
 soon involved in such a serious discussion as the con- 
 troversy we are about to follow. 
 
 The forces of ultra-conservatism and reaction were 
 as strong in Italy as in Germany, but the Humanists 
 were less zealous and determined, and when conflict 
 arose they were much inclined to say, with Lauren- 
 
 tius Valla : " Mother Church does not know anything 
 
 302
 
 Christian Art. 303 
 
 about criticism, but in this matter I think just as 
 Mother Church does." In the north the common 
 temper of scholars was sterner and more serious. 
 Italian Humanism never displayed any efficient in- 
 terest in the New Testament, and by the middle of 
 the fifteenth century was the contented servant of 
 privileged abuse. But scarcely had the New Learn- 
 ing passed the Alps before we find its adherents 
 turning to biblical studies and attacking traditional 
 privileges in the name of common justice. While 
 the presses of Venice and Rome were pouring out 
 editions of the classics and erotic poems, the presses 
 of the Rhine were busy with biblical and patristic 
 works, satires, and moral treatises. 
 
 This contrast between the spirit of Germany and 
 Italy is remarkable even in the sphere of art, where 
 it shows least upon the surface. Certain general 
 contrasts between the works of Diirer and Holbein 
 and those of Raphael and Michael Angelo, all four 
 of whom did their best-known work in the first quar- 
 ter cf the sixteenth century, suggest it. The north- 
 erners made cheap prints to go into the houses of 
 the common people, while the Italians were decorat- 
 ing the tombs, the chapels, and the palaces of princes. 
 The Italians were philosophic, moral, and aesthetic ; 
 the Germans religious and evangelic. Michael 
 Angelo painted the creation and prophecy, carved a 
 Moses out of Homer and a David who is one of 
 Plutarch's men ; but Holbein cut " Thus saith the 
 Lord " into the lines of the Samuel that meets Saul 
 in his little woodcut for Bible illustration. Raphael 
 made some perfectly drawn pictures out of the life
 
 304 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of Christ, that are as much like the four gospels as 
 the fighting Pope with his Humanistic cardinals, for 
 whom he did them, was like the Master and his 
 apostles ; Diirer put the spirit of the New Testament 
 into his rude woodcuts of him who preached the 
 gospel to the poor. Raphael painted for all ages 
 das eivig WeiblicJie; Diirer drew for the people of 
 his own age the Man of Sorrows. There is probably 
 as much provincialism in Ruskin's phrase of " kicking 
 prettinesses," applied to Raphael's "Transfiguration," 
 as in Pater's reference to " the grim inventions of 
 Albrecht Diirer " ; but it may not jar upon the broad 
 and gentle temper of history to suggest that the 
 greater rudeness and fidelity to the New Testament 
 of the Germans were both, perhaps, the outcome of 
 the spirit of their people. 
 
 These reflections may illustrate the deepest reason 
 why the whole New Learning of Germany, applauded 
 by all the northern Humanists, became involved in a 
 desperate battle with the party of orthodoxy over 
 the relation of scholarship to the Bible and the 
 Church. 
 
 The protagonist was John Reuchlin, and the oc- 
 casion was the zeal of John PfefTerkorn, a converted 
 Jew and master of the hospital of St. Ursula in 
 Cologne. With the help of the Dominicans of Co- 
 logne he published a series of pamphlets against the 
 Jews, very much in the tone and temper of the anti- 
 Catholic publications with which we are familiar in 
 this country. He followed the Emperor to Italy, 
 and as a result of his impassioned appeals Reuchlin, 
 as imperial councillor, received the request for a
 
 The Battle is Joined. 305 
 
 formal opinion on the question, " Ought all the books 
 of the Jews to be taken away from them and burned ? " 
 He made a most painstaking answer, in which he 
 advised the destruction only of certain blasphemous 
 parodies of Christianity, two of which he cited as 
 disavowed by the better Jews. He defended the 
 rest of their literature as highly useful to science and 
 theology, and guaranteed to the Jews by the laws of 
 the Empire. This opinion, which was sent under seal, 
 was seen in transit by Pfefferkorn, who immediately 
 published a pamphlet entitled " The Hand-glass," in 
 which he caricatured Reuchlin's official opinion, at- 
 tempted to show him as a poor scholar and a worse 
 Christian, and ended up by calling all patrons of 
 Jewish learning Ohrenblaser, Stuboistencker, Plippen- 
 plapper, Bentelfeger, Hinterschiitzer, Scitenstecher. 
 Reuchlin answered with " The Eye-glass," a pam- 
 phlet abounding in similar flowers of speech, which 
 bloomed freely over the whole field of contemporary 
 polemics. The original report of Reuchlin was already 
 pigeonholed and forgotten, but the conflict between 
 the Old Learning and the New, so long impending, 
 was begun, and all Germany flamed into literary war, 
 amid which the threats of the heretic's stake gleamed 
 darkly. For the party of reactionary orthodoxy, 
 headed by the Dominicans and the theologians of 
 Cologne, proposed now to extend to Reuchlin the 
 policy of thorough they had wished for the Jews. 
 But the case was appealed to Rome, and while Hu- 
 manistic cardinals were stirred up by letters to block 
 the efforts of zealous inquisitors, the cross-fire of 
 satires, poems, and pamphlets raged in Germany.
 
 306 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 All three classes of Humanists rallied around Reuch- 
 lin as a common leader. Johann Eck (1486-1543), 
 the young professor of theology at Ingolstadt, at- 
 tacked a reactionary theologian at Vienna as a fool 
 and a sophist ; for which we cannot help feeling there 
 was some ground when we learn that, as Rector of 
 the University, he forbade a young professor to lec- 
 ture because he had dared to use the classic tu 
 instead of the barbarous but customary vos. For it 
 was a cause of much horror to the Old School as 
 the Humanists mockingly put it, " Quod simplex 
 socius deberes tibisare unum rectorem universitatis 
 qui est magister noster." 
 
 But the most energetic defender of Reuchlin was 
 Ulrich von Hutten, a young representative of the 
 pagan Renascence. He was placed by his father, a 
 South German knight, in a convent at Fulda to be 
 educated, whence he ran away at sixteen to go to 
 the Humanistic University of Erfurt. Then for 
 years he lived the wild and studious life of a wan- 
 dering student, subsisting by the charity of friends 
 who admired his talents. Italy, the loadstar of all 
 who loved the New Learning, drew him also, and he 
 learned in the South land not only a deeper love of let- 
 ters, but a deeper hatred of the abuses of the Papacy. 
 Epigrams written at this time, but published later, 
 show it plainly. For instance, here is one: 
 
 O71 the Indulgence of Ju litis. 
 
 " See how the world of the faithful is guided by 
 the merchant Julius, who sells what he does not 
 possess — heaven.
 
 " Epistolcs Obscurorum Virorum!' 307 
 
 " Offer me at a bargain what you have ! How 
 shameless it is' to sell what you are most in want of 
 yourself! If the giants came back Jupiter would be 
 done for. Julius would certainly sell them Olympus. 
 But so long as another reigns and thunders above, I 
 shall never take the trouble to bid for property in 
 heaven." 
 
 Hutten came back from his travels a bold and 
 fluent satirist, German to the core, and plunged with 
 fresh zeal into the ranks of the Reuchlinists. 
 
 They were already a marshaled army with pub- 
 lished lists of names. One of their most distin- 
 guished muster-rolls was found in the volume printed 
 at Tubingen, 15 14, entitled " Clarorum Virorum 
 Epistolae, Latinae, Graecae et Hebriacae variis tem- 
 poribus missae ad Joannem Reuchlin." It was with 
 the aid of Hutten that a little company of the Erfurt 
 Humanists published anonymously a parody entitled 
 " Epistolae obscurorum virorum ad venerabilem virum 
 M. Ortuinum Gratium variis et locis et temporibus 
 missae et demum in volumen coactae." It is a work 
 so characteristic of its age that, by the confession of 
 its best commentators, translation is impossible and 
 paraphrase difficult. Its humor, whose tone has been 
 well compared to that of " Don Quixote," is stained by 
 the filthy jesting, its hatred of ignorant intolerance 
 by the reckless slander universal among scholars of 
 the day, and it is written in a wild but most clever 
 caricature of the dog-Latin of the monks. 
 
 The letters and poems in it were supposed to be ad- 
 dressed to Ortuin Gratius, of the theological faculty
 
 308 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of Cologne, by a series of friends who bore such 
 names as Eitelnarrabianus, Kukuk, Buntemantellus, 
 Dollenkopfius, Schaffmulius. They propounded 
 learned questions for discussion, or reported journeys 
 to other universities. Through them all runs a thread 
 of allusion to Reuchlin and the advance of the New 
 Learning. They suggest absurd arguments for his 
 discomfiture, or they tell of how his friends at other 
 universities turned the narrator out of the inn as an 
 enemy of the Muses. One reports that the chief 
 preacher in Wiirzburg is a dangerous man who an- 
 nounces that he belongs to no school except the 
 school of Christ ; that he preaches plainly, without 
 the tricks of rhetoric and logic, and the people like it. 
 He even dared to say, when Brother Jacob announced 
 the sale of indulgences, that if a man bought a hun- 
 dred indulgences, and did not live well, he will be 
 damned, and the indulgence will not help him in the 
 least. Another reports a disputation over a passage 
 of prophecy in which his adversary asserted that the 
 light of truth was about to be cast upon the dirty, 
 dark, and senseless theology which had been brought 
 into vogue a few hundred years before by men igno- 
 rant of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. God was sending 
 new doctors with lights, like Reuchlin and Erasmus, 
 who had just put out a true edition of Jerome, a real 
 theologian ; and he was working at the text of the 
 New Testament, which was worth more than to have 
 twenty thousand Scotists and Thomists disputing for 
 a hundred years over ens and essentia. 
 
 A single one of these letters will serve as a favor- 
 able specimen. It is from Thomas Langschneider to
 
 A Specimen Letter. 309 
 
 his old master Gratius, asking an opinion upon a 
 learned question. With many quotations from Aris- 
 totle and the Bible, he describes a feast at Leipzig, 
 given, according to custom, by one who had just 
 become master in theology ; and after they had 
 enjoyed the roast capons, fish, Malvoisie and Rhine 
 wine, Eimbecker, Torgauer, and Neuburger beer, 
 they began to discuss learned themes. And finally 
 Magister Warmsemmel, a reputable Scotist, and 
 Magister Delitzsch, a doctor of medicine and law, 
 became involved in an insoluble dispute as to whether 
 one who was about to become a doctor of theology 
 {Magister Noster) should be called Magister Nos- 
 trandus or Noster Magistrandns. Warmsemmel 
 points out that magistrare is a verb, but nostro, 
 nostrare, is not to be found in any dictionary. To 
 which his antagonist replied that in Horace's " Ars 
 Poetica " the right to make new words was clearly 
 established. The correspondent asks Gratius to de- 
 cide which was right, and, in closing, inquires how 
 the war comes on with that scoundrel Reuchlin, who, 
 he understands, obstinately refuses to recant. This 
 mildest of all the letters seems like fairly strong sar- 
 casm, but it needed coarse point to touch its victims, 
 for a Dominican prior in the Low Countries was so 
 pleased with this new defence of the labors of his 
 order on behalf of orthodoxy that he ordered a large 
 number of copies to be sent to friends in high rank. 
 History does not record what he said when he dis- 
 covered his mistake on reading the last letter of the 
 second part, which even the most Boeotian wits could 
 not misunderstand.
 
 3 1 o The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 The learned farce was received with Homeric 
 laughter. We can well imagine that, even in Co- 
 logne, the student body was delighted with it, and 
 if anything was needed to bring youngest Germany 
 to the side of the New Learning, the " Epistolae Ob- 
 scurorum Virorum " did it. But as subsequent edi- 
 tions became diffused and coarsened the judicious 
 grieved. Reuchlin thought it vulgar, and tradition 
 says he remonstrated sharply. A young professor 
 of theology at Wittenberg, Martin Luther, though 
 counted among the Reuchlinists, said it was imperti- 
 nent, and called the author " Hans Sausage." Eras- 
 mus, though he liked it at first, finally spoke of it 
 with asperity as an injury to the Humanistic cause. 
 
 For Erasmus was working on altogether different 
 lines. Colet and his two younger friends, More and 
 Erasmus, were united in a more or less unconscious 
 cooperation at a common work — reform by the dem- 
 onstration of a reasonable Christianity ; the philos- 
 ophy of Christ applied to the problems of the world. 
 
 With Colet this desire took a more personal and 
 religious form, and as time went on the thoughts of 
 the Dean of St. Paul became more and more centred 
 on Christ. He had arranged Christ's sayings into 
 groups to remember them better and planned a book 
 upon them. His preaching, the most influential in 
 England, dwelt more and more on the blessings and 
 example of Christ. He loved children, quoting the 
 example of our Lord, and bent his learning to write 
 a little Latin grammar for them, that they might 
 " grow to perfect literature and come at last to be 
 great clerks." He gave his whole private fortune
 
 Thomas More. 311 
 
 to found St. Paul's School for the free education of 
 one hundred and fifty-three boys, with the " intent 
 by this school specially to increase knowledge and 
 worshipping of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 good Christian life and manners in the children." 
 
 With Thomas More, greatest advocate, and finally 
 Lord Chancellor of England, the desire to propagate 
 the philosophy of Christ expressed itself naturally in 
 the direction of social and political reforms. His 
 " Utopia " was a description of an ideal common- 
 wealth, described by an old traveler he met in Ant- 
 werp through the introduction of Peter Giles, a well- 
 known merchant of that city. It ridicules the passion 
 for war then ruling the hearts of all Christian princes ; 
 skilfully denounces by comparison the crying injus- 
 tices done to the laboring classes by society and the 
 laws which " confer benefits on the gentry and care 
 to do nothing at all for peasants, colliers, servants, 
 wagoners, and mechanics, without whom no state 
 could exist." He points out that in England only 
 four people in ten could read, and proposes as a 
 better ideal, not an ignorant nation divided into 
 jealous classes of rich and poor, but a true commu- 
 nity, comfortable and educated throughout. He 
 suggests as one means of accomplishing this to so 
 repress idleness, restrict luxury, and manage work 
 that the hours of labor should be confined to six a 
 day for each male. He proposed sanitary reform to 
 stop the plagues, and hints at other improvements 
 which have become matters of course to us of these 
 latter days. Through all the work he shows the firm 
 faith that the teachings of Christ and the guidance
 
 312 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 of reason are workable, fitted, if men would only live 
 by them, to establish a Kingdom of God upon earth. 
 
 With Erasmus this desire to propagate the philos- 
 ophy of Christ turned in the direction of scholarship. 
 Not, indeed, that the acute writer, who had learned 
 from books and letters a thorough knowledge of the 
 world, neglected the idea of political reform. His 
 " Praise of Folly," which ran through seven editions 
 in a few months, was a classic treatment of the theme 
 handled by Brant in the chaotic " Ship of Fools " ; 
 and his " Christian Prince," written for the young 
 Charles, afterward Emperor of Germany, is, as has 
 been well suggested, the opposite to " The Prince " 
 of Machiavelli, then lying in manuscript. He bids 
 the Prince secure " the favor of God by making him- 
 self useful to the people, for the duties between a 
 prince and his people are neutral." But these were 
 simply the pastimes of a hard worker. The labor of 
 his life was the New Testament in Greek ; not the first 
 Greek Testament finished by the New Learning, — 
 for the Complutensian polyglot was ready a few 
 months earlier, — but the first to be put in circulation. 
 
 His preface to the great work makes clear his hope 
 to oppose two evils : first, the pagan tendency of the 
 age, which, while straining the human mind to master 
 all subtleties and toiling to overcome all difficulties, 
 neglects, derides, and treats with coldness the philos- 
 ophy of Christ; second, the tendency of the Old 
 Learning to substitute the schoolmen for the gospels- 
 " What are Albertus, Alexander, Thomas, ^gidius, 
 Ricardus, Occam, compared to Christ or Peter or
 
 The Fears of the Orthodox. 313 
 
 Paul or John ? If the footprints of Christ be anywhere 
 shown to us, we kneel down and adore. Why do we 
 not rather venerate the living and breathing picture 
 of him in these books ? If the vesture of Christ be 
 exhibited, where will we not go to kiss it? Yet his 
 whole wardrobe could not represent him more vividly 
 than these writings. We decorate statues with gold 
 and gems for the love of Christ. These books present 
 us with a living image of his holy mind." 
 
 The publication of this New Testament, which was 
 also a sort of commentary, had been much opposed 
 by the party of orthodoxy, and the grounds of oppo- 
 sition are clearly expressed in a letter of Martin Dor- 
 pius, of the University of Louvain, which beseeches 
 Erasmus, " by our mutual friendship and your wonted 
 courtesy, to desist from this attempt to supplement 
 the Latin New Testament with a Greek version which 
 amends the Vulgate." Dorpius asserts the folly of 
 such an attempt to correct a version which has in 
 it no errors or mistakes. " For this is the version 
 used and still used by the unanimous Universal Church, 
 and it cannot be that she is mistaken." " How could 
 it be possible that the heretic Greeks could have pre- 
 served a truer text than the orthodox Latins? " " Be- 
 sides," he continues, " there is great harm in your 
 attempt. If you discuss the integrity of the Scrip- 
 tures many will doubt ; for, as Augustine said to 
 Jerome, ' If any error should be admitted to have 
 crept into the Holy Scriptures, what authority would 
 be left to them?' Therefore, I beseech you, limit 
 your corrections to those passages of the New Testa'
 
 3 1 4 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 ment in which you can substitute better words with- 
 out altering the sense." 1 
 
 In spite of these alarmed remonstrances the book 
 appeared with a dedication, by permission, to the 
 Pope, and was received with acclaim. Letters came 
 to Erasmus from all sides ; among them a poem from 
 Philip Melancthon, a young student of Tubingen, who 
 was already known among his fellows as " the second 
 Erasmus." 
 
 To this chorus of praise there was strong dissent. 
 The reactionary orthodox party of course objected 
 bitterly, and Erasmus's enemies were loud against 
 him. Edward Lee, an Englishman, attacked him for 
 many errors, among them the omission of the text 
 on " the three that bear witness in heaven " — which 
 must, Lee said, result in a revival of Arianism and 
 schism in the Church. 
 
 And there were other objections in a more kindly 
 spirit. Martin Luther, a young professor of theology 
 at Wittenberg, wrote to his friend Spalatin how much 
 he regretted the evident preference of Erasmus for 
 following Jerome in seeking the historical (he calls it 
 the dead) sense of Scripture rather than the spiritual 
 method of Augustine. " The more I study the book, 
 the more I lose my liking for it. Erasmus, with all 
 his learning, is lacking in Christian wisdom. The 
 judgment of a man who attributes anything to the 
 human will is one thing, but the judgment of one 
 who recognizes anything but grace is another." 
 
 1 In 1512 Faber Stapulensis had felt obliged to defend himself, in 
 the preface to his commentary on Paul's Epistles, against the charge 
 of temerity because he had dared in comments to add to the text of the 
 Vulgate the sense of the Greek.
 
 Criticisms. 3 1 5 
 
 " Nevertheless," he continues, " I carefully keep the 
 opinion to myself, lest I should play into the hands 
 of his enemies." 
 
 Dr. Eck, the young professor of theology at In- 
 golstadt and a correspondent of Luther, wrote also 
 to their common friend Spalatin his objections to the 
 Novum Instrurnentum. They applied not so much 
 to its theology as to its critical method. Erasmus 
 had pointed out that the apostles, quoting from mem- 
 ory, were not always exact in citing the Old Testa- 
 ment. He had also said that their Greek was not 
 classic. Eck objects to the first remark on the 
 Augustinian ground that to admit error destroys 
 authority, and to the second because it attributes 
 negligence or ignorance to the Holy Spirit. In con- 
 clusion he hopes that Erasmus would read Augustine 
 more and Jerome less. Spalatin sent this letter to 
 Erasmus, who replied in a friendly tone to the friendly 
 remonstrance. He was publishing a splendid new 
 edition of Jerome for the purpose of showing that 
 the methods and results of his interpretation were 
 not novelties, but had the authority of the father 
 who gave the Church the Vulgate. Of course he 
 could not surrender his deliberate preference, but he 
 hoped that, as Jerome and Augustine had differed 
 without ceasing to be friends, he and Dr. Eck might 
 imitate their holy example. 
 
 Faber Stapulensis, who, when Erasmus settled at 
 Basle in 15 13, had written him a letter, brief but full 
 of congratulations, praying that his life might be 
 prolonged to enlighten the world with his labors, 
 accused Erasmus of folly, ignorance, and vanity be •
 
 3 1 6 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 cause he had suggested that doubts had been enter- 
 tained as to the Pauline authority of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews. Erasmus had criticised points in 
 Faber's commentary on the Pauline Epistles, pub- 
 lished in 15 12, and the bitterness of this tone was 
 doubtless due to the touchy vanity which is always 
 the weakness of scholars, and which the most distin- 
 guished men of the sixteenth century had no shame 
 in displaying. Erasmus himself too often whines like 
 a spoiled child over the injustice of fate or the lack of 
 appreciation of a world which flattered him inces- 
 santly. 
 
 Faber was by this time a great figure among men 
 of letters. In 15 13 Reuchlin had written to him as 
 the " restorer of Aristotle, the glory of whose works 
 is everywhere," begging that he would present to 
 the Sorbonne his defence against the charge of heresy 
 brought by the theologians of Cologne. He had 
 been gathering around him in Paris a little knot of 
 scholars, chief among whom was Guillaume Farel, born 
 of a noble family of Dauphine in 1489. Faber led 
 these in pious exercises, frequently going with Farel to 
 pray in the churches and make offerings of flowers 
 at the shrines of the saints. His best lectures were 
 upon the Psalms and the Epistles of Paul, on which 
 he published a commentary, in 1502, which empha- 
 sizes the doctrine of justification by faith. Though 
 his devotion to the Church and his hatred of schism 
 remained unbroken, there grew upon Faber a con- 
 viction of the evilness of the times and a hope of 
 better things. He seems to have shared the convic- 
 tion of his correspondent, Erasmus, that reason and
 
 Ulrich Zwingli. 317 
 
 the Word of God would dispel the reigning darkness ; 
 for Farel has' told us how earnestly he used to say, 
 " William, the world is to be renewed, and you will 
 see it." Among his favorite scholars was the son of 
 Briconnet, a great officer of state who, on the death 
 of his wife, took orders and became a cardinal. 
 Guillaume Briconnet became bishop and abbot while 
 still young, and made his abbey a seat of letters de- 
 voted to religion. It was there that Faber finished, 
 in 1509, his commentary on the Psalms. 
 
 Bound to this circle of French Humanists and to 
 Erasmus and his friends at Basle by a lively corre- 
 spondence was a Swiss who at an early age began to 
 win distinction in letters. Ulrich Zwingli had been 
 born in 1484 in the Alpine village of Toggenburg, 
 of which his father was chief magistrate. His uncle, 
 dean of the cathedral of a small city near by, took 
 the boy into his house and directed his education at 
 the newly opened school. At the University of 
 Vienna he fell under the power of the New Learning, 
 and at the age of twenty-three was called to be pastor 
 of the city of Glarus. He displayed power as a 
 preacher, and strove to use in that exercise of his 
 office all his knowledge, even learning the history of 
 Valerius Maximus by heart to furnish historical illus- 
 trations. He soon became possessed of the best 
 library in the vicinity, and as learning was scarce, 
 the fame of his scholarship spread. He also made 
 himself much beloved by the charm of his personality, 
 which was heightened by skill in music ; and a young 
 friend, inviting him to his magister banquet at Basle, 
 playfully addressed him as " the Apollonian lute-
 
 3 1 8 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 player and recognized Cicero of our age " — a jest 
 only in form, for he was already hailed as " the first 
 to acclimatize Humanistic studies in Switzerland," 
 and Erasmus wrote to him as one " who, with his 
 friends, would raise the Fatherland to a higher grade 
 of education and morals." These great labors and 
 pleasures were broken by sterner duties when Zwingli 
 marched as chaplain with the city company to sup- 
 port the banner of the Pope at Novara (15 13) and 
 Marignano ( 1 5 1 5 ). It was just before the last battle 
 that his powerful sermon in the market-place of 
 Monza hindered the main body of the confederates 
 from accepting the bribes of France and deserting 
 the League on the eve of battle. 
 
 Amid all these labors there had been growing in 
 him an ever-increasing devotion to the study of the 
 New Testament. The writings of two men were 
 especially influential in directing his thoughts in this 
 direction. He had the works of Pico della Mirandola 
 in the edition published by Wimpheling at Strass- 
 burg in 1504. Even as a student at Basle, Zwingli 
 had gotten into trouble by confessing his agreement 
 with some of the condemned theses of Pico, and now, 
 as a man, he busied himself much with his writings. 
 The works of Erasmus were all in his hands as fast 
 as they appeared ; the " Enchiridion," the " Praise of 
 Folly," the "Adages," and all the tractates, were his 
 familiar companions ; and when he visited Erasmus 
 in Basle in 15 15 he could greet him as an old friend 
 and master. Zwingli said afterward that Erasmus first 
 made him aware of the evils which had gathered 
 around the worship of saints and relics, and pointed
 
 Straightforward Preaching. 3 1 9 
 
 out the absence of all allusion to such practices in the 
 Bible. It was from these suggestions that Zwingli 
 became sure, about the year 15 15, that "Christ is 
 the only Saviour, comfort, and treasure of our poor 
 souls." 
 
 Soon after, his outspoken condemnation of the 
 French alliance, which, in his judgment, put the free 
 confederacy in the hands of the French King, so 
 offended some of the magistrates of Glarus, whom he 
 denounced as takers of bribes, that he accepted a call 
 to be preacher at the abbey of Einsiedeln. Since 
 the fifteenth century the wonder-working statue of 
 Einsiedeln had made it the centre of annual pilgrim- 
 ages from all South Germany. The riches thus 
 brought to the cloister coffers had wrought great in- 
 roads in the simple life of the monks. ^But the 
 officials by whom Zwingli was called had repressed 
 open scandals, and the abbot, while taking little 
 personal interest in religion, was glad to have good 
 sermons, and pleased that the abbey should become, 
 under Zwingli and his friends, a centre of Humanism 
 in Switzerland. It was very straight preaching the 
 pilgrims heard from the new incumbent ; not polemic, 
 but the proclamation of positive truths whose accep- 
 tance would have closed the shrines and stopped the 
 pilgrimages. The administrator of the cloister was 
 in entire sympathy with the straightforward preach- 
 ing, and also joined Zwingli in his literary studies, 
 for which he made large purchases of books from 
 Paris, Basle, and the other German presses. An 
 extensive correspondence united the little circle of 
 learned men with the literati of Basle, at whose head
 
 320 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 was Erasmus, and the circle of Faber Stapulensis, 
 whose comment on the Psalms was one of Zwingli's 
 favorite working books. But when the New Testa- 
 ment of Erasmus appeared Zwingli turned to it, and 
 we are told by one of his friends that he learned the 
 Greek text of Paul's Epistles by heart. 
 
 He was able to be quite a buyer of books, because 
 since his sermon at Monza he received from the Pope 
 a yearly present of fifty florins, which he used, per- 
 haps by Leo's wish, for the increase of his library.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE COURT OF LEO X. — HUMANISM IN ITALY AND 
 SPAIN — THE THREE BOY KINGS. 
 
 OR Leo shared his good fortune with 
 generous hand. His life was mirthful 
 and splendid. He ate little himself, fast- 
 ing three times in the week, but he enter- 
 tained royally, and his table cost him 
 ninety-six thousand florins, or more than half the 
 yearly income of the estates of the Church and seven 
 times the total yearly salary of all the professors of 
 the University of Rome. But he gave no banquet 
 as splendid as that to which he was invited by his 
 banker, Chigi, in honor of the christening of an il- 
 legitimate daughter. At the end of every course of 
 the feast the gold and silver plate was thrown out of 
 the windows into the river — to be caught by nets 
 hidden beneath the water. 
 
 These Papal banquets were adorned by poetry. 
 The recital of extempore verses was a common 
 amusement of Leo, and he often joined in the con- 
 tests himself. A perfect swarm of poets lived on 
 him, and, like Nicholas, he gave even to the bad ones. 
 With the latter he was not above a practical joke ; 
 o 3 ai
 
 322 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 for a certain Baraballo, who recited atrocious verses 
 to his own unbounded delight, was crowned poet and 
 led in mock triumph through the city mounted on 
 an elephant, the gift of the Portuguese King, whose 
 navigators had brought it round the Cape from India. 
 Leo would not allow the train to approach the Vat- 
 ican, but his zest in the colossal joke, in which the 
 whole court joined, is marked by the figure of the 
 elephant on the door between two of the rooms dec- 
 orated by Raphael. 
 
 The Pope's favorite amusement was music. He 
 sang well himself, and often joined in the concerts, 
 to which he listened as in a dream of delight. It 
 was at such times that he was most unbounded in his 
 gifts. He took great pleasure also in acting, and his 
 friends and household presented comedies before him, 
 for which Raphael sometimes painted scenes and 
 arranged decorations. These were frequently of a 
 free tone, and the Pope's presence at them often gave 
 offence to the ambassadors and other visitors. Leo 
 applauded and rewarded successful authors and 
 actors, but he had a monk whose piece was a failure 
 severely tossed in a blanket before him. He was 
 very fond of cards also, and his losses and the pres- 
 ents he made amounted to sixty thousand florins a 
 year — more than twelve times the amount Raphael 
 was paid for his work in the four great frescoed rooms 
 of the Vatican, and ten times what Michael Angelo 
 had received for painting the Sistine Chapel. 
 
 Of course no finances could stand such a strain as 
 this. Leo had a regular income of between four and 
 five thousand florins. In addition he sold between
 
 The Augustan Age of the Papacy. 323 
 
 twenty-five and twenty-six hundred offices, which 
 brought during eight years and a half a total of nearly 
 three million florins. But he left debts amounting 
 to nearly twelve hundred thousand ducats. Under 
 his successor the ordinary expenses of the Roman 
 State were reckoned at three hundred and fifty 
 thousand florins, so that in eight years and a half the 
 Pope spent on the conquest of Urbino, and other 
 personal and family expenses, about four million 
 florins, or an average of seven times the income of 
 Agostino Chigi, who, with seventy thousand florins 
 a year, was reckoned the richest merchant banker of 
 Italy. 
 
 For part of this huge shower of gold scattered 
 with liberal hand Leo received an extraordinary 
 return. The age of Augustus is not rendered more 
 illustrious by the writings of the men he patronized 
 than the age of Leo by the works of the masters of 
 the arts of design whom he employed ; and in the 
 popular mind he is remembered, not as the Pope 
 under whom Switzerland and Germany broke away 
 from the Papacy, but as the Pope for whom Bramante, 
 Michael Angelo, and Raphael worked. Neither the 
 glory nor the blame can be laid at his door. He 
 found the immortal three in Rome when he ascended 
 the throne, and he only continued to employ them 
 on the designs of Julius II. ; and the revolt of Ger- 
 many and Switzerland was the outcome of European 
 movements working in England, France, and Ger- 
 many, which we have seen beginning years before. 
 
 Another glory of the court of Leo, which, unlike 
 the undimmed pictures of Raphael, has now faded,
 
 324 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 was the fame of the litterateurs and scholars who 
 surrounded him. Rome usurped, under his rule, that 
 unquestioned literary supremacy which she had for 
 some years shared with Florence. His generous 
 patronage made the Eternal City a veritable paradise 
 of the Humanists. Next to a well-filled purse a 
 skilled pen was the best recommendation to ecclesi- 
 astical preferment. The chief novelists and historians 
 of Rome were bishops or at least apostolic secretaries, 
 and among the cardinals and their friends were many 
 men distinguished for literature. 
 
 These Roman lovers of letters and the arts fall 
 naturally into the three classes we have noted before 
 among the Humanists. 
 
 It is difficult to label the most distinguished stylist 
 of his day — Pietro Bembo, Leo's secretary, and 
 twenty-five years later cardinal under Paul III. — as 
 anything but a pagan. His learning was never turned 
 in the direction of the fathers or the Bible, nor were 
 his philosophical discussions directed toward any of 
 the questions of the day in Church or State. For 
 every exhortation he turns, not to the New Testa- 
 ment, but to the holy character and teachings of a 
 Socrates or a Plato. It is quite in keeping with all 
 we know of him that he should write to his friend 
 Sadoleto, begging him to hurry up his work on St. 
 Paul's Epistles and turn to Hortensius ; for, he adds, 
 " The barbaric style of Paul will ruin your taste. 
 Stop this child's play, which is unworthy of an ear- 
 nest man." 
 
 This Jacopo Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras, after- 
 ward, like Bembo, cardinal under Paul III., is a good
 
 Hadrian of Come to. 325 
 
 representative of the Middle Party, whose effort was 
 to reconcile ancient philosophy and the Bible. He 
 answered his friend Fregoso, who blamed him for 
 diverting any time from the study of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures : " The knowledge of liberal arts and philosophy 
 must be regarded as a distinguished part of true 
 wisdom, as steps for those who will mount to God." 
 " For," he asks, " do you believe you will find in the 
 nature of things or in any branch of science anything 
 which escaped the all-embracing knowledge of Plato 
 or the intellectual sharpness of Aristotle? " But he 
 finds the stay of his life, not " in the teaching which 
 we owe to Aristotle and Plato, but to God, the teacher 
 and Creator of all." " In him alone is the hope of 
 life." " Only God can help and hold in trouble. 
 Only in gratitude to him can we lead a happy and 
 useful life." Out of this double love of philosophy 
 and religion came his two chief works, " The Praise 
 of Philosophy " and " The Commentary on the 
 Epistle of Paul to the Romans." It is probable that 
 among the cardinals Contarini and Caraffa shared his 
 views and hopes of a philosophy of Christ. Sannazaro, 
 the famous Neapolitan, called the Christian Virgil, 
 who crowned his popular eclogues of love and friend- 
 ship with a poem on the birth of Christ, over which 
 he spent twenty years and his best energies, was 
 much admired by this circle. 
 
 We find the representative of that conservative and 
 strictly orthodox Humanism which desired to use the 
 New Learning only as a weapon for the defence of 
 Christianity and the Church in the person of Hadrian 
 of Corneto. It is a puzzle as yet unsolved by the
 
 326 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 writers who have alluded to it (e.g., Janitschek, 
 Gebhardt, Springer, Grimm, et al.) why Hadrian of 
 Corneto wrote the book " On True Philosophy," which 
 was published in 1507. He had long been the friend 
 and follower of Rodrigo Borgia, and when his patron 
 had become Pope rose rapidly in the scale of curial 
 promotion until he obtained the red hat. Bramante 
 built him a magnificent palace, and his riches caused 
 the report that Alexander and Caesar died from 
 changing the cups in an attempt to poison him in his 
 own garden. He mingled in curial politics, had to 
 flee from the wrath of Julius II., and was aware of 
 the plot to assassinate Leo X. In consequence of 
 this complicity he fled from the city, was deposed in 
 contumaciam, lived in Venice, and, returning to the 
 conclave at Leo's death, was murdered on the road 
 by his servant. He was the author of a poem on 
 "The Hunt," which was much admired, and a book 
 on "The Method of Speaking Latin," which went 
 through many editions and is called one of the most 
 solid productions of Italian Humanism. It is difficult 
 to understand why such a cardinal should write a 
 book opposing worldly learning and the study of 
 philosophy, except to confess an inner conviction 
 denied in his life. But such is the purpose of his 
 " De Vera Philosophia," a catena of quotations from 
 Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. 
 He begins by asserting that the source of faith and 
 knowledge is the Bible — that there can be no true 
 knowledge without faith and that human reason is 
 powerless for divine things. He goes on to demand 
 an implicit faith in the word of Scripture and to
 
 The Spirit of the Catholic Reaction. 327 
 
 limit all knowledge by it : " For what Scripture leaves 
 hidden human presumption may not attempt to 
 understand by conjecture." Scripture is a field on 
 which, if we wish to build, we must dig steadily until 
 we reach the rock which is Christ. None but those 
 who have received God's Spirit understand his Word. 
 Dialectics must be cast aside, and the ornaments of 
 rhetoric are to be despised. " If you ask me the cir- 
 cumference of the earth, I gladly confess I do not 
 know, and it would do me no good to know. The 
 free arts do not deserve the name, for only Christ 
 makes free. The works of the poets, the wisdom of 
 the worldly, the pomp of style, are the devil's food. 
 What has Aristotle to do with Paul, or Plato with 
 Peter? At the last judgment the foolish Plato and 
 his scholars will be summoned, and the proofs of 
 Aristotle will avail him little. Not by the philos- 
 ophers is true wisdom. Though they count and 
 measure the stars, though they labor at grammar, 
 rhetoric, or music, it is of no avail. They are only 
 truly wise when they believe on Christ. There is no 
 middle ground. Who stands not by Christ stands 
 by the devil. Whoso is not in the kingdom of God 
 ,s lost. Why shall I speak of physics, ethics, or 
 logic? All that human tongue can say is in Holy 
 Scripture. Its authority is greater than the power 
 of the whole human spirit." 
 
 Already, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
 there was stirring in Roman Humanism the spirit of 
 the Catholic Reform. For in Sadoleto we see the 
 complete union of letters and religion afterward to 
 be shaped into the elaborate educational system oi
 
 328 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 the Jesuits, while Hadrian's book foretells the fiery- 
 zeal of implicit orthodoxy, despising all things in 
 comparison to the fathers, the Church, and the Bible, 
 which was to mount the throne in Paul IV. 
 
 This type of prelate, using knowledge in the ser- 
 vice of an orthodoxy which loved existing institutions 
 and desired to reform them, appears at this time in 
 two men illustrious in the service of Spain. Both 
 were learned, one in the Old Learning, the other in 
 the New ; one thought Humanism dangerous, the 
 other welcomed it ; but both were alike in their de- 
 votion to the Church and their desire for reform. 
 
 Hadrian Dedel was born in Utrecht in 1459. He 
 received his education at Deventer and Louvain, 
 where he studied especially Thomas Aquinas and 
 Peter Lombard. As a young licentiate his lectures 
 and skill in disputation won him a large fame, which 
 led the Grand Duchess Margaret to give him money 
 to take his degree and become professor of theology. 
 The fruit of his studies appeared in a commentary on 
 Peter Lombard and in a collection of scholastic dis- 
 cussions entitled " Questiones Quodlibeticae " — a love 
 of the Old Learning which he never lost, for in 1 5 1 5 he 
 wrote advising the destruction of the books of Reuch- 
 lin. Hadrian's reputation for learning and piety 
 induced the Emperor Maximilian to appoint him tutor 
 to his grandson Charles. The other grandfather, 
 Ferdinand the Catholic, to whom he was sent as 
 ambassador, appointed him Bishop of Tortosa in 1 5 1 5. 
 He had won the affection of his pupil in spite of his 
 steady opposition to Charles's desire to spend more 
 time in knightly exercises than upon books. For
 
 Cardinal Ximenes. 329 
 
 the young Prince, not being endowed by nature with 
 a pleasing presence, labored hard to attain the per- 
 fect horsemanship which he displayed in his stately 
 entries. When Charles succeeded to the throne of 
 Spain he associated Hadrian with Cardinal Ximenes 
 in the management of the affairs of his kingdom, and 
 shortly afterward Leo X. made him a cardinal. 
 
 This Cardinal Ximenes, now eighty years old, was 
 one of the ornaments of the College, though his 
 honors and duties kept him from Rome. He dis- 
 played that union of patriotism, zeal for the Church, 
 and love of letters which during the next century, 
 the blooming-time of the Spanish race, was to be 
 characteristic of its greatest men. 
 
 He was born in 1436, of a noble family of fallen 
 fortunes, and graduated in theology from the Uni- 
 versity of Salamanca, where he lived for six years as 
 a private tutor. At the age of twenty-two he went 
 to Rome, where his knowledge of canon law enabled 
 him to live as a consistorial advocate. He returned 
 after six years with letters expectivce, which gave him 
 a claim upon the first vacant benefice in the see of 
 Toledo. These letters had frequently been de- 
 nounced as an abuse, and were suppressed by the 
 Council of Basle, but as the Pope denied its authority, 
 they were still granted. The historic objections to 
 the abuse of the expectivce strengthened the Arch- 
 bishop of Toledo, who wished to confer the first 
 vacant benefice upon an ecclesiastic of his household, 
 in resisting the Papal grant. He imprisoned Ximenes 
 for six years, vainly endeavoring to wrest from him 
 the surrender of the benefice. At the end of that
 
 330 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 time, despairing of bending the will of the prisoner, 
 the Archbishop gave him freedom and permitted his 
 induction. Ximenes wisely exchanged his benefice 
 for one in another diocese, where he soon rose to be 
 vicar-general. But, displeased by the care of the 
 details of the episcopal jurisdiction, he joined the 
 strict Franciscans, and dwelt for many years in a 
 hermitage, where he formed the ascetic habits which 
 he practised all his life. From this retreat he was 
 called to be confessor of the Queen, and shortly after 
 was elected provincial of his order for Castile. In 
 his new dignity he kept to the strictest letter of the 
 rule of St. Francis, traveling on foot, and often begging 
 his food. He soon received the appointment to the 
 Archbishopric of Toledo, which made him at once Pri- 
 mate of Spain, head of the nobility, and the richest sub- 
 ject in the kingdom. He gave great offence by refus- 
 ing to assume the state usual to his office, and still 
 traveling on foot or by a mule, with one attendant. 
 A letter was obtained from the Pope commanding 
 him " outwardly to conform to the dignity of your 
 state of life in your dress, attendants, and everything 
 else relating to the promotion of that respect due to 
 your authority." Henceforth his state was royal, 
 but he always wore a hair shirt under his robes, and 
 he used the monkish scourge so severely on himself 
 that his friends had to procure another letter of 
 remonstrance from the Pope. 
 
 He first signalized himself by zeal for the conver- 
 sion of the Moors, but recently become Spanish 
 subjects under the treaty of Granada. He frequently 
 invited to his palace the Moorish teachers and con-
 
 The Conversion of the Moors. 331 
 
 ferred with them on religion. " To impress his 
 instructions upon their sensual minds, he did not 
 hesitate to make them presents of costly articles of 
 dress, etc., and to do this encumbered his revenues 
 for years. The conversion of some of these alfaquis 
 was quickly followed by the conversion of great 
 numbers of other Moors, so that after laboring only 
 two months Ximenes was able to baptize four thou- 
 sand people, in December, 1499." * He also burned 
 eighty thousand Moorish books in the market-place 
 of Granada, sparing only the works on medicine, and 
 defended his action against those who condemned it 
 as a violation of the treaty of surrender made with 
 the Moors, and the edicts of the Synod of Toledo, 
 by which no Moor was to be forced to embrace 
 Christianity. He felt himself restrained by no treaty 
 against the descendants of renegades who had been 
 converted to Mohammedanism from Christianity dur- 
 ing the Moorish dominion. The children of all such 
 though in a remote generation, he seized, carried off, 
 and forcibly received them into the Church. An 
 attempt to thus arrest a Moorish young woman raised 
 a mob which killed the Archbishop's officer. The 
 courage of the Governor allayed the tumult, and 
 Ximenes persuaded the King to offer to the inhabi- 
 tants of the guilty city the choice of being baptized 
 or suffering the penalties of treason. They chose 
 the former, and thus in about a year Ximenes con- 
 verted Granada. 
 
 His associate in these labors, the Archbishop of 
 
 1 " Cardinal Ximenes," by Dr. von Hefele, afterward Roman 
 Catholic Bishop of Rothenburg.
 
 332 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Granada, had caused the Holy Scriptures and other 
 religious works to be translated into Arabic. But 
 Ximenes drawing his attention to the danger likely 
 to arise in the minds of the rude and ignorant from 
 the reading of the Bible, it was decided to withdraw 
 the Arabic Scriptures and circulate only the safer 
 literature of devotion and edification. 
 
 Meanwhile the Primate had been turning his 
 energies to the direction of the reform of education, 
 and became the most munificent of the long roll of 
 patrons and founders of schools which adorns the 
 reign of Isabella. His great University of Alcala, 
 begun in 1500, was opened about ten years later. 
 The head college of San Idlefonso had thirty-three 
 professors, one for each year of the life of Christ/and 
 twelve chaplains, one for each of the twelve apostles. 
 Ample provision was made for the study of Latin, 
 Greek, and Hebrew according to modern methods, 
 and the whole University was magnificently endowed. 
 Within twenty years it numbered seven thousand 
 students. 
 
 It was with the aid of this corps of scholars that 
 Ximenes began the Complutensian polyglot. The 
 ideas which moved him to the work are set forth in 
 its preface : " No translations represent perfectly 
 the sense of the original. The transcripts of the 
 Vulgate differ so much from one another that it is 
 necessary for us to correct the Old Testament by 
 the Hebrew text and the New Testament by the 
 Greek text. Every theologian should be able, also, 
 to drink of that water which springeth up to everlast- 
 ing life at the fountainhead itself. This is the reason,
 
 The Complutensian Polyglot. 333 
 
 therefore, why we have ordered the Bible to be 
 printed in the -original language with different trans- 
 lations. Our object is to revive the hitherto neg- 
 lected study of the Sacred Scriptures." Upon this 
 work he is said to have spent one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand dollars, whose purchasing value 
 was perhaps five times what it is now. It was dedi- 
 cated to Leo X. The New Testament appeared be- 
 fore Erasmus's, but did not circulate outside of Spain 
 until after his. One of the editors, Zuniga, having 
 sharply attacked the notes of Erasmus and spoken 
 contemptuously of the northern scholar in the 
 presence of Ximenes, the Cardinal said : " God 
 grant that all writers may do their work as well as 
 he has done his. You are bound either to give us 
 something better or not to blame the labors of 
 others." The New Testament volume contains the 
 Vulgate and a Greek text, with a system of notation 
 indicating corresponding words in the two languages. 
 The four volumes of the Old Testament contain the 
 Hebrew, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Targum 
 of the Pentateuch, and Latin translations of the 
 Septuagint and the Targum. The work is accom- 
 panied by Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek lexicons and 
 grammars. Only six hundred copies were printed, 
 and it soon became rare ; but its influence passed on 
 through the Antwerp and Paris polyglots, until all 
 were replaced by the London polyglot of 1657. 
 
 But the work of Ximenes was not confined to 
 missions, education, or patronage of sacred literature. 
 He spent his enormous income freely in public 
 works, churches, convents, and a great aqueduct for
 
 334 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 his native town. It was not long after he became 
 Primate of Spain that he conceived the idea of a new 
 crusade, and tried to rouse the kings of Spain, Por- 
 tugal, and England. But he was obliged to content 
 himself with a small crusade, which he led himself 
 against Oran, a Moorish town of North Africa grown 
 rich by piracy. He equipped the expedition of four- 
 teen thousand men at his own expense. The city 
 was taken at the first assault, and the inhabitants, 
 men, women, and children, put to the sword. The 
 expedition returned with five hundred thousand 
 florins and eight thousand captives, having added a 
 new province to the Spanish crown. 
 
 On the death of Ferdinand it was natural, there- 
 fore, that Ximenes should be appointed Regent of 
 Spain until Charles should return from Flanders to 
 be crowned. But scarcely had the new King reached 
 Spain than he retired the great Cardinal from the 
 service of State, and a few weeks later Ximenes died. 
 The exact cause of his abrupt dismissal is not known, 
 but probably the old man of eighty-two was not 
 flexible to the plans of a new government headed by 
 an ambitious boy. 
 
 For the destinies of Europe were at this time 
 mingled with the ambitious dreams of three boys, 
 each anxious to display his skill and the power of his 
 new kingdom. 
 
 The ablest of the three was Charles I., King of 
 Spain. His grandfather, Ferdinand, had married 
 Isabella of Castile, conquered Navarre, expelled the 
 Moors from Granada, and thus united Spain from the 
 Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. And in the partition
 
 The Boy Kings. 335 
 
 of Italy he had added to the possessions of his house 
 the crown of Naples and Sicily, while the discoveries 
 of Columbus and the bull of the Pope made him 
 master of the gold-mines of the New World. Through 
 his paternal grandmother, daughter of Charles the 
 Bold, Charles was heir to the Netherlands, whose 
 cities had succeeded Venice as the centre of European 
 trade, and Burgundy, which is now the northwest 
 corner of France. He was also the heir of his grand- 
 father, the Archduke of Austria. Thus in 15 16, at 
 the age of sixteen, he inherited a power greater than 
 any prince since Charlemagne. 
 
 England, whose terrible civil War of the Roses closed 
 with the fifteenth century, was ruled by Henry VIII., 
 a beautiful and talented Prince of twenty-five, the 
 patron of More, Erasmus, and Holbein, but self-in- 
 dulgent and possessed, in spite of his common sense, 
 by a restless thirst for distinction. 
 
 France, to which the great vassal duchy of Brit- 
 tany had just been organically united, was in 15 15 
 inherited by Francis I., at the age of twenty-one. 
 He was an apt pupil of the culture of the Renascence, 
 and not slack in the practice of its vices, from which 
 his two predecessors died. He was a skilful jouster, 
 and aspired to be the first knight of Europe. This 
 desire was flattered in the battle of Marignano, which, 
 as we have seen, resulted in restoring French rule 
 over the duchy of Milan and bartering the liberties 
 and income of the French Church to Leo X. 
 
 At the death of Maximilian, King of the Romans 
 (a title borne by the Emperor elect of Germany until 
 he was crowned at Rome), all three of these young
 
 336 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 kings became candidates for the imperial dignity 
 which gave the honor of the headship of Europe. 
 It was a dignity to which none but a powerful and 
 wealthy prince could venture any longer to aspire, 
 for the office had almost no revenue and little more 
 power to enforce authority than the incumbent could 
 raise from his personal resources. The German 
 Empire was simply a congeries of states and com- 
 monwealths, bishoprics, free cities, and dynastic 
 principalities, under an elective head, counselled by 
 a diet of princes and ambassadors, but possessed of 
 no organ of government by which any class of the 
 German body politic, except its jealous and warring 
 princes, could rightly form or express a common pur- 
 pose. Among the hundreds of members of this loose 
 confederation smaller leagues arose, which, as we 
 have seen in the life of Reuchlin, sometimes main- 
 tained common tribunals, sometimes oppressed a 
 weaker member of the Empire. Strife between these 
 dynasties and commonwealths was incessant, nor was 
 it looked upon as civil and unnatural war that Nurem- 
 berg should fight with a neighboring city, or a great 
 noble repress with arms the ambition of some usurp- 
 ing bishop. Just before the end of the century, 
 indeed, the Reichstag had endeavored to establish a 
 perpetual land peace, but within ten years a war 
 between the Swabian and the Swiss Leagues deso- 
 lated South Germany, and another contest over the 
 will of the petty Duke of Baiern-Landshut laid waste 
 the rich provinces of the Rhine. 
 
 The choice of the Emperor of this confederation 
 was in the hands of seven electors : the Archbishops
 
 Bought and Sold. 337 
 
 of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, the King of Bohemia, 
 the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, 
 and the Margrave of Brandenburg. These princes 
 knew the value of their votes in this crisis, and the 
 French agents went into Germany followed by a 
 pack-train of gold. When the ambassador protested 
 that such a way to the imperial crown was beneath 
 his King, Francis answered, " If you had to do with 
 people who possessed even a shadow of virtue your 
 counsel would be good ; but in these times whoever 
 wants the Papacy or the Empire, or anything else, 
 can only get it by bribery or force." Henry of Eng- 
 land had no chance against his wealthier antagonists. 
 But the Spanish agents were not behind in offering 
 coin and good marriages, which served as well. The 
 bargaining was sharp. The Count Palatine was said 
 to have changed sides six times, and finally wrote 
 that " we cannot do anything better, worthier, more 
 agreeable to Christ, or more wholesome for all Chris- 
 tians than to elect Francis." When the Spanish 
 ambassador told the Archbishop of Mainz that it was 
 a shame to sell himself to France, he replied that 
 Spain could have him by giving more, and, starting 
 at one hundred thousand gulden additional, finally 
 took twenty thousand after three days of chaffering. 
 To this willingness to sell his vote there was only 
 one exception, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, whose 
 honest patriotism finally brought him from three of 
 the electors the offer of the crown. The Pope urged 
 him to accept, but Frederick was too modest or too 
 wise to do so. For the Pope did not want either of 
 the great competitors lo gain the prize. Francis
 
 33& The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 held the key of North Italy in Milan. Charles was 
 King of Naples, and it was Leo's policy to keep the 
 balance of power between them, to play one off 
 against the other and make his profit out of the 
 game. He who had power to crush the other would 
 be too powerful for a safe neighbor to the house of 
 the Medici or the states of the Church. 
 
 Charles won the prize, partly because the German 
 people preferred the grandson of Maximilian to an 
 emperor who spoke a foreign tongue ; partly, also, 
 because the agents of Francis had put too much 
 weight on the power and wealth of their monarch, 
 his personal strength and skill in arms, his splendid 
 army, and his obedient kingdom. And the electors, 
 who thought little of the Turkish war, but much of 
 their own independence, preferred the weak and 
 silent Charles. So the able, strong-willed, close- 
 mouthed, and zealously pious lad was crowned Em- 
 peror of Germany at nineteen, to the wrath of Francis 
 and the despair of the Pope.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE NORTH LOSES PATIENCE WITH THE PAPACY 
 — THE LEADERS OF REVOLT IN GERMANY, 
 SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. 
 
 OTH triumphant Emperor and furious 
 Pope were confronted by a force neither 
 was large enough to understand. For, 
 great as Charles was to become in politics 
 and statecraft, he was not one of the rare 
 men, born and not made, who are capable of appre- 
 ciating or directing the play of those primal social 
 forces whose appearance foretells the change of 
 ancient institutions and the beginning of a new era 
 of history. He could handle skilfully jealous dy- 
 nastic interests, but he never understood the meaning 
 of patriotism. He could rule well in peace and war 
 as the head of the greatest house in Europe and the 
 God-anointed King of many lands, but he never 
 knew the force of national feeling struggling half 
 unconsciously for liberty. He was a zealous child of 
 the Church, who in his old age turned aside from the 
 glories of earth to prepare his soul for heaven, but he 
 never felt a thrill of the passion for truth which in- 
 spires the voices of those who cry in the wilderness. 
 
 339
 
 34-0 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 This great man of a narrow type, and the Pope, 
 whose highly cultivated taste was without a touch of 
 creative power, were confronted by a movement 
 whose violence can be compared to nothing else in 
 European history but the Barbarian Invasion and the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 The Reformation of Religion in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury was a European movement, the result of forces 
 which had been working for generations, and the 
 men who made it were also made by it. It varied 
 almost immediately into separate ecclesiastical insti- 
 tutions and produced different types of theology, 
 but it was not in any sense sectarian. The influence 
 of it is nowhere more visible than in the reform 
 within the ancient Church, known as the Catholic 
 Reaction. This emerged nearly a generation later, 
 at a time beyond the limits of this sketch, but its 
 spiritual source has been briefly indicated in the 
 Humanistic orthodoxy of Spain and Rome. Neither 
 was the Reformation in any sense a national move- 
 ment. For one hundred years the transalpine world 
 had asked again and again for that " reform of the 
 Church in head and members " which the Council of 
 Constance had left to the Popes. And when Sixtus 
 IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II., and 
 Leo X. had demonstrated the unwillingness of the 
 Papacy to reform itself, the Council of the Lateran 
 chose that instant to revoke the decrees of Constance 
 and deny the right of the Church to reform the 
 Papacy. The loyalty with which the nations of the 
 north had clung, in spite of almost unbearable rebuffs 
 and disappointments, to the venerable institution of
 
 Martin Luther. 341 
 
 their fathers was exhausted. They were weary of 
 patience. At'last they were reluctantly compelled 
 to admit that they were confronted, not by an ec- 
 clesiastical theory, but by an intolerable religious 
 situation. They abandoned all hope of reform and 
 ripened rapidly for revolution. 
 
 And the men who could give voice and form to 
 this new desire were at hand among the Younger 
 Humanists. They spoke almost simultaneously in 
 four places where we have seen the New Learning 
 firmly established. By 1525 the demand for revolt 
 against the traditional institution of the Papacy, 
 on the ground of the New Testament and the con- 
 science, had been heard from Martin Luther in 
 Germany, from Zwingli in Switzerland, from spiritual 
 descendants of Colet in England, from the friends of 
 Faber Stapulensis in France. And all of these men 
 read the New Testament, on which they based their 
 criticism of existing institutions, in the edition of 
 Erasmus. 
 
 Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk who 
 taught theology in the new University of Wittenberg, 
 founded by Frederick the Wise of Saxony. In 1 5 1 7, 
 when a Dominican by the name of Tetzel came up 
 through Germany selling indulgences for the triple 
 benefit of the Archbishop of Mayence, the banking- 
 house of Fugger in Augsburg, his creditor, and the 
 Papal fund of St. Peter's, Luther was roused, as many 
 men of his day had been, by this abuse of a traditional 
 custom of the Church. Tetzel was forbidden to enter 
 Saxony by the Elector, who had endowed the Uni- 
 versity by impounding the money gained by a similar
 
 34 2 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 traffic sixteen years before. But Tetzel approached 
 as near to the Saxon boundary as he dared and set 
 up his booth. Luther, who had already preached 
 twice to warn the people against buying, published 
 in October, 15 17, ninety-five theses in Latin, in- 
 tended to provoke an academic disputation upon the 
 virtue of indulgences. These theses were addressed 
 to the learned. They were heard by the people. 
 Translated at once, in fourteen days they were read 
 by all Germany. Two of the chief prosecutors in 
 the affair of Reuchlin, which was still dragging its 
 course through the courts of the Church, immediately 
 attacked Luther as a heretic, though as a matter of 
 fact his theses denied no proposition which had 
 ever been authoritatively established by the Church 
 as de fide. And his acquaintance, Johann Eck, like 
 himself trained in the New Learning, vigorous, 
 able, with a prodigious memory and great dialectic 
 skill, denounced him in a pamphlet entitled " Obe- 
 lisks." 
 
 Then Luther dropped Latin, always a Saul's armor 
 to him, and came out in his sermon on " Indulgences 
 and Grace " in rough, virile German. For he was 
 evidently of the opinion of his contemporary, the 
 Humanist Glarean, of Basle, who said that it was not 
 possible to describe Tiberius in Latin, but in German 
 it was easy to call him " ein abgefeimter, ehrloser, 
 znichtiger Bosewicht." With this swinging weapon, 
 which he forged himself (he was the first German to 
 write great things in his native tongue), Luther smote 
 his enemies, hip and thigh, from the Baltic to the 
 Alps. And when Charles was elected Emperor he
 
 Luther and the German People. 343 
 
 was become, by the testimony of friend and foe, the 
 most noted man in Germany. 
 
 In particular the Humanists had rallied to his side, 
 seeing in the assaults made on him a continuation of 
 the battle against Reuchlin. Early in 15 19 Christo- 
 pher Scheurl, a common friend of Eck and Luther, 
 wrote to remonstrate with Eck for attacking Luther : 
 " Thou wilt draw upon thyself the disfavor and hatred 
 of almost all Erasmians and Reuchlinists, all friends 
 of classic studies, as well as the modern theologians. 
 I have just been through several of the chief bishop- 
 rics, and find everywhere stately hosts of Martinists." 
 But had these been the only allies Luther found 
 there can be no doubt that he would have perished 
 at the stake like Huss and Savonarola. It was well 
 for him that he found the support of the German 
 people, rejoicing that at last they had a man after 
 their own heart, who could speak their wrath at a 
 system by which Italian prelates drained their gold 
 for a luxurious court. To this support of the Ger- 
 man people Luther soon began to make direct ap- 
 peal. For slowly in these years he passed through 
 the feeling of a prophet protesting against traditional 
 abuses in a venerable institution, and became pos- 
 sessed by the idea that he was the defender of the 
 truth of the Gospel and the liberty of a Christian 
 people against the false tyranny of a foreign Anti- 
 christ. He thus united to the desire for reform that 
 patriotic feeling, speaking to the people in their own 
 tongue, which we have marked as one of the three 
 tendencies observable among German men of letters 
 for the last two generations.
 
 344 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 There can be little doubt that progress in this 
 direction was made easier to him by the example of 
 Ulrich von Hutten. Before he left Italy, some months 
 before the posting of Luther's theses, Hutten had 
 arranged to receive a copy of the pamphlet of Lau- 
 rentius Valla on the so-called Donation of Con- 
 stantine. This was the first full exposition that the 
 document on which the Dominium Temporale had 
 long been canonically based was a forgery (a fact 
 now universally recognized by all scholars, Roman 
 Catholic and Protestant alike). Hutten printed the 
 manuscript with an ironical dedication to the Pope, 
 who would of course rejoice at the proof that the 
 temporal power, which evil Popes had so frequently 
 misused, was founded in error. He followed this by 
 his " Address on the Turkish War " to the princes 
 assembled at the Reichstag in Augsburg in 15 18, in 
 which appears the consciousness that Germany had 
 been drained by Papal taxes for crusades which never 
 marched, when the Germans, if they would, could 
 defend themselves against the infidel. " Therefore," 
 he ends, " if I may say boldly what I think, you 
 must in this war be on your guard against Rome as 
 much as against Asia." Luther was in Augsburg at 
 this time, but Hutten gave little thought to him, re- 
 garding the discussion of his theses as only a monk's 
 quarrel. But as the conflict deepened around Luther, 
 Hutten, who cared nothing for the religious questions 
 at issue, began to see in him a German oppressed by 
 the great foe of Germany, and in two pamphlets of 
 the spring of 1520 led the way in the path of an 
 appeal to the nation.
 
 '•'The Romish Triads." 345 
 
 " The Romish Triads " is a dialogue in the course 
 of which one of the speakers repeats the triads of 
 Vadiscus, a traveler returned from Rome. Three 
 things, he says, are banished from Rome — simplicity, 
 temperance, and piety. Three things are demanded 
 by every one in Rome — short masses, old gold, and 
 a licentious life. Of three things no one in Rome 
 cares to hear — of a General Council, of the reforma- 
 tion of the clergy, and of the beginnings of common 
 sense among the Germans. With three things the 
 Romans can never be satisfied — money for bishops' 
 palliums, Papal monthly taxes, and annates. Three 
 things pilgrims are wont to bring from Rome — stained 
 consciences, spoiled stomachs, and empty purses, etc. 
 The hearer listens with applause and closes the dia- 
 logue thus : " See in Rome the great storehouse of 
 the world, in which is heaped up what is robbed from 
 all lands. In the middle of it is the great weevil, 
 surrounded by his fellow-devourers, who destroy 
 huge heaps of fruit. They have first sucked our 
 blood, then gnawed off the flesh ; now they have 
 come to the marrow and are mashing up our very 
 bones. Will not the Germans take themselves to 
 their weapons and rush on with fire and sword? We 
 give them our gold ; we pay for their horses and dogs 
 and mules and the instruments of their vices. With 
 our money they nourish their wickedness, pass pleas- 
 ant days, robe in purple, bridle their horses and mules 
 with gold, build marble palaces. When shall we gain 
 sense and revenge our shame and the universal ruin ? " 
 
 The pamphlet entitled " The Spectators " was even 
 stronger. It represents Phoebus and his driver Phae-
 
 346 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 thon halting the chariot of the sun at midday to look 
 down through the clouds on the earth. They see in 
 Germany a great gathering in a city. It is a proces- 
 sion bringing in the Papal Legate to the Reichstag at 
 Augsburg. Phoebus explains to Phaethon what is hap- 
 pening, and describes the weakness and the strength 
 of the different orders of the German people as they 
 appear in the procession. He finds something to 
 blame in each, but thinks the priests worst of all. 
 They own half Germany, do nothing, and spend their 
 days in idleness. It is a shame for the nation, out 
 of mistaken piety, to tolerate them longer. Suddenly 
 they notice that some one is calling up to them 
 angrily out of the procession. It is the Papal Legate 
 scolding the sun for not having shone for ten days. 
 " Don't you know that, as the representative of the 
 Pope, I have power to bind and loose not only on 
 earth, but in heaven?" Phoebus answers that he 
 has heard some such thing, but does not believe it. 
 Whereupon the Legate calls him a bad Christian and 
 threatens to excommunicate him unless he makes 
 confession. Phcebus wants to know what would 
 happen then, and the Legate suggests several pen- 
 ances. Phcebus begins to laugh, and the Legate, in 
 a towering rage, excommunicates him. Phcebus tries 
 to soothe him by suggesting that he thought it kind- 
 ness not to shine too brightly, because the Legate 
 might have things to do which he would not care to 
 have the Germans see. He answers that he cares 
 nothing for the Germans, and begs the sun to start 
 a pestilence among them, that there may be many 
 empty benefices, so that he and the cardinals can
 
 J acta est A lea. 347 
 
 make some money. Whereupon Phaethon breaks in 
 to call him a cursed scoundrel, and bids him tell the 
 Pope that if he does not send better legates to Ger- 
 many the sheep will rise against so unrighteous and 
 bloodthirsty a shepherd. Whereupon the Legate 
 answers with an excommunication. Phaethon con- 
 signs him to the ridicule of the Germans, perhaps to 
 something worse than their ridicule. Then Phcebus 
 bids him drive on. 
 
 Hutten followed this modernized bit of Aristoph- 
 anes by a collection of writings from the end of the 
 fourteenth century, the time of the great schism : 
 protests against Papal abuses, assertions of Conciliar 
 Supremacy, and assertions of academic freedom. They 
 were prefaced by a " Letter to all German Freemen," 
 in which Hutten begged them not to let Luther 
 suffer as other protesters had suffered. " The axe is 
 laid at the foot of the tree. Therefore be of good 
 courage, ye German men, and stand by one another. 
 Do not be frightened, neither fail in the midst of the 
 battle. For in the end we shall win through — we 
 shall win through. Freedom forever! The die is 
 cast." 
 
 Within a few weeks of these words appeared 
 Luther's " Address to the Christian Nobility of the 
 German Nation," a deeper note of the same tone, 
 and in the heart of the people there was formed a 
 fixed resolve that, come what might, Martin Luther 
 should not be burned. 
 
 The Papal Nuntius to the Reichstag at Worms in 
 152 1 wrote : "Nine tenths of Germany cries, 'Luther,' 
 and the other, ' Death to the Roman Curia,' while
 
 348 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 everybody calls, ' General Council.' Compared to 
 this, the trouble between Henry and Gregory [Ca- 
 nossa] was an affair of roses and violets." Luther's 
 journey to Worms, to answer before the Reichstag 
 on a charge of heresy, was a triumph. Cities threw 
 open their gates, universities crowned him with honor, 
 and he entered the hall the elected champion of 
 German freedom. 
 
 There was none of the pomp of Constance in the 
 crowded and noisy Reichstag, but the situation was 
 the same. To Luther, as to Huss, the word of the 
 Church was, " Retract or be burned," and, like Huss, 
 Luther chose death. Then, according to the agree- 
 ment, the Emperor gave him a safe-conduct for 
 twenty-one days, and launched against him the ban 
 of the Empire. Luther started home, was taken out 
 of his wagon the second day by five men disguised 
 as robbers, who rode off with him, and for two years 
 not a hundred people knew where he was. 
 
 Meanwhile Ulrich Zwingli had also been slowly 
 drifting into revolt against the Papacy. In his case 
 the schism did not begin with any sudden accusation 
 of heresy. When he thundered from the pulpit of 
 Einsiedeln against a vender of indulgences, he had 
 the approval of his Bishop and the Papal Legate. 
 It was shortly after this successful protest that (in 
 the fall of 15 18) his name was suggested as preacher 
 of the cathedral of Zurich. But the appointment 
 was opposed, as Zwingli's friends wrote him, because 
 he was accused of the seduction of the daughter of 
 a respectable man near Einsiedeln. Zwingli denies 
 the seduction of an honorable woman by acknow-
 
 Zwingli Attacks Indulgences. 349 
 
 ledging with shame that he has not kept himself free 
 from the company of concubines ; and this confession 
 of a fault common to all the clergy of the time was 
 considered so unimportant that he was elected cathe- 
 dral preacher of Zurich, though in his penitent letter 
 he had begged his friend to withdraw his name if it 
 were thought that by his election " the cause of 
 Christ would suffer." 
 
 He began at once a style of preaching new to the 
 city. Instead of commenting on texts, he took up a 
 book of the Bible and expounded it in course from 
 beginning to end. In this way he went through the 
 whole New Testament in six years. He was a most 
 skilful speaker, and had carefully trained his weak 
 voice until it was flexible and penetrating. To the 
 logical exposition of the text he added practical 
 reflections upon the duties of the city at home and 
 abroad, and attacks upon the abuses of the times. 
 He had already protested against indulgences, and 
 when, early in 15 19, a certain Samson brought the 
 traffic into the neighborhood, Zwingli attacked it 
 fiercely in the pulpit and by protest to the ecclesias- 
 tical authorities. The result was an inhibition against 
 the preaching of Samson by the Bishop of Constance, 
 an edict refusing him entrance to the country from 
 the Council of Zurich and the assembled deputies of 
 the Swiss Confederates, and the whole was crowned by 
 a Papal letter censuring him for misstatements of the 
 doctrines of absolution and ordering him to obey the 
 orders of the Pope's beloved sons, the Swiss Confeder- 
 ates. Such utterances brought to Zwingli the hatred 
 of the extreme conservatives, but the love of northern
 
 350 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Switzerland ; and when the report of his death by 
 the plague spread in the fall of 15 19, he was mourned 
 in Basle as " the hope of the whole Fatherland," 
 " the trumpet of the gospel." 
 
 It was soon after his recovery from this illness that 
 Zwingli received the writings of Luther which as- 
 serted that faith was not bound by any human 
 authority. He was filled with joy to find another 
 stating so bravely and clearly convictions to which 
 he had himself arrived, and he wrote to Luther, 
 calling him David and Hercules in a breath, and 
 mixing up Cacus and Goliath in the approved fashion 
 of an evangelical Humanist. 
 
 It was not longbeforethe preacherof Zurich became 
 involved in direct opposition to the will of Leo. When 
 he first went to the city he had desired to surrender 
 his small Papal pension, but the Legate had persuaded 
 him to keep it, on the express condition that it was 
 simply the present of the Pope, who loved learning, 
 to a distinguished scholar, and bound him in no wise 
 to the suppression of opinion. In view of the con- 
 demnation of Luther it seemed impossible to receive 
 it, and Zwingli wrote to the Legate positively de- 
 clining to accept another payment. The next year 
 a Papal ambassador obtained from the Council of 
 Zurich the hire of a legion of mercenaries. Zwingli 
 instantlv denounced this sale of lives, which ought to be 
 risked only in defence of the Fatherland to" the wolves 
 who eat men." "Well do these cardinals wear red 
 hats and mantles," he said, " for if you shake them 
 gold pieces fall out, but if you wring them there runs 
 out the blood of your sons and brothers and fathers
 
 Zurich Revolts from Rome. 351 
 
 and friends." And the next year, horrified by a 
 narrow escape- from a conflict between their men and 
 another body of Swiss in the army of France, and 
 cheated out of their pay, the Council forbade foreign 
 service to all inhabitants of the canton. 
 
 It was soon after this that Zwingli, having in vain 
 sent in a petition to the Bishop, signed by ten priests, 
 asking to be released from the priestly vow of celibacy, 
 as not required by the gospels or practised by the 
 early Church, married the widow of a dead noble- 
 man who lived near him. In the middle of the 
 year he published his first attack upon the principle 
 of unlimited ecclesiastical authority. An attempt 
 by the monks to forbid Zwingli from preaching 
 on certain topics and disturbing the opinions which 
 had the authority of approved theologians, resulted 
 in a resolution of the City Council that the city pastor 
 must preach only what was in the Bible and pay no 
 attention to Duns Scotus or Thomas Aquinas. Five 
 days later the assembled clergy of the canton passed 
 unanimously a resolution to preach only what was in 
 the Word of God. Then, in a pamphlet entitled 
 " Beginning and End," addressed to his Bishop, 
 Zwingli defended the liberty of preaching the Word 
 against all traditional authority. And he closed with 
 the hope that " we may unite as the bride of Christ, 
 without spot or wrinkle, leaving the Church that is 
 nothing else but spot and wrinkle, because the name 
 of God is defamed by her." This was followed by 
 a " Counsel concerning the Message of the Pope to 
 the Princes of Germany," in which he besought them 
 not to surrender Luther, with whose destruction the
 
 352 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Pope would fasten his power upon Germany and tho 
 whole world. 
 
 Meanwhile, at Paris, even the quiet Faber had 
 fallen into trouble with the orthodox theologians. 
 He published in 151 8 a short treatise to prove that 
 Mary, the sister of Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and 
 the woman who was a sinner were not one and the 
 same person. But the lessons appointed to be read 
 on fast-days implied that they were, and he was at- 
 tacked for heresy. On the 9th of November, 152 1, 
 the theological faculty of Paris declared that any 
 defender of Faber's proposition was a heretic. And 
 a letter of that fall, from a monk of Annecy to a 
 friend at Geneva, reported a conversation of Domini- 
 can monks, in which they concluded that there were 
 four Antichrists in the Kingdom of Christ — Erasmus, 
 Luther, Reuchlin, and Faber. Meantime Faber had 
 been fortunately called out of the neighborhood of 
 the heresy-hunters. Briconnet invited him and 
 several friends to reside at Meaux, the capital of his 
 diocese, and aid in his pastoral labors for the reform 
 of religion. Among those who went with him was 
 Guillaume Farel.who resigned his position of professor 
 of philosophy in order to go. Confident in the 
 friendship and sympathy of the mother and sister of 
 the King, and supported by these scholars, Briconnet 
 began a reform of the Church in miniature. The 
 neglected pulpits of the city were regularly filled, and 
 Faber began the translation of the Bible into French. 
 The people flocked eagerly to the churches, but the 
 conservatives were filled with wrath to hear the use 
 of holy water for the dead denounced, and the doc-
 
 William Tyndale. 353 
 
 trine of purgatory rejected as resting only on tradi- 
 tion and not found in the New Testament. Farel 
 recalled a dozen years later how, on one occasion, 
 Faber, pleased with the reception of his new com- 
 mentary on the Gospels, prophesied in company that 
 the Gospel would spread through all France to repress 
 human tradition, and a certain monk named De Roma 
 answered him, " I and the other members of my order 
 will preach a crusade, and drive the King from his 
 kindgom by his own subjects, if he permits your 
 evangelical preaching." And scarcely had the work 
 begun at Meaux before the defenders of the faith at 
 Paris were taking steps to recall this erring bishop 
 from his dangerous paths. 
 
 Meantime, in England, a man of about the same 
 age as Luther and Zwingli was treading in spirit the 
 paths that led to revolt from the authority of the 
 Church and an appeal to the New Testament as the 
 final definition of religion. William Tyndale wrote of 
 having been educated at Oxford in the days when 
 " the old barking curs, Duns' disciples, and like draff 
 called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in 
 every pulpit against Greek and Latin and Hebrew, 
 giving great sorrow to the schoolmasters who taught 
 true Latin ; some, beating the pulpit with their fists 
 for madness, and roaring out with open and foaming 
 mouth that if there were but one Terence or Virgil 
 in the world, and that same in their sleeves, and a 
 fire before them, they would burn it, though it should 
 cost them their lives, affirming that all good learning 
 decayed and was utterly lost since men gave them 
 unto the Latin tongue." But through Colet and the 
 w
 
 354 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 little knot of Grecians who had just left when Tyn- 
 dale entered he somehow received the seed of the 
 New Learning. From Oxford he went to Cambridge, 
 where he may have heard Erasmus, and probably 
 fell in with a student named Bilney, who has recorded 
 that he formed the views for which he died at the 
 stake by reading the New Testament of Erasmus soon 
 after its publication. About 1521 Tyndale left the 
 University an ordained priest, to act as chaplain to 
 " Sir John Walsh, a knight of Gloucestershire." The 
 manor church of Little Foxbury was under an Italian 
 bishop who had never been inside his diocese. The 
 clergy were therefore more given to comfortable 
 orthodoxy than to work, and it is not surprising that 
 at suppers in the hall of the manor this man of the 
 New Learning became involved in debates with them. 
 It being objected by Madam Walsh that those 
 who differed with him were great beneficed clergy, 
 spending from one to three hundred pounds a year, 
 and that it did not stand to reason that a poor clerk 
 like himself, however well he might argue, could 
 really be right in opposing the authority of such 
 dignitaries, Tyndale was put upon some other 
 means of quieting the conscience of his worthy host- 
 ess. And he bethought him of translating the 
 " Enchiridion " of Erasmus, which he presented to 
 her in English as the work of a man high in favor 
 with the Archbishop and King of England. This 
 seems to have maintained his standing in the manor, 
 and he was able to free himself from a charge of 
 heresy brought against him by neighboring clergy- 
 men before the Chancellor of the diocese.
 
 Tyndale Translating the Bible. 355 
 
 These troubles, which he perceived grew out of the 
 ignorance of his accusers, suggested to him the idea of 
 translating the Bible, not, as Wiclif had done, from 
 the Vulgate, but from the original text. It is re- 
 ported that when a certain disputant said to him, 
 about this time, " It were better to be without God's 
 laws than the Pope's," Tyndale answered, " I defy 
 the Pope and all his laws." And then added, 
 quoting Erasmus, " If God spare me, ere many years 
 I will cause that the boy who driveth the plough 
 shall know more of Scripture than thou." Such 
 utterances soon made the country-side dangerous for 
 him, and Tyndale went to London in the summer of 
 1523, hoping to obtain for his translation of the New 
 Testament the patronage of Tunstal, the young Bish- 
 op, a friend of More and Erasmus. But Tunstal 
 received him coldly, and despairing of obtaining the 
 episcopal sanction, without which his translation could 
 not be printed in England, he sailed in the spring of 
 1524 for Hamburg.
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ADRIAN VI., THE HONEST ORTHODOX ECCLESIAS- 
 TIC — THE OLDER HUMANISTS OF THE NORTH 
 STAND BY THE CHURCH — THE YOUNGER AP- 
 PEAL TO THE NEW TESTAMENT — CLEMENT 
 VII., THE HEIR OF THE MEDICI. 
 
 N the 1st of December, 1 52 1, Leo died 
 suddenly, of malarial fever, in the midst 
 of the triumph of his politics, having just 
 received the news that of all Italy only 
 Genoa still held to France. The first 
 thought of the conclave of cardinals was for the 
 privileges of their order and the patronage of the 
 new pontificate. An agreement was drawn up, that 
 no cardinal might be arrested without a two-thirds 
 vote of his peers; that their property should be free 
 from tax ; that every cardinal having less than six 
 thousand florins a year should receive two hundred 
 a month from a tax levied upon the cloisters ; and 
 that the offices of the cities of the patrimonium 
 should be divided according to a detailed schedule 
 among the cardinals. All having signed the agree- 
 ment, they proceeded to election. 
 
 It was difficult. England, France, and Spain had 
 
 356
 
 A Reforming Pope. 357 
 
 their part in the struggle, the great nepots were 
 working each for his own hand, the " younger " 
 cardinals were united in common jealousy of the 
 " older," and the better men were disgusted with 
 the whole situation. When, for instance, Cardinals 
 Farnese, Ancona, and Grassi offered the tiara to 
 Zwingli's old friend, the Cardinal of Sion, he an- 
 swered, " I do not want to be Pope, but I will vote 
 for no Pope that has a wife " — a threat that silenced 
 the three politicians. In the midst of a frightful 
 wrangle, the Cardinal Medici, pointing out that after 
 so many failures it was manifest that no one present 
 could be elected, nominated the absent Cardinal of 
 Tortosa, Hadrian Dedel. The conclave stampeded, 
 and, to their own astonishment, unanimously elected 
 the former tutor of Charles V. The world was filled 
 with amazement that one with no hand in Roman 
 politics, known for his theological learning of the old 
 school and his ascetic life, should have been made 
 Pope. Everywhere the election was hailed with joy 
 by men who hoped for the conservative reform of 
 the Church. But in Rome there was mourning. 
 The people were enraged at the choice of a " bar- 
 barian," and the cardinals could not forgive them- 
 selves for electing one who had not signed the 
 agreement concerning patronage and privileges. As 
 they came from the conclave one by one, a howling 
 mob led them to their palaces ; and when he reached 
 his door the Cardinal of Mantua bowed politely and 
 thanked them for having used only words instead of 
 stones against one who had been guilty of such a 
 stupidity. A deep gloom settled upon the Papal
 
 358 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 court as the four thousand officials of Leo, who had 
 paid big prices for their offices, looked forward to the 
 coming of this strict churchman from the barbarous 
 north. 
 
 When the Pope (Adrian VI.) arrived in the city, 
 August 31, 1522, he found that he had a difficult task 
 before him. The extravagance of Leo had left the trea- 
 sury so empty that the cardinals had to pawn the 
 tapestries of Raphael and the silver statues out of the 
 Sistine Chapel to raise funds for the journey of the 
 Legates who informed him of his election, and the mass 
 of Leo's debts, at huge interest, was an almost ruinous 
 burden upon the income of the Church. Rome was 
 also in a frightful state of disorder. The Duke of 
 Camerino had been murdered just outside the gates, 
 and a few weeks before two bravos had been exe- 
 cuted who were accounted guilty of one hundred 
 and sixteen assassinations. To bring order out of 
 this chaos Adrian depended on Spain. He came into 
 the city guarded by Spanish troops and accompanied 
 by Spaniards and Flemings to fill the household 
 offices of the Vatican and be his counsellors. The 
 luxurious life of Leo ceased instantly. Adrian's old 
 housekeeper took charge of the cooking, and the 
 Papal table expenses were at once cut down to a 
 florin a day, which he took every night out of his 
 own purse. The palefreniers (grooms to lead the 
 horses) were reduced in number from one hundred 
 to ten. Two French chamberlains and two Spanish 
 pages completed the household. The Pope's first 
 speech in conclave was ominous to the splendid 
 cardinals of Leo. Its refrain was reform of the open
 
 Adrians Tasks. 359 
 
 and great scandals in the Curia, of which all the world 
 spoke. Such -economy made the Romans, whose 
 trade had flourished on the luxury of Leo, hate the 
 ascetic and taciturn foreigner; and his speech set 
 every cardinal who loved the politics and patronage 
 of the ecclesiastical machine entirely against the re- 
 former. 
 
 Four things claimed Adrian's attention : the reform 
 of the Curia, the heresy in Germany, the crusade 
 against the Turks, and the rivalry of Francis and 
 Charles, which threatened to fill Italy and the world 
 with war. His papers were carried to the Nether- 
 lands after his death and lost ; but from what we 
 know of his intentions he tried to manage all of these 
 like an honest churchman, an old-school theologian, 
 and a loyal Spaniard. He would gladly have taken 
 up reform first, and he believed that the clergy ought 
 to receive from the Church incomes only living ex- 
 penses and clothes ; but a short time convinced him 
 that, with the debts of Leo to handle and a hostile 
 College of Cardinals, he must go slowly. And the 
 other matters pressed. 
 
 In Germany he was disposed to make every con- 
 cession consistent with his ultra-orthodoxy. The 
 abuses connected with the sale of indulgences were 
 open, and admitted even by those who accepted the 
 principle of them. Ximenes had limited the sale in 
 Spain, and even the cardinals had agreed before the 
 election that the privilege of selling should be taken 
 from the Franciscan friars. No one recognized the 
 abuses which had gathered round the Roman institu- 
 tions better than Adrian. To the complaints which
 
 360 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 came from the German Reichstag at Nuremberg he 
 sent an answer confessing the great sins of the Papacy, 
 promising reform, and urging the princes to let Luther 
 be dealt with according to the ban which had declared 
 him guilty of death. The Reichstag's answer hailed 
 with joy the promises of the Pope to reform the 
 Church and to unite Christendom against the Turk, 
 regretted the discussions aroused by Luther, but said 
 that nothing but civil war could enforce the ban of 
 the Empire upon him. It suggested that, under the 
 circumstances, a General Council of the Church 
 should be called in Germany, where every delegate 
 might speak his opinion without fear or favor. This 
 answer meant a deadlock, for it seemed to Adrian 
 that there remained nothing for a Council to adjudi- 
 cate. 
 
 Scarcely had Adrian been inaugurated before 
 Charles began to foreclose the mortgage on the Pa- 
 pacy which his ready support of his old tutor gave 
 him, and his demands showed that there had been 
 some reason in the thought of those who feared, be- 
 fore Adrian started for Rome, that the Church was 
 threatened with a Spanish Babylonian Captivity. 
 He demanded twenty-eight concessions. They in- 
 cluded the grant of large parts of the regular income 
 of the Spanish Church, the use for the defence of his 
 Moorish conquests of all the money raised in Spain 
 for the crusade, the management of the three great 
 Spanish orders of Spiritual Knights, and such other 
 changes in patronage as made the crown absolute 
 master of the Spanish Church. In addition he asked 
 that the Pope should censure all who went to the
 
 Adrians Death. 361 
 
 great fair at Lyons, because Julius and Leo had 
 ordered it removed to Genoa with the purpose of 
 weakening the trade of France. Finally he demanded 
 that the Pope should join the league of England, 
 Venice, and Spain against France. To be able to 
 support these demands intelligently, his ambassador 
 filled the Vatican with spies ; and so successful was 
 his bribery that every word spoken in the secret 
 counsels of the Church was reported to him. Against 
 this claim Adrian stood out long, in the vain hope 
 that he might preserve the peace of Europe and unite 
 France and Spain against the Turk. Sultan Selim in 
 his will had left to his son the duty of taking first 
 Belgrade and then the island of Rhodes, and from 
 these points of departure on land and sea, of finishing 
 the conquest of Europe. Belgrade fell in 1521, the 
 first year of his reign. And after a heroic defence 
 of eight months by the Knights Hospitallers, the 
 Janizaries entered Rhodes on Christmas day, 1522. 
 A few months later, despairing of making peace 
 between the three young kings thirsty for glory, 
 Adrian entered into the league to defend Italy against 
 the invasion of Francis. Then, on the 14th of Sep- 
 tember, having seen the Turk capture the outer bul- 
 warks of Christendom on land and sea, he died amid 
 the clash of arms between the Defender of the Faith, 
 the most Catholic King, and the most Christian King. 
 The cardinals pressed into his room as he lay dying 
 and roughly demanded the key to his treasure-room. 
 But they found only a few silver pieces, some rings 
 of Leo's, and several hundred florins ; for Adrian had 
 been penurious, not for himself, but for the Church.
 
 362 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Rome rose in joy at the news of the death of a Pope 
 who was too good, even as they had rejoiced before 
 at the death of one who was too bad. The wits 
 crowned the doors of the honest old man's physician 
 with laurel and the inscription, " To the Liberator of 
 the Fatherland, from the Senate and People of Rome." 
 But the election of Adrian, though it did not reform 
 the Curia, was at least of service to the Church in 
 hastening the break between the Older Humanists 
 and the men of the radical reform. At his first pro- 
 test the Humanists of Germany had stood by Luther 
 almost to a man ; but when Luther revolted entirely 
 from the Papacy, and began to defend himself from 
 the stake and his cause from extinction by war to 
 the knife, one by one the Older Humanists — all the 
 men whom we have mentioned in that class and many 
 more — fell away from him. But their successors of 
 the next generation were more unanimous in stand- 
 ing by the protest that grew to revolt than their 
 fathers in abandoning it. Reuchlin died shortly after 
 the election of Adrian, having tried in vain to prevent 
 his nephew, Melancthon, from making close friends 
 with Luther, but his younger brother became a firm 
 Lutheran. None hailed the election of Adrian with 
 more joy than Erasmus. " We have a theologian 
 for Pope," he wrote to Zwingli, " and we shall soon 
 see a turn in the Christian cause " ; and soon 
 afterward, in answer to Adrian's request, he was 
 sending to Rome his counsel on the situation of the 
 Church and the German schism. In February, 1523, 
 he wrote one of his private letters, which became the 
 property of the world, to explain that he had nothing
 
 The Bible for the People. 363 
 
 to do with Luther. He had already broken with 
 Zwingli, and within two years he was at sword's 
 points with both the reformers. 
 
 But the men of the radical reform had by that time 
 gone too far to care for lukewarm adherents. In 
 France, in Germany, in Switzerland, even in England, 
 the line had been drawn, and the world was asked 
 to choose between the Christian institutions which 
 had grown into authority by tradition and custom, 
 and the record of the origins of Christianity as inter- 
 preted by reason and the conscience. 
 
 In January, 1523, Zwingli defended, in a public 
 disputation before the great Council of Zurich, sixty- 
 seven theses, of which the first was: "All who say 
 that the Gospel is nothing without the authentication 
 of the Church err and revile God." And at the con- 
 clusion the Council ordered that, " as no heresy had 
 been proved, he and the other preachers of Zurich 
 should continue to proclaim the true divine Scripture 
 according to the Spirit of God." 
 
 Already Luther had issued the New Testament in 
 a translation readable by North Germans and South 
 Germans — the first great monument of their common 
 speech and the foundation of a new literature. In 
 the fall of the following year, 1523, the New Testa- 
 ment appeared in French from the pen of Faber 
 Stapulensis, and in the fall of 1525 Tyndale printed 
 at Worms six thousand copies of his English New 
 Testament. Thus in the three chief transalpine 
 tongues the appeal was made to the individual reason 
 and conscience to test the Roman authority by the 
 record of the origins of Christianity. The result
 
 364 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 among each of these three peoples was schism and 
 revolt, leading to a century of religious war which 
 convulsed all Europe. 
 
 In this great conflict Spain was to be the champion 
 of the Papacy, ever striving to maintain or reestablish 
 its authority. But the able and pious youth of 
 twenty-three who was King of Spain and Emperor 
 of Germany at the death of Adrian did not realize at 
 first the greatness of the spiritual force which was to 
 destroy the power of the Papacy over half Europe. 
 His attention was concentrated upon the prospects of 
 a new and desperate struggle with his rival, the King 
 of France, for the possession of North Italy. It 
 seemed to him of the greatest importance, therefore, 
 to have not only a good Pope, but a Pope friendly 
 to Spain ; and at the end of fifty days of conclave, 
 when Giulio de Medici was elected and took the title 
 of Clement VII., his ambassador wrote, " Medici is 
 your creature." 
 
 The new Pope, though without any of Adrian's 
 ascetic tendencies, led a very strict life. The Vatican 
 was ruled by the utmost ecclesiastical decorum, and 
 the Pope's musical taste was chiefly indulged in im- 
 proving the ceremonies of the Church. He also 
 listened gladly to learned discussions at table upon 
 theology or philosophy. He kept himself from 
 simony and was just and punctual in fulfilling his 
 promises. His long experience in ecclesiastical affairs 
 made all men who thought that diplomacy could save 
 the Church expect great things of his pontificate. 
 For it was only after he had obtained power that he 
 displayed the curious mixture of obstinacy and lack
 
 The Wisdom that Became Foolishness. 365 
 
 of self-reliance which was in him. It was the mis- 
 fortune of Clement to have been trained in an arti- 
 ficial school and then plunged into a field of action 
 where primal passions of the soul were at work. 
 The maxims of the politics of Machiavelli were made 
 for a world where men were moved chiefly by ap- 
 petites and the secondary considerations of a highly 
 artificial system. Around Clement were moving the 
 forces of national hatred and patriotic pride, the love 
 of religious freedom, and the spirit of self-sacrifice 
 for venerable institutions. What wonder, then, that 
 his wisdom was worse than ignorance and his trained 
 cleverness the most fatal blundering?
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE SACK OF ROME. 
 
 HE war between the League and France 
 
 was pushed with vigor, and in May, 1524, 
 
 the French General was driven across the 
 
 Alps. To this victory the Pope, in spite 
 
 of the pressure of the Spanish ambassador, 
 
 contributed little, because he did not wish it to be 
 
 too complete. The Papacy had erected the French 
 
 kingdom of Sicily to prevent North and South Italy 
 
 being in the hands of one power, which would then 
 
 be too strong for it. By the same policy it had 
 
 gladly seen the kingdom of Naples pass to Spain. 
 
 If now Charles, Emperor and King of Spain, was to 
 
 rule in Naples and Milan, would it not be at the cost 
 
 of that political independence of the Papal States 
 
 which for fifty years had been the chief aim of all 
 
 Popes except the barbarian Adrian? So Clement 
 
 gave but little aid, and secretly urged Venice to follow 
 
 his example. Then, filled with fright at the triumph 
 
 of the Emperor, he turned to him with expressions 
 
 of loyalty and demands for a share in the conquests. 
 
 But when Francis crossed the Alps the next year 
 
 with the most powerful army of the generation, fifty 
 
 366
 
 Intrigues. 367 
 
 thousand men, the Pope closed a secret treaty with 
 him and Venice. All in vain ; for in the frightful 
 defeat of Pavia the army of France was destroyed and 
 the King taken prisoner. A month later Clement 
 entered again into alliance with the Emperor, agree- 
 ing to join in the defence of Milan against every 
 assailant. But scarcely was the King of France back 
 in his kingdom before Clement was active in favoring 
 the League of Cognac, in which the Pope, England, 
 Florence, and Venice joined to support Francis in 
 breaking the oaths by which he had secured his re- 
 lease from prison. 
 
 The Emperor made every effort to withdraw the 
 Pope from the League ; offered to give up Milan if 
 Clement and the Italian states would pay the costs 
 of conquering it. He even offered to leave all ques- 
 tions which could not be agreed on by treaty to the 
 decision of the Pope. But Clement was now bent on 
 war, for he had heard that the position of the Spanish 
 army was desperate. They were living in a wasted 
 and hostile country without any line of communica- 
 tion, and serving a crown which, with all its wealth, 
 was in a chronic state of bankruptcy. It seemed to 
 the weak obstinacy of Clement a good time to bring 
 pressure to bear on the Emperor. So the imperial 
 ambassador left the Vatican with threats and sar- 
 casms, and the Emperor fell back on the ancient 
 plan of raising insurrection in the Papal States. 
 
 Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, with his brothers and 
 relations, descendants of the old Ghibelline nobility, 
 collected four thousand men and suddenly fell on 
 Rome to seize the Pope. With them came the
 
 368 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Spanish ambassador. The herald proclaimed, as they 
 rode without a shot into the heart of Rome, that no 
 one need fear, for the Colonna were only come to 
 free Rome from the tyranny of an avaricious Pope. 
 Clement proposed to meet them on the throne like 
 Boniface, but was persuaded without much difficulty 
 to take refuge in the castle of San Angelo. Co- 
 lonna's men plundered St. Peter's and the Vatican, 
 making a booty reckoned at three hundred thousand 
 florins. The castle was unprovisioned for a siege, 
 and the Pope sent for the Spanish minister to make 
 terms. He threw himself at Clement's feet, and, ex- 
 pressing his regret for the plundering, gave back the 
 staff and tiara. There was nothing for Clement to 
 do but to grant all that was asked, which he promptly 
 did, but without the smallest intention of keeping his 
 word ; and with full absolution the Colonna retreated. 
 Meantime Charles had slackened much in his efforts 
 to suppress the Lutheran heresy ; for he was finding 
 out the wisdom of that ambassador who wrote from 
 Rome, in 1520, that he should show some favor 
 secretly to a certain monk Martin, for he might be 
 useful in case the Pope refused to join the anti-French 
 alliance or threatened to withdraw from it. And 
 when the Reichstag at Speyer, in the summer of 
 1526, demanded a General Council of the Church, 
 and meanwhile left it to each prince and city " to act 
 in regard to the Edict of Worms [which ordered the 
 surrender of Luther and the suppression of heresy] 
 as he hoped and trusted to answer to God and the 
 Emperor," Charles probably did not mourn very 
 much at this disobedience to the sentence of the
 
 The Pious Lands knee hts. 369 
 
 Church and the ban of the Empire. At all events 
 he had neither-leisure nor means to divert from his 
 contest with Francis and his ally, the Pope. And so 
 the German Reformation gained time to develop the 
 strength which enabled it a few years later to defend 
 its life on the field of battle against Church and 
 Empire. 
 
 Within a month the Pope had broken the forced 
 convention, excommunicated Colonna and all his 
 house, and put an army in the field against him. 
 Meantime from two sides the Emperor was strength- 
 ening his force in Italy. A fleet landed seven thou- 
 sand Spaniards on the coast of Tuscany, and in the 
 north, Georg von Frundsberg, organizer of the 
 German professional soldiers, was raising an army. 
 These mercenaries, whose fame was now beginning 
 to surpass that of the Swiss, were called the pious 
 Landsknechts, though it is difficult to see why. The 
 original members of these bands had been military 
 retainers of the knights whose employment was lost 
 by the decay of the feudal system. They had de- 
 veloped a loose organization, bound by unwritten 
 laws, undisciplined, but with great powers of cohe- 
 sion. However much they might quarrel among 
 themselves, they stood in thick phalanx, bristling 
 with eighteen-foot spears, against all outside inter- 
 ference. Their rough affection had nicknamed 
 Frundsberg " the father of all Landsknechts," and he 
 had little difficulty in raising among the mountains 
 of Tyrol and South Germany thirty-five companies, 
 amounting to twelve thousand men. The necessary 
 
 funds he got by mortgaging his own estates for 
 x
 
 370 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 thirty-eight thousand florins. For future pay he 
 trusted to the Emperor or to plunder. They were 
 a band of wild veterans, commanded by tried captains 
 of the lesser nobility who had won fame and skill in 
 the ceaseless wars of a lifetime, and, from the ranks 
 to the General, hatred of the Pope was almost as 
 strong as love of plunder. With forced marches 
 Frundsberg hurried this army over the Alps by 
 untrodden paths, his men hauling the stout old 
 General up the rocks with their long spears, while 
 their comrades took turns in shoving behind. He 
 had neither horses, provisions, artillery, nor money ; 
 but he struck off boldly into the valley of the Po, and, 
 fighting his way through the Papal mercenaries, 
 scarcely touched by the inhabitants of the rich and 
 thickly populated states he traversed, safely formed 
 a junction with the garrison of Milan, which put the 
 Duke of Bourbon, its commander, at the head of 
 thirty thousand men. He held the roads to Rome 
 and Florence, threatening to pour his army, mad- 
 dened by lack of pay and long-whetted appetite for 
 plunder, now on one city, now on the other. 
 
 Then Clement tried to make peace. It did not 
 seem a desperate situation. The League had thirty 
 thousand men in the field. The Spanish army was 
 penniless, cold, and starving. Long stretches of 
 hostile country lay between them and the strong 
 walls of Rome ; the burgher militia of the city was 
 fourteen thousand strong; it was still possible to 
 squeeze money out of the resources of the Church ; 
 and Italy hated the Spaniard as she hated the 
 Frenchman. If Clement had seen the real forces in 
 his own chosen game of politics he might at least
 
 The Threatening Cloud. 371 
 
 have lost with honor; but he was one of those poli- 
 ticians who always try to evade realities in the hope 
 that something will turn up. Five days he remained 
 undecided between the ambassador of France and 
 Spain. Then he agreed to a truce. 
 
 The news was received in the army of Bourbon 
 with indescribable wrath. The soldiers, cheated of 
 the prospect of plunder which alone had made them 
 bear their desperate hardships and total lack of pay, 
 rose in mutiny. The Spaniards sacked the quarters 
 of the Duke of Bourbon, and threw the golden tabard 
 with his coat of arms into the ditch. Meantime he 
 had taken refuge with Frundsberg and was hidden in 
 a stall of the stable. Three days later it was the 
 turn of the Landsknechts to mutiny. Frundsberg 
 assembled them by beat of drum into a great ring, 
 and. stood in the centre to speak to them. He bade 
 them have patience for a month. They answered 
 with shouts of "Gold! Gold! " and lowered their 
 spear-points against him. The insult broke the old 
 soldier's heart. He staggered and would have fallen, 
 but they caught him and helped him to a seat on a 
 drum, while the wrath of the men quickly melted to 
 pity. They laid him across the ass on which he rode 
 during the march, and brought him to an inn near 
 by, but Georg von Frundsberg was done. A year 
 later they got the paralyzed veteran across the Alps 
 to his mortgaged castle of Mindelheim, and he died 
 in a week. 
 
 The wild mass of fighting men, as frightful in peace 
 as in war, was left, half starved and unpaid, with no 
 leader who could control them except in battle. 
 Rome was their goal ; for in Rome lay the enemy of
 
 372 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Germany, the insulter of the Spanish King, the Pope; 
 and in Rome were the wines and the women, the 
 gold and jewels, the silks and satins which would 
 make up for all hardships and replace their lost pay. 
 It was a force that was not to be played with for an 
 instant. It must be bought off and turned back to 
 the north, or fought desperately like a herd of wild 
 beasts. Poor Clement did neither. Two hundred 
 and fifty thousand florins would have paid the first 
 instalment of the men's wages and halted them. He 
 was unwilling to raise it; and having made a truce 
 with the Spanish Vice-King of Naples, he dismissed 
 four thousand mercenaries, and sent a message to 
 the army of Bourbon to offer sixty thousand florins 
 if they would retreat. The generals ordered the 
 captains to ask the men if they were willing. The 
 Spanish regiments made answer that they were deeply 
 laden with sins and must go to Rome to get absolu- 
 tion, and finally Germans and Spaniards bound 
 themselves by an oath not to intermit the march. 
 Bourbon sent word to the Pope and the Vice-King 
 that he was helpless in the hands of his men, and 
 came on toward Rome. Then, too late, the Pope 
 found a desperate courage, entered once more into 
 league with France, England, and Venice, and made 
 efforts to arm the Romans and raise mercenaries. 
 He filled the city with tardy energy and Italy with 
 futile appeals for aid. 
 
 And that ragged and hungry host rolled steadily 
 along, eating unripe fruit by the wayside, plundering 
 and burning every city which did not feed them. 
 On the 4th of May Clement proclaimed a crusade
 
 The Storming of Rome. 2>7Z 
 
 against them as Lutherans and heretics, and on the 
 next day, forty thousand strong, they pitched their 
 camp before Rome. Their situation was desperate. 
 They had made the country behind a desert, they 
 were in the direst want, the walls were strong, the 
 city was capable of putting fourteen thousand fight- 
 ing men in the field, and the army of the League was 
 gathering to fall on their rear. It was with the mind 
 of one who dared not fail that Bourbon marshalled the 
 men at midnight. At daybreak, without artillery or 
 proper scaling-ladders, they made the assault. The 
 first rush failed, and the Landsknechts lost six ban- 
 ners. Then Bourbon sprang from his horse, and 
 seizing a ladder made of vineyard staves, started to 
 mount. A ball struck him, and with the cry, " Our 
 Lady ! I am dead," he fell. The news only roused 
 the fury of his men. In another wild assault Span- 
 iards and Germans planted their flags on top of the 
 wall in two places at the same moment, and a desper- 
 ate massacre began. A company of Roman militia 
 lost nine hundred out of a thousand. The Swiss 
 guard of the Pope perished almost to a man ; and a 
 maddened band of Spaniards even broke into the 
 hospital of San Spirito and massacred the patients. 
 The Pope was saying mass in St. Peter's when some 
 fleeing Swiss rushed in at the great doors, with the 
 killers hard after them. The attendants hurried him 
 by the covered passage toward the castle of San 
 Angelo, and the cries of his guardsmen cut down at 
 the high altar pursued him. The portcullis of the 
 castle fell upon the stream of fugitives, and two 
 cardinals were afterward drawn up in baskets. Mean-
 
 374 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 while Bourbon had died in the church of Campo 
 Santo, crying in his last delirium, "To Rome! To 
 Rome!" That frightful army was loose in the Eter- 
 nal City, with no one who could hold it in check for 
 a moment. 
 
 According to the laws of war which remained un- 
 questioned for generations later, a city taken by 
 assault belonged to the soldiers. They could hold 
 every man, woman, and child in it to ransom, or, if 
 they chose, put them to the sword. And when, the 
 next day, the army, which with all its disorganization 
 was still a frightful fighting-machine, passed from the 
 Leonina over the walls of the city proper, a sack 
 began more pitiless than that of Alaric and the Goths. 
 At the end of three days the Prince of Orange, now 
 ostensibly in command, ordered plundering to cease. 
 But the order was unheeded, and when the 
 soldiers were through it was said that no one over 
 three years was left alive, unless their lives were 
 bought by ransom. A certain bishop bought himself 
 three times, and at last was murdered. The prisoners 
 were dragged about with ropes to beg ransom from 
 their friends, like Cardinal Cajetan, who was hauled 
 and kicked through the streets until he had collected 
 what his captors demanded. When the money was 
 not to be had came torture. A Florentine, un- 
 able to endure longer, snatched a dagger from one 
 of his tormentors, killed him and then himself. A 
 Venetian threw himself backward out of a window to 
 escape pain by death. Nothing was sacred to the 
 crowd of Spaniards, Germans, and Italians, drunk 
 with wine, lust, and blood. They stabled their horses
 
 The Sack of Rome. 375 
 
 in the chapels of St. Peter's, broke open and plun- 
 dered the coffin'of Julius II., played dice on the high 
 altar, and got drunk out of the vessels of the mass. 
 The relics were insulted. A Landsknecht fastened 
 the holy lance-head on his own spear, and a captain 
 carried the cord on which Judas hanged himself back 
 to Germany, where he exhibited it in his village 
 church. One cardinal was taken from his bed, laid 
 out on a bier with wax candles in his hands, and 
 carried to an open grave, where a funeral oration was 
 delivered and the threat made to bury him alive 
 unless he paid the demanded ransom. In one of the 
 market-places drunken soldiers tried to force a poor 
 priest to give the consecrated host to an ass, and he 
 died under their torture. So the smoke of Rome's 
 agony went up to heaven, and the long-hoarded 
 riches of her luxurious palaces became the spoil of 
 the cruel soldiers of Spain and Germany. The booty 
 was reckoned conservatively at over eight million 
 florins ; some put it as high as twenty millions. 
 
 One month after the storm the Pope surrendered 
 the castle of San Angelo, agreeing to pay as a ransom 
 four hundred thousand florins in addition to the losses 
 of the city. But it was the middle of June be- 
 fore the soldiers could be induced to leave the city, 
 not by commands of their officers, but from fear of 
 famine and the beginnings of the plague. Their new 
 won wealth availed little. By the 1st of September 
 half of the Landsknechts were dead of malarial fever, 
 hunger, and debauchery. 
 
 The sack of Rome sent a thrill of horror through 
 the world, for it shocked even that age, when war
 
 376 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 knew no mercy. But it appears from letters and 
 pamphlets that everywhere earnest men, Protestants 
 and orthodox alike, held it to be a judgment of God 
 upon the sins of the Curia and that policy with which 
 every Pope since Sixtus IV., except the short-lived 
 Adrian, had used the power of the Vicar of Christ in 
 the dangerous game of dynastic politics. 
 
 Radically revolutionary thoughts were not wanting 
 to minds which had no connection with the move- 
 ments of Luther or of Zwingli. From more than one 
 side the counsel came to Charles to abolish the 
 Papacy, to rule himself as Emperor in Rome, and to 
 shape the unity of Christendom into a confederation 
 of national hierarchies which should establish the 
 reforms demanded by the laity under the direction 
 of a General Council. It is not to be supposed that 
 Charles seriously considered this plan. As a pupil 
 of Adrian, who had said that " if by the Roman 
 Church is understood its head, the Pope, it is certain 
 that he can err even in matters of faith," 1 Charles did 
 not believe in the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, which 
 did not become a test of orthodoxy for two hundred 
 and fifty years. But he was too much a man of in- 
 stitutions and too little a man of ideas to make it 
 possible that his zeal for religion should turn toward 
 a plan flattering to his pride, but destructive of so 
 many venerable and sacred forms and sanctions of 
 religious authority. And he was too much of a 
 diplomat to try anything which would have met such 
 powerful opposition from jealous interests. When 
 he he^d of the plundering of Rome he put on 
 
 1 " Schaff Creeds," p. 177.
 
 The Triumphant Emperor. $77 
 
 mourning, and wrote to princes and cardinals dis- 
 claiming all responsibility and laying the blame upon 
 the treacherous Papal politics and the long curial 
 corruption which had drawn down this judgment of 
 God. But he made no move to free the Pope 
 from the presence of the mutinous army constantly 
 threatening to plunder the city again unless they re- 
 ceived the promised pay. To the protests of Eng- 
 land and France, fearing that a Council under the 
 lead of Charles would make him too strong for their 
 interests, he paid but little attention; and in Novem- 
 ber he closed a treaty by which Clement received 
 back the States of the Church in return for a promise 
 of neutrality in the wars of Spain and the League, 
 secured by hostages and the payment of the wages 
 of the army which had sacked Rome. In addition 
 it was agreed that the reform of the Church in head 
 and members should be undertaken by a General 
 Council. 
 
 Before the sum agreed was fully paid the Pope 
 escaped the power of the half-mutinous imperial 
 soldiers by fleeing in disguise from the castle of San 
 Angelo, and took up his residence in Orvieto, in 
 want almost of the necessaries of life. Meanwhile 
 Italy was wasted by war from the Alps to the sea, 
 and her cities plundered by all the professional 
 soldiers of the world. In this frightful duel between 
 France and Spain for the possession of Italy the 
 Emperor steadily won. His generals held the fast- 
 nesses of the north against every effort of the League, 
 and the French army in the south perished by sword 
 and pestilence before the walls of Naples.
 
 378 The Age of the Renascence. 
 
 Then, on the 6th of October, 1528, the Pope came 
 back to the city, escorted by a detachment of Spanish 
 soldiers. The streets were burned, ruined, and empty, 
 for the population, which numbered eighty-five thou- 
 sand under Leo X., counted now but thirty-two 
 thousand. Many of these were beggars. The minds 
 of all were filled with memories of loss or insult. The 
 glory of the Eternal City was dimmed. The whole 
 brilliant company of artists and litterateurs which had 
 made Rome the centre of the cultured world was 
 scattered in poverty through Italy, or had died 
 miserably of hunger, the plague, or the abuse of 
 avaricious captors. Clement rode through the city 
 under a chill twilight rain, while the people watched 
 him in silence, broken only by reproaches or com- 
 plaints. He reached St. Peter's in tears. 
 
 One hundred and fifty years after Gregory had 
 entered the Eternal City on his return from Avignon, 
 the descendant of the typical family of the Italian 
 Renascence, the inheritor of Cosimo and Lorenzo de* 
 Medici, looked out of his plundered palace to see 
 Rome in ruins, Italy wasted by fire and sword, and 
 all transalpine Europe threatening revolt against the 
 Church.
 
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 INDEX. 
 
 Abbreviators, College of, 174. 
 
 Absenteeism, 107, 108. 
 
 Academy, Florentine, 264. 
 
 Academy, Roman, 175, 202, 264. 
 
 Acciaijuoli, Niccola, relation to 
 Boccaccio, 63. 
 
 Adalbert Ranconis, 57. 
 
 Adrian VI., election, 357; condi- 
 tion of Rome, 358; attitude 
 toward Germany,359 ; demands 
 of Charles I., 360, 361 ; league 
 against Francis, 361 ; death, 
 361 ; Erasmus on, 362. For 
 events previous to election, see 
 Dedel, Hadrian. 
 
 ^Eneas Sylvius, 165 ; on Ger- 
 mans, 177, 181 ; acquaintance 
 with Gregor von Heimburg, 
 181 sq. See Pius II. 
 
 Agliotti, Girolamo, 157. 
 
 Ailly, Pierre d'. See d'Ailly. 
 
 Albergati, Cardinal, 166. 
 
 Alberto da Sarteano, 157, 158. 
 
 Albornoz, Gil d', Papal legate, 
 
 36, 37- 
 Alcala, University of, 332. 
 Alchemy in Petrarch's time, 24, 
 
 25- 
 
 Alcor, Archdeacon of, on the 
 "Enchiridion," 285. 
 
 Alexander V., 81, 82 ; attitude of 
 University of Prague toward, 86. 
 
 Alexander VI., election, 212; 
 characteristics, 212 sq. ; reform- 
 ations, 214.; family life in Vati- 
 can, 229, 230 ; controversy with 
 
 Savonarola, 231 sq., 239, 240; 
 with the Orsini, 233 ; excom- 
 municates Savonarola, 235; grief 
 at murder of Juan, 236 ; reform 
 of Church, 236, 237 ; letter from 
 Savonarola, 237; backslidings, 
 238 ; renews warfare on Savo- 
 narola, 239, 240; plots with 
 France and Venice, 251 sq. ; 
 described in letter to Sylvius 
 de Sabellis, 254; lewd amuse- 
 ments, 256 ; rejoices at Caesar's 
 triumphant treachery, 257; im- 
 prisonment and death of Orsini, 
 257; supposed murders, 258; 
 death and alleged cause, 259; 
 not an atheist, 259, 260. For 
 references previous to election, 
 see Borgia, Roderigo. 
 
 Alfonso of Naples, relation to 
 Poggio, 138. 
 
 Alidosi, Cardinal, murdered, 290. 
 
 Ambrogio, 1 19. 
 
 Ancona, Cardinal, 357. 
 
 Andrea Mantegna on Prince 
 Djem, 210. 
 
 Andreas, Bishop of Crain, call 
 for General Council, 242. 
 
 Angelico, Fra, 159. 
 
 Antipope. See Benedict XIII., 
 Clement VII., Felix V. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, on Immacu- 
 late Conception, 75 ; condemned 
 by Colet, '282. 
 
 Aragon, kingdom created by 
 Papacy, 6. 
 
 385
 
 3 86 
 
 Index. 
 
 Aristotle, criticised by Petrarch, 
 25, 26; study of in early six- 
 teenth century, 316. 
 
 "Arrabbiati " in Florence, 231, 
 232, 241. 
 
 Ascanio Sforza. See Sforza, 
 Ascanio. 
 
 Aschaffenburg, concordat of, 121. 
 
 Astorre Manfredi. See Man- 
 fredi. 
 
 Astrology in Petrarch's time, 24, 
 
 25. 
 
 Augsburg, importance of, 183. 
 
 Augustine, methods contrasted 
 with Jerome's, 314, 315. 
 
 Aurispa, Giovanni, 130. 
 
 Austria, Italian claims, 288. 
 
 Avignon, return from, 1 sq. ; 
 power of court at, 8 ; St. Bridget 
 on, 41 ; condition in 1381, 73. 
 
 "Babylonian Captivity," 2. 
 
 Bacon, Roger, more original than 
 Petrarch, 23- 
 
 Ball, John, 17. 
 
 Baptista Mantuanus, in Rome 
 under Alexander VI., 230. 
 
 Barabello, poet, 322. 
 
 Barbo, Pietro, 172. See Paul II. 
 
 Bari, Archbishop of, 40. See 
 Urban VI. 
 
 Basle, Council of, 116, 119; de- 
 poses Eugenius IV., 120; sup- 
 presses letters expectiva, 329. 
 
 Basle, University of, 272, 275. 
 
 Beccadelli, " Hermaphroditus," 
 
 143- 
 Belgrade, fall of, 361. 
 Bembo, Pietro, a pagan, 324. 
 Benedict XIII., 62, 80; deposed 
 
 by Pisa, 81; his support, 82; 
 
 deposed by Constance, 105. 
 Benefices, plurality of, 107. 
 Bentivogli, 287. 
 Bernabo Visconti, 36. 
 Bernardino of Siena, 112; attacks 
 
 the " Hermaphroditus," 143; 
 
 ridiculed by Bruni, 155. 
 Bessarion, 164, 173. 
 Bible, in Germany, 303 sq. See 
 
 New Testament, Faber Stapu- 
 lensis, Colet, Erasmus, Tyn- 
 dale, Wiclif. 
 
 Bienveni, friend of Savonarola, 
 232. 
 
 Black death, 16 
 
 Boccaccio, letter to Petrarch on 
 Dante, 32 ; character, 62, 63 ; 
 relations to Petrarch, 63 ; De- 
 cameron, 64; place in letters, 
 65; against monks, 155; on 
 Spaniards, 176. 
 
 Bohemia, 82, 83; revolt, 102. 
 See Huss, John. 
 
 Bologna revolt against Papacy, 
 38; occupied by Julius II., 287. 
 
 Bonagratia, II. 
 
 Boniface VIII., pretensions, 6, 7. 
 
 Boniface IX., jubilee pilgrimage, 
 60. 
 
 Borgia, Alfonso, 164. See Calix- 
 tus III. 
 
 Borgia, Csesar, 213, 229; re- 
 ceives palm from Alexander 
 VI., 234; suspected of murder 
 of Juan, 238 ; marriage and 
 plots, 251 sq. ; murder of Lu- 
 crezia's husband, 253 ; new 
 honors and his supremacy, 254 ; 
 murder of a Venetian, 254 ; 
 described in a letter to Sylvius 
 de Sabellis, 254 ; other sup- 
 posed murders, 255, 258; later 
 campaigns, 255 sq. ; revolt of 
 captains, 256 ; overcomes them, 
 256; treachery at Sinigaglia, 
 257; most noted man in Italy, 
 257; illness, 259; sinking for- 
 tunes and death, 261. 
 
 Borgia, Jofr£, 213, 229. 
 
 Borgia, Juan, 213, 229; defeated 
 by the Orsini, 233 ; receives 
 palm from Alexander VI., 234; 
 prince, 235 ; murdered, 235 
 sq. 
 
 Borgia, Lucrezia, 213, 229; 
 divorced, 238; married, 251. 
 
 Borgia, Roderigo, nephew of 
 Calixtus III., 195; instru-
 
 Index. 
 
 387 
 
 mental in election of Sixtus 
 
 IV., 198; head of opposition 
 
 to Innocent VIII., 207; life as 
 
 a cardinal, 208 ; elected Pope, 
 
 212. See Alexander VI. 
 Borgia, Sancia, 253. 
 Borgia, family, typical of bad 
 
 tyrants of the age, 248 sq. 
 Boucicault, Marshal, 62. 
 Boulogne, Suffragan Bishop of, 
 
 284. 
 Bourbon, Duke of, 371 sq. 
 Bourges, national Synod of, 120. 
 Braccio Fortebraccio, 112, 113. 
 Bracciolini, Poggio. See Poggio. 
 Bramante at court of Leo X., 323, 
 
 326. 
 Brant, Sebastian, 276 sq. ; "Ship 
 
 of Fools," 277, 278. 
 Brescia claimed by France, 288. 
 Briconnet, Guillaume, 317, 352. 
 Bridget, St., on court of Avignon, 
 
 41. 
 Brothers of the Common Life, 
 
 188, 189. 
 Browning, "My Last Duchess," 
 
 type of Borgias, 249. 
 Bruni, Leonardo, 127, 130, 136; 
 
 a Christian, 141 ; letter from 
 
 Poggio, 146 sq. 
 Bulgaria under Papal power, 6. 
 Burckhardt, quoted, 250. 
 Cabala, 266, 280. 
 Cajetan, Cardinal, 374. 
 Calixtus III., 164, 165, 193. 
 Cambray, Bishop of, 281. 
 Cambridge, University of, 354. 
 Capponi, Piero de', 217, 2 18. 
 Capranica, Domenico, 164, 166. 
 Caraffa, Cardinal, 325. 
 Cardinals. See Curia. 
 Carvajal, Cardinal, 170, 173, 
 
 303-. 
 Catherine of Siena, denounces 
 
 Papal legates, 37 ; letter on 
 
 Papal schism, 44; career, 69 
 
 sq. 
 Catholic Reaction, 340. 
 Celtes, Conrad, 273. 
 
 Cesarini, Cardinal, 119; Human- 
 ist, 180. 
 
 Charlemagne. See Charles the 
 Great. 
 
 Charles I., Spain, relations to 
 Hadrian Dedel, 328, 329 ; re- 
 tires Ximenes, 334; greatness 
 of kingdom, 334, 335; wins 
 emperorship, 338 ; confronted 
 by Reformation, 339 sq. ; 
 strength and weakness, 339, 
 377; demands on Adrian VI., 
 360; triumphs, 366; relations 
 to Clement VII., 367, 369 sq. ; 
 to Luther, 368 ; unbelief in 
 Papal Infallibility, 376 ; treaty 
 with Pope, 377; triumphs over 
 France, 377. 
 
 Charles VIII. , France, 215. See 
 Savonarola. 
 
 Charles of Anjou holds Sicily as 
 fief of Church, 6. 
 
 Charles the Great, importance of,4. 
 
 Chigi, banker of Leo X., 295, 
 
 321, 323- 
 
 Chrysoloras, 123, 124. 
 
 Church. See Papacy, etc. 
 
 Ciriaco of Ancona, 130 sq. 
 
 Clement IV., homage from 
 France, 7. 
 
 Clement VI., creates kingdom of 
 the Fortunate Isles, 6. 
 
 Clement VII., election, 364; 
 errors, 365, 367; policy toward 
 Charles and Francis, 366 sq. ; 
 attacked, 368 ; surrenders, 375 ; 
 treaty with Emperor, 377 ; flees, 
 377; return, 378. 
 
 Clement VII., Antipope, 43; 
 obedience of University of 
 Paris, 75 ; condemns denial of 
 Immaculate Conception, 75. 
 
 Clifford, Sir Henry, relation to 
 Wiclif, 55. 
 
 Cognac, League of, 367. 
 
 Colet, John, 267 sq. ; influence 
 on Erasmus, 282, 283 ; evan- 
 gelicalism, 310; St. Paul's 
 school, 311; spiritual descen.
 
 3 88 
 
 Index. 
 
 dants, English leaders in Ref- 
 ormation, 341. 
 
 Colonna.Otto, 109. See Martin V. 
 
 Colonna, Pompeo, Cardinal, 367, 
 
 369- 
 Colonna, family, opposes Eugenius 
 
 IV., 115, 117 sq. ; opposes 
 
 Sixtus IV., 201 ; feud with 
 
 Orsini, 201, 205. 
 Commerce, confederacy of, 183. 
 Compagnacci of Florence, 241. 
 Complutensian polyglot, 332, m. 
 Conrad of Prague. See Konrad. 
 Constance, Council of, 82 sq., 91 
 
 sq. ; close, 109; Hefeleon, no. 
 Constantinople, fall of, 161. 
 Contarini, Cardinal, 325. 
 Conversino, Giovanni di, 122. 
 Coraro, Angelo, 79. See Gregory 
 
 XII. 
 Corsica-Sardinia, kingdom created 
 
 by Papacy, 6. 
 Cosimo de' Medici. See Medici, 
 
 Cosimo de'. 
 Cosimo, Rosselli. See Rosselli. 
 Cossa, Baldassar, 82. See John 
 
 XXIII. 
 Council, General, appeal for, 71 
 
 sq. ; by Savonarola, 241 ; by 
 
 Andreas, 242 ; by France, 290 ; 
 
 by Germany, 360, 368 ; agreed 
 
 to by Charles I., 377. See 
 
 d'Ailly, Pisa, Constance, Basle, 
 
 Lateran, etc. 
 Courtenay, William, president of 
 
 Council condemning Wiclif, 55, 
 
 56. 
 Courtrai, effect of, 15. 
 Cremona claimed by France, 288. 
 Croatia under Papal power, 6. 
 Crusades, under Calixtus III., 165; 
 
 under Pius II., 170; under 
 
 Leo X., 301. 
 Curia, 41 ; dissensions, 43, 69 sq. ; 
 
 reforms urged at Constance, 
 
 106, 108 ; plots, 109 ; under 
 
 Martin V., 114; Paul II., 172; 
 
 Innocent VIII., 207 sq. ; 
 
 Adrian VI., 357 so. 
 
 Da Feltre, Vittorino, pupil of 
 Conversino, 123, 132 sq. ; a 
 Christian, 141. 
 
 D'Ailly, Pierre, at University of 
 Paris, 71, 72; thesis, 72, 73; 
 advocate of University of Paris, 
 74; Letter from Hell, 74; Rec- 
 tor of college, 75 ; of University, 
 76; reputation, 75; defends 
 Immaculate Conception, 75 ; 
 advocates canonization of Peter 
 of Luxembourg, 76 ; Bishop of 
 Cambrai, 76, 78 ; triumph of 
 policy,82; at Constance, 92-95 ; 
 contrasted with Huss and 
 Jerome, 100, 101. 
 
 D'Albornoz, Gil, Papal legate, 
 
 36, 37- 
 
 Dalburg, Johann von, 274. 
 
 Damiani, Peter, defends flagella- 
 tion, 60. 
 
 Daughter of Cicero, finding of the 
 so-called, 209. 
 
 Dedel, Hadrian, 328, 357. See 
 Adrian VI. 
 
 De Hseretico Comburendo, 57. 
 
 Delia Rovere, family, 198 sq. 
 See titles under Rovere. 
 
 De Luna, Pedro, letter from Cath- 
 erine of Siena, 44. 
 
 Democracy, rise of, 13 sq. 
 
 De Montreuil, Jean, 177. 
 
 De Roma, defiance of Faber, 353. 
 
 Deschamps, Gilles, 75. 
 
 Deventer, school, 187, 281. 
 
 Djem, Prince, 210. 
 
 Domenico, Fra, ordeal, 243, 244. 
 
 Dominicans, reactionaries in Ger- 
 many, 305. 
 
 Donation of Constantine, 344. 
 
 Dondi, Giovanni, 25. 
 
 Dorpius, Martin, opposed to 
 Erasmus, 313. 
 
 Dringenberg, Ludwig, 187. 
 
 Diirer contrasted with the Ital- 
 ians, 303, 304. 
 
 " Eagle of France," 75. 
 
 Eberhard of Wurtemberg, Count, 
 279.
 
 Index. 
 
 389 
 
 Eck, Johann, attacks a reaction- 
 ary, 306 ; criticism on Erasmus, 
 315; on Luther, 342; remon- 
 strated with by Scheurl, 343. 
 
 Egidius of Viterbo at the Council 
 of the Lateran, 291. 
 
 Einsiedeln, 319. 
 
 Enea Sylvio Piccolimini. See 
 ;Eneas Sylvius. 
 
 England, under Papacy, 6 ; op- 
 position, 8, 9 ; peasant revolu- 
 tion, 16; black death, 16; 
 Statute of Laborers, 1 7 ; Human- 
 ism in, 267 sq. ; league with 
 other powers against France, 
 296; under Henry VIII. , 335. 
 " Epistolae Obscurorum Viro- 
 rum," 307, 308. 
 
 Erasmus, Desiderius, 281 sq. ; 
 influences at Oxford, 282, 283 ; 
 '* Enchiridion," 283 sq. ; trans- 
 lated by Tyndale, 354; op- 
 posed to " Epistolae Obscuro- 
 rum Virorum," 310; "Praise 
 of Folly," 312; "Christian 
 Prince," 312; his real labor, 
 312 sq. ; opposition to his 
 work, 313 sq. ; on Zwingli, 
 318; his edition of New Tes- 
 tament read by reformers, 341 ; 
 Antichrist, 352 ; on Adrian 
 VI., 362; breaks with Luther 
 and Zwingli, 363. 
 
 Erfurt, University of, 272, 274, 
 306. 
 
 Este, house of, relations to Bor- 
 gias, 252. 
 
 Eugenius IV., 1 14 ; characteristics 
 and troubles, 115; surrenders 
 to Basle, 116; flees, 116; em- 
 ploys Vitelleschi, 117 sq. ; re- 
 lations to Eastern Church, 
 119, 120; deposed by Basle, 
 120; death, 151. 
 
 Eversus, Count, 174. 
 
 Expectiva, letters, 329. 
 
 Faber Stapulensis, Bible student, 
 269, 270; on Erasmus, 315; 
 work, 316, 317, 320; friends, 
 
 French leaders in Reformation, 
 341 ; on the three Marys, 352 ; 
 Antichrist, 352 ; at Meaux, 
 35 2 > 353 > hi s New Testament, 
 3(>3- 
 
 Farel, Guillaume, 316, 317; at 
 Meaux, 352, 353. 
 
 Farnese, Cardinal, 357. 
 
 Farnese, Julia, 213. 
 
 Felix V., 120, 166. 
 
 Feltre, Vittorino da. See da Fel- 
 tre. 
 
 Ferdinand the Catholic, 328, 334. 
 
 Ferrante of Naples on crooked 
 streets, 203. 
 
 Ferrara follows Julius II., 288. 
 
 Ferrari, Cardinal, death and epi- 
 grams concerning, 255. 
 
 Feudalism, 13, 14, 26, 171. 
 
 Ficino, Marsiglio, Platonist, 
 263 sq. 
 
 Filargo, Pietro, 81. See Alex- 
 ander V. 
 
 Filelfo, Francesco, 137, 139 sq. ; 
 a pagan, 141 ; against monks, 
 155; against Pius II., 169, 
 170. 
 
 Flagellants, 60, 61. 
 
 Florence, in Renascence, 37 sq., 
 43, 124 sq., 200, 201 ; sup- 
 ports King of Naples, 206 ; 
 under Piero de' Medici, 214; 
 promised Pisa, 288 ; in reign 
 of Julius II., 290. See titles 
 under Medici, Savonarola. 
 
 For novo, battle of, 216. 
 
 Fortebraccio, Braccio, 112, 1 13. 
 
 France, alliance with Papacy, 2, 
 3, 7, 8 ; adopts decrees of 
 Basle, 120; New Learning in, 
 177, 269; invasion of Italy, 
 214 sq. ; Gallicanism, 241 ; re- 
 lations to Borgias, 251 sq. ; 
 second invasion of Italy, 251; 
 under Francis L, 335; Italian 
 claims, reign of Julius II., 
 287, 288 ; war with Papacy, 
 289, 296, 297 ; calls for Genera) 
 Council, 290 ; peace with Spain
 
 390 
 
 Index. 
 
 and the Empire, 298 ; struggle 
 
 for Italy, 364, 366 sq., 377. 
 
 See d'Ailly. 
 Francesco of Puglia challenges 
 
 Savonarola, 243. 
 Francis I., 297, 335 sq. ; bids for 
 
 emperorship, 337; defeated, 
 
 338, 367- 
 Franciscans (Strict), attacked by 
 
 Humanists, 155, 156; oppose 
 
 Savonarola, 243 sq. 
 Frederick III., Germany, *66, 
 
 167. 
 Frederick of Lavagna, 8. 
 Frederick the Pfalzgraf, 184, 
 
 186. 
 Frederick the Wise of Saxony, 
 
 337, 34i- 
 
 Fregoso, friend of Sadoleto, 325. 
 
 Freiburg, University of, 272, 275, 
 278. 
 
 French alliance, 319. 
 
 Friuli claimed by Austria, 288. 
 
 Froissart, no desire for individual 
 fame in peers to whom he ad- 
 dressed his book, 195. 
 
 Frundsberg, Georg von, 369. 
 
 Fuggers, family, 183. 
 
 Geiler of Kaisersberg, 275, 276. 
 
 Gemistos Platon, Humanist, 263. 
 
 Genoa, ally of Innocent VIII., 
 206; time of Julius II., 287. 
 
 Gerard von Puy, 37. 
 
 Germany, opposition to Papal 
 usurpation, 9, 10, 241 ; Human- 
 ism in, 178 sq., 271 sq., 302 
 sq. ; Italian claims, 288 ; league 
 against France, 296 sq. ; peace 
 after Marignano, 298 ; in six- 
 teenth century, 336. See Adrian 
 VI., Luther. 
 
 Gerson, John of, 75 ; learning 
 and character, 76-78 ; triumph 
 of policy, 82 ; at Constance, 
 92 ; sermon after Pope's flight, 
 94; contrasted with Huss and 
 Jerome, 100, 101. 
 
 Gil d'Albornoz, Papal legate, 36, 
 37. 
 
 Giles, Peter, 311. 
 
 Gilles, Deschamps, 75. 
 
 Glarean of Basle on the Ger- 
 man tongue, 342. 
 
 Gonzaga, family, influential in 
 election of Sixtus IV., 198; 
 relations to Borgias, 252. 
 
 Gossembrot, Sigismund, 183, 
 184. 
 
 Granada under Ximenes, 330 sq. 
 
 Grassi, Cardinal, 357. 
 
 Gratius, Ortuin, 307. 
 
 Gravina, Duke of, strangled, 
 
 257- 
 
 Greek, study of, in England, 
 267; in France, 269. 
 
 Gregor von Heimburg, acquain- 
 tance with ^Eneas Sylvius, 181 
 sq. 
 
 Gregory XI., return to Rome 
 from Avignon, 1 sq. ; reasons, 
 35 s q- ; death, 39. 
 
 Gregory XII., 79, 80; deposed 
 by Pisa, 81 ; his support, 82 ; 
 war of John XXIII. against, 
 87. 
 
 Greys in Florence, 241. 
 
 Grocyn, teacher of Greek at Ox- 
 ford, 267, 269. 
 
 Guarino da Verona, 123, 133, 
 133; respect of Poggio, 139; 
 a Christian, 141. 
 
 Gurk, Cardinal of, on Alexander 
 VI., 230. 
 
 Hadrian of Corneto, 299, 325 sq. 
 
 Hebrews, Epistle to the. See 
 Erasmus. 
 
 Hefele on Constance, no. 
 
 Hegius, master of Deventer, 
 187; teacher of Erasmus, 281. 
 
 Heidelberg, University of, 272, 
 274, 275. 
 
 Heimburg, Gregor von, acquain- 
 tance with jEmeas Sylvius, 181 
 sq. 
 
 Henry VII., Emperor, corona- 
 tion, 6. 
 
 Henry of Thalheim, II. 
 
 Hercules, Duke, 201.
 
 Index. 
 
 39i 
 
 Holbein contrasted with the 
 Italians, 303.. 
 
 Holy lance, 21 I. 
 
 Holy League, 289, 290, 361, 
 366 sq. 
 
 Humanists. See New Learn- 
 ing. 
 
 Hungary under Papal power, 5. 
 
 Huss, John, against withholding 
 the cup, 53, 104; career, 83; 
 inferior as a preacher to Konrad 
 and Miltitz, 84; pupil of 
 Wiclif, 84, 85 ; relations to 
 Archbishop of Prague, 85, 86; 
 Rector of Leipzig, 86 ; excom- 
 municated, and writings burned, 
 86, 87 ; against indulgences, 
 87 ; voluntary exile, 88 ; goes 
 to Constance, 88, 89 ; a pris- 
 oner, 96 sq. ; sentenced, 99 ; 
 death, 100; what he stood for, 
 100 sq., 145; not a grea: 
 thinker, 102. 
 
 Hutten, Ulrich von, on Julius 
 II., 289, 306; career, 306, 
 307; prints Donation of 
 Constantine, 344; "Address 
 on the Turkish War," 344; 
 " The Romish Triads," 344, 
 345; "The Spectators," 344 
 sq. ; other writings, 347. 
 
 Immaculate Conception, Aqui- 
 nas on, 75 ; defenders of, 275, 
 277. 
 
 Indulgences, 87, 107, 285, 286, 
 308, 341 sq., 349, 359. 
 
 Infallibility, 376. 
 
 Innocent VIII., 206; character- 
 istics and rule, 207, 208 ; three 
 great excitements, 209 sq. ; 
 death, 212; prohibits discus- 
 sion of Pico, 265. 
 
 Ippolito, Cardinal, of Este, 290. 
 
 Italy, French invasion, 214 sq., 
 251 ; divided into two parties 
 under Alexander VI., 233; 
 moral condition, latter half of 
 fifteenth century, 249 sq. ; po- 
 litical condition, time of Julius 
 
 II., 287; the Landsknechts, 
 369 sq. ; devasted, 377 ; Human- 
 ism — see individual titles under 
 New Learning. 
 
 Jacopo Santa Croce murdered, 
 258. 
 
 Jean de Montreuil, 177. 
 
 Jean of Jandun, 11. 
 
 Jerome, methods contrasted with 
 Augustine's, 314, 315. 
 
 Jerome of Prague, 87 ; death, 
 100 ; what he stood for, 100, 
 146; Poggio's letter, 146 sq. 
 
 Jews in Germany, writings, 305. 
 
 Johann of Wesel, 188, 190. 
 
 John XXII. , policy, 9. 
 
 John XXIII. , 82; war against 
 Gregory, 87 ; at Constance, 90, 
 92, 93 ; flight, 93 ; deposed, 95. 
 
 Julius II., 119; elected Pope, 
 261 ; career, 286 sq. ; wars, 
 287 sq. ; at Mirandola, 289 ; 
 Councils of Pisa and the 
 Lateran, 290, 291 ; patron of 
 art, 293 sq. For titles previous 
 to election, see Rovere, Giuliano 
 della. 
 
 Konrad of Prague, 83, 84. 
 
 La Grange, Cardinal, 42. 
 
 Lance, holy, 21 1. 
 
 Landsknechts, Pious, 369 sq. 
 
 Lateran, Council of the, 291 sq., 
 300; Papal Supremacy, 301. 
 
 Laura. See Petrarch. 
 
 Law in Petrarch's time, 25. 
 
 League, Holy, 289, 290, 361, 
 366 sq. 
 
 Lee, Edward, attacks Erasmus, 
 
 314- 
 
 Leipzig, University of, 86. 
 
 Leo III. crowns Charles the 
 Great, 4. 
 
 Leo X., epigram of Sarpi, 194; 
 election, 294; early career, 
 295 ; magnificence of inaugura- 
 tion, 295; court of, 296, 321 
 sq. ; wars, 296 sq. ; deceitful 
 policies, 296, 297, 298 ; con- 
 spiracies against him, 298 ;
 
 392 
 
 Index. 
 
 nepotism, 299 ; Council of the 
 Lateran, 300, 301 ; policy in 
 regard to emperorship, 338 ; 
 confronted by Reformation, 
 339 sq. ; death, 356. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci on Caesar 
 Borgia, 257. 
 
 Leto, Pomponius, 175, 202, 264. 
 
 Lewis of Bavaria, conflict with 
 Pope, 9, 10. 
 
 Linacre, physician to Henry 
 VIII. , 267. 
 
 Lincoln, Bishop of, disinters bones 
 of Wiclif, 97. 
 
 Literature. See New Learning. 
 
 Lollards, 56, 57. 
 
 Lord's Supper. See Huss, 
 Luther, Wiclif. 
 
 Louis XII., negotiations with 
 Borgias, 251 sq. ; on Caesar 
 Borgia, 257. 
 
 Louis of Castile, 6. 
 
 Luder, Peter, 185, 186. 
 
 Luna, Pedro de, letter from 
 Catherine of Siena, 44. 
 
 Luther, Martin, against the mass, 
 53; on Johann of Wesel, 190; 
 surprise at hospitals in Italy, 
 250; opposed to " Epistolae 
 Obscurorum Virorum," 310; 
 criticism of Erasmus, 314; 
 German leader, 341 ; career, 
 341 sq. ; on indulgences, 341, 
 342 ; Eck and Scheurl, 342, 
 343 ; evolution, 343 sq. ; in- 
 fluence of Hutten, 344 sq. ; 
 " Address to the Christian No- 
 bility,"347 ; strength, 347, 348 ; 
 disappearance, 348 ; influence 
 on Zwingli, 350; Antichrist, 
 352; Older Humanists desert 
 him, 362 ; his New Testament, 
 363 ; not pressed by Emperor, 
 368. 
 
 Lyons, Synod of, calls for Gen- 
 eral Council, 290. 
 
 Machiavelli on Caesar Borgia, 257. 
 
 Mainz, Archbishop of, bribed by, 
 Spain, 337. 
 
 Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandelfo, 
 
 buries Platon at Rimini, 263. 
 Man, Island of, kingdom created 
 
 by Papacy, 6. 
 Manfredi, Astorre, supposed 
 
 victim of Caesar Borgia, 255. 
 Manfredi, Octavian, supposed 
 
 victim of Caesar Borgia, 255. 
 Mantegna, Andrea, on Prince 
 
 Djem, 210. 
 Mantua follows Julius II., 288. 
 Mantua, Cardinal of, 357. 
 Mantua, Marquis of, on dying 
 
 words of Alexander VI., 259. 
 Mantuanus, Baptista, on Rome 
 
 under Alexander VI., 230. 
 Marcello of Venice at Council of 
 
 the Lateran, 293. 
 Mariano, Fra, Florentine preacher, 
 
 218. 
 Marignano, battle of, 297, 318, 
 
 335- 
 Marsigli, Luigi de', 66, 135. 
 
 Marsiglio Ficino, Platonist, 263 
 
 Marsilius of Padua, his great 
 treatise, 12. 
 
 Marsuppini, plot of Filelfo, 140. 
 
 Martin V., 109; conditions meet- 
 ing him, in, 112; defects of 
 character, 113; adjourns Synod 
 of Pavia, 114; death, 114; re- 
 lations to Curia, 114. 
 
 Mass. See Huss, Luther, Wiclif. 
 
 Maximilian, 271. 
 
 Medici, Cosimo de', 124 sq. ; 
 helps Ciriaco, 13 1 ; relations to 
 Filelfo, 140; to Platon, 263. 
 
 Medici, Giovanni de', father of 
 Cosimo, 125. 
 
 Medici, Giovanni de', 290, 294. 
 See Leo X. 
 
 Medici, Giuliano de', grandson of 
 Cosimo, 200. 
 
 Medici, Giuliano de', son of 
 Lorenzo, 296, 297. 
 
 Medici, Giuliode', 357, 364. See 
 Clement VII. 
 
 Medici, Lorenzo de', 125, 200:
 
 Index. 
 
 393 
 
 confesses to Savonarola, 222 ; 
 
 patron of Florentine Academy, 
 
 264. 
 Medici, Lorenzo de' (II.), 298 ; 
 
 Duke of Urbino, 299. 
 Medici, Piero de', 214; opposition 
 
 to Savonarola, 223 ; weakness, 
 
 225 ; in Rome, 235. 
 Medici family in control of 
 
 Florence in reign of Julius II., 
 
 290. 
 Medicine in Petrarch's time, 
 
 24, 25. 
 Melancthon, Philip, poem to 
 
 Erasmus, 314 ; friend of Luther, 
 
 362. 
 Michael Angelo, contrasted with 
 
 German artists, 303 ; in court 
 
 of Leo X., 323. 
 Michael of Cesena, n. 
 Micheletto, hangman of Caesar 
 
 Borgia, strangles Troccio, 258 ; 
 
 compels surrender of Papal 
 
 treasures, 260. 
 Michiel, Cardinal, supposed 
 
 murder, 258. 
 Milan, supports Naples, 206 ; time 
 
 of Alexander VI., 214; of 
 
 Julius II., 287; Council of 
 
 Pisa transferred thither, 291 ; 
 
 under Francis L, 297; offered 
 
 Pope by Charles, 367. 
 Miltitz of Prague, 84. 
 Mirandola, siege of, 289. 
 Mirandola, Pico della, influence 
 
 on Zwingli, 318. 
 Mission preachers, 219. 
 Mohammed II., defeated at 
 
 Belgrade, 165; victories, 170; 
 
 death, 201. 
 Monreale, Cardinal, supposed 
 
 murder, 258. 
 Montrcuil, Jean de, 177. 
 Moors, conversion of, under 
 
 Ximenes, 330 sq. 
 More, Thomas, 268 sq. ; meets 
 
 Erasmus, 282; " Utopia," 311. 
 Morton, Archbishop, 268. 
 Mountjoy, Lord, 282. 
 
 Mugnos, Canon, 106. 
 
 Naples, kingdom created by 
 Papacy, 6 ; wars, 206 ; in time 
 of Alexander VI., 214; of Julius 
 II., 287; in Spanish power, 
 366. 
 
 Neopagans, 264. 
 
 New Learning, 20 sq., 62 sq., 
 122 sq. ; most typical Human- 
 ists, 137 sq., 141 sq. ; relation 
 to Reformation, 145 sq. ; first 
 Humanist Pope, 151 sq. ; its 
 effect on feeling for liberty, 161, 
 272; spread beyond Italy, 176 
 sq. ; in France, 177, 269; 
 Germany, 178 sq., 271 sq., 
 302 sq. ; desire for distinction, 
 194 sq. ; three chief tendencies 
 in Italian Humanism, 262 sq. ; 
 in England, 267 sq. ; in Switzer- 
 land, 318 sq. See Petrarch, 
 Wiclif, da Feltre, Boccaccio, 
 Marsigli, Salutato, Medici, 
 Cosimo, Niccoli, Guarino, 
 Aurispa, Ciriaco, Traversari, 
 Bruni, Poggio, Filelfo, Bec- 
 cadelli, Valla, Nicholas V., 
 Pius II., Cesarini, Erasmus, 
 Faber, Farel, Zwingli, Leo X., 
 Ximenes, Luther, etc. 
 
 New Testament, Zwingli's stud- 
 ies, 318; in Germany, 303 sq., 
 363 ; in France, 363 ; England, 
 363. See Erasmus, Luther. 
 
 Niccoli, Niccolo de', 127, 136; 
 helps Poggio, 137; a Christian, 
 141. 
 
 Nicholas V., career and charac- 
 teristics, 151 sq., 159 sq. ; plots 
 against, 160, 161; death, 162; 
 criticism, 162 ; limitations, 193. 
 
 Nicolas of Clemanges, 75, 177. 
 
 Norway, kingdom created by Pa- 
 pacy, 6. 
 
 Novara, battle of, 296,318. 
 
 "Obelisks," 342. 
 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 57. 
 
 Orsini, Cardinal (under Urban 
 VI.), 42.
 
 394 
 
 Index. 
 
 Orsini, Cardinal (under Alexan- 
 der VI.), leads revolt against 
 Cwsar Borgia, 256; imprison- 
 ment and death, 257. 
 
 Orsini, Paolo, strangled, 257. 
 
 Orsini, the, feudwith Colonna,20i. 
 
 Ortuin Gratius, 307. 
 
 Oxford University, relations to 
 Wiclif, 55, 56; time of Colet, 
 267 sq., 353, 354. 
 
 Papacy, past relations to political 
 organizations, 3 sq. ; French 
 influence, 7, 8; taxes, 107; Re- 
 nascence Popes, 193 sq. ; tem- 
 poral dominion, 344 ; Infallibil- 
 ity) 37°- See Curia, Lateran, 
 Council of the, Wiclif, etc. 
 
 Pappenheim, Marshal of the Em- 
 pire, at Constance, 100. 
 
 Parentucelli, Tommaso, 151, 167. 
 See Nicholas V. 
 
 Paris, University of, centre of 
 Conciliar party, 71, 73; obedi- 
 ence to Clement VII., 75; on 
 the schism, 76, 80; leading uni- 
 versity, 278, 282, 283. 
 
 Paul II., 172 sq. ; relations to 
 Humanists, 174, 175; league 
 against the Turks, and death, 
 175; limitations, 193. 
 
 Pavia, French defeat of, 367. 
 
 Pavia, Synod of, 1 14. 
 
 Peace Congress, 170, 
 
 Peasant revolution, 16 sq. 
 
 Pedro de Luna, letter from Cath- 
 erine of Siena, 44. 
 
 Perugia occupied by Julius II., 
 287. 
 
 Peter of Luxembourg, canoniza- 
 tion proposed, 76. 
 
 Petrarch, parentage, 20 ; at Avig- 
 non, 21 ; services to classical 
 literature, 2 1 sq. ; as a collector, 
 23 ; attacks universities, 24 ; at- 
 titude toward various studies, 
 24, 25 ; individuality, 24-29 ; 
 criticism of Aristotle, 25, 26 ; 
 climbs Mount Ventoux, 27, 28 ; 
 acedia, 29 ; faults, 29 sq. ; 
 
 love of Laura, 31 ; honors, 32 ; 
 crowned, ^>Z '< true position, ^3t 
 34, 145 ; relations to Boccaa io, 
 32, 63; to monks, 154; visit to 
 Cologne, 176; on Frenchmen, 
 176. 
 
 Petrucci, conspiracy against Leo 
 X., 298, 299. 
 
 Pfefferkorn, John, anti-Jewish 
 writer, 304, 305. 
 
 Philip of the Pfalz, 279. 
 
 Philip the Hardy assaults Boni- 
 face, 7. 
 
 Pico, Giovanni della Mirandola, 
 265 sq. ; studied by More, 269 ; 
 Reuchlin on, 280; memorial to 
 Council of the Lateran, 300 ; 
 influence on Zwingli, 318. 
 
 Piero de' Capponi, 217, 218. 
 
 Pisa, yoke of Florence, 226, 288. 
 
 Pisa, Council of, 81 ; abortive 
 Council of 1511,290, 291. 
 
 Pius II., career, 165 sq. ; relation 
 to Humanists, 168 sq. ; Peace 
 Congress, 170; crusade and 
 death, 170; limitations, 193; on 
 Sforza, 197; on Borgia, 213; 
 against General Council, 242. 
 For events previous to election, 
 see ^neas Sylvius. 
 
 Platina, 174, 175, 202. 
 
 Plato in New Literature, 263 sq., 
 266. 
 
 Platon, Gemistos, Humanist, 263. 
 
 Plurality of benefices, 107. 
 
 Poggio, carries "Institutes" of 
 Quintilian to Constance, 129, 
 137 sq. ; paganism, 141 ; letter 
 to Bruni, 146 sq. ; attacks 
 monks, 155, 156; personal re- 
 lations to monks, 156; on Lon- 
 doners, 177. 
 
 Poland under Papal power, 5« 
 
 Polyglot, Complutensian, 333. 
 
 Pomponazzi, Pietro, book on the 
 soul, 301. 
 
 Pomponius Leto, 175, 202, 264. 
 
 Pontano on a cardinal of Alexan- 
 der VI. 's, 230.
 
 Index. 
 
 395 
 
 "Poor Priests," 1 8, 49. 
 
 Porcaro, Stefano, conspiracy, 160, 
 161. 
 
 Portugal, kingdom created by Pa- 
 pacy, 6; Alexander VI. divides 
 new West between it and 
 Spain, 213. 
 
 Pragmatic Sanction, 120, 241, 
 293. 297. 
 
 Prague, Archbishop of, 83, 85, 
 86. 
 
 Prague, University of, 57, 83, 86. 
 
 Prato sacked, 290. 
 
 Printing, 185, 274. 
 
 Puy, Gerard von, 37. 
 
 Ramiro, agent of Caesar Borgia, 
 256. 
 
 Ranconis, Adalbert, 57. 
 
 Raphael, 294, 321, 323; con- 
 trasted with the Germans, 303, 
 
 3°4- 
 Ravenna, French victory at, 289. 
 Raymond, Vicomte of Turenne, I. 
 Raynald, Cardinal, at Constance, 
 
 109. 
 Reformation, characteristics, 339 
 
 sq. ; attitude of Adrian VI., 
 
 359- 
 
 Renascence. See New Learning. 
 
 Reservation, right of, 107. 
 
 Reuchlin, Johann, 278 sq. ; works, 
 279, 280; on Jewish writings, 
 304 sq. ; intellectual warfare, 
 304-310; on Faber, 316; op- 
 posed by Hadrian Dedel, 328 ; 
 Antichrist, 352 ; death, 362. 
 
 Riario, Pietro, 198, 199. 
 
 Robert of Geneva, 42, 43. See 
 Clement VII. 
 
 Robert of Lecce, missioner, 219. 
 
 Robert of Lincoln, 8. 
 
 Rome sacked, 367 sq., 373 sq. 
 See Sixtus IV., Innocent 
 VIII., Leo X., Adrian VI. 
 
 Rosselli, Cosimo, patronized by 
 Sixtus IV., 203. 
 
 Rovere, Francesco della, 198. See 
 Sixtus IV. 
 
 Rovere, Giuliano della, 198, 206, 
 
 209 ; candidate for Papacy, 212 ; 
 
 second effort of Sforza for 
 
 French invasion of Italy, 215; 
 
 call for General Council, 242 ; 
 
 reconciled to Borgias, 252; 
 
 elected Pope, 261. See Julius 
 
 II. 
 Sadoleto, Jacopo, 324, 325, 327. 
 St. Paul's School, 311. 
 Saldner, Conrad, 184. 
 Salisbury, Bishop of, at Constance, 
 
 93- 
 
 Salutato, Coluccio, 67, 68, 123, 
 124; helps Poggio, 137; con- 
 trasted with Poggio, 138. 
 
 Samson attacked by Zwingli, 
 
 349- 
 Sannazaro, the Christian Virgil, 
 
 325- 
 
 Santa Croce, Jacopo, murdered, 
 258. 
 
 Sardinia, kingdom created by Pa- 
 pacy, 6. 
 
 Sarpi on Leo X., 194. 
 
 Sarteano, Alberto da, 157, 158. 
 
 Sauli, Cardinal, 298, 299. 
 
 Savonarola, addresses Charles 
 VIII., 217, 225; career, 218 
 sq. ; his great theme, 219, 220, 
 245, 246 ; fame, 220; know- 
 ledge of Bible, 220; interpreta- 
 tions and sermons, 221, 225; 
 visions, 222, 223, 224; courage, 
 222 ; confession of Lorenzo, 
 222 ; opposes Piero, 223 ; re- 
 forms in monastery, 223 ; 
 "grand Council," 226; con- 
 troversy with Pope, 231 sq., 
 239, 240; reforms carnival, 231, 
 
 232, 233; burning of "vaniti. 
 
 233, 234; a Puritan, but not a 
 Philistine, 234 ; excommuni- 
 cated, 235 ; letter to Pope, 237; 
 defiance of Pope, 239, 240 ; in- 
 tercepted letter to France, 243 ; 
 opposition of Franciscans, 243 ; 
 ordeal by fire, 243, 244; in 
 hands of mob, 244, 245 ; tor* 
 ture, 245 ; death, 247.
 
 39^ 
 
 Index. 
 
 Scarampo, Cardinal, 173. 
 
 Schedel, Hartmann, 187. 
 
 Schedel, Hermann, 184. 
 
 Scheurl, to Eck, on Luther, 343. 
 
 Schlettstadt school, 187. 
 
 Scholasticism, 11 sq. ; attacked 
 by Petrarch, 25 sq. 
 
 Schools, German, 187. 
 
 Scotland, kingdom created by Pa- 
 pacy, 6. 
 
 Selim, Sultan, 361. 
 
 Servia under Papal power, 6. 
 
 Sforza, Ascanio, 209 ; candidate 
 for Papacy, 212; bribed, 212; 
 plots against Savonarola, 231. 
 
 Sforza, Francesco, career, 196 
 sq. ; cynosure of Italy, 197. 
 
 Sforza, Giovanni, 234, 235. 
 
 Sforza, Jacopo, 112, 113, 196. 
 
 Sforza, Lodovico, 214 sq. 
 
 Sicily, kingdom under Papal 
 power, 6, 7, 366. 
 
 Siena, Synod at, 1 14. 
 
 Sigismund, Emperor, 82, 86, 87 
 sq. ; at Constance, 91 sq. ; firm- 
 ness after flight of Pope, 94 ; 
 betrayal of Huss, 97, 103; 
 crowns Beccadelli, 143 ; only 
 nominal head of Europe, 179, 
 180. 
 
 Simony, 107, 108, 300. 
 
 Sinigaglia, Caesar Borgia's treach- 
 ery at, 257. 
 
 Sion, Cardinal of, 357. 
 
 Sistine Chapel built by Sixtus 
 IV., 203. 
 
 Sitten, Bishop of, 289, 297. 
 
 Sixtus IV., election, 198; nepo- 
 tism, 198 sq. ; plots against 
 Medici, 200; wars, 201, 202; 
 power, 202 ; patron of culture, 
 
 202, 203 ; disorders in Rome, 
 
 203, 204 ; death, 204 ; bull on 
 Immaculate Conception, 277. 
 
 Soderini, Cardinal, 299. 
 
 Spain, Alexander VI. divides 
 new West between it and Por- 
 tugal, 213; Italian claims, 287, 
 288; league with Julius II. 
 
 against France, 289 ; league 
 
 with Leo X., 296 sq. ; peace 
 
 after Marignano, 298 ; under 
 
 Ferdinand the Catholic, 334, 
 
 335 ; champion of Papacy, 364. 
 
 See Adrian VI., Charles I., 
 
 Ximenes. 
 Spalatin, letters from Luther and 
 
 Eck on Erasmus, 314, 315. 
 Stapulensis, Faber. See Faber. 
 Switzerland, New Learning in, 
 
 318 sq. 
 Sylvester II., policy, 5. 
 Tetzel, 341, 342. 
 Theobald, sermon at Constance, 
 
 105. 
 Theodoric of Niem on Urban 
 
 VI., 58. 
 Tommaso of Sarzano, 151, 167. 
 
 See Nicholas V. 
 Torquemada, Juan, 119; patron 
 
 of printing, 185. 
 Transubstantiation. See Huss, 
 
 Luther, Wiclif. 
 Travasari, 1 19. 
 Traversari, 136, 157, 180. 
 Trent, Bishop of, at Constance, 
 
 96. 
 Trinacria, kingdom created by Pa- 
 pacy, 6. 
 Troccio, secretary of Alexander 
 
 VI., strangled, 258. 
 Tunstal, Bishop of London, 355. 
 Turks, the, 161, 170, 171, 175, 
 
 201, 360, 361. 
 Tyndale, William, 353 sq. ; his 
 
 New Testament, 363. 
 Unam Sanctam, 7. 
 Universities in middle ages, 185, 
 
 187. See under separate titles. 
 Urban V., approval of Aquinas, 
 
 75- 
 
 Urban VI., 41, 42 ; election pro- 
 nounced uncanonical, 43 ; war- 
 fare, 44, 45 ; death, 5 7 ; char- 
 acter, 58. 
 
 Urbino follows Julius II., 288. 
 
 Urbino, Duke of, kills Alidosi, 
 290.
 
 Index. 
 
 397 
 
 Valla,Laurentius,' ' De Voluptate," 
 142; career, 143, 144; on the 
 Donation of Constantine, 344 ; 
 on the Church and criticism, 
 302. 
 
 Vannozza, mistress of Borgia, 
 213. 
 
 Venice, ally of Sixtus IV., 201 ; 
 of Innocent VIII., 206; time 
 of Alexander VI., 214, 249, 
 251 sq. ; of Julius II., 2S7, 288, 
 289; Leo X., 296. See titles 
 under Sforza. 
 
 Verona claimed by Empire, 288. 
 
 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 152. 
 
 Vienna, concordat of, 121. 
 
 Vienna, University of, 274. 
 
 Visconti, Bernabo, 36. 
 
 Visconti, Filippo Maria, 197. 
 
 Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 67. 
 
 Visconti, Giovanni, 36. 
 
 Vitelleschi, Giovanni, 117 sq. 
 
 Vitellius of Ischia, 116. 
 
 Vitrarius, John, 284, 285. 
 
 Vittorino. See da Feltre. 
 
 Von Chlum, Baron, at Constance, 
 96 ; friend of Huss, 98, 99. 
 
 Von Dalburg, Johann, 274. 
 
 Von Duba, friend of Huss, 99. 
 
 Von Frundsberg, Georg, 369 sq. 
 
 Von Heimburg, Gregor, acquain- 
 tance with ^Eneas Sylvius, 181 
 sq. 
 
 Von Hutten, Ulrich. See Hut- 
 ten, Ulrich von. 
 
 Von Puy, Gerard, 37. 
 
 Vulgate. See Jerome. 
 
 Webster, John, " Duchess of 
 Main," type of Borgias, 248. 
 
 Werner of Urslingen, 35. 
 
 Wessel, Johann, 188 sq. 
 
 White Companies of Flagellants 
 60, 61. 
 
 Wiclif, John, 18 ; power, 46 sq. ; 
 teaching, 47 ; as a preacher, 48, 
 49 ; Bible, 49 ; denounces Pa- 
 pacy, 50; theological views, 51 ; 
 on Eucharist, 5 1 sq. ; death, 56 ; 
 influence, 57, 58; writings con- 
 demned at Constance, 97 ; bones 
 disinterred, 97. 
 
 William of Occam, 11. 
 
 Wimpheling, Jacob, 274, 275, 
 276. 
 
 Wittenberg, University of, 341. 
 
 Ximenes, Cardinal, 329 sq. ; im- 
 prisonment, 329 ; joins Fran- 
 ciscans, 330 ; Archbishop of To- 
 ledo, 330 ; conversion of Moors, 
 330 sq. ; University of Alcala, 
 332 ; Complutensian polyglot, 
 33 2 > 3331 varied labors, 333; 
 crusade against Oran, 334 ; re- 
 gent and death, 334 ; limits sale 
 of indulgences, 359. 
 
 Zabarella at Constance, 95. 
 
 Ziirich, Council of, 363. 
 
 Zwingli, Ulrich, career, 317 sq. ; 
 influence of Pico della Miran- 
 dola and Erasmus, 318 ; against 
 French alliance, 319; at Ein- 
 siedeln, 319 ; Swiss leader, 341 ; 
 against indulgences, 348 ; Ca- 
 thedral Preacher, 348, 349 ; ill- 
 ness, 350; on Luther, 350; re- 
 fuses Papal pension, 350; 
 against hire of mercenaries, 
 350; marries, 351 ; "Beginning 
 and End," 351 ; his sixty-seven 
 theses at Zurich, 363.
 
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