After his death the church was without a head till the third year, the

cardinals disagreeing exceedingly among themselves. At length, on the

5th of July, 1294, they unanimously chose an aged man, greatly venerated

for his sanctity--Pietro, surnamed di Murrhone, from a mountain in which

he led a solitary and very austere life; he assumed the pontifical name

of Celestine V. But as the austerity of his life tacitly censured the

corrupt morals of the Romish court, and especially of the cardinals, and

as he showed very plainly that he was more solicitous to advance the

holiness of the church than its worldly grandeur, he was soon considered

as unworthy of the office which he had reluctantly assumed. Hence some

of the cardinals, and especially Benedict Cajetan, persuaded him very

easily to abdicate the chair, in the fourth month of his pontificate.

He died, 1296, in the castle of Fumone, where his successor detained

him a captive, lest he should make some disturbance. But afterwards

Clement V enrolled him in the calendar of the saints. To him the sect

of Benedictine monks who were called, after him, Celestines, owed its

origin; a sect still existing in Italy and France, though now nearly

extinct, and differing from the other Benedictines by their more rigid

rules of life.

ACCESSION OF BONIFACE VIII

[Sidenote: [1294-1301 A.D.]]

He was succeeded in 1294 by Benedict, Cardinal Cajetan, by whose

persuasions he had been chiefly led to resign the pontificate, and who

now assumed the name of Boniface VIII. This was a man formed to produce

disturbance both in church and state, and eager for confirming and

enlarging the power of the pontiffs, to the highest degree of rashness.

From his first entrance on the office he arrogated to himself sovereign

power over all things sacred and secular; overawed kings and states by

his fulminations; decided important controversies at his will; enlarged

the code of canon law by new accessions, namely, by the sixth book of

_Decretals_; made war, among others, particularly on the noble family

of Colonna, which had opposed his election--in a word, he seemed to

be another Gregory VII at the head of the church. At the close of the

century, he established the year of jubilee, which is still solemnised at

Rome.

That the governors of the church, as well of highest rank as of inferior,

were addicted to all those vices which are the most unbecoming to men

in their stations, is testified most abundantly. As for the Greek and

oriental clergy, many of whom lived under oppressive governments, we

shall say nothing; although their faults are sufficiently manifest.

But of the faults of the Latins silence would be the less proper, in

proportion to the certainty that from this source the whole community

was involved in the greatest calamities. All the honest and good men

of that age ardently wished for a reformation of the church, both in

its head and in its members, as they themselves expressed it. But to so

desirable an event there were still many obstacles. First, the power of

the pontiffs was so confirmed by its long continuance that it seemed to

be immovably established. In the next place, extravagant superstition

held the minds of the majority of the people in abject slavery. And

lastly, the ignorance and barbarism of the times quickly extinguished the

sparks of truth that appeared from time to time. Yet the dominion of the

Roman pontiffs, impregnable and durable as it seemed to be, was gradually

undermined and weakened in this century, partly by the rash insolence

of the pontiffs themselves and partly by the occurrence of certain

unexpected events.

PHILIP THE FAIR OVERPOWERS THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1301-1305 A.D.]]

The commencement of this important change must be referred to the contest

between Boniface VIII, who governed the Latin church at the beginning

of this century, and Philip the Fair, king of France. This high-minded

sovereign first taught the Europeans what the emperors had in vain

attempted--that the Roman bishops could be vanquished, and be laid

under restraint. In a very haughty letter addressed to Philip, Boniface

maintained that all kings and persons whatever, and the king of France

as well as others, by divine command, owed perfect obedience to the

Roman pontiff, and this not merely in religious matters, but likewise

in secular and human affairs. The king replied with extreme bitterness.

The pontiff repeated his former assertions with greater arrogance, and

published the celebrated bull called _Unam sanctam_; in which he asserted

that Jesus Christ had granted a twofold power or sword to his church, a

spiritual and a temporal; that the whole human race was subjected to the

pontiff; and that all who dissented from this doctrine were heretics, and

could not expect to be saved. The king, on the contrary, in an assembly

of his nobles, in 1303, through the famous lawyer, Guillaume de Nogaret,

publicly accused the pontiff of heresy, simony, dishonesty, and other

enormities; and urged the calling of a general council to depose from his

office a pontiff so very wicked. The pontiff, in return, excommunicated

the king and all his adherents the same year.

Soon after receiving this sentence, Philip again, in an assembly of the

states of his kingdom, entered a formal complaint against the pontiff,

by men of the highest reputation and influence; and appealed to the

decision of a future general council of the church. He then despatched

Guillaume de Nogaret, with some others, into Italy, to rouse the people

to insurrection, and to bring the pontiff prisoner to Lyons, where he

wished the council to be held. Nogaret, who was a resolute and energetic

man, having drawn over to his interest the Colonna family, which was

at variance with the pontiff, raised a small force, suddenly attacked

Boniface, who was living securely at Anagni, made him prisoner, wounded

him, and, among other severe indignities, struck him on the head with his

iron gauntlet. The people of Anagni, indeed, rescued the pontiff from the

hands of his furious enemy; but he died shortly after, at Rome, in the

month of October, from rage and anguish of mind.

Benedict XI, previously Nicolo of Trevigio, the successor of Boniface,

profiting by his example, restored the king of France and his kingdom to

their former honours and privileges, without even being solicited; but he

was unwilling to absolve from his crime Nogaret, who had so grievously

offended against the pontifical dignity. This daring man, therefore,

prosecuted strenuously the suit commenced against Boniface in the Romish

court; and, in the name of the king, demanded that a mark of infamy

should be set upon the deceased pontiff.

Benedict XI died in the year 1304; and Philip, by his secret

machinations, caused Bertrand d’Agoust, a Frenchman, and archbishop of

Bordeaux, to be created pontiff at Rome, on the 5th of June, 1305. For

the contest of the king against the pontiffs was not yet wholly settled,

Nogaret not being absolved, and it might easily break out again. Besides,

the king thirsted for revenge, and designed to extort from the court of

Rome a condemnation of Boniface; he also meditated the destruction of the

Templars, and other matters of great importance which he could hardly

expect from an Italian pontiff. He therefore wished to have a French

pontiff, whom he could control according to his pleasure, and who would

be in a degree dependent on him. The new pontiff, who took the name of

Clement V, remained in France, as the king wished, and transferred the

pontifical court to Avignon, where it continued for seventy years. This

period the Italians call the Babylonian Captivity.[n]

HALLAM ON THE CLIMAX OF PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1305 A.D.]]

The noonday of papal dominion extends from the pontificate of Innocent

III inclusively to that of Boniface VIII; or, in other words, through the

thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her

ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were

her vassals. In her long contention with the house of Swabia, she finally

triumphed. After his deposition by the Council of Lyons, the affairs of

Frederick II went rapidly into decay. With every allowance for the enmity

of the Lombards and the jealousies of Germany, it must be confessed, that

his proscription by Innocent IV and Alexander IV was the main cause of

the ruin of his family.

This general supremacy effected by the Roman church over mankind in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, derived material support from the

promulgation of the canon law. By means of her new jurisprudence Rome

acquired in every country a powerful body of advocates who, though many

of them were laymen, would, with the usual bigotry of lawyers, defend

every pretension or abuse, to which their received standard of authority

gave sanction.

Next to the canon law, we should reckon the institution of the mendicant

orders among those circumstances which principally contributed to the

aggrandisement of Rome. By the acquisition, and in some respects the

enjoyment, or at least ostentation of immense riches, the ancient

monastic orders had forfeited much of the public esteem. No means

appeared so efficacious to counteract this effect as the institution of

religious societies, strictly debarred from the insidious temptations of

wealth. These new preachers were received with astonishing approbation by

the laity, whose religious zeal usually depends a good deal upon their

opinion of sincerity and disinterestedness in their pastors. And the

progress of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in the thirteenth century

bears a remarkable analogy to that of the English Methodists. Aware of

the powerful support they might receive in turn, the pontiffs of the

thirteenth century accumulated benefits upon the disciples of Francis

and Dominic. They were exempted from episcopal authority; they were

permitted to preach or hear confessions without leave of the ordinary, to

accept of legacies, and to inter in their churches. It was naturally to

be expected that the objects of such extensive favours would repay their

benefactors by a more than usual obsequiousness and alacrity in their

service. Accordingly, the Dominicans and Franciscans vied with each other

in magnifying the papal supremacy.

We should not overlook, among the causes that contributed to the dominion

of the popes, their prerogative of dispensing with ecclesiastical

ordinances. The most remarkable exercise of this was as to the canonical

impediments of matrimony. Such strictness as is prescribed by the

Christian religion with respect to divorce was very unpalatable to

the barbarous nations. They in fact paid it little regard; under the

Merovingian dynasty, even private men put away their wives at pleasure.

In many capitularies of Charlemagne, we find evidence of the prevailing

license of repudiation and even polygamy. The principles which the church

inculcated were in appearance the very reverse of this laxity; yet they

led indirectly to the same effect. Marriages were forbidden, not merely

within the limits which nature, or those inveterate associations which we

call nature, have rendered sacred, but as far as the seventh degree of

collateral consanguinity, computed from a common ancestor. Not only was

affinity, or relationship by marriage, put upon the same footing as that

by blood; but a fantastical connection, called spiritual affinity, was

invented in order to prohibit marriage between a sponsor and godchild. A

union, however innocently contracted, between parties thus circumstanced,

might at any time be dissolved, and their subsequent cohabitation

forbidden. Innocent III laid down as a maxim that out of the plenitude

of his power he might lawfully dispense with the law; and accordingly

granted, among other instances of this prerogative, dispensations from

impediments of marriage to the emperor Otto IV. Similar indulgences were

given by his successors, though they did not become usual for some ages.

The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 removed a great part of the restraint

by permitting marriages beyond the fourth degree, or what we call third

cousins; and dispensations had been made more easy when it was discovered

that they might be converted into a source of profit. They served a more

important purpose by rendering it necessary for the princes of Europe,

who seldom could marry into one another’s houses without transgressing

the canonical limits, to keep on good terms with the court of Rome,

which, in several instances that have been mentioned, fulminated its

censures against sovereigns who lived without permission in what was

considered an incestuous union.

The dispensing power of the popes was exerted in several cases of a

temporal nature, particularly in the legitimation of children for

purposes even of succession. This Innocent III claimed as an indirect

consequence of his right to remove the canonical impediment which

bastardy offered to ordination; since it would be monstrous, he says,

that one who is legitimate for spiritual functions should continue

otherwise in any civil matter. But the most important and mischievous

species of dispensations was from the observance of promissory oaths. Two

principles are laid down in the _Decretals_--that an oath disadvantageous

to the church is not binding; and that one extorted by force was of

slight obligation, and might be annulled by ecclesiastical authority.

As the first of these maxims gave the most unlimited privilege to the

popes of breaking all faith of treaties which thwarted their interest or

passion, a privilege which they continually exercised, so the second was

equally convenient to princes, weary of observing engagements towards

their subjects or their neighbours.

It must appear to every careful inquirer that the papal authority, though

manifesting outwardly more show of strength every year, had been secretly

undermined and lost a great deal of its hold upon public opinion, before

the accession of Boniface VIII, in 1294, to the pontifical throne. The

clergy were rendered sullen by demands of money, invasions of the legal

right of patronage, and unreasonable partiality to the mendicant orders;

a part of the mendicants themselves had begun to declaim against the

corruptions of the papal court; while the laity, subjects alike and

sovereigns, looked upon both the head and the members of the hierarchy

with jealousy and dislike. Boniface, full of inordinate arrogance and

ambition, and not sufficiently sensible of this gradual change in human

opinion, endeavoured to strain to a higher pitch the despotic pretensions

of former pontiffs. As Gregory VII appears the most usurping of mankind

till we read the history of Innocent III, so Innocent III is thrown into

shade by the superior audacity of Boniface VIII. But independently of the

less favourable dispositions of the public, he wanted the most essential

quality for an ambitious pope--reputation for integrity.

The sensible decline of the papacy is to be dated from the pontificate

of Boniface VIII, who had strained its authority to a higher pitch than

any of his predecessors. There is a spell wrought by uninterrupted

good fortune, which captivates men’s understanding, and persuades them,

against reasoning and analogy, that violent power is immortal and

irresistible. The spell is broken by the first change of success. In

tracing the papal empire over mankind, we have no marked and definite

crisis of revolution. But slowly, like the retreat of waters or the

stealthy pace of old age, that extraordinary power over human opinion

has been subsiding for five centuries. As the retrocession of the

Roman terminus under Adrian gave the first overt proof of decline in

the ambitious energies of that empire, so the tacit submission of the

successors of Boniface VIII to the king of France might have been hailed

by Europe as a token that their influence was beginning to abate.

Imprisoned, insulted, deprived eventually of life by the violence of

Philip, a prince excommunicated, and who had gone all lengths in defying

and despising the papal jurisdiction, Boniface had every claim to be

avenged by the inheritors of the same spiritual dominion. When Benedict

XI rescinded the bulls of his predecessor, and admitted Philip the Fair

to communion without insisting on any concessions, he acted perhaps

prudently, but gave a fatal blow to the temporal authority of Rome.[l]

FOOTNOTES

[92] [In the enforcement of celibacy, the emperors and a large part of

the laity were not unwilling to join. But when Gregory declared it a sin

for the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a

layman, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority.[g]]

[93] Floto (II, pp. 45 _et seqq._) has well shown the terrible workings

of this appeal to the populace. The peasants held that an accusation of

simony or marriage exempted them from the payment of tithe.

[94] [“Calixtus,” says Milman,[e] “though by no means the first

Frenchman, was the first French pontiff who established that close

connection between France and the papacy which had such important

influence on the affairs of the church and of Europe.”]

[95] [He was tied backwards on a camel and carried in the triumphal

procession of Calixtus, who had just previously excommunicated the

emperor. It was in his pontificate that the Concordat of Worms took place

as described previously.]

[96] [His name was Nicholas Breakspeare, and he was the only Englishman

who ever filled the papal chair.]

[97] [Under him Arnold of Brescia was robbed of his popularity and forced

into exile. He was captured by officers of Barbarossa and turned over

to the pope, who had him executed and his ashes cast into the Tiber.

Of him Milman[e] says: “Arnold of Brescia had struck boldly at both

powers; he utterly annulled the temporal supremacy of the pope; and if he

acknowledged, reduced the sovereignty of the emperor to a barren title.”]

[98] [Or rather, from his feet, according to Roger of Hoveden’s[h]

doubtful chronicle, which represents the pope as seated with his feet on

the crown and spurning it with a kick toward the kneeling emperor.]

[99] [Reichel[b] calls him “Greatest without exception among the great

popes of the Middle Ages.”]

[100] It may be well to state the chief points which the pope claimed

as his exclusive prerogative: (1) General supremacy of jurisdiction, a

claim, it is obvious, absolutely illimitable; (2) Right of legislation,

including the summoning and presiding in councils; (3) Judgment in

all ecclesiastic causes arduous and difficult. This included the

power of judging on contested elections, and degrading bishops, a

super-metropolitan power; (4) Right of confirmation of bishops and

metropolitans, the gift of the pallium. Hence, by degrees, rights of

appointment to devolved sees, reservations, etc.; (5) Dispensations; (6)

The foundation of new orders; (7) Canonisation. Compare Eichhorn, II, p.

500.

[101] The Conti family boasted of nine popes--among them Innocent III,

Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Innocent XIII; of thirteen cardinals, according

to Ciacconius.[j]

[102] Walter von der Vogelweide, who attributes all the misery of the

civil war in Germany to Innocent, closes his poem with these words

(modernised by K. Simrock):

“_Ich hörte fern in einer Klaus_

_Ein Jammern ohne Ende:_

_Ein Klausner rang die Hände;_

_Er klagte Gott sein bittres Leid;_

_O weh, der Papst ist allzu jung, Herr Gott, hilf deiner Christenheit._”

[103] It is remarkable that Innocent III was never canonised. There were

popular rumours that the soul of Innocent, escaping from the fires of

purgatory, appeared on earth, scourged by pursuing devils, taking refuge

at the foot of the cross, and imploring the prayers of the faithful.

[104] Milman[e] says: “The empire and the papacy were now to meet in

their last mortal and implacable strife. Cæsar would bear no superior,

the successor of St. Peter no equal.”

[105] [“With Conradin’s death,” says Mullinger,[d] “the long contest of

the empire with the popedom came to an end.”]

[106] [Of Clement IV, Milman[e] says: “It is his praise that he did

not exalt his kindred, that he left in obscurity the husbands of his

daughters. But the wonder betrayed by this praise shows at once how

Christendom had been offended; it was prophetic of the stronger offence

which nepotism would hereafter entail upon the papal see.”]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV. FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY

[Sidenote: [1305-1513 A.D.]]

The period in the papal history has arrived which in the Italian writers

is called the Babylonish Captivity; it lasted more than seventy years

(from 1305 to 1376). Rome is no longer the metropolis of Christendom;

the pope is a French prelate. The successor of St. Peter is not on St.

Peter’s throne; he is environed with none of the traditionary majesty

or traditionary sanctity of the Eternal City; he has abandoned the holy

bodies of the apostles, the churches of the apostles. It is perhaps the

most marvellous part of its history that the papacy, having sunk so low,

sank no lower; that it recovered from its degradation; that, from a

satellite, almost a slave of the king of France, the pontiff ever emerged

again to be an independent potentate; and, although the great line of

mediæval popes, of Gregory, of Alexander III, and the Innocents, expired

in Boniface VIII, he could resume even his modified supremacy. There

is no proof so strong of the vitality of the papacy as that it could

establish the law that wherever the pope is, there is the throne of St.

Peter; that he could cease to be bishop of Rome in all but in name, and

then take back again the abdicated bishopric.

Never was revolution more sudden, more total, it might seem more enduring

in its consequences. The close of the last century had seen Boniface VIII

advancing higher pretensions, if not wielding more actual power than any

former pontiff; the acknowledged pacificator of the world, the arbiter

between the kings of France and England, claiming and exercising feudal

as well as spiritual supremacy over many kingdoms, bestowing crowns as in

Hungary, awarding the empire; with millions of pilgrims at the jubilee in

Rome, still the centre of Christendom, paying him homage which bordered

on adulation and pouring the riches of the world at his feet. The first

decade of the new century is not more than half passed; Pope Clement V is

a voluntary prisoner, but not the less a prisoner in the realm, or almost

within the precincts of France; struggling in vain to escape from the

tyranny of his inexorable master, and to break or elude the fetters wound

around him by his own solemn engagements. He is almost forced to condemn

his predecessor for crimes of which he could hardly believe him guilty;

to accept a niggardly, and perhaps never-fulfilled penance from men

almost murderers of a pope; to sacrifice, on evidence which he himself

manifestly mistrusted, the Templars, one of the great military orders of

Christendom, to the hatred or avarice of Philip. The pope, from lord over

the freedom of the world, has ceased to be a free agent.[b]

CLEMENT V

[Sidenote: [1305-1311 A.D.]]

The pontiffs being at a distance, the Ghibelline faction in Italy, which

was hostile to the pontiffs, assumed greater boldness than formerly, and

not only invaded and laid waste the territories of St. Peter, but also

assailed the pontifical authority by their publications. Hence a number

of cities revolted from the popes; Rome itself became the parent and

fomenter of tumults, cabals, and civil wars; and the laws and decrees

sent thither from France were publicly treated with contempt, and not

merely by the nobles but also by the common citizens. A great part of

Europe followed the example of Italy; and numberless examples show that

the people of Europe attributed far less power to the fulminations and

decrees issued from France than to those issued from Rome. Various

seditions, therefore, were raised in one place and another against the

pontiffs, which they were unable to subdue and put down, notwithstanding

that the inquisitors were most active in the discharge of their functions.

As the French pontiffs could derive but little revenue from Italy, which

was rent into factions, seditious, and devastated, they were obliged

to devise new modes of raising money. They, therefore, not only sold

indulgences to the people more frequently than formerly, to the great

indignation of kings and princes, but they likewise required enormous

prices to be paid for their letters or bulls of every kind. In this thing

John XXII showed himself peculiarly adroit and shrewd; for though he did

not first invent the regulations and fees of the apostolic chancery, yet

the Romish writers admit that he enlarged them and reduced them to a

more convenient form. He also is said to have imposed that tribute which

under the title of _annates_ is customarily paid to the pontiffs; yet

the first commencement of it was anterior to that age. Moreover, these

French pontiffs, subverting the rights of election, assumed the power of

conferring all sacred offices, whether high or low, according to their

own pleasure; by which means they raised immense sums of money. Hence,

under these pontiffs, those most odious terms reservation, provision,

and expectative, rarely used before, were now everywhere heard, and they

called forth the bitterest complaints from all the nations of Europe;

and these complaints increased immeasurably when some of the pontiffs,

John XXII, Clement VI, Gregory XI, publicly announced that they had

reserved all churches to themselves, and that they would provide for all

without exception, by virtue of the sovereign right which Christ had

conferred on the vicars, or in the plenitude of their power. By these and

other artifices for filling their treasury and amassing property these

indiscreet pontiffs heaped additional odium on the apostolic see, and

thus weakened very considerably the papal empire, which began to decline

from the time of Boniface.

Clement V was governed all his life by the will and pleasure of Philip

the Fair, king of France. Guillaume de Nogaret, the implacable foe of

Boniface VIII, though excommunicated, resolutely prosecuted his own

cause and that of King Philip against Boniface in the papal court; a

transaction which, we believe, is without a parallel. Philip wished to

have the body of Boniface disinterred and publicly burned. With great

difficulty Clement averted this infamy by his entreaties and advice; but

in everything else he had to obey the king. Accordingly he abrogated the

laws enacted by Boniface, granted the king five years’ tithes, absolved

Nogaret from all crime, after imposing on him a slight penance, which

he never performed; restored the inhabitants of Anagni to their former

reputable and good standing, and held a general council at Vienne, 1311,

that Philip’s pleasure might be gratified in the suppression of the

Templars.[c]

THE FATE OF THE TEMPLARS

[Sidenote: [1311-1313 A.D.]]

The end of Clement himself and of Clement’s master, the king of France,

drew near. But the pope and the king must be preceded into the realm of

darkness and to the judgment-seat of heaven by other victims. The tragedy

of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close.[107] The four great

dignitaries of the order, the grand-master De Molay, Guy the commander

of Normandy, son of the dauphin of Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine

Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France Hugues de Peraud, were

still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on

their fate. The king and the pope were now equally interested in burying

the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived

uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named.

The grand-master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced

to perpetual imprisonment.

Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; of their

valiant brethren the most valiant had been burned alive, the recreants

had purchased their lives by confession; the pope in a full council had

condemned and dissolved the order. If a human mind, a mind like that

of De Molay, not the most stubborn, could be broken by suffering and

humiliation, it must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment.

The cardinal-archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform; he read the

confessions of the knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged

on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the pope, and

the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the king; he was proceeding to the

final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand-master advanced;

his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awe-struck

apprehension.

In a calm, clear voice De Molay spoke: “Before heaven and earth, on the

verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable

weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not

on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been

guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive

words of the pope and of the king; and so by our confessions brought

shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox brotherhood.”

The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their

profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the provost was

commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons: “To-morrow we

will hold further council.”

But on the moment that the king heard these things, without a day’s

delay, without the least consultation with the ecclesiastical

authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed heretics. On the island

in the Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the

king’s garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the

other, the two pyres were raised (two out of the four had shrunk back

into their ignoble confessions). It was the hour of vespers when these

two aged and noble men were led out to be burned. Both, as the smoke

rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital parts, continued

solemnly to aver the innocence, the Catholic faith of the order. The king

himself beheld this hideous spectacle.

[Sidenote: [1313-1316 A.D.]]

The wonder and the pity of the times which immediately followed not only

arrayed De Molay in the robes of the martyr, but gave him the terrible

language of a prophet. “Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon

thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of the Most High.”

According to some accounts this fearful sentence included the king, by

whom, if uttered, it might have been heard. The earliest allusion to this

awful speech does not contain that striking particularity which, if part

of it, would be fatal to its credibility--the precise date of Clement’s

death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed

to their account. The poetic relation of Godfrey de Paris simply states

that De Molay declared that God would revenge their death on their

unrighteous judges. The rapid fate of these two men during the next year

might naturally so appal the popular imagination as to approximate more

closely the prophecy and its accomplishment. At all events it betrayed

the deep and general feeling of the cruel wrong inflicted on the order;

while the unlamented death of the pope, the disastrous close of Philip’s

reign, and the crimes of his family seemed as declarations of heaven as

to the innocence of their noble victims.

The health of Clement V had been failing for some time. From his court,

which he held at Carpentras, he set out in hopes to gain strength from

his native air at Bordeaux. He had hardly crossed the Rhone when he was

seized with mortal sickness at Roquemaure. The papal treasure was seized

by his followers, especially his nephew; his remains were treated with

such utter neglect that the torches set fire to the catafalque under

which he lay, not in state. His body, covered only with a single sheet,

all that his rapacious retinue had left to shroud their forgotten master,

was half burned (not, like those of the Templars, on his living body)

before alarm was raised. His ashes were borne back to Carpentras and

solemnly interred.

Clement left behind him evil fame. He died shamefully rich. To his nephew

(nepotism had begun to prevail in its baleful influence) he bequeathed

not less than 300,000 golden florins, under the pretext of succour to

the Holy Land. He had died still more wealthy but that his wealth was

drained by more disgraceful prodigality. It was generally believed

that the beautiful Brunisand de Foix, countess of Talleyrand Périgord,

was the pope’s mistress; to her he was boundlessly lavish, and her

influence was irresistible even in ecclesiastical matters. Rumour ran

that her petitions to the lustful pontiff were placed upon her otherwise

unveiled bosom. Italian hatred of a transalpine pope, Guelfic hatred of

a Ghibelline pope, may have lent a too greedy ear to these disreputable

reports; but the large mass of authorities is against the pope; in his

favour, hardly more than suspicious silence.[b]

JOHN XXII TO URBAN V

[Sidenote: [1316-1333 A.D.]]

On the death of Clement, 1314, there were violent contests among the

cardinals respecting the election of a successor, the French demanding a

French pontiff and the Italians an Italian. After two years the French

gained the victory; and in 1316, Jacques d’Euse of Cahors, cardinal of

Porto, was made head of the church, and assumed the pontifical name of

John XXII. He was not destitute of learning, but was crafty, insolent,

weak, imprudent, and avaricious, as even those who honour his memory do

not positively deny. He rendered himself notorious by many imprudent and

unsuccessful enterprises, but especially by his unfortunate contest with

the emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria. There was a contest for the empire of

Germany between Ludwig of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria, each being

chosen emperor by a part of the electors in the year 1314. John declared

that the decision of this controversy belonged to him. But Ludwig, having

conquered his rival in battle and taken him prisoner, in the year 1322,

assumed the government of the empire, without consulting the pontiff, and

refused to submit a cause which had been decided by the sword to another

trial before the pontiff.

John was greatly offended at this, and in the year 1324 divested the

emperor of all title to the imperial crown. Ludwig, in return, accused

the pontiff of corrupting the faith, or of heresy; and appealed to the

decision of a council. Exasperated by this and other things, the pontiff,

in the year 1327, again divested the emperor of all his authority and

power, and laid him under excommunication. In revenge for this injury

the emperor, in the year 1328, at Rome, publicly declared John unworthy

of the pontificate; and substituted in his place Pietro di Corvara, a

Franciscan monk, and one of those who disagreed with the pontiff; and

he, assuming the name of Nicholas V, crowned Ludwig emperor. But in the

year 1330, this imperial pontiff voluntarily abdicated his office, and

surrendered himself into the hands of John, who kept him a prisoner at

Avignon till his death. Thus John continued to reign in spite of the

emperor, as did the emperor in spite of the pontiff.

[Illustration: A PRIEST OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

On the side of Ludwig stood the whole mass of the Fratricelli, the

Beghards (or Beguins) of every description, and the Spirituals, or more

rigid among the Franciscans; and these, being scattered over a large

part of Europe, and supported by the protection of Ludwig, everywhere

assailed John with reproaches and criminations, both orally and in

books, and charged him with religious apostasy. The pontiff, however,

was not greatly injured by these private attacks; but towards the close

of his life he fell under the disapprobation and censure of nearly the

whole church. For in the years 1331 and 1332, he taught in some public

discourses that departed souls would indeed behold Christ, but would not

see the face of God or the divine nature until their reunion with the

body at the last day. With this doctrine, Philip VI, the king of France,

was highly displeased; the theologians of Paris condemned it in 1333; and

both the friends and the foes of the pontiff were opposed to it. For it

appeared to them that the pontiff detracted much from the blessedness

of departed spirits. To so great opposition John, though naturally

pertinacious, had to give way. He therefore first apologised for the

doctrine; and afterwards, when near the point of death, 1334, he did not

indeed abandon it, but he qualified it by saying that he believed souls

in the intermediate state saw the divine essence, as far as the state and

condition of the disembodied spirit would permit. But this declaration

did not satisfy his adversaries. Hence, after various disputes, his

successor Benedict XII terminated the controversy, according to the

decision of the Parisian doctors, by declaring the true faith to be

that the souls of the blessed, when separate from the body, fully and

perfectly behold the divine nature, or God himself. Benedict could do

this without impeaching his predecessor; for John, when dying, submitted

his opinion to the judgment of the church, lest, perhaps, he should after

death be classed among heretics.

[Sidenote: [1333-1362 A.D.]]

On the death of John, 1334, new contests between the French and the

Italians, respecting the choice of a pontiff, divided the college of

cardinals. But near the close of the year, Jacques de Nouveau called

Fournier, a Frenchman, cardinal of St. Prisca, was chosen, and assumed

the name of Benedict XII. Historians allow him the praise of being an

upright and honest man, no less free from avarice than from the lust of

rule. During his reign the controversy with the emperor Ludwig was at

rest. For although he did not restore him to church communion, being

prevented, as is reported by the king of France, yet he did not attempt

anything against him. He saw the existing evils in the church, and some

of them, as far as he could, he removed; in particular he laboured to

reform by decrees and ordinances the orders of the monks, both mendicant

and opulent. But death removed him, when he was contemplating more and

greater changes, in 1342. Overlook superstition, which was the common

fault of his age, and we shall find nothing to prevent us from declaring

this pontiff to have been a right-spirited man.

Of a different spirit was his successor, Clement VI, who was likewise

a Frenchman, named Pierre Roger, and cardinal of St. Nereus and St.

Achilles. To say nothing of his other deeds, that are little to be

commended, he trod in the steps of John XXII by his provisions and

reservations of churches, which was evidence of a shameful avarice;

further, he conferred the most important spiritual offices on foreigners

and Italians, which produced controversies between him and the kings of

France and England; and, lastly, he demonstrated the arrogance and pride

of his heart, among other things, by renewing the war with Ludwig the

Bavarian. For, in the year 1343, he hurled new thunders at the emperor;

and finding these to be contemned by Ludwig, in the year 1346, he devoted

him again to execration; and persuaded the princes of Germany to elect

Charles IV, grandson of Henry VII, for their emperor. A civil war would

now have broken out in Germany, had not the death of Ludwig, in 1347,

prevented it. Clement followed him to the grave, in 1352, famous for

nothing but his zeal for exalting the majesty of the pontiffs, and for

adding Avignon, which he bought of Joanna queen of Naples, to St. Peter’s

patrimony.

[Sidenote: [1362-1378 A.D.]]

There was more moderation and probity in Innocent VI, or Etienne

d’Albert, a Frenchman, previously bishop of Ostia, who governed the

church ten years, and died in 1362. He favoured his own relatives too

much; but in other respects encouraged the pious and the well-informed,

held the monks to their duty, abstained from reserving churches, and did

many things worthy of commendation. His successor, Guillaume de Grimoard,

abbot of St. Victor, at Marseilles, who assumed the name of Urban V,

was also free from great faults, if we except those which are almost

inseparable from the office of a pope. Overcome by the entreaties of

the Romans, he removed to Rome in the year 1367, but returned again to

Avignon in 1370, in order to make peace between the king of England and

the king of France, and died there the same year.

He was succeeded by Pierre Roger, a Frenchman of noble birth, under

the pontifical name of Gregory XI. He was inferior to his predecessors

in virtue, but exceeded them in energy and audacity. Under him great

and dangerous commotions disturbed Italy and the city of Rome. The

Florentines, especially, waged fierce war with the Romish church, and

were successful in it. To restore the tranquillity of Italy, and recover

the territories and cities taken from the patrimony of St. Peter,

Gregory, in the year 1376, transferred his residence from Avignon to

Rome. One Catherine, a virgin of Siena, whom that credulous age took

to be a prophetess divinely inspired, came to Avignon, and by her

exhortations greatly contributed to this measure. But Gregory soon

after repented of his removal; for by their long absence from Italy the

authority of the pontiffs was so fallen there that the Romans and the

Florentines had no scruple to insult and abuse him in various ways. He

therefore purposed to return to Avignon, but was prevented by death,

which removed him from among living men in the year 1378.

After the death of Gregory XI, the cardinals being assembled to provide a

successor, the Roman people, fearing lest a Frenchman should be elected

who would remove to Avignon, demanded, with furious clamours and threats,

that an Italian should be placed at the head of the church without delay.

The terrified cardinals proclaimed Bartolommeo Prignani, who was a

Neapolitan by birth, and archbishop of Bari, to be elected pontiff; and

he assumed the name of Urban VI. This new pontiff, by his coarse manners,

his injudicious severity, and his intolerable haughtiness, alienated the

minds of all from him, but especially the cardinals. These, therefore,

withdrew to Fondi, a city in the kingdom of Naples, and there created

another pontiff, Robert count of Geneva, who took the name of Clement

VII, alleging that Urban was elected only in pretence, in order to quiet

the rage of the people of Rome. Which of these was the legitimate and

true pontiff still remains uncertain, nor can it be fully ascertained

from the records and documents which have been published in great

abundance by both parties. Urban continued at Rome; Clement removed to

Avignon in France.

Thus the unity of the Latin church, as existing under one head, came to

an end at the death of Gregory XI; and that most unhappy disunion ensued,

which is usually denominated “the great schism of the West.” For during

fifty years the church had two or three heads; and the contemporary

pontiffs assailed each other with excommunications, maledictions, and

insidious measures. The calamities and distress of those times are

indescribable. For besides the perpetual contentions and wars between

the pontifical factions, which were ruinous to great numbers, involving

them in loss of life or of property, nearly all sense of religion was

in many places extinguished, and wickedness daily acquired greater

impunity and boldness. The clergy, previously corrupt, now laid aside

even the appearance of piety and godliness, while those who called

themselves Christ’s vicegerents were at open war with each other; and the

conscientious people, who believed that no one could be saved without

living in subjection to Christ’s vicegerents, were thrown into the

greatest perplexity and anxiety of mind. Yet both the church and the

state received very considerable advantages from these great calamities.

For the very sinews of pontifical power were cut by these dissensions,

and no art could heal them any more; kings, too, and princes, who had

before been in a sense the servants of the pontiffs, now became their

judges and masters. Moreover, great numbers, possessing some measure of

discernment, despising and disregarding pontiffs, fighting for dominion,

committed themselves and their salvation to God alone, in full assurance

that the church and religion might be safe and continue so, although

without any visible head.[c]

THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST (1378-1417 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1378-1389 A.D.]]

Clement was immediately recognised as pope in Scotland, Savoy, and

Lorraine, afterwards in Castile (1381), Aragon (1387), and Navarre

(1390). On the other hand Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and

Prussia remained on Urban’s side.

The war between the two popes was not only waged with sentences of

excommunication, but in Italy with secular weapons also. Urban declared

that Queen Joanna, by her secession from his side, had forfeited the

kingdom of Naples, and granted it in fee to Charles, duke of Durazzo. On

the other hand Joanna, under Clement’s influence, took Louis, duke of

Anjou, at that time regent of France, for her adopted son and successor

(1380). Charles meanwhile in a short time made himself master of the

whole kingdom, took Joanna prisoner in 1381, and had her put to death,

when Louis appeared in Italy at the head of an army (1382). Charles

continued to maintain his ascendency, and Louis’ death (1384) would

have been decisive as regards Naples in favour of Urban and Charles

forever, had not differences forthwith arisen between the two latter,

which increased to such a degree, when the headstrong pope went in

person to Naples, that Urban pronounced sentence of dethronement and

excommunication against Charles, and was consequently besieged by him in

the castle of Lucera at Salerno (1385). He escaped to Genoa (September,

1385) without becoming wiser. By the cruel execution of five cardinals

he made himself still more hateful. After Charles’ death (1386) by his

impolitic refusal to invest his son Ladislaus (or Lancelot) with Naples,

he exposed this kingdom afresh to the danger of falling under the

dominion of France. The capital city was already conquered for the young

Louis of Anjou (1387), and the whole kingdom would have fallen to him and

the French pope, had not Urban’s successor, Boniface IX, at the right

moment, invested Ladislaus (1390) and rendered him his powerful support.

With a view to secure the states of the church against Louis, Boniface

granted many towns and castles in fee to powerful nobles, and thus roused

afresh in Rome a struggle for independence, which kept him long in

banishment from the city. True, Louis was forced to quit Italy altogether

(1400), and Ladislaus remained king of Naples. But this restless

agitation in Rome increased, and was even supported by Ladislaus, who

wished to make himself master of the city.

[Sidenote: [1389-1409 A.D.]]

As the schism lessened the revenues of the popes and increased their

expenses, so it caused a fresh aggravation of those church oppressions

which were already intolerable. The French pontiff, Clement VII, was

obliged indeed to exercise the right of presentation to ecclesiastical

offices, to which now also were added the _gratiæ exspectativæ_,

according to the nod of the French court, upon which he was quite

dependent; but in return for this the church of France, so long as her

grievances were not too loudly expressed, was delivered over as a prey to

his extortions. Tithes _vacantiæ_ and _annates_ were now the standing

income of the papal cabinet. In addition to these Clement laid claim to

the spoils of deceased prelates. His successor, Benedict XIII, wherever

it was possible, surpassed him in these systems of impoverishment.

So long as Urban VI lived, the Roman curia was advantageously

distinguished in this respect from that of Avignon. His successor,

Boniface IX, on the contrary, imitated all the extortions of his rivals

in France, but he far surpassed them in the simony which was practised

quite publicly by himself and the members of his curia, and was even

defended without any sense of shame. Thus at the end of this period both

obediences were groaning under the weight of persecution. England alone

repeatedly threw off every papal oppression, and in 1404 Hungary also

followed her example.

In consequence of these church oppressions, which were the result of the

schism, the religious scruples which were entertained with regard to it

were strengthened, and earlier steps demanded for its settlement. The

university of Paris in particular laboured with unshaken perseverance

to bring the schism to a close. After she had long waited in vain for a

sound agreement of the two popes betwixt themselves, she at last obtained

permission from the court of France to interpose her opinion upon these

events (1394). Benedict XIII, notwithstanding his promise made before

his election, showed even less inclination than his predecessor to take

serious steps to close the schism. To the urgent proposals of a French

national synod in 1395 he returned only an evasive answer. The university

nevertheless persevered in her endeavour, and at length contrived that

Charles VI, king of France, should join with the emperor Wenceslaus in

forcing both the popes to resign (1398).

The latter was in very truth too weak to keep his word; moreover he

was himself deposed by the secret machinations of his pope Boniface IX

(1400). On the other hand, by the decree of a new national synod France

withdrew from the obedience of Benedict; Castile followed her example

(1398), and this pope was kept a prisoner at Avignon. It was not till

after the lapse of many years, and the breach of express engagements,

that Benedict succeeded in regaining the church of France to his

obedience (1403) by the help of the duke of Orleans, who at that time

had won the ascendency at court. It was quickly manifest how little

he meant to keep these promises; but as the Italian cardinals imposed

similar engagements upon their new pope Innocent VII, on his election

in 1404, even only with a view to save appearances, it was necessary to

open negotiations. The fruitlessness of this proceeding increased the

general discontent; France threatened her pope with a fresh withdrawal

of allegiance (national council of January, 1407), when at length both

the popes agreed upon a personal interview at Savona in September, 1407.

Benedict appeared there in person; however, Gregory XII went only as far

as Lucca, and opened fresh negotiations for another place of congress.

This public breach of promise roused the Roman cardinals; they forsook

their pope Gregory, and renounced their allegiance to him, at the same

time that France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict. Benedict

indeed escaped the imprisonment with which he was threatened, by flight

to Perpignan; but the cardinals of both obediences united at Livorno

(Leghorn) and summoned a general council at Pisa in March, 1409, with a

view to the termination of the schism.

[Sidenote: [1378-1417 A.D.]]

The schism with its church oppression furnished the impulse, the weakness

of the papal see gave the long desired opportunity for an unbiased trial

of the existing state of the church; it led men to opinions which had

hitherto only been mooted in violent struggles with the popes, and so not

without an appearance of passion and party spirit; but now they struck

root so deeply, even among the most faithful adherents of the church,

that they could never again be entirely suppressed. Many an anxious gaze

was turned backwards to the earlier and better ages of the church, in

order to discover in its constitution the remedy for the scandals of

the present. This was a problem of learning. Its representatives, the

universities, particularly that of Paris, were listened to with eager

attention, and attained an influence which was formidable even to the

popes. This comparison of the present with the earlier ages of the church

could not but lead to many convictions unfavourable to the papal see.

True there were but isolated individuals who advanced so far upon this

line of thought as to wish the papacy quite removed from the church

as the source of all her evils. But even its truest adherents now

acknowledged the immoderate extension of papal power, and the monstrous

exaggeration of the papal dignity. They discovered in the bent of the

papacy to secular power the prime cause of all mischief, and even to

the schism, and they wished the times back again when the emperors

could convoke synods by their own authority to strangle a schism at its

birth. No less general was the discontent expressed against the papal

church oppressions, and the wish to remove them by limitations of the

papal power. Hitherto only adversaries of the popes, at open war with

them, had appealed to a general council as a higher authority, but

during the schism circumstances led to a general acknowledgment that

such a council must rank above the pope. After the Council of Pisa was

summoned to terminate the contest between the two popes, and set a

limit to the abuses of papal power, the canonists vied with each other

in demonstrating this new opinion so injurious to the papacy, of the

superiority of general councils to the pope, and thus the papal system of

the last century seemed to be threatened with total overthrow.

RELATION OF THE NATIONAL CHURCHES TO THE STATE

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

The jealousies betwixt the ecclesiastical and secular tribunals arising

from the immoderate extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction still

continued, but they began more and more to result in favour of the

latter. In Germany the fundamental principle that secular causes belonged

only to secular tribunals had been recognised long before, even by

the prelates, who were themselves temporal lords of the land; it was,

as a general rule, always maintained, though in individual cases the

ecclesiastical tribunals continually overstepped their limits. But during

the schism, the emperor Wenceslaus could only execute his decisions in

things temporal, against the higher orders of the clergy, by deeds of

violence. The cities continued to tax the excessive revenues of the

ecclesiastical sovereignty. They either forbade altogether the increase

of church property, or decreed that all fresh acquisitions should be

alienated again in a year and a day, or required from the new revenues

the customary taxes. Now that the parish priests, by their management

of people’s wills, provided too well for themselves and for the church,

it was determined that wills should only be made before the secular

authorities. Paderborn even prohibited the multiplication of masses for

souls. Still the popes wished to maintain a good understanding with the

cities, and bind them to themselves by means of privileges.

During the schism many concessions were made to the nobles also; thus

Boniface IX, in 1399 allowed Albert IV, duke of Austria, the _jus

primarum precum_. The free Swiss by the priests’ law (_Pfaffenbrief_) in

1370 put an end to the encroachments of the ecclesiastical tribunals. In

Italy the operation of the ecclesiastical tribunals, like the condition

of the whole country, was very fluctuating. Under Ghibelline lords they

were often quite suppressed. In France ecclesiastical jurisdiction had

reached its greatest extension; the kings connived at it, because they

wished to keep their bishops well inclined to themselves, and knew how to

tax any irregularities of the ecclesiastical tribunals. On the other hand

the barons were continually at issue with the prelates on this point,

and from both sides there were unceasing complaints of usurpation. The

remarkable negotiations which were instituted by command of King Philip

of Valois with the prelates summoned before parliament (1329), owing to

the king’s political aims, failed of their intended result. Immediately

afterwards the clergy sought to establish their jurisdiction still firmer

by decrees of councils. On the other hand a powerful resistance to these

proceedings was being developed in parliament, which was now transforming

itself into a standing corporation; this was especially manifest from

the time of Charles V. Henceforth ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not

only confined to its proper limits, but parliament claimed a certain

degree of superintendence over it, and drew to itself the right of

decision upon many points, which were at that time universally held to be

ecclesiastical.

The earlier encroachments of the popes upon episcopal rights were still

further increased by the fact that they now took to themselves entirely

the appointment to ecclesiastical offices, and exercised the right of

exemption in the highest degree, particularly during the schism. Thus

the importance of the bishops in the church was small; they compensated

themselves for this by secular honours and worldly enjoyment. The

oppression which fell upon them from above they knew how to discharge

upon those below, and so the lower orders of the clergy groaned beneath

intolerable burdens.

MORAL CONDITION OF THE CLERGY

The moral condition of the clergy could not fail to degenerate still more

in this period, in consequence of the manner in which ecclesiastical

offices were generally bestowed, the example which the papal court

gave, and the method in which the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was

administered. In the chapters, where the stalls were for the most part

benefices reserved for the nobles, as well as among the parochial

clergy, there prevailed a depth of ignorance and an immorality which

awakened indignation. The continued struggle of the synods against

the dissoluteness of priests remained quite fruitless. The laity were

only too glad to secure their wives and daughters from the sacerdotal

ravishers, and accordingly favoured, at times even demanded, fixed

alliances of their priests with concubines. Thus in many countries

concubinage was publicly allowed among the priests, who were supposed to

be too sacred for a matrimonial connection. The fines with which these

excesses were visited by many synods were quickly changed into a welcome

gratuity to the avarice of the bishops. Nevertheless, every attempt of

the secular power to check these scandals was resisted by the church as

an invasion of her rights.[d]

THE GREAT COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE; JOHN HUSS

[Sidenote: [1409-1429 A.D.]]

The Council of Pisa, which was designed to heal the wounds of the divided

church, unexpectedly inflicted upon her a new wound. On the 5th of June

it passed a heavy sentence on each of the pontiffs; for it declared them

both to be heretical, perjured, contumacious, unworthy of any honour, and

no longer members of the church. As the next step, the council created

Pietro Philarghi of Candia sovereign pontiff in their place, on the 26th

of June; and he assumed the name of Alexander V. But the two pontiffs

spurned the decrees of this council, and continued still to perform

their functions. Benedict held a council at Perpignan, and Gregory

assembled another at Austria, near Aquileia; but fearing the resentments

of the Venetians, he went first to Gaeta, where he threw himself upon

the protection of Ladislaus, king of Naples, and then fled, in 1412, to

Rimini.

The church was thus divided among three pontiffs, who fiercely

assailed each other with reciprocal excommunications, reproaches, and

maledictions. Alexander V, who was elected in the Council of Pisa, died

at Bologna in 1410. The sixteen cardinals, who were present in the

city, immediately filled his place with Baltasare Cossa, a Neapolitan,

who took the name of John XXIII, a man destitute of principle and of

piety. From this war of the pontiffs vast evils arose which afflicted

both the church and the state. Hence the emperor Sigismund, the king

of France, and other kings and princes of Europe, spared no pains nor

expense to restore harmony and bring the church again under one head.

From the pontiffs it was found quite impossible to obtain any personal

sacrifice for the peace of the church; so that no course remained but to

assemble a general council of the whole church, to take cognisance of

this great controversy. Such an assembly John XXIII, being prevailed on

by the entreaties of Sigismund and hoping that it would favour his cause,

appointed to be held at Constance in 1414. In this council were present

the pontiff John, the emperor Sigismund, many princes of Germany, and

ambassadors from the absent kings and princes of Europe, and from the

republics.

The principal object of this great council was to extinguish the discord

between the pontiffs; and this business was accomplished successfully.

For having established by two solemn decrees, in the fourth and fifth

sessions, that a pontiff is subject to a council of the whole church,

and having most carefully substantiated the authority of councils,

the fathers, on the 29th of May, 1415, removed John XXIII from the

pontificate on account of various offences and crimes; for he had pledged

himself to the council to resign the pontificate, and yet withdrew

himself by flight. Gregory XII voluntarily resigned his pontificate on

the 4th of July in the same year, through Carlo Malatesta. And Benedict

XIII, on the 26th of July, 1417, was deprived of his rank as a pontiff

by a solemn decree of the council. After these transactions, on the 11th

of November, 1417, Otto Colonna was elected pontiff by the unanimous

suffrages of the cardinals, and assumed the name of Martin V. Benedict

XIII, who resided at Perpignan, resisted indeed, and claimed the rights

and the dignity of a pontiff till his death, 1423; and after the death

of this obstinate man, under the auspices of Alfonso, king of Sicily,

Ægidius (Giles) Nuños, a Spaniard, was appointed to succeed him, by only

two cardinals. He assumed the name of Clement VIII, and wished to be

regarded as the legitimate pontiff; but in the year 1429 he was persuaded

to resign the government of the church entirely to Martin V.

[Sidenote: [1407-1416 A.D.]]

The things done in this council for the repression and extirpation of

heretics are not equally commendable; some of them, indeed, are quite

inexcusable. Before the council sat, great religious commotions had

arisen in several countries, but especially in Bohemia. There lived and

taught at Prague, with much applause, an eloquent and learned man, by

name John Huss, who acted as a professor of theology in the university

and as a minister of holy things in the church. Vehemently did he declaim

against priestly vices of every kind; which was generally done in that

age, and no good man disapproved it. He likewise endeavoured, after the

year 1408, to detach the university from acknowledging as pontiff Gregory

XII, whom Bohemia had hitherto obeyed. This gave great offence to the

archbishop of Prague and to the rest of the clergy, who were devoted

partisans of Gregory. Hence arose great hostility between Huss and the

archbishop, which the former kept up and increased by his discourses

against the Romish court and the vices of the clergy.

To these first causes of hatred against Huss, which might easily have

been surmounted, others were added of greater magnitude. First, he took

the side of the Realists in philosophy, and, therefore, according to the

usage of the age, goaded and pressed the Nominalists to the utmost of

his power; yet their number was very considerable in the university of

Prague, and their influence was not small. Afterwards, in the year 1408,

he brought it about that, in the controversy between the Germans and the

Bohemians respecting the number of votes, the decision was in favour

of the Bohemians. By the laws of the university it was ordained that

in academic discussions the Bohemians should have three votes, and the

other three nations but one. The university was then divided into four

nations, but the Bavarian, Polish, and Saxon were comprehended under the

general name of the German nation. The usage had been that the Germans,

who far exceeded the Bohemians in numbers, gave three votes and the

Bohemians but one. Huss, therefore, either from partiality to his country

or from hatred of the Nominalists, whom the greatest part of the Germans

preferred to the Realists, obtained, by means of the vast influence at

court which his eloquence gave him, a decree that the Germans should be

deprived of the three votes and should be bidden to content themselves

with one. This result of a long contest so offended the Germans that

a great multitude of them, with the rector of the university, Johann

Hofmann, at their head, left the university of Prague and retired

to Leipzig, where Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, founded a

university on their account in the year 1409. This event contributed

much to increase the odium against Huss and to work his ruin. The Germans

being ejected from Prague, Huss inveighed more freely than before against

the vices of the clergy, and also publicly preached and recommended the

opinions and the books of John Wycliffe, the Englishman. [See the history

of England.] Being accused before John XXIII, in the year 1410, he was

excommunicated by that pontiff. Spurning this thunderbolt, he continued,

with general applause, first by word of mouth, afterwards in various

writings, to lash the sores of the Roman church and of the priest of

every degree.

This good man, who was in love with real piety, but perhaps had sometimes

too much warmth and not sufficient prudence, being summoned to the

Council of Constance, went thither on the faith of a safe-conduct given

by the emperor Sigismund, with a view to demonstrate his innocence

and prove them liars who talked of him as an apostate from the Roman

church. And certainly he had not departed in things of any moment from

the religion of his times; but had only inveighed severely against the

pontiffs, the court of Rome, the more considerable clergy, and the monks;

which in fact had the sanction of his times, and was daily done in the

Council of Constance itself. Yet his enemies, who were numerous both in

Bohemia and in the council, managed the procedure against him so artfully

and successfully that, in violation of the public faith, he was cast into

prison; and when he would not, according to the council’s order, confess

himself guilty, he was adjudged a heretic, and burned alive, on the 6th

day of July, 1415. Full of faith and the love of God, he sustained this

punishment with admirable constancy. The same unhappy fate was borne with

the same pious fortitude and constancy by Jerome of Prague, the companion

of John Huss, who had come to Constance to support and aid his friend. He

yielded at first through fear of death to the mandates of the council,

and renounced those opinions which the council had condemned in him; but

being retained still in prison, he resumed courage, again avowed those

opinions, and was, therefore, committed to the flames on the 30th of May,

1416.

Before Huss and Jerome were condemned by the council, John Wycliffe, who

was considered, and not altogether without reason, as their teacher,

had been pronounced infamous, and condemned by a decree of the fathers.

For on the fourth day of May, 1415, the council declared a number of

opinions extracted from his writings to be abominable; and ordered all

his books to be destroyed, and his bones to be burned. Not long after,

on the 14th of June, they passed the famous decree that the sacred

supper should be administered to the laity under one kind of bread only,

forbidding communion under both kinds. For in the preceding year, 1414,

Jacobellus (James) of Mies, incumbent of St. Michael’s church at Prague,

by the instigation of a Parisian doctor, Peter of Dresden, had begun to

celebrate the communion under both kinds, at Prague; which example many

other churches followed. The subject being brought before the council

by one of the Bohemian bishops, it considered a remedy to be required

even for this heresy. By this decree at Constance, the communion of the

laity under one kind obtained the force and authority of law in the Roman

church.

[Sidenote: [1407-1431 A.D.]]

In the same year, the council placed among execrable errors, or heresies,

an opinion of Jean Petit, a Parisian theologian, that tyrants might be

lawfully slain by any private person. The party however, from whom this

opinion came was not named, because he was supported by very powerful

patrons. John duke of Burgundy employed assassins, in the year 1407, to

murder Louis duke of Orleans. A great contest now arose, and Petit, an

eloquent and ingenious man, pleaded the cause of John of Burgundy at

Paris; and in order to justify his conduct he maintained that it is no

sin to destroy a tyrant, without a trial of his cause, by force or fraud,

or in any other manner, and even if the persons doing it are bound to him

by an oath or covenant. By a tyrant, however, Petit did not understand

the sovereign of a nation, but a powerful citizen, who abused his

resources to the ruin of his king and country. The university of Paris

passed a stern and severe sentence upon the author of so dangerous an

opinion. The council, after several consultations, struck at the opinion,

without naming its author. The new pontiff, however, Martin V, from fear

of the Burgundian power, would not ratify even this mild sentence.

After these and some other transactions the council proceeded avowedly to

the subject of a reformation of the church, in its “head and members,”

as the language of that age was. For all Europe saw the need of such a

reformation, and most ardently wished for it. Nor did the council deny

that chiefly for this important object it had been called together.

But the cardinals and principal men of the Romish court, for whose

interest it was, especially, that the disorders of the church should

remain untouched, craftily urged and brought the majority to believe

that a business of such magnitude could not be managed advantageously,

until after the election of a new pontiff. The new head of the church,

however, Martin V, abused his power to elude the design of reformation;

and manifested by his commands and edicts that he did not wish the church

to be purged and restored to a sound state. The council, accordingly,

after deliberating three years and six months, broke up on the 22nd of

April, 1418, leaving the matter unaccomplished, and putting off that

reformation, which all good men devoutly wished, to a council which

should be called five years afterwards.

[Illustration: A PRIEST IN HIS MANTLE OF OFFICE, 1400]

[Sidenote: [1431-1439 A.D.]]

Martin V, being admonished on the subject, after a long delay appointed

this other council to be held at Pavia; and afterwards removed it to

Siena, and lastly to Bâle. But at its very commencement, on the 21st

February, 1431, he died; and was succeeded, in the month of March, by

Gabriel Condolmieri, a Venetian, and bishop of Siena, who took the name

of Eugenius IV. He sanctioned all that Martin had decreed about holding

the council at Bâle; and accordingly it commenced on the 23rd of July,

1431, under the presidency of Cardinal Julian, as representative of the

pontiff. Two objects especially were assigned to this celebrated council:

first, a union between the Greeks and the Latins; and secondly, the

reformation of the church, both in its “head and its members,” according

to the resolution adopted in the Council of Constance. Now that the

head, namely the sovereign pontiff, and all the members of the church,

that is the bishops, priests, and monks, were in a very unsound state no

one doubted. But when the fathers, by the very form of the council, by

its mode and order of proceeding, and by its first decrees, showed an

intention of performing in earnest what was expected of them, Eugenius

IV became uneasy for a corrupt church under such physicians, and twice

attempted to dissolve the council. This the fathers most firmly resisted;

and they showed by the decrees of the Council of Constance, and by other

arguments, that the council was superior in authority to a pontiff. This

first contest between the pontiff and the council was brought to a close

in the month of November, 1433; for the pontiff silently gave up the

point, and in the month of December, by letters sent from Rome, gave the

council his approbation.

After this the council prosecuted with energy the business upon which it

had entered. The legates of the Roman pontiff were now admitted; but not

until they had promised under oath to obey the decrees of the council,

and particularly the decrees of the Council of Constance, asserting the

dominion and jurisdiction of councils over the pontiffs. These very

decrees of Constance, so odious to the pontiffs, were renewed in a public

meeting of the fathers on the 26th of June, 1434. And on the 9th of

June, 1435, annates, as they were called, were abolished, the pontifical

legates in vain opposing it. On the 25th of March, 1436, a profession of

faith was read, intended for the pope himself on the day of his election.

The number of cardinals was reduced to twenty-four; and expectatives,

reservations, and provisions were abolished.

Other things coming on little agreeable to the pontiff, Eugenius

concluded that this very audacious and troublesome council must either be

removed into Italy or be curbed by another council in opposition to it.

Therefore, when these fathers decreed, on May 7th, 1437, that on account

of the Greeks the council should be held either at Bâle, or Avignon, or

in some city of Savoy, the pontiff, on the contrary, by his legates,

decided that the council should be held in Italy. Neither party would

revoke its decision. Hence a violent conflict, from this time onward,

existed between the pontiff and the council. On the 26th of July, 1437,

the council ordered the pontiff to appear before them at Bâle, and

give account of his conduct. The pontiff, on the other hand, dissolved

the council, and appointed another at Ferrara. But the fathers, with

the approbation of the emperor, the king of France, and other princes,

continued their deliberations at Bâle; and on the 28th of September of

the same year pronounced the pontiff contumacious for not obeying the

decree of a council.

On the 10th of January of the next year, 1438, Eugenius IV, in person,

opened the council which he had summoned to meet at Ferrara; and in

the second session of it excommunicated the fathers assembled at Bâle.

The chief business of this council was to negotiate a union between

the Greeks and Latins. The Greek emperor himself, Joannes Palæologus,

the patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph, and the principal theologians

and bishops of the nation had come personally to Italy, in order to

facilitate the success of this important negotiation. For the Greeks,

now reduced to extremities by the Turks, indulged the hope that if their

disagreements with the Roman pontiff were removed the Latins would afford

them succour. The business proceeded tardily, and with little success at

Ferrara; but afterwards rather better at Florence. For Eugenius in the

beginning of the year 1439, on account of the pestilence at Ferrara, had

ordered the council to remove to Florence. The fathers at Bâle, provoked

by these and other acts of Eugenius, proceeded on the 25th of June, 1439,

to deprive him of the pontificate; but this bold procedure of theirs was

not approved by the kings and princes of Europe. Eugenius, on the 4th

of September, by a very severe bull anathematised the Basilian fathers

and rescinded all their acts. Despising these thunders, on the 17th of

September, 1439, they elected a new pontiff, Amadeus, duke of Savoy, who

then led a retired life at Ripaille on the Leman Lake (Lake of Geneva).

He assumed the name of Felix V.

[Sidenote: [1439-1449 A.D.]]

Thus the lamentable schism, which had been extinguished after so much

labour and toil at Constance, returned with new and greater misfortunes.

For there were not only two pontiffs mutually condemning each other, but

likewise, what was worse, two opposing councils, that of Bâle and that of

Florence. The greater part of the church, indeed, adhered to Eugenius;

but most of the universities, and particularly the first among them,

that of Paris, as well as some kingdoms and provinces, chose to follow

Felix V. The Council of Bâle continued to deliberate and to pass laws

and decrees till the year 1443, notwithstanding all the opposition of

Eugenius and his adherents. And although the fathers separated in that

year, they nevertheless publicly declared that the council was not at an

end, but would assemble again at a proper time, either at Bâle, or Lyons,

or Lausanne. The Council of Florence was chiefly occupied in settling

the disputes between the Latins and the Greeks. This great business was

committed to selected individuals of both parties. The principal one

on the part of the Greeks was Bessarion, a very learned man, who was

afterwards admitted into the order of cardinals in the Roman church. This

man, being gained by the favours bestowed on him by the pontiff, exerted

his influence, and the pontiff employed rewards, threats, and promises to

induce the other Greeks to accede to the proposed terms of accommodation,

and to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeded also from the Son,

that departed souls undergo a purgation by fire before they are admitted

to the vision of God, that bread which is without leaven may be used in

the sacred supper, and lastly, what was most important of all, that the

Roman pontiff is the head and the judge of the church universal. One of

the Greeks, Mark of Ephesus, could not be persuaded, by entreaties or by

bribes, to give his assent. After all, this peace, which was extorted

by various artifices, was not stable. For the Greeks, on returning to

Constantinople, stated to their fellow-citizens that everything had been

carried at Florence by fraud, and they resumed their hostility. The

Council of Florence itself put an end to its deliberations on the 26th of

April, 1442. There were also negotiations in this council for bringing

the Armenians, and the Jacobites, but especially the Abyssinians, into

union with the Romish church; which were attended with the same result as

those respecting the Greeks.

[Sidenote: [1447-1455 A.D.]]

The author of this new pontifical schism, Eugenius IV, died in the month

of February, 1447, and was succeeded in the month of March by Nicholas V,

who was previously Tommaso Parentucelli of Sarzana, bishop of Bologna,

a man of learning himself and a great patron of learning, and likewise

moderate in temper and disposed for peace. Under him, by means of the

persevering labours and efforts of the kings and princes of Europe,

especially of the king of France, tranquillity was restored to the Latin

church. For Felix V, on the 9th of April, 1449, himself resigned the

supremacy of the church, and retired to his former quiet at Ripaille; and

the Basilian fathers, being assembled on the 16th of April at Lausanne,

ratified his voluntary abdication, and by a solemn decree directed

the whole church to obey Nicholas only. On the 18th of June Nicholas

promulgated this pacification; and, at the same time, confirmed by his

sanction the acts and decrees of the Council of Bâle. This Nicholas was

particularly distinguished for his love of literature and the arts, which

he laudably exerted himself to advance and encourage in Italy, especially

by means of the Greeks that came from Constantinople. He died on the 24th

of March, 1455, principally from grief, occasioned by the capture of

Constantinople by the Turks.[c]

At this date Milman closes his splendid work on _The History of Latin

Christianity_. It will be profitable to quote his summing up of the point

reached by Nicholas V, eight and a half centuries after Gregory the

Great.[a]

MILMAN ON NICHOLAS V AND THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [1447-1458 A.D.]]

The pontificate of Nicholas V is the culminating point of Latin

Christianity. The papal power indeed had long reached its zenith. From

Innocent III to Boniface VIII it had begun its decline. But Latin

Christianity was alike the religion of the popes and of the councils

which contested their supremacy. It was as yet no more than a sacerdotal

strife whether the pope should maintain an irresponsible autocracy, or be

limited and controlled by an ubiquitous, aristocratic senate. The most

ardent reformers looked no further than to strengthen the hierarchy. The

prelates were determined to emancipate themselves from the usurpations

of the pope, as to their elections, their arbitrary taxation by Rome,

the undermining of their authority by perpetual appeals; but they had no

notion of relaxing in the least the ecclesiastical domination. It was

not that Christendom might govern itself, but that themselves might have

a more equal share in the government. They were as jealously attached

as the pope to the creed of Latin Christianity. The council, not the

pope, burned John Huss. Their concessions to the Bohemians were extorted

from their fears, not granted by their liberality. The Vulgate was their

Bible, the Latin service their exclusive liturgy, the Canon Law their

code of jurisprudence.

Latin Christianity had yet to discharge some part of its mission. It

had to enlighten the world with letters, to adorn it with arts. It had

hospitably to receive (a gift fatal in the end to its own dominion) and

to promulgate to mankind the poets, historians, philosophers of Greece.

It had to break down its own idols, the schoolmen, and substitute a new

idolatry, that of classical literature. It had to perfect Christian art.

Already Christian architecture had achieved some of its wonders. The

venerable Lateran and St. Paul’s without the Walls, the old St. Peter’s,

St. Mark’s at Venice and Pisa, Strasburg and Cologne, Rheims and Bourges,

York and Lincoln, stood in their majesty. Christian painting, and even

Christian sculpture, were to rise to their untranscended excellence.

The choice of Nicholas V was one of such singular felicity for his time

that it cannot be wondered if his admirers looked on it as overruled by

the Holy Spirit. “Who would have thought in Florence,” so said Nicholas

to his biographer Vespasiano,[e] “that a priest who rang the bells should

become supreme pontiff?” Yet it seems to have been a happy accident.

In Nicholas V, in three short years, the pope had become again a great

Italian potentate. The pilgrims carried back throughout Europe accounts

of the resuscitated majesty of the Roman pontificate, the unsullied

personal dignity of the pope, the re-enthronement of religion in the

splendid edifices, which were either building or under restoration.

Nicholas V was to behold, as it were, the final act of homage to the

popedom, from the majesty of the empire. He was to be the last pontiff

who was to crown at Rome the successor of Charlemagne; Frederick III the

last emperor who was so to receive his crown from the hands of the pope.

[Sidenote: [1452-1455 A.D.]]

Now came that event which, however foreseen by the few wiser prophetic

spirits, burst on Europe and on Christendom with the stunning and

appalling effect of absolute suddenness--the taking of Constantinople

by the Turks. On no two European minds did this disaster work with more

profound or more absorbing terror than on Pope Nicholas V and Æneas

Sylvius (Enea Silvio Piccolomini); nor could anyone allege more sound

reasons for that terror than the pope and the bishop of Siena. Who

could estimate better than Æneas, from his intimate knowledge of all

the countries of Europe, of Italy, Germany, France, England, the extent

of the danger which impended over the Latin world? Never since its

earlier outburst might Mohammedanism seem so likely to subjugate if not

to swallow up distracted and disunited Christendom, as under the Turks.

By sea and land they were equally formidable. If Christendom should

resist, on what frontier? All were menaced, all in danger. What city,

what kingdom, would arrest the fierce, the perpetual invasion? From this

period throughout the affairs of Germany (at Frankfort he preached a

crusade) to the end of his legatine power, of his cardinalate, of his

papacy, of his life, this was the one absorbing thought, one passion, of

Æneas Sylvius. The immediate advance of the victorious Muhammed through

Hungary, Dalmatia, to the border, the centre of Italy, was stopped by a

single fortress, Belgrade; by a preacher, John Capistrano; by a hero,

John Hunyady. But it was not till, above a century later, when Don John

of Austria, at Lepanto by sea, and John Sobieski, before Vienna, by land,

broke the spell of Mohammedan conquest, that Europe or Christendom might

repose in security.

The death of Nicholas V was hastened, it was said, by the taking of

Constantinople. Grief, shame, fear, worked on a constitution broken

by the gout. But Nicholas V foresaw not that in remote futurity the

peaceful, not the warlike, consequences of the fall of Constantinople

would be most fatal to the popedom--that what was the glory of Nicholas V

would become among the foremost causes of the ruin of mediæval religion;

that it would aid in shaking to the base and in severing forever the

majestic unity of Latin Christianity.

Nicholas V aspired to make Italy the domicile, Rome the capital, of

letters and arts. No sooner was Nicholas pope than he applied himself

to the foundation of the Vatican library. Five thousand volumes were

speedily collected. The wondering age boasted that no such library had

existed since the days of the Ptolemies.

The scholars of Italy flocked to Rome, each to receive his task from

the generous pope, who rewarded their labours with ample payment. He

seemed determined to enrich the West with all that survived of Grecian

literature. The fall of Constantinople, long threatened, had been

preceded by the immigration of many learned Greeks. France, Germany, even

England, the Byzantine Empire, Greece, had been ransacked by industrious

agents for copies of all the Greek authors. No branch of letters was

without its interpreters.

[Illustration: A POPE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

To Nicholas V, Italy, or rather Latin Christianity, mainly owes her

age of learning, as well as its fatal consequence to Rome and to Latin

Christianity, which in his honest ardour he would be the last to foresee.

It was the splendid vision of Nicholas V that this revival of letters,

which in certain circles became almost a new religion, would not be

the bond-slave but the handmaid or willing minister of the old. Latin

Christianity was to array itself in all the spoils of the ancient world,

and so maintain (there was nothing of policy in his thought) her dominion

over the mind of man. But Rome under Nicholas V was not to be the centre

of letters alone; she was also to resume her rank as the centre of art,

more especially of architectural magnificence. Rome was to be again as of

old the lawgiver of civilisation; pilgrims from all parts of the world,

from curiosity, for business, or from religion, were to bow down before

the confessed supremacy of her splendid works.

The pope was to be a great sovereign prince, but above the sovereign

prince he was to be the successor of St. Peter. Rome was to be at once

the strong citadel, and the noblest sanctuary in the world, unassailable

by her enemies both without and within from her fortifications;

commanding the world to awe by the unrivalled majesty of her churches.

The Jubilee had poured enormous wealth into the treasury of the pope; his

ordinary revenues, both from the papal territory and from Christendom at

large, began to flow in with peace and with the revival of his authority.

That wealth was all expended with the most liberal magnificence. Already

had it dawned upon the mind of Nicholas V that the cathedral of the

chief of the apostles ought to rival, or to surpass, all the churches in

Christendom in vastness and majesty. It was to be entirely rebuilt from

its foundations. Julius II and Leo X did but accomplish the design of

Nicholas V.

Thus in Nicholas V closed one great age of the papacy. In Nicholas the

sovereign Italian prince and the pontiff met in serene and amicable

dignity; he had no temptation to found a princely family. But before

long the pontiff was to be lost in the sovereign prince. Nor was it less

evident that the exclusive dominion of Latin Christianity was drawing

to a close, though nearly a century might elapse before the final

secession of Teutonic Christianity, and the great permanent division

of Christendom. Each successive pontificate might seem determined to

advance, to hasten that still slow but inevitable revolution: the

audacious nepotism of Sixtus IV, the wickednesses of Alexander VI, which

defy palliation; the wars of Julius II, with the hoary pope at the head

of ferocious armies; the political intrigues and disasters of Clement

VII.[b]

POPES TO 1503

[Sidenote: [1458-1503 A.D.]]

Nicholas’ successor, Alfonso Borgia (Borja), a Spaniard, whose pontifical

name was Calixtus III, performed nothing great or splendid, if no account

be taken of his anxiety to urge Christian princes upon a war against the

Turks. He died in the year 1458. Much more celebrated was his successor,

Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, bishop of Siena, who ascended the papal

throne in 1458, and took the name of Pius II, a man of superior genius,

and renowned both for his achievements and for his various writings and

publications.

Yet posterity would have accounted him a much greater man, if he had not

been guilty of gross inconsistency. For after strenuously maintaining the

rights of councils against the pontiffs, and boldly defending the cause

of the Council of Bâle against Eugenius IV, upon being made pontiff, he

apostatised from himself; and January 18th, 1460, denied that a council

is superior to a pontiff, and severely prohibited appeals to councils;

and in the year 1461 obtained from Louis XI, king of France, the

abrogation of the pragmatic sanction, which was favourable to councils;

and finally, April 26th, 1463, he expressed a public disapproval of all

that he had himself written in favour of the Council of Bâle, and decreed

that Pius II was to be heard and obeyed, but that Æneas Sylvius was to

be condemned. A short time after making this declaration he fell ill and

died in the month of July, 1464.

Paul II, previously Pietro Barbo, a Venetian, who was raised to the chair

of St. Peter in 1464, and died in 1471, performed some acts not unworthy

of commendation, at least according to the views of that age; but he also

did many things that are scarcely excusable, if they are so at all, among

the least important of which is that he made a jubilee year come once in

every twenty-five years, in 1470. Hence his reputation with posterity has

remained equivocal.

The subsequent pontiffs, Sixtus IV, previously Francesco Albescola della

Rovere, who died in 1484, and Innocent VIII,[108] previously Giovanni

Battista Cibo, a Genoese, who died in 1492, were of the middle kind,

being distinguished as popes neither for great virtues nor for great

faults. Each, fearing for Italy and for all Europe, from the power of

the Turks, both prepared himself for a war upon them and very earnestly

urged one on the kings of Europe. But each met with such obstacles as

disappointed an object so dear to his heart. Nothing else was done by

them with much pretension to true greatness.

The pontifical series of this century is closed by Alexander VI, a

Spaniard, whose true name was Rodrigo Borgia. He may not improperly be

called the Nero of pontiffs. For the villainies, crimes, and enormities

recorded of this man are so many and so great as to make it seem clear

that he was destitute, we will not say of all religion, but even of

decency and shame. Among the things charged upon him, though some may be

false and others overstated, by his enemies, yet so many remain which

are placed beyond all dispute as are sufficient to render the memory

of Alexander execrable in the view of all who have even a moderate

share of virtue. A large part of his crimes, however, originated from

his excessive partiality for his children; for he had four sons by a

concubine, among whom was the notorious Cesare Borgia, infamous for his

enormous vices, and likewise one daughter named Lucrezia; and he was

intent solely on bringing forward and enriching these, without regarding

honesty, reason, or religion.[c]

ALEXANDER VI, THE BORGIA

[Sidenote: [1492-1503 A.D.]]

The great object of Alexander through his whole life was to gratify his

inclination for pleasure, his ambition, and his love of ease. When at

length he had attained to the supreme spiritual dignity, he seemed also

to have reached the summit of happiness. Spite of his advanced years, the

exultation he felt seemed daily to impart to him a new life. No painful

thought was permitted to disturb his repose for a single night. His only

care was to seize on all means that might aid him to increase his power,

and advance the wealth and dignity of his sons; on no other subject did

he ever seriously bestow a thought. This one consideration was at the

base of all his political alliances, and of those relations by which the

events of the world were at that time so powerfully influenced. How the

pope would proceed, in regard to the marriages, endowments, and advance

of his children, became a question affecting the politics of all Europe.

The son of Alexander, Cæsar Borgia, followed close on the footsteps of

Riario. He began from the same point, and his first undertaking was to

drive the widow of Riario from Imola and Forlì. He pressed forward to the

completion of his designs with the most daring contempt of consequences;

what Riario had only approached, or attempted, Cæsar Borgia carried

forward to its utmost results. Let us take a rapid glance at the means by

which his purposes were accomplished.

The ecclesiastical states had hitherto been divided by the factions of

the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the first represented in Rome by the family

of Orsini, the second by the house of Colonna. The popes had usually

taken part with one or the other of these factions. Sixtus IV had done

so, and his example was followed by Alexander and his son, who at

first attached themselves to the Guelf, or Orsini party. This alliance

enabled them very soon to gain the mastery of all their enemies. They

drove the house of Sforza from Pesaro, that of Malatesta from Rimini,

and the family of Manfredi from Faenza. They seized on those powerful,

well-fortified cities, and thus commenced the foundation of an extensive

lordship. But no sooner had they attained this point, no sooner had

they freed themselves from their enemies, than they turned every effort

against their friends. And it was in this that the practice of the

Borgias differed from that of their predecessors, who had ever remained

firmly attached to the party they had chosen; Cæsar, on the contrary,

attacked his own confederates, without hesitation or scruple. The duke of

Urbino, from whom he had frequently received important aid, was involved,

as in a network, by the machinations of Cæsar, and with difficulty saved

his life, a persecuted fugitive in his own dominions. Vitelli, Baglioni,

and other chiefs of the Orsini faction, resolved to show him that at

least they were capable of resistance. But Cæsar Borgia, declaring that

“it is permitted to betray those who are the masters of all treasons,”

decoyed them into his snares with profoundly calculated cruelty, and

mercilessly deprived them of life. Having thus destroyed both parties, he

stepped into their place, gathered the inferior nobility, who had been

their adherents, around him, and took them into his pay; the territories

he had seized on were held in subjection by force of terror and cruelty.

The brightest hopes of Alexander were thus realised--the nobles of the

land were annihilated, and his house about to found a great hereditary

dominion in Italy. But he had already begun to acquire practical

experience of the evil which passions, aroused and unbridled, are capable

of producing. With no relative or favourite would Cæsar Borgia endure

the participation of his power. His own brother stood in his way; Cæsar

caused him to be murdered and thrown into the Tiber. His brother-in-law

was assailed and stabbed, by his orders, on the steps of his palace.

The wounded man was nursed by his wife and sister, the latter preparing

his food with her own hands to secure him from poison; the pope set

a guard upon the house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Cæsar

laughed these precautions to scorn. “What cannot be done at noonday,”

said he, “may be brought about in the evening.” When the prince was on

the point of recovery, he burst into his chamber, drove out the wife and

sister, called in the common executioner, and caused his unfortunate

brother-in-law to be strangled. Towards his father, whose life and

station he valued only as means to his own aggrandisement, he displayed

not the slightest respect or feeling. He slew Peroto, Alexander’s

favourite, while the unhappy man clung to his patron for protection, and

was wrapped within the pontifical mantle. The blood of the favourite

flowed over the face of the pope.

For a certain time the city of the apostles, and the whole state of the

church, were in the hands of Cæsar Borgia. He is described as possessing

great personal beauty, and was so strong that in a bull-fight he would

strike off the head of the animal at a single blow; of liberal spirit,

and not without certain features of greatness, but given up to his

passions, and deeply stained with blood. How did Rome tremble at his

name! Cæsar required gold, and possessed enemies; every night were the

corpses of murdered men found in the streets, yet none dared move; for

who but might fear that his own turn would be next? Those whom violence

could not reach were taken off by poison. There was but one place on

earth where such deeds were possible--that, namely, where unlimited

temporal power was united to the highest spiritual authority, where the

laws, civil and ecclesiastical, were held in one and the same hand.

This place was occupied by Cæsar Borgia. Even depravity may have its

perfection. The kindred of the popes have often distinguished themselves

in the career of evil, but none attained to the eminence of Cæsar Borgia.

He may be called a virtuoso in crime. Was it not in the first and most

essential tendencies of Christianity to render such a power impossible?

And yet, Christianity itself, and the very position of the supreme head

of the church, were made subservient to its existence.

There needed, then, no advent of a Luther, to prove to the world that

these things were in direct opposition to the spirit of Christianity.

Even at that time men complained that the pope was preparing the way

for antichrist, and labouring for the interest of Satan rather than the

kingdom of God. We do not follow the history of Alexander in its minute

details. He once purposed, as is but too well authenticated,[109] to

destroy one of the richest cardinals by poison; but the latter contrived

to win over the pope’s chief cook by means of promises, entreaties, and

gifts. The confection, prepared for the cardinal, was set before the

pontiff himself; and Alexander expired from the effects of that poison

which he had destined for another.[f]

_Estimates of Alexander VI_

It is the pastime of historians to practise their technic impartially

in besmirching the sanctified reputations of the saints of popular

belief and in whitewashing the traditional villains. Alexander VI is

too historic a monster to escape the efforts of some apologist, and

in recent years Dr. Richard Garnett[g] and Frederick Baron Corvo[i]

have come to his rescue. The former praises his great shrewdness, his

learning and vigour, and finds him no worse than his times, which is at

best damning with faint praise one who stood for St. Peter on earth. Dr.

Garnett after his defence is however compelled to admit the following

flaws in the pope’s character:[a]

“Cardinal Borgia had simply bought up the Sacred College. Although

Alexander’s election was without question the most notorious of any for

the unscrupulous employment of illegitimate influences, it is difficult

to affirm that it was in principle more simoniacal than most of those

which had lately preceded it or were soon to follow. Men said that

Alexander had bribed the French ministers; probably he had. He had

been tortuous, perfidious, temporising under stress of circumstances.

Unrestrained by moral scruples, or by any spiritual conception of

religion, he was betrayed into gross sensuality of one kind, though in

other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable

guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principle of

justice. The general tendency of investigation, which utterly shattering

all idle attempts to represent him as the model pope, has been to relieve

him of the most odious imputations against his character. There remains

the charge of secret poisoning from motives of cupidity, which indeed

appear established, or nearly so, only in a single instance, but this may

imply others.”

In the same work Henry C. Lea[h] is more severe. “It is no wonder that

Rome had become a centre of corruption whence infection was radiated

throughout Christendom. In the middle of the fourteenth century Petrarch

exhausts his rhetoric in describing the abominations of the papal city

of Avignon, where everything was vile; and the return of the curia to

Rome transferred to that city the supremacy in wickedness. In 1499

the Venetian ambassador describes it as the sewer of the world, and

Machiavelli asserts that through its example all devotion and all

religion had perished in Italy. In 1490 it numbered 6000 public women--an

enormous proportion for a population not exceeding 100,000. The story is

well known, how Cardinal Borgia, who, as vice-chancellor, openly sold

pardons for crime, when reproved for this, replied, that God desires not

the death of sinners but that they should pay and live. If the diary of

Infessura[j] is suspect on account of his partisanship, that of Burchard

is unimpeachable, and his placid recital of the events passing under

his eyes presents to us a society too depraved to take shame at its own

wickedness. The public marriage, he says, of the daughters of Innocent

VIII and Alexander VI set the fashion for the clergy to have children,

and they diligently followed it; for all, from the highest to the lowest,

kept concubines, while the monasteries were brothels.”

And John Addington Symonds has been quite as emphatic:

“To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as

unrestrained as Nero’s, were relieved against the background of flames

and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable.

An epigram gained currency: ‘Alexander sells the keys, the altars,

Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.’ Having

sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with

rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him,

laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. His traffic in

church dignities was carried on upon a grand scale, twelve cardinals’

hats, for example, were put to auction in a single day. This was when

he wished to pack the conclave with votes in favour of the cession of

Romagna to Cesare Borgia. Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of

this pope throughout his life. His relations to Vanozza Catanei and to

Giulia Farnese were open and acknowledged. These two sultanas ruled

him during the greater portion of his career, conniving meanwhile at

the harem, which, after true oriental fashion, he maintained in the

Vatican.”[l]

JULIUS II

[Sidenote: [1503-1513 A.D.]]

A pope followed who made it his object to assume a position in direct

contrast with that of the Borgias; but who pursued the same end, though

he took different, and from that very circumstance successful, means

for his purpose. Julius II (1503-1513 A.D.) enjoyed the incalculable

advantage of finding opportunity for promoting the interests of his

family by peaceable means; he obtained for his kindred the inheritance

of Urbino. This done, he could devote himself, undisturbed by the

importunities of his kindred, to the gratification of that innate love

for war and conquest which was indeed the ruling passion of his life.

To this he was invited by the circumstances of the times, and the

consciousness of his eminent position; but his efforts were all for

the church--for the benefit of the papal see. Other popes had laboured

to procure principalities for their sons or their nephews; it was the

ambition of Julius to extend the dominions of the church. He must,

therefore, be regarded as the founder of the papal states.

[Illustration: A FRIAR OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

He found the whole territory in extreme confusion; all who had escaped

by flight from the hand of Cæsar had returned--the Orsini, the Colonna,

the Vitelli and Baglioni, Varani, Malatesta, and Montefeltri--everywhere

throughout the whole land were the different parties in movement;

murderous contests took place in the very Borgo of Rome. Pope Julius has

been compared with the Neptune of Virgil, when rising from the waves,

with peace-inspiring countenance he hushes their storms to repose. By

prudence and good management he disembarrassed himself even of Cæsar

Borgia, whose castles he seized and of whose dukedom he also gained

possession. The lesser barons he kept in order with the more facility

from the measures to this effect that had been taken by Cæsar, but he

was careful not to give them such cardinals for leaders as might awaken

the ancient spirit of insubordination by ambitious enterprise. The more

powerful nobles, who refused him obedience, he attacked without further

ceremony. His accession to the papal throne sufficed to reduce Baglioni

(who had again made himself master of Perugia) within the limits of due

subordination. Nor could Bentivoglio offer effectual resistance when

required to resign that sumptuous palace which he had erected in Bologna,

and whereon he had too hastily inscribed the well-known eulogy of his

own good fortune; of this he saw himself deprived in his old age. The

two powerful cities of Perugia and Bologna were thus subjected to the

immediate authority of the pontifical throne.

But with all this, Julius was yet far from having accomplished the end

he had proposed to himself. The coasts of the papal states were in great

part occupied by the Venetians; they were by no means disposed to yield

possession of them freely, and the pope was greatly their inferior in

military power. He could not conceal from himself that his attacking them

would be the signal for a commotion throughout Europe. Should he venture

to risk this?

Old as Julius now was, worn by the many vicissitudes of good and evil

fortune experienced through a long life; by the fatigues of war and

exile, and most of all by the consequences of intemperance and licentious

excess, he yet knew not what fear or irresolution meant; in the extremity

of age, he still retained that grand characteristic of manhood, an

indomitable spirit. He felt little respect for the princes of his time,

and believed himself capable of mastering them all. He took the field in

person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across

the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses

could not shake his purpose, but rather seemed to waken new resources

within him. He was accordingly successful; not only were his own baronies

rescued from the Venetians, but in the fierce contest that ensued, he

at length made himself master of Parma, Piacenza, and even Reggio, thus

laying the foundation of a power such as no pope had ever possessed

before him. From Piacenza to Terracina the whole fair region admitted his

authority.

PREVALENCE OF SECULARISM IN THE CHURCH

[Sidenote: [1471-1503 A.D.]]

It was an inevitable consequence that the whole body of the hierarchy

should be influenced by the character and tendencies of its chief, that

all should lend their best aid to the promotion of his purposes, and

be themselves carried forward by the impulse thus given. Not only the

supreme dignity of the pontiff, but all other offices of the church, were

regarded as mere secular property. The pope nominated cardinals from no

better motive than personal favour, the gratification of some potentate,

or even, and this was no unfrequent occurrence, for actual payment of

money! Could there be any rational expectation that men so appointed

would fulfil their spiritual duties? One of the most important offices

of the church, the Penitenziaria, was bestowed by Sixtus IV on one of

his nephews. This office held a large portion of the power of granting

dispensations; its privileges were still further extended by the pope,

and in a bull issued for the express purpose of confirming them, he

declares all who shall presume to doubt the rectitude of such measures,

to be a “stiff-necked people and children of malice.” It followed as a

matter of course that the nephew considered his office as a benefice,

the proceeds of which he was entitled to increase to the utmost extent

possible.

A large amount of worldly power was at this time conferred in most

instances, together with the bishoprics; they were held more or less as

sinecures according to the degree of influence or court favour possessed

by the recipient or his family. The Roman curia thought only of how

it might best derive advantage from the vacancies and presentations;

Alexander extorted double annates or first-fruits, and levied double, nay

triple tithes; there remained few things that had not become matter of

purchase. The taxes of the papal chancery rose higher from day to day,

and the comptroller, whose duty it was to prevent all abuses in that

department, most commonly referred the revision of the imposts to those

very men who had fixed their amount. For every indulgence obtained from

the datary’s office, a stipulated sum was paid; nearly all the disputes

occurring at this period between the several states of Europe and the

Roman court arose out of these exactions, which the curia sought by

every possible means to increase, while the people of all countries as

zealously strove to restrain them.

Principles such as these necessarily acted on all ranks affected by the

system based on them, from the highest to the lowest. Many ecclesiastics

were found ready to renounce their bishoprics; but they retained the

greater part of the revenues, and not unfrequently the presentation to

the benefices dependent on them also. Even the laws forbidding the son

of a clergyman to procure induction to the living of his father, and

enacting that no ecclesiastic should dispose of his office by will,

were continually evaded; for as all could obtain permission to appoint

whomsoever he might choose as his coadjutor, provided he were liberal of

his money, so the benefices of the church became in a manner hereditary.

It followed of necessity that the performance of ecclesiastical duties

was grievously neglected. In this rapid sketch, we confine ourselves to

remarks made by conscientious prelates of the Roman court itself.

In all places incompetent persons were intrusted with the performance

of clerical duties; they were appointed without scrutiny or selection.

The incumbents of benefices were principally interested in finding

substitutes at the lowest possible cost, thus the mendicant friars

were frequently chosen as particularly suitable in this respect. These

men occupied the bishoprics under the title (previously unheard of

in that sense) of suffragans; the cures they held in the capacity of

vicars. Already were the mendicant orders in possession of extraordinary

privileges, and these had been yet further extended by Sixtus IV, who

was himself a Franciscan. They had the right of confessing penitents,

administering the Lord’s Supper, and bestowing extreme unction, as also

that of burying within the precincts, and even in the habit of the order.

All these privileges conferred importance as well as profit, and the

mendicant friars enjoyed them in their utmost plenitude; the pope even

threatened the disobedient secular clergy, or others, who should molest

the orders, more particularly as regarded bequests, with the loss of

their respective offices.

The administration of parishes as well as that of bishoprics being

now in the hands of the mendicant orders, it is manifest that they

must have possessed enormous influence. The higher offices and more

important dignities were monopolised, together with their revenues, by

the great families and their dependants, shared only with the favourites

of courts and of the curia; the actual discharge of the various duties

was confided to the mendicant friars who were upheld by the popes.

They took active part also in the sale of indulgences, to which so

unusual an extension was given at that time, Alexander VI being the

first to declare officially that they were capable of releasing souls

from purgatory. But the orders also had fallen into the extreme of

worldliness. What intrigues were set on foot among them for securing the

higher appointments! what eagerness was displayed at elections to be rid

of a rival, or of a voter believed unfavourable! The latter were sent

out of the way as preachers or as inspectors of remote parishes; against

the former, they did not scruple to employ the sword, or the dagger,

and many were destroyed by poison. Meanwhile the comforts men seek from

religion became mere matter of sale; the mendicant friars, employed at

miserably low wages, caught eagerly at all contingent means of making

profit.

While the populace had sunk into almost heathen superstition, and

expected their salvation from mere ceremonial observances, but half

understood, the higher classes were manifesting opinions of a tendency

altogether anti-religious. How profoundly astonished must Luther have

been, on visiting Italy in his youth! At the very moment when the

sacrifice of the mass was completed, did the priests utter blasphemous

words in denial of its reality! It was even considered characteristic

of good society, in Rome, to call the principles of Christianity in

question. “One passes,” says P. Ant. Bandino,[m] “no longer for a man

of cultivation, unless one put forth heterodox opinions regarding the

Christian faith.” At court, the ordinances of the Catholic church, and of

passages from Holy Scripture, were made subjects of jest--the mysteries

of the faith had become matter of derision.

We thus see how all is enchained and connected--how one event calls

forth another. The pretensions of temporal princes to ecclesiastical

power awaken a secular ambition in the popes, the corruption and decline

of religious institutions elicit the development of a new intellectual

tendency, till at length the very foundations of the faith become shaken

in the public opinion.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[107] [For an account of the origin of the order of Templars and its

destruction see the previous history of the Crusades.]

[108] See Muratori,[e] _ad ann._ 1478. Innocent VIII had lived so

shamefully before he mounted the Romish throne that he had sixteen

illegitimate children to make provision for. Yet on the papal throne

he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in

his bull _Summis desiderantes affectibus_, etc., and also against the

Hussites, whom he well-nigh exterminated.

[109] [Though Von Ranke[f] and others believe that Alexander VI was

poisoned, Dr. Garnett[g] says: “His decease became the nucleus of a

labyrinthine growth of legend and romance. Modern investigation has

dispelled it all and left no doubt that his death was natural.”]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY

[b] H. H. MILMAN, _History of Latin Christianity_.

[c] LEOPOLD VON RANKE, _History of the Popes_.

[d] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Age_.

[e] O. J. REICHEL, _The See of Rome in the Middle Ages_.

[f] J. BASS MULLINGER, article on “Popedom,” in the _Encyclopædia

Britannica_.

[g] HENRY STEBBING, _History of the Christian Church_.

[h] JOHN WM. DRAPER, _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_.

[i] GREGORY OF TOURS, _Annales Francorum_.

[j] ANDREAS THIEL, _Epistolæ Romanorum Pontificorum_.

[k] GREGORY THE GREAT, _Letters and Dialogues_.

[l] EDWARD GIBBON, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

CHAPTER II. “THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT

[b] O. J. REICHEL, _op. cit._

[c] H. STEBBING, _op. cit._

[d] THOMAS GREENWOOD, _Cathedra Petri_.

[e] J. J. I. DÖLLINGER, _Die Papst Fabel des Mittelalters_.

[f] Article on Pope “Joan,” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[g] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[h] CHARLES KINGSLEY, _The Roman and the Teuton_.

[i] B. PLATINA, _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_.

[j] C. FLEURY, _Histoire Ecclésiastique_.

[k] C. BARONIUS, _Annales Ecclesiastici_.

[l] EINHARD, _Vita Caroli Magni_.

[m] _Chronicles of Moissiac._

[n] MARIANUS SCOTUS, _Universal Chronicle from the Creation to the Year

1083_.

[o] SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOURS, _Chronique Universelle_.

[p] OTTO VON FREYSING, _Chronik_.

[q] STEPHEN DE BOURBON, _Chronicle_.

[r] MARTINUS POLONUS, _Chronicon de Summis Pontificibus_.

[s] LIUTPRAND, _Antapodosis_.

CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY

[b] O. J. REICHEL, _op. cit._

[c] H. STEBBING, _op. cit._

[d] J. B. MULLINGER, _op. cit._

[e] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[f] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[g] JAMES BRYCE, _The Holy Roman Empire_.

[h] ROGER OF HOVEDEN, _Historia post Bedam_.

[i] K. F. EICHHORN, _Deutsche Staats und Rechtsgeschichte_.

[j] CIACCONIUS (CHACON), _Vitæ Pontificanum_.

[k] J. C. L. GIESELER, _Compendium of Ecclesiastical History_ (translated

by J. W. Hull).

[l] HENRY HALLAM, _The State of Europe during the Middle Ages_.

[m] INNOCENT III, _Epistolarum liber I et ref._

[n] J. L. VON MOSHEIM, _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_ (translated

from the Latin by James Murdock).

[o] ANSELMO DI LUCCA, _Defensio pro Gregorio VII_.

CHAPTER IV. FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY

[b] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[c] J. L. VON MOSHEIM, _op. cit._

[d] J. C. L. GIESELER, _op. cit._

[e] MURATORI, _Annali d’Italia_ (including Vespasiano’s “Life of Nicholas

V”).

[f] L. VON RANKE, _op. cit._

[g] RICHARD GARNETT, on “Rome and the Temporal Power,” in _Cambridge

Modern History_.

[h] HENRY C. LEA, on “The Eve of the Reformation,” in _Cambridge Modern

History_.

[i] F. B. CORVO, _Chronicles of the House of Borgia_.

[j] S. INFESSIORA, “Diarium” in Eccard’s _Corpus Historicum Medii Ævi_.

[k] J. BURCARDUS, _Didrium_ (edited by L. Thuasne).

[l] J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS, _The Age of the Despots_.

[m] P. A. BAMBINO, in Carraciolo’s _Life of Paul IV_.

[Illustration: THE SARACEN EMPIRE

At the time of Charlemagne

BORMAY & CO.]