who, notwithstanding his earldom of Alsace and his other hereditary
demesnes in the Alps, had not yet so much power as many other
aspirants to the imperial crown; but his chivalrous virtues ranked him
high in the estimation of many of the princes. A happy and singular
coincidence of accidental circumstances occasioned his unexpected
election to the empire, which appeared to him, as to many others, a
calling from above. Being on the most peaceful understanding with the
Pope, he yet abandoned his expedition to Rome; for he was, above all
things, anxious to put an end to anarchy, to establish the public
tranquillity on a solid basis, and, as far as was then possible, to
restore the reign of justice. The high services which by this he
rendered to his country in those distracted times, History has not
been backward to acknowledge; and, as the Patriarch of the imperial
house of Hapsburgh, he has been the founder of a power which, in
succeeding ages, has ever proved a pillar of strength and security to
Germany and even Europe. But often again did anarchy rear her head,
and often did disorder obtain the ascendant in Germany, as well as in
other European states. Nations felt the want of one mighty,
independent, and protecting power--they lamented the decline of those
Christian principles which had knit so closely all the ties of public
and private life; and they saw with regret the gradual approach of the
general dissolution and mighty ruin of European society. Under
Rodolph's successors, down to Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, the
Emperors were confined in their sphere of action to Germany and its
internal affairs, which do not here immediately concern us. The
expeditions to Rome tended, indeed, to keep alive the remembrance of
the old imperial rights and claims; but they were productive of no
permanent advantage, nor real extension of power. It was only in the
summoning of general councils (the want of which was soon so urgently
felt for the well-being of the church and of Christendom), that the
imperial power was really exerted in favour of the general interests
of Europe.
But the evils which ensued to the church and its head, from its
unhappy conflict with the temporal power, were far more extensive and
fatal in their consequences. In the mighty contests between the Popes
and Emperors, it was actual right which was the subject of dispute;
and, in truth, the first basis and highest principle of all right in
Christian states, and indeed in all human society; and however much of
error the exaggerations of later times may have infused into these
disputes, it was a sublime idea which animated either party. In
France, which now took up that attitude of hostility towards the head
of the church which the Emperors had once assumed, an entirely new era
in European policy, which had now ceased to be Christian, commenced
with the reign of Philip-le-bel. In the place of those great motives
and lofty ideas which animated a Gregory VII., on the one hand, and a
Conrad or Barbarossa, on the other, we meet with a vulgar policy, a
selfish cupidity, and an unworthy cunning. In every point of view,
Philip the Fair may be considered as the worthy predecessor of Louis
XI. Even his conduct towards the whole order of Templars, their
execution, or rather judicial murder, for the purpose of confiscation,
was a deed of violence which nothing could justify; even had the
suspicion entertained against the more corrupt portion of the order,
of having introduced from the East certain unchristian tenets, rites
and practices, been not entirely destitute of foundation. But yet this
suspicion did not affect the whole body, nor even the then worthy
grandmaster, as was shortly afterwards acknowledged by the King of
Portugal and the Pope himself; and, in any case, an ecclesiastical
affair of so much importance ought to have been investigated and
determined by a mode of procedure very different from this arbitrary
and despotic course.
The untimely exaggerations and absolute pretensions of Boniface VIII.,
which, though Papal, may almost be termed _Ghibelline_ (in the
same sense that we have applied that term to the acts of preceding
emperors), must have proved very welcome to Philip the Fair. He found
in the conduct of the Pope, a pretext for enticing him into France, in
order, on the first vacancy in the Holy See, to promote the election
of a Pope favourable to his views, and fix him at Avignon. It was a
deep-laid plan of policy on his part, to fix the residence of the
Popes for ever within his territories, in order more easily to extort
their consent to all his selfish projects, as in the case of the
Templars; a policy by which the Popes, during seventy years, were kept
in a state of absolute dependance on the court of France. And when at
last one of the Popes succeeded in rescuing the chair of Peter from
this Babylonish captivity, and placing it again at Rome, Popes were
elected one against the other at Rome and Avignon; and a schism broke
out in the church which lasted for forty years, till it was finally
quelled by the general council of Constance. A deeper wound could not
have been inflicted on Christianity than this division in the church,
which led minds astray, and introduced an indescribable confusion in
all the relations of public and private life. As, without the
all-protecting and all-connecting authority of the first Christian
Emperors, Europe in general, and Germany in particular, would much
sooner have been split and dismembered, and been deprived of all power
of permanent resistance against foreign aggression, and barbarian
inroads; so, without the Papal power, which was founded on, and
adapted for, unity, and which held together the fabric of the church,
Christianity would very soon have been lost and extinguished in a
multitude of particular sects, petty congregations, and opposite
parties, even where totally dissimilar systems of religion did not
spring up. The maintenance of orthodoxy in the Greek church, where the
Patriarch does not possess the same spiritual power, nor the same
extensive influence on society, as the Pope during the middle ages,
cannot be fairly adduced as an objection to the truth of this
observation. For it would be absurd to expect from the active,
stirring, restless, and animated spirit of the Western nations, moving
on as they did through a series of rapid, incessant, and progressive
changes, that innate monotony of thought even in faith, which was
natural to the dead, torpid Byzantine mind. When the Western church
had been weakened and convulsed by the conflict with the secular
power, the prejudicial and fatal effects of this contest became
apparent in religion itself and the internal region of faith. At
first, indeed, there arose a mighty moral power of resistance against
the growing corruption and the impending evil--a great spiritual
remedy, which sprang out of religion, and was perfectly conformable to
its spirit. It was here again apparent how that strengthening Spirit
of aid and counsel--that Paraclete promised to the church by its
divine Founder, knows at every period, and on every new occurrence of
danger, to employ the remedies the best and most fitting for the
exigences of the time; remedies of which the high origin is clearly
discernible, though in the hands of men they no longer retain their
primitive character, and do not accomplish all the good they might
have effected, or even become at last more and more perverted.
The great wealth of the church was not the sole, but one of the
principal subjects of dispute with the secular power, and was even a
stumbling-block to many, especially among the people. It was this
wealth, indeed, which had furnished the means of cultivating and
fertilizing the soil of Europe, and sowing the seeds of science on
the soil of human intellect; for the existence of the clergy had been
founded on landed property, and by this means they had become
naturalized and domiciliated in the state, and among the nation; till
the splendid endowments which they received from the liberality of
religious zeal, made the abbots, bishops, and the whole of the higher
clergy, wealthy lords, senators, and princes. This wealth and this
power, the clergy, especially in the earlier times, generally employed
in a manner the most praiseworthy, and the most conducive to the
welfare of the community. The annals of modern Europe, and the history
of every great and petty state within it, are full of the high
political services which the excellent churchmen of the middle age
rendered to the public weal. This was universally acknowledged, and
any sudden separation of the higher clergy from the state--any
degradation of that body from the exalted station which they occupied
therein, would have been a most serious loss to society. In the
contests of the emperors and other princes with the church and its
head, the immediate and original object of dispute was not
ecclesiastical property, which no one ever dreamed of attacking; but
the jurisdiction over that property, and the acknowledgment of that
jurisdiction. It is easy to conceive that all the members of the
higher clergy had not rendered services equally eminent, and that the
employment of their riches had not been equally laudable and
blameless. But, independently of individual abuses and scandals, the
great wealth of the dignified clergy, the eminent and splendid rank
they occupied in the state and in society, were ever a stumbling-block
to the people, and even to some ecclesiastics, and seemed in
contradiction with the original rule and evangelical poverty of the
primitive Christians. This was the first cause, the principal subject,
and, as it were, the favourite text of that popular opposition which
now, after the example had been set by princes and potentates, began
to unfurl its banners against the church.
Nothing therefore could be better adapted to the exigences of the age
than that, in opposition to the too great worldly pomp of many of the
high though meritorious and virtuous dignitaries of that time,
communities of men, animated by the sincerest piety, and the most
austere spirit of humility and self-denial, should have arisen to make
themselves all in all to the people, and set the example of perfect
evangelical poverty; or to devote their undivided zeal to popular
instruction and the office of preaching. Men of real sanctity, and the
most humble piety, and gifted with wonderful powers, entered on this
new path of religious zeal; and many amongst them, with a truly
high-minded freedom, reprehended the abuses and the moral corruption
then existing in church and state, and among all orders of society.
They met with contradiction and opposition, and even at an early
period incurred much blame; but here we must be careful to
distinguish human infirmity and partial degeneracy from the holy
origin of those establishments--from that spark of divine inspiration
which called these, and all other ecclesiastical institutes, into
existence. And thus that tide of popular opposition to the church,
which had received its first impulse from the secular power, and the
contests of the Ghibelline Emperors, rolled on with an ever increasing
force, swell, and violence. Scarce had the Waldenses disappeared, when
a religious sect still more numerous, the Albigenses--broke out in the
South of France, and not content with displaying the usual popular
opposition to the riches and real abuses of the church, broached many
errors and doctrines of the Eastern sects, which during the Crusades
may have found their way into that country. For this reason it was
thought justifiable to proclaim against them a formal Crusade, and, by
a most atrocious war of extermination, wherein the remedy appears no
less reprehensible than the evil itself, princes put down this popular
sect, which they regarded as rebellious not only against the church,
but the state itself.
Wickliffe in England was the first single bold Reformer that appeared,
and he was succeeded soon afterwards by an Innovator, whose enterprise
was attended with far more important consequences--John Huss in
Bohemia. Their writings, abounding not only in the wonted condemnation
of real abuses, but in many fanciful doctrines, unfounded assertions,
and germs of heresy, their cause as well as the general state of
affairs, and the problem of the age, became more complicated and
perilous.
John Huss was summoned before the council of Constance, which had
terminated so successfully the schism in the Papacy; but there,
without any regard to the imperial safe-conduct which he had received,
he was condemned, and delivered over to capital punishment. As one
injustice, one act of bloody severity, is sure to bring on another, a
few years afterwards the Senators of Prague were precipitated from a
window. This was the signal for a general rising of the people; Ziska,
at the head of his infuriated troops, ravaged Bohemia, burst into the
neighbouring provinces of Germany, and, with a Hussite army of seventy
thousand men spread terror every where on his march. This insurrection
was indeed suppressed, but Europe grew every day more and more ripe
for a Revolution.
A new and pressing danger, which had been long foreseen, now
threatened Europe from an opposite quarter. The Turks, who for almost
a century had been in possession of the Northern provinces of the
Byzantine Empire, became now masters of Constantinople, and the old
church of St. Sophia was converted into a Mosque. That portion of
Europe which stood in most immediate danger,--Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Poland--was now compelled to make, for the space of more
than two centuries, resistance to the progress of the Turkish power
the object of its most assiduous attention; and this was a
circumstance which tended to impede the emperors in all their other
enterprises, to divert their efforts, and consume their best energies,
and so far, in the then existing embarrassments in church and state,
exerted a very fatal influence on the whole system of European
society.
The immediate effects of the siege and fall of Constantinople were
highly favourable to literature and science in the last half of the
fifteenth century; when the Greek fugitives, by the rich and long-lost
treasures of classical knowledge which they brought, created a new and
brilliant era in letters and science; in Italy in the first instance,
then in Germany (at that time so closely connected with Italy), and
lastly in the rest of Europe. The knowledge of their classical tongue
and ancient literature had never been totally extinguished among the
Greek scholars and ecclesiastics; but in their hands this knowledge
remained a mere dead treasure, which was only afterwards turned to
profitable account, and to the service of society, by the more active
spirit of the Europeans.
The better of the late Byzantine Emperors, particularly some of the
Palæologi, had cultivated the sciences, and, by their love and
encouragement of learning, had given a new life to literature. Even in
the period immediately preceding the fall and conquest of
Constantinople, many Greeks had taken refuge in Italy, particularly
during the various attempts made to bring about the re-union of the
Greek with the Roman church;--attempts, however, which with the
exception of a small number of individuals who went over to the
Catholic church, were not attended with any general success. In Italy
the Greek fugitives established schools for their own language and
literature, and founded libraries; and if in the time of Petrarch few
Italians could be named that were conversant with that language and
literature, (and among these zealous promoters of Greek learning,
Boccaccio must be included with himself,) Florence now under the
Medici, the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo the Great, became a flourishing
seminary of Grecian letters and erudition; and at Rome also, the house
of Cardinal Bessarion was a true Platonic academy of science. Even the
study of the ancient Roman writers received a new stimulus, and was
prosecuted with a more classical taste and spirit. Courtly literati,
and Latin poets formed on the old classical models--political writers
in the Latin tongue, which was still the language of diplomacy--statesmen
and politicians of the greatest influence, trained up in the school of
Greek and Roman history and politics--and polite dilettanti of Pagan
antiquity,--all now gave the tone to this new and second epoch in the
intellectual culture of Europe. But the ruling spirit and tone of the
age proceeded mainly from the revival of the ancient literature and
learning of the Greeks. Natural philosophy, whatever extension it may
have received from the improvements in astronomy, and a more
comprehensive knowledge of the globe obtained by the discovery of the
New World, had not yet been wrought into a scientific form, capable of
exerting, as it did afterwards, an effective influence on the European
mind, or of giving it a new direction. In this period of the
restoration of science, some individuals, like Picus Mirandola, and
above all, the German Reuchlin, followed a Platonic track in search of
a more profound philosophy; or, like Bessarion, Marsilius Ficinus and
others, illustrated and diffused the philosophy of Plato. But these
were partial exceptions, and these first attempts were not always
faultless. Yet it must ever be a matter of regret that the beginning
then made towards a better and more profound philosophy should have
been left unfinished. To this the old scholastic philosophy was then a
powerful obstacle, and the spirit of anarchy, which the religious
contests of the following age called into existence, struck at the
root of all lofty speculation; and even in the flourishing age of the
Medici, it was the æsthetic part of ancient literature, and the
political application of classical knowledge, which formed the main
and almost exclusive object of pursuit.
Thus this regeneration, as it was called, was very imperfect and
incomplete; and, in a general sense, was really not such;--even in
science itself, the advantages which mankind had obtained, and which
they were so eager to display, were more like a passing blossom, than
a sound and vigorous root. Many of those classical spirits were more
conversant and more at home in ancient Rome and Athens, in the
manners, history, politics of antiquity, or even in its mythology
(then investigated with peculiar fondness and enthusiasm), than in
their own age, in the existing relations of society, or in the
doctrines and principles of Christianity.
The prevailing character of this new epoch of intellectual
cultivation, which succeeded to the scholastico-romantic period of
European art and science, was by those modes of thinking and those
modes of life, which, with more or less modification and variety, it
diffused over all the European countries; at the best a very partial
enthusiasm for Pagan antiquity, not merely in the department of art,
but in the whole compass of literature, nay even in history, politics,
and morals also. If we compare with the fearful commotions of the
following age this classical enthusiasm, often so ill suited to the
existing relations of society; its influence on the world will appear
like an enchanting draught, which intoxicated for a while the European
nations, drew them after objects totally foreign, made them forget
themselves in an illusive consciousness of their intellectual
refinement, and lulling them into a false security, blinded them to
their own corruption, and the greatness of the impending danger--the
yawning abyss on whose verge they then stood.
END OF LECTURE XIV.
LECTURE XV.
General observations on the Philosophy of History.--On the
corrupt state of society in the fifteenth century.--Origin of
Protestantism, and character of the times of the Reformation.
The Philosophy of History--that is to say, the right comprehension of
its wonderful course, the solution and illustration of its mighty
problems, and of the complex enigmas of humanity, and its destiny in
the lapse of ages--is not to be found in isolated events, or detached
historical facts, but in the principles of social progress. Historical
particulars can only serve to characterize the inward motives, the
prevailing opinions, the decisive moments, the critical points in the
progress of human society; and thus place more vividly before our eyes
the peculiar character of every age--each step of mankind in
intellectual refinement and moral improvement. To this end, historical
details are indispensable; for the ruling principles of social
developement are of a more exalted kind, and not mere organic laws of
nature, from which as in physiology, when the first principle of the
disorder is well understood, we can accurately deduce and partly at
least determine beforehand, the nature of the different phenomena and
symptoms, the rule of health, the diagnostic of the disease, as well
as the method of cure, the approach of the crisis, and its natural
declension, without being obliged to go through the labyrinth of all
the different cases that may have ever existed. Again, it is not in
the history of man, as in natural history, where the structure of the
various plants and animals forms by close analogy one connected system
of species and genera; and where the growth, bloom, decay and
extinction of individuals follow in an uniform order, like day and
night, or like the change of the seasons. But in the sphere of human
freedom; as man is a natural creature, but a natural creature endowed
with free-will, that is to say, with the faculty of moral
determination between the good or heavenly impulse, and the wicked or
hostile principle; all these organic laws of nature form only the
physical basis of his progress and history. And hardly do they form
this--but rather a mere disposition of which the direction depends on
man, or on the use he makes of his own freedom. It is only when that
higher principle of man's free-will has been weakened, debased,
obscured, extinguished, and utterly confounded, that those laws of
nature can hold good in history. Then indeed the symptoms of a
diseased age, the organic vices of a nation, the prognostics of a
general crisis of the world may be determined to a certain extent with
the precision of medical science. Though the general feelings of
mankind clearly declare the soul to be endowed with the faculty of
free-will; yet to reason, this freedom is an almost inextricable
enigma, the solution of which must be furnished by faith. Or rather
this is a mystery, of which the key and explanation must be sought for
in God and his Revelation; and the same will apply to every higher
principle, that transcends nature, and nature's laws.
Along with the principle of man's free-will which rises above
necessity, that law of nature--there is another higher and divine
principle in the historical progress of nations; and this is the
visible guidance of an all-loving and all-ruling Providence displayed
in the course of history, and the march of human destiny, whether in
things great or small. But the power of evil is something more than a
mere power of nature, and in comparison with this, it is a power of a
higher and more spiritual kind. It is that power whose influence is
not only felt in the sensual inclinations of nature, but which under
the mask of a false liberty, unceasingly labours to rob man of his
true freedom. Thus Providence is not a mere vague notion, a formula of
belief, or a feeling of virtuous anticipation--a mere pious
conjecture--but it is the real, effective, historical, redeeming power
of God, which restores to man, and the whole human race their lost
freedom, and with it the effectual power of good. The problem of human
existence consists in this, that man in the great stage of history, as
in the little details of private life, has to choose and determine
between a true heavenly freedom, ever faithful and steadfast to God,
and the false, rebellious freedom of a will separated from God. The
mere licence of passion or of sensual appetite is no liberty, but a
stern bondage under the yoke of nature. But as that false and criminal
freedom is spiritual, so it is superior to nature; and it is strictly
conformable to truth, to regard him as the first author of this false
liberty, whom revelation represents as the mightiest, the most potent,
and the most intellectual egotist among all created beings either in
the visible or invisible world.