CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION

I.

Decadence of Italy and the Council of Pisa.

The harmonious union of medieval with modern thought, the organic arrangement of the ideas brought by the Renaissance in the system of Christian Ethics, the inner development of Catholicism on the basis of this harmony as planned in the scheme of the Camera della Segnatura; all this miscarried, and was bound to do so, since the acting powers, on whom devolved the accomplishment of this great scheme, conceived in the true spirit of the Apostle Paul, lacked the ability and enthusiasm necessary for the execution of so enormous a task. The preceding paragraphs have shown to what extent these acting powers were incapable of fulfilling the mission set before them.

The powers at work were two in chief, the Papacy and the Italian nation. We have seen the Papacy of Medicean Rome swayed by political, by worldly considerations, guided in all its actions and decisions by the dynastic interests of its rulers. The religious and moral point of view was ignored in this domain of worldly aims and ideas. The pontificate of Adrian VI, that came as an interlude between those of Leo X and Clement VII, certainly was representative of religious Catholicism,--honorable, wise, sincere. But on the one hand it was of too short a duration to ripen any of its fruits, and on the other it failed, not only because of Italian corruption and the general dislike to foreigners, but also because the last Teutonic Pope could not comprehend the development of Italian culture, the right of the Latin world to its own characteristics, and the aesthetic interests swaying all minds south of the Alps. The predominance of the worldly and sensuous elements in life, in science, and even in art came into play; they did their part in preventing the victory of idealistic views.

Although the Curia was not equal to its task, had Italy been still in a healthy state the nation and public opinion could have forced the Papacy into right courses. But here also corruption had long since set in. Strong moral force, such as proclaims itself in Dante, in Caterina of Siena, was gone from the people; they had but lately given its last prophet to the flames in the Piazza della Signoria at Florence. No nation can sin thus against its best men without punishment. The people of Italy could not put new blood and fresh life into the Curia, because in them the law of the body had triumphed over the law of the spirit. The same observation has to be made in the province of literature. We have spoken of Ariosto; the other productions of the Medicean period in the domain of literature are for the most part trifling and frivolous in their contents. As Gregorovius says, their poets sang the praises of Maecenas and Phryne, they wrote pastorals and epics of chivalry, while the freedom of Italy perished. The theatre, still more early and markedly than pictorial art, cut itself adrift from ecclesiastical subjects and from the whole world of religious ideas. It became not merely worldly, but distinctly pagan, and at the same time incapable of any great creation of lasting value which could touch the heart of the nation. Serious theological literature was almost entirely lacking at Leo's Court and during his pontificate, with the exception of two or three names, such as Sadoleto, Egidio of Viterbo, and Tommaso de Vio. After the death of Raffaelle and Leonardo painting and sculpture at once took a downward path. Michelangelo upheld for himself the great traditions of the best time of the Renaissance for almost another quarter of a century; but he was soon a very lonely man. Decadence showed itself directly after Raffaelle's death, when Marcantonio engraved Giulio Romano's indecent pictures, and Pietro Aretino wrote a commentary on them of still more indecent sonnets. Clement VII, who had at one time received this most worthless of all men of letters as a guest in his Villa Careggi, repulsed him after this. But Aretino was characteristic of his time; what other would have borne with him?

After Raffaelle's death ideas were no longer made the subject of paintings; the world of enjoyment, sweet, earthly, sensual enjoyment, was now depicted before art declined into a chilly mannerism and the composite falseness of eclecticism. A time which is no longer able to give an artistic rendering of ideas is incapable of resolution and of great actions. Not only the Muses and the Graces wept by Raffaelle's grave, the whole Julian epoch was buried with him. During Leo's reign he had undertaken with feverish activity to conjure up not only ancient Rome but the antique ideals. In vain. His unaided force was not enough for the task, and he saw himself deserted by those whom he most needed and on whom he relied. And then came the Sack of Rome; it was the tomb of all this ideal world of the Renaissance period. From the smoking ruins of the Eternal City rose a dense, grey fog, a gloomy, spiritless despotism, utterly out of touch with the joyous spring of the mind of the Italian people whose harbinger was Dante. Under its oppression the intellectual life of the nation soon sank asphyxiated.

The Guelf movement of the Middle Ages, which had its home in the free States of Tuscany and North Italy, was dead and gone; it could no longer give life or withhold it. And the old Ghibelline principle was dead too. No German Emperor arose in whom the dreams of Henry VII could live again. What Charles V sought and attained in the two conferences at Bologna and during his subsequent visit to Rome (April 5, 1536) had nothing whatever to do with the plans of the Emperors before him. The restoration of the Medici in Florence and the Emperor's dealings with the doomed Republic inaugurated that unhappy policy which down to 1866 continued to make the Germans enemies of the Italians. This it was that, after the tribulations of Metternich's government, brought on the catastrophe of Solferino and Sadowa. The programme of 1510 demanded in the first place a reformation of the Church, both in its head and its members. Let us consider the attitude of Rome under the Medici with regard to this question.

The reformations attempted by the Councils of Constance and Basel had utterly failed. Since Martin V had returned to Rome the Papacy could consider nothing beyond the governing of the Papal State, and since Calixtus III it was involved in dynastic intrigue. Eneas Silvius had stated with the utmost clearness thirteen years before he became Pope that no one in the Curia any longer thought of reformation. Then Savonarola appeared; France and Germany cried out for reform. At the synods of Orleans and Tours (1510) the French decided on the assembling of an Ecumenical Council. In view of the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance, the dilatoriness of the Pope, and the breaking of the oath he had sworn in conclave, the Second Synod of Pisa was convoked (May 16, 1511). It was first and foremost a check offered to Julius II by French politicians, but was also intended to obtain a general recognition by the Church of the principles of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 drawn from the articles of the Basel and Constance conventions. This pseudo-synod was attended only by a few French prelates and savants. Meantime the Emperor Maximilian had conferred with the leading theologians of his Empire, such as Geiler von Kaisersberg, Wimpheling, Trithemius, Johann Eck, Matthäus Lang, and Conrad Peutinger, about the state of the Church. In 1510 he commissioned the Schlettstadt professor, Jakob Wimpheling, to draw up a plan of reform, which the latter published in his Gravamina Germanicae Nationis cum remediis et avisamentis ad Caesaream Maiestatem. It is composed of an extract from the Pragmatic Sanction, an essay on the machinations of courtiers, another on the ten grievances, with their remedies, notifications for the Emperor, and an excursus concerning legates. The ten gravamina are the same which Martin Mayr had mentioned as early as 1457 in his epistle to Eneas Silvius.

The Emperor, who since 1507 cherished the wild plan of procuring his own election to the Papacy on the death of Julius, at first gave his protection to the Council of Pisa. Afterwards he withdrew it, and the German Bishops also refused to have anything to do with the schismatic tendencies of the French. On July 18, 1511, Julius II summoned an Ecumenical Council to Rome; it assembled there on April 19, 1512, with a very small attendance composed entirely of Italian prelates. The Spaniards also showed an interest in the work of reformation, as is proved by the noteworthy anonymous Brevis Memoria, published by Döllinger; but they took no part in the Council. Before the opening of the Lateranense V a controversy had arisen on the powers within the scope of Councils. The Milanese jurist Decius had upheld the side of the Pisan Council, so had the anonymous author of the Status Romani Imperii, published in Nardouin, and Zaccaria Ferreni of Vicenza; the chief disputant on the side of the Curia was Tommaso de Vio (Cajetan).

It was a good omen for the Council that the best and most pious man of intellect then in Rome made the opening speech. Aegidius of Viterbo as Principal of the Augustinian Order had worked energetically at the reform of his own Order ever since 1508. Bembo and Sadoleto praised his intellect and his learning, and the latter wrote to the former that, though humanity and the artes humanitatis had been lost to mankind, yet Aegidius alone and unaided could have restored them to us. In his opening speech Aegidius uttered some earnest truths and deep thoughts. He touched on the real source of decadence in the Church.

Unfortunately the Council did not fulfill the expectations which might have been based on this inaugural address. When Leo X opened the sixth sitting (April 27, 1513) the assembly numbered, besides 22 cardinals and 91 abbots, only 62 bishops. Bishop Simon, of Modena, appealed to the prelates to begin by reforming themselves. At the seventh sitting the preacher, Rio, revived the theory of the two swords. On December 19, 1513, France was officially represented, and at the eighth sitting the Council condemned the heresies taken from the Arabs concerning the human soul, which was explained as humani corporis forma. These had already been denounced at Vienne. Then the theologians were called on to prune “the infected roots of philosophy and poetry”. Philosophers were to uphold the truth of Christianity. Bishop Nicholas of Bergamo and Cardinal Cajetan opposed this measure; the first did not wish restrictions to be imposed on philosophers and theologians, the second did not agree that philosophers should be called upon to uphold the truth of the Faith, since in this way a confusion might arise between theology and philosophy, which would damage the freedom of philosophy. At the ninth sitting the curialist, Antonio Pucci, spoke on reform, and said that the clergy had fallen away from love; that the tyranny of inordinate desire had taken its place; that their lives were in opposition to the teaching and canons of the Church. The bull of reformation published after this, Supernae dispositionis arbitrio, was concerned with the higher appointments in the Church, elections, postulations, provisions, the deposing and translation of prelates, commendams, unions, dispensations, reservations; with Cardinals and the Curia; reform in the life of priests and laity; the incomes and immunities of clerics; the wide spread of superstition and false Christianity. The reform of the Calendar was also debated, but at the tenth sitting (May, 1515) proved still unripe for discussion; the sitting was then devoted to the contentions of the bishops and the regular clergy; resolutions were passed concerning money-lenders; and Leo's bull pointed out the duty of furthering beneficial modern institutions. Of great interest is the bull concerning the printing and publishing of books: it attributes the invention of printing to the favor of Heaven, but adds that what was made for the glory of God ought not to be used against Him, for which reason all new books were to be subjected to the censorship of the Bishops and Inquisitors.

The eleventh sitting was occupied with the complaints of the Bishops against the Regulars, whom Aegidius of Viterbo defended (December 19, 1516). It was declared unlawful to foretell coming misfortunes from the pulpit with any reference to a definite date; this was probably a retarded censure on Savonarola. The bull Pastor Aeternus was issued, which proclaimed the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction. Leo declared it null and void, and confirmed the decision of the bull Unam Sanctam issued by Boniface VIII, that all Christians are subject to the Pope. At this point the ordinances for the clergy and their privileges were read. At the twelfth sitting Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola presented his Oratio de Reformandis Moribus to the Pope. In it he announces to Leo that should the Pope delay healing the wounds of society, He whose representative the Pope was would cut off the corrupted members with fire and sword, and scatter them abroad, sending a terrible judgment on the Church. Christ, he said, had cast out the doves and pigeons that were sold in the Temple; why should not Leo exile the worshippers of the many Golden Calves, who had not only a place, but a place of command in Rome? This again was a reminiscence of Savonarola's sermons. Pico had constituted himself his biographer and apologist. It was strange that the flaming words of the prophet should rise once more from the grave at the moment when their terrible prophecy was to be fulfilled in Germany.

On March 16, 1517, the Council closed with its twelfth sitting. It had made many useful orders, and shown good intentions to abolish various abuses. But the carrying out of the contemplated reforms of the Curia was entirely neglected. The Council was from first to last a dead letter, and, even had it gained effect for its resolutions, the catastrophe in the north would not have been averted. For there an inward alienation from Rome had long been going on, ever since the days of Ludwig the Bavarian; little was needed to make it externally also an accomplished fact. Neither Leo nor his Lateran Council had the slightest conception of this state of affairs north of the Alps.

The government of the Church was entirely in the hands of Italians; the Curia could count scarcely more than one or two Germans or English in their number. Terrible retribution was at hand. Leo X had seen no trace of the coming religious crisis, although its forerunners Reuchlin and Erasmus, Wimpheling and Hütten, and the appearance of Obscurorum Virorum Epistolae might well have opened his eyes. His announcement in the midst of all this ferment of the great Absolution for the benefit of St Peter's was a stupendous miscalculation, due to the thoughtless and contemptuous treatment vouchsafed to German affairs in Rome. Instead of directing his most serious attention to them Leo had meantime made his covenant with Francis I at Bologna (December, 1515), on which followed directly the French treaty of 1516. At Bologna the King had renounced the Pragmatic Sanction, in return for which the Pope granted him the right of nomination to bishoprics, abbeys, and conventual priories. It was the most immoral covenant that Church history had hitherto recorded, for the parties presented each other with things that did not belong to them. The French Church fell a victim to an agreement which delivered over her freedom to royal despotism; in return Francis I undertook that the Pope's family should rule in Florence, and as a pledge of the treaty gave a French Princess to the Pope's nephew Lorenzo in marriage.

The hour in which this compact was made was the darkest in Leo's pontificate. North of the Alps this act undermined all confidence in him or in his cousin Clement VII. No further reform of the Church was expected of two Popes who cared more for their dynasty than for the welfare of Christendom. The short interregnum of Adrian VI was, as we have seen, not equal to the task of carrying out the reformation. But it must be remembered that in his reign the worthiest representative of the Church's conscience during the Medicean era came forward once more with a plea for reform. The great document, laid before the Pope at his command, by Aegidius of Viterbo, revealed the disease, when it pointed to the misuse of papal power as the cause of all the harm, and demanded a limitation to the absolutism of the Head of the Church. This tallied with the Pope's ideas, and the celebrated instruction issued to the Nuncio Chieregato (1522), which announced that the disease had come from the head to the members, from the Pope to the prelates, and confessed, “We have all sinned, and there is not one that doeth good”.