£en <Bpoc$B of £(5urc0 gtBfotg THE AGE OF THE RENASCENCE AN OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE PAPACY FROM THE RETURN FROM AVIGNON TO THE SACK OF ROME (1377-1527) BY PAUL VAN DYKE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY VAN DYKE (Uef»T>or6 €§t Christian feifetdfute Co, MDCCCXCVII Cen €poci)S of Cimrrf) f^tstorp CDtteD bp VtA. VIL Copyright, 1897, by The Christian Literature Co. —— 1 CONTENTS PERIOD I. From the Return from Avignon to the Accession of Nicholas V. (J377-J447), Introductory Retrospect. PAGE of CHAP. I. The Growth of Patriotism or the Sense Nationality I CHAP. II. New Theories of the Seat of Sovereignty and the Rising Tide of Democracy 1 CHAP. III.—The New Learning—Petrarch, the Pro- totype of the Humanists 20 CHAP. IV.—The Condition in which the Returning Pope Found Italy and the Patrimony of St. Peter—The Beginning of the Great Schism—Two Vicars of Christ Fight for the Tiara 35 CHAP. V.—John Wiclif of England, and his Protest against Papal War 46 CHAP. VI.—Pope and Antipope—The White Penitents at Rome—The Siege of Avignon—The Followers of Petrarch, the Humanists, or Men of the New Learning 59 v ———— vi Contents. PAGE CHAP. VII.— Orthodox Demands for Union and Re- form: (i) Catherine of Siena and the Ascetic Pro- phets of Righteousness ; (2) The Party of Conciliar Supremacy 69 CHAP. VIII.—The Council of Pisa Makes the Schism Triple—The Protest of John Huss of Bohemia 79 CHAP. IX. The Council of Constance and Triumph of the Party of Conciliar Supremacy: (i) They Depose the Popes and Force Union; (2) They Repudiate the Bohemian Protest and Burn Huss; (3) They Fail to Determine the Reform of the Church in Head and Members 90 CHAP. X. The Papal Reaction—The Struggle for the Patrimonium—Martin V. and Eugenius IV. Reestab- lish the Papal Supremacy without Granting Re- form—The Protest and Abortive Schism of the Council of Basle in CHAP. XI. — The Spread of Humanism 122 PERIOD II. From the Accession of the First Humanist Pope to the French Invasion of Italy (J447-J494). CHAP. XII. Nicholas V., the First Humanist Pope, Makes Rome the Home of the Muses—The War of the Monks and the Humanists 151 CHAP. XIII. Calixtus III., the Old Spaniard, his **" Family Pride and his Zeal against the Infidel— Pius II., the Cultured Man of the World who Died a Crusader— Paul II., the Splendor-loving Vene- tian Nepot 164 CHAP. XIV.—The New Learning Crosses the Alps- Its Spread in France—The Forerunners of German Humanism 176 CHAP. XV.— The Man of the Renascence on the Throne of St. Peter—Sixtus IV., the Terrible 193 CHAP. XVI.—Innocent VIII., the Sultan's Jailer- Alexander VI. , the Handsome Spanish Nepot—The French Invasion 206 ———— Contents. vii PAGE CHAP. XVII.— Savonarola and Freedom 217 period m. From the French Invasion to the Sack of Rome (1494-J527). CHAP. XVIII.—The Household of Alexander VI.—The Prophet of Righteousness and the Vicar of Christ 299 CHAP. XIX. The Fall of the House of Borgia 248 CHAP. XX. Humanism in Europe from the Accession of Sixtus IV. to the Death of Alexander VI. (1471- 1503)—The Florentine Academy and the Oxford School—Faber Stapulensis and his Pupils at Paris —John Reuchlin and the Older Humanists of Ger- many—Erasmus 262 CHAP. XXL—Julius II. and Leo X.—The Nephew of Sixtus IV. and the Son of Lorenzo the Magnificent become Popes 286 CHAP. XXII. Transalpine Humanism under Julius and Leo—(1) The Battle of the Books about John Reuchlin ; (2) The Three Disciples of the Philosophy of Christ; (3) The Pupils of Faber Stapulensis; (4) Ulrich Zwingli 302 CHAP. XXIII. —The Court of Leo X.—Humanism in Italy and Spain—The Three Boy Kings 321 CHAP. XXIV. The North Loses Patience with the Papacy — The Leaders of Revolt in Germany, Switzerland, France, and England 339 CHAP. XXV.—Adrian VI., the Honest Orthodox Ec- clesiastic—The Older Humanists of the North Stand by the Church—The Younger Appeal to the New Testament—Clement VII., the Heir of the Medici 35 6 CHAP. XXVI. —The Sack of Rome 366 A List of the Popes and Antipopes 379 A List of the Humanists Mentioned 38° 1 AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY VAN DYKE ; AN INTRODUCTION. HEN the writing of this book was pro- posed to me, some years ago, I under- took it with alacrity, on account of the interest in the subject which I had long cherished, and yet with some grave mis- givings lest the pressure of other work, already prom- ised, but not performed, should rob me of the time needed to accomplish this task with thoroughness and precision. For I knew the Age of the Renascence well enough, through previous studies from the lit- erary, artistic, and philosophic points of view, to see that a man could not hope to make even an outline sketch of the Church in this complex period without much labor and steady thought. The very brevity of the book proposed was an added difficulty. It is hard to be concise without be- coming inaccurate. To make the results of study clear when the lack of space compels the omission of its au- processes ; to justify conclusions without giving thorities; to condense volumes of reading into a chapter of writing, and that chapter again into a paragraph, and that paragraph into a single sentence to select the characters of men who really embody xii An Introduction. the tendencies of their age ; and to find adjectives which shall be equivalent to biographies, distinct and vivid, without being unjust or violent; —in short, to draw a convincing picture, not of a single generation only, but of a movement which pervaded many gen- erations and races, and to do this within the compass of a few hundred pages, is an enterprise not to be effected without serious toil. Facing such a task as this, realizing its difficulties more and more sharply as the plan of the book took shape, and feeling at the same time the ever-increas- ing demands of other duties and literary engage- ments, I sought and gratefully welcomed the consent of my brother to make this volume a joint labor of fraternal authorship. Together we surveyed the field, marked out its limitations, rejoiced in the rich- ness of its promise, and groaned a little, yet not de- spondently, at the prospect of the many hard places and obstacles. On this preliminary journey of exploration we found ourselves in the full harmony of intellectual comradeship. The purpose, the method, the guiding principles of such a book as we wished to write seemed to us plain and self-evident. Abstract theo- ries of the nature of the Church troubled us little. Special pleading for or against the Papacy disturbed us even less. The question of absorbing interest was not, What ought the Church to be in a correct scheme of doctrine? but, What was the Church in the actual unfolding of human life? What part did the eccle- siastical institution play in the conflicts of the Renas- cence ? What did the idea of the Papacy mean as a An Introduction. xiii positive force, cooperating or conflicting with the other forces of the age ? How far did it affect, and how far was it affected by, the influences which pro- duced the great awakening of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? What was the real relation of the Church as an organization to Christianity as a spiritual life? How potently did that spiritual life make itself felt in the progress of the world ? The answer to these questions was not a matter of theory, but of fact. We felt sure that it was not to be found in the books of dogmatic theology or ecclesiastical history, nor in the decrees of councils, nor in the bulls of Popes, nor in the theses of reformers—except in so far as all of these were veritable details in the great panorama of life. Their value lay, not in what they professed or claimed, but in what they actually rep- resented. They were worth precisely what they expressed, reduced to the terms of reality. The answer to our questions must be sought chiefly of nations. in the character of men and the history the The type of ecclesiastical society produced by of contests between Pope and Antipope, the fashion moral amelioration effected by the Reforming Coun- spreading tree cils, the style of humanity in which the the things of Humanism bore its fruit—these were which we were drawn to study, and from which we to hoped to derive some real and definite knowledge, broaden our clarify our conception of the past, to vision judgment of the present, and to enlighten our of the future. evident that But as the work proceeded it became xiv An Introduction. the lion's share of it must fall to my brother. And of this, for several reasons, I was very glad ; chiefly because I was sure that his leisure, his industry, and his long previous studies in the special department of ecclesiastical history fitted him for the more careful and complete accomplishment of our design. More- over, there was a mortgage of other engagements, particularly in connection with the Lectures on Preaching at Yale University, in 1896, which more than covered all my time and strength. To his hands, therefore, the final execution of our plan was committed. The collection of materials, the workmanship, the filling in of the outline, are all his.