833 



EUGENIUS III. 



EULER, LEONARD. 



831 



uuder the coudition that the pontiff elect should swear fidelity to the 

 emperor before the imperial missus or representative. Eugenius held 

 a council at Rome, in which, among, other things, it was decreed that 

 iu every episcopal residence, as well as in every country parsonage, 

 there should be a master for teaching the people and explaining the 

 Scriptures. Eugenius died in 827, and was succeeded by Valeutiuus, 

 who, dying also after a few weeks, was succeeded by Gregory IV. 



EUGENIUS III., a native of Pisa, of the Cistercian order, and a 

 disciple of St. Bernard, succeeded in 1145 Lucius II., who had died of 

 a blow from a stone inflicted in a riot of the Roman people. Arnaldo 

 da Brescia was then preaching his reform at Rome, the senate had 

 declared itself independent of the pope, and Eugenius was obliged to 

 take up his residence at Viterbo. After some fighting and many 

 negociations between the pope, assisted by the people of Tivoli, and 

 the Romans, Eugenius repaired to France in 1147, and the following 

 year held a council at Rheims. He afterwards returned to Italy iu 

 1149, and with the assistance of Roger king of Sicily defeated the 

 Romans, and entered the city. New disturbances however arose, 

 which obliged him to take refuge iu Campania, where he received of 

 St. Bernard the book ' De Cousiderationc,' the subject of which was 

 advice on his pontifical station and its duties. After having resided 

 some time at Segni he made peace with the Romans, and returned to 

 Rome in 1152. He died the following year, and was succeeded by 

 Auastawua IV. It was under the pontificate of Eugenius III. that 

 Gratiauus, a Benedictine monk at Bologna, compiled his code of canou 

 law called Decretum Gratiani," which greatly favoured the extension 

 of the papal power. 



KUGENIUS IV., Gabriele Condulmero, a native of Venice, suc- 

 ceeded Martin V. iu March 1431. His was a most stormy pontificate. 

 He drove away the powerful family of Colonna, including the nephews 

 of the late pope, from Rome, charging them with having enriched 

 themselves at the expense of the papal treasury. Two hundred of 

 their adherents were put to death, and the palaces of the Colonna 

 were plundered ; but their party collected troops in the country and 

 besieged Rome. Eugenius, through the assistance of Queen Joanna II. 

 of Naples, defeated the Colonna, and obliged them to sue for peace 

 and surrender several towns and castles they held in the Roman state. 

 He afterwards made war against the various lords of Romagna, who 

 were supported by the Visconti of Milan ; and he appointed as his 

 general the patriarch Vitelleschi, a militant prelate, who showed con- 

 siderable abilities and little scrupulousness iu that protracted warfare, 

 by which the pope ultimately recovered a considerable portion of 

 territory. But as Vitelleschi intended to keep Romagna for himself, 

 the pope had him put to death. The famous condottiere Sforza 

 figured in all these broils. But the greatest annoyance to Eugenius 

 proceeded from the council of Basel, which had been convoked by his 

 predecessor, and which protracted its sittings year after year, broaching 

 doctrines very unfavourable to papal supremacy. After solemnly 

 asserting the superiority of the council over the pope, it forbade the 

 creation of new cardinals, prohibited appeals from the council to the 

 pope, suppressed the anuates, or payments of one year's income upon 

 benefices, which were a great source of revenue to the pupal treasury, 

 and made other important reforms. Eugenius, who had been obliged 

 to escape from Rome in disguise on account of a popular revolt, and 

 had taken up his residence at Bologna in 1437, now issued a bull 

 dissolving the council, recalling his nuncio who presided at it, and 

 convoking another council at Ferrara. Most of the fathers assembled 

 at Basel refused to submit, and summoned the pope himself to appear 

 before theui, to answer the charge of simony, schism, and others; 

 and after a time proceeded against him as contumacious, and deposed 

 him. Eugeuius meanwhile had opened in person his new council at 

 Ferrara, in February 1438, in which, after annulling all the obnoxious 

 decrees of the council of Basel, he launched a lull of excommunica- 

 tion against the bishops who remained iu that assembly, which he 

 characterised as a " Satanic conclave, which was spreading the abomina- 

 tion of desolation into the bosom of the church." The Catholic 

 world was divided between the two councils ; that of Bael proceeded 

 to elect a new pope in the person of Amadous VIII. of Savoy, who 

 assumed the name of Felix V., and was solemnly crowned at Basel. 

 The council of Ferrara in the meantime afforded a novel sight. The 

 Emperor John Faleologus II. came with Joseph, patriarch of Con- 

 stautmople, and more than twenty Greek bishops, attended by a 

 numerous retiuue, and took bis seat iu the assembly. The object 

 was the reconciliation of the eastern and western churches, which 

 Eugeniu* had greatly at heart, and to which Paleologus was also 

 favourably inclined, as he wanted tbe assistance of the powers of 

 western Europe against the Turks. The plague having broken out 

 at Ferrara, the council was removed to Florence. After many 

 theological disputations on the subject of the Holy Ghost, of the 

 primacy of the pope, of purgatory, and other controverted points, th : 

 decree of reunion of the two churches was passed, and signed by 

 both parties in July 1439. Tbe emperor and patriarch returned to 

 Constantinople highly pleased with Kugr.nius; but the Greeks took 

 offence at the terms of the union, the schism broke out afresh, and 

 tbe separation of the two churches has continued ever since. 



A grave charge against Eugenius is, that he encouraged the 

 Hungarians and Poles to break the peace they had solemnly sworn 

 with the Turks, under pretence that their oaths were not valid 



without the sanction of the pope ; he even si>nt Cardinal Julian as his 

 nuncio to attend the Christian army. The result was the battle of 

 Varna, 1444, in which the Christians were completely defeated, and 

 King Uladislaus of Poland and Cardinal Julian lost their lives. 



Eugeuius died at Rome in 1447, after a reign of sixteen years, and 

 in the sixty-fourth year of his age. He left the church in 'a state of 

 schism between him and his competitor Felix, his own states a prey 

 to war, and all Christendom alarmed at the progress of the Turkish 

 arms. In his last days he is said to have expressed himself weary of 

 agitation, and to have regretted the loss of his former monastic 

 tranquillity before his exaltation. He recommended peace and con- 

 ciliation to the cardinals assembled round him. He was succeeded by 

 Nicholas V., in favour of whom Felix V. soon after abdicated. The 

 pontificate of Eugeuius forms a stirring and interesting though painful 

 period in the history of Ittly and of the church. L'Enfant and 

 ..Eneas Silvius, afterwards pope, have written the history of the 

 council of Basel. See also the general collections of the councils and 

 Baluze's ' Miscellanies.' 



EULER, LEONARD, a celebrated mathematician of the last 

 century, was born on the 15th of April 1707, at Basel, in Switzerland ; 

 his father, Paul Euler, was the Calvinistic pastor of the neighbouring 

 village of Riechen. He was a man remarkable for unostentatious 

 piety, and imbued with a considerable knowledge of mathematics, 

 which he had acquired under the tuition of James Bernoulli. 



After being instructed by his father in analytical science, young 

 Euler was sent to the university of Basel, in which John Bernoulli 

 was at that time professor, and by his rapid progress and decided 

 mathematical genius he so tar gained the esteem of his teacher and of 

 the sons, Nicholas and Daniel Bernoulli, that his father was easily 

 dissuaded from his original intention of forming his sou intj a divine, 

 and wisely allowed him to pursue unshackled the high distinctions 

 then conferred by a profound scientific reputation. 



A prize having been proposed by the French Academy of Sciences 

 on the management of vessels at sea, the ambition of Euler, then 

 only nineteen years of age, induced him to attempt an essay, which 

 was received with considerable applause, though the prize was con- 

 ferred on Bouguer, an old and experienced professor of hydrography. 



The Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg was then rising to a 

 distinguished rank amongst similar institutions iu Europe under the 

 fostering patronage of Catharine I., who had invited several philo- 

 sophers to her capital, among whom were the Bernoullis above 

 mentioned. On the retirement of Daniel Bernoulli, Euler was 

 appointed professor of mathematics uuder Peter I. iu 1733; soon after 

 which he married a Swiss lady named Gsell, by whom he had a 

 numerous family. 



His works previous to tho date at which we have arrived were, 

 with few exceptions, confined to those mathematical questions arising 

 from the progressive march of the Integral Calculus, which, at that 

 time, caused much emulation in different countries. In general, 

 Euler was far more in his element in the abstruser parts of pure 

 mathematics than in the applied ; in many of the latter he was 

 frequently conducted to paradoxical results. 



In the memoirs of the Petropolitan Academy, 1729 and 1732, are 

 found several of his memoirs on trajectories, tautochrouous curves, 

 the shortest line along a surface between two given points, and on 

 differential equations; besides which he had published at Basei a 

 physical dissertation on sound. 



Euler found it convenient at this time to apply himself intensely 

 to study, not more from his natural ardour for the sciences and the 

 incentive of an increasing reputation than from the desire to avoid 

 the political intrigues which, under a suspicious and tyrannical 

 minister, then agitated Ruisia. 



Durii-g this interval he published an excellent treatise on mechanics 

 (Petersburg, 173d, 2 vols., 4to), a treatise on the theory of music, and 

 one on arithmetic, together with numerous papers in the Petersburg 

 Memoirs, chiefly on astronomical and purely mathematical subjects, 

 among which are contained his views on the solution of Isoperi- 

 metrical Problems, which embodied the profoundest researches on a 

 matter of great analytical difficulty previous to the discovery of the 

 Calculus of Variations by Lagrange. Upon the fall of Biren he 

 gladly accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia to visit Berlin. 

 When he was introduced to the queen-dowager in 1741, she was so 

 much struck with the paucity of his conversation that on requiring 

 an explanation, he replied that he had just returned from a country 

 where those who spoke were hanged. 



The princess of Anhalt-Dessau, being desirous to profit by the 

 presence of Euler in Berlin, requested to be favoured with instructions 

 on the known facts in the physical sciences. To this wish he fully 

 acceded on his return to St. Petersburg in 17(36, by publishing his 

 celebrated work, ' Letters to a German Princess ' (3 vols., 8vo, 1768) ; 

 in which he discusses with clearness the most important truths in 

 mechanics, optics, sound, and physical astronomy, having published 

 previous to this date several isolated treatises and some hundred 

 memoirs touching on every known branch of theoretical aud practical 

 mathematics. During his residence in Prussia he was much employed 

 by the enlightened monarch who then governed that kingdom in 

 questions connected with the mint, with navigable canals, &c. In 

 tho midst of such, varied employments he was not forgetful of the 



