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INFORMATION 



this was the tendency of the variona nations, the 

 pope during these centime* gradually lost hi 

 position as the disinterested umpire of Europe, 

 and sank into an Italian prince, with a temporal 

 policy of lii- own which led him to seek allies 

 among other tmtentates an they fell in with 

 his own gjiecial ends of the moment, liut such 

 alliances naturally gave offence to the princes 

 excluded from them, and led to a suspicious dis- 

 content with the Roman see, which, as was after- 

 wards proved in the case of England, needed only 

 the requisite occasion to flame into outright re- 

 U-llion. The Haying of Philip Augustus (died 

 1223) 'Happy Saladdin, who has no pope ! '- 

 expressed the feeling, which every century grew 

 stronger, that the pope would become an impossible 

 factor in Kuroiiean politics. To this feeling should 

 tie added the fact that, as the middle classes grew 

 in intelligence and well-being, they looked with 

 envy on the immense wealth of the clergy, and 

 grumbled at the large sums that annually went to 

 the coffers of Home. 



Dining the 14th and 15th centuries medievalism 



Save every sign of an exhausted phase of human 

 evelopment. By the so-called Babylonish Cap- 

 tivity, when the papal residence was fixed for 

 seventy years at Avignon (1305-76), and by the 

 Great Schism ( 1378-1417), during which the spec- 

 tacle was seen of first two and afterwards three 

 popes claiming to be the vicars of (iod on earth, 

 the papacy tmtl'crud a loss of prestige in the eyes of 

 all Europe which it never afterwards fully re- 

 covered. It was the further misfortune of the 

 church during this eclipse of its ancient glory that 

 all spiritual life seemed to have gone out of every 

 rank of its clergy- Testimonies from even' country 

 prove beyond question that by the end of the 15th 

 century the clergy had become grossly unfit to be 

 the spiritual (rowH of the people. The sources of 

 intellectual lif>' hail equally failed wherever the 

 old philosophy authorised by the church continued 

 to be tho subject of teaching and study. In the 

 later half of the l.'ith century scholasticism had 

 become the veriest trifling which ever engaged the 

 mind of man. In all the interests of man's well- 

 being, therefore, a renaissance was needed to evoke 

 new motives and supply new ideals which should 

 lift humanity to a higher plane of endeavour. Such 

 a renaissance came, ana fortunately the church 

 did not prove equal to suppressing this second 

 burst of life as it had suppressed that of the 12th 

 and 13th centuries. 



It was again in Italy that the new life first 

 declared itself. While north of the Alps scholas- 

 ticUm reigned in all the schools, the movement 

 known as the Renaissance (q.v.) had in Italy l>een 

 in full course for above a century. In itself the 

 Renaissance was as far as possible from leading 

 men to higher ideal* in religion ; yet in two of its 

 results it gave a direct impetus to the Reforma- 

 tion. Inspired lp\ the life of antiquity, the human- 

 ism of the Renaissance paganism! the church and 

 quickened that moral disintegration which was 

 the prime cause of the religious revolution. On 

 the other hand, through its opening of men's minds 

 by new studii-s ami new measures of things, the 

 Renaissance lightened the load of tradition, and 

 mode a new departure in the life of Christendom a 

 less formidable concept ion. In Erasmus ( 1467-1530 ), 

 who has always IMM-II regarded as a true inn- 

 ing father of the Reformation, wo clearly discern 



these two result* of the revival of the ancient litera- 

 tures. In o many words he states his grave fears 

 lest the church should lie wholly paganised by the 

 universal imitation of classical modes of thought 

 and speech ; while his own unsparing criticism 

 of the church and its traditions proves how much 



he owed to the so-called ' new learning.' 



The very zeal with which the revival of antiquity 

 was pursued in Italy was itself a countercheck to 

 religious reform in the country that of all others 

 needed it the moat. All contemporary literature 

 proves that during the later part of the 15th and 

 the opening of the 16th century the court of Rome 

 was as profoundly immoral as that of any of the 

 heathen emperors had been in the same city. The 

 spiritual claims of the papacy were the jest of 

 ecclesiastics themselves. ' This fable of Christ,' a 

 certain dignitary of the church is reported to have 

 said in the Vatican, ' has been to us a source of 

 great gain.' Among the Italian people, however, 

 there was never the slightest indication of a 

 national movement towards any serious breach 

 with the papacy. The religious melodrama en- 

 acted by Savonarola at Florence ( 148&-98 ) never 

 struck at the central ideas of papal Christianity: 

 and Savonarola, besides, never like Luther or Knox 

 woke a deep response in the national conscious- 

 ness. While in Italy, therefore, there was no 

 widespread religious quickening as in other coun- 

 tries of Christendom, there was no political reason 

 such as elsewhere produced a breach with the 

 papacy. For the Italian people the pope was not 

 a foreign prince with temporal interests of his 

 own conflicting with those of the nation at large. 

 The different republics which partitioned the 

 country might at times regard the pope as an 

 enemy to their individual ambitions; but the 

 nation as a whole was fully conscious of the honour 

 of having the vicar of God in their midst, and as 

 in the past they had stood by him against the 

 emperors, so in the great religious revolution of 

 the 16th century they also remained faithful to 

 him throughout the gradual dismemberment of his 

 spiritual dominion. 



Of the countries north of the Alps Germany 

 was the first to be widely influenced by that 

 revival of learning which hod its origin in ItaK. 

 In Germany, however, the new spirit wrought 

 under fundamentally different conditions, and 

 lighted the way to vastly different issues. There 

 was every reason why Germany should lead the 

 wny in the schism from Koine. Outside Italy 

 Germany was the country when- every abuse of 

 the mediaeval church was seen in its grossest form. 

 The ignorance and sensuality of the clergy, the 

 scandalous sale of livings, the disproportionate 

 papal exactions all these evils came to be vividly 

 realised by the quickened consciousness of the 

 nation. Between Rome and Germany, moreover, 

 an antagonism existed in the very conditions from 

 which mcdia'valisin had sprung. It was in virtue 

 of the mutual understanding lietween pope and 

 emperor that the church came to fill the place it 

 did in western Europe. Hut almost from the first 

 the interests of Rome and the empire hod Iw-en 

 in collision, so that pope and emperor came to he 

 mere rivals for the first place among the western 



i towers. It was natural, therefore, that in Germany 

 tome should lie regarded with a jealousy and sus- 

 picion which might easily grow into irreconcilable 

 hostility, 



These workings of the national mind found in- 

 tensified expression in the acts and writings of 

 Martin l.uther, who, with a genius and audacity 

 v hieli have given him a place among the moulders 

 of man's destinies, proclaimed the need of a new 

 departure in the religious life of humanity. In 

 rejecting the traditional claims of the papacy 

 l.uther at the same time supplied a new principle 

 bv which, as he contended, a higher and truer lifo 

 of the soul might lie lived. By his doctrine of .Ins 

 lilieation liy Faith l.uther threw each individual 

 on his own responsibility for the reason and life 

 which is entrusted to him. Hitherto the deepest 

 concerns of men had been inextricably bound up 



