72 THE PAPACY DURING THE RENAISSANCE 



Yet there is to-day no doubt that during prolonged 

 periods the Papal throne was deeply degraded. The tenth 

 century was such a period. During more than a hundred 

 years we see, amidst the appalling gloom, men of base 

 character struggle for and win the Papal dignity, until a 

 youth of monstrous vices (as his successor assures us), 

 Benedict IX, so fouls Rome that a lay monarch has to 

 intervene and purify the Church. The second great period 

 of Papal corruption extends from the middle of the fifteenth 

 to the middle of the sixteenth century ; and it is interesting 

 to consider the situation now that the settlement of the facts 

 has passed from the dusty arena of controversy to the grave 

 tribunal of history. 



The degradation of the Papacy during the Renaissance 

 was preceded and prepared by some of those chances of history 

 which so cynically refute the providential legend. France 

 obtained power over the Papacy, and the Papal Court was 

 transferred to Avignon. This dislocation led at once to the 

 development of a repulsive system of obtaining money and to 

 a great corruption of the cardinals, who elect the Pope. 

 Petrarch, who lived in Avignon at the time, describes the 

 licentious life which seethed at the foot of the superb palace 

 on the banks of the Rhone. He says repeatedly that nothing 

 in the most candid literature of ancient Rome equals the life 

 of those princes and prelates of the Church, and nothing in 

 the legend of ancient Babylon surpasses it. No one who has 

 read the little book of his "secret letters " will ever forget his 

 picture of a white-haired, and almost toothless, cardinal, in 

 his eighth decade of life, shocking even courtesans by his 

 lasciviousness (Letter xviii). 



The Papacy recovered on its return to Rome in 1376, but 

 the taint of the Sacred College was too deep to be removed, 

 and corruption haunted the Papal elections. One Pope, 

 John XXIII, was deposed by the assembled prelates of 

 Christendom for his numerous crimes and vices. Again the 

 Papacy recovered, and a series of estimable men wore the 

 tiara. But so far was Rome from enjoying a divine pro- 

 tection, so peculiarly human was its priesthood, that when 

 the voluptuous spring of the Renaissance spread over Italy 

 the Papacy suffered what we must call after the compre- 

 hensive corruption of the monasteries and nunneries of 

 Christendom the most extraordinary degradation known in 

 the history of religious institutions. 



The beginning of the debasement is a piquant comment 



