1906-7. TRANSACTIONS. 55 



Celebrities in A.D. 1500. — Savanarola has been dead two 

 years — he who in Florence so strenuously insisted upon reforms 

 in the church and elsewhere, and was tortured and burned for his 

 pains. Torquemada the great Spanish Inquisitor (appointed 

 1483) curiously enough died in the same year. Erasmus, the 

 Prince of Humanists (1467-1536) is 33 years old; Cardinal Wolsey 

 (1471-1530) is 29; Sir Thomas More (1480-1535) is 20; Luther 

 (1483-1546) is 17, and after 17 years more he will attachhis 

 theses to the Wittenberg door-post; Zwingie (1484-1531) the 

 Swiss Reformer is 16; Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) the great 

 founder of the order of Jesus is 9; Melancthon (1497-1560) is 3; 

 Cranmer (1498-1556) is just 2; and Calvin (1509-1564) is minus 9. 

 What cart-loads of theology, good and bad, are we to get out of 

 these men shortly; how certain was every one of them that he 

 alone was right ; and how clearly do we see what very human and 

 fallible people they all were. 



Of more service to the world than all of them, were Columbus 

 (1436-1508) who was at the end of our millenium and a half, 46 

 years old; and Copernicus (1473-1543) who was 27. 



Among the artists FraAngelico (1387 to 1455) is dead; Michael 

 Angelo (1475-1564) is 25; Titian (1477-1576) is 23; Raphael 

 (1483-1520) is 17; Corregio (1494-1534) is 6; and Benvenuto 

 Cellini (1500-1569) is just cutting his first tooth. 



Machiavelli (1469-1527) is 31. The prince was written 

 thirteen years after when he was 45. 



Character of the Times. — These are stormy, dangerous 

 and turbulent times, then, in which Machiavelli finds himself 

 struggling — times in which both force and craft are needed if 

 either a state or an individual is to keep afloat. Everything is 

 unsettled; everything is trying to get itself settled, and every- 

 thing is constantly finding that it cannot adjust and compose 

 itself permanently this way, and must try some other. Self- 

 preservation, the first law of nature, is also the most conspicuous; 

 for other laws become prominent only when this one has ceased 

 to influence daily action. In the words of some of the historians 

 of the period ; 



"The era was that of a strong man, in both secular and eccle- 

 siastical politics (a). 



" In the conflict of France and Spain and Germany, the little 

 Italian States had scant hope of preserving their independence 



(a) Dunning's Political Theories, 286. 



