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many children and there exhorted the princes, denounced the Popes and clamoured for an end of the exile, herself told Clement that he was an amator carnis, a lover of the flesh.

It is nevertheless true that a man of firmer character than this gallant Pontiff could not have risked going back to Rome. Devotees of armed might were everywhere busy carving little kingdoms out of the Papal provinces; and Rome itself presented an unparallelled pageant of an- archy. After the nobles had been defeated, the romantic spirit of Cola di Rienzi strutted about for a while, dressed in shreds of die past splendour of Rome and the Empire. This tribune of the people had delighted the Pope in Avignon and had won the friendship of Petrarch. But after his fall, Charles IV, to whose court in Prague he had fled, turned him over to the Pope as a heretic. The Avignon which he now beheld anew had meanwhile been purchased by Queen Joanna of Naples and made the property of the Roman See. This it remained until the French Revolution.

The Black Plague was now abroad. The Pope lived behind his thick walls as if in quarantine and received no one. A third of the population of Europe was buried in common graves, and those who survived trembled before the Lord God. New processions of Flagel- lantes, scourging their naked backs as they sang the Kyrie Eleison, moved through the land. A wave of religious enthusiasm brought hosts of pilgrims to Rome for the jubilee of 1350. Some of the laughter that was heard was the laughter of despair. In Avignon there was circulated in 1351 a "Letter of Lucifer to the Pope, His Viceroy on Earth." In it die Prince of Darkness thanks the Sovereign Pontiff, his cardinals and his prelates, for all the aid given him in his struggle against Christ. Victory was no longer remote. He sent greetings to them all, in the name also of their mother, Pride, and of all her sister Vices. A novella in Boccaccio's Decameron breathes the same spirit. Thus turbulent disgrundement of the era of the plague arose from hearts as devoted to the Church as that of Petrarch hearts that agreed with Dante, Rienzi, and all the humanists, that the Papal exile was a desecration of the Papacy and Italy alike. In their opposition to France and Avignon, they were abetted by more serious minds who, desiring cultural autonomy, strove to bring about a na- tional renaissance against all barbarians, including the French. In

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Rh this gladly, and reflected that the creature must be the soul of the man whom he had buried. He then came to an inn, and took service with the host, whose beautiful daughter he soon discovered to be a princess, who had been bought while an infant. After winning her love, the hero went on into two kingdoms, where he obtained a magical purse and a wonderful horse from two ugly daughters of innkeepers. With these possessions he returned to the princess, and started with her for his home. On the way he saved from death his two older brothers, who had gone out to seek adventures at the same time as himself They repaid the kindness by trying to drown him and by carrying the princess off home, where only by feigning illness could she frustrate their plan that she choose one of them as husband. Meanwhile, the hero was rescued from drowning by the hare, and came home. By pretending to be a physician he obtained access to the princess, was recognized, and then revealed himself to his father.

The Brazilian tale is brief but not unusual in type. A prince, while seeking a remedy for his father, passes through a town and sees a corpse, which is held for debt. He pays the creditors, and has the corpse buried. Later he is met by a fox, which helps him obtain not only the remedy for his father but in addition a princess as his wife. On its last appearance the beast declares that it is the soul of the man whom he buried.

Basque I. has the following form: Three sons go out to seek a white blackbird by which their father can be healed. Two of them get into debt to the same three ladies, and, according to the custom of the land, are imprisoned. The third son resists the sirens, ransoms his brothers, and also pays the debts of a dead man, whose corpse is being maltreated. He arrives at the house of the king who has the white blackbird, and is told to get a certain young woman from another king.

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Boccaccio's tale, the Christian merchant Gianotto convinces his fpend Abraham, the Jew of Paris, of the truth of Christianity. Against Gianotto's will and counsel the Jew decided to study his new faith in the city where the Curia is established. Gianotto now believes that all is lost. But Abraham returns resolved to enter the Church. He declares (and this is at once the comfort and the insight of this whole, period) to his pleasantly surprised friend: the Pope and his associates seek to blot out Christianity from the world and the hearts of men; and the fact that it nevertheless exists and flourishes proves that it must be of God.

Clement died soon thereafter of terror caused by the Lucifer letter. During his last years he had appeared in a much better light, as the giver of aid to victims of the pest, the author of measures taken to curb the madness of the Flagellantes, and the centre of resistance to a persecution of the Jews, who were believed to have brought on the plague by poisoning the wells and bewitching the atmosphere. He was followed by a simple, earnest man who took the name of Innocent VI (13521362). He curbed the maladministration of the Curia, which had now become wholly French, released Rienzi from imprison- ment, brought about a peace between France and England, and re- mained on fairly good terms with the Emperor, who received the Imperial crown when he came to Rome, though no popular enthusiasm embellished the ceremony. Charles issued a Golden Bull in 1355, which, without referring to the hody debated rights of the Pope, de- clared the Electoral-Princes sole possessors of the right to vote, and in exchange for cash gave the Italian cities freedom and the Italian princes their independence. The fact that he abandoned the right to mingle in Italian affairs meant that the German Empire was bounded on die south by the Alps. Once again Cola di Rienzi awakened the national yearning of his native city, to which he had gone after the Pope had set him free. Innocent had hoped to subdue the city by means of this tribune, but instead the man ruled so tyrannically that the people rose and slew him.

The unfortunate Rienzi had left Avignon on a Papal mission. He was to accompany the clerical general and statesman Albornoz whose task it was to reconquer the rebellious cities of the Papal States. Cardi- nal Albornoz, whom his Spanish countrymen today still regard as the

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greatest political genius of their race, named Rienzi Senator of Rome as a boon to the people. Then, during the four years after 1353, he completed his task with firmness and magnanimity. He utilized the pauses between battles to write a text of common law for the Papal States; and the wisdom of this treatise was to prove its worth down to the time of Napoleon.

The "widowed" Rome uttered many a lament that the absence of the Papacy prevented the renaissance of her ardently desired ancient glory. All but a few persons looked upon the Avignon Popes as legitimate. The master of all places, said Petrarch, can live in any and every place: where the Pope is, there is Rome also. But there was great rejoicing when Urban V (1362-1370) decided to return. The Emperor himself had come to Avignon to persuade this holy, morally impeccable monk, whose labours in behalf of culture were dictated by a lofty purpose, to break the French bonds. Nevertheless the Pope, who returned with his Curia in 1367 and an escort of a fleet of sixty galleys furnished by the Italian sea powers, faced difficult times. As he landed in the harbour of Corneto, Albornoz, now a tired old man, welcomed him on his knees. Certain jealous persons suspected him of having spent money for his own profit; and when he had cleared himself by riding up to the Papal dwelling in a cart drawn by oxen and presenting to the Pope the keys of the cities and fortresses he had conquered, the great Spaniard died assured of the Pope's thanks and confidence. Undoubtedly he was the second founder of the Papal States. Soon Urban was to realize what he had lost in this man. Florence, the most powerful political entity in Italy, fomented a rebel- lion among the citizens of die Papal States against the rule of alien French officials. Naples and the Visconti of Milan profited. Robber bands were the real masters as the gentle Pope, a lonely stranger, waited in Viterbo until the Eternal City had grown sufficiently calm to permit his entry.

What destruction and what misery there were in long abandoned Rome! Grass grew in the streets and on it the sheep pastured. They even found green forage in St. Peter's, and between the broken pave- ment stones of the Lateran. The yellow Tiber flowed over the ruins of fallen bridges; basilicas lay covered with dust and dirt; and the Vatican Palace stared emptily at the signs of decadence everywhere

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about, and at a wilderness of abandoned gardens. Charles IV also came to Rome so that his wife could be crowned, but the Empire headed by this merchant had squeezed too much money out of the land to make possible the thought of giving aid to the Pope. The attacks on Urban's wealth and temporal power continued, and the unfortunate stranger was once more driven back to the Rhone. Dur- ing the same year he died with the cross upon his breast, shaken with remorse over the fact that he had gone back to Avignon. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of St. Brigitta, who had urged him to remain. It was not until the election of Gregory XI (1370-1378), a French Pope, that the Apostolic See could once again be erected beside the graves of the Apostles and remain there. He saw that everything was lost if he stayed in Avignon any longer. The most difficult struggle he had to face was with Florence, for this ancient Guelph Republic raised the banner of the Italian national spirit against the French leadership of the Church and against the rule of strangers within its own boundaries. It assumed the leadership of a league of cities formed to combat all tyrants. Gregory imposed the gravest ecclesiastical penalties on Florence and at last sent an army against the urban league. Robert of Geneva, Cardinal and handsome soldier, took command of his Breton mercenaries, and heaped cruelty on cruelty. As a result of the blood-bath with which he avenged a desperate rebellion of the citizens of Cesana, there was lifted no praise in honour of the returning viceroy of Jesus Christ.

In older to bring about peace with Florence, Catherine Benincasa o Siena, daughter of a dyer, had summoned up all the fervour and power of her ecstatic souL Like Joan d'Arc, this Saint unfolded a political activity based on mystical impulses. She was a master of both effective speech and a powerful epistolary style, and exercised a profound influence upon the life of her time. Though she could not induce Florence to make peace, she did rouse the conscience of the Pope in the palace of Avignon. Toward the close of 1376 he left and landed in Ostia, sighing over the bleak impression made upon him by the shores to which he had come. That evening the Romans appeared in large numbers, gave him dominion over their city, and paid homage to him with torch dances and the blare of trumpets. A galley brought him up the Tiber to St. Paul's. Here he cast anchor and spent the

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night, which had already fallen while he was still aboard ship. Catherine had counselled him in vain to enter the city with no ap- purtenances of war, carrying only the crucifix and singing psalms. Two thousand troops of Robert's army accompanied the festive entry into the city on the next day, and the Pope rode on a white palfrey. The houses were festooned with tapestries and a shower of flowers descended from the roofs. St. Peter's cathedral, which had seen no Pope during two generations, received the procession in the light of 18,000 lamps.

Gregory lived out another restless year lamenting his return. As he was dying a sombre message was brought to him from England. This country, which a decade before (1366) had seen the parliament of Edward III terminate its status as a fief of the Holy See, now wit- nessed a strong movement against Rome as the result of Wyclif s teachings. This Oxford theologian at first upheld the ideal of a poor Church; but then he went farther and recommended a secularized state church which was to combat monasticism, accept the Bible as the sole authority of the faithful, and attack the Papacy on the ground that Christ alone was the true Pope. Gregory anathematized eighteen of Wyclif s earlier theses and imposed the ban on him. Sensing the coming of a schism and bearing no love for the men and women who had urged him to return to Rome they had, he thought, confused their own erratic fantasies with Divine revelation he died in 1378, the last French Pope.

The schism proved a reality. It began in the year when Charles IV, the self-same Emperor who had prepared the way for a firmer bond between the German crown and the Papacy, died. The weak- ness of the Empire under the succeeding kings Wenceslaus and Rupprecht, the persistent efforts of France to dominate the Curia, the English struggle over a national church, the internecine strife of the Italian republics, the dissolution of the Papal States into small prin- cipalities, and a hundred years of destructive warfare between the Provencal, Hungarian and Southern Italian Anjous for the kingdom of Naples all this helped during a whole generation to unsettle the nations likewise unable to decide who was the lawfully elected Pope, The question of obediences made this schism a temptation for European Christianity to split up into French, Italian, Spanish, German and

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English Churches. A chronicler of the fortunes of Peter's See might weU despair as he went over this troubled segment of time upon which no ray of light falls from above.

A stormy conclave which a mob of Francophobes invaded in order to insist upon a Roman or at least an Italian Pope, led hastily to the choice of a Cakbrian, Urban VI (1378-1389). This turbulent Pon- tiff repudiated every custom and practice that had originated in Avignon. Some cardinals left Rome; others declared the election illegal, and with the help of France and Naples elected Robert of Geneva, little more than a purple clad bandit-general, as Clement VII (1378-1394). He was driven out of San Angelo by the Romans, escaped to Naples where he also found no followers, and then took a ship for Avignon. He appointed sufficient cardinals in addition to the six who had remained there to constitute a full College; and the King aided this newly constructed Curia with every means at his disposal. The Popes exchanged bans again and again, until the whole of Christianity was excommunicated from the Church. Peo- ples and princes were divided in obedience. Germany, Scandinavia and England joined with Italy in recognizing Urban VI, while Naples, Savoy, Scotland and later on also Spain and France recognized Clement VII. On both sides murders were committed. Monasteries and churches fell into ruin, the learned and the unlearned were locked in argument, and the Orders were of such divided minds that though Catherine of Siena and Vincent Ferrer, powerful preacher of penance and missionary to the Jews, both wore the same Dominican habit they supported different Popes. She took up the cause of Urban, and he urged the rights of Clement.

It was little wonder that men like Wyclif were able to reap a goodly harvest. How could a realm divided against itself endure? Should not one leave the Devil and Beelzebub to their certain destiny? Deeper minds thought otherwise. They clung fast to the idea of a supreme moral instance and of a representation of the eternal in the body of the Church. But the life of the members was not to be saved unless the head were first saved. If other times had had to protect die Church against the Papacy, these times were perforce compelled to rescue Church and Papacy alike from the Popes. The enemies enthroned on the Tiber and the Rhone had blotted out the maxim,

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older than a thousand years, that the Pope could be judged by no one. The "common sense" (sensus communis) o the Church, long since summoned to the rescue by the absolutism of the Roman See itself, now had to enter the breach. Self-help through a kind of parliamentary rule seemed to be the only way out of the chaotic state of affairs. Two German theologians, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein (the second of whom also appealed to the authority of St. Hildegard of Bingen) conferred in Paris during 1380 and developed out of ideas once sponsored by Ockham and Marcilius of Padua their theory that in rime of need the Church is empowered to summon General Councils despite the Popes, and that to the decisions of such Councils the Bishops of Rome are also subject. This suggestion was endorsed by the university and was nursed by many minds until the situation grew so desperate that recourse to it was unavoidable.

Pope Urban's policy in Naples was nothing but a series of wild adventures. When he unearthed a conspiracy against himself, he ordered the execution of five of the cardinals who had participated. The indignation aroused by this inhuman Pontiff was so great that when he died there was turbulent rejoicing. Yet the hope that the Roman College would not seek to elect a successor was doomed to disappointment. Urban was followed by the young and uneducated Boniface IX (13891404). The schism caused him little concern but the Papal finances alarmed him since Church moneys were now paid into two Curiac and the pecuniary stability of his throne was thereby undermined. But the gold which his pedlars of indulgences brought home, whenever they did not pocket it themselves, he turned over to his relatives. Though the repute of this simonistic Pontiff was bad, the best minds of the University of Paris nevertheless urged that a new French election be postponed when Clement died in Avignon during the middle years of Boniface's pontificate. In vain had Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Charlier de Gerson, and Nicholas of Clemanges rec- ommended three roads toward peace to Clement before he died: the voluntary retirement of both Popes and a new election, or a decision by a court of arbitration selected from both camps, or a General Coun- cil. Their advice was now again in vain. Although the young king, the mentally unsettled Charles VI, had during a lucid moment him-

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self endorsed their recommendations, the cardinals elected Pedro di Luna, a Spaniard, Benedict XIII (1394-1417).

With unbending determination, this Pope who loved to rule re- sisted every plea o the Crown and of the University that he make an effort to reach a settlement. He was an admirer of St. Catherine of Siena and earnestly weighed plans to reform the Church; but for the sake of these plans he betrayed the Church and his genius alike. He was a little Hildebrand on a misguided errand, France itself as well as his native kingdoms of Castile and Navarre abrogated obedience to him, and for three years held him a prisoner in Avignon. Before his election he had sworn an oath to labour for the unity of the Church, but he lived up to this solemn promise by entering into meaningless negotiations with his opponent, after whose death the recalcitrant Romans elected a Pope of their own. Soon afterward he, too, died, and then they chose the aged Venetian cardinal who became Gregory XII (1406-1415). Both Popes pledged themselves to meet on the coast of Liguria and there exchange resignations; but the plan came to naught. With truly military caution they approached each other until only a small space intervened. According to the deposition of his secretary, Gregory said that he could live only on land and there- fore could not enter the water, while Benedict stated that he could live only on water and therefore could not go on land. All hope was gone. In Rome, the Pope, who indulged his favourites, still sur- rounded himself in his old age with a prodigal court. Finally even his own cardinals abandoned him. Meanwhile the Avignon party in France confronted a difficult situation when their benefactor, the Duke of Orleans who exercised the regency, was murdered. There- upon the cardinals of this Curia also urged that an understanding be reached with Rome. The two Colleges met in common assembly at Livorno and agreed that a Council should convene in Pisa during 1409. It was high time. Following the example set by English statesmen, France too had seriously undermined the position of the Papacy by declaring (1408) that it was illegal for the Popes to make appoint- ments to benefices or to tax the clergy. Gallicanism was in the as- cendancy. In common with Anglicanism it declared that the Pope might pasture his sheep but was not to fleece them. -

On the day appointed, the Council convened in the cathedral.

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Rh Though both of the Popes had been invited, neither appeared. Thereupon the Council conferred upon itself the authority it lacked, so that Gerson and d'Ailly crowned their theory with victory. The assembly deposed both Popes and chose the archbishop of Milan, who had been born in Greece, as Alexander V. He closed the Council of Pisa and postponed the reform for which the countries were clamouring until such time as another Council could convene. The rightful cardinals lent him their support and the greater part of the Church followed suit, but unity of obedience was so far from being established that matters were now worse than before. After Alexander suddenly died, the man who had dominated him and the Council completed, as John XXIII (1410–1415), what one chronicler termed "the accursed trinity of the Papacy." This unscrupulous and lucky Neapolitan was far more suited to the role of a criminal than to that of a Pope (after him no other Pontiff took the name of John) and the number of those who ardently desired a great council of reform increased.

It was to prove a boon to the Papacy that there still existed an Imperial authority which had not abandoned the idea that part of its function was to exercise a protectorate over the Church. After a three-fold Imperial schism, Sigismund became master of Germany in 1410 and could deal with the monstrous apparition of a three-fold schism in the Papacy. The hopes of the tottering Church rested on him alone. With energy and diplomacy he brought about the Council of Constance. This was a European congress of spiritual and temporal leaders, and means more in the history of the Papacy than merely an attempt to end the schism through arbitration. The Council attempted to undermine the absolutism of the Papal universal monarchy by emphasizing the democratic and national elements in the constitution of the Church. Nevertheless the monarchical system was not surmounted either during the debates of the four years during which the Council remained in session, or during the eighteen years which the Council of Basel consumed. Nevertheless the nations strengthened in the political as well as in the spiritual sense their desire for self-determination. The deepest reason for this outcome, which cannot at all be ascribed to a great Papal personality (for no such personality appeared during these two decades), must be seen

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to lie from the human point of view in the dogmatic and political essence of the Catholic Church. The iron determination to govern is the result of the Church's belief in the unity and inviolability of the law which it knows itself called upon to administer as the repre- sentative of the divinely established universal monarchy proclaimed in Christian revelation.

Sigismund realized the danger that lay in an aggressive Ottoman Empire, and was in addition confronted with religious and political up- heaval in Bohemia. The spirit of the Wyclifites had compelled Eng- land's parliament to legalize capital punishment as the only means of dealing with the Lollards, and it was now undermining civic order in the German eastern provinces as well. Prague, with its flourishing university, was the headquarters of these innovators. The Czech de- sire for political independence clashed with German tradition; and friends of ecclesiastical reform like Huss and Hieronymus were carried away by the fervour of their attack on a shameless traffic in indulgences and on a prelacy which had forgotten God to the point where their legitimate belief in their calling to cleanse the temple was tinged with Wyclifites ideas. They appealed from an errant Church to the Bible, from the Pope to Christ, and from the authority of existing institutions to personal conscience and conviction. In their zeal for the ideal Church they apostasized from the real Church.

The Emperor insisted upon obedience to Pope John. When he came to Italy, he then forced this Pope, who had been compelled to flee to Naples from Rome by the armies of Ladislas, to issue invitations to the Council. The choice of the German city of Constance indi- cated to John that whatever was done would be done inside the realm subject to Sigismund's authority. Therefore he sought at the same time to gain the support of Duke Frederic of Austria and John of Bur- gundy, both hostile to Sigismund. As he crossed the snow covered Arlberg and looked down upon the Bodensee, he said with a premo- nition of his destiny: "This, then, is the trap in which foxes are caught."

In Constance he was lodged in the bishop's palace. The public ses- sions were held in it and in the cathedral, and the discussions were con- cerned with the schism, with heresy and reform of the Church in all its members. They dealt also with the Bohemian question, the war

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between England and France, and many other problems which con- cerned the peoples of Europe. The novel order of procedure adopted was in itself an expression of the Council theory: ballots were cast ac- cording to nations and not according to individuals. Italy with the whole College of Cardinals had only one vote, as did Germany, France and England. Huss was already living in the city, provided with an Imperial letter of conduct which did not, however, guarantee him protection against the ecclesiastical penal courts since it was only a political pass. Pope John, granted all the honours of a legitimate Sovereign Pontiff, presided over the first public session on November 16, 1414. Sigismund appeared at Christmas time and was soon also a witness of a practically universal desire to desert John. During the second general session the Pope, who himself opened the meeting with High Mass, had to read amidst great excitement a declaration whereby he was obliged to abdicate provided the other two Popes did likewise. This document was preceded by a list of grievances in the fearful mirror of which the Pope could not help seeing that his cause was hopeless. An attempt by the French delegates to transfer the Coun- cil to French territory gave him new assurance, but this was as bootless as was his desire to come to terms with the Spanish Pope through a personal meeting in Nizza. This encounter Sigismund sought to reserve for himself, and he was supported by the majority of the Coun- cil. Then with the aid of Duke Frederic the Pope managed to escape from Constance at dusk on the 2oth of March, despite all precautions taken by Sigismund. Safe in Burgundy or France he could have disregarded the vote of the Council to suspend his activities or have ordered (for he was not deposed as yet) the assembly to remove to the West. But the effort did not succeed. His sensational adventure in escape ended in a Mannheim prison, from which he was released only in 1419, after Italy had again conferred ecclesiastical honours upon him.

On the morning after the flight the Emperor himself rode through the streets with a blare of trumpets. At this time Constance was the principal city of Europe a market centre, a camp and a forum alike. Twenty thousand foreigners resided permanently within its walls. Its highly developed industrial life, the excellent conduct of which has been much praised, was in danger of sudden collapse if the con-

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gregated masses fled in a panic. In all probability even the smallest money-lender or dealer in bread was seized with fright, but Sigismund announced the Pope's escape and at the same time urged all to remain, promising to protect the city. Two weeks later, on April 6th, 1415, the Council met in permanent session and reached the following con- clusion, from which only a few of its members dissented: that the Council of Constance represented the entire Church on earth, that it received its power directly from Christ, and that therefore everyone, including the Pope, was obliged to obey it. In a trial that followed John XXIII was deposed, on May 29th, as a simonist and an offender against the code of the Papacy. Broken in spirit, he had already re- ceived in Radolfszel the implacable decree from the mouth of some of his loyal followers. They could now kiss only his hands and his lips and not his foot. On the day when the verdict was announced, he ordered the Papal cross removed from his room. At the same time a goldsmith of Constance was ordered to break up his seal and coat of arms.

On July 4th, Gregory XII, then almost ninety, proclaimed through a legate that he was willing to abdicate under certain conditions. Two days later Huss was put to death at the stake. Neither the Pope nor a Papal tribunal imposed this terrible sentence. It was decreed by the Council of Reform, the spiritual prime movers of which, Gerson and d' Ailly, had themselves vied with each other in opposing the Pope and the hierarchy. This deed, from which the bloody Hussite wars took their rise, followed the example given by the English Crown, and as a seemingly up-to-date method of fighting against revolution excited the Council and the rest of the world far less than it would so many more modern dogmatists of a dogmaless freedom. A year later Muss's courageous friend Hieronymus was also burned at the stake; and the throng of humanists who spent their time in Constance and the "sur- rounding country as diplomatic officials, investigators, and antiquar- ians had occasion to marvel at the spiritual fortitude of a martyr. Among them were Poggio and a future Pope ^Eneas Silvio.

With less difficulty the Council solved the problem of how to de- pose Pedro di Luna, Benedict XIII. He still had a following of four cardinals; and though nearly ninety he ruled the eastern coast of Spain from his castle on a crag above Pensacola, and wrote in imitation of

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Boethius a treatise "Concerning the Comforts of Theology." Sigis- mund himself had visited Benedict in his former residence at Perpignan and had tried in vain to induce him to conform with the decrees o the Council. Now, however, he persuaded the countries which were in obedience to this Pope Aragon, Castile, Navarre and Scotland to sign the Treaty of Narbonne in mid-December, 1415, and there- with to sever the relationship. By this time St. Vincent Ferrer of Valencia, a holy and influential Dominican preacher, had become an important figure in the situation. This apostle, whose mind never seemed to grow old, had made a futile effort to persuade the anti-Pope, whose countryman he was and whose confessor he had once been, to abdicate. He still clung to his purpose, negotiated with the Emperor in opposition to Benedict, discussed the matter with the kings of France and Aragon, and at length declared that for the sake of unity Benedict must go. Finally the Spanish entered the Council as the fifth nation, and during the summer of 1417 joined the other powers in voting that Pedro di Luna be deposed. Though Benedict died in 1424, the burlesque of the Spanish schism continued.

The Council was wrestling with the problem whether the reform of the Church should be discussed before the election of a new Pope or whether a new Pope should first be appointed to whom the reform might then be entrusted. In spite of the great tension between the French and the English (a war had broken out just a while before and France had suffered a severe blow at the Battle of Agincourt, the ef- fects of which were mitigated only as a result of the service rendered by St. Jeanne d'Arc in 1429), the Council remained in session and arrived at definitive conclusions. Little was done in the matter of reform, though it was ruled that Councils must be summoned periodi- cally and that precautions must be taken against the threat of a new schism. These regulations were put in force and the form under which a new Papal election was to take place was decreed- In addi- tion to the College of twenty-three cardinals, six additional prelates from each of the five nations were given the right to vote.

The French were by no means pleased when on the nth of No- vember, 1417, an Italian Pope, Martin V (1417 1431), emerged from the Conclave. He belonged to the family of Colonna which had

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caused trouble to many Popes, most particularly to Boniface at Anagni. Welcomed by the world as a saviour of unity, he received the threefold crown in the Cathedral of Constance. The ceremony was of such splendour that even Rome had seldom seen the equal.

Exactly a hundred years before ths re:\^!:-.ni of Luther, this Pope rode through a German city; and at his side the Roman King and the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg walked through the deep mud holding the bridle reins of his steed. The Papacy was saved, but the man who was now Pope did not save the Church. The spirit and the mission of the Council, which came to a close in 1418, had been com- mitted into faithless hands. The fact that his fascinating character had won over everyone helped little or not at all to reform the Church in all its members. He went to Florence and from there, by diplo- macy and military action, succeeded in liberating the Papal States from the power of Naples and wild robber bands. The Eternal City and the surrounding territory afforded a picture of misery as a result of the war and famine which had been visited upon them. In Sep- tember, 1424, the Pope made his entry through the Porta del Populo. He took up residence in the Vatican and rebuilt ruined churches, in- cluding the Basilica of the Lateran which had long before been de- stroyed by fire, and as a Pope-King established the monarchical unity of his temporal power.

For more than a hundred years afterward Papal policy remained intimately bound up with the lesser fortunes of Rome and Italy. The axis of this policy became the Papal States, the emphasis on which increased as rime went on, because though the universal Church had the power to levy taxes, the triumph of nationalist particularism formed part of the troubles which necessarily confronted the spiritual head of a territorial monarchy obliged to pay soldiers, maintain a court, support cardinals and embassies, and become the builder and benefactor of his city. Martin V soon proved to be an able regent of the temporal power and an equally slothful shepherd of his flock. Neither as Pope nor as prince was he fond of the councilar idea. This was a threat to the monarchical character of the Church, and every reform it sponsored diminished the income with which alone he could balance his budget. But the nations were so persistent in demanding the continuance of the work begun at Constance that the Pope was

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compelled after many evasions to summon the Council of Basel. Car- dinal Giuliano Gesarini, who had preached the crusade against the powerful rebellion of the Hussites, wrote the Pope that it was high rime to act. Martin appointed the Cardinal president of the Council and thereupon died.

Constance was dominated by an idea of the Papacy, the bearer of which (reminiscent of Dante's imperial president of the peoples) was to be caput ministeriale, a serving head, and so to strive to bring about through free co-operation with the members of the body of the Church the subordination of all things earthly to the laws of Christ, If one compares the spirit of this Council with the attitude of the old Church, one sees that in spite of many resemblances of a superficial kind there had taken place during a thousand years a transition from enthusiasm to reason and from visionary yearning for the Civitas Dei to a query put by men who knew history as to what the function of the Church really was. What place did philosophy and law assign to it in the complex of human existence, and what form of adjustment between the Church and the Papacy was desirable? This new structure had been half completed at Constance but it was to fall into complete ruin at Basel. Nevertheless the event also had its meaning and its conse- quences.

Eugene IV (14311447), an honest, strict Venetian religious, gave the Conclave the promise it exacted that he would carry out a reform of the Church and the Curia. He did not lack fanatical zeal, but he was wholly without political skill and intellectual vision. Though he may have been bound by the agreement made by his predecessor to summon a future Council of Union on the southern coast of Italy, his attempt to suspend the deliberations of Basel after they had scarce be- gun and to choose another site compelled all those who participated in the Council to oppose him from the beginning. Sigismund, the German princes and the King of France adopted a hostile attitude; Cardinal Oesarini joined forces with them and finally persuaded the Pope himself to abandon his plan. The decision of Constance that the highest powers of the Church were lodged in the Council was proclaimed anew; Pope Eugene was called upon to justify his attitude, and a movement to depose him was threatened. Sigismund went to Rome and during the last days of May, 1433, managed to have him-

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self crowned Emperor. The diplomacy he used made less of an im- pression on Eugene than did attacks staged by the Visconri and other enemies. They looked upon his disagreement with the Council as an excure for stirring up popular resentment and therewith tumult. Eu- gene recognized the authority of the Council by signing a formula submitted to him; but the reforms it decreed threatened to close the sources from which the Curia could obtain much needed money. When the Council of Union was broached a minority wished to con- voke in Italy while a majority sided with the French (the object here was to restore the Gallican Papacy) and favoured Avignon. There- with minds were sundered into two hostile camps. A spiritual cleav- age went hand in hand with a disagreement concerning policy. The stronger wing of those who favoured parliamentarianism became more and more radically democratic. Caesarini and others, including the notable philosophic pioneer Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, completely revised their attitude and once again linked up their ideal of popular government, humanism and culture with a sovereign ecclesiastical mon- archy. They attended the Council of Union which met in company with the Greeks and all other Oriental peoples in Ferrara during 1438. It removed to Florence after 1439, and later on completed in Rome the difficult task of reunion. This was, however, only short lived because the Eastern Empire had to surrender Hagia Sophia to Allah and his Prophet in 1453*

The Council of Basel continued under French leadership. Both Germany and France managed to derive political benefits from the edicts of reform issued before the breach with the Pope occurred. Declarations against Roman centralism and the system of tithes were declared a law of the state in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438). The German Prince-Electors who after Sigismund's death maintained a neutral attitude amidst the quarrels which disrupted the Church, resolved at the Reichstag of Mayence in 1439 to fU w French example in so far as their principalities were concerned. The **Rump Parliament" of Basel committed suicide by deposing Eugene and setting up an anti-Pope the last one in history. This Felix V (1439-1449) was the rich Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who after a long reign in Rippaille on the Lake of Geneva, became a hermit living in perfect comfort as the head of an order of religious knights. He had

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few supporters even in France. ./Eneas Silvio, the humanist, entered his service as secretary and lauded the spirit of Basel in the purest Latin, but abandoned the post three years later, entered the service of the German Imperial chancellery in 1442, and then as a convert to the idea of a strong Papacy laboured in behalf of Eugene IV. Together with Caspar Schlick, whom Sigismund had appointed Chancellor, and in co-operation with the travelling legates Nicholas of Cusa and Thomas ParentucelH (the next Pope), he used every means and every trick known to skillful diplomacy to bring about the end of German neutral- ity that was already favouring a breach with Eugene. He persuaded Frederic III, the weak representative of Habsburg power and German monarchy, to order the Council out of the imperial city of Basel, in- duced the princes to sign concordats (from these there developed later on the rights of princes over the churches in their territories), and by means of the Concordat of Vienna (1448), which was declared an Imperial law in Aschaffenburg (1449) > he linked the German Church once more to a Papacy which could impose obligations but was itself above having such obligations imposed upon it. Pope Eugene did not live to see the completion of his work, but as he died he had the joy of knowing that the German ambassadors had professed obedience to him.

The wraith of the Council of Basel moved to Lausanne and there came to an end in 1449, a ^ ter ^ e ^ kad abdicated. The parliament in which, according to ^Eneas Silvio's account, the same bishops who defended their rights against Rome took to quarrelling with cooks and stable boys, ceased to possess any claim to existence. But the great chance to carry out reform in all departments of the Church was also not utilized by the Popes and the princes.

There are two kinds of sap which rise in the tree of the Church. Or rather there are two of which we are always made aware anew. The one now rose out of the world of that antiquity which again struggled toward rebirth, toward renaissance, and the other flowed from the Gospel that proclaims the death and rebirth of man into Christlikeness. These two forces were separated and merged, were wrapped in struggle, were persuaded to undergo reconciliation in that world of opposites which came by its reputation of inner unity simply because it was given an all-inclusive name the Renaissance.

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The fortunes of the Papacy, the deeds and misdeeds of the men who occupied the Roman See during the time of the Renaissance, the German Religious Revolution and the Counter-Reform undertaken by the Catholic Church, bring to mind a saying by that great humanist, -^Eneas Silvio: 'The apostolic ship often founders but it never sinks; it is often shaken, but it is never broken up." On the other hand Saint Martin, a mystic, later on termed the Church the strength of the Papacy; and in this sentence he came far nearer the truth than he did in the antithetical statement that the Papacy is the weakness of the Church. For we must remember that the vigorous protests of the Church against weak and wicked Popes were normally also a silent apotheosis of the Papal Sec,

No one has ever questioned the significance of this institution for the Eternal City, but many have debated about its connection with the imperium Romanum of antiquity. On this subject opinions differ widely in all ages. Edmund Gibbon, looking back upon Gregory the Great, was of the opinion that Rome had always contained within itself the law that governs its life. Hippolyte Taine believed that the Papacy had retained too much of the spirit of the Roman Empire and of Latin culture. Nietzsche, on the other hand, reproached Christen- dom with having corrupted Rome; and Goethe, wandering over the Seven Hills, refused to judge the past in accordance with his own ideas and sought to understand the greatness which confronted his gaze. One thing is surely true: antique Rome lived on in Christian Rome, and this even in times oblivious of Christ has constituted the political backbone of religious life in Europe. This it certainly was until the Rome of the Renaissance placed God beneath the gods. It lost the inner world of the first and the seventh Gregorys and with that the right to exercise power for the sake of faith.

The triumph of humanism did not come about unexpectedly. Men recalled to mind the Greek influence on early Christian thinkers and teachers. Cassiadorc had abandoned politics for the study of the ancient writers, and on these the cultural life of the courts of Charlemagne and Otto was fed. Cicero, Ovid, Terence and Seneca

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were read in the monasteries. Plato and soon after him Aristotle (though he was sharply attacked) nurtured Scholasticism. The Averroists in the secular schools of Paris soon found themselves pat- ently separating reason from faith. Dante still lived and wrote out of the feeling that these were one; and throughout a lifelong struggle Petrarch clung to that unity. After they were dead a change took place in Naples, Florence and other cities a change which led to a partly philosophical, partly aesthetic coolness to the spiritual world of the Middle Ages. In these cities and in the Rome of the Renaissance Popes, there were made manifest about 1500 things that had long since been in preparation in the dolce stil nuovo, in Scholasticism, and also in mysticism. The number of men who were estranged from the older conception of the supernatural increased. The arts of the Renaissance, if one excludes a few of its products, were no longer in- spired by the power of religion to give expression to its convictions, but grew out of the states of mind in which self-reliant man may find himself. To these artists religion became merely the subject-matter, the object, and the complex of symbols by which they gave expression to human points of view arising from within themselves. Some- times also it was no more than a storehouse of conventional fancies that could be put to aesthetic use. For already there were many who could not live without art many who differed radically in this respect from Bernard of Clairvaux who banished art lest it obscure the splen- dour of the inner life that had been vouchsafed to him. Art and inr tellectual activity were not to replace what had been lost. In this, as in many other periods during which they have flourished, they became symptoms of a defeatist pessimism face to face with existence. The magnificent human figures of the time wrestle with an inner spiritual chaos. Only a few artists confessed, as did MichaeUngelo, that in painting and sculpture alone is there no peace.

Hardly one among the ten Popes who reigned during this period of flourishing Roman culture can be recognized as a religious figure. It may be said in mitigation of the blame that rests upon most of them that there was a kind of natural barrier between these Romans and the innermost meaning of Christ's message. Characteristic of virtually all of them was readiness to take a role in th-. irama which He who

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138 He goes far on till he comes near the castle, where he meets a fox and is instructed by it to enter a certain room, in which he will find the lady dressed in poor clothing. He must have her put on good clothes, and she will sing. He follows the advice, but is interrupted, while the lady is singing, by the king of the castle, who tells him that he must get a white horse from still another king. He meets the fox again, and is instructed that, when he finds the horse with an old saddle on it, he must put on a good one, so that it will neigh. Again he follows the fox's advice, and is interrupted by people who rush in when they hear the horse neigh. From them he obtains the steed, and retraces his steps, eloping with the lady at the second king's castle and at the first king's carrying off the blackbird. On his arrival at home he is thrown into a cistern by his treacherous brothers, who take his spoil to the king. He is saved by the fox, however, which draws him out with its tail. When he comes into the presence of his father, and not till then, is the healing accomplished.

In Breton IV. we find again three sons of a king, who set forth to get the white blackbird and also the lady with locks of gold. Jeannot, the youngest of them, pays for the interment of a beggar on the way. Later a fox comes to him, saying that it is the soul of the poor man. It helps him procure the youth-giving blackbird and afterward the lady with the marvellous hair. He then meets his brothers, who for envy push him over a precipice, but he is saved and sent homeward by the fox.

Breton V. does not differ materially from the preceding, though it has interesting minor variations. The three sons of a king seek the bird Drédaine in its golden cage in order to cure their father. The two elder brothers go to England, and there meet jolly companions, but find no trace of the bird. The third brother, the ugly one, comes thither, is mocked and robbed by

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was thrice tempted by the Devil once enacted as an example for those who were to be His viceroys on earth. Everyone knows the Renais- sance Popes and knows the worst ones best. What they did for Rome abides as a service to humanity; what they left undone and what they did ignobly (perhaps these things are not separable from the service, for saints do not function as warlords, builders, and fosterers of the arts) the Church must pay for in the coinage of historical satire to which there is no reply save the answer of her Master that He had given Satan power also over His own.

The political events which took place on the European scene during this period were dominated by the rise of the Spanish Habsburg power and by the efforts of the other great powers, among which were the territorial sovereigns of the two central states of the old Empire, Ger- many and Italy, to oppose that rise. But though they were divided among themselves, the nations continued to develop an autonomous cultural life. France became the most determined rival of the Span- ish Habsburg House. After it had concluded the war with England, it effected the collapse of the hostile state of Burgundy and strength- ened its own power through the King's successful resistance to the nobles. It was again in a position to assume leadership in the trend toward absolute monarchy which was so marked a characteristic of the first half of the sixteenth century, and to foster its imperialistic plans in Italy. The governing idea was to gain control of the states of the eastern Mediterranean area. After a successful expedition enabled Charles VIII (1494) for a time to subject Italy to French influence, the fortunes of the peninsula were bound up with the outcome of the great contest between Spain and France. The prelude to this contest had been the struggle between the Houses of Aragon and Anjou for control of Southern Italy, Then the Spanish kingdom and Germany (France's ancient rivals) were united in the one empire of Charles V; and Francis I found himself in danger of being overwhelmed by the universal monarchy.

Since Germany was meanwhile split into two camps by the Refor- mation, the religious question also became a political factor in this struggle between Charles and Francis. The dissolution of the spiritual unity of Europe, long since preceded by a political centrifugalism,

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was made permanent by the opposition of France and Spain. The "most Christian King" had the greatest interest in keeping the Ger- man upheaval from subsiding. He supported Protestant princes be- cause they were opponents of the Emperor, and was thus logically compelled to accord a certain toleration to a new faith which was soon to endanger the French national monarchy when it produced the re- publican movement of the Hugenots. Meanwhile Charles V, though obliged to cherish the Catholic unity which held the many peoples under his dominion together in an Empire which had no other bond, came into conflict both with the nationalism of the new teaching and also with the universalism of the Papacy, then as always the natural antagonist of his universal Empire. Therefore he had to outlaw Lu- ther and yet to take arms against the Curia, which used France against him in order to protect its own territorial power. The paradoxical spectacle of troops of a Catholic Empire inimical to heretics burning and plundering the city of the Pope (the sack of Rome) re-emphasized more impressively than ever had been done in the Middle Ages the irreconcilability of a real Empire with a politically powerful Papacy. This irreconcilability was and remained the source of misfortune in the Church regardless of whether the ancient rights of the patrimonium Petri were defended or whether the nationalistic ideal of Italy and its cultural hegemony were served. Once the temporal possessions of the Papacy had had a great significance and mission; but for a long rime this had not been the case. The Popes were harassed by con- cern over their power, and therewith lost the superior claim to uni- versal respect which alone could have unified the great powers against the threat of Tartar and Mohammedan invasions. The idea of the Crusades had still been alive in the fourteenth century. For the central powers it was part and parcel of any plan for world dominion. Intel- lectual leaders like Dante, Petrarch and subsequent humanists sum- moned all to battle against the "Egyptian hound" Islam, in the name of that great spiritual affiliation between Christian peoples which they wished to conserve as the legacy of the Middle Ages. But it con- stantly proved less possible to throw back the Turkish heirs of the Byzantine Empire as decisively as Spain had done. Francis I even negotiated with the Sultan in order to curb the power of Charles V.

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Tommaso Parentucelli, the son o a Ligurian physician, continued the passionate humanistic studies of his early years after he had become Nicholas V (1447-1455). He had served as a teacher in the Flor- entine families of the Strozzi and Albizzi and had been Cosimo de Medici's librarian at San Marco. He was from the beginning eager to spend whatever money he had for books and building. A tireless collector of manuscripts from all the world, he was the founder of the Vatican Library. His hope was that the Roman See might by foster- ing culture win the affection of the peoples; and so the court of this amiable scholar, who personally led the simplest of lives, became in all truth a Court of the Muses. Fra Angelico painted for him; Leo Battista Alberti spent his universalistic genius on countless plans drawn up for the Pope. And among the host of literati who swarmed about there were also such critical spirits as Laurentius Valla, who proved that the long disputed "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery and escaped the Inquisition thanks to the Pope and the King of Naples. Churches fallen into ruin were restored, and buildings serving practical or ornamental uses were erected. To be sure the price exacted was a wholesale destruction of the memorials of antiquity. The waters of the Fontana Treve sparkled anew as the symbol of a fresh and vig- orous Roman life. Bulwarks and castles arose throughout the city and the Papal States by order of a Pope who spent his days and nights reading parchments but did not fathom the runic handwriting on the wall of the future. A treaty with Germany, the Viennese Concordat of 1448, conferred many an advantage on the Roman See which a stronger Imperial power would not have conceded; but it also increased German resentment, which expressed itself with increased vigour in the Gravamina nationis Germanica against the methods of Roman ad- ministration. Legates of the Curia who journeyed throughout Eu- rope to proclaim the jubilee of 1450 and to introduce reforms were able to do little even though they possessed gifts of mind and character similar to those which Nicholas of Cusa, so creative a spirit in that time of intellectual change, manifested in Germany. Here, under the much too prolonged and far too inactive rule of Frederic III, on whom the Pope had in 1452 conferred the last Imperial crown that was to be bestowed in Rome, traditional bonds with the ecclesiastical centre had been loosened. The failure of such advocates of reform made a

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far deeper impression on Nicholas V than did a conspiracy, organized by Porcaro, a demagogue and a shadow of Rienzi, who paid for his Gesaristic dreams and his attempts on the lives of the Pope and the cardinals with death by hanging.

A troubled Conclave followed the death of Nicholas and chose as Pope a Spaniard who had proved his mettle as a diplomat. He took the name of Calixtus III (14551458). He was descended from the powerful and prominent family of the Borgia of Valencia, and had grown up hating Islam. The war against the Turks became his polit- ical program: he sent men and money to Hunyadi, Regent of Hun- gary; and among the men were the Cardinal Legate Carvajal, the Pope's countryman, and St. Juan Capistrano, a fiery preacher. A fleet was fitted out by the Holy See itself and placed under the leadership of the Cardinal. Hunyadi died victorious after the Battle of Belgrade, 1456, mourned by the Pope who then sent aid to Iscander Beg (Prince George of Albania) who almost single handed kept the field against the Turks. The princes into whose eyes the scimitar did not directly flash looked calmly on at a distance. The Germans muttered against the tithes that were levied for the wars against the Turks; and, their bishops, whom the Concordat of Vienna had not freed from the bur- den of Roman taxation, were lax preachers of the Crusade. For the sake of its eastern trade Venice sought to live on good terms with the conquerors of Byzantium. Only a few understood what had been lost when the ancient bridge between Orient and Occident collapsed, because the fall of the hated Greek Empire overshadowed all else in their minds.

The danger was grave when Cardinal yEneas Silvio Piccolomini re- ceived the tiara as the fitting conclusion of the colourful Odyssey of his life. This noble Siennese, who had known a childhood of poverty, called himself Pius II (1458-1464), because "Pius" was the adjective coupled with -^Eneas in his beloved Virgil's epic. He was a broad- minded humanist who had manifested the brilliance and richness of a universal mind in writings and addresses. He was known as a charm- ingly libertine story-teller after the manner of Boccaccio, as a defender of the councilar idea, as secretary to an anti-Pope, as a geographer, as the historian of the Council of Basel, and as a diplomat in the Imperial chancellery. When he reached the age of fifty he stripped off a cer-

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tain frivolity and became devoted to serious thought. One is re- minded of Heniy V of England's parting from Falstaff in Shake- speare's play when one reads that the Pope in the famous Bull of 1463 told his contemporaries who bade "the new Pius to remember the old ^neas" to "forget ^neas but cling to Pius." He now upheld the Papal system without compromise. Appealing to a Council, no matter in whose name, he termed heresy and lese majeste. The first and last care of his government was to serve the idea of a unified lead- ership of the Christian West and to defend European culture against the attacks of Islam. Summoning all the Christian princes to a Coun- cil in Mantua, he urged them in a brilliant sermon to take up the Cross. He stubbornly insisted that each country pay its church rev- enue, cut off moneys due to humanists and artists, and used the vast sums which accrued to him from the newly discovered mines near Tolfa to arm and equip an army against the Crescent. When vir- tually all the Princes failed him, the Pope himself took command. He was already a dying man when he stood on the cliff of Ancona waiting for his fleet; and with his death the whole enterprise failed.

Paul II (14641471) was no energetic furtherer of his predecessor's policy. This splendour-loving Venetian dwelt within narrower ho- rizons. He was a generous and in spite of his dignity a jovial friend of the Romans, built the Venetian Palace of San Marco for himself, collected masterpieces of plastic art, and also aided the first German printers in Rome. Yet he was decidedly a churchman and this brought him into sharp conflict with the humanists. He discon- tinued the college of the seventy abbreviators who earned their keep in the Papal Chancellery by copying extracts from letters of petition and drawing up suggestions for Curial letters. Likewise he abolished the learned guild of the Roman Academy, wherein the cult of the ancient gods had become more than just a romantic game in the garb of an heroic past. The proceedings of this liberal lodge of cultivated men harboured also the passions of revolutionary demagogues. The sus- picion of having conspired against Paul rested even on Platina, who was made to serve a sentence in a cell at San Angelo. After he had begged his way out in the most self-abasing manner, he became the Plutarch of Papal history. Though his work as a whole is fair, he took revenge on the Pope who had punished him by describing him

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as a rude barbarian. Since even Platina could say nothing worse, this Pope who loved the world, doubtless also added something to the carnival joys of the Romans, but could not bring himself to go beyond imposing the ban on the Hussites, managed to earn a decent histori- cal reputation.

History has had to deal otherwise with his immediate successors. Even so all the ignominy which the Popes of the next fifty years were to heap upon the Papacy is not without its significance for the political historian; and to the chronicler of culture these are, of course, decades of splendour. Because these pontificates were alternately or simulta- neously concerned with fostering either the Papal States or nepotism, they prevented Rome from being swallowed up by France or the Spanish world empire.

Sixtus IV (14711484), born of a poor family of fisherfolk named Rovere in the Genoese country, first a Friar Minor and then General of the Franciscan Order, appears in the Vatican fresco painted by Melozzo da Forli as a venerable, princely figure, earnest, restrained, who gazes meditatively into the distance through wise, beautiful eyes. Among the men grouped before the seated Pontiff is Platina, Prefect of the Library, who kneels and points to an inscription which glorified the Pope as a builder of churches, bridges and squares, and the donor of a foundling hospital. The rest are relatives, among them also Galliano della Rovere who was later to become Pope Julius II. This group-picture, which portrays the opening of the Vatican Library, is also known as "Sixtus IV and his Circle." The chronicler of the Papacy looks upon it differently than does the friend of the arts.

Hardly was Sixtus elected than he appointed his nephews Giuliano and the degenerate Pietro Riario bishops and cardinals. Pietro soon managed to have a yearly income of about 2,250,000 francs in present- day currency. This he did not long enjoy, for he soon died of the effects of his dissoluteness. The most beloved of Papal favourites was, however, Pietro's brother, Girolamo Riario, a layman. Origi- nally a pedlar of spices, he became the sovereign of an important principality. The fact that his uncle had been zealous in behalf of the Crusades proved of value also to him; for according to contempo- raries the real Turks were the Pope's nephews. The tithes and the

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moneys gained from indulgences did not suffice to attain the high objective, to reach which Sixtus waged wars and did even worse. His territorial policy clashed with the interests of the Medici in Florence. When he stripped Lorenzo of an advantage gained in the Apennines, this Lord of the Florentine Republic was compelled to make an alliance with Milan and Venice.

Sixtus saw that the Roman See was at stake. He undermined the Medici bank by withdrawing the moneys of the Apostolic Camera which were deposited there; and Florence for its part withstood Rome whenever there was question of appointments to ecclesiastical positions. Still further clashes deepened the conflict. Driven by his passionate devotion to his kindred, by a lust for power, and by theocratic concep- tions of the Church-State, the Pope could not resist affiliating himself with the most prominent foes of the Medici government. Riario befriended himself with the House of Pacci in Florence, which was harbouring plans of rebellion. The Pope was made a confidant. He said he wished the state to be overthrown, but wanted no one killed: "Though Lorenzo is a wicked man, still I do not wish his death. To give our assent to assassination whoever the man might be would not be befitting our office. But in so far as rebellion is concerned, yes, I want it ... Go and do what you think best, but see to it that no murder is done." But the conspirators to whom he addressed these words had already made it clear to him that they were plotting murder. He allowed them to proceed and perpetrate a deed which he could have prevented but did not wish to prevent. During Solemn High Mass on Easter Sunday, 1478, Giuliano Medici was murdered, but Lorenzo escaped slightly wounded into the sacristy. The indig- nant people took a dreadful revenge on the Pacci and other conspira- tors, who were thus also victims of the Papal policy. Florence was placed under the interdict, and the Papal States had to bear the mili- tary consequences of the unsuccessful uprising. On the immortal splendour of the Sixtine Chapel there falls the irremovable shadow of treason to the highest dignity on earth. During the same year -the Pope also said the word which decided that the Inquisition in Spain was to be given a new lease of life. His endorsement was necessary because in essence the Inquisition was no less a Church than a State institution. The alien, principally Jewish elements which under-

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mined the structure of the state compelled their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand to adopt measures of defense in which political ends and spiritual means, political means and spiritual ends, were in- extricably interwoven. The great historical success achieved by this blunder was the temple-like structure of a state which was so firm that it had no appeal and so strong that it virtually turned to stone. From out of this Spain, which knew how to maintain its national independ- ence when it signed a Concordat with Sixtus in 1482, there would go out later on an impulse salutary to the whole tottering Church.

A meaning of comparable depth is not to be discerned in the other European scandal of this period of intellectual renaissance. The de- plorable figure of Innocent VIII (14841492), a Genoese who owed his tiara to Julius Rovere who dominated him, began his reign by is- suing the fateful bull against witchcraft. The great prelates of the Carolingian Empire, and even the Church laws of the "dark" tenth century, had condemned as heretical the belief in witchcraft and magic which was a legacy from old Nordic and other Germanic peoples. One ruling had declared that whosoever believed these things to be true had lost his faith that he was doubtless an unbeliever, and even more degraded than a heathen. The experience that if faith is shown out the door superstition comes in through the window, was also borne out by the sunlight of the Renaissance. Everyone knows how the old German mania of witchcraft, encouraged by Luther, soon spread anew through the Protestant countries. Against the opposi- tion of those who fought against the rabid scare the noble Jesuit Count Spe and Thomasius, the rationalist Lutheran theologians thundered, and said that now atheism was bursting in upon evangeli- cal Zion. During the century which gave birth to Galileo and Lieb- nitz, countless women's bodies shrivelled up at the stake in all parts of Northern Europe. Not even the hatred entertained by the Lutheran camp for the Pope and all things Catholic, a hatred which was even to repudiate Gregory Ill's reform of the calendar on the ground that it emanated from Rome, could overcome a passionate dedication to the spirit of the "Witchhammer." This Dominican catechism of the particular madness of the time said, in opposition to the early Middle Ages and also to Gregory VII who had suppressed the persecution of witches in Denmark, that it was a great heresy not to believe in

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witches and witchcraft. The German inquisitors who composed this treatise had previously succeeded in eliciting the Papal Bull, and with it solemn recognition of the sanity of their madness. Canonists, in- quisitors and executioners joined in receiving the blessing of Inno- cent VIII. These horrors ran their course while the Pope was helping his children to make brilliant marriages. He wedded his son Frances- chetto to a daughter of his new ally Lorenzo di Medici, and as part payment for this favour made a thirteen-year-old son of the Medici House (the future Pope Leo X) a Cardinal. The marriage of his daughter Teodorina in Aragon sealed the dearly bought peace with the Ferranti of Naples. Both marriages took place in the Papal pal- ace. Prince Dschem, a Vatican prisoner, furnished the sums which the Pope needed for himself and his family. This unfortunate pre- tender to the Turkish throne was kept under arrest; and in return for the service thus rendered, his brother and rival Sultan Bajazet paid a large annual tribute to Innocent.

The Conclave of 1492 was the unhappiest in Papal history. When Lorenzo Medici died the situation in Italy became chaotic. Inside the College of Cardinals the Milanese party under Ascanio Sforza opposed the Neapolitan party under Giuliano della Rovere. The leaders of both factions considered themselves still too young to wear the tiara and therefore pushed instruments of their policy into the fore- ground for the time being. It was masterly intrigue and shameless vote-buying which brought the victory to the richest of all the Cardi- nals, Rodrigo Borgia, who was the candidate of the Milanese camp. Elected unanimously, this sixty-year-old Pontiff called himself Alex- ander VI (14921503). Out of his adulterous union with a Roman noblewoman, Vannozza dei Catani, whom he loved better than any other woman who had bestowed her favours upon him, four children Cesare, Juan, Jofre and Lucrezia were born. His policy was based on nepotism; and after Cesare, who had been appointed a cardi- nal in 1493, resigned from the sacred College in 1498, the Pope de- voted himself completely to the task of building up a central Italian kingdom under the Borgia dynasty. Unstable, chaotic, he made and then dissolved amateurish alliances which brought both himself and Italy to the brink of despair. By making common cause with Milan,

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France's ally against Naples, he opened a route through Italy for Charles VIII, the French king whose diplomats had won him over to their side while he was still a cardinal. Negotiations between the Pope and Naples met with temporary success. Charles recognized the legitimacy of the Pope's election, the dubiousness of which had been a trump card in the hands of the Rovere, broke the Cardinal (Giuliano) and his party, and as a result induced Alexander to sever that tie with the Aragon prince of Naples which Cesare Borgia had just previously sealed by effecting the coronation of Alfonso II. There- with the French were free to attack Naples. When a league was formed to drive the conquering Charles out of the country, the Pope reversed his policy and joined it. He now also broke off his alliance with the house of Milan and brought about the divorce of his daughter Lucrezia, whom he had married at the age of thirteen to a Sforza. This year, 1497, in which the tragedy of Savonarola, the great casri- gator of Florence, neared its end and during which the Pope's son Juan was slain, possibly by Cesare, amidst a chaos of family scandals, was followed (1498) by a sharp change in the Borgia policy. Cesare himself now took control and proved firm, lucid and merciless. Every- one knows the unrelenting methods by means of which this ruthless man during a full five years carried out his will to power in a way that delighted Machiavelli. He dominated the Pope, his family, the Curia, the Sacred College, and the Roman nobility, and nowhere met resistance.

After the death of Charles VIII in 1498, Louis XII became King of France. In order to secure the Pope's assent to his divorce he offered him an alliance. Cesare accepted. He surrendered his spiritual ride, journeyed to France in order to induce Louis to take the field against Italy, and strengthened his position by marrying a French princess. The new allies moved on from victory to victory. Milan was oc- cupied, the seigniories of the Papal states and the Romagna were over- thrown, and all resistance in Rome was put down tyrannically during a speedy campaign in which the Pope himself took a part. Meanwhile Lucrezia conducted the business of the Curia. The power of the Colonna was broken, their fortresses were captured, and the heads of the family were slain. Suddenly Cesare appeared to be on the brink of danger his condottieri deserted him. But the horrible blood

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bath of Sinigaglia, where he drew the outwitted soldiers into a trap and ordered them strangled, cleared his path once more. The Orsini followed the Colonna down the path of destruction; the subjugation of Tuscany appeared to be only a question of time; the Spanish ma- jority in the College of Cardinals served as an instrument of the House of Borgia; and the Papal states were on the verge of becoming the sec- ular kingdom of their dynasty. Then everything was wrecked by an accident which seems like the closing act of a bad drama; and the splendour of the House of Borgia was destroyed.

Father and son had already done away with many a rich member of the Sacred College by resorting to poison. Cardinal Hadriaa Castellesi was also destined to meet the same fate. They agreed to come to dinner as his guests at his villa on the Janiculum. Poisoned wine, which they had provided, was destined for the lord of the house- hold; but the servants blundered and wine was drunk by all present. For two weeks the Pope fought for his strong life, but all efforts availed naught and he died on August 18, 1503.

Cesare hovered for a long rime between life and death, powerless to master the situation created by the decease of his father. After the pontificate of Pius III, an excellent Pope who unfortunately ruled only a meagre month, the energetic Giuliano Rovere became Pope. Now the head of the House of Borgia had to surrender his dominion over the Romagna. His life, which had known so many victories, came to an inglorious end in Spain during 1507. Lucrezia outlived him by twelve years; and in Ferrara she won for the name of Borgia some association with the milk of human kindness as the wife of the Duke, and as a mother and philanthropist.

Cesare and Lucrezia were personages one can understand, but it is otherwise with Pope Alexander, that formless son of chaos. Many contemporaries regarded him as a Marrane, but his habit of brooding over everything without proving able to reach a conclusion is an argu- ment against his having been of puie Jewish descent. On the other hand his superstitious nature, his intense sensuality and a certain heavy lack of intelligence make it impossible to look upon him as a repre- sentative of the pure Spanish character. But the riddle of his temper- ament is meaningless in comparison with the historical significance of his rule. Never before in the history of the Papacy was the tragedy

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of a sacred institution placed in desecrated hands enacted so powerfully as in the conflict between him and Savonarola, the great martyr of the Renaissance.

The sermons of Savonarola burst upon a Florence prostituted by power and prodigality, art and beauty, just as a storm might swoop down upon a fair. One cannot believe that this reddish blond son of Ferrara, whose soft eyes blended with the threatening daring of his face, was minus a trace of German blood. A whole generation prior to the religious catastrophe which was to overwhelm Germany, he sought to find a way between the Scylla of Rome and the Charybdis of anti-Rome. He was shipwrecked upon the rock that was sacred to him. He dwelt in the world of the prophets of the Old Testa- ment; and himself was of their tribe, a prophet to the marrow. In other words, he felt himself driven to proclaim to the whole world, in the presence also of the Roman throne placed above that world, the forgotten and betrayed "things of God." Regardless of what might come, he the mysteriously commissioned priest, gifted with mystical insight into the past and the future of historical development, was ready to meet and endure whatever might be exacted of him in behalf of those divine concerns which filled and stirred his soul.

To this day his enemies hurl at this fanatic (but fanwn means "holy ground") the rebuke that a monk should have meditated in his narrow cell at San Marco over learned parchments or knelt on a prie-dieu in Florence to worship God's councils and ordinances, instead of throwing himself headlong into the business of the great world. He had burned the vanities on the Place of the Seigniories, had inaugu- rated a sombre theocratic rule in Florence after France had overthrown the Medici, and had attacked the Pope for his vices as well as refused to obey him. Only poltroons or the corrupt will deny to a prophet the right to say what he must say. Nothing is more natural than that a religious man should take an interest in political trends which seek to bring about the death of religion* But just these did Savona- rola see in progress before his eyes. To him religion was not a mere magical business; but it was often just that to his contemporaries, even in the chambers of the Vatican. He demanded pure hearts and good deeds men able to stand in the presence of God. He lived and died for the sovereignty of the whole inviolate law of Christ the King.

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Prophetic consciousness spurred him on to renew the Church, in which from the beginning the gift of prophecy has always been (and will always be) made manifest. The fact that bold prophecies which he enunciated were verified strengthened his belief in his mission. Nev- ertheless he asked himself again, "Am I a prophet?" And he an- swered his question affirmatively he could not do otherwise. And then he preached unrestrainedly whatever his inner voice dictated, for it seemed as true to him as the Gospel itself. It was only as a cathe- dral preacher that he could fulfil his mission. "If I do not preach," he said, "I cannot live." The feeling of rhetorical power also carried him beyond the bounds he had set for himself. Yet even so impulse and effect, faith and utterance, survived in pure unison. Indeed loy- alty to his mission was the real cause of his tragedy. The hostile powers the Medici, Borgia, the Florence of the Arabbiati, his own Order, compelled him to act more and more wholeheartedly out of the necessity to "obey God." He was in no sense an innovator; but he did wish to renew what had become rotten in Florence, in Rome, and in the Church. His penitential sermons thundered and flashed like a great storm over the city of pleasure. Elegant humanists sniffed, irritated worldlings scoffed at him because of his ideals and his simplicity (simplicitas). No doubt he shook the foundations of Florentine culture. But what constitutes the power of a prophet if not his fundamental repudiation of the message of comfort proclaimed by the children of this world lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and pride? The real pessimism was that of Renaissance man who could not live without art, not that of the gentle Friar who sought nothing less than a victory over the world. A tendency to assent to the state kept him from making the secular power subservient to the priestly power or from subordinating the monarchy to the Papacy; and yet he held that the legitimately elected Pope is superior to a Council. A conservative friend of hierarchical order, neither was he intrinsically an iconoclast. He poured out the lava of his soul in verse. Even his bitter lamentations over the decadence of the Church were given strophic form; and the shadow of his spirit rested also upon the crea- tions of the artists who fell under the ban Fra Bartolomeo, Raphael and Michaelangelo.

Savonarola pitted his hopes on an alliance with the King of France.

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This belief in the great religious mission of Charles VIII he shared with others. The propaganda of the Anjous had aroused in many sec- tions of the people the hope that like a second Charlemagne the King would renew the Church of Italy and summon a Council to depose the unworthy Pope who was allied with the Turks, The Prior of San Marco could see no other help when he looked about him for some temporal power to ward off the destruction of Rome. Therefore he urged an alliance with France which was soon afterwards brought about by the Borgias themselves. Such a policy was, however, neces- sarily fatal to him as long as the Pope and his allies were pitted against France. Only Florence, under the spiritual compulsion of its prophet, clung to a union with the Valois monarch. But when Charles' cause was lost in Italy, the anger of the isolated city was directed at its spiritual leader. Alexander soon found friends enough on the Arno in order to bring about the fall of the "gossipy monk" whose peniten- tial preachments had long annoyed him. He summoned Savona- rola to Rome to give an account of himself, but the prophet did not go. He forbade him to preach; but Savonarola remained silent only a short while. He excommunicated him; but Savonarola paid no heed to this action, for the sentence seemed to him unjust and un- binding since the Pope was a simonist and an unbeliever meriting re- moval by a Council. Then Alexander threatened the city with the interdict, and the Florentines surrendered their prophet. They even tried him, though the Pope demanded that he be delivered unto him. Imprisoned, tortured, condemned to death, Savonarola remained what he had always been. On the 23d of May, 1498, he was hanged and burned. The monk entered the glory of martyrdom. A statute had destroyed the law, a letter had killed the spirit, and a criminal Pope had triumphed over a saint.

Italy could dispense with Cesare Borgia when Giuliano Rovcic called himself Julius II, in memory of Julius Cscsar (15031513). In youth he had been a Franciscan brother, had then become a bishop and a cardinal, and was the father of a daughter. Worldly to the core, heroic minded, a man of energy who with good reason was termed *'/ tembilc, this raw son of Genoa saved, as has often been said, the honour of the Papacy. He was beginning to grow old, but dur- ing the decade of his rule this titanic man proved himself the most

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 Rh the main argument, the value of which is not in any way diminished by somewhat crude theories on subjects beyond the immediate field of research. The index, as is often the case with foreign works, is hardly so full as could be wished, and a considerable list of errata might be given.

.

In this report on the folklore publications of six years, which fills 180 pages of the Romanische Forschungen, our indefatigable Viennese fellow worker has rendered a real service to folklore studies. Between four and five hundred folkloristic items, books, pamphlets, review or newspaper articles are noticed, and noticed in such a way as to emphasise their special features and to enable the reader to judge their value or (as is frequently the case) their lack of value. If I add that at least one-third of these items belong to the Slavonic languages and would otherwise remain unknown to the majority of Western students, it will be seen that Dr. Krauss' last production is indispensable to all who wish to follow the general movement of folklore studies and to know what is being done in folklore research. As far as I am concerned it has filled me with an, I know, hopeless longing that one of the worthy but borné millionaires who wish to encourage learning but don't know how to set about it, would entrust me with the spending of a thousand pounds to form a library for the Folk-Lore Society. Dr. Krauss' report may further be recommended to the many people who fancy (and with how much justification!) that anything German must needs be dull. He writes in a racy, slapdash style that makes one sit up all the time, and his pages are enlivened by any number of obiter dicta generally enunciated à propos of anything in the world but the matter in hand, as for instance the charming affirmation that no really intelligent person ever cares to vote, and that it is not worth while worrying a rap about


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warlike of all the successors of Peter and the greatest benefactor of Rome. His belief was that the Popes must be lords and masters of world affairs,

Julius was the first politician on the Papal throne who devoted all his power to freeing Italy from alien dominion. The slogan "Italia fara da $e" was written on his banner long before it was ever uttered. The worldly possessions of his See were to him merely a lever with which he could make the Papacy strong and Italy free. Nepotism and concern for the power of his house did not place his great concep- tion in the bondage which before his time the Borgias, and after him the dynastically narrow policy of a Medici Pope, would make so injuri- ous to the whole nation. Once again he reconquered the Papal States in their entirety, and as a good player of political chess moved and exchanged the pieces to his advantage. He took Cesare's Duchy away from him, conquered the Perugia of the Baglioni, and wrested Bologna from the Bentivogli. Next it was the turn of Venice. In order to drive this power which as a result of the turmoil inaugu- rated by the Borgias had annexed cities and territories belonging to the Papal States and was planning to establish its power on the main- land between the Apennines and the Alps back to its lagoons, he formed the League of Cambrai in 1509 with Emperor Maximilian, France and Spain. Then he imposed the ban on the Venetians and followed this up by letting the cannon speak victoriously at Agnadello. The defeated republic was not (decided the Pope) to fall a prey to the allies of the Holy See. Least of all could it be permitted that the power of France and Northern Italy should become a threat to Rome and the whole country. Fitori i barbari! When the French vassals of Ferrara infringed upon the sovereign rights of the Pope, a causus belli was provided. Spain as well as Venice now came to his aid: it was the Holy League against France. Julius himself took the field as general, but the French troops defeated his army at Ravenna, in 1512, though their leader, Gaston de Foix, young and heroic nephew of the King, fell at the height of victory. It was fortunate for the Pope that France was at this moment compelled to face another swarm of hostile powers. The young King Henry VIII of England, whose friendship Julius had already courted by sending him the Golden Rose, went to war against France in the Netherlands, while Ferdinand of

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Rh them, but goes his way. One night he lodges in a forest hut, and there finds a man's body, which the widow cannot bury for lack of money to pay the priest. He is now poor, but pays for the interment of the corpse, and proceeds. He is followed by a white fox, which instructs him how to achieve his quest. He soon reaches the castle, traverses three courts, comes to one chamber where he finds a piece of inexhaustible bread, enters a second where he gets an unfailing pot of wine and makes love to a sleeping princess, and goes on to a third where he finds a magical sword and the bird. He hastens away with his booty, guided for a time by the fox, sells his bread and his wine to innkeepers on condition that they be given up to the princess if ever she comes for them, and arrives at the city where his brothers are now in prison. He ransoms them by helping the king, and pays their debts by selling his sword. On their way home he is thrown into a well by his brothers, who take the bird to their father, but do not succeed in curing him. Meanwhile, the hero is saved by the fox, which now explains that it is the soul of the man whom he has buried, and definitely disappears. He arrives at his home as a beggar, and takes service with his father. Later the princess comes thither with the son that is the fruit of their union, and brings with her the bread, wine, and sword which she has found on the way. The bird sings, the king is healed, and the wicked brothers are executed.

Breton VI. lacks some of the interesting traits of the variant just given, but embroiders the theme with considerable grace. The three sons of a king set out to find the princess of Hungary, who has the only remedy that will cure their father. The eldest forgets his purpose, and wastes his money in rioting. The second finds him just as he is being led to death on account of debt, ransoms him, and shares his riotous pleasures. The third

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Spain attacked in the Pyrenees. The Swiss, under the leadership of Cardinal Schinner, who was allied with the Pope, joined with the Venetians and attacked the army of Louis XII in Northern Italy.

For the time being the French retreated. Agreement was reached in Mantua that Italy had been liberated and that the boundaries of the Papal States could now be firmly established. Milan came under the rule of the Sforza family, and in Florence the reign of the Medici was re-established. Machiavelli, comparing the fifteenth century with the beginning of the sixteenth century, correctly remarked that whereas formerly even the merest baron had despised the Papal power, now even the King of France respected it.

The Pope also kept the upper hand in warding off the spiritual attacks of his antagonists. The Florentine dictator, Soderini, had ceded Pisa to the French King as the site of a synod to be called in order to bring about a separation from Rome of the national Churches of France and Germany. The idea was that the new "Goliath" on the Papal throne, who upon election had forgotten his promise to summon a Council, was to be brought down by the slings of a few cardinals. Maximilian assented; indeed, when Julius was taken seriously ill during the summer of 1511, the Emperor, who was a widower, cherished the idea of becoming Pope as well. Julius saw the signs that pointed to the danger of a schism, perforce remembered his duty, and summoned a General Council to the Lateran in 1511. This lasted five years, discussed many things, arrived at a number of excellent conclusions, but made no very deep religious impression on the world or the Church.

Meanwhile Bramante, Michaelangelo and Raphael, though they also were at odds with the Pope during many an hour, completed their great works. The rebuilding of St. Peter's was begun, though one hundred and sixty years and twenty-two pontificates were to pass before this triumphal song in stone of the Universal Church would reach completion. The Vatican grew in breadth and height; the Stanzas and the Sixtine Chapel were rejuvenated with frescoes which gave witness to a new era as well as to the renascence of ancient cultural forces. Michaelangeio's monument to the Pope in San Pietro in Vincoli remained a torso, even as the political activities of this ruler of the Church found no conrinuer and perfecter. Among all the

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marble figures o this monument only one is worthy of Michaelangelo and the dead Pontiff. If, after losing oneself in reflection before this superhuman Moses, one tries to divine what the figure means, one may hover between disparate experiences of similar impressiveness. Does this figure signify by its exalted brooding aflame with divine fire, Papal awareness of God's commission to man and of His sacred wrath over the failure of mankind to respond to that commission? Or is the object of this majestic ire the scandal given by unworthy Popes?

Alexander, the Pope of Venus, had been followed by a Son of Mars; and now Pallas placed her favourite on the throne. That was about the meaning of an inscription on a triumphal arch as Leo X (1513- 1521) rode to the Vatican on a white horse, at the head of a solemn procession, to take possession of the Fisherman's See. This Medici prince was a cheerful epicurean, amiable and generous, a man of moderate endowments more devoted to the things that seem than to the things that are. He was a principe in Papal attire, and not much more. Before his rime many a Pontiff had fled from his electors be- cause the responsibility he was soon to assume seemed overwhelming. But we are told that Leo cheerfully accepted the burden. Dynastic interests took precedence in his mind over the idea of the Church as well as over the idea of the unity of Italy, which now looked upon the Popes as leaders and prime movers in the effort to foster a national policy. When France had reconquered Milan with a victory over the Swiss at Marignano, the Pope allied himself with the victor in order to insure the rule of the House of Medici in Florence. We must, he said, throw ourselves into the arms of the king and plead for mercy. His negotiations with Francis I, and the important Con- cordat of 1517 which the Lateran Council, still in session, had ratified, established the basis on which relations between the Curia and the French crown were to rest until the time of the Revolution. It is true that the half-schismatic clauses of the Pragmatic Sanction were removed in favour of a formal recognition of the Papal authority; but at bottom the fateful treaty established to a great degree the in- dependence of the Gallican Church from the Curia. Here the Pope was dominated by a desire to safeguard the dynastic interests of the Medici, and the same wish was also to involve him in disgraceful

MARTIN

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