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But in the Renaissance Providence seems to have had the design of showing again that intellectual and artistic culture may flourish, while the process of moral and social decline goes on. No regenerating wave passed over Italy’s society or cleansed her palaces and convents. The outward forms of civilization did not check the inward decline. The Italian character, says Gregorovius, "in the last 30 years of the 15th century displays a trait of diabolical passion. Tyrannicide, conspiracies and deeds of treachery were universal."  In the period of Athenian greatness, the process of the intellectual sublimation of the few was accompanied by the process of moral decay in the many. So now, art did not purify. The Renaissance did not find out what repentance was or feel the need of it. Savonarola’s admiring disciple, Pico della Mirandola, presented a memorial to the Fifth Lateran which declared that, if the prelates "delayed to heal the wounds of the Church, Christ would cut off the corrupted members with fire and sword. Christ had cast out the money-changers, why should not Leo exile the worshippers of the many golden calves?"  In Italy, remarks Ranke, "no one counted for a cultured person who did not cherish some erroneous views about Christianity."

The North had no Dante and Petrarca and Boccaccio or Thomas Aquinas, but it had its Tauler and Thomas à Kempis and its presses sent forth the first Greek New Testament. This was a positive preparation for the coming age as much as the Greek language was a preparation for the spread of Christianity through Apostolic preaching in the 1st century. German printers went to Rome in 1467 and as far as Barcelona. In his work on the new invention,1507, Wimpheling1348 declared "that as the Apostles went forth of old, so now the disciples of the sacred art go forth from Germany into all lands and their printed books become heralds of the Gospel, preachers of the truth and wisdom."  Germany became the intellectual market of Europe and its wares went across the North Sea to that little kingdom which was to become the chief bulwark of Protestantism. In vain did Leo X. set himself against the free circulation of literature.1349

The Greek edition of the New Testament and the printing-press,—that invention which cleaves all the centuries in two and yet binds all the centuries together—were the two chief providential instruments made ready for Martin Luther. But he had to find them. They did not make him a reformer, the leader of the new age. Erasmus, whom Janssen mercilessly condemns, remained a moralizer. He lacked both the passion and the heroism of the religious reformer. The religious reformer must be touched from above. Reuchlin, Erasmus and Gutenberg prepared the outward form of the Greek and Hebrew Bible. Luther discovered its contents, and made them known.

Such were the complex forces at work in the closing century of the Middle Ages. The absolute jurisdiction of the papacy was solemnly reaffirmed. The hierarchy virtually constituted the Church. Religious dissent was met with compulsion and force, not by persuasion and instruction. Coercion was substituted for individual consent. Popular piety remained bound in the old forms and was strong. But there were sounds of refreshing rills, flowing from the fresh fountain of the water of life, running at the side of the old ceremonials, especially in the North. The Revival of Letters aroused the intellect to a sense of its sovereign rights. The movement of thought was greatly accelerated by the printed page. The development of trade communicated unrest. But the lives of the popes, as we look back upon the age, forbade the expectation of any relief from Rome. The Reformatory councils had contented themselves with attempts to reform the administration of the Church. Nevertheless, though men did not see it, driftwood as from a new theological continent was drifting about and there were prophetic voices though the princes of the Church listened not to them. What was needed was not government, was not regulations but regeneration. This the hierarchy could not give, but only God alone.1350

The facts, set forth in this volume, leave no room for the contention of the recent class of historians in the Roman Church,—Janssen, Denifle, Pastor, Nicolas, Paulus, Dr. Gasquet—who have devoted themselves to the task of proving that an orderly reform-movement was going on when the Reformation broke out. That movement, they represent as an unspeakable calamity for civilization, an apostasy from Christianity, an insurrection against divinely constituted authority. It violently checked the alleged current of progress and popes, down to Pius IX. and Leo XIII., have anathematized Protestantism as a poisonous pestilence and the mother of all modem evils in Church and state. In the attempt to make good this judgment, these recent writers not only have laid stress upon "the good old times,"—a description which the people of the 16th century would have repudiated,1351 — but have resorted to the defamation of the German Reformer’s character, setting aside the contemporaries who knew him best, and violently perverting Luther’s own words. Imbart de la Tour, the most recent French historian of this school, on reaching the year 1517, exclaims, "The era of peaceful reforms was at an end; the era of religious revolution was about to open."1352

Lefèvre d’Etaples was not alone when he uttered the famous words: —

The signs of the times announce that a reformation of the Church is near at hand and, while God is opening new paths for the preaching of the Gospel by the discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards, we must hope that He will also visit His Church and raise her from the abasement into which she has now fallen.

The Philosophy of Christ,—the name which Erasmus gave to the Gospel in his Paraclesis, prefixed to his edition of the New Testament,—was to a large degree covered over by the dialectical theology of the Schoolmen. What men needed was the Gospel and the bishop of Isernia, preaching at the Fifth Lateran council in its 12th session, spoke better than he knew when he exclaimed: "The Gospel is the fountain of all wisdom, of all knowledge. From it has flowed all the higher virtue, all that is divine and worthy of admiration. The Gospel, I say the Gospel."  The words were spoken on the very eve of the Reformation and the council of the Middle Ages failed utterly to offer any real remedy for the religious degeneracy. The Reformer came from the North, not from Rome and as from another Nazareth. The angel of God had to descend again and trouble the waters and a single personality touched in conscience proved himself mightier than the wisdom of theology and wiser than the rulers of the visible Church.

Remarkable the Middle Ages were for their bold enterprises in thought and action and they are an important part of the history of the Church. We acknowledge our debt, but their superstitions and errors we set aside as we move on in the pathway of a more intelligent devotion and broader human, sympathies, towards an age when all who profess the Gospel shall unite together in the unity of the faith in the Son of God.

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Preface

Introduction

§ 1. Introductory Survey.

Chapter 1. The Decline Of The Papacy And The Avignon Exile. A.D. 1294-1377.

§ 2. Sources and Literature.

§ 3. Pope Boniface VIII. 1294–1303.

§ 4. Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France.

§ 5. Literary Attacks against the Papacy.

§ 6. The Transfer of the Papacy to Avignon.

§ 7. The Pontificate of John XXII 1316–1334.

§ 8. The Papal Office Assailed.

§ 9. The Financial Policy of the Avignon Popes.

§ 10. The Later Avignon Popes.

§ 11. The Re-establishment of the Papacy in Rome. 1377.

Chapter 2. The Papal Schism And The Reformatory Councils. 1378–1449.

§ 12. Sources and Literature.

§ 13. The Schism Begun. 1378.

§ 14. Further Progress of the Schism. 1378–1409.

§ 15. The Council of Pisa.

§ 16. The Council of Constance. 1414–1418.

§ 17. The council of Basel. 1431–1449.

§ 18. The Council of Ferrara-Florence. 1438–1445.

Chapter 3. Leaders Of Catholic Thought.

§ 19. Literature.

§ 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.

§ 21. Catherine of Siena, the Saint.

§ 22. Peter d’Ailly, Ecclesiastical Statesman.

§ 23. John Gerson, Theologian and Church Leader.

§ 24. Nicolas of Clamanges, the Moralist.

§ 25. Nicolas of Cusa, Scholar and Churchman.

§ 26. Popular Preachers.

Chapter 4. The German Mystics.

§ 27. Sources and Literature.

§ 28. The New Mysticism.

§ 29. Meister Eckart.

§ 30. John Tauler of Strassburg.

§ 31. Henry Suso.

§ 32. The Friends of God.

§ 33. John of Ruysbroeck.

§ 34. Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life.

§ 35. The Imitation of Christ. Thomas à Kempis.

§ 36. The German Theology.

§ 37. English Mystics.

Chapter 5. Reformers Before The Reformation.

§ 38. Sources and Literature.

§ 39. The Church in England in the Fourteenth Century.

§ 40. John Wyclif.

§ 41. Wyclif’s Teachings.

§ 42. Wyclif and the Scriptures.

§ 43. The Lollards.

§ 44. John Huss of Bohemia.

§ 45. Huss at Constance.

§ 46. Jerome of Prag.

§ 47. The Hussites.

Chapter 6. The Last Popes Of The Middle Ages. 1447–1521

§ 48. Literature and General Survey.

§ 49. Nicolas V. 1447–1455.

§ 50. Aeneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini, Pius II.

§ 51. Paul II. 1464–1471.

§ 52. Sixtus IV. 1471–1484.

§ 53. Innocent VIII. 1484–1492.

§ 54. Pope Alexander VI—Borgia. 1492–1503.

§ 55. Julius II., the Warrior-Pope. 1503–1513.

§ 56. Leo X. 1513–1521.

Chapter 7. Heresy And Witchcraft.

§ 57. Literature.

§ 58. Heretical and Unchurchly Movements.

§ 59. Witchcraft and its Punishment.

§ 60. The Spanish Inquisition.

Chapter 8. The Renaissance.

§ 61. Literature of the Renaissance.

§ 62. The Intellectual Awakening.

§ 63. Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio.

§ 64. Progress and Patrons of Classical Studies in the 15th Century.

§ 65. Greek Teachers and Italian Humanists.

§ 66. The Artists.

§ 67. The Revival of Paganism.

§ 68. Humanism in Germany.

§ 69. Reuchlin and Erasmus.

§ 70. Humanism in France.

§ 71. Humanism in England.

Chapter 9. The Pulpit And Popular Piety.

§ 72. Literature.

§ 73. The Clergy.

§ 74. Preaching.

§ 75. Doctrinal Reformers.

§ 76. Girolamo Savonarola.

§ 77. The Study and Circulation of the Bible.

§ 78. Popular Piety.

§ 79. Works of Charity.

§ 80. The Sale of Indulgences.

Chapter 10. The Close Of The Middle Ages.