History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution: Volume 1 — Causes of the Reformation, Part 1

The great intellectual revival, that followed upon the successful issue of the struggle for freedom waged by Gregory VII.

and his successors, reached the zenith of its glory in the thirteenth century.

Scholasticism, as expounded by men like Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas, and illustrated by a wealth of material drawn alike from the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers, the wisdom of Pagan philosophers, and the conclusions of natural science, was alone deemed worthy of serious attention.

Classical studies either were neglected entirely even in the centres of learning, or were followed merely for the assistance they might render in the solution of the philosophical and theological problems, that engaged men's minds in an age when Christian faith reigned supreme.

The Catholic Church, indeed, had never been hostile to classical studies, nor unmindful of their value, as a means of developing the powers of the human mind, and of securing both breadth of view and beauty of expression.

Some few teachers here and there, alarmed by the danger of corrupting Christian youth by bringing it into contact with Pagan ideals, raised their voices in protest, but the majority of the early Fathers disregarded these warnings as harmful and unnecessary.

Origen, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Basil, and St. Jerome, while not ignoring the dangers of such studies, recommended them warmly to their students, and in the spirit of these great leaders the Catholic Church strove always to combine classical culture and Christian education.

With the fall of the Empire, consequent upon its invasion by the barbarian hordes, classical studies were banished to some extent to the Western Isles, Ireland and Britain, from which they were transplanted to the Continent principally during the Carlovingian revival.

[1] In the cathedral, collegiate, and monastic schools the classics were still cultivated, though beyond doubt compilations were used more frequently than were the original works; and even in the darkest days of the dark ages some prominent ecclesiastics could be found well versed at least in the language and literature of Rome.

It looked, too, for a time, as if the intellectual revival of the twelfth century were to be turned towards the classics; but the example of men like John of Salisbury was not followed generally, and the movement developed rapidly in the direction of philosophy.

As a consequence, the study of Latin was neglected or relegated to a secondary place in the schools, while Greek scholarship disappeared practically from Western Europe.

The Scholastics, more anxious about the logical sequence of their arguments than about the beauties of literary expression, invented for themselves a new dialect, which, however forcible in itself, must have sounded barbarous to any one acquainted with the productions of the golden age of Roman literature or even with the writings of the early Fathers of the Latin Church.

Nor was it the language merely that was neglected.

The monuments and memorials of an earlier civilisation were disregarded, and even in Rome itself, the City of the Popes, the vandalism of the ignorant wrought dreadful havoc.

So complete a turning away from forces that had played such a part in the civilisation of the world was certain to provoke a reaction.

Scholasticism could not hold the field for ever to the exclusion of other branches of study, especially, since in the less competent hands of its later expounders it had degenerated into an empty formalism.

The successors of St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure had little of their originality, their almost universal knowledge, and their powers of exposition, and, as a result, students grew tired of the endless wranglings of the schools, and turned their attention to other intellectual pursuits.

Besides, men's ideas of politics, of social order, and of religion were changing rapidly, and, in a word, the whole outlook of the world was undergoing a speedy transformation.

In the Middle Ages religion held the dominant position and was the guiding principle in morals, in education, in literature, and in art; but as the faith of many began to grow cold, and as the rights of Church and State began to be distinguished, secularist tendencies soon made themselves felt.

Philosophy and theology were no longer to occupy the entire intellectual field, and other subjects for investigation must be found.

In these circumstances what was more natural than that some should advocate a return to the classics and all that the classics enshrined?

Again, the example set by the tyrants who had grasped the reins of power in the Italian States, by men like Agnello of Pisa, the Viscontis and Francesco Sforza of Milan, Ferrante of Naples, and the de' Medici of Florence, was calculated to lower the moral standard of the period, and to promote an abandonment of Christian principles of truth, and justice, and purity of life.

Everywhere men became more addicted to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, of vain glory, and material comfort; and could ill brook the dominant ideas of the Middle Ages concerning the supernatural end of man, self-denial, humility, patience, and contempt for the things that minister only to man's temporal happiness.

With views of this kind in the air it was not difficult to persuade them to turn to the great literary masterpieces of Pagan Rome, where they were likely to find principles and ideals more in harmony with their tastes than those set before them by the Catholic Church.

The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, then, mark a period of transition from the Middle Ages to modern times.

They saw a sharp struggle being waged between two ideals in politics, in education, in literature, in religion, and in morality.

In this great upheaval that was characterised by a demand for unrestricted liberty of investigation, a return to the study of nature and of the natural sciences, the rise and development of national literatures, and the appearance of a new school of art, the Humanist movement or the revival of the study of the classics, the /literae humaniores/, played the fundamental part.

In more senses than one it may be called the Age of the Renaissance.

Nor was it a matter of chance that this revival of interest in classical studies should have made itself felt first in Italy, where the downfall of the Empire, and the subsequent development of petty states seem to have exercised a magical influence upon the intellectual development of the people.

The Italians were the direct heirs to the glory of ancient Rome.

Even in the days of their degradation, when the capital deserted by the Popes was fast going to ruin, and when foreigners and native tyrants were struggling for the possession of their fairest territories, the memory of the imperial authority of their country, and the crumbling monuments that bore witness to it still standing in their midst, served to turn their patriotic ardour towards the great literary treasures bequeathed to them by Pagan Rome.

Greek literature, too, was not forgotten, though in the thirteenth century few western scholars possessed any acquaintance with the language.

Many causes, however, combined to prepare the way for a revival of Greek.

The commercial cities of Italy were in close touch with the Eastern Empire, especially since the Crusades; ambassadors, sent by the Emperors to seek the assistance of the Pope and of the Western rulers in the struggle against the Turks, were passing from court to court; the negotiations for a reunion of the Churches, which had been going on since the days of the first Council of Lyons, rendered a knowledge of Greek and of the writings of the Greek Fathers necessary for some of the leading ecclesiastics of the West; while, finally, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 forced many Greek scholars to seek a refuge in Italy or France, and provided the agents sent by the Popes and Italian rulers with a splendid opportunity of securing priceless treasures for the Western libraries.

Though Dante (1265-1321) is sometimes regarded as the earliest of the Humanist school[2] on account of his professed admiration for some of the Pagan masters and of the blending in his /Divina Comedia/ of the beauties of Roman literature with the teaching of the Fathers and Scholastics, still, the spirit that inspired him was the spirit of Christianity, and his outlook on life was frankly the outlook of the Middle Ages.

To Petrarch (1304-74) rather belongs the honour of having been the most prominent, if not the very first writer, whose works were influenced largely by Humanist ideals.

Born in Arezzo in 1304, he accompanied his father to Avignon when the latter was exiled from Florence.

His friends wished him to study law; but, his poetic tendencies proving too strong for him, he abandoned his professional pursuits to devote his energies to literature.

The patronage and help afforded him willingly by the Avignonese Popes[3] and other ecclesiastics provided him with the means of pursuing his favourite studies, and helped him considerably in his searches for manuscripts of the classics.

Though only a cleric in minor orders, he was appointed Canon of Lombez (1335), papal ambassador to Naples (1343), prothonotary apostolic (1346), and archdeacon of Parma (1348).

These positions secured to him a competent income, and, at the same time, brought him into touch with libraries and influential men.

The ruin of Italy and Rome, caused in great measure by the absence of the Popes during their residence at Avignon, roused all the patriotic instincts of Petrarch, and urged him to strive with all his might for the restoration of the ancient glory of his country.

Hence in his politics he was strongly nationalist, and hence, too, he threw the whole weight of his influence on the side of Cola di Rienzi, when in 1347 the latter proclaimed from the Capitol the establishment of the Roman Republic.

Nor did he hesitate to attack the Popes, to whom he was indebted so deeply, for their neglect of Rome and the Papal States, as well as for the evils which he thought had fallen upon Italy owing to the withdrawal of the Popes to Avignon.

He himself strove to awaken in the minds of his countrymen memories of the past by forming collections of old Roman coins, by restoring or protecting wherever possible the Pagan monuments, and by searching after and copying manuscripts of the classical writers.

In poetry, Virgil was his favourite guide.

As a rule he wrote in Italian, but his writings were saturated with the spirit of the early Pagan authors; while in his pursuit of glory and his love for natural, sensible beauty, he manifested tendencies opposed directly to the self-restraint, symbolism, and purity of the Middle Ages.

His longest poem is /Africa/, devoted to a rehearsal of the glories of ancient Rome and breathing a spirit of patriotism and zeal for a long lost culture, but it is rather for his love songs, the /canzoni/, that he is best remembered.

Petrarch, though a Humanist,[4] was no enemy of the Christian religion, nor did he imagine for a moment that the study of the Pagan classics could prove dangerous in the least degree to revealed religion.

It is true that his private life did not always correspond to Christian principles of morality, and it is equally true that at times his patriotism led him to speak harshly of the rule of the Popes in Italy and Rome; but he never wavered in his religious convictions, and never recognised that Pagan literature and ideals should be judged by other than current Christian standards.

The example of Petrarch was not followed, however, by several of the later Humanists.

His friend and disciple, Boccaccio (1313-75), imitated his master in his love for the classics and in his zeal for classical culture, and excelled him by acquiring, what Petrarch had failed utterly to acquire, a good knowledge of Greek.

Like Petrarch, he was assisted largely by the Popes, and took service at the papal court.

But his views of life and morality were coloured by Paganism rather than by Christianity.

Many of his minor poems are steeped in indecency and immorality, and reflect only too clearly the tendency to treachery and deceit so characteristic of the Italian rulers of his day; while the /Decameron/, his greatest work, is more like the production of a Pagan writer than of one acquainted with Christian ethics and ideals.

He delighted in lampooning the clergy, particularly the monks, charging them with ignorance, immorality, and hypocrisy.

Such a line of conduct was not likely to recommend the apostles of the new learning to the admirers of Scholasticism, nor to create and foster a friendly alliance between the two camps.

Yet, personally, Boccaccio was not an enemy of Christianity, and never aimed, as did some of the later Humanists, at reviving Paganism under the guise of promoting literature.

He was unshaken in his acceptance of the Christian revelation, and, as the years advanced, he began to realise the evil of his ways and the dangerous character of his writings.

Strange to say, it was to a body of the monks, whom he delighted in attacking, that he bequeathed the valuable library which he had brought together with such labour.

Had the Humanists contented themselves with advocating merely a return to classical studies, and had the Scholastics recognised that philosophy was not the only path to culture, it might have been possible to avoid a conflict.

But, unfortunately for religion, there were extremists on both sides.

On the one hand, some of the later Humanists, influenced largely by the low moral tone of the age, aimed at nothing less than the revival of Paganism, pure and simple; while, on the other, not a few of the Scholastics insisted strongly that Pagan literature, however perfect, should have no place in Christian education.

Between these two conflicting parties stood a large body of educated men, both lay and cleric, who could see no irreconcilable opposition between Christianity and the study of the classics, and who aimed at establishing harmony by assigning to the classics the place in education willingly accorded to them by many of the Fathers of the Church.

But the influence of this latter body could not effect a reconciliation.

A large section of the Humanists openly vindicated for themselves freedom from the intellectual and moral restraints imposed by Christianity.

Laurentius Valla[5] (1405-57) in his work, /De Voluptate/, championed free indulgence in all kinds of sensual pleasures, attacked virginity as a crime against the human race, and ridiculed the idea of continence and self-denial, while in his own life he showed himself a faithful disciple of the Epicurianism that he propounded in his writings.

His denunciations, too, of the Popes as the usurping tyrants of Rome in his work on the Constantine Donation were likely to do serious injury to the head of the Church in his spiritual as well as in his temporal capacity.

But bad as were the compositions of Valla, they were harmless when compared with the books and pamphlets of Beccadelli, the Panormite, who devoted himself almost exclusively to what was indecent and repulsive.

Poggio Bracciolini in his work, /Facetiae/, and Filelfo, though not equally bad, belong to the same category.

In the hands of these men the Renaissance had become, to a great extent, a glorification of Pagan immorality.

Their books were condemned by many of the religious orders, but without avail.

They were read and enjoyed by thousands, in whom the wholesale corruption prevalent in Florence, Siena, and Venice, had deadened all sense of morality.

A large number of the later Renaissance school were Christians only in name.

If the great body of them were judged by the heathen figures and phraseology with which their works abound, they could hardly be acquitted of Pagan tendencies; but in case of many of them these excesses are to be attributed to pedantry rather than to defection from the faith.

In case of others, however, although they were wary in their expressions lest they might forfeit their positions, Christian teaching seems to have lost its hold upon their minds and hearts.

Carlo Marsuppini, Chancellor of Florence, Gemistos Plethon, the well- known exponent of Platonic philosophy, Marsilio Ficino, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and the members of the Roman Academy (1460), under the leadership of Pomponius Laetus, were openly Pagan in their lives and writings.

Had the men in authority in Italy been less depraved such teaching and example would have been suppressed with firmness; or had the vast body of the people been less sound in their attachment to Christianity, Neo-Paganism would have arisen triumphant from the religious chaos.

[6] But not all of the Humanists belonged to the school of Valla, Beccadelli, Poggio, and Marsuppini.

The Camaldolese monk, Ambrogio Traversari, his pupil Giannozzo Manetti (1431-59), a layman thoroughly devoted to the Church, and the first of the Humanists to turn his attention to the Oriental languages, Lionardo Bruni, so long Apostolic Secretary at the papal court and afterwards Chancellor of Florence, Maffeo Vegio (1407-58), the Roman archaeologist, who in his work on education endeavoured to combine classical culture with Christian revelation, Vittorino da Feltre, a model in his life and methods for Christian teachers, Pico della Mirandola, Sadoleto, and Bida, were all prominent in the classical revival, but at the same time thoroughly loyal to the Church.

They were the moderate men between the Pagan Humanists and the extreme Scholastics.

Their aim was to promote learning and education, and to widen the field of knowledge by the introduction of the ancient literary masterpieces, not at the expense of an abandonment of Christianity, but under the auspices and in support of the Catholic Church.

Following in the footsteps of Origen, St. Gregory, St. Basil, and St. Augustine, they knew how to admire the beauties of Pagan literature without accepting its spirit or ideals, and hence they have been called the Christian Humanists.

The revival of Greek in Italy, where Greek literature was practically unknown, is due in great measure to the arrival of Greek scholars, who were induced to come by promises of a salary and position, or who travelled thither on political or ecclesiastical missions.

Of these the principal were Manuel Chruysoloras engaged at work in Florence from 1396, Cardinal Bessarion (1403?

-72) who came westward for the Council of Florence and ended his days in Venice to which he bequeathed his library, Gemistos Plethon (1355-1450) the principal agent in the establishment of the Platonic academy at Florence, George of Trebizond, Theodore Gaza, Lascaris, Andronicus Callistus, and others who fled from Greece to escape the domination of the Turks.

With the help of these men and their pupils a knowledge of Greek and of Greek literature was diffused through Italy, and in a short time throughout the Continent.

Everywhere collections of Greek manuscripts began to be formed; agents were sent to the East to buy them wherever they could be discovered, and copyists and translators were busy at work in all the leading centres of Italy.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 tended to help the Greek revival in the West by the dispersion of both scholars and manuscripts through Italy, France, and Germany.

Humanism owes its rapid development in Italy not indeed to the universities, for the universities, committed entirely to the Scholastic principles of education, were generally hostile, but rather to the exertions of wandering teachers and to the generous support of powerful patrons.

In Rome it was the Popes who provided funds for the support of Humanist scholars, for the collection and copying of manuscripts, and for the erection of libraries where the great literary treasures of Greece and Rome might be available for the general public; in Florence it was the de' Medici, notably Cosmo (1429-64) and Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-92), by whose exertions Florence became the greatest centre of literary activity in Europe; in Milan it was the Viscontis and the Sforzas; in Urbino Duke Federigo and his friends; and in Ferrara and Mantua the families of d'Este and Gonzaga.

Academies took the place of universities.

Of these the academy of Florence, supported by the de' Medici and patronised by the leading Greek and Italian scholars, was by far the most influential and most widely known.

The academy of Rome, founded (1460) by Pomponius Laetus, was frankly Pagan in its tone and as such was suppressed by Paul II.

It was revived, however, and patronised by Sixtus IV.

, Julius II.

, and Leo X. Similar institutions were to be found in most of the Italian States, notably at Venice and Naples.

In nearly all these cities valuable manuscript libraries were being amassed, and were placed generously at the disposal of scholars.

Another important aid to the popularisation of the works of the Greek and Latin writers was the invention of printing and its introduction into Italy.

The first printing press in Italy was established at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, whence it was transferred to Rome.

From this press were issued editions of the Latin classics, such as the works of Lactantius, Caesar, Livy, Aulus Gellius, Virgil, Lucan, Cicero, and Ovid.

Aldo Manuzio, himself an enthusiastic student of Greek literature, settled at Venice in 1490, and established a printing press with the intention of bringing out editions of the principal Greek authors.

His house was the great centre for Greek scholars from all parts of Italy, and from the Aldine Press were issued cheap and accurate editions of the Greek classics.

Later on when Florence and Milan were disturbed by the invasion of Charles VIII.

of France (1483-98), and when Naples was captured by the Spaniards the Humanist movement found a generous patron in Leo X. , a scion of de' Medici family.

From the press founded by Leo X. many classical texts were issued till the pillaging of the city by the imperial troops in 1527 dealt a death blow to the revival in Italy.