History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution - Volume 1 by James MacCaffrey (books for 9th graders TXT) 📖

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