Part 33 (2/2)

[Sidenote: Council of Basel, 1431-1449.]

116. The st.u.r.dy resistance of the Bohemians to those who proposed to bring them back to the orthodox faith by arms finally attracted the attention of Europe and called forth considerable sympathy. In 1431 the last of the crusades against them came to an ignominious end, and Martin V was forced to summon a new council in order to consider the policy which should be adopted toward the heretics. The Council of Basel lasted for no less than eighteen years. At first its prestige was sufficient to enable it to dominate the pope, and it reached its greatest authority in 1434 after it had arranged a peace with the moderate party of the Bohemian heretics. The council, however, continued its hostility towards Pope Eugene IV (elected in 1431), and in 1437 he declared the council dissolved and summoned a new one to meet at Ferrara. The Council of Basel thereupon deposed Eugene and chose an anti-pope. This conduct did much to discredit the idea of a general council in the eyes of Europe.

The a.s.sembly gradually dwindled away and finally in 1449 acknowledged the legitimate pope once more.

[Sidenote: Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1438-1439.]

[Sidenote: Union of Eastern and Western Churches.]

Meanwhile the Council of Ferrara[211] had taken up the momentous question of consolidating the Eastern and Western Churches. The empire of the East was seriously threatened by the on-coming Ottoman Turks, who had made conquests even west of Constantinople. The Eastern emperor's advisers urged that if a reconciliation could be arranged with the Western Church, the pope might use his influence to supply arms and soldiers to be used against the Mohammedans. When the representatives of the Eastern Church met with the Council of Ferrara the differences in doctrine were found to be few, but the question of the heads.h.i.+p of the Church was a most difficult one. A form of union was, nevertheless, agreed upon in which the Eastern Church accepted the heads.h.i.+p of the pope, ”saving the privileges and rights of the patriarchs of the East.”

[Sidenote: Results of the Council of Ferrara.]

While Eugene received the credit for healing the breach between the East and the West, the Greek prelates, upon returning home, were hailed with indignation and branded as robbers and matricides for the concessions which they had made. The chief results of the council were (1) the advantage gained by the pope in once more becoming the recognized head of Christendom in spite of the opposition of the Council of Basel, and (2) the fact that certain learned Greeks remained in Italy, and helped to stimulate the growing enthusiasm for Greek literature.

No more councils were held during the fifteenth century, and the popes were left to the task of reorganizing their dominions in Italy. They began to turn their attention very largely to their interests as Italian princes, and some of them, beginning with Nicholas V (1447-1455), became the patrons of artists and men of letters. There is probably no period in the history of the papacy when the head of the Church was more completely absorbed in forwarding his political interests and those of his relatives, and in decorating his capital, than in the seventy years which elapsed between 1450 and the beginning of the German revolt against the Church.

General Reading.--CREIGHTON, _History of the Papacy_ (Longmans, Green & Co., 6 vols., $2.00 each), Vol. I, is perhaps the best treatment of the Great Schism and the Council of Constance. PASTOR, _History of the Popes_ (Herder, 6 vols., $18.00), Vol. I, Book 1, gives the most recent and scholarly account from the standpoint of a Roman Catholic.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ITALIAN CITIES AND THE RENAISSANCE

[Sidenote: Italy the center of European culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.]

117. While England and France were settling their differences in the wretched period of the Hundred Years' War, and the little German princ.i.p.alities, left without a leader,[212] were busied with their petty concerns, Italy was the center of European culture. Its cities,--Florence, Venice, Milan, and the rest,--reached a degree of prosperity and refinement undreamed of beyond the Alps. Within their walls learning and art made such extraordinary progress that this period has received a special name,--the _Renaissance_,[213] or new birth. The Italian towns, like those of ancient Greece, were really little states, each with its own peculiar life and inst.i.tutions. Of these city-states a word must be said before considering the new enthusiasm for the works of the Romans and Greeks and the increasing skill which the Italian artists displayed in painting, sculpture, and architecture.

[Sidenote: Map of Italy in the fourteenth century.]

The map of Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century was still divided into three zones, as it had been in the time of the Hohenstaufens. To the south lay the kingdom of Naples. Then came the states of the Church, extending diagonally across the peninsula. To the north and west lay the group of city-states to which we now turn our attention.

[Sidenote: Venice and its relations with the East.]

Of these none was more celebrated than Venice, which in the history of Europe ranks in importance with Paris and London. This singular town was built upon a group of sandy islets lying in the Adriatic Sea about two miles from the mainland. It was protected from the waves by a long, narrow sand bar, similar to those which fringe the Atlantic coast from New Jersey southward. Such a situation would not ordinarily have been deliberately chosen as the site of a great city; but its very desolation and inaccessibility had recommended it to its first settlers, who, in the middle of the fifth century, had fled from their homes on the mainland to escape the savage Huns.[214] As time went on the location proved to have its advantages commercially, and even before the Crusades Venice had begun to engage in foreign trade. Its enterprises carried it eastward, and it early acquired possessions across the Adriatic and in the Orient.[215] The influence of this intercourse with the East is plainly shown in the celebrated church of St. Mark, whose domes and decorations suggest Constantinople rather than Italy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Scene in Venice]

[Ill.u.s.tration: St Mark's, Venice]

[Sidenote: Venice extends her sway on the Italian mainland.]

[Sidenote: The aristocratic government of Venice.]

It was not until early in the fifteenth century that Venice found it to her interest to extend her sway upon the Italian mainland. She doubtless believed it dangerous to permit her rival, Milan, to get possession of the Alpine pa.s.ses through which her goods found their way north. It may be, too, that she preferred to draw her food supplies from the neighborhood instead of transporting them across the Adriatic from her eastern possessions. Moreover, all the Italian cities except Venice already controlled a larger or smaller area of country about them.

Although Venice was called a republic, there was a strong tendency toward a government of the few. About the year 1300 all the townsmen except the members of certain n.o.ble families were excluded from the Grand Council, which was supposed to represent the people at large.

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