The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain

once more the bad old custom of nepotism. He advanced his kinsfolk to high positions in the Church, regardless of their age or attainments. But he distinguished some good men, as Calandrini, the Grand Penitentiary; the two Capranicas; Oliva, General of the Augustinians, known as the Angel of Peace; and the stern Carvajal, who survived as an example of austere virtue into the shameful years which tolerated Cardinals like Borgia and della Rovere. Judged by ethical standards, Italy exhibited during the whole of the fifteenth century a deeper decline than any other country in Europe. Private depravity and political debasement followed the most brilliant culture like a shadow; violence, craft, cruelty, were mingled with the administration of holy things. Yet the descent was broken, though not arrested, by religious revivals, especially in the north and centre, of which the credit is due to the Observantine Friars, the Austin Hermits, and the Benedictines. A catalogue of eighty Saints, men and women, chiefly in these communities, has been made out; it covers the period from 1400 to 1520. None are of the first rank; but Bernardino of Siena (1444) and Giovanni Capistrano (1456), Observantines, preached repentance with great if not lasting effect, to multitudes. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence (1459), taught Christian doctrine successfully; denounced usury; and was a welcome peacemaker. Lorenzo Giustiniani, Patriarch of Venice (1456), abounded in good works. Frä Angelico da Fiesole, the Dominican (1455), perhaps the most purely religious painter that ever lived, was himself a vision of innocence and joy. Bernardino da Feltre (1494), by way of rescuing the poor from usurers, against whom he waged an incessant warfare, established in Rome the first Monte di Pietä, with the concurrence of Innocent VIII. The whole story of his benevolent campaigns is replete with interest. A series of preachers- the most famous were Franciscans-from Roberto da Lecce to Gabriele da Barletta, thundered against the vices of the age and its growing paganism. The Third Order of St Francis counted thousands of members, especially in the middle class, not so tainted as nobles or clergy. For, whatever may be said in defence of the priesthood elsewhere, in the Italian Peninsula it had lost its savour. Documentary evidence from almost every district and city leaves no doubt on this melancholy subject. The clergy were despised; so patent was their misconduct that proposals to abrogate the law of celibacy began to be put forward. Pius II may have entertained such a thought. But he contented himself with an endeavour to correct the religious Orders. The Observantines, who were strict, deserved and obtained his favour. But continual strife for precedence, which meant disciples and influence, raged between these and the Conventuals, nor could any Pope reconcile them. Santa Giustina, the Benedictine house at Padua (1412), became an Italian Bursfelde; its reform was accepted in Verona, Pavia, Milan; Pius II brought under it many monasteries which required better discipline. He deposed Auribelle, the unworthy General of the Dominicans. He took severe measures with the convents of Vallombrosa, the Humiliati in Venice, the Carmelites in Brescia, the Religious in Siena and Florence. Other Popes, Paul II, Sixtus IV, even Alexander VI did in like manner. Such efforts had been stimulated by earnest and cultivated men, of whom the most capable were Traversari, General of the Camaldulese (1386-1439), Baptista Mantuanus (1448-1516), and Aegidius of Viterbo, Augustinian and Cardinal, whose decrees in the synod of Santa Sabina afforded a scheme of reformation to the Fifth Lateran.

      The correspondence of Alessandra degli Strozzi (1406-71), the biographies of Bisticci, the note-books of Rucellai, Landucci’s Diary, Domenichi’s work on the government of the household, reveal a sincere spirit of piety in many families, and correct the hard impression we should otherwise receive, especially of life at Florence under the Medici. Vittorino da Feltre’s school at Mantua is estimated in another chapter. With him as a Christian teacher may be named Agostini Dati of Siena (1479), and Maffeo Vigeo, the latter of whom wrote six books on education and was a friend of Pius II, devout, cultivated, and practical. St Antoninus published a manual of confession, which is but a specimen of a very large class, and which instructs all professions, from magistrates to weavers and day-labourers, in their several duties. Gilds and brotherhoods were a feature of the time. Their objects were mainly secular, but religious and charitable foundations were almost invariably associated with them. Strict rules, enjoining daily prayer, the use of the Sacraments, the observance of Sundays and holidays, are incorporated in their statutes. Care of the poor and sick members was obligatory; every gild had its physician; pensions were often provided for widows and children, and dowries for maidens. The wealthier brotherhoods built each their Scuola, and embellished or erected churches. In Italy, even more than among Germans, church-building was a passion and an art, lending itself sometimes to strange ends,—witness the Isotta Chapel at Rimini,—but serving religion on a grand scale, according as it was then interpreted. Plague and sickness called forth many confraternities, such as the great Misericordia dating from 1244, revived at Florence in 1475; San Rocco at Venice (1415); the Good Men of St Martin (1441) due to Archbishop Antoninus; and the Sodality of the Dolorosa yet existing in Rome (1448). Torquemada in 1460 established in the Minerva dowries for girls,—the Annunziata. Florence towards 1500 had seventy-three municipal associations, and at Rome there were many more, dedicated to religious observances, but likewise to charity. Such was the Brotherhood in the Ripetta established in 1499 by Alexander VI, which had its own hospital and took charge of sailors. Again, trade-gilds of every description flourished, native and even foreign; and these were accustomed to act the miracle-plays called divozioni, which had sprung up in Umbria. The great hospitals, of which there were thirty-five in Florence alone, are the special honour of the fifteenth century. In Rome, the Popes Martin, Eugenius, and Sixtus, the latter of whom rebuilt Santo Spirito, showed them constant favour. Most of the old foundations were kept up, many new ones added. Over the whole of Italy, in the period between 1400 and 1524, fresh hospitals, alms-houses, orphanages, schools, and other institutions of a charitable nature, have been reckoned up to the number of three hundred and twenty-four; but this calculation does not exhaust the list.

      From these things it is clear that Savonarola (1452-98), as happens to great men, did no more than sum up in his preaching a world of ideas and aspirations with which his audience,—the early contemporaries of Michelangelo,—were already familiar. Converted to the Order of St Dominic by a sermon which he heard from the lips of an Austin hermit at Faenza (1474); filled with a lofty Platonism learned from Aquinas; sickened by the public depravity, and prescient as his poem De Ruina Mundl shows of coming disasters, he nourished himself on the Bible and the Apocalypse; fasted, prayed, wept, and became a visionary. At Florence, to which he was transferred in 1484, he saw the Brethren of San Marco losing themselves in the pedantries of the old school, and the upper classes of society in the frivolities of the new. His rudeness of speech and violence of gesture told against him in the pulpit at first. He was always sighing for “that peace which reigned in the Church when she was poor.” Then at San Gemignano there came to the Friar his large prophetic vision, “the Church will be scourged and renewed, and that in our day.” He made no allowance for perspective. He came back, took Florence by storm, and ruled it like a king. His mind grew to be a place of dreams. This was not astonishing in the countryman of Dante and Buonarotti. Italians saw their religion painted and sculptured; for them it lay outside books and filled their eyes. But Florence was before all things a city of political scheming. The papacy aimed at temporal dominion; it was capable, so Machiavelli judged, of becoming the first power in the land. The pulpit was at once platform and newspaper. Spiritual censures were employed as weapons of war; Sixtus IV laid an interdict on Florence for the conspiracy of the Pazzi, with which his remembrance is indelibly bound up. How should a prophet not be a politician? Savonarola could not see his way to an answer in the negative. He foretold the coming of the French under Charles VIII. He did his utmost to keep Florence in a line of policy which Alexander VI rejected with disdain, although he accepted it two years after Savonarola’s death. In this confusion of ideas and interests the preacher of righteousness fell under excommuni cation; he was tortured, degraded, hanged, and burnt, by a coup d’État. Savonarola had invoked a General Council to depose Alexander VI. He fell back upon Pierre d’Ailly and the decrees of Constance. For his prophesyings he never claimed infallible authority. His moral teaching was taken from Aquinas; in expounding the Scriptures he followed the allegorical method; on points of dogma he was at one with his Dominican masters. Like the Brethren of Deventer he was friendly to learning, art, and science. Among his disciples were Pico della Mirandola, Frä Bartolommeo, Michelangelo. It would not be impossible to demonstrate that the sublime and simple grandeur with which the mightiest of Florentines has painted his Prophets and Sibyls on the vault of the Sistine chapel is in perfect accord with the melancholy and majesty of Savonarola’s