A Spartan resistance on the part of united Christendom perhaps might. But Christendom was not united, nor capable of Spartan discipline. Her internal condition seemed to show signs almost of approaching dissolution. The shadow of the great Papal schism still brooded over the destinies of the Church. That schism had been ended only by a revolution which, under the guidance of Gerson, had left the Pope the constitutional instead of the absolute monarch of the Church. The great heresies of the preceding century had, moreover, not yet been extinguished. The very names of Wiclif and Huss were still names of terror. Lollardy had been crushed, but it was not dead. Everywhere the embers of schism and revolution were still smouldering underneath, ready to break out again, in new fury, who could tell how soon?
Defeat of the Moors in Spain, and discovery of America.
It was in the ears of this apparently doomed generation that the double tidings came of the discovery of the Terra Nova in the West, and of the expulsion of the infidel out of Spain.
The ice of centuries suddenly was broken. The universal despondency at once gave way before a spirit of enterprise and hope; and it has been well observed, men began to congratulate each other that their lot had been cast upon an age in which such wonders were achieved.
Even the men of the old school could appreciate these facts in a fashion. The defeat of the Moors was to them a victory to the Church. The discovery of the New World extended her dominion. They gloried over both.
But these outward facts were but the index to an internal upheaving of the mind of Christendom, to which they were blind. The men who were guiding the great external revolution—reformers in their way—were blindly stamping out the first symptoms of this silent upheaving. Gerson, while carrying reform over the heads of Popes, and deposing them to end the schism or to preserve the unity of the Church, was at the same moment using all his influence to crush Huss and Jerome of Prague. Queen Isabella and Ximenes, Henry VII. and Morton, while sufficiently enlightened to pursue maritime discovery, to reform after a fashion the monasteries under their rule, and ready even to combine to reform the morals of the Pope himself in order to avert the dreaded recurrence of a schism,[17] were not eager to pursue these purposes without the sanction of Papal bulls, and without showing their zeal for the Papacy by crushing out free thought with an iron heel and zealously persecuting heretics, whether their faith were that of the Moor, the Lollard, or the Jew.
The revival of learning.
The fall of Constantinople, which had sounded almost like the death-knell of Christendom, had proved itself in truth the chief cause of her revival. The advance of the Saracens upon Europe had already told upon the European mind. The West has always had much to learn from the East. It was, for instance, by translation from Arabic versions that Aristotle had gained such influence over those very same scholastic minds to which his native Greek was an abomination.
This further triumph of infidel arms also influenced Christian thought. Eastern languages and Eastern philosophies began to be studied afresh in the West. Exiles who had fled into Italy had brought with them their Eastern lore. The invention of printing had come just in time to aid the revival of learning. The printing press was pouring out in clear and beautiful type new editions of the Greek and Latin classics. Art and science with literature sprang up once more into life in Italy; and to Italy, and especially to Florence, which, under the patronage of the splendid court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, seemed to form the most attractive centre, students from all nations eagerly thronged.