The Philosophy of History, Vol. 2 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

science on the soil of human intellect; for the existence of the clergy had been founded on landed property, and by this means they had become naturalized and domiciliated in the state, and among the nation; till the splendid endowments which they received from the liberality of religious zeal, made the abbots, bishops, and the whole of the higher clergy, wealthy lords, senators, and princes. This wealth and this power, the clergy, especially in the earlier times, generally employed in a manner the most praiseworthy, and the most conducive to the welfare of the community. The annals of modern Europe, and the history of every great and petty state within it, are full of the high political services which the excellent churchmen of the middle age rendered to the public weal. This was universally acknowledged, and any sudden separation of the higher clergy from the state—any degradation of that body from the exalted station which they occupied therein, would have been a most serious loss to society. In the contests of the emperors and other princes with the church and its head, the immediate and original object of dispute was not ecclesiastical property, which no one ever dreamed of attacking; but the jurisdiction over that property, and the acknowledgment of that jurisdiction. It is easy to conceive that all the members of the higher clergy had not rendered services equally eminent, and that the employment of their riches had not been equally

laudable and blameless. But, independently of individual abuses and scandals, the great wealth of the dignified clergy, the eminent and splendid rank they occupied in the state and in society, were ever a stumbling-block to the people, and even to some ecclesiastics, and seemed in contradiction with the original rule and evangelical poverty of the primitive Christians. This was the first cause, the principal subject, and, as it were, the favourite text of that popular opposition which now, after the example had been set by princes and potentates, began to unfurl its banners against the church.

Nothing therefore could be better adapted to the exigences of the age than that, in opposition to the too great worldly pomp of many of the high though meritorious and virtuous dignitaries of that time, communities of men, animated by the sincerest piety, and the most austere spirit of humility and self-denial, should have arisen to make themselves all in all to the people, and set the example of perfect evangelical poverty; or to devote their undivided zeal to popular instruction and the office of preaching. Men of real sanctity, and the most humble piety, and gifted with wonderful powers, entered on this new path of religious zeal; and many amongst them, with a truly high-minded freedom, reprehended the abuses and the moral corruption then existing in church and state, and among all orders of society. They met with contradiction and opposition, and even at an early period

incurred much blame; but here we must be careful to distinguish human infirmity and partial degeneracy from the holy origin of those establishments—from that spark of divine inspiration which called these, and all other ecclesiastical institutes, into existence. And thus that tide of popular opposition to the church, which had received its first impulse from the secular power, and the contests of the Ghibelline Emperors, rolled on with an ever increasing force, swell, and violence. Scarce had the Waldenses disappeared, when a religious sect still more numerous, the Albigenses—broke out in the South of France, and not content with displaying the usual popular opposition to the riches and real abuses of the church, broached many errors and doctrines of the Eastern sects, which during the Crusades may have found their way into that country. For this reason it was thought justifiable to proclaim against them a formal Crusade, and, by a most atrocious war of extermination, wherein the remedy appears no less reprehensible than the evil itself, princes put down this popular sect, which they regarded as rebellious not only against the church, but the state itself.

Wickliffe in England was the first single bold Reformer that appeared, and he was succeeded soon afterwards by an Innovator, whose enterprise was attended with far more important consequences—John Huss in Bohemia. Their writings, abounding not only in the wonted condemnation

of real abuses, but in many fanciful doctrines, unfounded assertions, and germs of heresy, their cause as well as the general state of affairs, and the problem of the age, became more complicated and perilous.

John Huss was summoned before the council of Constance, which had terminated so successfully the schism in the Papacy; but there, without any regard to the imperial safe-conduct which he had received, he was condemned, and delivered over to capital punishment. As one injustice, one act of bloody severity, is sure to bring on another, a few years afterwards the Senators of Prague were precipitated from a window. This was the signal for a general rising of the people; Ziska, at the head of his infuriated troops, ravaged Bohemia, burst into the neighbouring provinces of Germany, and, with a Hussite army of seventy thousand men spread terror every where on his march. This insurrection was indeed suppressed, but Europe grew every day more and more ripe for a Revolution.

A new and pressing danger, which had been long foreseen, now threatened Europe from an opposite quarter. The Turks, who for almost a century had been in possession of the Northern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, became now masters of Constantinople, and the old church of St. Sophia was converted into a Mosque. That portion of Europe which stood in most immediate danger,—Germany, Austria, Hungary

and Poland—was now compelled to make, for the space of more than two centuries, resistance to the progress of the Turkish power the object of its most assiduous attention; and this was a circumstance which tended to impede the emperors in all their other enterprises, to divert their efforts, and consume their best energies, and so far, in the then existing embarrassments in church and state, exerted a very fatal influence on the whole system of European society.

The immediate effects of the siege and fall of Constantinople were highly favourable to literature and science in the last half of the fifteenth century; when the Greek fugitives, by the rich and long-lost treasures of classical knowledge which they brought, created a new and brilliant era in letters and science; in Italy in the first instance, then in Germany (at that time so closely connected with Italy), and lastly in the rest of Europe. The knowledge of their classical tongue and ancient literature had never been totally extinguished among the Greek scholars and ecclesiastics; but in their hands this knowledge remained a mere dead treasure, which was only afterwards turned to profitable account, and to the service of society, by the more active spirit of the Europeans.