§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and elected at Lyons John XXII., A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old. He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’ pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his studies and his business. The weight of his official duties will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols. in the papal archives, belong to his reign.—In Germany, after the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne, Louis IV. the Bavarian, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III. of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322 Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within three months to cease discharging all functions of government till his election as German king should be acknowledged and confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ [112, 2]), appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy, and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist, and finally condemned him to death as guilty of high treason, while the mob carried out this sentence by burning the pope in effigy upon the streets. The people and clergy of Rome, in accordance with an old canon, elected a new pope in the person of a pious Minorite of the sect of the Spirituales (§ [112, 2]), who took the name of Nicholas V. Louis with his own hand placed the tiara on his head, and was then himself crowned by him. All this glory, however, was but short lived. An unsuccessful and inglorious war against Robert of Naples and a consequent revolt in Rome caused the emperor in A.D. 1328, with his army and his pope, amid the stonethrowing of the mob, to quit the eternal city, which immediately became subject to the curia. He did not fare much better in Tuscany or Lombardy; and thus the Roman expedition ended in failure. Returning to Munich, Louis endeavoured in vain amid many humiliations to move the determined old man at Avignon. But Nicholas V., the most wretched of all the anti-popes, went to Avignon with a rope about his neck in A.D. 1328, cast himself at the pope’s feet, was absolved, and died a prisoner in the papal palace in A.D. 1333. Next year John died. Notwithstanding the expensive Italian wars 25,000,000 gold guldens was found in the papal treasury at his death.—Roused by his opposition to the stricter party among the Franciscans (§ [112, 2]), its leaders lent all their influence to the Bavarian and supported the charge of heresy against the pope. Against John’s favourite doctrine that the souls of departed saints attain to the vision of God only after the last judgment, these zealots cited the opinions of the learned world (§ [113, 3]), with the University of Paris at its head. Philip VI. of France was also in the controversy one of his bitterest opponents, and even threatened him with the stake. Pressed on all sides the pope at last in A.D. 1333 convened a commission of scholars to decide the question, but died before its judgment was given. His successor hasted to still the tumult by issuing the story of a deathbed recantation, and gave ecclesiastical sanction to the opposing view.
§ 110.4. Benedict XII., A.D. 1334-1342, would probably have yielded to the urgent entreaties of the Romans to return to Rome had not his cardinals been so keenly opposed. He then built a palace at Avignon of imposing magnitude, as though the papacy were to have an eternal residence there. Louis the Bavarian retracted his heretical sentiments in order to get the ban removed and to obtain an orderly coronation. The first diet of the electoral union was held at Rhense near Mainz, in A.D. 1338, where it was declared that the election of a German king and emperor was, by God’s appointment, the sole privilege of the elector-princes, and needed not the confirmation or approval of the pope. This encouraged Louis to assert anew his imperial pretensions. Benedict’s successor Clement VI., A.D. 1342-1352, added by purchase in A.D. 1348 the city of Avignon to the county of Venaissin, which Philip III. had gifted to the papal chair in A.D. 1273.Both continued in the possession of the Roman court till A.D. 1791 (§ [165, 13]). Louis, now at feud with some of the powerful German nobles, sought to make terms of peace with the new pope. But Clement was not conciliatory, and made the unheard of demand that Louis should not only annul all his previous ordinances, but also should in future issue no enactment in the empire without permission of the papal see; and on Maunday Thursday, A.D. 1346, he pronounced him without title or dignity and called upon the electors to make a new choice, which, if they failed to do, he would proceed to do himself. As fittest candidate he recommended Charles of Bohemia, who was actually chosen by the five electors who answered the summons, under the title of Charles IV., A.D. 1346-1378, and had his election confirmed by the pope. The new emperor solemnly promised never to set foot on the domains of the Roman church without express papal permission, and to remain in Rome only so long as was required for his coronation. Louis died before he was able to engage in war with his rival, and when, six months later, the next choice of Louis’ party also died, Charles was acknowledged without a dissentient voice. He was crowned emperor in Rome by a cardinal appointed by Innocent VI., in A.D. 1355. Without doing anything to restore the imperial prestige in Italy, Charles went back like a fugitive to Germany, despised by Guelphs and Ghibellines. But in the following year, at the Diet of Nuremberg, he passed a new imperial law in the so called Golden Bull of A.D. 1356, according to which the election of emperor was to be made at Frankfort, by three clerical electors (Mainz, Cologne, and Treves) and four temporal princes (Bohemia, the Palatine of the Rhine, Saxony, and Brandenburg), and he appeased the pope’s wrath by various concessions to the curia and the clergy.
§ 110.5. The famous Rienzi was made apostolic notary by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343, and as tribune of the people headed the revolt against the barons in A.D. 1347. Losing his popularity through his own extravagances he was obliged to flee, and being taken prisoner by Charles at Prague, he was sent to Avignon in A.D. 1350. Instead of the stake with which Clement had threatened him, Innocent VI., A.D. 1352-1362, bestowed senatorial rank upon him, and sent him to Rome, hoping that his demagogical talent would succeed in furthering the interests of the papacy. He now once more, amid loud acclamations, entered the eternal city, but after two months, hated and cursed as a tyrant, he was murdered in A.D. 1354, while attempting flight.—By A.D. 1367 things had so improved in Rome that, notwithstanding the opposition of king and court and the objections of luxurious cardinals unwilling to quit Avignon, Urban V., A.D. 1362-1370, in October of that year made a triumphal entrance into Rome amid the jubilations of the Romans. Charles’ Italian expedition of the following year was inglorious and without result. The disquiet and party strifes prevailing through the country made the position of the pope so uncomfortable, that notwithstanding the earnest entreaty of St. Bridget (§ [112, 8]), who threatened him with the Divine judgment of an early death in France, he returned in A.D. 1370 to Avignon, where in ten weeks the words of the northern prophetess were fulfilled. His successor was Gregory XI., A.D. 1370-1378. Rome and the States of the Church had now again become the scene of the wildest anarchy, which Gregory could only hope to quell by his personal presence. The exhortations of the two prophetesses of the age, St. Bridget and St. Catherine (§ [112, 4]), had a powerful influence upon him, but what finally determined him was the threat of the exasperated Romans to elect an anti-pope. And so in spite of the renewed opposition of the cardinals and the French court, the curia again returned to Rome in A.D. 1377; but though the rejoicing at the event throughout the city was great, the results were by no means what had been expected. Sick and disheartened, the pope was already beginning to speak of going back to Avignon, when his death in A.D. 1378 put an end to his cares and sufferings.
§ 110.6. The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa.—Under pressure from the people the cardinals present in Rome almost unanimously chose the Neapolitan archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI., A.D. 1378-1389. His energies were mainly directed to the emancipating of the papal chair from French interference and checking the abuses introduced into the papal court during the Avignon residence; but the impatience and bitterness which he showed in dealing with the greed, pomp, and luxury of the cardinals roused them to choose another pope. After four months, they met at Fundi, declared that the choice of Urban had been made under compulsion, and was therefore invalid. In his place they elected a Frenchman, Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who was enthroned under the name of Clement VII., A.D. 1378-1394. The three Italians present protested against this proceeding and demanded, but in vain, the decision of a council. Thus began the greatest and most mischievous papal schism, A.D. 1378-1417. France, Naples, and Savoy at once, and Spain and Scotland somewhat later, declared in favour of Clement; while the rest of Western Europe acknowledged Urban. The two most famous saints of the age, St. Catherine and St. Vincent Ferrér (§ [115, 2]), though both disciples of Dominic, took different sides, the former as an Italian favouring Urban, the latter as a Spaniard favouring Clement. Failing to secure a footing in Italy, Clement took possession of the papal castle at Avignon in A.D. 1379. The schism lasted for forty years, during which time Boniface IX., A.D. 1389-1404, Innocent VII., A.D. 1404-1406, and Gregory XII., A.D. 1406-1415, elected by the cardinals in Rome, held sway there in succession, while at Avignon on Clement’s death his place was taken by the Spanish cardinal Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII., A.D. 1394-1424. The Council of Paris of A.D. 1395 recommended the withdrawal of both popes and a new election, but Benedict insisted upon a decision by a two-thirds majority in favour of one or other of the two rivals. An œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1409, dominated mainly by the influence of Gerson (§ [118, 4]), who maintained that the authority of the councils is superior to that of the pope, made short work with both contesting popes, whom it pronounced contumacious and deposed. After the cardinals present had bound themselves by an oath that whosoever of them might be chosen should not dissolve the council until a reform of the church in its head and members should be carried out, they elected a Greek of Candia in his seventieth year, Cardinal Philangi, who was consecrated as Alexander V., A.D. 1409-1410, and for three years the council continued to sit without effecting any considerable reforms. The consequence was that the world had the edifying spectacle of three contemporary popes anathematizing one another.
§ 110.7. The Council of Constance and Martin V.—Alexander V. died after a reign of ten months by poison administered, as was supposed, by Balthasar Cossa, resident cardinal legate and absolute military despot, suspected of having been in youth engaged in piracy. Cossa succeeded, as John XXIII., A.D. 1410-1415. He was acknowledged by the new Roman king, Sigismund, A.D. 1411-1437, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 1412, by Ladislas [Ladislaus] of Naples, so that Gregory XII. was thus deprived of his last support. The University of Paris continued to demand the holding of a council to effect reforms. Sigismund, supported by the princes, insisted on its being held in a German city. Meanwhile Ladislas [Ladislaus] had quarrelled with the pope, and had overrun the States of the Church and plundered Rome in A.D. 1413, and John was obliged to submit to Sigismund’s demands, He now summoned the 16th œcumenical Council of Constance, A.D. 1414-1418 (§ [119, 5]). It was the most brilliant and the most numerously attended council ever held. More than 18,000 priests and vast numbers of princes, counts, and knights, with an immense following; in all about 100,000 strangers, including thousands of harlots from all countries, and hordes of merchants, artisans, showmen, and players of every sort. Gerson and D’Ailly, the one representing European learning, the other the claims of the Gallican church (§ [118, 4]), were the principal advisers of the council. The decision to vote not individually but by nations (Italian, German, French, and English) destroyed the predominance of the Italian prelates, who as John’s creatures were present in great numbers. Terrified by an anonymous accusation, which charged the pope with the most heinous crimes, he declared himself ready to withdraw if the other two popes would also resign, but took advantage of the excitement of a tournament to make his escape disguised as an ostler. Sigismund could with difficulty keep the now popeless council together. John, however, was captured, seventy-two serious charges formulated against him, and on 26th July, A.D. 1415, he was deposed and condemned to imprisonment for life. He was given up to the Count Palatine Louis of Baden, who kept him prisoner in Mannheim, and afterwards in Heidelberg. Meanwhile the leader of an Italian band making use of the name of Martin V. purchased his release with 3,000 ducats. He now submitted himself to that pope, and was appointed by him cardinal-bishop of Tuscoli, and dean of the sacred college, but soon afterwards died in Florence, in A.D. 1419. Gregory XII. also submitted in A.D. 1415, and was made cardinal-bishop of Porto. Benedict, however, retired to Spain and refused to come to terms, but even the Spanish princes withdrew their allegiance from him as pope. The cardinals in conclave elected the crafty Oddo Colonna, who was consecrated as Martin V., A.D. 1417-1431. There was no more word of reformation. With great pomp the council was closed, and indulgence granted to its members. As the whole West now recognised Martin as the true pope the schism may be said to end with his accession, though Benedict continued to thunder anathemas from his strong Spanish castle till his death in A.D. 1424, and three of his four cardinals elected as his successor Clement VIII. and the fourth another Benedict XIV. Of the latter no notice was taken, but Clement submitted in A.D. 1429, and received the bishopric of Majorca.—Martin V. on entering Rome in A.D. 1420 found everything in confusion and desolate.By his able administration a change was soon effected, and the Rome of the Renaissance rose on the ruins of the mediæval city.[325]
§ 110.8. Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basel.—Martin V. commissioned Cardinal Julian Cesarini to look after the Hussite controversy in the Basel Council, A.D. 1431-1449. His successor Eugenius IV., A.D. 1431-1447, confirmed this appointment. After thirteen months he ordered the council to meet at Bologna, finding the heretical element too strong in Germany. The members, however, unanimously refused to obey. Sigismund, too, protested, and the council claimed to be superior to the pope. The withdrawal of the bull within sixty days was insisted upon. As a compromise, the pope offered to call a new council, not at Bologna, but at Basel. This was declined and the pope threatened with deposition. A rebellion, too, broke out in the States of the Church; and in A.D. 1433 Eugenius was completely humbled and obliged to acquiesce in the demands of the council. One danger was thus averted, but he was still threatened by another. In A.D. 1434 Rome proclaimed itself a republic and the pope fled to Florence. The success of the democracy, however, was now again of but short duration. In five months Rome was once more under the dominion of the pope. Negotiations for union with the Greeks were begun by the pope at Ferrara A.D. 1438. A small number of Italians under the presidency of the pope here assumed the offices of an œcumenical council, those at Basel being ordered to join them, the Basel Council being suspended, and the continuance of that council being pronounced schismatical. Julian, now styled “Julianus Apostata II.,” with almost all the cardinals, betook himself to Ferrara. Under the able cardinal Louis d’Aleman (§ [118, 4]), archbishop of Arles, some still continued the proceedings of the council at Basel, but in consequence of a pestilence they moved, in A.D. 1439, to Florence. A union with the Greeks was here effected, at least upon paper. The Basel Council banned by the pope, deposed him, and in A.D. 1439 elected a new pope in the person of Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who on his wife’s death had resigned his crown to his son and entered a monkish order. He called himself Felix V. Princes and people, however, were tired of rival papacies. Felix got little support, and the council itself soon lost all its power. Its ablest members one after another passed over to the party of Eugenius.In A.D. 1449 Felix resigned, and died in the odour of sanctity two years afterwards.[326]
§ 110.9. Only Charles VII. of France took advantage of the reforming decree of Basel for the benefit of his country. He assembled the most distinguished churchmen and scholars of his kingdom at Bourges, and with their concurrence published, in A.D. 1438, twenty-three of the conclusions of Basel that bore on the Gallican liberties under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, and made it a law of his realm. For the rest he maintained an attitude of neutrality towards both popes, as also shortly before the electors convened at Frankfort had done. Those assembled at the Diet of Mainz in A.D. 1439 recognised the reforming edicts of Basel as applying to Germany. Frederick IV., A.D. 1439-1493, who as emperor is known as Frederick III., under the influence of the cunning Italian Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (§ [118, 6]), though at first in the opposition, went over to the side of Eugenius IV. in A.D. 1446 upon receiving 100,000 guldens for the expenses of an expedition to Rome and certain ecclesiastical privileges for his Austrian subjects. Some weeks later the electors of Frankfort took the same steps, stipulating that Eugenius should recognise the decrees of the Council of Constance and the reforming decrees of Basel, and should promise to convene a new free council in a German city to bring the schism to an end, which if he failed to do they would quit him in favour of Basel. But at the diet, held in September of that year at Frankfort, the legates of the pope and of the king succeeded by diplomatic arts in coming to an understanding with the electors met at Mainz. Thus it happened that in the so-called Frankfort Concordat of the Princes a compromise was effected, which Eugenius confirmed in A.D. 1447, with a careful explanation to the effect that none of these concessions in any way infringed upon the rights and privileges of the Holy See. In the following year Frederick in name of the German nation concluded with Eugenius’ successor, Nicholas V., the Concordat of Vienna, A.D. 1448. The advantages gained by the German church were quite insignificant. Frederick received imperial rank as reward for the betrayal of his country, and was crowned in Rome, in A.D. 1452, as the last German emperor.
§ 110.10. Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Pius II., A.D. 1447-1464.—With Nicholas V., A.D. 1447-1455, a miracle of classical scholarship and founder of the Vatican Library, the Roman see for the first time became the patron of humanistic studies, and under this mild and liberal pope the secular government of Rome was greatly improved. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, in A.D. 1453, produced excitement throughout the whole of Europe. The eloquence of the pope roused the crusading spirit of Christendom, and oratorical appeals were thundered from the pulpits of all churches and cathedrals. But the princes remained cold and indifferent. After Nicholas, a Spaniard, the cardinal Alphonso Borgia, then in his seventy-seventh year, was raised to the papal chair as Calixtus III., A.D. 1455-1458. Hatred of Turks and love of nephews were the two characteristics of the man. Yet he could not rouse the princes against the Turks, and the fleet fitted out at his own cost only plundered a few islands in the Archipelago. Calixtus’ successor was Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the able and accomplished apostate from the Basel reform party, who styled himself, with intended allusion to Virgil’s “pius Æneas,” Pius II., A.D. 1458-1464. The pope’s Ciceronian eloquence failed to secure the attendance of princes at the Mantuan Congress, summoned in A.D. 1459 to take steps for the equipment of a crusade. A war against the Turks was indeed to have been undertaken by emperor Frederick III., and a tax was to have been levied on Christians and Jews for its cost; but neither tax nor crusade was forthcoming. Pius demanded of the French ambassadors a formal repudiation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and when they threatened the calling of an œcumenical council, he issued the bull Execrabilis, which pronounced “the execrable and previously unheard of” enormity of an appeal to a council to be heresy and treason. In A.D. 1461 the pope, by a long epistle, attempted the conversion of Mohammed II., the powerful conqueror of Constantinople. As the discovery of the great alum deposit at Rome in A.D. 1462 was attributed to miraculous direction, the pope was led to devote its rich resources to the fitting out of a crusade against the Turks. He wished himself to lead the army in person, in order to secure victory by uplifted hands, like Moses in the war with Amalek. But here again the princes left him in the lurch. Coming to Ancona in A.D. 1464 to take ship there upon his great undertaking, only his own two galleys were waiting him. After long weary waiting, twelve Venetian ships arrived, just in time to see the pope prostrated with fever and excitement.
§ 110.11. Paul II., Sixtus IV. and Innocent VII., A.D. 1464-1492.—Among the popes of the last forty years of the 15th century Paul II., A.D. 1464-1471, was the best, though vain, sensual, greedy, fond of show, and extravagant. He was impartial in the administration of justice, free from nepotism, and always ready to succour the needy. His successor, Sixtus IV., A.D. 1471-1484, formerly Franciscan general, was one of the most wicked of the occupants of the chair of Peter. His appeal for an expedition against the Turks finding no response outside of Italy, his love of strife found gratification in fomenting internal animosities among the Italian states. In favour of a nephew he sought the overthrow in A.D. 1478 of the famous Medici family in Florence. Julian was murdered, but Lorenzo escaped, and the archbishop, as abettor of the crime, was hanged in his official robes. The pope placed the city under ban and interdict. It was only the conquest of Otranto in A.D. 1480, and the terror caused by the landing of the Turks in Italy, that moved him to make terms with Florence. His nepotism was most shamelessly practised, and he increased his revenues by taxing the brothels of Rome. His powerful government did something towards the improvement of the administration of justice in the Church States and his love of art beautified the city. In A.D. 1482 Andrew, archbishop of Crain, a Slav by birth and of the Dominican order, halted at Basel on his return from Rome, where he had been as ambassador for Frederick, and, with the support of the Italian league and the emperor, issued violent invectives against the pope, and summoned an œcumenical council for the reform of the church in its head and members. The pope ordered his arrest and extradition, but this the municipal authorities refused. After a volley of bulls and briefs, charges and appeals, and after innumerable embassies and negotiations between Basel, Vienna, Innsbrück, Florence, and Rome, in which the emperor abandoned the archbishop and the papal legates dangled an interdict over Basel, the authorities decided to imprison the objectionable prelate, but refused to deliver him up. After eleven months’ imprisonment, however, he was found hanged in his cell in A.D. 1484. Sixtus had died three months before and Basel was absolved by his successor Innocent VIII., A.D. 1484-1492. In character and ability he was far inferior to his predecessor. The number of illegitimate children brought by him to the Vatican gave occasion to the popular witticism: “Octo Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas, Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem.” The mighty conqueror of half the world, Mohammed II., had died in A.D. 1481. His two sons contested for the throne, and Bajazet proving successful committed the guardianship of his brother to the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. The Grandmaster transferred his prisoner, in A.D. 1489, to the pope. Innocent rewarded him with a cardinalate, and Bajazet promised the pope not only continual peace, but a yearly tribute of 40,000 ducats. He also voluntarily presented his holiness with the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side. All this, however, did not prevent the pope from repeatedly but ineffectually seeking to rouse Christendom to a crusade against the Turks.To this pope also belongs the odium of familiarizing Europe with witch prosecutions (§ [117, 4]).[327]
§ 110.12. Alexander VI., A.D. 1492-1503.—The Spanish cardinal Roderick Borgia, sister’s son of Calixtus III., purchased the tiara by bribing his colleagues. In him as Alexander VI. we have a pope whose government presents a scene of unparalleled infamy, riotous immorality, and unmentionable crimes, of cruel despotism, fraud, faithlessness, and murder, and a barefaced nepotism, such as even the city of the popes had never witnessed before. He had already before his election five children by a concubine, Rosa Vanossa, four sons and one daughter, Lucretia, and his one care was for their advancement. His favourite son was Giovanni, for whom while cardinal he had purchased the rank of a Spanish grandee, with the title Duke of Gandia, and when pope he bestowed on him, in A.D. 1497, the hereditary dukedom of Benevento. But eight days after his corpse with dagger wounds upon it was taken out of the Tiber. The pope exclaimed, “I know the murderer.” Suspicion fell first upon Giovanni Sforsa of Pesaro, Lucretia’s husband, who had charged the murdered man with committing incest with his sister, but afterwards upon Cardinal Cæsar Borgia, the pope’s second son, who was jealous of his brother because of the favour shown him by Lucretia and by her father. Alexander’s grief knew no bounds, but sought escape from it by redoubled love to the suspected son. In A.D. 1498 the papal bastard resigned the cardinalate as an intolerable burden, married a French princess, and was made hereditary duke of Romagna. Suddenly at the same time, and in the same manner, in A.D. 1503, father and son took ill. The father died after a few days, but the vigour of youth aided the son’s recovery. Cæsar Borgia was at a later period cast into prison by Julius II., and fell in A.D. 1507 in the service of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. It was generally believed that Alexander died of poisoned wine prepared by his son to secure the removal of a rich cardinal. The father as well as the two brothers were suspected of incest with Lucretia. This pope, too, did not hesitate to intrigue with the Turkish sultan against Charles VIII. of France. With unexampled assumption, during the contention of Portugal and Spain about the American discoveries, he presented Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1493 with all islands and continents that had been discovered or might yet be discovered lying beyond a line of demarcation drawn from the North to the South Pole. Once only, when grieving over the death of his favourite son, had this pope a twinge of conscience. He had resolved, he said, to devote himself to his spiritual calling and secure a reform in church discipline. But when the commission appointed for this purpose presented its first reform proposals the momentary emotion had already passed away. Nothing was further from his thought than the calling of an œcumenical council, which not only the king of France, but also the Florentine reformer Savonarola demanded (§ [119, 11]).