Thus Zeus, the life-giving principle is the father of Clio, the muse of history, whose mother is Mnemosyne, or memory. History then is the memory of men's acts and God's providences, and combines a heavenly with an earthly nature. She is the daughter of God and man; but, alas, the purblind philosophy of the nineteenth century has not attained to the lofty views of heathen wisdom!
What a startling fact, that men brought up amid the glorious light of the present age should deny that divine intervention in human affairs which even the very heathens admitted!
The beginning of the fifteenth century finds Boniface IX., on the pontifical throne. During his reign the papal power culminated and began to decline.
No empire of ancient or modern times has experienced such marvelous and varied vicissitudes, as those which have befallen the empire of the Roman church. Born in obscurity and reared in adversity, that church nevertheless succeeded in climbing to a loftier throne and grasping the scepter of a more absolute dominion than either a Xerxes or an Alexander could boast. Pretending to despise mere worldly gains, she cunningly turned the channels of riches towards herself, and emptied them without scruple into her own coffers.
When Boniface ascended the papal throne, the authority of Rome was apparently greater than ever; but in reality it was much undermined by the advancing labors of civilization.
Society had made a great advance in the previous eight hundred years. In the seventh century, a cloud of more than Egyptian darkness overshadowed Europe. Then it was occupied by wandering savages; now it was organized into families, neighborhoods and cities. The seventh century left it full of bondmen; the fifteenth found it without a slave. Where there had been trackless forests there were now the abodes of civilized men. Instead of bloody chieftains drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were grave professors teaching the laws of nature and the principles of science.
Nor was this all. Rome herself had a preparatory work to do, and had she confined herself to that work, and sought not to trammel the minds of men, she would have continued a blessing to the race. Never before in the history of the world was there such a system. From her central seat she could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance or examine the private life of any individual. In all Europe there was not a man too great or too obscure, too insignificant or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage; and her knell tolled at his funeral. When even to his friends his lifeless corpse had become an offense, she received it into her consecrated ground, there to rest until the great reckoning day. In times of lawlessness and rapine, she sheltered the helpless from the tyrant, and made her sanctuaries a refuge for the despairing and oppressed, But like all man-made systems of religion, she failed by attempting to enforce fixed laws on society in the presence of higher truths and advancing civilization.
During all these centuries mankind had slowly but surely advanced and Abraham's seed, the Jews and Saracens, had been the leaders of that progress. Quietly the materials had been gathering until the whole continent was ripe for revolution.
Meanwhile God had raised up instruments, by which the commerce, politics and religious thought of Europe were completely changed.
In A. D. 1484, there were living in various parts of Europe three persons who were destined to set in motion these mighty movements. These were Gutenberg, Columbus and Luther. Around these men cluster many notable events; and a history of their lives and times would include some of the brightest pages in the annals of our race.