[1439-1449 A.D.]
Thus the lamentable schism, which had been extinguished after so much labour and toil at Constance, returned with new and greater misfortunes. For there were not only two pontiffs mutually condemning each other, but likewise, what was worse, two opposing councils, that of Bâle and that of Florence. The greater part of the church, indeed, adhered to Eugenius; but most of the universities, and particularly the first among them, that of Paris, as well as some kingdoms and provinces, chose to follow Felix V. The Council of Bâle continued to deliberate and to pass laws and decrees till the year 1443, notwithstanding all the opposition of Eugenius and his adherents. And although the fathers separated in that year, they nevertheless publicly declared that the council was not at an end, but would assemble again at a proper time, either at Bâle, or Lyons, or Lausanne. The Council of Florence was chiefly occupied in settling the disputes between the Latins and the Greeks. This great business was committed to selected individuals of both parties. The principal one on the part of the Greeks was Bessarion, a very learned man, who was afterwards admitted into the order of cardinals in the Roman church. This man, being gained by the favours bestowed on him by the pontiff, exerted his influence, and the pontiff employed rewards, threats, and promises to induce the other Greeks to accede to the proposed terms of accommodation, and to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeded also from the Son, that departed souls undergo a purgation by fire before they are admitted to the vision of God, that bread which is without leaven may be used in the sacred supper, and lastly, what was most important of all, that the Roman pontiff is the head and the judge of the church universal. One of the Greeks, Mark of Ephesus, could not be persuaded, by entreaties or by bribes, to give his assent. After all, this peace, which was extorted by various artifices, was not stable. For the Greeks, on returning to Constantinople, stated to their fellow-citizens that everything had been carried at Florence by fraud, and they resumed their hostility. The Council of Florence itself put an end to its deliberations on the 26th of April, 1442. There were also negotiations in this council for bringing the Armenians, and the Jacobites, but especially the Abyssinians, into union with the Romish church; which were attended with the same result as those respecting the Greeks.
[1447-1455 A.D.]
The author of this new pontifical schism, Eugenius IV, died in the month of February, 1447, and was succeeded in the month of March by Nicholas V, who was previously Tommaso Parentucelli of Sarzana, bishop of Bologna, a man of learning himself and a great patron of learning, and likewise moderate in temper and disposed for peace. Under him, by means of the persevering labours and efforts of the kings and princes of Europe, especially of the king of France, tranquillity was restored to the Latin church. For Felix V, on the 9th of April, 1449, himself resigned the supremacy of the church, and retired to his former quiet at Ripaille; and the Basilian fathers, being assembled on the 16th of April at Lausanne, ratified his voluntary abdication, and by a solemn decree directed the whole church to obey Nicholas only. On the 18th of June Nicholas promulgated this pacification; and, at the same time, confirmed by his sanction the acts and decrees of the Council of Bâle. This Nicholas was particularly distinguished for his love of literature and the arts, which he laudably exerted himself to advance and encourage in Italy, especially by means of the Greeks that came from Constantinople. He died on the 24th of March, 1455, principally from grief, occasioned by the capture of Constantinople by the Turks.[c]
At this date Milman closes his splendid work on The History of Latin Christianity. It will be profitable to quote his summing up of the point reached by Nicholas V, eight and a half centuries after Gregory the Great.[a]
MILMAN ON NICHOLAS V AND THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE
[1447-1458 A.D.]
The pontificate of Nicholas V is the culminating point of Latin Christianity. The papal power indeed had long reached its zenith. From Innocent III to Boniface VIII it had begun its decline. But Latin Christianity was alike the religion of the popes and of the councils which contested their supremacy. It was as yet no more than a sacerdotal strife whether the pope should maintain an irresponsible autocracy, or be limited and controlled by an ubiquitous, aristocratic senate. The most ardent reformers looked no further than to strengthen the hierarchy. The prelates were determined to emancipate themselves from the usurpations of the pope, as to their elections, their arbitrary taxation by Rome, the undermining of their authority by perpetual appeals; but they had no notion of relaxing in the least the ecclesiastical domination. It was not that Christendom might govern itself, but that themselves might have a more equal share in the government. They were as jealously attached as the pope to the creed of Latin Christianity. The council, not the pope, burned John Huss. Their concessions to the Bohemians were extorted from their fears, not granted by their liberality. The Vulgate was their Bible, the Latin service their exclusive liturgy, the Canon Law their code of jurisprudence.
Latin Christianity had yet to discharge some part of its mission. It had to enlighten the world with letters, to adorn it with arts. It had hospitably to receive (a gift fatal in the end to its own dominion) and to promulgate to mankind the poets, historians, philosophers of Greece. It had to break down its own idols, the schoolmen, and substitute a new idolatry, that of classical literature. It had to perfect Christian art. Already Christian architecture had achieved some of its wonders. The venerable Lateran and St. Paul’s without the Walls, the old St. Peter’s, St. Mark’s at Venice and Pisa, Strasburg and Cologne, Rheims and Bourges, York and Lincoln, stood in their majesty. Christian painting, and even Christian sculpture, were to rise to their untranscended excellence.
The choice of Nicholas V was one of such singular felicity for his time that it cannot be wondered if his admirers looked on it as overruled by the Holy Spirit. “Who would have thought in Florence,” so said Nicholas to his biographer Vespasiano,[e] “that a priest who rang the bells should become supreme pontiff?” Yet it seems to have been a happy accident. In Nicholas V, in three short years, the pope had become again a great Italian potentate. The pilgrims carried back throughout Europe accounts of the resuscitated majesty of the Roman pontificate, the unsullied personal dignity of the pope, the re-enthronement of religion in the splendid edifices, which were either building or under restoration. Nicholas V was to behold, as it were, the final act of homage to the popedom, from the majesty of the empire. He was to be the last pontiff who was to crown at Rome the successor of Charlemagne; Frederick III the last emperor who was so to receive his crown from the hands of the pope.