Chapter VIII · INTELLECT AND FAITH.

THE only heresies which really troubled the Church were those which obtained currency among the people unassisted by the ingenious quodlibets of dialecticians. Possibly there may be an exception to this in the theories of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, which apparently owed their origin to the speculations of Amaury of Bène and David of Dinant; but, as a whole, the Cathari and the Waldenses, the Spirituals and the Fraticelli, even the Hussites, had little or nothing in common with the fine-spun cobwebs of the schoolmen. For a heresy to take root and bear fruit, it must be able to inspire the zeal of martyrdom; and for this it must spring from the heart, and not from the brain. We have seen how, during centuries, multitudes were ready to face death in its most awful form rather than abandon beliefs in which were entwined their sentiments and feelings and their hopes of the hereafter; but history records few cases, from Abelard to Master Eckart and Galileo, in which intellectual conceptions, however firmly entertained, were strong enough to lead to the sacrifice. It is sentiment rather than reason which renders heretics dangerous; and all the pride of intellect was insufficient to nerve the scholar to maintain his thesis with the unfaltering resolution which enabled the peasant to approach the stake singing hymns and joyfully welcoming the flames which were to bear him to salvation.

The schools, consequently, have little to show us in the shape of contests between free thought and authority pushed to the point of invoking the methods of the Inquisition. Yet the latter, by the system which it rendered practicable of enforcing uniformity of belief, exercised too potent an influence on the mental development of Europe for us to pass over this phase of its activity without some brief review.

There were two tendencies at work to provoke collisions between the schoolmen and the inquisitors. The ardor of persecution, which rendered the purity of the faith the highest aim of the Christian and the most imperative care of the ruler, secular and spiritual, created an exaggerated standard of orthodoxy, which regarded the minutest point of theology as equally important with the fundamental doctrines of religion. We have already seen instances of this in the questions as to the poverty of Christ, as to whether he was dead when lanced on the cross, and as to whether the blood which he shed in the Passion remained on earth or ascended to heaven; and Stephen Palecz, at the Council of Constance, proved dialectically that a doctrine in which one point in a thousand was erroneous was thereby rendered heretical throughout. Moreover, erroneous belief was not necessary, for the Christian must be firm in the faith, and doubt itself was heresy.[597]

The other tendency was the insane thirst which inflamed the minds of the schoolmen for determining and defining, with absolute precision, every detail of the universe and of the invisible world. So far as this gratified itself within the lines of orthodoxy laid down by an infallible Church it resulted in building up the most complex and stupendous body of theology that human wit has ever elaborated. The Sentences of Peter Lombard grew into the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, an elaborate structure to be grasped and retained only by minds of peculiar powers after severe and special training. When this was once defined and accepted as orthodox, theology and philosophy became the most dangerous of sciences, while the perverse ingenuity of the schoolmen, revelling in the subtleties of dialectics, was perpetually rearguing doubtful points, raising new questions, and introducing new refinements in matters already too subtle for the comprehension of the ordinary intellect. The inquirer who disturbs the dust now happily covering the records of these forgotten wrangles can only feel regret that such wonderful intellectual acuteness and energy should have been so wofully wasted when, if rightly applied, it might have advanced by so many centuries the progress of humanity.

The story of Roger Bacon, the Doctor Mirabilis, is fairly illustrative of the tendencies of the time. That gigantic intellect bruised itself perpetually against the narrow bars erected around it by an age presumptuous in its learned ignorance. Once a transient gleam of light broke in upon the darkness of its environment, when Gui Foucoix was elevated to the papacy, and, as Clement IV., commanded the Englishman to communicate to him the discoveries of which he had vaguely heard. It is touching to see the eagerness with which the unappreciated scholar labored to make the most of this unexpected opportunity; how he impoverished his friends to raise the money requisite to pay the scribes who should set forth in a fair copy the tumultuous train of thought in which he sought to embody the whole store of human knowledge, and how, within the compass of little more than a single year, he thus accomplished the enormous task of writing the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus, and the Opus Tertium. Unfortunately, Clement was more concerned at the moment with the fortunes of Charles of Anjou than with the passing fancy which had led him to call upon the scholar; in little more than two years he was dead, and it is doubtful whether he even repaid the sums expended in gratifying his wishes.[598]

It was inevitable that Bacon should succumb in the unequal struggle at once with the ignorance and the learning of his age. His labors and his utterances were a protest against the whole existing system of thought and teaching. The schoolmen evolved the universe from their internal consciousness, and then wrangled incessantly over subtleties suggested by the barbarous jargon of their dialectics. It was the same with theology, which had usurped the place of religion. Peter Lombard was greater than all the prophets and evangelists taken together. As Bacon tells us, the study of Scripture was neglected for that of the Sentences, in which lay the whole glory of the theologian. He who taught the Sentences could select his own hour for teaching, and had accommodations provided for him. He who taught the Scriptures had to beg for a time in which to be heard, and had no assistance. The former could dispute, and was held to be a master; the latter was condemned to silence in the debates of the schools. It is impossible, he adds, that the Word of God can be understood, on account of the abuse of the Sentences; and whoso seeks in Scripture to elucidate questions is stigmatized as whimsical, and is not listened to. Worse than all, the text of the Vulgate is horribly corrupt, and where not corrupt it is doubtful, owing to the ignorance of would-be correctors and their presumption, for every one deemed himself able to correct the text, though he would not venture to alter a word in a poet. First of moderns, Bacon discerned the importance of etymology and of comparative philology, and he exposed unsparingly the wretched blunders customary among the so-called learned, who only succeeded in leading their pupils into error. Bacon’s methods were strictly scientific. He wanted facts, actual facts, as a basis for all reasoning, whether on dogma or physical and mental experiences. To him all study of nature or of man was empirical; to know first, and then to reason. Mathematics was first in the order of sciences; then metaphysics; and to him metaphysics was not a barren effort to frame a system on postulates assumed at caprice and built up on dialectical sophisms, but a solid series of deductions from ascertained observations, for, according to Avicenna, “the conclusions of other sciences are the principles of metaphysics.”[599]

The vast labors of the earnest life of a great genius were lost to a world too conceited of its petty vanities to recognize how far he was in advance of it. It was enamored of words; he dealt in things: the actual was rejected for the unsubstantial, and an intellectual revolution of priceless value to mankind was stifled in its inception. It was as though Caliban should chain Prospero and cast him into the ocean. How completely Bacon was unappreciated by an age unable to understand him and his antagonism towards its methods is evidenced by the scarcity of manuscripts of his works, the fragmentary condition of some of them, and the utter disappearance of others. “It is easier,” says Leland, “to collect the leaves of the Sibyl than the titles of the works of Roger Bacon.” The same evidence is furnished by the absence of detail as to his life no less than by the vulgar stories of his proficiency in magic arts. Even the tragic incident of his imprisonment by his Franciscan superiors and the prohibition to pursue his studies is so obscure that it is told in contradictory fashion, and its truth has been not unreasonably denied. According to one account he was accused of unorthodox speculations, in 1278, to Geronimo d’Ascoli, General of the Order; his opinions were condemned, the brethren were ordered scrupulously to avoid them, and he himself was cast into prison, doubtless because he did not submit as serenely as Olivi to Geronimo’s sentence. He must have had followers and sympathizers, for Geronimo is said to have prevented their complaints by promptly applying to Nicholas III. for a confirmation of the judgment. How long his imprisonment lasted is not known, though there is a tradition that he perished in jail, either through sickness or the ill-treatment which we have seen was freely visited by the Franciscans on their erring brethren. Another statement attributes his incarceration to the ascetic Raymond Gaufridi, who was General of the Order from 1289 to 1295. In either case it would not be difficult to explain the cause of his disgrace. In the fierce passions of the schools, one who antagonized so completely the prevailing currents of thought, and who exposed so mercilessly the ignorance of the learned, could not fail to excite bitter enmities. The daring scholar who preferred Scripture to the Sentences, and pronounced the text of the Vulgate to be corrupt, must have given ample opportunity for accusations of heresy in a time when dogma had become so intricate, and mortal heresy might lurk in the minutest aberration. The politic Geronimo might readily listen to enemies so numerous and powerful as those whom Bacon must have provoked. The ascetic Raymond, whose aim was to bring back the Order to its primitive rudeness and simplicity, would regard Bacon’s labors with the same aversion as that manifested by the early Spirituals to Crescenzio Grizzi’s learning. It was a standing complaint with his section of the Order that Paris had destroyed Assisi. As Jacopone da Todi sang:

and the Spiritual General might well like to strike a blow at the greatest scholar of the Order.[600]

While Bacon suffered because he antagonized the thought of his time, there was much of scholastic bitterness which escaped animadversion because it was the development of the tendencies of the age, and the schoolmen were allowed to indulge in endless wrangling for the most part without censure. The great quarrel between the Nominalists and the Realists occupies too large a space in the intellectual history of Europe to be wholly passed over, although its relation to our immediate subject is not intimate enough to justify detailed consideration.

In the developed theory of the Realists, genera and species—the distinctive attributes of individual beings, or the conceptions of those attributes—are real entities, if not the only realities. Individuals are ephemeral existences which pass away; the only things which survive are those which are universal and common to all. In man this is humanity, but humanity again is but a portion of a larger existence, the animate, and the animate is but a transitory form of an Infinite Being, which is All and nothing in particular. This is the sole Immutable. These conceptions took their origin in the Periphyseos of John Scot Erigena in the ninth century, whose reaction against the prevailing anthropomorphism led him to sublimated views of the Divine Being, which trenched closely on Pantheism. The heresy latent in his work lay undiscovered until developed by the Amaurians, when the book, after nearly four centuries, was condemned by Honorius III., in 1225.[601]

Nominalism, on the other hand, regarded the individual as the primal substance; universals are only abstractions or mental conceptions of qualities common to individuals, with no more of reality than the sounds which express them. Even as Realism in the hands of daring thinkers led to Pantheism, so, step by step, Nominalism could be brought to recognize the originality of the individual and finally to Atomism.[602]

The two antagonistic schools were first clearly defined in the beginning of the twelfth century, with Roscelin, the teacher of Abelard, as the leader of the Nominalists, and William of Champeaux at the head of the Realists. Discussion continued in the schools with constantly increasing bitterness, though neither side dared to push their own views to their ultimate conclusions. Realism in a modified form achieved a triumph with the immense authority of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Duns Scotus was a Realist, though he differed with Aquinas on the problem of individuation, and the Realists became divided into the opposing factions of Thomists and Scotists. While they were thus weakened with dissension, William of Ockham revived Nominalism, and it became bolder than ever. The perennial hostility between the Dominicans and Franciscans tended to range the two Orders under the opposing banners, while Ockham’s defence of Louis of Bavaria in his quarrel with the papacy served to impress upon the new school of Nominalists his views upon the relations between Church and State.[603]

The schools continued to resound with the clangor of disputation, occasionally growing so hot that blows supplied the deficiency of words, and even murder is said to have not been wanting. Under Peter d’Ailly and John Gerson the University of Paris was Nominalist. With the English domination the Realists triumphed and expelled their adversaries, who were unable to return until the restoration of the French monarchy. In 1465 there arose in the University of Louvain a strife which lasted for ten years over some propositions of Pierre de la Rive on fate and divine foreknowledge, in which the rival sects took sides. The University of Paris was drawn in; the Nominalists triumphed in condemning de la Rive, and the Realists took their revenge by procuring from Louis XI. an edict prohibiting the teaching of Nominalist doctrines in the University and in all the schools of the kingdom; all Nominalist books were boxed up and sealed until 1481, when Louis was persuaded to recall his edict, and the university rejoiced to regain her liberty. One tragic incident in the long quarrel has been already alluded to in the trial of John of Wesel which led to his death in prison, and it illustrates how readily scholastic ardor assumed that in gratifying its vindictiveness it was vindicating the faith. The contemporary reporter of the trial assumes that the persecution was caused by the antagonism of the Dominican Realists to the Nominalism of the victim, and he deplores the rage which led the Thomists to regard every one who denied the existence of universals as though guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, and as a traitor to God, to the Christian religion, to justice, and to the State.[604]

The annals of the schools are full of cases which show how the recklessness of disputatious logic led to subtleties most perilous in minute details of theology, and also how sensitive were the conservators of the faith as to anything that might be construed by perverse ingenuity as savoring of heresy. Duns Scotus did not escape, nor Thomas Bradwardine; William of Ockham and Buridan were enveloped in a common condemnation by the University of Paris, of which the latter had been rector. The boundaries between philosophy and the theology which sought to define everything in the visible and invisible world were impossible of definition, and it was a standing grievance that the philosophers were perpetually intruding on the domains of the theologians. When their daring speculations were unorthodox they sought to shelter themselves behind the assertion that according to the methods of philosophy the Catholic religion was erroneous and false, but that it was true as a matter of faith, and that they believed it accordingly. This only made matters worse, for, as the authorities pointed out, it assumed that there were two opposite truths, contradicting each other. It was not merely that orthodox sensitiveness was called upon to condemn, as was done in 1447 by the University of Louvain, such vain sophisms as the assertion that it is possible to conceive of a line a foot long which shall yet have neither beginning nor end, and that a whole may be in England while all its parts are in Rome; or those of Jean Fabre, condemned by the University of Paris in 1463, that any part of a man is a man, that one man is infinite men, that no man is ever corrupted, though sometimes a man is corrupted—propositions in which lurked the possibilities of heretical development—or the apparently yet more innocent grammatical obtuseness which recognized no difference between the phrases “the pot boils” and “pot, thou boilest”—an obtuseness which Erasmus tells us was regarded as an infallible sign of infidelity. Philosophers were not satisfied unless they could prove by logic the profoundest and holiest mysteries of theology, and, however zealous they were in the faith, the intrusion of reason into the theological preserves was not only resented as an interference, but was rightfully regarded with alarm at its possible consequences. When the Arab philosophers were disputing as to the nature and operation of the Divine Knowledge, the calm wisdom of Maimonides interposed, saying, “To endeavor to understand the Divine Knowledge is as though we endeavored to be God himself, so that our perception should be as his.... It is absolutely impossible for us to attain this kind of perception. If we could explain it to ourselves we should possess the intelligence which gives this kind of perception.” Ambitious schoolmen, however, as well as orthodox theological doctors, refused to admit that the finite cannot grasp the infinite, and their pride of reason awakened, not unnaturally, the jealousy of those who considered it their exclusive privilege to guard the Holy of Holies and to explain the will of God to men. This feeling finds expression as early as 1201 in the story told of the learned doctor, Simon de Tournay, who proved by ingenious arguments the mystery of the Trinity, and then, elated by the applause of his hearers, boasted that if he were disposed to be malignant, he could disprove it with yet stronger ones, whereupon he was immediately stricken with paralysis and idiocy. The self-restraint of such men was a slender reliance, and yet slenderer was the chance that the interposition of Heaven would always furnish so salutary a warning.[605]

The audacity of these rash intruders upon the sacred precincts increased immeasurably with the introduction of the works of Averrhoes in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, constituting a real danger of the perversion of Christian thought. In the hands of the Arab commentators the theism of Aristotle became a transcendental materialism, carried to its furthest expression by the latest of them, Ibn Roschd or Averrhoes, who died in 1198. In his system matter has existed from the beginning, and the theory of creation is impossible. The universe consists of a hierarchy of principles, eternal, primordial, and autonomous, vaguely connected with a superior unity. One of these is the Active Intellect, manifesting itself incessantly and constituting the permanent consciousness of humanity. This is the only form of immortality. As the soul of man is a fragment of a collective whole, temporarily detached to animate the body, at death it is reabsorbed into the Active Intellect of the universe. Consequently there are no future rewards or punishments, no feelings, memory, sensibility, love, or hatred. The perishable body has the power of reproducing itself and thus enjoys a material immortality in its descendants, but it is only collective humanity that is immortal.[606] To those whose conceptions of paradise and the resurrection were as material as the Swarga of the Brahman or the Kama Loka heavens of the Buddhist, such collective and insensible immortality, like the Moksha and Nirvana, was virtually equivalent to annihilation, and the Averrhoists were universally stigmatized as materialists.

Such theories as these necessarily induced the loftiest indifferentism as to religious formulas, although a wholesome dread of the rising Moslem fanaticism, from which Averrhoes had not escaped scathless, rendered him cautious as to assailing the established faith. “The special religion of philosophers,” he says, “is to study what exists, for the most sublime worship of God is the contemplation of his works, which leads us to a knowledge of him in all his reality. In the eye of God this is the noblest of actions, while the vilest is to accuse of error and presumption him who pays to divinity this worship, nobler than all other worship; who adores God by this religion, the best of all religions.” At the same time the received religions are an excellent instrument of morality. He who inspires among a people doubts as to the national religion is a heretic, to be punished as such by the established penalties. The wise man will utter no word against the national religion, and will especially avoid speaking of God in a manner equivocal to the vulgar. When several religions confront each other, one should select the noblest. Thus all religions are of human origin, and the choice between them is a matter of opinion or policy—but policy, if nothing else, must have prevented Averrhoes from uttering the phrase commonly attributed to him—“The Christian faith is impossible; that of Judaism is a religion of children, that of Islam, a religion of hogs.”[607]

Still less credible is the popular assertion which assigns to him the famous speech referring to Moses, Christ, and Mahomet as the three impostors who had deluded the human race. This saying became a convenient formula with which the Church horrified the faithful by attributing it successively to those whom it desired to discredit. Thomas of Cantimpré fathered it upon Simon de Tournay, whose paralytic stroke in 1201 he ascribed to this impiety. Gregory IX., when in 1239 he arraigned Frederic II. before the face of Europe, did not hesitate to assert that he was the author of this utterance, which Frederic made haste to deny in the most solemn manner. A certain renegade Dominican named Thomas Scot, who was condemned and imprisoned in Portugal, was said to have been guilty of this blasphemy among others, and the phrase drifted through the centuries until there was a current belief that an impious book existed under the title De Tribus Impostoribus, the authorship of which was attributed variously to Petrus de Vineis, Boccaccio, Poggio, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Servetus, Bernardino Ochino, Rabelais, Pietro Aretino, Étienne Dolet, Francesco Pucci, Muret, Vanini, and Milton. Queen Christina of Sweden vainly caused all the libraries of Europe to be searched for it, but it remained invisible until, in the eighteenth century, various scribblers put forth volumes to gratify the popular curiosity.[608]

Yet to Frederic II. may be attributed the introduction of Averrhoism in central Europe. In Spain it was so prevalent that about 1260 Alonso X. describes heresies as consisting of two principal divisions, of which the worst was that which denies the immortality of the soul and future rewards and punishments, and in 1291 we find the Council of Tarragona ordering the punishment of those who disbelieved in a future existence. It was from Toledo that Michael Scot came with translations of Aristotle and Averrhoes, and was warmly welcomed at the court of Frederic, whose insatiable thirst for knowledge and whose slender reverence for formulas led him to grasp eagerly at these unexpected sources of philosophy. It was probably these translations which formed the body of Aristotelism distributed by him to the universities of Italy. Hermannus Alemannus continued Michael’s work at Toledo and brought versions of other books to Manfred, who inherited his father’s tastes, so that by the middle of the century the principal labors of Averrhoes were accessible to scholars.[609]

The infection spread with rapidity almost incredible. Already, in 1243, Guillaume d’Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, and the Masters of the University condemned a series of scholastic errors, not indeed distinctively Averrhoist, but manifesting in their bold independence the influence which the Arab philosophy was beginning to exercise. In 1247 the papal legate Otto, Bishop of Frascati, condemned Jean de Brescain for certain heretical speculations concerning light and matter; he was banished from Paris and forbidden to teach, or dispute, or to live where there was a college. At the same time a certain Master Raymond who had been imprisoned for his erroneous views was found to be contumacious and was ordered back to prison, while, for the future, logicians were forbidden to argue theologically and theologians logically, as they were growing accustomed to do. This accomplished little, and as little was effected by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who employed their keenest dialectics to check the spread of these dangerous opinions. Bonaventura likewise denounced the audacious philosophy which denied immortality and asserted the unity of intellect and the eternity of matter, showing that Dominicans and Franciscans could co-operate against a common enemy. In 1270, Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, was called upon to condemn a series of thirteen errors, distinctively Averrhoist, which found defenders among the schools, to the effect that the intellect of all men is the same and is one in number; that human will is controlled by necessity; that the world is eternal and there never was a first man; that the soul is corrupted with the corruption of the body and does not suffer from corporeal fire; that God does not know individual things, he knows nothing but himself, and cannot give immortality and incorruptibility to that which is mortal and corruptible.[610]

This availed as little as the previous effort. In 1277 it was deemed necessary to invoke the authority of John XXI., under which Bishop Tempier condemned a list of two hundred and nineteen errors, mostly the same as the previous ones, or deductions drawn from them, tending to systematize materialism and fatalism. The daring progress made by free-thought is shown by the sharply defined antagonism proclaimed between philosophy and theology: The philosopher must deny the creation of the world because he relies upon natural causes alone, but the believer may assert it because he relies upon supernatural causes; the utterances of the theologians are based upon fables, and theology is a study unworthy the pursuing, for philosophers are the only sages and the Christian law impedes the progress of learning: prayer, of course, is unnecessary, and sepulture is not worth consideration by the wise man, but confession may be practised to save appearances. The Averrhoist theory of the universe and the celestial spheres was fully expressed, as well as the controlling influences of the stars upon human will and fortunes, for which, as we have seen, Peter of Abano and Cecco d’Ascoli subsequently suffered. In addition we have the speculation that with every cycle of thirty-six thousand years the celestial bodies returned to the same relative positions, producing a repetition of the same series of events.[611]

About the same time Robert Kilwarby, Archbishop of Canterbury, together with the Masters of Oxford, condemned some errors evidently originating from the same source, but not asserting materialism in a manner so absolute, and this condemnation was confirmed in 1284 by Archbishop Peckham, but the only punishment threatened was deposition for a Master, and for a Bachelor expulsion with disability for promotion. These articles were combined with those of Bishop Tempier, and together the collection had wide currency, as shown by the number of MSS. containing it. That the opinions thus condemned continued to be regarded as a source of real danger to the Church is manifested by the articles being customarily printed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries at the end of the fourth book of the Sentences, and also in an edition each of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Bonaventura.[612]

Yet after the death of Bishop Tempier these articles aroused considerable complaint as interfering with freedom of discussion, and they became the object of no little debate. In fact, in so long a list of errors, many of them scarce apprehensible save by the scholastic mind, it was almost impossible to avoid trenching upon positions held to be orthodox in a theology of which the complexity had grown beyond the grasp of finite intelligence and finite memory. Considerable trouble was occasioned by the fact that some of the articles assailed positions held by Thomas Aquinas himself; others were attacked by William of Ockham and Jean de Poilly. How perilous, indeed, was the position of the theological expert in the war of dialectics is seen in the case of the Doctor Fundatissimus, Egidio Colonna, better known as Egidio da Roma. There was no more earnest and active opponent of Averrhoism, and his list of its errors long continued to be the basis of its condemnation. Yet he translated a commentary on Aristotle, and in 1285 he was accused in Paris of entertaining some of the errors condemned in 1277. After considerable discussion the matter was carried before the Holy See, and Honorius IV. referred him back to the University of Paris for sentence. He made his peace so effectually that Philippe le Bel, whose tutor he had been, presented him to the great archbishopric of Bourges.[613]

At the close of the thirteenth and the commencement of the fourteenth century the principal figure in the contest with Averrhoes is Raymond Lully—aptly styled by Renan the hero of the crusade against it—but the career of Lullism was so remarkable that it must be considered independently hereafter. All efforts failed to suppress a philosophy which offered such attractions to the rising energies of the human intellect. An avowed school of Averrhoists arose, whose tenets, introduced in the University of Padua seemingly by Peter of Abano, reigned there supreme until the seventeenth century. The University of Bologna likewise adopted them. Jean de Jandun, the collaborator of Marsilio of Padua, was a modified Averrhoist, as were Walter Burleigh, Buridan, and the Ockhamists. John of Baconthorpe, who died in 1346 as General of the Carmelites, rejoiced in the title of Prince of Averrhoists, and through him the philosophy became traditional in the Order. These men might conceal to themselves the dangerous irreligion which lurked under their cherished theories, but when these spread among the people, divested of the subtle dialectics of the schools, they developed into frank materialism. Dante’s description of the portion of hell where

manifests by its occupants that Averrhoism in its crudest form was openly professed by men high in station; and some proceedings of the Inquisitions of Carcassonne and Pamiers in the first quarter of the fourteenth century indicate that even in the lower strata of society such opinions were not uncommon. The indignation of Petrarch shows us how fashionable and how outspoken by the middle of the century this indifferentism had become in the Venetian provinces, where men did not hesitate to ridicule Christ and to regard Averrhoes as the fountain of wisdom. In Florence the tradition of the same philosophic contempt for dogma is indicated by Boccaccio’s story of the Three Rings, wherein Melchisedech the Jew, by an ingenious parable, conveys to Saladin the conclusion that all three religions are on the same plane, with equal claims for reverence. In Spain, although philosophy was little cultivated, Moorish tradition seems to have kept Averrhoism alive. The revolted nobles who, in 1464, presented their complaints to King Enrique IV., declare him suspect in the faith because he keeps about his person enemies of Catholicism, and others who, while nominally Christians, boast of their disbelief in the immortality of the soul.[614]

Averrhoism had thus fairly conquered a position for itself, and it is one of the inscrutable problems why the Inquisition, so unrelenting in its suppression of minor aberrations, should have conceded impunity to speculations which not only sapped the foundations of Christian faith, but by plain implication denied all the doctrines on which were based the wealth and power of the hierarchy. Even the University of Paris, so vigilant in its guard over orthodoxy, seems during the remainder of the fourteenth century to have abstained from condemning Averrhoism and its deductions, although there were numerous decisions against minute errors of scholastic theology. Yet to Gerson Averrhoes was still the most insolent adversary of the faith; he was the man who had condemned all religions as bad, but that of the Christians as worst of all, for they daily ate their God; and, in the allegorical paintings of Orcagna, Traini, Taddeo Gaddi, and their successors, Averrhoes commonly figures as the impersonation of rebellious unbelief.[615]

It was not till 1512 that Averrhoism had its first recorded victim since Peter of Abano, in the person of Hermann of Ryswick, who, in 1499, had been condemned for teaching its materialistic doctrines—that matter is uncreated and has existed with God from the beginning, that the soul dies with the body, and that angels, whether good or bad, are not created by God. He abjured and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, but escaped and persisted in propagating his errors. When again apprehended, in 1512, the inquisitor at The Hague had no hesitation in handing him over as a relapsed to the secular arm, and he was duly burned.[616]

In northern Europe, where scholastic theology was engaged in mortal combat with Humanism, rigor like this is to be looked for, but the case was different in Italy. There letters had long before got the better of faith. The infection of culture and philosophy, of elegant paganism, pervaded all the more elevated ranks of society. A succession of cultured popes, who were temporal princes rather than vicars of Christ, and who prided themselves on the patronage of scholars, could turn aside from the affairs of state to stimulate the burning of miserable witches, but not to condemn the errors of the philosophers who adorned their courts. If Rome was to remain the mistress of the world under the New Learning, she could not afford to be relentless in repressing the aspirations and speculations of scholars and philosophers.[617] The battle had been fought and lost over Lorenzo Valla. It is true that his destructive criticism of the Donation of Constantine was written at Naples about 1440, when Alfonso I. was in conflict with Eugenius IV. Yet, as he not only swept away the foundations of the temporal power, but argued that the papacy should be deprived of it, the impunity which he enjoyed is a remarkable proof of the freedom of speech permitted at the period. His troubles arose from a different cause, and even these he would probably have escaped but for the quarrelsome humor of the man, and his unsparing ridicule of the horrible jargon of the schools and even of the earlier Humanists. He made enemies enough to conspire for his ruin at the court of Naples, where Alfonso had studied Latin under his teaching, and he soon gave occasion for their attack. Becoming involved in a contest with an ignorant priest who asserted that the Symbol was the production of the Apostles, the discussion spread to the authenticity of the communications between Christ and King Abgar of Edessa. Valla posted a list of the propositions assailed, and hired a hall in which to defend them against all comers, when his enemies procured from the king a prohibition of disputation. Valla then posted on the hall-door a triumphant distich:

Then the Inquisition interposed, but Alfonso exercised the royal Neapolitan prerogative of putting a stop to the prosecution, Valla being only forced to make a general declaration that he believed as Holy Mother Church believed—the sincerity of which appeared when, attacked on a point of dialectics, he defended himself by saying: “In this, too, I believe as Mother Church believes, though Mother Church knows nothing about it.” When, in 1443, Alfonso and Eugenius were reconciled, Valla sought to go to Rome, but was unable to do so; but when the monkish Eugenius was succeeded by the humanist Nicholas V., the way was opened. Nicholas not only welcomed him, but gave him a position among the papal secretaries and rewarded his translation of Thucydides with a gift of five hundred ducats. Calixtus III. provided him with a prebend in the pope’s own church of St. John Lateran, and here he was honorably buried. So little reverence, indeed, existed at the time for the most sacred subjects that Æneas Sylvius relates with admiration, as an illustration of Alfonso’s keenness, that when he had been wearied with a sermon by Frà Antonio, a Sicilian Dominican, on some questions concerning the Eucharist, he put to the preacher the following puzzle: A man enclosed a consecrated host in a vase of gold; a month later, on opening it, he found only a worm; the worm could not have been formed from the pure gold, nor from the accidents which were there, without the subject; it was therefore produced from the body of Christ; but from the substance of God nothing but God can proceed, therefore the worm was God. In such a spiritual atmosphere it was in vain that Lorenzo’s enemy Poggio, whom he had mercilessly ridiculed and abused, urged that his errors as to the nature of God and the vow of chastity should be reproved by fire rather than by argument. His commentary on the New Testament, in which he corrected the errors of the Vulgate by the aid of the Greek text, although subsequently put in the index by Paul IV. in 1559, was not condemned at the time. Nicholas V. saw it, Bessarion contributed to it, Nicholas of Cusa begged a copy of it, and Erasmus, in 1505, published it with enthusiastic encomiums, under the patronage of Christopher Fischer, papal prothonotary. We have seen from Bacon how hopelessly corrupt the text of the Vulgate had become; Valla’s attempt to purify it was warmly contested, but in his controversy over it with Poggio he won the victory, and the right to do so was thenceforth conceded.[618]

After this, scholarship, however heretical, had little to fear in Italy; and the toleration thus extended to the most daring speculations offers abundant food for thought, when we remember that at this very time the Franciscans and Dominicans were turbulently endeavoring to burn each other over the infinitesimal question as to whether the blood of Christ shed in the Passion remained on earth or not. It is true that in 1459 the Lombard inquisitor, Jacopo da Brescia, condemned to degradation and perpetual imprisonment Doctor Zanino da Solcia, Canon of Bergamo, who entertained some crazy theories that the end of the world was approaching, and that God had created another world populated by human beings, so that Adam was not the first man, together with some Averrhoistic tenets that it was the power of the stars, and not love for humanity that led Christ to the cross, and that Christ, Moses, and Mahomet governed mankind at their pleasure; but Pius II., in confirming the sentence, moderated it with the evident purpose in due time of remedying the over-zeal of the inquisitor. He also interfered when the Inquisition had condemned a high official of Udine for virtually denying immortality by asserting that the blood is the soul: the sentence was set aside, and the offender was offered the easy opportunity of escaping punishment as a heretic by publicly declaring this to be an error. Pius, however, showed his orthodoxy by reproving the laxity of Eugenius IV. in the case of Braccio da Montone, the condottiere lord of Perugia, an avowed infidel, whose body, on his death in 1424 at the siege of Aquila, was brought to Rome and thrust into unconsecrated ground until Eugenius had it translated and honorably buried in the cathedral of Perugia. A more typical case is that of Gismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. He was a man of high culture, and an ardent adept of the new philosophy, who manifested his zeal by bringing from the Peloponnesus and burying with a laudatory inscription, in the cathedral of Rimini, Gemistus Plethon, the half-pagan founder of a new philosophical religion. All this might have escaped animadversion had not his ambition led him to extend his dominions at the expense of papal territory. In the quarrel which ensued his heterodoxy served as a convenient object of attack, and in 1461 Pius II. condemned him as a heretic who denied the immortality of the soul, and in default of his body burned his effigy before a Roman crowd. So little effect had this that the Venetians maintained their alliance with Gismondo, and the Bishop of Treviso incurred imminent risk of losing his see by reason of publishing the sentence. More efficacious was a crusade, in 1463, under the Cardinal of Theane and Federigo d’ Urbino, when Gismondo was stripped of nearly all his possessions and was forced to sue for peace. His heresy then was so little regarded that he was allowed to abjure by deputy, and was reconciled under the trifling penance of Friday fasting on bread and water.[619]

In fact, as Gregory of Heimburg bitterly declares, it was safer to discuss the power of God than that of the popes. This was very clearly demonstrated in the persecution of the “Academy” by Paul II. Pius II. had formed in the curia a college of sixty “abbreviators” for the expedition of papal briefs, which became for the most part a refuge for needy men of letters. Platina, the papal biographer, who was one of them, tells us that it was customary among both philosophers and theologians to dispute about the soul, the existence of God, the separated essences, and other matters, and he seeks to palliate the evil repute thence arising by saying that people confounded search for the truth with heretical doubt. The people probably had ample cause for scandal in such debates among papal officials, which was not diminished when Pomponio Leto founded in honor of Plato an academy of the leading Humanists, who bestowed on their leader the title of Pontifex Maximus, offered sacrifices on the anniversary of the foundation of Rome, and discarded their baptismal names in favor of classical ones. Pomponio himself would study nothing later than the golden age of Roman literature, thus dismissing with contempt the Scriptures and the Fathers, and he daily knelt before an altar dedicated to Romulus. All this might have passed unrepressed had these classical zealots borne with philosophy the withdrawal of papal patronage. One of the early acts of Paul II., in his effort to reform abuses, was the suppression of the College of Abbreviators in consequence of ugly rumors as to the venality and extortion of its members. The men of letters, many of whom had purchased their positions, were indignant at this deprivation of their means of livelihood. Platina was hardy enough to ask the pope to have their rights decided by the Auditors of the Rota, and was refused with abundant emphasis. He then had the incredible audacity to write to Paul threatening him with an appeal to the princes of Christendom to call a council on the subject. After Constance and Basle, the word council was not one to be safely uttered within earshot of a pope; Platina was promptly arrested on a charge of high-treason and thrown into jail, where he lay in chains, without fire, during four winter months, until released on the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga. All this was not likely to create harmony between Paul and the Humanists; we can readily imagine that epigrams and satires on the pope were freely circulated and that the breach grew wider, but the men of letters, if allowed to remain hungry, were not molested until, early in 1468, Paul was informed that the members of the Academy were conspiring against him. That a crazy admiration of antiquity should culminate in an effort to restore the liberty of Rome was not improbable, and the situation in Italy was such as to render an effort of the kind abundantly capable of causing trouble. Paul was thoroughly alarmed, and at once imprisoned the suspected conspirators. The unlucky Platina, who was one of them, has given us an account of the relentless tortures to which, for two days, about twenty of them were subjected, while Pomponio, who chanced to be in Venice, was dragged to Rome like another Jugurtha. No criminating evidence of treason was discovered, but they were kept in durance for a year, and, in order to find some justification for the affair, which had excited much comment, they were accused of heresy, of disputing about the immortality of the soul, and of venerating Plato. It proves how leniently such aberrations were regarded that they were finally acquitted of all heresy and discharged; and that although Paul abolished the Academy, prohibiting even the mention of its name, his successor, Sixtus IV., as a patron of letters, permitted its re-establishment and appointed Platina librarian of the Vatican library which he founded.[620]

The tolerance thus extended to the paganism of the enthusiastic votaries of the New Learning produced a curious development of religious sentiment among them as insidiously dangerous to the faith, except in its lack of popular attractiveness, as the dogmas so ruthlessly exterminated by Peter Martyr and François Borel. Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist, evidently regarded himself, and was regarded, as a champion of Christianity and a most deserving son of the Church, and yet he kept a lamp lighted in honor of Plato, whom he repeatedly declared to be a Greek-speaking Moses. He brought all religions upon the same level. The worship of the pagan gods of antiquity was a worship of the true God, and not, as the Church held, an adoration of demons. He found Paradise in the Elysian Fields, and Purgatory in Hades. Zoroaster, Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates, Plato, and Virgil were prophets on whose evidence he relies to prove the divinity of Christ. The Crito confirms the Evangel and contains the foundation of religion. Even the Neo-Platonists, Plotinus and Proclus, and Iamblichus, are shown to have been supporters of the faith which they so earnestly combated while alive. For teachings far less dangerous than this hundreds of men had been forced to the alternative of recantation or the stake, but Marsilio was honored as a light of his age. It is true that he avoided the errors of Averrhoism, but as these were likewise tolerated his impunity is not to be ascribed to this. While admitting the importance of astrology, he held that the stars have no power of themselves; they can merely indicate, and their indication of the future by their regular revolutions shows that affairs are not abandoned to chance, but are ruled by Providence. So, while human character is affected by the position of the stars at the hour of birth, it is much more the result of heredity and training. Perhaps the most curious illustration which Marsilio gives us of the confusion and upturning of religious ideas in the Renaissance is a letter addressed to Eberhard, Count of Wirtemberg, in which he seriously proves that the sun is not to be worshipped as God. In one respect he was more orthodox than most of his brethren of the New Learning, for he believed in the immortality of the soul, and maintained it in a laborious treatise, but he could not convince his favorite pupil, Michele Mercato, and made with him a compact that the one dying first should return, if there was a future life, and inform the other. One morning Mercato was awakened by the trampling of a horse and a voice calling to him: on rushing to the window the horseman shouted, “Mercato, it is true!”. Marsilio had that moment died.[621]

An exception to this prevalent tolerance is commonly said to be found in the case of Matteo Palmiere of Pisa, reported to have been burned in 1483 for maintaining in his poem, the Città di Vita, that the souls of men are the angels who stood neutral in the revolt of Satan. In reality, however, although the Inquisition disapproved his book, the author was not persecuted; he was honorably buried in Florence, and his portrait by Sandro Botticelli was placed over the altar of San Pietro Maggiore.[622]

That it was not, however, always safe to presume on this favor shown to humanism is evident by the case of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the wonder of his age, who in 1487, when but twenty-four years old, published a series of nine hundred propositions which he offered to defend in Rome against all comers, paying the expenses of scholars who might travel for the purpose from distant lands. The list was virtually de omni scibili, comprising everything recognized as knowable in theology, philosophy, and science, even including the mysteries of the East. It was doubtless the pretentiousness of the young scholar which provoked enmity leading to animadversion on his orthodoxy, and it was not difficult in so vast an array of conclusions to find some thirteen which savored of heresy. To us it might appear a truism to say that belief is independent of volition; we might hesitate to affirm positively whether Christ descended into hell personally or only effectively; we might even agree with him that mortal sin, limited and finite, is not to be visited with chastisement unlimited and infinite; and we might hesitate to embark with him in investigating too narrowly the mysteries of transubstantiation; but these speculative assumptions of the self-sufficient thinker were condemned as heretical by the theologians appointed for their examination by Innocent VIII., who quietly remarked: “This youth wishes to end badly, and be burned some of these days, and then be infamous forever like many another.” Pico was urged to resist and raise a schism, but nothing was further from his thoughts. His few remaining years were passed in the assiduous study of Scripture; he designed, after completing certain works in hand, to wander barefoot over Europe preaching Christ; then, changing his purpose, he intended to enter the Dominican Order, but his projects were cut short, at the age of thirty-two, by the fever which carried him off, gratified in his last hours with a vision of the Virgin. Such a man was an easy victim; the voluminous apology which he wrote to explain his errors availed him nothing, and he was compelled to make a full submission, which earned from Alexander VI., in 1493, not long before Pico’s death, a bull declaring his orthodoxy and forbidding the Inquisition to trouble him.[623]

In curious contrast to this exceptional rigor was the toleration manifested towards the Averrhoists. It is true that Leo X., in the Council of Lateran, December 21, 1513, procured the confirmation of a bull in which he deplored the spread of the doctrine of the mortality of the soul and of there being but one soul common to mankind. He also condemned the opinions which maintained the eternity of the earth and that the soul has not the form of the body, and in prohibiting their teaching in the schools he especially alluded to the ingenious device adopted by professors of arguing against them so equivocally as to lead to the conviction of their truth. In 1518, moreover, when commissioning Master Leonardo Crivelli as Inquisitor-general of Lombardy, he calls his appointee’s special attention to those who seek to know more than it is well to know, and who think ill of the Holy See; these he is to repress with the free use of torture, incarceration, and other penalties, and to pay over their confiscated property to the papal camera, no matter of what condition or dignity they might be. Yet debates on points of Averrhoistic philosophy were the favorite amusement of the semi-pagan philosophers who gathered in Leo’s court, and who deemed that all that was necessary to preserve them from the Inquisition was to present arguments on both sides, pronounce the questions insoluble to human reason, and conclude with a hypocritical submission to the Church. Such was the device of Pomponazio (1473-1525), under whom Averrhoism became more popular than ever, although he ridiculed Averrhoes and called himself an Alexandrian, from Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Aristotelian commentator, from whom Averrhoes had derived much. Pomponazio invented the dilemma, “If the three religions are false, all men are deceived: if only one is true, the majority of men are deceived.” He argued, “If there is a will superior to mine, why should I be responsible for my acts and deeds? Now a will, a superior order exists, therefore all that happens must be in accordance with a preordained cause: whether I do right or wrong there is neither merit nor sin.” In his treatise De Incantationibus he argued away all miracles. The bones of a dog would effect cures as readily as the relics of a saint if the patient’s imagination entertained the same belief in them. Like Peter of Abano, moreover, he held that everything is according to the order of nature; revolutions of empires and religions follow the course of the stars; thaumaturgists are but skilful physicists who foresee the occult influences at work and profit by the suspension of ordinary laws to found new religions; when the influences cease, miracles cease, religions decay, and incredulity would triumph if renewed conjunctions of the planets did not cause fresh prodigies and new thaumaturgists. All this was far worse than anything for which Cecco d’Ascoli suffered, but Pomponazio escaped his fate by cautiously excepting the Christian faith.[624]

In fact, the only work which gave him serious trouble was his treatise De Immortalitate Animœ, written after the Lateran denunciation, in 1516, which Prierias informs us ought rather to have been entitled “De Mortalitate.” In this it is true that he rejects the Averrhoist theory of a universal intelligence as unworthy of refutation through its monstrous and unintelligible fatuity; but, after stating the various arguments for and against immortality, with an evident bearing towards the latter, he sums up by declaring the problem to be “neutral,” like that of the eternity of the earth; there are no natural reasons proving the soul either to be immortal or mortal, but God and Scripture assert immortality, and therefore reasons proving mortality must be false. He evidently seeks to indicate that immortality is a matter of faith, and not of reason; and he even goes so far as to attribute much of the popular belief in departed spirits and in visions to the frauds of corrupt priests, examples of which he says were not uncommon at the time. The thin veil thus cast over its infidelity did not save the book in Venice, where the patriarch had it publicly burned, and wrote to Cardinal Bembo to have it condemned in Rome. Bembo read it with gusto, pronounced it conformable with the faith, and gave it to the Master of the Sacred Palace, who reached the same opinion. The latter’s successor in office, however, Prierias, was less indulgent. In his treatise on witches (1521) he declares that the example of the Venetians ought to be everywhere followed, while his elaborate argumentation to prove the immortality of the soul, and that the souls of brutes are not the same as those of men, shows how widespread were irreligious opinions, and how freely the questions were debated at the time. This is further illustrated in the confession of Eugenio Tarralba before the Spanish Inquisition in 1528, when he testified that as a youth he had studied in Rome, where his three masters, Mariana, Avanselo, and Maguera, all taught him that the soul was mortal, and he was unable to answer their arguments.[625]

Pomponazio did not remain unanswered. In 1492 Agostino Nifo, professor at Padua, in his work De Intellectu et Dæmonibus, had contended for the Averrhoist theory of the unity of intelligence; a single intellect pervades the universe, and modifies all things at its will. He had already had trouble with the Dominicans, and this gave them the advantage; it would have fared ill with him had not Pietro Barozzi, the enlightened Bishop of Padua, saved him, and induced him to modify his teachings. Despite his philosophy, he was a skilful courtier, and became a favorite with Leo X., who made him count of the palace, and paid him to prove against Pomponazio that Aristotle maintained the immortality of the soul. He became the accepted interpreter of Averrhoes throughout Italy, and his mitigated Averrhoism remained the doctrine taught at Padua during the remainder of the century.[626]

It was impossible that the ministers of the Church should escape the contagion of this fashionable infidelity, however little, in their worldly self-seeking, they might trouble themselves about the theories of Averrhoism. In his sermons on Ezekiel, in the Lent of 1497, Savonarola describes the priests of the period as slaying the souls of their flocks by their wicked example; their worship, he says, is to spend the night with strumpets and the day in singing in the choir; the altar is their shop; they openly assert that the world is not ruled by the providence of God, but that everything is the result of chance, and that Christ is not in the Eucharist.[627] It was no wonder, then, that the more thoughtful of the laity, conscious of the evils of the dominant faith, and yet powerless, under the watchful eye of the Inquisition, to apply a corrective short of indifferentism or practical atheism; striving helplessly for something better than they saw around them, and yet unable to release the primal principles of Christianity from the incrustations of scholastic theology, should find their only refuge in these philosophical speculations which virtually reduced Christianity to nothingness. Had not the Reformation come, the culture of Europe would inevitably have been atheistic, or devoted to sublimated deism, scarce distinguishable from atheism. The Church would permit no dissidence within its pale, and yet was singularly tolerant of these aberrations of the fashionable Humanism. It persecuted the Fraticelli who dared to uphold the poverty of Christ, yet it allowed the paganism of the revived Hellenism to be disseminated almost without interference. Occasionally some zealous Dominican, eager to defend the inspired doctrines of the Angelic Doctor, would threaten trouble, and would burn a too daring book, but the author could readily find protectors high in the Church, some Barozzi or Bembo, who conjured the storm.

The Reformation served a double purpose in checking this tendency to dangerous speculation. It destroyed the hard-and-fast lines of the rigid scholastic theology, and gave to active intellects a wide field for discussion within the limits of the Christian faith. The assaults of Luther and Melanchthon and Calvin were not to be met with the dialectics of the schools, but with a freer and wider scope of reasoning. The worn-out debates over Aristotle and Alexander and Averrhoes, over Nominalism and Realism, were replaced with new systems of Scriptural exegesis and an earnest inquiry into man’s place in the universe and his relations to his fellows and to his God. Then the counter-Reformation aroused a zeal which could no longer tolerate the philosophical quodlibets leading to speculations adverse to the received faith. Servetus and Giordano Bruno belong to a period beyond our present limits, but their fate shows how little either Protestant or Catholic, in the fierce strife which enkindled such uncompromising ardor, were disposed to listen to philosophical discussions upon religious beliefs.

Before leaving this branch of our subject we must recur to the curious episode of the career of Raymond Lully, the Doctor Illuminatus, of whom Padre Feyjoo truly says, “Raymond Lully, looked upon from every side, is a very problematical object. Some make him a saint, others a heretic; some a most learned man, others an ignoramus; some regard him as illuminated, others as hallucinated; some attribute to him a knowledge of the transmutation of metals, others deny it; finally, some applaud his Ars Magna, others depreciate it.”[628]

This enigmatical being was born in Palma, the capital of Majorca, January 25, 1235. Sprung from a noble family, he was bred in the royal court, where he rose to the post of seneschal. He married and had children, but followed a gay and dissolute career until, like Peter Waldo and Jacopone da Todi, he was suddenly converted by an experience of the nothingness of life. He was madly in love with Leonor del Castello, and his reckless temper manifested itself by pursuing her on horseback into the church of Santa Eulalia during a Sunday service, to the great scandal of priest and congregation. To rid herself of such importunate pursuit, Leonor, with consent of her husband, exhibited to him her bosom, which was ravaged by a foul and mortal cancer. The shock brought to him so profound a recognition of the vanity of earthly things that he renounced the world and distributed his wealth in charity, after making provision for his family; and the same indomitable ardor which had rendered him extravagant in his pleasures sustained him to the end in his new vocation. Thenceforth he devoted his life to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, to the conversion of the Jews and Saracens, and to the framing of a system which should demonstrate rationally the truth of the Christian faith, and thus overcome the Averrhoism in which he recognized its most dangerous adversary.[629]

Ten years or more were spent in preparation for this new career. We hear of a pilgrimage to Compostella in 1266, and of his retirement to the Monte de Randa, near Palma, in 1275. He was so ignorant of letters that he was not even acquainted with Latin, the key to all the knowledge of the age. This he studied, and also Arabic, from a Saracen slave purchased for the purpose, and the earnest labors of an indefatigable mind can account for the enormous stores of learning which he subsequently displayed; so wonderful that to his followers they appeared necessarily the result of inspiration. In his retreat on Monte de Randa, where he conceived his Ars Universalis, he is said to have had repeated visions of Christ and the Virgin, which illuminated his mind; and the mastic-tree under which he habitually wrote bore testimony to the miracle, in its leaves inscribed with Latin, Greek, Chaldee, and Arabic characters. It continued to put forth such leaves. In the seventeenth century Vicente Mut vouches for the fact, and says he has some of them, while Wadding tells us that in his time they were carried to Rome, where they excited much wonder. When his work was completed an angel in the guise of a shepherd appeared, who kissed the book many times, and predicted that it would prove an invincible weapon for the faith.[630]

Emerging from his retreat, for forty years he led a wandering life of incessant activity, now stimulating popes and kings to renewed crusades, or to found colleges of the Oriental tongues to aid in missionary labors, now pouring forth volume after volume with incredible fecundity, now disputing and teaching against Averrhoism at Montpellier, Paris, and elsewhere, and now venturing himself among the infidel to spread among them the light of Christianity. In any one of these fields of action his labors would seem enough to exhaust the energies of an ordinary man. While on his way, in 1311, to the Council of Vienne, with projects for founding schools of Oriental tongues, for uniting in one all the military Orders, for a holy war against the infidel, for suppressing Averrhoism, and for teaching his art in all universities, he summed up his life: “I was married and a father, sufficiently rich, worldly, and licentious. For the honor of God, for the public weal, and for the advancement of the faith I abandoned all. I learned Arabic, and I have been repeatedly among the Saracens to preach to them, where I have been beaten and imprisoned. For forty-five years I have labored to excite the rulers of the Church and the princes of Christendom for the public good. Now I am old, I am poor, and I still have the same purpose, which, with the help of God, I will retain till I die.” At Vienne his only success was in obtaining a decree founding schools of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee in the papal court and in the Universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. Thence he went, for the second time, to Algiers, where, at Bugia, he made many converts, until thrown into prison and starved; then he was released and ordered out of the country, but continued proselyting. With wonderful forbearance the Moors contented themselves with placing him on board a ship bound for Genoa, and warning him not to return. Ship-wrecked in sight of land, he saved his life by swimming, but lost his books. Determined to win the palm of martyrdom, in August, 1314, he again embarked at Palma for Bugia. Promptly recognized, he was thrown into jail, beaten, and starved; but in prison he continued to preach to his fellow-captives, until the Moors, finding him unconquerable, took him out, June 30, 1315, and stoned him. Some Genoese merchants about to sail carried his yet breathing body on board their ship and laid their course for Genoa, but to their surprise found themselves at the entrance of the port of Palma. In vain they endeavored to leave the spot till, recognizing the will of Heaven, they carried the body ashore. Immediately it shone in miracles, and the cult of the martyr began. In 1448 a splendid chapel was erected in his honor in the church of the Franciscans, of which Order he was a Tertiary, and another one was dedicated to him in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1487 his bones were deposited in a richly carved alabaster urn, standing in a niche in the church-wall over an elaborate sepulchral monument, where they still remain.[631]

Slender were the results achieved at the moment by the self-devotion of this noble and indefatigable intellect. Averrhoism continued to gain strength, the Christian princes could not be stimulated to a new crusade, the conversion of Jew and infidel made no progress, and the only reward of labor so strenuous and so prolonged were Oriental schools established in Majorca and Sicily, and the foundation of others commanded by the Council of Vienne. Yet the prodigious literary activity of Lully left behind him a mass of writings destined to exercise no little influence on succeeding generations. He was perhaps the most voluminous author on record. Juan Llobet, who in the middle of the fifteenth century taught the Art of Lully in the University of Palma, had read five hundred of his books; some authors assert that their total number reached a thousand, others three thousand. Many have been lost, many spurious ones have been attributed to him, and the bibliography of his works is hopelessly confused; but Nicolas Antonio, after careful sifting, gives the titles of three hundred and twenty-one which may safely be ascribed to him. Of these there are sixty-one on the art of learning and general subjects, four on grammar and rhetoric, fifteen on logic, twenty-one on philosophy, five on metaphysics, thirteen on various sciences—astrology, geometry, politics, war, the quadrature of the circle, and the art of knowing God through grace—seven on medicine, four on law, sixty-two on spiritual contemplation and other religious subjects, six on homiletics, thirteen on Antichrist, the acquisition of the Holy Land, and other miscellaneous subjects, forty-six controversial works against Saracens, Jews, Greeks, and Averrhoists, and sixty-four on theology, embracing the most abstruse points, and religious poetry. The great collective edition of his works printed in Mainz from 1721 to 1742 forms ten folios. Like all other great scholars of his day, his name was a convenient one to affix to books on alchemy and magic, but all such are supposititious. His reputation as an alchemist is seen in the tradition that in England he made six million gold florins, and gave them to the king to stimulate him to a crusade, but his own opinion of alchemy is expressed in a passage of his Ars Magna: “Each element has its own peculiarities so that one species cannot be transmuted to another, wherefore the alchemists grieve and have occasion to weep,” and in other equally outspoken expressions.[632]

For our purpose we need consider but one phase of his marvellous productiveness. In the solitude of Monte de Randa he conceived the Art which passes by his name—a method in which, by diagrams and symbols, the sublimest truths of theology and philosophy can be deduced and memorized. Of this the Ars Brevis is a compend, while the Ars Magna describes it in greater detail and proceeds to build upon it a system of the universe. As the product of a man untinctured with culture till after the age of thirty it is a wonderful performance, revealing a familiar acquaintance with all the secrets of the material and spiritual worlds, the powers, attributes, motives, and purposes of God and his creatures logically deduced, which the Lullists might well hold to be inspired. This Art he himself taught at Montpellier and Paris, and in 1309 forty members of the latter University joined in a cordial recommendation of it as useful and necessary for the defence of the faith. At home it had great and enduring vogue. Favored by successive monarchs, it was taught in the Universities of Aragon and Valencia. In the middle of the fifteenth century the Estudio Lulliano was founded at Palma, subsquently enlarged into the Universidad Lulliana, where the tradition of his teaching was preserved almost to our own days. Cardinal Ximenes was its great admirer; Angelo Politiano says that to it he owed his ability to dispute on any subject; Jean Lefèvre d’Etaples prized it highly, as likewise did other men of note. On the other hand, it was condemned by Gerson and its use forbidden in the University of Paris; it was ill thought of by Cornelius Agrippa and Jerome Cardan; and Mariana tells us that in his time many considered it useless and even harmful, while others praised it as a gift from heaven to remedy ignorance, and in 1586 its use was prohibited in the University of Valencia.[633]

In this and in many of his other works Lully’s object was to prove by logical processes of thought the truths of Christianity and the positions of theology. We have already seen how the Church recognized the risk involved in this and forbade it, and Lully felt that he was treading on dangerous ground. He therefore lost no opportunity of declaring that faith is superior to reason, and that they were mistaken who held that faith proved by reason lost its merit. Devoting his life to combating Averrhoism and converting the infidel, he had felt that Christianity could only be spread by argument—that to convert men he had to convince them. Without this the work must stop, and he urged that the heathen might logically complain of God if it were impossible to convince their reason of the truth.[634] It was the same effort as that made two centuries later by Savonarola in his Crucis Triumphus, to combat the incredulity of the later Averrhoists and of the Renaissance.

The result showed the danger which lurked in his single-minded efforts. As his reputation spread and his disciples multiplied, Nicholas Eymerich, the Inquisitor of Aragon, to whom I have so often had occasion to refer, undertook to condemn his memory. Perhaps among the Lullists there were men whose zeal outran their discretion. Eymerich speaks of one, named Pedro Rosell, whose errors are a curious echo of the Joachites and Olivists, for he taught that, as the doctrine of the Old Testament was attributable to the Father and that of the New to the Son, so was that of Lully to the Holy Ghost, and that in the time of Antichrist all theologians would apostatize, when the Lullists would convert the world, and all theology but that of their master would disappear. Perhaps also, Eymerich, as a Dominican, was eager to attack one in whom the Franciscans gloried as one of their greatest sons. Doubtless, too, there is truth in the assertion of the Lullists that their defence of the Immaculate Conception rendered Eymerich desirous of suppressing them. Be this as it may, in a mass of writings embracing every conceivable detail of doctrine and faith, set forth with logical precision, it was not difficult for an expert to find points liable to characterization as errors. A royal privilege for the teaching of Lullism, issued by Pedro IV. in 1369, shows that already opposition had been aroused, and in 1371 Eymerich went to Avignon, where he obtained from Gregory XI. an order for the examination of Lully’s writings. On his return the king peremptorily forbade the publication of the papal mandate, but the irrepressible inquisitor in 1374 sent twenty of the inculpated books to Gregory, and in 1376 he had the satisfaction of exhibiting a bull reciting that these works had been carefully investigated by the Cardinal of Ostia and twenty theologians, who had found in them two hundred (or, according to Eymerich, five hundred) errors manifestly heretical. As the rest of Lully’s writings must presumably be erroneous, the Archbishop of Tarragona was ordered to cause all of them to be surrendered and sent to Rome for examination. Then King Pedro again interposed, and asked the pope to have any further proceedings carried on in Barcelona, as Lully’s works were mostly in Catalan, and could best be understood there.[635]

Eymerich triumphed for a time, and in his Directorium Inquisitorum he gives full rein to his hatred. Lully, he says, was taught his doctrine by the devil, but, to avoid prolixity, he enumerates only a hundred of the five hundred errors condemned by Gregory. Some of these trench on mystic illuminism, others are merely extravagant modes of putting ordinary propositions. For the most part they hinge on the assertion, condemned in the ninety-sixth error, “that all points of faith and the sacraments and the power of the pope can be and are proved by reasoning, necessary, demonstrative, and evident;” for they consist of efforts to define logically the mysteries of faith in a manner of which conceptions so subtle are incapable. Two or three, however, are manifestly heretical—that faith can err, but not reason, that it is wrong to slay heretics, and that the mass of mankind will be saved, even Jews and Saracens who are not in mortal sin. The Lullists had not been disposed to submit quietly. Eymerich describes them as numerous and impudent, and guilty of the error of holding that Gregory erred grossly in condemning their master, whose doctrine had been divinely revealed and excelled all other doctrine, even that of St. Augustin; that it is not to be gained by study, but by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, in thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty hours; that modern theologians know nothing of true theology, for, on account of their sins, God has transferred all knowledge to the Lullists, who are to constitute the Church in the times of Antichrist.[636]

There was in all this evidently the material which only needed nursing and provocation to develop into a new and formidable heresy under inquisitorial methods. Fortunately the king and a large part of the population were in sympathy with the Lullists; the Great Schism broke out in 1378, and Don Pedro acknowledged neither Urban VI. nor Clement VII. The kingdom was thus virtually independent; the Lullists boldly claimed that the bull of Gregory XI. had been forged by Eymerich; in 1385 an investigation was held which resulted in driving him from Aragon, when he was succeeded by his enemy, Bernardo Ermengaudi, who was devoted to the king, and who hastened to make a formal declaration that in Lully’s Philosophia Amoris there were not to be found the errors attributed to it by Eymerich. The banishment of the latter, however, did not long continue. He returned and resumed his office, which he exercised with unsparing rigor against the Lullists. This excited considerable commotion. In 1391 the city of Valencia sent to the pope Doctor Jayme de Xiva to complain of Eymerich’s enormous crimes, and to supplicate his removal. The envoy stopped at Barcelona to solicit the co-operation of that powerful community, and the town council, after listening to him, resolved that if the action of Valencia was general and not special, they would make “one arm and one heart” with their sister city; and, moreover, they begged the pope to command some prelate of the kingdom to examine and declare, under papal authority, whether the articles attributed to Lully had been justly or unjustly condemned by Eymerich.[637]

The popular effervescence grew so strong that in 1393 Eymerich was again banished by Juan I. He ended his life in exile, maintaining to the end the enormity of Lully’s heresy and the genuineness of Gregory’s bull. Antonio Riera, a Lullist who was active in the matter, he denounced as a heretic who foretold that before the end of the century all divine service would cease, that churches would be used as stables, and the laws of Christian, Jew, and Saracen would be converted into one; but which of these three it would be he could not tell. Meanwhile, in 1395, the Holy See granted the prayer of the Lullists for an examination, and the Cardinal of San Sesto was sent as special commissioner for the purpose. Gregory’s registers for 1376 were carefully examined, and the archivists testified that no record of the bull in question could be found. Still the question would not remain settled, for the honor of the Dominican Order and the Inquisition was at stake, and again, in 1419, another investigation was held. The papal legate, Cardinal Alamanni, deputed Bernardo, Bishop of Città di Castello, to examine the matter definitely. His sentence pronounced the bull to be evidently false, and all action taken under it to be null and void, but expressed no opinion on the writings of Lully, which he reserved for the decision of the Holy See. From that time forth the genuineness of the bull remained a matter hotly contested. Father Bremond prints it as authentic, and declares that after a dispassionate examination he is convinced that it is so; that the original autograph is preserved in the archives at Gerona, and he quotes Bzovius to the effect that the Lullists themselves admit that it is in the archives of Barcelona, Tarragona, and Valencia, whose bishops would not have admitted it if false; but Bzovius was a Dominican whose bitterness on the subject is seen in his stigmatizing Lully as a vagabond swindler. Certain it is that in the prolonged and ardent contest which raged over the question of Lully’s orthodoxy in the papal court, the Dominicans, with successive popes on their side, were never able to produce the original nor offer any evidence of its authenticity.[638]

In Aragon the decision of 1419 was regarded as settling the question. Royal letters in favor of Lullism were issued by Alonso V. in 1415 and 1449, by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1483 and 1503, by Charles V. in 1526, and by Philip II. in 1597; the latter monarch, indeed, had great relish for Lully’s writings, some of which he habitually carried with him on his journeys to read on the way, and in the library of the Escorial many copies of them were found annotated with his own hand. This royal favor was needed in the curious controversy which followed. Lully’s name had passed into the received catalogues of heretics, and as late as 1608 it was included in the list published by the Doctor of Sorbonne, Gabriel du Préau. Paul IV., in 1559, put it in the first papal Index Expurgatorius. When this came to be published in Spain, Bishop Jayme Cassador and the inquisitors suspended it and referred the matter to the consejo de la suprema, which ordered the entry to be borrado, or expunged. At the Council of Trent, Doctor Juan Villeta, acting for Spain, presented a petition in favor of Lully, which was considered in a special congregation, September 1, 1563, and a unanimous decision was reached, confirming all the condemnations passed on Eymerich for falsehood, and ordering the Index of Paul IV. to be expurgated by striking out all that related to Lully. This was a secret determination of the council, and was not allowed to appear in the published acts. It settled the matter for a time, but the question was revived in 1578, when Francisco Pegna reprinted Eymerich’s book with the special sanction of Gregory XIII., bringing anew before the world the bull of Gregory XI. and the errors condemned in Lully’s writings. Gregory XIII. ordered Pegna to examine the papal registers for the contested bull. Those in Rome were found imperfect, and the missing portions were sent for from Avignon, but the most diligent search failed to find the desired document, though it was alleged that two volumes of the year 1386 could not be found. Battle was now fairly joined between the partisans of Eymerich and those of Lully. In 1583 the Congregation of the Index determined to include Lully among the prohibited writers, but again Spanish influence was strong enough to prevent it. Under Sixtus V. there was another attempt, but Juan Arce de Herrera, in the name of Philip II., presented an Apologia to the Congregation of the Index, and again the danger was conjured. When the Index of Clement VIII. was in preparation the question was again taken up, June 3, 1594, and rejected out of respect for Spain; at the request of the Spanish ambassador the pope was asked to order a complete set of Lully’s works to be sent to Rome for examination, that the matter might be definitely settled; but this was not done, and in March, 1595, it was announced that his name was omitted from the Index. In 1611 Philip III. revived the controversy by applying to Paul V. for the canonization of Lully and the expurgation of Eymerich’s Directorium; a request which was repeated by Philip IV. After a confused controversy, it was determined that certain articles admittedly extracted from his books were dangerous, audacious, and savoring of heresy, and some of them manifestly erroneous and heretical. At a sitting, under the presidency of the pope himself, held August 29, 1619, it was resolved to send this censure to the Spanish nuncio, with instructions to inform the king and the inquisitors that Lully’s books were forbidden. Then came an appeal from the kingdom of Majorca begging that the books might be corrected, to which Paul replied, August 6, 1620, imposing silence; and on August 30 Cardinal Bellarmine drew up for the Inquisition a final report that Lully’s doctrine was forbidden until corrected, adding his belief that correction was impossible, but that the condemnation was thus phrased so as to mitigate its severity. Thus Lully was branded by the Holy See as a heretic, but, out of respect for the Spanish court, the sentence was never published: the matter was supposed by the public to be undecided, and the worship of him as a saint continued uninterruptedly. Raynaldus, in fact, writing in 1658, states that the question is still sub judice. About the same time certain Jesuits took up his cause against the Dominicans, and in 1662 a translation of his “Triumph of Love” appeared in Paris, on the title of which he was qualified as “Saint Raymond Lully, Martyr and Hermit.” The Dominican ire was aroused: appeal was made to the Congregation of Rites, which reported that Lully was included in the Franciscan martyrology under March 29, but that he must not be qualified as a saint, and that a careful examination should be made of his works, to prohibit them if necessary—a recommendation which was never carried out. Yet when, in 1688, Doctor Pedro Bennazar issued at Palma a book in praise of Lully, it was condemned by the Inquisition in 1690; and a compendium of his theology, by Sebastian Krenzer in 1755, was put on the Index, although this was not done with the numerous controversial writings which continued to appear, nor with the great edition of his works published from 1721 to 1742, in the title of which he was qualified as Beatus. Benedict XIV., in his work De Servorum Dei Beatificatione, after carefully weighing the authorities on both sides, says that his claims to sanctity are to be suspended until the decision of the Holy See. That decision was postponed for a century. In 1847 Pius IX. approved an office of “the holy Raymond Lully” for Majorca, where he had been immemorially worshipped; the office reciting that so fully was he imbued with the divine wisdom that he who had previously been uncultured was enabled to discourse most excellently on divine things. In 1858, moreover, Pius permitted the whole Franciscan Order to celebrate his feast on November 27. Yet the Dominicans had not forgotten their old rancor, for in 1857 there appeared in a Roman journal, published under the approbation of the Master of the Sacred Palace, an argument to prove that the alleged bull of Gregory XI. is still in force, and consequently that Lully’s books are forbidden, although they do not appear in the Index. This case and that of Savonarola serve to indicate how dangerously nebulous are the boundaries between heresy and sanctity.[639]

The example of Raymond Lully illustrates the pitfalls which surrounded the footsteps of all who ventured on the dangerous path of theology. That science assumed to know and define all the secrets of the universe, and yet it was constantly growing, as ingenious or daring thinkers would suggest new theories or frame new deductions from data already settled. Hosts of these were condemned; the annals of an intellectual centre like the University of Paris are crowded with sentences pronounced against novel points of faith and their unlucky authors. Occasionally, however, some new dogma would arise, would be vehemently debated, would refuse to be suppressed, and would finally triumph after a more or less prolonged struggle, and would then take its place among the eternal verities which it was heresy to call in question. This curious process of dogmatic evolution in an infallible Church is too instructive not to be illustrated with one or two examples.

It might seem a question beyond the grasp of finite intelligence to determine whether the souls of the blessed are wafted to heaven and at once enjoy the ineffable bliss of beholding the Divine Essence, or whether they have to await the resurrection and the Day of Judgment. This was not a mere theoretical question, however, but had a very practical aspect, for in the existing anthropomorphism of belief, it might well be thought that the efficacy of the intercession of saints depended on their admission to the presence of God, and the guardians of every shrine boasting of a relic relied for their revenues on the popular confidence that its saint was able to make personal appeals for the fulfilment of his worshippers’ prayers. The desired conclusion was only reached by gradual steps. The subject was one which had not escaped the attention of the early Fathers, and St. Augustin assumes that the full fruition of the Vision of God can only be enjoyed by the soul after it has been clothed in the resurrected body. Among the errors condemned in 1243 by Guillaume d’Auvergne and the University of Paris were two, one of which held that the Divine Essence is not and will not be seen by either angels or glorified souls; the other, that while angels dwell in the empyrean heaven, human souls, even including the Virgin, will never advance beyond the aqueous heaven. The decision of the bishop and University was cautious as regards the Divine Vision, which was only asserted in the future and not in the present tense, both as regards angels and human souls, but there was no hesitation in declaring that all occupied the same heaven. Thomas Aquinas argues the question with an elaborateness which shows both its importance and its inherent difficulty, but he ventures no further than to prove that the Blessed will, after the resurrection, enjoy the sight of God, face to face. It must be borne in mind that the prevalent expectation in each successive generation that the coming of Antichrist and the second advent were not far off, rendered of less importance the exact time at which the Beatific Vision would be bestowed, while the development of mystic theology tended to bring into ever more intimate relations the intercourse between the soul and its Creator. Bonaventura does not hesitate to treat as an accepted fact that the souls of the just will see God, and he asserts that some of them are already in heaven, while others wait confidently in their graves for the appointed time. The final step seems to have been taken soon after this by the celebrated Dominican theologian, Master Dietrich of Friburg, who wrote a tract to prove that the Blessed are immediately admitted to the Beatific Vision, a fact revealed to him by one of his penitents who, by order of God to solve his doubts, appeared to him ten days after death and assured him that she was in sight of the Trinity.[640]

Yet the doctrine was not formally accepted by the Church, and the mystical tendencies of the time rendered dangerous a too rapid progress in this direction. The Illuminism of the Brethren of the Free Spirit was a contagious evil, and the Council of Vienne in 1312 refrained from an expression of opinion on the subject, except to condemn the error of the Beghards, that man does not need the light of glory to elevate him to the sight of God—thus only by implication admitting that with the light of glory the soul is fitted to enjoy the Beatific Vision. When and how the dogma spread that the souls of the just are admitted at once to the presence of God does not appear, but it seems to have become generally accepted without any definite expression of approbation by the Holy See. In October, 1326, John XXII. treats as a heresy to be extirpated among the Greeks the belief that the saints will not enter paradise until the Day of Judgment, but not long afterwards he changed his mind, and his pride in his theological skill and learning would not let him rest until he had forced Christendom to change with him. He expressed his doubts as to the truth of the new dogma and indicated an intention of openly condemning it. His temper rendered opposition perilous, and none of the cardinals and doctors of the papal court dared to discuss it with him until, in 1331, an English Dominican, Thomas Walleys, in a sermon preached before him, boldly maintained the popular opinion and invoked the divine malediction on all who asserted the contrary. John’s wrath burst forth. Walleys was seized and tried by the Inquisition, cast into jail and almost starved to death, when Philippe de Valois intervened and procured his liberation. Having thus silenced his opponents, John proceeded to declare his opinions publicly. In the Advent of 1331 he preached several sermons in which he asserted that the saints in heaven will not have distinct vision of the Divine Essence before the Resurrection of the body and the Day of Judgment, until which time they will only see the humanity of Christ. “I know,” he said, “that some persons murmur because we hold this opinion, but I cannot do otherwise.”[641]

It shows the peculiar condition of the human mind engendered by the persecution of heresy that this was a political event of the gravest importance. We have seen how much stress was laid, in the quarrel between the empire and papacy, upon John’s innovation on the accepted belief as to Christ’s poverty, and the manner in which his resolute purpose had carried that dogma against all opposition. On this occasion he was the conservator of the previously received faith of the Church, but the political conjuncture was against him. Not only was Louis of Bavaria consolidating the empire in resistance to the aggressiveness of the papacy, but France, the main support of the Avignonese popes, was indisposed. Philippe de Valois had been offended by the rejection of his excessive demands in compensation of fulfilling his vows of a new crusade, and had been alienated by John’s yielding to the schemes of John of Bohemia, who was endeavoring to secure the imperial territories in Italy. Both monarchs took active steps to turn to the fullest account the papal heresy. It was a received principle that, as a dead man was no longer a man, so a pope detected in heresy was no longer a pope, seeing that he had ipso facto forfeited his office. Nothing better could serve the purpose of Louis of Bavaria and his junto of exiled Franciscans. Under the advice of Michele da Cesena he took steps to call a German national council, for which Bonagrazia drew up a summons based upon the papal heresy, and the plan was approved by Cardinal Orsini and his dissatisfied brethren. This came to nought, however, through the still greater promptness of Philippe de Valois to avail himself of the situation. He made the celebrated William Durand, Bishop of Mende, write a treatise in opposition to the papal views, and protected him when John sought to punish him. He assembled the University of Paris, which, January 3, 1333, pronounced emphatically in favor of the Beatific Vision, and addressed to the pope a letter asserting it without equivocation. Gerard Odo, the time-serving Franciscan General, was despatched, ostensibly to make peace between England and Scotland, but instructed to dally in Paris and endeavor to win over public opinion. He ventured to preach in favor of John’s conservative views, but only succeeded in arousing a storm before which he was forced to bow and humbly to declare that his argument was only controversial and not assertive. Philippe took the boldest and most aggressive position. He wrote to John that to deny the Beatific Vision was not only to destroy belief in the intercession of the Virgin and saints, but to invalidate all the pardons and indulgences granted by the Church, and so firmly was he convinced of its truth that he would take steps to burn all who denied it, including the pope himself. Even Robert of Naples joined in remonstrance. Haughty and obstinate as John had proved himself, he could not resist single-handed the indignation of all Europe, and he yielded. He purchased peace by political concessions, and wrote humbly to Philippe and Robert that he had never positively denied the Beatific Vision, but had treated it simply as an open question, subject to discussion. Even this was not enough. All his ambitious schemes had broken down. In Germany, Louis of Bavaria was posing as the defender of the faith. In France, even the weak Philippe de Valois had resumed his ascendency over Avignon. In Italy, John’s son, Cardinal Bertrand, had been forced to fly, and Lombardy had freed itself. For the wretched old man there was nothing left but to recant and die. He had convoked a consistory for December 2, 1234, to choose a successor to Louis of Bavaria, but before daybreak he was seized with a fatal flux which stretched him hopeless on his bed. Towards evening of the next day he assembled the cardinals and exhorted them to select a worthy successor to the chair of St. Peter, when his kindred urged him to save his soul and the reputation of the Church by withdrawing from his opinions as to the Beatific Vision. The secrets of that awful death-bed have never been revealed, but after he passed away on the 5th, a bull was promulgated over his name in which he professed his belief as to the Divine Vision, and, if he had in that or anything else held opinions in conflict with those of the Church, he revoked all that he might have said or done, and submitted himself to its judgment. Humiliating as was this, Michele da Cesena pronounced it insufficient, as he made no formal confession of error and recantation, whence it was to be inferred that he died a contumacious heretic. Even Paris was not satisfied, although conclusions were not expressed so openly.[642]