Note 27 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

As in ancient Greece, humorous blasphemy seems to have fared better than serious unbelief.27 As is remarked by Hallam, the number of vindications of Christianity produced in Italy in the fifteenth century proves the existence of much unbelief;28 and it is clear that, apart from academic doubt, there was abundant freethinking among men of the world.29 Erasmus was astonished at the unbelief he found in high quarters in Rome. One ecclesiastic undertook to prove to him from Pliny that there is no future state; others openly derided Christ and the apostles; and many avowed to him that they had heard eminent papal functionaries blaspheming the Mass.30 The biographer of Pope Paul II has recorded how that pontiff found in his own court, among certain young men, the opinion that faith rested rather on trickeries of the saints (sanctorum astutiis) than on evidence; which opinion the Pope eradicated.31 But in the career of Perugino (1446–1524), who from being a sincerely religious painter became a skeptic in his wrath against the Church which slew Savonarola,32 we have evidence of a movement of things which no papal fiat could arrest.