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gave lectures in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He was
made rector of the university. Aleandro became a
strenuous opponent of Lutlier; and the Sorbonne is
charged by Mark Pattison with persecuting the great
printer, Robert Estienne (1.503-59), though he always
obtained licence to sell his bibles and testaments.
The Sorbonne objected, however, to any publication
of Scripture without approved Catholic notes; and
this in a day which might be justly termed one of
rebuke and "blasphemy. France had its own type
of Humanist in that extraordinary man, Rabelais
{1490?-1.5.53), a physician, priest, and obscene jester
whose book is the glory and the shame of his native
tongue. Rabelais, treating the Christian religion
as a creed outworn, falls back upon a kind of liberal
Platonism; he would leave men to their instincts
and the joy of life. Much the same philosophy,
though in graver tones, is insinuated by Montaigne
(1533-92) in essays tinged with scepticism and
disenchantment. These two writers, who lie be-
yond the spring-tide of the revival, open in France
the anti-Christian war which has lasted, with growing
violence, down to our time. But the seventeenth
century witnessed an adaptation of the classical
forms to literature and preaching by Catholics of
genius, by Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, and PYnelon,
which yielded a highly original blending of religion
with eloquent prose and refined verse. In general,
nevertheless, we shall probably allow Taine's con-
tention that the influence of the Classics (Latin
rather than Greek always) on French education has
not been favourable to Christianity.
At Rome an "incredible liberty" of discussion pre- vailed under the spell of the Renaissance. Lord Acton quotes well-known instances. Poggio, the mocking adversary of the clergy, was for half a cen- tury in the service of the popes — Filelfo, a pagan un- abashed and foul, was handsomely rewarded by Nicholas V for his abominable satires. Pius II had the faults of a smart society journalist, and took neither himself nor his age seriously. Platina, with whom Paul II quarrelled on political grounds, wrote a vindictive slanderous book, "The Lives of the Roman Pontiffs", which, however, was in some de- gree justified by the project of reformation in "head and members" constantly put forth and never ful- filled until Christendom had been rent in twain. Yet Sixtus IV made Platina librarian of the Vati- can. It is equally significant that "The Prince", by Machiavelli, was published with papal licence, though afterwards severely prohibited. This tolera- tion of evil bore one good consequence: it allowed his- torical criticism to begin fair. There was need of a revision which is not yet complete, ranging over all that had been handed down from the Middle Ages under the style and title of the Fathers, the Councils, the Roman and other official archives. In all these departments forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a great scale.
In 1440 Lorenzo Valla counselled Eugenius IV not to rely upon the Donation of Constantine, which he proved to be spurious. Valla's tract was printed by Ulrich von Hutten; it became popular among Germans, and influenced Luther. But it opened to this enemy of the temporal power a place in the house- hold of Nicholas V. For another commencement of criticism we are indebted to the same unjileasant but sharp-sighted man of letters. It was Valla who first denied the authenticity of those writings which for centuries had been going about as the treatises composed by Dionysius the Areopagite. Three centuries later the Benedictines of St. Maur and the BoUandists were still engaged in sifting out the true from the false in patristic literature, in hagiology, in the story of the foundation of local churches. Mabillon, Ruinart, Papobroch, and their successors have cleared the ground for research into the Chris-
tian origins; they have enabled divines to consider
a theory of development, the materials of which were
hopelessly confused when Valla tilted against the
Donation itself, accepted and deplored as a fact by
Dante. How great that confusion was, the Bene-
dictine editions of the Fathers, which largely put
an end to it, abundantly show: the "authentic and
necessary evidences of historical religion" could not
be given their full value until this work was done.
It called for a disposition at once literary and criti-
cal, which the old method of training did not create
and scarcely would tolerate. But this chapter falls
outside the hmits of our subject.
It is remarkable that the healthy Christian use of ancient literature was destined to be taught by a Spanish reforming saint, himself not learned and certainly no dilettante. This was Ignatius Loyola, whose antecedents did not promise him the inheri- tance which Bembo and the other Ciceronian pedants had turned to such ill account. St. Ignatius, who began his order in Paris, who walked the same streets with Erasmus, Calvin, and Rabelais, did the most astonishing feat recorded in modern history. He reformed the Church by means of the papacy when sunk to its lowest ebb; and he took the heathen Classics from neo-pagans to make them instruments of Catholic education. Spain had been but little affected by the Renaissance. In temper crusading and still medieval, its poetry, drama, theology, were distinguished by qualities peculiarly its own. The Italian manner had not yet found imitators at its court when Ignatius WTote chivalrous sonnets to an unknown lady. His intensely practical turn of mind letl him to employ every talent in the Divine service; and he saw that learning, if it could be cleansed from its present stains, would not only adorn but defend the Holy Place. He had looked into the lighter pro- ductions of Erasmus; they gave him a shock; but he recognized the power, if not the charm, which Humanism wielded o\er young imaginations. His militant company took up again, without distinctly perceiving it, the task that Erasmus intended and Petrarch had set before Italians two hundred years previously.
In May, 1527, Rome was laid waste, its churches profaned, its libraries pillaged, by a rabble of mis- creants. "But", said Cardinal Cajetan, "it was a just judgment on the Romans." The pagan Renais- sance fell, stricken to death; it was high time for the Counter-Reformation (q. v.) to begin. The Council of Trent and the Society of Jesus took in hand to dis- tinguish between what was permissible and what was forbidden in dealing with literature. The Roman Index was established by Paul IV. A rigorous cen- sorship watched over the Italian printing press. By 1600 German importation of books across the Alps had ceased. If we would reckon the greatness of the change now wrought, we may compare the "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto, dedicated in 1516 to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, with Tasso's "Gerusalemme", es- pecially as revised by the poet himself, and at the dictation of the Roman censor, Antoniano. It was a change so marked that Scaliger termed the Italians generally hypocrites; but we know from the calendar of saints at this time and other sources how much had been done to check the wild licence of thought and speech in the Peninsula. Giordano Bruno, renegade and pantheist, was burnt in 1600; Cam- panella spent long years in prison. The different measures meted out to Copernicus by Clement VII and to Galileo by Paul V need no comment. The papacy aimed henceforth at becoming an "ideal government under spiritual and converted men". Urban VIII was the last who could be deemed a Renaissance pontiff (1623—44).
St. Ignatius, alive to the causes which had provoked many nations into revolt from the clergy, made learn-
