nor does any literary or artistic genius, rising to greatness CHAP. XVII. among his fellow countrymen, cast his rays upon them. After Justinian's days, the East Roman Empire produced, and has left us, little in the higher forms of art and nothing in institutions. It added nothing to the common store of thought and beauty in literature. It produced no speculative philosophy like that of the great Western schoolmen, no romantic figures in whom the gifts of thought and of action were united, like Bernard of Clairvaux and Arnold of Brescia, and least of all any poetry like that of mediaeval Provence and Italy. Yet it has been a mighty factor in history, for it stemmed for centuries the tide of Asiatic invasion, and it kept alive a Church which has helped to create and maintain an intense national feeling among the largest and most swiftly growing of modern European peoples. The Russians, who are as much a religious as a political community, carry with them over the vast spaces of Northern and Central Asia the traditions of an Empire conterminous with a Church, an Empire which is at once the offspring and the guardian of the Orthodox Faith. CHAPTER XVIII CHAP. A.D. 1378 1400. Rupert, 1400-1410. Sigismund, 1410-1438. Council of Constance, 1414-1418. THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE IN Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its lowest point. It had shot forth a fitful gleam under Sigismund, who in convoking and helping to guide the Council of Constance had revived one of the highest functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the first great oecumenical councils, and especially of the Council of Nicaea, had established the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from the whole Christian world. The tenet commended itself to the reforming party in the Church, headed by John Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith, to correct the abuses which had grown up in discipline and government, and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of General Councils, to whom it was now sought to ascribe an immunity from error superior to that, whatever it might be, which resided in the successor of Peter. And although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing of the larger claims which were soon to follow. The existence of the Holy Empire and the existence of General Councils were, as has been already re marked, essential parts of one and the same theory," and CHAP. it was therefore more than a coincidence that the last XVIII. occasion on which the whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single commonwealth," was also the last on which that commonwealth's lawful temporal head appeared in the exercise of his international functions. Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything more than a German monarch. Frederick III, 1440 It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain Albert II, a monarch at all. When Sigismund died leaving no male 1438-1440. heir the electors chose as Emperor his son-in-law Albert of Hapsburg, who had just been made king of Hungary. 1493. Albert was a man of ability and character, who might have done something to restore the power of the crown. But he died after two years: and his successor Frederick duke of Styria, a Hapsburg of the younger line, had neither the energy nor the courage which the conditions of the moment required. So when in A.D. 1493 the long and calamitous reign of Frederick ended, it was impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the condition into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire. The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had been protected rather by the weakness of their enemies than by their own strength. From France there had been little to fear while the English menaced her on one side and the Burgundian dukes on the other; from England still other states less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lan- of Europe. But now throughout Western Europe the power caster. * It is not without interest to observe that the Council of Basel (A.D. 1431– 1443) showed signs of reciprocating imperial care by claiming those very rights over the Empire to which the Popes were accustomed to pretend. b The Councils of Basel and Florence were not recognized from first to last by all Europe, as was the Council of Constance. When the Assembly of Trent met (A.D. 1545), the great religious schism had already made a general council, in the true sense of the word, impossible. Weakness of Germany as compared with the CHAP. Loss of imperial territories. of the feudal oligarchies was broken; and its chief countries were being, by the establishment of fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and aggressive military monarchies. Thus Spain became a great state by the union of Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in England there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. France had in the first half of the fifteenth century been desolated by intestine feuds, and for a time prostrate at the feet of England. Now, enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successors, she began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her people, and the restless ambition of her rulers, secured to her during several centuries. Meantime there had appeared in the far East a foe still more terrible. The capture of Constantinople gave the Turks a firm hold on Europe, and inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what Abderrahman and his Spanish Saracens had so nearly effected in the eighth- of establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed the Western as well as the Eastern Caesars. The navies of the Ottoman sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well appointed armies pierced Hungary and threatened Vienna. Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen without the frontiers of Germany herself were exposed by the loss of those adjoining territories which had formerly owned allegiance to the Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the Great Interregnum, and had recently wrested West Prussia from the Teutonic knights, and compelled their Grand Master to swear allegiance in respect of East Prussia, which they still retained. Bohemia, where German culture had struck CHAP. deeper roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the XVIII. privileges she had obtained from Charles the Fourth, and the subsequent acquisition of Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent inroads on her eastern border. Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Frederick Italy. the Second, for the ill starred expeditions of Henry the Seventh and Lewis the Fourth gave it only a brief and fleeting revival. Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of Florence; Frederick the Third received the Lombard as well as the imperial crown, but it no longer conveyed the slightest power. In the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. A little later Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any purpose south of the Alps. Nevertheless the phantom of imperial authority lingers on for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic neighbours even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to 'E però venendo gl' imperadori della Magna col supremo titolo, e volendo col senno e colla forza della Magna reggere gli Italiani, non lo fanno e non lo possono fare.' — M. Villani, iv. 77. Matthew Villani's etymology of the two great faction names of Italy is worth quoting, as a fair sample of the skill of mediaevals in such matters:— 'La Italia tutta è divisa mistamente in due parti, l' una che seguita ne' fatti del mondo la santa chiesa e questi son dinominati Guelfi; cioè, guardatori di fè. E l'altra parte seguitano lo 'mperio o fedele o enfedele che sia delle cose del mondo a santa chiesa. E chiamansi Ghibellini, quasi guida belli; cioè, guidatori di battaglie.' |