best to prevent the deposition of John XXIII., and now they strove hard to hasten the election of a pope and hinder the reforms of the Church. With little or no spiritual affection for the papacy, they saw that a pope at Rome brought much money into Italy; they clasped as a political distinction and national advantage that popedom which has divided, degraded, and enslaved them, and which the Italians of to-day are striving to put away. The German members of the council dwelt on the innumerable sins of the papacy-its pride, ambition, avarice, and moral pollution; dilated on the corruptions which it had introduced into the Church, and urged the reform of the Church before the election of her head, that he might enter upon a purified office, and be bound by the laws of reformation established by the council. But they were overborne as the mere reformers of the popedom always have been and deserve to be. The cardinals intrigued with assiduity and effect, and on the death of Robert Hallam, bishop of Salisbury, the ablest and most anti-papal of the English deputies, gained over the representatives of England. The Germans were left alone and yielded. The emperor gave way, mourning over his unfinished work and wroth with his red-hatted obstructors. dinals, attended by deputies from each nation, hastened into the conclave and lost no time in giving the Church a head in Otho Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. (Nov. 1417). The new pontiff of course evaded all serious and searching reforms; he made a few unimportant concessions to each of the nations severally; the reformers grew slack; the emperor despaired, and the council broke up (May 1418).65

The car

The assembly by the Bodensee has sunk into more than the insignificance and oblivion so especially the portion of great councils and congresses. The fathers of Constance, though belonging to European nations still living and potent, have become less interesting to us than the fathers of Nicæa or Chalcedon, just as the emperor Sigismund is far less known, is far less a reality to us than the emperor Constantine. Councils and congresses have been proverbially grievous failures; the council of Constance may perhaps be pronounced the most conspicuous failure of them all. No assembly ever came together under more splendid auspices or with more magnificent

65 Acta, pp. 384-95. Lenfant, lib. v. c. 59 et seq.; lib. vi., passim. Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, lib. lxii.

professions; no men ever undertook a greater work than the fathers who met beside the Bodensee. They came together to reform the Church in her head and members, to set in order the deranged spiritual affairs of Christendom, to heal the spiritual wounds and corruptions of the time; and they left the spiritual sores of the age not only unhealed, but unmitigated; they left the work of Church reform altogether unaccomplished. They were busy enough, it is true; they got one pope to resign; they pulled two popes down; they set one pope up; they brought the Church back under one head; they burned two reformers; they condemned to the flames the writings of another; they convulsed Bohemia; but they utterly failed to accomplish that which they professed to be their main business, to reform the Church in her head and members. The failure was conspicuous and ignominious, but inevitable. Every attempt to reform the papacy has failed, and must needs fail. They who have dealt with the popedom as an inherent spiritual corruption, incapable of healing or mitigation and simply requiring riddance and rejection, have often prevailed against it; while they who have treated the papacy as a good institution fallen into abuse and susceptible of amendment, have ever met with sore and signal failure.

The fathers of Constance undertook to regenerate Christianity by reforming the popedom just as in our day European Liberals and many of them Protestants, but with far less excuse and in defiance of a blaze of light, looked for the regeneration of Italy to a liberal and enlightened papacy. The distinguished assembly by the Bodensee undertook an impossibility, summoned the world to behold the performance, and ignominiously broke down. The work of the fathers of Nicæa retains an interest; their decrees have still some worth and validity for human souls while the only act of the council of Constance which retains any hold upon the heart and memory of mankind is its great crime. The assembly has a shameful share in the glorious immortality of its two noble victims.

Its reputation has suffered from the disunion of Christendom in the next age and from the subsequent spiritual development of mankind. It has found favour neither with Romanists nor Reformers. Its assertion of the superiority of a council to a pope has offended the one half of Christendom; while its vindication of Roman doctrines has disgusted the other half. Papists are angry with it for pulling down popes; Protestants are wroth

with it for burning reformers. But notwithstanding its manifold miscarriages, the council of Constance occupies an important place in the story of the papacy, and is not without significance in the history of the world. Its mere assemblage and professed object eloquently proclaimed the evils of the popedom; its failure to remedy those evils furthered the perception of their incurable nature. It revealed the papacy and hastened the Reformation.

151

BOOK VI.

FURTHER DECLINE OF THE POPEDOM.

Homines sceleratissumi, cruentis manibus, immani avaritia, nocentissumi, iidemque superbissumi; queis fides, decus, pietas, postremo honesta atque inhonesta omnia quæstui sunt.—SALLUSTIUS, de Bello Jugurthino, c. 31.

'Men of surpassing wickedness, of bloodstained hands, of boundless avarice, supremely baleful and exceedingly arrogant, with whom faith, honour, piety, in short all things noble and base, are mere matters of gain.'

THE schism was at an end. Martin V., the pontiff chosen at Constance, was acknowledged throughout Christendom, except upon the rock of Peniscola, and in some strongholds of Bohemia. On the breaking up of the council Martin betook himself to Italy and after some stay at Florence, made his entry into Rome (1420). For the first time for more than a century-for the first time since the death of Boniface VIII. (1303)-a generally recognised pope held his court permanently at Rome. The papacy regained its unity and its proper seat, but how changed from the papacy not only of Innocent III., but of Boniface VIII.! rudely shaken by the Avignon captivity, sorely battered by the great schism, and not at all strengthened by the handling of the council of Constance. A respectable man and a somewhat vigorous pope, Martin did his best for the popedom, though he did not forget his family, and ever sought to combine the aggrandisement of the Roman See with the aggrandisement of the house of Colonna. He bestirred himself not unsuccessfully to recover the revolted States of the Church, vainly preached peace to France and England, and incessantly stirred up war against the Hussites. But he prospered far more in Italy than in Bohemia, fared much better as a vindicator of the territorial than as a champion of the spiritual popedom.'

1

Sismondi, Histoire des R. I. tom. viii. 1. 63, p. 294 et seq.; 1. 65, p. 404. Raynaldus, an. 1419, 20 passim.

The great event of this pontificate was the victorious uprising of the Hussites against Rome. For the first time in the story of the papacy a nation threw off its spiritual yoke, and stood in arms against it. Such was the result of the chief exploit of the council of Constance. John Hus was exceedingly dear to his countrymen: his earnest spirit and holy life had won their love and veneration; his powerful preaching had commended his doctrines to their souls. His cruel death filled them with exceeding wrath and exceeding sorrow. Far from branding his memory, frightening his disciples, and crushing his principles, it hallowed his name, doubly endeared his doctrine, and greatly multiplied his followers. There was mourning throughout the land; but it was not the wailing of broken and despairing spirits, it was the grieving of glowing and indignant souls. The Bohemians felt the death of their two illustrious countrymen as an outrage upon their nation as well as upon their faith; they waxed more anti-papal and anti-sacerdotal; they burned to avenge the death of their prophet upon the priests who had accused and condemned him. They rebuked the council of Constance in grave epistles, they reviled it in fierce speeches and stern songs, disdained the summons which the council addressed to the leading Hussites, and frightened away the legate whom the council had sent to frighten them.2 But their wrath did not expire in bitter words. Exasperated by the execution of some others among their teachers, they rose against the monks and the priests. There were strife and tumult throughout the land; a stern and intense enthusiasm possessed the people. Three hundred tables were spread in the open air whereon 40,000 persons partook of the communion in both kinds. The Papists fell on bands hastening to the mighty feast, and were beaten back: civil war broke out: churches were forcibly occupied monasteries were plundered. Sluggish King Wenceslas, brother of Cæsar Sigismund, and formerly himself Cæsar, in love with an easy life and indifferent if not favourable to the Hussites, studiously kept out of the fray, passed from hidingplace to hiding-place, and left his heaving and convulsed realm to itself.3

:

But the Hussites had more than a careless king who would do nothing against them. They had for their chief a man of

2 Lenfant, Histoire des Hussites, lib. v. c. 2 et seq.; lib. vi. c. 1. Æneas Sylvius, Historia Bohemica, c. 36.

3 Æneas Sylvius, c. 35–37. Lenfant, lib. vi. c. 1 et seq.