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35

[21st July,

103 the present state requires not an emperor, but a cautious steward of the last relics of our fortunes. Well do I remember the lofty expectations which he built on our alliance with Mustapha; and much do I fear that his rash courage will urge the ruin of our house, and that even religion may precipitate our downfall.” Yet the experience and authority of Manuel preserved the peace and eluded the council; till, in the seventy-eighth year His death of his age, and in the habit of a monk, he terminated his career, A.D. 1425] dividing his precious moveables among his children and the poor, Of his six sons, his physicians, and his favourite servants. Andronicus the Second was invested with the principality of Thessalonica, and died of a leprosy soon after the sale of that city to the Venetians and its final conquest by the Turks. Some (A.D. 1430] fortunate incidents had restored Peloponnesus, or the Morea, to the empire; and in his more prosperous days Manuel had fortified the narrow isthmus of six miles 36 with a stone wall and one hundred and fifty-three towers. The wall was overthrown by the first blast of the Ottomans; the fertile peninsula might have been sufficient for the four younger brothers, Theodore and Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas; but they wasted, in domestic contests, the remains of their strength; and the least successful of the rivals were reduced to a life of dependence in the Byzantine palace.

John

II. A.D.

The eldest of the sons of Manuel, John Palæologus the Second, Zeal of was acknowledged, after his father's death, as the sole emperor Palæologus of the Greeks. He immediately proceeded to repudiate his wife 1425-1437 and to contract a new marriage with the princess of Trebizond; beauty was in his eye the first qualification of an empress; and the clergy had yielded to his firm assurance that, unless he might be indulged in a divorce, he would retire to a cloister and leave the throne to his brother Constantine. The first, and in truth the only, victory of Palæologus was over a Jew, whom,

See Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 243-248.

36 The exact measure of the Hexamilion from sea to sea, was 3800 orgygiæ [orgyiæ, opyviai], or toises, of six Greek feet (Phranzes, 1. i. c. 38), which would produce a Greek mile, still smaller than that of 660 French toises, which is assigned by d'Anville as still in use in Turkey. Five miles are commonly reckoned for the breadth of the Isthmus. See the Travels of Spon, Wheeler, and Chandler.

37 The first objection of the Jews is on the death of Christ: if it were voluntary, Christ was a suicide; which the emperor parries with a mystery. They then dispute on the conception of the Virgin, the sense of the prophecies, &c. (Phranzes, 1. ii. c. 12, a whole chapter).

Corruption of the Latin church

Schism,

A.D. 13771429

after a long and learned dispute, he converted to the Christian faith; and this momentous conquest is carefully recorded in the history of the times. But he soon resumed the design of uniting the East and West; and, regardless of his father's advice, listened, as it should seem, with sincerity to the proposal of meeting the pope in a general council beyond the Adriatic. This dangerous project was encouraged by Martin the Fifth, and coldly entertained by his successor Eugenius, till, after a tedious negotiation, the emperor received a summons from a Latin assembly of a new character, the independent prelates of Basil, who styled themselves the representatives and judges of the Catholic church.

The Roman pontiff had fought and conquered in the cause of ecclesiastical freedom; but the victorious clergy were soon exposed to the tyranny of their deliverer; and his sacred character was invulnerable to those arms which they found so keen and effectual against the civil magistrate. Their great charter, the right of election, was annihilated by appeals, evaded by trusts or commendams, disappointed by reversionary grants, and superseded by previous and arbitrary reservations.38 A public auction was instituted in the court of Rome: the cardinals and favourites were enriched with the spoils of nations; and every country might complain that the most important and valuable benefices were accumulated on the heads of aliens and absentees. During their residence at Avignon, the ambition of the popes subsided in the meaner passions of avarice 39 and luxury they rigorously imposed on the clergy the tributes of first-fruits and tenths; but they freely tolerated the impunity of vice, disorder, and corruption. These manifold scandals were aggravated by the great schism of the West, which continued above fifty years. In the furious conflicts of Rome and Avignon, the vices of the rivals were mutually exposed; and their precarious situation degraded their authority, relaxed their discipline,

38 In the treatise delle Materie Beneficiarie of Fra Paolo (in the ivth volume of the last and best edition of his works), the papal system is deeply studied and freely described. Should Rome and her religion be annihilated, this golden volume may still survive, a philosophical history and a salutary warning.

39 Pope John XXII. (in 1334) left behind him, at Avignon, eighteer. millions of gold florins, and the value of seven millions more in plate and jewels. See the Chronicle of John Villani (1. xi. c. 20, in Muratori's Collection, tom. xiii. p. 765), whose brother received the account from the Papal treasurers. A treasure of six or eight millions sterling in the xivth century is enormous, and almost incredible.

Pisa, A.D.

Constance,

1418

and multiplied their wants and exactions. To heal the wounds, Council of and restore the monarchy, of the church, the synods of Pisa 1409; of and Constance 40 were successively convened; but these great as- A.D. 1414semblies, conscious of their strength, resolved to vindicate the privileges of the Christian aristocracy. From a personal sentence against two pontiffs, whom they rejected, and a third, their acknowledged sovereign, whom they deposed, the fathers of Constance proceeded to examine the nature and limits of the Roman supremacy; nor did they separate till they had established the authority, above the pope, of a general council. It was enacted that, for the government and reformation of the church, such assemblies should be held at regular intervals; and that each synod, before its dissolution, should appoint the time and place of the subsequent meeting. By the influence of the court of Basil, of Rome, the next convocation at Sienna was easily eluded; 1443 but the bold and vigorous proceedings of the council of Basil 11 had almost been fatal to the reigning pontiff, Eugenius the Fourth. A just suspicion of his design prompted the fathers to hasten the promulgation of their first decree, that the representatives of the church-militant on earth were invested with a divine and spiritual jurisdiction over all Christians, without excepting the pope; and that a general council could not be dissolved, prorogued, or transferred, unless by their free deliberation and consent. On the notice that Eugenius had fulminated a bull for that purpose, they ventured to summon,

40 A learned and liberal Protestant, M. Lenfant, has given a fair history of the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basil, in six volumes in quarto; but the last part is the most hasty and imperfect, except in the account of the troubles of Bohemia. [For the Council of Pisa see Erler, Zur Geschichte des Pisaner Conzils, 1884. The history of the Council of Constance has been rewritten by L. Tosti, Storia del concilio di Costanza, 1853 (in 2 vols.), a work which has been translated into German by W. Arnold (1860). See also F. Stuhr, Die Organisation und Geschäftsordnung des Pisaner und Costanzer Konzils, 1891; and the document (Ein Tagebuch-fragment über das Kostanzer Konzil) edited by Knöpfler in the Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, vol. xi. p. 267 sqq., 1890. Gibbon does not mention the big work of Hardt: Magnum œcumenicum Constantiense concilium (6 vols.), 1697-1700 (Index, 1742).]

41 The original acts or minutes of the council of Basil are preserved in the public library, in twelve volumes in folio. Basil was a free city, conveniently situate on the Rhine, and guarded by the arms of the neighbouring and confederate Swiss. In 1459, the university was founded by Pope Pius II. (Eneas Sylvius), who had been secretary to the council. But what is a council, or an university, to the presses of Froben and the studies of Erasmus? [The first 3 vols. (1853-94) of the Vienna Monumenta conciliorum generalium are devoted to the council of Basil. For the union question see Mugnier, L'Expédition du concile de Bâle & Constantinople pour l'union de l'église grecque à l'église latine (1437-8), 1892.]

A.D. 1431

position to

IV.

to admonish, to threaten, to censure, the contumacious successor Their op of St. Peter. After many delays, to allow time for repentance, Eugenius they finally declared that, unless he submitted within the term of sixty days, he was suspended from the exercise of all temporal and ecclesiastical authority. And to mark their jurisdiction over the prince as well as the priest, they assumed the government of Avignon, annulled the alienation of the sacred patrimony, and protected Rome from the imposition of new taxes. Their boldness was justified, not only by the general opinion of the clergy, but by the support and power of the first monarchs of Christendom: the emperor Sigismond declared himself the servant and protector of the synod; Germany and France adhered to their cause; the duke of Milan was the enemy of Eugenius; and he was driven from the Vatican by an insurrection of the Roman people. Rejected at the same time by his temporal and spiritual subjects, submission was his only choice; by a most humiliating bull, the pope repealed his own acts and ratified those of the council; incorporated his legates and cardinals with that venerable body; and seemed to resign himself to the decrees of the supreme legislature. Their fame pervaded the countries of the East; and it was in their presence that Sigismond received the ambassadors of the Turkish sultan,2 who laid at his feet twelve large vases, filled with robes of silk the Grecks, and pieces of gold. The fathers of Basil aspired to the glory 1437 of reducing the Greeks, as well as the Bohemians, within the

Negotia

tions with

A.D. 1434

pale of the church; and their deputies invited the emperor and patriarch of Constantinople to unite with an assembly which possessed the confidence of the Western nations. Palæologus was not averse to the proposal; and his ambassadors were introduced with due honours into the Catholic senate. But the choice of the place appeared to be an insuperable obstacle, since he refused to pass the Alps or the sea of Sicily, and positively required that the synod should be adjourned to some convenient city in Italy, or at least on the Danube. The other articles of this treaty were more readily stipulated: it was agreed to defray the travelling expenses of the emperor, with a train of seven hundred persons," 43 to remit an immediate sum of eight

42 This Turkish embassy, attested only by Crantzius, is related with some doubt by the annalist Spondanus, A.D. 1433, No. 25, tom. i. p. 824.

43 Syropulus, p. 19. In this list, the Greeks appear to have exceeded the real numbers of the clergy and laity which afterwards attended the emperor and patriarch,

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LATE BYZANTINE ART: PANEL PAINTING OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE

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