CHRISTIANITY AND THE LIBERAL SPIRIT.
THE two last volumes of the excellent English translation of Gregorovius's great work on "Rome in the Middle Ages" (George Bell and Sons), just published, are not the least suggestive of that monumental work. We arrive in these volumes at the definite construction of the Papacy as a secu- lar, worldly power; in short, at the tradition which survived until the overthrow of the temporal power in 1870, and which the Pope, against the views of some of the wisest Catholics, is still engaged in dangling before the eyes of the faithful. The Papacy has passed through many phases. When the ancient Roman authority was everywhere falling in ruins it could fairly be claimed for the Papacy (notably under Gregory the Great) that, as representing the only moral and social power remaining in Europe, it was natural and right that men should crowd under its shelter from the anarchy which had overtaken the Western world. So, too, the stately edifice of the Papacy under Innocent III. has a profound moral claim as against the rapacity and barbarity of the secular Govern- ments of Western Europe. Selfish as were frequently their objects, we confess to a sympathy with some of the Pontiffs who were defending Italy against foreign encroachments. But after the return of the Popes from Avignon, the character of the Papacy changes, and the change consists essentially in this, that the Papacy becomes avowedly a secular and worldly institution, vying with the very worst Governments in its methods, spirit, and objects. The proof of this is to be found in these two significant volumes of G regorovius.
Two factors come into existence after the Pontificate of Martin V. In the first place there is the hardening of the centralised despotism at Rome. The Popes spend their energy in forming alliances which shall strengthen their own power, culminating in the alliance of Alexander VI. with France; and they increase their hold over Italy by their shameless nepotism, the worst examples of which are found in the policy of Sixtus IV. The reign of Alexander VI. (which must always be a stumbling-block to Catholics who believe that the choice of the Pope is dictated by the Holy Spirit) is remarkable for the fact that the Papacy so grasps at local secular sovereignties that it includes the States of Latium within its grip, and that while the moral and social condition of Rome itself was the scandal of the world. Matrimonial unions, diplomatic contracts, use of armed force, occupied whatever of the time of the Pope that was not given to sybaritic luxury. The second factor was more respectable, but it was not less a powerful agency in changing, and to some degree stereo- typing, the new aspect of the Papacy. Under that very remarkable man, Nicholas V., a Florentine by birth and a scholar by instinct, the Vatican became the centre of learn- ing as contrasted with piety or ecclesiastical lore. If we can think of the late Mr. Pater transformed into an ecclesiastic and installed in a great palace and acknowledged as the head of a vast, world-wide Communion, we shall understand the position of Nicholas V. No scandal attaches to his name, he was a great, and in some respects a worthy, Pope, but he was merely an elegant scholar interested in profane literature rather than in the Christian Gospel. In his days the Vatican was transformed into a literary workshop, where Greek and Italian copyists and translators were engaged in poring over ancient manuscripts brought from Constantinople and Alexandria. That learning which Paul counted as dross had conquered the simple religion of the Nazarene.
At the same time that the Papacy had thus become a worldly, centralised, semi-pagan, and dangerous power pre- siding over a city sunk in depravity (the testimony of the man who saw the body of the Pope's illegitimate son floating in the Tiber is significant,—he did not specially remark it because be saw hundreds of such bodies), the secular Powers of Western Europe had developed strong Monarchies of the absolute type. France under Louis XI. had developed some of the worst qualities of the age of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. ; the Monarchy was hardening into an oppressive and
an- scrupulous institution, dominated by Machiavellian ideas. A similar transformation was taking place in England, which in the end was only saved from despotism by the politi- cal ideals of the Puritans. Machiavellianism was control-
ling Italian thought. Venice would have emulated this tyranny had not her ambition been curbed and her power largely exhausted. Spain, after the conquest of Granada, soon became an aggressive and dangerous autocracy. There seemed to be a plague of absolutism in Western Europe, leading up to the Counter-Reformation and the reaction of the seventeenth century. Now, it is a striking fact, dwelt on justly by Gregorovius, that while this absolutism, alike in the Papacy and in secular sovereignties, was rearing its sinister form, Christianity was at its very lowest ebb in all the long centuries of European history. Theological controversies, it is true, were going on, but in the supreme region of Christian ethics there never was so base a time as when the Reyos Catolicos had overthrown their Moorish enemies, when the French Monarchy had crystallised, when the Tudors were trampling on the older free ideas of England, and when the Borgias were polluting the chair of St. Peter. The zenith of absolute Monarchy was synchronous with the nadir of Christianity.
Surely this is no accident. Whatever men may say of the inner doctrines of Christianity, whatever theories they may entertain as to its development, they cannot help agreeing that it wit- nesses, as no other form of religion has witnessed, to the brotherhood and freedom of mankind,—not the merely formal freedom and brotherhood of a political proclamation, but the substantial freedom and brotherhood of the common children of one Supreme Father. Take away that Christian factor, and what remains of the idea of human brotherhood ? Science, which coldly declares the survival of the fittest in a world-struggle, knows nothing of it; classical culture, to which Nicholas V. and the Humanists turned, was developed in a society based on slavery. There has been no permanent and substantial advance in political freedom save where the divine spirit engendered by the Christian Gospel has awakened and inspired the souls of men. We do not say that the inspiration has always been conscious; for we are inclined to think that some of the intellectual precursors of the French Revolution were unconsciously influenced by Christianity. But in so far as the idea of brotherhood was based on a priori theorising it was barren. The intellectual idea needed to be fused into glowing heat through a sincere faith in the divine love and care for men. That great faith, the sheet-anchor in spite of all her sins and sorrows of the Mediseval Church, had passed away in the days of the splendid, pompous Renaissance Papacy, and had been replaced by the superficial, essentially atheistic show of a veneered, revived pagan cult, with its classical myths gracefully interpreted by the hired artists of the Vatican. To match this neo-paganism a new political theory had been con- structed, wherein the old, homely liberties of the Northern peoples had been supplanted by a revival of ancient tyrannies. Faith had for a time all but fled the world ; make-believe and paste-board had taken its place, and a sordid and gilded despotism was attracting the fancy of Western Europe. The decline of faith meant the revival of despotism, as it always will. "Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." It was not till Puritanism arose in England that the spirit of freedom again had its full rights, and that the pagan spirit of tyranny fostered in Renaissance Rome received a check. The best of the Puritan statesmen of the Commonwealth were as sincere and single-minded in their Christianity as in their love of freedom. And they reconciled thus, not things alien and apart, but things essentially made one by the will of God.
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