The Historians' History of the World 08

Now came that event which, however foreseen by the few wiser prophetic spirits, burst on Europe and on Christendom with the stunning and appalling effect of absolute suddenness—the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. On no two European minds did this disaster work with more profound or more absorbing terror than on Pope Nicholas V and Æneas Sylvius (Enea Silvio Piccolomini); nor could anyone allege more sound reasons for that terror than the pope and the bishop of Siena. Who could estimate better than Æneas, from his intimate knowledge of all the countries of Europe, of Italy, Germany, France, England, the extent of the danger which impended over the Latin world? Never since its earlier outburst might Mohammedanism seem so likely to subjugate if not to swallow up distracted and disunited Christendom, as under the Turks. By sea and land they were equally formidable. If Christendom should resist, on what frontier? All were menaced, all in danger. What city, what kingdom, would arrest the fierce, the perpetual invasion? From this period throughout the affairs of Germany (at Frankfort he preached a crusade) to the end of his legatine power, of his cardinalate, of his papacy, of his life, this was the one absorbing thought, one passion, of Æneas Sylvius. The immediate advance of the victorious Muhammed through Hungary, Dalmatia, to the border, the centre of Italy, was stopped by a single fortress, Belgrade; by a preacher, John Capistrano; by a hero, John Hunyady. But it was not till, above a century later, when Don John of Austria, at Lepanto by sea, and John Sobieski, before Vienna, by land, broke the spell of Mohammedan conquest, that Europe or Christendom might repose in security.

The death of Nicholas V was hastened, it was said, by the taking of Constantinople. Grief, shame, fear, worked on a constitution broken by the gout. But Nicholas V foresaw not that in remote futurity the peaceful, not the warlike, consequences of the fall of Constantinople would be most fatal to the popedom—that what was the glory of Nicholas V would become among the foremost causes of the ruin of mediæval religion; that it would aid in shaking to the base and in severing forever the majestic unity of Latin Christianity.

Nicholas V aspired to make Italy the domicile, Rome the capital, of letters and arts. No sooner was Nicholas pope than he applied himself to the foundation of the Vatican library. Five thousand volumes were speedily collected. The wondering age boasted that no such library had existed since the days of the Ptolemies.

The scholars of Italy flocked to Rome, each to receive his task from the generous pope, who rewarded their labours with ample payment. He seemed determined to enrich the West with all that survived of Grecian literature. The fall of Constantinople, long threatened, had been preceded by the immigration of many learned Greeks. France, Germany, even England, the Byzantine Empire, Greece, had been ransacked by industrious agents for copies of all the Greek authors. No branch of letters was without its interpreters.

A Pope of the Fifteenth Century

To Nicholas V, Italy, or rather Latin Christianity, mainly owes her age of learning, as well as its fatal consequence to Rome and to Latin Christianity, which in his honest ardour he would be the last to foresee. It was the splendid vision of Nicholas V that this revival of letters, which in certain circles became almost a new religion, would not be the bond-slave but the handmaid or willing minister of the old. Latin Christianity was to array itself in all the spoils of the ancient world, and so maintain (there was nothing of policy in his thought) her dominion over the mind of man. But Rome under Nicholas V was not to be the centre of letters alone; she was also to resume her rank as the centre of art, more especially of architectural magnificence. Rome was to be again as of old the lawgiver of civilisation; pilgrims from all parts of the world, from curiosity, for business, or from religion, were to bow down before the confessed supremacy of her splendid works.