The Historians' History of the World 08

The pope was to be a great sovereign prince, but above the sovereign prince he was to be the successor of St. Peter. Rome was to be at once the strong citadel, and the noblest sanctuary in the world, unassailable by her enemies both without and within from her fortifications; commanding the world to awe by the unrivalled majesty of her churches. The Jubilee had poured enormous wealth into the treasury of the pope; his ordinary revenues, both from the papal territory and from Christendom at large, began to flow in with peace and with the revival of his authority. That wealth was all expended with the most liberal magnificence. Already had it dawned upon the mind of Nicholas V that the cathedral of the chief of the apostles ought to rival, or to surpass, all the churches in Christendom in vastness and majesty. It was to be entirely rebuilt from its foundations. Julius II and Leo X did but accomplish the design of Nicholas V.

Thus in Nicholas V closed one great age of the papacy. In Nicholas the sovereign Italian prince and the pontiff met in serene and amicable dignity; he had no temptation to found a princely family. But before long the pontiff was to be lost in the sovereign prince. Nor was it less evident that the exclusive dominion of Latin Christianity was drawing to a close, though nearly a century might elapse before the final secession of Teutonic Christianity, and the great permanent division of Christendom. Each successive pontificate might seem determined to advance, to hasten that still slow but inevitable revolution: the audacious nepotism of Sixtus IV, the wickednesses of Alexander VI, which defy palliation; the wars of Julius II, with the hoary pope at the head of ferocious armies; the political intrigues and disasters of Clement VII.b

POPES TO 1503

[1458-1503 A.D.]

Nicholas’ successor, Alfonso Borgia (Borja), a Spaniard, whose pontifical name was Calixtus III, performed nothing great or splendid, if no account be taken of his anxiety to urge Christian princes upon a war against the Turks. He died in the year 1458. Much more celebrated was his successor, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, bishop of Siena, who ascended the papal throne in 1458, and took the name of Pius II, a man of superior genius, and renowned both for his achievements and for his various writings and publications.

Yet posterity would have accounted him a much greater man, if he had not been guilty of gross inconsistency. For after strenuously maintaining the rights of councils against the pontiffs, and boldly defending the cause of the Council of Bâle against Eugenius IV, upon being made pontiff, he apostatised from himself; and January 18th, 1460, denied that a council is superior to a pontiff, and severely prohibited appeals to councils; and in the year 1461 obtained from Louis XI, king of France, the abrogation of the pragmatic sanction, which was favourable to councils; and finally, April 26th, 1463, he expressed a public disapproval of all that he had himself written in favour of the Council of Bâle, and decreed that Pius II was to be heard and obeyed, but that Æneas Sylvius was to be condemned. A short time after making this declaration he fell ill and died in the month of July, 1464.

Paul II, previously Pietro Barbo, a Venetian, who was raised to the chair of St. Peter in 1464, and died in 1471, performed some acts not unworthy of commendation, at least according to the views of that age; but he also did many things that are scarcely excusable, if they are so at all, among the least important of which is that he made a jubilee year come once in every twenty-five years, in 1470. Hence his reputation with posterity has remained equivocal.

The subsequent pontiffs, Sixtus IV, previously Francesco Albescola della Rovere, who died in 1484, and Innocent VIII,[108] previously Giovanni Battista Cibo, a Genoese, who died in 1492, were of the middle kind, being distinguished as popes neither for great virtues nor for great faults. Each, fearing for Italy and for all Europe, from the power of the Turks, both prepared himself for a war upon them and very earnestly urged one on the kings of Europe. But each met with such obstacles as disappointed an object so dear to his heart. Nothing else was done by them with much pretension to true greatness.