§ 56. LEO X. 1513-1521. 495
velli, Guicciardini and Erasmus. What a noble substitution it would have been, if these men had found welcome in the Vatican, and the jesters and buffoons and gormandizers been relegated to their proper place ! The high-priest of the Christian world is not to be judged in the same terms we would apply to a worldly prince ruling in the closing years of the Middle Ages. The Vatican, Leo turned into a house of revelling and ^fivnli'ty^^.lip place of all others Avhere the step and the voice of the man of God should have been heard. The Apostle, whom he had been taught to regard as his spiritual ancestor, accomplished his mission by readiness to undergo, if necessary, martyrdom. Leo despoiled his high office of its sacredness and prostituted it into a vehicle of his own carnal propensities. Had he followed the advice of his princely father, man of the world though he was, Leo X. would have escaped some of the reprobation which attaches to his name.
There is no sufficient evidence that Leo ever used the words ascribed to him, "how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."^ Such blasphemy we prefer not to associate with the de' Medici. Nevertheless, no sharper condemnation of one claiming to be Christ's vicar on earth could well be thought of than that which is carried by the words of Sarpi, the Catholic historian of the Council of Trent,^ who said, " Leo would have been a perfect pope, if he had combined with his other good qualities a moderate knowledge of religion and a greater inclination to piety, for neither of which he shewed much concern." Before Leo's death, the papacy had lost a part of its European constituency, and that part which, in the centuries since, has represented the furthest progress of civilization. TheJbulLwliicliJhis pontiff hurled at Martin Luther, 1520, was consumed into harmless ashes at Wittenberg, *ashes which do not speak forth from the earth as clo the ashes of John Huss. To the despised Saxon miner's son, the Protestant world looks back for the assertion of the right to study
1 Quantum nobis nostrisque eade Christo fabula profuerit, satis est omnibus sceculis notum. The words, said to have been spoken to Cardinal Bembo, were noted down for the first time by Bale in his Pageant of the Popes, ed. 1674, p. 179, Bale, bishop of Ossory, had been a Carmelite. 2 i ; i.
496 THE MIDDLK A(iES. A.D. 1294-1617.
the Scriptures, a matter of more importance than all the circumstance and rubrics of papal office and sacerdotal functions. Not seldom has it occurred that the best gifts to mankind have come, not through a long heritage of prerogatives but through the devotion of some agent of God humbly born. It seemed as if Providence allowed the papal office at the close of the mediaeval age to be filled by pontiffs spiritually unworthy and morally degenerate, that it might be known for all time that it was not through the papacy the Church was to be reformed and brought out of its mediaeval formalism and scholasticism. What popes had refused to attempt, another group of men with no distinction of office accomplished.
CHAPTER VII.
HERESY AND WITCHCRAFT.
§ 57. Literature.
For § 58. — For the Brethren of the Free Spirit, Fredericq : Cor- "■ pus doc. h<jer. pravitalis, etc., vols. I-III. — Haupt, art. ia Herzog, III. 467-473, Bruder des Freien Geistes. See lit., vol. V., I. p. 459. — For the Fraticelli, F. Ehrle : Die Spiritualen. Ihr Verhdltniss zum Franciskanerorden u. zu d. Fraticellen in Archiv f. K. u. Lit. geschichte, 1885, pp. 1509-1570 ; 1886, pp. 106-164 ; 1887, pp. 553-623.— Bollinger : Sektengesch., II. — Lea: Inquisition., III. 129 sqq., 164-175. — Wetzer-Welte, IV, 1926-1935. —For the Waldenses, see lit., vol. V., I. p. 459. —Also, "W. Preger: Der Traktat des Dav. von Atigsburg ilber die Waldenser, Munich, 1878. — Hansen : Quellen, etc., Bonn, 1901, 149-181, etc. See full title below. — For the Flagellants, see lit., vol. V., I. p. 876. Also Paul Runge : D. Lieder u. Melodien d. Geissler d. Jahres 1349, 7iach. d. Aufzeichnung Hugo''s von Beutlingen nebst einer Abhandlung iiber d. ital. Geisslerlieder von H. Schneegans u. einem Beitrage iiber d. deutschen u. niederl. Geissler von H. Pfannenschmid, Leipzig, 1900.
For § 59. Witchcraft. — For the treatments of the Schoolmen and other med. writers, see vol. V., I. p. 878. — Among earlier modern writers, see J. BoDiN: Magorum Daemonoinania, 1579. — Reg. Scott: Discovery of Witchcraft, London, 1584. — P. Binsfeld: De confessionibus maleficarum et sagarum, Treves, 1596. — M. Delrio: Disquisitiones magicae, Antwerp, 1599, Cologne, 1679. — Erastus, of Heidelberg : Bepititio disputationis de lamiis seu strigibus, Basel, 1578. — J. Glanvill: Sadducismus triumphatus, London, 1681. — R. Baxter : Certainty of the World of Spirits, London, 1691. — Recent writers. — * T. Wright: Narrative of Sorcery and Magic, 2 vols., London, 1851. — G. Roskoff: Gesch. des Teufels, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1869. — W. G. SOLDAN: Gesch. der Hexcnprocesse, Stuttgart, 1843; new ed., by Heppe, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1880. — Lea: History of the Inquisition, III. 379-550. — *Leckt : History of the Bise and Influence of the Spirit of Bationalism in Europe, ch. I. — Dollinger-Friedrich : D. Papstthum, pp. 123-131. — A. D. White, History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom, 2 vols., New York, 1898. — *J. Hansen: Zauberwahn. Inquisition und Hexenprocess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgnng, Munich, 1900 ; * Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. des Hexemoahns und der Hexenverfolgung im M.A., Leipzig, 1901. — Graf von Hoensbroech: D. Papstthum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit, Leipzig, 2 vols., 1900; 4th ed., 1901, L 380-599. — J. 2 k 497