§ 67. THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM. 609
nardino da Siena, Fra Angelico, Jacopo della Marca and John of Capistrano, few of the names are known to general history, and the last two showed traits which the common judgment of mankind is not inclined to regard as saintly. Pastor also adduces the wills of the dying, in which provision was made for ecclesiastical objects, but these may indicate superstitious fear as well as intelligent piety. After all js said^jtremains true that the responsibility and the guilt were with the clergy, who were^ightly made the targe'tsof the^vits, satirists and philosophers of the time.
But while jthe Humanists were condemning the clerical class, many, yea, the most of them, lived in flagrant violatloh oTTEe moral code themselves and^ ihclmed to scepticism or outright pagan^m. In their veneration of antiquity, they made the system of Plato of equal authority with the Christian system, or placed its authority above the Christian scheme. They advocated a return to the dictates of nature, which meant the impulses of the natural and sensuous man. The watchword, sequere naturam, " follow nature," was launched as a philosophical principle. The hard-fought controversy which raged over the relative merits of the two Greek thinkers, Aristotle and Plato, was opened by Plethon, who accused Aristotle of atheism. The battle was continued for many years, calling forth from contestants the bitterest personal assaults. In defending Plato, Ficino set the philosopher so high as to obscure the superior claims of the Christian religion, and it was seriously prnpoPiod to combiup with the Srripturej^dings Ql_thfiJJiiiirgX -6^^ from Plato's writings.^
Xhe immortality of the soul was formally questioned by_
more offensive portrait of a priest than the living person, Don Nicolo de Pelagait di Firarola. He had become the leader of a robber band and, in 1495, was confined in an iron cage in the open air in Ferrara. He had committed murder the day he celebrated his first mass and was absolved in Rome. Afterwards he killed four men and married two women who went about with him, violated women without number and led them captive, and carried on wholesale murder and pillage. But how much worse was this priest than John XXIII., charged by a Christian council with every crime, and Alexander VI., whose papal robes covered monstrous vice ?
1 See Pastor, III. 117 ; Symonds, II. 208, etc. 2r
610 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Pietro Pom^nazzi, a popular teacher of the Aristotelian philosophy in Padua and Bologna. His tract, published in 1516, was burnt by the Franciscans at Venice, but was saved from a like fate in Rome and Florence by the intervention of Bembo and Julius de' Medici. So widespread was the philosophy of materialism that the Fifth Lateran three years before, Dec. 19, 1513, deemed it necessary to reaffirm the doctrine of the soul's immortality and to instruct professors at the universities to answer the arguments of the materialists. In the age of Julius II. and Leo X., scepticism reigned universailyTn Rome, and the priests laughed among themselves over"their religious functions as the augurs once did in the ^ncien^city.^
The cliief indictment against Humanism is, tliat it lacked a serious moral sense, which is an essential element of tli^ christian system. Nor did it at any time show a purpose of morally redeeming itself or seek after a regenerative code of ethics. It declined into an intellectual and sestlietic luxury, a habit of self-indulgence for the few, with no provision for the betterment of society at large and apparently no concern for such betterment. The Humanists were addicted to arrogance, vanity, and lacked principle and manly dignity. They were full of envy and jealousy, engaged in disgraceful personal quarrels among themselves and stooped to sycophancy in the presence of the rich and powerful. Politian, Filelfo and Valla agreed in begging for presents and places in terms of abject flattery. While they poured contempt upon the functionaries of religion, they failed to imitate the self-denying virtues which monasticism enjoined and that regard for the rights of others which Christian teaching commands. Under the influence of the Renaissance was developed that delusive principle, called honor, which has played such an extensive role in parts of Europe and under which a polished culture may conceal the most refined selfishness. ^
No pugilistic encounter could be more brutal than the
^ Gregorovius, VIII. 300. For an excellent account of Pomponazzi and his views, see Owen : Skeptics, pp. 184-240.
2 See Burckhardt-Geiger, II. 155 sqq. and his quotation from Rabelais.