THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 781
counted for a cultured person who did not cherish some erroneous views about Christianity."
The North had no Dante and Petrarca and Boccaccio or Thomas Aquinas, but it had its Tauler and Thomas a Kempis and its presses sent forth the first Greek New Testament. This was a positive preparation for the coming age as much as the Greek language was a preparation for the spread of Christianity through Apostolic preaching in the 1st century. German printers went to Rome in 1467 and as far as Barcelona. In his work on the new invention, 1507, Wimpheling ^ declared " that as the Apostles went forth of old, so now the disciples of the sacred art go forth from Germany into all lands and their printed books become heralds of the Gospel, preachers of the truth and wisdom." Germany became the intellectual market of Europe and its wares went across the North Sea to that little kingdom which was to become the chief bulwark of Protestantism. In vain did Leo X. set himself against the free circulation of literature.^
The Greek edition of the New Testament and the printingpress, — that invention which cleaves all the centuries in two and yet binds all the centuries together — were the two chief providential instruments made ready for Martin Luther. But he had to find them. They did not make him a reformer, the leader of the new age. Erasmus, whom Janssen mercilessly condemns, remained a moralizer. He lacked both the passion and the heroism of the religious reformer. The religious reformer must be touched from above. Reuchlin, Erasmus and Gutenberg prepared the outward form of the Greek and Hebrew Bible. Luther discovered its contents, and made them known.
Such were the complex forces at work in the closing century of the Middle Ages. The absolute jurisdiction of the papacy was solemnly reaffirmed. The hierarchy virtually constituted the Church. Religious dissent was met with compulsion and force, not by persuasion and instruction. Coercion was substituted for individual consent. Popular piety re-
1 De arte impressoria. The printer Gutenberg lived 1397-1468 and his sonin-law, Schoffer, died 1502.
2 In his bull of May 4, 1515. See Mirbt, p. 177.
782 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
mained bound in the old forms and was strong. But there were sounds of refreshing rills, flowing from the fresh fountain of the water of life, running at the side of the old ceremonials, especially in the North, 'rhe KevivaJ of Lette^-s aroused the intellect to a sense of its sovereign rights. The movement of thought was greatly accelerated by the printed page. The development of trade communicated unrest. But the lives of the popes, as we look back upon the age, forbade the expectation of any relief from Rome. The Reformatory councils had contented themselves with attempts to reform tlie administration of the Church. Nevertheless, though men did not see it, driftwood as from a new theological continent was drifting about and there were prophetic voices though the princes of the Church listened not to them. What was needed was not government, was not regulations but regeneration. This the hierarchy could not give, but only God alone. ^
The facts, set forth in this volume, leave no room for the contention of the recent class of historians in the Roman Church, — • Janssen, Denifle, Pastor, Nicolas, Paulus, Dr. Gasquet — who have devoted themselves to the task of proving that an orderly reform-movement was going on when the Reformation broke out. That movement, they represent as an unspeakable calamity for civilization, an apostasy from Christianity, an insurrection against divinely constituted authority. It violently checked the alleged current of progress and popes, down to Pius IX. and Leo XIII., have anathematized Protestantism as a poisonous pestilence and the mother of all modern evils in Church and state. In the attempt to make good this judgment, these recent writers not only have laid stress upon " the good old times," — a description which the people of the 15th century would have repudiated,^ — but have resorted to the defamation
1 See Sohm's sententious words in closing his treatment of the Middle Ages, Kirchengesch., 15th ed., 1007, p. 122 sq. Colet, who was in Italy during the rule of Alexander VI. said: "Unless the Mediator who created and founded the Church out of nothing for liimself, lay his hand with all speed, our most disordered Church cannot be far from death. . . . All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ, not heavenly things but earthly things, what will bring them to death, not what will bring them life eternal.'' — Seebohm, p. 75.
2 To the other testimonies in this vol. add Erasmus, Enchiridion, p. 11 sq.