History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 9

LECTURE III. FREE THOUGHT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, AND AT THE RENAISSANCE; TOGETHER WITH ITS RISE IN MODERN TIMES.

LUKE xxi. 33.

_Heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away; but my words shall not pa.s.s away._

We have studied the history of unbelief down to the fall of heathenism. A period of more than seven hundred years elapses before a second crisis of doubt occurs in church history. The interval was a time of social dissolution and reconstruction; and when the traces of the free criticism of religion reappear, the world in which they manifest themselves is new.

Fresh races have been introduced, inst.i.tutions unknown to the ancient civilization have been mingled with or have replaced the old; and the ancient language of the Roman empire has dissolved into the Romance tongues. But Christianity has lived through the deluge, and been the ark of refuge in the storm; and its claims are now tested by the young world which emerged into being when the waters of confusion had retired. The silence of reason in this interval was not the result of the abundance of piety, but of the prevalence of ignorance; a sign of the absence of inquiry, not of the presence of moral and mental satisfaction.(251) Even when speculation revived, and reason re-examined religion, the literary monuments in which expression is given to doubt are so few, that it will be possible in the present lecture not only to include the account of the second and third crises which mark the course of free thought in church history, but even to pa.s.s beyond them, and watch the dawn of unbelieving criticism caused by the rise of the modern philosophy which ushers in the fourth of the great crises named in a previous lecture.(252)

The former of these periods which we shall now examine, the second in the general scheme, may be considered to extend from A.D. 1100 to 1400. Its commencement is fixed by the date at which the scholastic philosophy began to influence religion, its close by the revival of cla.s.sical learning. The history of free thought in it is complicated, by being to some extent the struggle of deeds as well as of ideas, a social as well as a religious struggle. It was the period which witnessed both the dissolution of feudalism and the theocratic centralization in the popedom; and while reason struggled on the one side against the dogmatic system, it struggled on the other to a.s.sert the rights of the state against the church, and to put restraints upon the privileges, dominion, and wealth, of the pope and clergy. The social struggle, to vindicate the liberty of the state against the undue power of the church, so far as it is the effect of free thought, appertains to our subject, in the same manner as was the case with the early attempts of a converse character of the Roman emperors to deny due liberty to the church, whenever, as in the case of Julian, they were the result of a deliberate examination of religion. Free thought in the middle ages is at once Protestantism, Scepticism, and Ghibellinism.(253)

The intellectual action in this crisis is marked by four forms;-(1) the criticism created by the scholastic philosophy, which has been thought to mark in Abelard the commencement of doubt; (2) the introduction of the idea of progress in religion, in the sense that Christianity is to be replaced by a better religion; (3) the idea of the comparison of Christianity with other religions, so as to obliterate its exceptional character; (4) the traces of disbelief in the doctrine of immortality. The two former are free thought as doubt, the two latter as disbelief.

It will be necessary, for ill.u.s.trating the first of those forms, to explain the nature of the scholastic philosophy, so far as to show how it might become the means of producing heresy or scepticism, when applied to theology.

Scholasticism is the vague name which describes the system of inquiry common in the middle ages.(254) In truth it marks a period rather than a system; a method rather than a philosophy. In spite of difference of form, it links itself with the speculations of other ages in community of aim, in that it strove to gain a general philosophy of the universe, to reach some few principles which might offer an interpretation of all difficulties.

In the present age the science which attempts this grand problem is denominated Logic, or Metaphysics, according to the different sphere which it covers.(255) But in the middle ages these two fields were not clearly distinguished; in the same manner as in the ??a?e?t??? of Plato, method and the realities attained by method were not separated.(256) Yet it was mainly in reference to the former that scholasticism wears the aspect of a method, and to the latter the aspect of a philosophy. Adopting deduction as the type of a perfect science, it a.s.sumed its data partly on the ground of innate ideas, partly from the truths of revelation, partly from the metaphysical dicta of Aristotle; and from these principles attempted to work out deductively a solution of universal nature. It was the S?f?a of Aristotle executed from a Christian point of view. In respect to the logical method there was a general agreement of opinion, but difference of system arose in the metaphysical. The form that the problem of science then a.s.sumed was peculiar. Instead of examining the data from which deduction starts, with a view of finding their subjective certainty as thoughts, the inquirers strove to settle the problem of their objective nature as things. The question asked was this: Are the genera and species which the mind contemplates, in its attempts to cla.s.sify and interpret phenomena, real in nature, or produced only by human thought and speech? A comparison with the modern mode of investigation will explain the importance which the question possessed, and the reason why it monopolized the entire field of inquiry.

The progress of discovery has forced upon us a subdivision of the sciences into two cla.s.ses, unknown in the middle ages; in one of which we discover causes; in the other, in which we are unable to find causes, we rest content with cla.s.sification by species and genera. In the former we discover antecedents, in the latter types.(257) But in mediaeval science, as in Greek, the latter cla.s.s was regarded as the sole form of all perfect science. Hence the reason will appear why the question as to the true nature of genera and species had a monopoly of the field of inquiry; and also why the theory of predication was exalted into the most important part of logic.(258) Those who thought that genera had a real existence as essences apart from man's mind and from nature, were denominated Realists: those who denied to them any real existence, and considered them to be a common quality labelled by a common name, were Nominalists: those who held the intermediate view, and a.s.sumed them to exist, not only as artificial names but also as general cla.s.ses in the human mind, were Conceptualists.

With the realist, cla.s.sification was not arbitrary, but true and determined for man. With the nominalist and conceptualist it was created by man, and amenable to correction.

The question, though now relegated from metaphysical to physical science, has still sufficient importance to enable us to perceive likewise the reason why these different theories could be the means of dividing men into parties. The bitterness with which a zoological inquiry of a.n.a.logous character into the perpetuity of natural species(259) has been lately a.s.sailed may enable us to realize the earnestness shown on this point in the middle ages. The question, as viewed by the schoolmen, was really the fundamental one as respects knowledge; and the opinions on it are the counterpart to those which relate to the tests of truth and the nature of being in modern metaphysics. The spirit of realism was essentially the spirit of dogmatism, the disposition to p.r.o.nounce that truth was already known.(260) Nominalism was essentially the spirit of progress, of inquiry, of criticism. Realism was in spirit deductive, starting from accepted dogmas: Nominalism was in spirit, though not in form, inductive. It tested cla.s.sifications, and admitted opportunities for the existence of doubt.

"Believe that you may know," was the expression of the former: "Know that you may believe," that of the latter.(261)

The two theories were of universal application to every subject of thought. An ill.u.s.tration will explain their relation to theology. In the foolish and almost irreverent attempts to explain by philosophy the nature of the triune existence of the divine Being, the realist a.s.suming the reality of the one genus Deity, was prepared to allow ident.i.ty of essence in the three species, the three members of the Divine Trinity. The nominalist, allowing only concrete existence, was obliged either to accept unity, only in a verbal sense, and be charged with tritheism, as Roscelin; or diversity only in a verbal sense, and incur the charge of Sabellianism, as Abelard.

Such was Scholasticism, and such its relation to philosophy and theology.(262) Existing for several centuries as an instinct, it became about the end of the eleventh century an intelligent movement.(263) At this period the problem was consciously proposed, and each of the three centuries which are comprised in our present period exhibits a different phase of the controversy. At first the movement was in favour of the nominalism in Roscelin and Abelard, and reason a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of alleged scepticism: in the thirteenth century the victory was in the hands of intelligent realists like Aquinas, who used reason in favour of orthodoxy. In the fourteenth, nominalism revived in Occam; the provinces of faith and philosophy were severed, and the final victory on the metaphysical question remained in the hands of the nominalists.

The scientific position of Abelard will thus be clear. We must now study his intellectual character, as embodying the sceptical aspect which belonged to nominalism.

Abelard's character is in many respects one of the most curious in history.(264) The record of his trials, bodily and mental,(265) enlists the romantic sympathy of the sentimentalist, and commands the serious attention of the philosopher. His wonderful reputation at Paris as a public lecturer connects him with the university life of the middle ages, and presents him as the type of the cla.s.s of great professors created by the absence of books and consequent prevalence of oral instruction. It was his vast influence which made his opinions of importance, and aroused the opposition of St. Bernard. It seems to have been the application of the nominalist philosophy to the doctrine of the Trinity, contained in Abelard's works on dogmatic theology,(266) which excited alarm. The council called at Sens(267) was a theological duel, wherein those two distinguished characters were matched, the most eloquent theologian and preacher against the most influential professor and philosopher; the saint against the critic. Bernard was right in his Theology; Abelard perhaps right in his philosophy.(268) This event however presents the effects of scholasticism in producing heresy rather than scepticism.

The great work which has laid Abelard open to the latter charge merits a brief notice. It was ent.i.tled the _Sic et Non_, and remained unpublished in the public doc.u.ments of France till recent years.(269) It is a collection of alleged contradictions, which exist on a series of topics, which range over the deepest problems of theology, and descend to the confines of casuistry in ethics.(270) In the discussion of them Abelard collects pa.s.sages from the scriptures and from the fathers in favour of two distinctly opposite solutions. He has however prefixed a prologue to the work, which ought to be taken as the explanation of his object.(271) He insists in it on the difficulty of rightly understanding the scriptures or the fathers, and refers it to eight different causes;(272) advising that when these considerations fail to explain the apparent contradictions of scripture, we should abandon the ma.n.u.scripts as inaccurate, rather than believe in the existence of real discrepancies. He draws also a broad distinction between canonical scripture and other literature, strongly affirming the authority of the former.

Is this work sceptical? Is it designed under a fair show to serve the purpose of unbelief? Or is it merely an instance of the awakening of the spirit of inquiry, the free criticism exercised by nominalism, the desire to prove all dogmas by reason? In other words, was the freethinking of Abelard rationalism, or was it merely Protestantism and theological criticism?

These questions have met with different answers. The Benedictine editors, viewing his condemnation by St. Bernard as parallel to that of the biblical critic R. Simon(273) by Bossuet, declined to publish the ma.n.u.script of his work.(274) More recent inquirers, especially the philosophical critic Cousin, have regarded Abelard with a favourable eye.

They consider his treatises merely to be a provisional scepticism, fortifying the mind against premature solutions. Some would even claim him as an early protestant, as the first of the line of men whose spirits, while fretting under the dogmatic teaching or the political centralization of the Western church, have unhesitatingly bowed before the authority of scripture.(275) Possibly these several views contain elements of truth.

Abelard's character was complex, and the purpose of his book equally so.

He embodied a movement, and experience had not yet taught men to distinguish in it the boundaries which separated the provinces of free thought. The argument in favour of scepticism drawn from the form of his work seems unfair. The statement of a series of paradoxes is lawful, if a solution of them be offered, or an explanation of the reason why a solution is impossible. The disputative, dialectical tone which a.s.sists in the work was the ordinary mode of instruction in the mediaeval universities, and finds a parallel in the method of thought observable in other ages. Abelard's statement of paradoxes, of an unsolved ma.s.s of contradictions, recalls, for example, the early paradoxes on motion which Zeno presented for the purpose of compelling acquiescence in the Eleatic teaching,(276) or the series of antinomies which Kant has given, as problems insoluble theoretically, but capable of harmony when viewed on the moral side.(277) In truth it is the mark, either, as in one of these cases, of the first awakening of the mind to curiosity; or, as in the other, of the last limit at which curiosity is compelled to pause.

Abelard's method is like that which is observable in Socrates, and in those early dialogues of his disciple Plato, in which the pupil is working in his master's manner, wherein difficulties are propounded without being solved. The hearer is cross-questioned, with the view of being made to feel the necessity of possessing knowledge; and a method is offered to him by which he is to find the solution of problems for himself.(278) In this view Abelard's doubt is really the inquiry which is the first step to faith; the criticism which precedes the constructive process, the negation before affirmation.

While its form may be regarded as an embodiment of the scholastic method, the manner of handling marks the commencement of modern biblical criticism. The suggestions which he offers(279) in reference to false readings of ma.n.u.scripts, the spuriousness of books, and the temporary character of the author's sentiments, as elements in determining the reality of a contradiction, or the necessary rejection of a pa.s.sage on grounds of dogmatic improbability, mark a sagacity which has been perfected into a science by the growth of modern criticism. Thus far we have only the elements of inquiry and criticism which enter into doubt; yet it would be unfair to deny that something of unbelief may have been found in a restless care-worn spirit like that of Abelard; and if any one thinks that he intended in his work to leave the reader with the impression that the solution is impossible, or that the doubter's side is the stronger, then we may consider him to have been an unbeliever, and regard his teaching as an example, often witnessed in later times, of a concealed irony, which, while pretending to accept revelation, has represented its evidence as insufficient, and its doctrines as unprovable.

If however he be taken to be a sceptic, it is only the infancy of doubt.

It is unlike the bitter disbelief shown by the early antichristian writers, or by the doubters of modern times. Whatever was valuable in the free thought of Abelard outlived his time. The spirit of inquiry which spoke through him, continued to operate in his successors.(280) His method was even adopted by his opponents. His follower, Arnold of Brescia, carried free thought from ideas into acts, and suffered martyrdom in a premature struggle against the papal church.(281) Being dead, Abelard yet spoke, both politically and philosophically; and his character remains as a type of the spirit of mingled doubt and hope and inquiry which is exhibited in the free thought of any of those great epochs, when knowledge is increased, and when earnest minds are standing in doubt whether the new wine can be placed in the old bottles.

The movement, which was beginning to be felt in every branch of life and thought in the twelfth century, was still more manifest in the course of the thirteenth, an age, which, whether viewed in its great men or great deeds, its movements political, ecclesiastical, or intellectual, is the most remarkable of the middle ages, and one of the most memorable in history.(282) The activity of speculation is evidenced by the increasing alarm which alleged heresy like the Albigensian was causing, and by the establishment of the system of ecclesiastical police(283) which developed into the inquisition. About the middle of the century, the influence of free thought in religion is supposed to have made its appearance, in a work which originated with one of the newly created mendicant orders. A book which had appeared at the beginning of the century, ent.i.tled "the Everlasting Gospel," was now edited with an introduction by some person of influence in the Franciscan order.(284) The idea conveyed was, that, as there are three Persons in the G.o.dhead, so there must be three dispensations; that of the Father which ended at the coming of Christ, that of the Son which was then about to conclude, and that of the Spirit, of which the religious ideal of the Franciscans was the embodiment.

The work caused immense alarm, and was condemned by the council of Arles,(285) on the ground that it a.s.sumed that Christianity was imperfect, and was to be replaced by a superior revelation developing from natural causes. It is doubtful whether the book was really intended to be sceptical. More probably it was mystical. Claiming to be founded on an apocalyptic idea,(286) it was a revival of the Chiliasm which haunted the Christians of Asia Minor in the early centuries; perhaps also it was the utterance of the spiritual yearning which marked the rise of the Franciscan order, and a protest against the worldliness of the times. It was connected too with the longings for political deliverance from the temporal dominion of the Popedom which were now beginning to be felt. In these latter aspects the idea, so far from being false, was an advance.

Christianity from time to time admits a progress, but from within rather than from without; a deeper spiritual appreciation of old truths rather than a reception of new ones. The demand for progress becomes a ground for alarm only when it implies that the world has bidden farewell to Christianity, either through the mystical expectation of a Millennial reign which is to supersede it, or through the sceptical belief that our religion has only an historic value, and needs remodelling to meet the requirements of advancing civilization. If the latter was the meaning of this utterance of the Franciscan book, the idea was the germ of the modern conception of the function of Christianity in "the education of the race,"

the first statement of which is usually attributed to Lessing.(287)

The same century which gave birth to this _mot_, expressive of _progress in religion_, created also another which embodied the idea of the _comparative study of religions_. This phrase may have different meanings.

It may signify the comparison of Christianity with ethnic creeds in its external and internal character, without sacrificing the belief that a divinely revealed element exists in it, which caused it to differ from them in kind as well as degree. Or it may mean a comparison of Christianity with other religions, as equally false with them, equally a deliberate and conscious invention of priestcraft which was the shocking view adopted by writers like Volney in the last century,(288) or else a comparison of it as equally true with them, as equally a psychological development of the religious intelligence, which is the view prevalent in many noted works on the philosophy of history in the present.(289) It was the second of these ideas, expressive of actual incredulity, which existed in the thirteenth century. It is traceable in the imputation made by Gregory IX(290) against the celebrated emperor Frederick II, that he had spoken of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, as the three great impostors who had respectively deceived the Jews, the Christians, and the Arabs.

The very possibility of the existence of such a comparison presupposes intercourse with disciples of foreign creeds. The Christians now no longer possessed a merely vague knowledge of Jews and Mahometans. The crusades were expiring, the danger which evoked them had subsided, and the enmity which supported them was decaying. Europe had entered into relations of commerce, if not of amity, with Mahometan nations; and through contact with them had come to measure them by an altered standard, and to acquire the idea of comparing religions. Frederick II, to whom this expression is imputed, is stated to have manifested admiration of Mahometan literature, and affection for his Mahometan subjects who afforded him aid in carrying out the plans of civilization which his powerful mind had formed;(291) and it was his indifference to a crusade, induced probably by other causes, which led the Pope to impute to him the blasphemy just quoted. The contact with the East, half a century later, in like manner afforded the pretext for fastening a charge of unbelief on the Knights Templars.(292) Contact with Mahometans had thus, we have reason to believe, created a lat.i.tude of thought in many parts of Christendom.

The same idea of the comparison of Christianity with other creeds reappears in a tale of Boccaccio,(293) in which the three great religions are represented under the allegory of three rings which a father gave to his children, so exactly alike that the judges could not decide which was the genuine one of the three, and which the copies. It is also ill.u.s.trated by the tradition of the existence of a book, ent.i.tled "De Tribus Impostoribus," which has been attributed almost to every great name in the middle ages which was conspicuous for opposition to the claims of the church, or for uneasiness under the pressure of its dogmatic teaching. The existence of the book is legendary: no one ever saw it: and the two distinct works which now bear the t.i.tle can be shown to have been composed respectively in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: but the legend is a witness to the fact of the existence of the idea which the book was said to embody. (20)

It is perhaps in some degree to the influence of the doctrine of absorption in the Mahometan philosophy of Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, who was the contemporary of Abelard, that we may attribute the disbelief in immortality to which we find a tendency toward the close of the thirteenth and during the fourteenth century.(294) Though it is probable that the indirect influence of the Arabic philosophy was felt earlier, in stimulating a demand for inquiry, a disposition to make dogmas submit to the test of reason, which has been shown to be the earliest form of mediaeval doubt; yet it was not until the thirteenth century that the works of Averroes definitely influenced scholasticism, through the teaching of Michael Scot and Alexander Hales, and by means of the rapidity of intellectual communication which forms so singular a feature in mediaeval history, spread their influence in Italy as well as in France. It was at this time that the doctrine of Averroes was attacked by Aquinas; and though the amount of its influence can hardly be estimated, we have the means of tracing the growth of dislike to its author in Christian lands, which is an incidental probability of the increasing danger to Christianity arising from it. In the middle of the thirteenth century the Franciscans study him without evincing hatred. About the end of it Dante describes him still without reproaches, though he places him in the Inferno along with other heathen philosophers:(295) but half a century later, in the pictures of the last judgment which exist in several states of Italy, each a little historic satire with its own peculiarities, we find Averroes depicted as the type of incredulity and blasphemy. In a fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, executed about 1335, when perhaps the recent canonization of Aquinas as an opponent of Averroes had directed attention to the influence of the Arabic philosopher, Orcagna has placed a separate _bolgia_, the lowest in his h.e.l.l, for three persons,-Mahomet, Anti-christ, and Averroes.(296)

The disbelief of immortality was however too obvious a temptation in a corrupt age, as well as too generally spread, especially in the next century, to be wholly attributable to the subtle influence of the doctrine of absorption of the Arabic philosophy. A mediaeval English poet(297) attributes incredulity to the higher cla.s.ses of his age; and Dante, in that poem which is a romantic picture of his contemporaries or predecessors, when devoting one circle of the Inferno to the habitation of the "more than a thousand" of those "who make the soul die with the body,"

attributes the cause of the sin to Epicureanism, a moral and not an intellectual cause.(298) It is a sad and humiliating thought to reflect also that a cause which must have increased incredulity, if it did not create it, was to be found in the vices of the clergy, especially near the papal court of Avignon. Most of the distinguished laymen whom history records as evincing unbelief belonged to the political party, which strove to repress the political centralization and temporal authority of the church; and it is to be feared that the causes just named were the means of repelling more deeply from religion the hearts of such persons whose interests or whose vices already led them to hate its promoters.(299)

We have thus collected the few traces which mark the history of free thought in the second great crisis of church history, and incidentally ill.u.s.trated its connexion with social movements as well as religious, and shown its relation to intellectual or moral causes. On the intellectual side we have witnessed the scholastic philosophy giving activity to the spirit of change, and contact with Mahometan life and opinion imparting the lat.i.tude to Christian thought which pa.s.sed into incredulity. On the moral we have noticed that the effect of social wants or of actual viciousness gave birth respectively to religious restlessness, or to actual disbelief of the supernatural. The church of the time was not unaware of the movement. In part it tried to repress it by persecution and by the Inquisition; but in part also by the lawful weapon of spiritual contest. The grand works of defence of the thirteenth century, which adjusted scholastic philosophy to dogmatic theology, and the spiritual activity of the mendicant orders, were real and lawful means of victory, appealing respectively to the intellect and heart.

The moral judgment formed on the movement seen in the whole period must vary with the phase of it viewed. The attack is not, like those of the early unbelievers, a struggle with which the sympathies of Christians cannot be enlisted. The darker aspects of it partake indeed of the same character; but it embodies a better element, a n.o.bler form of movement, tainted perhaps with doubt, but not with disbelief; viz. the attempt of the human mind to a.s.sert its rights in philosophy, theology, and politics; and as the epoch closes, the great truth has made itself felt in the world as the result of the contest, that Christianity is supreme only within its own sphere, which it is the problem of religious philosophy to discover; that freedom of inquiry is to be used outside the boundary, but that speculation must expire in adoration within it.

A new crisis may be considered to commence in the fifteenth century, in consequence of the introduction of fresh influences through the cla.s.sical revival. Yet as the two periods are connected in time, the transition is not sudden: the old influences gradually vanish away; the new ones had been slowly preparing before they became distinctly evident. The intellectual and social activity of the past period had been the means of educating the mind of Europe for the reception of the new forces which were now beginning to operate.(300)

The fifteenth century was a remarkable period for Europe, and preeminently for Italy. During several ages Italy had grown great by means of commerce and religion. The crusades, which had impoverished the rest of Europe, had enriched her; and the subjugation of the nations to the court of Rome had made her the treasury of Europe. Material wealth permitted the encouragement of the study of literature, which relations of commerce or of conquest with the Greek empire had been the means of reviving.

Ma.n.u.scripts were collected, and the remains of monuments of cla.s.sic art were studied. The love of antiquity gave perfection to art, and influenced literature. The work which centuries had slowly prepared now came to perfection. The scholastic philosophy declined; the sources of ecclesiastical education and of the existing religion were weakened; and by the close of the fifteenth century the tone of the age was in all respects changed. The devotion which had expressed itself in the great Gothic works of devotion of early ages was expiring, at least in Italy, and art itself gradually became secular, and expressed ideas more earthly.

When such a moment of material prosperity, combined with intellectual and social change, ensues immediately on the movement previously sketched, we should expect to find religion subjected to re-examination, and placed in temporary peril. The history confirms the supposition. If we regard this crisis as embracing about two centuries and a quarter,(301) comprehending the cla.s.sical revival, the opening of a new geographical world, and the great religious changes of the Reformation,-a period commencing with the Renaissance, and closed by the creation of modern philosophy;-we shall find two princ.i.p.al movements of unbelief for investigation, the one caused by literature, a return to a spirit of heathenism a.n.a.logous to that already described in Julian; the second caused by philosophy, a revival of pantheism. The first belonged especially to the close of the fifteenth century, and had its seat for the most part in Tuscany and Rome; the second to the sixteenth, and was represented in the university of Padua.

In both these movements, especially in the former, the open expression of unbelief in literature is rare, though the incidental proofs of its existence are abundant. It was a time of the dissolution of faith, not of overt attack. Unbelief was Epicurean indifference, rather than earnestness in destroying the old creed.

Two of the most obvious proofs that we can select for proving the existence of a state of unbelief(302) are, the ridicule of religion expressed in the burlesque poetry of the time, and the antichristian sympathies of several distinguished men.

It would be incorrect however to attribute the satirical allusions in the poetry wholly to the influence of the cla.s.sical revival; for the romantic epic in which they occur is the offshoot of the old prose romance of mediaeval chivalry, which had in earlier ages amused the courts of princes by directing its banter against ecclesiastical persons and inst.i.tutions.(303) But the tone of the poetry is now changed. The satire is directed against religion itself, not merely against the abuse of it, or the eccentricities of its adherents. Free thought is not merely political dissatisfaction, but religious unbelief. And with the alteration of the tone agrees also the increasing disposition to carry satire into the domain of the supernatural; which thus witnesses to the widespread unbelief in the hearers for whom it was designed. Italian critics have doubted indeed whether these epics are designed to convey a caricature, or pa.s.s beyond lawful satire:(304) yet even when allowance is made for the fact that they are an historic reproduction, and for the fund presented for humour by ecclesiastical peculiarities, it seems impossible to overlook the covert satire intended on church beliefs.(305) The intermixture of a comic element would not alone prove this. The miracle plays of the middle ages admitted comedy without intending irreverence;(306) and a gentle humour pervades many of the Autos of Calderon, which were acted on solemn festivals.(307) But there exists in the manner in which the supernatural element is managed by such poets as Pulci, Bello, and Ariosto, such evident purpose to bring into ridicule the existence of belief, that its parallel can only be found in the banter used by their imitator Byron, in his Vision of Judgment, and implies indifference both in author and reader; the expression of contempt, not of anger.(308)

The unbelief which existed in the courts for which this poetry was written, is a specimen of the general incredulity, or indifference to Christianity, which prevailed among the educated cla.s.ses, and was fostered by cla.s.sical studies and tastes. It seems strange to us, who have been long accustomed to regard cla.s.sical culture as the basis of general education, and who are impressed with the conviction of the great a.s.sistance ministered by it to theological study, to regard it as the producing cause of unbelief. This result of it however was a transitory one, originating in the shock which arose from the novel thoughts and tastes which mingled themselves with the ancient pursuits, and altered the previous ideal of life. Ever since the earliest times, a chasm had unavoidably separated heathen literature from Christian; and a dislike to heathen studies existed, which found its full expression in Gregory the Great.(309) The result was, that the Christian civilization did not consciously admit the introduction of heathen thought; and when the mind awoke suddenly to a perception of its beauty and depth, though deeper spirits, like Erasmus, regarded it with the enlightened Christian approbation which Origen had formerly shown, others were led, like Julian of old, from their admiration of it, to look with indifference or hostility on Christianity. Some of the brilliant and elevated minds that adorned the court of the Medicis were suspected of unbelief, or of preferring Platonism to Christianity;(310) and after the woes of the French invasion at the end of the century had deepened the corruption of morals, and stamped out political liberty, the last freshness of artistic creation, which had linked the public mind to Christianity through the deep instincts of the taste, disappeared. The art and literature which succeeded are an index of the tone which prevailed. Gaining perfection in form by the imitation of cla.s.sic models, they were cold, sensuous, unspiritual.(311) Cla.s.sical mythology was intermixed with gospel doctrines; and the early years of the sixteenth century represent the semi-heathen tone of thought which was the transition to the perfect fusion which afterwards took place of the old learning and the new. It was an age similar to those of modern times in France and Germany, which have been called periods of humanism, when hope suggests the inauguration of a new moral and social era, and the pride of knowledge produces a general belief in the power of civilization to become the sole remedy for evil.(312)

The social conditions of the age added moral causes to the intellectual, which tended to increase the unbelief, especially in the literary cla.s.ses.

One of them is perhaps to be found in the fact that the church prizes were the only reward for authorship. By the beginning of the sixteenth century authors became largely appreciated through the press, and received patronage at the courts of the various ???a???? who had established themselves on the ruins of the old republics. In the absence of any law of copyright there was no protection for them,(313) and consequently no reward except church patronage, which was therefore conferred indiscriminately, and tended to foster disbelief in the very recipients of it. A merely professional hold of religion is the surest road to absolute disbelief. It is inconceivable that the ecclesiastical scandals which history blushes to narrate, could have been perpetrated by believers; and the unbelief imputed to persons in high station, such as Leo X with other popes, and cardinals such as Bembo, was doubtless, if true, partly the result of the degrading effects of professional insincerity.

Such a state of unbelief could not be permanent, whether it was the result of a decaying system, or of the introduction of new influences. Nor would we use unnecessarily a polemical tone in speaking of a period where there is so much cause for Christian humiliation; yet it is worthy of notice that such facts are a refutation of the attack which has frequently been made on Protestantism, as the cause of eclecticism and unbelief. The two great crises in church history, when faith almost entirely died out, and free thought developed into total disbelief of the supernatural, have been in Romish countries; viz., in Italy in this period, and in France during the eighteenth century. In both the experiment of the authoritative system of the catholic religion had a fair trial, and was found wanting.

Other causes besides the cla.s.sical revival were operating to stimulate activity of mind and freedom of inquiry. It was an age in which the great system of the middle ages was finally dissolving. The discovery of new worlds seemed at once to call to Europe to break connexion with the old centre of ecclesiastical centralization; and to invite to that study of nature which should elevate, and as it were emanc.i.p.ate the mind, by teaching physical truth and the true method of discovery.(314) Political circ.u.mstances too, contributed toward the creation of ecclesiastical autonomy. The European nations had gradually grown into united families, and were now ready for cooperation in a system of balance of power.(315) The northern nations, long galled under the power of Rome, were panting for freedom; Germany first reforming her religion, and then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end.

The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of error which had fettered thought.

It is a matter of wonder that the great revolutions just named pa.s.sed with so little development of scepticism. In the nations north of the Alps there is hardly a trace. The charge of deism, directed in the fifteenth century against Pec.o.c.k,(316) bishop of Chichester, appears to have been unfounded. The contest which Ulrich von Hutten carried on against the monks and schools of Cologne was literary rather than religious;(317) Hutten being the literary and political reformer rather than the sceptic.

Even the most advanced spirits of the reformers,(318) Servetus and the Sozini, came forth from Italy, as from the centre of free thought. Nor were they unbelievers in the reality of a revelation; and they met with no support from the northern reformers. Servetus was martyred at Geneva, and the Sozini were banished into Poland. It was the spiritual earnestness which mingled with the intellectual movement in the Reformation, which prevented free thought from producing rationalism or unbelief.