tified, for what reason does not appear; but so mean is the malice of the wicked, that, thirteen years afterwards, Martin V., whom this Council was about to elect, sent peremptory orders to have the sentence strictly fulfilled. Thus, nearly forty-four years after his dissolution, they attempted it, burning certain bones presumed to be Wickliffe's, and throwing the ashes into the Swift, an adjoining brook, which runs into the Severn. The bones of the illustrious dead having been solemnly denounced, the Council then proceeded to the living, or the well known disciple of Wickliffe, John Huss: and on the 6th of July 1415, they condemned him to be burnt, as they also did his fellow-countryman, Jerome of Prague, in May 1416. These men of violence and blood, having thus covered themselves with never-dying infamy, were very eager to have rendered their sittings periodical, and the Council a permanent branch of their church constitution: but at last having elected Otho Colonna as Pontiff, on the 11th of November 1417, he took the name of Martin V., and the Council broke up in April 1418. This man, however, still had a rival in Benedict, till November 1424; nay, in Clement VIII., chosen as his successor, who did not resign till July 1429. Martin dying in 1431, before the close of the year, another General Council had assembled at Basil, which did not dissolve for twelve years. To any Pontiff, these were seasons of anxiety, and by no means in favour of any claim to infallibility, but this Council assumed a tone hitherto unknown. Not only asserting the supremacy of a Council, but divesting the Pontiff of several highly-valued and acknowledged rights; they prohibited him from creating new cardinals, and suppressed a large portion of his revenue, arising from the first year's income on all benefices. Eugenius IV., the successor of Martin, at length feeling this assembly so irksome and untoward, tried to hold another Council, first at Ferrara in 1438, and then at Florence in the following year; so that as there had been Pontiff against Pontiff for many years, and each of them choosing his own cardinals; the world was now kept awake by Council against Council, denouncing each other, and each of them choosing its own Pontiff! The Council of Basil, deposing Eugenius, chose for their head the retired Duke of Savoy, who assumed the title of Felix V. A moment such as had not occurred for nearly seventy years, or since 1378-a moment favourable to the sovereignty of the Pontiff, now at last arrived. It was the accession of Nicholas V., in March 1447, as the successor of Eugenius. Even after this, indeed, a rival still remained; but the Emperor interposed, and in April 1449, securing the retirement and renunciation of Felix to all claims, the pontifical authority at once rose to a height which it had not enjoyed for many years. The jubilee of 1450, a scene of riot and licentiousness, to which people from all parts of Europe came, seemed not only to prove that Rome was an attractive point of union still, but that the Pontiff might lift up his head once more, and say, "I sit secure, and shall see no sorrow." Assailed, for above seventy years, from without and from within-from without by the influence of Wickliffe and Huss, and from within by men of the Pontiff's own order-still there seemed to be little or nothing lost. General Councils had wrangled for many years, though, as such, they had now failed, and there will be no General Council now, till long after a very different scene has opened on the world.33 But still though they had failed, it was only in one sense. The principles then and there broached could not die. The principles maintained, especially at Basil, continued to operate throughout the rest of this century, and in a way so obnoxious to Rome, as to agitate every successive Pontiff. They were these principles, and more especially the tenet, that the authority of a General Council was superior to that of the Pontiff, which suggested to the Sovereign of France, Charles VII., what was styled "the pragmatic sanction" in 1438, while Germany had adopted it in 1439; both Sovereigns having made it the law of their respective kingdoms.34 Germany, indeed, had bowed allegiance before the jubilee, but France would not. This "sanction," like the statutes of provisors and præmunire in England, was meant to operate powerfully in preventing the wealth of France from flowing into Italy; a mode of resistance to pontifical authority, to which that power was ever most tenderly alive. The King of France might occasionally waver, as did Louis XI., when Eneas Sylvias, or Pius II., wept for joy; but then the Parliament of Paris must now also be acknowledged, and they firmly resisted. One Pontiff after another might denounce the measure, as they did also the English statutes, but still there was no change throughout this century. No change, till one obscure individual was raised up in this country, and another in Germany, who, under God, were to accomplish a work, to which neither Kings nor General Councils were equal or disposed. But if subjects such as these engrossed or agitated the masses of men; there was a movement on the part of individuals, and these possessing no civil, no official power whatever; another influence of a far more powerful, penetrating, and enduring character, by which 33 There was no General Council till that which was held at TRENT, from 1545-1563. That was the last, and if there ever be another, it will be assembled on the brink of the precipice. 344. Pragmatic Sanction," a general term for important ordinances, which had been enacted in public assemblies, with the counsel of Pragmatici, or eminent statesmen and lawyers. this century was distinguished. In the midst of such a thorny maze, or perpetual convulsion, on the Continent, it might certainly have been presumed that there was not one moment left for any thing else; but there is yet that other view of this century, to which any reader must now be glad to escape. Forming such a contrast to these broils, and going forward, not by connivance, but in open day, it is like another world; although, before long, both courses will turn out to have been in perfect harmony with the great end in view. Ancient prejudices, and certain long-fixed associations of the mind, were shaken to the root, by the events at which we have already glanced: but for the entrance of new ideas, and the notable reception of Divine Truth itself, Providence was preparing at the same time, or throughout the entire century. The triumph of Classical Learning. We have already conceded to Italy the precedence which she claims, as the revivalist of classical learning; and truly the first buds of promise in the fourteenth, were as nothing to the full blown garden of the fifteenth century. In the first years of its commencement, individual natives of Greece were finding their way into that country, nay, from about the year 1395, their language was taught in Florence and Venice, in Milan and Genoa, by Emanuel Chrysoloras. The Pontiff chosen in 1409, Alexander V., was a Grecian by birth. The whole lives of Italian scholars, we are told, were now devoted to the recovery of ancient works, and the revival of philology; while the discovery of an unknown manuscript, was regarded, says Tiraboschi," almost as the conquest of a kingdom." But "that ardour which animated Italy in the first part of the fifteenth century, was by no means common to the rest of Europe. Neither England, nor France, nor Germany, seemed aware of the approaching change." So says Mr. Hallam, in perfect harmony with Sismondi. Learning, indeed, such as it was, had even begun to decline at Oxford, but the eastern empire was now hastening to its end, and in 1453, came the fall of Constantinople. Long, therefore, before the close of the century, the roads to Italy will be crowded with many a traveller, and among the number we shall find that Englishmen, though the most distant, were not the last to hasten after classical attainments. Native Italians, we are perfectly aware, have been jealous of our ascribing too much to the event just hinted, but there can be no question that, in its consequences, it proved the first powerful summons to Europe to awake. On the sacking of Constantinople, we know of five vessels at least, that were loaded with the learned men of Greece, who escaped into Italy. Of course they brought their most valued treasure, or their books, with them; and thus by one and another, as well as the eager Italian himself, a stock of manuscript was accumulated on Italian ground, which was just about to be honoured with a reception, very different, indeed, from that of being slowly increased by the pen of the copyist !35 Italy thus became the point of attraction to all Europe. But how singular that the scholars of the west, as with common consent, should hasten to this one country for that learning, over the effects of which, the chief authority there, though so pleased at first, was afterwards to bewail, nay, to mourn for ages, or to the present hour! While, however, Italian scholars were thus busy, and leaving the Pontiff to fight his own battles, they were but little aware of what was preparing for them elsewhere. They were in fact more ignorant of this, than the western scholar had been of their thirst for learning; and was there no indication here, of but one guiding, one all-gracious power? The Invention of Printing. An obscure German had been revolving in his mind, the first principles of an art, applicable to any language on the face of the earth, which was to prove the most important discovery in the annals of mankind. At the moment when they were stormning Constantinople in the east, he was thus busy; spending all his substance, in plying his new art with vigour upon a book, and upon such a BOOK! Neither Kings, nor Pontiffs, nor Councils had been, or were to be, consulted here; nor was he encouraged to proceed by one smile from his own Emperor, or from any princely patron. No mechanical invention having proved so powerful in its effects as that of printing, it is not wonderful that so much research has been bestowed on the history of its origin and progress. The precise order in which some particular cities first enjoyed its advantages, still continues to afford room for minute criticism, but the progress of inquiry has reduced the field of controversy to a very narrow compass. A better history of the art, indeed, and more especially of its curious and rapid progress throughout Europe, may, and should still, be written; but the general results already ascer 35 After the accession of Nicholas V., to which we have alluded, he added 5000 volumes to the library of the Vatican, many of which were Greek books, or translations from them into Latin. Here were the versions of Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, Appian of Strabo, the Iliad, the works of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Theophrastus, and the Greek fathers. Among others, this was especially imitated, if not preceded, by COSMO DE MEDICI, the Florentine merchant, to whom a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books was often imported in the same vessel. His active agent, Janus Lascaris, returned from the east, with two hundred Manuscripts, eighty of which were then unknown in the libraries of Europe. tained, have now approached to such accuracy, as to suggest and justify several important and striking reflections. These results demand our notice at the close of the century, as they will be found to involve one important bearing on the subsequent history of the Sacred Volume, when it came to be first printed in the vernacular tongue. MENTZ, in the Duchy of Hesse (Mayence or Mainz), on the left bank of the Rhine, and four hundred miles from Vienna, may be regarded as the mother city of printing; and although three individuals shared the honour of perfecting the art on the same spot, if not under the same roof, the invention itself is due to only one man. Henne Gænsfleisch, commonly called John Gutenberg, (Anglicé, Goodhill,) the individual referred to, was born in Mentz, not Strasburg, as sometimes stated, about the year 1400; but, in 1424, he had taken up his abode in the latter city as a merchant. About ten years after this, or in 1435, we have positive evidence that his invention, then a profound secret, engrossed his thoughts; and here, in conjunction with one Andrew Dritzehen and two other citizens, all bound to secrecy, Gutenberg had made some experiments in printing with metal types before the year 1439. By this time Dritzehen was dead; and in six or seven years more, the money embarked being exhausted, not one fragment survives in proof of what they had attempted. Gutenberg, returning to his native city in 1445-6, he found it absolutely necessary to disclose his progress. More money was demanded, if ever he was to succeed; and having once opened his mind fully to a citizen, a goldsmith of Mentz, John Fust, he engaged to co-operate by affording the needful advances. At last, therefore, between the years 1450 and 1455, for it has no date, their first great work was finished. This was no other than the Bible itself!-the Latin Bible. Altogether unknown to the rest of the world, this was what had been doing at Mentz, in the West, when Constantinople, in the East, was storming, and the Italian "brief men," or copyists, were so very busy with their pens. This Latin Bible, of 641 leaves, formed the first important specimen of printing with metal types. The very first homage was to be paid to that SACRED VOLUME, which had been sacrilegiously buried, nay, interdicted so long; as if it had been, with pointing finger, to mark at once the greatest honour ever to be bestowed on the art, and infinitely the highest purpose to which it was ever to be applied. Nor was this all. Had it been a single page, or even an entire sheet which was then produced, there might have been less occasion to have noticed it; but there was something in the whole character of the affair which, if not unprecedented, rendered it singular in the usual current of human events. This Bible |