THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES The middle ages came into being at the time when the political structure of the world, based upon the conquests of Alexander the Great and the achievements of Julius Caesar, began to dis integrate. They were present when the believers in Mohammed held sway in provinces which Alexander had brought under the influence of Hellenism ; while the Lombards, the West Goths, the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons had established kingdoms in Italy, Spain, Gaul and Britain.
The orthodoxy of the Eastern Church was also a result of the Church's development after the time of Constantine. In the long strife over dogma the old belief of the Greeks in the value of knowledge had made itself felt, and this faith was not extinct in the Eastern Church. But the strife over dogma ended with the 7th century. After the termination of the Monothelite controversy (638-68o), creed and doctrines were complete; it was only neces sary to preserve them intact. Theology, therefore, now resolved itself into the collection and reproduction of the teaching of ancient authorities. The great dogmatist of the Eastern Church, John of Damascus (c. 699-753), who stood on the threshold of the middle ages, formulated clearly and precisely his working principle : to put forward nothing of his own, but to present the truth according to the authority of the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church.
In the Eastern Church the religious interest concerned itself more keenly with the mystic rites of divine worship than with dogma. Here was more than knowledge; here were representations of a mystic sensuousness, solemn rites, which brought the faithful into immediate contact with the Divine, and guaranteed to them the reception of heavenly powers. We may gauge the energy with which the Greek intellect turned in this direction if we call to mind that the controversy about dogma was replaced by the controversy about images. This raged in the Eastern Church for more than a century (726-843), and only sank to rest when the worship of images was unconditionally conceded. In this connec tion the image was not looked upon merely as a symbol, but as the vehicle of the presence and power of that which it repre sented.
Consistent with this circle of ideas is the cultivation of re ligious experience. A beginning had been made, in the 5th century, by the Neo-platonic Christian who addressed his contemporaries under the mask of Dionysius the Areopagite. He is the first of a series of theological mystics which continued through every cen tury of the middle ages. It is this striving of ter religious experi ence that gives to the Oriental monasticism (q.v.) of the middle ages its peculiar character; in it the old Hellenic ideal of the wise man who has no wants, avraprc€aa, was from the first fused with the Christian conception of unreserved self-surrender to God as the highest aim and the highest good.
The Eastern Church, then, throughout the middle ages, re mained true in every particular to its ancient character. It did not develop as did the Western Church during this period, but room for expansion was found in the new nations which had sprung into existence since the beginning of the middle ages : the Bulgarians, the Serbians, and the multifarious peoples grouped under the name of Russians. One outcome of this expansion was the impossibility of continuing to share the life of the Western Church. Neither in the East nor in the West was a separation desired; but it was inevitable, since the lives of East and West were moving in different directions.
Since the time when the church of eastern Syria had decided, in opposition to the church of the Empire, to cling to the ancient views of Syrian theologians—therefore also to the teaching and person of Nestorius—her relations were broken off with the church in western Syria and in Greek and Latin countries; but the power of Nestorian Christianity was not thereby diminished. Separated from the West, it directed its energies towards the East, and here its nearest neighbour was the Persian church. The latter followed, almost without opposition, the impulse received from Syria; from the rule of the patriarch Babaeus (498-503) it may be considered definitely Nestorian. Thus there survived in mid-Asia a widely-scattered remnant, which, although out of touch with the ancient usages of Christian civilization, yet in no way lacked higher culture. Nestorian philosophers and medical practitioners became the teachers of the great Arabian natural philosophers of the middle ages, and the latter obtained their knowledge of Greek learning from Syriac translations of the works of Greek thinkers.
Political conditions at the beginning of the middle ages fa voured the Nestorian church, and the fact that the Arabs had conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt, made it possible to exert an influence on the Christians in these countries. Of still more importance was the brisk commercial intercourse between central Asia and the countries of the Far East ; for this led the Nes torians into China. But with the consolidation of Mohammedan power the greater part of Nestorian Christendom was swallowed up by Islam, and only remnants of this once extensive church have survived until modern times. The middle ages were even more disastrous for Monophysita Christianity ; in their case there was no alternation of rise and decline, and there is only a long period of gradual exhaustion to chronicle, alike in Syria and in Egypt.
Nevertheless, the new conditions did exercise the strongest in fluence upon the character of the Church. The churches of the Lombards, West Goths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons, all counted themselves parts of the Catholic Church ; but the Catholic Church had altered its condition ; it lacked the power of organization, and split up into territorial churches. Under the Empire the oecumenical council had been looked upon as the highest repre sentative organ of the Catholic Church; but the earlier centuries of the middle ages witnessed the convocation of no oecumenical councils. Under the Empire the bishop of Rome had possessed in the Church an authority recognized and protected by the State; among the new territorial churches, respect for Rome and for the successor of Peter was not forgotten but had altered in character; legal authority had become merely moral authority; its wielder could exhort, warn, advise, but could not command. The bishops continued to meet in synods as before, but the councils became territorial synods; they were called together at irregular intervals by the king, and their decisions obtained legal effect only by royal sanction.
In the middle ages the civilizing task of the Church was first approached in England. Aldhelm (d. 709) and the Venerable Bede (d. 735) were the first scholars of the period. England was also the home of Winfrid Bonifatius (St. Boniface, d. c. 757), who, in co-operation with the bishops of Rome, began the reorganiza tion of the Frankish church, which had fallen into confusion and decay during the political disorders of the last years of the Mero vingians. It was Boniface, too, who, with the aid of numerous English priests, monks and nuns, introduced the literary culture of England into Germany.
Charlemagne (d. 814) built on the foundations laid by St. Boniface. The importance of Charlemagne's work, from the point of view of the Church, consists in his having led back the Frankish Church to the fulfilment of her functions as a re ligious and civilizing agent. This was the purpose of his ecclesiasti cal legislation. The principal means to this end taken by him was the raising of the status of the clergy. For the purpose of carrying out his ideas Charlemagne gathered round him the best intellects of Europe. None was more intimately associated with him than the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin (d. 8o4) ; but he was only one among many. Under this guidance theology flourished in the Frankish empire. It was as little original as that of Bede ; for on the conti nent, too, scholars were content to think what those of old had thought before them. But in so doing they did not only repeat the old formulae ; the ideas of the men of old sprang into new life. This is shown by the searching discussions to which the Adoption ist controversy gave rise. At the same time, the controversy with the Eastern Church over the adoration of images shows that, the younger Western theology felt itself equal, if not superior to the Greek.
The second generation of Frankish theologians did not lag behind the first. Hrabanus of Fulda (who died archbishop of Mainz in 856) was in the range of his knowledge undoubtedly Alcuin's superior. He was the first learned theologian produced by Germany. His disciple, Abbot Walafrid Strabo of Reichenau (d. 849), was the author of the Glossa Ordinaria, a work which formed the foundation of biblical exposition throughout the middle ages. France was still more richly provided with theo logians in the 9th century : her most prominent names are Hincmar, archbishop of Reims (d. 882), Bishop Prudentius of Troyes (d. 86i), the monks Servatus Lupus (d. 862), Radbert Paschasius (d. c. 86o), and Ratramnus (d. after 868) ; and the last theologian who came into France from abroad, Johannes Scotus Erigena (d. c. 88o). The real strength of Erigena was in the field of speculative metaphysics; the controversy about predestination, which, in the 9th century, Hincmar and Hrabanus fought out with the monk Gottschalk of Fulda, as well as the discussions that arose from the definition of the doctrine of transubstantiation by Radbert, enable us to gauge the intellectual energy with which theological problems were being handled.
Charlemagne followed his father's policy in carrying out his ecclesiastical measures in close association with the bishops of Rome. The relation was one of co-operation, without supremacy on either side. There were, indeed, forces tending in the contrary direction ; and these were present in the Frankish empire. Evi dence of this is given by the canon law forgeries of the 9th cen tury : especially the great collection of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals (see DECRETALS), the fundamental idea being that all lay control in ecclesiastical affairs is wrong. For the moment, how ever, this party met with no success. Of more importance was the fact that at Rome the old conditions, the old claims, and the old law were unforgotten. For example, Nicholas I. (858-867) drew a picture of the divine right and unlimited power of the bishop of Rome, which anticipated all that the greatest of his successors were, centuries later, actually to effect. The time had not, however, yet come for the establishment of the papal world dominion. For, while the power of Charlemagne's successors was decaying, the papacy itself became involved in the confusion of the party strife of Italy and of the city of Rome, and was plunged in consequence into such an abyss of degradation (the so-called Pornocracy), that it was in danger of forfeiting every shred of its moral authority over Christendom.
(ii.) During the central period of the Middle Ages the antago nism between the German conception of ecclesiastical affairs and Roman views of ecclesiastical law found inevitable expression. This was most obvious in the matter of appointment to bishoprics. At Rome canonical election was alone regarded as lawful; in Germany, on the other hand, developments since the time of Charlemagne had led to the actual appointment of bishops being in the hands of the king, although the form of ecclesiastical elec tion was preserved.
The practice customary in Germany was finally transferred to Rome itself. The desperate position of the papacy in the nth century obliged Henry III. to intervene. When, in Dec. 1046, after three rival popes had been set aside, he nominated Suidgar, bishop of Bamberg, as bishop of Rome before all the people in St. Peter's, the papacy was bestowed in the same way as a Ger man bishopric ; and what had occurred in this case was to become the rule. By procuring the transference of the patriciate from the Roman people to himself Henry assured his influence over the appointment of the popes, and accordingly also nominated the successors of Clement II.
His intervention saved the papacy. For the popes nominated by him, Leo IX. in particular, were men of high character, who exercised their office in a loftier spirit than their corrupt prede cessors. They placed themselves at the head of the movement for ecclesiastical reform. But it was not possible for the relation between Empire and Papacy to remain what Henry III. had made it.
The original sources of this reform movement lay far back, in the time of the Carolingians. It has been pointed out how Charlemagne pressed the monks into the service of his civilizing aims; but he thereby alienated monasticism from its original ideals. These, however, had far too strong a hold upon the Roman world for a reaction against the new tendency to be long avoided. This reaction began with the reform of Benedict of Aniane (d. 821), the aim of which was to bring the Benedictine order back to the principles of its original rules. In the next century the reform movement acquired a fresh centre in the Burgundian mon astery of Cluny. A large number of the reformed monasteries attached themselves to the congregation of Cluny, thus assuring the influence of reformed monasticism upon the Church, and securing likewise its independence of the diocesan bishops, since the abbot of Cluny was subordinate of the pope alone (see CLUNY, BENEDICTINES, and MONASTICISM). Everywhere the object was the same : the supreme obligation of the Rule, the renewal of discipline, and also the economic improvement of the monasteries.
The reform movement had originally no connection with ecclesiastical politics; but that came later when the leaders turned their attention to the abuses prevalent among the clergy, to the conditions obtaining in the Church in defiance of the ecclesiastical law. "Return to the canon law !" was now the battle-cry. The programme of reform thus included the freeing of the Church from the influence of the State, the recovery of her absolute con trol over all her possessions, the liberty of the Church and of the hierarchy.
As a result, the party of reform placed itself in opposition to those ecclesiastical conditions which had arisen since the con version of the Teutonic peoples. It was, then, a fact pregnant with the most momentous consequences that Leo IX. attached himself to the party of reform. For, thanks to him and to the men he gathered round him (Hildebrand, Humbert and others), their principles were established in Rome, and the pope himself became the leader of ecclesiastical reform. But the carrying out of reforms led at once to dissensions with the civil power, the starting-point being the attack upon simony, this term covering all transferences by laymen of ecclesiastical offices or benefices, even though no money changed hands in the process. Thus the lord who handed over a living was a simonist, and so too was the king who invested a bishop. The Church at first concentrated her attack upon investiture. In 1059 the new system of papal election introduced by Nicholas II. (see CONCLAVE) ensured the occupation of the Holy See by a pope favourable to the party of reform; and in 1078 Gregory VII. issued his prohibition of lay investiture. In the years of conflict that followed Gregory looked far beyond this point ; he set his aim ever higher, until, in the end, his idea was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power in the hands of the pope, and to raise the papacy to the dominion of the world. Thus was to be realized the old dream of Augustine : that of a Kingdom of God on earth under the rule of the Church. But it was not given to Gregory to reach this goal, and his successors had to return again to the strife over investiture; and the long struggle ended in a compromise by the Concordat of Worms (112 2 ), the essential part of which was that the Empire accepted the canonical election of bishops, while the Church acknowledged that the bishop held his temporal rights from the Empire, and was therefore to be invested with them by a touch from the royal sceptre. A similar solution was arrived at in England. In France the demands of the Church were successful to the same degree as in England and Germany, but without any conflict. Thus the Ger manic element in the law regarding appointment to bishoprics was eliminated. Somewhat later it disappeared also in the case of the churches of less importance, patronal rights over these being substituted for the former absolute ownership. The pontificate of Alexander III. (1159-81) decided this.
The Teutonic peoples had been taking the lead in the expansion of Christianity; but the spirit of the Latin races now began to assert itself. Scholasticism, the new theology, had its home in the Latin countries. Reason as well as authority had been appealed to as the foundation of theology; but for the theologians of the 9th and loth centuries, whose method had been merely that of restatement, ratio and auctoritas were in perfect accord. Then Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) ventured to set up reason against au thority : by reason the truth must be decided. This involved the question of the relation in theology of authority and reason, and of whether the theological method is authoritative or rational. To these questions Berengar gave no answer; he was ruined by his opposition to Radbert's doctrine of transubstantiation. The Lombard Anselm (d. IIo9), archbishop of Canterbury, was the first to deal with the subject. He took as his starting-point the traditional faith ; but he was convinced that whoever has ex perience of the truths of the faith would be able to understand them, by the exercise of his natural reason.
It was a bold conception—too bold for the mediaeval world, for which faith was primarily the obligation to believe. It was easy, therefore, to understand why Anselm's method did not become the dominant one in theology. Not he, but the Frenchman Abelard (d. 1142), was the creator of the scholastic method. Abelard, too, started from tradition; but he discovered that the statements of the various authorities are very often in the relation of sic et non, yes and no. Upon this fact he based his pronouncement as to the function of theology : it must employ the dialectic method to reconcile the contradictions of tradition, and thus to shape the doctrines of the faith in accordance with reason. By teaching this method Abelard created the implements for the erection of the great theological systems of the schoolmen of the 12th and i3th centuries : Peter Lombard (d. 1160), Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1275). They adventured a complete exposition of Christian doctrine that should be altogether ecclesiastical and at the same time altogether rational. In so doing they set to work to complete the development of ecclesiastical dogma; the formulation of the Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments was the work of scholas ticism.
Canon law is the twin-sister of scholasticism. At the very time when Peter Lombard was shaping his Sentences, the monk Gratian of Bologna was making a new collection of laws. It was not only significant that in the Concordia discordantium canonum ecclesias tical laws, whether from authentic or forged sources, were gath ered together without regard to the existing civil law; of even greater eventual importance was the fact that Gratian taught that the contradictions of the canon law were to be reconciled by the same method as that used by theology to reconcile the dis crepancies of doctrinal tradition. Thus Gratian became the founder of the science of canon law, a science which, like the scholastic theology, was entirely ecclesiastical and entirely rational (see CANON LAW) .
Like the new theology and the new science of law, the new monasticism was also rooted in Latin soil. The duty of the priest monk is not only to work out his own salvation, but, by preaching and cure of souls, to labour for others. This was the dominant idea of the order of friars preachers founded in 1216 by St. Dominic (see DOMINIC; DOMINICANS). It was also the basis of the order of friars minor, founded in 1210 (see FRANCIS OF ASSISI; FRAN CISCANS). This alone would serve to indicate the remarkable deepening of the religious life that had taken place in the Latin countries. In the 12th century the most influential exponent of this new piety was Bernard of Clairvaux (q.v.), who taught men to find God by leading them to Christ. Contemporary with him were Hugh of St. Victor (q.v.) and his pupil Richard of St. Victor (q.v.), both monks of the abbey of St. Victor at Paris, the aim of whose teaching was a mystical absorption of thought in the Godhead and the surrender of self to the Eternal Love. Under the influence of these ideas, in part purely Christian and in part Neo platonic, piety gained in warmth and depth and became more per sonal ; and though at first it flourished in the monasteries, and in those of the mendicant orders especially, it penetrated far beyond them and influenced the laity everywhere. The new piety did not set itself in opposition either to the hierarchy or to the institutions of the Church, such as the sacraments and the discipline of pen ance, nor did it reject those foreign elements (asceticism, worship of saints and the like) which had passed of old time into Chris tianity from the ancient world. Its temper was not critical, but aggressively practical.
All this meant a mighty exaltation of the Church, which ruled the minds of men as it had hardly ever done before. Nor was it possible that the position of the bishop of Rome, the supreme head of the Western Church, should remain unaffected by it. Two of the most powerful of the German emperors, Frederick I. and his son Henry VI., struggled to renew and to maintain the imperial supremacy over the papacy. But when at the peace of Venice (1177) Frederick recognized Alexander III. as pope, he relinquished the hope of carrying out his Italian policy ; while Henry died at the early age of thirty-two (1197), before his far reaching schemes had been realized.
The field was thus cleared for the full development of papal power. This had greatly increased since the Concordat of Worms, and reached its height under Innocent III. (I198-1216). Innocent believed himself to be the representative of God, and as such the supreme possessor of both spiritual and temporal power. He therefore claimed in both spheres the supreme administrative, legislative and judicial authority. The bishops described themselves as holding office "by grace of the Apostolic See," for they administered their dioceses as plenipotentiaries of the pope; and even the criminal jurisdiction of the church (see INQUISITION) became more and more concentrated in his hands. And just as he considered himself entitled to appoint to all ecclesiastical offices, so also he invested the emperor with his em pire and kings with their kingdoms. Not only did he despatch his decretals to the universities to form the basis of the teaching of the canon law and of the decisions founded upon it, but he con sidered himself empowered to annul civil laws. Thus he annulled the Great Charter in 1215. Just as the Curia was the supreme court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes, so also the pope threatened disobedient princes with deposition, e.g., the emperor Otto IV. in 1210, and John of England in 1212. But the papal claim to su preme temporal authority proved impossible to maintain, although Innocent III. had apparently enforced it. The long struggle against Frederick II., carried on by Gregory IX. (1227-41) and Innocent IV. , did not result in victory; no papal sentence, but only death itself, deprived the emperor of his dominions; and when Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), who gave the papal claims to universal dominion their classical form, quarrelled with Philip IV. of France about the extension of the royal power, he could not but perceive that the national monarchy had become a force which it was impossible for the papacy to overcome.
(iii.) At the close of the middle ages we come to a period of disintegration. While the Church was yet at the height of her power began the great revolution which was to end in the disrup tion of that union between the Temporal and the Spiritual which, under her dominion, had characterized the life of the West. The Temporal now claimed its proper rights. The political power of the Empire, indeed, had been shattered; but this left all the more room for the vigorous development of national states, notably of France and England. At the same time intellectual life was en riched by a wealth of fresh views and new ideas, partly the result of the busy intercourse with the East to which the Crusades had given the first impetus, and which had been strengthened and ex tended by lively trade relations, partly of the revived study, eagerly pursued, of ancient philosophy and literature (see RENAIS SANCE). The life of the Church, moreover, was affected by the economic changes due to the rise of the power of money as opposed to the old economic system based upon land.
The effects of these changes made themselves felt on all sides, in no case more strongly than in that of the papal claims to the supreme government of the world. Theoretically they were still unwaveringly asserted; but after Boniface VIII. no pope seriously attempted to realize them ; to do so had in fact become impossi ble, for from the time of their residence at Avignon 0305-77) the popes were in a state of complete dependence upon the French crown. In France Philip IV.'s jurists maintained that the tem poral power was independent of the spiritual. In Italy, a little later, Dante championed the divine right of the emperor (De Monarchia, 1311). In Germany, Marsiglio of Padua and Jean of Jandun, the literary allies of the emperor Louis IV., ventured to define anew the nature of the civil power from the standpoint of natural law, and to assert its absolute sovereignty (De f ensor pacis, c. 1352) ; while the Franciscan William of Occam (d. examined, also in Louis' interests, into the nature of the relation between the two powers. He too concluded that the temporal power is independent of the spiritual, and is even justified in invading the sphere of the latter in cases of necessity.
While these thoughts were filling men's minds, opposition to the papal rule over the Church was also gaining continually in strength. The reasons for this were numerous, first among them being the abuses of the papal system of finance, which had to provide funds for the vast administrative machinery of the Curia. There was also the boundless abuse and arbitrary exercise of the right of ecclesiastical patronage; and further the ever-increasing traffic in dispensations, the abuse of spiritual punishments for worldly ends, and so forth. No means, however, existed of enforc ing any remedy until the papal schism occurred in 1378. Such a schism as this, so intolerable to the ecclesiastical sense of the middle ages, necessitated the discovery of some authority superior to the rival popes, and therefore able to put an end to their quar relling. General councils were now once more called to mind; but these were no longer conceived as mere advisory councils to the pope, but as the highest representative organ of the universal Church, and as such ranking above the pope, and competent to demand obedience even from him. The council of Constance (1414-18) did actually put an end to the schism; but the reforms begun at Constance and continued at Basel proved insufficient. Above all, the attempt to set up the general council as an ordinary institution of the Catholic Church failed; and the Roman papacy, restored at Constance, preserved its irrespon sible and unlimited power over the government of the Church (see PAPACY; CONSTANCE, COUNCIL OF ; and BASEL, COUNCIL OF).
Neither France nor Germany, however, was prepared to forgo the reforms passed by the council. France secured their validity, as far as she herself was concerned, by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (July 7, 1438) ; Germany followed with the Acceptation of Mainz (March 26, 1439). The theory of the papal supremacy held by the Curia was thus at least called in question.
The antagonism of the opposition parties was even more pronounced. The tendencies which they represented had been present when the middle ages were yet at their height ; but the papacy, while at the zenith of its power, had succeeded in crush ing the attacks made upon the creed of the Church by its most dangerous foes, the dualistic Cathars (q.v.), Waldenses (q.v.) and kindred enthusiasts, who everywhere kept alive mistrust of the temporal power of the Church, of her priesthood and her hierarchy. In England the hierarchy was attacked by Wycliffe (d. 1384), its greatest opponent before Luther. Starting from Augustine's conception of the Church as the community of the elect, he protested against a church of wealth and power, a church that had become a political institution instead of a school of salvation; and against its head, the bishop of Rome. Wycliffe's ideas, conveyed to the continent, precipitated the outbreak of the Hussite storm in Bohemia (see Huss ; WYCLIFFE; LOLLARDS). This was open opposition; but there was besides another opposing force which, though it raised no noise of controversy, was far more widely severed from the views of the Church than either Wycliffe or Huss, namely the Renaissance, which began its reign in Italy during the 14th century. The Renaissance meant the emancipation of the secular world from the domination of the Church, and it contributed in no small measure to the rupture of the educated class with ecclesiastical tradition. Beauty of form alone was at first sought, and found in the antique ; but, with the form, the spirit of the classical attitude towards life was re vived. The men of the Renaissance wished to enjoy the earth by means of secular education and culture, and an impassable gulf yawned between their views of religion and morality and those of the Church. Theology could no longer provide a reconciliation. Since the time of Duns Scotus (d. 1308) theologians had been conscious of the discrepancy between Aristotelianism and ecclesi astical dogma. Faith in the infallibility of the scholastic system was thus shaken, and the system itself was destroyed by the re vival of philosophic nominalism, which had been discredited in the nth th century by the realism of the great schoolmen. It now found a courageous supporter in William of Occam, and through him became widely accepted. But nominalism was powerless to inspire theology with new life; on the contrary, its intervention only increased the inextricable tangle of the hairsplitting ques tions with which theology busied itself.
In the meantime the Roman claim to the supreme government of the Church was steadily maintained. In 1512 Julius II. called together the 5th Lateran general council, which expressly recog nized the subjection of the councils to the pope and also declared the constitution of Boniface VIII. (see above) valid in law. But the papacy that sought to win back its old position was no longer the same as of old. Eugenius IV.'s successor, Nicholas V. 55), was the first of the Renaissance popes. Under his successors the views which prevailed at the secular courts of the Italian princes came likewise into play at the Curia : the papacy became an Italian princedom. Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II.
were in many respects remarkable men, but they were scarcely affected by the convictions of the Christian faith. The terrible tragedy which was consummated on May 23, 1498, before the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, casts a lurid light upon the irrec oncilable opposition in which the wearers of the papal dignity stood to mediaeval piety; for Savonarola was in every fibre a loyal son of the mediaeval Church.
Twenty years after Savonarola's death Luther made public his theses against indulgences. The Reformation which thus began brought the disintegrating process of the middle ages to an end, and at the same time divided Western Catholicism in two. Yet we may say that this was its salvation; for the struggle against Luther drove the papacy back to its ecclesiastical duties, and the council of Trent established mediaeval dogma as the doctrine of modern Catholicism in contradistinction to Protestantism.