times it forced itself to the surface, and revealed its power on a large scale, as in the Albigensan revival. But the powers of evil were then too strong, to permit of its keeping the footing it had momentarily obtained. Beaten down, it again became torpid. But in the great spring-time which came along with Wicliffe it was effectually roused never again to shunber. Taking now its place in the front, it found itself supported by a host of agencies, of which itself was the real although the indirect creator. For it was the Lollard or Christian spirit, never, amid all the barbarism and strifes and superstitions that overlaid Mediaeval society, eliminated or purged out, that hailed letters in that early morning, that tasted their sweetness, that prompted to the cultivation of them, that panted for a wider sphere, for a greater liberty, for a purer state of society, and never rested till it had achieved it. This despised principle — for in the fifteenth century it is seen at the bar of tribunals, in prisons, at stakes, in the guise of a felon — was in truth the originator of these activities; it communicated to them the first impulse. Without it they never would have been: night, not morning, would have succeeded the Dark Ages. It was the day-spring to Christendom. And this is certified to us when, tracing the course of the two contemporary currents which we find flowing in England in the century under review, we see them, at a point a little way only in advance of that at which we are now arrived, uniting their streams, and forming one combined movement, known as the English Reformation.
But before that point could be reached England had to pass through a terrible conflict.
CHAPTER 11
INFLUENCE OF THE WARS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ON THE PROGRESS OF PROTESTANTISM
Convulsions of the Fifteenth Century — Fall of Constantinople — Wars in Bohemia — in Italy — in Spain — in Switzerland — Wars of the Papal Schism — Was it Peace or War which the Popes gave to Christendom? — Wars originated by the Popes: the Crusades; the War of Investitures; the Albigensian and Waldensian Crusades; the Wars in Naples, Poland, etc.; the Feuds in Italy; the Hussite Campaigns, etc. — Wars of the Roses — Traced to the Council of Archbishop Chicheley — Providential End of the Wars of the Fifteenth Century — The Nobility Weakened — The Throne made Powerful — Why? — Hussitism and Lollardism.
THE Day that was hastening towards the world sent terrible tempests before it as the heralds of its approach. Than the middle of the fifteenth century there is, perhaps, no point in modern history that presents a scene of more universal turmoil and calamity, if we except the period that witnessed the fall of the Western Empire. Nowhere is there stability or rest. All around, as far as the eye can reach, appears a sea whose waters, swollen into huge billows by the force of the mighty winds, are assailng the very foundations of the earth. The Christian of that day, when he cast his eyes around on a world rocked and tossed by these great tempests, must have despaired, had he not remembered that there is One who "sits King upon the floods."
The armies of the Turk were gathering round Constantinople, and the Queen of the East was about to bow her head and sink in a tempest of pillage, of rapine, and of slaughter. The land of Bohemia, watered, as with a plenteous rain, once, again, and a third time, with German blood, was gloomy and silent. Germany had sufered far more than she had inflicted.
From the Rhine to the Elbe, from the Black Forest to the Baltic, her nations were lamenting their youth slaughtered in the ill-fated campaigns into which Rome had drawn them against the Hussites. Italy, split up into principalities, was ceaselessly torn by the ambitions and feuds of its petty rulers, and if for a moment the din of these intestine strifes was hushed, it was in presence of some foreign invader whom the beauty of that land had drawn with his armies across the Alps. The magnificent cities of Spain, adorned by the art and enriched by the industry of the Moors, were being emptied of their inhabitants by the crusades of bigotry; the Moslem flag was being torn down on the walls of Granada, and the race which had converted the Vega around the Moorish capital into a garden, watering it with the icy torrents of the Sierra Nevada, and clothing it with corn-fields and orange-groves, were fleeing across the Straits to form new seats on the northern shores of Africa. The Swiss, who had looked for centuries with almost uninterrupted indifference on the wars and convulsions that distracted the nations that dwelt at the feet of their mountains, finding in their great hills an impregnable fortress against invasion, now saw themselves menaced in their valleys with a foreign sword, and had to fight for their immemorial independence. They were assailed by the two powerful kingdoms on each side of them; for Austria and France, in their desire to enlarge their territories, had become forgetful that in leveling the Alps of the Swiss, they but effaced the barrier between themselves, which prevented the two nations mingling their blood on fierce and frequent battle-fields.
As if the antipathies of race, and the ambition of princes, were not enough to afflict an unhappy age, another element of contention was imported into the strife by the Papal schism. The rival Popes and their supporters brought their cause into the battle-field, and torrents of Christian blood were shed to determine the question which was the true Vicar.' The arguments from piety, from wisdom, from learning were but dust in the balance against the unanswerable argument of the sword, and the gospel of peace was converted into the tocsin of war. The evils flowing from the schism, and which for so many years afflicted Christendom, cannot but raise the question in every dispassionate mind how far the Popes have fulfilled the office assigned them as the "Fathers of Christendom" and the Peacemakers of the World?, Leaving out of view their adulators on the one side, and their incriminaters on the other, let us put to history the question, How many are the years of peace, and how many are the years of war, which have come out of the Papal chair, and what proportion does the one bear to the other?
To put, then, a few plain questions touching matters of fact, let us ask, from whom came the crusades which for two centuries continued to waste the treasure and the blood of both Europe and Asia? History answers, from the Popes. Monks preached the crusades, monks enlisted soldiers to fight them and when the host was marshalled and all was ready, monks placed themselves at their head, and led them onward, their track marked by devastation, to the shores of Syria, where their furious fanaticism exploded in scenes of yet greater devastation and horror. In these expeditions the Popes were always the chiefs; the crossed emperors and kings were enlisted under their banner, and put under the command of their legates; at the Popes' mandate it was that they went forth to slay and to be slain. In the absence of these princes the Popes took into their hands the government of their kingdoms; the persons and goods of all the crusaders were declared under their protection; in their behalf they caused every process, civil and criminal, to be suspended; they made a lavish distribution of indulgences and dispensations, to keep alive fanatical fervor and sanguinary zeal; they sometimes enjoined as a command, and sometimes as a penance, service in the crusades; their nuncios and legates received the alms and legacies bequeathed for maintaining these wars; and when, after two dismal centuries, they came to an end, it was found that none save the Popes were the gainers thereby. While the authority of the Papal See was vastly strengthened, the secular princes were in the same proportion weakened and impoverished; the sway of Rome was confirmed, for the nations, broken and bowed down, suffered a yoke to be rivetted upon their necks that could not be broken for ages.
We ask further, from whom came the contest between the mitre and the Empire — the war of investitures, — which divided and ravaged Christendom for a full century and a half? History answers, from the Pope — Gregory VII. From whom came the Albigensian crusades, which swept in successive tempests of fire and blood across the south of France?
History answers, from the Pope — Innocent III. Whence came those armies of assassins, which times without number penetrated into the Waldensian valleys, carrying the torch into dwelling and sanctuary, and inflicting on the unoffending inhabitants barbarities and cruelties of so horrible a nature that they never can be known, because they never dare be told? History
