this design. In the last volume I endeavoured to show how the Medieval System of European art and literature grew by slow degrees out of the decaying elements of the Roman Empire; and how the influence either of the scholastic education, or of Christian manners, or of both, discloses itself in the work of men like Chaucer and Langland. At the same time we saw how this mainly ecclesiastical mode of conception and expression was beginning to be modified all over Europe by the reappearance of the civic spirit, and to what an extent powerful intellects in other countries, such as Dante in Italy, and John de Meung in France, influenced the thought and style of powerful intellects in England. This later movement will be seen through the present volume to be working with

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of transition from mediæval to modern times; the chief poets of the period work from the basis of culture provided for them by the Middle Ages, but they are alive to all the influences of their own age; and, like their ancestor Chaucer, they avail themselves of ideas and feelings flowing in upon them from a foreign source. Wyatt and Surrey are imitators of Petrarch; Sidney is inspired by Sannazzaro, George de Montemayor, and Castiglione; Lyly develops the manner of Guevara; Spenser emulates Marot and Ariosto; Marlowe embraces the doctrines of Machiavelli.

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that we should have a conception in outline of the manner in which men's minds were working, and of the ideas which occupied them, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the still Catholic European community. For this purpose I shall pursue a method I have already adopted. In an earlier chapter I endeavoured, by a concrete example, to illustrate the beginnings of the Renaissance; and I selected the Diet of Coblenz, in 1339, as an external indication of the comprehensive and far-reaching theory of order underlying the society of medieval Europe.1 I now propose to illustrate the working of the ancient system in Europe on 1 Vol. i. chap. v.

the eve of the Reformation by reference to the Diet of Augsburg held in 1518. The professed objects for which this Assembly was summoned, the various powers represented in its constitution, the rival interests which encountered in it, the passions and divergencies which it disclosed, will give us a general idea of the contemporary state of European Order. When we have formed a conception of the organic whole, I shall then turn to the parts, and seek in the most characteristic literature of the sixteenth century what I before sought in the literature of the fourteenth, a general idea of the movement of European Liberty.

I. Looking at the external form of Catholic unity presented to the minds of those who assembled at the Diet of Augsburg, there were many circumstances in the situation which might have hidden the approaching disruption of Europe from the eyes of a superficial observer. Suppose an inhabitant of Augsburg in the eleventh century to have fallen, like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, into a trance at the time of the First Crusade, he might have waked in the sixteenth century in the midst of sights and sounds not altogether unfamiliar to him. The Diet assembled professedly for the purpose of forming a European league against the Infidel. It was presided over by an Emperor, it was attended by the Legate of a Pope. The Pope, to encourage his secular coadjutor in his pious labours, sent him a sword and cap blessed by himself, as though the Princes of the Empire still shared the convictions and desires of their ancestors who listened to the exhortations of Peter the Hermit. But underneath this time-honoured symbolism how vast was the inward change! Instead of a stream of knights pressing eastward for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, the Crescent had become the attacking power; the tide of conquest now rolled from east to west. Constantinople had been in the hands of the Turks for more than half a century. The great Sultan, Selim I., having brought under his rule all the country between the Tigris and Euphrates, having vanquished the Sultan of Egypt, destroyed the dynasty of the Mamelukes,

and occupied Syria and Palestine, had consolidated his dominions in Asia, and threatened to descend on Europe by land and sea.

No less significant was the change in the relations of the Christian Powers among themselves. The tendency to harmonious action among the states of Europe had certainly not advanced since the taking of Constantinople, and at that epoch the Papal Legate, Æneas Sylvius, had thus described the machinery of what he called the Christian Republic: "It is a body without a head, a republic without laws or magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and none are willing to obey, every state has a separate prince, and every prince has a separate interest. Could they be assembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of command ? What order could be maintained? What military discipline? Who could undertake to feed such an enormous multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could reconcile the English with the French, Genoa with Arragon, the Germans with the nations of Hungary and Bohemia ? If a small number enlisted in the Holy War, they must be overthrown by the infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion."1

How was the spiritual power of the Christian Republic represented at the Diet? It is sufficient to say that the reigning Pope was Leo the Tenth. Not devoid of a certain ambition, Leo, a better man than Alexander the Sixth, a better statesman than Julius II., was capable of taking a comprehensive view of the true interests of the Papacy. But he was, above all things, an Epicurean. "God," said he, soon after his election, "has given us the Papacy; let us enjoy it." He had many of the tastes of his uncle, Lorenzo de' Medici, and used his position to minister, though with discretion and judgment, to his sense of what was humorous, curious, and beautiful.

1 Cited by Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. viii. p. 184 (Smith's edition).

His thoughts were rarely elevated above the enjoyments of the moment, so that when he appeared before the world in the character of a Hildebrand or an Innocent, the incongruity was startling. Was this a fitting representative of the Conscience of Christendom, qualified to direct the energies of the rival nations towards a common and noble end?

Who represented the secular principle of authority derived from the Empire of Charlemagne ? Maximilian I. was a monarch of generous and romantic temper, and of large ideas.1 But the actual imperial power was curtailed by the cumbrous constitutional machinery required to call it into exercise: and the inadequacy of Maximilian's resources, in proportion to his duties and responsibilities, had often caused him to appear before the world in circumstances of almost grotesque humiliation. Throughout the Empire, the headquarters of what remained of the mediæval system, the feudal principle presented a spectacle of hopeless anarchy. The power of the Emperor was opposed alike by the power of the Pope and of the princes; the power of the princes by the power of the knights; the power of the knights by the power of the cities. Every interest struggled for its own end and sought to neutralise the action of the central authority. Maximilian's main object in the Diet was to secure the succession to the imperial throne for his grandson the Archduke Charles, who by the vastness of his hereditary dominions seemed likely to be able to restore to the Empire something of its ancient splendour. The dignity of the position was also coveted by Francis I. of France, and by Henry VIII. of England, and Augsburg during the Diet became the scene of negotiations between the princely electors and the various candidates for the throne. The names and offices of the Seven Electors seem to breathe the grandeur of feudal antiquity. The Archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves, were arch-chancellors of the Empire, and represented the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Arles;

1 For an account of the life of Maximilian, and the state of Germany at this period, see Ranke's History of the Reformation, vol. i. Book I.

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the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of Bavaria, the Margrave of Brandenburg, were respectively chief cup-bearer, high marshal, high seneschal, and high chamberlain, and represented the various German princes. But the pledges and promises given and received by these lofty potentates in the course of the electoral struggle would probably have appeared sordid even to the burgesses of Gatton and Old Sarum.1

The authority of the Church as a whole was symbolised in the Diet by the presence of the Papal Legate, who was supported throughout Europe by all the forces of scholastic. logic and of monastic discipline. Both in their time had done good service to the Christian Church. Logic had maintained the cause of Papal Supremacy when this was indispensably necessary to the unity of Christendom, and when St. Anselm laid the foundations of the great structure of thought which was carried to completion by the hands of the schoolmen. But lapse of time and change of circumstance had greatly decayed the power of this instrument of Authority.

The stronghold of the scholastic system lay in the Universities. The encyclopædic education, passing after the fall of the Roman Empire from the Imperial to the Episcopal schools, had been carried thence into Charlemagne's schools of the Palace, and these again formed the nucleus of learned bodies which in Paris, Bologna, Louvain, and many other cities gradually formed themselves into self-governed corporations. As the study of logic prevailed over all the other arts, it was inevitable that experts in the science of disputation should acquire a vast intellectual influence; and the University of Paris, above all others, with its great college of the Sorbonne, was renowned for its School of Theology. Any departure from the strictly formulated doctrine and discipline of the Church was promptly detected and condemned by the doctors of this University. On the other hand, the course of events had done much to expand the rigid limitations even of the

1 A very good description of the intrigues of the time is given in Mignet's Rivalité de François Premier et Charles Quint, chap. 2.