Supplemental Research 1 Contents
1.	Popes	6-6

2.	Personalities	7-7

3.	"What profit has not that Fable of Christ brought us!" "LET US ENJOY THE PAPACY SINCE GOD HAS GIVEN IT TO US"	8-19

4.	**Forgery in Christianity, 1930** (Wheless)	20-20

5.	*Encyclopaedia Britannica*	21-35

6.	*History of the Christian Church* (Schaff)	36-38

7.	**The Diegesis, 1829** (Taylor)	39-42

8.	*History of the Christian Church* (Schaff)	43-47

9.	Renaissance (Burckhardt)	48-52

10.	Renaissance (Symonds)	53-61

11.	John Edwin Sandys	62-62

12.	*The Cambridge Modern History*	63-63

13.	Renaissance (Ferguson)	64-65

14.	*Mysteriously Meant* (Allen)	66-68

15.	www.christianism.com	69-73

16.	*The History of England* (Hume)	74-75

17.	*Pope Alexander VI and His Court* (Burchardus)	76-77

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18.	*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography*	78-79

19.	*The Life…of Leo the Tenth* (Roscoe)	80-93

20.	*The History of the Popes* (von Ranke)	94-105

21.	*The History of the Popes* (Pastor)	106-120

22.	*Jacopo Sadoleto* (Douglas)	121-126

23.	*Crises in the History of the Papacy* (McCabe)	127-130

24.	*A Rationalist Encyclopaedia* (McCabe)	131-132

25.	*Catholic Encyclopedia*	133-133

26.	*The Pope's Elephant* (Bedini)	134-134

27.	*Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy*	135-135

28.	*The Bad Popes* (Chamberlin)	136-138

29.	*Vicars of Christ* (de Rosa)	139-148

30.	*The Deaths of the Popes* (Reardon)	149-151

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Popes:	[reigns]

Innocent III	1198–1216

Paul II	1464–71
Sixtus IV	1471–84
Innocent VIII	1484–92
Alexander VI	1492–1503
Pius III	1503
Julius II	1503–13

Leo X 1513–21 [1475 – 1521] [Luther 1483 – 1546]

Adrian VI	1522–23
Clement VII	1523–34
Paul III	1534–49
Julius III	1550–55

[Encyc. Brit., v. 9, c2005, 123].

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Personalities:	lifespans


Jacopo Sannazaro	1458 – 1530

Erasmus	1466 – 1536

Pietro Bembo	1470 – 1547

Leo X	1475 – 1521

Jacopo Sadoleto	1477 – 1547

Martin Luther	1483 – 1546

Ulrich von Hutten	1488 – 1523

John Bale	1495 – 1563

Michel de Montaigne	1533 – 1592

Philippe du Plessis	1549 – 1623

Pierre Bayle	1647 – 1706

Johann von Mosheim	1694 – 1755

A few associations:

John Bale mentions Sannazaro [see 167, 164].

Du Plessis references Sannazaro [see 186, 187, 189, 190].

Bayle references du Plessis [see 308, 309].

Mosheim references du Plessis, and Bayle [see 317].

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1. My results, regarding the statement (from James Patrick Holding):

'"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

Pope Leo X.' :

COMMENT (LS): I will take a word from John Addington Symonds (54-55), and, The Cambridge Modern History (63), regarding Cosimo de' Medici, Pope Julius II, Pope Leo X, and state: "ATTRIBUTED" to LEO X.

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2. Of much interest (from James Patrick Holding): '

● When did Leo make this statement (the year is enough)?

● To whom did Leo make it, and who heard it?

● What was the context that prompted Leo to make this statement?

● In what document did those who heard it, report it?

● What reaction, if any, was there to this statement?

● In what contemporary works is all of this reported?

● Based on the above, show what in context the "fable" [see 166-170] Leo refers to – the entire existence of a man named Jesus? Not his existence, but just certain events? Etc.'

Comment (LS): Very stringent! Excellent!

If the above first six questions (substitute x (person) for Leo), had to be met by acceptable answers, in all books (newspapers, magazines, conversations, etc.), libraries (etc.) would be very small.

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On http://www.christianism.com/, page 1736, I (LS) have remarked:

PREFACE

I have had to quote the "Christian" authors Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and, many other ancient authors—"Pagan" and "Christian".

I realized years ago, that confidence in names of ancient authors, and, all their supposed writings, like religions, involves much faith, apologetics, etc. I asked (of necessity, myself): "where did they [and, who were they? and, when?] find the original manuscripts (autographs)?, under the beds of the authors?" I began researching. I began disappointments. [see 1752-1753, 1838-1850, 1878-1879]

I have not seen elaborate arguments, describing how we can be confident that all these persons existed, and that all (or some) of the writings ascribed to them, were by them. Fiats are presented, instead of proofs. Traditions! Presumptions!

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3. Reference to (from James Patrick Holding):

"Britannica does not know or care about this quote at all ["What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"]."

COMMENT (LS): The page number in Wheless was transposed (by who?): not page 217, but 127 [see 20].

[I am still laughing about: "Nice pix of pigeon's lungs and a goat's branchiole, but no Leo." [I formerly raised Birmingham Roller Pigeons, and had an article ("Tumbling Behavior in Pigeons") in the American Pigeon Journal, August, 1975 (research done 1964, for a class in Avian Physiology, U.C. Davis);

I studied bronchioles ("branchiole" in the E.B. article on "Respiration"), in histology]].

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"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!",

I have seen in the 9th, 11th, 13th and 14th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (and, the 10th and 12th editions, are reprints of the 9th and 11th editions (plus extra volumes)).

Note: from approximately 1883 to 1974 ("90" years!), the Encyclopaedia Britannica contained (contains) the article "Renaissance", by John Addington Symonds, with:

'This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram:

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"'

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4. Reference to (from James Patrick Holding):

"First of all, as I've noted before, it's not as though some offhand comment by a single Pope is enough to overturn 1500-2000 years of relevant secular and religious scholarship. The skeptics would like for you to believe that perhaps old Leo committed a serious gaffe

[(in an intimate setting) attempt to be witty, contrary, shocking, rational, etc.? (influence of wine, illness, fat, etc.?)]

here in which he admitted what was otherwise hidden

for nearly 1500 years, namely, that Christ never actually existed".

Comment (LS): The above is a helpful statement.

Who knows the private thoughts of people exposed to Christianism ("Christianity") through the centuries? Cultural imprinting, politics, self preservation—suppressed freethought and free speech, etc.

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The below (11-12), classic litanies, of course, do not disprove: Jesus (was) is a Fictional character (see christianism.com, main page):

'A child whose birth is heralded by a star which guides foreign sages to Judaea; a massacre of all the infants of a town within the Roman Empire by command of a subject king; a teacher who heals the leper, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the lame, and who raises the mouldering corpse; a King of the Jews entering Jerusalem in triumphal procession, [pg 194] without opposition from the Roman legions of Caesar; an accused ringleader of sedition arrested by his own countrymen, and handed over to the imperial governor; a rebel adjudged to death by Roman law; a three hours' darkness over all the land; an earthquake breaking open graves and rending the temple veil; a number of ghosts wandering about Jerusalem; a crucified corpse rising again to life, and appearing to a crowd of above 500 people; a man risen from the dead ascending bodily into heaven without any concealment, and in the broad daylight, from a mountain near Jerusalem; all these marvelous events took place, we are told, and yet they have left no ripple on the current of contemporary history. There is, however, no lack of such history, and an exhaustive account of the country and age in which the hero [Jesus] of the story lived is given by one of his own nation—a most painstaking and laborious historian [apparently, Josephus].

"[Edward Gibbon 1737 – 1794] how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses?

During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church.

but the sages of greece and rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world.

Under the reign of Tiberius [reign 14 – 37 C.E. (42 B.C.E. – 37 C.E.] the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event,

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which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca [c. 4 B.C.E. – 65 C.E.] and the elder Pliny [23 – 79 C.E.], who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature—earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of [pg 195] the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age"

(Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. ii., pp. 191, 192. Ed. 1821).'

[the above (11-12), from: Annie Besant [1847 – 1933], Christianity—Its Evidences. Its Origin. Its Morality. Its History, 1876, pages 193-195. [this book, one of my treasures; available online: http://snipurl.com/1o7va; etc.]].

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from: http://www.christianism.com/, page 527:

'THE UNIVERSAL THEORY OF DISEASE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT IS THAT OF DEMONIC POSSESSION. From the fourth chapter of St. Matthew on, we find numerous references to the healing of the sick and the casting out of devils; "and they brought unto him [Jesus] all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them." There are sixteen other references to such healings in Matthew, nineteen in Mark and twenty in Luke. The most interesting case is, of course, that of the devils expelled from their two human victims into the herd of Gadarene [see #4, 122] swine when "behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea" (Matthew 8; Mark 5; Luke 8).'

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from: http://www.christianism.com/, page 73.

'386. 'But the Jesus who emulated Buddha in advocating poverty and humility eventually became the mythic figurehead for one of the world's pre-eminent money-making organizations. The cynical Pope Leo X [1475 – 1521] exclaimed,

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"⁵⁹ [Barbara Walker, referencing L. Sprague de Camp]'

[(59) L. Sprague de Camp, The Ancient Engineers, (my source) Doubleday, 1963, 365 (also, from the same reference: [Leo X] "Since God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it".)].'

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from: The Ancient Engineers, L. [Lyon] Sprague de Camp [1907 – 2000], Doubleday, 1963.

'But this Pope was the fat, indolent, and worldly Leo X, who said:

"Since God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it," and

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"²²' [365].

[footnote] "22. Ibid. [ibidem (Latin): "in the same place" (previous reference: Leonardo da Vinci, Antonina Vallentin, 1938)], p. 462;

Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. [Latin: sub verbo: "under the word"] Renaissance." [384].

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Note: this repeated epigram, attributed to LEO X, is presented for sources, comparisons, etc.

1. '"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

Pope Leo X.' [James Patrick Holding (see 6)].

2. "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

[Barbara Walker, referencing L. Sprague de Camp (see 13)].

3. "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us" [Joseph Wheless (see 20)].

4. "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" [Encyclopaedia Britannica (Symonds) (see 24)].

5. "how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."

[Philip Schaff (see 36)].

6. "Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula proSuerit, satis est omnibus saeculis notum."

[Philip Schaff (see 36)].

7. 'Pope Leo the Tenth's avowal, that "it was well known how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us"'

[Robert Taylor (see 40)].

8. "It is well known to all ages how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us" [Roscoe (see 90)].

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9. "All ages can testifye [testifie] enough how [HOWE] profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us [VS] and our companie." [Roscoe, quoting John Bale (see 90, 92)] [spellings in brackets, are from "Bale's Pageant of Popes", 1574 (see 164)].

10. "the fable about Jesus Christ"

[Joseph McCabe (see 129, 132)].

11. "We owe all this to the fable of Jesus Christ"

[Joseph McCabe (see 132)].

12. "How much we and our family have profited by the legend of Christ, is sufficiently evident to all ages."

[Catholic Encyclopedia (see 133)].

13. "How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through the ages" [E.R. Chamberlin (see 137)].

14. "All ages can testifie enough howe profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to vs and our companie". [John Bale, 1574 (see 164)].

15. "Quantum nobis ac nostro coetui prosuerit ea de Christo fabula, satis est seculis omnibus notum." [John Bale, 1558 (see 167)]. [Medieval Latin (not!, Ciceronian Latin) (see 169)].

16. "It is sufficiently well-known to all ages how much this story about Christ has benefited us and our company."

[John Bale (translation of 14., above), 1558 (see 167)].

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17. "Quantum nobis ac nostro coetui prosuerit ea de Christo fabula, satis est seculis omnibus notum."

"All ages can abundantly testify how profitable that fable [story] of Christ has been to us and to our class.

FABULA can be translated TALE, FABLE; STORY; or DRAMA, according to what the writer wants to convey." [note: a definition of fiction is elusive (see 169)].

18. "what profit this fable of Christ hath brought to vs, and our company: All the world knoweth." [Two Treatises (see 176)].

19. "Que ceste fable de Christ nous a fait de bien & à tout nostre College."
[Du Plessis, 1611 (see 187)].

20. "It is sufficiently knowne to all ages, how greatly that fable of Christ hath profited us and ours."

[Du Plessis, English edition, 1612 (see 190)].

21. "to the great disgrace of the Romish church, they united in ridiculing the christian religion in their moments of festivity, as a lucrative fable." [see 220].

22. "Todo el mundo sabe quanto provecho aya traydo á NOSOTROS, Y á nEustra compānia aquella fabula de Christo" [Cipriano de Valera (see 223)].

23. "the Fabula de Christo" [The Visions of Pasquin (see 260)].

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24. Note: Pietro Bembo (Bembus) could have developed the epigram attributed to Leo X:

"What profit has not that Fable of Christ brought us!"

[see 306].

25. "it is well known of old, how profitable this fable of Jesus Christ has been to us.

Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula

prosuerit satis est omnibus seculis notum."

[Pierre Bayle (see 308)].

26. "WHAT A DEAL OF SERVICE HAS THIS FABLE OF CHRIST DONE US, AND OUR WHOLE COLLEGE." [Pierre Bayle, quoting Du Plessis (see 309)].

27. "[LEO X.] considered the Christian religion a fable, though a profitable one;

that he [leo x] doubted the immortality of the soul, &c." [Mosheim, quoting "Du Plessis, and other Protestants" (see 317)].

28. "we must admit that this fable of Jesus Christ has been quite profitable to us." [De Tribus Impostoribus (see 660)].

29. "the story of Jesus Christ is a (a) contemptible fable"

[The Treatise of the Three Imposters (see 668)].

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30. "how much this fable of Jesus Christ has been profitable to us."

'Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula prosuerit, satis est omnis seculis notum.'" [The Treatise of the Three Imposters (see 668)].

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"It is commonly believed that Leo [X], from the penetration of his genius, and his familiarity with ancient literature, was fully acquainted with the ridicule and falsity of the doctrines which, as supreme pontiff, he was obliged by his interest to promote" [Hume (see 74, 65)].

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Note: this repeated expression, attributed to LEO X, is presented as a minor study (see 53).

1. "Since God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it"

[Sprague de Camp (see 13)].

2. "Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us"

[Encyclopaedia Britannica (Hayes) (see 28)].

3. "'When the Pope [Leo X, Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)] was made, he said to Giuliano [brother] (Duke of Nemours):

Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it [TO] us—godiamoci il Papato, poichè Dio ce l' ha dato.'" [Symonds (see 53)].

4. "'Let us enjoy the Papacy,' said Leo X. [Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)], 'now that God has given it to us.'" [Symonds (see 55)].

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5. "The reign of Leo was about to shed new luster on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation to his brother [Giuliano]

'Godiamoci il Papato poichè Dio ce l' ha dato' [Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it to us]" [Symonds (see 56)].

6. "Leo X followed with a pale imitation of the policy of Alexander VI [Pope 1492 – 1503 (1431 – 1503)], his object being the advancement of the Medici family and the preservation of the papal dominions in the fierce strife between France and Spain. To him the papacy was a personal

possession out of which the possessor was expected to make the most, religion being an entirely subordinate affair. His conception of his duties is condensed in the burst of exultation attributed to him on his election,

—Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us!"

[Cambridge Modern History (see 63)].

7. 'When the Venetian ambassador ascribes to him [LEO X] the saying,

"Let us enjoy the Papacy now that God has given it to us,"

we may or may not have a mere popular rumour, though the phrase is at least a correct expression of Leo's ideal' [McCabe (see 129)].

8. 'The cardinals were accurate in their assessment of Leo's character.

"God has given us the Papacy—let us enjoy it,"¹

he [Pope Leo X] wrote to his beloved brother Giuliano.'

[Chamberlin (see 136)].

9. Did Leo say, "Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us"?[Murray (see 343)].

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from: Forgery in Christianity, A Documented Record of the Foundations of the Christian Religion, by Joseph Wheless [1858 – 1950], Lately Major, Judge Advocate, U.S.A.; Associate Editor (in Section of Comparative Law) of American Bar Association Journal; Life Member of American Law Institute; etc., Alfred A. Knopf, MCMXXX.

'"Churchmen in high places were constantly unmindful of truth, justice, purity, self-denial; many had lost all sense of Christian ideals; not a few were deeply stained by Pagan [?] vices....The earlier years of Aeneas Sylvius [Pope Pius II, 1458–64], the whole career of Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI), the life of Farnese, afterwards Paul III, until he was compelled to reform himself as well as the Curia,...all with disregard for the most elementary virtues. Julius II fought and intrigued like a mere secular prince;

Leo X [Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)], although certainly not an unbeliever—

[[brackets and contents, by Wheless] it was His Holiness who framed the famous "witty epigram:

'What profit has not that Fable of Christ brought us'";

Encyc. Brit., 14th Ed. xix, 217 [number error (transposition (by who? [see 561-563; etc.])); correct page number: 127]]

—was frivolous in the extreme;

Clement VII drew on himself the contempt as well as hatred of all who had dealings with him, by his crooked ways and cowardly subterfuges which led to the taking and pillage of Rome. Now, it is not unfair to trace in these popes, as in their advisers, a certain common type, the pattern of which was Cesare Borgia, sometime cardinal, but always in mind and action a condottiere [bandit], while its philosopher was Machiavelli. We may express it in the words of Villari as a 'prodigious intellectual activity accompanied by moral decay.' ...Not only did they fall away from monastic severities, they lost all manly and decent self-control...."'

["CE. [Catholic Encyclopedia] xii,767–768 [766–767]."] [351-352].

l l l l l

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from: Encyclopaedia Britannica; or a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled upon a New Plan. In which the different Sciences and Arts are digested into distinct Treaties or Systems; and The various Technical Terms, &c. are explained as they occur in the order of the Alphabet. Illustrated with one hundred and sixty copperplates. By a Society of Gentlemen in Scotland. In Three Volumes. Vol. III. Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar; And fold by Colin Macfarquhar, at his Printing-office, Nicolson-Street. M.DCC.LXXI. Reprint of the first edition, "Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968".

[Note: no entry for: Leo X; or, Renaissance]

"Religion, or Theology.

I. To know God, and to render him a reasonable service, are the two principal objects of religion. We know but little of the nature of bodies; we discover some of their properties, as motion, figure, colours, &c. but of their essence we are ignorant: we know still much less of the soul; but of the essence or nature of God, we know nothing: it is the prerogative of the Supreme Being alone to comprehend his own essence: all the efforts that we can make to attain that knowledge, are arrogant and ineffectual; it is foreign to the nature of a limited spirit: but our destiny is that of a man, and our desires are those of a God. In a word, man appears to be formed to adore, but not to comprehend, the Supreme Being.

II. We may say, however, with Virgil [70 – 19 B.C.E.], Jovis omnia plena; God manifests his existence, not only to the internal sensations of our minds, but in every object that surrounds us in the whole frame of nature; and if we cannot comprehend the Supreme Being by our senses, we may discover his attributes by our reason, almost as clearly as we distinguish the properties of matter, and many other objects: and this knowledge is sufficient for us. The end of every other science is some temporal happiness; theology alone proposes an eternal felicity; its objects therefore differs from all other sciences, as the age of threescore and ten differs from eternity. We cannot wonder therefore, that all the inhabitants of the earth, from the time of the creation, have made it their principal study, and have exerted all their abilities in the cultivation of it: we ought much rather to be astonished that it does not yet more strongly engage the attention of mankind; and that while they labour to assiduously to acquire those sciences, whose utility extends to so short a space of time, they should so frequently neglect that object which can secure their felicity in a future, certain, and eternal existence.

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III. From the first knowledge that we have of the world, that is to say, for about five thousand years past, men have blindly searched after the idea of the true God; and by the weakness of their discernment, they have fallen into a thousand errors. Paganism at first covered the whole earth, except that family alone which became the stock of the Jewish people [Semite "Pagans"!]: this paganism among different nations had different mixtures of idolatry. Moses first made known to the Hebrews the true God, and prescribed them his worship: his religion, however, was not adopted by any other people, not even by their neighbours. Jesus Christ appeared upon the earth, abolished a part of the Judaic law, reformed the religion of Moses, taught his divine doctrines, and offered himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. His gospel made a happy progress over all Europe, that is, over the then known part of the earth. Some time after, Mahomet arose in the east and preached a religion that he had compounded of the Jewish and Christian, and of his own ideas. Lastly, came Luther and Calvin, who reformed the errors which, according to them, had been introduced into Christianity under the reigns of the popes; and gave the idea of what is called the Protestant Religion. Confucius had taught the Chinese, and Zoroaster the Indians, religions drawn partly from philosophy, and partly from paganism; but the extent of these was very confined. All these religions, and their different sects, have had their theology, their priests, their ceremonies, their triumphs, and even their martyrs.

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IV. We shall not speak here of religions that are extinct, or that yet exist, but at a distance far from us:

we shall treat only of the Christian theology, which teaches us to know God, by revelation and by the light of reason, so far as it is possible for the weakness of the human mind to comprehend that inscrutable Being. The knowledge of the true God is indeed of little utility to man, unless he can suppose that there is some connection or relation between the Supreme Being and himself. Now it is from these connections or relations that are derived the necessity of the knowledge of the true God, and of the true manner in which he is to be worshipped: and this it is that forms the Christian theology; of which we shall now give the analysis.

V. To ascend by a chain of reasoning from things visible to things invisible, from palpable to impalpable, from terrestrial to celestial, from the creature even up to the Creator, is the business of theology: it is not surprising, therefore, that the union of many doctrines is necessary completely to form such a science. To understand, and properly to interpret the scriptures or revelation, demands not less sagacity than assiduity. The gift of persuasion is also essential to the ministers of the gospel. And lastly, the civil government has committed to their care certain functions of society, which relate, or seem to relate, either to the doctrines or morality of the gospel[.]..." [533].

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from: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Ninth Edition, Volume XX, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, MDCCCLXXXIII (1875-89).

Article: "Renaissance", by John Addington Symonds [1840 – 1893].

'....A similar criticism, conducted less on lines of erudition than of persiflage and irony, ransacked the moral abuses of the church and played around the very foundations of Christianity.

This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram:

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

[Note: Symonds did not provide a source for the epigram (protection?)]

The same critical and philosophic spirit working on the materials of history produced a new science, the honours of which belong to Machiavelli....' [386].

"That, in spite of retardation and retrogression, the old order of ideas should have yielded to the new all over Europe,—that science should have won firm standing ground, and political liberty should have struggled through those birth-throes of its origin,—was in the nature of things. Had this not been, the Renaissance or re-birth of Europe would be a term without a meaning.

Literature.—The special articles on the several arts and the literatures of modern Europe, and on the biographies of great men mentioned in this essay, will give details of necessity here omitted. It may be useful to indicate a few works upon the Renaissance in general. Burckhardt's Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, Michelet's "Renaissance" (7th vol. of Histoire de France), Voigt's Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums; Symond's Renaissance in Italy, Marc Monnier's Renaissance de Dante à Luther, Müntz's Précurseurs de la Renaissance and Renaissance en Italie et en France, and Geiger's Humanismus und Renaissance in Italien und Deutschland are among the most comprehensive.

(J.A.S.) [John Addington Symonds 1840 – 1893]" [394].

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[from: WorldCat: "The new volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, constituting, in combination with the existing volumes of the ninth edition, the tenth edition ["1902" (E.B.)] of that work..."].

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from: The Encyclopaedia Britannica, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volumes XXIII ("Renaissance"); XXVI ("Symonds"); XVI ("Leo X."), 1910–1911.

[Volume XXIII] Article: "Renaissance", by John Addington Symonds [1840 – 1893].

'Humanism in its earliest stages was uncritical. It absorbed the relics of antiquity with omnivorous appetite, and with very imperfect sense of the distinction between worse and better work. Yet it led in process of time to criticism. The critique of literature began in the lecture-room of Politian, in the printing-house of Aldus, and in the school of Vittorino. The critique of Roman law started, under Politian's auspices, upon a more liberal course than that which had been followed by the powerful but narrow-sighted glossators of Bologna. Finally, in the court of Naples arose that most formidable of all critical engines, the critique of established ecclesiastical traditions and spurious historical documents. Valla [Lorenzo Valla c. 1406 – 1457] by one vigorous effort destroyed the False Decretals and exposed the Donation of Constantine to ridicule, paving the way for the polemic carried on against the dubious pretensions of the papal throne by scholars of the Reformation.

A similar criticism, conducted less on lines of erudition than of persiflage and irony, ransacked the moral abuses of the church and played around the very foundations of Christianity.

This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram:

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

The same critical and philosophic spirit working on the materials of history produced a new science, the honours of which belong to Machiavelli [1469 – 1527] . He showed, on the one side, how the history of a people can be written with a recognition of fixed principles, and at the same time with an artistic feeling

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for personal and dramatic episodes. On the other side, he addressed himself to the analysis of man considered as a political being, to the anatomy of constitutions and the classification of governments, to the study of motives underlying public action, the secrets of success and the causes of failure in the conduct of affairs. The unscrupulous rigour with which he applied his scientific method, and the sinister deductions he thought himself justified in drawing from the results it yielded, excited terror and repulsion. Nevertheless, a department had been added to the intellectual empire of mankind, in which fellow-workers, like Guicciardini at Florence, and subsequently Sarpi at Venice, were not slow to follow the path traced by Machiavelli.' [87].

"That, in spite of retardation and retrogression, the old order of ideas should have yielded to the new all over Europe,—that science should have won firm standing-ground, and political liberty should have struggled through those birth-throes of its origin,—was in the nature of things. Had this not been, the Renaissance or re-birth of Europe would be a term without a meaning.

(J.A.S.) [John Addington Symonds 1840 – 1893]

LITERATURE.—The special articles on the several arts and the literatures of modern Europe, and on the biographies of great men mentioned in this essay, will give details of necessity here omitted. Of works on the Renaissance in general may be mentioned Jacob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italian (Eng. trans., 1878); G. Voigt, Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums (2 vols. 3^rd ed., by M. Lehnerdt, 1893); J.A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy; Marc Monnier, Renaissance de Dante à Luther; Eugène Müntz, Précurseurs de la Renaissance (1882), Renaissance en Italie et en France (1885), and Hist. de l'art pendant la Renaissance (1889–95); Ludwig Geiger, Humanismus und Renaissance in Italian und Deutschland (1882), and Cambridge Modern History, vol. i., "The Renaissance" (Cambridge 1903), where full bibliographies will be found." [93].

[Volume XXVI] ARTICLE: "SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON (1840–1893), English critic and poet, was born at Bristol, on the 5th day of October 1840." [286].

"[John Addington Symonds] was occupied upon the work to which his talents and sympathies were especially attracted, his Renaissance in Italy, which appeared in seven volumes at intervals between 1875 and 1886. The Renaissance had been the subject of Symonds' prize essay at Oxford, and

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the study which he had then given to the theme aroused in him a desire to produce something like a complete picture of the reawakening of art and literature in Europe." [286].

"He was assiduously, feverishly active throughout the whole of his life, and the amount of work which he achieved was wonderful when the uncertainty of his health is remembered. He had a passion for Italy, and for many years resided during the autumn in the house of his friend, Horatio F. Brown, on the Zattare, in Venice. He died at Rome on the 19th of April 1893, and was buried close to Shelley." [286].

"Full of ardour and ambition, sympathy and desire, he [Symonds] was perpetually tormented by the riddles of existence; through life he was always a seeker, ardent but unsatisfied [see christianism.com, main page, Postscript]." [287].

[Note: John Addington Symonds translated The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti [1475 – 1564] ("first English translation of the poetry of Michelangelo" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition, v.11, 461))].

[Volume XVI] ARTICLE: "LEO X. [Giovanni de' Medici] (1475–1521), pope from the 11th of March 1513, to the 1st of December 1521". [433].

' Leo's lively interest in art and literature, to say nothing of his natural liberality, his nepotism, his political ambitions and necessities, and his immoderate personal luxury, exhausted within two years the hard savings of Julius II., and precipitated a financial crisis from which he never emerged and which was a direct cause of most of the calamities of his pontificate. He created many new offices and shamelessly sold them. He sold cardinals' hats. He sold membership in the "Knights of Peter." He borrowed large sums from bankers, curials, princes and Jews. The Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the paying number of offices on Leo's death at 2150, with a capital value of nearly 3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats. Marino Giorgi reckoned the ordinary income of the pope for the year 1517 at about 580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the States of the Church, 100,000 from annates, and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by Sixtus IV. These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as they were received.

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Then the pope resorted to pawning palace furniture, table plate, jewels, even statues of the apostles. Several banking firms and many individual creditors were ruined by the death of the pope.

In the past many conflicting estimates were made of the character and achievements of the pope during whose pontificate Protestantism first took form. More recent studies have served to produce a fairer and more honest opinion of Leo X. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi bearing date of March 1517 indicates some of his predominant characteristics:—

"The pope [Leo X] is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted man, who avoids every difficult situation and above all wants peace; he would not undertake a war himself unless his own personal interests were involved; he loves learning; of canon law and literature he possesses remarkable knowledge; he is, moreover, a very excellent musician."

Leo was dignified in appearance and elegant in speech, manners and writing. He enjoyed music and the theatre, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients and the wonderful creations of his contemporaries, the spiritual and the witty—life in every form.

It is by no means certain [what percent of history is "certain"?] that he [Leo X] made the remark often attributed to him,

"Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us,"

but there is little doubt that he [Leo X] was by nature devoid of moral earnestness or deep religious feeling.

On the other hand, in spite of his worldliness, Leo was not an unbeliever; he prayed, fasted, and participated in the services of the church with conscientiousness. To the virtues of liberality, charity and clemency he added the Machiavellian qualities of falsehood and shrewdness, so highly esteemed by the princes of his time. Leo was deemed fortunate by his contemporaries, but an incurable malady, wars, enemies, a conspiracy of cardinals, and the loss of all his nearest relations darkened his days; and he failed entirely in his general policy of expelling foreigners from Italy, of restoring peace throughout Europe, and of prosecuting war against the Turks. He failed to recognize the pressing need of reform within the church and the tremendous dangers which threatened the papal monarchy; and he unpardonably neglected the spiritual needs of the time. He was, however, zealous in firmly establishing the political power of the Holy See; he made it unquestionably supreme in Italy;

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he [LEO X] successfully restored the papal power in France; and he secured a prominent place in the history of culture.' [end of article, excepting "Authorities"] [436].

"Authorities." [436]

"....W. Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X. (6th ed., 2 vols., 1853), a celebrated biography but considerably out of date [another annoying dismissive comment. Newer than thou, ergo, holier than thou!] in spite of the valuable notes of the German and Italian translators, Henke and Bossi…."

"(C.H. Ha.)" [436].

["CARLTON HUNTLEY HAYES, A.M., Ph., Assistant Professor of History in Columbia University, New York City. Member of the American Historical Association." [vi]].

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[from: WorldCat: "The Encyclopaedia Britannica; the new volumes, constituting, in combination with the twenty-nine volumes of the eleventh edition, the twelfth edition ["1922" (E.B.)], of that work...."].

[Note: the THIRTEENTH EDITION, 1926, has the same article ("Renaissance", by John Addington Symonds), also, in Volume XXIII.

The quotation: "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!", also, is on page 87].

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from: The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Fourteenth Edition, A New Survey of Universal Knowledge, Volume 19, Raynal to Sarreguemines, The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company LTD., London, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. New York. 1929.

ARTICLE: "RENAISSANCE". [122]

'Valla [Lorenzo Valla c. 1406 – 1457] by one vigorous effort destroyed the False Decretals and exposed the Donation of Constantine to ridicule, paving the way for the polemic carried on against the dubious pretensions of the papal throne by scholars of the Reformation. A similar criticism, conducted less on lines of erudition than of persiflage and irony, ransacked the moral abuses of the Church and played around the very foundations of Christianity.

This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated

Leo X.'s witty epigram,

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"

The same critical and philosophic spirit working on the materials of history produced a new science, the honours of which belong to Machiavelli.' [127].

[Note: Wheless [see 20] has page 217 for this reference. OBSERVE the transposition of numbers (and subject matter)—by someone!].

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'In truth the Renaissance was ruled by no Astrae [Astraea] redux [written by John Dryden, 1660. "return of the reign of justice to the earth" (answers.com)] but rather by a severe spirit which brought no peace but a sword, reminding men of sternest duties, testing what of moral force and tenacity was in them, compelling them to strike for the old order or the new, suffering no lukewarm halting between two opinions. That, in spite of retardation and retrogression, the old order of ideas should have yielded to the new all over Europe—that science should have won firm standing-ground and political liberty should have struggled through those birth-throes of its origin—was in the nature of things. Had this not been, the Renaissance or re-birth of Europe would be a term without a meaning.

(J.A.S.) [John Addington Symonds 1840 – 1893]

[Preserved Smith, continues the article: "Renaissance"] While Symonds' article on the Renaissance, originally contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica remains the classical exposition of a certain view of the subject, more recent research has brought out other aspects of the matter. It is noteworthy, however, that in some important points the very latest investigators have returned to Symonds' conception of the Renaissance, from which historians of the generation immediately following him had departed.

Our continually growing knowledge of the middle ages has thrown the Renaissance into a very different perspective from that in which it was once viewed. Less and less are the centuries preceding the 15th seen as the "Dark Ages" in contrast to the sudden sunrise of modern times. Indeed, many scholars now speak of a Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th century, an Ottonian Renaissance in the 10th, and of the Renaissance of the 12th century, in order to emphasize the constant stream of light and progress through out the millennium once regarded as a long night of gloom and decadence. On the other hand, many scholars have emphasized even more than did Symonds the extreme gradualness of the efflorescence of the Italian Renaissance and the long persistence in it of mediaeval and Germanic elements. The extreme position is taken by Mr. Henry O. Taylor, who is so impressed by the slowness of the transition from mediaeval to modern times that he would abolish the term "Renaissance" altogether. This proposal, however, has commended itself to few other scholars;

there was a re-birth of the human mind in the 15th century, though it was not so sudden and decisive as once thought.

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In another way our view of the Renaissance has been greatly modified by the economic historians who have stressed the material antecedents of the great political and intellectual movements of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Symonds, like nearly all his contemporaries, wrote almost as if the change in the mental habit of the race were a first cause, unexplained by any alteration in social conditions. But it is now generally accepted that the intellectual change was but the natural result of material conditions altered by the growth of wealth, of commerce, and of city communities. The humanists and artists were dwellers in the cities and in the marts of trade; their patrons were largely found in the newly powerful bourgeoisie of the Italian and German cities. Of course the Renaissance had its intellectual as well as its material antecedents; it was produced by the happy creation in the commercial revolution of a wealthy and leisured class just at a time when discoveries and inventions were thrilling the mind of Western Europe with interest and curiosity. It was no accident that individualism, humanism, and Italian painting attained their majority in the age which saw the invention of printing and the great geographical discoveries of Diaz, of Vasco da Gama, and of Columbus.

Of all the positions taken by Symonds that most subject to attack has been his assertion of the close connection and similar purpose of the Renaissance and Reformation. Like most historians of the 19th century, Symonds regarded them both as liberal movements, emancipations of reason so nearly alike that the Reformation might be called "the Teutonic Renaissance." Just as he was writing, however, Friedrich Nietzsche [1844 – 1900], basing his opinion on Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, which represented the Reformation as a blight on German Catholic civilization, proclaimed that "the Reformation was a reaction of backward minds against the Italian Renaissance": and this view gained ground until it was adopted by Catholic historians like Lord Acton, Protestant historians like Ernst Troeltsch, and generally by the majority of scholars. They have pointed out that the humanists and Reformers came to blows, that

the spirit of the Renaissance was largely secular and

that of the Reformation intensely religious,

that the former was tolerant and often indifferent and skeptical and that the latter was usually intolerant, devout, and sometimes superstitious, that the humanists were aristocratic and the Reformers democratic in method, and that Puritanism proved hostile to and often destructive of the artistic and pleasure-seeking interests of the Renaissance. In criticism of this view, however, it has been contended that the Renaissance was not, any more than the Reformation, consciously progressive; rather did both movements find their ideal in the

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past, the one in the golden age of Rome and the other in the primitive age of Christianity. It has been further shown that the humanists did little in principle to emancipate the reason from authority [still weak in this regard?]; they were closely bound by their own authorities in the classical poets and orators, and could only attack the schoolmen [definition complex, and aspects disputed] on the basis of the ancient pagans as the Reformers attacked them ["schoolmen"] from the standpoint of the ancient Fathers. In conclusion one may say that neither movement was a conscious appeal to reason or an intentional step forward and away from the past, but that each accomplished, undesignedly, a great work of emancipation and that each created new cultural values.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The special articles on the several arts and literatures of modern Europe, and on the biographies of the great men mentioned in this essay, will give the details of necessity here omitted. Of general works, with bibliographies, may be mentioned Jakob Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien [see 48], called by Lord Acton, "the most penetrating and subtle treatise on the history of civilization that exists in literature" (Leipzig, 1st ed. 1860; 20th ed., revised by L. Geiger, 1919; Eng. trans. by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1875); W.H. Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873); J.A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy (1875-88); Cambridge Modern History, vol. I, "The Renaissance" (1902); A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance (1904); J.E. Sandys, Harvard Lectures on the Revival of Learning (1905) and a History of Classical Scholarship, vol. ii. (1908); W.H. Hudson, The Story of the Renaissance (1912); K. Burdach, Reformation, Renaissance, Humanismus (Berlin, 1918); H.O. Taylor, Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century (1920); P. Monnier, Le Quattrocento [fifteenth century]: essai sur l'histoire littéraire due XV^esiècle italien (2nd ed. 1920); F.J. Mather, History of Italian Painting in the Renaissance (1922); J. Huizinga, The Warning of the Middle Ages (1924); G. Scott, The Architecture of Humanism (2nd ed. 1924); F.J.C. Hearnshaw, The Social and Political Ideas of some Great Thinkers of the Renaissance and Reformation (1925); and E. Troeltsch, "Renaissance und Reformation" in Historische Zeitschrift (Munich, vol. cx. pp. 519 ff).

(P.S.) ["PRESERVED SMITH [1880 – 1941], LITT.D.

Professor of Mediaeval History, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Author of The Age of the Reformation; Life and Letters of Martin Luther." [xiv]]' [134-135].

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"RESPIRATION" [217]

[Note: This is the discovery of James Patrick Holding (see 9), pursuing an unknown transposed reference number (page "217", in Wheless, which should have been 127) [see 20]]

"Fig. 2.—SECTION OF A NORMAL LUNG OF GOAT (B) The termination of a small branchiole" [217].

"Fig. 3.—DIAGRAM OF THE LUNGS AND AIR SACS OF THE PIGEON" [217].

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[repeating, from page 10]

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!",

I have seen in the 9th, 11th, 13th and 14th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (and, the 10th and 12th editions, are reprints of the 9th and 11th editions (plus extra volumes)).

Note: from approximately 1883 to 1974 ("90" years!), the Encyclopaedia Britannica contained (contains) the article "Renaissance", by John Addington Symonds, with:

'This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram:

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"'

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from: The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 9, Micropaedia, Founded 1768, 15th Edition, Encyclopaedia Britannica, c1993 (15th Edition, c1974).

[article] 'Renaissance, literally "rebirth," the period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages, conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in classical learning and values.

The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, and mariner's compass, and gunpowder.

To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation....' [1019].

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See: http://www.christianism.com/, Article 19, pages 375-389: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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from: History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff [1819 – 1893], Christianus sum. Christiani nihil a me alienum puto, Volume VI, The Middle Ages, From Boniface VIII., 1294, to the Protestant Reformation, 1517, by David S. Schaff, D.D., Eerdmans, 1960–1968 (c1910) (1883 – 1893).

"LEO X. 1513–1521."

"The highest ecclesiastical offices were for sale, as in the reign of Alexander. Cardinal Innocent Cibo paid 30,000 ducats or, as another report went, 40,000, for his hat, and Francesco Armellini bought his for twice that amount.²" [493].

'The Vatican, Leo turned into a house of reveling and frivolity, the place of all others where the step and the voice of the man of God should have been heard. The Apostle, whom he had been taught to regard as his spiritual ancestor, accomplished his mission by readiness to undergo, if necessary, martyrdom. Leo despoiled his high office of its sacredness and prostituted it into a vehicle of his own carnal propensities. Had he followed the advice of his princely father, man of the world though he was, Leo X. would have escaped some of the reprobation which attaches to his name.

There is no sufficient evidence that Leo ever used the words ascribed to him,

"how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."¹

Such blasphemy we prefer not to associate with the de' Medici. Nevertheless, no sharper condemnation of one claiming to be Christ's vicar on earth could well be thought of than that which is carried by the words of Sarpi, the Catholic historian of the Council of Trent,² who said, "Leo would have been a perfect pope, if he had combined with his other good qualities a moderate knowledge of religion and a greater inclination to piety, for neither of which he shewed much concern."' [495].

[footnote] "¹Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo

fabula proSuerit, satis est omnibus saeculis notum.

The words, said to have been spoken to Cardinal Bembo, were noted down for the first time by Bale in his Pageant of the Popes, ed. 1574 [1558, Latin (see 166)], p. 179. Bale, bishop of Ossory, had been a Carmelite." [495].

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'Intellectual freedom in Italy assumed the form of unrestrained indulgence of the sensual nature. In condemning the virginity extolled by the Church, Beccadelli pronounced it a sin against nature. Nature is good, and he urged men to break down the law by mixing with nuns.¹ The hetaerae were of greater service to mankind than monastic recluses. Illegitimacy, as has already been said, was no bar to high position in the state or the Church. Aeneas Sylvius declared that most of the rulers in Italy had been born out of wedlock,² and when, as pope, he arrived in Ferrara, 1459, he was met by eight princes, not a single one of them the child of legitimate marriage. The appearance of the Gallic disease in Italy at the close of the 15th century may have made men cautious; the rumor went that Julius II., who did not cross his legs at public service on a certain festival, was one of its victims.³ Aretino wrote that the times were so debauched that cousins and kinsfolk of both sexes, brothers and sisters, mingled together without number and without a shadow of conscientious scruple.⁴

What else could be expected than the poisoning of all grades of society when, at the central court of Christendom, the fountain was so corrupt. The revels in the Vatican under Alexander VI. and the levity of the court of Leo X. furnished a spectacle which the most virtuous principles could scarcely be expected to resist. Did not a harlequin monk on one occasion furnish the mirth at Leo's table by his extraordinary voracity in swallowing a pigeon whole, and consuming forty eggs and twenty capons in succession! Innocent VIII.'s son was married to a daughter of the house of the Medici, and Alexander's son was married into the royal family of France and his daughter, Lucrezia into the scarcely less proud family of Este. Sixtus IV. taxed and thereby legalized houses of prostitution for the increase of the revenues of the curia. The 6,800 public prostitutes in Rome in 1490, if we accept Infesura's figures, were an enormous number in proportion to the population. This Roman diarist says that scarcely a priest was to be found in Rome who did not keep a concubine "for the glory of God and the Christian religion." All parts of Italy and Spain contributed to the number of courtesans. They lived in greater splendor in Rome than the hetaerae in Athens, and bore classical names, such as Diana, Lucrezia, Camilla, Giulia, Costanza, Imperia, Beatrice. They were accompanied on their promenades and walks to church by poets, counts and prelates, but usually concluded their gilded misery in hospitals [?] after their beauty had faded away [classic Christian moralizing (disparaging)].¹

The almost nameless vice of the ancient world also found its way into Italy, and Humanists and sons of popes like the son of Paul III., Pierluigi Farnese, if not popes themselves, were charged with pederasty. In his 7th satire, Ariosto, d. 1533, went so far as to say it was the vice of almost all the Humanists. For being addicted to it, a Venetian ambassador lost his position,

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and the charge was brought against the Venetian annalist [historian], Sanuto. Politian, Valla and Aretino and the academicians of Rome had the same accusation laid at their door. The worst cannot be told, so abhorrent to the prime instincts of humanity do the crimes against morality seem. No wonder that Symonds speaks of "an enervation of Italian society in worse than heathen vices."²

To licentiousness were added luxury, gaming, the vendetta or the law of blood-revenge, and murder paid for by third parties. Life was cheap where revenge, a licentious end or the gain of power was a motive. Cardinals added benefice to benefice in order to secure the means of gratifying their luxurious tastes.¹ In the middle of the16th century, Italy, says Burckhardt [see 48], was in a moral crisis, out of which the best men saw no escape. In the opinion of Symonds [see 53], who has written seven volumes on the Renaissance, it is "almost impossible to overestimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the 16th century.["] And Gregorovius [Ferdinand Gregorovius 1821 – 1891] adds that "the richest intellectual life blossomed in a swamp of vices."²' [613-615].

"The famous tract, the Beggars' Petition, written on the eve of the British Reformation, accused the clergy of having no other serious occupation than the destruction of the peace of family life and the corruption of women.⁴" [669].

[footnote] '⁴Froude [see 367] puts the composition of this tract in 1528.

The 16th complaint runs: "Who is she that will set her hands to work to get 3 pence a day and may have at least 20 pence a day to sleep an hour with a friar, a monk or a priest. Who is she that would labor for a groat a day and may have at least 12 pence a day to be a bawd to a priest, monk or friar?"' [669-670].

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5. Reference to (from James Patrick Holding):

"And speaking of Wheless—in doing my trace on this quote, I found that he is actually one of the earliest persons who made use of this quote for skeptical purposes; the other earliest person was Robert Taylor—author from the 19th century of his own ridiculous works, including one claiming that the entire Bible was written by Egyptian monks in 250 BC [Diegesis, 429], and he uses a slightly different version of the quote. In the process of research I scoured the web for any pages that were using this quote, to see if anyone could give me a source earlier than Taylor…."

Comment (LS): the above underlined comment, by James Patrick Holding, is erroneous; an attempt to dismiss the phenomenon—Robert Taylor. See below.

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from: The Diegesis ["statement of the case" (O.E.D.)]; Being a Discovery of the Origin, Evidences, and Early History of Christianity, Never Yet Before or Elsewhere so Fully and Faithfully set forth. By the Rev. Robert Taylor [1784 – 1844], A.B. & M.R.C.S. London: Richard Carlile [1790 – 1843], 62, Fleet Street; John Brooks, 421 Oxford Street. 1829. [one of my treasures].

"JEWISH AUTHORS.

A.D. 40. Philo Judaeus, a native of Alexandria, of a priest's family, and brother to the alabarch, or chief Jewish magistrate in that city. See the large use of his testimony by Eusebius, given in this DIEGESIS.

A.D. 67. T. Flavius Josephus, the well known historian, or rather mythographist of the Jewish wars.

[apparently, an excursus] The version or first translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek, made by 70 or 72 translators called in proof, the Septuagint is properly the Alexandrian version, as having been made at Alexandria in Egypt, about 250 years B.C.

Not only the Old Testament, but the New, was entirely concocted and got up by these Egyptian monks, who from their far famed university of Alexandria, dealt out at their pleasure, the credenda that have since regulated the faith, and subjugated the reason of mankind.

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In a word, we owe every iota of the Christian religion to the Egyptian monks, and the facilities afforded for overbearing the resistance of reason and common sense, by the collecting and bringing together of all the powers of imposture into the first of these mischievous and wicked cabals, those chartered phalanxes of confederated knaves, which have since been called universities. [apparently, end of excursus]

A.D. 128. Aquila of Pontus, a Gentile convert to the Christian faith, lapsed into Judaism, and translated the Old Testament...." [429].

[footnote (not referenced above)] '*In the year 1444, Caxton published the first book ever printed in England. In 1474, the then Bishop of London, in a convocation of his clergy, said, "If we do not destroy this dangerous invention, it will one day destroy us." The reader should compare

Pope Leo the Tenth's avowal, that "it was well known how

profitable this fable of Christ has been to us: "

with Mr. Beard's Apology for it, in his third letter to the Rev. Robert Taylor, page 74, and Archdeacon Paley's declaration, that "he could not afford to have a conscience."—See Life of the Author attached to his work on the Evidences of Christianity, p. 11 London 12mo. edit. 1826.' [35].

"DR. LARDNER'S TABLE.

Dr. Lardner's Plan of the Times and Places of writing the Four

Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

(Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. i. p. iv.)

*Gospels*	*Places.*	*A.D.*
St. Matthew's	Judea, or near it.	About 64
St. Mark's	Rome.	64
St. Luke's	Greece.	63 or 64
St. John's	Ephesus.	68
The Acts of the Apostles	Greece.	63 or 64" [113].

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"A Table of St. Paul's Epistles in the Order of Time; with the Places where, and the Times when, they were written."

[dates vary from 52 – 63 A.D.] [113].

"A Table of the Seven Catholic Epistles, and the Revelation, with the Places where, and the Times when, they were written."

[dates vary from 62 – 96 A.D.] [113].

"Thus, after Europe and all Christian communities have been for so many ages led to believe that in the four gospels they possessed the best translations that could be derived, in their several languages, from the original inspired text of immediate disciples and contemporaries of Christ; it is at length admitted, that mankind have been and are egregiously deceived.

1. It is admitted, that these gospels were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed;

2. That Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were only translators or copyists of previously existing documents;

3. Composed by we know not whom;

4. We know not how;

5. We know not where;

6. WE KNOW NOT WHEN; [probably, after 180 B.C.E. (see christianism.com, Article #25, 550)]

7. And containing we know not what. The very first assertion in the title-page of our New Testament, in stating that it is translated from the original Greek, involves a fallacy; since it is absolutely certain that the Greek, from which our translations were made, was well nigh as far from being original, as the translations themselves, and it is absolutely uncertain what the original was." [137].

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Comment (LS): note found inside this (my) 1829 book (The Diegesis): old (hand made?) paper: 10.9 x 7.5 centimeters; pencil, quite legible writing:

'"The Hebrew who believes in Moses can show no other ground for his faith than a number of books which tell of Moses, his genealogy, his acts, his laws, his character, & his death. Yet when an independent inquirer subjects these books, & the accounts which they contain, to a rigid examination, he finds evidence that the writings are fabrications of a period at least a full thousand years after the era of their supposed epoch—probably more; and that all collateral testimony & internal evidence drawn from the books themselves disprove the actual existence of Moses"

"To the scholar, the Hebrew lawgiver [Moses] is as apocrYphal or fictitious a being as Hercules["]'

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from: History of The Christian Church, by Philip Schaff [1819 – 1893], Volume VII, Modern Christianity, The German Reformation, Eerdmans, 1960–1968 (c1910) (1883–1893).

"This volume constitutes the first part of

THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION

by Philip Schaff

It is included as Volume VII in the 8-volume

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

Volume VIII in this series, on the Swiss

Reformation, completes the 2-volume unit

on The History of the Reformation"

"ERASMUS [see 338–508, passim]." [399]

'In his will, dated Feb. 12, 1536, he [Erasmus c. 1466 – 1536] left his valuables to Froben, Rhenanus, and other friends, and the rest to the aged and poor and for the education of young men of promise.² The funeral was attended by distinguished men of both parties. He [Erasmus] lies buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel, where his memory is cherished.

Erasmus was of small stature, but well formed. He had a delicate constitution, an irritable temperament, fair skin, blonde hair, wrinkled forehead, blue eyes, and pleasant voice. His face had an expression of thoughtfulness and quiet studiousness.³ In his behavior he combined dignity and grace. "His manners and conversation," says Beatus Rhenanus, "were polished, affable, and even charming."

He [Erasmus] talked and wrote in Latin, the universal language of scholars in mediaeval Europe. He handled it as a living language, with ease, elegance, and effect, though not with classical correctness. His style was Ciceronian, but modified by the ecclesiastical vocabulary of Jerome. In his dialogue "Ciceronianus," or on the best mode of speaking (1528), he ridicules those pedantic semi-pagans, chiefly Italians, who worshiped and aped Cicero, and avoided Christian themes, or borrowed names and titles from heathen mythology. He [Erasmus] had, however, the greatest respect for Cicero, and hoped that "he is now living peacefully in heaven."

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He [Erasmus] learned neither German nor English nor Italian, and had only an imperfect knowledge of French, and even of his native Dutch.

He had a nervous sensibility. The least draught made him feverish. He could not bear the iron stoves of Germany, and required an open fireplace. He could drink no wine but Burgundy. He abhorred intemperance. He could not eat fish on fast days; the mere smell of it made him sick; his heart, he said, was Catholic, but his stomach Lutheran. He never used spectacles either by day or by candle-light, and many wondered that study had not blinded his eyes. He walked firm and erect without a cane. His favorite exercise was horseback-riding.¹ [see footnote, 47] He usually traveled on horseback with an attendant, and carried his necessaries, including a shirt, a linen nightcap, and a prayer-book, in a knapsack tied to the saddle. He shrank from the mere mention of death [see christianism.com, 2939-3058], and frankly confessed that he was not born to be a martyr, but would in the hour of trial be tempted to follow St. Peter. He [Erasmus] was fond of children, and charitable to the poor.

His Theological Opinions.

Erasmus was, like most of the German and English humanists, a sincere and enlightened believer in Christianity, and differed in this respect from the frivolous and infidel humanists of France and Italy. When charged by Prince Albertus Pius of Capri, who was in high favor at the papal court, with turning sacred things into ridicule, he answered, "You will much more readily find scoffers at sacred things in Italy among men of your own rank, ay, and in your much-lauded Rome, than with us. I could not endure to sit down at table with such men." He devoted his brilliant genius and classical lore to the service of religion. He revered the Bible as a divine revelation, and zealously promoted its study. He anticipated Luther in the supreme estimate of the world of God as the true source of theology and piety. Oecolampadius confessed that he learned from Erasmus "nihil in saris scripturis praeter Christum quaerendum."

He had a sharp eye to the abuses of the Church, and endeavored to reform them in a peaceful way. He wished to lead theology back from the unfruitful speculations and frivolous subtleties of scholasticism to Scriptural simplicity, and to promote an inward, spiritual piety. He keenly ridiculed the foolish and frivolous discussions of the schoolmen about formalities and quiddities, and such questions as whether God could have assumed the form of a woman, or an ass, or a cucumber, or a flint-stone; whether the Virgin Mary was learned in the languages; and whether we would eat and drink after the resurrection. He exposed the vices and follies, the ignorance and superstition, of the monks and clergy. He did not spare even the papacy. "I have no desire [see christianism.com, 2582]," he wrote in 1523, "that the primacy of the

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Roman See should be abolished, but I could wish that its discipline were such as to favor every effort to promote the religion of the gospel; for several ages past it has by its example openly taught things that are plainly averse to the doctrines of Christ."

At the same time he lacked a deeper insight into the doctrines of sin and grace, and failed to find a positive remedy for the evils he complained of. In using the dangerous power of ridicule and satire which he shared with Lucian, he sometimes came near the line of profanity. Moreover, he [Erasmus] had a decidedly skeptical vein, and in the present century he would probably be a moderate Rationalist.

With his critical faculty he saw the difficulties and differences in the human surroundings and circumstances of the Divine Scriptures. He omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, and only inserted it under protest in the third edition(1522), because he had rashly promised to do so if a single Greek MS. could be found to contain it.¹ He doubted the genuineness of the pericope of the adulteress (John 8:1–11), though he retained it in the text. He disputed the orthodox punctuation of Rom. 9:5. He rejected the Pauline origin of Hebrews, and questioned the Johannean authorship of the Apocalypse. He [Erasmus] judged Mark to be an abridgment of Matthew. He admitted lapses of memory and errors of judgment in the Apostles. He denied any other punishment in hell except "the perpetual anguish of mind which accompanies habitual sin." As to the Lord's Supper, he said, when asked his opinion by the magistrate of Basel about the book of Oecolampadius and his figurative interpretation,² that it was learned, eloquent, well written, and pious, but contrary to the general belief of the church from which it was dangerous to depart. There is good reason to believe that he doubted transubstantiation. He was also suspected of leaning to Arianism, because he summed up the teaching of Scripture on the Trinity in this sentence: "The Father is very frequently called God, the Son sometimes, the Holy Spirit never;" and he adds: "Many of the fathers who worshiped the Son with the greatest piety, yet scrupled to use the word homoousion, which is nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture."³ He moderated the doctrine of hereditary sin, and defended human freedom in his notes on Romans. He emphasized the moral, and depreciated the doctrinal, element in Christianity. He deemed the Apostles' Creed sufficient, and was willing to allow within this limit freedom for theological opinions. "Reduce the number of dogmas," he advised Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, "to a minimum; you can do it without injury to Christianity; on other points, leave every one free to believe what he pleases; then religion will take hold on life, and you can correct the abuses of which the world justly complains."

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He [Erasmus] had a high opinion of the morality and piety of the nobler heathen, such as Socrates, Cicero, and Plutarch. "The Scriptures," he says in his Colloquies, "deserve, indeed, the highest authority; but I find also in the writings of the ancient heathen and in the poets so much that is pure, holy and divine, that I must believe that their hearts were divinely moved. The spirit of Christ is perhaps more widely diffused than we imagine, and many will appear among the saints who are not in our catalogue."¹ Then, after quoting from Cicero and Socrates, he says, "I can often hardly restrain myself from exclaiming, 'Holy Socrates, pray for us.'"

The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli.

Bigoted Catholics hated and feared him [Erasmus], as much as the liberal admired and lauded him. "He [Erasmus] laid the egg," they said, "which Luther hatched."² They perverted his name into Errasmus because of his errors, Arasmus because he ploughed up old truths and traditions, Erasinus because he had made himself an ass by his writings. They even called him Behemoth and Antichrist. The Sorbonne condemned thirty-seven articles extracted from his writings in 1527.

His [Erasmus'] books were burned in Spain, and long after his death placed on the Index in Rome.

In his last word to his popish enemies who identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he [Erasmus] writes:

"For the future I despise them, and I wish I had always done so; for it is no pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout defiance of divine and human laws, 'We ought to obey God rather than men.' That was well said by the Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety; only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye well."¹

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His Works.

The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes:—

I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvelous industry and enterprise.

He [Erasmus] published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian.

He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516–1518; ed. ii., 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1530), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the "Christian Demosthenes"), Origen (in Latin, 1536). He wrote the prefaces and dedications.

He published the Annotations of Laurentius [also, Lorenzo] Valla

[c. 1406 – 1457] on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library....' [410-415].

[footnote (see 44)] '¹In thanking Archbishop Warham of Canterbury

[c. 1450 – 1532] for the present of a horse, he thus humorously describes the animal:

"I have received the horse, which is no beauty, but a good creature notwithstanding; for he is free from all the mortal sins, except gluttony and laziness; and he is adorned with all the virtues of a good confessor, being pious, prudent, humble, modest, sober, chaste, and quiet, and neither bites nor kicks."

To Polydore Virgil [or Vergil, c. 1470 – 1555], who sent him money to procure a horse, he replied, "I wish you could give me any thing to cure the rider."

("Dedisti quo Paretur equus, utinam dare possis quo REPARETUR eques."

—Op. III. 934.)' [411].

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from: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt [1818 – 1897], translation by S.G.C. Middlemore, With Two Hundred and Forty-Three Illustrations, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd. London, Bombay, Sydney, 1929 (1860 German).

"But all of who thought it possible to construct a state the greatest beyond all comparison was Machiavelli [1469 – 1527].³ ….

His [Machiavelli's] most complete programme for the construction of a new political system at Florence is set forth in the memorial to Leo X,⁵ composed after the death of the younger Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino (d. 1519), to whom he [Machiavelli] had dedicated his Prince. The State was by that time in extremities and utterly corrupt, and the remedies proposed are not always morally justifiable...." [104].

"MODERN WIT AND SATIRE" [169]

'Florence, the great market of fame, was in this point, as we have said, in advance of other cities. "Sharp eyes and bad tongues" is the description given of the inhabitants.² An easy-going contempt of everything and everybody was probably the prevailing tone of society. Machiavelli, in the remarkable prologue to his Mandragola, refers rightly or wrongly the visible decline of moral force to the general habit of evil speaking, and threatens his detractors with the news that he can say sharp things as well as they. Next to Florence comes the Papal Court, which had long been a rendezvous of the bitterest and wittiest tongues. Poggio's Facetiae are dated from the Chamber of Lies (bugiale) of the apostolic notaries; and when we remember the number of disappointed place-hunters, of hopeless competitors and enemies of the favourites, of idle, profligate prelates there assembled, it is intelligible how Rome became the home of the savage pasquinade [see 245-274] as well as of more philosophical satire. If we add to this the wide-spread hatred borne to the priests, and the well-known instinct of the mob to lay any horror to the charge of the great, there results an untold mass of infamy.³Those who were able protected themselves best by contempt both of the false and true accusations, and by brilliant and joyous display.¹ More sensitive natures sank into utter despair when they found themselves deeply involved in guilt, and still more deeply in slander.² In course of time calumny became universal, and the strictest virtue was most certain of all to challenge the attacks of malice. Of the great pulpit orator Fra Edgidio of Viterbo, whom Leo [Leo X] made a cardinal on account of his merits, and who showed himself a man of the people and a brave monk in the calamity of 1527,³ Giovio gives us to understand

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that he preserved his ascetic pallor by the smoke of wet straw and other means of the same kind. Giovio is a genuine Curial in these matters.⁴ He generally begins by telling his story, then adds that he does not believe it, and then hints at the end that perhaps after all there may be something in it. But the true scapegoat of Roman scorn was the pious and moral Adrian VI [Pope 1522 – 1523 (1459 – 1523)]. A general agreement seemed to be made to take him only to the comic side. Adrian had contemptuously referred to the Laocoön group as idola antiquorum, had shut up the entrance to the Belvedere, had left the works of Raphael unfinished, and had banished the poets and players from the Court; it was even feared that he would burn some ancient statues to lime for the new church of St Peter. He [Adrian VI] fell out from the first with the formidable Francesco Berni, threatening to have thrown into the Tiber not, as people said,⁵ the statue of Pasquino, but the writers of the satires themselves....' [168-169].

"Let us rather pause at the days of Leo X [Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)], under whom the enjoyment of antiquity combined with all other pleasures to give to Roman life a unique stamp and consideration.² The Vatican resounded with song and music, and their echoes were heard through the city as a call to joy and gladness, though Leo did not succeed thereby in banishing care and pain from his own life, and his deliberate calculation to prolong his days by cheerfulness was frustrated by an early death.³" [193].

'Whatever influence in Europe the Italian humanists have had since 1520 depends in some way or other on the impulse which was given by Leo.

He was the Pope who in granting permission to print the newly found Tacitus¹ could say that the great writers were a rule of life and a consolation in misfortune; that helping learned men and obtaining excellent books had ever been one of his highest aims; and that he now thanked heaven that he could benefit the human race by furthering the publication of this book." [231].

"The fame of Sannazaro [1458 – 1530], the number of his imitators, the enthusiastic homage which was paid to him by the greatest men—by Bembo, who wrote his epitaph, and by Titian, who painted his portrait—all show how dear and necessary he was to his age. On the threshold of the Reformation he [Sannazaro] solved for the Church the problem whether it were

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possible for a poet to be a Christian as well as a classic; and both Leo and Clement were loud in their thanks for his achievements." [262].

'The Latin epigram finally became in those days an affair of serious importance, since a few clever lines, engraved on a monument or quoted with laughter in society, could lay the foundation of a scholar's celebrity. This tendency showed itself early in Italy. When it was known that Guido della Polenta wished to erect a monument at Dante's grave epitaphs poured in from all directions,² "written by such as wished to show themselves, or to honour the dead poet, or to win the favour of Polenta." On the tomb of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti (d. 1354) in the cathedral at Milan we read at the foot of thirty-six hexameters: "Master Gabrius di Zamoreis of Parma, Doctor of Laws, wrote these verses." In course of time, chiefly under the influence of Martial, and partly of Catullus, an extensive literature of this sort was formed. It was held the greatest of all triumphs when an epigram was mistaken for a genuine copy from some old marble,³ [see footnote, 51] or when it was so good that all Italy learned it by heart, as happened in the case of some of Bembo's. When the Venetian Government paid Sannazaro six hundred ducats for a eulogy in three distichs⁴ no one thought it an act of generous prodigality. The epigram was prized for what it was, in truth, to all the educated classes of that age—the concentrated essence of fame. Nor, on the other hand, was any man then so powerful as to be above the reach of a satirical epigram, and even the most powerful needed, for every inscription which they set before the public eye, the aid of careful and learned scholars, lest some blunder or other should qualify it for a place in the collections of ludicrous epitaphs.⁵ The epigraph and the epigram were branches of the same pursuit; the reproduction of the former was based on a diligent study of ancient monuments.

The city of epigrams and inscriptions ["epigraphs"] was, above all others, Rome. In this state without hereditary honours each man had to look after his own immortality, and at the same time found the epigram an effective weapon against his competitors. Pius II counts with satisfaction the distichs which his chief poet, Campanus, wrote on any event of his government which could be turned to poetical account.

Under the following Popes satirical epigrams came into fashion, and reached, in the opposition to Alexander VI [Pope 1492 – 1503 (1431 – 1503)] and his family, the highest pitch of defiant invective.

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Sannazaro, it is true, wrote his verses in a place of comparative safety, but others in the immediate neighbourhood of the Court ventured on the most reckless attacks (p. 129). On one occasion when eight threatening distichs were found fastened to the door of the library¹ Alexander strengthened his guard by eight hundred men; we can imagine what he would have done to the poet if he had caught him. Under Leo X Latin epigrams were like daily bread. For complimenting or for reviling the Pope, for punishing enemies and victims, named or unnamed, for real or imaginary subjects of wit, malice, grief, or contemplation, no form was held more suitable. On the famous group of the Virgin with Saint Anna and the Child, which Andrea Sansovino carved for S. Agostino, no fewer than a hundred and twenty persons wrote Latin verses, not so much , it is true, from devotion, as from regard for the patron who ordered the work.² This man, Johann Goritz of Luxemburg, Papal referendary of petitions, not only held a religious service on the feast of St Anna, but gave a great literary dinner in his garden on the slopes of the Capitol. It was then worth while to pass in review, in a long poem, De Poetis Urbanis, the whole crowd of singers who sought their fortune at the Court of Leo. This was done by Franciscus Arsillus³—a man who needed the patronage neither of Pope nor prince, and who dared to speak his mind, even against his colleagues. The epigram survived the pontificate of Paul III only in a few rare echoes, while the epigraph continued to flourish till the seventeenth century, when it perished finally of bombast.' [269-270].

[footnote (see 50)] '³Sannazaro ridicules a man who importuned him with such forgeries: "Sint vetera haec aliis, mi nova semper erunt." (Ad Rufum, Opera, fol. 41a, 1535).' [269].

"Rome, however, possessed in the unique Court of Leo X a society to which the history of the world offers no parallel." [381].

_____ _____ _____

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from: Judgments on History and Historians, by Jacob Burckhardt [1818 – 1897], translated by Harry Zohn, with an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper [1914 – 2003], Beacon Press, c1958 (1942 German) (1929 German) ("Burckhardt's lecture notes for his history courses at the University of Basel during the period from 1865 – 1885." (xxiii)).

"Introduction"

'....The "general crisis" of the nineteenth century seemed to him [Jacob Burckhardt] like the crisis of the Roman Empire. Then too—and perhaps then only—the old ruling classes had lost control and the masses had broken through. Conventional historians looked back with complacency and disdain to the Roman Empire of the third century A.D., but Burckhardt, who never despised or condescended to the past, refused to imitate them. Recognizing the predicament, he could admire the courage of those great military usurpers who shouldered the burden under which each in turn would founder. But who, in the end, had saved not indeed the Empire but the Greco-Roman civilization of which it was the carrier? It was, he replied, the anchorites, the ascetics of the Christian church. Without them the Middle Ages, the rule of the barbarians, "would have been a den of murderers." Even so today, in "the crisis of the declining nineteenth century," said Burckhardt, "things can only be changed by ascetics, men who are independent of the enormously expensive life of the great cities." In the new great city of Basel, Burckhardt, living sparely in two rooms above a baker's shop, became himself something of an anchorite, as he sought in the study of past history what was worthy of note to his own age and might dispel "the clouds which hang over the end of our century."' [xvi-xvii].

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from: Renaissance in Italy, The Age of the Despots, John Addington Symonds [1840 – 1893], Second Edition, "Vol. 1", Smith, Elder, 1898 (1880 second edition) (1875).

"'When the Pope [Leo X, Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)] was made, he said to Giuliano [brother] (Duke of Nemours):

Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it [TO] us—godiamoci il Papato, poichè Dio ce l' ha dato.'²

[Comment: years ago, I (LS) placed this on christianism.com (because others had made much of it). I laughed when I first saw it. What was a brother expected to say? "Okay brother! I'm Pope! On your knees and pray, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!"]

It was in this spirit that Leo administered the Holy See." [342].

"Francesco Guicciardini [1483 – 1540] was born in 1482. In 1505, at the age of twenty-three, he had already so distinguished himself as a student of law

that he was appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the Institutes in public....

Leo who had the faculty of discerning able men and making use of them, took him [Francesco Guicciardini] into favour, and three years later appointed him Governor of Reggio [1516] and Modena [1517]." [233].

[footnote (not referenced above)] "¹The infamous stories about Sixtus [Sixtus IV.] and Alexander [Alexander VI.] may in part be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to epigrams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura, Burchard, and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two Popes such traits of character and such abominable actions as render the worst calumnies probable. Infessura [Stefano Infessura c. 1435 – c. 1500], though he expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his own eyes. Burchard [Johann Burchard c. 1450 – 1506] was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies, who reported the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more valuable than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman emperors. The despatches of the Venetian ambassadors,

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again, are trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political intention and not for the sake of gossip [?]." [304-305].

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from: Renaissance in Italy, The Revival of Learning, John Addington Symonds [1840 – 1893], Second Edition, "Vol. 2", Smith, Elder, 1898 (1880 second edition) (1875).

"As patriotism gave way to cosmopolitan enthusiasm, and toleration took the place of earnestness, in like manner the conflict of mediaeval tradition with revived Paganism in the minds of these self-reliant men, trained to indulgence by their large commerce with the world, and familiarized with impiety by the ever-present pageant of an anti-Christian Church, led, as I have hinted, to recklessness and worldly vices, rather than to reformed religion. Contented with themselves and their surroundings, they felt none of the unsatisfied cravings after the infinite, none of the mysterious intuitions and ascetic raptures, the self-abasements and transfigurations, stigmata and beatific visions, of the Middle Ages. The plenitude of life within them seemed to justify their instincts and their impulses, however varied and discordant these might be. The sonorous current of the world around them drowned the voice of conscience, the suggestion of religious scruples. It is only thus we can explain to ourselves the attitude of such men as Sixtus [Sixtus IV.] and Alexander [Alexander VI.], serenely vicious in extreme old age. The gratification of their egotism was so complete as to exclude self-judgment by the rules and standards they professionally applied; their personality was too exacting to admit of hesitation when their instincts were concerned; in common with their age they had lost sight of all but mundane aims and interests.

Three aphorisms, severally attributed to three representative Italians, may be quoted in illustration of these remarks.

'You follow infinite objects; I follow the finite;' said Cosimo de' Medici [1389 – 1464]; 'you place your ladders in the heavens; I on earth, that I may not seek so high or fall so low.'

'If we are not ourselves pious,' said Julius II. [Pope 1503 – 1513 (1443 – 1513)], 'why should we prevent other people from being so?'

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'Let us enjoy the Papacy,' said Leo X. [Pope 1513 – 1521 (1475 – 1521)], 'now that God has given it to us.'" [12-13].

"Classical style being the requirement of the age, it followed that everything was sacrificed to this.

In christening their children the great families abandoned the saints of the calendar and chose names from mythology.

Ettorre, Achille, Atalanta, Pentesilea, Lucrezia, Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale, Laomedonte, Fedro, Ippolito, and many other antique titles became fashionable. Those who were able to do so turned their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus or Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius for Antonio, Lucius Grassus for Luca Grasso; the German prelate John Goritz was known as Corycius,¹ and the Roman professor Gianpaolo Parisio as Janus Parrhasius. Writers who undertook to treat of modern or religious themes, were driven by their zeal for purism to the strangest expedients of

¹Namque sub Cebaliae memini me turribus altis

Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus

Corycium vidisse senem.—Virg. Georg. lib. iv. 125.

language. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth century, is Jupiter Optimus Maximus; Providence becomes Fatum; the saints are Divi, and their statues simulacra sancta Deorum. Our Lady of Loreto is changed into Dea Lauretana, Peter and Paul into Dii tutelares Romae, the souls of the just into Manes pii, and the Pope's excommunication into Divae. The Holy Father himself takes the style of Pontifex Maximus; his tiara, by a wild confusion of ideas, is described as infula Romulea. Nuns are Vestals, and the cardinals Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were found, whereof the following may be cited as a fair specimen:¹ 'Verum accidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram, ipse piae rei caussâ septem sacrosancta Divûm pulvinaria supplicaturus inviserit; errant enim lustrici dies, quos unoquoque anno quadragenos purificatione consecravit nostra pietas.'

It need hardly be added that, when the obligations of Latinity had reached this point,

to read Cicero [106 – 43 B.C.E.] was of far more importance than to study the Fathers of the Church.

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Bembo [Pietro Bembo 1470 – 1547], it is well known, advised Sadoleto [jacopo sadoleto 1477 – 1547] to 'avoid the Epistles of S. Paul [Sadoleto wrote on S. Paul (see 125)],

lest his barbarous["spin" translation (see below: "ineptiae")] style should spoil your taste: Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem virum tales ineptiae ["ineptiae": "sillinesses, fooleries, trifles, absurdities" (A Latin Dictionary, 1962 (1879)). "instances of folly (in behaviour, word, thought, etc."), absurdities, frivolities, etc." (Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1968)].'

The extent, however, to which formal purism in Latinity was carried, may be best observed in the 'Christiad' of Vida [Marco Girolamo Vida 1485? – 1566], and the poem 'De Partu Virginis' of Sannazzaro [Jacopo Sannazaro 1458 – 1530].² Sannazzaro not only invokes the muses of Helicon to sing the birth of Christ, but he also makes Proteus prophesy his advent to the river-god of Jordan. The archangel discovers Mary—described by the poet as spes fida Deorum—intent on reading nothing less humanistic than the Sibyls; and after she has received his message, the spirits of the patriarchs are said to shout because they will escape from Tartarus and Acheron and the hideous baying of the triple-throated hound." [287-289].

"The reign of Leo was about to shed new luster on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation to his brother [Giuliano]

'Godiamoci il Papato poichè Dio ce l' ha dato,' [Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it to us]

had a ring of promise in it for their numerous friends and clients. Even with the recommendation of Giuliano,

it is not likely that Leo would have overlooked a man so wholly after his own heart as Bembo.

The qualities he most admired—smooth manners, a handsome person, wit in conversation, and thorough mastery of Latin style, without pretension to deep learning or much earnestness of purpose—were incarnate in the courtly Venetian. Bembo was precisely the man to make Leo's life agreeable by flattering his superficial tastes and subordinating the faculties of a highly cultivated mind to frivolous, if intellectual, amusements. The churchman who warned Sadoleto against spoiling his style by study of the Bible, the prosaist who passed his compositions through sixteen portfolios, revising them at each remove, the versifier [Bembo] who penned a hymn to S. Stephen and a

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monologue for Priapus with equal elegance, was cast in the same mould as the pleasure-loving Pontiff. For eight years he lived at Rome, honoured by the Medici and loved by all who knew him. His [Bembo] duties as secretary to Leo, shared by his old friend and fellow-student Sadoleto, were not onerous; while the society of the capital afforded opportunity for the display of his most brilliant gifts. In 1520, wearied by nearly thirty years of continual Court life, and broken down in health by severe sickness, Bembo retired to Padua. The collection of a library and museum, horticulture, correspondence, and the cultivation of his studied Ciceronian style now occupied his leisure through nineteen most disastrous years for Italy. The learned courtiers of that age liked thus to play the Roman in their villas, quoting Horace and Virgil on the charms of rustic life, and fancying they caught the spirit of Cincinnatus while they strolled about the farm. Bembo's Paduan retreat became the rendezvous of all the ablest men in Italy, the centre of a fluctuating society of highest culture. Paul III. recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal in 1539." [298-299].

"SANNAZZARO'S [Jacopo Sannazaro 1458 – 1530] EPIGRAMS."

"Sannazzaro's own elegies on the joys of love and country life, the descriptions of his boyhood at Salerno, the praises of his Villa Mergillina, and his mediations among the ruins of Cumae, are marked by the same characteristics. Nothing quite so full of sensual enjoyment, so soft, and so voluptuous can be found in the poems of the Florentine and Roman scholars. They deserve study, if only as illustrating the luxurious tone of literature at Naples. It was not by these lighter effusions, however, that Sannazzaro won his fame. The epic on the birth of Christ cost him twenty years of labour; and when it was finished, the learned world of Italy welcomed it as a model of correct and polished writing. At the same time the critics seem to have felt, what cannot fail to strike a modern reader, that the difficulties of treating such a theme in the Virgilian manner, and the patience of the stylist, had rendered it a masterpiece of ingenuity rather than a work of genius.¹

Sannazzaro's epigrams, composed in the spirit of bitterest hostility towards the Borgia family, were not less famous than his epic [De partu virginis].

Alfonso of Aragon took the poet with him during his campaign against the Papal force in the Abruzzi; and these satires, hastily written in the tent and by the camp-fire, formed the amusement of his officers.

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From the soldiers of Alfonso they speedily passed, on the lips of courtiers and scholars, through all the cities of Italy; nor is it easy to say how much of Lucrezia Borgia's legend may not be traceable to their brief but envenomed couplets.

What had been the scandal of the camp acquired consistency in lines too pungent to be forgotten and too witty to remain unquoted.¹ [see footnote, 59]

As a specimen of Sannazzaro's style, the epigram on Venice may here be cited:—

Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis

Stare urbem, et toto ponere jura mari:

Nune mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces

Objice, et illa tui moenia Martis, ait:

Si Pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem aspice utramque;

Illam hominess dices, hanc posuisse deos.²

[see footnote (translation), 59]

I have already touched upon the Virgilianism of Sannazzaro's 'Partus Virginis.'³[see footnote, 59] What the cold churches of Palladio are to Christian architecture, this frigid epic is to Christian poetry. Leo X. delighted to recognize the Gospel narrative beneath a fancy dress of mythological inventions, and to witness the triumph of classical scholarship in the holy places of the mediaeval faith. To fuse the traditions of Biblical and secular antiquity was, as I have often said, the dream of the Renaissance. What Pico and Ficino attempted in philosophical treatises, the poets sought to effect by form. Religion, attiring herself in classic drapery, threw off the cobwebs of the Catacombs, and acquired the right of petites entrées at the Vatican. It did not signify that she had sacrificed her majesty to fashion, or that her tunic à la mode antique was badly made. Her rouge and spangles enchanted the scholarly Pontiff, who forthwith ordered Vida to compose the 'Christiad,' and gave him a benefice at Frascati in order that he might enjoy a poet's ease. Vida's epic, like Sannazzaro's, was not finished during the lifetime of Leo. Both the 'Christiad' and the 'Partus Virginis' reflected lustre on the age of Clement [Clement VII]." [341-343].

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[footnotes] '¹See Delitia Poetarum Italorum, second part, pp. 713–761. The following couplet on the death of Cesare Borgia is celebrated:—

Aut nihil aut Caesar vult dici Borgia; quidni?

Cum simul et Caesar possit et esse nihil.

²'When Neptune beheld Venice stationed in the Adriatic waters, and giving laws to all the ocean, "Now taunt me, Jupiter, with the Tarpeian rock and those walls of thy son Mars!" he cried. "If thou preferrest Tiber to the sea, look on both cities; thou wilt say the one was built by men, the other by gods."'

³See above, p. 288.' [342].

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from: Bibliography of the Writings of John Addington Symonds [1840 – 1893], by Percy L. Babington, Bibliography and Reference Series #174, Burt Franklin, 1968 (1925).

Note: this entry displays the contributions of John Addington Symonds, to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, 1879—1888.

"XIII. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA [ENCYCLOPAEDIA]

BRITANNICA

Ninth Edition

1879—1888

[note: bibliography numbers (383-396), not included]

Ficino, Marsilio

Vol. IX., 1879, pp. 138—140.

Filelfo, Francesco.

Vol. IX., 1879, pp. 161, 162.

Guarini, Giovanni Battista.

Vol. XI., 1880, pp. 236—238.

Guicciardini, Francesco.

Vol. XI., 1880, pp. 255—257.

Italy. Part II.—History.

Vol. XIII., 1881, pp. 467—491.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.

Vol. XV., 1883, pp. 146—152.

Manutius.

Vol. XV., 1883, pp. 512—514.

Metastasio.

Vol. XVI., 1883, pp. 103—105.

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Petrarch.

Vol. XVIII., 1885, pp. 706—711.

Poggio.

Vol. XIX., 1885, pp. 274, 275.

Politian.

Vol. XIX., 1885, pp. 345, 346.

Pontanus, Jovianus.

Vol. XIX., 1885, p. 454.

Renaissance.

Vol. XX., 1886, pp. 380—394.

[see page 386:

'This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram:

"What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"']

Tasso, Torquato.

Vol. XXIII., 1888, pp. 75—79.

Note: These contributions are signed with initials." [182-184].

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from: A History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. II [of three volumes], From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century (In Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands), [Sir] John Edwin Sandys [1844 – 1922], Hafner, 1967 (1958) (1903).

"CHAPTER IX.

FROM THE AGE OF LEO X TO THE SACK OF ROME.

The age of Aldus Manutius [1449 – 1515] was succeeded by the pontificate of Leo X (1513–21). Under the care of Lorenzo the future

Pope [leo x] had learnt his Latin and his Greek from the best scholars of Florence.

When he made his progress as Pope in the splendid procession from St Peter's to the Lateran, the streets of Rome were adorned with marble statues of the old pagan divinities, while a triumphal arch in front of the palace of the wealthy banker, Agostino Chigi, bore an inscription in golden letters recalling the times of Alexander VI and Julius II, and declaring that the reign of Venus and of Mars was over, and that of Minerva had begun:—

'olim habuit Cypris sua tempora, tempora Mavors

olim habuit, sua nunc tempora Pallas habet'¹." ["107"].

"Girolamo Fracastoro (1483–1553). Devoted to the study of music and astronomy, he was famous as a physician and a poet. The theme of the most important of his poems was the terrible scourge that first appeared in 1495 among the French soldiers quartered at Naples⁴.....The poem was dedicated to Bembo, and men of letters admired the poetic skill with which the author had handled an undoubtedly difficult topic. Sannazaro held it superior to anything composed by himself or any of his brother-poets, while the elder Scaliger even described it as a 'divine poem'¹....

A pleasant contrast to the neo-paganism of not a few of the poets of this age is presented by Marcantonio Flaminio of Serravalle (1498–1550), who is described by the historian of Italian literature as 'a name no less dear to Virtue than to the Muses'⁵ In his early youth he presented to Leo X some elegant compositions in Latin verse; but he cared little for the great world of Rome." [118-119].

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from: The Cambridge Modern History, Planned by The Late Lord Acton [1834 – 1902] LL.D., Regius Professor of Modern History, edited by A.W. Ward Litt.D., G.W. Prothero Litt. D., Stanley Leathes M.A., Volume I, The Renaissance, Cambridge, At the University Press, 1907.

"Leo X followed with a pale imitation of the policy of Alexander VI [Pope 1492 – 1503 (1431 – 1503)], his object being the advancement of the Medici family and the preservation of the papal dominions in the fierce strife between France and Spain. To him the papacy was a personal possession out of which the possessor was expected to make the most, religion being an entirely subordinate affair. His conception of his duties is condensed in the burst of exultation attributed to him on his election,

—Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us!

Under the circumstances the Holy See could inspire neither respect nor confidence. Universal distrust was the rule between the States, and the papacy was merely a State whose pretensions to care for the general welfare of Christendom were recognised as diplomatic hypocrisy." [665].

'Julius [Julius II: Pope 1503 – 1513 (1443 – 1513)] died, February 21, 1513, and to his successor, Leo X, was transferred the management of the Council. To him Gianfrancesco Pico [Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola 1469 – 1533] addressed a memorial recapitulating the evils to be redressed.

The worship of God, he said, was neglected; the churches were held by pimps and catamites; the nunneries were dens of prostitution; justice was a matter of hatred or favour; piety was lost in superstition; the priesthood was bought and sold; the revenues of the Church ministered only to the vilest excesses, and the people were repelled from religion by the example of their pastors.

The Council made at least a show of attacking these evils. On May 3, 1514, it approved a papal decree which, if enforced, would have cured a small portion of the abuses; but all subsequent efforts were blocked by quarrels between the different classes to be reformed. The Council sat until March, 1517, and the disappointment arising from its dissolution, without accomplishing anything of the long-desired reform, may well have contributed to the eagerness with which the Lutheran revolt was soon afterwards hailed; for thoughtful men everywhere must have been convinced that nothing short of revolution could put an end to corruption so inexpugnably established." [678].

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from: The Renaissance in Historical Thought, Five Centuries of Interpretation, Wallace K. Ferguson, Professor of History, New York University, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, "1981" (c1948).

"To the Memory of

PRESERVED SMITH [1880 – 1941]

the teacher and friend

to whom I owe more

than I was ever able to repay"

'Bolingbroke's [Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke 1678 – 1751] comments on the literary renaissance would scarcely be worth noting were they not so typical of the current trend of historical interpretation. Mentioning the "resurrection of letters" among the circumstances that had aided the success of the Reformation, he ascribed its progress to the newly discovered art of printing and its origins to the fall of Constantinople. In Italy the newly imported learning had been encouraged by the misguided policy of the popes, who thereby destroyed their own power.

[Bolingbroke] The magicians themselves broke the charm by which they had bound mankind for so many ages....As soon as the means of acquiring and spreading information grew common, it is no wonder that a system was unraveled, which could not have been woven with success in any ages, but those of gross ignorance and credulous superstition.¹⁰¹

One might have expected something more profound from the learned and philosophical Hume [David Hume 1711 – 1776], but his few comments on the intellectual history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are meager and conventional. In a brief retrospect at the end of the chapter on the reign of Richard III,¹⁰² he summarized the decline of Roman culture, laying the original blame, in the manner of Leonardo Bruni, on the despotism of the emperors. The decline continued until the eleventh century, at which time "the people of Christendom were the lowest sunk in ignorance, and consequently in disorders of every kind." Thereafter "the sun of science, beginning to reascend, threw out

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many gleams of light, which preceded the full morning, when letters were revived in the fifteenth century." For this upward movement no cause is suggested save that "there is a point of depression, as well as of exaltation, from which human affairs naturally return in a contrary direction." He returned to the revival of learning again in the chapter on Henry VII as a part of the general revolution that distinguished that age.¹⁰³ Here he ascribed the recovery of Greek learning directly to the flight of the refugees from Constantinople in 1453, and added that "about the same time, the purity of the Latin tongue was revived, the study of antiquity became fashionable, and the esteem for literature gradually propagated itself throughout every nation of Europe." In this instance the only cause suggested is the catastrophic event. Later he [Hume] suggested that

familiarity with ancient literature made Leo X aware of

"the ridicule and falsity of the doctrines, which, as supreme

pontiff, he was obliged by his interest to promote,"¹⁰⁴

and finally he [Hume] completed the Protestant-rationalist picture by including the revival of learning, with printing, among the reasons for the success of the Reformation.¹⁰⁵' [102-103].

[footnotes] "¹⁰¹Bolingbroke, Works, II, 345 f.

¹⁰²Hume, History of England, II, 366 f." [102].