Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/659

DEMORALIZATION OF TH.E LAITY. qa» up by God as a model and protector for the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops, through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual accepters of persons ; the v anoint ed themselves with the last essence extracted from their flocks and there was in them nothing of holy, of just, of wise, or even of decent. Luke Wadding is a witness above suspicion ; his con- scientious study of original sources entitles his opinions to weight and we may accept his description of Italy in the early part of the fifteenth century : "At that time Italy was sunk in vice and wickedness. In the Church there was no devotion, in the laity no faith, no piety, no modesty, no discipline of morals. Every man cursed his neighbor; the factions of Guelf and Ghibelline flood- ed the streets of the towns with fraternal blood, the roads were closed by robbers, the seas infested with pirates. Parents slew with rejoicing their children who chanced to be of the opposite faction. The world was full of sorcery and incantations ; the churches deserted, the gambling-houses filled." The testimony is too uniform to explain it away with the assumption that it rep- resents only the disenchantment of puritanism. ^Eneas Sylvius was no puritan, and his adventurous life had made him, perhaps, better acquainted with the whole of Christendom than any other man of his time, and in 1453 he says : " It is for this that I dread the Turks. Whether I look upon the deeds of princes or of prel- ates I find that all have sunk, all are worthless. There is not one who does right, in no one is there pity or truth. There is no recognition of God upon earth ; you are Christians in name, but you do the work of heathen. Execration and falsehood and slaughter and theft and adultery are spread among you, and you add blood to blood. What wonder if God, indignant at your acts places on your necks Mahomet, the leader of the Turks, like an- other Nebuchadnezzar, for you are either swollen with pride, or rapacious with avarice, or cruel in wrath, or livid with envy, or in- cestuous in lust, or unsparing in cruelty. There is no shame in crime, for you sin so openly and shamelessly that you seem to take delight in it." To what extent the Church was respon- sible for this may be judged by the terrible condition of Rome under Innocent VIII. as pictured in the diary of Infessura. Out- rages of all kinds were committed with impunity so long as the criminal had wherewith to compound with the papal chancery;