Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/450

Quumque ille se ea ratione pontificem creari velle pernegasset, ut scilicet pacto aliquo intercedente papatum obtineret, illi, intempestivam senis severitatem stomachati, ad Cardinalem Sancti Petri ad Vincula, Magistrum Franciscum Savonensem, sunt conversi, virum doctrina praestantissimum." In a passage apparently inspired by aversion for the irreligious renaissance, Savonarola is called "the most sincere man amongst the Italians of the time." It is invidious to disparage a man whose faith was strong enough to resist authority both in Church and State, and who impressed a doctrine which was newer if not more true then than now, that an awakened conscience must be traced and proved in public as much as in private life, so that a zealous priest is, normally, a zealous politician. And it may be that the shrill utterance of opportune prophecy is not always inconsistent with integrity. But the man who described in the pulpit his mission from Florence to heaven, and what he heard there, and afterwards explained that this was all a trope, cannot well be pronounced perfectly sincere on any hypothesis of sanity. How far the plea of partial insanity, which is gaining ground in society, may serve for the interpretation of history, is a problem which should commend itself to a writer so slow to use hard words and to associate dolus and culpa. Mr. Creighton describes the constitution of Julius against simony as a bold measure, showing a strong sense of the need of amendment. But he speaks of it as an incident in the annals of the year, a feature in the portrait of a pope, a plant sprung from no buried root. The prohibition of bribery at conclaves was old in the law of the Church. Four hundred and sixty years before, one of the popes wrote that he had been raised to the papal throne in place of I three others, deposed for bribery — "explosis tribus illis, quibus nomen papatus rapina dederat." The rising against Alexander VI., the coalition between Julian and Savonarola to eject him, would hardly be intelligible if the law against simony had been no more than an abrupt innovation. It is not quite accurate to say that the first