writers on the Catholic side to complaints which Erasmus uttered, especially in the last twelve years of his life, respecting the diminished interest in literature, which he attributed to the deleterious agency of Protestantism. The statements of Erasmus at that time, when his feelings were embittered, are to be received with allowance. Yet it is true that there was a period when the studies in which Erasmus and the Humanists took special delight, were regarded with a less lively interest, and that this may be set down as an effect of the Lutheran movement. It is the ordinary complaint of men of letters that in times of public agitation concerning the highest interests of mankind, grammar and rhetoric are neglected. Even the true interests of learning in such eras may suffer a temporary loss. a temporary loss. In the old age of Erasmus, the minds of men were intensely absorbed in religious investigation and controversy; and, as a natural result, purely literary pursuits were for a while, even to a harmful degree, eclipsed by other and more exciting studies.

In Spain, Protestantism was trampled out and the Catholic system had unlimited sway. The golden age of Spanish literature, when the most celebrated authors— Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon- flourished, dates from the middle of the sixteenth century. This may seem to speak well for the ecclesiastical system to which the Spanish people were subjected. But this, if it was the blossoming, was also the expiring era of Spanish letters. A death-like lethargy, the inevitable result of superstition and ecclesiastical tyranny, was creeping over the nation. This decline of the Spanish intellect, and the causes which produced it, have been well described by the Historian of Spanish literature. "That generous and manly spirit," says Ticknor, "which is the breath of intellectual life to any people, was restrained and stifled. Some departments of literature, such as forensic eloquence and eloquence of the pulpit, satirical poetry, and elegant didactic prose,

DECLINE OF THE SPANISH INTELLECT.

521* hardly appeared at all; others, like epic poetry, were strangely perverted and misdirected; while yet others, like the drama, the ballads, and the lighter forms of lyrical verse, seemed to grow exuberant and lawless, from the very restraints imposed on the rest; restraints which in fact forced poetical genius into channels where it would otherwise have flowed much more scantily and with much less luxuriant results." Of the books published in this period, Ticknor adds: they "bore everywhere marks of the subjection to which the press and those who wrote for it were alike reduced. From the abject title-pages and dedications of the authors themselves, through the crowd of certificates collected from their friends to establish the orthodoxy of works that were often as little connected with religion as fairy tales, down to the colophon, supplicating pardon for any unconscious neglect of the authority of the Church, or any too free use of classical mythology, we are continually oppressed with painful proofs, not only how completely the human mind was enslaved in Spain, but how grievously it had become cramped and crippled by the chains it had so long worn." 1 These effects were not due solely to the action of the Inquisition or of the despotic civil government, but to that superstitious habit of the nation, that unique mingling of relig ion and chivalrous loyalty to the king, which rendered this whole system of intellectual tyranny possible. It was this perversion of natural feeling which moved even Lope de Vega and Cervantes to exult when six hundred. thousand industrious and unoffending Moors were driven out of their native country.2 The same stern censors who visited with death the least taint of heresy, tolerated a drama more immoral than it had ever been before The willing submission of the people to the yoke of the Inquisition extinguished the last remaining sparks of inde pendence and of intellectual freedom. As we approach the conclusion of the seventeenth century, "the Inquisi1 History of Spanish Literature, i. 470. 2 Ibid., p. 467.

tion and the despotism seem to be everywhere present, and to have cast their blight over everything."!

The history of the Italian people had been of such a character, that a degradation like that which befell Spain, could not happen to Italy. Yet, from the middle of the sixteenth century, literature declined, and the intellectual vigor of the nation appeared to waste away.2 The destruction of republican liberty and the dreadful calamities under which the country had suffered during the half century which followed the invasion of Charles VIII., are partly responsible for this result. The Spanish dominion, which was extended over a great part of the peninsula, was fatal to all free and manly exertion.

But the Church, stimulated by the spirit of the Catholic Reaction, contributed directly to the repression of that mental activity and power, which had made Italy the pioneer for other nations in the path of culture and learning. In this long period, extending through the seventeenth century, only one great name-that of Tasso, who published his principal work in 1581 — appears; and Tasso is not a poet of the first order. Art revived, for a time, in the school of the Caracci; but Art, too, had passed its meridian, and its glory was departing. The writers of the seventeenth century are called by the Italians the "Seicentisti," a term which carries with it an association of inferiority. In this period there abounded what the Italians aptly name dilettantism; an indication that a literature has entered into the period of decay. The zeal for classical learning had grown cold. The little regard felt even for perfection of literary form is illustrated by such a work—which was one of the principal historical productions of the time as the Annals of Baronius.3 Yet in two directions signs of a fresh intellectual energy 1 History of Spanish Literature, iii. 208.

2 Sismondi, Hist. des Républ. Ital., xvi. 217 seq. Hist. of Lit. in Southern Europe, i. ch. xvi.

8 Ranke, History of the Popes, i. 496.

PERSECUTION IN ITALY.

523

appeared. A class of philosophers arose, who renounced the authority of Aristotle, and plunged into bold speculations upon the nature of the universe. This tendency was checked by the authorities of the Church. Giordano. Bruno was carried to Rome and burned at the stake, in 1600. There was, however, a curiosity for physical research, which kept within sober limits, and promised the best fruits to science. But the heavy hand of the Inquisition was laid upon these attractive studies. The persecution of Galileo did not crush them; they continued for a long time to be the chief province in which the Italian mind was distinguished; but that event checked and discouraged them. Galileo, a man of genius, whose eminence as a discoverer in science had been well earned, was directed by Pope Paul V., in 1616, through Cardinal Bellarmine, to give up the doctrine of the earth's motion round the sun, to teach it no more, and to write no more on the subject.1 At the same time, the Congregation of the Inquisition declared this opinion to be heretical. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic and had dedicated his book to Paul III.; but orthodoxy had now grown more timid and jealous of scientific researches. For fifteen years Galileo abstained from publishing anything further on the subject; but in 1632 he put forth his Dialogue relative to the two cosmical systems of Ptolemæus and Copernicus; having previously taken the precaution to submit it to ecclesiastical censorship at Rome and at Florence. This publication, notwithstanding the former injunction laid upon him, was the occasion of his subsequent troubles. The old philosopher was obliged to repair to Rome and answer before the Tribunal of the Inqui

1 A. Von Reumont, Beiträge z. ital. Geschichte, i. 303-425 (Galilei u. Rom.), Von Reumont is a learned Catholic scholar. See, also, The Private Life of Galileo (London, 1870). The prohibition of Paul V. was: "Ut opinionem, quod sol sit centrum mundi et immobilis, et terra moveatur, omnino relinquat, nec eam de cetero quovis modo teneat, doceat, aut defendat verbo aut scriptis." Von Reumont, p. 317.

sition. Pope Urban VIII. insisted that the obnoxious opinion must be forbidden, as contrary to the Scriptures.1 The explanations of Galileo, that he did not intend to violate the former prohibition, and that he had presented the Copernican doctrine only as an hypothesis, were of no avail. He was required to abjure this doctrine on his knees, as false, and was sentenced to imprisonment during the Pope's pleasure. Although he was not shut up in a cell, but was permitted to reside with friends, and in his own villa, he was still subjected to uncomfortable and humiliating restrictions, and to the repeated exercise of an annoying surveillance. His aged limbs were not stretched upon the rack; but there was a moral torture in being forced to deny what he believed to be the truth. Of the deep distress which this inexorable demand occasioned him we have ample proof. 2 It is true that personal enmities - the hatred of Galileo's scientific enemies, the feeling of the Barberini towards the Medici - had an agency in the proceedings against Galileo, and that the Pope imagined himself to be covertly ridiculed in the condemned Dialogue; but these hostile influences would have been powerless, had not a prevailing spirit of intolerance been ready to lend itself to the persecution. Much is said, by a class of writers, of the "imprudence" of Galileo in attempting to harmonize his doctrine with Scripture, and in entering at all into the province of exegesis. But the most that he did in this way, was to affirm that the Bible accommodates its language to common notions and does not aim to teach scientific truth; and his explanations of Biblical passages were, as the Inquisition, in the Act of Condemnation, testifies, in answer to objections alleged against his theory. He must not sug

1 Von Reumont, p. 380.

2 Von Reumont, p. 393. Whewell entirely errs in what he says of the mood of Galileo- - as if these events were not felt by him to be serious. History of the Inductive Sciences, i. 303 seq.

3 "And that, to the objections put forth to thee at various times, based on