France and England; but he received only pity, not aid. At the Council of Constance Byzantine ambassadors appeared. It was, however, reserved for the synods of Ferrara and of Florence to mature, as far as might be, the negotiation. The second son of John Palæologus journeyed again into Italy, A.D. 1438; and while Eugenius was being deposed in the chamber at Basle, he was consummating the union of the East and West in the Cathedral of Florence. In the pulpit of that edifice, on the sixth of July of that year, a Roman cardinal The Greek and a Greek archbishop embraced each other Church yields before the people; Te Deum was chanted in to the Latin. Greek, mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Creed was read with the "Filioque." The successor of Constantine the Great had given up his religion, but he had received no equivalent-no aid. The state of the Church, its disorders and schisms, rendered any community of action in the West impossible.

The last, the inevitable hour at length struck. Mohammed II. is said to have been a learned man, Mohammed able to express himself in five different lan- II guages; skilful in mathematics, especially in their practical application to engineering; an admirer of the fine arts; prodigal in his liberality to Italian painters. In Asia Minor, as in Spain, there was free thinking among the disciples of the Prophet. It was affirmed that the sultan, in his moments of relaxation, was often heard to deride the religion of his country as an imposture. His doubts in that particular were, however, compensated for by his determination to carry out the intention of so many of his Mohammedan predecessors-the seizure of Constantinople.

At this time the venerable city had so greatly declined that it contained only 100,000 inhabitants-out The siege of of them only 4970 able or willing to bear arms. ConstantiThe besieging force was more than a quarter of nople. a million of men. As Mohammed pressed forward his works, the despairing emperor in vain looked for the longpromised effectual Western aid. In its extremity, the devoted metropolis was divided by religious feuds; and when a Latin priest officiated in St. Sophia, there were

many who exclaimed that they would rather see the turban of the sultan than the tiara of the pope. In several particulars the siege of Constantinople marked out the end of old ages and the beginning of new. Its walls were shaken by the battering rams of the past, and overthrown by cannon, just then coming into general use. Upon a plank road, shipping was passed through the open country, in the darkness of a single night, a distance of ten miles. The works were pushed forward toward the walls, on the top of which the sentinels at length could hear the shouts of the Turks by their nocturnal fires. They were sounds such as Constantinople might well listen to. She had taught something different for many a long year. "God is God; there is none but God." In the streets an image of the Virgin was carried in solemn procession. Now or never she must come to the help of those who had done so much for her, who had made her a queen in heaven and a goddess upon earth. The cry of her worshippers was in vain.

city.

On May 29th, 1453, the assault was delivered. Constantine Palæologus, the last of the Roman emperors, putting off his purple, that no man might recognize and insult his corpse when the catastrophe was over, fell, as became a Roman emperor, in the breach. After his Fall of the death resistance ceased, and the victorious Turks poured into the town. To the Church of St. Sophia there rushed a promiscuous crowd of women and children, priests, monks, religious virgins, and—men. Superstitious to the last, in this supreme moment they expected the fulfilment of a prophecy that, when the Turks should have forced their way to the square before that church, their progress would be arrested, for an angel with a sword in his hand would descend from heaven and save the city of the Lord. The Turks burst into the square, but the angel never came.

More than two thirds of the inhabitants of Constantinople were carried prisoners into the Turkish camp-the men for servitude, the women for a still more evil fate. The churches were sacked. From the dome of St. Sophia its glories were torn down. The divine images, for the sake of which Christendom had been sundered in former

days, unresistingly submitted to the pious rage of the Mohammedans without working a single miracle, and, stripped of their gems and gold, were brought to their proper value in the vile uses of kitchens and stables. On that same day the Muezzin ascended the loftiest turret of St. Sophia, and over the City of the Trinity proclaimed the Oneness of God. The sultan performed his prayers at the great altar, directing the edifice to be purified from its idolatries and consecrated to the worship of God. Thence he repaired to the palace, and, reflecting on the instability of human prosperity, repeated, as he entered it, the Persian verse: The spider has woven his web in the imperial palace; the owl hath sung her watch song on the towers of Afrasiab."

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at the fall of

This solemn event-the fall of Constantinople-accomplished, there was no need of any reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches. The sword of Mohammed had settled their dispute. Constantinople had submitted to the fate of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage. Christendom was struck with consternation. The Terror of advance of the Turks in Europe was now very Christendom rapid. Corinth and Athens fell, and the reduc- Constantition of Greece was completed. The confines of nople. Italy were approached A.D. 1461. The Mohammedan flag confronted that peninsula along the Adriatic coast. In twenty years more Italy was invaded. Otranto was taken; its bishop killed at the door of his church. At this period, it was admitted that the Turkish infantry, cavalry, and artillery were the best in the world. Soliman the Magnificent took Belgrade A.D. 1520. Nine years Progress of afterwards the Turks besieged Vienna, but were the Turks. repulsed. Soliman now prepared for the subjugation of Italy, and was only diverted from it by an accident which turned him upon the Venetians. It was not until the battle of Lepanto that the Turkish advance was fairly checked. Even as it was, in the complicated policy and intrigues of Europe its different sovereigns could not trust one another; their common faith had ceased to be a common bond: in all it had been weakened, in some destroyed. Eneas Sylvius, speaking of Christendom, says, "It is a body without a head, a republic without

laws or magistrates. The pope or the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and no one is willing to obey." But, during this period of Turkish aggression, had not the religious dissensions of Christendom been decently composed, there was imminent danger that Europe would have been Mohammedanized. A bitter experience of past ages, as well as of the present, had taught it that the Roman Church was utterly powerless against such attacks. Safety was to be looked for, not in any celestial aid, but in physical knowledge and pecuniary resources, carried out in the organization of armies and fleets. Had her authority been derived from the source she pretended, she should have found an all-sufficient protection in prayerindeed, not even that should have been required. Men discovered at last that her Litanies and her miracles were equally of no use, and that she must trust, like any other human tyranny, to cannon and the sword.

Effect of the
Turkish in-

The Turkish aggression led to the staying of the democratic outbreak in the bosom of the Church-the abstaining for a season from any farther sapping vasion. of the papal autocracy. It was necessary that ecclesiastical disputes, if they could not be ended, should, at all events, be kept for a time in abeyance, and so indeed they were, until the pent-up dissensions burst forth in "the Reformation." And thus, as we have related, by Mohammedan knowledge in the West, papal Christianity was well-nigh brought to ruin; thus, by a strange paradox, the Mohammedan sword in the East gave it for a little longer a renewed lease of political power, though never again of life.

To Nicolas V., a learned and able pope, the catastrophe of Constantinople was the death-blow. He had been the Nicolas V. a intimate friend of Cosmo deMedici, and from patron of art. him had imbibed a taste for letters and art, but, like his patron, he had no love for liberty. It was thus through commerce that the papacy first learned to turn to art. The ensuing development of Europe was really based on the commerce of upper Italy, and not upon the Church. The statesmen of Florence were the inventors of the balance of power. A lover of literature, Nicolas was the

founder of the Vatican Library. He clearly perceived the only course in which the Roman system could be directed; that it was unfit for, and, indeed, incompatible with science, but might be brought into unison with art. Its influence upon the reason was gone, but the senses yet remained for it. In continuing his policy, the Gradual rise succeeding popes acted with wisdom. They of the fine arts. gratified the genius of their institutions, of their country, and their age. In the abundant leisure of monasteries, the monks had found occupation in the illumination of manuscripts. From the execution of miniatures they gradually rose to an undertaking of greater works. In that manner painting had originated in Italy in the twelfth century. Sculpture, at first merged in architecture, had extricated herself from that bondage in the fourteenth. The mendicant orders, acquiring wealth, became munificent patrons. From caligraphic illustrations to the grand works of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle is a prodigious advance, yet it took but a short time to accomplish it.

I have now completed the history of the European Age of Faith as far as is necessary for the purposes of this book. It embraces a period of more than a Review of the thousand years, counting from the reign of Con- Age of Faith. stantine. It remains to consider the intellectual peculiarity that marks the whole period-to review briefly the agents that exerted an influence upon it and conducted it to its close.

Faith.

Philosophically, the most remarkable peculiarity is the employment of a false logic, a total misconcep- Philosophical tion of the nature of evidence. It is illustrated peculiarities by miracle-proofs, trial by battle, ordeal tests, of the Age of and a universal belief in supernatural agency even for objectless purposes. On the principles of this logic, if the authenticity of a thing or the proof of a statement be required, it is supposed to be furnished by an astounding illustration of something else. If the character of a princess is assailed, she offers a champion; he proves victorious, and therefore she was not frail. If a The character national assembly, after a long discussion, can- of its logic. not decide "whether children should inherit the property of their father during the lifetime of their grandfather,