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public disasters. But Nicholas was among the most active in turning to the best account the circumstances that followed from the misfortune. He received with open arms and was largely beneficent to the crowd of scholars and men of learning and letters who were driven by the Turkish conqueror to seek refuge in Western Europe, and more especially in Italy. eagerly availed himself of the occasion to acquire manuscripts of the ancient writers; and the modern world, which profits by that revival of learning which became then or never possible, may thank Nicholas for his enlightened activity. He was a great builder and founder of universities. He largely improved that of Bologna, and founded those of Treves, Barcellona, and Glasgow, and conferred many privileges on that of Cambridge. He was the founder of the Vatican library; and the Medicean library at Florence, if due to the money of the Medici, was planned and carried out in accordance with the suggestions of Nicholas. He built the palace at the Lateran, and was the first of the long series of Popes to whom the rebuilding of St. Peter's is due, who conceived that noble ambition. He rebuilt the Milvian bridge, and largely improved many parts of Rome. Sarzana, Viterbo, Fabriano, Civita Vecchia, Orvieto, Spoleto, were all enriched by him with new and useful buildings. He was not chargeable with any tendency to nepotism; and an interesting anecdote has been preserved of a visit paid to him in Rome by his aged mother, who had come up from far-away little Sarzana, among the Tuscan Apennines, to see her two sons, one the Pope and the other a cardinal of the

Church. The poor old woman thought it necessary to present herself to his Holiness in very gorgeous attire, resplendent with gems and brilliant colours. But the Pope, as soon as ever he saw her, left the room, desiring his chaplain to tell the stranger that it was a mistake; that bedizened lady could not be his mother, and was, indeed, hardly a fitting visitor for the Apostolic palace. "He well remembered," he said, "his dear mother, who was a very plain and decent body, and whom he would fain see again, but had no desire to speak to the magnificent lady who had entered his room!” The old lady took the hint, returned in her own homely dress, and was received with open arms.

Fifteen cardinals entered into Conclave at the due time after the death of Nicholas, and on the fourth or fifth day elected, to the general surprise, the Spanish Cardinal Alfonso Borgia, by the name of Calixtus III. The purpose of the majority of the cardinals was to elect the learned Bessarion, who had come from Constantinople at the time Eugenius IV. was endeavouring to effect the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. He was unquestionably the man whom attainments and character marked as the fittest man in the Sacred College for the papacy. And had the cardinals held firmly to their first purpose, they would have spared the Church the indelible shame of having for ever on her list of Pontiffs Alexander VI., the second Borgia Pope! But the Cardinal of Avignon, who hoped that he himself would be elected, succeeded in arousing the jealousy and the bigotry of his colleagues by a violent speech, in which he dwelt upon the disgrace which it

would be to the Latin Church to confess, by putting a Greek on the Papal throne, that there was no man among themselves fitted for the Papacy; and, further, threw doubts upon the genuineness of Bessarion's "conversion," and on the orthodoxy, in any case, of a "Greek neophyte." The cardinals, however, would not have his Eminence of Avignon, and elected Borgia as a compromise. This Conclave, as has been said, was held in the Vatican; and from this time the Conclaves were held there uninterruptedly until the present century.

*

Calixtus III. (ob. 1458) reigned three years and three months; and on the due day after his death, on the 16th of August, eighteen cardinals went into Conclave, and on the third day elected Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini of Siena. In this case again the believers in the supervision of a special providence, controlling the actions of the electors, may point to this election as a notable instance of the truth of their theory. Few Conclaves have been more disgracefully conducted than was this, and few have concluded by making a better choice among the persons before them. After the first unsuccessful scrutiny the cardinals went to dinner, and after dinner there were, we are told, many meetings of groups and knots of cardinals, each intriguing in favour of different candidates, in which, as the chronicler of the Conclave says, "they hunted the Papacy either for themselves or

* This was the first election made in the manner which was subsequently recognised as one of three ways in which a Pope may be elected, and called an election "per accessum," the manner of which will be explained when we come to speak of the processes and ceremonial of the Conclave.

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for their friends, and spared not either prayers, promises, or threats. And some there were who, without any sense of shame or modesty, made speeches about themselves, and pointed out their own fitness for the Papacy; as did the Cardinal of Rouen, Barbo, Cardinal of Santa Maria Nuova, and Castelli, Cardinal of Pavia.

The Cardinal of Rouen seems to have been the chief of these audaciously simoniacal self-praisers, and was thought, when the cardinals went into Conclave, to be the most likely candidate. Though Eneas Sylvius of Siena took no steps to obtain the tiara for himself, saying at the opening of the Conclave, "It is God who appoints to the Papacy, not men!" his Eminence of Rouen perceived that he was his most dangerous rival. The writer of the story of this Conclave which I have before me declares that the Cardinal of Siena himself (Eneas Sylvius) did not disdain to recommend his own merits to the electors, despite what he had said. But other writers do not so represent the matter. And the writer in question seems to contradict himself in this respect, for he says presently that the Cardinal of Rouen feared the silence of the Cardinal of Siena more than he did all the much talking of the others. So "he kept calling aside now one and now another, saying to them, 'What can you want of this Eneas? Why do you think him worthy of the Papacy? Would you elect for Pontiff a gouty old man, as poor as Job! How can he, infirm and in poverty, support or succour the Church? But recently he has returned from Germany!"" (Piccolomini had nearly passed his life in various missions and embassies entrusted to him by the last and previous

...

Popes, and having had no time to care for his own fortunes, was in truth a very poor man.) "How do we know that he will not transfer thither the Papal court! What literature has he? Shall we put a poet on the seat of St. Peter?'" (Æneas Sylvius had that defect.) "Shall we govern the Church by the statutes and laws of the Gentiles?" (Alluding to Piccolomini's reputed acquaintance with the ancient literature.) . . . “Know, then, that I am not unworthy of consideration, and am no fool; nor am I unworthy of the Papacy in point of learning.'" (Eneas Sylvius, it may be remarked, was one of the most distinguished scholars of his day.) "I come of royal race, and am in want neither of friends, nor power, nor wealth, by which means it will be in my power to be of service to the poor Church. I hold many benefices, which, when on my elevation to the Papacy I give them up, will be divided among you.'" He continued, says the chronicler, to insist with many entreaties, mingled with threats. He went on to observe further, with an unblushing frankness which is the most amusingly audacious touch in his whole discourse, that should any one maintain that he could not fitly aspire to the Papacy by reason of the simony which he had practised, seeing that he had bought all the benefices he held, he would not deny that for the past he had been smirched by that foul stain, but that he promised and swore that for the future he would keep his hand clear of all such wickedness! And this while he was in the act of committing the most heinous simony conceivable by the persons he was addressing! As it appeared, however, that he failed to prevail on a sufficient number