It
can hardly be doubted that the Renaissance would soon have destroyed
these two Orders, had it not been for the German Reformation and the
Counter-Reformation which intervened. Their saints and popular
preachers could hardly have saved them. It would only have been
necessary to come to an understanding at a favourable moment with a
Pope like Leo X, who despised the Mendicant Orders. If the spirit of
the age found them ridiculous or repulsive? they could no longer be
anything but an embarrassment to the Church. And who can say what fate
was in store for the Papacy itself, if the Reformation had not saved
it?
The influence which the Father Inquisitor of a Dominican monastery was
able habitually to exercise in the city where it was situated, was in
the latter part of the fifteenth century just considerable enough to
hamper and irritate cultivated people, but not strong enough to extort
any lasting fear or obedience. It was no longer possible to punish men
for their thoughts, as it once was, and those whose tongues wagged most
impudently against the clergy could easily keep clear of heretical
doctrine. Except when some powerful party had an end to serve, as in
the case of Savonarola, or when there was a question of the use of
magical arts, as was often the case in the cities of North Italy, we
seldom read at this time of men being burnt at the stake.
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