he action of the Popes,
and principally of one ambitious Pope. The Vatican paintings were
largely political, commemorating the sovereign more than the priest,
until St. Peter's was designed to exhibit the sublime grandeur and
unity of the universal Church, and the authority of its head upon
earth. It was the crowning triumph of the Renaissance. When he was
dying, Julius said that the masses are impressed not by what they
know, but by what they see. He transmitted to his successors the
conception of a Church to be the radiant centre of religion and of art
for mankind; and we shall see that this was, after all, a disastrous
legacy.

The Renaissance, which was at its height in Italy after the middle of
the fifteenth century, was checked by the wars of Charles V, the siege
of Rome, and the Spanish domination. Toward 1540 Paolo Giovio says
that scholarship had migrated from the Italians to the Germans; and
the most learned Italian of the next generation, Baronius, knew no
Greek. Before its decline in Italy it had found new homes beyond the
Alps, especially in Germany. The Germans adopted the new learning
much later, near a century later than the Italians, when an occasional
student, such as Agricola and Reuchlin, visited Bologna or Rome. It
spread slowly. Of the seventeen universities, some, such as at
Vienna, Heidelberg, Erfurt, admitted the new studies; others, like
Cologne, resisted. There was not the patriotic sentiment, the
national enthusiasm. It was the importation of a foreign element, the
setting up of an old enemy, the restoration of a world the Germans,
under Alaric and Theodoric, had overthrown. They began with the
invention of printing, which exactly coincided with the fall of
Constantinople, as the earliest specimens of print are indulgences for
the Turkish war. This gave assurance that the work of the Renaissance
would last, that what was written would be accessible to all, that
such an occultation of knowledge and ideas as had depressed the Middle
Ages would never recur, that not an idea would be lost. They got
their classics generally from Italy; but after Aldus had published his
series of ancient writers, still treasured by those whom Greek
contractions do not repel, the New Testament and the Fathers, edited
by Erasmus, were printed at Bale by Froben and Amerbach.

The pagan spirit, the impatience of Christianity, appears only in one
or two Germans, such as Mutianus Rufus, who kept his conv