Angelus Bell rung every day
at noon to implore the aid of the heavenly powers against the Turks.
There is absolutely no question of any reference in this matter to the
comet, but here is where the story comes in.

Pope Calixtus' successor was the famous Renaissance scholar AEneas
Sylvius Piccolomini. He was just beginning some of the reforms, the
need of which had been pointed out by his friend, the scholarly
Nicholas of Cusa, when his death occurred as a consequence of his
fatigue in journeys undertaken to rouse the Christians of the West
against the Turks so as to preserve Christian civilization. His
successor was Pope Paul II. He found it necessary to suppress some of
the academies of Rome whose privileges were being abused by fostering
a pagan attitude toward philosophy and religion, and in revenge
Platina wrote a bitter biography of him, but no one has ever doubted
of his scholarliness. He built the Palace of St. Marco in Rome, now
known as the Venezia, and organized relief work among the poor while
encouraging printing, protecting universities, and showing himself a
judicious collector of works of ancient art.

Professor Draper's summaries of periods of history are amusing {513}
caricatures of the reality. I know no easier way to make a comic
history of progress in Europe, so-called, than to take a series of
excerpts from Draper's book and string them together. He ignores
completely the wonderful work done for scholarship, he knows nothing
apparently of the great series of books printed for us during the
Renaissance, usually in magnificent editions, which preserve scholarly
works of the Middle Ages, he utterly neglects the painting, the
architecture, the sculpture, even the great engineering feats in the
making of bridges and constructive work of all kinds, and then in
order to explain why there was nothing done by mankind puts all the
blame on the Church. As I have said before, in a period in which even
well-read men knew nothing about the Middle Ages, self-complacency
tempted them to conclude that such a gap in their knowledge could only
be because there was nothing to know about them. They looked for some
reason for the absence of accomplishment that made this blank in human
history. With their feelings, the Church was just the one that must be
responsible. Progress would surely have been made only that some
factor was keeping it back.

Professor Draper makes an especially strong appeal to American readers