ical authority, inspired, no doubt,
by the attacks that had been levelled against it by the erudite and
daring Lorenzo Valla.

This Valla was the distinguished translator of Homer, Herodotus, and
Thucydides, who more than any one of his epoch advanced the movement of
Greek and Latin learning, which, whilst it had the effect of arresting
the development of Italian literature, enriched Europe by opening up to
it the sources of ancient erudition, of philosophy, poetry, and literary
taste. Towards the year 1435 he drifted to the court of Alfonso of
Aragon, whose secretary he ultimately became. Some years later he
attacked the Temporal Power and urged the secularization of the States
of the Church. "Ut Papa," he wrote, "tantum Vicarius Christi sit, et
non etiam Coesari." In his De falso credita et ementita Constantini
Donatione, he showed that the decretals of the Donation of Constantine,
upon which rests the Pope's claim to the Pontifical States, was an
impudent forgery, that Constantine had never had the power to give,
nor had given, Rome to the Popes, and that they had no right to govern
there. He backed up this terrible indictment by a round attack upon the
clergy, its general corruption and its practices of simony; and as a
result he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. There it might have
gone very ill with him but that King Alfonso rescued him from the
clutches of that dread priestly tribunal.

Meanwhile, he had fired his petard. If a pretext had been wanting to
warrant the taking up of arms against the Papacy, that pretext Valla had
afforded. Never was the temporal power of the Church in such danger, and
ultimately it must inevitably have succumbed but for the coming of so
strong and unscrupulous a man as Sixtus IV to stamp out the patrician
factions that were heading the hostile movement.

His election, it is generally admitted, was simoniacal; and by simony he
raised the funds necessary for his campaign to reestablish and support
the papal authority. This simony of his, says Dr. Jacob Burckhardt,
"grew to unheard-of proportions, and extended from the appointment of
cardinals down to the sale of the smallest benefice."

Had he employed these means of raising funds for none but the purpose
of putting down the assailants of the Pontificate, a measure of
justification (political if not ecclesiastical) might be argued in his
favour. Unfortunately, having discovered these ready sources of revenue,
he continued to