Church, had the effect of bringing the conciliar
principle itself into disfavor with the European powers. The first
symptom of this repudiation of the Council by Europe was shown in the
neutrality proclaimed by Germany. The attitude of other Courts and
nations proved that the Western races were for the moment prepared to
leave the Papal question open on the basis supplied by the Council of
Constance.

The result of this failure of the conciliar principle at Basel was that
Nicholas V. inaugurated a new age for the Papacy in Rome. I have already
described the chief features of the Papal government from his election
to the death of Clement VII. It was a period of unexampled splendor for
the Holy See, and of substantial temporal conquests. The second Council
of Pisa, which began its sittings, in 1511 under French sanction and
support, exercised no disastrous influence over the restored powers and
prestige of the Papacy. On the contrary, it gave occasion for a
counter-council, held at the Lateran under the auspices of Julius II.
and Leo X., in which the Popes established several points of
ecclesiastical discipline that were not without value to their
successors. But the leaven which had been scattered by Wyclif and Hus,
of which the Council of Constance had taken cognizance, but which had
not been extirpated, was spreading in Germany throughout this period.
The Popes themselves were doing all in their power to propagate dissent
and discontent. Well aware of the fierce light cast by the new learning
they had helped to disseminate, upon the dark places of their own
ecclesiastical administration, they still continued to raise money by
the sale of pardons and indulgences, to bleed their Christian flocks by
monstrous engines of taxation, and to offend the conscience of an
intelligent generation by their example of ungodly living. The
Reformation ran like wild-fire through the North. It grew daily more
obvious that a new Council must be summoned for carrying out measures of
internal reform, and for coping with the forces of belligerent
Protestantism. When things had reached this point, Charles V. declared
his earnest desire that the Pope should summon a General Council. Paul
III. now showed in how true a sense he was the man of a transitional
epoch. So long as possible he resisted, remembering to what straits his
predecessors had been reduced by previous Councils, and being deeply
conscious of scandals in his own domestic affairs