Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/587

 PAGANISM OF THE RENAISSANCE. 571 spiring against him. That a crazy admiration of antiquity should culminate in an effort to restore the liberty of Rome was not improbable, and the situation in Italy was such as to render an effort of the kind abundantly capable of causing trouble. Paul was thoroughly alarmed, and at once imprisoned the suspected conspirators. The unlucky Platina, who was one of them, has given us an account of the relentless tortures to which, for two days, about twenty of them were subjected, while Pomponio, who chanced to be in Venice, was dragged to Pome like another Ju- gurtha. JSTo criminating evidence of treason was discovered, but they were kept in durance for a year, and, in order to find some justification for the affair, wmich had excited much comment, they were accused of heresy, of disputing about the immortality of the soul, and of venerating Plato. It proves how leniently such aber- rations were regarded that they were finally acquitted of all her- esy and discharged ; and that although Paul abolished the Acad- emy, prohibiting even the mention of its name, his successor, Sixtus IV., as a patron of letters, permitted its re-establishment and appointed Platina librarian of the Vatican library which he founded.* The tolerance thus extended to the paganism of the enthusias- tic votaries of the New Learning produced a curious development of religious sentiment among them as insidiously dangerous to the faith, except in its lack of popular attractiveness, as the dogmas so ruthlessly exterminated by Peter Martyr and Francois Borel. Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist, evidently regarded himself, and was regarded, as a champion of Christianity and a most deserving son of the Church, and yet he kept a lamp lighted in honor of Plato, whom he repeatedly declared to be a Greek-speaking Moses. He brought all religions upon the same level. The worship of the pagan gods of antiquity was a worship of the true God, and not, as the Church held, an adoration of demons. He found Para- — B. Plating Vit. Pauli II.— Cantu, I. 186-7, 198. Creigbton (Hist, of the Popes, III. 276 sqq.) has printed from a Cambridge MS. a curious correspondence between Pomponio, while imprisoned in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and his jailer, Rodrigo de Arevalo, afterwards Bishop of Zamora. It shows how fragile was the philosophy of the Platonists when exposed to real privations.
 * Gregor. Heymburg. Confut. Primatus Papae (Fascic. Rer. Expetend. II. 117).