Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/654

 C3S CONCLUSION. of Riga. The opposition crumbled away, and Martin V. was elected. The French quickly saw their mistake, and appealed to Sigismund, who curtly referred them to the pope whom they had chosen, and who now had full power of granting or refusing re- form. The council hurriedly adjourned after passing a few canons of little worth, and providing for a succession of general councils at short intervals.- We have seen how reform was skilfully eluded at the Council of Siena in 1421. At Basle it fared no better. In 1435 Andreas, Bishop of Minorca, addressed to the Cardinal-legate Cesarini an exhortation in which he said, " Evils, sins, and scandals have so in- creased, especially among the clergy, that, as the prophet says, already accursed lying and theft, and adultery 2nd simony, and murder and many other crimes have deluged the earth. . . . The avarice and lust of domination and the foul and abominable lives of the ecclesiastics are the cause of all the misfortunes of Christen- dom. The infidel and the heretic say that if the Christian faith and gospel law were true and holy, the prelates and priests would not live as they do. nor would the spiritual rulers work such con- fusion and scandal in Christendom without instant punishment from the Lord Jesus Christ, the founder of the gospel and the Church." Bishop Andreas further urged that the council condemn by an irrefragable decision the impious doctrine of some canonists that the pope cannot commit simony. Two years later, in 1437, John Nider, the Dominican, declared that the general reformation of the Church was hopeless, on account of the wickedness of the prelates and the lack of good-will of the clergy. Partial reforms might be practicable, but even in this the difficulty was almost in- superable. The council, he said, in its six years of existence had been unable to reform a single nunnery, although aided by ail the force of the secular power, t The council, indeed, attempted some reformation, but Eugenius TV. and his successors refused to observe its canons. Even in Germany and France the old abuses were reinstated, with their de- VII. 1124-32).— Von der Hardt, IV. 1414, 1417-18, 1422-3, 1426-7, 1432.— Ryuier, X. 433-6. — Gobelin! Personae Cosmodroin. iEt. ti. cap. 96. + Andreas Gubernac. Concil. P. n., in., v. cap. 2 (Von der Hardt, VI. 175, 179, 209J.— Nideri Forrnicar. Lib. I. c. vii.
 * Libellus Supplex oblatus Papas in Concilio Pisano (Martene Ampl. Coll.