Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/35

 that was to prove the true incarnation of the pagan Renaissance and modern realism. The flames which closed over Savonarola had early convinced Niccolo Machiavelli that no reform was to be looked for from Rome.

Savonarola's distrust of humanism and his harsh verdict on the extreme realism of contemporary art were not extinguished with his life. A few years later we find his thoughts worked out, or rather extended and distorted in literature. Castellesi (Adriano di Corneto), formerly secretary to Alexander VI and created Cardinal May 31, 1503, wrote his De vera philosophia ex quattuor doctoribus Ecclesiae, in direct opposition to the Renaissance and humanism. The author represents every scientific pursuit, indeed all human intellectual life, as useless for salvation, and even dangerous. Dialectics, astronomy, geometry, music, and poetry are but vainglorious folly. Aristotle has nothing to do with Paul, nor Plato with Peter; all philosophers are damned, their wisdom vain, since it recognised but a fragment of the truth and marred even this by misuse. They are the patriarchs of heresy; what are physics, ethics, logic compared with the Holy Scriptures, whose authority is greater than that of all human intellect?

The man who wrote these things, and at whose table Alexander VI contracted his last illness, was no ascetic and no monkish obscurantist. He was the Pope's confidant and quite at home in all those political intrigues which later under Leo X brought ruin upon him. His book can only be regarded as a blow aimed at Julius II, Alexander's old enemy, who now wore the tiara and was preparing to glorify his pontificate by the highest effort of which Christian art was capable. Providence had granted him for the execution of his plans three of the greatest minds the world of art has ever known: never had a monarch three such men as Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raffaelle at once under his sway. With their help Julius II resolved to carry out his ideas for the glory of his pontificate and the exaltation of the Church. What Cardinal Castellesi wanted was a downright rebellion against the Pope; if he, with his following of obscurantists, were acknowledged to be in the right, all the plans of the brilliant and energetic ruler would end in failure, or else be banned as worldly, and Julius II would lose the glory of having united the greatest and noblest achievement of art with the memory of his pontificate and the interests of Catholicism.

The Pope gave Cardinal Castellesi his answer by making the Vatican what it is. The alteration and enlargement of the palace however passes almost unnoticed in comparison with the rebuilding of the Basilica of St Peter's, on which the Pope was resolved since 1505. With the palace (1504) Bramante seemed to have set the crown on his many works; but the plans for the new cathedral, with all the sketches and alternatives which still survive and have been analysed for us with true critical appreciation, show us Bramante not only in the height of his creative