Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/719

 grew up apart from it and by its side rather than under its influence. The kingdom of intellectual unity-which Raffaelle had depicted for Julius II on the walls of the Vatican-was not realised. The leaders of the Christian Renaissance had not the moral enthusiasm or the force of character necessary for the task. As the gentle Andrewes and the gracious Falkland had to give way before the sterner enthusiasm and the narrow pedantry of Laud, which in its turn fell before a more single-minded but still narrower creed, so Contarini and his associates abdicated the leadership to Ignatius and Carafta. Neither Pole nor Morone had the spirit of martyrdom; and freedom could not triumph without its roll of martyrs. It was left to the sects in the future to vindicate the rights of conscience, and to extort by force from without what liberal churchmen had failed to achieve within the Church. There was a touch of the dilettante spirit in the aristocratic circles of the Catholic reformers in Italy at the opening of the sixteenth century which paralysed their efforts and enervated their moral fibre. The movement was too academic to influence the world effectively. Some of its members fell into the sins which they themselves had denounced, and like Cortese ended their lives in joining in the hunt for benefices. The rest contented themselves with a lower ideal as best they could, and stood helplessly aside. The Church was reformed and underwent a moral regeneration; but religious and intellectual freedom were left further off" than ever. The issues at stake were, however, made clear, and the parties in the great struggle were definitely marked out. A modus vivendi between authority and liberty could not be found. Neither would tolerate the other, and Europe was doomed to be the battlefield of the contending principles. The sword alone could be the arbiter.