ABSTRACT
We have already appreciated the fact that the last decade of the fifteenth century was a time of disillusion and disappointed hopes. The three great ideals of the Reformed Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Crusades, seemed all to have been tried and found wanting. As I said before, the year 1492–93 links the names of the most wicked Pope and the most forlorn Emperor that were ever seen, and the last Crusade had petered out in 1464 without even having started from Ancona. Perhaps it may be worth remembering that Henry VIII of England was a child of one year old in the dismal year 1492, and that the word ‘the Pope’ meant to him, till he reached the age of twelve, that very objectionable pontiff Alexander VI, with the general atmosphere of scandal and murder that hung about him, his family, and his court. The impressions of one’s youth cling about one’s mind for all one’s life. Is it to be wondered at that an intelligent boy of twelve could never get rid of the idea that ‘the Pope’ might mean a very objectionable person, by no means deserving of respect, open to all manner of bargains, and capable of any intrigue ? The Papacy, disguised under a sacred name, might mean a power without any moral sanction, and indifferent to right or wrong. If Henry in his later years, when he had developed into a selfish autolatrous tyrant, considered that his personal morals were no ban to his claiming supreme religious authority, he could argue that he had ample precedent in the recent history of the popes. He was reared in the old immoral atmosphere—and showed it.
