ABSTRACT
IN its earlier pages the previous volume of this series displays the medieval Church triumphant over its principal enemies, with the Papacy at the height of its power and repute, the Mendicant Orders at the peak of their zeal and influence, and the greatest of the schoolmen inspiring and directing the thought of Europe. Later, it has to trace a falling aw ay: to show the Papacy, newly rid of an old foe, succumbing to the insolence of a new one, and going into captivity far away from the home to which, in the minds of nearly all Christians, it had been inseparably attached; to exhibit the religious orders, even the friars, yielding to sloth, luxury, and vice, and losing all hold on the regard of the devout; to describe the collapse of orthodox thought after Duns Scotus had discredited the alliance between faith and rationalism which had made the thirteenth century so prolific in intellectual achievement. The decline (which indeed was manifest throughout the Church) had gone far by the date at which this volume starts. Yet it will only be in the succeeding volume that the impending catastrophe will be described. I f in the fifteenth century the Church grew no better, she did not grow much worse. It was not any new corruption or abuse that occasioned the revolt of the sixteenth century; it was a conviction that only by revolt could any improvement be effected. It took a long time for that belief to establish itself in the mind of Europe. For many years those most concerned about the abuses in the Church assumed that she could reform herself. It was this confidence that rendered possible the so-called Conciliar Movement.
