Eugenius IV

“ As the result of negotiations between Frederick Barbarossa and the Romans, Eugenius was finally enabled to return to Rome in December 1152, but died in the following July. He was succeeded by Anastasius IV. Eugenius retained the stoic virtues of monasticism throughout his stormy career, and was deeply reverenced for his personal character. ”

“ Although his pontificate had been so stormy and unhappy that he is said to have regretted on his death-bed that he ever left his monastery, nevertheless Eugenius’s victory over the council of Basel and his efforts in behalf of church unity contributed greatly to break down the conciliar movement and restore the papacy to the position it had held before the Great Schism. Eugenius was dignified in demeanour, but inexperienced and vacillating in action and excitable in temper. Bitter in his hatred of heresy, he yet displayed great kindness to the poor. ”

“ He also had to submit to the consequences of his origin on the occasion of a double election not foreseen by the Concordat of Worms, when he was forced to admit the necessity of appeal to Rome and to acknowledge the supremacy of the papal decision. The situation changed Eugenius in 1152, under Eugenius III., when Frederick Barbarossa was elected German king. He notified Eugenius III., 1145–1153.his election to the pope, but did not seek the pope’s approval. None the less, Eugenius III. felicitated the new sovereign on his election, and even signed the treaty of Constance with him (1153) . ”

“ Eugenius IV. resolved to resist this supremacy, though he did not dare openly to repudiate a very widespread doctrine considered by many to be the actual foundation of the authority of the popes before the schism. However, he soon realized the impossibility of treating the fathers of Basel as ordinary rebels, and tried a compromise; but as time went on, the fathers became more and more intractable, and between him and them gradually arose an impassable barrier. ”

“ A few months before this he had defeated at Frigidus, in the pass of the Julian Alps, Eugenius, the second pretender to lay claim to the throne during his reign. The pious monarch met his death in a different manner from his young co-rulers, Gratian and Valentinian II, but as had many of his predecessors. No murderous steel of mercenary aspirants put an end to his life, but surrounded by faithful friends and followers, and attended by the venerable Bishop Ambrose, his great soul departed from a body long worn out with trouble and anxiety and the many struggles of an almost incessant war. ”

“ Bellizarius, Eugenius, is there no guard above us That will protect me from a rape? 'tis worse Than worlds of tortures.
Eugen. Fear not, Victoria;
Be thou a chaste one in thy minde, thy body
May like a Temple of well tempered steele
Be batter'd, not demolishe'd.
Belliz. Tyrant, be mercifull;
And if thou hast no other vertue in thee
Deserving memory to succeeding ages,
Yet onely thy not suffering such an out-rage
Shall adde praise to thy name.
King. Where is the Groome?
Eugen. Oh sure the Sunne will darken And not behold a deed so foule and monstrous.
Enter Epidophorus with a Slave. ”

“ Cosmo. Eugenius, bow thy knee before our Jove, And the King gives thee mercy.
Dam. Else stripes and death.
Eugen. We come into the world but at one doore,
But twenty thousand gates stand open wide
To give us passage hence: death then is easie,
And I defie all tortures.
King. Then fasten the Cative;
I care not for thy wife: Get from mine eyes
Thou tempting Lamia. But, Bellizarius,
Before thy bodyes frame be puld in pieces,
Wilt thou forsake the errours thou art drencht in? ”

“ He entered the Carthusian Order in 1394, served as prior in various monasteries, and was made Bishop of Bologna, against his will, in 1417. In this office he still followed the Rule of his Order, was zealous for the reform of regular and secular clergy, and was a great patron of learned men, among whom was Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II. Martin V, and his successor, Eugenius IV, employed him on several important missions, thrice to France (1422, 1431, 1435) , and thrice to Lombardy (1420, 1427, 1430) . ”

“ Martin and Eugenius were both busy and warlike men. They were involved in all the countless internal conflicts of Italy; they were confronted by many troubles in the Church, by the argumentative and persistent Council of Bâle, and 526 an anti-Pope or two to increase their cares. The reign of Eugenius began by a flight from Rome with one attendant, from the mob who threatened his life. Nevertheless it was in these agitated days that the first thought of Rome rebuilt, as glorious as a bride, more beautiful than in her climax of classic splendour, began to enter into men's thoughts. ”

“ The Frankish general, who durst not shock the prejudices of the Roman world by himself assuming the purple, hung that dishonoured robe upon the shoulders of a rhetorician, a confidant, and almost a dependent of his own, named Eugenius. This man, like most of the scholars and rhetoricians of the day, had not abjured the old faith of Hellas. As Arbogast also was a heathen, though worshipping Teutonic rather than Olympian gods, this last revolution looked like a recurrence to the days of Julian, and threatened the hardly-won supremacy of Christianity. ”

“ Take hence the body,
Since me it hated it shall feele my hate:
Cast her into the fire; I have lost her,
And for her sake all Christians shall be lost
That subjects are to me: massacre all,
But thou, Eugenius, art the last shall fall
This day; and in mine eye, though it nere see more,
Call on thy helper which thou dost adore.
A Thunder-bolt strikes him.
Omnes. The King is strucke with thunder!
Eugen. Thankes, Divine Powers; Yours be the triumph and the wonder ours.
Anton. Unbinde him till a new King fill the throne; And he shall doome him.
A Hubert, a Hubert, a Hubert! ”

“ Chapter XXIV.—Of the tyranny of Eugenius and the victory won through faith by the Emperor Theodosius.
In this manner the peace of the churches was secured by the most religious emperor. Before the establishment of peace he had heard of the death of Valentinianus and of the usurpation of Eugenius and had marched for Europe. [1]
At this time there lived in Egypt [2] a man of the name of John, who had embraced the ascetic life. Being full of spiritual grace, he foretold many future events to persons who from time to time came to consult him. ”

“ To warn Eugenius against pride, Bernard reminds him in biblical terms that an insensate sovereign on a throne resembles “an ape upon a housetop,” and that the dignity with which he is invested does not prevent him from being a man, that is, “a being, naked, poor, miserable, made for toil and not for honours.” To his thinking, poison and the dagger were less to be feared by the pope than the lust of power. Ambition and cupidity were the source of the most deplorable abuses in the Roman Church. The cardinals, said Bernard, were satraps who put pomp before the truth. ”

“ In the next year, Eugenius, who had been made Emperor by Flavian and Arbogastes, restored the Altar of Victory, which however was finally removed by Theodosius after the defeat of Eugenius and Arbogastes. ”

“ The next day the dispersed cardinals came together again in St. Cæsarius' church, and set the thorny tiara on the head of a stranger to their order. This was the abbot of the Cistercian convent of St. Anastasius in Rome, formerly a monk under St. Bernard at Clairvaux. He took the name of Eugenius III. He bore the reputation of a mild and conciliating man; which fact would probably weigh all the more with the conclave under existing circumstances, from the recollection of Celestine II., whose gentleness had tamed what it appeared sternness could not subdue. ”

“ Not daring to proclaim himself emperor, he threw the purple robe on the shoulders of an imperial secretary, the rhetorician Eugenius. Theodosius, the avenger of orthodoxy, had the Catholic clergy on his side. Arbogast and Eugenius tried to rally to their cause all that were left of the pagans. This conduct raised the Christian population against them. A single battle, near Aquileia, put an end to this rule. Eugenius, being taken prisoner, was put to death; Arbogast slew himself (394) . ”

“ In November 1437 the emperor set out with a large following. Joseph, the aged patriarch of Constantinople, though without entertaining any hope for a successful issue, was forced to accompany the party. One of the most important members of it was the famous preacher Sylvester Syropulus, who has left a valuable account of the expedition. [6] Eugenius received them courteously and did his utmost to smooth the way to union. Both the pope and the emperor appear to have been actuated by a true desire to put an end to the schism. ”

“ Though he held the office of Apostolic Secretary under four Popes, his marriage stopped the way to ecclesiastical preferment, while his incapacity to use the arts of the stylist, the sophist, the flatterer, and the translator, lost him the favour his more solid qualities had at first procured. Eugenius could appreciate a man of his stamp better than Nicholas V., whose special tastes inclined to elegant humanism rather than to ponderous erudition.
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The lives of all the humanists illustrate the honours and the wealth secured by learning for her votaries in the Renaissance. ”

“ The emperor retired to the adjacent hills; where he passed a disconsolate night, without sleep, without provisions, and without hopes; 119 except that strong assurance, which, under the most desperate circumstances, the independent mind may derive from the contempt of fortune and of life. The triumph of Eugenius was celebrated by the insolent and dissolute joy of his camp; whilst the active and vigilant Arbogastes secretly detached a considerable body of troops to occupy the passes of the mountains, and to encompass the rear of the Eastern army. ”

“ The revolt of Arbogast and Eugenius, 392 A. D. In 391 Theodosius returned to the East, leaving Valentinian as emperor in the West with his residence at Vienna in Gaul. But the powerful Arbogast, whom Theodosius had placed in command of the western troops, refused to act under the orders of the young Augustus, and finally compassed his death (392 A. D.) . However, he did not dare, in view of his Frankish origin, to assume the purple himself, and so induced a prominent Roman official named Eugenius to accept the title of Augustus. ”

“ The men of Eugenius bore before them a figure of Hercules, and in the first battle they gained the advantage, for the more ignorant Eastern soldiers, though Christians, could not get rid of the notion that there was some sort of power in a heathen god, and thought Jupiter and Hercules were too strong for them.
But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, so that they gained a great victory, and a terrible storm and whirlwind which fell at the same time upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army feel the more sure that God fought on their side. ”

“ The emperor likewise was overcome by grief and anxiety, having not only lost his associate in the empire, who was a young man and so nearly related to him, but the empire having fallen into the hands of men disaffected to himself, and likewise invincible; Arbogastes being brave and skilful, and Eugenius learned and virtuous. ”

“ Eugenius protests to his flock that if they remain constant, no distance nor death could separate him from them in spirit; but that he was innocent of the blood of those that should perish, and that this his letter would be read before the tribunal of Christ at the last day for severer condemnation of such base apostates. “If I return to Carthage,” says he, “I shall see you in this life; if not, I shall meet you in the other. Pray for us, and fast; fasting and alms have never failed to move God to mercy. Above all things remember that we are not to fear those who can only kill the body.” ”

“ Deceived by these flattering representations, Eugenius raised an army and took possession of the gates into Italy, as the Romans call the Julian Alps, an elevated and precipitous range of mountains; these he seized beforehand and fortified, for they had but one path in the narrows, and were shut in on each side by precipices and the loftiest mountains. Theodosius was perplexed as to whether he ought to await the issue of the war, or whether it would be better in the first place to attack Eugenius ”

“ In July, 1446, Eugenius again alludes to the flourishing condition of Hussitism in Hungary and{545} Moldavia, in spite of the labors of the friars, and he recurs to the question which baffled Giacomo della Marca. Many parish priests, he says, in these regions not only keep concubines publicly, but teach that there is no sin in intercourse between unmarried persons; the question has been asked him whether this is heresy, justiciable by the Inquisition; this he answers in the affirmative, and authorizes Fabiano and his deputies to treat it as such. ”

“ Thanks to her good training, she was able to answer the abbot's searching questions so cleverly that he received all three, whom he could not help taking for refined and distinguished persons, into the convent, and permitted them to assume the monastic habit.
Eugenia made a beautiful, almost angelic, monk, and was called Brother Eugenius, while the two Hyacinths found themselves transformed for better or worse into monks; for they were never even consulted, and they had long been accustomed only to live according to the will of their female paragon. ”