TREATMENT OF THE GREEK EXILES..... 457+ But Mohammed was a merciless victor; the emotion of pity soon passed from his mind, and he indulged his ferocious passions by the infliction of every insult which cruelty, avarice and licentiousness could dictate on the unfortunate citizens. On these abominations it would be painful to dwell, and we therefore gladly turn to examine the effects of the downfal of Constantinople on the nations of the west. The exiles from Constantinople arrived in Italy, when the minds of men were just beginning to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of scholastic theology; and when the crimes of the Papacy, fast approaching the summit of their greatness, had driven men to enquire on what foundations the claims of the pontiffs rested. They brought with them the knowledge of the Greek language, and its study rapidly became popular with their hosts. It required no very deep study of the New Testament to discover that the ecclesiastical establishments which then over-shadowed Europe, and blighted every healthy plant that sprang beneath their shade, were directly inconsistent with the spirit and letter of the Gospel. The fall of Constantinople filled Christendom, but more especially eastern Germany, with terror. Mohammed, indeed, had opened for himself a passage into Italy, by the capture of Otranto; and but for his sudden death, might have occupied the ruined halls of the Cæsars, as well as the palaces of the Constantines, and placed the crescent on St. Peter's as on St. Sophia. The popes preached a new crusade; money was collected to subsidize troops; but the pontiffs used the treasures to enrich their families, to provide for their natural children, or to forward their schemes of ambition. Two years after Mohammed's death, the Turks might have been driven beyond the Hellespont-perhaps beyond the Euphrates, had Innocent VIII. been less avaricious, and the Venetians less influenced by commercial jealousy. Innocent did not even condescend to use the decent excuses of Sixtus; he pub 458 PROGRESS OF INVENTION. licly recognised his natural children, and filled Italy with cruel wars by his efforts to carve out principalities for them. The establishment of the Turks in Europe brought shame and sorrow to every Christian country, and the blame being justly cast upon the rulers of the Church, there was consequently a growing disposition to scrutinize severely the origin of privileges profligately abused, and the source of an authority exercised, not for conservation, but destruction. An atrocious violation of the laws of hospitality, combined with impolicy, injustice, and a wanton sacrifice of the interests of Christendom, greatly increased the alienation of many powerful minds from the papacy. The crime was commenced by Innocent, and consummated by Alexander; it brought to them but slight and temporary advantage; it irretrievably ruined the character of pontifical power. CHAPTER XXVIII. Social and Political condition of Europe in the TOWARDS the close of the fifteenth contury, a complete revolution changed at once the condition of society, and the political relations of states. This revolution was neither the result of force nor of wisdom; no great masses were put in motion to overturn established order, no great statesman arranged the combinations of profound policy to produce the mighty change; it was the result of a progressive advancement of intellect, accelerated by the almost simultaneous invention, or at least introduction from the East, of paper, of printing, of gunpowder and cannon, of an improved arithmetic, and of the mariner's compass. These great advances in knowledge extended the influence of literature and the arts, and prepared the way for salutary PAPER AND PRINTING. · 4.59 innovations in habits, religion and government. Europe gradually threw off the yoke of barbarism, superstition, and fanaticism, imposed upon it by the revolutions of the fifth century, and the principal Christian states assumed nearly the same form that they have at present. Useful as these inventions were, their history is involved in great obscurity; our limits will not permit us to glance at, much less examine the countless controversies to which each has given rise, but in our brief account we shall fairly state our authorities, so as to enable inquirers to judge for themselves. Before the invention of paper made from linen-rags, parchment was commonly used for copying books and for all public records; but as this was scarce and dear, cottonpaper was frequently purchased from the Arabs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The use of cottonpaper was derived from the remote East; it was first made known to the Saracens when they conquered Samarcand, (A.D. 704.) and soon afterwards a manufactory of paper was established at Mecca†. China was the country from whence the people of Samarcand derived their knowledge of paper, and in that country the art of manufacturing it was discovered more than two centuries before the Christian era. The use of linen was not general in Europe until the commencement of the thirteenth century; the similarity between linen and cotton stuffs must naturally have suggested the possibility of making paper from one as well as the other, and Germany, where most flax was grown and most linen made, was probably the parent of the invention. The oldest paper manufactory of which we have any certain account, was that established at Nuremberg §. The invention of the art of printing is much more difficult to be determined, than that of manufacturing paper; pro * Abulfeda. + Casiri. § Wehrs. Gaubil and Deguignes, Junr. bably because it was a discovery made very gradually. From a very remote age, the Chinese practised the art of printing from solid blocks, like our modern stereotype plates*; and this art was introduced into Europe for the purpose of manufacturing playing cards. The designs of the cards were engraved on wood †, and impressions taken from the blocks nearly a century before the art of printing with moveable types was known. The card-makers soon began to cut pictures of the saints, and sketches of sacred history on the wooden blocks, which were readily purchased for the purpose of illuminating missals and other books of devotion. These wood engravings probably suggested to Gutenberg the invention of moveable wooden-types, which he certainly began to use at Strasburgh (A.D. 1436 §). This was followed by the invention of type-founding, by Peter Schoeffer (A.D. 1456 ||), and of a press, at an unknown era. Gutenberg entered into partnership with John Fust or Faustus, a citizen of Mayence, who greatly improved the art, and in that age of superstition, was deemed a conjuror on account of his mechanical dexterity. The manufacture of gunpowder, and its various applications to the art of war, were probably separate inventions, and much of the difficulty with which the origin of these inventions is surrounded, may be avoided by viewing them separately. The explosive force of nitre seems to have been known in India and China from the most remote ages, but the chief use made of it was in the manufacture of fireworks at public rejoicings and festivals ¶. The Arabs learned the art in Samarcand, and Roger Bacon, a celebrated English monk, of the thirteenth century, who was deeply read in Saracenic literature, describes the composition of gunpowder with great accuracy The Arabs were the first to use cannon in Europe; the earliest account we have * Deguignes and Klaproth. § Oberlin. **. + Fournier. || Daunon. ** Roger Bacon died A. D. 1294. De Murr. ¶ Klaproth. MARINER'S COMPASS. 461 of these engines of war, describes them as being employed by the king of Grenada at the siege of Baza (A. D. 1342 *), but a century elapsed before they were brought to any thing like perfection. Guns and pistols were scarcely known before the beginning of the sixteenth century; old habits made warriors prefer the old implements of war, and for a long time the use of fire-arms was deemed sinful and disgraceful. Recent researches have enabled us to trace the introduction of the Magnetic needle † into Europe with some accuracy. The attractive power of the load-stone was known to the naturalists of Greece and Rome, but its pola rity certainly escaped their notice. It deserves to be noticed, that the earliest European accounts of the Magnetic needle, speak of it as something familiarly known, whence we may reasonably infer that it was practically known to sailors before it engaged the attention of the learned. The discovery of the magnet's polarity was made in China before the Christian era‡; it was used for the construction of magnetic chariots, whose origin is lost in the obscurity of the mythological ages. M. Klaproth has collected from Chinese authorities many curious anecdotes of the use made of these chariots; under the Tsin dynasty they formed a part of every royal procesIn the Tsin-tchi, or history of that dynasty, we find "The wooden figure placed on the magnetic car resembled a genius wearing a dress made of feathers; whatever was the position of the car, the hand of the genius always pointed to the south. When the emperor went in state, one * Cassiri. The first clear mention of the magnet's polarity, occurs in a Provençal Satire on the papacy, written by Guyot de Provins, about the year 1190. Klaproth. See also Athenæum, No. 369. |