304

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

LXX.

His inflexible zeal, which loudly censured theirluxury and vice, would have attached them tothe stations and duties of their parishes at Rome ;and had he not fatally delayed a new promotion,the French cardinals would have been reducedto an helpless minority in the sacred college.For these reasons, and in the hope of repassingthe Alps, they rashly violated the peace andunity of the church; and the merits of theirdouble choice are yet agitated in the catholicschools/ The vanity, rather than the interest,of the nation, determined the court and clergyof France/ The states of Savoy, Sicily, Cy-prus, Arragon, Castile, Navarre, and Scotland ,were inclined, by their example and authority,to the obedience of Clement the seventh, and,after his decease, of Benedict the thirteenth.Rome, and the principal states of Italy, Ger-many, Portugal , England/ the Low Countries,and the kingdoms of the north, adhered to theprior election of Urban the sixth, who was suc-

1 The ordinal numbers of the popes seem to decide the questionagainst Clement VII. and Benedict XIII , who are boldly stigmatisedas antipopes by the Italians, while the French are content with autho-rities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration (Baluz. inPraefat.). It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that saints, vi-sions, and miracles, should be common to both parties.

r Baluze strenuously labours (Not. p. 1271 1280) to justify the pureand pious motives of Charles V , king of France : he refused to hearthe arguments of Urban; but were not the urbanists equally deaf tothe reasons of Clement , &c.?

1 An epistle, or declamation, in the name of Edward III . (Baluz.Vit. Pap. Avenion. tom. i, p. 553) displays the zeal of the Englishnation against the clementines. Nor was their zeal confined to words;the bishop of Norwich led a crusade of 60,000 bigots beyond sea.{.Hume's History, vol. iii, p. 57, 58).