lianism and ecclesiastical dogma. Faith in the infallibility of
the scholastic system was thus shaken, and the system itself was
destroyed by the revival of philosophic nominalism, which had been
discredited in the 11th century by the realism of the great schoolmen.
It now found a bold supporter in William of Occam (q.v.), and through
him became widely accepted. But nominalism was powerless to inspire
theology with new life; on the contrary, its intervention only increased
the inextricable tangle of the hairsplitting questions with which
theology busied itself, and made their solution more and more
impossible.

Mysticism, moreover, which had no lack of noteworthy supporters in the
14th and 15th centuries, and the various new departures in thought
initiated by individual theologians such as Nicolaus Cusanus (d. 1464)
and Wessel Gansfort (d. 1489), were not competent to restore to the
Church what she had once possessed in scholasticism--that is to say, a
conception of Christianity in which all Christendom recognized the
convictions in which it lived and had its being.

This was all the more significant because Western Christendom in the
15th century was by no means irreligious. Men's minds were agitated by
spiritual questions, and they sought salvation and the assurance of
salvation, using every means prescribed by the Church: confession and
the communion, indulgences and relics, pilgrimages and oblations,
prayers and attendance at church; none of all these were contemned or
held cheap. Yet the age had no inward peace.

After the failure of the attempts at reform by the councils, the
guidance of the Church was left undisturbed in the hands of the popes,
and they were determined that it should remain so. In 1450 Eugenius IV.
set up in opposition to the council of Basel a general council summoned
by himself, which met first at Ferrara and afterwards at Florence. Here
he appeared to score a great success. The split between East and West
had led in the 11th century to the rupture of ecclesiastical relations
between Rome and Constantinople. This schism had lasted since the 16th
of July 1054; but now a union with the Eastern Church was successfully
accomplished at Florence. Eugenius certainly owed his success merely to
the political necessities of the emperor of the East, and his union was
forthwith destroyed owing to its repudiation by oriental Christendom;
yet at the same time his decretals of union were not devoid of
impo