lings with
the people and in their conventual life. Contempt for false miracles and
spurious reliques, and the horror of the traffic in indulgences,
swelled the storm of discontent among the more enlightened. But the
people continued to make saints, to adore wonder-working shrines, and to
profit by the spiritual advantages which could be bought. Pius II.,
mindful of the honor of his native city, canonized S. Bernardine and S.
Catherine of Siena. Innocent VIII consecrated a chapel for the Lance of
Longinus, which he had received from the Turk as part-payment for the
guardianship of Djem. The Venetian Senate offered 10,000 ducats for the
seamless coat of Christ (1455). The whole of Italy was agitated by the
news that S. Andrew's head had arrived from Patras (1462). The Pope and
his Cardinals went forth to meet it near the Milvian bridge. There Pius
II. pronounced a Latin speech of welcome, while Bessarion delivered an
oration when the precious member was deposited in S. Peter's. In this
passion for reliques two different sentiments seem to have been
combined--the merely superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms,
which caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark so jealously,
and the Neapolitans to watch the liqifaction of the blood of S.
Januarius with a frenzy of excitement--and that nobler respect for the
persons of the mighty dead which induced Sigismondo Malatesta to
transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to Rimini, and which rendered the
supposed coffin of Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to
Mussulman and Christian alike. The bones of Virgil, it will be
remembered, had been built into the walls of Naples, while those of Livy
were honored with splendid sepulture at Padua.

Owing to the separation between religion and morality which existed in
Italy under the influence of Papal and monastic profligacy, the Italians
saw no reason why spiritual benefits should not be purchased from a
notoriously rapacious Pontiff, or why the penalty of hell should not
depend upon the mere word of a consecrated monster. The Pope as
successor of S. Peter, and the Pope as Roman sovereign, were two
separate beings. Many curious indications of the mixed feeling of the
people upon this point, and of the advantage which the Pope derived from
his anomalous position, may be gathered from the historians of the
period. Machiavelli, in his narrative of the massacre at Sinigaglia,
relates that Vitellozzo Vitelli, while being str