The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [2299]
[Footnote 65: Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment by those who believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the instability of their faith. Yet as a mere philosopher, I cannot agree with the Greeks (Brunck, Poetae Gnomici, p. 231.) See in Herodotus (l. i. c. 31) the moral and pleasing tale of the Argive youths.]
[Footnote 66: In the first book of the Histoire du Concile de Pise, M. Lenfant has abridged and compared the original narratives of the adherents of Urban and Clement, of the Italians and Germans, the French and Spaniards. The latter appear to be the most active and loquacious, and every fact and word in the original lives of Gregory XI. and Clement VII. are supported in the notes of their editor Baluze.]
[Footnote 67: The ordinal numbers of the popes seems to decide the question against Clement VII. and Benedict XIII., who are boldly stigmatized as antipopes by the Italians, while the French are content with authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration, (Baluz. in Praefat.) It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that saints, visions and miracles should be common to both parties.]
[Footnote 68: Baluze strenuously labors (Not. p. 1271 - 1280) to justify the pure and pious motives of Charles V. king of France: he refused to hear the arguments of Urban; but were not the Urbanists equally deaf to the reasons of Clement, &c.?]
[Footnote 69: An epistle, or declamation, in the name of Edward III., (Baluz. Vit. Pap. Avenion. tom. i. p. 553,) displays the zeal of the English nation 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.)]
From the banks of the Tyber and the Rhone, the hostile pontiffs encountered each other with the pen and the sword: the civil and ecclesiastical order of society was disturbed; and the Romans had their full share of the mischiefs of which they may be arraigned as the primary authors. ^70 They had vainly flattered