[Sidenote: End of the intellectual influence of the papacy.] Thus we have seen that the personal immoralities and heresy of the popes brought on the interference of the King of France, who not only shook the papal system to its basis but destroyed its prestige by inflicting the most conspicuous indignity upon it. For seventy years Rome was disfranchised, and the rivalries of France and Italy produced the great schism, than which nothing could be more prejudicial to the papal power. We have seen that, aided by the pecuniary difficulties of the papacy, the rising intellect of Europe made good its influence and absolutely deposed the pope. It was in vain to deny the authenticity of such a council; there stood the accomplished fact. At this moment there seemed no other prospect for the Italian system than utter ruin; yet, wonderful to be said, a momentary deliverance came from a quarter whence no man would have expected. The Turks were the saviours of the papacy. At this point is the true end of the Italian system--that system which had pressed upon Europe like a nightmare. The great men of the times--the statesmen, the philosophers, the merchants, the lawyers, the governing classes--those whose weight of opinion is recognized by the uneducated people at last, had shaken off the incubus and opened their eyes. A glimmering of the true state of things was breaking upon the clergy. No more with the vigour it once possessed was the papacy again to domineer over human thought and be the controlling agent of European affairs. Convulsive struggles it might make, but they were only death-throes. The sovereign pontiff must now descend from the autocracy he had for so many ages possessed, and become a small potentate, tolerated by kings in that subordinate position only because of the remnant of his influence on the uneducated multitude and those of feeble minds. CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST--(_Concluded_). EFFECT OF THE EASTERN OR MILITARY ATTACK.--GENERAL REVIEW OF THE AGE OF FAITH. _The Fall of Constantinople.--Its momentary Effect on the Italian System._ GENERAL REVIEW OF THE INTELLECTUAL CONDITION IN THE AGE OF FAITH.--_Supernaturalism and its Logic spread all over Europe.--It is destroyed by the Jews and Arabians.--Its total Extinction._ _The Jewish Physicians.--Their Acquirements and Influence.--Their Collision with the Imposture-medicine of Europe.--Their Effect on the higher Classes.--Opposition to them._ _Two Impulses, the Intellectual and Moral, operating against the Mediæval state of Things.--Downfall of the Italian System through the intellectual Impulse from the West and the moral from the North.--Action of the former through Astronomy.--Origin of the moral Impulse.--Their conjoint irresistible Effect.--Discovery of the state of Affairs in Italy.--The Writings of Machiavelli.--What the Church had actually done._ _Entire Movement of the Italian System determined from a consideration of the four Revolts against it._