Six popes, after Nicholas V, governed the church during the second half of the fifteenth century: Calixtus III., from 1445 to 1458; Pius II. to 1464; Paul II. to 1471; Sixtus IV. to 1484; Innocent VIII. to 1492; and Alexander IV. for the following years.
Calixtus III. who vainly preached a crusade against the Turks established at Constantinople, shewed much more zeal still for the particular interests of his family. This pope had three nephews: he raised two of them to the cardinalat, which they disgraced by the open irregularity of their conduct. He heaped secular dignities on the head of the third: he made him duke of Spoleto, and general of the troops of the Holy See; he was desirous of making king of Naples, and thus terminate the rivalry existing between Ferdinand, the son of Alphonso, John, the son of Rene, and other candidates, whose object this kingdom was. Calixtus endeavoured to arm the Milanese against Ferdinand, and forbad this prince on pain of excommunication from taking the title of king: but Calixtus reigned only three years, and his ambitious intentions had no durable consequence.
After him came Pius II., who before, under the name of Eneas Sylvius, was an author sufficiently distinguished: he had also been secretary to the council of Basle, and as such a zealous partisan of the supremacy of councils; but finally, when pope, an ardent defender of the omnipotence of the Holy See. He even formally retracted all that he had written at the dictation of the council; and, by an express bull, Pius II. condemns Eneas Sylvius.²⁸³ His bull ‘Execrabilis,’ anathematizes appeals to general councils, to one of which France appealed on this very bull. Charles VII. still reigned; he maintained the pragmatic sanction; and observe in what terms the attorney general Douvet protests against this bull:²⁸⁴
“Since our holy father the pope, to “whom all power has been given for the building up “of the church and not for its destruction, wishes to “disturb and insult our lord the king, the ecclesi− “astics of the kingdom, and even his secular sub “jects, I, John Douvet, attorney general of his “Majesty, do protest such judgments or censures to “be null, according to the decrees of the sacred “canons, which declare void, in many cases, this “sort of decisions; submitting, nevertheless, all “things to the judgment of a general council, to “which our very Christian king purposes to have “recourse, and to which I, in his name, appeal.”