Loss and gain

Where do values come from and what becomes of them in the end? The loss and gain of beliefs can be two sides of the same coin. The point here is simply the almost tautologous one that the conversion, insofar as it was successful, can mean losing values and beliefs as well as gaining them. Conversion in the strongest sense involves abandoning one set of convictions and forms of life to embrace a different one. In such cases questions about loss and gain are almost the same. This chapter deals with both, the emphasis being sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other.

Individuals and systems

Belief systems relatively rarely disappear, and more often merely retreat. What this must mean in practice is that they lose some adherents and fail to recruit or to reproduce themselves up to full strength. This would have been the case with Conciliarism, a movement in full retreat by the end of the fifteenth century, though it never disappeared and was able to reassert itself in the context of Gallicanism. Conversely, papalism seems to have expanded its appeal in the second half of the fifteenth century, despite historiographical stereotypes to the contrary.

Experience and changing convictions

The shift of values in the fifteenth century back to a papalist world-view deserves more attention, and we have a privileged vantage point from which to observe the process in an autobiographical letter by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini.