§ 2. Sources and Literature.

For works covering the entire period, see V. 1. 1–3, such as the collections of Mansi, Muratori, and the Rolls Series; Friedberg’s Decretum Gratiani, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1879–1881; Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengeschichte; Mirbt: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstthums, 2d ed., 1901; the works of Gregorovius and Bryce, the General Church and Doctrinal Histories of Gieseler, Hefele, Funk, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Karl Müller, Harnack Loofs, and Seeberg; the Encyclopaedias of Herzog, Wetzer-Welte, Leslie Stephen, Potthast, and Chévalier; the Atlases of F. W. Putzger, Leipzig, Heussi and Mulert, Tübingen, 1905, and Labberton, New York. L. Pastor: Geschichte der Papste, etc., 4 vols., 4th ed., 1901–1906, and Mandell Creighton: History of the Papacy, etc., London, 1882–1894, also cover the entire period in the body of their works and their Introductory Chapters. There is no general collection of ecclesiastical author far this period corresponding to Migne’s Latin Patrology.

For §§ 3, 4. Boniface VIII. Regesta Bonifatii in Potthast: Regesta pontificum rom., II., 1923–2024, 2133 sq. – Les Registres de Boniface VIII., ed. Digard, Fauçon et Thomas, 7 Fasc., Paris, 1884–1903. – Hist. Eccles. of Ptolemaeus of Lucca, Vitae Pontif. of Bernardus Guidonis, Chron. Pontif. of Amalricus Augers Hist. rerum in Italia gestarum of Ferretus Vicentinus, and Chronica universale of Villani, all in Muratori: Rerum Ital. Scriptores, III. 670 sqq., X. 690 sqq., XI. 1202 sqq., XIIL 348 sqq. – Selections from Villani, trans. by Rose E. Selfe, ed. by P. H. Wicksteed, Westminster, 1897. – Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., Münster, 1902. Prints valuable documents pp. i-ccxi. Also Acta Aragonensia. Quellen ... zur Kirchen und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jayme II, 1291–1327, 2 vols., Berlin, 1908. – Döllinger: Beiträge zur politischen, kirchlichen und Culturgeschichte der letzten 6 Jahrh., 3 vols., Vienna, 1862–1882. Vol. III., pp. 347–353, contains a Life of Boniface drawn from the Chronicle of Orvieto by an eye-witness, and other documents. – Denifle: Die Denkschriften der Colonna gegen Bonifaz VIII., etc., in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengeschichte des M. A., 1892, V. 493 sqq. – Dante: Inferno, XIX. 52 sqq., XXVII. 85 sqq.; Paradiso, IX. 132, XXVII. 22, XXX. 147. Modern Works. – J. Rubeus: Bonif. VIII. e familia Cajetanorum, Rome, 1651. Magnifies Boniface as an ideal pope. – P Dupuy: Hist. du différend entre le Pape Bon. et Philip le Bel, Paris, 1655. – Baillet (a Jansenist): Hist. des désmelez du Pape Bon. VIII. avec Philip le Bel, Paris, 1718. – L. Tosti: Storia di Bon. VIII. e de’suoi tempi, 2 vols., Rome, 1846. A glorification of Boniface. – W. Drumann: Gesch. Bonifatius VIII. 2 vols., Königsberg, 1862. – Cardinal Wiseman: Pope Bon. VIII. in his Essays, III. 161–222. Apologetic. – Boutaric: La France sous Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1861. – R. Holtzmann: W. von Nogaret, Freiburg, 1898. – E. Renan: Guil. de Nogaret, in Hist. Litt. de France, XXVII. 233 sq.; also Études sur la politique Rel. du règne de Phil. Ie Bel, Paris, 1899. – Döllinger: Anagni in Akad. Vorträge, III. 223–244. – Heinrich Finke (Prof. in Freiburg): as above. Also Papsttum und Untergang des Tempelordens, 2 vols., Münster, 1907. – J. Haller: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, Berlin, 1903. – Rich. Scholz: Die Publizistik zur Zeit Philipps des Schönen und Bonifaz VIII., Stuttgart, 1903. – The Ch. Histt. of Gieseler, Hergenröther-Kirsch 4th ed., 1904, II. 582–598, F. X. Funk, 4th ed., 1902, Hefele 3d ed., 1902, K. Müller, Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengeschichte, VI. 281–364. – Ranke: Univers. Hist., IX. – Gregorovius: History of the City of Rome, V. – Wattenbach: Gesch. des röm. Papstthums, 2d ED., Berlin, 1876, pp. 211–226. – G. B. Adams: Civilization during the Middle Ages, New York, 1894, ch. XIV. – Art. Bonifatius by Hauck in Herzog, III. 291–300.

For § 5. Literary Attacks upon the Papacy. Dante Allighiere: De monarchia, ed. by Witte, Vienna, 1874; Giuliani, Florence, 1878; Moore, Oxford, 1894. Eng. trans. by F. C. Church, together with the essay on Dante by his father, R. W. Church, London, 1878; P. H. Wicksteed, Hull, 1896; Aurelia Henry, Boston, 1904. – Dante’s De monarchia, Valla’s De falsa donatione Constantini, and other anti-papal documents are given in De jurisdictione, auctoritate et praeeminentia imperiali, Basel, 1566. Many of the tracts called forth by the struggle between Boniface VIII. and Philip IV. are found in Melchior Goldast: Monarchia S. Romani imperii, sive tractatus de jurisdictione imperiali seu regia et pontificia seu sacerdotali, etc., Hanover, 1610, pp. 756, Frankfurt, 1668. With a preface dedicated to the elector, John Sigismund of Brandenburg; in Dupuy: Hist. du Différend, etc., Paris, 1655, and in Finke and Scholz. See above. – E. Zeck: De recuperatione terrae Sanctae, Ein Traktat d. P. Dubois, Berlin, 1906. For summary and criticism, S. Riezler: Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers, pp. 131–166. Leipzig, 1874. – R. L. Poole: Opposition to the Temporal Claims of the Papacy, in his Illustrations of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 256–281, London, 1884. – Finke: Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII., pp. 169 sqq., etc. – Denifle: Chartularium Un. Parisiensis, 4 vols. – Haller: Papsttum. – Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Colonna, III. 667–671, and Johann von Paris, VI. 1744–1746, etc. – Renan: Pierre Dubois in Hist. Litt. de France, XXVI. 471–536. – Hergenröther-Kirsch: Kirchengesch., II. 754 sqq.

For § 6. Transfer Of The Papacy To Avignon. Benedict XI.: Registre de Benoît XI., ed. C. Grandjean. – For Clement V., Clementis papae V. regestum ed. cura et studio monachorum ord. S. Benedicti, 9 vols., Rome, 1885–1892. – Etienne Baluze: Vitae paparum Avenoniensium 1305–1394, dedicated to Louis XIV. and placed on the Index, 2 vols., Paris, 1693. Raynaldus: ad annum, 1304 sqq., for original documents. – W. H. Bliss: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registries relating to Great Britain and Ireland, I.-IV., London, 1896–1902. – Giovanni and Matteo Villani: Hist. of Florence sive Chronica universalis, bks. VIII. sq. – M. Tangl: Die päpstlichen Regesta von Benedict XII.-Gregor XI., Innsbruck, 1898. Mansi: Concil., XXV. 368 sqq., 389 sqq. – J. B. Christophe: Hist. de la papauté pendant le XIVe siècle, 2 vols., Paris, 1853. – C. von Höfler: Die avignonesischen Päpste, Vienna, 1871. – Fauçon: La Libraire Des Papes d’Avignon, 2 vols., Paris, 1886 sq. – M. Souchon: Die Papstwahlen von Bonifaz VIII.-Urban VI., Braunschweig, 1888. – A. Eitel: D. Kirchenstaat unter Klemens V., Berlin, 1905. – Clinton Locke: Age of the Great Western Schism, pp. 1–99, New York, 1896. – J. H. Robinson: Petrarch, New York, 1898. – Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 1–7. – Döllinger-Friedrich: Das Papstthum, Munich, 1892. – Pastor: Geschichte der Papste seit dem Ausgang des M. A., 4 vols., 3d and 4th ed., 1901 sqq., I. 67–114. – Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England. – Capes: The English Church in the 14th and 15th Centuries, London, 1900. – Wattenbach: Röm. Papstthum, pp. 226–241. – Haller: Papsttum, etc. – Hefele-Knöpfler: VI. 378–936. – Ranke: Univers. Hist., IX. – Gregorovius: VI. – The Ch. Histt. of Gieseler, Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 737–776, Müller, II. 16–42. – Ehrle: Der Nachlass Clemens V. in Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengesch., V. 1–150. For the fall of the Templars, see for Lit. V. 1. p. 301 sqq., and especially the works of Boutaric, Prutz, Schottmüller, Döllinger. – Funk in Wetzer-Welte, XI. 1311–1345. – LEA: Inquisition, III. Finke: Papsttum und Untergang des Tempelordens, 2 vols., 1907. Vol. II. contains Spanish documents, hitherto unpublished, bearing on the fall of the Templars, especially letters to and from King Jayme of Aragon. They are confirmatory of former views.

For § 7. The Pontificate of John XXII. Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Jean XXII. relative a la France, ed. Aug. Coulon, 3 Fasc., 1900 sq. Lettres communes de p. Jean XXII., ed. Mollat, 3 vols, Paris, 1904–1906. – J. Guérard: Documents pontificeaux sur la Gascogne. Pontificat de Jean XXII., 2 vols., Paris, 1897–1903. – Baluze: Vitae paparum. – V. Velarque: Jean XXII. sa vie et ses aeuvres, Paris, 1883. – J. Schwalm, Appellation d. König Ludwigs des Baiern v. 1324, Riezler: D. Lit. Widersacher. Also Vatikanische Akten zur deutschen Gesch. zur Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern, Innsbruck, 1891. – K. Müller: Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern mit der römischen Curie, 2 vols., Tübingen, 1879 sq. – Ehrle: Die Spirituallen, ihr Verhältniss zum Franciskanerorden, etc., in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., 1885, p. 509 sqq., 1886, p. 106 sqq., 1887, p. 553 sqq., 1890. Also P. J. Olivi: S. Leben und s. Schriften 1887, pp. 409–540. – Döllinger: Deutschlands Kampf mit dem Papstthum unter Ludwig dem Bayer in Akad. Vorträge, I. 119–137. – Hefele: VI. 546–579. – Lea: Inquisition, I. 242–304. – The Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Franziskanerorden, IV. 1650–1683, and Armut, I. 1394–1401. Artt. John XXII. in Herzog, IX. 267–270, and Wetzer-Welte, VIII. 828 sqq. – Haller: Papsttum, p. 91 sqq. – Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England. – Gregorovius, VI. – PASTOR: I. 80 sqq.

For § 8. The Papal Office Assailed. Some of the tracts may be found in Goldast: Monarchia, Hanover, 1610, e.g. Marsiglius of Padua, II. 164–312; Ockam’s Octo quaestionum decisiones super potestate ac dignitate papali, II. 740 sqq., and Dialogus inter magistrum et discipulum, etc., II., 399 sqq. Special edd. are given in the body of the chap. and may be found under Alvarus Pelagius, Marsiglius, etc., in Potthast: Bibl. med. aevi. – Un trattato inedito di Egidio Colonna: De ecclesiae potestate, ed. G. U. Oxilia et G. Boffito, Florence, 1908, pp. lxxxi, 172. – Schwab: Gerson, pp. 24–28. – Müller: D. Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern. – Riezler: Die Lit. Widersacher der Päpste, etc., Leipzig, 1874. – Marcour: Antheil der Minoriten am Kampf zwischen Ludwig dem Baiern und Johann XXII., Emmerich, 1874. – Poole: The Opposition to the Temporal Claims of the Papacy, in Illust. of the Hist. of Med. Thought, pp. 256–281. – Haller: Papsttum, etc., pp. 73–89. English trans. of Marsiglius of Padua, The Defence of Peace, by W. Marshall, London, 1636. – M. Birck: Marsilio von Padua und Alvaro Pelayo über Papst und Kaiser, Mühlheim, 1868. – B. Labanca, Prof. of Moral Philos. in the Univ. of Rome: Marsilio da Padova, riformatore politico e religioso, Padova, 1882, pp. 236. – L. Jourdan: Étude sur Marsile de Padoue, Montauban, 1892. – J. Sullivan: Marsig. of Padua, in Engl. Hist. Rev., 1906, pp. 293–307. An examination of the MSS. See also Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum; Pastor, I. 82 sqq.; Gregorovius, VI. 118 sqq., the Artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Alvarus Pelagius, I. 667 sq., Marsiglius, VIII., 907–911, etc., and in Herzog, XII. 368 370, etc. – N. Valois: Hist. Litt., Paris, 1900, XXIII., 628–623, an Art. on the authors of the Defensor.

For § 9. The Financial System of the Avignon Popes. Ehrle: Schatz, Bibliothek und Archiv der Päpste im 14ten Jahrh., in Archiv für Lit. u. Kirchengesch., I. 1–49, 228–365, also D. Nachlass Clemens V. und der in Betreff desselben von Johann XXII. geführte Process, V. 1–166. – Ph. Woker: Das kirchliche Finanzwesen der Päpste, Nördlingen, 1878. – M. Tangl: Das Taxenwesen der päpstlichen Kanzlei vom 13ten his zur Mitte des 15ten Jahrh., Innsbruck, 1892. – J. P. Kirsch: Die päpstl. Kollektorien in Deutschland im XIVten Jahrh., Paderborn, 1894; Die Finanzverwaltung des Kardinalkollegiums im XIII. u. XIV. ten Jahrh., Münster, 1896; Die Rückkehr der Päpste Urban V. und Gregor XI. con Avignon nach Rom. Auszüge aus den Kameralregistern des Vatikan. Archivs, Paderborn, 1898; Die päpstl. Annaten in Deutschland im XIV. Jahrh. 1323–1360, Paderborn, 1903. – P. M. Baumgarten: Untersuchungen und Urkunden über die Camera Collegii Cardinalium, 1295–1437, Leipzig, 1898. – A. Gottlob: Die päpstl. Kreuzzugsteuern des 13ten Jahrh., Heiligenstadt, 1892; Die Servitientaxe im 13ten Jahrh., Stuttgart, 1903. – Emil Goeller: Mittheilungen u. Untersuchungen über das päpstl. Register und Kanzleiwesen im 14ten Jahrh., Rome, 1904; D. Liber Taxarum d. päpstl. Rammer. Eine Studie zu ihrer Entstehung u. Anlage, Rome, 1906, pp. 106. – Haller: Papsttum u. Kirchenreform; also Aufzeichnungen über den päpstl. Haushalt aus Avignonesischer Zeit; die Vertheilung der Servitia minuta u. die Obligationen der Prälaten im 13ten u. 14ten Jahrh.; Die Ausfertigung der Provisionen, etc., all in Quellen u. Forschungen, ed. by the Royal Prussian Institute in Rome, Rome, 1897, 1898. – C. Lux: Constitutionum apostolicarum de generali beneficiorum reservatione, 1265–1378, etc., Wratislav, 1904. – A. Schulte: Die Fugger in Rom, 1495–1523, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1904. – C. Samarin and G. Mollat: La Fiscalité pontifen France au XIVe siècle, Paris, 1905. – P. Thoman: Le droit de propriété des laïques sur les églises et le patronat laïque au moy. âge, Paris, 1906. Also the work on Canon Law by T. Hinschius, 6 vols., Berlin, 1869–1897, and E. Friedberg, 6th ed., Leipzig, 1903.

For § 10. Later Avignon Popes. Lettres des papes d’Avignon se rappor-tant a la France, viz. Lettres communes de Benoît XII., ed. J. M. Vidal, Paris, 1906; Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, ed. G. Daumet, Paris, 1890; Lettres ... de Clement VI., ed. E. Deprez, Paris, 1901; Excerpta ex registr. de Clem. VI. et Inn. VI., ed. Werunsky, Innsbruck, 1886; Lettres ... de Pape Urbain V., ed. P. Lecacheux, Paris, 1902. – J. H. Albans: Actes anciens et documents concernant le bienheureux Urbain V., ed. by U. Chevalier, Paris, 1897. Contains the fourteen early lives of Urban. – Baluze: Vitae paparum Avenionen-sium, 1693;– Muratori: in Rer. ital. scripp, XIV. 9–728. – Cerri: Innocenzo VI., papa, Turin, 1873. Magnan: Hist. d’ Urbain V., 2d ed., Paris, 1863. – Werunsky: Gesch. karls IV. u. seiner Zeit, 3 vols., Innsbruck, 1880–1892. – Geo. Schmidt: Der Hist. Werth der 14 alten Biographien des Urban V., Breslau, 1907. – Kirsch: Rückkehr der Päpste, as above. In large part, documents for the first time published. – Lechner: Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland, 1348–1351, 1884. – C. Creighton: Hist. of Epidemics in England, Cambridge, 1891. F. A. Gasquet: The Great Pestilence, London, 1893, 2d ed., entitled The Black Death, 1908. – A. Jessopp: The Black Death in East Anglia in Coming of the Friars, pp. 166–261. – Villani, Wattenbach, p. 226 sqq.; Pastor, I., Gregorovius, Cardinal Albornoz, Paderborn, 1892.

For § 11. The Re-Establishment of the Papacy in Rome. The Lives of Gregory XI. in Baluz, I. 426 sqq., and Muratori, III. 2, 645. – Kirsch: Rürkkehr, etc., as above. – Leon Mirot: La politique pontif. et le rétour du S. Siege a Rome, 1376, Paris, 1899. – F. Hammerich: St. Brigitta, die nordische Prophetin u. Ordenstifterin, Germ. ed., Gotha, 1872. For further Lit. on St. Brigitta, see Herzog, III. 239. For works on Catherine of Siena, see ch. III. Also Gieseler, II., 3, pp. 1–131; Pastor, I. 101–114; Gregorovius, VI. Lit. under §10.

§ 3. Pope Boniface VIII. 1294–1303.

The pious but weak and incapable hermit of Murrhone, Coelestine V., who abdicated the papal office, was followed by Benedict Gaetani,—or Cajetan, the name of an ancient family of Latin counts,—known in history as Boniface VIII. At the time of his election he was on the verge of fourscore,

Drumann, p. 4, Gregorovius, etc. Setting aside the testimony of the contemporary Ferretus of Vicenza, and on the ground that it would be well-nigh impossible for a man of Boniface’s talent to remain in an inferior position till he was sixty, when he was made cardinal, Finke, p. 3 sq., makes Boniface fifteen years younger when he assumed the papacy.

Born at Anagni, Boniface probably studied canon law, in which he was an expert, in Rome.

Not at Paris, as Bulaeus, without sufficient authority, states. See Finke, p. 6.

Boniface’s election as pope occurred at Castel Nuovo, near Naples, Dec. 24, 1294, the conclave having convened the day before. The election was not popular, and a few days later, when a report reached Naples that Boniface was dead, the people celebrated the event with great jubilation. The pontiff was accompanied on his way to Rome by Charles II. of Naples.

There is no doubt about the manifestation of popular joy over the rumor of the pope’s death. Finke, p. 46. At the announcement of the election, the people are said to have cried out, "Boniface is a heretic, bad all through, and has in him nothing that is Christian."

The coronation was celebrated amid festivities of unusual splendor. On his way to the Lateran, Boniface rode on a white palfrey, a crown on his head, and robed in full pontificals. Two sovereigns walked by his side, the kings of Naples and Hungary. The Orsini, the Colonna, the Savelli, the Conti and representatives of other noble Roman families followed in a body . The procession had difficulty in forcing its way through the kneeling crowds of spectators. But, as if an omen of the coming misfortunes of the new pope, a furious storm burst over the city while the solemnities were in progress and extinguished every lamp and torch in the church. The following day the pope dined in the Lateran, the two kings waiting behind his chair.

While these brilliant ceremonies were going on, Peter of Murrhone was a fugitive. Not willing to risk the possible rivalry of an anti-pope, Boniface confined his unfortunate predecessor in prison, where he soon died. The cause of his death was a matter of uncertainty. The Coelestine party ascribed it to Boniface, and exhibited a nail which they declared the unscrupulous pope had ordered driven into Coelestine’s head.

With Boniface VIII. began the decline of the papacy. He found it at the height of its power. He died leaving it humbled and in subjection to France. He sought to rule in the proud, dominating spirit of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; but he was arrogant without being strong, bold without being sagacious, high-spirited without possessing the wisdom to discern the signs of the times.

Gregorovius, V. 597, calls Boniface "an unfortunate reminiscence" of the great popes.

French enemies went so far as to charge Boniface with downright infidelity and the denial of the soul’s immortality. The charges were a slander, but they show the reduced confidence which the papal office inspired. Dante, who visited Rome during Boniface’s pontificate, bitterly pursues him in all parts of the Divina Commedia. He pronounced him "the prince of modern Pharisees," a usurper "who turned the Vatican hill into a common sewer of corruption." The poet assigned the pope a place with Nicholas III. and Clement V. among the simoniacs in "that most afflicted shade," one of the lowest circles of hell.

"Where Simon Magus hath his curst abode

To depths profounder thrusting Boniface." —Paradiso, xxx. 147 sq.

Contemporaries comprehended Boniface’s reign in the description, "He came in like a fox, he reigned like a lion, and he died like a dog, intravit ut vulpes, regnavit ut leo, mortuus est sicut canis.

In his attempt to control the affairs of European states, he met with less success than failure, and in Philip the Fair of France he found his match.

In Sicily, he failed to carry out his plans to secure the transfer of the realm from the house of Aragon to the king of Naples.

In Rome, he incurred the bitter enmity of the proud and powerful family of the Colonna, by attempting to dictate the disposition of the family estates. Two of the Colonna, James and Peter, who were cardinals, had been friends of Coelestine, and supporters of that pope gathered around them. Of their number was Jacopone da Todi, the author of the Stabat Mater, who wrote a number of satirical pieces against Boniface. Resenting the pope’s interference in their private matters, the Colonna issued a memorial, pronouncing Coelestine’s abdication and the election of Boniface illegal.

Dupuy, pp. 225-227.

The German emperor, Albrecht, Boniface succeeded in bringing to an abject submission. The German envoys were received by the haughty pontiff seated on a throne with a crown upon his head and sword in his hand, and exclaiming, "I, I am the emperor." Albrecht accepted his crown as a gift, and acknowledged that the empire had been transferred from the Greeks to the Germans by the pope, and that the electors owed the right of election to the Apostolic See.

In England, Boniface met with sharp resistance. Edward I., 1272–1307, was on the throne. The pope attempted to prevent him from holding the crown of Scotland, claiming it as a papal fief from remote antiquity.

Tytler, Hist. of Scotland, I. 70 sqq.

An important and picturesque event of Boniface’s pontificate was the Jubilee Year, celebrated in 1300. It was a fortunate conception, adapted to attract throngs of pilgrims to Rome and fill the papal treasury. An old man of 107 years of age, so the story ran, travelled from Savoy to Rome, and told how his father had taken him to attend a Jubilee in the year 1200 and exhorted him to visit it on its recurrence a century after. Interesting as the story is, the Jubilee celebration of 1300 seems to have been the first of its kind.

So Hefele VI. 315, and other Roman Catholic historians.

So spectacular and profitable a celebration could not be allowed to remain a memory. The Jubilee was made a permanent institution. A second celebration was appointed by Clement VI. in 1350. With reference to the brevity of human life and also to the period of our Lord’s earthly career, Urban VI. fixed its recurrence every 33 years. Paul II., in 1470, reduced the intervals to 25 years. The twentieth Jubilee was celebrated in 1900, under Leo XIII.

Leo’s bull, dated May 11, 1899, offered indulgence to pilgrims visiting the basilicas of St. Peter, the Lateran, and St. Maria Maggiore. A portion of the document runs as follows: "Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world, has chosen the city of Rome alone and singly above all others for a dignified and more than human purpose and consecrated it to himself." The Jubilee was inaugurated by the august ceremony of opening the porta santa, the sacred door, into St. Peter’s, which it is the custom to wall up after the celebration. The special ceremony dates from Alexander VI. and the Jubilee of 1600. Leo performed this ceremony in person by giving three strokes upon the door with a hammer, and using the words aperite mihi, open to me. The door symbolizes Christ, opening the way to spiritual benefits.

For the offerings accruing from the Jubilee and for other papal moneys, Boniface found easy use. They enabled him to prosecute his wars against Sicily and the Colonna and to enrich his relatives. The chief object of his favor was his nephew, Peter, the second son of his brother Loffred, the Count of Caserta. One estate after another was added to this favorite’s possessions, and the vast sum of more than 915,000,000 was spent upon him in four years.

See Gregorovius, V. 299, 584, who gives an elaborate list of the estates which passed by Boniface’s grace into the hands of the Gaetani. Adam of Usk, Chronicon, 1377-1421, ad ed., London, 1904, p. 259, "the fox, though ever greedy, ever remaineth thin, so Boniface, though gorged with simony, yet to his dying day was never filled."

§ 4. Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France.

The overshadowing event of Boniface’s reign was his disastrous conflict with Philip IV. of France, called Philip the Fair. The grandson of Louis IX., this monarch was wholly wanting in the high spiritual qualities which had distinguished his ancestor. He was able but treacherous, and utterly unscrupulous in the use of means to secure his ends. Unattractive as his character is, it is nevertheless with him that the first chapter in the history of modern France begins. In his conflict with Boniface he gained a decisive victory. On a smaller scale the conflict was a repetition of the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., but with a different ending. In both cases the pope had reached a venerable age, while the sovereign was young and wholly governed by selfish motives. Henry resorted to the election of an anti-pope. Philip depended upon his councillors and the spirit of the new French nation.

The heir of the theocracy of Hildebrand repeated Hildebrand’s language without possessing his moral qualities. He claimed for the papacy supreme authority in temporal as well as spiritual matters. In his address to the cardinals against the Colonna he exclaimed: "How shall we assume to judge kings and princes, and not dare to proceed against a worm! Let them perish forever, that they may understand that the name of the Roman pontiff is known in all the earth and that he alone is most high over princes."

Quomodo presumimus judicare reges et principes orbis terrarum et vermiculum aggredi non audemus, etc.; Denifle, Archiv, etc., V. 521. For these and other quotations, see Finke, Aus den Tagen Bon., etc., p. 152 sqq.

On the other hand, Philip the Fair stood as the embodiment of the independence of the state. He had behind him a unified nation, and around him a body of able statesmen and publicists who defended his views.

Contemporary writers spoke of the modern or recent French nation as opposed to the nation of a preceding period. So the author of the Tractate of 1308 in defence of Boniface VIII., Finke, p. lxxxvi. He said "the kings of the modern French people do not follow in the footsteps of their predecessors"—reges moderni gentis Francorum, etc. The same writer compared Philip to Nebuchadnezzar rebelling against the higher powers.

The conflict between Boniface and Philip passed through three stages: (1) the brief tilt which called forth the bull Clericis laicos; (2) the decisive battle, 1301–1303, ending in Boniface’s humiliation at Anagni; (3) the bitter controversy which was waged against the pope’s memory by Philip, ending with the Council of Vienne.

See Scholz, Publizistik, VIII. p. 3 sqq.

The conflict originated in questions touching the war between France and England. To meet the expense of his armament against Edward I., Philip levied tribute upon the French clergy. They carried their complaints to Rome, and Boniface justified their contention in the bull Clericis laicos, 1296. This document was ordered promulged in England as well as in France. Robert of Winchelsea, archbishop of Canterbury, had it read in all the English cathedral churches. Its opening sentence impudently asserted that the laity had always been hostile to the clergy. The document went on to affirm the subjection of the state to the papal see. Jurisdiction over the persons of the priesthood and the goods of the Church in no wise belongs to the temporal power. The Church may make gratuitous gifts to the state, but all taxation of Church property without the pope’s consent is to be resisted with excommunication or interdict.

Imposts upon the Church for special emergencies had been a subject of legislation at the third and fourth Lateran Councils. In 1260 Alexander IV. exempted the clergy from special taxation, and in 1291 Nicolas IV. warned the king of France against using for his own schemes the tenth levied for a crusade. Boniface had precedent enough for his utterances. But his bull was promptly met by Philip with an act of reprisal prohibiting the export of silver and gold, horses, arms, and other articles from his realm, and forbidding foreigners to reside in France. This shrewd measure cut off French contributions to the papal treasury and cleared France of the pope’s emissaries. Boniface was forced to reconsider his position, and in conciliatory letters, addressed to the king and the French prelates, pronounced the interpretation put upon his deliverance unjust. Its purpose was not to deny feudal and freewill offerings from the Church. In cases of emergency, the pope would also be ready to grant special subsidies. The document was so offensive that the French bishops begged the pope to recall it altogether, a request he set aside. But to appease Philip, Boniface issued another bull, July 22, 1297, according thereafter to French kings, who had reached the age of 20, the right to judge whether a tribute from the clergy was a case of necessity or not. A month later he canonized Louis IX., a further act of conciliation.

Boniface also offered to act as umpire between France and England in his personal capacity as Benedict Gaetanus. The offer was accepted, but the decision was not agreeable to the French sovereign. The pope expressed a desire to visit Philip, but again gave offence by asking Philip for a loan of 100, 000 pounds for Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois, whom Boniface had invested with the command of the papal forces.

In 1301 the flame of controversy was again started by a document, written probably by the French advocate, Pierre Dubois,

Summaria brevis et compendiosa doctrina felicis expeditionis et abbreviationis guerrarum ac litium regni Francorum. See Scholz, p. 415.

Boniface’s reply, set forth in the bull Ausculta fili — Give ear, my son—issued Dec. 5, 1301, charged the king with high-handed treatment of the clergy and making plunder of ecclesiastical property. The pope announced a council to be held in Rome to which the French prelates were called and the king summoned to be present, either in person or by a representative. The bull declared that God had placed his earthly vicar above kings and kingdoms. To make the matter worse, a false copy of Boniface’s bull was circulated in France known as Deum time,—Fear God,—which made the statements of papal prerogative still more exasperating. This supposititious document, which is supposed to have been forged by Pierre Flotte, the king’s chief councillor, was thrown into the flames Feb. 11, 1302.

See Scholz, p. 357. The authenticity of the bull Ausculta was once called in question, but is now universally acknowledged. The copy in the Vatican bears the erasure of Clement V., who struck out the passages most offensive to Philip. Hefele gives the copy preserved in the library of St. Victor.

The king replied by calling a French parliament of the three estates, the nobility, clergy and representatives of the cities, which set aside the papal summons to the council, complained of the appointment of foreigners to French livings, and asserted the crown’s independence of the Church. Five hundred years later a similar representative body of the three estates was to rise against French royalty and decide for the abolition of monarchy. In a letter to the pope, Philip addressed him as "your infatuated Majesty,"

Sciat maxima tua fatuitas in temporalibus nos alicui non subesse, etc. Hefele, VI. 332, calls in question the authenticity of this document, at the same time recognizing that it was circulated in Rome in 1802, and that the pope himself made reference to it. The original phrase is ascribed to Pierre Flotte, Scholz, p. 357. Flotte was an uncompromising advocate of the king’s sovereignty and independence of the pope. He made a deep impression by an address at the parliament called by Philip, 1302. He was probably the author of the anti-papal tract beginning Antequam essent clerici, the text of which is printed by Dupuy, pp. 21-23. Here he asserts that the Church consists of laymen as well as clerics, Scholz, p. 361, and that taxes levied upon Church property are not extortions.

The council called by the pope convened in Rome the last day of October, 1302, and included 4 archbishops, 35 bishops, and 6 abbots from France. It issued two bulls. The first pronounced the ban on all who detained prelates going to Rome or returning from the city. The second is one of the most notable of all papal documents, the bull Unam sanctam, the name given to it from its first words, "We are forced to believe in one holy Catholic Church." It marks an epoch in the history of the declarations of the papacy, not because it contained anything novel, but because it set forth with unchanged clearness the stiffest claims of the papacy to temporal and spiritual power. It begins with the assertion that there is only one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation. The pope is the vicar of Christ, and whoever refuses to be ruled by Peter belongs not to the fold of Christ. Both swords are subject to the Church, the spiritual and the temporal. The temporal sword is to be wielded for the Church, the spiritual by it. The secular estate may be judged by the spiritual estate, but the spiritual estate by no human tribunal. The document closes with the startling declaration that for every human being the condition of salvation is obedience to the Roman pontiff.

There was no assertion of authority contained in this bull which had not been before made by Gregory VII. and his successors, and the document leans back not only upon the deliverances of popes, but upon the definitions of theologians like Hugo de St. Victor, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. But in the Unam sanctam the arrogance of the papacy finds its most naked and irritating expression.

One of the clauses pronounces all offering resistance to the pope’s authority Manichaeans. Thus Philip was made a heretic. Six months later the pope sent a cardinal legate, John le Moine of Amiens, to announce to the king his excommunication for preventing French bishops from going to Rome. The bearer of the message was imprisoned and the legate fled. Boniface now called upon the German emperor, Albrecht, to take Philip’s throne, as Innocent III. had called upon the French king to take John’s crown, and Innocent IV. upon the count of Artois to take the crown of Frederick II. Albrecht had wisdom enough to decline the empty gift. Philip’s seizure of the papal bulls before they could be promulged in France was met by Boniface’s announcement that the posting of a bull on the church doors of Rome was sufficient to give it force.

The French parliament, June, 1308, passed from the negative attitude of defending the king and French rights to an attack upon Boniface and his right to the papal throne. In 20 articles it accused him of simony, sorcery, immoral intercourse with his niece, having a demon in his chambers, the murder of Coelestine, and other crimes. It appealed to a general council, before which the pope was summoned to appear in person. Five archbishops and 21 bishops joined in subscribing to this document. The university and chapter of Paris, convents, cities, and towns placed themselves on the king’s side.

The university declared in favor of a general council June 21, 1303, Chartul. Univ. Par. II. 101 sq.

One more step the pope was about to take when a sudden stop was put to his career. He had set the eighth day of September as the time when he would publicly, in the church of Anagni, and with all the solemnities known to the Church, pronounce the ban upon the disobedient king and release his subjects from allegiance. In the same edifice Alexander III. had excommunicated Barbarossa, and Gregory IX., Frederick II. The bull already had the papal signature, when, as by a storm bursting from a clear sky, the pope’s plans were shattered and his career brought to an end.

During the two centuries and a half since Hildebrand had entered the city of Rome with Leo IX., popes had been imprisoned by emperors, been banished from Rome by its citizens, had fled for refuge and died in exile, but upon no one of them had a calamity fallen quite so humiliating and complete as the calamity which now befell Boniface. A plot, formed in France to checkmate the pope and to carry him off to a council at Lyons, burst Sept. 7 upon the peaceful population of Anagni, the pope’s country seat. William of Nogaret, professor of law at Montpellier and councillor of the king, was the manager of the plot and was probably its inventor. According to the chronicler, Villani,

VIII. 63. See Scholz, pp. 363-375, and Holtzmann: W. von Nogaret.

In the meantime the feelings of the Anagnese underwent a change. The adherents of the Gaetani family rallied their forces and, combining together, they rescued Boniface and drove out the conspirators. Seated at the head of his palace stairway, the pontiff thanked God and the people for his deliverance. "Yesterday," he said, "I was like Job, poor and without a friend. To-day I have abundance of bread, wine, and water." A rescuing party from Rome conducted the unfortunate pope to the Holy City, where he was no longer his own master.

Ferretus of Vicenza, Muratori: Scriptores, IX. 1002, reports that Boniface wanted to be removed from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, but the Colonna sent word he was in custody.

Reports agree that Boniface’s death was a most pitiable one. He died of melancholy and despair, and perhaps actually insane. He refused food, and beat his head against the wall. "He was out of his head," wrote Ptolemy of Lucca,

Extra mentem positus. Ferretus relates that Boniface fell into a rage and, after gnawing his staff and striking his head against the wall, hanged himself. Villani, VIII. 63, speaks of a "strange malady" begotten in the pope so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad. The chronicler of Orvieto, see Döllinger: Beiträge, etc., III. 353, says Boniface died weighed down by despondency and the infirmities of age, ubi tristitia et senectutis infirmitate gravatus mortuus est. It is charitable to suppose that the pope’s old enemy, the stone, returned to plague him, the malady from which the Spanish physician Arnald of Villanova had given him relief. See Finke, p. 200 sqq.

Human sympathy goes out for the aged man of fourscore years and more, dying in loneliness and despair. But judgment comes sooner or later upon individuals and institutions for their mistakes and offences. The humiliation of Boniface was the long-delayed penalty of the sacerdotal pride of his predecessors and himself. He suffered in part for the hierarchical arrogance of which he was the heir and in part for his own presumption. Villani and other contemporaries represent the pope’s latter end as a deserved punishment for his unblushing nepotism, his pompous pride, and his implacable severity towards those who dared to resist his plans, and for his treatment of the feeble hermit who preceded him. One of the chroniclers reports that seamen plying near the Liparian islands, the reputed entrance to hell, heard evil spirits rejoicing and exclaiming, "Open, open; receive pope Boniface into the infernal regions."

Catholic historians like Hergenröther and Kirsch, bound to the ideals of the past, make a brave attempt to defend Boniface, though they do not overlook his want of tact and his coarse violence of speech. It is certain, says Cardinal Hergenröther,

Kirchengesch., II. 597 sq. Boniface called the French "dogs" and Philip garçon, which had the meaning of street urchin. A favorite expression with him was ribaldus, rascal, and he called Charles of Naples "meanest of rascals," vilissimus ribaldus. See Finke, p. 292 sq. Finke’s judgment is based in part upon new documents he found in Barcelona and other libraries.

In strong contrast to the common judgment of Catholic historians is the sentence passed by Gregorovius. "Boniface was devoid of every apostolical virtue, a man of passionate temper, violent, faithless, unscrupulous, unforgiving, filled with ambitions and lust of worldly power." And this will be the judgment of those who feel no obligation to defend the papal institution.

In the humiliation of Boniface VIII., the state gained a signal triumph over the papacy. The proposition, that the papal pretension to supremacy over the temporal power is inconsistent with the rights of man and untaught by the law of God, was about to be defended in bold writings coming from the pens of lawyers and poets in France and Italy and, a half century later, by Wyclif. These advocates of the sovereign independence of the state in its own domain were the real descendants of those jurisconsults who, on the pIain of Roncaglia, advocated the same theory in the hearing of Frederick Barbarossa. Two hundred years after the conflict between Boniface and Philip the Fair, Luther was to fight the battle for the spiritual sovereignty of the individual man. These two principles, set aside by the priestly pride and theological misunderstanding of the Middle Ages, belong to the foundation of modern civilization.

Boniface’s Bull, Unam Sanctam.

The great importance of Boniface’s bull, Unam Sanctam, issued against Philip the Fair, Nov. 18, 1302, justifies its reproduction both in translation and the original Latin. It has rank among the most notorious deliverances of the popes and is as full of error as was Innocent VIII.’s bull issued in 1484 against witchcraft. It presents the theory of the supremacy of the spiritual power over the temporal, the authority of the papacy over princes, in its extreme form. The following is a translation: —

Boniface, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God. For perpetual remembrance: —

Urged on by our faith, we are obliged to believe and hold that there is one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. And we firmly believe and profess that outside of her there is no salvation nor remission of sins, as the bridegroom declares in the Canticles, "My dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of her mother; she is the choice one of her that bare her." And this represents the one mystical body of Christ, and of this body Christ is the head, and God is the head of Christ. In it there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. For in the time of the Flood there was the single ark of Noah, which prefigures the one Church, and it was finished according to the measure of one cubit and had one Noah for pilot and captain, and outside of it every living creature on the earth, as we read, was destroyed. And this Church we revere as the only one, even as the Lord saith by the prophet, "Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog." He prayed for his soul, that is, for himself, head and body. And this body he called one body, that is, the Church, because of the single bridegroom, the unity of the faith, the sacraments, and the love of the Church. She is that seamless shirt of the Lord which was not rent but was allotted by the casting of lots. Therefore, this one and single Church has one head and not two heads,—for had she two heads, she would be a monster,—that is, Christ and Christ’s vicar, Peter and Peter’s successor. For the Lord said unto Peter, "Feed my sheep." "My," he said, speaking generally and not particularly, "these and those," by which it is to be understood that all the sheep are committed unto him. So, when the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they must confess that they are not of Christ’s sheep, even as the Lord says in John, "There is one fold and one shepherd."

That in her and within her power are two swords, we are taught in the Gospels, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword. For when the Apostles said, "Lo, here,"—that is in the Church,—are two swords, the Lord did not reply to the Apostles "it is too much," but "it is enough." It is certain that whoever denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter, hearkens ill to the words of the Lord which he spake, "Put up thy sword into its sheath." Therefore, both are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the temporal sword; the latter is to be used for the Church, the former by the Church; the former by the hand of the priest, the latter by the hand of princes and kings, but at the nod and sufferance of the priest. The one sword must of necessity be subject to the other, and the temporal authority to the spiritual. For the Apostle said, "There is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God;" and they would not have been ordained unless one sword had been made subject to the other, and even as the lower is subjected by the other for higher things. For, according to Dionysius, it is a divine law that the lowest things are made by mediocre things to attain to the highest. For it is not according to the law of the universe that all things in an equal way and immediately should reach their end, but the lowest through the mediocre and the lower through the higher. But that the spiritual power excels the earthly power in dignity and worth, we will the more clearly acknowledge just in proportion as the spiritual is higher than the temporal. And this we perceive quite distinctly from the donation of the tithe and functions of benediction and sanctification, from the mode in which the power was received, and the government of the subjected realms. For truth being the witness, the spiritual power has the functions of establishing the temporal power and sitting in judgment on it if it should prove to be not good.

This passage is based almost word for word upon Hugo de St. Victor, De Sacramentis, II. 2, 4.

And if the earthly power deviate from the right path, it is judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power deviate from the right path, the lower in rank is judged by its superior; but if the supreme power [the papacy] deviate, it can be judged not by man but by God alone. And so the Apostle testifies, "He which is spiritual judges all things, but he himself is judged by no man." But this authority, although it be given to a man, and though it be exercised by a man, is not a human but a divine power given by divine word of mouth to Peter and confirmed to Peter and to his successors by Christ himself, whom Peter confessed, even him whom Christ called the Rock. For the Lord said to Peter himself, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth," etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power so ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God, unless perchance he imagine two principles to exist, as did Manichaeus, which we pronounce false and heretical. For Moses testified that God created heaven and earth not in the beginnings but "in the beginning."

Furthermore, that every human creature is subject to the Roman pontiff,—this we declare, say, define, and pronounce to be altogether necessary to salvation.

Bonifatius, Episcopus, Servus servorum Dei. Ad futuram rei memoriam.

The text is taken from W. Römer: Die Bulle, unam sanctam, Schaffhausen, 1889. See also Mirbt: Quellen, p. 148 sq.

Unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et ipsam apostolicam urgente fide credere cogimur et tenere, nosque hanc frmiter credimus et simpliciter confitemur, extra quam nec salus est, nec remissio peccatorum, sponso in Canticis proclamante: Una est columba mea, perfecta mea. Una est matris suae electa genetrici suae [Cant. 6:9]. Quae unum corpus mysticum repraesentat, cujus caput Christus, Christi vero Deus. In qua unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma. Una nempe fuit diluvii tempore arca Noë, unam ecclesiam praefigurans, quae in uno cubito consummata unum, Noë videlicet, gubernatorem habuit et rectorem, extra quam omnia subsistentia super terram legimus fuisse deleta.

Hanc autem veneramur et unicam, dicente Domino in Propheta: Erue a framea, Deus, animam meam et de manu canis unicam meam. [Psalm 22:20.] Pro anima enim, id est, pro se ipso, capite simul oravit et corpore. Quod corpus unicam scilicet ecclesiam nominavit, propter sponsi, fidei, sacramentorum et caritatis ecclesiae unitatem. Haec est tunica illa Domini inconsutilis, quae scissa non fuit, sed sorte provenit. [John 19.]

Igitur ecclesiae unius et unicae unum corpus, unum caput, non duo capita, quasi monstrum, Christus videlicet et Christi vicarius, Petrus, Petrique successor, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: Pasce oves meas. [John 21:17.] Meas, inquit, generaliter, non singulariter has vel illas: per quod commisisse sibi intelligitur universas. Sive ergo Graeci sive alii se dicant Petro ejusque successoribus non esse commissos: fateantur necesse est, se de ovibus Christi non esse, dicente Domino in Joanne, unum ovile et unicum esse pastorem. [John 10:16.]

In hac ejusque potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem videlicet et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. Nam dicentibus Apostolis: Ecce gladii duo hic [Luke 22:38], in ecclesia scilicet, cum apostoli loquerentur, non respondit Dominus, nimis esse, sed satis. Certe qui in potestate Petri temporalem gladium esse negat, male verbum attendit Domini proferentis: Converte gladium tuum in vaginam. [Matt. 26:52.] Uterque ergo est in potestate ecclesiae, spiritualis scilicet gladius et materialis. Sed is quidem pro ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia exercendus, ille sacerdotis, is manu regum et militum, sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis.

Oportet autem gladium esse sub gladio, et temporalem auctoritatem spirituali subjici potestati. Nam cum dicat Apostolus: Non est potestas nisi a Deo; quae autem sunt, a Deo ordinata sunt [Rom. 13:1], non autem ordinata essent, nisi gladius esset sub gladio, et tanquam inferior reduceretur per alium in suprema. Nam secundum B. Dionysium lex dirinitatis est, infima per media in suprema reduci .... Sic de ecclesia et ecclesiastica potestate verificatur vaticinium Hieremiae [Jer. 1:10]: Ecce constitui te hodie super gentes et regna et cetera, quae sequuntur.

Ergo, si deviat terrena potestas, judicabitur a potestate spirituali; sed, si deviat spiritualis minor, a suo superiori si vero suprema, a solo Deo, non ab homine poterit judicari, testante Apostolo: Spiritualis homo judicat omnia, ipse autem a nemine judicatur. [1 Cor. 2:16.] Est autem haec auctoritas, etsi data sit homini, et exerceatur per hominem, non humana, sed potius divina potestas, ore divino Petro data, sibique suisque successoribus in ipso Christo, quem confessus fuit, petra firmata, dicente Domino ipsi Petro: Quodcunque ligaveris, etc. [Matt. 16:19.] Quicunque igitur huic potestati a Deo sic ordinatae resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit, nisi duo, sicut Manichaeus, fingat esse principia, quod falsum et haereticum judicamus, quia, testante Moyse, non in principiis, sed in principio coelum Deus creavit et terram. [Gen. 1:1.]

Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus dicimus, definimus et pronunciamus omnino esse de necessitate salutis.

The most astounding clause of this deliverance makes subjection to the pope an essential of salvation for every creature. Some writers have made the bold attempt to relieve the language of this construction, and refer it to princes and kings. So fair and sound a Roman Catholic writer as Funk

In his Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, I. 483-489. This view is also taken by J. Berchtold: Die Bulle Unam sanctam ihre wahre Bedeutung und Tragweite Staat und Kirche, Munich, 1887. An attempt was made by Abbé Mury, La Bulle Unam sanctam, in Rev. des questions histor. 1879, on the ground of the bull’s stinging affirmations and verbal obscurities to detect the hand of a forger, but Cardinal Hergenröther, Kirchengesch., II. 694, pronounces the genuineness to be above dispute.

§ 5. Literary Attacks against the Papacy.

Nothing is more indicative of the intellectual change going on in Western Europe in the fourteenth century than the tractarian literature of the time directed against claims made by the papacy. Three periods may be distinguished. In the first belong the tracts called forth by the struggle of Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII., with the year 1302 for its centre. Their distinguishing feature is the attack made upon the pope’s jurisdiction in temporal affairs. The second period opens during the pontificate of John XXII. and extends from 1320–1340. Here the pope’s spiritual supremacy was attacked. The most prominent writer of the time was Marsiglius of Padua. The third period begins with the papal schism toward the end of the fourteenth century. The writers of this period emphasized the need of reform in the Church and discussed the jurisdiction of general councils as superior to the jurisdiction of the pope.

I have followed closely in this chapter the clear and learned presentations of Richard Scholz and Finke and the documents they print as well as the documents given by Goldast. See below. A most useful contribution to the study of the age of Boniface VIII. and the papal theories current at the time would be the publication of the tracts mentioned in this section and others in a single volume.

The publicists of the age of Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair now defended, now openly attacked the mediaeval theory of the pope’s lordship over kings and nations. The body of literature they produced was unlike anything which Europe had seen before. In the conflict between Gregory IX. and Frederick II., Europe was filled with the epistolary appeals of pope and emperor, who sought each to make good his case before the court of European public opinion, and more especially of the princes and prelates. The controversy of this later time was participated in by a number of writers who represented the views of an intelligent group of clerics and laymen. They employed a vigorous style adapted to make an impression on the public mind.

Stirred by the haughty assertions of Boniface, a new class of men, the jurisconsults, entered the lists and boldly called in question the old order represented by the policy of Hildebrand and Innocent III. They had studied in the universities, especially in the University of Paris, and some of them, like Dubois, were laymen. The decision of the Bologna jurists on the field of Roncaglia was reasserted with new arguments and critical freedom, and a step was taken far in advance of that decision which asserted the independence of the emperor. The empire was set aside as an antiquated institution, and France and other states were pronounced sovereign within their own limits and immune from papal dominion over their temporal affairs. The principles of human law and the natural rights of man were arrayed against dogmatic assertions based upon unbalanced and false interpretations of Scripture. The method of scholastic sophistry was largely replaced by an appeal to common sense and regard for the practical needs of society. The authorities used to establish the new theory were Aristotle, the Scriptures and historic facts. These writers were John the Baptists preparing the way for the more clearly outlined and advanced views of Marsiglius of Padua and Ockam, who took the further step of questioning or flatly denying the pope’s spiritual supremacy, and for the still more advanced and more spiritual appeals of Wyclif and Luther. A direct current of influence can be traced back from the Protestant Reformation to the anti-papal tracts of the first decade of the fourteenth century.

The tract writers of the reign of Philip the Fair, who defended the traditional theory of the pope’s absolute supremacy in all matters, were the Italians Aegidius Colonna, James of Viterbo, Henry of Cremona, and Augustinus Triumphus. The writers who attacked the papal claim to temporal power are divided into two groups. To the first belongs Dante, who magnified the empire and the station of the emperor as the supreme ruler over the temporal affairs of men. The men of the second group were associated more or less closely with the French court and were, for the most part, Frenchmen. They called in question the authority of the emperor. Among their leaders were John of Paris and Peter Dubois. In a number of cases their names are forgotten or uncertain, while their tracts have survived. It will be convenient first to take up the theory of Dante, and then to present the views of papal and anti-papal writings which were evidently called forth by the struggle started by Boniface.

Dante was in nowise associated with the court of Philip the Fair, and seems to have been moved to write his treatise on government, the De monarchia, by general considerations and not by any personal sympathy with the French king. His theory embodies views in direct antagonism to those promulged in Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam, and Thomas Aquinas, whose theological views Dante followed, is here set aside.

The date of the De monarchia is a matter of uncertainty. There are no references in the treatise to Dante’s own personal affairs or the contemporary events of Europe to give any clew (sic). Witte, the eminent Dante student, put it in 1301; so also R. W. Church, on the ground that Dante makes no reference to his exile, which began in 1301. The tendency now is to follow Boccaccio, who connected the treatise with the election of Henry VII. or Henry’s journey to Rome, 1311. The treatise would then be a manifesto for the restoration of the empire to its original authority. For a discussion of the date, see Henry: Dante’s de monarchia, XXXII. sqq.

The interests of society, so the argument runs, require an impartial arbiter, and only a universal monarch bound by no local ties can be impartial. A universal monarchy will bring peace, the peace of which the angels sang on the night of Christ’s birth, and it will bring liberty, God’s greatest gift to man.

Libertus est maximum donum humanae naturae a Deo collatum, I. 14. It is a striking coincidence that Leo XIII. began his encyclical of June 20, 1888, with these similar words, libertas praestantissimum naturae donum, "liberty, the most excellent gift of nature."

In denying the subordination of the civil power, Dante rejects the figure comparing the spiritual and temporal powers to the sun and moon,

This last section of the book has the heading auctoritatem imperii immediate dependere a Deo.

The Florentine poet’s universal monarchy has remained an ideal unrealized, like the republic of the Athenian philosopher.

With reference to the approaching termination of the emperor’s influence in Italian affairs, Bryce, ch. XV., sententiously says that Dante’s De monarchia was an epitaph, not a prophecy.

The treatise De monarchia was burnt as heretical, 1329, by order of John XXII. and put on the Index by the Council of Trent. In recent times it has aided the Italian patriots in their work of unifying Italy and separating politics from the Church according to Cavour’s maxim, "a free Church in a free state."

In the front rank of the champions of the temporal power of the papacy stood Aegidius Colonna, called also Aegidius Romanus, 1247–1316.

Scholz, pp. 32-129.

The tract by which Aegidius is chiefly known is his Power of the Supreme Pontiff—De ecclesiastica sive de summit pontificis potestate. It was the chief work of its time in defence of the papacy, and seems to have been called forth by the Roman Council and to have been written in 1301.

Jourdain, in 1858, was the first to call attention to the manuscript, and Kraus the first to give a summary of its positions in the Oesterr. Vierteljahrsschrift, Vienna, 1862, pp. 1-33. Among Aegidius’ other tracts is the "Rule of Princes,"—De regimine principum —1285, printed 1473. It was at once translated into French and Italian and also into Spanish, Portuguese, English, and even Hebrew. The "Pope’s Abdication"—De renunciatione papae sive apologia pro Bonifacio VIII.—1297, was a reply to the manifesto of the Colonna, contesting a pope’s right to resign his office. For a list of Aegidius’ writings, see art. Colonna Aegidius, in Wetzer-Welte, III. 667-671. See Scholz, pp. 46, 126.

The pope judges all things and is judged by no man, 1 Cor. 2:15. To him belongs plenary power, plenitudo potestatis. This power is without measure, without number, and without weight.

Aegidius quotes the Wisdom of Solomon 2:21

In the second part of his tract, Aegidius proves that, in spite of Numb. 18:20, 21, and Luke 10:4, the Church has the right to possess worldly goods. The Levites received cities. In fact, all temporal goods are under the control of the Church.

Sub dominio et potestate ecclesiae.

The fulness of power, residing in the pope, gives him the right to appoint to all benefices in Christendom, but, as God chooses to rule through the laws of nature, so the pope rules through the laws of the Church, but he is not bound by them. He may himself be called the Church. For the pope’s power is spiritual, heavenly and divine. Aegidius was used by his successors, James of Viterbo, Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus, and also by John of Paris and Gerson who contested some of his main positions.

Scholz, p. 124.

The second of these writers, defending the position of Boniface VIII., was James of Viterbo,

See Finke, pp. 163-166; Scholz, pp. 129-153.

To Christ’s vicar, James says, royalty and priesthood, regnum et sacerdotium, belong. Temporal authority was not for the first time conferred on him when Constantine gave Sylvester the dominion of the West. Constantine did nothing more than confirm a previous right derived from Christ, when he said, "whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." Priests are kings, and the pope is the king of kings, both in mundane and spiritual matters.

Scholz, pp. 135, 145, 147. These two prerogatives are called potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis.

Henry of Cassaloci, or Henry of Cremona, as he is usually called from his Italian birthplace, d. 1312, is mentioned, contrary to the custom of the age, by name by John of Paris, as the author of the tract, The Power of the Pope—De potestate papae.

Finke, pp. 166-170; Scholz, pp. 162-1S6. Finke was the first to use this Tract. Scholz describes two MSS. in the National Library of Paris, and gives the tract entire, pp. 459-471.

Henry began his tract with the words of Matt. 27:18, "All power is given unto me," and declared the attack against the pope’s temporal jurisdiction over the whole earth a matter of recent date, and made by "sophists" who deserved death. Up to that time no one had made such denial. He attempts to make out his fundamental thesis from Scripture, the Fathers, canon law, and reason. God at first ruled through Noah, the patriarchs, Melchizedec, and Moses, who were priests and kings at the same time. Did not Moses punish Pharaoh? Christ carried both swords. Did he not drive out the money-changers and wear the crown of thorns? To him the power was given to judge the world. John 5:22. The same power was entailed upon Peter and his successors. As for the state, it bears to the Church the relation of the moon to the sun, and the emperor has only such power as the pope is ready to confer. Henry also affirms that Constantine’s donation established no right, but confirmed what the pope already possessed by virtue of heavenly gift.

Constantinus non dedit sed recognovit ab ecclesia se tenere—confitetur se ab ecclesia illud tenere. See Scholz, p. 467.

The main work of another defender of the papal prerogatives, Augustinus Triumphus, belongs to the next period.

Four of his smaller tracts are summarized by Scholz, pp. 172-189. See § 8.

An intermediate position between these writers and the anti-papal publicists was taken by the Cardinals Colonna and their immediate supporters.

Scholz, pp. 198-207.

Among the advanced writers of the age was William Durante, d. 1381, an advocate of Gallicanism.

Scholz, pp. 208-223.

Turning now to the writers who contested the pope’s right to temporal authority over the nations, we find that while the most of them were clerics, all of them were jurists. It is characteristic that besides appealing to Aristotle, the Scriptures, and the canon law, they also appealed to the Roman law. We begin with several pamphlets whose authorship is a matter of uncertainty.

The Twofold Prerogative—Quaestio in utramque partem — was probably written in 1302, and by a Frenchman.

This date is made very probable by Scholz, p. 225 sqq. Riezler, p. 141, wrongly put it down to 1364-1380. Scheffer-Boichorst showed that the author spoke of the canonization of Louis IX., 1297, as having occurred "in our days," and that he quoted the Liber sextus, 1298, as having recently appeared. The tract is given in Goldast: Monarchia, II. 195 sqq.

The same positions are taken in the tract,

It is bound up in MS. with the former tract and with the work of John of Paris. It is printed in Dupuy, pp. 663-683. It has been customary to regard Peter Dubois as the author, but Scholz, p. 257, gives reasons against this view.

A third tract, one of the most famous pieces of this literature, the Disputation between a Cleric and a Knight,

Disputatio inter clericum et militem. It was written during the conflict between Boniface and Philip, and not by Ockam, to whom it was formerly ascribed. Recently Riezler, p. 146, has ascribed it to Peter Dubois. It was first printed, 1476, and is reprinted in Goldast: Monarchia, I. 13 sqq. MSS. are found in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Prag. See Scholz, p. 336 sqq. An English translation appeared with the following title: A dialogue betwene a knight and a clerke concerning the Power Spiritual and temporal, by William Ockham, the great philosopher, in English and Latin, London, 1540.

In the publicist, John of Paris, d. 1306, we have one of the leading minds of the age.

Finke, pp. 170-177; Scholz, pp. 275-333.

John’s chief writing was the tract on the Authority of the Pope and King, —De potestate regia et papali,

First printed in Paris, 1506, and is found in Goldast, II. 108 sqq. For the writings ascribed to John, see Scholz, p. 284 sq. Finke, p. 172, says, ein gesundes beinahe modernes Empfinden zeichnet ihn aus. His tract belongs to 1302-1303. So Scholz and Finke. John writes as though Boniface were still living. He quotes "the opinions of certain moderns" and Henry of Cremona by name. The last chapter of John’s tract is largely made up of excerpts from Aegidius’ De renuntiatione papae. Scholz, p. 291, thinks it probable that Dante used John’s tract.

John makes a clear distinction between the "body of the faithful," which is the Church, and the "body of the clergy."

Congregatio fidelium ... congregatio clericorum.

As for the pope’s place in the Church, the pope is the representative of the ecclesiastical body, not its lord. The Church may call him to account. If the Church were to elect representatives to act with the supreme pontiff, we would have the best of governments. As things are, the cardinals are his advisers and may admonish him and, in case he persists in his error, they may call to their aid the temporal arm. The pope may be deposed by an emperor, as was actually the case when three popes were deposed by Henry III. The final seat of ecclesiastical authority is the general council. It may depose a pope. Valid grounds of deposition are insanity, heresy, personal incompetence and abuse of the Church’s property.

Following Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, John derived the state from the family and not from murder and other acts of violence.

Finke, p. 72; Scholz, p. 324.

The boldest and most advanced of these publicists, Pierre Dubois,

See Renan: Hist. Litt. XXVI. 471-536; Scholz, pp. 374-444.

The pope and clergy are given to worldliness and self-indulgence. Boniface is a heretic. The prelates squander the Church’s money in wars and litigations, prefer the atmosphere of princely courts, and neglect theology and the care of souls. The avarice of the curia and the pope leads them to scandalous simony and nepotism.

Scholz, p. 398.

Dubois also criticised the rule and practice of celibacy. Few clergymen keep their vows. And yet they are retained, while ordination is denied to married persons. This is in the face of the fact that the Apostle permitted marriage to all. The practice of the Eastern church is to be preferred. The rule of single life is too exacting, especially for nuns. Durante had proposed the abrogation of the rule, and Arnald of Villanova had emphasized the sacredness of the marriage tie, recalling that it was upon a married man, Peter, that Christ conferred the primacy.

Contulit conjugato scilicet beato Petro primatum ecclesiae, Finke, p. clxxiii. Arnald is attacking the Minorites and Dominicans for publicly teaching that the statements of married people in matters of doctrine are not to be believed, conjugato non est credendum super veritate divina.

Dubois showed the freshness of his mind by suggestions of a practical nature. He proposed the colonization of the Holy Land by Christian people, and the marriage of Christian women to Saracens of station as a means of converting them. As a measure for securing the world’s conversion, he recommended to Clement the establishment of schools for boys and girls in every province, where instruction should be given in different languages. The girls were to be taught Latin and the fundamentals of natural science, and especially medicine and surgery, that they might serve as female physicians among women in the more occult disorders.

A review of the controversial literature of the age of Philip the Fair shows the new paths along which men’s thoughts were moving.

See the summary of Scholz, pp. 444-458.

The pope’s spiritual primacy was left untouched. The attack was against his temporal jurisdiction. The fiction of the two swords was set aside. The state is as supreme in its sphere as the Church in its sphere, and derives its authority immediately from God. Constantine had no right to confer the sovereignty of the West upon Sylvester, and his gift constitutes no valid papal claim. Each monarch is supreme in his own realm, and the theory of the overlordship of the emperor is abandoned as a thing out of date.

The pope’s tenure of office was made subject to limitation. He may be deposed for heresy and incompetency. Some writers went so far as to deny to him jurisdiction over Church property. The advisory function of the cardinals was emphasized and the independent authority of the bishops affirmed. Above all, the authority residing in the Church as a body of believers was discussed, and its voice, as uttered through a general council, pronounced to be superior to the authority of the pope. The utterances of John of Paris and Peter Dubois on the subject of general councils led straight on to the views propounded during the papal schism at the close of the fourteenth century.

Scholz, p. 322; Schwab: Life of Gerson, p. 133.

This freedom of utterance and changed way of thinking mark the beginning of one of the great revolutions in the history of the Christian Church. To these publicists the modern world owes a debt of gratitude. Principles which are now regarded as axiomatic were new for the Christian public of their day. A generation later, Marsiglius of Padua defined them again with clearness, and took a step still further in advance.

§ 6. The Transfer of the Papacy to Avignon.

The successor of Boniface, Benedict XI., 1303–1304, a Dominican, was a mild-spirited and worthy man, more bent on healing ruptures than on forcing his arbitrary will. Departing from the policy of his predecessor, he capitulated to the state and put an end to the conflict with Philip the Fair. Sentences launched by Boniface were recalled or modified, and the interdict pronounced by that pope upon Lyons was revoked. Palestrina was restored to the Colonna. Only Sciarra Colonna and Nogaret were excepted from the act of immediate clemency and ordered to appear at Rome. Benedict’s death, after a brief reign of eight months, was ascribed to poison secreted in a dish of figs, of which the pope partook freely.

Ferretus of Vicenza, Muratori, IX. 1013. Villani, VIII. 80. As an example of Benedict’s sanctity it was related that after he was made pope he was visited by his mother, dressed in silks, but he refused to recognize her till she had changed her dress, and then he embraced her.

The conclave met in Perugia, where Benedict died, and was torn by factions. After an interval of nearly eleven months, the French party won a complete triumph by the choice of Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. At the time of his election, Bertrand was in France. He never crossed the Alps. After holding his court at Bordeaux, Poictiers, and Toulouse, he chose, in 1309, Avignon as his residence.

Thus began the so-called Babylonian captivity, or Avignon exile, of the papacy, which lasted more than seventy years and included seven popes, all Frenchmen, Clement V., 1305–1314; John XXII., 1316–1334; Benedict XII., 1334–1342; Clement VI., 1342–1352; Innocent VI., 1352–1362; Urban V., 1362–1370; Gregory XI., 1370–1378. This prolonged absence from Rome was a great shock to the papal system. Transplanted from its maternal soil, the papacy was cut loose from the hallowed and historical associations of thirteen centuries. It no longer spake as from the centre of the Christian world.

The way had been prepared for the abandonment of the Eternal City and removal to French territory. Innocent II. and other popes had found refuge in France. During the last half of the thirteenth century the Apostolic See, in its struggle with the empire, had leaned upon France for aid. To avoid Frederick II., Innocent IV. had fled to Lyons, 1245. If Boniface VIII. represents a turning-point in the history of the papacy, the Avignon residence shook the reverence of Christendom for it. It was in danger of becoming a French institution. Not only were the popes all Frenchmen, but the large majority of the cardinals were of French birth. Both were reduced to a station little above that of court prelates subject to the nod of the French sovereign. At the same time, the popes continued to exercise their prerogatives over the other nations of Western Christendom, and freely hurled anathemas at the German emperor and laid the interdict upon Italian cities. The word might be passed around, "where the pope is, there is Rome," but the wonder is that the grave hurt done to his oecumenical character was not irreparable.

See Pastor, I. 75-80. He calls Clement’s decision to remain in France der unselige Entschluss, "the unholy resolve," and says the change to Avignon had the meaning of a calamity and a fall, die Bedeutung einer Katastrophe, eines Sturzes. Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengeschichte, p. 458, pronounces it "a move full of bad omen." Baur, Kirchengesch. d. M. A., p. 265, said, "The transference of the papal chair to Avignon was the fatal turning-point from which the papacy moved on to its dramatic goal with hasty step." See also Haller, p. 23. Pastor, p. 62, making out as good a case as he can for the Avignon popes, lays stress upon the support they gave to missions in Asia and Africa. Clement VI., 1342-1352, appointed an archbishop for Japan.

The morals of Avignon during the papal residence were notorious throughout Europe. The papal household had all the appearance of a worldly court, torn by envies and troubled by schemes of all sorts. Some of the Avignon popes left a good name, but the general impression was bad—weak if not vicious. The curia was notorious for its extravagance, venality, and sensuality. Nepotism, bribery, and simony were unblushingly practised. The financial operations of the papal family became oppressive to an extent unknown before. Indulgences, applied to all sorts of cases, were made a source of increasing revenue. Alvarus Pelagius, a member of the papal household and a strenuous supporter of the papacy, in his De planctu ecclesiae, complained bitterly of the speculation and traffic in ecclesiastical places going on at the papal court. It swarmed with money-changers, and parties bent on money operations. Another contemporary, Petrarch, who never uttered a word against the papacy as a divine institution, launched his satires against Avignon, which he called "the sink of every vice, the haunt of all iniquities, a third Babylon, the Babylon of the West." No expression is too strong to carry his biting invectives. Avignon is the "fountain of afflictions, the refuge of wrath, the school of errors, a temple of lies, the awful prison, hell on earth."

Petrarch speaks of it "as filled with every kind of confusion, the powers of darkness overspreading it and containing everything fearful which had ever existed or been imagined by a disordered mind." Robinson: Petrarch, p. 87. Pastor, I. p. 76, seeks to reduce the value of Petrarch’s testimony on the ground that he spoke as a poet, burning with the warm blood of his country, who, notwithstanding his charges, preferred to live in Avignon.

During this papal expatriation, Italy fell into a deplorable condition. Rome, which had been the queen of cities, the goal of pilgrims, the centre towards which the pious affections of all Western Europe turned, the locality where royal and princely embassies had sought ratification for ambitious plans—Rome was now turned into an arena of wild confusion and riot. Contending factions of nobles, the Colonna, Orsini, Gaetani, and others, were in constant feud,

The children did not escape the violence of this mad frenzy. The little child, Agapito Colonna, was found in the church, where it had been taken by the servant, strangled by the Orsini.

The Italian peninsula, at least in its northern half, was a scene of political division and social anarchy. The country districts were infested with bands of brigands. The cities were given to frequent and violent changes of government. High officials of the Church paid the price of immunity from plunder and violence by exactions levied on other personages of station. Such were some of the immediate results of the exile of the papacy. Italy was in danger of succumbing to the fate of Hellas and being turned into a desolate waste.

Avignon, which Clement chose as his residence, is 460 miles southeast of Paris and lies south of Lyons. Its proximity to the port of Marseilles made it accessible to Italy. It was purchased by Clement VI., 1348, from Naples for 80, 000 gold florins, and remained papal territory until the French Revolution. As early as 1229, the popes held territory in the vicinity, the duchy of Venaissin, which fell to them from the domain of Raymond of Toulouse. On every side this free papal home was closely confined by French territory. Clement was urged by Italian bishops to go to Rome, and Italian writers gave as one reason for his refusal fear lest he should receive meet punishment for his readiness to condemn Boniface VIII.

See Finke: Quellen, p. 92.

Clement’s coronation was celebrated at Lyons, Philip and his brother Charles of Valois, the Duke of Bretagne and representatives of the king of England being present. Philip and the duke walked at the side of the pope’s palfrey. By the fall of an old wall during the procession, the duke, a brother of the pope, and ten other persons lost their lives. The pope himself was thrown from his horse, his tiara rolled in the dust, and a large carbuncle, which adorned it, was lost. Scarcely ever was a papal ruler put in a more compromising position than the new pontiff. His subjection to a sovereign who had defied the papacy was a strange spectacle. He owed his tiara indirectly, if not immediately, to Philip the Fair. He was the man Philip wanted.

Döllinger says Clement passed completely into the service of the king, er trat ganz in den Dienst des Königs. Akad. Vorträge, III. 254.

The terms on which the new pope received the tiara were imposed by Philip himself, and, according to Villani, the price he made the Gascon pay included six promises. Five of them concerned the total undoing of what Boniface had done in his conflict with Philip. The sixth article, which was kept secret, was supposed to be the destruction of the order of the Templars. It is true that the authenticity of these six articles has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that from the very outset of Clement’s pontificate, the French king pressed their execution upon the pope’s attention.

Mansi was the first to express doubts concerning these articles, reported by Villani, VIII. 80. Döllinger: Akad. Vorträge, III. 254, and Hefele, following Bouteric, deny them altogether. Hefele, in a long and careful statement, VI. 394-403, gives reasons for regarding them as an Italian invention. Clement distinctly said that he knew nothing of the charges against the Templars till the day of his coronation. On the other hand, Villani’s testimony is clear and positive, and at any rate shows the feeling which prevailed in the early part of the fourteenth century. Archer is inclined to hold on to Villani’s testimony, Enc. Brit., XXIII. 164. The character of pope and king, and the circumstances under which Clement was elected, make a compact altogether probable.

The proceedings touching the character of Boniface VIII. and his right to a place among the popes dragged along for fully six years. Philip had offered, among others, his brother, Count Louis of Evreux, as a witness for the charge that Boniface had died a heretic. There was a division of sentiment among the cardinals. The Colonna were as hostile to the memory of Boniface as they were zealous in their writings for the memory of Coelestine V. They pronounced it to be contrary to the divine ordinance for a pope to abdicate. His spiritual marriage with the Church cannot be dissolved. And as for there being two popes at the same time, God was himself not able to constitute such a monstrosity. On the other hand, writers like Augustinus Triumphus defended Boniface and pronounced him a martyr to the interests of the Church and worthy of canonization.

Dupuy, pp. 448-465. See Finke and Scholz, pp. 198-207. Among those who took sides against the pope was Peter Dubois. In his Deliberatio super agendis a Philippo IV. (Dupuy, pp. 44-47), he pronounced Boniface a heretic. This tract was probably written during the sessions of the National Assembly in Paris, April, 1302. See Scholz, p. 386. In another tract Dubois (Dupuy, pp. 214-19) called upon the French king to condemn Boniface as a heretic.

Clement issued one bull after another protesting the innocency of the offending parties concerned in the violent measures against Boniface. Philip and Nogaret were declared innocent of all guilt and to have only pure motives in preferring charges against the dead pope.

The tract of 1308 attempts to prove some of the charges against Boniface untrue, or that true sayings attributed to him did not make him a heretic. For example, it takes up the charges that Boniface had called the Gauls dogs, and had said he would rather be a dog than a Gaul. The argument begins by quoting Eccles. 3:19, p. lxx. sqq.

After long and wearisome proceedings, this order was formally legislated out of existence by Clement in 1312. Founded in 1119 to protect pilgrims and to defend the Holy Land against the Moslems, it had outlived its mission. Sapped of its energy by riches and indulgence, its once famous knights might well have disbanded and no interest been the worse for it. The story, however, of their forcible suppression awakens universal sympathy and forms one of the most thrilling and mysterious chapters of the age. Döllinger has called it "a unique drama in history."

Döllinger’s treatment, Akad. Vorträge, III. 244-274, was the last address that distinguished historian made before the Munich Academy of the Sciences. In his zeal to present a good case for the Templars, he suggests that if they had been let alone they might have done good service by policing the Mediterranean, with Cyprus as a base.

The destruction of the Templar order was relentlessly insisted upon by Philip the Fair, and accomplished with the reluctant co-operation of Clement V. In vain did the king strive to hide the sordidness of his purpose under the thin mask of religious zeal. At Clement’s coronation, if not before, Philip brought charges against it. About the same time, in the insurrection called forth by his debasement of the coin, the king took refuge in the Templars’ building at Paris. In 1307 he renewed the charges before the pope. When Clement hesitated, he proceeded to violence, and on the night of Oct. 13, 1307, he had all the members of the order in France arrested and thrown into prison, including Jacques de Molay, the grand-master. Döllinger applies to this deed the strong language that, if he were asked to pick out from the whole history of the world the accursed day,—dies nefastus,—he would be able to name none other than Oct. 13, 1307. Three days later, Philip announced he had taken this action as the defender of the faith and called upon Christian princes to follow his example. Little as the business was to Clement’s taste, he was not man enough to set himself in opposition to the king, and he gradually became complaisant.

In the bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae, 1307. Augustinus Triumphus, in his tract on the Templars, de facto Templarorum, without denying the charges of heresy, denied the king’s right to seize and try persons accused of heresy on his own initiative and without the previous consent of the Church. See the document printed by Scholz, pp. 508-516.

In the summer of 1308 the pope ordered a prosecution of the knights wherever they might be found.

In the bull Faciens misericordiam. In this document the pope made the charge that the grand-master and the officers of the order were in the habit of granting absolution, a strictly priestly prerogative. It was to confirm the strict view of granting absolution that Alexander III. provided for the admission of priests to the Military Orders. See Lea’s valuable paper. The Absolution Formula of the Templars. See also on this subject Finke I. 395-397. Funk, p. 1330, saysder Pabst kam von jetzt an dem König mehr und mehr entgegen und nachdem er sich von dem gewaltigsten und rücksichtsiosigsten Fürsten seiner Zeit hatte ungarnen lassen, war ein Entkommen aus seiner Gewalt kaum mehr möglich

Under the strain of prolonged torture, many of the unfortunate men gave assent to these charges, and more particularly to the denial of Christ and the spitting upon the cross. The Templars seem to have had no friends in high places bold enough to take their part. The king, the pope, the Dominican order, the University of Paris, the French episcopacy were against them. Many confessions once made by the victims were afterwards recalled at the stake. Many denied the charges altogether.

These practices have been regarded by Prutz, Loiscleur (La doctrine secrète des Templiers, Paris, 1872) and others as a part of a secret code which came into use in the thirteenth century. But the code has not been forthcoming and was not referred to in the trials. Frederick II. declared that the Templars received Mohammedans into their house at Jerusalem and preferred their religious rites. This statement must be taken with reserve, in view of Frederick’s hostility to the order for its refusal to help him on his crusade. See M. Paris, an. 1244.

In accordance with Clement’s order, trials were had in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and England. In England, Edward II. at first refused to apply the torture, which was never formally adopted in that land, but later, at Clement’s demand, he complied. Papal inquisitors appeared. Synods in London and York declared the charges of heresy so serious that it would be impossible for the knights to clear themselves. English houses were disbanded and the members distributed among the monasteries to do penance. In Italy and Germany, the accused were, for the most part, declared innocent. In Spain and Portugal, no evidence was forthcoming of guilt and the synod of Tarragona, 1310, and other synods favored their innocence.

The last act in these hostile proceedings was opened at the Council of Vienne, called for the special purpose of taking action upon the order. The large majority of the council were in favor of giving it a new trial and a fair chance to prove its innocence. But the king was relentless. He reminded Clement that the guilt of the knights had been sufficiently proven, and insisted that the order be abolished. He appeared in person at the council, attended by a great retinue. Clement was overawed, and by virtue of his apostolic power issued his decree abolishing the Templars, March 22, 1312.

Per viam provisionis seu ordinationis apostolicae is the language of the bull, that is, as opposed to de jure or as a punishment for proven crimes. This bull, Vox clamantis, was found by the Benedictine, Dr. Gams, in Spain, in 1865. See Hefele-Knöpfler, VI. 625 sqq. It is found in Mirbt: Quellen, p. 149 sq. Clement asserts he issued the order of abolition "not without bitterness and pain of heart," non sine cordis amaritudine et dolore. Two other bulls on the Templars and the disposition of their property followed in May.

The end of Jacques de Molay, the 22d and last grand-master of the order of Templars, was worthy of its proudest days. At the first trial he confessed to the charges of denying Christ and spitting upon the cross, and was condemned, but afterwards recalled his confession. His case was reopened in 1314. With Geoffrey de Charney, grand-preceptor of Normandy, and others, he was led in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Molay then stood forth and declared that the charges against the order were false, and that he had confessed to them under the strain of torture and instructions from the king. Charney said the same. The commission promised to reconsider the case the next day. But the king’s vengeance knew no bounds, and that night, March 11, 1314, the prisoners were burned. The story ran that while the flames were doing their grewsome (sic) work, Molay summoned pope and king to meet him at the judgment bar within a year. The former died, in a little more than a month, of a loathsome disease, though penitent, as it was reported, for his treatment of the order, and the king, by accident, while engaged in the chase, six months later. The king was only 46 years old at the time of his death, and 14 years after, the last of his direct descendants was in his grave and the throne passed to the house of Valois.

As for the possessions of the order, papal decrees turned them over to the Knights of St. John, but Philip again intervened and laid claim to 260,000 pounds as a reimbursement for alleged losses to the Temple and the expense of guarding the prisoners.

The wealth of the Templars has been greatly exaggerated. They were not richer in France than the Hospitallers. About 1300 the possessions of each of these orders in that country were taxed at 6000 pounds. See Döllinger, p. 267 sq. Thomas Fuller, the English historian, quaintly says, "Philip would never have taken away the Templars’ lives if he might have taken away their lands without putting them to death. He could not get the honey without burning the bees." The Spanish delegation to the Council of Vienne wrote back to the king of Aragon that the chief concern at the council and with the king in regard to the Templars was the disposition of their goods, Finke, I. 360, 374. Finke, I. 111, 115, etc., ascribes a good deal of the animosity against the order to the revelations made by Esquin de Floyran to Jayme of Aragon in 1306. But the charges he made were already current in France.

The explanation of Philip’s violent animosity and persistent persecution is his cupidity. He coveted the wealth of the Templars. Philip was quite equal to a crime of this sort.

Dante and Villani agree that the Templars were innocent. In this judgment most modern historians concur. Funk declares the sentence of innocence to be "without question the right one," p. 1341. Döllinger, with great emphasis, insists that nowhere did a Templar make a confession of guilt except under torture, p. 257. More recently, 1907, Finke (I. p. ix. 326 sq. 337) insists upon their innocence and the untrustworthiness of the confessions made by the Templars. He declares that he who advocates their guilt must accept the appearances of the devil as a tom-cat. Prutz, in his earlier works, decided for their guilt. Schottmüller, Döllinger, Funk, and our own Dr. Lea strongly favor their innocence. Ranke: Univ. Hist., VIII. 622, wavers and ascribes to them the doctrinal standpoint of Frederick II. and Manfred. In France, Michelet was against the order; Michaud, Guizot, Renan and Boutaric for it. Hallam: Middle Ages, I. 142-146, is undecided.

Purgatory, xx. 91.

The house of the Templars in Paris was turned into a royal residence, from which Louis XVI., more than four centuries later, went forth to the scaffold.

The Council of Vienne, the fifteenth in the list of the oecumenical councils, met Oct. 16, 1311, and after holding three sessions adjourned six months later, May 6, 1812. Clement opened it with an address on Psalm 111:1, 2, and designated three subjects for its consideration, the case of the order of the Templars, the relief of the Holy Land and Church reform. The documents bearing on the council are defective.

Ehrle,Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch. IV. 361-470, published a fragmentary report which he discovered in the National Library in Paris. For the best account of the proceedings, see Hefele-Knöpfler, VI. 514-554.

The council has a place in the history of biblical scholarship and university education by its act ordering two chairs each, of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee established in Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca.

While the proceedings against Boniface and the Templars were dragging on in their slow course in France, Clement was trying to make good his authority in Italy. Against Venice he hurled the most violent anathemas and interdicts for venturing to lay hands on Ferrara, whose territory was claimed by the Apostolic See. A crusade was preached against the sacrilegious city. She was defeated in battle, and Ferrara was committed to the administration of Robert, king of Naples, as the pope’s vicar.

All that he could well do, Clement did to strengthen the hold of France on the papacy. The first year of his pontificate he appointed 9 French cardinals, and of the 24 persons whom he honored with the purple, 23 were Frenchmen. He granted to the insatiable Philip a Church tithe for five years. Next to the fulfilment of his obligations to this monarch, Clement made it his chief business to levy tributes upon ecclesiastics of all grades and upon vacant Church livings.

Haller, p. 46 sqq.

His fortune Clement disposed of by will, 1312, the total amount being 814,000 florins; 300,000 were given to his nephew, the viscount of Lomagne and Auvillars, a man otherwise known for his numerous illegitimate offspring. This sum was to be used for a crusade; 314,000 were bequeathed to other relatives and to servants. The remaining 200,000 were given to churches, convents, and the poor. A loan of 160,000 made to the king of France was never paid back.

Ehrle, pp. 126, 135.

Clement’s body was by his appointment buried at Uzeste. His treasure was plundered. At the trial instituted by John XXII., it appeared that Clement before his death had set apart 70,000 florins to be divided in equal shares between his successor and the college of cardinals. The viscount of Lomagne was put into confinement by John, and turned over 300,000 florins, one-half going to the cardinals and one-half to the pope. A few months after Clement’s death, the count made loans to the king of France of 110,000 florins and to the king of England of 60,000.

Clement’s relatives showed their appreciation of his liberality by erecting to his memory an elaborate sarcophagus at Uzeste, which cost 50,000 gold florins. The theory is that the pope administers moneys coming to him by virtue of his papal office for the interest of the Church at large. Clement spoke of the treasure in his coffers as his own, which he might dispose of as he chose.

Clement’s grave is reported to have been opened and looted by the Calvinists in 1568 or 1577. See Ehrle, p. 139.

Clement’s private life was open to the grave suspicion of unlawful intimacy with the beautiful Countess Brunissenda of Foix. Of all the popes of the fourteenth century, he showed the least independence. An apologist of Boniface VIII., writing in 1308, recorded this judgment:

Finke: Aus den Tagen Bon. VIII., p. Ixxxviii.

By a single service did this pope seem to place the Church in debt to his pontificate. The book of decretals, known as the Clementines, and issued in part by him, was completed by his successor, John XXII.

§ 7. The Pontificate of John XXII 1316–1334.

Clement died April 20, 1314. The cardinals met at Carpentras and then at Lyons, and after an interregnum of twenty seven months elected John XXII., 1316–1334, to the papal throne. He was then seventy-two, and cardinal-bishop of Porto.

Villani, IX: 81, gives the suspicious report that the cardinals, weary of their inability to make a choice, left it to John. Following the advice of Cardinal Napoleon Orsini, he grasped his supreme chance and elected himself. He was crowned at Lyons.

Said to be the son of a cobbler of Cahors, short of stature,

Villani’s statement that he was the son of a cobbler is doubted. Ferretus of Vicenza says he was "small like Zaccheus."

The four notable features of John’s pontificate are his quarrel with the German emperor, Lewis the Bavarian, his condemnation of the rigid party of the Franciscans, his own doctrinal heresy, and his cupidity for gold.

The struggle with Lewis the Bavarian was a little afterplay compared with the imposing conflicts between the Hohenstaufen and the notable popes of preceding centuries. Europe looked on with slight interest at the long-protracted dispute, which was more adapted to show the petulance and weakness of both emperor and pope than to settle permanently any great principle. At Henry VII.’s death, 1313, five of the electors gave their votes for Lewis of the house of Wittelsbach, and two for Frederick of Hapsburg. Both appealed to the new pope, about to be elected. Frederick was crowned by the archbishop of Treves at Bonn, and Lewis by the archbishop of Mainz at Aachen. In 1317 John declared that the pope was the lawful vicar of the empire so long as the throne was vacant, and denied Lewis recognition as king of the Romans on the ground of his having neglected to submit his election to him.

The battle at Mühldorf, 1322, left Frederick a prisoner in his rival’s hands. This turn of affairs forced John to take more decisive action, and in 1323 was issued against Lewis the first of a wearisome and repetitious series of complaints and punishments from Avignon. The pope threatened him with the ban, claiming authority to approve or set aside an emperor’s election.

See Müller: Kampf Ludwigs, etc., I. 61 sqq. Examinatio, approbatio ac admonitio, repulsio quoque et reprobatio.

In answer to this first complaint of 1323, Lewis made a formal declaration at Nürnberg in the presence of a notary and other witnesses that he regarded the empire as independent of the pope, charged John with heresy, and appealed to a general council. The charge of heresy was based on the pope’s treatment of the Spiritual party among the Franciscans. Condemned by John, prominent Spirituals, Michael of Cesena, Ockam and Bonagratia, espoused Lewis’ cause, took refuge at his court, and defended him with their pens. The political conflict was thus complicated by a recondite ecclesiastical problem. In 1324 Lewis issued a second appeal, written in the chapel of the Teutonic Order in Sachsenhausen, which again renewed the demand for a general council and repeated the charge of heresy against the pope.

The next year, 1325, Lewis suffered a severe defeat from Leopold of Austria, who had entered into a compact to put Charles IV. of France on the German throne. He went so far as to express his readiness, in the compact of Ulm, 1326, to surrender the German crown to Frederick, provided he himself was confirmed in his right to Italy and the imperial dignity. At this juncture Leopold died.

By papal appointment Robert of Naples was vicar of Rome. But Lewis had no idea of surrendering his claims to Italy, and, now that he was once again free by Leopold’s death, he marched across the Alps and was crowned, January 1327, emperor in front of St. Peter’s. Sciarra Colonna, as the representative of the people, placed the crown on his head, and two bishops administered unction. Villani

X. 55.

To these acts of violence John replied by pronouncing Lewis a heretic and appointing a crusade against him, with the promise of indulgence to all taking part in it. Fickle Rome soon grew weary of her lay-crowned emperor, who had been so unwise as to impose an extraordinary tribute of 10,000 florins each upon the people, the clergy, and the Jews of the city. He retired to the North, Nicolas following him with his retinue of cardinals. At Pisa, the emperor being present, the anti-pope excommunicated John and summoned a general council to Milan. John was again burnt in effigy, at the cathedral, and condemned to death for heresy. In 1330 Lewis withdrew from Italy altogether, while Nicolas, with a cord around his neck, submitted to John. He died in Avignon three years later. In 1334, John issued a bull which, according to Karl Müller, was the rudest act of violence done up to that time to the German emperor by a pope.

336 sqq., 376 sqq., 406.

With his constituency completely lost in Italy, and with only an uncertain support in Germany, Lewis now made overtures for peace. But the pope was not ready for anything less than a full renunciation of the imperial power. John died 1334, but the struggle was continued through the pontificate of his successor, Benedict XII. Philip VI. of France set himself against Benedict’s measures for reconciliation with Lewis, and in 1337 the emperor made an alliance with England against France. Princes of Germany, making the rights of the empire their own, adopted the famous constitution of Rense,—a locality near Mainz, which was confirmed at the Diet of Frankfurt, 1338. It repudiated the pope’s extravagant temporal claims, and declared that the election of an emperor by the electors was final, and did not require papal approval. This was the first representative German assembly to assert the independence of the empire.

The interdict was hanging over the German assembly when Benedict died, 1342. The battle had gone against Lewis, and his supporters were well-nigh all gone from him. A submission even more humiliating than that of Henry IV. was the only thing left. He sought the favor of Clement VI., but in vain. In a bull of April 12, 1343, Clement enumerated the emperor’s many crimes, and anew ordered him to renounce the imperial dignity. Lewis wrote, yielding submission, but the authenticity of the document was questioned at Avignon, probably with the set purpose of increasing the emperor’s humiliation. Harder conditions were laid down. They were rejected by the diet at Frankfurt, 1344. But Germany was weary, and listened without revulsion to a final bull against Lewis, 1346, and a summons to the electors to proceed to a new election. The electors, John of Bohemia among them, chose Charles IV., John’s son. The Bohemian king was the blind warrior who met his death on the battlefield of Crécy the same year. Before his election, Charles had visited Avignon, and promised full submission to the pope’s demands. His continued complacency during his reign justified the pope’s choice. The struggle was ended with Lewis’ death a year later, 1347, while he was engaged near Munich in a bear-hunt. It was the last conflict of the empire and papacy along the old lines laid down by those ecclesiastical warriors, Hildebrand and Innocent III. and Gregory IX.

To return to John XXII., he became a prominent figure in the controversy within the Franciscan order over the tenure of property, a controversy which had been going on from the earliest period between the two parties, the Spirituals, or Observants, and the Conventuals. The last testament of St. Francis, pleading for the practice of absolute poverty, and suppressed in Bonaventura’s Life of the saint, 1263, was not fully recognized in the bull of Nicolas III., 1279, which granted the Franciscans the right to use property as tenants, while forbidding them to hold it in fee simple. With this decision the strict party, the Spirituals, were not satisfied, and the struggle went on. Coelestine V. attempted to bring peace by merging the Spiritual wing with the order of Hermits he had founded, but the measure was without success.

Under Boniface VIII. matters went hard with the Spirituals. This pope deposed the general, Raymond Gaufredi, putting in his place John of Murro, who belonged to the laxer wing. Peter John Olivi (d. 1298), whose writings were widely circulated, had declared himself in favor of Nicolas’ bull, with the interpretation that the use of property and goods was to be the "use of necessity,"—usus pauper,—as opposed to the more liberal use advocated by the Conventuals and called usus moderatus. Olivi’s personal fortunes were typical of the fortunes of the Spiritual branch. After his death, the attack made against his memory was, if possible, more determined, and culminated in the charges preferred at Vienne. Murro adopted violent measures, burning Olivi’s writings, and casting his sympathizers into prison. Other prominent Spirituals fled. Angelo Clareno found refuge for a time in Greece, returning to Rome, 1305, under the protection of the Colonna.

The case was formally taken up by Clement V., who called a commission to Avignon to devise measures to heal the division, and gave the Spirituals temporary relief from persecution. The proceedings were protracted till the meeting of the council in Vienne, when the Conventuals brought up the case in the form of an arraignment of Olivi, who had come to be regarded almost as a saint. Among the charges were that he pronounced the usus pauper to be of the essence of the Minorite rule, that Christ was still living at the time the lance was thrust into his side, and that the rational soul has not the form of a body. Olivi’s memory was defended by Ubertino da Casale, and the council passed no sentence upon his person.

In the bull Exivi de paradiso,

It is uncertain whether this bull was made a part of the proceedings of the Oecumenical Council of Vienne. See Hefele, VI. 550, who decides for it, and Ehrle, Archiv, 1885, p. 540 sqq.

In spite of the papal decree, the controversy was still being carried on within the order with great heat, when John XXII. came to the throne. In the decretal Quorumdam exegit, and in the bull Sancta romana et universalis ecclesia, Dec. 30, 1317, John took a positive position against the Spirituals. A few weeks later, he condemned a formal list of their errors and abolished all the convents under Spiritual management. From this time on dates the application of the name Fraticelli

Hefele, VI. 581. Ehrle: Die Spiritualen in Archiv, 1885, pp. 509-514.

The chief interest of the controversy was now shifted to the strictly theological question whether Christ and his Apostles observed complete poverty. This dispute threatened to rend the wing of the Conventuals itself. Michael of Cesena, Ockam, and others, took the position that Christ and his Apostles not only held no property as individuals, but held none in common. John, opposing this view, gave as arguments the gifts of the Magi, that Christ possessed clothes and bought food, the purse of Judas, and Paul’s labor for a living. In the bull Cum inter nonnullos, 1323, and other bulls, John declared it heresy to hold that Christ and the Apostles held no possessions. Those who resisted this interpretation were pronounced, 1324, rebels and heretics. John went farther, and gave back to the order the right of possessing goods in fee simple, a right which Innocent IV. had denied, and he declared that in things which disappear in the using, such as eatables, no distinction can be made between their use and their possession. In 1326 John pronounced Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse heretical. The three Spiritual leaders, Cesena, Ockam, and Bonagratia were seized and held in prison until 1328, when they escaped and fled to Lewis the Bavarian at Pisa. It was at this time that Ockam was said to have used to the emperor the famous words, "Do thou defend me with the sword and I will defend thee with the pen"—tu me depfendes gladio, ego te defendam calamo. They were deposed from their offices and included in the ban fulminated against the anti-pope, Peter of Corbara. Later, Cesena submitted to the pope, as Ockam is also said to have done shortly before his death. Cesena died at Munich, 1342 He committed the seal of the order to Ockam. On his death-bed he is said to have cried out: "My God, what have I done? I have appealed against him who is the highest on the earth. But look, O Father, at the spirit of truth that is in me which has not erred through the lust of the flesh but from great zeal for the seraphic order and out of love for poverty." Bonagratia also died in Munich.

See Riezler, p. 124.

Later in the fourteenth century the Regular Observance grew again to considerable proportions, and in the beginning of the fifteenth century its fame was revived by the flaming preachers Bernardino of Siena and John of Capistrano. The peace of the Franciscan order continued to be the concern of pope after pope until, in 1517, Leo X. terminated the struggle of three centuries by formally recognizing two distinct societies within the Franciscan body. The moderate wing was placed under the Master-General of the Conventual Minorite Brothers, and was confirmed in the right to hold property. The strict or Observant wing was placed under a Minister-General of the Whole Order of St. Francis.

Magister-generalis fratrum minorum conventualium and minister-generalis totius ordinis S. Francesci. The Capuchins, who are Franciscans, were recognized as a distinct order by Paul V., 1619. Among the other schismatic Franciscan orders are the Recollect Fathers of France, who proceeded from the Recollect Convent of Nevers, and were recognized as a special body by Clement VIII., 1602. These monks were prominent in mission work among the Indians in North America.

If the Spiritual Franciscans had been capable of taking secret delight in an adversary’s misfortunes, they would have had occasion for it in the widely spread charge that John was a heretic. At any rate, he came as near being a heretic as a pope can be. His heresy concerned the nature of the beatific vision after death. In a sermon on All Souls’, 1331, he announced that the blessed dead do not see God until the general resurrection. In at least two more sermons he repeated this utterance. John, who was much given to theologizing, Ockam declared to be wholly ignorant in theology.

In facultate theologiae omnino fait ignarus. See Müller: Kampf, etc., I. 24, note.

The King, Philip VI., took a warm interest in the subject, opposed the pope, and called a council of theologians at Vincennes to give its opinion. It decided that ever since the Lord descended into hades and released souls from that abode, the righteous have at death immediately entered upon the vision of the divine essence of the Trinity.

Mansi, XXV. 982-984.

The question was authoritatively settled by Benedict XII. in the bull Benedictus deus, 1336, which declared that the blessed dead—saints, the Apostles, virgins, martyrs, confessors who need no purgatorial cleansing—are, after death and before the resurrection of their bodies at the general judgment, with Christ and the angels, and that they behold the divine essence with naked vision.

Divinam essentiam immediate, se bene et clare et aperte illis ostendentem. Mansi, XXV. 986.

The financial policy of John XXII. and his successors merits a chapter by itself. Here reference may be made to John’s private fortune. He has had the questionable fame of not only having amassed a larger sum than any of his predecessors, but of having died possessed of fabulous wealth. Gregorovius calls him the Midas of Avignon. According to Villani, he left behind him 18,000,000 gold florins and 7,000,000 florins’ worth of jewels and ornaments, in all 25,000,000 florins, or $60,000,000 of our present coinage. This chronicler concludes with the remark that the words were no longer remembered which the Good Man in the Gospels spake to his disciples, "Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven."

XI. 20. Another writer, Galvaneus de La Flamma, Muratori, XII. 1009 (quoted by Haller, Papsttum, p. 104), says, John left 22,000,000 florins besides other "unrecorded treasure." This writer adds, the world did not have a richer Christian in it than John XXII.

When John died he was ninety years old.

§ 8. The Papal Office Assailed.

To the pontificate of John XXII. belongs a second group of literary assailants of the papacy. Going beyond Dante and John of Paris, they attacked the pope’s spiritual functions. Their assaults were called forth by the conflict with Lewis the Bavarian and the controversy with the Franciscan Spirituals. Lewis’ court became a veritable nest of antipapal agitation and the headquarters of pamphleteering. Marsiglius of Padua was the cleverest and boldest of these writers, Ockam—a Schoolman rather than a practical thinker—the most copious. Michael of Cesena

Riezler, p. 247 sq. Three of these writings are in Goldast’s Monarchia II., 1236 sqq. Riezler’s work, Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste is the best treatment of the subject of this chapter.

Ockam sets forth his views in two works, The Dialogue and the Eight Questions. The former is ponderous in thought and a monster in size.

The Dialogue, which is printed in Goldast, is called by Riezler an almost unreadable monster, ein kaum übersehbares Monstrum

More distinct and advanced were the utterances of Marsiglius of Padua. His writings abound in incisive thrusts against the prevailing ecclesiastical system, and lay down the principles of a new order. In the preparation of his chief work, the Defence of the Faith,—Defensor pacis,—he had the help of John of Jandun.

Müller, I. 368, upon the basis of a note in a MS. copy in Vienna, places its composition before June 24, 1324; Riezler between 1324-1326. John of Jandun’s name is associated with the composition of the book in the papal bulls. However, the first person singular, ego, is used throughout. According to Innocent VI., Marsiglius was much influenced by Ockam, then the leading teacher in France. This is inherently probable from their personal association in Paris and at the emperor’s court and the community of many of their views. See Haller, p. 78. John of Jandun died probably 1328. See Riezler, p. 56.

The personal fortunes of Marsiglius are of small historical concern compared with his book, which he dedicated to the emperor. The volume, which was written in two months,

Riezler, p. 36. It contains 150 folio pages in Goldast. Riezler, 193 sq., gives a list of MS. copies. Several French translations appeared. Gregory XI. in 1376 complained of one of them. An Italian translation of 1363 is found in a MS. at Florence, Engl. Hist. Rev., 1905, p. 302. The work was translated into English under the title The Defence of Peace translated out of Latin into English by Wyllyam Marshall, London, R. Wyer, 1535.

In condemning the work, John XXII., 1327, pronounced as contrary "to apostolic truth and all law" its statements that Christ paid the stater to the Roman government as a matter of obligation, that Christ did not appoint a vicar, that an emperor has the right to depose a pope, and that the orders of the hierarchy are not of primitive origin. Marsiglius had not spared epithets in dealing with John, whom he called "the great dragon, the old serpent." Clement VI. found no less than 240 heretical clauses in the book, and declared that he had never read a worse heretic than Marsiglius. The papal condemnations were reproduced by the University of Paris, which singled out for reprobation the statements that Peter is not the head of the Church, that the pope may be deposed, and that he has no right to inflict punishments without the emperor’s consent.

Chartul. Univ. Paris., II. 301.

The Defensor pacis was a manifesto against the spiritual as well as the temporal assumptions of the papacy and against the whole hierarchical organization of the Church. Its title is shrewdly chosen in view of the strifes between cities and states going on at the time the book was written, and due, as it claimed, to papal ambition and interference. The peace of the Christian world would never be established so long as the pope’s false claims were accepted. The main positions are the following:

Mirbt: Quellen, pp. 150-152, presents a convenient summary of Part III. of the Defensor. In this part a resumé is given by the author of the preceding portion of the work. Marsiglius quotes Aristotle and other classic writers, Augustine and other Fathers, Hugo of St. Victor and other Schoolmen, but he ignores Thomas Aquinas, and never even mentions his name.

The state, which was developed out of the family, exists that men may live well and peaceably. The people themselves are the source of authority, and confer the right to exercise it upon the ruler whom they select. The functions of the priesthood are spiritual and educational. Clerics are called upon to teach and to warn. In all matters of civil misdemeanor they are responsible to the civil officer as other men are. They should follow their Master by self-denial. As St. Bernard said, the pope needs no wealth or outward display to be a true successor of Peter.

The function of binding and loosing is a declarative, not a judicial, function. To God alone belongs the power to forgive sins and to punish. No bishop or priest has a right to excommunicate or interdict individual freedom without the consent of the people or its representative, the civil legislator. The power to inflict punishments inheres in the congregation "of the faithful"—fidelium. Christ said, "if thy brother offend against thee, tell it to the Church." He did not say, tell it to the priest. Heresy may be detected as heresy by the priest, but punishment for heresy belongs to the civil official and is determined upon the basis of the injury likely to be done by the offence to society. According to the teaching of the Scriptures, no one can be compelled by temporal punishment and death to observe the precepts of the divine law.

Ad observanda praecepta divinae legis poena vel supplicio temporali nemo evangelica scriptura compelli praecipitur, Part III. 3.

General councils are the supreme representatives of the Christian body, but even councils may err. In them laymen should sit as well as clerics. Councils alone have the right to canonize saints.

As for the pope, he is the head of the Church, not by divine appointment, but only as he is recognized by the state. The claim he makes to fulness of power, plenitudo potestatis, contradicts the true nature of the Church. To Peter was committed no greater authority than was committed to the other Apostles.

Nullam potestatem eoque minus coactivam jurisdictionem habuit Petrus a Deo immediate super apostolos reliquos, II. 15. This is repeated again and again.

The grades of the hierarchy are of human origin. Bishops and priests were originally equal. Bishops derive their authority immediately from Christ.

False is the pope’s claim to jurisdiction over princes and nations, a claim which was the fruitful source of national strifes and wars, especially in Italy. If necessary, the emperor may depose a pope. This is proved by the judgment passed by Pilate upon Christ. The state may, for proper reasons, limit the number of clerics. The validity of Constantine’s donation Marsiglius rejected, as Dante and John of Paris had done before, but he did not surmise that the Isidorean decretals were an unblushing forgery, a discovery left for Laurentius Valla to make a hundred years later.

As for the Scriptures, Marsiglius declares them to be the ultimate source of authority. They do not derive that authority from the Church. The Church gets its authority from them. In cases of disputed interpretation, it is for a general council to settle what the true meaning of Scripture is.

Interpretatio ex communi concilio fidelium facta, etc., Part III. 1.

Marsiglius quotes repeatedly such passages as "My kingdom is not of this world," John 18:36, and "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s," Matt. 22:21. These passages and others, such as John 6:15, 19:11, Luke 12:14, Matt. 17:27, Rom. 13, he opposes to texts which were falsely interpreted to the advantage of the hierarchy, such as Matt. 16:19, Luke 22:38, John 21:15–17.

If we overlook his doctrine of the supremacy of the state over the Church, the Paduan’s views correspond closely with those held in Protestant Christendom to-day. Christ, he said, excluded his Apostles, disciples, and bishops or presbyters from all earthly dominion, both by his example and his words.

Exclusit se ipsum et app. ac discipulos etiam suos ipsorumque successores, consequenter episcopos seu presbyteros, ab omni principatu seu mundano regimine exemplo et sermone, II. 4.

Marsiglius has been called by Catholic historians the forerunner of Luther and Calvin.

Döllinger: Kirchengesch. II. 259, 2d ed., 1843, says, "In the Defensor the Calvinistic system was in respect to Church power and constitution, already marked out." Pastor, 1. 85, says, "If Calvin depended upon any of his predecessors for his principles of Church government, it was upon the keen writer of the fourteenth century."

The tractarian of Padua and Thomas Aquinas were only 50 years apart. But the difference between the searching epigrams of the one and the slow, orderly argument of the other is as wide as the East is from the West, the directness of modern thought from the cumbersome method of mediaeval scholasticism. It never occurred to Thomas Aquinas to think out beyond the narrow enclosure of Scripture interpretation built up by other Schoolmen and mediaeval popes. He buttressed up the regime he found realized before him. He used the old misinterpretations of Scripture and produced no new idea on government. Marsiglius, independent of the despotism of ecclesiastical dogma, went back to the free and elastic principles of the Apostolic Church government. He broke the moulds in which the ecclesiastical thinking of centuries had been cast, and departed from Augustine in claiming for heretics a rational and humane treatment. The time may yet come when the Italian people will follow him as the herald of a still better order than that which they have, and set aside the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry as an invention of man.

Compared with Wyclif, a pamphleteer as keen as he, Marsiglius did not enter into the merits of distinctly theological doctrine nor see the deep connection between the dogma of transubstantiation and sacramental penance and papal tyranny as the English reformer did. But so far as questions of government are concerned, he went as far as Wyclif or farther. See the comparison, as elaborated by Poole, p. 275.

Germany furnished a strong advocate of the independent rights of the emperor, in Lupold of Bebenburg, who died in 1363. He remained dean of Würzburg until he was made bishop of Bamberg in 1353. But he did not attack the spiritual jurisdiction of the Apostolic See. Lupold’s chief work was The Rights of the Kingdom and Empire—de juribus regni et imperii,—written after the declarations of Rense. It has been called the oldest attempt at a theory of the rights of the German state.

Der älteste Versuch einer Theorie des deutschen Staatsrechts, Riezler, p. 180. Two other works by Lupold have come down to us. See Riezler, pp. 180-192.

In defining the rights of the empire, this author asserts that an election is consummated by the majority of the electors and that the emperor does not stand in need of confirmation by the pope. He holds his authority independently from God. Charlemagne exercised imperial functions before he was anointed and crowned by Leo. The oath the emperor takes to the pope is not the oath of fealty such as a vassal renders, but a promise to protect him and the Church. The pope has no authority to depose the emperor. His only prerogative is to announce that he is worthy of deposition. The right to depose belongs to the electors. As for Constantine’s donation, it is plain Constantine did not confer the rule of the West upon the bishop of Rome, for Constantine divided both the West and the East among his sons. Later, Theodosius and other emperors exercised dominion in Rome. The notice of Constantine’s alleged gift to Sylvester has come through the records of Sylvester and has the appearance of being apocryphal.

The papal assailants did not have the field all to themselves. The papacy also had vigorous literary champions. Chief among them were Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus Pelagius.

For the papal tracts by Petrus de Palude and Konrad of Megenberg, d. 1374, see Riezler, p. 287 sqq. The works are still unpublished. Konrad’s Planctus ecclesiae is addressed to Benedict in these lines, which make the pope out to be the summit of the earth, the wonder of the world, the doorkeeper of heaven, a treasury of delights, the only sun for the world.

"Flos et apex mundi, qui totius esse rotundi

Nectare dulcorum conditus aromate morum

Orbis papa stupor, clausor coeli et reserator,

Tu sidus clarum, thesaurus deliciarum

Sedes sancta polus, tu mundo sol modo solus."

Triumphus, an Italian, born in Ancona, 1243, made archbishop of Nazareth and died at Naples, 1328, was a zealous advocate of Boniface VIII. His leading treatise, The Power of the Church,—Summa de potestate ecclesiastica,—vindicates John XXII. for his decision on the question of evangelical poverty and for his opposition to the emperor’s dominion in Italy.

For edd. of Triumphus’ tract, see Potthast, Bibl. Hist. under Triumphus. Riezler, p. 286, dates the tract 1324-1328, Haller, p. 83, 1322, Scholz, p. 172, 1320. See Poole, 252 sq.

In spiritual matters he may err, because he remains a man, and when he holds to heresy, he ceases to be pope. Council cannot depose him nor any other human tribunal, for the pope is above all and can be judged by none. But, being a heretic, he ceases, ipso facto, to be pope, and the condition then is as it would be after one pope is dead and his successor not yet elected.

The pope himself may choose an emperor, if he so please, and may withdraw the right of election from the electors or depose them from office. As vicar of God, he is above all kings and princes.

The Spanish Franciscan, Alvarus Pelagius, was not always as extravagant as his Augustinian contemporary.

He incorporated into his work entire sections from James of Viterbo, De regimine christiano, Scholz, p. 151.

As the vicar of Christ, the pope is supreme over the state. He confers the sword which the prince wields. As the body is subject to the soul, so princes are subject to the pope. Constantine’s donation made the pope, in fact, monarch over the Occident. He transferred the empire to Charlemagne in trust. The emperor’s oath is an oath of fealty and homage.

The views of Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus followed the papal assertion and practice of centuries, and the assent or argument of the Schoolmen. Marsiglius had the sanction of Scripture rationally interpreted, and his views were confirmed by the experiences of history. After the lapse of nearly 500 years, opinion in Christendom remains divided, and the most extravagant language of Triumphus and Alvarus is applauded, and Marsiglius, the exponent of modern liberty and of the historical sense of Scripture, continues to be treated as a heretic.

§ 9. The Financial Policy of the Avignon Popes.

The most notable feature of the Avignon period of the papacy, next to its subserviency to France, was the development of the papal financial system and the unscrupulous traffic which it plied in spiritual benefits and ecclesiastical offices. The theory was put into practice that every spiritual favor has its price in money. It was John XXII.’s achievement to reduce the taxation of Christendom to a finely organized system.

The papal court had a proper claim for financial support on all parts of the Latin Church, for it ministered to all. This just claim gave way to a practice which made it seem as if Christendom existed to sustain the papal establishment in a state of luxury and ease. Avignon took on the aspect of an exchange whose chief business was getting money, a vast bureau where privileges, labelled as of heavenly efficacy, were sold for gold. Its machinery for collecting moneys was more extensive and intricate than the machinery of any secular court of the age. To contemporaries, commercial transactions at the central seat of Christendom seemed much more at home than services of religious devotion.

The mind of John XXII. ran naturally to the counting-house and ledger system.

Haller says, p. 103, the characteristic of John’s pontificate was finance, der Fiskalismus. Tangl, p. 40, compares his commercial instincts to the concern for high ideals which animated Gregory VII., Alexander III., and Innocent III. See vol. V, I., pp. 787, sqq.

Freewill offerings and Peter’s pence had been made to popes from of old. States, held as fiefs of the papal chair, had paid fixed tribute. For the expenses of the crusades, Innocent III. had inaugurated the system of taxing the entire Church. The receipts from this source developed the love of money at the papal court and showed its power, and, no matter how abstemious a pope might be in his own habits, greed grew like a weed in his ecclesiastical household. St. Bernard, d. 1153, complained bitterly of the cupidity of the Romans, who made every possible monetary gain out of the spiritual favors of which the Vatican was the dispenser. By indulgence, this appetite became more and more exacting, and under John and his successors the exploitation of Christendom was reduced by the curia to a fine art.

The theory of ecclesiastical appointments, held in the Avignon period, was that, by reason of the fulness of power which resides in the Apostolic See, the pope may dispense all the dignities and benefices of the Christian world. The pope is absolute in his own house, that is, the Church.

This principle had received its full statement from Clement IV., 1265.

Licet ecclesiarum. See Lib. sextus, III. 4, 2. Friedberg’s ed., II. 102, Lux, p. 5, says romanus pontifex supremus collator, ad quem plenaria de omnibus totius orbis beneficiis eccles. dispositio jure naturo pertinet, etc.

With the haughty assumption of Clement IV.’s bull and the practice of later popes, papal writers fell in. Augustinus Triumphus, writing in 1324, asserted that the pope is above all canon law and has the right to dispose of all ecclesiastical places.

Verum super ipsum jus, potest dispensare, etc. Quoted by Gieseler, II. 123.

In setting aside the vested rights of chapters and other electors, the pope often joined hands with kings and princes. In the Avignon period a regular election by a chapter was the exception.

Haller, p, 107.

To the supreme right of appointment was added the supreme right to tax the clergy and all ecclesiastical property. The supreme right to exercise authority over kings, the supreme right to set aside canonical rules, the supreme right to make appointments in the Church, the supreme right to tax Church property, these were, in their order, the rights asserted by the popes of the Middle Ages. The scandal growing out of this unlimited right of taxation called forth the most vigorous complaints from clergy and laity, and was in large part the cause which led to the summoning of the three great Reformatory councils of the fifteenth century.

See Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 762. K. Müller: Kirchengesch., II. 45. Kirsch: Finanzverwaltung, p. 70. Pastor, in the 1st ed. of his Hist. of the Popes, I. 63, said das unheilvolle System der Annaten, Reservationen und Expektanzen hat seit Johann XXII. zur Ausbildung gelangt.

Popes had acted upon this theory of jurisdiction over the property of the Church long before John XXII. They levied taxes for crusades in the Orient, or to free Italy from rebels for the papal state. They gave their sanction to princes and kings to levy taxes upon the Church for secular purposes, especially for wars.

The course of Clement V., in allowing grants to Philip the Fair, Charles of Valois, and other princes, was followed by John. In 1316 he granted to the king of France a tenth and annates for four years, in 1326 a tenth for two years, and in 1333 a tenth for six years. The English king, in 1317, was given a share of the tenth appointed by the Council of Vienne for a crusade and at the same time one-half of the annates. Again, in the years 1319, 1322, 1330, a tenth was accorded to the same sovereign. See Haller, p. 116 sq.

In estimating the necessities of the papal court, which justified the imposition of customs, the Avignon popes were no longer their own masters. They were the creatures of the camera and the hungry horde of officials and sycophants whose clamor filled the papal offices day and night. These retainers were not satisfied with bread. Every superior office in Christendom had its value in terms of gold and silver. When it was filled by papal appointment, a befitting fee was the proper recognition. If a favor was granted to a prince in the appointment of a favorite, the papal court was pretty sure to seize some new privilege as a compensation for itself. Precedent was easily made a permanent rule. Where the pope once invaded the rights of a chapter, he did not relinquish his hold, and an admission fee once fixed was not renounced. We may not be surprised at the rapacity which was developed at the papal court. That was to be expected. It grew out of the false papal theory and the abiding qualities of human nature.

Kirsch: Kollektorien, p. xii sq. and other Catholic writers make some defence of John’s financial measures on the ground that the sources of income from the State of the Church dried up when the papacy was transferred to Avignon.

The details governing the administration of the papal finances John set forth in two bulls of 1316 and 1331. His scheme fixed the financial policy of the papacy and sacred college.

For the details, see Tangl, p. 20 sqq.

These payments were regularly recorded in registers or ledgers kept by the papal secretaries of the camera. The details of the papal exchequer, extant in the Archives of the Vatican, have only recently been subjected to careful investigation through the liberal policy of Leo XIII., and have made possible a new chapter in works setting forth the history of the Church in this fourteenth century.

Woker took up the study in 1878, and has been followed by a number of scholars such as Tangl, Gottlob, Goeller, Haller, Baumgarten, Schulte, and especially Dr. Kirsch, professor of church history in the Catholic University of Freiburg, Switzerland. See, for a full description, Baumgarten, pp. v-xiii. The subject involves a vast array of figures and commercial briefs of all kinds, and includes the organization of the camera, the system of collection, the graduated scales of prices, the transmission of moneys to Avignon, the division of the receipts between the pope and the cardinals, the values of the numerous coins, etc. Garampi, a keeper of the Vatican Archives, in the eighteenth century arranged these registers according to countries. See Kirsch, Kollektorien, p. vii, and Rückkehr, p. xli-l; Tangl, vi sqq.; Baumgarten, viii, x sqq.

These studies confirm the impression left by the chroniclers and tract-writers of the fourteenth century. The money dealings of the papal court were on a vast scale, and the transactions were according to strict rules of merchandise.

Kirsch: Kollektorien, p. vii, note, gives four different headings under which the moneys were recorded, namely: (1) census and visitations; (2) bulls; (3) servitia communia; (4) sundry sources. He also gives the entries under which disbursements were entered, such as the kitchen, books and parchments, palfreys, journeys, wars, etc.

Archbishop, bishop, and abbot paid for the letters confirming their titles to their dignities. The appointees to lower clerical offices did the same. There were fees for all sorts of concessions, dispensations and indulgences, granted to layman and to priest. The priest born out of wedlock, the priest seeking to be absent from his living, the priest about to be ordained before the canonical age, all had to have a dispensation, and these cost money.

Tangl, 74 sq

The taxes levied upon the higher clergy were usually paid at Avignon by the parties in person. For the collection of the annates from the lower clergy and of tithes and other general taxes, collectors and subcollectors were appointed. We find these officials in different parts of Europe. They had their fixed salaries, and sent periodical reckonings to the central bureau at Avignon.

One of the allowances made by John XXII. for collectors was 5 gold florins a day. Kirsch: Kollektorien, VII. sqq., XLIX. sqq. Kirsch gives the official ledgers of papal collectors in Basel, pp. 4-32, and other sees of Germany. Sometimes the bishop acted as collector in his diocese, Goeller, p. 71.

The offerings made by prelates at their visits to the papal see, called visitationes,

Visitationes ad limina apostolorum, that is, visits to Rome.

The servitia communia, or payments made by archbishops, bishops, and abbots on their confirmation to office, were also listed, according to a fixed scale. The voluntary idea had completely disappeared before a fixed assessment.

Gottlob, Servitien, p. 30 sqq., 75-93; Baumgarten, p. xcvii sqq.

The following cases will give some idea of the annoyances to which bishops and abbots were put who travelled to Avignon to secure letters of papal confirmation to their offices. In 1334, the abbot-elect of St. Augustine, Canterbury, had to wait in Avignon from April 22 to Aug. 9 to get his confirmation, and it cost him 148 pounds sterling. John IV., abbot-elect of St. Albans, in 1302 went for consecration to Rome, accompanied by four monks. He arrived May 6, presented his case to Boniface VIII. in person at Anagni, May 9, and did not get back to London till Aug. 1, being all the while engaged in the process of getting his papers properly prepared and certified to.

Gesta Abb. monaster. S. Albani, II. 55 sq. See Gottlob, Servitien, p. 174 sqq. for the full list of his expenses.

Another abbot-elect of St. Albans, Richard II., went to Avignon in 1326 accompanied by six monks, and was well satisfied to get away with the payment of 3,600 gold florins. He was surprised that the tax was so reasonable. Abbot William of the diocese of Autun, Oct. 22, 1316, obligated himself to pay John XXII., as confirmation tax, 1,500 gold florins, and to John’s officials 170 more.

The contract is printed entire by Kirsch, Finanzerverwaltung, pp. 73-77, and Gottlob, p. 162 sqq.

The fees paid to the lower officials, called servitia minuta, were classified under five heads, four of them going to the officials, familiares of the pontiff, and one to the officials of the cardinals.

See Gottlob, pp. 102-118; Schulte, p. 13 sqq.

The annates, so far as they were the tax levied by the pope upon appointments made by himself to lower clerical offices and livings, went entirely into the papal treasury, and seem to have been uniformly one-half of the first year’s income.

John XXII., 1316, Benedict XII, 1335, Clement VI., 1342, and Boniface IX., 1392, issued bulls requiring such appointees to pay one-half the first year’s income into the papal treasury. See, on this subject, Kirsch, Kollektorien, p. xxv sqq. He mentions the papal collector, Gerardus, who gives a continuous list for the years 1343-1360, of such payments of annates, fructus beneficiorum vacantium ad Cameram Apostolicam pertinentes. The annates, or annalia, were originally given to the bishops when livings became vacant, but were gradually reserved for the papal treasury. See Friedberg, Kirchliche Abgaben, in Herzog, I. 95.

Special indulgences were an uncertain but no less important source of revenue. The prices were graded according to the ability of the parties to pay and the supposed inherent value of the papal concession. Queen Johanna of Sicily paid 500 grossi Tournois, or about $150, for the privilege of taking the oath to the archbishop of Naples, who acted as the pope’s representative. The bull readmitting to the sacraments of the Church Margaret of Maultasch and her husband, Lewis of Brandenburg, the son of Lewis the Bavarian, cost the princess 2000 grossi Tournois. The king of Cyprus was poor, and secured for his subjects indulgence to trade with the Egyptians for the modest sum of 100 pounds Tournois, but had to pay 50 pounds additional for a ship sent with cargo to Egypt.

Tangl, pp. 31, 32, 37

To these sources of income were added the taxes for the relief of the Holy Land—pro subsidio terrae sanctae. The Council of Vienne ordered a tenth for six years for this purpose. John XXII., 1333, repeated the substance of Clement’s bull. The expense of clearing Italy of hostile elements and reclaiming papal territory as a preliminary to the pope’s return to Rome was also made the pretext for levying special taxes. For this object Innocent VI. levied a three-years’ tax of a tenth upon the Church in Germany, and in 1366 Urban V. levied another tenth upon all the churches of Christendom.

Kirsch: Kollektorien, pp. xx, xxi.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the Church always responded to these appeals, or that the collectors had easy work in making collections. The complaints, which we found so numerous in England in the thirteenth century, we meet with everywhere during the fourteenth century. The resistance was determined, and the taxes were often left unpaid for years or not paid at all.

The revenues derived from feudal states and princes, called census, were divided equally between the cardinals and the pope’s private treasury. Gregory X., in 1272, was the first to make such a division of the tribute from Sicily, which amounted to 8000 ounces of gold, or about $90,000.

Kirsch: Finanzverwaltung, p. 3; Rückkehr, p. xv. The payment to Urban V. in 1367 and its division into equal shares is a matter of record. In a ledger account begun in 1317, and now in the Vatican, an ounce of gold was estimated at 5 florins, a pound of gold at 96 florins. See Kirsch, Finanzverwaltung, p. 71; Baumgarten, p. ccxi.

The yearly income of the papal treasury under Clement V. and John XXII. has been estimated at from 200,000 to 250,000 gold florins.

Ehrle: Process über d. Nachlass Klemens V., in Archiv, etc., V. 147. The revenue of Philip the Fair amounted in 1301 to 267,900 pounds. See Gottlob, Servitien, 133. Gottlob, p. 134, says the cardinals received as much more as their share.

These sources of income were not always sufficient for the expenses of the papal household, and in cases had to be anticipated by loans. The popes borrowed from cardinals, from princes, and from bankers. Urban V. got a loan from his cardinals of 30, 000 gold florins. Gregory XI. got loans of 30,000 florins from the king of Navarre, and 60, 000 from the duke of Anjou. The duke seems to have been a ready lender, and on another occasion loaned Gregory 40,000 florins.

Haller, p. 138.

The transactions of the Avignon chancellory called forth loud complaints, even from contemporary apologists for the papacy. Alvarus Pelagius, in his Lament over the Church, wrote: "No poor man can approach the pope. He will call and no one will answer, because he has no money in his purse to pay. Scarcely is a single petition heeded by the pope until it has passed through the hands of middlemen, a corrupt set, bought with bribes, and the officials conspire together to extort more than the rule calls for." In another place he said that whenever he entered into the papal chambers he always found the tables full of gold, and clerics counting and weighing florins.

De planctu eccl. II. 7, quum saepe intraverim in cameram camerarii domni papae, semper ibi vidi nummularios et mensas plenas auro, et clericos computantes et trutinantes florenos. See Döllinger-Friedrich, pp. 86, 420.

§ 10. The Later Avignon Popes.

The bustling and scholastic John XXII. was followed by the scholarly and upright Benedict XII., 1334–1342. Born in the diocese of Toulouse, Benedict studied in Paris, and arose to the dignity of bishop and cardinal before his elevation to the papal throne. If Villani is to be trusted, his election was an accident. One cardinal after another who voted for him did so, not dreaming he would be elected. The choice proved to be an excellent one. The new pontiff at once showed interest in reform. The prelates who had no distinct duties at Avignon he sent home, and to his credit it was recorded that, when urged to enrich his relatives, he replied that the vicar of Christ, like Melchizedek, must be without father or mother or genealogy. To him belongs the honor of having begun the erection of the permanent papal palace at Avignon, a massive and grim structure, having the features of a fortress rather than a residence. Its walls and towers were built of colossal thickness and strength to resist attack. Its now desolated spaces are a speechless witness to perhaps the most singular of the episodes of papal history. The cardinals followed Benedict’s example and built palaces in Avignon and its vicinity.

Clement VI., 1342–1352, who had been archbishop of Rouen, squandered the fortune amassed by John XXII. and prudently administered by Benedict. He forgot his Benedictine training and vows and was a fast liver, carrying into the papal office the tastes of the French nobility from which he sprang. Horses, a sumptuous table, and the company of women made the papal palace as gay as a royal court.

Pastor, I. 76, says, "Luxury and fast living prevailed to the most flagrant degree under Clement’s rule." For detailed description of Avignon and the papal palace, see A. Penjon, Avignon, la ville et le palais des papes, pp. 134, Avignon, 1878; F. Digonnet: Le palais des papes en Avignon, Avignon, 1907.

During Clement’s rule, Rome lived out one of the picturesque episodes of its mediaeval history, the meteoric career of the tribune Cola (Nicolas) di Rienzo. Of plebeian birth, this visionary man was stirred with the ideals of Roman independence and glory by reading the ancient classics. His oratory flattered and moved the people, whose cause he espoused against the aristocratic families of the city. Sent to Avignon at the head of a commission, 1343, to confer the highest municipal authority upon the pope, he won Clement’s attention by his frank manner and eloquent speech. Returning to Rome, he fascinated the people with visions of freedom and dominion. They invested him on the Capitol with the signiory of the city, 1347. Cola assumed the democratic title of tribune. Writing from Avignon, Petrarch greeted him as the man whom he had been looking for, and dedicated to him one of his finest odes. The tribune sought to extend his influence by enkindling the flame of patriotism throughout all Italy and to induce its cities to throw off the yoke of their tyrants. Success and glory turned his head. Intoxicated with applause, he had the audacity to cite Lewis the Bavarian and Charles IV. before his tribunal, and headed his communications with the magnificent superscription, "In the first year of the Republic’s freedom." His success lasted but seven months. The people had grown weary of their idol. He was laid by Clement under the ban and fled, to appear again for a brief season under Innocent V.

Avignon was made papal property by Clement, who paid Joanna of Naples 80, 000 florins for it. The low price may have been in consideration of the pope’s services in pronouncing the princess guiltless of the murder of her cousin and first husband, Andreas, a royal Hungarian prince, and sanctioning her second marriage with another cousin, the prince of Tarentum.

This pontiff witnessed the conclusion of the disturbed career of Lewis the Bavarian, in 1347. The emperor had sunk to the depths of self-abasement when he swore to the 28 articles Clement laid before him, Sept. 18, 1343, and wrote to the pope that, as a babe longs for its mother’s breast, so his soul cried out for the grace of the pope and the Church. But, if possible, Clement intensified the curses placed upon him by his two predecessors. The bull, which he announced with his own lips, April 13, 1346, teems with rabid execrations. It called upon God to strike Lewis with insanity, blindness, and madness. It invoked the thunderbolts of heaven and the flaming wrath of God and the Apostles Peter and Paul both in this world and the next. It called all the elements to rise in hostility against him; upon the universe to fight against him, and the earth to open and swallow him up alive. It blasphemously damned his house to desolation and his children to exclusion from their abode. It invoked upon him the curse of beholding with his own eyes the destruction of his children by their enemies.

This awful denunciation runs: Veniat ei laqueus quem ignorat, et cadat in ipsum. Sit maledictus ingrediens, sit maledictus egrediens. Percutiat eum dominus amentia et caecitate ac mentis furore. Coelum super eum fulgura mittat. Omnipotentis dei ira et beatorum Petri et Pauli ... in hoc et futuro seculo exardescat in ipsum. Orbis terrarum pugnet contra eum, aperiatur terra et ipsum absorbeat vivum. Mirbt: Quellen, p. 153. See Müller: Kampf Ludwigs, etc., II. 214.

During Clement’s pontificate, 1348–1349, the Black Death swept over Europe from Hungary to Scotland and from Spain to Sweden, one of the most awful and mysterious scourges that has ever visited mankind. It was reported by all the chroniclers of the time, and described by Boccaccio in the introduction to his novels. According to Villani, the disease appeared as carbuncles under the armpits or in the groin, sometimes as big as an egg, and was accompanied with devouring fever and vomiting of blood. It also involved a gangrenous inflammation of the lungs and throat and a fetid odor of the breath. In describing the virulence of the infection, a contemporary said that one sick person was sufficient to infect the whole world.

Quoted by Gasquet, Black Death, p. 46.

A large per cent of the population of Western Europe fell before the pestilence. In Siena, 80,000 were carried off; in Venice, 100,000; in Bologna, two-thirds of the population; and in Florence, three-fifths. In Marseilles the number who died in a single month is reported as 57,000. Nor was the papal city on the Rhone exempt. Nine cardinals, 70 prelates, and 17,000 males succumbed. Another writer, a canon writing from the city to a friend in Flanders, reports that up to the date of his writing one-half of the population had died. The very cats, dogs, and chickens took the disease.

Quoted by Gasquet, p. 46 sqq.

No class was immune except in England, where the higher classes seem to have been exempt. The clergy yielded in great numbers, bishops, priests, and monks. At least one archbishop of Canterbury, Bradwardine, was carried away by it. The brothers of the king of Sweden, Hacon and Knut, were among the victims. The unburied dead strewed the streets of Stockholm. Vessels freighted with cargoes were reported floating on the high seas with the last sailor dead.

Gasquet, p. 40.

In England, it is estimated that one-half of the population, or 2,500,000 people, fell victims to the dread disease.

These are the figures of Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, Gasquet, p. 226, and Cunningham, Growth of English Industries and Commerce, p. 275. Thorold Rogers, however, in Six Centuries of Work, etc., and England before and after the Black Death, Fortnightly Review, VIII. 190 sqq. reduces the number. Jessopp bases his calculations upon local documents and death lists of the diocese of Norwich and finds that in some cases nine tenths of the population died. The Augustinians at Heveringland, prior and canons, died to a man. At Hickling only one survived. Whether this fell mortality among the clergy, especially the orders, points to luxuriant living and carelessness in habits of cleanliness, we will not attempt to say.

The Black Death was said to have invaded Europe from the East, and to have been carried first by Genoese vessels.

Ralph, bishop of Bath and Wells, in a pastoral letter warned against the "pestilence which had come into a neighboring kingdom from the East." Knighton refers its origin to India, Thomas Walsingham, Hist. Angl., Rolls Series I. 273, thus speaks of it: "Beginning in the regions of the North and East it advanced over the world and ended with so great a destruction that scarcely half of the people remained. Towns once full of men became destitute of inhabitants, and so violently did the pestilence increase that the living were scarcely able to bury the dead. In certain houses of men of religion, scarcely two out of twenty men survived. It was estimated by many that scarcely one-tenth of mankind had been left alive."

In spite of the plague, and perhaps in gratitude for its cessation, the Jubilee Year of 1350, like the Jubilee under Boniface at the opening of the century, brought thousands of pilgrims to Rome. If they left scenes of desolation in the cities and villages from which they came, they found a spectacle of desolation and ruin in the Eternal City which Petrarch, visiting the same year, said was enough to move a heart of stone. Matthew Villani

Muratori, XV. 56.

Of the three popes who followed Clement, only good can be said. Innocent VI., 1352–1362, a native of the see of Limoges, had been appointed cardinal by Clement VI. Following in the footsteps of Benedict XII., he reduced the ostentation of the Avignon court, dismissed idle bishops to their sees, and instituted the tribunal of the rota, with 21 salaried auditors for the orderly adjudication of disputed cases coming before the papal tribunal. Before Innocent’s election, the cardinals adopted a set of rules limiting the college to 20 members, and stipulating that no new members should be appointed, suspended, deposed, or excommunicated without the consent of two-thirds of their number, and that no papal relative should be assigned to a high place. Innocent no sooner became pontiff than he set it aside as not binding.

Soon after the beginning of his reign, Innocent released Cola di Rienzo from confinement

Cola had roamed about till he went to Prag, where Charles IV. seized him and sent him to Avignon in 1352. Petrarch, who corresponded with him, speaks of seeing him in Avignon, attended by two guards. See Robinson, Petrarch, pp. 341-343 sqq.

Tyrants and demagogues infested Italian municipalities and were sucking their life-blood. The State of the Church had been parcelled up into petty principalities ruled by rude nobles, such as the Polentas in Ravenna, the Malatestas in Rimini, the Montefeltros in Urbino. The pope was in danger of losing his territory in the peninsula altogether. Soldiers of fortune from different nations had settled upon it and spread terror as leaders of predatory bands. In no part was anarchy more wild than in Rome itself, and in the Campagna. Albernoz had fought in the wars against the Moors, and had administered the see of Toledo. He was a statesman as well as a soldier. He was fully equal to his difficult task and restored the papal government.

The full term of Albernoz’ service in Italy extended from 1353-1368. By his code, called the Aegidian Constitutions, he became the legislator of the State of the Church for centuries. For text, see Mansi, XXVI. 299-307. Gregorovius, VI. 430, calls him "the most gifted statesman who ever sat in the college of cardinals," and Wurm, his biographer, "the second founder of the State of the Church."

In 1355, Albernoz, as administrator of Rome, placed the crown of the empire on the head of Charles IV. To such a degree had the imperial dignity been brought that Charles was denied permission by the pope to enter the city till the day appointed for his coronation. His arrival in Italy was welcomed by Petrarch as Henry VII.’s arrival had been welcomed by Dante. But the emperor disappointed every expectation, and his return from Italy was an inglorious retreat. He placed his own dominion of Bohemia in his debt by becoming the founder of the University of Prag.

In 1334 Clement had set off the diocese of Prag from the diocese of Mainz and made it an archbishopric.

Urban V., 1362–1370, at the time of his election abbot of the Benedictine convent of St. Victor in Marseilles, developed merits which secured for him canonization by Pius IX., 1870. He was the first of the Avignon popes to visit Rome. Petrarch, as he had written before to Benedict XII. and Clement VI., now, in his old age, wrote to the new pontiff rebuking the curia for its vices and calling upon him to be faithful to his part as Roman bishop. Why should Urban hide himself away in a corner of the earth? Italy was fair, and Rome, hallowed by history and legend of empire and Church, was the theocratic capital of the world. Charles IV. visited Avignon and offered to escort the pontiff. But the French king opposed the plan and was supported by the cardinals in a body. Only three Italians were left in it. Urban started for the home of his spiritual ancestors in April, 1367. A fleet of sixty vessels furnished by Naples, Genoa, Venice, and Pisa conducted the distinguished traveller from Marseilles to Genoa and Corneto, where he was met by envoys from Rome, who put into his hands the keys of the castle of St. Angelo, the symbol of full municipal power. All along the way transports of wine, fish, cheese, and other provisions, sent on from Avignon, met the papal party, and horses from the papal stables on the Rhone were in waiting for the pope at every stage of the journey.

Kirsch: Rückkehr, etc., pp. xii, 74-90. During the stop of five days at Genoa, Urban received timely help in the payment of the feoffal tax of Naples, 8000 ounces of gold. Kirsch, in his interesting and valuable treatment, publishes the ledger entries made in the official registers, deposited in Rome and Avignon and giving in detail the expenses incurred on the visits of Urban and Gregory XI. Gregorovius, VI. 430 sqq., gives an account of Urban’s pilgrimage in his most brilliant style.

At Viterbo, a riot was called forth by the insolent manners of the French, and the pope launched the interdict against the city. The papal ledgers contain the outlay by the apothecary for medicines for the papal servants who were wounded in the melee. Here Albernoz died, to whom the papacy owed a large debt for his services in restoring order to Rome. The legend runs that, when he was asked by the pope for an account of his administration, he loaded a car with the keys of the cities he had recovered to the papal authority, and sent them to him.

Urban chose as his residence the Vatican in preference to the Lateran. The preparations for his advent included the restoration of the palace and its gardens. A part of the garden was used as a field, and the rest was overgrown with thorns. Urban ordered it replanted with grape-vines and fruit trees. The papal ledger gives the cost of these improvements as 6,621 gold florins, or about $15,000. Roofs, floors, doors, walls, and other parts of the palace had to be renewed. The expenses from April 27, 1367, to November, 1368, as shown in the report of the papal treasurer, Gaucelin de Pradello, were 15,559 florins, or $39,000.

The accounts are published entire by Kirsch, pp. ix sqq. xxx, 109-165.

During the sixty years that had elapsed since Clement V. fixed the papal residence in France, Rome had been reduced almost to a museum of Christian monuments, as it had before been a museum of pagan ruins. The aristocratic families had forsaken the city. The Lateran had again fallen a prey to the flames in 1360. St. Paul’s was desolate. Rubbish or stagnant pools filled the streets. The population was reduced to 20,000 or perhaps 17,000.

Döllinger, The Church and the Churches, Engl. trans., 1862, p. 363, puts the population at 17,000. Gregorovius, VI. 438, makes the estimate somewhat higher

Urban set about the restoration of churches. He gave 1000 florins to the Lateran and spent 5000 on St. Paul’s. Rome showed signs of again becoming the centre of European society and politics. Joanna, queen of Naples, visited the city, and so did the king of Cyprus and the emperor, Charles IV. In 1369 John V. Palaeologus, the Byzantine emperor, arrived, a suppliant for aid against the Turks, and publicly made solemn abjuration of his schismatic tenets.

The old days seemed to have returned, but Urban was not satisfied. He had not the courage nor the wide vision to sacrifice his own pleasure for the good of his office. Had he so done, the disastrous schism might have been averted. He turned his face back towards Avignon, where he arrived "at the hour of vespers," Sept. 27, 1370. He survived his return scarcely two months, and died Dec. 19, 1370, universally beloved and already honored as a saint.

§ 11. The Re-establishment of the Papacy in Rome. 1377.

Of the nineteen cardinals who entered the conclave at the death of Urban V., all but four were Frenchmen. The choice immediately fell on Gregory XI., the son of a French count. At 17 he had been made cardinal by his uncle, Clement VI. His contemporaries praised him for his moral purity, affability, and piety. He showed his national sympathies by appointing 18 Frenchmen cardinals and filling papal appointments in Italy with French officials. In English history he is known for his condemnation of Wyclif. His pontificate extended from 1370–1378.

With Gregory’s name is associated the re-establishment of the papacy in its proper home on the Tiber. For this change the pope deserves no credit. It was consummated against his will. He went to Rome, but was engaged in preparations to return to Avignon, when death suddenly overtook him.

That which principally moved Gregory to return to Rome was the flame of rebellion which filled Central and Northern Italy, and threatened the papacy with the permanent loss of its dominions. The election of an anti-pope was contemplated by the Italians, as a delegation from Rome informed him. One remedy was open to crush revolt on the banks of the Tiber. It was the presence of the pope himself.

Pastor, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Kirsch, Rückkehr, p. xvii; Mirot, p. viii, 7 sq., and other Catholic historians agree that this was Gregory’s chief motive. Mirot, pp. 10-18, ascribes to Gregory three controlling ideas—the reform of the Church, the re-establishment of peace with the East as a preliminary to a new crusade against the Turks, and the return of the papacy to Rome.

Gregory had carried on war for five years with the disturbing elements in Italy. In the northern parts of the peninsula, political anarchy swept from city to city. Soldiers of fortune, the most famous of whom was the Englishman, John Hawkwood, spread terror wherever they went. In Milan, the tyrant Bernabo was all-powerful and truculent. In Florence, the revolt was against the priesthood itself, and a red flag was unfurled, on which was inscribed the word "Liberty." A league of 80 cities was formed to abolish the pope’s secular power. The interdict hurled against the Florentines, March 31, 1376, for the part they were taking in the sedition, contained atrocious clauses, giving every one the right to plunder the city and to make slaves of her people wherever they might be found.

Baluz, I. 435, Gieseler, IV. 1, p. 90 sq., give the bull.

Florence fanned the flames of rebellion in Rome and the other papal towns, calling upon them to throw off the yoke of tyranny and return to their pristine liberty. What Italian, its manifesto proclaimed, "can endure the sight of so many noble cities, serving barbarians appointed by the pope to devour the goods of Italy?"

Quoted by Mirot, p. 48, and Gregorovius, VI. 466 sqq.

To the urgency of these civil commotions were added the pure voices of prophetesses, which rose above the confused sounds of revolt and arms, the voices of Brigitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, both canonized saints.

Petrarch, who for nearly half a century had been urging the pope’s return, now, in his last days, replied to a French advocate who compared Rome to Jericho, the town to which the man was going who fell among thieves, and stigmatized Avignon as the sewer of the earth. He died 1374, without seeing the consuming desire of his life fulfilled. Guided by patriotic instincts, he had carried into his appeals the feeling of an Italian’s love of his country. Brigitta and Catherine made their appeals to Gregory on higher than national grounds, the utility of Christendom and the advantage of the kingdom of God. Emerging from visions and ecstatic moods of devotion, they called upon the Church’s chief bishop to be faithful to the obligations of his holy office.

On the death of her husband, St. Brigitta left her Scandinavian home and joined the pilgrims whose faces were set towards Rome in the Jubilee year of 1350.

Brigitta was born near Upsala, 1303. See Gardner, St. Catherine of Siena, p. 44 sqq. Döllinger has called attention to the failure of her prophecies to be fulfilled, Fables and Prophecies of the Middle Ages, trans. by Prof. Henry B. Smith, pp. 331, 398.

Catherine of Siena was more fortunate. She saw the papacy re-established in Italy, but she also witnessed the unhappy beginnings of the schism. This Tuscan prophetess, called by a sober Catholic historian, "one of the most wonderful appearances in history,"

Pastor, I. 103.

Gregory received a letter purporting to come from a man of God, warning him of the poison which awaited him at Rome and appealing to his timidity and his love of his family. In a burning epistle, Catherine showed that only the devil or one of his emissaries could be the author of such a communication, and called upon him as a good shepherd to pay more honor to God and the well-being of his flock than to his own safety, for a good shepherd, if necessary, lays down his life for the sheep. The servants of God are not in the habit of giving up a spiritual act for fear of bodily harm.

Scudder, p. 182 sqq.

In 1376, Catherine saw Gregory face to face in Avignon, whither she went as a commissioner from Florence to arrange a peace between the city and the pope. The papal residence she found not a paradise of heavenly virtues, as she expected, but in it the stench of infernal vices.

This was Catherine’s deposition to her confessor. See Mirbt: Quellen, p. 154, in romana curia, ubi deberet paradisus esse caelicarum virtutum, inveniebat faetorem infernalium vitiarum.

As early as 1374, Gregory wrote to the emperor that it was his intention to re-establish the papacyon the Tiber.

Later biographers tell of a vow made by Gregory at the opening of his pontificate to return to Rome, but no contemporary writer has any reference to it, Mirot, p. 62.

The journey was begun Sept. 13, 1376. Six cardinals were left behind at Avignon to take care of the papal business. The fleet which sailed from Marseilles was provided by Joanna of Naples, Peter IV. of Aragon, the Knights of St. John, and the Italian republics, but the vessels were not sufficient to carry the large party and the heavy cargo of personal baggage and supplies. The pope was obliged to rent a number of additional galleys and boats. Fernandez of Heredia, who had just been elected grand-master of the Knights of St. John, acted as admiral. A strong force of mercenaries was also required for protection by sea and at the frequent stopping places along the coast, and for service, if necessary, in Rome itself. The expenses of this peaceful Armada—vessels, mercenaries, and cargo—are carefully tabulated in the ledgers preserved in Avignon and the Vatican.

Kirsch, pp. 169-264, gives a copy of these ledger entries. One set contains the expenses of preparation, one set the expenses from Marseilles to Rome, and a third set, the expenses after arriving in Rome. Still another gives the espenses of repairing the Vatican—the wages of workmen and the prices paid for lumber, lead, iron, keys, etc. On the back of this last volume, which is in the Vatican, are written the words, "Expensae palatii apostolici, 1370-1380."

The elements seemed to war with the expedition. The fleet had no sooner set sail from Marseilles than a fierce storm arose which lasted several weeks and made the journey tedious. Urban V. was three days in reaching Genoa, Gregory sixteen. From Genoa, the vessels continued southwards the full distance to Ostia, anchorage being made every night off towns. From Ostia, Gregory went up the Tiber by boat, landing at Rome Dec. 16, 1377. The journey was made by night and the banks were lit up by torches, showing the feverish expectation of the people. Disembarking at St. Paul’s, the pope proceeded the next day, Jan. 17, to St. Peter’s, accompanied by rejoicing throngs. In the procession were bands of buffoons who added to the interest of the spectacle and afforded pastime to the populace. The pope abode in the Vatican and, from that time till this day, it has continued to be the papal residence.

Gregory survived his entrance into the Eternal City a single year. He spent the warmer months in Anagni, where he must have had mixed feelings as he recalled the experiences of his predecessor Boniface VIII., which had been the immediate cause of the transfer of the papal residence to French soil. The atrocities practised at Cesena by Cardinal Robert cast a dark shadow over the events of the year. An uprising of the inhabitants in consequence of the brutality of his Breton troops drove them and the cardinal to seek refuge in the citadel. Hawkwood was called in, and, in spite of the cardinal’s pacific assurances, the mercenaries fell upon the defenceless people and committed a butchery whose shocking details made the ears of all Italy to tingle. Four thousand were put to death, including friars in their churches, and still other thousands were sent forth naked and cold to find what refuge they could in neighboring towns. But, in spite of this barbarity, the pope’s authority was acknowledged by an enlarging circle of Italian commonwealths, including Bologna. Florence, even, sued for peace.

When Gregory died, March 27, 1378, he was only 47 years old. By his request, his body was laid to rest in S. Maria Nuova on the Forum. In his last hours, he is said to have regretted having given his ear to the voice of Catherine of Siena, and he admonished the cardinals not to listen to prophecies as he had done.

So Gerson, De examinatione doctrinarum, I. 16, as quoted by Gieseler, ut caverent ab hominibus sive viris sive mulieribus, sub specie religionis loquentibus visiones ... quia per tales ipse reductus. See Pastor, I. 113.

§ 12. Sources and Literature.

For §§ 13, 14. The Papal Schism.—Orig. documents in Raynaldus: Annal. Eccles.—C.E. Bulaeus, d. 1678: Hist. univer. Parisiensis, 6 vols., Paris, 1665–1673, vol. IV. —Van der Hardt, see § 15.—H. Denifle and A. Chatelain: Chartul. universitatis Paris., 4 vols., Paris, 1889–1897, vols. III., IV., especially the part headed de schismate, III. 552–639.—Theoderich of Nieheim (Niem): de Schismate inter papas et antipapas, Basel, 1566, ed. by Geo. Erler, Leipzig, 1890. Nieheim, b. near Paderborn, d. 1417, had exceptional opportunities for observing the progress of events. He was papal secretary—notarius sacri palatii — at Avignon, went with Gregory XI. to Rome, was there at the breaking out of the schism, and held official positions under three of the popes of the Roman line. In 1408 he joined the Livorno cardinals, and supported Alexander V. and John XXIII.—See H. V. Sauerland: D. Leben d. Dietrich von Nieheim nebst einer Uebersicht über dessen Schriften, Göttingen, 1876, and G. Erler: Dietr. von Nieheim, sein Leben u. s. Schriften, Leipzig, 1887. Adam of Usk: Chronicon, 1377–1421, 2d ed. by E. M. Thompson, with Engl. trans., London, 1904.—Martin de Alpartils: Chronica actitatorum temporibus Domini Benedicti XIII. ed. Fr. Ehrle, S. J., vol. I., Paderborn, 1906.—Wyclif’s writings, Lives of Boniface IX. and Innocent VII. in Muratori, III. 2, pp. 830 sqq., 968 sq.—P. Dupuy: Hist. du schisme 1378–1420, Paris, 1654.—P. L. Maimbourg (Jesuit): Hist. du grand schisme d’ Occident, Paris, 1678.—Ehrle: Neue Materialien zur Gesch. Peters von Luna (Benedict XIII.), in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., VI. 139 sqq., VII. 1 sqq.—L. Gayet: Le Grand schisme d’Occident, 2 vols., Florence and Berlin, 1889.—C. Locke: Age of the Great Western Schism, New York, 1896.—Paul Van Dyke: Age of the Renascence an Outline of the Hist. of the Papacy, 1377–1527, New York, 1897.—L. Salembier: Le grand schisme d’ Occident, Paris, 1900, 3d ed., 1907. Engl. trans., London, 1907.—N. Valois: La France et le grand schisme d’Occident, 4 vols., Paris, 1896–1901.—E. Goeller: König Sigismund’s Kirchenpolitik vom Tode Bonifaz IX. bis zur Berufung d. Konstanzer Concils, Freiburg, 1902.—M. Jansen: Papst Bonifatius IX. u. s. Beziehungen zur deutschen Kirche, Freiburg, 1904.—H. Bruce: The Age of Schism, New York, 1907.—E. J. Kitts: In the Days of the Councils. A Sketch of the Life and Times of Baldassare Cossa, John XXIII., London, 1908.—Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengesch., VI. 727–936.—Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 807–833.—Gregorovius, VI. 494–611.—Pastor, I. 115–175.—Creighton, I. 66–200.

For §§ 15, 16. The Councils of Pisa and Constance.—Mansi: Concilia, XXVI., XXVII.—Labbaeus: Concilia, XI., XII. 1–259.—Hermann van der Hardt, Prof. of Hebrew and librarian at Helmstädt, d. 1746: Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense Concilium de universali ecclesiae reformatione, unione et fide, 6 vols., Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1696–1700. A monumental work, noted alike as a mine of historical materials and for its total lack of order in their arrangement. In addition to the acts and history of the Council of Constance, it gives many valuable contemporary documents, e.g. the De corrupto statu eccles., also entitled De ruina eccles., of Nicolas Of Clamanges; the De modis uniendi et reformandi eceles. in concilio universali; De difficultate reformationis;and Monita de necessitate reformationis Eccles. in capite et membris,—all probably by Nieheim; and a Hist. of the Council, by Dietrich Vrie, an Augustinian, finished at Constance, 1417. These are all in vol. I. Vol. II. contains Henry of Langenstein’s Consilium pacis: De unione ac reformatione ecclesiae, pp. 1–60; a Hist. of the c. of Pisa, pp. 61–156; Niehelm’s Invectiva in di, ffugientem Johannem XXIII. and de vita Johan. XXIII. usque ad fugam et carcerem ejus, pp. 296–459, etc. The vols. are enriched with valuable illustrations. Volume V. contains a stately array of pictures of the seals and escutcheons of the princes and prelates attending the council in person or by proxy, and the fourteen universities represented. The work also contains biogg. of D’Ailly, Gerson, Zarabella, etc.—Langenstein’s Consilium pacis is also given in Du Pin’s ed. of Gerson’s Works, ed. 1728, vol. II. 809–839. The tracts De difficultate reformationis and Monita de necessitate, etc., are also found in Da Pin, II. 867–875, 885–902, and ascribed to Peter D’Ailly. The tracts De reformatione and De eccles., concil. generalis, romani pontificis et cardinalium auctoritate, also ascribed to D’Ailly in Du Pin, II. 903–915, 925–960.—Ulrich von Richental: Das Concilium so ze Costenz gehalten worden, ed. by M. R. Buck, Tübingen, 1882.—Also Marmion: Gesch. d. Conc. von Konstanz nach Ul. von Richental, Constance, 1860. Richental, a resident of Constance, wrote from his own personal observation a quaint and highly interesting narrative. First publ., Augsburg, 1483. The MS. may still be seen in Constance.—*H. Finke: Forschungen u. Quellen zur Gesch. des Konst. Konzils, Paderborn, 1889. Contains the valuable diary of Card. Fillastre, etc.—*Finke: Actae conc. Constanciensis, 1410–1414, Münster, 1906.—J. L’enfant (Huguenot refugee in Berlin, d. 1728): Hist. du conc. de Constance, Amsterdam, 1714; also Hist. du conc. de Pisa, Amsterdam, 1724, Engl. trans., 2 vols., London, 1780.—B. Hübler Die Konstanzer Reformation u. d. Konkordate von 1418, Leipzig, 1867.—U. Lenz: Drei Traktate aus d. Schriftencyclus d. Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1876. Discusses the authorship of the tracts De modis, De necessitate, and De difficultate, ascribing them to Nieheim.—B. Bess: Studien zur Gesch. d. Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1891.—J. H. Wylie: The Counc. of Const. to the Death of J. Hus, London, 1900.—*J. B. Schwab: J. Gerson, Würzburg, 1868.—*P. Tschackert: Peter von Ailli, Gotha, 1877.—Döllinger-Friedrick: D. Papstthum, new ed., Munich, 1892, pp. 154-l64. F. X. Funk: Martin V. und d. Konzil von Konstanz in Abhandlungen u.Untersuchungen, 2 vols., Paderborn, 1897, I. 489–498. The works cited in § 1, especially, Creighton, I. 200–420, Hefele, VI. 992–1043, VII. 1–375, Pastor, I. 188–279, Valois, IV., Salembier, 250 sqq.; Eine Invektive gegen Gregor xii., Nov. 1, 1408, in Ztschr. f. Kirchengesch., 1907, p. 188 sq.

For § 17. The Council Of Basel.—Lives of Martin V. and Eugenius IV. in Mansi: XXVIII. 975 sqq., 1171 sqq.; in Muratori: Ital. Scripp., and Platina: Hist. of the Popes, Engl. trans., II. 200–235.—Mansi, XXIX.-XXXI.; Labbaeus, XII. 454—XIII. 1280. For C. of Siena, MANSI: XXVIII. 1058–1082.—Monum. concil. general. saec. XV., ed. by Palacky, 3 vols., Vienna, 1857–1896. Contains an account of C. of Siena by John Stojkoric of Ragusa, a delegate from the Univ. of Paris. John de Segovia: Hist. gest. gener. Basil. conc., new ed., Vienna, 1873. Segovia, a spaniard, was a prominent figure in the Basel Council and one of Felix V.’s cardinals. For his writings, see Haller’s Introd. Concil. Basiliense. Studien und Quellen zur Gesch. d. Concils von Basel, with Introd. ed. by T. Haller, 4 vols., Basel, 1896–1903. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini: Commentarii de gestis concil. Basil., written 1440 to justify Felix’s election, ed. by Fea, Rome, 1823; also Hist. Frederici III., trans. by T. Ilgen, 2 vols., Leipzig. No date. Aeneas, afterward Pius II., "did not say and think the same thing at all times," says Haller, Introd., p. 12.—See Voigt: Enea Sylvio de’ Piccolomini, etc., 3 vols., Berlin, 1856–1863.—Infessura: Diario della cittá di Roma, Rome, 1890, PP. 22–42.—F. P. Abert: Eugenius IV., Mainz, 1884.—Wattenbach: Röm Papstthum, pp. 271–284.—Hefele-Knöpfler, VII. 375–849. Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum, 160 sqq.—Creighton, II. 3–273.—Pastor, I. 209—306.—Gregorovius, VI.-VII.—M. G. Perouse: Louis Aleman et la fin du grand schisme, Paris, 1805. A detailed account of the C. of Basel.

For § 18. The Ferrara-Florence Council.—Abram Of Crete: Historia, in Latin trans., Rome, 1521; the Greek original by order of Gregory XIII., Rome, 1577; new Latin trans., Rome, 1612.—Sylv. Syropulos: Vera Hist. unionis non verae inter Graecos et Latinos, ed. by Creyghton, Haag, 1660.—Mansi, XXXI., contains the documents collected by Mansi himself, and also the Acts published by Horatius Justinian, XXXI. 1355–1711, from a Vatican MS., 1638. The Greek and Latin texts are printed side by side. —Labbaeus and Harduin also give Justinian’s Acts and their own collections. —T. Frommann: Krit. Beiträge zur Gesch. d. florentinischen Kircheneinigung, Hale, 1872.—Knöpfler, art. Ferrara-Florenz, in Wetzer-Welte: IV. 1363–1380. Tschackert, art. Ferrara-Florenz, in Herzog, VI. 46 48.—Döllinger-Friedrich: Papstthum, pp. 166–171.

§ 13. The Schism Begun. 1378.

The death of Gregory XI. was followed by the schism of Western Christendom, which lasted forty years, and proved to be a greater misfortune for the Church than the Avignon captivity. Anti-popes the Church had had, enough of them since the days of Gregory VII., from Wibert of Ravenna chosen by the will of Henry IV. to the feeble Peter of Corbara, elected under Lewis the Bavarian. Now, two lines of popes, each elected by a college of cardinals, reigned, the one at Rome, the other in Avignon, and both claiming to be in the legitimate succession from St. Peter.

Gregory XI. foresaw the confusion that was likely to follow at his death, and sought to provide against the catastrophe of a disputed election, and probably also to insure the choice of a French pope, by pronouncing in advance an election valid, no matter where the conclave might be held. The rule that the conclave should convene in the locality where the pontiff died, was thus set aside. Gregory knew well the passionate feeling in Rome against the return of the papacy to the banks of the Rhone. A clash was almost inevitable. While the pope lay a-dying, the cardinals at several sittings attempted to agree upon his successor, but failed.

On April 7, 1378, ten days after Gregory’s death, the conclave met in the Vatican, and the next day elected the Neapolitan, Bartholomew Prignano, archbishop of Bari. Of the sixteen cardinals present, four were Italians, eleven Frenchmen, and one Spaniard, Peter de Luna, who later became famous as Benedict XIII. The French party was weakened by the absence of the six cardinals, left behind at Avignon, and still another was absent. Of the Italians, two were Romans, Tebaldeschi, an old man, and Giacomo Orsini, the youngest member of the college. The election of an Italian not a member of the curia was due to factions which divided the French and to the compulsive attitude of the Roman populace, which insisted upon an Italian for pope.

The French cardinals were unable to agree upon a candidate from their own number. One of the two parties into which they were split, the Limousin party, to which Gregory XI. and his predecessors had belonged, numbered six cardinals. The Italian mob outside the Vatican was as much a factor in the situation as the divisions in the conclave itself. A scene of wild and unrestrained turbulence prevailed in the square of St. Peter’s. The crowd pressed its way into the very spaces of the Vatican, and with difficulty a clearing was made for the entrance of all the cardinals. To prevent the exit of the cardinals, the Banderisi, or captains of the thirteen districts into which Rome was divided, had taken possession of the city and closed the gates. The mob, determined to keep the papacy on the Tiber, filled the air with angry shouts and threats. "We will have a Roman for pope or at least an ltalian."—Romano, romano, lo volemo, o almanco Italiano was the cry. On the first night soldiers clashed their spears in the room underneath the chamber where the conclave was met, and even thrust them through the ceiling. A fire of combustibles was lighted under the window. The next morning, as their excellencies were saying the mass of the Holy Spirit and engaged in other devotions, the noises became louder and more menacing. One cardinal, d’Aigrefeuille, whispered to Orsini, "better elect the devil than die."

It was under such circumstances that the archbishop of Bari was chosen. After the choice had been made, and while they were waiting to get the archbishop’s consent, six of the cardinals dined together and seemed to be in good spirits. But the mob’s impatience to know what had been done would brook no delay, and Orsini, appearing at the window, cried out "go to St. Peter." This was mistaken for an announcement that old Tebaldeschi, cardinal of St. Peter’s, had been chosen, and a rush was made for the cardinal’s palace to loot it, as the custom was when a cardinal was elected pope. The crowd surged through the Vatican and into the room where the cardinals had been meeting and, as Valois puts it, "the pillage of the conclave had begun." To pacify the mob, two of the cardinals, half beside themselves with fright, pointed to Tebaldeschi, set him up on a chair, placed a white mitre on his head, and threw a red cloak over his shoulders. The old man tried to indicate that he was not the right person. But the throngs continued to bend down before him in obeisance for several hours, till it became known that the successful candidate was Prignano.

In the meantime the rest of the cardinals forsook the building and sought refuge, some within the walls of St. Angelo, and four by flight beyond the walls of the city. The real pope was waiting for recognition while the members of the electing college were fled. But by the next day the cardinals had sufficiently regained their self-possession to assemble again,—all except the four who had put the city walls behind them,—and Cardinal Peter de Vergne, using the customary formula, proclaimed to the crowd through the window: "I announce to you a great joy. You have a pope, and he calls himself Urban VI." The new pontiff was crowned on April 18, in front of St. Peter’s, by Cardinal Orsini.

The archbishop had enjoyed the confidence of Gregory XI. He enjoyed a reputation for austere morals and strict conformity to the rules of fasting and other observances enjoined by the Church. He wore a hair shirt, and was accustomed to retire with the Bible in his hand. At the moment of his election no doubt was expressed as to its validity. Nieheim, who was in the city at the time, declared that Urban was canonical pope-elect. "This is the truth," he wrote, "and no one can honestly deny it."

Erler’s ed., p. 16.

Seldom has so fine an opportunity been offered to do a worthy thing and to win a great name as was offered to Urban VI. It was the opportunity to put an end to the disturbance in the Church by maintaining the residence of the papacy in its ancient seat, and restoring to it the dignity which it had lost by its long exile. Urban, however, was not equal to the occasion, and made an utter failure. He violated all the laws of common prudence and tact. His head seemed to be completely turned. He estranged and insulted his cardinals. He might have made provision for a body of warm supporters by the prompt appointment of new members to the college, but even this measure he failed to take till it was too late. The French king, it is true, was bent upon having the papacy return to French soil, and controlled the French cardinals. But a pope of ordinary shrewdness was in position to foil the king. This quality Urban VI. lacked, and the sacred college, stung by his insults, came to regard him as an intruder in St. Peter’s chair.

In his concern for right living, Urban early took occasion in a public allocution to reprimand the cardinals for their worldliness and for living away from their sees. He forbade their holding more than a single appointment and accepting gifts from princes. To their demand that Avignon continue to be the seat of the papacy, Urban brusquely told them that Rome and the papacy were joined together, and he would not separate them. As the papacy belonged not to France but to the whole world, he would distribute the promotions to the sacred college among the nations.

Incensed at the attack made upon their habits and perquisites, and upon their national sympathies, the French cardinals, giving the heat of the city as the pretext, removed one by one to Anagni, while Urban took up his summer residence at Tivoli. His Italian colleagues followed him, but they also went over to the French. No pope had ever been left more alone. Forming a compact body, the French members of the curia demanded the pope’s resignation. The Italians, who at first proposed the calling of a council, acquiesced. The French seceders then issued a declaration, dated Aug. 2, in which Urban was denounced as an apostate, and his election declared void in view of the duress under which it was accomplished.

The document is given by Hefele, VI. 730-734.

Robert of Geneva, at the time of his election 36 years old, came to the papal honor with his hands red from the bloody massacre of Cesena. He had the reputation of being a politician and a fast liver. He was consecrated Oct. 31 under the name of Clement VII. It was a foregone conclusion that he would remove the papal seat back to Avignon. He first attempted to overthrow Urban on his own soil, but the attempt failed. Rome resisted, and the castle of St. Angelo, which was in the hands of his supporters, he lost, but not until its venerable walls were demolished, so that at a later time the very goats clambered over the stones. He secured the support of Joanna, and Louis of Anjou whom she had chosen as the heir of her kingdom, but the war which broke out between Urban and Naples fell out to Urban’s advantage. The duke of Anjou was deposed, and Charles of Durazzo, of the royal house of Hungary, Joanna’s natural heir, appointed as his successor. Joanna herself fell into Charles’ hands and was executed, 1882, on the charge of having murdered her first husband. The duke of Brunswick was her fourth marital attempt. Clement VII. bestowed upon the duke of Anjou parts of the State of the Church and the high-sounding but empty title of duke of Adria. A portion of Urban’s reward for crowning Charles, 1881, was the lordship over Capria, Amalfi, Fondi, and other localities, which he bestowed upon his unprincipled and worthless nephew, Francis Prignano. In the war over Naples, the pope had made free use of the treasure of the Roman churches.

Clement’s cause in Italy was lost, and there was nothing for him to do but to fall back upon his supporter, Charles V. He returned to France by way of the sea and Marseilles.

Thus the schism was completed, and Western Europe had the spectacle of two popes elected by the same college of cardinals without a dissenting voice, and each making full claims to the prerogative of the supreme pontiff of the Christian world. Each pope fulminated the severest judgments of heaven against the other. The nations of Europe and its universities were divided in their allegiance or, as it was called, their "obedience." The University of Paris, at first neutral, declared in favor of Robert of Geneva,

The full documentary accounts are given in the Chartularium, III. 561-575. Valois gives a very detailed treatment of the allegiance rendered to the two popes, especially in vol. II. Even in Sweden and Ireland Clement had some support, but England, in part owing to her wars with France, gave undivided submission to Urban.

The papal schism which Pastor has called "the greatest misfortune that could be thought of for the Church"

Pastor, p. 143 sqq., quotes a German poem which strikingly sets forth the evils of the schism, and Pastor himself says that nothing did so much as the schism to prepare the way for the defection from the papacy in the sixteenth century.

The following is a list of the popes of the Roman and Avignon lines, and the Pisan line whose legitimacy has now no advocates in the Roman communion.

Roman Line

Urban VI., 1378–1389.

Boniface IX., 1389–1404.

Innocent VII., 1404–1406.

Gregory XII., 1406–1415.

Deposed at Pisa, 1409. d. 1424 Resigned

at Constance, 1415, d. 1417.

Avignon Line

Clement VII., 1378–1394.

Benedict XIII., 1394–1409.

Deposed at Pisa, 1409, and at

Constance, 1417,.

Pisan Line

Alexander V., 1409–1410.

John XXIII., 1410–1415.

Martin V., 1417–1431.

Acknowledged by the whole Latin Church.

The question of the legitimacy of Urban VI.’s pontificate is still a matter of warm dispute. As neither pope nor council has given a decision on the question, Catholic scholars feel no constraint in discussing it. French writers have been inclined to leave the matter open. This was the case with Bossuet, Mansi, Martene, as it is with modern French writers. Valois hesitatingly, Salembier positively, decides for Urban. Historians, not moved by French sympathies, pronounce strongly in favor of the Roman line, as do Hefele, Funk, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Denifle, and Pastor. The formal recognition of Urban by all the cardinals and their official announcement of his election to the princes would seem to put the validity of his election beyond doubt. On the other hand, the declaratio sent forth by the cardinals nearly four months after Urban’s election affirms that the cardinals were in fear of their lives when they voted; and according to the theory of the canon law, constraint invalidates an election as constraint invalidated Pascal II.’s concession to Henry V. It was the intention of the cardinals, as they affirm, to elect one of their number, till the tumult became so violent and threatening that to protect themselves they precipitately elected Prignano. They state that the people had even filled the air with the cry, "Let them be killed," moriantur. A panic prevailed. When the tumult abated, the cardinals sat down to dine, and after dinner were about to proceed to a re-election, as they say, when the tumult again became threatening, and the doors of the room where they were sitting were broken open, so that they were forced to flee for their lives.

To this testimony were added the depositions of individual cardinals later. Had Prignano proved complaisant to the wishes of the French party, there is no reason to suspect that the validity of his election would ever have been disputed. Up to the time when the vote was cast for Urban, the cardinals seem not to have been under duress from fear, but to have acted freely. After the vote had been cast, they felt their lives were in danger.

This is the judgment of Pastor, I. 119.

On the other hand, the same body of cardinals which elected Urban deposed him, and, in their capacity as princes of the Church, unanimously chose Robert as his successor. The question of the authority of the sacred college to exercise this prerogative is still a matter of doubt. It received the abdication of Coelestine V. and elected a successor to him while he was still living. In that case, however, the papal throne became vacant by the supreme act of the pope himself.

§ 14. Further Progress of the Schism. 1378–1409.

The territory of Naples remained the chief theatre of the conflict between the papal rivals, Louis of Anjou, who had the support of Clement VII., continuing to assert his claim to the throne. In 1383 Urban secretly left Rome for Naples, but was there held in virtual confinement till he had granted Charles of Durazzo’s demands. He then retired to Nocera, which belonged to his nephew. The measures taken by the cardinals at Anagni had taught him no lesson. His insane severity and self-will continued, and brought him into the danger of losing the papal crown. Six of his cardinals entered into a conspiracy to dethrone him, or at least to make him subservient to the curia. The plot was discovered, and Urban launched the interdict against Naples, whose king was supposed to have been a party to it. The offending cardinals were imprisoned in an old cistern, and afterwards subjected to the torture.

Nieheim, p. 91. See also pp. 103 sq., 110, for the further treatment of the cardinals, which was worthy of Pharaoh.

In the meantime, two of the prelates upon whom Urban had conferred the red hat, both Italians, went over to Clement VII. and were graciously received.

Breaking away from Genoa, Urban went by way of Lucca to Perugia, and then with another army started off for Naples. Charles of Durazzo, who had been called to the throne of Hungary and murdered in 1386, was succeeded by his young son Ladislaus (1386~1414), but his claim was contested by the heir of Louis of Anjou (d. 1384). The pontiff got no farther than Ferentino, and turning back was carried in a carriage to Rome, where he again entered the Vatican, a few months before his death, Oct. 15, 1389.

Bartholomew Prignano had disappointed every expectation. He was his own worst enemy. He was wholly lacking in common prudence and the spirit of conciliation. It is to his credit that, as Nieheim urges, he never made ecclesiastical preferment the object of sale. Whatever were his virtues before he received the tiara, he had as pope shown himself in every instance utterly unfit for the responsibilities of a ruler.

Clement VII., who arrived in Avignon in June, 1379, stooped before the kings of France, Charles V. (d. 1380) and Charles VI. He was diplomatic and versatile where his rival was impolitic and intractable. He knew how to entertain at his table with elegance.

Nieheim, p. 124.

Clement’s embassy to Bohemia for a while had hopes of securing a favorable declaration from the Bohemian king, Wenzil, but was disappointed.

Valois, II. 282, 299 sqq.

Boniface IX., who succeeded Urban VI., was, like him, a Neapolitan, and only thirty-five at the time of his election. He was a man of fine presence, and understood the art of ruling, but lacked the culture of the schools, and could not even write, and was poor at saying the services.

Nesciens scribere etiam male cantabat, Nieheim, p. 130.

In 1390, the Jubilee Year which Urban VI. had appointed attracted streams of pilgrims to Rome from Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and England and other lands, as did also the Jubilee of 1400, commemorating the close of one and the beginning of another century. If Rome profited by these celebrations, Boniface also made in other ways the most of his opportunity, and his agents throughout Christendom returned with the large sums which they had realized from the sale of dispensations and indulgences. Boniface left behind him a reputation for avarice and freedom in the sale of ecclesiastical concessions.

Erat insatiabilis vorago et in avaricia nullus similis ei, Nieheim, p. 119. Nieheim, to be sure, was disappointed in not receiving office under Boniface, but other contemporaries say the same thing. Adam of Usk, p. 269, states that, "though gorged with simony, Boniface to his dying day was never filled."

The preponderant influence of Ladislaus secured the election of still another Neapolitan, Cardinal Cosimo dei Migliorati, who took the name of Innocent VII. He also was only thirty-five years old at the time of his elevation to the papal chair, a doctor of both laws and expert in the management of affairs. The members of the conclave, before proceeding to an election, signed a document whereby each bound himself, if elected pope, to do all in his power to put an end to the schism. The English chronicler, Adam of Usk, who was present at the coronation, concludes the graphic description he gives of the ceremonies

Chronicle, p. 262 sqq. This is one of the most full and interesting accounts extant of the coronation of a mediaeval pope. Usk describes the conclave as well as the coronation, and he mentions expressly how, on his way from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, Innocent purposely turned aside from St. Clement’s, near which stood the bust of Pope Joan and her son.

Following the example of his two predecessors, Innocent excommunicated the Avignon anti-pope and his cardinals, putting them into the same list with heretics, pirates, and brigands. In revenge for his nephew’s cold-blooded slaughter of eleven of the chief men of the city, whose bodies he threw out of a window, he was driven from Rome, and after great hardships he reached Viterbo. But the Romans soon found Innocent’s rule preferable to the rule of Ladislaus, king of Naples and papal protector, and he was recalled, the nephew whose hands were reeking with blood making public entry into the Vatican with his uncle.

The last pope of the Roman line was Gregory XII. Angelo Correr, cardinal of St. Marks, Venice, elected 1406, was surpassed in tenacity as well as ability by the last of the Avignon popes, elected 1394, and better known as Peter de Luna of Aragon, one of the cardinals who joined in the revolt against Urban VI. and in the election of Clement VII. at Fondi.

Under these two pontiffs the controversy over the schism grew more and more acute and the scandal more and more intolerable. The nations of Western Europe were weary of the open and flagitious traffic in benefices and other ecclesiastical privileges, the fulminations of one pope against the other, and the division of sees and parishes between rival claimants. The University of Paris took the leading part in agitating remedial measures, and in the end the matter was taken wholly out of the hands of the two popes. The cardinals stepped into the foreground and, in the face of all canonical precedent, took the course which ultimately resulted in the reunion of the Church under one head.

Before Gregory’s election, the Roman cardinals, numbering fourteen, again entered into a compact stipulating that the successful candidate should by all means put an end to the schism, even, if necessary, by the abdication of his office. Gregory was fourscore at the time, and the chief consideration which weighed in his choice was that in men arrived at his age ambition usually runs low, and that Gregory would be more ready to deny himself for the good of the Church than a younger man.

Peter de Luna, one of the most vigorous personalities who have ever claimed the papal dignity, had the spirit and much of the ability of Hildebrand and his namesake, Gregory IX. But it was his bad star to be elected in the Avignon and not in the Roman succession. Had he been in the Roman line, he would probably have made his mark among the great ruling pontiffs. His nationality also was against him. The French had little heart in supporting a Spaniard and, at Clement’s death, the relations between the French king and the Avignon pope at once lost their cordiality. Peter was energetic of mind and in action, a shrewd observer, magnified his office, and never yielded an inch in the matter of papal prerogative. Through the administrations of three Roman pontiffs, he held on firmly to his office, outlived the two Reformatory councils of Pisa and Constance, and yielded not up this mortal flesh till the close of the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and was still asserting his claims and maintaining the dignity of pope at the time of his death. Before his election, he likewise entered into a solemn compact with his cardinals, promising to bend every effort to heal the unholy schism, even if the price were his own abdication.

The professions of both popes were in the right direction. They were all that could be desired, and all that remained was for either of them or for both of them to resign and make free room for a new candidate. The problem would thus have been easily settled, and succeeding generations might have canonized both pontiffs for their voluntary self-abnegation. But it took ten years to bring Gregory to this state of mind, and then almost the last vestige of power had been taken from him. Peter de Luna never yielded.

Undoubtedly, at the time of the election of Gregory XII., the papacy was passing through one of the grave crises in its history. There were not wanting men who said, like Langenstein, vice-chancellor of the University of Paris, that perhaps it was God’s purpose that there should be two popes indefinitely, even as David’s kingdom was divided under two sovereigns.

Du Pin, II. 821.

At his first consistory Gregory made a good beginning, when he asserted that, for the sake of the good cause of securing a united Christendom, he was willing to travel by land or by sea, by land, if necessary, with a pilgrim’s staff, by sea in a fishing smack, in order to come to an agreement with Benedict. He wrote to his rival on the Rhone, declaring that, like the woman who was ready to renounce her child rather than see it cut asunder, so each of them should be willing to cede his authority rather than be responsible for the continuance of the schism. He laid his hand on the New Testament and quoted the words that "he who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." He promised to abdicate, if Benedict would do the same, that the cardinals of both lines might unite together in a new election; and he further promised not to add to the number of his cardinals, except to keep the number equal to the number of the Avignon college.

Benedict’s reply was shrewd, if not equally demonstrative. He, too, lamented the schism, which he pronounced detestable, wretched, and dreadful,

Haec execranda et detestanda, diraque divisio, Nieheim, pp. 209-213, gives both letters entire.

Nothing could have been finer, but it was quickly felt that while both popes expressed themselves as ready to abdicate, positive as the professions of both were, each wanted to have the advantage when the time came for the election of the new pontiff to rule over the reunited Church.

As early as 1381, the University of Paris appealed to the king of France to insist upon the calling of a general council as the way to terminate the schism. But the duke of Anjou had the spokesman of the university, Jean Ronce, imprisoned, and the university was commanded to keep silence on the subject.

Prior to this appeal, two individuals had suggested the same idea, Konrad of Gelnhausen, and Henry of Langenstein, otherwise known as Henry of Hassia. Konrad, who wrote in 1380,

Gelnhausen’s tract, De congregando concilio in tempore schismatis, in Martène-Durand, Thesaurus nov. anecd., II. 1200-1226.

In more emphatic terms, Henry of Langenstein, in 1381, justified the calling of a council without the pope’s intervention.

Consilium pacis de unione et reformatione ecclesiae in concilio universali quaerenda, Van der Hardt, II. 3-60, and Du Pin, Opp. Gerson, II. 810

The views of Langenstein, vice-chancellor of the University of Paris, represented the views of the faculties of that institution. They were afterwards advocated by John Gerson, one of the most influential men of his century, and one of the most honored of all the centuries. Among those who took the opposite view was the English Dominican and confessor of Benedict XIII., John Hayton. The University of Paris he called "a daughter of Satan, mother of error, sower of sedition, and the pope’s defamer, "and declared the pope was to be forced by no human tribunal, but to follow God and his own conscience.

In 1394, the University of Paris proposed three methods of healing the schism

Chartul III. p. 608 sqq.

The last method, settlement by a general council, which the university regarded as offering the most difficulty, it justified on the ground that the pope is subject to the Church as Christ was subject to his mother and Joseph. The authority of such a council lay in its constitution according to Christ’s words, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Its membership should consist of doctors of theology and the laws taken from the older universities, and deputies of the orders, as well as bishops, many of whom were uneducated,—illiterati.

Chartul., I. 620.

Clement VII. showed his displeasure with the university by forbidding its further intermeddling, and by condemning his cardinals who, without his permission, had met and recommended him to adopt one of the three ways. At Clement’s death the king of France called upon the Avignon college to postpone the election of a successor, but, surmising the contents of the letter, they prudently left it unopened until they had chosen Benedict XIII. Benedict at once manifested the warmest zeal in the healing of the schism, and elaborated his plan for meeting with Boniface IX., and coming to some agreement with him. These friendly propositions were offset by a summons from the king’s delegates, calling upon the two pontiffs to abdicate, and all but two of the Avignon cardinals favored the measure. But Benedict declared that such a course would seem to imply constraint, and issued a bull against it.

The two parties continued to express deep concern for the healing of the schism, but neither would yield. Benedict gained the support of the University of Toulouse, and strengthened himself by the promotion of Peter d’Ailly, chancellor of the University of Paris, to the episcopate. The famous inquisitor, Nicolas Eymericus, also one of his cardinals, was a firm advocate of Benedict’s divine claims. The difficulties were increased by the wavering course of Charles VI., 1380–1412, a man of feeble mind, and twice afflicted with insanity, whose brothers and uncles divided the rule of the kingdom amongst themselves. French councils attempted to decide upon a course for the nation to pursue, and a third council, meeting in Paris, 1398, and consisting of 11 archbishops and 60 bishops, all theretofore supporters of the Avignon pope, decided upon the so-called subtraction of obedience from Benedict. In spite of these discouragements, Benedict continued loyal to himself. He was forsaken by his cardinals and besieged by French troops in his palace and wounded. The spectacle of his isolation touched the heart and conscience of the French people, and the decree ordering the subtraction of obedience was annulled by the national parliament of 1403, which professed allegiance anew, and received from him full absolution.

When Gregory XII. was elected in 1406, the controversy over the schism was at white heat. England, Castile, and the German king, Wenzil, had agreed to unite with France in bringing it to an end. Pushed by the universal clamor, by the agitation of the University of Paris, and especially by the feeling which prevailed in France, Gregory and Benedict saw that the situation was in danger of being controlled by other hands than their own, and agreed to meet at Savona on the Gulf of Genoa to discuss their differences. In October, 1407, Benedict, attended by a military guard, went as far as Porto Venere and Savona. Gregory got as far as Lucca, when he declined to go farther, on the plea that Savona was in territory controlled by the French and on other pretexts. Nieheim represents the Roman pontiff as dissimulating during the whole course of the proceedings and as completely under the influence of his nephews and other favorites, who imposed upon the weakness of the old man, and by his doting generosity were enabled to live in luxury. At Lucca they spent their time in dancing and merry-making. This writer goes on to say that Gregory put every obstacle in the way of union.

Nieheim, pp. 237, 242, 274, etc., manifeste impedire modis omnibus conabantur.

Benedict’s support was much weakened by the death of the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, who had been his constant supporter. France threatened neutrality, and Benedict, fearing seizure by the French commander at Genoa, beat a retreat to Perpignan, a fortress at the foot of the Pyrenees, six miles from the Mediterranean. In May of the same year France again decreed "subtraction," and a national French assembly in 1408 approved the calling of a council. The last stages of the contest were approaching.

Seven of Gregory’s cardinals broke away from him, and, leaving him at Lucca, went to Pisa, where they issued a manifesto appealing from a poorly informed pope to a better informed one, from Christ’s vicar to Christ himself, and to the decision of a general council. Two more followed. Gregory further injured his cause by breaking his solemn engagement and appointing four cardinals, May, 1408, two of them his nephews, and a few months later he added ten more. Cardinals of the Avignon obedience joined the Roman cardinals at Pisa and brought the number up to thirteen. Retiring to Livorno on the beautiful Italian lake of that name, and acting as if the popes were deposed, they as rulers of the Church appointed a general council to meet at Pisa, March 25, 1409.

As an offset, Gregory summoned a council of his own to meet in the territory either of Ravenna or Aquileja. Many of his closest followers had forsaken him, and even his native city of Venice withdrew from him its support. In the meantime Ladislaus had entered Rome and been hailed as king. It is, however, probable that this was with the consent of Gregory himself, who hoped thereby to gain sympathy for his cause. Benedict also exercised his sovereign power as pontiff and summoned a council to meet at Perpignan, Nov. 1, 1408.

The word "council," now that the bold initiative was taken, was hailed as pregnant with the promise of sure relief from the disgrace and confusion into which Western Christendom had been thrown and of a reunion of the Church.

§ 15. The Council of Pisa.

The three councils of Pisa, 1409, Constance, 1414, and Basel, 1431, of which the schism was the occasion, are known in history as the Reformatory councils. Of the tasks they set out to accomplish, the healing of the schism and the institution of disciplinary reforms in the Church, the first they accomplished, but with the second they made little progress. They represent the final authority of general councils in the affairs of the Church—a view, called the conciliary theory—in distinction from the supreme authority of the papacy.

The Pisan synod marks an epoch in the history of Western Christendom not so much on account of what it actually accomplished as because it was the first revolt in council against the theory of papal absolutism which had been accepted for centuries. It followed the ideas of Gerson and Langenstein, namely, that the Church is the Church even without the presence of a pope, and that an oecumenical council is legitimate which meets not only in the absence of his assent but in the face of his protest. Representing intellectually the weight of the Latin world and the larger part of its constituency, the assembly was a momentous event leading in the opposite direction from the path laid out by Hildebrand, Innocent III., and their successors. It was a mighty blow at the old system of Church government.

While Gregory XII. was tarrying at Rimini, as a refugee, under the protection of Charles Malatesta, and Benedict XIII. was confined to the seclusion of Perpignan, the synod was opened on the appointed day in the cathedral of Pisa. There was an imposing attendance of 14 cardinals,—the number being afterwards increased to 24,—4 patriarchs, 10 archbishops, 79 bishops and representatives of 116 other bishops, 128 abbots and priors and the representatives of 200 other abbots. To these prelates were added the generals of the Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Augustinian orders, the grand-master of the Knights of St. John, who was accompanied by 6 commanders, the general of the Teutonic order, 300 doctors of theology and the canon law, 109 representatives of cathedral and collegiate chapters, and the deputies of many princes, including the king of the Romans, Wenzil, and the kings of England, France, Poland, and Cyprus. A new and significant feature was the representation of the universities of learning, including Paris,

Schwab, p. 223 sq. The address which Gerson is said to have delivered and which Mansi includes in the acts of the council was a rhetorical composition and never delivered at Pisa. Schwab, p. 243.

The second day, the archbishop of Milan, Philargi, himself soon to be elected pope, preached from Judg. 20:7: "Behold, ye are all children of Israel. Give here your advice and counsel," and stated the reasons which had led to the summoning of the council. Guy de Maillesec, the only cardinal surviving from the days prior to the schism, presided over the first sessions. His place was then filled by the patriarch of Alexandria, till the new pope was chosen.

One of the first deliverances was a solemn profession of the Holy Trinity and the Catholic faith, and that every heretic and schismatic will share with the devil and his angels the burnings of eternal fire unless before the end of this life he make his peace with the Catholic Church.

Mansi, XXVII. 358.

The business which took precedence of all other was the healing of the schism, the causa unionis, as, it was called, and disposition was first made of the rival popes. A formal trial was instituted, which was opened by two cardinals and two archbishops proceeding to the door of the cathedral and solemnly calling Gregory and Benedict by name and summoning them to appear and answer for themselves. The formality was gone through three times, on three successive days, and the offenders were given till April 15 to appear.

By a series of declarations the synod then justified its existence, and at the eighth session declared itself to be "a general council representing the whole universal Catholic Church and lawfully and reasonably called together."

Mansi, XXVII. 366.

D’Ailly, in making definite announcement of his views at a synod, meeting at Aix, Jan. 1, 1409, had said that the Church’s unity depends upon the unity of her head, Christ. Christ’s mystical body gets its authority from its divine head to meet in a general council through representatives, for it is written, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." The words are not "in Peter’s name," or "in Paul’s name," but "in my name." And when the faithful assemble to secure the welfare of the Church, there Christ is in their midst.

Gerson wrote his most famous tract bearing on the schism and the Church’s right to remove a pope—De auferibilitate papae ab ecclesia — while the council of Pisa was in session.

See Schwab, p. 250 sqq.

Immediately after Easter, Charles Malatesta appeared in the council to advocate Gregory’s cause. A commission, appointed by the cardinals, presented forty reasons to show that an agreement between the synod and the Roman pontiff was out of the question. Gregory must either appear at Pisa in person and abdicate, or present his resignation to a commission which the synod would appoint and send to Rimini.

Gregory’s case was also represented by the rival king of the Romans, Ruprecht,

The electors deposed Wenzil in 1400 for incompetency, and elected Ruprecht of the Palatinate.

In a document of thirty-eight articles, read April 24, the council presented detailed specifications against the two popes, charging them both with having made and broken solemn promises to resign.

The argument was conducted by Peter de Anchorano, professor of both laws in Bologna, and by others. Peter argued that, by fostering the schism, Gregory and his rival had forfeited jurisdiction, and the duty of calling a representative council of Christendom devolved on the college of cardinals. In certain cases the cardinals are left no option whether they shall act or not, as when a pope is insane or falls into heresy or refuses to summon a council at a time when orthodox doctrine is at stake. The temporal power has the right to expel a pope who acts illegally.

In an address on Hosea 1:11, "and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and shall appoint themselves one head," Peter Plaoul, of the University of Paris, clearly placed the council above the pope, an opinion which had the support of his own university as well as the support of the universities of Toulouse, Angers, and Orleans. The learned canonist, Zabarella, afterwards appointed cardinal, took the same ground.

The trial was carried on with all decorum and, at the end of two months, on June 5, sentence was pronounced, declaring both popes "notorious schismatics, promoters of schism, and notorious heretics, errant from the faith, and guilty of the notorious and enormous crimes of perjury and violated oaths."

Eorum utrumque fuisse et esse notorios schismaticos et antiqui schimatis nutritores ... necnon notorios haereticos et a fide devios, notoriisque criminibus enormibus perjuriis et violantionis voti irretitos, etc., Mansi, XXVI. 1147, 1225 sq. Hefele, VI. 1025 sq., also gives the judgment in full.

Deputies arriving from Perpignan a week later, June 14, were hooted by the council when the archbishop of Tarragona, one of their number, declared them to be "the representatives of the venerable pope, Benedict XIII." Benedict had a short time before shown his defiance of the Pisan fathers by adding twelve members to his cabinet. When the deputies announced their intention of waiting upon Gregory, and asked for a letter of safe conduct, Balthazar Cossa, afterwards John XXIII., the master of Bologna, is said to have declared, "Whether they come with a letter or without it, he would burn them all if he could lay his hands upon them."

The rival popes being disposed of, it remained for the council to proceed to a new election, and it was agreed to leave the matter to the cardinals, who met in the archiepiscopal palace of Pisa, June 26, and chose the archbishop of Milan, Philargi, who took the name of Alexander V. He was about seventy, a member of the Franciscan order, and had received the red hat from Innocent VII. I. He was a Cretan by birth, and the first Greek to wear the tiara since John VII., in 706. He had never known his father or mother and, rescued from poverty by the Minorites, he was taken to Italy to be educated, and later sent to Oxford. After his election as pope, he is reported to have said, "as a bishop I was rich, as a cardinal poor, and as pope I am a beggar again."

Nieheim, p. 320 sqq., gives an account of Alexander’s early life.

In the meantime Gregory’s side council at Cividale, near Aquileja, was running its course. There was scarcely an attendant at the first session. Later, Ruprecht and king Ladislaus were represented by deputies. The assumption of the body was out of all proportion to its size. It pronounced the pontiffs of the Roman line the legitimate rulers of Christendom, and appointed nuncios to all the kingdoms. However, not unmindful of his former professions, Gregory anew expressed his readiness to resign if his rivals, Peter of Luna and Peter of Candia (Crete), would do the same. Venice had declared for Alexander, and Gregory, obliged to flee in the disguise of a merchant, found refuge in the ships of Ladislaus.

Benedict’s council met in Perpignan six months before, November, 1408. One hundred and twenty prelates were in attendance, most of them from Spain. The council adjourned March 26, 1409, after appointing a delegation of seven to proceed to Pisa and negotiate for the healing of the schism.

After Alexander’s election, the members lost interest in the synod and began to withdraw from Pisa, and it was found impossible to keep the promise made by the cardinals that there should be no adjournment till measures had been taken to reform the Church "in head and members." Commissions were appointed to consider reforms, and Alexander prorogued the body, Aug. 7, 1409, after appointing another council for April 12, 1412.

Creighton is unduly severe upon Alexander and the council for adjourning, without carrying out the promise of reform. Hefele, VI. 1042, treats the matter with fairness, and shows the difficulty involved in a disciplinary reform where the evils were of such long standing.

At the opening of the Pisan synod there were two popes; at its close, three. Scotland and Spain still held to Benedict, and Naples and parts of Central Europe continued to acknowledge the obedience of Gregory. The greater part of Christendom, however, was bound to the support of Alexander. This pontiff lacked the strength needed for the emergency, and he aroused the opposition of the University of Paris by extending the rights of the Mendicant orders to hear confessions.

The number of ecclesiastical gifts made by Alexander in his brief pontificate was large, and Nieheim pithily says that when the waters are confused, then is the time to fish.

As a rule, modern Catholic historians are inclined to belittle the Pisan synod, and there is an almost general agreement among them that it lacked oecumenical character. Without pronouncing a final decision on the question, Bellarmin regarded Alexander V. as legitimate pope. Gerson and other great contemporaries treated it as oecumenical, as did also Bossuet and other Gallican historians two centuries later. Modern Catholic historians treat the claims of Gregory XII. as not affected by a council which was itself illegitimate and a high-handed revolt against canon law.

Pastor, I. 192, speaks of the unholy Pisan synod—segenslose Pisaner Synode. All ultramontane historians disparage it, and Hergenröther-Kirsch uses a tone of irony in describing its call and proceedings. They do not exonerate Gregory from having broken his solemn promise, but they treat the council as wholly illegitimate, either because it was not called by a pope or because it had not the universal support of the Catholic nations. Hefele, I. 67 sqq., denies to it the character of an oecumenical synod, but places it in a category by itself. Pastor opens his treatment with a discourse on the primacy of the papacy, dating from Peter, and the sole right of the pope to call a council. The cardinals who called it usurped an authority which did not belong to them.

But whether the name oecumenical be given or be withheld matters little, in view of the general judgment which the summons and sitting of the council call forth. It was a desperate measure adopted to suit an emergency, but it was also the product of a new freedom of ecclesiastical thought, and so far a good omen of a better age. The Pisan synod demonstrated that the Church remained virtually a unit in spite of the double pontifical administration. It branded by their right names the specious manoevres of Gregory and Peter de Luna. It brought together the foremost thinkers and literary interests of Europe and furnished a platform of free discussion. Not its least service was in preparing the way for the imposing council which convened in Constance five years later.

§ 16. The Council of Constance. 1414–1418.

At Alexander’s death, seventeen cardinals met in Bologna and elected Balthazar Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. He was of noble Neapolitan lineage, began his career as a soldier and perhaps as a corsair,

Nieheim, in Life of John, in Van der Hardt, II. 339.

Leaning for support upon Louis of Anjou, John gained entrance to Rome. In the battle of Rocca Secca, May 14, 1411, Louis defeated the troops of Ladislaus. The captured battle-flags were sent to Rome, hung up in St. Peter’s, then torn down in the sight of the people, and dragged in the dust in the triumphant procession through the streets of the city, in which John participated. Ladislaus speedily recovered from his defeat, and John, with his usual faithlessness, made terms with Ladislaus, recognizing him as king, while Ladislaus, on his part, renounced his allegiance to Gregory XII. That pontiff was ordered to quit Neapolitan territory, and embarking in Venetian vessels at Gaeta, fled to Dalmatia, and finally took refuge with Charles Malatesta of Rimini, his last political ally.

The Council of Constance, the second of the Reformatory councils, was called together by the joint act of Pope John XXIII. and Sigismund, king of the Romans. It was not till he was reminded by the University of Paris that John paid heed to the action of the Council of Pisa and called a council to meet at Rome, April, 1412. Its sessions were scantily attended, and scarcely a trace of it is left.

Finke: Forschungen, p. 2; Acta conc., p. 108 sqq.

Ladislaus, weary of his treaty with John and ambitious to create a unified Latin kingdom, took Rome, 1413, giving the city over to sack. The king rode into the Lateran and looked down from his horse on the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, which he ordered the canons to display. The very churches were robbed, and soldiers and their courtesans drank wine out of the sacred chalices. Ladislaus left Rome, struck with a vicious disease, rumored to be due to poison administered by an apothecary’s daughter of Perugia, and died at Naples, August, 1414. He had been one of the most prominent figures in Europe for a quarter of a century and the chief supporter of the Roman line of pontiffs.

Driven from Rome, John was thrown into the hands of Sigismund, who was then in Lombardy. This prince, the grandson of the blind king, John, who was killed at Crécy, had come to the throne of Hungary through marriage with its heiress. At Ruprecht’s death he was elected king of the Romans, 1411. Circumstances and his own energy made him the most prominent sovereign of his age and the chief political figure in the Council of Constance. He lacked high aims and moral purpose, but had some taste for books, and spoke several languages besides his own native German. Many sovereigns have placed themselves above national statutes, but Sigismund went farther and, according to the story, placed himself above the rules of grammar. In his first address at the Council of Constance, so it is said, he treated the Latin word schisma, schism, as if it were feminine.

Date operam, the king said, ut ista, nefanda schisma eradicetur. See Wylie, p. 18

Pressed by the growing troubles in Bohemia over John Huss, Sigismund easily became an active participant in the measures looking towards a new council. Men distrusted John XXIII. The only hope of healing the schism seemed to rest with the future emperor. In many documents, and by John himself, he was addressed as "advocate and defender of the Church"

See Finke, Forschungen, p. 28. Sigismund gives himself the same title. See his letter to Gregory, Mansi, XXVIII. 3.

Two of John’s cardinals met Sigismund at Como, Oct. 13, 1413, and discussed the time and place of the new synod. John preferred an Italian city, Sigismund the small Swabian town of Kempten; Strassburg, Basel, and other places were mentioned, but Constance, on German territory, was at last fixed upon. On Oct. 30 Sigismund announced the approaching council to all the prelates, princes, and doctors of Christendom, and on Dec. 9 John attached his seal to the call. Sigismund and John met at Lodi the last of November, 1413, and again at Cremona early in January, 1414, the pope being accompanied by thirteen cardinals. Thus the two great luminaries of this mundane sphere were again side by side.

Sigismund, in his letter to Charles VI of France, announcing the council, had used the mediaeval figure of the two lights, duo luminaria super terram, majus videlicet minus ut in ipsis universalis ecclesiae consistere firmamentum in quibus pontificalis auctoritas et regalis potentia designantur, unaquae spiritualia et altera qua corporalia regerentur. Mansi, XXVIII. 4.

Gregory XII., who recognized Sigismund as king of the Romans.

There is some evidence that a report was abroad in Italy that Sigismund intended to have all three popes put on trial at Constance, but that a gift of 60,000 gulden from John at Lodi induced him to support that pontiff. Finke: Acta, p. 177 sq.

The council, which was appointed for Nov. 1, 1414, lasted nearly four years, and proved to be one of the most imposing gatherings which has ever convened in Western Europe. It was a veritable parliament of nations, a convention of the leading intellects of the age, who pressed together to give vent to the spirit of free discussion which the Avignon scandals and the schism had developed, and to debate the most urgent of questions, the reunion of Christendom under one undisputed head."

Funk, Kirchengesch., p. 470, calls it eine der grossartigsten Kirchenversammlungen welche die Geschichte kennt, gewissermassen ein Kongress des ganzen Abenlandes

Following the advice of his cardinals, John, who set his face reluctantly towards the North, reached Constance Oct. 28, 1414. The city then contained 5500 people, and the beauty of its location, its fields, and its vineyards, were praised by Nieheim and other contemporaries. They also spoke of the salubriousness of the air and the justice of the municipal laws for strangers. It seemed to be as a field which the Lord had blessed.

Hardt, II. 308.

The first day of November, John attended a solemn mass at the cathedral. The council met on the 5th, with fifteen cardinals present. The first public session was held Nov. 16. In all, forty-five public sessions were held, the usual hour of assembling being 7 in the morning. Gregory XII. was represented by two delegates, the titular patriarch of Constantinople and Cardinal John Dominici of Ragusa, a man of great sagacity and excellent spirit.

The convention did not get into full swing until the arrival of Sigismund on Christmas Eve, fresh from his coronation, which occurred at Aachen, Nov. 8, and accompanied by his queen, Barbara, and a brilliant suite. After warming themselves, the imperial party proceeded to the cathedral and, at cock-crowing Christmas morning, were received by the pope. Services were held lasting eight, or, according to another authority, eleven hours without interruption. Sigismund, wearing his crown and a dalmatic, exercised the functions of deacon and read the Gospel, and the pope conferred upon him a sword, bidding him use it to protect the Church.

Constance had become the most conspicuous locality in Europe. It attracted people of every rank, from the king to the beggar. A scene of the kind on so great a scale had never been witnessed in the West before. The reports of the number of strangers in the city vary from 50,000 to 100,000. Richental, the indefatigable Boswell of the council, himself a resident of Constance, gives an account of the arrival of every important personage, together with the number of his retainers. One-half of his Chronicle is a directory of names. He went from house to house, taking a census, and to the thousands he mentions by name, he adds 5000 who rode in and out of the town every day. He states that 80,000 witnessed the coronation of Martin V. The lodgings of the more distinguished personages were marked with their coats of arms. Bakers, beadles, grooms, scribes, goldsmiths, merchantmen of every sort, even to traffickers from the Orient, flocked together to serve the dukes and prelates and the learned university masters and doctors. There were in attendance on the council, 33 cardinals, 5 patriarchs, 47 archbishops, 145 bishops, 93 titular bishops, 217 doctors of theology, 361 doctors in both laws, 171 doctors of medicine, besides a great number of masters of arts from the 37 universities represented, 83 kings and princes represented by envoys, 38 dukes, 173 counts, 71 barons, more than 1500 knights, 142 writers of bulls, 1700 buglers, fiddlers, and players on other musical instruments. Seven hundred women of the street practised their trade openly or in rented houses, while the number of those who practised it secretly was a matter of conjecture.

Offene Huren in den Hurenhäusern und solche, die selber Häuser gemiethet hatten und in den Ställen lagen und wo sie mochten, doren waren über 700 und die heimlichen, die lass ich belibnen. Richental, p. 215. The numbers above are taken from Richental, whose account, from p. 154 to 215, is taken up with the lists of names. See also Van der Hardt, V. 50-53, who gives 18,000 prelates and priests and 80,000 laymen. A later hand has attached to Richental’s narrative the figures 72,460.

The English and Scotch delegation, which numbered less than a dozen persons, was accompanied by 700 or 800 mounted men, splendidly accoutred, and headed by fifers and other musicians, and made a great sensation by their entry into the city. The French delegation was marked by its university men and other men of learning.

Usk, p. 304; Rymer, Foeder., IX. 167; Richental, p. 34, speaks of the French as die Schulpfaffen und die gelehrten Leute aus Frankreich

The streets and surroundings presented the spectacle of a merry fair. There were tournaments, dances, acrobatic shows, processions, musical displays. But in spite of the congestion, good order seems to have been maintained. By order of the city council, persons were forbidden to be out after curfew without a light. Chains were to be stretched across some of the streets, and all shouting at night was forbidden. It is said that during the council’s progress only two persons were punished for street brawls. A check was put upon extortionate rates by a strict tariff. The price of a white loaf was fixed at a penny, and a bed for two persons, with sheets and pillows, at a gulden and a half a month, the linen to be washed every two weeks. Fixed prices were put upon grains, meat, eggs, birds, and other articles of food.

Richental, p. 39 sqq., gives an elaborate list of these regulations.

Among the notables in attendance, the pope and Sigismund occupied the chief place. The most inordinate praise was heaped upon the king. He was compared to Daniel, who rescued Susanna, and to David. He was fond of pleasure, very popular with women, always in debt and calling for money, but a deadly foe of heretics, so that whenever he roared, it was said, the Wyclifites fled.

So de Vrie, the poet-historian of the council, Hardt, I. 193. The following description is from the accomplished pen of Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II: "He was tall, with bright eyes, broad forehead, pleasantly rosy cheeks, and a long, thick beard. He was witty in conversation, given to wine and women, and thousands of love intrigues are laid to his charge. He had a large mind and formed many plans, but was changeable. He was prone to anger, but ready to forgive. He could not keep his money, but spent lavishly. He made more promises than he kept, and often deceived."

The next most eminent persons were Cardinals D’Ailly, Zabarella, Fillastre, John of Ragusa, and Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, who died during the session of the council, and was buried in Constance, the bishop of Winchester, uncle to the English king, and John Gerson, the chief representative of the University of Paris. Zabarella was the most profound authority on civil and canon law in Europe, a professor at Bologna, and in 1410 made bishop of Florence. He died in the midst of the council’s proceedings, Sept. 26, 1417. Fillastre left behind him a valuable daily journal of the council’s proceedings. D’Ailly had been for some time one of the most prominent figures in Europe. Hallum is frequently mentioned in the proceedings of the council. Among the most powerful agencies at work in the assemblies were the tracts thrown off at the time, especially those of Diedrich of Nieheim, one of the most influential pamphleteers of the later Middle Ages.

Finke, p. 133, calls him the "greatest journalist of the later Middle Ages." The tracts De modisuniendi, De difficultate reformationis, De necessitate reformationis are now all ascribed to Nieheim by Finke, p. 133, who follows Lenz, and with whom Pastor concurs as against Erler.

The subjects which the council was called together to discuss were the reunion of the Church under one pope, and Church reforms.

In hoc generali concilio agendum fait de pace et unione perfecta ecclesiae secundo de reformatione illius, Fillastre’s Journal, in Finke, p. 164. Haec synodus ... pro exstirpatione praesentis schismatis et unione ac reformatione ecclesiae Dei in capite et membris is the councils own declaration, Mansi, XXVII. 585

From the very beginning great plainness of speech was used, so that John had good reason to be concerned for the tenure of his office. December 7, 1414, the cardinals passed propositions binding him to a faithful performance of his papal duties and abstinence from simony. D’Ailly wrote against the infallibility of councils, and thus furnished the ground for setting aside the papal election at Pisa.

From November to January, 1415, a general disposition was manifested to avoid taking the initiative—the noli me tangere policy, as it was called.

Apud aliquos erat morbus "noli me tangere," Fillastre’s Journal, p. 164.

The nations met each under its own president in separate places, the English and Germans sitting in different rooms in the convent of the Grey Friars. The vote of the majority of the nations carried in the public sessions of the council. The right to vote in the nations was extended so as to include the doctors of both kinds and princes. D’Ailly advocated this course, and Fillastre argued in favor of including rectors and even clergymen of the lowest rank. Why, reasoned D’Ailly, should a titular bishop have an equal voice with a bishop ruling over an extensive see, say the archbishopric of Mainz, and why should a doctor be denied all right to vote who has given up his time and thought to the questions under discussion? And why, argued Fillastre, should an abbot, having control over only ten monks, have a vote, when a rector with a care of a thousand or ten thousand souls is excluded? An ignorant king or prelate he called a "crowned ass." Doctors were on hand for the very purpose of clearing up ignorance.

When the Italian tract appeared, which teemed with charges against John, matters were brought to a crisis. Then it became evident that the scheme calling for the removal of all three popes would go through, and John, to avoid a worse fate, agreed to resign, making the condition that Gregory XII. and Benedict should also resign. The formal announcement, which was read at the second session, March 2, 1415, ran: "I, John XXIII., pope, promise, agree, and obligate myself, vow and swear before God, the Church, and this holy council, of my own free will and spontaneously, to give peace to the Church by abdication, provided the pretenders, Benedict and Gregory, do the same."

Hardt, II. 240, also IV. 44; Mansi, XXVII. 568. Also Richental, p. 56.

Constance was wild with joy. The bells rang out the glad news. In the cathedral, joy expressed itself in tears. The spontaneity of John’s self-deposition may be questioned, in view of the feeling which prevailed among the councillors and the report that he had made an offer to cede the papacy for 30,000 gulden.

According to a MS. found at Vienna by Finke, Forschungen, p. 148.

A most annoying, though ridiculous, turn was now given to affairs by John’s flight from Constance, March 20. Rumors had been whispered about that he was contemplating such a move. He talked of transferring the council to Rizza, and complained of the unhealthiness of the air of Constance. He, however, made the solemn declaration that he would not leave the town before the dissolution of the council. To be on the safe side, Sigismund gave orders for the gates to be kept closed and the lake watched. But John had practised dark arts before, and, unmindful of his oath, escaped at high noon on a "little horse," in the disguise of a groom, wrapped in a gray cloak, wearing a gray cap, and having a crossbow tied to his saddle.

Richental, pp. 62-72, gives a vivid account of John’s flight and seizure.

So great was the panic produced by the pope’s flight that the council would probably have been brought to a sudden close by a general scattering of its members, had it not been for Sigismund’s prompt action. Cardinals and envoys despatched by the king and council made haste to stop the fleeing pope, who continued on to Laufenburg, Freiburg, and Breisach. John wrote to Sigismund, expressing his regard for him, but with the same pen he was addressing communications to the University of Paris and the duke of Orleans, seeking to awaken sympathy for his cause by playing upon the national feelings of the French. He attempted to make it appear that the French delegation had been disparaged when the council proceeded to business before the arrival of the twenty-two deputies of the University. France and Italy, with two hundred prelates, had each only a single vote, while England, with only three prelates, had a vote. God, he affirmed, dealt with individuals and not with nations. He also raised the objection that married laymen had votes at the side of prelates, and John Huss had not been put on trial, though he had been condemned by the University of Paris.

To the envoys who found John at Breisach, April 23, he gave his promise to return with them to Constance the next morning; but with his usual duplicity, he attempted to escape during the night, and was let down from the castle by a ladder, disguised as a peasant. He was soon seized, and ultimately handed over by Sigismund to Louis III., of the Palatinate, for safe-keeping.

In the meantime the council forbade any of the delegates to leave Constance before the end of the proceedings, on pain of excommunication and the loss of dignities. Its fourth and fifth sessions, beginning April 6, 1415, mark an epoch in the history of ecclesiastical statement. The council declared that, being assembled legitimately in the Holy Spirit, it was an oecumenical council and representing the whole Church, had its authority immediately from Christ, and that to it the pope and persons of every grade owed obedience in things pertaining to the faith and to the reformation of the Church in head and members. It was superior to all other ecclesiastical tribunals.

Hardt, IV. 89 sq., and Mansi, XXVII. 585-590. The deliverance runs: haec sancta synodus Constantiensis primo declarat ut ipsa synodus in S. Spiritu legitime congregata, generale concilium faciens, Eccles. catholicam militantem representans, potestatem a Christo immediate habeat, cui quilibet cujusmodi status vel dignitatis, etiamsi papalis existat, obedire tenetur in his quae pertinent ad fidem et exstirpationem praesentis schismatis et reformationem eccles. in capite et membris.

Gerson, urging this position in his sermon before the council, March 23, 1415, said

Hardt, II. 265-273; Du Pin, II. 201 sqq.

The conciliar declarations reaffirmed the principle laid down by Nieheim on the eve of the council in the tract entitled the Union of the Church and its Reformation, and by other writers.

Hardt, vol. I., where it occupies 175 pp. Du Pin, II., 162-201. This tract, formerly ascribed to Gerson, Lenz and Finke give reason for regarding as the work of Nieheim.

These views were revolutionary, and show that Marsiglius of Padua, and other tractarians of the fourteenth century, had not spoken in vain.

Having affirmed its superiority over the pope, the council proceeded to try John XXIII. on seventy charges, which included almost every crime known to man. He had been unchaste from his youth, had been given to lying, was disobedient to his parents. He was guilty of simony, bought his way to the cardinalate, sold the same benefices over and over again, sold them to children, disposed of the head of John the Baptist, belonging to the nuns of St. Sylvester, Rome, to Florence, for 50,000 ducats, made merchandise of spurious bulls, committed adultery with his brother’s wife, violated nuns and other virgins, was guilty of sodomy and other nameless vices.

Hardt, IV. 196-208; Mansi, XXVIII. 662-673, 715. Adam of Usk, p. 306, says, Our pope, John XXIII., false to his promises of union, and otherwise guilty of perjuries and murders, adulteries, simonies, heresy, and other excesses, and for that he twice fled in secret, and cowardly, in vile raiment, by way of disguise, was delivered to perpetual imprisonment by the council.

When John received the notice of his deposition, which was pronounced May 29, 1415, he removed the papal cross from his room and declared he regretted ever having been elected pope. He was taken to Gottlieben, a castle belonging to the bishop of Constance, and then removed to the castle at Heidelberg, where two chaplains and two nobles were assigned to serve him. From Heidelberg the count Palatine transferred him to Mannheim, and finally released him on the payment of 30,000 gulden. John submitted to his successor, Martin V., and in 1419 was appointed cardinal bishop of Tusculum, but survived the appointment only six months. John’s accomplice, Frederick of Austria, was deprived of his lands, and was known as Frederick of the empty purse—Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche. A splendid monument was erected to John in the baptistery in Florence by Cosimo de’ Medici, who had managed the pope’s money affairs.

While John’s case was being decided, the trial of John Huss was under way. The proceedings and the tragedy of Huss’ death are related in another place.

John XXIII. was out of the way. Two popes remained, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., who were facetiously called in tracts and addresses Errorius, a play on Gregory’s patronymic, Angelo Correr,

This name is given to Gregory constantly by Nieheim in his De schismate

Peter de Luna was of a different mind. Every effort was made to bring him into accord with the mind of the councilmen in the Swiss city, but in vain. In order to bring all the influence possible to bear upon him, Sigismund, at the council’s instance, started on the journey to see the last of the Avignon popes face to face. The council, at its sixteenth session, July 11, 1415, appointed doctors to accompany the king, and eight days afterwards he broke away from Constance, accompanied by a troop of 4000 men on horse.

Sigismund and Benedict met at Narbonne, Aug. 15, and at Perpignan, the negotiations lasting till December. The decree of deposition pronounced at Pisa, and France’s withdrawal of allegiance, had not broken the spirit of the old man. His dogged tenacity was worthy of a better cause.

Pastor, Hefele, and Hergenröther call it stubbornness, Hartnäckigkeit. Döllinger is more favorable, and does not withhold his admiration from Peter.

Peter de Luna was now as thoroughly isolated as any mortal could well be. The council demanded his unconditional abdication, and was strengthened by the admission of his old supporters, the Spanish delegates. At the thirty-seventh session, 1417, he was deposed. By Sigismund’s command the decision was announced on the streets of Constance by trumpeters. But the indomitable Spaniard continued to defy the synod’s sentence till his death, nine years later, and from the lonely citadel of Peñiscola to sit as sovereign of Christendom. Cardinal Hergenröther concludes his description of these events by saying that Benedict "was a pope without a church and a shepherd without sheep. This very fact proves the emptiness of his claims." Benedict died, 1423,

Valois, IV. 450 454, gives strong reasons for this date as against 1424.

It remained for the council to terminate the schism of years by electing a new pontiff and to proceed to the discussions of Church reforms. At the fortieth session, Oct. 30, 1417, it was decided to postpone the second item until after the election of the new pope. In fixing this order of business, the cardinals had a large influence. There was a time in the history of the council when they were disparaged. Tracts were written against them, and the king at one time, so it was rumored, proposed to seize them all.

Fillastre’s Journal, p. 224. For the tracts hostile to the cardinals, see Finke, Forschungen, p. 81 sq.

The papal vacancy was filled, Nov. 11, 1417, by the election of Cardinal Oddo Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. The election was consummated in the Kaufhaus, the central commercial building of Constance, which is still standing. Fifty-three electors participated, 6 deputies from each of the 5 nations, and 23 cardinals. The building was walled up with boards and divided into cells for the electors. Entrance was had by a single door, and the three keys were given, one to the king, one to the chapter of Constance, and one to the council. When it became apparent that an election was likely to be greatly delayed, the Germans determined to join the Italians in voting for an Italian to avoid suspicion that advantage was taken of the synod’s location on German soil. The Germans then secured the co-operation of the English, and finally the French and Spaniards also yielded.

Richental, p. 116 sqq., gives a detailed account of the walling up of the Kaufhaus and the election, and of the ceremonies attending Martin’s coronation. He also, p. 123, tells the pretty story that, before the electors met, ravens, jackdaws, and other birds of the sort gathered in great numbers on the roof of the Kaufhaus, but that as soon as Martin was elected, thousands of greenfinches and other little birds took their places and chattered and sang and hopped about as if approving what had been done.

The Western Church was again unified under one head. But for the deep-seated conviction of centuries, the office of the universal papacy would scarcely have survived the strain of the schism.

Catholic historians regard the survival of the papacy as a proof of its divine origin. Salembier, p. 395, says, "The history of the great Schism would have dealt a mortal blow to the papacy if Christ’s promises had not made it immortal."

Martin at once assumed the presidency of the council which since John’s flight had been filled by Cardinal Viviers. Measures of reform were now the order of the day and some headway was made. The papal right of granting indulgences was curtailed. The college of cardinals was limited to 24, with the stipulation that the different parts of the church should have a proportionate representation, that no monastic order should have more than a single member in the college, and that no cardinal’s brother or nephew should be raised to the curia so long as the cardinal was living. Schedules and programmes enough were made, but the question of reform involved abuses of such long standing and so deeply intrenched that it was found impossible to reconcile the differences of opinion prevailing in the council and bring it to promptness of action. After sitting for more than three years, the delegates were impatient to get away.

As a substitute for further legislation, the so-called concordats were arranged. These agreements were intended to regulate the relations of the papacy and the nations one with the other. There were four of these distinct compacts, one with the French, and one with the German nations, each to be valid for five years, one with the English to be perpetual, dated July 21, 1418, and one with the Spanish nation, dated May 13, 1418.

See Mirbt, art. Konkordat, in Herzog, X. 705 sqq. Hardt gives the concordats with Germany and England, I. 1056-1083, and France, IV. 155 sqq. Mansi, XXVII. 1189 sqq., 1193 sqq.

The action of the Council of Constance lifted the state to some measure of equality with the papacy in the administration of Church affairs. It remained for Louis XIV., 16431715, to assert more fully the Gallican theory of the authority of the state to manage the affairs of the Church within its territory, so far as matters of doctrine were not touched. The first decisive step in the assertion of Gallican liberties was the synodal action of 1407, when France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict XIII. By this action the chapters were to elect their own bishops, and the pope was restrained from levying taxes on their sees. Then followed the compact of the Council of Constance, the Pragmatic Sanction adopted at Bourges, 1438, and the concordat agreed upon between Francis I. and Leo X. at the time of the Reformation. In 1682 the French prelates adopted four propositions, restricting the pope’s authority to spirituals, a power which is limited by the decision of the Council of Constance, and by the precedents of the Gallican Church, and declaring that even in matters of faith the pope is not infallible. Although Louis, who gave his authority to these articles, afterwards revoked them, they remain a platform of Gallicanism as against the ultramontane theory of the infallibility and supreme authority of the pope, and may furnish in the future the basis of a settlement of the papal question in the Catholic communion.

See art. Gallikanismus, in Herzog, and Der Ursprung der gallikan. Freiheiten, in Hist. Zeitschrift, 1903, pp. 194-215.

In the deliverance known as Frequens, passed Oct. 9, 1417, the council decreed that a general council should meet in five years, then in seven years, and thereafter perpetually every ten years.

Creighton, I. 393, after giving the proper citation from Hardt, IV. 1432, makes the mistake of saying that the next council was appointed for seven years, and the succeeding councils every five years thereafter.

The Council of Constance was the most important synod of the Middle Ages, and more fairly represented the sentiments of Western Christendom than any other council which has ever sat. It furnished an arena of free debate upon interests whose importance was felt by all the nations of Western Europe, and which united them. It was not restricted by a programme prepared by a pope, as the Vatican council of 1870 was. It had freedom and exercised it. While the dogma of transubstantiation enacted by the 4th Lateran, 1215, and the dogma of papal infallibility passed by the Vatican council injected elements of permanent division into the Church, the Council of Constance unified Latin Christendom and ended the schism which had been a cause of scandal for forty years. The validity of its decree putting an oecumenical council above the pope, after being disputed for centuries, was officially set aside by the conciliar vote of 1870. For Protestants the decision at Constance is an onward step towards a right definition of the final seat of religious authority. It remained for Luther, forced to the wall by Eck at Leipzig, and on the ground of the error committed by the Council of Constance, in condemning the godly man, John Huss, to deny the infallibility of councils and to place the seat of infallible authority in the Scriptures, as interpreted by conscience.

Note on the Oecumenical Character of the Council of Constance.

Modern Roman Catholic historians deny the oecumenical character and authority of the Council of Constance, except its four last, 42d-45th sessions, which were presided over by Pope Martin V., or at least all of it till the moment of Gregory XII.’s bull giving to the council his approval, that is, after John had fled and ceased to preside. Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 862, says that before Gregory’s authorization the council was without a head, did not represent the Roman Church, and sat against the will of the cardinals, by whom he meant Gregory’s cardinals. Salembier, p. 317, says, Il n’est devenu oecuménique qu’après la trente-cinquième session, lorsque Grégoire III. eut donné sa démission, etc. Pastor, I. 198 sq., warmly advocates the same view, and declares that when the council in its 4th and 6th sessions announced its superiority over the pope, it was not yet an oecumenical gathering. This dogma, he says, was intended to set up a new principle which revolutionized the old Catholic doctrine of the Church. Philip Hergenröther, in Katholisches Kirchenrecht, p. 344 sq., expresses the same judgment. The council was not a legitimate council till after Gregory’s resignation.

The wisdom of the council in securing the resignation of Gregory and deposing John and Benedict is not questioned. The validity of its act in electing Martin V., though the papal regulation limiting the right of voting to the cardinals was set aside, is also acknowledged on the ground that the council at the time of Martin’s election was sitting by Gregory’s sanction, and Gregory was true pope until he abdicated.

A serious objection to the view, setting aside this action of the 4th and 5th sessions, is offered by the formal statement made by Martin V. At the final meeting of the council and after its adjournment had been pronounced, a tumultuous discussion was precipitated over the tract concerning the affairs of Poland and Lithuania by the Dominican, Falkenberg, which was written in defence of the Teutonic Knights, and justified the killing of the Polish king and all his subjects. It had been the subject of discussion in the nations, and its heresies were declared to be so glaring that, if they remained uncondemned by the council, that body would go down to posterity as defective in its testimony for orthodoxy. It was during the tumultuous debate, and after Martin had adjourned the council, that he uttered the words which, on their face, sanction whatever was done in council in a conciliar way. Putting an end to the tumult, he announced he would maintain all the decrees passed by the council in matters of faith in a conciliar way—omnia et singula determinata et conclusa et decreta in materiis fidei per praesens sacrum concilium generale Constantiense conciliariter tenere et inviolabiliter observare volebat et nunquam contravenire quoquomodo. Moreover, he announced that he sanctioned and ratified acts made in a "conciliar way and not made otherwise or in any other way." Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat papa et ratificat et non aliter nec alio modo. Funk, Martin V. und das Konzil zu Konstanz in Abhandlungen, I. 489 sqq., Hefele, Conciliengesch., I. 62, and Küpper, in Wetzer-Welte, VII. 1004 sqq., restrict the application of these words to the Falkenberg incident. Funk, however, by a narrow interpretation of the words "in matter of faith," excludes the acts of the 4th and 6th sessions from the pope’s approval. Döllinger (p. 464), contends that the expression conciliariter, "in a conciliar way," is opposed to nationaliter, "in the nations." The expression is to be taken in its simple meaning, and refers to what was done by the council as a council.

The only other statement made by Martin bearing upon the question occurs in his bull Frequens, of Feb. 22, 1418, in which he recognized the council as oecumenical, and declared its decrees binding which pertained to faith and the salvation of souls—quod sacrum concilium Constant., universalem ecclesiam representans approbavit et approbat in favorem fidei et salutem animarum, quod hoc est ab universis Christi fidelibus approbandum et tenendum. Hefele and Funk show that this declaration was not meant to exclude matters which were not of faith, for Martin expressly approved other matters, such as those passed upon in the 39th session. There is no record that Martin at any time said anything to throw light upon his meaning in these two utterances.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, as Raynaldus, an. 1418, shows, the view came to expression that Martin expressly intended to except the action of the 4th and 6th sessions from his papal approval.

Martin V.’s successor, Eugenius IV., in 1446, thirty years after the synod, asserted that its decrees were to be accepted so far as they did not prejudice the law, dignity, and pre-eminence of the Apostolic See — absque tamen praejudicio juris et dignitatis et praeeminentiae Apost. sedis. The papacy had at that time recovered its prestige, and the supreme pontiff felt himself strong enough to openly reassert the superiority of the Apostolic See over oecumenical councils. But before that time, in a bull issued Dec. 13, 1443, he formally accepted the acts of the Council of Basel, the most explicit of which was the reaffirmation of the acts of the Council of Constance in its 4th and 5th sessions.

It occurs to a Protestant that the Council of Constance would hardly have elected Oddo Colonna pope if he had been suspected of being opposed to the council’s action concerning its own superiority. The council would have stultified itself in appointing a man to undo what it had solemnly done. And for him to have denied its authority would have been, as Döllinger says (p. 159), like a son denying his parentage. The emphasis which recent Catholic historians lay upon Gregory’s authorization of the synod as giving it for the first time an oecumenical character is an easy way out of the difficulty, and this view forces the recognition of the Roman line of popes as the legitimate successors of St. Peter during the years of the schism.

§ 17. The council of Basel. 1431–1449.

Martin V. proved himself to be a capable and judicious ruler, with courage enough when the exigency arose. He left Constance May 16, 1418. Sigismund, who took his departure the following week, offered him as his papal residence Basel, Strassburg, or Frankfurt. France pressed the claims of Avignon, but a Colonna could think of no other city than Rome, and proceeding by the way of Bern, Geneva, Mantua, and Florence, he entered the Eternal city Sept. 28, 1420.

Richental, pp. 149 sqq.

Rome was in a desolate condition when Martin reached it, the prey of robbers, its streets filled with refuse and stagnant water, its bridges decayed, and many of its churches without roofs. Cattle and sheep were herded in the spaces of St. Paul’s. Wolves attacked the inhabitants within the walls.

Five large wolves were killed in the Vatican gardens, Jan. 23, 1411. Gregorovius, VI. 618

Among the signs of Martin’s interest in religion was his order securing the transfer to Rome of some of the bones of Monica, the mother of Augustine, and his bull canonizing her. On their reception, Martin made a public address in which he said, "Since we possess St. Augustine, what do we care for the shrewdness of Aristotle, the eloquence of Plato, the reputation of Pythagoras? These men we do not need. Augustine is enough. If we want to know the truth, learning, and religion, where shall we find one more wise, learned, and holy than St. Augustine?"

As for the promises of Church reforms made at Constance, Martin paid no attention to them, and the explanation made by Pastor, that his time was occupied with the government of Rome and the improvement of the city, is not sufficient to exculpate him. The old abuses in the disposition and sale of offices continued. The pope had no intention of yielding up the monarchical claims of the papal office. Nor did he forget his relatives. One brother, Giordano, was made duke of and another, Lorenzo, count of Alba. One of his nephews, Prospero, he invested with the purple, 1426. He also secured large tracts of territory for his house.

Pastor, I. 227, Martin’s warm admirer, passes lightly over the pope’s nepotism with the remark that in this regard he overstepped the line of propriety—er hat das Mass des Erlaubten überschritten.

The council, appointed by Martin at Constance to meet in Pavia, convened April, 1423, was sparsely attended, adjourned on account of the plague to Siena, and, after condemning the errors of Wyclif and Huss, was dissolved March 7, 1424. Martin and his successors feared councils, and it was their policy to prevent, if possible, their assembling, by all sorts of excuses and delays. Why should the pope place himself in a position to hear instructions and receive commands? However, Martin could not be altogether deaf to the demands of Christendom, or unmindful of his pledge given at Constance. Placards were posted up in Rome threatening him if he summoned a council. Under constraint and not of free will, he appointed the second council, which was to meet in seven years at Basel, 1431, but he died the same year, before the time set for its assembling.

Eugenius IV., the next occupant of the papal throne, 1431–1447, a Venetian, had been made bishop of Siena by his maternal uncle, Gregory XII., at the age of twenty-four, and soon afterwards was elevated to the curia. His pontificate was chiefly occupied with the attempt to assert the supremacy of the papacy against the conciliar theory. It also witnessed the most notable effort ever made for the union of the Greeks with the Western Church.

By an agreement signed in the conclave which elevated Eugenius, the cardinals promised that the successful candidate should advance the interests of the impending general council, follow the decrees of the Council of Constance in appointing cardinals, consult the sacred college in matters of papal administration, and introduce Church reforms. Such a compact had been signed by the conclave which elected Innocent VI., 1352, and similar compacts by almost every conclave after Eugenius down to the Reformation, but all with no result, for, as soon as the election was consummated, the pope set the agreement aside and pursued his own course.

On the day set for the opening of the council in Basel, March 7, 1431, only a single prelate was present, the abbot of Vezelay. The formal opening occurred July 23, but Cardinal Cesarini, who had been appointed by Martin and Eugenius to preside, did not appear till Sept. 9. He was detained by his duties as papal legate to settle the Hussite insurrection in Bohemia. Sigismund sent Duke William of Bavaria as protector, and the attendance speedily grew. The number of doctors present was larger in comparison to the number of prelates than at Constance. A member of the council said that out of 500 members he scarcely saw 20 bishops. The rest belonged to the lower orders of the clergy, or were laymen. "Of old, bishops had settled the affairs of the Church, but now the common herd does it."

Traversari, as quoted by Creighton, I. 128.

The tasks set before the council were the completion of the work of Constance in instituting reforms,

Ob reformationem Eccles. Dei in capite et membris specialiter congregatur, Mansi, XXIX. 165, etc.

The business was performed not by nations but by four committees, each composed of an equal number of representatives from the four nations and elected for a month. When they agreed on any subject, it was brought before the council in public session.

It soon became evident that the synod acknowledged no earthly authority above itself, and was in no mood to hear the contrary principle defended. On the other hand, Eugenius was not ready to tolerate free discussion and the synod’s self-assertion, and took the unfortunate step of proroguing the synod to Bologna, making the announcement at a meeting of the cardinals, Dec. 18, 1431. The bull was made public at Basel four weeks later, and made an intense sensation. The synod was quick to give its answer, and decided to continue its sittings. This was revolution, but the synod had the nations and public opinion back of it, as well as the decrees of the Council of Constance. It insisted upon the personal presence of Eugenius, and on Feb. 15, 1432, declared for its own sovereignty and that a general council might not be prorogued or transferred by a pope without its own consent.

In the meantime Sigismund had received the iron crown at Milan, Nov. 25, 1431. He was at this period a strong supporter of the council’s claims. A French synod, meeting at Bourges early in 1432, gave its sanction to them, and the University of Paris wrote that Eugenius’ decree transferring the council was a suggestion of the devil. Becoming more bold, the council, at its third session, April 29, 1432, called upon the pope to revoke his bull and be present in person. At its fourth session, June 20, it decreed that, in case the papal office became vacant, the election to fill the vacancy should be held in Basel and that, so long as Eugenius remained away from Basel, he should be denied the right to create any more cardinals. The council went still farther, proceeded to arraign the pope for contumacy, and on Dec. 18 gave him 60 days in which to appear, on pain of having formal proceedings instituted against him.

Sigismund, who was crowned emperor in Rome the following Spring, May 31, 1433, was not prepared for such drastic action. He was back again in Basel in October, but, with the emperor present or absent, the council continued on its course, and repeatedly reaffirmed its superior authority, quoting the declarations of the Council of Constance at its fourth and fifth sessions. The voice of Western Christendom was against Eugenius, as were the most of his cardinals. Under the stress of this opposition, and pressed by the revolution threatening his authority in Rome, the pope gave way, and in the decree of Dec. 13, 1433, revoked his three bulls, beginning with Dec. 18, 1431, which adjourned the synod. He asserted he had acted with the advice of the cardinals, but now pronounced and declared the "General Council of Bagel legitimate from the time of its opening." Any utterance or act prejudicial to the holy synod or derogatory to its authority, which had proceeded from him, he revoked, annulled, and pronounced utterly void.

Decernimus et declaramus generale concil. Basileense a tempore inchoationis suae legitime continuatum fuisse et esse ... quidquid per nos aut nostro nomine in prejudicium et derogationem sacri concil. Basileensis seu contra ejus auctoritatem factum et attentatum seu assertum est, cassamus, revocamus, irritamus et annullamus, nullas, irritas fuisse et esse declaramus, Mansi, XXIX. 78.

No revocation of a former decree could have been made more explicit. The Latin vocabulary was strained for words. Catholic historians refrain from making an argument against the plain meaning of the bull, which is fatal to the dogma of papal inerrancy and acknowledges the superiority of general councils. At best they pass the decree with as little comment as possible, or content themselves with the assertion that Eugenius had no idea of confirming the synod’s reaffirmation of the famous decrees of Constance, or with the suggestion that the pope was under duress when he issued the document.

So Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 919, Pastor, I. 288, etc. Funk, Kirchengesch., p. 874, with his, usual fairness, says that Eugenius in his bull gave unconditional assent to the council. So verstand er sich endlich zur unbedingten Annahme der Synode

Eugenius was the last pope, with the exception of Pius IX., who has had to flee from Rome. Twenty-five popes had been obliged to escape from the city before him. Disguised in the garb of a Benedictine monk, and carried part of the way on the shoulders of a sailor, he reached a boat on the Tiber, but was recognized and pelted with a shower of stones, from which he escaped by lying flat in the boat, covered with a shield. Reaching Ostia, he took a galley to Livorno. From there he went to Florence. He remained in exile from 1434 to 1443.

In its efforts to pacify the Hussites, the synod granted them the use of the cup, and made other concessions. The causes of their opposition to the Church had been expressed in the four articles of Prag. The synod introduced an altogether new method of dealing with heretics in guaranteeing to the Hussites and their representatives full rights of discussion. Having settled the question of its own authority, the synod took up measures to reform the Church "in head and members." The number of the cardinals was restricted to 24, and proper qualifications insisted upon, a measure sufficiently needed, as Eugenius had given the red hat to two of his nephews. Annates, payments for the pallium, the sale of church dignities, and other taxes which the Apostolic See had developed, were abolished. The right of appeal to Rome was curtailed. Measures of another nature were the reaffirmation of the law of priestly celibacy,

De concubinariis, Mansi, XXIX. 101 sq.

Eugenius did not sit idly by while his prerogatives were being tampered with and an utterly unpapal method of dealing with heretics was being pursued. He communicated with the princes of Europe, June 1, 1436, complaining of the highhanded measures, such as the withdrawal of the papal revenues, the suppression of the prayer for the pope in the liturgy, and the giving of a vote to the lower clergy in the synod. At that juncture the union with the Greeks, a question which had assumed a place of great prominence, afforded the pope the opportunity for reasserting his authority and breaking up the council in the Swiss city.

Overtures of union, starting with Constantinople, were made simultaneously through separate bodies of envoys sent to the pope and the council. The one met Eugenius at Bologna; the other appeared in Basel in the summer of 1434. In discussing a place for a joint meeting of the representatives of the two communions, the Greeks expressed a preference for some Italian city, or Vienna. This exactly suited Eugenius, who had even suggested Constantinople as a place of meeting, but the synod sharply informed him that the city on the Bosphorus was not to be considered. In urging Basel, Avignon, or a city in Savoy, the Basel councilmen were losing their opportunity. Two delegations, one from the council and one from the pope, appeared in Constantinople, 1437, proposing different places of meeting.

When the matter came up for final decision, the council, by a vote of 355 to 244, decided to continue the meeting at Basel, or, if that was not agreeable to the Greeks, then at Avignon. The minority, acting upon the pope’s preference, decided in favor of Florence or Udine. In a bull dated Sept. 18, 1437, and signed by eight cardinals, Eugenius condemned the synod for negotiating with the Greeks, pronounced it prorogued, and, at the request of the Greeks, as it alleged, transferred the council to Ferrara.

"Transfer" is the word used by the pope—transferendo hoc sacrum concilium in civitatem Ferrarensium, Mansi, XXIX. 166. Reasons for the transfer to an Italian city and an interesting statement of the discussion over the place of meeting are given in Haller, Conc. Bas., I. 141-159.

The synod was checkmated, though it did not appreciate its situation. The reunion of Christendom was a measure of overshadowing importance, and took precedence in men’s minds of the reform of Church abuses. The Greeks all went to Ferrara. The prelates, who had been at Basel, gradually retired across the Alps, including Cardinals Cesarini and Nicolas of Cusa. The only cardinal left at Basel was d’Aleman, archbishop of Arles. It was now an open fight between the pope and council, and it meant either a schism of the Western Church or the complete triumph of the papacy. The discussions at Basel were characterized by such vehemence that armed citizens had to intervene to prevent violence. The conciliar theory was struggling for life. At its 28th session, October, 1437, the council declared the papal bull null and void, and summoned Eugenius within sixty days to appear before it in person or by deputy. Four months later, Jan. 24, 1488, it declared Eugenius suspended, and, June 25, 1439, at its 34th session, "removed, deposed, deprived, and cast him down," as a disturber of the peace of the Church, a simoniac and perjurer, incorrigible, and errant from the faith, a schismatic, and a pertinacious heretic.

Eugenium fuisse et esse notorium et manifestum contumacem, violatorem assiduum atque contemptorem sacrorum canonum synodalium, pacis et unitatis Eccles. Dei perturbatorem notorium ... simoniacum, perjurum, incorrigibilem, schismaticum, a fide devium, pertinacem haereticum, dilapidatorem jurium et bonorum ecclesiae, inutilem et damnosum ad administrationem romani pontificii, etc., Mansi, XXIX. 180.

In the meantime the council at Ferrara had been opened, Jan. 8, 1438, and was daily gaining adherents. Charles VII. took the side of Eugenius, although the French people, at the synod of Bourges in the summer of 1438, accepted, substantially, the reforms proposed by the council of Basel.

Mirbt gives it in part, Quellen, p. 160.

The attitude of the German princes and ecclesiastics was one of neutrality or of open support of the council at Basel. Sigismund died at the close of the year 1437, and, before the election of his son-in-law, Albrecht II., as his successor, the electors at Frankfurt decided upon a course of neutrality. Albrecht survived his election as king of the Romans less than two years, and his uncle, Frederick III., was chosen to take his place. Frederick, after observing neutrality for several years, gave his adhesion to Eugenius.

Unwilling to be ignored and put out of life, the council at Basel, through a commission of thirty-two, at whose head stood d’Aleman, elected, 1439, Amadeus, duke of Savoy, as pope.

H. Manger, D. Wahl Amadeos v. Savoyen zum Papste, Marburg, 1901, p. 94. Sigismund, in 1416, raised the counts of Savoy to the dignity of dukes.

The papal achievement in winning Frederick III., king of the Romans, was largely due to the corruption of Frederick’s chief minister, Caspar Schlick, and the treachery of Aeneas Sylvius, who deserted one cause and master after another as it suited his advantage. From being a vigorous advocate of the council, he turned to the side of Eugenius, to whom he made a most fulsome confession, and, after passing from the service of Felix, he became secretary to Frederick, and proved himself Eugenius’ most shrewd and pliable agent. He was an adept in diplomacy and trimmed his sails to the wind.

The archbishops of Treves and Cologne, who openly supported the Basel assembly, were deposed by Eugenius, 1446. The same year six of the electors offered Eugenius their obedience, provided he would recognize the superiority of an oecumenical council, and within thirteen months call a new council to meet on German soil. Following the advice of Aeneas Sylvius, the pope concluded it wise to show a conciliatory attitude. Papal delegates appeared at the diet, meeting September, 1446, and Aeneas was successful in winning over the margrave of Brandenburg and other influential princes. The following January he and other envoys appeared in Rome as representatives of the archbishop of Mainz, Frederick III., and other princes. The result of the negotiations was a concordat,—the so-called princes’ concordat,—Fürsten Konkordat,—by which the pope restored the two deposed archbishops, recognized the superiority of general councils, and gave to Frederick the right during his lifetime to nominate the incumbents of the six bishoprics of Trent, Brixen, Chur, Gurk, Trieste, and Pilsen, and to him and his successors the right to fill, subject to the pope’s approval, 100 Austrian benefices. These concessions Eugenius ratified in four bulls, Feb. 5–7, 1447, one of them, the bull Salvatoria, declaring that the pope in the previous three bulls had not meant to disparage the authority of the Apostolic See, and if his successors found his concessions out of accord with the doctrine of the fathers, they were to be regarded as void. The agreement was celebrated in Rome with the ringing of bells, and was confirmed by Nicolas V. in the so-called Vienna Concordat, Feb. 17, 1448.

Given in Mirbt, p. 165 sqq.

Eugenius died Feb. 23, 1447, and was laid at the side of Eugenius III. in St. Peter’s. He had done nothing to introduce reforms into the Church. Like Martin V., he was fond of art, a taste he cultivated during his exile in Florence. He succeeded in perpetuating the mediaeval view of the papacy, and in delaying the reformation of the Church which, when it came, involved the schism in Western Christendom which continues to this day.

The Basel council continued to drag on a tedious and uneventful existence. It was no longer in the stream of noticeable events. It stultified itself by granting Felix a tenth. In June, 1448, it adjourned to Lausanne. Reduced to a handful of adherents, and weary of being a synonym for innocuous failure, it voted to accept Nicolas V., Eugenius’ successor, as legitimate pope, and then quietly breathed its last, April 25, 1449. After courteously revoking his bulls anathematizing Eugenius and Nicolas, Felix abdicated. He was not allowed to suffer, much less obliged to do penance, for his presumption in exercising papal functions. He was made cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and Apostolic vicar in Savoy and other regions which had recognized his "obedience." Three of his cardinals were admitted to the curia, and d’Aleman forgiven. Felix died in Geneva, 1451.

In his bull Ut pacis, 1449, recognizing the Lausanne act in his favor, Nicolas V. called Amadeus "his venerable and most beloved brother," and spoke of the Basel-Lausanne synod as being held under the name of an oecumenical council, sub nomine generalis concilii, Labbaeus, XII. 663, 665.

The Roman Church has not since had an anti-pope. The Council of Basel concluded the series of the three councils, which had for their chief aims the healing of the papal schism and the reformation of Church abuses. They opened with great promise at Pisa, where a freedom of discussion prevailed unheard of before, and where the universities and their learned representatives appeared as a new element in the deliberations of the Church. The healing of the schism was accomplished, but the abuses in the Church went on, and under the last popes of the fifteenth century became more infamous than they had been at any time before. And yet even in this respect these councils were not in vain, for they afforded a warning to the Protestant reformers not to put their trust even in ecclesiastical assemblies. As for the theory of the supremacy of general councils which they had maintained with such dignity, it was proudly set aside by later popes in their practice and declared fallacious by the Fifth Lateran in 1516,

Sess. XI. romanum pontificem tanquam super omnia conciliaauctoritatem habentem, conciliorum indicendorum transferendorum «e dissolvendorum plenum jus et potestatem habere. This council at the same time pronounced the Council of Basel a "little council," conciliabulum, "or rather a conventicle," conventicula. Mansi, XXXII. 967.

§ 18. The Council of Ferrara-Florence. 1438–1445.

The council of Ferrara witnessed the submission of the Greeks to the Roman see. It did not attempt to go into the subject of ecclesiastical reforms, and thus vie with the synod at Basel. After sixteen sessions held at Ferrara, Eugenius transferred the council, February, 1439, to Florence. The reason given was the unhealthy conditions in Ferrara, but the real grounds were the offer of the Florentines to aid Eugenius in the support of his guests from the East and, by getting away from the seaside, to lessen the chances of the Greeks going home before the conclusion of the union. In 1442 the council was transferred to Rome, where it held two sessions in the Lateran. The sessions at Ferrara, Florence, and Rome are listed with the first twenty-five sessions of the council of Basel, and together they are counted as the seventeenth oecumenical council.

Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengesch., p. 477.

The schism between the East and the West, dating from the middle of the ninth century, while Nicolas I. and Photius were patriarchs respectively of Rome and Constantinople, was widened by the crusades and the conquest of Constantinople, 1204. The interest in a reunion of the two branches of the Church was shown by the discussion at Bari, 1098, when Anselm was appointed to set forth the differences with Greeks, and by the treatments of Thomas Aquinas and other theologians. The only notable attempt at reunion was made at the second council of Lyons, 1274, when a deputation from the East accepted articles of agreement which, however, were rejected by the Eastern churches. In 1369, the emperor John visited Rome and abjured the schism, but his action met with unfavorable response in Constantinople. Delegates appeared at Constance, 1418, sent by Manuel Palaeologus and the patriarch of Constantinople,

Richental, Chronik, p. 113, has a notice of their arrival.

Neither Eugenius nor the Greeks deserve any credit for the part they took in the conference. The Greeks were actuated wholly by a desire to get the assistance of the West against the advance of the Turks, and not by religious zeal. So far as the Latins are concerned, they had to pay all the expenses of the Greeks on their way to Italy, in Italy, and on their way back as the price of the conference. Catholic historians have little enthusiasm in describing the empty achievements of Eugenius.

So Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengesch., p. 476; Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 949; Funk, Kirchengesch., p. 377. Pastor, II. 307, says, "Die politische Nothlage brachte endlich die Griechen zum Nachgeben."

The Greek delegation was large and inspiring, and included the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople. In Venetian vessels rented by the pope, the emperor John VI., Palaeologus reached Venice in February, 1438.

An account of the emperor’s arrival and entertainment at Venice is given in Mansi, XXXI. 463 sqq.

Among the more prominent Greeks present were Bessarion, bishop of Nice, Isidore, archbishop of Russian Kief, and Mark Eugenicus, archbishop of Ephesus. Bessarion and Isidore remained in the West after the adjournment of the council, and were rewarded by Eugenius with the red hat. The archbishop of Ephesus has our admiration for refusing to bow servilely to the pope and join his colleagues in accepting the articles of union. The leaders among the Latins were Cardinals Cesarini and Albergati, and the Spaniard Turrecremata, who was also given the red hat after the council adjourned.

The first negotiations concerned matters of etiquette. Eugenius gave a private audience to the patriarch, but waived the ceremony of having his foot kissed. An important question was the proper seating of the delegates, and the Greek emperor saw to it that accurate measurements were taken of the seats set apart for the Greeks, lest they should have positions of less honor than the Latins.

So Syrophulos. See Hefele Conciliengesch., VII. 672.

The first common session was not held till Oct. 8, 1438. Most of it was taken up with a long address by Bessarion, as was the time of the second session by a still longer address by another Greek. The emperor did his share in promoting delay by spending most of his time hunting. At the start the Greeks insisted there could be no addition to the original creed. Again and again they were on the point of withdrawing, but were deterred from doing so by dread of the Turks and empty purses.

Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 949, lays stress upon the Greek readiness to accept alms.

The Greeks accepted the addition made to the Constantinopolitan creed by the synod of Toledo, 589, declaring that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but with the stipulation that they were not to be required to introduce the filioque clause when they used the creed. They justified their course on the ground that they had understood the Latins as holding to the procession from the Father and the Son as from two principles. The article of agreement ran: "The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally and substantially as it were from one source and cause."

Aeternaliter et substantialiter tanquam ab uno principio et causa. The statement ex patre et filio and ex patre per filium were declared to be identical in meaning.

In the matter of purgatory, it was decided that immediately at death the blessed pass to the beatific vision, a view the Greeks had rejected. Souls in purgatory are purified by pain and may be aided by the suffrages of the living. At the insistence of the Greeks, material fire as an element of purification was left out.

The use of leavened bread was conceded to the Greeks.

In the matter of the eucharist, the Greeks, who, after the words, "this is my body," make a petition that the Spirit may turn the bread into Christ’s body, agreed to the view that transubstantiation occurs at the use of the priestly words, but stipulated that the confession be not incorporated in the written articles.

The primacy of the Roman bishop offered the most serious difficulty. The article of union acknowledged him as "having a primacy over the whole world, he himself being the successor of Peter, and the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians, to whom, in Peter, Christ gave authority to feed, govern and rule the universal Church."

Diffinimus sanctam apostol. sedem et Romanam pontificem in universum orbem tenere primatum et ipsum pontificem Romanum successorem esse B. Petri principis apostolorum, et verum Christi vicarium, totiusque ecclesiae caput, et omnium Christianorum patrem et doctorem existere, etc. Mansi, XXXI. 1697.

The articles of union were incorporated in a decree

The document, together with the signatures, is given in Mansi, pp. 1028-1036, 1695-1701. Hefele-Knöpfler, Conciliengesch., VII. 742-753, has regarded it of such importance as to give the Greek and Latin originals in full, and also a German translation.

On July 6, 1439, the articles were publicly read in the cathedral of Florence, the Greek text by Bessarion, and the Latin by Cesarini. The pope was present and celebrated the mass. The Latins sang hymns in Latin, and the Greeks followed them with hymns of their own. Eugenius promised for the defence of Constantinople a garrison of three hundred and two galleys and, if necessary, the armed help of Western Christendom. After tarrying for a month to receive the five months of arrearages of his stipend, the emperor returned by way of Venice to his capital, from which he had been absent two years.

The Ferrara agreement proved to be a shell of paper, and all the parade and rejoicing at the conclusion of the proceedings were made ridiculous by the utter rejection of its articles in Constantinople.

On their return, the delegates were hooted as Azymites, the name given in contempt to the Latins for using unleavened bread in the eucharist. Isidore, after making announcement of the union at Of en, was seized and put into a convent, from which he escaped two years later to Rome. The patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria issued a letter from Jerusalem, 1443, denouncing the council of Florence as a synod of robbers and Metrophanes, the Byzantine patriarch as a matricide and heretic.

It is true the articles were published in St. Sophia, Dec. 14, 1452, by a Latin cardinal, but six months later, Constantinople was in the hands of the Mohammedans. A Greek council, meeting in Constantinople, 1472, formally rejected the union.

On the other hand, the success of the Roman policy was announced through Western Europe. Eugenius’ position was strengthened by the empty triumph, and in the same proportion the influence of the Basel synod lessened. If cordial relations between churches of the East and the West were not promoted at Ferrara and Florence, a beneficent influence flowed from the council in another direction by the diffusion of Greek scholarship and letters in the West.

Delegations also from the Armenians and Jacobites appeared at Florence respectively in 1439 and 1442. The Copts and Ethiopians also sent delegations, and it seemed as if the time had arrived for the reunion of all the distracted parts of Christendom.

See Mansi, XXXI. 1047 sqq.; Hefele-Knöpfler, VII. 788 sqq. The only meeting since between Greeks and Western ecclesiastics of public note was at the Bonn Conference, 1875, in which Döllinger and the Old-Catholics took the most prominent part. Dr. Philip Schaff and several Anglican divines also participated. See Creeds of Christendom, I. 545-554, and Life of Philip Schaff, pp. 277-280.

On Aug. 7, 1445, Eugenius adjourned the long council which had begun its sittings at Basel, continued them at Ferrara and Florence, and concluded them in the Lateran.

§ 19. Literature.

For § 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.—No complete ed. of Ockam’s works exists. The fullest lists are given by Riezler, see below, Little: Grey Friars of Oxford, pp. 226–234, and Potthast: II. 871–873. Goldast’s Monarchia, II. 313–1296, contains a number of his works, e.g. opus nonaginta dierum, Compendium errorum Johannis XXII., De utili dominio rerum Eccles. et abdicatione bonorum temporalium, Super potestatem summi pontificis, Quaestionum octo decisiones, Dial. de potestate papali et imperiali in tres partes distinctus, (1) de haereticis, (2) de erroribus Joh. XXII., (3) de potestate papae, conciliorum et imperatoris (first publ. 2 vols., Paris, 1476).—Other works: Expositio aurea super totam artem veterem, a com. on Porphyry’s Isagoge, and Aristotle’s Elenchus, Bologna, 1496.—Summa logices, Paris, 1488.—Super I V. Iibros sententiarum, Lyons, 1483.—De sacramento altaris, Strassburg, 1491.—De praedestinatione et futuris contingentibus, Bologna, 1496.—Quodlibeta septem, Paris, 1487.—Riezler: D. antipäpstlichen und publizistischen Schriften Occams in his Die literar. Widersacher, etc., 241–277.—Haureau: La philos. scolastique.—Werner: Die Scholastik des späteren M. A., II., Vienna, 1883, and Der hl. Thos. von Aquino, III.—Stöckl: Die Philos. des M. A., II. 986–1021, and art. Nominalismus in Wetzer-Welte, IX.—Baur: Die christl. Kirche d. M. A., p. 377 sqq.—Müller: Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern.—R. L. Poole in Dict. of Natl. Biog., XLI. 357–362.—R. Seeberg in Herzog, XIV. 260–280.—A. Dorner; D. Verhältniss von Kirche und Staat nach Occam in Studien und Kritiken, 1886, pp. 672–722.—F. Kropatscheck: Occam und Luther in Beitr. zur Förderung christl. Theol., Gütersloh, 1900.—Art. Nominalismus, by Stöckl in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 423–427.

For § 21. Catherine of Siena.—Her writings. Epistole ed orazioni della seraphica vergine s. Catterina da Siena, Venice, 1600, etc.—Best ed. 6 vols., Siena, 1707–1726.—Engl. trans. of the Dialogue of the Seraphic Virgin Cath. of Siena, by Algar Thorold, London, 1896.—Her Letters, ed. by N. Tommaseo: Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, 4 vols., Florence, 1860.—*Eng. trans. by Vida D. Scudder: St. Cath. of Siena as seen in her Letters, London, 1906, 2d ed., 1906.—Her biography is based upon the Life written by her confessor, Raymundo de Vineis sive de Capua, d. 1399: vita s. Cath. Senensis, included in the Siena ed. of her works and in the Acta Sanctt. III. 863–969.—Ital. trans. by Catherine’s secretary, Neri De Landoccio, Fr. trans. by E. Cartier, Paris, 1863, 4th ed., 1877.—An abbreviation of Raymund’s work, with annotations, Leggenda della Cat. da Siena, usually called La Leggenda minore, by Tommaso d’antonio Nacci Caffarini, 1414.—K. Hase: Caterina von Siena, Ein Heiligenbild, Leipzig, 1804, new ed., 1892.—J. E. Butler: Cath. of Siena, London, 1878, 4th ed., 1895.—Augusta T. Drane, Engl. Dominican: The Hist. of Cath. of Siena, compiled from the Orig. sources, London, 1880, 3d ed., 1900, with a trans. of the Dialogue.—St. Catherine of Siena and her Times, by the author of Mademoiselle Mori (Margaret D. Roberts), New York, 1906, pays little attention to the miraculous element, and presents a full picture of Catherine’s age.—*E. G. Gardner: St. Catherine of Siena: A Study in the Religion, Literature, and History of the fourteenth century in Italy, London, 1907.

For § 22. Peter d’ailly.—Paul Tschackert: Peter von Ailli. Zur Gesch. des grossen abendländischen Schismas und der Reformconcilien von Pisa und Constanz, Gotha, 1877, and Art. in Herzog, I. 274–280.—Salembier: Petrus de Alliaco, Lille, 1886.—Lenz: Drei Traktate aus d. Schriftencyclus d. Konst. Konz., Marburg, 1876.—Bess: Zur Gesch. des Konst. Konzils, Marburg, 1891.—Finke: Forschungen und Quellen, etc., pp. 103–132.—For a list of D’Ailly’s writings, See Tschackert, pp. 348–365.—Some of them are given in Van der Hardt and in Du Pin’s ed. of Gerson’s Works, I. 489–804, and the De difficultate reform. eccles., and the De necessitate reform. eccles., II. 867–903.

For § 23. John Gerson.—Works. Best ed. by L. E. Du Pin, Prof. of Theol. in Paris, 5 vols., Antwerp, 1706; 2d ed., Hague Com., 1728. The 2d ed. has been consulted in this work and is pronounced by Schwab "indispensable." It contains the materials of Gerson’s life and the contents of his works in an introductory essay, Gersoniana, I. i-cxlv, and also writings by D’ailly, Langenstein, Aleman and other contemporaries. A number of Gerson’s works are given in Goldast’s Monarchia and Van der Hardt.—A Vita Gersonis is given in Hardt’s Conc. Const., IV. 26–57.—Chartul. Univ. Paris., III., IV., under John Arnaud and Gerson.—J. B. Schwab: Johannes Gerson, Prof. der Theologie und Kanzler der Universität Paris, Würzburg, 1858, an exhaustive work, giving also a history of the times, one of the most thorough of biographies and to be compared with Hurter’s Innocent III.—A. Masson: J. Gerson, sa vie, son temps et ses oeuvres, Lyons, 1894.—A. Lambon: J. Gerson, sa réforme de l’enseigement Theol. et de l’éducation populaire, Paris, 1888.—Bess: Zur Gesch. d. Konstanz. Konzils; art. Gerson in Herzog, VI. 612–617.—Lafontaine: Jehas Gerson, 1363–1429, Paris, 1906, pp. 340.—J. Schwane: Dogmengesch.—Werner: D. Scholastik d. späteren M. A., IV., V.

For § 24. Nicolas of Clamanges.—Works, ed. by J. M. Lydius, 2 vols., Leyden, 1013, with Life.—The De ruina ecclesiae, with a Life, in Van der Hardt: Conc. Constan., vol. I., pt. lII.—Writings not in Lydius are given by Bulaeus in Hist. univ. Paris.—Baluzius: Miscellanea, and D’Achery: Spicilegium.—Life in Du Pin’s Works of Gerson, I., p. xxxix sq.—A. Müntz: Nic. de Clem., sa vie et ses écrits, Strassburg, 1846.—J. Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 493–497.—Artt. by Bess in Herzog, IV. 138–147, and by Knöpfsler in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 298–306.—G. Schubert: Nic. von Clem. als Verfasser der Schrift de corrupto ecclesiae statu, Grossenhain, 1888.

For § 25. Nicolas of Cusa.—Edd. of his Works, 1476 (place not given), as ed. by Faber Stapulensis, 3 vols., 1514, Basel.—German trans. of a number of the works by F. A. Schrapff, Freiburg, 1862.—Schrapff: Der Cardinal und Bischof Nic. von Cusa Mainz, 1843; Nic. von Cusa als Reformator in Kirche, Reich und Philosophie des 15ten Jahrh., Tübingen, 1871.—J. M. Düx: Der deutsche Card. Nic. von Cusa und die Kirche seiner Zeit, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1847.—J. Uebinger: D. Gotteslehre des Nic. von Cusa, Münster, 1888.—J. Marx: Nik. von Cues und seine Stiftungen au Cues und Deventer, Treves, 1906, pp. 115.—C. Schmitt: Card. Nic. Cusanus, Coblenz, 1907. Presents him as astronomer, geographer, mathematician, historian, homilete, orator, philosopher, and theologian.—Stöckl, III. 23–84.—Schwane, pp. 98–102.—Art. by Funk in Wetzer-Welte, IX. 306–315.

§ 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.

Scholasticism had its last great representative in Duns Scotus, d. 1308. After him the scholastic method gradually passed into disrepute. New problems were thrust upon the mind of Western Europe, and new interests were engaging its attention. The theologian of the school and the convent gave way to the practical theological disputant setting forth his views in tracts and on the floor of the councils. Free discussion broke up the hegemony of dogmatic assertion. The authority of the Fathers and of the papacy lost its exclusive hold, and thinkers sought another basis of authority in the general judgment of contemporary Christendom, in the Scriptures alone or in reason. The new interest in letters and the natural world drew attention away from labored theological systems which were more adapted to display the ingenuity of the theologian than to be of practical value to society. The use of the spoken languages of Europe in literature was fitted to force thought into the mould of current exigencies. The discussions of Roger Bacon show that at the beginning of the fourteenth century men’s minds, sated with abstruse metaphysical solutions of theological questions, great and trivial, were turning to a world more real and capable of proof.

The chief survivors of the dialectical Schoolmen were Durandus and William Ockam. Gabriel Biel of Tübingen, who died just before the close of the fifteenth century, is usually called the last of the Schoolmen.

Seeberg gives a good deal of attention to Biel in his Dogmengeschichte. Stöckl carries the history of scholasticism down to Cardinal Cajetan, who wrote a commentary on Thomas Aquinas’ Summatheologica, and includes the German mystics, Eck, Luther, etc., who clearly belong in another category. Professor Seth, in art. Scholasticism in the Enc. Brit., and Werner, close the history with Francis Suarez, 1617. The new age had begun a hundred years before that time.

A characteristic feature of the scholasticism of Durandus and Ockam is the sharper distinction they made between reason and revelation. Following Duns Scotus, they declared that doctrines peculiar to revealed theology are not susceptible of proof by pure reason. The body of dogmatic truth, as accepted by the Church, they did not question.

A second characteristic is the absence of originality. They elaborated what they received. The Schoolmen of former periods had exhausted the list of theological questions and discussed them from every standpoint.

The third characteristic is the revival and ascendency of nominalism, the principle Roscellinus advocated more than two hundred years before. The Nominalists were also called Terminists, because they represent words as terms which do not necessarily have ideas and realities to correspond to them. A universal is simply a symbol or term for a number of things or for that which is common to a number of things.

Terminus prolatus vel scriptus nihil significat nisi secundum voluntariam institutionem. Ockam, as quoted by Stöckl, II. 962.

Durandus, known as doctor resolutissimus, the resolute doctor, d. 1334, was born at Pourçain, in the diocese of Clermont, entered the Dominican order, was appointed by Fohn XXII. bishop of Limoux, 1317, and was later elevated to the sees of Puy and Meaux. He attacked some of the rules of the Franciscans and John XXII.’s theory of the beatific vision, and in 1333 was declared by a commission guilty of eleven errors. His theological views are found in his commentary on the Lombard, begun when he was a young man and finished in his old age. He showed independence by assailing some of the views of Thomas Aquinas. He went beyond his predecessors in exalting the Scriptures above tradition and pronouncing their statements more authoritative than the dicta of Aristotle and other philosophers.

Naturalis philosophiae non est scire quid Aristoteles vel alii philosophi senserunt sed quid habet veritas rerum, quoted by Deutsch, p. 97. Durandus’ commentary on the sentences of the Lombard was publ. Paris, 1508, 1515, etc. See Deutsch, art. Durandus, in Herzog, V. 95-104.

On the doctrine of the eucharist Durandus seems not to have been fully satisfied with the view held by the Church, and suggested that the words "this is my body," may mean "contained under"—contentum sub hoc. This marks an approach to Luther’s view of consubstantiation. This theologian was held in such high esteem by Gerson that he recommended him, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bradwardine and Henry of Ghent, to the students of the college of Navarre.

Schwab: J. Gerson, p. 312.

The most profound scholastic thinker of the fourteenth century was the Englishman, William Ockam, d. 1349, called doctor invincibilis, the invincible doctor, or, with reference to his advocacy of nominalism, venerabilis inceptor, the venerable inaugurator. His writings, which were more voluminous than lucid, were much published at the close of the fifteenth century, but have not been put into print for several hundred years. There is no complete edition of them. Ockam’s views combined elements which were strictly mediaeval, and elements which were adopted by the Reformers and modern philosophy. His identification with the cause of the Spiritual Franciscans involved him in controversy with two popes, John XXII. and Benedict XII. His denial of papal infallibility has the appearance not 80 much of a doctrine proceeding from theological conviction as the chance weapon laid hold of in time of conflict to protect the cause of the Spirituals.

Of the earlier period of Ockam’s life, little is known. He was born in Surrey, studied at Oxford, where he probably was a student of Duns Scotus, entered the Franciscan order, and was probably master in Paris, 1315–1320. For his advocacy of the doctrine of Christ’s absolute poverty he was, by order of John XXII., tried and found guilty and thrown into confinement.

It lasted four years, Müller,Ludwig der Baier, p. 208.

His theory of nominalism was explicit, and offered no toleration to the realism of the great Schoolmen from Anselm on. Individual things alone have factual existence. The universals are mere terms or symbols, fictions of the mind—fictiones, signa mentalia, nomina, signa verbalia. They are like images in a mirror. A universal stands for an intellectual act—actus intelligenda — and nothing more. Did ideas exist in God’s mind as distinct entities, then the visible world would have been created out of them and not out of nothing.

Nullum universale est aliqua substantia extra animam existens, quoted by Seeberg, in Herzog, p. 269. Quoddam fictum existens objective in mente. Werner, 115. The expression objective in mente is equivalent to our word subjective.

Following Duns Scotus, Ockam taught determinism. God’s absolute will makes things what they are. Christ might have become wood or stone if God had so chosen. In spite of Aristotle, a body might have different kinds of motion at the same time. In the department of morals, what is now bad might have been good, if God had so willed it.

In the department of civil government, Ockam, advocating the position taken by the electors at Rense, 1338, declared the emperor did not need the confirmation of the pope. The imperial office is derived immediately from God.

Imperialis dignitas et potestas est immediate a solo Deo. Goldast, IV. 99, Frankf. ed. See also Dorner, p. 675.

The final seat of authority, this thinker found in the Scriptures. Truths such as the Trinity and the incarnation cannot be deduced by argument. The being of God cannot be proven from the so-called idea of God. A plurality of gods may be proven by the reason as well as the existence of the one God. Popes and councils may err. The Bible alone is inerrant. A Christian cannot be held to believe anything not in the Scriptures.

See Riezler, p. 273, and Seeberg, pp. 271, 278, Christianus de necessitate salutis non tenetur ad credendum nec credere quod nec in biblia continetur nec ex solis contentis in biblia potest consequentia necessaria et manifesta inferri.

The Church is the community of the faithful—communitas, or congregatio fidelium.

Romana ecclesia est distincta a congregatione fidelium et potest contra fidem errare. Ecclesiae autem universalis errare non potest. See Kropatscheck p. 65 sqq., and also Dorner, p. 696.

In the doctrine of the eucharist, Ockam represents the traditional view as less probable than the view that Christ’s body is at the side of the bread. This theory of impanation, which Rupert of Deutz taught, approached Luther’s theory of consubstantiation. However, Ockam accepted the Church’s view, because it was the less intelligible and because the power of God is unlimited. John of Paris, d. 1308, had compared the presence of Christ in the elements to the co-existence of two natures in the incarnation and was deposed from his chair at the University of Paris, 1304. Gabriel Biel took a similar view.

See Werner, D. hl. Thomas, III. 111; Harnack, Dogmengesch., III. 494; Seeberg, 276.

Ockam’s views on the authority of the civil power, papal errancy, the infallibility of the Scriptures and the eucharist are often compared with the views of Luther.

For example, Kropatscheck, especially p. 66 sqq., and Seeberg, p. 289.

§ 21. Catherine of Siena, the Saint.

Next to Francis d’Assisi, the most celebrated of the Italian saints is Catherine of Siena—Caterina da Siena—1347–1380. With Elizabeth of Thuringia, who lived more than a century before her, she is the most eminent of the holy women of the Middle Ages whom the Church has canonized. Her fame depends upon her single-hearted piety and her efforts to advance the interests of the Church and her nation. She left no order to encourage the reverence for her name. She was the most public of all the women of the Middle Ages in Italy, and yet she passed unscathed and without a taint through streets and in courts. Now, as the daughter of an humble citizen of Siena, she ministers to the poor and the sick: now, as the prophetess of heaven, she appeals to the conscience of popes and of commonwealths. Her native Sienese have sanctified her with the fragrant name la beata poplana, the blessed daughter of the people. Although much in her career, as it has been handed down by her confessor and biographer, may seem to be legendary, and although the hysterical element may not be altogether wanting from her piety, she yet deserves and will have the admiration of all men who are moved by the sight of a noble enthusiasm. It would require a fanatical severity to read the account of her unwearied efforts and the letters, into which she equally poured the fire of her soul, without feeling that the Sienese saint was a very remarkable woman, the Florence Nightingale of her time or more, "one of the most wonderful women that have ever lived," as her most recent English biographer has pronounced her. Or, shall we join Gregorovius, the thorough student of mediaeval Rome, in saying, "Catherine’s figure flits like that of an angel: through the darkness of her time, over which her gracious genius sheds a soft radiance. Her life is more worthy and assuredly a more human subject for history than the lives of the popes of her age."

Gardner, p. vii; Gregorovius, VI. 521 sqq.

Catherine Benincasa was the twenty-third of a family of twenty-five children. Her twin sister, Giovanna, died in infancy. Her father was a dyer in prosperous circumstances. Her mother, Monna Lapa, survived the daughter. Catherine treated her with filial respect, wrote her letters, several of which are extant, and had her with her on journeys and in Rome during her last days there. Catherine had no school training, and her knowledge of reading and writing she acquired after she was grown up.

As a child she was susceptible to religious impressions, and frequented the Dominican church near her father’s home. The miracles of her earlier childhood were reported by her confessor and biographer, Raymund of Capua. At twelve her parents arranged for her a marriage, but to avoid it Catherine cut off her beautiful hair. She joined the tertiary order of the Dominicans, the women adherents being called the mantellate from their black mantles. Raymund declares "that nature had not given her a face over-fair," and her personal appearance was marred by the marks of the smallpox. And yet she had a winning expression, a fund of good spirits, and sang and laughed heartily. Once devoted to a religious life, she practised great austerities, flagellating herself three times a day,—once for herself, once for the living and once for the dead. She wore a hair undergarment and an iron chain. During one Lenten season she lived on the bread taken in communion. These asceticisms were performed in a chamber in her father’s house. She was never an inmate of a convent. Such extreme asceticisms as she practised upon herself she disparaged at a later period.

At an early age Catherine became the subject of visions and revelations. On one of these occasions and after hours of dire temptation, when she was tempted to live like other girls, the Saviour appeared to her stretched on the cross and said: "My own daughter, Catherine, seest thou how much I have suffered for thee? Let it not be hard for thee to suffer for me." Thrilled with the address, she asked: "Where wert thou, Lord, when I was tempted with such impurity?" and He replied, "In thy heart." In 1367, according to her own statement, the Saviour betrothed himself to her, putting a ring on her finger. The ring was ever afterwards visible to herself though unseen by others. Five years before her death, she received the stigmata directly from Christ. Their impression gave sharp pain, and Catherine insisted that, though they likewise were invisible to others, they were real to her.

In obedience to a revelation, Catherine renounced the retired life she had been living, and at the age of twenty began to appear in public and perform the active offices of charity. This was in 1367. She visited the poor and sick, and soon became known as the ministering angel of the whole city. During the plague of 1374, she was indefatigable by day and night, healed those of whom the physicians despaired, and she even raised the dead. The lepers outside the city walls she did not neglect.

One of the remarkable incidents in her career which she vouches for in one of her letters to Raymund was her treatment of Niccolo Tuldo, a young nobleman condemned to die for having uttered words disrespectful of the city government. The young man was in despair, but under Catherine’s influence he not only regained composure, but became joyful in the prospect of death. Catherine was with him at the block and held his head. She writes, "I have just received a head into my hands which was to me of such sweetness as no heart can think, or tongue describe." Before the execution she accompanied the unfortunate man to the mass, where he received the communion for the first time. His last words were "naught but Jesus and Catherine. And, so saying," wrote his benefactress, "I received his head in my hands." She then saw him received of Christ, and as she further wrote, "When he was at rest, my soul rested in peace, in so great fragrance of blood that I could not bear to remove the blood which had fallen on me from him."

The fame of such a woman could not be held within the walls of her native city. Neighboring cities and even the pope in Avignon heard of her deeds of charity and her revelations. The guide of minds seeking the consolations of religion, the minister to the sick and dying, Catherine now entered into the wider sphere of the political life of Italy and the welfare of the Church. Her concern was divided between efforts to support the papacy and to secure the amelioration of the clergy and establish peace. With the zeal of a prophet, she urged upon Gregory XI. to return to Rome. She sought to prevent the rising of the Tuscan cities against the Avignon popes and to remove the interdict which was launched against Florence, and she supported Urban VI. against the anti-pope, Clement VII. With equal fervor she urged Gregory to institute a reformation of the clergy, to allow no weight to considerations of simony and flattery in choosing cardinals and pastors and "to drive out of the sheep-fold those wolves, those demons incarnate, who think only of good cheer, splendid feasts and superb liveries." She also was zealous in striving to stir up the flames of a new crusade. To Sir John Hawkwood, the freelance and terror of the peninsula, she wrote, calling upon him that, as he took such pleasure in fighting, he should thenceforth no longer direct his arms against Christians, but against the infidels. She communicated to the Queen of Cyprus on the subject. Again and again she urged it upon Gregory XI., and chiefly on the grounds that he "might minister the blood of the Lamb to the wretched infidels," and that converted, they might aid in driving pride and other vices out of the Christian world.

Scudder, Letters, pp. 100, 121, 136, 179, 184, 234, etc.

Commissioned by Gregory, she journeyed to Pisa to influence the city in his favor. She was received with honors by the archbishop and the head of the republic, and won over two professors who visited her with the purpose of showing her she was self-deceived or worse. She told them that it was not important for her to know how God had created the world, but that "it was essential to know that the Son of God had taken our human nature and lived and died for our salvation." One of the professors, removing his crimson velvet cap, knelt before her and asked for forgiveness. Catherine’s cures of the sick won the confidence of the people. On this visit she was accompanied by her mother and a group of like-minded women.

A large chapter in Catherine’s life is interwoven with the history of Florence. The spirit of revolt against the Avignon regime was rising in upper Italy and, when the papal legate in Bologna, in a year of dearth, forbade the transportation of provisions to Florence, it broke out into war. At the invitation of the Florentines, Catherine visited the city, 1375 and, a year later, was sent as a delegate to Avignon to negotiate terms of peace. She was received with honor by the pope, but not without hesitancy. The other members of the delegation, when they arrived, refused to recognize her powers and approve her methods. The cardinals treated her coolly or with contempt, and women laid snares at her devotions to bring ridicule upon her. Such an attempt was made by the pope’s niece, Madame de Beaufort Turenne, who knelt at her side and ran a sharp knife into her foot so that she limped from the wound.

The dyer’s daughter now turned her attention to the task of confirming the supreme pontiff in his purpose to return to Rome and counteract the machinations of the cardinals against its execution. Seeing her desire realized, she started back for Italy and, met by her mother at Leghorn, went on to Florence, carrying a commission from the pope. Her effort to induce the city to bow to the sentence of interdict, which had been laid upon it, was in a measure successful. Her reverence for the papal office demanded passive obedience. Gregory’s successor, Urban VI., lifted the ban. Catherine then returned to Siena where she dictated the Dialogue, a mystical treatise inculcating prayer, obedience, discretion and other virtues. Catherine declared that God alone had been her guide in its composition.

In the difficulties, which arose soon after Urban’s election, that pontiff looked to Siena and called its distinguished daughter to Rome. They had met in Avignon. Accompanied by her mother and other companions, she reached the holy city in the Autumn of 1378. They occupied a house by themselves and lived upon alms.

Gardner, p. 298, says one of the two houses is still shown where they dwelt.

She died lying on boards, April 29, 1380. To her companions standing at her side, she said: "Dear children, let not my death sadden you, rather rejoice to think that I am leaving a place of many sufferings to go to rest in the quiet sea, the eternal God, and to be united forever with my most sweet and loving Bridegroom. And I promise to be with you more and to be more useful to you, since I leave darkness to pass into the true and everlasting light." Again and again she whispered, "I have sinned, O Lord; be merciful to me." She prayed for Urban, for the whole Church and for her companions, and then she departed, repeating the words, "Into thy hands I commit my spirit."

At the time of her death Catherine of Siena was not yet thirty-three years old. A magnificent funeral was ordered by Urban. A year after, her head, enclosed in a reliquary, was sent to her native Siena, and in 1461 she was canonized by the city’s famous son, pope Pius II., who uttered the high praise "that none ever approached her without going away better." In 1865 when Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome was reopened, her ashes were carried through the streets, the silver urn containing them being borne by four bishops. Lamps are kept ever burning at the altar dedicated to her in the church. In 1866 Pius IX. elevated the dyer’s daughter to the dignity of patron saint and protectress of Rome, a dignity she shares with the prince of the Apostles. With Petrarch she had been the most ardent advocate of its claims as the papal residence, and her zeal was exclusively religious.

In her correspondence and Dialogue we have the biography of Catherine’s soul. Nearly four hundred of her letters are extant.

None of these are in her own hand, but six of them are originals as they were written down at her dictation. Gardner, p. xii., 373 sqq.

The correspondence shows that Catherine had some acquaintance with the New Testament from which she quotes the greater precepts and draws descriptions from the miracle of the water changed into wine and the expulsion of the moneychangers from the temple and such parables as the ten virgins and the marriage-feast. One of her most frequent expressions is the blood of Christ, and in truly mystical or conventual manner she bids her correspondents, even the pope and the cardinals, bathe and drown and inebriate themselves in it, yea, to clothe and fill themselves with it, "for Christ did not buy us with gold or silver or pearls or other precious stones, but with his own precious blood."

Letters, pp. 54, 65, 75, 110, 158, 164, 226, 263, 283, etc.

To Catherine the religious life was a subjection of the will to the will of God and the outgoing of the soul in exercises of prayer and the practice of love. "I want you to wholly destroy your own will that it may cling to Christ crucified." So she wrote to a mother bereft of her children. Writing to the recluse, Bartolomea della Seta, she represented the Saviour as saying, "Sin and virtue consist in the consent of the will, there is no sin or virtue unless voluntarily wrought."

To another she wrote, "I have already seen many penitents who have been neither patient nor obedient because they have studied to kill their bodies but not their wills."

Letters, pp. 43, 162, 152, 149.

Her sound religious philosophy showed itself in insisting again and again that outward discipline is not the only or always the best way to secure the victory of the spirit. If the body is weak or fallen into illness, the rule of discretion sets aside the exercises of bodily discipline. She wrote, "Not only should fasting be abandoned but flesh be eaten and, if once a day is not enough, then four times a day." Again and again she treats of penance as an instrument. "The little good of penance may hinder the greater good of inward piety. Penance cuts off," so she wrote in a remarkable letter to Sister Daniella of Orvieto, "yet thou wilt always find the root in thee, ready to sprout again, but virtue pulls up by the root."

Monastic as Catherine was, yet no evangelical guide-book could write more truly than she did in most particulars. And at no point does this noble woman rise higher than when she declined to make her own states the standard for others, and condemned those "who, indiscreetly, want to measure all bodies by one and the same measure, the measure by which they measure themselves." Writing to her niece, Nanna Benincasa, she compared the heart to a lamp, wide above and narrow below. A bride of Christ must have lamp and oil and light. The heart should be wide above, filled with holy thoughts and prayer, bearing in memory the blessings of God, especially the blessing of the blood by which we are bought. And like a lamp, it should be narrow below, "not loving or desiring earthly things in excess nor hungering for more than God wills to give us."

To the Christian virtues of prayer and love she continually returns. Christian love is compared to the sea, peaceful and profound as God Himself, for "God is love." This passage throws light upon the unsearchable mystery of the Incarnate Word who, constrained by love, gave Himself up in all humility. We love because we are loved. He loves of grace, and we love Him of duty because we are bound to do so; and to show our love to Him we ought to serve and love every rational creature and extend our love to good and bad, to all kinds of people, as much to one who does us ill as to one who serves us, for God is no respecter of persons, and His charity extends to just men and sinners. Peter’s love before Pentecost was sweet but not strong. After Pentecost he loved as a son, bearing all tribulations with patience. So we, too, if we remain in vigil and continual prayer and tarry ten days, shall receive the plenitude of the Spirit. More than once in her letters to Gregory, she bursts out into a eulogy of love as the remedy for all evils. "The soul cannot live without love," she wrote in the Dialogue, "but must always love something, for it was created through love. Affection moves the understanding, as it were, saying, ’I want to love, for the food wherewith I am fed is love.’ "

Scudder, Letters, pp. 81, 84, 126 sq.; Gardner, Life, p. 377.

Such directions as these render Catherine’s letters a valuable manual of religious devotion, especially to those who are on their guard against being carried away by the underlying quietistic tone. Not only do they have a high place as the revelation of a pious woman’s soul. They deal with unconcealed boldness and candor with the low conditions into which the Church was fallen. Popes are called upon to institute reforms in the appointment of clergymen and to correct abuses in other directions. As for the pacification of the Tuscan cities, a cause which lay so close to Catherine’s heart, she urged the pontiff to use the measures of peace and not of war, to deal as a father would deal with a rebellious son,—to put into practice clemency, not the pride of authority. Then the very wolves would nestle in his bosom like lambs.

Letters, p. 133.

As for the pope’s return to Rome, she urged it as a duty he owed to God who had made him His vicar. In view of the opposition on the Rhone, almost holding him as by physical force, she called upon him to "play the man," "to be a manly man, free from fear and fleshly love towards himself or towards any creature related to him by kin," "to be stable in his resolution and to believe and trust in Christ in spite of all predictions of the evil to follow his return to Rome."

Letters, pp. 66, 185, 232, etc.

The stress Catherine laid upon the pope’s responsibility to God and her passionate reproof of an unworthy and hireling ministry, inclined some to give her a place among the heralds of the Protestant Reformation. Flacius Illyricus included her in the list of his witnesses for the truth—Catalogus testium veritatis.

Döllinger, Fables and Prophecies of the Middle Ages, p. 330, calls attention to the failure of Catherine’s predictions to reach fulfilment. "How little have these longings of the devout maiden of Siena been transformed into history!"

In recalling the women of the century from 1350 to 1450, the mind easily associates together Catherine of Siena and Joan of Arc, 1411–1431, one the passionate advocate of the Church, the other of the national honor of France. The Maid of Orleans, born of peasant parentage, was only twenty when she was burnt at the stake on the streets of Rouen, 1431. Differing from her Italian sister by comeliness of form and robustness of constitution, she also, as she thought, was the subject of angelic communications and divine guidance. Her unselfish devotion to her country at first brought it victory, but, at last, to her capture and death. Her trial by the English on the charges of heresy and sorcery and her execution are a dark sheet among the pages of her century’s history. Twenty-five years after her death, the pope revoked the sentence, and the French heroine, whose standard was embroidered with lilies and adorned with pictures of the creation and the annunciation, was beatified, 1909, and now awaits the crown of canonization from Rome. The exalted passion of these two women, widely as they differ in methods and ideals and in the close of their careers, diffuses a bright light over the selfish pursuits of their time, and makes the aims of many of its courts look low and grovelling.

§ 22. Peter d’Ailly, Ecclesiastical Statesman.

One of the most prominent figures in the negotiations for the healing of the papal schism, as well as one of the foremost personages of his age, was Peter d’Ailly, born in Compiegne 1350, died in Avignon 1420. His eloquence, which reminds us of Bossuet and other French orators of the court of Louis XIV., won for him the title of the Eagle of France—aquila Francia.

Tschackert, Salembier and Finke consider D’Ailly under the three aspects of theologian, philosopher and ecclesiastical diplomatist. Lenz and Bess emphasize the part he played as an advocate of French policy against England..

In 1372 he entered the College of Navarre as a theological student, prepared a commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard three years later, and in 1380 reached the theological doctorate. He at once became involved in the measures for the healing of the schism, and in 1381 delivered a celebrated address in the name of the university before the French regent, the duke of Anjou, to win the court for the policy of settling the papal controversy through a general council. His appeal not meeting with favor, he retired to Noyon, from which he wrote a letter purporting to come from the devil, a satire based on the continuance of the schism, in which the prince of darkness called upon his friends and vassals, the prelates, to follow his example in promoting division in the Church. He warned them as their overlord that the holding of a council might result in establishing peace and so bring eternal shame upon them. He urged them to continue to make the Church a house of merchandise and to be careful to tithe anise and cummin, to make broad the borders of their garments and in every other way to do as he had given them an example.

Epistola diaboli Leviathan. Tschackert gives the text, Appendix, pp. 15-21.

In 1384 D’Ailly was made head of the College of Navarre, where he had Gerson for a pupil, and in 1389 chancellor of the university.

When Benedict XIII. was chosen successor to Clement VII., he was sent by the French king on a confidential mission to Avignon. Benedict won his allegiance and appointed him successively bishop of Puy, 1395, and bishop of Cambray, 1397. D’Ailly was with Benedict at Genoa, 1405, and Savona, 1407, but by that time seems to have come to the conclusion that Benedict was not sincere in his profession of readiness to resign, and returned to Cambray. In his absence Cambray had decided for the subtraction of its allegiance from Avignon. D’Ailly was seized and taken to Paris, but protected by the king, who was his friend. Thenceforth he favored the assemblage of a general council.

At Pisa and at Constance, D’Ailly took the position that a general council is superior to the pope and may depose him. Made a cardinal by John XXIII., 1411, he attended the council held at Rome the following year and in vain tried to have a reform of the calendar put through. At Constance, he took the position that the Pisan council? though it was called by the Spirit and represented the Church universal, might have erred, as did other councils reputed to be general councils. He declared that the three synods of Pisa, Rome and Constance, though not one body, yet were virtually one, even as the stream of the Rhine at different points is one and the same. It was not necessary, so he held, for the Council of Constance to pass acts confirming the Council of Pisa, for the two were on a par.

These judgments are expressed in the Capita agendorum, a sort of programme for the guidance of the council prepared by D’Ailly, 1414. Finke, Forschungen, pp. 102-132, has no doubt that they proceeded from D’Ailly’s pen, a view confirmed by MSS. in Vienna and Rome. Finke gives a résumé of the articles, the original of which is given by van der Hardt., II. 201 sqq. and Mansi, XXVII. 547.

In the proceedings against John XXIII., the cardinal took sides against him. He was the head of the commission which tried Huss in matters of faith, June 7, 8, 1415, and was present when the sentence of death was passed upon that Reformer. At the close of the council he appears as one of the three candidates for the office of pope, and his defeat was a disappointment to the French.

Tschackert, p. 295.

D’Ailly followed Ockam as a nominalist. To his writings in the departments of philosophy, theology and Church government he added works on astronomy and geography and a much-read commentary on Aristotle’s meteorology.

Tschackert gives an estimate of D’Ailly’s writings, pp. 303-335.

§ 23. John Gerson, Theologian and Church Leader.

In John Gerson, 1363–1429, we have the most attractive and the most influential theological leader of the first half of the fifteenth century. He was intimately identified with the University of Paris as professor and as its chancellor in the period of its most extensive influence in Europe. His voice carried great weight in the settlement of the questions rising out of the papal schism.

Jean Charlier Gerson, born Dec. 14, 1363, in the village of Gerson, in the diocese of Rheims, was the oldest of twelve children. In a letter to him still extant,

Schwab, p. 51.

Gerson, perhaps the most distinguished name the University of Paris has on its list of students, was a faithful and enthusiastic son of his alma mater, calling her "his mother," "the mother of the light of the holy Church," "the nurse of all that is wise and good in Christendom," "a prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem," "the fountain of knowledge, the lamp of our faith, the beauty and ornament of France, yea, of the whole world."

Schwab, p. 59.

In 1382, at the age of nineteen, he passed into the theological department, and a year later came under the guidance of D’Ailly, the newly appointed rector, remaining under him for seven years. Gerson was already a marked man, and was chosen in 1383 procurator of the French "nation," and in 1387 one of the delegation to appear before Clement VII. and argue the case against John of Montson. This Dominican, who had been condemned for denying the immaculate conception of Mary, refused to recant on the plea that in being condemned Thomas Aquinas was condemned, and he appealed to the pope. The University of Paris took up the case, and D’Ailly in two addresses before the papal consistory took the ground that Thomas, though a saint, was not infallible. The case went against De Montson; and the Dominicans, who refused to bow to the decision, left the university and did not return till 1403.

Gerson advocated Mary’s exemption from original as well as actual sin, and made a distinction between her and Christ, Christ being exempt by nature, and Mary—domina nostra — by an act of divine grace. This doctrine, he said, cannot be immediately derived from the Scriptures,

In scriptura sacra neque continetur explicite neque in contentis eadem educitur evidenter, Du Pin’s ed. III. 1350. For sermons on the conception, nativity and annunciation of the Virgin’ vol. III. 1317-1377. Also III. 941, and Du Pin’s Gersoniana, I. cviii. sq.

At D’Ailly’s promotion to the episcopate, 1395, his pupil fell heir to both his offices, the offices of professor of theology and chancellor of the university. In the discussion over the healing of the schism in which the university took the leading part, he occupied a place of first prominence, and by tracts, sermons and public memorials directed the opinion of the Church in this pressing matter. The premise from which he started out was that the peace of the Church is an essential condition to the fulfilment of its mission. This view he set forth in a famous sermon, preached in 1404 at Tarascon before Benedict XIII. and the duke of Orleans. Princes and prelates, he declared, both owe obedience to law. The end for which the Church was constituted is the peace and well-being of men. All Church authority is established to subserve the interests of peace. Peace is so great a boon that all should be ready to renounce dignities and position for it. Did not Christ suffer shame? Better for a while to be without a pope than that the Church should observe the canons and not have peace, for there can be salvation where there is no pope.

Potest absque papa mortali stare salus, Du Pin, II. 72. The Tarascon sermon is given by Du Pin Pin, II. 54-72. Schwab’s analysis, pp. 171-178.

Gerson, though not present at the council of Pisa, contributed to its discussions by his important tracts on the Unity of the Church—De unitate ecclesiastica— and the Removal of a Pope—De auferbilitate papae ab ecclesia. The views set forth were that Christ is the head of the Church, and its monarchical constitution is unchangeable. There must be one pope, not several, and the bishops are not equal in authority with him. As the pope may separate himself from the Church, so the Church may separate itself from the pope. Such action might be required by considerations of self-defence. The papal office is of God, and yet the pope may be deposed even by a council called without his consent. All Church offices and officials exist for the good of the Church, that is, for the sake of peace which comes through the exercise of love. If a pope has a right to defend himself against, say, the charge of unchastity, why should not the Church have a like right to defend itself? A council acts under the immediate authority of Christ and His laws. The council may pronounce against a pope by virtue of the power of the keys which is given not only to one but to the body—unitati. Aristotle declared that the body has the right, if necessary, to depose its prince. So may the council, and whoso rejects a council of the Church rejects God who directs its action. A pope may be deposed for heresy and schism, as, for example, if he did not bend the knee before the sacrament, and he might be deposed when no personal guilt was chargeable against him, as in the case already referred to, when he was a captive of the Saracens and was reported dead.

At the Council of Constance, where Gerson spoke as the delegate of the French king, he advocated these positions again and again with his voice, as in his address March 23, 1415, and in a second address July 21, when he defended the decree which the synod had passed at its fifth session. He reasserted that the pope may be forced to abdicate, that general councils are above the popes and that infallibility only belongs to the Church as a body or its highest representative, a general council.

See Schwab, pp. 520 sqq., 668.

A blot rests upon Gerson’s name for the active part he took in the condemnation of John Huss. He was not above his age, and using the language of Innocent III. called heresy a cancer.

In a sermon before the Council of Constance, Du Pin, II. 207.

In the controversy over the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, involved in the Bohemian heresy, Gerson also took an extreme position, defending it by arguments which seem to us altogether unworthy of a genuine theology. In a tract on the subject he declared that, though some passages of Scripture and of the Fathers favored the distribution of both wine and bread, they do not contain a definite command, and in the cases where an explicit command is given it must be understood as applying to the priests who are obliged to commune under both kinds so as to fully represent Christ’s sufferings and death. But this is not required of the laity who commune for the sake of the effect of Christ’s death and not to set it forth. Christ commanded only the Apostles to partake of both kinds.

Contra heresin de communione laicorum sub utraque specie, Du Pin, I. 457-468. See Schwab, p. 604 sqq.

To these statements Gerson added practical considerations against the distribution of the cup to laymen, such as the danger of spilling the wine, of soiling the vessels from the long beards of laymen, of having the wine turn to vinegar, if it be preserved for the sick and so it cease to be the blood of Christ—et ita desineret esse sanguis Christi — and from the impossibility of consecrating in one vessel enough for 10,000 to 20,000 communicants, as at Easter time may be necessary. Another danger was the encouragement such a practice would give to the notions that priest and layman are equal, and that the chief value of the sacrament lies in the participation and not in the consecration of the elements.

Quod virtus hujus sacramenti non principalius in consecratione quam in sumptione, Du Pin, I. 467.

A subject on which Gerson devoted a great deal of energy for many years was whether the murder of tyrants or of a traitorous vassal is justifiable or not. He advocated the negative side of the case, which he failed to win before the Council of Constance. The question grew out of the treatment of the half-insane French king, Charles VI. (1880–1422), and the attempt of different factions to get control of the government.

On Nov. 28, 1407, the king’s cousin, Louis, duke of Orleans, was murdered at the command of the king’s uncle, John, duke of Burgundy. The duke’s act was defended by the Franciscan and Paris professor, John Petit,—Johannes Parvus,—in an address delivered before the king March 8, 1408. Gerson, who at an earlier time seems to have advocated the murder of tyrants, answered Petit in a public address, and called upon the king to suppress Petit’s nine propositions.

Vol. V. of Gerson’s works is taken up with documents bearing on this subject. Gerson’s addresses, bearing upon it at Constance, are given in vol. II. See Schwab, p. 609 sqq., and Bess, Zur Geschichte, etc. The Chartularium, IV. 261-285, 325 sqq., gives the nine propositions in French, with Gerson’s reply, and other matter pertaining to the controversy.

The bishop of Paris, supported by a commission of the Inquisition and at the king’s direction, condemned Petit and his views. In February, 1414, Gerson made a public address defending the condemnation, and two days later articles taken from Petit’s work were burnt in front of Notre Dame. The king ratified the bishop’s judgment, and the duke of Burgundy appealed the case to Rome.

Schwab, p. 620.

The case was now transferred to the council, which at its fifteenth session, July 6, 1415, passed a compromise measure condemning the doctrine that a tyrant, in the absence of a judicial sentence, may and ought to be put to death by any subject whatever, even by the use of treacherous means, and in the face of an oath without committing perjury. Petit was not mentioned by name. It was this negative and timid action, which led Gerson to say that if Huss had had a defender, he would not have been found guilty. It was rumored that the commission which was appointed to bring in a report, by sixty-one out of eighty votes, decided for the permissibility of Petit’s articles declaring that Peter meant to kill the high priest’s servant, and that, if he had known Judas’ thoughts at the Last Supper, he would have been justified in killing him. The duke of Burgundy’s gold is said to have been freely used.

Mansi, XXVII. 765, Quilibet tyrannus potest et debet licite et meritorie occidi per quemcumque ... non expectata sententia vel mandato judicis cuiuscumque. For D’Ailly’s part, see Tschackert, pp. 235-247.

The duke of Burgundy got possession of Paris in 1418, and Gerson found the doors of France closed to him. Under the protection of the duke of Bavaria he found refuge at Rattenberg and later in Austria. On the assassination of the duke of Burgundy himself, with the connivance of the dauphin, Sept. 10, 1419, he returned to France, but not to Paris. He went to Lyons, where his brother John was, and spent his last years there in monastic seclusion. The dauphin is said to have granted him 200 livres in 1420 in recognition of his services to the crown.

It remains to speak of Gerson as a theologian, a preacher and a patriot.

In the department of theology proper Gerson has a place among the mystics.

Gerson’s mysticism is presented in such tracts as De vita spirituali animae and De monte contemplationis, Du Pin, III. 1-77, 541-579.

While Gerson emphasized the religious feelings, he was far from being a religious visionary and wrote treatises against the dangers of delusion from dreams and revelations. As coins must be tested by their weight, hardness, color, shape and stamp, so visions are to be tested by the humility and honesty of those who profess to have them and their readiness to teach and be taught. He commended the monk who, when some one offered to show him a figure like Christ, replied, "I do not want to see Christ on the earth. I am contented to wait till I see him in heaven."

When the negotiations were going on at the Council of Constance for the confirmation of the canonization of St. Brigitta, Gerson laid down the principle that, if visions reveal what is already in the Scriptures,

In his De probatione spirituum, Du Pin, I. 37-43; and De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis, Du Pin, I. 43-59.

The Scriptures, Gerson taught, are the Church’s rule and guide to the end of the world. If a single statement should be proved false, then the whole volume is false, for the Holy Spirit is author of the whole. The letter of the text, however, is not sufficient to determine their meaning, as is proved from the translations of the Waldenses, Beghards and other secretaries.

Si propositio aliqua J. scripturae posita assertive per auctorem suum, qui est Sp. sanctus, esset falsa. tota s. scripturae vacillaret auctoritas, quoted by Schwab, p. 314.

Great as Gerson’s services were in other departments, it was, to follow his sympathetic and scholarly biographer, Schwab, from the pulpit that he exercised most influence on his generation.

Gerson hatte seine einflussreiche Stellung vorzugsweise dem Rufe zu danken den er als Prediger genoss, Schwab, p. 376.

During the last ten years of his life, spent in seclusion at Lyons, he continued his literary activity, writing more particularly in the vein of mystical theology. His last work was on the Canticles.

The tradition runs that the great teacher in his last years conducted a catechetical school for children in St. Paul’s at Lyons, and that he taught them to offer for himself the daily prayer, "God, my creator, have pity upon Thy poor servant, Jean Gerson"—Mon Dieu, mon Createur, ayez pitié de vostre pauvre serviteur, Jean Gerson.

See Schwab, p. 773, who neither accepts nor rejects the tradition. Dr. Philip Schaff used to bring the last literary activity of President Theodore D. Wolsey, of Yale College, into comparison with the activity of Gerson. In his last years Dr. Wolsey wrote the expositions of the Sunday school lessons for the Sunday School Times.

In a threefold work, giving a brief exposition of the Ten Commandments, a statement of the seven mortal sins and some short meditations on death and the way to meet it, Gerson gives a sort of catechism, although it is not thrown into the form of questions and answers. As the author states, it was intended for the benefit of poorly instructed curates who heard confessions, for parents who had children to instruct, for persons not interested in the public services of worship and for those who had the care of the sick in hospitals.

Opusculum tripartitum: de preceptis decalogi, de confessione, et de arte moriendi, Du Pin, I., 425-450. Bess, in Herzog, VI. 615, calls it "the first catechism."

The title, most Christian doctor—doctor christianissimus — given to John Gerson is intended to emphasize the evangelical temper of his teaching. To a clear intellect, he added warm religious fervor. With a love for the Church, which it would be hard to find excelled, he magnified the body of Christian people as possessing the mind and immediate guidance of Christ and threw himself into the advocacy of the principle that the judgment of Christendom, as expressed in a general council, is the final authority of religious matters on the earth.

He opposed some of the superstitions inherited from another time. He emphasized the authority of the sacred text. In these views as in others he was in sympathy with the progressive spirit of his age. But he stopped short of the principles of the Reformers. He knew nothing of the principles of individual sovereignty and the rights of conscience. His thinking moved along churchly lines. He had none of the bold original thought of Wyclif and little of that spirit which sets itself against the current errors of the times in which we live. His vote for Huss’ burning proves sufficiently that the light of the new age had not dawned upon his mind. He was not, like them, a forerunner of the movement of the sixteenth century.

The chief principle for which Gerson contended, the supremacy of general councils, met with defeat soon after the great chancellor’s death, and was set aside by popes and later by the judgment of a general council. His writings, however, which were frequently published remain the chief literary monuments in the department of theology of the first half of the fourteenth century.

The first complete edition of Gerson’s writings appeared from the press of John Koelhoff. 4 vols. Cologne, 1483, 1484. The celebrated preacher, Geiler of Strassburg, edited a second edition 1488.

§ 24. Nicolas of Clamanges, the Moralist.

The third of the great luminaries who gave fame to the University of Paris in this period, Nicolas Poillevillain de Clamanges, was born at Clamengis,

The spelling given by Denifle in the Chartularium.

In 1394, Clamanges took a prominent part in preparing the paper, setting forth the conclusions of the university in regard to the healing of the schism.

Chartul., III 617-624.

The Paris professor was one of the men whom the keen-eyed Peter de Luna picked out, and when he was elected pope, Clamanges supported him and wrote appealing to him, as the one who no longer occupied the position of one boatman among others, but stood at the rudder of the ship, to act in the interest of all Christendom. He was called as secretary to the Avignon court, but became weary of the commotion and the vices of the palace and the town.

Taedebat me vehementer curiae, taedebat turbae, taedebat tumultus, taedebat ambitionis et morum in plerisque vitiosorum, he wrote. Quoted by Knöpfler.

To D’Ailly he wrote on the advantages of a secluded life.—De fructu eremi. In another tract—De fructu rerum adversarum — he presented the advantages of adversity. One of more importance complained of the abuse of the Lord’s Day and of the multiplication of festivals as taking the workman from his work while the interests of piety were not advanced. In still another tract—De studio theologico — addressed to a theologian at Paris who had inquired whether it was better for him to continue where he was or to retire to a pastorate, he emphasized the importance and delicacy of caring for souls, but advised the inquirer to remain at the university and to concern himself chiefly with the study of the Scriptures. He ascribed the Church’s decline to their neglect, and pronounced the mass, processionals and festivals as of no account unless the heart be purified by faith.

During the sessions of the Council of Constance, which he did not attend, Clamanges sent a letter to that body urging unity of thought and action. He expressed doubt whether general councils were always led by the Holy Spirit. The Church, which he defined as infallible, is only there where the Holy Spirit is, and where the Church is, can be only known to God Himself. In 1425 he returned to Paris and lectured on rhetoric and theology.

Clamanges’ reputation rests chiefly upon his sharp criticism of the corrupt morals of the clergy. His residence in Avignon gave him a good opportunity for observation. His tract on the prelates who were practising simony—De praesulibus simoniacis — is a commentary on the words, "But ye have made it a den of thieves," Matt. 21:13. A second tract on the downfall of the Church—De ruina ecclesiae — is one of the most noted writings of the age. Here are set forth the simony and private vices practised at Avignon where all things holy were prostituted for gold and luxury. Here is described the corruption of the clergy from the pope down to the lowest class of priests. The author found ideal conditions in the first century, when the minds of the clergy were wholly set on heavenly things. With possessions and power came avarice and ambition, pride and luxury. The popes themselves were guilty of pride in exalting their authority above that of the empire and by asserting for themselves the right of appointing all prelates, yea of filling all the benefices of Christendom. The evils arising from annates and expectances surpass the power of statement. The cardinals followed the popes in their greed and pride, single cardinals having as many as 500 livings. In order to perpetuate their "tyranny," pope and curia had entered into league with princes, which Clamanges pronounces an abominable fornication. Many of the bishops drew large incomes from their sees which they administered through others, never visiting them themselves. Canons and vicars followed the same course and divided their time between idleness and sensual pleasure. The mendicant monks corresponded to the Pharisees of the synagogue. Scarcely one cleric out of a thousand did what his profession demanded. They were steeped in ignorance and given to brawling, drinking, playing with dice and fornication. Priests bought the privilege of keeping concubines. As for the nuns, Clamanges said, he dared not speak of them. Nunneries were not the sanctuaries of God, but shameful brothels of Venus, resorts of unchaste and wanton youth for the sating of their passions, and for a girl to put on the veil was virtually to submit herself to prostitution.

Quid aliud sunt hoc tempore puellarum monasteria, nisi quaedam, non dico Dei sanctuaria sed execranda prostibula Veneris ... ut idem hodie sit puellam velare quod ad publice scortandum exponere, Hardt, I. 38.

The author did not call to open battle like the German Reformer at a later time, but suggested as a remedy prayers, processions and fasts. His watchword was that the Church must humble itself before it can be rebuilt.

Eccles. prius humilianda quam erigenda. The authorship of the De ruina has been made a matter of dispute. Müntz denied it to Clamanges chiefly on the ground of its poor Latin and Knöpfler is inclined to follow him. On the other hand Schuberth and Schwab, followed somewhat hesitatingly by Bess, accept the traditional view, Schwab brings out the similarity between the De ruina and Clamanges’ other writings and takes the view that, while the tract was written in 1401 or 1402, it was not published till 1409.

The loud complaints against the state of morals at the papal court and beyond during the Avignon period increased, if possible, in strength during the time of the schism. The list of abuses to be corrected which the Council of Constance issued, Oct. 30, 1417, includes the official offences of the curia, such as reservations, annates, the sale of indulgences and the unrestricted right of appeals to the papal court. The subject of chastity it remained for individual writers to press. In describing the third Babylon, Petrarch was even more severe than Clamanges who wrote of conditions as they existed nearly a century later and accused the papal household of practising adultery, rape and all manners of fornication.

Mitto stuprum, raptus, incestus, adulteria, qui jam pontificalis lasciviae ludi sunt, quoted by Lea. Sacerd. Celibacy, I. 426. Gillis li Muisis, abbot of St. Martin di Tournai, d. 1352, in the Recollections of his Life written a year before his death, speaks of good wines, a good table, fine attire and above all holidays as in his day the chief occupations of monks. Curés and chaplains had girls and women as valets, a troublesome habit over which there was murmuring, and it had to be kept quiet. See C. V. Lang

§ 25. Nicolas of Cusa, Scholar and Churchman.

Of the theologians of the generation following Gerson and D’Ailly none occupies a more conspicuous place than the German Nicolas of Cusa, 1401–1464. After taking a prominent part in the Basel council in its earlier history, he went into the service of Eugenius IV. and distinguished himself by practical efforts at Church reform and by writings in theology and other departments of human learning.

Born at Cues near Treves, the son of a boatman, he left the parental home on account of harsh treatment. Coming under the patronage of the count of Manderscheid, he went to Deventer, where he received training in the school conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life. He studied law in Padua, and reached the doctorate, but exchanged law for theology because, to follow the statement of his opponent, George of Heimburg, he had failed in his first case. At Padua he had for one of his teachers Cesarini, afterwards cardinal and a prominent figure in the Council of Basel.

In 1432 he appeared in Basel as the representative of Ulrich of Manderscheid, archbishop-elect of Treves, to advocate Ulrich’s cause against his rivals Rabanus of Helmstatt, bishop of Spires, whom the pope had appointed archbishop of the Treves diocese. Identifying himself closely with the conciliar body, Nicolas had a leading part in the proceedings with the Hussites and went with the majority in advocating the superiority of the council over the pope. His work on Catholic Unity,—De concordantia catholica,—embodying his views on this question and dedicated to the council 1433, followed the earlier treatments of Langenstein, Nieheim and Gerson. A general council, being inspired by the Holy Spirit, speaks truly and infallibly. The Church is the body of the faithful—unitas fidelium — and is represented in a general council. The pope derives his authority from the consent of the Church, a council has power to dethrone him for heresy and other causes and may not be prorogued or adjourned without its own consent. Peter received no more authority from Christ than the other Apostles. Whatever was said to Peter was likewise said to the others. All bishops are of equal authority and dignity, whether their jurisdiction be episcopal, archiepiscopal, patriarchal or papal, just as all presbyters are equal.

John of Turrecremata, d. 1468, whose tract on the seat of authority in the Church—Summa de Eccles. et ejus auctoritate —1450 has already been referred to, took the extreme ultramontane position. The papal supremacy extends to all Christians throughout the world and includes the appointment of all bishops and right to depose them, the filling of all prelatures and benefices whatsoever and the canonizing of saints. As the vicar of Christ, he has full jurisdiction in all the earth in temporal as well as spiritual matters because all jurisdiction of secular princes is derived from the pope quod omnium principum saecularum jurisdictionalis potestas a papa in eos derivata sit. Quoted from Gieseler, III. 5, pp. 219-227.

In spite of these views, when the question arose as to the place of meeting the Greeks, Nicolas sided with the minority in favor of an Italian city, and was a member of the delegations appointed by the minority which visited Eugenius IV. at Bologna and went to Constantinople. This was in 1437 and from that time forward he was a ready servant of Eugenius and his two successors. Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II., called him the Hercules of the Eugenians. Aeneas also pronounced him a man notable for learning in all branches of knowledge and on account of his godly life.

Hist. of Fred. III., 409, Germ. transl. II. 227.

Eugenius employed his new supporter as legate to arrange terms of peace with the German Church and princes, an end he saw accomplished in the concordat of Vienna, 1447. He was rewarded by promotion to the college of cardinals, and in 1452 was made bishop of Brixen in the Tyrol. Here he sought to introduce Church reforms, and he travelled as the papal legate in the same interest throughout the larger part of Germany.

By attempting to assert all the mediaeval feoffal rights of his diocese, the bishop came into sharp conflict with Siegmund, duke of Austria. Even the interdict pronounced by two popes did not bring the duke to terms. He declared war against the bishop and, taking him prisoner, forced from him a promise to renounce the old rights which his predecessors for many years had not asserted. Once released, the bishop treated his oath as null, on the ground that it had been forced from him, and in this he was supported by Pius II. In 1460 he went to Rome and died at Todi, Umbria, a few years later.

Nicolas of Cusa knew Greek and Hebrew, and perhaps has claim to being the most universal scholar of Germany up to his day since Albertus Magnus. He was interested in astronomy, mathematics and botany, and, as D’Ailly had done before, he urged, at the Council of Basel, the correction of the calendar. The literary production on which he spent most labor was a discussion of the problems of theology—De docta ignorantia. Here he attacked the scholastic method and showed the influence upon his mind of mysticism, the atmosphere of which he breathed at Deventer. He laid stress upon the limitations of the human mind and the inability of the reason to find out God exhaustively. Faith, which he defined as a state of the soul given of God’s grace, finds out truths the intellect cannot attain to.

Fides est habitus bonus, per bonitatem data a deo, ut per fidem restaurentur illae veritates objectivae, quas intellectus attingere non potest, quoted by Schwane, p. 100.

His last labors, in connection with the crusade against the Turks pushed by Pius II., led him to studies in the Koran and the preparation of a tract,—De cribatione Alcoran,—in which he declared that false religions have the true religion as their basis.

It is as an ecclesiastical mediator, and as a reformer of clerical and conventual abuses that the cardinal has his chief place in history. He preached in the vernacular. In Bamberg he secured the prohibition of new brotherhoods, in Magdeburg the condemnation of the sale of indulgences for money. In Salzburg and other places he introduced reforms in convents, and in connection with other members of his family he founded the hospital at Cues with beds for 33 patients. He showed his interest in studies by providing for the training of 20 boys in Deventer. He dwelt upon the rotation of the earth on its axis nearly a century before Copernicus. He gave reasons for regarding the donation of Constantine spurious, and he also called in question the genuineness of other parts of the Isidorian Decretals.

On the other hand, the cardinal was a thorough churchman and obedient child of the Church. As the agent of Nicolas V. he travelled in Germany announcing the indulgence of the Jubilee Year, and through him, it is said, indulgences to the value of 200,000 gulden were sold for the repair of St. Peter’s.

This noble and many-sided man has been coupled together with Gutenberg by Janssen,—the able and learned apologist of the Catholic Church in the closing years of the Middle Ages,—the one as the champion of clerical and Church discipline, the other the inventor of the printing-press. It is no disparagement of the impulses and work of Nicolas to say that he had not the mission of the herald of a new age in thought and religion as it was given to Gutenberg to promote culture and civilization by his invention.

Janssen, I. 2-6. Here we come for the first time into contact with this author whose work has gone through 20 editions and made such a remarkable sensation. Its conclusions and methods of treatment will be referred to at length farther on. Here it is sufficient to call attention to the seductive plausibility of the work, whose purpose it is to show that an orderly reformation was going on in the Church in Germany when Luther appeared and by his revolutionary and immoral tendency brutally rived the unity of the Church and checked the orderly reformation. Such a conclusion is a result of the manipulation of historic materials and the use of superlatives in describing men and influences which were like rills in the history of the onward progress of religion and civilization. The initial comparison between Gutenberg and Nicolas of Cusa begs the whole conclusion which Janssen had in view in writing his work. Of the permanent consequence of the work of the inventor of the printing-press, no one has any doubt. The author makes a great jump when he asserts a like permanent influence for Nicolas in the department of religion.

§ 26. Popular Preachers.

During the century and a half closing with 1450, there were local groups of preachers as well as isolated pulpit orators who exercised a deep influence upon congregations. The German mystics with Eckart and John Tauler at their head preached in Strassburg, Cologne and along the Rhine. D’Ailly and Gerson stood before select audiences, and give lustre to the French pulpit. Wyclif, at Oxford, and John Huss in Bohemia, attracted great attention by their sermons and brought down upon themselves ecclesiastical condemnation. Huss was one of a number of Bohemian preachers of eminence. Wyclif sought to promote preaching by sending out a special class of men, his "pore preachers."

The popular preachers constitute another group, though the period does not furnish one who can be brought into comparison with the field-preacher, Berthold of Regensburg, the Whitefield of his century, d. 1272. Among the popular preachers of the time the most famous were Bernardino and John of Capistrano, both Italians, and members of the Observant wing of the Franciscan order, and the Spanish Dominican, Vincent Ferrer. To a later age belong those bright pulpit luminaries, Savonarola of Florence and Geiler of Strassburg.

Bernardino of Siena, 1380–1444, was praised by Pius II. as a second Paul. He made a marked impression upon Italian audiences and was a favorite with pope Martin V. His voice, weak and indistinct at first, was said to have been made strong and clear through the grace of Mary, to whom he turned for help. He was the first vicar-general of the Observants, who numbered only a few congregations in Italy when he joined them, but increased greatly under his administration. In 1424 he was in Rome and, as Infessura the Roman diarist reports,

Diario, p. 25. For Bernardino, see Thureau-Dangin, St. Bernardin de Sienne. Un prédicateur populaire Paris, 1896. Several edd. of his sermons have appeared, including the ed. of Paris, 1650, 5 vols., by De la Haye.

John of Capistrano, 1386–1456, a lawyer, and at an early age intrusted with the administration of Perugia, joined the Observants in 1416 and became a pupil of Bernardino. He made a reputation as an inquisitor in Northern Italy, converting and burning heretics and Jews. No one could have excelled him in the ferocity of his zeal against heresy. His first appointment as inquisitor was made in 1426, and his fourth appointment 23 years later in 1449.

Jacob, I. 30 sq. For John’s life, see E. Jacob, John of Capistrano. His Life and Writings, 2 vols., Breslau, 1906, 1907. Pastor, I. 463-468, 691-698; Lempp’s art. in Herzog, III. 713 sqq.; Lea, Inquisition, II 552 sqq.

As a leader of his order, he defended Bernardino in 1427, and was made vicar-general in 1443. He extended his preaching to Vienna and far up into Germany, from Nürnberg to Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and Breslau, making everywhere a tremendous sensation. He used the Latin or Italian, which had to be interpreted to his audiences. These are reported to have numbered as many as thirty thousand.

Yea, 60,000 at Erfurt. Jacob, I. 74.

The life of Vincent Ferrer, d. 1419, the greatest of Spanish preachers, fell during the period of the papal schism, and he was intimately identified with the controversies it called forth. His name is also associated with the gift of tongues and with the sect of the Flagellants. This devoted missionary, born in Valencia, joined the Dominican order, and pursued his studies in the universities of Barcelona and Lerida. He won the doctorate of theology by his tract on the Modern Schism in the Church—De moderno ecclesiae schismate. Returning to Valencia, he gained fame as a preacher, and was appointed confessor to the queen of Aragon, Iolanthe, and counsellor to her husband, John I. In 1395, Benedict XIII. called him to be chief penitentiary in Avignon and master of the papal palace. Two years later he returned to Valencia with the title of papal legate. He at first defended the Avignon obedience with great warmth, but later, persuaded that Benedict was not sincere in his professions looking to the healing of the schism, withdrew from him his support and supported the Council of Constance.

Ferrer’s apostolic labors began in 1399. He itinerated through Spain, Northern Italy and France, preaching two and three times a day on the great themes of repentance and the nearness of the judgment. He has the reputation of being the most successful of missionaries among the Jews and Mohammedans. Twenty-five thousand Jews and eight thousand Mohammedans are said to have yielded to his persuasions. Able to speak only Spanish, his sermons, though they were not interpreted, are reported to have been understood in France and Italy. The gift of tongues was ascribed to him by his contemporaries as well as the gift of miracles. Priests and singers accompanied him on his tours, and some of the hymns sung were Vincent’s own compositions. His audiences are given as high as 70,000, an incredible number, and he is said to have preached twenty thousand times. He also preached to the Waldenses in their valleys and to the remnant of the Cathari, and is said to have made numerous converts. He himself was not above the suspicion of heresy, and Eymerich made the charge against him of declaring that Judas Iscariot hanged himself because the people would not permit him to live, and that he found pardon with God.

Lea: Inquisition. II. 156, 176, 258, 264.

On his itineraries Ferrer was also accompanied by bands of Flagellants. He himself joined in the flagellations, and the scourge with which he scourged himself daily, consisting of six thongs, is said still to be preserved in the Carthusian convent of Catalonia, scala coeli. Both Gerson and D’Ailly attacked Ferrer for his adoption of the Flagellant delusion. In a letter addressed to the Spanish preacher, written during the sessions of the Council of Constance, Gerson took the ground that both the Old Testament and the New Testament forbid violence done to the body, quoting in proof Deut. 14:1, "Ye shall not cut yourselves." He invited him to come to Constance, but the invitation was not accepted.

For German preaching in the fourteenth century, other than that of the mystics, see Linsenmeyer, Gesch. der Predigt in Deutschland his zum Ausgange d. 14ten Jahrh., Munich, 1886, pp. 301-470; Cruel:Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt im M A., p. 414 sqq.; A. Franz: Drei deutsche Minoritenprediger des XIIten und XIVten Jahrh., Freiburg, 1907, pp. 160. The best-known German preachers were the Augustinians Henry of Frimar, d. 1340, and Jordan of Quedlinburg, d. about 1375. See for the fifteenth century, ch. IX.

§ 27. Sources and Literature.

General Works.—*Franz Pfeiffer: Deutsche Mystiker, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1857, 2d ed of vol. I., Göttingen, 1906.—*R. Langenberg: Quellen und Forschungen zur Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, Bonn, 1902.—F. Galle: Geistliche Stimmen aus dem M. A., zur Erbauung, Halle, 1841.—Mrs. F. Bevan: Three Friends of God, Trees planted by the River, London.—*W. R. Inge: Light, Life and Love, London, 1904. Selections from Eckart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck, etc.—The works given under Eckart, etc., in the succeeding sections. R. A. Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics. For a long time the chief English authority, offensive by the dialogue style it pursues, and now superseded.—W. Preger: Gesch. der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1874–1893.—G. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. II., Hamburg, 1841.—*Inge: Christian Mysticism. pp. 148 sqq., London, 1899. — Eleanor C. Gregory: An Introd. to Christ. Mysticism, London, 1901.—W. R. Nicoll: The Garden of Nuts, London, 1905. The first four chapp. give a general treatment of mysticism.—P. Mehlhorn: D. Blüthezeit d. deutschen Mystik, Freiburg, 1907, pp. 64.—*S. M. Deutsch: Mystische Theol. in Herzog, XIX. 631 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt im M. A., pp. 370–414. A. Ritschl: Gesch. d. Pietismus, 3 vols., Bonn, 1880–1886.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., III. 376 sqq.—Loofs: Dogmengesch., 4th ed., Halle, 1906, pp. 621–633.—W. James: The Varieties of Relig. Experience, chs. XVI., XVII.

For § 29. Meister Eckart.—German Sermons bound in a vol. with Tauler’s Sermons, Leipzig, 1498, Basel, 1521.—Pfeiffer: Deutsche Mystiker, etc., vol. II., gives 110 German sermons, 18 tracts, and 60 fragments.—*Denifle: M. Eckehart’s Lateinische Schriften und die Grundanschauung seiner Lehre, in Archiv für Lit. und Kirchengesch., II. 416–652. Gives excerpts from his Latin writings.—F. Jostes: M. Eckehart und seine Jünger, ungedruckte Texte zur Gesch. der deutschen Mystik, Freiburg, 1895.—*H. Büttner: M. Eckehart’s Schriften und Predigten aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen übersetzt, Leipzig, 1903. Gives 18 German sermons and writings.—G. Landauer: Eckhart’s mystische Schriften in unsere Sprache übertragen, Berlin, 1903.—H. Martensen: M. Eckart, Hamburg, 1842.—A. Lasson: M. E. der Mystiker, Berlin, 1868. Also the section on Eckart by Lasson in Ueberweg’s Hist. of Phil.—A. Jundt: Essai sur le mysticisme spéculatif d. M. E., Strassburg, 1871; also Hist. du pathéisme populaire au moyen âge, 1876. Gives 18 of Eckart’s sermons. Preger, I. 309–458.—H. Delacroix: Le mysticisme spéculatif en Allemagne au 14e siècle, Paris, 1900.—Deutsch’s art. Eckart in Herzog, V. 142–154.—Denifle: Die Heimath M. Eckehart’s in Archiv für Lit. und K. Gesch. des M. A., V. 349–364, 1889.—Stöckl: Gesch. der Phil., etc., III. 1095–1120.—Pfleiderer: Religionsphilosophie, Berlin, 2d ed., 1883, p. 3 sqq.—INGE.—L. Ziegler: D. Phil. und relig. Bedeutung d. M. Eckehart in Preuss. Jahrbücher, Heft 3, 1904.—See a trans. of Eckart’s sermon on John 6:44, by D. S. Schaff, in Homiletic Rev., 1902, pp. 428–431

Note.—Eckart’s German sermons and tracts, published in 1498 and 1521, were his only writings known to exist till Pfeiffer’s ed., 1867. Denifle was the first to discover Eckart’s Latin writings, in the convent of Erfurt, 1880, and at Cusa on the Mosel, 1886. These are fragments on Genesis, Exodus, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom. John Trithemius, in his De Scripp. Eccles., 1492, gives a list of Eckart’s writings which indicates a literary activity extending beyond the works we possess. The list catalogues four books on the Sentences, commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, the Canticles, the Book of Wisdom, St. John, on the Lord’s Prayer, etc.

For § 30. John Tauler.—Tauler’s Works, Leipzig, 1498 (84 sermons printed from MSS. in Strassburg); Augsburg, 1508; Basel, 1521 (42 new sermons) and 1522; Halberstadt, 1523; Cologne, 1543 (150 sermons, 23 being publ. for the first time, and found in St. Gertrude’s convent, Cologne); Frankfurt, 1565; Hamburg, 1621; Frankfurt, 3 vols., 1826 (the edition used by Miss Winkworth); ed. by J. Hamberger, 1864, 2d ed., Prag, 1872. The best. Hamberger substituted modern German in the text and used a Strassburg MS. which was destroyed by fire at the siege of the city in 1870; ed. by Kuntze und Biesenthal containing the Introdd. of Arndt and Spener, Berlin, 1842.—*Engl. trans., Susanna Winkworth: The History and Life of Rev. John Tauler with 25 Sermons, with Prefaces by Canon Kingsley and Roswell D. Hitchcock, New York, 1858.—*The Inner Way, 36 Sermons for Festivals, by John Tauler, trans. with Introd. by A. W. Huttons London, 1905.—C. Schmidt: J. Tauler von Strassburg, Hamburg, 1841, and Nicolas von Basel, Bericht von der Bekehrung Taulers, Strassburg, 1875.—Denifle: D. Buch von geistlicher Armuth, etc., Munich, 1877, and Tauler’s Bekehrung, Münster, 1879.—A Jundt: Les amis de Dieu au 14e siècle, Paris, 1879.—Preger, III. 1–244.—F. Cohrs: Art. Tauler in Herzog, XIX. 451–459.

Note.—Certain writings once ascribed to Tauler, and printed with his works, are now regarded as spurious. They are (1) The Book of Spiritual Poverty, ed. by Denifle, Munich, 1877, and previously under the title Imitation of Christ’s Life of Poverty, by D. Sudermann, Frankfurt, 1621, etc. Denifle pointed out the discord between its teachings and the teachings of Tauler’s sermons. (2) Medulla animae, consisting of 77 chapters. Preger decides some of them to be genuine. (3) Certain hymns, including Es kommt ein Schiff geladen, which even Preger pronounces spurious, III. 86. They are publ. by Wackernagel.

For § 31. Henry Suso,—Ed. of his works, Augsburg, 1482, and 1512.—*M. Diepenbrock: H. Suso’s, genannt Amandus, Leben und Schriften, Regensburg, 1829, 4th ed., 1884, with Preface by J. Görres.—H. Seuse Denifle: D. deutschen Schriften des seligen H. Seuse, Munich, 1880.—*H. Seuse: Deutsche Schriften, ed. K. Bihlmeyer, Stuttgart, 1907. The first complete edition, and based upon an examination of many MSS.—A Latin trans. of Suso’s works by L. Surius, Cologne, 1555. French trans. by Thirot: Ouvages mystiques du bienheureux H. Suso, 2 vols., Paris, 1899. Engl. extracts in Light, Life and Love, pp. 66–100.—Preger: D. Briefe H. Suso’s nach einer Handschrift d. XV. Jahrh., Leipzig, 1867.—C. Schmidt: Der Mystiker, H. Suso in Stud. und Kritiken, 1843, pp. 835 sqq.—Preger: Deutsche Mystik, II. 309–419.—L. Kärcher: H. Suso aus d. Predigerorden, in Freiburger Diöcesenarchiv, 1868, p. 187 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt, 396 sqq.—Art. in Wetzer- Welte, H. Seuse, V. 1721–1729.

For § 32. The Friends of God.—The works of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, Ruysbroeck.—Jundt: Les Amis de Dieu, Paris, 1879.—Kessel: Art. Gottesfreunde in Wetzer-Welte, V. 893–900.—The writings of Rulman Merswin: Von den vier Jahren seines anfahenden Lebens, ed. by Schmidt, in Reuss and Cinitz, Beiträge zu den Theol. Wissenschaften, V., Jena, 1854.—His Bannerbüchlein given in Jundt’s Les Amis.—Das Buch von den neun Felsen, ed. from the original MS. by C. Schmidt, Leipzig, 1859, and in abbreviated form by Preger, III. 337–407, and Diepenbrock: Heinrich Suso, pp. 505–572.—P. Strauch: Art. Rulman Merswin in Herzog, XVII. 20–27.—For the "Friend of God of the Oberland" and his writings. K. Schmidt: Nicolas von Basel: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, Vienna, 1866, and Nic. von Basel, Bericht von der Bekehrung Taulers, Strassburg, 1876.—F. Lauchert: Des Gottesfreundes im Oberland Buch von den zwei Mannen, Bonn, 1896.—C. Schmidt: Nic. von Basel und die Gottesfreunde, Basel, 1856.—Denifle: Der Gottesfreund im Oberland und Nic. von Basel. Eine krit. Studie, Munich, 1875.—Jundt: Rulman Merswin et l’Ami de Dieu de l’Oberland, Paris, 1890.—Preger, III. 290–337.—K. Rieder: Der Gottesfreund vom Oberland. Eine Erfindung des Strassburger Johanniterbruders Nicolaus von Löwen, Innsbruck, 1905.

For § 33. John Of Ruysbroeck.—Vier Schriften, ed. by Arnswaldt, with Introd. by Ullmann, Hanover, 1848.—Superseded by J. B. David (Prof. in Louvaine), 6 vols., Ghent, 1857–1868. Contains 12 writings.—Lat. trans. by Surius, Cologne, 1549.—*F. A. Lambert: Drei Schriften des Mystikers J. van Ruysb., Die Zierde der geistl. Hochzeit, Vom glanzenden Stein and Das Buch uon der höchsten Wahrheit, Leipzig. No date; about 1906. Selections from Ruysbroeck in Light, Life and Love, pp. 100–196.—*J. G. V. Engelhardt: Rich. von St. Victor u. J. Ruysbroeck, Erlangen, 1838.—Ullmann: Reformatoren, etc., II. 35 sqq.—W. L. de Vreese: Bijdrage tot de kennis van het leven en de werken van J. van Ruusbroec, Ghent, 1896.—*M. Maeterlinck: Ruysbr. and the Mystics, with Selections from Ruysb., London, 1894. A trans. by Jane T. Stoddart of Maeterlinck’s essay prefixed to his L’Ornement des noces spirituelles de Ruysb., trans. by him from the Flemish, Brussels, 1891.—Art. Ruysbroeck in Herzog, XVII. 267–273, by Van Veen.

For § 34. Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life.—Lives of Groote, Florentius and their pupils, by Thomas À Kempis: Opera omnia, ed, by Sommalius, Antwerp, 1601, 3 vols., Cologne, 1759, etc., and in unpubl. MSS.— J. Busch, d. 1479: Liber de viris illustribus, a collection of 24 biographies of Windesheim brethren, Antwerp, 1621; also Chronicon Windeshemense, Antwerp, 1621, both ed. by Grube, Halle, 1886.—G. H. M. Delprat Verhandeling over de broederschap van Geert Groote en over den involoed der fraterhuizen, Arnheim, etc., 1856.—J. G. R. Acquoy (Prof. in Leyden): Gerhardi Magni epistolae XIV., Antwerp, 1857. G. Bonet-Maury:: Gerhard de Groot d’après des documents onédites. Paris 1878.—*G. Kettlewell: Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life, 2 vols, New York, 1882.—*K. Grube: Johannes Busch, Augustinerpropst in Hildesheim. Ein kathol. Reformator in 15ten Jahrh., Freiburg, 1881. Also G. Groote und seine Stiftungen, Cologne, 1883.—R. Langenberg: Quellen and Forschungen, etc., Bonn, 1902.—Boerner: Die Annalen und Akten der Brüder des Gemainsamen Lebens im Lichtenhofe zu Hildesheim, eine Grundlage der Gesch. d. deutschen Brüderhäuser und ein Beitrag zur Vorgesch. der Reformation, Fürstenwalde, 1905.—The artt. by K. Hirsche in Herzog, 2d ed., II. 678–760 and L. Schulze, Herzog, 3rd ed., III., 474–507, and P.A. Thijm in Wetzer-Welte, V. 1286–1289.—Ullmann: Reformatoren, II. 1–201.—Lea: Inquisition, II. 360 sqq.—Uhlhorn: Christl. Liebesthätigkeit im M. A., Stuttgart, 1884, pp. 350–375.

Note.—A few of the short writings of Groote were preserved by Thomas à Kempis. To the sermons edited by Acquoy, Langenberg, pp. 3–33, has added Groote’s tract on simony, which he found in the convent of Frenswegen, near Nordhorn. He has also found Groote’s Latin writings. The tract on simony—de simonia ad Beguttas — is addressed to the Beguines in answer to the question propounded to him by some of their number as to whether it was simony to purchase a place in a Beguine convent. The author says that simony "prevails very much everywhere," and that it was not punished by the Church. He declares it to be simony to purchase a place which involves spiritual exercises, and he goes on to apply the principle to civil offices pronouncing it simony when they are bought for money. The work is written in Low German, heavy in style, but interesting for the light it throws on practices current at that time.

For § 35. The Imitation of Christ.—Edd. of À Kempis’ works, Utrecht, 1473 (15 writings, and omitting the Imitation of Christ); Nürmberg, 1494 (20 writings), ed. by J. Badius, 1520, 1521, 1528; Paris, 1549; Antwerp, 1574; Dillingen, 1676; ed. by H. Sommalius, 3 vols., Antwerp, 1599, 3d ed. 1615; ed. by M. J. Pohl, 8 vols. promised; thus far 5 vols, Freiburg im Br., 1903 sqq. Best and only complete ed.—Thomas à Kempis hymns in Blume and Dreves: Analecta hymnica, XLVIII. pp. 475–514.—For biograph. and critical accounts.—Joh. Busch: Chron. Windesemense.—H. Rosweyde: Chron. Mt. S. Agnetis, Antwerp, 1615, and cum Rosweydii vindiciis Kempensibus, 1622.—J. B. Malou: Recherches historiq. et critiq. sur le véritable auteur du livre de l’Imitat. de Jesus Chr., Tournay, 1848; 3d ed., Paris 1856.—*K. Hirsche: Prologomena zu einer neuen Ausgabe de imitat. Chr. (with a copy of the Latin text of the MS. dated 1441), 1873, 1883, 1894.—C. Wolfsgruber: Giovanni Gersen sein Leben und sein Werk de Imitat. Chr., Augsburg, 1880.—*S. Kettlewell: Th. à Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life, 2 vols., London, 1882. Also Authorship of the de imitat, Chr., London, 1877, 2d ed., 1884.—F. R. Cruise: Th. à Kempis, with Notes of a visit to the scenes in which his life was spent, with some account of the examination of his relics, London, 1887.—L. A. Wheatley: Story of the Imitat. of Chr., London, 1891.—Dom Vincent Scully: Life of the Venerable Th. à Kempis, London, 1901.—J. E. G. de Montmorency: Th. à Kempis, His Age and Book, London, 1906—*C. Bigg in Wayside Sketches in Eccle. Hist., London, 1906, pp. 134–154.—D. B. Butler, Thos. à Kempis, a Rel. Study, London, 1908.—Art. Thos. à Kempis in London Quarterly Review, April, 1908, pp. 254–263.

First printed ed. of the Latin text of the Imitat. of Christ, Augsburg, 1472. Bound up with Jerome’s de viris illust. and writings of Augustine and Th. Aquinas.—Of the many edd. in Engl. the first was by W. Atkynson, and Margaret, mother of Henry VII., London, 1502, reprinted London, 1828, new ed. by J. K. Ingram, London, 1893.—The Imitat. of Chr., being the autograph MS. of Th. à Kempis de Imitat. Chr. reproduced in facsimile from the orig. in the royal libr. at Brussels. With Introd. by C. Ruelens, London, 1879.—The Imitat. of Chr. Now for the first time set forth in Rhythm and Sentences. With Pref. by Canon Liddon, London, 1889.—Facsimile Reproduction of the 1st ed. of 1471, with Hist. Introd. by C. Knox-Little, London, 1894.—The Imitat. of Chr., trans. by Canon W. Benham, with 12 photogravures after celebrated paintings, London, 1905.—An ed. issued 1881 contains a Pref. by Dean Farrar.—R. P. A. de Backer: Essai bibliograph. sur le livre de imitat. Chr., Liège, 1864.—For further Lit. on the Imitat. of Chr., see the Note at the end of § 35.

§ 28. The New Mysticism.

At the time when the scholastic method was falling into disrepute and the scandals of the Avignon court and the papal schism were shaking men’s faith in the foundations of the Church, a stream of pure pietism was watering the regions along the Rhine, from Basel to Cologne, and from Cologne to the North Sea. North of the Alps, voices issuing from convents and from the ranks of the laity called attention to the value of the inner religious life and God’s immediate communications to the soul.

To this religious movement has recently been given the name, the Dominican mysticism, on account of the large number of its representatives who belonged to the Dominican order. The older name, German mysticism, which is to be preferred, points to the locality where it manifested itself, and to the language which the mystics for the most part used in their writings. Like the Protestant Reformation, the movement had its origin on German soil, but, unlike the Reformation, it did not spread beyond Germany and the Lowlands. Its chief centres were Strassburg and Cologne; its leading representatives the speculative Meister Eckart, d. 1327, John Tauler, d. 136l, Henry Suso, d. 1366, John Ruysbroeck, d. 1381, Gerrit Groote, d. 1384, and Thomas à Kempis, d. 1471. The earlier designation for these pietists was Friends of God. The Brothers of the Common Life, the companions and followers of Groote, were of the same type, but developed abiding institutions of practical Christian philanthropy. In localities the Beguines and Beghards also breathed the same devotional and philanthropic spirit. The little book called the German Theology, and the Imitation of Christ, were among the finest fruits of the movement. Gerson and Nicolas of Cusa also had a strong mystical vein, but they are not to be classed with the German mystics. With them mysticism was an incidental, not the distinguishing, quality.

The mystics along the Rhine formed groups which, however, were not bound together by any formal organization. Their only bond was the fellowship of a common religious purpose.

Their religious thought was not always homogeneous in its expression, but all agreed in the serious attempt to secure purity of heart and life through union of the soul with God. Mysticism is a phase of Christian life. It is a devotional habit, in contradistinction to the outward and formal practice of religious rules. It is a religious experience in contrast to a mere intellectual assent to tenets. It is the conscious effort of the soul to apprehend and possess God and Christ, and expresses itself in the words, "I live, and yet not I but Christ liveth in me." It is essentially what is now called in some quarters "personal religion." Perhaps the shortest definition of mysticism is the best. It is the love of God shed abroad in the heart.

See Inge, Engl. Mystics, p. 37. This author, in his Christian Mysticism, p. 5, gives the definition that mysticism is "the attempt to realize in the thought and feeling the immanence of the temporal in the eternal and of the eternal in the temporal." His statements in another place, The Inner Way, pp. xx-xxii, are more simple and illuminating. The mystical theology is that knowledge of God and of divine things which is derived not from observation or from argument but from conscious experience. The difficulty of giving a precise definition of mysticism is seen in the definitions Inge cites, Christian Mysticism, Appendix A. Comp. Deutsch, p. 632 sq

Without disparaging the sacraments or disputing the authority of the Church, the German mystics sought a better way. They laid stress upon the meaning of such passages as "he that believeth in me shall never hunger and he that cometh unto me shall never thirst, " "he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father "and "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness." The word love figures most prominently in their writings. Among the distinctive terms in vogue among them were Abgeschiedenheit, Eckart’s word for self-detachment from the world and that which is temporal, and Kehr, Tauler’s oft-used word for conversion. They laid stress upon the new birth, and found in Christ’s incarnation a type of the realization of the divine in the soul.

German mysticism had a distinct individuality of its own. On occasion, its leaders quoted Augustine’s Confessions and other works, Dionysius the Areopagite, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, but they did not have the habit of referring back to human authorities as had the Schoolmen, bulwarking every theological statement by patristic quotations, or statements taken from Aristotle. The movement arose like a root out of a dry ground at a time of great corruption and distraction in the Church, and it arose where it might have been least expected to arise. Its field was the territory along the Rhine where the heretical sects had had representation. It was a fresh outburst of piety, an earnest seeking after God by other paths than the religious externalism fostered by sacerdotal prescriptions and scholastic dialectics. The mystics led the people back from the clangor and tinkling of ecclesiastical symbolisms to the refreshing springs of water which spring up into everlasting life.

Compared with the mysticism of the earlier Middle Ages and the French quietism of the seventeenth century, represented by Madame Guyon, Fénelon and their predecessor the Spaniard Miguel de Molinos, German mysticism likewise has its own distinctive features. The religion of Bernard expressed itself in passionate and rapturous love for Jesus. Madame Guyon and Fénelon set up as the goal of religion a state of disinterested love, which was to be reached chiefly by prayer, an end which Bernard felt it scarcely possible to reach in this world.

The mystics along the Rhine agreed with all genuine mystics in striving after the direct union of the soul with God. They sought, as did Eckart, the loss of our being in the ocean of the Godhead, or with Tauler the undisturbed peace of the soul, or with Ruysbroeck the impact of the divine nature upon our nature at its innermost point, kindling with divine love as fire kindles. With this aspiration after the complete apprehension of God, they combined a practical tendency. Their silent devotion and meditation were not final exercises. They were moved by warm human sympathies, and looked with almost reverential regard upon the usual pursuits and toil of men. They approached close to the idea that in the faithful devotion to daily tasks man may realize the highest type of religious experience.

By preaching, by writing and circulating devotional works, and especially by their own examples, they made known the secret and the peace of the inner life. In the regions along the lower Rhine, the movement manifested itself also in the care of the sick, and notably in schools for the education of the young. These schools proved to be preparatory for the German Reformation by training a body of men of wider outlook and larger sympathies than the mediaeval convent was adapted to rear.

For the understanding of the spirit and meaning of German mysticism, no help is so close at hand as the comparison between it and mediaeval scholasticism. This religious movement was the antithesis of the theology of the Schoolmen; Eckart and Tauler of Thomas Aquinas, the German Theology of the endless argumentation of Duns Scotus, the Imitation of Christ of the cumbersome exhaustiveness of Albertus Magnus. Roger Bacon had felt revulsion from the hairsplitting casuistries of the Schoolmen, and given expression to it before Eckart began his activity at Cologne. Scholasticism had trodden a beaten and dusty highway. The German mystics walked in secluded and shady pathways. For a catalogue of dogmatic maxims they substituted the quiet expressions of filial devotion and assurance. The speculative element is still prominent in Eckart, but it is not indulged for the sake of establishing doctrinal rectitude, but for the nurture of inward experience of God’s operations in the soul. Godliness with these men was not a system of careful definitions, it was a state of spiritual communion; not an elaborate construction of speculative thought, but a simple faith and walk with God. Not processes of logic but the insight of devotion was their guide.

It is quite in keeping with this contrast that Pfleiderer, in his Religionsphilosophie, excludes the German mystics from a place in the history of German philosophy on the ground that their thinking was not distinctly systematic. He, however, gives a brief statement to Eckart, but excludes Jacob Boehme.

Although the German mystical writers have not been quoted in the acts of councils or by popes as have been the theologies of the Schoolmen, they represented, if we follow the testimonies of Luther and Melanchthon, an important stage in the religious development of the German people, and it is certainly most significant that the Reformation broke out on the soil where the mystics lived and wrought, and their piety took deep root. They have a perennial life for souls who, seeking devotional companionship, continue to go back to the leaders of that remarkable pietistic movement.

The leading features of the mysticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be summed up in the following propositions.

1. Its appeals were addressed to laymen as well as to clerics.

2. The mystics emphasized instruction and preaching, and, if we except Suso, withdrew the emphasis which had been laid upon the traditional ascetic regulations of the Church. They did not commend buffetings of the body. The distance between Peter Damiani and Tauler is world-wide.

3. They used the New Testament more than they used the Old Testament, and the words of Christ took the place of the Canticles in their interpretations of the mind of God. The German Theology quotes scarcely a single passage which is not found in the New Testament, and the Imitation of Christ opens with the quotation of words spoken by our Lord. Eckart and Tauler dwell upon passages of the New Testament, and Ruysbroeck evolves the fulness of his teaching from Matthew 25:6, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him."

4. In the place of the Church, with its sacraments and priesthood as a saving institution, is put Christ himself as the mediator between the soul and God, and he is offered as within the reach of all.

5. A pure life is taught to be a necessary accompaniment of the higher religious experience, and daily exemplification is demanded of that humility which the Gospel teaches.

6. Another notable feature was their use of the vernacular in sermon and treatise. The mystics are among the very earliest masters of German and Dutch prose. In the Introduction to his second edition of the German Theology, Luther emphasized this aspect of their activity when he said, "I thank God that I have heard and find my God in the German tongue as neither I nor they [the adherents of the old way] have found Him in the Latin and Hebrew tongues." In this regard also the mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were precursors of the evangelical movement of the sixteenth century. Their practice was in plain conflict with the judgment of that German bishop who declared that the German language was too barbarous a tongue to be a proper vehicle of religious truth.

The religious movement represented by German and Dutch mysticism is an encouraging illustration that God’s Spirit may be working effectually in remote and unthought-of places and at times when the fabric of the Church seems to be hopelessly undermined with formalism, clerical corruption and hierarchical arrogance and worldliness. It was so at a later day when, in the little and remote Moravian town of Herrnhut, God was preparing the weak things of the world, and the things which were apparently foolish, to confound the dead orthodoxy of German Protestantism and to lead the whole Protestant Church into the way of preaching the Gospel in all the world. No organized body survived the mystics along the Rhine, but their example and writings continue to encourage piety and simple faith toward God within the pale of the Catholic and Protestant churches alike.

A classification of the German mystics on the basis of speculative and practical tendencies has been attempted, but it cannot be strictly carried out.

See Preger, I. 8, and Ullmann, Reformatoren, II. 203. Harnack goes far when he denies all originality to the German mystics. Of Eckart he says, Dogmengesch. III. 378, "I give no extracts from his writings because I do not wish to seem to countenance the error that the German mystics expressed anything we cannot read in Origen, Plotinus, the Areopagite, Augustine, Erigena, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, or that they represented a stage of religious progress." The message they announced was certainly a fresh one to their generation, even if all they said bad been said before. They spoke from the living sources of their own spiritual experience. They were not imitators. Harnack, however, goes on to give credit to the German mystics for fulfilling a mission when he says they are of invaluable worth for the history of doctrine and the church history of Germany. In the same connection he denies the distinction between mysticism and scholastic theology." Mysticism," he asserts, "cannot exist in the Protestant Church, and the Protestant who is a mystic and does not become a Roman Catholic is a dilettante." This condemnation is based upon the untenable premise that mysticism is essentially conventual, excluding sane intellectual criticism and a practical out-of-doors Christianity.

§ 29. Meister Eckart.

Meister Eckart, 1260–1327, the first in the line of the German mystics, was excelled in vigor of thought by no religious thinker of his century, and was the earliest theologian who wrote in German.

Eckart’s name is written in almost every conceivable way in the documents. See Büttner, p. xxii, as Eckardus, Eccardus, Egghardus; Deutsch and Delacroix, Eckart; Pfeiffer, Preger, Inge and Langenberg, Eckhart; Denifle and Büttner, Eckehart. His writings give us scarcely a single clew to his fortunes. Quiétif-Echard was the first to lift the veil from portions of his career. See Preger, I. 325.

During the century before Eckart, the German church also had its mystics, and in the twelfth century the godly women, Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schoenau, added to the function of prophecy a mystical element. In the thirteenth century the Benedictine convent of Helfta, near Eisleben, Luther’s birthplace, was a centre of religious warmth. Among its nuns were several by the names of Gertrude and Mechthild, who excelled by their religious experiences, and wrote on the devotional life. Gertrude of Hackeborn, d. 1292, abbess of Helfta, and Gertrude the Great, d. 1302, professed to have immediate communion with the Saviour and to be the recipients of divine revelations. When one of the Mechthilds asked Christ where he was to be found, the reply was, "You may seek me in the tabernacle and in Gertrude’s heart." From 1293 Gertrude the Great recorded her revelations in a work called the Communications of Piety—Insinuationes divinae pietatis. Mechthild of Magdeburg, d. 1280, and Mechthild of Hackeborn, d. 1310, likewise nuns of Helfta, also had visions which they wrote out. The former, who for thirty years had been a Beguine, Deutsch calls " one of the most remarkable personalities in the religious history of thirteenth century." Mechthild of Hackeborn, a younger sister of the abbess Gertrude, in her book on special grace,—Liber specialis gratiae,—sets forth salvation as the gift of grace without the works of the law. These women wrote in German.

Flacius Illyricus includes the second Mechthild in his Catal. veritatis. For the lives of these women and the editions of their works, see Preger, I. 71-132, and the artt. of Deutsch and Zöckler in Herzog. Some of the elder Mechthild’s predictions and descriptions seem to have been used by Dante. See Preger, p. 103 sq. Mechthild v. Magdeburg: D. fliessende Licht der Gottheit, Berlin, 1907.

David of Augsburg, d. 1271, the inquisitor who wrote on the inquisition,—De inquisitione haereticorum,—also wrote on the devotional life. These writings were intended for monks, and two of them

Die sieben Vorregeln der Tugend andder Spiegel der Tugend, both given by Pfeiffer, together with other tracts, the genuineness of some of which is doubted. See Preger, I. 268-283, and Lempp in Herzog, IV. 503 sq.

In the last years of the thirteenth century, the Franciscan Lamprecht of Regensburg wrote a poem entitled "Daughter of Zion" (Cant. III. 11), which, in a mystical vein, depicts the soul, moved by the impulse of love, and after in vain seeking its satisfaction in worldly things, led by faith and hope to God. The Dominicans, Dietrich of Freiburg and John of Sterngassen, were also of the same tendency.

Denifle, Archiv, etc., II. 240, 529.

Eckart broke new paths in the realm of German religious thought. He was born at Hochheim, near Gotha, and died probably in Cologne.

Till the investigations of Denifle, his place of birth was usually given as Strassburg. See Denifle, p. 355.

Charges of heresy were preferred against him in 1325 by the archbishop of Cologne, Henry of Virneburg. The same year the Dominicans, at their general chapter held in Venice, listened to complaints that certain popular preachers in Germany were leading the people astray, and sent a representative to make investigations. Henry of Virneburg had shown himself zealous in the prosecution of heretics. In 1322, Walter, a Beghard leader, was burnt, and in 1325 a number of Beghards died in the flames along the Rhine. It is possible that Eckart was quoted by these sectaries, and in this way was exposed to the charge of heresy.

The archbishop’s accusations, which had been sent to Rome, were set aside by Nicolas of Strassburg, Eckart’s friend, who at the time held the position of inquisitor in Germany. In 1327, the archbishop again proceeded against the suspected preacher and also against Nicolas. Both appealed from the archbishop’s tribunal to the pope. In February, Eckart made a public statement in the Dominican church at Cologne, declaring he had always eschewed heresy in doctrine and declension in morals, and expressed his readiness to retract errors, if such should be found in his writings.

Ego magister Ekardus, doctor sac. theol., protestor ante omnia, quod omnem errorem in fide et omnem deformitatem in moribus semper in quantum mihi possibile fuit, sum detestatus, etc. Preger, I. 475-478. Preger, I. 471 sqq., gives the Latin text of Eckart’s statement of Jan. 24, 1327, before the archiepiscopal court, his public statement of innocence in the Dominican church and the document containing the court’s refusal to allow his appeal to Rome.

In a bull dated March 27, 1329, John XXII. announced that of the 26 articles charged against Eckart, 15 were heretical and the remaining 11 had the savor of heresy. Two other articles, not cited in the indictment, were also pronounced heretical. The papal decision stated that Eckart had acknowledged the 17 condemned articles as heretical. There is no evidence of such acknowledgment in the offenders extant writing.

The 26 articles, as Denifle has shown, were based upon Eckart’s Latin writings. John’s bull is given by Preger, I. 479-482, and by Denifle, Archiv, II. 636-640. Preger, I. 365 sqq., Delacroix, p. 238 and Deutsch, V. 145, insist that Eckart made no specific recantation. The pope’s reference must have been to the statement Eckart made in the Dominican church, which contained the words, "I will amend and revoke in general and in detail, as often as may be found opportune, whatever is discovered to have a less wholesome sense, intellectum minus sane.

Among the articles condemned were the following. As soon as God was, He created the world.—The world is eternal.—External acts are not in a proper sense good and divine.—The fruit of external acts does not make us good, but internal acts which the Father works in us.—God loves the soul, not external acts. The two added articles charged Eckart with holding that there is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable, and that God is neither good nor better nor best, so that God can no more be called good than white can be called black.

Eckart merits study as a preacher and as a mystic theologian.

As a Preacher.—His sermons were delivered in churches and at conferences within cloistral walls. His style is graphic and attractive, to fascination. The reader is carried on by the progress of thought. The element of surprise is prominent. Eckart’s extant sermons are in German, and the preacher avoids dragging in Latin phrases to explain his meaning, though, if necessary, he invents new German terms. He quotes the Scriptures frequently, and the New Testament more often than the Old, the passages most dwelt upon being those which describe the new birth, the sonship of Christ and believers, and love. Eckart is a master in the use of illustrations, which he drew chiefly from the sphere of daily observation,—the world of nature, the domestic circle and the shop. Although he deals with some of the most abstruse truths, he betrays no ambition to make a show of speculative subtlety. On the contrary, he again and again expresses a desire to be understood by his hearers, who are frequently represented as in dialogue with himself and asking for explanations of difficult questions. Into the dialogue are thrown such expressions as "in order that you may understand," and in using certain illustrations he on occasion announces that he uses them to make himself understood.

Büttner, p. 14; Pfeiffer, p. 192, etc.

The following is a resumé of a sermon on John 6:44, "No man can come unto me except the Father draw him."

Pfeiffer, 216.

There are three things in nature which draw, and these three Christ had on the cross. The first was his fellow-likeness to Us. As the bird draws to itself the bird of the same nature, so Christ drew the heavenly Father to himself, so that the Father forgot His wrath in contemplating the sufferings of the cross. Again Christ draws by his self-emptiness. As the empty tube draws water into itself, so the Son, by emptying himself and letting his blood flow, drew to himself all the grace from the Father’s heart. The third thing by which he draws is the glowing heat of his love, even as the sun with its heat draws up the mists from the earth.

The historian of the German mediaeval pulpit, Cruel, has said,

p. 384.

Eckart as a Theological Thinker.—Eckart was still bound in part by the scholastic method. His temper, however, differed widely from the temper of the Schoolmen. Anselm, Hugo of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura, who united the mystical with the scholastic element, were predominantly Schoolmen, seeking to exhaust every supposable speculative problem. No purpose of this kind appears in Eckart’s writings. He is dominated by a desire not so much to reach the intellect as to reach the soul and to lead it into immediate fellowship with God. With him the weapons of metaphysical dexterity are not on show; and in his writings, so far as they are known, he betrays no inclination to bring into the area of his treatment those remoter topics of speculation, from the constitution of the angelic world to the motives and actions which rule and prevail in the regions of hell. God and the soul’s relation to Him are the engrossing subjects.

Denifle lays down the proposition that Eckart is above all a Schoolman, and that whatever there is of good in him is drawn from Thomas Aquinas. These conclusions are based upon Eckart’s Latin writings. Deutsch, V. 15, says that the form of Eckart’s thought in the Latin writings is scholastic, but the heart is mystical. Delacroix, p. 277 sqq., denies that Eckart was a scholastic and followed Thomas. Wetzer-Welte, IV. 11, deplores as Eckart’s defect that he departed from "the solid theology of Scholasticism" and took up Neo-Platonic vagaries. If Eckart had been a servile follower of Thomas, it is hard to understand how he should have laid himself open in 28 propositions to condemnation for heresy.

As for God, He is absolute being, Deus est esse. The Godhood is distinct from the persons of the Godhead,—a conception which recalls Gilbert of Poictiers, or even the quaternity which Peter the Lombard was accused of setting up. The Trinity is the method by which this Godhood reveals itself by a process which is eternal. Godhood is simple essence having in itself the potentiality of all things.

Pfeiffer, pp. 254, 540.

All created things were created out of nothing, and yet they were eternally in God. The master who produces pieces of art, first had all his art in himself. The arts are master within the master. Likewise the first Principle, which Eckart calls Erstigkeit, embodied in itself all images, that is, God in God. Creation is an eternal act. As soon as God was, He created the world. Without creatures, God would not be God. God is in all things and all things are God—Nu sint all Ding gleich in Gott und sint Got selber.

Pfeiffer, pp. 282, 311, 579.

As for the soul, it can be as little comprehended in a definition as God Himself.

Die Seele in ihrem Grunde ist so unsprechlich als Gott unsprechlich ist. Pfeiffer, p. 89.

It is one of Eckart’s merits that he lays so much stress upon the dignity of the soul. Several of his tracts bear this title.

Die Edelkeit der Seele, Von der Würdgkeit der Seele, Von dem Adel der Seele. Pfeiffer, pp. 382-448.

Passing to the incarnation, it is everywhere the practical purpose which controls Eckart’s treatment, and not the metaphysical. The second person of the Trinity took on human nature, that man might become partaker of the divine nature. In language such as Gregory of Nyssa used, he said, God became man that we might become God. Gott ist Mensch worden dass wir Gott wurden. As God was hidden within the human nature so that we saw there only man, so the soul is to be hidden within the divine nature, that we should see nothing but God.

p. 540.

The generation of the eternal Son in the soul brings joy which no man can take away. A prince who should lose his kingdom and all worldly goods would still have fulness of joy, for his birth outweighs everything else.

pp. 44, 478-488.

One of the terms which Eckart uses most frequently, to denote God’s influence upon the soul, is durchbrechen, to break through, and his favorite word for the activity of the soul, as it rises into union with God, is Abgeschiedenheit, the soul’s complete detachment of itself from all that is temporal and seen. Keep aloof, abgeschieden, he says, from men, from yourself, from all that cumbers. Bear God alone in your hearts, and then practise fasting, vigils and prayer, and you will come unto perfection. This Abgeschiedenheit, total self-detachment from created things,

Lautere, alles Erschaffenen ledige Abgeschiedenheit. For the sermon, see Büttner, p 9 sqq.

In another place, Eckart says that he who has God in his soul finds God in all things, and God appears to him out of all things. As the thirsty love water, so that nothing else tastes good to them, even so it is with the devoted soul. In God and God alone is it at rest. God seeks rest, and He finds it nowhere but in such a heart. To reach this condition of Abgeschiedenheit, it is necessary for the soul first to meditate and form an image of God, and then to allow itself to be transformed by God.

Pfeiffer, II. 484.

What, then, some one might say, is the advantage of prayer and good works? In eternity, God saw every prayer and every good work, and knew which prayer He could hear. Prayers were answered in eternity. God is unchangeable and cannot be moved by a prayer. It is we who change and are moved. The sun shines, and gives pain or pleasure to the eye, according as it is weak or sound. The sun does not change. God rules differently in different men. Different kinds of dough are put into the oven; the heat affects them differently, and one is taken out a loaf of fine bread, and another a loaf of common bread.

Eckart is emphatic when he insists upon the moral obligation resting on God to operate in the soul that is ready to receive Him. God must pour Himself into such a man’s being, as the sun pours itself into the air when it is clear and pure. God would be guilty of a great wrong—Gebrechen — if He did not confer a great good upon him whom He finds empty and ready to receive Him. Even so Christ said of Zaccheus, that He must enter into his house. God first works this state in the soul, and He is obliged to reward it with the gift of Himself. "When I am blessed, selig, then all things are in me and in God, and where I am, there is God, and where God is, there I am."

Pfeiffer, pp. 27, 32, 479 sq., 547 sq.

Nowhere does Eckart come to a distinct definition of justification by faith, although he frequently speaks of faith as a heavenly gift. On the other hand, he gives no sign of laying stress on the penitential system. Everywhere there are symptoms in his writings that his piety breathed a different atmosphere from the pure mediaeval type. Holy living is with him the product of holy being. One must first be righteous before he can do righteous acts. Works do not sanctify. The righteous soul sanctifies the works. So long as one does good works for the sake of the kingdom of heaven or for the sake of God or for the sake of salvation or for any external cause, he is on the wrong path. Fastings, vigils, asceticisms, do not merit salvation.

Pfeiffer, II. 546, 564, 633, Niht endienent unserin were dar zuo dass uns Got iht gebe oder tuo.

The stress which Eckart lays upon piety, as a matter of the heart and the denial to good works of meritorious virtue, gave plausible ground for the papal condemnation, that Eckart set aside the Church’s doctrine of penance, affirming that it is not outward acts that make good, but the disposition of the soul which God abidingly works in us. John XXII. rightly discerned the drift of the mystic’s teaching.

In his treatment of Mary and Martha, Eckart seems to make a radical departure from the mediaeval doctrine of the superior value of pure contemplation. From the time of Augustine, Rachel and Mary of Bethany had been regarded as the representatives of the contemplative and higher life. In his sermon on Mary, the German mystic affirmed that Mary was still at school. Martha had learned and was engaged in good works, serving the Lord. Mary was only learning. She was striving to be as holy as her sister. Better to feed the hungry and do other works of mercy, he says, than to have the vision of Paul and to sit still. After Christ’s ascension, Mary learned to serve as fully as did Martha, for then the Holy Spirit was poured out. One who lives a truly contemplative life will show it in active works. A life of mere contemplation is a selfish life. The modern spirit was stirring in him. He saw another ideal for life than mediaeval withdrawal from the world. The breath of evangelical freedom and joy is felt in his writings.

Es geht ein Geist evangelischer Freiheit durch Eckart’s Sittenlehre welcher zugleich ein Geist der Freudigkeit ist, Preger, I. 452. See the sermon on Mary, Pfeiffer, pp. 47-53. Also pp. 18-21, 607.

Eckart’s speculative mind carried him to the verge of pantheism, and it is not surprising that his hyperbolical expressions subjected him to the papal condemnation. But his pantheism was Christian pantheism, the complete union of the soul with God. It was not absorption in the divine being involving the loss of individuality, but the reception of Godhood, the original principle of the Deity. What language could better express the idea that God is everything, and everything God, than these words, words adopted by Hegel as a sort of motto: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are the same, and there is but one sight, one apprehension, one love."

Das Auge das da inne ich Gott sehe, das ist selbe Auge da inne mich Gott sieht. Mein Auge und Gottes Auge, das ist ein Auge, und ein Erkennen und ein Gesicht und ein Minnen, Pfeiffer, p. 312.

Harnack and others have made the objection that the Cologne divine does not dwell upon the forgiveness of sins. This omission may be overlooked, when we remember the prominence given in his teaching to regeneration and man’s divine sonship. His most notable departure from scholasticism consists in this, that he did not dwell upon the sacraments and the authority of the Church. He addressed himself to Christian individuals, and showed concern for their moral and spiritual well-being. Abstruse as some of his thinking is, there can never be the inkling of a thought that he was setting forth abstractions of the school and contemplating matters chiefly with a scientific eye. He makes the impression of being moved by strict honesty of purpose to reach the hearts of men.

This is well expressed by Lasson in Ueberweg, I. 471. Inge says, p. 150, Eckart’s transparent honesty and his great power of thought, combined with deep devoutness and purity of soul, make him one of the most interesting figures in the history of Christian philosophy.

§ 30. John Tauler of Strassburg.

Among the admirers of Eckart, the most distinguished were John Tauler and Heinrich Suso. With them the speculative element largely disappears and the experimental and practical elements predominate. They emphasized religion as a matter of experience and the rule of conduct. Without denying any of the teachings or sacraments of the Church, they made prominent immediate union with Christ, and dwelt upon the Christian graces, especially patience, gentleness and humility. Tauler was a man of sober mind, Suso poetical and imaginative.

John Tauler, called doctor illuminatus, was born in Strassburg about 1300, and died there, 1361. Referring to his father’s circumstances, he once said, "If, as my father’s son, I had once known what I know now, I would have lived from my paternal inheritance instead of resorting to alms."

Preger, III. 131. The oldest Strassburg MS. entitles Tauler erluhtete begnodete Lerer. See Schmidt, p. 159. Preger, III. 93, gives the names of a number of persons by the name of Taweler, or Tawler, living in Strassburg.

He was in his native city again when it lay under the interdict fulminated against it in 1329, during the struggle between John XXII. and Lewis the Bavarian. The Dominicans offered defiance, continuing to say masses till 1339, when they were expelled for three years by the city council. We next find Tauler at Basel, where he came into close contact with the Friends of God, and their leader, Henry of Nördlingen. After laboring as priest in Bavaria, Henry went to the Swiss city, where he was much sought after as a preacher by the clergy and laymen, men and women. In 1357, Tauler was in Cologne, but Strassburg was the chief seat of his activity. Among his friends were Christina Ebner, abbess of a convent near Nürnberg, and Margaret Ebner, a nun of the Bavarian convent of Medingen, women who were mystics and recipients of visions.

Christina wrote a book entitled Von der Gnaden Ueberlast, giving an account of the tense life led by the sisters in her convent. She declared that the Holy Spirit played on Tauler’s heart as upon a lute, and that it had been revealed to her in a vision that his fervid tongue would set the earth on fire. See Strauch’s art. in Herzog, V. 129 sq. Also Preger, II. 247-251, 277 sqq.

Tauler’s reputation in his own day rested upon his power as a preacher, and it is probable that his sermons have been more widely read in the Protestant Church than those of other mediaeval preachers. The reason for this popularity is the belief that the preacher was controlled by an evangelical spirit which brought him into close affinity with the views of the Reformers. His sermons, which were delivered in German, are plain statements of truth easily understood, and containing little that is allegorical or fanciful. They attempt no display of learning or speculative ingenuity. When Tauler quotes from Augustine, Gregory the Great, Dionysius, Anselm or Thomas Aquinas, as he sometimes does, though not as frequently as Eckart, he does it in an incidental way. His power lay in his familiarity with the Scriptures, his knowledge of the human heart, his simple style and his own evident sincerity.

Specklin, the Strassburg chronicler, says Tauler spoke "in clear tones, with real fervor. His aim was to bring men to feel the nothingness of the world. He condemned clerics as well as laymen."

If we are to follow the History of Tauler’s Life and Conscience, which appeared in the first published edition of his works, 1498, Tauler underwent a remarkable spiritual change when he was fifty.

A translation of the book is given by Miss Winkworth, pp. 1-73. It calls Tattler’s monitor der grosse Gottesfreund im Oberlande. See § 32.

Some of Tauler’s expressions might give the impression that he was addicted to quietistic views, as when he speaks of being "drowned in the Fatherhood of God," of "melting in the fire of His love," of being "intoxicated with God." But these tropical expressions, used occasionally, are offset by the sober statements in which he portrays the soul’s union with God. To urge upon men to surrender themselves wholly to God and to give a practical exemplification of their union with Him in daily conduct was his mission.

He emphasized the agency of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens and sanctifies, who rebukes sin and operates in the heart to bring it to self-surrender.

One of the sermons, bringing out the influence of the Spirit, based on John 16:7-11, is quoted at length by Archdeacon Hare in his Mission of the Comforter. See also Miss Winkworth, pp. 350 358.

As for good works, if done apart from Christ, they are of no avail. Tauler often quoted the words of Isaiah 64:6. "All our righteousnesses are as a polluted garment." By his own power, man cannot come unto God. Those who have never felt anxiety on account of their sins are in the most dangerous condition of all.

Miss Winkworth, pp. 353, 475, etc.

The sacraments suffer no depreciation at Tauler’s hands, though they are given a subordinate place. They are all of no avail without the change of the inward man. Good people linger at the outward symbols, and fail to get at the inward truth symbolized. Yea, by being unduly concerned about their movements in the presence of the Lord’s body, they miss receiving him spiritually. Men glide, he says, through fasting, prayer, vigils and other exercises, and take so much delight in them that God has a very small part in their hearts, or no part in them at all.

Inner Way, p. 200. Miss Winkworth, pp. 345, 360 sqq.

In insisting upon the exercise of a simple faith, it seems almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that Tauler took an attitude of intentional opposition to the prescient and self-confident methods of scholasticism. It is better to possess a simple faith—einfaltiger Glaube — than to vainly pry into the secrets of God, asking questions about the efflux and reflux of the Aught and Nought, or about the essence of the soul’s spark. The Arians and Sabellians had a marvellous intellectual understanding of the Trinity, and Solomon and Origen interested the Church in a marvellous way, but what became of them we know not. The chief thing is to yield oneself to God’s will and to follow righteousness with sincerity of purpose. "Wisdom is not studied in Paris, but in the sufferings of the Lord," Tauler said. The great masters of Paris read large books, and that is well. But the people who dwell in the inner kingdom of the soul read the true Book of Life. A pure heart is the throne of the Supreme Judge, a lamp bearing the eternal light, a treasury of divine riches, a storehouse of heavenly sweetness, the sanctuary of the only begotten Son.

Preger, III. 132; Miss Winkworth, p. 348.

A distinctly democratic element showed itself in Tauler’s piety and preaching which is very attractive. He put honor upon all legitimate toil, and praised good and faithful work as an expression of true religion. One, he said, "can spin, another can make shoes, and these are the gifts of the Holy Ghost; and I tell you that, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift to be able to make shoes, and would try to make them so well as to become a pattern to all." Fidelity in one’s avocation is more than attendance upon church. He spoke of a peasant whom he knew well for more than forty years. On being asked whether he should give up his work and go and sit in church, the Lord replied no, he should win his bread by the sweat of his brow, and thus he would honor his own precious blood. The sympathetic element in his piety excluded the hard spirit of dogmatic complacency. "I would rather bite my tongue," Tauler said, "till it bleed, than pass judgment upon any man. Judgment we should leave to God, for out of the habit of sitting in judgment upon one’s neighbor grow self-satisfaction and arrogance, which are of the devil."

Preger, III. 131; Miss Winkworth, p. 355.

It was these features, and especially Tauler’s insistence upon the religious exercises of the soul and the excellency of simple faith, that won Luther’s praise, first in letters to Lange and Spalatin, written in 1516. To Spalatin he wrote that he had found neither in the Latin nor German tongue a more wholesome theology than Tauler’s, or one more consonant with the Gospel.

Köstlin, Life of M. Luther, I. 117 sq., 126. Melanchthon, in the Preface to the Franf. ed. of Tauler said: "Among the moderns, Tauler is easily the first. I hear, however, that there are some who dare to deny the Christian teaching of this, highly esteemed man." Beza was of a different mind, and called Tauler a visionary. See Schmidt, p. 160. Preger, III. 194, goes so far as to say that Tauler clearly taught the evangelical doctrine of justification.

The mood of the heretic, however, was furthest from Tauler. Strassburg knew what heresy was, and had proved her orthodoxy by burning heretics. Tauler was not of their number. He sought to call a narrow circle away from the formalities of ritual to close communion with God, but the Church was to him a holy mother. In his reverence for the Virgin, he stood upon mediaeval ground. Preaching on the Annunciation, he said that in her spirit was the heaven of God, in her soul His paradise, in her body His palace. By becoming the mother of Christ, she became the daughter of the Father, the mother of the Son, the Holy Spirit’s bride. She was the second Eve, who restored all that the first Eve lost, and Tauler does not hesitate to quote some of Bernard’s passionate words pronouncing Mary the sinner’s mediator with Christ. He himself sought her intercession. If any one could have seen into her heart, he said, he would have seen God in all His glory.

The Inner Way, p. 57 sqq. 77 sqq.

Though he was not altogether above the religious perversions of the mediaeval Church, John Tauler has a place among the godly leaders of the Church universal, who have proclaimed the virtue of simple faith and immediate communion with God and the excellency of the unostentatious practice of righteousness from day to day. He was an expounder of the inner life, and strikes the chord of fellowship in all who lay more stress upon pure devotion and daily living than upon ritual exercises. A spirit congenial to his was Whittier, whose undemonstrative piety poured itself out in hearty appreciation of his unseen friend of the fourteenth century. The modern Friend represents the mysterious stranger, who pointed out to Tauler the better way, as saying:—

Said Tauler,

§ 31. Henry Suso.

Henry Suso, 1295?-1366, a man of highly emotional nature, has on the one hand been treated as a hysterical visionary, and on the other as the author of the most finished product of German mysticism. Born on the Lake of Constance, and perhaps in Constance itself, he was of noble parentage, but on the death of his mother, abandoned his father’s name, Berg, and adopted his mother’s maiden name, Seuse, Suso being the Latin form.

Bihlmeyer, p. 65, decides for 1295 as the probable date of Suso’s birth. Other writers put it forward to 1300.

For supporting the pope against Lewis the Bavarian, the Dominicans in Constance came into disfavor, and were banished from the city. Suso retired to Diessehoven, where he remained, 1339–1346, serving as prior. During this period, he began to devote himself to preaching. The last eighteen years of his life were spent in the Dominican convent at Ulm, where he died, Jan. 25, 1366. He was beatified by Gregory XVI., 1831.

Suso’s constitution, which was never strong, was undermined by the rigorous penitential discipline to which he subjected himself for twenty-two years. An account of it is given in his Autobiography. Its severity, so utterly contrary to the spirit of our time, was so excessive that Suso’s statements seem at points to be almost incredible. The only justification for repeating some of the details is to show the lengths to which the penitential system of the Mediaeval Church was carried by devotees. Desiring to carry the marks of the Lord Jesus, Suso pricked into his bare chest, with a sharp instrument, the monogram of Christ, IHS. The three letters remained engraven there till his dying day and, "Whenever my heart moved," as he said, "the name moved also." At one time he saw in a dream rays of glory illuminating the scar.

He wore a hair shirt and an iron chain. The loss of blood forced him to put the chain aside, but for the hair shirt he substituted an undergarment, studded with 150 sharp tacks. This he wore day and night, its points turned inwards towards his body. Often, he said, it made the impression on him as if he were lying in a nest of wasps. When he saw his body covered with vermin, and yet he did not die, he exclaimed that the murderer puts to death at one stroke, "but alas, O tender God, — zarter Gott,—what a dying is this of mine!" Yet this was not enough. Suso adopted the plan of tying around his neck a part of his girdle. To this he attached two leather pockets, into which he thrust his hands. These he made fast with lock and key till the next morning. This kind of torture he continued to practise for sixteen years, when he abandoned it in obedience to a heavenly vision. How little had the piety of the Middle Ages succeeded in correcting the perverted views of the old hermits of the Nitrian desert, whose stories this Swiss monk was in the habit of reading, and whose austerities he emulated!

God, however, had not given any intimation of disapproval of ascetic discipline, and so Suso, in order further to impress upon his body marks of godliness, bound against his back a wooden cross, to which, in memory of the 30 wounds of Christ, he affixed 30 spikes. On this instrument of torture he stretched himself at night for 8 years. The last year he affixed to it 7 sharp needles. For a long time he went through 2 penitential drills a day, beating with his fist upon the cross as it hung against his back, while the needles and nails penetrated into his flesh, and the blood flowed down to his feet. As if this were not a sufficient imitation of the flagellation inflicted upon Christ, he rubbed vinegar and salt into his wounds to increase his agony. His feet became full of sores, his legs swelled as if he had had the dropsy, his flesh became dry and his hands trembled as if palsied. And all this, as he says, he endured out of the great inner love which he had for God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing pains he wanted to imitate. For 25 years, cold as the winter might be, he entered no room where there was a fire, and for the same period he abstained from all bathing, water baths or sweat baths—Wasserbad und Schweissbad. But even with this list of self-mortifications, Suso said, the whole of the story was not told.

In his fortieth year, when his physical organization had been reduced to a wreck, so that nothing remained but to die or to desist from the discipline, God revealed to him that his long-practised austerity was only a good beginning, a breaking up of his untamed humanity,—Ein Durchbrechen seines ungebrochenen Menschen,—and that thereafter he would have to try another way in order to "get right." And so he proceeded to macerations of the inner man, and learned the lessons which asceticisms of the soul can impart.

Suso nowhere has words of condemnation for such barbarous self-imposed torture, a method of pleasing God which the Reformation put aside in favor of saner rules of piety.

Other sufferings came upon Suso, but not of his own infliction. These he bore with Christian submission, and the evils involved he sought to rectify by services rendered to others. His sister, a nun, gave way to temptation. Overcoming his first feelings of indignation, Suso went far and near in search of her, and had the joy of seeing her rescued to a worthy life, and adorned with all religious virtues. Another cross he had to bear was the charge that he was the father of an unborn child, a charge which for a time alienated Henry of Nördlingen and other close friends. He bore the insinuation without resentment, and even helped to maintain the child after it was born.

Suso’s chief writings, which abound in imagery and comparisons drawn from nature, are an Autobiography,

It contains 53 chapters. Diepenbrock’s ed., pp. 137-306; Bihlmeyer’s ed., pp. 1-195. Diepenbrock’s edition has the advantage for the modern reader of being transmuted into modern German.

The Autobiography came to be preserved by chance. At the request of Elsbet Staglin, Suso told her a number of his experiences. This woman, the daughter of one of the leading men of Zürich, was an inmate of the convent of Tosse, near Winterthur. When Suso discovered that she had committed his conversations to writing, he treated her act as "a spiritual theft," and burnt a part of the manuscript. The remainder he preserved, in obedience to a supernatural communication, and revised. Suso appears in the book as "The Servant of the Eternal Wisdom."

The Autobiography is a spiritual self-revelation in which the author does not pretend to follow the outward stages of his career. In addition to the facts of his religious experience, he sets forth a number of devotional rules containing much wisdom, and closes with judicious and edifying remarks on the being of God, which he gave to Elsbet in answer to her questions.

A translation of these definitions is given by Inge, in Light,Life and Love, pp. 66-82..

The Book of the Eternal Wisdom, which is in the form of a dialogue between Christ, the Eternal Wisdom, and the writer, has been called by Denifle, who bore Suso’s name, the consummate fruit of German mysticism. It records, in German,

Suso made a revision of his work in Latin under the title Horologium eternoe sapientiae, a copy of which Tauler seems to have had in his possession. Preger, II. 324

Suso declares that one who is without love is as unable to understand a tongue that is quick with love as one speaking in German is unable to understand a Fleming, or as one who hears a report of the music of a harp is unable to understand the feelings of one who has heard the music with his own ears. The Saviour is represented as saying that it would be easier to bring back the years of the past, revive the withered flowers or collect all the droplets of rain than to measure the love—Minne — he has for men.

The Servant, after lamenting the hardness of heart which refuses to be moved by the spectacle of the cross and the love of God, seeks to discover how it is that God can at once be so loving and so severe. As for the pains of hell, the lost are represented as exclaiming, "Oh, how we desire that there might be a millstone as wide as the earth and reaching to all parts of heaven, and that a little bird might alight every ten thousand years and peck away a piece of stone as big as the tenth part of a millet seed and continue to peck away every ten thousandth year until it had pecked away a piece as big as a millet seed, and then go on pecking at the same rate until the whole stone were pecked away, so only our torture might come to an end; but that cannot be."

Having dwelt upon the agony of the cross and God’s immeasurable love, the bliss of heaven and the woes of hell, Suso proceeds to set forth the dignity of suffering. He had said in his Autobiography that "every lover is a martyr,"

Bihlmeyer’s ed., p. 13.

After dwelling upon the advantages of contemplation as the way of attaining to the heavenly life, the Eternal Wisdom tells Suso how to die both the death of the body and the soul; namely, by penance and by self-detachment from all the things of the earth—Entbrechen von allen Dingen. An unconverted man is introduced in the agonies of dying. His hands grow cold, his face pales, his eyes begin to lose their sight. The prince of terrors wrestles with his heart and deals it hard blows. The chill sweat of death creeps over his body and starts haggard fears. "O angry countenance of the severe Judge, how sharp are thy judgments!" he exclaims. In imagination, or with real sight, he beholds the host of black Moors approaching to see whether he belongs to them, and then the beasts of hell surrounding him. He sees the hot flames rising up above the denizens of purgatory, and hears them cry out that the least of their tortures is greater than the keenest suffering endured by martyr on the earth. And that a day there is as a hundred years. They exclaim, "Now we roast, now we simmer and now we cry out in vain for help." The dying man then passes into the other world, calling out for help to the friends whom he had treated well on the earth, but in vain.

The treatise, which closes with excellent admonitions on the duty of praising God continually, makes a profound spiritual impression, but it presents only one side of the spiritual life, and needs to be supplemented and expurgated in order to present a proper picture. Christ came into the world that we might have everlasting life now, and that we might have abundance of life, and that his joy might remain in us and our joy might be full. The patient endurance of suffering purifies the soul and the countenance, but suffering is not to be counted as always having a sanctifying power, much less is it to be courted. Macerations have no virtue of themselves, and patience in enduring pain is only one of the Christian virtues, and not their crown. Love, which is the bond of perfectness, finds in a cheerful spirit, in hearty human fellowships and in well-doing also, its ministries. The mediaeval type of piety turned the earth into a vale of tears. It was cloistral. For nearly 30 years, as Suso tells us, he never once broke through the rule of silence at table.

Autobiog., ch. XIV, Bihlmeyer’s, ed., p. 38

Suso kept company with the Friends of God, and acknowledged his debt to Eckart, "the high teacher," "his high and holy master," from whose "sweet teachings he had taken deep draughts." As he says in his Autobiography, he went to Eckart in a time of spiritual trial, and was helped by him out of the hell of distress into which he had fallen. He uses some of Eckart’s distinctive vocabulary, and after the Cologne rnystic’s death, Suso saw him "in exceeding glory" and was admonished by him to submission. This quality forms the subject of Suso’s Book on the Truth, which in part was meant to be a defence of his spiritual teacher.

A passage bearing on the soul’s union with Christ will serve as a specimen of Suso’s tropical style, and may fitly close this chapter. The soul, so the Swiss mystic represents Christ as saying—

"the soul that would find me in the inner closet of a consecrated and self-detached life,—abgeschiedenes Leben,—and would partake of my sweetness, must first be purified from evil and adorned with virtues, be decked with the red roses of passionate love, with the beautiful violets of meek submission, and must be strewn with the white lilies of purity. It shall embrace me with its arms, excluding all other loves, for these I shun and flee as the bird does the cage. This soul shall sing to me the song of Zion, which means passionate love combined with boundless praise. Then I will embrace it and it shall lean upon my heart."

Von der ewigen Weisheit, Bihlmeyer’s ed., p. 296 sq.

§ 32. The Friends of God.

The Friends of God attract our interest both by the suggestion of religious fervor involved in their name and the respect with which the prominent mystics speak of them. They are frequently met within the writings of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroeck, as well as in the pages of other writers of the fourteenth century. Much mystery surrounds them, and efforts have failed to define with precision their teachings, numbers and influence. The name had been applied to the Waldenses,

Preger, III. 370; Strauch, p. 205.

A letter written by a Friend to another Friend

As printed by Preger, III. 417 sq.

Among the leading Friends of God were Henry of Nördlingen, Nicolas of Löwen, Rulman Merswin and "the great Friend of God from the Oberland." The personality of the Friend of God from the Oberland is one of the most evasive in the religious history of the Middle Ages. He is presented as leader of great personal power and influence, as the man who determined Tauler’s conversion and wrote a number of tracts, and yet it is doubtful whether such a personage ever lived. Rulman Merswin affirms that he had been widely active between Basel and Strassburg and in the region of Switzerland, from which he got his name, the Oberland. In 1377, according to the same authority, he visited Gregory XI. in Rome and, like Catherine of Siena, petitioned the pontiff to set his face against the abuses of Christendom. Rulman was in correspondence with him for a long period, and held his writings secret until within four years of his (Rulman’s) death, when he published them. They were 17 in number, all of them bearing on the nature and necessity of a true conversion of heart.

The two leading writings are Das Buch ron den zwei Mannen, an account of the first five years immediately succeeding the author’s conversion, and given in Schmidt’s Nic. von Basel, pp. 205-277, and Das Buch von den fünf Mannen, in which the Oberlander gives an account of his own life and the lives of his friends. For the full list of the writings, see Preger, III. 270 sqq., and Strauch, p. 209 sqq.

This mystic from the Oberland, as Rulman’s account goes, led a life of prayer and devotion, and found peace, performed miracles and had visions. He is placed by Preger at the side of Peter Waldo as one of the most influential laymen of the Middle Ages, a priest, though unordained, of the Church. After Rulman’s death, we hear no more of him.

Rulman Merswin, the editor of the Oberland prophet’s writings, was born in Stra6sburg, 1307, and died there, 1382. He gave up merchandise and devoted himself wholly to a religious life. He had undergone the change of conversion—Kehr. For four years he had a hard struggle against temptations, and subjected himself to severe asceticisms, but was advised by his confessor, Tauler, to desist, at least for a time. It was towards the end of this period that he met the man from the Oberland. After his conversion, he purchased and fitted up an old cloister, located on an island near Strassburg, called das grüne Wört, to serve as a refuge for clerics and laymen who wished to follow the principles of the Friends of God and live together for the purpose of spiritual culture. In 1370, after the death of his wife, Rulman himself became an inmate of the house, which was put under the care of the Knights of St. John a year later. Here he continued to exhort by pen and word till his death. He lies buried at the side of his wife in Strassburg.

Merswin’s two chief writings are entitled Das Bannerbüchlein, the Banner-book, and Das Buch von den neun Felsen, the Nine Rocks. The former is an exhortation to flee from the banner of Lucifer and to gather under the blood-red banner of Christ.

See Preger, III. 349 sqq. C. Schmidt gives the test, as does also Diepenbrock, H Suso, pp. 505-572

Rulman then returns to the nine rocks, which represent the nine stages of progress towards the source of our being, God. Those who are on the rocks have escaped the devil’s net, and by climbing on up to the last rock, they reach perfection. Those on the fifth rock have gained the point where they have completely given up their own self-will. The sixth rock represents full submission to God. On the ninth the number is so small that there seemed to be only three persons on it. These have no desire whatever except to honor God, fear not hell nor purgatory, nor enemy nor death nor life.

The Friends of God, who are bent on something more than their own salvation, are depicted in the valley below, striving to rescue souls from the net in which they have been ensnared. The Brethren of the Free Spirit resist this merciful procedure.

The presentation is crude, and Scripture is not directly quoted. The biblical imagery, however, abounds, and, as in the case of the ancient allegory of Hermas, the principles of the Gospel are set forth in a way adapted, no doubt, to reach a certain class of minds, even as in these modern days the methods of the Salvation Army appeal to many for whom the discourses of Bernard or Gerson might have little meaning.

l Strauch, p. 208, and others regard Merswin’s works as in large part compilations from Tauler and other writers. Strauch pronounces their contents garrulous—geschwätzig. The Nine Rocks used to be printed with Suso’s works. Merswin’s authorship was established by Schmidt.

Rulman Merswin is regarded by Denifle, Strauch and other critics as the author of the works ascribed to the Friend of God from the Oberland, and the inventor of this fictitious personage.

Rulman hat den Gottesfreund einfach erfunden. Strauch, p. 217.

Whatever may be the outcome of the discussion over the historic personality of the man from the Oberland, we have in the writings of these two men a witness to the part laymen were taking in the affairs of the Church.

§ 33. John of Ruysbroeck.

Independent of the Friends of God, and yet closely allied with them in spirit, was Jan von Ruysbroeck, 1293–1381. In 1350, he sent to the Friends in Strassburg his Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage—Chierheit der gheesteleker Brulocht. He forms a connecting link between them and the Brothers of the Common Life. The founder of the latter brotherhood, de Groote, and also Tauler, visited him. He was probably acquainted with Eckart’s writings, which were current in the Lowlands.

The extent to which Eckart influenced the mystics of the Lowlands is a matter of dispute. The clergy strove to keep his works from circulation. Langenberg, p. 181, quotes Gerherd Zerbold von Zütphen’s, d. 1398, tract, De libris Teutonicalibus which takes the position that, while wholesome books might be read in the vulgar tongue, Eckart’s works and sermons were exceedingly pernicious, and not to be read by the laity. Langenberg, pp. 184-204, gives descriptions and excerpts from four MSS. of Eckart’s writings in Low German, copied in the convent of Nazareth, near Bredevoorde, and now preserved in the royal library of Berlin, but they do not give Eckart as the author.

The Flemish mystic was born in a village of the same name near Brussels, and became vicar of St. Gudula in that city. At sixty he abandoned the secular priesthood and put on the monastic habit, identifying himself with the recently established Augustinian convent Groenendal,—Green Valley,—located near Waterloo. Here he was made prior. Ruysbroeck spent most of his time in contemplation, though he was not indifferent to practical duties. On his walks through the woods of Soignes, he believed he saw visions and he was otherwise the subject of revelations. He was not a man of the schools. Soon after his death, a fellow-Augustinian wrote his biography, which abounds in the miraculous element. The very trees under which he sat were illuminated with an aureole. At his passing away, the bells of the convent rang without hands touching them, and perfume proceeded from his dead body.

The title, doctor ecstaticus, which at an early period was associated with Ruysbroeck, well names his characteristic trait. He did not speculate upon the remote theological themes of God’s being as did Eckart, nor was he a popular preacher of every-day Christian living, like Tauler. He was a master of the contemplative habit, and mused upon the soul’s experiences in its states of partial or complete union with God. His writings, composed in his mother-tongue, were translated into Latin by his pupils, Groote and William Jordaens. The chief products of his pen are the Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, the Mirror of Blessedness and Samuel, which is a defence of the habit of contemplation, and the Glistening Stone, an allegorical meditation on the white stone of Rev. 2:17, which is interpreted to mean Christ.

Ruysbroeck laid stress upon ascetic exercises, but more upon love. In its highest stages of spiritual life, the soul comes to God "without an intermediary." The name and work of Christ are dwelt upon on every page. He is our canon, our breviary, our every-day book, and belongs to Laity and clergy alike. He was concerned to have it understood that he has no sympathy with pantheism, and opposed the heretical views of the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Beghards. He speaks of four sorts of heretics, the marks of one of them being that they despise the ordinances and sacraments of the Catholic Church, the Scriptures and the sufferings of Christ, and set themselves above God himself. He, however, did not escape the charge of heresy. Gerson, who received a copy of the Spiritual Marriage from a Carthusian monk of Bruges, found the third book teaching pantheism, and wrote a tract in which he complained that the author, whom he pronounced an unlearned man, followed his feelings in setting forth the secrets of the religious life. Gerson was, however, persuaded that he had made a mistake by the defence written by John of Schoenhofen, one of the brethren of Groenendal. However, in his reply written 1408, he again emphasized that Ruysbroeck was a man without learning, and complained that he had not made his meaning sufficiently clear.

Engelhardt, pp. 265-297, gives a full statement of the controversy. For Gerson’s letters to Bartholomew and Schoenhofen and Schoenhofen’s letter, see Du Pin, Works of Gerson, pp. 29-82. Maeterlinck, p. 4, refers to the difficulty certain passages in Ruysbroeck’s writings offer to the interpreter.

The Spiritual Marriage, Ruysbroeck’s chief contribution to mystical literature, is a meditation upon the words of the parable, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him." It sets forth three stages of Christian experience, the active, the inner and the contemplative. In the active stage the soul adopts the Christian virtues and practises them, fighting against sin, and thus it goes out "to meet the bridegroom." We must believe the articles of the Creed, but not seek to fully understand them. And the more subtle doctrines of the Scripture we should accept and explain as they are interpreted by the life of Christ and the lives of his saints. Man should study nature, the Scriptures and all created things, and draw from them profit. To understand Christ he must, like Zaccheus, run ahead of all the manifestations of the creature world, and climb up the tree of faith, which has twelve branches, the twelve articles of the Creed.

As for the inner life, it is distinguished from the active by devotion to the original Cause and to truth itself as against devotion to exercises and forms, to the celebration of the sacrament and to good works. Here the soul separates itself from outward relations and created forms, and contemplates the eternal love of God. Asceticism may still be useful, but it is not essential.

The contemplative stage few reach. Here the soul is transferred into a purity and brightness which is above all natural intelligence. It is a peculiar adornment and a heavenly crown. No one can reach it by learning and intellectual subtlety nor by disciplinary exercises. In order to attain to it, three things are essential. A man must live virtuously; he must, like a fire that never goes out, love God constantly, and he must lose himself in the darkness in which men of the contemplative habit no longer find their way by the methods known to the creature. In the abyss of this darkness a light incomprehensible is begotten, the Son of God, in whom we "see eternal life."

At last the soul comes into essential unity with God, and, in the fathomless ocean of this unity, all things are seized with bliss. It is the dark quiet in which all who love God lose themselves. Here they swim in the wild waves of the ocean of God’s being.

I have followed the German text given by Lambert, pp. 3-160. Selections, well translated into English, are given in Light, Life and Love.

He who would follow the Flemish mystic in these utterances must have his spirit. They seem far removed from the calm faith which leaves even the description of such ecstatic states to the future, and is content with doing the will of God in the daily avocations of this earthly life. Expressions he uses, such as "spiritual intoxication,"

See Lambert, pp. 62, 63, etc.

"Even devotion must give way to a work of love to the spiritual and to the physical man. For even should one rise in prayer higher than Peter or Paul, and hear that a poor man needed a drink of water, he would have to cease from the devotional exercise, sweet though it were, and do the deed of love. It is well pleasing to God that we leave Him in order to help His members. In this sense the Apostle was willing to be banished from Christ for his brethren’s sake."

"Always before thou retire at night, read three books, which thou oughtest always to have with thee. The first is an old, gray, ugly volume, written over with black ink. The second is white and beautifully written in red, and the third in glittering gold letters. First read the old volume. That means, consider thine own past life, which is full of sins and errors, as are the lives of all men. Retire within thyself and read the book of conscience, which will be thrown open at the last judgment of Christ. Think over how badly thou hast lived, how negligent thou hast been in thy words, deeds, wishes and thoughts. Cast down thy eyes and cry, ’God be merciful to me a sinner.’ Then God will drive away fear and anxious concern and will give thee hope and faith. Then lay the old book aside and go and fetch from memory the white book. This is the guileless life of Christ, whose soul was pure and whose guileless body was bruised with stripes and marked with rose-red, precious blood. These are the letters which show his real love to us. Look at them with deep emotion and thank him that, by his death, he has opened to thee the gate of heaven. And finally lift up thine eyes on high and read the third book, written in golden script; that is, consider the glory of the life eternal, in Comparison with which the earthly vanishes away as the light of the candle before the splendor of the sun at midday."

Quoted by Galle, pp. 184-224.

§ 34. Gerrit de Groote and the Brothers of the Common Life.

It was fortunate for the progress of religion, that mysticism in Holland and Northwestern Germany did not confine itself to the channel into which it had run at Groenendal. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, and before Ruysbroeck’s death, it associated with itself practical philanthropic activities under the leadership of Gerrit Groote, 1340–1384, and Florentius Radewyn, 1350–1400, who had finished his studies in Prag. They were the founders of the Windesheim Congregation and the genial company known as the Brothers of the Common Life, called also the Brothers of the New Devotion. To the effort to attain to union with God they gave a new impulse by insisting that men imitate the conduct of Christ.

See Grube, Gerh. Groot, p. 9; Langenberg, p. ix; Pastor, I. 150. The Latin titles of the brotherhood were fratres vitae communis, fratres modernae devotionis, fratres bonae voluntatis, with reference to Luke 11:14, and fratres collationari with reference to their habit of preaching. Groote’s name is spelled Geert de Groote, Gherd de Groet (Langenberg, p. 3), Gerhard Groot (Grube), etc.

Groote was born at Deventer, where his father had been burgomaster. After studying at Paris, he taught at Cologne, and received the appointment of canon, enjoying at least two church livings, one at Utrecht and one at Aachen. He lived the life of a man of the world until he experienced a sudden conversion through the influence of a friend, Henry of Kolcar, a Carthusian prior. He renounced his ecclesiastical livings and visited Ruysbroeck, being much influenced by him. Thomas à Kempis remarks that Groote could say, after his visits to Ruysbroeck, "Thy wisdom and knowledge are greater than the report which I heard in my own country."

At forty he began preaching. Throngs gathered to hear him in the churches and churchyards of Deventer, Zwolle, Leyden and other chief towns of the Lowlands.

The title, hammer of the heretics,—malleus hereticorum,—was applied to him for his defence of the orthodox teaching. For the application of this expression, see Hansen, Gesch. des Hexenwahns, p. 361. On Groote’s fame as a preacher, see Grube, p. 14 sqq., 23. Thomas à Kempis vouches for Groote’s popularity as a preacher. See Kettlewell, I. 130-134. Among his published sermons is one against the concubinage of the clergy—de focaristis. For a list of his printed discourses, see Herzog, VII., 692 sqq., and Langenberg, p. 35 sqq.

Groote strongly denounced the low morals of the clergy, but seems not to have opposed any of the doctrines of the Church. He fasted, attended mass, laid stress upon prayer and alms, and enforced these lessons by his own life. To quote an old writer, he taught by living righteously—docuit sancte vivendo. In 1374, he gave the house he had inherited from his father at Deventer as a home for widows and unmarried women. Without taking vows, the inmates were afforded an opportunity of retirement and a life of religious devotion and good works. They were to support themselves by weaving, spinning, sewing, nursing and caring for the sick. They were at liberty to leave the community whenever they chose. John Brinkerinck further developed the idea of the female community.

The origin of the Brothers of the Common Life was on this wise. After the inhibition of lay preaching, Groote settled down at Deventer, spending much time in the house of Florentius Radewyn. He had employed young priests to copy manuscripts. At Radewyn’s suggestion they were united into a community, and agreed to throw their earnings into a common fund. After Groote’s death, the community received a more distinct organization through Radewyn. Other societies were established after the model of the Deventer house, which was called "the rich brother house,"—het rijke fraterhuis,—as at Zwolle, Delft, Liége, Ghent, Cologne, Münster, Marburg and Rostock, many of them continuing strong till the Reformation.

See Grube, p. 88, and Schulze, p. 492 sqq., who gives a succinct history of 18 German houses and 20 houses in the Lowlands. The last to be established was at Cambray, 1505.

A second branch from the same stock, the canons Regular of St. Augustine, established by the influence of Radewyn and other friends and pupils of Groote, had as their chief houses Windesheim, dedicated 1387, and Mt. St. Agnes, near Zwolle. These labored more within the convent, the Brothers of the Common Life outside of it.

The Brotherhood of the Common Life never reached the position of an order sanctioned by Church authority. Its members, including laymen as well as clerics, took no irrevocable vow, and were at liberty to withdraw when they pleased. They were opposed to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and were free from charges of looseness in morals and doctrine. Like their founder, they renounced worldly goods and remained unmarried. They supported the houses by their own toil.

Writing of Radewyn, Thomas à Kempis, Vita Florentii, ch. XIV., says that work was most profitable to spiritual advancement, and adapted to hold in check the lusts of the flesh. One brother who was found after his death to be in possession of some money, was denied prayer at his burial.

To gardening, making clothes and other occupations pertaining to the daily life, they added preaching, conducting schools and copying manuscripts. Groote was an ardent lover of books, and had many manuscripts copied for his library. Among these master copyists was Thomas à Kempis. Classical authors as well as writings of the Fathers and books of Scripture were transcribed. Selections were also made from these authors in distinct volumes, called ripiaria — little river banks. At Liege they were so diligent as copyists as to receive the name Broeders van de penne, Brothers of the Quill. Of Groote, Thomas à Kempis reports that he had a chest filled with the best books standing near his dining table, so that, if a course did not please him, he might reach over to them and give his friends a cup for their souls. He carried books about with him on his preaching tours. Objection was here and there made to the possession of so many books, where they might have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.

Uhlhorn, p. 373, gives the case of such an objector, a certain man by the name of Ketel of Deventer. Also Langenberg, p. x.

The schools conducted by the Brothers of the Common Life, intended primarily for clerics, have a distinguished place in the history of education. Seldom, if ever before, had so much attention been paid to the intellectual and moral training of youth. Not only did the Brothers, have their own schools. They labored also in schools already established. Long lists of the teachers are still extant. Their school at Herzogenbusch had at one time 1200 scholars, and put Greek into its course at its very start, 1424. The school at Liége in 1524 had 1600 scholars.

See Schmid, Gesch. d. Erziehung vom Anfang his auf unsere Zeit, Stuttgart, 1892, II. 164-167; Hirsche in Herzog, II 759; Pastor’s high tribute, I. 152; and Langenberg, p. ix.

Scarcely less influential was the public preaching of the Brethren in the vernacular, and the collations, or expositions of Scripture, given to private circles in their own houses. Groote went to the Scriptures, so Thomas à Kempis says, as to a well of life. Of John Celle, d. 1417, the zealous rector of the Zwolle school, the same biographer writes: "He frequently expounded to the pupils the Holy Scriptures, impressing upon them their authority and stirring them up to diligence in writing out the sayings of the saints. He also taught them to sing accurately, and sedulously to attend church, to honor God’s ministers and to pray often."

Kettlewell, I. 111.

The central theme of their study was the person and life of Christ. "Let the root of thy study," said Groote, "and the mirror of thy life be primarily the Gospel, for therein is the life of Christ portrayed."

Thos. à Kempis, Vita Gerard. XVIII. 11; Kettlewell I. 166. A life of a cleric he declared to be the people’s Gospel—vita clerici evangelium populi.

The excellent people joined the other mystics of the fourteenth century in loosening the hold of scholasticism and sacerdotalism, those two master forces of the Middle Ages.

See Ullman, II. 82, 115 sq. Schulze, p. 190, is not so clear on this point. Kettlewell, II. 440 says that the Brothers were "the chief agents in pioneering the way for the Reformation."

Some of these were translations from Bernard’s Jesu dulcis memoria, and some condemned festivities like the Maypole and the dance.

See Langenberg. The poem he gives on the dance, 68 sqq., begins—

Hyr na volget eyn lere schone

Teghen dantzen unde van den meybome.

Here follows a nice teaching against dancing and the May tree. One reason given against dancing was that the dancers stretched out their arms, and so showed disrespect to Christ, who stretched out his arms on the cross. One of the documents is a letter in which a monk warns his niece, who had gone astray, against displays of dress and bold gestures, intended to attract the attention of young men, especially on the Cathedral Square. With the letter he sent his niece a book of devotional literature.

Eugene IV., Pius II., and Sistus IV. gave the Brothers marks of their approval, and the great teachers, Cardinal Cusa, D’Ailly and John Gerson spoke in their praise. There were, however, detractors, such as Grabon, a Saxon Dominican who presented, in the last days of the Council of Constance, 1418, no less than twenty-five charges against them. The substance of the charges was that the highest religious life may not be lived apart from the orders officially sanctioned by the Church. A commission appointed by Martin V., to which Gerson and D’Ailly belonged, reported adversely, and Grabon was obliged to retract. The commission adduced the fact that there was no monastic body in Jerusalem when the primitive Church practised community of goods, and that conventual walls and vows are not essential to the highest religious life. Otherwise the pope, the cardinals and the prelates themselves would not be able to attain to the highest reach of religious experience.

Van der Hardt, Conc. Const., III. 107-121, gives Grabon’s charges, the judgments of D’Ailly and Gerson and the text of Grabon’s retraction.

With the Reformation, the distinct mission of the Brotherhood was at an end, and many of the communities fell in with the new movement. As for the houses which maintained their old rules, Luther felt a warm interest in them. When, in 1532, the Council of Hervord in Westphalia was proposing to abolish the local sister and brother houses, the Reformer wrote strongly against the proposal as follows: "Inasmuch as the Brothers and Sisters, who were the first to start the Gospel among you, lead a creditable life, and have a decent and well-behaved community, and faithfully teach and hold the pure Word, such monasteries and brother-houses please me beyond measure." On two other occasions, he openly showed his interest in the brotherhood of which Groote was the founder.

De Wette, Luther’s Letters, Nos. 1448, 1449, vol. IV., pp. 358 sqq.

§ 35. The Imitation of Christ. Thomas à Kempis.

... mild saint

The pearl of all the mystical writings of the German-Dutch school is the Imitation of Christ, the work of Thomas à Kempis. With the Confessions of St. Augustine and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress it occupies a place in the very front rank of manuals of devotion, and, if the influence of books is to be judged by their circulation, this little volume, starting from a convent in the Netherlands, has, next to the Sacred Scriptures, been the most influential of all the religious writings of Christendom. Protestants and Catholics alike have joined in giving it praise. The Jesuits introduced it into their Exercises. Dr. Samuel Johnson, once, when ill, taught himself Dutch by reading it in that language, and said of its author that the world had opened its arms to receive his book.

Art. The Worldly Wisdom of Thos. à Kempis, in Dublin Review, 1908, pp. 262-287.

The number of counted editions exceeds 2000. The British Museum has more than 1000 editions on its shelves.

Backer, in his Essai bibliogr., enumerates 545 Latin editions, and about 900 editions in French. There are more than 50 editions belonging to the fifteenth century. See Funk, p. 426. The Bullingen collection, donated to the city library of Cologne, 1838, contained at the time of the gift 400 different edd. Montmorenci, p. xxii sq., gives the dates of 29 edd., 1471-1503, with places of issue.

Originally written in the Latin, a French translation was made as early as 1447, which still remains in manuscript. The first printed French copies appeared in Toulouse, 1488. The earliest German translation was made in 1434 and is preserved in Cologne, and printed editions in German begin with the Augsburg edition of 1486. Men eminent in the annals of German piety, such as Arndt, 1621, Gossner, 1824, and Tersteegen, 1844, have issued editions with prefaces. The work first appeared in print in English, 1502, the translation being partly by the hand of Margaret, the mother of Henry VII. Translations appeared in Italian in Venice and Milan, 1488, in Spanish at Seville, 1536, in Arabic at Rome, 1663, in Arminian at Rome, 1674, and in other languages.

Corneille produced a poetical translation in French, 1651. A polyglot edition appeared at Sulzbach, 1837, comprising the Latin text and translations in Italian, French, German, Greek and English.

The Imitation of Christ consists of four books, and derives its title from the heading of the first book, De imitatione Christi et contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi, the imitation of Christ and the contempt of all the vanities of the world. It seems to have been written in metre.

Hirsche discovered the rhythm and made it known, 1874.

Here are counsels to read the Scriptures, statements about the uses of adversity and advice for submission to authority, warnings against temptations, reflections upon death, the judgment and paradise. Here are meditations on Christ’s oblation on the cross and the advantages of the communion, and also admonitions to flee the vanities and emptiness of the world and to love God, for he that loveth, knoweth God. Christ is more than all the wisdom of the schools. He lifts up the mind in a moment of time to perceive more reasons for eternal truth than a student might learn over books in ten years. He teaches without confusion of words, without the clashing of opinions, without the pride of reputation,—sine fastu honoris,—the contention of arguments. The concluding words are: "My eyes are unto Thee. My God, in Thee do I put my trust, O Thou Father of mercies. Accompany thy servant with Thy grace and direct him by the path of peace to the land of unending light—patriam perpetuae claritatis."

The plaintive minor key, the gently persuasive tone of the work are adapted to attract serious souls seeking the inner chamber of religious peace and purity of thought, but especially those who are under the shadow of pain and sorrow. The praise of Christ is so unstinted, and the dependence upon him so unaffected, that one cannot help but feel, in reading this book, that he is partaking of the essence of the Gospel. The work, however, presents only one side of the Christian life. It commends humility, submission, gentleness and the passive virtues. It does not emphasize the manly virtues of courage and loyalty to the truth, nor elaborate upon Christian activities to be done to our fellow-men. To fall in completely with the spirit of Thomas à Kempis, and to abide there, would mean to follow the best cloistral ideal of the Middle Ages, or rather of the fourteenth century. Its counsels and reflections were meant primarily for those who had made the convent their home, not for the busy traffickers in the marts of the world, and in association with men of all classes. It leans to quietism, and is calculated to promote personal piety for those who dwell much alone rather than to fit men for engaging in the public battles which fall to men’s usual lot. Its admonitions are adapted to help men to bear with patience rather than to rectify the evils in the world, to be silent rather than to speak to the throng, to live well in seclusion rather than set an example of manly and womanly endeavor in the shop, on the street and in the family. The charge has been made, and not without some ground, that the Imitation of Christ sets forth a selfish type of religion.

This is Milman’s judgment. Hist. of Lat. Christ., Bk. XIV., 3, Milman said, "The book’s sole, single, exclusive object is the purification, the elevation of the individual soul, of the man absolutely isolated from his kind, of the man dwelling alone in the heritage of his thoughts."

Over the pages of the book is written the word Christ. It is for this reason that Protestants cherish it as well as Catholics. The references to mediaeval errors of doctrine or practice are so rare that it requires diligent search to find them. Such as they are, they are usually erased from English editions, so that the English reader misses them entirely. Thomas introduces the merit of good works, transubstantiation, IV. 2, the doctrine of purgatory, IV. 9, and the worship of saints, I. 13, II. 9, II. 6, 59. But these statements, however, are like the flecks on the marbles of the Parthenon.

The author, Thomas à Kempis, 1380–1471, was born in Kempen, a town 40 miles northwest of Cologne, and died at Zwolle, in the Netherlands. His paternal name was Hemerken or Hämmerlein, Little Hammer. He was a follower of Groote. In 1395, he was sent to the school of Deventer, under the charge of Florentius Radewyn and the Brothers of the Common Life. He became skilful as a copyist, and was thus enabled to support himself. Later he was admitted to the Augustinian convent of Mt. St. Agnes, near Zwolle, received priest’s orders, 1413, and was made sub-prior, 1429. His brother John, a man of rectitude of life, had been there before him, and was prior. Thomas’ life seems to have been a quiet one, devoted to meditation, composition and copying. He copied the Bible no less than four times, one of the copies being preserved at Darmstadt. His works abound in quotations of the New Testament. Under an old picture, which is represented as his portrait, are the words, "In all things I sought quiet, and found it not save in retirement and in books."

In omnibus requiem quaesivi et non inveni nisi in een huechsken met een buexken. Franciscus Tolensis is the first to ascribe the portrait to à Kempis. Kettlewell’s statements about à Kempis’ active religious services are imaginary, I. 31, 322, etc. See Lindsay’s statement, Enc. Brit., XIV. 32.

In these writings the traces of mediaeval theology, though they are found, are not obtrusive. The writer followed his mediaeval predecessors in the worship of Mary, of whom he says, she is to be invoked by all Christians, especially by monastics.

De disciplina claustralium, Pohl’s ed., II. 313. For prayers to Mary III. 355-368 and sermons on Mary, VI. 218-238.

From these tender praises of Mary it is pleasant to turn away to the code of twenty-three precepts which the Dutch mystic laid down under the title, A Small Alphabet for a Monk in the School of God.

III. 317-322.

NOTE. – The Authorship of the Imitation of Christ. This question has been one of the most hotly contested questions in the history of pure literature. National sentiments have entered into the discussion, France and Italy contending for the honor of authorship with the Lowlands. The work is now quite generally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis, but among those who dissent from this opinion are scholars of rank.

Among the more recent treatments of the subject not given in the Literature, § 27, are V. Becker: L’auteur de l’Imitat. et les documents néerlandais, Hague, 1882. Also Les derniers travaux sur l’auteur de l’Imitat., Brussels, 1889.—Denifle: Krit. Bemerk. zur Gersen-Kempis Frage, Zeitung für kath. Theol., 1882 sq.—A. O. Spitzes: Th. à K. als schrijver der navolging, Utrecht, 1880. Also Nouvelle défense en réponse du Denifle, Utrecht, 1884.—L. Santini: I diritti di Tommaso da Kemp., 2 vols., Rome, 1879–1881.—F. X. Funk: Gerson und Gersen and Der Verfasser der Nachfolge Christi in his Abhandlungen, Paderborn, 1899, II. 373–444.—P. E. Puyol: Descript. bibliogr. des MSS. et des princip. edd. du livre de imitat., Paris, 1898. Also Paléographie, classement, généalogie du livre de imitat., Paris, 1898. Also L’auteur du livre de imitat., 2 vols., Paris, 1899.—Schulze’s art. in Herzog.—G. Kentenich: Die Handschriften der Imitat. und die Autorschaft des Thomas, in Brieger’s Zeitschrift, 1902, 18 sqq., 1903, 594 sqq.

Pohl gives a list of no less than 35 persons to whom with more or less confidence the authorship has been ascribed. The list includes the names of John Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris; John Gersen, the reputed abbot of Vercelli, Italy, who lived about 1230; Walter Hylton, St. Bernard, Bonaventura, David of Augsburg, Tauler, Suso and even Innocent III. The only claimants worthy of consideration are Gerson, Gersen, and Thomas à Kempis, although Montmorency is inclined to advance the claim of Walter Hylton. The uncertainty arises from the facts (1) that a number of the MSS. and printed editions of the fifteenth century have no note of authorship; (2) the rest are divided between these, Gerson, Gersen, à Kempis, Hylton, and St. Bernard; (3) the MSS. copies show important divergencies. The matter has been made more difficult by the forgery of names and dates in MSS. since the controversy began, these forgeries being almost entirely in the interest of a French or Italian authorship. A reason for the absence of the author’s name in so many MSS. is found in the desire of à Kempis, if he indeed be the author, to remain incognito, in accordance with his own motto, ama nesciri, "love to be unknown."

Of the Latin editions belonging to the fifteenth century, Pohl gives 28 as accredited to Gerson, 12 to Thomas, 2 to St. Bernard, and 6 as anonymous. Or, to follow Funk, p. 426, 40 editions of that century were ascribed to Gerson, 11 to à Kempis, 2 to Bernard, 1 to Gersen, and 2 are anonymous. Spitzen gives 16 as ascribed to à Kempis. Most of the editions ascribing the work to Gerson were printed in France, the remaining editions being printed in Italy or Spain. The editions of the sixteenth century show a change, 37 Latin editions ascribing the authorship to à Kempis, and 25 to Gerson. As for the MSS. dated before 1460, and whose dates may be said to be reasonably above suspicion, all were written in Germany and the Lowlands. The oldest, included in a codex preserved since 1826 in the royal library of Brussels, probably belongs before 1420. The codex contains 9 other writings of à Kempis besides the Imitation, and contains the note, Finitus et completus MCCCCXLI per manus fratris Th. Kempensis in Monte S. Agnetis prope Zwollis (finished and completed, 1441, by the hands of brother Thomas à Kempis of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle). See Pohl, II. 461 sqq. So this is an autographic copy. The text of the Imitation, however, is written on older paper than the other documents, and has corrections which are found in a Dutch translation of the first book, dating from 1420. For these reasons, Funk, p. 424, and others, puts the MS. back to 1416–1420.

The literary controversy over the authorship began in 1604, when Dom Pedro Manriquez, in a work on the Lord’s Supper issued at Milan, and on the alleged basis of a quotation by Bonaventura, declared the Imitation to be older than that Schoolman. In 1606, Bellarmin, in his Descript. eccles., was more precise, and stated it was already in existence in 1260. About the same time, the Jesuit, Rossignoli, found in a convent at Arona, near Milan, a MS. without date, but bearing the name of an abbot, John Gersen, as its author; the house had belonged to the Benedictines once. In 1614 the Benedictine, Constantius Cajetan, secretary of Paul V., issued his Gersen restitutus at Rome, and later his Apparatus ad Gersenem restitutum, in which he defended the Italian’s claim. This individual was said to have been a Benedectine abbot of Vercelli, in Piedmont, in the first half of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, the Augustinian, Rosweyde, in his vindiciae Kempenses, Antwerp, 1617, so cogently defended the claims of à Kempis that Bellarmin withdrew his statement. In the nineteenth century the claims of Gersen were again urged by a Piedmontese nobleman, Gregory, in his Istoria della Vercellese letteratura, Turin, 1819, and subsequent publications, and by Wolfsgruber of Vienna in a scholarly work, 1880. But Hirsche and Funk are, no doubt, right in pronouncing the name Gersen a mistake for Gerson, and Funk, after careful criticism, declares the Italian abbot a fictitious personage. The most recent Engl. writer on the subject, Montmorency, p. xiii. says, "there is no evidence that there was ever an abbot of Vercelli by the name of Gersen."

The claims of John Gerson are of a substantial character, and France was not slow in coming to the chancellor’s defence. An examination of old MSS., made in Paris, had an uncertain issue, so that, in 1640, Richelieu’s splendid edition of the Imitation was sent forth without an author’s name. The French parliament, however, in 1652, ordered the book printed under the name of à Kempis. The matter was not settled and, at three gatherings, 1671, 1674, 1687, instituted by Mabillon, a fresh examination of MSS. was made, with the result that the case went against à Kempis. Later, Du Pin, after a comparison of Gerson’s writings with the Imitation, concluded that it was impossible to decide with certainty between these two writers and Gersen. (See his 2d ed. of Gerson’s Works, 1728, I. lix-lxxxiv) but in a special work. Amsterdam, 1706, he had decided in favor of the Dutchman. French editions of the Imitation continued to be issued under the name of Gerson, as, for example, those of Erhard-Mezler, 1724, and Vollardt, 1758. On the other hand, the Augustinian, Amort, defended the à Kempis authorship in his Informatio de statu controversiae, Augsburg, 1728, and especially in his Scutum Kempense, Cologne, 1728. After the unfavorable statement of Schwab, Life of Gerson, 1858, pp. 782–786, declaring that the Imitation is in an altogether different style from Gerson’s works, the theory of the Gerson authorship seemed to be finally abandoned. The first collected edition of Gerson’s Works, 1483, knows nothing about the Imitation. Nor did Gerson’s brother, prior of Lyons, mention it in the list he gave of the chancellor’s works, 1423. The author of the Imitation was, by his own statements, a monk, IV. 5, 11; III., 56. Gerson would have been obliged to change his usual habit of presentation to have written in the monastic tone.

After the question of authorship seemed to be pretty well settled in favor of à Kempis, another stage in the controversy was opened by the publications of Puyol in 1898, 1899. Puyol gives a description of 548 manuscripts, and makes a sharp distinction between those of Italian origin and other manuscripts. He also annotates the variations in 57, with the conclusion that the Italian text is the more simple, and consequently the older and original text. He himself based his edition on the text of Arona. Puyol is followed by Kentenich, and has been answered by Pohl and others.

Walter Hylton’s reputed authorship of the Imitation is based upon three books of that work, having gone under the name De musica ecclesiastica in MSS. in England and the persistent English tradition that Hylton was the author. Montmorency, pp. xiv, 138–170, while he pronounces the Hylton theory of authorship untenable, confesses his inability to explain it.

The arguments in favor of the à Kempis authorship, briefly stated, are as follows:—

1. External testimony. John Busch, in his Chronicon Windesemense, written 1464, seven years before à Kempis’ death, expressly states that à Kempis wrote the Imitation. To this testimony are to be added the testimonies of Caspar of Pforzheim, who made a German translation of the work, 1448; Hermann Rheyd, who met Thomas, 1454, and John Wessel, who was attracted to Windesheim by the book’s fame. For other testimonies, see Hirsche and Funk, pp. 432–436.

2. Manuscripts and editions. The number of extant MSS. is about 500. See Kentenich, p. 294. Funk, p. 420, gives 13 MSS. dated before 1500, ascribing the Imitation to à Kempis. The autograph copy, contained in the Brussels codex of 1441, has already been mentioned. It must be said, however, the conclusion reached by Hirsche, Pohl, Funk, Schulze and others that this text is autographic has been denied by Puyol and Kentenich, on the basis of its divergences from other copies, which they claim the author could not have made. A second autograph, in Louvaine (see Schulze, p. 730), seems to be nearly as old, 1420, and has the note scriptus manibus et characteribus Thomae qui est autor horum devotorum libellorum, "written by the hand of Thomas," etc. (Pohl, VI. 456 sq.). A third MS., stating that Thomas is the author, and preserved in Brussels, is dated 1425.—As for the printed editions of the fifteenth century, at least 13 present Thomas as the author, from the edition of Augsburg, 1472, to the editions of Paris, 1493, 1500.

3. Style and contents. These agree closely with à Kempis’ other writings, and the flow of thought is altogether similar to that of his Meditation on Christ’s Incarnation. Spitzen seems to have made it at least very probable that the author was acquainted with the writings of Ruysbroeck, John of Schoenhoven, and other mystics and monks of the Lowlands. Funk has brought out references to ecclesiastical customs which fit the book into the time between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hirsche laid stress on Germanisms in the style.

Among recent German scholars, Denifle sets aside à Kempis’ claims and ascribes the work to some unknown canon regular of the Lowlands. Karl Müller, in a brief note, Kirchengesch., II. 122, and Loof’s Dogmengesch., 4th ed., p. 633, pronounce the à Kempis authorship more than doubtful. On the other hand, Schwab, Hirsche, Schulze and Funk agree that the claims of Thomas are almost beyond dispute. It is almost impossible to give a reason why the Imitation should have been ascribed to the Dutch mystic, if he were not indeed its author. The explanation given by Kentenich, p. 603, seems to be utterly insufficient.

§ 36. The German Theology.

The evangelical teachings of the little book, known as The German Theology, led Ullmann to place its author in the list of the Reformers before the Reformation.

The best German ed., Stuttgart, 1858. The text is taken from Pfeiffer’s ed., Strassburg, 1851, 3d ed. unchanged; Gütersloh, 1875, containing Luther’s Preface of 1518 and the Preface of Joh. Arndt, 1632. Pfeiffer used the MS. dated 1497, the oldest in existence. The best Engl. trans., by Susannah Winkworth, from Pfeiffer’s text, London, 1854, Andover, 1856. The Andover ed. contains an Introd. by Miss Winkworth, a Letter from Chevalier Bunsen and Prefaces by Canon Kingsley and Prof. Calvin E. Stowe.

Luther announced his high obligation to the teachings of the manual of the way of salvation when he said that next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book had come into his hands from which he had learnt more of what God and man and all things are and would wish to learn more. The author, he affirmed, was a pure Israelite who did not take the foam from the surface, but drew from the bed of the Jordan. Here, he continued, the teachings of the Scriptures are set forth as plain as day which have been lying under the desk of the universities, nay, have almost been left to rot in dust and muck. With his usual patriotism, he declared that in the book he had found Christ in the German tongue as he and the other German theologians had never found him in Greek, Latin or Hebrew.

The German Theology sets forth man’s sinful and helpless condition, Christ’s perfection and mediatorial work and calls upon men to have access to God through him as the door. In all its fifty-four chapters no reference is made to Mary or to the justifying nature of good works or the merit of sacramental observances.

Dr. Calvin E. Stowe said "the book sets forth the essential principle of the Gospel in its naked simplicity," Winkworth’s ed., p. v.

The book, starting out with the words of St. Paul, "when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away," declares that that which is imperfect has only a relative existence and that, whenever the Perfect becomes known by the creature, then "the I, the Self and the like must all be given up and done away." Christ shows us the way by having taken on him human nature. In chs. XV.-LIV., it shows that all men are dead in Adam, and that to come to the perfect life, the old man must die and the new man be born. He must become possessed with God and depossessed of the devil. Obedience is the prime requisite of the new manhood. Sin is disobedience, and the more "of Self and Me, the more of sin and wickedness and the more the Self, the I, the Me, the Mine, that is, self-seeking and selfishness, abate in a man, the more doth God’s I, that is, God Himself, increase." By obedience we become free. The life of Christ is the perfect model, and we follow him by hearkening unto his words to forsake all. This is nothing else than saying that we must be in union with the divine will and be ready either to do or to suffer. Such a man, a man who is a partaker of the divine nature, will in sincerity love all men and things, do them good and take pleasure in their welfare. Knowledge and light profit nothing without love. Love maketh a man one with God. The last word is that no man can come unto the Father but by Christ.

In 1621 the Catholic Church placed the Theologia Germanica on the Index. If all the volumes listed in that catalogue of forbidden books were like this one, making the way of salvation plain, its pages would be illuminated with ineffable light.

Stöckl and other Catholics, though not all, are bitter against the Theologia and charge it with pantheism. Bunsen ranked it next to the Bible. Winkworth’s ed., p. liv.

§ 37. English Mystics.

England, in the fourteenth century, produced devotional writings which have been classed in the literature of mysticism. They are wanting in the transcendental flights of the German mystics, and are, for the most part, marked by a decided practical tendency.

The Ancren Riwle was written for three sisters who lived as anchoresses at Tarrant Kaines, Dorsetshire.

The Ancren Riwle, ed. by J. Morton, Camden series, London, 1853. See W. R. Inge, Studies in Engl. Mystics, London. 1906. p. 38 sqq.

Juliana of Norwich, who died 1443, as it is said, at the age of 100, was also an anchoress, having her cell in the churchyard of St. Julian’s church, Norwich. She received 16 revelations, the first in 1373, when she was 30 years old. At that time, she saw "God in a point." She laid stress upon love, and presented the joyful aspect of religion. God revealed Himself to her in three properties, life, light and love. Her account of her revelations is pronounced by Inge "a fragrant little book."

The Revelations of Divine Love has been ed. by R. F. S. Cressy, London, 1670, reprinted 1843; by H. Collins, London, 1817, and by Grace Warrack. 3d ed. Lond., 1909. See Inge and Dict. of Natl. Biog.

The Ladder of Perfection, written by Walter Hylton, an Augustinian canon of Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire, who died 1396,

Written in English, the Ladder was translated by the Carmelite friar, Thomas Fyslawe, into Latin. Hylton’s death is also put in 1433.

These writings, if we except Rolle, betray much of that sobriety of temper which characterizes the English religious thought. They contain no flights of hazy mystification and no rapturous outbursts of passionate feeling. They emphasize features common to all the mystics of the later Middle Ages, the gradual transformation through the power of love into the image of God, and ascent through inward contemplation to full fellowship with Him. They show that the principles of the imitation of Christ were understood on the English side of the channel as well as by the mystics of the Lowlands, and that true godliness is to be reached in another way than by the mere practice of sacramental rites.

These English pietists are to be regarded, however, as isolated figures who, so far as we know, had no influence in preparing the soil for the seed of the Reformation that was to come, as had the Pietists who lived along the Rhine.

Montmorency, p. 69, makes a remark for which, so far as I know, there is no corroborative testimony in the writings of the English Reformers, that "in this English mystical movement—of which a vast unprinted literature survives—is to be found the origin of Lollardism and of the Reformation in England."

§ 38. Sources and Literature.

For § 39. Church and Society in England, etc.—Thomas Walsingham: Hist. Anglicana, ed. by Riley, Rolls Ser., London, 1869.—Walter de Heimburgh: Chronicon, ed. by Hamilton, 2 vols., 1848 sq.—Adam Merimuth: Chronicon, and Robt. de Avesbury: De gestis mirabilibus Edwardi III., ed. by Thompson with Introd., Rolls Ser., 1889.—Chron. Angliae (1326–1388), ed. by Thompson, Rolls Ser., 1874.—Henry Knighton: Chronicon, ed. by Lumby, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., 1895.—Ranulph Higden, d. bef. 1400: Polychronicon, with trans. by Trevisa, Rolls Ser., 9 vols., 1865–1886.—Thos. Rymer, d. 1713: Foedera, Conventiones et Litera, London, 1704–1715.—Wilkins: Concilia.—W. C. Bliss: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to G. Britain and Ireland, vols. II.-IV., London, 1897–1902. Vol. II. extends from 1305–1342; vol. III., 1342–1362; vol. IV., 1362–1404. A work of great value.—Gee and Hardy: Documents, etc.—Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Eccles. Doc’ts.—Stubbs: Constit. Hist. of Engl., III. 294–387.—The Histt. of Engl., by Lingard, bks. III., IV., and Green, bk. IV.—Capes: The Engl. Ch. in the 14th and 15th Centt., London, 1900.—Haller: Papsttum und Kirchenreform, pp. 375–465.—Jessopp: The Coming of the Friars.—Creighton: Hist. of Epidemics in England.—Gasquet: The Great Pestilence, 1893.—Rashdall and others: Histt. of Oxford and Cambridge.—The Dict. of Nat. Biog.—Also Thos. Fuller’s Hist. of Gr. Brit., for its general judgments and quaint statements.—Loserth: Studien zur Kirchenpolitik Englands im 14 Jahrh. in Sitzungsberichte d. kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissenschaften in Wien, Vienna, 1897.—G. Kriehn: Studies in the Sources of the Social Revol. of 1381, Am. Hist. Rev., Jan.-Oct., 1902.—C. Oman: The Great Revolt in 1381, Oxford, 1906.—Traill: Social Engl., vol. II., London, 1894.—Rogers: Six Centt. of Work and Wages.—Cunningham: Growth of Engl. Industry.

For §§ 40–42. John Wyclif.—I. The publication of Wyclif’s works belongs almost wholly to the last twenty-five years, and began with the creation of the Wyclif Society, 1882, which was due to a summons from German scholars. In 1858, Shirley, Fasc., p. xlvi, could write, "Of Wyc’s Engl. writings nothing but two short tracts have seen the light," and in 1883, Loserth spoke of his tractates "mouldering in the dust." The MSS. are found for the most part in the libraries of Oxford, Prag and Vienna. The Trialogus was publ. Basel, 1525, and Wycliffe’s Wycket, in Engl., Nürnberg, 1546. Reprinted at Oxford, 1828.—Latin Works, ed. by the Wyclif Soc., organized, 1882, in answer to Buddensieg’s appeal in the Academy, Sept. 17, 1881, 31 vols., London, 1884–1907.—De officia pastorli, ed. by Lechler, Leipzig, 1863.—Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, Oxford, 1869.—De veritate sac. Scripturae, ed. by Rudolf Buddensieg, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—De potestate papae, ed. by Loserth, London, 1907.—Engl. Works: Three Treatises, by J. Wyclffe, ed. by J. H. Todd, Dublin, 1851.—*Select Engl. Works, ed. by Thos. Arnold, 3 vols., Oxford, 1869–1871.—*Engl. Works Hitherto Unprinted, ed. by F. D. Matthew, London, 1880, with valuable Introd.—*Wyclif’s trans. of the Bible, ed. by Forshall and Madden, 4 vols., Oxford, 1850.—His New Test. with Introd. and Glossary, by W. W. Skeat, Cambridge, 1879.—The trans. of Job, Pss., Prov., Eccles. and Canticles, Cambridge, 1881.—For list of Wyclif’s works, see Canon W. W. Shirley: Cat. of the Works of J. W., Oxford, 1865. He lists 96 Latin and 65 Engl. writings.—Also Lechler in his Life of Wiclif, II. 559–573, Engl. trans., pp. 483–498.—Also Rashdall’s list in Dict. of Nat. Biog.—II. Biographical.—Thomas Netter of Walden, a Carmelite, d. 1430: Fasciculi zizaniorum Magistri Joh. Wyclif cum tritico (Bundles of tares of J. Wyc. with the wheat), a collection of indispensable documents and narrations, ed. by Shirley, with valuable Introd., Rolls Ser., London, 1858.—Also Doctrinale fidei christianae Adv. Wicleffitas et Hussitas in his Opera, Paris, 1532, best ed., 3 vols., Venice, 1757. Walden could discern no defects in the friars, and represented the opposite extreme from Wyclif. He sat in the Council of Pisa, was provincial of his order in England, and confessor to Henry V.—The contemporary works given above, Chron. Angliae, Walsingham, Knighton, etc.—England in the Time of Wycliffe in trans. and reprints, Dept. of Hist. Univ. of Pa., 1895.—John Foxe: Book of Martyrs, London, 1632, etc.— John Lewis: Hist. of the Life and Sufferings of J. W., Oxford, 1720, etc., and 1820.—R. Vaughan: Life and Opinions of J. de Wycliffe, 2 vols., London, 1828, 2d ed., 1831.—V. Lechler: J. von Wiclif und die Vorgesch. der Reformation, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1873.—*Engl. trans., J. W. and his Engl. Precursors, with valuable Notes by Peter Lorimer, 2 vols., London, 1878, new edd., 1 vol., 1881, 1884.—*R. Buddensieg: J. Wiclif und seine Zeit, Gotha, 1883. Also J. W. as Patriot and Reformer, London, 1884.—E. S. Holt: J. de W., the First Reformer, and what he did for England, London, 1884.—V. Vattier: J. W., sa vie, ses oeuvres et sa doctrine, Paris, 1886.—*J. Loserth: Hus und Wiclif, Prag and Leipzig, 1883, Engl. trans., London, 1884. Also W.’s Lehre v. wahrem u. falschem Papsttum, in Hist. Zeitschrift, 1907, p. 237 sqq.—L. Sergeant: John Wyclif, New York, 1893.—H. B. Workman: The Age of Wyclif, London, 1901.—Geo. S. Innes: J. W., Cin’ti.—J. C. Carrick: Wyc. and the Lollards, London, 1908.—C. Bigg, in Wayside Sketches in Eccles. Hist., London, 1906.—For other Biogg., see Shirley: Fasciculus, p. 531 sqq.—III. J. L. Poole: W. and Movements for Reform, London, 1889, and W.’s Doctr. of Lordship in Illustr. of Med. Thought, 1884.—Wiegand: De Eccles. notione quid Wiclif docuerit, Leipzig, 1891.—*G. M. Trevelyan: Engl. In The Age Of W., London, 2d ed., 1899.—Powell and Trevelyan: The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards, London, 1899.—H. Fürstenau: J. von W.’s Lehren v. d. Stellung d. weltl. Gewalt, Berlin, 1900.—Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Eccles. Docts.—Gee and Hardy.—Stubbs: Constit. Hist., III. 314–374.—The Histt. of Capes, Green and Lingard, vol. IV.—The Histt. of the Engl. Bible, by Eadie, Westcott, Moulton, Stoughton, Mombert, etc.—Matthew: Authorship of the Wycliffite Bible, Engl. Hist. Rev., January, 1895.—Gasquet: The Eve of the Reformation, new ed., London, 1905; The Old Engl. Bible and Other Essays, London, 1908.—R. S. Storrs: J. Wyc. and the First Engl. Bible in Sermons and Addresses, Boston, 1902. An eloquent address delivered in New York on the 500th anniversary of the appearance of Wyclif’s New Test.—Rashdall in Dict. of Natl. Biog., LXIII. 202–223.—G. S. Innis: Wycliffe Cinti.

For § 43. Lollards.—The works noted above of Knighton, Walsingham, Rymer’s Foedera, the Chron. Angliae, Walden’s Fasc. ziz., Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Also Adam Usk: Chronicle.—Thos. Wright: Polit. Poems and Songs, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., London, 1859.—Fredericq: Corp. inquis. Neerl., vols. I.-III.—Reginald Pecock: The Repressor of overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. by Babington, Rolls Ser., 2 vols., London, 1860.—The Histt. of Engl. and the Church of Engl.—A. M. Brown: Leaders of the Lollards, London, 1848.—W. H. Summers: Our Lollard Ancestors, London, 1904.—*James Gairdner: Lollardy and the Reform. in Engl., 2 vols., London, 1908.—E. P. Cheyney: The Recantations of the Early Lollards, Am. Hist. Rev., April, 1899.—H. S. Cronin: The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards, Engl. Hist. Rev., April, 1907.—Art. Lollarden, by Buddensieg in Herzog, XI. 615–626.—The works of Trevelyan and Forshall and Madden, cited above, and Oldcastle, vol. XLII. 86–93, and other artt. in Dict. of Nat. Biog.

For §§ 44–46. John Huss. — Hist. et monumenta J. Hus atque Hieronymi Pragensis, confessorum Christi, 2 vols., Nürnberg, 1558, Frankfurt, 1715. I have used the Frankfurt ed.—W. Flajshans: Mag. J. Hus Expositio Decalogi, Prag, 1903; De corpore Christi: De sanguine Christi, Prag, 1904; Sermones de sanctis, Prag, 1908; Super quatuor sententiarum, etc.—*Francis Palacky: Documenta Mag. J. Hus, vitam, doctrinam, causam in Constantiensi actam consilio illustrantia, 1403–1418, pp. 768, Prag, 1869. Largely from unpublished sources. Contains the account of Peter of Mladenowitz, who was with Huss at Constance.—K. J. Erben (archivarius of Prag): Mistra Jana Husi sebrané spisy Czeske. A collection of Huss’ Bohemian writings, 3 vols., Prag, 1865–1868.—Trans. of Huss’ Letters, first by Luther, Wittenberg, 1536 (four of them, together with an account by Luther of Huss’ trial and death), republ. by C. von Kügelgen, Leipzig, 1902.—Mackenzie: Huss’ Letters, Edinburgh, 1846.—*H. B. Workman and B. M. Pope: Letters of J. Hus with Notes.—For works on the Council of Constance, see Mansi, vol. XXVIII., Van der Hardt, Finke, Richental etc., see § 12.—C. von Höfler: Geschichtsschreiber der hussitischen Bewegung, 3 vols., Vienna, 1856–1866. Contains Mladenowitz and other contemporary documents.—*Palacky, a descendant of the Bohemian Brethren, d. 1876: Geschichte von Böhmen, Prag, 1836 sqq., 3d ed., 5 vols., 1864 sqq. Vol. III. of the first ed. was mutilated at Vienna by the censor of the press (the office not being abolished till 1848), on account of the true light in which Huss was placed. Nevertheless, it made such an impression that Baron Helfert was commissioned to write a reply, which appeared, Prag, 1867, pp. 287. In 1870, Palacky publ. a second ed. of vol. III., containing all the excerpted parts.—Palacky: Die Vorlaeufer des Hussitenthums in Böhmen, Prag, 1869.—L. Köhler: J. Hus u. s. Zeit, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1846.—E. H. Gillett, Prof. in New York Univ., d. New York, 1876: Life and Times of J. Huss, 2 vols., Boston, 1863, 3d ed., 1871.—W. Berger: J. Hus u. König Sigismund, Augsburg, 1871.—Bonnechose: J. Hus u. das Concil zu Kostnitz, Germ. trans., 3d ed., Leipzig, 1870.—F. v. Bezold: Zur Gesch. d. Husitenthums, Munich, 1874.—E. Denis: Huss et la guerre des Hussites, Paris, l878.—A. H. Wratislaw: J. Hus, London, 1882.—*J. Loserth: Wiclif and Hus, also Beiträge zur Gesch. der Hussit. Bewegung, 5 small vols., 1877–1895, reprinted from magazines. Also Introd. to his ed. of Wiclif’s De ecclesia. Also art. J. Huss in Herzog, Encyc., VIII. 473–489.—Lechler: J. Hus, Leipzig, 1890.—*J. H. Wylie: The Counc. of Constance to the Death of J. Hus, London, 1900.—*H. B. Workman: The Dawn of the Reformation, The Age of Hus, London, 1902.—Lea: Hist. of the Inquis., II. 431–566.—Hefele, vol. VII.—*J. B. Schwab: J. Gerson, pp. 527–609.—Tschackert: Von Ailli, pp. 218–235.—W. Faber and J. Kurth: Wie sah Hus aus? Berlin, 1907.—Also J. Huss by Lützow, N. Y., 1909, and Kuhr, Cinti.

For § 47. The Hussites.—Mansi, XXVII, XXIX.—Haller: Concil. Basiliense.—Bezold: König Sigismund und d. Reichskriege gegen d. Husiten, 3 vols., Munich, 1872–1877.—*Jaroslav Goll: Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. der Böhmischen Brüder, 2 vols., Prag, 1878–1882.—*L. Keller: Die Reformation und die aelteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1885.—W. Preger: Ueber das Verhältniss der Taboriten zu den Waldesiern des 14ten Jahrh., 1887.—Haupt: Waldenserthum und Inquisition im südöstlichen, Deutschland, Freiburg i. Br., 1890.—H. Herre: Die Husitenverhandlungen, 1429, in Quellen u. Forschungen d. Hist. Inst. von Rom, 1899.—*E. Müller: Böhm. Brüder, Herzog, III. 445–467.—E. De Schweinitz: The Hist. of the Church known as the Unitas Fratrum, Bethlehem, 1885.—Also Hergenröther-Kirsch: Kirchengesch., II. 886–903.

§ 39. The Church in England in the Fourteenth Century.

The 14th century witnessed greater social changes in England than any other century except the 19th. These changes were in large part a result of the hundred years’ war with France, which began in 1337, and the terrible ravages of the Black Death. The century was marked by the legal adoption of the English tongue as the language of the country and the increased respect for parliament, in whose counsels the rich burgher class demanded a voice, and its definite division into two houses, 1341. The social unrest of the land found expression in popular harangues, poems, and tracts, affirming the rights of the villein and serf class, and in the uprising known as the Peasants’ Revolt.

The distinctly religious life of England, in this period, was marked by obstinate resistance to the papal claims of jurisdiction, culminating in the Acts of Provisors, and by the appearance of John Wyclif, one of the most original and vigorous personalities the English Church has produced.

An industrial revolution was precipitated on the island by the Great Pestilence of 1348. The necessities of life rose enormously in value. Large tracts of land passed back from the smaller tenants into the hands of the landowners of the gentry class. The sheep and the cattle, as a contemporary wrote, "strayed through the fields and grain, and there was no one who could drive them." The serfs and villeins found in the disorder of society an opportunity to escape from the yoke of servitude, and discovered in roving or in independent engagements the joys of a new-found freedom. These unsettled conditions called forth the famous statutes of Edward III.’s reign, 1327–1377, regulating wages and the prices of commodities.

The popular discontent arising from these regulations, and from the increased taxation necessitated by the wars with France, took the form of organized rebellion. The age of feudalism was coming to an end. The old ideas of labor and the tiller of the soil were beginning to give way before more just modes of thought. Among the agitators were John Ball, whom Froissart, with characteristic aristocratic indifference, called "the mad priest of Kent," the poet Longland and the insurgent leader, Watt Tyler. In his harangues, Ball fired popular feeling by appeals to the original rights of man. By what right, he exclaimed, "they, who are called lords, greater folk than we? On what grounds do they hold us in vassalage? Do not we all come from the same father and mother, Adam and Eve?" The spirit of individual freedom breathed itself out in the effective rhyme, which ran like wildfire, —

The rhymes, which Will Longland sent forth in his Complaint of Piers Ploughman, ventilated the sufferings and demands of the day laborer and called for fair treatment such as brother has a right to expect from brother. Gentleman and villein faced the same eternal destinies. "Though he be thine underling," the poet wrote, "mayhap in heaven, he will be worthier set and with more bliss than thou." The rising sense of national importance and individual dignity was fed by the victory of Crécy, 1346, where the little iron balls, used for the first time, frightened the horses; by the battle of Poictiers ten years later; by the treaty of Brétigny, 1360, whereby Edward was confirmed in the possession of large portions of France, and by the exploits of the Black Prince. The spectacle of the French king, John, a captive on the streets of London, made a deep impression. These events and the legalization of the English tongue, 1362,

Mandeville composed his travels in 1356 in French, and then translated out of French into English, that every man of his nation might understand. Trevisa, writing in 1387, said that all grammar schools and English children "leaveth French and construeth and learneth English."

The uprising, which broke out in 1381, was a vigorous assertion of the popular demand for a redress of the social inequalities between classes in England. The insurgent bands, which marched to London, were pacified by the fair promises of Richard II., but the Kentish band led by Watt Tyler, before dispersing, took the Tower and put the primate, Sudbury, to death. He had refused to favor the repeal of the hated decapitation tax. The abbeys of St. Albans and Edmondsbury were plundered and the monks ill treated, but these acts of violence were a small affair compared with the perpetual import of the uprising for the social and industrial well-being of the English people. The demands of the insurgents, as they bore on the clergy, insisted that Church lands and goods, after sufficient allowance had been made for the reasonable wants of the clergy, should be distributed among the parishioners, and that there should be a single bishop for England. This involved a rupture with Rome.

See Kriehn, AmHist. Rev., pp. 480, 483.

It was inevitable that the Church should feel the effects of these changes. Its wealth, which is computed to have covered one-third of the landed property of the realm, and the idleness and mendicancy of the friars, awakened widespread murmur and discontent. The ravages made among the clergy by the Black Death rendered necessary extraordinary measures to recruit its ranks. The bishop of Norwich was authorized to replace the dead by ordaining 60 young men before the canonical age. With the rise of the staples of living, the stipends of the vast body of the priestly class was rendered still more inadequate. Archbishop Islip of Canterbury and other prelates, while recognizing in their pastorals the prevalent unrest, instead of showing proper sympathy, condemned the covetousness of the clergy. On the other hand, Longland wrote of the shifts to which they were put to eke out a living by accepting secular and often menial employment in the royal palace and the halls of the gentry class.

There was a movement from within the English people to limit the power of the bishops and to call forth spirituality and efficiency in the clergy. The bishops, powerful as they remained, were divested of some of their prestige by the parliamentary decision of 1370, restricting high offices of state to laymen. The first lay chancellor was appointed in 1340. The bishop, however, was a great personage, and woe to the parish that did not make fitting preparations for his entertainment and have the bells rung on his arrival. Archbishop Arundel, Foxe quaintly says, "took great snuff and did suspend all such as did not receive him with the noise of bells." Each diocese had its own prison, into which the bishop thrust refractory clerics for penance or severer punishment.

The mass of the clergy had little learning. The stalls and canonries, with attractive incomes, where they did not go to foreigners, were regarded as the proper prizes of the younger sons of noblemen. On the other hand, the prelates lived in abundance. The famous bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, counted fifty manors of his own. In the larger ones, official residences were maintained, including hall and chapel. This prelate travelled from one to the other, taking reckonings of his stewards, receiving applications for the tonsure and ordination and attending to other official business. Many of the lower clergy were taken from the villein class, whose sons required special exemption to attend school. The day they received orders they were manumitted.

The benefit of clergy, so called, continued to be a source of injustice to the people at large. By the middle of the 13th century, the Church’s claim to tithes was extended not only to the products of the field, but the poultry of the yard and the cattle of the stall, to the catch of fish and the game of the forests. Wills almost invariably gave to the priest "the best animal" or the "best quick good." The Church received and gave not back, and, in spite of the statute of Mortmain, bequests continued to be made to her. It came, however, to be regarded as a settled principle that the property of Church and clergy was amenable to civil taxation, and bishops, willingly or by compulsion, loaned money to the king. The demands of the French campaigns made such taxation imperative.

Indulgences were freely announced to procure aid for the building of churches, as in the case of York Cathedral, 1396, the erection of bridges, the filling up of muddy roads and for other public improvements. The clergy, though denied the right of participating in bowling and even in the pastime of checkers, took part in village festivities such as the Church-ale, a sort of mediaeval donation party, in which there was general merrymaking, ale was brewed, and the people drank freely to the health of the priest and for the benefit of the Church. As for the morals of the clergy, care must always be had not to base sweeping statements upon delinquencies which are apt to be emphasized out of proportion to their extent. It is certain, however, that celibacy was by no means universally enforced, and frequent notices occur of dispensations given to clergymen of illegitimate birth. Bishop Quevil of Exeter complained that priests with families invested their savings for the benefit of their marital partners and their children. In the next period, in 1452, De la Bere, bishop of St. David’s, by his own statement, drew 400 marks yearly from priests for the privilege of having concubines, a noble, equal in value to a mark, from each one.

Gascoigne, as quoted by Gairdner: Lollardy and the Reform., I. 262.

Of the ecclesiastics of the century, if we except Wyclif, probably the most noted are Thomas Bradwardine and William of Wykeham, the one the representative of scholarly study, the other of ecclesiastical power. Bradwardine, theologian, phiIosopher, mathematician and astronomer, was a student at Merton College, Oxford, 1325. At Avignon, whither he went to receive consecration to the see of Canterbury, 1349, he had a strange experience. During the banquet given by Clement VI. the doors were thrown open and a clown entered, seated on a jackass, and humbly petitioned the pontiff to be made archbishop of Canterbury. This insult, gotten up by Clement’s nephew Hugo, cardinal of Tudela, and other members of the sacred college, was in allusion to the remark made by the pope that, if the king of England would ask him to appoint a jackass to a bishopric, he would not dare to refuse. The sport throws an unpleasant light upon the ideals of the curia, but at the same time bears witness to the attempt which was being made in England to control the appointment of ecclesiastics. Bradwardine enjoyed such an enviable reputation that Wyclif and other English contemporaries gave him the title, the Profound Doctor—doctor profundus.

Wyclif: De verit. scr., I. 30, 109, etc.

Wykeham, 1324–1404, the pattern of a worldly and aristocratic prelate, was an unblushing pluralist, and his see of Winchester is said to have brought him in £60,000 of our money annually. In 1361 alone, he received prebends in St. Paul’s, Hereford, Salisbury, St. David’s, Beverley, Bromyard, Wherwell Abergwili, and Llanddewi Brewi, and in the following year Lincoln, York, Wells and Hastings. He occupied for a time the chief office of chancellor, but fell into disrepute. His memory is preserved in Winchester School and in New College, Oxford, which he founded. The princely endowment of New College, the first stones of which were laid in 1387, embraced 100 scholarships. These gifts place Wykeham in the first rank of English patrons of learning at the side of Cardinal Wolsey. He also has a place in the manuals of the courtesies of life by his famous words, "Manners makyth man."

See art. by Tait in Dict. of Nat. Biog., LXIII. 225-231.

The struggles of previous centuries against the encroachment of Rome upon the temporalities of the English Church was maintained in this period. The complaint made by Matthew Paris

Rolls Series, IV. 559.

The three most important religious acts of England between John’s surrender of his crown to Innocent III. and the Act of Supremacy, 1534, were the parliamentary statutes of Mortmain, 1279, of Provisors, 1351, and for the burning of heretics, 1401. The statute of Mortmain or Dead-hand forbade the alienation of lands so as to remove them from the obligation of service or taxation to the secular power. The statute of Provisors, renewed and enlarged in the acts of Praemunire, 1353, 1390 and 1393, concerned the subject of the papal rights over appointments and the temporalities of the English Church. This old bone of contention was taken up early in the 14th century in the statute of Carlyle, 1307,

Gee and Hardy, pp. 92-94.

The memorable statute of Provisors forbade all papal provisions and reservations and all taxation of Church property contrary to the customs of England. The act of 1353 sought more effectually to clip the pope’s power by forbidding the carrying of any suit against an English patron before a foreign tribunal.

See the texts of these statutes in Gee and Hardy, 103 sqq., 112-123. With reference to the renewal of the act in 1390, Fuller quaintly says: "It mauled the papal power in the land. Some former laws had pared the pope’s nails to the quick, but this cut off his fingers."

To these laws the pope paid only so much heed as expediency required. This claim, made by one of his predecessors in the bull Cupientes, to the right to fill all the benefices of Christendom, he had no idea of abandoning, and, whenever it was possible, he provided for his hungry family of cardinals and other ecclesiastics out of the proverbially fat appointments of England. Indeed, the cases of such appointments given by Merimuth, and especially in the papal books as printed by Bliss, are so recurrent that one might easily get the impression that the pontiff’s only concern for the English Church was to see that its livings were put into the hands of foreigners. I have counted the numbers in several places as given by Bliss. On one page, 4 out of 9 entries were papal appointments. A section of 2½ pages announces "provisions of a canonry, with expectation of a prebend" in the following churches: 7 in Lincoln, 5 in Salisbury, 2 in Chichester, and 1 each in Wells, York, Exeter, St. Patrick’s, Dublin, Moray, Southwell, Howden, Ross, Aberdeen, Wilton.

II. 345; III. 54 sq. Prebend has reference to the stipend, canonry to the office.

In spite of legislation, the papal collectors continued to ply their trade in England, but less publicly and confidently than in the two preceding centuries. In 1379, Urban VI. sent Cosmatus Gentilis as his nuncio and collector-in-chief, with instructions that he and his subcollectors make speedy returns to Rome, especially of Peter’s pence.

Bliss IV. 257.

The great name of Wyclif, which appears distinctly in 1366, represents the patriotic element in all its strength. In his discussions of lordship, presented in two extensive treatises, he set forth the theory of the headship of the sovereign over the temporal affairs of the Church in his own dominions, even to the seizure of its temporalities. In him, the Church witnessed an ecclesiastic of equal metal with Thomas à Becket, a man, however, who did not stoop, in his love for his order, to humiliate the state under the hand of the Church. He represented the popular will, the common sense of mankind in regard to the province of the Church, the New Testament theory of the spiritual sphere. Had he not been practically alone, he would have anticipated by more than two centuries the limitation of the pope’s power in England.

§ 40. John Wyclif.

The title, Reformers before the Reformation, has been aptly given to a group of men of the 14th and 15th centuries who anticipated many of the teachings of Luther and the Protestant Reformers. They stand, each by himself, in solitary prominence, Wyclif in England, John Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in Florence, and Wessel, Goch and Wesel in Northern Germany. To these men the sculptor has given a place on the pedestal of his famous group at Worms representing the Reformation of the 16th century. They differ, if we except the moral reformer, Savonarola, from the group of the German mystics, who sought a purification of life in quiet ways, in having expressed open dissent from the Church’s ritual and doctrinal teachings. They also differ from the group of ecclesiastical reformers, D’Ailly, Gerson, Nicolas of Clamanges, who concerned themselves with the fabric of the canon law and did not go beyond the correction of abuses in the administration and morals of the Church. Wyclif and his successors were doctrinal reformers. In some views they had been anticipated by Marsiglius of Padua and the other assailants of the papacy of the early half of the 14th century.

John Wyclif, called the Morning Star of the Reformation, and, at the time of his death, in England and in Bohemia the Evangelical doctor,

Fasciculi, p. 362.

Wyclif occupies a distinguished place as an Oxford schoolman, a patriot, a champion of theological and practical reforms and the translator of the Scriptures into English. The papal schism, occurring in the midst of his public career, had an important bearing on his views of papal authority.

So far as is known, he confined himself, until 1366, to his duties in Oxford and his parish work. In that year he appears as one of the king’s chaplains and as opposed to the papal supremacy in the ecclesiastial affairs of the realm. The parliament of the same year refused Urban V.’s demand for the payment of the tribute, promised by King John, which was back 33 years. John, it declared, had no right to obligate the kingdom to a foreign ruler without the nation’s consent. Wyclif, if not a member of this body, was certainly an adviser to it.

So Lechler, who advances strong arguments in favor of this view. Loserth, who is followed by Rashdall, brings considerations against it, and places Wyclif’s first appearance as a political reformer in 1376. Studien zur Kirchenpol., etc., pp. 1, 32, 35, 44, 60. A serious difficulty with this view is that it crowds almost all the Reformer’s writings into 7 years.

In the summer of 1374, Wyclif went to Bruges as a member of the commission appointed by the king to negotiate peace with France and to treat with the pope’s agents on the filling of ecclesiastical appointments in England. His name was second in the list of commissioners following the name of the bishop of Bangor. At Bruges we find him for the first time in close association with John of Gaunt, Edward’s favorite son, an association which continued for several years, and for a time inured to his protection from ecclesiastical violence.

John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was the younger brother of the Black Prince. The prince had returned from his victories in France to die of an incurable disease.

On his return to England, he began to speak as a religious reformer. He preached in Oxford and London against the pope’s secular sovereignty, running about, as the old chronicler has it, from place to place, and barking against the Church.

Chron. Angl., p. 115 sq.

The Oxford professor’s attitude had become too flagrant to be suffered to go unrebuked. In 1377, he was summoned before the tribunal of William Courtenay, bishop of London, at St. Paul’s, where the proceedings opened with a violent altercation between the bishop and the duke. The question was as to whether Wyclif should take a seat or continue standing in the court. Percy, lord marshal of England, ordered him to sit down, a proposal the bishop pronounced an unheard-of indignity to the court. At this, Lancaster, who was present, swore he would bring down Courtenay’s pride and the pride of all the prelates in England. "Do your best, Sir," was the spirited retort of the bishop, who was a son of the duke of Devonshire. A popular tumult ensued, Wyclif being protected by Lancaster.

Pope Gregory XI. himself now took notice of the offender in a document condemning 19 sentences from his writings as erroneous and dangerous to Church and state. In fact, he issued a batch of at least five bulls, addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, the University of Oxford and the king, Edward III. The communication to Archbishop Sudbury opened with an unctuous panegyric of England’s past most glorious piety and the renown of its Church leaders, champions of the orthodox faith and instructors not only of their own but of other peoples in the path of the Lord’s commandments. But it had come to his ears that the Lutterworth rector had broken forth into such detestable madness as not to shrink from publicly proclaiming false propositions which threatened the stability of the entire Church. His Holiness, therefore, called upon the archbishop to have John sent to prison and kept in bonds till final sentence should be passed by the papal court.

Gee and Hardy, p. 105 sqq.

Fortunately, the pope might send forth his fulminations to bind and imprison but it was not wholly in his power to hold the truth in bonds and to check the progress of thought. In his letter to the chancellor of Oxford, Gregory alleged that Wyclif was vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he hoped to pollute the faithful and bring them to the precipice of perdition, overthrow the Church and subvert the secular estate. The disturber was put into the same category with those princes among errorists, Marsiglius of Padua and John of Jandun.

Fasc., pp. 242-244.

The archbishop’s court at Lambeth, before which the offender was now cited, was met by a message from the widow of the Black Prince to stay the proceedings, and the sitting was effectually broken up by London citizens who burst into the hall. At Oxford, the masters of theology pronounced the nineteen condemned propositions true, though they sounded badly to the ear. A few weeks later, March, 1878, Gregory died, and the papal schism broke out. No further notice was taken of Gregory’s ferocious bulls. Among other things, the nineteen propositions affirmed that Christ’s followers have no right to exact temporal goods by ecclesiastical censures, that the excommunications of pope and priest are of no avail if not according to the law of Christ, that for adequate reasons the king may strip the Church of temporalities and that even a pope may be lawfully impeached by laymen.

With the year 1378 Wyclif’s distinctive career as a doctrinal reformer opens. He had defended English rights against foreign encroachment. He now assailed, at a number of points, the theological structure the Schoolmen and mediaeval popes had laboriously reared, and the abuses that had crept into the Church. The spectacle of Christendom divided by two papal courts, each fulminating anathemas against the other, was enough to shake confidence in the divine origin of the papacy. In sermons, tracts and larger writings, Wyclif brought Scripture and common sense to bear. His pen was as keen as a Damascus blade. Irony and invective, of which he was the master, he did not hesitate to use. The directness and pertinency of his appeals brought them easily within the comprehension of the popular mind. He wrote not only in Latin but in English. His conviction was as deep and his passion as fiery as Luther’s, but on the one hand, Wyclif’s style betrays less of the vivid illustrative power of the great German and little of his sympathetic warmth, while on the other, less of his unfortunate coarseness. As Luther is the most vigorous tract writer that Germany has produced, so Wyclif is the foremost religious pamphleteer that has arisen in England; and the impression made by his clear and stinging thrusts may be contrasted in contents and audience with the scholarly and finished tracts of the Oxford movement led by Pusey, Keble and Newman, the one reaching the conscience, the other appealing to the aesthetic tastes; the one adapted to break down priestly pretension, the other to foster it.

But the Reformer of the 14th century was more than a scholar and publicist. Like John Wesley, he had a practical bent of mind, and like him he attempted to provide England with a new proclamation of the pure Gospel. To counteract the influence of the friars, whom he had begun to attack after his return from Bruges, he conceived the idea of developing and sending forth a body of itinerant evangelists. These "pore priests," as they were called, were taken from the list of Oxford graduates, and seem also to have included laymen. Of their number and the rules governing them, we are in the dark. The movement was begun about 1380, and on the one side it associates Wyclif with Gerrit de Groote, and on the other with Wesley and with his more recent fellow-countryman, General Booth, of the Salvation Army.

Although this evangelistic idea took not the form of a permanent organization, the appearance of the pore preachers made a sensation. According to the old chronicler, the disciples who gathered around him in Oxford were many and, clad in long russet gowns of one pattern, they went on foot, ventilating their master’s errors among the people and publicly setting them forth in sermons.

Chron. Angl., p. 395; also Knighton, II. 184 sq.

It was in 1381, the year before Courtenay said his memorable words, that Walden reports that Wyclif "began to determine matters upon the sacrament of the altar."

Fasc., p. 104.

The same year, the Peasants’ Revolt broke out, but there is no evidence that Wyclif had any more sympathy with the movement than Luther had with the Peasants’ Rising of 1525. After the revolt was over, he proposed that Church property be given to the upper classes, not to the poor.

See Trevelyan, p. 199; Kriehn, pp. 254-286, 458-485.

Courtenay’s elevation to the see of Canterbury boded no good to the Reformer. In 1382, he convoked the synod which is known in English history as the Earthquake synod, from the shock felt during its meetings. The primate was supported by 9 bishops, and when the earth began to tremble, he showed admirable courage by interpreting it as a favorable omen. The earth, in trying to rid itself of its winds and humors, was manifesting its sympathy with the body ecclesiastic.

Sicut in terrae visceribus includuntur aëret spiritus infecti et ingrediuntur in terrae motum, Fasc., p. 272.

The council condemned 24 articles, ascribed to the Reformer, 10 of which were pronounced heretical, and the remainder to be against the decisions of the Church.

Gee and Hardy, pp. 108-110.

But Courtenay would permit no trifling and, summoning Rygge and the proctors to Lambeth, made them promise on their knees to take the action indicated. Parliament supported the primate. The new preaching was suppressed, but Wyclif stood undaunted. He sent a Complaint of 4 articles to the king and parliament, in which he pleaded for the supremacy of English law in matters of ecclesiastical property, for the liberty for the friars to abandon the rules of their orders and follow the rule of Christ, and for the view that on the Lord’s table the real bread and wine are present, and not merely the accidents.

Select Engl. Writings, III. 507-523.

The court was no longer ready to support the Reformer, and Richard II. sent peremptory orders to Rygge to suppress the new teachings. Courtenay himself went to Oxford, and there is some authority for the view that Wyclif again met the prelate face to face at St. Frideswides. Rigid inquisition was made for copies of the condemned teacher’s writings and those of Hereford. Wyclif was inhibited from preaching, and retired to his rectory at Lutterworth. Hereford, Repyngdon, Aston and Bedeman, his supporters, recanted. The whole party received a staggering blow and with it liberty of teaching at Oxford.

Fasc., pp. 272-333. See Shirley, p. xliv.

Confined to Lutterworth, Wyclif continued his labors on the translation of the Bible, and sent forth polemic tracts, including the Cruciata,

Latin Works, II. 577 sqq.

Two years before his death, Wyclif received a paralytic stroke which maimed but did not completely disable him. It is possible that he received a citation to appear before the pope. With unabated rigor of conviction, he replied to the supreme pontiff that of all men he was most under obligation to obey the law of Christ, that Christ was of all men the most poor, and subject to mundane authority. No Christian man has a right to follow Peter, Paul or any of the saints except as they imitated Christ. The pope should renounce all worldly authority and compel his clergy to do the same. He then asserted that, if in these views he was found to err, he was willing to be corrected, even by death. If it were in his power to do anything to advance these views by his presence in Rome, he would willingly go thither. But God had put an obstacle in his way, and had taught him to obey Him rather than man. He closed with the prayer that God might incline Urban to imitate Christ in his life and teach his clergy to do the same.

While saying mass in his church, he was struck again with paralysis, and passed away two or three days after, Dec. 29, 1384, "having lit a fire which shall never be put out."

2 The most credible narrative preserved of Wyclif’s death comes from John Horn, the Reformer’s assistant for two years, and was written down by Dr. Thomas Gascoigne upon Horn’s sworn statement. Walden twice makes the charge that disappointment at not being appointed bishop of Worcester started Wyclif on the path of heresy, but there is no other authority for the story, which is inherently improbable. Lies were also invented against the memories of Luther, Calvin and Knox, which the respectable Catholic historians set aside.

Wyclif was spare, and probably never of robust health, but he was not an ascetic. He was fond of a good meal. In temper he was quick, in mind clear, in moral character unblemished. Towards his enemies he was sharp, but never coarse or ribald. William Thorpe, a young contemporary standing in the court of Archbishop Arundel, bore testimony that "he was emaciated in body and well-nigh destitute of strength, and in conduct most innocent. Very many of the chief men of England conferred with him, loved him dearly, wrote down his sayings and followed his manner of life."

Bale, in his account of the Examination of Thorpe, Parker Soc. ed., I. 80-81. The biographies of Lewis, Vaughan, Lorimer and Sergeant give portraits of Wyclif. The oldest, according to Sergeant, pp. 16-21, is taken from Bale’s Summary, 1548. There is a resemblance in all the portraits, which represent the Reformer clothed in Oxford gown and cap, with long beard, open face, clear, large eye, prominent nose and cheek bones and pale complexion.

The prevailing sentiment of the hierarchy was given by Walsingham, chronicler of St. Albans, who characterized the Reformer in these words: "On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John de Wyclif, that instrument of the devil, that enemy of the Church, that author of confusion to the common people, that image of hypocrites, that idol of heretics, that author of schism, that sower of hatred, that coiner of lies, being struck with the horrible judgment of God, was smitten with palsy and continued to live till St. Sylvester’s Day, on which he breathed out his malicious spirit into the abodes of darkness."

The dead was not left in peace. By the decree of Arundel, Wyclif’s writings were suppressed, and it was so effective that Caxton and the first English printers issued no one of them from the press. The Lateran decree of February, 1413, ordered his books burnt, and the Council of Constance, from whose members, such as Gerson and D’Ailly, we might have expected tolerant treatment, formally condemned his memory and ordered his bones exhumed from their resting-place and "cast at a distance from the sepulchre of the church." The holy synod, so ran the decree, "declares said John Wyclif to have been a notorious heretic, and excommunicates him and condemns his memory as one who died an obstinate heretic."

A part of the sentence rans, Sancta synodus declarat diffinit et sententiat eumdem J. Wicleff fuisse notorium haereticum pertinacem et in haeresi decessisse ... ordinat corpus et ejus ossa, si ab aliis fidelibus corporibus discerni possint exhumari et procul ab ecclesiae sepultura jactari. Mansi, XXVII. 635.

The words of Fuller, describing the execution of the decree of Constance, have engraven themselves on the page of English history. "They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighboring brook running hardby. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over."

In the popular judgment of the English people, John Wyclif, in company with John Latimer and John Wesley, probably represents more fully than any other English religious leader, independence of thought, devotion to conscience, solid religious common sense, and the sound exposition of the Gospel. In the history of the intellectual and moral progress of his people, he was the leading Englishman of the Middle Ages.

2 Green, in his Hist. of the Engl. People, passes a notable encomium on the "first Reformer," and the late Prof. Bigg, Wayside Sketches, p.131, asserts "that his beliefs are in the main those of the great majority of Englishmen to-day, and this is a high proof of the justice, the clearness and the sincerity of his thoughts." The Catholic historian of England, Lingard, IV. 192, after speaking of Wyclif’s intellectual perversion, refers to him, "as that extraordinary man who, exemplary in his morals, declaimed against vice with the freedom and severity of an Apostle."

§ 41. Wyclif’s Teachings.

Wyclif’s teachings lie plainly upon the surface of his many writings. In each one of the eminent rôles he played, as schoolman, political reformer, preacher, innovator in theology and translator of the Bible, he wrote extensively. His views show progress in the direction of opposition to the mediaeval errors and abuses. Driven by attacks, he detected errors which, at the outset, he did not clearly discern. But, above all, his, study of the Scriptures forced upon him a system which was in contradiction to the distinctively mediaeval system of theology. His language in controversy was so vigorous that it requires an unusual effort to suppress the impulse to quote at great length.

Clear as Wyclif’s statements always are, some of his works are drawn out by much repetition. Nor does he always move in a straight line, but digresses to this side and to that, taking occasion to discuss at length subjects cognate to the main matter he has in hand. This habit often makes the reading of his larger works a wearisome task. Nevertheless, the author always brings the reader back from his digression or, to use a modern expression, never leaves him sidetracked.

I. As a Schoolman.—Wyclif was beyond dispute the most eminent scholar who taught for any length of time at Oxford since Grosseteste, whom he often quotes.

Op. evang., p. 17, etc., De dom. div., p. 215, etc., De dom. civ., 384 sqq., where the case of Frederick of Lavagna is related at length.

II. As a Patriot.—In this role the Oxford teacher took an attitude the very reverse of the attitude assumed by Anselm and Thomas à Becket, who made the English Church a servant to the pope’s will in all things. For loyalty to the Hildebrandian theocracy, Anselm was willing to suffer banishment and à Becket suffered death. In Wyclif, the mutterings of the nation, which had been heard against the foreign regime from the days of William the Conqueror, and especially since King John’s reign, found a stanch and uncompromising mouthpiece. Against the whole system of foreign jurisdiction he raised his voice, as also against the Church’s claim to hold lands, except as it acknowledged the rights of the state. He also opposed the tenure of secular offices by the clergy and, when Archbisbop Sudbury was murdered, declared that he died in sin because he was holding the office of chancellor.

Wyclif’s views on government in Church and state are chiefly set forth in the works on Civil and Divine Lordship—De dominio divino, and De dominio civili — and in his Dialogus.

The De dom. civ. and the De dom. div., ed. for the Wyclif Soc. by R. L. Poole, London, 1885, 1890. See Poole’s Prefaces and his essay on Wyclif’s Doctrine of Lordship in his Illustrations, etc., pp. 282-311. TheDialogus, sive speculum ecclesiae militantis, ed. by A. W. Pollard, 1886.

The Civil Lordship opens by declaring that no one in mortal sin has a right to lordship, and that every one in the state of grace has a real lordship over the whole universe. All Christians are reciprocally lords and servants. The pope, or an ecclesiastical body abusing the property committed to them, may be deprived of it by the state. Proprietary right is limited by proper use. Tithes are an expedient to enable the priesthood to perform its mission. The New Testament does not make them a rule.

From the last portion of the first book of the Civil Lordship, Gregory XI. drew most of the articles for which Wyclif had to stand trial. Here is found the basis for the charge ascribing to him the famous statement that God ought to obey the devil. By this was meant nothing more than that the jurisdiction of every lawful proprietor should be recognized.

III. As a Preacher.—Whether we regard Wyclif’s constant activity in the pulpit, or the impression his sermons made, he must be pronounced by far the most notable of English preachers prior to the Reformation.

Loserth, Introd. to Lat. sermones, II., p. xx, pronounce their effect extraordinary. The Engl. sermons have been ed. by Arnold, Select Engl. Works, vols, I, II, and the Lat. sermons by Loserth, in 4 vols.

The style of the English discourses is simple and direct. No more plainly did Luther preach against ecclesiastical abuses than did the English Reformer. On every page are joined with practical religious exposition stirring passages rebuking the pope and worldly prelates. They are denounced as anti-christ and the servants of the devil—the fiend—as they turn away from the true work of pasturing Christ’s flock for worldly gain and enjoyment. The preacher condemns the false teachings which are nowhere taught in the Scriptures, such as pilgrimages and indulgences. Sometimes Wyclif seems to be inconsistent with himself, now making light of fasting, now asserting that the Apostles commended it; now disparaging prayers for the dead, now affirming purgatory. With special severity do his sermons strike at the friars who preach out of avarice and neglect to expose the sins of their hearers. No one is more idle than the rich friars, who have nothing but contempt for the poor. Again and again in these sermons, as in his other works, he urges that the goods of the friars be seized and given to the needy classes. Wyclif, the preacher, was always the bold champion of the layman’s rights.

His work, The Pastoral Office, which is devoted to the duties of the faithful minister, and his sermons lay stress upon preaching as the minister’s proper duty. Preaching he declared the "highest service," even as Christ occupied himself most in that work. And if bishops, on whom the obligation to preach more especially rests, preach not, but are content to have true priests preach in their stead, they are as those that murder Jesus. The same authority which gave to priests the privilege of celebrating the sacrament of the altar binds them to preach. Yea, the preaching of the Word is a more precious occupation than the ministration of the sacraments.

Evangelizatio verbi est preciosior quam ministratio alicujus ecclesiastici sacramenti, Op. evang., I. 375. Predicatio verbi Dei est solemnior quam confectio sacramenti, De sac. scr., II. 156. See also Arnold, Engl. Works, III. 153 sq., 464;Serm. Lat., II. 115;De scr. sac., II. 138.

When the Gospel was preached, as in Apostolic times, the Church grew. Above all things, close attention should be given to Christ’s words, whose authority is superior to all the rites and commandments of pope and friars. Again and again Wyclif sets forth the ideal minister, as in the following description:—

"A priest should live holily, in prayer, in desires and thought, in godly conversation and honest teaching, having God’s commandments and His Gospel ever on his lips. And let his deeds be so righteous that no man may be able with cause to find fault with them, and so open his acts that he may be a true book to all sinful and wicked men to serve God. For the example of a good life stirreth men more than true preaching with only the naked word."

The priest’s chief work is to render a substitute for Christ’s miracles by converting himself and his neighbor to God’s law.

Debemus loco miraculorum Christi nos et proximos ad legem Dei convertere. De ver., I. 90; Op. evang., I. 368.

IV. As a Doctrinal Reformer.—Wyclif’s later writings teem with denials of the doctrinal tenets of his age and indictments against ecclesiastical abuses. There could be no doubt of his meaning. Beginning with the 19 errors Gregory XI. was able to discern, the list grew as the years went on. The Council of Constance gave 45, Netter of Walden, fourscore, and the Bohemian John Lücke, an Oxford doctor of divinity, 266. Cochlaeus, in writing against the Hussites, went beyond all former computations and ascribed to Wyclif the plump sum of 303 heresies, surely enough to have forever covered the Reformer’s memory with obloquy. Fuller suggests as the reason for these variations that some lists included only the Reformer’s primitive tenets or breeders, and others reckoned all the younger fry of consequence derived from them.

The first three articles adduced by the Council of Constance

See Mansi, XXVII., 632-636, and Mirbt, p. 157 sq.

The most of the 45 propositions represent Wyclif’s views with precision. They lie on the surface of his later writings, but they do not exhaust his dissent from the teachings and practice of his time. His assault may be summarized under five heads: the nature of the Church, the papacy, the priesthood, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the use of the Scriptures.

The Church was defined in the Civil Lordship to be the body of the elect,—living, dead and not yet born,—whose head is Christ. Scarcely a writing has come down to us from Wyclif’s pen in which he does not treat the subject, and in his special treatise on the Church, written probably in 1378, it is defined more briefly as the body of all the elect—congregatio omnium predestinatorum. Of this body, Christ alone is the head. The pope is the head of a local church. Stress is laid upon the divine decree as determining who are the predestinate and who the reprobate.

De dom. civ., I. 358. Ecclesia cath. sive Apost. est universitas predestinatorum. De eccles., ed. by Loserth, pp. 2, 5, 31, 94, Engl. Works, III. 339, 447, etc.

Some persons, he said, in speaking of "Holy Church, understand thereby prelates and priests, monks and canons and friars and all that have the tonsure,—alle men that han crownes,—though they live ever so accursedly in defiance of God’s law." But so far from this being true, all popes cardinals and priests are not among the saved. On the contrary, not even a pope can tell assuredly that he is predestinate. This knows no one on earth. The pope may be a prescitus, a reprobate. Such popes there have been, and it is blasphemy for cardinals and pontiffs to think that their election to office of itself constitutes a title to the primacy of the Church. The curia is a nest of heretics if its members do not follow Christ, a fountain of poison, the abomination of desolation spoken of in the sacred page. Gregory XI. Wyclif called a terrible devil—horrendus diabolus. God in His mercy had put him to death and dispersed his confederates, whose crimes Urban VI. had revealed.

De eccles., 5, 28 sq., 63, 88, 89, 355, 358, 360.

Though the English Reformer never used the terms visible and invisible Church, he made the distinction. The Church militant, he said, commenting on John 10:26, is a mixed body. The Apostles took two kinds of fishes, some of which remained in the net and some broke away. So in the Church some are ordained to bliss and some to pain, even though they live godly for a while.

Engl. Works., I. 50.

As for the papacy, no one has used more stinging words against individual popes as well as against the papacy as an institution than did Wyclif. In the treatises of his last years and in his sermons, the pope is stigmatized as anti-Christ. His very last work, on which he was engaged when death overtook him, bore the title, Anti-christ, meaning the pope. He went so far as to call him the head-vicar of the fiend.

The condemnatory epithets and characterizations are found in the Engl. Works, ed. by Matthew, De papa, pp. 458-487, and The Church and her Members, and The Schism of the Rom. Pontiffs, Arnold’s ed., III. 262 sqq., 340 sqq., the Trialogus, Dialogus, the Latin Sermons, vol. II., and especially the Opus evangelicum, parts of which went under the name Christ and his Adversary, Antichrist. See Loserth’s introductions to Lat. Serm., II. p. iv sq., and Op. evang., vol. II.; also his art. Wiclif’s Lehre, vom wahren, undfalschen Papsttum, Hist Ztschrift, 1907, and his ed. of the De potestate papae. In these last works Loserth presents the somewhat modified view that when Wyclif inveighed against the papacy it was only as it was abused. The De potestate was written perhaps in 1379. His later works show an increased severity.

As for the interpretation of Matthew 16:18, Wyclif took the view that "the rock" stands for Peter and every true Christian. The keys of the kingdom of heaven are not metal keys, as popularly supposed, but spiritual power, and they were committed not only to Peter, but to all the saints, "for alle men that comen to hevene have these keies of God."

Op. evang., II. 105 sq.; Engl. Works, I. 350 sq.

Constantine’s donation, the Reformer pronounced the beginning of all evils in the Church. The emperor was put up to it by the devil. It was his new trick to have the Church endowed.

De ver., I. 267; Engl. Works, III. 341 sq.; De Eccles., 189, 365 sqq.; Op. Evang., III. 188.

The pope’s practice of getting money by tribute and taxation calls forth biting invective. It was the custom, Wyclif said, to solemnly curse in the parish churches all who clipped the king’s coins and cut men’s purses. From this it would seem, he continued, that the proud and worldly priest of Rome and all his advisers were the most cursed of clippers and out-purses,—cursed of clipperis and purse-kerveris,—for they drew out of England poor men’s livelihoods and many thousands of marks of the king’s money, and this they did for spiritual favors. If the realm had a huge hill of gold, it would soon all be spent by this proud and worldly priest-collector. Of all men, Christ was the most poor, both in spirit and in goods and put from him all manner of worldly lordship. The pope should leave his authority to worldly lords, and speedily advise his clergy to do the same. I take it, as a matter of faith, that no man should follow the pope, nor even any of the saints in heaven, except as they follow Christ.

Engl. Works, III. 320. Letter to Urban VI., Fasc. ziz., p. 341; Engl. Works, III. 504-506.

The priests and friars formed another subject of Wyclif’s vigorous attack. Clerics who follow Christ are true priests and none other. The efficacy of their acts of absolution of sins depends upon their own previous absolution by Christ. The priest’s function is to show forgiveness, already pronounced by God, not to impart it. It was, he affirmed, a strange and marvellous thing that prelates and curates should "curse so faste," when Christ said we should bless rather than reprove. A sentence of excommunication is worse than murder.

The rule of auricular confession Wyclif also disparaged. True contrition of heart is sufficient for the removal of sins. In Christ’s time confession of man to man was not required. In his own day, he said, "shrift to God is put behind; but privy (private) shrift, a new-found thing, is authorized as needful for the soul’s health." He set forth the dangers of the confessional, such as the unchastity of priests. He also spoke of the evils of pilgrimages when women and men going together promiscuously were in temptation of great "lecherie."

His De eucharistia et poenitentia sive de confessione elaborates this subject. See also Engl. Works, I. 80, III. 141, 348, 461.

Straight truth-telling never had a warmer champion than Wyclif. Addressing the clergy, he devotes nearly a hundred pages of his Truth of Scripture to an elaboration of this principle. Not even the most trifling sin is permissible as a means of averting a greater evil, either for oneself or one’s neighbor. Under no circumstances does a good intention justify a falsehood. The pope himself has no right to tolerate or practice misrepresentation to advance a good cause. To accomplish a good end, the priest dare not even make a false appeal to fear. All lying is of itself sin, and no dispensation can change its character.

De eccles., p. 162; De ver. scr., II. 1-99. Omne mendacium est per se peccatum sed nulla circumstantia potest rectificare, ut peccatum sit non peccatum, De ver., II. 61.

The friars called forth the Reformer’s keenest thrusts, and these increased in sharpness as he neared the end of his life. Quotations, bearing on their vices, would fill a large volume. Entire treatises against their heresies and practices issued from his pen. They were slavish agents of the pope’s will; they spread false views of the eucharist; they made merchandise of indulgences and letters of fraternity which pretended to give the purchasers a share in their own good deeds here and at the final accounting. Their lips were full of lies and their hands of blood. They entered houses and led women astray; they lived in idleness; they devoured England.

Engl. Works, III. 420 sqq.; Op. evang., II. 40; Lat. serm., IV. 62, 121, etc.

The Reformer had also a strong word to say on the delusion of the contemplative life as usually practised. It was the guile of Satan that led men to imagine their fancies and dreamings were religious contemplation and to make them an excuse for sloth. John the Baptist and Christ both left the desert to live among men. He also went so far as to demand that monks be granted the privilege of renouncing the monkish rule for some other condition where they might be useful.

See the tract Of Feigned Contemplative Life in Matthew, pp. 187, 196; De eccles., p. 380; Lat. Serm., II. 112.

The four mendicant orders, the Carmelites, Augustinians, Jacobites or Dominicans, and Minorites or Franciscans gave their first letters to the word Caim, showing their descent from the first murderer. Their convents, Wyclif called Cain’s castles. His relentless indignation denounced them as the tail of the dragon, ravening wolves, the sons of Satan, the emissaries of anti-christ and Luciferians and pronounced them worse than Herod, Saul and Judas. The friars repeat that Christ begged water at the well. It were to their praise if they begged water and nothing else.

Lat. serm., II. 84; Trial., IV. 33; Engl. Works, III. 348; Dial., pp. 13, 65, etc.

With the lighter hand of ridicule, Chaucer also held up the mendicants for indictment. In the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales he represents the friar as an—

If it required boldness to attack the powerful body of the monks, it required equal boldness to attack the mediaeval dogma of transubstantiation. Wyclif himself called it a doctrine of the moderns and of the recent Church—novella ecclesia. In his treatise on the eucharist, he praised God that he had been delivered from its laughable and scandalous errors.

Ab isto scandaloso et derisibili errore de quidditate hujus sacramenti, pp. 52, 199.

Neither by way of impanation nor of identification, much less by way of transmutation, is the body in the host. Christ is in the bread as a king is in all parts of his dominions and as the soul is in the body. In the breaking of the bread, the body is no more broken than the sunbeam is broken when a piece of glass is shattered: Christ is there sacramentally, spiritually, efficiently—sacramentaliter, spiritualiter et virtualiter. Transubstantiation is the greatest of all heresies and subversive of logic, grammar and all natural science.

De euchar., p. 11; Trial., pp. 248, 261.

The famous controversy as to whether a mouse, partaking of the sacramental elements, really partakes of Christ’s body is discussed in the first pages of the treatise on the eucharist. Wyclif pronounces the primary assumption false, for Christ is not there in a corporal manner. An animal, in eating a man, does not eat his soul. The opinion that the priest actually breaks Christ’s body and so breaks his neck, arms and other members, is a shocking error. What could be more shocking,—horribilius,—he says, than that the priest should daily make and consecrate the Lord’s body, and what more shocking than to be obliged to eat Christ’s very flesh and drink his very blood. Yea, what could be thought of more shocking than that Christ’s body may be burned or eructated, or that the priest carries God in bodily form on the tips of his fingers. The words of institution are to be taken in a figurative sense. In a similar manner, the Lord spoke of himself as the seed and of the world as the field, and called John, Elijah, not meaning that the two were one person. In saying, I am the vine, he meant that the vine is a symbol of himself.

The impossibility of the miracle of elemental transmutation, Wyclif based on the philosophical principle that the substance of a thing cannot be separated from its accidents. If accidents can exist by themselves, then it is impossible to tell what a thing is or whether it exists at all. Transubstantiation would logically demand transaccidentation, an expression the English Reformer used before Luther. The theory that the accidents remain while the substance is changed, he pronounced "grounded neither in holy writt ne reson ne wit but only taughte by newe hypocritis and cursed heretikis that magnyfyen there own fantasies and dremes."

De euch., pp. 78, 81, 182; Engl. Works, III. 520.

Another proof of Wyclif’s freedom of mind was his assertion that the Roman Church, in celebrating the sacrament, has no right to make a precise form of words obligatory, as the words of institution differ in the different accounts of the New Testament. As for the profitable partaking of the elements, he declared that the physical eating profits nothing except the soul be fed with love. Announcing it as his expectation that he would be set upon for his views, he closed his notable treatise on the eucharist with the words, The truth of reason will prevail over all things.

In these denials of the erroneous system of the mediaeval Church at its vital points, Wyclif was far in advance of his own age and anticipated the views of the Protestant Reformers.

§ 42. Wyclif and the Scriptures.

Wyclif’s chief service for his people, next to the legacy of his own personality, was his assertion of the supreme authority of the Bible for clergy and laymen alike and his gift to them of the Bible in their own tongue. His statements, setting forth the Scriptures as the clear and sufficient manual of salvation and insisting that the literal sense gives their plain meaning, were as positive and unmistakable as any made by Luther. In his treatise on the value and authority of the Scriptures, with 1000 printed pages,

De veritate Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, with Introd., 3 vols., Leip., 1904. The editor, I. p. xci, gives the date as 1387, 1388. Wyclif starts out by quoting Augustine at length, I. 6-16. The treatise contains extensive digressions, as on the two natures of Christ, I. 179 sqq., the salutation of Mary, I. 282 sqq., lying, II. 1-99, Mohammedanism, II. 248-266, the functions of prelates and priests, III. 1-104, etc.

To give the briefest outline of the Truth of Scripture will be to state in advance the positions of the Protestant Reformers in regard to the Bible as the rule of faith and morals. To Wyclif the Scriptures are the authority for every Catholic tenet. They are the Law of Christ, the Law of God, the Word of God, the Book of Life—liber vitae. They are the immaculate law of the Lord, most true, most complete and most wholesome.

lex domini immaculata ... verissima, completissima et saluberrima, I. 156.

This book is the whole truth which every Christian should study.

Illum librum debet omnis christianus adiscere cum sit omnis veritas, I. 109, 138.

All through this treatise, and in other works, Wyclif contends against those who pronounced the sacred writings irrational or blasphemous or abounding in errors and plain falsehoods. Such detractors he labelled modern or recent doctors—moderni novelli doctores. Charges such as these would seem well-nigh incredible, if Wyclif did not repeat them over and over again. They remind us of the words of the priest who told Tyndale, 150 years later, "It were better to be without God’s laws than to be without the pope’s." What could be more shocking,—horribilius,—exclaimed Wyclif, than to assert that God’s words are false.

I. 151, 200, 394, 408; Lat. serm., 179; De eccles., 173, 318, etc.

The supreme authority of the Scriptures appears from their contents, the beneficent aim they have in view, and from the witness borne to them by Christ. God speaks in all the books. They are one great Word of God. Every syllable of the two Testaments is true, and the authors were nothing more than scribes or heralds.

Tota scrip. est unum magnum Verbum Dei., I. 269. Autores nisi scribae vel precones ad scrib. Dei legem. I. 392. Also I. 86, 156, 198, 220 sqq., III. 106 sqq., 143.

Wyclif devotes much time to the principles of biblical exposition and brushes away the false principles of the Fath-ers and Schoolmen by pronouncing the "literal verbal sense" the true one. On occasion, in his sermons, he himself used the other senses, but his sound judgment led him again and again to lay emphasis upon the etymological meaning of words as final. The tropological, anagogical and allegorical meanings, if drawn at all, must be based upon the literal meaning. Wyclif confessed his former mistake of striving to distinguish them with strict precision. There is, in fact, only one sense of Scripture, the one God himself has placed in it as the book of life for the wayfaring man.

De ver., 114, 119, 123. Sensus literalis script. est utrobique verus, p. 73. Solum ille est sensus script. quem deus et beati legunt in libro vitae qui est uni talis et alteri viatoribus, semper verus, etc., p. 126.

To withhold the Scriptures from the laity is a fundamental sin. To make them known in the mother-tongue is the first duty of the priest. For this reason priests ought always to be familiar with the language of the people. Wyclif held up the friars for declaring it heresy to translate God’s law into English and make it known to laymen. He argued against their position by referring to the gift of tongues at Pentecost and to Jerome’s translation, to the practice of Christ and the Apostles who taught peoples in their native languages and to the existence in his own day of a French translation made in spite of all hindrances. Why, he exclaims, "should not Englishmen do the same, for as the lords of England have the Bible in French, it would not be against reason if they had the same material in English." Through an English Bible Englishmen would be enabled best "to follow Christ and come to heaven."

Matthew, Sel. Works, p. 429 sq.

Christen men and women, olde and young, shulden study fast in the New Testament, and no simple man of wit shulde be aferde unmeasurably to study in the text of holy Writ. Pride and covetise of clerks is cause of their blyndness and heresie and priveth them fro verie understonding of holy Writ. The New Testament is of ful autorite and open to understonding of simple men, as to the pynts that ben most needful to salvation.

Wyclif was the first to give the Bible to his people in their own tongue. He knew no Hebrew and probably no Greek. His version, which was made from the Latin Vulgate, was the outgrowth of his burning desire to make his English countrymen more religious and more Christian. The paraphrastic translation of books which proceeded from the pen of Richard Rolle and perhaps a verse of the New Testament of Kentish origin and apparently made for a nunnery,

The text pub. Cambr., 1902 and 1905, by Anna C. Paues: A Fourteenth Engl. Bible Vs.

A manuscript preserved in the Bodleian, Forshall and Madden affirm to be without question the original copy of Hereford himself. These editors place the dates of the versions in 1382 and 1388. Purvey was a Lollard, who boarded under Wyclif’s roof and, according to the contemporary chronicler, Knighton, drank plentifully of his instructions. He was imprisoned, but in 1400 recanted, and was promoted to the vicarage of Hythe. This preferment he resigned three years later. He was imprisoned a second time by Archbishop Chichele, 1421, was alive in 1427, and perhaps died in prison.

To follow the description given by Knighton in his Chronicle, the gift of the English Bible was regarded by Wyclif’s contemporaries as both a novel act and an act of desecration. The irreverence and profanation of offering such a translation was likened to the casting of pearls before swine. The passage in Knighton, who wrote 20 years after Wyclif’s death, runs thus: —

The Gospel, which Christ bequeathed to the clergy and doctors of the Church,—as they in turn give it to lay and weaker persons,—this Master John Wyclif translated out of the Latin into the Anglican tongue, not the Angelic tongue, so that by him it is become common,—vulgare,—and more open to the lay folk and to women, knowing how to read, than it used to be to clerics of a fair amount of learning and of good minds. Thus, the Gospel pearl is cast forth and trodden under foot of swine, and what was dear to both clergy and laity is now made a subject of common jest to both, and the jewel of the clergy is turned into the sport of the laity, so that what was before to the clergy and doctors of the Church a divine gift, has been turned into a mock Gospel [or common thing].

Commune aeternum. It is hard to give the exact rendering of these words. Knighton goes on to refer to William of St. Amour, who said of some that they changed the pure Gospel into another Gospel, the evangelium aeternum or evangelium Spiritus sancti. Knighton, Chronicle, II. 151 sq.

The plain meaning of this statement seems to be that Wyclif translated at least some of the Scriptures, that the translation was a novelty, and that the English was not a proper language for the embodiment of the sacred Word. It was a cleric’s book, and profane temerity, by putting it within the reach of the laity, had vulgarized it.

The work speedily received reprobation at the hands of the Church authorities. A bill presented in the English parliament, 1891, to condemn English versions, was rejected through the influence of the duke of Lancaster, but an Oxford synod, of 1408, passed the ominous act, that upon pain of greater excommunication, no man, by his own authority, should translate into English or any other tongue, until such translation were approved by the bishop, or, if necessary, by the provincial council. It distinctly mentions the translation "set forth in the time of John Wyclif." Writing to John XXIII., 1412, Archbishop Arundel took occasion to denounce "that pestilent wretch of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of anti-christ who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother-tongue."

Novae ad suae malitiae complementum Scripturarum in linguam maternam translationis practica adinventa. Wilkins, III. 350.

In 1414, the reading of the English Scriptures was forbidden upon pain of forfeiture "of land, cattle, life and goods from their heirs forever." Such denunciations of a common English version were what Wyclif’s own criticisms might have led us to expect, and quite in consonance with the decree of the Synod of Toulouse, 1229, and Arundel’s reprobation has been frequently matched by prelatical condemnation of vernacular translations of the Bible and their circulation down to the papal fulminations of the 19th century against Bible societies, as by Pius VII., 1816, who declared them "fiendish institutions for the undermining of the foundation of religion." The position, taken by Catholic apologists, that the Catholic hierarchy has never set itself against the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but only against unauthorized translations, would be adapted to modify Protestantism’s notion of the matter, if there were some evidence of only a limited attempt to encourage Bible study among the laity of the Catholic Church with the pages of Scripture open before them. If we go to the Catholic countries of Southern Europe and to South America, where her away has been unobstructed, the very opposite is true.

In the clearest language, Wyclif charged the priestly authorities of his time with withholding the Word of God from the laity, and denying it to them in the language the people could understand. And the fact remains that, from his day until the reign of Elizabeth, Catholic England did not produce any translations of the Bible, and the English Reformers were of the opinion that the Catholic hierarchy was irrevocably set against English versions. Tyndale had to flee from England to translate his New Testament, and all the copies of the first edition that could be collected were burnt on English soil. And though it is alleged that Tyndale’s New Testament was burnt because it was an "unauthorized" translation, it still remains true that the hierarchy made no attempt to give the Bible to England until long after the Protestant Reformation had begun and Protestantism was well established.

The copies of Wyclif’s and Purvey’s versions seem to have been circulated in considerable numbers in England, and were in the possession of low and high. The Lollards cherished them. A splendid copy was given to the Carthusians of London by Henry VI., and another copy was in the possession of Henry VII. Sir Thomas More states distinctly that there was found in the possession of John Hunne, who was afterwards burnt, a Bible "written after Wyclif’s copy and by him translated into our tongue."

More’s Works, p. 240, quoted by Gairdner, I. 112.

In looking over the career and opinions of John Wyclif, it becomes evident that in almost every doctrinal particular did this man anticipate the Reformers. The more his utterances are studied, the stronger becomes this conviction. He exalted preaching; he insisted upon the circulation of the Scriptures among the laity; he demanded purity and fidelity of the clergy; he denied infallibility to the papal utterances, and went so far as to declare that the papacy is not essential to the being of the Church. He defined the Church as the congregation of the elect; he showed the unscriptural and unreasonable character of the doctrine of transubstantiation; he pronounced priestly absolution a declarative act. He dissented from the common notion about pilgrimages; he justified marriage on biblical grounds as honorable among all men; he appealed for liberty for the monk to renounce his vow, and to betake himself to some useful work.

The doctrine of justification by faith Wyclif did not state. However, he constantly uses such expressions as, that to believe in Christ is life. The doctrine of merit is denied, and Christ’s mediation is made all-sufficient. He approached close to the Reformers when he pronounced "faith the supreme theology,"—fides est summa theologia,—and that only by the study of the Scriptures is it possible to become a Christian.

See De ver. scr., I. 209, 212, 214, 260, II. 234. He made a distinction between the material and formal principles when he spoke of the words of Christ as something materiale, and the inner meaning as something formale. Buddensieg, p. xlv, says Wyclif had a dawning presentiment of justifying faith. According to Poole, he stated the doctrine in other terms in his treatment of lordship. Rashdall, Dict. Natl. Biog., LXIII. 221, says that, apart from the doctrine of justification by faith, there is little in the teachings of the 16th cent. which Wyclif did not anticipate.

Behind all Wyclif’s other teaching is his devotion to Christ and his appeal to men to follow Him and obey His law. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the name of Christ appears on every page of his writings. To him, Christ was the supreme philosopher, yea, the content of all philosophy.

Summus philos., immo summa philosophia est Christus, deus noster, quem sequendo et discendo sumus philosophi. De ver. scr., I. 32.

In reaching his views Wyclif was, so far as we know, as independent as any teacher can well be. There is no indication that he drew from any of the medieval sects, as has been charged, nor from Marsiglius and Ockam. He distinctly states that his peculiar views were drawn not from Ockam but from the Scriptures.

De ver. scr., I. 346 sqq. See Loserth, Kirchenpolitik, pp. 2, 112 sq. Buddensieg, De ver. scr., p. viii, says, Was er war wissen wir, nicht wie er es geworden. We know what he was, but not how he came to be what he was. See, for a Rom. Cath. judgment, Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 878, who finds concentrated in Wyclif the false philosophy of the Waldenses and the Apocalypties, of Marsiglius and Ockam.

The Continental Reformers did not give to Wyclif the honor they gave to Huss. Had they known more about him, they might have said more.

Melanchthon, in a letter to Myconius, declared that Wyclif was wholly ignorant of the doctrine of justification, and at another time he said he had foolishly mixed up the Gospel and politics.

Note. – The Authorship of the First English Bible. Recently the priority of Wyclif’s translation has been denied by Abbot Gasquet in two elaborate essays, The Old English Bible, pp. 87–155. He also pronounces it to be very doubtful if Wyclif ever translated any part of the Bible. All that can be attempted here is a brief statement of the case. In addition to Knighton’s testimony, which seems to be as plain as language could put it, we have the testimony of John Huss in his Reply to the Carmelite Stokes, 1411, that Wyclif translated the whole Bible into English. No one contends that Wyclif did as much as this, and Huss was no doubt speaking in general terms, having in mind the originator of the work and the man’s name connected with it. The doubt cast upon the first proposition, the priority of Wyclif’s version, is due to Sir Thomas More’s statement in his Dialogue, 1530, Works, p. 233. In controverting the positions of Tyndale and the Reformers, he said, "The whole Bible was before Wyclif’s days, by virtuous and well-learned men, translated into English and by good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read." He also says that he saw such copies. In considering this statement it seems very possible that More made a mistake (1) because the statement is contrary to Knighton’s words, taken in their natural sense and Huss’ testimony. (2) Because Wyclif’s own statements exclude the existence of any English version before his own. (3) Because the Lollards associated their Bible with Wyclif’s name. (4) Because before the era of the Reformation no English writer refers to any translating except in connection with Wyclif’s name and time. Sir Thomas More was engaged in controversy and attempting to justify the position that the Catholic hierarchy had not been opposed to translations of the Scriptures nor to their circulation among proper classes of the laity. But Abbot Gasquet, after proposing a number of conjectural doubts and setting aside the natural sense of Knighton’s and Arundel’s statements, denies altogether the Wycliffite authorship of the Bible ascribed to him and edited by Forshall and Madden, and performs the feat of declaring this Bible one of the old translations mentioned by More. It must be stated here, a statement that will be recalled later, that Abbot Gasquet is the representative in England of the school of Janssen, which has endeavored to show that the Catholic Church was in an orderly process of development before Luther arose, and that Luther and the Reformers checked that development and also wilfully misrepresented the condition of the Church of their day. Dr. Gasquet, with fewer plausible facts and less literature at command than Janssen, seeks to present the English Church’s condition in the later Middle Ages as a healthy one. And this he does (1) by referring to the existence of an English mediaeval literature, still in MSS., which he pronounces vast in its bulk; (2) by absolutely ignoring the statements of Wyclif; (3) by setting aside the testimonies of the English Reformers; (4) by disparaging the Lollards as a wholly humble and illiterate folk. Against all these witnesses he sets up the single witness, Sir Thomas More.

The second proposition advocated by Dr. Gasquet that it is doubtful, and perhaps very improbable, that Wyclif did nothing in the way of translating the Bible, is based chiefly upon the fact that Wyclif does not refer to such a translation anywhere in his writings. If we take the abbot’s own high priest among authorities, Sir Thomas More, the doubt is found to be unjustifiable, if not criminal. More, speaking of John Hunne, who was burnt, said that he possessed a copy of the Bible which was "after a Wycliffite copy." Eadie, I. 6O sqq.; Westcott, Hist. of the Eng. Bible. Gairdner who discusses the subject fairly in his Lollardy, I. 101–117, Capes, pp. 125–128, F. D. Matthew, in Eng. Hist. Rev., 1895, and Bigg, Wayside Sketches, p. 127 sq., take substantially the position taken by the author. Gasquet was preceded by Lingard, Hist. of Eng., IV. 196, who laid stress upon More’s testimony to offset and disparage the honor given from time immemorial to Wyclif in connection with the English Bible.

How can a controversialist be deemed fair who, in a discussion of this kind, does not even once refer to Wyclif’s well-known views about the value of a popular knowledge of the Scriptures, and his urgency that they be given to all the people through plain preaching and in translation? Dr. Gasquet’s attitude to "the strange personality of Wyclif" may be gotten from these words, Old Eng. Bible, p. 88: "Whatever we may hold as Catholics as to his unsound theological opinions, about which there can be no doubt, or, as peace-loving citizens, about his wild revolutionary social theories, on which, if possible, there can be less," etc.

The following are two specimens of Wyclif’s versions:—

MATT. VIII. 23–27. And Jhesu steyinge vp in to a litel ship, his disciplis sueden him. And loo! a grete steryng was made in the see, so that the litil ship was hilid with wawis; but he slepte. And his disciplis camen nigh to hym, and raysiden hym, sayinge, Lord, saue vs: we perishen. And Jhesus seith to hem, What ben yhee of litil feith agast? Thanne he rysynge comaundide to the wyndis and the see, and a grete pesiblenesse is maad. Forsothe men wondreden, sayinge: What manere man is he this, for the wyndis and the see obeishen to hym.

ROM. VIII. 5–8. For thei that ben aftir the fleisch saueren tho thingis that ben of the fleisch, but thei that ben aftir the spirit felen tho thingis that ben of the spirit. For the prudence of fleisch: is deeth, but the prudence of spirit: is liif and pees. For the wisdom of fleische is enemye to God, for it is not suget to the lawe of God: for nether it may. And thei that ben in fleisch: moun not please to God.

§ 43. The Lollards.

Although the impulse which Wyclif started in England did not issue there in a compact or permanent organization, it was felt for more than a century. Those who adopted his views were known as Wycliffites or Lollards, the Lollards being associated with the Reformer’s name by the contemporary chroniclers, Knighton and Walsingham, and by Walden.

In 1382 Repyngdon was called Lollardus de secta Wyclif, and Peter Stokes was referred to as having opposed the "Lollards and the sect of Wyclif," Fasc., 296. Knighton, II. 182, 260, expressly calls the Wycliffians Lollards, Wycliviani qui et Lollardi dicti sunt.

The term Lollards was transplanted to England from Holland and the region around Cologne. As early as 1300 Lollard heretics were classed by the authorities with the Beghards, Beguines, Fratricelli, Swestriones and even the Flagellants, as under the Church’s ban. The origin of the word, like the term Huguenots, is a matter of dispute. The derivation from the Hollander, "Walter Lollard," who was burnt in Cologne, 1322, is now abandoned.

Fredericq, I. 172. A certain Matthew, whose bones were exhumed and burnt, is called Mattaeus Lollaert. Fred., I. 250. For documents associating the Lollards with other sectarists, see Fred., I. 228, II. 132, 133, III. 46, etc.

The Wycliffite movement was suppressed by a rigid inquisition, set on foot by the bishops and sanctioned by parliament. Of the first generation of these heretics down to 1401, so far as they were brought to trial, the most, if not all, of them recanted. The 15th century furnished a great number of Lollard trials and a number of Lollard martyrs, and their number was added to in the early years of the 16th century. Active measures were taken by Archbishop Courtenay; and under his successor, Thomas, earl of Arundel, the full force of persecution was let loose. The warlike bishop of Norwich, Henry Spenser, joined heartily in the repressive crusade, swearing to put to death by the flames or by decapitation any of the dissenters who might presume to preach in his diocese. The reason for the general recantations of the first generation of Wyclif’s followers has been found in the novelty of heresy trials in England and the appalling effect upon the accused, when for the first time they felt themselves confronted with the whole power of the hierarchy.

Cheyney, p. 436 sqq.

In 1394, they were strong enough to present a petition in full parliament, containing twelve Conclusions.

Gee and Hardy, pp. 126-132. Fasc., pp. 360-369. See Gairdner, I. 44-46

From about 1390 to 1425, we hear of the Lollards in all directions, so that the contemporary chronicler was able to say that of every two men found on the roads, one was sure to be a Lollard.

Knighton, II. 191.

The most prominent personages connected with the earliest period of Wycliffism, Philip Repyngdon, John Ashton, Nicolas Hereford and John Purvey, all recanted. The last three and Wyclif are associated by Knighton as the four arch-heretics.

Repyngdon, who had boldly declared himself at Oxford for Wyclif and his view of the sacrament, made a full recantation, 1382. Subsequently he was in high favor, became chancellor of Oxford, bishop of Lincoln and a cardinal, 1408. He showed the ardor of his zeal by treating with severity the sect whose views he had once espoused.

John Ashton had been one of the most active of Wyclif’s preachers. In setting forth his heretical zeal, Knighton describes him as "leaping up from his bed and, like a dog, ready to bark at the slightest sound." He finally submitted in Courtenay’s court, professing that he "believed as our modur, holy kirke, believes," and that in the sacrament the priest has in his hand Christ’s very body. He was restored to his privileges as lecturer in Oxford, but afterwards fell again into heretical company.

Knighton, II. 171 sqq., gives the recantation in English, the Fasc., p. 329, in Latin. John Foxe’s accounts of the Lollard martyrs are always quaintly related. Gairdner is the fullest and best of the recent treatments. For his judgment of Foxe, see I. 159, 336 sqq. He ascribes to him accuracy in transcribing documents. The articles in the Dict. of Natl. Biog. are always to be consulted.

Hereford, Wyclif’s fellow-translator, appealed to Rome, was condemned there and cast into prison. After two years of confinement, he escaped to England and, after being again imprisoned, made his peace with the Church and died a Carthusian.

In 1389, nine Lollards recanted before Courtenay, at Leicester. The popular preacher, William Swynderby, to whose sermons in Leicester the people flocked from every quarter, made an abject recantation, but later returned to his old ways, and was tried in 1891 and convicted. Whether he was burnt or died in prison, Foxe says, he could not ascertain.

The number suffering death by the law of 1401 was not large in the aggregate. The victims were distributed through the 125 years down to the middle of Henry VIII.’s reign. There were among them no clergymen of high renown like Ridley and Latimer. The Lollards were an humble folk, but by their persistence showed the deep impression Wyclif’s teachings had made. The first martyr, the poor chaplain of St. Osythe, William Sawtré, died March 2, 1401, before the statute for burning heretics was passed. He abjured and then returned again to his heretical views. After trying him, the spiritual court ordered the mayor or sheriff of London to "commit him to the fire that he be actually burnt."

Gee and Hardy give the sentence and the Fasc. the proceedings of the trial. It is a matter of dispute under what law Sawtré was condemned to the flames. Prof. Maitland, In his Canon Law, holds that It was under the old canon practice as expressed in papal bulls. The statute De comburendo was before parliament at the time of Sawtre’s death.

Among other cases of burnings were John Badby, a tailor of Evesham, 1410, who met his awful fate chained inside of a cask; two London merchants, Richard Turming and John Claydon at Smithfield, 1415; William Taylor, a priest, in 1423 at Smithfield; William White at Norwich, 1428; Richard Hoveden, a London citizen, 1430; Thomas Bagley, a priest, in the following year; and in 1440, Richard Wyche, who had corresponded with Huss. Peter Payne, the principal of St. Edmund’s College, Oxford, took refuge in flight, 1417, and became a leader among the Hussites, taking a prominent part as their representative at the Council of Basel. According to Foxe there were, 1424–1480, 100 prosecutions for heresy in Norwich alone. The menace was considered so great that, in 1427, Richard Flemmyng, bishop of Lincoln, founded Lincoln College, Oxford, to counteract heresy. It was of this college that John Wesley was a fellow, the man who made a great breach in the Church in England.

The case of William Thorpe, who was tried in 1397 and again before Arundel, 1407, is of interest not only in itself, but for the statements that were made in the second trial about Wyclif. The archbishop, after accusing Thorpe of having travelled about in Northern England for 20 years, spreading the infection of heresy, declared that he was called of God to destroy the false sect to which the prisoner belonged, and pledged himself to "punish it so narrowly as not to leave a slip of you in this land."

The proceedings are given at great length by Foxe and by Bale, who copied Tyndale’s account. Sel. Works of Bp. Bale, pp. 62-133.

Up to the close of the 14th century, a number of laymen in high position at court had favored Wycliffism, including Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Richard Stury and Sir John Clanvowe, all of the king’s council, Sir John Cheyne, speaker of the lower house, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Erpingham and also the earl of Salisbury.

Walsingham, II, 244; Knighton, II. 181; Chron. Angl., p. 377.

It is a pleasant relief from these trials and puttings-to-death to find the University of Oxford in 1406 bearing good testimony to the memory of its maligned yet distinguished dead, placing on record its high sense of his purity of life, power in preaching and diligence in studies. But fragrant as his memory was held in Oxford, at least secretly, parliament was fixed in its purpose to support the ecclesiastical authorities in stamping out his doctrine. In 1414, it ordered the civil officer to take the initiative in ferreting out heresy, and magistrates, from the Lord chancellor down, were called upon to use their power in extirpating "all manner of heresies, errors and lollardies." This oath continued to be administered for two centuries, until Sir Edward Coke, Lord High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, refused to take it, with the name Lollard included, insisting that the principles of Lollardy had been adopted by the Church of England.

Summers, p. 67.

Archbishop Chichele seemed as much bent as his predecessor, Arundel, on clearing the realm of all stain of heresy. In 1416 he enjoined his suffragans to inquire diligently twice a year for persons under suspicion and, where they did not turn them over to the secular court, to commit them to perpetual or temporary imprisonment, as the nature of the case might require. It was about the same time that an Englishman, at the trial of Huss in Constance, after a parallel had been drawn between Wyclif’s views and those of the Bohemian, said, "By my soul, if I were in your place I would abjure, for in England all the masters, one after another, albeit very good men, when suspected of Wicliffism, abjured at the command of the archbishop."

Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 175.

Heresy also penetrated into Scotland, James Resby, one of Wyclif’s poor priests, being burnt at Perth, 1407, and another at Glasgow, 1422. In 1488, a Bohemian student at St. Andrews, Paul Craw, suffered the same penalty for heresy.

Mitchell: Scottish Reformation, p. 15.

Between 1450–1517, Lollardy was almost wholly restricted to the rural districts, and little mention is made of it in contemporary records. At Amersham, one of its centres, four were tried in 1462, and some suffered death, as William Barlowe in 1466, and John Goose a few years later. In 1507, three were burnt there, including William Tylsworth, the leading man of the congregation. At the crucial moment he was deserted by the members, and sixty of them joined in carrying fagots for his burning. This time of recantation continued to be known in the district as the Great Abjuration. The first woman to suffer martyrdom in England, Joan Broughton, was burnt at Smithfield, 1494, as was also her daughter, Lady Young. Nine Lollards made public penance at Coventry, 1486, but, as late as 1519, six men and one woman suffered death there. Foxe also mentions William Sweeting and John Brewster as being burnt at Smithfield, 1511, and John Brown at Ashford the same year. How extensively Wyclif’s views continued to be secretly held and his writings read is a matter of conjecture. Not till 1559 was the legislation directed against Lollardy repealed.

Our knowledge of the tenets and practices of the Lollards is derived from their Twelve Conclusions and other Lollard documents, the records of their trials and from the Repressor for over-much Blaming of the Clergy, an English treatise written by Dr. Pecock, bishop of Chichester, and finished 1455. Inclined to liberal thought, Bishop Pecock assumed a different attitude from Courtenay, Arundel and other prelates, and sought by calm reasoning to win the Lollards from their mistakes. He mentioned the designation of Known Men—1 Cor. 14:38, 2 Tim. 2:19—as being one of old standing for them, and he also calls them "the lay party" or "the Bible Men." He proposed to consider their objections against 11 customs and institutions, such as the worship of images, pilgrimages, landed endowments for the church, degrees of rank among the clergy, the religious orders, the mass, oaths and war. Their tenet that no statute is valid which is not found in the Scriptures he also attempted to confute. In advance of his age, the bishop declared that fire, the sword and hanging should not be resorted to till the effort had been made "by clene wit to draw the Lollards into the consent of the true faith." His sensible counsel brought him into trouble, and in 1457 he was tried by Archbishop Bouchier and offered the alternative of burning or public recantation. Pecock chose the latter, and made abjuration at St. Paul’s Cross before the archbishop and thousands of spectators. He was clothed in full episcopal robes, and delivered up 14 of his writings to be burnt.

Among these works was the Provoker, in which Pecock denied that the Apostles had compiled the Apostles’ Creed. See Introd. to Babington’s Ed. of the Repressor in Rolls Series, and art. Pecock in Dict. Natl. Biog., XLIV. 198-202.

There seems to have been agreement among the Lollards in denying the material presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread and in condemning pilgrimages, the worship of images and auricular confession. They also held to the right of the people to read the Scriptures in their own tongue.

Knighton, II. 155, complains of the Lollards having the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue. Such a translation he said the laity regarded as melior et dignior quam lingua latina.

Lollardy was an anticipation of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and did something in the way of preparing the mind of the English people for that change. Professed by many clerics, it was emphatically a movement of laymen. In the early Reformation period, English Lutherans were at times represented as the immediate followers of Wyclif. Writing in 1523 to Erasmus, Tonstall, bishop of London, said of Lutheranism that "it was not a question of some pernicious novelty, but only that new arms were being added to the great band of Wycliffite heretics."

Trevelyan, p. 349.

§ 44. John Huss of Bohemia.

Across the seas in Bohemia, where the views of Wyclif were transplanted, they took deeper root than in England, and assumed an organized form. There, the English Reformer was called the fifth evangelist and, in its earlier stages, the movement went by the name of Wycliffism. It was only in the later periods that the names Hussites and Hussitism were substituted for Wycliffites and Wycliffism. Its chief spokesmen were John Huss and Jerome of Prag, who died at the stake at Constance for their avowed allegiance to Wyclif.

Through Huss, Prag became identified with a distinct stage in the history of religious progress. Distinguished among its own people as the city of St. John of Nepomuk, d. 1383, and in the history of armies as the residence of Wallenstein, the Catholic leader in the Thirty Years’ War, Prag is known in the Western world pre-eminently as the home of Huss. Through his noble advocacy, the principles enunciated by Wyclif became the subject of discussion in oecumenical councils, called forth armed crusades and furnished an imposing spectacle of steadfast resistance against religious oppression. Wycliffism passed out of view in England; but Hussitism, in spite of the most bitter persecution by the Jesuits, has trickled down in pure though small streamlets into the religious history of modern times, notably through the Moravians of Herrnhut.

During the reign of Charles IV., king of Bohemia and emperor, 1346–1378, the Bohemian kingdom entered upon the

golden era of its literary and religious history. In 1344, the archbishopric of Prag was created, and the year 1347 witnessed an event of far more than local importance in the founding of the University of Prag. The first of the German universities, it was forthwith to enter upon the era of its brightest fame. The Czech and German languages were spoken side by side in the city, which was divided, at the close of the 14th century into five quarters. The Old Town, inhabited chiefly by Germans, included the Teyn church, the Carolinum, the Bethlehem chapel and the ancient churches of St. Michael and St. Gallus. Under the first archbishop of Prag, Arnest of Pardubitz, and his successor Ocko of Wlaschim, a brave effort was made to correct ecclesiastical abuses. In 1355, the demand for popular instruction was recognized by a law requiring parish priests to preach in the Czech. The popular preachers, Konrad of Waldhausen, d. 1369, Militz of Kremsier, d. 1874, and Matthias of Janow, d. 1394, made a deep impression. They quoted at length from the Scriptures, urged the habit of frequent communion, and Janow, as reported by Rokyzana at the Council of Basel, 1433, seems to have administered the cup to the laity.

The truth of Rokyzana’s statement is denied by Loserth, In Herzog, VIII. 588 sq. On other Bohemian preachers of Huss’ day, see Flajshans, Serm. de Sanctis, p. iv.

Close communication between England and Bohemia had been established with the marriage of the Bohemian king Wenzel’s sister, Anne of Luxemburg, to Richard II., 1382. She was a princess of cultivated tastes, and had in her possession copies of the Scriptures in Latin, Czech and German. Before this nuptial event, the philosophical faculty of the University of Prag, in 1367, ordered its bachelors to add to the instructions of its own professors the notebooks of Paris and Oxford doctors. Here and there a student sought out the English university, or even went so far as the Scotch St. Andrews. Among those who studied in Oxford was Jerome of Prag. Thus a bridge for the transmission of intellectual products was laid from Wyclif’s lecture hall to the capital on the Moldau.

See Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 70. Wenzel or Wenceslaus IV., surnamed the Lazy, was the son of Charles IV. His second wife was Sophia of Bavaria. His half-brother, Sigismund, succeeded him on the throne.

John Huss was born of Czech parents, 1369, at Husinec in Southern Bohemia. The word Hus means goose, and its distinguished bearer often applied the literal meaning to himself. For example, he wrote from Constance expressing the hope that the Goose might be delivered from prison, and he bade the Bohemians, "if they loved the Goose," to secure the king’s aid in having him released. Friends also referred to him in the same way.

Workman: Hus’ Letters, pp. 94, 118, 163, 189, 192, 198, 201. The spelling, Hus, almost universally adopted in recent years by German and English writers, has been exchanged by Loserth in his art. in Herzog for Huss, as a form more congenial to the German mode of spelling. For the same reason this volume has adopted the form Huss as more agreeable to the English reader’s eye and more consonant with our mode of spelling. Karl Müller adopts this spelling in his Kirchengeschichte. The exact date of Huss’ birth is usually given as July 6th, 1369, but with insufficient authority. Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 65 sq.

With his academic duties Huss combined the activity of a preacher, and in 1402 was appointed to the rectorship of the Chapel of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. This church, usually known as the Bethlehem church, was founded in 1391 by two wealthy laymen, with the stipulation that the incumbent should preach every Sunday and on festival days in Czech. It was made famous by its new rector as the little church, Anastasia, in Constantinople, was made famous in the fourth century by Gregory of Nazianzus, and by his discourses against the Arian heresy.

As early as 1402, Huss was regarded as the chief exponent and defender of Wycliffian views at the university. Protests, made by the clergy against their spread, took definite form in 1403, when the university authorities condemned the 24 articles placed under the ban by the London council of 1382. At the same time 21 other articles were condemned, which one of the university masters, John Hübner, a Pole, professed to have extracted from the Englishman’s writings. The decision forbade the preaching and teaching of these 45 articles. Among Wyclif’s warm defenders were Stanislaus of Znaim and Stephen Paletz. The subject which gave the most offence was his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

A distinct stage in the religious controversies agitating Bohemia was introduced by the election of Sbinko of Hasenburg to the see of Prag, 1403. In the earlier years of his administration Huss had the prelate’s confidence, held the post of synodal preacher and was encouraged to bring to the archbishop’s notice abuses that might be reformed. He was also appointed one of a commission of three to investigate the alleged miracles performed by the relic of Christ’s blood at Wylsnak and attracting great throngs. The report condemned the miracles as a fraud. The matter, however, became subject of discussion at the university and as far away as Vienna and Erfurt, the question assuming the form whether Christ left any of his blood on the earth. In a tract entitled the Glorification of all Christ’s Blood,

De Omni Christi sanguine glorificato, ed. by Flajshans p. 42.

So extensive was the spread of Wycliffism that Innocent VII., in 1405, called upon Sbinko to employ severe measures to stamp it out and to seize Wyclif’s writings. The same year a Prag synod forbade the propaganda of Wyclif’s views and renewed the condemnation of the 45 articles. Three years later Huss—whose activity in denouncing clerical abuses and advocating Wyclif’s theology knew no abatement—was deposed from the position of synodal preacher. The same year the University authorities, at the archbishop’s instance, ordered that no public lectures should be delivered on Wyclif’s Trialogus and Dialogus and his doctrine of the Supper, and that no public disputation should concern itself with any of the condemned 45 articles.

The year following, 1409, occurred the emigration from the university of the three nations, the Bavarians, Saxons and Poles, the Czechs alone being left. The bitter feeling of the Bohemians had expressed itself in the demand for three votes, while the other nations were to be restricted to one each. When Wenzel consented to this demand, 2000 masters and scholars withdrew, the Germans going to Leipzig and founding the university of that city. The University of Prag was at once reduced to a provincial school of 500 students, and has never since regained its prestige.

See Rashdall: Universities of Europe, I. 211-242. The number of departing students is variously given. The number given above has the authority of Procopius, a chronicler of the 15th century. Only 602 were matriculated at Leipzig the first year, and this figure seems to point to a smaller number than 2000 leaving Prag. Kügelgen, Die Gefängnissbriefe, p. ix, adopts the uureasonable number, 5000.

Huss, a vigorous advocate of the use of the Czech, was the recognized head of the national movement at the university, and chosen first rector under the new régime. If possible, his advocacy of Wyclif and his views was more bold than before. From this time forth, his Latin writings were filled with excerpts from the English teacher and teem with his ideas. Wyclif’s writings were sown broadcast in Bohemia. Huss himself had translated the Trialogus into Czech. Throngs were attracted by preaching. Wherever, wrote Huss in 1410, in city or town, in village or castle, the preacher of the holy truth made his appearance, the people flocked together in crowds and in spite of the clergy.

Workman: Hus’ Letters, p. 36.

Following a bull issued by Alexander V., Sbinko, in 1410, ordered Wyclif’s writings seized and burnt, and forbade all preaching in unauthorized places. The papal document called forth the protest of Huss and others, who appealed to John XXIII. by showing the absurdity of burning books on philosophy, logic and other non-theological subjects, a course that would condemn the writings of Aristotle and Origen to the flames. The protest was in vain and 200 manuscript copies of the Reformer’s writings were cast into the flames in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace amidst the tolling of the church bells.

Among the condemned writings, 17 in all, were the Dialogus, Trialogus, De incarnatione Verbi and the De dominio civili.

Two days after this grewsome act, the sentence of excommunication was launched against Huss and all who might persist in refusing to deliver up Wyclif’s writings. Defying the archbishop and the papal bull, Huss continued preaching in the Bethlehem chapel. The excitement among all classes was intense and men were cudgelled on the streets for speaking against the Englishman. Satirical ballads were sung, declaring that the archbishop did not know what was in the books he had set fire to. Huss’ sermons, far from allaying the commotion, were adapted to increase it.

Huss had no thought of submission and, through handbills, announced a defence of Wyclif’s treatise on the Trinity before the university, July 27. But his case had now passed from the archbishop’s jurisdiction to the court of the curia, which demanded the offender’s appearance in person, but in vain. In spite of the appeals of Wenzel and many Bohemian nobles who pledged their honor that he was no heretic, John XXIII. put the case into the hands of Cardinal Colonna, afterwards Martin V., who launched the ban against Huss for his refusal to comply with the canonical citation.

Colonna’s sentence was read from all the pulpits of Prag except two. But the offensive preaching continued, and Sbinko laid the city under the interdict, which, however, was withdrawn on the king’s promise to root out heresy from his realm. Wenzel gave orders that "Master Huss, our beloved and faithful chaplain, be allowed to preach the Word of God in peace." According to the agreement, Sbinko was also to write to the pope assuring him that diligent inquisition had been made, and no traces of heresy were to be found in Bohemia. This letter is still extant, but was never sent.

Early in September, 1411, Huss wrote to John XXIII. protesting his full agreement with the Church and asking that the citation to appear before the curia be revoked. In this communication and in a special letter to the cardinals

These letters are given by Workman, pp. 51-54.

The same year, 1411, John XXIII. called Europe to a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the defender of Gregory XII., and promised indulgence to all participating in it, whether by personal enlistment or by gifts. Tiem, dean of Passau, appointed preacher of the holy war, made his way to Prag and opened the sale of indulgences. Chests were placed in the great churches, and the traffic was soon in full sway. As Wyclif, thirty years before, in his Cruciata, had lifted up his voice against the crusade in Flanders, so now Huss denounced the religious war and denied the pope’s right to couple indulgences with it. He filled the Bethlehem chapel with denunciations of the sale and, in a public disputation, took the ground that remission of sins comes through repentance alone and that the pope has no authority to seize the secular sword. Many of his paragraphs were taken bodily from Wyclif’s works on the Church and on the Absolution from guilt and punishment.

Huss’ tract is entitled De indulgentiis sive de cruciatu papae Joh. XXIII. fulminata contra Ladislaum Apuliae regem. Nürnb. ed., 213-235.

Popular opinion was on the side of these leaders, but from this time Huss’ old friends, Stanislaus of Znaim and Stephen Paletz, walked no more with him. Under the direction of Wok of Waldstein, John’s two bulls, bearing on the crusade and offering indulgence, were publicly burnt, after being hung at the necks of two students, dressed as harlots, and drawn through the streets in a cart.

Workman: Hus’ Letters.

To reaffirm its orthodoxy, the theological faculty renewed its condemnation of the 45 articles and added 6 more, taken from Huss’ public utterances. Two of the latter bore upon preaching.

See Huss’ reply, Defensio quorundam articulorum J. Wicleff, and the rejoinder of the Theol. faculty, Nürnb. ed., I. 139-146.

To allay the excitement, Wenzel induced Huss to withdraw from the city. This was in 1412. In later years Huss expressed doubts as to whether he had acted wisely in complying. He was moved not only by regard for the authority of his royal protector but by sympathy for the people whom the interdict was depriving of spiritual privileges. Had he defied the sentence and refused compliance with the king’s request, it is probable he would have lost the day and been silenced in prison or in the flames in his native city. In this case, the interest of his career would have been restricted to the annals of his native land, and no place would have been found for him in the general history of Europe. So Huss went into exile, but there was still some division among the ecclesiastical authorities of the kingdom over the merits of Wycliffism, and a national synod, convoked February 13, 1413, to take measures to secure peace, adjourned without coming to a decision.

Removed from Prag, Huss was indefatigable in preaching and writing. Audiences gathered to hear him on the marketplaces and in the fields and woods. Lords in their strong castles protected him. Following Wyclif, he insisted upon preaching as the indefeasible right of the priest, and wrote that to cease from preaching, in obedience to the mandate of pope or archbishop, would be to disobey God and imperil his own salvation.

Workman: Hus’ Letters, pp. 60, 66.

Of the extent of Huss’ influence during this period he bore witness at Constance when, in answer to D’Ailly, he said:

I have stated that I came here of my own free will. If I had been unwilling to come, neither that king [referring to Wenzel] nor this king here [referring to Sigismund] would have been able to force me to come, so numerous and so powerful are the Bohemian nobles who love me, and within whose castles I should have been able to lie concealed.

And when D’Ailly rebuked the statement as effrontery, John of Chlum replied that it was even as the prisoner said, "There are numbers of great nobles who love him and have strong castles where they could keep him as long as they wished, even against both those kings."

The chief product of this period of exile was Huss’ work on the Church, De ecclesia, the most noted of all his writings. It was written in view of the national synod held in 1413, and was sent to Prag and read in the Bethlehem chapel, July 8. Of this tractate Cardinal D’Ailly said at the Council of Constance that by an infinite number of arguments, it combated the pope’s plenary authority as much as the Koran, the book of the damned Mohammed, combated the Catholic faith.

Du Pin, Opp. Gerson., II. 901. The De ecclesia is given in the Nürnb. ed., I. 243-319.

In this volume, next to Wyclif’s, the most famous treatment on the Church since Cyprian’s work, De ecclesia, and Augustine’s writings against the Donatists, Huss defined the Church and the power of the keys, and then proceeds to defend himself against the fulminations of Alexander V. and John XXIII. and to answer the Prag theologians, Stephen Paletz and Stanislaus of Znaim, who had deserted him. The following are some of its leading positions.

The Holy Catholic Church is the body or congregation of all the predestinate, the dead, the living and those yet to be.

Eccl. est omnium praedestinatorum universitas; quae est omnes praedestinati, praesentes, praeteriti et futuri. Nürnb. ed. I., 244.

He thus set himself clearly against the whole ultramontane theory of the Church and its head. The Roman bishop, he said, was on an equality with other bishops until Constantine made him pope. It was then that he began to usurp authority. Through ignorance and the love of money the pope may err, and has erred, and to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.

Nürnb. ed., I. 260, 284, 294, etc.

In the second part of the De ecclesia, Huss pronounced the bulls of Alexander and John XXIII. anti-christian, and therefore not to be obeyed. Alexander’s bull, prohibiting preaching in Bohemia except in the cathedral, parish and monastic churches was against the Gospel, for Christ preached in houses, on the seaside, and in synagogues, and bade his disciples to go into all the world and preach. No papal excommunication may be an impediment to doing what Christ did and taught to be done.

Nürnb. ed., I. 302.

Turning to the pope’s right to issue indulgences, the Reformer went over the ground he had already traversed in his replies to John’s two bulls calling for a crusade against Ladislaus. He denied the pope’s right to go to war or to make appeal to the secular sword. If John was minded to follow Christ, he should pray for his enemies and say, "My kingdom is not of this world." Then the promised wisdom would be given which no enemies would be able to gainsay. The power to forgive sins belongs to no mortal man anymore than it belonged to the priest to whom Christ sent the lepers. The lepers were cleansed before they reached the priest. Indeed, many popes who conceded the most ample indulgences were themselves damned.

De indulgentiis, Nürnb. ed., pp. 220-228.

In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church visible, and in setting aside the sacerdotal power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke with the accepted theory of Western Christendom; he committed the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. These fundamental ideas, however, were not original with the Bohemian Reformer. He took them out of Wyclif’s writings, and he also incorporated whole paragraphs of those writings in his pages. Teacher never had a more devoted pupil than the English Reformer had in Huss. The first three chapters of De ecclesia are little more than a series of extracts from Wyclif’s treatise on the Church. What is true of this work is also true of most of Huss’ other Latin writings.

Loserth wrote his Wicliff and Hus to show the dependence of Huss upon his English predecessor, and the latter half of this work gives proof of it by printing in parallel columns portions of the two authors, compositions. He says, p. 111, that the De ecclesia is only "a meagre abridgement of Wyclif’s work on the same subject." This author affirms that in his Latin tractates Huss "has drawn all his arguments from Wyclif," and that "the most weighty parts are taken word for word from his English predecessor," pp. xiv, 139, 141, 156, etc. Neander made a mistake in rating the influence of Matthias of Janow upon Huss higher than the influence of Wyclif. He wrote before the Wyclif Society began its publications. Even Palacky, in his Church History of Bohemia, III. 190-197, pronounced it uncertain how far Huss was influenced by Wyclif’s writings, and questions whether he had attached himself closely to the English Reformer. The publications of the Wyclif Society, which make a comparison possible, show that one writer could scarcely be more dependent upon another than Huss was upon Wyclif.

The Bohemian theologian was fully imbued with Wyclif’s heretical spirit. The great Council of Constance was about to meet. Before that tribunal Huss was now to be judged.

§ 45. Huss at Constance.

The great expectations aroused by the assembling of the Council of Constance included the settlement of the disturbance which was rending the kingdom of Bohemia. It was well understood that measures were to be taken against the heresy which had invaded Western Christendom. In two letters addressed to Conrad, archbishop of Prag, Gerson bore witness that, in learned centres outside of Bohemia, the names of Wyclif and Huss were indissolubly joined. Of all Huss’ errors, wrote the chancellor, "the proposition is the most perilous that a man who is living in deadly sin may not have authority and dominion over Christian men. And this proposition, as is well known, has passed down to Huss from Wyclif."

Van der Hardt, I. 18; Palacky, Docum., pp. 523-528.

To Constance Sigismund, king of the Romans and heir of the Bohemian crown, turned for relief from the embarrassment of Hussitism; and from Lombardy he sent a deputation to summon Huss to attend the council at the same time promising him safe conduct. The Reformer expressed his readiness to go, and had handbills posted in Prag announcing his decision. Writing to Wenzel and his queen, he reaffirmed his readiness, and stated he was willing to suffer the penalty appointed for heretics, should he be condemned.

For these letters and copies of the handbill, see Workman, Hus’ Letters, p. 140 sqq.

Under date of Sept. 1, 1414, Huss wrote to Sigismund that he was ready to go to Constance "under safe-conduct of your protection, the Lord Most High being my defender." A week later, the king replied, expressing confidence that, by his appearance, all imputation of heresy would be removed from the kingdom of Bohemia.

Huss set out on the journey Oct. 11, 1414, and reached Constance Nov. 3. He was accompanied by the Bohemian nobles, John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba and Henry Lacembok. With John of Chlum was Mladenowitz, who did an important service by preserving Huss’ letters and afterwards editing them with notes. Huss’ correspondence, from this time on, deserves a place in the choice autobiographical literature of the Christian centuries. For pathos, simplicity of expression and devotion to Christ, the writings of the Middle Ages do not furnish anything superior.

In a letter, written to friends in Bohemia on the eve of his departure, Huss expressed his expectation of being confronted at Constance by bishops, doctors, princes and canons regular, yea, by more foes than the Redeemer himself had to face. He prayed that, if his death would contribute aught to God’s glory, he might be enabled to meet it without sinful fear. A second letter was not to be opened, except in case of his death. It was written to Martin, a disciple whom the writer says he had known from childhood. He binds Martin to fear God, to be careful how he listened to the confessions of women, and not to follow him in any frivolity he had been guilty of in other days, such as chess-playing. Persecution was about to do its worst because he had attacked the greed and incontinence of the clergy. He willed to Martin his gray cloak and bade him, in case of his death, give to the rector his white gown and to his faithful servant, George, a guinea.

The route was through Nürnberg. Along the way Huss was met by throngs of curious people. He sat down in the inns with the local priests, talking over his case with them. At Nürnberg the magistrates and burghers invited him to meet them at an inn. Deeming it unnecessary to go out of its way to meet Sigismund, who was at Spires, the party turned its face directly to the lake of Constance. Arrived on its upper shore, they sent back most of their horses for sale, a wise measure, as it proved, in view of the thousands of animals that had to be cared for at Constance.

Huss kept one for himself, thinking it might be necessary for him to ride and see Sigismund. Writing from Constance, Nov. 4th, he said that horses were cheap there. One, bought in Bohemia for 6 guineas, was given away for 7 florins, or one-third the original price. Workman: Letters, p. 158.

Arrived at Constance, Huss took lodgings with a "second widow of Sarepta," who had kept the bakery to the White Pigeon. The house is still shown. His coming was a great sensation, and he entered the town, riding through a large crowd. The day after, John of Chlum and Baron Lacembok called upon pope John XXIII., who promised that no violence should be done their friend, nay, even though he had killed the pope’s own brother. He granted him leave to go about the city, but forbade him to attend high mass. Although he was under sentence of excommunication, Huss celebrated mass daily in his own lodgings. The cardinals were incensed that a man charged openly with heresy should have freedom, and whatever misgivings Huss had had of unfair dealing were to be quickly justified. Individual liberty had no rights before the bar of an ecclesiastical court in the 15th century when a heretic was under accusation. Before the month had passed, Huss’ imprisonment began, a pretext being found in an alleged attempt to escape from the city concealed in a hay-wagon.

The charge is reported by Richental, p. 76 sq. His story is invalidated by the false date he gives and also by the testimony of Mladenowitz, who declared it wholly untrue. If there had been any attempt at escape, it would hardly have been allowed to go unnoticed in the trial. See Wylie, p. 139.

After a short audience with the cardinals, the prisoner was taken away by a guard of soldiers, and within a week he was securely immured in the dungeon of the Dominican convent. Preparations had been going on for several days to provide the place with locks, bolts and other strong furnishings.

In this prison, Huss languished for three months. His cell was hard by the latrines. Fever and vomiting set in, and it seemed likely they would quickly do their dismal work. John XXIII. deserves some credit for having sent his physician, who applied clysters, as Huss himself wrote. To sickness was added the deprivation of books, including the Bible. For two months we have no letters from him. They begin again, with January, 1415, and give us a clear insight into the indignities to which he was exposed and the misery he suffered. These letters were sent by the gaoler.

What was Sigismund doing? He had issued the letter of safe-conduct, Oct. 18. On the day before his arrival in Constance, Dec. 24th, John of Chlum posted up a notice on the cathedral, protesting that the king’s agreement had been treated with defiance by the cardinals. Sigismund professed to be greatly incensed, and blustered, but this was the end of it. He was a time-serving prince who was easily persuaded to yield to the arguments of such ecclesiastical figures as D’Ailly, who insisted that little matters like Huss’ heresy should not impede the reformation of the church, the council’s first concern, and that error unreproved was error countenanced.

In an audience with Sigismund, D’Ailly protested that factum J. Hus et alia minora non debebant reformationem eccles. et Bon. imperii impedire quod erat principale pro quo fuerat concilium congregatum. Fillflastre, in Finke, p. 253.

During his imprisonment in the Black Friars’ convent, Huss wrote for his gaoler, Robert, tracts on the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, Mortal Sin and Marriage. Of the 13 letters preserved from this time, the larger part were addressed to John of Chlum, his trusty friend. Some of the letters were written at midnight, and some on tattered scraps of paper.

On reading a letter in the Bethlehem chapel, Hawlik exclaimed, alas, Hus is running out of paper." And John of Chlum spoke of one of Huss’ letters as being written " on a tattered, three-cornered bit of paper." Workman: Hus’ Letters, p. 196.

In the meantime the council had committed the matter of heresy to a commission, with D’Ailly at its head. It plied Huss with questions, and presented heretical articles taken from his writings. Stephen Paletz, his apostate friend, badgered him more than all the rest. His request for a "proctor and advocate" was denied. The thought of death was continually before him. But, as the Lord had delivered Jonah from the whale’s belly, and Daniel from the lions, so, he believed, God would deliver him, if it were expedient.

Upon John XXIII.’s flight, fears were felt that Huss might be delivered by his friends, and the keys of the prison were put into the hands of Sigismund. On March 24th the bishop of Constance had the prisoner chained and transferred by boat to his castle, Gottlieben. There he had freedom to walk about in his chains by day, but he was handcuffed and bound to the wall at night. The imprisonment at Gottlieben lasted seventy-three days, from March 24th-June 5th. If Huss wrote any letters during that time none have survived. It was a strange freak of history that the runaway pontiff, on being seized and brought back to Constance, was sent to Gottlieben to be fellow-prisoner with Huss, the one, the former head of Christendom, condemned for almost every known misdemeanor; the other, the preacher whose life was, by the testimony of all contemporaries, almost without a blemish. The criminal pope was to be released after a brief confinement and elevated to an exalted dignity; the other was to be contemned as a religious felon and burnt as an expiation to orthodox theology.

At Gottlieben, Huss suffered from hemorrhage, headache and other infirmities, and at times was on the brink of starvation. A new commission, appointed April 6, with D’Ailly at its head, now took up seriously the heresy of Huss and Wyclif, whom the council coupled together.

See Card. Fillastre’s Diary in Finke’s Forschungen, pp. 164, 179.

In order to bring the prisoner within more convenient reach of the commission, he was transferred in the beginning of June to a third prison,—the Franciscan friary. From June 5–8 public hearings were had in the refectory, the room being crowded with cardinals, archbishops, bishops, theologians and persons of lesser degree. Cardinal D’Ailly was present and took the leading part as head of the commission. The action taken May 4th condemning 260 errors and heresies extracted from Wyclif’s works was adapted to rob Huss of whatever hope of release he still indulged. Charges were made against him of holding that Christ is in the consecrated bread only as the soul is in the body, that Wyclif was a good Christian, that salvation was not dependent upon the pope and that no one could be excommunicated except by God Himself. He also had expressed the hope his soul might be where Wyclif’s was.

Utinam anima esset ibi, ubi est anima Joh. Wicleff. Mansi, xxvII. 756.

On the morning of June 7th, Huss exclaimed that God and his conscience were on his side. But, Said D’Ailly, "we cannot go by your conscience when we have other evidence, and the evidence of Gerson himself against you, the most renowned doctor in Christendom."

Nos non possumus secundum tuam conscientiam judicare, etc., Palacky, Doc. 278. Tschackert, pp. 225, 235, says D’Ailly would have been obliged to lay aside his purple if he had not resisted Huss’ views. Huss had said of Gerson,O si deus daret tempus scribendi contra mendacia Parisiensis cancellarii, Palacky, Doc. 97. Gerson went so far as to say that Huss was condemned for his realism. See Schwab, pp. 298, 586.

That night, as Huss wrote, he suffered from toothache, vomiting, headache and the stone. On June 8th, 39 distinct articles were handed to him, 26 of which were drawn from his work on the Church. When he demurred at some of the statements, D’Ailly had the pertinent sections from the original writings read. When they came to the passage that no heretic should be put to death, the audience shouted in mockery. Huss went on to argue from the case of Saul, after his disobedience towards Agag, that kings in mortal sin have no right to authority. Sigismund happened to be at the moment at the window, talking to Frederick of Bavaria. The prelates, taking advantage of the avowal, cried out, "Tell the king Huss is now attacking him." The emperor turned and said, "John Huss, no one lives without sin." D’Ailly suggested that the prisoner, not satisfied with pulling down the spiritual fabric, was attempting to hurl down the monarchy likewise. In an attempt to break the force of his statement, Huss asked why they had deposed pope John. Sigismund replied that Baldassarre was real pope, but was deposed for his notorious crimes.

The 39 articles included the heretical assertions that the Church is the totality of the elect, that a priest must continue preaching, even though he be under sentence of excommunication, and that whoso is in mortal sin cannot exercise authority. Huss expressed himself ready to revoke statements that might be proved untrue by Scripture and good arguments, but that he would not revoke any which were not so proved. When Sigismund remonstrated, Huss appealed to the judgment bar of God. At the close of the proceedings, D’Ailly declared that a compromise was out of the question. Huss must abjure.

See Tschackert p. 230. D’Ailly persisted in this position after he left Constance. Wyclif and Huss remained to him the dangerous heretics, pernitiosi heretici. Van der Hardt, VI. 16.

As Huss passed out in the charge of the archbishop of Riga, John of Chlum had the courage to reach out his hand to him. The act reminds us of the friendly words Georg of Frundsberg spoke to Luther at Worms. Huss was most thankful, and a day or two afterward wrote how delightful it had been to see Lord John, who was not ashamed to hold out his hand to a poor, abject heretic, a prisoner in irons and the butt of all men’s tongues. In addressing the assembly after Huss’ departure, Sigismund argued against accepting submission from the prisoner who, if released, would go back to Bohemia and sow his errors broadcast. "When I was a boy," he said, "I remember the first sprouting of this sect, and see what it is today. We should make an end of the master one day, and when I return from my journey we will deal with his pupil. What’s his name?" The reply was, Jerome. Yes, said the king, I mean Jerome.

Huss, as he himself states, was pestered in prison by emissaries who sought to entrap him, or to "hold out baskets" for him to escape in. Some of the charges made against him he ascribes to false witnesses. But many of the charges were not false, and it is difficult to understand how he could expect to free himself by a public statement, in view of the solemn condemnation passed upon the doctrines of Wyclif. He was convinced that none of the articles brought against him were contrary to the Gospel of Christ, but canon law ruled at councils, not Scripture. A doctor told him that if the council should affirm he had only one eye, he ought to accept the verdict. Huss replied if the whole world were to tell him so, he would not say so and offend his conscience, and he appealed to the case of Eleazar in the Book of the Maccabees, who would not make a lying confession.

Workman: Hus’ Letters, pp. 226, 289-241.

On June 15th, the council took the far-reaching action forbidding the giving of the cup to laymen. This action Huss condemned as wickedness and madness, on the ground that it was a virtual condemnation of Christ’s example and command. To Hawlik, who had charge of the Bethlehem chapel, he wrote, urging him not to withhold the cup from the laity.

See Workman, pp. 185, 245, 248.

The darkness deepened around the prisoner. On June 24th, by the council’s orders, his writings were to be burnt, even those written in Czech which, almost in a tone of irony, as he wrote, the councillors had not seen and could not read. He bade his friends not be terrified, for Jeremiah’s books, which the prophet had written at the Lord’s direction, were burnt.

His affectionate interest in the people of "his glorious country" and in the university on the Moldau, and his feeling of gratitude to the friends who had supported him continued unabated. A dreadful death was awaiting him, but he recalled the sufferings of Apostles and the martyrs, and especially the agonies endured by Christ, and he believed he would be purged of his sins through the flames. D’Ailly had replied to him on one occasion by peremptorily saying he should obey the decision of 50 doctors of the Church and retract without asking any questions. "A wonderful piece of information," he wrote, "As if the virgin, St. Catherine, ought to have renounced the truth and her faith in the Lord because 50 philosophers opposed her."

Workman, p. 264.

On the first day of July, he was approached by the archbishops of Riga and Ragusa and 6 other prelates, who still had a hope of drawing from him a recantation. A written declaration made by Huss in reply showed the hope vain.

Ibid., p. 276.

Still another deputation approached him, his three friends John of Chlum, Wenzel of Duba and Lacembok, and four bishops. They were sent by Sigismund. As a layman, John of Chlum did not venture to give Huss advice, but bade him, if he felt sure of his cause, rather than to be against God, to stand fast, even to death. One of the bishops asked whether he presumed to be wiser than the whole council. No, was the reply, but to retract he must be persuaded of his errors out of the Scriptures. "An obstinate heretic!" exclaimed the bishops. This was the final interview in private. The much-desired opportunity was at hand for him to stand before the council as a body, and it was his last day on earth.

After seven months of dismal imprisonment and deepening disappointment, on Saturday, July 6th, Huss was conducted to the cathedral. It was 6 A. M., and he was kept waiting outside the doors until the celebration of mass was completed. He was then admitted to the sacred edifice, but not to make a defence, as he had come to Constance hoping to do. He was to listen to sentence pronounced upon him as an ecclesiastical outcast and criminal. He was placed in the middle of the church on a high stool, set there specially for him.

Ad medium concilii ubi erat levatus in altum scamnum pro eo. Mansi, XXVII. 747.

The commission, which included Patrick, bishop of Cork, appointed to pronounce the sentence, then ascended the pulpit. All expressions of feeling with foot or hand, all vociferation or attempt to start disputation were solemnly forbidden on pain of excommunication. 30 articles were then read, which were pronounced as heretical, seditious and offensive to pious ears. The sentence coupled in closest relation Wyclif and Huss.

The articles are given in Mansi, pp. 754 sq., 1209-1211, and Hardt, IV. 408-12.

The sentence ran that "the holy council, having God only before its eye, condemns John Huss to have been and to be a true, real and open heretic, the disciple not of Christ but of John Wyclif, one who in the University of Prag and before the clergy and people declared Wyclif to be a Catholic and an evangelical doctor—vir catholicus et doctor evangelicus." It ordered him degraded from the sacerdotal order, and, not wishing to exceed the powers committed unto the Church, it relinquished him to the secular authority.

Not a dissenting voice was lifted against the sentence. Even John Gerson voted for it. One incident has left its impress upon history, although it is not vouched for by a contemporary. It is said that, when Huss began to speak, he looked at Sigismund, reminding him of the safe-conduct. The king who sat in state and crowned, turned red, but did not speak.

The order of degradation was carried out by six bishops, who disrobed the condemned man of his vestments and destroyed his tonsure. They then put on his head a cap covered over with pictures of the devil and inscribed with the word, heresiarch, and committed his soul to the devil. With upturned eyes, Huss exclaimed, "and I commit myself to the most gracious Lord Jesus."

The old motto that the Church does not want blood—ecclesia non sitit sanguinem — was in appearance observed, but the authorities knew perfectly well what was to be the last scene when they turned Huss over to Sigismund. "Go, take him and do to him as a heretic" were the words with which the king remanded the prisoner to the charge of Louis, the Count Palatine. A guard of a thousand armed men was at hand. The streets were thronged with people. As Huss passed on, he saw the flames on the public square which were consuming his books. For fear of the bridge’s breaking down, the greater part of the crowd was not allowed to cross over to the place of execution, called the Devil’s Place. Huss’ step had been firm, but now, with tears in his eyes, he knelt down and prayed. The paper cap falling from his head, the crowd shouted that it should be put on, wrong side front.

It was midday. The prisoner’s hands were fastened behind his back, and big neck bound to the stake by a chain. On the same spot sometime before, so the chronicler notes, a cardinal’s worn-out mule had been buried. The straw and wood were heaped up around Huss’ body to the chin, and rosin sprinkled upon them. The offer of life was renewed if he would recant. He refused and said, "I shall die with joy to-day in the faith of the gospel which I have preached." When Richental, who was standing by, suggested a confessor, he replied, "There is no need of one. I have no mortal sin." At the call of bystanders, they turned his face away from the East, and as the flames arose, he sang twice, Christ, thou Son of the living God, have mercy upon me. The wind blew the fire into the martyr’s face, and his voice was hushed. He died, praying and singing. To remove, if possible, all chance of preserving relics from the scene, Huss’ clothes and shoes were thrown into the merciless flames. The ashes were gathered up and cast into the Rhine.

While this scene was being enacted, the council was going on with the transaction of business as if the burning without the gates were only a common event. Three weeks later, it announced that it had done nothing more pleasing to God than to punish the Bohemian heretic. For this act it has been chiefly remembered by after generations.

Not one of the members of the Council of Constance, after its adjournment, so far as we know, uttered a word of protest against the sentence. No pope or oecumenical synod since has made any apology for it. Nor has any modern Catholic historian gone further than to indicate that in essential theological doctrines Huss was no heretic, though his sentence was strictly in accord with the principles of the canon law. So long as the dogmas of an infallible Church organization and an infallible pope continue to be strictly held, no apology can be expected. It is of the nature of Protestant Christianity to confess wrongs and, as far as is possible, make reparation for them. When the Massachusetts court discovered that it had erred in the case of the Salem witchcraft in 1692, it made full confession, and offered reparation to the surviving descendants; and Judge Sewall, one of the leaders in the prosecution, made a moving public apology for the mistake he had committed. The same court recalled the action against Roger Williams. In 1903, the Protestants of France reared a monument at Geneva in expiation of Calvin’s part in passing sentence upon Servetus. Luther, in his Address to the German Nobility, called upon the Roman Church to confess it had done wrong in burning Huss. That innocent man’s blood still cries from the ground.

Huss died for his advocacy of Wycliffism. The sentence passed by the council coupled the two names together.

Buddenseig, Hus, Patriot and Reformer, p. 11, says, "The whole Hussite movement is mere Wycliffism." Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. xvi, says, it was Wyclif’s doctrine principally for which Hus yielded up his life. Invectives flying about in Constance joined their names together. TheMissa Wiclefistarum ran, Credo in Wykleph ducem inferni patronum Boemiae et in Hus filium ejus unicum nequam nostrum, qui conceptus est ex spiritu Luciferi, natus matre ejus et factus incarnatus equalis Wikleph, secundum malam voluntatem et major secundum ejus persecutionem, regnans tempore desolationis studii Pragensis, tempore quo Boemia a fide apostotavit. Qui propter nos hereticos descendit ad inferna et non resurget a mortuis nec habebit vitam eternam. Amen.

John Huss struck at the foundations of the hierarchical system. He interpreted our Lord’s words to Peter in a way that was fatal to the papal theory of Leo, Hildebrand and Innocent III.

Gerson declared that among the causes for which Huss was condemned was that he had affirmed that the Church could be ruled by priests dispersed throughout the world in the absence of one head an well as with one head. Schwab, p. 588.

The enlightened group of men who shared the spirit of Gerson and D’Ailly did not comprehend Wycliffism, for Wycliffism was a revolt against an alleged divine institution, the visible Church. Gerson denied that the appeal to conscience was an excuse for refusing to submit to ecclesiastical authority. Faith, with him, was agreement with the Church’s system. The chancellor not only voted for Huss’ condemnation, but declared he had busily worked to bring the sentence about. Nineteen articles he drew from Huss’ work on the Church, he pronounced "notoriously heretical." However, at a later time, in a huff over the leniency shown to Jean Petit, he stated that if Huss had been given an advocate, he would never have been convicted.

Schwab, pp. 588-599, 600. On the whole subject of Huss’ views Schwab has excellent remarks, p. 596 sqq.

In starting out for Constance, Huss knew well the punishment appointed for heretics. The amazing thing is that he should ever have thought it possible to clear himself by a public address before the council. In view of the procedure of the Inquisition, the council showed him unheard-of consideration in allowing him to appear in the cathedral. This was done out of regard for Sigismund, who was on the eve of his journey to Spain to induce Benedict of Luna to abdicate.

See Workman: Age of Hus, pp. 284, 293, 364, and Wylie, p. 175 sqq.

As for the safe-conduct—salvo-conductus — issued by Sigismund, all that can be said is that a king did not keep his word. He was more concerned to be regarded as the patron of a great council than to protect a Bohemian preacher, his future subject. Writing with reference to the solemn pledge, Huss said, "Christ deceives no man by a safe-conduct. What he pledges he fulfils. Sigismund has acted deceitfully throughout."

Workman: Hus’ Letters, p. 269 sq.

The safe-conduct was in the ordinary form, addressed to all the princes and subjects of the empire, ecclesiastical and secular, and informing them that Huss should be allowed to pass, remain and return without impediment. Jerome, according to the sentence passed upon him by the council, declared that the safe-conduct had been grossly violated, and when, in 1433, the legates of the Council of Basel attempted to throw the responsibility for Huss’ condemnation on false witnesses, so called, Rokyzana asked how the Council of Constance could have been moved by the Holy Ghost if it were controlled by perjurers, and showed that the violation of the safe-conduct had not been forgotten. When the Bohemian deputies a year earlier had come to Basel, they demanded the most carefully prepared briefs of safe-conduct from the Council of Basel, the cities of Eger and Basel and from Sigismund and others. Frederick of Brandenburg and John of Bavaria agreed to furnish troops to protect the Hussites on their way to Basel, at Basel, and on their journey home. A hundred and six years later, Luther profited by Huss’ misfortune when he recalled Sigismund’s perfidy, perfidy which the papal system of the 16th century would have repeated, had Charles V. given his consent.

Luther declared that a safe-conduct promised to the devil must be kept. See Köstlin, M. Luther, I. 352.

In a real sense, Huss was the precursor of the Reformation. It is true, the prophecy was wrongly ascribed to him, "To-day you roast a goose—Huss—but a hundred years from now a swan will arise out of my ashes which you shall not roast." Unknown to contemporary writers, it probably originated after Luther had fairly entered upon his work. But he struck a hard blow at hierarchical assumption before Luther raised his stronger arm. Luther was moved by Huss’ case, and at Leipzig, forced to the wall by Eck’s thrusts, the Wittenberg monk made the open avowal that oecumenical councils also may err, as was done in putting Huss to death at Constance. Years before, at Erfurt, he had taken up a volume of the Bohemian sermons, and was amazed that a man who preached so evangelically should have been condemned to the stake. But for fear of the taint of heresy, he quickly put it down.

John Zacharias, one of the professors of the university at Erfurt, had taken a prominent part in the debates at Constance against Huss, and received as his reward the red rose from the pope. Köstlin, M. Luther, I. 53, 87.

A cantionale, dating from 1572, and preserved in the Prag library, contains a hymn to Huss’ memory and three medallions which well set forth the relation in which Wyclif and Huss stand to the Reformation. The first represents Wyclif striking sparks from a stone. Below it is Huss, kindling a fire from the sparks. In the third medallion, Luther is holding aloft the flaming torch. his is the historic succession, although it is true Luther began his career as a Reformer before he was influenced by Huss, and continued his work, knowing little of Wyclif.

To the cause of religious toleration, and without intending it, John Huss made a more effectual contribution by his death than could have been made by many philosophical treatises, even as the deaths of Blandina and other martyrs of the early Church, who were slaves, did more towards the reduction of the evils of slavery than all the sentences of Pagan philosophers. Quite like his English teacher, he affirmed the sovereign rights of the truth. It was his habit, so he stated, to conform his views to the truth, whatever the truth might be. If any one, he said, "can instruct me by the sacred Scriptures or by good reasoning, I am willing to follow him. From the outset of my studies, I have made it a rule to joyfully and humbly recede from a former opinion when in any matter I perceive a more rational opinion."

Si aliqua persona ecclesiae me scrip. s. vel ratione valida, docuerit, paratissime consentire. Nam a primo studii mei tempore hoc mihi statui proregula, ut quotiescunque saniorem sententiam in quacunque materia perciperem, a priori sententia gaudenter et humiliter declinarem. Wyclif had expressed the same sentiment in his De universalibus, which Huss translated, 1398. See Loserth, p. 253.

§ 46. Jerome of Prag.

A year after Huss’ martyrdom, on May 30, 1416, his friend Jerome of Prag was condemned by the council and also suffered at the stake. He shared Huss’ enthusiasm for Wyclif, was perhaps his equal in scholarship, but not in steadfast constancy. Huss’ life was spent in Prag and its vicinity. Jerome travelled in Western Europe and was in Prag only occasionally. Huss left quite a body of writings, Jerome, none.

Born of a good family at Prag, Jerome studied in his native city, and later at Oxford and Paris. At Oxford he became a student and admirer of Wyclif’s writings, two of which, the Trialogus and the Dialogus, he carried with him back to Bohemia not later than 1402. In Prag, he defended the English doctor as a holy man "whose doctrines were more worthy of acceptance than Augustine himself," stood with Huss in the contest over the rights of the Bohemian nation, and joined him in attacking the papal indulgences, 1412.

Soon after arriving in Constance, Huss wrote to John of Chlum not to allow Jerome on any account to go to join him. In spite of this warning, Jerome set out and reached Constance April 4th, 1415, but urged by friends he quit the city. He was seized at Hirschau, April 15, and taken back in chains. There is every reason for supposing he and Huss did not see one another, although Huss mentions him in a letter within a week before his death,

Workman: Letters, p. 266.

On Sept. 11, 1415, Jerome solemnly renounced his admiration for Wyclif and professed accord with the Roman church and the Apostolic see and, twelve days later, solemnly repeated his abjuration in a formula prepared by the council.

Mansi, XXVII. 794 sqq., 842-864.

Release from prison did not follow. It was the council’s intention that Jerome should sound forth his abjuration as loudly as possible in Bohemia, and write to Wenzel, the university and the Bohemian nobles; but he disappointed his judges. Following Gerson’s lead, the council again put the recusant heretic on trial. The sittings took place in the cathedral, May 23 and 26, 1416. The charge of denying transubstantiation Jerome repudiated, but he confessed to having done ill in pledging himself to abandon the writings and teachings of that good man John Wyclif, and Huss. Great injury had been done to Huss, who had come to the council with assurance of safe-conduct. Even Judas or a Saracen ought under such circumstances to be free to come and go and to speak his mind freely.

On May 30, Jerome was again led into the cathedral. The bishop of Lodi ascended the pulpit and preached a sermon, calling upon the council to punish the prisoner, and counselling that against other such heretics, if there should be any, any witnesses whatever should be allowed to testify,—ruffians, thieves and harlots. The sermon being over, Jerome mounted a bench—bancum ascendens — and made a defence whose eloquence is attested by Poggio and others who were present. Thereupon, the, holy synod "pronounced him a follower of Wyclif and Huss, and adjudged him to be cast off as a rotten and withered branch—palmitem putridum et aridum.

For the sentence, see Mansi, XXVII. 887-897. Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, gives a translation and an excellent account of the proceedings against Jerome and his martyrdom.

Jerome went out from the cathedral wearing a cheerful countenance. A paper cap was put on his head, painted over with red devils. No sentence of deposition was necessary or ceremony of disrobing, for the condemned man was merely a laic.

Laicus, Mansi, XXVII. 894.

Poggio Bracciolini’s description of Jerome’s address in the cathedral runs thus:—

It was wonderful to see with what words, with what eloquence, with what arguments, with what countenance and with what composure, Jerome replied to his adversaries, and how fairly he put his case .... He advanced nothing unworthy of a good man, as though he felt confident—as he also publicly asserted—that no just reason could be found for his death .... Many persons he touched with humor, many with satire, many very often he caused to laugh in spite of the sad affair, jesting at their reproaches .... He took them back to Socrates, unjustly condemned by his fellow-citizens. Then be mentioned the captivity of Plato, the flight of Anaxagoras, the torture of Zeno and the unjust condemnation of many other Pagans .... Thence he passed to the Hebrew examples, first instancing Moses, the liberator of his people, Joseph, sold by his brethren, Isaiah, Daniel, Susannah .... Afterwards, coming down to John the Baptist and then to the Saviour, he showed how, in each case, they were condemned by false witnesses and false judges .... Then proceeding to praise John Huss, who had been condemned to be burnt, he called him a good man, just and holy, unworthy of such a death, saying that he himself was prepared to go to any punishment whatsoever .... He said that Huss had never held opinions hostile to the Church of God, but only against the abuses of the clergy, against the pride, the arrogance and the pomp of prelates .... He displayed the greatest cleverness,—for, when his speech was often interrupted with various disturbances, he left no one unscathed but turned trenchantly upon his accusers and forced them to blush, or be still .... For 340 days he lay in the bottom of a foul, dark tower. He himself did not complain at the harshness of this treatment, but expressed his wonder that such inhumanity could be shown him. In the dungeon, he said, he had not only no facilities for reading, but none for seeing .... He stood there fearless and unterrified, not alone despising death but seeking it, so that you would have said he was another Cato. O man, worthy of the everlasting memory of men! I praise not that which he advanced, if anything contrary to the institutions of the Church; but I admire his learning, his eloquence, his persuasiveness of speech, his adroitness in reply .... Persevering in his errors, he went to his fate with joyful and willing countenance, for he feared not the fire nor any kind of torture or death .... When the executioners wished to start the fire behind his back that he might not see it, he said, ’Come here and light the fire in front of me. If I had been afraid of it, I should never have come to this place.’ In this way a man worthy, except in respect of faith, was burnt .... Not Mutius himself suffered his arm to burn with such high courage as did this man his whole body. Nor did Socrates drink the poison so willingly as be accepted the flames.

Huss, Opera, II. 532-534. Palacky, Mon. 624-699. A full translation is given by Whitcomb in Lit. Source-Book of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 40-47.

Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II., bore similar testimony to the cheerfulness which Huss and Jerome displayed in the face of death, and said that they went to the stake as to a feast and suffered death with more courage than any philosopher.

Hist. Boh., c. 36.

§ 47. The Hussites.

The news of Huss’ execution stirred the Bohemian nation to its depths. Huss was looked upon as a national hero and a martyr. The revolt, which followed, threatened the very existence of the papal rule in Bohemia. No other dissenting movement of the Middle Ages assumed such formidable proportions. The Hussites, the name given to the adherents of the new body, soon divided into two organized parties, the Taborites and the Calixtines or Utraquists. They agreed in demanding the distribution of the cup to the laity. A third body, the Unitas Fratrum, or Bohemian Brethren, originated in the middle of the 15th century, forty years after Huss’ death. When it became known that Huss had perished in the flames, the populace of Prag stoned the houses of the priests unfriendly to the martyr; and the archbishop himself was attacked in his palace, and with difficulty eluded the popular rage by flight. King Wenzel at first seemed about to favor the popular party.

The Council of Constance, true to itself, addressed a document to the bishop and clergy of Prag, designating Wyclif, Huss and Jerome as most unrighteous, dangerous and shameful men,

Improbissimos, et periculosissimos, teterrimosque viros, Mansi, XXVII. 781-783.

The high regard in which Huss was held found splendid expression at the Bohemian diet, Sept. 2, 1415, when 452 nobles signed an indignant remonstrance to the council for its treatment of their "most beloved brother," whom they pronounced to be a righteous and catholic man, known in Bohemia for many years by his exemplary life and honest preaching of the law of the Gospel. They concluded the document by announcing their intention to defend, even to the effusion of blood, the law of Christ and his devoted preachers.

Mansi, pp. 789-91.

To this manifesto the council, Feb. 20, 1416, replied by citing the signers to appear before it within 50 days, on pain of being declared contumacious.

Huss’ memory also had honor at the hands of the university, which, on May 23, 1416, sent forth a communication addressed to all lands, eulogizing him as in all things a master whose life was without an equal.

Palacky, Monum., I. 80-82.

Upon the dissolution of the council, Martin V., who, as a member of the curia, had excommunicated Huss, did not allow the measures to root out Hussitism drag. In his bull Inter cunctos,

Mansi, XXVII. 1204-15. Also Mirbt, p. 157 sqq.

Affairs entered a new stage with Wenzel’s death, 1419. With considerable unanimity the Bohemian nobles acceded to his successor Sigismund’s demand that the cup be withheld from the laity, but the nation at large did not acquiesce, and civil war followed. Convents and churches were sacked. Sigismund could not make himself master of his kingdom, and an event occurred during his visit in Breslau which deepened the feeling against him. A merchant, John Krasa, asserting on the street the innocence of Huss, was dragged at a horse’s tail to the stake and burnt. Hussite preachers inveighed against Sigismund, calling him the dragon of the Apocalypse.

Martin V. now summoned Europe to a crusade against Bohemia, offering the usual indulgences, as Innocent III. had done two centuries before, when he summoned a crusade against the Cathari in Southern France. In obedience to the papal mandate, 150,000 men gathered from all parts of Europe. All the horrors of war were perpetrated, and whole provinces desolated. Five times the holy crusaders entered the land of Huss, and five times they were beaten back. In 1424 the Hussites lost their bravest military leader, John Zizka, but in 1427, under his successor, Procopius Rasa, called the Great, the most influential priest of Prag, they took the offensive and invaded Germany.

While they were winning victories over the foreign intruders, the Hussites were divided among themselves in regard to the extent to which the religious reformation should be carried. The radical party, called the Taborites, from the steep hill Tabor, 60 miles south of Prag, on which they built a city, rejected transubstantiation, the worship of saints, prayers for the dead, indulgences and priestly confession and renounced oaths, dances and other amusements. They admitted laymen, including women, to the office of preaching, and used the national tongue in all parts of the public service. Zizka, their first leader, held the sword in the spirit of one of the Judges. After his death, the stricter wing of the Taborites received the name of the Orphans.

The moderate party was called now Pragers, from the chief seat of their influence, now Calixtines,—from the word calix or cup,—or Utraquists from the expression sub utraque specie, "under both forms," from their insisting upon the administration of the cup to the laity. The University of Prag took sides with the Calixtines and, in 1420, the four so-called Prag articles were adopted. This compact demanded the free preaching of the Gospel, the distribution of the cup to the laity, the execution of punishment for mortal sins by the civil court, and the return of the clergy to the practice of Apostolic poverty. The Calixtines confined the use of Czech at the church service to the Scripture readings.

As early as 1423, dissenters with the name of Hussites appeared in Northern Germany and Holland, Fredericq, Corpus Inq., III. 65, 142, etc.

After the disastrous rout of the Catholic army, led by Cardinal Cesarini at Tauss, Aug. 14, 1431, the history of the Bohemian movement passed into a third stage, marked by the negotiations begun by the Council of Basel and the almost complete annihilation of the Taborite party. It was a new spectacle for an oecumenical council to treat with heretics as with a party having rights. Unqualified submission was the demand which the Church had heretofore made. On Oct. 15, 1431, the council invited the Bohemians to a conference and promised delegates safe-conduct. This promise assured them that neither guile nor deceit would be resorted to on any ground whatsoever, whether it be of authority or the privileges of canon law or of the decisions of the Councils of Constance and Siena or any other council.

Sine fraude et quolibet dolo, occulte vel manifeste, etc. Mansi, XXIX. 27.

The council recognized the austere principles of the Hussites by calling upon the Basel authorities to prohibit all dancing and gambling and the appearance of loose women on the streets. On their arrival, Jan. 4, 1433, the Bohemians were assigned to four public taverns, and a large supply of wine and provisions placed at their disposal. Delegations from the council and from the city bade them formal welcome. They followed their own rituals, the Taborites arousing most curiosity by the omission of all Latin from the services and discarding altar and priestly vestments.

On the floor of the council, the Bohemians coupled praise with the names of Wyclif and Huss, and would tolerate no references to themselves as heretics. The discussions were prolonged to a wearisome length, some of their number occupying as much as two or three days in their addresses. Among the chief speakers was the Englishman, Peter Payne, whose address consumed three days. The final agreement of four articles, known as the Campactata, was ratified by deputies of the council and of the three Bohemian parties giving one another the hand. The main article granted the use of the cup to the laity, where it was asked, but on condition that the doctrine be inculcated that the whole Christ is contained in each of the elements. The use of the cup was affirmed to be wholesome to those partaking worthily.

See Mansi, XXXI. 273 sqq.

Although technically the question was settled, the Taborites were not satisfied. The Utraquists approached closer to the Catholics. Hostilities broke out between them, and after a wholesale massacre in Prag, involving, it is said, 22,000 victims, the two parties joined in open war. The Taborites were defeated in the battle at Lipan, May 30, 1434, and Procopius slain. This distinguished man had travelled extensively, going as far as Jerusalem before receiving priestly orders. He was a brilliant leader, and won many successes in Austria, Moravia and Hungary. The power of the Taborites was gone, and in 1452 they lost Mt. Tabor, their chief stronghold.

The emperor now entered upon possession of his Bohemian kingdom and granted full recognition to the Utraquist priests, promising to give his sanction to the elections of bishops made by the popular will and to secure their ratification by the pope. Rokyzana was elected archbishop of Prag by the Bohemian diet of 1435. Sigismund died soon after, 1437, and the archbishop never received papal recognition, although he administered the affairs of the diocese until his death, 1471.

Albert of Austria, son-in-law of Sigismund and an uncompromising Catholic, succeeded to the throne. In 1457 George Podiebrad, a powerful noble, was crowned by Catholic bishops, and remained king of Bohemia till 1471. He was a consistent supporter of the national party which held to the Compactata. The papal authorities, refusing to recognize Rokyzana, despatched emissaries to subdue the heretics by the measures of preaching and miracles. The most noted among them were Fra Giacomo and John of Capistrano. John, whose miraculous agency equalled his eloquence, succumbed to a fever after the battle of Belgrade.

In 1462 the Compacts were declared void by Pius II., who threatened with excommunication all priests administering the cup to the laity. George Podiebrad resisted the papal bull. Four years later, a papal decree sought to deprive that "son of perdition" of his royal dignity, and summoned the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus, to take his crown.

Pius had received at Mt. Tabor hospitable treatment from the Hussites, whom he was afterwards to treat with wonted papal arrogance. Travelling through Bohemia on a mission from Frederick III., and benighted, he preferred to trust himself to the Taborites rather than to their enemies. Although he had found refuge with them, he used ridicule in describing their poverty and peasant condition. Some he found almost naked, some wore only a sheepskin over their bodies, some had no saddle, some no reins for their horses. And yet he was obliged to say that, though they were bound by no compulsory system of tithes, they filled their priests’ houses with corn, wood, vegetables and meat. See Lea, II. 561.

The third outgrowth from the Hussite stock, the Unitas Fratrum, commonly called the Bohemian Brethren, has had an honorable and a longer history than the Taborites and Calixtines. This body still has existence in the Moravians, whose missionary labors, with Herrnhut as a centre, have stirred all Protestant Christendom. Its beginnings are uncertain. It appears distinctly for the first time in 1457, and continued to grow till the time of the Reformation. Its synod of 1467 was attended by 60 Brethren. The members in Prag were subjected to persecution, and George Podiebrad gave them permission to settle on the estate, Lititz, in the village corporation of Kunwald.

The old Moravian school for girls near Lancaster, Pa., gets its name from this colony. The wife of President Benjamin Harrison studied there.

The exact relation which this Hussite body bore to the Taborites and to the Austrian Waldenses is a matter which has called forth much learned discussion, and is still involved in uncertainty. But there seems to be no doubt that the Bohemian Brethren were moved by the spirit of Huss, and also that in their earliest period they came into contact with the Waldenses. Pressing up from Italy, the followers of Peter Valdez had penetrated into Bohemia in the later part of the 14th century, and had Frederick Reiser as their leader.

For the earlier history of the Austrian Waldensians, see vol. V., part I., p. 500 sq.

Believing that the papal priesthood had been corrupt since Constantine’s donation to Sylvester, the Brethren, at the synod of 1467, chose Michael, pastor of Senftenburg, "presbyter and bishop," and sent him to the Waldensian bishop Stephen for sanction or consecration.

So Lucas of Prag. See his writings in Goll, pp. 107, 112. De Schweinitz, Hist. of the Un. Fratrum, p. 141 sqq., accepts the ordination of Stephen as regular. Müller questions it, Herzog, III. 452.

By 1500, the Bohemian Brethren numbered 200,000 scattered in 300 or 400 congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. They had their own confession, catechism and hymnology.

See Müller’s art. on Bohemian Hymnody in Julian’s Dicty.

The merciless persecutions of the Brethren and the other remaining Hussite sectarists were opened under the Austrian rule of Ferdinand I. in 1549, and continued, with interruptions, till the Thirty Years’ War when, under inspiration of the Jesuits, the government resorted to measures memorable for their heartlessness to blot out heresy from Bohemia and Moravia.

The Church of the Brethren had a remarkable resurrection in the Moravians, starting with the settlement of Christian David and other Hussite families in 1722 on land given by Count Zinzendorf at Herrnhut. They preserve the venerable name of their spiritual ancestry, Unitas Fratrum, and they have made good their heritage by their missionary labors which have carried the Gospel to the remotest ends of the earth, from Greenland to the West Indies and Guiana, and from the leper colony of Jerusalem to Thibet and Australia. In our own land, David Zeisberger and other Moravian missionaries have shown in their labors among the Indian tribes the godly devotion of John Huss, whose body the flames at Constance were able to destroy, but not his sacred memory and influence.

§ 48. Literature and General Survey.

Works on the Entire Chapter.—Bullarium, ed. by Tomasetti, 5 vols., Turin, 1859 sq.—Mansi: Councils, XXXI., XXXII.—Muratori: Rerum ital. scriptores. Gives Lives of the popes.—Stefano Infessura: Diario della città di Roma, ed. by O. Tommasini, Rome, 1890. Extends to 1494, and is the journal of an eye-witness. Also in Muratori.—Joh. Burchard: Diarium sive rerum urbanarum commentarii, 1483–1506, ed. by L. Thuasne, 3 vols., Paris, 1883–1885. Also in Muratori.—B. Platina, b. 1421 in Cremona, d. as superintendent of the Vatican libr., 1481: Lives of the Popes to the Death of Paul II., 1st Lat. ed., Venice, 1479, Engl. trans. by W. Benham in Anc. and Mod. Libr. of Theol. No date.—Sigismondo Dei Conti da Foligno: Le storie de suoi tempi 1475–1510, 2 vols., Rome, 1883. Lat. and Ital. texts in parallel columns.—Pastor: Ungedruckte Akten zur Gesch. der Päpste, vol. I., 1376–1464, Freiburg, 1904.—Ranke: Hist. of the Popes.—A. von Reumont: Gesch. d. Stadt Rom., vol. III., Berlin, 1870.—*Mandell Creighton, bp. of London: Hist. of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, II. 235-IV., London, 1887.—*Gregorovius: Hist. of the City of Rome, Engl. trans., VII., VIII.—*L. Pastor, R. Cath. Prof. at Innsbruck: Gesch. der Päpste im Zeitalter der Renaissance, 4 vols., Freiburg, 1886–1906, 4th ed., 1901–1906, Engl. trans. F. I. Ambrosius, etc., 8 vols., 1908.—Wattenbach: Gesch. des röm. Papstthums, 2d ed., Berlin, 1876, pp. 284–300.—Hefele-Hergenröther: Conciliengeschichte, VIII. Hergenröther’s continuation of Hefele’s work falls far below the previous vols. by Hefele’s own hand as rev. by Knöpfler.—The Ch. Histt. of Hergenröther-Kirsch, Hefele, Funk, Karl Müller.—H. Thurston: The Holy Year of Jubilee. An Account of the Hist. and Ceremonial of the Rom. Jubilee, London, 1900.—Pertinent artt. in Wetzer-Welte and Herzog. The Histt. of the Renaissance of Burckhardt and Symonds.—For fuller lit., see the extensive lists prefixed to Pastor’s first three vols. and for a judicious estimate of the contemporary writers, see Creighton at the close of his vols.

Note. – The works of Creighton, Gregorovius and Pastor are very full. It is doubtful whether any period of history has been treated so thoroughly and satisfactorily by three contemporary historians. Pastor and Gregorovius have used new documents discovered by themselves in the archives of Mantua, Milan, Modena, Florence, the Vatican, etc. Pastor’s notes are vols. of erudite investigation. Creighton is judicial but inclined to be too moderate in his estimate of the vices of the popes, and in details not always reliable. Gregorovius’ narration is searching and brilliant. He is unsparing in his reprobation of the dissoluteness of Roman society and backs his statements with authorities. Pastor’s masterly and graphic treatment is the most extensive work on the period. Although written with ultramontane prepossessions, it is often unsparing when it deals with the corruption of popes and cardinals, especially Alexander VI., who has never been set forth in darker colors since the 16th century than on its pages.

§ 49. Nicholas V.—Lives by Platina and in Muratori, especially Manetti.—Infessura: pp. 46–59.—Gibbon: Hist. of Rome, ch. LXVIII. For the Fall of Constantinople.—Gregorovius: VII. 101–160.—Creighton: II. 273–365.—Pastor: I. 351–774.—Geo. Findlay: Hist. of Greece to 1864, 7 vols., Oxford, 1877, vols. IV., V.—Edw. Pears: The Destruction of the German Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks, London, 1903, pp. 476.

§ 50. Pius II.—Opera omnia, Basel, 1551, 1571, 1589.—Opera inedita, by I. Cugnoni, Rome, 1883.—His Commentaries, Pii pontif. max. commentarii rerum memorabilium quae temporibus suis contigerunt, with the continuation of Cardinal Ammanati, Frankfurt, 1614. Last ed. Rome, 1894.—Epistolae, Cologne, 1478, and often. Also in opera, Basel, 1551. A. Weiss: Aeneas Sylvius als Papst Pius II. Rede mit 149 bisher ungedruckten Briefen, Graz, 1897.—Eine Rede d. Enea Silvio vor d. C. zu Basel, ed. J. Haller in Quellen u. Forschungen aus ital. Archiven, etc., Rome, 1900, III. 82–102.—Pastor: II. 714–747 gives a number of Pius’ letters before unpubl.—Orationes polit. et eccles. by Mansi, 3 vols., Lucae, 1755–1759.—Historia Frid. III. Best ed. by Kollar, Vienna, 1762, Germ. trans. by Ilgen, 2 vols., in Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit., Leipzig, 1889 sq.—Addresses at the Congress of Mantua and the bulls Execrabilis and In minoribus in Mansi: Concil., XXXII., 191–267.—For full list of edd. of Pius’ Works, see Potthast, I. 19–25.—Platina: Lives of the Popes.—Antonius Campanus: Vita Pii II, in Muratori, Scripp., III. 2, pp. 969–992.—G. Voigt: Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini als Papst Pius II. und sein Zeitalter, 3 vols., Berlin, 1856–1863.—K. Hase: Aen. Syl. Piccolomini, in Rosenvorlesungen, pp. 56–88, Leipzig, 1880.—A. Brockhaus: Gregor von Heimburg, Leipzig, 1861.—K. Menzel: Diether von Isenberg, als Bischof von Mainz, 1459–1463, Erlangen, 1868.—Gregorovius: VII. 160–218.—Burckhardt.—Creighton: II. 365–500.—Pastor: II. 1–293. Art. Pius II. by Benrath in Herzog, XV. 422–435.

§ 51. Paul II.—Lives by Platina, Gaspar Veronensis, and M. Canensius of Viterbo, both in Muratori, new ed., 1904, III., XVI., p. 3 sqq., with Preface, pp. i-xlvi.—A. Patritius: Descriptio adventus Friderici III. ad Paulum II., Muratori, XXIII. 205–215.—Ammanati’s Continuation of Pius lI.’s Commentaries, Frankfurt ed., 1614. Gaspar Veronensis gives a panegyric of the cardinals and Paul’s relatives, and stops before really taking up Paul’s biography. Platina, from personal pique, disparaged Paul II. Canensius’ Life is in answer to Platina, and the most important biography.—Gregorovius: VII.—Creighton: III.—Pastor: II.

§§ 52, 53. Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII.—Infessura, pp. 75–283.—Burchard, in Thuasne’s ed., vol. I.—J. Gherardi da Volterra: Diario Romano, 1479–1484, in Muratori, Scripp., XXIII. 3, also the ed. of 1904.—Platina in Muratori, III., p. 1053, etc. (accepted by Pastor as genuine and with some question by Creighton).—Sigismondo dei Conti da Foligno: vol. I. Infessura is severe on Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Volterra, who received an office from Sixtus, does not pronounce a formal judgment. Sigismondo, who was advanced by Sixtus, is partial to him.—A. Thuasne: Djem, Sultan, fils de Mohammed II. d’après les documents originaux en grande partie inédits, Paris, 1892.—Gregorovius: VII. 241–340.—Pastor: II. 451-III. 284.—Creighton: III. 56–156.—W. Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 2 vols., Liverpool, 1795, 6th ed., London, 1825, etc.

§ 54. Alexander VI.—Bulls in Bullarium Rom.—The Regesta of Alex., filling 113 vols., in the Vatican, Nos. 772–884. After being hidden from view for three centuries, they were opened, 1888, by Leo XIII. to the inspection and use of Pastor.—See Pastor’s Preface in his Gesch. der Päpste, Infessura. Stops at Feb. 26, 1494.—Burchard: vols. II., III.—Sigismondo de’ Conti: Le storie, etc.—Gordon: Life of Alex. VI., London, 1728.—Abbé Ollivier: Le pape Alex. VI. et les Borgia, Paris, 1870.—V. Nemec: Papst Alex. VI., eine Rechtfertigung, Klagenfurt, 1879. Both attempts to rescue this pope from infamy.—Leonetti: Papa Aless. VI., 3 vols., Bologna, 1880.—M. Brosch: Alex. VI. u. seine Söhne, Vienna, 1889.—C. von Höfler: Don Rodrigo de Borgia und seine Söhne, Don Pedro Luis u. Don Juan, Vienna, 1889.—Höfler: D. Katastrophe des herzöglichen Hauses des Borgias von Gandia, Vienna, 1892.—Schubertsoldem: D. Borgias u. ihre Zeit, 1907.—Reumont: Gesch. der Stadt Rom. Also art. Alex. VI. in Wetzer-Welte, I. 483–491.—H. F. Delaborde: L’expédition de Chas. VIII. en Italie, Paris, 1888.—Ranke: Hist. of the Popes.—Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo.—Gregorovius: Hist. of City of Rome, vol. VII. Also Lucrezia Borgia, 3d ed., Stuttgart, 1875. Engl. trans. by J. L. Garner, 2 vols., New York, 1903.—Creighton: III.—Pastor: III.—Hergenröther-Kirsch: III. 982–988.—* P. Villari: Machiavelli and his times, Engl. trans., 4 vols., London, 1878–1883.—Burckhardt and Symonds on the Renaissance.—E. G. Bourne: Demarcation Line Of Alex. Vi. In Essays In Hist. Criticism.—Lord Acton: The Borgias and their Latest Historian, in North Brit. Rev., 1871, pp. 351–367.

§ 55. Julius II. Bullarium IV.—Burchard: Diarium to May, 1506.—Sigismondo: vol. II.—Paris de Grassis, master of ceremonies at the Vatican, 1504 sqq.: Diarium from May 12, 1504, ed. by L. Frati, Bologna, 1886, and Döllinger in Beitäge zur pol. Kirchl. u. Culturgesch. d. letzen 6 Jahrh., 3 vols., Vienna, 1863–1882, III. 363–433.—A. Giustinian, Venetian ambassador: Dispacci, Despatches, 1502–1505, ed. by Villari, 3 vols., Florence, 1876, and by Rawdon Browning in Calendar of State Papers, London, 1864 sq.—Fr. Vettori: Sommario delta storia d’Italia 1511–1527, ed. by Reumont in Arch. Stor. Itat., Append. B., pp. 261–387.—Dusmenil: Hist. de Jules II., Paris, 1873.—* M. Brosch: Papst Julius II. und die Gründung des Kirchenstaats, Gotha, 1878.—P. Lehmann: D. pisaner Konzit vom Jahre, 1511, Breslau, 1874.—Hefele-Hergenröther: VIII. 392–592.—Benrath: Art. Julius II., in Herzog, IX. 621–625.—Villari: Machiavelli.—Ranke: I. 36–59.—Reumont: III., Pt. 2, pp. 1–49. Gregorovius: VIII.—Creighton: IV. 54–176.—Pastor: III.

§ 56. Leo X.—Regesta to Oct. 16, 1515, ed. by Hergenröther, 8 vols., Rome, 1884–1891.—Mansi: XXXII. 649–1001.—Paris de Grassis, as above, and ed. by Armellini: Il diario de Leone X., Rome, 1884. Vettori: Sommario.—M. Sanuto, Venetian ambassador: Diarii, I.-XV., Venice, 1879 sqq.—*Paulus Jovius, b. 1483, acquainted with Leo: De Vita Leonis, Florence, 1549. The only biog. till Fabroni’s Life, 1797.—* L. Landucci: Diario Fiorentino 1450–1516, continued to 1542, ed. by Badia, Florence, 1883.—*W. Roscoe: Life and Pontificate of Leo X., 4 vols., Liverpool, 1805, 6th ed. rev. by his son, London, 1853. The book took high rank, and its value continues. Apologetic for Leo, whom the author considers the greatest pope of modern times. Put on the Index by Leo XII., d. 1829. A Germ. trans. by Glaser and Henke, with valuable notes, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1806–1808. Ital. trans. by Count L. Bossi, Milan, 1816 sq.—E. Muntz: Raphael, His Life, Work, and Times, Engl. trans., W. Armstrong, London, 1896.—E. Armstrong: Lor. de’ Medici, New York, 1896.—H. M. Vaughan: The Medici Popes (Leo X. and Clement VII.), London, 1908. Hefele-Hergenröther: VIII. 592–855.—Reumont: III. Pt. 2, pp. 49–146. Villari: Machiavelli.—Creighton: IV.—Gregorovius: VIII.—Pastor: IV.—Köstlin: Life of Luther, I. 204–525.—*A. Schulte: Die Fugger in Rom. 1495–1523, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—Burckhardt.—Symonds.

Popes.—Nicolas V., 1447–1455; Calixtus III., 1455–1458; Pius II., 1458–1464; Paul II., 1464–1471; Sixtus IV., 1471–1484; Innocent VIII., 1484–1492; Alexander VI., 1492–1503; Pius III., 1503; Julius II., 1503–1513; Leo X., 1513–1521.

The period of the Reformatory councils, closing with the Basel-Ferrara synod, was followed by a period notable in the history of the papacy, the period of the Renaissance popes. These pontiffs of the last years of the Middle Ages were men famous alike for their intellectual endowments, the prostitution of their office to personal aggrandizement and pleasure and the lustre they gave to Rome by their patronage of letters and the fine arts. The decree of the Council of Constance, asserting the supreme authority of oecumenical councils, treated as a dead letter by Eugenius IV., was definitely set aside by Pius II. in a bull forbidding appeals from papal decisions and affirming finality for the pope’s authority. For 70 years no general assembly of the Church was called.

The ten pontiffs who sat on the pontifical throne, 1450–1517, represented in their origin the extremes of fortune, from the occupation of the fisherman, as in the case of Sixtus IV., to the refinement of the most splendid aristocracy of the age, as in the case of Leo X. of the family of the Medici. In proportion as they embellished Rome and the Vatican with the treasures of art, did they seem to withhold themselves from that sincere religious devotion which would naturally be regarded as a prime characteristic of one claiming to be the chief pastor of the Christian Church on earth. No great principle of administration occupied their minds. No conspicuous movement of pious activity received their sanction, unless the proposed crusade to reconquer Constantinople be accounted such, but into that purpose papal ambition entered more freely than devotion to the interests of religion.

This period was the flourishing age of nepotism in the Vatican. The bestowment of papal favors by the pontiffs upon their nephews and other relatives dates as a recognized practice from Boniface VIII. In vain did papal conclaves, following the decree of Constance, adopt protocols, making the age of 30 the lowest limit for appointment to the sacred college, and putting a check on papal favoritism. Ignoring the instincts of modesty and the impulse of religion, the popes bestowed the red hat upon their young nephews and grandnephews and upon the sons of princes, in spite of their utter disqualification both on the ground of intelligence and of morals. The Vatican was beset by relatives of the pontiffs, hungry for the honors and the emoluments of office. Here are some of those who were made cardinals before they were 30: Calixtus III. appointed his nephews, Juan and Rodrigo Borgia (Alexander VI.), the latter 25, and the little son of the king of Portugal; Pius II., his nephew at 23, and Francis Gonzaga at 17; Sixtus IV., John of Aragon at 14, his nephews, Peter and Julian Rovere, at 25 and 28, and his grandnephew, Rafaelle Riario, at 17; Innocent VIII., John Sclafenatus at 23, Giovanni de’ Medici at 13; Alexander VI., in 1493, Hippolito of Este at 15, whom Sixtus had made archbishop of Strigonia at 8, his son, Caesar Borgia, at 18, Alexander Farnese (Paul III.), brother of the pope’s mistress, at 25, and Frederick Casimir, son of the king of Poland, at 19; Leo X., in 1513, his nephew, Innocent Cibo, at 21, and his cousin, the illegitimate Julius de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII., and in 1517 three more nephews, one of them the bastard son of his brother, also Alfonzo of Portugal at 7, and John of Loraine, son of the duke of Sicily, at 20. This is an imperfect list.

Among other youthful appointments to the dignity of cardinal are Jacinto Bobo, afterwards Coelestine III., at 18, by Honorius III., 1126; Peter Roger, afterwards Gregory XI., at 17, Hercules Gonzaga, by Clement VII., at 22; Alexander Farnese, by his uncle, Paul III., at 14, who also appointed his grandsons, Guida Sforza at 16 and Ranucio Farnese at 15; two nephews, at the ages of 14 and 21, by Julius III., d. 1555, and also Innocent del Monte at 17; Ferdinand del Medici at 14, by Pius IV., d. 1565; Andrew and Albert of Austria, sons of Maximilian II., at 18, by Gregory XIII., and Charles of Loraine at 16; Alexander Peretti at 14, by his uncle, Sixtus V., d. 1590; two nephews at 18, by Innocent IX., d. 1591; Maurice of Savoy at 14, and Ferdinand, son of the king of Spain, at 10, by Paul V., d. 1621; a nephew at 17, by Innocent X., d. 1655; a son of the king of Spain, by Clement XII., d. 1740.

The cardinals vied with kings in wealth and luxury, and their palaces were enriched with the most gorgeous furnishings and precious plate, and filled with servants. They set an example of profligacy which they carried into the Vatican itself. The illegitimate offspring of pontiffs were acknowledged without a blush, and the sons and daughters of the highest houses in Italy, France and Spain were sought in marriage for them by their indulgent fathers. The Vatican was given up to nuptial and other entertainments, even women of ill-repute being invited to banquets and obscene comedies performed in its chambers.

The prodigal expenditures of the papal household were maintained in part by the great sums, running into tens of thousands of ducats, which rich men were willing to pay for the cardinalate. When the funds of the Vatican ran low, loans were secured from the Fuggers and other banking houses and the sacred things of the Vatican put in pawn, even to the tiara itself. The amounts required by Alexander VI. for marriage dowries for his children, and by Leo X. for nephews, were enormous.

Popes, like Sixtus IV. and Alexander VI., had no scruple about involving Italy in internecine wars in order to compass the papal schemes either in the enlargement of papal domain or the enrichment of papal sons and nephews. Julius II. was a warrior and went to the battle-field in armor. No sovereign of his age was more unscrupulous in resorting to double dealing in his diplomacy than was Leo X. To reach the objects of its ambition, the holy see was ready even to form alliances with the sultan. The popes, so Döllinger says, from Paul II. to Leo X., did the most it was possible to do to cover the papacy with shame and disgrace and to involve Italy in the horrors of endless wars.

Papstthum, p. 192.

Three events of permanent importance for the general history of mankind also occurred in this age, the overthrow of the Byzantine empire, 1453, the discovery of the Western world, 1492, and the invention of printing. It closed with a general council, the Fifth Lateran, which adjourned only a few months before the Reformer in the North shook the papal fabric to its base and opened the door of the modern age.

§ 49. Nicolas V. 1447–1455.

Nicolas V., 1447–1455, the successor of Bugenius IV., was ruled by the spirit of the new literary culture, the Renaissance, and was the first Maecenas in a line of popes like-minded. Following his example, his successors were for a century among the foremost patrons of art and letters in Europe. What Gregory VII. was to the system of the papal theocracy, that Nicolas was to the artistic revival in Rome. Under his rule, the eternal city witnessed the substantial beginnings of that transformation, in which it passed from a spectacle of ruins and desertion to a capital adorned with works of art and architectural construction. He himself repaired and beautified the Vatican and St. Peter’s, laid the foundation of the Vatican library and called scholars and artists to his court.

Pastor heads his chapter on Nicolas with the caption Nicolas V., der Begründer des päpstlichen Maecenats

Thomas Parentucelli, born 1397, the son of a physician of Sarzana, owed nothing of his distinction to the position of his family. His father was poor, and the son was little of stature, with disproportionately short legs. What he lacked, however, in bodily parts, he made up in intellectual endowments, tact and courtesies of manner. His education at Bologna being completed, his ecclesiastical preferment was rapid. In 1444, he was made archbishop of Bologna and, on his return from Germany as papal legate, 1446, he was honored with the red hat. Four months later he was elevated to the papal throne, and according to Aeneas Sylvius, whose words about the eminent men of his day always have a diplomatic flavor, Thomas was so popular that there was no one who did not approve his election.

To Nicolas was given the notable distinction of witnessing the complete reunion of Western Christendom. By the abdication of Felix V., whom he treated with discreet and liberal generosity, and by Germany’s abandonment of its attitude of neutrality, he could look back upon papal schism and divided obediences as matters of the past.

The Jubilee Year, celebrated in 1450, was adapted to bind the European nations closely to Rome, and to stir up anew the fires of devotion which had languished during the ecclesiastical disputes of nearly a century.

Pastor, I 417 sq., emphasizes these consequences of the Jubilee Year.

The calamity, which occurred on the bridge of St. Angelo, and cast a temporary gloom over the festivities of the holy year, is noticed by all the contemporary writers. The mule belonging to Peter Barbus, cardinal of St. Mark’s, was crushed to death, so dense were the crowds, and in the excitement two hundred persons or more were trodden down or drowned by being pushed or throwing themselves into the Tiber. To prevent a repetition of the disaster, the pope had several buildings obstructing the passage to the bridge pulled down.

Infessura, p. 48; Platina, II. 242; Aeneas: Hist. Frid. 172; Ilgen’s trans., I. 214.

In the administration of the properties of the holy see, Nicolas was discreet and successful. He confirmed the papal rule over the State of the Church, regained Bolsena and the castle of Spoleto, and secured the submission of Bologna, to which he sent Bessarion as papal legate. The conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, who emulated the ambitions of Rienzo, was put down in 1453 and left the pope undisputed master of Rome. In his selection of cardinals he was wise, Nicolas of Cusa being included in the number. The appointment of his younger brother, Philip Calandrini, to the sacred college, aroused no unfavorable criticism.

Nicolas’ reign witnessed, in 1452, the last coronation in Rome of a German emperor, Frederick III. This monarch, who found in his councillor, Aeneas Sylvius, an enthusiastic biographer, but who, by the testimony of others, was weak and destitute of martial spirit and generous qualities, was the first of the Hapsburgs to receive the crown in the holy city, and held the imperial office longer than any other of the emperors before or after him. With his coronation the emperor combined the celebration of his nuptials to Leonora of Portugal.

Frederick’s journey to Italy and his sojourn in Rome offered to the pen of Aeneas a rare opportunity for graphic description, of which he was a consummate master. The meeting with the future empress, the welcome extended to his majesty, the festivities of the marriage and the coronation, the trappings of the soldiery, the blowing of the horns, the elegance of the vestments worn by the emperor and his visit to the artistic wonders of St. Peter’s,—these and other scenes the shrewd and facile Aeneas depicted. The Portuguese princess, whose journey from Lisbon occupied 104 days, disembarked at Leghorn, February, 1452, where she was met by Frederick, attended by a brilliant company of knights. After joining in gay entertainments at Siena, lasting four days, the party proceeded to Rome. Leonora, who was only sixteen, was praised by those who saw her for her rare beauty and charms of person. She was to become the mother of Maximilian and the ancestress of Charles V.

Infessura, p. 52, says that language could not exaggerate Leonora’s beauty, bella quanto si potesse dire. Aeneas, Hist. Frid., 265, speaks of her dark complexion, jet-black and lustrous eyes, her soft red cheeks, her intelligent expression, and her snow-white neck, "in every particular a charming person."

On reaching the gates of the papal capital, Frederick was met by the cardinals, who offered him the felicitations of the head of Christendom, but also demanded from him the oath of allegiance, which was reluctantly promised. The ceremonies, which followed the emperor’s arrival, were such as to flatter his pride and at the same time to confirm the papal tenure of power in the city. Frederick was received by Nicolas on the steps of St. Peter’s, seated in an ivory chair, and surrounded by his cardinals, standing. The imperial visitor knelt and kissed the pontiff’s foot. On March 16, Nicolas crowned him with the iron crown of Lombardy and united the imperial pair in marriage. Leonora then went to her own palace, and Frederick to the Vatican as its guest. The reason for his lodging near the pope was that Nicolas might have opportunity for frequent communication with him or, as rumor went, to prevent the Romans approaching him under cover of darkness with petitions for the restoration of their liberties.

Hist. Frid., 294; Ilgen, II. 84 sq. Aeneas gives the alternate reason for the hospitality shown to his master.

Scarcely in any pontificate has so notable and long-forecasted an event occurred as the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks, which took place May 29, 1453. The last of the Constantines perished in the siege, fighting bravely at the gate of St. Romanos. The church of Justinian, St. Sophia, was turned into a mosque, and a cross, surmounted with a janissary’s cap, was carried through the streets, while the soldiers shouted, "This is the Christian’s God." This historic catastrophe would have been regarded in Western Europe as appalling, if it had not been expected. The steady advance of the Turks and their unspeakable atrocities had kept the Greek empire in alarm for centuries. Three hundred years before, Latin Christendom had been taught to expect defeats at the hands of the Mohammedans in the taking of Edessa, 1145, and the fatal battle of Hattin and the loss of Jerusalem, 1187.

In answer to the appeals of the Greeks, Nicolas despatched Isidore as legate to Constantinople with a guard of 200 troops, but, as a condition of helping the Eastern emperor, he insisted that the Ferrara articles of union be ratified in Constantinople. In a long communication, dated Oct. 11, 1451, the Roman pontiff declared that schisms had always been punished more severely than other evils. Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who attempted to divide the people of God, received a more bitter punishment than those who introduced idolatry. There could not be two heads to an empire or the Church. There is no salvation outside of the one Church. He was lost in the flood who was not housed in Noah’s ark. Whatever opinion it may have entertained of these claims, the Byzantine court was in too imminent danger to reject the papal condition, and in December, 1452, Isidore, surrounded by 300 priests, announced, in the church of St. Sophia, the union of the Greek and Latin communions. But even now the Greek people violently resented the union, and the most powerful man of the empire, Lucas Notaras, announced his preference for the turban to the tiara. The aid offered by Nicolas was at best small. The last week of April, 1453, ten papal galleys set sail with some ships from Naples, Venice and Genoa, but they were too late to render any assistance.

Pastor, I. 588 sqq., devotes much space to an attempt to show that Nicolas made an effort to help the Greeks. Infessura blames him for making none.

The termination of the venerable and once imposing fabric on the Bosphorus by the Asiatic invader was the only fate possible for an empire whose rulers, boasting themselves the successors of Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian, Christian in name and most Christian by the standard of orthodox professions, had heaped their palaces full of pagan luxury and excess. The government, planted in the most imperial spot on the earth, had forfeited the right to exist by an insipid and nerveless reliance upon the traditions of the past. No elements of revival manifested themselves from within. Religious formulas had been substituted for devotion. Much as the Christian student may regret the loss of this last bulwark of Christianity in the East, he will be inclined to find in the disaster the judgment realized with which the seven churches of the Apocalypse were threatened which were not worthy. The problem which was forced upon Europe by the arrival of the Grand Turk, as contemporaries called Mohammed II., still awaits solution from wise diplomacy or force of arms or through the slow and silent movement of modern ideas of government and popular rights.

The disaster which overtook the Eastern empire, Nicolas V. felt would be regarded by after generations as a blot upon his pontificate, and others, like Aeneas Sylvius, shared this view.

Aeneas wrote, July 12, 1453, to the pope: "Historians of the Roman pontiffs, when they reach your time, will write, ’Nicolas V., a Tuscan, was pope for so many years. He recovered the patrimony of the Church from the hands of tyrants, he gave union to the divided Church, he canonized Bernardino, he built the Vatican and splendidly restored St. Peter’s, he celebrated the Jubilee and crowned Frederick III.’ All this will be obscured by the doleful addition, ’In his time Constantinople was taken and plundered by the Turks.’ Your holiness did what you could. No blame can be justly attached to you. But the ignorance of posterity will blame you when it hears that in your time Constantinople was lost." Gibbon makes the observation that "The pontificate of Nicolas V., however powerful and prosperous, was dishonored by the fall of the Eastern Empire," ch. LXVIII. It was not within Nicolas’ power to avert the disaster.

He issued a bull summoning the Christian nations to a crusade for the recovery of Constantinople, and stigmatized Mohammed II. as the dragon described in the Book of Revelation. Absolution was offered to those who would spend six months in the holy enterprise or maintain a representative for that length of time. Christendom was called upon to contribute a tenth. The cardinals were enjoined to do the same, and all the papal revenues accruing from larger and smaller benefices, from bishoprics, archbishoprics and convents, were promised for the undertaking.

Feeble was the response which Europe gave. The time of crusading enthusiasm was passed. The Turk was daring and to be dreaded. An assembly called by Frederick III., at Regensburg in the Spring of 1454, at which the emperor himself did not put in an appearance, listened to an eloquent appeal by Aeneas, but adjourned the subject to the diet to meet in Frankfurt in October. Again the emperor was not present, and the diet did nothing. Down to the era of the Reformation the crusade against the Turk remained one of the chief official concerns of the papacy.

If Nicolas died disappointed over his failure to influence the princes to undertake a campaign against the Turks, his fame abides as the intelligent and genial patron of letters and the arts. In this rôle he laid after generations under obligation to him as Innocent III., by his crusading armies, did not. He lies buried in St. Peter’s at the side of his predecessor, Eugenius IV.

His epitaph is given by Mirbt, p. 169.

The next pontiff, the Spaniard, Calixtus III., 1455–1458, had two chief concerns, the dislodgment of the Turks from Constantinople and the advancement of the fortunes of the Borgia family, to which he belonged. Made cardinal by Eugenius IV., he was 77 years old when he was elected pope. From his day, the Borgias played a prominent part in Rome, their career culminating in the ambitions and scandals of Rodrigo Borgia, for 30 years cardinal and then pope under the name of Alexander VI.

Calixtus opened his pontificate by vowing "to Almighty God and the Holy Trinity, by wars, maledictions, interdicts, excommunications and in all other ways to punish the Turks."

Mansi, XXXII. 159 sq.

Calixtus’ unblushing nepotism surpassed anything of the kind which had been known in the papal household before. Catalan adventurers pressed into Rome and stormed their papal fellow-countrymen with demands for office. Upon the three sons of two of his sisters, Juan of Milan, son of Catherine Borgia, and Pedro Luis and Rodrigo, sons of Isabella, he heaped favor after favor. Adopted by their uncle, Pedro and Rodrigo were the objects of his sleepless solicitude. Gregorovius has compared the members of the Borgia family to the Roman Claudii. By the endowment of nature they were vigorous and handsome, and by nature and practice, sensual, ambitious, and high-handed,—their coat of arms a bull. Under protest from the curia, Rodrigo and Juan of Milan were made cardinals, 1457, both the young men still in their twenties.

Their unsavory habits were already a byword in Rome. Rodrigo was soon promoted over the heads of the other members of the sacred college to the place of vice-chancellor, the most lucrative position within the papal gift. At the same time, the little son—figliolo — of the king of Portugal, as Infessura calls him, was given the red hat.

With astounding rapidity Pedro Luis, who remained a layman, was advanced to the highest positions in the state, and made governor of St. Angelo and duke of Spoleto, and put in possession of Terni, Narni, Todi and other papal fiefs.

Pastor, I. 747, says ein solches Verfahren war unerhört, it was an unheard-of procedure.

Calixtus’ death was the signal for the flight of the Spanish lobbyists, whose houses were looted by the indignant Romans. Discerning the coming storm, Pedro made the best bargain he could by selling S. Angelo to the cardinals for 20,000 ducats, and then took a hasty departure.

Like Honorius III., Calixtus might have died of a broken heart over his failure to arouse Europe to the effort of a crusade, if it had not been for this consuming concern for the fortunes and schemes of his relatives. From this time on, for more than half a century, the gift of dignities and revenues under papal control for personal considerations and to unworthy persons for money was an outstanding feature in the history of the popes.

§ 50. Aeneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini, Pius II.

The next pontiff, Pius II., has a place among the successful men of history. Lacking high enthusiasms and lofty aims, he was constantly seeking his own interests and, through diplomatic shrewdness, came to be the most conspicuous figure of his time. He was ruled by expediency rather than principle. He never swam against the stream.

Enea ist seiner Tage nie gegen den Strom geschwommen. Haller In Quellen, etc., IV. 83.

Aeneas Sylvius de’ Piccolomini was born in 1405 at Corsignano, a village located on a bold spur of the hills near Siena. He was one of 18 children, and his family, which had been banished from Siena, was poor but of noble rank. At 18, the son began studying in the neighboring city, where he heard Bernardino preach. Later he learned Greek in Florence. It was a great opportunity when Cardinal Capranica took this young man with him as his secretary to Basel, 1431. Gregorovius has remarked that it was the golden age of secretaries, most of the Humanists serving in that capacity. Later, Aeneas went into the service of the bishop of Novaro, whom he accompanied to Rome. The bishop was imprisoned for the part he had taken in a conspiracy against Eugenius IV. The secretary escaped a like treatment by flight. He then served Cardinal Albergati, with whom he travelled to France. He also visited England and Scotland.

London he found the most populous and wealthy city he had seen. Scotland he described as a cold, barren, and treeless country.

Returning to Basel, Aeneas became one of the conspicuous personages in the council, was a member, and often acted as chairman of one of the four committees, the committee on faith, and was sent again and again on embassies to Strassburg, Frankfurt, Trent and other cities. The council also appointed him its chief abbreviator. In 1440 he decided in favor of the rump-synod, which continued to meet in Basel, and espoused the cause of Felix V., who made him his secretary. The same year he wrote the tract on general councils.

Libellus dialogorum de generalis concilii auctoritate.

At the time of his election as pope, Aeneas was 53 years old. He had risen by tact and an accurate knowledge of men and European affairs. He was a thorough man of the world, and capable of grasping a situation in a glance. He had been profligate, and his love affairs were many. A son was born to him in Scotland, and another, by an Englishwoman, in Strassburg. In a letter to his father, asking him to adopt the second child, he described, without concealment and apparently without shame, the measures he took to seduce the mother. He spoke of wantonness as an old vice. He himself was no eunuch nor without passion. He could not claim to be wiser than Solomon nor holier than David. Aeneas also used his pen in writing tales of love adventures. His History of Frederick III. contains prurient details that would not be tolerated in a respectable author to-day. He was even ready to instruct youth in methods of self-indulgence, and wrote to Sigismund, the young duke of the Tyrol, neither to neglect literature nor to deny himself the blandishments of Venus.

Aeneas aided Chancellor Schlick in some of his love adventures, and described one of them in the much-read novel, Eurialus et Lucretia. His letters from 1444 on, show a desire to give up the world. He declared he had had enough of Venus, but he also wrote that Venus evaded him more than he shrank from her. He seems to have passed into a condition of physical infirmity, and to have been forced to abandon his immoral courses. He, however, also indicates he had begun to be actuated by feelings of penitence, whether from motives of policy or religion cannot be made out. Gregorovius, VII. 165, combines the inconsistent passages from Pius, letters when he says that, after long striving to renounce the pleasures of the world, exhaustion and incipient disease facilitated the task.

Aeneas’ constitution was already shattered. He was a great sufferer from the stone, the gout and a cough, and spent many months of his pontificate at Viterbo and other baths. His rule was not distinguished by any enduring measures. He conducted himself well, had the respect of the Romans, received the praise of contemporary biographers, and did all he could to further the measures for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. He appointed the son of his sister, Laodamia, cardinal at the age of 23, and in 1461 he bestowed the same dignity on Francis Gonzaga, a youth of only 17. These appointments seem to have awakened no resentment.

To advance the interest of the crusade against the Turks, Pius called a congress of princes to meet in Mantua, 1460. On his way thither, accompanied by Bessarion, Borgia and other cardinals, he visited his birthplace, Corsignana, and raised it to a bishopric, changing its name to Pienza. He also began the construction of a palace and cathedral which still endure. Siena he honored by conferring the Golden Rose on its signiory, and promoting the city to the dignity of a metropolitan see. He also enriched it with one of John the Baptist’s arms. Florence arranged for the pope’s welcome brilliant amusements,—theatrical plays, contests of wild beasts, races between lions and horses, and dances,—worldly rather than religious spectacles, as Pastor remarks.

The princes were slow in arriving in Mantua, and the attendance was not such as to justify the opening of the congress till Sept. 26. Envoys from Thomas Palaeologus of the Morea, brother of the last Byzantine emperor, from Lesbos, Cyprus, Rhodes and other parts of the East were on hand to pour out their laments. In his opening address, lasting three hours, Pius called upon the princes to emulate Stephen, Peter, Andrew, Sebastian, St. Lawrence and other martyrs in readiness to lay down their lives in the holy war. The aggression of the Turks had robbed Christendom of some of its fairest seats,—Antioch, where the followers of Christ for the first time received the name Christians, Solomon’s temple, where Christ so often preached, Bethlehem, where he was born, the Jordan, in which he was baptized, Tabor, on which he was transfigured, Calvary, where he was crucified. If they wanted to retain their own possessions, their wives, their children, their liberty, the very faith in which they were baptized, they must believe in war and carry on war. Joshua continued to have victory over his enemies till the sun went down; Gideon, with 300, scattered the Midianites; Jephthah, with a small army, put to flight the swarms of the Ammonites; Samson had brought the proud Philistines to shame; Godfrey, with a handful of men, had destroyed an innumerable number of the enemy and slaughtered the Turks like cattle. Passionately the papal orator exclaimed, O! that Godfrey were once more present, and Baldwin and Eustache and Bohemund and Tancred, and the other mighty men who broke through the ranks of the Turks and regained Jerusalem by their arms.

Mansi, XXXII. 207-222.

The assembly was stirred to a great heat, but, so a contemporary says, the ardor soon cooled. Cardinal Bessarion followed Pius with an address which also lasted three hours. Of eloquence there was enough, but the crusading age was over. The conquerors of Jerusalem had been asleep for nearly 400 years. Splendid orations could not revive that famous outburst of enthusiasm which followed Urban’s address at Clermont. In this case the element of romance was wanting which the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre had furnished. The prowess of the conquering Turks was a hard fact.

During the Congress of Mantua the controversy broke out between the German lawyer, Gregor of Heimburg, and Pius. They had met before at Basel. Heimburg, representing the duke of the Tyrol, who had imprisoned Nicolas of Cusa spoke against the proposed crusade. He openly insulted the pope by keeping on his hat in his presence, an indignity he jokingly explained as a precaution against the catarrh. From the sentence of excommunication, pronounced against his ducal master, he appealed to a general council, August 13, 1460. He himself was punished with excommunication, and Pius called upon the city of Nürnberg to expel him as the child of the devil and born of the artifice of lies. Heimburg became a wanderer until the removal of the ban, 1472. He was the strongest literary advocate in Germany of the Basel decrees and the superiority of councils, and has been called a predecessor of Luther and precursor of the Reformation.

Gregorovius, VII. 184. His tract Admonitio de injustis usurpationibus paparum rom. ad imperatorem ... sive confutatio primatus papae, and other tracts by Heimburg, are given in Goldast, Monarchia. See art. Gregor v. Heimburg, by Tschackert in Herzog, VII. 133-135, and for quotations, Gieseler.

Pius left Mantua the last of January, 1461, stopping on the return journey a second time at his beloved Siena, and canonizing its distinguished daughter, Catherine.

A full translation of the letter is given by Gregorovius in Lucrez. Borgia, p. 7 sq.

The ease with which Pius, when it was to his interest, renounced theories which he once advocated is shown in two bulls. The first, the famous bull, Execrabilis, declared it an accursed and unheard-of abuse to make appeal to a council from the decisions of the Roman pontiff, Christ’s vicar, to whom it was given to feed his sheep and to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. To rid the Church of this pestiferous venom,—pestiferum virus,—it announced the papal purpose to damn such appeals and to lay upon the appellants a curse from which there could be no absolution except by the Roman pontiff himself and in the article of death.

Mansi, XXXII. 259 sq.; Mirbt, p. 169 sq.

Three years later, April 26, 1463, the theory of the supremacy of general councils was set aside in still more precise language.

Mansi, XXXII. 195-203. Gieseler quotes at length. Aeneas had written a letter to the rector of the Univ. of Cologne with the same import, Oct. 13, 1447.

It would not be ingenuous to deny to Pius II., in making retractation, the virtue of sincerity. A strain of deep feeling runs through its long paragraphs which read like the last testament of a man speaking from the heart. Inspired by the dignity of his office, the pope wanted to be in accord with the long line of his predecessors, some of whom he mentioned by name, from Peter and Clement to the Innocents and Boniface. In issuing the decree of papal infallibility four centuries later, Pius IX. did not excel his predecessor in the art of composition; but he had this advantage over him that his announcement was stamped with the previous ratification of a general council. The two documents of the two popes of the name Pius reach the summit of papal assumption and consigned to burial the theories of the final authority of general councils and the infallibility of their decrees.

Scarcely could any two things be thought of more incongruous than Pius II.’s culture and the glorious reception he gave in 1462 to the reputed head of the Apostle Andrew. This highly prized treasure was brought to Italy by Thomas Palaeologus, who, in recognition of his pious benevolence toward the holy see, was given the Golden Rose, a palace in Rome and an annual allowance of 6,000 ducats. The relic was received with ostentatious signs of devotion. Bessarion and two other members of the sacred college received it at Narni and conveyed it to Rome. The pope, accompanied by the remaining cardinals and the Roman clergy, went out to the Ponte Molle to give it welcome. After falling prostrate before the Apostle’s skull, Pius delivered an appropriate address in which he congratulated the dumb fragment upon coming safely out of the hands of the Turks to find at last, as a fugitive, a place beside the remains of its brother Apostles. The address being concluded, the procession reformed and, with Pius borne in the Golden Chair, conducted the skull to its last resting-place. The streets were decked in holiday attire, and no one showed greater zeal in draping his palace than Rodrigo Borgia. The skull was deposited in St. Peter’s, after, as Platina says, "the sepulchres of some of the popes and cardinals, which took up too much room, had been removed." The ceremonies were closed by Bessarion in an address in which he expressed the conviction that St. Andrew would join with the other Apostles as a protector of Rome and in inducing the princes to combine for the expulsion of the Turks.

Pastor, II. 233-236, and Creighton, II. 436-438, give elaborate accounts of this curious piece of superstition.

In his closing days, Pius II. continued to be occupied with the crusade. He had written a memorable letter to Mohammed II. urging him to follow his mother’s religion and turn Christian, and assuring him that, as Clovis and Charlemagne had been renowned Christian sovereigns, so he might become Christian emperor over the Bosphorus, Greece and Western Asia. No reply is extant. In 1458, the year before the Mantuan congress assembled, the crescent had been planted on the Acropolis of Athens. All Southern Greece suffered the indignity and horrors of Turkish oppression. Servia fell into the hands of the invaders, 1459, and Bosnia followed, 1462.

Pius’ bull of 1463, summoning to a crusade, was put aside by the princes, but the pontiff, although he was afflicted with serious bodily infirmities, the stone and the gout, was determined to set an example in the right direction. Like Moses, he wanted, at least, to watch from some promontory or ship the battle against the enemies of the cross. Financial aid was furnished by the discovery of the alum mines of Tolfa, near Civita Vecchia, in 1462, the revenue from which passed into the papal treasury and was specially devoted by the conclave of 1464 to the crusade. But it availed little. Pius proceeded to Ancona on a litter, stopping on the way at Loreto to dedicate a golden cup to the Virgin. Philip of Burgundy, upon whom he had placed chief reliance, failed to appear. From Frederick III. nothing was to be expected. Venice and Hungary alone promised substantial help. The supreme pontiff lodged on the promontory in the bishop’s palace. But only two vessels lay at anchor in the harbor, ready for the expedition. To these were added in a few days 14 galleys sent by the doge. Pius saw them as they appeared in sight. The display of further heroism was denied him by his death two days later. A comparison has been drawn by the historian between the pope, with his eye fixed upon the East, and another, a born navigator, who perhaps was even then turning his eyes towards the West, and before many years was to set sail in equally frail vessels to make his momentous discovery.

On his death-bed, Pius had an argument whether extreme unction, which had been administered to him at Basel during an outbreak of the plague, might be administered a second time. Among his last words, spoken to Cardinal Ammanati, whom he had adopted, were, "pray for me, my son, for I am a sinner. Bid my brethren continue this holy expedition." The body was carried to Rome and laid away in St. Peter’s.

The disappointment of this restless and remarkable man, in the closing undertaking of his busy career, cannot fail to awaken human sympathy. Pius, whose aims and methods had been the most practical, was carried away at last by a romantic idea, without having the ability to marshal the forces for its realization. He misjudged the times. His purpose was the purpose of a man whose career had taught him never to tolerate the thought of failure. In forming a general estimate, we cannot withhold the judgment that, if he had made culture and literary effort prominent in the Vatican, his pontificate would have stood out in the history of the papacy with singular lustre. It will always seem strange that he did not surround himself with literati, as did Nicolas V., and that his interest in the improvement of Rome showed itself only in a few minor constructions. His biographer, Campanus, declares that he incurred great odium by his neglect of the Humanists, and Filelfo, his former teacher of Greek, launched against his memory a biting philippic for this neglect. The great literary pope proved to be but a poor patron.

Creighton, II. 491. Pastor, II. 28-31, makes a belabored effort to remove in part this stigma, and excuses Pius II. by the lack of funds from which he suffered and his engrossment in the affairs of the papacy. Pius chartered the universities of Nantes, Ingolstadt and Basel.

Platina describes Pius at the opening of his pontificate as short, gray-haired and wrinkled of face. He rose at daybreak, and was temperate at table. His industry was noteworthy. His manner made him accessible to all, and he struck the Romans of his age as a man without hypocrisy. Looked at as a man of culture, Aeneas was grammarian, geographer, historian, novelist and orator. Everywhere he was the keen observer of men and events. The plan of his cosmography was laid out on a large scale, but was left unfinished.

Hist. rerum ubique gestarum cum locorum descriptione non finita, Venice, 1477, in the Opera, Basel, 1551, etc.

§ 51. Paul II. 1464–1471.

The next occupant of the papal throne possessed none of the intellectual attractiveness of his predecessor, and displayed no interest in promoting the war against the Turks. He was as difficult to reach as Pius had been accessible, and was slow in attending to official business. The night he turned into day, holding his audiences after dark, and legates were often obliged to wait far into the night or even as late as three in the morning before getting a hearing.

Pietro Barbo, the son of a sister of Eugenius IV., was born in Venice, 1418. He was about to set sail for the East on a mercantile project, when the news reached Venice of his uncle’s election to the papacy. Following his elder brother’s advice, he gave up the quest of worldly gain and devoted himself to the Church. Eugenius’ favor assured him rapid promotion, and he was successively appointed archdeacon of Bologna, bishop of Cervia, bishop of Vicenza, papal pronotary and cardinal. On being elected to the papal chair, the Venetian chose the name of Formosus and then Mark, but, at the advice of the conclave, both were given up, as the former seemed to carry with it a reference to the pontiff’s fine presence, and the latter was the battle-cry of Venice, and might give political offence. So he took the name, Paul.

Before entering upon the election, the conclave again adopted a pact which required the prosecution of the crusade and the assembling of a general council within three years. The number of cardinals was not to exceed 24, the age of appointment being not less than 30 years, and the introduction of more than one of the pope’s relatives to that body was forbidden.

The document Is given by Raynaldus and Gieseler.

This solemn agreement, Paul proceeded at once summarily to set aside. The cardinals were obliged to attach their names to another document, whose contents the pope kept concealed by holding his hand over the paper as they wrote. The veteran Carvajal was the only member of the curia who refused to sign. From the standpoint of papal absolutism, Paul was fully justified. What right has any conclave to dictate to the supreme pontiff of Christendom, the successor of St. Peter! The pact was treason to the high papal theory, and meant nothing less than the substitution of an oligarchy for the papal monarchy. Paul called no council, not even a congress, to discuss the crusade against the Turks, and appointed three of his nephews cardinals, Marco Barbo, his brother’s son, and Battista Zeno and Giovanni Michïel, sons of two sisters.

Pastor, II. 307, fully justifies Paul for setting aside the pact on the ground that every pope gets plenary authority directly from God.

A noteworthy occurrence of Paul’s pontificate was the storm raised in Rome, 1466, by his dismissal of the 70 abbreviators, the number to which Pius II. had limited the members of that body. This was one of those incidents which give variety to the history of the papal court and help to make it, upon the whole, the most interesting of all histories. The scribes of the papal household were roughly divided into two classes, the secretaries and the abbreviators. The business of the former was to take charge of the papal correspondence of a more private nature, while the latter prepared briefs of bulls and other more solemn public documents.

Hergenröther: Kath. Kirchenrecht, p. 299

The unfortunate abbreviator, who was more of a scholar than a politician, was thrown into prison and held there during the four months of Winter without fire and bound in chains. Unhappily for him, he was imprisoned a second time, accused of conspiracy and heretical doctrine. In these charges the Roman Academy was also involved, an institution which cultivated Greek thought and was charged with having engaged in a propaganda of Paganism. There was some ground for the charge, for its leader, Pomponius Laeto, who combined the care of his vineyard with ramblings through the old Roman ruins and the perusal of the ancient classics, had deblaterated against the clergy. This antiquary was also thrown into prison. Platina relates how he and a number of others were put to the torture, while Vienesius, his Holiness’ vice-chancellor, looked on for several days as the ordeal was proceeding, "sitting like another Minos upon a tapestried seat as if he had been at a wedding, a man in holy orders whom the canons of the Church forbade to put torture upon laymen, lest death should follow, as it sometimes does." On his release he received a promise from Paul of reappointment to office, but waited in vain till the accession of Sixtus IV., who put him in charge of the Vatican library.

Jacob Volaterra in Muratori, new ed., XXIII. 3, p. 98.

Paul pursued an energetic policy against Podiebrad and the Utraquists of Bohemia and, after ordering all the compacts with the king ignored, deposed him and called upon Matthias of Hungary to take his throne. Paul had rejected Podiebrad’s offer to dispossess the Turk on condition of being recognized as Byzantine emperor.

Pastor, II. 358 sqq., makes a heroic effort to exempt Paul from the guilt of neglecting the crusade against the Turks. In a letter written by Cardinal Gonzaga, which he prints for the first time (II. 773), the statement is made that Paul was quietly laying aside one-fourth of his income to be used against the Turks. There is no mention of any sum of this kind among the pope’s assets.

In 1468, Frederick, III. repeated his visit to Rome, accompanied by 600 knights, but the occasion aroused none of the high expectation of the former visit, when the emperor brought with him the Portuguese infanta. There was no glittering pageant, no august papal reception. On receiving the communion in the basilica of St. Peter’s, he received from the pontiff’s hand the bread, but not the "holy blood," which, as the contemporary relates, Paul reserved to himself as an object-lesson against the Bohemians, though it was customary on such occasions to give both the elements. The successor of Charlemagne and Barbarossa was then given a seat at the pope’s side, which was no higher than the pope’s feet.

Patritius in Muratori, XXIII. 205-215.

Paul was not without artistic tastes, although he condemned the study of the classics in the Roman schools,

Pastor, II. 347, tries to show that Paul had some mind for humanistic studies. During his pontificate, 1467, the German printers, Schweinheim and Pannarts, set up the first printing-presses in Rome, but not under Paul’s patronage.

To this diversion the pontiff added sensual pleasures and public amusements.

A quotation given by Gregorovius, VII. 226, probably exaggerates when it states he filled his house with concubines—ex concubina domum replevit.

The pope’s death was ascribed to his indiscretion in eating two large melons. Asked by a cardinal why, in spite of the honors of the papacy, he was not contented, Paul replied that a little wormwood can pollute a whole hive of honey. The words belong in the same category as the words spoken 300 years before by the English pope, Adrian, when he announced the failure of the highest office in Christendom to satisfy all the ambitions of man.

§ 52. Sixtus IV. 1471–1484.

The last three popes of the 15th century, Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI., completely subordinated the interests of the papacy to the advancement of their own pleasure and the enrichment and promotion of their kindred.

Den nächst-folgenden Trägern der Tiara schien dieselbe in erster Linie ein Mittel zur Bereicherung und Erhöhung ihrer Familien zu sein. Diesem Zwecke wurde die ganze päpstliche Macht in rücksichtslosester Weise dienstbar gemacht, Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengesch., p. 483.

The chief features of the reign of Sixtus IV., a man of great decision and ability, were the insolent rule of his numerous nephews and the wars with the states of Italy in which their intrigues and ambitions involved their uncle. At the time of his election, Francesco Rovere was general of the order of the Franciscans. Born 1414, he had risen from the lowest obscurity, his father being a fisherman near Savona. He took the doctor’s degree in theology at Padua, and taught successively in Bologna, Pavia, Siena, Florence and Perugia. Paul II. appointed him cardinal. In the conclave strong support is said to have come to him through his notorious nephew, Peter Riario, who was active in conducting his canvas and making substantial promises for votes.

The effort to interest the princes in the Turkish crusade was renewed, but soon abandoned. Cardinals were despatched to the various courts of Europe, Bessarion to France, Marco Barbo to Germany, and Borgia to Spain, but only to find these governments preoccupied with other concerns or ill-disposed to the enterprise. In 1472, a papal fleet of 18 galleys actually set sail, with banners blessed by the pope in St. Peter’s, and under the command of Cardinal Caraffa. It was met at Rhodes by 30 ships from Naples and 36 from Venice and, after some plundering exploits, returned with 25 Turkish prisoners of war and 12 camels,—trophies enough to arouse the curiosity of the Romans. Moneys realized from some of Paul II.’s gems had been employed to meet the expenditure.

Sixtus’ relatives became the leading figures in Rome, and in wealth and pomp they soon rivalled or eclipsed the old Roman families and the older members of the sacred college. Sixtus was blessed or burdened with 16 nephews and grandnephews. All that was in his power to do, he did, to give them a good time and to establish them in affluence and honor all their days. The Sienese had their day under Pius II., and now it was the turn of the Ligurians. The pontiff’s two brothers and three, if not four, sisters, as well as all their progeny, had to be taken care of. The excuse made for Calixtus III. cannot be made for this indulgent uncle, that he was approaching his dotage. Sixtus was only 56 when he reached the tiara. And desperate is the suggestion that the unfitness or unwillingness of the Roman nobility to give the pope proper support made it necessary for him to raise up another and a complacent aristocracy.

Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 979. These most reputable Catholic historians intimate rather than emphasize this consideration.

Sixtus deemed no less than five of his nephews and a grandnephew deserving of the red hat, and sooner or later eight of them were introduced into the college of cardinals. Two nephews in succession were appointed prefects of Rome. The nephews who achieved the rank of cardinals were Pietro Riario at 25, and Julian della Rovere at 28, in 1471, both Franciscan monks; Jerome Basso and Christopher Rovere, in 1477; Dominico Rovere, Christopher’s brother, in 1478; and the pope’s grandnephew, Raphael Sansoni, at the age of 17, in 1477. The two nephews made prefects of Rome were Julian’s brother Lionardo, who died in 1475, and his brother Giovanni, d. 1501. Lionardo was married by his uncle to the illegitimate daughter of Ferrante, king of Naples.

A useful genealogical tree of the Rovere is given by Creighton, III. 100. Pastor takes no pains to hide his righteous indignation at Sixtus’ exhaustive provision for his relatives,—seine zahlreiche und unwürdige Verwandten, as he calls them.

Upon Peter Riario and Julian Rovere he heaped benefice after benefice. Julian, a man of rare ability, afterwards made pope under the name of Julius II., was appointed archbishop of Avignon and then of Bologna, bishop of Lausanne, Constance, Viviers, Ostia and Velletri, and placed at the head of several abbeys. Riario, who, according to popular hearsay, was the pope’s own child, was bishop of Spoleto, Seville and Valencia, Patriarch of Constantinople, and recipient of other rich places, until his income amounted to 60,000 florins or about 2,500,000 francs. He went about with a retinue of 100 horsemen. His expenditures were lavish and his estate royal. His mistresses, whom he did not attempt to conceal, were dressed in elegant fabrics, and one of them wore slippers embroidered with pearls. Dominico received one after the other the bishoprics of Corneto, Tarentaise, Geneva and Turin.

The visit of Leonora, the daughter of Ferrante, in Rome in 1473, while on her way to Ferrara to meet her husband, Hercules of Este, was perhaps the most splendid occasion the city had witnessed since the first visit of Frederick III. It furnished Riario an opportunity for the display of a magnificent hospitality. On Whitsunday, the Neapolitan princess was conducted by two cardinals to St. Peter’s, where she heard mass said by the pope and then at high-noon witnessed the miracle play of Susanna and the Elders, acted by Florentine players. The next evening she sat down to a banquet which lasted 3 hours and combined all the skill which decorators and cooks could apply. The soft divans and costly curtainings, the silk costumes of the servants and the rich courses are described in detail by contemporary writers. In anticipation of modern electrical fans, 3 bellows were used to cool and freshen the atmosphere. In such things, remarks Infessura, the treasures of the Church were squandered.

Diario, p. 77. At the chief banquet, the menu comprised wild boars roasted whole, bucks, goats, hares, pheasants, fish, peacocks with their feathers, storks, cranes, and countless fruits and sweetmeats. An artificial mountain of sugar was brought into the dining-chamber, from which a man stepped forth with gestures of surprise at finding himself amid such gorgeous surroundings.

In 1474, on the death of Peter Riario, a victim of his excesses and aged only 28,

Sixtus reared to him a splendid monument in the Church of the Apostles. Peter and his brother Jerome are represented as kneeling and praying to the Madonna. See Pastor, II. 294 sq.

The terrible tragedy was enacted in the cathedral of Florence. When Montesecco, a captain of the papal mercenaries, hired to carry out the plot, shrank from committing sacrilege by shedding blood in the church of God, its execution was intrusted to two priests, Antonio Maffei da Volterra and Stefano of Bagnorea, the former a papal secretary. While the host was being elevated, Julian de’Medici, who was inside the choir, was struck with one dagger after another and fell dead. Lorenzo barely escaped. As he was entering the sanctuary, he was struck by Maffei and slightly wounded, and made a shield of his arm by winding his mantle around it, and escaped with friends to the sacristy, which was barred against the assassins. The bloody deed took place April 26, 1478.

The city proved true to the family which had shed so much lustre upon it, and quick revenge was taken upon the agents of the conspiracy. Archbishop Salviati, his brother, Francesco de’ Pazzi and others were hung from the signoria windows.

See the account of the legate of Milan, publ. by Pastor, II. 785 sq. Of Sixtus’ connivance at the plot against the Medici, Pastor, II. 541, says, "It calls for deep lament that a pope should play a part in the history of this conspiracy."

With intrepid resolution, Sixtus resented the death of his archbishop and the indignity done a cardinal in the imprisonment of Raphael as an accomplice. He hurled the interdict at the city, branding Lorenzo as the son of iniquity and the ward of perdition,—iniquitatis filius et perditionis alumnus,—and entered into an alliance with Naples against it. Louis XI. of France and Venice and other Italian states espoused the cause of Florence. Pushed to desperation, Lorenzo went to Naples and made such an impression on Ferrante that he changed his attitude and joined an alliance with Florence. The pope was checkmated. The seizure of Otranto on Italian soil by the Turks, in 1480, called attention away from the feud to the imminent danger threatening all Italy. In December of that year, Sixtus absolved Florence, and the legates of the city were received in front of St. Peter’s and touched with the rod in token of forgiveness. Six months later, May 26, 1481, Rome received the news of the death of Mohammed II., which Sixtus celebrated by special services in the church, Maria del Popolo,

Infessura, p. 86.

Again, in the interest of his nephew, Jerome, Sixtus took Forli, thereby giving offence to Ferrara. He joined Venice in a war against that city, and all Italy became involved. Later, the warlike pontiff again saw his league broken up and Venice and Ferrara making peace, irrespective of his counsels. He vented his mortification by putting the queen of the Adriatic under the interdict.

In Rome, the bloody pope fanned the feud between the Colonna and the Orsini, and almost succeeded in blotting out the name of the Colonna by assassination and judicial murder.

Sixtus has the distinction of having extended the efficacy of indulgences to souls in purgatory. He was most zealous in distributing briefs of indulgence.

Pastor, II. 610 sqq., is very cautious in his remarks on the subject of Sixtus’ indulgences, almost to reticence.

He issued two bulls with reference to the worship of Mary and the doctrine of the immaculate conception, but he declared her sinlessness from the instant of conception a matter undecided by the Roman Church and the Apostolic see—nondum ab ecclesia romana et apostolica sede decisum.

Mansi, XXXII. 374 sqq., gives the bull on the immaculate conception dated Sept. 5, 1483; also Mirbt, p. 170.

Such was Sixtus IV., the unblushing promoter of the interests of his relatives, many of them as worthless as they were insolent, the disturber of the peace of Italy, revengeful, and yet the liberal patron of the arts. The enlightened diarist of Rome, Infessura,

In quo felicissimo die, etc., pp. 155-158.

During his reign, were born in obscure places in Saxony and Switzerland two men who were to strike a mighty blow at the papal rule, themselves also of peasant lineage and the coming leaders of the new spiritual movement.

§ 53. Innocent VIII. 1484–1492.

Under Innocent VIII. matters in Rome were, if anything, worse than under his predecessor, Sixtus IV. Innocent was an easy-going man without ideals, incapable of conceiving or carrying out high plans. He was chiefly notable for his open avowal of an illegitimate family and his bull against witchcraft.

At Sixtus’ death, wild confusion reigned in Rome. Nobles and cardinals barricaded their residences. Houses were pillaged. The mob held carnival on the streets. The palace of Jerome Riario was sacked. Relief was had by an agreement between the rival families of the Orsini and Colonna to withdraw from the city for a month and Jerome’s renunciation of the castle of S. Angelo, which his wife had defended, for 4,000 ducats. Not till then did the cardinals feel themselves justified in meeting for the election of a new pontiff.

The conclaves of 1484 and 1492 have been pronounced by high catholic authority among the "saddest in the history of the papacy."

Pastor, III. 178.

His description goes into the smallest details. A protocol was again adopted, which every cardinal promised in a solemn formula to observe, if elected pope. Its first stipulation was that 100 ducats should be paid monthly to members of the sacred college, whose yearly income from benefices might not reach the sum of 4,000 ducats (about 200,000 francs in our present money). Then followed provisions for the continuance of the crusade against the Turks, the reform of the Roman curia in head and members, the appointment of no cardinal under 30 for any cause whatever, the advancement of not more than a single relative of the reigning pontiff to the sacred college and the restriction of its membership to 24.

Burchard, I. 33-55

Rodrigo Borgia fully counted upon being elected and, in expectation of that event, had barricaded his palace against being looted. Large bribes, even to the gift of his palace, were offered by him for the coveted prize of the papacy. Cardinal Barbo had 10 votes and, when it seemed likely that he would be the successful candidate, Julian Rovere and Borgia, renouncing their aspirations, combined their forces, and during the night, went from cell to cell, securing by promises of benefices and money the votes of all but six of the cardinals. According to Burchard, the pope about to be elected sat up all night signing promises. The next morning the two cardinals aroused the six whom they had not disturbed, exclaiming, "Come, let us make a pope." "Who?" they said. "Cardinal Cibo." "How is that?" they asked. "While you were drowsy with sleep, we gathered all the votes except yours," was the reply.

The new pope, Lorenzo Cibo, born in Genoa, 1432, had been made cardinal by Sixtus IV., 1473. During his rule, peace was maintained with the courts of Italy, but in Rome clerical dissipation, curial venality and general lawlessness were rampant. "In darkness Innocent was elected, in darkness he lives, and in darkness he will die," said the general of the Augustinians.

Infessura, p. 177. The Augustinian was thrown into prison for making the remark. Infessura returns again and again, pp. 237 sq., 243, 256 sq., to the reign of crime going on in the city.

All ecclesiastical offices were set for sale. How could it be otherwise, when the papal tiara itself was within the reach of the highest bidder?

Funk, Kirchengesch., 373, says, In Rom. schien alles käuflich zu sein

Innocent’s children were not persons of marked traits, or given to ambitious intrigues. Common rumor gave their number as 16, all of them children by married women.

So Marullus in his epigram—

Octo nocens pueros genuit totidemque puellas,

Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem

Illegitimately he begat 8 boys and girls as many.

Hence Rome deservedly may call him father.

Burchard, I. 321, calls Franceschetto bastardus.

The statement of Infessura is difficult to believe, although it is made at length, that Innocent issued a decree permitting concubinage in Rome both to clergy and laity. The prohibition of concubinage was declared prejudicial to the divine law and the honor of the clergy, as almost all the clergy, from the highest to the lowest, had concubines, or mistresses. According to the Roman diarist, there were 6,800 listed public courtezans in Rome besides those whose names were not recorded.

Infessura, p. 259 sq. Pastor, III. 269, pronounces Infessura’s statement altogether incredible,—gänzlich unglaubwürdig,—and blames Infessura’s editor, Tommasini, for allowing the statement to pass in his edition without note or comment. Pastor, in his 1st ed., III. 252, had pronounced the statement of the Roman diarist eine ungeheuerliche Behauptung.

What could be expected where the morals of the supreme pontiff and the sacred senate were so loose? The lives of many of the cardinals were notoriously scandalous. Their palaces were furnished with princely splendor and filled with scores of servants. Their example led the fashions in extravagance in dress and sumptuous banquetings. They had their stables, kennels and falcons. Cardinal Sforza, whose yearly income is reported to have been 30,000 ducats, or 1,500,000 francs, present money, excelled in the chase. Cardinal Julian made sport of celibacy, and had three daughters. Cardinal Borgia, the acknowledged leader in all gayeties, was known far and wide by his children, who were prominent on every occasion of display and conviviality. The passion for gaming ran high in the princely establishments. Cardinal Raphael won 8,000 ducats at play from Cardinal Balue who, however, in spite of such losses, left a fortune of 100,000 ducats. This grandnephew of Sixtus IV. was a famous player, and in a single night won from Innocent’s son, Franceschetto, 14,000 ducats. The son complained to his father, who ordered the fortunate winner to restore the night’s gains. But the gay prince of the church excused himself by stating that the money had already been paid out upon the new palace he was engaged in erecting.

The only relative whom Innocent promoted to the sacred college was his illegitimate brother’s son, Lorenzo Cibo. The appointment best known to posterity was that of Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, afterwards Leo X.

Another appointment, that of D’Aubusson, was associated with the case of the Mohammedan prince, Djem. This incident in the annals of the papacy would seem incredible, if it were not true. A writer of romance could hardly have invented an episode more grotesque. At the death of Mohammed II., his son, Djem, was defeated in his struggle for the succession by his brother Bajazet, and fled to Rhodes for protection. The Knights of St. John were willing to hold the distinguished fugitive as prisoner, upon the promise of 45,000 ducats a year from the sultan. For safety’s sake, Djem was removed to one of the Hospitaller houses in France. Hungary, Naples, Venice, France and the pope,—all put in a claim for him. Such competition to pay honor to an infidel prince had never before been heard of in Christendom. The pope won by making valuable ecclesiastical concessions to the French king, among them the bestowal of the red hat on D’Aubusson.

The matter being thus amicably adjusted, Djem was conducted to Rome, where he was received with impressive ceremonies by the cardinals and city officials. His person was regarded as of more value than the knowledge of the East brought by Marco Polo had been in its day, and the reception of the Mohammedan prince created more interest than the return of Columbus from his first journey to the West. Djem was escorted through the streets by the pope’s son, and rode a white horse sent him by the pope. The ambassador of the sultan of Egypt, then in Rome, had gone out to meet him, and shed tears as he kissed his feet and the feet of his horse. The popes had not shrunk from entering into alliances with Oriental powers to secure the overthrow of Mohammed II. and his dynasty. Djem, or the Grand Turk, as he was called, was welcomed by the pope surrounded by his cardinals. The proud descendant of Eastern monarchs, however, refused to kiss the supreme pontiff’s foot, but made some concession by kissing his shoulder. He was represented as short and stout, with an aquiline nose, and a single good eye, given at times inordinately to drink, though a man of some intellectual culture. He was reported to have put four men to death with his own hand. But Djem was a dignitary who signified too much to be cast aside for such offences. Innocent assigned him to elegantly furnished apartments in the Vatican, and thus the strange spectacle was afforded of the earthly head of Christendom acting as the host of one of the chief living representatives of the faith of Islam, which had almost crushed out the Christian churches of the East and usurped the throne on the Bosphorus.

Bajazet was willing to pay the pope 40,000 ducats for the hospitality extended to his rival brother, and delegations came from him to Rome to arrange the details of the bargain. The report ran that attempts were made by the sultan to poison both his brother and the pope by contaminating the wells of the Vatican. When the ambassador brought from Constantinople the delayed payment of three years, 120,000 ducats, Djem insisted that the Turk’s clothes should be removed and his skin be rubbed down with a towel, and that he should lick the letter "on every side," as proof that he did not also carry poison.

Totam ab omnibus ejus lateribus lingua sua lambivit. Infessura, p. 263. For the letter of the painter Mantegna to the duke of Mantua and its curious details, June 15, 1489, see Pastor, 1st ed., III. 218. The picture of the Disputation of St. Catherine in the sala dei santi in the Vatican contains a picture of Djem riding a white palfrey. Infessura and Burchard enter with journalistic relish into the details of Djem’s appearance and treatment In Rome.

Another curious instance was given in Innocent’s reign of the hold open-mouthed superstition had in the reception given to the holy lance. This pretended instrument, with which Longinus pierced the Saviour’s side and which was found during the Crusades by the monk Barthélemy at Antioch, was already claimed by two cities, Nürnberg and Paris. The relic made a greater draft upon the credulity of the age than St. Andrew’s head. The latter was the gift of a Christian prince, howbeit an adherent of the schismatic Greek Church; the lance came from a Turk, Sultan Bajazet.

Some question arose among the cardinals whether it would not be judicious to stay the acceptance of the gift till the claims of the lance in Nürnberg had been investigated. But the pope’s piety, such as it was, would not allow a question of that sort to interfere. An archbishop and a bishop were despatched to Ancona to receive the iron fragment, for only the head of the lance was extant. It was conducted from the city gates by the cardinals to St. Peter’s, and after mass the pope gave his blessing. The day of the reception happened to be a fast, but, at the suggestion of one of the cardinals, some of the fountains along the streets, where the procession was appointed to go, were made to throw out wine to slake the thirst of the populace. After a solemn service in S. Maria del Popolo, on Ascension Day, 1492, the Turkish present, encased in a receptacle of crystal and gold, was placed near the handkerchief of St. Veronica in St. Peter’s.

Infessura p. 224, and especially Burchard, I. 482-486, and Sigismondo, II. 25-29, 69, give extended accounts of the honors paid to the piece of iron, the sacratissimum ferreum lanceae. The sultan’s representative, Chamisbuerch, who was also present, was reported to have handed the pope a package containing 40,000 ducats. Sigismondo uses the word spicula, little point, for the lance.

The two great stains upon the pontificate of Innocent VIII., the crusade he called to exterminate the Waldenses, 1487, and his bull directed against the witches of Germany, 1484, which inaugurated two horrible dramas of cruelty, have treatment in another place.

Innocent was happy in being permitted to join with Europe in rejoicings over the expulsion of the last of the Moors from Granada, 1492. Masses were said in Rome, and a sermon preached in the pontiff’s presence in celebration of the memorable event.

Burchard, I. 444 sqq.

§ 54. Pope Alexander VI—Borgia. 1492–1503.

The pontificate of Alexander VI., which coincides with the closing years of the 15th century and the opening of the 16th, may be compared with the pontificate of Boniface VIII., which witnessed the passage from the 13th to the 14th centuries. Boniface marked the opening act in the decline of the papal power introduced by the king of France. Under Alexander, when the French again entered actively into the affairs of Italy, even to seizing Rome, the papacy passed into its deepest moral humiliation since the days of the pornocracy in the 10th century.

Alexander VI., whom we have before known as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, has the notorious distinction of being the most corrupt of the popes of the Renaissance period. Even in the judgment of Catholic historians, his dissoluteness knew no restraint and his readiness to abase the papacy for his own personal ends, no bounds.

Pastor, III. 278, says that, "from the moment he received priestly consecration to the end of his life, he was a slave to the demon of sensuality." Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengesch., p. 485, speaks of his career before he reached the papal office as having been "very dissolute"—sehr dissolut. Prof. Villari, Machiavelli, I. 279, calls Alexander the worst of the popes, whose "crimes were sufficient to upset any human society." Gregorovius and Pastor have carried on the most notable researches in this period, and rivalled one another in the brilliant description of Alexander’s reign and domestic relations.

At Innocent VIII.’s death, 23 cardinals entered into the conclave which met in the Sistine chapel. Borgia and Julian Rovere were the leading candidates. They were rivals, and had been candidates for the papal chair before. Everything was to be staked on success in the pending election. Openly and without a blush, ecclesiastical offices and money were offered as the price of the spiritual crown of Christendom. Julian was supported by the king of France, who deposited 200,000 ducats in a Roman bank and 100,000 more in Genoa to secure his election. If Borgia could not outbid him he was, at least, the more shrewd in his manipulations. There were only five cardinals, including Julian, who took nothing. The other members of the sacred college had their price. Monticelli and Soriano were given to Cardinal Orsini and also the see of Cartagena, and the legation to the March; the abbey of Subiaco and its fortresses to Colonna; Civita Castellana and the see of Majorca to Savelli; Nepi to Sclafetanus; the see of Porto to Michïel; and rich benefices to other cardinals. Four mules laden with gold were conducted to the palace of Ascanio Sforza, who also received Rodrigo’s splendid palace and the vice-chancellorship. Even the patriarch of Venice, whose high age—for he had reached 95—might have been expected to lift him above the seduction of filthy lucre, accepted 5,000 ducats. Infessura caustically remarks that Borgia distributed all his goods among the poor.

P. 281. In his despatch to the duchess of Este, published by Pastor, 1st ed., III. 879, Giovanni Boccaccio, bishop of Modena, gives an estimate of Borgia’s ability to pay for the tiara, the vice-chancellorship worth 8,000 ducats, the cities of Nepi and Civita Castellana, abbeys In Aquila and Albano, each worth 1,000 ducats a year, two large abbeys in the kingdom of Naples, the abbey of Sabiaco, worth 2,000 a year., abbeys in Spain, 16 bishoprics in Spain, the see of Porto, worth 1,200 ducats, and numerous other ecclesiastical places.

The ceremonies of coronation were on a scale which appeared to the contemporaries unparalleled in the history of such occasions. A figure of a bull, the emblem of the Borgias, was erected near the Palazzo di S. Marco on the line of the procession, from whose eyes, nostrils and mouth poured forth water, and from the forehead wine. Rodrigo was 61 years of age, had been cardinal for 37 years, having received that dignity when he was 25. His fond uncle, Calixtus III., had made him archbishop of Valencia, heaped upon him ecclesiastical offices, including the vice-chancellorship, and made him the heir of his personal possessions. His palace was noted for the splendor of its tapestries and carpets and its vessels of gold and silver.

The letter of Cardinal Sforza to his brother, dated 1484, and publ. by Pastor, III. 876, gives a description of his associate’s palace.

The pre-eminent features of Alexander’s career, as the supreme pontiff of Christendom, were his dissolute habits and his extravagant passion to exalt the worldly fortunes of his children. In these two respects he seemed to be destitute at once of all regard for the solemnity of his office and of common conscience. A third feature was the entry of Charles VIII. and the French into Italy and Rome. During his pontificate two events occurred whose world-wide significance was independent of the occupant of the papal throne,—the one geographical, the other religious,—the discovery of America and the execution of the Florentine preacher, Savonarola. As in the reign of Calixtus III., so now Spaniards flocked to Rome, and the Milanese ambassador wrote that ten papacies would not have been able to satisfy their greed for official recognition. In spite of a protocol adopted in the conclave, a month did not pass before Alexander appointed his nephew, Juan of Borgia, cardinal, and in the next years he admitted four more members of the Borgia family to the sacred college, including his infamous son, Caesar Borgia, at the age of 18.

Burchard, I. 577.

Alexander’s household and progeny call for treatment first. It soon became evident that the supreme passion of his pontificate was to advance the fortunes of his children.

Seine Kinder zu erhöhen war sein vorzüglichstes Ziel is the statement of the calm Catholic historian, Funk, p. 373.

Alexander was the acknowledged father of five children by Vanozza de Cataneis: Pedro Luis, Juan, Caesar, Lucretia, Joffré and, perhaps, Pedro Ludovico. The briefs issued by Sixtus IV. legitimating Caesar and Ludovico are still extant.

They are given in Burchard, Supplement to vol. III, and dated Oct. 1, 1480, and Nov. 4, 1481.

These were not the only children Alexander acknowledged. His daughters Girolama and Isabella were married 1482 and 1483.

Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, p. 19, and Appendix, Germ. ed., where the marriage contract of Girolama is given.

Among Alexander’s mistresses, after he became pope, the most famous was cardinal Farnese’s sister, Julia Farnese, called for her beauty, La Bella. Infessura repeatedly refers to her as Alexander’s concubine. Her legal husband was appeased by the gift of castles.

The gayeties, escapades, marriages, worldly distinctions and crimes of these children would have furnished daily material for paragraphs of a nature to satisfy the most sensational modern taste. Don Pedro Luis, Alexander’s eldest son, and his three older brothers began their public careers in the service of the Spanish king, Ferdinand, who admitted them to the ranks of the higher nobility and sold Gandia, with the title of duke, to Don Pedro. This gallant young Borgia died in 1491 at the age of 30, on the eve of his journey from Rome to Spain to marry Ferdinand’s cousin. His brother, Don Juan, fell heir to the estate and title of Gandia and was married with princely splendor in Barcelona to the princess to whom Don Pedro had been betrothed.

Alexander’s son, Caesar Borgia was as bad as his ambition was insolent. The annals of Rome and of the Vatican for more than a decade are filled with his impiety, his intrigues and his crimes. At the age of six, he was declared eligible for ordination. He was made protonotary and bishop of Pampeluna by Innocent VIII. At his father’s election he hurried from Pisa, where he was studying, and on the day of his father’s coronation was appointed archbishop of Valencia. He was then sixteen.

Don Joffré was married, at 13, to a daughter of Alfonso of Naples and was made prince of Squillace.

The personal fortunes of Alexander’s daughter, Lucretia, constitute one of the notorious and tragic episodes of the 15th century.

The most serious foreign issue in Alexander’s reign was the invasion of Charles VIII., king of France. The introductory act in what seemed likely to be the complete transformation of Italy was the sale of Cervetri and Anguillara to Virginius Orsini for 40,000 ducats by Franceschetto, the son of Innocent VIII. This papal scion was contented with a life of ease and retired to Florence. The transfer of these two estates was treated by the Sforza as disturbing the balance of power in the peninsula, and Ludovico and Ascanio Sforza pressed Alexander to check the influence of Ferrante, king of Naples, who was the supporter of the Orsini. Ferrante, a shrewd politician, by ministering to Alexander’s passion to advance his children’s fortunes, won him from the alliance with the Sforza. He promised to the pope’s son, Joffré, Donna Sancia, a mere child, in marriage. Ludovico Sforza, ready to resort to any measure likely to promote his own personal ambition, invited Charles VIII. to enter Italy and make good his claim to the crown of Naples on the ground of the former Angevin possession. He also applauded the French king’s announced purpose to reduce Constantinople once more to Christian dominion.

On Ferrante’s death, 1494, Alfonso II. was crowned king of Naples by Alexander’s nephew, Cardinal Juan Borgia. Charles, then only 22, was short, deformed, with an aquiline nose and an inordinately big head. He set out for Italy at the head of a splendid army of 40,000 men, equipped with the latest inventions in artillery. Julian Rovere, who had resisted Alexander’s policy and fled to Avignon, joined with other disaffected cardinals in supporting the French and accompanying the French army. Charles’ march through Northern Italy was a series of easy and almost bloodless triumphs. Milan threw open its gates to Charles. So did Pisa. Before entering Florence, the king was met by Savonarola, who regarded him as the messenger appointed by God to rescue Italy from her godless condition. Rome was helpless. Alexander’s ambassadors, sent to treat with the invader, were either denied audience or denied satisfaction. In his desperation, the pope resorted to the Turkish sultan, Bajazet, for aid. The correspondence that passed between the supreme ruler of Christendom and the leading sovereign of the Mohammedan world was rescued from oblivion by the capture of its bearer, George Busardo.

These letters are given in full by Burchard, II. 202 sqq. Alexander’s letters Gregorovius pronounces to be genuine beyond a doubt. The sultan’s are matter of dispute. Ranke discredited them, but Gregorovius regards their contents as genuine, though the form may be spurious. Creighton, III. 300 sqq., gives reasons for accepting them.

On the last day of 1494, the French army entered the holy city, dragging with it 36 bronze cannon. Such military discipline and equipment the Romans had not seen, and they looked on with awe and admiration. To the king’s demand that the castle of S. Angelo be surrendered, Alexander sent a refusal declaring that, if the fortress were attacked, he would take his position on the walls surrounded with the most sacred relics in Rome. Cardinals Julian Rovere, Sforza, Savelli and Colonna, who had ridden into the city with the French troops, urged the king to call a council and depose Alexander for simony. But when it came to the manipulation of men, Alexander was more than a match for his enemies. Charles had no desire to humiliate the pope, except so far as it might be necessary for the accomplishment of his designs upon Naples. A pact was arranged, which included the delivery of Djem to the French and the promise that Caesar Borgia should accompany the French troops to Naples as papal legate. In the meantime the French soldiery had sacked the city, even to Vanozza’s house. Henceforth the king occupied quarters in the Vatican, and the disaffected cardinals, with the exception of Julian, were reconciled to the pope.

On his march to Naples, which began Jan. 25, 1495, Charles took Djem with him. That individual passed out of the gates of Rome, riding at the side of Caesar. These two personages, the Turkish pretender and the pontiff’s son, had been on terms of familiarity, and often rode on horseback together. Within a month after leaving Rome, and before reaching Naples, the Oriental died. The capital of Southern Italy was an easy prize for the invaders. Caesar had been able to make his escape from the French camp. His son’s shrewdness and good luck afforded Alexander as much pleasure as did the opportunity of joining the king of Spain and the cities of Northern Italy in an alliance against Charles. In 1496, the alliance was strengthened by the accession of Henry VII. of England. After abandoning himself for several months to the pleasures of the Neapolitan capital, the French king retraced his course and, after the battle of Fornuovo, July 6, 1495, evacuated Italy. Alexander had evaded him by retiring from Rome, and sent after the retreating king a message to return to his proper dominions on pain of excommunication. The summons neither hastened the departure of the French nor prevented them from returning to the peninsula again in a few years.

The French left behind them a terrible legacy in the disease which they are said to have carrried during the Crusades and again a century ago, under Napoleon, to Syria, and known as the French disease. See Pastor, III. 7.

The misfortunes and scandals of the papal household were not interrupted by the French invasion, and continued after it. In the summer of 1497, occurred the mysterious murder of Alexander’s son, the duke of Gandia, then 24 years old. It was only a sample of the crimes being perpetrated in Rome. The duke had supped with Caesar, his brother, and Cardinal Juan Borgia at the residence of Vanozza. The supper being over, the two brothers rode together as far as the palace of Cardinal Sforza. There they separated, the duke going, as he said, on some private business, and accompanied by a masked man who had been much with him for a month past. The next day, Alexander waited for his son in vain. In the evening, unable to bear the suspense longer, he instituted an investigation. The man in the mask had been found mortally wounded. A charcoal-dealer deposed that, after midnight, he had seen several men coming to the brink of the river, one of them on a white horse, over the back of which was thrown a dead man. They backed the horse and pitched the body into the water. The pope was inconsolable with grief, and remained without food from Thursday to Sunday. He had recently made his son lord of the papal patrimony and of Viterbo, standard-bearer of the church and duke of Benevento. In reporting the loss to the consistory of cardinals, the father declared that he loved Don Juan more than anything in the world, and that if he had seven papacies he would give them all to restore his son’s life.

The origin of the murder was a mystery. Different persons were picked out as the perpetrators. It was surmised that the deed was committed by some lover who had been abused by the gay duke. Suspicion also fastened on Ascanio Sforza, the only cardinal who did not attend the consistory. But gradually the conviction prevailed that the murderer was no other than Caesar Borgia himself, and the Italian historian, Guicciardini, three years later adopted the explanation of fratricide. Caesar, it was rumored, was jealous of the place the duke of Gandia held in his father’s affections, and hankered after the worldly honors which had been heaped upon him.

When the charcoal-dealer was asked why he did not at once report the dark scene, he replied that such deeds were a common occurrence and he had witnessed a hundred like it.

Burchard’s account of the tragedy, II. 387-390. Gregorovius, VIII. 424, confidently advocates the theory of fratricide. This explains why Alexander dropped the investigation two weeks after it was begun, and why he and Caesar in the first meetings after the event were silent in each other’s presence. However, it is almost too much to believe that Alexander would at once begin to heap honors upon Caesar, as he did, if the father believed him to be the murderer. Roscoe, I. 153 sq., and Pastor discredit the theory of fratricide, to which Creighton, III. 388, also inclines. Don Juan was the only one of the Borgias that founded a family.

In the first outburst of his grief, Alexander, moved by feelings akin to repentance, appointed a commission of six cardinals to bring in proposals for the reformation of the curia and the Church. His reforming ardor was, however, soon spent, and the proposals, when offered, were set aside as derogatory to the papal prerogative. For the next two years, the marriages and careers of his children, Caesar and Lucretia, were treated as if they were the chief concern of Christendom.

Lucretia, born in 1480, had already been twice betrothed to Spaniards, when the father was elected pope and sought for her a higher alliance. In 1493, she was married to John Sforza, lord of Pesaro, a man of illegitimate birth. The young princess was assigned a palace of her own near the Vatican, where Julia Farnese ruled as her father’s mistress. It was a gay life she lived, as the centre of the young matrons of Rome. Accompanied by a hundred of them at a time, she rode to church. She was pronounced by the master of ceremonies of the papal chapel most fair, of a bright disposition, and given to fun and laughter.

Burchard, II. 280, 493, filia clarissima, filia jocosa et risoria.

The marriage with the lord of Pesaro was celebrated in the Vatican, after a sermon had been preached by the bishop of Concordia. Among the guests were 11 cardinals and 150 Roman ladies. The entertainment lasted till 5 in the morning. There was dancing, and obscene comedies were performed, with Alexander and the cardinals looking on. And all this, exclaims a contemporary," to the honor and praise of Almighty God and the Roman church!"

Infessura, p. 286 sq., closes his account by saying he would not tell all, lest it might seem incredible. The account of Boccaccio, ambassador of Ferrara, who was present, is given by Gregorov., Lucr. Borgia, pp. 59-61.

After spending some time with her husband on his estate, Lucretia was divorced from him on the charge of his impotency, the divorce being passed upon by a commission of cardinals. After spending a short time in a convent, the princess was married to Don Alfonso, duke of Besiglia, the bastard son of Alfonso II. of Naples. The Vatican again witnessed the nuptial ceremony, but the marriage was, before many months, to be brought to a close by the duke’s murder.

In the meantime Donna Sancia, the wife of Joffré, had come to the city, May, 1496, and been received at the gates by cardinals, Lucretia and other important personages. The pope, surrounded by 11 cardinals, and with Lucretia on his right hand, welcomed his son and daughter-in-law in the Vatican. According to Burchard, the two princesses boldly occupied the priests’ benches in St. Peter’s. Later, it was said, Sancia’s two brothers-in-law, the duke of Gandia and Caesar, quarrelled over her and possessed her in turn. Alexander sent her back to Naples, whether for this reason or not is not known. She was afterwards received again in Rome.

Caesar, in spite of his yearly revenues amounting to 35,000 ducats, had long since grown tired of an ecclesiastical career. Bishop and cardinal-deacon though he was, he deposed before his fellow-cardinals that from the first he had been averse to orders, and received them in obedience to his father’s wish. These words Gregorovius has pronounced to be perhaps the only true words the prince ever spoke. Caesar’s request was granted by the unanimous voice of the sacred college. Alexander, whose policy it now was to form a lasting bond between France and the papacy, looked to Louis XII., successor of Charles VIII., for a proper introduction of his son upon a worldly career.

Alexander had courteously attended a mass for the repose of the soul of his old enemy, Charles, in the Sistine chapel, Burchard, II. 461.

The arrangements for Caesar’s departure from Rome were on a grand scale. The richest textures were added to gold and silver vessels and coin, so that, when the young man departed from the city, he was preceded by a line of mules carrying goods worth 200,000 ducats on their backs. The duke’s horses were shod with silver. The contemporary writer gives a picture of Alexander standing at the window, watching the cortege, in which were four cardinals, as it passed towards the West. The party went by way of Avignon. After some disappointment in not securing the princess whom Caesar had picked out, Charlotte d’Albret, then a young lady of sixteen, and a sister of the king of Navarre, was chosen. When the news of the marriage, which was celebrated in May, 1499, reached Rome, Alexander and the Spaniards illuminated their houses and the streets in honor of the proud event. The advancement of this abandoned man, from this time forth, engaged Alexander VI.’s supreme energies. The career of Caesar Borgia passes, if possible, into stages of deeper darkness, and the mind shrinks back from the awful sensuality, treachery and cruelty for which no crime was too revolting. Everything had to give way that stood in the hard path of his vulgar ambition and profligate greed. And at last his father, ready to sacrifice all that is sacred in religion and human life to secure his son’s promotion, became his slave, and in fear dared not to offer resistance to his plans.

The duke was soon back in Italy, accompanying the French army led by Louis XII. The reduction of Milan and Naples followed. The taking of Milan reduced Alexander’s former ally and brought captivity to Ascanio Sforza, the cardinal, but it was welcome news in the Vatican. Alexander was bent, with the help of Louis, upon creating a great dukedom in central Italy for his son, with a kingly dominion over all the peninsula as the ultimate act of the drama. The fall of Naples was due in part to the pope’s perfidy in making an alliance with Louis and deposing the Neapolitan king, Frederick.

Endowed by his father with the proud title of duke of the Romagna and made captain-general of the church, Caesar, with the help of 8,000 mercenaries, made good his rights to Imola, Forli, Rimini and other towns, some of the victories being celebrated by services in St. Peter’s. At the same time, Lucretia was made regent of Nepi and Spoleto. As a part of the family program, the indulgent father proceeded to declare war against the Gaetani house and to despoil the Colonna, Savelli and Orsini. No obstacle should be allowed to remain in the ambitious path of the unscrupulous son. Upon him was also conferred that emblem of purity of character or of high service to the Church, the Golden Rose.

The celebration of the Jubilee in the opening year of the new century, which was to be so eventful, brought hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the holy city, and the great sums which were collected were reserved for the Turkish crusade, or employed for the advancement of the Borgias. The bull announcing the festival offered to those visiting Rome free indulgence for the most grievous sins.

Burchard, II. 591-593.

In glaring contrast to the religious ends with which the Jubilee was associated in the minds of the pilgrims, Caesar entered Rome, in February, surrounded with all the trappings of military conquest. Among the festivities provided to relieve the tedium of religious occupations was a Spanish bull-fight. The square of St. Peter’s was enclosed with a railing and the spectators looked on while the pope’s son, Caesar, killed five bulls. The head of the last he severed with a single stroke of his sword.

Another of the fearful tragedies of the Borgia family filled the atmosphere of this holy year with its smothering fumes, the murder of Lucretia’s husband, the duke of Besiglia, to whom she had borne a son.

Rodrigo, who was baptized in St. Peter’s, Nov. 1, 1499, the 16 cardinals then in Rome, many ambassadors and other dignitaries being present. In 1501 he was invested with the duchy of Sermoneta. Burchard, II. 675, 578; III. 170.

With such scenes the new century was introduced in the papal city. But the end was not yet. The appointment of cardinals had been prostituted into a convenient device for filling the papal coffers and advancing the schemes of the papal family. In 1493 Alexander added 12 to the sacred college, including Alexander Farnese, afterwards Paul III., and brother to the pope’s mistress. From these creations more than 100,000 ducats are said to have been realized.

Infessura, p. 293.

One iniquity only led to another, Cardinal Orsini, while on a visit to the pope, was taken prisoner. His palace was dismantled, and other members of the family seized and their castles confiscated. The cardinal’s mother, aged fourscore, secured from Alexander, upon the payment of 2,000 ducats and a costly pearl which Orsini’s mistress had in her possession and, dressed as a man, took to Alexander,

Burchard, III. 236.

The last of Alexander’s notable achievements for his family was the marriage of Lucretia to Alfonso, son of Hercules, duke of Ferrara, 1502. The young duke was 24, and a widower. The prejudices of his father were removed through the good offices of the king of France and a reduction of the tribute due from Ferrara, as a papal fief, from 400 ducats to 100 florins, the college of cardinals giving their assent. While the negotiations were going on, Alexander, during an absence of three months from Rome, confided his correspondence and the transaction of his business to the hands of his daughter. This appointment made the college of cardinals subject to her.

Lucretia entered with zest into the settlement of the preliminaries leading up to the betrothal and into the preparations for the nuptials. When the news of the signing of the marriage contract reached Rome, early in September, 1501, she went to S. Maria del Popolo, accompanied by 300 knights and four bishops, and gave public thanks. On the way she took off her cloak, said to be worth 300 ducats, and gave it to her buffoon. Putting it on, he rode through the streets crying out, "Hurrah for the most illustrious duchess of Ferrara. Hurrah for Alexander VI."

Burchard, III. 161 sq.

The rest of the night was spent in a banquet in the Vatican, when comedies were rendered, in which Caesar was one of the leading figures. To their credit be it said, that some of the cardinals and other dignitaries preferred to retire early. The week which followed was filled with entertainments, including a bull-fight on St. Peter’s square, in which Caesar again was entered as a matador.

The festivities were brought to a close Jan. 6th, 1502. 150 mules carried the bride’s trousseau and other baggage. The lavish father had told her to take what she would. Her dowry in money was 100,000 ducats. A brilliant cavalcade, in which all the cardinals and ambassadors and the magistrates of the municipality took part, accompanied the party to the city gates and beyond, while Cardinal Francesco Borgia accompanied the party the whole journey. In this whole affair, in spite of ourselves, sympathy for a father supplants our indignation at his perfidy in violating the sacred vows of a Catholic priest and the pledge of the supreme pontiff. Alexander followed the cavalcade as far as he could with his eye, changing his position from window to window. But no mention is made by any of the writers of the bride’s mother. Was she also a witness of the gayeties from some concealed or open standing-place?

Lucretia never returned to Rome. And so this famous woman, whose fortunes awaken the deepest interest and also the deepest sympathy, passes out from the realm of this history and she takes her place in the family annals of the noble house of Este. She gained the respect of the court and the admiration of the city, living a quiet, domestic life till her death in 1519. Few mortals have seen transpire before their own eyes and in so short a time so much of dissemblance and crime as she. She was not forty when she died. The old representation, which made her the heroine of the dagger and the poisoned cup and guilty of incest, has given way to the milder judgment of Reumont and Gregorovius, with whom Pastor agrees. While they do not exonerate her from all profligacy, they rescue her from being an abandoned Magdalen, and make appeal to our considerate judgment by showing that she was made by her father an instrument of his ambitions for his family and that at last she exhibited the devotion of a wife and of a mother. Her son, Hercules, who reigned till 1559, was the husband of Renée, the princess who welcomed Calvin and Clement Marot to her court.

Death finally put an end to the scandals of Alexander’s reign. After an entertainment given by Cardinal Hadrian, the pope and his son Caesar were attacked with fever. It was reported that the poison which they had prepared for a cardinal was by mistake or intentionally put into the cups they themselves used.

The question of whether or no poison was the cause of the pope’s death must be regarded as an open one. This is the view taken by Gregorovius, Roscoe, I. 193 sq., Reumont, Pastor, III. 499. Creighton, IV. 43, and Hergenröther, III. 987, are against the theory of poisoning. Neither Burchard nor the ambassador of Venice speak of poison. The ambassador of Mantua, writing on the 19th, denies the charge, which was freely made on the streets. Ranke, D. röm. Päpste, p. 35, distinctly decides for poisoning. So also Hase, Kirchengesch., III. 353. Many contemporary writers pronounced for poisoning, Guicciardini, Cardinal Bembo, Jovius, Cardinal Aegidius, etc. Alexander’s physician gave as the immediate cause of death apoplexy. Against the theory of poisoning is the fact that Cardinal Hadrian was also taken sick. On the other hand is the evidence that Alexander’s body immediately after death was bloated and disfigured and his mouth was filled with foam, and that Caesar was taken sick at the same time with the same symptoms, a fact which Gregorovius, VII. 521, pronounces the strongest evidence for the theory of poisoning.

In passing an estimate upon Alexander VI., it must be remembered that the popular and also the carefully expressed judgments of contemporaries are against him.

There is one exception, the address made in the conclave after Alexander’s death by the bishop of Gallipolis. See Garnett’s art. Engl. Hist. Rev., 1892, p. 311 sq., giving the text of the British Museum, the only copy in existence.

Alexander’s intellectual abilities have abundant proof in the results of his diplomacy by which be was enabled to plot for the political advancement of Caesar Borgia, with the support of France, at whose feet he had at one time been humbled, by his winning back the support of the disaffected cardinals, and by his immunity from personal hurt through violence, unless it be through poison at last. That which marks him out for unmitigated condemnation is his lack of principle. Mental ability, which is ascribed to the devil himself, is no substitute for moral qualities. Perfidy, treachery, greed, lust and murder were stored up in Alexander’s heart.

Bishop Creighton, IV. 44, lays stress on the fact that hypocrisy was not added to Alexander’s other vices.

To Alexander nothing was sacred,—office, virtue, marriage, or life. As cardinal he was present at the nuptials of the young Julia Farnese, and probably at that very moment conceived the purpose of corrupting her, and in a few months she was his acknowledged mistress. The cardinal of Gurk said to the Florentine envoy, "When I think of the pope’s life and the lives of some of his cardinals, I shudder at the thought of remaining in the curia, and I will have nothing to do with it unless God reforms His Church." It was a biting thrust when certain German knights, summoned to Rome, wrote to the pontiff that they were good Christians and served the Count Palatine, who worshipped God, loved justice, hated vice and was never accused of adultery. "We believe," they went on, "in a just God who will punish with eternal flames robbery, sacrilege, violence, abuse of the patrimony of Christ, concubinage, simony and other enormities by which the Christian Church is being scandalized."

Burchard, III. 110.

It is pleasant to turn to the few acts of this last pontificate of the 15th century which have another aspect than pure selfishness or depravity. In 1494, Alexander canonized Anselm without, however, referring to the Schoolman’s great treatise on the atonement, or his argument for the existence of God.

Mansi, XXXII. 533 sq.

In accord with the later practice of the Roman Catholic Church, Alexander restricted the freedom of the press, ordering that no volume should be published without episcopal sanction.

Decretum de libris non sine censura imprimendis, 1501. Reusch, Index, p. 54.

If any papal bull might be expected to have the quality of inerrancy, it is the bull bearing so closely on the destinies of the great American continent, and through it on the world’s history. But the terms of the bull of May 4th were set aside a year after its issue by the political treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, which shifted the line to a distance 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. And the centuries have rudely overturned the supreme pontiff’s solemn bequest until not a foot of land on this Western continent remains in the possession of the kingdoms to which it was given. Putting aside the distinctions between doctrinal and disciplinary decisions, which are made by many Catholic exponents of the dogma of papal infallibility, Alexander’s bull conferring the Americas, as Innocent III.’s bull pronouncing the stipulations of the Magna Charta forever null, should afford a sufficient refutation of the dogma.

The character and career of Alexander VI. afford an argument against the theory of the divine institution and vicarial prerogatives of the papacy which the doubtful exegesis of our Lord’s words to Peter ought not to be allowed to counteract. If we leave out all the wicked popes of the 9th and 10th centuries, forget for a moment the cases of Honorius and other popes charged with heresy, and put aside the offending popes of the Renaissance period and all the bulls which sin against common reason, such as Innocent VIII.’s bull against witchcraft, Alexander is enough to forbid that theory. Could God commit his Church for 12 years to such a monster? It is fair to recognize that Catholic historians feel the difficulty, although they find a way to explain it away. Cardinal Hergenröther says that, Christendom was delivered from a great offence by Alexander’s death, but even in his case, unworthy as this pope was, his teachings are to be obeyed, and in him the promise made to the chair of St. Peter was fulfilled (Matt. 23:2, 3). In no instance did Alexander VI. prescribe to the Church anything contrary to morals or the faith, and never did he lead her astray in disciplinary decrees which, for the most part, were excellent."

Hergenröther-Kirsch, II. 987.

In like strain, Pastor writes:

III. 503

In such reasoning, the illustrations beg the question. No matter how clean or unclean the hands may be which handle it, lead remains lead, and no matter whether the setting be gold or tin, an opaque stone remains opaque which is held by them. The personal opinion of Leo the Great will not be able to stand against the growing judgment of mankind, that the Head of the Church does not commit the keeping of sacred truth to wicked hands or confide the pastorate over the Church to a man of unholy and lewd lips. The papal theory of the succession of Peter, even if there were no other hostile historic testimony, would founder on the personality of Alexander VI., who set an example of all depravity. Certainly the true successors of Peter will give in their conduct some evidence of the fulfilment of Christ’s words "the kingdom of heaven is within you." Who looks for an illustration of obedience to the mandates of the Most High to the last pontiff of the 15th century!

Pastor, in the course of prolonged estimates, Gesch. der Päpste, III. pp. vi, 601sq., etc., says: "The life of this voluptuary—Genussmenschen —a man of untamed sensuality, contradicted at every point the demands of him he was called upon to represent. With unrestrained abandon, he gave himself up to a vicious life until his end." Ranke thus expresses himself, Hist. of the Popes, Germ. ed., I. 32. "All his life through, Alexander was bent on nothing else than to enjoy the world, to live pleasurably, to satisfy his passions and ambitions." The estimate of Gregorovius, City of Rome, VII. 525, is this: "No one can ever discover in Alexander’s history any other guiding principle than the contemptible one of aggrandizing his children at any cost. To the despicable objects of nepotism and self-preservation he sacrificed his own conscience, the happiness of nations, the existence of Italy and the good of the Church." Bishop Creighton, IV. 43-49, lays such elaborate emphasis upon Alexander’s knowledge of politics, firmness of purpose and affability of manners that one loses the impression of the baseness of his morals and the sacrilege to which he subjected his office and himself. He seems to have been influenced by Roscoe’s presentation of Alexander’s "many great qualities," I. 195.

§ 55. Julius II., the Warrior-Pope. 1503–1513.

Alexander’s successor, Pius III., a nephew of Pius II., and a man of large family, succumbed, within a month after his election, to the gout and other infirmities. He was followed by Julian Rovere, Alexander’s old rival, who, as cardinal, had played a conspicuous part for more than 30 years. He proved to be the ablest and most energetic pontiff the Church had had since the days of Innocent III. and Gregory IX. in the 13th century.

At Alexander’s death, Caesar Borgia attempted to control the situation. He afterwards told Machiavelli that he had made provision for every exigency except the undreamed-of conjunction of his own and his father’s sickness.

The Prince, ch. VII.

The election of Julian Rovere, who assumed the name of Julius II., was accomplished with despatch October 31, 1503, after bribery had been freely resorted to. The Spanish cardinals, 11 in number and still in a measure under Caesar’s control, gave their votes to the successful candidate on condition that Caesar should be recognized as gonfalonier of the church. The faithful papal master-of-ceremonies, whose Diary we have had occasion to draw on so largely, was appointed bishop of Orta, but died two years later. Born in Savona of humble parentage and appointed to the sacred college by his uncle, Sixtus IV., Julius had recently returned to Rome after an exile of nearly 10 years. The income from his numerous bishoprics and other dignities made him the richest of the cardinals. Though piety was not one of the new pontiff’s notable traits, his pontificate furnished an agreeable relief from the coarse crimes and domestic scandals of Alexander’s reign. It is true, he had a family of three daughters, one of whom, Felice, was married into the Orsini family in 1506, carrying with her a splendid dowry of 15,000 ducats. But the marriage festivities were not appointed for the Vatican, nor did the children give offence by their ostentatious presence in the pontifical palace. Julius also took care of his nephews. Two of them were appointed to the sacred college, Nov. 29, 1503, and later two more were honored with the same dignity. For making the Spanish scholar, Ximenes, cardinal, Julius deserved well of other ages as well as his own. He was a born ruler. He had a dignified and imposing presence and a bright, penetrating eye. Under his white hair glowed the intellectual fire of youth. He was rapid in his movements even to impetuosity, and brave even to daring. Defeats that would have disheartened even the bravest seemed only to intensify Julius’ resolution. If his language was often violent, the excuse is offered that violence of speech was common at that time. As a cardinal he had shown himself a diplomat rather than a saint, and as pope he showed himself a warrior rather than a priest. When Michael Angelo, who was ordered to execute the pope’s statue in bronze, was representing Julius with his right hand raised, the pope asked, "What are you going to put into the left?" "It may be a book," answered the artist. "Nay, give me a sword, for I am no scholar," was the pope’s reply. Nothing could be more characteristic.

The statue was placed in front of St. Petronio in Bologna. The left hand held neither book nor sword, but the keys. Pastor, III. 569, says,in einer derartigen Persönlichkeit lag mehr Stoff zu einem Könige und Feldherrn als zu einem Priester

Julius’ administration at once brought repose and confidence to the sacred college and Rome. If he did not keep his promise to abide by the protocol adopted in the conclave calling for the assembling of a council within two years, he may be forgiven on the ground of the serious task he had before him in strengthening the political authority of the papal see. This was the chief aim of his pontificate. He deserves the title of the founder of the State of the Church, a realm that, with small changes, remained papal territory till 1870. This end being secured, he devoted himself to redeeming Italy from its foreign invaders. Three foes stood in his way, Caesar and the despots of the Italian cities, the French who were intrenched in Milan and Genoa, and the Spaniards who held Naples and Sicily. His effort to rescue Italy for the Italians won for him the grateful regard due an Italian patriot. Like Innocent III., he closed his reign with an oecumenical council.

Caesar Borgia returned to Rome, was recognized as gonfalonier and given apartments in the Vatican. Julius had been in amicable relations with the prince in France and advanced his marriage, and Caesar wrote that in him he had found a second father. But Caesar now that Alexander was dead, was as a galley without a rudder. He was an upstart; Julius a man of power and far-reaching plans. Prolonged co-operation between the two was impossible. The one was sinister, given to duplicity; the other frank and open to brusqueness. The encroachment of Venice upon the Romagna gave the occasion at once for Caesar’s fall and for the full restoration of papal authority in that region. Supporters Caesar had none who could be relied upon in the day of ill success. He no longer had the power which the control of patronage gives. Julius demanded the keys of the towns of the Romagna as a measure necessary to the dislodgment of Venice. Caesar yielded, but withdrew to Ostia, meditating revenge. He was seized, carried back to Rome and placed in the castle of S. Angelo, which had been the scene of his dark crimes. He was obliged to give up the wealth gotten at his father’s death and to sign a release of Forli and other towns. Liberty was then given him to go where be pleased. He accepted protection from the Spanish captain, Gonsalvo de Cordova, but on his arrival in Naples the Spaniard, with despicable perfidy, seized the deceived man and sent him to Spain, August, 1504. For two years he was held a prisoner, when he escaped to the court of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. He was killed at the siege of Viana, 1507, aged 31. Thus ended the career of the man who had once been the terror of Rome, whom Ranke calls "a virtuoso in crime," and Machiavelli chose as the model of a civil ruler. This political writer had met Caesar after Julius’ elevation, and in his Prince

The Prince, written in 1515, was dedicated to Leo X.’s nephew, Lorenzo de’ Medici, at a time when it was contemplated giving Lorenzo a large slice of Italian territory to govern. See Villari: Machiavelli, III. 372-424. Also Louis Dyer: Machiavelli and the Modern State, Boston, 1904. Caesar Borgia had his laureate, who sung his praises in 12 Latin lyrics, Peter Franciscus Justulus of Spoleto. Jupiter, who is represented as about to destroy the world for its wickedness, perceives that it contains at least one excellent young man, Caesar, and sends Mercury to urge him to take up arms for the world’s deliverance. Engl. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1902, pp. 15-20.

Julius was also actively engaged in repairing some of the other evils of Alexander’s reign and making amends for its injustices. He restored Sermoneta to the dukes of Gaetani. The document which pronounced severe reprobation upon Alexander ran, "our predecessor, desiring to enrich his own kin, through no zeal for justice, but by fraud and deceit, sought for causes to deprive the Gaetani of their possessions." With decisive firmness, he announced his purpose to assert his lawful authority over the papal territory and, accompanied by 9 cardinals, he left Rome at the head of 500 men and proceeded to make good the announcement. Perugia was quickly brought to terms; and, aided by the French, the pope entered Bologna, against which he had launched the interdict. Returning to Rome, he was welcomed as a conqueror. The victorious troops passed under triumphal arches, including a reproduction of Constantine’s arch erected on St. Peter’s square; and, accompanied by 28 members of the sacred college, Julius gave solemn thanks in St. Peter’s.

The expedition is described by de Grassis, the new master of ceremonies at the papal palace, who accompanied the expedition, and also by Aegidius of Viterbo,

The next to be brought to terms was Venice. In vain had the pope, through letters and legates, called upon the doge to give up Rimini, Faenza, Forli and other parts of the Romagna upon which he had laid his hand. In March, 1508, he joined the alliance of Cambrai, the other parties being Louis XII. and the emperor Maximilian, and later, Ferdinand of Spain. This agreement decided in cold blood upon the division of the Venetian possessions, and bound the parties to a war against the Turk. France was confirmed in the tenure of Milan, and given Cremona and Brescia. Maximilian was to have Verona, Padua and Aquileja; Naples, the Venetian territories in Southern Italy; Hungary, Dalmatia; Savoy, Cyprus; and the Apostolic see, the lands of which it had been dispossessed. It was high-handed robbery, even though a pope was party to it. Julius, who had promised to add the punishments of the priestly office to the force of arms, proceeded with merciless severity, and placed the republic under the interdict, April 27, 1509. In vain did Venice appeal to God and a general council. Past sins enough were written against her to call for severe treatment. She was forced to surrender Rimini, Faenza and Ravenna, and was made to drink the cup of humiliation to its dregs. The city renounced her claim to nominate to bishoprics and benefices and tax the clergy without the papal consent. The Adriatic she was forced to open to general commerce. Her envoys, who appeared in Roma to make public apology for the sins of the proud state, were subjected to the insult of listening on their knees to a service performed outside the walls of St. Peter’s and lasting an hour; at every verse of the Miserere the pope and 12 cardinals, each with a golden rod, touched them. Then, service over, the doors of the cathedral were thrown open and absolution pronounced.

Pastor, III. 643, contents himself with the simple mention of the absolution of the Venetian’s, and omits all reference to the humiliating conditions. The Venetian scribblers let loose their pens against Julius and, among other charges, made against him the charge of sodomy. Pastor, III. 644, Note.

Julius’ plans were next directed against the French, the impudent invaders of Northern Italy and claimants of sovereignty over it. Times had changed since the pope, as cardinal Julian Rovere, had accompanied the French army under Charles VIII. The absolution of Venice was tantamount to the pope’s withdrawal from the alliance of Cambrai. By making Venice his ally, he hoped to bring Ferrara again under the authority of the holy see. The duchy had flourished under the warm support of the French.

Julius now made a far-reaching stroke in securing the help of the Swiss, who had been fighting under the banners of France. The hardy mountaineers, who now find it profitable to entertain tourists from all over the world, then found it profitable to sell their services in war. With the aid of their vigorous countryman, Bishop Schinner of Sitten, afterwards made cardinal, the pope contracted for 6,000 Swiss mercenaries for five years. The localities sending them received 13,000 gulden a year, and each soldier 6 francs a month, and the officers, twice that sum. As chaplain of the Swiss troops, Zwingli went to Rome three times, a course of which his patriotism afterwards made him greatly ashamed. The descendants of these Swiss mercenaries defended Louis XVI., and their heroism is commemorated by Thorwaldsen’s lion, cut into the rock at Lucerne. Swiss guards, dressed in yellow suits, to this day patrol the approaches and halls of the Vatican.

Zwingli’s friend, Thomas Platter (1499-1582), in speaking in his Autobiography of his travels in Germany as a boy to get knowledge and begging his bread, mentions how willing the people were to give him ear, "for they were very fond of the Swiss." At Breslau a family was ready to adopt him partly on this ground. After the defeat of Marigano, 1515, it was a common saying, so Platter says, "The Swiss have lost their good luck." On one occasion near Dresden, after a good dinner, to which he had been treated, he was taken in to see the mother of the home, who was on her death-bed. She said to Platter and his Swiss companions, "I have heard so many good things about the Swiss that I was very anxious to see one before my death." See Whitcomb, Renaissance Source-Book, p. 108; Monroe, Thos. Platter, p. 107.

The French king, Louis XII. (1498–1515), sought to break Julius’ power by adding to the force of arms the weight of a religious assembly and, at his instance, the French bishops met in council at Tours, September, 1510, and declared that the pope had put aside the keys of St. Peter, which his predecessors had employed, and seized the sword of Paul. They took the ground that princes were justified in opposing him with force, even to withdrawing obedience and invading papal territory.

Mansi, XXXII. 555-559.

At the opening of the campaign, Julius was in bed with a sickness which was supposed to be mortal; but to the amazement of his court, he suddenly arose and, in the dead of Winter, January, 1511, betook himself to the camp of the papal forces. His promptness of action was in striking contrast to the dilatory policy of Louis, who spent his time writing letters and summoning ecclesiastical assemblies when he ought to have been on the march. From henceforth till his death, the pope wore a beard, as he is represented in Raphael’s famous portrait.

Creighton, IV. 123, unguardedly says that Julius was the first pope who let his beard grow. Many of the early bishops of Rome, as depicted in St. Peter’s, wore beards. So did Clement VII. after him, and other popes.

In the meantime the French were carrying on the Council of Pisa. The pope prudently counteracted its influence by calling a council to meet in the Lateran. Christendom was rent by two opposing ecclesiastical councils as well as by two opposing armies. The armies met in decisive conflict under the walls of the old imperial city of Ravenna. The leader of the French, Gaston de Foix, nephew of the French king, though only 24, approved himself, in spite of his youth, one of the foremost captains of his age. Bologna had fallen before his arms, and now Ravenna yielded to the same necessity after a bloody battle. The French army numbered 25,000, the army of the League 20,000. In the French camp was the French legate, Cardinal Sanseverino, mounted and clad in steel armor, his tall form towering above the rest. Prominent on the side of the allied army was the papal legate, Cardinal de’ Medici, clad in white, and Giulio Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The battle took place on Easter Day, 1512. Gaston de Foix, thrown to the ground by the fall of his horse, was put to death by some of the seasoned Spanish soldiers whom Gonsalvo had trained. The victor, whose battle cry was "Let him that loves me follow me," was borne into the city in his coffin. Rimini, Forli and other cities of the Romagna opened their gates to the French. Cardinal Medici was in their hands.

The papal cause seemed to be hopelessly lost, but the spirit of Julius rose with the defeat. He is reported to have exclaimed, "I will stake 100,000 ducats and my crown that I will drive the French out of Italy," and the victory of Ravenna proved to be another Cannae. The hardy Swiss, whose numbers Cardinal Schinner had increased to 18,000, and the Venetians pushed the campaign, and the barbarians, as Julius called the French, were forced to give up what they had gained, to surrender Milan and gradually to retire across the Alps. Parma and Piacenza, by virtue of the grant of Mathilda, passed into his hands, as did also Reggio. The victory was celebrated in Rome on an elaborate scale. Cannons boomed from S. Angelo, and thanks were given in all the churches. In recognition of their services, the pope gave to the Swiss two large banners and the permanent title of Protectors of the Apostolic see—auxiliatores sedis apostolicae. Such was the end of this remarkable campaign.

Julius purchased Siena from the emperor for 30,000 ducats and, with the aid of the seasoned Spanish troops, took Florence and restored the Medici to power. In December, 1513, Maximilian, who at one time conceived the monstrous idea of combining with his imperial dignity the office of supreme pontiff, announced his support of the Lateran council, the pope having agreed to use all the spiritual measures within his reach to secure the complete abasement of Venice. The further execution of the plans was prevented by the pope’s death. In his last hours, in a conversation with Cardinal Grimani, he pounded on the floor with his cane, exclaiming, "If God gives me life, I will also deliver the Neapolitans from the yoke of the Spaniards and rid the land of them."

Pastor, III. 725.

The Pisan council had opened Sept. 1, 1511, with only two archbishops and 14 bishops present. First and last 6 cardinals attended, Carvajal, Briçonnet, Prie, d’Albret, Sanseverino and Borgia. The Universities of Paris Toulouse and Poictiers were represented by doctors. After holding three sessions, it moved to Milan, where the victory of Ravenna gave it a short breath of life. When the French were defeated, it again moved to Asti in Piedmont, where it held a ninth session, and then it adjourned to Lyons, where it dissolved of itself.

Hefele-Hergenröther, VIII. 520.

Very different in its constitution and progress was the Fifth Lateran, the last oecumenical council of the Middle Ages, and the 18th in the list of oecumenical councils, as accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. It lasted for nearly five years, and closed on the eve of the nailing of the XCV theses on the church door in Wittenberg. It is chiefly notable for what it failed to do rather than for anything it did. The only one of its declarations which is of more than temporary interest was the deliverance, reaffirming Boniface’s theory of the supremacy of the Roman pontiff over all potentates and individuals whatsoever.

In his summons calling the council, Julius deposed the cardinals, who had entered into the Pisan synod, as schismatics and sons of darkness.

A pamphlet war was waged over the council. Among the writers on the papal side was Thomas de Vio Gaeta, general of the Dominican order and afterwards famous as Cardinal Cajetan, who had the colloquies with Luther. His tracts were ordered burnt by Louis XII. He took the ground that no council can be oecumenical which has not the pope’s support. An account of this literary skirmish is given by Hefele-Hergenröther, VIII. 470-480.

At the 2d session, Cajetan dilated at length on the pet papal theory of the two swords.

In the 4th session, the Venetian, Marcello, pronounced a eulogy upon Julius which it would be hard to find excelled for fulsome flattery in the annals of oratory. After having borne intolerable cold, so the eulogist declared, and sleepless nights and endured sickness in the interests of the Church, and having driven the French out of Italy, there remained for the pontiff the greater triumphs of peace. Julius must be pastor, shepherd, physician, ruler, administrator and, in a word, another God on earth.

Tu pastor, tu medicus, tu gubernator, tu cultor, tu denique alter Deus in terris, Mansi, XXXII. 761. Hefele-Hergenröther VII. 528-531, pronounce this expression, God on earth, used before by Gregory II., a rhetorical flourish and nothing more. See also Pastor, III. 725.

At the 5th session, held during the pope’s last illness, a bull was read, severely condemning simony at papal elections. The remaining sessions of the council were held under Julius’ successor.

When Julius came to die, he was not yet 70. No man of his time had been an actor in so many stirring scenes. On his death-bed he called for Paris de Grassis, his master of ceremonies, and reminded him how little respect had been paid to the bodies of deceased popes within his recollection. Some of them had been left indecently nude. He then made him promise to see to it that he should have decent care and burial.

De Grassis reports the rumors abroad concerning the pope’s mortal malady. One of them was the Gallic disease, and another that the pope’s stomach had given way under excessive indulgence. He also speaks of the great number who went to look at the pope’s corpse and to kiss his feet. Döllinger, III. 432.

The scenes which ensued were very different from those which followed upon the death of Alexander VI. A sense of awe and reverence filled the city. The dead pontiff was looked upon as a patriot, and his services to civil order in Rome and its glory counterbalanced his deficiencies as a priest of God.

Guicciardini pronounces Julius a priest only in name. A letter dated Rome, Feb. 24, 1513, and quoted by Brosch, p. 363, has this statement, hic pontifex nos omnes, omnem Italiam a Barbarorum et Gallorum manibus eripuit, an expression used by Aegidius and Marcello before the Lateran council. See also Paris de Grassis-in Döllinger, p. 482. Pastor, III. 732, and Hergenröther, Conciliengesch., VIII. 535, justify Julius’ attention to war on the ground that he was fighting in a righteous cause and for possessions he had held as temporal prince ever since the 8th century. The right of a pope to defend the papal state is inherent in the very existence of a papal state. Even a saint, Leo IX., urges Pastor, p. 741, followed the camp.

It was of vast profit that the Vatican had been free from the domestic scandals which had filled it so long. From a worldly standpoint, Julius had exalted the papal throne to the eminence of the national thrones of Europe. In the terrific convulsion which Luther’s onslaughts produced, the institution of the papacy might have fallen in ruins had not Julius re-established it by force of arms. But in vain will the student look for signs that Julius II. had any intimation of the new religious reforms which the times called for and Luther began. What measures this pope, strong in will and bold in execution, might have employed if the movement in the North had begun in his day, no one can surmise. The monk of Erfurt walked the streets of Rome during this pontificate for the first and only time. While Luther was ascending the scala santa on his knees and running about to the churches, wishing his parents were in purgatory that he might pray them out, Julius was having perfected a magnificently jewelled tiara costing 200,000 ducats, which he put on for the first time on the anniversary of his coronation, 1511. These two men, both of humble beginnings, would have been more a match for each other than Luther and Julius’ successor, the Medici, the man of luxurious culture.

See Ranke: Hist. of the Popes, I. 35.

Under Julius II. the papal finances flourished. Great as were the expenditures of his campaigns, he left plate and coin estimated to be worth 400,000 ducats. A portion of this fund was the product of the sale of indulgences. He turned the forgiveness of sins for the present time and in purgatory into a matter of merchandise.

Pastor, III. 575, condemns Julius under this head, tadelnswerth erscheint dass das Ablassgeschäft vielfach zu einer Finanzoperation wurde

In another place, Julius will be presented from the standpoint of art and culture, whose splendid patron he was. What man ever had the privilege of bringing together three artists of such consummate genius as Bramante, Michael Angelo and Raphael! His portrait in the Pitti gallery, Florence, forms a rich study for those who seek in the lines and colors of Raphael’s art the secret of the pontiff’s power.

An original cartoon of this portrait is preserved in the Corsini Florence. In 1889 I met Professor Weizsäcker of Tübingen in Florence standing before Julius’ portrait and studying it. I had been with him in his home before he started on his journey, and he told me that one of the chief pleasures which he was anticipating from his Italian trip was the study of that portrait of one of the most vigorous—thatkräftig —of the popes.

In the history of the Western Continent, Julius also has some place. In 1504 he created an archbishopric and two bishoprics of Hispaniola, or Hayti. The prelates to whom they were assigned never crossed the seas. Seven years later, 1511, he revoked these creations and established the sees of San Domingo and Concepcion de la Vega on the island of Hayti and the see of San Juan in Porto Rico, all three subject to the metropolitan supervision of the see of Seville.

§ 56. Leo X. 1513–1521.

The warlike Julius II. was followed on the pontifical throne by the voluptuary, Leo X.,—the prelate whose iron will and candid mind compel admiration by a prince given to the pursuit of pleasure and an adept in duplicity. Leo loved ease and was without high aims. His Epicurean conception of the supreme office of Christendom was expressed in a letter he sent a short time after his election to his brother Julian. In it were these words, "Let us enjoy the papacy, for God has given it to us."

These words are upon the testimony of the contemporary ambassador, Marino Giorgi, and cannot be set aside. Similar testimony is given by a biographer of Leo in Cod. Vat., 3920, which Döllinger quotes, Papstthum, p. 484, and which runs volo ut pontificatu isto quam maxime perfruamur. Pastor, IV. 353, while trying to break the force of the testimony for Leo’s words, pronounces the love of pleasure a fundamental and insatiable element of his nature—eine unersättliche Vergügungssucht, etc. Hefele-Knöpfler, Kirchengesch., p. 488, speak in the same vein when they say, Des neuen Papstes vorzüglichstes Streben galt heiterem Lebensgenuss, etc.

Born in Florence, Dec. 11, 1475, Giovanni de’ Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had every opportunity which family distinction, wealth and learned tutors, such as Poliziano, could give. At 7 he received the tonsure, and at once the world of ecclesiastical preferment was opened to the child. Louis XI. of France presented him with the abbey of Fonte Dolce, and at 8 he was nominated to the archbishopric of Aix, the nomination, however, not being confirmed. A canonry in each of the cathedral churches of Tuscany was set apart for him, and his appointments soon reached the number of 27, one of them being the abbacy of Monte Cassino, and another the office of papal pronotary.

See Vaughan, p. 13 sq.

The highest dignities of the Church were in store for the lad and, before he had reached the age of 14, he was made cardinal-deacon by Innocent VIII., March 9, 1489. Three years later, March 8, 1492, Giovanni received in Rome formal investment into the prerogatives of his office. The letter, which Lorenzo wrote on this latter occasion, is full of the affectionate counsels of a father and the prudent suggestions of the tried man of the world, and belongs in a category with the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son. Lorenzo reminded Giovanni of his remarkable fortune in being made a prince of the church, all the more remarkable because he was not only the youngest member of the college of cardinals, but the first cardinal to receive the dignity at so tender an age. With pardonable pride, he spoke of it as the highest honor ever conferred upon the Medicean house. He warned his son that Rome was the sink of all iniquities and exhorted him to lead a virtuous life, to avoid ostentation, to rise early, an admonition the son never followed, and to use his opportunities to serve his native city. Lorenzo died a few months later.

The famous letter is given by Roscoe, Bohn’s ed., pp. 285-288, and Vaughan, p. 23 sqq.

When Julius died, Giovanni de’ Medici was only 37. In proceeding to Rome, he was obliged to be carried in a litter, on account of an ulcer for which an operation was performed during the meeting of the conclave. Giovanni, who belonged to the younger party, had won many friends by his affable manners and made no enemies, and his election seems to have been secured without any special effort on his part. The great-grandson of the banker, Cosimo, chose the name of Leo X. He was consecrated to the priesthood March 17, 1513, and to the episcopate March 19. The election was received by the Romans with every sign of popular approval. On the festivities of the coronation 100,000 ducats, or perhaps as much as 150,000 ducats, were expended, a sum which the frugality of Julius had stored up.

The procession was participated in by 250 abbots, bishops and archbishops. Alfonso of Este, whom Julius II. had excommunicated, led the pope’s white horse, the same one he had ridden the year before at Ravenna. On the houses and

on the arches, spanning the streets, might be seen side by side statues of Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medicean house, and of the Olympian gods and nymphs. On one arch at the Piazza di Parione were depicted Perseus, Apollo, Moses and Mercury, sacred and mythological characters conjoined, as Alexander Severus joined the busts of Abraham and Orpheus in his palace in the third century. A bishop, afterwards Cardinal Andrea della Valle, placed on his arch none but ancient divinities, Apollo, Bacchus, Mercury, Hercules and Venus, together with fauns and Ganymede. Antonio of San Marino, the silversmith, decorated his house with a marble statue of Venus, under which were inscribed the words—

As a ruler, Leo had none of the daring and strength of his predecessor. He pursued a policy of opportunism and stooped to the practice of duplicity with his allies as well as with his enemies. On all occasions he was ready to shift to the winning side. To counteract the designs of the French upon Northern Italy, he entered with Maximilian, Henry VIII. and Ferdinand of Spain into the treaty of Mechlin, April 5, 1513. He had the pleasure of seeing the French beaten by Henry VIII. at the battle of the Spurs

August 15, 1513. The Scotch king, James IV., who had married Henry’s sister, Margaret, joined the French. The memorable defeat at Flodden followed, Sept. 9, 1513. James and the flower of the Scotch nobility fell. Leo recognized Henry’s victories by conferring upon him the consecrated sword and hat which it was the pope’s custom to set aside on Christmas day.

The same month Leo came to an understanding with Maximilian and Spain, whereby Julian de’ Medici, the pope’s brother, should receive Parma, Piacenza and Reggio. Leo purchased Modena from the emperor for 40,000 ducats, and was sending 60,000 ducats monthly for the support of the troops of his secret allies.

At the very same moment, faithless to his Spanish allies, the pope was carrying on negotiations with Venice to drive them out of Italy.

Louis’ son-in-law and successor, Francis I., a warlike and enterprising prince, held the attention of Europe for nearly a quarter of a century with his campaigns against Charles V., whose competitor he was for the imperial crown. Carrying out Louis’ plans, and accompanied by an army of 35,000 men with 60 cannon, he marched in the direction of Milan, inflicting at Marignano, Sept., 1515, a disastrous defeat upon the 20,000 Swiss mercenaries.

The battle is vividly described by D. J. Dierauer, Gesch. der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, 2 vols., Gotha, 1892, vol. II. 451 sqq. On the second day of the battle, the arrival of the Venetian troops gave victory to the French. Of the 12,000 left on the field dead, the most were Swiss. Before entering the battle, as was their custom, the mountaineers engaged in prayer, and the leader, Steiner of Zug, after repeating the usual formula of devotion unto death, threw, in the name of the Trinity, a handful of earth over his fellow-soldiers’ heads.

They met at Bologna. Conducted by 20 cardinals, Francis entered Leo’s presence and, uncovering his head, bowed three times and kissed the pontiff’s hand and foot. Leo wore a tiara glittering with gems, and a mantle, heavy with cloth of gold. The French orator set forth how the French kings from time immemorial had been protectors of the Apostolic see, and how Francis had crossed the mountains and rivers to show his submission. For three days pontiff and king dwelt together in the same palace. It was agreed that Leo yield up Parma and Piacenza to the French, and a concordat was worked out which took the place of the Pragmatic Sanction. This document, dating from the Council of Basel, and ratified by the synod of Bourges, placed the nomination to all French bishoprics, abbeys and priories in the hands of the king, and this clause the concordat preserved. On the other hand, the clauses in the Pragmatic Sanction were omitted which made the pope subject to general councils and denied to him the right to collect annates from French benefices higher and lower.

The election of a successor to the emperor Maximilian, who died Jan., 1519, put Leo’s diplomacy to the severest test. Ferdinand the Catholic, who had seen the Moorish domination in Spain come to an end and the Americas annexed to his crown, and had been invested by Julius II. in 1510 with the kingdom of Naples, died in 1516, leaving his grandson, Charles, heir to his dominions. Now, by the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian, Charles was heir of the Netherlands and the lands of the Hapsburgs and natural claimant of the imperial crown. Leo preferred Francis, but Charles had the right of lineage and the support of the German people. To prevent Charles’ election, and to avoid the ill-will of Francis, he agitated through his legate, Cajetan, the election of either Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, or the elector of Brandenburg. Secretly he entered into the plans of Francis and allowed the archbishops of Treves and Cologne to be assured of their promotion to the sacred college, provided they would cast their electoral vote for the French king. But to be sure of his ground, no matter who might be elected, Leo entered also into a secret agreement with Charles. Both candidates had equal reason for believing they had the pope on their side.

Pastor, IV. 185 sq., strongly condemns Leo’s two-tongued diplomacy, doppelzüngiges Verhalten. Leo’s brief, authorizing Francis to make a promise of red hats to the two archbishops, is dated March 12, 1519.

In his administration of the papacy, Leo X. was not unmindful of the interests of his family. Julian, his younger brother, was made gonfalonier of the Church, and was married to the sister of Francis I.’s mother. For a time he was in possession of Parma, Piacenza and Reggio. Death terminated his career, 1516. His only child, the illegitimate Hippolytus, d. 1535, was afterwards made cardinal.

The worldly hopes of the Medicean dynasty now centred in Lorenzo de’ Medici, the son of Leo’s older brother. After the deposition of Julius’ nephew, he was invested with the duchy of Urbino. In 1518 he was married to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, a member of the royal house of France. Leo’s presents to the marital pair were valued at 300,000 ducats, among them being a bedstead of tortoise-shell inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious stones. They took up their abode at Florence, but both husband and wife died a year after the marriage, leaving behind them a daughter who, as Catherine de’ Medici, became famous in the history of France and the persecution of the Huguenots. With Lorenzo’s death, the last descendant of the male line of the house founded by Cosimo de’ Medici became extinct.

In 1513 Leo admitted his nephew, Innocent Cibo, and his cousin, Julius, to the sacred college. Innocent Cibo, a young man of 21, was the son of Franceschetto Cibo, Innocent VIII.’s son, and Maddelina de’ Medici, Leo’s sister. His low morals made him altogether unfit for an ecclesiastical dignity. Julius de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII., was the bastard son of Leo’s uncle, who was killed in the Pazzi conspiracy under Sixtus IV., 1478. The impediment of the illegitimate birth was removed by a papal decree.

The investigation, started by Leo, resulted in making it appear that Julius’ mother, Floreta, and his father had agreed to regard themselves as married, though a formal service was wanting.

The Vatican was thrown into a panic in 1517 by a conspiracy directed by Cardinal Petrucci of Siena, one of the younger set of cardinals with whom the pope had been intimate. Embittered by Leo’s interference in his brother’s administration of Siena and by the deposition of the duke of Urbino, Petrucci plotted to have the pope poisoned by a physician, Battesta de Vercelli, a specialist on ulcers. The plot was discovered, and Petrucci, who came to Rome on a safe-conduct procured from the pope by the Spanish ambassador, was cast into the Marroco, the deepest dungeon of S. Angelo. On being reminded of the safe-conduct, Leo replied to the ambassador that no one was safe who was a poisoner. Cardinals Sauli and Riario were entrapped and also thrown into the castle-dungeons. Two other cardinals were suspected of being in the plot, but escaped. Petrucci and the physician were strangled to death; Riario and Sauli were pardoned. Riario, who had witnessed the dastardly assassination in the cathedral of Florence 40 years before, was the last prominent representative of the family of Sixtus IV. Torture brought forth the confession that the plotters contemplated making him pope. Leo set the price of the cardinal’s absolution high,—150,000 ducats to be paid in a year, and another 150,000 to be paid by his relatives in case Riario left his palace. He finally secured the pope’s permission to leave Rome, and died, 1521, at Naples.

One of the sensational pageants which occurred during Leo’s pontificate was on the arrival of a delegation from Portugal, 1514, to announce to the pope the obedience of its king, Emmanuel. The king sent a large number of presents, among them horses from Persia, a young panther, two leopards and a white elephant. The popular jubilation over the procession of the wild beasts reached its height when the elephant, taking water into his proboscis, spurted it over the onlookers.

The elephant became the subject of quite an extensive literature, poets joining others in setting forth his peculiarities. See Pastor, IV. 52, Note.

The Fifth Lateran resumed its sessions in April, 1513, a month after Leo’s election. The council ratified the concordat with France, and at the 8th session, Dec. 19, 1513, solemnly affirmed the doctrine of the soul’s immortality.

The concordat met with serious resistance in France both from parliament and the University of Paris on the ground that it set aside the decisions of the Councils of Constance and Basel on the question of conciliar authority, and thus overthrew the Gallican liberties. The rector of the university forbade the university printer issuing the document, but he was brought to time by Leo instructing his legate to pronounce censure against him and the university, who "thinking themselves to be wise, had become fools."

The invention of printing was recognized by the council as a gift from heaven intended for the glory of God and the propagation of good science, but the legitimate printing of books was restricted to such as might receive the sanction of the master of the palace in Rome or, elsewhere, by the sanction of the bishop or inquisitors who were charged with examining the contents of books.

Perpetuis futuris temporibus, nullus librum aliquem seu aliam quamcunque scripturam tam in urbe nostra quam aliis quibusvis civitatibus et diocesibus imprimere seu imprimi facere praesumat, Mansi, XXXII. 912 sq. Also in part in Mirbt, p. 177.

The council approved the proposed Turkish crusade and levied a tenth on Christendom. Its collection was forbidden in England by Henry VIII. Cajetan presented the cause in an eloquent address at the Diet of Augsburg, 1518. Altogether the most significant of the council’s deliverances was the bull, Pater aeternus, labelled as approved by its authority and sent out by Leo, 1516.

Sacro concilio approbante. Döllinger, Papstthum, p. 185, affirms that, in far-reaching significance, no other rule ever passed in a Roman synod equals this bull.

Nor should it be overlooked that in his bull the infallible Leo X. certified to a falsehood when he expressly declared that the Fathers, in the ancient councils, in order to secure confirmation for their decrees, "humbly begged the pope’s approbation." This he affirmed of the councils of Nice, 325, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople, 680, and Nice, 787. 214 years before, when Boniface VIII. issued his bull, Philip the Fair was at hand to resist it. The French sovereign now on the throne, Francis I., made no dissent. The concordat had just been ratified by the council.

The council adjourned March 16, 1517, a bare majority of two votes being for adjournment. Writers of Gallican sympathies have denied its oecumenical character. On the other hand, Cardinal Hergenröther regrets that the Church has taken a position to it of a stepmother to her child. Pastor says there was already legislation enough before the Fifth Lateran sat to secure all the reforms needed. Not laws but action was required. Funk expresses the truth when he says, what the council did for Church reform is hardly worth noting down.

Kirchengesch., p. 383.

In passing judgment upon Leo X., the chief thing to be said is that he was a worldling. Religion was not a serious matter with him. Pleasure was his daily concern, not piety. He gave no earnest thought to the needs of the Church. It would scarcely be possible to lay more stress upon this feature in the life of Louis XIV., or Charles II., than does Pastor in his treatment of Leo’s career. Reumont

III., part II., p. 128

The qualities, with which nature endowed him, remained with him to the end. He was good-humored, affable and accessible. He was often found playing chess or cards with his cardinals. At the table he was usually temperate, though he spent vast sums in the entertainment of others. He kept a monk capable of swallowing a pigeon at one mouthful and 40 eggs at a sitting. To his dress he gave much attention, and delighted to adorn his fingers with gems.

The debt art owes to Leo X. may be described in another place. Rome became what Paris afterwards was, the centre of luxury, art and architectural improvement. The city grew with astonishing rapidity. "New buildings," said an orator, "are planted every day. Along the Tiber and on the Janicular hill new sections arise." Luigi Gradenigo, the Venetian ambassador, reports that in the ten years following Leo’s election, 10,000 buildings had been put up by persons from Northern Italy. The palaces of bankers, nobles and cardinals were filled with the richest furniture of the world. Artists were drawn from France and Spain as well as Italy, and every kind of personality who could afford amusement to others.

The Vatican was the resort of poets, musicians, artists, and also of actors and buffoons. Leo joined in their conversation and laughed at their wit. He even vied with the poets in making verses off-hand. Musical instruments ornamented with gold and silver he purchased in Germany. With almost Oriental abandon he allowed himself to be charmed with entertainments of all sorts.

Among Leo’s amusements the chase took a leading place, though it was forbidden by canonical law to the clergy. Fortunately for his reputation, he was not bound, as pope, by canon law. As Louis XIV. said, "I am the state," so the pope might have said, "I am the canon law." Portions of the year he passed booted and spurred. He fished in the lake of Bolsena and other waters. He takes an inordinate pleasure in the chase, wrote the Venetian ambassador. He hunted in the woods of Viterbo and Nepi and in the closer vicinity of Rome, but with most pleasure at his hunting villa, Magliana. He reserved for his own use a special territory. The hunting parties were often large.

Pastor, who gives eight solid pages, IV. 407-415, to an account of Leo’s hunting expeditions, speaks of his passion for the chase as his leidenschaftliche Jagdliebhaberei

The theatre was another passion to which Leo devoted himself. He attended plays in the palaces of the cardinals and rich bankers and in S. Angelo, and looked on as they were performed in the Vatican itself. Bibbiena, one of the favorite members of his cabinet, was a writer of salacious comedies. One of these, the Calandria, Leo witnessed performed in 1514 in his palace. The ballet was freely danced in some of these plays, as in the lascivious Suppositi by Ariosto, played before the pope in S. Angelo on Carnival Sunday. Another of the plays was the Mandragola, by Machiavelli, to modern performances of which in Florence young people are not admitted.

Vaughan, p. 177.

Festivities of all sorts attracted the attention of the good-natured pope. With 14 cardinals he assisted at the marriage of the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, to his mistress. The entertainment was given at Chigi’s beautiful house, the Farnesina. This man was considered the most fortunate banker of his day in Rome. The kings of Spain and France and princes of Germany sent him presents, and sought from him loans. Even the sultan was said to have made advances for his friendship. His income was estimated at 70,000 ducats a year, and he left behind him 800,000 ducats. This Croesus was only fifty-five when death separated him from his fortune. At one of his banquets, the gold plates were thrown through the windows into the Tiber after they were used at the table, but fortunately they were saved from loss by being caught in a net which had been prepared for them. On another occasion, when Leo and 18 cardinals were present, each found his own coat-of-arms on the silver dishes he used. At Agostino’s marriage festival, Leo held the bride’s hand while she received the ring on one of her fingers. The pontiff then baptized one of Chigi’s illegitimate children. Cardinals were not ashamed to dine with representatives of the demi-monde, as at a banquet given by the banker Lorenzo Strozzi.

Sanuto, as quoted by Pastor, IV. 384. For some of the entertainments given by Cardinal Riario Cornaro, see Vaughan, p. 186 sqq. At one of the banquets given by Cardinal Cornaro, sixty-five courses were served, three dishes to each course, and all served on silver. Such devices as a huge pie, from which blackbirds or nightingales flew forth, or dishes of peacocks’ tails, or a construction of pastry from which a child would emerge to say a piece,—these were some of the inventions prepared for the amusement of guests at the tables of members of the sacred college.

With the easy unconcern of a child of the world, spoiled by fortune, the light-hearted de’ Medici went on his way as if the resources of the papal treasury were inexhaustible. Julius was a careful financier. Leo’s finances were managed by incompetent favorites.

Vettori, a contemporary, as quoted by Villari, IV. 4, says, "It was no more possible for his Holiness to keep 1,000 ducats than it is for a stone to fly upwards of itself." Villari, IV. 45, gives a list of Leo’s enormous debts.

Two years after Leo assumed the pontificate, the financial problem was already a serious one. All sorts of measures had to be invented to increase the papal revenues and save the treasury from hopeless bankruptcy. By augmenting the number of the officials of the Tiber—porzionari di ripa — from 141 to 612, 286,000 ducats were secured. The enlargement of the colleges of the cubiculari and scudieri, officials of the Vatican, brought in respectively 90,000 and 112,000 ducats more. From the erection of the order of the Knights of St. Peter,—cavalieri di San Pietro,—with 401 members, the considerable sum of 400,000 ducats was realized, 1,000 ducats from each knight. The sale of indulgences did not yield what it once did, but the revenue from this source was still large.

Schulte, I. 174, 223 sqq.

The shortages were provided for by resort to the banker and the usurer and to rich cardinals. Loan followed loan. Not only were the tapestries of the Vatican and the silver plate given as securities, but ecclesiastical benefices, the gems of the papal tiara and the rich statues of the saints were put in pawn. Sometimes the pope paid 20 per cent for sums of 10,000 ducats and over.

These figures are given by Schulte, I. 224-227, upon the basis of Sanuto and other contemporary writers. The iII odor of usury was avoided by representing the charges of the bankers as gifts.

For the bankers and all sorts of money dealers the Medicean period was a flourishing time in Rome. No less than 30 Florentines are said to have opened banking institutions in the city, and, at the side of the Fuggers and Welsers, did business with the curia. The Florentines found it to be a good thing to have a Medicean pope, and swarmed about the Vatican as the Spaniards had done in the good days of Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., the Sienese, during the reign of Pius II., and the Ligurians while Sixtus IV. of Savona was pope. They stormed the gates of patronage, as if all the benefices of the Church were intended for them.

Pastor, IV. 371, in his striking way says,Der Zudrang der Florentiner in der ersten Zeit dieses Pontificats war ein enormer. Die Begehrlichkeit dieser Leute war grenzenlos. The Fuggers, who carried on the most extensive dealings with the papal treasury and the sacred college, had been firmly established in Rome since the beginning of Alexander VI.’s pontificate. They came originally from Langen to Augsburg, where they started business as weavers, and then branched off into trading in spices and other commodities reaching Europe through Venice, and in copper and other metals, under the name of Ulrich Fugger and Brothers (George and Jacob), and their capital, estimated by the taxes they paid, increased, between 1480 and 1501, 1,634 per cent. Schulte, p. 3. After its transfer to Rome, the house became the depository of the papal treasurer and cardinals, and was the intermediary for the payment of annates and servitia to the papal and camera treasuries. The amounts, as furnished in the ledger entries, are given by Schulte.

Leo’s father, Lorenzo, said of his three sons that Piero was a fool, Giuliano was good and Giovanni shrewd. The last characterization was true to the facts. Leo X. was shrewd, the shrewdness being of the kind that succeeds in getting temporary personal gain, even though it be by the sacrifice of high and accessible ends. His amiability and polish of manners made him friends and secured for him the tiara. He was not altogether a degenerate personality like Alexander VI., capable of all wickedness. But his outlook never went beyond his own pleasures. The Vatican was the most luxurious court in Europe; it performed no moral service for the world. The love of art with Leo was the love of color, of outline, of beauty such as a Greek might have had, not a taste controlled by regard for spiritual grace and aims. In his treatment of the European states and the Italian cities, his diplomacy was marked by dissimulation as despicable as any that was practised by secular courts. Without a scruple be could solemnly make at the same moment contradictory pledges. Perfidy seemed to be as natural to him as breath.

See Pastor’s terrific indictment, IV. 359 sq.

At the same time, Leo followed the rubrics of religion. He fasted, so it is reported, three times a week, abstained from meat on Wednesday and Friday, daily read his Breviary and was accustomed before mass to seek absolution from his confessor. But he was without sanctity, without deep religious conviction. The issues of godliness had no appreciable effect upon him in the regulation of his habits. Even in his patronage of art and culture, he forgot or ignored Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Erasmus. What a noble substitution it would have been, if these men had found welcome in the Vatican, and the jesters and buffoons and gormandizers been relegated to their proper place! The high-priest of the Christian world is not to be judged in the same terms we would apply to a worldly prince ruling in the closing years of the Middle Ages. The Vatican, Leo turned into a house of revelling and frivolity, the place of all others where the step and the voice of the man of God should have been heard. The Apostle, whom he had been taught to regard as his spiritual ancestor, accomplished his mission by readiness to undergo, if necessary, martyrdom. Leo despoiled his high office of its sacredness and prostituted it into a vehicle of his own carnal propensities. Had he followed the advice of his princely father, man of the world though he was, Leo X. would have escaped some of the reprobation which attaches to his name.

There is no sufficient evidence that Leo ever used the words ascribed to him, "how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."

Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula profuerit, satis est omnibus saeculis notum. The words, said to have been spoken to Cardinal Bembo, were noted down for the first time by Bale in his Pageant of the Popes, ed. 1574, p. 179. Bale, bishop of Ossory, had been a Carmelite.

§ 72. Literature.

For §§73, 74.—The works of Erasmus, Colet, Tyndale, Geller of Strassburg and other sources quoted in the notes.—Lea: Hist. of Cler. Celibacy. Also Hist. of Span. Inq.—Histt. Of The Engl. Ch. by Capes and Gairdnertraill: Social Hist. of Engl., vol. II.—Seebohm: Oxf. Reformers.—Gasquet: The Old Engl. Bible and Other Essays, Lond., 2d ed., 1907. Also The Eve of the Reformation, pp. 245 sqq.—Cruel: Gesch. d. deutschen Predigt, im MA, pp. 431–663, Detmold, 1879.—Kolde: D. relig. Leben in Erfurt am Ausgange d. MA, 1898.—Landmann: D. Predigttum in Westphalen In d. letzten Zeiten d. MA, pp. 256.—Schön: art. Predigt in Herzog, XV. 642–656. Janssen-Pastor: Hist. of the Ger. People, vol. I.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, I. 31 sqq., III. 133 sqq.—Hefele-Hergenröther: Conciliengesch., vol. VIII.

For § 75.—Ullmann: Reformers before the Reformation, 2 vols., Hamb., 1841 sq., 2d ed., Gotha, 1866, Engl. trsl, 2 vols., Edinb., 1855; Also J. Wessel, ein Vorgänger Luthers, Hamb., 1834.—Gieseler, II., Part IV. 481–503. Copious excerpts from their writings.—Hergenröther-Kirsch, II., 1047–1049.—Janssen-Pastor: I. 745–747.—Harnack: Dogmengesch., III. 518, etc.—Loofs: Dogmengesch., 4th ed., 655–658.—For Goch: His De libertate christ., etc., ed. by Corn. Graphaeus, Antw., 1520–1523.—O. Clemen: Joh. Pupper von Goch, Leip., 1896 and artt. In Herzog, VI. 740–743, and In Wetzer-Welte, VI. 1678–1684.—For Wesel: his Adv. indulgentias in Walch’s Monumenta medii aevi Götting., 1757.—The proceedings of his trial, in Aeneas Sylvius: Commentarium de concilio Basileae and D’argentré: Col. Nov. judiciorum de erroribus novis, Paris, 1755, and Browne: Fasciculus, 2d ed., Lond., 1690.—Artt. in Herzog by Clemen, xxi, 127–131, and Wetzer-Welte, VI. 1786–1789.—For Wessel: 1st ed. of his works Farrago rerum theol., a collection of his tracts, appeared in the Netherlands about 1521, 2d ed., Wittenb., 1522, containing Luther’s letter, 3d and 4th edd., Basel, 1522, 1523. Complete ed. of his works containing Life, by A. Hardenberg (preacher in Bremen, d. 1574), Groningen, 1614.—Muurling: Commentatio historico-Theol. de Wesseli cum vita tum meritis, Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1831; also de Wesseli principiis ac virtutibus, Amsterd., 1840.—J. Friedrich, Rom. Cath.: J. Wessel, Regensb., 1862.—Artt. Wessel in Herzog, by Van Veen, xxi. 131–147, and Wetzer-Welte, XII. 1339–1343.—P. Hofstede de Groot: J. Wessel Ganzevoort, Groningen, 1871.

For § 76.—Nicolas of Lyra: Postillae sive Commentaria brevia in omnia biblia, Rome, 1541–1543, 5 vols., Introd.—Wyclif: De veritate scrip. Sac., ed. by Buddensieg, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1904.—Gerson: De sensu litterali scrip: sac., Du Pin’s ed., 1728, I. 1 sqq.—Erasmus: Introd. to Gr. Test., 1516.—L. Hain: Repertorium bibliographicum, 4 vols., Stuttg., 1826–1838. Ed. Reuss, d. 1891: D. Gesch. d. heil. Schriften N. T., 6th ed., Braunschweig, 1887, pp. 603 sqq.—F. W. Farrar: Hist. of Interpretation, Lond., 1886, pp. 254–303.—S. Berger: La Bible Française au moyen âge, Paris, 1884. Gasquet: The Old Engl. Bible, etc.; the Eve of the Reformation.—F. Falk: Bibelstudien, Bibelhandschriften und Bibeldrucken, Mainz, 1901: Die Bibel am Ausgange des MA, ihre Kenntnis und ihre Verbreitung, Col., 1905.—W. Walther: D. deutschen Bibelübersetzungen des MA, Braunschweig, 1889–1892.—A. Coppinger: Incunabula bibl. or the First Half Cent. of the Lat. Bible, 1450–1500, with 54 facsimiles, Lond., 1892.—The Histt. of the Engl. Bible, by Westcott, Eadie, Moulton, Kenyon, etc.—Janssen-Pastor: Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, I. 9 sqq.—Bezold: Gesch. der Reformation, pp. 109 sqq.—R. Schmid: Nic. of Lyra, In Herzog XII. 28–30.—Artt. Bibellesen und Bibelverbot and Bibelübersetzungen in Herzog II. 700 sqq., III. 24 sqq. Other works cited in the notes.

For § 77.—I. Sources: Savonarola’s Lat. and Ital. writings consist of sermons, tracts, letters and a few poems. The largest collection of MSS. and original edd. is preserved in the National Library of Florence. It contains 15 edd. of the Triumph of the Cross issued in the 15th and 16th centt. Epp. spirituales et asceticae, ed. Quétif, Paris, 1674. The sermons were collected by a friend, Lorenzo Vivoli, and published as they came fresh from the preacher’s lips. Best ed. Sermoni a Prediche, Prato, 1846. Also ed. by G. Baccini, Flor., 1889. A selection, ed. by Villari and Casanova: Scelta di prediche e scritti, G. Sav., Flor., 1898.—Germ. trsl. of 12 sermons and the poem de ruina mundi by H. Schottmüller: Berlin, 1901, pp. 132. A. Gherardi: Nuovi documenta e studii intorno a Savon., 1876, 2d ed., Flor., 1887.—The Triumph of the Cross, ed. in Lat. and Ital. by L. Ferretti, O. P., Milan, 1901. Engl. trsl. from this ed. by J. Procter, Lond., 1901, pp. 209.—Exposition of Ps. LI and part of Ps. XXXII, Lat. text with Engl. trsl. by E. H. Perowne, Lond., 1900, pp. 227.—Sav.’s Poetry, ed. by C. Guasti, Flor., 1862, pp. xxii, 1864.—Rudelbach, Perrens and Villari give specimens in the original.—E. C. Bayonne: Oeuvres spir. choisies de Sav., 3 vols., Paris, 1880.—Oldest biographies by P. Burlamacchi, d. 1519, founded on an older Latin Life, the work of an eye-witness, ed. by Mansi, 1761: G. F. Pico Della Mirandola (nephew of the celebrated scholar of that name), completed 1520, publ. 1530, ed. by Quétif, 2 vols., Paris, 1674. On these three works, see Villari, Life of Sav., pp. xxvii sqq.—Also J. Nardi (a contemporary): Le storie della cittá di Firenze, 1494–1531, Flor., 1584. Luca Landucci, a pious Florentine apothecary and an ardent admirer of Sav.: Diario Fiorentino, 1450–1516, Florence, 1883. A realistic picture of Florence and the preaching and death of Savonarola.

II. Modern Works.—For extended lit., see Potthast: Bibl. Hist. med., II. 1564 sqq.—Lives by Rudelbach, Hamb., 1835.—Meier, Berl., 1836.—K. Hase in Neue Propheten, Leip., 1851.—F. T. Perrens, 2 vols., Paris, 1853, 3d ed., 1859.—Madden, 2 vols., Lond., 1854.—Padre V. Marchese, Flor., 1855.—*Pasquale Villari: Life and Times of Savon., Flor., 1859–1861, 2d ed., 1887, 1st Engl. trsl. by L. Horner, 2d Engl. trsl. by Mrs. Villari, Lond., 2 vols., 1888, 1 vol. ed., 1899.—Ranke in Hist. biogr. Studien, Leip., 1877.—Bayonne: Paris, 1879.—E. Warren, Lond., 1881.—W. Clark, Prof. Trinity Col., Toronto, Chicago, 1891.—J. L. O’Neil, O. P.: Was Sav. really excommunicated? Bost, 1900; *H. Lucas, St. Louis, 1900.—G. McHardy, Edinb., 1901.—W. H. Crawford: Sav. the Prophet in Men of the Kingdom series.—*J. Schnitzer: Quellen und Forschungen zur Gesch. Savon., 3 vols., Munich, 1902–1904. Vol. II., Sav. und die Fruerprobe, pp. 175.—Also Savon. im Lichte der neuesten Lit. in Hist.-pol. Blätter, 1898–1900.—H. Riesch: Savon. U. S. Zeit, Leip., 1906.—Roscoe in Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent.—E. Comba: Storia della riforma in Italia, Flor., 1881.—P. Schaff, art. Savon. in Herzog II., 2d ed., XIII. 421–431, and Benrath in 3d ed., XVII. 502–513.—Creighton: vol. III.—Gregorovius: VII. 432 sqq.—*Pastor: 4th ed., III. 137–148, 150–162, 396–437: Zur Beurtheilung Sav., pp. 79, Freib. im Br., 1896. This brochure was in answer to sharp attacks upon Pastor’s treatment of Savonarola in the 1st ed. of his Hist., especially those of Luotto and Feretti.—P. Luotto: Il vero Savon. ed il Savon. di L. Pastor, Flor., 1897, p. 620. Luotto also wrote Dello studio di scrittura sacra secondo G. Savon. e Léon XIII., Turin, 1896.—Feretti: Per la causa di Fra G. Savon., Milan, 1897.—Mrs. Oliphant: Makers of Florence. Godkin: The Monastery of San Marco, Lond., 1901.—G. Biermann: Krit. Studie zur Gesch. des Fra G. Savon., Rostock, 1901.—Brie: Savon. und d. deutsche Lit., Breslau, 1903.—G. Bonet-Maury: Les Précurseurs de la Réforme et de la liberté de conscience ... du XIIe et XIIIe siècle, Paris, 1904, contains sketches of Waldo, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter the Venerable, St. Francis, Dante, Savonarola, etc.—Savonarola has been made the subject of romantic treatment by Lenau In his poem Savonarola, 1844, Geo. Eliot in Romola, and by Alfred Austin in his tragedy, Savonarola, Lond., 1881, with a long preface in which an irreverent, if not blasphemous, parallel is drawn between the Florentine preacher and Christ.

For § 78.—See citations In the Notes.

For § 79.—G. Uhlhorn: Die christl. Liebesthätigkeit im MA, Stuttg., 1884.—P. A Thiejm: Gesch. d. Wohlthätigkeitsanstalten in Belgien, etc., Freib., 1887.—L. Lallemand: Hist. de la charité, 3 vols., Paris, 1906. Vol. 3 covers the 10th-16th century.—T. Kolde: Art. Bruderschaften, in Herzog, III. 434–441.—A. Blaize: Des monts-de-piété et des banques de prêt sur gage, Paris, 1856.—H. Holzapfel: D. Anfänge d. montes pietatis 1462–1515, Munich, 1903.—Toulmin Smith: Engl. Gilds, Lond., 1870.—Thorold Rogers: Work and Wages, ch. XI. sqq.—W. Cunningham: Growth of Engl. Industry and Commerce, bk. II., ch. III. sqq.—Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, II.—Stubbs: Const. Hist., ch. XXI.—W. von Heyd: Gesch. d. Levantenhandels im MA, 2 vols., Stuttg., 1879.—Artt. Aussatz and Zins u. Wucher In Wetzer-Welte, I. 1706 sqq., XII. 1963–1975.—Janssen-Pastor, I. 451 sqq.—Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste., III.

For § 60.—The Sources are Thomas Aquinas, the papal bulls of indulgence and treatments by Wyclif, Huss, Wessel, John of Paltz, James of Jüterbock, etc. Much material is given by W. Köhler: Dokumente zum Ablassstreit, Tüb., 1902, and A. Schulte: D. Fugger in Rom, 2 vols., Leipz., 1904. Vol. II contains documents.—The authoritative Cath. work is Fr. Beringer: Die Ablässe, ihr Wesen u. Gebrauch, pp. 860 and 64, 13th ed., Paderb., 1906.—Also Nic. Paulus: J. Tetzel, der Ablassprediger, Mainz, 1899.—Best Prot. treatments, H. C. Lea: Hist. of Auric. Conf. and Indulgences in the Lat. Ch., 3 vols., Phil., 1896.—T. Brieger, art. Indulgenzen in Herzog, IX. 76–94, and Schaff-Herzog, V. 485 sqq. and D. Wesen d. Ablasses am Ausgange d. MA, a university address. Brieger has promised an extended treatment in book form.—Schaff: Ch. Hist., V., I. p. 729 sqq., VI. 146 sqq.

§ 73. The Clergy.

Both in respect of morals and education the clergy, during the period following the year 1450, showed improvement over the age of the Avignon captivity and the papal schism. Clerical practice in that former age was so lo that it was impossible for it to go lower and any appearance of true religion remain. One of the healthy signs of this latter period was that, in a spirit of genuine religious devotion, Savonarola in Italy and such men in Germany as Busch, Thomas Murner, Geiler of Strassburg, Sebastian Brant and the Benedictine abbot, Trithemius, held up to condemnation, or ridicule, priestly incompetency and worldliness. The pictures, which they joined Erasmus in drawing, were dark enough. Nevertheless, the clergy both of the higher and lower grades included in its ranks many men who truly sought the well-being of the people and set an example of purity of conduct.

The first cause of the low condition, for low it continued to be, was the impossible requirement of celibacy. The infraction of this rule weakened the whole moral fibre of the clerical order. A second cause is to be looked for in the seizure of the rich ecclesiastical endowments by the aristocracy as its peculiar prize and securing them for the sons of noble parentage without regard to their moral and intellectual fitness. To the evils arising from these two causes must be added the evils arising from the unblushing practice of pluralism. No help came from Rome. The episcopal residences of Toledo, Constance, Paris, Mainz, Cologne and Canterbury could not be expected to be models of domestic and religious order when the tales of Boccaccio were being paralleled in the lives of the supreme functionaries of Christendom at its centre.

The grave discussions of clerical manners, carried on at the Councils of Constance and Basel, revealed the disease without providing a cure. The proposition was even made by Cardinal Zabarella and Gerson, in case further attempts to check priestly concubinage failed, to concede to the clergy the privilege of marriage.

Lea: Cler. Celibacy, II. 25. Gerson: Dial. naturae et sophiae de castitate ecclesiasticorum. Du Pin’s ed., II. 617-636.

In Spain, the efforts of synods and prelates to put a check upon clerical immorality accomplished little. Finally, the secular power intervened and repeated edicts were issued by Ferdinand and Isabella against priestly concubinage, 1480, 1491, 1502, 1503. So energetic was the attempt at enforcement that, in districts, clerics complained that the secular officials made forcible entrance into their houses and carried off their women companions.

Lea: Inq. of Spain, I. 15 sqq.

In France, the bishop of Angers, in an official address to Charles VIII., 1484, declared that the religious orders had fallen below the level of the laity in their morals.

For further testimonies, see Lea: Cler. Celibacy, II. 8 sqq.

In Germany, although as a result of the labors of the Mystics the ecclesiastical condition was much better, the moral and intellectual unfitness was such that it calls forth severe criticism from Catholic as well as Protestant historians. The Catholic, Janssen, says that "the profligacy of the clergy at German cathedrals, as well as their rudeness and ignorance, was proverbial. The complaints which have come down to us from the 15th century of the bad morals of the German clergy are exceedingly numerous." Ficker, a Protestant, speaks of "the extraordinary immorality to which priests and monks yielded themselves." And Bezold, likewise a Protestant, says that "in the 15th century the worldliness of the clergy reached a height not possible to surpass."

Janssen, I. 681, 687, 708; Ficker, p. 27; Bezold, pp. 79, 83.

The bishops were charged with affecting the latest fashions in dress and wearing the finest textures, keeping horses and huntings dogs, surrounding themselves with servants and pages, allowing their beards and hair to grow long, and going about in green- and red-colored shoes and shoes punctured with holes through which ribbons were drawn. They were often seen in coats of mail, and accoutred with helmets and swords, and the tournament often witnessed them entered in the lists.

See Hefele-Hergenröther: Conciliengesch., VIII., under Kleidung, and Butzbach: Satirae elegiacae quoted by Janssen, I. 685 sqq.

The custom of reserving the higher offices of the Church for the aristocracy was widely sanctioned by law. As early as 1281 in Worms and 1294 in Osnabruck, no one could be dean who was not of noble lineage. The office of bishop and prebend stalls were limited to men of noble birth by Basel, 1474, Augsburg, 1475, Münster and Paderborn, 1480, and Osnabruck, 1517. The same rule prevailed in Mainz, Halberstadt, Meissen, Merseburg and other dioceses. At the beginning of the 16th century, it was the established custom in Germany that no one should be admitted to a cathedral chapter who could not show 16 ancestors who had joined in the tournament and, as early as 1474, the condition of admission to the chapter of Cologne was that the candidate should show 32 members of his family of noble birth. Of the 228 bishops who successively occupied the 32 German sees from 1400–1517, all but 13 were noblemen. The eight occupants of the see of Münster, 1424–1508, were all counts or dukes. So it was with 10 archbishops of Mainz, 1419–1514, the 7 bishops of Halberstadt, 1407–1513, and the 5 archbishops of Cologne, 1414–1515.

Janssen, I. 689-696, gives a full list of these bishops.

A high standard could not be expected of the lower ranks of the clergy where the incumbents of the high positions held them, not by reason of piety or intellectual attainments but as the prize of birth and favoritism. The wonder is, that there was any genuine devotion left among the lower priesthood. Its ranks were greatly overstocked. Every family with several sons expected to find a clerical position for one of them and often the member of the family, least fitted by physical qualifications to make his way in the world, was set apart for religion. Here again Geiler of Strassburg applied his lash of indignation, declaring that, as people set apart for St. Velten the chicken that had the pox and for St. Anthony the pig that was affected with disease, so they devoted the least likely of their children to the holy office.

The German village clergy of the period were as a rule not university bred. The chronicler, Felix Faber of Ulm, in 1490 declared that out of 1000 priests scarcely one had ever seen a university town and a baccalaureate or master was a rarity seldom met with. With a sigh, people of that age spoke of the well-equipped priest of, the good old times."

From the Alps to Scandinavia, concubinage was widely practised and in parts of Germany, such as Saxony, Bavaria, Austria and the Tirol, it was general. The region, where there was the least of it, was the country along the Rhine. In parts of Switzerland and other localities, parishes, as a measure of self-defence, forced their young pastors to take concubines. Two of the Swiss Reformers, Leo Jud and Bullinger, were sons of priests and Zwingli, a prominent priest, was given to incontinence before starting on his reformatory career. It was a common saying that the Turk of clerical sensualism within was harder to drive out than the Turk from the East.

How far the conscientious effort, made in Germany in the last years of the Middle Ages to reform the convents, was attended with success is a matter of doubt. John Busch labored most energetically in that direction for nearly fifty years in Westphalia, Thuringia and other parts. The things that he records seem almost past belief. Nunneries, here and there, were no better than brothels. In cases, they were habitually visited by noblemen. The experience is told of one nobleman who was travelling with his servant and stopped over night at a convent. After the evening meal, the nuns cleared the main room and, dressed in fine apparel, amused their visitor by exhibitions of dancing.

Janssen, I. 726. Bezold, p. 83, certainly goes far, when he makes the unmodified statement, that the convents were high schools of the most shameful immorality—Hochschulen der gräuelichsten Unsittlichkeit

The practice of priestly concubinage, uncanonical though it was, bishops were quite ready to turn into a means of gain, levying a tax upon it. In the diocese of Bamberg, a toll of 5 gulden was exacted for every child born to a priest and, in a single year, the tax is said to have brought in the considerable sum of 1,500 gulden. In 1522, a similar tax of 4 gulden brought into the treasury of the bishop of Constance, 7,500 gulden. The same year, complaint was made to the pope by the Diet of Nürnberg of the reckless lawlessness of young priests in corrupting women and of the annual tax levied in most dioceses upon all the clergy without distinction whether they kept concubines or not.

Lea, II. 59.

If we turn to England, we are struck with the great dearth of contemporary religious literature, 1450–1517, as compared with Germany.

Gee and Hardy: in Documents, etc., gives only two ecclesiastical acts between 1402-1532.

As for the practice of plural livings, it was perhaps as much in vogue in England as in Germany. Dr. Sherbourne, Colet’s predecessor as dean of St. Paul’s, was a notable example of a pluralist, but in this respect was exceeded by Morton and Wolsey. As for the ignorance of the English clergy, it is sufficient to refer to the testimony of Bishop Hooper who, during his visitation in Gloucester, 1551, found 168 of 811 clergymen unable to repeat the Ten Commandments, 40 who could not tell where the Lord’s Prayer was to be found and 31 unable to give the author.

See James Gairdner in Engl. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1905.

In Scotland, the state of the clergy in pre-Reformation times was probably as low as in any other part of Western Europe.

Dr. Tulloch says in his Luther and other Leaders of the Reformation, "Nowhere else had the clergy reached such a pitch of flagrant and disgraceful iniquity and the Roman Catholic religion such an utter corruption of all that is good as in Scotland."

Side by side with the decline of the monastic institutions, there prevailed among the monks of the 15th century a most exaggerated notion of the sanctifying influence of the monastic vow. According to Luther, the monks of his day recognized two grades of Christians, the perfect and the imperfect. To the former the monastics belonged. Their vow was regarded as a second baptism which cleared those who received it from all stain, restored them to the divine image and put them in a class with the angels. Luther was encouraged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be affirmed that any one "entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.

Bernard in Migne, 182:889, Th. Aq. Summa, II. 2, q. 189. Denifle, Luther und Lutherthum, I. 208, makes the monstrous charge of deliberate lying and knavery against Luther for his treatment of monkish baptism. Kolde: Denifle’s Beschimpfung M. Luthers, Leipz., 1904, pp. 33-49, shows the justice of Luther’s representations. Their truth is not affected by the statement of Joseph Ries: Das geistiche Leben nach der Lehre d. hl. Bernard, p. 86, namely that Bernard and the Church held that outside the convents there may be some who are in the state of perfection while inside cloistral walls there maybe those who are in the imperfect state.

§ 74. Preaching.

The two leading preachers of Europe during the last 50 years of the Middle Ages were Jerome Savonarola of Florence and John Geiler of Strassburg. Early in the 15th century, Gerson was led by the ignorance of the clergy to recommend a reduction of preaching,

Contra vanam curiositatem, Du Pin’s ed., 1728, I. 106 sqq.

In Germany, the importance of the sermon was emphasized by synodal decrees and homiletic manuals. Such synods were the synods of Eichstädt, 1463, Bamberg, 1491, Basel, 1503, Meissen, 1504. Surgant’s noted Handbook on the Art of Preaching praised the sermon as the instrument best adapted to lead the people to repentance and inflame Christian love and called it "the way of life, the ladder of virtue and the gate of paradise."

Manuale curatorum predicandi praebens modum, 1503, quoted by Janssen, I. 38.

By the end of the 15th century, all the German cities and most of the larger towns had regular preaching.

Cruel, pp. 647, 652, closes his treatment of the German pulpit in the M. A. with the observation that the old view, reducing the amount of preaching in Germany in the 15th century, must be abandoned. Cruel’s view is now generally accepted by Protestant writers.

Other signs of the increased interest felt in sermons were the homiletic cyclopaedias of the time furnishing materials derived from the Bible, the Fathers, classic authors and from the realm of tale and story. To these must be added the plenaria, collections from the Gospels and Epistles with glosses and comments. The plenarium of Guillermus, professor in Paris, went through 75 editions before 1500. Collections of model sermons were also issued, some of which had an extensive circulation. The collection of John Nider, d. 1439, passed through 17 editions. His texts were invariably subjected to a threefold division. The collection of the Franciscan, John of Werden, who died at Cologne about 1450, passed through 25 editions. John Herolt’s volume of Sermons of a Disciple — Sermones discipuli — went through 41 editions before 1500 and is computed to have had a circulation of no less than 40,000 copies.

Jannsen, I:43.

The sermons of the German preachers of the 15th century were written now in Latin, now in German. The more famous of the Latin sermonizers were Gabriel Biel, preacher in Mainz and then professor in Tübingen, d. 1495, and Jacob Jüterbock, 1883–1465, Carthusian prior in Erfurt and professor in the university in that city.

Ullman: Reformers, etc., I. 229 sqq., classes him with the Reformers before the Reformation, and chiefly on the basis of his tract, De septem ecclesiae statibus.

More famous than all others was Geiler of Strassburg, usually called from his father’s birthplace, Geiler of Kaisersberg, born in Schaffhausen, 1445, died in Strassburg, 1510. He and his predecessor, Bertholdt of Regensburg, have the reputation of being the most powerful preachers of mediaeval Germany. For more than a quarter of a century he stood in the cathedral pulpit of Strassburg, the monarch of preachers in the North. After pursuing his university studies in Freiburg and Basel, Geiler was made professor at Freiburg, 1476. His pulpit efforts soon made him a marked man. In accepting the call as preacher in the cathedral at Strassburg, he entered into a contract to preach every Sunday and on all festival and fast days. He continued to fill the pulpit till within two months of his death and lies interred in the cathedral where he preached.

Lives of Geiler by Abbé L. Dacheux, 1876, and Lindemann, 1877. For earlier biographies by Beatus Rhenanus, etc., see Lorenzi, I. 1. Geiler’s sermons have been issued by Dacheux:Die ältesten Schriften G.’s, Freib., 1882, and by Ph. de Lorenzi, 4 vols., Treves, 1881-1883, with a Life. See also Cruel, Deutsche Predigt, pp. 538-576; H. Hering: Lehrbuch der Homiletik, p. 81 sq., and Kawerau, in Herzog VI. 427-432, Janssen, I. 136 sqq.

"The Trumpet of Strassburg," as Geiler was called, gained his fame as a preacher of moral and social reforms. He advocated no doctrinal changes. Called upon, 1500, to explain his public declaration that the city councillors were "all of the devil," he issued 21 articles demanding that games of chance be prohibited, drinking halls closed, the Sabbath and festival days observed, the hospitals properly cared for and monkish mendicancy regulated.

He was a preacher of the people and now amused, now stung them, by anecdotes, plays on words, descriptions, proverbs, sallies of wit, humor and sarcasm.

A remarkable specimen of his power to play on words is given in his use of the word Affe, monkey, which he applied to ten different classes of the devil’s dupes. See Cruel, p. 543. Bischof, bishop, he derived from Beiss-schaf —bite-sheep—because prelates bit the sheep instead of taking them to pasture.

Geiler’s style may seem rude to the polite age in which we live, but it reached the ear of his own time. The high as well as the low listened. Maximilian went to hear Geiler when he was in Strassburg. No one could be in doubt about the preacher’s meaning. In a series of 65 passion sermons, he elaborated a comparison between Christ and a ginger cake—the German Lebkuchen. Christ is composed of the bean meal of the deity, the old fruit meal of the body and the wheat meal of the soul. To these elements is added the honey of compassion. He was thrust into the oven of affliction and is divided by preachers into many parts and distributed among the people. In other sermons, he compared perfect Christians to sausages.

In seven most curious discourses on Der Hase im Pfeffer an idiomatic expression for That’s the Rub—based on Prov. 30:26, "The coney is a weak folk," he made 14 comparisons between the coney and the good Christian. The coney runs better up hill than down, as a good Christian should do. The coney has long ears as also a Christian should have, especially monastics, attending to what God has to say. The coney must be roasted; and so must also the Christian pass through the furnace of trial. The coney being a lank beast must be cooked in lard, so also must the Christian be surrounded with love and devotion lest he be scorched in the furnace. In 64 discourses, preached two years before his death, Geiler brought out the spiritual lessons to be derived from ants and in another series he elaborated the 25 sins of the tongue. In a course of 20 sermons to business men, he depicted the six market days and the devil as a pedler(sic) going about selling his wares. He preached 17 sermons on the lion in which the king of beasts was successively treated as the symbol of the good man, the worldly man, Christ and the devil; 12 of these sermons were devoted to the ferocious activities of the devil. A series on the Human Tree comprised no less than 163 discourses running from the beginning of Lent, 1495, to the close of Lent, 1496.

During the last two years of the 15th century, Geiler preached 111 homilies on Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools Narren-schiff — all drawn from the text Eccles. 1:15 as it reads in the Vulgate, "the fools are without number." Through Geiler’s intervention Brant had been brought to Strassburg from Basel, where he was professor. His famous work, which is a travesty upon the follies of his time, employed the figure of a ship for the transport of his fools because it was the largest engine of transportation the author knew of. Very humorously Brant placed himself in the moderator’s chair while all the other fools were gathered in front of him. He himself took the rôle of the Book-fool. Among other follies which are censured are the doings of the mendicants, the traffic in relics and indulgences and the multiplication of benefices in single hands.

See Lorenzi, II. 1-321.

In this period, the custom came to be quite general to preach from the nave of the church instead of from the choir railing. Preachers limited their discourses by hour-glasses, a custom later transplanted to New England.

Cruel, quoting Surgant, p. 635. Erasmus, Praise of Folly, p. 95, speaks of the preacher "spending his glass in telling pleasant stories.’

The criticisms which preachers passed upon the customs of the day show that human nature was pretty much the same then as it is now and that the "good old times" are not to be sought for in that age. All sorts of habits were held up to ridicule and scorn. Drunkenness and gluttony, the dance and the street comedy, the dress of women and the idle lounging of rich men’s sons, usury and going to church to make a parade were among the subjects dwelt upon. Again and again, Geiler of Strassburg returned to the lazy sons of the rich who spent their time in retailing scandals and doing worse, more silly in their dress than the women, fops who "thought themselves somebody because their fathers were rich." He also took special notice of women and their fripperies. He condemned their belts, sometimes made of silk and adorned with gold, costing as much as 40 or 50 gulden, their padded busts and their extensive wardrobes, enabling them to wear for a week at a time two different garments each day and a third one for a dancing party or the play. He launched out against their long hair, left to fall down over the back and crowned with ribbons or small caps such as the men wore. As examples of warning, Absalom and Holofernes were singled out, the former caught by his hair in the branches of the tree and Holofernes ensnared by the adornments of Judith. Geiler called upon the city authorities to come to the help of society and the preacher and legislate against such evils.

See Cruel’s chapter on pulpit polemics, pp. 617-629 and Janssen, I. 440 sqq. A preacher in Ulm, John Capistran, about 1450, was put by the aldermen in the lock-up for his excessive vehemence in condemning the prevailing luxury in dress and other questionable social customs.

Another preacher, Hollen, condemned the long trails which women wore as "the devil’s wagon," for neither men nor angels but only the devil has a caudal appendage. As for dancing, especially the round dances, the devil was the head concertmaster at such entertainments and the higher the dancers jumped, the deeper their fall into hell and, the more firmly they held on to each other with their hands, the more closely did the devil tighten his hold upon them. Dancing was represented by the preachers as an occasion of much profligacy.

In ridiculing the preaching of his day, Erasmus held forth the preachers’ ignorance, their incongruous introductions, their use of stories from all departments without any discrimination, their old women’s tales and the frivolous topics they chose—aniles fabulae et questiones frivolse. A famous passage in which the great scholar disparages the preaching of the monks and friars begins with the words: —

All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are these gestures! What heights and falls in their voice! What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of months, apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another.

Praise of Folly, 141 sqq.

Erasmus deserves credit for discerning the need of the times, and recommending the revival of the practice of preaching and the mission of preachers to the heathen nations. His views were set forth in the Ecclesiastes or Preacher, a work written during the Freiburg period and filling 275 pages,

Basel, ed. 1540, pp. 643-917.

Of the English pulpit, there is little to say. We hear of preaching at St. Paul’s Cross and at other places, but there is no evidence that preaching was usual. No volumes of English sermons issued from the printing-press. Colet is the only English preacher of the 15th century of historical importance. The churchly counsel given to priests to impart instruction to the people, issued by the Lambeth synod of 1281, stands almost solitary. In 1466, Archbishop Nevill of York did no more than to repeat this legislation.

In Scotland the history of the pulpit begins with Knox. Dr. Blaikie remarks that, for the three centuries before the Reformation, scarcely a trace of Christian preaching can be found in Scotland worthy the name. The country had no Wyclif, as it had no Anselm.

W. G. Blaikie: The Preachers of Scotland, p. 36.

The Abbé Dr. Gasquet in a chapter on A Forgotten English Preacher in his Old Eng. Bible and other Essays gives extracts from the MS. sermon of Thomas Branton, Bishop of Rochester, 1372–1389. After saying that we know very little about mediaeval preaching in England, Dr. Gasquet, p. 54, remarks that it is perhaps just as well, as the sermons were probably dull and that "the modern sermon" has to be endured as a necessary evil. In his chapter on Teaching and Preaching, pp. 244–284, in his Eve of the Reformation, the same author returns to the subject, but the chapter itself gives the strongest evidence of the literary barrenness of the English Church in the closing years of the Middle Ages and the dearth of preaching and public instruction. By far the larger part of the chapter, pp. 254–280, is taken up with quotations from Sir Thomas More, the tract Dives and Pauper and other tracts, to show that the doctrine of the worship of images and saints was not taught in its crass form and with a statement of the usefulness of miracle-plays as a means of popular religious instruction. Dr. Gasquet lays stress upon the "simple instruction" given by the English priesthood in the Middle Ages as opposed to formal sermons which he confesses "were probably by no means so frequent as in these times." He makes the astounding assertion, p. 245, that religions instruction as a means of social and moral improvement was not one of the primary aims of the Reformation. The very opposite is proved by the efforts of Luther, Calvin and Knox to secure the establishment of schools in every hamlet and the catechisms which the two former prepared and the numerous catechisms prepared by their fellow Reformers. And what of their habit of constant preaching? Luther preached day after day. One of the first signs of the Reformation in Geneva was that St. Pierre and St. Gervaise were opened for preaching daily. Calvin incorporated into his ecclesiastical polity as one of the orders the ministry, the teaching body.

§ 75. Doctrinal Reformers.

A group of theologians appeared in Northwestern Germany who, on the one hand, were closely associated by locality and training with the Brothers of the Common Life and, on the other, anticipated the coming age by the doctrinal reforms which they proposed. On the latter account, John of Goch, John of Wesel and Wessel of Gansfort have been properly classed with Wyclif and Huss as Reformers before the Reformation.

This group of men forms the subject of Ullmann’s notable work The Reformers before the Reformation published in 1841. He followed Flacius, Walch and others before him who had treated them as precursors of the Reformation. Hase: Kirchengesch., II. 551; Köstlin: Leben Luthers, I. 18; Funk, p. 382, and others still hold to this classification. Loofs: Dogmengesch., p. 658, takes another view and says "they were not Reformers before the Reformation, nevertheless they bear witness that, in the closing years of the Middle Ages, the preparation made for the Reformation was not, merely negative." Janssen, I. 745, treats them as followers of Huss.

John Pupper, 1400–1475, usually called John of Goch from his birthplace, a hamlet on the lower Rhine near Cleves, seems to have been trained in one of the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and then studied in Cologne and perhaps in Paris. He founded a house of Augustinians near Mecheln, remaining at its head till his death. His writings were not published till after the beginning of the Reformation. He anticipated that movement in asserting the supreme authority of the Bible. The Fathers are to be accepted only so far as they follow the canonical Scriptures. In contrast to the works of the philosophers and the Schoolmen, the Bible is a book of life; theirs, books of death.

Goch’s words are Sola scriptura canonica fidem indubiam et irrefragabilem habet auctoritatem. The writer in Wetzer-Welte concedes Goch’s depreciation of the Schoolmen and of Thomas Aquinas in particular, whom at one point Goch calls a prince of error—princeps erroris.

John Ruchrath von Wesel, d. 1481, attacked the hierarchy and indulgences and was charged on his trial with calling in question almost all the distinctive Roman Catholic tenets. He was born in Oberwesel on the Rhine between Mainz and Coblentz. He taught at the University of Erfurt and, in 1458, was chosen its vice-rector. Luther bore testimony to his influence when he said, "I remember how Master John Wesalia ruled the University of Erfurt by his writings through the study of which I also became a master."

Catholic writers like Funk, p. 390, Wetzer-Welte and Janssen, I. 746, speak of Wesel as one of the false teachers of the Middle Ages and find many of the doctrines of the Reformation in his writings.

In 1479, Wesel was arraigned for heresy before the Inquisition at Mainz.

For detailed account of the trial, Ullman, I. 383-405.

At the request of Diether of Isenburg, archbishop of Mainz, the Universities of Cologne and Heidelberg sent delegates to the trial. The accused was already an old man, leaning on his staff, when he appeared before the tribunal. Lacking strength to stand by the heretical articles, he agreed to submit "to mother Church and the teachings of the doctors." A public recantation in the cathedral followed, and his books were burnt.

During his trial, Wesel acknowledged the following writing as his: 1, Super modo obligationis legum humanarum ad quemdam Nicolaum de Bohemia. 2, De potestate actes. 3, De jeuniis. 4, De indulgentiis.

Among Wesel’s reported sayings, which must have seemed most blasphemous to the devout churchman of the time, are the following: "The consecrated oil is not better than the oil used for your cakes in the kitchen." "If you are hungry, eat. You may eat a good capon on Friday." "If Peter established fasting, it was in order that he might get more for his fish" on fast days. To certain monastics, he said, "Not religion" (that is, monastic vows) "but God’s grace saves," religio nullum salvat sed gratia Dei.

A still nearer approach to the views of the Reformers was made by Wessel Gansfort, commonly called John Wessel,

The name, "John" is disputed by Muurling and Wetzer-Welte and shown by Paulus to be a mistake. Gansfort, or Goesevort, was the name of the village from which the family came.

Wessel spent some time in Basel, where he met Reuchlin. In 1473, the bishop of Utrecht wrote that many were seeking his life and invited him back to Holland. His last years, from 1474 on, Wessel spent with the Brothers of the Common Life at Mt. St. Agnes, and in the nuns’ convent at Groningen. There, in the place of his birth, he lies buried. His last words were, "I know no one save Jesus, the Crucified."

Wessel enjoyed a reputation for great learning. He escaped arraignment at the hands of the Inquisition, but was violently attacked after his death in a tract on indulgences, by Jacob Hoeck, Dean of Naaldwyk. None of Wessel’s writings were published till after the outbreak of the Reformation. Although he did not reach the doctrine of justification by faith, he declared that pope and councils may err and he defined the Church to be the communion of the saints. The unity of the Church does not lie in the pope—unitas ecclesiae sub uno papa tantum accidentalis est, adeo ut non sit necessaria. He laid stress upon the faith of the believer in partaking of the eucharist or, rather, upon his hunger and thirst after the sacrament. But he did not deny the sacrifice of the mass or the validity of the communion under one kind. He gave up the judicial element in priestly absolution.

See Ritschl: The Christian Doctr. of Justification and Reconciliation. Edinb. ed., p. 481 sq.

In 1522, a Dutch lawyer, von Hoen, joining with other Netherlanders, sent Luther a copy of some of Wessel’s writings.

In a letter accompanying the gift, Honius wrote that the words "This is my body" meant "This represents my body." For Luther’s reply, see Köstlin: Luthers Leben, I. 701. For the lat edd. of Wessel’s works, see Doedes, pp. 435, 442. Doedes in Studien u. Kritiken, for 1870, p. 409, asks, "Who in the latter half of the 15th cent. had so much genuine faith and evangelical knowledge as this man who was always the scholar of the Lord Jesus Christ and nothing else?"

These three German theologians, Goch, Wesel and Wessel, were quietly searching after the marks of the true Church and the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone. Without knowing it, they were standing on the threshold of the Reformation.

§ 76. Girolamo Savonarola.

Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter.

In the closing decade of the 15th century the city of Florence seemed to be on the eve of becoming a model municipality, a pattern of Christian morals, a theocracy in which Christ was acknowledged as sovereign. In the movement looking towards this change, the chief actor was Jerome Savonarola, prior of the

Dominican convent of St. Mark’s, the most imposing preacher of the Middle Ages and one of the most noteworthy preachers of righteousness since St. Paul. Against the dark moral background of his generation he appears as a broad sheet of northern light with its coruscations, mysterious and protentous, but also quickly disappearing. His message was the prophet’s cry, "Who shall abide the day of His coming and who shall stand when He appeareth?"

Savonarola, born in Ferrara Sept. 21, 1452, died in Florence May 23, 1498, was the third of seven children. Choosing his grandfather’s profession, he entered upon the study of medicine, from which he was turned away by a deepening impression of the corruption of society and disappointment at the refusal of a family of Strozzi, living at Ferrara, to give him their daughter in marriage. At the age of 23, he secretly left his father’s house and betook himself to Bologna, where he assumed the Dominican habit. Two days after his arrival in Bologna, he wrote thus to his father explaining the reason of his abrupt departure.

I could not endure any longer the wickedness of the blinded peoples of Italy. Virtue I saw despised everywhere and vices exalted and held in honor. With great warmth of heart, I made daily a short prayer to God that He might release me from this vale of tears. ’Make known to me the way,’ I cried, ’the way in which I should walk for I lift up my soul unto Thee,’ and God in His infinite mercy showed me the way, unworthy as I am of such distinguishing grace.

The translation is from Schottmüller, pp. 2, 3. This writer gives two of Savonarola’s letters to his mother.

He begged his father to console his mother and referred him to a poem by his pen on the contempt of the world, which he had left among his papers. In this letter and several letters to his mother, which are extant, is shown the young monk’s warm affection for his parents and his brothers and sisters.

In the convent, the son studied Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and became familiar with the Scriptures, sections of which he committed to memory. Two copies of the Bible are extant in Florence, containing copious notes in Savonarola’s own handwriting, made on the margin, between the printed lines and on added leaves.

The one, the Vulgate printed in Basel, 1491, the other in Venice, 1492. See Luotto: Dello Studio, etc. This author draws a parallel between Leo XIII.’s commendation of the study of the Bible and Savonarola’s emphasis upon it as the seat of authority.

In 1481, he was sent to Florence, where he became an inmate of St. Mark’s. The convent had been rebuilt by Cosimo de Medici and its walls illuminated by the brush of Fra Angelico. At the time of Savonarola’s arrival, the city was at the height of its fame as a seat of culture and also as the place of lighthearted dissipation under the brilliant patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

The young monk’s first efforts in the pulpit in Florence were a failure. The congregation at San Lorenzo, where he preached during the Lenten season, fell to 25 persons. Fra Mariano da Gennazzano, an Augustinian, was the popular favorite. The Dominican won his first fame by his Lenten sermons of 1486, when he preached at Brescia on the Book of Revelation. He represented one of the 24 elders rising up and pronouncing judgments upon the city for its wickedness. In 1489, he was invited back to Florence by Lorenzo at the suggestion of Pico della Mirandola, who had listened to Savonarola’s eloquence at Reggio. During the remaining nine years of his life, the city on the Arno was filled with Savonarola’s personality. With Catherine of Siena, he shares the fame of being the most religious of the figures that have walked its streets. During the first part of this short period, he had conflict with Lorenzo and, during the second, with Alexander VI., all the while seeking by his startling warnings and his prophecies to bring about the regeneration of the city and make it a model of civic and social righteousness. From Aug. 1, 1490, when he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mark’s, the people thronged to hear him whether he preached there or in the cathedral. In 1491, he was made prior of his convent. To preaching he added writings in the department of philosophy and tracts on humility, prayer and the love of Jesus. He was of middle height, dark complexion, lustrous eyes dark gray in color, thick lips and aquiline nose. His features, which of themselves would have been called coarse, attracted attention by the serious contemplative expression which rested upon them, and the flash of his eye.

Savonarola’s sermons were like the flashes of lightning and the reverberations of thunder. It was his mission to lay the axe at the root of dissipation and profligacy rather than to depict the consolations of pardon and communion with God. He drew more upon the threatenings of the divine wrath than upon the refreshing springs of the divine compassion. Tender descriptions of the divine love and mercy were not wanting in his sermons, but the woes pronounced upon the sinfulness of his time exceeded the gentle appeals. He was describing his own method, when he said, "I am like the hail. Cover thyself lest it come down upon thee, and strike thee. And remember that I said unto thee, Cover thy head with a helmet, that is clothe thyself with virtue and no hail stone will touch thee."

Sermon, March 14, 1498. Schottmüller, p. 111. Roscoe: Life of Lorenzo, ch. VIII., says: "The divine word from the lips of Savonarola, descended not amongst his audience like the dews of heaven. It was the piercing hail, the sweeping whirlwind, the destroying sword."

In the time of his greatest popularity, the throngs waited hours at the doors of the cathedral for the preacher’s arrival and it has been estimated by Villari, that audiences of 10,000 or 12,000 hung on his discourses. Like fields of grain under the wind, the feelings of his audiences were swayed by the preacher’s voice. Now they burned with indignation: now they were softened to tears. "I was overcome by weeping and could not go on." So wrote the reporter while taking down a sermon, and Savonarola himself felt the terrible strain of his efforts and often sank back into his seat completely exhausted. His message was directed to the clergy, high and low, as well as to the people and the flashes of his indignation often fell upon the palace of Lorenzo. The clergy he arraigned for their greed of prebends and gold and their devotion to outer ceremonies rather than to the inner life of the soul. Florence he addressed in endearing terms as the object of his love. "My Florence," he was wont to exclaim. Geneva was no more the city of Calvin or Edinburgh of Knox than was Florence the city of Savonarola. Portraying the insincerity of the clergy, he said: —

In these days, prelates and preachers are chained to the earth by the love of earthly things. The care of souls is no longer their concern. They are content with the receipt of revenue. The preachers preach to please princes and to be praised by them. They have done worse. They have not only destroyed the Church of God. They have built up a new Church after their own pattern. Go to Rome and see! In the mansions of the great prelates there is no concern save for poetry and the oratorical art. Go thither and see! Thou shalt find them all with the books of the humanities in their hands and telling one another that they can guide mens’ souls by means of Virgil, Horace and Cicero ... The prelates of former days had fewer gold mitres and chalices and what few they possessed were broken up and given to relieve the needs of the poor. But our prelates, for the sake of obtaining chalices, will rob the poor of their sole means of support. Dost thou not know what I would tell thee! What doest thou, O Lord! Arise, and come to deliver thy Church from the hands of devils, from the hands of tyrants, from the hands of iniquitous prelates.

Villari, I. 183 sqq.

Dizzy flights of fancy abounded in Savonarola’s discourses and took the place of calm and logical exposition. On the evening before he preached his last sermon in Advent, 1492, Savonarola beheld in the middle of the sky a hand holding a sword with the inscription, Behold the sword of the Lord will descend suddenly and quickly upon the earth—Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter. Suddenly the sword was turned toward the earth, the sky was darkened, swords, arrows and flames rained down. The heavens quaked with thunder and the world became a prey to famine and death. The vision was ended by a command to the preacher to make these things known. Again and again, in after years did he refer to this prophetic vision.

So Nov. 1, 1494, etc. See Schottmüller, p. 28 sqq. The motto, cito et velociter, was repeated to Savonarola by the Virgin in his vision of heaven, 1495.

The inscription on the heavenly sword well represents the style of Savonarola’s preaching. It was impulsive, pictorial, eruptive, startling, not judicial and instructive. And yet it made a profound impression on men of different classes. Pico della Mirandola the elder has described its marvellous effect upon himself. On one occasion, when he announced as his text Gen. 6:17, "Behold I will bring the flood of waters upon the earth," Pico said he felt a cold shudder course through him, and his hair, as it were, stand on end. One is reminded of some of the impressions made by the sermons of Christmas Evans, the Welsh preacher, and the impression made by Whitefield’s oratory upon Lord Chesterfield and Franklin. But the imagery of the sermon, brilliant and weird as it was, is no sufficient explanation of the Florentine preacher’s power. The preacher himself was burning with religious passion. He felt deeply and he was a man of deep devotion. He had the eye of the mystic and saw beneath the external and ritual to the inner movements of spiritual power.

The biblical element was also a conspicuous feature of his preaching. Defective as Savonarola’s exegesis was, the biblical element was everywhere in control of his thought and descriptions. His famous discourses were upon the ark, Exodus, and the prophets Haggai, Ezekiel, Amos and Hosea, and John’s Revelation. He insisted upon the authority of Scripture. "I preach the regeneration of the Church," he said, "taking the Scriptures as my sole guide."

Rudelbach, pp. 333-346, presents an elaborate statement of Savonarola’s attitude to the Bible, and quotes from one of his sermons on the Exodus thus: "The theologians of our time have soiled everything by their unseemly disputations as with pitch. They do not know a shred of the Bible, yea, they do not even know the names of its books."

Another element which gave to Savonarola’s sermons their virility and power was the prophetic element. Savonarola was not merely the expounder of righteousness. He claimed to be a prophet revealing things which, to use his own words, "are beyond the scope of the knowledge which is natural to any creature." This element would have been a sign of weakness, if it had not been associated with a great personality, bent on noble ends. The severity of his warnings was often so fearful that the preacher himself shrank back from delivering them. On one occasion, he spent the entire night in vigils and prayer that he might be released from the duty of making known a message, but in vain. The sermon, he then went forth to preach, he called a terrific sermon.

Savonarola’s confidence in his divine appointment to be the herald of special communications from above found expression not only from the pulpit but was set forth more calmly in two works, the Manual of Revelations, 1495, and a Dialogue concerning Truth and Prophecy, 1497. The latter tract with a number of Savonarola’s sermons were placed on the Index. In the former, the author declared that for a long time he had by divine inspiration foretold future things but, bearing in mind the Saviour’s words, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs," he had practised reserve in such utterances. He expressed his conception of the office committed to him, when he said, "The Lord has put me here and has said to me, ’I have placed thee as a watchman in the centre of Italy ... that thou mayest hear my words and announce them,’ " Ezek. 3:17. If we are inclined to regard Savonarola as having made a mistake in claiming prophetic foresight, we easily condone the mistake on the ground of his impassioned fervor and the pure motives by which he was animated. To his prophecies he applied Christ’s own words, that no jot or tittle should fail till they were fulfilled.

None of his messages was more famous than the one he received on his visit to paradise, March, 1495. Before starting on his journey, a number of ladies offered to be his companions. Philosophy and Rhetoric he declined. Accepting the company of Faith, Simplicity, Prayer and Patience, he was met on his way by the devil in a monk’s garb.

Lucas, pp. 55-61, gives a translation of the interview. Also Perrens, II. 167-177.

The question arises whether Savonarola was a genuine prophet or whether he was self-deluded, mistaking for the heated imaginations of his own religious fervor, direct communications from God.

Luotto asserts that the dilemma is presented of the genuineness of Savonarola’s predictions or downright imposture and he boldly supports the former view. Pastor, Villari, Lucas and others show that we are not narrowed down to this dilemma.

For us, the only valid test is historical fact. Were Savonarola’s prophecies fulfilled? The two prophecies, upon whose fulfilment stress is laid, were the political revolution in Florence, which occurred, and the coming of Charles VIII. from across the Alps. Savonarola saw in Charles a Cyrus whose advent would release Florence from her political bondage and introduce an era of civil freedom . He also predicted Charles’ subsequent retreat. Commines, who visited Savonarola in the convent of St. Mark’s after the trials which followed Charles’ advent in Italy had begun, went away impressed with the friar’s piety and candor, and declared that he predicted with certainty to him and to the king, "things which no one believed at the time and which have all been fulfilled since."

Villari I. 855 and Bonet-Maury, p. 232.

No scene in Savonarola’s career excels in moral grandeur and dramatic interest his appearance at the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in 1492. History has few such scenes to offer. When it became apparent to the brilliant ruler of the Florentine state that his days were numbered, he felt unwilling to face the mysteries of death and the future without the absolution priestly prerogative pretends to be competent to confer. Savonarola and Lorenzo loved Florence with an equal love, though the one sought its glory through a career of righteousness and the other through a career of worldly dominion and glittering culture. The two leaders found no terms of agreement. Lorenzo had sought to win the preacher by personal attention and blandishments. He attended mass at St. Mark’s. Savonarola held himself back as from an elegant worldling and the enemy of the liberties of Florence. "You see," said Lorenzo, "a stranger has come into my house, yet he will not stoop to pay me a visit." "He does not ask for me; let him go or stay at his pleasure," replied the friar to those who told him that Lorenzo was in the convent garden.

Five influential citizens of Florence called and suggested to the friar that he modify his public utterances. Recognizing that they had come at Lorenzo’s instance, he bade them tell the prince to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons and spares not the mighty of the earth. Lorenzo called upon Fra Mariano to publicly take Savonarola to task. This he did from the pulpit on Ascension Day, 1491. Lorenzo himself was present, but the preacher’s charges overshot the mark, and Savonarola was more popular than ever. The prior of St. Mark’s exclaimed, "Although I am a stranger in the city, and Lorenzo the first man in the state, yet shall I stay here and it is he who will go hence."

When the hour of death approached, Lorenzo was honest with himself. In vain did the physician, Lazzaro of Pavia, resort to the last medical measure, a potion of distilled gems. Farewell was said to Pico della Mirandola and other literary friends, and Lorenzo gave his final counsels to his son, Piero. The solemn rites of absolution and extreme unction were all that remained for man to receive from man. Lorenzo’s confessor was within reach but the prince looked to St. Mark’s. "I know of no honest friar save this one," he exclaimed. And so Savonarola was summoned to the bedside in the villa Careggi, two miles from the city. The dying man wanted to make confession of three misdeeds: the sack of Volterra, the robbery of Monte delle Fanciulle and the merciless reprisals after the Pazzi conspiracy. The spiritual messenger then proceeded to present three conditions on which his absolution depended. The first was a strong faith in God’s mercy. The dying man gave assent. The second was that he restore his ill-gotten wealth, or charge his sons to do it. To this assent was also given. The third demand required that he give back to Florence her liberties. To this Lorenzo gave no response and turned his face to the wall. The priest withdrew and, in a few hours, April 8, 1492, the ruler of Florence passed into the presence of the omnipotent Judge who judgeth not according to the appearance but according to the heart and whose mercy is everlasting.

The surmisal has been made that, if Savonarola had been less rigid, he might have exercised an incalculable influence for good upon the dying prince who was still susceptible of religious impressions.

So Pastor, III. 141. The account given of Lorenzo’s interview with Savonarola is based upon Burlamacchi and Mirandola. Politian, in a letter to Jacopo Antiquario, gave a different amount of the three demands and made no mention of Savonarola’s demand that Florence be restored her liberties. He also added that Savonarola left the room pronouncing upon the dying man a blessing. Politian’s version is accepted by Roscoe, ch. X., Creighton, III. 296-299 and Lucas, 83 sq. The version given above is accepted by Villari, 168 sqq., W. Clark, p. 116, and the rigid critic Hase, p. 20. Ranke did not see his way clear to deny its truth and Reumont, II. 443, who denied it in the 1st ed. of his Lorenzo de’ Medici, hesitates in the 2d ed. Pastor proceeds upon the basis of its truth but expresses doubt in a note.

During the years, beginning with 1494, Savonarola’s ascendancy was at its height and so cold a witness as Guicciardini reports his influence as extraordinary. These years included the invasion of Charles VIII., the banishment of the Medici from Florence and the establishment of a theocratic government in the city.

"He will come across the Alps against Italy like Cyrus," Savonarola had prophesied of the French king, Charles VIII. And, when the French army was approaching the confines of Florence, he exclaimed, "Behold, the sword has come upon you. The prophecies are fulfilled, the scourge begun! Behold these hosts are led of the Lord! O Florence, the time of singing and dancing is at an end. Now is the time to shed floods of tears for thy sins."

Florence listened eagerly. Piero de’ Medici went to the French camp and yielded to the king’s demand for 200,000 florins, and the cession of Pisa, Leghorn and Sarzana. But Savonarola thundered and pled from the pulpit against the Medicean house. The city decreed its banishment and sent commissioners to Charles, with Savonarola among them. In his address, which is preserved, the friar reminded his Majesty that he was an instrument sent by the Lord to relieve Italy of its woes and to reform the Church. Charles entered Florence but, moved by Savonarola’s intercession, reduced the tribute to 120,000 florins and restrained the depredations of the French soldiery. The king also seems to have listened to the friar’s stern words when he said to him, "Hearken unto the voice of God’s servant and pursue thy journey onward without delay."

When Charles, after sacking Rome and occupying Naples, returned to Northern Italy, Savonarola wrote him five letters threatening that, if he did not do for Florence the things about which he had spoken to him, God’s wrath would be poured out upon his head. These things were the recognition of the liberties of Florence and the return of Pisa to her dominion. In his letter of May 25, 1495, bidding Charles favor the city of Florence, he asserted, "God has chosen this city and determined to magnify her and raise her up and, whoso toucheth her, toucheth the apple of His eye." Certainly, from the standpoint of the welfare of Italy, the French invasion was not of Providential origin. Although the banners of his army were inscribed with the words Voluntas Dei — the Will of God—and Missus Dei — the legate of God—Charles was bent on territorial aggrandizement and not on breaking the bonds of civic despotism.

The time had now come to realize in Florence Savonarola’s ideal of government, a theocracy with Christ at its head. The expulsion of the Medici made possible a reorganization of the state and the new constitution, largely a matter of Savonarola’s creation, involved him inextricably in civic policies and the war of civic factions. However, it should not be forgotten that his municipal constitution secured the commendation of Guicciardini and other Italian political writers. It was a proof of the friar’s remarkable influence that, at his earnest advice, a law was passed which prevented retaliatory measures against the followers of the Medici. Landucci wrote in his diary that, but for Savonarola, the streets would have been bathed in blood. In his great sermons on Haggai, during the Advent season of 1494, and on the Psalms in 1495, Savonarola definitely embarked as a pilot on the political sea. "The Lord has driven my bark into the open ocean," he exclaimed from the pulpit. Remonstrating with God for imposing this duty upon him, he declared, ’I will preach, if so I must, but why need I meddle with the government of Florence.’ And the Lord said, ’If thou wouldst make Florence a holy city, thou must establish her on firm foundations and give her a government which cherishes righteousness.’ Thus the preacher was committed. He pronounced from the pulpit in favor of virtue as the foundation of a sound government and democracy as its form. "Among northern nations," he affirmed, where there is great strength and little intellect, and among southern nations where there is great intellect and little strength, the rule of a single despot may sometimes be the best of governments. But in Italy and, above all in Florence, where both strength and intellect abound,—where men have keen wits and restless spirits,—the government of the one can only result in tyranny."

In the scheme, which he proposed, he took for his model the great council of Venice, leaving out its head, the doge, who was elected for life. The great council of Florence was to consist of, at least, 1500 men, who had reached the age of 29, paid their taxes and belonged to the class called beneficiati, that is, those who held a civil office themselves or whose father, grandfather, or great-grandfather had held a civil office. A select council of 80 was to be chosen by it, its members to be at least forty years of age. In criminal cases, an appeal from a decision of the signory was allowed to the great council, which was to meet once a week and to be a voting rather than a deliberative body.

The place of the supreme doge or ruler, Savonarola gave to God himself. "God alone," he exclaimed from the pulpit, "God alone will be thy king, O Florence, as He was king of Israel under the old Covenant." "Thy new head shall be Jesus Christ,"—this was the ringing cry with which he closed his sermons on Haggai. Savonarola’s recent biographer, Villari, emphasizes "the masterly prudence and wisdom shown by him in all the fundamental laws he proposed for the new state." He had no seat in the council and yet he was the soul of the entire people.

One of Savonarola’s propositions was to levy taxes on real property alone and, it seems, he was not averse to taxing Church property. Landucci, p. 119; Villari, I. 269, 298; II. 81.

In the last chapter of his career Savonarola was pitted against Alexander VI. as his contestant. The conflict began with the demand made by the pope July 25, 1495, that Savonarola proceed to Rome and answer charges. Then followed papal inhibitions of his preaching and the decree of excommunication, and the conflict closed with the appointment of a papal commission which condemned Savonarola to death as a heretic.

Alexander’s order, summoning the friar to Rome, was based on his announcement that his predictions of future events came by divine revelation.

See the document in Lucas, p. 180, and O’Neil, p. 9 sq. The original in Rudelbach.

Alexander’s first letter inhibiting him from preaching, Sept. 9, 1495, condemned Savonarola’s insane folly in mixing up with Italian political affairs and his announcement that he was a special messenger sent from God. In his reply Savonarola answered the charges and, at the invitation of the signory, continued to preach. In his third brief, Oct. 16, 1495, the pontiff forbade him to preach openly or in private. Pastor remarks, "It was as clear as the sun that Savonarola was guilty of rank disobedience to the papal authority."

Zur Beurtheilung, p. 66. Pastor is refuting Luotto’s position.

For five months, the friar held himself aloof in his convent but, Feb. 17, 1496, at the call of the signory to preach the Lenten sermons, he again ascended the pulpit. He took the bold position that the pope might err. "The pope," he said, "may command me to do something that contravenes the law of Christian love or the Gospel. But, if he did so command, I would say to him, thou art no shepherd. Not the Roman Church, but thou errest." From that time on, he lifted his voice against the corruptions of the papal city as he had not done before. Preaching on Amos 4:1, Feb. 28, 1496, he exclaimed, "Who are the fat kine of Bashan on the mountains of Samaria? I say they are the courtesans of Italy and Rome. Or, are there none? A thousand are too few for Rome, 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 are too few for Rome. Prepare thyself, O Rome, for great will be thy punishments."

The Italian text in Perrens, I. 471 sq. The sermons of this period were on Amos, Zachariah, Micah and Ruth. According to Burlamacchi, the sultan had some of them translated into Turkish. Villari, II. 87.

Finding threats would not stop Savonarola’s mouth, Alexander resorted to bribery, an art in which he was well skilled. Through a Dominican sent to Florence, he offered to the friar of St. Mark’s the red hat. But Alexander had mistaken his man and, in a sermon delivered August, 1496, Savonarola declared that neither mitres nor a cardinal’s hat would he have, but only the gift God confers on His saints—death, a crimson hat, a hat reddened with blood. Lucas, strangely enough, ascribes the offer of the red hat, not to vicious shrewdness but to the alleged good purpose of Alexander to show his appreciation of, an earnest but misguided man."

The carnival season of 1496 and the seasons of the next two years gave remarkable proofs of the hold Savonarola had on the popular mind. The carnival, which had been the scene of wild revelries, was turned into a semi-religious festival. The boys had been accustomed to carry their merriment to rude excesses, forcing their demands for money upon older persons, dancing around bonfires at night and pelting people and houses promiscuously with stones. For this "festival of the stones," which the signory had been unable to abolish Savonarola and his co-helpers substituted a religious celebration. It was called the reform of the boys. Savonarola had established boys’ brigades in different wards of the city and arranged tiers of seats for them against the walls of the cathedral. These "boys of Fra Girolamo," as Landucci calls them, marched up and down the streets singing hymns which Savonarola and Benivieni composed and taking their places at stands, erected for the purpose, received collections for the poor.

On the last day of the carnival of 1497, occurred the burning of the vanities, as it was called. The young men, who had been stirred to enthusiasm by Savonarola’s sermons, went through the city, knocking from door to door and asking the people to give up their trinkets, obscene books such as Ovid and Boccaccio, dice, games of chance, harps, mirrors, masks, cosmetics and portraits of beautiful women, and other objects of luxury. These were piled up in the public square in a pyramid, 60 feet high and 240 feet in circumference at the base. The morning of that day, throngs listened to the mass said by Savonarola. The young men went in procession through the streets and reaching the pile of vanities, they with others joined hands and danced around the pile and then set fire to it amid the singing of religious songs. The sound of bells and trumpets added to the effect of the strange spectacle. Men thought of the books and philters, burnt at Ephesus under the spell of Paul’s preaching. The scene was repeated the last year of Savonarola’s life,1498.

Savonarola has been charged with having no sympathy with the Renaissance and the charge it is not easy to set aside. As Burckhardt, the historian of that movement, says, he remained a monastic. In one writing, he sets forth the dangers of literature. Plato and Aristotle are in hell. And this was the judgment expressed in the city of the Platonic Academy! Virgil and Cicero he tolerated, but Catullus, Ovid and Terence he condemned to banishment.

Dio Kultur d. Renaissance, II. 200 sq.

At one time, under the spell of the prior’s preaching, all Florence seemed to be going to religion. Wives left their husbands and betook themselves to convents. Others married, taking the vow of nuptial abstinence and Savonarola even dreamed that the city might reach so perfect a condition that all marrying would cease. People took the communion daily and young men attended mass and received the eucharistic emblem. Fra Bartolomeo threw his studies of naked figures into the fire and for a time continued to think it sinful to use the hands in painting which ought to be folded continually in prayer. It was impossible that such a tension should continue. There was enthusiasm but not regeneration. A reaction was sure to come and the wonder is that Savonarola retained so much of the popular confidence, almost to the end of his life.

Alexander would have none of the Florentine reforms and was determined to silence Savonarola at any cost. Within the city, the air was full of rumors of plots to restore the Medici and some of the conspirators were executed. Enemies of the republic avowed their purpose to kill Savonarola and circulated sheets and poems ridiculing and threatening him. Insulting placards were posted up against the walls of his convent and, on one occasion, the pulpit of the cathedral was defiled with ordure and draped in an ass’ skin, while spikes were driven into the place where the preacher was accustomed to strike his hand. Landucci speaks of it as a "great scandal." Assassins even gathered in the cathedral and were only cowed by guards posted by the signory. The friar of St. Mark’s seemed not to be appalled. It was ominous, however, that the signory became divided in his support.

If possible, Savonarola became more intense in his arraignment of the evils of the Church. He exclaimed: "O prostrate Church, thou hast displayed thy foulness to the whole earth. Thou hast multiplied thy fornications in Italy, in France, in Spain and all other regions. Thou hast desecrated the sacraments with simony. Of old, priests called their bastards nephews, now they call them outright sons." Alexander could not mistake the reference nor tolerate such declamations. The integrity of the supreme seat of Christendom was at stake. A prophetic function superior to the papacy Eugenius III. might recognize, when it was administered in the admonitions of a St. Bernard, but the Florentine prophet had engaged in denunciation even to personal invective. The prophet was losing his balance. On May 12,1497, for "his failure to obey our Apostolic admonitions and commands" and as "one suspected of heresy" Alexander declared him excommunicate. All were forbidden to listen to the condemned man or have converse with him.

The bull is given by Villari, II. 189 sq.; Pastor, III. 411 sq.

In a letter addressed a month later "to all Christians, the elect of God," Savonarola again affirmed his readiness to yield to the Church’s authority, but denied that he was bound to submit to the commands of his superiors when these were in conflict with charity and God’s law. "Henceforth," exclaimed the Puritan contemporary, Landucci, "we were deprived of the Word of God." The signory wrote to Alexander in support of Savonarola, affirming his purity of character and soundness of doctrine, and friends, like Pico della Mirandola the younger, issued defences of his conduct. The elder Pico della Mirandola and Politian, both of whom had died a year or two before, showed their reverence for Savonarola by assuming the Dominican garb on their death-beds.

At this time, Savonarola sent forth his Triumph of the Cross, in which were set forth the verity and reasonableness of the Catholic faith.

Published in 1497, both in Latin and Etruscan, the Etruscan translation being by Savonarola himself.

Savonarola kept silence in the pulpit and refrained from the celebration of the sacrament until Christmas day of 1497, when he celebrated the mass at St. Mark’s three times. On the 11th of February, he stood again in the pulpit of the duomo. To a vast concourse he represented the priest as merely an instrument of the Almighty and, when God withdraws His presence, prelate and pope are but as "a broken iron tool." "And, if a prelate commands what is contrary to godly living and charity, he is not only not to be obeyed but deserves to be anathema." On another occasion, he said that not only may the pope be led into error by false reports but also by his own badness, as was the case with Boniface VIII. who was a wicked pope, beginning his pontificate like a fox and ending it like a dog.

Pastor: Beurtheilung, p. 71 sqq.; Villari, II. 252.

Every Roman priest, he said, had his concubine. No longer do they speak of nephews but of their sons and daughters. Savonarola even sought to prove from the pulpit that the papal brief of excommunication proceeded from the devil, inasmuch as it was hostile to godly living.

It was becoming evident that the preacher was fighting a losing battle. His assaults against the morals of the clergy and the Vatican stirred up the powers in the Church against him; his political attitude, factions in Florence. His assertions, dealing more and more in exaggerations, were developing an expectant and at the same time a critical state of mind in the people which no religious teacher could permanently meet except through the immediate and startling intervention of God. He called heaven to witness that he was "ready to die for His God" and invited God to send him to the fires of hell, if his motives were not pure and his work inspired. On another occasion, he invoked the Lord to strike him dead on the spot, if he was not sincere. Landucci reports some of these wild protestations which he heard with his own ears.

One weapon still remained to the pope to bring Savonarola to terms,—the interdict. This he threatened to fulminate over Florence, unless the signory sent this "son of the evil one" to Rome or cast him into prison. In case the first course was pursued, Alexander promised to treat Savonarola as a father would treat a son, provided he repented, for he "desired not the death of a sinner but that he might turn from his way and live."

See Alexander’s letters in Perrens, I. 481-485; Pastor, III. 418 sq. O’Neil finds no room for them.

Through epistolary communications and legates, the signory continued its attempts to remove Alexander’s objections and protect Savonarola. But, while all the members continued to express confidence in the friar’s purity of motive, the majority came to take the position that it was more expedient to silence the preacher than to incur the pope’s ban. At the public meeting, called by the signory March 9,1498, to decide the course of action to be taken, the considerations pressed were those of expediency. The pope, as the vicar of Christ, has his authority directly from God and ought to be obeyed. A second consideration was the financial straits of the municipality. A tenth was needed and this could only be ordered through the pope. Some proposed to leave the decision of the matter to Savonarola himself. He was the best man the world had seen for 200 years. Others boldly announced that Alexander’s letters were issued through the machinations of enemies of Florence and the censures they contained, being unjust, were not to be heeded.

See Schnitzer: Feuerprobe, p. 38 sqq.

In his last sermon, Savonarola acknowledged it as his duty to obey the mandate. A measure had been worked out in his mind which was the last open to a churchman. Already had he hinted from the pulpit at the convention of a general council as a last resort. The letters are still extant which he intended to send to the kings of Spain, England, France, Germany and Hungary, calling upon them to summon a council. In them, he solemnly declared that Alexander was no pope. For, aside from purchasing his office and from his daily sale of benefices, his manifest vices proved him to be no Christian. The letters seem never to have been received. Individuals, however, despatched preliminary communications to friends at the different courts to prepare the way for their appeal.

For the originals, see Perrens, I. 487-492. Excerpts are given by Villari, II. 292 sq. See also Hase, p. 59, Creighton, III. 237. Of the genuineness of the letters, Villari says there can be no doubt.

Florence was startled by the rumor that resort was to be had to ordeal by fire to decide the genuineness of Savonarola’s claims.

Landucci’s account of the fuoco, p. 165 sqq., is most vivid. For Cerretani’s account, Schnitzer’s ed., 59-71.

The ordeal was authorized by the signory and set for April 7. It was decided that, in case Fra Domenico perished, Savonarola should go into exile within three hours. The two parties, Domenico and Rondinelli, filed their statements with the signory. The Dominican’s included the following points. The Church stands in need of renovation. It will be chastened. Florence will be chastened. These chastisements will happen in our day. The sentence of excommunication against Savonarola is invalid. No one sins in ignoring it.

Schnitzer, p. 54.

The ordeal aroused the enthusiasm of Savonarola’s friends. When he announced it in a sermon, many women exclaimed, "I, too, I, too." Other monks of St. Mark’s and hundreds of young men announced their readiness to pass through the flames out of regard for their spiritual guide.

Alexander VI. waited with intense interest for the last bulletins from Florence. His exact state of mind it is difficult to determine. He wrote disapproving of the ordeal and yet he could not but feel that it afforded an easy way of getting rid of the enemy to his authority. After the ordeal was over, he praised Francesco and the Franciscans in extravagant terms and declared the Franciscans could not have done anything more agreeable to him.

Schnitzer, p. 64 sq., who goes into the matter at length, and Villari, II. 306 sqq., agree in the opinion that Alexander fully sympathized with the ordeal. They also agree that the Arrabbiati were largely, if not wholly, responsible for the suggestion of the ordeal and making it a matter of public appointment. Pastor, III. 429, represents Alexander as wholly disapproving the ordeal.

The coming trial was looked for with the most intense interest. There was scarcely any other topic of conversation in Florence or in Rome. Great preparations were made. Two pyres of thorns and other wood were built on the public square about 60 feet in length, 3 feet wide at the base and 3 or 4 feet high,

There is a difference among the contemporary writers about the figures. Landucci, p. 168, gives the length at 50 braccia, width 10 and height 4; Bartolomeo Cerretaui, Schnitzer ed. p. 62, the width as 1 braccio and the height 2.

The solemnity was set for eleven o’clock. The Dominicans made a solemn impression as they marched to the appointed place. Fra Domenico, in the van, was clothed in a fiery red velvet cope. Savonarola, clad in white and carrying a monstrance with the host, brought up the rear of the body of monks and these were followed by a great multitude of men, women and children, holding lighted tapers. When the hour arrived for the procession to start, Savonarola was preaching. He had again told the people that his work required no miracle and that he had ever sought to justify himself by the signs of righteousness and declared that, as on Mt. Carmel, miraculous intervention could only be expected in answer to prayer and humility.

Later mediaeval history has few spectacles to offer to the eye and the imagination equal in interest to the spectacle offered that day. There, stood the greatest preacher of his time and the most exalted moral figure since the days of John Huss and Gerson. And there, the ancient method of testing innocency was once more to be tried, a novel spectacle, indeed, to that cultured generation of Florentines. The glorious pageants of Medicean times had afforded no entertainment more attractive.

The crowds were waiting. The hour was past. There was a mysterious moving of monks in and out of the signory-palace. The whole story of what occurred was later told by Savonarola himself as well as by other eyewitnesses. The Franciscans refused to allow Fra Domenico to enter the burning pathway wearing his red cope or any of the other garments he had on, on the ground that they might be bewitched. So he was undressed to his skin and put on another suit. On the same ground, they also insisted that he keep at a distance from Savonarola. The impatience of the crowds increased. The Franciscans again passed into the signory-hall and had a long conference. They had discerned a wooden crucifix in Domenico’s hands and insisted upon its being put away for fear it might also have been bewitched. Savonarola substituted the host but the Franciscans insisted that the host should not be carried through the flames. The signory was appealed to but Savonarola refused to yield, declaring that the accidents might be burnt like a husk but that the essence of the sacred wafer would remain unconsumed. Suddenly a storm came up and rain fell but it as suddenly stopped. The delay continued. The crowds were growing unruly and threatening. Nightfall was at hand. The signory called the ordeal off.

Savonarola’s power was gone. The spell of his name had vanished. The spectacle was felt to be a farce. The popular menace grew more and more threatening and a guard scarcely prevented violence to Savonarola’s person, as the procession moved back to St. Mark’s.

There is much in favor of the view that on that day Savonarola’s political enemies, the Arrabbiati, were in collusion with the Franciscans and that the delay on the square, occasioned by interposing objections, was a trick to postpone the ordeal altogether.

Schnitzer, p. 159 sq., who says the signory and the Franciscans joined "in packing the cards."

Florence felt mad anger at having been imposed upon. The next day St. Mark’s was stormed by the mob. The signory voted Savonarola’s immediate banishment. Landucci, who wept and continued to pray for him, says "that hell seemed to have opened its doors." Savonarola made an address, bidding farewell to his friends. Resistance of the mob was in vain. The convent was broken into and pillaged. Fra Domenico and the prior were bound and taken before the galfonier amidst insults and confined in separate apartments. A day or two later Fra Silvestro, whose visions had favored the ordeal, was also seized. "As for saying a word in Savonarola’s favor," wrote Landucci, "it was impossible. One would have been killed."

The pope, on receiving the official news of the occurrences in Florence, sent word congratulating the signory, gave the city plenary absolution and granted it the coveted tithes for three years. He also demanded that Savonarola be sent to Rome for trial, at the same time, however, authorizing the city to proceed to try the three friars, not neglecting, if necessary, the use of torture.

Etiam per torturam. Alexander’s letter in Lucas, p. 372.

I was present at the reading of the proceedings against Savonarola, whom we all held to be a prophet. But he said he is no prophet and that his prophecies were not from God. When I heard that, I was seized with wonder and amazement. A deep pain took hold of my soul, when I saw such a splendid edifice fall to the ground, because it was built upon the sorry foundation of a falsehood. I looked for Florence to become a new Jerusalem whose laws and example of a good life—buona vita — would go out for the renovation of the Church, the conversion of infidels and the comfort of the good and I felt the contrary and took for medicine the words, "in thy will, O Lord, are all things placed"—in voluntate tua, Domine, omnia sunt posita. Diary, p. 173.

Alexander despatched a commission of his own to conduct the trial anew, Turriano, the Venetian general of the Dominicans and Francesco Romolino, the bishop of Ilerda, afterwards cardinal. Letters from Rome stated that the commission had instructions "to put Savonarola to death, even if he were another John the Baptist." Alexander was quite equal to such a statement. Soon after his arrival in Florence, Romolino announced that a bonfire was impending and that he carried the sentence with him ready, prepared in advance.

Fra Domenico bore himself most admirably and persisted in speaking naught but praise of his friend and ecclesiastical superior. Fra Silvestro, yielding to the agonies of the rack, charged his master with all sorts of guilt. Other monks of St. Mark’s wrote to Alexander, making charges against their prior as an impostor. So it often is with those who praise in times of prosperity. To save themselves, they deny and calumniate their benefactors. They received their reward, the papal absolution.

The exact charges, upon which Savonarola was condemned to death, are matter of some uncertainty and also matter of indifference, for they were partly trumped up for the occasion. Though no offender against the law of God, he had given offence enough to man. He was accused by the papal commissioners with being a heretic and schismatic. He was no heretic. The most that can be said is, that he was a rebel against the pope’s authority and went in the face of Pius II.’s bull Execrabilis, when he decided to appeal to a council.

See the miserable letters sent by the papal commission to Alexander, Lucas, pp. 434-436.

The intervals between his torture, Savonarola spent in composing his Meditations upon the two penitential Psalms, the 32d and the 51st. Here we see the gloss of his warm religious nature. The great preacher approaches the throne of grace as a needy sinner and begs that he who asks for bread may not be turned away with a stone. He appeals to the cases of Zaccheus, Mary Magdalene, the woman of Canaan, Peter and the prodigal son. Deliver me, he cries, "as Thou hast delivered countless sinners from the grasp of death and the gates of hell and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness." Luther, who published the expositions with a notable preface,1523, declared them "a piece of evangelical teaching and Christian piety. For, in them Savonarola is seen entering in not as a Dominican monk, trusting in his vows, the rules of his order, his cowl and masses and good works but clad in the breastplate of righteousness and armed with the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation, not as a member of the Order of Preachers but as an everyday Christian."

Weimar ed. XII. 248. Twenty-three edd. of Savonarola’s exposition appeared within two years of the author’s death and, before half a century elapsed, it had been translated into Spanish, German, English and French. In Italy, it was used as a tract and put into the hands of prisoners condemned to death. It was embodied in the Salisbury Primer,1538, and in Henry VIII.’s Primer,1543.

At their own request the three prisoners, after a separation of six weeks, were permitted to meet face to face the night before the appointed execution. The meeting occurred in the hall of the signory. When Savonarola returned to his cell, he fell asleep on the lap of Niccolini of the fraternity of the Battuti, a fraternity whose office it was to minister to prisoners. Niccolini reported that the sleep was as quiet as the sleep of a child. On awaking, the condemned man passed the remaining hours of the night in devotions. The next morning, the friends met again and partook together of the sacrament.

The sentence was death by hanging, after which the bodies were to be burnt that "the soul might be completely separated from the body." The execution took place on the public square where, two months before, the crowds had gathered to witness the ordeal by fire. Savonarola and his friends were led forth stripped of their robes, barefooted and with hands bound. Absolution was pronounced by the bishop of Verona under appointment from the pope. In pronouncing Savonarola’s deposition, the prelate said, "I separate thee from the Church militant and the Church triumphant"—separo te ab ecclesia militante et triumphante. "Not from the Church triumphant," replied Savonarola, "that is not thine to do"—militante, non triumphante: hoc enim tuum non est. In silence he witnessed the deaths of Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro, whose last words were "Jesus, Jesus," and then ascended the platform of execution. There were still left bystanders to fling insults. The bodies were burnt and, that no particle might be left to be used as a relic, the ashes were thrown into the Arno.

Savonarola had been pronounced by Alexander’s commission "that iniquitous monster—omnipedium nequissimum — call him man or friar we cannot, a mass of the most abominable wickedness." The pious Landucci, in thinking of his death, recalled the crucifixion and, at the scene of the execution, again lamented the disappointment of his hopes for the renovation of the Church and the conversion of the infidel—la novazione della chiesa e la conversione degli infedeli.

Savonarola was one of the most noteworthy figures Italy has produced. The modern Christian world, Catholic and Protestant, joins him in close fellowship with the flaming religious luminaries of all countries and all centuries. He was a preacher of righteousness and a patriot. Among the religious personalities of Italy, he occupies a position of grandeur by himself, separate from her imposing popes, like Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; from Dante, Italy’s poet and the world’s; from St. Francis d’Assisi and from Thomas Aquinas. Italy had other preachers,—Anthony of Padua, Bernardino of Siena,—but their messages were local and ecclesiastical. With Arnold of Brescia, Savonarola had something in common. Both had a stirring message of reform. Both mixed up political ideals with their spiritual activity and both died by judicial sanction of the papal see.

Savonarola’s intellectual gifts and attainments were not extraordinary. He was great by reason of moral conviction, his eloquence, his disinterested love of his country, his whole-souled devotion to the cause of righteousness. As an administrator, he failed. He had none of the sagacity or tact of the statesman and it was his misfortune to have undertaken to create a new government, a task for which he was the least qualified of all men.

See the excellent remarks of Burckhardt: Renaiss., II. 200.

Savonarola was a true Catholic. He did not deny a single dogma of the mediaeval Church. But he was more deeply rooted in the fundamental teachings of Christ than in ecclesiastical formulas. In the deliverance of his message, he rose above rituals and usages. He demanded regeneration of heart. His revolt against the authority of the pope, in appealing to a council, is a serious stumbling-block to Catholics who are inclined to a favorable judgment of the Friar of St. Mark’s. Julius II.’s bull Cum tanto divino,1505, pronounced every election to the papacy secured by simony invalid. If it was meant to be retroactive, then Alexander was not a true pope.

Pastor, III. 436 says that Savonarola was always true to Catholic dogma in theory. His only departure was disobeying the pope and appealing to a council. Father Proctor, Pref. to Triumph of the Cross, p. xvii, calls Savonarola "Of Catholics the most Catholic."

The favorable judgments of contemporaries were numerous. Guicciardini called him the saviour of his country—salvatore di patria — and said that "Never was there so much goodness and religion in Florence as in his day and, after his death, it was seen that every good thing that had been done was done at his suggestion and by his advocacy." Machiavelli thus expressed himself: "The people of Florence seemed to be neither illiterate nor rude, yet they were persuaded that God spake through Savonarola. I will not decide, whether it was so or not, for it is due to speak of so great a man with reverence."

The day after Savonarola’s death, women were seen praying at the spot where he suffered and for years flowers were strewn there. Pico della Mirandola closed his biography with an elaborate comparison between Savonarola and Christ. Both were sent from God. Both suffered in the cause of righteousness between two others. At the command of Julius II., Raphael,12 years after Savonarola’s death, placed the preacher among the saints in his Disputa. Philip Neri and Catherine de Ricci

Cardinal Capecelatro in his Life of St. Ph. Neri. trsl. by Father Pope, I. 278, says, "Philip often read Savonarola’s writings especially the Triumph of the Cross, and used them in the instruction of his spiritual children." Quoted by Proctor, Preface, p. 6. For Catherine de Ricci, see her Life by F. M. Capes, Lond.,1908, pp. 48, 49, 53,270 sq. She was devoted in her cult of Savonarola and wrote a laud to him. This was the chief objection to her beatification in 1716, but the arguments for an unfavorable judgment of Savonarola were answered on that occasion.

Within the Dominican order, the feeling toward its greatest preacher has undergone a great change. Respect for the papal decision led it, for a hundred years after Savonarola’s death, to make official effort to retire his name to oblivion. The Dominican general, Sisto Fabri of Lucca, in 1585, issued an order forbidding every Dominican monk and nun mentioning his name and commanded them to give up any article to their superiors which kept warm admiration for him or aroused it. In the latter half of the 19th century, as the 400th anniversary of his execution approached, Catholics, and especially Dominicans, in all parts of the world defended his memory and efforts were made to prepare the way for his canonization. In the attempt to remove all objections, elaborate arguments have been presented to prove that Alexander’s sentence of excommunication was in fact no excommunication at all.

Father O’Neil, a Dominican, in his work, Was Savonarola really excommunicated? takes this position and says, p. 132, "Alexander did not inflict any censure on Savonarola." The fact, however, is that in his letters to the signory, Alexander proceeded on the basis of his brief of excommunication. He stated distinctly the reasons for his being excommunicated and he called upon the priests of Florence to publicly announce his sentence of May 12,1497, upon pain of drawing ecclesiastical censure upon themselves. O’Neil replies that a papal decision, based upon a false charge, is invalid, p. 175 sqq.

By the general consent of Protestants, Jerome Savonarola is numbered among the precursors of the Reformation,—the view taken by Ranke. He was not an advocate of its distinguishing tenet of justification by faith. The Roman church was for him the mother of all other churches and the pope its head. In his Triumph of the Cross, he distinctly asserts the seven sacraments as an appointment of Christ and that Christ is "wholly and essentially present in each of the eucharistic elements." Nevertheless, he was an innovator and his exaltation of divine grace accords with the teaching of the Reformation. Here all Protestants would have fellowship with him as when he said:

Sermon VIII. in Prato ed. quoted by Rudelbach. Bayonne wrote his work in 1879 to dispose of this charge and to prepare the way for Savonarola’s canonization.

It is untrue that God’s grace is obtained by pre-existing works of merit as though works and deserts were the cause of predestination. On the contrary, these are the result of predestination. Tell me, Peter; tell me, O Magdalene, wherefore are ye in paradise? Confess that not by your own merits have ye obtained salvation, but by the goodness of God.

Passages abound in his Meditations like this one. "Not by their own deservings, O Lord, or by their own works have they been saved, lest any man should be able to boast, but because it seemed good in Thy sight." Speaking of Savonarola’s Exposition of the Psalms, Luther said that, although some clay still stuck to Savonarola’s theology, it is a pure and beautiful example of what is to be believed, trusted and hoped from God’s mercy and how we come to despair of works. And the whole-souled German Reformer exclaimed, "Christ canonizes Savonarola through us even though popes and papists burst to pieces over it."

Canonizat eum Christus per nos, rumpanter etiam papae et papistae simul. Weimar ed. XII. 248.

The sculptor has given him a place at the feet of Luther and at the side of Wyclif and Huss in the monument of the Reformation at Worms. When Catholics, who heard that this was proposed, wrote to show the impropriety of including the Florentine Dominican in such company, Rietschel consulted Hase on the subject. The venerable Church historian replied, "It makes no difference whether they counted Savonarola a heretic or a saint, he was in either case a precursor of the Reformation and so Luther recognized him."

Kirchengesch., II. 566.

The visitor in Florence to-day finds two invisible personalities meeting him everywhere, Dante, whom the city banished, and Savonarola, whom it executed. The spirit of theexecutioner has vanished and the mention of Savonarola’s name strikes in all Florentines a tender chord of admiration and love. In 1882, the signory placed his statue in the Hall of the Five Hundred. There, a few yards from the place of his execution, he stands in his Dominican habit and cowl, with his left hand resting on a lion’s head and holding aloft in his right hand a crucifix, while his clear eye is turned upwards. Again, on May 22,1901, the city honored the friar by setting a circular bronze tablet with portrait on the spot where he suffered death. A great multitude attended the dedication and one of the wreaths of flowers bore the name of the Dominicans.

In Savonarola’s cell in St. Mark’s has been placed a medallion head of the friar, and still another on the cloistral wall over the spot where he was seized and made prisoner, and the visitor will often find there a fresh wreath of flowers, a proof of the undying memory of the Florentine preacher and patriot.

§ 77. The Study and Circulation of the Bible.

The only biblical commentary of the Middle Ages, conforming in any adequate sense to our modern ideas of exegesis, was produced by Nicolas of Lyra, who died 1340. The exegesis of the Schoolmen was a subversion of Scripture rather than an exposition. In their hands, it was made the slave of dogma. Of grammatical and textual criticism they had no conception and they lacked all equipment for the grammatical study of the original Hebrew and Greek. What commentaries were produced in the flourishing era of Scholasticism, were either collections of quotations from the Fathers, called Chains,—catenae, the most noted of which was the catena on the Gospels by Thomas Aquinas,—or, if original works, they teemed with endless suggestions of the fancy and were like continents of tropical vine-growths through which it is next to impossible to find a clear path to Jesus Christ and the meaning of human life. The bulky expositions of the Psalms, Job and other biblical books by such theologians as Rupert of Deutz, Bonaventura and Albertus Magnus, are to-day intellectual curiosities or, at best, manuals from which piety of the conventual type may be fed. They bring out every other meaning but the historical and plain sense intended by the biblical authors. Especially true is this of the Song of Songs, which the Schoolmen made a hunting-ground for descriptions of the Virgin Mary.

So sober a writer as Reuss, p. 607, speaks of the commentaries on the Canticles, as being without number.

The traditional mediaeval formula of interpretation reduced Tychonius’ seven senses to four,—the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. The formula ran:—

Thomas Aquinas, fully in accord with this method, said that "the literal sense of Scripture is manifold, its spiritual sense, threefold, viz., allegorical, moral and anagogical."

Summa, I. 1 art. x.

After the Reformation was well on its way, the old irrational method continued to be practised and Bishop Longland, in a sermon on Prov. 9:1,2, preached in 1525, explained the words "she hath furnished her table" to mean, that wisdom had set forth in her spiritual banquet the four courses of history, tropology, anagogy and allegory.

Farrar, p. 295.

The papists divide the Scripture into four senses, the literal, tropological, allegorical and anagogical. The literal sense has become nothing at all, for the pope hath taken it clean away and hath made it his possession. He hath partly locked it up with the false and counterfeited keys of his traditions, ceremonies and feigned lies. Thou shalt understand that the Scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense, and this literal sense is the root and ground of all and the anchor that never faileth whereunto, if thou cleave, thou canst never err or go out of the way.

The Obedience of a Christian Man, Parker Soc., p. 303 sq. The author of the Epp. obscurorum virorum speaks of having listened to a lecture on poetry, in which Ovid was explained naturaliter, literaliter, historialiter et spiritualiter. In his preface to the Pentateuch, p. 394, Tyndale said, "The Scripture hath but one simple, literal sense whose light the owls cannot abide."

A decided step in the direction of the, new exegesis movement was made by Nicolas of Lyra in his Postillae, a brief commentary on the entire Bible.

Lyra’s work was printed 8 times before 1500. The ed. printed at Rome,1471-1473, is in 5 vols.

Lyra’s lasting merit lies in the stress he laid upon the literal sense which he insisted should alone be employed in establishing dogma. In practice, however, he allowed a secondary sense, the mystical or typical, but he declared that it had been put to such abuse as to have choked out—suffocare — the literal sense. The language of Scripture must be understood in its natural sense as we would expect our words to be understood.

Prol. 2. Omnes presupponunt sensum Lit. tanquam fundamentum, unde sicut aedificium declinans a fundamento disponitur ad ruinam expositio mystica discrepans a sensu lit. reputanda est indecens et inepta. See Reuss, p. 610.

Although Wyclif wrote no commentaries on books of Scripture, he gave expositions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue and of many texts, which are thoroughly practical and popular. In his treatise on the Truth of Scripture, he seems at times to pronounce the discovery of the literal sense the only object of a sound exegesis.

Sensus lit. scripturae est utrobique verus, De ver., I. 73,122.

Later in the 15th century, the free critical spirit which the Revival of Letters was begetting found pioneers in the realm of exegesis in Laurentius Valla and Erasmus, Colet, Wesel and Wessel. As has already been said, Valla not only called in question the genuineness of Constantine’s donation, but criticised Jerome’s Vulgate and Augustine. Erasmus went still farther when he left out of his Greek New Testament,1516, the spurious passage about the three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, though he restored it in the edition of 1522. He pointed out the discrepancy between a statement in Stephen’s speech and the account in Genesis and questioned the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostolic origin of 2d and 3rd John and the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse.

In opposition to such views the Sorbonne, in 1526, declared it an error of faith to call in question the authorship of any of the books of the New Testament. Erasmus recommended for the student of the Scriptures a fair knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and also that he be versed in other studies, especially the knowledge of natural objects such as the animals, trees, precious stones and geography of Scripture.

Paraclesis.

The nearest approach to the exegetical principles as well as doctrinal positions of the Reformers was made by the Frenchman, Lefèvre d’Etaples, whose translations of the New Testament and the Old Testament carry us into the period introduced by Luther. It remained for Luther and the other Reformers to give to the literal or historical sense its due weight, and especially from the sane grammatical exegesis of John Calvin is a new period in the exposition of the sacred writings to be dated.

The early printing-presses, from Lyons to Paris and from Venice and Nürnberg to Cologne and Lübeck, eagerly turned out editions of the entire Bible or parts of it, the vast majority of which, however, gave the Latin text. The first printed Latin Bible, which appeared at Mainz without date and in two volumes, belongs before 1455 and bears the name of the Gutenberg Bible from the printer or the Mazarin Bible from the copy which was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. Before 1520, no less than 199 printed editions of the entire volume appeared. Of these,156 were Latin,17 German,—3 of the German editions being in Low German,—11 Italian, 2 Bohemian and one Russian.

Falk, pp. 24, 91-97, gives a full list with the places of issue. Walther gives a list of 120 MSS. of the Bible in German translation. The Lenox Library in New York has a copy of the Mazarin Bible. The first book bearing date, place and name of printers was the Psalterium issued by Fust and Schöffer, Aug. 14,1457. See Copinger: Incunabula biblica or the First Half Century of the Latin Bible, Lond.,1892.

To the printed copies of the whole Scriptures must be added the parts which appeared in plenaria and psalteria,—copies of the Gospels and of the Psalms,

Often only a brief selection of Psalms was given. Such collections were meant as manuals of devotion and perhaps also to be used In memorizing. See Falk, p. 28 sqq.

The number of copies of the Bible sent off in a single edition is a matter of conjecture as must also be the question whether copies were widely held by laymen.

Janssen, I. 23, 75 attempts to establish it as a fact that the copies struck off were numerous. He cites in confirmation the edition of the Latin Grammar of Cochlaeus,1511, which included 1,000 copies, and of a work of Bartholomew Arnoldi, 1517, 2,000 copies. Sebastian Brant declared that all lands were full of the Scriptures, and the Humanist, Celti, that the priests could find a copy in every inn if they chose to look. 6,000 copies of Tyndale’s New Testament were printed in a single edition. The Koberger firm of Nürnberg has the honor of having produced no less than 26 editions, 1476-1520. Its Vulgate was on sale in London as early as 1580.

The new path which Erasmus struck out in his edition of the New Testament was looked upon in some quarters as a dangerous path. Dorpius, one of the Louvain professors, in 1515, anticipated the appearance of the book by remonstrating with Erasmus for his bold project and pronounced the received Vulgate text free "from all mixture of falsehood and mistake." This, he alleged, was evident from its acceptance by the Church in all ages and the use the Fathers had made of it. Another member of the Louvain faculty, Latromus, employed his learning in a pamphlet which maintained that a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was not necessary for the scholarly study of the Scriptures. In England, Erasmus’ New Testament was attacked on a number of grounds by Lee, archbishop of York; and Standish, bishop of St. Asaph, preached a furious sermon in St. Paul’s churchyard on Erasmus’ temerity in undertaking the issue of such a work. The University of Cologne was especially outraged by Erasmus’ attempt and Conrad of Hersbach wrote:

Hase: Ch. Hist., II. 2, p. 493. Faulkner: Erasmus, p. 127 sqq. Dorpius’ letter is given by Nichols, II. 168 sqq.

They have found a language called Greek, at which we must be careful to be on our guard. It is the mother of all heresies. In the hands of many persons I see a book, which they call the New Testament. It is a book full of thorns and poison. As for Hebrew my brethren, it is certain that those who learn it will sooner or later turn Jews.

But among the men who read Erasmus’ text was Martin Luther, and he was studying it to settle questions which started in his soul. About one of these he asked his friend Spalatin to consult Erasmus, namely the final meaning of the righteousness of the law, which he felt the great scholar had misinterpreted in his annotations on the Romans in the Novum instrumentum. He believed, if Erasmus would read Augustine’s works, he would change his mind. Luther preferred Augustine, as he said, with the knowledge of one tongue to Jerome with his knowledge of five.

Down to the very end of its history, the mediaeval Church gave no official encouragement to the circulation of the Bible among the laity. On the contrary, it uniformly set itself against it. In 1199 Innocent III., writing to the diocese of Metz where the Scriptures were being used by heretics, declared that as by the old law, the beast touching the holy mount was to be stoned to death, so simple and uneducated men were not to touch the Bible or venture to preach its doctrines.

Migne CCXIV:695 sq.

I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated into their own vulgar tongue, as though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men’s ignorance of it. The counsels of kings are much better kept hidden but Christ wished his mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel and the epistles of Paul. And I wish they were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen but also by Turks and Saracens, I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plow, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.

The utterances of Erasmus aside, the appeals made 1450–1520 for the circulation of the Scriptures among all classes are very sparse and, in spite of all pains, Catholic controversialists have been able to bring together only a few. And yet, the few that we have show that, at least in Germany and the Netherlands, there was a popular hunger for the Bible in the vernacular. Thus, the Preface to the German Bible, issued at Cologne,1480, called upon every Christian to read the Bible with devotion and honest purpose. Though the most learned may not exhaust its wisdom, nevertheless its teachings are clear and uncovered. The learned may read Jerome’s Vulgate but the unlearned and simple folk could and should use the Cologne edition which was in good German. The devotional manual, Die Himmelsthür,—Door of Heaven,—1513, declared that listening to sermons ought to stir up people to read diligently in the German Bible. In 1505, Jacob Wimpheling spoke of the common people reading both Testaments in their mother-tongue and made this the ground of an appeal to priests not to neglect to read the Word of God themselves.

Falk, p. 18. Janssen, I. 72, is careful to tell that the peasant, Hans Werner, who could read, knew his Bible so well by heart that he was able to give the places where this text and that were found.

Such testimonies are more than offset by warnings against the danger attending the popular use of Scriptures. Brant spoke strongly in this vein and so did Geiler of Strassburg, who asserted that putting the Scriptures into the hands of laymen was like putting a knife into the hands of children to cut bread. He added that it "was almost a wicked thing to print the sacred text in German."

Es ist fast ein bös Ding dass man die Bibel zu deutsch druckt. Quoted by Frietsche-Nestle in Herzog, II. 704.

The decree was so effective that, after 1488, only four editions of the German Bible appeared until 1522, when Luther issued his New Testament, when the old German translations seemed to be suddenly laid aside.

Reuss, p. 534. The last four editions of the old German Bible were 1490, Augsburg, 1494, Lübeck, Augsburg, 1508, 1518.

Distinct witness is borne by Tyndale to the unwillingness of the old party to have the Bible in English, in these words: "Some of the papists say it is impossible to translate the Scriptures into English, some that it is not lawful for the layfolk to have it in the mother-tongue, some that it would make them all heretics."

Pref. to the Pentateuch, Parker Soc. ed., Tyndale’s Doctr. Works, p. 392. Arundel did not adduce any errors in Wyclif’s version. Abbot Gasquet, in The Old Engl. Bible, p. 108, and Eve of the Reform., p. 209 sqq., attempts to show that the Bible was not a proscribed book in England before the Reformation. The testimonies he adduces, commending the Scriptures, are so painfully few as to seem to make his case a hopeless one. Dixon, Hist. of the Ch. of Engl., I. 451, speaks of Arundel’s "proclaiming the war of authority against English versions."

In France, according to the testimony of the famous printer Robert Stephens, who was born in 1503, the doctors of the Sorbonne, in the period when he was a young man, knew about the New Testament only from quotations from Jerome and the Decretals. He declared that he was more than 50 years old before he knew anything about the New Testament. Luther was a man before he saw a copy of the Latin Bible. In 1533, Geneva forbade its citizens to read the Bible in German or French and ordered all translations burnt.

See Baird: Hist. of the Huguenots, I. 57; Lindsay: The Reformation, II. 80.

On the other hand, through the agency of the Reformers, the book was made known and offered freely to all classes. What use the Reformers hoped to make of printing for the dissemination of religion and intelligence is tersely and quaintly expressed by the martyrologist, Foxe, in these words:

Book of Martyrs, V. 355.

Either the pope must abolish printing or he must seek a new world to reign over, for else, as the world stands, printing will abolish him. The pope and all the cardinals must understand this, that through the light of printing the world begins now to have eyes to see and heads to judge .... God hath opened the press to preach, whose voice the pope is never able to stop with all the puissance of the triple crown. By printing as by the gift of tongues and as by the singular organ of the Holy Ghost, the doctrine of the Gospel sounds to all nations and countries under heaven and what God reveals to one man, is dispersed to many and what is known to one nation is opened to all.

Note: – Both Janssen and Abbot Gasquet spend much pains in the attempt to show that the mediaeval Church was not opposed to the circulation of the Bible in popular versions or the Latin Vulgate. The proofs they bring forward must be regarded as strained and insufficient. They ignore entirely the vast mass of testimony on the other side, as, for example, the testimony involved in the popular reception given to the German and English Scriptures when they appeared from the hands of the Reformers and the mass of testimony given by the Reformers on the subject. Gasquet endeavors to break the force of the argument drawn from Arundel’s edict, but he has nothing to say of the demand Wyclif made for the popular dissemination of the Bible, a demand which implied that the Bible was withheld from the people. Dr. Barry who belongs to the same school, in the Cambr. Mod. Hist., I. 640, speaks of "the enormous extent the Bible was read in the 15th century" and that it was not "till we come within sight of the Lutheran troubles that preachers, like Geiler of Kaisersberg, hint their doubts on the expediency of unrestrained Bible-reading in the vernacular." What is to be said of such an exaggeration in view of the fact that the vast majority of Bibles were in Latin, a language which the people could not read, that Geiler died in 1510, seven years before Luther ceased to be a pious Augustinian monk, and that he did very much more than hint doubts! He expressed himself unreservedly against Bible-reading. Janssen-Pastor,—I. 23 sqq., 72 sqq., VII. 535 sqq.—have a place for stray testimonies between 1480–1520 in favor of the popular reading of the Scriptures, but, go far as I can see, do not refer to the warnings of Brant, Geiler and others against their use by laymen, and the only reference they make to Bertholdt’s notorious decree is to the clause in which the archbishop emphasizes the divine art of printing, divina quaedam ars imprimendi, I. 15.

§ 78. Popular Piety.

During the last century of the Middle Ages, the religious life of the laity was stimulated by some new devices, especially in Germany. There, the effort to instruct the laity in the matters of the Christian faith was far more vital and active than in any other part of Western Christendom.

The popular need found recognition in the illustrations, furnished in many editions of the early Bibles. The Cologne Bible of 1480, the Lübeck Bible of 1494 and the Venice Bible of Malermi,1497, are the best examples of this class of books. Fifteen of the 17 German Bibles, issued before the Reformation, were illustrated.

A more distinct recognition of this need was given in the so-called biblia pauperum,—Bibles for the poor,—first single sheets and then books, containing as many as 40 or 50 pictures of biblical scenes.

Ed. Reuss: D. deutschen Historienbibeln vor d. Erfindung d. Bücherdrucks,1855.—J. T. Berjeau: Biblia pauperum, Lond.,1859.—Laib u. Schwarz: D. Biblia pauperum n. d. original in d. Lyceumbibl. zu Constanz, Zürich,1867,—Th. Merzdorf: D. deutschen Historienbibeln nach 40 Hdschriften, Tüb., 1870, 2 vols.—R. Muther: D. ältesten deutschen Bilderbibeln, 1883.—Falk: D. Bibel an Ausgange d.MA, p. 77 sqq.—Biblia pauperum n. d. Wolfenbüttel Exemplare jetzt in d. Bibl. nationale, ed. P. Heintz, mit Einleitung über d. Entstehung d. biblia pauperum, by W. L. Schreiber, Strass., 1903.—Artt. Bilderbibel, in Herzog, III 214 and Historienbibel, in Herzog, VIII. 155 sqq. and Bib. pauperum, in Wetzer-Welte, II. 776 sq.—Reuss: Gesch. d. N. T., 524 sqq.

An extract will give some idea of the kind of information furnished by this class of literature. When Adam was dying, he sent Seth into the garden to get medicine. The cherub gave him a branch from the tree of life. When Seth returned, he found his father dead and buried. He planted the branch and in 4000 years it grew to be the tree on which the Saviour was crucified.

The best executed of these biblical picture-books are those in Constance,

The Constance copy in the Rosengarten museum contains many pictures, with explanatory notes on each page. I was particularly struck with the execution of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.

A marked and most hopeful novelty in Germany were the numerous manuals of devotion and religious instruction which were issued soon after the invention of printing. This literature bears witness to the intelligent interest taken in religious training, although its primary purpose was not for the young but to furnish a guide-book for the confessional and to serve priest and layman in the hour of approaching death.

Bezold, p. 112, speaks of the number of these manuals as massenhaft and Dr. Barry, Cambr. Hist., I. 641, with rhetorical unprecision speaks of them as sold in all book-markets. See J. Geffcken: D. Bibelcatechismen d. 15 Jahrh., Leipz.,1855.—B. Hasak. D. christl. Glaube d. deutschen Volkes beim Schlusse d. MA, Regensb., 1868.—P. Bahlmann: Deutschland’s kathol. Katechismen his zum Ende d. 16 Jahrh., Münster, 1894.—F. Falk: D. deutschen Sterbebüchlein bis 1520, Col., 1890. Also Drei Beichtbüchlein nach den 10 Geboten, Münster, 1907. Also D. Druckkunst im Dienste d. Kirche bis 1520, Col., 1879.—F. W. Battenberg; Joh. Wolff, Beichtbüchlein, Giessen, 1907.—Janssen-Pastor, I. 82 sqq.—Achelis: Prak. Theol., II. 497 sqq.—Wiegand: D. Apost. Symbol in MA, p. 50 sqq

A compendious statement of their intent is given in the title of the Seelenführer,

Printed at Mainz, by Peter Schöffer,1498, 47 pp.

With variations, these little books explain the 10 Commandments, the 14 articles of the Creed—the number into which it was then divided—the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, mortal sins, the 5 senses, the works of mercy and other topics. The Soul’s Comfort, which appeared in 16 editions,1474–1523,

See list of the editions in Bahlmann, p. 13 sq. The Cologne ed. of 1474 is in the London museum.

The Path to Heaven contains 52 chapters. The first two set forth faith and hope, the joys of the elect and the pains of the lost and it closes with 4 chapters describing a holy death, the devil’s modes of tempting the dying and questions which are to be put to sick people. Dietrich Kolde’s Mirror of a Christian Man, one of the most popular of the manuals, in the first two of its 46 chapters, took up the Apostles’ Creed and, in the last, the marks of a good Christian man. The first edition appeared before 1476; the 23d at Delfft,1518.

Bahlmann, pp. 17-19. The first dated MS. copy is 1470.

Many of the manuals expressly set forth the value of the family religion and call upon parents to teach their children the Creed, the 10 Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, to have them pray morning and evening and to take them to church to hear the mass and preaching. The Soul’s Guide says, "The Christian home should be the first school for young children and their first church."

The Path to Heaven,

Bahlmann, p. 7, gives as the probable date of composition,1450. The 1st printed ed., Augsburg, 1484. See also Geffcken, pp. 107-119.

Of the penitential books, designed distinctly as manuals of preparation for the confessional, the work of John Wolff is the most elaborate and noteworthy. This good man, who was chaplain at St. Peter’s, Frankfurt, wrote his book 1478.

See Falk: Drei Beichtbüchlein. The text of Wolff’s manual fills pp. 17-75. Falk also gives a penitential book, printed at Nürnberg, 1475, pp. 77-81, and a manual printed at Augsburg, 1504, pp. 82-96.

Wolff’s book, which is a guide for daily Christian living, sets forth at length the 10 Commandments and the acts and inward thoughts which are in violation of them, and puts into the mouth of the offender an appropriate confession. Thus, confessing to a violation of the 4th Commandment, the offender says, "I have done on Friday rough work, in farming, dunging the fields, splitting wood, spinning, sewing, buying and selling, dancing, striking people at the dance, playing games and doing other sinful things. I did not hear mass or preaching and was remiss in the service of Almighty God." Upon the exposition of the Decalogue follow lists of the five baser sins,—usury, killing, stealing, sodomy and keeping back wages,—the 6 sins against the Holy Ghost, the 7 works of mercy such as visiting the sick, clothing the naked and burying the dead, the sacraments, the Beatitudes, the 7 gifts of the Holy Ghost and an exposition of repentance. The work closes with a summary of the advantages to be derived from the frequent repetition of the 10 Commandments and mentions 13 excuses, given for not repeating them, such as that the words are hard to remember and the unwillingness to have them as a perpetual monitor.

These manuals, having in view the careful instruction of adults and children, indicate a new era in the history of religious training. No catechisms have come down to us from the ancient Church. The catechumens to whom Augustine and Cyril addressed their catechetical discourses were adults. In the 13th century, synods began to call for the preparation of summaries of religious knowledge for laymen. So a synod at Lambeth,1281, Prag,1355, and Lavaur, France,1368. The Synod of Tortosa,1429, ordered its prelates to secure the preparation of a brief compendium containing in concise paragraphs all that it was necessary for the people to know and that might be explained to them every Sunday during the year by their pastors. Gerson approached the catechetical method (see this volume, p. 216 sq.) and, after long years of activity made the statement that the reformation of the church must begin with children, a parvulis ecclesiae reparatio et ejus cultura incipienda.

Gerson’s opp., Du Pin’s ed., III. 280. Luther, in the same vein, said in 1516, Weimar ed., I. 450, 494, that, if there was to be a revival in the Church, it must start with the instruction of the children. A single book, corresponding to the manuals above described, has come down to us, from an earlier period, the composition of a monk of Weissenberg of the 9th century. See two Artt. on Catechisms in the Presb. Banner, Dec. 31, 1908, Jan. 7, 1909 by D. S. Schaff.

In England, we have something similar to the German penitential books in the Prymers,

Maskell: Monumenta ritualia, 2d ed., 1882, III., pp. ii-lxvii and a reprint of a Prymer, III 3-183. Dr. Edward Barton edited three Primers, dating from 1535, 1539, 1546, Oxf., 1834. See also Proctor’s Hist. of the Bk. of Com. Prayer, p. 14 sq. Proctor calls the Primer "the book authorized for 150 years before the Reformation by the Engl. Church, for the private devotion of the people." A. W. Tuer: Hist. of the Horn Book, 2 vols., Lond., 1896. Highly illust. and most beautiful vols.

A nearer approach to the catechetical idea was made by Colet in his rudiments of religious knowledge appended to his elementary grammar, and intended for use in St. Paul’s School. It contains the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, an exposition of the love due God and our fellowmen, 46 special "precepts of living," and two prayers, and is generally known as the Catecheyzon.

Text in Lupton: Life of Colet, pp. 285-292.

Religious instruction was also given through the series of pictures known as the Dance of Death, and through the miracle plays.

G. Peignot: Recherches sur les Danses des morts, Paris, 1826.—C. Douce: The Dance of Death, London, 1833.—Massmann: Literatur der Todtentänze, etc., Leipzig, 1841.—R. Fortoul: Les Danses des morts, Paris, 1844.—Smith: Holbein’s Dance of Death, London, 1849.—G. Kastner, Les Danses des morts, Paris, 1852.—W. Bäumker: Der Todtentanz, Frankfurt, 1881.—W. Combe: The Engl. Dance of Death, new ed., 2 vols., N. Y., 1903.—Valentin Dufour, Recherches sur la danse macabre, peinte en 1425, au cimetiere des innocents, Paris, 1873.—Wetzer-Welte: Todtentanz, XI., 1834-1841.

In the fifteenth century, the religious drama was in its bloom in Germany and England.

In addition to the Lit. given in vol. V.: 1, p. 869, see F. E. Schelling: Hist. of the Drama of Engl.,1558-1642, with a Résumé of the Earlier Drama from the Beginning, Boston, 1908.

Set forth by living actors, the miracle plays and moralities were to the Middle Ages what the Pilgrim’s Progress was to Puritans. They were performed from Rome to London, at the marriage and visits of princes and for the delectation of the people. We find them presented before Sigismund and prelates during the solemn discussions of the Council of Constance, as when the play of the Nativity and the Slaughter of the Innocents was acted at the Bishop of Salisbury’s lodgings,1417, and at St. Peter’s, as when the play of Susannah and the Elders was performed in honor of Leonora, daughter of Ferrante of Naples,1473. At a popular dramatization of the parable of the 10 Virgins in Eisenach,1324, the margrave, Friedrich, was so moved by the pleas of the 5 foolish maidens and the failure to secure the aid of Mary and the saints, that he cried out, "What is the Christian religion worth, if sinners cannot obtain mercy through the intercession of Mary?" The story went, that he became melancholy and died soon afterwards.

Of the four English cycles of miracle plays, York, Chester, Coventry and Towneley or Wakefield, the York cycle dates back to 1360 and contained from 48 to 57 plays. Chester and Coventry were the traditional centres of the religious drama. The stage or pageant, as it was called, was wheeled through the streets. The playing was often in the hands of the guilds, such as the barbers, tanners, plasterers, butchers, spicers, chandlers.

Pollock gives 48 York guilds with plays assigned to each, pp. xxxi-xxxiv. There are records of plays in more than 100 Engl. towns and villages, Pollock, p. xxiii.

Chester cycles was Noah’s Flood, a subject popular everywhere in mediaeval Europe. After God’s announcement to the patriarch, his 3 sons and their wives offered to take hand in the building of the ark. Noah’s wife alone held out and scolded while the others worked. In spite of Noah’s well-known quality of patience, her husband exclaimed: —

Nothing daunted, however, the patriarch went on with his hammering and hewing and remarked: —

The ark finished, each party brought his portion of animals and birds. But when they were housed, Noah’s help-meet again proved a disturbing element. Noah bade Shem go and fetch her.

Shem told her they were about to set sail, but still she resisted entreaty and all hands were called to join together and "fetch her in."

One of the best of the English plays, Everyman, has for its subject the inevitableness of death and the judgment.

The text in Pollock. It was revived in New York City in the Winter of 1902-1903 and played in three theatres, creating a momentary interest.

Such plays were impressive sermons, a popular summer-school of moral and religious instruction, the mediaeval Chatauqua. They continued to be performed in England till the 16th century and even till the reign of James I., when the modern drama took their place. The last survival of the religious drama of the Middle Ages is the Passion Play given at Oberammergau in the highlands of Bavaria. In obedience to a vow, made during a severe epidemic in 1684, it has been acted every ten years since and more often in recent years. Since 1860, the performances have attracted throngs of spectators from foreign lands, a performance being set for 1910. Writers have described it as a most impressive sermon on the most momentous of scenes, as it is a solemn act of worship for the simple-hearted, pious Catholics of that remote mountain village.

Pilgrimages and the worship of relics were as popular in the 16th century as they had been in previous periods of the Middle Ages.

See Erasmus: Praise of Folly, Enchiridion and Colloquies.—Gasquet: Eve of the Reformation, pp. 365-394.—G. Ficker: D. ausgehende Mittelalter, Leipzig, pp. 69-73.—H. Siebert, Rom. Cath.:Beiträge zur vorreformatorischen Heiligen-und Reliquienverehrung, Frei b. im Br., 1907.—Bezold, p. 105 sqq., Janssen-Pastor.

Among the popular shrines in Germany were the holy blood at Stemberg from 1492, the image of Mary at Grimmenthal from 1499, as a cure for the French sickness, the head of St. Anna at Düren from 1500, this relic having been stolen from Mainz. The holy coat of Treves was brought to light in 1512. As in the flourishing days of the Crusades, so again, pilgrimage-epidemics broke out among the children of Germany, as in 1457 when large bands went to St. Michael’s in Normandy and in 1475 to Wilsnack, where, in spite of the exposure by Nicolas of Cusa, the blood was still reputed holy.

We have the account of the latter by an eye-witness, the chronicler priest, Conrad Stolle of Erfurt. See Ficker, p. 69 sq.

Imposing religious processions were also popular, such as the procession at Erfurt,1483, in a time of drought. It lasted from 5 in the morning till noon, the ranks passing from church to church. Among those who took part were 948 children from the schools, the entire university-body comprising 2,141 persons, 812 secular priests, the monks of 5 convents and a company of 2,316 maidens with their hair hanging loosely down their backs and carrying tapers in their hands. German synods called attention to the abuses of the pilgrimage-habit and sought to check it.

Janssen, I. 748-760, ascribes the popularity of pilgrimages in Gemany to the currendi libido, the travelling itch.

English pilgrims, not satisfied with going to Rome, Jerusalem and the sacred places on their own island, also turned their footsteps to the tomb of St. James of Compostella, Spain. In 1456, Wey conducted 7 ship-loads of pilgrims to this Spanish locality. Among the popular English shrines were St. Edmund of Bury, St. Ethelred of Ely, the holy hood of Boxley, the holy blood of Hailes and, more popular than all, Thomas à Becket’s tomb at Canterbury and our Blessed Lady of Walsingham. So much frequented was the road to Walsingham that it was said, Providence set the milky way in the place it occupies in the heavens that it might shine directly upon it and direct the devout to the sacred spot. These two shrines were visited by unbroken processions of religious itinerants, including kings and queens as well as people less distinguished. Reference has already been made to Erasmus’ description, which he gives in his Colloquies. At Walsingham, he was shown the Virgin’s shrine rich with jewels and ornaments of silver and gold and lit up by burning candles. There, was the wicket at which the pilgrim had to stoop to pass but through which, with the Virgin’s aid, an armed knight on horseback had escaped from his pursuer. The Virgin’s congealed milk, the cool scholar has described with particular precision. Asking what good reason there was for believing it was genuine, the verger replied by pointing him to an authentic record hung high up on the wall. Walsingham was also fortunate enough to possess the middle joint of one of Peter’s fingers.

At Canterbury, Erasmus and Colet looked upon Becket’s skull covered with a silver case except at the spot where the fatal dagger pierced it and Colet, remarking that Thomas was good to the poor while on earth, queried whether now being in heaven he would not be glad to have the treasures, stored in his tomb, distributed in alms. When a chest was opened and the monk held up the rags with which the archbishop had blown his nose, Colet held them only a moment in his fingers and let them drop in disgust. It was said by Thomas à Kempis, that rarely are they sanctified who jaunt about much on pilgrimages—raro sanctificantur, qui multum peregrinantur.

Imit. of Christ, I. 1, ch. 23. See Siebert, p. 55.

Saints continued to be in high favor. Every saint has his distinct office allotted to him, said Erasmus playfully. One is appealed to for the toothache, a second to grant easy delivery in childbirth, a third to lend aid on long journeys, a fourth to protect the farmer’s live stock. People prayed to St. Christopher every morning to be kept from death during the day, to St. Roche to be kept from contagion and to St. George and St. Barbara to be kept from falling into the hands of enemies. He suggested that these fabulous saints were more prayed to than Peter and Paul and perhaps than Christ himself.

· Praise of Folly, pp. 85, 96, and Enchiridion, XII., P. 135.

The encouragement, given at Rome to the worship of relics, had a signal illustration in the distinguished reception accorded the head of St. Andrew by the Renaissance pope, Pius II. In Germany, princes joined with prelates in making collections of sacred bones and other objects in which miraculous virtue was supposed to reside and whose worship was often rewarded by the almost infinite grace of indulgence. In Germany, in the 15th century as in Chaucer’s day in England, the friars were the indefatigable purveyors of this sort of merchandise, from the bones of Balaam’s ass to the straw of the manger and feathers from St. Michael’s wings. The Nürnberger, Nicolas Muffel, regretted that, after the effort of 33 years, he had only been able to bring together 308 specimens. Unfortunately this did not keep him from the crime of theft and the penalty of the gallows.

Bezold, p. 99; Siebert, p. 59.

A most remarkable collection was made by no less a personage than Frederick the Wise of Saxony.

Die Universität Wittenberg nach der Beschreibung des Mag. Andreas Meinhard, ed. by J. Hausleiter, 2d ed., Leipz., 1903.

The religious reverence paid to the Virgin could not well go beyond the stage it reached in the age of the greater Schoolmen nor could more flattering epithets be heaped upon her than were found in the works of Albertus Magnus and Bonaventura. Mary was more easily entreated than her Son. The Horticulus animae,—Garden of the Soul,—tells the story of a cleric, accustomed to say his Ave Marias devoutly every day, to whom the Lord appeared and said, that his mother was much gratified at the priest’s prayers and loved him much but that he should not forget also to direct prayers to himself. The book, Heavenly Wagon, called upon sinners to take refuge in her mantle, where full mercy and pardon would be found.

Siebert, p. 39.

Blessid art thou virgyn marie, that hast born the lord maker of the world: thou hast getyn hym that made thee, and thou dwellist virgyne withouten ende. Thankis to god.

Heil sterre of the see, hooli goddis modir, alwei maide, blesful gate of heuene.

See Maskell, III. 63.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in its extreme form, exempting Mary from the beginning from all taint of original sin, was defined by the Council of Basel

Nunquam actualiter subjacuisse originali peccato, sed immunem semper fuisse ab omni originali et actuali culpa. Mansi, XXIX. 183.

To the worship of Mary was added the worship of Anna, Mary’s reputed mother. The names of Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim, were received from the Apocryphal Gospels of James and the Infancy. Jerome and Augustine had treated the information with suspicion as also the further information that the couple were married in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth, had angelic announcements of the birth of Mary and that, upon Joachim’s death, Anna married a second and a third time. The Crusaders brought relics of her with them to Western Europe and gradually her claim found recognition. Her cult spread rapidly. In Alexander VI. she found a distinguished devotee. Churches and hospitals were built to her memory. Trithemius wrote a volume in her praise and artists, like Albrecht Dürer, joined her with Mary on the canvas.

Janssen, I. 248. See E. Schaumkell: Der Cultus der hl. Anna am Ausgange des MA, Freib., 1896. J. Trithemius: De laudibus S. Annae, Mainz, 1494.

If sacred poetry is any test of the devotion paid to a saint, then the Virgin Mary was far and away the chief personage to whom worshippers in the last centuries of the Middle Ages looked for help. The splendid collection issued by Blume and Dreves,—Analecta hymnica,—filling now nearly 8,000 pages, gives the material from which a judgment can be formed as to the relative amount of attention writers of hymns and sequences paid to the Godhead, to Mary and to the other saints. Number XLII., containing 336 hymns, gives 37 addressed to Christ,110 to Mary and 189 to other saints. Number XLVI. devotes 102 to Mary. These numbers are taken at random. Here are introductory verses from several of the thousands of hymns which were composed in praise of her virtues and the efficacy of her intercession:—

Anna also has a large place in the hymns of the later Middle Ages and the 16th century.

Number XLII. of Blume and Dreves’ collection gives 10; Number XLIII. 9, Number XLIV. 8, Anna hymns.

In England, singing sacred songs seems to have been little cultivated before the 16th century. The singing of Psalms in the days of Anne Boleyn was a novelty and was greatly enjoyed at the court as it was later in Elizabeth’s reign, on the streets. The vast numbers of sacred pieces, written in Germany, France and the Lowlands, were intended for conventual devotions not for popular use.

The Cambridge Role, a MS. in Cambridge, contains 12 carols. John of Dunstable founded a school of music early in the 15th century. Traill: Social Engl., II. 368 sq. Maskell, Mon.rit., III. 1 sqq., gives a number of English hymns printed In the Prymers of the first half of the 16th century.

These adjuncts and elements of Christian worship and training were added to the usual service of the churches, the celebration of the mass, which was central, the confessional and preaching. The age was religious but doubt was growing. A writer of the 16th century says of England:

Italian Relation of Engl., Camden Soc. ed., p. 23.

There are many who have various opinions concerning religion but all attend mass every day and say many pater nosters in public, the women carrying long rosaries in their hands and any who can read taking the Hours of our Lady with them and reciting them in church verse by verse in a low voice is the manner of the religious. They always hear mass in their parish church on Sunday and give liberal alms nor do they omit any form incumbent upon good Christians.

The age of a more intelligent piety was still to come, though it was to prove itself less submissive to human authority.

§ 79. Works of Charity.

Benevolence and philanthropy, which are of the very essence of the Christian religion, flourished in the later Middle Ages. In the endeavor to provoke his generation to good works, Luther asserted that "in the good old papal times everybody was merciful and kind. Then it snowed endowments and legacies and hospitals."

Quoted by Uhlhorn, p. 439. Janssen, II. 325 sq., takes too seriously Luther’s complaint that more liberality had been shown and care given to the needy under the old system than under the new, using it as a proof of the influence of Protestantism. Riezler, Gesch. Baierns, as quoted by Janssen, I. 679 says, "The Christian spirit of love to one’s neighbor was particularly active In the 15th century in works of benevolence and there Is scarcely another age so fruitful In them." So also Bezold, p. 94.

The modern notion of stamping out sickness by processes of sanitation scarcely occurred to the mediaeval municipalities. Although the population of Europe was not 1/10 of what it is to-day, disease was fearfully prevalent. No epidemics so fatal as the Black Death appeared in Europe but, even in England, the return of plagues was frequent, as in 1406,1439,1464,1477. The famine of 1438, called the Great Famine, was followed the next year by the Great Pestilence, called also the pestilence sans merci. In 1464, to follow the Chronicle of Croyland, thousands, "died like slaughtered sheep." The sweating sickness of 1485 reappeared in 1499 and 1504. In the first epidemic, 20,000 died in London and, in 1504, the mayor of the city succumbed. The disease took people suddenly and was marked by a chill, which was followed by a fiery redness of the skin and agonizing thirst that led the victims to drink immoderately. Drinking was succeeded by sweating from every pore.

See C. Creighton in Social England, II. 412, 475, 561.

Provision was made for the sick and needy through the monasteries, gilds and brotherhoods as well as by individual assistance and state collections. The care of the poor was in England regarded as one of the primary functions of the Church. Archbishop Stratford,1342, ordered that a portion of the tithe should be invariably set apart for their needs. The neglect of the poor was alleged as one of the crying omissions of the alien clergy.

Doles for the poor, a common form of charity in England, were often provided for on a large scale. During the 40 days the duke of Gaunt’s body was to remain unburied, 50 marks were to be distributed daily until the 40th day, when the amount was to be increased to 500 marks. Bishop Skirland wanted 200 given away between his death and his interment. A draper of York gave by will 100 beds with furniture to as many poor folk. A cloth-maker made a doubtful charity when he left a suit of his own make to 13 poor people, with the condition that they should sit around his coffin for 8 days. There were houses, says Thorold Rogers, where doles of bread and beer were given to all wayfarers, houses where the sick were treated, clothed and fed, particularly the lepers. One of the hospitals that survives is St. Crow at Winchester for old and indigent people.

Rogers: Work and Wages, p. 417. Stubbs: Const. Hist., ch. XXI. Capes: Engl. Ch. Hist. in the 14th and 15th Cent., pp. 276 sq., 366 sq.

Hospitals, in the earlier part of our period, were the special concern of the knights of the Teutonic Order and continued throughout the whole of it to engage the attention of the Beguines. It became the custom also for the Beguines to go as nurses to private houses as in Cologne, Frankfurt, Treves, Ulm and other German cities, receiving pay for their services.

Uhlhorn, p. 383 sq.

Rome had more than one hospital endowment. The foundation of Cardinal John Colonna at the Lateran, made 1216, still remains. In his History of the Popes (III. 51), Pastor has given a list of the hospitals and other institutions of mercy in the different states of Italy and justly laid stress upon this evidence of the power of Christianity. The English gilds, organized, in the first instance, for economic and industrial purposes, also pledged relief to their own sick and indigent members. The gild of Corpus Christi at York provided 8 beds for poor people and paid a woman by the year 14 shillings and fourpence to keep them. The gild of St. Helena at Beverley cared constantly for 3 or 4 poor folk.

In 1409 was founded an asylum for lunatics in Valencia, Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, II. 94 sq. There were pest-houses In Oxford and Cambridge and Continental universities often had special hospitals of their own. Writing of the 16th century, Thomas Platter speaks of such a hospital at Breslau. The town paid 16 hellers for the care of each patient. These institutions were, however, far removed from our present methods of cleanliness. Of the Breslau hospital, Platter (Monroe’s Life, p. 103 sq.) says, "We had good attention, good beds, but there were many vermin there as big as ripe hemp-seed, so that I and others preferred to be on the floor rather than in the beds."

Leprosy decreased during the last years of the Middle Ages, but hospitals for the reception of lepers are still extensively found,—the lazarettos, so called after Lazarus, who was reputed to have been afflicted with the disease. Houses for this malady had been established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry I. at St. Giles, by King Stephen at Burton, Leicestershire and by others till the reign of John. St. Hugh of Lincoln, as well as St. Francis d’Assissidistinguished themselves by their solicitude for lepers. But the disease seems to have died out in England in the 14th century and it was hard to fill the beds endowed for this class of sufferers. In 1434, it was ordered that beds be kept for 2 lepers in the great Durham leper hospital "provided they could be found in these parts." Originally the hospital had beds for 60.

Geo. Pernet: Leprosy in Quart. Rev., 1903, p. 384 sqq. C. Creighton, Soc. Engl., II. 413. This Hist., Vol. V., I., pp. 395, 825, 894. For the fearful prevalence of cutaneous diseases and crime in England in the 13th century and as a cure for those who sigh for the fictitious happy conditions of mediaeval society, see Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, p. 101 sqq.

Begging was one of the curses of England and Germany as it continues to be of Southern Europe to-day. It was no disgrace to ask alms. The mendicant friars by their example consecrated a nuisance with the sacred authority of religion. Pilgrims and students also had the right of way as beggars. Sebastian Brant gave a list of the different ecclesiastical beggars who went about with sacks, into which they put with indiscriminate greed apples, plums, eggs, fish, chickens, meat, butter and cheese,—sacks which had no bottom.

In Germany, towns gave franchises to beg.

Uhlhorn, pp. 483, 456. Such a license was issued in Vienna,1442. Eberlin of Günzburg went so far as to say that in Germany, 14 out of every 15 people lived a life of idleness.

With the decay of the monastic endowments and the legal maintenance of wages at a low rate, the destitution and vagrancy increased. The English statutes of laborers at the close of this period,1495 and 1504, ordered beggars, not able to work, to return to their own towns where they might follow the habit of begging without hindrance.

Stubbs ch. XXI.; Social Engl., II. 548-550. Cunningham, p. 478 sq.; Rogers, pp. 416-419.

At a time when in Germany, the richest country of Europe, church buildings were multiplying with great rapidity, many churches in England, on account of the low economic conditions, were actually left to go to ruin or turned into sheepcotes and stables, a transmutation to which Sir Thomas More as well as others refers. The rapacity of the nobles and abbots in turning large areas into sheep-runs deprived laborers of employment and brought social distress upon large numbers. On the other hand, parliament passed frequent statutes of apparel, as in 1463 and 1482, restricting the farmer and laborer in his expenditure on dress. The different statutes of laborers, enacted during the 15th century, had the effect of depressing and impoverishing the classes dependent upon the daily toil of their hands.

See Traill: Soc. Engl., II. 388, 392-398. For the activity in churchbuilding in Germany, see Janssen, I. 180 sq.; Bezold, p. 90; Ficker, p. 65.

In spite of the strict synodal rules, repeated again and again, usury was practised by Christians as well as by Jews. All the greater Schoolmen of the 13th century had discussed the subject of usury and pronounced it sin, on the ground of Luke 6:34, and other texts. They held that charges of interest offended against the law of love to our neighbor and the law of natural fairness, for money does not increase with use but rather is reduced in weight and value. It is a species of greed which is mortal sin.

Thos. Aquinas: Summa, II. 2, q. 78.

The rates of the Jews were exorbitant. In Florence, they were 20% in 1430 and, in 1488, 32½%.

Pastor: Gesch. d. Päpste, III. 83 sq. For Germany, see Janssen, I. 460 sqq.

To afford relief to the needy, whose necessities forced them to borrow, a measure of real philanthropy was conceived in the last century of the Middle Ages, the montes pietatis, or charitable accumulations.

Other names given to them were montes Christi, monte della carità, mare di pietà. See Holzapfel, pp. 18, 20, for funds to provide for burial, montes mortuorum, made up from contributions, and funds to which mothers contributed at the birth of children, called montes dotis. Holzapfel gives the primary authorities on the benevolent loaning funds, pp. 3-14.

The popes showed a warm interest in the new benevolence by granting to particular funds their sanction and offering indulgences to contributors. From 1463 to 1515 we have records of 16 papal authorizations from such popes as Pius II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II. and Leo X. The sanction of Innocent VIII., given to the Mantua fund,1486, called upon the preachers to summon the people to support the fund, promised 10 years full indulgence to donors, and excommunicated all who opposed the project. Sixtus IV., in commending the fund for his native town of Savona,1479, pronounced its worthy object to be to aid not only the poor but also the rich who had pawned their goods. He offered a plenary indulgence on the collection of every 100 gulden. In 1490, the Savona fund had 22,000 gulden and the limit of loans was raised to 100 ducats.

Holzapfel, pp. 10-12, 44, 64, 70.

The administration of these bureaus of relief was in the hands of directors, usually a mixed body of clergymen and laymen, and often appointed by municipal councils. The accounts were balanced each month. In Perugia, the rate, which was 12% in 1463, was reduced to 8% a year later. In Milan it was reduced from 10% to 5%, in 1488. Five per cent was the appointed rate fixed at Padua, Vicenza and Pisa, and 4% at Florence. The loans were made upon the basis of property put in pawn. The benevolent efficacy of these funds cannot be questioned and to them, in part, is due the reduction of interest from 40% to 4 and 10% in Italy, before the close of the 15th century.

Holzapfel, p. 134.

A foremost place in advancing the movement was taken by the Franciscans and in the Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre,1439–1494, it had its chief apostle. This popular orator canvassed all the greater towns of Northern Italy,—Mantua, Florence, Parma, Padua, Milan, Lucca, Verona, Brescia. Wherever he went, he was opposed from the pulpit and by doctors of the canon law. At Florence, so warmly was the controversy conducted in the pulpits that a public discussion was ordered at which Lorenzo de’ Medici, doctors of the law, clerics and many laymen were present, with the result that the archbishop forbade opposition to the mons on pain of excommunication. The Deuteronomic injunction, 24:12 sq., ordering that, if a man borrow a coat, it should be restored before sundown and the Lord’s words, Luke 6, were quoted by the opposition. But it was replied, that the object of loaning to the poor was not to enrich the fund or individuals but to do the borrower good. Savonarola gave the institution his advocacy.

Villari, I. 294 sqq.; Holzapfel, pp. 124, 135. According to Holzapfel, there were in Italy in 1896, 556 monti di pietà with 78,000,000 lire—$16,000,000—out in loans.

The attempt to transplant the Italian institution in Germany was unsuccessful and was met by the establishment of banks by municipal councils, as at Frankfurt.

Holzapfel, p. 102 sqq.; Janssen, I. 464, 489.

Notable expression was also given to the practice of benevolence by the religious brotherhoods of the age. These organizations developed with amazing rapidity and are not to be confounded with the gilds which were organizations of craftsmen, intended to promote the production of good work and also to protect the master-workers in their monopoly of trade. They were connected with the Church and were, in part, under the direction of the priesthood, although from some of them, as in Lübeck, priests were distinctly excluded. Like the gilds, their organization was based upon the principle of mutual aid

The constitution of the Gild of St. Mary of Lynn contained the clauses, "If any sister or brother of this gild fall into poverty, they shall have help from every other brother and sister in a penny a day." The Gild of St. Catharine, London, had a similar stipulation. Smith: Engl. Gilds, p. 185.

The dead, who had belonged to them, had the distinct advantage of being prayed for. Their sick were cared for in hospitals, containing beds endowed by them. Sometimes they incorporated the principle of mutual benefit or assurance societies, and losses sustained by the living they made good. At Paderborn, in case a brother lost his horse, every member contributed one or two shillings or, if he lost his house, his fellow-members contributed three shillings each or a load of lumber.

As there were gilds of apprentices as well as of master-workmen, so there were brotherhoods of the poor and humble as well as of those in comfortable circumstances. Even the lepers had fraternities, and one of these clans had fief rights to a spring at Wiesbaden. So also had the beggars and cripples at Zülpich, founded 1454. The entrance fee in the last case was 8 shillings, from which there was a reduction of one-half for widows.

Uhlhorn, p. 422.

In the case of the Italian brotherhoods, it is often difficult to distinguish between a society organized for a benevolent purpose and a society for the cult of some saint. The gilds of Northern Italy, as a rule, laid emphasis upon religious duties such as attendance upon mass, confession of sins and refraining from swearing. The Roman societies had their patron saints,—the blacksmith and workers in gold, St. Eligius, the millers Paulinus of Nola, the barrel-makers St. James, the inn-keepers St. Blasius and St. Julian, the masons St. Gregory the Great, the barbers and physicians St. Cosmas and St. Damian, the painters St. Luke and the apothecaries St. Lawrence. The popes encouraged the confraternities and elevated some of them to the dignity of archfraternities, as St. Saviour in Rome, the first to win this distinction. Florence was also good soil for religious brotherhoods. At the beginning of the 16th century, there were no less than 73 within its bounds, some of them societies of children.

Pastor, IV. 30-38

Society did not wait for the present age to apply the principle of Christian charity. The development of organizations and bureaus in the 15th century was not carried as far as it is to-day, and for the good reason that the same demand for it did not exist. The cities were small and it was possible to carry out the practice of individual relief with little fear of deception.

§ 80. The Sale of Indulgences.

Nowhere, except in the lives of the popes themselves, did the humiliation of the Western Church find more conspicuous exhibition than in the sale of indulgences. The forgiveness of sins was bought and sold for money, and this sacred privilege formed the occasion of the rupture of Western Christendom as, later, the Lord’s Supper became the occasion of the chief division between the Protestant churches.

Originally an indulgence was the remission of a part or all of the works of satisfaction demanded by the priest in the sacrament of penance. This is the definition given by Roman Catholic authorities to-day.

So Paulus; J. Tetzel, p. 88, and Beringer, p. 2, a member of the Society of Jesus, whose work on indulgences has the sanction of the Congregation of Indulgences of the College of Cardinals. Both writers insist that the indulgence does not confer forgiveness of guilt but only the remission of penalty after guilt is forgiven. See also on the general subject this Hist., V. 1, pp. 735-748, VI. 146 sqq.

The application of indulgence to the realm of purgatory by Sixtus IV. was a natural development of the doctrine that the prayers and other suffrages of the living inure to the benefit of the souls in that sphere. As Thomas Aquinas clearly taught, such souls belong to the jurisdiction of the Church on earth. And, if indulgences may be granted to the living, certainly the benefit may be extended to the intermediate realm, over which the Church also has control.

Sixtus’ first bull granting indulgence for the dead was issued 1476 in favor of the church of Saintes. Here was offered to those who paid a certain sum—certam pecuniam — for the benefit of the building, the privilege of securing a relaxation of the sufferings of the purgatorial dead, parents for their children, friend for friend. The papal deliverance aroused criticism and in a second bull, issued the following year, the pontiff states that such relaxations were offered by virtue of the fulness of authority vested in the pope from above plenitudo potestatis — to draw upon the fund of merits..

For the text of the bulls, see Lea III. 585 sqq. and Köhler, pp. 37-40. A bull ascribed to Calixtus III., 1457, also sanctions indulgences for the dead. It is accepted as genuine by Paulus. For Gabriel Biel’s acceptance of Sixtus’ assertion of power to grant indulgences to the dead, see Köhler, p. 40.

To the abuse, to which this doctrine opened the door, was added the popular belief that letters of indulgence gave exemption both from the culpability and penalty of sin. The expression, "full remission of sins," plena or plenissima remissio peccatorum, is found again and again in papal bulls from the famous Portiuncula indulgence, granted by Honorius III. to the Franciscans, to the last hours of the undisputed sway of the pope in the West. It was the merit of the late Dr. Lea to have called attention to this almost overlooked element of the mediaeval indulgence. Catholic authorities of to-day, as Paulus and Beringer, without denying the use of the expression, a poena et culpa, assert that it was not the intent of any genuine papal message to grant forgiveness from the guilt of sin without contrition of heart.

Paulus, 97 sq., and Beringer, p. 11, either explain the expression to mean the penalty of guilt, as if it read a poena culpae delicta, or refer it to venial sins. See Vol. V. 1, p. 741. The Jubilee bull of Boniface VIII., 1300, was interpreted by a cardinal to include in its benefits guilt as well as penalty—duplex indulgentia culpae videlicet et poenae. Köhler, p. 18 sq., gives the text of the bull. John XXIII. confessed to have often absolved a culpa et poena.

Long before the days of Tetzel, Wyclif and Huss had condemned the use of the formula, "from penalty and guilt," as did also John Wessel. In denouncing the bulls of indulgence for those joining in a crusade against Ladislaus, issued 1412, Huss copied Wyclif almost word for word.

Nürnb. ed., 1715, vol. I. 212-267; Defens. quor. artt. J. Wyclif and the Reply of the Prag. Theol. faculty, I. 139-146.

Indulgences found an assailant in Erasmus, howbeit a genial assailant. In his Praise of Folly, he spoke of the "cheat of pardons and indulgences." These lead the priests to compute the time of each soul’s residence in purgatory and to assign them a longer or shorter continuance according as the people purchase more or fewer of these salable exemptions. By this easy way of purchasing pardon any notorious highwayman, any plundering bandit or any bribe-taking judge may for a part of their unjust gains secure atonement for perjuries, lusts, bloodsheds, debaucheries and other gross impieties and, having paid off arrears, begin upon a new score. The popular idea was no doubt stated by Tyndale in answer to Sir Thomas More when he said, that "men might quench almost the terrible fire of hell for three halfpence."

See Gasquet, Eve of the Reformation, p. 384.

It is fair to say that, while the last popes of the Middle Ages granted a great number of indulgences, the exact expression, "from guilt and penalty," does not occur in any of the extant papal copies

James of Jüterbock in his Tract. de indulg. about 1451 says he did not recollect to have seen or read a single papal brief promising indulgence a poena et culpa. Köhler, p. 48.

Indulgences in the last century of the Middle Ages were given for all sorts of benevolent purposes, crusades against the Turks, the building of churches and hospitals, in connection with relics, for the rebuilding of a town desolated by fire, as Brüx, for bridges and for the repair of dikes, such an indulgence being asked by Charles V. The benefits were received by the payment of money and a portion of the receipts, from 33% to 50%, was expected to go to Rome. The territory chiefly, we may say almost exclusively, worked for such enterprises was confined to the Germanic peoples of the Continent from Switzerland and Austria to Norway and Sweden. England, France and Spain were hardly touched by the traffic. Cardinal Ximenes set forth the damage done to ecclesiastical discipline by the practice and, as a rule, it was under other pretexts that papal moneys were received from England.

For the details which follow, the treatment by Schulte, in his work on the Fuggers, is the chief authority. This book contains a remarkable array of figures and facts based on studies among the sources.

In the transmission of the papal portions of the indulgence-moneys, the house of the Fuggers figures conspicuously. Sometimes it charged 5%, sometimes it appropriated amounts not reckoned strictly on the basis of a fixed per cent. The powerful banking-firm, also responding cheerfully to any request made to them, often secured the grant of indulgences in Rome. The custodianship of the chests, into which the indulgence-moneys were cast, was also a matter of much importance and here also the Fuggers figured prominently. Keys to such chests were often distributed to two or three parties, one of whom was apt to be the representative of the bankers.

Among the more famous indulgences for the building of German churches were those for the construction of a tower in Vienna,1514, for the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Constance, which had suffered great damage from fire,1511, the building of the Dominican church in Augsburg,1514, the restoration of the Cathedral of Treves,1515, and the building of St. Annaberg church,1517, in which Duke George of Saxony was much interested. One-half of the moneys received for these constructions went to Rome. In most of these cases, the Fuggers acted as agents to hold the keys of the chest and transmit the moneys to the papal exchequer. The sees of Constance, Chur, Augsburg and Strassburg were assigned as the territory in which indulgences might be sold for the cathedral in Constance. No less than four bulls of indulgence were issued in 1515 for the benefit of Treves, including one for those who visited the holy coat which was found 1512 and was to be exhibited every 7 years.

Treves also boasted of a nail of the cross, the half part of St. Peter’s staff and St Helena’s skull.

Among the noted hospitals to which indulgences were issued—that is, the right to secure funds by their sale—were hospitals in Nürnberg,1515, Strassburg,1518 and S. Spirito, Rome,1516.

Both of the churches in Wittenberg were granted indulgences and a special indulgence was issued for the reliquary-museum which the elector Frederick had collected. An indulgence of 100 days was attached to each of the 5,005 specimens and another 100 to each of the 8 passages between the cases that held them. With the 8,133 relics at Halle and the 42 entire bodies, millions and billions of days of indulgence were associated, a sort of anticipation of the geologic periods moderns demand. To be more accurate, these relics were good for pardons covering 39,245,120 years and 220 days and the still further period of 6,540,000 quarantines, each of 40 days.

In Rome, the residence of the supreme pontiffs, as we might well have expected, the offer of indulgences was the most copious, almost as copious as the drops on a rainy day. According to the Nürnberger relic-collector, Nicolas Muffel, every time the skulls of the Apostles were shown or the handkerchief of St. Veronica, the Romans who were present received a pardon of 7,000 days, other Italians 10,000 and foreigners 14,000. In fact, the grace of the ecclesiastical authorities was practically boundless. Not only did the living seek indulgences, but even the dying stipulated in their wills that a representative should go to Assisi or Rome or other places to secure for their souls the benefit of the indulgences offered there.

Prayers also had remarkable offers of grace attached to them. According to the penitential book, The Soul’s Joy, the worshipper offering its prayers to Mary received 11,000 years indulgence and some prayers, if offered, freed 15 souls from purgatory and as many earthly sinners from their sins. It professed to give one of Alexander Vl.’s decrees, according to which prayer made three times to St. Anna secured 1,000 years indulgence for mortal sins and 20,000 for venial. The Soul’s Garden claimed that one of Julius II.’s indulgences granted 80,000 years to those who would pray a prayer to the Virgin which the book gave. No wonder Siebert, a Roman Catholic writer, is forced to say that "the whole atmosphere of the later Middle Ages was soaked with the indulgence-passion."

Reliquienverehrung, pp. 33 sq., 60 sq.

An indulgence issued by Alexander VI., in 1502, was designed to secure aid for the knights of the Teutonic Order against the Russians. The latter was renewed by Julius II. and Cologne, Treves, Mainz, Bremen, Bamberg and other sees were assigned as the territory. Much money was collected, the papal treasury receiving one-third of the returns. The preaching continued till 1510 and Tetzel took a prominent part in the campaign.

A full account in Paulus, Tetzel, pp. 6-23.

It remains to speak of the most important of all of the indulgences, the indulgence for the construction of St. Peter’s in Rome. This interest was pushed by two notable popes, Julius II. and Leo X., and called forth the protest of Luther, which shook the power of the papacy to its foundations. It seems paradoxical that the chief monument of Christian architecture should have been built in part out of the proceeds of the scandalous traffic in absolutions.

On April 18,1506, soon after the laying of the cornerstone of St. Peter’s, Julius II. issued a bull promising indulgence to those who would contribute to its construction, fabrica, as it was called. Eighteen months later, Nov. 4,1507, he commissioned Jerome of Torniello, a Franciscan Observant, to oversee the preaching of the bull in the so-called 25 Cismontane provinces, which included Northern Italy, Austria, Bohemia and Poland. By a later decree Switzerland was added.

In a pamphlet entitled Simia by Andrea Guarna da Salerno, Milan, 1517, as quoted by Klaczko, Rome and the Renaissance, p. 25, Bramante the architect was refused entrance to heaven by St. Peter for destroying the Apostle’s temple in Rome, whose very antiquity called the least devout to God. And when the heavenly porter charged him with a readiness to destroy the very world itself and ruin the pope, the architect confessed and declared that his failure was due to the fact that "Julius did not put his hand Into his pocket to build the new church but relied on indulgences and the confessional." Paris de Grassis called Bramante "the ruiner,"architectum Bramantem seu potius Ruinantem.

The preaching of indulgences in Germany for the advantage of St. Peter’s began in the pontificate of Leo X. and is closely associated with the elevation of Albrecht of Hohenzollern to the sees of Mainz, Magdeburg and Halberstadt. Albrecht, a brother of Joachim, elector of Brandenburg, was chosen in 1513 to the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the bishopric of Halberstadt. The objections on the ground of his age and the combination of two sees—a thing, however, which was true of Albrecht’s predecessor—were set aside by Leo X., after listening to the arguments made by the German embassies.

In 1514, Albrecht was further honored by being elected archbishop of Mainz. The last incumbent, Uriel of Gemmingen, died the year before. The archdiocese had been unfortunate with its bishops. Berthold of Henneberg had died 1504 and James of Liebenstein in 1508. These frequent changes necessitated a heavy burden of taxation to enable the prelates to pay their tribute to the Holy See, which amounted to 10,000 ducats in each case, with sundry additions. By the persuasion of the elector Joachim and the Fuggers, Leo sanctioned Albrecht’s election to the see of Mainz. He was given episcopal consecration and thus the three sees were joined in the hands of a man who was only 24.

But Albrecht’s confirmation as archbishop was not secured without the payment of a high price. The price,10,000 ducats, was set by the authorities in Rome and did not originate with the German embassy, which had gone to prosecute the case. The proposition came from the Vatican itself and at the very moment the Lateran council was voting measures for the reform of the Church. It carried with it the promise of a papal indulgence for the archbishop’s territories. The elector Joachim expressed some scruples of conscience over the purchase, but it went through. Schulte exclaims that, if ever a benefice was sold for gold, this was true in the case of Albrecht.

See his account of the transaction, I. 115-121.

The bull of indulgences was issued March 31,1516, and granted the young German prelate the right to dispose of pardons throughout the half part of Germany, the period being fixed at 8 years. The bull offered, "complete absolution—plenissimam indulgentiam — and remission of all sins," sins both of the living and the dead. A private paper, emanating from Leo and dated two weeks later, April 15, mentions the 10,000 ducats proposed by the Vatican as the price of Albrecht’s confirmation as having been already placed in Leo’s hands.

Schulte, I. 125. Leo’s bull of March 31 is given by Köhler, pp. 83-93. Even the Rom. Cath., Paulus, Tetzel, p. 31, goes as far as to speak of "the miserable business which for both Leo and Albrecht was first of all a financial transaction."

The description of Tetzel’s sale of indulgences and Luther’s protest are a part of the history of the Reformation. It remains, however, yet to be said, as belonging to the mediaeval period, that the grace of indulgences was popularly believed to extend to sins, not yet committed. Such a belief seems to have been encouraged by the pardon-preachers, although there is no documentary proof that any papal authorities made such a promise. In writing to the archbishop of Mainz, Oct. 31,1517, Luther had declared that it was announced by the indulgence-hawkers that no sin was too great to be covered by the indulgence, nay, not even the sin of violating the Virgin, if such a thing had been possible. And late in life,1541, the Reformer stated that the pardoner "also sold sins to be committed."

An offer of this sort is referred to by John of Paltz (see quotation in Paulus): Tetzel, p. 136, and Paulus’ attempt to explain it away.

The traffic in ecclesiastical places and the forgiveness of sins constitutes the very last scene of mediaeval Church history. On the eve of the Reformation, we have the spectacle of the pope solemnly renewing the claim to have rule over both spheres, civil and ecclesiastical, and to hold in his hand the salvation of all mankind, yea, and actually supporting the extravagant luxuries of his worldly court with moneys drawn from the trade in sacred things. How deep-seated the pernicious principle had become was made manifest in the bull which Leo issued, Nov. 9,1518, a full year after the nailing of the Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, in which all were threatened with excommunication who failed to preach and believe that the pope has the right to grant indulgences.

The bull in Mirbt, p. 182.