A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURIN THE MIDDLE
AGE
CHARLES HARDWICK
CONTENTS.
FROM GRE30RY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE. 590-814.
Growth of the Church.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
Internal Organization .
Relations to the Civil Power
STATE OP
RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES
STATE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY
FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO POPE GREGORY VII.
§ 1. Growth of the Church.
In tlie Scandinavian kingdoms . . . . , . 100
Among the Slavic or Slavonian races . . . Ill
Moravian Ckuroli . . . . . ib.
Bohemian Church . . . . . . 114
Polish Church llfi
Wendirth Church 117
Bulgarian Church . . . . . 121
Other Slavonic Churches .... 124
Hungarians .... . . . . 12(5
In Central Asia 128
§ 2. Limitation of the Church.
Ravages of the Northmen 130
Persecutions in Spain 132
CHAPTER VI.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVEItXJIF.XT OF THE CHURCH.
§ 1.
Internal Organization 134
§ 2. Relations to the, Civil Power . . . fw
CHAPTER VII.
STATE OP
RELIGIOUS DOCTRIUE AND CONTROVERSIES.
Eastern Church 17t;
Reparation of East and West . . , . . . 181
Eastern and Western Sects -, 137
CHAPTER VIII.
ST4TE
OF INTELLIGENCE AXD PIETY . . I'Jl
FROM GREGORY VII. UNT.L THE TRANSFER OF THE PAPAL SEE TO AVIGNON.
CHAPTER IX.
TAIJE
§ 1 Growth of the Church
Among the Finns . ..... 206
In Pomerania 207
Among the Wends 209
Lieilanders and other tribes . . . 212
Prussians 214
§ 2. Vicissitudes of the Church in other regions.
Eastern Asia 217
Spain and Northern Al'ricj. 219
Among the Jews 220
CHAPTER X.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OP THE CHURCH.
1. Internal Organization 221
2.............. Relations to the Civil
Power 243
CHAPTER XI.
STATE OF RELIGIOUS
DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES.
Western Church . 257
Eastern Church 272
Relations of the East and West . .... 276
Eastern and Western Sects ... . 2S2
Bopomiles * ih.
Cathari and Albigenses 286
Petrolirusians 290
Waldenses or Yaudois 291
Apostolicals 294
CHAPTER XII.
STATE OF
INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY . . 296
FROM THE TRANSFER OF THE PAPAL SEE TO
AVIGNON UNTIL THE EXCOMMUNICATION OF lUTHER,
PAflE
Growth of the Church.
Among the
Lithuanians . ... 312
Samaites and Lapps .... 314
Kumaniann . . ... ih.
In the Canaries and Western Africa .... 315
In America 316
Compulsory Conversion of Muhannnedans and Jews , 318
CHAPTER XIV.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH.
The. Papacy 321
Other Branches of the Hierarchy . . , , . 310
CHAPTER XV.
STATE OF
RELIGIOUS DO''TRINE AND CONTROVERSIES,
Western Church 351
Eastern Church 362
Relations of East and West 364
Reformatory Efforts 371
Wycliffites 374
Hussites
. 400
STATE OF
INTELLIGENCE flND ?IETT . .414
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A HISTORY
THE period of
the Church’s life, to be considered in the following pages, will exhibit a
variety of features with which the student has been familiarized already in the
history of earlier times.
The foremost
article of faith, the Incarnation of our Lord, after a long struggle with
Rationalism on the one side and Spiritualism on the other, was finally elucidated
and established at the Council of Chalcedon (451): and although we shall
hereafter notice sundry forms of misbelief on this and kindred tenets, they
are frequently no more than reproductions or recurring phases of the past. It
should also be observed, that not a few of the characteristics of the Church in
her ritual, constitution, and relations to the civil power, had been
permanently fixed at the opening of this period ; and most, of the external
changes afterwards effected are the natural fruit of principles that had long
been ripening within. The same is true in a considerable measure of the
mediaeval Church-writers. Generally speaking, they trod in the steps of their
immediate predecessors, epitomizing what they had no longer the ability to
equal, and, with bright exceptions in St Bernard and some of the leading
schoolmen, showing little or no depth and originality of thought.
It is true
the degree of intelligence was different at
M. A. B
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Decay
of intelligence and of piety.
Growth
of the papal power in the Went.
Eastern
Church different from the Western.
different,
points of ike Middle Ages, and varied also in the fje5x»ra,l' branctjcspfthe
Church. Perhaps the lowest point for western Christendom at large was the sixth
and two following centuries, when society, everywhere depressed by the recent
inroads of barbarians, had not been able to rally from its languor and to mould
its chaotic elements afresh. To this, among other causes, we may assign the
deterioration of piety as well as of arts and letters, which is painfully
prominent in the records of that period : and to the same source is due the
admixture of unchristian feelings and ideas that had been blended with the
life, of the Medirv.val Church, clouding the sense of personal responsibility,
or giving birth to a servile and Judaizing spirit, that continued, more or
less, to keep its hold upon the faithful till the dawn of the Reformation.
Synchronizing
with the decay of literature, the degeneracy of taste, and an obscuration of
the deeper verities of the Gospel, is the growth of the Papal monarchy, whose
towering pretensions are in sight through the whole of the present period. It
may have served, indeed, as a centralizing agent, to facilitate tho fusion of discordant
races ; it may have proved itself in times of anarchy and ignorance a powerful
instrument, and in some sort may have balanced the encroachments of the civil
power. Yet on the whole its effect was deadening and disastrous: it weakened
the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline by screening the mendicant and monastic
orders from the jurisdiction of the bishops: it perpetuated the use of Latin
Service- books when the mass of the people could no longer understand them: it
crippled the spirit of national independence as well as the growth ot
individual freedom: while its pride and venality excited a bitter disaffection
to the Church, and opened a way for the deep convulsions at the middle of the
sixteenth century.
But this
remark, as well as the former on the altered phases of society, must be
confined to the Western or Latin Church, which was in close communion with the
popes. In the Eastern, where the like disturbing powers had operated less, the
aspect of religion was comparatively smooth. Islamism, which curtailed it on
all sides, but was incapable of mingling with it, did not waken in its members
a more primitive devotion, nor inject a fresh stock of
Mediaeval
Period.
3
energy and
health : it had already entered, in the seventh century, upon the calm and
protracted period of decline which is continuing at the present day.
Yet,
notwithstanding the stagnant uniformity in the general spirit of the age, a
change had been gradually effected in the limits of the Christian kingdom.
True; to the promise of the Lord, the Church of God multiplied in all quarters,
putting forth a number of new branches in the East and in the West, and, in
spite of the dimness of the times, bearing witness to its heavenly origin and
strength. As it had already triumphed over the systems of Greece and Rome, and
had saved from the wreck of ancient civilization whatever they possessed of the
beautiful and true, it now set out on a different mission, to raise the
uncultured natures of the North1, and to guide the Saxon, the
Scandinavian, and eventually the Slave, into the fold of the Good Shepherd.
1 All
Science ami art. ul) social culture, and the greatest political and
national movements, received their impulse from the Church, and were
guided and ruled by her spirit, however imperfect the form may have been under
which Christianity then existed.
B 2
INTRODUC
TION.
Proofs of surviving energy in the whole.
J
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first Jjmirtr of tl;e glMt Jgcs.
THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH FROM GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE.
CHAPTER I.
Roman ■aission to the Anglo- Saxons, i.D. 596
§1. GROWTH OF THE CHURCH
Steps hail been
already taken for the evangelizing of the Goths in Germany, the Burgundians and
Franks in Gaul, and the Piets1 in Scotland; in all which provinces
the labours of tho missionary had been very largely blessed. But a race of men,
who were destined above others to aid in converting the rest of Europe, was now
added to the Christian body. The Anglo-Saxons had been settled on the ruins of
the British Church for at least a century and a half, when a mission, formed by
Gregory the Great, appeared in the isle of Thanet. It was headed by his friend
Augustine, a Roman abbot, whose companions were nearly forty in number3.
Although the Germanic tribes were bordering on the British Christians4,
whom they had driven to the west, and had extended their conquests as
1
Coluruba, after labouring 32 years, breathed his last at the time when the
ltomun missionaries landed (Annates Cambria, in Monument. Britann. p. 831; see
also his life* by Adamnan, ed. Reeves, Dublin, 1857, pp. 228—230, 310: and in
Can5sius, Lectionrs Antiques, v. pt. ti. p. 559).
4 Tho
pious design had been conceived many year* before, while Gregory was abbot of a
monastery in Rome. Beda, Ilist. Ecc. n. 1 and from Ms own letters v,t leam that
intelligence had reached him ot a desire on the part of the English' themselves
for conversion to the Christian faith. Lib. vi. ep. 58, 59.
3 ‘Ut ferunt, ferme quadraginta.’ Bed. i.
25. They were at first deterred bj the hopelesnness of the undertaking, and
only reassured by an earnest letter from the Roman bishop: Gregor. Ep. lib. vi.
ep. 51.
4 Though i,inch depressed, the British
Church was far from extinguished. Bede (a war™ friend of the Roman
missionaries! mentions ‘neptem Brittonum episcopi it plures \iri doctissimi,’
n. 2; and the monastery of Uancomaburg (JBangor-y»-Coe,d), under its abbot
Dinoot, was large and flourishing. This applies of course only to the Western
side of the island.
far as the
Church that was already planted in the north1 bnglish by a mission from the sister
island, they had lost very little of their zeal for Woden, Tivv, and Fricge2.
It is not indeed unlikely that some of them may have gained a slight knowledge
of the Gospel from their numerous Keltic slaves; yet the only Christian of
importance in Kent on the landing of Augustine was the Frankish queen of
i'Ethelberlit, whom he espoused on condition of allowing her the free use of
her religion3. The system, therefore, which the Roman missionaries
founded was entirely of extraneous growth, was built on the .Roman model of the
period; and as it differed4 not a little from that of the British
1 Bed. hi. 4; v. 9. Saxon Chron.
ad an. 505. Ninias, ‘the apostle of the southern Piets' (between the Firth of
Forth ind the Grampians), had been educated at Romt. and died early in the
fifth century. His see was at ‘Candida Casa’ (in Sax. Chron. Hwiterne). It
afterwards came into tilt' hands of the ‘ Angles’ (Bed. hi. 4). Columba and hi*
successors Iiad thtir original establishment among the northern Piets (the
Gael; at Hycolumbeille, or Iona.
s For
m account of their mythology see Turner, Anglo-Saxons,
Append, bit. ii. c. in., and Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 327- 445.
3 In her retinue was a Frankish bishop,
Liudhard, who officiated in the church of St Martin near Canterbury, preserved
from the time of the Homans. Bed. i. 25, 26.
4 The first point of difference was in the
reckoning of Easter. The British and Irish were not indeed Quarto-decimani
(Bed. hi. 4): they uniformly solemnized that festival on a Sunday, liut in some
years (owing to their use of the cycle which up to 458 had been employed at
Home i on a Sunday different from that observed by the rest of the Church,
(Bed. ii. 2. 19;
Ideler, Chronol. n. 275 seq. Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, ed.
Uaddan and Stubbs, I. 152, 153.) The second was in the administering of
baptism, the exact point of which is uncertain. It appears however that the
defect was not the omission of Chrism or Confirmation, which although disused
in the Irish Church at a later period (Ep. Lanfr. Opp. ed. Bened. p. 320),
are mentioned in St Patrick’s letter to Coroticus. It is more probable that
the practice was that of single immersion. (Kunstmann, Ponitent. Bucher der Angelsachs. p.
2. Councils and Eccl.- Doc. I. 153.) Other points which emerged later than Augustine’s time were the form of
clerical ton«ure (Ussher, Antiq. Brit.
477), a practice of consecrating bishops by a single bishcp (Counc. and Eccl.
Doc. i. 1(15), peculiar ritual at ordination (ibid.), and consecration of
churches. The question of the Marriage of the Clergy, which is sometimes
alleged as a disputed one,does not seem to have arisen; nor is there any reason
to suppose that the state of opinion respecting it was at this moment in
Britain at all different from that of the other Western Churches. The real
question that prevented union was no doubt Augustine’s claim to superiority.
(See below, pp. 8, 9.) Augustine consented to waive the other differences for
the present, if three points were conceded; ‘Quia in multis quidem nostrcr
consuetudini, imo universalis ecclesias, contraria geritis: et tamen si in
tribus his milii obtemperare vultis, ut pascha suo tempore celebretis; ut
ministerium baptizandi, quo
First
steps of the
Homan
Disagreement
with the British Church: a.d. 603.
and the Irish
Churches, its advancement could not fail to place it in collision with those
bodies.
The field of
Augustine’s earlier labours was the kingdom of Kent. Softened by a Christian
consort, the king was himself baptized; and in his chief city (I)uroveruum
=Canterbury), Augustine was acknowledged as archbishop of the English, being
consecrated in 597, by Yirgilius of Arles1. This fact was announced
to Gregory the Great by two members of the mission, Laurentius and Peter2,
who bore a detailed account of its success; and Gregory3 was able to
inform an Eastern correspondent, that on Christ- mas-dav, 597, no less than ten
thousand ‘ Angli’ had been baptized by their brother-bishop. Still, in spite of
this glowing picture, the conversion of the people was afterwards retarded:
numbers of them, only half-weaned from paganism, relapsing to their former
state4. As the sphere of the Homan mission widened, the unfriendly
posture of the native Christians would be more and more perplexing. A
conference5 was accordingly procured by the help of iEthelberht,
with the hope of disarming this hostility and of gaining the cooperation of the
British: but the haughty manner of Augustine, threatening an invasion of their
freedom, was the signal for a harsh and spirited resistance; they instantly
rejected his proposals, and declared that nothing should induce them to accept
him as their archbishop6. A similar divergency of usages,
Deo renascimur, juxta morem sanct® Komanse et apoatolie* ecclesise
compleatis; ut genti Anglorum una nobiscum verbum Domini prsedicetis, cretera
quge agitis, quamvis moribus nostris contraria, Eequanimiter euncta
tolerabimus.’ • Bed. n. 2.
1 Bed. i. 27, and Pagi, Critic. ad an. 596,
§ 5.
2 Ibid. They carried also a string of
questions from Augustine, touching matters in which he was himself at a loss.
The answers of Gregory are preserved in Bede, ib.
3 Gregor. Epist. lib. viii. ep. 30. Bede
attributes the success of the missionaries to the ‘ simplicitatem innocentis
vitas ac duleedinem doctrine eorum coelestis,’ i. 26, though Augustine is said
to have wrought miracles (i. 31: cf. Greg. Epist. viii. 30).
4 e. g. in Kent itself, Eadbald, the
next king, restored the heathen worship. ,
5 Bed. ii. 2: cf. Palgrave, Engl. Common.
I. 238 seq.
6 ‘At illi nil horum se facturos neque
ilium pro archiepiscopo habituros esse respondebant.9 Bed.
ibid. A very spirited protest, granting that the Britons owed to the Boman
bishop, in common with all Christians, the deference of love, but denying that
any other obedience was due to him, is ascribed to Dinoot abbot of Bangor, who.
is mentioned by Bede on this
combined with
this independent spirit, had produced a similar estrangement in the Irish
missionaries, who were stationed in the north of Britain. Laurentius1,
the successor of Augustine at Canterbury, with Mellitus of London and Justus
of Rochester, endeavoured to secure their friendship, about 605, complaining
that a prelate of their communion (Daganus) would not even eat bread with the
Anglo-Roman party: but this, like the former application to the Britons, was at
present void of fruit.
Meanwhile the
two bands of workmen were proceeding in their labours, and though parted from
each other felt the blessing of the Lord. At the death of Augustine2,
the English Church had been organized in Kent and brought into close communion
with the Roman ; the pope, however, leaving its founder at liberty to select a
ritual for it from the Gallican and other ‘ uses V instead of copying the Roman
rules entirely. On the accession of Eadbald, the son of ^Ethelberht. in 616,
the prospects of the Church were darkened by the restoration of the pagan
worship: and only when Laurentius was on the point of giving up the mission in
despair1, did the king retrace his steps, and bow the knee to
Christ.
A similar
reverse occurred in the neighbouring state of Essex. Its king, Sa'berht, was
the nephew of iEthel- berht of Kent: he had received the Gospel5
early from
same occasion. See Bpclman’ti Concil. i. 108. But although the authenticity
of the document in which this is contained has been accepted by some critics
(Lappenberg, Hist, of England, ed. Thorpe, i. 135), it in generally regarded as
apocryphal, and exists only in very late MSS. (GounciU, &c. I. 122,
142.) A passage in Bede (n. 20) proves that the feeling of repugnance on
the part of the Britons grew up into hitter hatred: ‘Quipp« cum usque hodie
moris sit Brittonum fidem religio- nemque An^lxrum pro mhilo habere, no I j Lie
in aliquo eis magis com- munieare quam, paganis.’
1 Bed. ii. i. The form of address is
remarkable: ‘Duminis caristimit, fratribm episc.opU, Tel abbatibus per
universam Scottiam.’
2 a.d. GO-1 or 605. This date, though very
important, cannot be accurately
ascertained. See Smith's note on Bed. Hist. Eccl. it. 3. Wharton, Aug.
Sac. ii. 89—91.
3 "Non enim pro locis res, sed pro
bonis rebus loca amanda runt. Ex singulis ergo quibusque ecclesiis, qua' pia,
qua- religiosa, qna> recta sunt elige, et hcec quasi in fasciculum collecta,
apud Anglurum mentes in consvetudinem depone.’ Bed. I. 27.
4 Bed. ii. 6: cf. Neander, Church Hist. v.
24, note.
5 Bed. ii. 3. Gregory had designed
Lc mdon as the seat of the southern metropolitan, Epist. lib. xi. ep. 65: but
Boniface V. in 625, confirmed the selection of Canterbury. 'Wilkins, Concil.
i. 32.
enoush
CHCKIIH.
and aith the Irish, missionaries.
Progress of the Gospt I in Kent.
Conversion of Essex.
Conversion of Wessex.
the hands of
the Roman missionaries and established a bishopric in London, his chief city.
On his death, however, in 616, his sons, who had clung to their heathen habits,
made light of the Christian faith, and the refusal of the bishop (Hellitus) to
give them a share of the Eucharistic bread was followed by his expulsion1
from their kingdom. A gloomy interval succeeded, the faith either languishing
in secret, or being utterly subverted2, till the reign of Sigeberht
the Good 653—650;. His friendship with Oswiu, king of Northumbria, led the way
to his own conversion, while on a visit to that court3. He was
baptized by Finau, one of the Irish missionaries, and took back with him Cedd4
and others, by whom the whole kingdom of Essex was at length added to the Church.
In Wessex,
the Christian faith w'as planted byBirinus5, sent over by pope
Honorius in 634. He succeeded in converting Cynej.:il>>. the king, and
was bishop of Dorcic (Dorchester) till 649 or 650; but much of bis success may
be attributed to a visit, of Oswald, king of Northumbria, whose brother Oswiu
(also of the Irish school) did further service to the Wessex-mission6.
The successor of Cynegils, Cenwealh, a pagan, was driven from the throne in
643, but afterwards converted at the court of East Anglia. He was distinguished
by his Christian zeal. On his
1 Beil. ii.
5.
2 Bed. hi. 22. Justus, through the
influence of Eadbald, v. as restored to Rochester, from which he. hail retired
(Bed. n. 5), hut the pagan inhabitants of London would not receive their bishop
Mellitus (Ibid. n. 6 . In the following year (619) he succeeded Laurentius at
Canterbury, and was in hi- turn succeeded by Justus in 624 (ii. 7, 8).
3 Bed. hi. 22; Florcnt. Wigorn. Chronicon
ad an. 65JS.
* Afterwards
consecrated by Finan and two other Irish prelates as bishop of the East-Saxons.
Bed. hi. 22. A short relapse ensued on the death of Sigeberht, but the new
faith was permanently restored by the zeal of bishop Jarumuu. Bed. m. 30.
5 Bed. in. 7.
6 Wharton's Anglia Sacra, i. 192. Through
the influence of Oswiu, a Gaul named Agilbert, who had ‘spent not a
little time in Ireland legenda- rurn gratia gcriptwarum,’ was chosen to succeed
Bilious (Bed. in. 7), but his imperfect knowledge of the English language
displeasing the king, he returned into France. His successor was an
Anglo-Saxon, AVini (664); but he also incurred the displeasure of the king, and
migrating to London (666) was placed in that see by the king of Mercia. His
post was filled for a time by Leutherius, nephew of Agilbert, who was
consecrated in 670, by Theodore, the seventh archbishop of Canterbury. Bed.
ibid. The'first Anglo-Saxon raised to the episcopal dignity appears to have
been Ithainax of Bochenter: Florcnt. Wigorn. Chron. ad an. 641.
restoration,
therefore, the extension of the faith was a primary concern, and Wessex,
destined to become the leader of the English race, continued from that time
faithful to the Church.
Sussex,
like its neighbour Kent, was converted by the Roman party. The task had been
reserved for a native of Northumbria, Wilfrith, who combined
with his devotion to the pope the earnestness and prudence which are needed for
the work of the evangelist. Banished from his diocese in the north of England1,
he was able in five years (681—686) to organize the church of the South-
Saxons, who had previously resisted the appeals of a small Irish mission2.
The king, indeed, iEthelwealh, was a Christian already, having been baptized in
Mercia, but paganism still kept its hold upon his people, in whose hearts it
had found its last entrenchment.
The
conversion of East Anglia was early attempted by the Roman Mission. Rsedwald,
the king, had been instructed at the court of iEthelberht of Kent, but afterwards,
through the influence of his wife and friends, the strength of his faith
relaxed3. The assassination of his son (Eorpwald) in 628. was a
further check to the progress of the Gospel, which, at the instance of the
king of Northumbria, he had cordially embraced: and for three years it was
almost everywhere suppressed4. At the end of this interval, however,
his brother, Sigeberht, who had been Christianized in Gaul, was able to restore
it; and with the aid of Felix5, a native of Burgundy, the see of
Dumnoc (Dumvieh) was founded for the prelate of East Anglia. But the completion
of their work is due to the efforts of an Irish monk, named Fursey", whose
missionary
1
Beil. it. 13.
5 Ibid. They had a ‘monaKteriolum’ at a
place narntd Bosanhaiu. AYilfrith’s monastery or mission station was at Selsey.
3 Bed. ii.
15. To satisfy both parties ho reared the altar of Christ at
the side of the ancient ‘ arula ad victimas
dasmoniorum.’
1
[bid.
6 He received his mission from Honorius,
the fifth archbishop of Canterbury, and presided over the wse of Dunwich 17
years. Bed. ib. Under hK advice Sigeberht founded a school on the plan of those
he had
seen in Gaul: ‘Scholam,in qua pueri literis
erudirentur.. eisque p»da-
gogos ac magistros jnxta morem Cantuariorum pnebente.’ Bed. in. 18.
* in. 19.
The date of his arrival in England was 633. Bede gives a glowing picture.of his
sanctity and zeal.
Cnnmsinn vf Smsex.
Cnnvertion of Eaft Anglia.
Conversion
of Northumbria.
tours,
extending over a period of fifteen years, are said to have produced a
marvellous effect on the heathen and the faithful.
The kingdom
of Northumbria, consisted of two parts, Deira (from the Humber to the Tees),
and Bemicia (from the Tees to the Clyde). They were forcibly united at the
opening of this period, under the sway of an enemy to the Christian faith. His
defeat led the way to the accession of Eadwine, who on mounting his paternal
throne at York (616), was permitted to annex the kingdom of Bernicia. His
second wife was a daughter of ^Ethelberht of Kent, whom he espoused in
<J2£i; but notwithstanding a residence among the British clergy1,
he was still disaffected to the Gospel. Several circumstances had conspired,
however, to impress it on his mind2, and in 627, through the
influence of Paulinus, who had accompanied his queen to Northumbria, he was
baptized with a concourse of his people3. His death followed in
633, Penda, king of Mercia, the last champion of the English pagans, ravaging
the whole of his dominions and subverting every trophy of the Gospel1.
But the arms of his kinsman. Oswald, made a way for its permanent rerival in
the course of the year 635; and since Oswald had been trained by the Irish
missionaries5, he sent to their principal station at Iona for clergy
to evangelize his people, himself acting as interpreter. Aidan was the chief of
this band of teachers, and from his see in Lindisfarne (or Holy Island) he
guided all the movements of the mission6. He expired
* Sea
T.appenberg, A agio-Saxons, i. 145.
s
Beil. n. 9- -12. imong other predisposing cause1* -H as a letter
from Boniface V. (625), accompanied by a present, and the ‘ benedictio pro-
tectoris vestri B. Petri apostolorum principis,' but his conversion did not
occur till two years later.
3 See the very interesting circumstances in
Bed. ii. 12. CVifi was the last of the pagan high-priests. The scene was at
Godnrai.dhan., in the East Biding of Yorkshire. Ho great was the success of
Paulinu» in Deira, that on one occasion ho was employed for thirty-six days in
baptizing on one spot Bed. n. 1 i
4 Bed. ii. 20. P-iulinus, with the
widowed queen, sought refuge in Kent. He succeeded to the see of Rochester.
» ‘Misit ad majores natu Scottorum, inter quos
exulans- bapti^matii sacrameuta consecutus
i rat.’ Bed. lit. ii.
6 Bed. hi. 3. His field of labour extended
an far as Scotland, embracing York, abandoned by Paulinus. York did not regain
its ari'hie- piscopal rank till 735. Saxon Ckron. ad an. The archbishops of
York
in 651, after
an episcopate of seventeen years, the admiration of his Roman rivals1.
His mantle fell on Finan, who lived to see religion everywhere established in
the northern parts of Britain, and died in 661 or 662
To him also
Mercia was indebted for its first bishop Diuma, in 655. His master Oswiu, king
of Northumbria, having signalized himself by the overthrow of Penda, was
finally supreme in Middle England as well as in the north, and urgent in
promoting the conversion of the natives. Addicted in his earlier years to the
principles of his instructors, he established a religious system of the Irish
cast, and three of the Mercian prelates in succession owed their orders to the
Irish Church8,
The planting,
therefore, of the Gospel in the Anglo- Saxon provinces of Britain was the work
of two rival bands, (1) the Roman, aided by their converts and some teachers
out of Gaul, (2) the Irish, whom the conduct of Augustine and his party had
estranged from their communion. If we may judge from the area of their field
of action, it is plain that the Irish were the larger body: but a host of
conspiring causes3 gradually resulted in the spread and ascendancy
of Homan modes of thought.
The ritual
and other differences, obtaining in the various kingdoms, came painfully to
light on the intermarriage of the princes; and it was an occasion of this sort4
that
subsequently claimed to exercise metropolitan jurisdiction iu the whole
of Scotland: see tfpotswnod, Hist, of Ch. of Scotland (Lond. 1(577), pp. 34,
36, 38. From thi“ claim the Scottish church was* released by the popes, who
towardo the end of the 12th century made the bishops immediately subject to
Kome. Tho see of bt Andrew'o was not made archiepiscopal uuul 1472.
1 ‘
Hffic autem dissonantia paschalis observantia', vivente jEdano, patienter ab
omnibus tolerabatur, qui patenter intellexerant, quia etti pascha contra morem
eorum [i. e. the Irish party], qui ipsum miserant, facerfi non potuit, opera
tamen fidei, putatii et dilectionis, juxta mortm omnibv* sanctis coruuetnm,
diligenter exequi curavit.’ Bed. iii. 25.
- Bed. iii. 21.
3 e. g. The political predominance of
Wessex, ■which had been entirely Eomaniy.ed by liirinus and bid
followers, the activity, organization, and superior intelligence of the Roman
missionaries (such as Wilfrithl, the apostolical descent of the Banian church
(one of the sedes apostolica), and the prestige it had borrowed from the Roman
empire.
4 Bed iii. 25: ‘Unde nonnunquam
contigisse fertur illirt temporibus, nt bis in anno uno pascha celebraretur. Et
cum rex parcha Dominicum Bolutis jejuniis faeeret, tunc regina cum suis
persistens adhuc in jejunio diem I’almaram celebraret.’
ENOLISU CHCRl
H.
Conversion of Mercia.
Predn,ni- nanre of the Rori’an ehm/rt in the Christianity
of England,
Conference ot Whitby, 664.
Withdraw*
al of the Irish Clergy. Influence of Theodore.
served in no
small measure to shape all the after-fortunes of the Church in the northern
parts of Britain. The queen of Oswiu. the Northumbrian, was a daughter of
Eadwine and brought up in Kent; with Ealhfrith his son1, the coregent,
she was warm in her attachment to the customs of the south. Oswiu, 011 the
other hand, continued in communion with t.he Irish, over whom he had placed the
energetic Cohn an as the third bishop of Lindisfame. The controversy waxing hot
in 664. Colman was invited by the king to a synod at Streoneshealh (the Whitby
of the Danes), to meet the objections of an advocate of Home, in the person of
the rising Wilfrith2. The end was, that Oswiu and his people3,
persuaded by the agents of the queen, and dazzled by the halo which encircled
(as they dreamt) the throne of the ‘chief apostle,’ went over to the Roman
party, whiie the clergy, who were slow in complying with the changes of the
court, withdrew from the scene of conflict into Ireland4.
But it was
not till the time of Archbishop Theodore (638—690) that the fusion of the
English Christians was complete5. The two leading rulers, of
Northumbria and Kent, agreed in procuring his appointment8, and
advancing his designs in the other kingdoms. By the aid of a Roman
1
Eddius, Vit. 8. Wiljndi, c.-vn. aped Gale, Script ores. xv. p. 54.
> Bed. i'-. 25.
3 The Mur was afra id lest St Peter should
finally exclude him from heaven; and after his decision in behalf of Wilfrith,
faverunt adsidentes quiqiie sive adstantcs, majores cum mediocribus.’ Ibid. The
balance of argument however, it is bat fair to state, was on the side of
Wilfrith.
4 Bed. hi. 26. Fot th«i after-lift- of
Colman, pee Bed. rv. 4. Others, however, like Bishop Cedd the brother of St
Chad, conformed to the Homan customs. Ibid. The ntxt bishop of Lindisfame,
Tuda, had been educated in the south of Ireland, where the Roman Easter had
been adopted as t*arly aw 634, Bed. Ul. 26. of, in. 3 (p. 175, A, in Monumen
Britan.). This conformity wab afterward* increased by the labours of Adamnan
(687—704), v 15. The Piets accepted the Homan Easter in 710, the monks of It na
in 716: tht tonsure was received by the former in 710 and by the latter in 718.
The Britons of Wales conformed later, between 755 and 809. (Councils, &c. 1.
203, 11. 106.)
5 Bed. iv. 2: ‘Isque primus erst in
archiepiscopis, cui omnis Anqlonm ecdesia luan’is dare consentiret.’
6 Peusdedit died July 14, 664. and after a
vacancy of two or three years Oswiu and Ecgberht sent a presbyter, Wigheard,
elected by the
church of Canterbury, for consecration at the Roman
see. Wu'neard died at Romo: and after some correspondence with the tuo chief
kings t.f
England, Vitalian sent, at their request (Ced. in.
20; iv. 1), a prelate for the ■vacant see.
colleague and
through the exertions (often conflicting with his own) of tlie ever-active
Wilfrith, he was able to reduce the Irish school to insignificance1;
and while giving to the Church a high degree of culture, he was unwittingly-
binding it more closely in allegiance to the popes5. At Lis death
the island had been Romanized, according to the import of the term in the
seventh century: but the freer spirit of the Early Church still lingered in the
north. When, for example, ail attempt was made to enforce the mandates of
the pope, as distinguished from his fatherly advice, it met with a vigorous
repulse3 from two succes-
1 So
fa;1 as culture goes Theodore was not in opposition to the Irish;
they attended his schools in largo numbers (Aldhelm, Epist. 4; ed. Giles, p.
94): but in reference to discipline he directed that the imperfection in the
orders of persons ordained by Scottish or British bishops should bo remedied by
imposition of hands of a Catholic bishop; churches consecrated by them are to
be purified and “confirmed;” they are not to receive the Eucharist or Chrism
without expressing their wish to be united with the church; and if any doubt
about their baptism, they may be baptized. Theod. Poenit. 11. c. 9. (Councils,
&c. in. 197.)
1
Bed. iv. 2. He was seconded in 673 by a synod held at Hertford: Wilkins,
Concil. 1. 41. Councils &c. m. 11H. The English sees at the close of the
present period were the following: Province of Canterbury—
(1) Lichfield,
(2) Leicester, (3) I.indsey (Sidnactster), (4) Worcester, (5) Hereford, (6)
Sherborne, (7) Winchester, (8) Elmham, (9) Dunwich, (10) London, (11)
Rochester, (12) Selsey. Province of York—(1) Hexham,
(2) I.indisfarne,
(3) Whithem. Kemble. Anglo-Saxons, 11. 361, 362. At n iater period some of
these perished altogether, as Hexham, Whithem and Dunwich; while others were
formed, as Durham in succession to fcindisfame, Dorchester for Lincoln, ami in
Wessex, Banisbury Jlrast- nesbvrig—ecclesia Corvinensisi for Wilts, Wells for
Somerset, Crediton for Devonshire, and during some time, St Germans and perhaps
Bodmin for Cornwall, It was only in the 12th century that the whole Cambrian
Church was brought under tho jurisdiction of tho see of Canterbury: Williams,
Feel. Hint, of the Cymry, pp. 162.163; Lond. 1841. Councils. &c. ed. Haddan
and Stubbs, vol. 1. pp. 302 sq.
3 When Wilfrith. on his deposition from his
see, brought hin grievance to the pope, the sentence in his favour in 679 was
so far from reversing the decision at home, that on his return Ecgfrith of
Northumbria thr-w him into prison, and afterwards banished him. Bed. iv. 12,
13. Aldfrrth, on a like occasion, having readmitted him into tho kingdom, was
no less opposed to his Romanizing conduct. Having made a fresh appeal to Rotne,
and obtained from John VI. a favourable sentence (in 704, see Vit. S.
Wilfrid, c. 48—52), the bearers of it to the king were addressed in the
following terms: ‘ Se quidem legatorura personis, quod essent et vita graves et
aspectu honorabiles, honorem i.t parentibus deferre, cceterum ansensum
leflationi omnim abmiere, quod esset contra rationein homini jam bis a
tolo Antjlorum conrilio damnatu propter quce- libet apostolica scripta
comnnmicare.’ A compromise, however, was effected at his death, and WiHrith
was transferred to another see. W. Malmesb. Gesta Pontiff, ed. Hamilton, p.
239. It should be reinem-
Disngard
of
the papal claints.
ENGLISH
CHURCH.
Influence
of Inland in the cause cf missions.
Labovrs of Coluiaba- nus 590— 615;
sive kings,
assisted by their clergy, who thus stand at the head of a Jine of champions in
the cause of English freedom.
IN GERMANY AND PARTS ADJACENT.
Although the
cross had long been planted, here and there1, in the heart of the
German forests, as well as in the cities which bad owned the Roman sway, it was
not till the present period that religion could obtain a lasting basis and
could organize the German Church. The founding of the work was due to foreign
immigration. Ireland was at this time conspicuous for its light2: it
was full of conventual houses, where the learning of the west had taken refuge,
and from which, as from, missionary schools, the Gospel was transmitted far and
near.
The leader of
the earliest band who issued to the succour of the continent of Europe, was the
ardent Co- lumbanus8, (reared in the Irish monastery of Bangor).
With twelve young men, as his companions, he crossed over into Gaul, at the
close of the sixth century; but the strictness of his Rule4 having
rendered him obnoxious to the native clergy, and at length to the Burgundian
court6, be wras compelled to migrate into Switzerland
(610), working first in the neighbourhood of Zurich and next at
bered that in this struggle Theodore took a most active part against Vi
llfrith. and whilst he could hardly be expected to declare his contempt of
Bome, maintained the independence of the Church as much as did the kings.
1 See
an interesting account of the labours of Severinus and other solitaries in
Neander, O. Ii. v. 34, seq. BoMj’s ed.
3 ‘Hibernia quo catervatim istinc lectores
classibus advecti confluunt:’ a saying of Mdheim; ‘he contemporary of Theodore;
Epist• ad Eahfri- dum. Opp. p. 94, ed. Giles: Ussher’s Epist. Hibern. p. 27;
Opp. iv. 451, ed. ELrington. Antiquo tempore,' sayfr Mcuin at the end of the
next century, ‘ doctissimi solebant iuapi4ri de Hibernia, Britanniam. (ialliam,
Italian' venire et multos per ecclesias Christi fecisse proiectus.’ Ep. ooxxi.
(Al. eexxv.) Opp. i. 2«5.
1 See a life of him by Jonas, a monk of Ms
foundation at Bubbio, in llabillon, Acta Sa.nct. Ord. Benedict, sac. H. pp.
2—20.
4 Among Lis ether works in Billioth.
Patrum, ed. (Salland, tom. xn.; cf. Neander, G. II. v. 41, 42. The XVI.
Instructivncs of Columbanus are well « orth reading.
5 Three great settlements had grown out of
Ms labours in Gaul, the monasteries of Luxeuil, 1’ontaine (Fontana:) and
Anegray; besides the impulse he had given to religion generally.
Bregenz. From
thence in 313 lie was driven over the Italian frontier, and founded the
monastery of Bobbio, where he died in 615 Columbanus was attached to the
customs of his mother-church, and the struggle we have noticed in the case of
England was repeated in his lifetime. The freedom of his language to the Roman
bishops1 is a proof that he paid no homage to their see, though his
final residence in Italy appears to have somewhat modified his tone. He hail a
noble fellow-worker in his countryman, Gallus2, the founder of the
monastery of St Gall, who, with a perfect knowledge of the native dialects,
promoted the conversion of the Swiss and Swabians, till 640.
Yet these were
only drops in a long stream of missions that was now bearing on its bosom, far
and near, the elements of future greatness and the tidings of salvation. At the
end of the series of evangelists, contributed from Ireland, one of the more
conspicuous was Kilian3'650—689), who may be regarded as the apostle
of Franconia, or at least as the second founder of its faith. The centre of his
labours was at Wurzburg, where some traces of the Irish culture are surviving
at this day4.
Meanwhile the
ardour of the native Christians was enlisted in the spreading of the German
Church. Thus, a Frankish synod, about 313, wakened to a sense of duty by the
earnest Columbanus, made an effort to evangelize the neighbouring heathen5.
Emmeran, a prelate out of Aqui-
andnfOaf.
bit
590- - (iiO.
Ktllan in Franconia.
Xat're mu- siuns ;
1 See one to Gregory the Great, Gregor.
Epist. lib. ix. ep. 127. A more important testimony is supplied by his fifth
letter, ad Bonifacium IV., where he administers some salutary warnings to the
Ch.ireh of Rome: cf. W. G. Todd’s Church of St Patrick, pp. 118 v-q. Lond.
1844. In one passage he a'tmits that a church, instructed by St Peter and St
Paul, and honoured by their tombs, is worthy of all deference; but he reserves
the first rank for the church of Jerusalem: Roma orbis terrarum caput est
ecclesiarum, salva loci Duminicie resurrection is singulari yrce- rogatira.
§ 10.
2 The Life of Gallus, in its oldest form,
is printed in the Monument. German. IHstor. tom. n. 5 31, ed. Pertz: cf.
Neander, v. 47—49.
1 See
a Life of him in Canisius, Led. Antiq. in. pt. 1. pp. 175—179, ed. Basnage;
also a Passio SS. Kiliani et Sociorum ejim, ibid. IbO—182. Kilian
applied to the pope for his sanction of the undertaking.
1
Lappenberg, Ang.-Sax. i. 183.
* They
made choice of Abbot Eustasius, the successor of Columbanus at Luxeuil, for the
director of the mission. See his Life by Jonas, the monk of
liobbio, in Mabillun's Acta Sanct.
Ord. Benedict, sice. ii. pp.
M. A. 0
Eligius,
A
mandus, and others, in the Netherlands.
English
missions to Friesland, and the neighbour- hood.
tania1,
and Ruprecht2 of Worms, left their sees in the seventh century to
share in the holy conquest now advancing on all sides. By them, and the Frank
Corbinian, the foundations of a church were laid, not only in Bavaria, but also
on the banks of the Danube as far as Pannonia. A multitude of sources were thus
opened for the speedy propagation of the faith in the whole of southern
Germany.
In the north,
where the pagan system3 had a firmer hold upon the people, the
promoters of the Gospel were continually resisted. Notwithstanding, zealous
bishops like Eligius4 won their way in the midst of the savage
Frieslanders, whose empire at the opening of this period had extended also to
the Netherlands. There, it is true, religion had been planted long before, but
the inroads of those heathen tribes had left scarcely any vestige of the
Church. The sword of Dagobert I., who wrested many districts from their grasp,
had made a w7ay for the reconversion of Batavia (628—638), while
missionaries out of England afterwards engaged to soften and evangelize the
barbarous invaders. Ground wras already broken by the enterprising
Wilfiith5, who, in his flight from his diocese in 673, w'as driven
to the coast of Friesland, where he seems to have reaped a harvest of
conversions.
His work was
resumed by Willebrord6, an Englishman.
116—123: one also of Agil, a companion of Eustasius, ib. pp. 316—326, cf.
Neander, C. FI. y. 51—53.
1
Life in Canisius, Lect. Antiq. m. pt. 1. pp. 94 sq., though from its date (the
tenth or eleventh century) it is not trustworthy throughout.
a The
olilest account of him is printed in Kleinmayrn’s Nachrichten von Juvavia (the
ancient Salzburg). K. Life also of Corbinian may be seen in Meichelbeck's Hist.
Frisiny. (Freising], tom. i, pp. 1 sq. ed. 1724.
3 For a good account of Paganism in those
regions, see Mone’s Ge- schichte des Heidmthums in nordlichen Europa, Leipzig,
1823; and J. Grimm’s Deutsche JSIythologie, Gottingen, 1844.
* Or 1st
Eloy (burn 588, died 659), appointed, in 641, bishop of Tour- nay and Jsoyon.
See an interesting Life of him by a pupil, in D’Achery’s Spicilegium, tom. n.
p. 76, and Dr Maitlend’s Darir iges, pp. 101 sq. Eligius was preceded by
Amandus, ordained (630) -without a diocese fepisco- pus regionarius) to labour
in the neighbourhood of Ghent ami Antwerp, but appointed in 618 to the see of
ilastricht (Trajectum), where he died in 679. Life in Mabiilon’s Acta Bened.
sase. n. 679—706. Contemporary with him was Audomar (St Oraer), out of the
Irish monastery at Luxeuil, who preached from the neighbourhood of Boulogne as
far as the Scheldt.
6 Florent. Wigorn. ail an. 677: Eddius,
Vtt. Wilf. c. xxvi—xxviii.
6 His Life was written by Alcuin; Opp. tom.
n. 183: but a still older account of his labours is in Bede, Ilist. F.cc. v. 10
sq.
who, though a
student for twelve years in Ireland1, was marked, like the other
Anglo-Saxons of the period, hy the warmth of his devotion to the Roman see2.
The field of his principal success was the neighbourhood of Wilteburg
(Trajectum—Utrecht), where he died, after a long episcopate, in 739 or 741. He
is said to have been assisted in his labours by Wulfram3, bishop of
Sens, who migrated with some attendants into Friesland ; and the work was
enlarged by a native, Wursing4, as well as by other pupils of
Willebrord; one of whom, Swithberht5, in the life-tiine of his
master, appears to have penetrated even into Prussia.
But meanwhile
a fresh actor had come forward in the same hopeful cause. This was a I
)evonshire-man, Winfrith, who, under the title BONIFACIUS6, is known as the apostle of Thuringia, and of some of the neighbouring
districts. He was to Germany what Theodore had been to England, binding all the
members of the Church together, and imparting to it new stability and life.
Crossing over into Friesland (716), he joined himself to Willebrord at Utrecht;
but, retreating, for some cause or other, to his native country, he remained in
his cloister at Nursling two years'. He then went to Iiome, commended7
to the pope by Daniel of Winchester, and in 719 was formally deputed" by
Gre-
1 1 Ibique duodecim annis inter eximios simul piai religionis et same
lectionis magistros, futurus multorum populorum pradicator erudiebatur.' Vit. S. Willebrord. lib. I. c. 4.
18 He
visited the pope in 692, ‘lit com ejus licentia et benedictione desideratum
evangolizandi gentibus opus iniret.’ Bed. v. 11. In 696 he was sent by Pepin of
Heristal, who an mayor of the palace of Austrasia had subdued home of the
Frieslanders, to be ordained, by the pope, archbishop of that region. Ibid.:
ef. Annales Xantenses (in Pertz), i.». 694.
3 Life in the Acta Sanctorum for March 20,
ed. Bolland.
1 See the interesting account of him in the
Vit. S. Liudgeri, c. 1—4: Murium, (ierman. ed. Pertz, n. 405, 406.
5 Bed. v. 11. He also mentions (c. 10) a
mission of two English brothers, Mger Hewald and Albus Hewald, who perished in
their attempt to evangelize the foreign Saxons (provinciam antiquoruni
Saxonuml.
6 The best Life of him is that by a presbyter,
Willibald: Pertz’s J/onw- vienta, ii. 334 seq. .Iafft5, Monumenta iloguntina, pp. 422—171. CL Bonifacius
der Apostel der Deutsehen, by Seilers, Mainz, 1815.
1 Vit. £
14.
8
Bomfacii Epist. a.; J. 26. ed. Giles. But notwithstanding his profound respect
for the papal chair, his independent spirit more than once breaks out in the
course of his correspondence. Thus in 742 he quotes the tradition of his nativo
land, as reckoned from Augustine, against a reported decision of the rniing
pope, Ep. xi.ix. p. 103; and it is clear from the same letter (p. 105)
that he did not allow the light of any pope to dispense with the ‘ decreta
canonuin.'
Univ
Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
Willebrord
(692
741).
Wulfram.
Wursing.
Swithberht.
Labours
of Winfrith or Bonifacius :
in
Fries- land:
in Thuringia:
gory II. ‘to
inquire into the state of the savage Germans’ eastward of the Rhine. The first
fruits of his zeal were gathered in Thuringia; hut news out of Friesland drew
him thither, and he taught for three years in conjunction with Willebrard \ His
next missionary station (722) was at Amoneburg, in Upper Hessia, chosen with
the hope of converting the Hessians, and after them the Saxons. Summoned by the
pope, who had heard of his success, he undertook a second journey to Rome
(723), where, together with the name of Bonifacius2, he received
ordination as a missionary bishop, and made himself, by oath, the vassal of the
Roman Church. He was thus armed with a new authority; and, seconded in many
cases by the civil power3, was able to extend the sphere of his
operations, and to bear down all opponents, whether heathen, or disciples of
the freer Christian school4, that had its birth in Ireland. At the
same time he was constant in imparting, to the utmost of his power, the salutary
doctrines of the Gospel. Famed for his preaching5, his diffusion of
the Scriptures6, and his zeal in the founding of monastic schools,
which he fed by a number of auxiliaries7 from England, his work
could not fail to prosper in a neighbourhood which was the field of his
missionary zeal for no' less than fifteen years. In
Vit. | §21.
10.
‘ Tuo conamine et Caroli pr.incipis,' was the language of pope Gregory
III. to Boniface (Oct. 29, 739); Bonifacii Opp. ed. Giles, x. 97; yet the power
of Charles Martel was not uniformly on the side of the missionaries. It was
only under Pepin and Carlomau that Bonifact could feel himself supreme.
4 Neander discovers traces of this
earlyprotestantism in fhe records o£ his preaching: e. g. in a letter of
Gregory III. to the bishops of Bavaria and Alemaimia, after urging them to
adopt the Boman uses, as taught byBonifaee, he warned them to reject ‘et
gentilitatis ritum et doetrinam, vel venientium Britunum, vel falsurum
sacerdotum, et hareticorum, ant undecunque pint.’ Bonifacii Opp. I. 96: cf.
Neander, v. 67 (and note). Neander’s notion of the freedom of the Irish school
is somewhat visionary. It can hardly be denied that the accusation* brought
against these teachers by Boniface are countenanced by the half mystic half
sensuous views of religion which appear in the best authenticated legends of
the ancient Irish. Boniface himself (Ep. xli.) draws a gloomy picture of the
state of the clergy and deplores his inability to hold communion with them.
5 ‘ Evangelica etiam doctrina adeo
prajcipnus extitit, ut apostolorum tempora in ejus praedicatione laudares.’ Annales Xantenses, v.n. 752.
0 Epp. xvjii xix. Opp. i. 52, 53.
r Vrillibald, Vit. S. Bonifac. § 23.
738 he is
said to have baptized a hundred thousand natives1. A third visit to
Rome (738) resulted in his mission to Bavaria, where he laboured in the twofold
task of organizing the Church, and counteracting a large class of teachers,
who, here as in Thuringia, were opposed to ‘the tradition of the Roman see2.’
With the sanction of the duke of Bavaria, his territory was distributed afresh
into the dioceses of Salzburg, Regensburg (Ratisbon), Freising, and Passau3:
and the death of Charles Martel4, which followed soon after the
return of Boniface (741), allowed him to advance more freely with his
centralizing projects. In 742. the founding of the bishoprics3 of
Wurzburg, Erfurt, and Buraburg (in Hessia), to which Eich- stadt may be added,
conduced to the same result. He was now also urged by Carloman to revive the
action of the. Prankish synods, which had long been discontinued6:
and presiding at the first of them (744), in his capacity of papal vicar7,
he took the lead in promoting what he deemed ‘a reformation of the Church8.’
One of
' 1 Such was the report that had reached Gregory III. Oct. 29,
739: Bonif. Opp. i. 96. His felling of an oak, which had long been sacred to
Thor, made a very deep impression, Vit. Bonif. § 22, 23.
2 Bonif. Ep. xr.vi: Opp. i. 97. He found
only one bishop in the whole province, and of him (Yivilo) the pope speaks but
dubiously: ‘Hie si aJiquid excedit contra canonicam regulam, doce et corrige
eum juxtp. Homan® ecclesise traditionem, quam a nobis accepisti.’ Ibid. The
following is the account given by Willibald (§ 28) of the state of religion there:
‘ Versque fidei et religionis sacramenta renovavit, et destructores ecele-
eiarum populique perversores abigebat. Quorum alii pridem falso se episeopatun
gradu prsetulerunt, alii etiam presbyteratus se officio deputa- tiant, a ji
hasc atque alia innumerabilia fingentes, magna ex parte popu- lum seduxerurt:’
cf. Annales Xantenses, ad an. 752, and Aventinus, An- nales Boiorwn, 254, ed.
trundling.
3 Vit. Bonifac. § 28.
4 He had patronized -what Boniface
describes as the • false,’ ‘ erroneous,’ ‘ schiFmatical priests’ (?) the old
Frankish clergy. See e.g. Bonif. Epist. xn; but they were now driven from the
court at the instance of pope Zacharias: lb. Ep. xlviii : cf. Ep. Lrv. p. 116;
i,x. p. 127.
6 Ep. xt.ix. p. 101; Vit. § 31.
6 Ep. xi.ix. p. 102.
7 He had received the pallium as early as
732, Vit. § 23, but was Btill without a. fixed see.
8 The aim of pope Zacharias in advocating a
yearly synod may be seen in Bonif. Ep. xmy. In a letter addressed
(Nov. 5, 743) to Boniface himself (Ep. lv.), he speaks of his anxiety ‘pro
adimatione et reformatione ecclesiarum Christi,’ and charges his vicar -lit
qine repereris, contra Ohris- tianam religionem vel canonum institute, ibidem
dotineri, ad normani rectitndinis studeas reformare. ’ See also a remarkable
letter of Boniface (a.d. 748) to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury (Ep.
lxiii.), where he
founds
sertral
bishopric*.
Revival of Synods in the Frank-, itsh Church.
Contro-
verity with A ddbert and Clement.
Later
acts of Boni*
face
('744 -755).
the, leaders
of the school whom Boniface had strongly reprehended was a Frankish bishop,
Adelbert1, belonging to the anti-Roman party. He was revered by the
people as a saint, though much that is imputed to him savours of the mystic,
and betokens an ill-regulated mind. On the suit of his rival, Boniface, who had
secured his condemnation2 at Soissons (744), he was excommunicated3
by a Roman synod in 745, together with a fellow-bishop, Clement. The latter
had been trained in the schools of Ireland, his native country, and had there
imbibed an extensive knowledge of the Scriptures; but the tone of his theology,
so far as we can judge, was sceptical and indevout4.
The silencing
of these opponents left the missionary course of Boniface almost wholly
unobstructed: but his own anxieties increased as he was verging to his end.
Disappointed in the hope of placing his metropolitical chair at Cologne (744),
where he would have been near to his Frisian converts, he was, on the
deposition5 of Gewillieb, constrained6 to accept the
archbishopric of Mentz (Moguntia). He there found a, more definite field of
duty in 748. One of the latest acts in his eventful life was the part he took
(752) in favour of Pepin, who superseded his imbecile master, Childeric III.
Boniface, at the instance of the Pope, administered the rite of unction. The
measures he
urges the necessity of a reformation in England. ITis letter ha?! been
regarded as leading the way to the reforms of the synod of Clovesho of 747; but
it must have been written after that council was held. (Councils, &c. hi.
383.) Wilkins, Concil. i. 94.
1 'Wfllib. Vit. Bonif. § 29: also an
account in a second Life of Boniface in Pertz, u. 354; Bonif. Opp. n. 40—16: cf. Walch, Hist,
tier Ket- zereyen, x. 46 sq.
2 I’agi, ad an 741, §§ tii, yiii.
3 Zacharias, two years later, was induced
in spite of Boniface to reopen the question, and summoned both Adelbert and
Clement to his own court at Rome, but the idsue is not known exactly. Neander,
C. II. v. 77—86.
4 ‘Per suam stultitiam sanctorum patrum
scripta respuit, vel omnia svnodalia acta pani pendit. etc.’ Bonif. Opp. a, 46.
Among other errors he is said to have taught ‘ multa horribiUa de
praadestinatione Dei eontraria fidei catholicaj.’ I'.p. i.vii. p. 123. Boniface
fi-und other adversaries in two Irishmen, Samson (Kp. lxxi. p. 171) and
Virgilius, or 1’eargal [Ibid. pp. 172 sq.): but the latter was acquitted by the
pope, and died bishop of Salzburg: cf. Todd’s Church of St 1’atrick, pp. 59 sq.
5 Pertz, ii. 354.
s See
the Letter of Zacharias, Bonif. Epist. lxxi. p. 174.
had taken to
secure his conquests were now rapidly com- gerhak
pleted, and in 755 he set out, with a large band of fellow- ' unBC“-
workmen, for the scene of his early enterprise iu Friesland; where, after
preaching t.o the heathen tribes with eminent success, he died as a martyr at
the age of seventy- five \
A man with
his strength of character, his learning, and his saintly life, could not fail
to have attracted a number of disciples. One of them, Gregory2, as
abbot of Utrecht, was at the head of a missionary-college, and at the same time
assiduous in his efforts to promote the conversion of the Frieslanders. Another
of the more remarkable wTas the abbot Sturm", who had been also
trained under the eye of Boniface, and stationed in a monastery at Fulda, of
which he was himself the romantic founder4. Aided by no less than
four thousand inmates, he was able to disseminate the arts, and augment the
conveniences of life, while he softened the ferocious spirit of his neighbours.
With some
casual exceptions5, the evangelizing of the German tribes was
hitherto conducted on pacificatory principles6, like those which
had prompted and consolidated the first missions of the Church. A fresh plan,
however, was now adopted in dealing with the rude and warlike Saxons7
(from the Baltic to the confines of Thuringia and
1 Willibald. Vit. Bonif. §§ 33—37. The day
of his death was June 5; the plaee, on the banka of the ISordne (Bordau), not
far from Dokkum.
His remains with those of his fellow martyrs, being rescued by the Christians,
were interred at Fulda, his favourite monastery.
• A Life of him was written by his pupil Liudger, in
Act. Sanrt. Ord.
Bened. S£ee. in. p. ii. 319 sq. The way in v. hioh
he was fascinated by the
zealous missionary is most strikingly narrated. Though not a pupil of Boniface.
Willibald, the early English traveller, wan ordained bj him in 739; and after a
short mission to Thuringia, wao consecrated bishop of Eichstadt, one of the
dioceses formed by Boniface. See the interesting Life of Willibald, by a nun of
Heidenbeim, in Act. Sanct. Ord. Bened.
EiEC. in. p. ii. 365 sq.
3 Life by his pupil, Eigil, in Perth’s
Monument. Germ.
n. 365 sq.
4 Ibid. p. 367.
5 e.g. The case of Amandus in Belgium, who
procured an order from the Frankish monarch, compelling all persons to submit
to baptism.
Boniface also invoked the ‘ patrociniuui principis Francorani:’ but his
aim was to quell irregularities among the clergy and religious orders.
Epist. xii. p. 39.
6 See the excellent advice given to
Boniface by Daniel of Winchester.
Bonif. Ep. xiv.
7 Bonifa ’e had been already urged to
undertake this mission in the years 723, 733 ; Epp. ix, xxviiij and even
earlier ((>90— 740) some im-
Gregory /if Utrecht d. 7tf4.
Sturm of Fulda
d. 779-
Compulsory
conversion of the Old- Saxons
Opposed
by A leuin, but in vain.
Hessia), who
had forced their ancient idolatry once more across the Rhine. Fierce as they
were in their hatred of the Gospel, the repugnance would he naturally
embittered by the medium through which it was presented to their notice: for
they viewed it, iu the hands of a Frankish teacher, as an agent for promoting
their political depression. He came in the wake of invading hosts, by which
Charlemagne was endeavouring to effect their subjugation (772—804): and
although numbers of them did accept the ritual of the Church, it was
unquestionably iu many cases by compulsion1. Alcuin, at the impulse
of his Christian feelings, would have fain placed a check2 on the
rigour of the Franks. Rut his protests were unheeded ; Charlemagne still
persisting in his *plan of breaking the indomitable spirit of the Saxons by
forcing the conversion of the vanquished, and establishing himself on the basis
of the Church3. A long and bloody war, attended by an edict4
of the Frankish court, which made the rejection of the Gospel a capital
offence, resulted in the permanent disarming of the Saxons and their
annexation to the Western Church6. A way was in the mean time opened
for the
preesion hail been made on tlie Saxons by the labours of Lebwin, a
Yorkshire monk. See his Life in Pertz, ii.
361 sq.
1 ‘ Congregato iam (? turn) grandi exercitu
[a.i>. 772], invocato Christi nomine, Saxuiiiam profectns est, adsumtis
universis saeerdotibus, abba- tibns, presbyteris, et omnibus orthodoxis atque
fidei cultoribus, ut gentem quffi ab initio mundi da-munam vinculis fuerit
obligata, doctrinis saeris mite et suave Christi jugum oredendo subire
feeissent. Quo cun, rex pervenisset,
partim bellis, partim suasionibus, partim etiam muneribue, maxima ex parte
gentem illam ad fidem Christi convert it.’ Yit. Sturmi,
1. c. p. 376: cf. Alenin. Ep. in. ad Colcum Lectorem in Scotia: Opp. i.
G.
2 Epist.xxxvii. (A1.xt.ii. | ad
3legenfridum\{& privy-councillor oi Charlemagne ). Of many striking
passages this may be a sample: ‘ Fides quo- que, sicut sanctus ait Augustinus,
res est voluntaria, non 'lecessaria. Attrahi poterit homo in ridem, non cogi.
Cogi poteris ad Baplismum, sed non proficit fidei. Nisi infantilis setas aliorum peccatis obnoxia
alio- rum ronfessione salvari poterit. Perfect® ajtatis vir pro se respondeat,
quid eredat aut quid cupiat. Et si failaeiter fiuem profitetur, veraciter
salutem non habebit. Unde et prajdicatores paganorum populuin paci- jicis
verbis ft prudentibas fidem docere debent.’ Opp. I. 50; see also his letter (Ep. lxxx, Al. xov.) written to
Charlemagne himself: i. 117
J The
chief ecclesiastical establishments were at Osnabriick, Munster, Paderborn,
Ycrden, Jlinden, and Seligenstadt. The last see was afterwards transferred to
Halberstadt.
4 See the Capitulate de Partibus Saxonice,
i. 251, in Baluze’s Cayitvl. Reg. Fran.,
Paris, 1677: and cf. Schrockh’s Kirchen-Gescldchte, xix. 20 i sq.
5 Einhard.
JTit. Karoli 2Iagn. c. 7; apud Pertz, ii. 4-i7.
deeper
planting of the Gospel, by means of the numerous schools and churches founded
by the Franks, and still more by the holy and commanding character of members
of the Saxon mission. Such were Sturm, Willehad, and Liudger. The first, whom
we have seen already, spent the evening of his days in this field of labour1.
The second (Willehad) was a native of Northumbria2, whom the hopeful
letters of the English missionaries had excited to cast in his lot among them.
He set out for Friesland with the sanction of the Northumbrian king and the
blessing of a synod3. Banished from the neighbourhood of Groningen,
which had bean already stained by the blood of Boniface, he found shelter at
the court of Charlemagne, ■who sent him (730) to aid in the missions then
attempting to evangelize the Saxons. In 787, after an eventful term of
suffering and success, he was raised to the episcopal dignity, his chair being
placed at Wigmodia (Bremen): but a sudden illness cut him off two years later,
while engaged in a visitation-tour.
Liudger* was
a noble Frieslander, who had been trained in the school of Utrecht, and
afterwards by Alcuin at York. For a long time distinguished as a missionary to
his own people, and afterwards as the apostle of Heligoland, which Willebrord
quitted in despair, he was sent by Charlemagne, on the subjugation of the
Saxons, to Munster, where he toiled in the spirit of a true evangelist5
till 809.
A fresh
accession to the Church was the tribe of the Carentani, who had settled in the
early part of the seventh century in Styria. and Carinthia. The Gospel reached
them through Bavarian channels, first6 at the instance of
1 Yit. Sturm, ubi sup.
2 A Life of him, written by Anskar, “bishop
of Bremen (middle of the ninth century), is printed in Pertz, ii. 378 sq.
3 Ibid. § 1.
4 For a Life of Liudger by his second
successor, Altfrid, see Pertz, ii. 403 sq. He is said to have left York * bene instructus,
habens secum copiam librorum. * lib. i. § 12. ...
5 * Itaque more solito cum omni aviditate
et sollieitudine rudibus Sax- onum populis studebat in doctrina prodesse,
erutisque idolatrifB spinis, verbum Dei diligenter per loca singula serere, ecclesias
construere, et per eas singulos ordinare presbyteros, quos verbi Dei
cooperatores sibi ipsi nutriverat.’ Ibid. § 20. We are told in the following
paragraph that he had hitherto declined the ‘ pontificalem gradum.’ His
reluctance, however, was at length overcome by Hildebold, archbishop of
Cologne.
G
See the Life of Yirgilius in Act. Sanct. Ord.Bened. iv. 27U sq. The
Fresh measures for the conversion of the Saxons,
and other northern tribes. Willehad d. 789-
Liudqcr
d. 809.
The Gospel in Styria and Carinthia.
(?) 766800.
Mission to the Avares in Hun- gary.
796.
Missionary zeal of the Nestorians.
Virgilius of
Salzburg, and afterwards of Amo, his second successor. Arno, on ordaining a ‘
missionarj^ bishop ’ for these parts (800), intended, if possible, to make his
way as far as the neighbouring Slavonians*.
He had been
also employed by Charlemagne, whose sceptre was now stretching over Hungary2,
to organize a mission for the barbarous Avares8. In 736, one of
their chiefs, Tuduii, having been baptized at the Frankish court4,
his return was viewed as a propitious moment for planting further outposts of
the Church in the same distant regions. But it seems that the mission was not
worked with corresponding vigour*.
IN EASTERN
ASIA,
The zeal and
perseverance that were shewn in the converting of the German tribes had been
confined in this period to the bosom of the Western Church. Owing partly to
domestic troubles, but still more to their lack of expansiveness and health,
the churches of the East were now feeble and inactive. At the death of
Justinian I. (565) they seem to have abandoned the propagation of the Gospel to
those numerous offshoots from the patriarchate of Antioch, who continued to
reject the council
Curim liian chieftain hud allowed his son to be educated as a Christian
at the court of Bavaria. This, on his accession to tho throne, paved the way
for the evangelizing of his subjects.
1 See
the treatise of a priest of Salzburg (written at the close of the ninth
century', De Oonversione Bnjariorum et Oarentanorum, in Script. Rerum Boic ed.
Oefele, i. 280 sq.: also a Life of Rupert (first bishop of balzburg) in
Canisius, Lect. Antiq. in. pt. ii. p. 313
a
Einhardi Fuldenses Annales, a.d. 788, 791: apud Pertz, I. 350.
3 See Prays Annal. Vet. Hunnorum, Avar, et
Hungar. 269 sq., ed. Yindobon. 1761.
1
Einhard, a.d. 796. A second case occurred in 805. Ibid. The projected mission
to the Avares or Huns drew many excellent remarks from ileuin, who was fearful
lest the policy pursued ji the case of the Saxons should be repeated there. In
a letter to Charlemagne (796), Ep. xx\ in. (Al. xxxiii.) he says, ‘Sed nunc
praeviueat sapientissima et Deo placabilis devotio vestra populo novello
praedicatores, moribus honestis, scientia saeraa fidei edoctos, et evangelicis
prseceptis imbutos,’ etc. lie recommends, as a model for the missionary, St
Augustine’s treatise Tie Cate- chizandis Rudibus: Opp. I. 37, 38. The same care
and tenderness are impressed on archbishop Amo in Ep. xxx, xxxi, lxxii, (Al.
xxxiv. \\xv, iixxxvii; Opp. i. 39, 40,105), his eye being still fixed on the
recent failure in the missions to the Saxons.
5 Alcuin, Ep. xcn. (Al. cviii.) p. 135.
of Ephesus,
under the name of Nestorians1 or Chaldeans. Most of them, on their
expulsion from the Roman empire, had found a shelter with their
fellow-Christians in Persia, to whom they were united by a common misbelief.
Here they obtained an exclusive toleration, though it did not altogether screen
them from the rancour of the heathen natives2. From the sixth to the
eleventh century, when the power of the Nestorians may be said to have culminated,
they were peculiarly distinguished by their missionary spirit3. The
head of their system, known as the catholicos, and subsequently (498) as the
patriarch, presided over churches in Chaldam, Persia, Media, Mesopotamia, and
in districts far beyond the Tigris, in Baetriana and India. His see4
was originally at Seleueia, and afterwards at Bagdad and Babylon, where he
might have vied even with the Western pontiffs in a plenitude of power: for the
bounds of his patriarchate embraced no less than twenty-five metropolitans5,
nearly all of whom were located in the various countries they had rescued from
the yoke of paganism6. Timotheus7, who was the Nestorian
patriarch from 778 to 820, may be mentioned as the warmest advocate of
missions. He sent out a large band of monks from the convent of Beth-abe in
Mesopotamia, to evangelize the Tatar tribes, who roved in the neighbourhood of
the Caspian sea: and some of them penetrated as far as India* and China9,
either planting or reviving in those
1
They repudiated this title (J. S. Asseman, Ttiblioth. Orientalis, tom. m. pt.
n. pp. 75, 76); hut retained the terminology, and, with few exceptions, the
heretical tenets, condemned by the Church at large. See Palmer’s Treatise on
the Church, I. 319, 320, 3rd edit.
!
Asseman, ubi sup. pt. I. p. 109, pt. it. c. v. § 2. This section gives an
account of their condition under the successive Persian kijgs, from 488 tu 640,
when the country was invaded by the Muhammedans.
3 Ibid. part n. p. 81. They were materially
assisted by the favour of the caliph, who had numbers of them always in hit*
service.
1
Ibid. pp. 622 sq. The see was eventually transferred to Mosul, p. 626.
5 Neale’s Hist, of 'Eastern Church, Xntrod.
i. 143. A ‘ Notitia’ of all the sees is given in Asseman, pp. 705 sq.
6 They were also conspicuous for their love
of learning. Their great school wa* at Nisibis, which rose out of the ruins of
the school of Edessa (destroyed about 490); Asseman, tom. in. pt. n. pp. 428,
927. A whole chapter (x\.) is devoted to similar institutions.
• Ibid.
part I. pp. 158 sq.
s On
the earlier traces of Christianity in India, see Neander, C. II. in. 164 sq.
9 David is mentioned as a bishop ordained
for China by the patriarch
Vast
area of their scttltmtnU.
Timotheus; and the missixmt to India and China.
ASIATIC
MISSIONS.
Further
influence of the Nes- iorians in Emtevn Asia.
The
Gospel planted in Nubia by the Jacobites.
distant parts
a knowledge of the Gospel. Two of the episcopal members of the mission, Cardag
and Jaballaha, transmitted a report of their success to the Nestorian patriarch,
who urged them to perpetuate the impression they had made by ordaining other
bishops to succeed them1.
It was also
in this period, though the date is not exactly ascertainable2, that
a distinguished Syrian, Mar- Thomas (it would seem a merchant3),
prevailed on the community of Christians, already stationed on the coast of
Malabar4, to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the
Nestorian catholicos. By this step he led the way to a further propagation of
the Nestorian creed : and in the ninth century6 two bishops of that
communion, Sapor and Peroses, are said to have planted the cross to the southwest
of Cochin in the kingdom of Diamper.
IN
AFRICA. .
The only
progress to be noted in this corner of the Christian kingdom, is due to the
sect of the Alexandrian Jacobites (Monophysites), who had already in the lifetime
of Justinian found admission into Nubia3. In the
*
Timotheus; ’Asseman, ibid. part n. p. 82. It is by no means improbable
that the Gospel had reached this country at a still earlier date. (See De Guignes, Untersuchvng
iiber die im Iten Jahrhunderte in Sina sich auf- lialtenden Christen, ed. Greifswald, 1769.) Among other evidence in a
Syro-Chinese inscription, brought to lisclit by the Jesuit missionaries in
1625, and purporting to belong to 782 (in Mosheim, Hist. Eccl. Tartarm rum,
App. m. end elsewhere!). According to it, Olopuen, a Nestorian priest, visited
China in 635 from the western frontier of the country. See Kesson’s Cross and
Dragon (Christianity in China), pp. 16 sq. Lond. 1854.
1 The lack of a third prelate to assist in the
consecration of the Dew bishops was to be supplied by a copy of the Gospels.
Asseman, ubi sup.
- Ibid. paH in. p. 143: Neale, Eastern
Church, Introd. i. 146.
s
This, however, is denied by Asseman, p. 444, who concludes his argument as
follows: ‘ Habemus itaque Thornam non Armenum mercatorem, neque infra sextum
Christi seculum, sed circa annum 800, sub Timot-heo Nestorianorum patriarclia a
JaLallaha et Kardago Ghilanie et Dailamas metropolitis ex monacho ccenobii
Beth-Abensis ordinatum episcop’im atque in vicinam Indiam inissum.’ ,
4 Cf.
Neander, m. 106: Lassen, Ind. Alterthum,
u. 1101, 1102: fionn, 1852. The present Christians of lialabar boast of their
descent from this llar-Thomas.
1 Asseman, ubi sup. p. 442.
6 Ibid. tom. ii. p. 330: cf. Letronne's
(Ihristianisme en Egypte, ep Nubie, et en Abyssinie, £t Paris, 1832. The
Christian priest-kings of
patriarchate
(686—688) of Isaac (a Jacobite.) there is further proof of the connexion
between that country and Alex- uidria; Isaac interposing his authority to
settle a dispute oetween the emperor of Ethiopia and the king of Nubia1,
rhere is also an interesting notice of an application’ made jy a priest from
India to Simon, successor of Isaac '689—700), requesting at his hands episcopal
consecration; aut whether India proper or Ethiopia is here meant, has oeen much
disputed3.
§2.
LIMITATION OF THE CHURCH.
The countries
which had formed the cradle of the Church and the scene of its earlier
triumphs, were now destined to behold its obscuration and extinction. Persia,
for example, after wresting many Christian provinces out of the hands of the
Eastern emperor (604—621), among others those of Palestine and Egypt, set on
foot a most bloody persecution. All, whom the sword of Kesra (Chosroes) had
spared, were forced into union with the hated Nes- torians4. But the
tempest, though terrilic, was of short duration; Heraclius being able (621-628)
to repair his losses, and to heal the distractions of the Church.
Jerusalem,
however, had been scarcely rescued from the Persians, when a message5
was dispatched to the Eastern emperor, inviting him to join the Moslems, and to
recognize their prophet. Born6 at Mecca in 569 or 570,
Nubia turned Mohammedans orlv in the 14th century: Lepsius, Discoveries
in Egypt, &c. p. 259, Lond. 1852.
1 Itenaudot,
Hist. I'atr. Alexand. p. 178.
2 Ibid. pp. 184 sq. Le Quicn, Oriens Gkristiamu, h. 454.
3 See
Asseman, ubi sup. 451 sq.—It is needless to dwell on the efforts made in this
period for the conversion of the Jews, in the vrest by the governments of
Spain, and in the east by the Emperor Leo, the Isaurinn; for their measures
were nearly always coercive, and on that account abortive. See a chapter on the
subject in Schrockh, xix. 298—32G.
1 Theophanes, Chrtmographia, pp. 199 sq., inter Scrijitores Byzantiv. ed.
Venet. 1729. At p. 213 c, ibid. is the following entry: ’Hi'd'y/cafe Si roi'S
Xpicrnamii yevijflai ds rfy Tov yif’TToplov Bprjir^etav irpbs "o <
6v
fiatriKda [i. e. the
emperor]. This seems to have been the policy of the Persians throughout in
tolerating the Nestorian body.
6 Ockley,
Hist, of the ikiracens, p.
51, ed. Dohn.
6 See
Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet, and, for hi* religions system, Sale’s Koran, with the Preliminary Discourse,
and Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled,
Lond. 1829. Other viewa may be
obtained from Weil’s 21 u-
Invasion
of the E'lrtern Church from Per- si a.
Pise
if Muham- medanUin.
MOHAM
MEDANISM.
Materials
out of which it was constructed.
Its
essential errors and impieties.
of the stock
of Ishmael, Muliammed1 seems in early life to have been possessed by
the persuasion that he was an agent in the hands of God to purify the creed of
his fellow-countrymen. The texture of his mind was mystical, inclining him to
solitude and earnest contemplation2: but the spirit of enthusiasm,
thus fostered and inflamed, was afterwards corrupted by the lust of worldly
power’. Some of the more intelligent around him were monotheists already,
having clung to the tenets of their father Ishmael; but others, a large section
of the Arab tribes, were sunk in idolatry and superstition4. We
learn also that on the rise of Islam ism many Jews had been long settled in
Arabia, where they gained some political importance5; and that
heralds of the Gospel on its earliest promulgation made very numerous converts;
though the Christians at this time were for the most part Jacobites6,
who had come from the neighbouring lands in quest of an asylum. It is clear,
therefore, that materials were at hand out of which to construct a composite
religion like that now established by Jluhammed; and when he ventured to unfold
his visions to the world in 611, it was easy to discern in their leading
features a distorted copy of the Bible7. While Islamisrn was the foe
of all creature-worship, while it preached with an emphasis peculiar to itself
the absolute dependency of
hammed der Prophet, ed. Stuttgart, 1843, and Dellinger's Muhammed's
Religion nach ihrer inneren Entwickelung, etc.. ed.
Regensburg, 1838. The last writer looks upon Muhammedanism as a kind of
preparation for tho Gospel in the southern and eastern world. Mohler’s work, On
the Relation of Islam to the Gospel, has been translated by llenge; Calcutta,
1847.
1 —llaxovnit),
from which the common form Mahomet was derived.
2 He
retired for a month every year into a mountain-cavern, abandoning Us
mercantile employments. It was not till Ms fortieth year (609) that the
archangel Gabriel (according to his statement) announced to him his mission
from on high. Alralfeda, quoted in Ockley’s Saracens, p. 11. According to the
second writer, iluhammed was assisted in compiling the Koran by a Persian .Tew
and a Nestorian mouk. His own followers maintain that it was shewn to him at
once by the archangel, though published only in detached portions during the
next 23 years.
3 Cf.
Maurice's Religions of the World, pp. 18, 19, 2nd edit. Others would regard
Muhammed as an impostor from the first; e.g. White in his Hampton Lectures for
1784, passim.
* Sale’s
Preliminary Discourse, pp. 24 sq.
« Ibid. p. 28.
. 6 pp. 29. 81. The Nestorians also had one bishop.
Ibid.
* Traces
also of a Gnostic element have been found in the Koran. Xoander, G. II. v. 118.
man and the
unity aud infinite sublimity of God, its teaching even there was meagre and
one-sided: it was a harsh aud retrogressive movement; it lost sight of what
must ever be the essence of the Gospel, the Divinity and Incarnation of the
Saviour, the original nobility of man, and his gradual restoration to the
likeness of his Maker. It was, in fact, no more than the Socinianism or Deism
of Arabia. Clouding over all the attributes of love, Mu- hammed could perceive
in the Almighty nothing more than a high and arbitrary Will, or a vast and
tremendous Power,—views which had their natural result in fatalism, and in
fostering a servile dread or weakening the moral instincts1. His own
tribe, the Koreish of Mecca, startled2 by his novel doctrine, were
at first successful in resisting the pretensions of ‘the prophet;’ but his
flight (i.e. the Hejrak, July 10,
622), while it served as an epoch in the annals of his followers,
entailed a terrific evil on the world. It imparted to the system of Muhainmed,
hitherto pacific3, all its fierce and its persecuting spirit. On his
arrival at Medina, where he acted in the twofold character of prince and
prophet, he was able to enlarge the circle of his influence, and to organize a
sect of religious warriors,— so gigantic, that in the tenth year of the Hejrah
every part of his native land, including Mecca4, trembled at his
word. His death followed in 632, but the ardour he had roused descended to the
caliphs, and increased with the number of his converts. Dropping all their
ancient feuds, exulting in
1 The way in which Islamism was regarded by the
Church, in the eighth century, appears from a Dialogue between s Christian and
a Moslem, ascribed to John of Damascus nr to his disciple, Theodore Abukara: in
Biblioth. Patrum, ed. Galland, mi. 272 sq., and (somewhat differently) in
Biblioth. Patrum Parisiens. XI. 431 sq. We there learn that the points insisted on against Muhammtid were
the l>i\inity of Christ, and the freedom of the human -n ill.
n
Kale, ib. p. 58.
3 He
■was at first tolerant of other systems [Koran, ch. ii. t.), but
he now opened what was called ‘the holy war,’ for the purpose of exterminating
all idolaters, and of making Jews and Christians tributary to the crescent. Ib.
c. ix. lxvii : Ockley,
p. 32. These ends were continually kept in view by the Moslem conquerors. kJee
Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. iv. ch. T.
4 tie took
this stronghold of his enemies in 630, and by wav of conciliating the Arabs he
adopted their national sanctuary (the Kaaba) as the chief temple of Islamism.
Ockley, p. 18. This was not the only stroke of policy by which he circumvented
the more superstitious, of hi» countrymen.
Ml'HAM-
MEIUNISM.
Flight
of Muham- meet,
and
Ats appeal to force in projsigat- ing hii religion.
MUHAM-
MEDANISJI.
Probable
reasons of its predominance in the Christian d'ts- tncts.
Its
rapid and extensive con-
The
desolation of the Christian
a fresh and
energizing faith, or maddened by the sensual visions of the future, the
adherents of the crescent fought their way through all the neighbouring states.
Though some of their progress may be due to the corruption and distractions of
the Church1, and more to their simple or accommodating tenets, very
much was effected by their Graft in dealing with the Christian body. It was the
aim of the caliph, by conciliating the heretical communities, Nestorian and Monophysite
especially, to use them as his agents in diminishing the member of the
Catholics, who, firm in their allegiance to the emperor, were branded with the
name of Melchites2. Joining thus the devices of the politician with
the tire of the enthusiast, the fortunes of Islamism rapidly advanced. Its
second caliph, Omar, took Jerusalem in 637, and was master of the whole of
Syria in 639. Egypt was annexed in 640. Persia bowed its head beneath the
crescent in 651. Under the Ommiades (caliphs of Damascus), Islamism had subdued
the northern coast of Africa (707), and in 711 it had been established
everywhere in Spain, with the exception of a small Gothic kingdom in the
mountains: while the Byzantine metropolis itself w'as made to shudder (669,
717) at the sight of the Moslem armies. Restless even at the foot of the
Pyrenees, they spread into France as far as the Loire; but in 732 were finally
repulsed and humbled by the arms of Charles Martel. In 73d- they threatened to
extend their ravages to the interior of Italy; and after they had occupied many
of the neighbouring islands, Rome3 was with diiiiculty rescued from
their grasp in.849.
However much
of good eventually resulted from the Saracenic conquests, they were fatal to
the present welfare
1 ‘ The sense of a Divine, Almighty 'Will, to which
all Iraman wills w°re to be bowed, had evaporated amidst the worship of images,
amidst moral corruptions, philosophical theories, religious controversies.*
Maurice, Religions of the World, p. 23. Overcoloured as this statement is, it
is too near the truth: (ef. the language of the emperor Heraclius in 633, when
the Moslems were'now advancing upon Syria: Oekley’s Saracens, p. 95). ,
‘
In Egypt* f°r example, the .Tacobites were the more numerous
body, and though not wholly exempted from persecution were for the most part
favoured by the Moslems. Neale, Eastern Church, ‘Alexandria,’ iT.
72. The Nestorians in like manner were protected by the caliphs of Bagdad, who
owed to them much of their taste for literature. Schrockh, xix. 396 sq.
3 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, v. 209 sq. ed.
JKlman.
of religion
and the progress of the Church. Though tending to promote the interest of
letters1 in a period when the other kingdoms of the world were
comparatively dark, they have desolated many a region where the Gospel was
supreme, and obliterated all the traces of its earliest propagation. At the
time when Boniface2 and his companions were engaged in evangelizing
the Teutonic tribes, they heard that the famous churches of the East, the
special husbandry of Christ and His Apostles, were the prey of the
antichristian armies of Muhammed. The defenceless patriarchates3 of
Jerusalem, of Antioch, and Alexandria, deprived of their rightful pastors, and
curtailed on every side, are moving illustrations of the general ruin; and out
of four hundred sees that once shed a salutary light on Africa, four only were
surviving in the eleventh century4. The rest had been absorbed into
the vortex of Islainism.
1 A'nulfeda, Annale*
MotUmici, tom. ji. pp. 73 sq. Leipz.
1754. See a chapter on the ‘Literature of the Arabians' in SUm<mdd'i
Literature of the South of Europe, I. 48 sq. The Moslems of Spain began to
endow schools about 736: Conde, Domination de los Arabes en Espana, i. 110,
Barcelona, 1844. On the literary taste of Alhukem (a.d. 964 sq.) see ii. 11—L6.
1 He speaks with alarm of the Saracenic invasions in
Ep. xxxn. The ‘ tribulatio Saracenorum ’ was in like manner present to the mind
of Zachariun, in 745, when he contemplated the growth of the Church among the
Frisians: Mansi, in. 336.
1 The patriarchs were driven into the Greek
empire. Tn Alexandria the Church was partially restored by tho election of
Cosmas in 727 (Neale, ibid. ii. 107); but none of the Eastern Churches have to
this day recovered from the blow inflicted by Islamism. lu the fifth century
they contained as many as 800 bishoprics.
4 Wiltsch,
Atlas Sacer, p. 12, Gotha1. 1813.
MUItAM-
HEDANI3JI.
Chvrch
in Africa and in tkeJiant
JI. A.
CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
§ 1. INTERNAL
ORGANIZATION
Tiie model
that was followed from the first in the organizing of the Christian body, had
continued to pass over to the churches newly planted. Active members of a
mission, if not consecrated in the outset1 of their course, were
advanced to the rank of bishops when their labours had succeeded*. With a staff
of inferior clergy, who were taken very often iu this age from some of the
monastic orders, they were foremost in dispensing all the means of grace as well
as in the closer supervision of their flocks. While acting3 as the
champions of the wronged, the guardians of the foundling and the minor, and of
all who were either destitute or unprotected, they were placed in more intimate
relations to the clergy, who had learned to regard their bishop as the centre
of all rightful action, and the source of the authority deposited in them.
1 Under
the title ‘episcopus regionarius:’ see above, p. 18, n. 4; p. 25. Birinus had
at first no see: Bed. in. 7.
2 The case
of Liudger (p. 25, n. 5) is a solitary exception; but even he was obliged to
conform.
3 e.g. Codex Justin. lil>. i. tit. iv. Be Episcopali Audientia, §§ 22—24, 27, 28, 30, 33.
The sphere of their duties was extended (560) to the oversight of the
administration of justice: Clotarii Constitutio Generalise § yi, in the
Capitul. Begum Franconimy ed. Baluze, i. 7. The following extract from Canon xviii. of the
Council of Toledo (a.d. 589) is a further instance of this power: ‘Sint enim
prospectores episcopi, secundum regiam admonitionem, qualiter judices cum
populis agant: ut aut ipsos prsemonitos corrigant, aut insolentias eorum
auditibus prineipis inno- tescant. Quodsi correptos emendare nequiverint, et ab ecclesia et a communione suspendaut/
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The
transmission of the episcopal power and privi-
But the acts
of the diocesan, if arbitrary and unlawful, might- be checked by appealing to
another bishop, whom the canons of the Church, i;i union with the civil power,
had raised to superior eminence of rank. This was the metropolitan or primate1,
who presided in a synod of provincial bishops, regulated their election,
authorized their consecration, had the power of revising their decision, or of
carrying it for judgment to a conclave of his brother- prelates; and lastly,
among other rights inherent in the primate, he was the public organ of
communication with the State,—the channel for enforcing its enactments or
distributing its bounty.
It is true
that as the metropolitan constitution of the Church had grown out of the
political divisions of the empire2, it had also felt the shock by
which the empire was subverted; and that, compared with its vigour in the
former period, it was now very often inefficient, if not altogether in
abeyance. Prelates of remoter dioceses, which they were engaged in reclaiming
from the heathen, not unfrequently regarded the appointment of a primate as a
clog on the freedom of their action. This3 was peculiarly apparent
in the i’ranks; nor is it hard to discern in their impatience of control a link
in the chain of causes which was tending to consolidate the empire of the pope.
They bowed to his legates and supported his pretensions, to evade wliat they
deemed a vassalage at home.
Yet, in spite
of the wide-spread disaffection to the government of primates, it was able,
here and there, to perpetuate its hold, and even to secure a footing in the
newly founded churches. When Boniface was brought into collision with tho
bishop of Cologne4, he strenuously
1 See
Bingham, Book n. ch. xvi. §§ 12 sq. and authorities there.
2 This
statement may be seen expanded at great length in Crakan- thorp’s Defcmio EccL
Anglican, eh. xxii. §§ 64 sq.
3 Cf,
Meander, v. 88 sq. 153, 154. The provincial synods, which were calculated to
become the strongest agent of the metropolitans, had been discontinued in
France for no less than eighty years: see the letter of Boniface, above, p. 21.
4 Ep.
xciv. a.d. 753: ‘Et modo vult Coloniensis episcopus sedem supradicti
Willibrordi prredieatoris [i. e. Utrecht] sibi contrahere, ut non sit
episcopalis sedes, subjecta Romano pontijici, prsedicans gentem Fre- sonum. Cui respondebam, ut credidi, quod majus et
potius fieri debeat pr&ceptum apostolic® sedis, et ordinatio Sergii papte,
et legatio venerandi prasdicatoris Willibrordi, ut et fiat sedes episcopalis
subjecta llomano.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
How
affect- ed by the metropolitan constitution of some
Churches.
The
decline of metropolitans at this period.
Its
effect on the yroicth of the papal poicer.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Metropolitans
established in the recently converted countries ; but with a Homan- izing
bias.
resented
every act of interference in the spirit of the Frankish prelates: but in other
parts he laboured from the first to organize the metropolitan system, and to
use it as the special instrument of Rome. In his -view1 every
prelate of a district should be placed in a close dependence on the
metropolitan, and the metropolitan in subservience to the pope, on whom the
correction of the evils, that might baffle a domestic synod, should be finally
devolved. After manifold obstructions2, the design of Boniface was
partly carried out. A council at Soissons3 (744, enabled him to fix
one metropolitan at Rheims, and a second in the town of Sens. Mentz was awarded
to himself; and at the close of the century two others, Arno of Salzburg and
Hildebold of Cologne, were added to the list of primates. ' In England4
also we have seen that the Roman mission were in favour of the same
arrangement, choosing for tlieir purpose Canterbury8 aud York*, but
the dignity
pontifici prsedicans gentem Fresonum, quia ma^na par* iilorum adhae
pagana eat; quain destructs ecclesioke funuamenta diruta, ft a paganis
conculcata, ei per negliyentiam episcopnrum derelicta. Sed ipse non consentit.’
1 ‘Hecrevimus autem in nostro Rynndali conyentu. et confessi
(ramus fidem catholicam, et unitatem, et subjectionem Romance ecclesiee, tine
tenus vit® nostra?, velle servare: sanoto Petro et vicario ejus velle sub-
jici: svnodum per omnes annos congregare: metropolitanvs pallia ab ilia $?de
quarere, etc. . . . Decrevimus, ut metropolitans qui sit pallio sub- limatus,
hortetur cseteros, et admoneat, et investiget, quis sit inter eos curiosus de
salute populi, quisve negligent servus Dei.. . Statuimus quod proprium sit
metropolitano, juxta eanonum statuta, subjectorum sibi epitscoporum investigare
mores et sollicitudinem circa populos, quales ^int . . . Sic enim, ni tailor,
omnes episcopi debent metropolitano, et ipse Romano pontifici, si quid de corrigendis
populis apud eos impossible est, notum facere, et sic aliei.i fient a sanguine
anima-um perditarum.’ Kp.
i,xin.
a.d. 748 (addressed to Cuthbert, archbp. of Canterbury).
2 'l)e eo
autem, quod jam prastrrito tempore de architpiscopis et de palliis a Romana
ecclesia petendis, juxta promissa Francorum, sanctitati vestne notum ieci,
indulgentiam apostolicse sedis flagito: quia quod promisorunt tardantes non
impleverunt, et adhuo differtur et ventilatur, quid iude perficere volnerint,
ignoratur, sed men voluntate impleta est promissio:’ Ep. i.xxv. (to pope
Zacliarias, a.ii. 751): cf. Neander, G. 11. v. 89.
3 Labbe,
vi, 1552.
4 It is
remarkable that in Ireland there were no metropolitans, or none at least -who
wore the pallium, till 1151. (B. Hoveden, ad annum.) But neither was there any
diocesan system.
5 See
above, p. 9, note 5. The primacy of Cantcrbnry, which had been endangered by
Offa’s erection of ar\ archiepiscopal see at Lichfield, was recognized by Leo
iu.-, and settled in k provincial synod, 8U3. Wilkins, i. 166.
intended for
the latter was a long while in abeyance. In all cases it was now the custom to
create a metropolitan by sending him the pall or pallium, as a decorative
badge. At tirst1 it implied that all, thus distinguished by the
pope, were prelates in communion with the Roman see: but in after-times it grew
into a symbol of dependence.
Much,
however, as the papacy had gained by these centralizing changes, it was equally
indebted to the conquests of Islamism. While they tended to unite the
Christians of the west, they shook the dominion of the Eastern patriarchs; and
three of these we must regard as virtually dethroned2. They all, in
the former period of the Church, had exercised a constant check on the
pretensions of the pope; for like him3 they had extensive powers and
were invested with precedence over other bishops: in proportion, therefore, as
the sphere of their influence was narrowed, that of the larger patriarchates
would be suffered to increase; and the struggle for priority of place among
them would be confined to the Roman and Byzantine sees. The envy and ambition
of these pontiffs led the way to a multitude of evils; and resulted, at the
close of the
INTERNAL
OHOANIZA-
TIOX.
The
nr ant of the pallium.
The
par,a’ ptnrtr ad- cmirid Inj the Sara- cenir. conquests.
6 See a'ui>v(\ p. 12, note 6. St Gregory directed
that the metropolitans oi England should receive consecration from each other:
but until York had regained its archiepiscopai rank in 735, the prelate-elect
of Canterbury was sometimes consecrated in Gaul, and sometimes by a conclave of
hii own sufiragans. Kemble, n. 381.
1 Ont of
the earliest instances of such a grant from the pope is that of Csosarius,
bishop <>f Arles, to whom Symmachus is said to have permitted (513)
‘speciali privilegio, pallii ’jxuin.’ Vit. S. Ceetar. in the Acta Sanctorum,
August, vi. 71. For another example of nearly the same date, see a letter of Symmaehus to Theodore, archbishop of Lurch, in
Ludewig, Scriptures He rum German, ii. 3;>2: but JaffcS, Ilegest. Pontif.
Human. (Iierolini, 1851), places it among the ‘Liters* Spurite.’ In the Kastern Church all bishops, as such, had worn
a pallium {<itio<p6rtor):
Pertsch, l)e origins, usu, et auctoritate pallii archiepiscopalis,
pp. 91 sq. llelmst. 1754: Neale’s History of Eastern
Church, Introd. p. 312. In the west also, after it cnme into use, it was given
to simple bishops as well as to primates. Pertsch, ib. 134 sq.
2 It is
true the Nestorians and Jacobites kept up the patriarchal system (see Asseman,
Biblioth. Orient, tom. hi. part ii. pp. 643 sq., and Neale’s Eastern Church,
ii. 98 sq. where the forms of election are given in the two cases
respectively): but as they were not iD commuidon with the Church at large, they
had no weight in counteracting the encroachments of the popes.
3 The
Eoman patriarchate was originally email, confined to the ten provinces of
middle and southern Italy and Sicily. See Do llarca, Concordia
Sacerd. et Imperii, lib. I. c. 7.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
' y. !
Struggle
between Home and Byzantium.
The
title of * (Ecumenical patriarch
following
period, in a deep and irreparable schism between the Greek and the Latin
Christians. It is true there had long been a feeling of respect (in some, it
may be, allied to veneration) for the Church that was thought to have been
planted by St Peter in the mother-city of the world1. This feeling
was diffused in countries very far from the Italian pale; it was shared even in
the Eastern patriarchates, where the many were disposed to grant a primacy of
order to the sister-church of Rome. But when the court with its prestige had
been transplanted from the west, Constantinople was exalted to a parity of rank2,
and laboured to secure its prominent position.
An example of
the contest is supplied at the close of the sixth century. John the Faster (o
v-qcnevTiW), patriarch of Constantinople, had begun3 (about 587) to
make use of the title ‘ QEcumenical bishop,’ in accordance with the pompous
language of Justinian4. This was peculiarly offensive to the Roman
prelate, Gregory the Great (5S0— 694), Who instantly denounced5 the
conduct of his rival.
1 e. g. Valentin, in. a.d. 455: ‘cum igitur sedis apostolicse
primatura B. Petri ineritum, qui eat princeps sacerdotalis corona?, et Roms nai
dia;- nitas civitatis, sacra etiam synodi lirmarit auctoritas ’ etc.: ail calc.
Cod. Thcodosian. torn. yi. p. 12: cf. the language
of Columbanus, above, p. 17, note 1.
2 Bee Concil. Constantinop.
a.ti. 381, can. in.: Concil. Chalcedon, a.d. 451, can. xxvni, which confirms
the decision of the earlier council: r& itja 7r/>e(7/3aa aTrtvet;t.a.v
raj rijs vieis Pu)/j.7js fcyitordrip Opuvj:, x.t.X., on the
ground that Constantinople was the peat of the empire. The Council in Trullo
(691) repeated the decree in still clearer terms: can. xxxvi: T&* iulcv airoXavovjav
irpetr^etoiv rrj 7rpe<rpuT{pq. ja<xt\tni These
canons were signed by the emperor and the four Eastern patriarchs: the pope,
however, obstinately refused, and some of the decisions were afti-rwards reversed
by synods in the west. In the Codex, of Justinian, lib. i. tit. ii. c. 24, the
Church of Constantinople is entitled vazQv tCjv
AXh'ov Ki<pa\y: but he used the same language in regard to the Church
of Home. Ibid. lib. i. tit. i. c. 7, an.l elsewhere. The incursion of the
Lombardis into Italy (568) weakened the connexion between the empire and the
popes, and left them more at liberty to follow out their centralizing
projects. Kven then, however, the obstructions they encountered were not few.
The archbishop of Aquileia ami the Istrian prelates had suspended all communion
with the court of Borne in the controversy on the Three Chapters, and were not
reconciled till 698: see J. F. B. II. de Bubeis. Jlonimmta Ecclesite
Jquilejensis, ed. 1740, end Gieseler, ii. 129.
3 It is
clear from Gregor. Ep. v. 18, that Pelagius II., Ms predecessor, was offended
‘propter m-fandura elationis vocabulum.’
4 Cf.
Codex, kb. i. tit. i. 7: Novell, hi. v. and elsewhere.
6 See, among others, a letter addressed to
John himself (595), V. 18, and one of the same date to the emperor Maurice, v.
20.
For his own
part also he was ready to disclaim an appellation of that nature1,
on the ground that it detracted from the honour of his colleagues. Yet in spite
of these disclaimers, it is obvious that to him, far more than any of his
predecessors, the foundation of the papal monarchy is due*. He seems to have
been possessed by an idea3 that the source of all authority for
every province of the Church was lodged, by some special grant, in the
successors of St Peter: and the vigour of his mind* united with his many
Christian virtues, had euabled him to propagate his tenets far and near, not
only in the ancient Roman dioceses, but' in every province of the west. In
contrast with the misery at home3, a lield of increasing glory was
presented to his view in the mission to the Anglo-Saxons, the conversion of the
Arian Visigoths in Spain6, and the respect with which his coun-
1 a.t). 598, in a letter to Eulogius,
patriarch of Alexandria, -who, in the
style of the Eastern Church, hail called Gregory ‘ universalis episco- pus.’
Gregor, lip. Tin. 30. li continued, however, to be given to the see of
Constantinople, and Phocas, the murderer of Maurice, who ascended the imperial
throne in 602, rewarded the countenance he had received from the pope (cf.
Gregor. Epist. xm. 31), by advocating his pretensions to supremacy: ‘Hie
(Phocas), rogante papa Bonifacio, sta- tuit sedem Bomai'ffl et Apostolic®
ecclesite caput esse omnium ecclesia- rum, quia ecclesia Constantinopolitana
primam se omnium ecclesiarum scribebat.’ Beda, Chronicon, a.d. (ill. The
communication of tho Eo- man prelates with the court was kept up by an agent
(apocrisiurius) at Constantinople. Gregory tht Great and two of his immediate
successors had each held this office in their earlier years.
2 ‘ Upon
the whole, the papal authority had made no decisive progress in France, or
perhaps anywhere beyond Italy, till the pontificate of Gregory I.’ Hallam,
lliddU Ages, ch. vn: i. 519; ed. 1841. For a minute account of its inroads and
possessions at the beginning of the seventh century, see "Wiltscli’s
Handbuch der Kirchlichen Geographic und Sta- tistik, i. 67 sq.
Berlin, 1846.
3 *De
Constantinopolitana ecclesia,’ he asks, Epist. ix. 12, ‘quis earn dubitet sedi
apostolic® esse subjeetam?’— but this might imply no more than the priority of
Home as one of the sedes apostolic#: see the whole of his letter to Eulogius (yil 40), where he seems
to argue as if Antioch and Alexandria, which had also been indebted to St
Peter, stood on a level with the lioman church.
4 This was
shewn by his letters, of which 840 have been preserved, and by his theological
Treatises.
5 Gibbon,
ch. xlv: n. 267, ed. Milman.
* tn a
letter to Bechared, king of the Visigoths, a.l. -’>*.*9, F.pitt. a. 122,
he praises the zeal of that monarch in
reclaiming ‘all the nation of the Goths’ from the heresy of Arius, and forwards
a pallium to I .pander, bishoji oE Seville, at his own request. Ibid. ix. 121.
In 701 -710, however, Witiza the king endeavoured to restore the independence
of the
Progrtu
tf the papa) pc/ictr tin- dtrGrtyr.nj the Gnat.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
sels were
accepted by the Frankish kings and prelates1. He was followed in a
quick succession by Sabinian (604), Bonifacius III. (607), Bonifacius IV.
(608), Deusdedit (615), Bonifacius V. (619), Honorius I. (625), Severinus (S38
?), John IV. (640), Theodore I. (642), Martin I. '649,, Eugenius I. (654\
Vitalian (657), Adeodatus (&J2), Doims (G76), Agatho2 (673), Leo
II. (682), Benedict II. (683?), John3 V. (685), Conon (686), Sergius
I. (687), John VI. (701), John VII. (705), Sisinuius (703), Constantine I.
(708), Gregory4 II. (715),—whose advocate in forwarding the papal
power was Boniface, the Englishman,—Gregory6 III. (731), Zacharias
(741), Stephen II. (752), Stephen6
Spanish Church, and forbade all appeals to a ‘foreign’ bishop; but the conquests
of the Saracens soon after put an end to this freer movement. For a careful
statement of the evidence respecting Witiza, see Gieseler, ii. 189 sq.
1 e. g.
Gregor. Epist. xi. 55, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 69. In the lust, dated like the
others, 601, he asks leave of Brunechild, the Frankish queen, to send a legate
into Gaul, -with the hope of restraining such priests as lived ‘ impudice ac
nequiter. ’ This intercourse was, however, weakened during the political
disturbances of the seventh century, and. only re-established under Pepin and
Carlompn. Gieseler, n. 187.
2 In
apologizing for his delay in sending legates to the Council of Constantinople
(680), he thus speaks of the growth of his dominion in the west: ‘Primum
quidem, quod numerosa multitude nosirorum usque ad oceani regiones extenditur,
cujus itineris lc 'nginquitas in multi temporis cursum protelatur: sperabamus
deindt do Britannia Theodorum, a/chie- piscopum et phiJosophum, ad nostram
humilitatem conjungere: et ruax- ime quin in medio gentium, tam Longobardornm,
quamqve Sclavorum, necnon Fran corum, Gallorum, et Gothorum, atque
Britanrtorum, plurimi confamulorum nostrorum esse noscuntur.’ Mansi, xi. 294.
3 It is
remarkable tha.. this pope and six of his immediate successors were either
Greeks or Syrians, which is to be ascribed to the want of iheological scholars
in B ime, or still more to the influence of the Byzantine court. Bollinger, C.
II. in. 110.
4 The
following passage from a letter to the emperor Leo (729) is very remarkable:
‘Nos viarn ingredimur in extremas occidentis regiones versus illos, qui
sanctum baptisma efflagitant. Cum enim iliuc episcopos misissem et sanctse
ecclesiae nostee clericos, nondum adducti sunt, ut capita sua inclinarent et
baptizarentur, eorum principes, quod exoptent, ut eorum sim susceptor
iirifiyTmPTes yevttr^at aiW&v ava%xov)'
Hac de causa nos ad viam, Dei benignitate,
accingimus, ne forte damnationis et incuria nostrse rationem reddamus.’ Mansi,
xn. 981. Another specimen of his extravagant language occurs, ibid. 971: toV
&yiov II{tfov
at :ra<rat /3a(fiXeiai r:qs
SOaeus Qebv iiriyeiop Oxovtri.
5 In a
letter to the English bishops (cir. 731) he informs them that he had
constituted Tatwin, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all Britain and. his
vicar. Wilkins, i. 81. But the genuineness of the letter is questionable. See
Councils, &c. hi. 312.
* At his
prayer (755) the Franks were induced to rescue his possessions
III. (753), Paul I. (757), Constantine II. (767), Philip
(763), Stephen IVr. (768), Hadrian L (772), Leo 111. (795— 816). But
although we may trace encroachments in the conduct of these prelates, and a
growing boldness in their tone, especially in Gregory II. and in Zacharias, it
was not until the papacy1 of Hadrian I. that a claim to the pastorship
of all the Christian Church was fully brought to light. The Eastern
patriarchates, it is true, continued to resist this arrogant demand as firmly
and successfully as ever: but it gained a more general acceptance iu the west.
This will be found especially in regions now brought over to the Gospel, and in
tribes of Teutonic blood. A large portion of the extant rescripts2
issued at this period were directed to the rulers of the Church of England.
While they shew us how profoundly she was moved by sentiments of gratitude and
veneration3, they bear witness also to the servile spirit of her
children, notwithstanding4 some
from the Lombards (Scriptorrs Pranc. ed. Duchesne, in. 707), and in this
■way Italy was lost to the enfeebled emperors of the cast, who could no
longer keep it in their grasp. The crowning of Charlemagne (Dec. 25, 800) with
the imperial diadem, in the church of St Peter, gave fresh •igour to the
inroads of the popes. He added also to their landed property, and made them
temporal princes: on which see Hadrian’s letter to him ^777> ubi sup. 766;
Neander, y. 168; and De Marca, De Concordia, lib. in. c. 12.
1 ‘ It cannot, I think, be said, that any material
acquisitions of ecclesiastical power were obtained by the successors of
Gregory (the Great) for nearly one hundred and fifty years.’ Ilallam, Middle
Ages, I. 520. Hadrian I., however, says distinctly (782): ‘ Sedes apo^tolica
caput totius mundi et omnium Dei eccle»iarum,’ Codex Carolin. ed. Cenni, r.
389:
1 Cuius sollicitudo, delegata Divinitys,
cunctis debeturecclesiis:’and other
similar expressions are quoted by Neander, v. 166, 167 (notes). On the
circulation of the pseudo-Isidore Decretals (at the close of the eighth
century) these notions were apparently supported by a continuous chain of testimony
reaching up to the Apostles. Ibid. vi. 2—8.
3 See the useful index of Jaft'tS (Berlin, 1851)
entitled Ileuesta Pontificvm tLomanorum.
3 This led
to the foundation of an English college at Rnme entitled ‘ Schola Saxonum.' See
Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons, I. 205—207. It was afterwards converted into a
hospital ‘ Xenodochium Sancti Spiritus,’ for the entertainment of English
pil;Trinis who, from 720 to the close of the century, were very numerous. Bed.
Hist. Eccl. v. 7: Chronicon, in Monument. Ilist. Britan, p. 101 a. Others,
like the youthful monarch Cead- w'alla (689), and his successor Ine (725), took
up their permanent abode in Home, ‘ ad limina beatorum apostol.jrum.’ Bed. Ilist.
Eccl. T. 7.
4 See
Wilfrith’s case, above, p. 15, n. i!. Alevtin, also, It'd astray by a spurious
document (Ep. xcti, al. cvnr. Opp. t. 13t, cf. Neand. v. 168), arrived in the
year 800 at the conclusion, that the see of Borne was ‘ judiiiariam, non
judicandam;’ and in 796 he addressed the pope [Ep.
INTERNAL
OltUANIZA-
TIOK.
Further
increase t,f the papal power: its establishment among the Anglo- Saxons :
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
and
the Germans.
The
groiv- ing consideration of the Monies.
occasional
assertions of their freedom. And the same must be conceded in the case of
Germany, as soon as the Irish school was silenced and subverted. In the council1
at which Boniface presided (742), in his character of Homan legate, he was able
to anticipate the fervent wishes of his master. Every scheme he then propounded
for tho organizing of the German Church was based on subjection to the popes.
This tendency indeed was balanced for a while by the action of the royal power;
but as soon as the diadem of Charlemagne had descended to his weaker and more
pliant offspring, the aggressive spirit of the papacy unfolded all its might.
A second
feature in the changes of this period was the growing reputation of the monks.
Being now not un- frequently admitted into orders, and distinguished for their
missionary zeal, their swarming numbers, their superior learning, and the
strictness of their mode of life, they won the applauses of the multitude as
well as of the courts2, eclipsing the parochial clergy, and evading
the exactions of the bishops. It is true, they were subject in most countries3
to the censures of their own diocesans, but in the course of the seventh
century they strove to be exempted from this rule, which had sometimes grown exceedingly
oppressive4; and the favour they enjoyed at Home5 enabled
many convents of the west to realize
xx, al. xxiv, Opp. I. 30) in the following terms: ‘ Sanctissime Pater,
pon- tifex a Deo elecius, Vioaiins apostolorum, harres patrum, prineeps eccle-
siae, unius immaculate columbas nutritor,’ etc.; though much 'if this language
is to be regarded as empty rhetoric.
1 Ep.
lxiii. Carloman, who prompted this synodal action, withdrew from his court in
718, ‘ ad liniina beatorum apostolorum pervenit,' and assumed the monastic
habit. Annales Laurissenses Minor, in Pertz. l 115.
2 In
England alone nearly thirty kings and queens retired into convents or
reclusion during the seventh and eighth centuries. Dollinger, II. 58. And the
same, though to a less extent, is true of other countries. Schroakh, xx. 10—12.
The monastic life was the realization of the ideal of the mediasval mind.
Buckingham, BibU in the Middle Ages, p. 82.
3 There was an exception in the case of
Airica, where tome of the convents placed themselves under the protection of
distant bishops. Cono.il. od. Mansi, vm. 618. hi the seventh centuiy exemptions
had commenced in the patriarchate of Constantinople. They were denoted by the erection,
at the cloister, of a patriarchal cross. Dollinger, II. 285.
4 On the despotic powers of the bishops at
this period and the opposition (conjurationes) they provoked, see Guizot,
Hist, of Civilization, tt'c., II. 55 sq., 91 sq., ed. Lond. 1846. The conjurationes of the monks were perhaps al in
to the clerical ‘gilds’ in England. Alfred’s Works, 1.445.
their wishes1.
They were made to contribute in this way to the fixing of the papal power. The
liules2 of Columbanus, Isidore, and Csesarius of Arles, like the
older systems of St Basil, Oassian, and the rest, were gradually mpplanted in
the Western churches by the order of St Benedict. He was a native of Umbria,
and in 523 established the great model-abbey of Monte Cassino. His chief aim
was to mitigate the harshness and monotony ;hat characterized the Eastern
systems, though in one reject he made his institute more rigid,—by the vow,
.vliich, after a noviciate of one year, he claimed of every person who
retreated to his cloisters. It was not, however, ill some time after his death
\5i3) that the order was '•xtensively adopted: but in the course of t wo
hundred /ears it was everywhere diffused in Gaul, in Italy, and •Spain; and it
followed in the track of Benedictine monks A'ho laboured in Great Britain and
the northern parts of iurope3. Much as this order, by its union and
its growing
6 See Gregor. I., F.pist. vm. 15, addressed
(598) to the bishop rf livenna. A Boman
Synod (tjOl) drew up constitutions in their favour; here is also a decree
attributed to a Boman Council of 610 allowing aonks in priests’ orders to
execute all priestly functions; but this is pro- ably spurious. (Councils,
&c. m. 63, 64.) Cf. Council of Seville (618) ixTl 10, 11; Epist. Jdhan. IV. apud Labb. Concil. v. 1773.
1 The parly and less questionable exemptions simply
relieve the monks mm the interference of bishops in the economical management
of the nonasteries. This privilege is greatly expanded in the forged documents
f a later period; a ludicrous instance is that of Medeshamstede, in rhich the
pope is made to appoint the abbot his legate for all England. Vi'kins, i. 48.
1 See L. Holstein’s Codex
Regutarum llonasticarum, etc. 1759, and •leylot’s Histoire des Ordres Religieux, etc. ed. 1792. Monasticism etained its variety of form in the Eastern
patriarchates. For some idea f its spirit in those regions, see lloschus
(Johan.), Aet/xuV (compiled bout 610; in Auctarium Biblioth. Patrum Duaeanum,
Paris, tom.
1057 sq. The numerous conventual establishments of the Nestorians re
described in Asseman, Biblioth. Orient, tom. n part ii. The Jacob- es at this
period introduced monasticism into Ethiopia, ivhere ‘the ons of Toklahaimanut ’
are said to have equalled the Benedictines of the ?est. Neale, u. 74.
3 It has been questioned whether the early monasticism of the Anglo- laxon Church was
purely Benedictine. On the whole it seems mo«t pro- able that Augustine and the
Kentish mission introduced the modified or ix practice then in vogue at Home,
and that even this was modified still irther by the association of secular
priests with monks m the episcopal ,nd missionary settlements. As the character
of the church became less istmctly missionary, and as the reforms of the
Benedictine rule followed ne another, the monks became more strict and
separated from the secu-
The
im- portnnrc of the Be.- nedictinc ordtr.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Institution
of collegiate Canons.
numbers,
interfered with, the freedom of the local churches, and facilitated the
incursions of the popes, it must notwithstanding be regarded as a patron of
the arts1, and as contributing to fan the embers of religion2.
The
corruptions which prevailed in the eighth century among the major and the minor
clerics, as distinguished from the monks, appear to have suggested the idea of
binding them together by a rule, analogous to those obtaining in the convents.
The design is attributed to (Jhrodegang, a pious bishop of Metz (742—7G6), who
founded3 what was known as the order of cathedral or collegiate ‘
canons.’ It is clear that the members of his chapter differed little from the
Benedictine monks, except in their enjoyment of some personal estate, arising
from a periodical division of the funds of the cathedral. They used a common
dormitory and refectory; at fixed (or ‘canonical’) hours they met in the church
for worship, and in the chapter-house to hear the exhortations of the bishop.
Chrodegang’s institute was sanctioned, with some changes, at the council of
Aix- la-Chapelle (816), and was copied4 very soon in other
countries. .
Ur clergy (e. g. under Benedict Biscop and later tinder Boniface) but
also diminished in numbers and influence, until at the date of the Danish
invasion pure monastieism was nearly extinct. That invasion destroyed the
remains of the primitive system, and the English monaehism of the tenth century
was a new institution. In (iermanv it was otherwise; Willebrord, Boniiace, and
most of the German missionaries were also Benedictines. It was natural,
therefore, that the German synods should insist upon conformity to the
institute under which they Lad themselves been trained. Helyot, ii. 58.
1 The impulsi in this direction appears to have been
communicated by Cassiodorus. See his treatises ‘De institutione Divinarum
litterarum’ and ‘De artibus a<- disciplinis liberalium
litterarum’ (Opp. Ilothomagi, 1679), both of which were much esteemed by the
mediaeval monks.
* See
Mabillon’s Acta Sanctorum Ordin. Benedict, passim. The Benedictines and their
offshoots were peculiarly devoted to the study of the Bible: see, for instance,
the Antiquiores Cumuetudines Cluniacemis Mo- nasterii, in D'Achery, i. 650,
(ed. 1723), where we find the order of reading the whole Bible once a year.
3 Chrodogangi
Regula Sincera, apud llansi, Concil. xrv. 313. Strictly, speaking, Chrodegang
was not the author of the rule. It was akin to the canonical institute of St
Augustine: Helyot, n. 64 sq. Canonesses also are first mentioned at the Council
of Chalons-sur-Saone (813j: Ib. ii. 59.
4 Ib. p.
68. Paul Wamefrid (Gesta Episc. Mettensium; Pertz, ii. 268) has left a
contemporary account of Chrodegang and his active life. Charlemagne was so
pleased with the new institute that he wanted u J the cleigy to be either monks or canons.
Capitular. a.d. 789, c. 75
iBaluze,
But in
addition to the city clergy, whom it was thus attempted to reduce more fully
under the inspection of the bishop, every diocese included many others, who
officiated in rural districts. These were the seculars, comprising (1) the
parish-priests1 and their assistants; (2) the roving or itinerant
clergy2, who had no proper cure and no fixed employment; (3) a
large band of chaplains8, who obeyed all the movements of the court,
or were attached to the castles of the gentry. To correct excesses in these
quarters, and to mitigate the evils, on the part of laymen, that grew out of
their abuse4 of the right of patronage, it was needful that the
prelates should secure a closer supervision of their flocks. An order had
indeed been given at the end5
i. 239).
There are traces of an attempt to introduce portions of the system into England
as early as H13; Councils, &c., iii. 575; Kemble, Vod. Dipl, co: monastic
institutions being then on the -wane. But neither the discipline nor the name
of canons was really planted here before the 11th century and then the rule of
Chrodegang was almost universally rejected.
1 See Bingham, bk. ix. ch. viii. In most
other countries the division into parishes was very ancient, but in England the
introduction of the system is a matter of great obscurity. The monastic
stations founded by the original missionaries seem to have long supplied the
wants of the people. The original parish priest would be the minister of the
village community or chaplain of the lord of a franchise, and the parish in
most cases would coincide with the territory of the community or franchise. In Bede’s letter to Egbert traced of an
incipient system of the kind may be found. The process in a thinly populated
and unsettled country wap naturally slower than on the continent where it was
only necessary to adopt the ancient local divisions. Theodore has been named as
the founder of the parochial system, but it was probably growing up gradually
from his time to that of Alfred.
s
These had grown up through a relaxation of the ancient laws which provided that
no clergyman should be ordained except to a particular church. Charlemagne
laboured to abate the evils that had flowed from their disorderly proceedings.
Capitular, a.d. 789: il>. A.n. 794. The former, among other things, decrees
‘ut in diebus festis vel Dominicis. omnes ad eecle^iam verdant, et non invitent
presbyteros ad dorrujg suas ad missas faciendas,’ c. 9.
3 The trouble
they created for the bishops may be gathered from the 14th canon of the Council
of Chalons (649). The principal chaplain of the court (archicapellanus) became
a kind of ‘minister of religion’ for the whole kingdom: see Planck,
(jescliichte der Kirchenverfassung,
ii. 147.
4 e. p.
Bonifacii Opp. n. ‘22: 1 Ct laici presbyteros non ejiciant de ecclesiis, nec mittere prawumant
sine consensu episcoporum sui 'rum: ut laici ornnino non audeant munera exigere
a presbyteris, propter com- mendationem ecclesiaj cuique presbytero.’ ThiB
prohibition waa renewed (813) at Arles, c. 5.
5 Coneil.
Bracarense m. (of Braga, 572) can. i. .
INTERN All ORGANIZATION.
The
secular clergy.
of the former
period (572) that the bishop should inspect his diocese in person every year.
This practice was continued in the following centuries1; and the
effect of it was extended by the larger powers of the archdeacon2,
and the rise of many rural chapters3 (or associations of adjoining
parishes).
But the
organization of the Church is due still more to the influence of Synods4,
which had long been in the Western Church the ordinary courts for determining
all controverted questions. The proceedings of the synods5 of this
epoch, with exceptions to be noticed in the following chapter, did not turn
habitually on points of doctrine, but related to the conduct of the clergy or
the people, the external welfare of the Church, and the wider propagation of
the Gospel. They forbad all ministrations oi' a cleric who was unacquainted6
with the language of the country; they insisted on a more extensive knowledge
of the Bible7;
1 e. g.
Bonifacii Epist. lxiii. p. 141: Synod of Clovesho, 747, can. in.; Wilkins, i.
95. In the Frankish empire these visitations were connected with the
establishment of sends (?synodi), or spiritual courts: see Neander, v. 148,149.
The bishops in all cases attempted to extirpate the numerous remains of
heathenism as well as open vices.
2 Bingham, bk. ii. ch. xxi. § 9: Neander, v. 152, 153. In some of the
recently converted districts there was a great lack both of presbyters and
bishops. See the excellent letter of Bede to archbp. Ecgberht (734), where he
urges the necessity of further subdivision in that prelate’s field of labour.
As the power of the archdeacon was enlarged, the chorepiscopi were all
abolished. Giesler, ii. 249.
3 The ‘ capitula ruralia5 were
presided over by archpresbyters, or, in more modem language, rural deans: see
Ducange, sub voce, and Dansey's Horce Decanicce Rurales, 2nd edit.
4 See above, p. 36, and cf. Guizot,
Civilization, Lect. xm. In Spain the synods were chiefly national, and, in
defect of such, provincial councils were to be assembled every year. See Council
of Toledo (633), c. 3: Merida (666), c. 7. The former of these gives directions
touching the mode in which the synods should be held, can. 4. In England, under
Theodore and subsequently, it was usual to hold provincial synods, at least in
the southern province, though not, as he directed, twice a-year. Kemble, ii.
367.
5 See an abstract of their acts,
chronologically arranged, in Guizot, Append, to Vol. ii. For. specimens, at length, see those of Clovesho (747),
and Cealchythe (787): Wilkins, i, 94 sq.; 145 sq. The object of the annual
synod is thus stated by pope Zacharias {Bonif. Epist. xlviii.): ‘ad pertractandum de unitate ecclesi®, ut si quid
adversi acciderit radicibus amputetur, et Bex ecclesia maneat inconcussa.’
6 e. g.
Bonifacii Statuta, § xxvii : Opp. ii. 24: cf. Charlemagne, Capital. A.D. 813,
§ 14; i. 505.
7 e. g. Council of Toledo (C33), c. 25:
(653), c. 8: of Arles (813), c. 25.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Episcopal
visitations. Archdeacons, and rural chapters.
Synods.
Th.eir
main objects at this -period.
they
prescribed the routine of public worship1, and endeavoured to
produce a greater uniformity*; in short, they were the legislative and judicial
organs of the Church; although their movements might be checked and overruled
by the voice of superior councils, by the arbitrary measures of the State, or,
at times, in the churches of the west, by the fiats of the Roman court.
The marriage
of the clergy proper3, interdicted though it were by emperors and
kings, by ■western synods, and emphatically by the popes, was not
generally suppressed in the seventh century. In the eastern patriarchates, a
council held at Constantinople, 391, (the Council in Trullo), while forbidding4
second marriages of priests or deacons, and reflecting on all marriages
contracted after ordination, is opposed to the canons of the west. It
vindicates5 the right of married clergymen to live as before with
their proper consorts, on the ground that the holy ordinance of matrimony would
be otherwise dishonoured. In the Latin Church, however, where the Trullan
regulations were not all adopted, we observe a more stringent tone in the
synodal decisions6; and when Boniface had been successful iu his
German mission, he expended not a little of his ardour in discrediting the
married clergy7. This
1 e. g. Council of Rami’. (595), c. 1,
prescribing what parts of the service sliC.il be chanted, and what read.
a e.
g. Toledo (675), c. 3, ordering all bishops of the province to conform to the
ritual <>f the metropolitan church; as an older canon of Toledo (633), c.
2, directed that the same order of prayer and psalmody should be observed
throughout the kingdom.
3 This
distinction is important: for a multitude of persons now submitted to the
tonsure without passing to the higher orders of the Church. See Guizot, Lect.
xnr. p. 38.
4 Can.
iii: Mansi, xi. 811.
5 Can.
xiii.
6 e. g.
Council of Toledo (0531 can. v. vi. vn. It seems that 'Witiza, the reforming
king of Spain, in the eighth century, rescinded the decrees relating to the celibacy
of clerics. Gieseler, n. l'Jl, note.
7 The
following is the language of his patron Zacharias: ‘Qui cle- rici etiam ab
nxoribus abstinere debeant, ex concilio Africano, cap. x\xvn. ita continentur:
I’rssterea cum de clericorum quorundam (quani- vis erga proprias uxores)
incontinentia referretur, placuit episcopos et presbyteros seu diaconos,
secundum propria statuta, etiam ab usori- bus continere: quod nisi fecerint, ab
ecclesiastico officio removeantur. Oteros autem clericos ad id non cogi, sed
seeundum nniuscujusque ecclesiae consuetudiuem observari debere.’ Bonif. Ep.
lxv: Opp. i. 155.
Marriage
of the clergy.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Income
of the clergy.
Tithes.
antipathy was
shared by his countrymen at home1: yet, 'n spite of the admonitions
of the bishop, and the legislation of the Wit An (or state-council), very many
of the English seculars, like those of other lands, continued to bring, up the
issue of their marriage2.
With regard
to the income of the clergy, it accrued as before from the endowments of their
churches, and the voluntary offerings of the faithful3. The revenues
thus obtained were thrown into a common stock, which it was usual, in the Roman
church* and others, to distribute in four portions; of which one was allotted
to the poor, a second to the parish priests, a third to the fabric and expenses
of the church, and the remnant to the bishop of the diocese. The administration5
of the property was left entirely in his hands.
Another
source of cliurch-revenue wrere the tithes, which, although they had
been claimed on moral grounds at a far earlier date6, were not
uniformly paid by Christians of the west until the close of the sixth century7.
A special law of Charlemagne8, 779, enforced the payment on all
subjects of the empire, and his neighbours for the most part followed his
example9. Like the voluntary orfer-
1 There
are however hprdly any references to clerical marriages in the genuine
Anglo-Saxon lawn or canons of this period.
2 See
Kemble, fi. iii sq., where the chain of testimony is shewn to be almost
unbroken.
3 The
French clergy at the end of this period had become extremely rich. See Gmjrard, (Jartulaire de I’Eglise de Notre
Dame de Paris, Pref. p. xxxvii; Paris, 1850.
4 Bed. i.
27. In Spain, and perhaps elsewhere, the bishop had a third of the revenues:
see Council of Braga (560), can. yiii of Toledo (633), car., xxxm
5 Couijcil
of Orleans (511), can. xiv. xt- cf. Guizot, Lect. xm. p. 53. The Council of
Braga (G75) complains of the injustice and extortion of some of the bishops.
* Bingham, bk. v. ch. v.
7 The
councils of Tours (567) and of Macon (583) endeavoured to procure a more
regular payment.
8 Capitular,
a.d. 779, c. vn.
The severity with which this law had been enforced was regretted by the. gentlo
Alcuin: see Epist. lxxx. (al. xcv.) ad Domnum Regem: Opp. I. 117. In Ep. lxxii.
(al. lxxxvii. Opp. I. 105) he gives the following advice to Amo: ‘Esto prauicator
pietatis, non dociuiarum exactor.'
9 The
history of tithe in England has been complicated both by controversial
misstatements and by the existence of the antedated or fabricated penitential
literature. The establishment of the right grew up here in very much the same
course as on the continent. (1) Setting
ings which
preceded them, the tithes were intended for the clergy and the poor; the bishop
of the diocese at first prescribing the allotments, even where he wag not
himself entitled to a portion.
KELAIIONS TO
THE cn il
POTiEH.
§2. RELATIONS
OF THE CHURCH TO THE CIVIL POWER.
The Church
has been hitherto regarded as on independent corporation, organized entirely
on a model of its own, expanding with the vigour it inherited from heaven, and
governed, in the name of its holy Founder, by the prelates who derived
authority from Him. But after the imperial coinage bore the impress of
religion, and the sovereigns of the east and west were ‘patrons of the Church,
its history involved another class of questions: it had entered into an
alliance with the State, and, as a natural result, its path was in future to be
shaped according to the new relations. This alliance did not lead, as it might
have done, to an absorption of the secular into the sacerdotal power, nor to a
complete amalgamation of the civil and ecclesiastical tribunals : yet its
strength was often injured by the action of opposing forces, either by the
Church aspiring to become the mistress of the State, or by the State
encroaching on the province of the Church and suppressing her inherent rights.
The former of these tendencies predominated in the west, the latter in the
east. The one was diverging into Romanism;
aside the statements of the spurious penitentials, it is clear from the
genuine penitential of Theodore, that the duty of giving tithe to sacred
purposes was regarded by him as part of the common law of the church; Pcenit.
ii. c. ii. § 8; c. xrv. §§ 9, 10. The same was the opinion of the early lawyers
who refer the introduction of the custom to St Augustine. Leges Eadw. capp.
vii. viii. Thorpe, i. 445. (2) The legatine Council of 787, whose decrees were
accepted as binding by the kings and witan of Mercia and Northumbria, and
probably by the witan of Wessex also, enacts in the seventeenth canon, “ut
omnes studeant de omnibus quse possident decimas dare:” and on this is perhaps
based the statement that Off a gave a tithe of all his property to the church.
Beyond this canon there is no extant enactment declaring the legal obligation
of tithe; but it appears as an established law in the time of Edward the Elder;
Thorpe, i. 171. “ If any man withhold tithes let him pay lahslit among the
Danes, wite with the English.” On the story of Ethelwulfs gift of tithe, see
Councils, &c, hi. 637.
General
charactcr of the alii- ance between Church and Stale.
Deference
of the West" ern kings to the ecclesiastics, in questions of doctrine.
the other, to
dictation of the civil power in adjudging controversies of the faith,—or, in a
word, to Byzantinism.
It is true
that the claims of the Roman pontiffs, who evoked the aggressive spirit of the
Church, were not urged at the present epoch as they were in after-ages. Till
the middle of the eighth century Rome was itself dependent on the Eastern
empire1, and its voice in all civil questions5 was
proportionately humble. On the contrary it will be found that the court of
Byzantium was unwilling to abandon the despotic powers that had been wielded by
Justinian. All theEastern patriarchs,and not unfrequently the Roman3,
were its immediate nominees; it laid claim to a, quasi-sacer- dotal* character,
and, as we shall see at large, affected to decide in religious controversies of
tho very gravest kind. The Western princes, who, until the time of Charlemagne,
stood far lower in their mental training, were accustomed to defer entirely6
to the wisdom of the synods, if the faith of the Church was thought to be imperi
lied: and in cases even where the kings, the bishops, and the nobles were com-
1 Gibbon,
it. 479, ed. Milmart.
2 Thus
Gregory II., one of the stoutest champions of the papacy, writes to the Emperor
Leo (729): ‘Sei* sancta- ecclesiae dogmata non im- peratorum esso.sed
pontificum: idcirco ecclesiis praepositi sunt pontifices a reipuhlica negotiis
abstinevtes, et imperatores ergo bimiliter an ecelesi- asticis abstineant, et
quffl sibi eommissa sunt, capessant.’ Mansi, Concil. xn. 969: cf. ibid. 977, ttliere
he admits that the bishojis hare no right
• introspieiendi
in pa'atium, ac dignitates regias deferendi.’
s See
Schroukh, xix. 408 sq. But in the case of the liuman bishop there was generally
some kind of election, though it was seldom bonalide.. Gregory the Great, like
many of his successors, seems to haTe owed his elevation to his former
appointment, as ‘apocrisiarius’ at the court of Byzantium. Ho was consecrated
by the command of the emperor Maurice, after his election by ‘the clergy,
senate, and Hi man people.’ Johan. I>iacon. Vit. Gregor. I. 39, in Gregor.
Opp. ed. Bened. it. 36: Gregor. Tumnensis, Hint. Franc, lib. x. 1. Some idea of
the excitement caused by these popular elections may be derived from the
example of Sergius I. (687), who iti .mid to have been chosen ‘a primatibus
judicum, et exercitu Roman* militia1, vel cleri seditiosi parte
plurima, et pravertim sacerdotum atque civium multitudine.’ Two othor
candidates, Pasehalis and Theodoras, were elected by different factions. Vit.
Sergii, in Vignola Lib. Pontif. i. 303, 304, ed. Bom. 1724.
4 ‘
Imperator sum et sacerdos’ was the claim of the emperor Leo (729): Mansi,
Goncil. hi. 975. One of the charges brought against Ana- stasius, a disciple of
Maximus, in the Monothelete controversy, was that lie refused to recognize the
emperor as a priest, and as possessed of spiritual jurisdiction Maxinri Opp. I.
30: ed. Combefis.
5 Of.
Guizot, as above, «. 30. The precedents in which the royal power was most
freely exercisod have been collected in the great work entitled Preuves dcs
Libertez de VEglise Gallicane.
Lined in one
assembly—an arrangement not unusual in the Frankish empire1 and
continuing in England till thoNormau Conquest2—there was still a
disposition to refer not a few of the civil questions3 that emerged
to the ultimate decision of the prelates.
It was
different, however, in respect of a second class of questions, where the
temporal and ecclesiastical provinces appear to interpenetrate each other, We
shall there find the Church compelled to surrender a large portion of her
ancient rights. A prominent example is supplied in the filling up of vacant sees.
The bishop was at first elected, as a rule4, by the voices of the
clergy and the people ; but in the. Frankish empire, as well as in other parts,
this custom had been suffered to die out, amid the social changes of the times.
The arbitrary will of barbaric princes, such as Clovis, Chilperic, and Charles
Martel, was able to annihilate the canons of the Church. They viewed the
bishoprics as a sort of ministerial benefice5, and as investing
their possessors with political importance: it is not surprising, therefore,
if we find a series of such kings bestowing them at random on the favourites of
the court. These lax and iniquitous proceedings6 were not, however,
always unresisted by the clergy. Several councils7, in succession,
tried in vain to
1 See
the list of persons present at the Councils, in Labbe, or Mansi:
and of. Caroli Magni Capitul. lib. vi. c. 111.
3 Ancient Laws, d'c., ed. TLorpe, 1.
495. Before that time the bishop Kittle
his place at the side of the ealdorman in the county-coort (scir- gemfit).
Kemble, n. 385.
3 For an
abstract of the varied duties of a bishop at this period, see Ancient Laws, Ac.
11. 310 sq.
4 The
exceptions, under the old Koman empire, were the bishoprics of the more
important cities, winch in the east and west alike had been generally filled by
the royal nominees. Neander, v. 127.
Gieseler, 11. 153. Hence the demand of military services, which some of
the bishops rendered in person. Gewillieb (above, p. 22) is a striking instance
of this usage, though it was less common in the eighth than in the former
centuries. Charlemagne (in 801) absolutely forbade all priests from taking part
in a battle. Mansi, xiii. 1054.
6 Gregor.
Turon. Hist. Francor. vi. 39: ‘Cum multi uiunera offerrent,’ etc. De S. Vatrum
Vit. c. 3. de, S. Gallo: ‘Jan tunc, gcrmen illud iniquum ccuperat pullularo, ut
sacerdotium aut yenderetur a regibus ant compararetur a elericis.’ Cf. Neander,
v. 127 sq.; Gieseler, 11. 154, n. 9. The abuse had been manifested also in
Spain, where the council of Barcelona (599) forbade the elevation of laymen to
bishoprics ‘aut per sacra regalia, aut per consenbionem cleri vel plebis:’ can.
3: Mansi, x 482 sq. Gregory mentions a case of this sort in Hint. Francor.
viii. 22.
7 e.g.
that of Auvergne (533), c. 2; that of Paris (557), c. 8. The
■p G)
Calif
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RELATIONS TO
THfi CIVIL POWER.
Points
in which the civil ‘power encroached.
Discontinuance
of episcopal elections.
DELATION'S TO
THE CIVIL POWER,
Efforts
to revive the older system:
favoured
in some measure hy the Carol- ingian princes:
stem the
growing evil. They were seconded by Gregory the Great1, and in 815,
a synod held at Paris had the courage to reiterate the ancient regulations. It
declared5 that all episcopal elections which have been made without
the consent of the metropolitan and bishops of the province, and of the clergy
and people of the city, or which have been made by violence, cabal, or bribery,
are henceforth null and void. This canon was at length confirmed by Clothaire
II., but not until he had so modified its meaning as to be left in possession
of a veto, if not of larger powers3. It was afterwards repeated in
624 or 625 at Rheirns, with the addition4, ‘that no one shall be
consecrated bishop of a see, unless he belong to the same district, have been
chosen by the people and the bishops of the province, and have been approved by
a metropolitan synod.’ Under Charlemagne, and the rest of the Carolingian
princes, who were anxious to revive the canons of the Early Church, those
efforts of the Frankish prelates to regain their independence were more
uniformly carried out. The freedom of episcopal elections was, at least in
words, conceded5, and the Church was not unwiding in her turn to
grant a cor- firmatory pow'er to the sovereign6. It resulted, therefore,
that a prelate, after his election, could not officiate in his
latter employs the following language, after directing that the elections
should be made by ‘the people and the clergy: ’ • Quodsi per ordinationem
regiam honorin istius culmen pervadere aliquis nirnia temeritate prtesum-
serit, a comprovincialibus loci ipsius episcopus recipi nullatenus mereatur,
quem indebite ordinatum agnoscunt.’
1 e. g.
Epist. (a.d. G01) xi.
59, 60, 61, 63.
2 Can. i:
Labb. v. 1650.
3 His
proviso rui»s as follows: ‘Episeopo decedente in loco ipsius, qui a
metropolitano ordinari debet cum provincialibus a clero et populo eligatur: et
si persona condigna fuerit, per ordinationem prlneipis ordi- netur: vel certe
si de palatio eligitur, per meritum persona) et doctrinal, ordinetur.’ Ibid.
1653.
4 Gan. m;
nv.
5 e. g.
(Japitul. Aquibgranense (a.d. 803), c. 2: ‘Ut sancta ecelesia *uo iiberius
potiretur honore, adsenram ordini ecclesiastico prabuimus, ut episcopi per
electionem cleri et pupuli, secundum statuta canonum, de propria diocesi,
remota personarum et munerum acceptione, ob vitaa meritum et hapientia? donum,
eligantur,’ etc.
6 Something
like this had been already conceded in the council of Orleans (5491, c. 10;
where the election is appointed to be made cum voluntate regis: cf. above, note
3. ‘The contest between election and royal nomination was often reproduced: but
in every case the necessity of [the royalj confirmation was acknowledged.’
(iuizot, a. 31.
sacred
calling till he hud received the approbation of the secular authority. But, as
we shall see hereafter, even where the princes were most friendly to the
Church, they were loth to be deprived of so strong an engine as the privilege
of naming bishops must have placed within their grasp. They seem indeed to have
employed it, in some special cases, with the open acquiescence of the clergy;
for a canon of the council at Toledo1, 681, enacted, with conditions,
that a primate was at liberty to consecrate those persons whom the king should
appoint to the vacant sees : and in England, where the clergy, and the people
also, had a voice in the royal council (in the ‘ witena gemot ’), the
nomination of a prelate by that body, though in theory an act of the sovereign
himself, approximated to the primitive election2.
A second point
in which the civil and ecclesiastical authorities might have come into
collision was the gathering of church-assemblies. In the former period,
general councils had been summoned by the kings, while the provincial and
diocesan were held at the pleasure of the bishops. But distinctions of this
kind were no longer kept in view, at least in the administration of the
newly-planted churches. Numbers of the earliest and most active converts, both
in Germany and in England, were connected with the royal households; and in
this way it would naturally occur that measures which related to the organizing
of the Church would emanate directly from the king. His power was in fact
exhibited not only in the founding of episcopal sees, but in a general
supervision of the clergy, and in the convocation of assemblies whether
legislative or judicial. In those countries, synods (as already noted) were
most frequently combined with the civil diets ; though the prelates, under
Charlemagne, held their sessions in a separate chamber3; and even
where they met to determine a
1 c.
vi: Labb. vi. 1221.
3 See Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 377, where it is
also shewn that English prelates were sometimes both appointed and displaced by
a mere act of the royal will, and that bishoprics were frequently bestowed on
royal chaplains. It is clear however from Alcuin’s letters to the clergy of
York, and from other sources, that in the latter days of the Heptarchy the
right of election was recognized and really exercised by the clergy.
3 e. g. this wTas the usage at the council of Mentz (913); cf. Capitul, a.d. 811, c. 4;
i. 478, ed. Baluze.
RELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
Righ
t of
calling
Synods
exercised
ly kings.
Mutual
confidence of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities.
Effects
of this on society.
doctrinal
question, they were acting, for the most part, in obedience to the royal will1.
It is indeed
remarkable, that so long as kings were esteemed the real patrons of the Church'2,
she felt no wish to define exactly her relations to the civil power: the two
authorities, in some way parallel and independent, laboured to enforce obedience
to each other3. This was manifested more especially iu Charlemagne
and the Anglo-Haxon princes, who seem to have maintained, with few exceptions,
a most friendly bearing to the Church, and to have everywhere infused a mutual
confidence into the courts, the bishops, and the people.
Gifted in
this manner with peculiar powers4 in virtue of their close alliance
with the State, the clergy, and especially the prelates, were enabled to exert
a salutary influence on the daily temper of the kings, and on the
administration of the laws. Their frequent intercessions iu behalf of
criminals, and the asylums5 opened in their churches for
1 ‘Orta quasstione de sancta Trinitate, et de sanctorum
iniaginibus, inter orientalem et occidentalem ecclesiam, id eat, Romanos et
Gra»cos, rex Pippinus [a.d. 767], eonventu in Gentiliaco villa eongregato,
synodum de ipsa qua’Stiono habuit.’ Binbardi
Annales: Pertz. i. 145. In like manner, numerous councils were convoked by
Charlemagne jussu ejus'). Ibid. i. 38, 87, 181, 19R, 201).
2 Alenin,
writing to Charlemagne (799) a letter (Ep. i.xxt. al. xcv.) in many ways
remarkable, thus speaks of his relation to the Church: ‘Ecce! in te solo tota
salus ecclesiarum Christi inclinata reeumbit. Tu Yindex scelerum, tu rector
errantium, tu eonsolator incerentium, tu exaltatio bonorum.' Opp. i. 117. He
had just been deploring the evils of the times, and especially the insurrection
of the Romans against Leo III.: cf. Annales Lauresham.; Pertz, 1. 38. There can
indeed be no doubt respecting the extent of the royal prerogative, as it was
wielded by the hands of Charlemagne. Though he exempted the clergy more than
ever from the jurisdiction of the civil courts (Capit. A.n. 801, c. 1) he
retained the highest judicial power in all civil causes, even where the
litigants were bishops (Capit v.n. 812, c. 1). By means of the missi (two extraordinary
judges, a bishop, and a count), he was able to keep a continual check on the
administration both of ecclesiastical and of civil officers: Capitul. in., a.d. 789, c. ii.
and elsewhere: cf. Gieseler, it 241 sq.: Guizot, ii. 319, 320.
8 ‘L’Eglise
£tait tellement identifi^e avec lYtat, qu’il y avait alors plutot confusion que
rivalit*? entre eux.’ Gutfrard, Cartulaire de VEglist de Notre Dame, Pref. p.
xxi. Cf.
Ranke, Reformation, i. 6, 7: Lond. 1845.
4 How
multifarious were the rights and duties of the bishops may be seen from the
Anglo-Saxon Institutes of Eccl. Polity; Thorpe; ii. 312 sq. Doubtless one
result of their position was to secularize their spirit; and of this Alcuin
frequently complains: e. g. ‘Pastores cur as turhant saocu- lares, qui Deo
vacare dobuerunt:’ Ep. rxii. (al. cli.) Opp. I. 163.
5 The
abuses of the right of sanctuary were checked by the inter-
the
persecuted and the friendless, were effectual in subduing the austerity of
justice, and impressing on a rude, impetuous and revengeful age the sacredness
of human life. A singular effect of the alliance now cemented in the west,
between the Church and civil power, was the drafting of a large body of the
serfs into the ranks of the working clergy. It was usual for the free-men of a
country to assist in the military service; but as all were exempted who had
taken orders, many persons were now anxious to be numbered with the clerics,
for the sake of evading the injunction of the State. A law was accordingly
passed, forbidding any free-man to become a priest (or even to retire into a
convent), until he had secured the acquiescence of the king1. It
happened as an immediate consequence, that prelates2 were constrained
to levy their recruits from a different class of men; and as the serfs were
almost everywhere enfranchised as a step to ordination, this enactment of the
civil power was tending in a high degree to humanize and to ennoble the most
abject of our race3.
position of the civil law. Thus the Capitulare of Charlf-marme, a.i> 779, cap.
6. forbids any bishop or abbot to ;'ive shelter to a thief or murderer. In
England, however, if the criminal took refuge in a church enjoying the
prijilege of asylum, a Ihw of .Tne (688—725) provided that his life should be
spared, but that he should make the legal ‘bot,’ or satisfaction, § 5; Thorpe,
I. 104.
1 Bee can. i of the council of Orleans
(511): Baluzii Capitular, n. 386. In 805, Oapitul. c. 15. the law is extended
to ail free-men ‘qui ad ser- vitium Dei se tradere volunt,’ i.e. who wish to
become either clerics or monks.
3 In the rule for canons, sanctioned by the council
at Aix-la-Chspelle (816) it U stated that many of the prelates selected their
clergy exclusively from the serfs (cun. cxix.), and did so in defiance of the
laws requiring them to be manumitted before ordination: e. g. Council of Toledo
(683), can. lxx’v The object was to keep them more entirely under the lash of
episcopal discipline (severissimis verberibus): Mansi, xiv. 230.
3 See Neander’s remarks on this point, and on the
general feelings of the Church with regard to slavery: v. 133—139. Another
remarkable instance of the change produced by Christianity is seen in the
Anglo- Saxon Inxtitutes, <fco., ed. Thorpe, n. 314, where the lord is
enjoined to protect his thralls, on the ground that ‘ they and those that are
free are equally dear to God, who bought us a'l with equal value.’ Perhaps no
feature of the Middle Ages is more striking than the influence of the Church in
teaching the equality of men, and opening a way to preferment for the humblest
of her members. Any one might be received into a monastery: he could then be
ordained, and if possessing superior qualifications might advance to the very
highest eminence in Church and State. In this manner some of the evils, arising
out of the hereditary character of feudalism, were largely counteracted; and
the Church became the champion and promoter of popular rights.
Ifmr
the relations of Church and State affected slavfA.
ON THE STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES.
Veneration
for the UolySerip- tuns.
WESTERN CHURCH.
A FEW of the
minor discrepancies1 in the lists of the Scripture-canon had come
over to the present period ; but in every quarter of the Church a cordial
veneration for the teaching of the Bible had continued as of old. It was the
treasury of supernatural wisdom and the fountain of religious truth. A personal
investigation of it was accordingly required2 in those who had
learned to read, although the number of such persons at this epoch would be
relatively small; while ignorance or meagre knowledge of its pages was regarded
as a bar to holy orders®.
1 See
Schrockh. xx. 191 sq. ami Bp. Cosin, Hitt, of the Canon, eh.
IX. ?
2 Thus the
English canons of Clovesho (747), ufter '•omplaining that too many ‘ rather
pursued the amusements of this present unstable life than the assiduous study
of the Holy Scripture,’ proceed as follows:
‘ Therefore let the boys be confined and trained up in the Rchools to the
law of sacred knowledge, that bring by this means well-learned, they may become
in all respects useful to the Church of God.’ English Canonr, ed. Johnson, i.
246, Oxf. 1850. Ci the language of Aldhelm, in Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, n. 5
(Opp. ed. Giles, p. 334); and De Laudihus Vit■ ginitatis, § 4, p. 4. One
of the motives of Charlemagne in forwarding the restoration of letters was a
fear lest the prevailing ignorance should lead to misconceptions of the Bible:
‘ ne sicut minor in scribendo erat prudentia, ita yuoque et multo minor in eis,
qiiam recte esse dcbuisset,
t sanctarum Scripturarum ad intelligendum sapientia.’ Capitul.
ed. Baluze, I. 201.
J
e.g. Council of Tole.dn (633), can. xx\ ; tries (813), can. i. Alcuin (797)
thus exhorts the people of his native lend (Ep. r.:x. al. lxxit. Opp. I. 78): ‘
I’rimo omnium qui in ecclesia Christi Deo deserviuut, discant diligentor,
quomodo Deo placeant, quomodo fidem eatholicam, quam primum doctores nostri in
eis fundaverunt, obtinere hrmiier et prajdicare valeant; quia ignorantia. Scripturarum ignorantia Dei (^...Adducite
vobis doetore* et magistros Sanc.tm Seripturce, ne sit inopia apud vos Yerbi
Dei, etc.’ In confuting misbelievers, it was usual to insist on
that
—8HJ State of
Religious Doctrine and Controversies.
57
From their
mode of interpreting the Scriptures, it is plain that the Latin doctors
sympathized with St Augustine, and were generally disposed to follow in his
steps. Of his more eminent disciples we have one in the Roman bishop, Gregory
the Great, who forms the transition- link in our descent from the early to the
mediaeval schools of thought. He had imbibed the predominating spirit of the
west: he clung to the authoritative language; of the councils with implicit and
unreasoning belief1. His -writings, therefore, stand in some way
contrasted with the subtler and more independent labours of the Eastern
theologians, where, especially in men like John of Damascus2, we
may trace a continual effort to establish the traditions of the past on
dialectic grounds. So far, indeed, was Gregory the Great from prying into
speculative matters, that he seems to have confined himself exclusively to one
(the more practical) aspect of the Augustinian system". Like his master,
he was strongly conscious of the vast and all-holy attributes of God, the depth
and malignity of evil, and the moral impotence of man un-
interpretatinn
of the Scripture.^, which accorded with the teaching of the Fathers; e. g. ‘
Tantuin Divina voluit procidentia, nt rescriberetur in evangelicas celsitudinis
auctoritatem, sanctorumque patrum probabilibus Uteris, quantum lui nostram
sufficere salutem censuit. lllis utauiur nominibus de Christo, quas in veteri
novoque Testamento inveniuntur soripta. SuflEMat
nobis apostolica auctoritatis doctrina, et catholicorum Patruin lougo tempore
explurata tides.’ Alcuin, adv. Elipandum. lib. iv. c.
It; Opp. i. 914.
' Thus at his consecration, he wrote a synodal letter to the other
patriarchs (591) testifying >is reverence fur the (Ecumenical councils.
Mansi, ix. 1041. Several Spanish Councils (e.g. Toledo, 653) did the Fame: aud
the English synod of Cealchythe (787) particularizes the Nicene and six General
Councils. Wilkins, I. 146.—The only case in which the Western Church appears to
vary from this rule relates to the important clause Filioque, added to the
Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed. The addition can be clearly traced to Spain
(Council of Toledo, 589: Mansi, ix. 981). It excited the disploasurt of the
Greeks about 767 (see Annales Laurisi. ad an. Pertz, i. 144); but the dispute
did not come to a head till 809. The clausi was everywhere inserted (in the west)
at the bidding of Pope Nicholas I. (867): Mansi, xx. 355. See Neale’s Eastern
Church, ‘Introd.’ pp. 1147 sqq. The defenders of it rolied on the ‘Athan- asian
Creed,’ now quite current in tho Latin Church. Waterland, Hist, of Athan.
Creed, ch. vi.
- Scholasticism properly so called, had its
starting-point in him. See below on the ‘ Eastern Church.’
3 Neander, C. II. v. 197 nq. whose
criticism on Gregory the Great is generous and just. The influence exercised by
Gregory on the government of the Church has been pointed out already: see p.
39- Univ Calif - Digitized by
Microsoft ®
WESIEKN
CHURCH.
Theologi/
of Qregnry the. Great.
The
prar. tical bent of his teaching.
The
errors he was instrumental in spreading.
quickened by
the Blessed Spirit; yet was careful to explain at large the power of
self-determination, or the freedom of the human will1. He urged on
all around him2, and especially on those who were occupied iu
teaching3, their own need of internal holiness and purity of
conscience. Although placing a peculiar stress on the liturgic element of
worship1, ann on a stern and ascetic training of the body, he was
far from losing sight of the essence of religion, or from exalting human merit
into rivalry with Christ’s5. The work that presents him to our view
in a less favourable light, is made up of a series of Dialogues, in which he
has 'netrayed an excessive credulity. It 13 there also that the doctrine of a
purgatorial fire, which had been long' floating in the western churches, gained
a fuller and more definite expression. It is principally based upon the,
evidence of disembodied spirits’; and as their pains are said to have been
mitigated by the ‘ oblation of the salutary host’8, the views which
men took
1 ‘ Quia praeveniente Dh ma gratia in operatione bona, nostrum
liberum arbitriura sequitur, nosmetipsos libercre djjimur, qui !ibt ranti nos
Domino consentimns,’ etc. Moraliain
Job. lib. iXrv. §24. Tliis work, in thirty-five books, consists of a
practico-allegorical exposition of the book of Job, and furnishes a clear view
of Gregory's ethical system. He wrote also twenty-two Homilies on Ezekiel, and
forty Homilies on the Gospels.
2 e.g.
Jloralia, lib. xix. § 38.
3 See his
Iteyula Pastoralis, which is a fine proof of his ministerial earnestness, and
was largely circulated in the west.
4 His
Liber Sacramenturum (or Sacramentary) was adopted in the countries which
received their Christianity from Home, and has been substantially preserved
ever since. For an account of the liturgical changes due to him, see Palmer's
Origines Liturg. i. 113 sq., 126 sq., 4th edit.: Fleury’s Histoire Eccles. liv.
xxxvi. § 146.
5 llomil. in, Evangel, xxxiv.: ‘ Habete ergo fiduciam, fratres
mei, de misericordia Conditori» nostri, cogitate qu® facite, recogitate quffl
fecistis. Largitalem supernaj pietatis aspicite, et ad misericordem Judicem,
dum ailliac expectat, cum lachrymis venite. ConsiJerantes nainque quod justus
sit, peccata vestra nolite negligere: considerantes veru quod pins sit, nolite
desperare. Freeh et apud Deum humini fiduciam. Deus homo. Est nobis spes magna
pot-nitentibus, quia Advocatus noster factus est Judex noster. Opp. i. 1611. ed. Bened.
0 Bee
Schrockh, xvH. 333 sq. Xeander rv. 442, 443. St Augustine viewed the doctrine
of a purgatory in the mediaeval sense as somewhat doubtful: ‘ Incredibile non
est, et utrura ita sit, quaTi potest. Ibid.
1 Dialog, lib. rv. c. 35, 39,46, 51, 55. It
should be stated that some writers have questioned the genuineness of this
treatise: but Mabillon (Act. Sanct. Ordin. Benedict, tom. I. § 2) anil the
Benedictine editor of Gregory's Works, appear to have the better of the
argument.
8 Ibid. c.
55: * Si culpae [i.e. leves culpas, c. 39] post mortem insolu-
814 State of Religious Doctrine and
Controversies.
59
henceforward
of the sacrament itself would be distorted in the same proportion.
Gregory was
succeeded in the west by Isidore of Seville (Hispaleiisis), who died in 636. He
was a large and intelligent contributor to the literature of Spain. In addition
to his other writings, he has left a minute description of the Mozarabic (or
Old Spanish) liturgy1; but his chief treatise in the sphere of
dogmatical theology consists of a train of thoughts’ on Christian faith and
practice. They are drawn, however, in most cases, from the fertile works of St
Augustine, aud from the MaraMa of Gregory the Great.
In England3
one of the ripest scholars4 that the Roman mission to the
Anglo-Saxon had produced was the Venerable Beda (Bede). At the age of seven
years he found his way into the monastery of Jarrow5, in whose
cloisters
biles non sunt, nuiltum solet animas etiam
post mortem sacra oblatio hostia? salutari^ adjuvare,’ etc.
1 De (Jfficiis Ecclesiastieis; of. Palmer's Origines
Litur. I. 172 sq.
3 De summo Bono or Sententiarum Libri Tres. Isidore
wad followed in this line by Tajo of Saragossa and Iklefprrsus of Toledo. On
the canons attributed to him, see Blondel's Pseudo-Isidorus, and above, p. 41,
n. 1, &e.
3 Famed as were the ‘maestri e Scotia’ (Ireland), and
high as that country stood in literary merits, it produced no distinguished
writer at this period. Columbanus (see above, p. 16) is the solitary
theologian: for Adinman (d. 704) though perhaps of Irish extraction, composed
no more than a treatise de Situ Terrte Sanctce, and a Life of St Columba.
1 Others were Bp. Aldiielm (656—709),
chiefly known by his poem and prose treatise De Laud? Virginitatis, (Opp. ed.
Giles, Oxon. 1814); Eddius, the biographer of Wilfrith: Boniface, the
missionary, author of fifteen popular Sermons, and the Letters so often quoted
in the iast chapter. To this number we may add Archbp Theodore (668—690), whose
mission into England was the opening of a new era in the cultivation of all
kinds of learning (Bed. Hist. Eccl. iv. 2), and whose Penitential furnishes an
important collection of disciplinary canons. Of this famous work there were
many imitations at an early period, and under its mane some later treatises of
a tnuch more extensive character passed current. It is given in its genuine
form by Wasserschleben, in Die Bus- fordnungen der Abendldndischen Kirche,
Halle, 1851; and in the Councils and Ecclesiastical Doemnentt, ed. Haddan ami
Stubbs, m. 176 sq. The book published under the title in the Ancient Laws, by
Thorpe, is a work (>f much later date and of Krankihh origin. A still older
example of the class is a worn of John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople
(585- 593), published in the ippendix of the Hist, de Disciplina Pmnitent. by
Mori- nus, Paris, 1651. Compare also the Liber Gildte de Pcenitentia, which is
still earlier. Councils, &c. I. 119.
5 This was the foundation of Benedict
ISiscop, who aided more than an} other person in the civilizing of the north of
England. His last anx-
Ifidorr
of Seville.
(595-
n;36).
Venerable
Bede.
735).
western lie continued till his death,
absorbed by the offices of ' 1 tranquil
worship, or engaged in collecting and communi
cating
knowledge. So ardent was liis thirst for learning, that it urged him into
almost every field of mediseval study; but he has himself informed us, that he
found a special satisfaction in the pages of the Bible1. His expository
works, comprising Sermons and Commentaries, evince a knowledge both of Greek
and Hebrew; in their style and spirit, and in much also of their material, they
resemble the more ancient writings of the Fathers, and especially of St
Augustine2.
A
bosom-friend of Beda, who transmitted the; impression he had made on the whole
of the Western Church, was Ecgberht, archbishop of York, where he founded a
noble school and library3, and was distinguished for his patronage
of letters4. In the crowd8 of enthusiastic pupils, whom
his talents had attracted to the north of England, was a native of his
mother-city, Alcuin or Albinus, who was destined to become the master-spirit of
the age.
iety was for hit) books, ‘ biWiothecam quam de Itoma nobili>simam
eopio- sistjimamque advexerat.’ See Beda’s Life of him in Vit. Abbatum Vuire-
muth., (at the end of the lli.it. JSccl. ed. Hussey), pp. 316—325.
1 ‘
cunctumque ex eo tempus vitse iu ejusdem monasterii habitation peragens, omnem
meditandis Scripturis operam detli, <itque inter observantiam disciplines
regularis et quuti'lianam cantamli ii. eeelesia caram, semper aut discere aut
docere, aut scribere dulce habui.' Hist. Eccl. v. 2t. Nothing can be more
simple and pathetic than the narrative which a disciple (Cuthbertl has left us
of his last hours. See “Wright's Biogr. Brit. Literar. I. 267, 268. He had only
just completed a translation of St John’s Gospel into Anclo-Saxon, when he died,
in the midst of his weeping scholars, with a 1 Gloria Patri’ on his lips.
2 This
connexion is most obvious in the Commentaria in omnes Epis- tolas S. Pauli. The
other works of a decidodly theological cast are, Ex- planatio in Pentatenchum
et Libros Begum; in tiamuelem,; in Psalmos, in Esdram, Tobiam, Job, Proverbia,
et Ccwtica; in Quatuor Evangelia, et Acta Apostolorum; in p'pis tolas
Cathnlicas et Apocalypsin; besides a number of Sermones de Tempore, and others.
3 See an
account of its contents in 'Wright’s Biograph. Liter, i. pp. 37, 38.
1 llis own genuine works are, a Dialogns
Ecclesiastic<r Institutionis (in Latin) and a Penitential published first in
its integrity by Wasser- schleben in his “ ilussordnungen ” and in the
Councils, <£'c. hi. 416 sq. The penitential works commonly ascribed to him,
printed in Thorpe and Wilkins, are of much later date and foreign origin.
5 ‘Erat siquidem ei ex noLilium filiis grex
echolasticorum, quorum quidum artis grammatics rudimentis, alii disciplinis
erudiebact’ r artium jam liberalium.
uomulli Dirinarum Scripturaram, etc. Vit. Alcuini, c. it composed in 829, and
prefixed to his Works.
Ecgberht
678 - 766).
— 814] State tf Religious Doctrine and
Controversies.
61
His fame
having reached the court of Charlemagne, he was pressed to take part in the
projects of that monarch for securing a more healthy action in the members of
the Frankish church. Directing the scholastic institutions, prompting or
tempering the royal counsels, foremost in the work of domestic reformation, and
conspicuous for the breadth and clearness of his views with regard to the
management of missions1, Alcuin carried to his grave the admiration
of his fellow-countrymen, and of the whole of western Europe. His theology, as
it survives in his expository works2, is like that of Gregory and
Beda, with whose writings he had been familiar from his youth: it bears the
common Augustinian impress. He has left, however, certain systematic treatises3
on fundamental truths of revelation, as well as on absorbing questions of the
day: and in these he has exhibited, not only his entire acceptance of the
teaching of the past, but an acute and well-balanced mind,
From Alcuin
we pass over to a controversy in which he bore a leading part,—the controversy
known as the Adoption ist, but in reality a phase of Nestorianism revived4.
It is the one formidable tempest5 of this period which had its
birth-place in the Western Church. The authors of it were two Spanish prelates
(in the latter half of the eighth century), Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of
Urgel (a town of Catalonia), who, as it would seem, in their anxiety to
1 See
above, pp. 24, 26.
2 These
are, Questions and Answers on the Book of Genesis, Commentaries on the
Penitential Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, St John’s Gotpel, and
three Epistles of St Paul.
a The
chief are De Fide Trinitatis fa body of Divinity), De Process tone Spiritus
Sancti ^defending the Western view of it), and his contributions to the
Adoptionist controversy (see below, pp. 62- 64).
4 ‘Ecce
pars qua:Jain mundi hseretiea* pravitatis t eneno infecta est, asserens
Christum Jesum Deo Patri vcrirm nun esse Filium, nee proprium, seil adoptivuru
et Nestoriana hceresis ab oriente...lungum postliminium
r<viviscens,latitando fngit in oceidentem’. Alcuin, J.ibellus adv. Hceresin
Felicis, § 2. It is not clear, however, that the authors of the movement were
acquainted with the writings of the Nestorian school. For a complete history
of it, see J. C. F. Walch, Hist. Adoptianorum; Nwinder, v. 216- 233; and Dorner,
Lehre von der Person Christi, ii. 306—329; Berlin, 1853.
“ For minor struggles in England and Germany, see above pp. 8, 22, 23. It
is clear also from Alcuin, (Epist. ccxxi. al. crxxv. Opp. 1. 285). that other
classes of dissentients ^adversarios Apostolicie doctrinal) were not wanting.
Alcuin
I? 735—
fcOl.,
Rise
of tie Adoption- ist heresy.
ifjt
essential rcsemblanee tn Nesto- rianism.
make the
truth of the Incarnation less offensive to Mu- hammedans1,
maintained2 that our blessed Lord, as man, was the proper son of
David; or, in other words, that in respect of His humanity, He was only the
adoptive Son of God (‘Deus nuncupativus et adoptivus Films’). In support of
their position3, Felix, the more learned misbeliever, ventured to
reoccupy the ground of the N estorian, though their arguments were put in a
somewhat different form. They seized on the expressions of the Bible which
unfolded the subordinate relations of the Son, in His mediatorial work ; and
while admitting, that, as God, He was truly and eternally begotten of the
Father4, they inferred that the humanity of Christ wras
so dissociable from the Godhead as to be no more than a Temple for the Logos5,
—no more than a creature chosen to become the organ of the Lord, in a way not
essentially unlike" the adoption of all Christians as the family and
instruments of God. The creed of Felix did not recognize in the Incarnate
Saviour any true assumption of man’s nature into fellowship with the Divine:
he was accordingly most scrupulous in his distinction of the predicates
belonging unto each; and even went so far as to impute the prayers, the sufferings,
and the death of-Christ to a necessity inherent in His manhood7, and
not to a voluntary condescension of the Godhead with which humanity was made
indissolubly
1 Seamier, ibid. p. 219.
2 ...‘dicentes, Deum esse verum, qui ex Deo natus est, et Deum
nun- cupatiTiim, hominem ilium, qui de Yirgine faetus est.’ Alcuin, adv. Elipand. lib. iv. e. 5. They made an
appeal to older authorities (see the Epist. Elipandi ad Albinum; Alcuin, Opp.
n. 868 sq.), especially to the language of the Mozarabic (old Spanish) Liturgy,
then in use, where tho term ‘ adoption ’ is employed to denote the assumption
of oar nature into unity with God. Alcuin reproached Elipandus with
substituting ‘ adop- trsi ’ for ‘ assumpti.’
3 The main
authorities are *o he found in the works of Alcuin, (1) Libellus adversus
Heeretin Felicis Mpitcopi, (2) Contra Felicem Vrgelli- tanum Episcopum; to
which may be added, (3) tho treatise quoted in the last note.
* ‘ Deuu Dei Filium ante omnia
tempora sine initio ex I’atre geni- tum, non adoptione sed genere, neque gratia
sed natura, etc.’
5 Alcuin,
contra Felicem, lib. vn. c. 2.
6 He
compared the adoption of Christ with that of Christians, admitting, however,
that the relation constituted in the funner case was higher in degree (‘
excellentins’). Alcuin, contra Felicem, lib. n. c. 15, sq., and especially the
language of Felix himself, lib. iv. c. 2.
7 Ibid.
lib. vii. c. 15.
one.
Adoptionism, in other words, if carried to its logical results, would have
resolved the connexion that subsisted in the two-fold natures of our Lord into
a moral and extrinsic union: it was fatal, therefore, to a truth which, of all
others, will be found to lie the nearest to the core of Christianity,—the
Incarnation of the Saviour.
After
lighting up a controversy in the Spanish church1, Aloptionism
extended into Gothia (the adjacent parts of France), where it had soon to
encounter a decisive overthrow. It was examined, at the wish of Charlemagne, by
tho synod of Ratisbon2 (792), where Felix, as belonging to the
Frankish empire, had been summoned to appear.
On witnessing
the condemnation of his tenets, he renounced them on the spot, and, as a penance,
was sent to the court of Rome3 to repeat his abjuration. But no
sooner was he lodged, on his return, in the Saracenic provinces of Spain, than
he relapsed inti) his former errors4. Elipandus5 in the
mean time represented the injustice of the recent acts, and earnestly desired
the emperor to call another synod. His request led the way to the convoking of
a more numerous council in 794, at Frankfort6, where it? rondem- the
verdict of the former synod was confirmed. Soon nation, after this decision,
Alcuin, who was personally known to Felix, opened a more friendly7
correspondence with the champions of the system there exploded; and although
1 Two ecclesiastics were its chief antagonists,
Etherius, bishop of Osma, and Beatus, a priest, The latter had employed himself
in expounding the Apocalypse, and was the author of the fragment Adversra
Elipandum, in Canisius, I.ect. Antiq. 11. 279—375, ed. Basnago. Elipan- dus, on
the other side, denounced his antagonism as the work of Antichrist. Ibid. 810.
* Cf. Schrockh,
xx. 405, 400, respecting the accounts of earlier proceedings.
3 Pertz, 1. 179. In the following year (793) the pope
(Hadrian T.) wrote u letter to the Spanish clergy, threatening to proceed
against Elipandus. Mansi, xm. 805
1 Aleuin, adv. EUpand. lib. 1. c. 16.
5 See Eput. Episcop. Hispan. ad Carolum Magn. in
Aleuin. Opp. 11.
567.
0 A
Koman Council (799) appears to have affirmed the last decision,
Tiabb. vu. 1150. Pagi, however, places this Homan Council earlier, ad an
792: Mansi, xm. 857.
7 ‘Cui
[i. e. FelieiJ in has adveniens partes caritatis calamo epistolam
exhortatoriam, ut se eatholiciB jungeret unitati, dirigere curavi.’ Adv.
Elipand.
lib. 1. c. 16. The letter alluded to is iu his IVorls, 1. 783.
Opposition
to Adop- tionism.
and
s\q>- pretnon.
Mionotheh-
tum:
its
nature.
f
by
Elipahdtis, who did not live in the Frankish empire, all his arguments were met
with bitterness and scorn, upon the other he was able to produce at least a
transitory change1. They had a long interview in the synod held at
Aix-la-Chapelle, 799, when Felix, vanquished for awhile by his opponent,
promised to abandon the delusion, and in future to be guided by the teaching of
the Church. But as few of the prelates were induced to rely upon this promise,
they delivered him, with the approval of the emperor, into the custody of
Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons. At his death, which occurred in 816, it was plain
from an extant paper that he still adhered to his former creed on almost every
point2. It fell, however, into silence and oblivion ere its
vacillating author had been taken from the scene of conflict.
EASTERN
CHURCH.
As the heresy
of Nestorius had been reawakened in the Latin Church, that of Eutyches (or the
Monophysite) recunred, in the opening of the present period (633 - -680), to
engage the more speculative doctors of the East. It was held, notwithstanding
the definitions of Chalcedon, that our belief iii the union of Two Natures in
the Person of the Son of God involves, as one of its consequences, our belief
in His singleness of will and operation. In the reasoning of this party, known
as the Monotheletes3, the actions of our Lord, both human and
Divine, must be ascribed to a single energy within Him (evepyeia 0eav- hpitirj)
; they were said to spring from the Logos only, as the one proper source,
although the human element in Christ was not verbally denied, but viewed as the
passive agent of His Godhead4. It resulted, therefore, that
1 Alcuin was assisted by a committee of inquiry, whom
Charlemagne sent on two occafeionb into the districts (chiefly Languedoc),
whtre Adoptionism had gained a footing. Epist. xcn. al. ran. p, 136. He had
also a coadjutor in Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, who wrote two Treatises,
Sacrosyllabas and Adversus Felicem, in refutation of Adoptionism: Opp. A miet.
1737.
3 See the Libtr adt. Dogma Fe.Hcis, by Ago’oard. who
succeeded Leidrad as archbis-hop of Lyons: Agobardi Opp. ed. italuze, 1666.
3 = JIoi'oOeXijrat, a name which was not gi
ven to them till the following century.
1 See the Fragments of Theodore of L’haran in Mansi,
xi. 367 sq. He asserts that in our Lord ffrai (juav tvtpyetap' ravTijs Si
r^yvirriv kqx
the current
usage of distinguishing between the natures of our Lord was founded on 110
difference or duality iu Him, but on abstractions of the human mind.
The author of
this heresy was an Arabian bishop, Theodore of Pharan, who brought over to his
views no less a personage than Sergius, the patriarch of the Byzantine capital.
He was supported also by the emperor, Heraclius, who thought he could discover
in the school of Theodore an apt and auspicious medium for disarming the
hostility of the Monophysites, and winning back the Armenian provinces, which
by their help had been transferred to the rule of Persia. At his desire a
Formulary was composed, which in the hands of the pliant Cyrus1,
formerly of Phasis, but now translated to the see of Alexandria (630), effected
a reunion of the Monophysites, or Jacobites, with the Melchites, or the Church
(633). It was cemented by nine Articles of concord2, in the seventh
of which the heresy of Theodore was formally acknowledged. A monk of Palestine,
Sophronius, happening to be then at Alexandria, foresaw the disastrous issues
of the compromise, and set out immediately for Constantinople to unburden his
dismay to the patriarch in person. Though the protests he there entered were
unheeded, he was placed in the following year, by his election to the
patriarchal chair of Jerusalem, in a more commanding station. Sergius, now (as
it would seem) afraid of his opposition, attempted to enlist the influence of
the Roman bishop on the side of the M0110- theletes, and in that he was
eminently successful. The surviving letters of Honorius (634) leave no doubt as
to
orifiiovfr^bv
roe Qeov, opyavov Zk ti)v
dydponrorrjra. Tlie difficult} of the Monotheletes, as we see moat plainly in
the case of Honoring, bishop of Rome, was iu admitting that a two-fold -will
could subsist, in one and the same subject, 'without conflict and opposition.
They placed great stress on a phrase /up (or, as others read, Kaierj) DtanSpixy
irepytif, ■which occurs in the 'writings of tlie Pseudo-Dionysins [Ibid.
565). On the vast influence exercised by this author in stimulating the
dialectico- mystical tendencies of the East, pee Neander, v. 234 sq.; and
Domer, Lehre von der Person Christi, 2r Theil, 196 sq.
1 lie at first seems to have hesitated, but kin
scruples were removed by Sergius. Cyri Epist. ad. Sergivm, Mansi, xi. 561.
:
Mansi, xt. 563, In the 7th Art. it was stated: tov airor tya Xpitrri* ml vlov
ivepryovvra ra ijtoirptirij Kal dvffptixtra ,’ug. Vt arSpucij tv<fyyha. The
Monophysites, who were numerous anti powerful in Egypt, looked upon the
concordat as a triumph: while not a few of the Melchites quitted the communion
of Cyrus. Neale, Eastern Church, 11. 63.
The
author of it.
I<!
grmrtk promoted by jxdilicdt influe net.
The:
compromise with the Jacobitets in Egypt.
Re^htanre
of
Sopkro- nius.
Publication
of the Ecthesis, 638.
the
Western Church.
his approval
of the policy adopted by the Eastern emperor, and signify his full agreement
with the novelties of Sergius1. They produced, however, no effect on
the patriarch of Jerusalem, who strenuously maintained liis ground’ until 637,
when the cloud of Islamism which had gathered over Syria shut him out from all
further notice. In 638, the emperor, assisted as before, put forth an
expository edict3 ("E/ccWi? rrjs 7r/o-recos'), in which it is
peremptorily ordered, that while the doctrine of one Person must be held in
accordance with conciliar definitions, nothing more is to be said or published
on the single or the two-fold mode of operation (jiiav rj St'o evtpytiat). But
in respect of the second point, ic ventured to determine that there is in
Christ one only will, and that the teaching of the other school leads
necessarily to the idea of two antagonistic wills (dvo fcai ravra evavTta
deXtj/MTa),—an assumption, it will be remarked, as arbitrary as it is
unfounded. The appearance of this edict, though it roused no active opposition
either at the seat of power, or in the patriarchate of Alexandria, was
differently regarded by the Christians of the west. At Rome, a successor of
Honorius, John IV., deliberately rejected the imperial edict, first4,
in a synod (641);; and next in the letters he addressed to Constantine5,
the son of Heraclius, and to Pyrrhus6, who now' occupied the chair
of Sergius. Still their edict kept its ground
1 ‘TJnam voluntatem fatemur Domini nostri
Jesu Chrifti:’ Mansi, xi. 539. ‘ Utrum autem propter opera Ditinitatis et
humanitatis una, an ”eminop operationes delieant derivataa dic-i vel intelligi,
ad nos ista perti- nere non debent: relmquentes ea grammaticis, qui solent
parvulis ex- quioita deriyando nomina venditare.’ lb. 542 : ef. a second letter
o£ the Kamo kind, ib. 579. He even explain? away the text, ‘Father, not My
will, but Thine be done,’ as if it were spoken merely for the instruction of
the faithful, and wa>< no index of the human will of Christ. On these
accounts the name of Honorius was placed among those whom the sixth general
Council (680) anathematized. Some Bomanists have attempted to evade or deny
this fact: but see, among others, Bossuet, Defensio Declar. Glen Gallicani, ir.
128. .
" See his ypdii/xara hSponariKa. (a circular issued when he entered
on his office), in Act. xi. o£ the (Ecumenical Council (680): Mansi, xi. 462
sq.
3 Mansi,
x. 992. It is borrowed, in tome parts word for word, from
an epistle of Sergius to Honorius of I tome; ibid.
xi. 329.
* Theophanes, Chronograph, i. 508: ed. Bonn.
6 Mansi,
x. 682.
6 Ib. xi. 9.
in spite of
the denunciations of the west1, and Paul, who succeeded Pyrrhus2
in 642, adhered in like manner to the Monothelete opinions.
But they had
soon to encounter a severe antagonist in Maximus, the Confessor (! 580— 655), one of the most
eminent writers of the period, and distinguished by a clear anil profound
perception of the true humanity of Christ3. Originally an important
personage at court, he had afterwards embraced the monastic life, and risen to
the post of hegumenos, or abbot, of Chrysopolis (on the Asiatic side of the
Bosphorus). But as he was opposed to the ruling party in his view of
Monotheletism, he retreated into Africa, where his erudition and acuteness4
were employed in making converts; and in 649 we find him at the Lateran,
enkindling the zt'al of pope Martin I.
In the
previous year (648), the emperor Constans II., anxious to restore tranquillity
and order, had determined to withdraw the ‘ Ecthesis’ and to replace it by
another edict of a less dogmatic character, entitled ‘Type of the Faith’
(Tu7tov t?/? TricrTecos). It forbad4 all kinds of disputations on
the •filling and the working of our Lord, and that under heavy penalties;
confining the dissentients, whether lay or clerical, within the terms of the
older councils of the Church. But, politic as it might seem, this measure was
peculiarly offensive to the champions of the truth. In their eyes it was harsh,
one-sided, and despotic; and, still more, was calculated to engender disbelief
with regard to a cardinal point of their religion6. Iu the west,
therefore, Martin I. immediately convoked
1 Thus,
Theodore, bishop of Rome, after a long correspondence with the Monotheletes,
undertakes (648) to deprive the Byzantine patriarch. Vit. Theodor, in Vignolii
Lib. Pontif. i. 257.
2 Pyrrhus
abdicated on account of his unpopularity, fied into Africa, abjured his
Monothelete opinions (645) at Bome, but speedily fell into them afresh and
recovered his see in 654.
3 Cf.
Neand. v. 250—254. Some of his works are collected by Com- befis in 2 vols.
Par. 1675. For an account of the rest, see Smith’s Biogr. Diet.
4 See his
Disputatio cum Pyrrho: Opp. n. 159;—195.
5 Mansi, x, 1029...deaTvl^ofxev...^})
ddeiav %xuv vP&* aW^Xot'S <5?rS roC xapSvTos irepi evbs
OeXij/xarot i} fiias tvepydas, rj Svo ivepya&v Kal duo ffeXy/ud- Twv,
oiavST]TroTe Trpocptpew &ii<Pi<rf$iiT7}aw, #piv re, Kal
(piXoi'ciKlav.
6 See
Epist. Abbat. et Monachor. in Synodo Lateran. apud
Manfi x. 904. These were Oriental monks and abbots who had
fled to Borne for an asylum.
EASTERN
CHURCH.
Maximut,
the Confessor.
Publication
of the Type.
Conduct
of Martin /.
Jlh
attain- der, and death.
Fate,
of M aximus.
a synod
(619;, which condemned the heresy of the Mono- theletes as well as the
‘Ecthesis’ and ‘Type/ and anathematized1 its principal abettors,
Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Gyrus, Pyrrhus, and Paul, at that time patriarch
of Constantinople. Though the emperor was not personally touched by the
fulminations of this council, the proceedings had aroused his deepest
indignation. He instructed the Byzantine exarch (his governor in Italy) to
enforce compliance! with the ‘Type,’ and ultimately (653) to proceed to the
attainder of the pope, who had made himself obnoxious to tho charge of high
treason. The command was punctually obeyed; and on June 17, 653, Martin was
transported to the seat of government, like an ordinary criminal. He did not
reach Constantinople till Sept. 17, 354. At his trial he was loaded writh
indignities, and finally banished to the Crimea, where he died in the following
year2. A still heavier doom awaited Maximus3 and two of
his disciples: they were at first sent into Thrace; but on refusing to accept
the ‘ Type’ were dragged back to Constantinople, anathematized iu a synod over
which Peter, the new patriarch, presided, find after scourging, mutilation,
and a public mockery were banished (662) into the Caucasus, among the Lazians.
Maximus survived only a few days, and with him all the zeal of the eastern
Duotlieletes appears to have been extinguished'.
In the next
ten years we meet with few -,f any traces
1 Ibid, x. 115*. Tho fourteenth canon will illustrate
their view ol the controversy: ‘ Si qui* secundum scelerosos haereticos cum uua
volun- tate et una oneratione. qua> ab hasreticis irnpie eonfitctur, et duas
voluvi- tates pariterque et oprrationea. hoc eBt, Divinam et Lumanain. ^uae in
ipso Chri-ito Deo in imitate salvantur, et a ^anctis patribun oithodoxe in ipso
prselicantur, denegat et respuit, condeinnatus sit.’ The encyclic letters ot
the pope and synod contain the following violent expressions: ‘Impios
haereticos cum omnibus pravissimis dogmatibus eurum et im- piam ecthesin vel
impiissimum, typum et umnes, qui eos vel quidquam de his, quEB exposita sunt in
eis, suscipiunt aut deiendunt, deu vrrba pro eis faciunt in scripto. anal
bematizavimus. ’ Ibid. 1175: cf. Martin’s letter to the emperor, giving him an
acoounl of the proceedings, p. 790.
" See the Comnvmoratio and other documents in Mansi, x. 853.
3 See
the Life, of Maximus and other ancient documents prefixed to the edition of his
works by Combefis.
Tho new pope Eugunius, appointed by the exarch, is said to have trodden
in the steps of Hpnorius: at least his agents (apocriwiarii) at Constantinople,
had subscribed the ‘Type’ and had persuaded Maximus to yield. V'talian also
(657--672' acquiesced, or made no public stand igainst the court. Schrockh. xx
435, 436.
of resistance
in that quarter, though it is probable that in the Latin Church the
disaffection to the ‘ Type’was silently increasing1. Constant; left
the throne to Constantine Po- gonatus (668—685), who does not seem to have ever
been devotedly attached to the reigning school of doctrine. On the contrary a
letter2 which he wrote to Donus, bishop of Rome, 678. expressed an
earnest wish to heal the distractions of the Church by summoning a general
council. On the arrival of the letter Donus was no more, but it came into the
hands of Agatho his successor, who immediately adopted the suggestion, and,
convening an assembly of the western bishops3 to deliberate upon it,
sent a deputation of them to Constantinople. He also contributed materially to
the successful issue of the council, by his full and lucid exposition of the
controverted truth4. The sessions, which were eighteen in number,
lasted from the 7tl\ November, 680. to the 16th September, 681, the emperor
himself presiding not unfrequently in person. After a minute and somewhat
critical review of the authorities which had been alleged on either side, Monotheletism
was left with an almost solitary champion* :.n the person of
Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, who for adhering to his old opinions was
eventually deposed by his brother-prelates (March 7, 681). A definition of the
true faith6 and an anathema
1 In the year 677, the communion be tween the
Churches of Home anil Constantinople was entirely suspended, Theodore the
Byzantine patriarch proposing to strike the name cf Vitalian, as well as of the
othei Itoman bishops after Honorius. from the diptychs, or saered catalogues of
the Chunh. Ibid.
- Constant, ep. ad Donum in A/'t. Cone. vi.
CEcumenic. Mansi, xr. 195.
3 Held
at Kome, March 27, 080; Mansi, xl 185: cf. Eddius, Vit. Wilfrid, c. 51.
' He wrote to the emperor in his own neme and that of the synod, containing
125 delegates: Mansi, xi. 28G. He cites passages from the Gospels which prove
the co-operation in our Lord of the human and Divine wills: dwelling among
others on S. Matth. xx^i. 39, which hie predecessor Honorius had explained
away. The letter was read in the 4th session of the ensuing council.
• At the
opening of the synod, George I., patriarch of Constantinople, took his aide,
but afterwards declared himself a convert to the opposite party. Iu the 15th
session, Polychronius, a fanatical monk of Thrace, endeavoured to establish the
truth of Monotheletism by raising a dead man to life, but after whispering some
time in the ear of the corpse, he confessed hid inability to work the miracle.
He was accordingly deposed from the priesthood. The samp penalty was inflicted
on a Syrian piiust at the following session (Aug. 9).
6 Mansi,
xi. 031—637...ri avdp&Tivov airuv 61\rj/ia tiwViv oi-x ArypiStj, Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
EASTERN
CHURCH.
'ts
deci' ion.
I tfcmpts to
evive Mo- othele• ism.
t
survives mong the
pronounced on
all who were infected with the heresy of the Jlonotheletes (Honorius1
in the number) brought the sittings of the council to a close, and renewed the
communion of the Greek and Latin Churches. Their solution of the controversy
was as follows: that in Christ ‘there are two natural wills and two natural
operations, without division, without change or conversion, with nothing like
antagonism, and nothing like confusion,’—yet they were careful to add a
precautionary clause, to the effect that the human will could not come into
collision with the Divine, but was in all things subject to it.
Their
definitions, though confirmed anew by the voice of the Trullan Council2
(631), did not immediately suppress the Monothelete discussions. On the
contrary, a later emperor, Bardanes, or Philippicus3, commanded the
erasure of the recent creed from the Acts of the General Councils, and
proceeded (711) with the help of a creature of the court, whom he placed in the
see of Constantinople, to revive the exploded errors. But his own dethronement
in 713 put an end to the agitation.
A small
remnant of Jlonotheletes continued to subsist for ages in the fastnesses of
Lebanon. These were the
<ri<rW(TTai
fi.d\\ov...ouo (piGLKas ivepyelas dfiiaiptTMS, arpt7rToJS,
ducri- (t-ws, dauyx'rrws tv auru: ry Kvplip 3«£afo/iep.
There is some 'varia
tion in the statements as to the number of bishops present. The subscriptions
do not exceed one hundred.
See above, p. 66, n. 1. Attempts had been made to vindicate the orthodoxy
of Honorius (e. g. by Maximus, Mansi, x. 687), and his acqui- escenci in the
creed of Sergius had been studiously passed over in the proceedings of the
Human synods, but here at Constantinople the clause nal 'Ov&pio* t6v yevofievou Trdwav r^s
Trpeafivr^'as 'Pd/j.7]S, <.t.\ was thrice aided to the list of the anathematized.
Mansi, xi. 556, 622, 656. Leo II., in notifying his acceptance or confirmation
of the council (682), adds a clause to the same effect: he anathematized ‘et
Honorium I., qui hanc apostolicain ecclesiam non apostolicaj traditionis
doctrina lustravit, sed prnfana proditione immaculatam fidem subvertere conatus
est.’ Ih. x’. 731. The cabe of Honorius has occupied a considerable place in
recent controversy, in connexion with the action of the Vatican Council of
1869—70 on Papal Infallibility.
- Mansi,
xi. 921. On the displeasure which this council had excited in the west, see
above, p. 38, r, 2; p. 47; p. 51; and cf. Gieseler, ii. 178 sq.
3 Theophanex, Chronograph. 319 sq. ed.
Paris: Combefis, Hist. Hares. Monothel. § ii. 201 sq. Paris, 1648. Philippicus,
with the same object, ordered the removal of a picture, (‘imaginem, quam Graci
votaream vo«ant, sex continentem sanctas et universales
synodos’) from St Peters church at Home; In t his mandate was rejected by
Constantine I. (712): Vit. Conftantin. in Yignolii Lib. Pontif. ii. 10.
Maronites* the followers of a civil and
ecclesiastical chieftain, John Marun, who is said to have flourished ii>
the seventh or eighth century. It is not clearly* ascertained at what time the
Monotlielete opinions were accepted by this tribe, but we learn that somewhat
earlier than 1182 about forty thousand of them recognized the jurisdiction of
the Latin patriarch of Antioch, and passed over to the Church of Rome3.
It has been
mentioned that the task of vindicating orthodoxy at this period had been
consigned in no small degree to Maximus. But his works are not all devoted to
polemics4. He was the representative of a tendency to dialectician!,
which had been long prevailing in the Greek communion. Both his learning and
his spirit were transmitted to another student, John of Damascus (fl. 74.0’),
who has left behind him logical investigations of nearly all the earlier
controversies, and of the Monotlielete6 among the rest. His work,
entitled6 An Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, is tinctured
with the Aristotelian philosophy, and exercised an important influence on the
culture of the Eastern churches from that day to our own. It was in truth the
starting-point of their scholastic system, although the materials out of which
it grew were borrowed in most cases from the Fathers, and especially from
Gregory of Nazianzus.
Biit the pen
of Damascenus did not dwell entirely on this class of theological discussions:
it invested a less specu-
1 See
the Biblioth. Orientalis of J. S. Asseman (himself descended from this body),
tom. i. 487 sq., and a different account in Combefis, Hist. Hares. Monothel.,
p. 460: cf. also Gibbon, iv. 383—385, ed. Mil- man.
s
John of Damascus (Libelhis de Vera Sententia, c. 8: Opp. I. 395, ed. Le Quien)
already (cir. 750) numbers them among the heretics. He also describes a
Monophysite addition to the Trisagion (Ibid. p. 485) by the term Mopwlfriv.
3 Schrockh,
xx. 455. The chief authority for this statement is William of Tyre; but at a
later period Abulpharagius (who died 1286) speaks of the Maronites as still a
sect of the Monotheletes. Ibid.
4 See a
review of his theological system in Neander, v. 236 sq.
5 Ilfpi tCjv
£v Tif? 5vo OtXtj/jidroju
icai ivepyei&v Kal Xonrwv tf>v<n- K(Sv idtu/xdrojv.
6 "E/v'Scxm
aVpt/3r?? ttjs 6p0o56l;ov TrlereM. On his
system of religious doctrine, see Schrockh, xx. 230—329: Eitter, Geschichte der
Christl. Phi- losophiey ir.
553; Dorner, Lehre von der Person Christi, ii. 257 sq.; and, for a list of his
multifarious writings, Smith’s Biograph. Dictionary.
Maronitct
of Syria.
The
Thco- logy of Maximus;
and
John of Damascus.
Rise
of the Iconoclastic. controversy.
Conduct
of Leo the 1 saurian.
Iative theme
with ull the subtleties and nice distinctions of the schools1. This
was the question of image- worshipa, which in the reigns of Leo the
Isaurian, and his successors (726- 842,, convulsed every province of the
Church. It was already an established custom to make use of images and
pictures, with the view of exciting the devotion of the people, or of
instructing the more simple and unlettered; but the Western Church, at least
until the close of the sixth century, had not proceeded further than this
point3. A different feeling was however common In the Eastern, where
the softer and more sensuous Greek was frequently betrayed into a blind and
superstitious veneration for the images and pictures of the saints4.
It was, accordingly, at the seat of the Byzantine empire that a series of
reactions now commenced.
Leo, the
Isaurian, of a rough and martial temper, was the first of the Iconoclastic
princes. Influenced5, it is said, by the invectives of Mohammedans
and Jews, who had stigmatized the use of images as absolute idolatry,
1 In his
discourses, Tlpbs rot) s diafidWovras tcls ay (as dtcbvas: Opp. I. 305 sq. He
viewed the Iconoclastic movement as an attack upon the essence of the Gospel;
and the dread of idolatry as a falling back into Judaism, or even into
Hanichasism. Cf. Milman, Latin Christianity, ir. 107.
2 It is a
great misfortune that the surviving authorities are nearly all on one side,—in
favour of image-worship. The council by which it was established, in their
fifth session, commanded that all the writings of the Iconoclastic party should
be destroyed. On this account the records of the opposition made by an earlier
synod (754) have to be collected from the Acts of the Council of Nicsea, and
from the Libri Carolini; on which see below.
3 e. g.
the very remarkable letters of Gregory the Great to Serenus, bishop of
Marseilles (599); Epist. lib. ix. ep. 105: ‘ et quidem zelum vos, ne quid
manufactum adorari posset, habuisse laudavimus, sed frangere easdem imagines
non debuisse judicamus: idcirco enim pictura in eccle- siis adhibetur, ut hi,
qui litteras nesciunt, saltern in parietibus videndo legant, quae legere in
codicibus non valentcf. lib. xi. ep. 13.
4 See the
instances adduced by Neander, v. 277, 278.
5 One of
his advisers was Constantine, bishop of Naeolia: another was of senatorial
rank, named Beser, who had passed some time in captivity among the Saracens.
See Mendham’s Seventh General Council, Introd. pp. xii—xiv. Other attempts to
explain the antipathy of Leo may be found in Schlosser’s Geschichte der
bilder-sturmenden Kaiser, pp. 161 sq. Frank! 1812: cf. Mansi, xii. 959. It is
not unlikely that a wish to reabsorb the Muhammedans into the Church was one of
the leading motives.
he ordered1
(726), that the custom of kneeling before them should in future be abandoned.
The resistance of the aged patriarch5, Germanus, and a fiery
circular3 from John of Damascus, who was now residing iu a convent
at Jerusalem, incited Leo to more stringent measures. He accordingly put
forth4 a second edict (729 or 730) in which images and pictures were
proscribed, and doomed to unsparing demolition. It extended to all kinds of
material representations, with the sole exception of the cross5.
The speedy execution of this peremptory order drove Germanus from the helm of
the Oriental Church, and forced into the vacant place his secretary Anastasius,
a devoted servant of the court. The rest of the non-conforming clergy were now
silenced or ejected: but the cause of image-worship, hopeless though it seemed,
had still a most vehement defender in John of Damascus, whom the terrors of the
empire could not reach.
The shock
which this controversy had occasioned in the east was rapidly transmitted far
and near. The Roman bishop, Gregory IT., nominally subject to Byzantium, bade
defiance to the royal edict (i 730j, in a letter full of scorn and sarcasm6:
and, in order to elude the vengeance of the
1 The edicts on image-worship are collected in
Goldastus, Imperialia decreta de cultu Imaginum, ed. Francof. 1G08.
* Mansi,
xiii. 91): cf. his Liber de Syaodis, etc. in SpieUegium lloma- num, vn. 99 sq. Eom. 1842. For the probable nature of his interview
■with Leo at tho opening of the controversy, see Neander, v. 281—283. He seems
to have first struck out the distinction of a relative worship (irpocKvvnfcis
trxtTinyi, as addressed to the images of Christ: and affirm-* that with regard
to the Virgin and the saints no worship (karpeiol is due to them, much less to
material representations of them. It is plain, however, that the idea of giving
some honour to tho pictures of the saints- (e. g. praying and placing lights
before them) had been worked into his creed, and to abandon it appeared
equivalent to a renunciation of the Gospel.
3 See
the first of his Orations, above referred to; p. 78, n. 3.
1 Goldastus,
ubi sup. note 1: cf. Theophanes, Chronograph, pp. 336, 343.
’ On removing an image of our Lord from a niche in the imperial palace,
he erected the symbol of the cross in its place. See Analecta Grieca, ed.
Benedict, i. 415.
6 Mansi, in, 959 sq.: of. his letter to Germanus, Ibid. xiii. 91. His
successor, Gregory III., held a council at Home (Nov. 1, 731), in which it was
decreed, 1 ut si quis deinceps sacrarum imaginum depositor
atque destructor et profanator, vel biasphemus exstiterit, sit extorris a
Corpora et Sanguine Jesu Christi, vel totius ecclesiss unjtate et conipage.'
Vit. Gregor. III., in Yignol. Lib. Puntif. it. 43, 14.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft (*
Triumph
of the lco- noclasU.
Reshtanre
of Ore go eg
II.
Proceedings
of Constantine Copro- ni/mus.
Council
of Constanti-
■ 754.
exarch, threw
himself for help into the arms of the Lombards.
At the death
of Leo, 741, his policy was vigorously carried out by Constantine (Copronymus),
his son: hut it is plain that a large section of the people, and especially the
monks1, were ardently attached to the interdicted usage. It must
also be confessed that, iu the acts of Constantine, still more than in the
life-time of his father, we may notice an extreme but salutary dread of superstition
in alliance with fanatical dislike of art, and a fierce and persecuting
spiritHaving quelled an insurrection which the image-worshippers excited in his
absence3 (743), he determined to convoke a synod in the hope of
bringing the dispute to an amicable issue, or at least of fortifying the
position of the Iconoclastic party. It assembled in 754 at Constantinople, and
was composed of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia4.
The deliberations were continued for the space of six months, and led to a
unanimous decision5. It declared that the
1
irepartTiyrlptai twv tu affKOVfxivtjiV rdy/j.a tl
(iermanus, de Synodis, etc.- ubi sup. p. 61. The majority of the artists at this period were
inmates of religious houses, and as their craft was endangered by the measures
of the court, nearly nil of them were found in the rank* of the recusants. They
were loud in denouncing Constantine as a blasphemer and a renegade: which would
naturally inflame the hatred he already bore to monaehism in general. See a
good picture of the state of feeling in the life of the monk Stephen (of the
grotto of Auxentius), in the Analecta Grceca, ubi sup.: and cf. Neander, v. 303
sq.
z The
impiety and profligacy of Constantine may ^ave been very much over-coloured by
the monastic chroniclers, e. g. Theophanes, 343 sq., but his cruelty it is
impossible to question: see the evidence in Sehlosser, Geschichte der
bil&erstiirm. Kaiser, pp. 228 -234.
J It was headed by his brother-in-law, Artavasdes;
Theophanes, p. 347.
* None of
the patriarchs were present at this council. The see o£ Constantinople was
vacant: the heads of the churches of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were
subject to the Saracens, and were deterred by the jealousy of their masters
from public, communication with the Christians of the empire: while the Church
of Eome was invaded by the Lombards, and devoted to the use of images.
Constantine [I. (767) informs I’epin of France ‘qnulis fervor sanctarum
imaginum orientalibuM in partibus cunctis Christianis immineat,’ Hist. Franc.
Scriptores, ed. Duchesne, ni. 825. A Homan council (769| under Stephen TV. confirmed
the • veneration of images.’ Mansi, xii. 720. It is clear also that the
proceedings at Constantinople (754) were repudiated by the patriarch of
Jerusalem (Mansi, xii. '135), who was joined by the patriarch* of Antioch and
Alexandria. The president of the council was Theodosius, metropolitan of
Ephesus.
5 Mansi, tin. 205.
—8] 4] State of
Religious Doctrine and Controversies.
75
worshipping
(irpoaKweiv Kal trefteaOai) of images and pictures was a relapse into
idolatry, excited by the malice of the Tempter; and that consequently emperors
were hound, in imitation of the Apostolic practice, to destroy every vestige of
the evil1. At the same time, not a single prelate manifested any
wish to vary from the standard language of the Church2. They opened
the proceedings by acknowledging the doctrine of the Six General Councils, and
abjuring every phase of misbelief which had there been examined and condemned.
A long and
triumphant reign (741—775) enabled Constantine to carry out the wishes of his
party: and his successor, Leo IV., sumamed Cliazarus (775—780), though more
lenient than his father, steadily enforced the oath ‘ which had been issued bv
that king against the worshipping of images and pictures. Leo was espoused to
the artful and unscrupulous Irene, who at his decease administered the business
of the State in the name of Constantine VI., her minor son. She had been
educated in a family opposed to the Iconoclasts, and was tinged with the
superstition of the age: no sooner, therefore, was she mistress of the empire,
than her leanings to the monks were frequently betrayed in her distribution of
the church-preferment. It was not, however, until the sixth year of her
administration, that she ventured to proceed more freely. Hitherto the
soldiers, who revered the memory of Constantine and took the side of the
Iconoclasts, had operated as a formidable check upon her zeal: but
Its
deci-
Accession
of Leo 1 V.
The
empress Irene:
her
zeal in behalf of images.
1 to\jj.$v
dvdpwirov tov olovh-qwore eTririjdeijeiv to toiovtov dcrefih Kal dvoatov
iTTiT-fidev/xa. Mansi, xm. 328. Their prohibitions extended not only to all
kinds of images composed ‘by the pagan and accursed art’ of the painter, but
even to the figures (hitherto preserved) upon the sacred vestments and
church-plate (Mansi, ib. 332); although to check any further outbreaks of
individual fanaticism, it was now ordered that the permission of the patriarch,
or of the emperor, should be procured to warrant alterations in the
ecclesiastical ornaments.
2 They
even pronounced an anathema on all who do not confess ttjv detxap9ivov Tslaplav
KVplios Kal aXyff&s 9e0T0K0V, virepripav re clvat irdcrijs opaTrjs Kal
doparov /crtoews; and on all who do not ask for the prayers of her, and of the
other saints. Mansi, xm. 345, 348.
3 It seems
to have been administered to every citizen of Constantinople, if not in all
quarters of the empire: cl. Neander, v. 307, 308. Leo, however, permitted
numbers of the exiled monks to shew themselves in public, and thus laid a train
for the explosion that ensued.
Second
Council of Ntccca,
787.
Its
sessions,
and
decree.
the election
of Tarasius1 to the patriarchal chair enabled her to make
arrangements for the convocation of a synod, which she trusted would reverse
the policy adopted in the former reigns. The Roman bishop, Hadrian I., most
cordially invited by Irene, sent a deputation of the Western clergy to assist
her; but the efforts of Tarasius, who was anxious to secure a like concurrence
on the part of the Oriental patriarchates2, were not equally
successful. Very many of the delegates assembled at Constantinople, Aug. 1,
7S6; but, owing to an insurrection3 of the military, their
proceedings were suspended for a year. They next met at Nica?a in Bithynia, to
the number of about three hundred and fifty prelates, and immediately resumed
their labours 'Sept. 24, 787). In less than a month the business of the Synod
was completed: and as soon as their ‘ definition’ had been formally proclaimed
(Oct. 23) in the royal city, images were almost universally restored. A
multitude of bishops, who had been hitherto distinguished as Iconoclasts,
alarmed in some cases by the evidence4 in favour of the use of
images, or anxious to retain their mitres and their incomes, signed a humble
recantation5 of the tenets now exploded. The decision6 of
the Council
1 Hip
predecessor Paul, on the point of death, retired into a monastery. Tarasius
-was secretary to the emperor, and the irregularity „f j,is election, together
with his use of the title ‘(Ecumenical patriarch," scandalized the Homan
bishop Hadrian I. (Mansi, in. 1056, 1077): but in consideration of his zeal tor
images, the anger cf the pope -was speedily disarmed. Kee a Life of Tarasius by
his pupil, in the Acta Sanctorum, Febr. tom. in. pp. 576 sq.
2 The
messengers of Tarasius, on reaching Palestine, were informed by some monks whom
they met with, that the Moslem authorities would not tolerate a general
council, and that it would be fruitless to proceed any further on their errand:
but in order that they might secure at least a show of representatives, they
brought back two Palestinian monks, with the style and title of Legates of the
East. On this account, tho synod has no claim to be called (Ecumenical; cf.
Palmer, Treatise on the Church,
ii. 151, 152; 3rd eilit.
3 Mansi,
xit. 990 s<i
4 The
inaccuracy of the quotations from the older writers, as betrayed in the
proceedings of the Nicene Council, and the utter want of criticism evinced by
the prelates in adducing spurious works, are painfully astounding: e. the
rtorv of a miraculous image at Berytus was attributed to the great Athanasius, and
urged as an authority: cf. Mendham, Seventh General Council, Introd. pi), lii.
aq.
* Cf.
Meander, v. 318 320.
5 Mansi,
am. 377. The ^pixmVijms would include the offering of
lights and incense (BvniaimTuv koI 4>wtuv vpaaaywyfyi
as well as bowing
ran as follows:
it enjoined that ‘ bowing and an honourable adoration ' amrarr[i.ov real
TifjLtjTiKijV pocncivrjo-Lv) should be offered to all sacred images; but this
external and inferior worship must not be confounded with the true and supreme
worship [rijv Kara, iriaTiv rgiuiv aXtjOivrfv \arptiav) which belongs
exclusively to God.’
In the time
of Irene and her soil, as also of Nicephoms I. and Michael Rliangabe, this
decision of the council was unsparingly enforced; although an insurrection of
Iconoclasts in 812 bore witness to their strength and formidable numbers1.
But a milder and more lasting opposition took its rise in the west of Europe.
It appears, that soon after the conclusion of the synod, Charlemagne had received
from Rome a Latin version of the ‘Acts,’ which wras transmitted for
the sake of gaining his concurrence2. Startled by the language of
the Eastern prelates, he determined, with the aid of his clerical advisers3,
to compose an elaborate reply. It came out under the title Libri Carolini4. In the course of one hundred and twenty ■chapters, he examined
and confuted all the arguments on “which the Council of Nica^a rested. But in
spite of an occasional display of bitterness in criticizing his opponents, he
was far from a heated partizan. He occupied a kind of middle place5;
and while strenuously denouncing the impieties connected with the worshipping
of pictures, did
donii *nd prostration. The degree of reverence is the samp as many of tho
Iconoclasts were not unwilhn" to bestow on the sign of the cross "and
on the volume of the Gospels [tuj t vit to
rod rt/tlov nal fa,7roiou t7ra.upo{ Kai roil aylois «i5»77e\lots kcll toIs
\oltois icpots dvaOrjpaat).
1 For an account of the reaction, under Leo
the Armenian, and the final Triumph ot the image-party in H42, see the
following period: ‘State of religious doctrine,’ &c„, in the ‘Eastern
Church/
2 It appears that the question was already
mooted at Gentilly in 767, under Pepin, hut the verdict of that synod in not
known. Labb. vi. 170ii'. Cf. above, p.
54, n. 1.
3 One of the principal waf> mo3t
probably Alcuin: Lorenz, Alcuins Lehen, p. 132; Neander, v. 324, note.
* In
Goldastus, Imperialia Decreta de Cultu Tmaginum, pp. 07 sq. Neander (v. 325-
-335) ha* left a careful analysis of the Libri Carolini.
5 e. g. -Adorationem soli Deo debitam
imaginilms impertire aut seg- nitisB
est, si utcunque acitur, aut msania;, vel potius infidelitatis, si
i>ertinaciter tlefeiuiit'ir:’ lib. hi. c. 24. ‘Imagines vero, omni sui cultura et adoratione
secluta, utrum in basilicis propter memotiam rerum gest- arum et omamentmn sint, an etiam non pint, nullum iidei
catholics adferre poterunt prs'judieiitm; quippe cum ad peragenda nostrai
salutis mysteria nullum penitus officium habere noscantur: ‘ lib. n. c. 21.
Opposition
to imagt~ teortihip in the, TVest.
The
Libri Carolini.
THE TA.ULI-
CIANS.
Council
of Frankfort, 794:
and
acquiescence of the English Church.
Rise
of Paulician-
not fall into
the track of the fanatical Iconoclasts, who were proscribing all the imitative
arts as the invention of the Devil. His treatise very soon elicited an answer1
from Pope Hadrian I., which, as it fell innocuous on himself, made 110
impression on the bishops of the empire. They assembled at Frankfort (794:), to
the number of three hundred, and determined in the presence of the papal
legates, that the recent council of the Greeks had no claim whatever on their
notice2; adding, that all acts of worship, such as many were not
indisposed to offer to the images of saints, invaded the prerogatives of God.
And as the English Church3 appears to have united with the Frankish
in the passing of this memorable protest, very few of the Western Christians,
those of Italy excepted, were committed to the fatal principles established at
Nicosa.
THE PADLIC
IANS.
But while the
strength of the Christian Church was tried to the utmost in the midst of
domestic conflicts, she had also to encounter a fresh form of thought which
threatened her dominion in the East. This was the creed of the Paulician s4
Like the other medieval sects, they
1 Mansi,
nil. 759.
2 Mansi,
xjii. 909. The following is the entry of Einhard, AnnaUs, a.d. 794 (Pertz,
I. 181): ‘Synodus etiam, qu® ante paucos annos in Con- stantinopoli sub Herena
(Irene) et Constantino filio ejus congregata, et au ipsis non solum septima,
verum etiam universalis est appullata, ut neo ^optima nec universalis haberetur
dicereturve, quasi supervacua in totum ab omnibus abdieata est.’
a
Simeon of Purham, following £ contemporaneous authority, (Scrip- tores x. col.
Ill, ed. Twysdenj, thus describes the correspondence between Charlemagne and
the English: ‘Anno 79‘2, Karolns rex Franeorum misit synodalom librum ad
Britanniam, sibi a Constantinopoli directum, in quo libro fheu! proh dolor!)
multa ineonvenientia, et versa fidei contrar’a reperientes; msxime, quod pene
omnium orientalium doctorum, non minus quam trecentoruin, vel eo amplius,
episcoporum unanimi assertione confirmantum imagines adorare debere; quod
omnino ecclesia Dei exe- cratur. Contra quod scripsit Albinus [i.e. Alcuin]
epistolam ex authori- tate Divinarum scripturarum mirabiliter affimiatam;
illamque cum eodem libro et persona episcoporum, ac principum nostrorum, regi
Erancorum attulit.’ 21071. Mist. Brit. p. 667: cf. Twysden's Vindication, pp.
206 sq., new edit.
1 Hav\tKtavo[, otherwise called ttuukianTcu. Some
have looked upon the name IJavXiKiavol as equivalent to llaiXoiudv^ai (Photius,
ad-versui recentiores ilanichteo«, lib. I. c. 2: in ,T. C. Wolf's Anecdnta
Grccca, tom.
i. and ii ed. Hamb. 1722); arguing that the
founders of the sect were
were
distinguished by their opposition to the whole of the ecclesiastical system,
and not merely to peculiar articles of faith. They seem to have been an
offshoot from the Mareionites, who lingered1 in the regions of Armenia
Prima, where the founder of Paulieianism appeared at the middle of the seventh
century (657—684).
His former
name was Constantine, but at the outset of his mission in behalf of what he
deemed the genuine teaching of St Paul, he chose the expressive title of ‘
Sylvanus.’ Though addicted to the study of the sacred volume, and especially
the writings of the great Apostle, whom his predecessor, Marcion, held in equal
honour, he was notwithstanding governed all his life-time by the principles of
dualism, in which it is likely he was reared. He argued that the Maker of the
human body and the Lord of the sensible creation, was to be distinguished from
the perfect God, the Author of the world of spirits2. In his view,
matter, as the agent of the Demiurgus, was the source of every evil; while the
soul of man, originally wedded to Divinity itself, had been seduced into union
with the body, where she dwelt in a doleful prison3. Her deliverance
out of this enthralment was the work of the
two Manichasans, Paul and John, sons of Callinice: but there are strong
reasons for doubting the truth of this account. See the Essay of Gieseler in
the Theolog. Studien und Kritiken for 1829, Heft i. pp. 79 sq. He maintains
that the name Paitlician (UavXiKoL leading to Ilat/Amaj'oi) was given to them
on account of the exclusive value they attached to the writings of St Paul.
Neander also has shewn that their tenets were not, strictly speaking,
Manichcean, but are to be classed under the phase of Gnosticism put forth by
Marcion and his party: v. 337 sq. The oldest treatise on the heresy of the
Paulicians is an Oration of John of Ozun, patriarch of the Armenians (718—729):
Opp. ed. Yenet. 1834. But the fullest statement of their errors is to be found
in the work of Photius (above cited), and the Historia Manichceorum of Peter
Siculus (about 800), ed. Ingolstadt, 1604, and elsewhere.
1 Neander,
v. 339.
2 llp&Tov fib ydp i<ni rb /car’
avrofc yvdpia/xa rb dpxas opLoXoyeiv, ‘Kov'rjpbv dtbv Kal dyadbv' Kal SXkov
etvat roOSe tov Kbafxov )v ical it-ovaia- <rr^v, erepov 8k rov p.4\\ovToSy
k.t.X. Pet. Siculus, ubi sup, pp. 16 sq. Photius, ubi sup. lib. ii. c. 3, 5.
3 See the
investigation of Neander on this point, v. 356 sq. They had a firm belief in
the possibility of redemption, which they rested on the known affinity
subsisting between God and their spirits: Oi)5£ ykp
Ou5* OUT CO
K0.T€Kpd,T7]<T€V Ol55£ TUV lubvTWV Trpo5(5u)K6T UV eai/TOj) S T7JS 'pVXVS ®
ws fxi}oap,vj 7rpos /xydefilav 6'Xws rrjs aXyOeias aty\ijv tovs eaKortap^vovs iiTHTTpifaaOai,
8ti o ayaOfo Oeos r\v ad /cat
ccrrt nal £<rrcu. Photius, lib. ii. c. 3.
Its
founder.
Glaring
instances of misbelief.
Views
of the Sacraments;
of
the
Scriptures:
Redeemer. He
descended from the presence of the Highest God, invested with a heavenly body1;
for, as matter was essentially corrupt, the Saviour did not take our human
nature, but was borti of His Virgin Mother only in appearance2. A
denial of the Incarnation led the way to other forms of blasphemy and
misbelief. It was held by the Paulicians that the sufferings of Christ were
equally unreal, that in virtue of His higher nature He was incapable of death,
and that His cross in particular was nothing more than a sign of maledictiond.
Firm in a belief that matter is the seat of evil, they rejected all the outward
means of grace, and more especially the Sacraments. They held that the Baptism1
which our Lord intended was a baptism only of the Spirit, resting on the
passage wliere He pointed to Himself as the one ‘ living water.’ The Communion,
in like manner, was divested of its symbols6 and its meaning; for,
according to tlxe creed of the Paulicians, it is not the material elements but
only Christian doctrines that can possibly become the vehicle of God in
communicating blessings to the soul.
Assigning a
peculiar value to the writings of St Paul, the followers of Constantine
rejected the epistles of St Peter'5, whom they branded as a traitor
to the Gospel, and
1 |uijot avrrjs ya’V7]'/h'li>a
roi1 ’Kfiptav, a\\’ ovpavutitv rb auua Kare- peyxeiv. Pet. Sioul.
ibid.: cf. Photius, lib. I. c. 7.
2 df vih <rw\7>os. They even spoke of
the Virgin as scarcely fit to be numbered with the good and virtuoun; adding
that she bore sons to Joseph after the- birth of our Saviour: Pet. Sicul. p.
18.
3 It wan called KaKoipyav ipyavov t.o.1
biro anfa> eel/taw. Photius. lib.
i. c. 7: cf. Pet. Sicul. ibid. Yet it appears
that some at least of the Paulicians made use of a wooden cross with
superstitious objects. Phot, lib. i. c. 9.
4 Photius, ibid. Some of them however had their
children baptized (Xeander, v. 363), perhaps with an idea that the sacrament
would benefit the body.
5 \tyoi'res, Btl ovk rp>
dpros h.o.1 otvos, t>v o K, vptos
idtfiov rots poftrjTail
avTov
tiri rov 5elirifov, a\\d GVfj.fio\u:Jos rd pr/para avrov avrois ioidou, dpTov
Kai otvov. Pet. Sicul. ibid.
6 rds 5i'o Ka&o\ixds...HiTpuv
rov 7rporrairc/rr6\ov oi a?rex^wi
irpbs avTov diaKeip-evoi. k.t.X. Pet. Siculus, ubi sup, cf. Photius, lib. I. c.
8. They rejected also the writings of the Old Testament (rTjv oiavovv flipbor
TraXjmVi, regarding them as the production of a system which was under the
dominion of the Demiurgus. Of the writings of the New Testament they seem to
have adapted four Gospels (laying stress, however, on that according to St
Luke), fourteen Epistles of St Paul (of which one was
as the head
of the Judaizing party in the Church. This anti-Jewish feeling, everywhere
apparent, made them anxious to revive (as they supposed) an apostolic ministry,
to simplify the ritual of the (Church, and disentangle the surviving elements
of Christianity from numerous aftergrowths of error. Thus they styled
themselves the ‘ Catholics’ and ‘ Christians’ proper, as distinguished from
the ‘ Romans,’ or professors of the state-religion1. They would
tolerate no difference of class or order, such as that subsisting in the
Church between the clergy and the laity. Their ministers2 were
simply teachers, standing in a close relation to the Holy Spirit, and at first
peculiarly awakened by His impulse.
How far the
Paulicians had been guilty of the grosser violations3 of the moral
law imputed to them by opponents, it is difficult to ascertain precisely: but
one principle on which they acted in the time of persecution is an argument
against their purity of conscience. They were ready to disguise their tenets,
under pressure, and resorted even to the worship and communion of the Church in
order to escape the eye of the police, and to propagate their system with
impunity.
The founder
of it, Constantine (Sylvanus), after labouring to spread it in Armenia for a
long term of years, was stoned to death, at the instigation of the emperor, by
some of his own disciples (684). The officer, who was entrusted with this duty,
Symeon (Titus), afterwards passed over to the sect, and occupied the place of
Con-
addressed to the L&odiceans), the Epistles of St .Tames, St John, and
St Jude, and the Acts of the Apostles. Ibid. and cf. Neander, v. 3GH sq.
1 Ka^uXtKty
oe tKKXtjalav to.
iavrtSv KaXonri ffwttpia. Photiub, lib. I. c. 9: cf. Kb. i. c. 6. Another of
their titles -was that of xpurroiroXtrai. See the Anathemas published in
Tollius, Insignia Itinrrarii Italici, p. 122.
2 They
rejected not only the name' Itpiu but xpeo-fSiVepoi also, as savouring of
Judaism. Pet. Sicul. p. 20. At the head of their ministerial system were, (1)
apostles or prophets, (2) teachers and pastors (Si5drKa\oi and Tc-0Lp.hu), (3)
itinerant messengers of the truth associated with the prophets
{<TmhS-rju-iA), (4) voraptoi, perhaps scribes, or copyists of religious records.
Neander, v. 365. The fame dread of Judaism induced them to relinquish the
current title vaoi (temples), and to call their places of assembly ‘oratories’ 'xaiV Photius, lib. I. c. 9.
3 This
feature of their system is dwelt upon by John of Ozun, a con- ii'iiinorary
iabove, p. 79, note): and hp is supported by the other writers. On the other
hand, see Neander, v. 366 iq.: Gieseler.’rAcuJ. Htudlen ■and, Kritiken
for 1839, pp. 120 sq.
if. A.
Schism
among the Paulicians.
Conduct
of Qegnmius.
Fresh
secession at his death.
Decline
of Paulician- vtm.
stantine
until the year 690; when a further inquisition, prompted by Justinian II.,
ended in a fresh proscription, and brought Symeon, with a multitude of others,
to the stake. He was followed in the second generation by Gegnsesius (Timothy),
whose claim to be regarded as the single leader of the party (circ. 715), on
the ground that the influence of the Holy Spirit, who had rested on his father,
was exclusively transmitted unto him, provoked a secession from his standard.
The dissentients took the side of Theodore, his brother, wTho
affirmed that au equal ministerial gift had come to him directly from on high1.
The growth of the Paulicians now demanding the attention of the government,
Gegna-sius, in 717, was summoned to Constantinople, and interrogated by the
patriarch concerning his behaviour and his creed. By means of equivocal
expressions5, intermingled with anathemas on all who varied from the
teaching of the Church, he was able to secure the interest of Leo the Isaurian,
and took back with him a letter of protection for himself and his adherents.
Migrating across the frontier, he established his metropolis within the
territories of the Caliph, at the town of Mana- nalis (near Samosata), and died
about the year 745 Another schism arose, dividing the Paulicians into bitter
factions, one of whom, preserving their allegiance to the son of Gegnaasius,
fell a prey to the armies of the Moslems. The pretender, Joseph (or
Epaphroditus), menaced by a like incursion, fixed his chair in Pisidia ; and
the sect of the Paulicians in his life-time was diffused over many parts of
Asia Minor.
Joseph was
succeeded (circ. 750) by the cynical or (it may be) the immoral Baanes (o
fivTrap'x;), under whom the delusion seems to have been rapidly declining: but
it now attracted a more able and exalted leader, Sergius'
1 Photius, lib. x. c. 18.
4 See Neander’s remarks on this interview,
ibid. 3-14. As it is plain that the Paulicians were strongly opposed to
imagfc-w&rnhip, and as their abhorrence of this practice was the first
point of attraction for their converts, many of whom had been Iconoclasts
(John of Ozun, Oratio, pp. 76, 89), we may conjecture that the emperor Leo, the
antagonist of images, to on tnat
account more leniei.t to Gegnassius and his party.
3 Pet. Siculus, ibid. p. 54. Tho case of
Sergius sbews that although the reading of the Bible was not positively
interdicted, it was usual for the laity to shrink from this personal
investigation of tue mysteries of the faith, and ior the clergy in some cases
to encourage the delusion.
(or
Tychicus), a native of Galatia, and the second founder of Paulicianism. Assiduous
in his study of the writings of St Paul, to whom, as he imagined, Christian
truth had been almost exclusively revealed, he clung notwithstanding to the
dualistic errors, w hich had marked the anterior stages of his sect; and while
surpassing all his predecessors in the moral duties of religion1, he
indulged an extravagance of speech that bordered upon self-idolatry2.
His efforts to extend his influence were untiring; in the course of
four-and-thirty years, he traversed every part of Asia Minor3, and enjoying
many glimpses of imperial favour in the reign of Nieephorus I.4,
succeeded iu imparting to the sect a far more stable frame-work.
But this
interval of calm was short. The progress of a noxious error, pictured iu the
strongest colours to the mind, of Leo the Armenian, was sufficient to arouse
his vengeance: he despatched inquisitors6 into the misbelieving
districts, with the hope of eradicating all who shewed no symptom of
repentance. A number of them fled afresh into the territories of the Caliph;
the emir of Melitene granting them a small asylum in the town of Argaum, from
which place, in defiance of the wish of Sergius6, who was himself a
refugee, they made incursions into the border provinces of the empire. At the
death7 of
1 The
following is the testimony of an implacable opponent: Kai raveivov ?70os Kal Ka.T€<rxvtjLaTi<r/J.ivos
rpdvos Kal Tj/xepdT^ 01) rot)s oircelovs viroaalvovffa fxovov, dXXa rot)?
Tpax^Tepov diaxcifiivovs viroXeal- vovffa re Kal avkaytoyovcra. Photius, lib.
i. e. 22: ef. Pet. Sicul. p. 58.
2 He was
understood to argue as if he were the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost (Photius, lib.
1. p. Ill); but it may be that his object was to represent himself as, in a
higher sense, the organ of the Spirit, for the restoration of the Gospel. He
spoke of himself, however, as ‘the shining light/ ‘the light-giving star,’ ‘the
good shepherd,’ &c. Ibid. p. 98.
3 ’A7t6 dvaroX(2v Kal Svafiwv, Kal fiofipa Kal votov iSpafiou
Kijptjaauv to ei'ayyiXiov tov XpKrrov, tois ifiots yovaai (3ap-f}<ras.
Extract from one of his letters, in Pet. Sicul. p. 60.
4 Theophanes,
Ghron. p. 413, ed. Paris. He granted them a plenary toleration in Phrygia and
Lycaonia. We learn from the same authority, that in the following reign many
persons at Constantinople (though they proved a minority) resisted all attempts
to punish heretics with death ; p. 419.
5 The
cruelty of these officials roused the spirit of the sufferers, who cut them off
at Cynoschora in Armenia. Pet. Sicul. p. 66.
6 Ibid. p.
62.
7 He was
assassinated by a zealot of Nieopolis: cf. Gieseler, in Studien und Kritiken
for 1829, p. 100.
THE PAULI*
CIANS.
Revived
der Sergius.
Persecutions
of the Pauliciana.
Their
suppression in the East.
their leader
in 835, the constitution of the system underwent a rapid change : a band of
his assistants1 (avveichriiAoi) were at first exalted to supremacy
of power; but as soon as the persecuting spirit2 was rekindled in
the breast of the empress Theodora (circ. 844;), the sect was converted into a
political association, and soon after grew notorious for its lawlessness and
rapine. At the head of it was a soldier, Karbeas, who in alliance with the
Saracens and many of the rival schools of Paulieians (drawn by a common misery
together), was enabled to sustain himself in a line of fortresses upon the
coniines of Armenia, and to scourge the adjacent province3. His
dominion was, however, broken, and well-nigh extinguished under Basil I.4
(867—886); though some of the phases of Paulicianism were constantly revived
among the sects of the following period.
1 Pet. Sicul. pp. 70 sq.
' A hundred thousand men are said to have been hanged, beheaded, or
drowned. Constantini Porphjrng.
Continuator, lib iv. c. 16; inter Scriptores Hyzant. p. 103, ed. Paris.
3 Ibid. e.
23, 21, 25.
4 In 96'.*
a remnant of them were tran&porfa 1 from the eastern districts to
I’hilippopolis in Thrace by the emperor John Tziinisces. From thence they were
able to extend themselves into other parts* of Europe-: but it is remarkable
that pome of th( ir posterity are still found in the place to which they were
transported. Neander, yi. 341: cf. Gibbon, v. 281—283; ed. llihnan; and
Spencer’s Travels in European Turkey,
ii. 353.
■814]
ON THE STATE OF INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY.
THE standard
of intelligence continued, on the whole, to be higher in the East than in the
West; and more especially in districts where the Moslems were repulsed, it was
subjected to fewer fluctuations. The religious spirit of the people, in like
manner, underwent but little change, and, with the sole exception of the
controversy on the use of pictures, which had stimulated every class of the community
and made them take a- side, their piety was generally confined to dreamy
contemplation, or expressed In a calm routine of worship1, tinctured
more or less with superstition5. In the discipline and ritual of the
Church it is easy to remark the same kind of uniformity; the Trullan Council
(391), by a series of one hundred and two canons3, having furnished
all the Eastern patriarchates with a code of discipline, which has been
constantly in force from that day to our own.
Of the west,
as already noticed*, Ireland was the bright- Variation.t est spot in the
beginning of this period. Under Theodore5, "*t!ie
of
tli.6
1 Theodore, himself a Greek of Tarsus, informs us
that the Greeks, lay and clerical, were ordered to communicate every Sunday
(Ptpnltent. lib. r. c. 1.2, Councils &c. ill. 186): and Beda {Epist. ad
Ecgherctum, § 9) implies that in the east at large (‘totum Orientem’) it was not
unusual for the pious to receive the sacrament every day.
* Pictures
teem to have been perverted by the Oriental, as relics were in the Latin
churches. Many of them had the reputation of working miraculous cures; and the
‘Legends’ of the period are full of instances establishing the almost universal
spread of this and of similar delusions.
3 Concil.
Quinisext., Mansi, -sr. 935—988: see above, p. 47.
4 Above,
p. 16. n. 2: pp. 19, 22.
A.bove, pp. 14, 5'J, n. t. Beda seem» to have gathered into himself all
the learning of the Irish, Frank and English churches, anil to have transmitted
it through the Northumbrian schools to Alcuin. who in turn trnnsplanted it into
France just as the northern invasions threatened to extinguish it here.
Permancn,
form of rtliyloa in the East.
and from his
death to the invasions of the Northmen, much of the illumination still
proceeding from the sister-island is reflected in the schools of Britain, where
‘the ministers of God were earnest both in preaching and in learning;’ and
which acted as a ‘ seminary of religion,’ whither pupils now resorted ‘from
foreign countries seeking after wisdom1.’ It was different in the
Frankish and Burgundian provinces of Gaul, in which literature had been
suffered to degenerate by the barbarous Merovingian kings. The flourishing
schools of the Roman municipia had entirely disappeared2, and their
place was but inadequately filled by monastic and cathedral institutions, now
set apart almost exclusively for the education of the clerics and the members
of religious orders. Charlemagne, aided more especially by Alcuin5,
and other learned foreigners and natives, opened a fresh era in the history of
letters ; and the whole of his mighty empire underwent a salutary change. He
laboured to revive religion by the agency of sounder learning4, and
in order to secure this end established a variety of schools,—the palatine,
parochial, monastic, and cathedral5.
But we should
remember that the northern tribes, who
1 The remark of Kin," Alfred (Freface to his
translation of Gregory’s
Pastoral),
on contrasting the decay of learning after the barbaric inroads of the Danes.
Beda (it. 2) mentions that, after the coming of Theodore, all 'who wished to be
instructed in sacred literature • haberent in promptu magistros qui doeerent.’
3 See
Guizot’s Sixteenth Lecture, where he shews that from the sixth to the eighth
century the surviving literature of France in exclusively religious. ‘Ante ipsum enim dominum regem
Carolum, in Gallia nullum studinm fuerat liijeralium ^riium.’ Annal. Lauriss. a.d. 787; Pertz, i. 171. The
statu of learning in Italy itself was little better, owing to the savage spirit
of the Lombards. Hallam, Literature of Europe, pt. i. ch. i. § 8.
3 Above,
p. Cl. Some of the other more distinguished foreigners were Peter Pisanus, Paul
Warnefrid, and Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, T.eidrad, archbishop of Lyons
(a native of Noricum), and Theodulph, bishop of Orleans, of Gothic parentage.
Angilbert, the prime minister of Pepin and secretary of Charlemagne, was a
native Frenchman, and a great promoter of schools and learning.
4 See
above, p. 56, n. 2.
5 The best
account of these institutions may be seen in Keuffel, Hist. OriginU ac Prngr.
Schnl. inter Christianos. pp. 161 sq. The trimum and q’Mdrivium, elements of
the ‘ seven liberal arts,’ made part of the education given in the schools of
Charlemagne. Theodulph, bishop of Orleans (Capitulare, c. 20: Mansi, xiti. 933
sq.), established village schools (‘per villas et vicos’) for ail classes of
the people.
MEANS OF
GBACK ANI) KNOWLEDGE
Western
Church.
Efforts
of i karle- I'.ar/ne in hkalf of learning.
broke up the
empire of the Caesars and were now planted on its ruins, not unfrequently
retained their native dialects as well as a crowd of pagan customs and ideas1.
Some of them, indeed, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Burgundians, and tho
Lombards, gradually forgot their mother- tongue, and at the end of the ninth
century had thrown it off entirely*. But a number of their northern kinsmen did
not follow their example. This variety of languages, combining with the
remnants of barbaric life, would everywhere impose an arduous task upon the
clergy of the west; yet few of them, it must be owned, were equal to their duty0:
and the ill-advised adoption of the Latin language4 as the vehicle
of public worship (though at first it might have proved convenient here and
there) contributed to thwart the influence of the pastor and retarded the improvement
of his flock. It is true that considerable good resulted from the energy of
individual prelates, who insisted on the need of clergy able to instruct their
people in the elements of Christian, knowledge6, and to preach
1 e.g. rtumerous traces of this lingering heathenism
have been collected in Kemble’s Saxons, vol. 1. App. f : cf. Gieseler, 11.
160—162.
1 Palgrave, Hist, of Numuindij, r. 64.
3 See
above, pp. 46, 06. The Capitular it ad paroehitz sun Sacerdotn of Theodulph,
bi-shop of Orleans (786—821), while it displays somewhat elevated views of the
pastoral office, indicates a sad deficiency in the knowledge of the general
body of ecclesiastics. In like manner it was necessary to make the following
decree at the English synod of Clovesho (747): ‘ That priests who know it not
should learn to construe and explain in our own tongue the Creed and Lord’s
Prayer and the sacred words which are solemnly pronounced at the celebration of
the mass, and in the office of baptism,’ etc. Johnson, English Canons, 1. 247;
ed. Oxf. 1850. The literary qualifications needed in all ecclesiastics are enumerated
in the Capitular of 802, apud Pertz, hi. 107.
4 The same
feeling of respect for the usages of Bome induced the Frankish and English
churches to adopt her psalmody and choral service, See Neander, v. 175,176.
The mission of John, ‘tho archchanter,’ and the establishment of the ‘cursus
Bomanus’ in England (679), are described by Beda, Hist. JiccL iv 18. The
Scottish 1 Irish) rites, however, had not been entirely superseded in the
north of England at the close of the eighth century. Maskell’s Ancient Liturgy,
Pref. p. liv. In Ireland they retained their old supremacy until the arrival of
the English, when the Anglican ritual was ordered to be observed ‘in omnibus
punibus ecclesias, by the synod of Cashel (U72), e. 7; Wilkins. 1. 473.
5 Cf. the
preceding note 3. Reda (ep. ad Ecgberctum, § 3): In qua videlicet
pradli<atione populis exhibenda. hoc pr» cffiteris omni instantia procurandum
arbitror, ut fidem catholicam quoe apostolico symbolo con- tinetur, et
Pominicam orationem quam sancti Evangelii nos Scriptura edocet, omnium qui ad
tuurn regimen pertinent, memorias radicibus inii
MEANS OF
OBACE ANi> KNOWLEDGE.
Evil
gro’1’- ing out of the variety 0f language.
A
t tempts to mitigate thtse cvilt.
in the
language of the country. Thus, in England it was ordered1 that the
priests shall often invite the people to meet on the Lord’s day and other
festivals ‘to hear the word of God and to be often present at the sacraments of
the masses and at preaching of sermons’: and the rigorous observance2
of the Lord’s day in particular would give them opportunities of profiting by
the injunction. It was urged anew in the reign of Charlemagne; e.g. at the
Council of Mentz3 (813), and in the same year at Arles, where the
clergy are directed to preach on festivals and Sundays, not only in the cities,
but in country parishes4.
The growing
education of the people would enable a far greater number of them to peruse the
holy Scripture ; nor did any wish exist at present to discourage such a study5.
gere cure*. Et quidem omnes qui Latinam linguiim leetionis usu didice-
runt, etiam haia optime didieisse certissirmim est: sed idiotas, hoc est, eos
qui proprias tantum lingua1 notitiam habent, ha?c ipsa sua lingua dicere, ae scdulo decantare
faeito.’ The same is frequently enjoined elsewhere, e. g. Council of Montz,
813, can. 45: llansi, xiv. 74. A. xhort form of abjuration of idolatry and
declaration of Christian faith, in the Terna'-uiar language, is preserved among
the works of Boniface: u. 16, ed. Giles.
1 Council of Clovesho, 747, can. Ii.
Johnson’s English Canons i. 249. Ohrodegang of Jletz directed that the Word of
salTation should be preached at least twice a month, though expressing a desire
that sermons might b« still more frequent: Regula, c. 44; llansi, xiv. 337.
'■
The Penitential of Theodore (lib. i. c. 11, lib. ii. c. 8) is most stringent
on this head: cf. a law of King Ine against Sunday working (Thorpe,
I. 104; Johnson, V 132), and ow’ of the ‘Laws of the Northumbrian
Priests’ (§ 55) against Sunday traffic and journeying of all kinds (Thorpe,
ii. 298, Johnson, I. 379). See Schriiokh, xx. 315, 316,
for the views entertained by John of Damascus on the nature of tlie Lord’s day.
It is plain from the prohibitions of the Councils (e. q. of Chalons, 649, c.
xix.) that the ohurch-inclosure was at times converted into an arena of Sanday
merriment and dissipation.
3 Can.
xxv: ‘ Juxfa quod intelligere vulgus possit.’
4 Can. x:
‘Etiam in omnibus parochiis.’ It was added in the Council of Tours (813), c.
xvn., that preachers should translate their sermons either into Romana rustica
or Theotisca (l)eutsch), ‘quo tacilius cuncti possint intelligere qua?
dicuntur.’ Charlemagne had already published a collection of discourses
(Homiliarium), which had been compiled by Paul Warnefrid (Diaconus), from the
sermons of tho Latin Fathers. See Banke’s article in the Studim und Kritiken,
1855, 2*“ Heft, pp. 382 sq.
5 See e.g.
tho passages above quoted, p. 56, and a still finer one translated inro
Anglo-Saxon, and preserved in Soames’ Bamptmt Lectures, 92, 93: cf. also the
language of Ildeionsus of Saragossa, in Baluze’s Miscellanea, vi. 59. Alcuin,
writing to the emperor (circ. 800', thua alludes to a query put to him by a
layman who was conversant with the Scriptures; ‘Vere et valde gratum habeo,
laicos qnandoqne ad evangelicals eflloruisse qu&stiones, durn queudam
audivi virum pruduntein aliquando
It. was, however, long restricted by the scarcity of books, and still
more by the want of vernacular translations; though the latter had begun to be
remedied, at least in some scanty measure, by the English and the German1
Churches. Ulfilas, the father of this kind of literature, was followed, after a
long interval, by the illustrious Beda, who, if he did not render the whole
Bible2 into Anglo- Saxon, certainly completed the Gospel of St John3.
Aldlielm, who died in 709, is said to have made a version of the Psalms4;
and we may infer from the treasures of vernacular literature handed down by the
scholars of the period next ensuing, that not a few analogous productions were
destroyed in the conflict with the Danes.
But a more fascinating species of instruction was supplied in the ‘Lives
of Saints6.’ The number of these works, surviving at the present
day, is actually prodigious5; and the influence they exerted on the
mediaeval mind was
Vernacular translations of the Bible.
Lives of Saints:
dicere,
clericorum esse evangelium discere, non laicorum,’ etc. Epist. cxxiv. (al.
clxiii.) Opp. 1. 180. It has been observed, that in the catalogues of
mediaeval libraries, copies of the Holy Scriptures constitute the greater
number of the volumes. Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy, i. 63. The subject has been
examined also by Mr Buckingham, in his Bible in the Middle Ages, Lond. 1853.
1 The influence exerted by Christianity on
the old-German Language has been recently investigated by Von Raumer,
Einwirkung des Christen- thums auf die althochdeutsche Sprache, Stuttgart,
1845, where translations, glosses, and other fragments of vernacular piety
have been discussed. But many of these specimens belong to the following
period.
2 See Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxon Kings, i.
203; and Gilly’s Introd. to the Romaunt Version of the Gospel according to St
John (Lond. 1848), pp. xi. sq.
3 ‘Evangelium
quoque Johannis, quod difficultate sui mentes legen- tium exercet his diebus,
lingua interpretatus Anglica, condeseendit minus imbutis Latina.’ Wil.
Malmesbur. de Gestis Regum, lib, i. p. 89, ed. Hardy.
4 Wright, Biog. Brit. Lit. i. 222. There
was also a large stock of Anglo-Saxon religious poetry, of which Cfedmon’s
Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures (ed. Thorpe, 1832) is a
very striking type. Cffidmon died about 680. He was desired by the abbess Hilda
of Whitby to transfer into verse the whole of the sacred history. Wright’s
Biog. Brit. Lit. i. 195. The interesting Anglo-Saxon Ritual, published, in
1839, by the Surtees Society, is one of a large class of interlinear translations,
and may be assigned to the commencement of the ninth century: Stevenson’s
Preface, p. x.
5 Gregory of Tours, who died 593, in a
series of publications of this class, gave an impulse to the wonder-loving
spirit of the age.
6 See a calculation in Guizot’s Seventeenth
Lecture, based on the materials still surviving in the Acta Sanctorum.
MEANS OF
GRACE AND
know
ledge.
their
general character.
Ilow
congenial to the spirit of the age.
deep and universal. While they fed almost every stream of superstition,
and excited an unhealthy craving for the marvellous and the romantic, they were
nearly always tending, in their moral, to enlist the affectious of the reader
on the side of gentleness and virtue; more especially by setting forth the necessity
of patience, and extolling the heroic energy of faith. One class of these
biographies deserves a high amount of credit: they are written by some friend
or pupil of their subject; they are natural and life-like pictures of the
times, preserving an instructive portrait of the missionary, the recluse, the
bishop, or the man of business; yet in many cases the acts and sufferings of
the mediaeval saint have no claim to a place in the sphere of history, or else
they have been so wantonly embellished by the fancy of the author, that we can
disentangle very few of the particles of truth from an interminable mass of
fiction. As these ‘Lives’ were circulated freely in the language of the people1,
they would constitute important items in the fire-side readings of the age; and
so warm was the response they found in men of every grade, that notwithstanding
feeble efforts to reform them*, or at least to eliminate a few of the more
monstrous and absurd, they kept their hold on Christendom at large, and are subsisting
even now in the creations of the mediaeval artist3.
Keeping pace with this expansion in the field of
1 An interesting specimen (Anglo-Saxoni
lias been editedwith a translation by C. V. Goodwin (Lond. 1848). The subject
of it is St Guthlac. a hermit of Crowland (written about 750, by a monk named
Felix). There are many others preserved in oar MSS. repositories.
2 This had been attempted as early as the
time of pope Gelasius (496); Mansi, vm. 149: but the taste for legendary
compositions went on increasing. Much of the increase in the number of the ‘
saints ’ is due to the liberty which every district seems to have enjoyed of
enlarging its own calendar at pleasure. There is no instance of a canonization
by the pope until the case of Swibert (about 800); and that has been disputed
fTwyslen, Vindication of the Church of England, p. 219, new ed.). According to
Gieseler, n. 421, the earliest was Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg, in 993.
Charlemagne, who was anxious to withstand the superstitions of his age (e.g
baptizing of bells, the ‘sortes sanctorum,’ etc.), published a capitulary (789,
76), De psntdagraphiis et dubiU narrationibus; and in the capitulary of
Frankfort (794, c. 40) is the following injunction: -ut nulli novi
sancti eolantur, aut iuvocentur, nec memorim eornm per vias [t. e. wayside
chapels] erigantur; sed ii soli in ecclesia venerandi sint, qui ex auetoritate
passionum aut vitas merito electi sunt.’
3 Didron’s Christian Iconography, i. 192.
hagiology, the reverence which had long been cherished for the veritable
saints continued to increase in every province of the Church; and even to
resemble, here and there, a lower kind of worship. None of the more enlightened,
it is true, have failed to distinguish1 very clearly in their works
between the honour of regard and imitation to be offered to the saint, and the
supremacy of love and homage which is due to God alone: but iu the mind of
unreflecting peasants such distinctions were obliterated more and more, and
numbers of the saints, apocryphal as well as true, had come to be regarded in
the light of tutelar divinities8. At the head of a catalogue of
saints, on whom a special veneration3 was bestowed, is the blessed
Virgin Mary; the exaggerations of this honour, which peep out iu the earlier
times, assuming more unchristian phases, in proportion as the worship of the
Church was contracting a more sensuous tone. The synod held at Merits'** 813 in
drawing up a list of feast-days, has included one for the ‘Purification of St
Mary5,’ handed down from better ages;
coKRrp nous
AND 1BCSES.
Exaggeration of the honour due to taints.
1 e. g.
Isidor. Hispalens. De Eccles. Officiis,
lib. i. c. 34. Beda speaks of the transformation of the Pantheon at Bome into
the Church of the Virgin and all Martyrs: ‘ut, ubi quondam omniuiu non deorum
Bed dffimoniorum cultus agebatur, ibi deinceps omnium fieret inemoria sanctorum.1
Chroniron, a.n. 6X4; Monum. Hitt.
Britan, p. 97.
2 Neander, v. 182, 183. But notwithstanding
a large number of examples in this country where the saints are spoken of a*
‘intercessors’ with Clod, they are scarcely ever at this period addressed
directly, the petition being that ‘God would make them intercessors in our
behalf,’ Soames, Bampton Led. p. 195, and notes. The passage sometimes quoted
from Theodore, •which speaks of more objectionable formula* as then actually
existing in the Litany of the Churi h: ‘ Christe, audi nos; ac deinde, Sanc.ta
Maria, ora pro nobis; neque dicitur, Christe, ora pro nobis, et Sancta Maria,
vel Scmete Petre, audi nos; sed, Christe, audi nos; Fill Dei, te rogamvs, audi
nos,’ is spurious. Alcuin’s apostrophe to S. Wille- brord. il genuine, reads
very like a prayer. Opp. n. 195.
3 See Ildefonsus, De Illibata Virginitate
B. Virginis, in Biblioth.
Patr.
vri. 432 sq. ed. Colon. 1018; and, for the Eastern church. John of
Damascus,
Scrmo in Annmciat. Dominie nostra OeoroVou: Opp. ii. 835 sq.
* Can. 36.
Mansi, xiv. 73. At the same council four great fasts art-
mentioned:
the first week in March, the second week in June, the third ■week in
September, and the labt full week in December before Christmas- day; at all
which seasons public litanies and masses were to be solemnized at nine
o’clock, on Wednesdays, Fridays, aud Saturdays.
* Also called Festum kiymeonis, and Festum
Symeonis et Hannie. In the Greek Church, where the honour is directed chiefly
to our Lord, the title of the corresponding feast is toprq tijs i'Tavavirjs
Beda has a Homily upon it in the course of the festivals; Opp. til 327: and Ba-
Festival
of- theAssump- tion of the Virgin.
Other
festivals now generally observed in the Western Church.
but in that list is also found tho festival of tho Assumption of the
Virgin (August 15th), which communicated a far stronger impulse to the
creature-worship of the masses. It grew1 out of a spurious legend
methodized by Gregory of Tours, in which it was affirmed that the original
Apostles, on assembling at the death-bed of the Virgin, saw her carried by a
band of angels' into heaven.
The other festivals2, excluding Sundays, now appointed or
continued in the Frankish church, relate to the Nativity, the Circumcision,
the Epiphany, and the Ascension of the Lord, the feast (or ‘dedication’) of St
Michael3, the martyrdoms (‘natales’) of St Peter and St Paul, of St
Remigius, St Martin, St Andrew, and the nativity of St John the Baptist4:
to which number, ancient festivals of saints and martyrs, who were buried in
each diocese, together with the feasts of dedication for the several churches,
were appended by the same authority. To this period also it is usual to assign
the institution of the festival in honour of ‘All Saints,’ which,
notwithstanding, had been long observed upon the octave of Whitsunday by the
Christians of the East. It was ranked as a provincial celebration in the time
of Boniface IV., when he was allowed to convert the famous Pantheon to the ser-
ronius,
Annal. ad an. 544, informs us that Gelasius laid the foundation for its
observance when he abolished the lupercalia.
1 The various conjectures of the Fathers on
the subject of the Yir gin’s end, have been stated at length by Gieseler, n.
313, n. l'J. The apocryphal writing Transitus S. Marice, from which Gregory of
Tours (De gloria 2Iartyrum, lib. I. c. 4) derived the story now in circulation,
had been placed by pope Gelasius among the interdicted books: above, p. 90, n.
2. Another festival, the Birth of the Virgin (Sept. 8), is dated also from this
period.
2 Ooncil. Mogunt. as above. The services of
Easter and Whitsunday are to be continued for a whole week; and that of
Christmas for four days.
:
Not adopted in the East till the 12th century; Guerike, 2Ianual of Antiq. of
the Church, p. 195, ed. Morrison.
4 In a second ami an earlier list
(Capitular. lib. I. c. 158), the feasts of St Stephen, St John the Evangelist,
and the Holy Innocents, are al.;o included: while with regard to the
Assumption, it is ad led, ‘Pe adsump- tione S. Mari* interrogandum rtlinquimuIt
is plain that this doubt continued to exist in the Anglo-Saxon Church. See the
extract froj'' a vernacular sermon in Soames’ Hampton Led. pp. 226, 227. The
13th canon of Clovesho (747) orders, in the case of England, that the ‘ nativities’
of saints should be observed according to the Boman martyrology: Johnson, I.
249.
vico of tlie Gospel; and the usage thus adopted in the Roman dioceses was
extended to the whole of the Western Church by Gregory IV. in 835 \
The state of feeling with regard to relics8, which grew out of
an excessive veneration for the saints; was rapidly assuming the extravagance
and folly that have marked its later stages.
The deplorable abuse of the imitative arts has been noticed in the rise
and progress of the iinage-controversy. We there saw that the evil was resisted3
for a time in the Frankish and the English Churches, while it gained a still
lirrner hold on other parts of Christendom, and threatened to subside into
absolute idolatry.
The disposition to erect and beautify religious houses, which prevailed
in the east and west alike, is often to be traced to purely Christian feelings4:
not unfrequently, however, it proceeded from a mingled and less worthy motive,
1 Gnerike, p. 181. The following is the
language of Alcuin (739) respecting the institution of tliis festival, and tha
mode in ■which it should be kept: ‘Quod nt fieri digne possit a nobis,
lumen verum, quod illuminat omnem hominem, Christus Jesus, illuminet corda
nostra, et pax Dei, quae exxuperat omncm eensum, per intercessionem omnium
Sanctorum Ejus, custodiat ca usque in diem setemitatis. Hunc solemni- tatem
sanctibsimam tribus diebus jejunando, orando. nnssas canendo, et eleemoxynas
dando per invicem, sincera devotione praccdamus.’ lip. lxxvi. (al. xci.); Opp. I. 113.
5 e. g. Theodor. Penitential, lib. ii. c. 1 ‘
Beliqui* tameh sanctorum venerandae sunt. Si potest fieri, candela ardoat ibi
per singular noctes. Si autem paupertas loci non binit, non noeet eis.’ It
was customary in the Prankish empire for chaplains to carry the relics of St
Martin and others at the head of their armies patrociiLia vel pignora
sanctorum’): cf. bchroekh. ix. 127, 131: and the same feeling led the
persecuted Spaniard to discover the potent relics of St Jamea (between 791 and
842) in the person afterwards called St James of Compostella: Acta Sanct. Jul.
tom. vi. p. 37. Even Alcuin (Homil. de Natali S. Willebrord., Opp. ii. 195) believed that the saintly
missionary might continue to w>rk miracles on e arth, through the special
grace of God.
3 See above, p. 78. The same kind of
exaggerated veneration was bestowed on the real or imaginary fragments of the
cross; and in 631 the Emperor Heraclius, on defeating the Persians (above, p. 29),
and recovering the precious relic, from their hands, established a festival in
honour of it, called fravpannos ijufya (Sept. 14), adopted soon afterwards at
Eome, under the designation, i'estum exaltationis crucU: see Liber Pontif. ed.
Vignol. I. 310.
4 e. g. Einhard. Vit. Karoli Magn. c. 26:
Pertz, n. 457. In a capitulary, 811 (Mansi, xm. 1073), addressed to the
prelates of the empire, the emperor tells them that, however good a work is the
building of line churches, the true ornament is to be found in the life of the
worshippers (‘prasferendns est a'difieiia bonornm morum omatua et culmen’).
TOBBtfP-
TIONS AND AKrSES.
Relics.
Imaged.
Religious
fouiida-
tiuns.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Pilf/ri-
mages.
Practical
results of
from the impulses of servile fear, and from a wish in the soul of the
promoter to disarm the awakened vengeance of his Judge1. Another
form in which these errors came to light was the habit of performing
pilgrimages to some holy spot or country, where men dreamed of a nearer
presence of the Lord, or some special intercession of the saints. A multitude
of English devotees2 betook themselves to Rome: and while it may be
granted that excursions of this kind were often beneficial to the arts and
letters of the country3, no one has denied that many of the
pilgrims, more especially the female portion, fell a prey to the laxity of
morals which the custom almost everywhere induced. The less intelligent appear
to have expected that a pilgrimage would help them on their way to heaven,
apart from any influence it might have in stimulating the devotions of the
pious: but this fallacy was strenuously confuted by the leading doctors of the
age4.
It lias been shewn already6 that the notion of a pur-
1 The form of bequest often runs as
follows; ‘Pro animsc- nostra? remedio et salute:’ ‘ut non inveniat in nobis
ultrix flamma quod devoret, sed Domini pietaB quod coronet.’ See other forms 01
the name class in Schrockh, xx. 110, 111. However such expressions should not
be analyzed too critically: clearly they were not intended as expositions of
doctrine or creed, and pious forms in every age are liable to be misused.
2 See above, p. 41, n. 3. Boniface was
constrained to deprecate the frequency of pilgrimages, on the ground that they
were often fatal to the virtue of the females: • Perpauca! enim sunt civitates
in Lon;?oLardia, vel in Francia, aut in Gallia, in qua non sit adultera vel
inoretrix generis Anglorum: quod scandaium est, et turpitudo totius ecclesiae
vestrEe:’ Ep. lxiii; Opp. I. 146.
3 This v, a.* certainly the case in men
like Benedict Biseop, of whom Beda has remarked, ‘Toties mare transit,
nu’i-quum, ut est consuetudinis quibusdom, vacuus et inutilis rediit, sed nunc
librorum eopiam sanctorum, nunc reliquiarum beatorum martyrum Christi manus venerabile
detulit, nunc architectos ecclesia fabncandse, nunc vitrifactores ad fenestras
ejus decorandas ac muniendas, nunc cantandi et in ecclesia per totum ann 'lm
ministrandi secum magistros adduxit, etc.’ Jlondl. in Natal. Benedict. J Opp. vii. 334.
- Thus the
45th canon of the Council of Chalons (8131 condemns all the pilgrimages
undertaken in an irreverent spirit, with the hope of securing a remission oi
past sins, where no actual reformation was desired: but it is no less ready to
commend such journeys when accompanied by true devotion (‘orationibus
insistendo, eieemosynas largiendo, vitam emeii.iandu, mores componendo ’): cf.
Alcuin, Epist. cxlvii. (al.
cxcvi.) Opp. I. 208.
5 Above, pp. 58, 59. Stories, like that
which is told of Fursey, the Irish monk (Bed. Hitt. Eccl. m. 19), -would deepen
the popular belief in a purgatorial fire.
gatorial fire, to expiate the minor sina (‘leves culpee’) which still
adhered to the departed, had been definitely formed under Gregory the Great,
and from him was transmitted to the Christians of the West. This notion, while
it threw a deeper gloom upon the spirits of the living, led the way to
propitiatory acts intended to relieve the sufferings of the dead. It prompted
feelings and ideas widely differing from those which circulated in the
earlierChurch1: for there, when the oblations were presented in the
name of a departed worthy, they commemorated one already in a state of rest,
though sympathizing with his brethren in the flesh, and expecting the
completion of his triumph. The result of those inediipval masses for the dead2
was to occasion a plurality of altars3 in the churches, to commence
the pernicious rite of celebrating the Eucharist without a congregation
(‘missas privatce,’ or ‘solitarise’), and to reduce
the doctrine of purgatory. Jiirara for the dead.
Private
masin.
:
Cf. Bp. Taylor’s Dissuasive, bk. ii. § 2: Works, yi. 545 sq., ed. Eden.;
Schrockh, xx. 175 sq.—With regard to the doctrine of the Eucharist, considered
as a sacrificial act, commemorating the Great Sacrifice, and as the means of
feeding upon Christ by fuith, more vrill be observed in the following period,
when the views of the Church at large began to be more technically stated. That
the dogma of a physical transubstuntiation of the elements was not held in the
7th century,, is clear from Isidor. Hispalensis,
De Fccles. Officiis, lib. i. c. 18: Ilde- fonsus, De Gognitione Baptismi (in
Baluze’s A!iseellanea, vi. 99). The current doctrine of the Greek
Church is to be sought in a work of Anastasius (a learned monk of Mount Sinai,
at the close of the seventh century) entitled 'Oorjyos, seu Dux vim adversus
Acephalos, c. 23, ed. Ingolstadt, 1606; and in John of Damascus, De Fide
Ortiiodoxa, lib. iv. c. 13: Opp. x. 267 sq. It was already common for the
Easterns to make use of the terms utrajSAiJ, nera<TToixtLutTis,
p.erairoii}irts, although neither then, nor at the present day, was it intended
to express a ‘physical’ change in the substance of the elements after
consecration, but a change which they define as ‘sacramental and mystical.’
Palmer, Treatise on the Church, ii. 167, 3rd edit.: cf. L’Arroque, Mist, of the
Eucharist, c. XI. XII.
3
The usages and modes of thought in reference to them may be gathered from the
following passage: ‘Nonnnlli solent interrogare, si pro omnibus regeneratis
liceat saotificium Mediatoris offerre, quamvis flagitio- sissime viventibus, et
in inalis operibus perseverantibus? De hac quies- tione varin, expositio Patrum
invenitur.’ The point is finally determined thus: ‘lllic saltern de minimis
nihil quisque purgationis obtinebit, nisi bonis hoc, actibus, in hac adhuc \ita
positus, ut illic obtineat, proinerea- tur.’ It occurs in the long Penitential
falsely ascribed to Theodore, Thorpe, ii. 53. In tho East (Council in Tmllo,
can. 83) it was necessary to condemn a custom of administering the communion to
the dead.
3
See Capitulnr. a.d. 805, i. c. 6 (I’ertz, hi. 132), ‘Do Altaribus, ut non
supeifluu sint in Ecclesiis.’
General system of church - penance.
in many parts the number of communicants1: but scandals of
this kind, like many others then emerging to the surface of the Church, were
warmly counteracted by the better class of prelates2.
The establishment of these propitiatory masses for the dead, itself an
effect of the novel dogmas which had flowed from the belief in purgatory, had
contributed to work still further changes in the system of church-penance. It
is true that the writers of this period lay great stress on the renovation of
the heart as the index of a genuine contrition3; they recoil from
the idea that alms, or any outward act, can be accepted as an expiation for
man’s sin, so long as the disposition of the sinner is unchanged4;
yet the efforts6 which were made by a series of active prelates to
discriminate minutely between heavier and lighter sins, and to allot in each
single case the just amount of penance, in proportion to the magnitude of
1 See above, p. 85, i*. I. In the Western
Church, where a neglect of the Eucharist was not followed by excommunication
(Theodor. Pmnit. lib. I. c. 12), it was necessary to exhort the laity to a more
frequent participation : e. g. Council of Clovesho (747), can. 23: Johnson, i.
253, 254. The Council of Chalons (813), can. 47, orders all Christians to
communicate on llaundy-Thursday: llansi, xiv 103.
2 e. g. Solitary masses are condemned by
the Council of Mentz (813), can. 43; and by Theodulph, bishop of Orleans,
Capitulare ad Sacerdotes, c. vn; Johnson, I. 456: cf. ibid. 419.
3 The Council of Chalons, above cited
(813), is full of cheering thoughts on this point as on many others. Its languagt was, ‘ Neque enim pensanda est pcenitentia quantitate
temporis, sed ardore mentis et mortiiicatione corporis. Cor autem contritum et
humiliatum Deus non Bpemit:’ can. 34. In can. 38 it repudiates what
was known as ‘libelli pu-nitentiales’ (certificates of penance irregularly
acquitting the offender),
‘ quorum sunt
certi errores, incerti auctores.’
■ e.g.
The emphatic language of the synod of Clovesho; can. 26, 27; Johnson, I.
255—259. Twelve means and conditions of forgiveness are recited in the
so-called Penitential of Cummeanus; Wasserschleben, Bassordnungen, p. 304. The
fanatical austerity with which Conditions of this class were sometimes carried
out, resulted in a kind of oriental selfdestruction, and induced the Frankish
emperor to pass i special law (Capital. 789, c. 77. ed. Baluze, i. 239)
forbidding all such penitents to show themselves in public. A milder form of
the same feeling ip betrayed in the 10th canon of Toledo (683), where we learn
that it was not uncom mon for persons (even prelates) in a time of dangerous
iHnt^s to submit themselves to public penance, for the greater security,
although their conscience did not accuse them of any special sin.
5 See above, p. 59, n. 4. inother
contribution to the series' w as made at the opening of the ninth century by
Halitgar, bishop of Cam bray (Cameracensis), printed in Canioius, Lect. Antiq.
ed. Basnage, tom. ii. part ii. pp.
87 sq.
the offence1, arc dark and distressing proofs of the corruptions
then prevailing in the Church, no less than of the servile spirit that was
influencing her teachers. In the case of overt sins, where public satisfaction
was required, the form of it was generally determined by the bishop when lie
came on his visitation-tour2; but all offences of a private nature,
though not uniformly8, were most frequently confessed in secret to a
priest, who, varying from the ancient practice, instantly conceded absolution4,—with
the tacit understanding, in all cases, that the penance he directed would be
afterwards performed.
Yet, far as the actual system of the Church, in this and other features,
had diverged from apostolic usage; largely as alloy had now been fused into the
gold, and thickly as the tares were mingling with the wheat implanted by the
heavenly Sower,—there is ample testimony in the canons of reforming synods,
and still more in the exalted lives of men like Aidan, Gregory, Eligius,
Liudger, Bede, and Alcuin, or of John the Almoner, of Maximus and others in the
East, to certify us that reli
1
See especially Halitgar’s Penitential and the compilation ■which has been
published, wrnngly of course, under the name of Egbert, Thorpe, ii. 129 -239.
One of the worst features of this system, as it is here expounded, was the
redemption, or commutation, of penances by means of money-payments, e.g.
Cummesmis, apud Wasserschleben, p. 404: cf. Canons enacted under Edgar; Thorpe,
ii. 284—288: see the sect. * Of satisfaction
for sin,' in the Penitential Canom (963); Johnson, i. 440. It led to the
transferring of the civil ‘ bots,’ or compensations, to the higher province of
religion, and could hardly fail to foster the pernicious thought that it was
possible in many cases to buy off the displeasure of the Lord; although an
inference like this was strongly censured in the 20th canon of Clovesho; and in
one ‘Enacted under Edgar,' § 19, it is added that the penitent, however
wealthy, ‘ must supplicate for himself, with true love of God.’ Of. Bedae Ep.
ad Ecyberctuni, § 11 (p. 343, ed. Husseyj.
“ See above,
p. 46. n. L: and Capitular, it, a.d. 813,
c. 1.
3 Theodor.
Pasnit. lib. i. cap. 12. § 7. “ Confessio autem I)eo «oli
agatur
licebit si necesse estit is added "et hoc, necessarium, in quibus- dam
codicibus non est;” and so in fact it stands in Cummeanus, xiv. 13. The
statements of Tlieodulph of Orleans (Capit. e. 30: Mansi, int. 1002),
and
of the Council of Chilons, above cited, c. 33, are still clearer proof*
that
confession to a priest was not generally regarded as essential to forgiveness
of sins.
* Thus
Boniface in his S'tatuta (Opp. it. 22—25) enjoins, c. 31: ‘Curet unusquisque
presbyter statim post acceptam confessionem puenitentinm,
singuios
data oratione reconeiliari.’
coRRcr-
TIONS AN I*
ABUSES.
Confettion and satis- fart top.
Tokens of vitality within the Church.
CORKUP- 1IONS
AND ABUSES.
gion was not mastered by tho powers of darkness, but that, on the
contrary, the Spirit of her Lord and Saviour was still breathing iu the
Christian Church, and training men for heaven.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO GREGORY VIT.
B 2
CHAPTER V.
§ 1. GROWTH
OF THE CHURCH.
IN THE SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS
The age iu which the hardy
Northmen were descending on the rest of Europe and preparing to involve their
fortunes in the politics of neighbouring countries, was distinguished by the
earliest missionary efforts to engraft them on the Christian- Church. This
project is attributable in some measure to the enterprising Liudger, but his
zeal, after reaping a small harvest of conversions1, was restrained
by an order of the Frankish monarch2.
In the evening of his reign, however, when the Saxons were all conquered,
Charlemagne, it is said, was purposing to fouud an archbishopric at Hamburg,
with a view to the further planting of the Gospel in the Scandinavian kingdoms',
The completion of this noble scheme had been reserved for his successor, Louis
the Pious, who by the
1 See above, p. 25. The Englishman,
WillehacI, also |p. 26) preached as early as 780 to the Ditmarai, in the
neighbourhood of Hamburg. The best modern account of the propagation of the
Gospel in these regions is Hunter's Kirchengeschichte von Diinem. und Norweg.
Leipz. 182B: cf. also Kruse’s S.
Amchar, Altona, 1823.
5 Fuit autom cupiens anxio gratia docendi
Northmanno** adire, sed rex Karolus nullatenus assensum pnpbuit.’ Vit. S.
Liudger. apud Pertz, ii. 414.
3 ‘ Unde pra>dicatio verbi Dei finitimis
fieret populis, Sueonum, DanOrum, Norweorum, Farrise, Gronlandan, Islandau,
Scridivindan, Slavorum. necnon omnium septentrionalmm et orientalium nationuin
quocumque modo maninatdruin. qui paganicis adhuc erroribus involvua- tur.’ Vit.
S, liimbert. c. 1: Ibid. ii. 7G5.
?irst steps >i the con- ersion of he North- r»
na- :nnn.
succours he despatched1 to Harald, king of Jutland, made a way
for the introduction of the Christian faith. A mission was at first directed2
by the earnest and experienced Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims. He carried a
commendatory letter3 from pope Paschal I. (cire. 822), and was attended
by the learned Halitgar4, bishop of Cambray. Their labours were
rewarded *, more especially in Jutland ; and in 828 the king himself, together
with his consort and a retinue of Danes, was solemnly baptized at Mentz6
in the presence of the emperor, his patron. Harald now returned to his native
country, and was anxious to engage the help of some active prelate, who would
give himself entirely to the work of organizing missions for the other parts of
Denmark.
These important functions ■were devolved on Anskar7
(Ansgar), who was destined to be afterwards called the ‘Apostle of the North.’
He was bom in the diocese of Amiens, 801, and educated at Corbey, an adjoining
monastery, under Adalhard8, the grandson of Charles Martel, and
Paschasius Radbert, a professor of theology. In 822 Anskar was removed to a new
foundation3, lately planted by the monks of Corbey, in Westphalia,
on the banks of the Weser. Ho there acted as the head of a thriving school10
and preached among the natives, until, at the request of Louis, he was added
to the suite of the Danish monarch. Like his predecessor, Ebbo, he is said to
have
1 A nnales Fuldens. a.d. 815: Pertz, i. 336.
2 Vit. S. Anskarii, c. 13: /bid. n. 699.
3 Lappenberg’s Ilamlar//. Urkundenbuch, i.
9; ed. 1842.
4 See p. 90, n. 5.
Annales Fuldens. i.i>. 822: Peitz, i. 357. The
starting-point of their operations was at Welanao, the modem lliinsterdorfi,
near Itzehoe, in Holstein.
6 Ibid. a.d.
826; p. 359; cf. the contemporary Carmina of Ermoldus Nigellus, ‘ in
honorem Hludowici,’ reprinted in Pertz, ii. 467 sq.
7 The interesting Life of Anskar is the work of Bimbert and
another of his pupils, and was composed before tho year 876. It is reprinted in
Pertz, Momtm. Germ. ii. 689—725.
8 See Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy, I. 169,
209.
» Called the
new Corbey or Corvey. The abbot (Vit. Anskar. c. 7) for ti time was Count Wala,
brother of Adalhard, who was separated from his wife and thrust into that
position by an order of the jealous Louis. See the rhetorical accounts of
Adalhard and Waist, by Paschasius Badbert, in Ptrtz, n. 524—569; and Badberti
Opp. 1507, ed. Migne.
10 Vit.
e. 6.
Us first ■sit to Unmark:
ad Sioe-
en:
irtlal mens of the,
been armed with a commendatory letter1 from pope Eu- genius
II. He departed from his cloister iu 826 or 827, accompanied by a single
coadjutor, Autbert, who assisted him in the foundation of a school in
Nordalbingia, on the borders of Schleswig. Here they educated a small band of
native youths whom they had ransomed out of slavery'*. But their proceedings
were suspended for a time by a rebellion of the pagan Danes, who, in 823, were
able to expel the king, and all whom they suspected of alliance with the
Franks.
A second, held, however, was soon opened to the diligence of Anskar.
Guided by the will of Louis, and surrendering the Danish mission to another
monk named Gisiemar3, he migrated in 031 to Sweden, where, as he had
been informed, a multitude of persons were now anxious to embrace the Gospel4.
His companion was a brother-monk of Corbey, Witmar; and the missionaries,
rescued only with their lives from an attack of northern pirates, landed on the
coast of Sweden at Bioika5, near the ancient capital, Sigtuna. Here
they gained permission from the king to enter on their labours, and were
welcomed more especially by Christian captives6, whom the Swedes had
carried off from the adjoining districts. After making
1 Lappenberg, flamburg. Urkunde.nbuch. i.
29. Pope Gregory IV. (about S34) is said to have confirmed tlie appointment of
Anskar a* ‘ pri- ixium Nordalbingorum archiepiscopum,’ and to have commissioned
him and his successors as the papal legates ‘ iii omnibus circumqnaque genti-
bus Daiiorunt, Sueonum. Noruehorum, Karrie, etc.;’ but this document, if not
altogether spurious, is at least interpolated. JafK, Regest. Pontif. Roman, p. 228: cf. Wiltsch, Kirchl. Geographic,, §
252, n. 8. Some
of the language here employed agrees with expressions in the Life of S.
Rimbert, cited above, p. 100, n. 3.
2 ‘Ipsi quoque Divino inspirati amore ad
promulgandam devotioni* suss religionem coeperunt curiose pueros quajiere, quos
emerent, et ad Dei servitium educarent,’ etc. Vit. S. Anskar. c. 8. Autbert
died two years after.
3 ‘ Patrem [? the prior] devotissimum Gislemarum, fide et
operibu* bonis probatum, etq.' Ibid. c. 10.
4 Ibid. c. 9. They seem to have heard of
Christianity bj means at the traffic carried on between Dorstode (Wyk te Duerstede)
and some of the Swedish ports: cf. c. 27. Anout 830 they sent envoys to the
court of Louis the i’ious requesting a supply of regular instructors, e. 9. The
clironology adopted in this i arrative is that of Dahlmaun, the last editor of
the Life of Aiiskar. With regard to earlier traces of the Gospel see Schrockh,
xxi. 320.
6 Vit. c. 11, ami the note in Pertz, n.
697.
« Ibid.
one important, convei't, Herigar (or Hergeir), a distinguished Swedish
noble, messengers were sent to Louis with the tidings of success;, and Anskar,
in 832 or 833. was raised to the archbishopric of Hamburg1, which
had been selected as the centre of the northern missions. He soon afterwards
betook himself to Rome, and as the guest of Gregory IV. was bound more closely
in allegiance to 1 he pope, and flattered by the present of a pall2.
With the desire of strengthening the work of Anskar, Ebbo, whom we. saw already
forwarding the Gospel in the north, deputed his own missionary office to his
nephew Gauzbert , who henceforward (with the name of Simon) was especially
directed to evangelize the Swedes.
For some time very little was effected by the holy zeal of Anskar. An
opponent of the Christian faith, the persecuting Horic (Erich), was the single
lord of Denmark; and the efforts of the missionary, who was planted on the
frontier of the kingdom, were confined to the redemption and religious training
of a multitude of youthful slaves. In 837 the see of Hamburg also was invaded
by the northern pirates (Vikings), who demolished4 all the outward
fabric of religion. While the bishop with a few necessitous attendants wandered
to and fro among the ruins of his diocese, a fresh disaster had occurred in
Sweden (837), where the heathen population rose in arms against the
missionaries, and expelled them from the country5.
1 .... ‘ cui subjaceret uni\ersa
Nordalbingorrun ecclesia, et ad quam pertineret omnium regionum aquilonalium
potestas ad constituendos episcopos, sive presbyteros in ilia* partes pro
Christi nomine destinan- dos.’ Ibid. c. 12: cf. Capitular, ed. Baluze, i. 681.
Anskar wan consecrated by Drogo, archbishop of Jletz, and ‘ aiuhicapellanus’;
Ebbo and others assisting.
“ Ibid. c. 13: but cf. above, p. 102, n. 1.
3 Ibid. c. 14: . . . . ‘ad partes veniens
Sueonum, honorifice et a rege et a populo susceptus est, coepitque cum
benevolantia et unanimitate omnium ecclesiam iuibi fabricare, et publice
evangelium fidei pradicare.’
Funds for the
mission were provided iu this cane, and in that of Anskar, by the gift of a
monastery from the crown.
4 ‘ Xbi ecclesia miro opere magisterio
domni episcopi constructa, ruin
cum claustra monasterii mirifiee eomposita, igni succensa est. Ibi bib-
lioteca [1. e. the copy of the Bible], quam serenissimus jam meinoratus
imperator eidem patri nostro contulerat, optime conscripta, una cum pluribus
aliis libris igni disperiit.’ Vit. S. Anskar. e. 16.
6 Ibid. c. 17. Ebbo was now untangled in the political troubles of the
A,ishar, archbishop of Hamburg.
Interruption of his labours.
But a brighter epoch was approaching. Anskar, at the end of seven years,
was able to regain his hold on the affections of the Swedes. In 844 he
persuaded Ardgar1, an anchoret in holy orders, to direct the
movements of the sinking mission; and in 849 his own hands were considerably
strengthened by annexing to his archbishopric the larger see of Bremen2,
which was vacant by the death of Leuderic in 847 His elevation is to be
ascribed to the interest of Louis the Germanic, but the union of the sees was
afterwards confirmed3 by a rescript of pope Nicholas I. (864).
Relieved in this way from the embarrassment occasioned by his want of funds, he
gave himself entirely to the wider planting of the faith. His progress wras
facilitated by disarming, if not absolutely winning over4, the
impetuous Horic, king of Jutland; and a number of the Danish Christians, who
had long been worshipping in secret, publicly avowed and exercised their
faith*. The mission now7 expanded freely on all sides.
It was at this juncture that the Swedes, on the return of the hermit
Ardgar, were in want of an authorized instructor ; and accordingly the great
apostle of the North-men,
empire; but a
short time before his death he gave utterance to a firm belief that
Christianity would ere long penetrate the furthest corner of the north: . . . .
‘si aliquando propter peccata quodammodo impeditum fuerit, quod nos in illis
ccepimus gentibus, non tamen umquam penitus extinguetur, sed fructificabit in
Dei gratia et prosperabitur, usque quo perveniat nomen Domini ad fines orbis
terras.’ Ibid. c. 34.
1 Ibid. c. 19, 20; where an account is
given of the zeal and fortitude displayed by Herigar and other Christians while
the mission was suspended. Ardgar ultimately returned to his hermitage (?
850).
2 Anskar hesitated in the first instance
(Vit. c. 22), but was overpowered by the king and the Council of Mentz (?
847). It appears that the see of Hamburg was now reduced, by the desolations of
the Northmen, to four ‘baptismal churches.’ Ibid.: cf. Giesebrecht’s Wendische Geschichte, x. 161; Berlin, 1843: Pagi,
ad an. 858, §§ 3 sq.
3 Lappenberg, Hamburg, Urkund. i. 25. The
see of Bremen had been formerly subject to the primate of Cologne, but was by
this act transferred to Hamburg.
4 ‘Ille
quoque omnia, quas ei ex Divina intimabat scriptura, benigne audiebat, et bona
prorsus ac vere salutaria esse laudabat, seque his plurimum delectari ac
libenter Christi gratiam velle promereri/ Vit. Anskar., c. 24.
6 ‘ Multi
namque ibi antea erant Christian!, qui vel in Dorstado vel in Hammaburg
baptizati fuerant, quorum quidam primores ipsius viei habebantur, et gaudebant
facultatem sibi datam Christianitatem suam observandi.’ Ibid.
Ilmnc favourable to the Christians.
Farther progress of the mission.
girding up his loins afresh, and taking with him Erimbert1, a
priest, set out for the court of Olof, king of Sweden2, where he
hoped to secure a footing for the Gospel. He way aided by a timely nomination
as ambassador of Louis the Germanic, and had also the protection of an envoy
from the friendly court of Jutland. After hesitating for some time, it was
decided by the Swedish nobles that the future toleration of the Christian faith
should be determined by appealing to the heathen lots3; which providentially
accorded with the earnest prayers of Anskar*. He now left his colleague,
Erimbert, in Sweden, and revisited his diocese5 ((-ire. 854).
Another storm was blackening the horizon of the Danish Church; the king of
Jutland, who had been a patron of the mission, was supplanted by a second
Horic, under whom assemblies of the Christian population had been strongly
interdicted; but a kindlier spirit was ere long infused into the royal
counsels; and when Anskar sank beneath his burdens in 865. he left a
flourishing community behind him both in Schleswig and in Jutland.
He was followed in the see of Hamlmrg-Bremen (865-888) by a prelate of
congenial temper. This was Rimbert6, his biographer and pupil. But
the widening irruptions of the pagan Northmen7 counteracted all the
efforts of the missionary, and uprooted many ancient in
A nskar's fresh visit to Sweden:
its happy issue.
Fresh reverse in Denmark:
soon terminated.
Renewal of the troubles of the Church.
1 It was on this person that Gauzbert, who
had been expelled from Sweden, now devolved his missionary office. Ibid. c. 25,
30.
2 The interview is recorded at length,
ibid. c. 26.
s
For an account of the northern mythology, see the references above, p. 18, n.
3, to which Mallet’s Northern Antiquities may be added.
4 ‘Exeuntes igitur more ipsorum in campum,
miserunt sortes: ceci- ditque sors, quod Dei voluntate Christiana religio ibi
fundaretur.’ Vit. Anskar., c. 27.
5 Ibid. c. 28.
6 See the Life of Himbert (Pertz, n.
765—775), written either by a cleric of the diocese of Bremen, or by a monk of
Corbey, soon after his death.
7 Some of them effected a landing in
Belgium as early as 820, but were repelled (Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy, I.
255). The Danish invasions of England, and the Norwegian invasions of Ireland
and Scotland, began at the close of the preceding century. Alcuin already
speaks of the ‘populus paganus’ in 797; Epist. lix. : al. lxxiv, Opp. I. 78:
cf. Worsaae’s Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland, passim.
They ravaged every part of France and won a permanent settlement in Neustria
about 911. Palgrave, I. 671 sq.
DANISH
AND
SWEDISH
CHURCH.
Favourable policy of Harald.
Establishment
of
stitutions in the other Christian provinces of Europe. Rimbert was
succeeded by Adalgar1, but the sphere of his labours was still more
contracted by the inroads of the Slaves and the Hungarians2. At the
opening of the tenth century the throne of Denmark had been tilled by a
usurper, Gurm, who shewed a bitter hatred to the Church : but in 934. his
violence was checked by Henry I. of Germany, who wrested Schleswig from his
grasp, and planted there a colony of Christians3. The next king of
Denmark, Harald Blaatand, in a long reign of fifty years (941—991) was
favourable4 to the propagation of the Gospel; and Ada]dag, the
archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, actively proceeded in the organizing of the
Danish Church. This work, however, was again suspended through the violent
reaction of the pagans6, headed by the faithless son of Harald,
Sveno (Svend), who, on his accession to the throne, immediately expelled the
clergy, and was afterwards the scourge of England6. There, indeed,
his fury was at length exchanged for something like repentance7;
arid his son, the distinguished Cnut (Canute the Great, 1014 -1035), was
assiduous in despatching missionaries8
1 Lappenberg,
Hamburg. TJrkund. 1. 43.
a Adam. Bremensis
(who wrote about 1073), Hist. Eccles. Kb. I. c. 32 sq.
1
Ibid. l;b. f« c. 48 -50, and Schriickh, xxi. 344 sq. The new archbishop
of Hamburg-Bremen, Unni, availed himself of this favourable turn in the
fortunes of the Church, and renewed the mission to the heathen. One of the
petty langs of South Jutland, 1'rodo, is said to have been baptized by Unni;
and this led to the establishment of bishoprics at Schleswig, Bipen, and
Aarhus. See Council of Ingelheim, a.d. 948;
aud the conflicting account of Adam of Bremen, lib. ii. c. 2. Not long after bishoprics were planted at Odensee,
in the island of Funen ; at Iloskild, in Zealand, as well as at Lund and Dalby.
Wiltsch, Kirch. Geograph. I 389.
4 Eespecting his conversion, see the story
of Wittekind, a monk of Corbey, in the Scriptores Serum German, ed. lleibom. i.
660; and cf. Neander, v. 397, 398.
5 Adam. Bremensis, Hist. Eccl. lib. n. c.
15 sq.
6 Ibid. c. 28, 36: see below, on the
‘Limitation of the Church."
7 He is even said to have laboured in
behalf of the religion he had Formerly betrayed and persecuted. Saxo
Grammaticus, Hist. Danorum, lib. a. pp. 186—188, ed. Stephan.
8 Bishops and priests are said to have been
ordained for this purpose by zKthelnoth, the archbishop of 'Canterbury. Adam.
Bremen, lib. ii. c. 30 sq. Hunter,
Kirchengesch. von Danemarh, i. 322 The zeal of Cnut was stimulated at the remembrance
of the wroDgs inflicted on the Church at large by his persecuting father: and
the same motive, mingled with
DANISH
AND
SWEDISH
CHURCH.
religion under Cnut the Great.
Fresh efforts to convert the Siredes :
triumphant under Olaf SkStko- mmg.
excessive
reverence for the pope, impelled him to set out on a pilgrimage to Kome (in
1027) : Anglo-Sax. Chron. ail an. 1031: cf. Lappunberg, Anglo-Saxon Kings, 11.
211 sq.
, 1
The nephew of Cnut, Sveno Estrithson, who succeeded to the crown of Denmark in 1017,
cooperated with Adalbert, the archbishop of Ham- burg-lirerm-n, in propagating
the Gospel in the northern islands and elsewhere (Adam. Bremen, lib. rr. c.
16); but in Friesland, on the coast of Schleswig, as well as in the corners of
North Jutland and of Schonen, paganism subsisted for a century or more.
s
Adam. Bremen. Jib. 1 c. 51.
3 Ibid. lib. 11. 0. 2, c. 10. There were
still, however, many heathen, er but half-converted Christians, even in the
north of Sweden: cf. Schrockh, xxi. 361, 362. Among the upper Swedes the pagan
system lingered till the mi Idle of the 12th century.
4 Adam. Bremen, lib. II. c. 38, 40, 44.
Some of these English missionaries (e. g. Will frith), by their violent
attacks on paganism, aroused the vengeance of the Swedes.
5 It was tilled by an Englishman named
Turgot, but his orders were derived from the archbishop of Hamburg, Unwan.
Other Swedish bishoprics were soon afterwards founded at Xjncoping, Wexiii,
Tpsala. Strengnaes, aud Westerahs. Jealousies appear to have arisen between the
later prelates of Hamburg-Bremen and the kings of neighbouring states ( Adam.
Bremen, lib. m. c. 15—17): but the difference was adjusted •for a while in the
time of archbishop Adalbert, who was (1068) acknowledged as the primate of
twelve dioceses (Wiltsch, Kirchl. Geograph. 1. 390), and also as a kind of
Scandinavian pontiff. In 1104, however, the more northern bishops were
subordinated to the metropolitan of Lund. Miinter, Kircheng. 11. 76.
to evangelize his Scandinavian subjects, until Denmark, as a nation, paid
her homage unto Christ1.
In Sweden, where the elements of strife resembled those of Denmark,
little progress had been made in the diffusion of the Gospel'*, since the
happier days of Anskar. Many seeds, however, planted by his care and watered by
the visits of his scholar, Rimbert, still continued to bear fruit. The mission
was resumed3 in 930 by Unni, archbishop of Hamburg; and some other
neighbouring prelates joined him in his work. The reign of Olaf Skot- kouung,
commencing with the eleventh century, was marked by a more vigorous advancement
on all sides. He was baptized about 1008, and afterwards secured the help of
English clergymen, as Sigefrith, Rodulf, Sigeward, and others, who expended all
their strength in building up the Scandinavian Churches4. The first
bishopric of Sweden5 was now placed at Skara, in West-Gothland,
where the Christians more especially abounded; and the policy of future kings,
excepting Svend, the latest champion of
Christian*
ity eventually supreme. Planting of the Gospel in Norway:
idolatry1, contributed to swell their numbers. In 1075 the
public services of Thor and Odin were all absolutely interdicted by a royal
order, and the cause of Christianity henceforth was everywhere triumphant.
Tho first entrance of the Gospel into Norway was effected also through an
English channel. Hacon (Hagen) is said to have been educated2 at the
court of iEthelstan (924-—941); and on his return, to his native country, where
he made himself supreme, he laboured, with the aid of priests from England, to
displace the pagan worship8. His endeavours soon aroused the hatred
of his subjects, who accordingly compelled him to take part in their
sacrificial rites4, and murdered the promoters of the Christian
religion. On his death, which was embittered by the thought of his criminal
compliance with idolatry, the Northmen were subdued by Harald Blaatand, king of
Denmark (962), who, in order to revive a knowledge of the Gospel, had recourse
to oppression and the sword. His measures were reversed soon after by the equal
violence of Hacon jarl, an implacable opponent of the truth6. It
was, however, introduced afresh by Olaf Tryggvason (995—1000), who had been
converted while engaged in foreign travel6, and was finally baptized
in the Kcilly Islands7. Anxious to diffuse the blessings of the
Gospel,
* The pagan party were exasperated by the
efforts of Adelward -(a bishop sent from Bremen. 1064) to subvert their ancient
temple at TTpsala. Axtam. Bremen, lib. iu, c. 17; lib. it. c. 44. This attempt was
prudently resisted by the Christian me inarch, Stenkil; but his sun Inge
(1067.1, who yielded to the over-zealous missionaries, -n an expelled by the
heathen under Svend, and restored only-by the help of his Danish neighbours.
This is the
account of the Scandinavian Chroniclers: see the evidence or. both sides in
Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxon Kings, n. 105, 106.
3 See Hunter, as above; Torfasus, Hist.
Norvegica, Pars ii. pp. 215 sq.
ed. Hafniap, 1711; and, for the most ancient authority, the Heim- skringla
(Hist, of Norwegian Kings), by Snorro Sturleson, who died in 1241
1
He Anally consented to eat horse-flesh, after drinking in honour of Odin, Thor,
and Bragi [? Fricge]. Torfa us, Pars ii. pp.
219 sq.
3 Ibid. 237 sq, He had been himself a Christian in the previous reign, but
had apostatized on his accession to tho throne.
8
He had travelled in Greece, Russia, England, and the north of Germany Tn the
last-mentioned country, he fell in with Thangbrand, a soldier-like priest of
Bremen, -nho appears to have turned his thoughts to the consideration of the
Gospel.
i He had
landed there while engaged iu a piratical expedition. Some
he took with him into Norway (977; an ecclesiastic of the name of
Thangbrand, but their efforts were too often thwarted by the violence with
which their teaching was accompanied. The jarls, who governed Norway as the
envoys from the courts of Denmark and Sweden, after Olaf was deposed (1000),
extended toleration to the Christians, and ari soon as the foreign yoke was
broken by the valour of Olaf the Holy (1017—1033), every stronghold1
of the pagan system was unsparingly demolished, and the Gospel, partly by
instruction2, but still more by dint of arms3, was
planted on the ruins.
Iceland, which was destined to enjoy the highest reputation as a seat of
mediaeval learning, had been colonized by the Norwegians in 870. But the
tidings of the Gospel did not reach it, or at least made no distinct impression4,
till a Saxon prelate, Friedrich, influenced by the reasons of a native
chieftain, who had roved the German seas, attempted to secure a footing in 981.
He was, however, fiercely counteracted by the scalds (or pagan minstrels): and
after labouring to little purpose, for a period of five years, he gave up the
mission in despair. A fresh attempt
time before,
in conjunction with Svend of Denmark, he had ravaged all the southern coasts.
Lappenberg, ii. 157, 158. He was afterwards confirme-l in England, which he
promised not to visit for the future as an enemy (Saxon Chron. a.t>. 994).
1
See, among other instances, the account of the destruction of a colossal
‘Thor’ in the province of Dalen : Neander, v. 410, 411.
”■ In this he was assisted by the founding of
schools, and by the labours of ecclesiastics out of England (see above, p. 106,
u. 8), some of whom passed iurward into Sweden. The Norwegian sees of Nidaros (Drontheim),
Opslo, Bergen, Hammer, and Stavanger, were not organized until the following
period (Wiltsch, Kirchl. Geogr. ft. 9fi): but Olaf was the tounder of the
mother-church of Drontheim. Nominally all the Scandinavian
churches were still subject to the archbishopric of Hamburg, but it seems from
u rescript of pope Alexander II. (1061), that it was customary for the
Norwegian bishops to bp consecrated either in England or in France. Lappenberg,
Ilambvrg. Urkund. I. 84: Mansi, six. 942 sq.
3 The sufferings of the heathen party
predisposed them to assist the English monarch, Cnnt, 1028. in dethroning Olaf
(Lappenb. ii. 215, 216) ; but the fortunes of the Church were unaffected by
this conquest.
* We learn from Munter’s Geschiehte (as
above), I. 520, that when the Northmen landed, they found some traces of an
older Christianity which had been planted in Iceland by the agency of Irish
missionaries : cf. Neander, v. 412, note. One of the fullest histories of the
Icelandic Church is that by Firmur Joensen (Finus Juhannjuusi, Hist. Kcclt-s.
Itlandiie, Hafnia\ 1772—1775.
finally successful.
The conversion of Iceland.
The Gospel in Green- land:
in ike Orkney, Shet-
was made by Olaf Tryggvason, tlie king of Norway, who persuaded Stefner,
a young Christian Icelander (996), to carry back the Gospel to his
fellow-countrymen. His labours also were resisted, as were those of the royal
chaplain and ambassador, the military Thangbrand (997 —999). But the progress
of religion in the motlier-country rapidly abated the objections of the
colonists, and as early as 1000 laws were enacted1 by the native
legislatures favourable to the ultimate supremacy of the Gospel. While a number
of the ancient practices were suffered to remain in secret, it was now
determined that all Icelanders should be baptized, and that the public rites of
paganism should in future be abolished. A numerous class of natives, as we may
suppose, continued to hand down the hereditary rites2; but through
the teaching of new bands of missionaries5, chiefly English and
Irish, they were gradually converted and confirmed.
A fresh accession to the Churches of the North was tho distant Greenland,
also partly colonized from Norway, at the end of the tenth century. Its apostle
was an Icelander, Leif, who entered on his work in 9S9: and in 1055 the
community of Christians had been fully organized by the appointment of a bishop4.
At the same time Christianity was carried to the
1
This step was facilitated by winning over (some say, with the help ol a bribe)
the chief-priest Thorgeir, who was also supervisor of tho legislative acts :
Schriickh, xxi. 389.
Home
revolting customs, e. g. the exposing ol infants, lingered fur p while,
notwithstanding the attempt of Olai, ling oi Norway (1019— 1033;, to suppress
them : Neander, v. 419.
1 One of the most conspicuous was Kernhard,
an Englishman, sent into Iceland by Olaf the Holy. In 1056 the first diocesan
bishop, lsleif, was placed at Skaalholt (Adam of Bremen, lie Situ I)ani<z,
c. 228;. He was consecrated bj Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen. Another see was
founded in 1105 at Holum Wiltsch, Kirchl. tieogr. n. 96, n. 8.
4 This Wu~ bishop Albert, pent by Adalbert
of Hamburg-Bremen, Hunter, i. 555 sq.: cf. the bull of Victor II. (1055)
confirming the privileges of the archbishop of Hamburg, in Lappenberg, Hamburg,
Urkund. r. 77, and idai^ of Bremen, De Situ Vania,
c. 214. The last glimpse of this ancient Church of Greenland is seen in 1408.
lieligion seems to have expired soon after with the swarm of Icelandic and
Norwegian settlers, who gave place to the present Esquimaur. In 1733, the
Moravians made a fresh attempt to introduce the Gospel into Greenland.—There is
an interesting tradition (Miinter, i. 501) of a Haioii or Irish missionary, who
is waid to have crossed from Greenland into North-America, in 1059, and there
to have died a martyr.
Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroe Islands, which were peopled mainly by
Norwegians1. In the former cases the success of Olaf Tryggvason was
due in 110 small measure to the force of arms2; and even in the
Faroe Islands, where at first he was able to proceed more calmly, through the
medium of an earnest native, Sigmund3, not a few of his efforts were
coercive. But the work was afterwards resumed, in a better spirit, by
succeeding kings of Norway4.
AMONG THE SLAVIC OK SLAVONIAN RACES.
This large and important family of men*, extending eastward from the Elbe
to the Don, and southward from the Baltic to the Adriatic (with a few
exceptions6 in Croatia and Carinthia), had continued, till the
present period, strangers to the Gospel. The exertions made by Arno, the
archbishop of Salzburg '800), were repeated in the time of Louis the Pious, by
Urolf, the archbishop of Lurch7 (Laureacum).
It was through this channel that the earliest missions were established
in Moravia. But the nation was still generally addicted to the pagan worship,
when two learned and experienced brothers, monks of the Greek communion,
entered on the same arena. These were Cyril8 (Constantine) and
Methodius9, who had already
I Worsaae, Danes and Norwegians, &c.
pp. 220, 221.
a
See Torfceus, Orcades. Havnise, 1607: Hunter, 1. 548.
3 Torfeus, De rebus gestis Fmreyensium,
Havn. 1693; Neander, v. 421.
4 On the conversion of the Northmen -who
Fettled in Christian countries, see below, <5 2, ‘Limitation of ihe Church.’
5 The oiigiu and antiquities of these races
have been thoroughly investigated hy Shafarik, Slawische Alterthumer, Leipzig,
1613.
II See above, p. 26.
7 Also called the bishop of Passau, tho two
sees having been united since the year 099 (Wiltsch, i. 076); but the primate
of Lorch disappears for a century, and then, after u long struggle -with the
archbishops of Salzburg, dies oat entirely (Ibid. 379): cf. Gieseler, h. 452,
n. 1.
* Cyril,
in 848, was Kent by the emperor Michael to instruct the ('hazari (also a
Slavonian tribe), who bordered on the Greek possessions in the Crimea.
(Asseman, Kalendar. Universeb Eeclesitp., in. 13 sq.
ed. Bon*. 1755.) Some of the natives embraced Christianity, but others were
perverted by the Jews and Moslems.
8 It is possible that the Methodius here
mentioned is the same
laud,
ami
Faroe
lands.
Propagation of Christianity amony the Slaves.
Conversion
ofMora-
Labours
of Methodius.
been successful in a different field of labour. They anived in Moravia,
861 or 862 and by the use of the native tongue in public worship, and the
dissemination of the Scriptures1, were enabled very soon to gather
in a harvest of conversions. But the jealousy which had been reawakened at
this time between the Greek and Latin Churches, added to a host of diplomatic
reasons on the part of the Moravian princes, made it necessary for the leaders
of the mission to secure an understanding with the Western pontiff, who was
anxious on his part to cultivate their friendship. Cyril and Methodius W'ent
to Home in 867; and the former either dying on the journey or (as others say)
retiring to a convent, his companion was now chosen by the pope, and
consecrated metropolitan of Pannonia and Moravia2. He immediately
resumed his labours (868) in this new capacity. Soon after, the political
disturbance, which commenced with tfie year 870, impelled him to seek refuge in
the neighbouring district of Moravia, where the German spirit was supreme, and
w here a mission had been planted from the see of Salzburg3. As
Metho-
person who
warf instrumental m the conversion of Bulgaria. Sep below, p. 122: and cf.
Schrockh, xxi. -409 sq. There is, howe\ er, great diversity in the accounts of
these two eminent missionaries. The most critical are the work of Asseman,
quoted in the previous note, and two publications of Dobrowsky, Cyrill vnd
Methodius der Slaven Apostel, Prag, 1823, and Mdhr. Legende von Cyrill und
Method., Prag, 1826: cf. also the Bussiau version in Nestor’s Annales, ed.
Schlozer, c. x.; tom. m. pp. 149 sq.
1 Whether Cyril actually invented the
Slavonic writing, or remodelled some existing alphabet, has been disputed; but
there is no doubt as to his translation of the Scriptures into the languagt of
the people: Neander, v. 434, 435. The following is the account given of their
missionary labours: ‘ Cceperunt itaque ad id quod venerant peragendum studiose
insistere, et parvulos eorum literas edocere, officia ecclesiastica instruere,
et ad correptionem divcrsorum errorum, quos in populo illo repererant, falcem
eloquiorum suorum inducere.’ Vit. Constantini, § 7: in Acta Sanctorum, Mart.
tom. n. pp. 19 sq.
Ibis
statement is derived from the title of a letter addressed by John VIII. to
Methodius (879), in Boczek, Codex Diplomaticus et Epi- stolaris Moravice
(Olomuc. 1836), i. 29: cf. an earlier letter of the same pontiff (circ. 874) to
Louis the Germanic. Ibid. I. 34. It appears also from a rescript ‘ ad
Salonitanos clericos ’ (Mansi, xvn." 129), that Methodius had certain ‘
episcopi regionarii ’ under him Ilis see was Welehrad, the capital of the
ancient kingdom of Moravia. Potthast, Ilibl. Hist. If. 371.
3 See the anonymous account of a priest of
Salzburg (quoted in p. 26, n. 1). As late as 865, the archbishop of Salzburg
consecrated several churches in this district.
dius was devoted all his life-time to the creed and ritual of the Greeks,
and constantly made use of the Slavonic language, lie excited the displeasure1
of his German fellow- workers, who, as soon as they found their influence on
the wane, did not hesitate to brand him as a traitor to the faith. In 879 he
responded to a summons of the pope2, whom he convinced (880) of his
orthodoxy3, as well as of the propriety of using the vernacular
language4 in the public worship of the Church; and in the following
year he was reinstated in his sphere of duty, and invested with still larger
powers. But meanwhile a serious misunderstanding had grown up between him and
the Moravian king, Swatopluk, who succeeded Wratislav, his uncle (870 -894).
Other influential persons5 in like manner threw their strength into
the German faction, and Methodius, while proceeding with his missionary work in
the same earnest spirit as before, was under the necessity of vindicating
himself a second time from the calumnics of his
1 Ibid ‘usquedum
quidam Grascus Methodius nomine, noviter
inventis
Slavinis literis, linguam Latinam doctrinamque Momanam, atque literas
auctorabiles Latinas philosophice superducens, vilescere fecit cuneto populo ex
parte missas et evangelia, ecclesiasticumque officium illorum, qui hoc Latine
celebraverunt. Quod ille [t. e. Richbald, the head of the Salzburg mission]
ferre non valens, sedem repetivit Ju- vaviensem.’
2 Above, p. 112, n. 2, and in Mansi, xvii.
133, The drift of the summons was, ‘ ut veraciter eognoseamus doetrinam tuam
cf. Epist♦ ad Zuventapu de Moravna (? Morawa, in Pannonia), in Boezek,
ubi sup. i. 40.
3 ‘Nos autem ilium in omnibus
ecclesiasticis doetrinis et utilitatibus orthodoxum et proficuum esse
reperientes, vobis iterum ad regendam commissam sibi ecclesiam Dei remisimus,’
etc. Ep. ad Sphentopulcum comitem; Mansi, xvrr. 181. Neander (v. 438) infers
that the Greek mode of stating the Procession of the Holy Ghost was also
conceded by this pope.
4 ‘Literas
denique Sclavonieas a Constantino quondam philosopho repertas, quibus Deo
laudes debite resonent, jure laudamus, et in eadem lingua Christi Domini nostri
pr®conia et opera ut enarrentur, jubemus... Nec San® fidei vel doctrinse
aliquid obstat, sive missas in eadem Scla- vonica lingua canere, sive sacrum Evangelium,
vel lectiones Divinas novi et veteris Testamenti bene translatas et
interpretatas legere, aut alia horarum officia omnia psallere.’ Ibid.
The injunction, therefore, was, that in all the Moravian Churches the Gospel
should be first read in Latin and then in Slavonic (‘ sicut in quibusdam
eeelesiis fieri videtur ’).
5 e.g. The bishop of Neitra, Wiching (a
German), whom the papal rescript, above quoted, n. 4, had subordinated to
Methodius: Bee the letter of the same pope (881), Boezek, uhi sup. I. 44:
Asseman, Kalend. Vnivers. Eccl. nr. 159 sq.
Fresh
misunderstanding with the German 'party.
BOHEMIAN
CHURCH.
Destruction of Mora' tuan inde- pendence.
The Gospel in Bohemia.
opponents. Ho set out for Rome in 831; but as there is no certain trace1
of him after this date, it has been inferred that he did not survive the
journey. His Slavonic coadjutors are said to have been subsequently banished
from Moravia'; and although a strong reaction was produced by the ensuing
reign of Moimar, -who was able to dissociate the Moravian < liurch entirely
from the intermeddling of the German3, all his projects were
defeated in 908, when the armies of adjacent countries, more especially
Bohemians and Hungarians, trampled on his crown. For nearly thirty years the
progress of the Gospel in Moravia was retarded by these struggles; and when
Moravian Christiatis reappear ou the page of history, they are subject to the
bishops of Bohemia. Afterwards a see was established at Olmiitz *.
The first seeds of religion had been scattered in Bohemia by the same
active hand5. Its duke, Bondwoi, was converted by Methodius6
(eirc. 871), while on a visit to the court of the Moravian king, Swatopluk, who
was at that time his superior lord. On his return to his own dominions, he took
with him a Moravian priest, by whom his wife, Ludmilla7, afterwards
conspicuous in devotion, was admitted to the Christian fold. But heathenism8,
iu spito
1See
Dobrowsky, Cyrill und Methodius, pp. 113 sq.
* Ibid. •
> Ou the
jealousy excited by these controversies, see the remonstrance of Theotmar,
arefcbp. of Salzburg, aud of Hatto, archbp. of Mentz, addressed to pope John
IX. (900- 901) : Mansi, xvm. 203, 205. They view the independence of tbe
Moravians as a violation of the rights of the bishop of Passau, and of the
German Church at large, from whom, as it is alleged, the conversion of Moravia
had proceeded.
4 See Wiltsch, i. 361, 363. Some place the
foundation of this see at the year 1062.
5 The following entry in the Fuldenses
Annales, A.D. 845, will take ns back somewhat further: ‘ Hludowicus 14 ex
dncibus Boemanorum cum hominibus suis Ohristianam religionem desiderantcs
suscepit, et iu octavis Tlieophania: baptizari jussii.’ Pertz, i. 364.
6 Thij point is no: quite established, but
the evidence in favour of it is considerable. Dobrowsky, Cyrill und Method, p.
106: Mdhr. Legende, p. 114 : cf. Neander, v. 442, note.
1 See
one Life of Ludmilla, addressed to bishop Adalbert of Prague, ab>ut 985, in
Acta Sanctorum, Sept. tom. v. 354, and a second in Itobner’s contribution to
the Abhandhmgen der hohmisch. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, for 1786, pp.
417 sq. But neither of these legends is of much historical value.
8 A.f. the head of this party was Pragomir
or Drahomira, wife of Wtatislav, who is charged with the assassination of
Ludmilla.
of her untiring efforts and the piety of Wratislav her son, maintained
its rule in almost every district of Bohemia; and the struggle was prolonged
into the reign of her grandson Wenzeslav1 (928-936), who seems to
have inherited her faith and saintliness of life. He was murdered at the
instigation of his pagan brother, Boleslav the Cruel, and for many years the
little band of Christians had to brave a most bitter persecution. In 950,
Boleslav was conquered by the armies of Germany, under Otlio I.; which paved a
way to the establishment and wider propagation of the truth. Still more was
effected by the sterner policy of Boleslav the Pious (067—999); in whose reign
also a more definite organization was imparted to the whole of the Bohemian
Church by founding the bishopric of Prague2. It was filled in 933 by
a learned German, Adalbert (orWojtech). Noted for the warmth of his missionary
zeal3, he laboured, with the aid of Boleslav', to drive out the
surviving elements of paganism, by circulating a more stringent code of
disciplinary injunctions4. The imprudent haste and harshness of his
measures, added to the national dislike of everything Germanic, soon compelled
him to resign his post, when he retreated to a convent. In 994. he was ordered
to resume his duties by the. voice of the Roman synod5, and
reluctantly obeying the injunction he returned into Bohemia; but the jealous
spirit he had stirred in the Slavonian populace ere long ejected him afresh.
His policy however was triumphantly established
BOHEMIA S'
chcihu.
Adalbert, arehbhhop of Prague:
his expulsion.
1 Seethe Life of Wenzeslav (Wcneeslaua) ; Aeta Sanrtor. Sept.
vn. 825.
2 Wiltsch, I. 361, 363, n. 22: but the
rescript attributed to John XIII., confirmin'; the foundation of the bishopric,
is spurious. Jaffe. Regctta Pontif.
p. 917. The first prelate was Diethim.r, a monk of Magdeburg: see
Cosmas Pragensis, who wrote a Bohemian Chronicle about ll(K): tom. pp. 1993 sq.
in Mencken. Script. Her. Germanic,
3 He finally died a martyr in 997, while
seeking to convert the Prussians, in the neighbourhood of Dantzig. See a Life
of Adalbert in Pertz, vi. 574. He hrd also laboured in a mission to the
Hungarians, nee below, p. 127. The efforts of Adalbert in behalf of the
ferocious Prussians were repeated by Prano, the court-chaplain of Otho III.:
but he too perished in 1003, together with eighteen of his companions. Act. Sanct. Ord. Benedict vm. 79 sq.
4 Among other things he combated polygamy,
clerical concubinage, arbitrary divorces, the traffic in Christian slaves which
was largely carried on hv Jews, &c. See the Life of Adalbert, as above: and
cf. Schrockh. xii. 440, 441.
5 See both the Lives of him, in Pertz, vi.
£39, 602.
Triumph of the German spirit. The Gospel in Poland.
A d option of coercive measures.
in the time of Sevorus1 a later primate (1030-1087); for
although the Slavo-Latin ritual2, as imported from Moravia, was
still cherished here and there, it gradually retired before the influence of
the Roman or Germanic uses.
As the Gospel had passed over from Moravia to Bohemia, so the latter was
the instrument of God for planting it among the kindred tribes of Poland. Their
dominion at this period was extending northward to the Netze, and embraced all
the modern province of Silesia. In 966, the Polish duke3, Mjesko or
Miecislav, who had married a Bohemian princess (Dambrowka), was converted to
the Christian faith; and many of the courtiers following his example were
baptized on the same occasion. But his violent suppression of the pagan worship
(967), as in cases we have seen already, could not fail to produce an obstinate
resistance4 on the part of the uninstructed. In the following
reigns, when Poland for a time was freed from the superiority of the empire, this
obnoxious policy continued; and the slightest violation of the canons of
1 Schrockh, xxi. 4i2sq.
2 One of the conditions! mentioned in the
rescript which relates to the founding of the Bee of Prague is to the effect
that Divine service shall in future be performed * non secundum ritu* aut
sectam Bulgaria gentis, vel Ruzice aut Sclavonics lingute, sed magis sequens
instituta et decreta apostolica,’ &c. Boczek, Codex Diplomaticus Moral', i.
80. But spurious though this rescript is, a multitude of better proofs assure
us that the question here suggested was a source of much dispute. See the
account of a struggle between the Latin and Slavonic services at the convent of
Sasawa, in Mencken. Script. Rer. German, hi. 1782 sq. After a vehement letter
of Gregory VII. (1080) to Wratislav, duke of Bohemia, prohibiting the use of
the Slavonic ritual (Mansi, xx. 290), the monks who adhered to the use of it
were (in 1097) expelled, and their service-books destroyed (Mencken, in. 1788).
In some parts of Bohemia, the vernacular ritual was revived, or kept its
ground; and one convent in the suburbs of Prague retains it at this day.
Gieseler, ii. 458, n. 17.
3 See Thieimar (or Ditmari, Chronicon, lib.
iv. c. 35: in Pertz, v. 783, and the Polish historian, Martinos Gallus (who
wrote about 1130), lib. i. c. 5, ed. Bandtke, 1824: et. Schrockh, xxt. 491 sq., where the traces of a
somewhat older Christianity have been collected.
4 Accordingly we find that the Gospel had
made little progress in 980: Schrockh, xxi. 490. For some time there was but
one Polish oishopric, that of Posen, founded fit is said) by the Emperor Otho
I. in 970, and subordinated to the metropolitan of Magdeburg. When Poland, in
the following century, became an independent kingdom, the archbishopric of
Gnesen took the lead of other sees (including Oolberg, Cracow, and Wra tislavia
or Breslau) which were founded. Wiltsch, i. 395—397 : cf. Schrockh xxi. 497 sq-
A council was held iu Poland (1000) by the Emperor OLho III. Mansi, xix. 207.
the Church was punished by the civil power1. A fresh impulse
was communicated to the progress of religion, by the reign2 of
Casimir I. (1034 -1058), who was previously an inmate either of the Benedictine
house at Clugny, or of a German convent at Braunweiler. By him all the ritual
of the Church, that had hitherto retained a portion of the impress it derived
from the Christians of Moravia and Bohemia3, was brought into more
general agreement with the liturgies and customs of the West4.
In addition to the tribes already folded in the Christian Church, were
others also of Slavonic blood, most commonly entitled Wends. They had settled
in the districts bordering the Elbe, the Oder, and the Saale, and were already
vassals of the German empire. Like the northern Saxons of the former period,
they were men of a fierce and indomitable spirit, who regarded the persuasions
of the missionary as designed to perpetuate their bondage. This political
repugnance to his visits was increased by his imperfect knowledge of the
Slavic dialects5; and as their nationality was more and more
endangered by the heavy yoke6 of their oppressors, they were
constantly attempting to regain their independence, and extinguish the few glimmerings
of truth that had been forced into their minds. Accordingly, the progress of
religion in these districts had been slow and superficial; but the death of
their conqueror, Henry I., in 236, was followed by a different mode of treat-
Attemptx to introduce the Gospel among the Wendt.
1 e.g. ‘ Quicunque post eeptuagesimam camem
manducasse inveni- tur, abscisis dentibus graviter punimr. Lex narnque divina
in his regio- nibus noviter exorta potentate tali, melius quam jejunio ab
episcopis instituto, corruhoratur.' Thietmar, Chrun. lib. ym. c. 2.
2 The strange circumstances connected with
his elevation are related in ilartinus Gallus, Ohronicon, as above; and Cromer,
de Rebus Polono- rum, lib. iv. p. 50, ed. Colon.
s See Friese,
Kirchengeachichte des Konigreichs Poland, 1. 01 sq., Breslau, 1786.
4 As early as 1012, the king of Poland,
Boleslav, betrays a strong
leaning
to the Church of Home (Thietmar, Chronic, lib. vi. c. 56', and many of his
successors carried this feeling of deference much further.
6 See a striking exemplification of this in
Thietmar’s Chronicon, lib. 11. c. 23 (Pertz, v. 755).
6 ‘ Quibus mens pronior est ad pensiones
vectigalium quam ad con- versionem gentilium,' wus the censure passed upon the
German conquerors by the then king of .Denmark. Neander, v. 446, note. The same
is the complaint of the Chronicler Helmold (lib. 1. c. 21). ‘ Semper proniores
sunt tributis augmentandis, quam animabus Domino conquirtaidis.’
WEN DISH
CHURCH.
Foundation of several bishoprics.
ment, and a somewhat larger measure of success. Desirous of promoting
their conversion, Oth© I. founded many bishoprics1 among the Wends,
and placed them under the direction of a better class of men,—of missionaries
who had been distinguished by their skill in other fields of labour. In 946 a
prelate of this kind was sent to Havelberg; another to Aldenburg, in 048 ; a
third to Brandenburg, in S49. Those of Meissen (Misna), Cizi, and Merseburg
followed in 968, and in that, or in the previous year, the organization of the
Wendish Church was finished by erecting the metropolitical see of Magdeburg,
according to a plan propounded by the council of Ravenna* (967). The first
primate, Adalbert, lia«l been educated in the monastery of Treves, and is said
to have been chosen several years before to plant a fruitless mission in a
distant tribe of Slaves3. His present work also was thwarted by a
general insurrection of the heathen Wends, assisted by unstable soldiers of the
Cross. Impatient of the German rule, or maddened by some special grievances
occurring at the time, they ravaged4 all the neighbouring districts,
more especially the seats of missionary enterprise; and though the leader of
the movement, Mistewoi, a Christian, afterwards deplored his furious onslaught,
it was long ere the wounds he had inflicted on the Church were altogether
healed.
A salutary change is dated from the reign of his holy grandson,
Gottschalk, who is famous in the German annals
1
Wiltsch, i. 394, 395. The bishopric of Cizi (Zeiz) was in 1029 transferred to
Naumburf'; that of Aidenburg (Oldenburg) was transferred to Liibeck in and was
from the first a suffragan of the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, and not,
like the rest, of Magdeburg. It seems to have been afterwards divided, and two
other bishoprics established, for a time, ut Ratzeburg and Mecklenburg. See the
Chrunicon Slavorum by Helmold, a missionary at Bosov, about 1150, in Leibnitz's
Scriptore.s Brunsr. n. 537 sq.
• Mansi, inn.' 501—503; cf.
Schrockh, xxi. 482 sq. One object of thi i Emperor in urging
the foundation of this new archbishopric appears to have been <i wish to
abridge the inordinate power of the see of Mentz. The pall was sent to the new
German primate in 'J6S. Mansi, xix. 5.
3 Jt is generally supposed that the
Slavonic tribe in question was that of the Ruxsiam; but. Neander (v. 447, 452)
argues that the*Slavonians in the isle of Iiiigen were intended by the
chroniclers.
4 See Helmol'l, as above, lib. I. c. 14
sq., Giesebreeht's Wendisehe Geschichtm (from 7SO to 1182), i. 257; Berlin,
1843. When Mistewoi professed himself a Christian, after his repentance, he wap
compelled to retire from the scene of his impiety, and died at Bardevik.
Helmold, ibid. c. 16.
as the founder of the Wendish empire (1047j. He was trained in a
Christian school at Liineburg, and the military ardour he had shewn at an
earlier period was eventually directed to the propagation of the Gospel1.
Aided by an ample staff of clerics, whom he drew more especially from the
archbishopric of Bremen1, lie proceeded with unwavering zeal in the
conversion of his people. Yet so strongly were they wedded to their heathen
rites, that after labouring among them twenty years he fell a victim to his
Christian fervour (1066), dying8,• with a number of his chief
assistants, in the midst of revolting tortures. From this period the reaction
in behalf of paganism went on rapidly increasing, until few4, if
any, traces of the mission were left.
Meanwhile, another family of Slaves, united by a line of Scandinavian5
princes, were engrafted on the Eastern Church. The Russians had now gradually
expanded from the neighbourhood of Moscow, 011 one side to the Baltic, on the
other to the Euxine Sea. Their predatory and commercial habits brought them
pointedly before the notice of the emperors and prelates of the East, and
efforts seem to
1 He is even said to have preached, or
expounded, the Gospel to his subjects: ‘ Sane magnas devotionis vir dicitur
tanto. religionis Divinas exarsissH studio, ut ^ermonem exhortations ad
populuin frequenter in ecclesia ipse feeerit, ea scilicet, qua* al>
episcopis vel presbyteris mystice ilicebantur, cupiens Slavicis verbis reddere
planiora.’ Helmold, ibid. e.
20.
Bremen, as
the point of departure for tho northern missions, seems to have been a
rallying-place for all kind- of unfortunate ecclesiastics: ' Oonfluebant ergo
in curiam ejus [i.e. of Adalbert, or Albrecht, the archbishop] multi
sacerdotes et religiosi, plerique etiam episcopi, qui sedibus suis exturbati
mens® ejus erant participes, quorum sarcina ipse allevari cupiens traruimisit
eos in latitudinem gentium.’ Ibid. c. 22 : cf. Adam of Bremen, Hist. Eccl. c.
142.
J
The place of his death wan Leutzen. The last \ictim -was the aged bishop of
Mecklenburg, who, after he had been dragged through the chief cities of the
Wendish kingdom, was sacrificed to the war-god, Eadegast, whose temple stood at
Bethre. Helmold, ibid. c. 23.
4 Religion seems to have been kept alive in
some measure among the Sorlii (between the Elbe and the Saale), through the
zealous efforts of Benno, bishop of Meissen (1066—1106). See a Life of him in
Mencken. Script. Iter. German. 11.
1857 sq. But in other districts what is stated by the Chroniclers
will too generally apply: ‘ Slavi servitutis jugum arinuta manu submoverunt,
tantaque animi obstinantia libertatem de- fendere nisi sunt, ut prius maluerint
mori quain Ohristianitatis titvlwn
resumcre, aut tributa solvere Saxonum principibus. ’ Helmold. ibid.
c. 25.
5 Cf. Milman’s note on Gibbon, v. 304.
lluric, the father of this
dynasty,
became the king of Kussia in 802.
The zeal and martyrdom of king (iolti- chalk.
Extirpation of the < ruspel.
Conversion of the Russians;
tlieir depen^ dence on the Church of Constantinople.
have been made as early as 863 to evangelize1 the warlike
tribes that bordered on the Greek dominions. It is probable that sundry germs
of Christianity* were carried home already by invaders, who at this and later
times had prowled upon the Bosphorus; and in 945 we see distincter traces of
the progress of the Gospel, more especially in Kieff*. But the baptism4
of the princess Olga, who is reverenced as the ‘Helena’ of Russian
Christianity, was the commencement of a brighter period in the triumphs of the
faith (circ. 855). Her son, indeed, Sviatoslav I. (955—972) resisted all her
gentle efforts to embrace him in the Christian fold; but the suggestions she
instilled into the heart of Vladimir, her grandson, led the way, after many
painful struggles6, to his public recognition of the Gospel (circ.
S80). On his marriage with the sister of the Byzantine emperor, the Church of
Russia wras more intimately bound to the orthodox
1 Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople
(Epist. ii. p. 58, ed. Montague:
cf. Pagi, iu Baronii Annales, i.i>, 861), iu writing against the pretensions
of the Roman nee (866) exults in the conversion of the Russians, by the agency
of Eastern missionaries: hut his statement is extravagant and overcoloured. See
MouravieH's Hist, of the Church of Russia p. 8, translated by Blackinore, Oxf.
1842. An attempt has been made by the archimandrite "Macarius, Ilist. of
Christianity in Russia before St Vladimir (St Petersb. 1846), to establish a
tradition of the middle ages that St Andrew preached the Gospel in Russia.
2 In a catalogue of sees subject to
Constantinople, there is mention of a metropolitan of Russia as early as 891
(Mouravieff, as above, p. 9): yet many of these earlier accounts art- not
trustworthy throughout. The great authority is Nestor, a monk of Kieff, who
wrote in the eleventh century. His Chronicle has been edited in part, with a
valuable commentary, by Schlozer, Gottingen, 1802—1809.
3 Ir a treaty between king Igor and the
Byzantine court (945), there is an allusion to Russian (Varangian > converts
and to a church dedicated in honour of the prophet Elias, at Kieif, the ancient
capital of the empire. Nestor, Amial. iv. 95 sq. ed. Schlozer. Kiefi became an
episcopal see in 988. 'Wiltsch, i. 429.
’ This took place at Constantinople, whither she
repaired in order to obtain a knowledge of the truth. The emperor Constantine
Porphyro- genitus was her godfather. Nestor, v. 58 sq. There is some reason for
supposing that she made an application to Otho I., in 959 or 960, requesting
him to lend assistance in promoting the extension of the faith i see above, p.
118, n. 3; and cf. Schrockh, xxi. 515—517.
5 At first he was like his father, ardently
devoted to the pagan worship : he was solicited in succession by Muhanunedan
and Jewish mis sionaries from Bulgaria and adjacent parts (Mouravieff, pp. 10,
11); and then, after oscillating (it is said) between the Greek and Eoman
rites, determined to accept the former. See a fragment, De Conrersione P,us
sorum, published by lianduri. in thi Imperium Orientate, n. 62 sq. and
Neander’s note, v. 453. He was finally baptized at Cherson (on the
communion of the East1; and missionaries from Constantinople
ardently engaged in softening and evangelizing the remoter districts of the
kingdom. Aided by the royal bounty, they erected schools and churches in the
leading towns, and making use of the Slavonic Bible and other Service-books,
which were translated to their hands by Cyril and Methodius2, they
obtained a ready entrance to the native population, and the Church, as an
effect of their judicious zeal, expanded freely on all sides. In the time3
of Leontius, metropolitan of Kieff, the formation of a number of episcopal sees4
presented a substantial basis for the future conquests of the truth; and under
two immediate successors of Vladimir (1019-1077), their empire was
Christianized completely. But the fierce irruption of the Mongols (1223),
resulting as it did in their occupation of the country till 1462, was fatal to
the health and progress of the Russian, state; although the unity of purpose
now imparted to it by religion enabled it to wrestle with the infidels, and
finally to drive them out.
Another tribe, in part at least if not entirely, of Slavonic origin5
was now united to the Eastern Church. It was the tribe of the Bulgarians, who
were driven by the onward march of population to the southern borders of the
Danube, where they founded a considerable state iu Dardania, Macedonia, and
Epirus. While a party of their ruder kinsmen on the Volga were embracing the
Koran6, a wish
I>nieper>,
where a bishopric was already planted, and on his return to Kieff proceeded to
destroy the monuments of heathenism, particularly the images of 1’eroun, the
god of thunder: Moura\ieff, pp. 13, 14.
1 This was still further shewn by the
adoption of the Greek earn inlaw, as well as of the Oonstantinopolitan
service-books, &«. Mouravieff, pp. 17, 357. Greeks, in like manner, were
employed in constructing the first Russian churches (Ihid. 161), and
introducing the choral music of Constantinople (Ibid. p. ‘22).
2 See above, p. 112; Mouravieff, p. 8.
3 Ibid. p. IB. The next king, Yaroslaf,
added greatly to the number of the schools and churches, and even translated
many books of devotion, p. 20. tlo was also the chief founder of the Russian
convents, which adopted the Eule of the Studium monastery at Constantinople.
Ibid. p. 24.
4 e.g. of Novogorod, of Itostoff,
Ohernigoff, Vladimir, and Belgorod. During the oppression of the Mongols, which
lasted two hundred years, the metropolitical chair was transferred to Madimir,
and finally in 1320 to Moscow.
5 Gibbon, v. 290, 291, ed. Mllm&n :
Schrockh, xxi. 399.
6 The Caliph, Muktedir, sent missionaries
among them in 921, at the
BULGARIAN
CHORC1I.
The Gospel among (he Hungarians.
BFLGABI IN
cnntcir.
Quarrel between the Roman and
2^atriarchs.
had been inspired into the others for instruction in the doctrine of the
Gospel. In 811 many hordes of the Bulgarians, after vanquishing Nicephoros I.,
pursued their devastations to the city of Adrianople, and among the other
captives carried off its bishop and a multitude of Christians. In this way it
is likely that the seeds of truth1 were scattered in Bulgaria.
Somewhat later, Constantine, a captive monk, endeavoured to mature them, and
his hands were strengthened by a princess of the country, who was educated as a
Christian at Constantinople, whither she had been transported in the wars. By
her suggestions, and a spirit-stiring picture of the day of judgment, furnished
to her by a Grecian monk and artist, her brother, Bogoris*, the Bulgarian king,
(in 863 or 864) was drawn to listen to her creed; aud as the agency by which he
had been won proceeded from the Eastern Church, the patriarch of Constantinople,
Photius, entered on the task of training him more fully in the rudiments of
truth, and of planting it among his subjects3. But he seems at first
to have been dissatisfied with the ground on which he stood: and either from a
wish to obviate the lack of an efficient clergy, and the jangling and
uncertainty produced by rival missions4, or from a lower and
political dislike to be involved in more intimate relations with the court of
Byzantium, he soon afterwards betook himself for counsel to the Christians of
the West. In 866 oi 067 an embassy was sent to Hatisbon, invoking the
assistance of Louis the Germanic5, and either then, or a short time
earlier, envoys
request of
their own chieftain, to complete their training in the system of Muhammed: cf.
a Russian work quoted by Gieseler, n. 486, n. 2.
1 See the continuation of Theophanes, in
the Scriptores Byzantin. ed. Venet. p. 100.
2 Ibid. lib. it. c. 13—15: cf. Neander, y.
433, 431. It seems doubtful whether the present artist, whose name is
Methodius, was identical with the missionary of that name, whom we have seen
above, p. 112. Bogoris after his baptism was called Michael, the Greek emperor
Michael III standing as his godfather, by proxy.
3 I^hotii Xyisi. i.; ed. Lond. 1651.
4 It seem-i, from the letter of Nicholas 1.
(below, p. 123,n. 1). that missionaries of different nations were labouring in
Bulgaria, and propounding different doctrines, so that the people hardly knew
whom to believe: ‘ multi ex diversis locis ('hristiani advenerint, qui prout
voluntas eorum existit multa et varia loquuntur, id est, Gra?ci, Anneni, et ex
esetoris locis:’ c. 106.
5 Annales Fuldens. a.d. 8BG (Pertz, i.
379): ‘Legati Bulgarum Bades-
were directed to the pope. Accordingly, in the following year, two
Italian bishops1 set out for Bulgaria, bearing with them a long
series of directions and decisions from the pen of Nicholas L As we shall see
at large hereafter, this new act of intervention in the bounds of a diocese
already occupied by others added fuel to the flames of jealousy and envy, which
had long been growing up between the pontiff's of the Greek and Latin
Churches. As at an earlier period, they were not slow in exchanging
fulminations8; during which the capricious author of the storm went
over to the side of Pliotius and immediately3
ponam ad
regem venerunt, dicentes regem illorum cum populo non modico ad Christum ease
conversum, simulque petentes, ut rex iiloneoa prwdieatorea Christiana)
religionis ad eos mittere non differret.'. The king appointed a bishop together
with a staff of priests and deaeons, who might undertake the mission, hut on
arriving at Rome they found that the pope had already sent auxiliaries enough
for the occasion. Ibid. a.d. 807: cf. Le Quien, Orient Christianus, I.
99 sq.
1
Vit. Nicolai, in Vignol. Lib. Pontif. in. 210, 211. In 8117 other missionaries,
priests, and bishops, were ilispatched to Bulgaria (Ibid. pp. 212, 213), ‘ut,
quia ipsum Fonnosum [the areLbishop-designate of Jus- tiniana Prima in
Bulgaria] plebem dimittere sibi ereditam non oportebat episcopum, ex his
presbyteris ad ai’chiepiscopatum eligatur, et sedi eonse- crandus apostolicte
mittatur.’ The copious answer of Nicholas to the questions of the Bulgarian
envoys will be found in Mansi, xv. 41)1 sq. Among other passages of this
memorable document there if an emphatic condemnation of compulsory conversions,
such as Bogoris appears to have attempted: c. 11.
a
See the encyclical epistle of Photius to the Oriental patriarchs, In his
I(pint. ed. Lond. 1651, pp. 47 sq. The following is a specimen of his vehement
language: Kai yap Ji), Kal iiro K5j/ rfjs 'IraXtas p.epS>v cuv Slkt) rts
iiTLGTo\ri Trpbs ijfias dvairttpoiTTjiuv, d.ppr]TV* tyK\ii/j.dra]V ytfiovoa,
ar.va Kara rou oUeiov auruji' emiTKOTOu ol T-qv lraXlav ohcafirrts per a TuWrjs
Kara . 'pifftui t.al upKtjiP ftuplw b tirtu'JjivTo. in) irapibav aCroiis ovtws
ulKTp&s oWvpievovs, Kal vwa TijXiKaiWijs fiapetas TTLefrfitvovs Tvpavvlhos,
Kal robs hpaTiKoits vuu-v 1 s vfipttpfjUvovi, /cat ttarras 6e(rp.oi’s
tKkXqaia'i dvuTpeTropti'ois, p. 59. The emperors of the East supported Photius,
and when their letters were forwarded by Bogoris to Rome, the pope in his turn
(867) issued an encyclical epistle to Hincmar archbishop of Bheims and the
other archbishops and bishops of France, denouncing the Cireek Church on
various grounds, (see below on the ‘Schism between the Eastern and Western
Churches,’) and especially the envy of the Byzantine patriarch because the king
of Bulgaria had sought *a sede B. Petri institutores et doctrinam.’ llansi, xv.
355
1
‘Magna sub velocitate’ is the language of Hadrian 11. (869), when he laboured
to re-establish his jurisdiction in Bulgaria. Vignol. Lib. Pontif. 111. 253:
but the Roman missionaries were immediately expelled. A fragment of a letter
written by the pope to Ignatius, putriareli of Constantinople, on the
consecration of the Greek archbishop of Bulgaria is preserved in Mansi, xvi.
414, »nd in xvtt. 62, 67, 68, 129,
131, 136, are letters from John VIII., in which he laboured to convict the
Eastern
huuubiak
enuBCH.
OTHER
SLAVONIC
CHURCHES.
Bulgaria
finally annexed to the Eastern Church. Partial conversion of the Chazars.
Conversion
of the Croats
compelled the Roman mission to withdraw. The Church of Bulgaria was now
organized afresh, according to the Eastern model, and continued for a while
dependent on the see of Constantinople1.
The Chazars, who dwelt in the vicinity of the Crimea, on the borders of
the Eastern empire, followed the example of Bulgaria; though the preachers of
the Gospel had to struggle with a host of proselyting Jews, as well as with the
propagandists of Islamism2. About 850, some inquiring members of
this tribe implored the emperor (Michael III.) to send a well-instructed missionary
among them; and the agent chosen for that work was Constantine (or Cyril),
afterwards conspicuous for his zeal in building up the Churches of Moravia and
Bohemia3. Many of the natives, touched by his glowing sermons, were
converted to the truth, and permanently associated with the see of Constantinople.
Still, as late as 92], their leading chieftain was a Jew, and others were
addicted to the system of Muhammed11.
The Chrobatians or Croats, who had emigrated in the seventh century from
Poland to the region5 bounded by the Adriatic and the Saave, were
Christianized, in part, at the commencement of this period. It is said®
emgerors and
prelates of a breach of duty in withdrawing tlie Bulgarians fmm the papal
jurisdiction. In the first of this series of remonstrances he warns king
Michael (liogoris) of the errors of the Greeks, and adds: ‘Mihi credite, non
gloiiam ex vobis, vel honorem, aut censuin expectantes, non patri® regimen et
reipublicse znoderamen adipisci eupimus; sed dioeceseos ejusdem regionis curam
et dispositionem resu- mere volumus.’
1 Le Quieti, Oriem Christianus, I. 104.
a
See the Life of Constantine (Cyril) above referred to, p. 112: ‘Caza- rorurn
legati venerunt, orantes ac supplic&ntes, ut dignaretur [addressing the
emperor Michael, circ. 850] mittere ad illos aliquem eruditrun virum, qui eos
fidem catholieain veraciter edoceret, adjicientes inter caitera, quoniam nunc
Judsei ad fidem suam, modo Saraceni ad suam, nos converter e contrario
moliuntut.’ § 1.
3 /Vbove, pp. Ill—110.
1 The chief authority for this statement is
a Muliamimdan ambassador, who travelled in these regions, 921, and reported
that he found as many Moslems as Christians, besides Jews and idolaters. Se'e
Erahn, in tho Mfmoiret de VAcademie de St Petersbourg (1822), tome Tin; 598
sq.; and Gieseler, ix. 480, n. 3.
5 They were, in port, separated from the
Adriatic by the narrow kingdom .of Dalmatia, peopled chiefly by the Slaves,
and subject at the opening of this period to the Roman patriarch: Wiltseh, i.
399.
6 Dollinger, tit. 22, 23. Croatia was
included in the ecclesiastical
that a Roman mission was dispatched among them, at the wish of their
chieftain, I’orga, which resulted in their subsequent connexion with the
pontiffs of the West.
Here also may be noted the conversion of some kindred tribes who were
impelled into the interior of Hellas1. They were gradually brought
under the Byzantine yoke, and, after the Bulgarians had embraced the offers of
the Gospel, they attended to the exhortations of the missionaries sent among
them by the emperor Basil (circ. 870).
The evangelizing of the larger tribe of Servians, who inhabited the
numerous inountain-ridges stretching from the. Danube to the shores of the
Adriatic, was not equally felicitous and lasting. Through their nominal
dependence on Byzantium2, many of them were already gathered to the
Christian Church, but when they were enabled to regain their freedom In 827,
they seem to have refused allegiance3 to the creed of their former
masters. Subsequently, however, the victorious arms of Basil (circ. 870) made
a way to the re-admission of a band of Christian teachers furnished from
Constantinople. Through their efforts, aided by vernacular translations4,
a considerable change was speedily produced; and early in the tenth century we
read“ that an important staff of native clergy were ordained for the Servian
Church by the Slavonic bishop of Nona (in Dalmatia). From their geographical
position on the border-land between the Eastern and the Western Empire, the
inhabitants of Servia could retain a kind of spiritual6 as well as
civil independence; but
province of
Dioclea, and though subject for a time, at the close of the ninth century, to
the see of Constantinople, it was afterwards (1067; embraced anew in the
jurisdiction of the pope. Wiltsch, 1. 399,
400.
n Fullmerayer,
Geschichte der Ilalbimel Morea wahrend des Hit tel alters, 1. 230
sq. In like manner nearly all tho JIainotes, the descendants of the ancient
Greeks, who had retreated to the rocky fastnesses in the neighbourhood of mount
Taygetus, embraced the Gospel at this period. Ibid. 1. 137. Constantine
Porphyrogen. De Admin'utrat. Imper. § 50 (ed. ISekker, p. 221) speaku of the
obstinacy with which they had dun* to the pa.Tan worship of the Greeks.
2 Itanke, Hist, nf Servia, Lond. 1853, pp.
2, 3.
3 I'ollinger, hi. 23.
4 lianke, p. 3.
5 Ibid.
6 The patriarch of Constantinople granted
them the privilege of always electing their archbishop (of Uschiae) from their
own national clergy.
and other
Slavic
tribet.
The Gospel among the Servians.
Their ecclesiastical position.
Inroads of the Magyars.
their leanings on the whole were to the Church of Constantinople.
The one serious obstacle remaining to the spread and perpetuity of truth
in every part of Eastern Europe were the settlements of the Hungarians
(Magyars). Descended from a Tatar or a Finnish tribe1, they fell
upon the province of Pannonia at the close of the ninth century (circ. 885),
and, after breathing for a while among their permanent possessions, hurried
onward like a stream of fire, to desolate the plains of Italy, and terrify the
nations westward of the llhine2. The triumphs3 of the
German princes, Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great (934. S55), eventually
delivered Christendom, and shut the Magyars within their present boundaries
upon the Danube. There they mingled with the early settlers (the Avars*), and
others whom they carried off as captives from the neighbouring Slavonic tribes6.
Ibid. p. 7. A.t other times they seem to have been
in communication with the court of Home, which waf> continually repeating
its claims to jurisdiction over all the ILjrian dioceses (see e. g. a letter of
.Tohn VIII. to the bishop-elect of Nona (H79), urging him not to receive
consecration Irom any but the pope himself. Mansi, xvii. 124). Gregory VII. was the first who saluted the
Grand f^hupane of Servia by the title of ‘king;’ but the attempts to win him
over to the Latin Church were always made in vain: Ranke, p. 5.
1
Gibbon, v. 294 sq.; ed. 'Uilman. The best modern history of them is MaiUth’s
Geschichte der Magyaren, Wien, 1828. It is not improbable that the religious
system of the heathen Magyars was borrowed from the Persians. It was dualistic,
and the evil principle was named Armanyos (—Ahrim&n). Polling, hi. 33.
8 Gibbon, v. 300. ‘Oh! save and deliver n»
from the arrows of the Hungarians,’ was the cry of the persecuted Christians,
who were massacred by thousands.
3 Gibbon, Hid. pp. 302, 303.
* A.
mission had been organized for them by Charlemagne, who had nominally ruled the
whole of modem Hungary (see above, p. 28); but, as we gather from a rescript of
lienedict VII. (974), dividing Pannonia between the archbishops of Salzburg
and Lorch (Laureacum), the province of the latter had been heathenized atresh
(‘ ex vicinioram frequenti popu- latione barbarorum deserta et in soliludinem
redacta’;; Boezek, Codex Diplom. Morar.. i. 93: Mansi, xix. 52 sq.
5 This appears from a report afterwards
sent to the pope in 974 respecting the extension of the Gospel in Hungary.
Mansi, iix. 49 sq.,
At this propitious moment a few seeds of Christianity were introduced
among them by the baptism1 of two ‘Turkish’ (or Hungarian) chiefs at
Constantinople ('948;. One of these, however, ISulosudes, speedily relapsed
into his former superstitions: and the other, Gylas, though assisted by a
prelate8 who accompanied him on his return, was not able to produce
any powerful impression. The espousing of his daughter3 to Geisa,
the Hungarian duke i£72-997), was more conducive to the propagation of the
faith. But her husband, though eventually baptized, was still wavering in his
convictions, when the German influence, now established by the victory of Otho
(355), was employed in the conversion of the humbled Magyars. As early as 970
missions had been organized by prelates on the German border, none of whom were
more assiduous in the work than Piligrin of Passau4. It is not,
however, till the reign of Stephen (Waik), tho first ‘king’ of Hungary
(997—1038), that the evangelizing of his subjects can be shewn to be complete.
Distinguished from his childhood5 by the interest he took in all
that concerned the welfare of religion, he attracted a large band of monks and
clerics from adjoining dioceses6, and endeavoured to enlarge the
borders of the Christian fold. Religious houses,
and as above,
n. 4. From the same source we learn that many of these captives were already
Christians, which facilitated the conversion of their masters.
Oedrenus,
Hist. Compend. in tho Scriptores Byzant., ed. Paris, 638: cf. Slail&th, as
ahove, 1. 23 sq.
A
Constantinopolitan monk, uam«d Hierotheos. Ibid.
* See the somewhat conflicting evidence in
Schrockh, xxi. 5U0. Thiet- mar (Ditmar), Chronic, lib. viii. c. 3 (Pertz, v. 862), )4ves the following account of
the impiety of Geisa: * Hie Deo omnipotent! variisque deormu illusionibus
immolans, cum ah antistite suo oh hoc accusaretur, divitem ee et ad hspc
faeienda satis potentem afiirmavit.’
4 See p. 126, r,. 5. Ymong other
missionaries whom he sent was a Swiss monk of Einsiedeln, who was afterward?
bishop of Eatisbon. But his labours were indifferently received (IAfe of
Wolfgang, in Mabillon, Acta Savct.
(Jrd. Bened., Ssec. v. p. H17). The same Held attracted Ada1-
hert of Prague, on his expulsion from Bohemia: seo above, p. 115, and cf.
Mailath, Qttch. der Magyaren, 1. 31.
5 Life of Stephen (written about 1100 by
ar> Hungarian bishop), in Schwandtner, Scriptor. Her. Hungnr. 1. 416 sq.
' 1
Audita fama boni rectoris, multi ex terris alii* eanonic-i ot monachi ltd ipsnm
quasi ad patrem confluehant. ’ Life
of two Polish monks) y.oerard
and Benedict, by a contemporary bishop, in the Acta Sanctorum, Jul., tom. iv. p.
326.
First seeds of Christianity in Hungary.
Triumph of the Gospel.
The Hungarian Church dependent on the Roman.
Continuance of the Nestorian
schools, and churches started up on every side1, and Hungary
was now distributed, like other countries, into parishes and sees, and placed
under the archbishopric of Gran2 (Strigonium). More than once,
however, Stephen had recourse to the arm of the civil power in advancing the
dominion of the faith, especially in 1003, when he had made himself supreme in
Transylvania and in one portion of Wallachia3. The effect of this unchristian
element in his proceedings was a terrible revulsion at his death in favour of
paganism4.
Instead of cleaving to the Churches of the East, by which the Gospel was
at first imparted to them, the Hungarians, under Stephen more espfeciallv,
were drawn into the closest union with the popes. He married a Bavarian
princess, sister of the emperor Henry II., and his policy was always to
preserve an amicable bearing in relation to the German empire. By the interest
of Otho III.3, he was advanced to the dignity of king, that honour
being formally conferred upon him in 10008
by Silvester II. A more lasting symbol of dependence on the West is found in
the general use of Latin as the medium for the worship of the Church, and even
as th(jr language of the courts of justice7.
IN CENTRAL ASIA.
The missionary zeal we have remarked8 in the Nes- torian body,
as distinguished from the other Christians of
1
See the Life of Stephen, as above, pp. 417 sq.
a
Wiitseh, 1. 398, 399.
3 Life of Stephen, ibid.; cf. Neander. v. 460.
4 He was aided, for pome years, by his sou
Emmerich (Henry;, who, however, died before him in 1032; and afterwards on two
occasions (1045 and 1060) a desperate attempt was made to re-establish paganism
byforce. See the Hungarian Chronicle, in Schwandtner’s Scriptures Her.
Huiigar. i. 105, 113 sq.
i 1 Imperatoris
autem gratia ei hortatu, gener Heinrici, ducis Ba- wariorum, Waic [=StephenJ in
regno suimet episcopates cathedras faeiens, coronam et bentdictionem accepit.’
Thietmar (Ditmar), Ohr. lib. iv. c. 38 (Pertz, v. 781).
1 Fej4r, Codex Diplomatics Hungarice.
(Budae, 1829), I. 274: cf. Life of Stephen, as above, p. 417. But considerable
doubts have been expressed as to the genuineness of this papal rescript: see
Gieseler, u. 463, Schrockh, m 544 sq.
7 Dollinger, in. 35, 36.
8 See above, pp. 26—28.
the East, continued to the present period, when it gained its highest
point. Protected by the favour of the caliphs1, the disciples of the
Nestorian school were able, after strengthening the Churches they had planted
in their ancient seats, to propagate a knowledge of the Gospel in the distant
hordes of Scythia. A Tatar or a Turkish chieftain2, bordering on
China, with his subjects to the number of two hundred thousand, was converted
at the close of the tenth century; and this would naturally conduce to the
formation of ulterior projects in behalf of the adjacent tribes of Turkistan3.
It seems that from the date of the conversion here recorded, Christianity main
tained a stable footing in those quarters till it fell beneath the devastating
inroads4 of Timur (or Tamerlane). Its chief promoters were a series
of the native khans who had inherited, for many generations, the peculiar name
of ‘Prester John’5, or were at least distinguished by that title in
the credulous accounts of tourists and crusaders6.
§ 2.
LIMITATION OF THE CHURCH.
The desolating march of the Hungarians7 into Europe has been
noticed on a former page. Yet deeply as those ravages were felt, they did not
permanently curtail the area of the Western Church. A heavier blow had been
inflicted by the ruthless hordes of Northmen (principally
1 Thin protection v.as not, however,
uniformly granted: e.g. in 849 the Christians of Chaldsea underwent a bitter
persecution. Lo Quien, Oriens Christ. 11. 1130.
2 Asseman. Biblioth. Orient., tom. 11. 444
sq: Mosheim, Hist. Tartar. Eccles., pp. 23 sq., ed. Ilehnstad. 1711 He was
baptized by the Nes- torian primate of Mara in Chorasan: (cf. Le Quien, Oriens
Christ. 11.
1261
sq.)
1
On the spread of Nestorianism in these regions, see above, p. 26, and cf.
Wiltsch, 1. 461.
1
Mosheim. ibid. pp. 27 sq.
6 Asseman, tom. 111. part 11. p. 487: cf.
the discussion on thib point in Schrockh,,<xv. 186- 194. Some writers iia\e
inferred that the original
Prester John
’ was a Nestorian priest, who had been raised to the throne of the Tatar
princes; but others, it would seem more probably, look upon the form ‘ Prester
’ as a western corruption of some Persian, Turkish, or Mongolian w ord.
1 e.g. Joinville’s Memoir/ of St Louis, pp. 477 sq., in liohn’s Chronicles
of the Crusaders.
7 Above, p. 126.
Propagation of the Gospel in Tata,-y.
• Prester John.'
The avti- ChristJan fury of the Northmen.
RAVAGES OF
THE NORTHMEN.
Theirestab- liskment in the British J islands,
and gradual conversion.
Danish and Norwegian vikings), who alighted on the fairest field of
Christendom to cover it with violence and death'. In their unhallowed thirst
for gold they pillaged almost every church and ahbey on their way, in Germany,
in France, in Belgium, in the British Islands; and, success inflaming their
cupidity, they ventured even to the coasts of Italy and Spain, and came into collision
with the other spoilers of the Church, the Moslems and the Magyars. Their path
was uniformly marked fey ruined towns and castles, by the ashes of the peaceful
village and the bones of its murdered inmates: literature was trampled down and
buried, order and religion were expiring on all sides; while the profaneness
and brutality of which the Northmen are convicted baffle or forbid
description’.
Nowhere did the tempest fall with greater violence than on the borders of
the British Church3.’ The inroads of the Scandinavian vikings form
the darkest passage in her annals. Landing year by year a multiplying swarm of
pirates, they continued to enchain and spoil her from 7874 until the
date of the Norman Conquest. After the disastrous war of 833- 851, very many of
them left their barks and settled in the conquered lands, more especially the
Northern and the Eastern districts. It now seemed, indeed, as if the
Anglo-Saxon had been destined to succumb in turn before the ruder spirits of
the North, as he had formerly expelled the British Christians. But this fear
was gradually abated when a number of tho Anglo-Danes, abandoning the gods of
the Valhalla, were
1 The best modern account of these
miscreants is in Pclgrave’s Hist, of Normandy, I. 297 sij.: Lappenberg's Ilist.
of England under the Anglo- Saxon Kings, vol. ii.,
and \Yorsaae’s Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland:
on their inroads into Spain and Portugal, see C'onde, Dominacion de los Arabes
en Espaiia, i. 276, 284; ed. Barcelona, 1844.
2 The chronicles of the period give
intensity of meaning to the cry of the persecuted Church: ‘A furore Normannorum
libera nos.’ See Pal- grave, I. 460.
3 .... ‘ per Angliam et circa illam
pervagantes monasteria cum monachiu et sanctimonialibus, ecclesias cum clericis
incendere, civitates, urbes, opjiida, villasqne cremare, agros devastare,
fltrages hominum multas agere, iniiame cessabant.’ Florent. Wigom. ad Chron.
Append, in Monument. Britan, p. 610.
4 5'axon Chron. ad. an. A simple picture of
the barbarities committed by the Danes has been preserved in the
after-portions of this Chronicle.
absorbed into the Church. Anterior to the treaty of 878 between the
English, under Alfred, and the Northmen, under Gutlirum (Gorm), the latter had
been well-affected to the Gospel; and his baptism made a way to the
evangelizing of his subjects in East-Anglia, where he governed till liis death,
8911. After a very short lime the religion of the vanquished was
generally adopted by the Danish settlers in Northumbria. The peace of the
Church and country, consolidated under Edgar, was broken iu upon by new hordes
of the heathen under his unhappy successor. But in the time of the Scandinavian
dynasty, beginning with Cnut the Great2 (1016-1035;, the permanent
Danish settlers, who now might be distinguished from the lawless viking that
was prowling on the seas, were thoroughly blended with the English population.
Similar results ensued iu Scotland8, where, at least among the
Highlands, the majority of settlers were Norwegian, .and united to the crown of
Norway: while their brethren, who had won important colonies in Ireland, were
not slow in copying their example4.
After paralysing all the vigour of the sons of Charlemagne by their
desultory’ inroads, many bands of Northmen settled down in France (circ. 870),
and gradually submitted to the Gospel3. In 876 and following years,
their mighty chieftain, Kollo, wasted all the north and midland provinces, but,
after a most bloody contest, was bought off by the surrender of a large portion
of the Frankish territory of Neustria (911), and married to a Christian
princess. On his baptism”, in 912, the Gospel was successively diffused in
1 Alfred and GulhrunCs Peace,
in Thorpe, Anglo-Saxon Laws, 1. 3 52. In 94a Odo, whose father was a Dane and
fought against the English under Alfred, occupied the see 01' Canterbury: and
a, number of the other clerics were of Scandinavian blood. Worsaae, 134, 135.
1
On his zeal in extirpating heathenism and in restoring the external fabric of
religion, nee Lappenberg, 11. 203 sq. \mong other proofs of a better state of
things was the institution of 0 festival in honour of archbishop JElfheah
(Elfeg), who had been deliberately murdered after the general massacre at
Canterbury (1011). Saxon Chron., ad. an. 1012.
* See above, p. 111. Iona was again a
missionary center for the ('hristianizin;; of the southern islands, and the
Gospel was at times conveyed from it to Norwaj and Iceland. Worsaae, pp. 275,
276.
‘ Ibid. pp.
333 sq. Norwegian king* reined in IHiblin. Waterford, and Limerick, for three
centuries, p. 316.
5 Pal['rave, It 503, 504.
6 Ibid. 0‘JO.
PERSECUTIONS
IN SPAIN.
and general conversion.
of the Church by the Mu- kammedans in Spain.
every quarter of the dukedom. Missions1 had been formed
already under Herve, primate of the Gauls, and Guido, archbishop of Eouen; yet,
until the final victory of Rollo, many converts had been ill-instructed in the
faith, and not unfrequently retained their pagan habits and ideas2.
The condition of the Church in the Iberian peninsula was now less hopeful
tliau in Britain, Germany, or France; for thougli at first the Moslems3
did not practice anything like systematic persecution4, they
resisted all the missionary efforts of the Christians, and by proselyting in
their turn extended the dominion of the caliph^. Nothing daunted by the checks
they had received from Charles Martel, they sometimes overleapt the Pyrenaean
barrier; and in Spain, the mountain-districts, where the Church had taken
refuge, or at least in which alone she dwelt secure and independent, were
contracted more and more by the encroachments of Islam. She was still more
fearfully afflicted iu the gloomy period (850—960), when the Moslems,
irritated in some cases by the vehemence with which their system was denounced,
adopted a more hostile policy, and panted for the blood of their opponents. At
this juncture, we are told, multitudes6 of Spanish Christians
perished by the scourge or in the flames, exhibiting, indeed, the firmness of
the earliest martyr, but deficient in his calm forbearance and his holy
self-possession. A considerable section of the Church, desirous of restraining
what had grown into a kind of passion, drew a difference between these
martyrdoms and those of ancient times; and in a
1
See the Pastoral of archbp. HervtS, in the Concilia liothomagensU Provin.,
.Rouen, 171? It was based upon instructions given him (900) by pope- John IX.;
Mansi, inn. 189 sq.
1
In tlie document above cited the pope speaks distrustfully of mi-n who had been
baptized and re-baptized ‘et post baptism'im g.-ntilittr vixerin* et pagannrum
more Christianos interfecerint, sacerdotes trucida- verint, atque tuuulacris
immulantes idolothyta comederint.’
!
See above, p. 32.
1
See the Memorials Sanctorum >f Eulogias, in Schott’s Ilisparda lllustrata,
vol. iv., as adduced by Neander, v. 461, 462; and. on the general feeling of
the Moslems to the Christians at thit period, see Conde, Dorrdnariop dr- lus
Arabes en Espana, I. 88, 101, 180; Schrockh, xxi. 293—299; Gieseler, h. 305 sq.
5 By intermarriages and other means: see
Geddes. Hist, o] the Expulsion of the Moriscoes, in his Miscell. Tracts, i.
104 sq.
0 in the laBt note, and in the Indiculus
Luminosus of Alvar of Cordova, passim
council1, held at Cordova (852), aud prompted, some have said,
by Abdu-r-Kahman II., it was ruled that, for the future, Christians, under
persecution, should not rush unbidden to the danger, but should wait uutil the
summons of the magistrate compelled them to assert their faith. The ultimate
predominance of these, and other like pacific counsels, gradually disarmed the
fury of the Moslems; and the bleeding Church of Spain enjoyed an interval of
rest.
1
Jlan.-ii, xiv. 9fi9. Eulofrius, however, afterwards (859) the victim of his
stern ami unflinching hatred of Islainism, has denounced this synod as
unlawful: Memoryut Sand. lib. n. c. 15: cf. his Apologeticus pro hlartyribm
aiverms Galumniatores, where he vigorously defends the conduct of the most
fanatic martyrs. He was followed in this line by Al»ar, his biographer.
l-EBSE-
0DTIONS IS SPAIN.
» t.
•
Monarchical form of the Western Church.
Promoted I)tt *ke ‘ Forged Decretals'
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
The form of government-
prevailing in the Western, as distinguished from the Eastern Church, was
threatening to become an absolute autocracy. This change is due entirely to the
growth of the papal usurpations, which almost reached a climax under
Hildebrand, or Gregory VII. (1073). The Romanizing spirit of the west will
consequently form a leading item in our sketch of the internal constitution of
the Christian body at this period of its progress.
The attention of the reader should especially be drawn to one of the
mightiest engines in the triumphs of the papacy, a series of Decretals, known
as the Pseudo-Isidore1,
1 Cf. tlie allusions to this series above,
p 41, n. 1; p. 59, n. 2. Some of the documents had already appeared in the
collection of Dio- nysiuH Exiguus (circ. 526), and others ii a later one
ascribed to Isidore of Seville, but the impostor [Miihler, Schriften und
Aussatze, i. 309, makes- him only a romanticist!] who had assumed the name of
Isidore, at the beginning *>f the 9th century, fabricated many others, and
professed to carry back the series of papal rescript.- as fa.^ as A.n. 93. A
large portioii of these were afterwards received into the Roman eanon-law. See Spittler’b Ge.schichte de$ cannn. Reditu Hz auf die
Zeiten dts faUchen Itidorut: Werken, i. 220 sq. Halle, 1778.
It is almost certain that the Pseudo-Isidore decretals were first published, as
a body, in Austrasia, find in the interest of the see of Mentz; between the
years 829 and 845; though some of them appear to have been circulated
separately in the rirna of Charlemagne. The forgery has been imputed to Riculf,
archbishop of Mentz 787—814, but it is more probably due to the deacon
Benedict who lived in the time of archbishop Otgar of Mentz. 826—847. See
Robertson, Church History, ji. 268,
269; Gieseler, ii. 331, n. 12;
which had been fabricated, in some measure out of the existing canons, at
the close of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth; and in the
latter period, after suffering fresh interpolations, were made current in the
churches of the W'est. While tending to exaggerate the power and privileges of
the sacerdotal order generally, they strengthened more and more the aspirations
of the papal see1, by representing it, on the authority of ancient
usage, as the sole and irresponsible directress of the theocratic system of the
Church. As early8 as 857, the Pseudo-Isidore decretals had been
openly enlisted to repress ecclesiastical commotions3, and to settle
questions of the day; and subsequently to the year 864', they were adduced in
many of the papal rescripts,—it would seem, with no shadow of misgiving.
l’rior to this date the claims to supremacy of power, so steadily
advanced by the adherents of the Roman church, were seldom carried out to their
natural results. Under Stephen V. (816), Paschal I. (817), Eugenius II. (824),
Valentine (827), Gregory IV.6 (827), Sergius II.* (844;,
Guizot, Lect.
xx^ ii. The first person who critically impugned the genuineness of the
collection (as distinguished from its binding force ■ was I’eter Comestor
in the 12th century; but tho cheat, was not generally exposed until the time of
tho lleformation, when the Magdeburg Contuiiators (cent. 11. c. 7, cent. 111. c.
7) pointed out the almost incredible anachronisms and other clumsy frauds by
which tho bulk of the decretals are distinguished. They have, since been openly
abandoned by Bel- larmine, de Pontif. Roman, lib. 11. c. 14; Barnnius, Anna!.
Eccl. ad an. 865, § 8; Floury, Hist. Eccl. tom. xhi. Disc. Pr«:iim.
p. 15.
1 e.g. ‘Quamobrem sancta Bomana Ecclesia
ejus [i.e. S. Petri] merito Domini voce consecrata, et sanctorum Patrum
auctoritate robo- rat-a. primatum tenet omnium ecclesiarum, ad qu.-tm tam summa
episcoporum negotia et judicia atque querela.1, quam et majores
ecclesiarum qusestiones, quasi ad caput, semper referenda sunt.’ Yigilii f’p.
ad Pro- futvrum, c. 7; cf. Mansi, ix. 20, note.
2 Of. above, p. 41, n. 4.
3 e. </. Hinrniar, who afterwards
questioned their binding force, when cited by the popes against himself, could
hold them out notwithstanding as a warning to church-robbers (‘raptores et
pradones rerum ecclesiasti- carum'i: Epist. Synodal, in Mansi, xv, 127.
4 Gieseler, 11. 333, n. 15.
5 The important letter (Mabillon, Vet.
Anal. p. 298) bearing the name of this pope and addressed to bishops
everywhere, is at the least of questionable authority: Jaffe, Rsgest. Pontif.
Rom. p. 227. One clause of it runs thus: 1 Cum nulli dubium sit,
quod non solum pontificalis causatio, sed omnis sancta< n-ligionis relatio
ad Sudani apostolicam, quasi ad caput, debet referri et iude n<'rmam
sumero.’
•An
’anti-pope’ ^John), chosen ‘satis iruperito et agresti pnpulo,’
INTKRfc'il,
OBUAXIZ.l-
TION.
internal Leo IV.1 (847), Benedict III.® (8G5J, they had made
110 oEUAxizA- measurable progress: hut when Nicholas L (853 -867) was ’ seated
on the throne, the theory of papal grandeur, which had long been floating in
the mind of western Christendom, began to be more clearly urged and more
consistently established3. In the course of his reign, however, he
experienced more than one indignant check4 from the resistance of
a band of prelates who stood forward to uphold the independence of provincial
churches, and the ancient honour of the crown. The staunchest of these
anti-papal champions was the Frankish primate Hincmar5: but they
could not
was
interpolated after Gregory IV., but soon afterwards expelled, ab ‘ urbis
principibufc.’ Liber Pontif. ed Vignol. tu.
39, 40. Sergius (844) appointed a ucar for all the transalpine
provinces; cf. bis Epistle in Mansi, xiv. 80(i.
1 On the death of Leo TV. the papal chair
is said to have been occupied by a female pope, Johann* (Johannes Anglicus) :
but as the story, in addition to its great improbability on chronological and
other grounds, is not found in any writer of the period, or lor centuries
later, it is now almost universally rejected by the critics. Prior to the
Reformation, few, if any, doubted the existence of the papess. See the evidence
fairly stated in Schrockh, xxn. 75—110; Gieseler, H. 220, ». x. The story may
have possibly originated in the soft or dissolute lives of men like Joiin VIII.
and his later namesakes.
2 Another ‘ anti-pope ’ Anastasius was
elected on the death of Benedict III., but speedily deposed. Liber Pontif. ill.
154.
3 One of the earliest indications of this
purpose may be found in a rescript (863), where the primacy of Hincmar (of
liheims) is confirmed on the express condition, ‘ si tam in pra<senti quam
semper, iv nullo ab apostoliece sedis prceceptionibus quoquomcidn
discrepaverit.’ Mansi, xv. 375. On the vast influence exercised by Nicholas I.
in the establishment of the idtra-jiapal claims, see Planck, Geschirfitt des
Pabsthums von der mitte des neunten Jahrhunderts an, I. 35—147; Milman, Latin
Christianity, bk. 5, ch. 4; Neunder, vi. 10 sq.
* e.g. the account in the ipjiendix to the
Annales Bertiniani (Pertz, i. 463), when the two Frankish archbishops, Gunthar
of Colognt and Thietgaad of Treves, protested against the sentence which the
pope had passed in condemnation of themselves and the synod of Metz (863). But
as the Frankish promoters weri abetting the illicit union of the king Lothair
IT. with )us mistress, "Waldrade, their resistance was deprived of all
moral force, and was eventually conducive to the despotism of Nicholas : cf.
Milman, Jl. 301 sq. For the peremptory proceedings of the Boman synod on this
question, see Mansi, xv. 651.
5 He had deposed the bishop of Soissons,
Bothad, in 863, notwithstanding his appeal to Bome, and when this prelate in
the following year detailed his grievances before a Boman synod, the pope was
able in the end to effect his restoration (Jan. 22, 865): Lib. Pontif. m. 207;
Mansi, xv. 693. It was on this occasion that Nicholas entrenched himself behind
the Pseudo-Isidore decretals: ‘Absit ut eujuscumque [pontificis Bomaiii], qui
iu fide catholica perseveravit, vel decretalia eonstituta vel de ecclesiastica
disciplina qualibet exposita non amplectamur opuscula,
Impulse given tu Papal axvrpa- tivns by Nicholas 1.
keep their ground in opposition to the centralizing spirit of the age;
particularly when that spirit had evoked the forged decretals, and consigned
them to intrepid pontiffs such as Nicholas 1.
A. slight reaction, it is true, occurred under Hadrian II. (867), when
the zeal of Eincmar stirred him up afresh to counteract1 the
imperious measures of the Roman church, and warn it of the tendency to schism
which its frequent intermeddling in the business of the empire could not fail
to have excited. Still, on the accession of pope John VIII. (872), it entered
into closer union2 with the reigning house of France, and in spite
of the remonstrances of Hincmar and of other prelates like him, it continually
enlarged the circle of its power. Jolm VlII< was succeeded by Marinus 1.3
qua dumtaxat
et antiquitus sancta Humana ecclesia conxervans nobis quoque custodienda
ma’tdavit, et penes se in unis archivis recondita veneratur...decretales
epistola- Romanorum pontificum sunt recipiendse,
?etiamsi non grmt canonum codici compaginata*.’
1 See liia bold letter to Hadrian II (870)
in Hincmar, Opp. lr. 689, ed. Sirmond. Hadrian had come forward to defend the
cause of the emperor Louis II., and even threatened to place the adherents of
Charles the Bald under an anathema: Mansi, xv. 839. Another specimen of
Hiremar’s independence is the letter written in the name of Charles the Raid to
Hadriar II. (Hincmar, Opp. ii. 701), who had interfered in behalf of Hincmar’s
nephew vHincmar, bishop of Laon), after he was deposed by the synod
of Douzi iDuziaoum) in 871: Mansi, xvi. 569 sq. In this case also the
assumptions of the pontiff had been based on the pseudo- Isidore decretals,
which led Hincmar (though not critical enough to see their spuriousness) to
draw an important difference between merely papal rescripts and the laws of the
Christian Church when represented in a General Council: cf. Hincmar'» Opiucul.
lv. Capitulorum adv. Hincmar. I.auil.: Opp. ti. 377 sq.
8 John VIII., in 876, approved the conduct
of Hincmar in deposing his unworthy nephew (Mansi, xvn. 226), and afterwards
espoused the cause of Charles th« Bald, whom he crowned as emperor. The tone of
Charles was altered by this step, and he permitted the appointment of a papal
vicar with the right of convoking synods, notwithstanding the remonstrances of
Hincmar (Opp. ti. 719). The prodigious power* of this legate may be gathered
from the following statement: ‘ ut, quotks utili- tas ecclesiastica dictaverit,
sive in evocanda synodo, sive in aliis negotiis exercendis per Clallias et per
Germanias apostolica vice fruatur, et de- creta sedis apostolica> per ipsum
episcopis manifest* efficiantur: et rursus qua? gesta fuerint ejus relatione,
si necesse fuerit, apostolieo? sedi pand- antur, et majora negotia ac
difficiliora qua?que suggestione ipsius a setle apostolica disponenda et enucleanda
quasrantur:’ cf. Gieseler, ii. 318,
n. 31.
3 This was the first pope, who before his
elevation to that ran r 1 ad actually been made a bishop. Annal.
Fuldens. a.d. 882 (I’ertz, i.
397), where the election is spoken of as ‘ contra statuta canonum.’
INTh.l-.NAL
OEOANIZA- y OH.
His successors.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Corrupted state of the Papacy.
(882), Hadrian HI. (834), Stephen VI. (885),
Formosus1 331', Boniface VI. (896), Stephen VII. C896),
Roma.nus (897), Theodore II. (837J, John IX. (898), Benedict IV. (900), Leo. V.
(903), Christopher (903), Sergius III. (904), Anastasius III. (Sll), Lando
(913), John X.2 (914), Leo VI. (928), Stephen VIII. (929), John XI.
(931), Leo VII. (936), Stephen IX. (939), Marinus II. (942), Agapetus II.
(9x6), John XII.3 (955). They lill what is to be regarded as the
vilest and the dreariest passage in the annals of the papacy; yet
notwithstanding the decisive language in which the sins and corruptions4
of the Roman church were censured here and there, it kept its hold on the
affections of the masses, and continually made good its claim to a supremacy of
power5.
At the close of a second troublous period, during which the see of Rome
was governed, as before, by lax and
1 The corpse of Formosus n as exhumed bj-
Stephen VII. and all Ills official acts annulled. Chron. S. Benedict. (Pertz,
v. 204: cf. i. 53, 412). But although these proceedings were in turn condemned
(898) by John IX. (Mansi, xvm 221), a long and disgraceful contest was kept up
between the advocates and enemies of Formosus.
2 In the Pontificate oi John X. and those
of his immediate successors. the Boman Church was at the mercy of a band of
unprincipled females. See Schrfickh, xxn. 242 sq. Bollinger, 'ii 130. When we
have made a large abatement for the credulity of the Italian chronicler
Luitprand, who wa,< a contemporary (see his Antnpodoaxs, in Pertz, v. 273
sq.), enough will be left to prov( the horrible degeneracy and the unblushing
licence of the Human see at this period of its history : cf. the treatise of
Baiherius, bishop of Verona, rff Contemptu Canonum (in IVAchery’s Spicilegium,
I. 347 sq.). He speak* of the utter corruption of morals as extending - a vUissimo
utique ecclesite usque ad prajbtantis- simum, a laico usque ad pontificem (pro
nefas!) summurn.’
3 Iniquity reached a dim a# in this
pontiff, who was raised to The
papal throne at the age of eighteen. He was deposed (Dec. 4, 963) by The
emperor Otho (Luitprand, De, rebus (iestis Othonis, in Pertz, v. 342), who
secured the appointment of Leo VIII. and maintained him at tin helm of the
"Western church, in spite of the opposition of both John XII, and Benedict
V.: Mansi, xvln. 471; Luitprand, ubi sup. c. 20; Coptin. Regi- non.
Chron. a.d. 964 (Pertz, f. 626).
4 The centre of this party wa* Arnulph.
archbishop of Orleans: see Neander, vi. 33 sq. His freer spirit was imbibed by
Gerbert, who in 999 was himself raised to the papal chair, and took the name of
Silvester II., but his brief reign (of lour years) prevented him from carrying
out his projects of reform. Ibid. i:nd
Hock’s Gerbert oder papst Sylvester II. und sein Jahrhundert, ed. Wien.
1837.
s
The synod of Kheiins (991. famished an almost solitary instance of contempt for
the papal jurisdiction. Mansi, xix. 109 sq.; Bicher (in Pertz, v. 636 sq.).
worthless rulers,—Leo VIII. (963—965), Benedict V. (964), John XIII.
(965), Benedict VI.1 (972), Benedict VII. (974), John XIV.2
(983), Boniface VII. (984), John XV. (935), Gregory V.s (9961,
Silvester II. (999), John XVII. (1003), John XVIII. (1003), Sergius IV. (1009),
Benedict VIII.4 (1012), John XIX. (1024), Benedict IX.5
(1033), Gregory VI. (1045), Clement II. (1046), Lamasus II. (1048), —there had
grown up in almost every country" a desire to promote a reformation of the
Church, to counteract the spread of secularity, and put an end to the ravages
of discord and corruption. But it chanced that the masterspirit of this
healthier movement had been trained from his very cradle in the tenets of the
Pseudo-Isidore decretals, and the reader will accordingly perceive, that all
the efforts he originated for the extirpation of abuses, were allied with a
strong determination to extend the dominions of the papacy, by making it, as
far as might be, independent of the German empire. Such was the incessant aim
of Hildebrand6, who, long before his elevation to the papal throne,
directed the reforming policy, as well
1 He was put to death hy the lawless
faction, headed by the females above mentioned, p. 138, 11 2. Respecting Donus
or Domnus, who is said to have succeeded for a few days, see Jaifc, pp. 331,
332.
2 John XIV. was starved to death, or
executed (984) by Boniface VII. his successor (Rerum Ital, Script, ed. Mura
tori, in. ii. 333- -3351, who had been consecrated pope as early as 974, but
soon alterwards expelled. Beriman. Chron. a.d. 974 (Pertz, nr. 116).
3 After the consecration of Gregory V. his
place was seized (997) by an ‘ antipope’ (John XVI., called Calabritanu* and
Philaga thus), but the intruder was in turn defeated and barbarously mutilated.
Vit, S. NUi (I’ertz, vi. 616).
4 This pope was, in like manner, supplanted
for a time (1012) by an
* antipope,’
Gregory. Thietmar. Chron. lib. vi. c. 61 (Pertz, v. 835).
5 Benedict IX., one of the most profligate
of the pontiffs, owed his elevation to the gold of his father. At the time of
his election he did not exceed the age of twelve years. Heriman. Chron. (Pertz,
vn. 121), Glabei Kadulphus, Hist. lib. iv. c. 5: lib. v. c. 5 (in Bouquet's
Histu- riens des Goulet, etc. x.50sq.). Inl045 he sold the popedom (see authorities
in JafK, pp. 361, 362), but seized it afresh in 1047: so that with an
‘antipope’ (Silvester III. 1044—104G) and Gregory VI. (who was appointed in
1045, on the retirement of Benedict IX.) there were now three rival popes. All
of them were deposed by the Synod of Sutri (1046), at the instance of the
emperor Henry III. See the account of I)esiderius (afterwards pope Victor
III.), De Miraculis, etc. dialogi i.in JBihlioth. Pair. ed. f,ugduit. xvm. pp.
853 sq.).
8 He was seconded throughout by l’eter
l)amiani, cardinal bishop of Ostia, who was equally anxious to abolish simony,
to check the immorality of the priesthood, and to widen the dominions of the
pope.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Denre of reformation.
The ‘ reforming ' party advocate the vl-
tra-jjapal cln,'am.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Effect of these claims, on the metropolitan
constitution.
as the encroachments of successive pontiffs,—Leo IX. (1048), Victor II.
(1054), Stephen X. (1057), Benedict X. (1058), Nicholas II.1 (1059j,
and Alexander II. (1061—1073). A field was thus preparing for that mighty
conflict of the secular and sacerdotal powers, which was doomed under Gregory
YII. to agitate the Christian Church in every province, of the west.
But while the arm of the papacy grew stronger in proportion to the
weakness of the Carolingian inonarclis; while it rapidly extended its
possessions, in the east as far as Hungary, and up to Greenland in the north,
the augmentation of its power was followed, as a natural result, by the
curtailment of the privileges of the metropolitan bishops. Hincmar felt these
fresh invasions more acutely than his neighbours: he objected to the intermeddling
of the pontiff in the case of an appeal to Rome, upon the ground that such an
act was fatal to episcopacy2 in general; and when afterwards a papal
vicar, with extraordinary powers, was nominated for the Gallican and German
churches, the same class of prelates openly disputed the appointment; they
protested that they would not acquiesce in novelties put forward by the
delegate of Rome, except in cases where his claims to jurisdiction could be
shewn to be compatible with ancient laws and with the dignity of metropolitans3.
A recent law demanding vows of absolute obedience to the pope4, on
the conferring of the pallium,
1 This pontiff, on tho death of tho emperor
(Henry III.) effected an important cnange in the relations of the papacy, by
which it wan determined that the pope should ii- future be elected by the
cardinals (bishops, priests, and deacons), with tlie concurrence of the rest of
the Boman clergy and laity, and subject to an iil-delined acquiescence of the
emperor See the best version of this act in T'ertz, Leges, ii. Append, p. 177: md cf. llullam,
Middle Ages, ii. 180 (10th ed.).
" ‘
Flanc tenete,’ are the words he puts into the mouth of his Ii.'man’ izing
nephew ‘ et evindicate mecum compilationem [i.e. the Pseudo- Isidore
decretals], et nullinisi Bomano pontifici debebitis subjectionem; et
disdpabitis iru-cum Dei ordinationem in communis episcopalis ordinis discretam
sedibus dignitatem,’ Hincmar, Opp. ii. 559, 560.
. -3-Hincmar,
Opp. it. 719.
4 Cf. above, p. 136, n. S. The first cast
on record is that of Anskar. the apostle of the North. He had received the
pallium as archbishop of Hamburg (above, p. 103), without any such condition:
but when Nicholas T, fH04J confirmed the union of the two seen of Hamburg and
Bremen (above, p. 104). he announced to Anskar that it wai granted on
condition, that himself and his successors not only acknowledge the six
served to deepen this humiliation of the Western primates; and iu
newly-planted churches, where the metropolitan constitution was adopted, under
Roman influence, it was seldom any better than a shadow. Though the primates
usually confirmed the bishops of their province, and were still empowered to
receive appeals from them and from their synods, they were rigorously watched,
and overruled in all their sacred functions, by the agents or superior mandates
of the Pope1. The notion had diffused itself on every side, that he
was the ‘universal bishop’ of the Church2, that he was able to
impart some higher kind of absolution3 than the ordinary priest or
prelate, and was specially commissioned to redress the wrongs of all the
faithful. It may be that his intervention here and there was beneficial, as a
counterpoise to the ambition of unworthy metropolitans, protecting many of
their suffragans and others from the harshness of domestic rule: but on the
contrary we should remember that the pontiffs also had their special failings,
and the growth of their appellate jurisdiction only added to the scandals of
the age. It
general
councils, but profess on oath to observe with all reverence ‘ decreta omnium
Bomanaa sedis prffisulum et epistolas quaa sibi delataa fuerint.’ Lappenberg,
Hamb. Urkunde.n~buck, i. 21. In 866 Nicholas was under the necessity of
upbraiding Hincmar, among other acts of disrespect, for not using the pallium
‘certis temporibus:’ Mansi, xv. 753, On the rapid alteration of the views of
prelates with regard to the importance of this badge, see Pertsch (as above,
p. 37), p. 145.
1 Among the latest champions for the
metropolitan system in its struggle with the papacy, were the archbishops of
Milan: see the contemporary account of Amulph (a Milanese historian), in
Muratori, Rerum Ital. Script, iv. 11 sq. When Peter Damiani and Anselm, bishop
of Lucca, were sent as papal legates to Milan in 1059, this protesting spirit
was peculiarly awakened: ‘Factione clericorum repente in populo murmur
exoritur, non debere Ambrosianam ecclesiam Romanis legibus mb- jacere,
nullumque judicandi vel disponendi jus Romano pontijici in ilia sede
competere.’ Damiani, Opusc. v. Opp. in. 75: Mansi, xix. 887 sq.: cf. Neander,
on the whole of this movement; vi. 62—70.
2 ‘ Summum pontificem et universalem papam,
non unius urbis sed totius orbis:’ cf. Schrockh, xxii. 417, 418. The condemnation of orders conferred by Scottish
teachers, which was issued by the Councils of Chalons (813), c. 43 (Labbe, vn.
1270); and of Cealchythe (816), c. 5 (Councils, &c, in. 581), cannot be
understood as indicating any resistance to papal jurisdiction specially
maintained by the Scots; but must be regarded as a precaution for securing the
purity of the succession and the regular authority of the diocesans. It is
really to be viewed as a measure of the same sort as the disuse of
Chorepiscopi.
3 .See examples in Gieseler, ii. 384, 385.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
General character of the bishops.
was not, however, till a period somewhat later that these features of the
papal system, traceable to the ideas which gave birth to the ‘spurious
decretals,’ were unfolded in their ultimate and most obnoxious shape.
The organizing of the several dioceses had continued as of old. The
bishop1 was, at least in theory, the father and the monarch of his
charge. But the effects of his episcopate were often damaged2 or
destroyed by his utter inexperience, by the secularization of his heart, and
his licentious habits. It is clear that not a few of the Western prelates had
been wantonly obtruded on their flocks, through private interest and family
connexions, or indeed, in many cases, through the open purchase of their sees
from the imperial power. By this kind of bishops the disease that had been
preying on the Church for centuries was propagated still more widely; and those
prelates who were far less criminal allowed themselves to be entangled in the
business of the State, to the abandonment of higher duties. Yet, in spite of
this unhappy prevalence of episcopal delinquency, occasional exceptions meet
us in all branches of the Church: the synodal enactments3 that
1 The chorepiscopi, ■whom to saw
expiring in the former period (p. 46, 51. 2), lingered here and there. The
synod of Paris (829) complains of them (lib. I. c. 27) as wishing to intrude
into the province of the bishops. Kishotas I. in 864 (Mansi, xv. 390) directs
thar ordinations made by them should not be rescinded, but that in future they
should abstain from every function that was peculiar to the episcopate: cf. a
rescript of 865 (Ibid. x\. 462), pud one of Leo VII., about 937 (Ibid. xviii. 879), in wliich a like
prohibition is repeated. The synod of Metz (888), can. 8, directs tha* churches
consecrated by chorepiscopi only shall be consecrated anew by the bishop
■ ibid. xvm. 80.
2 A child of live years old was made
archbishop of Kheims (925). The see of Narbonne was purchased for another at
the age oJ ten. Hallam, Middle Ages, ii. 172. His statement, from Yaissfete,
that it was almost general in the Western church to have bishops under twenty,
is, of course, an exaggeration. The following picture is drawn, by Aito, bishop
of Vercelli (about 950), in DAchery’s Spicileg. t. 421: ‘ Tllorum sane, quos
ipsi [i.e. principes] eligunt, vitia, quamvis muita et magna sint, velut nulla
tamen reputantur. Quorum quidem in ixaminatione non charitas et tides
vel spes inquiruntur, sed divitiw, affinitas et obss- quium considerantur.’ And
again, p. 423: ‘ Quidam antem adeo mente et corpore obeseeantoar ut ipsos etiam
parvulos ad pastoralem promovere uuram non dubitent,' etc.
3 e.g. A synodal letter of the pope to the
bishops of Brittany (848\ Mansi, xiv. 882, or still earlier, the reforming
synod of Paris. 829, at which three bools of more stringent canons were drawn
up. The Council of Pavia (Papiense or Ticinense), held in 850. among other
salutary injunctions prohibiting episcopal extortion and intemperance, directed
acquaint us with the spread of evil testify no less to the existence of a
nobler class of bishops, actively engaged in their sacred avocations and
deploring the enormities around them.
As we readily foresee, the mass of the parochial clergy1 were
infected by the ill example of the prelate. They bad taken holy orders, in some
cases, from unworthy motives, chiefly with a view to qualify themselves for the
acceptance of the tempting chureh-preferment, which had rapidly increased in
value since the time of Charlemagne. Others gained possession of their
benefices through the help of unhallowed traffic with the patron; or descendant
of the founder, of a church. This crime of simony, indeed, was one of the most
flagrant characteristics of the age2. It urged a multitude of
worthless men to seek admission into orders solely as the shortest way to
opulence and ease: while some of them, regardless of propriety, are said to
have farmed out the very offerings of their flock3, and pawned the
utensils of the church4.
Nor were other seculars more scrupulous, and worthy of their calling. The
itinerating priests5, whom, we en-
that bishops
should, when possible, oelehrate mass every day, should read the Holy
Scriptures, explain them to their clergy, and preach on Sundays and holy-days.
Can. 2—5. The works of mercy wrought by individual bishops (such as ltadbod 0i
Trfeves and Ethelwold of Winchester) are recounted by Neander, vi. 88, 89, and
note.
1
Bowden’s Gregory the Seventh, 1. 43 sq. ‘ Ipsi primates utrinsque ordinis in
avaritiam versi, coeperunt exercere plurimas, ut olim fecerant, vel etiam eo
amplius rapinas cupiditatis: deinde mediocres ac minores exemplo maiorum ad
iminania sunt flagitia devoluti.’ (jlaber Badul- phus, Hitt. lib. iv. c. 5.
a
Cf. above, p. 143, n. 2. It began to be prevalent a* early as 82G (Pertz,
Lege,'s, 11. App. pp. 11 sq.). Li was denounced by Leo IV. (circ. 850) -n the
letter to tho bishops of Brittany (Mansi, xiv. 882). Subsequently it grew up
to an enormous pitch (Lambert’s Annales, a.d. 1063, 1071, in Pertz, vii. 166,
184), and the correction of it was a chief aim of the reforming movement under
Hildebrand, who was resolved to cut it off, especially in the collation of the
crown-preferment. There was also at this period no lack of pluralista: e.g. two
of the archicapelUni of Louis the Pious held three abbeys each. Palgrave, Normandy, 1. 239,
247.
" S»-e Vidailldn, Vie de
Greg. VII. 1. 377, Paris, 1837.
4 Hincmar of Eheims was compelled to issue
a decree against these practices. Bowden, as above, p. 49.
5 See above, p. 45. The 23rd canon of the
council of Pavia (850) renews the condemnation of these * clerici aeephalicf.
Life of Bp. (icdehard of Hildesheim, c. iv. § 26 (Acta Sanct. Maii, 1. 511), 'where they
are baid to wander to and fro • vel monachico vel canonico vel etiam Graco
habitu.’
hegentraey of the parochial clergy:
and of ulhtrs,
more
especially in Italy.
Decay
of the order of Canons.
countered in the former period, still continued to produce disorder on
all sides. They were not, however, so degraded as the larger class of
chaplains, who are said to have literally swarmed in the houses of the gentry1.
Very frequently of servile origin, they were employed by the feudal lords in
humble, and, at times, in menial occupations, which exposed them to the
ridicule of the superior clergy, and destroyed their proper influence on
society at large. It is not therefore surprising, that so many councils of this
age unite in deploring the condition of both morals and intelligence in the
majority of the ecclesiastics. This degeneracy was most of all apparent in the
church of Italy2, and, in the early years of Hildebrand, the clergy
of the Homan see are mentioned as preeminent in every species of corruption3.
There as elsewhere nearly all the healthier impulse that, was given to the
sacred orders by the energy of Charlemagne, had been lost in the ensuing
troubles which extinguished the dominion ol'liis house (887).
The decline of the cathedral canons* is a further illustration of this
change. Materialized by the prevailing lust of wealth, they strove to make themselves
completely
1
The following is a picture of them drawn by Agobard, archbp. of Lyons, in. his
De privilegio et jure Sacerdotii, c. xi.: ‘I’ceditas nostri temporis uumi
lachrymarum fonte ploranda, quando increbuit consue- tudo impia, ut pane nullue
inveniatur quantulumcunque proficiens ad honores et gloriam temporalem, qui non
domesticum habeat sacerdotem, non cni obediat, sed a quo incessanter exigat
liritam simul atque illici- tam obedientiam, ita ut plerique im eniantur qui
aut ad men?as minis- trtnt.’ etc.
4 See the works of Ratherius, a rt forming
bishop of Verona (who died in 924), in lVAchery’s Spicilegium, i. 345 «q. The
ignorance and immorality of his own elergj, and of the Italians generally,
appear to have been almost incredible. Another eye-witness speaks in the same
strain of the Milanese ecclesiastics: ‘ Istis temporibus inter dericos tanta
erat dissolutio, ut alii uxores, alii meretrices publice tenerent, alii venauo-
nibus, alii aucupio vacabant, partim fuenerabantur in publico, partim in vicis
tabemas exercebani cunctaque ecclesiastica beneficia more pecu- dum vendebant.’
Life of Ariald (a vehement preacher, who fell a victim to his zeal in §2, in l’uricelli's History of the Milanese
Church;
Milan. 1657.
The same scandals and corruptions were prevailing at this period In the East:
e.g. Neale, Church of Alexandria, (i. 190, 211.
3 Hildebrand’s uncie wculil not allow him
to complete his education there, ‘ ne Lomanse urbis corruptissimis tunc moribus
(ubi omnis pane clerm aut simoniacus erat aut concubinarius, aut etiam vitio
utroque sordebat) inquinaietur a;tas tenera,’ etc. See Vidaillan, Vie de Greg. I. S72. •
4 Cf. above,
p. 44.
ze e t
jft
independent of the bishop; and as soon as they had gained intern**, the power of managing their
own estates1, we see them 0I'^I'^.ZA"
falling back into the usual mode of life*, except in the two particulars of
dwelling near each other in the precincts of the cathedral, and dining at a
common table. As a body, they had lost their ancient strictness, and were idle,
haughty, and corrupt. The failure of all attempts to effect a general reform of
the existing bodies resulted in the formation, under the influence of Ivo of
(Jhartres, of a new order, the canons regular of St Augustine, very closely
resembling Benedictine rnonachism.
In this connexion we may touch on a kindred point, the marriage, or in
other cases the concubinagp, of clerics.
At no period did the law of celibacy find a general acceptance3,
notwithstanding the emphatic terms in which it was repeated4; and
when Hildebrand commenced his task as a reformer, aiming chiefly at
ecclesiastical delinquents, numbers of the bishops and the major part of the
country- elergy5 were exposed to his stern reproaches. In some
1
Th" earliest instance on record is the chapter of Cologne, -whose
independence was confirmed by Lothair in 860, and afterwards by a council at
Cologne in 873: Mansi, xvn. 275; cf. Gieseler, 11. 387 inote).
a
The following is the language of Ivo, the holy bishop of Chartres, who wrote
about 1090: ‘ Quod vero communis vita in omnibus ecclesiis psene defecit, tam
civilibus quain diocesanis, nec auctoritati sed'desuetu- dini et defectui
adscribendum est, refrigescente charitate, qua; omnia vult habere communia. et
regnant.e cupiditate, qua? non qmerit ea, quse Dei sunt et prrxiliii. sed
tantum quffi sunt propria.’ Epist. 215. Giei-’eler, u.388. From the Annal’s of Hirschau, (J.
Trithemius) a.d. 973, we learn that the example had been set in that year by
the canons of Trfeves: i. llfi, ed. 1690.
3 See above, p. 47.
* e.g.
Canons at Eanham (1009), § 2, where it is affirmed
that some of the English clerics had more wives than one. Johnson, 1. 483.
5 e.g. we are told of the Norman prelates
and the other clergy: ‘ Ra- eerdotes up summi pontifieen libere coujugati
et arma portantes ut laici (rant/ Life of Herluin, abbot of Bee, in Mabillon, Act Sanct. Ord. limed., saw. vi. part 11. p. 344.
Batlierius of Verona (above, p. 144, n. 2) found it an established custom for
the clergy to live in wedlock, and for their pons to be clergymen in their
turn: IVAchery’s Spicilegium,
1. i)70, 371.
Aventinus (Annales liviorum, lib. v.
c. 13, p. 541, ed. Gund- ling), speakinf; of this same period,
remarks: ‘Saeerdotes ilia tmipea- tate publioe uxoret., sicuti cajteri Christiani,
habebant, filios procreabunt, sicut in instruments donationum, qme illi
templis, mystis, monachis fe^ere, ubi hue nominatim cum conjugibus testes
eitantur, et honesto vocabnlo preshy teri site nuncupantur, invenio.’ According to Mr Hnllsm ( Middle Ages, 11. 17S) the sons of
priests were capablc of inheriting by I
Coiitln liana of clerical IIKit. riayts.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The struggle to suppress them on the Continent.
Dunstan’s measures for the same end.
quarters, and especially at Milan, where the ordinances against clerical
marriage had been rigorously urged, there was a party1 who contended
for the lawfulness of such alliances, deriving their ideas from the Bible and
the earlier doctors of the Church. But the great body of the people, blinded by
the prejudices of the age2, and disgusted by the lewdness and
corruption which had shewn itself in spite of the marriage of the clerics, took
the side of men like Hildebrand, abstaining even from the public services
conducted by the married priest8, and indicating their
disapprobation by ridicule and not unfrequently by their assaults on his
property or person4. A like spirit is betrayed in the still earlier
movement that was headed by the English primate, Dunstan5 (861—9C8).
He was truly anxious for the moral elevation of his clergy; but the measures he
adopted to secure it were not able to achieve a permanent success. He hoped to
counteract the barbarism and immorality around him by abstracting the ecclesiastics
from the world, that is, by prohibiting their marriage: and this object seemed
to him most easy of attainment by the substitution of monastic and unmarried
clergy iu the place of degenerate seculars and canons8. By his
the laws of
Franco and also of Castile: in the latter country in consequence of the
indulgence shewn to concubinage in general.
1
See the controversy at length in Neander vi. 61 sq.: and Milman. Latin
Christianity, in. 13 sq., who, with many other instances, mentions the letter
of Ulric, bishop of Augsburg (900), to pope Nicholas 1. (in Eccard, 11. 23). An
actual permission to marry was given to his clergy by Cunibert, bishop of
Turin, himself unmarried, in the hope of preserving his diocese from the
general corruption. Ibid. p. 53.
3 These were so strong that even ltatberius
of Verona looked upon the man who was ‘ contra oanones uxorius ’ in the light
of an adulterer. DAchery, 1. 363. On this account it is not easy to distinguish
between the lawful and illicit connexions of the clergy, H'ldebrand. Damiani
and other zealots spoke of such alliances in general as reproductions of the ‘
Sicolaitan heresy.’ See Damiani Opuscul. xyiii., contra Clericos intemperantes.
3 In accordance with the bidding of the
Council of Lateran (1059): Mansi, xix 907-
.Vrnulph,
Hist. Midiol. lib. in. c. 9: cf. Floury, liv. mi. s. 2G.
5 See the accounts in Koames, Anglo-Saxon
Church, pp. 195 sq., ed. 1844: and Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons, 11. 12G sq.
6 ' ...statuit 1.969], et statuendo
decretum confirmavit, videlicet nt canonici omnes, presbyteri omnes, diaeoni et
subdiaconi omnes, aut caste^ viverent aut ecclesiao quas tenebant una cum rebus
ad oas pertinentilras perderent.’ Oswald, bishop of Worcester, was especially
active in carrying out this edict, and founled seven monasteries in his own
diocese
Degeneracy of the monks.
iniluence, and the aid of the civil power which he wielded at his
pleasure, many of the elder clerics were ejected, and Benedictine monks1
promoted to the leading sees and richer livings. But soon afterwards, this rash
proceeding led the way to a violent reaction: and the following period had to
witness many struggles for ascendancy between the monks and seculars of
England. When the latter gained a victory, we learn that their wives4
were partakers of the triumph.
Contrary to the idea of I)unstan, the corruptions of the age had found
admission even to the cloisters. It was customary3 for the royal
patron of an abbey to bestow it, like a common estate, on some favourite
chaplain of his court, on parasites or 011 companions of his pleasures, paying
no regard to their moral character and intellectual titness. Others gained
possession of the convents by rapacity and sold them to the highest bidder,
not unfrequently to laymen4, who resided on them with their wives
and families, and sometimes with a troop of their retainers5. It
should also be observed, that in the present
alone. ‘
...Post ha'c in aliis Anglia! partibus ail paroehiam suam nil pf- tinentibus
insignes ecclesias ob pr»'fixam eausam clericis evacuavit, el eas...viris
monastica* institutionis sublimavit.’ Eadmer, Vit. S. Oswaldi (in Wharton’s
Anglia Sacra, 11. 200).
1
Lappenberg, 11. 136, 137. It is by no means easy to disentangle the several
measures taken in the English church for the reform of mu- nasticism anil for
the improvement of clerical morality in general; or to determine what was the
action of the statesmanlike mind of Dunstan, and what of the narrower and
severer piety of his followers. But there is no doubt that Dunstan’s personal
share in these transactions has been exaggerated, fur he did not turn out the
secular clerks of his own cathedral-, either at Worcester or Canterbury. A
great deal of the evidence for his prohibition of clerical marriages is very
questionable. On the whole question of clerical celibacy treated historically,
see Lea’s Hittory of Sacerdotal Celibacy, Philadelphia, 1867.
a ‘ Principes plurimi et optimates abbates cum monachis
de munas- teriis, in quibus rex Eadgarus eos locaverat, expulerunt, et
clericos, ut prius, loco eorum cum uxoribus
induxerunt.’ Matth. Westmonast. Flor. [list. p. 19ii, ed. Franoof. 1601.
3 Bowden’s Gregory the Seventh, 1. 46. It was
complained of Charles the Bald that he gave away religious houses recklessly, 1
partim juven- tute, partim fragilitate, partim alioram callida >.uggestione,
etiam et mirarum necessitate, quia dicebant petitores, nisi eis ilia loca sacra
donaret, ab eo deficerent.’ Epist.
Episcoporum ad J.udoricum liegem, in Baluze, 11. 110.
1
Known by tho uamn of abba-comites: cf. Palgrave, Norman*, 1. 134 sq.
4 Council of Trosli, as below, p. 143, n.
2.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
A ttempts to
reform
them.
Benedict of A niane.
age, when many of the chief foundations were most anxious to obtain
exemptions from the bishops1, ami had no efficient champions iu the
Roman see, they were deprived of their strongest remedy against the evils which
beset them. The appearance of a race of worldly-minded abbots wTas
the signal for the relaxation of monastic discipline2 in every
quarter of the west: and this degeneracy produced in turn the open violation of
the rules of St Benedict.
An effort, it is true, was made, as early as 817, under Louis the Pious,
to check these rampant evils in the convents of his kingdom. It was mainly
stimulated by the zeal of Benedict3 of Ania.ne (774^821), who,
following at a humble distance in the steps of the elder Benedict and borrowing
his name, is honoured as the second founder of monasticism in France4.
Disorders of the grossest kind, however, had continually prevailed until the
time of Berno5, the first abbot of Clugny (910), and Odo6,
his successor (927-541), who endeavoured to effect a thorough reformation. In
the hands of the latter abbot, not a few of the
1
See above, p. 42. The privileges actually granted to them did not -at first
exempt them from the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishop; although he hail no longer
any power to modify the rules of the fraternity. e.g. in the Council of Fiines
(Concil. apud S. Macram), 881, his authority is still recognized: for the
fourth canon orders that all monasteries, nunneries, and other religious
houses shall be visited by the bishop and the king’s commissioners, and a
report drawn up of their condition, Mansi, mi. 540. The exemption o 1 the abbey
of Clugny was made absolute by Alexander II. in 1063, and other instances soon
afterwards occurred. Gieseler, 11. 420. In the newly-founded Russian church the
common practice of the East obtained; the bishop having the sole right of
appointing the archimandrites and also of depriving them. Mouravieff s Hist. 0/
the Suttian Chuich, pp. 359, 330.
3 See the complaints of the council of
Trosli (near Soissons^ 909, can. 3, which taxes both the monks and nuns with
every species of excels: llansi, xyiii. 270. The degeneracy is traced to the
influence of the lay-abbots, who were then in possession of nearly all the
monasteries of France.
3 His measures are detailed in a Capitulary
(Aquisgrane-nse (817): Baluze, 1. 579) containing eighty articles, which may be
viewed as a commentary on the rule of Benedict the elder. See Guizot’s remarks
upon it, Led. 1, Among other things he urges that ‘the reformation of the Hixth
century was at once extensive and sublime: it addressed itself to what was
strong m human nature: that of the ninth century was puerile, inferior, and
addressed itself to what was weak and servile in man."
1 In the Frankish empire at this period
there were cighiy-three large monasteries. Dollinger, in. 192.
s
See his Life in Mabillon. AH. Sand. Ord. Ben. ssec. v. pp. 67 sq.
e
Ibid. pp. i50 sq.
ascetic laws were made more stringent and repulsive1: yet the
fame of the order from this period was extended far and wide8. In
spite of an extreme austerity in many of its regulations, they presented a
refreshing contrast to the general corruption; and their circulation gave a
healthier tone to all the churches of the west3.
The impulse which had led to this revival of the Benedictine order,
urged a number of congenial spirits to take refuge in the mountains and the
forests, with the hope of escaping from the moral inundation, or of arming for
a future struggle with the world. Of these we may notice Romuald*, who in after
life became the founder (circ. 1018) of a large community of hermits, known as
the Camaldulenses; John Gualbert5, in whose cell the order of the
Coenobites of Vallombrosa had its cradle (circ. 1038); and especially the younger
Nilus6, a recluse of Calabria, who stood forward in the tenth
century as an awakening preacher of repentance in his own and in the
neighbouring districts.
§2. RELATIONS
OF THE CHURCH TO THE CIVIL POWER.
The influence of the State preponderated as before in all the Eastern
churches. This was shewn especially in
1 Among other changes, the- Ordo
Cluniacensia observed an almost unbroken silence ‘in ecclesia, dormitorio,
refectorio, et coquina.’ See their Consuetudines (circ. 1070) lib. n. cap. iii.
De Silentio; cap. rv. De signU loquendi; in lVAchery’s Spicilegium, 1. 670 sq.
2 In the year of his death, Odo left his
successor two hundred and seventy deeds of gift which had been made to the
order in thirty-two years. Dollinger, 111. 194. The abbots Majolus and Odilo
advanced its reputation more and more. Seo the Life of the latter in Mabillon,
sajc. Vi. part 1, pp. 601 sq.
3 The greatest difficulty was presented by
some of the German monasteries, where the inmates rose into rebellion. See the
instances in Gieseler, 11. 415, n. 9. The example, however, of Hanno, archbp.
of Cologne, in 1068, was followed very generally. Lambert of Hersfeld, Annates
in Pertz, vn. 238. The ‘congregation uf Hirschau’ also sprang up at this time
(1069): it was based on the rule of Clugny. Bemold’s Cltronicon, in Port/, vn.
451.
4 See his Life in I'aniiani, Hist.
Sanctorum; Opp. 11. 426; and the Suit of the Camaldulensians, in Holstein’s
Codt-x Reg. Mvnast. 11. 192 sq.
5 Life in Mabillon, saeo. yi. part 11. pp.
266 sq.
• Ail interesting sketch of Ms labours is
given by Neander, vi. 105— 110.
Rise of tin Cl uni an monks.
Some other
religions
spirits.
Difference
between the East and West.
Causes
of a movement in the West against the supremacy of the crown.
tlie appointment of their bishops, who, with the exception of the
patriarchates which still languished under the dominion of the Saracens, were
for the most part chosen absolutely by the crown. In ltussia1 and
the other kingdoms where the Gospel had been planted by the agency of Oriental
missions, the alliance with the civil power was also intimate and undisturbed.
But it was otherwise in nearly all the churches of the west. The daring and
aggressive genius of the papacy, which now' stood forward on the plea of acting
as their champion, had embarrassed the alliance on the one side; while the
grasping worldliness of laymen generally, and the venality or violence with
which the civil power had tampered with the church-preferment2,
seemed to justify the disaffection that arose in every quarter. Very much of it
is traceable to a confusion of ideas relating to the temporalities of the
Church. The laity, and more especially the crown, regarded the endowments made
by them or by their predecessors for the service of religion, in the light of
public loans, which still remained at their disposal; and the practice of
conceding to church-founders what is called the right of patronage3,
appeared in some degree to favour this construction. An effect of those
prolific errors might be seen, most glaringly perhaps, 011 filling up the
vacant sees. In harmony with the prevailing feudalism a bishopric was granted
at this period like an ordinary fief4; and emperors, in their
capacity of
1 The bishops were us&ally selected by
the prince of the district with the consent of the superior clergy and the
chief of the citizens, and were then presented to the metropolitan for
consecration. Mouravieff’s Hist. by Blackmore, p. 359. The Hungarian bishops,
although chiefly foreigners at first, and in communion with tho Western Church,
were similarly noinmated by the crown. Diillinger, in. 35.
2 See above, pp. 143 sq.; and other
examples in Gieseler, 11. 239, n. 10. Under Henry IV., the rival of Hiluebrand,
simony was practised at the imperial court in the most scandalous manner (e.g. Lambert’s
Aunales, a.d. 1063, 1071: Pertz, tii. 166, 184).
'■ From
the first, however, the privilege of appointing to a church could not lawfully
be exercised without the approval of the bishop of the diocese, to whose
jurisdiction also the new incumbent was made'subject (see Council of Rnme, in
826. and again in 853, c. 21; Jlansi, xiv. 493, 1006, 1016). But this rule,
like others of tho kind, was continually evaded.
4 Besides taking the oath of allegiance,
like other vassals, prelates were on this ground compelled to render to the
king a twofold service, one of following liim in time of war, the other of
appearing frequently at
suzerain, affected to confer investiture upon the spiritual as well as on
the temporal nobility. So blind were many of them to the plain distinction
between the property and sacred duties of a see, that their appointment now
began to be confirmed by the delivery of a ring and crozier,— symbols of the
spiritual functions of the bishop. He was thus insensibly becoming a mere
feudatory, or a vassal of the crown1.
We saw that under Charlemagne2 prelates were again
occasionally chosen in obedience to the ancient canons; and tho clergy lost no
opportunity of pleading this concession in their efforts to retain the freedom
it had promised8. Still the privdego was scarcely more than verbal
at the best4: and under Otho I., who laboured to curtail the power
of the German and Italian clergy5, it was formally annulled. He
acted on the principle, that p*pes and
court. They
were also amenable to the judicial sentence of the king, regarded as their
liege-lord, and even were a: times deposed by him. Hasse. as below. On the
state of feeling with regard to the participation of ecclesiastics in the
wars, see Neander, vi. 83 sq.
1 Haase's Life of Anselm, by Turner, p. 53,
Lond. 1850: see Church’s Essays (from the Christian Remembrancer), and his Life
of Anselm. As consecration was subsequent to investiture, the jurisdiction of
the prelate seemed to be derived from the state. The indignation of the
Hillebran- dine party at this juncture may be gathered from Humbert’s treatise
A dvemis Simoniacos, lib. hi. c. 11 (in Martene’s Thesaurus Anecdot. tom.
v. p. 787).
:
\bove, p. 53.
3 Thus, at the Council of Valence (855), c.
7 (Mansi, xv. 7), it was decreed that ‘ on the death of a bishop, the monarch
should be requested to allow the clergy and the community of the place to make
an election according to the canons.’ But the synod goes on to intimate that
mon- archs not unfrequently sent a nominee of their own, and that their permission
was in all cases needed before an election could take place. See the energetic
letter of Hincmar to Louis III. of France, on the subject of royal interference
in elections: Opp. tom. ii. p.
190.
4 Bowden, Life of Gregory, i. 45: cf.
Guizot, n. 320.
5 Vidaillan,
Vie de. Greg. VII. I. 365, BOG. \fter deposing pope Benedict V. (964)
and restoring Leo VIII., Otho held a council at Borne, which, in his presence,
granted him and his descendants the right of choosing the popes in future, and
of giving investiture to the bishops of the empire. See the acts of this
council in Luitprand, de Rebus Gestix Ottonis, c. 10 sq. (Pertz, v. 342): and De Marca, De Concordia, lib. vtu. c. 12, § 111. This
decree was prompted by the growth and bitterness of the political factions
which at that time were convulsing every part of Italy. But acts of
violence" among tho populace were not uncommon, at an earlier period, in
the filling up of vacant sees: e.g. the decree of Stephen V. (816), in Mansi,
xiv. 147.
Nominations
to vacant secs.
Encroach•
men's on the side of theChurch:
bishops were like other functionaries of the empire, and as such were
subject to his beck. These fresh assumptions were indeed renounced by Henry
II., but soon afterwards repeated: and it was on the absolute appointment of
pope Leo IX. (1049) by Henry III. of Germany, that Hildebrand at length
emerged from private life, to bring the struggle to a crisis. He was able in
1039, while engaged as the subdeacon of the Roman church, to wrest the nomination
of the popes entirely from the civil power1, although reserving to
it for the present a precarious right of confirmation. But this partial
victory incited him the more to persevere in his original design of compassing
what he esteemed the ancient freedom of the Church. Accordingly, as soon as he
was elevated to the papal throne, he hastened to prohibit every form of ‘
lay-investitureand the dispute which he had thus embittered was not closed for
half a century2.
While it is plain that the civil power exceeded its own province in
suppressing the episcopal elections and iu arbitrary misappropriation of the
other church-prefer- ment, there was also an aggressive movement on the side of
the ecclesiastics. This, indeed, is the most prominent and startling feature of
the times. It was of course developed to the greatest height among the popes,
who had already shewn themselves peculiarly impatient of the secular
authority. We saw that under Charlemagne they were able to effect but little in
curtailing his imperial powers; and in 823 Paschal I. even felt obliged to
clear himself by oath before the missi (or commissioners) of Louis the Pious8;
yet from this period onwards the pretensions of the Roman court were less and
less disputed by the Caroliugian princes4. Its ascendancy increased
1 Bee above, p. 140, n. 1
2 By the Concordat of Worms, 1122; see
below, ‘ Relations of the Cliurch to the Civil Power,’ Period in.
3 Life. of Louis, by Thnganus, in Pertz,
if. 597. Other examples of thitf supremacy of the civil power at Home itself
may be seen in Uieseler, ii. 231,
232.
4 The following frasrment fcirc. 850) of a
letter from Leo IV. to the
emperor
Louis II., which has been preserved in (iratian (Decret. Pars tt.
Caus.
ii. (,!u. vn. c. 41), is one of
the latest recognitions of the imperial
rights: ‘ Nos, si incompetenter aliqui-l egimus, et in subditis justse
legis
trainitem
non conservavimu3, vestro ac missorum vestmrum cuncta volu-
on the dismemberment of the Frankish empire, and still further when all
central government was enervated by the jirogress of the feudal system. Aided
by the ‘ Forged Decretals,’ which endeavoured among other kindred objects to
exalt the Church above the influence of the temporal princes, Nicholas Ii was
able to achieve a number of important triumphs. He came forward, it is true, on
two occasions, as a champion of the wronged, a bold avenger of morality2,
and therefore carried with him all the weight of popular opinion. His success
emboldened John VIII. in 876 to arrogate in plainer terms, and as a privilege
imparted from on high, the right of granting the imperial crown3 to
whomsoever he might choose: and since this claim was actually established in
his patronage and coronation of the emperor Charles the Bald4, the
intermeddling of the pope in future quarrels of the Carolingiatis, ami indeed
of other princes, was facilitated more aud more. The claim grew' up, as we
shall see in Hildebrand, to nothing less than a theocratic power extending over
all the earth.
Nor was the spirit of aggression at this time restricted to the Homan
pontiffs. It had also been imbibed by other prelates of the west. In England'',
it is true, if we except collisions in the time of Odo and Dunstan, there is
little or no proof that the ecclesiastics were forgetting their vocation. While
the Church continued, as before, in close alliance with the civil power, she
exhibited no tendency to cripple or dispute the independence of the crown. But
mm
emendate judicio’ etc. ‘But every tiling soon changes, ami tlie Church in her
turn governs the emperor.’ Guizot, n. 320.
1 A contemporaneous admirer says of him, ‘
regibus ac tvrannis inpe- ravit, eisque, ac si dominus otbis tervarum, auctoritate
pra-fait.’ Regino’s Chron. ad an. 8GH.
2 See above, p. 136, n. i: and cf. Guizot,
it. 341 sq.
3 lipist.
ccrxv. cccxvi. : Mansi, xvn. 227, 230.
4 It should be remarked, however, that
Charles the Bald, in earlier life a warm defender of the liberties of the
Frankish Church (see above, p. 137), was not, in 876, entirely made a vassal of
the pope’s. See Gol- dast’s Collectio Constitut. Imperial, ii. 34.
6
As before noticed (p. 49), the civil and spiritual tr-bunals had been acting
most harmoniously together till the Norman Conquest. Some ecclesiastical causes
were referred to the decision of a synod of the prelates ; but many which at a
later period were reputed ecclesiastical were subjected, like the ordinary
causes of the laity, to the judgment of the shiremoot or county-court. This
extended even to the probate of wills. Kemble, Saxons, jr. 385.
DILATIONS TO
TH£ CIVIL POWER.
especially of
the 2mpea :
hut
aho of the prelaws generally.
RELATIONS TO
THE, CIVIL POWER.
Exceptions
to this rule.
it was otherwise in continental nations. There we see the monarch
struggling on one side with his disaffected
OO
CT #
nohles, on the other with the prelates of his realm; and not unfrequently
succumbing to the usurpations of the latter. Before the death of Charlemagne,
for example, his authority in matters even of religion was so great, that
councils1 deemed it proper to address him in a tone which bordered
almost on servility: yet more than one of his successors formally acknowledged
their dependence on the members of the hierarchy, and submitted to its most humiliating
censures2. The extent of this vast but ill-defined preponderance may
be gathered from the transfer that was made of the regalia (royal privileges)
to the hands of the superior clergy3.
Some, indeed, of the better class of prelates, while they rendered due
obedience to the civil ruler, kept aloof from all secular affairs4:
the rest however, more especially throughout the tenth century, yielded to the
worldly spirit of the age ; they could too seldom be distinguished from the
other vassals. But this close connexion with the crown was operating as a check
on hierarchical ambition:
1 e.g. the councils of Arles and Mentz,
both held in 813, on making a report to him of ecclesiastical matters that were
crying for a reformation, beg him to supply what ho might deem corrections, and
confirm their work by his authority. Mansi, xiv. 62, 65.
2 e.g. Louis the Pious (835j was deposed
and afterwards absolved by a party of bishops: Mansi, xiv. 657. See Palgrave,
Hist, of Normandy, I. 295, 296. Louis the Uermanic was treated in like manner
by a synod at Metz (859): Baluze, Capitular. ii
1.21. In the tsynod of Savoniferes (Tullensis. apud Saponarias) held in
the same year, Charles the Bald acknowledged his dependence on the bishops in
the most abject terms: Baluze, n. 129: cf. Guizot, ii. 326, 327. The general
principle on which the bishops claimed to exercise these powers was frequently
avowed in the synods: e.g. K'jnes, apud S. Macram (881), c. 1; Mansi, xvn. 538
Trosli (909), c 1; Mansi, xvm. 267.
s
Among these regalia may be mentioned the right of tolls, markets and coinage
which was granted among other privileges by Louis the Pious, on the principle
‘ut episcopos, qui propter animamm regimen principes sunt cceli, ipse eosdem
nihilominus principes efflaeret regni. Gieseler, ii. 255, 874. These grants, however, were made not unfre-
quentlv by the sovereigns with a political object, to secure the allegiance of
the bishops, to balance them against the inordinate power of the feudal lords;
to retain a certain amount of patronage that could not be made hereditary, and
to interpose tracts of sacred estates between the territories of princes
devoted to private war. Hasse’s Life of Anselm, p. 51.
4 Thus, for example, reasoned Badbod,
archbp. of Utrecht. See his Life, in Mabillon, Act. Sanct. Bened. ssec. v. p.
30,
it eventually gave birth to an important school of royalists, who
vindicated the imperial interest1 from the attacks of an extreme or
Romanizing party.
Of the minor and less obvious benefits accruing to society at large from
the exalted power of the ecclesiastics, one is to be found in the exertions
which they made to mitigate the ravages of private or intestine wars, now
common in all quarters. They were able in the end (circ. 1032) to establish
certain intervals of peace2 (‘Treugas Dei’), extending from the
Thursday to the Monday morning of each week: for which space it was ordered,
under pain of excommunication, that all acts of violence as well as
law-proceedings should be everywhere suspended. The same influence was directed
also, though more feebly, to the abolition of the ordeal-trials, or as they
were. commonly entitled, 'judgments of God.’ The zealous Agobard of Lyons was
conspicuous in this movement3: but the custom, deeply rooted in
antiquity, was not to be subverted at a blow. It kept its hold on the Germanic
races till a far later period, notwithstanding constant efforts, made in
councils, for its suppression, partly no doubt through the sanction or
connivance of the ill-instructed teachers of the Church.
1 How large this party grew may he inferred
from the ease of England, where the bishops almost to a man united with the
crown in opposition to archbp. Anselm and his view of the
investiturc-controversy. On one occasion he complained of this most bitterly,
adding, ‘et me de regno, potius quarn hoc servarent, expulsuros, et a llomana
ecclesia se discessuros.’ Epist, lib. iv. ep. 4.
a
See Pucange, under Treva, Treuga, seu Trevia Dei: cf. Neander’s remarks, vi.
87, 88; and Balmez, Protestantism and Catholicity compared, c. xxxii. pp. 139 sq. The provincial synod
of Limoges (1031) placed a number of refractory barons, who refused to join in
the ‘Treuga Dei,’ under an interdict: Mansi, xix. 530, 542.
3 e. g. in his treatise Contra Judicium
Dei. Pope Stephen VI. (circ. 886) condemns both fire and water-ordeals. He
adds, ‘Spontanea enirn confessione vel testium approbatione publicata delicta .
. . commissa sunt regimini nostro judicare: occulta vero et incognita Illi sunt
relinquonda, Q d solus novit corda filiorum hominum.’ Mansi, xvm. 25. On the other
hand, the .‘judicium aquie frigid® et callida-’ was defended even by Hincmar of
Rheims: Opp. tom. 11. 676. “Wager of Battle’’ was strongly denounced by the
Council of Valence (855), c. 12, under pain of excommunication, which
incapacitated the subject of it for performing any civil function; Mansi, xv.
9. On the whole subject of ordeal and wsger of battle, see Lea’s /Superstition
and force, Philadelphia, 1870.
UEULTIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
Beneficial
retult of clerical ascendancy.
CHAPTER Vit
ON THE STATE
OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES.
The
mighty influence of St A nyus- tine,
and
his school.
WESTERN
CHURCH.
The works of St Augustine
had continued to direct the mind of Western Christendom. Ho was the standard
author of the age, .and to his writings it was commonly indebted for the traces
it retained of earnestness and evangelic truth. Inferior only to the sacred
penmen, whom his ample expositions of the Scriptures were believed to represent
with a peculiar fidelity, he was consulted as the ablest guide in all the
speculative provinces of thought: and we shall see in the review of a
discussion, which affected many branches of his system of theology, that all
the combatants professed a high respect for him, and that the vanquished fled
for shelter to his works. In cases even where the Augustinian spirit did not
find its way directly, it was circulated, in a somewhat milder form1,
by influential writers of his school, especially by Gregory the Great and
Alcuin.
The majority of authors whom this period has produced will take their
place at the beginning of it. They were nearly all of them brought up in the
scholastic institutions of the Frankish empire*. One of Alcuin's many pupils,
1 e. g. Alcuin, de Fide S. Trinit at is,
lib. n. c. 8 (Opp. i. 717)- uses language inconsistent ■with a belief in
the extreme position of a ‘pra-destinatio duplex,’ and bis view was shared by
Rabanus Maurus. Cf. S. Augustine F.pist. 214 (al. 46) ad Valentin. § 2; Opp.
Ii. 790.
2 Some ot the principal wire the Schola Palatina
(patronized by Louis the Pious. Lothair, and Charles the Bald;, and those of
Orleans, F11M&, Corbey (old and now), Rheims, Tours, Hirschau, Reiehenau,
and St Gall.
and, like him, an indefatigable friend of education, occupied the
foremost rank of theologians in the west. This was Rabanus Maurus, who had been
the master of the school, and afterwards the abbot, of Fulda (822), before bis
elevation to the archbishopric of ilentz (847). His numerous Commentaries1
on the writings of the Sacred Canon, and on some of the Apocrypha, evince a
familiarity with older Christian literature; and the devotional feeling which
pervades them may convince us that the piety of better ages, though too
frequently declining, was not dead. Another of his works, De Institutione
('lericorum, while important in a liturgical point of view, contributed to the
more careful training of the candidates for holy orders, and inspired them with
a deeper sense of the importance of their work. Rabanus was a favourite author
in tho west for many centuries after his death2.
Another of the Carolingian literati was Agobard3, archbishop
of Lyons (813—841), equally conspicuous for his scholarship and his activity in
the affairs of state4. But he is better known as a reformer of
religion. Many of his treatises were aimed at the ignorance and superstitions
of the times, especially at those connected with the growing use of images5.
Rabanus
Maurus
(776—
856).
Agobard
of Lyons (d. 811'.
See Bate’s Geschichte, der ri'mhch. Literatur in ha’roling. Zeitalter,
Oarls- ruhe, 1840. Its character in this, even more than in the
former period, was exclusively religious ; science (mathematics, astronomy, and
medicine' being for the moat part abandoned to the Arabs, who patronized such
studies, more especially in Spain. Their great college of Cordova, which became
for Europe what Bagdad was for Asia, was founded in 980. See Middoldorpf,
Ctimment. de lnstitutis Literariis in Ilispania, qua: Arabes auctores
habuerunt, (}ottingse, 1810.
1
Very many of his works (including Homilies, a« well an ethical and
eeclesiological treatises) were published, in 6 vols. folio, at Cologne, 1027:
set' also a sketch of Kabanus, by Kunstmann, Mainz, 1841
s
Mabillon, Act. Sanct. Ord. Hencd. Ssec. vi. Prafatio, § 1.
3 The best edition of his works is that of
Balune, Paris, lfiCfi, 2 vols. 8yo: cf. Hundeshagen, de Agobardi Vila et
Scriptis, Giessse, 1831.
4 His fame in this capacity is stained by
the countenance he gave to the rebellious sons of Louis the Pious, contrasting
ill with Rabanus Maurus. Neander, yi. 157
5 e. g. He condemned the ‘battle-trial,’
and the ‘water-ordeal’ (see above, p. 155): and his treatise, I)e Picturis et
Imaginibus, is a resolute attack on all forms of image-worship, and a protest
against the sensuous bias of the Church. He also laboured to reform the
liturrjy of his province; and the two works, De Dir in a rsalmodiu and De
Correctione Antiphunarii, are a defence of his proceedings. The great number of
In this ami other points he may be linked with Claudius, bishop of Turin,
w'ho died in 839, after an episcopate of eighteen years. Excited, as it seems,
by principles which he had learned from holy Scripture and the works of St
Augustine1, he stood forward to revive, as far as he was able, a
more truly Christian spirit in the members of the Church. He ardently declaimed
against all forms of creature-worship, not excluding invocation of the saints;
and, on his arrival in his diocese, all symbols, whether pictures, images, or
crosses, which could possibly give rise to adoration, were ejected from the
churches2. In addition to his writings on these subjects, of which
fragments only are preserved, he was a fertile commentator on the Bible; yet,
with one or two exceptions3, all his labours in this field of
thought are still inedited.
A list of other kindred works, though varying much in character and
worth, was added to the hermeneutical productions of the age. The chief were,
(1) Commentaries
Jews who had
settled in the Frankish empire at that period urged him to take up his pen
against them: e. g. De Insole,Mia Judceurum, and De Judaie is Supers ti tioni
bus.
1
The adversaries of Claudius have endeavoured to convict him of Adoptionism, on
the ground that he was educated in Spain (see above, p. 61); hut his
AugustLiianism is proved by Neander, vi. 120 sq.
1 In this measure lie was strongly resisted
by his former friend the abbot Theodemir, by Dungal, an Irishman, by Jonas
bishop of Orleans, and others: but he kept his ground until his death,
apparently through the support of the Frankish emperor. See Schrockh, xxm. 407-
121: Dbllinger, m. 57, 58. It is remarkable that Jonas of Orleans admitted the
flatjrant abuse of images prevailing in the Church of Italy, and only found
fault with Claudius for supposing that the same abuse existed iu the French and
German churchns. He defends the ‘adoration’ of the cross (‘ob recordationem
passionis Dominicas’), but explains the act to mean no more than ‘salutare.’
See his treatise De Gultu Imaginum, in Bibl. Patrum, ed. Lugdun. xrv. fol. 183.
This prelate was a "tern and faithful censor of all forms of immorality.
See his De Institutione Laicali, in D’Achery’s Spicilegium, 1. 258 —323. Leger
and other writers on the Waldenses have endeavoured to connect Claudius of
Turin with that body, representing him as the leader of a secession which is
thought to have taken place as early as the 9th century; but on no better
grounds than conjecture.
3 His Commentary on the Epistle to the
Galatians will be found in Iliblioth. Patr., ed. Lugdnn. xiv. 189 sq., and that
on the Epistle to Philemon in the Spicilegium Romanum, ix. 109 sq.
Introductions to other books Lave also been published (Gieseler, 11. 262, n.
19): see, especially, Specimens of his inedited works, with dissertations by
liudel- bach, Havnias, 1824. .
Claudius
of Turin
ia. 839).
of Haimo1, bishop of Halberstadt (841—853), and formerly a
fellow-student of Rabanus Maurus: (2) the popular and widely-circulated Glossa
Ordinaria (or an exposition of the difficult texts of Scripture), compiled by
Walafrid Strabo2, abbot of lieichenau ( 842—849 ): but (8) worthy of
especial mention is the sober and elaborate Commentary on St Matthew, by
Christian Druthmar3, a monk of Cor bey, and divinity-lecturer in
the diocese of Liege, who died about 810.
These all, together with the great majority of writers who come forward
at the present period, yield a simple and unreasoning assent to the traditions
of the past: but in a work of the deacon Fredegis, who had been trained in
Alcuin’s school at York, we may discover symptoms of a more philosophizing
tendency4 That tendency, however, was betrayed far more distinctly
in the Irishman0 JohD Scotus (Erigcna), who wTas regarded
as an oracle of wisdom by the court of Charles the Bald. He was the earliest of
the mediaeval writers in the west, who ventured to establish Christian dogmas
by a dialectic process; who, in other words, attempted to evince the union, or
consistency at least, of human reason and theology. In this respect he must be
viewed as a precursor of the schoolmen6 who, in close alliance with
the Aristotelian
Haimo
of Ilalber- stadt ‘
(d. 853V
Walafrid
Strabo (d. 849.) Druthmar (d. 840).
Fredegis.
John
Scotus Eriqena
(d. 875
a
precursor of the Wt stern school-
1 There is some difficulty in ascertaining
what works are really his. See Oudinus, De Scriptoribus Eccl. il 330: Schrockh,
xxm. 282 sq.: Mabillon, Acta Benedict, v. 585 sq.
2 The Glossa Ordinaria was published at
Antwerp in 6 vols. folio, 1631. Another important work of Walafrid Strabo is of
a liturgical character, De Exordiis et Incrementis 1lerum Ecclesiasticarum,
published in Hittorp’s collection De Divinis Officiis, Colon. 1068.
3 In the Biblioth. Patrum, ed. Lugdun. xv.
86 sq. The preface to this commentary shews that Druthmar was averse to
mystical interpretations of the Bible, except when they are subordinated to the
literal or historic sense. Neander, vi. 159.
4 See his Epistola de Nihilo et Tenebris ad
proceres Palatii, in Baluz.
et
Mansi, Miscell. ii. 56.
6
Neander has pointed out several circumstances which indicate that the Irish
monasteries still continued to influence literature in the West; vi. 161, 162
(jiote): see also Lanigan, Hist, of Irish Church, in. 260 sq. John Scotus
Erigena is to be carefully distinguished from a monk, named John, whom king
Alfred invited from France to the English court. See Mabillon’s Annates
Benedict, m. 243.
6 For the rise of scholasticism in the
East, see above, pp. 57, 70, 71. Its cradle, or at least the earliest school in
which it was cultivated by the Westerns, was the monastery of Bee in Normandy.
Lanfranc and Anselm (afterwards archbishops of Canterbury) took the lead in its
diffusion (see
but
his philosophic system that of NeoPlatonism.
Gottschalk
(<1. 868?) and the predestina- rian controversy.
philosophy1, were bent on systematizing the traditions of the
Church, and proving that the Christian faith is truly rational2. But
Scotus, while agreeing with the schoolmen in his point of departure, differed
widely from them all in his results. He was a jNeo-Platouist; and, like the
Alexandrian doctors of an earlier age, could see in Christianity no more than
a philosophy,—an earthly manifestation of the Absolute, intended to direct and
elevate the human spirit and prepare it for eventual absorption into God3.
It is a startling feature of the times that one, whose theories were so
divergent from the teaching of the Church, was called to speak as an authority
on two of the most awful topics of the faith. These were the doctrines of
Predestination and the Eucharist; which, owing to the great activity of thought
engendered in the Carolingiau schools, were now discussed with unwonted
vehemence.
The former of these controversies4 took its rise from
Gottschalk, who in earlier life had been a monk of Fulda, under the eye of
Rabanus Maurus; but had left it for the cloister of Orbais iu the diocese of
Soissons. Going'
Mohler’s
Schriften und Aufsatze, I. 32 sq.); Lanfranc Baying first tried tlie temper of
Ms new weapon in the Eucharistic controversy witli Berengarius: see below.
1 The logical writings of Aristotle (the
first two treatises of the Organon) were known in the West from the ninth
century, but only, till the thirteenth, by the Latin translation of Boetius.
Cousin's Ouvraget inedites d'A belard, Introd. p. Ii.: Smith’s Bing. Diet. i.
325.
2 ‘Auctoritas
ox vera ratione processit, .atio vero nequaquam ex
auctoritate Nil enim aliud
videtur mihi esse vera auctoritas, nisi
rationis virtute couperta vtritas, et a sacris patribus ad posteritatis
utili- tatem literis commendata.’ Scotus, De Division?■ Natures, p. 3!),
ed. Oxon.
1961. The entire works of Scotus have been recently collected and edited by
Floss, in Migne’s Patrologia, Paris, 1853: cf. a review of that publication in
the Theol. QuartaUchrift, TUbing. 1854, i. 127 sq.
3 (in the whole .of his
philosophico-religious system, see Bitter, Gesch. der Christ. Philosophie, in.
206 sq.; Keander, m. ]03 sq.; Guizot, Lect. xxviii.; Dorner, n. 344—358. His
pantheism is clearly established by the treatise De Divisione Natures: but very
much of his philosophizing was unintelligible to the age He seems to have
imbibed that tendency from his familiarity with Greek nritfcrB, and especially
with Dionysius the Arcopagito, whom he translated into Latin. This translation
excited the suspicions of popo Kieholas I. (Mansi, xv 401). His great work was
condemned by the University of Paris in 1209: Dorner, p. 358.
4 The great authority is Mauguin’s
collection of aneitnt authors, De Pra’destinatione et Gratia, Paris, 1650: cf.
Vssher’s Gvtteschalci et Prcr- dest. Controv. Hist. Dublin, 1631; Cellot’s
Ilist. Qotteschalci Pradesti- naliani, Paris, 1G55.
far beyond his favourite author, St Augustine1, he maintained
the most rigorous opinions on the subject of Divine predestination, stating it
in such a way as to imperil human freedom. He contended for a twofold system of
decrees (‘prsedestinatio duplex’), which consigned the good and bad, elect and
reprobate alike, to portions from eternity allotted to them, irrespectively of
their own conduct in the present life. In other words, Divine foreknowledge in
his system was identified completely with predestination; and the latter was
as arbitrary in relation to the lost as to the saved,—the one infallibly
attaining to eternal life, the other being so necessitated to continue in his
sins, that he can only be, in name a subject of God’s grace, and only in
appearance a partaker of the sacraments.
The Church bad hitherto been occupying, on the present as on other
kindred points, an intermediate place, affirming, but with no attempt to
reconcile, the absolute necessity of superhuman powers, while she insisted on
the salvability of all men. Notwithstanding her profound respect for St
Augustine and her hatred of Pelagianism, she did not countenance the fatalistic
theory of grace, which threatens, and constructively subverts, the principle of
our responsibility to God. Accordingly, as soon as Gottschalk published his
opinions2, he encountered a decisive opposition from the leading
doctors of the age. His old superior, Rabanus Maurus, now archbishop of Mentz,
influenced (it may be) to some extent by personal dislike, put forth a vehement
reply to what he deemed an utter violation of the faith. Although himself a
warm believer in the doctrine of Divine decrees3, Rabanus shrank
from
1 See a fair statement of this vexed
question in Guizot’s Civilization in France, Lect. v. It is plain, however,
that St Augustine in some passaged made use of language bordering on the
positions of Gottschalk; iind the ‘gemina prsedestinatio sive electorum ad
requiem, give repro- borum ad mortem’ is at least as old a» Isidore of Seville,
Sentent. lib. ii. c. 6.
2 He appears to have had an earlier controversy
with Rabanus, while lie was a monk at Kulda (Kunstmann's Hrabanus Maurus, p.
09); but he did not develupe his opinions fully till some years later, when he
was returning from a tour in Italy. He then disclosed them to Notting, bishop
of Yerona (W47), who brought the question under the notice of Rabanus Maurus.
s
Nearly all the statements in his Epist. ad No tiny um fapud Manguin,
i. 3) are borrowed from the works of St
Augustine and Prosper. Neander, vi. 185.
WESIEItS
CHURCH.
11
vs extreme pod- tioiis:
how
difftr- t.nt from those of the Church.
liahanus
ilavrvs I is oppontrti.
Gottschalk
at the synod of Mentz (848),
imprisoned
by Archbp. Jllncmar
(849).
Defenders
of Gottschalk.
all approximation to the thought that the causality of sin is traceable to
God. In his view the Divine foreknowledge is distinguishable from Divine
predestination; and those oidy whom the Lord foreknows as the incorrigibly
wicked, are abandoned to eternal death (‘ praesciti ’). Gottschalk, in the
following year (848), defended his positions1 at the council of
Mentz, stating (it is said) emphatically that the scriptural phrases which
record our Saviour’s death for all men should be limited to the ‘elect;’ and
that the rest of the human family, as the result of a constraining act of God,
have been irrevocably destined to perdition2. As the voice of the
synod was against him, Gottschalk was now handed over to his metropolitan, the
proud and energetic Hinomar, who soon afterwards (849) procured his condemnation3
at Kiersy-sur-Oise (Carisiacum), and shut him up in a monastic prison, where he
lingered under the ban of the archbishop till 868, refusing to abjure or modify
his errors.
But the controversy kindled by him in the Frankish Church was not so
easily extinguished. Many influential writers, moved either by pity for his
barbarous fate1 or by
1 See fragments of liis defence in
Iiincmar, de Prcedestinatiune, c. 5, e. 21, c. 27: cf. Annales Fuldenses,
a.j>. 848, in Pertz, t- 365.
2 Italiani Epistola Synod aUt ad Hincmarum (Mansi,
xiv. 914): ‘quod pra-destinatio Dei, sicut in Lono, sit ita et in male): et
tales sint in hoc mundo quidain, qui propter praidestinationem Dei, quse eos
cogat in mortem ire, non possint ab errore et peccato se corrigere; quasi Deus
eos fecisset ab initio incorrigibiles esse et pcena3 obnoxios i" interitum
ire. ’ But it must be borne in mind, that this statement of the views of
Gottschalk is the work of an adversary, and as such may have been overcoloured.
- Mansi, xiv. 919. By thi< synod, thf-
unfortunate monk was ordered to be flogged, according to a rule of
St Benedict, for troubling the deliberations on ecclesiastical aftairs, and
intermeddling with politics. While he lay in prison at the monastery of
Hautvilliers, he wrote two more confessions of hi'; faith, adhering to his
former tenets: Mauguin, i. 7. The importance he attached to the controversy may
be estimated from the violent language of his prayer, ‘ Te precor, Domine Deus,
gratis Ecclesiam Tuam custodias, ne sua diutius earn falsitate pervertant |
alluding to his opponents], htzreseosque turn pestifera de reliqvu pravitate
subvertant, licet se suosque secum lugubiiter evertant,’ etc. He i Iso offered
to prove
tho
truth of his tenets by submitting to the ordeal of fire, s... ‘ut
videlicet, quatuor
doliis uno post unum positis atque ferventi sigillatim ropletis aqua, uleo
pingui, et pice, et ad uitimum accenso copiosissimo igne, liceret mihi,
inyocato gloriosissimo nomine Tuo, ad approbandam hauc fidem meam, imo fidein
Catholicam, in singula introire et ita per singula transire,’ etc.
* This feeling seems to have been shared by
pope Xieholas I. to
their predilection tor his theological opinions, had immediately
appeared in his behalf. Of these the chief were Prudentius1, bishop
of Troyes; Servatus Lupus*, the accomplished abbot of Ferrieres; and
llatramnus3, a learned monk of Corbey; none of whom, however, would
commit himself to the extreme positions of his client. They affirmed that the
predestination of the vjick-id is not absolute, but is conditioned on Divine
foreknowledge of all sins that would result from the voluntary act of
Adam,—holding fast, on this and other points, to the more sober views of St
Augustine.
Hincmar and his party were now driven to defend their harsh proceedings,
and as they could no longer count upon the help of Rabanus Maurus, who withdrew
entirely from the conflict4, they put forward as the champion of
their cause the learned and free-thinking guest of Charles the Bald—Erigena.
His famous treatise, De Prcedestina- tione5, appeared in 851: but
arguing, as he did, on purely philosophic grounds, for the unbiassed freedom of
the will, and contradicting all established doctrines of the nature both of
good and evil, he gave equal umbrage to his enemies and friends. The former
instantly assailed him (852) by the hands of Prudentius of Troyes6
and Floras7 a deacon of Lyons; while the primate Hincmar, compromised
bv his ill-chosen coadjutor, went in search of other means for quieting the
storm.
A work of Amulo, archbishop of Lyons, now lost,
whom
Gottschalk had eventually appealed, Hmemur, Opp. n. 290, ed. Sirmond.
1 See his Letter to Hincmar (circ. 849) in
Cellot’s Hist. Gottesehal. Prmdest. pp. 4‘25 sq. But he also, like
others of the period, would interpret passages like 1 Tim. ii. 4, exclusively
of the ‘elect.’
2 His work, De Trihue Quastionibus, is
printed in 'M'auguin, i. pt. ii. 9: see also the Works of Servatus I.upus,
ed. Baluze, Antv. 1710.
3 De
Pnedestinatione. Dei (circ. 850), in Mauguin, I. pt. i. 27 sq. His
name was frequently mi»-read into Bertram, perhaps Bs. (= Beatun) Batramn.
4 See his letters to Hincmar, in
Eunstmann’s Hrabatius, pp. 215 sq.
s
In Mauguin, i. pt. i. 103 sq.
* De Pnedestinatione contra ■Tuh.
Scotvm, in Mauguin. i. pt. I. 191 sq.
7 He wrote, in the name of the Church of
Lyons, De Pnedestinatione contra Jnh. Scoti erronras Definitiones; ibid. 575
sq.: see Neander, vi. 202, 203, on the character of this reply. The council
of Valence (835) repeated the condemnation of Scotus (c. iv. c. vi.) in the
most contemptuous terms.
JohiiScotus
writes
ar/aimf
him,:
but
both parties.
Remigius
of Lyons vindicates the general theory of Goitschalk.
Hincmar's
reply at the synod of Kiersyt 853.
The
rival synod of Valence, 855.
was -written with this object: hut Remigius, his successor and the
leading prelate of the south of Gaul, did not inherit his opinions *. He
condemned the cruelty by which the author of the movement was repressed, and
strove in a less raided tone to vindicate his orthodoxy from the imputations of
the northern province. He contended that in Gottschalk’s system of theology the
absolute predestination of the wicked had been neither stated nor implied; and
while confessing his own predilection for the view that- God does not wish the
salvation of all men, he declared his willingness to leave that question open
till it was authoritatively settled by the Church. His manifesto roused the
zeal of Hincmar to the very highest pitch, and in another synod2
held at Kiersy (853), his party reasserted nearly all the views which
Gottsohalk had continued to reject. In a short series of propositions, based
entirely on the works of St Augustine, they affirmed, with other truths
admitted by their adversaries, that no human being whom the Lord foreknew as
wicked had been foreordained to perish, and that Christ had died a sacrifice
for all men, willing all men to be saved3. The counter-movement in
the southern province ultimately issued in a rival synod, which assembled at
Valence* in 855. Its effect, however, was to bring the disputants more closely
to each other. It declared expressly that the sin of man, although an object of
Divine foreknowledge, was in no degree necessitated by an act of
predetermination: and while all the prelates were agreed that Christ did not
redeem habitual unbelievers", they confessed that many are in truth re-
1 Hincmar, and l’aruulua bishop of Laon,
had already written two letters to Amulo; sending him at the same time a. copy
of the letter from Rabanus Maurus to Nutting of Verona. These three documents
Remigius now proceeded to examine in his Liber de Tribus fipistolis, in
Mauguin,
1. pt. 11. 61 sq. The notion that the wicked
are necessitated to commit impiety he spurns an ‘immanis et detestabilis blanphemia’
(c. XM.), and deiiies< that it was held by any one; ruflpcliug strongly on
Rabanus M aurus, who imputed it to Gottschalk. See Neander, vi. 203 sq.; and
Milman, Latin Christianity, 111. 241 sq.
2 Mjnsi, xiv. 995; cf. 920.
3 ‘Christi sanguinem pro omnibus fusum,
licet non nnines passionis mysterio redimantur:’ c. 4,
4 Mansi, xv. 1 sq. Remigiup had already
censured the ‘four chapters’
of
Kiersy; Mauguin, 1. pt. 2. 178.
6
They even spoke of universal redemption as a ‘nimius error:’ c. i.
generated at their baptism, who in after-life may forfeit the initial
grace of God by their unholy conduct1.
Hincmar now took up his pen and laboured to confirm the views he had
espoused, in two elaborate productions2, one of which is lost; and
iu 859, he was able to effect a better understanding with the prelates of the
south at the council of Savonibres in the diocese of Toul3. There,
eight metropolitans, with more than thirty bishops, received some general
statements of the Augustinian dogmas; and the combatants on either side,
exhausted by the struggle, were now willing to lay down their arms, without
coming to any more definite conclusion, yet without granting to Gottschalk any
alleviation of his wretched imprisonment4.
The second controversy that sprang up in the Carol- ingian era of the
Church related to the mode in which the Body and Blood of Christ arc taken and
received in
WESlEIiN
CHOTCH.
Termination
vf the struggle, at Sawaiiru, 859
The
Euchn- riftic con- trovtrsi/.
1
... ‘ex ipsa tamen multitudine fidelium et mlemptorum, alios sal- vari H'tenia
salute, quia per gratiam Dei in redemptione sua fideliter
permanent,
alios quia noluerunt permanere in salute fidei a<l
plenitu-
dinem salutis
et ad perceptionem astemaj beatitudiris nullo modo per- venire.’ c. 5. Tlie following
passage from the Annale.s Bertiniani (by l’rudentius of Troyes), a.d. 859
(Pertz. 1. 453), appears to intimate that pope Nicholas I. approved of the
canons of Valence: ‘Nicolaus, pontifcx llomanus, de gratia Dei et libero
arbitrio, de veritate gemin® prwdestina- tionis et sanguine C.hristi, ut pro
credent Urns omnibus fusus sit, fideliter eoniirmat' The Jesuits, who are
strongly opposed to Gottschalk, labour hard to set aside this passage.
3
The extant work, written between 859 and RH3, is entitled De Pree- dfstinatione
Dei et Libert) Arbitrio adversus Gotteschalkum et cteUros Pmdestinatianos: see
his Works by Sirmond, tom. 1.
3 Cone. Tullense I. (apud Saponarias;
ilansi, xv. 527) read over nix doctrinal canons, which had been agreed upon at
a smaller Bjnod, held about a fortnight before at Langres (Lingonense; ibid.
xv. 525), apparently in preparation for this meeting with Hincmar; and which
had been framed at Valence in 855 (ibid. xv. 3). The prelates, however, for the
sake of peace, now omitted the reference to the four Kiersy propositions,
which bad been pointedly condemned at Valence, 1 propter inutili-
tatem, vel etiam noxietatem, et errorem contrarium veritati;’ c. 4. Cf.
tiieseler, 11. 297 sq.; Neander, vi. ‘208.
4 He died in prison, 868. Neander (p. 204)
cites from Muuguin the terms of well-deserved rebuke, in which Remigius
condemned llinemarV cruel treatment of Goti schalk. This unhappy monk had been
involved (circ. 850) in another dispute with Hincmar, touching the expression,
•Te, trina Deltas unaque, poscimus,’ which occurs in an ancient bmn. The
primate had forbidden the use of it on the ground that it savoured of
Tritheism: but Gottschalk and the other Frankish Benetlietines, represented by
llatramnus, justified the phrase (Hincmar's Works, 1. 413 sq.), and Hincmar was
compelled to let the matter rest. On Hincmar's career generally see his Life by
J. C. Prichard, Oxford, 1849.
the Lord’s Supper. It employed the leading theologians of the west for
several years: and when religion had emerged from the benumbing darkness of the
tenth century, it furnished a perplexing theme for the most able of the
schoolmen. As the spirit of the Western Church contracted a more sensuous tone,
there was a greater disposition to confound the sacramental symbols with the
grace they were intended to convey, or, in a word, to cor- porealize the
mysteries of faith. Examples of this spirit may be found in earlier writers who
had handled the great question of the Eucharist: but it was first distinctly
manifested by Paschasius Radbert in 831 He was a monk, and afterwards (844:-
-851) the abbot, of Corbey; and in a treatise1, On the Sacrament of
the Body and Blood of Christ, appears to have maintained that, by the act of
consecration, the material elements are so transformed as to retain no more
than the appearance (‘ figura ’) of their natural substance, being truly,
though invisibly, replaced by Christ Himself in every way the same as He was
bom and crucified2. The work of Radbert was composed in the first
instance for a pupil, but when he presented a new edition of it (844) to
Charles the Bald, it startled nearly all the Rabanus Maurus8 wrote
against it;
The
trork of Paschasius Mad- if it, 831.
scholars of the age.
1 The best edition is iu Mart&ne and
Durand’s Veter. Script. Collect. ix. 367 sq.; or Eadberti Opp. omnia, ed.
Migne, 1852.
"
e. g. ‘Quia Christum vorari fas dentibus non est, vojait in mysterio hunc
par.em et vinun. vere carnem Nuam et sanguintm, consecratione Spiritus Sancti,
potentialiter creari, creando vero quotidie pro mundi vita mystice immolari, ut
sicut de Virgine per Spiritum vera caro .tine ooitu crtatur ita per eundem ex
substantia panis ac vini mystice idem Christi corpus et saneruis consecretur,’
etc. c. iv.: ‘Substantia panis et yini in Christi carnem et tsanguinem
eflicaciter interius commutatur,’ c. viii. It may be noted, as an index to the
principles of Eadbert, that he also argued for the miraculous delivery of the
Virgin m giving birth to our blessed Lord (‘ absque vexatione matris ingressus
est mundurn sine dolore et sine gemitu et sine ulla corruptione carnis'):
l’aseh. Eadbert. de Partu Virginis, in D’Achery’s Spicilegium, I. 44. He was
again opposed in this view by Eatramnus: Ibid. i. 52.
3 ‘
Qnidam nuper de ipso sacramento corporis et sanj'uinis Porcini
non rite sentientes dixerunt, hoc ipsum esse corpus et sanguinam Do
mini, quod de Maria Virgine natum est, et in quo ipse Dominus passus
est in cruce et resnrrexit de sepulcro. Cm errnri
quantum potuimus, ad Egilonem abbatem [i.e. of Prtlm] scribentes, de corpore
ipso quid vere
credendum
sit aperuimus.’ Epist. ad Heribaldum Autissiodnremnn epif.
(bp.
of Auxerre). The passage is given, in its fullest form, in Mabill.m’s Iter
Germanicum, p. 17, The letter to Egilo has perished, unless it be
but unhappily no full account of his objections is preserved. Another
monk of Corbey, Ratramnus, whom wo saw engaging in a former controversy, was
the main antagonist of Radbert. He put forth, at the request of the emperor, a
treatise1 On the Body and Blood of the Lord. It is divided into
two parts, the first entering on the question, whether the body and blood
of Christ are taken by the faithful communicant in mystery or in truth (‘in
mysterio an in veritate2’); the second, whether it is the same body
as that iu which Christ was born, suffered, and rose from the dead. In
answering the former question he declared, with St Augustine, that the
Eucharistic elements possess a twofold meaning. Viewed externally they are not
the thing itself (the ‘res sacra- menti’); they are simply bread and wine: but
in their better aspect, and as seen by faith, the visual organ of the soul,
they are the Body and Blood of Christ. The latter question was determined in
the same spirit, though the language of Ratramnus is not equally distinct.
While he admitted a ‘conversion’ of the elements into the body of the Lord, in
such a manner that the terms were interchangeable, he argued that the body was
not Christ’s in any carnal sense, but that the Word of God, the Bread Invisible,
which is invisibly associated with the Sacrament, communicates nutrition to the
soul, and quickens all the faithful who receive Him3. Or, in other
words, Ratramnus
identical
-with a document edited by Hnbillon in Act. Sanct. Ord. Bened. S£ec. iv.
pt. 11. 591. Other traces of the doctrine of Kabamis on the Eucharist are left
in his De Instit. Clericorum, lib. A c. 31 ■ cf. Soames’s Bampton Led.
pp. 412, 413. Itadbert himself was forced to allow, in writing to a monk
Frudegard (Opp. p. 1351, ed. Jligne) that ‘many’ doubted the truth of his
teaching: and the Humanists admit that ho was the first writer who explained
their -views of the Lord’s Supper with precision. See L’Arroque’s Hist, of the
Eucharist, p. 387, Lond. 1684.
1 The best edition is by Boileau, Paris,
1712. Respecting the genuineness of the work, see Fabricius, Bihl. Latinitatis
Med. Mtat. 1. Gtil «q.
2 Adding, by way of explanation, ‘ utrum
aliquid secreti contineat, quod oculis fidei solummodo pateat,’ § 1. He
afterwards illustrates the efficacy of the Lord’s Supper by the analogous
application of the element of water in the sacrament of Haptism.
3 ‘Yerbniu
Dei, qui est i'anis Invisibilis, invisibiliter in Illo existens Sacramento,
invisibiliter participatione Sui fidelium mentes vivificando pascit.’ See
Neander, vi. 214 sq.; Dollinger, m. 73. Th> work of Ratramnus was placed in
the Index Librorum Pruhibitorum of 1559; but some Boman Catholic writers
(e.g. Mabillon, Act. Sanct. limed, stec. iv. pt. 11. prtef. p. xliv) try
to vindicate him from tho charge of ‘heresy.’
Refuted
btp Ji-itraia- n us.
The
nature of his reply-
Ills
views accordant with the general teaching of the age. John Scotus takes the
opposite extreme.
was iu favour of a real, while he disbelieved a corporal, or material presence
in the Eucharist.
His views were shared, to some extent at least, by Floras, Walafrid
Strabo, Christian JJruthmar, and others1 on the continent, and were
identical with those professed in England till the period of the Norman
conquest2. The extreme position on the other side appears to have
been taken by Erigena, who was invited, as before, to write a treatise oil the
subject of dispute. Although his work 3 has perished, we have reason
to infer from other records of his views, that he saw little more in the
Eucharist than a memorial of the absent body of the Lord,—or a remembrancer of
Christian truths, by which the spirit of the faithful is revived, instructed,
and sustained4.
Paschasius, unconvinced by opposition, stedfastly adhered to his former
ground5; and as the theory which he
1 See extracts from tlieir works iu
Gieseler, n. 289, n. 8. Amalariu*!, a priest and abbot in the diocese of Metz,
took parr in the Eucharistic controversy, arguing for triplicity of the body of
Christ (de tripartite Christi Corporei, i. e. a distinction between the natural
body of Christ and the Eucharistic, first, as it exists ill the living
Christian, and secondly, as it abides in the Christian after death. He opened
the revolting question of Stercoranism (the liability of the Eucharistic
elements to the same kind of decomposition in the human system as that which is
undergone by ordinary food): see Mabillon, Act. Sanct. Bened. praaf. ad ssec.
iv. pt. ii. p. xxi. The views of Amalarius on the symbolic nature of the
Eucharist may he seen in liis answer to Eantgar, bp. of Noyon, in D’Acherv’s
Spicileg. hi. 330.
2 Ihis point has been triumphantly
established by many writers; e.g. Soames’s Hampton Lect. Serm. vn. and notes.
iElfric, the great Angli-Saxon doctor, was familiar with the work of Eatramnus:
Ibid. p. ±21.
3 The work of Eatramnus has been attributed
to him, an t many writers have maintained that only one book was written (see
Lauf’s essay on this point iu the Theolog. Studien und Kritiken for 1828, I.
735 sq.): but the other view that there were originally two treatises, composed
under royal patronage, appears to be the more probable. Neander, vi. 217.
4 Hincmar (Opp. i. 232) condemns as ono of
the opinions of Scotus, that the Eucharist was ‘ta-ntum memoria veri corporis
et sanguinis Ejus.’ Adrevald has also written an Opusculum de Corpore et
Sanguine Domini contra Joannem Scotum, in D’Achery’s Spicileg. i. 150: a'ud in a
MS. lately found at Eome, containing a commentary of Scotus on the llierar-
chia Caelestis, the Eucharist is sail to be Hypicam similitudinem spirituals
participationis Jesu. quam fideliter solo intellectu gustamus.’ Koto to the
English edition of Dollinger’s Ch. Hist. m. 73. Cf. Scoti Opp. ed. Floss, p.
41.
6 See his Expositio in Matth. lib. mi. c.
xxvi. Opp. p. 891, ed. Migne. His view uppears to be supported in Haimo’s
Tractatus de Corp. et Sang. Domini (DAchery, i. 42).
laid before a council6, which was sitting at the time, its
Lull
in the controvert*}.
Revived
by Berenga• rius (d. 1088)-
defended was in unison with the materializing spirit of the age, it was
gradually espoused in almost every province of the Western Church. The
controversy slumbered1, with a few exceptions, for the whole of the
tenth century, when it broke out with reinvigorated force. The author of the
second movement, Berengarius, was archdeacon of Angers (1040), and formerly the
head of the thriving schools attached to the cathedral of Tours. Embracing the
more spiritual view of the Eucharist, as it had been expounded by llatramnus2,
he was forced at length into collision with a former school-fellow, Adel- mann1,
who warned him in 1045 and 1047 of scandals he was causing in the Church at
large by his opinions on this subject. Like the rest of the mediaeval
reformers, Berengarius had inherited a strong affection for the works of St
Augustine4; and his confidence in the antiquity and truth of his
position is expressed, with a becoming modesty, in his appeal to the celebrated
Lanfranc5, prior of Bee, in Normandy. This letter had been forwarded
to Rome, where Lanfranc was in 1050, and on being
Hit
riew condemned at Home,
1UE0.
1 Cf. L'Arroque, History of the F.ucharixt,
part H. ch. xvi. Herigar, abbot of Lobes, iu the diocese of Liege (circ. 1000), compiled ‘contra Ratbertran multa catholicorum patrum scripta de
corpore et sanguine Domini’ (D’Aehery, 11. Hi): and
Gerbert (afterwards, in 999, Silvester
II.)
put forth a modified version of the theory of Radbert (in Pez, Thesaurus
Anecdot. tom. 1. pt. 11. 133—149) especially denouncing the ‘ Ster- coranists.
’ On the other hand, that theory was advocated in its fulness by Gezo. abbot of
Tortona (circ. 950; in Muratori’s Anecdota, in. 237), and confirmed in the eyes
of the vulgar by miraculous stories, which asserted nothing less than a
physical change in tho Eucharistic elements.
2 Owing to the early confusion between the
works of Scotus and Ratramnus (see above, p. 168, n. 3), Berengarius is
continually charged with drawing his opinions on the Eucharist from the erratic
Scotus; but there is no question, after his own constant reference to the
treatise of llatramnus, that it was the work intended by his adversaries.
3 Then residing at LiSge, afterwards (1048)
bishop of Brescia. See Adelmann. De Veritate Curporis et Sanguinis Domini, ed.
Schmidt, Brunsv. 1770, in which edition other documents are printed. Tho rumour
which had reached Lifege was, that lierengarius denied ‘venun corpus Christi,’
and argued for ‘figuram quandain et ainulitudmem.’
4 See Neander, vi. 223.
5 Lanfranc. Opp. ed. B’Achery, p. 22. One
of the best modern accounts of this controversy is in Ebrurd’s Doctrine and
History of the Lord's Supper (in German), 1. 439 sq. Franoof. 1845.
9 Mansi, six. 757: Lanfranc. Opp. p. 234: Berengar. de
Sacra Cutna, p. 35; ed. Berolin. 1834. The sentence was
confirmed in the following
He
is acquitted at Tourst 1.054
author was condemned unheard. His friends, however, more particularly
Bruno1, bishop of Angers, did not abandon him in this extremity;
and after a short interval of silence and suspense2, he was relieved
from the charge of heresy in a provincial synod held at Tours3 in
1004. The papal representative was Hildebrand, who listened calmly to the
arguments of the accused, and when he had most cordially admitted that the
bread and wine are ,in one sense) the Body and Blood of Christ4, the
legate took his side, or was at least completely satisfied with the account he
gave of his belief. Confiding in the powerful aid of Hildebrand, he afterwards
obeyed a summons to appear in Rome* (1059), but bis compliance ended in a
bitter disappointment of bis hopes. The sensuous multitude, who liad become
impatient of all phrases that ex-
rmdemned
afresh,
1C59
September, at
Vercelli, where tlie book of Scotus (? Eairamnus) is connected with the
doctrine oi Berengarius: Mansi, xix. 773; Berengar. de Sacr. Ccena, pp. 42, 43.
He was anxious to appear at this later synod, but was prevented by the king of
France (Henry I.), the patron of the abbey of Tours, in which Berengarius was
an inmate.
1 See his friendly but guarded Letter to
Berengarius, printed in De Eoye, De Vita Berengarii, p. 48, ed. Andegav. 1657.
2 In this interval is to be placed the
council of Pans, if such a council was actually held. See Neander, vi. 231,
232. In any case, it is plain that popular opinion was strongly against
Berengarius. The Bishop of Lifege (Deoduin), in an EpistU to the king (Bibl.
Patr. ed. Lugdun. xvtii. 531), alludes to this excited state of
public feeling in violent terms, and even charges Berengarius and Bruno of
Angers with denying other articles of faith (‘ qualiter...antiquas hasreses
modemis temporibus introducendo adstruant, corpus Domini non tam corpus esse
quam umbram et figuram corporis Domini, legitima conjugia des truant, et,
quantum in ipsis est, baptisnium parvulorum evertant ’).
1 See Berengarius, ubi sup. pp. 50 sq., and
the varying account of Lanfranc, de Eucharist, c. iv.
4 1 Panis atque vinum altaris post consecrationem sunt corpus Christi et
sanguis.’ From
this and other passages it is plain that Berengarius did not view the Eucharist
as a bare symbol. What he controverted was the theory of men like archbishop
Guitmund, circ. 1075 (de Corpore et Sanguine Christi, in Bibl. Patr. ed. Lugd.
xvm. 440), who maintained that the bread and "wine were changed ‘
essentialiter. ’ The same writer mentions that, while some of the •
Berengariani ’ admitted ‘ tantummodo umbras et figuras,’ Berengarius himself and
others (‘rectis Ecclesiaa rationibus cedentes’) affirmed a real though
uncorporeal presence: ‘diount ibi corpus et sanguinem Domini levera, sed
latenter contineri, et, ut sitmi possint quodammodo (ut ita dixerim). impanari.-
This view was certainly shared by Bruno, above, n. 1; and, in so far ab we can
judge, by Hildebrand himself. Neander, vi. 233 (note).
8
Mansi, xit. 758.
pressed a spiritual participation iu the Eucharist1, now
clamoured for his death, and through the menaces of bishop Humbert, who was
then the leading cardinal, he was eventually compelled to sign a formula of
faith, in which the physical conversion of the elements was stated in the most
revolting terms8. The insincerity of this confession was indeed soon
afterwards apparent: for on his return to France he spoke with bitterness, if
not contempt, of his opponents3, and at length proceeded to develope
and defend bis earlier teaching. His chief antagonist4 was Lan-
franc, who, while shrinking from expressions such as those which emanated from
the Roman synod, argued strongly for a change of substance in the bread and
wine6. The controversy, in their hands, became a battle-field for
putting the new dialectic weapons to the proof; and in a long dispute,
conducted with no common skill, they both were able to arrive at clearer
definitions than had hitherto been current in the Church. The feverish
populace, however, with the great majority of learned men, declared for
Lanfranc from the first; and more than once his rival only just escaped the
ebullition of their rage8. The lenient tone7 of Alexander
II. in dealing with reputed misbelief, was due perhaps to the pacification of
his favourite, Hildebrand; and when the latter was exalted to the papal throne
as Gregory VI I. (]073), the course of Berengarius promised to grow smoother.
But that interval of peace was short. His adversaries, some of whom had private
grounds of disaffection to the reigning pontiff, made common cause
Controversy
reopened.
Lanfranc,
his opponent.
1 Berengarius,
de Sacra Ccena, p. 72.
2 ... ‘verum
corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi esse, et sensualiter non solum
sacramento, sed in veritate, manibus sacerdotum tractari, frangi et fidelium
dentibus atteri;’ Lanfranc, Opp. p. 232.
3 See a contemporary -writing (? by Bernaldus),
in Bibl. Pair. ed. Lugd. xviii. 835.
4 Another was Guitmund (see p. 170, n. 4),
and a third Durandus, abbot of Troam (Lanfranc. Opp. ed. D’Acbery, Append, pp.
71 sq.),
5 1 Credimus
terrenas substantias, quge in mensa Dominica per sacer- dotale myeterium
Divinitus sanctificantur, ineffabiliter, incomprehensi- biliter, mirabiliter,
operante superna potentia, converti in essentiam Dominici corporis, reservatis
ipsarum rerum speciebus, et quibusdam aliis qualitatibus,’ etc. De Eucharist,
c. xviii. p. 244.
6 e.g. at tbe synod of Poitiers (1076):
Chronicon. S. Maxentii, in Labbe’s Biblioth. MSS. 11. 212.
7 Bee tbe statement of tbe writer quoted
above, n. 3.
Cited
to appear again at Rome, 1078.
His
recantation, 10/S.
with the more stringent cardinals; and in 1078, the author of the
movement, which continued to distract the Western Church, was cited to appear a
second time at Home1. The pope himself, adducing the authority of
Peter Damiani as an equipoise to that of Lanfranc, was at first content with an
untechnical confession that ‘the bread and wine are, after consecration, the
true Body and Blood of Christ;’ which the accused was ready to accept2.
But other members of the Roman church, incited by the cardinal Benno3,
Gregory’s implacable opponent, now protested that, as formulae like these did
not run counter to the faith of Berengarius, he should be subjected to a
stricter test. To this demand the pope was driven to accede4, and in
a numerous council6, held at Rome in the following February (1079),
the faith of the accused again forsook him. He subscribed a new confession
teaching the most rigorous form of transiibstantiatiou'1, and
retired soon afterwards from Rome with testimonials of his orthodoxy granted by
the pope7. As in the former case, his liberation was accompanied by
bitter self-reproach; but though he seems to have maintained his old opinions8
till his death, in 1088 no further measures of repression were adopted by his
foes.
1
See the account of Berengarius himself in Hasten© and Durand’s Thesaur.
Anecdot. iv. 103; Mansi, xix.' 761.
s
‘Profiteer panem altaris post consecrationem esse verum corpus Christi, quod
mram est de Virgine, quod passum est in eruce, quod sedet ad dexteram Patris;
et vinum altaris, postquam nonsecratum est, esse verum sanguinem, qui manavit
de latere Christi.’
3 He calls in question the ‘orthodoxy’ of
Gregory himself, as -well he might, for fraternizing ■with Berengariu-..
See his work De Vita Hilde- Irandi (in Goldasl’s Apolog. pro Henrico IV. p. 3.)
1 Cf. Neander, vi. 244, 245.
5 Mansi, xx.
523.
6 ‘Corde
credo et ore confiteor, panem et vinum. quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium
sacrae orationis et verba nostri Eedemptoris suh- stantialiter converti in
veram et propriam et vivificatricen. cainem et sanguinem Jesu Christi Domini
nostri, et post consecrationem esse veram Christi corpus, quod uatum est de
Virgine, et quod pro salute mundi oblntnm in cruce pependit, et quod sedet ad
dexteram Patris; et verum sanguinem Christi, qui de latere Ejus effusus est,
non tantum per signum et virtutem Sacramenti, sed in proprietate natural et
veritate substantia.'
t
D’Achery’s Spicileg. hi. 413.
All who call Berengarius a heretic are anathematized.
8
See Gieseler, ii. 411. and
Neander, vi. 247, on the one side; and Dollinger, in. 79, 80, on the other.
In him expired an able but inconstant champion1 of the
primitive belief respecting the true Presence iu the Supper of the Lord. While
he contended that the substance of the elements is not destroyed at
consecration, he regarded them as media instituted by the Lord Himself for the
communication, in a supernatural manner, of His Body and His Blood to every
faithful soul. He argued even for the fitness of the term ‘conversion’ as
equivalent to ‘consecration,’ and in this respect allowed a change in the bread
and wine; a change, how'ever, which, according to his view, was nothing like a
physical transubstantiation, but was rather a transfiguration, which the elements
appeared to undergo, when contemplated by a living faith in Christ, who had
appointed them as representatives and as conductors of Himself.
The great bulk of the church-writers who had been produced in the period
under our review, are far less worthy of enumeration. We must not, however,
pass in silence men2 like Alfred the Great, the Charlemagne of
England (871—901) wrlio, after struggling with the barbarous
Northmen, and at length subduing them, stood forward as the ardent patron of
the Church and a restorer of religion. Almost every trace of native scholarship3
had been obliterated in the conflict with the Danes, but through the holy
efforts of the king himself4, assisted by a band
1 The later Roman Catholic writers,
Mabillon, Martfne, anil Durand, adnut, after tho discovery of some original
documents, that he only denied trannub^tantiation, hut conceded a ‘real
presence.’ (iieseler, ibid. It is plain, however, that the movement which he
headed, numbered others who denied the presence of the Lord in any sense
whatever: see above, p. 170, n. 4.
r
Cf. The Laws of Howel the Good, the Cambrian prince and legislator of the 10th
century.
* See above, p. H6, n. X.
* A Jubilee edition of his Complete Works
has been published. His most valuable treatises
(ecclesiastically speaking) aro the Anglo-Saxon editions of the Pastoral of
Gregory the Great, and Bede’s Church History: to which we may add the freer
version of Boetius de Conxolalione and the Soliloquies of St Augustine. The
Laws of King Alfred are re-published in Thorpe’s Ancient Lairs, &c. i.
44—101. It was mainly through the influence of khig Alfred that so many
vernacular glosses'on the Scriptures and the Service-books were undertaken at this
period. See Wright’s Biograph. Britan. (Anglo-Saxon Period) pp. 426, 127.
The Rule of St Benedict was afterwards translated into Anglo-Saxon by Kthelwold.
Ibid. 440.
WESTERN
CHURCH.
Summary
of h is belief.
Alfred
the Great
(d. 901).
IIis
influence as a patron of learning and religion.
uEIfric.
Wulfsian,
or Lupus.
of literati1, a new impulse was communicated to the spiritual
and intellectual progress of the Anglo-Saxon race. The English, it is true,
like other churches of the west*, was not exempted from the corruptions which
prevailed so widely in the tenth century: hut from the age of Alfred, a more
general diffusion of religious truth, in the vernacular language, raised the
standard of intelligence. His policy was carried out3 by iElfric,
the Canonist, Homilist, Grammarian, Monastic Reformer, and Hagiograplier, to
whom we are indebted for a large proportion of the vernacular literature of
his age, but whose identification is one of the most obscure problems of
English History4. JElfric left behind him a set of eighty
Anglo-Saxon Homilies for Sundays and great festivals, compiled in almost every
case from the earlier doctors of the west; and a second set for Anglo-Saxon
Saints’ days. There is extant also a collection of contemporary Homilies ascribed
to a Bishop Lupus, who has been conjecturally identified with Archbishop
Wulfstan of York5.
1 Some of these 'were Plegmuntl, archbp, of
Canterbury, who died 923; Werefrith, bp. of "Worcester (d. 915),
(irinibald, John of Cnrbey (confounded with John Scotus Erigenat, and Asser,
the biographer of Alfred, and a native of Wales. See Wright, ubi sup. pp.
405—418.
2 The almost solitary exceptions on the
continent, at least till the close of the tenth century, are Batherius of
Verona, and Atto of Yer- celli; see above, p. 144, n. 2 ; p. 142, n. 2. The
latter, it may be added, wrote a Commentary of some value on the Epistles of St
Paul: ed. Vercelli, 1768.
8
See his Preface to the Ilomilies, when, in declaring that hii- aim was to edify
unlettered people, who knew nothing but ‘ simple English,’ he alludes to the ‘
prudent ’ labours of king Alfred.
4 The difiiculty of distinguishing between
the tiany owners of the name of iElfric is confessed on every hand. See
Wharton’s Dissertatio utrum lilfricus Grammaticus! (who makes the most
distinguished JKlfric- an archbishop of York:) and, on the other side, Mores'
De JElfrico Dorobernensi Archiepiscopo, ed. Thorkelin, Lond. 1789, who
identifies him with the archbishop .Elfric of Canterbury. The editor < if
the .Elfriu Ilomilies (Mr Thorpe) assigns them to the archbishop of York. But
all that can be certainly advanced is that the homilist was a West-Saxon monk,
a pnpil of Ethelwold bishop of Winchester; and that there are almost
insuperable objections to identifying him with either prelate. See an elaborate article in Niedner’s Zeitsclirift fur
die listorische Theologie, 1856. Heft iv. pp. 487 sq. Wright, ubi sup.
485, 186.
5 See Wanlej's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon
MSS. (in Hickes’ Thesaurus),
ii. 140—143.
There was another Wolstan (or Wulfstani at the close of the tenth century. He
was a monk of Winchester and a respectable Latin poet. 'Wright, pp. 471--474.
Contemporary with him was the
On the continent of Europe very few of the scholars had attained to
greater celebrity than Gerhert, a monk of Aurillac, and subsequently pope
Silvester II. (999-1003). His fund of scientific knowledge1 was
derived from the Muhammedans; and, as the fruit of an awakened intellect, he
was at first a strenuous adversary of the ultra- papal claims2. His
influence was extended far and near, especially by a distinguished pupil,
Fulbert, in whose hands the school of Chartres grew into a mighty agent for
diminishing the darkness of the age.
By this and other kindred institutions3 it was shewn that a
fresh era of comparative illumination had now- opened in the west. The seeds of
knowledge and of moral culture, planted in. the time of Charlemagne, were
beginning to produce more salutary fruits; for though the systems of the schoolmen
were iu many points imperfect, they may justly be regarded as a great advance
upon the barbarism which marked the seventh century, and the materializing
spirit of the tenth.
The Eastern Church, while it continued to preserve its former intellectual
level1, manifested a deplorable defect
Latin poetess
Boswitha, a nnn of Gandersheim. See her Carmina, ed. Witemb 1707.
1
His mathematical and astronomical learning was suspected: and the vulgar
thought him guilty of alliance -with the devil. Only a few of his workt* have
been published. See especially his Epistles, in the Scrip- tores Franc., ed.
Duchesne, ii. 787 sq. Ilia
treatise on the Eucharisi is mentioned above, p. 169, n. 1„
3
See above, p. 138, n. 4.
3
Those more especially influenced by Gorbert were Bobbio, Eheims, Aurillac,
Tours, and Sens.
1
Above, p. 04. Of the Eastern dissenting bodies the Armenians, who are like the
Jacobites in nearly every feature, were most flourishing throughout the present
period. See Neumann’s Getch. der Armenischen Literatur, pp. 114 sq. Leipzig,
1836; Stanley, Lectures on the Eastern Church, pp. 7 sq. Their separation is
said to have arisen from the accidental absence of the Armenian bishops
from the Council of Chalce- don (451); hence they never received its decrees,
and, in 596, they repudiated it, under their patriarch Abraham I., at the
synod of Tovin. The chief patriarch was henceforth called ‘Catholicos,’ and
resided in the convent of Echmiadzin, now belonging to Eussia: Golovin’s Caucasus,
p. 168, Lond. 1854. An attempt was made about 866 to ■nin them over
to the Eastern Church, but it was fruitless. See ,Spicileg. Bom. tom. x. pt. ii. 419.
Gerherl,
or SUvestcrll.
(d. 1003).
Fulbtrt,
hishop of Chartra, <d. 1028).
The
revival of the Iconoclastic controversy.
Leo
the Armenian (d. 820).
The
resistance of Nicepho- ms: and the Constanti-
of earnestness and moral health. We gather this especially from records
of the image-controversy, which, although it had rapidly subsided after the
council of Niccea (787), started into life again at the commencement of the
present period. It had been revived, indeed, by some of the Frankish prelates1
(such as Agobard and 'Claudius of Turin); but there, as images were not so
grievously- abused, the agitatiou they excited was not permanent. In the
Byzantine capital, however, the Iconoclasts grew up into a powerful body, and
were able, for a time at least, to sway the fortunes of the Eastern Church.
The germs of a reaction seem to have been always cherished in the army,
who, as we observed, had been the main support of an Iconoclastic monarch2;
and when Leo the Armenian (813—820) was invested with the purple, they rejoiced
to see him take the lead in the suppression of all images (the symbol of the
cross excepted). Leo strove at first to bring about his reformation by
conciliatory means3; but as Nicephorus, the patriarch of
Constantinople, was inflexibly devoted to the present ritual of the church, he
fell under the severe displeasure of the court. As in the former time, the spirit
of resistance still continued to be strongest in the monks4. They
were now headed by the abbot of the Studion (a great monastery of Con-
1
Above, pp. 157, 158. In 825 a synod had been held at Paris under Louis the
Pious, for the purpose of ascertaining what the Fathers thought of the use of
images iu Divine -worship. The prelates there assembled did not hesitate to
censure the prevailing superstitions on this subject, more especially in Italy
(Mansi, xiv. 421), and also animadverted on the language of the pope in his
attempt to answer tbo Libri Carolini (a^ove, p. 77). A_t the same time they
were opposed to the violent proceedings of the Iconoclasts. Some of the
Frankish prelates even went on » mission, first to Home, and then to
Constantinople, in the capacity of mediators between the pope and the emperor
Michael II. See Life of Louis the Pious, in Pertz, ir. G31.
* Above, p. 75,
3 He represented, among other things, that
the ‘people’ were opposed to imagc-worship (o Xaos o'Kai'SaM^crac Sia rds
thcovaSj Xtyovres Stt makms auras irpoiTKwmfitv, Kal Sti Scd ro>"ro rd.
iOmj Kiotcvova.v ijfitSr)-. but thi^ antipathy (as will appear in the sequel)
was far from general. He urged also the importance of scriptural proof for the
practice (ireZow ijaas it oe iiceiva Trpo&KweiTty T7]S ypcupijs p.jj ixov<rys
prjr&s TrJnro-e}. For tin account of the whole interview between Leo and
the patriarch, see the Chronograph. (in Continuation of Theophnnes), p. 437,
and the Life of Xicepfwrut, by his pupil, Ignatius, in the Acta t'anct. Mart.
ii. 296, 701.
1 Above, p. 74, n 1.
stantinople), Theodore Studita (759—823), who maintained that an inferior
worship ('jrpoaKvvrims-) of the sacred images was to he recognized as an
essential article of faith1. His violence, united with the firmness
of Nicephorus, impelled the emperor to enter on a strenuous course of action.
He forbade the public meetings of the monks, and bound them to maintain a total
silence on the subject of dispute2; himself avowing no desire at
present to expel the images entirely. But as soon as he could count upon the
help of many of the bishops, he convened a synod3 at Constantinople
(815) for this purpose; and, on finding that the patriarch was still
immoveable, proceeded to eject him from his throne. It was bestowed on a severe
Iconoclast, Theodotus, but all the ardent image-worshippers immediately
renounced communion with him*. Their resistance now brought down upon their
heads the most inhuman persecutions, and a number of the monks (their leader,
Theodore, included) felt the lashes of the vigilant police, and died in prison
or in exile5.
1 Ho argued, that tho hostility to images
arose from disbelief in tho reality of Christ's human nature, See his B/rfXos
Sayfiarurfj (three discourses against Iconoclasm), passim. Most of his
numerous works relate to the same question, and are written in the same
vehement tone. See a portion of them in Sirmond’s Opp. tom. v. (Paris, 16061,
where a Greek Life of Theodorus (? by a monk named Michael) Mill also be found.
Other v orl;s are enumerated in Smith's liiograph. IHct.. m. 1057.
2 Theodore, the Studite, in a vehement
circular, denounced all those who yielded to tho edict. Epist. lib. ii. ep. 2.
3 Mansi, xiv. 135. This synod (never
recognized in the Western Church) condemned the Acts of the Council of Kieses
(787), and decreed that all paintings in the churches should be destroyed, as
well as the ecclesiastical vestments and vessels which were maried by any
sacred image. Neander (vi. 272), relying perhaps on n letter of the next emperor,
Michael (Mansi, nv. 4J7), supposes that a council (‘ locale concilium ’) had
been held anterior to tho deposition of Nicephorus, in order to effect a
compromise between the opposite extremi s. The images or pictures were to be
raised into a higher part oi the churches, ‘ ne ab indoctioribus et
infirmioribus adorarentur.'
4 The conforming party, who resorted to a
kind of mental reservation (otnui'of/.ict, as they called it), were regarded
by the rest as traitors. See the letter of Theodore to Nicephorus, the banished
patriarch, lib. it. ep. IS. We learn from another of these letters (lib. ii.
ep. 215) that men of his way of thinking travelled into Ttaly for ordination,
shunning tho Iconoclasts as nothing less than heretics. They did not, however,
yield to tho exclusive theory of Home, but viewed the pope as one of the patriarchs
(rd TTevranbpi'tpov icpdroi rrjs I,<K\rj<ria^), though granting
him the first place in general councils (lib. ii. ep. 129).
5 See besides the Life of Theodore, tho touching
story of his pupil. Nicetas, another Studite mon’c, in the Act. tianct.
Febr. tom. i. 538 sq. I
nopolita*
under
Theodore the Studite.
Iconoclastic
synod
(815):
persecution
of the iulagc-iror- shippers.
EASTERN
CHURCH,
Gentle
po~ licy oj Michael II.
Persecutions
under Theophilus (d. 842).
Images
finally
restored
under
Theodora,
843.
The accession of the new emperor, Michael II. (820— 829), filled the
image-worshippers with hope. He tolerated them on principle, and laboured even
to effect a general understanding in the disputants on either side1.
But men like Theodore the Studite could not listen to a proposition, which in
their eyes would involve a compromise of truth2. The schism was,
accordingly, continued to the end of the reign.
Theophilus, the heir of Michael II., succeeded to the throne in 629, and
for thirteen years directed all his energies to silence and convert the monks,
who clung as formerly to image-worship. Very many of his acts are stained by
cruelty, although his enemies have been unable to deny that he was zealous in
promoting what he deemed the cause of God, and upright in discharging his
imperial duties3. But it happened now, as at the death of Leo IV.;
his able and intriguing relict, Theodora, who administered affairs in tlie
minority of her son (Mieliael III.), restored the interdicted worship4,
banished John the Grammarian, patriarch of Constantinople, who was true to his
opinions, and established in his place a zealot named Methodius. On the first
Sunday of Lent (Feb. 18, 843), the use of images was introduced afresh into the
churches of the Eastern metropolis, where the event has been commemorated ever
since by an animal feast, entitled ‘Feast of Orthodoxy.’ With some brief
exceptions, the Iconoclastic troubles vanish at this stage. The subsequent
decrees of
1 See the Life of Theodore the Studite, a?
above, c. 102—122. This emperor, in writing to the Western Church, has left a
most melancholy picture of tho extravagances of the image-party. ‘ Psallebant et adora- bant, atijup ab eisdem imaginibus aux;.ium
petebani. Plerique autein linteaminibus easdem imagines rircumdabaut et
filiorum siiorum de
baptismatis fontibu* susceptrices [i. e. sponsors] faciebant
Quidam vero sacerdotnm et clericorum colores de imaginibus radr-ntes,
immiscuerunt oblationibus et vino, etc. Mansi, xiv.
420. Even Theodore himself, while arguing for the absolute necessity of images
for fixing in our minds- the truth of the Incarnation, T.as compelled to
acknowledge that, in some cases, reverence for them had issued in idolatry.
tJee fur instance, his Epist. lib. n. ep. 151: and Neander, vi. 281, 282.
2 Epibt. lib. ti. ep. 171.
3 See the evidence respecting him fairly
stated in Pchlosser’s Ge- schichte der bilder-stvrm. Kaiser, pp. 409 sq.
' [bid.
544 sq. For the strange way in which her scruples, as to the salvation of her
husband, were removed, see .the Continuation of Theo- phanes, lib. iv. c. 4.
councils at Constantinople1, in 8S9 and 879, may be regarded
as the formal winding-up of the discussion,—till it was at length reopened by
the Western Churches in the sixteenth century.
The master-spirit of the image-worshipped, as we have seen already, was
the abbot Theodore, the Studite. N early all his published writ ings bear upon
this point: but he has left a multitude of other works behind him*. He was held
in very high repute, and thus transmitted the impression which was made upon
the Eastern Church by John of Damascus, whom in many features he resembled. In
the latter half of the ninth century and the commencement of the tenth, there
w’as no lack of scholars at Constantinople, owing to the special patronage
afforded to them by the emperors Basil the Macedonian (867—886) and Constantine
Porphyrogennetus (913—959). Indeed the whole of the present period witnessed a
variety of literary labours in the East, although they are too often
compilations3 (or Caterice) from the older stores of knowledge.
Simeon* (o Mtza^paa-Tr,^), who appears to have flourished about 900, was
not destitute of originality, but it is manifested chiefly iu his numerous
Lives of Saints8; the greater part of which, however, may have been
recastings from the earlier Legends. None of the expositors of Holy Scripture
is more worthy of a passing notice than the Thracian bishop, (Ecumenius (circ.
950). Though he
1 Here, as in the earlier synod (843), tho
language of the second council of N icon ft was confirmed. In 869, the third
canon puts tho worship of the sacred image of our Lord upon a level with the
worship of the Gospels: Mansi, wi. 400. Traces of a -hort reaction of
Ieonoclasm. about 860, are found iu an epistle of pope Nicholas I.; Mansi, xv.
161.
2 See above, p. 177, n. 1.
3 e.g. Constantine Porphyrogennetus
suggested the formation of compendious works from all the earlier writers.
They were arranged under fiity-three heads, embracing history, politics, and
morals. Schrijckh.
xxi.
130 sq.
* See Leo
Allatius, De Simeonum Scriptis Diatriba.
6 The number of these is reckoned at six or
seven hundred: hut mam seem to have been compiled l>v other writers. Ibid.
and Fabricius, Bih- Uoth. Grceca, ed. Harles, x. 186 sq. Tho rest
of his works are Annah, Sermons, Poems, &c. See the list in Smith’s
liiogr. Diet. m. 953, 954. His credulity was quite prodigious, for expressions
like the following
seem
to indicate that he believed his own stories. He is speaking of his
namesake
Symeon Stvlites, the elder: ’AXXi StSoika /117 ms /ttri raura [iv0os tlyai tt]S a\t]0tiai ytyvitrw/iii'Oi.
The
lilt- nry la- hturi of Thtodnrc the Studite.
Aye
of Catena-.
Simeim
iletap,\ras-
(Ecume-
nius, (circ. 950).
Eutychius
of Alexandria
(d. 940).
Photius
(d. 891?).
His
varied erudition.
borrowed largely from St Chrysostom, his Commentaries1 on the
A cts, the Canonical Epistles, and the Apocalypse, betoken a sound judgment in
the choice of his materials, aud are always neatly, if not elegantly written.
As a general scholar, tinctured also with the love of science, we may notice an
Egyptian prelate, Eutychius''1 (Said Ebn- Batrich), patriarch of
Alexandria (933-940;.
But the ripest and most highly gifted of the Eastern scholars, in the
period under our review, was Photius3, an exalted servant of the
court of Byzantium in the middle of the ninth century. His character, indeed,
is sullied by ambition, and too oft by his forgetfulness of higher duties and
unprincipled devotion to the world; yet as a writer no one will deny that he
conferred a lasting boon on that and succeeding ages. In addition to his
Bibliotheca (criticisms in almost every field of ancient literature), his
JS'omocanon (or a digest of ecclesiastical laws), his interesting Letters, and
a string of minor works, he published treatises directly bearing on theology
and sacred exegesis. Some of these are in the form of Homilies and
Commentaries*, and in one (the Amphilochia) he attempts to solve a number of
perplexing questions in divinity. The rest are chiefly aimed at misbelievers
(such as the Paulicians), or impeach the orthodoxy of the rival Church of Rome.
From Photius, therefore, we may pass to a dispute in which he played a
leading part, the controversy which resulted in the
1 The Exposition of the Gotpeli frequently
attributed to Mm appears to be the work of a later writer', Euthyniius
Zigabenus (or Zvgadenus), a monk of Constantinople (published in 3 vols. 8vo.
Leipzig, 1792). The Commentaries of (Ecvimenius have been often printed (e.g.
Paris, 2 vols. folio, 1631). For that on the Apocalypse, see Cramer's GaUnce,
Oxf. 1840.
s
Hiri Annals (reaching to the year 9-10) were edited by Pocock, Oxon. 1659:
besides which he wrote a treatise on Medicine, and a Disputation between a
Christian and a Heretic. See Neale’s East. Church,
‘
Vli'xan-lria,’ ii. INI—183.
a
See the ample article in Smith’s Biugraph. Diet. hi. 317—355.
* A copy of the Commentary of Photius on the
Pauline Epistles, mentioned by the writer of tho article above, is among the
Cambridge University MSS. (Ff. i. 30).
SCHISM BETWEEN TH^ EASTERN AND THE WESTERN CHURCHES.
The materials of dissension had been long accumulating, and there needed
only a direct collision of the Homan and Byzantine patriarchs to tear asunder
the surviving fibres which composed the bond of peace. Apart from the divergencies
of temperament and intellectual bias, which in periods like the present, were
not easily adjusted, the old leaven1 of ambition, jealousy, aud envy
had fermented more and more. One subject of dispute assumed the gravest
character, relating as it did to the Procession of the Holy Ghost. It had
already occupied the leading theologians of the East and West (for instance,
Alcuin and John of Damascus), and was now put forward still more prominently
on both sides'. The Greeks, while they admitted fully5 that the Holy
Spirit is communicated by, and through, the Son, and therefore may be called
“the Spirit of the Son,” denied as fully that the Godhead of the Holy Ghost
proceeded equally from Both the other Persons of the blessed Trinity. To argue
thus appeared to them a violation of the truth, that God the Father is to be
regarded as the single Root or underived Principle of Godhead (as the
d-r>x*l °f being). Other grounds of discord came to light later, but from
the importance of the doctrine, the Procession of the Holy Ghost has ever been
the
1 Above, pp. 37, 38, 47; p. 51. n. 1: p.
57, n. 1; p. 122. D811ing«r traces the origin of the schism directly to the
Council in TruUo (691). when t'ie (ireek bishops shewed what he think* an
unjustifiable ‘ fastidiousness on the subject of the superiority of tho Church
of Rome,’ m. 83: cf. Nea ider, vi. 298, 299; Stanley’s Eastern Church, pp. 23
sq.
2 The following is the title of a tract by
Photius: Kari tZv t?;s TraXata;
'Pc&jut/s un 4k Ilarpos /tAfou iKTCopetitrtu to IIj'frMa t6 ' Ay lo¥ aW
ov'/l Kai iK rov TioC. Il is printed in the Pnnuplia of Euthymius Zigabe-
nus (pp. 112, 113, ed. Tergovist. 1710). On the introduction of the clause FUioque
into tho western creeds, see above, p. 57, n. 1, and the references there.
3 Nnale's Eastern Church, Introd. Dissert,
in. The language of John of Damiscus (quoted by Neander. vi. 295) is as
follows: Tlor 5( llm'fia, oi’x us Iz avTov, dW <os 3*’ avrou tK rov
llaTpbt tKToptvifievoV fiiros yhp atnos b llarijfi. ‘ Juxia vero Latinos, a Patre et FiHo: quumvis in quibus lam
(ira-corum expositionibus ejindem Spiritum a Patre per
Pilium
procedere reperiamus.’ Scotus Erigena, De Divisione Naturir, p.
85, ed. Oxon. Ifi81. Cf. Laud, Vonf. with Fisher, pp. 17—20, Oxf.
183'J.
The
Grech doctrine of the Procession of the Iloly Ghost.
Deposition
of the patriarch Jgnalius, 858.
The
conduct of his rival Pho' tius.
His
claims recognized by papal legates: but denied at Pome, 863.
most conspicuous topic in the quarrels of the East and West.
The deposition of Ignatius1 by the worthless Caesar Bardas,
uncle of Michael III., was followed by the elevation of Photius to the
patriarchal throne of Constantinople (858). He was before a courtier and a
layman, but, as happened not unfrequently in such an age, he passed at once
through the subordinate gradations of the ministry, and in a week had reached
the highest honours of the Church2. Ignatius was, however, far too
conscious of integrity to sign his own disgrace, and sentence was accordingly
pronounced against hint at a council3 drawn together by his r'val in
the following year (859). But as the friends of the deposed were still a
formidable body4, Photius ventured to invoke the mediation of the
Church of Rome5, and for that purpose put himself into communication
with the equally ambitious pontiff, Nicholas I. The latter bent as we have seen
on carrying out the Pseudo- Isidore Decretals6, now came forward as
an autocratic judge7. In this capacity he sent two legates to
Constantinople ''860), but they were not proof against the threats and bribery
of the court8. They recognized the claims of the intruder, Photius
(861) ; yet their sentence was ere long repudiated9 by a Roman Synod
(863), which, after weighiug all the merits of Ignatius, did not hesitate to launch
anathemas upon his rival. This event was fol-
1
See the contemporary Life of Iijnatius, by Nicetas Paphlago, a ■warm
almirer of him, in Mansi, xvi. 209 sq. According to tin's authority, Burdas had
been excommunicated by Ignatius on the charge of incest with the wife of his
own son.
a
Ibid. 229, 232. Photius urged on his own behalf that the appointment was
pressed upon him by the clergy as well as by the court.
3 The report of i^s proceedings was
destroyed at the eighth session of the following council in 809.
4 See Photii F.pist. in. vi. vm.; ed.
Montague, Loud. 1051.
5 See the reply of Nicholas I. (Sept. 25,
860) to a letter of the emperor (now lost), in Mansi, xv. 162': and the
somewhat fulsome letter of Photius himself in Baroniun, Annales, ad an. 859, §
61.
6 Above, pp. 134 sq. He actually rebuked
Photius in 862 for his slowness in perceiving the weight of such Decretals.
Mansi, xv. 174.
■
In the Letter to the emperor above cited, and another of the same date to
Photius. Mansi, x\. 168.
8 Ibid. xv. 216, where Nicholas informs
the emperor that the un- wonhy legates have been excommunicated.
8 fbid. xv. 178 sq., 245 sq.
lowed by an angry correspondence between the emperor Michael and the pope1;
while Photius2, throwing off the mask and waiving all his former
courtesy, proceeded in a council held at Constantinople to denounce the Latin
Church in general, and even to anathematize the pope (867;. The quarrel was
embittered by occurrences already noted in the missions of Bulgaria3.
The diffusion of the Gospel in that country had been due at first to the
Byzantine Church, but on the introduction of a staff of Latin clergy in 866.
the province had been wrested from the hands of Photius. He alluded to this
point in the ‘ Encyclica,’ which he put forth on summoning the council of 867,
and even went so far as to charge the Western missionaries with departures from
the faith*.
But at this crisis, a new emperor, Basil I. (the Macedonian), whom
Photius estranged by rejecting him from the Communion5, on the ground
of his complicity in the assassination of his predecessor, took the side of
the opponents and proceeded to restore Ignatius to his see. The pope was now
invited to acknowledge him afresh6, and at the numerous council of
Constantinople7 (Oct. 5, 8G3—March
SEPARATION
OF
east a:;:) west.
Hit
quarrel with pope
Nirhula31
ard
the
Latin
Church.
Restoration
o f Ignatius,
1
The emperor's letter is lost, but its contemptuous character may be inferred,
from the more dignified reply of Nicholas (8651. Ibid. xv.
187 sq. He
despises the imperial threats (‘ Nolite nobis minas pretender e, quoniam nec
illas metuimus, nec per has prascepta vestra faciemu*':’ ib. 213), being no
longer subject to the Eastern oouri: cf. the equally characteristic letter to
the emperor (806): Ibid. 216 sq.
3 See Epist. 11. pp. 47 sq. This was an
encyclical letter addressed to the leading bishops of the East, inviting them
to take part in a synod. For a briet notice of its acts, see Anastaxius, Freef.
ad Concil. CEcumen. vm. [i. e. the so-called a'cumenical council of
Constantinople, 869]: Mansi, xvi. 1 sq.
3 Above, pp. 121, 122.
* He dwelt
especially on the Western doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, the
celibacy of the clergy, anil fasting on the Sabbath (Saturday). The cause of
the Latins was defended, among others, by the learned Ratramnus of Oorbey,
whose reply (in D'Achery’s Spicilegium.
I. 63-- 112) is characterized by great
moderation.
5 See on this point the annotations of
Neander, vi. 314. The same view is taken by the writer in Smith’s Biogr. Diet.
in. 349.
6 Mansi, xvi. 46.
7 Ibid. xvi. 1 sq. This council was
preceded by a kindred one at Eome (June, 869: see Jaffe, pp. 256, 257), and
Roman influence, telling as it did in favour of Ignatius, was predominant
throughout. Some of the Greek prelates, it is true, protested, * non bene
factum fuisse, quod ecclesiam Constantinopolitanam tanta subjections Roman®
<=ubdi eecle- 6ia3 permiserint' (Mansi, xvi. 29); and the following entry of
a Frankish
at
the Council of Constantinople,
869.
Reappointment
of Photius, 878,
approved
by the Council of Constantinople, 879,
13, 870), where Photius was again condemned, the schism between the rival
patriarchs, as well as that between the Christians of the East and West,
appeared1 to have been healed.
In C73, when Ignatius was no more, the choice of the emperor fell upon
their ancient adversary, Photins, whom he had already called from banishment.
It seems, however, that there was a numerous party in the East, who were all
bitterly opposed to the imperial nomination, on the ground that Photius still
lay under sentence of a council headed by the pope. To satisfy the scruples of
this school2 an effort was next made to win his approbation of their
recent conduct, such appearing the most likely way to bring the quarrel to a
close. Accordingly the pontiff, John VIII., more pliant than his predecessors,
and affecting to undo the late decisions at Constantinople by a special act of
grace*, despatched his legates to the scene of the dispute (Aug. 16, 879): but
in the following council, while the Easterns seemed to recognize his right of
interference, they most artfully evaded all the ultra-papal claims, to the
annoyance of the Roman Church4. The
chronicler (quoted by Gieseler, 11.471) is most significant: ‘In qua
synodo de imaginibus adorandis aliter quam orthodoxi doctores ante definierant,
statuerunt; qufedam etiam pro favore Homani pontificis, qui eorum votis de
imaginibu-5 adorandis amsuifc, et quEedam contra autiquos canonee,’ etc. The
claim of the council to he called (ecumenical (cf. above, p. 70, n. 2) is
entirely set aside by the fact that the other threp patriarchs were not
represented; the pretended envoys of those sees being in truth agents from the
Saracens, who had come to Constantinople on matters of business (Photii,
Epist. cxvm.: cf. Palmer, Treatise on the Church, 11. 161, 162; 3rd edit.).
1 The old controversy about Bulgaria was,
however, still unsettled, and we find John VIII. (878) repeatedly holding out
the threat of excommunication against Ignatius on account of an assertion of
patriarchal rights in ordaining clergy for that dibtrict: Mansi, xvii. 67. The
Eastern influence finally triumphed; the province of Achrida nr Ju*tinianopolib
adhering to the see of Constantinople. "Wiltsch, i. 405. But the straggle
has been renewed in our own days, in I860 and 1861.
s
Meander, vi. 321, 322.
3 See his Letters in Mansi, xvi, 479 sq.
The policy of Jol.n VIII. was chiefly aimed at securing for himself the
province of Bulgaria; and at least, according to the Homan version of the
matter, Photius had accepted this condition, but had afterwards falsified the
papal rescript, so that before it was submitted to the council it appeared
more favourable to the independence of the Eastern Church.
4 The Acts of the council are in Mansi xvii. 373 sq. In the fifth
sanction of that church, indeed, was for a time conceded to their Acts1;
but when she saw that, the Byzantine patriarch determined to retain his
jurisdiction in Bulgaria, notwithstanding her reiterated threats, she had
recourse to another fulmination2 (circ. 831), and thus the intercommunion
of the two rival churches was again suspended.
For a century and a half at least the marks of intercourse are slight
and discontinuous. In 1021 (or thereabouts) the emperor Basil II., struck by
the degraded state of Western Christendom, proposed to reestablish a concordat,
on the understanding that the patriarchs of Rome and of Byzantium should
hereafter act upon a level; and it seems that John XIX. was only frightened
from considering tho suggestion by the ferment it excited in the West3.
Indeed a kindlier feeling had been now more generally diffused, as we may
gather from the fact that public worship, in accordance with the ritual of the
Greeks, was tolerated at Rome, and the converse at Byzantium. But this very
circumstance eventually became the ground of fresh disputes, and led the way to
the final schism. The patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, in 1053,
peremptorily forbade the celebration of the Latin
Fresh
quarrel with the pope. Attempt to restore com* munion (circ.
1024).
Final
rupture,
10j4.
session (Jan.
26, 880), the Roman legates declared that they recognized Photius as the lawful
patriarch, and rejected the council of 869, at which he was condemned. In the
second session (Nov. 16, 879), the claims of the papal legates with regard to
Bulgaria were mildly repelled. But the most remarkable feature of the synod was
its reaffirmation of the Niceno-Uonstantinopolitan Creed, without the clause ‘
l’ilioque.’ Ib. p. 515,
1 Thus the pope writes to Photius (Aug, 13,
880): ‘Ea, qua? pro causa tum restitutionis synodali decreto Constantinopoli
misericord’ter acta sunt, recipimus.’ He rejects, however, any of the Acts to
which his legates may have assented ‘ contra apostolieam prEeceptionein.’
Mansi, x\n. 185. The synod was afterwards called by the Latins ‘Pseudo- synodus
Photiana.’ The Greeks regard it as * oecumenical.’
2 Mansi, xvi. 449; xvii. 537. For the later
measures of the popes against Photius, see ibid. xvm. 11. He was again
displaced in 886, from political motives, by Leo VI., and died an exile in
Armenia (circ. 891).
a
Glaber Radulph. Hist. lib. iv. c. i. After stating the proposal as above, he
continues: ‘ Dum ergo adhuc leni sub murmure huiusce machinatores in conclavi
sese putarent talia tractavisse, velox iama de ipsis per universam Italiam
decucurrit. Sed qualis tunc tnnraltus, quam vehemens commotio per
cunctos exstitit, qui uudierunt, dini non valet.’ A
remonstrance on the subject was addressed to the pope by William of Dijon.
ritual in bis province1; and, assisted by Leo, metropolitan of
Bulgaria, published ati intemperate attack2 011 all the members of
the Western Church. This angry missive roused the indignation of the Latins,
more especially of tbe polemic cardinal Humbert3, whose reply,
though very bitter in its tone, is marked in some respects by larger views of
evangelic freedom. All attempts to calm the passion of the disputants were
vain: and when the papal legates, at the instance of a Romanizing emperor4,
arrived at Constantinople in 1054, they found the patriarch im- moveably
opposed to their pretensions. They departed, therefore, after placing on the
altar of the church of St Sophia (July 16) an imperious writ of
excommunication®, which was followed in its turn by an anathema from Cerularius
and his clergy6. The disunion of the Roman and Byzantine sees was
consummated by these acts; and as the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch7,
and Jerusalem
1 See the letter of Leo IX. (1054) to
Cerularius of Constantinople and Leo of Achrida: Jlansi, xix. 635.
2 It is only extant in the Latin version of
cardinal Humbert, in Baronius, Annal. ad an 1053, §§ 22 sq. It was addressed to
John, bishop of Trani (in Apulia), but through him ‘ad universos jirincipes
sacer dotum ut sacerdotes Francoruiu et monachos et populos et ad ipsum
reverendissimum papam.’ He insists, among other trivial things, on the
importance of using common or leavened bread in the celebration of the
Eucharist, instead . f the paschal or unleavened bread, which after the eighth
century had been common among the Latins : see the Dissertation concerning
Azymes, in Neale’s Eastern Church, Introd. V. 1051 sq. The around of the
objection to the Latin custom was alleged to be its Judaizing tendency. See
another angry work in opposition to the Latin Church by Nicetas, a Studite
monk, in Canisius, Lect. Antiq. in. pt. i. pp. 308 sq., where Humbert's
Respunsio is also printed. Nicetas afterwards recanted.
3 See above, p. 171. His refutation is
printed at length in Canisius, Lect. Antiq. in. pt. i. pp. 283 sq.
4 This tenderness foi Borne is indicated in
the letter addressed to him by Leo IX. (1054): Mansi, xix. 667.
6 See the Brevis Commemi/ratio of Humbert
in Canisius, Ibid. pp. 325 sq. Among other charges levelled at the Orientals in
this document the following are remarkable: ‘ Sicut -Vrriaui rebaptizant in
nomine sanctas Irinitatis baptizatos, et maxime Latinos ; sicut Donatistaj
affirmant, excepta (iracorum Ecclesia, Ecclesiam Christi et verum sacrifi-
oium atqne baptismum ex toto mundo periisse; sicut Nicolaitse rarnales nvytias
concedunt et defendant pacri altaris ministris; sicut Severiani maledictam
dicunt legem Mosis ; sicut Pneumatomachi vel Theomachi absciderunt a symbolo
Spiritus Sancti processionem a Filio,’ etc.
5 In a synod held at Constantinople (1054);
see Leo Allatius, De Libris Iicclesiasticis (ircecorum, ed. Paris. 1645,
pp. 161 sq.
7 Peter of Antioch acted at first the part
of a mediator: see JJTonu-
adhered to the more powerful see of Constantinople, the estrangement was
transmitted almost universally to other countries of the East1.
THE EASTERN AND WESTERN SECTS,
The rise and growth of the Paulicians2 have been fully traced
already, though their influence gave a colour to the present period of the
Church. They flourished chiefly in Armenia, on the borders of the Zendic or
Parsee religion ; and a mixture of their creed with it appears to have
produced the sect of the Thontrakians, founded by one Sembat, a Paulieian
(between 833 and 851) in the province of Ararat3. In spite of
persecution ‘ it made numerous converts, more especially when it was joined by
an Armenian bishop, Jacob, in 1002.
This century also witnessed a revival5 of the mystic sect of
Euchites (or Enthusiasts), who afterwards were known by an equivalent Slavonic
name, the Bogomiles. Proceeding from the Eastern Church they seem to have
maintained substantially the Zendic doctrine of two principles, and also to
have held with it exaggerated views of the importance of monastic life, which
they regarded as the one effective agent for the subjugation of the flesh and
for disarming all the powers of darkness.
menta
Eccl. Grmc. ed. Coteler. 11. 123 sq In the same collection (pp. 138 sq.) are
letters addressed to Peter by Cerularius, in which he complains of the pride
and insolent demands of the legates, and points out what he considers fresh
scandals in the Latin Church.
1 At the period of the separation it seems
probable that the number of episcopal bees was nearly equal on both sides.
Palmer's Treatise on the Church, I. 164, 165, 3rd edit.
3 \bove, pp. 78—84.
3 See Chamchean’s (or, as the Germans write
it, Tschamtschean's Geschichte von Armenien, 11. 884 sq.; Neander, vi. 34'2 sq.
4 Th» Armenian Church (cf. above, p. 175,
11. 4) bad retained a large amount of Judaizing elements (even animal
sacrifices in memory of the dead), and accordingly the antagonism between it
an.l the Paulicians was complete. Ibid. Akin to the Armenians iu their
tenderness for Judaism, were the new sect of Athinganians, who appeared iu
Phrygia. Neander (vi. 347 sq.) conjectures that they were a remnant of the
Judaizing misbelievers whom St Paul rebukes in the Epistle to the Colossians
(ii. 21 sq.).
5 Several traces of them in the interval
between the fourth and eleventh centuries, have been pointed out by Gieseler,
11. 489 (note). They seem to have had a regular church constitution, and to
have named
The
sect if the Thun- trakiam.
Revival
of the E»- chites.
Transmission
of many of their principles to the West
The
so- called Ma- nichceans in Europe. Their dis- tinctive tenets.
Many of these oriental sects, desirous of securing proselytes or driven
from their early haunts hy dint of persecution, migrated, as it would seem,
most frequently along the course of the Danube, into several countries of the
West. The progress of the Bogomiles and the related school of Cathari belongs
to the following period: but the seeds of lasting controversies were now
scattered far and wide, in Italy, in France, and even in the Netherlands and
some parts of Germany. The name with which the sectaries are branded in the works
of a host of un- discriminating adversaries, is the odious name of Mani-
chaians1,—misbelievers who had formerly aroused the zeal of St
Augustine. They had gained a stable footing in the church of Orleans (circ. 102
Oj, and attracted notice almost simultaneously in other distant spots.
So far as we can gather from the extant traces of the movement* all its
chief adherents were distinguished by a tendency to rationalism, while they
preserved the mystic and ascetic elements of thought wre have just
noted in the Euchite. Questioning the possibility of supernatural birth,
the chief
teachers ‘apostles.’ The fullest source of information respecting them at the
latter date is the llfpi hepyeiai Sa.tp.ovur AMXoyts of the very learned
Michael Psellus (circ. 1050). ed. Norimberg. 1838. • imoug other startling
practices he mentions that the Euchites w^re
1 devil-worshippersperhaps connected in
some measure with the ‘ Xezeedees,’ on whom see Badger’s Nestorians, i. Ill—
134: Lond. 1852.
* The other view (advocated, for instance,
hy Gieseler, H. 491) is, that the western sects, now stigmatized as Manichman*,
were really descended from the ancient llanen, whose disciples had not been extinguished
in some parts of Italy. This class of writers grant, however, that after the
crusades there was a kind of fusion of the eastern and western sects,
and that the Bogomiles (or Euchites) were then rxactly like the French and
Italian ‘ Manichtcans.' The view adopted i. i tho text is that of JIuratori,
Antiq. Italia me.dii JEri, v. 81—152; Gibbon,
v. 283 sq., ed. Milman; and Neander, vi. 348.
See Bobertson, Church History, ii. 423.
2 See especially the Acts of the synods of
Orleans (1022) and of Arras (1025) in Mansi, xix. 373,423; (ilaber Kadulph.
Ilist. lib. iii. c. 8; and the Chronicle of Ademar, a contemporary monk of
Angouleme, in Bouquet, x. 154. Besides the tenets mentioned above, these
sectaries made light of all the mediaeval ?aint-s, and reverenced n6ne except
apostles and martyrs: they opposed the veneration of the cross; tliey ridiculed
the consecration of churches; they insisted on the greater dignity of the
unmarried state, and even spoke of sexual intercourse when sanctified hy
matrimony as a thing accursed. Like the Euchites, they ar« said to have
worshipped the devil (above, n. 5), and to have religiously abstained from
e\ery kind of animal food.
they represented the humanity of Christ as the mere semblance of a body,
and accordingly concluded that His death and resurrection also were unreal:
while the same Docetic theory resulted in contempt of all material media;
instituted to promote the culture of the soul. They undervalued, if they did
not openly abjure, the holy sacraments, professing to administer a spiritual
baptism and a spiritual Eucharist instead of corresponding ordinances in the
system of the Church1.
On the detection of this band of heretics in Aquitaine and other parts of
France, a synod was convened at Orleans in 1C22. where thirteen of the ‘
Manichaeans,’ who were true to their convictions, suffered at the stake2.
Soon afterwards a kindred faction was impeached in the dioceses of liege and
Arras by a synod held at the latter place3 (1025). But
notwithstanding the extreme severity4 with which the leading
misbelievers were repressed, the sect went on fermenting, more especially among
the working class5. Besides a host of other ‘ Manicha’ans ’ who were
executed in these parts and even in the north of Germany6, the
neighbourhoods of Milan and Turin supplied fresh victims to the sanguinary
spirit of the age (1030). The heretics abounded most at Monteforte7;
and their creed, so far
1 See the remarks of Neander on this point,
ti. 352. The sect administered a
rite resembling confirmation. They termed it thp ‘ conso- lamentum,’ or
communication of the Comfoiter. Ibid. At the synod of Arra-i they brought three
reasons against the effiracy of baptism as administered by the Church—‘ (1)
quia vita reproba ministrorum bap- tizandis nullum potest prosbere salutis
remedium: (2) quia quidquid vitiorum in fonte renunciatur postmodum in
■sita repetitur: (3) quia ad parculum non volentem neque currentem, iidei
nescium, suasque salutis atque utilitatis ignarum, in quem nulla regenerationis
petitio, nulla fidei potest inesse confessio, aliens voluntas, alicua tides,
aliena confessio nequaquam pertinere videtur.’ Mansi, xix. 425.
2 Authorities above, p. 188, n. 2.
3 Mansi xix. 423 sq. The abp. Gerhard II.
refuted the objections of the sectaries at length. Ibid.
1
Almost the only prelate who denounced the persecuting spirit of the times was
Wazo, bishop of Liege (d. 1017); see his noble language in the tiesla Episcoporum
Leudiensium, in Martfene and Durand’s Col- lectio, iv. 898 sq.
0 They were particularly stimulated, first
by Gundulf, an Italian, and then by a teacher of the name of Itamihed, who was
at last hunted down and burned.
c
Herimanni Chron. an. 1052 (Pertz, tii. 130).
7 Glaher Radulph. Ilist. lib. iv. c. 2. A
new name began to be
SECTS.
Persecution
of the sectaries.
as we can judge, liad even fewer elements of truth1 than were
surviving 111 the other branches of the sect.
applied in
Italy at this period to all kinds of sects. It was that of Patareni, or Paterini,
which appears to he derived from ‘pataria,’ r. Milanese word = ‘popular
faction.’ It wa*. originally thu nickname given by the clergy to the popular
party of Milan dnring the agitations against the marriage of the priests:
Schrockh, xxni. 31!), 350; Neander.
vi. 67, 68.
1 See Landulpbf Hist, ii edition, lib. n.
c. 27 (in Mnratori, Script. Ital. xv. 88. sq.), where an account is given of
the sect by one of its functionaries, Gerhard, who was summoned by ar^hbp.
Heribert of Milan. According to him, the doctrines of the Gospel, though in
words accepted as the truth, were robbed of all their meaning by an ultra-
spiritualistic style of exposition. Thus the Son of God is made to signify a.
soul that has become the object of God’s love; the birth of Christ from the
Virgin is the new birth of a soul out of the sacred Scriptures; w hile the ‘
Holy Ghost ’ is the true understanding of these Scriptures.
ON THE STATE
OF INTELLIGENCE ANI) PIETY.
In sketching the religious life of Western Christendom at this period, a
distinction must be drawn between the tenth century and the remaining portions
of the ninth and the eleventh. The influence of the Carlovingian schools,
supported as they were by Louis the Pious and Charles the Raid1, was
very w idely felt: it ended only when domestic troubles, the partition of the
empire, and the savage inroads of the Northmen checked all further growth. The
same is, speaking generally, true of England; but the noble efforts of king
Alfred2 to revive the ancient taste for learning rescued his
dominions, in some way at least,, from the barbaric darkness which continued to
oppress the continent of Europe, till the dawn of the Hildebrandine
reformation. Nearly all the intermediate time is desert, one expanse of moral
barrenness and intellectual gloom3.
As in the former period the instruction of the masses was retarded by the
multiplicity and breaking up of languages, and most of all, by the adherence
of the Western Church to Latin only as the vehicle of worship. It was
1 In the former reign the literature was
almost exclusively religious, owing to the predilections of the monarch, but
the court and schools of Charles the Bald displayed a stronger relish for more
general learning (‘utriusque eruditionis Divinas scilicet et humanas’ is the
language of the Council of Savoni&res in 859): cf. Guizot, 11. 371.
2 Above, pp. 173, 174.
3 See, for instance, Mabillon, Act.
Sanct. Ord. Benedsjbc. v. Pratf.
Other writers {e. g. Hallam, Lit. of Middle Ages, pt. 1, ch. I. § 10)
consider the tenth an advance upon the seventh century, more particularly in
Trance.
4 See above, p. 87.
The
variations in the degree of intelligence.
Tenth
century peculiarly dark. Decay of the Laun language.
MEANS OF
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Injunctions
on preaching.
now, in fact, disused1 by nearly all excepting clerics. Many
of the councils have, however, laid especial stress on the necessity of
preaching in the native dialects*. They urge that opportunity should be
afforded, bpth in town and country parishes3, of gaining a complete
acquaintance with the precious Word of God. The doctrines of the Saviour’s
incarnation, death, and final triumph in behalf of man, the gift of the Holy
Ghost, the value of the sacraments, the blessedness of joining in the act of
public prayer, the need of pure and upright living, and the certainty of future
judgment in accordance with men’s works, are recommended as the leading topics
for the expositions of the priest4. But insufficient training5,
even where he was alive
1 Bahr, Gpschichte der romisch. Lit, in harol. Zeit. p. 59.
2 e. r], The council of Mentz, in 847,
orders (c. 2) that bishops should not only be assiduous in preaching, hut that
they should be able to translate their homilies into Rimanu rustica or
Theotisea (Deutseh), ‘quo facilius cuneti possint intrlligere quse dicuntur.’
The practice of the Engiish in this respect is illustrated by iElfric and 'Wulfstan
.see above, p. 174): and in vEltric’s Canons, c. 23 (Johnson, i. 397), the
priest is distinctly reminded of his duty to expound the Gospel in English
every Sunday and mass-dav.
3 e.g. The council of Valence (855), c. 10.
Pope Nicholas I. soon afterwards (between 858 and 867) urges the importanci i
of erecting ‘plebes, vel baptismales ecclesias’ (parish churches), ‘ut ibi
conventus celebrior populorum fiat et doctrina fidei pradicetur.' Mansi, xv.
452.
4 See, for instance, the Capituh of Herard,
archbp. of Tours (858), c. 9 (in Baluze, I. 1285): and council of Mentz, a?
above, n. 2.
6 The requisite amount of knowledge is laid
down by Hincmpr in Ms Capitula (852); Mansi, xv. 475. Besides committing
several offices aDd formulas to memory, the priest is to be able to expound the
Apostles’ Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed of St Athanasius (‘ Quicunque
Yult’), anil understand forty homilies of Gregory the Great. Several councils
complained bitterly of anleamed priests: e. g. that of Rome (826;, which also
insists on the importance of securing school-masters, ‘qui studia litterarum
liberalimnque artium dogmata assidue doeeant:’ c. 34; Mansi, iiv. 1008: cf.
if,. 493. So grossly ignorant were the clerics of Verona, that Ratherius (d.
974) found many (plurimos) tumble to repeat even the Apostles’ Creed: D'Achery,
r. 381. See Ratherius von Vtrona und das zehnte Jahrhundert, von
Albrecht Vogel, Jena, 1854. He had also to contend with others
(of Vicenza) who had. sunk into anthropomorphism, resolutely maintaining (like
the present Mormons) ‘ corporeum Ileum esse:’ Ibid. 388 sq. This part of
Christendom, indeed, would seem to have been very prone to such unworthy
speculations. Here sprang up the ‘ Theopasehites’ condemned at Rome (862), when
the decision was that the Godhead of our Saviour was impassible, that He
‘passionem crucis tantummodo secundum camem sustinuisse’ (Mansi, xv. 658). The
same council was under the necessity of condemning an opinion that in baptism ‘
originale non ablui delictum ’
to his vocation,*, rendered him unable to imprint those verities
effectually upon his semi-barbarous flock. As children they were taught indeed
by him and by their sponsors1 several elements of Christian faith
(e.g. the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed): yet there is reason to infer
that in the many, more especially of tribes which were now added to the Church,
the roots of heathenism were still insuperably strong2.
How far the masses learned to read is not so easily determined. The
amount of education must have differed with the circumstances of the country,
diocese, or parish : still wo are assured that efforts were continually made to
organize both town and village schools3.
The richest institutions of this class were the conventual seminaries of
the French and German Benedictines; and although they often shared in the
deterioration of the order, and were broken up by the invasions of the Magyars
and Northmen, we must view them as the greatest boon to all succeeding ages;
since in them4 especially the copies of the Sacred Volume, of the
fathers, and of other books were hoarded and transcribed5.
The reverence for the Holy Scriptures on the ground of their superhuman
character was universally retained6.
MEANS OF
t.liAri; ANj> KNOW - LEDiiK.
Crudenc
s of the j/o- pular in- etructiun.
Schools,
tfptdaUg
the Bene- dicltiit.
* Gieseler (11. 265, n. 29) mentions a
German-Latin exhortation on this subject belonging to the present period.
Still, as we may judge from the council of Trosli (909), c. 15, multitudes of
either sex were unabio to repeat even the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.
- Of. above, p. 87, n. 1; p. 110j p. 116;
p. 132, n. 3.
3 e. fi. Council of Valence (855), c. 18;
council of Savonieres (859), c. 10. llerard of Tours, in like manner, enjoins
(c. 17) ‘ ut scholas presbyteri pro posse habeant et libros emendates.’ It
seems, however, that there wad a constant jealousy of the lay or secular
schools on the part of the monks, who succeeded in getting several of them
closed. Yidaillan, Vie de Greg. VII., 1. 290.
1 Some idea of the content* of a monastic
library at this period may be formed from the catalogue belonging to the French
convent of St Itiquier, in Ghronicon Mouast. S. Iiicharii Centulemis
(D’Achery’s Spicil.
11. 310 sq.).
5 The founder of a reformed branch of the
Benedictines, the Congregation of Hirschaa, did Kreat service in this way:
‘Duodeeim monachis suis scriptores optimos instituit, quibus ut Divina
anctoritatis librot, et sanctorum Patrum tractatux rescriberent, demandavit. Erant pra>ter lios et alii scriptores sine ccrto numero, qui pari
diligentia seribendis volu- minibus operam impendebant.' J.
Trithemius [John of Trittenheim], Annales Hmaugienses, 1. 227: ed. St Gall,
1690.
6 See the Benedictine Hist. Lit. dc la
France, iv. 2.V2 sq.. v. 291 sq.,
MEANS OF
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Scarcity
of entire copies of the Bible,. Vernacular translations.
Too often, however, the supply of biblical as well as other manuscripts
appears to have been extremely small1; and very few even of tbe
well-affected clergy had sufficient means to purchase more than two or three
separate works2 of the inspired Authors. Copies of the Psalms and
Gospels were most frequently possessed.
The laity, when they could read, had also opportunities of gathering
crumbs of sacred knowledge, here and there at ieast, from versions now in
circulation3 of some parts of holy Writ, from interlinear glosses of
the Service-books4, or from poetic paraphrases, harmonies, and hymns
in tbe vernacular,—product ions which indeed grow very numerous at this period5.
and, for
England, iElfric, On the Old and New Testaments, translated by L’Isle, Lond.
103H. \t the consecration of a bishop the following question 'was asked: ‘ Vis
ea qua* ex Dir inis Scripturis intelligis plebem cui ordinances es et verbis
.locere et exemplis.’ MS. quoted in Soames, Bampt. Lect. p. 95. See Maskell’s
Monumenta Bitualia, in. 246. Dun- stan urges th« advantage oi a familiar
acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures ii his ‘Exposition of the Rule of St Benedict:’
Cambr. Univ. MSS., Ee. ii. 4,
t& 26, b.
1 Mr Kemble (Saxons, ii. 434) quotes a letter from Freculf
bishop of Lisieux to Rabanus Maurus, in which he says ‘in episcopio nostra
parvitati commisso, nec ipsos Novi et Veteris Testamenti repperi liliros, multo
minus horum expociiiones.’
2 Thia was implied in the advice of Riculf,
bishop of Soissons (889), who urged his country clergy to bestow especial pains
upon their schools, and to provido themselves with as many books as possible.
If they could not procure all tho Old Testament, they were at least to have the
Book of Genesis: Fleury, liv. ut. g 4. In the conventual catalogua above cited,
p. 193, n. 4, the ‘Bibliotheca,’ or entire Bible, was in one copy ‘disijersa in
voluminibus xiv.’
3 Ab >ve, p. 89. King Alfred is said to
have commenced a version of the Psplms into English (W. Malmsbur. De Gest.
Begum, p. 45, ed. Francof. 1601). Thh fragments of iElfric’s Ileptateuchus, a
translation of portions of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, &c-., have been
printed, ed. Thwaites, Oxon. 1698. The Anglo-Saxon Gospels (best edited by
Thorpe, Loud. 1842) are also traceable to this period. The Slavonic churches of
Moravia, Russia, Servia, and probably others, possessed the Bible and
Service-books in the vernacular. See above, p. 113, p. 121, p. 125: but it is
worthy of remark, that in the cognate church of Dalmatia, subject to tbe
popes, attempts were ultimately made (e. g. council of Spalato, 1009) to banish
the Slavonic ritual and to substitute the Latin.
4 Above, p. 89, n. 4; ar.d 'Wright’s Bingr.
Brit. i. 427 The ‘Durham Book’ (Cotton MS. Nero, D. it.), of which the Latin portion was written between 687
an.t 721, received the interlinear gloss about 950.
5 Louis the Pious had a metrical version of
the Scriptures made under hid direction (Palgrave’o Normandy, i. 188), which
most probably
Still, as writers of the age itself complain, a careful study of the
Bible was comparatively rare, especially throughout the tenth century; the
clerics even giving a decided preference to seme lower fields of thought, for
instance, to the elements of logic and of grammar1. The chief source
of general reading was the swarming ‘ Lives of Saints,’ which had retained the
universal influence we have noticed on a former page2. The Eastern
Church was furnished with them even to satiety by Simeon Meta- phrastes3;
and a number of his wildest Legends were transmitted to the West. The general
craving for such kinds of food is well attested by the fact that iElfric had
himself translated two large volumes at the wish of the English people, and had
subsequently been induced to undertake a third for the gratification of the
monks*.
The counteraction to this growing worship of the saints was now less
frequent and emphatic than before. The voice of a reforming prelate, such as
Agobard* or Claudius of Turin8, did little to abate the ruling
spirit of the age.
Popularity
of the Lives of Faints.
Scunt-tuor-
skip.
is the
lleliand (circ. 830), an Old-Raxon Gospel Harmony (ed. Schmellc-r), alliterative in form. Another
Harmony, or Paraphrase of tlu Gospels, is by Ottfried (circ. 868), a
monk of Weissenburg. See this and other vernacular pieces in Schilter’s
Thesaurus Antiq. Ti'utonicarum. The Psalms also were translated into the
Low-Gernipn dialect (ed. Hagen). Von I'.aumer (as referred to above, p. 89, n.
1) will point out many other fragments of thin class. In the eleventh century,
Notker Labeo, a monk of St Gall, and Williranj, master of the eathedral-school
at Bamberg, added to the stock of vernacular theology; the former having
published a German paraplirase of the Psalms, and the latter a German
translation and exposition of Solomon’s Song.
1 See the complaint of Notker in Neander,
vi. 177. Agobard of Lyons, at an earl it-r date, in his endeavours to reform
the Liturgy, and laise the spiritual character of the priesthood, bears the
following witness to the evils of his time: ‘ Quam plurimi ah ineunte pueritia
UHq;:e ad senectutis canitiem omnes dies vita* susa in parando et confinnanlo
expendunt, et totum tempus utilium et spiritalium studiorum, legendi,
videlicet, et Dirina eloquia perscrutandi, in istiusmodi oceupatione cun-
sumunt.’ He Corrections Antiphon. c. 18. Upp. 11. 99, ed. Baluze.
2 p. 90.
3 Above, p. 179.
4 See the Preface tn ar> Anglo-Saxon
Passion of St George, f dited by the present writer, for the late Perry Society,
No. lxxxviii. Time for reading would be found on Sundays, which were still
most rigorously observed: e.g. Council of Eanham (1009), c. 15, c. 30 (Johnson,
1. 480, 490}; Council of Ooyaco, in Spain (1050), c. 3.
3 De Imaginibui, c. xxxv: Opp. 1. 267.
11 See Neander, vi. 129.
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CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Increase
in the number of Saints.
The
excessive veneration of the Virgin.
The calendar was crowded more and more with names, occasionally, it is
true, the names of genuine saints1, or those of missionaries •who
expired in the evangelizing of the heathen; but frequently they represent a
host of mythic beings, coloured, if not altogether forged, to satisfy the wants
of an uncritical and marvel-hunting generation2. In some cases, it
is probable, the authors of the Legends put them out as nothing more than
historical romances, but the ordinary reader did not view them in this light;
and therefore the results to which they naturally led, in moulding the
religious habits and ideas of the Middle Ages, were extensive and profound3.
Of all the saints whom Christians venerated more and more, the blessed
Virgin was the chief. The story of her exaltation into heaven obtained a
general credence, and as men were often vying with each other in attempts to
elevate her far a,hove the common sphere of humanity4, they now
devised a public service for this end,—the Hours or Office of St Mar if’. It
was gradually accepted in the
1 e.g. Count Gerald of Aurillae, whose life
was written by Odo, the abbot of Clueny, in the Siblioth. Cluniacensis, ed.
I’aris, 1G14. He is said to have left many clerics far behind in his knowledge
of the Scriptures.
2 e.g. Bellarmire even thinks that the
productions of Simeon Meta- phrastes were indebted largely to his own inventive
powers (they were narrations ‘non ut res gestse fmrant, sed ut geri
potuerant’): but this idea is rejected by anothfr of the Roman
controversialists, Leo Allatius, in his l)e Simeonum Scriptis, pp. 43—47. Many
legends also were repeated of different saints merely with a change of names:
Gieseler, 11. 421, 4'25. The Church besides was deluged at this periud by
‘heretical’ or ‘apocryphal’ hymns and martyrologies: see, for instance, the
Pref. quoted in p. 105, n. 4. Agobard inform-) us in like manner that it was
usual for some persons to sing the most heterodox effusions even in the
churches: ‘non solum im>pta et superliua sed etiam proiana et ha<retica
in ecclesiis decantare.’ l)e Correct. Antiphon. c. 18. He proposes instead of
these to have a reformed intiplionary, ‘ex purissimis Sanctaa Scriptural verbis
sufficientissimo ordinatum.’ Ibid. c. 19.
3 We may conceive of thin effect more
clearly by remembering that Ignatius Loyola was fired to institute the Order of
the Jesuits by reading the Legenda in a time of sickness. An account of the
Martyrologies produced by the present period may be seen in Schrockh, xxm. 209
sq.
4 e. g. Peter Damiani (Hildebrand’s
coadjutor) has* the following:
‘ Humquid quia ita deificata, ideo nostra) humanitatis oblita es? Nequa-
quam, domina....Data est tibi omnis potestas in coelo et in terra.’ Hermo
xx.iv. Opp. n. 107. Hio sermons on the Virgin are always in this strain: cf.
Soames’ Hampton Led. pp. 232 sq.
6 Hymns in honour of the Virgin are
somewhat older, but Damiani seems to have been among the first who engrafted
them on the public
monasteries, where the custom of performing mass on Saturdays1
to the especial honour of the Virgin also took its rise.
The saints indeed were worshipped by the more enlightened on the ground
that every act of veneration paid to them was ultimately paid to Christ
Himself, and would redound to the glory of His grace2: but in the
many it was very different. Owing to their want of spiritual and intellectual
culture, a distinction of this kind was for the most part altogether
unintelligible. They would naturally confound the courtiers and the king; in
other words, the worship of the holy dead, as understood by them, was bordering
close upon polytheism. The formal recognition (‘canonization’) of a saint, not
only in one single district but in every province of the Church (a usage dating
from the present period3), added greatly to the downward impulse.
We have glanced already at tho storm excited by the images and pictures
of the saints. It seems that on the close of the Iconoclastic troubles they were
now employed in East and West alike, although the more intelligent continued to
regard them in the light of historical reworship of tlie Church: see his
Opuscul. xxxiii. c. 3. It was n-iw not nnUMia! to call
her ‘ mater misericordio,’ ‘ beata regina mundi,’ 4 sae- steorra.’
etc. Mabiilon (Annal. Benedict, iv. 402 sq.) traces the Rnsary. or Psalter of
the Virgin, to tho eleventh century, when it existed in England and the
Netherlands.
1
Damiani, ubi sup. c. 4. He met •with opposition when he urged this observance
on some of the Italian convents. A monk, Gozo, resisted it on the ground that
it was an innovation: see Gieseler, 11. 428, n. 18.
a
e.g. Such is the language of John XV. in 993 (Mansi, xii. 170)
1 quoniam sic adoramus et colimus reliquias
martyrum et confessorum, ut Eum Cujus martyres et confessores sunt adoremus,
honoramus servos, lit honor redundet in Dominum,’ etc. Even Ratherius of Verona
was an advocate of saim-worship in this sense: Prvloquia, lib. iv. p. 892, ed.
Ballerini. On the other hand, Claudius of Turin (above, p. 158) condemned the
practice. The ideas of king Alfred may be gathered from expressions like the
fallowing: ‘I Alfred king, in honour of God and of tin1 lilessed
Virgin Mary and of all the Saints,’ etc....''Whosoever i-hall misappropriate
this gift, may he he by God and the Holy Virgin Mary and ail the saints
accursed for ever.’ Codex Diplomatics, ed. Kemble, u 106.
3 See above, p. 90, n. 2. The earliest
-well-authenticated instance of a canonization by the pope is that of Ulrieh,
bishop of Augsburg, which took place in 993: Mausi, \ix. 169. The
metropolitans, however, in some districts exercised their ancient right till
1153: Pagi, Breviar. Pontif. hi. 115.
COliKCP-
TIONH AM) IBUSES.
Prevailing
ideas of the nature of Xaint-wor- ship.
hinges.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Relics:
the
gross abuses re- specting them.
membrancers, and not as in themselves the end, or even the especial
channels of devotion1.
A perpetual source of mischief and profaneness was the feverish passion
to become possessed of relics of the saints. The gross credulity of some, and
the unpardonable fraud of others, multiplied the number of these objects of
research to a prodigious and most scandalous extent. They grew at length into a
common article of traffic2. Monasteries in particular, where many of
them were enshrined from motives either of cupidity or superstition, reaped a
harvest by exhibiting their treasures to the simple-hearted crowd. A few indeed
of the disinterested or less credulous abbots interposed occasionally, and shut
up some wonder-working relic from the gaze of the tumultuary assemblage whom it
had attracted to the spot3. Too often, however, ‘the religious,?
running with the stream of popular opinion, acquiesced in the circulation of
the vilest cheats4. The masses were thus more and more confirmed in
semi-pagan notions with respect to amulets and charms; believing everywhere, to
some extent at least, in the protective ami the therapeutic virtues of the
relics.
In connexion with this point we may remark, that
1 See above, pp. 158, 175. A remarkable
specimen of the reigning modes of thought on this subject is supplied by the
Laws of king Alfred (Thorpe, i. 44), where the second precept of the Decalogue
is omitted, but in order to complete the number ten, we have the following
addition, : Make not thou for thyself golden or silver gods.’
2 e.g. Life, of llabanus Maurus, in Act.
Sanct. Febr. i. 513. Glaber Iiaduiphus (Hist. lib. iv. e. 3) tells a story
>/f an impostor who wandered (circ. 1020) from place to place, under
different names, as a vendor of dead men’s bones, which he dug up almost
iuiiiscriminately. Numbers of relics now began to be imported by the pilgrims
on their visits to the East. Thus Simeon of Trfeves (d'rc. 1030) introduced
relics of St Catharine to the Western Church, where she was hitherto unknown;
Fleury, Hist. EccUs., lib. lix. s. ‘27. Perhaps no more striking characteristic
of the spirit of the times has been recorded than the contest respecting a St
Martial (one of the companions of St Denis the Areopagite?) whom the monks of
Limoges endeavoured to exalt into the rank of an apostle. See an account of the
controversy in Schrockh, xxm. 145 sq.
3 e.g. Gesta Abhatum Trudnnensivm (St
Trond), in D'Achery’s Spi- ciUg. ii. 664. Cf. Gu&ard, Cartulaire de VEglise de Notre-D'ime.,
p. xxv.
* The number of these finally suggested the
application of the f reordeal (ex above, p. 155, n. 3) to test the genuineness
of relics. See Ma- billon’s Vet. Analecta, p. 568. Schrockh (ixni. 180 sq.; enumerates
some of the most cherished of the relics now discovered or transmitted to the
West; e.g. a Tear of Christ, Blood of Christ. 4ic.
a more ancient practico of the Church in seeking to ward oft' the ravages
of sickness, now obtained an almost universal currency. This was the rito which
subsequently bore the name of ‘extreme unction.’ It was at the first applied by
private Christians1, and was not restricted, any more than the
anterior custom noticed by St James (v. 14), to mortal sickness only. The administration
was however, in the eighth century, confined to members of the sacerdotal class2,
the rite itself attaining to the rank of special ordinances, which, in laxer
phrase, were not unfrequently entitled ‘sacraments8.’
As might be augured from the cheerless aspect of the age, a number of the
more devout of either sex had been impelled into seclusion, where they lived
amid inhospitable woods and wilds. These hermits, it would seem, abounded most
in the tenth century4. Disgusted with their former selves, or with
the desperate state of murals and religion in the town, they hoped to find in
solitude an interval of holy calm which they might dedicate to prayer and
closer self-inspection.
A more earthly spirit breathed in the prevailing rage for pilgrimages. Many
doubtless undertook them with a mingled class of feelings, differing little, if
at all, from those of modem tourists: while the rest would view such journeys,
as the Church herself did for the most part, in relation to the penitential
system of the age. As the more hopeful doctrines of the cross had been
forgotten
1
Cf. Noander vi. 145: Klee (Roman-catholic), Ilist. of Christ. Dnct. (in
German), 1 art 11. ch. vi. § 5.
- ‘ Omnes
presbyteri oleum inflrmorum ab ryiiscopo expetant secum- que habeant; et admoneant
fideles infirmos illud exquirero ut eodem oleo peruncti a presbyteris
eanentur,’ etc. Bonifaoii Opp. 11. 24, ed. Giles. The usage is again
sanctioned, more especially in case of mortal sickness, by the council of Pavia
(850), p. 8. In the Canons enacted under Edgar (Thorpe, 11. 258) it is enjoined
that “ the priest shall give ‘liusel’ (the Eucharist) to the sick, and unction
also, if they desire it."
3 e.g. Damiuni tpeaks of twelve rites to
which this name is applicable, unction in the number: Sermo lxix; Opp. 11. 167.
It may be noted hero that although communion in both kinds was still the rule
of the Church, the consecrated wine was often administered, for prudential
reasons, through a tube (‘calamus,’ ‘ canna,’ ‘Ariula’): see Spittler, Oesch.
des Kelrhe* im Abendm-ihh The practice of teceiving tho consecrated elements
into the hand of the communicant began tu be discontinued after the Council of
Rouen (880): Granoolaa, Lea Anc. Liturg. 11. 3i3.
4 Capefigue, L’Eglise au hluyen Age, 1.
251.
Solitaries.
Pilgrim
ages,
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
to
Rome,
and
to the Holy Sepulchre. The penitential system of the Church.
or displaced, men felt that the Almighty could no longer be propitious to
them while resorting to the common means of grace. Accordingly they acquiesced
in the most rigid precepts of their spiritual director and the heaviest
censures of the Church. The pilgrimage to Rome stood highest in their favour
during all the earlier half of the present period; the extravagant ideas of
papal grandeur, and the hope of finding a more copious absolution at the hands
of the alleged successor of St Peter, operating very powerfully iu all districts
of the West1. But subsequently the great point of confluence was the
Holy Sepulchre, which from the year 1020 seems to have attracted multitudes of
every grade2.
It must, however, be remembered, that the better class of prelates, even
where they yielded more or less to the externalizing spirit of the times, have
never failed to censure all reliance on these works as grounds of human merit,
or as relieving men from the necessity of inward transformation to the holy
image of the Lord3. A number also, it must be allowed, of the
ascetics, both in east and west, exhibited the genuine spirit of humility and
self
1
See above, pp. 111, 142. Such pilgrims were called Rom/i, Homines peregrini et
Romei, liomipeta. Nicholas I. (8G2) declares, ‘Ad hanc sanctum Romi.nam
ecclesiam, de diversis mundi partibus quotidie multi sceleris mole oppressi
eonfugiunt, remissionem scilicet, et venialem sibi gratiaiu tribui supplici et
ingenti cordis m'prore poscentes:’ Mansi, xv. 280. Individual
bishops protested against this custom; and the council of Seligenatadt (1022)
commanded that the German Christians should 'first perform the penance
prescribed by their own clergy, and then, if they pleased to obtain the
permission of their bishop, it allowed them to go to Rome; c. 18; Mansi, xix.
398. A similar proof of independence is supplied by archbishop Dunstan: Soames,
Anglo-Saxon Church, p. 207, ed. 1844.
- ■ Per idem tempus (circ. 1030) ex
universo orbe tam innnmerabilis multitudo coepit couiluere ad sepulchrum
Salvatoris Hierosolymis, (plantain nullus homimim prius sperare poterat.
Primitus enim nrdo infe- rioris plebis, deinde vero mediocres, posthaic
permaximi quique reges et comites, m irehiones ac pra?suies : ad ultimum vero,
quod nunquam con- tigerat, mulierpj multas nobiles cum pauperioribus illuc
perrexere.’ Gla- ber Hadnlph. Ilist. lib. iv. c. 0. For earlier instances of
these visits, see Schrockh, xxm. 203 sq., and the treatise of Adamnan De Situ
Te.rrce Sanctce, ed. Ingolstadt, 1019. The fame of St James (Ban Jago) of
Compostella (above, p. 93, n. 2) wa» now increasing in the West. See Heidegger,
Dissert, de P-regrinat. Ileligiosis, pp. 18 sq. Tignri, 1R70.
3 See e.g. the IAbri Tres de Institutione
Laicnli of Jonas, bishop of Orleans, patron, in D’Achery’s Spicileg. i. 258-
-323.
renunciation1. Yet, upon the other hand, it is apparent that
the penitential discipline of the Church was undermining the foundations of
the truth. The theory most commonly adopted was, that penances are
satisfactions paid by the offender, with the hope of averting the displeasure
of Almighty Grod. Its operation, therefore, would be twofold, varying with the
temperament or the convictions of the guilty. The more earnest felt that the
effects of sin could only be removed by voluntary suffering, by an actual and
incessant mortification of the flesh. Accordingly they had recourse to measures
the most violent, for instance, to a series of extraordinary fasts and
self-iiiilicted scourgings2, not unlike the almost suicidal
discipline which had for ages been adopted by the Yogis of the east. The other
and the larger class who shrank front all ascetic practices could find relief
in commutations, or remissions, of the penances3 prescribed by
canons of the ancient Church. A relaxation of this kind, now legalized in all
the Libri Fwnitentiales, was entitled ail ‘indulgence.’ Grants of
money for ecclesiastical purposes, a
pilgrimage, the repetition of religious formulas, and other acts like these,
were often substituted for a long term of rigorous self-denial4, and
too often also (we must apprehend) for genuine change of heart and life. The
magnitude of penances was greater in the case of clerics
1 Thus Anskar, the Apostle of the North,
who carried the practice of self-mortification to a high pitch, <*>nld
pray notwithstanding that he mi^ht he kept from spiritual pride which
threatened him at times:
‘ Qua de re tristis factus, et ail Domini pietatem totis viribus in ora-
tione conversus, postulabat lit Sua eum gratia ab hac perniciosissima impietate
liberaret.’ Vit. S. Anskar. e. 33 : Tertz, ii.
717. In the same spirit, Theodore the Studite could attribute all he had and
all he was to (iod : Aid air'Kdyym oIktipiawv,
oik #£ Ipyuv tnov rival-.'' ov yap iwofrjixd ti
dyaObv ri Trj? yi)S d\\d rovvavrbv. Epist. lib. II. ep. 84.
3 The great advocate of this extreme
asceticism was Damiani, who regarded it as a ‘purgatory’ on earth. He had to
defend his views, however, from tho censure of opponents. See his Opuscul. xliu. De
Laude F.ogellorum et Disriplinie, and cf. (lieseler, n.
414, n. 10.
’ This
practice of the Church had been condemned («. g. in the reforming synod of
Clovesho 747, c. 26; and afterwards in that of Mentz, 847, c. 31), but it had
gained an almost universal currency in the present period.
* See Sluratori, Antiq. Ital. v. 710
sq. • De redemptione Peccatorura.’, The custom of granting indulgences
to certain ‘ privileged ’ churches dates from the profligate pontiff, Benedict
IX. (above, p. 13!*, n. 5) : see JIabillon, Act. Sanct. Ord. Bened. btec. v.
prtef. § 10'J.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES*
FaUe
vieics of penitence.
Self-
_ sourginq and ex- Irene asceticism.
Indul
gences,
or
esmm illations of penance.
Vicarious
fasting.
Confession:
Excommu
nication.
Anathema.
Interdict.
than in that of layman; it was greater also in the highborn than the
low: but through a sad confusion of ideas it was possible for the more wealthy
sinner to compress a seven years’ fast, for instance, into one of three days,
by summoning his numerous dependents, and enjoiniug them to fast with him and
in his stead1.
Beside the discipline allotted to the individual, on confessing
voluntarily to the priest, more overt acts of sin3 had to be
publicly acknowledged on the pain of excommunication. When offenders proved
refractory, the issuing of this sentenc3, backed as it now was by the civil
power, incapacitated them for holding offices or reaping honours of the state.
Another engine of the spirituality was the more dreadful sentence of anathema,
by which the subjects of it were excluded altogether from the fellowship of Christians3.
But the heaviest of those censures, which we find developed in its greatest
vigour at the opening of the eleventh century, was termed the interdict4,
or utter excommunication, not of individuals merely, but of all the province
where a crime had been committed.
The morose and servile feelings which the penitential system of the
Church engendered or expressed, were deepened by the further systematizing of
her old presentiments respecting purgatory. The distinction, to be afterwards
1 A case cf this very kind occurs in the
Canons enacted under Edgar (Thorpe, it, 286).
It in presumed, of course, that the offending lord who profits by the
regulation is penitent himself, but irom the whole passage one i-i bound to
draw the inference that a sin was to bG liquidated exactly like some ordinary
debt. ‘ The man not possessing means may not so proceed, but must seek it for
himself the more diligently; and that [the canon is compelled to add] is also
justest, that every one wreak his own misdeeds on himself, w’ith diligent bc5t
(satisfaction). Scriptum est enim: Quia unusquisque onus suum
portabit,’ p. 289. Damiani (Opuseul. v. • Mansi, xis. 893) makes use of the
following language : ‘Centum itaque annorum sibi pomitentiam indidi,
redemptio- nemque ejus taxatamper unumjuermjue annum,peeunim quantitate
pra-fixi.’
2 The bishop inquired into such flagrant
cases on his visitauon-tour. See Itsgino, De Discipline Eccl. lib. n. o. 1 sq.,
ed. Ealuze, 1671.
3 See Neander, vi. 153.
1
Earlier instances occur, but till the present period they had been condemned by
the more sober class of prelates; e.g. Hincmar’tf Opusc. kxxiii. (against his nephew Uinomar of
Laon, who had placed his diocese under an interdict). The first example of the
medieval practice which drew down no condemnation, happened in 991: see
Bouquet's Hid tor tens del Oaules, etc s. 147. The penalty wan legalized in
1031 by the provincial synod of Limoges (Limovicense II.); Mansi, xix 541,
6 See above, p. 95.
evolved, between the temporal and eternal consequences of sin, was still
indeed unknown: but in defining that a numerous class of frailties, unforgiven
in the present life, are nevertheless remissible hereafter, the dominion of the
sacerdotal order and the efficacy of prayers and offerings on the part of the
survivors were indefinitely extended to the regions of tlie dead1.
From this idea*, when embodied ultimately in a startling legend3,
sprang the ‘Feast of AH Souls’ (Nov. 2), which seems to have been instituted
soon after 1024, at (Jlugny, and ere long accepted in the Western Church at
large.
Perhaps the incident which of all others proved the aptest illustration
of tho spirit of the age, is found iu a prevailing expectatiou that the
winding-up of all things would occur at the close of the tenth century. At
first arising, it may be, from misconceptions of the words of the Apocalypse4
(xx. 1—6), the notion was apparently confirmed by the terrific outbreak of the
powers of evil; while a vivid consciousness of their demerit tilled all orders
of society with a foreboding that the Judge was standing at the door. As soon
as the dreaded year 1000 had gone over, men appeared to breathe more freely on
all sides. A burst of gratitude for their deliverance5 found
expression in rebuilding or in decorating sanctuaries of
1 Thus John VIII. (eire. 878) declares-
that Absolution Is to be {minted to those Christians who have died while
lighting ‘pro defensione sancta- Dei ecclesiaj et pro statu Christiana
religionis ae reipublica-,’ against pagans and infidels. Mansi, xvn. 104.
" Cf.
I’algrave, History of Normantfy, i. 164.
3 Vit. S. Odilonit, c. 1 i; in Mabiilon,
Act. Sanct. Ord. Bened. so?c.
vi. pt. i. p. 701: of. Nchrockh, iiui. 223.
4 Hengstenberg, Die OJTeribarung des h.
Johannes, ii. 309, Berlin, 1850; Mosheim, Cent. k. part ii. e. in. §
3: Capefigue, L'Eplise au Moyen Aye, i. 259 sq. Deeds of gift in the tenth century
often commence with the phrase, ‘ Appropinquante mundi termino.’
5 Capefigue, pp. 269, 270. Gratitude might
enter very largely into men’s feelings ai this crisis; but more frequently it
wax the wish to make compensation for sin (‘ synna gcbftan ’ is the Anglo-Saxon
phrase) which stimulated men to acts of piety and benevolence. • Pro redemption
anima' me® et prsedecessornra meorum ’ may be taken as a fiiir specimen of the
motives which were then in the ascendant: cf. iSehrookh, xxiii. 130 sq. and
Kemble’s Codex Diplomatics, passim. The excitement in connexion with the year
1000 was renewed in 1033, at the beginning of the second thousand years after the
Crucifixion. Many were then stimulated to set out for Palestine, where Christ
was expected to appear: see above, p. 200.
com.rp-
TIOKS AST
ABUsES.
I 1
The
tfftcti of tht beltt/ in purga lory.
Ft
ait of All Suuii.
General
expectation, of the final judgment.
Impulse
given to church- building. Reformation of religion still deferred.
God and other spots connected with religion. To this circumstance we owe
a number of the stateliest minsters and cathedrals which adorn the west of
Europe1.
Much, however, as the terrors of the Lord had stimulated zeal and piety,
it is too obvious that the many soon relapsed into their ancient, unconcern.
The genuine reformation of the Church ‘in head and members,’ though the want
of it is not unfrequently confessed, was still to human eye impossible. She had
to pass through further stages of probation and decline. It almost seems as if
the consciousness of individual fellowship with Christ, long palsied or
suppressed, could not be stirred into a healthy action till the culture of the
human intellect had been more generally advanced. Accordingly the dialectic
studies of the schools, however mischievous in other ways, were needed for the
training of those master-minds, who should at length eliminate the pagan
customs and unchristian modes of thought which had been blended in the lapse
of ages with the apostolic faith. It was required especially that Hildebrandine
principles, which some had taken as the basis of a pseudo-reformation, should
be pressed into their most offensive consequences, ere the local or provincial
Churches could be roused to vindicate their freedom and cast off the papal yoke2.
1 1 Infra
millesimum tertio jam fere imminento anno i-ontigit in 'mi- verso pcene
terrarum orbe, prascipue tamen in Italia et in Galliis, inno- vari ecclesiarum
basilicas, licet plerseque decenter locatse minime in- diguissent, etc...Erat
enim instar ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet, rejects vetustate, passim
candidam ecclesiarum vestem indueret.’ Glaber Itadulpli. Hist. lib. in. c. 4.
2 Schaff (Ch. But. ‘ Jntrod.’ p. 51)
remarks on tlie character of this period:—‘ This may be termed the ago of
Christian legalism, of Church authority. Personal freedom is here, to great
extent, lost in slavish subjection to fixed, traditional rules and forms. The
individual subject is of account, only as the organ and medium of the general
spirit of the Church. Mi secular powers, the state, science, art, are ander the
guardianship of the hierarchy, and must everywhere serve its ends. This is
emphatically the era of grand universal enterprises, of colossal works, whoso
completion required the cooperation of nations and centuries ; the age of the
supreme outward sovereignty of the visible- Church. Such a well-ordered and
imposing system of authority was necessary for the training of the Bomanic and
Germanic nations, to raise them from barbarism to the consciousness and
rational use of freedom. Parental discipline must precede independence:
children must first be governed, beforo they can govern themselves: the law is
still, as in the days of iloses, a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ.’
THE CHRISTIAN' CHURCH FROM GREGORY YIT. UNTIL THE TRANSFER OF THE PAPAL
SEE TO AVIGNON.
1073—1S05
CHAPTER IX.
§1. GROWTH OF
THE CHURCH.
northern The
districts in the north of Europe, which had hitherto missions. C011timied strangers to the Christian faith,
were for the most part now ‘ convertedthough the agency employed was far too
frequently the civil sword, and not the genuine weapons of the first Apostle.
AMONG THE FINNS.
These tribes, addicted still to a peculiar form of nature- worship1,
were subdued (circ. 1150} by Eric IX., king of Sweden, whose exertions in
diffusing Christianity2 have won for him the name of saint3.
Impelled by a misgoverned zeal, he laboured to coerce the Finns into a
knowledge of the Gospel. His ally in this crusade was Henry, bishop of Upsala4,
an Englishman, who ultimately perished while attempting to excommunicate a
murderer (1153). Some real progress was effected6 in the reign of
Eric;
1 Hone, Getch. de.s HeiJenthums, i 43 sq.
2 Sweden was itself imperfectly
Christianized in the former period (p. 107, n. 3). In 1123 a crusade was formed
against the heathen of Beanis, where several Englishmen, Dav id, Askil, Stephen
and others were distinguishid missionaries yLaing's Sweden, p. 239, Lond.
3839); and in some of the other districts Eric carried on the work of
conversion (Schrockh, xxv. 279).
3 See his Life in the Acta Sanct. Jiaii,
iv. 187.
4 He also was canonized: see his Life in
the Acta Sanct. Jauuar. n.
249.
* A bishopric was founded at Hendameeki,
afterwards (? 1228^ transferred to Abo. Wiltsch, Kirchl. Geogr. it. 259, n.
14. It was included in tha Swedish province of Upsala.
Military
conversion of the Finns.
but in 1240 we find the natives generally adhering to their ancient
superstitions, and most eager to annihilate the little Christian flock. A
Swedish jarl, accordingly (12£9j, began a fresh crusade against them, anti his
violence was copied on a further provocation by the Swedish monarch, Thorkel.
who reduced a tribe of Finns beyond the Tawastlanders. It is said that, prior
to the date of his incursion, tidings of the faith had reached them through a
Russian channel1.
AMONG THE SCLAVONIC TRIBES.
The rapid progress of the truth among this section of the human family
has been already traced2. The present period witnessed an extension
of the missionary work. The earliest converts were tho Pomeranians, then
possessing Pomerania Proper, Wartha, and Lusatia. From the date of their
succumbing to the Poles (circ. 997) attempts were made, especially in Eastern
Pomerania, to annex the heathen natives to the Church by founding a bishopric
at Oolberg3 (1000). But their fierce resistance4 to the
missionary long impeded his success; and only when the Polish sway was
extended over all the western district by the arms of Boleslav III. in 1121,
could any stable groundwork be procured for the ulterior planting of the
Church.
A Spanish priest named Bernard3, who embarked upon the mission
in the following year, was found obnoxious, from his poverty, asceticism, and
other causes, to the bulk
1
Dollincrc-r, m. 277, 278.
- Above, pp.
Ill sq.
3 Wiltsoh, 1. 3;)7, n. 2. The bi«hop
lteinbem, however, had no successor (see Kanngiefiser’s Bekehrungs-Gesch.
der I'ummern zum Christen- thmne, pp. 295 sq., Greiiswald, 1824); the
diocese being united -with that of Gnesen.
1 •
Sed nee gladio pra*dicationis cor eorum a perfidia potuit revocari, nec gladin
jugulationis eurum penitus viperalis progenies aboleri. Smpe tameu priucipes
eorum a Duee I’olonia* prtelio superati ad baptismum confugerunt, itemque
eollectis viribus iidem Christianam abuegantes contra Christianas bellum denuo
paraverunt.’ Martinus Gullus (as above, p. 116,11. 3).
5 Vit. S. Ottonis, in Ludewi"’s
Script. Her. Epit cop. Bamberg. 1. 400 sq. A moro nearly contemporary
account of the mission is the Vit. U. Ottonu, in Canisii Led. Antiq. ed.
Basnage, in. pt. ii. pp. 35 sq.
The
mis- tionary tfor's -if the Pula.
Labours
of Otho, bishop of Bamberg
(d. 1139).
Successful
at Stettin.
of the heathen natives. He was therefore superseded at his own desire by
one more fitted for the task, the cheerful and judicious Otho, bishop of
Bamberg, who set out (April 24, 1124) with an imposing retinue and many
tempting presents. He commenced the missionary work at Pyrit-z (near the Polish
frontier), where a large assemblage was collected for the celebration of a
pagan feast; and after twenty days no less than seven thousand of them were
admitted to the sacrament of baptism. Wartislav, the duke of Pomerania, was a
warm supporter of the mission, exercising a most salutary influence by his own
renunciation of polygamy, and his endeavours to repress the other heathen
customs1. Fear of Poland, blended with increasing admiration of the
earnestness of bishop Otho, gradually disposed the natives of all ranks to seek
for shelter in the Church. From Cammin, where the ducal family resided, Otho
bent his course to the important isle of AVollin, whence however he was soon
obliged to fly from the assault of an infuriated mob. He next addressed his
offers to the leading town of Pomerania, Stettin, and succeeded after fresh
resistance in demolishing the temple of its chief divinity* (Triglav), and in
winning over a large band of converts3. Having lingered here five
months, he crossed again to AVollin, the remaining stronghold of the pagan
party, and was now enabled to adopt the town of Jalin as the see* of the first
bishop (Adalbert).
He then took his leave of Pomerania and returned to Bamberg in the spring
of 1125 : but learning subsequently
1
From Otto’s addresses (in Canisius, as above, pp. fil—63) to the
recently-baptized converts we learn, among other tl ings, that the unnatural
custom of destroying female children at their birth prevailed to a great
extent.
a
The interesting circumstances connected with this and similar acts are given at
length in. Neander, vxi. 16—21: cf. Mone, i. 178.
3 Numbers seem to have been influenced by a
promise now elicited by Otho from the dull! of Poland, to remit the annual
tribute of the Christian Pomeranians {Vit. B. Ottonis, in Canisius, p. 69).
4 Owing to quarrels with the Danes, the
bishopric was afterward? (1175) transferred to Cammin. Wiltsch, ii. 85. It was exempted from all
urchiepiscopal jurisdiction ami placed in immediate dependence on tho see of
Borne by Innocent II. (1140): Hasselbaeh, Codex Pumeraniie Diplom. I. 36; ed.
Greifswald, 1843. Clement III. sanctioned the transfer of the see in 1188, on
the understanding that the bishops should pay annually to the pope ‘ fertonem
(=farthing) auri.’ Ilid. p. 152.
that a strong reaction had commenced in favour of the ancient religion,
he was constrained to enter 011 a second journey in 1198. Deflecting from his
earlier route1 he came into the dukedom at the town of Demmin
(Timiana), where the Gospel was unknown. A diet held at Usedoni (Uznam), soon
after his arrival, sanctioned its diffusion iu these parts, and Otho lost no
time iu sending out his staff of missionaries, two and two, among the
neighbouring heathen. As before, he frequently encountered opposition from the
populace, especially at Wolgast (Hologasta), which he visited in person. A large
band of soldiers headed by the duke himself, could hardly keep the multitude
in check. At length, however, they consented to behold the demolition of the
pagan temples, and promoted the erection of a Church.
On leaving Wolgast Otho steadily declined the services of Albert the
Bear, who would have fain employed his sword against the pagans. Giitzkow
(Gozgangia) was the place at which the missionaries halted next, and where they
reaped a larger harvest of conversions2. An attempt to gain the
Slavic isle of Rugen having failed, they bent their course to Stettin with the
hope of counteracting the revival of the pagan rites. The bishop found an
ardent coadjutor in a former convert Witstack3, and their courage,
tempered with affection, finally disarmed the frenzy of the zealots, who passed
over in great numbers to the Church (1128). Henceforward it was everywhere
triumphant. Christian, more particularly Saxon, colonists supplied the waste of
population which had been occasioned by incessant wars; and as the clergy for
the most part were Teutonic also, Pomerania both in language and in creed was
Germanized4.
The Wendisli tribes, especially the northernmost (the Obotrites), who had
relapsed into polytheism upon the martyrdom of Gottschalk5 (1066;,
continued for the most
1 Vit. B. Ottnnis, a» above, pp. 75
sq.
s Ibid.
pp. 77 sq. On the consecration of a stately church, the bishop dwelt at
lar^c upon tho truth that the one genuine temple of the Lord is in the human
heart. His sermon wrought a deep effect, especially in Jli/laf, the governor of
tho district.
a
Ibid. pp. 83 sq.
4 Jleandir, vn. 41.
5 See above, pp. 118, 119.
51.
A. P
Bitterly
opposed at Wolgast:
but,
finally StKCettful,
Vicissitudes
of religion :
its
re-establishment in the southern -provinces.
Subjugation
of the Obotriles. Previous labours of Vicelin (d. 1154).
His
re* veraes:
part the implacable opponents of the Gospel till the middle of the
twelfth century. His son, indeed, assisted by the neighbouring Christian
states, restored the Wetidish kingdom in 1105, and made some brief and feeble
efforts to restore the truth1. The dissolution of the empire on the
death of Cnut (1131) facilitated the political designs of German princes and
the spread of Christianity. The arms of Albert the Bear (1133 sq.) in
Brandenburg (Leuticia) and of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony (1142 sq.), replaced
the Wendish Church upon its early footing, and soon after it was able to
reorganize a number of the sees2 that had been ruined in the former
period.
Many of the northern Wends3, however, stubbornly adhered to
the ancestral religion until the utter subjugation of the Obotrites in 1162.
Their chief apostle was the saintly Vicelin4, a man of learning and
of indefatigable zeal. Attracted to this field of missionary enterprise (1125),
he preached at first in the border-town of Neumiinster (Faldera), selecting it
as a kind of outpost in his plan for the evangelizing of the northern districts
of the Elbe. He drew around him a fraternity5 of laymen and
ecclesiastics, and in 1134, when the emperor Lothair II. paid a visit to the
north, the earnest labours of the mission had been very largely blessed.
A church in Liibeck, with authority to organize religion in those parts,
was now committed to the hands of Yicelin; but the Slavonians, on the death of
the emperor (1137), suspecting him of a design against their liberties, rose up
1 The best general accounts are Helmold,
Citron. Slarorum, lib. i. c. 24 sq. (as above, p.
118, n. 1), and (xebhardi, Gtttchiciuie alUr Wendisch- Slavtic.hm Staaten, I.
143 sq.
2 Cf. above, p. Ilf?, n. 1 The see of
Oldenburg, after being occupied by Vicelin and Gerold, vraJ,
transferred to Liibeck by Henry the Lion; that of Mecklenburg to Schwerin
(1197), ‘propter tyrannidem Sclav- orum.’ Wiltsch, ii. 79. The see of
liatzeburp was also revived. Ibid. PI. 79, 238.
3 Helmold, Chron. Ibid.
4 See De AVestphalen’s Origines
Neomonaster, in the Monument, Cim- brica, n. 234 sq. ai.d Prwf pp. 33 sq.: cf.
St Vicelin, von P.'C. Kruse, ed. Altout,, 1826. Yieelin stwlied Biblical and
other literature for three years at the university of Paris under Rudolf and
Anselm. He was born at Quernheim, a village on the banks of the Wesrr.
3 According to Schrockh (xxv, 261], tho
Rule adopted was that of the ‘ I'rsauonstratensians. ’
in arms and banished every herald of the faith1. Retiring only
when the storm was loudest, Yicelin continued to watch over the affairs of his
disheartened flock. At length the partial subjugation of the Slaves by Adolph,
count of Holstein, opened a more prosperous era; and in 1149, the toil-worn
missionary was promoted to the see of Oldenburg by Hart wig; the archbishop of
Bremen. A prolonged misunderstanding now ensued between that primate and the
duke, upon the subject of investiture2; but though embarrassed by
it, Yicelin continued3 to the last (1154) a pattern of devotion anil
of evangelic zeal. By dint of arms, by missionary labour, and a large infusion
of Germanic settlers, gradually displacing the more ancient population,
Christianity was now triumphantly diffused in all the broken empire of the
Wends.
The latest fortress and asylum of Slavonic heathenism4 was the
extensive isle of Riigen. It had shewn a bitter and imperious zeal in favour of
paganism when Pomerania was converted3. Otho had, indeed, on more
than one occasion, purposed to extend his visits thither, but the warlike
bearing of the people, and the fears of his companions had constrained him to
desist6. It was reduced, however, in 1168. by an invasion of the
Danes7, who broke in pieces the chief shrine (of Swantewit) at
Arcona, and reared a Christian sanctuary upon the site. The natives generally,
convinced by the successes of the adversary that their own divinities were
powerless, now assented to the Gospel The ecclesiastical supervision of the
island was entrusted to a luminary of the Danish Church, the bishop Absalom of
Roskild8.
1 Helmold, C'l.ron. o. 48—c. 55.
2 It appear* that this ami other sees were
re-erected contrary to the wishes of the duke (Schriiekh, xxv. 263). He
therefore oluimed at least the right of granting investiture to the
newly-chosen bishops, as was (’one by the German kings. To this Hartwig, proud
of his priinatial dignity, objected as disgraceful to the Church: but Yicelin
at length consented.
3 Helmold, Ibid. c. 71 sq.
4 Hone, Gesch. des Heidrntbums, I.
173 sq.
5 Menacing their recently converted
neighbours of Stettin and Jr.lin ‘ quod sine respectu et consilio eorum idolis
renunciassent.’ Ibid. p. 1S4.
6 See the account at length in Neander, ni.
32, 33.
~
llelmold, Ibid. lib. ii. c. 12, c. 13: Gebhardi, ii. !) sq.
R
Riigen was thus annexed to his own diocese: 'Wiltsch, n. 95.
p 2
elevation
to the. fee of Oidenbmg.
Final
triumph of the Gospel. Military conversion of JRugtn.
Labours
of
Canon
Meinhard-
Relapse
of his con,' verts♦
Succeeded
by Ber - tkold.
AMONG THE LIEFLANDERS AND OTHER NORTHERN TRIBES.
These tribes1, who bordered mainly on the Baltic and extended
northward to the Gulf of Finland, were most probably a branch of the Slavonic
family, though largely intermingled, it is said, with others of the
Indo-European stock, and also with the Ugrian race of Finns.
Livonia had been for some time visited by its northern neighbours, when
an aged canon of the name of Meinhard2 joined himself to certain
merchants from the port of Liibeck, or Bremen, who were trading thither in 1186
He had been reared in one of Yicelin’s foundations (Sege- berg), and was truly
anxious to extend a knowledge of the Christian faith. As soon as he had made
some progress in the work, he was appointed to the see of Yxkull3
(Ykeshola, on the I)una) by the German prelate Hartwig, the archbishop of
Hamburg-Bremen, who had signalized himself in other missionary fields. The
hopes, however, which this step excited in the breast of Meinhard, were all
blasted when lie came into his diocese. The fickle multitude had speedily
relapsed, and though he spared no pains to rescue them afresh from the
seductions of polytheism, he died without attaining any permanent success
(1186). His post was filled by a Cistercian abbot, Berthold4, out of
Lower Saxony, who after trying more pacific measures, carried on the mission in
a very different spirit. Aided by pope Innocent III.5 he summoned a
large army of crusaders from the neighbouring regions; and the terrified
Livonians were at length compelled to acquiesce in his demands. He fell iu
battle; but as soon as the victorious army was withdrawn, the pagans rose
afresh to wreak their ven
1 Bespecting their mythology, nee Slone, x.
66 sq.
2 Bee the Origines Livoniir zacrce et
civiles (a Chronicle by Henry, a Livonian priest, -written about 1226), ed. Franeof. 1740, pp. 1—5: Geb- hardi, Gesch. von Liefland,
etc. pp. 314 sq.
* It was secured, to the province ot Hamburg
by the grant of pope Clement III. (1188): Lappenberg, Hamburg Urhundenbuch,!.
248.
1
Origines Mvonia (as above, n. 2), pp. 10 sq.
5 See liis three Letters on this subject in
Raynaldus, .innal. EccL ad an. 1199, § 38. He directs those who had vowed a
pilgrimage to Home, to substitute for it a crusade against the Livonians.
geance on the Christian body. Berthold was succeeded by a priest of
Bremen, Albert (1193- 1229), who also came into the diocese attended by a
numerous army. He established* in 1201 the knightly Order of the Sword (‘Ordo
Fratrum militias Christi’), by whose chivalry the elements of paganism were
gradually repressed. The centre of his operations was at Riga (built in 1200),
to which place the see of Yxkull was transferred2.
The zeal of Albert now impelled him to extend the Church in the adjoining
countries. Esthland (or Esthonia) seems to have been visited already at the
instance of pope Alexander III.3 (1171), but the' attempt, as far as
we can judge, was fruitless. A fanatical campaign4 of the Knights of
the Sword, aided by the king of Denmark, Waldemar II., had a different issue
(1211—1218). The province now succumbed and was evangelized at least in name5.
The twofold nature of the influences exerted in this work gave rise to a
vexatious feud between the Germans and the Danes, which terminated after many
years in the ascendancy of the former. Similar disputes had previously grown
up between the military Order and the bishops6.
The conversion of Semgallen7 followed in 1218. and that of
Courlaud8 in 1230, though in neither case are we at liberty to argue
that the truth was planted very deeply9.
1 Helyot, Hist, dee Ordres Beliff. et Militaires, m.
150 Fq. Better
influences were at work in Biga. Thus, archbishop Andrea* of Lund, who hail
come over with the allied Danes in 1205, lectured during the whole winter on
the Book of Psalms. Neander, vn. 53.
1 Wiltsch, 11. 82, n. 13. The church of
Riga was soon raised to arphiepiscopal rank, and a large province assigned it,
by pope Alexander IV. llaynaldus, Annal. Eccl. ad an. 1255, § 61.
3 Jlansi. xxi. 936. A certain fc'ulco is
there mentioned as the bishop of the Kstlilanders.
* Origines Livonia (as above, p. 212, n. 2),
pp. 122 sq.
5 One bishopric was planted at Reval, a
second (1224) at Dorpat, and a third at Pernau, finally transferred to the isle
of Oesel. Wiltsch, n. 268. The see of lleval was of Danish origin: the German
party planting theirs in the first instance at Leal, afterwards at Dorpat: cf.
Schrookh, xx\. 304.
6 Origines Livonia’, pp. 47 sq. The pope at
last decided in favour of the Knights. Ibid. p. 74.
7 A bishopric was placed at Seelburg:
Wiltsch, 11. 2G8. The natives, however, soon relapsed into heathenism.
8 Bishopric at Pilten. Ihid.
9 The visit of William of Modena, as papal
legate, in 1225. was salutary in appeasing strife and urging the necessity of
Christian education.
ESTHONIAX
OHCBCH.
Suppression
of the pagan* htj force.
Military
conversion of E$th- land:
Sfmga'len
and Cuur- land.
Labours
of the monk Christian
<d. 1241).
Reaction,
AMONG THE
PRUSSIANS.
Prussia, whose inhabitants were chiefly Slaves, with an admixture of the
Lithuanian and Germanic blood, was now divided into several independent states,
all marked, however, by inveterate hatred of the Gospel. In the time of
Adalbert of Prague and Bruno, chaplain of Otho III., this fierce antipathy,
embittered, we may judge, by their incessant struggle with the Christian Poles,
had shewn itself in the assassination of the missionaries1; and as
late as the opening of the thirteenth century, the fascinations of a simple and
voluptuous paganism2 retained their ancient power.
_ The first successful3 preacher was a monk, named Christian,
from a Pomeranian convent (Oliva) near Dantzic (circ. 121D). He was supported
warmly by pope Innocent III,4, and on a visit to the see of Rome
(circ. 1214), in which he was attended by two Prussian chiefs, the first-fruits
of his zeal, the pontiff made him bishop of the new community. Ere long,
however, the suspicions of the heathen (anti-Polish) party woke afresh, and
drove them in their rage to take a signal vengeance on the (’hristians5,
and to scourge the neighbouring districts
Aiming other
things he warned the German clergy, 1 ne Teutonici grava- minis
aliquod juguin importable neophytoruin humeris imponerent, sed juguin Domini
le\e ac suave, fideique semper docerent sacramenta.’ See the account of his
proceedings at length, in Gebhardi (as above), pp. 381 sq.
1 See above, p. 115, n. 3.
2 Mone, Gesch. des Heiden. I.
79 sq. Among other barbarous and bloody rites, it was the custom to destroy, or
sell, the daughters of a family excepting one. On the antiquities of Prussia,
see HartkuocJi, Alt und Neues Preussen, Kiinigsberg, 1684.
3 He was preceded (in 1207) by a Polish
abbot, Gottfried, and a monk, Philip, but. the work appears to have been
interrupted by the murder of the latter. There is, however, some contusion iu
the history at this point. See Schrockh, xx\. 314 sq. The original authority is
Peter of Dusburg, who wrote his Chronicon Prussia about 1326. It is edited,
with dissertations, by Hartknoch, Jen®, 1G79.
4 Be committed the supervision of the
converts in the first, place to the archbishop of Gnesen: Innocent III. Epist.
lib. flu. ep. 128. But the missionaries had another lorm of opposition to
endure, arising from tn< jealousy of their own abbots. See Innocent’s letter
(1213) in their behalf, lipist. lib. xv. ep. 147.
5 Pet. de
Dusburg, Chron. Pruss. Pars h. c. 1 sq. Nearly three hun-
which belonged to Conrad, duke of Masovia1. Through his
efforts, aided by the sanction of the pope, a body of Crusaders were attracted
to the theatre of strife ■''1219). The ‘Order of Knights-Brethren of
Dobrin’2, allied to those whom we have rnet already in Livonia, was
now formed upon the model of the Templars; but as soon as they had proved
unequal to the work of subjugating Prussia, tho more powerful ‘Order of
Teutonic Knights’ was introduced3, upon the understanding that the
conquered district should remain in their possession. Step by step, though
frequently repelled, they won their way into tho very heart of Prussia. In the
course of these revolting wars, extending over fifty years (1230—12G3), and
waged in part, with native pagans, and in part with Russians, Pomeranians4,
and other jealous states, the land w'as well-nigh spoiled of its inhabitants. A
broken remnant6, shielded in some measure by the intervention of
the popes, were now induced to discontinue all the heathen rites, to recognize
the claims of the Teutonic Order, and to welcome the instruction of the German
priests. The dioceses8 of Culm, Ermeland, Pomerania, and Samland,
organized before the final conquest by Innocent IV.7 (1243), were
subdivided into three parts, of which two rendered homage to the Knights, and
the remainder to the bishop,
Crusades
of the Knights- Brethren ;
and
the
Teutonic
Knights.
The
heather
finally
sabdmd,
1283.
Errlcs>ai-
tieal organization.
dred churches
and chapels were destroyed, and many Christians put to death.
1 It id dear frrnn a spirited epistle of
Innocent III. (lib. xv. pp. 148), that the authorities of Poland and Pomerania
pressed hard upon the converts, and employed the Gospel chiefly an an organ
for effecting the subjugation of the Prussians. Hence the reaction.
'J
Chron. Pruts. ibid. c. 4: Bollinger, in. 281, 282.
3 Ibid. On the following events, see
Hartknorh’s Fourteenth Ditser- tation (as above, p. 214, n. 3,) and the various
documents appended to his work; I. j>p. 47H sq.
4 The chief opposition came from this
quarter; Sv;mtepolk, the dukr of Pomerania, being jealous of the military
Order. He complained of their despotic conduct to the pope, who laboured to
secure more favourable terms for the oppressed: see Privilegium Pruthenis, a.d. 124.9 ron- cessum, in Tlartknorh,
pp. 463 sq. Eventually, however, tho Teutonic Knights were almost absolute in
the ecclesiastical affairs. Bollinger, p. 284.
6 Some few, however, w.iuld not yield, but
found a sanctuary among their heathen neighbours of Lithuania. Chron. Prunx.
Pars m. c. 81.
f
Wiltseh, 11. 270 sq.. where an inquiry is made as to the subsequent
distribution of the Prnt-sian dioceses.
7 Hartknoch, pp. 477, 478.
Nestorian-
ism in Eastern Asia:
tolerated
by the Mongols.
as their feudal lord. A multitude of churches and religious houses now
sprang up on every side. The Prussian youths were sent for education to the
German schools, especially to Magdeburg, and at the close of the present period
the Teutonic influence was supreme.
§ 2.
VICISSITUDES OF THE CHURCH IN OTHER REGIONS.
The Nestorian body, though its power was on the wane, continued1
to unfurl the sacred banner of the cross, almost without a rival, among the
tribes of Eastern Asia. We are told, indeed, that one of the Khans of Kerait,
who bore the name of ‘ Prester-John/ despatched an embassy to llome2
in 1177, and that a leading member of it was there consecrated bishop. But in
12023 the kingdom of Kerait sank before the revolutionary
arms of Chinghis-Khan, the founder of the great Mongolian dynasty; although a
remnant of the tribe appears to have survived and to have cherished
Christianity as late as 12464. While hosts of Mongols poured into
the steppes of Russia (1223), threatening to eradicate the growing Church, in
north and south alike6, and even to contract the limits of the
German empire (1240), the Nestorian
1 See above, pp. 128, 129. The residence of
their patriarch was still Bagdad.
5 The authorities for this account are
exclusively English. The letter of pope Alexander III. (dated Sept. 27, 1177)
is preserved in Benedict of Peterborough, i. 210, and Iloger of Hoveden, ii. 168; the address is ‘Ad Johannem
regem Indorum.’
B
D’Herbelot, Biblintheqve Orientate, ‘ Carit ou Kent’ p. 235.
* Diillinger, in. 287. It is even said (cf.
Neander, vn. 65, 66) that
Chinghis-Khan
espoused the Christian daughter of TJng-Khsm. the priest- Mng of the period.
6 See thp touching narrative of these incursion?
in Mouravit-ff, Hist. uif the Buss. Church, pp. 42 sq. The centre of Bu™ian
Christianity, Kieff, after a bloody siege, was given up to fire and pillage:
and the metropolitans transferred their residence first to "Vladimir and
then to Moscow, where they groaned for two centuries under the yoke of the
Mongols. Cf. iieale’s Hist, of the Eastern Church, Int. i. 56. One ol the
native princes, Daniel (‘dux Bussite’), supplicated the assistance of Pope Innocent
IV., wlio sent a legate into Bussia for the sake 11 negotiating the admission
of that country into the Latin Church; but Oriental influence baffled the
attempt. Capefigue, n. 106.
missionary, as it seems, was still at liberty to propagate liis creed,
and sometimes very high in the favour of the Khan, whose sceptre quickly
stretched across the whole of Persia, and the greater part of Central and of
Eastern Asia.
The incursions of the Mongols into Europe, joined with a report that some
of them had shewn au :nterest in the Christian faith, excited Innocent
IV. to send an embassy1 among them in 124.5. Soon after three
Franciscan monks embarked upon a kindred mission into Tartary itself8.
They found the Khan apparently disposed to tolerate the Gospel, aud a number of
Nestorian clergy at his court. But this and other hopes8 of his
conversion proved illusive. Actuated, a-s it seems, by a belief that it was
necessary to propitiate the gods of foreign lands before he was allowed to
conquer them, the Khan attended with an equal affability to the discourses of
the Catholics, Nestorians, Buddhists, and Muhammedans, by all of whom he was
solicited to cast his lot among them. In the end, when the posterity of
Chinghis saw their arms victorious everywhere, they set on foot a composite
religion4,—the still thriving Lainaism,—as the religion of the
state. The first Grand Lama was appointed under Kublai-Khan in 1260, for the
eastern (or Chinese) division of the empire5. Chris-
1 A report of their journey and negociation
with the Mongolian general in Persia is given by Vincent of Beauvais
(Bellovacensis), iu his Speculum Historiale, lib. xxxi. c. 33 sq. The
arrogance of the pope anil the unskilfu'.ness of his Dominican envoys only
irritated the Mongolian.
2 They were accompanied by an Italian, John
de Plano Carpini, whose report is given as above. The fullest form of it
appears in the Paris edition of 1838.
3 Ajl- embassy of Louis IX. of France (in
1253) grew out of the report that Mangu-Khan, as well as some inferior princes,
were disposed to join the Church. The leading envoy was a Franciscan, William
de llubru- quis, whose report is in the 11, 'lation des Voyages en Tartaric,
edited by liergeron, Paris, 1634. He disparages the missionary labours of the
Nestorians, and draws a gloomy picture of their o«n condition. This, however,
should be taken ‘ cum grano salis.’ His discussions with the various teachers
of religion are most interesting. Noander (vn. 71 sq.) gives a sketch of them.
See also Wuttke, Oesch. des Heidenthums, 1. 215 —218, Breslau, 1852.
4 It was largely intermixed with Buddhism,
or rather Buddhism formed the essence and substratum of it. See Schlosser’s
Weltgeschichte, Band. m. Th. 11. Abth. 1. p. 209: cf. 11. Hue’s Voyages dans
la Tartaru, etc., in which its numerous points of resemblance to the
media>val Christianity may be at once discerned.
s
In Persia (circ. 1258) Hulagu-Khan, whose queen was a Nestorian, favoured
Christianity (Asseman, Iiibl. Orien. tom. in. pt. 11. pp. 103 sq.),
EASTERN
ASIA*
Their
incursions into
Europe.
Negotiations
with a mew to their conversion.
Their
adoption
of Lammsia.
Mission
of John de Monte Corvino (d. 1330).
Extinction
of the Latin influence in China.
The
Eastern Cru-
tianity, however, even there was tolerated, and at times respected by the
Khans.
This feeling is apparent in the history of Marco Polo1, a
Venetian, who resided many years at tlie court of Kublai- Khan (1275—1293); and
still more obviously in the reception given to a genuine missionary of the
Latin Church, John de Monte Corvino2, a Franciscan. After sojourning
a while in Persia and India, he proceeded quite alone, in 1292, to China, where
he preached, with some obstructions, in the city of the Khan, Cambalu (Pekin).
He was joined in 1303 by Arnold, a Franciscan of Cologne. His chief opponents
were Nestorians, who eventually secured a fresh ascendancy in China,
counteracting all his labours. On the death of John (1330), aided though he was
at length by other missionaries, every trace of the Latin influence rapidly
decayed3.
A notice of the mighty movements, known as the Crusades, belongs more
aptly to a future page : for much as they subserved the interest of the papacy,
entangled the relations of the Greek and Latin Church, united nations and the
parts of nations by one great idea, and modified in many ways the general
spirit of the times, they wrought no lasting changes in the area of the
Christian fold.
and so did
many of his successors: hut this circumstance aroused the hatred of
the'Muhamjnedans (who formed the great maiority of the population), till at
last tlie Christian Church was almost driven out of Persia. Neander, vn. 75,
70.
His curious
work, T)e. Re.gionibus Orientalibus, written after his return to Europe, has
been frequently printed.
2 The origma! account of his* missionary
travels is in "Wadding's Annettes Fratr. Minor, tom. vi.: cf. the sketch
in Neander, vn. 77 sq. He instituted schools: he translated tho New Testament
and Book of lJsalm> into the Tatar language: and one of his
converts (formerly a Nestorian), who appears to have been descended from the •
priest-kings,’ began to translate tht whole Roman liturgy into the vernacular,
but died prematurely (1299). In 1303, Clement V. elevated the Church of Pekin
to the rank of an aichbishopric. Wiltsch. ii.
325. The Nestorians had already occupied the see (cil-c. 1282;, and kept
their hold till the beginning of the 16th century. Ibid. 366. Some interesting
illustrations of the part taken by English sovereigns in promoting these
missions may be found in Kymer’s Fadera, n. 17, 18, 37, <tc.
3 The next prelate, nominated by John
XXII., never took possession of his diocese, probably on account of the change
of dynasty by which the Catholics appear to have been expelled (1369). Asseman.
Bibl. Orient. tom. hi. pt. ii. 516, 535.
The impulse they communicated to the nations of the west is further shewn
by the attempts, in part abortive and in part successful, to eject the Moors
from Africa and Spain'. Too often, however, the conversion of the unbeliever,
in the proper meaning of the phrase, was but a secondary object. The
enthusiastic Francis of Assisi4 is one instance of the better class
of preachers; a second is supplied in the eventful life of a distinguished
scholar, llaymond Lull3 (1236—1315). When he perceived how the
Crusaders had in vain attempted to put down the Saracens by force of arms4,
he tried the temper of the apostolic weapons, and endeavoured to establish
truth by means of argument and moral suasion. In the intervals between his
missionary tours, directed chiefly to the Saracens and Jews of his native
isle, Majorca, and the north of Africa*, he hoped to elaborate an argumentative
system (‘ Ars Generalis ’) by the help of which the claims of Christianity
might be established in so cogent and complete a way, that every reasonable
mind would yield its willing homage to the Lord6. He acted on these
principles, and after eight-and-twenty years of unremitting toil, was stoned
to death in the metropolis of the Mu- liammedans, at Bugia (Bejyah).
The fanaticism, which found expression in the violence of the Crusaders,
still continued to abhor and persecute
1 Capefigue, u. 82, 83. The chief agents in
this work were the Franciscans aud Dominicans.
2 See the account of his preaching to the
Sultan of Egypt in 1219, in Jac. de Yitry’s Hint. Occid. c.. 32, and Neale’s
East. Church, ii. 286.
3 See Wadding’s Annal. i'ratr. Minor., ail
an. 1275, 1287, 1290, 1293, 1295, ami (especially) 1315: cf. also a Life of him
in the Act. Sanct. Jun. Y. 661 sq. in edition of his very numerous works was
published at Ment /. in 1722.
4 At first indeed he thought that arms
might be of service in supporting his appeal (Neander, vn. 263): but
subsequently he confessed that
such
a method was unworthy of the cause (Ibid. pp. 265, 266). One of his projects
was to found missionary colleges, in which the students might be taught the
languages of heathen countries, aud at length (1311)
the
plan received the approbation of pope Clement V. and the Council of Vienne.
Professors of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic were in future to be supported at
Borne, Paris, Oxford and Salamanca (Ibid. pp. 85, 95, 96).
4 He travelled, on one occasion, into
Armenia, with the hope of winning the natives over to the Ijatin Church.
8
See his Necessaria Dmunstratio Articulvrum Fidei.
SPAIN AS1)
NOBTHEUN AFRICA.
Others
in Spain and Africa.
Better
spirit manifested in Raymond Lull
(d. 1315).
Attempts
to Christianize the Jtw>.
JEWS. t -1
Their
occasional success.
the Jews1. That wondrous people in the present period
manifested a fresh stock of intellectual vigour, and so far as learning2
reached were quite a match for their calumniators and oppressors. It is true
that men existed here and there to raise a hand in their behalf3:
and of this number few were more conspicuous than the better class of popes4.
Whenever reasoning6 was employed to draw them over to the Christian
faitli, their deep repugnance to the Godhead and the Incarnation of our blessed
Lord, as well as to the many forms of creature-worship then prevailing in the
Church, is strongly brought to light. Occasionally the attempt would prove
successful, as we gather from the very interesting case of Hermann8
of Cologne, who was converted at the middle of the twelfth century: but issues
of this happy kind were most unquestionably rare.
1 A
rail account of their condition at this period may be seen in Schrockli, xxv.
329 sq.
f
Joseph Kimchi (circ. 1160), -with nis sons David and Moses, were distinguished
as Biblical scholars- isee list of their works in i’urst’s Bib- lioth. Judaica,
Leipzig, 1851). liabbi Solomon Isaac (Bashi) also flourished at the close of
the twelfth century. But the greatest genius whom their nation has produced, at
least in Christian times, both as a free expositor of Holy Scripture and a
speculative theologian, was Maimo- uides (Moses Ebn-Maimun;, born at Cordova in
1181: Bee Fiirst, Ibid. Th. ii. pp.
290—313.
3 e.g. St Bernard defended them from the
onslaught of a savage monk, Rudolph, who, togethei with the cross, was
preaching deaih to thG Jews: Neander, vii. 101, and the Jewish Chronicle there
cited.
4 Ibid. pp. 102 sq., where many papal
briefs are noticed, all protecting Jews and urging gentle measures in
promoting their conversion. But Neander overlooks a multitude of other
documents in which the popes and councils of the 13th century have handled the
Jews more roughly: see Schrockh, xxv. 353 sq.
6
e.g. Abbot (xislebert (of Westminster), Disputatio Judcei cum Christiana if
Fide Christiana, in Anselm’s Works, pp. 512—523, ed. Paris, 1721: Richard of St
Victor, De Emm.an.ueU, Opp. pp. 280 - 312, ed. Ro thomagi, IU50. a. more
elaborate work is by a Spanish Dominican. Raymond Martini, of the 13th century.
It is entitled Pugio Fidei, end directed first against Muhammedans, and next
against Jews; edited by Carpzov, Leipzig, 1687.
6 See his own narration of the process,
appended to the Pugio Fidei, as above. He finally entered a convent of the
l’raiinonstratensians at Kappenberg in Westphalia.
CHAPTER X.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
§ 1. INTERNAL
ORGANIZATION.
Referring to a later
page for some account of the encroachments now effected by the hierarchy in the
province of the civil power, as well as for a sketch of the reactions they
produced in England, Germany, and France, we shall at present notice only the
internal constitution of the Church regarded as a spiritual and independent
corporation.
In the western half of Christendom the pope, who formed its centre, was
no more a simple president or primus, charged with the administration of
ecclesiastical affairs according to the canons1. He had gradually
possessed himself of the supreme authority': he was the irresponsible dictator
of the Church, the only source of lawful jurisdiction, and the representative
of Christs. The claim which he put forward in the half-century from
Innocent III. to Innocent IV. (1198—1243), though reach
1 Cf. tho language even of Boniface, p. 19,
n. 8; and of Dunstnn. p. 200, n. 1. In the present period individuals were not
wanting to dispute the claim of popes, who promulgated new enactments of their
own (e.g. I’lacidus of Nonantula, De Honore Ecclesiie, in Pezii Thesaur.
Anecdot. n. pt. n. pp. 75 sq., and especially Grosseteste of Lincoln, see
below, p. 228): but their power of dispensing with the canons of the Church was
almost everywhere allowed, iu many cases ‘ante factum.’
See
authorities at length in Gieseler, in. 162 sq. Among the few limitations to
which this power was subjected is the case when any dispensation would he
‘contra quatnor evangelia,’ or ‘contra praceptum Apostolic i.e. ‘in iis quoe
spectant ad articulos fidei.’ John of Salisbury (cp. 198, ed. Giles) limits tho
papal power in the same manner.
3 e.g. Innocent III. Epist. lib. I ep.
cocxxvi.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The
culmination of the pa/ial power.
The
infill' ence of Gregory VII.
ing to an almost prseterhuman height,1, was very generally
allowed. The metropolitans and other bishops, having lost their independence,
were content to be esteemed his vassals, instruments, or vicars2.
They were said to be appointed ‘by the grace of God and of the apostolic see.’
In other words, the scheme which had been advocated by the Pseudo-Isidore
‘Decretals’ was at length in active operation.
No one clung to this idea so .intelligently or promoted its development
so much as the indomitable Hildebrand3, or Gregory VII. (1073). His
leading principles are stated, both in reference to the Church and civil power,
in certain propositions known as the Dictatus Hildebrandinii.
Trained, while serving former pontiffs, in the art of government, he turned his
wondrous energy and diplomatic skill to the immediate execution of the projects
he had cherished from his youth. These were (1) the absolute ascendancy of
papal power, and (2) the reformation of abuses, more especially of those which
had been generated by the bishops and the clerics5. Hildebrand
was seconded from first to
1 The former pontiff, in a passage* quoted
with approbation by Cape- figue (ii. 61),
styles himself ‘citra Deum, ultra hominem,’ and again, ‘minor Deo, major
htmine.’ Yet iu cases where the popes surrendered any of these claims, their
partisans contended (e.g. Dollinger, in. 339) that an unpalatable edict of the
Roman see could not invalidate the acts of former synods. At the crisis here
alluded to, the French bishops almost to a man (‘universi p;rne Franciaj
episcopi’) determined on tho excommunication of the pope himself, if he abandoned
any more of the hierarchical pretensions. See Gerhoh of Beichersberg, De
Corrupto Ec- clesitf: Statu, c. 22.
2 See Innocent III. Epist. lib. i. epp.
ccccxcv, ccccxcvi. The office of a bishop was regarded as a cession made by him
of part of his own universal pastorship In the Canon Law (Sexti Decret. lib. I.
tit. ii. c. i.) it is affirmed of
the Homan pontiff'; * jura omuia in scrinio pectoris sui cousetur habere.’ The
same spirit i* betrayed in the absolute limitation of the name ‘apostolic see’
to the Church of liome; thereby swallowing up the other ‘ sedes apostolic®.’
3 Above, pp. 140 sq.
4 Bowden’s Life of Greg. VII. II. 391. Mr
Bowden (77>id. ii. 50, 51) argues that this series, consisting of
twenty-seven propositions, ought not to be ascribed to Hildebrand himself; yet
it is obvious that they have preserved, in a laconic shape, the principles on
which his policy was uniformly based: cf. Neander, vh. 165.
6 Above, p. 110. Gregory’s earnestness on
this point can hardly be questioned. Wedded as he doubtless was to the idea of
carrying out the paptu claims at any cost, and wanting therefore, as he showed
himself, in truthfulness on more than one occasion, he was, notwithstanding,
actuated by a firm belief that God had raised him up for moral ends, espe-
last, by very many of the nobler spirits of the age1, who
trusted that a sovereign power, if wielded by the Roman pontiffs, might be
turned into an agent for the moral exaltation of the Church. But iu the
Hildebraudine (or ‘reforming’) party there were many others who had been
attracted chiefly by the democratic (or in some, it may be, the fanatic) spirit
of the movement2. They were glad of an occasion for expressing their
contempt of married clergymen, or for escaping altogether from domestic rule.
The policy of Hildebrand, on this and other questions, was adopted in the
main by his successors, Victor 111. (1086', Urban II. (1088), Paschal II.
(1C99), Gelasius II. (1118); but owing to the bitter conflicts with the German
emperor as well as to the coexistence of an influential anti-pope, Clement III.3
(1080—1100), their usurpations iu the Church at large were somewhat
counteracted. The two following pontiffs, Calixtus II. (1119' and Honorius II.
(1124), maintained the Hildebraudine principles with almost uniform success,
and in the reigns of Innocent II.* (1130), Coelestine II. (1143), Lucius II.
(1144), Engenius III. (1145), Anastasius IV. (1153); Hadrian IV. (1154), Alexander
III.3 (1159), Lucius III. (1181), Urban III. (1185),
ciallv for
the repression of thp worldly spirit which possessed the mass of the
ecclesiastics (e.g. Epist. lib. 1. ep. 9; Alansi, xx. 00;: cf. Neander, vn. 110
sq.
1 Neander, Ibid. 125 mote), 153.
* It is plain that Hildebrand always counted
on the succour of the populace ;ef. above, p. 140), and iu his efforts to put
down clerical rnsi- riages, as well ax customs really exceptionable, he relied
on what is called the force of ‘ public opinion,’ which he lost no time in
seeking to exasperate: see Neander, vn. 128, 135, 117: Bollinger, in. 318.
This movement afterwards became unmanageable (Neander, Ibid. 202), and it seems
that not a few of the later forms of misbelief (e.g. the invalidity of
sacraments administered by unworthy clergymen) are traceable to the workings of
the spirit which the Ilildi brandine principles called up.
3 On his death Theoderio wan elected by the
rival party, but soon afterwards shut up in a monastery. Albert (also called
‘untipapa') followed in 11(12, and Silvester IV. (or Maginulfus) in 1105. The
last was deposed by Henry V. in 1111, when his dispute with Paschal II. hail
been adjusted for a time. See Jaffi5, pp. 519—521. The antipope to
I’alixtus
II. was Burdinus (Gregory VIII.). 1118—1121.
4 He was opposed, however, firbt by
Anacletus II. (1130—1138). and next by Victor IV. (1138); lmt as the schism did
not grow out of political considerations, the dominion of the papacy was not.
much weakened by it. Innocent II. was supported by the almost papal influence
of St Bernard, and the peace which he effected was consolidated at the council
of Lateran (1139).
5 Under this pontiff an important decreo
was made for obviating the
iHTEKSAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The
serits of popes.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Decay
of the papal grandeur.
Gregory VIII. (1187), Clement 111. (1187), Ccelestine III. (1191;, the
papal claims, though not unfrequently contested at those points in which they
trenched upon the civil jurisdiction, were, in sacred matters, still more
generally allowed. With Innocent III.1 (1198), the idea of the Roman
pontiff as the organ and the representative of , God in the administration of
all sublunary things was carried, step by step, into the most extravagant
results. He was, indeed, the second Hildebrand; but, owing to the circumstances
of the age, he far exceeded every other pontiff Id the grandeur of his
conquests and the vigour of the grasp by which they were retained. Honorius HI.
(1216), Gregory IX. (1227), Ccelestine IV.2 (1241), and Innocent ]
V. (1243;, inherited his domineering spirit and perpetuated the efforts he had
made in carrying out his theory of papal absolutism: but the tide (as we shall
see hereafter) now began to turn, and at the close of the present period many
of their worst pretensions, after calling tip a spirited reaction, had been tacitly
withdrawn. The following are the other members of the series, dating from the
time of Innocent IV. to the important epoch, when their honours had begun to
droop,
divisions
which arose at the papal elections: Mansi, xxii.
217. Further regulations were introduced ■with the name object by
Gregory X.: cf. Neander vn. 266. Alexander III. had to encounter a series of
formidable rivals, Victor IV. (1159—1164), Paschal III. (1164—1168), Calixtus
111. (1168—1178), Innocent 111. or Landus Sitinus (1178—1180), backed by the
imperial interest; but his triumph was secured by the exertions of men like our
English primate, Becket, who appear to have carried with them the general
feeling of the age.
1 See Xeander’s remarks on his character
and conduct, vn. 239 sq. Some of hij verj numerous Letters were
edited by Baluze, in 2 vols. folio; and his Works aro novr printed in 4 vols.
of Migne’s Patrologia, Paris, 1855: cf. the able, but ^Romanizing work of
Hurter, Gesch. Papst Innueenz des Britten, Hamburg, 1834. The towering claims
of Innocent and uis successors were supported by the new school of canonists
(■ de- cretists,’ afterwards ‘ decretalists,’) v.hich had sprung up
especially at Bologna. About 1151, Gratian published his Concordia
Discordautiuni Canunum [the Drrretum Gratiani], in which he forced the older
canons into tvifiaony with the Pseudo-Isidore Decretals. As the papal edicts
multiplied and superseded more and more the ancient regulations of the Church,
a further compilation was required. It made its appearance in 1234, under the
hanctiori of Gregory IX., in fire books, i. sixth (‘ Liber Sextus'; vas added
by Boniface VIII. in 1298. Sec Bohmer’s Dissert. in his edition of the Corpus
Juris Canonici, Hal®, 1747.
2 The papal chair, which he filled only a
few days, continued vacant until June, 1243.
and when tho papal chair itself was planted at Avignon1
—Alexander IV. (1254), Urban IV. (1261\ Clement IV. (1265), Gregory X. (1271),
Innocent V. (1276), Hadrian V. (1276), John XX. or XXI.2 (1276),
Nicholas III. (1277), Martin IV. (1281), Honorius IV. (1285), Nicholas IV.3
(1288\ Coelestine V.4 (1294), Boniface VIII. (1294;, Benedict XI.
(1303), Clement V. (1305).
The leading agents, or proconsuls, of the pope in the administration of
his ever-widening empire, were the legates (or ‘legati a latere’), whom he
sent, invested with the fullest jurisdiction, into every quarter of the world.
Officials of this class appeared occasionally in the time of Hinemar5:
but their mission was regarded as intrusive, and excited many hostile feelings
in the country whither they were bound8. The institution was how-
1 Another vacancy, of two years and nine
months, occurred at his death.
2 This was the title which the pope himself
assumed (thereby, as it has been argued, counting Joan as a popej, although he
was really the twentieth of the name.
" The
Human see was Tacant at his death for two years and three months.
4 Known at the • hermit-popesee Dollinger, it. 79, 80. He abdicated after a brief
reign of three months.
5 Above, p 137, n. 2.
6 Thus. Chicheley, archbishop of
Canterbury, writes at a still later period: ‘Be inspection of lawes and
cronicles was there never no legat a latere sent into no lond, ard specially in
to your rengme of Yngland,
withowte
grete and notable cause And yit over
that, he was tretyd
with or he
ctm in to the lond, when he shold have exercise of his power, and how myche
sehold bee put in execution,’ &c. Vit. II. Chichele, p. 129, Lond.
1099. In the year 1100, when the archbishop of Vienne came into England in this
capacity he made no impression on the people, but departed • a nemine pro
legato susceptus, nee in aliijuo legati officio functus.’ Eadmer, ed. Selden,
1623, p. 5tf. William of Corbeuil, however, the archbishop of Canterbury, who
had been sent to Itome, to complain of the intrusion of a legate into England,
returned in 1126, the bearer of the very office against which the nation had
protested ((xervas. Dorobem., in Twysden’s Script. X, col. 1603); being
elevated to that office by Honorius H. (Wharton, Ang. Hac. t. 792.) The
archbishop by accepting the office was enabled to exclude the interference of
any other legate from Bome, whilst the pope, by commissioning the archbinhop as
legate, was enabled to regard all the proper jurisdiction of the
metropolitanate as exercised under his own a uthori/ation. From the year 1195
to the reformation the archbishops of Canterbury were with scarcely an exception
legates, legati nati, commissioned by the popes as a matter of course. The
dislike of the English seems to have been directed rather against the Italian
extortioners •who as Cardinals appeared for a short time with special
commission a latere.
IN* EKNAL
ORGANIZATION’.
The
tmt influence of the papal legato.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
A
ppeals to Home.
ever, au essential element of Hildebrandine despotism1: and
while its operation hero and there was salutary, or was tending to correct
abuses3 in some ill-conditioned province, it more frequently became
an engine of extortion, and thus added to the scandals of the age. The
constant intermeddling of the popes in other churches, by the agency of roving
legates, indicated more and more the worldly spirit which possessed them,
notwithstanding all their affectation of peculiar purity and all their projects
of reform. The ‘curia’ (or the court) of Rome3 was now the
recognized expression; and no object lay so near the heart of him who bore the
legatine authority4, as the advancement of its temporal interests
in opposition to the crown and every species of domestic rule.
Tlio same desire to elevate and to enrich the papacy,
1 e.g. see Gregory's Epist. to the duke of
Bohemia: Mansi, xx. 73. He exhorted the civil authorities to compel the
acquiescence of Jaromir, the contumacious bishop of Prague, ‘usque ad
interniciem.’ According to the Dictatus Hildebrand., § 4, the legate was to
take precedence of a] i bishops.
2 St Bernard’^ ideal of a legate will be
found in the He Consideratione ad Eugenivm, lib. iv. c. 4. His picture was,
however, realized too seldom : ‘ Nonne alterius sceculi res est, redisse
legatum de terra auri sine auro? transisse per terrain argenti et argentum
nescisse?’ c. 5. On the general duties of the legate and his influence in
promoting the consolidation of the papacy, see Planck, iv. pt. n. 639 sq
3 ‘ Neque enim vel hoc ipsum carere macula
vidttur, quod nunc dici- tur curia Romana qua; antehac dicebatur ecclesia
Bomana.’ Gerhoh of Beichersberg, De Conupti Ecclesia Statu, Prtefat. (seu
Epist. ad Henri- cum Card.) § 1, Opp. V. 9, ed, Migne.
1 The Ii mtes constantly urged the light of
the pope to dispose of \acant benefices, and even bishoprics. Planck, uhi svp.
pp. 713 sq. At first he recommended individuals, by way of ‘petition;’ but in
tho 13th century tht ‘preces’ were changed into ‘mandata;’ and he finally
insisted on the promotion of his lavourites (sometimes boys, and chiefly
absentees) in thu most peremptory manner, by an edict ‘non obstante.’ It was a
case of this kmd (1252; which stirred the indignation of Grosseteste, bishop
of Lincoln: see the account in Matthew Paris (ed. 16sl), p. 710; cf. pp. 749
sq. A former pope (Honorius III.) in 1226 (Matthew Paris, p. 276) had been
constrained to make the most humiliating confession by his legate, Otbo: ‘Idem
papa allcgavit scan.lalum sanctas Homan® ecclesise et opprobrium
vetustissimum, notam scilicet concupiscen- tise, qu£B radix dicitur omnium
malorum: et in hoc praicipue, quod nullns potest aliquod negotium in Bomana
curia expedire nisi cum magna effu- sione pecunia' et donorum exhibitione,’
etc.: cf. John of Salisbury’s 1‘olicraticus, lib. V. c. 16. An exact account of
the steps by which papal influence was introduced into English church patronage
will bo found in Bishop Forbes’s Explanation of the 39 Articles, it. 719, Oxford, ltJ68.
though blended iu some cases with a wish to patronize the feeble and to
shelter the oppressed, is seen in a requirement now extended in all quarters,
that appeals, instead of being settled in the courts at home, should pass, almost
indiscriminatelyto the lloman court, as the ultimate tribunal of the West.
Attempts*, indeed, were made (occasionally by the popes3 themselves)
to limit this unprincipled recourse to foreign jurisdiction: but the practice,
notwithstanding such impulsive acts of opposition, kept its hold on every side,
especially in all the newly- plunted churches.
The development of papal absolutism, though it tended to protect tlie
bishops from the violence of feudal lords, and even to exempt them altogether
from the civil jurisdiction, swallowed up the most important of their rights.
The metropolitans, in cases where they did not also fill the post of legate,
were compelled to yield obedience to the papal nominee4, though he
might often be a priest and nothing more. The vows of servitude imposed on them
at the reception of the pallium5 were exacted also
1 See St Bernard's remarks, Ad Eugenium,
Bb. hi. c. 2. Innocent
III.,
a shrewd administrator, checked the> excessive frequency of appeals, on the
ground that numbers would avail themselves of this privilege merely to buy off
the execution of the laws : e.g. Concil. Lateran. (1215) c. 7. He enioined that
the sentence of provincial councils should take immediate effect, and that no
appeal should lie to Home unless the forms of law had been exceeded.
2 In England there was always a peculiar
jealousy oil the subject of appealhi ami when this feeling was aroused in 1164,
provision was distinctly made in the ‘ Constitutions of Clarendon,’ that all
controversies whatever should be settled in the home-courts: Matthew Paris, p.
84 (from Boger of Wendover, FUires Hit tor. n. 300: ed. E. H. S. 1841). The
prelates and others in like manner had required a pledge from An»elm, ‘ quod
nunquam amplius sedem Sancti Petri, vel ejus vicarimn, pro quavis quaj tibi
queat ingori causa appelles. ’ Eadmer, p. 39.
s
See n. 1. *
4 See above, p. 225, n. 6. The English wero
extremely scandalised when John of Crenia (1123)' a cardinal priest, assigned
these novel powers: Crervase of Canterbury (I)orobem. }, ed. Twysdon, col. 1
And wc may gather from the following passage of a letter addressed to Gregory
VII.. that many bishops viewed him as the enemy of all authority except the
papal: • Sublata, quantum in te fnit. orrmi potentate ab epUcapis,
quip eis Jlivinitus per gratiara Spiritus Sancti collate esse dinoscivnr,
dum nemo jam alicui episcopus aut presbyter est, nisi qui hoc indignissima
assentatione a fastu tuo emcndicavitin Eccard’s
Script.
Her. Germanic, ii. 172.
6 Above, p. 141.
o 2
Eft a of papal absolutism <>n episcopacy.
Roman-
izinn
spirit
of
the monks.
from the other bishops1, who, in order to secure the
friendship of the pope, betook themselves to Rome, and sued for confirmation at
his hands. The pride, extortion, and untruthfulness of many of the pontiffs
stirred them, it is true, at times into tlxe posture of resistance, and a man
like Robert Grosseteste8 did not hesitate to warn the pope himself,
that by persisting in extravagant demands, the Roman Church was likely to
become the author of apostasy and open schism. Yet, generally, we find that a
belief in the transcendant honours of the Roman see retained the western
bishops in their old connexion with it. Galling as they felt the bondage, they
had not the heart to shake it off.
The stoutest advocates of papal usurpation were the members of religious
orders. Gifted with a very largo amount of the intelligence, the property3,
the earnestness, and the enthusiasm of the age, they acted as the pope’s
militia4, and became in troublous times the pillars of his throne.
On this account he loaded them with favours6.
1 See Neandpr, vn. 276, 277: Dollinger, hi. 33i. The protpstantism of Matthew
Paris breaks out afresh at this indignity, when it was urged more pointedly in
1257 He calls the i papal edict ‘ Statutnm Bomai cruentissimum, quo oportet
quemlibet electum personaliter transalpinare, et in suam hesionem, imo
eversionem, Bomanorom loculos impritjnare p. 820.
2 ‘ Absit, autem, absit, quod hseo
sacratiBsima pedes, et in ea prsesi- dentes, quibus communiter et in omnjhiif-
mandatis suis et prseceptis obtempcratur, prajcipiendo quiequam Christi
praeeeptis et voluiitati i-on- trarium, tint Causa veras discessioniH.’ See the
whole of this startling and prophetic Siimon in the Opuscula R. Grosseteste, in
Brown’s I'as-'i cuius, ii. 255.
Then is a copious Life of Grosseteste, by Pegge; his letters have been
published ji the Chronicles and Memorials, edited bv Mi Luard, 1861.
8
Their property was very much augmented at the time of the Crusades by
mortgages anil ea«v purchase from the owners, whi. were bent on visiting the
Holy Land, Planck, it. pt. n, 345
sq. Others aho, to escape oppression, held their lands feudally from the
religious houses and the clergy.
4 For this reason they 5n( urred the hitter
hatred of the anti-Hildf- brandine school, who called them ‘Pharisees’ and
‘Obscurantes’ (Ne- ander, vit, 133, 134). AVlicn the Church was oscillating
between Alexander HI. and tht anti-pope (Victor), the Carthurians. and
Cistercians warmly took the side of tie former, and secured his triumph. See
Life of Bishop Anthehn in the Art. Sanct. Jun. v. e. 3.
s
e.y. the abbot was allowed to wear the insignia of the bishop, sandals, mitre,
und crosier: and exemptions (see above, p. 148, n. 1) were now multiplied in
every province, ;t s a glance at Jaffa's Begesta Pontine. Roman, flill
abundantly shew. The nature of these privileges Univ Caiit - Digitized by
Microsoft ®
Many of the elder Benedictines liad departed from the strictness of their
rule, and in this downward course they were now followed by the kindred monks
of Clugny: but a number of fresh orders started up amid the animation of the
Hildebrandine period, anxious to redeem the honour of monasticism, and even to
surpass the ancient discipline. Of these the order of Carthusians, founded by
Bruno1 of Cologne (1084), at the Chartreuse, near Grenoble, proved
themselves the most unworldly and austere. They fall into the class of
anchorets, but like the Benedictines they devoted many of their leisure hours
to literary occupations2. Other confraternities8 appeared
; but none of them were so successful as the order of the Cistercians (monks of
Citeaux near Dijon), who endeavoured to revert in every feature of their system
to the model of St Benedict. The founder4, llobert, having vainly
sought for peace and satisfaction in the life of a recluse, established his new
convent in 1098. Its greatest
maybe
gathered from an epistlo of Frban n. (1092) id Mansi, xx. 052. Complaints
respecting them were constantly addressed to the succeeding I opes: e.g, that
of the archbishop of Canterbury among the Epist. of Peter of Blois (Blesensis),
ep. 68; and St Bernard, Ad Eugenium, lib. 11:. 4.
1
Seo Jlabillon, Ar.t. Sanct. Ord. Bened. vi. pt. n. 52 sq.: Amoks, v. 2(12 sq,
ilany of the later legends respecting Bruno are purely mythical. The order of
the Carmelites founded in Palestine about 115G ■wan transplanted into tho
West during the following century and assimilated to the other order* of
Friars. They grew up into a somewhat numerous body. See Holstein’s Codex
Regular, in. 18 sq., and Fleury, Hist. Eeel. liv. lxxvi. § 55.
3 Labbe has published their Institutiones
in his Bibliotheca, I. 638, sq.: cf. Neander, vii.
368.
3 e.g. The Ordo Grandimontensis (of
(rrainmout) founded about 1070 (see Jifo of the founder, Stephen, in Jlartfne
and Durand's Ampliss, Collectio, ti. 1050 sq.; SlabillonV Artnales, v. 65 sq.):
the Ordo Fontis- Ebraldi (of Fonlevraud), founded in 1094 (Mabillon’s Annul, v.
314 sq.). Tho Order of St Anthony, founded by Gaston in 1095, attended ou the
sick, especially the leprous (Act. Sanct. Jan. n. 160 sq.): the Trinitarians
(“Fratres Domus Sanctis Trinitatis ’), founded by John de Matha and Felix de
Valois (1198), endeavoured to procure the redemption of Christians who had
fallen into tho hands of the infidels. See Fleury, liv. lxxv. § 9.
1
See Uabillon, a* above, v. 219, 393 nq.; Manrique, AmaUs Cis- tercienses, Lugd.
1642; and Holstein, Codex, ii. 386
sq. Among the other features of the institute we notice a peculiar reverence
for episcopal authority: see the papal confirmation of their rules (1119) in
Manrique,
i. 115. '
ISTliltKAIi
OBGA*IZA-
TION.
Rise
of the Carthusians,
1034.
kisc
of the Cistercians,
103b.
Influence
of St Bernard.
Modastic
orders ill adapted to the times.
The
rise of the Franciscans, 1207
luminary was St Bernard1 (1113—-11S3), who, after spending a
short time in the parent institution, planted the more famous monastery of
Clairvaux (Olara Vallis), in the diocese of Langres. Aided by the influence of
his name anti writings, the Cistercian order rapidly diffused itself in every
part of Earope*, and became ere long the special favourite of the popes3.
It formed, indeed, a healthy contrast to the general licence of the age, as
well as to the self-indulgence and hypocrisy of many of its c(Enobitic rivals4.
But however active and consistent they might be, these orders were
imperfectly adapted to the wants of the thirteenth century As men who had
renounced the business of this world, to make themselves another in the
cloisters where they lived and died, they kept too far aloof from secular
concerns, and even where they had been most assiduous in the duties of their
convent, their attachment to it often indisposed them to stand forward and do
battle with the numerous sects that threatened to subvert the empire of their
patron. Something ruder and more practical, less wedded to peculiar spots and
less entangled by superfluous property, was needed if the Church were to retain
its rigid and monarchic form5. The want was made, peculiarly
apparent when the Albigenses had begun to lay unwonted stress on their own
poverty, and to decry the self-indulgence of the monks.
At this conjuncture rose the two illustrious orders known as mendicant,
(1) the Minors or Franciscans,
1 Sec Neander's Life of Mm, There is an
English Life of Bernard by J. 0. Morison. London, 1864.
* At the death of Bernard (1153) he left
behind Mm one hundred and sixty monasteries, which had been formed by monks
from Clairvaux.
3 e.g. Innoeent III. and the council of
Lateran ',1215), c. 12, held it up as a model for all others.
4 One of these was the order of Clugnj,
presided over (1122--1156) by Peter the Venerable, who, though anxious *o
promote the reformation of his house, resented the attack which had been mado
on it by some of the Cistercians. Foi an account of Ms friendly controversy
with Bernard, see JIaitland s Dark A yes, pp. 423 sq. Thera aro traces of tho
controversy in the poem De Clarevallensibus et Cluniacensibus, among those
attributed to Walter Mapes, ed. Wright, pp. 237 sq.
5 Innocent XTI. seems to have felt tliib:
for, notwithstanding his desire to check the multiplication of fresh
orders of moDks IConcil. I.atcran. 1215, c, 13, ■ ne quis de cartero
novam religionem inveniat’), he could not resist the offers now held out by such
an army of auxiliaries.
(2) the Preachers or Dominicans, both destined for two centuries to play
a leading part in all the fortunes of the Church. The former sprang from the
enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi1 (1182—1226). Desirous of reverting
to a holier state of things (1207), he taught the duty of renouncing every kind
of worldly goods2, and by a strain of spirit-searching, though
untutored, eloquence attracted many thousands to his side. Tin; pope3
at first looked down upon this novel movement, but soon afterwrards
confirmed tho rule of the Franciscans, and indeed became their w'armest
friend. By founding what was termed an ‘order of penitence4’ (the
third estate of Friars), they were able to embrace in their fraternity a number
of the working classes, who, while pledged to do the bidding of the pope and to
observe the general regulations of the institute, were not restricted by the
vow of celibacy nor compelled to take their leave entirely of the world.
The stricter spirits of this school could not, however, be so easily
confined within the limits which their chief was anxious to prescribe. They
followed out their principle of sacred communism, or evangelical perfection,
to its
1 Sea tho Life of him by Thuman of Celano,
his companion (in Act. Sanct. Octob. 11. 688 sq.j; another, by Bonaventura, a
Franciscan (Hid. 742 sq.):, cf. Chaviu de Xlalan, L'llistoire de S. Franfoit
d'Assise, l’aris, 1845, Helyot, Ilist. des Ordres, etc., tom. tii. The
great authority on the Franciscan Order generally is Wadding's Annales Minorvm,
liomir-, 1731—1741. Cf. Pri-f. to Memumenta Franciscana, ed. Brewer. 1858, in
the Chronicles, dtc. of Great Britain. AVe lind the germs of it in an early
sect of Euchites, who, from a desire to reach the summit of ascetic holiness,
renounced all kinds of property and common modes of life. Neander, in. 342.
2 In the fashion of the age he spoke of
Poverty as his bride and tho Franciscan order as their offspring. Before ten
years had elapsed, five thousand mendicants assembled at Assisi to hold the
second, general chapter of their order. Sir J. Stephen’s Essays, 1. 121, 122.
Tho Order of St Clara Ordo dominarum pauperum't was animated by the same
spirit, and adopted the Franciscan rules: Holstein’s Codex, at. 34 sq.: Helyot,
vn. 182 sq. On the stigmatisation of St Francis, and the impious extravagances
to which it led, see a temperate article iu the Revue des deux Mondes, Tome
viii. pp. 45!) sq.
3 Innocent HI., after hesitating a while,
extended to them a rordisl. but unwritten, approbation (1209). In 1223, the
order was formally adopted by Honorius III.: see Holstein, 111. 30 sq. A pledge
of absolute obedience to the pope is contained in the first chapter. Nicholas
IV. was so ardently attached to them that he enjoined the use of their service-
books on the whole Church, (’apefigue, 11. 180.
4 Holstein, in. 39 sq.: Helyot, vn. 216
sq.: cf. Sir J. Stephen’s remarks on this supplemental institute, 1. 127, 128.
INTERNAL
OBttANIZA-
TIGtf.
Thor
aUi- anee with the Pope.
The
aberrations of a n extreme party.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The
rise of the Dominicans, 1215.
most obnoxious length, and even ventured to affirm that Christ and the
original Apostles had nothing of their own! A quarrel was now opened, in the
course of which the rigorous faction1 (‘ Spirituales’ they were
called), deriving tlieir ideas2 very mainly from one-sided views of
the Apocalypse, commenced a series of attacks upon the members of the hierarchy
and the secularizing spirit of the age. A party of these malcontents were drafted
off at length into a fresh community, entitled the Coeles- tine-Hermits3
(1294'!, but in the end they seem to have entirely separated from the Church,
and to have been absorbed into the sect of the ‘ FratricelliV where, indeed,
they underwent a bitter persecution.
The twin-order, that of the Dominicans or‘Preachers,’ took its rise in
1215 at Toulouse. Its founder was the canon Dominic5 (b. 1170), a
native of Castile, although the plan was due rather to his bishop Diego
(Didacus)
1 They professed to be adhering literally
to the will of their founder; but the popes, especially G-reg. IX. (1231) .’,nd
Innocent IV. (1245), took the other (or the laxerj side: see their bulls in
lloderic’s Nova Collectio Privilegiorum, etc., ed. Antverp. 1623, pp. 7, 13.
2 These may be gathered from a production
called the Introduetorius in Evangelium jEtemum, which appeared at Paris in
1251. The subject is exhausted by Gieseler, m. 251 sq.; am3 Neander, vm. 369
sq. When Nicholas III. (1279) explained the rule of St Francis still more
laxly, the ‘ spiritnales ’ grew still more indignant. They were headed by the
friar John Peter de Oliva, of whose Postilla super Apocalypsi, extracts are preserved
i?i Daluze and Mansi, Miscell. ii. 258 sq. J'l commenting on Apoc. xvii., he
has the following passage: ‘Nota quod hac mulier >tat hie pro Romana gente
et imperio, tam prout fuit quondam in statu paganismi, quam prout postmodnm
fuit in fide, Christi, multis tamen criminibus cum hoc tnundo fornicata,’ etc.
3 So called from pope Ccelestine V., their
patron: Helyot, vii. 45. The> were, however, persecuted by the rest of the
Franciscans (e. g. Wadding, ad an. 1302, §§ 7, 8).
4 See Capefigtu-, ii. 147, 148, Among their
supporters may be ranked TJbertinus de Casali, a pupil of the Franciscan Oliva
above mentioned, n. 2: see the Articuli Probationum contra fratrem XJbertinum
de Casali inductarum, and his reply before John XXII., in Baluze and llansi,
Miscell. ii. 276 sq. One charge brought against him is for saying ‘quod a
tempore Cadestini papse non fuit in Ecclosia papa verus.’
■ The oldest Life of Dominic is by his
successor Jordanus, printed, with others, in the Act. Sanct. August, i. 545 sq.
For tho Constitutions of the Order, see Holstein’s Codex, rv. 10 sq. At the
suggestion of Innocent III., the -basis of the rule of Dominic was borrowed
from the Augustinian: and soon after, at a general chapter-meeting (1220), the
principles of Francis of Assisi were adopted, in su far as they abjured all
property and income, fit. S. Dopiinici (by Jordanus), c 4
uf Osma, who, while journeying in the south of France, had noticed with
concern that anti-papal and heretical opinions were most rife, and threatened
to disturb all orders of society. His object, therefore, was, in concert with
the prelates of the district, to refute the arguments adduced by the
heresiarchs, to emulate their poverty, and to win their followers back to the
communion of the Church. In carrying out this undertaking, Dominie had been
distinguished from the first, and when its author died (circ. 1207) he still
continued, with a few of his companions, in the same sphere of duty. In 1209
the misbelieving province of Languedoc was desolated by the earliest of the
Albigensian crusades1. The leaders of that savage movement found a
spy and coadjutor in the over- zealous missionary; and soon after he began to
organize and head the larger confraternity, whose foremost object was the
spiritual benefit2 of others and the vindication of the Church.
Accompanied by the notorious Foulques8 (or Fulco), bishop of
Toulouse, he laid his project at the feet of the sovereign pontiff in an hour
when Rome might well have trembled for its empire in the south of France
(1215;, and readily procured the papal sanction. In the following year the
institute was solemnly confirmed4 by Honorius III. It soon attracted
many able and devoted members, and diffused itself on every side.
Though parted from each other now and then by mutual jealousies5,
the Minorites and Preachers commonly proceeded hand in hand6,
particularly in resisting the attacks which they provoked, not only from the
clergy and
I See below, ‘ State of Religions
Doctrine,’ § Sects.
a
.‘stadium nostrum ad hoc debet principaliter intendere ut proxi- morum
auimaburi possimus utiles esse.’ Constit. Prol. c. 3.
II Cf. Sir J. Stephen’s l.cct. on the Hint,
of France, 1. 221, ed. 1851.
4 The bull of confirmation is prefixed to
the Constitutions of the order,
as
above, p. 232, n. 5. According to the pope’s idea tho Dominicans were to become
‘ pugilex fidei et vera inundi lumina.’
6 See tho graphic picture of Matthew Paris,
Hist. Major, a.d. 1243, p. 540.
They afterwards contended still more sharply touching the immaculate
conception of the Virgin, the Franciscans taking the positive,
the
Dominican- the negative. Klee, Hist, of Christ. Dogmas (German), pt. 11. c.
iii. § 25.
6 e. <j. the generals of the two
orders issued a number of caveats in 1255, with a view to cement or
re-establish friendly relations. Wadding's Annal. Minor, ad un. 1255, <j 12.
Its
CM- ntxion witn the AVn- gttusian crutades.
Controversy
hi - tween the Mendicants and the Universities.
internal
monastic orders1, but from nearly all tho Universities.
Presuming on their popularity, their merits2,
and the v_ strong protection of the
lloman court3, they thrust themselves into the professorial chairs,
and not unfrequently eclipsed all other doctors4. Paris was at
present the chief seat of European learning, and in it especially (1251), the
Mendicants, although in favour with tho king, had to encounter a determined
opposition5. For a while they were discouraged by a bull of Lnnocent
IV.6, who saw the inroads they were making on the constitution of
the Church., and was accordingly induced at length to take the part of the
University; but on his death (1254:) they found an ardent champion in pope
Alexander IV.7 His influence and the writings of the more
distinguished members of tlieii body (such as Bonaventura8 and
Aquinas*) aided
1
e.g. Matthew I'ans. a.d. 1243, p.
541; a.d. 1247, p. 630. He was
himself a Benedictine, and implacable in hi* hostility to t.he new race of
teachers.
1
These must originally have been very considerable, for besides their zeal in
missionary labour, they conciliated the good opinion of a class of men like
Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, who employed them in his diocese. He defended
them against the opposition of his clergy, and even charged (he latter through
the archdeacon ‘ad inducendut effica- citer populum ut Fratrum utriusque
Ordinir* prsedicationes devote et atteijte audiat,’ etc.: Brown’s F'aiitc. ii.
382. He afterwards bequeathed his library to the Franciscans at Oxford, among
whom the famous Boger liacon was. educated (Warton, Eng. Poetry, n. 89, ed.
1840): though Matthew Pari- writes that on his death-bed he complained that
they > ad disappointed his expectations, and had begun to degenerate most
grievously: Hist. Maj., A.i>. 1253, p. 752.
3 e. (j. Gregory IX. (1237) begins a giant
of privileges in the following terms: Quorum a'nundavit initiuitas. et
refriguit charitas plurimorurc., ccce orJinem dilectorum fillorum fratrum
Praadicatorum Doininus sus- citavit,’ etc. in Matth. Paris, *..d, 1246, p. G07. The popes claimed
the right of sending Friars anywhere without the acquiescence of the bishops or
the clergy.
4 Most of the thuological professors in the
University of Xaples, founded 1220, were chosen from tho Mendicants. Their
first establishment in F.ngland was at Oxiurd, 1221, when, for some time, they
produce 1 the lulling t'cholara of the age. Warton, as above, pp. 88, 89.
5 See Liulffius (Da Boulayi, Ilist.
Univers. Paris, hi. 210
bq.; Oape- figue, ii. 167 sq. The latter is a warm apologist of the
Friars. Their most vigorous opponent at the time was William de Sancto Amore, a
Parisian doctor of divinity, who composed his treatise lie Periculis
Novitrimorum Temyorum, in 1255. It is printed (as two Sermons) in Brown's
Fasciculus, n.' 43—54. The author was condemned by Alexander
IV.,
but reconciled to Clement IV.
8 Bulaus, Ibid. 270 sq.: cf. Xeander, vn.
392.
7 B jiasus, 273. In rhis bull he exempts
them from the jurisdiction of tho bishops and parish priests.
8 He was general of the Minorites, and often
argued for them on the
them iu bearing down resistance, and in virtually supplanting for a time
the ordinary teachers of the Church.
The Mendicants, as we have seen already, fostered in their bosom many
germs of misbelief. In this particular they seem to have resembled the still
older groups of Beguins or Beghards1, who finally took refuge
J2&0) in the third order of the Franciscans*. They were chiefly females
(‘Beguina?’) in the earlier stages of their history, but, subsequently, when
the number of them had prodigiously increased3, the principle on
which they had associated was borrowed (circ. 1220) by the other sex4
(‘Beguini'). They were ridiculed5 as ‘pietists’ (boni homines), and
in the end appear to have adopted most of the opinions held by the extreme or
Apocalyptic school of the Franciscans, so that ‘Beguin’ often was synonymous
with heretic.
Another wing of the great army which the Christians of the Middle Age
employed for their defence and the consolidation of the papal empire were the
Military Orders. Their triumphant struggle with the heathen of the north of
Europe has been mentioned on a former page8. It was their leading
object to combine the rules of chivalry and knighthood with monastic
discipline, which they derived, to some extent, from the Cistercian
institutions.
The Knights Templars'' ('Fratres Militias Templi’) were
pica of
necessity, alleging that the ordinary ecclesiastics were so corrupt as to
neglect all their sacred duties: see e. g. his Liber de Panpertate Christi
contra Magist. Guiielmum, etc.
* See his Opuscul. xix.,
contra Impugn antes Dei cultum et religionem.
1 See Mosheim, De Bey hard is et h-guinnbus
Commentariuo. pasaim. They seem to have existed as early as the eleventh
century in Flanders. The nami- (see Ducange, sab vnc.) appears to have heen
extended to all kinds of female associations (‘collegia') where the secular and
monastic life were partially combined. The inmates (‘canonissa)') could leave
the establishment and marry. a Helyot, vn. 251.
3 Matthew Paris (a.d. L2o0, p. 690) speaks oi the German ‘ Beguina ’ as an ‘
innumerabilis mnltitudo.’
4 Mosheim, as above, p. 168.
*’ See
Ducange, under ‘Papelardus.’
8 TP- 213, 215.
7 See, on their general history, I.'Art de
verifier les Date*, 1. 512 sq., and
the Hist. Crit. et Apologet. des Che valient du Temple, Paris. 17H9.
Their Regula is printed in liolstein, 11. 429 bo.: anil iu llansi, xju. 859
sq. .
INItBNAL
UEUAXIZi-
TIUN.
The
Seguing or Beghards.
Military
Orders.
The
Knight
Templars,
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
The
dissolution of the Order,
The
Knights
Hospital- lers.
founded at Jerusalem (1119) and through the powerful advocacy of St
Bernard1 the idea which they attempted to embody won the sanction of
the western prelates in the synod of Troyes 2 (Jan. 13, 1128). The
order soon extended into every part of Europe, where it was most liberally
endowed. Amid the stirring incidents of the crusades, the Templars had abundant
opportunity for justifying the discernment of their patrons. On the fall of
Acre in 1291, they could maintain the Christian cause no longer, and retreated
to their rich domains in Cyprus : hut suspicions3 of their orthodoxy
which had once been irreproachable were now quite current in the west. A long
and shameful controversy ended in the dissolution of the order4 at
Vienne (March 22, 1312).
Their property was all sequestrated and in part transferred5
to what are known as the Knights Hospitallers*, organized as early as 1018, to
wait on the sick pilgrims in the hospital of St John, at Jerusalem, but not
converted into a military order till the twelfth century7. They also
were ejected from the Holy Land with the last army of
1 Jle wrote his Exhortatio ad Milites
Templi at the request of tho Grand-master, Hugh des Payens. See also his Tract,
de Nova Militia.
2 Concil. Trecense: Mansi, xxi. 357.
3 The charges brought against them may be
classed as follows; (1) Systematic denial of Christ on their admission into the
order, accompanied with spitting or trampling on the cross. (2) Heretical
opinions concerning the sacraments. (3) Deception of absolution from masters
and preceptors, although laymen. (4) Debauchery. (5) Idolatry. (6) General
secrecy of practice. See English Review, Vol. I. p. 13.
4 The Teni) iars were not allowed to speak
in their own defcnce, and all the English, Spanish, German and some other
prelates were accordingly resolved to take no part in their condemnation. This
was the ork of the French king Philip the Fair and his creature, pope Clement
V., who also carried oif a portion of the spoil, by levying fines on the
transfer of the property. Tli& Grand-master and others were burnt by the
arbitrary act ot Philip.
" See i
he remarkable statute De Terris Templariorum, 17 Edw. II. st. in. The ‘Temple’
of London was given, by «ome private arrangement, to the earl of Pembroke
(whose widow founded Pembroke College, Cambridge), bui afterwards passed into
the hands of the Hospitallers, who leased it to the. students of the laws of
England.
B Helvot, in. 74 sq.; Yertot’s Ilist. des Chevaliers
Hospitallers, etc., Paris, 1726.
7 The Pule
given to the order by Raymond du Puy (1118), in Holstein, ii. 445 sq., is silent as to their
military duties, but in’the same year they performed a prodigy of valour,
Helyot, p. 73. They were taken under the special protection of Pope Innocent
H., in 1137: Brfl- quigny, Table Chronol. des Diplomis, etc., in. 4, Paris,
1769. .
Crusaders, but continued to exist for many centuries. Their chief asylum
was at Rhodes (1309), and finally at Malta (1530).
A connecting link between the rest of the religious orders and the
seculars, or ‘ working clergy,’ is supplied by the canons regular of St
Augustine whose institution, the result of the failure of all attempts to
reform the old secular canons, coincides in date with the opening of thi,*
period.1. Another order of a similar kind was that of the Prsemon-
gtratensians (canons of Pr&nonstre), who sprang up in the diocese of Laon,
in 1119. Their founder, Xorbert2, was himself a secular, but od awakening
to a deeper sense of his vocation, he resolved to organize an institution for
the better training of ecclesiastics". With this object he endeavoured to
unite the cure of souls and a conventual mode of life.
The canons secular, in pursuance of their ancient policy4,
withdrew still further from the reach of their diocesan. At the conclusion of
the struggle which the Church maintained against the civil power respecting
the episcopal appointments, nearly all the bishops were elected absolutely by
the canons of the cathedrals5, which could not fail to add fresh
weight to their pretensions. They exceeded all the
1
See above, p, 144:
5 bee liiaiiYc by a Prasmonstratensian i-i
the Act. Ranct. Jun. i. 804 sq., and Hugo’s Ord. Prcemonst. Annal., Nancui,
1734. He died archbishop of JIagdeburg, in 113 i.
3 It was commended in 1129 by popo Innocent
IT. (Hugo, n. 109), who afterwards granted to it many privileges. Le I’aige,
Bibliuth, Prtemonst., p. 022,1’arin, 1633.
1
See above, pp. 114,145.
3 Thus Innocent III, (1215) enjoins
respecting the election of a bishop, ‘ ut is eollatiune adhibita eligatur, in
quem omncs vel major vel sanior pars capituli consentit:’ Dtcrt t. Gregor, lib.
I. tit. vi. c. 42 (in Corpus Juris Canon.). Before this time a certain right of
assent had been reserved for ‘spiritales et religiosi viri’ (including,
perhaps, the laity): but by an edict of Gregory IX. (ibid. c. 56) it is
forbidden, notwithstanding any usage to the contrary, ‘ne per laicos, cum
canonicis, pontiiicis [i.e. of a bishop] electio pra sumatur.’ This right of
election had long been possesfed by the Scotch Culdees (Keledei=‘ servants of
God'), who were an order of canonical clergy, some, if not all. of them being
attached to the cathedral churches. DcSUingsr, m. 270, 271. They were at length
superseded in many places by canons regular, and on appealing to Boniface Mil.
in 1297, with the hope of recovering their ancient right of electing their
bishop, they were unsuccessful. Cf. Spotswood, Hist, of Church und State of
Scotland, p. 51.
Thr
orcltr of Pres- nunutra- tensian canons.
Power
and degi ntrac<j of the canons.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA*
TION.
Attempts
to reform them.
Titular
and suffragan bishops.
oilier clergy both in rank and in worldliness, regarding the cathedral
prebend as a piece of private income, suited more especially for men of noble
birth1, and not unfrequently employing substitutes2 (or ‘
conduct-clerics ’) to discharge their sacred duties. Many an effort, it is
true, was made to bring about a reformation3 of the canons, and in
some of the western churches the new impulse which accompanied the
Hildebrandine movement may have been considerably felt : but, judging from the
number of complaints that meet us in the writings of a later period, those
reforming efforts were too commonly abortive4.
We have seen” that many of tlie functions of tlie clior- episcopi
devolved on the archdeacons. After the thirteenth century the supervision of a
diocese was often shared by titular or suilragan bishops'1, whom the
pope continued to
1
This plea was urged hy the chapter of Strawburg in 1232; but the pope (Decret.
Greg. IX. lib. in. tit. \. c. 37) replied that the true nobility was ‘non
generis sed virtutum:’ cf. Neander, mi. 286.
a
‘Clerici conductitii: ’ see Ducange, under ‘conductitius.’ This! point is dwelt
upon by a most rigorous censor of the canons, although one of their own order,
Gerholi oi lteicliersborg. Sea his Oxalogus de. differentia clerici regularis
et tacularix. ‘Nos uutem’ (says the Secular (’anon) ‘pcone omnes genere,
nobilitato, divitiis excellimus:’ Gerholii Ujip. n. 1419, ed. Migne.
3 As early as 1059, Nicholas II. and a
Boman synod had enjoined (c. 3) the strict observance of their rule (Mansi,
xix. 897). In very many cases canons were allowed to have private property: but
when attempts were made to reform the order, the new canons (‘canonic!
regulares’) as distinguished from the old (‘cauonici su*culares’) boasted of
their ‘apostolical’ community of goods. SehrBckh, xxvii. 223- -226. The name of
■ canons’ however was everywhere given to
the cathedral clergy, whether or no they had over accepted a rule; and after
the foundation of the A.ugusfinian canons or canons regular, the pretence of a
rale was scarcely maintained by the canons secular at all. The Augustinian
canons occupied. most of the Scottish cathedrals and that of Carlisle. The
other Knglish cathedrals remained until the Information divided nearly equally
between the Benedictines and the secular canons; the Utter possessed tlie
cathedrals of the Continent with very few exceptions.
4 Planck, rv. pt. ii. 570 sq.
6 Above, p. 46, n. 2.
fl
‘Episeopi in partibus infideliutn.' Tho number of these increased very much
when Palestine became a Turkish province. Councils were then under the
necessity of checking their unlicensed ministrations: e.g. that of Itavenna
(1311) speaks in no gentle terms of ‘ignoti et vagabundi episcopi, et maxime
lingua et ritu dissoni:’ see Planck, ii. pt.
n. 604 sq.; Neander, vii. 297, 298. These bishops under the title of suffragans
were very largely employed in those countries iu Which, as in Kngland and
Germany, the dioceses were largo, and the diocesan bishops employed in secular
business; a list of the English suffragans may be found in the Rcgiifrum Sacrum
Anglicanum (Oxford, 1858), pp. 142 -148.
ordain for countries which the Saracens had wrested from his hands. These
bishops found employment more especially in Germany. Where they did not exist,
archdeacons were unrivalled in the vast extent of their authority1,
which numbers of them seem indeed to have abused by goading the inferior
clerics2 and encroaching 011 the province of the bishop*. In the
hope of checking this presumption, other functionaries, such as
‘vicars-general’ and ‘officials’4, were appointed to assist in the
administration of the churches of the west. But these in turn appear to have
excited the distrust and hatred of the people, by their pride, extortion, and
irreverence'1.
The more solemn visitations" of the bishop were continued ; and he
still availed himself of the diocesan synod for conferring with the clergy and
adjusting purely local questions. Other councils also7, chiefly what
are termed
1 This may be ascertained from the Decret.
Gregor. IX. lib. 1. tit. xxni., which contains ten chapters ‘Do officio
Archidiaconi.’
3 e. p. John of Salisbury (ep. lxxx.)
complains at length of the ‘rabies archidiaconorum.' Some of them, however,
were most exemplary, travelling, stuff in hand, through their archdeaconries
and preaching in every village. Neander, (vn. 293) quotes Mich an instance.
3 Thomassinus, Vetua et Nova Becletice
Discipl. pt. 1. lib. n. 0.18—20. Alexander III. found it necessary to inhibit
the archdeacon of Ely, among others, from committing tho cure of souls to
persons ‘sine mandato et, licontia episcopi.’ Mansi, xxii. 3G4.
* Thomassinus, ibid. c. 8,9: Sehroclih,
xxvn. 150 sq. Other duties of the archdeacon were transferred to the
‘penitentiary’ of the diocese, an officer appointed at tho council of Lateran
(Decret. Qregor. lib. 1. tit. xxxi. c. 15) to assist the bishop ‘ non solum in
prtrdicationis officio, verum etiam in audiendis confessionibus et pirnitentiis
injungendis, ac ensteris, quas ad salutem pertinent anmmruin.’ However, as tho
archdeacons were generally in deacon’s orders, they could not have discharged
the duties imposed on the penitentiaries. They should be regarded as
ecclesiastical lawyers, not as persons in charge of souls.
3 See an
epistle of Peter Blesensis (of Blois), where at the close of the twelfth
century ho calls tho officials ‘episcoporum Ban;juisugas:’ ep. xxv. Other
instances are given by Neander, vn. 294.
* See above, p. 46. The council of Lateran
(1179), c. 4, passed some curious regulation* limiting tho equipages of the
prelates and archdeacons while engaged on these visitation-tour-..
f Their
number may be estimated from tho list in Nicolas’ Chrtmol. pp. 239—259. What
are called by tho Church of Rome ‘general’ or ‘oecumenical’ councils, those of
Lateran (1123), of Lateran (1139), of Lateran (1179), of Lateran (1215), of
Lyons (1245), of Lyons (1271), were such neither in their mode of convocation
(having no true representatives from other patriarchates), nor in their
reception by the Church at large. See Palmer’s Treatise on the Church, n.
102 sq., 3rd ed. Provincial rvnods wore commanded to be held every year by the
council uf Lateran (1215), c. 7.
Vicars-
general and of- jiciaU.
Synods.
INTERNAL
ORGANIZA
TION.
Corrupt*
ions of the clergy ge-
‘provincial’ (or, in England, ‘convocations’1) were assembled
through the whole of the present period. Their effect, however, w;is diminished
by the intermeddling of the papal legates and the growth of Romish absolutism8.
From these councils, much as they evince of the genuine spirit of reform,
we are constrained to argue, that the general system of the Church was now most
grievously disjointed and the morals of the clergy fearfully relaxed. Abuses of
ecclesiastical patronage3 which Hildebrand and others of his school
attempted to eradicate had come to light afresh. A race of perfunctory and
corrupted priests, non-residents and pluralists, are said to have abounded in
all quarters4; and too often the emphatic voice of
1 See above, pp. 5U, 53: p. 133, n. 5. From
the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon church, the bishops and abbots hud been
accustomed to meet in ecclesiastical councils; sometimes in national (Bede, H.
Ii. iv. 17), sometimec in provincial assemblies (Sim. Dun. Mon. Hist. Brit. p.
670), and thip- independently of the witenagemots, and before the assembling of
a general witeuagemot for England was possible. After the Conquest for a long
period the ecclesiastical councils were national, and attended by the prelates
of both provinces, as, for example, that of London in 1075; (Will. Malmesb.
Gesta JPonMcum, pp. do—68, ed. Hamilton.) In 1127, the king held a council at
London, and the archbishop another at Westminster (H. Hunt. fo. 219, ed.
Savile). in a way which has been compared with the modern custom of holding
parliament and convocation at the same time. See Wake, State of the Church, p.
171, London, 1703. Becords of provincial councils are very rare, until the
custom of voting money in them arose. That of 1175 however, at Westminster,
was clearly a provincial council of Canterbury (Hoveden ii. 7'2), and lhat of 1195 held by Hubert Walter as legate,
at York, was a provincial Council of the Northern province (Hoveden, m.
293—297). Provincial councils become more frequent after the beginning of
John’s reign; and diocesan ones also in which the money-grants of the clergy
wero arranged. During the thirteenth century it is dinicult to distin' guish in
every case the ecclesiastical and secular character of these meetings; and
towards the end of it, Convocation in two provincial representative assemblies
was established on its present basis. The representative principle was
introduced rather earlier into the ecclesiastical than into the lay councils;
proctors for the cathedral clergy being summoned as early at least as 1225. In
1258 the archdeacons act as proctors or proxies for the clergy of their
archdeaconries; in 1273 the bishops are directed to name the representatives;
in 1277 the diocesan clergy are represented by proctors, and from 1283 each
diocese is represented as al the present day. These Convocation? must be
carefully distinguished from the Parliamentary assemblies of the clergy which
were not provincial. See Select Charters (Oxford, 1870}, pp. 38,412—*46, 456,
&c.
2 Oapefigue, ir. 65, 66.
Above, pp.
143 sq.
4 On this subject, see the Verbum
Albreviatum of Teter Cantor (a Paris theologian, who died 1197), c. 34, ed.
Montibus, 1639, and 'ierhoh of Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
councils, st ipulating as to the precise conditions on which sacred
offices were to be held, produced no visible or permanent effect.
One source of tlie more glaring immoralities1, which synod
vied with synod in denouncing, was the celibacy of the clergy. This had been at
length established as the practice of the AVestern Church through tbe astute
and unremitting efforts of the Roman pontiff. It is true that even Gregory VII.
had been constrained to shew indulgence2 in some cases where the
married priest appeared incorrigible ; and in England, at the council of
.Winchester (1076), the rigours of the Hildebraiuline legislation were
considerably abated3: but the marriage of the clergy, discredited
on every hand, was gradually disused, and died away entirely at the middle of
the thirteenth century. The prohibition was at length extended also, after a
protracted contest, to sub-deacons and inferior orders4 of the
INTEl'.NAL
OBUANIZA-
TION.
Constrained
celibacy:
its
extension.
Reichersberg,
De Corrvpto Eccletia Statu; Opp. 11. 10 sq. ed. Migne. The language of men like
Bonaventura (Opp. yu. 330, ed. Lugduni), ■vshere, in his defence of the
Mendicants, he draws a most gloomy picture oi the clergy, should be taken ‘cum
grano salis;’ but his colouring is not very much deeper than that of bishop
Grosseteste (ep. cvil), in Brown’s
Fascic. 11. 382: cf. his Strmo ad clentm, contra pastures et prce- latus
tnalos; Ibid. 263. Schrockh (xxyii. 175 sq.) has proved at large from the
decrees of councils, that simony, which Hildebrand and others after him
denounced, was rife in nearly every country, cften in its most obnoxious forms.
1 e.g. Schrockh, xxvii. 205,206. lien like
Aquinas saw clearly ‘ minus esse peceatum uxore uti quam cum alia fomicari’
(Ibid. p. 211); but they all felt that the canons of the Church were absolutely
binding, and therefore that clerical marriages were sinful.
2 The imperial party, now in the ascendant,
won the sympathy of many of the married priests, anil Hildebrand accordingly
advised his legates for the present (1081) to dispense with some of the more
rigorous canons on this subject: Mansi, xx. 342. As late as 1114, the council
of ■Gran (Strigoniense) decreed as follows, c. 31 : ‘Presbyteris uxores,
quas legitimis ordinibus acceperint, moderatius habendas, praavisa fragilitate,
indulsimiis: ’ P^terffy’s Concil. Hungar. 1. 57, ed. Tiennaj Austr. 1742:
Mansi, xxi. 106.
s •Decretum
est, ut nullus eanonicus nxorem habeat. Raeerdotes
vero in castellis vel in vicis habitantes habentes uxores non oogantur ut
dimittant; non habentes interdicantur ut habeant,’ etc.; Wilkins, 1. 367.
For the later aspects of the struggle in England and other countries, see tho
references in Gieseler, m. 205—207, n. 4. Zealots like Roscelin contended that
the sons of clergymen were not eligible to any ecclesiastical office. Neander,
vm. 9.
4 Thoinassinus, Ecd. Discip. pt. 1. lib.
11. c. 65. According to the Decr/t. Greg. lib. 111. tit. m. c. 1, a cleric
under tho rank o£ subdeacon
and
effect.
Other
vices of the, seculars.
clerical estate. A darker train of evils was the consequence of this
unnatural severity. Incontinence, already general1 among the higher
clergy, now infected very many of the rest. Nor was that form of vice the only
one which tended to debase the spirit of the seculars and counteract the
influence which they ought to have exerted on their flocks. Their levity,
intemperance, and extortion2 had too frequently excited the disgust
and hatred of the masses, and so far from meeting with the reverence which
their sacred office claimed, they were the common butt of raillery and coarse
vituperation3 The more earnest of their charge
might retain
his wife by relinquishing his office, but subdeacons anil ail higher orders are
compelled to dismiss their wives and do penance: cf. Synod of London (1108j:
Wilkins, i. 387.
1 Thus the Gloss, on Distinct, lxxxi. c. G
(in Corpus Jur. Canon.) adds that deprivation is not meant to bo enforced ‘ pro
simplici furnica- tione;' urging, as the reason, ‘eumpauci sine illo ritio
invrniantur.’
2 The prevalence of the^e vices may be
inferred from the numerous complaints of men like St Bernard (see passages at
length, in Gieseler, hi. 208—‘210, n. 10), and the decrees of councils (e. g.
Lateran, 1215, cc. 11, 15, 16). The same is strongly brought to light in the
reforming (anti-secularking) movement headed by Arnold of Brescia: hee Neander,
vii. 205 sq.
3 See, for instance, the Collection of
Political Songs, &(:., edited by Mr Wright for the Camden Society, and
‘Latin Pot'tiu ctmmonly attributed to Walter Mopes’ (appointed archdeacon Of
Oxford in 1196), edited by the same. Tnese specimens, together with the whole
cycle of l’rovenpal poetry (the sirventes of tho Troubadours and the fabliaux
of the Trouveres), contain the most virulent attacks on the clerical, and
sometimes the monastic, order. Much as satire of this kind was overcoloured by
licentious or distempered critics, it had, doubtless, some foundation. The
champion and biographer of Becket, Herbert of Bose- ham, did not hesitate to employ
the following language in speaking of the clergy: ‘ Sacerdos quippf nisi sensum
Scripturarum yraliabuorit, tanquam omni carens sensu, idolum potius quam
sacerdos judicatur.
Utinara et juxta prophets votum illis fiant similes qui ea faciunt, qui
tales in Dei ecdesia crdmant. Simia quippe in aula, taiis sacerdos
in ecclesia.’ Supplementa Herb, do Bo»eham, pp. 102 sq., ed. Oaxton Soc. 1851.
It shoiild, however, be borne in mind that the very evidence on which this
account of the clergy is received proves the existence of a better and higher
idea, and that tho ruling one. The enactments of councils are necessitated by a
single case as well as by many, and the fact that such enactments were possible
proves that the majority of at least the influential clergy were on the right
side. No institution could stand if it were to be judged by vulgar caricatures
such as the popular songs are; nor could the history of public morality at the
present day be drawn from the police reports. The abuses of certain sorts were through
the inedievul period great and notorious, but if they had been the rule
generally tho Church must have long pgo ceased to exist. It is observable Uso
that the worst charges are ail in general language. No accurate
preferred the ministrations first of monks, and then of mendicants, whose
popularity must have been chiefly due to their superior teaching and more
evangelic lives. Exceptions there would doubtless be in which the humble
parish-priest approved himself the minister of God and was the light and
blessing of his sphere of duty: but the acts of such are seldom registered
among the gloomy annals of the age.
§2. RELATIONS
OF THE CHURCH TO THE CIVIL POWER.
The Western Church was now exalted by the papacy as the supreme and
heaven-appointed mistress of the State; or looking at the change produced by
this conjuncture from a different point of view, she ran the risk of falling,
under Gregory VII., into a secular and merely civil institution. Having
generally succeeded in his effort to repress the marriage of the clergy, he
began to realize the other objects that had long been nearest to his heart, the
abolition of all ‘ lay-investitures,’ the freedom of episcopal elections, and
his own ascendancy above the jurisdiction of the crown1. In
carrying out his wishes he advanced a claim to what was nothing short of feudal
sovereignty in all the kingdoms of the west2, in some upon the
ground that they were the possessions (fiefs) of St Peter3, and in
others as made tributary to the popes by a specific grant4.
judgment can
be drawn from the generalities of fanatical reformers or from thu sneers of
professed enemies.
1 His own election, it is true, had been
confirm' d by the emperor according to the decree of Nicholas II. (above,
j>. 140, n. 1): but that is tho last case on record of a like confirmation.
Uowden’s Life of Gregory VII. 1. 323.
2 In his more sober moments he allowed that
the royal power was-1 also of Divine institution, but subordinate to
the papal. The two dignities (‘apostolioa et regia’) are like the bun and
moon: Epist, lib. yii. ep. 25 (Mansi, xx. 308). .Vn apology for Gregory VII. on
claiming oaths of knightly service from the kings and emperors, is made by Bollinger,
in. 311—31B.
* Spain was so regarded (‘ ah antique
proprii juris 9. Petri fuisse’): Epitt. lib. 1. ep. 7. .
1
Thus Gregory MI. (1074) reproaches the king of Hungary for acccpting the
emperor as lord paramount of his dominions. That
n
RELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
Their
general unpopularity.
The
main features of the Wide- brandine policy.
Struggle
of the, pope with
Henry
IV
The chief opponent of these ultra-papal claims was Henry IV. of Germany1:
but his abandoned character, his tampering with the churoh-preferment, and his
unpopularity in many districts of the empire, made it easier for the pope to
humble and subdue him. The dispute was opened by a Roman synod in 1075, where
every form of lay-investiture was strenuously resisted2. After some
pacific correspondence, in which Henry shewed himself disposed to beg the
papal absolution3 for the gross excesses of his youth, lie was at
length commanded to appear in Rome for judgment4, on the ground that
Hildebrand had been entrusted with the moral superintendence of the world.
Henry now hastened to repel this outrage: he deposed his rival6, and
was speedily deposed himself and stricken with the papal ban0
(1076). Supported by a
kingdom is
said to be ‘ Roman® ecclesite propriuiu. .a rege btephano olim B. Petro
cblatum.’ The letter goes on to nay: ‘ Praterea Heinricus pi® memorise
imperator ad honoren. S. Petri regnum illnd expugnans, \ictorege et facta
victoria, ad corpus B. Petri lanceam coronamque trans misit et pro gloria
triumphi sui illuc ivm'i direxit insignia, quo prinei• patum dignitatis ejus
attinere cognovit.’ Lib. n. ep. 13: cf. above, p. 128, n. V On the sturdy
language cf William the Conqueror, when asked to do homage to Gregory, see
Turner, Hist, of England, ‘Middle Ages," i. 131, ed. 1830.
1 See Stanzel,
Gesch. Deutschland* unter den frank. Kaisern, I. 218 sq.
On the
historical connexion of this law, see JaiJ4, p. 417. It run? as follows: ‘ Si
quis deinceps episcopatum vel abbatiam de inm ali- cujus laic® person®
susceperit, nuilatenus inter episcopos Iiabeatur,’
etc adding, ‘ Si quis ii nperatorum. regum,
ducum, marohiorun,,
comitum, vel
quilibet sajc.ulariuni potestatum nut personar-jiu investi- turam episcopatuum
vel alicujus ecclesiastic® dignitatis dare pr®- sumpserit, ejusdem sententi®
[i.e. of excommunication] vineuli adstrictum esse tciat . Mansi, vx. 517.
(iregorv had already (1073) threatened Philip of France with excommunication
and anathema for simoniacal proceedings: F/pist. lib. i. ep. 35.
3 His letter (1073) is gfven at length in
Bowden. I. 340 sq. The hopes which it inspired in Gregory are expressed by his
Epist. lib. I. epp. 25, 26,
1 See Bruno, De Bello Saxon, c. 64 (in
Pertz, vn. 351); and Lambert’s Annales, a.d.
1076. According to the latter writer Henry was summoned, on pain of
anathema, to appear in Home by Feb. 22: but cf. Neander, vii. 141, 145.
0 The stronghold of the impf rialists was
the collegiate chapter of Goslar. Th.vv were hacked on this occasion by the
synod of Worms (Jan. 24, 1076), which, not content with a repudiation of the
pope, ahsailed his character with the most groundless calumnies: Lambert, as
anove; Bowden, n. 92 sq.
5 JIansi, xx. 46‘J. ‘ Henrico regi, filio
Henrici fmptratoris, qui contra Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
number of disloyal princes who assembled at Tribur, the terrible
denunciation took effect; they formed the resolution of proceeding to appoint
another king, and Henry’s wrath was, for a time at least, converted into fear1.
An abject visit to the pope, -whom he propitiated by doing penance at Canossa2,
ended in the reconstruction of his party, and the gradual recognition of his
rights3. The papal ban, indeed, was reimposed in 1080; but Henry
hail strength enough to institute a rival pontiff4 (Clement III.) :
and although hi.s arms were partially resisted by the countess of Tuscany5
(Matilda) and the Normans under Robert Guiscard0 who came forward in
behalf of Gregory, the subjects of the pope himself were now in turn estranged
from him7. He therefore breathed his last (1085J an exile from the
seat of his ambitious projects8.
It was ‘made apparent in the course of this dispute that numbers were
unwilling to concede the pope a right of excommunicating monarchs, even in
extreme cases; and
tuam
ecclesiam inaudit* superbia insurrexit, totius rejmi Teutonicorum et Italiaa
gubernacula oontradico, et omnes Clirii-tiam>s a vinculo jura- menti. quod
sibi fecere vel facient, absolvo, et ut nullus ei sicut regi serviat
interdico...vinculo cum anathematis vice tua alligo’.... Cf. Paul. Bemried,
Vit. Gregor, c. 68 sq. This and other works in defence of Gregory will be found
in Gretser, Opp. tom. vi. Those wliich take the opposite (or imperial) tside
have been rollected in Goldast’s Apolog. pro Imper. Henrico IV.. Hanov. 1611.
1 Neander, vn. 153:
2 See the humiliating circumstances
detailed by Gregory himpelf (Jun. 28, 1077) in a letter written to the German
princes: lib. jr. ep.
12. Tho tone of this letter is most unapostolic.
11 The enemies of Henry, it is true, proceeded
to elect Kudolph of Swabia for emperor, rhe pope remaining neutral at first,
and afterwards (1080) espousing (Mansi, xx. 531) what he thought the stronger
bide: but Rudolph’s death soon after left his rival in possession of the crown,
and ruined the designs of Gregory.
1
Jalle, p. 443.
6 On the relations of Gregory with this
princess, see Neander, vn. 153 (note), and Sir J. Stephen's Essays, 1. 45 sq.
5 This rude soldier hail been
excommunicated by Gregory in 1074 (Mansi, xx. 402), but in 1080 (June 29) the
services of the Norman army were secured at all hazards. See Gregory’s
investiture of their leader in Mansi, xx. 314.
7 See Bowden, 11. 318.
8 One of his last public acts was a renewal
of the anathema against Henry and the anti-pope: see Bemold’s Chron, a.d. 1084
(l’ertz, vii. 441). The letters of Gregory VII. bearing on German and imperial
topics have been published in a very convenient form by Jaffo, jIvnu- me.nta
Gregonana, Berlin, 1865.
BELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
‘Reform- ing*
principles developed by it.
Further
papal encroachments.
Strengthened
by the
that others who admitted this denied the further claim to dispossess an
emperor of all his jurisdiction and absolve his subjects from their oath of
allegiance1.
The relations of the spiritual and temporal authorities were now
embarrassed more and more by popes who followed in the steps of Gregory. The second
"Urban, after placing Philip I. of France2 under the papal ban
(1094), forbade a priest or bishop to swear any kind of feudal homage8
to the sovereign or to other laymen,—an injunction which, i.' carried out,
would have been absolutely fatal to the union of the Church and civil power.
This pontilf also headed the new movement1 of the age for rescuing
Palestine from the dominion of the Saracens. The project had been entertained
before by Gregory VII.® who seems to have expected that Crusades, while strengthening
his throne, would tend to reunite the Eastern and the Western Christians; but
no step was taken for the realizing of his wish until it found a mighty echo in
the heart of Urban II.* Of the many consequences which resulted from that
wondrous impulse, none is more apparent than the exaltation of the papal
dignity7 at the expense of every other. Rome had thus identified
her-
1 Ci. on the one side Neander, yii. 149
sq., Gieseler, in. 16, n. 25, with Diiilinger, iii.
323 sq. Gregory’s own defence of Ms conduct may be seen in his Epist.
lib. iv. ep. 2. According to Capefigce (i. 294 sq.), tbe excommunicated emperor
was to bo avoided like a leper, and therefore liis deposition followed as a
matter of course.
s
In this case as in others (cf. p, 136, n. 4) the papal fulmination was a
popular act, Philip bavins repudiated his lawful wife. He was resisted by Ivo,
the bishop of Chartres, who begged the pope (Epist. 46) to adhere to the
sentence ho had pronounced through his legate at the council of Autun. The ban
was accordingly pronounced afresh at the council of Clermont (1095) in Philip’s
oau territories. Bernold’s Chron. a.j. 1095
(Pertz, vu. 464).
3 See Dollinger’s remarks on what he calls
‘ the new and severe addition,' iii. 330.
4 On the Crusader generally, see Wilkon,
Gesch. der Kreuzziige, Michaud, Hist, des Groisades, and Gibbon, ch. lviii.
5 Epist. lib. ix. ep. 31. In lib. a. ep.
49, he begs that men who love Si Poter will not prefer the cause of secular
potentates to thst of the Apostle, and complains of tho sad depression of the
Eastern Church.
6 See the acts of the council of Clermont
(Nov. 18—28, 1095), in Mansi, ix. 815 sq.
7 Neander, vn. 170. On the establishment of
the kingdom of Jerusalem (1099) the power of the pope was fully reco,jnized in
temporal
as
in spiritual things.
self with the fanaticism of princes and of people, to secure an easy
triumph over hotli.
Paschal II., known in English history as the supporter of archbishop
Anselm1 in his opposition to the crown, had sided with Henry V. in
his unnatural effort to dethrone his father (1104): hut soon afterwards he
drove tho pope himself into concessions which were deemed an ignominious
compromise. Paschal2 openly surrendered into the hands of the civil
power all the secular fiefs which had been bestowed on the clergy, on condition
that the king should in his turn resign the privileges of investiture; but subsequently
even this condition was abandoned, and the over- pliant pontiff went so far as
to concede that Henry should invest the prelates, in the usual way, before
their consecration. But the pledge was speedily revoked.
Amid the crowd of conflicting theories as to the limits of the sovereign
power in matters ecclesiastical, there grew up in the popedom of Calixtus II. a
more tractable and intermediate party3; and since all the combatants
wrere now exhausted by the struggle4, a concordat was
agreed
1 See Hiisse’s Life of Anselm, Lond. 1850;
and Turner’s middle Ages, i. 155 *q. The investiture-controversy (ef. above,
p. 155, n. 1) was settled in England an early a* 1107; the pope and Anselm
having conceded that all prelates should, on their election, do homage to the
king. This concordat was accepted in tho synod of London, 1107: Wilkins. I.
386.
2 He had already (1106) prohibited every
land of lay investiture like his predecessors (Mansi, xx. 1.211): but in 1111,
on the advance of an imperial army, hr proposed (1) to resign the regalia held
by bishops and abbots, ‘i.e. eivitates, dueatus, inarchias, coinitatus,
inonetas, telo- neum, mercatum, advocatias regni, iura centurionum, et curtes,
quip manifeste regni sunt, cum pertinentiis suis, militia et castra regni' (in
Pertz, iv. 67); and (2) to grani the king, ‘ut regni tui episcopis vel
abbatibus libere prater symoniam et violentiam electis, investituran virpro et
annuli conferas,’ etc.; Ibid. p. 72. The pope, however (see above, p. 222, n.
1), was soon compelled by his party to revoke these concessions: Ibid. Append,
pp. 181 sq.: cf. Cardinal, de Aragon. Vit, Paschalis II., in Muratori, Her.
Ital. Script, m. part I. 363, anil Neau- der, vii. 186—194. A very bold and
bitter protest was put forth (circ. 1102) against the temporal assumptions of
Paschal, by the rhureh cf Liege. Their organ was Sigebert, a monk of Gemblours
(Ciemblaeensis). The letter is printed, among other places, in Mansi, xx. 987.
3 This school was represented by Hugo, a
monk of Fleury, whose Tractatui de Regia Potentate et Sacerdutali Dignitate
is preserved in Baluze and Mansi's MiscelUm. iv. 184 sq.
4 The following language of Calixtus to the
emperor (Teb. 19, 1122) deserves attention: ‘Nihil, Henrice, do tuo jure
vendieare sibi qua3rit
Humiliation
of Paschal II.
Concordat,
of J Vorms, 1122.
RELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
The
Ghibel- lines and the popes.
upon at Worms1 (in September 1122), and solemnly confirmed by
the council of Later,an'2 in the following year (March 27). It was
there determined that the emperor should cease to claim the right of
iuvestiture by ring and crosier and should grant to every church the free
election of the bishop, while the pope conceded that on their election
prelates should receive the ‘regalia’ from the king by means of the sceptre,
and should thus avow their willingness to render unto Caesar the things that
are truly his.
But though one topic of dispute was now adjusted, fresh ones could not
fail to be evoked by the aspiring projects of the papacy: while on the other
hand, the opposition offered by the house of Franconia, under Henry JV. and
Henry V., was stubbornly continued for a hundred years (1137—1236) by the new
line of emperors3 (the Hohen- staufen, Waiblingen or Ghibellines).
The pontiff could, however, keep his ground, supported as he was by tho
political assailants of' the empire*.
His throne, indeed, was shaken for a time in the impetuous movement
headed by a minor cleric, Arnold of Bresciawho came forward as the champion of
the volun-
ecclesia; nee
regni nee imperii gloriam affectamu»: obtintal eeclesia quod Christi est,
habeat imperator quod suum est,’ etc.; in Neugart's Codex Diplom. Alemannice,
ii. 50, ed. 1791.
1 See Ekkehard, ad an. 1122 (Pertz, vm.
260) ; Vit. Calixti, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script, in. pt. i. p. 420: Planck,
iv. pt. i. 297 sq.
2 Dellinger mi. 345, 316) remarks that on
the subject of the act of ‘homage- a*i distinguished from the oath
of fealty, tho concordat was entirely silent, indicating that Calixtus
‘tolerated’ it. In a letter dated Dec. 13, 1122, he congratulates tha emperor
on his return ‘nunc tandem ad eccleaiiu gremium:’ Mansi, xxi. 280.
5 See Von Eaumer’s Gesch. der HohenstaUfen
und ihrer Zeit, Leipzig, 1840.
1
The Guelphs (VTelfs) ard GMbellines became the •Yr’higs’ and ‘Tories’ of this
period, the pope allying himself with the former: cf. F. von Schlegel, Philos,
of History, p. 369 (Bohn’s ed.), who views the matter differently. The Welfs
took their name from the Jno of princes which gave dukes ti> Bavaria and
Saxony. Under Frederick I. this line was represented by Henrv the Lion; and
later on by his son Otho IV; both of whom represented the ancient dislike Of
the Saxonr. of North Germany to the imperial rule, and so were united in a
common antipathy with the popes. The use of the party names however is later
than the struggle itself; the power of both llohenstaufen and AVelf was extinct
by the middle of the 13th century, and they represent merely imperial and papal
partizonship in Italy of a later date.
'■ See
Schrockh, xx. 112 sq., and 155, 15C, on the different views
tary system, and impugned the right of bishops and of popes themselves to
any temporal possession. A republic was proclaimed at Rome (1143J; the principles
of Arnold spread in every part of Lombardy, and though repressed at length by
the imperial arms1, the fermentation they excited did not Gease for
twenty years, after which the misguided author of it fell into the hands of
the police2 (1155).
The German empire was now administered by one of the sturdiest of the
anti-papal monarehs, Frederic I. or Barbarossa (1152—1190). But after he had
proved himself a match for Hadrian IV.3, he was compelled (1176) to
recognize the claims of Alexander III.4, who, counting on the
disaffection of the Lombards, carried out the Hil- debrandine principles in all
their breadth and rigour. He was seconded in England by the primate Becket5,
who, although he rose to eminence as a minister of the king6,
respecting
him. Neander’s estimate is favourable (vii. 203—209\ It appears to be
established that Arnold wa« a pupil of Ahelard: Ibid. p. 204 (note), Francke,
Arnold von Brescia, Zurich, 1825, tries to connect him with the Waldenses and
Cathari. He was condemned as early a^ 1139, at the council of Lateran, in
company with the anti-pope: cf. S. Bernard. Epist. 195, written in the
following year to caution the bishop of Constance jgainet Arnold and his
principles.
1 The Romans in this extremity invited
Conrad to resume the ancient imperial rights: see e.g. the two Letters in
Martfene and Durand’s Collect.
11. 398.
a
Hadrian IY. desired the emperor to give np ‘Arnaldum hsereticum, quem
vicecomites de Campania abstulerant. . . quem tanquam prophetam in terra sua
cum honor< habebant.’ Card, de Aragon. Vit. Hadriani, in Muratori, as above,
p. 442. He was immediately hanged: cf. Neander, vn. 223.
3 He had reminded Frederic (1157) that the
imperial crown was conferred (‘collatam’) by the pope, with the addition,
‘Neque tamen pcenitet noB desideria tute voluntatis in omnibus implevis&e,
sed si majora bene- ficia excellentia tua de manu nostra suscepisset, si
fieri posset, non immerito gauderemns:’ see ltadevicus Gest. Frid. lib. 1. c.
9; in Muratori, Iier. Ital. Script, vi. 746 sq. The pope, in 1158, was
forced to explain away the obnoxious termn: Ibid. c. 22; Pertz, iv. 106.
4 See Yon Itnumer (as above), pp. 244 sq.;
Bollinger, IV. 19, 2ft; Gieseler, 111. § 52, 11. 22.
s A
copious stock of authorities for the Life of Becket is contained in the S.
Thomas Cantuariensis, edited by Giles, 8 vols. Oxf. 1845 : see also J.
C. Itobertson’s Bechet, a Biography, London, 1859.
0 Sharon Turner han tried to shew that
several limitations of the clerical encroachments had been made under his own
auspices: Middle Ages, 1. 233, and note 55, ed. 1830. The instances, however,
are not very convincing; and all that can be proved is that whilst Becket was
minister, the bishops and abbots were brought under contribution for the
scutage. The same writer has nhewn (p. 259, n. 112) that at one period
RELATIONS TO
I HE CIVIL FOWEK.
Tit
( antikit rarchi- cat move - menl vndtr Arnold.
Early
tlrnffgle of Frederic Barbnrossa with the popts.
The
influence of Becket.
RELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
threw himself, on his promotion to Canterbury, on the side of clerical
immunities and ultimately perished in the cause. The point on which he took his
stand was the exemption of all clerical offenders from the civil jurisdiction,
urging that, whatever was the nature of their crime1, they should be
tried in the spiritual courts, and punished only as the canon law prescribed.
The king insisted, on the contrary, that clerics, when convicted in his courts,
should be degraded by the Church and then remanded to the civil power for
execution of the sentence. In a meeting* called the ‘Council of Clarendon’
(Jan. 25, 1164), Becket had allowed himself to acquiesce in regulations which
he deemed entirely hostile to the Church and fatal to his theory of
hierarchical exemption: but the pope immediately absolved him from the oath3,
and afterwards, until his murder (Dec. 29, 1170), countenanced his unremitting
opposition to the crown1. His canonization, and the miracles5
alleged to have been wrought on pilgrims who had worshipped at his tomb,
conspired to lix che
the clergy
-were apprehensive lest Henry should have broken altogether with the pope.
1 The number of crimes charged against
clerics fmajor and minor! in the early years of this reign was very great.
Engl. Review, vi. 61, 62.
2 It consisted of the king, the two
archbishops, twelve bishops, and thirty-nine lay barons. Though purporting to
re-enact the ‘customs of England,’ the Constitutions of Clarendon infringe at
many points on the oxisting privileges of the Church: e.g. the twelfth reduced
the patronage of the bishoprics and abbeys almost entirely under the king’s
control. "Wilkins, i. 4:)5.
-i
Epist. S. Thoma, ii. 5, ed. Giles.
1
Alexander durst not bring th« matter to an open rupture, on account of his own
misunderstanding with the emperor Frederic: but (June 8, l Lt5i>) he
reprimanded Henry (Ibid. ir. 115) and incited home of the bishops to exert
their influence in behalf of Becket. Among other things they were to admonish
the king, ‘ ut in eo quod excesserit satisfaciat, a pravis actibus oiunino
desistat, Bomanam ecclesiam solita venerations respiciat,’ etc.; Ibid. n. 90:
cf. ii. 53. Even where he is
urging Becket to proceed against his-enemies (April, 1166) he adds: ‘Verum de
persona resin speciale tibi mandatum m in damus, nec tamen jus tibi pontificate
quod in ordinatione et consecratione tlaa suscepisti a'limimus.’ Ibid. ut:
12. In a subsequent endeavour to effect a
compromise, Henry insisted on the reservation ‘ salva dignitate regni,’ and
Becket on ‘ salva ecclesiaa dignitate,’ so that nothing was accomplished.
(Bobertson, Bechet, p. 224.) But the king afterward- relented (Jan, 1170) when
he found it likely that his kingdom would be placed under an interdict (Epist.
S. Thomce, ii. 55).
3 John of Salisbury, Vita 8. Tluma’, Opji.
v. 380, ed. Giles.
triumph1 of those ultramontane principles which ho hail
laboured more than others to diffuse.
Meanwhile the conflict with the emperor had been reopened. Lucius III.
and his immediate successors (11G1— 1107 ) were ejected from the papal
city by domestic troubles2; and the restless Barbarossa threatened
to reduce them into bondage, when he was at length diverted from tho theatre of
strife to lead an army of Crusaders (1183). He did not survive the expedition3.
The reign of Henry VI. and the minority of Frederic II. favoured the encroachments
of the Roman pontiff. Innocent III. (as we have seen4) advanced the
most exorbitant pretensions, and by force of character as well as circumstances
humbled nearly all the European courts. His foremost wishes were the conquest
of Palestine and an extensive 1 reformation of the Church5,’
but neither of these ends could be achieved, according to his theory, except by
the obliteration of all nationalities and the entire ascendancy of Rome above
the temporal power. He gave away the crown of Sicily6 and governed
there as guardian of the king: he elevated, and in turn deposed, a candidate
for the imperial thro no7:
1
See the Purgatio Henrici Begis pro morte beiti Thotna, and the Charta
Absolutionis Domini Regis in Roger de Hoveden, Chron. 11. 85—37; ed.
London, 1869. Thu vantage-ground secured to Alexander by these acta is shewn in
language like the following (Sept. 20, 1172), where he had congratulated Henry
on the conquest of Ireland: ‘ Et quid Romana ecclesia aliud jus habet in insula
quair in terra magna et oon- tinua, nos earn spem tenentes, quod jura ipsius
ecclesise non solum conservare velis, sed etiam ampHare, et nbi nullum jus
habet, id debeas cibi conferre, rogamus,’ etc. Rymur’s Fcedera, j. 45, ed.
1816: Jaffe, p. 751. .
1
I>iillinger, iv. 21 sq.
5 Von Raumer, as above, n. 411 sq.
4 Above, pp. 224, 225.
s
Thus he writes (1215): ‘Ulins ergo testimonium >nvocamus, Qui Testis est in
coelo fidelis, quod inter omnia desiderabili'i cordis nostri duo in hoc sieculo
principaliter affectamus, ut ad recuperationem videlicet Terras Sanctaa ac
reformationem universalis Ecclesia; valeamus intendere cum effectu.’ Mansi, xxii. 960. The foundation of the Latin
empire at Constantinople (1204; added largely to the papal empire and excited
larger expectations. It was destroyed, however, in 1261.
6 Securing from the (Town a surrender of
the following points: tho royal nomination of bishops, the power of excluding
legates, and prohibiting appeals to Rome, and the arbitrary grant or refusal
of permission to the bishops to be present at councils: see Planck, iv. pt. 1.
452 sq.; Dbllinger, iv. 27
t
This was Othu IV., who had renounced all participation in ec-
IvKLATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWEB.
Bit
influence counteracted under Innocent III.
RELATIONS TO
THE CIVIL POWER.
he freed the subjects of count Raymond of Toulouse, who was infected with
the Albigensiau tenets, from their allegiance : he made Philip Augustus of
France take back his rightful queen2: and, passing over similar
achievements, it was he who forced a sovereign of this country (Jolm) to hold
his royal dignity as one of the most abject vassals of the pope3
(1233). The ‘Magna Carta’ was, however, gained :u spite of Innocent’s emphatic
reprobation4, and his death in 1216 allowed the imperialists to
breathe afresh and make an effort for diminishing the range of papal absolutism.
Fretted by their opposition, Gregory IX. betrayed the fiery spirit of his predecessors
and pronounced his ban against the emperor Frederic II.6 (1227). A
compromise ensued, in which the quarrel seemed to have been amicably settled:
but the interval of calm was short; and on the recommencement of hostilities,
the fearless monarch was at length proscribed as an incorrigible misbeliever,
who had justly forfeited his crown (March 24, 1239)6. The contest
thus exasperated
plesiaetioal
elections and the ‘jus spolii,’ or title to the property of deceased bishops
and other clergymen: but afterwards ■withdrawing from this engagement and
seizing some of the temporalities of the Human see, he was excommunicated by
Innocent (1211) and his crown transferred to Frederic II.: Matthew Paris, from
Eoger of Wendoyer, a.d. 1210:
Dollinger, ry. 31, 32.
1 See Sir J. Stephen’s Lectures,.!. 219,
820; ed. 1851.
8 Innocent. Epist. lib. in. ep. 11 sq..:
Will. Armor, apud Bouquet, xvii. 88.
3 The pope ‘ sententialiter doflnmt ut rex
Anglornw Johannes a solio regni deponeretur, et alius, papa procurante,
succederet, qui dignior haberetur,’ etc. SI. Paris, -l.k. 1212, p. 195; from
Roger of Wendoyer, in. 211, ed. Coxe. He had before (1208) laid the whole
.kingdom under interdict. In John’s deed of cession he speak3 of it as made
‘Deo et sanctis Apostolis ejus Petro et Paulo, et Sancta; Homan® ecclesise
matri nostrce, ac domino papa lnnocentio ejusque catholicis Buccessoribus...pro
remissione omnium peccaturum nostrorum et totius generis nostri tarn pro % iv
in quam pro defunctis.’ SI. Paris, a.i>. 1213, p. 109; R. Wendover, in. 253.
The tribute-money was to be ‘mille marcas esterlingcrum aimuatim.’
WTendover, a.d.
1215, m. 323.
5 Wendoyer
(1228), iv. 157; SI. Paris, p. 291. While under this ban Frederic
actually set out on a crusade in spite of the Roman pontiff, insuing his orders
‘in the iiame of God and of Christendom.’
® The grounds
on which the papal fulmination rested are given at length in the bull of
deposition: SI. Paris (1239), p. 412: cf. Frederic’s own letters, Ibid. pp. 415
sq, How far he merited the charge of blasphemy, infidelity, or free thinijng,
is discussed by Neander, vit, 248 t>q. The recent work, Historia Diphmatica
Friderici Secundi, ed. Huillnrd-
did not cease until his death iu 1250, after having more and more
developed the conviction iu his subjects, that some check must he imposed on
the ambition of the Roman .see1.
The papacy, indeed, appeared to have come forth triumphant when the last
of the Hohenstaufen, Conradin*, perished 011 the scaffold (Oct. 29, 1268): but,
in spite of the prodigious energy which it continued to evince, its hold on all
the European nations was relaxing, while the hope of Eastern conquest faded
more and more3. It is alike remarkable that one of the premonitory
blows which Roman despotism provoked had been inflicted, half unconsciously,
by Louis IX. (St Louis) of France, and at this very juncture. What are known as
the ‘ Gallican Liberties ’ are clearly traceable to him. In his ordinance of
12681 he proceeds 011 the idea of building up a ‘ national church ’
in strict alliance with the civil power. But a more sensible advance was made
in this direction under Philip the Fair5, whose conduct iu
ecclesiastical affairs, however selfish, arbitrary and unjust, was tending
Br<3iolles
(Paris, 1853), contains the most accurate information respecting him
I A saying rose in Germany that Frederic
would return, or that an eagle would spring from his ashes and destroy the
papacy.
II Von Eaumer, Gesch. der Hohenstaufen, iv.
594.
1
Cf. the remarks of Neander on the dying-out of the Crusades: vn, 2B0 sq.
4 Commonly culled a ‘ Pragmatic
Sanctionprinted in Capefigue, n. 352 sq. See the critique of this author (n.
171, 172). Another instrument, hearing the title 1 Pragmatic
Sanction-' and more plainly ‘Gallican,’ was issued hy Charles VII. in 1438.
Louis IX. also contributed to the foundation of the college of Sorbonne (1259),
which afterwards produced a number of intrepid champions in tho cause of
‘nationality* as it diverges from the Boman theory of universalism.
5 On his important struggle with Boniface
VIII. see Gieseler, in. 133—15(5, on one side, and I)ollinger, iv. 80 sq. or
Capefigue, ii, 181 sq. on the
other. After some preliminary skirmishing. Philip, backed by the States-General
(Ap. 10, 1302), wrote a warning letter to i he pope, whose indignation knew no
bounds. In the famous decretal ‘ TJnam Sanctam,’ which appeared in the
following November, and is printed in Capefigue, ii. 355 (cf. Neander, ix. 11), ISoniface asserted the
absolute supremacy of papal power ('Porro subesse Itomano poniifici omnem
humanam ereatu- ram deelaramus, diciir.us, diffinimus et pronuntiamus omnino
esse de necessitate sa'.utis’). He published the ban against his rival (April
13, 1303), but it was powerless. Philip summoned tlie States-General afresh
(June 13), where he preferred a charge of heresy against the pope and stated
his intention of appealing to a general council and a future pontiff. Boniface,
huwever, died in October, and the next pope (Benedict XI.)
KELITKIKS TJ
TnE CIVIL rOWEB.
Beginning
cf reaction against tin pajMry.
The
grounds
of this reaction..
to reverse the whole of the Hildebraudine policy, and threatened more
than once to rend the kingdom from its old connexion with the Roman see. The
humbled pontiff, watched and crippled at Avignon, was for many years the
creature and tool of the kings of France1.
There was, indeed, no general wish to question the supremacy of Home, so
long as she confined herself within the sacerdotal province; but her
worldliness, venality, and constant intermeddling in the affairs of state, could
hardly fail to lessen the respect with which her claims had been regarded: and
as soon as the idea of an appeal from her decisions to a General Council2
was distinctly mastered, it is cleax that the prestige by which her usurpations
were supported was already vanishing away. The true relations of the regal and
ecclesiastical authority3 were now discussed with greater freedom. A
reaction had commenced. Mankind were growing more and more persuaded that
prerogatives like those of Hildebrand or Innocent III. were far from
Apostolic, and could not be safely lodged in sacerdotal hands4.
Prophetic warnings on the fall and secularization of the Church, poured forth
by
revoked all
th3 edicts -which Boniface had promulgated against the French king.
1
Thk juried of about seventy years (1305—1309 at Lyons, 1309 to 1376 at Avignon)
is known as ‘the Captivity,’ and was such when regarded from the ultramontane
point of view: see Vitce Paparum Avenionensium, ed. Baluze, Paris, 1093.
s
.Frederic II. had done this in hit- circular Letters to the Christian princes
and tho cardinals: Matthew Paris, p. 416: Neander, vii. 248. The example was folk/wed by Philip the Fair: see
above, p. 253, n. 5. A remarkable symptom 01 the state of feeling on this point
is furnished by a poem of the 13th century (Cambr. Univ. MSS. Dd. xi. 78, §
18), where the Homans, after arguing with pope Innocent III., and charging him
with becoming ‘apostaticus’ (fol. J14, a), ar« mado to carry their appeal to a
general council, which pronounces in their favour.
3 e.g. by the Dominican, John of Paris, in
his Tractatus de Potestate Regali et Papali, published in (ioldast’s Monarchia
sancti Romani Im- peratoris, li. 108 sq. .In analysis of it is made in the
posthumous % olume of Neander, lx. pp. 22 sq. See also tho Qucfstio duputata in
utramque partem pro et contra pontificiam potestatem, by iEgidius itomanas
(afterwards archbishop oi Bourgcs), in Goldast, n. 95 sq.; Neander, ix. 19.
The worst evils of the age w ore traced to the temporal possessions of the pope
and to the spurious ‘Donatio Oonstantini,’ on which those possessions were
believed to rest: cf. above, p. 40, n. 6.
1 See especially the ‘Supplication du Pueuble de France
cm Roi contre le Pape Boniface le Ylll.,’ iu the Appendix to Du Puy’s Ilist. du
Dijfe- rend tntre le Pape et Philippes le Bel, Paris, 1G55.
earnest souls like Hildegard and Joachim1, united with the
sneers of chroniclers like Matthew Paris and a host of anti-papal songs2
in waking the intelligence and passions of the many: while the spreading
influence of the Universities and Parliaments1’ was tending, by a
different course, to similar results. The vices of the sacred curia,
uncorrected by the most despotic of its tenants, had excited general grief and
indignation, even in the very staunchest advocates of Home. St Bernard4,
for example, in admonishing Eugenius III, to extirpate abuses, could not help
reverting with a sigh to earlier ages of the faith, when ‘the Apostles did not
cast their nets for gold and silver but for souls.’ And both in Germany and in
England, the impression had grown current that the Church of Rome, which had
been reverenced there as a benignant mother, was now forfeiting her claim to
such a title by imperious and novercal acts5.
1
The ‘abbot Joachim, in hi« exposition of Jeremy, and the maiden Hildegare in
the book of her prophecy,’ are frequently cited in these times by writers on
the corruption* of the Church (e.g. ir a Sermon preached by Ii. "Wimbledon
at St Paul’s Cross, a.u. 1389, and
printed in London, 1745). Respecting them and their influence, see Neander, vn.
298—322; Robertson, iii. 200—212.
3 Extracts from German ballads of this
clas.i have been collected in Staudlin’s Archiv fur alte mid neu Kirchengesch.
iv. pt. iii. pp. sq.: cf. above, p. 242, n. 3. The unmeasured lulminations of
the Albigenses and other sectaries will be noticed on a future page. Dante (it
is well known) associated a Roman bishop with the apocalyptic woman riding on
the beaut ‘con le sette teste.’
3 Cf. Capefigue’s observations on this
point, ii. 163. (‘On commen- <^ait une ^poquo de curiosite et d'innovation.’) Comte
(Philos. Posit. lib. vi. c. 10) fixes on the opening of the 14th century as the
origin of the revolutionary process, which has from that date been participated
in by every social class, each in its own way.
4 See his De Consideratione ad Eugenhim,
passim. Tn epist. 238,
‘ Amantiasimo
J’atri et domino Ilei gratia summo Pontifici Eugenio,’he asks: ‘Qnis mihi det
antequam moriar videre ecclesiam Dei sicut in diebus antiquis, quando Apostoli
laxabant retia in captuijfim. non in cap- turam argenti vel auri, sed in
capturam auimarum?’
* Thus Frederic II., in writing to the king
of England (Matthew Paris, A.D. 1228, p. 293), complains that tho ‘Curip
Romana,' which ought to be a nurse and mother-church, is ‘omnium malorum radix
et origo, non matemos sed actus exercens novercales, ex cognitis fructibus suis
certum faciens argumentum.’ And John of Salisbury, the bosom friend of Hadrian
IV., assured that pontiff how the public feeling was now set against the Roman
church; ‘Sicut enim dicebatur a multis, R anana ecclesia, qua) mater omnium
ecdesiarum est, se nun tam matnm exhibtt aliis quam novercam.’ Policraticus,
lib. vj. c. 24.
Premonitory
tfmp- tum.i of the Reformation.
In other words, the struggle with the civil power had been maturing the
predispositii >ns that eventually attained their object in redressing
ancient wrongs and in a general re-awakeniii"; of the Church.
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE STATE
OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES.
WESTERN CHURCH.
The man who at this time surpassed all others in religious earnestness, and
who has therefore been revered especially by all succeeding ages of the
Church, was the illustrious Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux1. In
reference to his system of theology he boars the title ‘last of the Fathers,’
representing what is called the ‘ positive,’ patristic or traditionary school,
which in the twelfth century was giving place to philosophical inquiries and to
freer modes of thought. St Bernard, in his numerous Letters, Tracts, and
Sermons (of which eighty-six are on the ‘Book of Canticles’ alone), exhibits a
decided opposition2 to the speculative, and as deep a love for the
contemplative, or mystical, theology. His general object was to elevate and
warm the spirit of the age in which he lived, and all his writings of this
class are emanations from a truly Christian heart that, after communing
profoundly with itself, appears to have obtained a satisfactory response
1 See
above, p. 230, Neandt'r’s Life of him, translated by Wrench: and Hint. Litter, de, S. Itemard et de IHerre-le-Venirable by l)om Cl<-
meneet, ed. 1773.
-
This antagonism is eeen especially in his controversy with
Abelard (see below). Thus, for instance, he ■writes in KpUt. 192:
‘Magister Petrus [i.e. Abelard] in libris suis profana* vocum noutates inducit
et sensum, disputans de fide contra ndem, verbis legis legem impupnat. Nihil
\idet per Bpeculum et in a-niginate, sed facie ad fariem omni* intuetur, ambolaus
ill magnis et in mirabilibus super se.’ The school of the Victorines (inmiites
of the abbey of St Victor ut Paris) came back, as we shall see, in part to the
standing ground of St Bernard.
St
Ben,ard (d 1153).
The
peculiar tune if his theology.
The
rise of the Schoolmen.
A
nselm, archbp. of Canterbury
(<1.1109).
'General
drift of Fcholasti-
to its most ardent aspirations in that view of Holy Scripture which had
been transmitted by the ancient doctors of the Church.
But meanwhile other principles, allied in some degree to those which
characterize the Syrian school of theologians in the fifth century and John of
Damascus in the eighth1, were spreading in all parts of Europe. The
scholastic era had begun. We saw the earliest trace of it, according to its
proper definition, iu the monastery of Bee2, and Anselm, who became
the abbot in 1070 and archbishop in 1093, may be regarded as the purest and
most able type of schoolmen in the west3. He occupied the place of
St Augustine in relation to the Middle Age. The basis of his principles indeed
was also Augustinian4: but the form and colour which they took from
the alliance now cemented between them and Aristotelian dialectics, gave to
Anselm a peculiar mission, and, compared with his great master, a one-sided
character.
The leading object of the Schoolmen 'n the earlier stages of their course
was not so much to stimulate a spirit of inquiry, as to write in the defence
and illustration of the ancient doinnas of the Church3. In this
1
See above, pp. 71, 72.
£
Above, p. 159, n. 6.
:i
Cf. Mohler’s Essay entitled Die Scholastik S«s Anselmus in liis Schriften etc.
(Regensburg, 1839), i. 129—176: Borneinann's Anselmus et A beelardus, Havnise,
1840.
1 Thun,
according to his own account (Epist. lib. i. ep. 68), it had been his desire in
controversy, ‘ ut omniuo nihil ibi assererem, nisi quod aut canonicis aut B.
Augustini dictis incunctanter posse defendi vi- derem.’ The work here referred
to is the Monologmm sive exemplum meditandi de ratione Fidei, ■which,
together with his Proslogium (or Fides qu&rens Intellection), gives the
best insight into his theologico-inetaphv- dical system. Some parts of it were
attacked by a monk named Gaunilo, and Anselm replied in the Apnlogetieus. His
Works, containing a Life by his English pupil, Eailmer, were edited by
(xerberon, Paris, 1673, and have been reprinted in Migne’s Patrologite cursus,
Paris, 1854. A contemporary, and in some respects an equal, of Anselm, was
Hildebert of Lavardin, bishop of lo Mans, and afterwards archbp. of Tours, who
died about 1135. His works were published at Paris, in folio, 1708. _ ■
5 The principle on which the true
scholastic wrote is forcibly stated by Anselm in the following passage: ‘
Nullus quippe Christianus debet disputare, quonuido quod ecclesia cathoiica
corde credit et ore confite- tur, non sit: sed semper enndein fidem
indubitanter tunendo, amando, et secundum iilam vivendo humiliter quantum
potest, quajrere rationem quomodo sit.’ De Fide Trinitat. contra Foscellinum,
c. 2: or still moie
capacity, they undertook to shew, (1) that faith and reason are not
inconsistent; or, in other words, that all the supernatural elements of
revelation are most truly rational: they laboured (2) to draw together all the
several points of Christian doctrine, and construct them into one consistent
scheme ; and (3) they attempted the more rigorous definition of each single
dogma, pointed out the rationale of it, and investigated its relation to the
rest.
This method of discussion was extended even to the most inscrutable of
all the mysteries of faith, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity in Unity: and
some of the scholastics did not hesitate to argue that the truth of it is
capable of rigorous demonstration1. A dispute as to the proper terms
in stating that and other doctrines opened out the controversy of the
Nominalists and Realists, a question which employed the subtle spirit of the
Schools at intervals for three or more centuries. The author of the former
system2 was the canon Rousellin, or Roscel- linus3, of
Compiegne, who, holding that all general conceptions are no more than empty
names (‘flatus vocis’), or, in other words, are mere grammatical abstractions,
chosen to facilitate our intellectual processes, but with no real and objective
import, argued boldly from these principles that if, according to the current
language of the Church, the essence of the Godhead might be spoken of as One
reality (‘ una res ’), the personal distinctness of the three Divine hypostases
would be constructively denied. To view the Godhead thus was (in his eye) to
violate the Christian faith : it was equivalent to saying that the Persons of
the Holy Trinity were not Three distinct
touchingly in
the Froslnylum, c. 1 ; ‘Non tento, Pomine, penetrare alti- tudinem
Tuain, quia nnllatenus comparo il!i intellectnm rueum ; sed desidero
aliqnatenus intelligere veritatem Timm, quam credit et aniat cor nioum. Neque
enim quaaro intelligere ut credarn, sed credo ut inttlligam.’
1 Klee, Hitt, of Christian Dogmas
(German!, part n. oh. ii. §11.
2 The problem, had, however, been suggested
at an earlier date by Porphyry: see Cousin’s Ouvfages inedits d’Abelard, pp.
Ix. sq. Pari-. 183(i: Gieseler, in. 278, u. 5.
3 The historical notices of Roscellinus are
very few: see F.pistola Jtihannis ad Anselvium. in Btduze and Mansi, Mis
cell. u. 174: Anselm's Liber de Fide Trinitatis et de IncarvaHone Verbi
contra blaipltemias Jluzelini. Gieseler, iii.
281, n. 12, has also drawn attention to u letter of Roscillinus, Ad
Petr. AbalarJum, lately found in Muuicli.
Depute
between the Nominalists and licalisti.
Opinions
of lioscclli-
2
Go
State of Religious Doctrine and Controversies, [a.d. 1073
condemned
at ike Council of Soissons, 1092;
and
refuted by Anselm.
Abelard
and his tendencies (0. 1142).
subsistences (‘non tres res’), but names and nothing more, without a
counterpart in fact. He urged, accordingly, that to avoid Sabellianism the
doctors of the Church were bound to call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost three
real Beings (‘tres res’) of equal majesty and will. A council held (1092) at
Soissons1 instantly denounced the author of these .speculations ou
the ground that they were nothing short of tritheism: and Anselm, as the
champiou of the other system (or the school of Realists), took up his pen to
write in its behalf2. According to his view the genus has a true
subsistence prior to, and independent of the individuals numbered in the class
it represents: particulars arise from universals, being fashioned after these
(the ‘universalia ante rem’) or modelled on a general archetype that
comprehends the properties of all3.
But though the Nominalists were now suppressed, they afterwards returned
to the encounter, headed by a man of most extraordinary powers. Abelard, born
in Brittany (1079), was educated under William of Champeaux4 (Cam*
pellensis), a renowned logician of the Realistic school. The boldness of his
speculations and his brilliant talents soon attracted crowds of auditors to
Paris, where he opened his
1 SeePagi Critic. inBaronii Annal. ad an.
1094 Roscellinus abjured the heresy imputed to him, but afterwards •withdrew
his recantation. He died at last in retirement.
2 The treatise above mentioned, p, 259, n.
3. He maintained that God, though Triune, is one ‘Ipsum:’ Dorner, p. 360. A-S
the title indicates, Anselm looked upon the nominalistic theory of iiis
opponent as subversive also of the doctrine of the Incarnation. He could not
understand how Christ assumed humanity in all its fulness, if hamanivv be not a
something real and objective, different from the nature of an individual man:
cf. archd. Wilberforco, On the Incarnation, pp. 40 sq. The thoughts of Anselm
on this doctrine are preserved at length iu his remarkable treatise, Cur Deus
Homo, analysed in part by SchriicKi, xxviii.
876—384.
3 The Nom-'nalists regarded all general
ideas (universalia) as nothing but abstractions of the human understanding, and
derived from the objects presented to its observation {post rem). The llealists
viewed such general ideas as having their origin entirely in the mind itself
tante rent), or as that which is essential in every thing actual (in re). Cf.
llilman, Latin Christianity, hi. 247;
Neander, vm. 3; and references in Gieselei, m. 278, 279, n. 6.
4 See a Life of him in the Hist. Littir. de la France, x. 307: cf. Cousin, as above, p. ex. A
short Treatise of William de Champeaux, be Originc Anima, is printed in Martene
and Durand, Thesaur. 1 need. v. 877 sq.
career1. Success, however, threw him off his guard; and to the
evil habits there contracted2 many of his future griefs as well as
many of his intellectual aberrations may be traced. His earliest publication
was an Introduction to Theology3, in which he has confined
himself to an investigation of the mysteries connected with the Holy Trinity.
It claims for men the right of free inquiry into all the subjects of
belief, asserting that the highest form of faith is one which has resulted from
a personal acquaintance with the ground on which it rests4. The
indiscriminate avowal of this principle, united in his pupils with the boast,
that nothing really exceeds the comprehension of a well-instructed mind,
provoked the opposition of the older school of teachers3. The
council of Soissons (1121) compelled him to withdraw his more extreme positions,
and consign his volume to the flames4. But the enthusiasm awakened
by his lectures did not die, and as
1 He tad indeed lectured for a while
already at Laon in opposition to Anselm of that place, whose works are
sometimes confounded with those of Anselm of Canterbury: see Cave, ad an. 1103.
2 See hi* own epistle Dr historia
Calamitatum marum, in P. Abtelardi et Heloisa Opp. Paris, 1616: cf. Hist. Litter, de la France 5U. 86 sq., 629 sq.; Alelard, par C. de Remusat,
Paris, 1845; Jlilman, Latin Christianity, nn 251 sq.
3 Jntroductio ad Theolog. Christ., seu de
Fide Trinitatis; Opp. 973 sq. He tries to shew that the doctrine of tlie
Trinity is a necessary conception of right reason, and as such wan not unknown
even to the Gentile sages: cf. the larger and revised edition of the treatise
entitled Theologia Christiana, in Slartfne ami Durand's Thetaur. Anecd. v. 1139
sq. Gieseler (111. 282, n. 16) supposes that another work, Sentential Abue-
lardi, was deri ved also from this source.
1
See Neander’s remark on the difference between Anselm and Abelard, viii. 35,
36. The strong feelings of the latter on this point may be estimated from a
single passage: ‘ Asserunt [i.e. the anti-philosophic school] nil ad cathohcai
fidei mysteria pertinens ratione investigandum esse, sed de omnibus
auctoritati statim credendum esse, quantumcunqne hsec ab humuna ratione
remota esse videatur. Quod quidem si recipiatur ...cujusque popuJi tides,
quantamcunque adstruat falsitatem, refelli non potent, etsi in tautam devoluta
sit ctecitatem, ut idolum quodlibet Deum esse ac oceli ac terra) Creatorem
fateatur.’ Introd. ad Theolog. lib. 11. c. 3, p. 1059.
“ Walter de
Mauretania (llortagne) was one of these: see his Epist. ad Petrum Ahalard., in
D’Achery, ni. 525.
* Of. his own account, Ilist.
Calamit. guar. c. 9, with Otto Frising. De Gestis Frider. lib. 1. c.
47 (in Muratori, Her. Ital. Script, tom. vi.). He now retired first to
the abbey of St Denis, and afterwards to an oratory in the diocese of Troyes
(‘the Paraclete’). This he transferred to Heloise when he himself became abbot
of Buys in Brittany (1126 —1136).
Condemnation
of h i m at Soi&sons, 112] •
and
at
1140.
Gilbert
de la Poree
(a. 1154).
he still adhered to his opinions1, many charges of heretical
teaching were brought against him. Bernard of (Jlair- vaux, whose tone of mind
was so completely different from his, had been induced2 to take the
lead in checking the dissemination of his views. The two great doctors were
confronted in the council of Sens (June 22, 1140,; where it was decided that the
teaching of Abelard was unsound3, but that the mode of dealing with
his person should, on liis appeal, be left to the superior judgment of the
pope. The latter instantly (July 16) approved their verdict and condemned the
misbeliever to perpetual silence4. He now published a Confession and
ApologyD and died soon afterwards, the guest of Peter the Venerable6
and the monks of Clugny (1112).
The zeal of Bernard w'as now turned against a kindred writer, Gilbert de
la Poree (Porretanus), bishop of Poitiers (1141), who, iu criticizing the
established language of the Church, had been apparently betrayed into a class
of
1
Another startling work, his Sic et Non, had probalily appeared ill the mean
time. Home portions of it are printed in Cousin’s Outrages inSdits. It exhibits
the multiformity of Christian truth by placing side by side a number of
divergent extracts from the Fathers, forming a manual for scholastic
disputation: cf. Milman, in. 271 If Bernard saw this treatise, it explains his
implacable hostility. Other causes of otfence were found in his Scito teipsum
and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.
"■
By 'William, abbot of St Thierry, in Bernard. Epist. 320, al. 391. The ground
of Bernard’s opposition, which appears to have been first stated to Abelard in
private, may be seen in his Letters (Epp. 188, 192, 193), aud his Tractatus de
Erroribus P. Abcelardi ad Innocent. II. ; Opp. 1. 1441, ed. Paris, 1839.
3 The charges brought against h'm were of
the most serious kind, e.g. that he made ‘degrees’ in the holy Trinity, that he
denied, or evacuated, the doctrines of grace, and divided the Person of Our
Lord like the Nestorians. All that is known respecting the proceedings of the
council has been collected in Gieseler, 111. 287, n. 24.
1 In writing to Bernard and others,
Innocent II. declares that he condemned.the ‘perversa dogmata cum auctore,’
Mansi. xxi. 505; and afterwards commands, ‘ut 1’etrum Aba?lardum et Arnaldum
de Brixia [see above, p. 249], perversi dogmatis fabricatores et catholicse
fidei impug- natores, in religiosis locis...separatim faciatis includi, et
libros erroris eorum, ubicuinque reperti fuerint, igne comburi.’
5 Bespecting these and the spirit which
suggested them, see Neander, vni. 02, 63.
6 By his influence a reconciliation was effected
between Bernard and Abelar-l: see his Epist. lib. iv. ep. 4, in liibl. Patr.
ed. Lugdun. xxn. 907; Milman, in. 207.
errors bordering on Nestorianism1. Convicted by a synod held
at Paris in 1147, he disarmed his adversaries by recanting in the following
year at Rheims* (March 21).
Our space will not admit a separate notice of the many other writers3,
who in different ways attempted to pursue the philosophic, methods of the
Schoolmen in the study of theology. The impulse given in that direction by Abelard
had been moderated for a time: the calmer views of Anselm having grown
predominant, especially among the Victorines (surnamed from the abbey of S. Victor
at Paris)—Hugo4, Richard6, and Walter8, all of
whom combined the cultivation of the dialectics of the age with a more
spiritual and mystic turn of mind7. It was through their endeavours
more especially that men like Bernard were conciliated by degrees in favour of
the general priii ciples from which scholasticism had sprung.
This combination was exhibited afresh in Robert le Poule (or Pullen), for
some years distinguished as a
1 The fourth proposition he was charged
with maintaining is ‘ Quod Ijivina uatura non esset incarnata:’ cf. Capefigue,
1. 357, 358. The following ‘ minor ’ points are also urged against him (Otto
Prising. De GestU Frider. lib. 1. 0. 50): ‘ Quod meritum humunum attenuando,
nullum mereri diceret priEter Christum: Quod Ecclesiai saeramenta evacuando
diceret, nullum baptizari nisi halvandum.’ He wrote, among other subjects, on
the Apocalvpso (ed. Paris, 1512).
2 See the ‘Eidei symbolum contra errores
(iilliberti Porretani,’ in Mansi, xxi. 712.
3 e.g. John of Salisbury (d. 1180), a pupil
of Abelard, but unlike him (Wright's Bingr. Brit. 11. 230 sq.): Rupert of Deutz
(d. 1135), a copious exegetical writer (Ilist. Litter, de la France, xi. 422
sq. : Dorner, 11. 389 sq.)
4 His chief works (ed. Rotomagi, 1618) are
De Sacramentis Fidei and the Summa Sententiarum (assigned
incorrectly, with the title Tractatm Theologicus, to Hildebert of Tours]:
see Licbner’s Hugo von 8. Victcr und die
theol. Ilichtungen seiner Zeit, Leipzig, 1832, and Hist. Litter\
de la France, xn. 7. Neander (vim, 65 sq.) gives a striking summary of
his modes of thought.
5 Richard was of Scottish extraction, und
wrote De Trinitate, De statu interioris hominit, etc. (ed. Rotomagi,
1G50): cf. Neander, vm. 80—82; Schrockh, xxix. 275—290.
6 The opposition to Abelard and his school
was strongest in this writer (otherwise called Walter of Mauretania; see above,
p. 201, n. 5). His chief work is commonly entitled Contra quatunr
lahijrinthos Gall iff, being a passionate attack on the principles of
Abelard, Peter Lombard, l’eter of Poitiers, and Gilbert de la Porde. Extracts
only are printed in Bulans, Hist. Univ. Paris, 11. 200 sq., 402 sq., 562
sq., 629 sq.
7 On this peculiarity, and the Greek
influence it betrayed, tee Dorner, 11. 360 sq.
Nu'lt]'ratio
a 0/ Sckoleuti- dim.
Jingo
of St Victor (d; 1141).
Richard
of St Victor
(d. 1173K
Walter
of St Victor (circ. 1180).
Robert le Poule, or Pullen
(A. 1150).
Peter
Lombard, Master of the Sentences
(d. 1164).
preacher1 in Oxford, and at length a Roman cardinal (1144).
His treatise called the Sentences* (‘Libri Senten- tiarum’) recognized the
principle of basing every dialectic process on the Holy Scriptures and the
Fathers. But the classical production of this kind is one by Peter Lombard, of
Novara, who attained the greatest eminence at Paris®, where he died as bishop
in 1164. His work was also termed The Sentences4 (or ‘ Quatuor Libri
Sententiarum ’). It consisted of timid arguments upon the leading theological
questions then debated in the schools, supported always by quotations from the
older Latin doctors of the Church ; and since the whole is neatly and
methodically put together, it was welcomed as a clear and useful hand-book by
the students in divinity. Its fame, mdeed, extended everywhere, and many able
scholars both of that and future times wrote commentaries on it, making
1 .... ‘ibique scripturas Divinas, qua1
per Mem tompus in Anglia ob- Boluerant, praB scholast.ieis quippe neglects
fuerant, per quinquenniom legit, oumique die Dominico verbum Dei populo
praidicavit, ex cujus uoctrina plurimi profecerunt.’ Quoted in Wright’s liiogr,
Britan, ii. 182 (note). Another Englishman of distinction in the field of
metaphysical theology was Bobert of llelun, bishop of Hereford, who wrote a
Summa Theologia, Ibid. p. '201. Copious extracts from this Summa are printed
inBulfeus, Ilistor. Univers. Paris, ii. 585—628.
2 Published at Paris, 1655. He appears to
have also written on the Apocalypse, and twentv of his Sermons are preserved
among the Lambeth MSS. Wright, Ibid. p. 183.
3 He wab opposed by Walter of St Victor
(above, p. 263, n. 6), for his speculations touching the Incarnation (or
‘Nihiliani«m," as they were called); see Domer, n. 379 sq. : but his work
On the Sentences received the formal approbation of Innocent III. at the
council of Ldteran (1215), c. 2.
i
The first book treats ‘De Mysterio Trinitatis,’ the second ‘De Serum
oorporalium et Hpirhualium ereatione et formatione,’ the third ‘De Incarnatione
Vtrbi aliisque ad hoc speciantibus,’ the fourth ‘De Sacramentis et eignis
saeramentalibus.’ See Schrockh’s account of it a.id its author, ixviii.
187—534; and an analysis of the work in Tarner, Middle Ages, Part iv, eh. 1;
and cf. Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. xiv. ch. hi. Peter Lombard had before him a Latin version of the
great work of John Damascenus, tepl op8o5a£oi Tiare^s, and thus connected the
Western with the Eastern scholasticism: Dorner,
ii. 257,
258. Swmmce and Sententice were now multiplied in every quarter, tho first
being mainly devoted to the free discussion of doctrines and speculative
problems, a-ud the seoond more especially to the arrangement of passages
derived from the writings of the Fathers. To the former class belongs the
Ar<t Catholics Fidei ex ratidnibus natH- ralibut demonstrates, of Alanus
Magnus, a Parisian doctor (d. 1202), in Pez, Thesaur. Anecdut. I. pt. ii. 475
sq.
it the groundwork of more shrewd and independent speculations.
Hitherto the influence of the Aristotelic philosophy had been confined
almost entirely to the single field of dialectics1, where it served
for the defence of Christian dogmas. Plato was the real favourite of the Church,
although a concord2 having been in part established between him and
the Stagirite, the opinions of the latter had indirectly tinctured the theology
of many writers in the west. It, is remarkable, indeed, that when the other
works of Aristotle, through the medium of the Arabs and Crusaders, were more
widely circulated in the twelfth century, they were not only treated by the
popes and councils with suspicion, but the physical and metaphysical books were
actually condemned3. Yet this antipathy soon afterwards abated4,
and in the more palmy period of the Schoolmen, dating from Alexander of Hales,
the blending of the Aristotelic processes and doctrines with the con-
1
Cf. above, p. 1(50, n. 2. The other work? of Aristotle were, however, studied
with enthusiasm in the Moorish schools of Spain, especially after the time of
Avicenna (Ebn-Sina), who died in 1036. V new impulse in the same direction was
given by Averroes (Ebn-Eashid), at the close or' the twelfth century, who
combined with his belief in the Koran an almost servile deference to the
philosophic views of the Stagirite. See authorities in Tennemann’s Manual of
Philosophy, §§ 255 —257 : cf. Milman, vi. 265 sq. From the tenets of Averroes,
when imbibed by Christian writers, grew the tendency to scepticism which the
profound and ever-active Raymond Lull (above, p. 219j especially en- deavo'ired
to resist in his Ars Generalis.
s
See Meander, vm. 91, 92, 127; and Dr Hampden’s Thomas Aquinas. in En/'yclop.
Metrop. xi. 804, 805.
3 (-.(/. at the synod of Paris (1209 or
1210), and afterwards by a papal legate (1215). The ‘statute’ of the latter
(BuIspus, Hist. Univ. Paris, hi. Kl) is as
follows: ‘ Et quod legant libros Aristotelis de dialectic*, tam de veteri quam
de nova in scholis ordinarie et non ad cursum...Non legantur !ibr; Aristotelis
de metaphysioa et naturali philosophia, nec SummsB de eisdem aut de doctrina
inagistri de J (inant aut Amalrici hseretici, aut Mauricii Hispani.’ These
persons were infected with the Pantheistic principles advocated by Erigena, and
then spreading in the Moorish schools: see Dorner, 11. 365, 366. The pope
(1229) again forbids the introduction of ‘profane science’ into the study of
Scripture and tradition: cf. Capefigue’s remarks, n. 165, 166; and Milman, ti. 268.
* Thus Roger Bacon
(Opus Majus, p. 14, ed. Jebb), writing fifty years later, says that Aristotle’s
treatises had been condemned ‘oh densam ig- norantiam. ’ Among the works of
Robert Grosseteste (see above, p. 228) is a Commentary on parts of Aristotle
(in Libros Post trio rum), cd. Yenet. 1552.
Change
of feeling with respect tu Aristotle.
troversies of the Western Church was almost uni verial
Alexander of Hales (Alosius), after studying mi the convent of that name
io Gloucestershire, attained a high celebrity at Paris, where he was
distinguished from the many scholars of the age as the ‘Irrefragable Doctor.’
11 is great work is a Summa Univ era at rhmltHjim*, in which the various topics
handled in the book of Peter Lombard are extended and discussed according to
the strictly syllogistic method of the Schools.
11 (' \va« a mendicant of the Franciscan order, arid as such had taken
part in the training of another schoolman (the ‘Seraphio Doctor ’), who was
destined to effect a lasting hold upon the spirit of the Western Churches.
This wan John of Fidanea, or Honaventura, in whom the rising order of
Franciscan* found an able champion' and a venerated head. Inferior in acumen
to his fellow-countryman,' archbishop Anselm, he was more than equal in tho
warmth mid elevation of Inn feeling!, though the mode in which they wore too
frequently expressed—-the rapturous worship of the Virgin* in a deep and
startling blemish on his character. His works are very numerous8,
for the most part of a mystical, ascetic, and subjective Kind.
Contemporary with these two Franciscans, and no less distinguished, were
the two Dominicans, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, standing also in the
same relation of tutor and pupil Albert , bora in Swabia (1193),
1
(if, Mllnnn’s remark* an t,h« oro of Soholantiolira, luultho dciioo]- imm; ha
Hit OhfUUanlty, vt. »q. j und Brewer'* I’refiice to Alon it mtnta I'ratuUaaiut,
)>]> Hi. nq., la ChronieUlt and Mtmoiialt of Gnat iiritain
9 Opp. tv 1.
Cologne, 1683, t v»1k. j non
Hohrllokh (\ux, 9—54) for 11 iiketoh
ui lit* theolog)o»l lynturo.
» H"ii ulimo, p. Villi i hi ui,
ou liiit Hfe und writing*, Hint, LUtfr. it? la Frntunt, xxix, B6o *q. j
Bohi'Uo'kb, xm, 1109 HiW.
* WIiimi lio hooumo limicrttl of the
FmnallOMi*, ho placed thorn nmlor tho |io('iilmr p»tron*j!e of Uio Virgin, und
hi* work* tihound with extnvu- Hlit iiml itoimt linpiou* *»Ylng* in hut honour
(f.ftptculum <!■' littutUbuK II. Marin). It hueheen dlipated whether
tho PtalUrlum I). Marl# bo hlx nr not, r.g. by A Hum Dutler In hi* Lift of S,
Bimavmtvra (July 11) - of, HolirooKh, xwni 955, and
0»peflgu», ii <t(K
* Tho VaUonn tiltian in in 8 voH folio.
Among tho re«t (vol iv. v.) in n OemnwntaHui in 11 /.iVir. Smtentiarum. The
tint *nd soonml
volume*
ounhim exposition* of tln> Holy Scripture
0 See his ll'urh in HI volt, folio, oil.
Lyon*, 1051: mid,
for hi* Life,
educated ut Paris and Bologna, and eventually settling at Cologne,
exhibited all the marks of the genuine scholar. He was conversant with nearly
every field of human thought, but most at home in physics, natural history, and
ethics. His chief writings in divinity are Commentaries1 on
the Book of Sentences, and a Smnma TkmUypat*, in both of which, amid a crowd of
metaphysical subtleties peculiar to the time, he manifests a clear conception
of the leading truths of Christianity.
But Albert and indeed all others were eclipsed by his illustrious and
profound disciple. Thomas de Aquino* (or Atjuinas), honoured with the names of
* Universal ’ aud 'Angelic Doctor,’ and the founder of the able school of
1 Thomists,’ proved himself tho
master-spirit of scholasticism, and a most worthy representative of mediaval
philosophy. He took his stand among the school of Realists, and was devoted
strongly to tho Aristotelian dialectics, which he used as tho organ of
investigation: but his independent genius urged him to dissent materially from
other principles of Aristotle, and to graft upon the older system many foreign
elements, A careful study4 of the Bible and the Book of Sentences
prepared him for the composition of those powerful works which occupied him
till his death in 1274. The greatest of them is the Sv.mma 2'otins
Theologies*, which, as it forms a clear exponent of
SerifUms
Ord. PradkaL In Quetit and Eehard, i. 168 sq., SohrvVkU,
Jcxtv. 424 sq,
1
Filling, vol. xiv—xvi.
a
See Sehrfiekh's Analysis, xxix. 57 sq.
1 See las Life in (ho .lofts SmtKt. Mart.
j. 655 sq., and on his philoso- plueo-tfeligious system, Pr Hampden's Jqttimts,
in KxeyH. Xtfrop. xt„ 793 sq,: Sehrtiekh, xxix. 71—20S: Bitter"* (h<xh.
iIrr Christ!. Philis. iv. S5 7 sq.
* It is also
mention*.! in his Wography (as above) that ho never wrote, lectured, or
dkputed, wifhout betaking himself to God in {'rayor for tho Divine
illumination, and he did tho same when bo was confronted by difficulties and
doubts. Tho reason bo assigned for the peculiar frequency of his durations was
tho following: 'Quia frequenter oontingit, quod dam intelleetus snperins
snbtilia speculator, atTeetus informs a devotione remittitur.*
s A
good edition, with copious indexes, was published at Arras (Atrebatj) in 1610.
The whole works of Aquinas have been often reprinted. The best edition is that
of Venice (1745 sq.i in -S vok. 4to. His Outrun Anrai (from the Fathers) has
been translated into Knglish (Osf. 1843).
WKSTKUN
CttUKCH.
TAp****
.t fumns
tl224 (A; jMfetic
if
kis
Satumn
I'heolo-
(x*.
WESTERN
CHURCH.
Prima
Pars.
Secunda
Pars.
his views and is the most colossal work of that or any period, merits an
especial notice1. It is divided into three great parts, (1) the
Natural, (2) the Moral, (3) the Sacramental. In the first of these, the writer
ascertains the nature and the limits of theology, which he esteems a proper
science, based upon a supernatural revelation, the contents of which, though
far transcending all the powers of human thought, are, when communicated,
subjects for devout inquiry and admit of argumentative defence. Accordingly
the writer next discusses the existence and the attributes of God, endeavouring
to elucidate the nature of His will, His providence, the ground of His
predestination2, and the constitution of the Blessed Trinity in
Unity,—a doctrine which, although he deems it incapable of logical
demonstration, finds an echo and a counterpart in man. Descending from the
Cause to the effects, he analyses the constituent parts of the creation,
angels, the material world, and men, enlarging more especially upon the
functions of the human soul, its close relation to the body, and the state of
both before the Fall.
The second part is subdivided into the Prima Secundce, and the Secunda
Secundce. The former carries on the general subject, viewing men no longer from
the heavenly but from the earthly side, as moral and responsible agents gifted
with a vast complexity of passions, sentiments, and faculties. The way in which
these powers would naturally operate, if acting by themselves, is first
considered, and the author then proceeds to shew how they are modified by
supernatural agencies, or coexistent gifts of grace3. This leads him
to compare the state, or the position, of mankind in reference to the systems
(or economies) of
1 Cf. Hampden, as above, p. 2fi7, n. 3, and
Kling's Descriptlo Sumnuc Theolog. Tuumce Aquin. succirwta, Bonn, 1846.
2 On this point Ms views are rigorously
\ugustinian, Par. i. Qua?st.
<
an. Anselm wrote a special treatise on it in a somewhat milder tone. The title
is, De Concordia 1'raxcientice et Frcedestinationis necnon Gratice Dei cum
libero arbitrio.
3 He does not indeed suppose, as many of
the Schoolmen did, that the communication of the gifts of grace was to depend
upon the way in which mankm-i employed the simply natural qualities (‘ puri
natu- ri.lia !j His view is, that grace was given from the first,
and that the harmonious coexistence of the natural and the supernatural
constituted man’s ‘ originaliis justitia. ’ The violation of this Larmony
(‘inordinata dispositio partium animifc') is original sin. Cf. Neander, vui.
193.
grace and nature, and, as the immediate consequence, to treat of our
original righteousness, free-will, original sin, justification1, and
the various rules of life. Iu the Secunda Secunda?, the several virtues are
discussed in turn, as they exist under the operation of Divine grace- or tha t
of nature only. They are seven in number. Three of them are ‘ theological,’ or
supematurally infused and nourished,— viz. faith, hope, and love, while the
remainder are the four cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, fortitude, and
temperance, and are ‘ethical’ or purely human. The discussion of these virtues
forms an admirable work on Christian morals.
The third part of the Summa is devoted to an exposition of the mysteries
of the Incarnation anil the efficacy of the Sacraments,—a class of topics
which, according to the principles of all the mediaeval writers, are
essentially akin2. Aquinas traces every supernatural influence to
the Person of the Word made flesh, who by the union of our nature with the
Godhead has become the Reconstructor of humanity and the Dispenser of new life.
This life, together with the aliment by which it is sustained, descends to man
through certain outward media, or the sacramental ordinances of the Church:
their number being seven, viz. Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penitence,
Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction3. In the last division of the
work we see tho mighty influence of Aquinas iu determining tho scientific form
and mutual action of those
1 This he make*? to be primarily the
infusion nf grace, which operates (1) in the spontaneous movement of the will
to Clod, (2) in the resistance to sin, and (3) to its forgiveness; although
these effects are said to be produced simultaneously. Prima Secwnd. Quaest.
cxm. Art. 8: cf. Neander, ttii. 222 sq.
2 ‘Post considerationem <*>ruin qua»
pertinent ad mysteria Yerbi Incamati, considerandum est de Ecdesi® ^acramentis,
qua- ab Ipso Yerbo Inramato effioaciam habent.’ Quaat. lx. On the mutual relations and order of the sacraments in
the theological system of Aquinas, see Quu^t. lxv.
Art. 1, 2. One of his reasons for assigning the chief place to the
Eucharist is this : ‘Nam in Sacramento EueharistiiB continetur Ipse Christas
substantiuliter, in aliis autem sarramentis continetur qnaadam virtus
instrumentalist participata a Christo.’ Ihid. Art. 3.
3 The discussion of these points in detail
was cut short by the a’lthor’s death, before he reached the ‘sacrament of
orders:’ bnt a Supplement containing his opinions on tlie rest was formed out
of his Commentary on the Ilouk of Sentences, and is appended to the A rras and
other editions of the Summn,
WKSTKBS
cnrncii.
Tertis
Pat s.
John
Duns Scot us
(tL 1308),
the
Subtle.
The
peculiar opinions of his school.
doctrines which hereafter threatened to obtain complete ascendancy in all
the western Churches.
The most powerful rival of Aquinas and the Tho- mists of this period was
the English Franciscan, John Duns Scotus1, whose acumen and success
in the scholastic fields of war enabled him to organize the party known as ‘
Scotists.’ He was termed the ‘ Subtle Doctor,’ and although a realist in the
dispute concerning universal and particulars, diverged on many topics from the
system of Aquinas2, and attracted a large number of disciples. In
the narrower province of theology he is remarkable for his antagonism, in part
at least, to the authority of St Augustine. He maintained the freedom of the
human will, and stated other principles in such a way as to incur the
imputation of Pelayianism3; while in his theorizing with regard to
the conception of the Virgin he opposed, not only the more ancient teaching of
the Church4, but also that of Bernard5 and the school of
Thomists6.
1 Bom at Dunston, near Alnwick; or at Dunse
in Berwickshire; at 'Duns in the countrey of Mers, according to Spotswood (anno
1328), ’ p. 54. See Life of Scotus by Wadding (the Franciscan annalist;
prefixed to his edition of the Works of Scotus, Lugdun. 1039, 12 vols. fol.
2 Schrockh, xxiv. 435 sq.; Bitter, iv. 354
sq. Gieseler (hi. 305, n. 26) j draws attention to an order in which all the
Franciscan lecturers are commanded to follow Scotus ‘tarn in cursu philosophico
quam in thoo-
3 e.g. on the question of original sin he
argued that it was barely negative, a ‘carentia justitisB debits’ (In Lib.
Sentent. lib. n. Dist. xxxn. §7), discarding from his definition the idea of
concupiscence (Ibid. Dist. xxx.) He questioned the absolute necessity of
preventing grace, asserting ‘ quud ex puris naturalibus potest qucecunque
voluntas saltern in statu naturffi instituta diligere Deum super omnia’ (Ibid.
lib. hi. Dist. xxvu. § 15): and while Aquinas made the heresy of I’elagius to
consist in maintaining ‘quod initio** bene faciendi sit ex nobis, consummatio
autem a Deo’ (Summa, Part i., Quaast. ssnt., Art. 5), Scotus thought the root
of it to lie in the position ‘quod liberum arbitrium sujftciat sine gratia’
Ibid. lib. a. Dist. xxviii. § 1).
These Pelagianizing tendencies of the Scotists were opposed by orchbp.
Bradwardine (of Ganterbmy), who died 1349, in his De Causa Dei contra Pelagium,
etc., ed. Savile, Lond. 1618.
4 Cf. above, p. 233, n. 5. Domer (ii. 410, 417) connects the Hario-
latry
of Scotus with his peculiar views of the Incarnation.
6 Bernard in his Epist. clxxiv. speaks of the doctrine of the
immaculate conception as a novelty, ‘quam ritus Ecclesise nescit, non probat
ratio, non commendat antiqua traditio,’ etc.
6 In the Summa, Part. :ii. Qua'St. xxvu. Art. 1, as contrasted
with Duns Scotus, In Libr. Sentent. lib. hi. Dist. m. Qua;st. l. §§ 9, 14 sq.;
and iRosarium B. Maria;, seu Append, ad qucest. 1. dist. 3: cf. Klee, Hint.
Passing by a crowd of minor writers1 who adhered to one or
other of these theological parties, our attention is arrested by the most
original genius whom the thirteenth century produced. The Friar Bacon2,
bom at Tlehester, in Somersetshire, 1214, was trained in the universities of
Oxford and Paris, where his time was for the most part devoted to scientific
pursuits, and to the study of languages. His great proficiency in these had won
for him the name of ‘Doctor Mirabilis.’ He entered the Franciscan Order, but
the more fanatic members of that body, joining with unlettered clergymen and
academics, put an end to his public lectures, and eventually procured Lis
incarceration (1278), on the ground that he was prying too minutely into all
the mysteries of nature. In the Opus Majus de utilitate Scientiarum3,—a
collection of his works addressed iu 1266 to Pope Clement IV.,—the general
object is to inculcate the need of a reform in the physical and other sciences:
but he did not hesitate to push his principle of free inquiry into every sphere
of human thought4. While indicating little or no love for the
scholastic subtleties5,
of
Dogmas, part 11. ch. hi. § 25, where it is mentioned that Duns Scotus so far
carried his point in the University of Paris as to exclude all
persons from degrees who did not pledge themselves to maintain the truth of the
immaculate conception.
1 William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (d.
1248), deserves some mention as a theologian and apologist (Opp. Paris, 1674,
2 vols. folio), and as a sample of the scanty stock of writers who were not
attached to one or other of the Mendicant Orders. Of the ritualists belonging
to the thirteenth century the most eminent is Duranti (not to be confounded
with a m.minalistic schoolman, Durand de S. Pourcain), whose Rationale Divi-
norum OJTiriorum is a copious exposition of the principles supposed to be
expressed in the structure, ornaments, the ministry, and ritual of the Church.
It has been often published, e.g. Yenet. 1609. On the other liturgical writings
of the period, see Schrockh, xxviii. 277 sq.
2 Iloger is to bo distinguished from his
contemporary Robert Bacon, the friend of Grosseteste. See Tamier’s Biblioth.
under the names: from which source a good account of I’riar Bacon and his
writings may be drawn. Some idea of his marvellous acquaintance with chemistry
and other sciences is given by Dr Shaw, in Dr Hook’s I'ccl. Biogr. 1. 450, 451:
cf. Paltirave’s Merchant and Friar, passim; anti the Preface to the
volume of Bacon’s Opera Inedita, ed. Brewer, 1859, in the series of Chronicles
and ilemoriaU of Great Britain.
3 Ed. .Tebb, Lond. 1733.
4 e.g. he points out errors in the writings
of the Fathers (c. 12), arguing that ‘in omni homine est multa imperfeetio
sapiential tam in sanctis quam in sapientibus.’
5 lie preferred Aristotle on the whole, but
added very charaeteris-
Boger
Bacon
(d. 1294),
the Wonderful.
His
general views in relation to
theology.
jDeadness of
the Greek communion.
lie spoke iu favour of the wider circulation and more earnest study of
the sacred volume, tracing nearly all the evils of the times to want of personal
acquaintance with this heavenly ride of life1. He proved the
clearness and fertility of his convictions on these points by recommending a
revision of the Latin Vulgate2, and especially by urging the
importance of recurring to the Greek and Hebrew texts. Indeed the mind of Roger
Bacon was so greatly in advance of the period when he lived, as to have antedated
much of what has only flourished since the reformation of the Western Church.
EASTERN
CHURCH.
There was little in the mind of Eastern Christendom to correspond with
the activity, enthusiasm, and almost universal progress we have noted in the
sister churches of the West. Reposing with a vague and otiose belief on the
traditionary doctrines as they had been logically systematized by John of
Damascus, the great body of the ‘orthodox’ (or Greek) communion were subsiding
fast into a state of spiritual deadness and of intellectual senility. The
rigours of Byzantine despotism, too prone to intermeddle with the articles of
faith3, the ill example of a
tically.
‘Posteriores ij’sum in aliquibus correxerunt, et multa ad ejus opera
addideiunt, et adhuc addentur usque ad finem mundi: quia nihil est perfectum in
humanis inventionibus:’ Ilid. part ii. c. 8. The highest of iril sciences
(according to him) is tho science that treats of divine things, and it is all
contained in tho Bibit! ‘quso ii sacris literis tota con- tinmur, per jus tamon
canonicum et philosophiam e~plicanda: ’ as in the following note, p. 421; cf.
Neander, Mil. 112, 113.
1 See tho remarkable extracts from his
Epistola de Laude Scripture Sanctte, in the additions made to Ussher’s Hist.
Dngmat. by Wharton (Lond. 1689), pp. 420—424. The MS. is in the Library at
Lambeth: no. cc. fol. 38.
2 This idea was carried out in pan by Hugo
de S. Charo VS. Cher), a Dominican (d. 1263), who by the aid of
Hebrew, Greek, ar.d Latin MSS. reformed th< text of the vhole Bible. He also
composed n Goncordavc, of the Scriptures (Schrockh, ::x\hi. 331), and I’ostillm
in Universa MMw, juxta quadrvplicem senmm {Ibid. 368).
3 Cf. above, p. 50, n. 4. In tho present
period Nicetas Ohuniates (De Manuele Comnenu, lib. vii. c. 5) remarks that tho
emperors expected men to believe that they were, ws SoXouwj' Ot:naotboi ical
Soyuanoral tfeioraroi, Kal Kavoves rCy ko.vovusv ev&earspoi, ical air\vs
Qtltav kclI dvdptavlvta* TTfiayfidr^r dTpo<r<f>a\eis yvJiuoves. The
emperor here alluded to (1143—1180) excite(l a most violent controversy, by
insisting on the general adoption of this
crowd of idle and unlettered monks1, and
the perplexities entailed upon the Eastern empire by the recklessness of the
Crusaders2, had contributed to this result. The literary spirit now
and then revived, however; and if they in whom it wrought are often shadows in
comparison of men like Chrysostom, or Basil, or the Gregories, they must be,
notwithstanding, viewed as bright exceptions to the general dulness of the
ago.
Among the foremost scholars of the eleventh century is Michael Psellus,
the younger, who besides composing multifarious treatises3 on jurisprudence,
physics, mathematics, and philosophy, displayed an aptitude for higher fields
of contemplation in his Chapters on the Holy Trinity and the Person of Christ,
and his Paraphrases on the Old Testament.
Contemporary with him was Theophylact4, archbishop of
Bulgaria, who achieved a lasting reputation by his Commentaries on the Gospels,
the Acts, the Epistles of St Paul, and the Minor Prophets. They are based, however,
for the most part on the corresponding labours of St Chrysostom.
Another exegetical writer was a monk of Constantinople, Euthymius
Zigabenus5, who commented on the Psalms, the Gospels, and the
Pauline Epistles, in the style, and not
formula, rbv
treirapKVtievov Qeov T/>nj(p^peiv re 6/j.ou
/cat Trpofffptyeadai (Ibid.). Home ol the bishops who resisted it, when
sanctioned by a council, were instantly deposed: cf. Neander, tiii. 252, 253.
On a later occasion, when the prelates made a stand against him, Manuel
threatened to call in the pope, which iJrimstely led to a compromise : Ibid.
p. 254. The despotism of Michael Palsologus (1259—1282) occasioned -what is
known an the Amman schism (12(16—13121, by which tho Church of Constantinople
was for a time divided in itself and separated from that of Alexandria. See
Neale, n. 311, 312.
1 See the startling revelations of
Eustathius, ’Eirf-rjre^is fiiov pomxi- kov
tir! tGv inpl o.vtov, passim.
Opp. ed. Tafel, 1832.
2 On the relations of the East and West at.
this period, see below, pp. 276 sq.
3 See a list of them in Oudinus, De
Scripforibut Eccl. ;i, 646. and the article in Smith’s IHogr. Viet. in.
563, 561. The work on th« Trinity and some of tho paraphrases have been
published. Psellus also wrote an ecclesiastical treatise, Eis rds dyias iirrd
<rvroSovs, Basil. 1536.
4 Opp. Venet, 1754—1763. 4 vols. fol.: cf.
Schrockh, xnm. 315--318. The sober views of Theophylact on the separation of
East and West may be fathered from his Lib. de iis in qitibus Latini
accusantur.
J
Cf. above, p. 180, n. 1. Gieseler contends that he should be called Zygadeuus.
His valuable Commentaries on the Psalina and Gospels have
Michael
Psellus (d 1105?)
Theophy-
lact (d. 1112?
Euthymius
Zigaberw* id. 1118 ?)
Nicetas
Acominatus <0 1206?)
Nicholas
bp. of Me- thone (d. 1200?)
Eustathius
archbp. of Thessalo- nica
(d. 1198).
unfrequently the language, of the earlier doctors of the East. He also
wrote a Panoply1 in refutation of all forms of misbelief, deriving
the great bulk of his materials from the same quarter
In the following century a kindred work2, intended as the
complement of this, proceeded from the learned pen of Nicetas Acominatus (born
at Chon®, formerly Colosse). The title is Thesaurus Orthodoxies, but only
portions of it have been published.
Nicholas, bishop of llethone (in Messenia) was a more original and able
writer. He examined and rejected the philosophy of Proclus3, the
Neo-Platonist, whose principles appear to have survived in the Peloponnesus,
and was also energetic in repelling the encroachments of the pope and in
defending the peculiar tenets of the Greeks.
But all the Eastern scholars of this period are surpassed by the
archbishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius. His gigantic commentaries'1
on the ancient poets, more especially on Homer, did not so engross his mind as
to unfit him for the prosecution of his ecclesiastical studies. Some of his
minor works6, including Sermons and Epistles, have lately come to
light, and we there see him treading in the
been often
printed in Latin versions. The Greek text of that on the Psalms is in
Theophylacti Opp. Tom. iv. 325 sqq.: that on the Gospels ■was printed at
Leipzig, 1792, ami Athens, 1840. The Commentary on the Epistles exists only in
MS. Cf. Fabricius, Ilibl. Greeca, vm. 328 sq.; Gieseler, in. 485, n. 4; and
Schrnckh (xxvm. 306 sq.) on the character of his works.
1 The full title is llavo7r'\ta SoyfiaTiKj,
rrjs opOooo^ov nte-mos. Part only of the Greek original has been published (at
Tergovisto, in 'Wallachia, 1711). A Latin translation appeared at Venice in
1555: hut the thirteenth title, I'ard Tijs 7ra\ntdsrjroi raii' ’IraXuv, on the
doctrine of the Procession, is there dropped. See an interesting article (by
Ull- mann>. in the St.udien und Kritiken, for 1833, in. 665. Another work of
this class (A Collection of the Principles of Faith) was composed for the
Alexandrine Jacobites by Ebn-Nassal. It not only refutes the systems of
paganism and Judaiesm, but makes an assault on tho Nestorians and the Melchites.
Neale, ii. 304.
2 tjtlmann, Ibid. p. 680. The whole is
extant in the Eoyal Library of Paris. The first five bo. ks appeared in Paris,
1569. On the historical writings of the author, see Smith’s Biogr. Diet. H.
1183. -
3 Tho title of the +reatise is
’XrdrTvfe &eoXoyiKrjs aToixa&imfs UpiiAov, ed. Yomel, Francf. 1825: cf.
Ullmann, as above, pp. 701 sq. His treatises De Primatu Papa, etc. are not
published (Fabricius, Bibl. Grae. xi. 290).
4 See Smith’s Biogr. Diet. n. 120.
5 Euatathii Oyjuteula, ed. Tafel, Fran?of.
1832 : cf. Neander, fra; 248.
steps of Chrysostom, and waging war against the hollowness, frivolity,
and superstitions of the age.
Besides a multitude of long-forgotten writers on divinity, and some who
still enjoy considerable fame as jurists and historians, others had continued
to spring up beyond the pale of the ‘Orthodox’ communion. Ebed-Jesu1
metropolitan of Soba (Nisibis) was the most able and voluminous writer of the
Chaldaean (or ‘Nestorian’) body; and among the Jacobites were Dionysius
Bar-Salibi2, bishop of Amida, Jacob3, bishop of Tagritum,
and Abulpharagius ‘ (Bar- Hebrseus), maphrian or primate of the East. The
kindred sect of the Armenians also added many contributions to the province of
dogmatic and polemical theology, as well as to the other fields of learning5.
The best known and most accessible are those of the Armenian catholicos,
Nerses", who exhibits a decided predilection for the western modes of
thought.
Hated and occasionally persecuted by their Moslem conquerors, these
sects had gradually been drawn more closely to each other7, though
retaining their distinctive creeds. The state of feeling was, however,
dilferent in the Greek and Latin Christians, whom we saw diverging more completely
and exchanging the most bitter fulminations at the close of the previous
period.
1 Among other tilings (see Asseman, Bihl.
Orient, m. part. I. 325) ht wrote a treatise entitled Liber Margarita seu de
Veritate Christians' Iteligionu, printed in Maii Script. Vet. Nova
Collectio, llom. 1825, Tom. x. pan. ii.
317 sq.
2 He wrote Commentaries on the whole Bible
and many other treatise? (Asseman, Ibid. ii. 156). HisLitwrgia is published in
Benaudot, Lit.urg. Orient. Collectio, ii. 448 sq., ed. 1847.
a
On his Liber Tlu’saurorum, see Assenan, Ibid. n. 237.
4 Besides a very important historical work,
Ilist. Dijnasliarum, of which versions have been printed entire (ed.
Pocock, 1663), together with a portion of the original Syriac (Leipzig, 178!))
and extracts from the rest ia Asseman I Ibid. it. 241—463),
Abulpharagius wrote many strictly theo- loaieal works, e.g. Ilnrreum
Mysteriorum, CaudUlabrum Sanctorum de FandamentU ecclesiasticis. His
Nomocanon Ecclcsice Antiochena is published iu a Latin version by Mai,
as above, Tom. x. part. ii. 1—268: and hinLiturgia inllenaudot, ii.
455—467, where see the editor’s annotations, pp. 467- 470.
5 See Neumann’s Gesch. der Armcnisc.h.
Liter, p. 148: cf. above, p. 175, n. 4.
6 His work?, with a Latin version, were
published at Venice, in 2 vols. Svo. 1833.
"
Asseman (ii. 291) quotes the
following from Abulpiaragius, who,
T 2
fihed-Jesu
(d. 1318).
Bar-SafU
i (d, 3171’. Jacob of Tagritui,i
id. 1231).
AbuJpha-
raqius
(d! 1283).
Nerses
(d. 1173).
Prolongation
of the
schism.
Reunion
attempted
1098:
RELATIONS OF
THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCHES.
The effuct of tlie scholastic system, and still more of the development
of papal absolutism, was to sharpen the great I ines of demarcation which
divided East from West. The Latin theory as to the mode of the Procession of
the Holv Spirit, which has constituted, with some points of minor moment, an
insuperable bar to compromise, was'now more clearly stated and more logically
urged into its consequences by a master mind like Anselm’s1; while
the towering claims of Hildebrand, content with nothing short of universal
monarchy in every patriarchate of the Church, were met by indignation and
defiance2.
It is likely that the thought of widening the papal empire was a moving
cause of the Crusades; and when the iirst of those enterprises was considered
at the council of Bari3 fin Apulia), 3 038, the Latin doctrine was
distinctly
after
censuring those who introduced absurd heresies into the Church, continues:
‘Reliqua> vero quae hodie in mundo obtinent secta>, cum omnes de
Trinitate et incolumitate naturarum, ex quibus est Christus absque conversione
et commistioiu-, ague bene smtiant, in numinibvs unionis solum secumpugnant:’
cf. Ibid. pp. 249, 266. The Armenians on more than one occasion made overtures
to the Greek empire with a view to the establishment of union, dnd that union
seemed to be almost completed in 1179. (Gieseler, m. 503, n. 9.) But
subsequently (1199) fresh negotiations were opened with the popes, which led to
r more permanent result (Schrockh, xxix. 368 sq.). In 1289 it is recorded that
the catho- licos received a pallium from Rome (Ibid. 370). This truce was,
however, ultimately broken in its turn. The powerful Latins al-^o threatened at
one period (1237- -1247) to absorb the Jacobites and the Nestorians: see Ray-
naldus, Ann. liccl. ad an. 1247, §? 32—42;
Schrockh, xxix. 363—367.
1 Se< his
De Processione Spiritus Sancti contra Grcecos: Opp. ed. Ger-
beron, pp. 49—61. The sober tone of this production may i>e estimated from
the Prologue where he is speaking of his antagonists: ‘ Qui quoniam Kvangelia
nobiscum venerantur, et in aliis de Trino et Uno Deo credunt iioc ipsum per
omnia quod nos, qui de eadem re certi sumus; spero per auxilium ejusdem
Spiritus Sancti quia si malunt solidse veritat; acquies- cere quam pro inani
victoria contendere, per hoc quod absque ambiguitate confitentur ad hoc quod
non recipient rationabiliter duci possint.’
2 e.g. Anna Comnena, as quoted by
Gibbon, ed. llilrnan, vi. 5, n. 11. X7nder Hildebrand (1075) the Y>Testem
pontiffs made their first attempt upon the Russian church, ‘ex parte Ii.
Petri:’ Mansi, xx. 183: Moura- vjeff, p. 362.
8
instlm happened to be present, and (adds William t'; Malmesbury)
‘ita pertractavil qusestionis latera, ita penetravit et enubilavit intima, ut
Latini clamore testarentur gaudium, Grasci de se praberi dolerent ridicu- lum.
Df Gestis Pontif. p. 100; ed. Hamilton. Out of this oration grew the treatise
above mentioned.
reaffirmed, and the anathema imposed afresh on all who ventured to impugn
it. In the reign of the next pontitf (Paschal II.) a negotiation was set on
foot (1113) by sending Peter Chrysolauus1, archbishop of Milan, to
the court of Alexius I. Comnenus, (1081—1118), who was trembling at the
progress of the Seljuk Turks on one side and the wild Crusaders on the other.
Terras of union were again proposed in 1115 Paschal writing a pacific letter to
the emperor, but urging the submission" of the Eastern prelates as the
foremost article of the concordat he was anxious to arrange. The project
failed, however, as we learn from its revival in 1136, when Anselm, bishop of
Havelberg. and ambassador of Lothair II., disputed with Nicetas, the archbishop
of Nicomedia, at Constantinople. It is obvious from the extant record3
of this interview, that the divergency of East and West had rather widened
since the time of Cerularius; and the other writings of the age4
bear witness to the fact. They shew especially6 that the
encroachments of the pope were now more keenly felt to
and
sulsf- quentty :
but
the tf- fart unavailing.
1
See his Oration in Leo AUatius, Gracia Orthodoxa, I. 379 sq. Bom. 1652. The
treatise J)e Eccl. Occident, atque Orient, perpetua Contention*, by the same
author, is an important, though one-sided, authority in this .Uspute.
5 ‘Prima igitur unitatis hujus via hsee
videtur. nt confrater noster Constantinopolilanus patriarcha primalujn et
reverentiam sedis apostolicse recognoscens...obstinatiam prasteritam
corrigat...Ea enim, quae inter Latinos et Grsecos filler vel consuetudinum
[diversitatem] faciunt, non viden- tur aliter posse sedari, nisi prius capiti
membra cohffreant.’ The whole of this letter is printed for the lirst time in
Jaffe, Hegest. Pont if. Human. pp. 510, 511, Berolin. 1851. The independent
bearing of the Bussian Church at this period is well attested bv a letter of
the metropolitan of Kieff to the pope, in Mouravieff, ed. Blackmore, pp.
36N—370.
* In D’Achery’s Spicileg. i. 161 sq. Of. the
modem German essays, referred to by Xeander, vm. 256 i'note).
1 See the list in Gieseler, iii. 491, n. 7. The popular hatred is
graphically sketched by Gibbon, vi. 5 sq. At this period grew up the still
pending controversy on the subject of the Holy Places at Jerusalem. After the
capture of Jerusalem in 1187, the ‘orthodox’ or Greeks purchased from Saladin
the church of the Holy Sepulchre; but Latin Christians, and even some of the
Eastern sects (e.g. the Armenians), were allowed the uiie of chapels in it, to
the great ann. lyance of the proper owners.
5 Thus Nicetas, in the Disputation# above
quoted (lib. in. c. 8, p. 1961: ‘Si Bomanus Pontifex in exoelso throno gloria
suse residens nobis tonare, et quasi projicere manda'a sua de sublimj voluerit,
et non nostro concilio, sed proprio arbitrio, pro beneplaeito suo de nobis et
de ecelesiis nostris judicare, imo imperare voluerit: qua' fratemitas, seu
etiam quce patcmitas hi£c esse poterit! Quis hoc imquurn ;equo animo sustinero
queat 1’ etc.
RELATIONS OF
THE EAST AND WEST.
Founda-
t ion of a Latin empire at Constantinople.
Its
effect on the reunion of the Churches.
be subversive of religious nationality, and. that the ‘Roman’ Church was
being substituted for the Catholic and Apostolic brotherhood which they were
taught to reverence in the creedl.
The founding of a Latin empire at Constantinople by the French and
Venetians, and the brutal pillage that had been its harbinger (1204), could
only deepen the hereditary hatred of the Greeks, aud add fresh fuel to the
flame1. It' chanced, however, that the new political relations which
this Latin dynasty effected, led the way to another series of attempts for
binding the antagonistic churches into one. The Eastern emperors, who held
their court at Nicsea, watching for an opportunity to stem the furious tide of
western domination, ultimately sought to bring about this object by negotiating
a religious treaty with the popes. The step angina ed in the able politician,
John III. Vatatzes (1222- 1255), who was seconded by two severe but on the
whole conciliatory letters3 from the pen of Germanus, the patriarch
of Constantinople (1232). Gregory IX. attracted by these overtures dispatched
his envoys to the East {1233). They were instructed to declare4 that
while he could not tolerate iu any one the slightest deviation from the
doctrines of the Roman Church, he
1 Ibid.
2 Ho deep had the aversion grown that ut
the date of the council of Latoran (1215), it was no: unusual for the Greeks to
rebaptize those who had been already baptized by the Latins; c. 1: cf. above,
p. 188, u. 5. Other sweeping charges which polemics brought against each other
may be seen iu the Tractatus contra Gracuram errores de Processione Spiritus
S.,de animabns defimctorum, de azymis et fermentnto et de obedientia Rom.
Ecclesice (1252), in Oanisius, Lect. Antiq., ed. Ba^nage, iv. 29 sq. In the
midst of these dissensions the French king, Philip Augustus, founded a ‘
collegium Gonstantinopolitanum ’ in Paris for the training of the Greeks who
now and then embraced the Latin rite: Bulssus, Hist. Univ. Paris, in. 10.
3 Preserved in Matthew Paris, a.d. 1237, pp. 386 sq.: but misdated.
See an account of the life ami writings of Germanus in Smith’s Biogr. Diet. ii.
264. He did not hesitate to trace the schism between the rival churches to the
pride and tyranny of Home: ‘ Divisio nostra! unitatis processit a tyrannide
vestras oppresnionis [addressing the cardinals], et exactionum Bomana!
ecclesia!, quae de matre facta noverca suos quos diu educaverat, more rapacis
volucris suos pullos expellentis, filios elon- gavitp. 389.
4 See the papal Letters in Matthew Paris,
pp. 390 sq. The envoys were two Dominicans and two Franciscans, respecting
whose negotiation, see Baynaluus, Annal. a.i>.
1233, § 5 sq.
would allow the Orientals to retain a few of their peculiar usages, ami
even to omit, provided they did not repudiate1, the expression
Filioque, in their recitation of the Creed.
Although this effort shared the fete of many of its predecessors, an
important school with leanings to the Western view of the Procession now arose
among the Greeks. The leader of it was an influential ascetic, Nicephoros
Blemmidas2; and when the policy of John Yatatzes was continued under
Michael Palaeologus, who drove the Latins from Constantinople (1261 j, the plan
of a reunion was more widely entertained, and in so far as the Byzantine
jurisdiction reached, was almost carried to effect. The emperor himself appears
to have been forced into this negotiation by his dread of the crusade3
which XTrban IV. had organized against him, for the purpose of replacing
Baldwin II., his Latin rival, on the throne. When every other scheme for
warding off the danger failed him, he convened a synod at Constantinople, arid
enlarging 011 the critical position of affairs, attempted to win over the
reluctant Clergy to his side. He argued4 that the use of leavened or
unleavened bread might be in future left an open question; that it was
imprudent, and uncharitable also, for the Eastern Christians to require an
absolute agreement in the choice of theological terms, and that they ought to
exercise forbearance on such points, provided the antagonistic Latins would in
turn expunge their Filioque from the Creed; that by agreeing to insert the
1 They were even required to burn the
"books which they had written against the Latin doctrine of the
Procession, and to inculcate it in their
sermons.
3
He wrote two works on the Procession, in the one maintaining the Greek
doctrine, and in the other manifesting a decided preference for the Latin. Leo
Allatius (De Perpetua Consensione, lib. ii. c. 14) attempts to explain this
variation. Both the treatises are published in that writer’s Gracia Orthodoxa,
i. 1—60, The firmness of Nicephorus in declining to administer the sacrament to
Marcesina, an imperial mistress, is applauded by Neander, vm, 263.
3 See Gibbon, vi. 96 sq., ed. Milman.
4 The best account is that of Georgius
Pachymeres, who was advocate-general of the church of Constantinople, and
wrote, among other things, an Historia Byzantina, containing the life of
Michael Palfflo- logus: see especially lib. v. c. 18 sq., ed. Bonn, 1835, and
cf. Schrockh, xxix. 432 sq.
RELATIONS OF
THE EAST AND WEST.
Fresh
attempts at .union.
The
arguments of Michael Palceo- logus.
RELATIONS OF
THE EAST AND WEST.
Resistance
offered to them,.
His
deputation to ihe pope,
1273.
Reunion
of Rome and Comtanti-
name of tho Roman pontiff in the ‘diptychs,’ they Would not incur the
charge of elevating him unduly, nor of derogating from the honour of the
Eastern patriarchs; and lastly, that the exercise of papal jurisdiction in the
matter of appeals, if such a claim as that should be in words asserted, could
not, owing to the distance of the Eastern empire, he so harsh and burdensome as
they were ready to forebode.
The, patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph, who was ever an inflexible
opponent of the compromise, had found a warm supporter in the chartophylax
Beccus, or Yeccus, (keeper of the records in the great church of Constantinople).
But it seems that the convictions of the latter underwent a thorough change1
while he was languishing in prison, as a penalty for his resistance to the
wishes of the court; aud afterwards we find him the most able and unflinching
champion of the party who were urging on the project of reunion. Michael
Palseologus now sent a message2 to pope Gregory X., :n
which, ignoring the disinclination of the patriarch and the hostility of his
own subjects at Constantinople, he expressed a strong desire for unity, and
even ventured to hold out a hope of its immediate consummation v1273).
In the following year a larger embassy3 appeared in his behalf at
what is called
1 This change is ahcribable, in part at
least, to th( writings of Ni- cephorus Blemmidas. Some have viewed it as no
more than Hypocritical pretence. But his subsequent firmness, notwithstanding
all the persecutions he endured from the dominant party, is opposed to this
construction. Many ot his works are published by Leo Allatius. in the Gracia
Orthodox a.
2 Neale, Bast. Church, Alexandria,’ ii. 315. The displeasure cf the people
at this movement of the court is noticed by Pachymeres, as above, lib. v. c.
22. Gibbon mentions, however, that the letters of union were ultimately signed
by the emperor, his son, and -hirty-five metropolitans (vi. 98), which included
all the suffragans of that rank belonging to the patnarcnate: yet (as Mr Neale
remarks) they do not address the pope as ‘oecumenical,’ but only as the ‘great
pontiH of the Apostolic see.’ Ibid. p. 316,
3 The members of it were Germanus, formerly
patriarch of Constantinople, Theuphanes, metropolitan of Nica?a, and many
other court dignitaries. In the letter which they carried with them ilansi,
xxiv. 07), Michael Palieologus, after he had made a statement of his faith
according to a form drawn up by Clement IV. in 1267, preferred the following
request: ■ Bogamus magnitudinem vestram, ut ecclesia nositri, dicat sanctum
symbolum, prout dicebat hoc ante scbisma usque in hodiernum diem;’ but it seems
that the delegates themselves had no objection to me
the 'general’1 council of Lyons; and on June 29, 1274, the
formal work of ‘reconciliation’ was inaugurated, in the presence of the pope
himself, with unexampled grandeur and solemnity’. A later session of the
prelates, on July 6, beheld the representatives of Michael Palseologus abjure
the ancient schism, and recognize the papal primacy, as well as the
distinctive tenets of the Roman Church.
On their return, the patriarch Joseph, who had previously retired into a
convent waiting for the issue of negotiations he had vainly striven to retard,
was superseded by his former colleague Beccus3: but the people of
Constantinople viewed the union with unmixed abhorrence, and in many cases
went so far as to decline religious intercourse with any one suspected of the
slightest tenderness for Rome. The gentle pen of Beccus was in vain employed
to soften the asperity of public feeling; and although he often interceded with
the emperor in mitigation of the penalties inflicted by that heartless tyrant
on the nonconforming party, his endeavours only tended to increase the general
agitation. He resigned his honours, Dec. 26, 1282, convinced that lie should
never reconcile his Hock to the unpopular alliance with the West4.
The Roman pontiffs had in turn grown weary of the coldness, craft, and
insincerity betrayed by Michael and his
clause
Filiotue, as they chanted the creed ■with that addition on the 6th of
July.
1 The Council was not recognized as
‘oecumenical ’ by Eastern churches: it contained no representatives of
Athanasius the patriarch of Alexandria, nor of Euthymius of Antioch, nor of
Gregory II. of Jerusalem. The last of these positively wrote against the union.
Noale, Ilid. p. 317. The Fame repugnance to the union was felt in Russia.
Mouravieff, p. 49.
-
Five hundred Latin bishops, seventy abbots, and about a thousand other
ecclesiastics were present, together with ambassadors from England, France,
Germany, &c. Tbe pope celebrated high mass, and Bona- ventura preached.
Aquinas, who had recently composed an Opusculum contra Gracot, was expected to
takn part in the proceedings of the council, but died on his journey thither. •
1 Pachymeres, as above, lib. v. c. 24 sq.,
and Neander, vm. 270 sq. Banishment, imprisonment, confiscation of property,
scourging, aud personal mutilation were among the instruments employed by
Michael Palfeologus in forcing bis subjects into an approval of the union with
the Latins. On the other side, the ultra Greeks were most unmeasured in their
animosity and in the charges which they brought against their rivals.
* Pachymeres (lib. vi. c. 30) says that,
with the exception of tbe emperor ami patriarch, and a few of their immediate
dependents, xdyrts
iiv<Tu.{vaii'Of
Tig fipqi'Tj.
nopU,
at the council cf Lynns. 1274. General disajjpro- hation of the me.a-
Formal
dissolution of the iiniirVj 1281.
Jlise
and spread of the Bogomiles.
son in carrying out the terms of union. They accordingly allowed the
crown of the Two Sicilies to fall into the hands of his powerful rival1,
Charles of Anjou (1266): and when he instigated the revolt of those provinces
in 1280. pope Martin IV, restrained himself no longer, breaking up the hollow
and unprofitable treaty by his excommunication of the Eastern emperor2
(Nov. 18. 1281). The speedy death of Michael Palseologus (1282) was followed by
the overthrow and disappearance of the Latin party, and the formal revocation3
of the acts in which the see of Constantinople had succumbed to that of Rome.
THE EASTERN
AND WESTERN SECTS.
The most important of the Eastern sects who flourished at this period
were the Bogomiles, or the Massilians4, kindred (as we have already
seen5) to the Enthusiasts or Euchites. Issuing in the early part of
the twelfth century frcm Bulgaria, where they grew into a formidable body, they
invaded other districts in the patriarchate of Constantinople, and soou
afterwards obtained a footing in Egyptian dioceses'1.
At the centre of their theological system7, which was
• Gibbon, vi. 100 sq.
2 See the document in Raynaldus, Annal.
Eccles. a.d. 1281, § 25. Earlier
traces of displeasure are noted in Schrockh, xxtx. 14’.).
3 The new emperor Andronicus II., although
he had joined his father in negotiating the union on political grounds, was
really opposed to it: see his Life by Pachymeres, Ub. i. c. 2. He also was
excommunicated, by Clement V., in 1307.
4 That these names may be regarded as
descriptive of the same body, is proved by the following passage, among others:
H iroXviivvjuos tOiv MaacnXiai'wi',
etroif Boyo/jil\uv atpens it* ttcliti
Trb\ei, koX xtfyp, Ka!
twapxty.
ravPy.
Euthymius Zigabenus, in his work entitled ’’E\t7xos Kal 0p.apftos tt}s ,S\a<T(p7]aov kcu iro\uet8oiir
alptctws tiSv d$tuv
Macr<ra\.ayut,f
rQv kcu &ovv8aiTt3v /eat KoyopLtXwv kaXov/j.tvui', /cat Eu^trwj', k. t.X.,
edited by To]lias in his Iter Italicum, 1696, p. 112.
6
Above, p. 187. The colony of the Paulicians at Philippopolis (above, p. 81, n.
4) was still thriving: but their influence was counteracted in a great degree
by the foundation of the orthodox Alexiopolis in the reign of Alexius Comnenus
(1081—1118). See the Life of that emperor Alexias') by his learned daughter
Anna Comnena, lib. xiv.
6 Neale, ii. 240. According to this writer,
a treatise, still in MS., was composed by the Alexandrine patriarch Eulogius
against the Bogomiles
f
Our information on this subject is derived mainly from tli« wo^k of Euthymius,
above cited, n. 4, and the twenty-third title of his Pano- plia (see above, p.
274, n. 1), which was edited separately by Gieseier,
quasi-dualistic, stood a superhuman being whom they called Satanael, the first-born
Son of God, and honoured with the second place in the administration of the
world1. This Being (a distorted image of the Prince of Evil) was ere
long intoxicated by the vastness of his power: he ceased to pay allegiance to
the Father, and resolved to organize an empire of his own. A multitude of
angels, whom he had involved in his rebellion, were ejected with him from the
nearer presence of the Lord, and after fashioning the earth from preexistent
but chaotic elements, he last of all created man. The human soul, however, had
a higher origin: it was inspired directly into our first parents by the Lord of
heaven Himself; the framer of the body having sought in vain to animate the
work until he had addressed his supplications to the Author of all Good*. The
very excellences now apparent in mankind inflamed the envy of Satanael. He
seduced the mother of the human race; and Cain, the godless issue of that
intercourse, became the root and representative of evil: while his brother
Abel, 011 the contrary, the son of Adam, testified to the existence of a better
principle in man. This principle, however, was comparatively inefficacious3
owing to the crafty malice of the Tempter;
Gottingen,
1842. The general truthfulness of Eastern writers on the Bogomiles has been
established by the close agreement of their narrative with independent
publications of the Western Church in refutation of the kindred sect of
Cathari.
1 Euthym. Panop. tit. xxiii. c. 6: cf. the apocryphal Gospel
in Thilo’s Codex Apocryph. N. Test. I. 885, and Neander’s summary, vm. 279 sq.
2 Aieirpeo-peijaaTo irp6s rov ayaOov IT
artpa, Kal irap€Ka\e<re ire/xcpdyjvai Trap avrov ttvotiv, iwayyeiXd/Atvos
koivov elvai rov &v0puirovt el faoirot?)8rjy Kal
airo rod yivovs aurou irXypovadai rous ovpavfy tottovs T(Sv airofyujjOivruv ayyekuv: Ibid. c. 7. The same idea of
supplying vacancies occasioned by the fall of the angels is mentioned
elsewhere: e. g. by Scotus Erigena, t)e Divisione Natures, p. 304, ed. Oxon.
3 A£yov<rtvt 8n t&v
avdpwirw wiKp&s rvpawovp.ivoiv, Kal diryvuis dxoMv- fitvwv, fxbyis 6\lyoi
nvls rijs rov iraTpos fieplSos iyivovro, Kal els ttjv twv dyy£\<*)v ra^iv avipyvav. Ibid. c. 8. One of the
acts of Satanael, according to this sect, was to delude Moses, and through him
the Hebrew nation, by giving them the Law. The Bogomiles had consequently no
reverence for the Pentateuch, although they used the Psalter and the Prophets,
as well as the New Testament (c. 1). Neander thinks (vm. 286) that they
attributed a paramount authority to the Gospel of St John: and it is actually
stated (c. 16) that a copy of that Gospel was laid upon the head of each on his
admission to the sect.
SECTS.
The
main features of their creed.
Their
false views respecting the Incarnation :
and
the
Holy
Trinity.
Other
errors.
and at length1 an act of meroy on the part of God was
absolutely needed for the rescue and redemption of the human soul. The agent
whom lie singled out was Christ. A spirit, called the Son of God, or Logos, and
identified with Michael the Archangel, came into the world, put on the
semblance of a body’, baffled the apostate angels, and divesting their
malignant leader of all superhuman attributes, reduced his title from Satanael
to Satan, and curtailed his empire in the world3. The Saviour was
then taken up to heaven, where, after occupying the chief post of honour, He
is, at the close of the present dispensation, to be reabsorbed into the essence
out of which His being is derived. The Holy Spirit, in like manner, is,
according to the Bogomiles, an emanation only, destined to revert hereafter,
when His work has been completed, to the aboriginal and only proper source of
life.
The authors of this scheme had many points in common with the other
mediaeval sects. They looked on all the Church as antichrist ian and as ruled
by fallen angels, arguing that no others save theiy own community were genuine
‘citizens of Christ’4. The strong repugnance which they felt to
every thing that savoured of Mosaism5 urged them to despise the
ritual system of the Church: for instance, they contended that the only proper
baptism
1 This was said to be in the 5500th year
after the creation of the world, which corresponded with the Christian era in
the reckoning of Constantinople.
2 <rapKO. t$ <pa<.voi±(v{) vkitcqv
Kal ofiolav ApOp'jiTov a&^an t-q 5’ d\t]6rti} ai'Xox *at (/to7r/>ejriJ,
c. 8. The Incarnation and the Passion of the Christ were, therefore, equally
unreal. Ibid.
s
According to Euthymius (Ibid.) Satan was shut up in Tartarus raxel *ai jSapu
k\oiQ KaraSijffai Kal ey/cXetffai ry Taprdpy); but it appears from other
statements that ihe unredeemed were still, according to tho Bogomiles, exposed
to his malignity: cf. Meander’s note, viii.
281. The consciousness of this may have led them to propitiate the
powers of darkness by a modified worship, which some of them actually paid;
appealing 1 n justification of thnir conduct to the language of apocryphal
Gospels \Ibid. cc. 20, 21). On the devil-worshippers, cf. above, p. 187, ' . 5.
4 See Tollius, Iter Ital. p. 112. The word
is xp«m>t6X!to.i.
5 See above, p. 283, n. 3. They spoke of
churches as the habitation of demons (Euthymius, as above, c. 18), urging that
the Almighty does not dwell in ‘temples made with hands;’ they condemned the
sacrament of tho alrar (ttjv
fiuartKTjv Kal tf>piKT7jp Upovpylav), on the ground that it was Ui'ciav ruv
intHKot’VTtov toI■ raws
fiat/;.jvuv. c. 17. The only
form of prayer which they allowed was the Lord’s Prayer: c. 19.
is a baptism of the Spirit1. A more healthy feeling was indeed
expressed iu their hostility to image-worship* and exaggerated reverence of the
saints, though even there the opposition rested mainly on Docetic views of
Christ and His redemption3.
These opinions had been widely circulated4 iu the Eastern
empire when Alexius Comnenus (d. 1118) caused iuquiries to be made respecting
them, and after he had singled out a number of the influential misbelievers5
doomed them to imprisonment for life. An aged monk, named Basil, who came
forward as the leader of the sect, resisted the persuasions of Alexius and the
patriarch. He ultimately perished at the stake, in Constantinople, 1119. His
creed, however, still survived and found adherents in all quarters, more
especially in minds alive to the corruptions of the Church, and mystic in their
texture".
The communication which existed now between the Eastern and the Western
world, arising chiefly out of pilgrimages, commerce, and crusades, facilitated
the transmission of these errors into Lombardy, the south of France, aud
ultimately into almost every part of Western Europe. Ail the varying titles,
Bulgri , Pope-
1 c. Jfi. The baptism administered at
church was in their eyes equivalent to John’s, and therefore wad a vestige of
Judaism. Their own mode of initiation is described in tho paragraph here
quoted.
2 Toi's *Iepa/ix«s Si Kal tovs IIaiVpas
6/j.ou wdyras iirohoKiiia^oviriv lit a5a>Xo\arpar fitd 7t)v twp tixoio'v r
kvvt] a iv (c. 11). It is very remarkable that the Bogomiles cherished an esteem
for Constantine Co- prommus (above, p. 74).
:1
They abhorred the symbol of the cross ws Areuptrrpi toP ^wrrjpos (c. 14); they refused the title Ofotoims to the
Virgin on the ground that it properly belongs to every holy soul, and not
peculiarly to her who was unconscious even of the Saviour’s birth (r^s
TrapOtvov pyre n)v etiroSov airou yvavayt pyre T-qv i^ohou, c. 8). An Oration
was composed by the patriarch of Constantinople, (rermanus (d. 1254), In
exaltativnem vene- randcr cruris et advcrsus Bogomilns; in Oretser, Opp. Ii.
112 sq.
* See the
expressions in p. 282, n. 4.
5 For an account of the stratagem employed
by Alexius, see Schroekh,
xxix. 462 sq.
6 See the sketch given by Neander of the
two monks Chrysomalos and Niphon (viii. 289- 295). Several councils of
Constantinople (e.g. 1140, 114:i; Mansi, xxi. 551, 583) anathematized the
principles of tho Bogomiles.
7 This name (witb its varieties, Bulgares,
Bougres, etc.) points at once to Bulgaria, the chief seat of the Bogomiles, and
formerly infected with the cognate heresy of the I’aulicians (Gibbon, v. 281
sq. ed. llil- man'.
KKCT8.
Thtir
apparition to ihuiges and sii tit-worth tp.
Partial
svpprestion of the sect,
1319.
The
rise of the Cat ha ri or AV,i- jenscs.
The
abstract principles of their creed.
licani1, Pater ini2, Passagieri3,
Oathari4, and Albigenses5, indicate, if not the very
same, at least a group of kindred sects, all standing in relations more or less
immediate with the Bogomiles, and holding certain points in common with the
Paulicians and the Manichasans proper6.
At the basis of their speculative system lay the Eastern theories of
dualism and emanation. But the former was considerably changed or softened,
partly (as it seems) by contact with less impious sectaries, and partly by the
independent action of the Western mind. One school7 of
1 ‘Popelicani’ (= ‘PuLlicani,’ and in
'Flanders, ‘Piphiles') seems to have been chiefly used in France. Ducangc,
Gloss, v. ‘ Pupulicani.’ It is probably a corrupted form of llavXi/aavol. See Dr
Maitland’s Facts and Documents illustrative of the History, <fee. of the
Albigenses and Waldtnses, Lond. 1832, p. 91, and the same writer’s Eight
Essays, Lond. 1852, p. 172. The Greeks would pronounce their word Pavlikiani.
2 See above, p. 189, n. 7. Matthew Paris,
a. d. 1236, p. 362, writes, ‘qui
vuigariter dicuntur Paterini et Bugares:' and, a.d. 1238, p. 407: •Lpsos autem
nomine vulgari Bunaros appellavit (Bobertus Bugre, the Inquisitor), sive essent
Paterini, tire Joviniani, yel Albigenses, vel aliis heeresibus maculati.’
3 This name, with its equivalent
‘Passagini,’ is derived from ‘Passa- gium,’ the common word for a ‘crusade’
(Ducange, sub voc.); it therefore will suggest the channel by which Catharist
opinions were convoyed at times into the west of Europe.
4 This name (=the Pure, or Puritans, and
connected with ‘Boni Homines' and ‘Bons-hommes’) was most current in Germany.
It survives as a generic form in Ketzer. As early as ildhelm (Upp. p. 87, ed.
Giles) we read of heretics, ‘qui so Katharo^, id est, mimdos nuucapari
voluerunt,’ but the reference is to the early Novatianists.
6
The name "Albigenses- (meaning natives of the district
Albigesium, or the neighbourhood of Alby) does not appear to have been used for
marking out the members of this sect uniil some time after what is called the ‘
Albigensian’ Crusade (Maitland, Facts and Documents, &c. p. 96). They were
at first known by some one of the titles above mentioned, or others like them
(see Sohmi.it, Hist, et Doctrine de la secte des Cathares, Paris, 1849, Tome
ix. pp. 275—284); and subsequently, as distinguished from the Waldenses, they
bore the simple name of ‘heretics:’ Maitland, Eight Essays, p. 178.
6 See the w orks of Maitland and Schmidt
above referred to • and especially Hahn’s Gesc.h. der Ketzer ivi Mittelalter,
Stuttgart, 1845—7; Gieseler, in. §§ 87—90, 96; and Neander, vm. 297—330. The
last writer has pointed ant many particulars which shew the close affinity
between the Oathari and Bogomiles, although he thinks ip. 297) that one class
of the former may have sprung oui of some other (Eastern)' sect which differed
in the details of its creed from Bogomiles or Euchites: cf. Schmidt’s reply, ii. 263 —266, in which he contends that
Bogomilism itself is rather a branch or modification of primitive Catharism.
7 Neander, vm. 298. It is observable that
some writers of this party appealed both to the Scriptures and Aristotle in
favour of their views;
Cathari continued, it is true, entirely dithfistic, cherishing the
Manicha-an view of two opposing Principles, which had alike subsisted from
eternity in regions of their own (the visible and tbe invisible): but others1,
like the Bogomiles, while tracing the formation of the present world to
absolutely evil agencies, and looking upon matter as irreconcileably opposed to
spirit, were nevertheless induced to recognize one only primal God, the Author
of all true and permanent existence. The antagonistic powers of darkness had
originally paid allegiance unto Him, and as their fall, with its results, at
length necessitated tbe descent of Christ, who was a glorious emanation
issuing from the Father in behalf of men, the fruii of His redemption will be
seen in the eventual recovery of human souls and a return of the material world
into the chaos out of which it had been shaped.
In noting the more practical phases of this heresy the modes of thought
we saw prevailing in the Bogomiles continually recur. Tho Cathari rejected most
of the prophetic writings of the Old Testament2 as well as the distinctive
principles! of the Mosaic ritual, on the ground that Satan was the author of
them both3. Contending that the body of the Son of God4,
on His appearance among men, was an ethereal body, or was not in any way
but thev
indulged in tho most extravagant flights of ‘ spiritual ’ inttr- pretatiun.
Among the chief of their dogmatic peculiarites they were pre- destinarians (p.
301), and represented the Virgin-Mother as an angel (p. 303).
1 Ibid. p. 303; with which compare
Schmidt's ‘ Appreciation Generale,’ it. 107 173.
2 The Dominican Moneta, who wrote his book
Adversus Catharos et Valdenscs about 1240, says (p. 218) that the Cathari at
first rejected aii the prophets except Isaiah: but they afterwards quote these
writings in disputing with their adversaries.
3 e.g. Peter, a Cistercian monk of Vaux
Cemai (Vallis-sarnensis . whose Hist. Albigemium (as far as the year 121S) is
printed in the Recueil dr.s llistoriens de la France, xii-. 1 «q.:
‘Novum Testamentum benigno Deo, Vetus vero maliguo attribuebant, et illud omnino
repudiabant 2>mter quasdam auctoritates qua de veteri Testamento novo sunt
insert#,' etc. c. 2.
1 Different views existed on this point.
One school of Cathari admitted the reality of our Saviour's body, but ascribed
it to Satan, and affirmed that the genuine Christ ('bonus Christus') is purely
spiritual a,nd altogether different from the historic Christ (see Peter of Vaux
Cemai, as in the former note): others held the same opinion as the Bogomiles;
above, p. 283.
Its
more practical aspects.
The
Ca- thari most ■powerful in the south of France.
derived from tho substance of His Virgin-mother, they repudiated every
article of faith that rests upon the doctrine of the Incarnation. They agreed
in substituting novel rites for those administered at church1, denouncing
with peculiar emphasis the baptism of unconscious children2. They
were also most ascetic in their discipline; forbidding matrimony, and, at least
in many districts, every kind of animal food. Nor should we deem this rigour
hypocritical. The lives of the more spiritual or ‘perfect’ classa
presented an example of simplicity, and sometimes even of moral elevation4,
higher than was commonly discernible in members of the Church; and to this
circumstance should be ascribed at least some measure of the popularity and
progress5 of the Cathari as soon as they began to circulate their
tenets in the West.
The ground in which those tenets were most deeply rooted was the south of
France, from Beziers to Bordeaux, especially throughout the territories of the
count of Toulouse, and in the neighbourhood of Alby. Here, indeed, among the
haunts of gaiety, refinement, and romance, the morals both of court and people
were most shamelessly
1 Their hatred of the whole chureh-system
in attested by contemporary ■writers, e.g. Ebrard and Ermengard, edited
by (Iretser (Ingolstadt, 1-614), in a work bearing the incorrect title Trias
Scriptorvm adv. Wal densium sectam: cf. Crieseler, m. 405—407, n. 25, 26; and
Maitland, Facts and Documents, pp. 372—391.
2 Their own rite of initiation was called
‘consolamentum (cf. Jbove, p. 189, ii. 1), a ‘baptism of the Spirit'
(‘Consolator’), which they administered by the laying on of hands anl prayer.
See Schmidt, n. 119 sq. respecting this and other rites. The best original
authority is Bainerio Sacchoni (circ. 1250), whose work is analysed in
Maitland's Facts and Documents, pp. 400 sq.: cf. pp. 525 sq.
3 The Oathari were divided into (1) the
‘Perfecti,’ or ‘Boni Homines,’ and (2) the ‘Credentes,' or 1
Auditors-s:' see Schmidt, ii. 91
sq. Neander, yin. 315 sq. It is recorded that, although the number of the
Cathari was immense in til quarters of the world in the first half of the
thirteenth century, only four thousand belonged to the class of ‘Perfc-cti.’
4 The picture drawn by Schmidt (i. 1941
maybe somewhat too fayoujS able, but the superiority of their moral character
as compared with that of some of the prelates cannot be disputed. See the whole
of the chapter, pp. 188 sq.
s
e.g. William of Newburgh. De 1iebwf Angl. lib ii,
c. 13, whose history closes in 1197, describes their rapid growth in
Trance, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Some ■alio found their way into
England v.ere suppresses as early as 1166, by a council at Oxford, (B. Diceto,
ed. Twysden, c. 539. Wilkies, i. 438). They were so numerous in the south of
Trane*,
relaxed1; but on a sudden the attention of the many, rich and
poor alike, had been directed into other channels by the forcible harangues of
‘Albigensian’ preachers. With a few exceptions, all the barons of the neighbourhood
became protectors of the heresy; some even ranking •with its most devoted
followers, the ‘Perfect*.’ In a council held at Toulouse as early as July 8,
1119, a class of tenets such as those maintained among the Cathari3,
were solemnly denounced; and mission after mission4 laboured to
repress their wider circulation. It was not, however, until the pontificate of
Innocent III.8, that vigorous measures were adopted for the
extirpation of the sect. The murder of the papal legate6, Pierre de
Casteluau, in 1208, which was attributed unjustly to count Raymond of Toulouse,
a patron
Guienne,
Provence, and the greater part of Gascony. that foreigners were told how heresy
was rapidly infecting more than a thousand tow-is. and how the followers of
'Mane-* in that district were outnumbering those of Jesus Christ. Schmidt, i.
194. The same is mentioned with regard to Lombardy and the papal states
(Schmidt, i. 142 sq.), wiure we may gather from the treatise of Bonacursus
(circ. 1190), Vita Hwretkorum, seu Manifestatio Hcrresis Catharorum (in
U’Achery, I. 208 sq.), that the leaders of the sect ^‘Fassagini’1 had so far
modified their doctrines a* to have betrayed a Judaizing tendency; cf. Neander,
Tin. 332; Schmidt, ii. 294.
1 Abundant proofs of this are furnished :.n
the ‘ ehanzos ’ of the Provencal poets, collected, for example, by Eaynouard
in his Poesies des Troubadours; and in the Fabliaux; although these latter more
commonly refer to the north of France.
3 Schmidt, i. 195, 196.
•!
It denounces (can. 3) those, ‘ qui religionis speciem simulantes Po- minici
corporis et sanguinis sacramentuni, puerorr.m baptisms, sacer- doti’jm, et
cseteros ecclesiasticos ordines et legitimaram Jacir.ant fcedera nuptiarum,’
(Mansi, xxi. 225, where the date is incorrectly given: cf. Jafit?, p. 529). At
this council an appeal was made to ‘potestates exterst,’ in order to suppress
the misbelievers. The decrees were echoed at the council of Lateran (1139):
Mansi, xxi. 532. Other councils, e.g. Rhcims (1148), c. 18, and Tours
(llt>3) c. 4, adopted the same course. An important conference with the
leaders of the Cathari was held in 1165 (Hoveden, Chr. n. 105, Mansi, xxn. 157)
at Lombers, the residence of their bishop Sieard Cellerier, near Alby: cf.
Schmidt, l. 70 sq.
4 That in 1147 consisted of the legate
Alberic and St liemard: see Bernard. Epist. 241, from which we learn that the
churches were deserted, the clergy despised, and nearly all the south of
France addicted to the Cathari: cf. Schmidt, i. 44, 45. In 11S1, llenry
Cardinal bishop of Albano, who had before (1178> when abbot of Clairvaux
endeavoured to reclaim the diocese of Alby in a gentler way, began to preach a
crusade against it: Ibid. i. 83.
3 See above, p. 233, on his patronage of
Dominic, the founder of the Treachers.
<> Schmidt, i. 217 sq.
M. A. U
Their
violent rfpra- sion; by Crusades,
and
by the Inquisition.
Peter
of Brun
<a. ii24)
of the ‘Alllicenses,’ led the way to an atrocious series of Crusades, at
first conducted at the Lidding of the pope by Simon de Montfort, earl of
Leicester, and extending over thirty years1. By tliis terrific war
the swarming misbelievers of Provence were almost literally ‘drowned in
blood.’ The remnant which escaped the sword of the crusaders fell a prey to
ruthless agents of the Inquisition,—the tribunal now established permanently by
the council of Toulouse” (1229) for noting and extinguishing all kinds of
heretical pravity.
The fears awakened at Rome and in the "Western Church at large by
the astounding progress of the ‘Al- bigenses,’ were increased by other
movements, totally distinct in character, but also finding the great bulk of
their adherents in the southern parts of France. The author of the earliest
(1104-—1124.) was a priest of Bruis named Peter (hence the title
Petrobrusiani), who, together with some startling traits of heterodoxy,
manifested” an attachment to the central truth of Christianity, and a desire to
elevate the tone of morals in the districts where he taught. He ultimately
perished at the stake; but the impression he produced was much extended by a
Cluniac monk and deacon, Henry4. After labouring seduluusly
1 See Barrau and Darrafton, Hist, dts
Croisades contre Us Paris, 1840, and Schmidt, ab £bove, 1. 219—293.
2 Mansi, xxm. 192 sq. Tho gerip of tliis
institution is contained in the decree of luciiiB III. (1181), ‘Contra
Ha;reticos,’ (Maitland’s Facts, &e. pp. 496—498); and its organization was
advanced by the council of Lateran (1215), c. 3 (Decret. Gregor, lib. %. tit.
7, c. 13: in the Corpus Juris Canon.). On the general history see Limboroh,
Hist. Inquisitionis, Amst. 1692. It soon found other fields of duty iu
exf.inguif.hing the (Jathari of Italy ('Schmidt, 1. 159 sq.), of Spain (Ibid.
1. 372 sq.), of Germany (Ibid. 1. 376 sq.), and also iu suppressing (1234) a
politico-religious sect, entitled ‘ Stedin^&rs,’ who had arisen iu tho
district of Oldenburg: Gieseler, m. § 89, n. 37. Friesisches Archiv, ed.
Ehrentiaut, 11. 265 sq., Oldenburg, 1854. They refused to pay tithes and
tributes.
3 Our chit f information respecting him is
derived from a contemporary Letter of Peter tho Venerable, Adversus
Petrolrusianos Iftzreticos ; Opp. p. 719, ed. Migne. It seems that Peter of
Bruis and his immi diate followers rejected infant baptism, on the ground that
peisonal faith is always needed as a precondition, ere the grace of God can
take effect
* nos vero tempns congruum
fidei expectamus’). For this cause they rebaptized. They undervalued,
if they did not absolutely set aside, the Eucharist, They burned the crosses,
and denounced church-music and the ritual system of the age. They also censured
and derided prayers and offerings for the dead: cf. Neander, vm. 338—-341.
4 See Gesta Ilildcberti among the Acta
Episcopttnm Cenomanensium
in tho field which had been overrun by ‘Albigensian’ missionaries, ami
attracting many whom their doctrines did not satisfy1, he fell 1147)
into the hands of a papal legate, who had visited Provence in company with St
Bernard for the purpose of resisting the further propagation of heretical
opinions. Henry was sentenced at the council of Rheims (1148) to meagre diet
and imprisonment for life.
How far the influential sect, afterwards known as the ‘Waldenses2,’
were allied with this reforming movement, is not easy to determine. They are
certainly to be distinguished from the ‘Albigenses3.’ In their
creed we find no vestiges of dualism, nor anything which indicates the least
affinity to oriental theories of emanation. What those bodies learned to hold
in common, and what made them equally the prey of the Inquisitor, was their unwavering
belief iu the corruption of the Mediaeval Church, especially as governed by the
Roman pontiffs4. It has also been disputed whether the ‘Waldenses’
dated further back as a religious corporation than the twelfth century.
HKCTS.
and
Henry the Cluniaa monk ( silenced 1148'.
The
\V*l- dmses or YaudSt.
[i.e.
of le Mans], in Mabttkm, Vet. Analect.
in. 312, and cf. Neander. vm. 341—350; Gieseler, 111. 391—393, n. 4.
1 Schmidt. I.
40, 41.
J
This name first occvrs in an edict of Alfonso, king i i Arrapon (1194).
(Maitland’s Facts and Dwuments. &c., p. 181.) The- ‘Waldenses ’ are there
associated with tho ‘ Inzab'nati ’ [i.e. persons wearing ‘ sabots' or wooden
shoes), and with the ‘ Poor Men of Lyons.’ Aaother of the names they bore was ‘
Leonist® ’ (from Leonum - Lyons).
3 This distinction has been questioned by
two very different schools of theologian*, one endeavouring to shew that the
tenets of the Albigenses and Waldenses were equally false, and the second that
they were equally true: but all dispassionate writers of the present day {e.g.
Gieseler, Neander, Schmidt) agree in the conclusion above stated. Dr Maitland
has discussed the question at length in his Facts and Documents, etc., and in
his Eight Essays (ly52), pp. 178 sq., he adduces evidence from a record of the
Inquisition of Toulouse (1307- -1323) which ‘ completely decides the question.’
A new work, entitled DU' rumanischen Waldenser, etc. was put forth in 1853
(Halle) by Dr Herzog.
4 In 1207 a pastor of tho Albigenses rua;jiitained
that the Chursh of Rome was not the Spouse of Christ, but the Apocalyptic
Babylon. See the extract (>n this subject in Ussher’s De Christ. Eccl. Succesiionc et Ntatu, ch. x. § 23, Opp. ii. 341, ed. Elrington. The Waldenses
also ultimately urged the same objection (though at first their tone was
different), ‘ Quod Ecclesia R«muna non est Ecclesia Jesu Ohristi
Quod Ecclesia Romana est ecclesia malignantium, et bestia et meretrix.'
etc. See
Rainerii Humma de Catharis et Leonistis, in Martfne and Durand’s Thesaur.
.Inccdvt. Y. 1775.
U 2
SECTS.
Their
founder, Peter Waldo:
Although this view appears to have been current once with members of the
sect1, or had at least been confidently urged on some occasions when
the adversary challenged them to prove tbe antiquity of their opinions, it is
found to have no basis in authentic history.
The leader of the agitation out of which they grew (1170) was Peter Waldo
(Pierre de Yaud), a citizen of Lyons, who renounced his property that he might
give himself entirely to the service of religion. He began to circulate a llo-
inaunt version of tbe Gospels and of many otlier books of Holy AVrit2,
and with the aid of kindred spirits, laymen like himself, to preach among the
populace; their object being, not to tamper with the creeds or revolutionize
tbe ecclesiastical system, but rather to exalt the spirit and to pimfy the
practice of the age. These warm and desultory efforts proved distasteful to the
archbishop of Lyons, who compelled the preachers to desist. They carried an
appeal to Home (1179), exhibiting their version of the Bible to pope Alexander
III., and suing for his appro-
1
In tbe Sdmma, as above quoted, the Waldenses of the thirteenth century affirmed
• 'juod ecclesia Christi permansit in episcopis et aliis pradatis usque ad B.
Sylvestnim [the contemporary of Constantine], et in eo defecit quousque ipsi
earn restaurarunt: tarnen dicunt, quod semper fueruiit aliqui qui Deum timebant
et salvabantur.’ But when it was argued, e.g. by the Dominican Moneta (circ. 1240)
Adversus Catheros et Valdmtes, ed. Ricchini, p. 402, that the Waldenses were
not ‘ successors Ecclesiai primitive, ’ and therefore not ‘Ecclesia Dei,’ some
of them contended that the sect had lasted ever since the time of pope
Sylvester, and others that it was traceable to tho age of the Apostles: see the
Additions to the Summa of Ilainerio, in Mil. Pair. ed. Lugdua. xxv.
264, and Pilichdori, Contra Waldenses (circ. 1444):
Ibid. xxv. 278. Schmitt (ir 287—293) has proved that history and tradition aro
both silent oil this great antiquity ui'til tho 13th century, and that tho sect
was really no older than Peter Waldo. Neander (vm. 368, note) thinkd Dr
Maitland somewhat too sceptical as to the genrjneness of the Nolla Leyczon, a
WaMensian summary of doctrines, claiming to belong to a. i>. J100. Schmidt,
p. 200, supposes that it may have been written at the close of the 12th centurj
but the researches of Mr Bradshaw Lave shown that it cwinot ue earlier than the
loth (The Books of the Yaudois, p. 220; by Dr Todd, Cambridge, 1865).
a
As he was himself no scholar, tho version was made for him by two c
ccle-'iastics. See a contemporary account by tht Dominican Stephen Do Borbone,
extracted in D’Argentr<5, Collectio ■Judieiorum de Novis Erroribus.
qui ab initio xii sire, usque ad an. 1632 in Ecclesia proscripti sunt, Paris,
1728, i. 87. The same hands translated for him ‘ auctoritates Sanctorum multas
per titulus congregatas, quas Sentential appeJlabant.’
bation botli of it ami of the new fraternity1. The papal licence
was not given, although at present the WaMenses did not share in the anathemas
pronounced on other bodies (Cathari included); They were afterwards condemned,
however, in 1184. by Lucius III.2 But nothing could repress the
sturdy vigour of the men who laboured at all costs to forward what they deemed
a genuine reformation of the Church. Their principles were soon diffused iu
Southern France, in Arragon, in Piedmont, in Lombardy3, and even in
the Rhenish provinces4. Insisting as they always did on the desirableness
of personal acquaintance with the Bible, which, in union with their claim to
exercise the sacerdotal office6, constituted the peculiarity iu
their original creed, they multiplied translations iiitd the vernacular, and
frequently surpassed the clergy in their knowledge of the scriptures6.
Innocent III. endeavoured to unite them with the Church (1210), and he iu part
succeeded, forming his Waldensian converts into a society entitled Pauperes
Catholici1; but the majority, estranged by persecution, zealously
maintained a separate existence. At the close of the thirteenth centuiy we find
a number
fails
to procure the papal sanction.
Rapid
diffusion of his principles.
1 See the important record of their conduct
at the council of Lateran by one who was an eye-witness, Walter Mapes,
afterwards archdeacon of Oxford (1196). Thu passage is in his De Sugis
Curialium, Distinct. 1. § xxxi. (ed. Wright, 1850), the title being ‘De secta
Valdesiormn.’
• ‘ In vrimis ergo C'atharos et Patarinos, et eou qui se Humiliatos vel
Pauperes de Lugduno falso nomine luentiuntur; Passaginos, Josepinos,
Arnolilistas perpetuo decemimus anathemate subjacere.’ Mansi, xxn.
in.
3 See authorities at length in Gieseler,
111. § 88. n. 8, 9, 10.
4 The following passage is an -illusion to
their progress in the
neighbourhood
of Treves (1231): ‘Et plures erant secta» et nmlti earum
instructi
erant Scripturis Sanctis, quas habebant in Theutonicam trans- latas.’ Gexta
Trevirorum, 1. 819, August. Trevir. 1836.
c
e.y. They maintained (in the passage above cited, n. 4) that the Eucharist
might be consecrated ‘a viro et muliere, ordinato et non ordinatoand botb males
and females preached on every side (‘ tam homines quam mulieres, idiot* et
illiterati, per villas iliscurrentes et domos ptnctrantcs et in plateis
praniieantes et etiam in ecdesiis, ad idem alios provocabant.’ Stephen de
Borbone (as above, p. 292. n. 2). They had u ministry, however, nominated by
the brotherhood, and consisting of ‘ majorales ’ (= bishops ?) and • barbas ’
(= preachers ?): see Gieseler, 111. 465, n. 29. Their ministers were married.
8
Meander, vm. 360.
t
Innocent III. Epist. lib. xt. epp. 196—198: lib. Stir.
epp. 17, 09: lib. xm. ep. 78.
The
Apos- tolicals
(l'-'JO—
1307-.
of them in the valleys of Piedmont1,
where after many dark vicissitudes they arc surviving at the present day2.
_ _
Their tenets, which were at tho first distinguishable in but few
particulars from those of other Christians, rapidly developed into forms
antagonistic to the common teaching of the Mediseval Church3. The
Vaudois were indeed to some extent precursors of the Reformation, more
especially as it was often carried out in continental Europe.
An allusion has been made already to the aberrations of the stricter
school of the Franciscans4, of the Beghards5, and the
Arnoldists6 (or partisans of Arnold of Brescia). From the impulse
which had been communicated by the authors of those movements, sprang another
sect, entitled ‘Apostolicals7.’ It was confined at first to Lombardy
and
1 See extracts from h record in the
archives of Turin communicated by Krone in his Fra Dolcino und die Patarener,
p. 22, Leipz. 1814.
2 They maintained themselves iv. Provence
until 1545, vrhen hy uniting with the Cahinists they were violently persecuted
and expelled. For an account ot their past sufferings and present condition,
see Gilly’s Narrative, &e. 4th edition, and Leger, Hitt, des Vaudois. Their
intercourse with (Ecolampadius and other Swiss reformers, in 1530, is described
by Herzog, pp. 333—370.
3 They denied the sacramental character of
orders, unction, confirmation and marriage, and the efficacy of absolution and
the Eucharist when these were administered by unworthy persons whether lay or
cleric (cf. above, p. 293, n. 5). They did not accept the canon of the Mass,
but were i n favour of more frequent (even daily) communion. They did not
invoke the saints, nor venerate the cross and relics. They did not believe in
any kind of purgatory, and made no offerings for the dead. They repudiated
tithes, the taking of an oath, military service, and capital punishment. They
disparaged fasting, all distinction of days "quod unus dies sit sicut
alius’), and every kind of decoration in the ritual or the fabric of the
church. With regard to baptism their opinions are cot very clearly stated, but,
owing to their strong belief in the necessity of actual preconditions on the
part of the recipient, they seem at best to have esteemed it, when administered
to infants, as an empty ceremonial (‘ quod ablutio, qua} datur inlantibus,
nihil prosit ’): cf. Meander, vm. 365. See on the "Waldensian doctrines
the cuthorities quoted above, p. 292, n. 1, and the Extracts from Limborch's
History uf the Inquisition, in 'Maitland’s Facts, &c. pp. 229 sq.
* Above, p. 232.
5 Above, p. 885. Gieseler, in.
469, 470, n. 35. has pointed out some features in which the Beghards, or, (as
they described themselves) ‘ the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit,’ were
akin to tht Waldenses; and it will be shewn hereafter thai they were
progenitors of tho German (not the English) Lullards, or Lollards •
8
Above, pp. 249, 250.
7 See Mosheim’s Gesch. des Apottel-ordens,
Helmstedt, 1748. A full,
certain districts of the Tyrol. Its main object was to realize the
long-forgotten picture which the Bible seemed to furnish of a truly evangelic
poverty, and of a Church where all the members, from the highest to the lowest,
are united solely by the bonds of Christian love1. The exhortations
of tlie Apostolicals were all, however, more or less distempered by fanatical
and communistic theories2, which, rousing the displeasure of the
Inquisition and the civil power, at length consigned their hapless leader,
Saga- relli8, to the stake (1300). His able, but misguided follower,
Dolcino, after braving almost every kind of danger, for the sake of his
convictions, met the same unchristian treatment1 (1307).
but somewhat
violent, description of the struggle which the ‘Apostolical/-’ excited will be
found in JIariotti’s (Gallenga) Fra Dulcino and his Times, Lond. 1853.
1 ‘ Sine vinculo obedientias exterioris,
sed interioris tarn urn.’
2 Slariotti, pp. 182 sq., pp. 213 sq.
Extracts from two of Dolcino’s circulars are Riven in lluratori, Script. Her.
Ital. rx. 450. The following views, among his other predictions, shew that he
hoped to witness not only the purilication of the papacy hut also tho founding
of a native monarchy: ‘ Fredericus rex Sicilia1 debet relevari in
imperatorem, et facere reges novos, et B.mifacium papani pugnando habere et
facere occidi cum aliis occidendis...Tunc omnes Christiani erunt positi in
pace, et tunc erit unus papn sanctus a Deo missus mirabiliter et electus,...et
sab illo papa erunt illi, qui sunt de statu Apostalico, et etiam aid >le
clericis et religiosis qui unientur eis et
tunc accipient Spiritus Sancti
pratiam,
nicnt aoceperunt Apostoli in Ecclesia primitiva.’ For Dante’s view' uf Dolcino
and his misuiun, see Dell’ Inferno, cant, xxviii.
55 sq.
3 Mariotti, p. 102.
; Ibid.
p. 296. In 1320 some branches of tho sect of the ‘ Apostolicals’ existed in
the south of France, and traces of them are found in Germany as late as the
year 1402. Ibid. pp. 314 sq.
S12CT8.
Sagarelli,
and Dolcino,.
(
ON THE STATE
OF INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY.
New
impulse given to the Western mind.
Literature
not exclusively ecclesiastical :
Confining our review
to Western Christendom1, in which alone the aspect of religion
underwent a clearly measurable change, we must regard the present as an age of
great activity and very general progress. Tho Crusades had opened a new world
of intellectual enterprise; the fever of scholasticism arousing all the speculative
faculties had urged men to investigate the grounds of their belief; while
literary institutions, bent on furthering the spread of secular as well as
sacred knowledge, and constructed after the illustrious models in the
University of Paris, had sprung up on every side2. A somewhat novel
feature in the works transmitted to us from the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries should not be overlooked. The literature of Europe until then was
almost everywhere exclusively ‘religious/ or one might affirm at least that it
was nearly always penetrated by a strong ecclesiastical element3.
But afterwards a different class of works were published, which, if not
entirely hostile to the Church, were calculated to impair its old ascendancy
and to imperil the foundations of both faith and morals. Such were many
1 On the torpor and monotony of the Eastern
Church at this period
also,
see above, p. 272.
3
Se£ above, 231. Colleges began to be numerous in Prance, Italy,
Spain, Portugal, and (ierinany (Miihler, Schriften, etc. ft: 6). This
impulse war transmitted as far as Iceland, on the copious literature of which,
see Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, pp. 363 sq. ed. 1S17. The two ‘ general'5
councils of Lateran. a.d. 1179 (c.
18), and A .p. 1215 i’c. 11), enjoin that a -.choolmaster rihall be provided in
every cathedral church for teaching the poorer clerico and the young.
3 Capefigue,
L’Eglise au Moyen Age, 1. 3G2.
of the amorous pieces1 of the Troubadours, Trouveres, atid
Minnesingers. Soft and polished as they are, it, is too obvious that their
general tendency was to produce contempt for holy things and throw a veil upon
the most revolting sensuality. The same is often true of mediaeval romances8,
which, as may be argued from the copious list- surviving at the present day,
began to fascinate a very numerous circle.
The more earnest readers still preferred the ancient ‘ Lives of Saints3.’
These after some recasting were, as in the former age, translated into many
dialects of Europe. Some acquaintance with the truths of Christianity might
also be obtained from versions of tho Bible, or at least of certain parts which
were occasionally pat in circulation4. But the most original method
now adopted for imparting rudiments of sacred knowledge were dramatic
exhibitions, called ‘ miracle-plays,’ which grew at length into ‘moralities.’
The object was to bring the leading
1 See Sismondi, Literature of the South of
Europe, c. iy.—c. yiii. ; Taylor (Edgar;, Layk
of the Minnesingers, pas»im. It appears that one of the earliest of the amorous
poets in the north of Trance was Abelard, the schoolman. Hallam, Liter, of Eur.
pt. 1. ch. 1. § 36. ('11 the “warms of romances that found their way into the
monasteries at this period, see Warton, Engl. Poet. 1. 80 sq. ed. 1840.
2 See Ellis, Specimens of Early Engl.
Romances, ed. Ha'iwell, 1848.
3 The Speculum Ilistoriale of Vincent of
Beauvais (Bellovacensis), and the Historia Lombardica sive Legenda Aurea de
Titis Sanctorum, of Jacobus de Voragine (da Viraggio), were the favourite books
in Western Europe. The popularity of the latter (the ‘Golden Legend’) continued
to the time of tiie lieformation. A specimen of the vernacular hagiology of
this period is furnished by a Semi-Saxon Legend of St Catherine 1 among the
publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society). The date is the early part
of the 13th century.
4 E.g. before the year 1200, the English
had tranr-lated into their own dialect, in prose, the Psalter and the Canticles
of the Church; and towards the middle of the thirteenth century they seem to
have possessed a prose version of the entire l!ible. But most of the sacred
literature at this period is metrical; e. g. the Orrmtlum, written perhaps
about the commencement of the thirteenth century, and serving as a paraphrase
of the Gospels and the Acts. Other instances are quoted in the Pnface to the
Wycliffite Bible, p. iii. Oxford, 1850. The Historia Scholastica of Peter
Comestor (circ. 1190) was very generally circulated both in the original aud in
translations. It contains an abstract of sacred history, disfigured often by
absurd interpolations and unauthorized glosses. A version of it, somewhat
modified (1294), was known as the fir«t French Bihle. See Gilly’s Preface to
the Romaunt Version of St John, pp. xiv.—xvii. Lond. 1848.
MEAN'S OP
GllACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
>
often
very immoral,
Vernacular
sources of religious knowledge.
Religions
plays.
MEANS OF
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Reading
of the Bible.
Specially
promoted by the sec- lanes.
facts of revelation and cliurch-history more vividly before the
ill-instructed mass. The infancy, the public life, and crucifixion of our
Blessed Lord were the most favourite topics1.
It is constantly complained, however, even with regard to the more
enterprising class of scholars, that the Bible was comparatively thrust into
the background2, many of them seeming to prefer the study of the
pagan writers or the civil law, and others giving all their time to lectures on
the ' Book of Sentences.’
The Vaudois, on the contrary, like all the other medieval sectaries who
thought themselves constrained to wrestle with the evils of the times, appealed
in every case directly to the Bible3; and although the meaning of
the sacred text was often very grievously distorted in their efforts to
establish a one-sided or heretical position, the fresh impulse which had now
been given to scriptural inquiry was insensibly transmitted far and wide among
the members of the Church itself4. At first, indeed, the use to
which vernacular translations were applied
1
See an abstract of one of them in Sismondi, Lit. of the South of Europe, 1. 231
sq.; Mone’s Schavspiele des MittelaHers, passim, Karlsruhe, 1846, and Warton’e
Hitt, of English Poe.try, ii 24 sq., ed. 1840. It is remarkable that a northern
missionary (at Kigal male nse of this vehicle in 1204, ‘ ut fidei Oristianat
rudimenta gentilitas fide <tiam discerut oeulata Neander, vii. 52. One of
the earliest, and in England the very first, of these theatrical pieces was a
Ludus S, Cathcainos. performed at Dunstable about 1100: Dugdale’s Moneat. ii. 184, new ed.
1
Thus Eobert le Poule (Pullen), a=s above, p. 263, read the Scriptures at
Oxford, where, as well as in other parts of England, they had been neglected
‘pras scholasticiscf. tho remarkable language of Peter of Blois (Blesensis),
archdeacon of Bath rcir. 1200), ep. lxxvi.
The following words of Roger Bacon (quoted in Bula'us, Hist. Univ.
Paris, irr. 3H3) are to the same effect: ‘Baccalaureus, qui legit textum.
suceumbit lectori Sententiarum. Parisiis ille, qui legit Sententias, habet
prin- cipalem horam legendi secundum suam voluntatem. habei socinm et cameram
apud religiosos, sed qui legit Bibliam caret his,’ etc,—But on tho other hand
numerous instances }-ave been collected, more especially by TJssher (Hist. Dofimatica:
Works, ed. Elrington, xii, 317—343), iu which the ancient reverence for the
Scriptures, as the rule >'f life, is very forcibly expressed.
3 It was the principle of Peter Waldo to
persuade all ‘ at Biblia legerent, atque ex ipso fonto libentiun haurirent
aquam salutarem, quam ex hominum impuris lacunis. Soli euim Bibliie scripturae
tot Dhinis tratimoniis omatm atque confirmatae conocientias tuio inniti posse,’
MS. quoted by XJssher, as above, p. 331.
4 E.g. Roger Bacon, above, p. 271.
awakened the suspicions1 of the prelates and the fury of the
Inquisition. The endeavours to suppress them dated from the council of Toulouse2
in 1229. reference being there intended more especially to the Romaunt
translations circulated by the followers of Peter Waldo. But iu spite of this
repugnance on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities, the wish to draw
instruction personally from the oracles of God continued to increase with the
diffusion of intelligence.
The present age was also far superior to the last in the efficiency and
number of its public teachers3. Every parisli- priest, as
heretofore, was bound4 to inculcate on all the
A
tfempwl supprtssicm of rernaru- lar translations.
1
Thus Innocent III. (1190), lib. n. ep. 141, after directing the attention of
the bishop anil chapter of Metz to the existence of a ‘ Gallic ’ Torsion of the
Psalter, Gospels, Panline Epistles, etc., proceeds as follows: ‘ Licet autem
desiderium intelligendi Divinas Scriptures, et secundum eas studium adhortandi
reprehe.ndendum non sit, sed potius cummendandum; in eo tarnen apparent
merito arguendi, quod tales occulta conventicula sua celebrant, officium sibi
prasdicationis usurpant, sacerd'Tum simplicitatem eludunt, et eoram consortium
aspemantur, qai talibus non inhasrent.’ 4. like feeling was manifested in
condemning the works of the pantheistic schoolmar David of Dinant (see above,
p.
265, n. 3). The prohibition was extended to all
‘theological’ works in the French language, David having used translations for
disseminating hi» opinions: Neander, viii. 131, 132.
1
Can. 1-1, It forbids the laity to have in their possession any copy of the
books of the Old and New Testament, except perhaps the Psalter and those parts
of the Bible contained in the Breviary ani the Hours of the Blessed \ irgin,
and most rigorously condemns the use of vernacular translations. See Fleury’s
apology for this injunction. Hist. Eccles., Iiv. lxxix. § 58. At the council of Tarragona (1234, c. 2). the
censure is restricted to all versions ‘in Eomanico:’ but in 1240 the council of
Beziers (Biterrense), where the Cathari had been most numerous, absolutely
urge the Inquisition (c. 36: Mansi, xxm. 724) to take measures ‘de libris
theologicis non tenendis etiam a laicis in Latino, et neque ab ipsis neque a
olericis in vulgari.’ It is remarkable, however, that notwithstanding
these local prohibitions, many parts of the Bible were still translated (e.
g. into Italian ami Spanish), and apparently authorized: Gilly, as above,
pp. xvi., xvii. The reason given for putting out a new edition or' the French
‘Bible’ (see above, p. 297, n. 4) in the reign of Charles V. of France
(1364—1380), was to supplant the Waldensian versions: Gilly, p. xxii. Cf.
Buckingham, Bible in the Middle Ages, pp. 43, 4fi. On the.use made of
translations of the Scriptures by the Koman missions to the East, see above, p.
218, n. 2.
3 We may judge of the opportunities of
instruction now afforded to the working-classes by the fact that all persons
were enjoined to go to church (sometimes under a penalty, e. g. council of
Toulouse, A. d, 1229, c. 25) on Sundays, on the greater festivals (see a list
of them, Ibid. c, 26, or council of Exeter, A. d. 1287, c. 23), and on Saturday
evenings.
4 Cf. above, pp. 192,193; see also the
rraeepta L'vmmunia of Odo,
MEANS OV
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Preaching,
often
com- mitted to the Men- dicant Orders.
children of his cure at least some elementary knowledge of the Christian
faith (by expositions of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments,
and at last the Ave llaria, in the vulgar tongue), as -well as to be diligent
in preaching to the rest1. But more was now effected through the
voluntary labours of the Mendicants2, whose zeal and learning were
employed, as they itinerated here and there, in teaching simple truths of
Christianity no less than in repelling what were deemed the shafts of
misbelief. A prelate, such as Grosseteste3, anxious for the
.spiritual advancement of his flock and painfully alive to the incompetence4
of many of the seculars, occasionally invited Mendicants to aid him in his
holy task; and even where they had no imitation, they considered that the papal
licence was enough to warrant their admission into any diocese'. The popularity
of this abnormal method of procedure indicates the growing thirst for
knowledge; and we must infer that, notwithstanding all the gross hypocrisy,
fanaticism, and intermeddling spirit which the friars have too commonly
betrayed in after times, they served at first as powerful agents in the hands
of the Almighty for promoting intellectual culture and enlivening the stagnant
pulses of religion5.
bishop of
Pan" (circ. 1200), § 10, in Mansi, rsn. 681; the Statuta Synodal. of
liichard of Chichester (1246), Ibid. xxm. 714: aud archbp. Peckham’s
Constitutions (1281), in Johnson, n. 282 sq.
1 A
mighty influence must hare been exerted by the sermons of St Bernard, who often
preached in the vernacular language. Specimens of this class are printed in the
Document svr Vllistoire de France, ed. Le Iloux dti Lincy, 1841. On the other
famous preachers of this period, nee Scl.rockh, xxix. 313 sq. The sermons of
Berthold, a Franciscan (d. L272), are said to have produced a very deep
impression on all kinds of hearers. Many uf them (surviving in the vernacular)
have been edited bj Klinj:, Berlin, 1824. Specimens of early English Sermons of
the 13ih and 14th centuries have been edited for the Early English Text Society
by Dr R. Morris, 1868.
3
See above, pp. 230 sq.
3 Above, p. 234, n.‘2.
4 This was also urged bj th< apologist
of the Franciscan and Dominican nrder3. He regarded them as supernumeraries
especially authorized by the pope in an emergency to remedy the sad defects of
the parochial priests: cf. the language of Bonaventura and Aquinas quoted in
Neander, vii. 398.
5 Chi treatise of Humbert de Romanis (circ.
1250), general of the Dominicans, entitled I)e Eruditione Pradicatorum, is a
tine proof of the earnestness with which men were enjoined to enter on the v
ork
It was not Until this period that the ‘sacramental’ system of the Church
attained its full development1. The methodizing and complete
determination of tbe subjects it involved is due to the abstruse inquiries of
the (Schoolmen. Previously the name of 'sacrament’ was used to designate2
a ritual or symbolic act in general,—Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist
belonging to a special class3. But in the twelfth century tho
ordinances which could claim to be admitted to tbe rank of ‘sacraments’ were
found to coincide exactly with the sacred number Seven4. The
earliest trace of this scholastic limitation has been pointed out in a
discourse of Otho the apostle of the Pomeranians5 (1124:) ; and from
the age of Peter Lombard * Bonaventura, and Aquinas, members of the
of preaching,
though we trace in if a disposition to exaggerate tho worth of sermons as
compared with other means of grace. See a review of it in Meander, to. 435—440. The following is the
account given by the biographer of Aquinas (c. viii. s. 48, as above, p. 267,
n. 3), respecting his style of preaching: * Prsedicationes suas, quibus
placeret Deo, prodeaset populo, sic formabat, ut non esset in curiosis humante
sapierti® verbis, sed in spiritu et virtute sermonis, qui, vitatis qute
curiositati potius quam militati deserviunt, in illo suo vulgari natalis soli
proponubat et prosequebatur utilia populo.’
1 See Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrine, § 189
(vol. n. pp. 73 sq., Edinb. 1852), on the one side, and Klee, Dogmengesch. Pt.
11. ch. vi., on the other.
s
St Augustine’s definition was ‘sacra? rei signinn, or ‘ invisibilis gratia?
visibilis forma ’ (Klee, Ibid. § 1): but like Damiani (quoted above, p. 199, n.
3), he applied the word ‘ sacramentum ’ very generally. The same appears to
have been the rase with the word fivimjptov in the East, although the number of
rites to which it wa« in strictness applicable, was ct length reduced to
six.—baptism, the Lord's Supper, the consecration of the holy oil (reXrt4)
pvpov1), priestly orders, monastic dedication I'jtowtxiKij and the ceremonies relating to the holy
dead.
Schrockh, xxiii. 127—129: xxvhi. 45.
8 E.g. as late as liabanus Maurus {De
Imtitut. Clerienrum, lib. 1. c. 24), and Pascliasius Itadbert,
(De Corpore et Sang. Domini, c. 3), anti Berengarius (De
Cana Domini, p. 153), the ‘sacramenta1 are restricted in this
manner: and when Alexander of Hales (Summa, Pt. iv. Qua?st. vm. Art. 2)
accepted the scholastic terminology he was constrained to allow that only two
acraments (baptism and tho Eucharist,) were instituted by the Lord Himself
‘secunduiu suam formarn.’ The same appears to be tho view of Hugo of St
Victor, in his work Un the Sacraments (aboTe, p. 203, n. t).
4 See the varying theories on this point in
Klee (as above), § 10, to which may be added the sermons of tho Franciscan
Berthold (as above, p. 300, n. 1), pp. 439 sq.
“ Above, p.
208: cf. Schrockh, xxv. 227.
6 Sentent., lib. iv. Dist. 1. sq., which
practically settled the dis-
Sarramen-
tal st/shm
vf
Du-
Churcli.
Limitation
of the sa- cramcrds to
Mode
of
regarding
them.
Definite
establish- ment of transub- stantiation.
Western Church were taught to pay a large, if not an equal, share of
reverence to all the ‘sacraments of the new law,’—Baptism, Confirmation, the
Eucharist, Penitence, Extreme Unction, Orders, and Matrimony. A distinction
was, however, drawn among them in respect of dignity, specific virtues, and
importance1. Preachers also were not wanting to insist upon the need
of faith and other preconditions in all those, excepting infants2,
who were made partakers of the sacraments. Still it is plain that the
prevailing tendency of this and former ages, as distinguished from the period
since the Reformation, was to view a sacred rite far too exclusively in its
objective character3, (i. e. without regard to the susceptibility of
those to whom it was applied).
These feelings were in no case carried out so far as in relation to the
Eucharist. The doctrine which affirmed a physical ‘transubstantiation’ of the
elements had, oil the overthrow of Berengarius4, gained complete
possession of
enssion in
the Western Church. The s?cts, 'inwever. still continued to protest against the
elevation of r, class of
orirnunces for which there wan no express warrant in the Bible (e. g. the
Waldenses, above, p. '294, n. 3).
1 Klee, as above, S 11.
2 See the remarkable passage in Peter
Lombard, Sentent. lib. iv., Dist. 4, on the benefits of baptism in the case of
infants. His language implies that the precise amount of spiritual blessing
was* disputed, and that some, who thought originol sin to be remitted in the
case of every child, contended that the grace imparted then was given ‘in
munere non in usu, ut cum ad majorem venerint [t, e. cuncti parvuli] a-tatem,
ex munere sortiantur usum, nisi per liberum arbitriurn usum muneris extinguant
peccando, et ita ex culpa eorum est, non ex defectu gratis, quod ruali fiunt.’
Aquinas discusses the same point, ‘utrum pueri in baptismo consequantur gratiam
et virtutes ’ (Summa, Pt. in., Qusest. lxix., Art. vi.j, determining it, for
the most part, in the language of Augustine.
3 The. phrase ‘ ex opere operato’ was now
introduced to represent this mode of viewing sacraments; e. g. ljuns Scotus
(Sent. lib. iv. Dist. I., Qua;st, 6, § 10) affirm*, * Sacrament am ex virtute
operis operati confert gratiam, ita quod non requiritur ibi bonus motus anterior
qui mereatur gratiam; sed sufficit, quod suscipiens non ponat obicem.’ Aquinas,
on the other hand (Summa, Pt. iii., Qua?st. lxii. i maintains that the sacrament
is no more than the ‘imtrumenialis causa gratise,’ while the true agent is God:
‘Deus sacramentis adhibitis in anima gratiam operatur:’...
‘ Nihil potest causare gratipm, nisi Deus.’ Elsewhere,
however (Pt. hi. QuffiSt. LXXX. Art. 12), he argues that the ‘perfection’ of
the Eucharist is not to be sought ‘ in usu fidelium, sed in consecratione materia:.’
* See above, p 173..
the leading teachers of the West1. Discussions2, it
is true, were agitated still among the Schoolmen as to the exact intention of
the phrase ‘to transubstantiate;’ but the emphatic sentence of the council
held at the Lateran8 (1215), designed especially to counteract the
spreading tenets of the Albigenses and some other sects4, admitted
of no casuistical evasion.
One effect of a belief in transubstantiation was to discontinue the
original practice of administering the Eucharist in both kinds5; the
reason being that our Blessed Lord existed so entirely and so indivisibly in
either element that all who were partakers of the consecrated Host received
therein His Body and His Blood8. This novel theory was called the
doctrine of ‘concomitance:’ but notwithstanding all the specious logic which
the schoolmen urged in its behalf, it was not generally accepted till the close
of the thirteenth century.
Another consequence that flowed immediately from the scholastic dogmas on
the Lord’s Supper was the adoration of the Host. It had been usual long before
to elevate’
. CuBEUP-
TIONS AND ABUSES.
Communion
in one kliul only.
Adoration
uf the Huai.
1 Giestler (in. 315. n. 5) has pointed out
a;j instance where tlie term ‘ transubstantiatio’ occurs as early as Damiai-i
in his Erpositio Canonii Missal, in Maii Script. Vet. Collect, vi., pt. 11.
215, Bom. 1825). Other instances belonging to the twelfth century have been
collected in Bp. Cosin’a Hist. Transubstant. c. 7, new edit., which is an important
authority on the whole question.
a
See Klee, as above, g 23. One of the most independent writers on the subject
was the Dominican, John of Paris (circ. 1300), whose l)eter- minatio de modo
existendi Corporis Christi in sacramento altaris alio quam, sit ille, quern
tenet ecclesia was edited by Allix, Lond. 1686: cf. Neander, tii. 473.
3 ‘
In qua [i.e. Ecclesia] idem Ipse Sacerdos est ft Sacrificium Jesus Christus,
Cujus corpus et sanguis in Sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vim
veraciter continentur, transubstantiatis pane in corpus tt vino in sanguinem
potestate Divina’, etc. c. 1. On the contemporary
doctrine of
the Eastern Church, see above, p. 95, n. 1; SchroeUi, xxyiii. 72, 73; Hagenbach, § 197.
■ Cf.
Palmer’s Treatise on the Church, part iv. eh. si. § 2.
6 Cf. above, p. 1.99, n. 3.
* Anselm (Epist. lib. iv. ep. 1A7) -was the
first who argued ‘ in utraque specie totum Christum sumi.’ Others, quoted at
length by Gieseler (hi. 320—324,
11. 11, 12), followed his sample; though the cup did not begin to be actually
withdrawn from the communicants till somewhat later. The steps by which the
change we;* I'nallv accomplished have been traced at length in Spittler (ad
above, p. 19E), n. 3).
7 hchrockh, xxviii.
74: Klee, part 11. ch. vi. § 32: L’Arroque, Hist, of
the
Eucharist, part x. ch. ix. We jfay gather the prevailing modes o'f
Feast
of
Corpus
Christi.
Practical
result of a belief in transub- stantiation.
the holy sacrament with the idea of teaching by a
symbol tho triumphant exaltation of the Lord. A different meaning was,
however, naturally imparted to the rite1, where men believed that
Christ was truly veiled beneath the sacramental emblems. These in turn became
an object of the highest worship, which was paid to them not only in the
celebration of the mass, but also when the Host was carried in procession to the
sick. The annual feast of Corpus Christi (on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday)
was the point in which these acts of worship culminated. It was authorized
expressly in a bull of "Urban IV.2 (1264), and confirmed afresh
by Clement V. at the council of Vienne 5 (1311). ,
Although we must acknowledge that the better class of minds may have been
stimulated iu their pious meditations4 by thus realizing the
immediate presence of the
thought from
the ‘AncrenEiwle,’ ■written early in the 13th century (edited with
translation by Jlorton; Camd. Soc. 1853): ■ Tr; the mass, when tlie
priest elevates God’s body, say these verses standing, Ecce. salus mundi,
cerium Patris, hostia vera, Viva cam, deltas integra, verus homo: and then tall
down with this greeting, Ave frincipium, nostrce creationis, etc.’ p. 32.
1 The first recorded instance of ‘
adoratior' in Germany (i.e. ot kneeling down before the host as an object of
worship) is said to Lave occurred in the 13th century (circ. 1215). See
Cajsariu« or Heisterbach, De Mira- culis, etc., Dialugi, lib. ix. c. 51 (quoted
bj Nearider, vii. 474). Ir. the Decret. Gregor. IX., lib. in. tit. -i i. c. 10 (Corpus Juris Canon.), we
-ind the following order of Honoring III. (circ. 1217): ‘ Sacerdos vero
quilibet frequenter doceat plebem suam, ut, cum in celebratione mi^sarum eleva-
tur Hostia salutaris, quilibet se reverentar inclinet, idem faciens cum earn
defert presbyter ad iniirmum.’ The Order of St Clara (above, p, 231, n.2)
devoted themselves especially to the adoration of the sacrament. Cape- iigue,
ii. 21.
2 BuUarivm Romanum, I. 14<> sq.
Lugdui , 1712. It seems to hav« existed somewhat earlier in the diocese of
Liege, or at least the institution of it was suggested from that quarter. Seo
Gest. Pontiff. Leodhm., ed. Chapeaville, ii.
293; Leodii, 1012.
3 Clementin. lib. iii. tit. xvi. (in the Corpus Jur. Canon.).
1
E.g. the treatise De Sacrament. Altarie, Pt. n. c. S (wrongly ascribed to
Anselm of Canterbury and printed in the old editions of his Works):
‘ Cum ergo, de carne Sua, amandi He tantam ingerit materiam, magnam et
miriticam animabus nostris vita? alimoniam ministrat, cum d.ilciter
recolligimus et in ventre memorial recondimus quiecanque pro nobis fecit et
passus est Christus.’ Ancren Bank, p. 35 (Morton's
translation): ‘After the kiss of peace in the mass, when the priest
consecrates, forget there all the world, and there be entirely out of the body;
there in glowing love embrace your beloved [Saviour] Who is comr down from
heavcr into your breast’s"bower, and hold Him fast until He
shall have granted whatever you wish for.’ Cf. Meander, vii. 467.
Crucified, the general effect of a belief in transubstan- tiation, aud
the doctrines in connexion with it, was to thin the number of communicants1.
The Eucharist was commonly esteemed an awful and mysterious sacrifice of which
the celebrant alone was worthy to partake, at least from day to day'. His Hock
were present chiefly as spectators of the rite.
A grave delusion which had shewn itself already in the worship of the
blessed Virgin was contiuued to the present age2. It now pervaded
almost every class of Christians, not excepting the more thoughtful Schoolmen3,
and was one of the prime elements in giving birth to what are called the
institutes of ‘chivalry V The parallel indeed which was established at this
time between the honours rendered to St Mary and to God Himself6 is
a distressing
1
The twenty-first canon of the Council of Lateran (1215) is evidence of this
infrequency. It enjoins that all the faithful of either sex shall communicate
at least once a year, viz. at Easter, on pain of excommunication (‘ nisi forte
de eonsilio proprii sacerdotis 6H aliquam rationabilem causam ad teinpus ab
ejus perceptione duxerit abstinendum’). Schrockh (xiTin. Ill sq.) has collected
other evidence, shewing that in France aud England attempts were made to induce
the people to communicate three times 9 year. Worthless priests now began to
enter into pecuniary contracts, binding themselves to offer masses (say for
twenty or thirty years) in bf half of the dying and the dead The better class
of prelates did not fail, however, to denounce the practice. Ibid. p. 113, and
Neander, tii. 481. The practice of administering the Eucharist to children was
discontinued from this epoch, scarcely any trace of it appearing after the
twelfth century. It was actually forbidden at the council of Bordeaux
(Burdegalense), a.d. 1255, c. 5, but is still retained in the Eastern Church.
s
Buckingham, p. 255: ‘ In the 13th century the universal reverence of mankind found
utterance in the establishment of that order, whose founders chose the title of
Servites, or Serfs of llary, as the expression of their joyful allegiance to
her sovereignty.'
:l e
g. Bonaventura, above, p. 266.
1
See Miller’s History Philosophically Illustrated, n. 14—16. A glance at the
Fabliaux (ed. Le Grand) will shew the awful way in which the worship of tho
Virgin was associated with an almost diabolical licentiousness: see especially
the Contes Devots, in tome v.
5 We see this feeling manifested strongly
in the Curms B. Maria (Neander, vir. 117, note), and in the compilation of the
Psalterium Minas, tho Psalterium Majus B. Virginis Mariie, and the BibHa
Mariana, which .whoever may have been the authors) were circulated at this
period (cf. above, p. 266, n. 4; and Gieseler, in. 340—343, n. 9, 10, 12). Aquinas
lirst employed the term hyperdvlia ( — ‘ medium inter latriam et duliam’),
intending by it the pe-'uliar veneration, short of supreme worship, which was
due to the Virgin as distinguished from till other saints (Suuma, Secunda
Secundaj, yu&st. cm. Art. iv.). He affirms elsewhere
M.
A. X
Worship
of the Virgin.
CORRUPTIONS AND
ABUSES.
Saint
worship.
Pilgrim
ages.
proof that in the estimation oven of her purest votaries she was exalted
far above the human level and invested with prerogatives belonging only to her
Son. A slight reaction may indeed have been occasioned through the partial
failure of the effort, noticed on a previous page1, when the Franciscans
attempted to exact belief in the immaculate conception of the Virgin as an
article of faith: but it is obvious that the party siding with Anselm, Bernard,
and Aquinas was outnumbered by the rest, and that the general current of
religious feeling h.ad now set the other w ay.
The number of factitious saints, already vast2, was multiplied
by the credulity of some and by the impious fraud of others, who on their
return from Palestine were apt to circulate astounding tales among their
countrymen, and furnish fresh supplies of relics to the convents on their way.
These practices, however, were most warmly reprobated here and there8.
The rage for pilgrimages had not been diminished, even after the idea of
rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was generally abandoned4 on all sides.
The less distant shrines were still frequented by a crowd of superstitious
(Part in.
Quo?st. xxv. Art. v.) ; quod matri Begis non debetur sequalis honor
honori qui debetur Kegi; debetur tamen ei quidarn honor consimUis rati one
cujusdam excellentias.’
1
Above, p. 270. The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin (Dee. 8),
corresponding with that oi her Nativity (Sept. 8: of. above, p, 92, n. I.) was
introduced in the 13th century, but not made absolutely binding (‘ oujus
celehrationi non imponitur necessitas;’ Synod of Oxford, a.d. 1222, c. 8: Jlanai, xxii. 1153). See, on the general question, Gravois, De Ortu et Progressu Cultus ac
Festi Immac. Concep.
Dei Genetricis, Luc. 1762. The Council of Basel (Sess. xxxvr.; Sept. 17, 1439)
decreed that the doctrine of tho Immaculate Conception was a pious opinion,
agreeable to the worship of the Church, the Catholic Faith, and right reason.
See the armaments against it in the great work of Torquemada, Iractatus dt
Veritate Gonceptionis B.M. V. llome, 1547; Oxford, 1869.
\.tovo, p.
190: seo the very large Catalogue Sanctorum, compiled by Peter de iNatalibus;
fol. Lugdun. 1514. To this period belongs the lamous legend of the 11,000
virgins of Cologne (perhaps a mis-reading of XI M. Yirginos--XI Martyres,
Virgines). The story was already currenl among our forefathers in the 14th
century: see a Norman-French Chronicle, c. jan. Cambr. Univ. MSS. Be. i. 20.
3 A fine .specimen occurs in the treatise
De Pignoribus Sanctorum . if Guibert, abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy (d. 1124):
Opp. ed. D’Achery, 1651.
* Above, p. 253. The feelings of the m-.m
intelligent pilgrims may be gathered from a tract of Peter of ISlois, De
Ilierosolymitana Peregrlna tione aeceleranda. See extracts of the same general
character in Neander, vn. 425—427.
devotees, attracted thither, as of old, by an idea of lightening the
conscience at an easy cost. Nor was the sterner and ascetic class of penitents
extinct1: although it seems that in the West the spirit of religion
had upon the whole become more joyous than was noted iu the former period.
The influence of the Schools had shewn itself again in giving a more
scientific shape to the conceptions which had long been current in the Western
Church respecting penance. It is true that many popular abuses of au earlier
date2 were still too common both in England and the continent. They
kept their ground in spite of all the efforts made by Gregory VII.3
and other prelates to enforce a worthier and more evangelic doctrine. Peter
Lombard, with the Schoolmen generally, insisted on contrition of the heart as
one of three4 essential elements in true repent-
1 They frequently took refuge in some one
of the religious Orders or attached themselves to the third elans of the
Franciscans (sue above, p. 231). la the Eastern Church the self-immolation of
the monks assumed the most extravagant shapes. See Eustathius, Ad Stylitam
quendam, c. 48 sq. (Opp. ed. Tafel). The pilgrimages of Italian ‘ I’lagel-
lants’ (1260 sq.) are manifestations of the same spirit in the West (Murat
ori, Script. Her. Ital. vm. 712). The author of the Ancren Riwle, who is
generally very stern, was under the necessity of (riving such injunctions as
these to the nuns of Tarent in Dorsetshire : ‘ Wear no iron, nor iiair- clcth,
nor hedgehog-skins; and do not beat yourselves therewith, nor with a scourge of
leather thongs, nor leaded; and do not with holly nor with briars cause
yourselves to bleed without leave of your confessor; and do not, at one time,
use too many flagellations:’ p. 419 (Morton’s translation;.
3
See above, p. 201: ond cf. council of York (1195) c. 4; of London (1237), c. 4:
Wilkins, 1. 501, 650; Johnson, 11. 76, 154.
3 His letter (1079) to the bishops and
faithful of Brittanv (lib, vn. ep. 10: Mansi, xx. 295) is very remarkable. He
argues that true repentance is nothing loss than a return to such a state of
mind as to feel one’s self obliged hereafter to the faithful performance of
baptismal obligations. Other forms of penance, if this change of heart be iv
anting, are said to be sheer hypocrisy. See also the Epistles of lvo of
Chartres, epp. 47, 228; and the lfith canon of tho synod of Melfl (1039):
Mansi, xi. 724. The sober views of Hildebrand respecting monasticism may be
gathered from his letter to the abbot of Clugny: lib. vi. ep. 17.
4 The three-fold representation of penance,
‘ oontritio (distinguished fram attritio) cordis,’ ‘ confessio oris,’ and ‘
satisfactio operis,' dates from Hildebert of Tours, e.g. Strmo iv. in
Quadragesima, Opp. col. 324. It is also fuund in Peter Lombard (Sentent. lib.
Iv., Dist. xvi.) and in the schoolmen generally,. Peter Blesensis, De
Confessiune Saeramentali (p. 1086, ed. Migne) has the following passage: ‘Christus
autem purga- tionem peceatorum faciens, non in judicio, sed in desiderio, non
in ardore, sed in amore, tria nobis purjatoria misericorditer assignavit,
conncp-
TIONS
A\'I> ABUSES.
Scholastic
view of Finance.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Absolution.
ance;—the remaining parts, confession of the mouth and satisfaction,
being signs or consequences of a moral change already wrought wLthia. According
to this 'view, humiliation in the sight of God is proved by corresponding acts
of self-renunciation, by confession to a priest (a usage absolutely enjoined
on all of either sex in the Lateran council1, 1215), and by
performing, in obedience to his will, a cycle of religious exercises (fastings,
prayers, alms, and other kindred works). The aim of these austerities, as well
as that of penance in all cases, was to expiate the ‘poena,’ or the temporal
effect of sins which, it was argued, cleaves to the offender, and demands a
rigorous satisfaction, even after the eternal consequences of them (or the
‘culpa’) are remitted freely by the pardoning grace of Christ2. As
many as neglected to complete this satisfaction in the present life would find
a debt remaining still to bo discharged in purgatory,—apprehended by the
Schoolmen as a place of discipline to which the spirits of the justified, and
they alone, have access.
Peter Lombard also dealt a heavy blow on those who had exaggerated the
effects of sacerdotal absolution3. He
cordis
contritionem, oris confessionem, carni,- affliction cm, ’ etc. Ou the names ‘
contrition' aud ‘ attrition,’ see Klee, part n. oh. vi. § 11.
1 Peter Lombard (as above, Dist. xvii.)
asserts the necessity of oral confession, ‘ si adsit facultas.-- but
the first conciliar authority absolutely demanding it of every one, ‘ postquam
ad annos discretionis pervenerit,’ is the Concil. Later. (1215), c. 21, See the
arguments of Aqu’iias in the Summa, part in. Qusest. j.xxxiv. sq. The practice of confessing to laymen was
allowed in extreme cases, but in the 13th century such acts were ,! adged to be
non sacramental: see Gieseler, in. § 83, n. 2: Klee, as above, § 19. On the
violent- controversy which sprang up at this period in the Jacobite communion
respecting the necessity of auricular confession, see Neale, Eastern Church, ii. 261 sq.
2 e.g. Aquinas, {Summa, Pt. in. Supplement.
QuEcst. xvm. Art. 2): ‘Illi, qui per contr.tionem conseqnutus est remissionem
peccatorum, quantum ad culpam, et per eonsequens quantum ad reatum patnte
eetenue, quae simul cum culpa dimittitur ex vi clavinm, ex pas«ione Christi
effica- ciarn habentium, augetur gratia, et remittitur temporalis pcena, cujus
reatus adhac remansorat post culpas rcmissionem: non tamen tota, sicut in
baptismo, sed pars ejus,’ etc.
3 "Hoc
sane dicere ac sentire possumus, qnod solus I leu.-, dimittit pcccata et
retinet: et tamen Ecclesia: contulit potestatem ligandi et sol- vendi. Sed
aliter Ipse solvit vel ligat, alitor Ecclesia. Ipse <-nim per se tantim-
dimittit peccatnm, quia et animam luundat ab interiori macula, et a debito
seterna* mortis solvit. Non autem hoc sacerdotibus concessit, qvibus tamen
tribuit potestatem solvendi et ligamli, i. e. ostendendi homines ligatos vel
solutos.’ Sentent.
lib. iv. Dist. xvnr. This view was, however, far from general: cf. Klee, § 8.
maintained that any sentence of the priest was valid only ill so far as
it accorded with the higher sentence of the Lord. But in the many a distinction
of this kind was far too often disregarded, and the errors into which they fell
would find abundant countenance in some proceedings of the Church itself.
Indulgences, for instance, purporting to lessen the amount, of satisfaction,
or, in other words, to act as substitutes for penitential exercises', were now
issued by the popes, in favour of all Western Christendom, when it was necessary
to stir up the zeal of the Crusaders, or advance the interest of the Roman see.
The earliest grant of‘plenary’ indulgences is due to Urban II.* (1095). It was
discovered also that a treasury of merits3, rising chiefly out of
Christ’s, but partly out of those which others, by His grace, had been enabled
to contribute, was now placed at the disposal of the popes, who could allot
them to the needy members of the Church as an equivalent for uncompleted
peuance. A gigantic illustration of these principles recurred in 1300, which
Boniface VIII. appointed as tho year of J ubilee4. A plenary
indulgence was thereby
1 See above, p. 201.
2 Council of Clermont, c. 2: ‘Quicunque pro
sola tleVotlone non pro honoris vel pecunia? adeptione, ad liberandam Ecclesiam
Dei Jerusalem profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni pmnitentia [ei] reputetur:’
llansi, xx. 816: cf. Gibbon, ed. Milman, v. 41:1 sq. The fearful relaxation of
morals in the great bulk of the crusaders furnishes an instructive comment on
this practice. See Aventinus, Annul. Boiorum, lib. v«. c. 3, edit. Gundlmg.
Innocent III. himself (1215), in Decretal. Greg. IX., lib. v. tit. xxx\iii. c. 14, was obliged to limit the
extension and number ot indulgences, and Innocent IV. (1246), in Mansi, xxiii. 600, confesses that some of the
Crusaders ‘ cum deberent ab excessibus abstinere, propter Ubertatem eis
indultam, furta, homieidia, raptus mulierum, et alia perpe- trant detestanda.’
The inability of the populace to enter into the scholastic distinctions on
this point is singularly illustrated by the language of William of Auxerre, who
viewed the teaching of the Church about it as a kind of ‘pious fraud.’ Neander,
vu. 486.
3 ‘Thesaurusmeritorum,’or‘Thesaurus
supererogationis psrfectorum.’ The first advocates of this notion were
Alexander of Hales and Albertus Magnus (see extracts in Gieseler, § 84, n.
15—18). With regard to souls in purgatory it was contended that indulgences do
not apply auctnritative but impetrative, i.e. not directly, but in virtue of
the suffrages which are made in their behalf by the living. The question is
discussed at length by Aquinas (Srnnma, Pt. fli. Supplement. Quest, lxxi. Art. 10).
4 See the Bull in the Extravagantes
Communes (Corp. Jur. Carton.), lib. v. tit. ix. c. 1. The
pope grants to all who are penitent, or shall become so. ‘in prassenti et
quolibet centesiino secuturo unnis, non solum plenum, sed largiorern, imo
plenissimam omniLun suorum veniam pecca- torum."
eoanur-
IIOX!) ANT)
ABCSKS.
I
lid III -
genets.
Trecutny
of men's.
Year
of Jubilee.
Contradictions
in the general aspect of the age.
held out to every Christian, who, for certain days, should punctually
worship at the tombs of St Peter and St Paul. The news of this festivity was
spread on every side, attracting a tumultuary host of pilgrims1,
male and female, who set out for the metropolis of Western Christendom, in
search of what they hoped might prove itself a general amnesty, at least for
all the temporal effects of sin, both present and to come.
In that and other like events we see the characteristic features of the
age. It was an age of feverish excitement, where the passions and imagination
acted far more strongly than the reason, and accordingly it teemed throughout
with moral paradoxes. Elements of darkness and of light, of genuine piety and
abject superstition, of extreme decorum and unblushing profligacy, of
self-sacrifice approaching almost to the apostolic model and of callousness
that bordered on brutality, are found not only iu immediate juxtaposition, but
often, as it seems, amalgamated and allied. The courtly knight devoted to the
special honour of the Virgin, but most openly unchaste, the grasping friar, the
Inquisitor consigning to the faggot men whom he had just been labouring to
convert, the gay recluse, the pleasure-hunting pilgrim, the Crusader bending on
the blood-stained threshold of the Sepulchre and then disgracing by flagitious
deeds the holy sign he had emblazoned on his armour,—these are specimens of the
deplorable confusion to be traced in all the ruling modes of thought.
But on the other hand we should remember that anomalies which differ
only in degree present themselves in every age of Christianity, nay, more or
less, in every human heart; and that in spite of very much to sadden and
perplex us iu our study of the Middle Age, there is enough in men like Anselm,
Bernard, Louis IX. of France, Aquinas, Grosseteste, and if we include the gentler
sex, Elizabeth of Hessen, Hedwige of Poland, and a host of others, to attest
the permanent influence of Christian truth and real saintliness of life.
1
Capefigue, n. 142 sq.
Jfrarljf |1enob of i\t glMe %p.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCn FROM THE TRANSFER OF THE PAPxlL SEE TO AVIGNON UNTIL
THE EXCOMMUNICATION OF LUTHER.
1305—1520.
Introduction
of the <fospel into Lithuania:
§1. GROWTH OF
THE CHURCH.
The Gospel of our Blessed
Lord was now ‘ in truth or in pretence’ accepted by the vast majority of
European tribes, although in much of the Iberian peninsula, in Russia1,
and the modern Turkey2, its ascendancy was broken or disputed by the
adversaries of the Cross.
AMONG THE
LITHUANIANS
Almost the onty district of importance which remained entirely in the
shade of paganism was the grand-duchv of Lithuania3, peopled by a
branch of the Harmatian family4, in close relation to the Slaves6.
As early as 1252 we read6 that Mindove, the son of a Lithuanic
chief, embraced the Christian faith, and Vitus, a Dominican, appears to have
1
The Mongols were net expelled till 1462; see above, p. 121.
s
Constantinople itself fell into the hands of tho Muhammedans, May 29, 1453; the
last refuge of the Christians being the church of St Sophia, which was
afterwards converted into a mosque. Gibbon, vi. 312 sq., ed. Milman.
8 Hither had fled a remnant of the
Prussians, who still clung to heathenism: above, p. 215, n. 5.
4 Numbers of their kinsmen in the East,
instead of realizing the hopes of Catholic and Nestorian missionaries (cf.
above, p. 216), shewed a stronger leaning to Muhainmcdanism. See Mosheim, Hist.
Tartar. Eccl., pp. 90 sq. In China riso Christianity was well-nigh subverted in
1309 (above, p. 218, n. 3), and the subsequent irruptions (1370 —1400) of Timur
.or Tamerlane), an ardent patron of the Persian (anti-Turkish) sect of the
Muhammedans, while they proved instrumental in <’urtsiling the Ottoman
power, were no less fatal to the propagation of the Gospel. See Gibbon, vi. 178
sq., ed. Milman.
5 Dr Latham's Ethnology of Europe, pp. 154
sq., Lond. 1852.
5 Diillinger, m. 285, 286: but cf.
Schrockh, xxx. 496. Bussian influences had also been exerted on the other side
md in a milder spirit. Mouravieff, p. 42.
through
a
Polish
channel.
gone thither, at the bidding of pope Innocent IV., as missionary bishop:
but ere long the influence he exerted was reversed, aud scarcely aught is heard
of Christianity in Lithuania until 1386. In that year Jagal, or Jagello1,
the grand-duke, whose predatory inroads had been long the terror of his Polish
neighbours, entered into an alliance with them, 011 condition that he should
espouse their youthful monarch, Hedwige, and should plant the Church in every
part of his dominions. Jagal was baptized at Cracow8 1386), by the
name of Vladislav, and in conjunction with Bodz&nta* tlio archbishop of
Gnesen, and a staff of Polish missionaries headed by Vasillo, a Franciscan
monk, he soon extinguished the more public and revolting rites of paganism.
But, strange to say, the work of the evangelist was mainly undertaken by the
duke himself4, the missionaries having little or no knowledge of
the. native dialects. The change produced was, therefore, nearly always
superficial5, though, as time went on, the immediate neighbourhood
of Wilna6, where the bishops lived, was gradually pervaded by a
knowledge of the truth.
1
The chief original authority on the conversion of Lithuania is the Ilisturia
Polonim of John Dlugoss (a canon of Cracow, who died 1480), ed. Lips. 1711,
lib. x. pp. 96 sq.
s
Some of hist retinue who had been formerly baptized according to Greek rites
could not be induced 1 ad iterandum, vel, ut signifioantiori verbo
utar, ad supplendum baptisma.’ Ibid, p. 104.
3 Wiltsch. 11. 261.
4 The following entry of the Polish
chronicler is in many ways instructive: ‘l’er dies autem aliquot de articulis
fidei, quos credere oportet, et Oratione Dominica atque symbolo per sacerdotes
Polonorum, magis tamen per Wladislai regis [ ? operam], qui linguam gentis
noverat et cui facilius assentiebat, edocta, sacri baptismatis unda renata est,
largiente Wladislao rege singulis ex popularium numero post susceptum baptisms
de panno ex Polonia adducto novas vestes, tunicas, et indumenta:’ p. 110. The
baptisms were performed by sprinkling a largo mass of the people at once, to
all of whom was given the same Christian name, e.g. Paul or Peter.
6 In the middle of the fifteenth century,
serpent-worship was still dominant in many districts (see .Eneas Sylvius, De
Statu Europe, c. 2f>, pp. 275 sq., Helmstad. 1699): and traces of heathenism
are recorded even in the sixteenth century (see Lucas David, Preuss. Clironik.
ed. Henning, vn. 205).
6 The see was founded in 1387, in which
year, according to a chronicler (quoted by Itaynaldus, ad an. § 16), Lithuania
passed over ‘ail ecclesise Romans obedientiam, optiini principis auctoritate
inducta.’ The bishop was placed in immediate subjection to the papal see,
without u metropolitan.
and
Lapps.
Conversion
if the Rumanians.
AMONG THE
SAMAITES AND LAPPS.
The arms of the Teutonic knights1 had forced a way into the
region occupied by the tribe of Samaites (Samo- gitse), which are probably to
be connected with the savage and half-christian race of Samoieds*, at present
bordering on the Arctic circle. The slight impression thus produced was afterwards
extended (1413) by the labours of a Lithuanian priest named Withold3.
He was consecrated bishop of Woruie or Miedniki4 (? 1^17), but
numbers of his flock appear to have immediately relapsed. The date of their
final conversion is unknown.
The Lapps, a kindred tribe5 inhabiting the northernmost
extremity of Scandinavia, had submitted to the thriving state of Sweden in 1279
From thence proceeded Christian missions, more particularly in the time of
Hemming6, primate of Upsala (1335), who founded the first church at
Tornea, and baptized a multitude of people. It was not, however, till the
sixteenth and two following centuries7 that Christianity became the
popular religion.
AMONG THE
RUMANIANS.
These were members of the Turkish family8, who entered Europe
at the close of the eleventh century upon the track of the Magyars. They
settled more especially in Volhynia and Moldavia, where, unlike a number of
their kinsmen who became Mohammedans, they clung to a degraded form of paganism9.
In 1340 some Franciscan missionaries, who
1
-Ybove, p. 215.
3
Schrockh denies this (xxx. 498), hut assigns no reason On the other hand it is
indisputable that the Samoieds (a section of the Tgrian race) bad formerly
dwelt in more southern latitudes: cf. Latham, Ethnology of Europe, pp. 166 sq.
3 Dlagoss, as above, lib. u. pp. 342 sq.
* A bishopric had been planted here in 1387
(see lla^naldus, as above, p. 313, n. 6), bat owing to the troubles of the
period, was not actually tilled until 1117: cf. "Wiltsch, it. 262.
5 Latham, as above, p. 147.
6 See Sclieft'pr'fc Lapponia, c. R, pp. 63
sq., Francof. 1673.
“ Guerike,
Kirchemgesch. n, 355, 356, Halle, 1843. On the earlier labours of Bassian
monks, see Slouravieff, pp. 7U, 97.
8 Latham, as above, p. 247.
9 According to SpoDdanus, Annales, ad an.
1220 (Continuatio, t. p. 78), the archbishop of Grail had in that year baptized
the iing of
had been established in the town of Szeret (in Bukhoviua), were
assassinated by the natives. To avenge this barbarous wrong an army* of
Hungarian crusaders marched into the district and compelled a large proportion
of the heathen to adopt the Christian faith and recognize the Roman pontiff2.
But as all Moldavia was ere long subdued by the Walla- chians, the new
‘converts’ passed thereby into the jurisdiction of the Eastern Church’.
IN THE
CANAFJIES AND WESTERN AFRICA
The enterprising spirit of the Portuguese had opened a new field for
missionary zeal. Incited by the ardour of prince Henry4, they
discovered the important island or Madeira in 1-420. Other efforts were alike
successful; and in 1484 Burtolonie Diaz ventured round the southern point of
Africa, which was significantly termed the ‘ Cape of Good Hope.’ The
ground-work of their Indian empire was established in 1508 by Alfonso
Albuquerque. Meanwhile the authors of these mighty projects had secured the
countenance and warrant of the pope, on the condition that wherever they might
plant a flag, they should be also zealous in promoting the extension of the
Christian faith*. This pledge, however, was but seldom kept in view throughout
the present period; an immoderate lust
the Rumanians
and Home of his subjects: but it does not appear that Christianity was
generally adopted till a later period: of. Schrockh, xxx. 499, 500. "
1 See the i»ative Chronicle, e. 46, in
Schwandtner’s Script. Rer. Him- gar. 1. 193.
" A
Latin bishopric was placed at Szeret in 1370 by Urban V.: Wiltsch, 11. 300,
340.
3 I hid. pp. 340, 349.
4 See Mariana, Hist. General de Espaila,
lib. xx\. e. 11 (n. 166 sq., Madrid, 1078).
5 The first arrangement of this kind was
made by Henry of Portugal with Eugenius TV. in 1443. Other instances are cited
in Schrockh, xxx. 501, 502. Mariana llib. xxvi. p. 17) speaks as if it were a
leading object of the expeditions ‘Llevar la luz del Evangelio a lo postrero
del mundo, y a la India Oriental.’ Whenever missionary zeal was manifested, it
was also turned against antagonistic furms of Christianity. Thus in India, the
Portuguese laboured to repress the ‘ Syrian’ Christians (above, p. 2tf) on the coast
of Malabar (see Geddes, Hitt. o f Church of Malabar, p. 4, I.ond. 1094); and
the same spirit dictated the first interference of the Portuguese in the Church
of Abyssinia, extending over half a century (1490 sq): Neale, East. Church, it.
343 sq.
Influence
of th-e din- coverict of th‘: Portuguese.
Apathy
in regard tn missions.
Conversion
of the Canary Islands.
Christianity
on the coast of Guinea.
Discovery
of America.
Fanaticism
of the Spanish conquerors:
of wealth and territorial grandeur strangling for the most part every
better aspiration. The Canary Islands are indeed to be excepted from this
class. A party of Franciscans1, about 1476, attempted to convert
the natives; and a letter2 of pope Sixtus IY. attests their very
general success, at least in four of the southern islands. The same
missionaries penetrated as far as the ‘ western Ethiopians,’ on the coast of
Guinea*. And soon after, in 1484, when traffic had been opened with the
Portuguese, the seeds of Christianity were scattered also to the south of
Guinea, in Congo and Benin4 But on the subsequent discovery of a
passage round the Cape, the speculations of the western merchants were diverted
into other channels.
IN AMERICA,
Columbus, while enjrajied in the service of Ferdinand
o
o t t
and Isabella, landed on the isle of San Salvador in 1492; and five years
later, a Venetian, Cabot or Gabotta, who had sailed from England, ranged along
the actual coast of North America, and was indeed the first of the adventurers
who trod the soil of the new continent5. Iu 1499 Brazil was also
added to the empire of the Portuguese, and afterwards, in 1520. Magalhaens
achieved the circumnavigation of the globe. Yet owing to the unhappy policy of
the Churcli in Spain and Portugal, these conquests did not lead at first to any
true enlargement of her borders. What was done ostensibly for ‘the conversion
of the Indians’ tended rather to accelerate their ruin6. The
1 Bavnaldus, ad sn. 1476, § 21.
2 ‘ Porcepimus quod jam Divina cooperante
gratia ex septpm ipsarum Canaria insulin habitatores quatuor earundum insularum
ad fidem con- versi sunt: in aliis vero convertendis tribus non pauca sed masua
expec- tatur populomin et gentium multitudo eonverti; nam qui Deurn haetenus
non noverunt, modo cupiunt cat-holicam fidem suscipcre, ae sacri baptis- rnatis
unda renaaci,’ etc. Quoted iu 'SViltsch, § 522, n. 1.
3 llaynaldus, ad an. 1476, § 22.
4 Ibid. ad an. 1484, § 82: Schriickh,
x\x. 503. .
6 Cf. the interesting tradition noticed
above, p 110,1 4.
6 The. title of the contemporary work of
liartolome. de las Casas, an eyewitness, is pathetically true: Relation de la
destruicion de las Indian. Kee an account of him and his writings in Prescott’s
Conquest of Mexico, I. 318 sq. Lond. 1850. He declares that in forty years his
fellow-countrymen had massacred twelve millions of the natives of America.
fanatic temper of the Spaniard, maddened as he was by recent conflicts
with the infidel at home, betrayed him into policy on which we cannot dwell
without a shudder. Multitudes who did not bend to his imperious will and
instantly renounce the ancient superstitions, were most brutally massacred,
while slavery became the bitter portion of the rest*. Their only friend for
many years was an ecclesiastic, Bartolomo de las Casas, who in sojourning among
them (till 1516) drew a harrowing picture of tbe national and social wrongs he
struggled to redress2. Some measures had indeed been taken for
disseminating Christian principles and lightening the yoke of the oppressed.
The pope already urged this point on making grants of territory3 to
the crowns of Spain and Portugal. At his desire a band of missionaries4,
chiefly of the Mendicant orders, hastened to the scene of action; and in many
of the ordinances which prescribe the service of the Indians, it is stipulated
that religious training shall be added. But these measures seldom took effect.
In 1520 only five bishoprics6 had been established, and the genuine
converts were proportionately rare: although it should be stated that upon the
final settlement of Mexico, the conqueror bad begun to manifest a deep
solicitude for the religious welfare of his charge15.
1 Tho Tlasoalans alone, at the
recommendation of Cortes, were exempted from the system of repartimientos (or
compulsory service). Prescott, as above, iii.
218: cf. m. 281. At first the bondage of the conquered was most abject,
but tho emperor Charles V. consented to its mitigation, and allowed tho
Spaniards to transport a multitude of Negroes from the coast of Africa. Thus
started the inhuman 1 slave-trade.’
s
Above, p. 316, n. 6. He finally retreated, almost- in despair, to a convent in
St Domingo. His dislike of slavery was, however, shared by the Dominican
missionaries, who appear as the ‘ abolitionists ’ of that age.
3 Alexander VI. affected to do this (3493),
‘do nostra mera liberalitate ao de apostolic® potostatis plenitudino: ’
Itaynaldus, ad an. 1493, § 19: cf. Mariana, lib. sivi. c. 3 (11. 184). In the same year he sent out missionaries
to attempt the conversion of the natives, § 24.
* Prescott, in. 218 (note).
5 Wiltsch, § 523, where a letter, addressed
to Leo X. by Peter Martyr (an ecclesiastic of the court of Ferdinand), is
quoted.
8 Prescott, m. 219. He begged the emperor
to send out holy men, not pampered prelates, but members of religioux orders
whose lives would, bo a fitting commentary on their doctrine. The result seems
to have been eminently successful in this case, almost every vestige of tho
Aztec worship disappearing from the Spanish settlements in the course of the
next twenty years.
somewhat
modijy‘4.
Attempts
to convert the Indiaiis.
The
Moors of Spain:
their
conversion, or expulsion.
Persecution
of the Jetcs,
COMPULSORY
CONVERSION OF MUHAMMEDANS AND JEWS.
A series of reactions dating from an earlier period had confined the
Moorish influence to a corner in the south of Spain; and when the royal city of
Granada ultimately bowed beneath the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492,
it was their ardent hope to Christianize the whole Peninsula afresh. The
foremost agent they employed was Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo (1195). His
arguments, however, did not always satisfy the audiences to whom they were
addressed1, and therefore he proceeded in the narrow spirit of the
age, to which in other points he shewed himself remarkably superior2,
to advise tlie application of coercive measures3, justifying them
on grounds of policy. The copies of the Koran were immediately seized and burnt
in public, while to gratify the rage of the fanatic populace, it was resolved
at last, in 1501, that every obstinate Muhammedan who did not quit the country
should henceforward be reduced to the position of a serf. As one might
naturally expect, a part of the Moriscos now conforms;!I4; but many
others, who were true to their convictions, crossed the channel into Barbaryf.
The violence with which the Jews were handled by the other states of
Europe6 was intensified in the Peninsula where they had long existed
as a thriving and comparatively learned body , The old story of their
crucifying
1 Sen
Mechier, Iliat. du Cardinal Ximenes, i. 136 sq. Pari?!. 1694.
On the conquest of Granada, Ferdinand ha'l positively pledged himself to
tolerate the religion of the Moors. Mariana, lib. xxv. c. 16 (xi. 176).
2 He was, for instance, a great patron of
learning, and contributed much to the editing of the Polyglot! Bible
■which bears his name (Fleury, lib. cxix. § 142). A sketch of his
ecclesiastical reforms is given m Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, H. 481 sq.
3 On the different views that were taken of
his conduct, see Schroclui,
xxx. 518, 519.
4 Mariana (lib. xxvn. c. 5) records many
instances, whare thousands
were
baptized together.
6 Ibid.
6 Schrockh (xxx. 551 sq.) has pointed out a
number of cruelties committed on tho Jews of Germany. One of the most inhuman
persecutions, which he does not mention, happened in 1349, \.hen they were
charged with poisoning the wells and canning an unut>ual mortality (see
Pezii Scriptor. Her. Austr. i. 248).
7 Their greatest theological luminai-y at
this time was Babbi Isaac Aoarbanel, a distinguished i-xegetical writer, born
at Lisbon (14-37). His
children on Good Friday, gained a general currency at the beginning of
the present period1. Laws were framed accordingly for their
repression, and a superstitious rabble, stimulated, in the south of Spain
particularly, by inflammatory preachers2, vented their unchristian
fury on the Jews, whom they despoiled of property and even life itself. More
salutary influence was exerted here and there by magistrates or preachers of
the better class3: aud at the memorable disputation in Tortosa4
which lasted several months (14.14). a party of the most accomplished liabbis
owned their inability to answer their opponents, and, with two exceptions,
instantly passed over to the Church. But although the conversion of thoir
champions had disarmed to some extent the prejudice of others, it does not
appear that the Hebrews as a body had been drawn more closely to the Christian
faith. The thunders of the Spanish Inquisition, which began its course in
1480, were continually levelled at the Jews5 and at a growing class
of persons whom it taxed with Judaizing. Prompted by the same distempered zeal,
or captivated by a prospect 01 replenishing the public coffers, Ferdinand and
Isabella gave them
particularly
in Spam.
Endeavours
to convert them.
works on the
Old Testament have been much used and valued by Christian commentators.
1 Thus in Spain Alfonso X. enacted a law
providing for the punishment of but'li offemdera. A. de Castro, Hist, of the
Jews in Spain, translated by Mr Kirwan, pp. 64, 65, Cambridge, 1851. At the
s<ime time all Jews were ordered to wear a red badge on their left shoulder,
under heavy penalties.
2 e.g. those preached at Seville, 1391, by
a’vhdeacon Martinez {Ibid. pp. 87 sq.), the effect of which was that many of
his audience rushed into the streets and murdered all the Jews they met. He was
restrained, however, by the king (John I.): but in the very next reign four
thousand Jews were slain at once. Ibid. p. 92.
s
The conversion (circ. 1390) of the learned Talmudist, TCalorqi (afterwards
known as Jer6nimo de Santa Fe) is traced to the diHCourses of an earnest
preacher, Vincente Ferrer. Ibid. p. 95. Pablo (afterwards bishop of Cartagena)
was moved to follow his example by reading Aquinas De Legibus. Ibid p. 106.
4 Ibid. pp. 96—1(10. The congress was held
in tho presence of the Spanish anti-pope Benedict XIII., who afterwards issued
certain decrees condemnatory of Jewish tenets, and among other things requiring
tlui Jews should listen every year to three sermons preached with tho design of
promoting their conversion: Ibid. p. 101. A similar decree was passed at the
council of Basel in the sixteenth session (Feb, 5,14U4), where tho necessity
for founding Hebrew and other protV ssorships in the Universities was strongly
insisted on. Cf. above, p. ‘219, n. 4.
5 Ibid. pp. 145 sq.
the alternative of baptism or expulsion1. Many, as we noticed
in regard to the Moriscos, would he nominally Christianized in order to retain
their property. A multitude of others fled for refuge chiefly into Portugal,
but new calamities were thickening on their path. In 1493 the king of Portugal
(Jolm II.) ordered2 that the children of the Hebrews should be
forcibly abstracted and baptized; while such of the adults as were unwilling to
be taught the truths of Christianity were in the following reign compelled to
forfeit their possessions and to emigrate in quest of other homes.
!
Ilid. p. 164 Accounts differ as to the actual number of the expelled. Mariana
(lib. xxvi. c. lj thinks it might be as great as eight hundred
thousand.
2 De Castro, as above, pp. 202 sq.
CONSTITUTION
AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
The numerous changes that
were supervening at this period on the constitution of the Western Church, internally
regarded, had been so inextricably blended with ulterior questions touching its
relation to the secular authority, that, in the narrow limits of a volume like
the present, the two subjects will be most conveniently approached and carried
on together.
Viewed by unobservant eyes, the form of government prevailing in the west
of Christendom might often look ab autocratic as it was in tbe palmy days of
Gregory VII. or Innocent III.; but on a closer survey we shall find that while
political events as well as public opinion had been hitherto conspiring almost
uniformly to exalt the papacy, they now were running more and more directly
counter to its claims. The very impulses which it had given for civilizing all
the influential states of Europe were now threatening to recoil and overwhelm
itself. From the commencement of the present period to the former half of the
fifteenth century the consciousness of civil and of intellectual independence
was awakening alike in kings, in scholars, and in legislative bodies. The
important middle-class, now starting up on every side, had also grown impatient
of the foreign bondage; and although the surface of tho Church was somewhat
smoother in the interval between the council of Basel (1443, and the appearance
of Luther, it is obvious that a strong under-current of hostility to Rome had
never ceased to work and rankle in men's bosoms. There was
Growth
of attli-papd feeling.
EffeH
of the residence at Avignon (1305—•
1376).
still indeed no -well-defined intention to revive the theory of local
churches, or to limit, in things purely spiritual, the jurisdiction of the
Roman see: but as one formidable class of its pretensions had intruded very far
into the province of the civil power, the pontiffs daily ran the risk of
-weakening their sway in general by the arbitrary maintenance of some obnoxious
point. The conflict, which at first is traceable in almost every case to the
resentment of a crushed and outraged nationality, was easily extended to a
different sphere of thought, till numbers of the more discerning spirits,
keenly smarting under the injustice of the pope, liail lost all real faith in
his infallibility1.
A heavy blow had been inflicted on the temporal supremacy of Rome when
Clement V. submitted to the king of France and fixed his chair within the jurisdiction
of a papal vassal, Robert of Anjou, at Avignon. The seventy years’ captivity2,
as the Italians often called the papal sojourn in Provence, had tended much to
weaken the prestige associated with the mother-city of the West. The pontiffs
also, living as they now did far awav from their estates, devised new engines
of extortion3 for replenishing their empty coffers. By this venal
1 e.g. Tha followink is the language of
ilarsilius of Padua, formerly rector of the University of Paris: ‘sic igitur
propter temporalis conten- dendo non vere defenditur sponxa Christi. Earn
ete'.im qtwe vere Christi sponsa est, catholicam fidem et fidelium
inultiftidint-m, nun defendunt modemi llomar.orum pontifices, sed oftnnuunt,
illiusque pul- chritudinem, unitatem videlicet, non servant, sed fuidant, dum
7izanias et schismata seminando ipsius membra lacerant et ab invict m
separant,’ etc.; in Goldast, Monarchia Roman, n. 281, ed. Franco! 1668.
• ‘L’empia Babilouia’ is the phrase of Petrarch.
3 e.g. the appropriation of rich benefices
and bishoprics to the use of the pope or of hi* favourites, by what -were known
as ‘reservations' or ‘provisions.’ Such benefices were held with others ‘in
oommendam:’ of. above, p. 226, n. 4. The system in this form commenced under
Clement Y. {Extravagantcs Communes, lib. hi. tit. ii. c. 2, in • Corpus Juris
Caron.’), anu was fully developed by his successor John XXII., who ‘reserved’
to himself all the bishoprics in Christendom (Daluze, Vit. Paparum Avenion., I.
722; flallam, Middle Ages, c. vii. pt. ii.: vol. ii. p. 234, 10th ed.; where other instances are given). In
England, where the papal mandates for preferring a particular clerk had been
disputed long before, the system of ‘provisions’ was most strenuously repelled:
see Rot. Pari., 3 ,T!ie. Ji. § 37, and e»]>ecially the famous statute of
Provi- surs (1351), 25 Edw. III., cap. 6. Other cases of resistance are cited
in Twysdon, Vindication of the Oliurcli, pp. 80, 81, Camb. ed. Annates, or
firbt-fruite of Ecclesiastical benefices, were also instituted by John XXII.,
and rapacious policy the feelings of the Church were still more deeply
irritated and more lastingly estranged1..
In spite of the obsequiousness of Clement V. in dealing with the crown
of France, he shewed as often as he dared that he inherited the domineering
temper of the papacy2. But his pretensions were eclipsed by those of
John XXII.3 (1316), whose contest4 with Louis of Bavaria,
king of the Romans, was a prolongation of the mortal feud between the
Ghibellines and Guelfs, to which allusion has been made above5. In
1S23 (Oct. 8) a papal missive6 called on Louis to revoke his
proclamations, to abstain from the administration of the empire, and present
himself, within three months, a suppliant at Avignon, if he wished his claims
to be allowed. Meanwhile both laymen and ecclesiastics were commanded to withhold
allegiance from him. Goaded by indignities like this, Louis put forth a
counter-manifesto (Dec. 16. 1323), in which he did not hesitate to call his
adversary a pretender and a fautor of heretical pravity. He also stated his
intention of appealing to a General Council7. But his threats
who
accumulated in this way a prodigious treasure (ElaUam, Ibid.; Twystien, pp.
104—107).
1 e.g. Giovanni Vii ani IHist. Fiorent.
lib. ix. p. 58) draws the following picture of John XXII.: ‘ Questi fu huomo
molto cupido di moneta e simoniacc, che ogni beneficio per moneta in sua corte
si vendea, ’ etc.
2 This was exemplified in his laying Venice
under the interdict (1309), aud even forbidding all commerce with it and
empowering any one to seize the property or persons of its subjects. Kavnald.
ail an. 1309, § 6.
3 Owing to a violent dispute between the
French and Italian cardinals, the papal throne was vacant two years and nearly
four months after the death of Clement (1314). It may here be noted that the
last important contribution to the Canon Law (the Libri Clementini) was made
by this pope in 1313: cf. above, p. 224, n. 1.
, 4
One of the best accounts of this important struggle will be found in
Ohlenschlager, Staatsgesch. des r'&m. Kaiserthums in der erst. HMfit des
14ten Jahrhuni. pp. 80 sq., i’j-ancof. 1755.
6 p. 248. Dante was engaged in tliis
controversy, taking the side of the (jhibellines. His book On Monarchy appeared
in 1322.
6 See the various Processes against the
emperor in Martene and Du; rand’s Thesanr. Anecd. ii. 644 sq., and cf. Dollinger, rv. 106.
The people, the jurists, and many of the clergy took the imperial side of the
dispute.
1
See above, p. 254. The document in Ohlenschlager, as above, Ur- kundenbueb, p.
84. Louis admits, however, that the Almighty has placed two great lights in the
firmament of the Church, ‘ pontificalcm videlicet auctoritatem et impf ratoriam
majestatem, illud ut pranesset diei, spiri- tualia disponendo, ttiterum ut
prajesset nocti, temporalia judicando:’ cf. above, p. 243, n. 2.
v 9
Contest
between JvL a XXII. and Louis of Bavaria.
THE
PAPACY.
Champions
of the imperial interest.
1
The leading author was liarsilius of Padua, assisted by John of Janduno, »
Franciscan: cf. Xeander, ix. 35. The Defensor Fan's is printed in ttoldast’s
Monarch. Roman, n. 154 sq. It was translated into English at the beginning of
the Kelormation, ind included in a list of ‘ {prohibited booksBaker, Notes on
Burnet (Brit. Mag. xtjiyi. 395).
1
e.g. Conclusio xvi., xvm., xxm., xxxvn. (These Conclusions, forty- one in
number, are in the third Part of tlio treatise). The following is another
indication of the same teadcmy (Concl. xxxin.i: ‘Generale concilium ant
partiale sauerdotum et episcop.>rum ac re.liquorum fidelium. per coactivam
potestatcm congregare, ad fidelem legislatorem aut ejus auctoritate
principantem in eoimnunitatibus fidelium tantummodo perti- nere, nec in aliter
congregato determinata vim aut robur habere.’ The Defensor Pads also advocates
the theory that priests and bishops were originally equal, and derives the
primacy of Borne itself from a grant of Constantine (‘ qui quantum
prajeminentiam et potestatem tribuit epis- copis et ecclesis Koiuanai super
cajturas mundi ecclesias seu presbyteros omnes’). As above, ii. 24b.
3 Thus they plainly stats, ‘quod nullam
scripturam irrevocabiliter veram credere vel fateri tenemur de necessitate
salutis cetervce, nisi eas qu£e canonical appellantur’ (Ibid. p. 254);
reserving, however, the first place in the interpretation of bcripture to
general councils (‘ et ideo pie tenendum determinationes concjli'irum
generalium in senMbus scriptural dubiis a Spiritu Sancto suse veritatis
originem mmere,' Ibid.).
4 See nbove, p. 231. It was members of this
school, headed by t'ber- tinus de Casali, wLo stigmatized the pope as a heretic
for Diaintaining that our Lord and the Apostles ‘in speciali non habuisse
aliqua, nec in communi etiam.’ See also the Defcnsorium Wil. Occami contra
Johan, paparn XXII., in Brown’s Fascic. ii. 439—4G5.
and protests were alike unheeded, and the sentence of excommunication was
launched against him in the following spring (March 21).
Amid the tumults which, this controversy had produced, the Church was
further startled by the publication of a treatise written by Imperialists’ and
levelled at the roots of papal, and indeed all other hierarchical supremacy.
The title of it is Defensor Pads. As the natural effect of a recoil from
Hildebrandine principles, it manifests a disposition to exaggerate the
privileges of the laity in matters that affect the Church, contending even that
the power of the keys was delegated to the priesthood by their flock or by the
emperor himself, who might be viewed as the representative of all*. In many points
the authors of this work preserved a juster balance and may fairly take their
stand with the precursors of the Reformation3. It is plain that
nearly all the anti- papal writings of the age are tinctured with the principles
of the extreme Franciscans; or the ‘Spuituales4/
who had long been halting in their loyalty to Rome. Another of that
disaffected class is William of Ockham, the English schoolman, who had found a
shelter at the court of Louis of Bavaria, and contended with a boldness
hitherto unequalled for the dignity and independence of the empire1.
He questioned the infallibility of the pope 111 judging even of doctrinal
matters, and, unlike the great majority who shared his feelings on this head,
he was unwilling to accept a General Council as the court of ultimate appeal.
The cause of John XXII. was defended, among others2, by an
Augustinian hermit of Ancona, Agustino Triumfi (Triumphus), who, in pushing
ultramontane principles to their legitimate results, asserted that the pope
alone could nominate an emperor, and therefore that the college of electors
acted only at his beck or through his delegation3. But the hour was
past when writers of this stamp could sway the general mind of Europe.
Appealing to a future council4, Louis braved the excommunication,
and at last the interdict5, of his opponent (1324). He confided in
the loyalty of his dependents6, and especially in the Franciscan
order, one of whom he thrust into the
1
His Dhputatio de Potentate Eccletia et Sceculi and other kindred works are
printed in Uoldast, as above, 11. 314 sq. His anti-popery is
almost as hot
as Luther’s (e.g. p. 390j: cf. Turner, Hist, uf England, Middle Ages, m. 98.
3 The principal -sra* a Franciscan of a
milder school, named A1 varus Pelagius, who cumposed his De Planctu Ecclesice
about 1330 (ed. Tenet. 1560). He maintains ‘ quod juripdictionem habet
universalem in toto inundo Papa nedum in spiritualibus, sed temporalibus, licet
executionem gladii temporalis et jurisdictionem per filiuin suum legitiinuin
impera- torem, cum fuerit, tanquam per advoeatum et defensorem Ecclesia;, et
per alios reges... debeat exercere:’ lib. 1. c. 13.
s
See the Summa de Potestate Ecclesicustica (ed. Rum., 1582), Qunpat. xxxv. Art. 1 sq. The papal
claims were seldom more offensively stated than in the following passage: *
Pionum est autem, quod papa est omnis juris interpres et nrdinator, tamquam
architector in tota ecclesiastics hierarcbia, vice Ohristi; unde quolibet jure
potest, cum subest causa rationabilis, decimas laicorum, non solum su'nditormn,
verom etiam regum, principum et dorninnrum recipere et concedere pro ecclesia)
militate, ac eos, si mduerint dure, compellere.' Qua‘st. t.xxiti. Art. 111.
j His formal
appeal is given iu Kaluze, Vit. Papar. Avenion. n. 478.
“ In
Mart&ne and Durand, as above, 11. 600.
6 We learn from the contemporary Chronicon
of Johann von Winterthur (or Vitoduranus), that such of tho clergy as observed
the interdict were roughly handled by the people: see Thesaurus Hist. Helvetica
(Tiguri, 1735), .. 49.
THE
TAPACT.
Defenders
of the Papacy.
The
papal threats ino- ptraticc.
THE
PAPACY.
Attempts
at reconciliation,i
Continuance
and close of the struggle.
place of J dim XXII. with the title Nicholas V., and from whom he
received the imperial crown. These friars never ceased to tax the pontiff as a
heretic, alleging, in addition to an older charge respecting his contempt of ‘
evangelical poverty,’ that he had absolutely erred while preaching on the
beatific vision of the saints1.
The next pontiff, Benedict XII.2 (1334,, appears to have been
anxious to reform his court, and even cancelled many grants of benefices which
his predecessors had made over to themselves3. He also wished to
bring about a reconciliation with Louis of Bavaria : but his efforts were
resisted by the king of France, to whom he was in bondage*. For this cause the
interdict of John
XXII. long
continued to disturb the peace of Germany. Iu 1338 a meeting of electors5
held at Rense (on the banks of the Rhine) asserted the divine commission of the
emperor, and laboured to emancipate him altogether from the trammels of the
Roman pontiffs, venturing even to withdraw from them the ancient privilege of
confirming his election. Clement VI. (1342) prolonged the controversy, and on
finding the imperialists determined to maintain their ground, two other writs
of excommunica-
1 According to the Oontinuaior of tho
Chronicon of 'William de Nangis (D’Achery, in. 95), he had stated in a sermon
(1*131), ‘ quod anirna1 dece- dentium iu gralia non videant Drum per
essentiam, nec sint perlecte beat®, nitri post resumptionem corporis:’ cf.
Dellinger; it. Ill (Bote). The
practical deduction from his view is thus stated by Giovanni Yillani, lib. *.
c. 230: ‘Dicendo laicamente, come fedel Christiano, che in vane si pretjherebbono
i santi, ii harebbesi speranza di salute per li loro meriti, se nostrk donna
panta Maria...e li altri nanti non potessono vedere la Deitade infino al d! d6l
giudicio, ’ etc.
3 Personally he was not a model for the
clergy, being ‘ c ’inestor ma”- iiaus et potator egregius,’ and the origin of
the proverb 1 bibamus papa- liter:’ see Neander, tx. 5H.
3 e.g.
Baluze, Vit. Papar. Avmion. i. 198. A’-bert of Strasburg
(Argcntinensis), Chron. in Urstisii German. Ilistor. n. 125.
4 Dollinger, iv. 116, 117.
5 See the document in Ohlonschlnper, as
above, p. 188. This act «as Kfterwards published (March, 1339) at a
constitution oi the < mpire (ftoldast, Cunstit. Imperial, n't. Ill), and
vigorously defended by Leopold of Bebenburg, afterwards bishop of Bamberg, and
by "William of Ockham. The lo st-inentioned writer took the part of Louis
in another question, where he far exceeded his prerogative by trying to
dissolve the marriage of Margaret of Carintbia, ana granting to his son the
dispensations necessary for contracting an alliance with her (1342) See Ockham,
lie Jurisdictione imperatoris in caum matrivumiaUbus, in Goldast’s Monarch. i.
21, and the Chronicon of Yitoduranus (as above, p. 325, n. 6), p. 59.
tion1, breathing curses hitherto unequalled in the manifestoes
of the pope, were circulated in all quarters where adherents could be gained
(1341, 1346). When Louis died in 1347, the prospects of his house aud party had
been darkened by the elevation of a rival candidate for the empire, Charles of
Moravia, who had pledged himself2 to carry out the policy suggested
by the king of France and by the conclave at Avignon. Many of the violent Franciscans
were now ready to conform, and even "William of Ockham ultimately
recognized, in words at least, the jurisdiction of the pope3.
But much as this important victory might seem to benefit the cause of
Clement and to prop his sinking fortunes, they were damaged more and more by
his rapacity, his nepotism, and the licentious splendour of his court4.
He was succeeded by Innocent VI. (1352), who in a reign of ten years did
something5 to produce a healthier tone of morals and to allay the
ever-formidable. spirit of remonstrance which was breaking out on every side,
especially in parliaments anil other public bodies. Urban V. (1362) attempted,
notwithstanding the resistance of one faction in the conclave, to replace the
papal chair in Italy (1387), but unpropitious circumstances drove him back*;
and that desire could not be finally accomplished till the next pontificate
(1370), when Gregory XI., relying on the influence of a nun, the able Catharine
of Siena7, occupied
1 In liaynald. ad an. 1343, § 13: ad an.
13-1(5, § 3. For the intervening negotiations -with the pope, see documents in
Ohlensehliiger, pp. 226 sq.
2 Raynald. ad an. 1346, § 19.
3 Dollinger, it. 123.
4 See Alliert of Strasburg (as above!, p.
133, and Matteo Yillani (who continued the Historie Florentine of hia brother,
Giovanni Yillani), lib. in. c. 43: cf. Dollinger, iv. 124.
6 e.g.
Baluze, Vit. Papar. Ai'enion, 1. 357. Under bin predecessor almost
a)l the Engli»h benefices were reserved to the pope or other aliens,’ which
provoked the famous statute of I’rovisors (1350). Innocent YI. did not repeat
his claims; and Urban Y. issued a bull Cmtra Plurnlitates in beneficiis (1365J:
Wilkinx, m. 62.
6 Raynald. ad an. 1370, § 19. Petrarch (Vie
de Petrarque, by Pe Sade) was actively engaged iu this dispute, contending for
the claims of Eome as the metropolis of the popes, and eloquently denouncing
the corruptions of Avignon, which he calk the third Babylon: sew his Epistohe
sine titulo. X sketch of the rise and fall of Bienzi, and the civil revolutions
of which I tonic was now the theatre, will be found in Gibbi m, ch. lxx.
7 Borne of her works, including letters on this
point, were printed
THE
PAPACY.
Return
of thi Piqie to Rome,
1370.
The
papal schism of forty years.
the old metropolis (1376). His. death, which followed in 1378, gave rise
to a dispute, which, next to the long residence at Avignon, tended more than other
agencies to shake the empire of the popes, and stimulate a reformation of the
Church1. The present schism, unlike convulsions of an earlier
period2, lasted almost forty years (1378 —1417 s)_. and
therefore could not fail to give an impulse, hitherto unknown, in calling up
the nationality of mam a western state, in satisfying it that papal rule was
no?- essential to its welfare, and in thereby adding strength to local
jurisdictions. The dislike of ‘ aliens’ and of Roman intermeddling was
embittered at the same time by the fresh exactions4 of the rival
pontiffs, each of whom was
at Paris, 164
i: see her Life in the Act. Sanct. April in. 956. Bridget (Brigitta) of Sweden,
also canonized, was equally -trgent in promoting the return of Gregory: see her
Bevelationes, iib.'iv. c. 139 sq., ed. Ait. verp. 1611.
3 See N’eandrr, ix. 67 sq. on the rise and
important bearings of tho papal schism. Henry of Hesse (al. Langenstein), in
his Consilium Pads, printed by Von iler Hardt in the Concil. Constant, ii. 1
sq., declares (1381) ‘Hanc tribulationem a Deo non gratis pennissam, sed in
necessa- riarn opportunamque ecclesiee reformationem finaliter convertendam: ’
cf, Lentant, Concile de Pise, lib. i. p. 51, Amsterd. 1724.
3 See, fur instance, p. 223, n. 3, 4, 5.
=
In this year Benedict Xill. was deposed by the coimcil of Constance, but he
persisted in his claims until his death in 1424.
4 See the treatise, written in
1401, De. Iluina Ecclesia (al. De Cor- rupto Ecclesia Statu), attributed
generally to Nicholas de Clemenget (Olemangis), ami printed in Von del- Hardt,
Concil. Constant, tom. I. pt. in., and in Brown, Fascic. ii. 555 sq. Neander
(ix. 81 sq.) has reviewed this memora hie work, together with s short
treatise, De Studio Theologko, in D’Achery, 7. 473 sq. The author traces the
exile of the popes to their own ‘ fornic.ationes odibiles.’ In speaking of his
own time he writes: ‘Adeo se et ecclesiam universalem eorum arbitrio
subjecerunt utque dediderunt, ut yix aliqunm parvulam prsebendam nisi eorum
man- dato rel consensu in pro\inciis eorum tribuere ausi essent.’ A second
writer of the period, Theodoric of Niem (Nieheim), in his works, De Schismate,
and Nernus Unionis (Argentor. 1629), has furnished ample evidence to the same
effect. The English parliaments continued to resist, with more or less
firmness, the increased exactions of the pope, and in 1389 the statute of
Pramunirf, 13 Bic. II. stat. n. c. 2 and 3, enlarged and reinforced by 16 Bic.
II. c. 5, was levelled at the same offender. No one in future was to send or
bring hither a summons or excommunication against any person for executing the
statute of Provisors (cf. above. p. 327, n. 5), and the bearers of papal bulls
or other instruments for the translation of bishops and like purposes, were subjected
to the penalty of forfeiture and perpetual imprisonment. It is remarkable that
the statute 16 Bic. II. was enrolled on the desire of tho archbishop of
Canterbury. Twysden, Vindie. of the Church, p. Ill,' Camb. ed. '
clearly anxious to maintain his dignity at any cost what' ever.
The origin of this important feud appears to he as follows1.
When the cardinals, of whom the great majority were French, had met to
nominate a successor of Gregory XI., the Roman populace tumultuously demanded
that their choice should fall on some Italian. Influenced by this menace they
elected a Neapolitan, the archbishop of Bari, who at his coronation took the
name of Urban VI. (April 18. 1378). The cardinals, however, soon repented of
their choice, and, when the pressure of the mob had been withdrawn, endeavoured
to annul the whole proceeding by the substitution of a member of their own
conclave, and a Frenchman, who was crowned as Clement VII. (Oct. 31). Between
these two competitors the Western Church was almost equally divided3.
Urban, who remained at Rome, enjoyed the countenance of England, Italy,
Bohemia, the German empire, Prussia, Poland, and the Scandinavian kingdoms:
while his rival, who retreated to Avignon, was acknowledged in the 'whole of
France8, Scotland, Spain, Lorraine; Sicily, and Cyprus.
Neither of the factions would consent to the retirement of their leader,
and accordingly the quarrel was embittered and prolonged. The Roman conclave,
after the death of Urban, nominated Boniface IX. (1389), Innocent VII. (1404),
and Gregory XII. (1406); and Clement had an obstinate successor in the cardinal
Pedro de Luna, Be-
1 Halhm, 3Iiddle Affes, 11. 237,238, 10th
ed.: Maimbourg, Ilist. <ht
grand
Sehismr, Paris, 1678; and mi'Tu especially Lenfant, ConcUt de
Pise,
-who in the first and second books has fairly stated the evidence on
both
sides.
s
Kichard T'llerston (or Ulverstour), -whose paper urging an immediate
‘reformation
of the church ’ -was presented at the council of Pisa (1409),
complains of
this among the other consequences of the schism: -Quod profecto exinde patuit,
quod retma inter se prius divisa partibus a se invicem divisis ef inter se de
papatu contendentibus se pariformitrr con- junxerunt.' Jee the whole of thin
remarkable document in Von der Hardt’s Concil. Constant. 1. 1126 sq.
8 The university of Paris shewed its
independence for some time by recognizing neither of the candidates, so that
there were three parties in the Western Church, the Urbanites, the Clementites,
and the Neutrals. The last party, who were looking to a general couni il for
redress, were represented by Henry of Langenstein (cf. above, p. 328, n. 1):
Neander, ix. 71, 72. The influential manifestoes issued at this crisis by the
university are noticed in Buteus, Ilist. Univ. Paris, iv. 018 t>q.
Its
orii/in.
Balance
of thi two O],- poiing fae- lions.
Series
of rival popes.
Council
of Pisa,
1409:
nedict XIII. (1S94). Dismayed or scandalized by this unseemly struggle,
the more earnest members of the Church1 now looked iu every quarter
for redress. At length they seem to have been forced to a conclusion that the
schism was never likely to be healed, except by the assembling of a general
council2, which (in cases where a reasonable doubt existed as to the
validity of an election) nearly all the theologians deemed superior to the
pope. The Council of Pisa3 was now summoned in this spirit by the
allied cardinals (1499), its object being to secure the unity, and stimulate
the reformatiou, of the Church. During the sessions, which extended over many
months (March 25—August 7), the rival pontiffs, on declining to present
themselves for judgment, were pronounced contumacious (March 30), and at last
were both formally deposed4 (June 5) as guilty of schism, heresy,
and perjury. The choice of the electors now fell on Peter of Candia (Alexander
V.), who pledged himself to purify the Church5,
1 Others looked upon the question, it is
true, in a very different manner, saying, ‘nihil onailing eurandum quot papa
sint.’ 13ula;us, Hist. Univ. Paris, iv. 700.
2 Appeals had been occasionally made
already to a general council in the case where Eoman absolutism was peculiarly
oppressive (see above, p. 254): but the coexistence of two rival pontiffs vying
with each other in the magnitude of their exactions, led men to discuss the
subject far more deeply. See, for instance, the remarkable treatise of
Matthaeus de Cra- coua, bishop of Worms, entitled De Squaloribus Romance Curice
(in Walch, Moniment. Medii jEvi, I. 1— 100, Gotiing. 1757).
3 See
Lenfant’s Hist, du Coneile de Pise, Amst. 1724: Mansi, xxvii.
1 sq. Among the very numerous prelates here
assembled was llobert Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, who took an active part in
the proceedings, and declared (April 30) that he bad authority from the king of
England to consent to whatever the council might determine fur promoting unity:
Mansi, il. 12-5.
4 ‘ Christi
nomine invocato, sancta et universalis synodus universalem ecclexiam
repraisentans, et ad quani cognitio et decisio hujus causa' nos- citur
pertinere...pronuni'iat...Angelum Corrario [/. e. Gregory XII.] et Petrurn de
Luna [i. e. Benedict XIII.] de papatu contendentes et eorum utrumque fuisse et
esse notorios scliismaticos, et antiqui schismatis nutritpres,
defensores,...necnon notorios hsereticos et a tide devios, notoriisque
criminibus enormifius perjurii et violationis voti irretitos,’ etc. On
these grounds a definitive sentence is passed upon both, inhibiting them ‘ne
eorum aliquis pro summo pontitice gerere se praa- -umat,’ etc.'. Mansi, ib.
402: cf. Tlieodoric of Niem, De Bihismate, lib. in. c. 44.
5 Leniant, t. 290. See the discourse of
Gerson, preached Oefore him, on thin subject, in Gerson’s Works, ed. Du Pin, ti. 191. The text was Acts i. 6; from
which he urged the pope to realize (as far as migh!
iu head and members ; but, he died in the following year, when Balthassar
Cossa (John XXIII.), notoriously1 devoid of principle, succeeded to
his throne. So far, however, was this council from allaying the religious
conflicts of the west, that for a time it only added fuel to the flames. The
whole of Spain and Scotland still adhered to Benedict ; and as the Roman
candidate (Gregory XII.) was not entirely unsupported, Christendom might gaze
with horror at the spectacle of three antagonistic popes. A large majority,
however, recognized the claim of John
XXIII., upon the ground that he was nominated by the
lawful conclave who presided in the council of Pisa. But this worthless pontiff
afterwards consented, in an evil hour, to summon all the western prelates to
another general council held at Constance (1414—1413), and intended, like its
predecessor, to eradicate abuses, and to heal the papal schism*. The animus of
the assemblage, numbering altogether eighteen thousand in ecclesiastics only”,
was displayed in the first session (Nov. 16, 1414); where it was determined*
that not only the prelates (bishops and abbots)
be) all the
ends for which the Church of Christ was founded. But as many prelates hastened
to depart, the question of reform was afterwards postponed until the year
1412, when Alexander was to nail another council for that purpose ^‘reformare
TCcclesiam in capite et in membris’). This delay was strongly censured by the
ardent reformers, such as Nicholas de Clemenges: see his Disputatio super
materia Ooncilii Generalis (written in 1116): Opp. ed. Lvilius, 1613, p. 70. It
is true that a synod was held at Eome in 1112, but, as the same writer
complains (Hid. p. 75), the time was merely wasted ‘in rebus supervacuis
nihilque ad utili- tatem ecclesias pertinentibus.’
1 Nichola- de Clemenges (ibid. p. 75)
speaks of him in 1410 as ‘Balthasar ille perfidissimus nnper e Petri sede iquam
turpissime fuda- \it) ejectus:: see the Life «f him by Theodoric uf
Niem in Von der Hardt’s Concil. Constant. 11.
336 sq.: and cf. Dollinger, iv. 152.
2 Sec
Lenfant’s Hist, du Ooncile de Constance, Amst. 1727, and Von der Hardt, Concil:
Constant. 6
vols. JKrancof. 1700 (additional volume containing Index by Bohnstedt, Berlin,
1742).
3 Dollinger, iv. 155. [n the train of this
assemblage followed, it is said, no less than seven hundred ‘mulieres
communes.’ See the statistical account of an eyewitness in Von der Hardt, v.
pt. 11. pp. 10 sq.
4 The advocate of the inferior clergy was
the cardinal Peter d'Ailly, bishop of Camliray. See the whole discussion in Von
der Hardt, ii. 224 sq. The Paris doctors, in suggesting the appeal to a general
council (1394), had already urged the importance of introducing doctors of theology
and law, or at least the representatives of cathedral chapters, monastic
orders, Arc. The prelates, as a body, were considered too illiterate for the
decision of so grave a point (‘quia plures eorum, proh pudor! kodie satis
illiterati sunt ’): see Bulajus, Hint. Univ. Paris, iv. 690.
wfffectual
in repressing schism.
Council
of Constance 14141418;.
Vote
by * nations,'
Deposition
of John XXIII.
1415.
l>ut inferior clergy, proctors for the universities, and others, not
excluding jurists, should possess a deliberative voice. The princes and ambassadors
of Christian states might also vote, except on articles of faith. And as
Italian prelates, who wor@ numerous and devoted to the interest of the pope,
were not unlikely to impede t.lie progress of reform, if suffrages continued to
be taken by the head, it was arranged that all the members of the council
should divide themselves into four ‘nations1,’ the Italian, German,
French, and English, each with equal rights, and that no proposition should be
carried till it was separately discussed in all the nations, and then passed by
a majority. Entrenched upon this vantage-ground, the members of the synod
wrung a promise2 of immediate abdication from pope John himself, by
whom they were convened, and after he had violated his oath and fled3
to Sehaffhausen in disguise (March 21), they did not scruple to assert the
paramount authority of the council, citing him (May 2) to appear before them,
and at length completing his deposition4 (May 12, 1415). To these
acts indeed they were ostensibly impelled by a memorial5, charging
him with almost every species of depravity: but it is obvious that the real
cause of their antagonism was a desire to limit
1
See Lenfant, ii. p. 45. After the
renewed deposition of Benfdict XIII. (July 26, 1417;, a Spanish • nation’ was added.
s
Von der Hardt. n. 240.
3 He hoped that in his absence nothing
could be undertaken to his detriment, and some of his adherents in the council
argued ‘ quod concilium ilissolutum esset propter absentiam et recessum dicti
Balthasario.’ Theod. of Niem. I if. Joh. XXIII. (as above), liu. it. c. 8.
4 After stating that he had persevered in
evil courses ‘ post monitiones debitas et caritativas,’ and had shown himself
altogether incorrigible, they proceed: ‘Eum dicta sancta synodus amovet,
j.riva; et deponit, nnhcrsos et singulos Christicolas, cujnscunque status
dignitatis vel con- ditionis ejristant, ab ejus obedientia, fidelitate et
juramento, absolutos deolarando.’ Von der Hardt, iv. 280; Mansi, xxvu. 716. In
a former session (March 30) they had declared: ‘Quod ipsa Synodus in Spiritu
Sancto legitime congregata, generale concilium faeiens et ecclesiam catholicam
militnntem reprassentans, potestatem a Christo immediate habet, cui quilibet
cuiuscunque status vel dignitatis, etiamsi papalis, existat, obedire tenetcr in
his, quae pertinent ad fidem et ad exstirpa- tionem dicti schismatis, ac
generalem reformation>>m Ecclesi® Dei in
capite et in membris.’ Ibid. iv. 89: Mansi, ib. 585. On
this ground rest the famous ‘ Gallican Articles’ of 1682.
6 Theodoric of Niem, Vit. Joh. XXIII, lib.
n. c. 3: cf. Hallain, Middle Ages, ii. 240,
10th ed.
the supremacy of Rome and strangle the more daring of the papal
usurpations. Two of the conspicuous leaders in the movement were Peter d’Ailly1
(de Alliaco) and John Gerson2, who had been successive chancellors
of the university of Paris. They had warmly advocated the assembling of the
Pisan council; and at Constance, the acute and fearless Gerson proved himself
the soul of both the anti-Roman and reforming parties.
Gregory XII. withdrew his claims (July 4, 1415), aud measures were
adopted for displacing Benedict XIII., who was accordingly degraded and deposed
(July 26, 1417)3. In the forty-first session (Nov. 11, J4l7), the
cardinals, assisted for this turn by prelates of the different nations, elected
a new pope. He took the style of Martin V. His earliest promise was to expedite
the general reformation of the Church, a point on which the English, French,
and German4 deputies insisted strongly, aud for which a plan5
had been devised in the previous session; but ere long the council was
dissolved by his authority (April
1 See, foi instance, Ms Monita de
necessitate reformationis eccletia
(in
Gerson. Opp. ii. 885 sq. ed. Du
Pin), <>r his treatise De difficultate reformationis in Concilio
universali (Ibid. 867 fcq.).
3 His works on this subject are too
numerous for recital (Opp. tom. ii. pt.
n. passim). One of tho most severe is entitled, De Modis uniendi ac reformandi
EccUsiam in Concilio universali. For a review of this memorable treatise, see
Neander, ix. 136. On the flight of the pope, Gerson, in tho name of the I'rench
ambassadors axd the university of Paris, preached an energetic sermon (March
23) affirming the absolute superiority of tho Council (0pp. tom. n„ pt. ii. 201 sq.).
a Von der
Hardt, iv. 1873.
4 Tho Germans, backed fcv Sigismund, the
king of the Romans, wore
anxiout,
to commence the work of reformation before they elected the new pope: but on
this point they finally ^ave way (Ibid. iv. 1394 sq.). The following is their
protest (p. 1424): ‘ Protestatur hose natio Germa- nica coram 1 >eo, tota
curia coelesti, universali ecclesia et vobis, quod nisi feceritis pra?missa
rnodo et ordine supra dictis, quod non per earn, sod per vos stat, stetit et
stabit, quominus sponsa Christi, sancta mater ecclesia, suo Sponso inconvulsa,
purior et immaculata reformetur, et reformata ad perfectam reducatur umtatem.’
A? early as June 15, 1415, a committee, termed tho Roformation-collego
(‘Reformatorium'), had been organized. On its resolutions, see Lenfant, n. 309
sq.
6 Von der Hardt, rv. 1452. The points
enumerated are nearly all of a fiscal and disciplinary character. The one most
ultimately bearing on Christian doctrine is the question of indulgences, which
in the time of tho papal schism had been sold or distributed at random (cf. Von
der Hardt, i. 1010).
THE
PAPACT.
Influence
of Gerton.
Election
of a new pope,
1417.
Meeting
of the Council of Basel, 1431. . Its leading objects.
22 1418) without proceeding to redress the scandalous abuses1
on which Roman despotism was fed.
Arrangements had been made2, however, that a second council
should be gathered at the end of five years to reconsider this gigantic task.
It was convoked accordingly at Pavia (142.3) by Martin V., who afterwards transferred
it to Siena, where the barren sessions were prolonged into tho following year.
But owing to a further act of prorogation nothing was effected till the western
prelates met at Basel (July 23, 1431), soon after the election of the new pope,
Eugenius IV. The objects of this great assemblage3, as enumerated
in the outset, were (1) to extirpate all forms of heresy, (2) to reunite the.
Eastern and the Western Churches, (3) to promote instruction in the truth,
(4) to check
the wars then raging among Christian princes,
(5) to bring
about a reformation of the Church in head and members, (G) to re-establish, in
so far as might be, the severity of ancient discipline. The president was the
cardinal Juliano Cesarini4, who had been selected for that office by
Martin V. and confirmed in the appointment by Eugenius IV. It was plain,
however, that the anti-papal spirit which prevailed at Constance had not.
ceased to animate the western prelates, and accordingly the Roman
1 The only exceptions were a few decrees published
March 21, 1418, for restraining simony, &c. (Ihid. p. 1535.) The
unsuccessful termination of this council naturally shook men’s faith in the
probability of a reformation; e.g. Gobelinus Persona, a G-erman chronicler,
writing at the time (Cosmodromium, in Mcibom. Rer. German. Script, j. 345,
Helm- sestad. 1688), complains as follows: ‘Ego quidem jam annis multis sta-
tum pertractans Ecclesias, per quem modum ad universalis ecclesia}
reformationem, scandalis sublatis omnibus, peryenire posset curiosa mente
revolvi. Quem qnidem modum IJominus fortasse ostendet, cum in spiritu vehementi
cunteret naves Iharsis.’ To abate tho disaffection of the states who were most
anxious for the remedy of some inveterate disorders, Martin entered into
separate concordats with them, e.g. with the English, in Von der Hardt, i. 1079
sq.
2 Yon der Hardt, iv. 1546.
3 See all tho Acts and other documents
relating to this council in Mansi, xxix —ixxi.
!
He was at the time engaged in trying to reclaim the Hussites /in Bohemia), and
therefore opened the synod by means of two plenipotentiaries. In the following
September he arrived at Basel, when he found only a ■■small muster
of prelates. The mode of voting in this synod differed from that which we have
noticed at Constance. Here indeed, as there, the members were divided into four
sections; bat they were taken indiscriminately from any province of the Church.
curia eyed them with suspicion and alarm1. On the 12th of
November, a bull was issued for transferring tbe council to Bologna*, chiefly
with the pretext that the Eastern Church was favourable to re-union, and
preferred to hold their conference with the Latins in some town of Italy. But,
notwithstanding this abrupt decision of the pope, the council of Basel,
supported by the University of Paris3 and emboldened by the
arguments of Nicholas Cusanus4 (of Cues, in the diocese of Treves),
proceeded with its arduous work; aud in the second session (Feb. 15, 1432; did
not hesitate to reaffirm the most extreme decrees of Constance6, which
subordinated all ecclesiastical authority to that of universal synods. It was
also now decided that the council could not lawfully be transferred, dissolved,
or interrupted by any human power, without its own deliberation and consent.
Belying on the countenance of Sigismund and other princes, the assembly warned,
entreated, and required Eugenius (April 29) to present him-
1 Oapefigue,
a consistent ultramontanist, sees the real ground of this alarm: ‘Je considfere
les conciles de Constance, do Bile, et la Pragma- tique Sanction, comme les
trois actes qui finissent le moyen ligo de l'Eglise, en ebranlant la forte et
sainte dictature des papes:' n. 385.
3
Jiavniil'l. ad an. 1431, ‘20, 21.
3 See their Epistle, dated Feb. 9, 1432, in
Bulaens, Hist. Univ. Paris, v. 412 sq. The university-men also acted the chief
part in this assemblage : cf. Dollinper, iv. 184, 207.
1 See his remarkable treatise, De Catholica
Concordantia, written at this time, and printed with his other numerous Works,
Basil. 1565. Ho afterwards (circ. 1437) went over to the papal side, and even
did his. utmost to discredit the proceedings at Basel. In the work above
quoted, besides vindicating the supremacy of general councils, he threw suspicion
on tho Pseudo-Isidore decretals, the ‘ Donatio Constantini,’ etc.
5 Mansi, rsix. 21. The president (Cardinal
Juliano) felt himself constrained to write two energetic letters to the pope,
his patron, (in Brown’s Fasciculus, I. 54—67) deprecating the dissolution of
tho Council. He points out that by denying its authority, the pope rejected the
council of Constance and ultimately destroyed his own title to the pontifical
chair (p. 64). Tlie following sentence is instructive: ‘Si modo dissolva- tur
concilium, m line populi Germania? videntes se non solum destitutes ab
ecclesia, sed deceptos, coneordabunt cum ha<reticis [meaning the Hussites],
et fient nobis iniiniciores quaw illi ? Heu, Heu! quanta ista erit cunfutiio!
finis pro certo est. Jam, ut video, securis ad radieem posita est,’ etc. p. 59.
A like foreboding was expressed by a Spanish bishop, Andreas de Escobar (1434),
writing to the same cardinal Juliano (see his Gubernacuhim ConciHorum, in Von
der Hardt, vi. 182): ‘Et timendum est, quod ante diem judicii et in brevi, nisi
super earn [i.e. the llomau Church] fiat reformatio et reparatio, desoletur et
foras iuittatur et ab homimbus concclcetur.’
Hostility
if the pope.
Progress
of the struggle.
The
pope declared contumaci- 0218.
II
is temporary recog- nition of the council.
Departure
of his representatives.
self within three months1, or send accredited persons who
might give his sanction to the whole proceedings. Overtures of peace ensued,
and for a while accommodation did not seem impossible: but in the following
September, the promoters of the council moved that both the pope and cardinals
should be pronounced contumacious, on the ground that the obnoxious bull which
they had published for its dissolution was still unrevoked. At length the pope
could not resist the urgent prayers of Sigismund and other advocates of peace:
aud as the council was now willing to withdraw its threats and censures,
representatives, who swore2 (April 3, 1434'; that they would
faithfully adhere to the decrees of Constance, and would labour to advance the
objects contemplated by the present meeting, were deputed to attend in his
behalf. But when, amid discussions for reducing the pecuniary tribute3
to the pope (June 9, 1435J, it was contended that in this respect he was amenable
to their control, his emissaries bitterly protested. Other subjects of dispute
arose continually, and in the end the papal nuncios, Juliano4 with
the rest, departed from the council. After their retreat the pope was censured
even more emphatically for his backwardness in carrying out the work of
reformation5; and in person or
1 This threat was several times repeated,
e.g. Sept. 6. 1482, Dee. 18, 1432, Feb. 19, 1433, Sept. 11, 1433. On Nov. 6,
1433 (the 14tL- session; a new respite of three months was granted to Eugeniu^,
an(j +lie same time were sent to him three forms of revocation. One
of these ht employed soon after in ai.nulling all the bulls and other
instruments which he had issued against the council. His letters to this effect
were read Feb. 5, 143 i.
2 Mansi, xxix. 409. In the ensuing session
(April 26) it was resolved that the legates should he permitted to preside in
the council only on the condition that they should acknowledge their authority
to be derived entirely from the council: Ibid. p. 90. The namber of the
prelates at Basel was now about one hundred.
3 After abolishing first-fruits (Mansi,
xxrx. 104) it is added: ‘Et si (quod absit) liomanus pontifex, qui pra<
c*teris universalium conciliorum exequi et custodire canones debet, adversus
hanc sanctionem aliquid faciendo eeclesiam scandalizet, generali Concilio
deferatur.’ This wap only one of a number of reforming acts which emanated from
the council subsequently to July 14, 1433. The last decisions of the kind were
made, Jan. 24, 1438: see Mansi, xxi\. 159.
4 He appears to have seceded in the
twenty-fifth session (May 7,
1437),
when his advice, touching certain Greek ambassadors who had come over to
negociate a uni' <n, was rejected by the council.
6
Mansi, xseix. 137 sq. They declared that nothing could induce him
by deputy was absolutely summoned to appear before the council within
sixty days. But feeling his position stronger1 than before, his tone
was now proportionately changed. Instead of yielding to the summons, he put
forth a document (Sept. 18, 1437) in which he sought to stifle the decrees of
Basel, and urged the whole of Christendom to meet him in a council at Ferrara.
The new leader of the Basel assembly was the cardinal l’Allemand*, archbishop
of Arles, who shewed himself unflinching in his struggles to promote a
reformation of the Church. On March 29.1438. the rival synod of Ferrara was
condemned; and all who had frequented it, the pope himself among the number,
excommunicated. In a later session he was formally deposed8 (June
25, 1439). Into the place of Eugenius (Nov. 17) they elected an aristocratic
hermit (formerly the duke of Savoy) who reluctantly assumed4 the
name of Felix V. (July 24, 1440). But from this very date the cause of the
‘reforming’ (anti-papal) party manifestly drooped3. The
‘ut oliquam
morum emendationem Christo placentem, aut notissimo- rutn i.busuum correctionem
iu ecclesia =ancta Dei fefficere satageret.’
When he
yielded to the wish of Sigismund and others, and acknowledged the assembly at
Basel, his territory was in a state of revolution, and a prey to lawless
condottieri (cf. Diillinger, it. 188).
This storm had now blown over, and Eugeniuu strerigthene d himself by
dispatching nuncios to the several courts of Europe with his own ex-parte
version of the subjects in dispute.
2 Respecting him see Scbruckh, xxxii. 65
sq. After the convocation of the synod of Ferrara, he was the only cardinal
who remained at Basel.
3 Mansi, xxix. 17;), The synod decrees,
‘Gabrielem prius nomination Eugenium papain IV. fuisse et esse notorium et
maniiVstum contuma- cem. mandatix feeu prspceptis eccleaim universalis
inobedientfm et in aperta rebellione persistentem,’ etc.. There was a small
party at Basel, headed by Tedeschi, archbishop of Palermo |Panormitanus), which
attempted to avert this crisis by maintaining that inferior clerics who constituted
a large majority should be deprived of their deliberative voice. The bishops,
't appears, weie not disposed to go so far as the rest (of. Dollinger, iv. 201,
202). Tedeschi himself, however, was a warm adherent of thf council generally.
See his work in favour of it (1139) in Mansi, xxxi. 203 sq. An answer was put
forth by Johannes de Turre- cremata, entitled Summa de Ecclesia, ed. Venet.
1561.
4 See the Letter of jEneas Syhius (August
13, 1440], giving an account of the coronation of Felix, in Brown’s
Fasciculus, 1. 52— 54. Felix was, however, recognized only in Savoy,
Switzerland, Bavaria and some other parts of Germany.
6
This was proved by the secession of the more influential members from the
council. See the (one-sided; account of Johannes de I’olemar
Eis
bull convening a fresh council.
Counter
mow meat at Bastl.
Deposition
of the pope.
empire, Spain, and France were, for the most part, neutral, not
renouncing their connexion with Eugenius, while they inconsistently professed
to recognize the legitimacy of the council of Basel. The English people, with
some others, took his side more warmly, and sent deputies to Florence, whither
his new council of Ferrara was translated (1439). So vast indeed was the
discomfiture now suffered hy his adversaries, that upon the abdication of Felix
Y-.j ten years later, all attempts to limit his supremacy and purify the west of
Christendom, by means of universal synods, were abandoned in despair.
The only country, where the principles which had been advocated in those
synods gained a lasting hold upon the rulers both iu Church and State, was
France. In what is known as the Pragmatic Sanction1 of
Bourges, enacted under Charles YII. (1438), it was maintained distinctly, with
some other kindred points, all adverse to the ultramontane claims, that General
Councils are superior to the pope. This edict, which for half a century became
the great palladium of the liberties of France, was afterwards repealed by
Louis XI. for diplomatic reasons; but as the. Parisian parliament would not
register his act, the ‘Sanction’ kept its ground until it was supplanted by a
new &ncordat in the time of Francis I.2 (15] 6).
(1143), in
ilansi, xx-i. 197 sq.; .Eneas Sylvius, Descrijttio Germania, o. 10; and Hatfam,
Middh Ages, n. 244, luth ed.
1 Cf. above, p. 253: Gieseler, iv. pp. 369,
370 A history of this document is contained in the first %olume of the
well-imown Traitez des Droits et Libertez de VEglise Gallicane. Pope Pius II.
said of it: ‘The bishop of Euine, whose diocese is the world, has no more
jurisdiction in France, than what the parliament is plea»ed to allow him.1
llanke, Hist, of France, i. 78, Lond. 1852. In Germany the pope (Nicholas V.)
was able to obtain more copious concessions. The ‘concordat of A,--
chaffenburg’ (July, 1447), confirmed at Vienna (Feb. 17, 1448), replaced him
nearly on his former ground icf. above, p. 334, n. 1, and Gieseler, iv. p.
345}. To the excesses which the Romi\n court aiterwards committed we raust
trace tho Gravamina of 1161, in Walch. Honiment. Med. JEvi, 1. 101 sq., and the
memorabla Centum Gravamina drawn up by the German princes in 1522.
2 Hallam, as above, p. 252. The following
is the entry of the learned chronicler Genebrard {Chronograph. Paris, 1580),
relating to this subject: ‘Anno 1516 abrogata est in Galliis Pragmatiea
Kanctio, et (Jon- cordata, ut vocant, substituuntur, fremente twiverso clero,
sckolasticis, pnpulo, bonis denique et doctis omnibus’ For the vigorous
Appellatio of •ho University of Paris, reaffirming the principles laid down at
the coun- <:il of Basel, see Brown's Fassic. i. 68—71.
General
reaction in his favour.
Pragmatic
Sanction of
1438, '
finally
exchanged for a
Concm
dat.
Amid the lull which rested on the surface of the Church at large fur more
than half a century anterior to the Reformation, the cupidity of Rome was far
more generally confined within the papal states and their immediate circle1.
Nearly all the line of pontiffs, Nicholas V. (1447J, Ca- lixtus III. (1455),
Pius II. or v^ueas Sylvius’ (1458), Paul II. (14:64), Sixtus IY. (1471),
Innocent VIII. (1484), Alexander YI. (1492), Pius III* (1503), Julius II.
(1503), and Leo X.4 (1513—1522), betrayed increasing love of pomp
and worldly pleasures. Nepotism was the prevailing motive in their distribution
of preferment, while the taxes of their chancery rose from day to day5.
Too many also played a leading part in base political intrigues, which, even if
successful, tended to destroy tho influence and discredit the pretensions of
the hierarchy at large. Nor may we pass in silence the appalling profligacy
which too often stained the reputation of these later pontiffs, more
particularly that of Alexander YI.6, who is perhaps unequalled iu
the history of mediaeval crime, except by Caesar Borgia, his son An effort, it
is true, was made
1
iwn'.kt, Popes during the IBth end 17th centuries (Bolin’s ed-), i. § 4, pp. 25
sq. Sixros IV. was thu first, to carry out this line of politics, and even
favoured the conspiracy -which led to the attempted assassination of '.orenzo
dei Medici on the steps of the high-altar in the cathedral of Florence. ‘Abuse
followed abuse, and a dangerous confusion in the ideas of uen on the nature of
the ecclesiastical power and on the true position of the pope was the natural
consequence. ’ Dollinger, iv. 220.
3
He was formerly devoted to the anti papal cause (see his important Commentarius
de Gestis BasiliensU Concilii, In Brown’s Fascic. i. 1—51), but undi r the
influence of the great reaction that ensued, he joined the party of Nicholas
V., and received a cardinal’s hat from Calixtus TH. (1450). He died of grief
(1404) on finding that he could not stir the Church to join him in driving back
the Turks who had now taken Constantinople (May 29, 1453), and occupied Bosnia
and Slavonia. See the unsparing Life of him in I’latina, Vit. Pontif. Human.,
and a more favourable one by Campani, in Muratori, Script. Her. Ital. in. pt.
n. 907 sq. His own Epistola (often printed) are the best original authority.
3 The fir^t word of this pope after his
election (1503) waa ‘Reformation.’ He died in twenty-six days. Dollinger, iv.
229.
4 On the part taken by this pontiff at the
outset of the Reformation, see Roscoe’s Life and Pontificate of Leo X., chap.
xv.
5 Ranke, p. 43. Diillinger (at "the
time of writing, an ultrwnontanist) is on these subjects too impartial for his
Knglish translator: see note at p. 228. ,
* 'Well might the cry be uttered that the
pope wau now preparing the way fur Antichrist; and that he laboured to promote
the coining of the kingdom, not of heaven, but of Satan. Ranke, i. 39.
THE
PAPACY.
Restriction
of the influence of the pcpis:
their
seed- larity,
and
profligacy. '
under iEneas Sylvius1 and Julius II* to resuscitate the
Hildebrandine principles, and in the council of Lateran2 (1512—1517)
that effort was in part rewarded when the French, who had been hitherto the
chief antagonists of ultra-papal claims, consented to abandon the Pragmatic
Sanction8: yet, meanwhile, a different class of spirits breaking in
tumultuously upon the guilty slumbers of the conclave, had begun to wrench away
the time-worn pillars on which lloman despotism was reared.
The other prelates of the west maintained their old relations to the
papacy, with the exception that the lessening of its influence often added to
the magnitude of theirs. This happened more especially throughout the
forty-years’ schism4. The pallium was, however, still procured by
all the metropolitans: the lloman legate, where the office wras not
held l>y one of them, enjoyed precedence in ecclesiastical assemblies, and
in cases where no obstacle5 was
1
Sen, for instance, his Bulla Retractatianum (April 2d, 1403; Ray- nald. ad an.
§ 114 sq.), in -widen h;- maintains that the pope has received supreme power
over the whole Church directly from Christ Himself, and that all other
minister* are his delegates (‘per ordinem in omnem dif- f’lndit ecoJesiam’)i He
assailed the french ‘Pragmatic Sanction,’ but Charles YII. 1460) met him by
appealing to a general council: see Prevvpts de.s IAbertez de VEglise
Gallicane, e. xm. § 10
* It is of him Macchiavelli says iBanke, i.
42) that ‘time was, when no baron was so insignificant. but that he might
venture to brave the papal power; now, it i s regarded with respect even by a
king of France.’
- Labbe, xiv. 1- 346. In the year preceding
the convocation of this synod, I.ouis XII. of France, quarrelling svith pjpe
Julius II., had instigated some of the cardinal!- t. call a counc.il at Pisa
(Imbue, xm. 1486 eq.). It met for several months (Nov. 1, 1511—April 21, 1512),
and in the last session ventured to suspend the pope: but iis members were then
dispersed and nothing came of thsir denunciations Louis XII in the course of
this dispute struck a coin with the legend ‘ Per Jam Babylonia nomen:’ see
Thuanus (De Tiiouj, Hist. i. 11.
1 See above, p. 338. n. 2 ‘La l’ra^Tnatique, veritable
■-ource de schisme et d'h^sie, fut heureusemfcnt n.voqu^e par Louis XI.’ Cape-
figun, ii. 335 (note).
1
Above, p. 828, On tne other hand tho growing system of papal ‘provisions' (cf.
abo^e, p. 322. n. 3) tended to deprive diem of a large portion of their formei
iuiluence. This wax confessed by Martin V. (1418), in stiiving to remedy some
of the abuses generated by his predecessors, who exempted ‘occlesias,
-'lonasteria, capitula, conventus, pri- oratus, et personas ’ from the
jurisdiction of the bishops • in grave ipsorum Ordinari-.ram pratjudieium:’ Yon
der Hardt, 1535.
6
Such obstacle?, however, did continually arise; e.g. m England, when Henry
.Beaufort, bishop of Winchester was constituted legate by Martin Y. (1426), he
was admitted to the counsels of the sovereign only
OTHEK
Lit.'.S< HKS 01 THE HIEK.1K- em.
Bishops
of the period.
made by kings and parliaments his influence was supreme. Appeals were
also not unfrequently transferred from the diocesan and the provincial courts
to what was deemed the chief tribunal of the west: but on this subject we
observe a corresponding jealousy among the legislative bodies1.
In appointing bishops there was much variety of usage, as the papal or
imperial interest predominated. Theoretically every prelate was to be elected2,
in accordance with the ancient laws, and one of the most urgent stipulations
of the council of Easel (July 14, 1433) related to this subject. It was meant
to counteract encroachments8 both of Rome and of the civil power.
According to the German compact, made in 1448, these free elections4
were to be continued, the appointment of a prelate lapsing to the pope, if the
capitular election were not made within the legal time. But, for the most part,
it is obvious that the crown was very loath to acquiesce in such arrangements,
and contrived, while bent on humbling papal arrogance, to fix the right of
nominating to the bishoprics and higher benefices absolutely in itself5.
The French con-
on the
condition, ‘ quod quotiens aliqua, materia;, causa1, vel negotia
ipsum dominum regem aut regna seu (Jomiriia sua ex parte una, ac sedem
apostolicam ex parte altera concementia .... idem cardinalis se ab hujusmudi
consiUo absentet, et eommnnirationi eorundem, causaruiu, materiarum, et
negotiorum non intersit qvovis modo,’ etc., Rot. Pari. 8° Hen. Yl. c. 1 7. It
is also worth observing that a charge brought against Wolsey was, that as
legate he had transgressed the ‘ statute of Pra?munire ’ (see above, p. 328, n.
1), by receiving bulls from Home and acting on them ■without the king's
leave. See the Articles against him in Herbert’s Hist, of Henry VIII. pp. 294
sq. Lond. 1672.
1
Cf. Twysden, Vindication of the Church, pp. 51 sq. Camb. ed.
5 Above, pp. 151, 152, 237.
3 See riess. *11.; Mansi, xxix. 61: ‘Decretum de electionibus et eon- lirmutiomljus episcoporum et
pra’latorum.’ The
prelates had their eye especially on the very numerous ‘reservations’
(electiones expectanda) made by the pope in favour of some candidate of his
own: but they proceed to txhort princes also to abstain from superseding, or
intermeddling with, capitular elections. This indeed is only one of tho measures
they originated for securing the independence -of the episcopate. Their
president (the cardinal archbishop of Arles), after declaring that modem
bishops were mere shadows (‘umbra? qua>dam’), superior to the presbyters
only ‘habitu et reditibus," goes on to state: ‘At nos eos in rtatu
reposuimus pristino...nos eos, qui jam nun erant episcopi, fecimus episcopos.’ Ain. Sylvius, de Concil. Basil, (in Brown’s Fascic. 1. ‘23).
4 Hchrockh,
xxxit. 161,
165.
3 ltanke, Popes, j, 31. The flagrant
instances, that now meet us, of
OTHER
BRiNCnES OF 1 HE HII-.I, VK- OHI.
Their
appointment :
OTHER
BRANCHES OF THE HIERARCHY.
often
made by the Crown,
A
tfempted reformation by means of diocescni
cordat, for example, which restored the annates and some other privileges
to Leo X., secured this right to Francis,— the nominee, however, heing pledged
to seek collation from the pope: and in this country, more particularly during
the reign of Henry VII., the power of filling up the vacant sees had generally
devolved upon the crown, which also was appropriating to itself one-half of the
annates. Everywhere, indeed, the civil governments of Europe had become possessed
of what were long regarded as ecclesiastical prerogatives. The secular element
in the Church was threatening to suppress the spiritual or hierarchic, and
accordingly throughout the earlier stages of the Reformation we shall have to
notice the confusion of ideas which this new ascendancy produced1.
In the attempt to reinvigorate episcopacy the council of Basel enjoined
(Nov 25, 1433) that each bishop should hold a diocesan synod once at least
every year2, aud by his presence labour to advance the reformation
both of pastors and of flocks. But owing to his sad unfitness, intellectual and
moral, or his livelong absence3 from the sphere to which his
energies were due, the bishop very seldom gave effect to this injunction. It,
is true that fine exceptions are not absolutely wanting, but the bishops for
episcopal
pluralities, are traceable, at least in some degree, to this dictation of the
crown. Thus, the royal favourite Wolsey at the close of the present period was
fanning on easy terms the bishoprics of Bath, Worcester, and Hereford, the
real owners being absentees: he also gained successively the bishoprics of
Durham and Winchester, contriving to keep one of them along with his
archbishopric: he also held iu com- mendam the abbey of Si Alban’s and many
other pieces of ecclesiastical preferment, besides enjoying the virtual
patronage of most of the vacant benefices. Herbert, Hist, of Henry VIII. p. 57.
1
See the just remarks on this point by Bp. Russell, Church in Scotland, i. 164,
165. Tho royal intermeddling vrith conventual and other church-property had in
England begun some time before the Reformation; e.g. several monasteries were
suppressed by Wolsey with the consent both of the king and the pope. Herbert’s
Hist, of Henry VIII., pp. 116, 147, 163, 164, 251.
8
Sess. xv : ‘Ad minus semel in anno uni non est consuetudo bis annuatim
celebraii.’ Provincial synods were also ordered to assemble at least every
third year, and in England we occasionally ;meet with a list of 1
Reformanda in eonvocatione cleri;’ e. g. A. 1). 1444,
'Wilkins, alt, 540.
1 1 Multi ex eis qui pastorali apice potiuntur, perdue
annosa tempora potiti sunt, nitnquam eiv'.tates suas intraverunt, suas
ecclesias viderunt, sua loca vel diceceses visitaverunt,’ etc. Nicholas
de Cl&aenges, De cor- rupto Ecclesia Statu: Brown's Faecic. n= 562.
Passages might be rnulti-
the most part had grown ignorant, idle, anti sensual, or were often
occupied exclusi vely in search of honours and emoluments that bound them to
the earth1.
The monks, as we have seen already3, gorged with the
ecclesiastical endowments, lost the moral elevation3 they had shewn
throughout the early periods of the Church, and with it forfeited their hold on
the affections of the people. Except the order of Carthusians4 none
of them adhered to the letter of their institute. Their intellectual vigour at
the same time underwent a corresponding deterioration, insomuch that few if
any works of merit, either in the iield of science or in that of theology,
proceeded in
plied to tho
me effect, especially in reference to thoso cases where the pope presented his
own courtiers to the foreign sees.
1 e.g. in tiie Defensor Pads (above quoted
p. 324) we have the following complaint: ‘ Nunc vero propter regiminis
corruptionem plurima pars sacertlotum et episcoporum in sacra Scriptura periti
sunt paruin, et si dicere licesit insufficienter; eo quod temporalis
benelieiorum, quae assequuutur officiosi, ambitiosi, cupidi, et causidici
quidam obtinere volunt et obtincnt obsequio, prece vel pretio vel sasculari
potentia;’ p. 258: cf. the frightful picture of the Spanish prelates, at the
close of this period, drawn by the Dominican Pablo de Leon in his G-uia del
Cielo (extracts in De Castro, Spanish Protestants, Lond. 1851. pp. xxv. sq.).
He trace« many of the evils to the vile example of the Koman court, p. xxix.
Other evidence, is lurnished by the decrees of the ‘Beformation- college’ at
Constance: see Lenfant: liv. vn. s. 42 sq. John Sturmius (ad Cardinales
delectos; Argentor. 1538) asserts: * Per (iermaniam in maximo numero
episcoporum nulius est, qui, si canonum autoritas resti- tuta esset, locum suum
tueri possit. In Gallia qnoque pauci sunt, sed tamen ilia felicior
est quam Germania. De Italia nihil uffi.rmare possum. Anglia sola est qua)
extraplo esse possit.’
'■
Above, p. 230. The Spanish writer, above quoted, while acknowledging that good
and holy monks existed, urges their inconvenient wealth as a reason for some
change. ‘If left alone,’ he says, <every thing will very soon belong to the
monasteries,’ p. xx.
8
See Nicholas de Olemenges (as above), p. 564. The same writer is equally severe
in speaking of the nuns. He says that their convents were not ‘Dei sanctuaria,
sed Veneris execranda prostibula’ (p. 566). And (lemon more than once advances
the same charge; e.g. in a sermon preached before the council of Constance he
declares, ‘Et utinam nulla sint monasteria mulierum quas facta sunt prostibula
meretricum; et pro- hibeat adhuc deteriora Deus.’ Opp. it. 550, ed. Dupin. The
persecutions to which a nun of the stricter sort was subject are graphically
described in a MS. belonging to tbe University of Cambridge (Dd. i. p. 372).
The usages of a well-ordered nunnery are minutely described in the ' Anereii
Jtiirle’ (I'anul. Soc. 1853), ed. Morton.
4 See the contemporary work of John
Buschius, De reformatione mn- naiterioram. Lib. in. c. 32 (in Le bnitz’s
Srriptores [iruitn-. ii. 1135). A
healthier impulse was, however, given at the close of the 14th century to
monasticism in ltussia, by Sergius of Bostoif, on whom see Mouravieff. pp. 61
sq. and notes.
OTHKlt
BRANCHES or THK HIIBAR- CHT.
Degeneran/
of the monks.
Efforts
io
refm'm
them.
New
Congregations.
The
condition of the Friars.
this age from cloisters of the west. The councils of Constant-1
and Basel2, in their endeavours to brace up monastic discipline
afresh, produced some transitory changes, by insisting on the need of reformation
and by authorizing a commission of inquiry into many of the German convents.
But in spite of these remedial measures we are bound to argue, from complaints
which rise iu every quarter, that monasticism had grown almost incorrigible and
was ripening daily for the scythe. As in the former period, numerous
congregations, separating one by one from the degenerate Benedictines,
organized themselves in fresh societies. Of these the principal were (1417) the
congregation of S. Justina3, to which was afterwards united that of
Monte Cassino. Offshoots4, in like manner, such as the Bernardines
(1497), grew out of the Cistercian order.
While the monks had thus degenerated step by step, the Mendicants
retained their former influence. The great bulk of the religious endowments
were now lavished upon them, until they rivalled the Establishment which they
had bitterly attacked, in the magnificence of their foundations and the
freedom of their mode of life6. Confiding in the patronage of popes6,
of kings*, and noble ladies,
1 On the orders made by the ‘
Reformation-college’ at Constance, see Lenfaot, Ur. >ii. s. 55. .
2 See Bnsehius, as above, pp. 476 sq., and
elsewhere.
3 Helyot,
Hist, des Ordret llelig. vi. ‘230 sq. Paris, 1714. The rise of
other confraternities is mentioned in the sara-i place.
4 Ibid. v. 56 sq. The Spanish ‘ Order of
the Hieronymite3’ (hermits) had been founded as early as 1370; but they were at
first devoted to the so-called rule of St Augustine. In 14*24 they adopted
another: see Holstein’s Codex, in. 43 sq.; and Stirling'b Cloister-Life of the
Emperor Charles V., pp. 77, 7B.
5 See Nicholas de Cl^menges, as above, pp.
504, 565; The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman (by William
Langland, about 1362), ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1869; The Creed of Piers Plowman,
<-d. Skeat, London, 1837; and a still earlier satire On the Times of Edw.
II., edited by the present -writer for the Percy Society, No. lxxxii. Th» author of the latter poem
attacks the vices prevalent among all classes of the community, especially the
‘Menours [Franciscans] aDd Jacobyn’ [Dominicans], Cannes [Carmelites], and
Friars of what was called the order of St Aagustine: stan. 30 sq. In this
particular he was a precursor of Wyclifie, on whose controversy with the
Mendicants, see Vaughan’s Life, pp. S2 sq., ed. 1853.
* e.g. Sixtus IV. (himself a Franciscan)
granted them enormous privileges in a bull entitled Mare Magnum lAug. 31,
1474), which was confirmed in the ‘Bulla Aurea’ (July 26, 1479). The
parish-priest ■who resisted them was threatened with the loss of his
benefice. See the
they were able to surmount the opposition1 of the Universities
and the parochial clergy, who regarded them with mingled fear, abhorrence, and
contempt. In spite of mutual jealousies and altercations5, the four
leading orders of Mendicants3 (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites,
and Augustinians) held themselves together4 and were almost absolute
in the administration of the Western Church. Their learning and activity
prevented them from forfeiting this prominent position, till the latter half of
the fifteenth century, when all of them put forth the symptoms of decay5.
"While the Dominicans had been employed especially in
Bullarium
Bomanum, in. 3, 139. The subject was reopened in the 11th session of the
council of Lateran (Dec. 19, 1516).
* See Turner’s Middle Ages, hi. 115 sq. The English Franciscans were
most favoured by gentlewomen, the Dominicans by the nuns. Ibid. 116.
1 Cf. above, pp. 233,234. Pope John XXII.
(Extravagantes Communes, lib. v., tit. iii. c. 2, in Corp. Jur. Canon.) took
the side (1321) of the Friars against a doctor of the Sorbonne (J. de Poliaco);
bur the Sorbonne gained a victory in 1409; Bula-ns, Hist. Univ. Paris, v, 189:
cf. v. 522 sq. In Brown's Fascic. (n. 466—486) "will be found a
Defensorium Curatorum, contra privilegiatos (1357), by Bichard, archbishop of
Armagh, who spent som“ years at Avignon, stri\ing to interest the pope it
favour of the parish-priests. Thu convocation of York (1466), under archbishop
Nevil, condemned those Friars (‘ pardoners’), who went about raising funds by
preaching (or selling) indulgences, in the name of the pope and othtr bishops:
Johnson, English Canons, ii. 521,
522.
2 Cf. above, p. 233, and see Warton’s Engl.
Poetry, ii. 87 sq., ed.
1840.
1
Or, as they were now severally termed, the grey-friars, the black- friartI, the
white-friars, and the Austin-friars.
1
Thus when they were attacked by the archbishop of Armagh (above, t. 1), the
cause of all the four orders was defended in common: bee Tri themius (John of
Trittenheim), Annal. Hirsaug. it. 245.
5 Such was plainly the case in England Isee
Wart on, Tlyid. pp. 92, 93). The Carmelites, who were once conspicuous in
repelling Loillarditm (Turner, m. 122), had lost their reputation both for
scholarship and orthodoxy about 1460; and some time before, the Augustinians
hadruinwl their cause by preaching seditious sermons. When Leland (circ. 1540)
visited the ancient seat of the Franciscans at Oxford, he found in the library
little more than empty shelves covered with dust and cobwebs (‘inveni etiam et
libros, sed quos tribus obolis non emerem’). The Observants (1425) were a
reformed Order of Franciscans. The influence of the Mendicants was great,
however, even at the end of the present period: for Erasmus {Epist. cooclxxvii., Opp. m. 515, ed. 1 .ugd.
Batav. 1703) declares that the world was then, among other evils, groaning
under ‘ tyrannide Fratrum Mendicantium, qui cum sint satellites sedis Bornana,
tamen eo potentia' ac. multitudinis evadunt, ut ipsi Bomano pontilici atque
ipsis adeo regibus sint fomiidabiles.’
Their
eventual decline.
Aberrations
of one school of Minorites.
Friars-Regular.
The
and
Lollards.
counteracting misbelief and guiding the machinery of the Inquisition, an
important school of the Franciscans, as wo noticed on a former page1,
were hostile to the see of Rome. The feeling which had prompted that hostility
was equally aroused by other branches of the Church-establishment. In union
with the Beghards2, they continued to maintain that truly
‘spiritual’ persons would subsist exclusively on alms, that personal tithes
were not due to the parochial clergy save by usage, and that deadly sin was
fatal to the sacerdotal character3. They also propagated the Apocalyptic
theories of earlier times4, and one at least of theii' sodality laid
claim to the prophetic office6. The more sober still adhered to the
communion of the Church, reverting to the letter of their institute, and
finally obtaining* the approbation of the council of Constance6
(1415). As distinguished from the laxer or conventual school of the
Franciscans, they were called Friars-Regular.
But other groups, in which the Beghard influence7 seems to
have preponderated, now appeared in many countries of the west, especially in
Flanders and some parts of Germany. One section of them, notwithstanding the
indiscriminate censures8 of pope Clement Y., had manifested no
desire to vary from the general teaching of the Church. They were religious
brotherhoods and sister-
1 Above, p. 321.
8
Above, p. 235. They were condemned by John XXII. in 1317 (ExtravagantIt Johan.
XXII, tit. vn., in Corp. Jut. Canon.), 'who declares that very many of them are
persons, -who 1 a veritate Catholic* fidei deviantes, ecciosiastica
sacramenta despiciunt ac errores alios student multipliciter seminare.’ Jlanv
of this class fell a prey to the Inquisition: of. a contemporary account in
lialuze, Vit. Pap. Avenion. i. 598.
:
See, for instance, the proceedings against William Bussell and other English
Franciscans, in Wilkins, hi. 433
sq.
4 Above, pp 332, 333. The Postilla of Oliva
were still most popular among thun. The Church of Rome was Babylon, the ‘
meretrix niagna;’ John XXII. was ‘mysticus Antiohristus, pra-parator vise
majorit* Anti- cliristi, ’etc- See the Liber Sententiarum, p. 304, annexed to
Limborcli’s Hist. Inquisitionis.
5 See the Copia Prophetice Fratris Joh. de
Riipetcistil, etc. in Brown's Fascic, ii.
494 sq. For other light on this interesting subject, consult Dr
Maitland’s Eight Essays (1852), pp. 2U6 sq.
6 Von der Hardt, iv. 515.
See above, p.
235. and Mosheim, as there quoted, pp. 244 sq.
8
e.g. Clementin. ConstH. lib. m. tit. xi. c. i. John XXII., .01 the contrary, in
1318, took the females commonly called Brghincs under hi? protection. Mosheim,
Ibid. pp. 627 sq
hoods distinguished for their zeal in visiting the sick, or, in the case
of those to whom the name of Lollards1 (Lullards) was now popularly
given, for singing at the funerals and for otherwise assisting in the burial of
the dead. Hut it would seem that the title ‘Lollard,’ like the older one of
Beghard, or Beguiii, was at an early date synonymous with heretic2,
although the bearers8 of them both were shielded, now and then at
least, from the Inquisitor by missives of succeeding popes.
Another confraternity, which ran the risk of being confounded with the
Beghards, owed their origin to Gerhard Groot4, a clergyman of
Deventer, at the middle of the fourteenth century. They soon expanded, under
the able patronage of the reformed ‘canons of Windesheim,’ into an order called
the ‘ Fratres Yitse Communisand while elevating in some degree the tone of
personal religion, they contributed5 to the more careful training
both of
■ A * ear'y as the year 1309, we read of 1
qnidam hypocrite gyrovagi, qui Lollardi, sive Deum laudantes, vocabantur,’ in
the neighbourhood of Liege: see the Gest. Pontiff. Leod. Script, ed.
Chapeaville, 11. 350. The derivation thus suggested is from the German lullen (
= ‘luU‘), referring to the plaintive melody employed by them at funerals: cf!
Gieseler, iv. p. 15!), n. i, and Maitland as above, p. 204. A ballad on Sir
John Oldcastle, quoted by Turner (111. 144, note), appears to connect ‘Lollardrie'
with an English verb ‘lolle.’ See also llalliwell, Arch. Diet. s.v. 1
Lollards.’
£
See the last extract. In 1408, arohbp. Arundel declares in his Constitutions
againnt the Lollards (§ 10) that his province (of Canterbury) was ‘ infected
with new unprofitable doctrines, and blemished with the new damnable brand of
Lollardy’ (Johnson, ir. 470), which implies thai the name w as then somewhat
fresh in England.
=
Thus Boniface IX. (1395) recalls the exemptions which had been granted to
persons of either sex (‘ vulgo Beghardi, seu Lullardi et Zues- triones, a se
ipsis vero pauperes Fratricelli seu pauperes pueruli nomi- nati' bv himself or
his predecessors, on the ground that heresies were lurking in the institute.
Mosheim, as above, p. 409.
* See the deeply interesting Life of him by
Thomas a Keinpis (d. 11711 in the Wnrlcs of the latter, in. 3 sq., ed. Colon.;
and a Chronieon (circ. 1165) of the canons of Windesheim by one of their
number, Joh. Bu- schius, ed. Antverp. 1621. Thit. order hud to defend themselves
against a virulent attack of a Saxon Dominican (Ibid. pp. 547 sq.), and were
supported by the leading men at tho council of Constance. Lenfant, Hist, du
Concile, liv. vi. §JS 64 sq. One of the grounds of objection to them was that
they lived together without adopting monastic vows. They were afterwards
protected for a time by Eugenius IV. (Mosheim, as above, pp. 068 sq.): but
numbers, through their strong resemblance to the Beghards, were at last
compelled to seek a shelter in the tertiary estate of the Franciscans (cf.
above, p. 232).
5 Their chronicler Buschius (as above, n.
4) asks with justice (p. 214):
OTHE.lt
PEANCHE3 OF THE HIE EAR- CHY.
Common-
Life Clerics.
OTHER
BRANCHES OF 1HE HIERARCHS.
Degene
racy of the clerics.
laymen and ecclesiastics in the North of Europe. One oi their most holy
luminaries was Thomas a Kemp is1, -svho died in 1471
It may be safely stated that the ‘ working ’ (parish) clergy had never
been so debased as at the close of the present period. The corruptions we have
marked already5 were now threatening day by day to leaven all the
lump. In Germany’ and Spain4 particularly, their unblushing licence,
covetousness, pride, and secularity exposed them to the hatred of their Hocks
and to the satire of the whole community. Relieved on one side by exemptions
from the jurisdiction of the civil courts, aud on the other by the
intermeddling zeal of Friars, on whom the actual cure of souls had very
frequently devolved, they sank into luxurious ease and abject ignorance, or
confined themselves to the mechanical performance of their sacred duties in
the Church. Unchastity, the fruit of a mis‘ Quanta- in saculo sunt peraonw
sexus utriusque, quaj amicitia Ms conjunct® a bseculi vanitate per eas
[cungregationes] converse, et nd mtliora...ipsar'iin exemplo
inducta et provocates, quamvis ad imnia evangelica concilia statim arripienda
propter multa impedimenta non- dum dare se valent, vitam tamen sanctam a
peccatis alieuam, ad earum informationeni student observare, quis enumerabit?'
Their scholastic and other institutions are described at length bv Delprat,
Verhandeling over de Iiroederschap van G. Groote, Utrecht, 1830 (translated
into German. with additions, by Mohnikf, Leipz. 1840).
1 It has been disputed whether the De
Imitatione Christi is to lio classed among his warm-hearted writings
(some assigning it to abbot Gersen, and others to (jer^on, the Chancellor of
Paris), hut the evidence, external and internal, seems to point him out as the
real author: cf, Gieseler, y. 73, H, n. 12.
2 Above, pp. 2 tO, 241.
3 e.g. The cardinal Cesarini (above, p.
335) make* the fullowing report to Kugeniua IV.: ‘ Incitavit etiam me hue
venire [»'.?. to the reforming council of Basel] deformitas et dissolutio cleri
ilemannia1, ex qua laici supra mtidum irritantur adpersus statum
ecclesiasticum. Propter quod valde timendum est, nisi se emendmt, ne
iaici, more llussitarum, in tnfum clerum irruant, ut publice dicunt:’ in
Brown’s Pascic. i. 56
1 See especially De Cabtro's Spanish
Protestants, pp. xvi. Bq. Lond. 1851, and the original authorities there
mentioned. The following proverb is a sample:
“ i'lerigo,
fraile 6 judio
“No lo tengas
por amigo.” p. xxxvii. For England .the evidence that might he cited is
overwhelming. Gower, for instance, who denounced ‘Antichristes Lollardes,' is
in the Vox Clamantis a stern censor of the vicious clergy. See the Preface: ed.
by Mr ( oxt for the Roxburgh Club, 1850. In this point he quite agrees with
Wycliffe. The anthor of metrical Sermons [v Richard of Hampule], in the Camb.
Univ. MSS., Dd. I. pp. 188, 189, 283, has fine passages on the same subject.
guided rigour in ecclesiastical legislation, had been long the darkest
blot upon their characters, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
proofs that it went on increasing are most lamentably rife. It had infected all
the clerical estate, but seems to have been more especially notorious in
cathedral-canons1.
To eradicate these old and ulcerating evils was a leading object in the
great reformatory councils of Constance and Basel One proposition there
advanced was to annul the law enforcing celibacy*; but the common feeling, that
of Gerson3 with the rest, continued to incline the other way. The ‘
concubinary ’ priests (intending also by that name the clerics who might have
been secretly married) were condemned with special emphasis at Basel1
(Jan. 22, 1435). On their conviction they were sentenced, after a brief
respite, to the loss of their benefices, and in case of new offences made
incapable at any future time of holding Church preferment. Still, it is too
obvious, from the cries of sorrow, indignation, and disgust which rise in every
quarter, that these stem injunctions were comparatively
1 See the evidence with regard to Spain in
De Castro as above, p. xxix. Nicholas de Clemenges, De currupto Ecclesiie
statu, after declaiming against the ignorance and vices of the other clergy,
characterizes the canons as ‘indoctos, simoniacos, cupidos.,.adhuc etiam ebri-
osos, incontinentissimos, uipote qui passim et mverecunde prolem ex meretrice
susceptam et scorta vice conjugum domi tenent,’ etc. Brown’s Fascic. ii. 563, 564. At the name period the
‘Reforming College’ of Constance pawed many regulations with a view to the
improvement of these latter. See Lenfant, liv. vn. c. 54.
2 e.g. Cardinal Zabarella, in Ton der
Hardt, i. 524. Platina (Vit. Pil II. p. 311) represents that pope as saying,
that if there were pood reasons fur prohibiting the marriage of priests, there
were stronger reasons for allowing it: cf. his language in Brown’s Fascic. I.
50.
s
See his Dialngus Sophia: et Natvrre. super cceUbatu ecclesiasticurum {Opp. ii. 017 sq., ed. Du Pin). Gieseler, v.
pp. 15—18, lias collected numerous instances of the other kind in which the
marriage of the clergy wa-> advocated by individual writers throughout the
fifteenth century.
4 JIansi, xxix. 101. This decree also
condemns a pernicious custom of pome bishops, who accepted a pecuniary fine
from clergymen without compelling them to put away their mistresses. A similar
complaint had been already made by the House of Commons in 1372 {Rntul. Pari.
46® Edw. III. p. 313). They prayed the king for remedy against ordinaries who
look sums of money from ecclesiastics and others ■ pur redemption de lour
pecche de jour en jour et an on an, de ce que Us tiendrent overte- ment
leurs concubines.’ The evil was however unredressed, as we may leom, among
other evidence, from a monstrous anecdote in Erasmus, Opp. ix. 401: ed. Le
Clerc.
OTHER
BRANCHES or 1HE HIERARCHY.
Attempts
Ut repress the scandal :
unsuccess
ful.
futile1. Individuals2 there would doubtless be, who
formed a bright exception to the guilty mass; but when the Churel at length
woke it]) and felt that some reorganization oi her system was imperatively
needed, if she hoped to keep her hold on the affections of mankind, no scandal
was so generally confessed3 as that presented by the lives o] the
paroch'al clergy.
A long
catalogue of authorities will be found in Gieseler, v. pp. 10
2 Such, for instance, were not wanting in
Spain itself; De Castro, as above, p. xxxr.
3 The committee of cardinals appointed by
pope Pt.il III. in 1538, tc consider what could possibiy be done ‘de tmendanda
Ecclesia,’ animadverted in tho i'rst piace on the incompetence and crying
vices of the priests and other clerics: ‘Hinc innumera scandala, hinc
contemptut ordinis ecclesiastici, hinc Divini cultux veneratio non tantum
diminutn sed etiam propc iam extincta.’ Lu Plat. Monum. Concil. Trident, in 598
sq., Lovan. 17S2: cf. the present writer's History of the Articles, pp. 1, 2;
new edition.
CHAPTER XV.
OX THE STATE
OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AND CONTROVERSIES.
WESTERN
CHURCH.
The leading theologians of this period may be ranged in one of two great
classes. They are cither speculative, bent on reaching the solution of dogmatic
problems through the aid of Greek philosophy; or mystical, reposing on the old
foundations of belief and shrinking from all dialectic processes by which the
former school had long been struggling to prove the truth and reasonableness
of Christianity.
The spirit of inquiry which had been so powerfully stimulated in the two
preceding centuries continued to be active in the present. Some indeed, as
heretofore1, employed scholastic weapons merely for the purpose of
defence, for vindicating the established doctrines of the Church, and urging
them in such a manner as to satisfy tho systematizing genius of the age. On men
of this kind, treading in the reverential steps of Anselm and Aquinas, the
effect of disputation would be often salutary : it imparted a more definite
and scientific shape to their convictions. But another train of consequences
might result from the scholastic exercises. An acute and daring mind, unsobered
by religious culture, might convert them into an arena for evolving its own
scepticism, and thus philosophy would prove herself the parent and the nurse
of misbelief. Examples of these rationalistic tendencies appeared at an early
date among the Nominalists, in Roscellinus, and still more in the disciples of
Abelard. It was not, however, till the four-
J See above,
pp. 257, 258.
Two
great classes of theologians.
Continuance
of scholasticism.
Development
of sceptical tendencies.
Durand de S. Pour- fain
(d. 1333),
‘ Doctor
mus.
teeuth century that some objections which had hitherto been stated
hypothetically in the mock-encounters of the schools were deemed unanswerable
by the inen who put them forth. In other words, scholasticism, which had been
ever liable to this perversion1, not unfrequently broke out at last
into rebellion and derided supernatural truth.
The nominalistic school, from which these tendencies were mainly to
proceed, was now revived under Durand of S. Pounjain2 (de S.
Porciano), a Dominican and formerly a Thomist. But the second founder of it was
a provincial of the English Franciscans, William of Ockham, born in Surrey, and
in earlier life addicted to the principles of Bcotus2. He was aptly
characterized as
1 Fred. \on Schlegel (Phil, of Hist. pp.
375 sq., ed. 1817) maintains that the basis of the Aristotelian philosophy is
essentially ‘ rationalistic,’ and that even the genius of Aquinas could not
bring it into harmony ■with revelation. The remark that a principle might
be true in philosophy, and yet false in theology, betrays tho doubt which
scholasticism felt with respect to its own intimati tendencies. Comte (liv. vi.
c. 10) affirms that the growing triumph of scholasticism was actually working
the destruction of the theological philosophy and authority. It should be borne
in mind, however, that tht worst forms of misbelief sprang up at the end of the
fifteenth century, when Hatonism had gained predominance afresh: see below, p
355 Several glimpses of an older unbelief, arising from the false philosophy
then prev alent, occur in the works of Petrarch: e.g. in Lis De ignorantia mi
iprius et multurum, he writes of the philosophers whom he encountered, Submotis
arbitris oppugnant veritatem et pietatem, clanculum in angulis irridentes
Christum, atnue Aristotelem, quem n-jn intelligunt, adorantes,’ etc., Opp. hi.
1048. The frightful length to which these blasphemies were earrif d at the
close ol the present period is illustrated by the following extract from a
letter of Erasmus (lib. un. ep. 34, Opp. ed. Le Clerc): ‘At ego Romm his auri-
buH audivi quosdani abominandis blasphemlis debacchantes in Christum, et in
Illius Apostolos, idque multis mecum ftttdientibus et quidem im- pune. Ibidem
multos novi, qui commemorabant, se dicta horrenda audisse a quibusdam
saeerdotib'is uulm Pontificia ministris, idque in ipsa mistsa, tarn clari ut ea
vox. ad inultorum aures pervenerit.’
2 The freedom of his mind is indicated by
his title, ‘ Doctor resolu- tissimus’ (cf. Schrockh, xxxrv. 191 sq.). (Jn many
points, especially The doctrine nf the sacraments, he ventured to
depart from Aquinas. He arrived at the conclusion (Opus super Sententias
Lombardi, Lib. iv. Dist. x. Quiest. 4), that there is in a sacrament no ‘
virtus causativa gratia!,’ tht recipients, where they place no bar, deriving
grace • non a sacramento sed a Deo.' He also excludes matrimony from the number
of sacraments ‘properly so called' (Lib. iv Dist. xxvi. Quaist. 3). Cf.
trieseler, iv § 116, p. 168, n. 1.
According to
Domer (n. 116, 447), it was the Scotist-nominalists, and not the
Thomi-t-nominalistx, who placed religion altogether on the same fouting as philosophy,
and gave an impulse to froethiuLing.
the ‘Invincible’ and ‘.Singular Doctor.’ We have seen the intrepidity
with which he vindicated the imperial interest in opposition to the pope1,
and this desire to question every species of traditionary knowledge made him
sometimes overleap the common boundaries by which the doctriues of the Church
were guarded and defined. An ardent speculator on the nature of ideas, he
contended finally that thought itself is but subjective,— a conclusion which
could hardly fail to give the most pernicious haudle to freethinkers of the
day. Indeed an under-stream of scepticism2 pervades his own productions.
Ockham was vehemently opposed by many of the Realists3, but
notwithstanding all their censures and the formal inhibition of his writings in
the University of Paris4, the ascendancy of Nominalism as modified
by him was everywhere apparent, more especially in Germany and England’. One of
the last influential schoolmen,
WKSTEItH
CHtTRt n.
Willia
m of Ockham
M. 1347),
the
1 Invincible.’
Spread
cf Oekham.-
1 Above, p. 325. It is indeed remarkable,
though easily explained, that what are called the ‘orthodox’ scholastics took
the side of Roman despotism, and that the nominalists were very ofton in the
ranks of antipapists. Eoxe (Acts and Mon. ii.
659, ed. Lond. 1813) says of Ockham, that he was "a worthy divine,
and of a right sincere judgment, as the times then would either give or
suffer.’ His book, Super potestate prce- latis Ecclesia} aUjue principibus
terrarum commissa, was printed in England, in the reign of Henry VIII., in
Latin, arid also in en English translation. On this ground we may understand
why OokLam was at first a special favourite of Luther and Melanchthon, while in
doctrine they were often quite antagonistic to him. See Laurence, Bampt. Led.
p. 59 (note) 3rd ed. He seems, however, favourable to the Lutheran view of
consub- stantiation: pee his Quodlibeta Septem una cum Tractatu de Sacramento
Altaris, lib. iv. Qusest. 35, ed. Argent. 1191. In the latter treatise (c. 3)
he says that the liible does not teach us to believe in the annihilation of the
substance of the bread: cf. Schrockh, xxxiv. 195 sq., and, on the philosophical
system of Ockham, as developed in his Quastiones in Lib. Sentent. (ed. Lugdun.
1495), and his Centiloquium Theologicum (ed. Oxon. 1675), see Ritter, Gtseh.
der Christ. Philos, tv. 579 sq.
2 See an essay by Rettberg, in the Studie.n
und Krilikcrt for 1839, i. 69 sq.
3 e.g. by Walter Burley, a sch< >lar
of Oxford, and formerly his fellow- student.
4 Thus, while John Buridan, his pupil, was
‘ rector’ of ihe university, the ‘ din'.trina Uulielmi dicti Occam’ was
condemned (1339): see Bulans Hist. Univ. Paris, iv. 257, and, for a sterner
prohibition, Ibid. iv. 265. In 1473 the Realists obtained a fresh victory by
means of a royal order {Ibid. v. 706 sq.). -which commanded that the books of
their opponents should be locked up. But the order was rescinded in 1481 (Ibid.
v. 739).
5 Cf. Mr Hiillam’a remark on this
circumstance: Literal, of Europe, Pt. i. ch. in. § 69.
Reaction
against the A ristote- lian scholastics.
Gabriel Biel1, who died in 1495, adhered almost implicitly to
him. A less extended notice of these writers* will suffice, particularly as
their disputations do not fall so much into the province of theology as into
that of metaphysics.
It was natural, when scholasticism had almost everywhere degenerated
into lifeless subtleties, that a new period of reaction would commence. We saw
the jealousy with which it was discountenanced by Bernard3 at the
first, and in proportion as its vices came to light, a multitude of others
turned their arms against it4. Some of them indeed may have been
actuated mainly by a wish to introduce a purer love of letters, which wras
certainly the case with not a few of the Platonic illuminati, Who revived the
study of the pagan classics in the
1
His chief work is a Colleetoriim ex Occamo in Lib. Sentent. ed. Tubingen,
1501. His Expositio Canonis Ulissce. important, in a liturgical point of view,
has been printed more than once. On his protestantism, see a dissertation
entitled l)e Gabriele Biel celeberrimn papista Anti- papista, by H. W. Biel,
Yiteb. 1719. Biel was succeeded by Cortesius (‘the Cicero ot dogmatists’), on
whom see Schrockh, xxxir. 217 sq.
a
Rome of the chief were Robert Holcot, an Englishman (d. 1349), Gregory of
Bimini, or Ariminensis (d. 1358), Richard Swinc«head I or Suisset), an Oxford
man (circ. 1350), Henry of Hesse (d. 1897). But they were all surpassed by
Peter d’Ailly (cf. above, p. 333), who wa« made a cardinal in 1411. He laboured
to establish clear distinctions between theology and philosophy. See his
Quaistiones super Lib..Sentent., Argent. 1490, and a list of his other numerous
works in Cave, Hist. Liter, ad ai\ 1396. A Life of him by Du Pin is contained
in the first volume of Ger- son’s Works, ed. Du Pin.
s
Above, p. 257, n. 2.
4 This antagonism was •'hewn emphatically
in Erasmus (b. 1486), whose Morice Encomium (1508), his Ratio perveniendi ad
veram Theo’o- giam, and other works, are full of severe critiques on the
fi.llies of the latei schoolmen. He had been preceded by Lanrentius Valla [Opp.
Basil. 1548), who died in 1457, by Rndolph Agricola, or Hausmann, d. 1485 (Opp.
Colon. 1539). One of his contemporaries who took the •same side, was Ulrich von
Hutten, d. 1523 (Opp. Berol. 1821—5). This German knight had a urincipal band
in the famous satires Epistolas Obscuro- ram Virorum (ed. Munch, 1827), in
which the stupidity and dog-Latin of the mendicant friars, and. their loud
outcries respecting tho luxuries of the Humanists, are described so naturally
and trutbrullv, that the Dominicans at first joined in circulating the book.
See Gieseler, v. § 154, pp. 199 sq. Luther at the same time was able to rejoice
that the ■ lec- tiones sententiarise’ were despised, and that professors
who wished to gain an audience must lecture on the Bible, St Augustine, ‘
aJiumve Ecclesiastics auetoritatis doctorem.’ S^e his Lettert. ed. De Wette,
I. 57.
second half of the fifteenth century1. They strove to banish
the Stagy rite’ and enthrone a more congenial philosophy iu tho affections of
the Church. That movement failed, however, to revive the ancient truths of
Christianity. Its general aim was heathenizing, more especially as it has been
developed in the works of men like Marsilio Ficiuo, the favourite of the
Medici, and others, who not only clothed the doctrines of the Gospel in the
phraseology of Cicero and Horace, but were threatening to exalt their Grecian
master into rivalry with Christ. So prevalent had errors of this class become,
that in the eighth session of the Lateran council3 (Dec. 19. 1513)
it was necessary to declare the immortality of individual souls (in opposition
to the Platonic views of ultimate absorption), and to order all who might profess
to teach the doctrines of the old philosophy that they should never hesitate to
point out the particulars in which it differed from the Christian faith. The
need of this injunction was peculiarly great in Italyi, where
learning in the fifteenth century, and, more than ever, at the dawn of Luther’s
reformation, threatened to assume an anti-christian character,—where wanton
speculations had become most rife, and where indeed it was an index of good
breeding to despise the mysteries of Holy Writ3.
But meanwhile other agents were at work in many parts of German*. The
studies of ecclesiastics had there taken a more distinctly biblical direction.
Men who learned to know themselves were thirsting6 after something
more
1
Seo Bosooe’g Life of Leo X. n. 87 sq., Lond. 1840; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, Pt.
i. ch. a. § 04, and ch. in. § 85. Ficino, however, wrote an apologetic
treatise, De Iieligione Christiana, analysed by Schrikkh, xxxiv. 312 sq.
1 Hallam. Ibid. eh. m. §3 13 sq. l’ico of
Mirandola at one time would havo fain established tho consistency ot tho
Aristotelian aud Platonic systems: but hin own leanings were towards tho
latter, which he Wended with a multitude of wild opinions borrowed from tho
Oabbalistis writings of the Jews: see his Heptaplus, Basil. 1601.
* I.abbe, xiv. 187.
,4
Cf. tho extract from Erasmus, above, p. 352, n. 1, aud others in
Gieseler, v.
§ 154, pp. 181, 182, n. 8.
6 •
In quel tempo non pareva fosse galantuomo e buon oortegiano colui che de dogmi
della Chiesa non aveva, qunkhe opinione erronea ed heretica.' MS. quoted in
Itanke, Popes, t. 50, Lond. 1817.
6 ‘
Nam quid potest ibi syncernm diei, ubi pro religions superstitio, pro diviua
sapientia liomiruun philosophia, pro Christo Socrates, pro
Revival
of 1'latuiuxnL.
Its
heretical tendencies :
especia’hj
in Italy.
Myst'eal
school of theologians.
WESTERN
CHURCH.
John
Tender (1290—
1361),
‘ doctor mblimis et illumina- tus
profound than the scholastic subtleties, more fervent than the cloudy
reveries of Plato. Such was the new race of mystics. Here and there wo find
them swerving into serious errors1, but more commonly they are
distinguished by a simple and unreasoning adherence to the central doctrines of
the faith, combining with it a peculiar earnestness and a desire to elevate the
tone of personal religion. In the members, therefore, of this school (the
‘Friends of God’ as they were called) we may discern precursors2 of
a genuine reformation.
At the head of them is John Tauler3, a Dominican of Cologne.
He was originally captivated by the dialectic studies of the age, and the
effect, of them continued to be traceable in all his writings : but his
intercourse with a Waldensian4, Nicholas of Basel (1340), produced a
thorough change in his convictions and pursuits. For twenty years he was an
indefatigable preacher, stimulated®, as it seems, by the political distractions
of his country and the ravages of a terriiic pestilence (‘the black death’).
His thrilling sermons6, of which many were preserved in the vernacular
dialects, are marked by evangelic tenderness and
sacris
scriptofibns Iristoteles atque Plato in Ecclesiam irrnpnrunt. Ne- que hffic ita intelligi velim, quasi reprehendam philosophise
studium.. sed sic se res habet, ut, nisi (livinitatis cognitio praamonstratris,
mens ipsa hominis errans et vaga ad loca spinosa deviaque deducatur.’ Ktur-
mius ad Cardinales dele.ctos; Argentor. 1538.
1 e.g. Master Eckart (Aichard), a Dominican
of Cologne, who died about 1325, and was one of a class of mystics who diverged
into NeoPlatonism, affirming, for example, that our individuality would be forfeited
at last on our reabsorption into the Divine essence. See Schmidt, Etudes sur le mysticisme allemand au xiv’ siecle, a,
Pari3,1817, pp. 12 sq.; Neander, ix. 56'j sq., and Bitter, Christl. Philos,
iv. 498 sq. Komo of the doctrines of Eckart were condemned in a bull of John
XXII. (1329): see Baynald. ad an. 1329, §§ 70, 71.
2 See I'llinann'a Meformatoren Vor der
Reformation, Harab. 1841 and
J
See especially Schmidt’s Johannes Tauler von Strassburg, Hamb.
1841, and his French Essay quoted in a previous
note.
* On this point, see Neander, ix. 563 sq.
« Ibid. p.
588.
6 The last (modernized) edition was printed
at Frankfort, 1826, in
3 vols. octavo. Luther (1516) spoke of them
as follows: ‘ Si te delectat puram, solidam, antiques similiimam theulogiam
legere in Germanica lingua effusam, Sermones Johannis Tauleri, prasdicatoriaa
professions [i.e. a Dominican], tibi comparare potes...Neque onim ego vel in
Latina vel in nostra lingim theologiam vidi salubriorem et cum livangelio
conso- nantiorem.’ Luther’s Letters, ed. De 'Wette, i. 45.
spiritual depth. They were peculiarly useful in resisting the general
tendency to overvalue the liturgic element of worship.
Tauler will he found to have had numerous points in common with John
Ruysbroek1, prior of the Canons-Regular at Groenendaele near
Brussels. He was equally desirous of conforming to the public institutions of
the Church2, although his language more than once excited a
suspicion of his orthodoxy. Gerson3 wrote (1406) against some
chapters of a book in which the doctrine of eventual absorption into God
appears to be maintained. The works4 of Ruysbroek, in the Flemish
language, were extensively circulated. They are characterized by thorough
knowledge of the spiritual wants and aberrations of the age. He strove to wake
afresh the consciousness of individual fellowship with God, in opposition to
the modes of thought which prompted men to lean for help on outward union with
the Church, The faults of Ruysbroek
John
Ruysbroek
<d. 1381),
* doctor
ecstatiais.*
1 See
Schmidt, Etudes sur le mysticisme, etc. pp. 213 sq., Schrockh, xxxiv. 274
sq., and Neander rx. 579 sq. His works appeared in a Latin translation at
Cologne, 1552, and subsequently.
a
Extracts in Neander, pp. 556, 557.
3 The title is Epist. super tertia parte
libri Joh. Ruysbroech de ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum, Opp. i. 59, ed. Du Pin,
where the remainder of the controversy will be found.
4 They were translated into Latin (ed.
Colon. 1552) and afterwards into German (Offenbach, 1701): cf. Schmidt, Etudes
(as above), pp. 218 sq., Neander ix. 580 sq. A third writer of this school was
Henry Suso (1300—1365), a Dominican of Swabia, on whom see Diepenbrock, Suso’s
Leben und Schriften, Regensburg, 1837. Many other Dominicans followed in his
steps. Thomas a Kempis, one of the ‘Common-Life’ clerics (see above, p. 348,
and Schrockh, xxxiv. 302—33£), may be added to the number, and so may the
unknown author [? Ebland] of the famous treatise, Eyn teutsch Theologiay
das ist, eyn edles Bixchlein vom rechten Ver- stand, etc., edited by Luther
in 1518. He says, in the Preface, that next to the Bible and St Augustine (his
usual mode of speaking) there was no book he prized more highly. The best
modern edition is that of Biesen- thal, Berlin, 1842: another by Pfeiffer
(Roman Catholic), Stuttgart, 1851. In England the mystical school, though far
less influential, had a worthy representative in the hermit Bichard Rolle, of
Hampole, near Doncaster, who died in 1348. Very many of his writings are
poetical. See Wharton’s Append, to Cave, ad an. 1340, and Warton’s Hist,
of Eng. Poetry, n. 35—43, ed, 1840. The treatise De Emendatione Vitee
(printed at Paris, 1510) furnishes a good specimen of his teaching, e.g.
cap. ix.: ‘ Si cupis ad amorem Dei pervenire et succendi in desiderio
coelestium gaudiorum, et induei ad contemptum terrenorum, non sis negligens ad
meditandum et legendum sacram Scripturam.’ Several of his English Treatises
have been printed by the Early English Text Society.
John
Gerson
(1363—
1429),
* doctor
Christian-
Savona
rola
(1452—
1498).
are the common faults of mystical writers, springing from umlue
development of the imaginative faculty.
John Charlies de Gerson, chancellor of Paris (1395), whom we have noticed
as an adversary of the ultra-papal claims1, and also as opposed in
some degree to Ruysbroek. was himself upon the whole addicted to the principles
of mysticism ". But many of his writings indicate especial aptness for
discussing points of practical Christianity-". He was the most
illustrious theologian of the time, and even now is generally revered. The
part, however, which he played at Constance in promoting the condemnation of
Hnss1 must ever be a grievous stain upon his character. He died in
virtual exile5 at Lyons, 1429
Another mystic of a warmer temperament than Gerson, but deficient in his
mental balance, was the Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola6, born in
1452 at Ferrara. Some of his contemporaries, it is true, denounce him as a wild
and visionary demagogue7, but the majority bear witness
1 Above, p, 333.
2 See, for example, his Be Mystica
Theologia, and other kindred treatises in the collection of his Works by Du
Pin, tom. iii. pt. n. But he never
failed to guard against the feverish illusions of enthusiasm: thus he wrote
Contra sectam Flagellantium; and also De probatione Spi- rituum, giving rules
for distinguishing false from true revelations. Cf. Schrockh, xxxiv. 291—302.
3 On this account he was sumamed ‘Doctor
Christianissimus.* Schmidt has published an able Essai sxtr Jean Gerson, Paris,
1839.
4 Lenfant, liv, in. § 5. It was of him that
Huss wrote as follows:
‘ 0 si Deus daret tempus scribendi contra mendacia Parisiensis Cancel-
larii, qui tam temerarie et injuste coram tota multitudine non est veritus
proximum erroribus annotare.5 Ibid.
5 Ibid. liv. vi. § 82'. On his return from
his asylum at Molk, he exercised the humble office of catechizer of children,
whom he collected daily in the church of St Paul at Lyons, and of whom he
required no other reward than that they should repeat this simple prayer, *
God, have mercy on thy poor servant, Gerson.5
6 A Life of him by Pico of Mirandola, his
friend, is contained in the Vit. Select. Virorum, ed. Bates, Load. 1681, pp.
108 sq. But the best accounts are that in Sismondi, Hist, des Repub. Ital. tome
xn.; Meier’s Girolamo Savonarola, Berlin, 1836; The Life and Times of Girolamo
Savonarola (containing a complete catalogue of his writings), Lond. 1843;
Jerdme Savonarole, sa vie, ses predications, ses Merits, d’aprks les documens
originaux, par F. T. Perrens, Paris, 1853; see also'an Article on Savonarola in
Quart. Rev. No. cxcvii.
7 He laid espeeial stress on the
Apocalypse, which, after 1485, he expounded at Brescia, Florence, and elsewhere
to crowded audiences; denouncing the vengeance of heaven against Italy, and
even claiming to himself a kind of prophetic mission (see Life and Times, as
above, pp.
to his patriotism, his zeal, his learning, and his saintly life. The
fiery eloquence of Savonarola was evoked1 by the unparalleled
corruption of the Roman see, as then administered by Innocent VIII. and
Alexander VI. How many elements of superstition and fanaticism had been
unconsciously blended with his nobler feelings is not easy to determine: but
the freedom of his speech2 in censuring the vices and disputing the
infallibility of the pope has never been denied. In May, 1497, when lie was
laid under the ban of excommunication", he answered the papal brief in
letters full of vehement remonstrances, and even ultimately dared* to
excommunicate the pope ia turn (Feb. 18, 1493). His capture, prompted by the
rage of his political adversaries, followed on the eighth of April, and soon
afterwards his ashes were thrown into the Arno at Florence (May 22), with the
sanction, if not through the instigation, of Alexander VI5.
Savonarola has been called the Luther" of Italy: but his eventual
implication in the quarrels of the Florentines proved fatal both to him and to
his cause.
A truer prototype of Luther was John Wessel7 (sur- named
Basilius and also Gansfort), born at Groningen
97 sq., and
Savonarola's Compendium Revelationum). He became the head of the Frateschi, or
republican, party at Florence, who endeavoured to avert the judgments of God by
checking the fearful spread of immorality (Iiid. p. 155).
1 Even Dollinger (iv. 227j admits this, and
praises ‘ the eloquent and venerated Dominican.’
2 Life and Times, as above, pp. 267 sq. His
invectives were also directed generally against the prelates of the church.
‘Illoram libidi- nem avaritiamque, illorum luius simoniacasque labes
insectabatur, publico privatimque monere solitus, a Babylone (lUunam
intelligent) fugien- dum esse,’ etc. Tit. Select. Viror. as above, p. 118.
3 It was now that l’ico of ilirandola wrote
his Apologia- pro Ilie- ronynri Savonarola viri pruphetee Innocentia, which is
printed iu Goldast's Honnrch. n. 1635 sq.
4 Life and Tilly’s, pp. 320---322. 5 Ibid. p. 351.
• Attempts have been made, but not
successfully, to prove that he held the Lutheran view of justification,
indulgences, &c.: cf. M'Crie's Reformation in Italy, p. 18, Lond. 1827.
7 The best authority is TJllmann’tf Johann
Wessel, ein Vorgdniter Luthers, Hamb. 1834, and in the Reformatoren ror der
Reformatioa, Ilanxb. 1842. The Works of Wessel (with a Life, prefixed) were published
at Groningen, 1614. He is not to be confounded with his acquaintance Johann
von Wesel (de Wesalia), called also Eichrath and Uurchar- dus, who was a
professor of theology at Erfurt and afterwards a ‘reforming’ preacher at
Worms. He died in prison (1482), as it seems, for
WESTERN
CHURCH.
John
Wessel
<1420—
1489).
Biblical
studies.
Nicholas
de Lyra
(4 1340).
(1420). After studying and then lecturing in the universities of
Heidelberg, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere, be grew dissatisfied with the
scholastic theology, and took refuge in a warm but scientific mysticism. On
almost every point, on justification, penance,' purgatory, and even on the
Eucharist, he has anticipated the conclusions of those earnest spirits1
who were destined to commence the Saxon reformation of the Church. John Wessel
was alike distinguished as a theologian and as a general scholar. He died in
peace at Groningen (1489), protected from the inquisition by the bishop of
Utrecht.
Jn Wessel, as in many of his predecessors, tbere had been awakened a fresh
love for biblical studies. This alone had constituted in their hearts a bond of
sympathy with men like Wycliffe and the Hussites, more especially perhaps in
Germany, where versions of the Holy Scriptures had been made, and very largely
circulated2, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Before
that time the only critical works deserving notice3 are the Postills
of Nicholas de Lyra4, a Franciscan, who applied his Hebrew knowledge
holding
intercourse with the Hussites. For Ms Paradoxa and the pro. ceedings against
him, see Brown’s Fascic. I. 325—333, and FUmaim, Reform, vor der Ref. r. 307
sq. His Disputatio advcrsus Indulgentias is printed in Walch, Monim. Med. JEvi,
i, ).’_1 sq. He denied the supremacy of the Roman Church, and asserted that of
Holy Scripture: but, as John Weasel lamented (Opp. ed. 1614), p. 920, his
’eruditio et peracre mgenium not unfrequently betrayed him into novelties. His
reforming’ principles were shared iu some measure by the prior of a nunnery at
ilalines, John Pupper of Goch, near Cleves (d. 1475). Suspecting him and
others, see Vllmann, an above, and for some of his writings, Walch, JIonim.
3Ied. JEvi, ii. pt. i. 1 sq., and it. 73 sq.
1 See, lor instance, the extracts in
Gieseler, v. § 153, pp. 172 sq., n. 18. Luther wrote the preface to a Farrago
of his works, ed. Basil- 1522, and expressed
himself in the following terms (which furnished Ullmann v:ith a motto |: ‘ Wene
ich (len Wessel zuvor gelesen, so liessen meine Widersacher sich diinkon,
Luther hiitte Alles vom Wessel genom- men, alsu stimmet unstr Beider Geist
zusammen.’
2 e.g. the old High-German version, printed
first at llentz, 1462, was reprinted ten times before the Reformation (see
other evidence in Gieseler, v. § 146, p. 74, n. 13). In like manner an Italian
version, printed at Venice as early as* 1471, is said to have gone through nine
editions in the fifteenth century (see M‘Crie’s Reform, in Italy, p. 53, Lonti.
1827).
3 Exceptions may be made in favour of the
English Dominican Robert Holcot (d. 1349), on whose exegetical and other works,
see Wharton’is Append, to Oave s Hist. Liter, ad an. 1340; and of the Spanish
prelate, Tostatus of Avila (d. 1454), on whom, see Schrockh, xxx/v. 147 »q.
4 His PostilUz Perpeturi in Biblia have
been often published, first at Rome, 1471, in 5 vola. folio.
with effect to the elucidation of the Old Testament, and Gerson, who was
led by corresponding works of St Augustine to construct a Harmony of the Four
Gospels1. But on the resuscitation of the ancient literature and the
discovery of printing, stronger impulses were communicated in this direction.
The superior scholarship and taste of Laurentius Valla2, cardinal
Ximenes8, Reuchlin*, Erasmus6, and others, indicated that
a brighter period was now dawning on the field of scriptural hermeneutics.
Though it be unfair to urge; that men were wholly unacquainted with the Bible
in the times anterior to the Reformation, we may safely argue that the
Reformation was itself a consequence of the enlightenment which biblical
inquiries had produced.
EASTERN
CHURCH.
As there was almost nothing in the Eastern Churches corresponding to the
Middle Ages in the West, we meet with nothing like the healthy series of
reactions just described. The present period was indeed more sterile and
monotonous than all which went before it. Scarcely any theological writers6
of importance can be traced excepting
1
This work in entitled MonoUssaron, seu unum ex quatuor F.vangeliU: Gerson, Opp.
ed. ])u Pin, iv. 83 sq. He looks upon the variations in the Sacred Writers as
constituting a ‘ concordinsima dissonantia.'
1
His entire work* -were printed at Basel in 1540. The chief of them iu this
connexion (cf. above, p. 851, n. 4) is the series of Annotation.es in Novum
Testamcntum, which display great critical ability. His work, De IAbero
Arbitrio, and still more the famous Declamatio de faUo credita et ementita
Cimstantini Dnnatione (cf. above, p. 254, n. 3), have laid him open to
BellarmineV charge of being a precursor of the Lutherans.
3 Cf. above, p. 318. His sagacity tiid zeal
in the preparation of the Oomplutensian Polyglott (1514—1517) were beyond nil
praise: see Schrockh, xxxrr. 81 sq. The papal sanction was, however, withheld
until after the cardinal's death in 1528.
4 lleuchlin’s fame is mainly due to his
restoration of Hebrew literature, in vlnch he was bitterly opposed by many of
the German monks. (See Maii Vit. Jle.uchlini, passim.' Against them are
directed the most cutting satires of the Epistolce Obscurorum Vironm (see
above, p. 354,
11. 4). Beuchlin’s Hebrew grammar and lexicon
were published in 1506: and in 1518 a fine edition of the Hebrew Bible appeared
at Venice. M'Crie, Reform, in Italy, p. 40.
5 His edition of the New Testament appeared
at Basel in 151fi:
Hid.
pp. 47 sq. The mighty influence which his theological works
exerted
on the Reformation, more especially in England, where his caution us
appreciated, belongs in strictness to the following period.
s
To Church-hiatory an important contribution was made by Nice-
fjtrson
(d. 1422).
Laurentius
Valla
(d. 1451).
Ximenes (d. ] 522).
Rmehlin
(d. 1522).
Erasmus
(d. 1536).
Scarcity
of
yreai
xcriUrs.
Theophanes
of Niccea (circ. 1347).
Simeon
of
trica
(circ. 1410). George of Trehizond (1396— I486)-
Russian
sect of Stri* golniks.
The
Quiet- ist or Ifesychast controversy:
those who figured in the controversy with the Latin Church.
The most distinguished of the biblical scholars was Theophanes1,
archbishop of Nicsea, who composed a Harmony of the Old and New Testament, and
also an elaborate Apology, directing both of them against the Jews. A monk of
Thessalonica, Simeon2, wrrote a Dialogue against all
Heresies, and many other works iu vindication of the ‘orthodox’ (or Greek)
communion. George of Trebizond, a somewhat copious author3, added to
the stock of evidences in a book on the Truth of Christianity.
The state of feeling in the great majority of Eastern Christians was so
torpid as to cause but few internal ruptures. The Strigolniks4 of
.Russia, who in 1371 and afterwards obtained a host of proselytes at Novogorod,
are the only formidable sect that sprang up in this period. They were bitterly
opposed to all the members of the sacerdotal order, and their tenets, in some
points at least, resemble those now current with the English ‘ Lollards.’
But another controversy5, that broke out in the neighbourhood
of Constantinople, also merits our attention, yielding as it does some insight
into the prevailing modes of thought. A party of the monks who swarmed upon the
‘ Holy Mountain ’ (Athos)6, in their contemplations on
phorus
Callifti Xanthopuli (circ. 1333), whose work in eighteen hooks extends from the
Incarnation to the death of l’hocas (610;: see Dowling's Intrud. to Eccl.
Ilist. pp. 91 sq., Lond. 1838.
1
See Wharton’s Append, to Cave, ad an. 1347
- Ibid. ad an. 1410. Leo Allatius (the
Romanized "writes, with reference to Simeon’s Dialogue, that it is ‘pius
et doctus, di^nusque qui aliquimdo lucem videat, sed mamiductus a Catholico.'
De Simeonum Scriptis Diatriba, p. 193. Another work of this Simeon is On the
Faith and Sacraments of the Church, printed, according to Schrockh (xxxiv.
427), in Moldavia (1G83) with the authority of Dositheus, patriarch of
Jerusalem.
3 Wharton, as above, ad an. 1.440, and Leo
Allatius, De Qeorgils Diatriba, pp. 395 sq.
1 See Mouravieff, ed. Blackmore, pp. 65,
379, 380. They maintained that all Christians are invested with the rights of
priesthood, and elected their own teachers from among themselves. They also
denied the necessity of confession, and madb no prayers and offerings for the
dead.
5 On this controversy, see Schrockh, xxxiv.
431—451; Kngelhardt, Die Arsenianer'[cf. above, p. 272,
n. 3] und Hesychasten, in Tllgen’s Zeit- schrift, Ed. vru. st. i. pp. 48 sq.;
Dorner. Lehre
von der Persim Christi, ii. 292—297.
6 Since the 9th century Mount Athos has
been covered with monas.
the blessedness of ‘seeing God,’ were led to argue that the Christian may
arrive at a tranquillity of mind entirely free from perturbation, and that all
enjoying such a state may hold an ocular intercourse with God Himself, as the
Apostles were supposed to do when they beheld His glory shining forth in the
Transfiguration of our Lord. These mystics bore the name of Quietists, or
Hesychasts1 (Wav-vaarcu). They were vehemently assailed2
by Bar- laam (circ. 1341), a learned monk of the order of St Basil, and in all
his earlier life a staunch defender of the Eastern Church3. His
strictures roused the indignation of Gregorius PaBftnas*, afterwards the
archbishop-designate of Thessalonica; by whose influence several councils5,
held at Constantinople (1341—1350), were induced to shelter, if not absolutely
patronize, the Quietists. Their censor, driven to revoke his acrimonious
charges, instantly seceded to the Western Church6, where he became
the bishop of Gerace iu Calabria. The Hesychastic school was thus enabled to
achieve a triumph. They were generally supported by the eastern theologians7;
among others by the celebrated mystic, Nicholas Cabasilas, archbishop also of
Thessalonica (circ. 1350). His important treatise on The Life in Christ8
is now accessible to scholars.
teries. See
their number and condition (in 1836) described in Curzon’s Visit to Monasteries
in the Levant, Lond. 1849, pp. 356 sq.
1 Other names given to them by their
opponents were Massalians (above, p. 282, n. 4), and ,0Ju^»aA6i/,t>xot
(Umbilicanimi). The latter seems to have referred to their custom of sitting
still and gazing on the pit of their stomach (not unlike some of the Hindu and
other heathen ascetics).
2 Joh. Cantacuzenus, Hist. lib. n. c. 39;
Niceph. Gregoras, Hist. Byzant. lib. xi. c. 10.
3 See. for instance, his Uepl rrjs tov Iftfira ed. Salmasius, Iiugdun. 1645.
4 Joh. Cantacuzenus, Ibid. On his other
writings, see Wharton’s Append, to Cave, ad an. 1354.
5 (1341),
Mansi, xxv. 1147; (1347), xxvi. 105; (1350), ib. 127.
6 Cantacuzenus,
lib. n. c. 40; Niceph. Gregoras, Ibid. Some of the Letters
which he wrote on the Western side of the controversy are printed in Canisius,
Lect. Antiq., ed. Basnage, iv, 361 sq. Other instances of secession to the
Latin Church occur now and then.
7 Cf. Schrockh, xxxiv. 449, 450.
8 See Gass, Die Mystik des Nicolaus
Cabasilas vom Leben in Christo, Griefswald, 1849: Wharton, as above, ad an.
1350. Among other works in vindication of the Greek Church, he wrote a treatise
on the Procession of the Holy Ghost, in answer to Aquinas (cf. above, p. 281,
n. 2).
ojtened
by Barluam (circ. 1341). Resistance ‘if
Gregoriu*
Panamas,
and
Nicholas
Cabasilus.
RELATIONS OF
EAST AND WEST.
Eastern
antipathy to the Latin Church.
Reopening
of negotiations.
T ml of John
VI. Palcmlogus to Rome,
1369.
RELATIONS OF
THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCHES.
The ancient resolution to maintain their freedom in defiance of the Roman
court was still tlie general feeling of the eastern Christians. Some of them,
for instance Nilus Cabasilas1, who had preceded his nephew Nicholas
in the arcliiepiscopal chair of Thessalonica, wrote with temper and ability.
But in proportion as the Turks were menacing Constantinople, it became the
policy of the enfeebled emperors to win. the favour of the Latin Churches.
This could only be effected by the healing of the schism.
Negociations were accordingly reopened as early as 1333. In 1339
Audronicus III. Palseologus2 dispatched a formal embassy to Benedict
XII. at Avignon. The leader of this party was the monk Barlaam, who, as we have
seen3, immediately afterwards passed over to the Western Church. His
mission was, however, fruitless in respect of his fellow-countrymen at large:
and though another emperor, John VI. Palfeologus, betook himself in person* to
the court of Rome (1SS9), and by his abject homage to pope Urban V. endeavoured
to awake the sympathy
1 His works, De Cavsis Divisiumtm in
Ecclesia and Be Primatu Papm (translated into English, Lond. 1560), were edited
by Salmasius, Hanov. 1608. He also wrote at great length De Processione S.
Hpiritus adversus Latinos: nee Leo illatins, Diatriha de Nilis, p. 49. Another
Nilus (surnamed Damyla), cire. 1400, wrote several treatises on kindred subjects,
but in a more bitter spirit: see Wharton's Append, to Cave, ad an. 1400,
2 On the earlier correspondence, see
Ilaynald. ad an. 1333, §§ 17 sq., and Gibbon, ch. lxvi. In 1339 (Ilaynald. ad an. §§ 19 sq.) the Greeks
promise, 'Qusecunque a generali concilio determinata luerint, omnes orientales
libenter hste recipient.’ They also begged that the mode of stating the
Procession of the Holj Ghost might be left an open question; but the Latins
answered, that this would be to violate the unity of tht faith, (‘quia in Ecclesia
Catholica, in qua una tides esse noscitur, quoad hoc duplicem lidem minus
veraciter esset dare’). With regard to the papal supremacy, Benedict intimated
that the only way to ‘ auxilia, consilia, et favores,’ was by cordially
returning to ‘the obedience of the Koman church.’ A fresh embassy was sent to
Avignon by Cantacuzenus (see his own Hist. lib. it.
c. 9), for the sake of negociating a union with Clement VI. (1348); but
it also was fruitless.
5 Above, p. 363.
4 Kaynald. ad an. 1369, § 1 sq. He had already
(1355) bound himself by a secret oath to become ‘fidelis, obediens, reverens,
et devotus beatissimo patn et domino, domino Innocentio sacrosanct® llomana* ac
universalis Ecclesise .... summo pontifici et ejus successoribus. ’ Hay- nald.
ad an. 1355, § 34: cf. Gibbon, ch. lxvi.
(vi. 217—220, ed. llihnan).
of European princes, his defection from the Eastern Church produced no
spiritual nor temporal results. His son, Manuel II., notwithstanding a fresh
canvass for auxiliaries1 in Italy, France, Germany, and England
(1400 -1402), was unshaken in his predilections for the creed and worship of
his fathers*. The invasions of Timur (or Tamerlane), who conquered Anatolia in
1402. and thus diverted3 for a while the onslaught of the Turks,
relieved the emperor from the necessity of forming an alliance with the west;
but, danger having finally become more imminent than ever, a fresh series of
negociations were commenced (1434) under John VII. Palseologus, his son.
This monarch, after some preliminaries, undertook to hold another
conference with the Latin Church beyond the Adriatic; and when he was driven to
determine4 whether the true channel of communication were the Roman
pontiff or the council of Easel, an accident eventually threw him into the
firms of the former. He was carried off in triumph to the council of Ferrara
(Feb. 28, 14S8), attended by twenty-one eastern prelates, in addition to the
patriarch of Constantinople5. The chief spokesmen on his side were
RELATIONS OF
EAST AX I) WEST.
AntiRoman
bin* of kit son.
Fresh
negotiations under John VII. Palceo-
loqvs.
1434
1438.
Council
of Ferrara,
1438.
1 Gibbon, Ibid. pp. 220—222. Or account of
the papal schism
(above,
p. 328) tlit" emperor had studiously avoided committing himself to either
party, and indeed that circumstance facilitated his application to the
different courts.
3
He even wrote twenty "Dialogues in its defence: Leo AUatius, De Feel.
Occident, et Orient. Perpet. Consensione, p. 854. In 1418, however, he appears
to have sent an embassy, headed by the archbishop of Kieff, to the council of
Constance, where the Greeks were allowed to perform Divine Service according to
their rite. See Lenfunt, Hist, du Candle de Const, liv. vi. ch. 44.
3 Cf. Miller’s History philosophically
illustrated, ii. 371, 3rd edit.
1 Both the council and the pope (ci. above,
p. 337) had sent vessels to fetch the emperor from Constantinople, but tho
pope’s galleys anticipated the other by a few days, and thus in al) probability
decided a most critical question as to the relations of the East and West in
future ages. The admiral of the pope’s galleys was his nephew, who hail
received instructions ha. TToXen^jaT} orou av evprj rd Karcnya rijs 2vvuOor,
teal, et dvrfyhj, *ara6'Vy hu c'<pavi>r'Q. See 011 the whole subject the
work of Syropulus (circ. 1444), Yera HUt. unionis non verm inter Grceeos et
Latinos, ed. Oreyghton, llag£e Oomitis, 16(S0, and the Arts of the councils of
Ferrara and Florence, in Labbe, xm. 1 sq.: cf. Schrockh, xxiiv. 413 sq.
5 The Russian church at this time was
governed by a metropolitan of Kieff, called Isidore, who hail been appointed at
Constantinople under Humanizing influences. He went to the council of Ferrara
in spite of the misgivings of king Basil, and at length espoused the tenets of
the
RELATIONS OF
EAST AND WEST.
Subjects
of discussion.
Synod
transferred to Florence, 1439.
Mark of Ephesus, Dionysius of Sardis, and Bessarion of Nicsea. Legates
also were accredited for the occasion by Philotheus of Alexandria and Dorothuus
of Antioch; while Joachim of Jerusalem entrusted his subscription to Mark of
Ephesus.
The pope (Eugenius IV.) was not generally present in the council, after
the second session (March 15); but he left behind him two accomplished
advocates, the cardinal Juliano1, who had now retreated from the
synod of Basel, and Andrew, the Latin bishop of llhodes. The scheme of
questions to be handled by the deputies consisted of the following heads: (1)
the Procession of the Holy Spirit, (2) the addition of the clause Filioque to
the Constantinopolitan creed, (3) Purgatory and the intermediate state, (4)
the use of unleavened bread in the holy Eucharist, (5) the jurisdiction of the
Roman see and the supremacy of the pope. A long delay occurred before the
actual business of the conference was opened, owing to the thin attendance * of
the western prelates at Ferrara. But in tho following autumn (Oct. 8), when the
vigour of the Basel assembly was declining, a debate3 was held
respecting the first point of controversy. It continued, with some interruptions,
till the synod was at length transferred, by reason of the plague, to Florence.
There the sessions were resumed on Feb 26, 1438. and with them the
discussions as to the Procession of the Holy Ghost. The Latin arguments,
adduced by the provincial of the Dominicans in Lombardy, were stigmatized at
western
theologians. On his return, however, decorated with the Roman purple, he wap
for a while shut up in a monastery; but escaping thence took refuge with the
pope. Mouraviuff, pp. 76—78.
■ See above, p. 334, and p. 336, n. 4.
2 In the first session before the arrival
of tho Greek* there were present only cardinal Juliano, live archbishops,
eighteen bishops, ten abbots, anil some generals of monastic orders. Afany of
the European princes were in favour of the council of Basel (see above, p.
337), and Charles VII. of France, in particular, at first forbade any of his
subjects to go to Ferrara.
s
Andrew of Rhodes contended at great length in the' Cth session (Oct. 20) that
the clause Filioque, which the Greeks regarded as a mere addition, was in truth
an explication, or necessary consequence, of what had been maintained from the
beginning. In the next session (Oct. 25) he illustrated his remark by the
enlargement of the Xicene Greed at Constantinople in 381.
length as absolutely heretical by Mark of Ephesus1, but ou the
other hand Bessarion* owned himself a convert to the western doctrine, which he
now proceeded to defend with vigour. A decree3, embodying his
conclusions, was put forward, pledging all who signed it to believe that the
Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and that His essence is
eternally from Both as from One principle, aud by one only spiration (‘tamquam
ab uno principio et unioa spiratione’): or, in different language, that the
Son is verily the Cause, or principle, of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit
equally with the Father. It was next conceded by the Easterns that unleavened
bread as well as leavened might be lawfully and efficaciously employed in
celebrating the Eucharist4. The Latin theories on purgatory also
were admitted, the new definition being, that the soul of every penitent who
dies in the love of God, before he has made satisfaction for his past misdeeds
by bringing forth the fruits of penitence, is aided after death by prayers and
other offerings which the faithful make in his behalf; while he himself is
undergoing pains (‘poenis purgatoriis’) in order to his final purification and
reception into heaven5. Whether this effect be due to elemental lire
or other agents, is
:
Respecting him and his numerous anti-Latin •writings, see Wharton's Append, to
Cave, ad a 1. 3 436. His Epistola de Syuodo Florentine/, ad t,nines Christianos
is printed, in the replv of Joseph, bp. of Methone, in I.abbe, xtii. pp. 677
sq. Another Greek declared on this occasion, when a threat had been applied to
make him surrender his belief: > Mori malo, quaiu unquam I.atinizare.’
2 See 'Wharton, as above. Bessarion became
a Human cardinal, and on the death of Nicholas Y. (1455) was on the point of
succeeding to the popedom. His munificence and abilities contributed much to
the diffusion of (ireek literature in Italy.
3 Labbe, xiii.
510 sq.
4 The language is remarkable: ‘Tn azymo
sive fermentato pane triticeo corpus Christi veraciter confici [in Bessarion’s
version reXetuBa.-. aXijSus]; sacerdotesque iu altero ipsum Domini corpus
conficere debere, unumquemque scilicet junta sua) ecelesite, sive occidentals,
sive orien- talis, eonsuetudinem.’
6 Ibid. and cf. Schrijckh, xxxiv. 429, 430.
The other two cases, where the destination of the spirit it either heaven or
hell, are put as follows: *Illortunque animas, qui post lmptisma susccptuin
nullam om- nino peccati macubuu incurrerunt, illas etiam, qiuo post contractam
peccati macula:a \el in suis corporibus, vel eisdem exuttp corpori’ous, prout
superius dictum est, sunt purgata1, in calum mox recipi, et intueri
clare ipsum Deum Trinum et Unttm (cf. above, p. 326, n. 1), sieuti est, pro
meritorum tamen diversitato aiiiun alio perfeetius; illorum autem
KELAT10NS OF
I!AST ASD WEST.
Secession
to the Latin side. Iherees on the Procession ;
on
unleavened bread:
cm
Purgatory :
declared to be no matter for a synodal decision. As to the supremacy (to
irpwTeiov) of the pope1, the Greeks were willing to acknowledge it
iu all its latitude, unless indeed the final clause for saving the canonical
order, rights, and privileges of the Eastern patriarchs were meant to
circumscribe his power.
This memorable edict was published July 6, 1439. when it exhibited the
signatures2 of the emperor, the representatives of the patriarchs
of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and of many others, not including Mark
of Ephesus, nor the patriarch of Constantinople, who had lately died at
Florence. The great object of so many conferences might seem to have been
reached. But when the tidings of reunion were divulged in llussia3
aud the Eastern Church1 at large, the synod was immediately repudiated
by the several churches. The new patriarch of Constantinople, Metrophanes,
became an object both of hatred and contempt to his own suffragans, who forced
him in the end to abdicate his throne. All ‘ Latinizers ’ W'ere regarded by the
populace as abject traitors to the faith of Christ; and even the compliant
patriarchs6 who took a share in the proceedings at Ferrara, soon
repented of their aberrations and openly reverted to the ‘ orthodox ’ belief.
animas, qui
in actuali mortali peceato, Tel solo original! decedunt, mox in infernum
descendere, pcenis tamen disparibus puniendas.’
1 ‘ Item diffinimus, sanctam apostolicam
sedem et Bomanum ponti- fieem in universum orbem tenere primatum et ipsum
pontificem Koma- num successorem esse beati Petri principis apostolorum, et
verum Christi viearium, totiusque eeelesise caput et omnium Christianorum
patrem ac doetorem existere,* etc. Ibid. . The pope, however, it was added, is
to act in accordance with the canons of the Church (ko.61 $v rpoirov /cal iv rois 'rrpa.KTiKots
r&v olKOv/jieptK&v cvvodwv, Kal iv tqis
iepois Kavoat 8ia\ajAj3d- verat).
2 On the Latin side the persons who affixed
their names were the pope, eight cardinals, the Latin patriarchs of Jerusalem
and Grado, two episcopal ambassadors of the duke of Burgundy, eight
archbishops, forty- seven bishops (nearly all Italians), four generals of
monastic orders, and forty-one abbots. The Greeks, to the number of thirty,
arrived at Constantinople, on their return, Feb. 1, 1440.
3 See above, p. 365, n. 5.
4 Neale’s Eastern Church, * Alexandria,’ ii. 337: and Gibbon, ch. lxvii. (vi.
260, 261, ed. Milman).
5 See e.g. their synodal letter (1443) in
Leo Allatius, De Perpet. Con- sensione, pp. 939 sq., in which they characterize
the council of Florence as tuapav, and threaten to excommunicate all who
fraternize with the Latins. Their epistle to the emperor is quite as
denunciatory: Ibid. pp, 942 sq.
delations
OF EAST AND
WEST.
on
the papal supremacy.
Completion
of the
Its
rejection in the East.
O11 the annihilation of Byzantine glory (14D3j the reasons for
soliciting the friendship of the Western Church had ceased to operate. The
Christians of Constantinople were then permanently disengaged from their
alliance with the civil power, and from that day to this, in spite of many
proselytizing efforts, concentrated at the close of the sixteenth century against
the Church of Russia’, the inveterate quarrels of the East and West have never
been composed.
The fears awakened at Constantinople by the Turks had acted in like
manner on the court of Armenia. As early as 1317 an embassy8 was
sent imploring help from John XXII., and promising as an equivalent to bring
about a cordial reconciliation with the Latin Church'" The briefs,
however, which he circulated in the west of Europe with the hope of stirring up
a new crusade were fruitless4: while, upon the other side,
hereditary hatred of the council of Chalcedon5 and a strong
attachment to
1
Jlouraviefii, p. 122.
* Raynald. ad an. 1317, § 35: cf. ad an.
1308, § 32, and a’oove, p. 275, n. 7.
3 Ibid. ad an. 1318, §§ 8—17. In the same
year (§ 15) this pope sent a party at Dominicans to facilitate the union; but
it never seems to have extended beyond the court and tho nobles of Lesser
Armenia: see (as below, n. 6) Art. ixxiv. Of course tho little Latinized
kingdom of Armenia (Cilicia) could not undertake for the Armenian Church, the
bulk of which lav far off, and had been long under Turkish dominii in.
4 The patience of the Church was already
well-nigh exhausted by the levying of tenths and other contributions with a
similar pretext, for the benefit of the popes and the kings of France cf.
Twysden, Vindication, p. 103, Camb. ed. The pope, however, in the present case
forwarded pecuniary help to the Armenians (Raynald. ad an. 1323, § 5: Schrockn,
tSMT. 453). There is some danger of confounding the Armenians of the little Christian
kingdom which became extinct in 1393, with those of Greater Aimenia, where the
strength of the Armenian Church lay. The kingdom from its close connexion with
the Crusaders was always more than hulf Roman.
6 See a catalogue of errors alleged against
them in 1341 by Benedict XII. (in writing to the Catholioos of Armenia);
Raynald. ad an. 1341, §§ 45 sq. It is there stated (Art. m.) that they held a
ftetiv al in honour of Dioscorus who was condemned at Chalcedon (Oct. 13,
451), them- selvesmaintainins? with him, or at least deducing from his theory,
‘ Quod sicut in IJoinino Jesu Christo erat unica Persona, ita erat un;‘ Natura,
scilicet Divina, et tfna volunias et una operatio’ (cf. above, p. 64). They
appear to have also held (Art. iv.) that since the Passion of cur Lord original
sin lim been remitted to ail the children of Adam (‘pueri qui nascuntur ex
filiis Adam non sunt damnationi addicti’). They did not believe in a purgatory
(‘ quia, ut diount, si Christianus confiteatur peceata sua, onuaia peccata ejus
et piviur peccatumm ei dimittuntur,' Art. xyb.). They offered no prayers for
the dead with the hope of procuring a remis-
KSLATIOKS OF
EAST AND WEST.
Perpetuity
cf tie schism.
Vain
attempts
to win 01: tr the Armenians,
renewed
at Florence j
extended
to the Copts.
Latin
'party in Abyssinia.
to
the
Nestm'ians
and the Maronites.
their semi-Jewish notions1 swayed the bulk of the Armenian
people to resist the tempting offers of the pope. In 1367 their country fell a
prey to the Mameluke Turks, who threatened to erase all vestiges of
Christianity2. Yet even in the little kingdom a remnant survived. At
the council of Florence, after the departure of the Greeks, a specious edict
was drawn up (Nov. 22, 1440) for the purpose of embracing the Armenians in the
general peace3. The kindred sect of Copts (or Jacobites) of Egypt,
who had also undergone a frightful persecution at the hands of the Mamelukes4,
were made the subjects of a like decree3 (Feb. 4. 1441). An emissary
of the Coptic patriarch6 appeared in Florence, to facilitate this
work. In neither case, however, did the overtures prevail except with
individuals here and there. A firmer footing was at length obtained among the
Christians of Abyssinia7. It proceeded from an interchange of
salutations at the Florentine synod on the part of their king Zara Jacob and
Eugenius IV. The ultimate effect of it was the formation of a Latinizing school,
which flourished, for some time at least, under the auspices of the court of
Portugal8. We gather also from the closing acts of the council of
Florence, now translated to the Lateran (Sept. SO, 3444, and Aug, 7, 1415),
that the prelates made a vigorous effort to win over the Jacobites9
(‘Syrians’), and that numerous section of the Maronites10, who still
sion of sins
sed generaliter orant pro omnibu» mortuis, siout pro beata Maria, Apostolis,
Martyribns, et aliis nanctis, ut in die judicii intrent in regnum
collate.Ibid.). In Arts, lxxxtv., lxxxv.,
we are told that they absolutely denied the papal supremacy.
1 Thui< (Art. xlvi.) they observed the legal distinctions between the
clean and unclean meats: cl above, p. 187, n. 4.
“ liayuald.
ad an. 1382, 49.
a 1
.nbbci, xni. 1197 sq.; Schrockh, xxxrv. 458.
4 Eenaudot, Hist. Patr. Alexand. Jacob, pp.
602 sq.; Neale, H. 322, 323.
' Labbe,
Ibid. 1204 sq.: Schroekh, xxxiv. 416.
6 Neale, n. 336.
"
Neale,
it 336.
8 Ste above, p. 315, n. 5.
u
Labbe, xin. 1222 sq. This decree states that Abdalla, archbp. of Edessa, had
cjme to the synod in the name of Ignatius, patriarch of the Syrians.
10 Ibid. 1223 sq. (cf. above, p. 71). On the
t-amo occasion, deputies presented themselves in the name of Timotheus,
metropolitan of tho ‘Chaldeans’ (Nestorians) of Cyprus. By these proceedings,
writes tho Continuator of Floury (ad an. L443, s. 5), all the eastern sects
would
adhered to the Monothelete opinions. Whether any kind of change resulted
from these later manifestoes of the Western Church, it is not easy to decide.
CONTINUOUS
EFFORTS TO WORK OUT A REFORMATION
The name of Reformation1 had been long familiar in the West of
Europe. ] hiring all the present period, more especially the earlier half of
the fifteenth century, it never ceased to vibrate iu men’s ears. A
consciousness that the ecclesiastical system was diseased and lamentably out of
joint, as well as a presentiment that things could not long continue as they
were, had been awakened on all sides among the earnest and more thoughtful
members of the Church. These feelings were occasionally shared by the chiefs of
the Roman court2 itself: but for the most part it had now become the
centre of corruption and a rallying point for all the self-complacent and
reactionary spirits. Hence the origin of the continued struggle made at Pisa,
Constance, and Basel, to circumscribe the papal monarchy. The leaders in it
felt that such a step was absolutely indispensable for healing the disorders of
the age. The council-party, as we saw, eujoyed the patronage of kings and
governments; it was supported almost uniformly by the lawyers and the more
intelligent among the laity. We must, however, bear in iniiid that few
reformers of this class had ever meditated critical inquiries into the
established dogmas of the Church. Oue section of them were disposed to carry
their reformatory principle no further than the temporal branches of the papal
jurisdiction or the gross excesses in the lives of clergymen aud monks.
Accordingly the failure3 of the
have been
united to the Church of Roma, ‘si ses decrrts eussent &e re^Cts put led lieux; mais par malheur ils
n’euront point d’effet:’ cf.
Gibbon, vi.
241, ed. Jlilman.
1 See e.g. above, p. 21, n. 8; p. 251 n.
ii.
2 <-.3. Pirn 111., above, p. 339, n. 9.
The language of Hadrian YX.
(by hi*
Xuncio), at the diet of Nuremberg in 1522, is moat cmphatic:
Eaynald. ad
an. 1522, § 06.
5 See above, p. 334, n. 1. The cry for a
general council -wan renewed, however, at the end of thd fifteenth century, and
prolonged by the Germans and English to the middle of the next. We gather from
the following expressions that little hope was held out of a, conciliar
reformation : ‘ Quis ista deficiunt [i.e. obedientia principnm, zelus fidei],
qua'so, ex conciliis cujusmodi reformatio proveniet .... Ecclesiam per
concilium reformare non poterit omnii humana facultas: sed alium modurn Altis-
BB 2
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
Rrformt
rs in the Church.
befohh\- movement they had started, for convening general councils effobis
periodically, seemed a blow quite fatal to their projects _ ‘of reform. But
others who I ke them were anxious to preserve the outward unity of Christendom
at almost any price, went further in applying sanatory measures. Chilled and
wearied by the subtleties of a degenerate race of schoolmen, they reverted1
for illumination to the Holy Scriptures, and the writings of the early Church.
The great majority, indeed (for instance men like Gerson. or Thomas a Kempis),
were not conscious of antipathy to the established creed or ritual institutions
of their country. Many doctrines” which have since been methodized in such a
way as to present a sharper, a more startling and more systematic form, were
tacitly allowed or even strenuously defended: yet meanwhile the general tone
of their productions, as the use to which they were hereafter put by leaders of
the Reformation shewed, was adverse8 to the modes of thought and
feeling which prevailed before that epoch.
simus
procurabit, nobis quidem pro mmf incngnitum, licet hea! pra foribus existat, ut
ad printinum ntdtoru ecclesia redeat.’ The words are addressed by the
Irquii-itor Henry Institoris to the enthusiast (or impostor) Andrew archbishop
of Crayn, who in 1480 summoned a gem ral council on his ovsn authority to
Basel, and died in prison in 1484. Hottinger, Hist. Ec.cl. ssec. xv p. 413; see
also Farlati, Illyricum sacrum, vol. vit pp. 437—448. Andrew was a Dominican
friai, mimed ZuccomakiJii, and his see was probably in pnrtibus: he gave
himself out as Cardinal of S. Sixtus. His wholf history, which might be
interesting, is unfortunately obscure. See Gioselei, v. pp. 154-156.
1
See above, p. 356.
1
Gerson, for example, reconciled himself to a belief :n the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin, on tbu ground that it was a development:
‘
Dootores addiderunt mulias veritates ultra Apostolos. Quapropter dicere
possumus, hanc veritatem “beatam Mariam non fuisse conceptam in peccato
originali” de illis esse veritatibus, quw noviter svnt revelata vel declarata,
tam pel miracula qua.' leguntur, quam per majoriin partem Ecclesia,
sanct&s qua) hoc niodo tenet.’ Opp. in 1330, ed. Dupin. He also applies the
remark to purgatory. Juster -views art) advocated in a Wyclifiite treatise
(1395) edited by ForshalJ (1851), the author asking (p. 79) in a parallel case;
‘ Bi what presumpcion bryngitb in this synful tnan this nouelrie, not foundiii
opinlj in the lawc of God neithir in roesun ?’
3
The Catabigus Tcstium VeritatU, qui ante nostram aitatem redo- marunt Papal
(ed. 1556;, though constructed in a narrow, "rasping, and, at times, in
something like d disingenuous spirit, will furnish many illustrations of thin
remark See also Field, On the Church, Append, to Book in. (ii, 1—387, cd. 1849), who proves at
length that the extreme opinions, stereotyped by the Council ol Trent, were
held only by 1 a faction’ iii the age preceding Luther’s.
While the timid, calm, or isolated efforts of this kind were tending in
the bosom of the Church itself to something more emphatic, other agencies
external to it had been also urging on the work. In spite of the Inquisitors1
who prowled in every part of Europe, many sects, retaining more or less of
truth, and more or less antagonistic to the hierarchy and the ritual of the
Church, continued to recruit their forces. Though the Catliari, or Albigenses,
hiul been massacred3 in all the south of France (except a miserable
remnant3], they were at the middle of the fourteenth century so
numerous4 in Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Albania, Bulgaria, and
especially in Bosnia, as to form a large proportion of the populace. The school
of Peter Waldo had been similarly thinned by ruthless persecutions3,
but it still survived6 in France, in parts of Germany, and even in
Bohemia, as well as in the more sequestered vales and fastnesses of Piedmont7.
The B< ghards8 also, with the German Lollards, or at least that
section of them which had now revolted absolutely from the Church, including
Fratricelli, 'Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit,’ and a minor group of
mystical and antinomian confraternities, appear at. intervals on every side.
They seemed to thrive not only in their earlier settlements, but also n the
south of France, in
Schrockh,
xxxiv. 468 sq.
8 See above, p. 289.
3 Such are, possibly, the CaRota of the
Pyrenees: Schmidt, Hist, des Cathares, etc. i. Ii60.
* Ibid. i. 125 »q. The inhabitants of Bosnia
and Albania, where the doctrines of the Bogomiles were deeply rooted,
afterwards became the champions of Mamism. Spencer’s Travels in European
Turkey, r. 303— 312, Lond. 1851.
’ Tfio first
of these, in the present period, was set on foot by John XXII. (1332), and many
others followed: Schrockh, xxxi\. 488 sq.
6 The number* in Dauphiny, a» late as 1373,
are said to be ‘maxima multitudo’ (Ilaynald. ad i»n. § 20). Traces of them in
different parts of Germany are noted by Gieseler to the end of the fourteenth
century;
iv. § 122, pp. 218, 219. p. 5. They are said to
have entered Bohemia at the close of the twelfth (see The Reformation and
Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, Lond. 1845,1. 5; and Krai-mski, Reform, in Poland,
I. 53).
7 \bove, p. 294.
8 See above, pp. 232, 235, 294, n. 5. J>
346. In 1322, a person named Walter [Lollard ?] was put to death at Cologne,
for circulating herexy in the vernacular: see John of Trittenheim (Trithemius),
Annal. ii. 155.
KCT'OmiA.
Toby
BFPORTS.
Reformers
out of the Church.
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
John
Wy cliffe (d. 1384),
the
‘ Evangelic Doctor.'
Italy and Sicily1. To these may be subjoined the Adamites, the
Lueiferians, the Turlupiues (all independent offshoots from the Beghards2),
the disciples of John Pirnensis3 in Silesia, and a party of
Flagellants4, who, because they pushed ascetic principles to an
intolerable length and flogged themselves in public several times a day, were
finally restrained by Clement VI. (1349;. They now seceded in great numbers
from the Church.
A movement altogether disconnected3 from the rest had
meanwhile been advancing rapidly in England. Its author was John Wycliffe, (or
John of Wycliffe), born not far from. Richmond, Yorkshire (? 1324). It is said
that he
1
John XXII. levelled a bul! against them (Deo. 30, 1317), in the Extravagantes
Johan. XXII.. tit. vn. (‘ Corpus Juris Canon.’). From it we gather that they
sheltered themselves under the pretext of belonging to the tertiary order of
Franciscans*.
J
See the literature respecting them in Gieseler, iv. § 122, pp. 224, 225, n. lo,
11,12. Gerson (as there quoted) charges some of these sectaries with the most
unbridled licentiousness.
3 The author of this sect appeared in 1341,
maintaining among other kindred tenets that the pope was Antichrist, and more
especially distinguished by his hatred of the clergy: Krasinski, Reform, in
Poland, I. 55, 56. Perhaps they were in some way connected with the llussian
Stri- golniks (cf. above, p. 362), and many would at length pass over to the
more extreme party of Hussites.
1 Of. above, p.
201, and see Hahn, Gesch. der Ketzer im, Zlittelalter, If. 537 sq. The
later Flagellants (‘ Bianchi’) wore white garments, and on crossing the Aips
into Italy (1399) produced a marvellous sensation. Benedict IX., however,
finally apprehended the leader, and consigned him to the flames. Members of the
sect were found in Thuringia and other parts of Germany at the outbreak of the
Reformation, inofher group of sectaries, entitled ‘Dancers' (from their violent
gesticulations unde* what they deemed the influence of the Holy Ghost), sprang
up in Flanders about 1370: cf. Gieseler, iv. § 119, pp. 203, 204, n, 23, 24.
Some of the phenomena presented by them may remind us of the modern ‘
electro-biology,1
5 ‘It is a remarkable fact that the
writings of "Wycliffe nerer give us any reabou to suppose that he was
acquainted i.i any degree with the history of the Waldenses, the Albigenses, or
with any of tho continental sects:’ Vaughan's Wycliffe, p. 46, ed. 1853. The
predecessor whom he valued most was Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln. ‘ Seith
Robert Grosteed that this [pope’s] bulles ben heresies’ (MS quoted i)' Turner,
v. 148, n. 5)—is only one of a multitude of
references wbiclj he lins made to that prelate. In the Wycliffite treatise
(1395) edited by Mr Fiirshall, with the title, Remonstrance against Romish
Corruptions (Lond. 1851), there are no less than five such references to ‘the
worshipful clerk, Grouted, bisshop of Lincolne.’ On Dr Maitland’s theory for
connecting the English Lollards with the political and other prophets of the
continent (e.g. the abbot Joachim, above, p. 255, n. lj, see Lis Eight Essays
(1852), j>p. 207 sq.
HU
early career.
was at one time a resident iu Queen’s College, Oxford1, but as
there were certainly two if not three persons at the university bearing the
same name at this time, this is very uncertain8. The first fact
distinctly known about him is that in 1361 he was master or warden of Ealliol
College3. Devoting his attention to scholastics, he is said to have
outstripped4 all others in that field of study: but his title
Evangelic (Gospel) Doctor indicates that he was no less favourably known at
Oxford for proficiency in biblical literature. Recent historical research has
shewn that the theory once received, of the commencement5 of
Wvcliffe’s controversial labours6 by an attack on the friars, is untenable.
1
Even this* statement about liim is uncertain. Compare Shirley, Fasciculi
Zizanionm, pref. xii. xiv.; told the remarks of Ur H. T. Biley in the Second
Keport of the Historical MSS. Commission, 1671, pp.
Ill, 142.
’■
The ,tohn Wyeliffe whose history is most frequently confounded with the
reformer’*, was in 1356 a fellow of Merton College, and afterwards rector of
Mayfield in Sussex, who died in 1383. It is probable thut this person was also
Warden of Canterbury Hall. These preferments have frequently been assigned to
the great Wyeliffe, who however was a Doctor of Divinity at thi time that his
namesake was a Bachelor. The whole argument against the identity of the two is
stated by Dr Shirley, Fatcietdi Zizaniorum, pp. 513—528.
3 He was also presented by this society
(1361) to tLf rectory of Fyling- ham, in the archdeaconry of Stow, a benefice
which he afterwards exchanged (1368) for Ludgersball, nearer to Oxford.
J
Thus Henry Knvgliton (in Twysden’s Scriptores X., coL 2644) is driven to admit,
‘in philosophia nulli reputabatur secundus, in scholas- ticis discipline
incompa>-abilis: ’ cf. Le Bas, Life of Wielif, pp. 93, 944, Lond. 1832. He
was a Bealisi, and thus opposed himself to Ockham. For a complete list of his
scholastic an 1 philosophical writings (many of which are preserved in the
Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, MSS. No.326),see Shirley’s Catalogue of
Wyclif's Original Works,Oiford, 1865; Select English Works of Wyclif, ed.
Arnold, hi. x\ii.; and Vaughan’s Wyeliffe, pp. 541 sq., ed. 1853.
5 “That in 1356 he published his first
work, The Last Age of the. Church ; that the same year he was one of the
fellows of Merton, that in 1360 he took uji the pen of the dying Archbishop
Fitz Italph of Armagh in his memorable controversy with the Mendicants, are
facts only by courtesy and repetition. The Last Age of the Church has been
assigned to him in common witli half the English religions tracts of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, iu the absence of all external, and in defiance of all
internal evidence.” Shirley, Fasc. Zizan. pref. xiii. On the authorship of the
Last Age of the Church, see Shirley’s Catalogue of Wiclif’s Works, pref. p.
xiii. it waa edited by Dr Todd, Dublin, 1851.
6 See e.g. his Two Short Treatises against
the Orders of Begging Friars, Oxi. 1608; printed also in the Select English.
Works of Wielif,
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
Ills
Objections to
the Friars,
To whatever date however this hostility is to he referred, his works on
the subject are the utterances of a man righteously indignant at the
hollowness, the selfindulgence, and extortion of the papal volunteers. He
seems to speak as if he had been personally thwarted by them in his ministerial
labours: every scandal and disaster of the times was laid to their account. By
them the working of the Church was said to have been so enfeebled and
disorganized, that till they had been taught to understand the ‘freedom of the
Gospel’ and the ‘clean religion of Jesus Christ,’ all other remedies would
prove inefficacious. Wycliffe never paused nor faltered1 in his
declamations on this head, and therefore the hostility which he excited in a
large and powerful section of his countrymen pursued him even to the grave.
But on the other hand his zeal, his patriotism, and learning commended him to
ed. Arnold,
Oxford, 1871. in. 860. Mr Arnold ascribes these tracts to 1382 and 1384, and
even questions whether they are Wvcliffe’s. Thfv contain however much of the
teaching of his school on the subject. He had been preceded in this line by
several writers (see above, p. 344, n. 5), especially by llichard Fitzralph,
archbishop of Armagh, who had (in 1357) arraigned the Mendicants before the
pope and cardinals at Avignon (above, p. 345, n. 1). The Friars, on the other
hand, were not destitute of champions. See, for instance, Wil. Wodfordus (a
Franciscan) adversus Joh. Wiclefum Anglum (in Brown’s Fasc. i. 191 »q.), which
is a full examination of the various errors charged on Wycliffe and his school.
1 One of the few anecdotes preserved
respecting him informs us that, when dangerously ill in 1379, he was visited by
certain Mendicants who urged him to recal the accusations he had levelled at
them. His reply wa», ‘I shall not die, bat live, and again declan- the evil
deeds of the Friars:’ Le Bas, p. 196. In the tract, De Ecclesia et Membris
suis, written in the last year of his life (1384), and edited in 1851, with two
other treatises by Dr Todd, and by Mr Arnold in the Select English Works of
WycUf m. 338, h< urges that ‘for profit of the chirche thulden freris
w'orche to quench this striyf.’ ‘But noon,’ be adds, ‘groundith here his word,
as noon of thes newe ordris groundith, that he can: inne bi Crist, and but gif
[i.e. unless] this groundyng be in dede. dremes and confermyngis ben nougt. On
this maner shulden trewe men sele wisely the sothp, and purge our moder of
apoatemes, that ben harmful in the chirche. To this shulde the pope helpe, for
to this dette weren apostlis boundnn, and not to lordshipis of money but [i.e.
except] in as myche as it helpide herto’ etc., p. xlvii. (ed. Arnold, p. 353).
Th* next treatise in Dr Todd’s volume, De Apostasid Vleri (imold. p.
430),'[i.e. their abandonment of their proper duties], shows that Wycliffe was
not blind to failings in that quarter also; and the same is still more manifest
in a work doubtfully attributed to liim Of Clerks Pussessiuners: see an account
of it in Vaughan, p. 526. Shirley, Catalogue, p. 41; Arnold, Select Works of
Wyclif, in. xix.
Echvard III., who made him one of the royal chaplains1 and
bestowed on him the prebend of Aust in the collegiate church of Westbury
(Worcester) and the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire2
(1374). The favour of the crown had been already manifested in selecting him
for one of the commissioners appointed to negociate at Bruges with certain
papal envoys touching the pecuniary exactions of their master. Though the
mission does not seem to have produced3 a real mitigation of abuses,
it would hardly fail to rivet the attention of an earnest soul like Wyeliif'e’s
on the manifold enormities prevailing in the papal court and the administration
of the Church at large.
His controversial career, so far as it can be dated by extant monuments,
began about 1363, when on philosophical subjects he was engaged in a dispute
•with the Carmelite Kynvngham4. To Wycliffe’s mind philosophical and
practical questions presented themselves in close conjunction, scholastic,
theological, and ecclesiastical abuses were too lirmly allied to stand
severally alone when once the reformer’s hand was raised against any one of
them. Still in 1366 we find him prepared to call himself ‘ a lowly and obedient
son of the Roman Church5;’ as though the clearest
1 Thin point is rather open to discussion,
resting mainly on the ■way in which he speaks of himself as standing in a
clos< relation to the crown
i - peculiarie rcgis clericus’). As such he
professed hit- readiness to maintain that the sovereign of this country may
justly rule, though denying tribute to the pope: \Vighan, as above, p. 106.
2 Le Bas, p. 155. He had meanwhile (before
13G61 become a S. T. 1'. of Oxford, and as such lectured in Theology: see
Shirley, Fasc. Ziz. prof. p. xvii.
* For instance, Wyclifle’s coadjutor, the
bishop of Bangor, was ini mediately afterwards translated (1375) by a papal
bull to Hereford, although the issue of the conference was that the pope should
desist from all ‘reservations,’ and that the king should no longer confer benefices
by an arbitrary writ (‘Quare impedit’): Le Bas, p. 151. The influence of the
recent negociations may be seen, however, in the ‘Ilolls’ of whit is called the
‘Good 1'arliament’ (1376), which demanded among other things that no papal
questor or collector should remain in England on p.tin of life and limli (see
Rot. Pari. 50“ Edw. III., § 114).
4 Dr Shirley divides Wycliffe’s literary
career into three periods: the first lasting up to 1366 or 1367, including his
logical, physical and scholastic works; the second including his attempts at.
constitutional reform in the church extending to the date of the great schism;
the third from 1376 to his death, including his doctrinal writings. Fasc. Ziz.
pref. pp. xvxix -xliii.
6 Vaughan, p. 109. His views at this time
on the question whether
MiFOKMA-
TOHY
EHOR1S,
Diplomatic
mission to
1374 - 1375,
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
Attacks
upon the papacy,
1376.
insight into its corruptions and its crooked policy wore absolutely
needed ere lie could be roused to controvert the papacy itself.
His eyes were opened by the diplomatic mission to Bruges1, and
accordingly, soon after his return, the Romanizing party in the Church of
England, stimulated as it seems by the emphatic warnings of the pope, and
headed by William Courtenay, bishop of London, instituted measures for
convicting him of heresy. He was cited to appear and vindicate himself before
the convocation, which assembled at St Paul’s Cathedral, ‘Feb. 3, 1377”. The
charges brought against him were that he advanced, in lectures and elsewhere, a
class of tenets like the following3:—that the Church of Home is not
the
the crown of
England owe any feudal homage to the pope in consequence of the proceedings in
the time of John (cf. above, p. 252) are stated in a Determinatin, printed in
Lewis, Life, and bufferings of John Wiclif, pp. 849 sq., Oxt. 1820. In this
treatise (p. 354) we may see the germ of a strange doctrine which afterwards
became a reproach to him and his followers, viz. that power and property are
held by the tenure of grace, and therefore liable to be forfeited by the
‘mortal sin’ of the owner. Mr Le Bas endeavours to relieve WyclifEe from this
charge, pp. 350 sq.: cf. "V aughan, p. 460.
1 He came from thence, persuaded that the
‘proud, worldh priest of Rome’ was ‘the most cursed of clippers and
pursekervers.’ Lewis, p. 37.
2 The chronology of these events is rather
confusing, but according to the authorities at present accessible, the
following appears to he the sequence. The Convocation at which AVvcliffe first
appeared was held at St Paul’s for the purpose of granting a subsidy, Feb. 3,
1377, iHody, p. 225). Wyeliffe’s appearance and the riot that broke up the
sitting are placed on the 23rd of February. The pope’s letters were issued on
the 22nd of May. Of these the first is addressed to the University, and forbids
the propounding of Wycliffe’s opinions, (Wals. 346); the second to the
archbishop aud the bishop of London, bid ling them admonish the king aud
nobles not to favour Wycliffe (Ibid. 347). The third to the same two prelates
enjoining them to cite Wycliffe to Rome (Ibid. 348). The fourth to the same
directing the arrest of the reformer iIbid. 350), the fifth to the king desiring
him to favour the prosecution. Edward died on the 21st of June. Tho letters of
the archbishop and bishop addressed to the University, directing the appearance
of Wycliffe at St Paul’s in obedience to the papal mandate, are dated Dec. 28,
1377, (Wilkins in. 123). He is ordered to appear on tho thirtieth day alter
citation. The place seems to have been changed, and probably the t'ay also. The
trial at Lambeth was the result, and it was broken up in much the same way as
the former attempt at St Paul’s. Compare Shirley. Fasc. Ziz. xxvi.—xxxiii.,
Vaughan, pp. 185 sq.
3 All the nineteen propositions are given
in Wilkins, as above, p. 123: cf. Massingberd’s Eng. Reformation, p. 9, Lond.
1847. The last of the schedule must have been peculiarly offensive: ‘Ecclesiasticus,
imino
head of all Churches, nor has Christ committed larger functions to St
Peter than to others of the Twelve; that the Roman pontiff has no powers of
absolution different from those entrusted to all members of the priesthood;
that ecclesiastical censures ought not to be used for gratifying individual
spleen, and that an excommunicated person does not truly fare the worse unless
he be already self-ejected from the fellowship of Christians; that the civil
power, in certain cases, may both lawfully and meritoriously punish a
delinquent, church by appropriating its revenues ; that the Gospel is
sufficient as a rule of life for every class of Christians, and that other
‘rules’ (adopted by religious orders, for example) can add nothing of perfection
to the law of God.
When ou the 23rd of February he appeared before the convocation he was
accompanied by the earl marshal, Percy, and by John of Gaunt, the duke of
Lancaster. The latter, as the head of a numerous party who were bent on
lowering the pretensions of the English ecclesiastics, manifested a peculiar
zeal in his behalf. Some verbal skirmishing that passed between the bishop of
London and these powerful friends of Wycliffe, issued in a riot of the
citizens, who could not brook what they esteemed the insult which was put on
their diocesan, and who hated John of Gaunt. Amid this angry tumult the inquiry
was suspended.
During the few months that followed Wycliffe’s enemies were busy at Rome.
The king1 died in June, but before this the pope had issued letters
against the reformer, addressed to the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, and
the chancellor of Oxford*. In
pursuance of these orders
et Bomanus pontifex, potest legitime a subditis et laieis corripi et
etiaru aecusari. ’ In the accompanying instruments the pope
associates Wycliffe \\itli ilarsilius of I’adua (see above, p. 324, u. 1) ‘of
accursed memory.'
1
Whether Edward, who enacted a statute of PrEPmiinire (making the execution of
all bulls, without the licence of the crown, a very grave offenee), would have
been likely to sanction the proceedings against Wv- eliffe, is not easy to
determine.
3_
The following is part of Walsingham’s entry at the year 1378, Kiley’s edition,
vol. I. p. 345: ‘Diu in pendulo hserebant [i.e. the Oxford authorities] utrum
papalem buUam deberent cum honore recipero, vel om- nino cum dedecore refutare
. . . Pudet recordationis tanta' imprudentia?: et ideo supersedeo in hujusmodi
materia immorari, ne materna videar
Summary
of his opinions at this time.
Proceed
ings
against
him.
13/7.
BEFOBMA-
TOEY
EFFOBTS.
His
line of defence,
and
the
principles
there
enunciated.
WyclitFe appeared early in 1378 before the bishops at Lambeth; but ou
this occasion a fresh uproar stirred up, it seems by the partizans of the
reformer1, aud supported by a message in his favour from the
princess of Wales, determined the archbishop to dismiss him with a reprimand2.
It is important to remark the tone and tactics of the culprit while he
was arraigned at this tribunal3. He examined all the several
propositions which the papal rescript had alleged against him, urging in the outset
that they were a puerile and garbled version of his real tenets, and declaring
his willingness to acquiesce in the decisions of ‘ holy mother Church.’ In
proving that mankind had no power to make St Peter and his successors the
political rulers of the world ‘for ever,' he appealed to the admitted fact that
temporal property could only last until the second advent. Other arguments
alike evasive were applied to propositions on the subject of civil dominion and
of civil inheritance: but when he finally approached the questions touching
church-property, the power of excommunication, and the different orders of the
ministry, his language was more candid and distinct. As tithes and all
ecclesiastical possessions were but eleemosynary4. he maintained
that to withhold them, in some
ubera
decerpere dentibus, (juffi dare lac potum sciential consuevere.’ It appears
also that Wyclifle carried with him a large party (even a majority) of the
Londoners (Vaughan. pp. 189, 190), although the municipal authorities, and manj
of the citizens, who hated John of Gaunt, were acrve ‘in the other side.
1
Walsingham (p. 356) complains on this occasion, • Non dico cirea tantum
Londiniensets, sed viles ipsius civitatih se impudenter ingerere prajsumpsemnt
in eandem capellam [i.e.. at Lambeth], et verba facere pro eodtm, et istud
negotium impedire.’
' See
Walsingham’s indignant language on the cowardice or mildness of the prelates.
He says, among other things, that they became ‘velut homo non audiens, et non
habens in ore suo redargutiones. ’ Ibid. p. 356, Their injunction charging
Wycliffe to abstain from publishing h:s opinions, was altogether
lost upon him
3 The same chronicler taxes him with
dissimulation inn crooked dealing in the interview at Lambeth: Ibid. pp. 356.
363: cf. Le Das, pp. 17H sq.; Lingara, iv. 256 sq.: and \aughan, pp. 207 sq.,
the last of whom makes merrj on .the occasion, it would seem to many readers,
at Wycliffe’s own expense.
1 The payments to the papacy had always
been spoken of as alms
• eleemosyna beati Petti’). Sir Thomas More,
Suppl. of Houles, (Works, i. 290) describes Peterpence as ‘ ever payde before
the conquest
instances at least,.might fee an act of duty and of genuine befoeua- eharity1. His
statement was, however, somewhat modified
by intimating that such revocations should be only
made ________ ,, j
in cases where they had been authorized by civil and by canon law2.
Respecting excommunications, he avowed that no effect was wrought by them
unless the sentence of the Church accorded with the will of Christ. He followed
several of the schoolmen3 in regarding priests and bishops as of the
same spiritual order, though different iu rank or jurisdiction; arguing on
this ground, that each of the seven sacraments might be lawfully administered
by any of the sacerdotal class. He also reaffirmed his earlier statement, that
ecclesiastics, nay the pope himself4, might be on some accounts
impleaded and corrected by their subjects, whether clerical or lay5.
The death of Gregory XI. in the spring of 1373 was followed, as already
noticed6, by the schism which paralysed the vigour of the Roman
court. Its jealousy
to the
apostelike spa towards the mayntenance therof, but only bv -nay of gratitude
and almes.' On tht. Reapontio magistri Johannis Wycliff (1377) respecting this
question, see Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 258 sq.. in Chronicles of Great
Britain: ef. Twysden’s Vindication, p. 1)6. Camb. ed.
1 Wjclift'e. like the abbot Joachim,
Hildegard, ard the more rigorous school of Friars, now arrived at the conviction
that the secularitv of the Chnrcn was mainly due to its abundant property. On
this account he ■would have gladly seen ecclesiastics liesiitute of
temporal possessions except the scantiest portion by which life could be
sustained: cf. Le Bas, p. 194.
2 It is manifest, however, from the
proceedings of the synod of London (1382) that Wyeliffe was still charged with
holding more extreme opinions on this subject: ‘ Item quod decimse sunt purse
eleemosynse, et quod paronhiani possint propter peccata suorum euratorum eas
detinere, et ad libitum aliis eonferre.’ Wilkins, 111. 157.
3 See Palmer’s Treatise, on the Church,
part rr. ch. iv. sect. 1.
4 He does not even shrink from the
supposition 1 Si papa fuerit a fide devius.’
5 After his escape from his enemies at
Lambeth, Wyeliffe had a controversy on the same topic with an anonymous divine
called ‘ mixtus theuiogui." He there carries his opinions out more fully:
see LeBas, pp.
190 sq.;
Vaughan, pp. 216 sq.
6 Above, p. 328. In Wjcliffe’s treatise,
Schisrm Papce (ISB'2), (Select English Works uf Wyclif; ed. Arnold, Oxford
1871, p. 247,' he thus writes of the dissension: ‘ Trust we in the help of
Christ on thi* point, for he hath begun already to help u» graciously, in that
ho hath clove the head of Antichrist, and made the two parts light againsl each
other.
For it is not
to be doubted that the sin of the popes which hath been bo long continued, hath brought in this division.’ Quoted in
'Yaudian, p. 374.
Wycliffe
attacks the dogma of transub- stantiation.
1380.
was thus diverted from the struggles of the English Church, aud Wycliffe
gathered strength and courage for his work. He had been hitherto endeavouring
for the most part to suppress the evils that grew out of maladministration1.
If he called the papacy an ‘ antichristian’ power, he only meant, as did a host
of earlier writers who had used a similar expression, to denounce the practical
corruptions then abounding in the see of Rome. Rut after 1330 many of his
protests went far deeper2. He repudiated the prevailing dogmas on
the nature of the
1
Thus in the one of his three manifestoes issued at this time, which Shirley
fixes in October 1377, and Lewis after the Lambeth nxamination, his protest
runs as follows: ‘ H® sunt conclusiones, quas vult etiam usque ad mortem
defendere, ut per hoc valeat mores Ecclesht refonnare.’ (Le^is, p. 389,
Fasc. Ziz. p. 245.) Wycliffe, in other words, had hardly exceeded many of his
predecessors in the area and vehemence of his critiques. See for instance, A
Poem on the Times of Edward II. (circ. 1320), edited by the present writer for
the Percy Society, No. lxxxii. ,
or the Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman, passim; although the Creed may have
been itself a Wycliffite production.
" The
following are five of the twelve theses whicl ne is charged with maintaining at
Oxford on this subject (1381): 1. ‘ Hostia consecrata quam videmus in altari
nec est Christus nec aliaua Sui pars, sed effieax ejus «ignum. 2. Nnllus viator
[i.e. Christian] sufficit oculo corporali, tied fide Christum videre in hostia
consecrata. 3. Olim fuit fides Eecle- sii£ Romans in professiono Bcrengarii,
quod pani^ et vinum qua* remanent post benediciionem sunt hostia consecrata.
4. Eucharistia habet virtute verborum sacramentalium tam corpus quam sanguinem
Christi vere et realiter ad qutmlibet ejus puncrum 5. Transubstantiatio,
idemptificatio, et impanatio.quibus utuntur baptist® signorum in materia de
Eucharistia, non sunt fundabiles in Scriptura.’ Ease. Ziz. pp. 105, 106. Then
views are fully stated in the fourth book of Wycliffe’s Tria- logus (in 1382),
a work which embodies many of his academical lectures. It was printed in 1525,
at Basel, with the tide Jo. Wiclefi riri undiquaque piissimi Dialogorum libri
quatuor; and has been republished at Oxford under the editorship of I)r Lechler
of Leipzig, in 1869. In an English Confession, of the same date, preserved in
Knyghton (inter Scriptores X., col. 2649), he deems it ‘ heresie for to trow
that this sacrament is Goddas body and no bredt; for it is both togedur.’ He
also draws a sharp distinction between his view and that of ‘ heretykef that
trowes and telles that this bacraiuenr may on none wise be Goddus body.' Cf.
also a Latin Confessin, iu Vaughan, pp. 564 sq., Ease. Ziz. 115-132. where
Wycliffe taunts his adversaries o: i the ground that they are ‘ secta cultorum
acci- dentium," and expresses his belief 1 quod finaliter
veritas vineet ens.' He also adduces seven witnesses from the Fathers of the
Church ‘ ad testifi- candam Ecclesiae judicis hujus sententiani.’ ascribing the
establishment >f transubstantiation to Innocent III. and tht Friars cf.
above, p. 302, Wycliffe’s Trialogus, p. 233 (ed. Oxon.), and the Wycliffite
Remonstrance, edited by Hr Forshall (Lond. 1851), p. 79. Neander (li. pp. 218
sq., Bohn's edition) has investigated tht opinions of the reformer on these
topics.
Presence in the Eucharist. According to his view there is no physical
conversion of the elements; they do not lose their proper substance after
consecration: yet in some mode or other which he does not rigidly define, it is
contended that the sacramental bread is simultaneously and truly the Body of
Christ. In different language, Wyclitfe seems to have revived the doctrine of
Ilatrainnus, /Elfric, and Berengarius1.
When these tenets had been advocated for some time in Oxford1*,
they excited the hostility of William Berton, the chancellor (1381), who,
calling to his aid twelve other doctors, eight of whom were members of
religious orders and on that account the bitter enemies of Wyeliffe, instantly
pronounced the views of the reformer contrary to the determinations of the
Church. They censured3 him, and with him all who were unwilliug to
confess that after the consecration of the Eucharistic elements ‘there do not
remain in that venerable sacrament the material bread and wine which were
there before, each according to its own substance or nature, but only the
species of the same, under which species the very Body and Blood of Christ are
really contained, not merely figuratively or tropically, but essentially,
substantially, and corporeally,—so that Christ is there verily in His own
proper bodily presence.’ Silenced by the academical authorities, the fearless
culprit next endeavoured to confound his adversaries by appealing to the king4:
but he
1 See the previous note, and cf. above, pp.
168, 1C9, 173.
TheDffinitio
contmOpinionts Wyclifianas, here alluded to (Vaughan, pp. 561—563;
Fascic. Ziz. p. 110), complains that by the publication of ‘ pestiferous
.documents’ at Oxford, * fideb Catholica periclitatur, devotio populi
minuratur, et hac universitas mater nostra non mediocriter dif famatur.’
;i
Vaughan, p. 562- cf. Twysden’s Vindication, p. 234. They also appended a
prohibition, ‘ ne quis de ca;tero aliquem public* docentem, te- nentem vel
defendentem prtcmissas duas assertiones erroneas aut earum alteram in scholia
vel extra scholas in hac universitate quovismodo audiat vel auscultet, sed
statim sic docentem tanquam serpentem venenum pes- tiierum emittentem fugiat et
abi^cedat sub pceaa excommunicationis major! 3,’ etc. (Fasc. Ziz. 112.) To set
himself right with his friends and followers at large, Wyeliffe now published
(13H1) liis well-known tract entitled Ostiolum or Wyrkett (printed first at
Nuremberg iu 1546). See Shirley’s Catalogue, p. 33. He seems to have retreated
from the University at the same time, but, according to I)r Vaughan (pp. 571
»q.), he was there again in the following year (1382).
* See tho extract from archbp. Sudbury’s Register in Wiliins, in.
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
His
teaching on this subject condemned at Oxford.
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
Unpropi-
tious cir» cumstances.
Synod
of London,
1382.
was driven to suspend this measure by the intervention of John of (Jaunt,
who seems indeed to have been losing all bis confidence in Wycliffe, when the
latter animadverted on the doctrine, as distinguished from the practical
corruptions and the secular encroachments, of the Church. A communistic
outbreak of the English peasants and villeins, headed by Wat Tyler and John
Balle1, occurred at this very juncture ; and although it was not
instigated* or fomented by the new opinions, it could hardly fail to prejudice
the civil power against all further movements; more especially when, as in
Wycliffe’s, little or no tenderness was shewn to the Establishment aud other
constituted authorities of the realm.
The primate had been murdered in the recent tumults. To his throne
succeeded Courtenay, the old antagonist of the reforming party, who availed
himself at once of the alarms now generally felt in England for suppressing
what was deemed by many of his school the surest provocation of God’s anger3.
By his influence a new synod4
171, where
the language is remarkable: ‘ ...appellavit non ad papam, vel episcopum, vel
ordinariuiu ecclesiasticum; sed haereticus ultiajrens saiculari potestati in
defensionem sui erroris et haresis appellavit ad regem Kichardum, volens per
hoc se protegere regali potestate, quod non puniretur, vel emendaretur,
ecclesiastica potestate.’ In the autumn ef 1382, however, 'Wycliffe carried
‘his appeal to Cassar,’ in a Complaint nhieh he addressed to the king aud
parliament (printed at Oxford in 1608,with other pieces under the editorship of
Dr James; ed. Arnold, in. 507). It is divided into four anicles, three of which
relate to the vows of religious orders, the relations of the clergy to the
civil power, and the withholding of tithes aud offerings from unworthy curates;
while tho fourth re-states the theory of Wycliffe on tran»ubstantiation.
1 Of this person, who was a priest,
Knyghton (col. 2644) says that he was a ‘precursor- of
"Wycliffe, but never intimates that the two were acting in concert: cf.
Wilkin*, in. 152, 153.
2 Tuis fact is well established by the
author of a History of England and France under the House of Lancaster (Lond.
1852), pp. 16 sq.. and notes: cf. Vaughan, pp. 260, 261 Hr Hallam. (Middle
Ages, m. 178, 179, 10th ed.) leans to the other *ide. That incendiary
principles were not uncommon at this period may be gathered from the
condemnation of John Petit, a doctor of Paris, by the synod of Constance (July
6, 1415).
3 e.g. The zealot, WaMngham (vol. it. p. 11), who never charged the
Wycliffites with stimulating the insurrection, looks upon it as a Judgment of
heaven upon the p.-elates for not prosecuting the new heresy.
4 Wilkins, in. 157. One of th< prelates
was William of Wykeham. It is remarkable that, among the other accusations here
brought against the reformer, one is to this effect, that after the death of
Urban VI. no pope pught to be recognized, but that the people should be, like the
Greeks, governed by their own law*: § 9. See the contemporary history of these
proceedings in Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. Shirley, pp. 272 sq.
was convened at the house of the Black Friars, London, (May 19, 1382), in
order to deliberate respecting certain strange opinions which were said to have
been widely circulated among both the nobility and the commoners of England.
The proceedings had the sanction of eight prelates, with a sprinkling of
canonists, civilians, and divines. Of twenty-four propositions1 there attributed to Wycliffe, ten were branded as
heretical, and all the rest as execrable and erroneous. Some of Wycliffe’s more
distinguished partisans, especially Nicholas Hereford, Philip Repington, and
John Aston'2, were now called upon to disavow those tenets, or to
suffer heavy penalties,—an ordeal which it seems but few of them had still
sufficient constancy to meet3. There was indeed no English law at
present which inflicted capital punishment in case of heresy: but Courtenay had
been able to procure a royal letter4 (dated July 13) which authorized their banishment
from Oxford and the ultimate imprisonment of all who might defend the new
opinions. Lancaster himself enjoined the leaders of the movement to throw down
their arms; and after
KEPOEMA-
TOIiY
EFFORTS.
Condemnation
of the Wy- cliffita.
1
Many of tnese were statements, somewhat garbled, of -what Wycliffe really
taught. The most preposterous of them (§ 7) ran as follows: •Quod Deus debet
obedire diabolo,' an inference drawn perhaps from Wycliffe’s rigorous views of
predestination. Of the ‘erroneous’ conclusions one is thus expressed: ‘Quod
lieeat alioui etiam diacono vel presbytero, priedieare verbum Dei absque
auctoritate sedis apostolic!* vel episeopi catholici, seu alia de qua
sutiicienter constet.' This charge originated in the fact that some of
Wycliffe’s disciples, ‘ Simple Priests ’ or ‘Poor Priests,’ itinerated, like
the Friars, in all parts of the country, often barefoot and in coarse raiment
of a russet hue, inveighing against the corruptions of tlie Church, comforting
the sick and dying, and expounding the Scriptures. They formed a kind of
‘home-mission.’ Fasc. Ziz. xl.
a
Wilkins, in. 166. Fate. Ziz. 289. The following passage from Walsingham
(Hyjiodigma Neustricp, in Camden's Angliea, &c. p. 535) appear^ to shew
that Wycliffism was now most unpopular among the clergy. They granted the king
a tenth in the autumn of 1382, but with the condition ‘nt videlicet Eex manus
apponat defensioni ecclesia?, et pra'stet auxilium ad compressionem htereticorum
Wicklevensium, qui jam fcUa prava doctrina pn-ne infeeerant totum regnum.’
3 Vaughan, pp. 269 sq.; Hitt. ■ 1/
England under tht House of Lancaster, pp. 18—22, and note xn. How far Wycliffe
was himself disposed at this time to modify his statements on the Eucharist may
be gathered from tho documents enumerated in p. 382, n. 2.
* Addressed to
the Oxford authorities and also to sheriffs and mayors: see Hist, of England,
as above, p. 3G0; and F'ascic. Zizaniorum, pp. 312 sq.
Wycliffe1
s retirement and death,
1384.
His
translation of
the
Bible.
Wycliffe had in vaiu endeavoured to excite the king and parliament in
their behalf1, lie quietly resided on his benefice at Lutterworth,
where he expired2, in the communion of the English Church, Dec. 31,
1284
Meanwhile, however, he had occupied himself in labours that were destined
to immortalize his name. The earlier of those versions of the Bible and
‘Apocrypha/ which are known as 1 AYycliffite3,’
was then completed. Not a few detached portions, as we have already seen4,
were rendered into English at an earlier date: but never till the present
period was the whole of the sacred volume generally unlocked and circulated
freely among all orders of society. Though it is probable that many who
resisted Wycliffe’s movement as unauthorized were still in favour of vernacular
translations6, others seem to have regarded
1
See above, p. 383, n. 4: Vaughan, pp. 289 sq. His comparative impunity now
stimulated Urban YI. (the rival pope acknowledged in this country) to cite him
to the court of Home. Wycliffe replied excusing himself in a half-sarcastic
letter (printed in Vaughan, p. 576; Select English Works, ed. Arnold, m. 504;
and in Latin in Fat tic: Zizan. p. 341), upon the ground of bodily infirmity (a
paralytic affection of which he died at last). Among other things he says: ‘I
suppose over this, that the pope be most oblished to the keping of the Gospel
among all men that liven here. For the pope is highest vicar that Christ has
here in erth. For moreness [i. e. superiority] of Christ’s vicars is not
measured by worldly moreness, bot by this, that this vicar sues [i. e. follows]
more Christ by vertuous living: for thus teches the Gospel.’
a
He was taken ill at mass on the feast of Thomas a Becket (Dec. 29) and died on
the feast of pope Silvester, from which his enemies argued that his death was a
Divine judgmunt for tho violence with which he had assailed both these
prelates.
3 See on this subject the able Preface to
the Wycliffite Versions of the Bible, published at Oxford, 1850, p. vi. The
later and more popular version is mainly due to John Purvey, the second
champion of thu English Lollards; Ibid. p. xxxii.; Vaughan, p. 359, note.
4 Above, p. 297, n. 4. Sir Thos. More
{Works, p. 233, ed. 1549) actually asserts that Wycliffe’s version of the whole
Bible into English was not the oldest: but no one has ever verified the
assertion: cf. Vaughan, p. 334. The extract given in Ussher (Ilist. Dogmat.,
Works, xtr. 346, ed. Elrington) states that an earlier version was put forth by
John of Trevisa, chaplain to Lord Berkeley; but this theory is also untenable;
Pref. to the Wycliffite Bible, p. xxi.
6 Even archbishop Arundel (Constitutions
against Lollards, § 6; with notes in Johnson, n. 166, 467. Oxf. 1851) .does not
absolutely forbid such translations (in 140K), but requires tlmt they shall
first be submitted to the diocesan, or it need be, to a provincial council. He
also praises Anne of Bohemia ^the queen of Rich. II. 1, ‘quod quamvis advena
esset et peregrina, tainen quatuor Erangelia in Unguam Anglicam versa et doc-
torum communtariis declarata assidue meditaretur.’ Quoted in Ussher,
them in every case with horror and alarm1. I11 putting forth
their work it is quits obvious that the authors were anticipating the most
active opposition2. An attempt was made accordingly, soon after it
appeared, to check its circulation8! but 110 measures of that kind
were carried out till twenty years later, in a synod4 held at Oxford
{1408).
The general views of Wycliffe on dogmatic questions may be gathered
partly from the evidence adduced above, and partly from the multitudinous
tracts6 he composed at Lutterworth immediately before his death; but
none of these are so distinct and comprehensive as the more scholastic work
entitled his Trialogus6. Accepting the con- ciliar definitions of
the) ancient Church7 as they related to the central truths of
our religion, he professed to be desirous of reverting in all other points to
Holy Scripture and the early standards of belief8. The prominence
as abovp, p.
352. Hi chard, of Hampole’s version of the Fsalms (circ. 1310) was not
prohibited.
1 Thus Knvghton, the anti-Jjollard, has tho
following characteristic passage (col. 2644): ‘Hie magister Johannes Wyclif
evangelium, quod Christas contuiit clericis et Ecclesias.doctoribus, ut ipsi
laicis et inferiori- bus personis secundum temporis exigentiam et personarum
indigentiam cum mentis eorum tsurio dulciter ministrarent, transtulit de Latino
in Anglicam linguam, non angelicam, unde per ipsum fit vulgare et magis apertum
laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus, quam solet esse clericis admodum
literatis et bene intelligentibus: et sic evangelica margarita spargiteir’ etc.
* For their mode of defence, see Preface to
the Wycliffite Bible, pp. xiv, xv. note: Vaughan, p. 338. The title of
Wycliffe.’s own treatise on this point is sufficiently startling: How
Antichrist and his clerks travail to destroy Ilnly Writ.
3 Sen the remarkable protest of John of
Gaunt, when an attempt was made to suppress it by act of X’arliament (1390), in
Ussher, as above, p. 352.
1 Wilkins, m. 314; Johnson, 11. 457.
5 Vaughan, p. 405. The number of them (see
the Catalogue, Ibid. pp. 525— -544) appears almost incredible.
* ibove, p. 382, n. 2. It is analysed in
Turner’s Hist, of Entil. ‘Middle Ages,’ v. 1H5-193, ed. 1830.
7 See the extracts in llassingberd, Engl.
lieformation, pp. 127, 128, 2nd ed. The Wycliffite llemonstranee (ed.
Forsliall) occupies the saint* ground. It contends that the doctrine of
transubstantiation is not expressed in Holy Writ and is unproved by ‘kyndeli
[i, e. natural] reesoun,' and experience. ‘Also holi doctouris hi a thousand
veer and more taught™ not this oninli, but expresli tho contrarie, as it is
opia of seynt Austyn, Jerom, and Chrisostomp. IS.
* The following prophecy in the Trialonus
(ed. Oxon. p. 349) is very remarkable: ‘ Suppuno autem, quod aliqui fratres,
quos I'eus ducere
EtFORMA- T
II'.Y IFFOKTSL
Summary
of h is theolrr/iral opinions:
awarded in his system to the Incarnation and Atonement of the Saviour1
led him to renounce all trust in human merit, to suspect, if not to discontinue
invocations of the saints, and more especially to fulminate against the impious
sale of ‘pardons,’ or indulgences. Though he persisted to the last in speaking
of the ‘.sacraments’ as seven in number2, he arrived at clear
distinctions with regard to their necessity, importance, and effect. The
Eucharist, according to his view, while it is ‘sacramentally the Body of
Christ’ is also ‘in its nature truly bread3;’ and consequently the
supreme worship of the Host appeared to him idolatrous4. In
baptism, which he thought was properly administered to infants, he could
recognize the ordinary channel instituted by the Lord Himself, and therefore
commonly required, in order to the remission of sins5. He was in
doubt as to the scripturalness of confirmation6, shocked by an
excessive ritualism with which it had been loaded and obscured. The ministerial
‘orders.’ he contended, were originally two7; on which account the
bishop ought to be included iu a category with the pope, the cardinals, and
others, who had no existence in the apostolic age. The first step In genuine
penitence3, according to his view, is thorough change of heart, and
though
dignatur, ad
religionem prim;pvam Christi devotins convertentnr, et relicta sua periiuia,
sive obtenta sive petita Antichrist! licentia, redibunt libere ad religionem
Christi primsevaiu, et tune tjdifieaount eeele- biam sicut l’aulus.’
1 Trialogus,
pp. 310, 356 sq.: ef. Le Bas, pp. 321, 322. He is most
emphatic on thn subject of indulgences in his treatise On Prelates, (1383):
Vaughan, pp. 428—430.
2 Trialogus, pp. 245 sq.
3 Ibid. pp. 249 sq.: cf. above. p. 382, n.
2.
* See Meander’s remarks on this point, ix.
225.
5 Trialogus,
pp. 281 sq.
6 Ibid. p.
292: cf. Le I’as, p. 340.
7 Cf. above, p. 381. Tut passage in the
Trialogus (p. 290) runs as follows: ‘ In priuiitiva Eccleaia .... suflecerunt
duo ordmes elericorum, scilicet, sacerdos et diaeonus .... Tunc enim adinventa non fuit dis- tinctio papse et cardinaKum,
pairiareharum et archiepiscuporum, epi- hcoporuiu et archidiaconorum,’ etc. In
his treatise on Obedience to Prelates! (1382), he defends the irregularities
of ‘poor priests' (cf. above, p. 385, n. 1) by urging that the ‘worldly’
bishops had no right to prevent them from instructing the people: Vaughan, pp.
424 sq.
p
Trialogus, pp. 326 sq. Of confession hf adds: ‘Sed non credat aliqnis, quin
sine tali confe^sione auriculari stat hominem vere conteri et balvari, rum
Petruc injunxit generalem panitentiam.’
especially
vn the sacraments.
he did not question the established usage of auricular confession, he
denied its absolute necessity in every case.
His speculations on the nature and intent of matrimony1
are peculiarly erratic. On the one side he conceived it to have been ordained
for the filling up the vacancies occasioned in the court of heaven by the
apostasy of Satan and his angels5: on the other, he regarded stipulations
which forbid the marriage even of the nearest kindred as deriving all their
force from human maxims and decrees3. The last in order of the
‘sacraments,’ extreme unction, was verbally retained: but he had looked in vain
for traces of its institution in the Holy Scriptures4.
While diverging thus at numerous points from the tradition of the
Mediaeval Church, it is remarkable that YVyclitle still continued to believe :n
purgatory5, and at least to some extent in the effects producible on
saints departed by the prayers and alms of holy frieuds surviving, and the
service of the mass. A late, if not his very latest, publication8 represents the family of God in three divisions:
(1) the holy angels and beatified men, (2) the saints in purgatory, who are
doomed to expiate the sins
1 See the Trialogus, pp. 315—325, aud Le
Bas, pp. 312, 343.
2 Cf. above, p. 283, n. 2.
3 After speaking of the marriage of
brothers and sisters in the infancy of tlie world, he adds: ‘Nec superest
ratio, quare non sic lieerot hodie, nisi hamana ordinatio, quaa dicit non solum
ex cognatione, sed tx affinitate, amorem inter homines dilatari; et causa ha;e
hominum est nimis debilis’ (p. 318). More sober views, however, are expressed
in An Apology for Lollard Doctrines, attributed to Wycliffe, pp. 70, 71, ed.
Todd, 1842.
4 See the brief discussion in the next
chapter of the Trialogus (lib. iv. c. 25). He maintains that St. Janies (v. 14)
is not speaking of
‘infirmiratem
fiualem, sed consolationem faciendam a presbytero, dum aliquis inlirmutur, et
quia per viam naturae oleum abundans in illis partibus valet ad corporis
sanitatem. Ideo talem meminit unctionem, non quod illud oleum agat in animarn,
wed quod oratio effusa a sacer- dote devoto medicat quemquam, ut Deus
infirmitati anima> suffragetur,' (p. 333).
6 Tn hi* treatise On the Curse Expounded
[Select English Works, iii. 286,
287 (1383)], he says that saying of mass, with cleanness of holy life and
burning devotion, pleaseth God Almighty, and is profitable to
Christian
snuls in purgatory, and to men living on earth that they may withstand
temptations to sins. Vaughan, p. 438: of. Le Bas, pp.' 327, 328.
6 De Ecclesia et Membris ejus, edited by
Dr Todd ^Dublin, 1851), and in the Select Works, iii. 338 sq.
Purgatory.
Tripartite
division of thb Church.
Absolute
reprobation.
Develop-
ment of his principles by ike Lollards.
390 State of Religious Doctrine and Controversies.
[a.d. 1305
------------------- , - —
E’sroBHi- committed in the world1, and (3) the remnant of
true- fe^oKTs hearted Christians who are following while on earth the ’
footsteps of the Lord. As a result of his belief in absolute predestination2,
he confined the members of the Church to those who will eventually be saved3.
The reprobate he held to form a class essentially and irreversibly distinct;
although as long as men are in the body none (it was maintained) could feel
assured of his eternal destination1.
Many germs of error and extravagance may be detected in the theories of
Wyeliffe, much as those were overbalanced by the noble witness he had borne to
long- forgotten truths and by the virtues of his private life. The anti-social
principles avowed by some of his successors (known as early as the year 1387 by
the opprobrious name of ‘Lollards’)6 had been logically drawn from his extreme positions
on the nature of property and the inherent vice of all ecclesiastical
endowments. Part, indeed, of the success6 attending his own labours would be due to this
peculiarity of his creed: but there we also find an element conducing more
than others to its premature decline. The upper classes of society were
alienated7, and a number
1 The words are remarkable, particularly as
indicating a distrust of prayers for tlie dead: ‘The secound part of this
chirche ben seiniis in purgatorie; and thes svnner not of the newe, but purgen
ther olde svnnes: and man} errours tallen in preiying for theis seyntis; and
sitli thei alle ben deede in body, Christis wordis may be takun of hem, Sue
[follow] we Crist in our liyf and late the deede berie the dede;’ Select Works,
tn. 339.
2 See Neander’s investigation of this
point, ix. 240 sq. One of the charges brought against Wyeliffe at the council
of Constance (1415) was, that ‘omnia de necessitate absoluta eveniuntef.
Lenfant, Iliitt. du Con- cile, liv. 11. ch. 59, Art. xvrii.
3 ‘This chirche is modir to eeh man that
shal be saaf, and conteyneth no membre but oonli men that bhal be saved;’ De
Ecclesia, as above (Select Works, m. 339).
4 Ibid. p. 339. He adds, tliat ‘as eeh man
shal hope that he shal be saaf in bliss, so he shulde suppose that he be lyme
of lioli churche.’
5 See above, p. 347, n. 1; and Turner,
Middle Ages, v. 198, where the bishop of Worcester (1387) denounces the
‘Lollards’ as ‘eternally- damned sons of Antichrist,’ &c.
6 This was so marked, that Knygliton, in
speaking (coll. 2661, 2666) of knights, counts, and even dukes among the ‘
Wyoliviani sive Lollardi,’ adds: ‘ Secta ills in masimo honore illis diebus
habebatur et in tantum mnltiplieata fuit, quod vix duos videres in via quin
alter eorum discipu- lus Wyclefi fuerit.’
t
Hist, of England under the House of Lancaster, pp. 35, S7.
of the more distinguished clerics, who had joined the movement in its
earlier stages, now withdrew and took the other side1. Soon after
Wyeliffe’s death complaints were made that the ‘Lollards’ advocated tenets like
the following2: They regarded absolution as sinful and even impious:
pilgrimages, invocation of saints, the keeping of saints’-days, and the use of
images they branded as idolatry: they questioned3 the lawfulness of oaths, and, undervaluing all episcopal
jurisdiction, went so far as to ordain their ministers’ and organize an
independent sect. On more than one occasion members of it were obnoxious to the
charge of stirring up sedition*; and the English court, at length relieved from
other adversaries, entered on a vigorous course of action for repressing every
kind of misbelief. The same repressive policy was followed out by Henry IV.,
who on dethroning Richard (Sept. 29, 1399) had fouud it more than ever needful
to secure the aid of the ecclesiastics, monks, and friars®. At this epoch, it
would
Attempt*
of the Crown to repress them.
1 Instances are given in Le Bas, pp.
386—390. The same occurred, and fur similar reasons, in the great convulsion of
the sixteenth century. Heath, for instance, an especial favc&rite of
Melanchthon (1535), became the Marian archbishop of York (1555). '
:l
See the catalogue of these ‘ novi errores ’ in Knyghton, col. 2707.
3 The words are ■ Quod non licet
aliquo modo jurare:’ cf. the charges brought against the Waldenses, above, p.
294, n. 3.
4 Walsingham, Hypodigma Neustrice, p. 544,
alludes to this feature of their system in the following terms: ‘ Lollardi
sequaces Johannis Wi- cliff in tantam «unt evecti temeritatem, ut eornm
presbyteri, more pon- tificum [i.e. bishops] novos crearent presbyteros,
asserentes quemlibet sacerdotem tantam habere potestatem conferendi sacramenta
ecclesias- tica quantum papacf. the Apology for the Lollards, pp. 28 sq., and
Dr Todd’s re marks, ‘ Introd.,' pp. xxviii. xxix.
5 e.g. they placarded the churches in
London with scurrilous attacks upon the priests. Hist, of England, an above,
pp. 29, 30. The boldness of their tone at this period is attested by the
remonstrances which they addressed to the parliament of 1395 (Wilkins, in.
221). The substance of their manifesto was then expanded and published in the
English language ; and Mr Forshall has apparently identified the larger
treatise with the Ecclesia Regimen, or so-called Remonstrance, which he edited
in | 1851: see his Pref. pp. ii, In the following year (1396), eighteen
propositions taken from Wycliffe’s Trialogus were condemned by a synod held in
London (Wilkins, in. 229), and answered in the treatise of Woodford above
cited, p. 375, n. 6.
6 Soon after his accession he put forth a
proclamation with the sanction of the House of Lords, directing the seizure
and imprisonment of all persons who dared to preach against the Mendicants
(March 21,1400): Bymcr’s Fader*, vm. 87. Henry V. (Nov. 6, 1413) made a grant
of 25 marks per annum to tho Warden and Convent of Friars Minors in the
Further
points of controversy opened.
Persecuting
statute.
seem, the tenets of the Lollards1 were expressed with greater boldness and pursued
more generally into their logical results. They lost all reverence for the
sacraments administered at church, and characterized the mass itself2 as the watch-tower of Antichrist. They absolutely
rejected the doctrine of purgatory8, though retaining, with
conditions, certain prayers and offerings for the dead4. They
carried out their views of matrimony so far as to require that monks and nuns
should marry, lowering at the same time its importance by dispensing with the
intervention of the priest. Their strong antipathy to saints’ days now
extended to the weekly festival of the resurrection, which they treated as a
merely Jewish ordinance6. Of other features now developed, none was
practically more important than the circulation of a host of semipolitical
prophecies6, suggested by extravagant ideas respecting the
secularization of the Church.
It was to meet these later forms of Lollardism that Henry and his
parliament devised the sanguinary statute7
De hcereiico comburendo. Trial in the civil courts was hereby superseded; for
certificates from any bishop or his commissary, stating that a person was
convicted or was vehemently suspected of heresy, constrained the
University of
Cambridge for the support of the Catholic faith: Documents relating to the
University, I. 38, ed. 1852.
* See Hist, of England, as above, p. 32.
2 Wyclifi« himself in charge! (but. as it
seems, unfairly) with disparaging •thallass and Hours.’ Thus, in the Articuli
Joh. Wiclefi condemned at Constance (in Brown’s Fascic. i. 276), we read among
others of this kind : ‘ Utile foret ecclesise poni in pristina libertate: et
sic ces- sarent missarum suporadditarum solennia et orationes cum horis cano-
nicis adinventas. Licet enim istse tress adinventiones humana) per acci-
densprosint eccUsim, non tamen tantum quantum peccatum diabvli.’
a
Cf. above, p. 389.
4 e.g. iu one of the Conclusions (§ 7),
addressed to Parliament (as above, p. 391, n. 5), they speak as follows: ‘Quod
spirituales orationes pro aniiuabut; mortuorum facto in ecclesia nostra [i.e.
the Church of England which they distinguish (§ 1) from its ‘noverca,’ the
Church of Home], prseferentes mmm per nomen magis quam alium, est falsum fun-
damentuiu eleemosynaa.’
6 Cf. above, p. 294, n. 3; where tho same
charge is brought against the Waldevises.
6 See Dr Maitland’s 8th essay (1852) on The
Lollards, pp. 21<> sq. These ‘ prophecies ’ continued to be circulated
until tho very dawn of the Reformation.
7 2 Hen. IV. c. 15; Wilkins, hi. 252. On the doubts respecting the
authority of this act, see Ilist. of England, as above, Note x\ii.
Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ® j
sheriffs and their officers ‘forthwith in some high place, before the
people, to do him to be burnt.’ An early victim of the spirit which presided in
the framing of this merciless enactment was William Sawtre1, a
parish-priest, who had already manifested what were deemed heretical opinions,
and had been driven to recant; but on reiterating his denial of transubstantiation2,
he was publicly burnt at Smithfield (Feb. 26, 1401). Another victim was Lord
Cobham3 (Sir John Oldcastle), a person of extraordinary
merit. He had always set the highest value on the works of Wycliffe4,
and his mansion at Cowling Castle in Kent had often furnished Lollard preachers
with a shelter and a home. Suspected of a leaning to the new opinions, he was
now, on his appeal to Henry V.5, transferred into the court of
archbishop Arundel, liis most implacable opponent* (Sept. 1413;. The charges brought
against him were that he impugned the jurisdiction of the English Church and
propagated misbelief, particularly on the Eucharist, the merit of pilgrimages,
relics, imagc-worship, and the papal monarchy. The trial ended in a sentence
which proclaimed
1 Vaughan, p. 486. The royal mandate for
his execution (Rot. Pari.
2 Hen. IV. § 29) orders it to be made
conspicuous 1 in abhorrence of his crime and as an example to ail
other Christians.’
2 This was the gravamen of the case against
him. A MS. Chronicle of the period (Carnbr. Univ. Libr. I)d. \iv. 2, f-ol.
3051, in recounting similar persecutions, states the crimr of one of the
sufferers in these terms: ‘bicause that- he said that godys body myjt nat be
grounds in a rnulle, and that he kept oounseil in huyding of lollards boks.’
3 One of the best accounts of him is given
in tho anonymous Hist, of England, as above, pp. 6U- K7.
4 Copies of them were diffused at his
expense: Vaughan, p. 495.
6 This monarch is praised by a contemporary
as ‘ Christo et u -_ndo commendatissimus inter reges,’ for raising a standard ‘
contra Wicle- vistas ha-reticos.’
6 In the convocation held at Oxford, 1408,
and apparently adjourned to London, he had published his violent Constitutions
against Lollar<k (Johnson, ii. 457—475,
Oxf. 1851, where see the editor's notes). The first of these enjoins that
"no one preach to the people or clergy in Latin or in the vulgar tongue,
within a church or without it, unless he present himself to the diocesan of the
place in which he attempts to preach and be examined,’ &c. In § 4, scholars
are forbidden to dispute ‘ publicly, or even privately, concerning the Catholic
faith or the sacrumentK of the Church.’ Arundel was nosv supported by a
Carmelite friar, Thomas Netter, of Walden, whose Doctrinale Anliquitattm
Fidei Eccl. Cathol. (not unfrequently printed) is aimed at the Lollards. He
is also generally regarded as the author of Fasciculi Zizaviorum magistri
Juhannis IVyclif, (above, p. 380, n. 4): see Shirley's Introd., pp. Ixx.
sq.
William
Kaictrt
(d. 1401).
Lord
Cobham
(d. 1117).
77ie
_ Council of Constance denounces Wycliffe,
1415.
him a ‘
pernicious and detestable hereticbut in the respite granted with the hope of
wringing from him a confession of his guilt, he found an opportunity of
escaping into Wales1, where he continued till 1417 He was then recaptured,
sentenced to the stake, and most barbarously executed in St Giles’s Fields on
Christmas-day2.
A heavier
blow had meanwhile been inflicted on the Lollards by the council of Constance8
(1415). However cordially the bulk of the ecclesiastics there assembled might
rejoice in the attempt of Wycliffe to repel the arrogance of Rome, to banish
all administrative abuses, and to elevate the tone of morals in the Church at
large4, they could not tolerate those branches of his system where
he meddled with the order of society and questioned the traditionary faith of
Christians. Five-and-forty articles5, extracted from his writings,
were accordingly denounced (■May 4, 1415). Another list, extending to no
less than
1 Walsingham fed. Riley, it. 306, 307) ascribes the rumours of
disturbances in the following January to a secret conspiracy of the Lollards:
but there is every reason to believe that Cobham was still in AY ales: cf.
Vaughan, pp. 503—505. In 1430, however, some of them did rise into actual
rebellion • Turner, Middle Ages, in. 14, 15.
2 Many other executions followed (Wilkins,
hi. 394 sq.) to the joy of men like Thomas Netter, who says (in the Proem, to
his Doctrinale) that they were all consigned ‘ duplici poenaj, incendio propter
Deum, suspen- dio propter regem.’ Elmham. a Latin poet oi the time, discovers
Sir John Oldcastle in the apocalyptic number 666: Liber Metricus, I. cap. n.
li 89, 90.
‘Nomine
sexcenti sunt, sexaginta simul sex:
Extrahe quot remanent,
his sua vita datur.’
Memorials,
of lien. V., edited by Cole, in the series of Chronicles and Memorials of
Great Britain, p. 96.
3 The University of Oxford had deputed
twelve persons in 1412 to examine the works of Wycliffe, and the result was that
no fewer than two h mdred and sixty-seven, conclusions were branded as ‘ guilty
of lire:’ Wilkins, hi. 339 sq. A fact like this appears to militate strongly
against the genuineness of the Publike Testimonie given ovt by the Universitie
of Oxford in honour of Wycliffe, and bearing date Oct. 5, 1406 (Ibid. ui. 802):
cf. Le Bas, pp. 309 sq. His writings were also condemned by pope John XXIII. in
1412: llansi, xxvn. 505.
4 We may estimate the strength of these
feelings from the fact that the University of Oxford, which condemned the
Lollard tenets iu 1412, drew up in^.414. and by the king’s express command, a
series of Articles concerning'the Reformation of the Church (Wiikms, n r. 360-
-365).
6 See Von
der Hardt, Concil. Constant, iv. 150 Bq., and Lenfaut, Hist, du Concile de
Const, liv. ii. eh. 59. The proceedings were prefaced
by a sermon from the bishop of Toulon, in which it is remarkable that the pope
himself was handled in the roughest way.
sixty
articles1 was added in a further session (July 6); ■nearly all
of them agreeing in the main with accusations that had been already urged
against himself or some of his early followers in England. On the same occasion
it was ordered that the bones of Wycliffe, if discernible from those of other
persons, should be burnt,—a fulmmation which, however, was suspended till the
time of pope Martin V. (1423). The prelate whom he charged to see it executed
was Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, once an ardent champion of the new opinions2,
who proceeded to exhume the body of his former friend, and after burning it,
directed that the ashes should be thrown into the Swift, the stream which flows
by Lutterworth3.
The only
writer who applied himself in earnest to convert the Lollards, by the use of
candid argument and by diffusing tracts in the vernacular, was Reginald Pecock,, who had been translated from the bishopric of St Asaph to that of
Chichester in 1449 His moderation was, however, almost fatal to
him. He could not insist upon the absolute infallibility of the Church5;
and after a vexatious controversy with his brother-prelates, he was driven by a
threat of punishment for heresy to make a solemn recanta
1
Yon der Hardt, it. 408 sq.;
Lenfant, liv. in. ch. 42. Ohicheley, who succeeded Arundel at Canterbury, in
the following year (1416) followed up these censures in the same spirit
(Wilkins, hi. 378), aiming more
especially to prevent the Lollards from holding ‘secret conventicles.’
1 Bee Le Bas, p. 390.
3 Lyndwood (Provincials, p. 284, Oxon.
1079) mentions these barbarous proceedings with apparent satisfaction.
* See Lewis, Life of Pecock, passim: and
Wharton’s Append, to Cave, ad an. 1444. His chief book against the Lollard* is
entitled The Repressor of overmuch blaming of the Clergy; printed (1860) in
the series of
Chronicles
and Memorials of (xreat Britain. In the first part he discusses at great length
the principal objection of the nonconformists, that nothing is to be received
as true, or obligatory on the Christians, if it be not full} and expressly
stated in the Bible. He maintains (Pt. I. ch. v. p. 25), ‘if eny semyng
discorde be bitwise the wordis writen in the outward book of Holi Scripture
and the doom of resoun, ■write in manni- Foule ami herte, tho wordis so
writen withoutforth oujten be expowned anti be interpretid and broujt forto
accorde with the doom of resoun in thilk mater;’ &c.
6 His obnoxious
statements had appeared in his Treatise of Faith : see Mr Babington’s
Introduction to Pecock’s Repressor, jip. xxxii. sq., ami p. xxxix. n. 1. The
second book, in which he shews that Scripture is the only perfect and
substantial basis of belief, was published, London, 1688.
Earning
of his ho,a?, 1128
Reginald
Ptmek,
(silenced
1457J.
Ulterior
influence of the Lollards.
tion, and was
finally imprisoned in Thorney abbey where he died1.
Although it
is not easy to trace out the fortunes of the Lollards during the political
convulsions from which England suffered in the fifteenth century, nor to
determine whether they were still surviving at the outbreak of the Reformation2,
we can scarcely doubt that strong predispositions were excited in its favour,
by their preaching and their works. John Wycliffe may indeed be taken as the
prototype3 of one important school of English, and still more of
Continental Church-reformers. In the natural bias of his mind, in the unwonted
clearness of his moral intuitions, in his rude but manly style, and in the
fearless energy with which he struggled, almost singlehanded, to eradicate the
gross abuses of the times, we see an agent qualified to censure and demolish
errors rather than to strengthen the dismantled fortress of the Clmrcb, and
beautify afresh the ancient sanctuary of truth: while some of bis opinions,
even where he was not conscious of the slightest wish to foster insurrection,
were too easily convertible for such an end by over-boated crowds or by less
scrupulous disciples. It is found, accordingly, that the Reformers who at last
succeeded in the sphere of labour where his patriotic piety had. failed, drew
little, if at all, from his productions4: and in Germany, the
Lutheran,
1 He was allowed no writing materials, and
‘no books to look on, but only a portuous [i.e. breviary], a mass-book, a
psalter, a legend, and a Bible.’ llarleian MS. quoted by Turner, iii. 143, n.
47: cf. Repressor, Introd. p. lvii, ami note 3. Iceland (Collectanea, m. 410,
ed. Hearnej extracts a passage from an old chronicle which throws light on tho
condemnation of Pecock: ‘male sensit de Eucharutia et de sanctionibus
Ecclesiffi.’ Tho suspicion with which he was regarded is further seen in a
supplemental statute of King’s College, Cambridge (founded 1441); provision
being then made that every scholar, at the end of his probationary years,
should abjure the errors or heresies ‘Juhannis Wiclif, Reginaldi Pecock,’ etc.:
Lewis, as above, p. 173.
2 Traces of their influence are found in
the Acts of the Convocation of 1530: see Hardwick's Hist, of the Articles, pp.
34, 35, 2nd edition.
3 See Prof. Blunt’s remark on the affinity
between the Lollard and the Puritan, in his Sketch of the Reformation, pj). 87
sq., 6th edit.
* Dr Todd, in the ‘Advertisement’ prefixed
to his edition of TYy- cliffe’s treatise De Ecclesia et membris suis, quotes a
passage from Aylmer’s Harborough for faithful subjects, printed at Strasburg,
1559, and launching censures at the prelates on account of their temporal
possessions. The author seems to have been stirred to make thi» onslaught by
reading ‘'Wicliefe’s boke, which he wrote He Ecclesia:’ but when ha
as
distinguished from the Swiss diviues, appear to have regarded Lollardism with
positive distaste1.
The feverish
impulses, however, which that system had communicated to the general spirit of
the age were soon transmitted to a distance. They not only tended to enlighten
England, but ‘ electrified ’ Bohemia. Some indeed of the reaction there
produced is traceable to other causes2, for example, to the freer
element in the original Christianity of the district; to the old antagonism
between the Slavic and Germanic i'amilies, of whom the latter was in close
alliance with the pope; and even more to individual preachers3, who,
anterior to the age of Huss or Wyeliffe, started independent measures for the
exaltation of their mother-Church.
Of these
precursors, three at least deserve a special notice. Milicz, a Moravian of
Cremsier, was the archdeacon of Prague, and secretary to the emperor Charles
IV., the king of Bohemia. Anxious to devote himself entirely to the spiritual
benefit of others, he resigned his large emoluments (1364), and during several
years perambulated the country as an earnest preacher of repentance4.
He was more and more oppressed by a conviction that
Milicz
(d. 1374).
was at length
promoted t« the see of London, he ‘changed his mind,’ pp. C—-8: cf. Micolas’s
Life and Times of Hatton, p. 237, Lond. 1847. The twenty-sixth of the Article*
of Religion, if nut others also, may have had an eye to errors of the Lollards;
although in tho Remonstrance edited by Mr Vorsliall, the writer of it grants
that sacraments and other orilinancess may be truly administered by ‘ evil men’
{p. 123), but that in cases where the lives of priests are openly scandalous,
their flocks are bound to keep aloof from their communion (cf. Apology for
Lollard Doctrines, pp. 37 —40, ed. Todd).
1
Some of their antipathy was due to the aberrations mentioned in the previous
note: e.g. Apologia Confess. August, (by Mclanchthon), p. 149, in the Lihri
SymboKci, ed. Francke, Leipz. 1847: cf. other instances in Gieseler, tv. § 125, p. 257, n. 31, and Le Bas,
pp. 320, 321.
1
See above, pp. Ill—115.
3 The best modern authorities on this
subject are Palacfcy’s Oeseh. von SShmen, Prag. 1845, and Jordan’s Vorldufer
des Uusitenthums in Sohmen, Leipz. 1846.
4 At first his influence was impaired by
his want of familiarity with the native tongue, or the strangeness of his
accent (‘ propter incongru- entiam vulgaris sermonis’); but afterwards he made
u deep impression, more especially on the female auditors (‘inceperunt mulieres
superb® pepla alta et gemmis ciroimidata caputia et vestiimnta auro et argento
omata deponere’): sen a Life of Milicz (by a disciple) in lialbinus, 2Tu- tcll.
Hist. Bohemia, Decad. i., lib. iv., pp. 45, 46; I’rag. 1682.
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
Conrad
of Wald- hausen <A■ 1309).
the Church
had sunk into the grasp of Antichrist1. He treated on this topic in
St Peter’s at Rome2 (1367), but was immediately silenced by the
Inquisition3. Urban V., however, who attempted at that very juncture4
to reoccupy the old metropolis, released the culprit from his chains and sent
him back to Prague. He there resumed his work; but certain Friars, envious of
his popularity and writhing under his rebukes, commenced a fresh attack upon
him. He expired at Avignon in 1374. while tho judicial process they had
instituted was still pending6.
One of his
contemporaries was an Austrian, Conrad of Waldhausen6, who adopted a
like method in Vienna for awakening all classes of society. He was at length
invited by the emperor Charles IV. to aid the holy movement in Bohemia7;
aud the sermons which he there delivered seem to have produced a marvellous
effect. Like Milicz, he had also proved himself peculiarly obnoxious to the
Mendicants8, who strove to silence him (1364). Their opposition
failed, however, and he died in peace (1369;.
Among the
numerous followers of Milicz none acquired
1 With tliis feeling he composed a Libellus
de Antichristo, on which dee Neamler, ix. pp. 256 sq., Jordan, p. 29.
' He there
announced ‘quod Antichristus venit’ (Life, as above, p. 51): feeling himself
constrained to pray and labour ■ pro domino nostro papa «t pro domino
imperatore, ut ita ordinent ecelesiain sanctam in spiritualibus et
temporalibus, ut securi fideles deserviant Creatori:’ Neander, ix. 259. Another
of the charges subsequently brought against him was for strenuously maintaining
‘ quod omnis homo tenetur de necessitate saltern ad minus bis in h-bdumada
sumere Corporis Dominici sacramentum:: Jordan, p. 39, where all the
twelve articles are given.
3 This engine was now vorked by Mendicants,
to whom Milicz. like Wycliffe, made himself peculiarly obnoxious. On hit.
apprehension some of them announced to their congregations in Prague,
‘Carissimi, ecce jam Alilitias cremabitur:’ Life, as above, p. 51.
4 See above, p. 328.
6 This point does not seem to be very
clearly established: see Jordan, p. 27. and Neander, ix. p. 263.
fi
Sometimes called ‘von Stiekna’ through an error of the press which confounded
him with another of the flame class. Sczekna is said to havei also
distinguished himself by preaching ‘contra clericos:’ Neander, p.
264, note.
7 On his labours thera and heretofore, see
Jordan, pp. 3 sq. He also was persuaded that the Antichrist was rampant in the
Church
6
According to lialbinus (as above, p. 397, n. 4), p. 406, Conrad com
posed a large
treatise entitled Accusationes Mendicaniium: cf. Neander,
pp. 268 sq.
so high a
reputation as Matthias of Janow (in Bohemia), who, proceeding on the same
conviction that the Church would decompose if it were not immediately reformed1,
appears to have anticipated many of the views afterwards cherished by the
Lutheran divines. A six years’ residence at Paris (hence his title of ‘Magister
Parisiensis’) made' him an accomplished scholar and philosopher: but holier
aspirations were excited in him as he listened to the fervent preachers now
arising in his native country. In 1381 lie was collated to a stall in tlie
cathedral church of Prague. The scandals there laid open to his gaze impelled
him to rebuke the monks and clerics, iu a work2 On the Abomination
of Desolation in the Church. A more important \¥01'k3>
however, is entitled Rides of the Old, and New Testament, in which, amid a
number of prophetic theories, he handles the corruptions of the age with
terrible severity. Among the remedies on which both he and Milicz hail
insisted, one wras greater frequency in the reception of the Lord’s
Supper4; but a synod held at
1 He -wont so far even as to despair of the
corrigibility of the Church in its present state: ‘ Dei Ecclesia nequit ad
pristinam suam dignitatem reduci, vel reformari, nisi prius omnia fiant nova.’
iJe Sacerdutum et Monachorum Abmnmatiune Desolationis, etc. c. 37 (published in
tho Hist, et Monument. Juh. Hus, Norinib. 1715, i. 473 sq.). In an extract
(given by Jordan, pi. 68), he thinks it essential to a reformation that the
ritual system of the Church and some of its dogmatical excrescences should be
curtailed: ‘ Quapropter apud me decretum habeo, quod ad reformandam pacem et
unionem in universit-te Christiana expedit omnem plantatio- nem illam
er-idicare, et abbreriare iterum verbum super terrain, et reducere- Christi
Jesu Ecclesiam ad bua primordia salubria et compendiosa.’ The -work has been
ascribed sometimes to Wycliffe and also to Huss; but it is, no doubt, by
Matthias.
2 As in the previous note.
3 The whole is still in MS., but extracts
from it are supplied in Jordan, as above, pp. 59 sq.: cf. Neander’s review,
ix. pp. 280—335. In one passage (p. 313; it is manifest that Janow, had he
followed out his argument, w. iaid have insisted on the necessity of communion
in both kinds. His words are, ‘Propter quntidianain frequentiam et propter
dualitatem utriusque speciei, panis et \ini, a quibus hoc sacrificium
integraturcf. p. 333. According to his view, the Eucharist was the crowning act
of worship (p. 323), and the Bible the great source of Christian joy and
knowledge. On the latter point he spoke with a peculiar emphasis ( Jordan, p.
30); ‘ Unde cum vidi quam plurimos portare semper reliquias et ossa diver surum
sanctorum, pro defensione sua quilibet et sua singuliiri devotione...ego elegi
niilii Bibliam, meam electam sociam mere peregri- nationi, gestare semper
mecum,’ etc.
4 See above, p. 398, n. 2. Janow thus
expresses himself in tho unpublished work reviewed by Meander (p. 329): *
Absit uutem hoc a Cliris-
ilailkvu
of Janow
(d. 1394).
EIFOBSCA-
TORY
EFFORTS.
John
(d. 1415).
Trans-
mission of
writings
to Bohemia.
Prague1 in 1388 discountenanced the practice, by forbidding
laymen to communicate more frequently tlian once a month2.
The ground had thus been broken for the sedulous but ill-requited labours
of John Huss0 (Hus), who saw the light at Husinecz, a market-town of
Bohemia, July
S, 1369 His
place of training was the newly-founded University of Prague, where he became
professor (i. e. public tutor) in philosophy ('1396). Soon afterwards, in
(1400), he was chosen as the spiritual director of the queen Sophia ; and his
popular discourses at the chapel of Bethlehem4 in Prague (1401) were
instrumental to the spreading of his iniluence from the court and unhersity to
all the humbler grades of life. His ‘orthodoxy’ at this time was unimpeachable:
we find him bearing a commission from the primate Sbynco (Lepus) and
conducting an inquiry into the genuineness of a reputed, miracle at Wilsnack5.
Huss had grown familiar with the Sacred Writings, with the doctors of the
Western Church, especially Augustine, and with modem authors of celebrity,
including Grosseteste6 of Lincoln and his own fellow-countryman,
Matthias of Janow, when the theological as well as other tracts of Wycliffe
found their way as far as Prague and caused a general fermentation in the
academic circles7.
tinnis quod
debeant solum semel ia anno agere mfmoriam Dominica? passionis, quse continuis
momentis debet in ipsorum pecturibus demorari.’ He was iu lavour of daily communion.
1 Jordan, p. 55.
2 In the Ancren Eiwle (Camd. Soe. 185H), p.
412, it is enjoined that, as men undervalue what is frequently administered,
the laity should communicate only fifteen time)! in a year.
3 See especially, th* Historia et Monuments
Jtih. Hus atqut llieron. Pragensit, Xoiimb. 1715; Palacky, Gesch. von Pt'dhmen,
as above; Neander, ix 839 -537; and Datrn’s J{agister Johannes Hus, 1853.
Documenta -V. J. Hus vitam, dortrinam, can sum in Constantiensi concilia actam,
&c. iliustraniia; ed. Fr. Palacky, Prag. 18G9.
The founder
of thin chapel states, Iu his deed of gift (Gieseler, v.
§ 150, p.
103, n. 1), that he caiit i it ‘Bethlehem quod mterpretatur domut panis...hac
consideratione, ut ibidem popalus comiuunii et Christi lideles pane praedicationis
sancta? refici deb( ant.’
6
See the particular in Neander, pp. 312 sq.
6 This may be concluded from references to
Grosseteste in the works of Huss.
1 According to
Huss himself (Contra Anglicum Joan. Stoke*: Opp. i. 108), \vho hifi'ims us that
as early as 13sl some of the Wycliiiite tracts
The exchange of sentiments promoted iu this age by wandering scholars was
facilitated in the case of England and Bohemia by the marriage, in 1382, of the
princes? Anna, daughter of Charles IV., to our Richard II. We are also told1
that Jerome of Prague, who stood to Huss in a relation similar to that in which
Melanchthon stood to Luther, sojourned for a time at Oxford (circ. 1398), aud
on returning home imported numerous copies of the Wyclifiite tracts to
circulate among the students in Bohemia. Huss had not been favourably
impressed with some of these productions ; but a change2 at length
appears to have come over him, and he stood forth as Wycliffe’s pupil and
apologist. The ground-tone of their minds, however wide they may have been
apart on isolated topics, was the same: they were both Realists3,
and both intensely anxious to promote the reformation of the Church
A numerous party5 now began to cluster in the chapel
were known in
Prague, and that he was acquainted with them before 1391. These, however, may
have been chiefly philosophical in their character.
1 The authority on which this statement
generally rests is .Eneas Sylvius (Hist. Bohem. c. 35), whose hatred of the
Hussites will be gathered from the following extract: ‘Imbutus jam ipse [i. e.
vir quidam genere nobilis] Wiclevitaru>i> veneno et ad nocendum paratus,
tu;u quod erat familiar, suas cognomen, l’utridum Piscem, i.e. fcetiilum virus,
in fives SjUOS evomuit.’ Palacky. however, neeius to think that th;: noble here
mentioned was Nicholas von F&ulli&eh, a less distinguished follower of
Wycliffe (111. pt, 2, 192, n. 245).
2 Vaughan s Wycliffe, p. 509. Yet it is
ebvious from the language used by Hubs himself
(Opp. 1. 330) that he did not acquiesce in some of Wycjine’s opinions even at
the close of his career. He says that he holds to the ‘sentential vertn’ of the
English reformer, ‘non quia ipse dixit, sed quia Divina Scriptura, vel ratio
iniallibilis dicit. Si autem aliquem errurem posuerit, nec ipsum, nec quemcunque
uliiim intendo in errore, quantumliuet modice, imitari.' On
the other hand, JEneas Sylvius, as above, declares that Huss carried his
admiration of Wycliffe to the highest pitch, asserting of his books that they
contained all truth,
‘
adjiciensque crebro inter prajdicandum. se postquam ex hae luce migra- ict .n
ea loca proficisei cupere, ad qu£e Wyclevi aninia pervenisset, qiurn virum
bonum, sanctum, cteloque dignum non dubitaret.’
;1
Neander, ix. p. 349. The (Jtrman students, on the contrary, were Nominalists,
which introduced another element of strife.
* Huss (Opp. 1. 109) mentions this as the
great bond of sympathy with the English reformer: ‘ Movent me sua scripts,
quibus nititur toto conamine omnes homines ad legem Christi reducere, et
clerurn priecipue, jit dimittendo saculi pompam et di.minationem vivat cum
apostolis vitam Christi.’
5 Neander, pp. 352 sq. .Eneas Sylvius (as
above, c. 35) puts the
BEFoBMA-
TORY
EFFORTS.
Quarrel
of
Huss
attacks the corrupt ecclesiastics,
140?
and the lecture-room of Huss. In him the natives saw an able type of the
Bohemian as distinguished from the other class of students; and accordingly the
advocacy of the new opinions in religion was ere long identified with
nationalism in politics, and irritated by the national dislike of every thing
Germanic. In the midst of this unhappy war of races, nearly all the foreigners
withdrew from Prague (1409), transfusing into other seats of learning the
antipathy which most of them now cherished for both Wycliffe and the new
reformers in Bohemia.
One of the most glaring evils on which Huss insisted from the opening to
the close of his career, was the degeneracy of the ecclesiastics1.
His invectives roused the anger of his former friend, archbishop Sbynco'2,
who, imputing the sensation thus produced to the diffusion of the Lollard
tracts, commanded them to be collected and committed to the flames3
(1408). A series of complaints were also lodged at Rome4, which
finally evoked a bull of Alexander V. (Dec. 20, 1409). He there enjoined a
fresh inquiry, in the hope of burning all the other books of Wycliffe and
suppressing every form of Lollardism.
matter lens:
‘Rexenmt s.iliolarn Pragmsem usque in ea tom" .ra Teu- tones. Id
molestissimum Bohemia fuit, hominibus natura ferocibus atque indomitis.’ After
the secession of tho Germans, who are said to have m inhered, at the least,
five thousand (others hat e it forty-fmr thousand) ldsud«nts, there wero only
two thousand left in I’ragut. The malcontents established themselves at
Leipzig.
1
Cl, above, p. 401, n. 4. In 1407 he preached before a diocesan synod from Eph.
vi. 11 (Opp. it. 32 sq.), and betrayed his leaning to the views of Wycllffo and
Matthias of Janow with regard to the ecclesiastical en dowments. He also
inveighs against tho dissolute habits of many of his audience (‘pralati,
canonici, plelmni, et alii presbyteri," p. 38).
5 Neander, pp. 301 sq A formal treatise
(‘Antiwickleffus’) was composed at this juncture (1408) by Stephen, prior of
the Carthusians of I)o'an near Olmtitz. It is printed in Pez, Thesaur. Anecdot.
iv. part, ii 149 sq. where the Antilmsm* and other cognate pieces mav be found
(pp. 301 sq.).
3 Two hundred copies, of which many had
'neon richly bonr.d, wero thus destroyed: cf. Vaughan’s Wycliffe, p. 404. The
University of Pragui declared (June 15, 1410) that it was not a consenting party
to the act of archbishop Sbynco and the rest ‘in combustionem libroium magistri
Johannis Wicklef(xieseler, v. § 150, p. 109, note 9. Neander (p. 377) places
this combustion in the summer of 1410.
4 \nother ground of complaint was that the
nesv reformer exercised pernicious influence by his sermons. This was to be
obviated by forbidding any one to preach in a private chapel, such as the
Bethlehem, fcieo Alexander’s bull in Baynald. ad an. 1409, jj 89,
But Huss, like his precursor, was at first in favour with the court1;
and this advantage, added to a keen perception of the weakness and injustice of
the papacy, induced him to appeal from the decision of ‘a pontiff ill informed’
to one ‘to be better informedV So confident was he in his integrity, that 011
receiving news of Alexander’s death (May 3, 1410) soon afterwards, he promptly
brought his case before the new pope'1, the monster Jolm XXIII. The
culprit was now cited to attend in person at Bologna; but his friends, who knew
the danger he was in, dissuaded him from such a step4, and on his
failing to appear, the sentence of excommunication (Feb. 1411) was launched
immediately against him, notwithstanding all the interest employed on his
behalf by Wenceslaus and the queen'. Their influence was, however, more
successful iu promoting an accommodation between him and the archbishop: Huss
avowing his respect for the ecclesiastical authority and his determination to
adhere iu all things to the will of Christ and of the Church0.
But in the following autumn Sbynco breathed his last, and when a legate
was despatched from ltome with the accustomed pallium for the new archbishop,
John XXIII. annexed to it a parcel of indulgences, which purported to be at
once available for all persons who might volunteer to execute the ban that had
been issued for dethroning his opponent, the king of Naples. The enormity of
this procedure stirred tho vehemence of Huss7 and of his col-
_ 1
Stephen, tho prior of Dolan (as above), p. 390; ascribes the protection of
Huss to the ‘ popularis vulgi favor et sseculare brachium.’
’ ‘A papa
male informato ad papam melius informandum:’ see Neander,p. 37fi.
3 His Appeltatio ad sedt-m Apostolicam is
printed in the Hist, et Monument. 1. 112. Bespecting Jolm XXIII., See above,
p. 331.
4 The following is part of his uwu version
of the matter: ‘Citatuss antem personaliter ad Homanam curiam optabam cumparere
humiliter; sed quia mortis iraidise tam in regno quam extra regnnm pra'sertim a
Teuton iris sunt mihi posits, ideo multorum fretus consilio judieavi, quod
foret Peum tentare, vitam morti tradere, profectu Ecclesite non urgente. Igitur non parui personality, sed aduicatos et procurators constiiui,
volens «<incta> sedi apostolic,'p obedire.’ See the rest
of this Confession uf Faith, correctly given in Pelzel, Lcbensgeschichte des
Kunigs Wencesl&us, Documents, No. 230; Prag. 1788.
0 Neander, pp. 392 sq.
8 Ibid. p. 396. He now put forth the
Confession, quoted above, vin- dioating himself in the eyes of the University.
7 lie justified his resistance on the
following ground*: ‘Ego dixi quod
appeals
to a pope letter informed :
ts
excommunicated,
1411:
but
reconciled to the arck- lishop.
Indulgences
sent into Bohemia ;
REFORMATORY
EFFORTS. < v i
'burning
of the dom- mtnts in Prague. Ifvss retreats.
Bis
reli-
league,
Jerome, to the very highest pitch. The latter, hot and sanguine, lost no time
in propagating his enthusiasm among the students, who, in order to exact a
kind of vengeance for the seizure of Wycliffe’s writings, organized a
mock-procession in the streets of Prague and burnt the papal instruments1.
Though Huss had not directly sanctioned this irregularity, ami though he afterwards
regretted its occurrence, the most formidable censures of the Church alighted
on his head2. He could no longer prosecute his public mission, but
addressing an appeal to Jesus Christ Himself3, the only righteous
Judge, retreated from the theatre of strife.
The works4
which he composed in hi* retirement have
affccto
cordialiter impleri mandatu apostulica et ipsis omnino obedire, sed voco
n-andata apostolica doctrina» -ipostolorum Christi, et dp q ranto mandata
pontificis concordaverint cum mandat is ut doctrinis apostolicis, secundum
regulam legia Christi, de wnto volo ipsis parati&oime obedire hed si quid
adoersi concepero non obediam. ttiamsi ignem pr>, combus- tione mei coiporis
meis oculis prseponatis:5 Neander, p. 400, His views on indulgences
ma^ be seen at length in a remarkable Quustio devoted to that subject (1412):
Hist, et Monument, i. 215 sq.
* See Pelzel, as above, ii 608 sq. It tieems
that thf violence con. nected -with this act estranged the king from Huss
According to Stephen of Dolan (in Pez, Thesam. Monument, iv. pan ii. 380), he
published a decree, 'ut nequaquam a'iquis audeat rebellare et contradicees
ocoulte vel publice, -ab capitalj poena, indulgentiis papalilius. Three ynuthe
were afterwards executed for interrupting preachers who invited their flocks to
purchas* indulgences, ~ee Neander, pp. 117 sq., and Lenfant, Hist, du Concile,
de Constance, liv. m. o. 11.
5 Bo was uxcommunicatuu afresh, and all tht
place in which he lived was stricken by the papal interdict. Even the chapel in
which he prupched was to be levtllod with the ground: Palaeky, iii. pt. i. 286.
3 See the Hist, et Monument. I. 22
4 One of the most important, and indeed his
very greatest work, is theTractatus de Ecclesia (iu the Hist, et Monument, i
243 sq.). His? division of. the Church, like that of Viyeliffe (see above, p.
389), is tri partite. The • ecclesia dormiens’ he defines (c 21 to be ‘numerus
prs - destmatoniin in purgatorio pattens.’ > By recognizing some of tht,
finally ui ndemned a* members of tht Church *>n earth, he chews that he did
not follow Wycliife blindly (cf. above, p. 390, n. 4). The following art his
wi>rds (c. 3): ‘Dupliciter homines possunt esse de sancta matre Ecclesia,
v-el secundum prfwd"stinationem *d vitan. Eetemam, quomodo omnes finaliter
sancti sunt de sancta matre Ecclesia; vel secundum prsedestina- nonem soluiu
n,d prsesentem justitipm, ut omnes, qui aliquantlji a.scipiunt gratlam
nenrissianis peocatorum sed finaliter non perseverant.' He insists upon the
fact (e.g. c. 4, c. 13 sq.; that Christ and lie alone is the "Head ot the
CLurch,’ but also urges the importance of obeying the pope and cardinals (ei
17) ‘dun! docuerint veritatem juxta legem Dei.' inothtr source for ascertaining
his opinions at this juncture are his Letters (Ibid, l 117 sq.: ci. I’alacky,
in. pt. i. 297, 20Hj.
enabled us to
mark the final stages in the growth of his belief. To many of the
characteristic dogmas then prevailing in the Church he yielded his unwavering
assent1, confining his denunciations mainly to those points which he
regarded as excrescences, abuses, or distorted forms of truth. His principles2,
indeed, had they been logically apprehended and consistently applied, must have
constrained him to relinquish some of the positions advocated by the western
schoolmen: but, unlike his English fellow- worker, Huss ha-i not been largely
gifted with the logical faculty, and therefore he continued all his life
unconscious of his own divergencies. So far was he indeed from meditating the
formation of a sect, that he had hoped to renovate the Western Church entirely
from within. A reference to these facts may well explain the readiness3
he shewed to vindicate himself before the council of Constance, whither he was
now invited to proceed. That great assembly constituted in his eyes the lawful
representative of Christendom; and as he had no longer any hope of finding
justice at the papal court, he went in search of it elsewhere. We see him
starling for the council* (Oct. 11, 1414) armed with testimonials of his ‘
orthodoxy ’ from the primate of Bohemia (Conrad), and the titular bishop of
Nazareth, who was officiating as the inquisitor of heresy in the diocese of
Prague5. He also bore the passport (or ‘ safe-conduct ’) of the king
of the Romans, Sigismund6, which guaranteed his personal
1 See
Luifant's IlUt. du Concile de, Constance, liv, m. c, 50—55; and cf. liv. 1. c.
27.
* Neander, pp. 429 gq.
3 After liis arrival at Constance he stated
that he came with joy, and added, that if he were eonvioted of any error he
would immediately abjure it. Lenfant, liv. 1. 0. 36.
4 Ibid. Hv. t. c. 24.
6
lu this document (Ilist. et Monument, j. 3^ the inquisitor declares, among
other things, ‘Collationes plures [i. c. with master John Huss] do diversis
sacra) scriptural materiis faciendo, nunquam aliquem iu ipso inveni errorem vel
hEPresim, sed in omnibus verbis et operibua suis ipsum semper verum et
catholicum hominem reperi.’
6 Ibid. 1. 2. The violation of this promise
was subsequently justified (Sept. 23, 1115) by a aecree of the council (in Von
der Hardt, iv. 521), on the ground that Huss, by impugning the ‘orthodox
faiih,' had rendered himself ‘ ab omni conductu et privilegio alienum; nec
aliqna sihi fides aut promissio da jure natural]’, Divino vel humano, fuerit in
prm- judicium cathnlica fidei observanda.’
giom
opinions at thin time.
He
proceeds to the Council of Constanct, 14J 4;
where
Tie ■is treacherously imprisoned.
protection in
the very strongest terms. He reached Constance1 on the third of
November, attended by a party of his fellow-countrymen, especially the noble
John of Chlum, his pupil and unwavering friend. But others, who were labouring
to repress the holy movement in Bohemia, had arrived before him3.
One of them, Palecz3, his former colleague in the university of
Prague, was actively engaged in circulating rumours to his disadvantage: and
as many of the clerics there assembled had been prejudiced against him, partly
through his recent quarrel with the German students, partly through his
firmness in declining to pronounce an indiscriminate condemnation of Wycliffe
and the Oxford school of cliurch-reformers, he was treacherously taken into
custody4 (Nov 28). The scenes that followed are the most revolting
in the annals of the Western Church. The oral explanations5 of the prisoner,
even as reported by his adversaries, and the tracts6 which he
composed while languishing in chains, shew that to the last his own opinions
coincided in almost every point with those professed by members of the council.
They were zealously employed in limiting the power and in denying the
infallibility of Rome1: they all of them ex-
1 According to Lenfant .liv. A c. ‘2(5)
Huss immediately notified his cnival to pope John XXIII., who promised to lend
him every help in hia power.
2 Lenfant,
liv. I. e. 35: Neander, ix. p. 165. They had been alienated from
him chiefly by hia vigorous opposition to the papal 'ndulgences.
3 In a formal reply, Ad Script. Steph.
Palttk, hi hud been constrained to speak as follows: ‘ Amicus Paletz, amiea
veritas, utrisque amicis exis- tentibus, sanctum est prahonorare veritatem.’
* Neander, pp. 472 sq. Some of the loose
charges brought against him may be seen in Ltniant, liv. i. c. 12 One oi them
was, that he taught tho necessity of administering the Eucharist in both kinds;
but we shall see hereafter that the accusation was groundless: cf. his own
replies in Hist, et Momim. i. 15 sq. Geraon, the famous <'hancellor of
Paiis, also extracted nineteen articles from tlie treatise De Ecclesia. and
called upon the council to condemn them (Ibid. pp. 20 sq.): cf. above, p. 35H.
n. 4. His ftllow-countrymen expressed their indignation at the imprisonment of
Huss (Hist, et Monum. I. 9 sq.), and they were seconded by the Polish nobles
who were present at the council (Kraainski, lief arm. in Poland, I. 62j.
6
e. g. in 1ns three public hearings before the council (Lenfant, liv in. c. 4
sq.; Neander, pp. 495—515). On the second of these occasions (June 7/ hi-
actually spoke of the view of lierengarius on the iiucharist as ‘magna
haiesis.’
6 Lenfant, liv. i. c. 43.
7 See above, pp. 331 sq.
liibited a
wish to elevate the inorals of the clergy, and advance at least iu some degree
the reformation of the Church,—the very measures that lay nearest to the heart
of Huss: yet so infatuated were they by their national prejudices, or so
blinded by their hatred of a man who would not disavow all sympathy with
Wycliffe1 (much as he receded from the doctrines of the Lollards),
that they sentenced him to perish at the stake2. As soon as the
executioner had done his barbarous work, the ashes of the victim were all flung
into the Rhine, ‘that nothing might remain on earth of so execrable a heretic’
(July
The ardent
Jerome of Prague, who shared his sentiments, and who appeared at Constance
hoping for a prosperous issue, was at first so panic-stricken by the fate of
Huss that he consented to abjure the errors which the council charged against
him3 (Kept. 23). But his courage afterwards revived. He publicly
revoked his abjuration (May 15, 1416), in so far as he had offered violence to
truth or had defamed the memory of Huss and Wycliffe. He was therefore handed
over to the civil power, and several of his most infuriated enemies wore struck
by the unearthly ioy that swelled his bosom even in the flames* (May 30).
The ashes of
these two reformers lighted up a long
1 A charge on which tht council placed
peculiar emphasis related to this point: ‘Quod pertinaciter articulos erroneos
Wifclefii docuisset in Bohemia et defendiRset.’ On his reply, see Lenfant, liy.
in. c. 5, and Neander, p. 501. TI11 former of these writers (liv. 111. c. 57)
shews that partial sympathy with Wycliffe wan the ground of his condemnation;
and it is remarkable that the order of the council for burning the hones of the
English reformer immediately preceded the examination of Huss: cf. above, p.
395.
2 Ilist. et
Monum. 1. 33 sq.. and Lenfant, liv. in. c. 45. The following
passage indicates a hope that reformation would come at last: ‘Prius laqueos,
citationes et anathemata Anseri [a play on hi* own name, Hus = Goose]
paraverunt, et jam nonnullis ex vobis insidiantur. Sed quia Anser. animal cicur, avis domestic®, suprema volatu suo non
pertingens, eorum laqueos I? non] rupit, nihiieminus alia? aves, quas Verbo Dei
et vita volatu suo alta petunt, eorum insidias conterent.’ Hist,
et Monum. 1.121.
3 Lenfant, liv. iv. c. 31. See also the
Narratin in the Hist, et Monum. Johan, Huss, 11. 522 sq.
4 Lenfant, Kv. iv. c. 85. Ah be went to the
place of execution he recited the Apostles’ Creed, and at the stake his voice
was heard chanting the Paschal Hymn, ‘Salve, festa dies,’ etc. The astonishment
of Poggio,
and
pvt, to death,
1415.
Mar
tiir- d‘ml of Jeromt of Pragut,
1 '116.
Rise
of the Hvssite
REFORMA
TORY
EFFORTS.
Jacobellus de Misa.
The
Calix- tines, or Utraquists.
and furious
war1. Their countrymen Lad already expostulated with the council,
in the hope of rescuing the martyrs from its grasp; and when the tidings of
their execution reached Bohemia, hostility to the Germans and to Sigismund
expressed itself anew in revolutionary acts. Another element of strife had also
been contributed. It seems that Huss, who held the mediaeval doctr.'ue of
concomitance2, had acquiesced in the propriety of the communion in
one kind: but his disciple, Jacobellus de Misa (Jacob of Hies), incited
probably by some expressions in the works of Matthias of Janow3, had
begun as early as the autumn of 1414 to lay unwonted stress on the importance
of administering the chalice to the laity4. The other side was taken
quite as absolutely by the council of Constance5 (June 14, 1415),
and ‘The Chalice,’ therefore, grew at length into a watcli-word of that numerous
party iu Bohemia who revered the memory of Huss. For several years the forces
of the empire were completely kept at bay: but the development of the religious
differences among the Hussites was afterwards fatal to their arms. One section
of them, the Calixtines6 or Utraquists\ may be called the moderate
party. They adhered to Huss
the
Florentine scholar, on listening to his defence before the council, is
expressed in a letter to Leonardo Aretino, translated in Leiifant, c. 86.
See Lenfant, Hist, de la guerre des Hussites, etc. Amsterdam,
1731, ■with a Supplement by lieausobre, Lausanne, 1735.
s
Above, p. 303. The question is fully investigated by Leiifant. Hist, du Conr.ile de Const, liv. ii. c. 74 «1.
J Cf. Neander, p. 488.
■ That
he was the first to administer in both kind? is expressly stated in the
Apologia verm Boutrina drawn up iu 1538 by the * Moravians’ (in Lyd: Waldensia,
n. 292, Dordreci, 1617): ‘Jlagister Jacobellus primus omiiium communionem
ntriusque speciei in Bohemia practicare eiepit: ’ cf. iEnea.s Sylvius, Hist.
Bohem. c. 35.
5 See the decree in Yon der Hardt, iii. 646, where the modem practice is
defended on the ground that it serves ‘ad evitandum pericula aliqua et
scandala.’ Thu doctrine of I'Oncomitance is also affirme 1 in the strongest
terms (‘cum firmissime credendum sit, et nullatenus dubitandum. integrum
corpus Christi et >anguinem tam sub specie panis quam sub specio vini
veraciter contineri’). For the Apologia of Jacobellus in reply to this decree,
see Von der Hardt, m. 591 sq. Ho was supported by the university of Prague
(March 10, 1417), whose manifesto is printed in the Ilist. et Me num. n. 539.
6 From Calix—chalice.
7 From the phrase ‘ sub utraque specie.’
and
Jacobellus, claiming1 that the Word of God should be freolv preached
in all tho kingdom of Bohemia, that the Eucharist should be administered
according to the terms of the original institution; that the incomes of the
clergy should be lowered, and a more rigorous discipline enforced on all the
members of the Church. This section of the Hussites, after many sanguinary
struggles with the empire and their brethren, were eventually absorbed into the
Western Church, negociations with them having been conducted through the medium
of the council of Basel2 (1133). But the reasvance was kept up much
longer by the Taborites (so called from a Bohemian mountain, Tabor, where they
pitched their earliest camp). While they adopted many theories like those now
current in the sect of the Waldenses3, they diverged at other points
into a gloomy aud morose fanaticism4. They ventured to destroy all
sacred literature, with the exception of the Bible; to denude religion of all
pomp and every kind of ceremonial; to deprive the clergy of their property; to
pillage the religious houses; and, confiding in the hope that Christ would soon
return in person as their king, they bade defiance to their constituted rulers
in both church and state. They were suppressed, however, in the end. by the Bohemian
government (circ. 1453), or forced to sue for toleration as a sect. From their
communion, after its fanatic
1
See the ■whole document in Brzezyna (at Byzynius), Diarium Belli
Hussitiai (in Ludewig'B Jleliquice Mattuscr. vi. 175 sq.).
a
See the documents in MartOne and Durand, Antpl. Collect, vm. 596 s (. The
Compaetata now drawn up concede the points on which the Calixtines had
insisted, but with many stringent limitations: for instance, the priest who
ministers in both kinds is nevertheless to teach the people tliiit ‘sub
qualibet specie est integer et totus Christus:’ cf. Jlansi, \\x. 092. In 1462,
.Eneas Sylvius (Pius II.) declared the Compaetata invalid, but they kept their
ground in spite of his denunciation; Gieseler, v. § 152, pp. 145, 14H, notes
10, 17.
3 Members of this sect existed in Bohemia
at this time: see above, p. 373. n 6.
1
On (heir actions and opinions, see Brzezyna (as above, n, li, pp. 145 pq., 190
sq., arid the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Rofamia,
1. 14 sq. Lond. 1845. Their chief leaders were
Ziska (d. 1424) and Procopius isee Brown’s Fascic. ft. 632 sq.): but after
1453, when they had been defeated by the ('alixtines, they disappear as a
political body. About the ami' time (1450) they seem to have opened
negociations with the patriarch of Constantinople: Ibid. p. 29. section of the
Taborites were now entitled ‘Picards’ (i.i. Beghardsl, a name of reproach
already given to Milici, and to the early followers of Huss.
Hie
Tabor- ittt,
Origin
of tilt Murat i- am, or United Brethren (circ.
1450).
element, had
been expelled, arose the peaceful and still thriving confraternity1
entitled the Moravians, or I nited Brethren, who thus constitute the chief
historic link between the times of Huss or Wyeliffe and our own.
It seems that
efforts liad been made to propagate the Hussite doctrines in the neighbouring
state of Poland. As early as 1431 a public disputation2 was held at
Cracow between the doctors of the university and certain deputies from Bohemia;
and in 1450, a Polish senator4 proposed to expedite a reformation of
the Church by calling in the aid of the secular authority. But further
indications of this spirit are not clearly traceable until the partisans of
Luther made some converts at Dantzig4 and Thorn5 about
the year 1520
He it was
-who carried out the principles6 which Huss had perished in
attempting to diffuse. Their characters,
1 A
complete history of them will ba found in Carpzcv, Religions- Wtterfuckang der
B'ohmischen und Miihrischen Bruder, Leipz. 1742' see also Lydii Waldensia, a, 1
sq. Dordreci, 1617. They separated entirely from the Church in 1457, not ‘
propter cmremonias aliquot vel ritus ab hominibus institutos, sed propter malam
et corruptam dactrinam.’ They denied transubstantiation and condemned the
adoration of the Host, affirming that Christ is not in the Eucharist
‘corporaliter’ but ‘spiritali- ter, potenter, benedicte, in veritate.’ See the
Responsio Excunatoria Fratrum Waldemipm (1508), in Brown's Fascic. I. 184.
Other doctrinal peculiarities are enumerated in two kindred documents (Ibid.
pp. Ki2— 172). Mosheim regards the modem Moravians, or United Brethren, ratner
as imitators than as representatives of the United Brethren of the sixteenth
century, remarking especially that but a very small fraction of them is
Bohemian or Moravian. (Eccl. Hist. hi. 479.)
- Krasinski, Reform, in Poland, i. 79.
3 Ibid. I. 92 sq.
4 Ibid. p. 113.
5 Ibid. p. 124. VThen tin papa1
legate came to this place, and was proceeding to burn a portrait t i Luther, he
was pelted away by the crowd.
5 See Ihe striking words ox Luther in the
Preface he coutri--'ited to the Works of Huss, ed. Norimb. 1558 (quoted by Lenfant, Hist, du Concile de Constancy, liv. i.
c. 21). He
speaks oi his ‘incredible astonishment' on reading a copy of the Sermons of
John Huss, which he found (circ. 15U6) in the convent, at Erfurt: ‘I could not
comprehend,' he adds, ‘for vhat cause they burnt so great a man. who explained
the Scriptures with so aiucb gravity and skill,' In 1519 Luther exchanged
letters with some of ihe Utraquists of Bohemia, one of whom addressed him as
follows: ‘Quod olim Johanne-, Huss in Bohemia fuerat, hoc tu, Murtine, es in
Saxonia. Quid "gitur tibi opus? Yigila et confortare in Domino, deinde
cave ab hominibus:’ see (iieseler, \. p. 246; Fourth Period, § I, n. 50. The
connexion between Huss and Luther is strongly stated in a contemporary ballad,
edited by Soltau (Leipzig, 1845), pp. 278, 279.
Reforming
'party in Poland.
Appearance
of Luther (14831546).
indeed, had
many traits in common1. Both were strongly bsfobma- indisposed to
vary from the standard teaching of the t
Church4:
yet both were ultimately driven into a posture of_____ t .
hostility by
struggling to suppress the sacrilegious traffic in indulgences. Their
conscience sickened and revolted at the spectacle. A power that authorized
proceedings so iniquitous, aud did not scruple to employ its engines for ex
terminating all whose moral nature had impelled them to protest, could hardly
(so they reasoned) be of God.
Although the
Saxon friar had not anticipated the ulterior bearings of this thought while he
was posting up his theses on indulgences8 (Oct. 31, 1517), his later
interviews4 with Cajetan, Eck, and others tended to develope his
opinions, and convinced him more and more that something must be done to
purify the Western Church. When cited to the court of Rome, he entered an
appeal6, as Huss had done before him, to a future and more evangelic
pontiff (Oct. 16. 1518), and soon after indicated his intention of applying
for redress to what he deemed the first tribunal of all Christendom, a general
Council6 (Nov. 28).
1
One of the mo-t important differences was in their philosophic modes of
thought. Huss (we saw above, p. 401) was a determined Eealist; while Luther
seems to hav< inclined in early life to Nominalism.
His favourite
authors were Peter d’Aillv, Gerson, 'William of Ockham (cf. above, p. 353, n.
1), and Gabriel ljiel, preferring them to Thomas (Aquinas; and Duns Scotus. He
was marked, however, like his great Bohemian prototype, by an intense love for
biblical studied (‘ fontes doctrine cade«tis avid# legebat ipse;’) while they
both were stronaly Augus- tinian. llelanchthon says of Luther (Vita Latheri, p.
7, ed. Heumannl, after mentioning the above particulars: ‘Sed oinnia Angustini
monu- menta et sa-pe legerat et optime memmerat: ’ cf. above, p. 357. n. t.
!
They were also ardently devoted to the pope. Luther has informed ns that in
early life he was so infatuated by the papal do>?mas, ‘ut para- tissimus
fuerim omnes, si potuissem, occidere ant occidentibus cnoperari et consentire,
qui papa? vel una syllaba obedientiam detrectarent.’ Pref. to his Works, dated
1545.
8 See them (ninety-five in number) in
Loscher, Reformations-Acta und Dommenfa, 1. 438, Leipz. 1720. One thesis (§ 27)
ran as follows: ‘Homi- nem prsedicant, qui statim nt jactua minimum in cistam
tinnierit, evolare dicui.i animam’ [i.e. out of purgatory]. The papal bull
enforcing the generally received doctrine of indulgences is dated Nov. 9,1518:
see it in Loscher, 11. 493.
4 An account of these discussions is
reserved for a future volume, when the gradual change in Luther’s views will be
exhibited more fully,
3 ‘A papa non bene informato ad melius
informandum.’ Bee the
document
in Loscher, as above, 11. 484.
8 Ibid. n. 505. He renewed this appeal
Nov. 17, 1520.
A
new epoch in Church- History,
A further
series of discussions, held at Leipzig1 (June 27, —July 16, 1519),
ended in his formal condemnation hy the pope (June 15. 1520): yet Luther,
differing from a host of his precursors who had not been able to withstand the
thunders of the Vatican, intrepidly arose to meet the danger, pouring forth a
torrent of defiance and contempt. The bull of excommunication which had branded
him as a heretic was publicly burnt2 at the eastern gate of Wittenberg,
together with a copy of the Decretals and other obnoxious writings3
(Dec. 10, 1520).
Every chance
of compromise and reconciliation4 vanished at this point: it forms
one of the most momentous epochs in the history of Europe, of the Church, and
of the world. The deep and simult aneous heaving that was felt soon afterwards
in Switzerland5, m Spain, in Poland, and in Scandinavia, in the
British Islands and in Hungary,
' Ibid. hi.
215 sq. Luther was supported on this occasion by Carl-, stadt (Bodenstein);
their chief antagonist was Eck. Immediately afterwards "Uelanchthon wrote
his Defensio contra Johan. Eckiurn: Opp. I. 113, ed. Bretschneider. In the
iollowing year Eck betook himself to Rome in order to stir up the pontiff (Leo
X-.). The bull against Luther (in Kaynald. ad an. 1520, § 51) was da, to his
exertions.
!
Hoe the reasons he assigned for this act [Quare Pontificis Romttni et
diecipulnrum ejvs Libri a Doctor?, 31, Luthern combusti sinti in his Works, ed.
Walch, xv. 1927. cf. Koseoo’s Leo tlie Tenth, n. 218,219, Lond. 1846 On the
following day he told his oollege-elass, ’Nisi toto corde dissentiatis a regno
papal), non potesfis assequi vestrarum animarum salutem.’ His treatise De
Captivitate Sabylonica Ecclesia, which was piohibited as early as Oct. 20, 1520
(De Wette, i. 517), shews that or the doctrine of the sacraments he had now
broken altogether from the Meiliasval Church.
3 •Oranes libri Papa>, Dferetum,
Deoretales, Sext., Clement., Extravagant., et BuJla novisbima Leonis X.; item
Summa Angelica [a work on casuistry], Chrysoprasus Eceii [a treatise on
predestination], et alia ejusdeiL, jutoris. Emseris et qu»dam alia,
qua1 adjeeta per alios sunt:’ Luthers Briefe, ed. De 'NYette, i 532.
4 The nearest approximation to it, so far
as the Saxon reformers ■were concerned, was at the diet of Batixbon
(1541): see the present writer’s Hist, of the Articles, pp 29, 30, 2nd edit.
* According to a statement of Capito (1536)
in Hottinger’s Hist. Eccl. sffic. xvi. pt. n. 207, the Swiss reformation sprang
ip more independently:
‘ Antequa'u
Lutherus in lucem <merserat, Zuinglius et ego inter nos pommunicavimus de Pontifice
aejiciendo, etiam dum ille vitarn degeret in Eremitorio. Xam ntrique ex Erasmi eonsuetudine et lectione Ima rum auctoriun
qualecumque judicium turn suboleseebat.’ In
Switzerland also it was the scandalous truffi<- in indulgences that fired
the soul of Zwin- gli (Ibid. part iii. p. 162): cf. De Ffilice, Hist, of the,
Protestants of France, Introd. pp. xxix., xxx. Lond. 1853.
in France, in
Belgium, and the Papal States themselves, as well as in the German provinces
extending from the Baltic to the Tyrol, proved that all things were now fully
ripe for some gigantic change; the Reformation
had arrived.
REFORMA*
TORY
EFFORTS.
CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE STATE
OF INTELLIGENCE AND PIETY.
MEANS OF
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Transitional
character of this period.
Enough lias been already urged to warrant us in saying
tliat this period in the lifetime of the Western Church is eminently one of
twilight ami transition. It may altogether be esteemed a sort of
border-province that unites the Mediaeval to the Modern history of Europe. Many
of the old traditions, whether social, civil or religious, had been rudely
shaken in the conflicts of an earlier date; but it was only in the fourteenth,
and still more the fifteenth century, that we behold them tottering to their fall,
or actually dethroned. Then also that romantic ardour,—the enthusiasm so
characteristic of the Middle Age, producing its phantastic modes of thought and
action, and diffusing over it an irresistible charm,—was more and more exhausted1.
Popes and preachers, for example, sought in vain to organize a fresh crusade:
their motives were no longer thought to be above suspicion, and accordingly,
when armies of the ‘paynim’ hovered on the confines of the Western Church
itself and made the potentates of Hungary and Poland tremble for their safety,
few could now be stirred to raise a hand in their behalf. The spir.t of
religious chivalry was dying, or at least had forfeited the strong predominance
it once possessed: it yielded to the cold, and often contemptuous, voice of
reason or the maxims of prudential statecraft; while the failure of the public
faith in the Roman system was tending to produce lukewarmness in the many, and
in some a rabid unbelief. A different but no less portentous revolution had
come over all the other faculties of man: he grew more con-
1
The chief exceptions will he found in Spain: cf. ahoye, p. 31S.
scions of Lis
freedom, of his personality, and of his power. The dim and circumscribed
horizon of his thoughts, which heretofore ho never dared to pass, and which his
fathers deemed impassable, was every day expanding on all sides. A prospect
wider, grander, and more full of hope seemed stretching at his feet.
The causes
that had been conspiring to produce this mighty change were various, and were
also acting through a multitude of independent channels. Some may be enumerated
thus:—the bold discussions of the later Schoolmen1, which, however
heartless, had not failed to sharpen and evolve the intellectual powers; the
restoration of a purer taste2, exemplified in literature by men like
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, and in art by Giotto, Michael Angelo,
and Raphael; the frequent intercourse8 between the Eastern and
Western Christians, more particularly in negociating a reunion of the Church;
the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (1453); the westward tlight of
scholars bearing with them Greek and other manuscripts; the spread of commerce;
the discovery of unknown and long-forgotten Continents, unveiling wider spheres
of intellectual enterprise; the cultivation of the modem languages, and the
invention (or at least extended use) of paper4 as the common vehicle
of writing. But- the mightiest agent was the press; typography, or printing by
the aid of moveable metallic types1, originating at the middle of
the fifteenth century. By means of it the ancient sources of instruction hail
been multiplied indefinitely; reading had become more easy and inviting, while
the rapid diminution thus effected in the price of
1
See above, pp. 351 iq.
? Miller’s
History philosophically illustrated, Bk. li. ch. son., xrr. Hallam [Lit. of
Europe, Pt. i. ch. i. fj 92) regards Petrarch an the restorer of polite letters
The reunimation of Arcl.itwture had preceded that of the other fine arts by
many centuries. (See Hallam, Europe during the Middle Ages, ch. n. pt. n.).
Indeed it was the renaissance of heathenizing influence in the age preceding
tho Beformation that led to the departure from the ancient types in Italy and
other countries of the West, and interfered with the development of Christian
architecture in the unreformed as well a» in the reformed communities.
3 i\ yon Schlegel, Phil, of Hist,try, pp.
38G, 3H7, ed. 1817.
4 See Hallam, Lit. of Europe, Pt i. ch. I.
gg 59 sq.
5 Ibid. ch. hi.
§ 19; Milltr, n. 410 sq. Tabular or block-printing
was
much older.
MEANS OF
GBACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Causes
of the change.
Printing
one of the most important.
MEANS OP
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Scholastic
institutions and their results.
books1
had made them more accessible to every grade of life. We may compute the
influence of the new invention by considering that in thirty years, from 1470
to 1500, more tliau ten thousand editions of books and pamphlets issued from
the press2.
The number of
these publications may be also taken as an index to the growth of schools and
other kindred institutions. It is true that as the monks degenerated3
many of the old establishments connected with religious houses were involved in
their decline; and the same, though in a less degree, is often visible among
the different ranks of Friars4: but meanwhile a considerable
compensation had been made in every part of Europe by the founding of colleges
and universities as well as minor seats of learning. Not a few indeed of these
were planted on the very site of convents which had been legally suppressed for
the purpose. At the time when Luther was engaged in giving lectures at
Wittenberg, as many as sixty-six universities were organized in different parts
of Europe, sixteen of them iu Germany itself5; and even in the
fourteenth century we know that such as then existed literally swarmed with
students'3. It is symptomatic of the influence exercised by
institutions of this class
1
The price was immediately diminished four-fifths: Hallam. Ibid,
§ 147.
' See the
statistics, Ibid. § 142. Morf than half of these appeared in Italy. The
editions of the Vulgate were 91. In England ail the books printed in this in
terra! amounted to 141.
3 See above, p. 343.
1
,U>ove, p. 345.
’ Alohler’s Schriften, etc. n. 6: Schrockh, xxx. G4 -127
6 It is said, but the statement is quite
incre'lible, that before the plague of 1348, no less than thirty thousand
students were congregated at Oxford in nearly four hundred seminaries. The
following is a portion of tht statement made by Ilichard, archbishop of Armagh,
an Oxford man, in Brown’s Fascic. u. 473, 474 ‘Item consequitur grave damnum in
clero, in hoc, quod jam in Studiis [i.e. the scholastic institutions] regni
Anglia propter talem substractionem a suis parentibus puerorum [i.«. their
absorption into the IL ndicanl orders], laici nbique retraliunt suoa filios ne
mittant eos ad Studium. quia potius eligunt eos facure cultores agrorum eos
Jiabendo quam sic in Studiis eos taliter amittere: et sic fit quod ubi in
Studio Oxoniensi adhur meo tempore erant triginta millia Ktudentium, non
reperiuntur sex millia his diebus; et major hnjus minu- tionis causa sive
occasio, pra:missa puerorum circumventio [i.e. by the Friars j a>stimatur:’
cf. Vaughan s Ii yclijfe, pp. 32, 33; and c,n the vast number of students who
seceded from Prague in the time of Huss, see above, p. 401, n. 5.
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that they
invariably produced the chief antagonists of Roman absolutism1;
Wycliffe, Huss, and others being numbered with the foremost academics of the
age5. In very many, doubtless, no desire of reformation was awakened
by the subtle exercises of the schools; and it is certain that no aim was
further from the thoughts8 of those who in the latter half of the
fifteenth century were loud in advocating a return to every class of pagan
models and were eagerly engaged in studying the aisthetics and philosophy of
Greece: yet even there we must remember that the critical faculty was
stimulated in a way unknown to former ages. Some at length were bent on turning
this new light directly to the Church. The copies of the Holy Scriptures and
the Earlier Fathers were sought out, collated, and iu certain cases printed,
more especially by scholars like Erasmus4, who were thus
unconsciously supplying food as well as armour to the champions of a later day.
Jlen needed little penetration to discern that Christianity, at least in its
ordinary manifestations, had receded far from its ideal; and although by some
these changes were explained on what has since been termed the theory of
development6, another class of minds0 would labour to
retrace their steps, in bringing back the creed and ritual of the Church into
more perfect harmony with those of Apostolic times.
' This, we
hare seen, was remarkably the rase in the model-nniversity of Paris: and
accordingly writers like (Japefigue («.<1. jl. 1(59) always regard it as
professing ‘ une th<?ologie Equivoque et un eatholicisme inixtc, osant
quelquefois la negation partielle de l’autorite du pape.’
a
Even (ierson, while deploring the abuses of the prriod, turned with comfort to
the thought that education might eventually uproot them: ‘ A putris videtur
incipienda Ecelesia) reformatio.’ Opp. n. 109, ed. Du Pin
3 See above, p. 35S: and cf. Jl’Crie’s Reformation
in Italy, pp. 12. sq.
4 See above, p. 361. It was indeed a
characteristic of the reforming party, that they encouraged learning and
carried with them the chief scholars of the time, at least in earlier stages of
the movement (Eoscoe, Life of Leo X., Is. 103,104, ed. 1816). Yet, on the other
hand, we must remember that the anti-reformation school was by no means
destitute of learning. For instance, the decree which condemned Luther as a
heretic was drawn and signed by the elegant pen of cardinal Sadoleti.
5 Such, for instance, was the way in which
Gerson reconciled himself to one prevailing doctrine of the age: see above, p.
372, n. 2.
6 This was the conviction of archbishop
Hermann of Cologne, among others: see his Simple and Religion* Consultation,
‘Epistle,’ A, iii. Loud. 1547.
E K
MEANS OP
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Study
of the Bible.
Continued
use of vei - nacular translations.
The growing
taste for purely biblical studies1 has been noted iu a former page.
That taste was chiefly though not altogether fostered by the anti-Roman
party,—in the Church itself2 by those who urged the need of reformation,
and still more by sectaries who justified their own abnormal acts by combating
the errors and abuses that had long been festering in Christendom at large. Nor
were the many absolutely destitute of sacred knowledge and of access to the
oracles of Cod. The blow5 which had been aimed at the vernacular
translations of the thirteenth century had ceased to operate, or was at least
evaded, in all quarters. Several, it is true, including the more gifted
ecclesiastics, looked upon those versions with an ill-concealed distrust*, and
some of the more acri- moinous partisans of Rome denounced them altogether6:
1
Above, p. 360.
1
e.g. by Nicholas de Cl«mcnges (in the De Studio Theologieo, as above, p. 328,
n. 4), who, after urging the study of the Fathers on the principle that they
are streams which bear us up directly to the fi.untain, has
remarked in reference to the Sacred Writings: ‘ Quoniam in his quaa Divina sunt
nihil debemus tomere dt-finire, n'si °x c&lestibus posxit oraculis
approbari; quas divinitus enuntiata de his, qua* scitu de Deo sunt necesaaria,
aut ad salutem opponuna, si diligenter investigarentur, nos sufficienter
in«truunt' (p. 476). Dr Afiendor. an Oxford man, who preached at the council of
Constance (1415), exhorted the prelates in particular to cultivate this study
(Lenfant, liv. iv. c. 36): end the reforming cardinal DAilly, in like maaner,
recommends it on the ground that ‘ipsum xundamentum Scclesiai’ is ‘ip-a Sacraa
Scriptura; veritas’ (in Brown s Fascic. n. 510). We see the eftect of the
rexival of letters in the following passage of Pico of Mirandola (quoted by
Ussher, Opp. xii. 366, ed.
Elrington): ‘Ad hanc notiiiam Divinorum capessendtun veteres th/’ologi omnes
exhortantur. Huic juniores, Innocentius, Joannes Gorson, alii^ue nonnulli
assidue monent !ncumbendum: et non modo his qui e,x officio ad id
negotii punt obnoxii, ut sacerdotes et clerici, sed omnibus cu'uscunquo grs
.las et ordinis extiterint.’
3 See above, p. 299. To the instances there
adduced, in note 2, it may be added that an English prose version of the Book
of Psalms and certain Canticles was made (eirc. 1320) bj William of Schorham,
and that another was contributed by Jtichard of Hampole (cf. above, p. 357, n
4), who added a brief commentary: see Preface to the Wycliffite Bibli-, p. v.
1 Even Gerson is to he reckoned in this
class. He desires (Opp. i. 105, ed. Du Pin) ‘prohioendam esse vulgurem
translationem liur.aum saerorum nostrie Bibliffc, prtrsertim extra muralitates
et historias,’ adding,
‘ clara-i
rationes ad hoc plurimas invenire facile est.’ His authority is urged by the
anti-reformation writer, Cochlasus, in the tract, ‘An expediat Laicis legere
novi Testamenti Ubms lingua vemacula,’ ed. 1533. The •Ormulum' (above, p. 297,
ri. 4) was received with jealousy and opposition see White’s Pref. p. lxxv.
Oxf. 1852.
6 See, for example, the offensive language
of Knvghtun (Wycliffe’s
yet in spite
of this occasional resistance, they could never be displaced. In England
numerous copies of the -Wyclifike Bibles1 were long cherished, even
as it seems by many who did not embrace the Lollard doctrines; and in all the
second half of the fifteenth century2 translations of the Scriptures
found a multitude of readers, in both Gei many and northern Italy, and some in
Spain itself.
We should
remember also that a larger fraction of the whole community were educated at
this period, having learned to write8 as well as read. The operation
of the Crusades had proved most favourable to the growth of civil liberty: they
had relaxed the trammels of the feudal system*. Artisans and traders had sprung
up on every side, and the inhabitants of towns, supplying the prolific germ of
the important middle-class, were far more numerous than in all the earlier
ages of the Church. Amid the humblest order of society, the peasants, where the
bulk appear to have been scarcely above the state of villenage, some scanty
tokens of amelioration and refinement5 were discernible. The powers
of thought hail been more commonly aroused, and, as the natural effect of such
awakening, the masses had grown conscious of their own importance.
antagonist),
above, p. 386, n. 1. In a” anti-Lollard song, printed by Eitson, it is said to
be 1 unkyndly for a knight’ to ‘bable the Bibel day and Light.’
1 See above, p. 385, and the Preface to the
Oxford edition, p. xx\iii. In the Constitutions of archbishop Arundel (Juhnson,
11. 466), the reading of such versions is prohibited, under pain of tho greater
excommunication, u t leant until they have been tormally authorized.
2 The numerous eilitions of the (xerman and
Italian Bibles have been mentioned above, p. 360: cf. Buckingham, Bible in the
Middle Ages, pp. 60 sq. Attempts wore made, however, to suppress all vernacular
translations, for instance, by the archbp. of Jlentz iu 14«6 (quoted in
Gieseler, v. § 146, p. 75, n. 14). In Spain the lovers of the Sacred Books
evaded the Inquisitor by translating portions of them into Castilian verse
{e.g. .lob, Psalms, Proverbs, and the Life of Christ, drawn from the Evangelists):
4. de Castro, Spanish Protestants, p. lxii., Lond. 1851. On the importance
attached to the vernacular dialects and to the general diffusion of the
Scriptures by the Waldenses, see Neander, ix. 565. The price of the Sacred
Books, however, would be long a serious bar to their progress in the lower
orders of society. Thus a copy of Wycliffe’s Bible, at the beginning of the
15th century, cost four marks and forty pence ( = £2. 16s. Hd. of present
money): Blunt’s Sketch of the Reformation. p. 69, 6th edit.
3 Hallam. Liter, of Europe, Pf. 1. ch. 1.
§§ 54 sq.
4 See Sir J. Stephen, On the History of
France, Lect. vt.
f History uf
England and France under the House of Lancaster, p. 10.
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MEANS or 01! ICE AKD ENoW- LEDGF.
Intelligence
more widely dift fustd.
MEANS OF
GRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Other
books of devotion and religious instruction.
They were
often most impatient of the yoke which both in secular and iu sacred matters
goaded them at every point and bowed them to the earth. The strength of such
convictions was peculiarly betrayed in all the fourteenth century, when it is
easy to observe the rapid growth of self-assertion, breaking out into political
discontent1.
Besides the
other tracts and ballads that were circulated for the gratifying of these
intellectual wauts, there was a constant issue of ‘religious’ publications.
Thus in England a vernacular book of devotion for the laity was furnished by
‘The PrymerV The authors or translators of religious poetry3 were
also very numerous, choosing, for example, as their subject, an affecting
passage in the life or sufferings of our blessed Lord, expounding Psalms or
Canticles, or not unfrequently embellishing the passion of some primitive or
mediaeval saint. A deep impression must also have been produced by tracts like
those contained in the i Pauper liusticus ’ or ‘ Poor Caitif,’ which were now disseminated
far and wide in English, with the hope of leading ‘ simple men and women of
good will the right way to heaven ‘' The same idea was exteu-
1
e.g. in England, as early at) 1275, it was found necessary to repress a number
of ballads and other pieces tending ‘to cause discord betwixt kin;' ar>d
people ’ (Warton, Engl. Poetry, 1.45, ed. 1840); and in the time of Wyeliffe
and i-ubsequently (see above, p. 384, n. 3) the spirit of disaffection shewed
itself in the most violent forms (of. the Preface to a Poem On the times of
Edw. II., ed. Percy Society, No. lxxxii.,
pp. vii. sq.).
1
Edited, with a preliminary Dissertation, and an Appendix of some other
vernacular forms of prayer, confession, &c., in Vol. ii. of Haskell’s Mommenta Ritualia. The
contents are: the Matins, and Hours ()f our Lady; the Evensong; the
Compline; the seven Psalm': ihe fifteen Psalms: the Litany (containing the germ
of the English Litany now in use); the Placebo, and Dirige (the Office of the
Dead); the Commenda tions; the Paternoster) the Ave Maria; the Creed; the Ten
Command' ments; the Seven deadly Bins. See the Contents of other copies of ‘
the Prymer,’ ib. pp. xl. sq.; Procter, Ilist, of the Prayer-IInok, pp. 12
sq.
J
The Cambridge University Library is rich in' this kind of literature. A
remarkable instance occurs in MS. Dd. I. 1, § 7, entitled Memorial?
Credentium,’ which is said to be ‘wreten in englisch tonge for lewid [lay] men,
that nought understand latyr ne frensch, and is drawn out of holi writte and of
holy doctors beforn this tyme.’ It contains an ar< - '.in: of the plagues of
Egypt and the giving of the law, expositions of the Ten (’ommundments, the
seven ueadly sins, penance, transubstantiation, the Lord’s prayer, the four
cardinal virtues, the seven sacraments, the sever, gifts of the Holy Gho<t,
the seven works of mercy, the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. The date is
about 1330.
* For an
account of it see Vaughan’s Wyeliffe, p. 533, new edit.
sively
adopted on the continent, especially1, as it would seem, by the new
order in which Thomas a Kempig had been reared. Indeed the unexampled
popularity of his own treatise ‘ On the Imitation of Christ’2 will
furnish a delightful proof that thousands of his fellow-men could find a
pleasure iu his simple and soul-stirring maxims,— maxims which, in spite of
their asceticism, are ever animated by the breath of genuine Christianity.
The sermons
preached at church on Sundays and saints’- days must have varied with the piety
and knowledge of the curate or the friar who supplied his place. In England
many of them in the fourteenth century were metricals, consisting,
as a general rule, of paraphrases on the Gospels throughout the year, enforced
by anecdotes or stories which the preacher borrowed from the Old and New
Testament, from Legends, and from other sources. Some of these productions are
both simple and pathetic; but the great majority are pointless, cold, and
nearly always full of puerilities. If we may judge from the severe remarks of
Gerson4 in his
Shirley
points out that it is not a vrork of Wycliffe, hut of a mendicant friar, on the
authority of bishop Peeock. Fasc. Zizan. xiii.
1
See Delprat (as above, p. 347, n. 5), pt • sq. The Mendicants opposed till-
practice of the ‘Common-Life Brothers,’ affirming ‘quod laici libros
Teutonicales habere non deberent, et sermones non nisi ad pupultun in ecclesia
fieri deberent.’ The chronicler, John Busch, in his De reformatione
Monasteriurum (as above, p. 343, n. i), u, 925 sq., did not justify the
translation of the ‘Canon’ (of the Mass), and of books which he thought 'altos
et divinos;’ yet he adds, ‘libros morales de vitiis et virtutibus, de
Incamatione, Vita, et Passione Christi, de vita et aancta conversatione et
martyrio sanctorum Apostolorum, etc.; houiiliax quoque et sermones Sanctorum,
ad emendationem vita1, murum discipli- nam, infemi timorem,
patriseque coelestis amorem provocantes, habere et quotidie legere cunctis doctis
et indoctis utilissimum est.’
1
Above, p. 348, n. 1. This work is said to have pone through 1800 editions:
Hallam’s Liter, of Europe, Pt. I. ch. n. § 63.
3 Thus in the volume of sacred poetry above
mentioned (p. 420, n. 3), there is a long series of metrical sermons belonging
to this class (pp. 48— ■ 402). They proceed, with two exceptions, in the
usual course from Advent onwards. Many other copies exist; e.g. one in the same
repository, Gg. v. 31, anti a third in the Ashmolean collection, No. 42. Such
also had been the Ormulum (ed. Gxon. 1852), a series of Homilies, composed in
metre without alliteration (early in the 13th century): cf. White’s Pref. pp.
lux., lxxi. A series of Expositions of the Dominical Gospels, in lioraanoe, is
preserved in the Camb. Univ. J1S. Gg. i. 1. fol. 135—261: their author was
Eobert de Grethum. Eor specimens of the English prose sermons in the following
century, see the Liber Fes- tivalis printed by Caxtou.
4 Lenfant,
Hist, du Concile de Constance, liv. vii. c. 8. Gerson
adds,
JIEAX8 OF
QRACE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Sermont.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Sacra
mental
system.
sermon before
the Council of Rheims in 1408, the office of preaching was now generally
disparaged; bishops having almost everywhere abandoned it to their
stipendiaries or to the vagrant friars. In the age anterior to the Reformation
it was often made a subject of complaint1, that preachers spent
their strength on empty subtleties, or even interlarded their discourses with
citations from the pagan authors rather than the Word of God. A better class
indeed always existed, such as we have sketched2 in Germany and
Bohemia, but the evidence compels us to infer that members of it were
comparatively few'
The
observations made already on the ritual and the sacramental system4
of the Church apply still further to
that there
was no greater rarity than to hear ‘good Gospel-preaching.’ ‘Seeds of
error," he continues, ‘are scattered abroad, and the people ate fed with
impertinent and Irivolous tales.’ Richard Ulverstone (above, p. 329, n. 2) in
like manner expresses a hope, that when abuses hsd been taken away the pontiff
would preach the Gospel himself, and would depute sound preachers to all parts
of Christendom: Ibid. c. 9. The language of John of Trittenheim, immediately
before the Reformation (circ. 1485), shows that this hope had not been
realized. After speaking of the secularity and vices of the clergy generally,
he adds, ‘Romai'E lingua scribere vel loqui nesciunt. vix in vulgari exponcre
Evangelia didicerunt. Quantos errores, fabulas et htereses iu Ecclesia
pratdicando populis enun- cient, quis nisi expertus credere posset!’ Jnstit.
vita sacerdotalis, c. 4: Opp. Jlogunt. 1605.
1 See the last reference, and other
passages in Gieseler, v. § 146, pp. 70—72, notes 2, 3. A like charge Lad been
brought against the preachers of an earlier date by Nicholas de Olemenges, in
his De studio Theolog. (as above, p. 328, n. 4). He writes, ‘Hodie phirimi
exercentur, qua- licet intellecmm utcunque acuant, nullo tamen igne succendunt
affectum, nullo alimento pascunt. sed frigiJum, torpentem, ariduin relinquunt-’
p. 476. Many ot the Sermones de. Tempore, the Strmonet de Sanctis, tho Scrmones
Quadragesimales, etc. of the period amply justify this comment. Immediately
before the time of Luther several mendicants adopted a sarcastic and
quasi-comic style of preaching, e.g. Geiler of Kaisersberg, Jlenot, a
Franciscan of Paris, Gabriel of Barletta, a Neapolitan: see, especially, ‘Der
Prediger Olivier Maillard,’ l>y C. Schmidt, in the Zeit- schrift fur die
histur. Theologie, 1856, pp. 489—542. Some preachers used to give a coarse flavour
to their discourses. This was thought to be especially allowable during the
Easter festival, when, according to a prevalent custom, the roughest jests were
tolerated even in the pulpit, to excite what was called the Easter laugh.
See above,
pp. 355 sq. and pp. 397 sq.
3 Even Bossuet allows that man} of the
preachers ‘made the basis' of piety to consist in those practices which are
only its accessories,’ and that they ‘did not speak of the trrace of Jesus
Christ as they ought to have done.’ Quoted in De Felice, Hist, of the
Protestants uf France, Introd. p. xvii. Lond. 1853.
4 Pp. 3U1-305.
the present
period. Much as individual writers1 called in question the
scholastic arguments on which that system now reposed, and much as others might
protest” against the notion that a sacrament can operate mechanically, or
without conditions on the part of the recipient, it is plain that Western
Christendom3 had, generally speaking, acquiesced in the conclusions
of the earlier Schoolmen; or, in other words, adopted the positions that were
afterwards fixed and stereotyped by the Council or Trent4. Almost
the only symptom of resistance, on the part of those who held the other
doctrines of the Church, related to communion in both kinds; but we have seen
that the Council of Constance6 strenuously adhered to the prevailing
usage, and at length, when some apparent relaxation had been made at Basel, the
11011-necessity of such communion (or the doctrine of ‘concomitance’) was quite
as strongly reaffirmed.
The worship
of the Virgin, which had been developed in preceding centuries to an appalling
height, was carried even higher by the sensuous and impassioned writers of the
present, period. She was invoked, not only as the queen of heaven, our
advocate, our mediatrix, and in some degree the moving cause of our redemption6,
but as the
1 e.g.
Durand de S. Pourpain (above, p, 352, n. 2), Wycliffe, Tri- alogux, lib. iv. c.
1 sq.
2 e.q. John Wessel (Luther’s prototyped, in
Ullmann’s Life 01 him (Hamb. 1834), pp. 322, 323.
3 The Eastern Church (cf. above, p. 301, n.
2) had also manifested a disposition to accept the Western view, at least the
representatives v.hom it sent to the council of Florence were committed to that
course; Mansi, xxxr, 1054 sq.
4 Hence the phrase ‘scholasticorum doctrine’
in the Engli-h Articles of 1552 as ‘ doctrina Eomanensium’ in the Articles of
15G2: see Hardwick’s HUt. of the Articles, pp. 304, 305, 2nd edit.
5 See above, p. 408. A treatise was
composed in the name of the council by Maurice of Prague (Lenfant, liv. vt. c.
19), in which tho chief weight of the argument is made to rest on the authority
of synods. The populace were easily reconciled to the withdrawal of the Cup,
especially when stories of -bleeding Hosts’ were circulated afresh: see
Gieseler, v. § 145, p. 63, n. 9, where Nicholas Cusanus (1451), as papal
legate, denounces the fabricators of this ‘miracle’ for their profaneness and
cupidity. In the MS. volume referred to above (p. 420, n. 3) there is a story
of an abbot who argued that ‘the bred in the awter is nut kynde- liche
[naturally ] Goddis body but a tofene thereof’ (p. 522). He is confuted by a
miracle, in which appeared ‘iu the awter a child liggingbeforn the prest,’
&c.
6 These expressions were used even by John
Huss, in 1114; see Lenfant, Concile de Const, liv. 1. c. 27.
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CORRUPTIONS
AKD ABUSES.
Worship
of tht Virgin.
all-powerful,
the single, and the all-prevailing intercessor \ High and low, the scholar and
the peasant, generally esteemed an ‘ Ave Maria’ as equivalent to a ‘ Pater Nos-
ter’2. It was therefore easy to predict that the hostility3
evoked by efforts which had long been seeking to exact belief in the immaculate
conception of the Virgin, had grown feebler every day.
Although the
spread of scholarship4 had frequently ex-
1 Instances occur, not only in poets like
Chaucer, whose Prtere Nostre Dame contains the line ‘Almighty and all merciable
queene,’ but also in the ilariale of an Italian Franciscan, Bemardhaue de
Bustis, on whose works see Wharton's Append, to Cave, ad an. 1480. One extract
(Part. xii. Sermo ii.) will suffice: ‘A tempore quo virgo
Maria eonoepit in utero Verbum Dei, quandam ut sic dicam jurisdictionem seu
auctori- tatem obtinuit in omni Spiritus Sancti processione temporali, ita ut
nvlla creatura aliquant a Deo obtineat gratiam vel virtutem, nisi secundum
Ipsius pia matrix dispensationem.' ‘In her the penitent beheld the Mother and
the Mediatrix, the loving parent and the potent intercessor, eager to bless as
she was all-powerful tu save.’ Buckingham, p. 255.
2 See examples in Gieseler, §145, p. 65, n.
13. It is painful to observe an archbishop of Canterbury (Sudbury) enjoining
his clergy (1377) to supplicate (‘devotissime exorent’) in one breath God, His
Mother, and the Saints: Wilkins, iii. 121.
Two new festivals were instituted about the same date (1372, 1389) in honour of
the Virgin, the former called Festun< Pmsentationis, the latter, 1'estum
Visitationis. Another indication of the blindness with which the worship of the
Virgin was now practised is supplied by the currency of the fable respecting a
miraculous transfer of her house Irom Palestine to Loretto: see Uieseler, v. §
145, pp. 64. 65, n. 12.
3 See above, p. 306. Thu way in which the
credit of St. Bernard and other writers was now xaved is indicated by the
following extract from Gabriel Biel, the schoolman (Oollectorium, lib. iii. distinct, iii. qutest. i. art. 2): ‘Auctoritas Ecclesi® major est
aactoritato cujuscunquo Sancti, saltern post c&nonicos Scriptores. ...Nec
propter hoc culpandus est D. Bemhardus, sed nec S. Thomas, S. Bonaventura,
carterique Doctores cum magno moderamine opposita opinantes, quoniam eorum
tempore hoc licuit, quoniam 'luila determinate vel Concilii vel Apostolic®
sedis facta fuit.’ The conciliar authority to which he alludes is that of the
sjnod of Basel (Mansi, xxix. 183); yet even the decree there issued, owing to
the quarrel^ of the council and the pope, was not regarded as a final settlement
of the question. The Dominicans still protested, and went so far as to charge
the advocates of the immaculate conception of the Virgin with the name of
heretics; see a bull of Sixtus IV. (1483) in the Canon Law (Extravagant!i
Gommun. lib. in. tit. xii. c 2).
4 Thus Gerson preached a striking sermon at
Constance oh the canonization of St Bridget (cf. above, p. 327, n. 7, and
Lenfant, liv. i. c. 70). The title is De Probatione Spirituum {Opp. r. 37 sq.).
Jacobellus, the Hussite (Lenfant, liv. it: c. 73), disparages without
absolutely rejecting some of the Legends; for instance, that of St Catharine of
Alexandria. Gobelinus Persona (circ. 1420), and after him Nicholas Clopper
(1472), were still more sceptical respecting her, although her name in some
places
was admitted
into the ‘Canon of the Mabs.’ See An Historical Inquiry
univ
oaf// - utgttizea oy iviicrusOTi ® .
cited men to
criticize the older Legends, and on more than one occasion to dispute the title
even of the favourite saints of Christendom, their worship, generally speaking,
had continued as before. They occupied the place of tutelar divinities1,
however much the holier class of Christians shrank from their complete
association 011 a level with the King of saints Himself. It was indeed a gross
exaggeration of the reverence paid to them in earlier times that stirred the
zeal of Wycliffe*. Not content with placing them in a subordinate position, he
impugned the custom of observing special festivals in honour of the saints:
but few if any members of the Church were now disposed to follow his example.
This
repugnance may have been increased in him by witnessing the multiplicity of
such observances; for it is remarkable that in the present period indications
of a wish to simplify the public ritual frequently occur and are betrayed by
earnest men of very different schools of thought. They felt that true devotion
ran the risk of being suffocated3, and the memory of Christ Himself
obscured, by
respecting
her, by the present writer, among the Publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society (1849).
1 Gerson admits (Opp. in. 947) that some Christian*
whom he terms ‘simpletons’ worshipped the very images of the saints, but he
excuses this impiety on the ground of their invincible ignorance, or because
they intend to do what the Church does in the honour she bestows on images.
Huss, though censuring such worship, did not object to certain marks of outward
reverence (‘ licet possint homines genua flectere, yrare, ofterre, candelas
ponere,’ etc.): Opp. 11. 813.
2 Trialoflus, lib. nr. c. 30. The
‘reforming’ party at Constance (including D’Ailly aud Gerson) were in favour
of abolishing all festivals ‘ not instituted by the old law and the decrees of
the Fathers, especially the inferior holy-davs,’ on tho ground that they were
generally devoted to drunkenness and every species of excess: Lenfant. liv. rn.
c. 62. A catalogue of the feasts which were rigorously observed by tho Church
of England iu 1362, will be found in Wilkins, 11. 560 (cf. Johnson’s Notes, 11.
346, 428, 429). The first in order is the Lord’s Day (‘ah hora diei sabbati
vespertina inchoandum, non ante horam ipsam prajveniendum, ne JudaicEB
professionis participes videamur’). The festival of Trinity Sunday, or at least
its universal observance on the octave of Whitsunday, also dates from thn
present period: see Guerike, Manual of Antiquities, ed. Morrison, p.
161.
3 See the remarkable extract from .Tacobus
de Paradiso, a Carthusian (d. 1465) in Gieseler, § 145, vol. v. p. 59, n. 1,
and the whole of another of his treatises, De Septem Statibus Ecclesia, in
Brown’s Fateic. 11. 102— 112. The same point is urged by Nicholas de
Cl^menges in his Be novit celebritatibus non imtituendit (Opp. pp. 143
sq., ed. Lydius). Matthias of Janov, in like manner, 111 the Be Sacerdotum
et Monuchorum abuntuui-
WonMp
of the saints.
Reaction
against the ritualism uf the ayt.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES.
Penance.
a complexity
of rites that were too often altogether unintelligible to their flocks. These
rites they also felt were celebrated only for filthy lucre by a multitude of
hypocritical and sacrilegious priests1. The mind of Western
Christendom had thus been predisposed for the avenging outbreak of the
sixteenth century, which shewed its vehemence in nothing so distinctly as in
the abolishing of ‘ dark and dumb ceremonies,’—prelates not uncommonly included
in the number.
But a darker
blot, and one that was almost ingrained into tho constitution of the Mediaeval
Church, is found in the prevailing theory of penance. At the basis of it lay
the thought, that, notwithstanding the forgiveness of sins, a heavy debt is
still remaining to be paid by the offender as a precondition to his ultimate
acceptance with the Lord. The liquidation of this debt, according to the
Schoolmen, is advanced not only by the self-denial and the personal afflictions
of the sinner, but ou his removal hence may be facilitated more and more
through various acts of piety which others undertake in his behalf2.
Among
tione (as above, p. 309, n. 1), c. 60, complained as* follows: ‘
Multiplicata sunt ad hfflc mandata et ceremomm liominura infinitas, et ut
tantum essent tremenda et tantoe auctoritatis, quemadmodum Dei numini praa-
cepta, pntdicantur et docentur et cum magna districtione imjieranrur.’ The
gentler influence of the ‘Friends of God’ (above, p. 356) was tending to the
same result. Even the papal champion (cf. above, p. 325, n. 2), Alvar us
Pelagius (De Planctu EccUs'u?, lib. ii. c. 5), is forced to acknowledge:
‘Nostra autem Ecclesia plena et superplena est altaribuo, missis, et
sacrificiis.’
1
e.g. Alvarus Pelagius, as in the previous note: ‘Tot enim hodis dicuntur miss*
quasi quaistuamp, vel consuetudinarias vel ad complacen tiam, vel ad scelera
cooperienda, vel propriam iustificationtun, quod apud populum vel clerum
sacrosanctum Corpus Domini jam vilescit.’ And Jacobus de Paradiso (in Brown, ii. 110), after inveighing against a number
of superstitions, adds, ‘ Alfaria aut ecclesias iu conventiculis locorum, sub
ape miracutorum aut sacrorum erigentes propter turpem quantum.’ The conclusion
of the paragraph is very striking: ‘Et quis omnia enarrare ac enumerare
suffiiiat. quibus Ecclesia modemis temporibus cernitur deformata? Putamusne
hasc omnia aliquando posse reformariV cf. the observations Concerning the
Service, of the. Church and Of Ceremonies, prefixed to the English
Prayer-Book.
2 Gabriel Biel, Expositio Missiz (see
above, p. 354, n. 1), Lect. lvii. states the question thus: ‘Cum enim defuncti
implere non possint opus, pro quo dantur indulgenti®, dum illud pro eis fit ab
alio, jam opus alterius sujfragatur eis, ut possint consequi indulgentias, non
minus quam si ipsi per se opus illud implevissent.' So far was this idea of
substitution carried, that some of the Franciscans thought every member of
their own Order safe, expecting that St Francis would descend annually and
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rosoft ®
the more
intelligent1 it was asserted that relief is only possible to those
who have already manifested true repentance and are truly justified before
their death. The soul which has not in the present life been made a subject of
this holy change will pass immediately into the prisons of tho lost, where it
can profit neither by its own compunction nor by the suffrages of other men.
But in the popular discourses of the age we look in vain for such
discrimination in the handling of these awful subjects; penance is too
generally confounded with repentance, while the commutation and vicarious
fulfilment of it are at least assumed to be available for all, however hardened
or corrupt, and whether numbered with the living or with the dead2.
A penance was
awarded either publicly in case of flagrant and notorious sin, or privately in
the confessional; its nature and degree depending on the customs of the
diocese, or 011 the will of the spiritual adviser3. But the work of
penitence was prosecuted by the several classes of delinquents in a very
different spirit. Some, exceeding the most harsh requirements of the Church,
endeavoured to allay the consciousness of guilt by various methods of
self-torture, stimulated4 now, as heretofore, by apprehensions, that
the end of all things was at hand, particularly by the frequent wars, by
famine, pestilence,
all -who had
died that year in tlie liahit of the Order. See the account in Eccard. Corpus.
Hist. Med. jSvi, n. 1101.
1 Cf. above, pp. 307, 308.
3 e.g. a, plenary indulgence ia said to be
effectual ‘pro vivis pt defunc- tis,’ and itK common definition ia ‘omnium
peccatorum et punarum. quax quis in purgatorio deberet pati, retnissio. ’
Although the metrical preacher (Camb. Univ. MSS., Dd. I. p. 861) condemns
praying for those who are in hell on the ground that it is ‘unskilful’ and
'unworthy to God to hear,’ he admits that such prayer might be answered.
3 In the MS. volume, above quoted, p. 515,
three ‘degrees of penance’ are enumerated: (1) ‘ beforn the busschop in the
begvnnyng of teutons, in the cathedral chirche,’ (2) ‘ dryuvng about the
sinner, about the chirche or market, or other pilgrimage, with tapres and
candelis,’ &o.., (3) ‘beforn the prest whanne a man schryueth him of his synne
and taketh his penaunce therfor.'
4 Guerike, Kiri'hengesch. i. 820, 5th edit.
A more healthy form of piety had shewn itself in others of this period, many of
both sexes and of all rank* devoting at least an hour every day ‘ Minimum
humano generi impensum beneficium. Christi
Passionem, meditari ac repetere, ut exinde Deo grati mala mundi ferant
patientius et virtutes operentui facilius.’
See Neander,
ix. p. 595.
Atretic
view of it.
or other
national calamities, and by the desolating inroads of the Turk. By none had
this conception of the penitential discipline been carried to so terrible a
length as by the ‘Flagellants1,’ who, although eventually excluded
from the Church, were faithful to its real principles, and in respect of their
unnatural austerity, had won the admiration* of both scholars and the more
enthusiastic of the crowd. The gloom, however, which had been diffused in
every quarter by the rigorous theory of penance was now dissipated, partly
through the wider spread of knowledge, partly by a wish to substitute less
onerous kinds of ‘satisfaction’ for the discipline exacted iu the ancient
canons of the Church. A favourite remedy was that of vowing pilgrimages to the
shrine of some preeminent or wonder-working saint. The crowd of devotees that
travelled to and fro on errands of this nature was prodigiously3
enlarged; while it is obvious that the Years of Jubilee4, as often
as they revolved, would keep
1 See above, p. 374: Gieseler, in. § 84, p.
378, B. 21; and § 123, pp 227 -232: Jlilman, Latin Christianity, iv. pp.
396,397. Two outbreaks of this religious phrenzy occurred; in 1260, when the
great pilgrimage of Flagellants started from Perugia: and in 134K and
following years, on the breaking out of the ‘Black Death:’ the practice lasted
into the 15th century, until it was disapproved by the Council of Constance.
2 On the reasons which influenced the
council of Constance to deal gently with this sect, see Lenfant, liv. t. c. 50—55. It found a patron in the
Spanish worthy Vincente Ferrer (above, p. 319, u. 3).
s
e. g. the number of royal licences granted in the first seven months 'of 1415,
to authorize the exportation of English pilgrims to the shrine of St Iago of
Compostella in Spain (cf. above, p. 200, n. 2) was 2200: see the statistics in
Turner, Middle Apes, hi. 138, n.
28. Of domestic pilgrimages which stood in high repute in all the fifteenth
century, the must popular was that to Becket’s shrine at Canterbury, to
Winifrith’s Well, and to the image of Our Lady of Walsingham. On the continent
multitudes resorted to Loretto, Einsiedeln, the Seamless Coat of Treves,
&c. &c.
4 Cf. above, p. 310. Clement, in 1343, had
fixed the recurrence of the Jubilee at the end of fifty years (see the
Extravagantes Communes, lib. v. tit. 9, c. 2), esteeming it an act of amnesty
to all who were ‘vere poenitentes et confessi.’ Urban VI., however, in 1389,
shortened the period to thirty-three years; but died soon afterwards. It was
the sight of the enormities connected with the jubilee of Boniface IX. in the
following year that roused the indignation of Theodoric of Niem (see his
oft-quoted treatise Be Schismate, lib. i. c. 08). He declares that the papal
quasstors realized immense sums of money by the sale of indulgences, ‘quia
omnia peccata etiam sine pcenite.ntia ipsis confitentibus rrl-ixarunt.’ This
conduct of his agents was, however, soon repudiated by Boniface himself:
Kaynald. ad an. 1390, § 2.
Self-indulgent
view of it.
' alivo the
public prepossessions by attracting an enthusiastic stream of pilgrims out of
all the countries of the west to worship at the ‘ tomb of the Apostles.’
One of the
chief baits by which the multitude were captivated at this period was the grant
of fresh indulgences (remission of unfinished penance). But these grants could
also be procured iu other instances by money-pay- ments, aud without submitting
to the dangers and discomforts of a lengthened tour. The ‘pardoner1’
had in the middle of the fourteenth century become a recognized official of the
Roman pontiffs, and as such he introduced himself at every turn among the
numerous chapmen of the age. The merit of his wares may have been sometimes
questioned2, while the purchaser had no explicit warrant of their
universal applicability,—that is, in favour of the dead as well as of the
living. But this point was definitely ruled iu the affirmative3 by
Sixtus IV. (1477): and during all
1
See Chaucer’s well-known picture (or, in come respects, caricature) of the •
pardoner.’ He also dealt in charms and relics, palming on the pimple many bones
ol which the genuineness was more Than questionable: cf. the Secreta
Sacerdotum of Henry of Langenstein ,{quoted by Gieseler, iv. § 113, p. 200, n.
14), who, after speaking of the sale of precious relics, adds ‘forto est os
alicujus asini vel damnati.’ Many timid efforts were made to pul down
unlicensed traffickers, nml those quajstors who had exceeded their commission:
ct. above, p. 345, n. 1, and Lenfant, Concile de Constance, liv. vii. c. 61.
a
The affirmative side was generally taken (above, p. 309, n. 3), but Gerson,
Sermo II. pro defunctii, still denies • indulgentiar. acquiri posse pro
mortuis.’ Gabriel Biel, in like manner, had once doubted (Lect. lvi.) ‘utrum
indulgentiffi prosint defunetis;’ but, cf. above, p. 426, n. 2. It was, in
fact, esteemed a heresy (in 1479) to advocate the other side, ‘Romanum
pontificem purgaturii pcenam remittere non posse:’ Ravnaid. ad an. 1479, § 32.
s
See his Declaratio, with many other facts relating to this question, in Amort,
De origin«, progrt-^u, valore, et fructu lndulgentiarum, n. 292, August.
Vindel. 1735. llis argument is the following: ‘Quoniam orationes et eleemosyna)
valent tanquam suifragia animahns impensa, nos, quibus plenitudo potestatis ex
alto est attriimta, de thesauri > niii-
i versalis
Ecclesire, qui ex Christi sanctorumque Ejus meritis constat, nobis commisso,
auxilium et suffrag’um ar.'mabus purgatorii afferre cupientes supradictam
concesnimus indulgentiam, ita tamen. ut fideles ipsi pro eisdem animabus
suffragium durent, quod ipste defunctorum animat per be nequeant
a>limplere,’ When it was demanded why the pope, who claimed a kind of ownership
in this treasury of merits, did not make more copious grants to Christians
generally, the answer was, that as the minister of God he must dispense the
good things of the Church with judgment and moderation (‘discrete et rum
moderamine’) Luther revived this question in the 82nd of his theses on
indulgences, as above, p. 411, n. 3.
eoRKCt-
TION’S AND
ABUSES.
Pardons
from the p ope.
CORRUPTIONS
AND ABUSES,
Controversy
respecting their efficacy.
Reaction
against the whole system of Church penance;
the next
half-century the traffic in indulgences had growi into the most gigantic evil
of the times. An inexhausti ble supply of pardons1, unrestrained Ly
explanations as tr their distinctive import and effects, were sold by vagram
commissaries2, chiefly friars, like so many articles of dress or
food : ‘ redemption for the sins ’ not only of the buyer but of families and
even districts, being advertised foi sale by public auction, and at last made
purchaseable ir advance.
How many and
how tangled were the roots of this impiety is gathered from a judgment of the
theologica faculty3 at Paris in 1518. Those doctors, it is true, hat
found themselves unable to concur in a prevailing notion that all souls
indifferently escape from purgatory at the instant when a contribution of ten
‘testons’ sterling has been made on their behalf, to funds collected for a
charitable object, or for instituting fresh crusades: yet on the other hand
their judgment clearly recognized the vicious principle on which the system of
indulgences was reared They leave the full adjudication of the matter in the
hands of God, who it is argued will assuredly accept (though no( according to a
stated law or graduated tariff) whatsoevei is disbursed, in aid of living or
departed souls, from the superfluous treasure of the Church.
It was
however quite impossible that thoughtful mer could look upon this doctrine of
vicarious pardons, and the mpious traffic it produced, with aught like
reverence or respect. Too many poured contempt upon the minis-
1
Gabriel Biel accounts for their prodigious increase, part!y from th( fact that
charity having waxed (told, 1 nec satisfactiones condigna? injun
guntur, nec modice injuncts" perficiuntur.’ Exposit. Misses, Lect. lvii
- See, for
‘nstance, Luther’s theses, § 21 sq., as above, p. 411, n. 3 and cf. De Felice,
Hist, of the. Protestants in France, Tntrod. p. xix, The diplomata with which
Tetzel was furnished for sale were printei forms* with blank spaces for the
names of the purchasers, which hi filled up with his own hand, as occasion
required. A copy of one ii preserved in Gerdes, Scrinium Antiquarian (documents
relating to th( Reformation), I. 73, Groning. 1748. For the modern traffic in
indul gences at Alcala, see L’Espagne Pithoretgue, by De Cuendias and Dt Tereal,
pp. 265—268.
3 Ibid. p. 113: cf. Smedley’s Reformed
Religion in France, I. 5 sq., Lond. 1832. The Horbonne had in ii83 rejected the
proposition that al] souls in purgatory are ‘ de jurisdictione papas,’ and that
if he wish he cai evacuate the whole region: gee D’Argentre, Collcctio
Judiciorum de Novii Efroribut, i. part ii. 305.
terial office
generally when they were told that a certificate of absolution could be
purchased at their pleasure. Others of a graver mood, like Huss1, or
John of Wessel2, viewed the subject differently; they brought it to
the touchstone of antiquity and grew persuaded that indulgences, at least as
they were sanctioned by the popes and schoolmen, were not able to abide the
test. A way had thus been gradually prepared for Luther and his colleagues; and
as soon as the half-hearted pontiff, Leo X., was urged to reaffirm the modern
theory3,—declaring that the temporal effects of sin may be remitted
to the living and the dead alike, by means of the indulgences which he had been
empowered to distribute as the almoner of Christ and of the saints,—the friar
of Wittenberg restrained himself no longer. He rushed forward to denounce an
antichristian and demoralizing traffic, and at first he carried with him nearly
all the better spirits of the age4. For Luther had betrayed 110 wish
to criticize the general teaching of the Church, to meddle with the continuity
of her existence, to subvert her ancient ritual, or disparage her collective
voice. The ground which he had occupied was moral rather than dogmatic, lie had
sought to reinvigorate
1
Above, p. 403.
* See the whole of his Adversus Tndulgentias
Disputatio, in Walch, Moniment. Medii ^Svi, Fasc. 1.. pp. Ill —156. While
so-anting that the pope was able to commute the penalty which human law may
have in any case attached to sin, he absolutely denies the scripturalness of
the pretension to relax a penalty imposed by God Himself (‘ non est in sacro
Oanone seriptum’). Durand de S. Pouri;ain, In Sentent. lib. iv.,
distinct, xy., quasst. 3, had lung befoie suggested that tbe
Bible said nothing of indulgences expressly (‘expresse’), and that Ambrose,
Hilary, Augustine, and Jerome were all equally silent : while Gabriel Biel (himself
an advocate of indulgences) allows in Lect. lvu.,
([noted above, that, before the time of Gregory the Great, ‘modicns vel
nullus fuit usus indulgentiarum. ’
3 The document is printed in Loscher, as
above, 11. 493. After defining that the ‘ culpa' which attached to sin was
graciously forgiven through the ‘ sacrament of penance,’ he proceeded to
discuss the ‘ tem- poraliti pcena.’ The following clause is unmistakeable: ‘Ac
propterea omnes tam vivos qnam defunctos, qui veraciter omnes indulgentias
hujusmodi consecuti fuerint, a tanta temporali poena secundum ]>hinam justitiam
pro peccatis suis actualibus debita liberari, quanta concensus et acquinta
indulgentuic d'quivah't.'
* Even F. von Rchlegel (Phil, of Ilibtory,
pp. 400, 401, Lond. 1S47) admits that the strong necessity of some regeneration
was then universally felt, and that Luther seemed to numbers the very man for
the work.
more
especially in the time of Luther.
OOEKl’P-
TIONS AND
ABUSES.
in man the
consciousness of personal responsibility, while he insisted, with an emphasis
unequalled bince the time of St Augustine, on the need of individual fellowship
with Christ.
If it appear
that in the following stages of the movement which he headed some of his
disciples pushed reforming principles to revolutionary lengths; if his iniquitous
extrusion from the Western Church became the signal for igniting
long-extinguished controversies, and the origin of feuds that vibrated in every
corner of the Christian fold, those evils, it should never be forgotten, are
less chargeable on the impetuosity of Luther than on the fierce antagonism of
Rome. The pride, the worldliness, the arbitrary and exclusive temper of the
papal court, as well as the unholy craft by which it undermined the liberty and
threatened to eclipse the light of Christendom, had long been tending more than
other causes to provoke inquiry and necessitate the crisis that ensued. All
projects of reform, suggested either from within or from without, had
consequently grown distasteful to the Roman pontiffs : it was so with hardly an
exception in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries; and in the sixteenth
we shall fii d them concentrating all their virulence to blast alike the
Foreign and the English Reformations in the bud.
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