FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER

XIV

BONIFACE VIII AND THE BABYLONISH

CAPTIVITY

 

“WE declare, we say, we define and pronounce that to every human creature it is absolutely necessary to salvation to be subject to the Roman pontiff”. So wrote Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303). He was born of a noble family of Anagni, studied canon law, visited France, and on coming to England was besieged in the Tower of London by the rebellious earl of Gloucester and rescued by the future King Edward I. He gained great influence as a cardinal, forced the weak and ascetic Pope Celestine V to abdicate, and was himself crowned Pope with much pomp in January 1295. He had a passionate desire, to restore the papacy to the proud position which it had held in the days of Innocent III, to unite the European states under his own authority, and to rescue the Holy Land. He pursued these ends with indefatigable energy and stated his opinions with the harsh dialectic of a professional canonist. The result was to involve the papacy in serious disputes with other powers and to pave the way for future disasters.

It was a matter of money which, not for the last time, kindled the quarrel between Rome and the states beyond the Alps. In 1296, by the bull Clericis laicos, he forbade the levying of taxes on the clergy, taxes which had been disguised under such names as 'gifts', 'aids', and 'subsidies'. This immediately produced a conflict with Philip the Fair of France, which continued in spite of the fact that in two subsequent letters Boniface softened his claim and offered an olive branch to France by canonizing Louis IX. He met with more success in dealing with the German king, Adolph of Nassau, whose position was too unstable to justify resistance. And he refused to recognize Albert I of Austria until Albert admitted the right of the Pope alone to bestow the imperial crown. But these triumphs were more than balanced by failures in England and France. Boniface in 1300 sent a papal envoy to Edward I, the conqueror of Scotland, with a bull denying his right to the lordship of Scotland and declaring that it belonged to the holy see. Edward, who was a man of deep religious feeling, laid the Pope’s bull before the barons and requested them to send their own reply. This reply declared that the kings of England ought not to answer to any judge concerning their rights. And Edward himself rejected an article promoted by Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the effect that the clergy should not be taxed without the consent of the Pope.

In the meantime Boniface had the consolation of witnessing the Jubilee which he had proclaimed for the year 1300. It is thus briefly described by a recent Jesuit historian: “On the publication of the bull granting the remission of all their sins to the pilgrims who should betake themselves to Rome, an enormous crowd of the faithful of all countries flowed thither. It is estimated that every day of the Jubilee the number of strangers present in the Eternal City amounted to 200,000. A contemporary affirms, perhaps with some exaggeration, that he had seen in the basilica of St. Paul two clerks occupied day and night in collecting with shovels the money which rained down at the foot of the altar of the apostle”. Encouraged by the spiritual and financial support derived from the Jubilee, Boniface entered upon a second conflict with Philip the Fair. He promoted to the see of Pamiers, a see erected without consulting the king, Bernard Saisset, a Languedocian who had no love for the French monarch; and he added to his indiscretion by sending Saisset as his legate to Paris. The legate's behavior was such that he was soon placed under arrest. Boniface gave vent to his indignation, and on December the 5th, 1301, issued his celebrated bull Ausculta fili in which he claims that God has put him over kings and their kingdoms, and convokes the bishops of France to a council at Rome. He compares Philip his 'son' to the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears. The partisans of Philip replied by circulating a forged bull which exaggerated the claims made in the authentic document, and the king convoked the three orders of the realm to meet at Paris. The Estates General therefore met for the first time in the cathedral church of Notre-Dame on April the 10th, 1302, and assured Philip of their unanimous support.

Boniface held the council at Rome, and on November the 8th published the bull Unam Sanctam, which has been quoted in the opening words of this chapter. The bull is the most absolute assertion of the power of the Pope which was ever formulated in the Middle Ages. Near the time of the publication of this bull, William de Nogaret became chancellor of France and precipitated events by his audacious proposal to seize the Pope in Italy, and then bring him to France to be condemned by a national council. Philip secured the help of the Colonna family, a great family at feud with the family of the Pope, and Sciarra Colonna and a large band of soldiers made their way to Anagni, where the Pope was then residing. They appeared in the city at dawn, and, after a day spent in pillage, invaded the palace, and found the Pope lying on his bed and clasping a cross. After three days of confinement and humiliation he was rescued by a crowd of his friends from Anagni and its neighborhood. He was taken to Rome, where he was kept in the Vatican by the Orsini until his death, a month after his capture. Arrogant and avaricious, he was at least energetic and courageous, and might have accomplished much for the Church if he had not been, in the words of Villani, “a man more worldly than became his station”. A fresco of Giotto represents him publishing the indulgence of 1300, and Dante, in his Divine Comedy, places Boniface VIII in hell with the title of “Prince of the New Pharisees”, who fought not with Saracens and Jews but with Christian people.

Benedict XI (1303-1304), the successor of Boniface VIII, reigned only for a few months. He released Philip from the excommunication which he had incurred, softened the decisions laid down in the bull Clericis laicos, and exhorted the Christian world to undertake a crusade. The Colonna and Orsini families by their continual feuds made Rome insecure for any Pope, and in fact fifteen pontiffs had already lived almost entirely away from their capital. The papacy therefore sought another home, far removed from the ancient seat of spiritual sovereignty, and found this home at the very gates of France.

 

On the river Rhone, in what is now the south-east of France, wind-swept and somewhat unhealthy, lies the city of Avignon.

It is remarkable for its massive medieval ramparts, a huge somber palace, and an exquisite Gothic mausoleum in a Romanesque cathedral church. That mausoleum is the tomb of Pope John XXII, and the ramparts and the palace were built by popes in the fourteenth century. For Avignon was chosen in 1308 by Clement V as his papal residence, and it remained the papal seat until 1377, when Pope Gregory XI migrated to Rome. Then two antipopes, Clement VII and Benedict XIII, resided there till the latter was expelled in 1408. But the town remained in the possession of the popes till the French Revolution.

Pope Clement V (Pope from 1305 to 1314), a Gascon with a Gascon's love of ostentation, was by birth a subject of the King of England, and by force of circumstances an instrument of the King of France. He was well educated and he was affable. But he was too weak in health and character to resist the implacable ambition of Philip the Fair, who was determined to strengthen the French monarchy and to put the papacy under his yoke. The Pope was to be employed to destroy the powerful order of the Templars, whose wealth Philip coveted and whose influence he feared. And among the first acts of the new Pope was the creation of nine French cardinals, a token to the world that the papacy, so fiercely independent under the late Pope Boniface VIII, had entered into the bondage which men called the “Babylonish Captivity”.

The Templars, an order which was considered to be the bulwark of Christianity against the unbelievers, were at the zenith of their power. This power did not only rest upon the reverence felt for the Cross whose cause they championed, or upon the fear inspired by their swords. The Templars had become the bankers and financiers of Europe. In their strong­holds gold and silver were kept safely, and it was they who made trade with the East possible and profitable. From Ireland to Armenia they were a force to be reckoned with, and nowhere more than in France. Philip the Fair, a persecutor of Jewish and Lombard money-lenders, coveted the money of the Templars, and he also hoped to make the different military orders amalgamate and acknowledge one master, and that master a Frenchman. He craftily took advantage of the vulgar gossip which put the worst interpretation upon the pride and isolation of the Templars. For human nature is apt to suspect what it does not understand, and it was reported that within the fortresses of the Templars appalling profanities and the vilest vices were commonly practiced. By the king's command all the Templars in France were arrested on October the 13th, 1307.

The Pope was at first indignant and claimed that the matter should be dealt with by his own tribunal. Philip pretended to submit, but the inquisitors, under the direction of his confessor, continued to examine the arrested Templars. Many of them under torture confessed abominable crimes, and the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, admitted that he had denied Christ and had spat upon the Cross. Clement V countenanced the torture of the accused, but reserved his final judgment for a Council held at Vienne in 1311.

The Council of Vienne, summoned by the bull Alma Mater and attended by numerous bishops from all parts of western Europe, including Scotland and Ireland, opened on October the 16th, 1311. The position of Clement V was critical and his conduct was criminal. Philip the Fair was near at hand at Lyons, demanding the immediate suppression of the Order. On the other hand many of the bishops said that the Order could not be judicially suppressed until the knights had been allowed to defend themselves. Seven Templars offered themselves as deputies for the defence, and Clement had them cast into prison. In March 1312 Philip came to Vienne and sat on the Pope's right hand while the pontiff preached against the Templars. On March the 22nd Clement 'provisionally', and not de jure or by way of a definite sentence, abolished the Order, although it had never been formally pronounced guilty. In May, to the vexation of Philip, he transferred the goods of the Order to the Knights of St. John, and then reserved to himself the case of the Grand Master and other high officers of the Order. The Council closed on the same day. It had been merely a pretext for giving some appearance of justice to the abolition of the Templars; and such trivialities as the proposed crusade and the reform of the Church, both of them on the nominal programme of the Council, had been quickly expedited and dismissed.

Then for a time the fate of the Templars is veiled in silence. But the silence is broken by the record of the tragic end of Jacques de Molay and of Gaufrid de Charnay, Preceptor of Normandy. In March 1314 they were brought to a scaffold erected in front of Notre-Dame, Paris. The Pope had committed the right of judging the accused to three cardinals, and their sentence was read before the assembled multitude. It was a sentence to lifelong imprisonment. Suddenly and unexpectedly the two Templars cried out that they were not guilty of the action of which they were accused, but only guilty of betraying the Order with a view to saving their own lives; the Order itself was pure. The astonished cardinals postponed their decision to the next day. But the king's council at once condemned the accused to death. Towards dusk a pile of faggots was erected on the little island in the Seine called Tile des Juifs. Facing death heroically and protesting their innocence, the Templars were burnt with their eyes towards Notre-Dame, and the light of the flames played on the walls of the king's palace. The next month died Pope Clement V.

 

After much dispute among the cardinals, Jacques Duèse of Cahors, an elderly Frenchman, was elected Pope, taking the name of John XXII (1316-1334). He was an eminent jurist and a hard worker, and his pontificate tested his qualities to the utmost. There were two candidates for the German throne, Louis IV of Bavaria and Frederic III of Austria. The former defeated his rival in 1322, but was forbidden by the Pope to discharge the functions of government until his election to the throne was confirmed by the papal chair. Louis IV replied by appealing from the Pope to a General Council and treating the Pope as one who had forfeited his chair by heresy. The alleged heresy consisted in reversing the decisions of former popes who had favored the Franciscans, and in condemning the view that Christ and his apostles had no personal or even common property. Far more extreme and visionary beliefs were held by the so-called 'Spirituals' among the Franciscans. Excommunicated by the Pope for their schismatical tendencies, the Spirituals joined other discontented elements in the Church, and rallied round Louis in opposition to the Pope.

Among these opponents of John XXII was the celebrated English Franciscan philosopher William of Occam, whose teaching subordinated the Pope to a general council, and a general council to Scripture and the whole body of the faithful. William of Occam went to Pisa in 1328 and there conferred with two learned doctors of the University of Paris, Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun. Some four years previously these two men had produced the adventurous treatise called Defensor Pacis. This book, though neither very lucid nor entirely logical, had quickly captured the attention of the learned. Its theories were novel and audacious, and it might be called not so much a defender of the peace as a declaration of war. It treated the medieval prerogatives of the papacy as fictitious and the papacy as a human institution, leaving the sovereign pontiff only the rank of president in an episcopal republic. It denied any coercive authority of the hierarchy, even over clerics, unless this authority was conceded by the people, and it affirmed that the whole body of the faithful, or their delegate the head of the State, ought to choose persons to be admitted to holy orders, appoint to benefices, and authorize religious institutions. Democratic in its essence, the Defensor Path could be forged into a weapon for the promotion of an aggressive imperialism, and John XXII very naturally condemned, the authors of this troublesome treatise.

In 1327 Louis IV marched on Rome, and on January the 17th, 1328, was crowned in St. Peter's by Sciarra Colonna. He caused the clergy and people to depose John XXII, and he selected in his stead a 'Spiritual' Franciscan, who took the name of Nicolas V. Louis placed the 'fisherman's ring' on the finger of Nicolas, who was enthroned in St. Peter's ten days later. Nicolas then crowned Louis. Quick failure followed this quick success. The hapless antipope went to Avignon, and, with a halter round his neck, begged for absolution. The absolution was granted, and the penitent died in 1333 within the walls of the papal palace.

The next year John XXII was laid to rest in the cathedral of Avignon. He had caused great irritation by the indefatigable zeal with which he replenished the papal treasury. Among his fiscal measures was the extension of the practice of demanding annates—that is, the first year's income received by persons freshly appointed to a benefice. Dante echoed the general sentiments of the people when he denounced 'greedy wolves in sheep's clothing' who 'range wide o'er all the pastures'. But it is only fair to add that John XXII did not devote to luxury the fruits of his talent in finance. Though he lavished gifts upon his brothers and sisters, his nephews and nieces, and his fellow townsmen of Cahors, he lived simply and worked hard, he promoted learning, and encouraged missionary enterprise in Asia.

The two next popes, Benedict XII (1334-1342) and Clement VI (1342-1352), were men of very diverse characters, the former the son of a French miller, the latter the son of a French lord. Benedict XII was a Cistercian with a strong sense of duty, and he took great pains to secure reforms in the religious orders and good appointments to ecclesiastical offices. Realizing that Rome could never be his home, he began to erect the papal palace at Avignon. He condemned the doctrine of John XXII to the effect that the souls of the righteous will not enjoy the beatific vision of God until after the last judgment. Benedict's pontificate is also remarkable for his relations with the Armenians. The Crusades had made Latin Christendom better acquainted with the ancient Church of Armenia, and the Dominicans distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring that Church into union with Rome. Many Armenian monks were induced to accept papal supremacy. Like other converts they were inclined to show more zeal than knowledge, and one John of Kerni pronounced the orders and even the baptism of the Armenian Church to be invalid. Another Armenian embarrassed the Pope by presenting to him a list of one hundred and seventeen errors and superstitions held by his compatriots. Vigorous protests and recriminations were the result, and the cause of reunion was injured. In spite of these obstacles, the worship of the national Church of Armenia contains distinct traces of Western influence to this day. A stranger proof of intercourse between East and West is the fact that in 1338 Pope Benedict XII received sixteen delegates of the Khan of Tartary.

In dealing with Louis of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XII was at first no less conciliatory than John XXII had been unbending. This provoked the jealousies of the Kings of France and Naples, who exerted themselves to prejudice the Pope against Louis. Three embassies came from Louis to Avignon with no definite result; and the consequence was that Louis made an alliance, both defensive and offensive, with Edward III of England. Weary of internal strife, and sickened by the inaction of the Pope, the Germans took their own affairs into their own hands. At Rense, on July the 16th, 1338, all the prince-electors of the Empire, with the exception of the King of Bohemia, swore to defend the liberties of the Empire. They declared that the emperor's authority came immediately from God alone, and that the prince whom the electors had lawfully elected needed no further confirmation for his title of king and emperor. These principles were upheld soon afterwards by the Diet of Frankfurt, a city which was under the Pope's interdict from 1329 to 1349. His position having been strengthened in Germany, Louis deserted Edward III and allied himself with the French. He entered into negotiations with the new Pope, Clement VI, who demanded such severe conditions of peace that a rupture followed and a bull deprived him of his empire. He died in 1347 after the electors had chosen his friend Charles, King of Bohemia, as emperor (Charles IV).

 

Clement VI (1342-1352) was a Benedictine and a theologian. He boasted that his predecessors had not known how to be popes, and he considered that a successor of St. Peter ought to live like a prince. He was a munificent patron of the arts, and the pontifical palace was resplendent with rich decorations and sumptuous apparel. He bought cloth of gold from Damascus, silk from Tuscany, woolen cloth from Flanders, and linen from Paris; and in the season for wearing furs he had in his wardrobe cloaks and caps made of more than a thousand ermine skins.

In his methods of taxation he displayed an unlimited rapacity, a rapacity which did not exceed the demands which were made upon him by greedy adventurers, clerical and lay. But he wished to be clement in deed as well as in name. In the awful plague of 1347 he was generous in relieving the distressed. He opposed the cruel diversion of harrying the Jews and condemned the fanaticism of the Flagellants who scourged themselves for the glory of God. He made Casimir of Poland do penance for committing adultery. He founded the University of Prague and he tried to stop the Hundred Years War between France and England. The most formidable danger that he had to face was in the Eternal City itself.

In 1343 he gave the position of apostolic notary to Nicola or Cola di Rienzi. This man, the eloquent and vigorous son of a tavern-keeper, took the title of tribune and liberator of the Roman Republic in 1347. Clever in interpreting the aspirations of the multitude, he spoke with passion of the glory and the servitude of Rome, published new laws, was given unlimited authority, and organized the police and the collection of taxes. Intoxicated with success, he cited the two claimants of the imperial throne, Louis the Bavarian and Charles of Bohemia, to appear before him, and offended the Pope by proposing to set up a new Roman empire. His power rapidly declined, the Pope denounced him as a pagan and a heretic; he fled to Charles, now practically emperor, and Charles delivered him up to Clement VI, who imprisoned him at Avignon.

 

Innocent VI (1352-1362), a Frenchman born in Limousin, came to the throne when Rome was torn by anarchy. Hoping to restore order, he gave to Rienzi the rank of senator and sent him to Rome as a companion of the able Spanish cardinal, Albornoz, Vicar-General of the States of the Church. Albornoz was active, prudent, and diplomatic; but Rienzi, after a brief revival of his former popularity, became detested for his cruelty, and was killed by the mob in 1354.

Innocent VI was a man of high character. He reduced the luxury of the papal court, prohibited pluralities, and tried to make the higher clergy reside in their benefices and sees. He protested against the famous Golden Bull of Charles IV, promulgated in 1356, which recognized and strengthened the power of the electors who chose the German kings, and which ignored all claims of the popes to confirm their election, or to nominate any one to administer the Empire during a vacancy.

Urban V (1362-1370), a French Benedictine of blameless character with a zeal for education, had a brief but memorable reign. He was crowned at Avignon. At the entreaties of Peter de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, and the Carmelite monk Peter Thomas, he proclaimed a new crusade. The chief enemies of Christendom were no longer the Arabs, but the Mongols, who devastated Asia, and the Ottoman Turks, who threatened the whole of south-eastern Europe. The Crusaders were able for a time to occupy Alexandria in 1365, but in the very same year the Turks entered the strong city of Adrianople, which they keep at the present day. And before another generation had passed they had fought with the Serbians in the grim battle of Kossovo, where the Serbians, without being wholly vanquished, lost so heavily that their subjugation in the next century was inevitable. Though the crusade effected little, the Pope had the satisfaction of receiving into communion with Rome the Greek emperor John Palaeologus, who gained very little worldly advantage in return for his spiritual migration.

Before this event took place the Pope, to the consternation of the French court, had left Avignon for Rome, where no pope had stayed for sixty years. His return was hailed with delight, and the poet Petrarch celebrated it in the words of the psalmist, “When Israel came out of Egypt and the house of Jacob from among a strange people”. The Pope was visited by the Emperor Charles IV and crowned the Empress Elizabeth, thus cementing papal friendship with the Empire of the West as well as the Empire of the East. But life in Rome was so troubled that he returned to Avignon and died there on his rough bed and in his Benedictine habit.

The revolt against the papacy, which was ripening in England during the days of Urban V, will be mentioned later.

 

Gregory XI (1370-1378), a learned man of noble origin, gentle and irresolute except in opposing heresy, was the last of the French popes. He failed to reconcile England and France, or to help the Greeks against the Turks. He had more success in Italy, which was torn with strife after the death of Cardinal Albornoz. Florence, Perugia, and Milan rebelled against him. Florence, a centre of commerce, art, and letters, with a popula­tion of at least 100,000, replied to the Pope's interdict by levying a tax on Church property and ordering the clergy to disregard the Pope's action. Gregory then sent an army of Bretons to invade the territory of the Florentine republic. The Bretons were commanded by Cardinal Robert of Geneva, afterwards the antipope Clement VII. Then, in 1376, St. Catherine of Siena went to Avignon as a peacemaker. Peace was not immediately attained, but the humble and saintly woman, who some years earlier had become a member of the third order of St. Dominic, did more than anyone else to induce the Pope to heal the strife between warring nations and to go back to Rome. Knowing the weakness of his health and aware of other perils, Gregory began his journey. He arrived in Rome on January the 17th, 1377, and died there in March. His opposition to the teaching of Wycliffe will be considered later.

A general survey of the French period of the papacy, the period of the Babylonish Captivity, will leave upon the mind of the careful student the impression that the popes were not as black as they have been painted. They made some real protests on the side of right, some efforts on behalf of peace in Europe and Christian missions in Asia. But their propensity for accumulating money and their subservience to the interests of France were obvious. The popes lost prestige in Italy, Germany, and England, and their attempt to centralize all authority in themselves provoked jurists, philosophers, and preachers to ally themselves with the new social forces which threatened the Church with a reformation from without instead of a reformation from within.

Some further details regarding the papal method of governing the Church may now be considered.

 

In the middle of the thirteenth century we find that the popes had begun to 'provide' persons for ecclesiastical offices and benefices without regarding the rights of patrons, and Clement V claimed the right to appoint all bishops instead of leaving the election of bishops in the hands of the cathedral chapters. The popes disposed of benefices to men of their own choosing before those benefices became vacant, and in 1344 Clement VI claimed the full right to dispose of all churches, dignities, offices, and ecclesiastical benefices. The promotion of non-resident foreigners to English benefices as a reward for their services to the popes was somewhat exasperating to Englishmen, but their exasperation was increased by the Pope encouraging men to resort to his own legal courts rather than to the courts of their own country. And when they knew that the large subsidies levied in England passed from the papal chests at Avignon into the hands of the French army their indignation found an outlet in the English Parliament.

The English Parliament, in 1343, forbade absolutely any one to bring into England letters, briefs, and 'provisions' contrary to the rights of the king or his subjects, and those who broke the law were to be brought before the king's courts. Clement VI concealed his vexation and by delay and diplomacy calmed the rising storm. Hostilities soon broke out afresh. In 1346 King Edward III confiscated the benefices held by aliens. And in 1351 Parliament passed the Statute of Provisors. It openly charged the Pope of Rome with encroaching upon the rights of others, affirmed that the free election of bishops and other dignitaries should take place in accordance with ancient practice, and that if certain patrons and the bishop unduly delayed in appointing to a benefice the king should have the right to appoint. Edward III seems not to have used this law, but to have kept it as a weapon in reserve. In 1353 the attack on Rome was renewed in the Statute of Praemunire (from praemonere, to pre-admonish), which prohibits, under pain of the loss of all property and all civil rights, the transference of cases from the king's court to any foreign court. A further step was taken in 1366, in the time of Urban V. He had demanded the payment of the yearly tribute of one thousand marks which had been promised by King John, a tribute which was thirty-three years in arrears. This impolitic request was answered by the Lords and Commons of England, who, after consulting with the clergy, declared that Edward III was under no obligations to pay what John had promised without the consent of the nation. They also threatened to oppose the Pope if he should take canonical proceedings against the king. Such was the soil on which the doctrines of Wycliffe grew and spread. Gregory XI renewed the papal claims, but made a few concessions, and Edward III promised not to put in force the obnoxious statutes. They met each other half-way, and they agreed upon an armistice. But the fact remains that in the reign of Edward III the English King and Parliament checked the encroachments of Rome. And this was emphasized before the close of the century by the statute of Richard II, which claimed for the king's court his old rights in the matter of ecclesiastical patronage and forbade under heavy penalties the purchase of bulls from Rome (1392).

Nevertheless, it must be remembered that England, as a part of a united Latin Christendom, shared the common law, the Ius Commune, of canons and decretals which had the same force throughout that Christian commonwealth. It would be a mistake to suppose that the Roman Canon Law was only current so far as it was incorporated into the native English Canon Law. Archbishop Peckham's Constitution against pluralities shows us that in the thirteenth century the English Spiritualty could venture to legislate contrary to a recent decretal. But Peckham humbly excused himself to the Pope for his conduct, and in the fifteenth century Lyndwood, the great English authority on Canon Law, holds definitely that though the archbishop may supplement papal legislation, he has no power to derogate from or abrogate the laws made by his superior, whether Pope or legate.