FROM JUSTINIAN TO LUTHER

XVII

SCHISMS AND REFORMS

 

WE want a Roman, or anyhow an Italian. So shouted the Roman mob, in their own dialect, as they surged over the piazza in front of the basilica of St. Peter, the ancient basilica of the Emperor Constantine. It was April the 7th, 1378, only a few days after the death of Pope Gregory XI, and this was the cry that greeted the cardinals as they arrived at the Vatican. The next day the door of the Vatican itself was forced by some of the bolder spirits from among the crowd. Their wish was fulfilled. The cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, who took the name of Urban VI. Having elected him, they accepted his pontifical acts as valid and his personal favors as their due.

Hard, sincere, and tactless to the verge of brutality, the new Italian Pope exasperated the cardinals by his rough efforts in the direction of reform. He persisted in spite of the warnings of St. Catherine of Siena, and the cardinals one by one pleaded ill-health and asked leave of absence. They speedily met at Anagni and conveniently remembered that though they had really elected the Pope, they had not acted freely but under the pressure of fear, fear of the Roman people. So on August the 9th, 1378, they proclaimed that the election of Urban VI was null and void, and that the apostolic see was vacant. The next month they elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva, who took the name of Clement VII and went to reside at Avignon. In the meantime Urban remained in Rome, appointed twenty-six new cardinals and excommunicated his rival. A double papacy was the result. Thus was consummated the Great Schism which divided Western Christendom for some fifty years. On the side of Clement VII were France, Scotland, Spain, and southern Italy; on the side of Urban VI were England, Hungary, Poland, the greater part of Germany, and the Scandinavian countries.

Clement VII was young, aristocratic, ardent. He was fired with the hope of taking Rome from his rival. In this hope he drew to his side Louis, Duke of Anjou, offering him as a bait a new kingdom to be carved out of the States of the Church.

Military expeditions in Italy were the result, expeditions which cost Louis his life and Clement vast sums of money. Costly wars, together with costly embassies and princely habits, did little to strengthen his authority, and they led men to blame him for the schism which he declined to discuss before a General Council. In the meantime Urban VI, by his unscrupulous nepotism and violent self-will, undermined his position in Rome. He deposed Joanna of Naples and gave her kingdom to Charles of Durazzo, who rewarded him by interning him at Nocera. Urban escaped to Genoa and put to death several cardinals whom he suspected of conspiring against him.

Could either of these popes be the real father of the faithful, the vice-regent of Jesus Christ? Even cardinals were puzzled. And some of the most serious and learned men, like Peter d'Ailly and John Gerson, asked whether the subordination of the Church to the Pope was not something contingent upon historical circumstances only, and whether authority in religion did not rest upon a wider and more solid basis, the infallibility of the whole body of the faithful represented in a Council. So we find two different means proposed for extricating the Church from its difficulties. The first was to compel one pope, or both popes, to resign. The second was to call a Council.

It was while such questions were agitating men's minds, and the two rival popes were belabouring each other 'with apostolic blows and knocks', that there died John Wycliffe (1320-1384). Master of 'le Balliol halle', Oxford, in 136o, he became a Doctor of Theology in 1372, and in 1374 he went to Bruges to discuss with the Pope's envoys some differences about ecclesiastical appointments. On his return to England he disputed the justice of the Pope's demand for the tribute promised by King John. He urged that the king held his dominion directly from Christ and that the Pope had no claim to it. He expounded his doctrine of the Church in numerous writings, including two treatises, the de Ecclesi a Christi and the Dialogus sive speculum ecclesiae militantis. He upheld St. Augustine's doctrine of predestination, and on that doctrine attempted to build a great theory of the Church, the most elaborate theory then opposed to the Catholic doctrine. The Church is the society of the predestined of which Christ is the head, the Pope is only the head of the Church militant if he is predestined. It is possible to know whether a man is predestined by his obedience to the law of God, and the law of God is to be found in the Gospel. Hence it is of the utmost necessity that all, both priests and laymen, should study the Bible. According to his later and more developed doctrine, it would be better for the Church to have no Pope, for the Pope is the vicar not of Christ but of Antichrist. He is 'the man of sin'. He ought to have no temporal power, for Christ has given all temporal power to Caesar. Ordination confers no indelible character: a priest who is fallen into mortal sin cannot dispense true sacraments. He also taught that a verbal confession of sins should be optional, and he opposed indulgences. He denounced the cultus of the saints, though not the cultus of the Blessed Virgin—'Worship we Jesus and Mary with all our might'. He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation while strongly asserting the presence of Christ's body in the sacrament and blaming those who held that a priest might be excused from saying Mass, which God himself commanded, and not excused from saying Mattins and Evensong. His most fixed principles were his belief in nationalism and regal supremacy, his opposition to ecclesiastical endowments, and, above all, his belief in the supreme authority of the Bible.

Pope Gregory XI was much disturbed by the teaching of Wycliffe, and at this point becomes of considerable importance for the history of religion in England. In the spring of 1377 he issued three bulls which were directed against Wycliffe's teaching. One accuses him of holding the errors of Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, and calls upon the Chancellor and the University of Oxford to arrest the heretic. A second summons him to appear in person before the Pope. A third directs the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to examine him themselves. These contradictory bulls were probably intended to allow the English prelates to take any means of suppressing Wycliffe which they considered most efficient. They were also a deliberate attempt, an attempt which failed, to introduce into England the papal inquisition. The influence which Wycliffe had acquired is proved by the fact that some time after the bulls must have arrived in England, he was formally consulted by the king's advisers and by Parliament as to whether they might lawfully prevent money going out of the kingdom to foreign and non-resident holders of English benefices. He replied boldly in the affirmative. When Parliament was dissolved, Oxford received the papal bull. Wycliffe was then merely required to confine himself to Black Hall. The theologians, on the whole, took his part. The Chancellor and doctors affirmed that his conclusions were true, although they 'sounded ill in the ears of their hearers', a phrase in which moderation seems to be tempered with ambiguity.

To Wycliffe and his friends must be given the credit of first publishing, between 1380 and 1384, the whole Bible in the English tongue. The Anglo-Saxon Gospels were no longer intelligible and the Anglo-French version of the Bible was read by few, for Anglo-French was dying. By appealing to the Bible and by inspiring other men to translate it, Wycliffe performed a work of great and permanent importance. It may be doubted whether he had the saint's hatred of sin and passion for souls. He had nothing of the mystical and lyrical spirit of his older contemporary, Richard Rolle, another Yorkshireman, who translated the Psalms and found 'joy in God'. Wycliffe's polemic was too negative and his ecclesiastical polity was too Erastian. But he was as fearless as he was earnest, he was eminent in learning and filled with sympathy for the oppressed. In the England of his age he stands alone as theologian, preacher, and politician, and after his age his influence was a force in England and beyond.

The Hussite movement in Bohemia was a result of Wycliffe's influence in Oxford.

 

In the fourteenth century Bohemia, to some extent in consequence of the infiltration of German settlers, made a very marked progress in political and intellectual development. This development was aided by King Charles (1346-1378) and his son Wenzel (1378-1419). In 1344 Prague was made an archbishopric and separated from Mainz, and four years later the University of Prague was founded. An increased patriotism and a desire to promote reforms in the Church accompanied this new state of affairs. Some tentative efforts had been made earlier, but the movement definitely began about 1401, when Wycliffe's theological works were brought to Prague by Jerome of Prague, who had been a student in Oxford. His philosophical works had been studied earlier. Both Wycliffe's philosophy and his theology stirred the mind of John Hus, a Master of Arts, who preached in Czech in the Bethlehem chapel at Prague and was confessor of Queen Sophia of Bohemia. He soon became an intellectual leader of the Czechs. His archbishop, Sbynko, appointed him with others to investigate a pretended miracle at Wilsnack. He proved that the miracle was a fraud, and pilgrimages to Wilsnack were forbidden by the archbishop. But about 1408 clouds began to thicken over the head of Hus. Wenzel altered the constitution of the university, and the German members withdrew from it and founded the University of Leipzig. The University of Prague was now purely Slav, and Hus was its rector. But the archbishop, drawn into the quarrel between the rival claimants to the papal throne, and in obedience to a papal bull, burnt Wycliffe's books, and in 1411 put Hus under a ban. Nevertheless he became reconciled to Hus. It was Pope John XXIII who made the real break between Rome and the Hussite party. In 1412 he caused an indulgence to be preached in Bohemia for a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, who was a powerful supporter of the rival Pope, Gregory XII. Hus and his friend Jerome of Prague wrote and spoke against this indulgence with such effect that the populace fastened the Pope's bull on the breast of a prostitute and led her through the city in contempt of Rome, 'the mother of harlots'. Hus and his fol­lowers were then excommunicated and every place in which he resided was put under an interdict. He left Prague and lived with various noble patrons, writing vigorously in Latin and Czech.

 

The death of Pope Urban VI, in 1389, was followed by that of Clement VII in 1394. In the see of Rome Urban was followed by Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and then Gregory XII, who resigned in 1415. The first was poorly educated but a man of good character, except in his propensity for favoring his family and selling offices. Innocent VII had a wide knowledge of canon and civil law. In 1404 he issued a summons for the meeting of a General Council. It was hardly his fault that the Council did not meet. His nephew murdered certain prominent Romans and thereby so infuriated the people that the Pope had to flee to Viterbo and did not receive the submission of his subjects until a short time before his death. Gregory XII, a weak old man who had been Latin patriarch of Constantinople, was elected on condition that if the antipope at Avignon should resign, he should do the same and thereby end the schism.

But the antipope at Avignon was Benedict XIII, who remained inflexibly opposed to the Roman popes. He was an Aragonese, dignified, astute, and energetic. His claims were defended by persons whom Rome regards as models of holiness, such as St. Vincent Ferrer, the missionary, St. Colette, the reformer of a Franciscan religious order, and the Blessed Peter of Luxemburg, an ascetic young cardinal at whose tomb the people of Avignon prayed and sought for miracles. Two Councils held at Paris insisted that Benedict XIII should resign, and in 1398 a third Council detached France from his obedience. Western Christianity was now divided into three branches, the party of Rome, the party of Avignon, and the party of France, which dispensed with the papacy and maintained that as the Pope had only received his power in order to edify the Church, he ought not to be obeyed when he destroyed it. Benedict, however, promised in 1404 that he would abdicate if his rival died or abdicated, and for a time secured obedience in France. His rival, Boniface IX, died soon afterwards, but Benedict XIII gripped his tiara with the same tenacity as before. His falsehood, and the heavy taxes which he levied in France, caused a fourth Council to be held at Paris in 1406. He was denounced as a perjurer and a schismatic, the doctrine that a pope is subject to the Church grew more and more popular, and a bull from Benedict XIII was torn in pieces by the University of Paris.

In the meantime the cardinals of both parties felt it their duty to grasp the helm of the Church. With the approval of the Universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna they determined to convoke a General Council, holding that the Church must have a natural and divine right to find within itself the means of reconstituting its unity. The result was the opening of a Council at Pisa in March 1409. It was convoked by the cardinals alone in spite of the formal opposition of both popes, Benedict XIII and Gregory XII. Scotland, Spain, and parts of Germany and Italy were unrepresented at the Council. The two popes were both deposed as heretics, and under the influence of Cardinal Balthazar Cossa a third pope was chosen. He took the name of Alexander V, but died the next year, urging upon the cardinals the duty of concord. They then elected Balthazar Cossa himself, who took the name of John XXIII. The sincere Christian might well ask, 'Where is the Vicar of Christ?' If he were a Frenchman he would have had to reply to himself that in the thirty-one years from 1378 to 1409 the Vicar of Christ had for two short periods been at Avignon, that for two other short periods he had been nowhere, and that he was now to be found at Pisa. The marvel is, not that there was so much rebellion against Christian law and order, but that so much fervent Christian piety survived.

As for John XXIII, it was notorious that he was no model of a Christian pontiff, and the two other popes could not be expected to efface themselves at his command. Let all three abdicate, was the cry of the wise and far-sighted d'Ailly. So John was obliged to appeal to the Emperor Sigismund for help, and to consent to his proposal to summon a General Council. The Council met on November the 1st, 1414, at Constance. The party of reform was led by d'Ailly, Gerson, who was the delegate of the University of Paris, and Zabarella, legate of John XXIII, all illustrious, pious, and imbued with the conviction that a Council has higher authority than a pope. They soon came into conflict with John through their unwillingness to ratify the deposition of his two rivals, as decreed at Pisa, an action which might seem to question the plenary authority of the Pisan Council. John fled to Schaffhausen in disguise and thus left the field clear for the Council to assert its own authority. It did so in the vital words, maintained by many in the communion of Rome until 187o: “The Council of Constance, legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit, forming a General Council and representing the Catholic Church Militant, holds its authority immediately from Christ, and every one, of whatever state or dignity, even the papal, is bound to obey it in what concerns the faith, the extirpation of schism, and the reformation of the Church in its head and in its members”.

Pope John XXIII had departed from Constance a few days before this memorable decision had been formulated. The two other members of the so-called “abominable trinity” wanted to retain their office for some time longer. But Gregory XII, the Roman Pope, resigned in July 1415, and in 1417 Benedict XIII was deposed and retired to Spain. In November 1417 the Council elected a new Pope, Otto Colonna, who took the name of Martin V. The Council continued its sittings until April 1418. During this time there appeared to be considerable danger of the papal monarchy being replaced by a kind of intellectual republic, for not only the popes but also the bishops were thrown into the shade by theologians from the leading universities. Seven decrees of reform were promulgated, and con­cordats made with the Germans, the English, and the three Latin nations

 

The name of the Council of Constance is forever blackened by its treatment of John Hus.

Bohemia was seething with agitation against the papacy, and the Emperor Sigismund summoned Hus to attend the Council, promising him a safe-conduct. Hus reached Constance on November the 3rd, 1414, and was thrown into prison three weeks later. Sigismund was told that, as Hus was arraigned as a heretic before a General Council, it was beyond the authority of the civil power to protect him. Hus was imprisoned for seven months and frequently examined as to his opinions. He steadily repudiated the heretical propositions which had been extracted from Wycliffe's writings and had already been condemned by the University of Prague. He behaved with gentleness and courage. His trial lasted three days, and judgment was pronounced against him in Constance cathedral July the 6th, 1415. A bishop preached on Rom. VI. 6 and, addressing Sigismund, said, “By destroying this heretic thou shalt obtain an undying name to all ensuing generations”. Seven bishops dressed Hus in priestly vestments, of which they then stripped him. They put on him a tall hat painted with devils and said, “We give thy soul to the devil”. Hus replied, “I commend it into the hands of our Saviour Jesus Christ”. He was burnt the same day. His friend Jerome of Prague suffered at the stake with equal courage on May the 30th, 1416.

It cannot be doubted that Hus died as a martyr both to Slavdom and to reform. German national feeling was enraged by his devotion to Bohemian interests and his opposition to the philosophy which was then in vogue among the Germans. And on the other hand the papal party were indignant at his opposition to indulgences and his teaching that originally the Bishop of Rome was no more than other bishops, and that Christ is the only head of His Church. He upheld the doctrine of transubstantiation and was inclined to favor the practice of communion in one kind. Like the French Waldensians, he did not hold that the sacraments were invalid if administered by an unworthy priest. Though a less subtle theologian than Wycliffe he was more safe, and he deserves far more admiration than most of the reformers of the next century.

 

After the death of Hus the Bohemian reformers became divided into two parties. The first was that of the Taborites, a violent and democratic party which opposed all peace with Rome. The second was that of the Calixtines, a more aristocratic party led by Rokyczan of Prague. They declared that they would be satisfied with four reforms, one of which was the restoration of the chalice (calix) to the laity. The Council of Basel, in 1433, granted these reforms, though with certain restrictions, and the majority of the Calixtines then became reconciled with Rome. They became known as the Utraquists, because they received the Eucharist in both kinds (sub utraque specie).

The later history of the Hussites is extremely complicated and interwoven with that of the Waldensians and other religious sects. They were involved in internecine wars, and the Taborites were heavily defeated by the Utraquists at Lipan in 1434. King George Podjebrad (d. 1471) and King Wladislaw II were both in favor of Church unity, and for some time the Utraquist Church and that of the more distinctly Latin rite existed side by side. Many others, including Rokyczan, now Archbishop-elect of Prague (d. 1471), were not satisfied with such a compromise, and were in favor of a separation of Church and State. They were led by a layman, Peter of Chelcic, and about 1453 called themselves 'The Union of Brethren' (Unitas fratrum) or 'The Bohemian Brethren'. They were allowed by Podjebrad to settle in a deserted village, Kunwald, in the barony of Senftenberg, and found a teacher in Michael of Bradacz, the local priest. In 1467, at a synod held at Lhotka, they definitely separated from the national Church, and Michael was consecrated bishop by a Waldensian bishop named Stephen. For some time their faith and practice seem to have been essentially Catholic. But a younger, less Catholic party arose under the leadership of Luke of Prague, and in 1494 a synod at Reichenau rejected the authority of Peter of Chelcic and adopted a more Protestant position, making the Bible their only standard and affirming a merely symbolic doctrine of the Eucharist. In spite of their divisions they spread rapidly. Early in the sixteenth century they possessed hundreds of churches in Bohemia and Moravia. On the appearance of Luther they approached him with a view to union. He objected to the value which they attached to episcopacy and celibacy, and also to their denial of the Real Presence. They objected to his one-sided view of justification and his antinomian idea of freedom. The two parties at last came to an agreement in 1542, and the 'Bohemian' or 'Moravian', Brethren became gradually infected with Lutheran views, and even with those of the Calvinists. Their literary achievements were remarkable, and their translation of the Bible into Czech was almost as influential in shaping that language as Luther's translation was in influencing the language of Germany. The persecution of the Moravians, which was one of the results of the Counter-Reformation, and their revival in the eighteenth century, fall outside the scope of the present volume.

According to the decisions reached at Constance, a General Council should have met in 1423. This was not possible, but such a Council met at Basel in December 1431. It was occupied with a prolonged theological struggle with the new Pope, Eugenius IV (1431-1447). He attempted to dissolve the Council; but the Fathers refused to be dissolved, renewed the decrees of Constance as to the supremacy of a General Council, and passed several practical reforms. At the end of 1433 the Pope gave way; he annulled his previous dissolution and formally recognized the Council of Basel as a General Council. Differences broke out anew, and in 1439 the Council made the mistake of electing an antipope, Felix V. The latter gained very little support outside Savoy. He soon abdicated, and he died with a reputation for his piety. He was the last antipope. Before Eugenius was deposed and supplanted he had ordered the transference of the Council to Ferrara. His followers met there early in 1438 and concerned themselves with the urgent question of reunion with the Greek Church, Greeks and Latins keenly discussing the points of difference, especially the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed. The next year their deliberations were continued at the celebrated Council of Florence, where the walls of division between the two Churches were apparently broken.

In the train of the Greek emperor there came to this Council of Reunion two notable Eastern metropolitans, Isidore of Kiev and Bessarion of Nicaea. It was agreed that it was true to say either that the Holy Spirit proceeds 'from the Father and the Son' or that He proceeds 'from the Father through the Son'. Both parties had the sense to see that it did not matter whether leavened or unleavened bread was used in the liturgy. And the Easterns, knowing that the Turks were almost at their doors, and hoping for Western help, admitted that the Pope was 'the Vicar of Christ, Shepherd, and Teacher of all Christians to guide and rule the whole Church of God', but added the ambiguous clause 'without prejudice to the rights and privileges of the other Patriarchs'. The only Oriental bishop who refused to sign was Mark of Ephesus.

Officially the union was complete. But Mark was regarded in the East as a hero, and in 1472, when Constantinople was a Turkish city, a synod at Constantinople rejected the Council of Florence with anathemas. And when Isidore appeared again in Moscow, Basil III interned him in a monastery. The Pope then nominated Isidore's friend Gregory as Uniate Archbishop of Kiev, a city which was still within the borders of Lithuania and therefore under Latin influence. The Russians retorted by raising an 'Orthodox' prelate, Jonas, to the metropolitan see of Moscow. The difficulty was resolved in 147o, when Gregory himself renounced his Uniate status and was accepted as Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev. The successors of Jonas were content to be called metropolitans of Moscow and all Russia, and a double line of metropolitans, of Moscow and Kiev, respectively, lasted until 1589.

Before the Council of Basel had finished its prolonged sittings, Charles VII, King of France, resolved to commence the reform of the Church himself. He called together at Bourges, in 1438, the bishops of France and the members of his Council to consider the decrees of Basel which limited the power of the Pope, particularly in matters of finance, and the relation of the Pope to the Council. The result was the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which suppressed the payment of annates and other exactions and deprived the Pope of the power of nominating to vacant bishoprics. It became a foundation-stone of the liberties of the Galilean Church. It remained in force until 1516, when Francis I and Pope Leo X signed the Concordat of Bologna, a concordat which restored annates to the Pope but secured important rights for the Crown.

The second half of the fifteenth century is a time of transition, and its great attraction lies in the fact that we can see its two­fold character, which alternately faces the past and the future. Religion is still medieval, but there are signs which point to both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. The conciliar movement failed; the work done at Constance and Basel did not alter Rome. Papalism defeated Episcopalianism. The assertion of the Pope's primacy at Florence counter­balanced the efforts of bishops and theologians, and in 1460 Pope Pius II, in his bull Exsecrabilis, forbade an appeal from the Pope to a General Council. But the movement left its mark on history, and the desire for reformation was not extinguished. The Catholic sovereigns, though unwilling to proceed very far in the work of decentralizing religious authority, were determined to claim in ecclesiastical affairs the rights which their predecessors had exercised before the medieval papacy had matured. Moreover, the movement had been supported by men of rare ability, deeply persuaded that the authority of the Church resided in the consciousness of the whole body. The two words Council and Reform remained wedded together, a double-edged weapon against the papacy, and the outward expression of a moral discontent. We can understand why Luther appealed to a General Council, and why his contemporary Pope Clement VII dreaded the very name of it.

It was at this period of change that the idea of a Western Roman empire declined; the last Roman emperor, Frederic III, was crowned in Rome in 1452. The Eastern Roman empire fell for ever when the Turkish sultan, Muhammad the Conqueror, took Constantinople in 1453 and rode on horseback into Justinian's peerless church of St. Sophia. But a new empire was won for Christendom when America was discovered, and when the Spaniards took Granada from the Muslim Moors in 1492. Spain was marked out to be the homeland of the new Catholicism of future generations.