CHURCH HISTORY.

§ 93.1. The Scandinavian Mission Field.―The work of Ansgar and Rimbert (§ 80) had extended only to the frontier provinces of Jutland and to the trading ports of Sweden, and even the churches founded there had in the meantime become almost extinct. A renewal of the mission could not be thought of, owing to the robber raids of Normans or Vikings, who during the ninth and tenth centuries had devastated all the coasts. But it was just those Viking raids that in another way opened a door again for the entrance of missionaries into those lands. Many of the home-going Vikings, who had been resident for a while abroad, had there been converted to the Christian faith, and carried back the knowledge of it to their homes. In France the Norwegians under Rollo founded Normandy in A.D. 912. In the tenth century the entire northern half of England fell into the hands of the Danes, and finally, in A.D. 1013, the Danish King Sweyn conquered the whole country. Both in France and in England the incomers adopted the profession of Christianity, and this, owing to the close connection maintained with their earlier homes, led to the conversion of Norway and Denmark.

§ 93.2. In Denmark, Gorm the Old, the founder of the regular Danish monarchy, makes his appearance toward the end of the ninth century as the bitter foe of Christianity. He destroyed all Christian institutions, drove away all the priests, and ravaged the neighbouring German coasts. Then, in A.D. 934, the German king Henry I. undertook a war against Denmark, and obliged Gorm to pay tribute and to grant toleration to the Christian faith. Archbishop Unni of Bremen then immediately began again the mission work. With a great part of his clergy he entered Danish territory, restored the churches of Jutland, and died in Sweden in A.D. 936. Gorm’s son, Harald Blaatand, being defeated in battle by Otto I. in A.D. 965, submitted to baptism. But his son Sweyn Gabelbart, although he too had been baptized, headed the reactionary heathen party. Harald fell in battle against him in A.D. 986, and Sweyn now began his career as a bitter persecutor of the Christians. Eric of Sweden, however, formerly a heathen and an enemy of Christianity, drove him out in A.D. 980, and at the entreaty of a German embassage tolerated the Christian religion. After Eric’s death in A.D. 998, Sweyn returned. In exile his opinions had changed, and now he as actively befriended the Christians as before he had persecuted them. In A.D. 1013 he conquered all England, and died there in A.D. 1014. His son Canute the Great, who died in A.D. 1036, united both kingdoms under his sceptre, and made every effort to find in the profession of a common Christian faith a bond of union between the two countries over which he ruled. In place of the German mission issuing from Bremen, he set on foot an English mission that had great success. In A.D. 1026 by means of a pilgrimage to Rome, prompted also by far-reaching political views, he joined the Danish church in the closest bonds with the ecclesiastical centre of Western Christendom. Denmark from this time onwards ranks as a thoroughly Christianized land.

§ 93.3. In Sweden, too, Archbishop Unni of Bremen resumed mission work and died there in A.D. 936. From this time the German mission was prosecuted uninterruptedly. It was, however, only in the beginning of the eleventh century, when English missionaries came to Sweden from Norway with Sigurd at their head, that real progress was made. By them the king Olaf Skötkonung, who died in A.D. 1024, was baptized. Olaf and his successor used every effort to further the interests of the mission, which had made considerable progress in Gothland, while in Swealand, with its national pagan sanctuary of Upsala, heathenism still continued dominant. King Inge, when he refused in A.D. 1080 to renounce Christianity, was pursued with stones by a crowd of people at Upsala. His son-in-law Blot-Sweyn led the pagan reaction, and sorely persecuted those who professed the Christian faith. After reigning for three years, he was slain, and Inge restored Christianity in all parts. It was, however, only under St. Eric, who died in A.D. 1160, that the Christian faith became dominant in Upper Sweden.263

§ 93.4. The Norwegians had, at a very early period, by means of the adventurous raids of their seafaring youth, by means of Christian prisoners, and also by means of intercourse with the Norse colonies in England and Normandy, gained some knowledge of Christianity. The first Christian king of Norway was Haco the Good (A.D. 934-961), who had received a Christian education at the English court. Only after he had won the fervent love of his people by his able government, did he venture to ask for the legal establishment of the Christian religion. The people, however, compelled him to take part in heathen sacrifices; and when he made the sign of the cross over the sacrificial cup before he drank of it, they were appeased only by his associating the action with Thor’s hammer. Haco could never forgive himself this weakness and died broken-hearted, regarding himself as unworthy even of Christian burial. Olaf Trygvesen (A.D. 995-1000), at first the ideal of a Norse Viking, then of a Norse king, was baptized during his last visit to England, and used all the powerful influences at his command, the charm and fascination of his personality, flattery, favour, craft, intimidation and cruelty, to secure the forcible introduction of Christianity. No foreigner was ever allowed to quit Norway without being persuaded or compelled by him to receive baptism. Those who refused, whether natives or foreigners, suffered severe imprisonment and in many cases were put to death. He fell in battle with the Danes. Olaf Haraldson the Fat, subsequently known as St. Olaf (A.D. 1014-1030), followed in Trygvesen’s steps. Without his predecessor’s fascinating manners and magnanimity, but prosecuting his ecclesiastical and political ends with greater recklessness, severity, and cruelty, he soon forfeited the love of his subjects. The alienated chiefs conspired with the Danish Canute; the whole country rose against him; he himself fell in battle, and Norway became a Danish province. The crushing yoke of the Danes, however, caused a sudden rebound of public feeling in regard to Olaf. The king, who was before universally hated, was now looked on as the martyr of national liberty and independence. Innumerable miracles were wrought by his bones, and even so early as A.D. 1031 the country unanimously proclaimed him a national saint. The enthusiasm over the veneration of the new saint increased from day to day, and with it the enthusiasm for the emancipation of their native country. Borne along by the mighty agitation, Olaf’s son, Magnus the Good, drove out the Danes in A.D. 1035. Olaf’s canonization, though originating in purely political schemes, had put the final stamp of Christianity upon the land. The German national privileges, however, were insisted upon in Norway over against the canon law down to the 13th century.264

§ 93.5. In the North-Western Group of Islands, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faröe Isles, the sparse Celtic population professing Christianity was, during the ninth century, expelled by the pagan Norse Vikings, and among these Christianity was first introduced by the two Norwegian Olafs. The first missionary attempt in Iceland was made in A.D. 981 by the Icelander Thorwald, who having been baptized in Saxony by a Bishop (?) Frederick, persuaded this ecclesiastic to accompany him to Iceland, that they might there work together for the conversion of his heathen fellow countrymen. During a five years’ ministry several individuals were won, but by a decision of the National Council the missionaries were forced to leave the island in A.D. 958. Olaf Trygvesen did not readily allow an Icelander visiting Norway to return without having been baptized, and twice he sent formal expeditions for the conversion of Iceland. The first, sent out in A.D. 996, with Stefnin, a native of Iceland, at its head, had little success. The second, A.D. 997-999, was led by Olaf’s court chaplain Dankbrand, a Saxon. This man, at once warrior and priest, who when his sermons failed shrank not from buckling on the sword, converted many of the most powerful chiefs. In A.D. 1000 the Icelandic State was saved at the last hour from a civil war between pagans and Christians which threatened its very existence, by the adoption of a compromise, according to which all Icelanders were baptized and only Christian worship was publicly recognised, but idol worship in the homes, exposure of children, and eating of horses’ flesh was tolerated. But in A.D. 1016, as the result of an embassage of the Norwegian king Olaf Haraldson, even these last vestiges of paganism were wiped out.―Greenland, too, which had been discovered by a distinguished Icelander, Eric the Red, and had then been colonized in A.D. 985, owed its Christianity to Olaf Trygvesen, who in A.D. 1000 sent the son of the discoverer, Leif the Fortunate, with an expedition for its conversion. The inhabitants accepted baptism without resistance. The church continued to flourish there uninterruptedly for 400 years, and the coast districts became rich through agriculture and trade. But when in A.D. 1408 the newly elected bishop Andrew wished to take possession of his see, he found the country surrounded by enormous masses of ice, and could not effect a landing. This catastrophe, and the subsequent incursions of the Eskimos, seem to have led to the overthrow of the colony.―Continuation, § 167, 9.―Leif discovered on his expeditions a rich fertile land in the West, which on account of the vines growing wild there he called Vineland, and this region was subsequently colonized from Iceland. In the twelfth century, in order to confirm the colonists in the faith, a Greenland bishop Eric undertook a journey to that country. It lay on the east coast of North America, and is probably to be identified with the present Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

§ 93.6. The Slavo-Magyar Mission-field.―Even in the previous period a beginning had been made of the Christianizing of Bohemia (§ 79, 3). After Wratislaw’s death his heathen widow Drahomira administered the government in the name of her younger son Boleslaw. Ludmilla, with the help of the clergy and the Germans, wished to promote St. Wenzeslaw, the elder son, educated by her, but she was strangled by order of Drahomira in A.D. 927. Wenzeslaw, too, fell by the hand of his brother. Boleslaw now thought completely to root out Christianity, but was obliged, in consequence of the victory of Otho [Otto] I. in A.D. 950, to agree to the restoration of the church. His son Boleslas [Boleslaw] II., A.D. 967-999, contributed to its establishment by founding the bishopric of Prague. The pope seized the opportunity on the occasion of this founding of the bishopric to introduce the Roman ritual (A.D. 973).265

§ 93.7. From Bohemia the Christian faith was carried to the Poles. In A.D. 966 the Duke Micislas was persuaded by his wife Dubrawka, a Bohemian princess, daughter of Boleslaw I., to receive baptism. His subjects were induced to follow his example, and the bishopric of Posen was founded. The church obtained a firm footing under his son, the powerful Boleslaw Chrobry, A.D. 992-1025, who with the consent of Otto III. freed the Polish church from the metropolitanate of Magdeburg, and gave it an archiepiscopal see of its own at Gnesen (A.D. 1000). He also separated the Poles from German imperial federation and had himself crowned king shortly before his death in A.D. 1025. A state of anarchy, which lasted for a year and threatened the overthrow of Christianity in the land, was put an end to by his grandson Casimir in A.D. 1039. Casimir’s grandson Boleslaw II. gave to the Poles a national saint by the murder in A.D. 1079 of Bishop Stanislas [Stanislaus] of Cracow, which led to his excommunication and exile.

§ 93.8. Christianity was introduced into Hungary from Constantinople. A Hungarian prince Gylas received baptism there about A.D. 950, and returned home with a monk Hierotheus, consecrated bishop of the Hungarians. Connection with the Eastern church, however, was soon broken off, and an alliance formed with the Western church. After Henry I. in A.D. 933 defeated the Hungarians at Keuschberg, and still more decidedly after Otto I. in A.D. 955 had completely humbled them by the terrible slaughter at Lechfelde, German influence won the upper hand. The missionary labours of Bishop Piligrim of Passau, as well as the introduction of Christian foreigners, especially Germans, soon gave to Christianity a preponderance throughout the country over paganism. The mission was directly favoured by the Duke Geysa, A.D. 972-997, and his vigorous wife Sarolta, a daughter of the above-named Gylas. The Christianizing of Hungary was completed by Geysa’s son St. Stephen, A.D. 997-1038, who upon his marriage with Gisela, the sister of the Emperor Henry II., was baptized, a pagan reaction was put down, a constitution and laws were given to the country, an archbishopric was founded at Gran with ten suffragan bishops, the crown was put upon his head in A.D. 1000 by Pope Sylvester II., and Hungary was enrolled as an important member of the federation of European Christian States. Under his successors indeed paganism once more rose in a formidable revolt, but was finally stamped out. St. Ladislaw [Ladislaus], A.D. 1077-1095, rooted out its last vestiges.

§ 93.9. Among the numerous Wendish Races in Northern and North-Eastern Germany the chief tribes were the Obotrites in what is now Holstein and Mecklenburg, the Lutitians or Wilzians, between the Elbe and the Oder, the Pomeranians, from the Oder to the Vistula, and the Sorbi, farther south in Saxony and Lusatia. Henry I., A.D. 919-936, and his son Otto I., A.D. 936-973, in several campaigns subjected them to the German yoke, and the latter founded among them in A.D. 968 the archbishopric of Magdeburg besides several bishoprics. The passion for national freedom, as well as the proud contempt, illtreatment, and oppression of the German margraves, rendered Christianity peculiarly hateful to the Wends, and it was only after their freedom and nationality had been completely destroyed and the Slavic population had been outnumbered by German or Germanized colonists, that the Church obtained a firm footing in their land. A revolt of the Obotrites under Mistewoi in A.D. 983, who with the German yoke abjured also the Christian faith, led to the destruction of all Christian institutions. His grandson Gottschalk, educated as a Christian in a German monastery, but roused to fury by the murder of his father Udo, escaped from the monastery in A.D. 1032, renounced Christianity, and set on foot a terrible persecution of Christians and Germans. But he soon bitterly repented this outburst of senseless rage. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he escaped and took refuge in Denmark, but subsequently he returned and founded in A.D. 1045 a great Wendish empire which extended from the North Sea to the Oder. He now enthusiastically applied all his energy to the establishment of the church in his land upon a national basis, for which purpose Adalbert of Bremen sent him missionaries. He was himself frequently their interpreter and expositor. He was eminently successful, but the national party hated him as the friend of the Saxons and the church. He fell by the sword of the assassin in A.D. 1066, and thereupon began a terrible persecution of the Christians. His son Henry having been set aside, the powerful Ranian chief Cruco from the island of Rügen, a fanatical enemy of Christianity, was chosen ruler. At the instigation of Henry he was murdered in his own house in A.D. 1115. Henry died in A.D. 1127. A Danish prince Canute bought the Wendish crown from Lothair duke of Saxony, but was murdered in A.D. 1131. This brought the Wendish empire to an end. The Obotrite chief Niklot, who died in A.D. 1161, held his ground only in the territory of the Obotrites. His son Pribizlaw, the ancestor of the present ruling family of Mecklenburg, by adopting Christianity in A.D. 1164, saved to himself a part of the inheritance of his fathers as a vassal under the Saxon princes. All the rest of the land was divided by Henry the Lion among his German warriors, and the depopulated districts were peopled with German colonists.―In A.D. 1157 Albert the Bear, the founder of the Margravate of Brandenburg, overthrew the dominion of the Lutitians after protracted struggles and endless revolts. He, too, drafted numerous German colonists into the devastated regions.―The Christianizing of the Sorbi was an easier task. After their first defeat by Henry I. in A.D. 922 and 927, they were never again able to regain their old freedom. Alongside of the mission of the sword among the Wends there was always carried on, more or less vigorously, the mission of the Cross. Among the Sorbi bishop Benno of Meissen, who died in A.D. 1107, wrought with special vigour, and among the Obotrites the greatest zeal was displayed by St. Vicelinus. He died bishop of Oldenburg in A.D. 1154.

§ 93.10. Pomerania submitted in A.D. 1121 to the duke of Poland, Boleslaw III., and he compelled them solemnly to promise that they would adopt the Christian faith. The work of conversion, however, appeared to be so unpromising that Boleslaw found none among all his clergy willing to undertake the task. At last in A.D. 1122, a Spanish monk Bernard offered himself. But the Pomeranians drove him away as a beggar who looked only to his own gain, for they thought, if the Christians’ God be really the Lord of heaven and earth He would have sent them a servant in keeping with His glorious majesty. Boleslaw was then convinced that only a man who had strong faith and a martyr’s spirit, united with an imposing figure, rank, and wealth, was fit for the work, and these qualifications he found in bishop Otto of Bamberg. Otto accepted the call, and during two missionary journeys in A.D. 1124-1128 founded the Pomeranian church. Following Bernard’s advice, he went through Pomerania on both occasions with all the pomp of episcopal dignity, with a great retinue and abundant stores of provisions, money, ecclesiastical ornaments, and presents of all kinds. He had unparalleled success, yet he was repeatedly well nigh obtaining the crown of martyrdom which he longed for. The whole Middle Ages furnishes scarcely an equally noble, pure, and successful example of missionary enterprise. None of all the missionaries of that age presents so harmonious a picture of firmness without obstinacy, earnestness without harshness, gentleness without weakness, enthusiasm without fanaticism. And never have the German and Slavic nationalities so nobly, successfully, and faithfully practised mutual forbearance as did the Pomeranians and their apostle.―The last stronghold of Wendish paganism was the island of Rügen. It fell when in A.D. 1168 the Danish king Waldemar I. with the Christian Pomeranian and Obotrite chiefs conquered the island and destroyed its heathen sanctuaries.

§ 93.11. Mission Work among the Finns and Lithuanians.―St. Eric of Sweden in A.D. 1157 introduced Christianity into Finland by conquest and compulsion. Bishop Henry of Upsala, the apostle of the Finns, who accompanied him, suffered a martyr’s death in the following year. The Finns detested Christianity as heartily as they did the rule of the conquering Swedes, who introduced it, and it was only after the third campaign which Thorkel Canutson undertook in A.D. 1293 against Finland, that the Swedish rule and the Christian faith were established, and under a vigorous yet moderate and wise government the Finns were reconciled to both.―Lapland came under the rule of Sweden in A.D. 1279, and thereafter Christianity gradually found entrance. In A.D. 1335 bishop Hemming of Upsala consecrated the first church at Tornea.

§ 93.12. Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland were inhabited by peoples belonging to the Finnic stem. Yet even in early times people from the south and east belonging to the Lithuanian stem had settled in Livonia and Courland, Letts and Lettgalls in Livonia, and Semgalls and Wends in Courland. The first attempts to introduce Christianity into these regions were made by Swedes and Danes, and even under the Danish king Sweyn III., Eric’s son, about A.D. 1048 a church was erected in Courland by Christian merchants, and in Esthonia the Danes not long after built the fortress of Lindanissa. The elevation of the bishopric of Lund into a metropolitanate in A.D. 1098 was projected with a regard to these lands. In A.D. 1171 Pope Alexander III. sent a monk, Fulco, to Lund to convert the heathen and to be bishop of Finland and Esthonia, but he seems never to have entered on his duties or his dignity. Abiding results were first won by German preaching and the German sword. In the middle of the 12th century merchants of Bremen and Lübeck carried on traffic with towns on the banks of the Dwina. A pious priest from the monastery of Segeberg in Holstein, called Meinhart, undertook in their company under the auspices of the archbishop of Bremen, Hartwig II., a missionary journey to those regions in A.D. 1184. He built a church at Üxküll on the Dwina, was recognised as bishop of the place in A.D. 1186, but died in A.D. 1196. His assistant Dietrich carried on the work of the mission in the district from Freiden down to Esthonia. Meinhart’s successor in the bishopric was the Cistercian abbot, Berthold of Loccum in Hanover. Having been driven away soon after his arrival, he returned with an army of German crusaders, and was killed in battle in A.D. 1198. His successor was a canon of Bremen, Albert of Buxhöwden. He transferred the bishop’s seat to Riga, which was built by him in A.D. 1201, founded in A.D. 1202, for the protection of the mission, the Order of the Brethren of the Sword (§ 98, 13), amid constant battles with Russians, Esthonians, Courlanders and Lithuanians erected new bishoprics in Esthonia (Dorpat), Oesel, and Semgallen, and effected the Christianization of nearly all these lands. He died in A.D. 1229. After A.D. 1219 the Danes, whom Albert had called in to his aid, vied with him in the conquest and conversion of the Esthonians. Waldemar II. founded Revel in A.D. 1219, made it an episcopal see, and did all in his power to restrict the advances of the Germans. In this he did not succeed. The Danes, indeed, were obliged to quit Esthonia in A.D. 1257. After Albert’s death, however, the difficulties of the situation became so great that Volquin, the Master of the Order of the Sword, could see no hope of success save in the union of his order with that of the Teutonic Knights, shortly before established in Prussia. The union, retarded by Danish intrigues, was not effected until A.D. 1237, when a fearful slaughter of Germans by the Lithuanians had endangered not only the existence of the Order of the Sword but even the church of Livonia. Then, too, for the first time was Courland finally subdued and converted. It had, indeed, nominally adopted Christianity in A.D. 1230, but had soon after relapsed into paganism. Finally in A.D. 1255 Riga was raised to the rank of a metropolitanate, and Suerbeer, formerly archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, was appointed by Innocent IV. archbishop of Prussia, Livonia, and Esthonia, with his residence at Riga.

§ 93.13. The Old Prussians and Lithuanians also belonged to the Lettish stem. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, first brought the message of salvation to the Prussians between the Vistula and Memel, but on the very first entrance into Sameland [Samland] in A.D. 997 he won the martyr’s crown. This, too, was the fate twelve years later of the zealous Saxon monk Bruno and eighteen companions on the Lithuanian coast. Two hundred years passed before another missionary was seen in Prussia. The first was the Abbot Gothfried from the Polish monastery of Lukina; but in his case also an end was soon put to his hopefully begun work, as well as to that of his companion Philip, both suffering martyrdom in A.D. 1207. More successful and enduring was the mission work three years later of the Cistercian monk Christian from the Pomeranian monastery of Oliva, in A.D. 1209, the real apostle of the Prussians. He was raised to the rank of bishop in A.D. 1215, and died in A.D. 1245. On the model of the Livonian Order of the Brethren of the Sword he founded in A.D. 1225 the Order of the Knights of Dobrin (Milites Christi). In the very first year of their existence, however, they were reduced to the number of five men. In union with Conrad, Duke of Moravia, whose land had suffered fearfully from the inroads of the pagan Prussians, Christian then called in the aid of the Teutonic Knights, whose order had won great renown in Germany. A branch of this order had settled in A.D. 1228 in Culm, and so laid the foundation of the establishment of the order in Prussia. With the appearance of this order began a sixty years’ bloody conflict directed to the overthrow of Prussian paganism, which can be said to have been effected only in A.D. 1283, when the greater part of the Prussians had been slain after innumerable conflicts with the order and with crusaders from Germany, Poland, Bohemia, etc. Among the crowds of preachers of the gospel, mostly Dominicans, besides Bishop Christian and the noble papal legate William, bishop of Modena, the Polish Dominican Hyacinth, who died in A.D. 1257, a vigorous preacher of faith and repentance, deserves special mention. So early as A.D. 1243, William of Modena had sketched an ecclesiastical organization for the country, which divided Prussia into four dioceses, which were placed in A.D. 1255 under the metropolitanate of Riga.

§ 93.14. The introduction of Christianity into Lithuania was longest delayed. After Ringold had founded in A.D. 1230 a Grand Duchy of Lithuania, his son Mindowe endeavoured to enlarge his dominions by conquest. The army of the Prussian-Livonian Order, however, so humbled him that he sued for peace and was compelled to receive baptism in A.D. 1252. But no sooner had he in some measure regained strength than he threw off the hypocritical mask, and in A.D. 1260 appeared as the foe of his Christian neighbours. His son Wolstinik, who had remained true to the Christian faith, dying in A.D. 1266, reigned too short a time to secure an influence over his people. With him every trace of Christianity disappeared from Lithuania. Christians were again tolerated in his territories by the Grand Duke Gedimin (A.D. 1315-1340). Romish Dominicans and Russian priests vied with one another under his successor Olgerd in endeavours to convert the inhabitants. Olgerd himself was baptized according to the Greek rite, but apostatised. His son Jagello, born of a Christian mother, and married to the young Polish queen Hedwig, whose hand and crown seemed not too dearly purchased by submitting to baptism and undertaking to introduce Christianity among his people, made at last an end to heathenism in Lithuania in A.D. 1386. His subjects, each of whom received a woollen coat as a christening gift, flocked in crowds to receive baptism. The bishop’s residence was fixed at Wilna.

§ 93.15. The Mongolian Mission Field.―From the time of Genghis Khan, who died in A.D. 1227, the princes of the Mongols, in consistency with their principles as deists with little trace of religion, showed themselves equally tolerant and favourable to Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The Nestorians were very numerous in this empire, but also very much deteriorated. In A.D. 1240-1241 the Mongols, pressing westward with irresistible force, threatened to overflow and devastate all Europe. Russia and Poland, Silesia, Moravia, and Hungary had been already dreadfully wasted by them, when suddenly and unexpectedly the savage hordes withdrew. Innocent IV. sent an embassage of Dominicans under Nicolas Ascelinus to the Commander Batschu in Persia, and an embassage of Franciscans under John of Piano-Carpini to the Grand Khan Oktaï, Genghis Khan’s successor, to his capital Karakorum, with a view to their conversion and to dissuade them from repeating their inroads. Both missions were unsuccessful. Certain adventurers pretending to be bearers of a message from Mongolia, told Louis IX. of France fabulous stories of the readiness of the Grand Khan Gajuk and his princes to receive Christianity, and their intention to conquer the Holy Land for the Christians. He accordingly sent out two missions to the Mongols. The first, in A.D. 1249 was utterly unsuccessful, for the Mongols regarded the presents given as a regular tribute and as a symbol of voluntary submission. The second mission in A.D. 1253, to the Grand Khan Mangu, although under a brave and accomplished leader, William of Ruysbroek, yielded no fruit; for Mangu, instead of allowing free entrance into the land for the preaching of the gospel, at the close of a disputation with Mohammedans and Buddhists sent the missionaries back to Louis with the threatening demand to tender his submission. After Mangu’s death in A.D. 1257, the Mongolian empire was divided into Eastern and Western, corresponding to China and Persia. The former was governed by Kublai Khan, the latter by Hulagu Khan.―Kublai Khan, the Emperor of China, a genuine type of the religious mongrelism of the Mongolians, showed himself very favourable to Christians, but also patronised the Mohammedans, and in A.D. 1260 gave a hierarchical constitution and consolidated form to Buddhism by the establishment of the first Dalai Lama. The travels of two Venetians of the family of Polo led to the founding of a Latin Christian mission in China. They returned from their Mongolian travels in A.D. 1269. Gregory X. in A.D. 1272 sent two Dominicans to Mongolia along with the two brothers, and the son of one of them, Marco Polo, then seventeen years old. The latter won the unreserved confidence of the Grand Khan, and was entrusted by him with an honourable post in the government. On his return in A.D. 1295 he published an account of his travels, which made an enormous sensation, and afforded for the first time to Western Europe a proper conception of the condition of Eastern Asia.266 A regular Christian missionary enterprise, however, was first undertaken by the Franciscan Joh. de Monte-Corvino, A.D. 1291-1328, one of the noblest, most intelligent, and most faithful of the missionaries of the Middle Ages. After he had succeeded in overcoming the intrigues of the numerous Nestorians, he won the high esteem of the Grand Khan. In the royal city of Cembalu or Pekin he built two churches, baptized about 6,000 Mongols, and translated the Psalter and the New Testament into Mongolian. He wrought absolutely alone till A.D. 1303. Afterwards, however, other brethren of his order came repeatedly to his aid. Clement V. appointed him archbishop of Cembalu in A.D. 1307. Every year saw new churches established. But internal disturbances, under Kublai’s successor, weakened the power of the Mongolian dynasty, so that in A.D. 1370 it was overthrown by the national Ming dynasty. By the new rulers the Christian missionaries were driven out along with the Mongols, and thus all that they had done was utterly destroyed.―The ruler of Persia, Hulagu Khan, son of a Christian mother and married to a Christian wife, put an end in A.D. 1258 to the khalifate of Bagdad, but was so pressed by the sultan of Egypt, that he entered on a long series of negotiations with the popes and the kings of France and England, who gave him the most encouraging promises of joining their forces with his against the Saracens. His successors, of whom several even formally embraced Christianity, continued these negotiations, but obtained nothing more than empty promises and protestations of friendship. The time of the crusades was over, and the popes, even the most powerful of them, were not able to reawaken the crusading spirit. The Persian khans, vacillating between Christianity and Islam, became more and more powerless, until at last, in A.D. 1387, Tamerlane (Timur) undertook to found on the ruins of the old government a new universal Mongolian empire under the standard of the Crescent. But with his death in A.D. 1405 the dominion of the Mongols in Persia was overthrown, and fell into the hands of the Turkomans. Henceforth amid all changes of dynasties Islam continued the dominant religion.

§ 93.16. The Mission Field of Islam.―The crusader princes and soldiers wished only to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels, but, with the exception perhaps of Louis IX., had no idea of bringing to them the blessings of the gospel. And most of the crusaders, by their licentiousness, covetousness, cruelty, faithlessness, and dissensions among themselves, did much to cause the Saracens to scorn the Christian faith as represented by their lives and example. It was not until the 13th century that the two newly founded mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans began an energetic but fruitless mission among the Moslems of Africa, Sicily, and Spain. St. Francis himself started this work in A.D. 1219, when during the siege of Damietta by the crusaders he entered the camp of the Sultan Camel and bade him kindle a fire and cause that he himself with one of the Moslem priests should be cast into it. When the imam present shrank away at these words, Francis offered to go alone into the fire if the sultan would promise to accept Christianity along with his people should he pass out of the fire uninjured. The sultan refused to promise and sent the saint away unhurt with presents, which, however, he returned. Afterwards several Franciscan missions were sent to the Moslems, but resulted only in giving a crowd of martyrs to the order. The Dominicans, too, at a very early period took part in the mission to the Mohammedans, but were also unsuccessful. The Dominican general Raimund de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], who died in A.D. 1273, devoted himself with special zeal to this task. For the training of the brethren of his order in the oriental languages he founded institutions at Tunis and Murcia. The most important of all these missionary enterprises was that of the talented Raimund Lullus of Majorca, who after his own conversion from a worldly life and after careful study of the language, made three voyages to North Africa and sought in disputations with the Saracen scholars to convince them of the truth of Christianity. But his Ars Magna (§ 103, 7), which with great ingenuity and enormous labour he had wrought out mainly for this purpose, had no effect. Imprisonment and ill-treatment were on all occasions his only reward. He died in A.D. 1315 in consequence of the ill-usage which he had been subjected.

§ 94.1. The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.―In the spring of A.D. 1096 vast crowds of people gathered together, impatient of the delays of the princes, and put themselves under the leadership of Walter the Penniless. They were soon followed by Peter of Amiens with 40,000 men. A legend, unworthy of belief, credits him with the origin of the whole movement. According to this story, the hermit returning from a pilgrimage described to the holy father in vivid colours the sufferings of their Christian brethren, and related how that Christ Himself had appeared to him in a dream, giving him the command for the pope to summon all Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. The legend proceeds to say that, by order of the pope, Peter the Hermit then went through all Italy and France, arousing the enthusiasm of the people. The hordes led by him, however, after committing deeds of horrid violence on every side, while no farther than Bulgaria, were reduced to about one half, and the remnant, after Peter had already left them because of their insubordination, was annihilated by the Turks at Nicæa. Successive new crusades, the last of them an undisciplined mob of 200,000 men, were cut down in Hungary or on the Hungarian frontier. In August a regular crusading army, 80,000 strong, under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, passing through Germany and Hungary, reached Constantinople. There several French and Norman princes joined the army, till its strength was increased to 600,000. After considerable squabbling with the Byzantine government, they passed over into Asia. With great labour and heavy loss Nicæa, Edessa, and Antioch were taken. At last, on 15th July, 1099, amid shouts of, It is God’s will, they stormed the walls of Jerusalem; lighted by torches and wading in blood, they entered with singing of psalms into the Church of the Resurrection. Godfrey was elected king. With pious humility he declined to wear a king’s crown where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. He died a year after, and his brother Baldwin was crowned at Bethlehem. By numerous impropriations crowds of greater and lesser vassals were gathered about the throne. In Jerusalem itself a Latin patriarchate was erected, and under it were placed four archbishoprics, with a corresponding number of bishoprics. The story of these proceedings enkindled new enthusiasm in the West. In A.D. 1101 three new crusades of 260,000 men were fitted out in Germany, under Welf, duke of Bavaria, and in Italy and in France. They marched against Bagdad, in order to strike terror into the hearts of Moslems by the terrible onslaught; the undisciplined horde, however, did not reach its destination, but found a grave in Asia Minor.

§ 94.2. The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.―The fall of Edessa in A.D. 1146, as the frontier fortress of the kingdom, summoned the West to a new effort. Pope Eugenius III. called the nations to arms. Bernard of Clairvaux, the prophet of the age, preached the crusade, and prophesied victory. Louis VII. of France took the sign of the cross, in order to atone for the crime of having burnt a church filled with men; and Conrad III. of Germany, moved by the preaching of Bernard, with some hesitation followed his example. But their stately army fell before the sword of the Saracens, the malice of the Greeks, and internal disorders caused by famine, disease, and hardships. Damascus remained unconquered, and the princes returned humbled with the miserable remnant of their army.

§ 94.3. The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.―The kingdom of Jerusalem before a century had past was in utter decay. Greeks or Syrians and Latins had a deadly hatred for one another: the vassals intrigued against each other and against the crown. Licentiousness, luxury, and recklessness prevailed among the people; the clergy and the nobles of the kingdom, but especially the so called Pulleni,268 descendants of the crusaders born in the Holy Land itself, were a miserable, cowardly and treacherous race. The pretenders to the crown also continued their intrigues and cabals. Such being the corrupt condition of affairs, it was an easy thing for the Sultan Saladin, the Moslem knight “without fear and without reproach,” who had overthrown the Fatimide dynasty in Egypt, to bring down upon the Christian rule in Syria, after the bloody battle of Tiberias, the same fate. Jerusalem fell into his hands in October, A.D. 1187. When this terrible piece of news reached the West, the Christian powers were summoned by Gregory VIII. to combine their forces in order to make one more vigorous effort, Philip Augustus of France and Henry II. of England forgot for a moment their mutual jealousies, and took the cross from the hands of Archbishop William of Tyre, the historian of the crusade. Next the Emperor Frederick I. joined them, with all the heroic valour of youth, though in years and experience an old man. He entered on the undertaking with an energy, considerateness, and circumspection which seemed to deserve glorious success. After piloting his way through Byzantine intrigues and the indescribable fatigues of a waterless desert, he led his soldiers against the well-equipped army of the sultan at Iconium, which he utterly routed, and took the city. But in A.D. 1190 the heroic warrior was drowned in an attempt to ford the river Calycadnus. A great part of his army was now scattered, and the remnant was led by his son Frederick of Swabia against Ptolemais. At that point soon after landed Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion of England, who after his father’s death put himself at the head of an English crusading army and had conquered Cyprus on the way. Ptolemais (Acre) was taken in A.D. 1191. But the jealousies of the princes interfered with their success. Frederick had already fallen, and Philip Augustus under pretence of sickness returned to France; Richard gained a brilliant victory over Saladin, took Joppa and Ascalon, and was on the eve of marching against Jerusalem when news reached him that his brother John had assumed the throne of England, and that Philip Augustus also was entertaining schemes of conquest. Once again Richard won a great victory before Joppa, and Saladin, admiring his unexampled bravery, concluded with him now, in A.D. 1192, a three years’ truce, giving most favourable terms to the pilgrims. The strip along the coast from Joppa to Acre continued under the rule of Richard’s nephew, Henry of Champagne. But Richard was seized on his return journey and cast into prison by Leopold of Austria, whose standard he had grossly insulted before Ptolemais, and for two years he remained a prisoner. After his release he was prevented from thinking of a renewal of the crusade by a war with France, in which he met his death in A.D. 1199.269

§ 94.4. The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.―Innocent III. summoned Christendom anew to a holy war. The kings, engaged in their own affairs, gave no heed to the call. But the violent penitential preacher, Fulco of Neuilly, prevailed upon the French nobles to collect a considerable crusading army, which, however, instead of proceeding against the Saracens, was used by the Venetian Doge, Dandolo, in payment of transport, for conquering Zaras in Dalmatia, and then by a Byzantine prince for a campaign against Constantinople, where Baldwin of Flanders founded a Latin Empire, A.D. 1204-1261. The pope put the doge and the crusaders under excommunication on account of the taking of Zaras, and the campaign against Constantinople was most decidedly disapproved. Their unexpected success, however, turned away his anger. He boasted that at last Israel, after destroying the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, was again united to Judah, and in Rome bestowed the pallium upon the first Latin patriarch of Constantinople.―The Children’s Crusade, which in A.D. 1212 snatched from their parents in France and Germany 30,000 boys and girls, had a most tragic end. Many died before passing from Europe of famine and fatigue; the rest fell into the hands of unprincipled men, who sold them as slaves in Egypt.―King Andrew II. of Hungary, urged by Honorius III., led a new crusading army to the Holy Land in A.D. 1217, and won some successes; but finding himself betrayed and deserted by the Palestinian barons, he returned home in the following year. But the Germans under Leopold VII. of Austria, who had accompanied him remained, and, supported by a Cologne and Dutch fleet, undertook in A.D. 1218, along with the titular king John of Jerusalem, a crusade against Egypt. Damietta was taken, but the overflow of the Nile reservoirs placed them in such peril that they owed their escape in A.D. 1221 only to the generosity of the Sultan Camel.

§ 94.5. The Fifth Crusade, A.D. 1228.―The Emperor Frederick II. had promised to undertake a crusade, but continued to make so many excuses for delay that Gregory IX. (§ 96, 19) at last thundered against him the long threatened excommunication. Frederick now brought out a comparatively small crusading force. The Sultan Camel of Egypt, engaged in war with his nephew, and fearing that Frederick might attach himself to the enemy, freely granted him a large tract of the Holy Land. At the Holy Sepulchre Frederick placed the crown of Jerusalem, the inheritance of his new wife Iolanthe, with his own hands on his head, since no bishop would perform the coronation nor even a priest read the mass service for the excommunicated king. He then returned home in A.D. 1229 to arrange his differences with the pope. The crusading armies which Theobald, king of Navarre, in A.D. 1239, and Richard Earl of Cornwall, in A.D. 1240, led against Palestine, owing to disunion among themselves and quarrels among the Syrian Christians, could accomplish nothing.

§ 94.6. The Sixth, A.D. 1248, and Seventh, A.D. 1270, Crusades.―The zeal for crusading had by this time considerably cooled. St. Louis of France, however, the ninth of that name, had during a serious illness in A.D. 1244, taken the cross. At this time Jerusalem had been conquered and subjected to the most dreadful horrors at the hands of the Chowaresmians, driven from their home by the Mongols, and now in the pay of Egyptian sultan Ayoub. Down to A.D. 1247 the rule of the Christians in the Holy Land was again restricted to Acre and some coast towns. Louis could no longer think of delay. He started in A.D. 1248 with a considerable force, wintered in Cyprus, and landed in Egypt in A.D. 1249. He soon conquered Damietta, but, after his army had been in great part destroyed by famine, disease and slaughter, was taken prisoner at Cairo by the sultan. After the murder of the sultan by the Mamelukes, who overthrew Saladin’s dynasty, he fell into their hands. The king was obliged to deliver over Damietta and to purchase his own release by payment of 800,000 byzantines. He sailed with the remnant of his army to Acre in A.D. 1250, whence his mother’s death called him home in A.D. 1254. But as his vow had not yet been fully paid, he sailed in A.D. 1270 with a new crusading force to Tunis in order to carry on operations from that centre. But the half of his army was cut off by a pestilence, and he himself was carried away in that same year. All subsequent endeavours of the popes to reawaken an interest in the crusades were unavailing. Acre or Ptolemais, the last stronghold of the Christians in the Holy Land, fell in A.D. 1291.

§ 95.1. Islam in Sicily.―The robber raids upon Italy perpetrated by the Sicilian Saracens were put an end to by the Normans who settled there in A.D. 1017. Robert Guiscard destroyed the remnant of Greek rule in southern Italy, conquered the small Longobard duchies there, and founded a Norman duchy of Apulia and Calabria in A.D. 1059. His brother Roger, who died in A.D. 1101, after a thirty years’ struggle drove the Saracens completely out of Sicily, and ruled over it as a vassal of his brother under the title of Count of Sicily. His son Roger II., who died in A.D. 1154, united the government of Sicily and of Apulia and Calabria, had himself crowned in A.D. 1130 king of Sicily and Italy, and finally in A.D. 1139 conquered also Naples. In consequence of the marriage of his daughter Constance with Henry VI. the whole kingdom passed over in A.D. 1194 to the Hohenstaufens, from whom it passed in A.D. 1266 to Charles of Anjou; and from him finally, in consequence of the Sicilian Vespers in A.D. 1282, the island of Sicily passed to Peter of Arragon, the son-in-law of Manfred, the last king of the Hohenstaufen line. The Normans and the Hohenstaufens granted to the subject Saracens for the most part full religious liberty, the Emperor Frederick recruiting from among them his bodyguard, and they supplied the bravest soldiers for the Italian Ghibelline war. For this purpose he was constantly drafting new detachments from the African coast, as Manfred also had done. The endeavours made by monks of the mendicant orders for the conversion of the Saracens proved quite fruitless. It was only under the Spanish rule that conversions were made by force, or persecution and annihilation followed persistent refusal.

§ 95.2. Islam in Spain.―The times of Abderrhaman III., A.D. 912-961, and Hacem II., A.D. 961-976, were the most brilliant and fortunate of the Ommaiadean khalifate. After the death of the latter the chamberlain Almansor, who died in A.D. 1002, reigned in the name of Khalif Hescham II., who was little more than a puppet of the seraglio, and his rule was glorious, powerful and wise. But interminable civil contentions were the result of this disarrangement of government, and in A.D. 1031, in consequence of a popular tumult, Abderrhaman IV., the last of the Ommaiades, took to flight, and voluntarily resigned the crown. The khalifate was now broken up into as many little principalities or emirships as there had been governors before. Amid such confusions the Christian princes continued to develop and increase their resources. Sancho the Great, king of Navarre, A.D. 970-1035, by marriage and conquest united almost all Christian Spain under his rule, but this was split up again by being partitioned among his sons. Of these Ferdinand I., who died in A.D. 1065, inherited Castile, and in A.D. 1037 added to it Leon by conquest. With him begins the heroic age of Spanish knighthood. His son Alfonso IV., who died in A.D. 1109, succeeded in A.D. 1085 in taking from the Moors Toledo and a great part of Andalusia. The powerful leader of the Almoravides, Jussuf from Morocco, was now called to their aid by the Moors. On the plain of Salacca the Christians were beaten in A.D. 1086, but soon the victor turned his arms against his allies, and within six years all Moslem Spain was under his government. His son Ali, in a fearfully bloody battle at Ucles in A.D. 1107, cut down the flower of the Castilian nobility; this marked the summit of power reached by the Almoravides, and now their star began slowly to pale. Alfonso I. of Arragon, A.D. 1105-1134, conquered Saragossa in A.D. 1118, and other cities. Alfonso VII. of Castile, A.D. 1126-1157, whose power rose so high that most of the Christian princes in Spain acknowledged him as sovereign, and that he had himself formally crowned emperor of Spain in A.D. 1135, conducted a successful campaign against Andalusia, and in A.D. 1144 forced his way down to the south coast of Granada. Alfonso I. of Portugal, drove the Moors out of Lisbon; Raimard, count of Barcelona, conquered Tortosa, etc. At the same time too the government of the Almoravides was being undermined in Africa. In A.D. 1146 Morocco fell, and with it North-western Africa, into the hands of the Almohades under Abdelmoumen, while his lieutenant Abu Amram at the same time conquered Moslem Spain and Andalusia. Abdelmoumen’s son Jussuf himself crossed over into Spain with an enormous force in order to extinguish the Christian rule there, but fell in a battle at Santarem against Alfonso I. of Portugal. His son Jacob avenged the disaster by the bloody battle of Alarcos in A.D. 1195, where 30,000 Castilians were left upon the field. When, notwithstanding the overthrow, the Christians a few years later endeavoured to retrieve their loss, Jacob’s successor Mohammed descended upon Spain with half a million fanatical followers. The critical hour for Spain had now arrived. The Christians had won time to come to agreement among themselves. They fought with unexampled heroism on the plain of Tolosa in A.D. 1212 under Alfonso VIII. of Castile. The battlefield was strewn with more than 200,000 bodies of the African fanatics. It was the death-knell of the rule of the Almohad in Spain. Notwithstanding the dissensions and hostilities that immediately broke out among the Christian princes, they conquered within twenty-five years the whole of Andalusia. The work of conquest was carried out mostly by Ferdinand III., the saint of Castile, A.D. 1217-1254, and Jacob I., the conqueror of Arragon, A.D. 1213-1276. Only in the southernmost district of Spain a remnant of the Moslem rule survived in the kingdom of Granada, founded in A.D. 1238 by the emir Mohammed Aben Alamar. Here for a time the glories of Arabic culture were revived in such a way as seemed like a magical restoration of the day of the Ommaiades. In consequence of the marriage in A.D. 1469 of Ferdinand of Arragon, who died in A.D. 1516, with Isabella of Castile, these two most important Christian empires were united. Soon afterwards the empire of Granada came to an end. On 2nd January, A.D. 1492, after an ignominious capitulation, the last khalif, Abu Abdilehi Boabdil, was driven out of the fair (Granada), and a few moments later the Castilian banner waved from the highest tower of the proud Alhambra. The pope bestowed upon the royal pair the title of Catholic monarchs. The Moors who refused to submit to baptism were expelled, but even the baptized, the so-called Moriscoes, proved so dangerous an element in the state that Philip III., in A.D. 1609, ordered them to be all banished from his realm. They sought refuge mostly in Africa, and there went over openly again to Mohammedanism, which they had never at heart rejected.270

§ 95.3. The Jews in Europe.―By trade, money lending and usury the Jews succeeded in obtaining almost sole possession of ready money, which brought them often great influence with the needy princes and nobles, but was also often the occasion of sore oppression and robbery, as well as the cause of popular hatred and violence. Whenever a country was desolated by a plague the notion of well-poisoning by the Jews was renewed. It was told of them that they had stolen the consecrated sacramental bread in order to stick it through with needles, and Christian children, that they might slaughter them at their passover festival. From time to time this popular rage exploded, and then thousands of Jews were ruthlessly murdered. The crusaders too often began their feats of valour on Christian soil by the slaughter of Jews. From the 13th century in almost all lands they were compelled to wear an insulting badge, the so called Jews’ hat, a yellow, funnel-shaped covering of the head, and a ring of red cloth on the breast, etc. They were also compelled to herd together in the cities in the so called Jewish quarter (Italian=Ghetto), which was often surrounded by a special wall. St. Bernard and several popes, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., etc., interested themselves in them, refused to allow them to be violently persecuted, and pointed to their position as an incontrovertible proof of the truth of the gospel to all times. The German emperors also took the Jews under their special protection, for they classed them, after the example of Vespasian and Titus, among the special servants of the imperial chamber, (Servi camera nostræ speciales).271 In England and France they were treated as the mancipium of the crown. In Spain under the Moorish rule they had vastly increased in numbers, culture and wealth; also under the Christian kings they enjoyed for a long time special privileges, their own tribunals, freedom in the possession of land, etc., and obtained great influence as ministers of finance and administration, and also as astrologers, physicians, apothecaries, etc.; but by their usury and merciless greed drew forth more and more the bitter hatred of the people. Hence in the 14th century in Spain also there arose times of sore oppression and persecution, and attempts at conversion by force. And finally, in A.D. 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic drove more than 400,000 Jews out of Spain, and in the following year 100,000 out of Sicily. But even the baptized Jews, the so-called “New Christians,” who were prohibited from removing, fell under the suspicion of secret attachment to the old religion, and many thousands of them became victims of the Inquisition.―Many apologetic and polemical treatises were composed for the purpose of discussion with the Jews and for their instruction, but like so many other formal disputations they did not succeed in securing any good result, for the Jewish teachers were superior in learning, acuteness, and acquaintance with the exposition of Old Testament Scriptures, upon which in this discussion everything turned. But an interesting example of a Jew earnestly striving after a knowledge of the truth and working himself up to a full conviction of the divinity of Christianity and the church doctrine of that age, somewhere about A.D. 1150, is presented by the story told by himself of the conversion of Hermann afterwards a Premonstratensian monk in the monastery of Kappenberg in Westphalia.272 But on the other hand there are also isolated examples of a passing over to Judaism as the result, it would seem, of genuine conviction. The first known example of this kind appears in A.D. 839, in the case of a deacon Boso, who after being circumcised received the name Eleazar, married a Jewess, and settled in Saracen Spain, where he manifested extraordinary zeal in making converts to his new religion. A second case of this sort is met with in the times of the Emperor Henry II., in the perversion of a priest Wecelinus. The narrator of this story gives expression to his horror in the words, Totus contremisco et horrentibus pilis capitis terrore concutior. Also the Judaising sects of the Pasagians in Lombardy during the 11th century (§ 108, 3) and the Russian Jewish sects of the 15th century (§ 73, 5) were probably composed for the most part of proselytes to Judaism.273

§ 96.1. The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I., † A.D. 973.―Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8), the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful, ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours, sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line of popes known as the pornocracy. Sergius III., A.D. 904-911, Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the short pontificates of the two immediately following popes, Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop of that place, to the papal chair under the title of John X., A.D. 914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano (§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I., A.D. 916-924, as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time, for in A.D. 931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and he assumed the name of John XI. But her other son Alberich, who inherited the temporal kingdom from A.D. 932, restricted this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power, and called himself by the name of John XII. A.D. 955-963―the first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair. He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus; in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, in A.D. 911, the Frankish duke Conrad I., A.D. 911-918, was elected king of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim in A.D. 915 threatening the rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His successor, the Saxon Henry I., A.D. 919-936, was the first to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within their own domains. His greater son, Otto I., A.D. 936-973, by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom of Italy, and was at Candlemas A.D. 962 crowned emperor by the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank for thirty years. Thus was the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationalities founded, which continued for centuries to be the centre around which the history of the church and the world revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial privileges maintained by Charlemagne. The Privilegium Ottonis, still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which was that he became convinced that the document was not the original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the obligations of the pope in accordance with the Constitutio Romana, § 82, 4.―But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him, and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius [Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod of Rome in A.D. 963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder, blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected pope Leo VIII., A.D. 963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon afterwards, in A.D. 964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms. Leo VIII. had in John XIII., A.D. 965-972, a virtuous and worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making his escape in A.D. 966. Otto now for the third time crossed the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty, and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as Otto II., A.D. 967.

§ 96.2. The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.―After the death of Otto I., since Otto II., A.D. 973-983, was restrained from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles, the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X. and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party had in A.D. 974 overthrown Pope Benedict VI., A.D. 972-974, appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means of a compromise of parties Benedict VII., A.D. 974-983, was now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in Italy in A.D. 980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II. again restored the imperial prestige in Rome in A.D. 981, but in A.D. 982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had in John XIV., A.D. 983-984, secured the appointment of a pope faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old, was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III., A.D. 983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same name. In A.D. 984 the anti-pope Boniface VII., who had fled to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new pope John XV., A.D. 985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had, after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., in A.D. 987, taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at a synod at Rheims in A.D. 921, and put in his place Gerbert, the greatest scholar (§ 100, 2) and statesman of that age. The council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III., who in A.D. 997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor. Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims. John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his arrival in A.D. 996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who assumed the name of Gregory V., A.D. 996-999, and by him he was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic, almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home, Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod in A.D. 997, which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III., under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his hands for reins.―From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication. But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor accomplished.

§ 96.3. Otto III. now raised to the papal chair his teacher Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under the title of Sylvester II., A.D. 999-1003. Already in Ravenna had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.). He energetically contended against simony, that special canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity, inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom of a Renovatio imperii Romani with the mummified form of the Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was called into being. On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13) the emperor emancipated the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising its see into an archbishopric. He also, in A.D. 1000, released the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§ 93, 7), the most dangerous enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire, enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty, conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary (§ 93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country, and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran. Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor, however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only an early death A.D. 1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too, the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after in A.D. 1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.

§ 96.4. From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri, A.D. 1002-1046.―After the death of Otto III., Henry II., A.D. 1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained the German crown―a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome, after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last elected pope died soon after one another in A.D. 1012, the long subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich, came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one of their own families, Benedict VIII., A.D. 1012-1024. The anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III., the imperial crown, in A.D. 1014, and continued ever after to maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny. They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct, disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward the close of their lives that they could take any very decided action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia in A.D. 1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery. The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West. But the death of the pope in A.D. 1024, which was followed in a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II., Conrad II., A.D. 1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less, however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother Romanus, under the name of John XIX., A.D. 1024-1033, as void of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old, was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name of Benedict IX., A.D. 1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became better under Conrad’s son, Henry III., A.D. 1039-1056, who strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors, with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was, in A.D. 1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny, among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The new pope assumed the name of Gregory VI., A.D. 1044-1046. He wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken. Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans, again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed at the Synod at Sutri, A.D. 1046. The Romans gave to him the right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, who took the name of Clement II., and crowned the king emperor on Christmas, A.D. 1046. The Romans were so delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence. Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany, where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain, had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into the monastery of Clugny.

§ 96.5. Henry III. and his German Popes, A.D. 1046-1057.―With Clement III., 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa (§ 98, 1), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the church of that age were simony, or obtaining spiritual offices by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), and Nicolaitanism (§ 27, 8), under which name were included all fleshly lusts of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread, that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod in Rome in A.D. 1047, began the battle against simony. But he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy the papal chair as Damasus II. Twenty-three days afterwards, however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on the condition that it should have the approval of the people and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX., A.D. 1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles. But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests, he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty. Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field in A.D. 1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded, after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine, so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines, and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died in A.D. 1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt], who now ascended the papal throne as Victor II., A.D. 1055-1057. Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however, at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections, and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent, and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.―Henry died in A.D. 1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died in A.D. 1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him, but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had become one of great importance.

§ 96.6. The Papacy under the Control of Hildebrand, A.D. 1057-1078.―After Victor’s death the cardinals without paying any regard to the imperial right, immediately elected Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, at that time abbot of Monte Cassino, and Hildebrand travelled to Germany in order to obtain the post factum approval of the empress. Stephen IX., A.D. 1057-1058, for so Frederick styled himself, died before Hildebrand’s return. The Tusculan party took advantage of his absence to put forward as pope a partisan of their own, Benedict X., A.D. 1058. But an embassy of Hildebrand’s to the empress secured the succession to bishop Gerhard of Florence. Benedict was obliged to withdraw, and Gerhard ascended the papal throne as Nicholas II., A.D. 1058-1061. With him begins the full development of Hildebrand’s greatness, and from this time, A.D. 1059, when he became archdeacon of Rome, till he himself mounted the papal chair, he was the moving spirit of the Romish hierarchy. By his powerful genius in spite of all hindrances he raised the papacy and the church to a height of power and glory never attained unto before. He thus wrought on, systematically, firmly, and irresistibly advancing toward a complete reformation in ecclesiastical polity. Absolute freedom of the church from the power and influence of the state, and in order to attain this and make it sure, the dominion of the church over the state, papal elections independent of any sort of temporal influence, the complete uprooting of all simoniacal practices, unrelenting strictness in dealing with the immorality of the clergy, invariable enforcement of the law of celibacy, as the most powerful means of emancipating the clergy from the world and the state, filling the sacred offices with the most virtuous and capable men, were some of the noble aims and achievements of this reformation. Hildebrand sought the necessary secular protection and aid for the carrying out of his plans among the Normans. Nicholas II., on the basis of the donation of Constantine, gave as a fief to their leader, Robert Guiscard (§ 95, 1), the lordship of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, out of which the Saracens had yet to be expelled, and exacted from him the oath of a vassal, by which he bound himself to pay a yearly tribute, to protect the papal chair against all encroachments of its privileges, and above all to maintain the right of papal elections by the “meliores cardinales.” Yet again, Nicholas, when, at a later period, by the help of the Normans, he had broken the power of the Tusculan nobles, issued a decree at a Lateran synod at Rome, in A.D. 1059, by which papal elections (§ 82, 4) were regulated anew. Of the two extant recensions of this decree, which are distinguished as the papal and the imperial, the former is now universally acknowledged to be the more authentic form. According to it the election lies exclusively with the Roman cardinal priests (§ 97, 1); to the rest of the clergy as to the people there is left only the right of acclamation, that brought no advantage, and to the emperor, according to Boichorst, the right of concurrence after the election and investiture, according to Granert, the right of veto before the election. This decree, and not less the league with the Normans, were open slights to the imperial claims upon Italy and the papal chair. The empress therefore convened about Easter, A.D. 1061, a council of German bishops, at which Nicholas was deposed, and all his decisions were annulled. Soon after the pope died. The Tusculan party, now joined with the Germans under the Lombard chancellor Wibert, asked a new pope from the empress. At the Council of Basel in A.D. 1061, bishop Cadalus of Parma was appointed. He assumed the name of Honorius II., A.D. 1061-1072. But Hildebrand had already five weeks earlier in concert with the Margravine Beatrice of Canossa, wholly on his own responsibility, chosen bishop Anselm of Lucca, and had him consecrated as Alexander II. A.D. 1061-1073. Honorius advanced to Rome, accompanied by Wibert, and frequently in bloody conflicts conquered the party of his opponent. Duke Godfrey the Bearded of Lorraine, the husband of Beatrice, now appeared as mediator. He made both popes retire to their dioceses and gave to the empress the decision of the controversy. But meanwhile a catastrophe occurred in Germany that led to the most important results. Archbishop Anno of Cologne, standing at the head of a rising of the princes, decoyed the young king of twelve years of age on board a ship at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and took him to Cologne. The regency and the conduct of government were now transferred to the German bishops collectively, but lay practically in the hands of Anno, who meanwhile, however, since A.D. 1063, found himself obliged to share the power with Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. At a council held at Augsburg in A.D. 1062, Alexander was acknowledged as the true pope, but Honorius by no means resigned his claims. With a small army he advanced upon Rome in A.D. 1064, seized fort Leo, which had been built and fortified by Leo IV. for defence against the Saracens, entrenched himself in the castle of St. Angelo, and repeatedly routed his opponent’s forces. But Hildebrand reminded the Normans of their oath of fealty. At a council held at Mantua in A.D. 1064 (or 1067?) Alexander was once again acknowledged, and Honorius, whose party the council sought in vain to break up by force of arms, was again deposed. The proud, ambitious and self-seeking priest of Cologne had meanwhile been obliged to transfer to his northern colleague, Adalbert of Bremen, the further education and training of the young king, who, though only fifteen years old was now proclaimed of age in A.D. 1065, as Henry IV., A.D. 1056-1106. If the bishop of Cologne injured the disposition of the royal youth by his excessive harshness and severity, the bishop of Bremen did him irreparable damage by allowing him unrestrained indulgence in his evil passions.

§ 96.7. Gregory VII., A.D. 1073-1085.―Hildebrand had at last brought the papacy to such a height of power that he was able now to put the finishing stroke to his own work in his own name, and so now he mounted the chair of the chief of the apostles, as Gregory VII., elected and enthroned by a disorderly mob. The Lombard and German bishops appealed to the emperor to have the election declared invalid. But he being on all sides threatened with wars and revolution, thought it advisable to forego the assertion of his rights and to win the favour of the pope by a letter full of devotion and humility. At the Roman Fast Synod of A.D. 1074, Gregory renewed the old law of celibacy and rendered it more strict, deposed all married priests or those who got office through simony, and pronounced their priestly acts invalid. The lower clergy, who were generally married, violently opposed the measure, but Gregory’s stronger will prevailed. Papal legates visited all lands, and, supported by the people, insisted upon the strict observance of the papal decree. At the next fast synod in A.D. 1075, the pope began the contest against the usual investiture of the higher clergy by the temporal princes, with ring and staff as symbols of episcopal office. Whoever should accept ecclesiastical office from the hand of a layman was to be deposed, and any potentate who should give investiture should be put under the ban of the church. Here too he thundered his anathema against the counsellors of Henry who should meanwhile prove guilty of the sale of ecclesiastical offices. Henry, whose hands were fully occupied with the rebellious Saxons, at first dismissed his counsellors, but after the close of the wars he reinstated them, and quite ignored the papal prohibition of investiture. Gregory had for a while quite enough to do in Italy. Cencius, the head of the nobles opposed to reform, fell upon him on Christmas, A.D. 1075, during Divine service, and made him prisoner, but the Romans rescued him, and Cencius had to take to flight. On New Year’s Day, A.D. 1076, there appeared at the royal residence at Goslar a papal embassy which threatened the king with excommunication and deposition should he not immediately break off all relations with the counsellors under the ban, and reform his own infamous life. The king burst out in furious rage. He heaped insults upon the legates, and at the Synod of Worms, on 24th January, had the pope formally deposed as a perjured usurper of the papal chair, a tyrant, an adulterer and a sorcerer. The Lombard bishops, too, gave their consent to this decree (§ 97, 5). At the next Roman Fast Synod on 22nd February, the pope placed all bishops who had taken part in these proceedings under ban, and at the same time solemnly excommunicated and deposed the king, and released all his subjects from the obligation of their oaths of allegiance. Moreover he had the king’s ambassadors, whose life he had preserved from the fury of those present at the meeting of synod by his personal interference, cast into prison, and then in the most contemptuous manner led through the streets. The papal ban made a deep impression upon the German people and princes. One bishop after another gave in, the Saxons raised a new revolt, and at the princes’ conference at Tribur, in October, A.D. 1076, the pope was invited to come personally to Augsburg on 2nd February, to meet and confer with the princes about the affairs of the king. It was resolved that if Henry did not succeed by 22nd February, the first anniversary of the ban, to get it removed, he should for ever forfeit the crown, but that meanwhile he should reside at Spires and continue in the exercise of all royal prerogatives.

§ 96.8. It was for the pope’s advantage to have the business settled upon German soil with the greatest possible publicity. Therefore he scornfully refused the humble petition of the king to send him absolution from Rome, and hastened his preparations for travelling to Augsburg. But Henry went forth to meet him on the way. Shortly before Christmas he escaped from Spires with his wife and child, and in spite of a severe winter crossed Mount Cenis. The Lombards protected him in defying the pretensions of the pope. But Henry’s whole attention was now directed to overturning the machinations of the hostile German princes. So he suddenly appeared at Canossa, where Gregory was staying with the Margravine Matilda, daughter of Beatrice, a princess enthusiastically attached to him and his ideal. This meeting was unexpected and undesired by the pope. There during the cold winter days, from 25th to 27th January, A.D. 1077, stood the son of Henry III. barefoot in the courtyard of the castle of Canossa, wearing a sackcloth shirt, fasting all day and supplicating access to the proud monk. With inflexible severity the pope refused, until at last the tears, entreaties, and reproaches of the margravine overcame his obduracy. Henry promised to submit himself to the future judgment of the pope in regard to his reconciliation with the German princes, and was absolved. Nevertheless the princes at the Assembly at Forcheim in March, with the concurrence of the papal legate, elected a new king in the person of Rudolph of Swabia, Henry’s brother-in-law. Roused to fury, Henry now hastened back to Germany, where soon he gathered round him a great army. Notwithstanding all pressure brought to bear upon him, Gregory maintained for three years a position of neutrality, but at last, in A.D. 1080, at the Roman Fast Synod, where the envoys of the contending kings presented their complaints, he renewed the excommunication and deposition of Henry. Then the bishops of Henry’s party immediately met at Brixen, and hurled the anathema and pronounced sentence of deposition against Gregory, and elected as anti-pope Wibert, formerly chancellor, then archbishop of Ravenna, who assumed the title of Clement III., A.D. 1080-1100. After the death of Rudolph in battle, at Merseburg, in A.D. 1080, Henry marched across the Alps and appeared at Pentecost before the gates of Rome, which were opened to him after a three years’ siege. Clement III. then at Easter, A.D. 1084, set upon him and his queen the imperial crown. Gregory had withdrawn to the Castle of St. Angelo. Henry, however, was compelled by the appearance of a new rival for the crown, Henry, Count of Luxemburg, to return to Germany, and Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke, hastened from the south to deliver the pope, which he accomplished only after Rome had been fearfully devastated. Gregory died in the following year, A.D. 1085, at Salerno. Gregory VII. also took the field against the dissolute and prodigal king of France, Philip I., and threatened him, because of simony, with interdict and deposition. His success here, however, was comparatively small. Philip avowedly submitted to the papal decree, but did not in the least alter his conduct, and Gregory felt that it was not prudent to push matters to an extremity. He showed himself more indulgent toward the powerful William the Conqueror of England, although this prince ruled the church of his dominions with an iron hand, pronounced all church property to be freehold, and was scarcely less guilty of simony than the kings of Germany and France. Yet the pope himself, who hoped to secure the aid of his arms against Henry IV., and sought therefore to dazzle him with the prospect of the imperial throne, winked at his delinquencies, and loaded him with expressions of his good-will. The primate of England, too, the powerful Conqueror’s right-hand supporter, Lanfranc of Canterbury, who bore a grudge against Gregory because of his patronage of the heretic Berengarius [Berengar] (§ 101, 2), showed no special zeal for the reforms advocated by the pope. At a synod held at Winchester in A.D. 1076, the law of celibacy was enforced, with this limitation, however, that those of the secular clergy who were already married should not be required to put away their wives, but no further marriages among them were to be permitted.275

§ 96.9. The Central Idea in Gregory’s Policy was the establishment of a universal theocracy, with the pope as its one visible head, the representative of Christ upon earth, who as such stands over the powers of the world. Alongside of it, indeed, the royal authority was to stand independently as one ordained of God, but it was to confine itself strictly to temporal affairs, and to be directed by the pope in regard to whatever might be partly within and partly without these lines. All states bearing the Christian name were to be bound together as members of one body in the great papal theocracy which had superior to it only God and His law. The princes must receive consecration and Divine sanction from the spiritual power; they are “by the grace of God,” not immediately, however, but only mediately, the church as the middle term stands between them and God. The pope is their arbiter and highest liege lord, whose decisions they are under obligation unconditionally to obey. Royalty stands related to the papacy as the moon to the sun, from which she receives her light and warmth. The church, which lends to the power of the world her Divine authority, can also withdraw it again when it is being misused. When this is done, the obligation of subjects to obey also ceases. Gregory began this gigantic work, not so much to raise himself personally to the utmost pinnacle of power, but rather to save the church from destruction. He certainly was not free from ambition and the lust of ruling, but with him higher than all personal interests was the idea of the high vocation of the church, and to the realizing of it he enthusiastically devoted all the energies of his life. On the other hand, he cannot escape the reproach of having striven with carnal weapons for what he called a spiritual victory, of having meted out unequal measures, where his interests demanded it, in the exercise of his assumed function as judge of kings and princes, and of having occupied himself more with political schemes and intrigues than with the ministry of the church of Christ. His whole career shows him to have been a man of great self reliance, yet, on the other hand, he was able to preserve the consciousness of the poor sinner who seeks and finds salvation only in the mercy of Christ. The strict morality of his life has been admitted even by his bitterest foes. Not infrequently too did he show himself in advance of his time in humanity and liberality of sentiment, as e.g. in the Berengarian controversy (§ 101, 2), and in his decided disapproval of the prosecution of witches and sorcerers.276

§ 96.10. Victor III. and Urban II., A.D. 1086-1099.―Gregory VII. was succeeded by the talented abbot of Monte Cassino, Desiderius, under the title of Victor III., A.D. 1086-1087. Only after great pressure was brought to bear upon him did he consent to leave the cloister, which under his rule had flourished in a remarkable manner; but now aged and sickly, he only enjoyed the pontificate for sixteen months. His successor was bishop Odo, of Ostia, a Frenchman by birth, and a member of the Clugny brotherhood, who took the name of Urban II., A.D. 1088-1099. For a long time he was obliged to give up Rome to the party of the imperial anti-pope. But the enthusiasm with which the idea of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre was taken up, which he proposed to Western Christendom at the Council of Clermont, in A.D. 1095 (§ 94), secured for him the highest position in his time, and made him strong enough to withstand the opposition of Philip I., king of France, whom he had put under ban at Clermont, on account of his adulterous connection with Bertrada. Returning to Italy from his victorious campaign through France, he was able to celebrate Christmas once again in the Lateran at Rome in A.D. 1096. His main supporters in the conflict against the emperor were the powerful Margravine Matilda, and the emperor’s most dangerous opponent in Germany, duke Welf of Bavaria, whose son of the same name, then in his seventeenth year, was married by the pope to the widowed Matilda, who was now forty years of age, whence arose the first of the anti-imperial and strongly papistical Welf or Guelph party in Germany and Italy. On the other side the margravine succeeded in stirring up Conrad, the son of Henry IV., to rebel against his father, and had him crowned king in A.D. 1087. At Cremona this prince held the pope’s stirrup, and took the oath of obedience to him. The emperor had him deposed in A.D. 1098, and had his second son elected and crowned as Henry V. Urban, who received on his death-bed the news of the destruction of Jerusalem, died in A.D. 1099, and his anti-pope Clement III., who had withdrawn to Ravenna, died in the following year.

§ 96.11. Paschalis II., Gelasius II., and Calixtus II., A.D. 1099-1124.―Urban’s successor, Paschalis II., A.D. 1099-1118, also a member of the Clugny brotherhood, at once stirred up the fire of rebellion against the excommunicated emperor, and favoured a conspiracy of the princes. The young king, at the head of the insurgents, took his father prisoner, and obliged him to abdicate in A.D. 1106. Six months afterwards the emperor died. The church’s curse pursued even his corpse. Twice interred in holy ground, first in the cathedral of Liège, then in the cathedral of Spires, his bones were exhumed and thrown into unconsecrated ground, until at last, in A.D. 1111, his son obtained the withdrawal of the ban. At the Council of Guastalla in A.D. 1106, Paschalis renewed the prohibition of Investiture. But Henry V., A.D. 1106-1125, concerned himself as little about this prohibition as his father had done. No sooner had he seated himself upon the throne in Germany than he crossed the Alps to compel the pope to crown him emperor and concede to him the right of investiture. The pope, who was willing that the church should be poor if only she retained her freedom, being now without counsel or help (for Matilda was old and her warlike spirit was broken, and from the Normans no assistance could be looked for), was driven in A.D. 1111, in his perplexity to offer a compromise, whereby the emperor should surrender investiture to the church, but on the other hand the clergy should return to him all landed property and privileges given them by the state since the times of Charlemagne, while the Patrimony of Peter should continue the property of the pope himself. On the basis of this agreement the coronation of the emperor was to be celebrated in St. Peter’s on 12th Feb., A.D. 1111. But when after the celebration had begun the document which set forth the compact was read, the prelates present in the cathedral raised loud cries of dissent and demanded that it should immediately be cancelled. The coronation was not proceeded with, the pope and his cardinals were thrown into prison, and a revolt of the Romans was suppressed. The pope was then compelled to rescind the synodal decrees and formally to grant to the king the right of investiture; he had also, after solemnly promising never again to put the emperor under ban, to proceed with the coronation. But Hildebrand’s party called the pope to account for this betrayal of the church. A synod at Rome in A.D. 1112 declared the concessions wrung from him invalid, and pronounced the ban against the emperor. The pope, however, remembering his oaths, refused to confirm it, but it was nevertheless proclaimed by his legate in the French and German synods. Matilda’s death in A.D. 1115 called the emperor again to Italy. She had even in the time of Gregory VII. made over all her goods and possessions to the Roman Church; but she had the right of free disposal only in regard to allodial property, not in regard to her feudal territories. Henry, however, now laid claim to all her belongings. At the Fast Synod of A.D. 1116 Paschalis asked pardon of God and man for his sin of weakness, renewed and made more strict the prohibition of investiture, but still stoutly refused to confirm the ban of the emperor. In consequence of a rebellion of the Romans he was obliged to take to flight, and he died in exile in A.D. 1118. The high church party now chose Gelasius II., A.D. 1118-1119, but immediately after the election he was seized by a second Cencius (see § 96, 7) on account of a private grudge, fearfully maltreated and confined in chains within his castle. The Romans indeed rescued him, but the emperor’s sudden arrival in Rome led him, in order to avoid making inconvenient terms of peace, to seek his own and the church’s safety in flight. The people and nobles in concert with the emperor set up Gregory VIII. as anti-pope. So soon as the emperor left Rome, Gelasius returned. But Cencius fell upon him during Divine service, and only with difficulty he escaped further maltreatment by flight into France, where he died in the monastery of Clugny after a pontificate of scarcely twelve months. The few cardinals present at Clugny elected archbishop Guido of Vienne. He assumed the title of Calixtus II., A.D. 1119-1124. Pope and emperor met together expressing desires for peace. But the auspiciously begun negotiations never got beyond the statement of the terms of contract, and ended in the pope renewing at the Council of Rheims, in A.D. 1119, the anathema against the emperor and anti-pope. Next year Calixtus crossed the Alps. He received a hearty greeting in Rome. He laid siege to the anti-pope in Sutri, took him prisoner, and after the most contumelious treatment before the Roman mob, cast him into a monastic prison. The investiture question, now better understood through learned discussions on civil and ecclesiastical law, was at last definitely settled in the Worms Concordat, as the result of mutual concessions made at the National Assembly at Worms, A.D. 1122. The arrangement come to was this: canonical election of bishops and abbots of the empire by the diocesan clergy and the secular nobles should be restored, and under imperial inspection made free from all coercion, but in disputed elections decisions should be given in accordance with the judgment of the metropolitan and the rest of the bishops, the investing of the elected with the sceptre in Germany before, in other parts of the empire after, consecration, should belong to the emperor, and investiture with ring and staff at the consecration should belong to the pope. This agreement was solemnly ratified at the First Œcumenical Lateran Synod in A.D. 1123.

§ 96.12. The contemporary English Investiture Controversy was brought earlier to a conclusion. William the Conqueror had unopposed put Norman prelates in the place of the English bishops, and had homage rendered him by them, while they received from him investiture with the ring and the staff. William Rufus, the Conqueror’s son and successor, A.D. 1087-1100, a domineering and greedy prince, after Lanfranc’s death in A.D. 1089 (§ 101, 1) allowed the archbishopric of Canterbury to remain vacant for four years, in order that he might himself enjoy the undisturbed possession of the revenues. It was not till A.D. 1093, during a severe illness and under fear of death, that he agreed to bestow it upon Anselm, the celebrated Abbot of Bec (§ 101, 1, 3), with the promise to abstain ever afterwards from simony. No sooner had he recovered than he repented him of his promise. He resumed his old practices, and even demanded of Anselm a large sum for his appointment. For peace sake Anselm gave him a voluntary present of money, but it did not satisfy the king. When, in A.D. 1097, the archbishop asked permission to make a journey to Rome in order to have the conflict settled there, the king banished him. In Rome Anselm was honourably received and his conduct was highly approved; but neither Urban II. nor Paschalis II. could venture upon a complete breach with the king. William the Conqueror’s third son, Henry I. Beauclerk, A.D. 1100-1135, who, having also snatched Normandy from his eldest brother Robert, needed the support of the clergy to secure his position, agreed to the return of the exiled primate, and promised to put a stop to every kind of simony; but he demanded the maintenance of investiture and the oath of fealty which Anselm now, in consequence of the decrees of a Roman synod which he had himself agreed to, felt obliged to refuse. Thus again the conflict was renewed. The king now confiscated the goods and revenues of the see, and the archbishop was on the point of issuing an excommunication against him, when at last an understanding was come to in A.D. 1106, through the mediation of the pope, according to which the crown gave up the investiture with ring and staff, and the archbishop agreed to take the oath of fealty.―In France, too, from the end of the 11th century, owing to the pressure used by the high church reforming party, the secular power was satisfied with securing the oath of fealty from the higher clergy, without making further claim to investiture.277

§ 96.13. The Times of Lothair III. and Conrad III., A.D. 1125-1152.―After the death of Henry V. without issue, the Saxon Lothair, A.D. 1125-1137, was elected, and the Hohenstaufen grandson of Henry IV. descended in the female line was passed over. Honorius II., A.D. 1124-1130, successor of Calixtus II., hastened to confer the papal sanction upon the newly elected emperor, who already upon his election had, by accepting spiritual investiture before temporal investiture, and a minimising of the oath of fealty by ecclesiastical reservations, showed himself ready to support the claims of the clergy. But neither ban nor the preaching of a crusade against Count Roger II. of Sicily (§ 95, 1) could prevent him from building up a powerful kingdom comprehending all Southern Italy. The next election of the cardinals gives us two popes: Innocent II., A.D. 1130-1143, and Anacletus II., A.D. 1130-1138. The latter, although not the pope of the majority, secured a powerful support in the friendship of Roger II., whom he had crowned king by his legate at Palermo. Innocent, on the other hand, fled to France. There the two oracles of the age, the abbot Peter of Clugny and Bernard of Clairvaux, took his side and won for him the favour of all Cisalpine Europe. Both popes fished for Lothair’s favour with the bait of the promise of imperial coronation. A second edition of the Synod of Sutri would probably have enabled a more powerful king to attain the elevation of Henry III. But Lothair was not the man to seize the opportunity. He decided in favour of the protégé of Bernard, led him back in A.D. 1133 to the eternal city, had himself crowned emperor by him in the Lateran and invested with Matilda’s inheritance, which was declared by the curialists a fief of the empire. But Lothair’s repeated demands, that what had been acquired by the Concordat of Worms should be renounced, were set aside, through the opposition not so much of the pope as of St. Bernard and St. Norbert (§ 98, 2). At the prayer of the pope, who immediately after Lothair’s departure had been driven out by Roger, and moved by the prophetic exhortations of Bernard, the emperor prepared for a second Roman campaign in A.D. 1136. Leaving the conquest of Rome to the eloquence of the prophet of Clairvaux, he advanced from one victory to another until he brought all Southern Italy under the imperial sway, and died on his return homeward in an Alpine hut in the Tyrol. Fuming with rage Roger now crossed over from Sicily and in a short time he reconquered his southern provinces of Italy. The appointment, however, of a new pope after the death of Anacletus miscarried, and Innocent was able at the Second Œcumenical Lateran Synod in A.D. 1139 to declare the schism at an end. The pope then renewed the excommunication of Roger and pronounced an anathema against the teachings of Arnold of Brescia (§ 108, 7), a young enthusiastic priest of the school of Abælard, who traced all ecclesiastical corruption back to the wealth of the church and the secular power of the clergy. He next prepared himself for war with Roger. That prince, however, waylaid him and had him brought into his tent, where he and his sons cast themselves at the holy father’s feet and begged for mercy and peace. The pope could do nothing else than play the rôle of the magnanimous given him in this comedy. He had therefore to confirm the hated Norman in the possession of the conquered provinces as a hereditary monarchy with the ecclesiastical privilege of a native legate, and, as some set off to comfort himself with, the prince was to regard the territory as a fief of the papal see. But still greater calamities befell this pope. The republican freedom, which the cities of Tuscany and Lombardy won during the 12th century, awakened also among the Romans a love of liberty. They refused to render obedience in temporal matters to the pope and established in the Capitol a popular senate, which undertook the civil government in the name of the Roman Commune. Innocent died during the revolution. His successor Cœlestine II. held the pontificate for only five months, and Lucius II., after vainly opposing the Commune for seven months, was killed by a stone thrown in a tumult. Eugenius III., A.D. 1145-1153, a scholar and friend of St. Bernard, was obliged immediately after his election to seek safety in flight. An agreement, however, was come to in that same year: the pope acknowledged the government of the Commune as legitimate, while it recognised his superiority and granted to him the investiture of the senators. Yet, though taken back three times to Rome, he could never remain there for more than a few months. He visited France and Germany (Treves) in A.D. 1147. In France he heard of the fall of Edessa. Supported by the fiery zeal of Bernard, the summons to a second crusade (§ 94, 2) aroused a burning enthusiasm throughout all the West. But in Rome he was unable to offer any effectual resistance to the demagogical preaching by which Arnold of Brescia from A.D. 1146 had inflamed the people and the inferior clergy with an ardent enthusiasm for his ideal constitution of an apostolic church and a democratic state. Since this change of feeling had taken place in Rome, both parties, that of the Capitol as well as that of the Lateran, had repeatedly endeavoured to win to their side the first Hohenstaufen on the German throne, Conrad III., A.D. 1138-1152, by promise of bestowing the imperial crown. But Conrad, meanwhile otherwise occupied, refrained from all intermeddling, and when at last he actually started upon a journey to Rome death overtook him on the way.

§ 96.14. The Times of Frederick I. and Henry VI., A.D. 1152-1190.―The nephew and successor of Conrad III., Frederick I. Barbarossa, A.D. 1152-1190, began his reign with the firm determination to realize fully the ideas of Charlemagne (§ 82, 3) by his pope Paschalis III., whom at a later period, in A.D. 1165, he had canonized. With profound contempt at heart for the Roman democracy of his time, he concluded a compact in A.D. 1153 with the papal see, which confirmed him in the possession of the imperial crown and gave to the pope the Dominium temporale in the Church States. After the death of Eugenius which soon followed, the aged Anastasius IV. occupied the papal chair for a year and a half, a time of peace and progress. He was succeeded by the powerful Hadrian IV., A.D. 1154-1159. He was an Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, son of a poor English priest, the first and, down to the present time, the only one of that nation who attained the papal dignity. He pronounced an interdict upon the Romans who had refused him entrance into the inner part of the city and had treacherously slain a cardinal. Rome endured this spiritual famine only for a few weeks, and then purchased deliverance by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who soon thereafter fell into the hands of a cardinal. He was indeed again rescued by force, but Frederick I., who had meanwhile in A.D. 1154 begun his first journey to Rome, and on his way thither had humbled the proud Lombard cities struggling for freedom, urged by the pope, insisted that he should be surrendered up again, and subsequently gave him over to the Roman city prefect, who, in A.D. 1155, without trial or show of justice condemned him to be burnt and had his ashes strewn upon the Tiber. In the camp at Sutri the pope personally greeted the king who, after refusing for several days, at length agreed to show him the customary honour of holding his stirrup, doing it however with a very bad grace. Soon too the senatorial ambassadors of the Roman people, who indulged in bombastic, turgid declamation, presented themselves professing their readiness on consideration of a solemn undertaking to protect the Roman republic, and on payment of five thousand pounds, to proclaim the German king from the Capitol Roman emperor and ruler of the world. With a furious burst of anger Frederick silenced them, and with scathing words showed them how the witness of history pointed the contrast between their miserable condition and the glory and dignity of the German name. Yet on the day of the coronation, which they were not able to prevent, the Romans took revenge for the insults he had heaped upon them by an attack upon the papal residence in the castle of Leo, and upon the imperial camp in front of the city, but were repelled with sore loss. Soon thereafter, in A.D. 1155, the emperor made preparations for returning home, leaving everything else to the pope. The relations between the two became more and more strained from day to day. The Lombards, too, once again rebelled. Frederick therefore in A.D. 1158 made his second expedition to Rome. On the Roncalian plains he held a great assembly which laid down to the Lombards as well as to the pope the imperial prerogatives. Hadrian would have given utterance to his wrath by thundering an anathema, but he was restrained by the hand of death.

§ 96.15. The cardinals of the hierarchical party elected Alexander III., A.D. 1159-1181, those of the imperial party, Victor IV. A synod convened by the emperor at Pavia in A.D. 1160 decided in favour of Victor, who was now formally recognised. Meanwhile Milan threw off the yoke that had been laid upon her. After an almost two years’ siege the emperor took the city in A.D. 1162 and razed it to the ground. From France whither he had fled, Alexander, in A.D. 1163, launched his anathema against the emperor and his pope. The latter died in A.D. 1164, and Frederick had Paschalis III. († A.D. 1168) chosen his successor; but in A.D. 1165, Alexander returning from France, pressed on in advance of him and was acknowledged by the Roman senate. Now for the third time in A.D. 1166, Frederick crossed the Alps. A small detachment of troops that had been sent in advance to accompany the imperial pope to Rome under the leadership of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, in a bloody battle at Monte Porzio in A.D. 1167 utterly destroyed a Roman army of twenty times its size. Frederick then himself hasted forward. After an eight days’ furious assault the fortress of Leo surrendered, and Paschalis was able to perform the Te Deum in St. Peter’s. The Transtiberines, too, after Alexander had sought safety in flight, soon took the oath of fealty to the emperor upon a guarantee of imperial protection of their republic. But at the very climax of his success “the fate of Sennacherib” befell him. The Roman malaria during the hot August became a deadly fever plague, thinned the lines of his army and forced him to withdraw. So weakened was he that he could not even assert his authority in Lombardy, but had to return to Germany in A.D. 1168. The emperor’s disaster told also unfavourably upon the fortunes of his pope, whose successor Calixtus III. was quite disregarded. In A.D. 1174 Frederick again went down into Italy and engaged upon a decisive battle with the confederate cities of Lombardy, but in A.D. 1176 at Legnano he suffered a complete defeat, in consequence of which he agreed at the Congress of Venice, in A.D. 1177, to acknowledge the freedom of the Lombard cities, abandoned the imperial claims upon Rome, and recognised Alexander III., who was also present there, as the rightful pope, kissing his feet and holding his stirrup according to custom. Rome, which he had not seen for nearly eleven years, would no longer shut her gates against the pope. Welcomed by senate and people, he made his public entrance into the Lateran in March A.D. 1178, where in the following year he gathered together 300 bishops in the Third Lateran Council (the 11th œcumenical), in order by their advice to heal the wounds which the schism of the church had made. Here also, in order to prevent double elections in time to come, it was resolved that for a valid papal election two-thirds of the whole college of cardinals must be agreed. The right of concurrence assigned by the decree of Nicholas II. in A.D. 1059 to the people and emperor was treated as antiquated and forgotten, and was not even alluded to.

§ 96.16. Even before his victory over the powerful Hohenstaufen, Alexander III. during his exile won a yet more brilliant success in England. King Henry II., A.D. 1154-1189, wished to establish again the supremacy of the state over church and clergy, and thought that he would have a pliant tool in carrying out his plans in Thomas à Becket, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury, in A.D. 1162. But as primate of the English church, Thomas proved a vigorous upholder of hierarchical principles. Instead of the accommodating courtier, the king found the archbishop immediately upon his consecration the bold asserter of the claims of the church. The jovial man of the world became at once the saintly ascetic. At a council at Tours in A.D. 1163, he returned into the pope’s own hand the pallium with which an English prince had invested him in name of the king, resigning also his archiepiscopal dignity, that he might receive these directly as a papal gift. Straightway began the conflict between the king and his former favourite. Henry summoned a diet at Clarendon, where he obtained the approval of the superior clergy for his anti-hierarchical propositions; Thomas also for a time withstood, promising at last, when urged on all sides, to assent to the constitutions, but refusing to sign the document when it was placed before him. The king now ordered a process of deposition to be executed against him, and Thomas then fled to France, where the pope was at that time residing. The pope released him from his promise, condemned the Constitutions of Clarendon, and threatened the king with anathema and interdict. At last, after protracted negotiations, in A.D. 1170 by means of a personal interview on the frontiers of Normandy, a reconciliation was effected; by which, however, neither the king nor the archbishop renounced their claims. Thomas now returned to England and threatened with excommunication all bishops who should agree to the Constitutions of Clarendon. Four knights seized upon an unguarded word of the king which he had uttered in passion, and murdered the archbishop at the altar in A.D. 1170. Alexander canonized the martyr to Hildebrandism, and the king was so sorely pressed by the pope, his own people and his rebellious sons, that he consented to do penance humbly at the tomb of his deadly sainted foe, and submitted to be scourged by the monks. Becket’s bones, for which a special chapel was reared at Canterbury, were visited by crowds of pilgrims until Henry VIII., when he had broken with Rome (§ 139, 4), formally arraigned the saint as a traitor, had his name struck out of the calendar and his ashes scattered to the winds.278―Thus by A.D. 1178 Alexander III. had risen to the summit of ecclesiastical power; but in Rome itself as well as in the Church States, he remained as powerless politically as before. Soon, therefore, after the great council he again quitted the city for a voluntary exile, and never saw it more. His three immediate successors, too, Lucius III. († A.D. 1185), Urban III. († A.D. 1187), and Gregory VIII. († A.D. 1187), were elected, consecrated and buried outside of Rome. Clement III. († A.D. 1191) was the first to enter the Lateran again in A.D. 1188, on the basis of a compromise which acknowledged the republican constitution under the papal superiority. Meanwhile Frederick I., without regarding the protest of the pope as liege lord of the Sicilian crown, had in A.D. 1186 consummated the fateful marriage of his son Henry with Constance, the posthumous daughter of king Roger, and aunt of his childless grandson William II. († A.D. 1194), and thus the heiress of the great Norman kingdom of Italy. From the crusade which he then undertook in A.D. 1189 Frederick never returned (§ 94, 3). His successor, Henry VI., A.D. 1190-1197, compelled the new pope Cœlestine III., A.D. 1191-1198, to crown him emperor in A.D. 1191, conquered the inheritance of his wife, pushed back the boundaries of the Church States to the very gates of Rome, and asserted his imperial rights even over the city of Rome itself. He pressed on to the realizing of the scheme for making the German crown together with the imperial dignity for ever hereditary in his house. The princes of the empire in A.D. 1196 elected his son Frederick II., when scarcely two years old, as king of the Romans. He then thought under the pretext of a crusade to conquer Greece, to which he had laid groundless claims of succession, but while upon the way his plans were overthrown by his sudden death at Messina.

§ 96.17. Innocent III., A.D. 1198-1216.―After the death of Alexander III. the power and reputation of the Holy See had fallen into the lowest degradation. Then the cardinal deacon, Lothair Count of Segni in Anagni, succeeded in A.D. 1198 in his 37th year, under the name of Innocent III., and raised the papacy again to a height of power and glory never reached before. In point of intellect and power of will he was not a whit behind Gregory VII., while in culture (§ 102, 9), scholarship, subtlety and adroitness he far excelled him. His piety, too, his moral earnestness, his enthusiasm and devotion to the church and the theocratical interest of the chair of St. Peter, were at least as powerful and decidedly purer, deeper and more spiritual than Gregory’s. And in addition to all these great endowments he enjoyed an invariable good fortune which never forsook him. His first task was the restoration of the Church States and his political prestige in Rome. In both these directions he was favoured by the sudden death of Henry VI. and the internal disorders of the Capitoline government of that time. On the very day of his enthronement the imperial prefect tendered him the oath of fealty and the Capitol did homage to him as the superior. And also before the second year had passed the Church States in their fullest extent were restored by the expulsion of the greater and smaller feudal lords who had been settled there by Henry VI. Rome was indeed once more the scene of wild party conflicts which forced the pope in A.D. 1203 to fly to Anagni. He was able, however, to return in A.D. 1204 and to conclude a definite and decisive peace with the Commune in A.D. 1205, according to the terms of which the many-headed senate resigned, and a single senator or podestà nominated by the pope was entrusted with the executive authority. Meanwhile Innocent had been gaining brilliant successes beyond the limits of the States of the Church. These were won first of all in Sicily. The widow of Henry VI. had her son Frederick of four years old, after his father’s death, crowned king in Palermo. Unadvised and helpless, pressed upon all sides, she sought protection from Innocent, which he granted upon her renouncing the ecclesiastical privileges previously claimed by the king and making acknowledgment of the papal suzerainty. Dying in A.D. 1198, Constance transferred to him the guardianship of her son, and the pope justified the confidence placed in him by the excellent and liberal education which he secured for his ward, as well as by the zeal and success with which he restored rest and peace to the land. In Germany, Philip of Swabia, Frederick’s uncle, was appointed to carry on the government in the name of his Sicilian nephew during his minority. The condition of Germany, however, demanded the direct control of a firm and vigorous ruler. The princes, therefore, insisted upon a new election, for which Philip also now appeared as candidate. The votes were split between two rivals; the Ghibellines voting for Philip, A.D. 1198-1208, and the Guelph party for Otto IV. of Brunswick, A.D. 1198-1218. The party of the latter referred the decision to the pope. For three years he delayed giving judgment, then he decided in favour of the Guelph, who paid for the preference by granting all the demands of the pope, and calling himself king by the grace of God and the pope. The States of the Church were thus represented as including the Duchy of Spoleto, and in the election of bishops the church was freed from the influence of the state. By A.D. 1204, however, Philip’s power and repute had risen to such a pitch that even the pope found himself obliged to take into account the altered position of matters. A papal court of arbitration at Rome to which both claimants had agreed to submit, was on the point of giving its decision unequivocally in favour of the Hohenstaufen, when the murder of Philip by Otto of Wittelsbach, in A.D. 1208, rendered it void. Otto IV. was now acknowledged by all, and in A.D. 1209 he was crowned by the pope after new concessions had been made. But as Roman emperor he either would not or could not perform what he had promised before and at his coronation. He took to himself the possessions of Matilda as well as other parts of the States of the Church, and was not prevented from pursuing his victorious campaign in Southern Italy by the anathema which Innocent thundered against him in A.D. 1210. Then Innocent called to mind the old rights of his former pupil to the German crown, and insisted that they should be given effect to. In A.D. 1212, Frederick II., now in his eighteenth year, accepted the call, was received in Germany with open arms, and was crowned in A.D. 1215 at Aachen. Otto could not maintain his position against him, and so withdrew to his hereditary possessions, and died in A.D. 1218.

§ 96.18. King Philip Augustus II. of France, had in A.D. 1193 married the Danish princess Ingeborg, but divorced her in A.D. 1196, and married the beautiful Duchess Agnes of Meran. Innocent compelled him in A.D. 1200 to put her away by issuing against him an interdict, but it was only in A.D. 1213 that he again took back Ingeborg as his legitimate wife.―From far off Spain the young king Peter of Arragon went in A.D. 1204 to Rome, laid down his crown as a sacred gift upon the tomb of the chief of the apostles, and voluntarily undertook the payment of a yearly tribute to the Holy See. In the same year a crusading army, by founding a Latin empire in Constantinople, brought the schismatical East to the feet of the pope (§ 94, 4). In England, when the archbishopric of Canterbury became vacant, the chapter filled it by electing their own superior Reginald. This choice they had soon cause to rue. They therefore annulled their election, and at the wish of the usurping king John Lackland made choice of John, bishop of Norwich. Innocent refused to confirm their action, and persuaded certain members of the chapter staying in Rome to choose the cardinal priest Stephen Langton, whose election he immediately confirmed.279 When the king refused to recognise this appointment, and on an interdict being threatened swore that he would drive all priests who should obey it out of the country, the pope issued it in A.D. 1208 against all England, excommunicated the king, and finally, in A.D. 1212, released all his subjects from their oath of allegiance and deposed the monarch, while he commissioned Philip Augustus of France to carry the sentence into effect. John, now as cringing and terrified as before he had been proud and despotic, humbled himself in the dust, and at Dover, in A.D. 1213, placed kingdom and crown at the feet of the papal legate Pandulf, and received it from his hands as a papal fief, undertaking to pay twice a year the tribute imposed. But in A.D. 1214 the English nobles extorted from their cowardly tyrant as a safeguard against lordly wilfulness and despotism the famous Magna Charta, against which the pope protested, threatening excommunication and promising legitimate redress of their grievances, though in consequence of confusion caused by the breaking out again of the civil wars he was unable to enforce his protest. And now his days were drawing to an end. At the famous Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, more than 1,500 prelates from all the countries of Christendom, along with the ambassadors of almost all Christian kings, princes and free cities, gave him homage as the representative of God on earth, as visible Head of the Church, and supreme lord and judge of all princes and peoples. A few months later he died.―As in Italy and Germany, in France and England, he had also in all other states of the Christian world, in Spain and Portugal, in Poland, Livonia and Sweden, in Constantinople and Bulgaria, shown himself capable of controlling political as well as ecclesiastical movements, arranging and smoothing down differences, organizing and putting into shape what was tending to disorder. Some conception of his activity may be formed from the 5,316 extant decretals of the eighteen years of his pontificate.

§ 96.19. The Times of Frederick II. and his Successors, A.D. 1215-1268.―Frederick II.,280 A.D. 1215-1250, contrary to the Hohenstaufen custom, had not only agreed to the partition of Sicily from the empire in favour of his son Henry, but also renewed the agreements previously entered into with the pope by Otto IV. He even increased the papal possessions by ceding Ancona, and still further at his coronation at Aachen he showed his goodwill by undertaking a crusade. He also allowed this same Henry who became king of Sicily as a vassal of the pope, to be elected king of the Romans in A.D. 1220, and then began his journey to Rome to receive imperial coronation. The new pope Honorius III., A.D. 1216-1227, formerly Frederick’s tutor and even still entertaining for him a fatherly affection, exacted from him a solemn renewal of his earlier promises. But instead of returning to Germany, Frederick started for Sicily in order to make it the basis of operations for the future carrying out of the ideas of his father and grandfather. The peace-loving pope constantly urged him to fulfil his promise of fitting out a crusade. But it was only after his successor Gregory IX., A.D. 1227-1241, a high churchman of the stamp of Gregory VII. and Innocent III., urged the matter with greater determination, that Frederick actually embarked. He turned back, however, as soon as an epidemic broke out in the ships, but he did not himself escape the contagion, and died three days after. In A.D. 1227 the pope had in a senseless passion hurled an anathema against him, and, in an encyclical to all the bishops, painted the emperor’s ingratitude and breach of faith in the darkest colours. The emperor on his part, in a manifesto justifying himself addressed to the princes and people of Europe, had quite as unsparingly lashed the worldliness of the church, the corruption, presumption and self-seeking of the papacy, and then in A.D. 1228 he again undertook the postponed crusade (§ 94, 5). The pope’s curse followed “the pirate” to the very threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, and a papal crusading force made a raid upon Southern Italy. Frederick therefore hastened his return, landed in A.D. 1229 in Apulia, and entered into negotiations for peace, to which, however, the pope agreed only in A.D. 1230, when the emperor’s victoriously advancing troops threatened him with the loss of the States of the Church. In consequence of the pope’s continued difficulties with his Romans, who drove him three times out of the city, Frederick had frequent opportunities of showing himself serviceable to the pope by giving direct aid or mediating in his favour. Nevertheless he continually conspired with the rebellious Lombards, and in A.D. 1239 renewed the ban against the emperor. The pope who had hitherto only charged Frederick with a tendency to freethinking, as well as an inclination to favour the Saracens (§ 95, 1), and to maintain friendly intercourse with the Syrian sultans, now accused him of flippant infidelity. The emperor, it was said, had among other things declared that the birth of the Saviour by a virgin was a fable, and that Jesus, Moses and Mohammed were the three greatest impostors the world had ever seen,―a form of unbelief which spread very widely in consequence of the crusades. Manifestoes and counter-manifestoes sought to outdo one another in their violence. And while the wild hordes of the Mongols were overspreading unopposed the whole of Eastern Europe, the emperor’s troops were victoriously pressing forward to the gates of Rome, and his ships were preventing the meeting of the council summoned against him by catching the prelates who in spite of his prohibition were hastening to it. The pope died in A.D. 1241, and was followed in seventeen days by his successor Cœlestine IV.

§ 96.20. For almost two years the papal chair remained vacant. Then this position was won by Innocent IV., A.D. 1243-1254, who as cardinal had been friendly to the emperor, but as pope was a most bitter enemy to him and to his house. The negotiations about the removal of the ban were broken off, and Innocent escaped to France, where at the First Lyonese or 13th Œcumenical Council of A.D. 1245, attended by scarcely any but Frenchmen and Spaniards, he renewed the excommunication of the emperor, and declared him as a blasphemer and robber of the church deprived of his throne. Once again with the most abject humility Frederick sued for reconciliation with the church. The pope, however, wished not for reconciliation, but the destruction of the whole “viper brood” of the Hohenstaufens. But the rival king, Henry Raspe of Thuringia, set up by the papal party in Germany, and William of Holland, who was put forward after his death in A.D. 1247, could not maintain their position against Frederick’s son, Conrad IV., who as early as A.D. 1235 had been elected in place of his rebel brother Henry as king of the Romans. Even in Italy the fortune of war favoured at first the imperial arms. At the siege of Parma, which was disloyal, the tide began to turn. The sorely pressed citizens made a sally in A.D. 1248, while Frederick was away at a hunt, and roused to courage by despair, put his army to flight. His brave son, Enzio, king of Sardinia and governor of Northern Italy, fell in A.D. 1249 into the hands of the Bolognese, and was subjected to a life-long imprisonment. Frederick himself in A.D. 1250 closed his active life in the south in the arms of his son Manfred. The pope then returned to Italy, in order to take possession of the Sicilian kingdom, which he claimed as a papal fief. But in A.D. 1251 Conrad IV., summoned by Manfred, hasted thither from Germany, subdued Apulia, conquered Naples, and was resolved to lay hands on the person of the pope himself, who had also excommunicated him, when his career was stopped by death in A.D. 1254, in his twenty-sixth year. On behalf of Conrad’s two-year-old son, Conradin, who had been born in Germany after his father’s departure, Manfred undertook the regency in Southern Italy, but found himself obliged to acknowledge the pope’s suzerainty. Nevertheless the pope was determined to have him also overthrown. Manfred, however, escaped in time to the Saracenic colony of Luceria, and with its help utterly defeated the papal troops sent out against him. Five days after Innocent IV. died, Alexander IV., A.D. 1254-1261, although without his predecessor’s ability, sought still to continue his work. He could not, however, either by ban or by war prevent Manfred, who on the report of Conradin’s death had had himself crowned, from extending the power and prestige of his kingdom farther and farther into the north. Urban IV., A.D. 1261-1264, a Frenchman by birth, son of a shoemaker of Troyes, took up with all his heart the heritage of hate against the Hohenstaufens, and in A.D. 1263 invited Charles of Anjou, the youngest brother of Louis IX. of France, to win by conquest the Sicilian crown. While the prince was preparing for the campaign Urban died. His successor, Clement IV., A.D. 1265-1268, also a Frenchman, could not but carry out what his predecessor had begun. Charles, whom the Romans without the knowledge of the pope had elected their senator, proceeded in A.D. 1265 into Italy, took the vassal oath of fealty, and was crowned as Charles I., A.D. 1265-1285, king of the two Sicilies. Treachery opened up his way into Naples. Manfred fell in A.D. 1266 in the battle of Benevento; and Conradin, whom the Ghibellines had called in as a deliverer of Italy, after the disastrous battle of Tagliacozzo in A.D. 1268, died on the scaffold in his sixteenth year.

§ 96.21. The Times of the House of Anjou down to Boniface VIII., A.D. 1288-1294.―The papacy had emerged triumphantly from its hundred years’ struggle with the Hohenstaufens, and by the overthrow of this powerful house Germany was thrown into the utmost confusion and anarchy. But Italy, too, was now in a condition of extreme disorder, and the unconscionable tyrants of Naples subjected it to a much more intolerable bondage than those had done from whom they pretended to have delivered it. After the death of Clement IV. the Holy See remained vacant for three years. The cardinals would not elect such a pope as would be agreeable to Charles I. During this papal vacancy Louis IX. of France, A.D. 1226-1270, fitted out the seventh and last crusade (§ 94, 6), from which he was not to return. As previously he had reformed the administration of justice, he now before his departure introduced drastic reforms in the ecclesiastical institutions of his kingdom, which laid the first foundations of the celebrated “Gallican Liberties.” Clement IV. gave occasion for such procedure on the part of the monarch who was a model of piety after the standard of those times, by claiming in A.D. 1266 for the papal chair the plenaria dispositio of all prebends and benefices. In opposition to this assumption the king secured by a Pragmatic Sanction of A.D. 1269 to all churches and monasteries of his realm unconditional freedom of all elections and presentations according to old existing rights, confirmed to them anew all privileges and immunities previously granted them, forbade every form of simony as a heinous crime, and prohibited all extraordinary taxation of church property on the part of the Roman curia.―At last the cardinals took courage and elected Gregory X., A.D. 1271-1276, an Italian of the noble house of Visconti. The desolating interregnum in Germany was also put an end to by the election of Count Rudolf of Hapsburg, A.D. 1273-1291, as king of the Germans. At the Second Lyonese or 14th Œcumenical Council of A.D. 1274, the worthy pope continued his endeavours without avail to rouse the flagging enthusiasm of the princes so as to get them to undertake another crusade. The union with the Greek church did not prove of an enduring kind (§ 67, 4). The constitution, too, sanctioned at the council, which provided, in order to prevent prolonged vacancies in the papal see, that the election of pope should not only be proceeded with in immured conclaves in the place where the deceased pope last resided with the curia, but also (though this was again abrogated in A.D. 1351 by a decree of Clement VI.) should be expedited by limiting the supply of food after three days to one dish, after other five days to water, wine, and bread. Yet this completely failed to secure the object desired. More successful, however, were the negotiations carried on at Lyons with the ambassadors of the new German king. Rudolf, in entering upon his government, renewed all the concessions made by Otto IV. and Frederick II., renounced all imperial claims upon Rome and the States of the Church, with the exception of the possessions of Matilda, and abandoned all pretension to Sicily. The pope on his part acknowledged him as king of the Romans and undertook to crown him emperor in Rome, where this agreement was to be formally ratified and signed. But Gregory died before arrangements had been completed.

§ 96.22. The three following popes, Innocent V., Hadrian V., and John XXI., died soon after one another. The last named, previously known as Petrus [Peter] Hispanus, had distinguished himself by his medical and philosophical writings. He was properly the twentieth Pope John, but as there was a slight element of uncertainty (§ 82, 6) he designated himself the twenty-first. After a six months’ vacancy Nicholas III., A.D. 1277-1280, mounted the papal throne. By diplomacy he secured the ratification of the still undecided concordat with the German kingdom, and Rudolf, who had enough to do in Germany, immediately withdrew from Italian affairs, even abandoning his claims to imperial coronation. The powerful pope, whose pontificate was marked by rapacity and nepotism, and who is therefore put by Dante in hell, did not live long enough to carry out his plans for the overthrow of the French yoke in Italy. But he obliged Charles I. to resign his Roman senatorship, and secretly encouraged a conspiracy of the Sicilians, which under his successor Martin IV., A.D. 1281-1285, a Frenchman and a pliable tool of Charles, broke out in the terrible “Sicilian Vespers” of A.D. 1282. The island of Sicily was thereby rent from the French rule and papal vassalage, and in a roundabout way the Hohenstaufens by the female line regained the government of this part of their old inheritance (§ 95, 1). Rome now again in A.D. 1284 shook off the senatorial rule which Charles I. had meanwhile again assumed, and after his death and that of Martin, which speedily followed, they transferred this dignity to the new pope Honorius IV., A.D. 1285-1287, whose short but vigorous reign was followed by a vacancy of eleven months. The Franciscan general then mounted the papal throne as Nicholas IV., A.D. 1288-1292. He filled up the period of his pontificate with vain endeavours to revive the spirit of the crusades and secure the suppression of heresy. Violent party feuds of cardinals of the Orsini and Colonna factions delayed the election of a pope after his death for two years. They united at last in electing the most unfit conceivable, Peter of Murrone (§ 98, 2), who, as Cœlestine V. changed the monk’s cowl for the papal tiara, but was persuaded after four months by the sly and ambitious Cardinal Cajetan to resign. Cajetan now himself succeeded in A.D. 1294 as Boniface VIII. The poor monk was confined by him in a tower, where he died. He was afterwards canonized by Pope John XXII.

§ 96.23. Temporal Power of the Popes.―During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the spiritual power of the papacy had reached its highest point, the pope came to be regarded as the absolute head of the church. Gregory VII. arrogated the right of confirming all episcopal elections. The papal recommendations to vacant sees (Preces, whence those so recommended were called Precistæ) were from the time of Innocent III. transformed into mandates (Mandata), and Clement IV. claimed for the papal chair the right of a plenario dispositio of all ecclesiastical benefices. Even in the 12th century the theory was put forth as in accordance with the canon law that all ecclesiastical possessions were the property not of the particular churches concerned but of God or Christ, and so of the pope as His representative, who in administering them was responsible to Him alone. Hence the popes, in special cases when the ordinary revenues of the curia were insufficient, had no hesitation in exercising the right of levying a tax upon ecclesiastical property. They heard appeals from all tribunals and could give dispensations from existing church laws. The right of canonization (§ 104, 8), which was previously in the power of each bishop with application simply to his own diocese, was for the first time exercised with a claim for recognition over the whole church by John XV., in A.D. 993, without, however, any word of withdrawing their privilege from the bishops. Alexander III. was the first to declare in A.D. 1170 that canonization was exclusively the right of the papal chair. The system of Gregory VII. made no claim of doctrinal infallibility for the Holy See, though his ignorance of history led him to suppose that no heretic had ever presided over the Roman church, and his understanding of Luke xxii. 32 made him confidently expect that none ever would. Innocent III., indeed, publicly acknowledged that even the pope might err in matters of faith, and then, but only then, become amenable to the judgment of the church. And Innocent IV., fifty years later, taught that the pope might err. It is therefore wrong to say, “I believe what the pope believes;” for one should believe only what the church teaches. Thomas Aquinas was the first who expressly maintained the doctrine of papal infallibility. He says that the pope alone can decide finally upon matters of faith, and that even the decrees of councils only become valid and authoritative when confirmed by him. Thomas, however, never went the length of maintaining that the pope can by himself affirm any dogma without the advice and previous deliberations of a council.―Kissing the feet sprang from an Italian custom, and even an emperor like Frederick Barbarossa humbled himself to hold the pope’s stirrup. According to the Donation of Constantine document (§ 87, 4), Constantine the Great had himself performed this office of equerry to Pope Sylvester. When the coronation of the pope was introduced is still a disputed point. Nicholas I. was, according to the Liber pontificalis, formally crowned on his accession. Previously the successors of the apostles were satisfied with a simple episcopal mitre (§ 84, 1), which on the head of the crowned pope was developed into the tiara (§ 110, 15). At the Lateran Council of A.D. 1059 Hildebrand is said to have set upon the head of the new pope Nicholas II. a double crown to indicate the council’s recognition of his temporal and spiritual sovereignty. The papal granting of a golden rose consecrated by prayer, incense, balsam and holy water to princes of exemplary piety or even to prominent monasteries, churches, or cities, conveying an obligation to make acknowledgment by a large money gift, dates as far back as the 12th century. So far as is known, Louis VII. was the first to receive it from Alexander III. in A.D. 1163.―The popes appointed legates to represent them abroad, as they had done even earlier at the synods held in the East. Afterwards, when the institution came to be more fully elaborated, a distinction was made between Legati missi or nuntios and Legati nati. The former were appointed as required for diplomatic negotiations, visitation and organization of churches, as well as for the holding of provincial synods, at which they presided. They were called Legati a latere, if the special importance of the business demanded a representation from among the nearest and most trusted councillors of the pope, i.e. one of the cardinals, as Pontifices collaterales. The rank of born legate, Legatus natus, on the other hand, was a prelatic dignity of the highest order conferred once for all by papal privilege, sometimes even upon temporal princes, who had specially served the Holy See, as for example the king of Hungary and the Norman princes of Italy (§ 96, 3, 13), which made them permanently representatives of the pope invested with certain ecclesiastical prerogatives.―Among the numerous literary and documentary fictions and forgeries with which the Gregorian papal system sought to support its ever-advancing pretensions to authority over the whole church, is one which may be regarded as the contemporary supplement to the work of the Pseudo-Isidore. It is the production of a Latin theologian residing in the East, otherwise unknown, who, at the time of the controversies waged at the Lyonese Council of A.D. 1274 between the Greeks and Latins (§ 67, 4), brought forth what professed to be an unbroken chain of traditions from alleged decrees and canons of the most famous Greek Councils, e.g. Nicæa, Chalcedon, etc., and church fathers, most frequently from Cyril of Alexandria, the so-called Pseudo-Cyril, in which the controverted questions were settled in favour of the Roman pretensions, and especially the most extreme claims to the primacy of the pope were asserted. It was presented in A.D. 1261 to Urban IV., who immediately guaranteed its genuineness in a letter to the emperor Michael Palæologus. On its adoption by Thomas Aquinas, who diligently employed its contents in his controversies against the Greeks as well as in his dogmatic works, it won respect and authority throughout all the countries of the West.

§ 97.1. The Roman College of Cardinals.―All the clergy attached to one particular church were called Clerici cardinales down to the 11th century. But after Leo IX. had reformed and re-organized the Roman clergy, and especially after Nicholas II. in A.D. 1059 had transferred the right of papal election to the Roman cardinals, i.e. the seven bishops of the Roman metropolitan dioceses and to the presbyters and deacons of the principal churches of Rome, the title of cardinal was given to them at first by way of eminence and very soon exclusively. It was not till the 13th century that it became usual to give to foreign prelates the rank of Roman cardinal priests as a mark of distinction. Under the name of the holy college the cardinals, as the spiritual dignitaries most nearly associated with the pope, formed his ecclesiastical and civil council, and were also as such entrusted with the highest offices of state in the papal domains. Innocent IV. at Lyons in A.D. 1245 gave to them as a distinction the red hat; Boniface VIII. in A.D. 1297 gave them the purple mantle that indicated princely rank. To these Paul II. in A.D. 1464 added the right of riding the white palfrey with red cloth and golden bridle; and finally, Urban VIII. in A.D. 1630 gave them the title “Eminence.” Sixtus V. in A.D. 1586 fixed their number at seventy, after the pattern of the elders of Israel, Exod. xxiv. 1, and the seventy disciples of Jesus, Luke x. 1. The popes, however, took care to keep a greater or less number of places vacant, so that they might have opportunities of showing favour and bestowing gifts when necessary. The cardinals were chosen in accordance with the arbitrary will of the individual pope, who nominated them by presenting them with the red hat, and installed them into their high position by the ceremony of closing and opening the mantle. From the time of Eugenius IV., A.D. 1431, the college of cardinals put every newly elected pope under a solemn oath to maintain the rights and privileges of the cardinals and not to come to any serious and important resolution without their advice and approval.

§ 97.2. The Political Importance of the Superior Clergy (§ 84) reached its highest point during this period. This was carried furthest in Germany, especially under the Saxon imperial dynasty. On more than one occasion did the wise and firm policy of the German clergy, splendidly organized under the leadership of the primate of Mainz, save the German nation from overthrow or dismemberment threatened by ambitious princes. This power consisted not merely in influence over men’s minds, but also in their position as members of the states of the empire and territorial lords. Whether or not a warlike expedition was to be undertaken depended often only on the consent or refusal of the league of lords spiritual. It was the policy of the clergy to secure a united, strong, well-organized Germany. The surrounding countries wished to be included in the German league of churches and states; not, however, as the emperor wished, as crown lands, but as portions of the empire. Against expeditions to Rome, which took the attention of German princes away from German affairs and ruined Germany, the German clergy protested in the most decided manner. They wished the chair of St. Peter to be free and independent as a European, not a German, institution, with the emperor as its supporter not its oppressor, but they manfully resisted all the assumptions and encroachments of the popes. One of the most celebrated of the German dignitaries of any age was Bruno the Great, brother of the Emperor Otto I., equally distinguished as a statesman and as a reformer of the church, and the unwearied promoter of liberal studies. Chancellor under his imperial brother from A.D. 940, he was his most trusted counsellor, and was appointed by him in A.D. 953 Archbishop of Cologne, and was soon after made Duke of Lorraine. He died in A.D. 965. Another example of a German prelate of the true sort is seen in Willigis of Mainz, who died in A.D. 1011, under the two last Ottos and Henry II., whom he raised to the throne. The good understanding that was brought about between this monarch and the clergy of Germany was in great measure owing to the wise policy of this prelate. Under Henry IV. the German clergy got split up into three parties,―the papal party of Clugny under Gebhard [Gebhardt] of Salzburg, including almost all the Saxon bishops; an imperial party under Adalbert of Bremen, who endeavoured with the emperor’s help to found a northern patriarchate, which undoubtedly tended to become a northern papacy; and an independent German party under St. Anno II. of Cologne (§ 96, 6), in which notwithstanding much violence, ambition, and self-seeking, there still survived much of the spirit that had characterized the policy of the old German bishops. Henry V., too, as well as the first Hohenstaufens, had sturdy supporters in the German clergy; but Frederick II. by his ill treatment of the bishops alienated their clergy from the interest of the crown. The rise of the imperial dignitaries after the time of Otto I., and the transference to them under Otto IV. of the election of emperor raised the archbishops of Mainz, Treves, and Cologne to the rank of spiritual electoral princes as arch-chaplains or archchancellors. The Golden Bull of Charles IV., in A.D. 1356 (§ 110, 4), confirmed and tabulated their rights and duties.

§ 97.3. The Bishops and the Cathedral Chapter.―The bishops exercised jurisdiction over all the clergy of their diocese, and punished by deprivation of office and imprisonment in monasteries. Especially questions of marriage, wills, oaths, were brought before their tribunal. The German synodal judicatures soon gave way before the Roman judiciary system. The archdeacons emancipated themselves more and more from episcopal authority and abused their power in so arbitrary a way that in the 12th century the entire institution was set aside. For the discharge of business episcopal officials and vicars were then introduced. The Chorepiscopi (§ 84) had passed out of view in the 10th century. But during the crusades many Catholic bishoprics had been founded in the East. The occupants of these when driven away clung to their titles in hopes of better times, and found employment as assistants or suffragans of Western bishops. Thus arose the order of Episcopi in partibus (sc. infidelium) which has continued to this day, as a witness of inalienable rights, and as affording a constant opportunity to the popes of showing favour and giving rewards. For the exercise of the archiepiscopal office, the Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215 made the receiving from the pope the pallium (§ 59, 7) an absolutely essential condition, and those elected were obliged to pay to the curia an arbitrary tax of a large amount called the pallium fee. The canonical life (§ 84, 4) from the 10th century began more and more to lose its moral weight and importance. Out of attempts at reform in the 11th century arose the distinction of Canonici seculares and regulares. The latter lived in cloisters according to monkish rules, and were zealous for the good old discipline and order, but sooner or later gave way to worldliness. The rich revenues of cathedral chapters made the reversion of prebendal stalls the almost exclusive privilege of the higher nobility, notwithstanding the earnest opposition of the popes. In the course of the 13th century the cathedral clergy, with the help of the popes, arrogated to themselves the sole right of episcopal elections, ignoring altogether the claims of the diocesan clergy and the people or nobles. The cathedral clergy also made themselves independent of episcopal control. They lived mostly outside of the cathedral diocese, and had their canonical duties performed by vicars. The chapter filled up vacancies by co-optation.

§ 97.4. Endeavours to Reform the Clergy.―As a reformer of the English clergy, who had sunk very low in ignorance, rudeness and immorality, the most conspicuous figure during the 10th century was St. Dunstan. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 959 and died in A.D. 988. He sought at once to advance the standard of education among the clergy and to inspire the Church with a higher moral and religious spirit. For these ends he laboured on with an energy and force of will and an inflexible consistency and strictness in the pursuit of his hierarchical ideals, which mark him out as a Hildebrand before Hildebrand. Even as abbot of the monastery of Glastonbury he had given a forecast of his life work by restoring and making more severe the rule of St. Benedict, and forming a brotherhood thoroughly disciplined in science and in ascetical exercises, from the membership of which, after he had become bishop of Worcester, then of London, and finally primate of England and the most influential councillor of four successive kings, he could fill the places of the secular priests and canons whom he expelled from their cures. As the primary condition of all clerical reformation he insisted upon the unrelentingly consistent putting down of marriage and concubinage among the priests.281―In the 11th century St. Peter Damiani distinguished himself as a zealous supporter of the reform party of Clugny in the struggle against simony, clerical immorality, and the marriage of priests. This obtained for him not only his position as cardinal-bishop of Ostia, but also his frequent employment, as papal legate in serious negotiations. In A.D. 1061 he resigned his bishopric and retired into a monastery, where he died in A.D. 1072. His friend Hildebrand, who repeatedly called him forth from his retreat to occupy a conspicuous place among the contenders for his hierarchical ideal, was therefore called by him his “holy Satan.” He had indeed little interest in pressing hierarchical and political claims, and was inclined rather to urge moral reforms within the church itself. In his Liber Gomorrhianus he drew a fearful picture of the clerical depravity of his times, and that with a nakedness of detail which gave to Pope Alexander II. a colourable excuse for the suppression of the book. For himself, however, Damiani sought no other pleasure than that of scourging himself till the blood flowed in his lonely cell (§ 106, 4). His collected works, consisting of epistles, addresses, tracts and monkish biographies, were published at Rome in A.D. 1602 in 4 vols. by Cardinal Cajetan.―In the 12th century St. Hildegard (§ 107, 1) and the abbot Joachim of Floris, (§ 108, 5) raised their voices against the moral degradation of the clergy, and among the men who contributed largely to the restoring of clerical discipline, the noble provost Geroch of Reichersberg in Bavaria, who died in A.D. 1169 (§ 102, 5) and the canon Norbert, subsequently archbishop of Magdeburg (§ 98, 2), are deserving of special mention.―In the 13th century in England Robert Grosseteste distinguished himself as a prelate of great nobility and force of character. After being chancellor of Oxford he became bishop of Lincoln, energetically reforming many abuses in his diocese, and persistently contending against any form of papal encroachment. He died in A.D. 1253.282

§ 97.5. The Pataria of Milan.―Nowhere during the 11th century were simony, concubinage and priests’ marriages more general than among the Lombard clergy, and in no other place was such determined opposition offered to Hildebrand’s reforms. At the head of this opposition stood Guido, archbishop of Milan, whom Henry III. deposed in A.D. 1046. Against the papal demands, he pressed the old claims of his chair to autonomy (§ 46, 1) and renounced allegiance to Rome. The nobles and the clergy supported Guido. But two deacons, Ariald and Landulf, about A.D. 1057 formed a conspiracy among the common people, against “the Nicolaitan sect” (§ 27, 8). To this party its opponents gave the opprobrious name of Pataria, Paterini, from patalia, meaning rabble, riffraff, or from Pattarea, a back street of ill fame in Milan, the quarter of the rabble, where the Arialdists held their secret meetings. They took the name given in reproach as a title of honour, and after receiving military organization from Erlembald, Landulf’s brother, they opened a campaign against the married priests. For thirty years this struggle continued to deluge city and country with blood.

§ 98.1. Offshoots of the Benedictines.

1. The Brethren of Clugny. Among the Benedictines, since their reformation by the second Benedict (§ 85, 2) many serious abuses had crept in. After the Burgundian Count Berno, who died in A.D. 927, had done useful service by restoring discipline and order in two monasteries of which he was abbot, the Duke William of Aquitaine founded for him a new institution. Thus arose in A.D. 910 the celebrated monastery of Clugny, Cluniacum, in Burgundy, which the founder placed under immediate papal control. Berno’s successor Odo, who died in A.D. 942, abandoning the life of a courtier on his recovery from a severe illness, made it the head and heart of a separate Clugny-Congregation as a branch of the Benedictine order. Strict asceticism, a beautiful and artistic service, zealous prosecution of science and the education of the young, with yet greater energy in the promotion of a hierarchical reform of the church as a whole, as well as an entire series of able abbots, among whom Odilo († A.D. 1048), the friend of Hildebrand, and Peter the Venerable († A.D. 1156) are specially prominent, gave to this congregation, which in the 12th century had 2,000 monasteries in France, an influence quite unparalleled in this whole period. The abbot of Clugny stood at the head, and appointed the priors for all the other monasteries. Under the licentious Abbot Pontius, who on account of his base conduct was deposed in A.D. 1122, the order fell into decay, but rose again under Peter the Venerable. Continuation, § 164, 2.
2. The Congregation of the Camaldolites was founded in A.D. 1018 by the Benedictine Romuald, descended from the Duke of Ravenna, at Camaldoli (Campus Maldoli), a wild district in the Apennines. In A.D. 1086 a nunnery was placed alongside of the monastery. The president of the parent monastery at Camaldoli stood at the head of the whole order as Major. The order carried out enthusiastically the high church ideal of Clugny, and won great influence in its time, although it by no means attained the importance of the French order.
3. Twenty years later, in A.D. 1038, the Florentine Gualbertus founded the Order of Vallombrosa, in a romantically situated shady valley of the Apennines (Vallis umbrosa), according to the rule of Benedict. This was the first of all the orders to appoint lay brethren for the management of worldly business, in order that the monks might observe their vow of silence and strict seclusion. The parent monastery attained to great wealth and reputation, but it never had a great number of affiliated institutions.
4. The Cistercians. In A.D. 1098 the Benedictine abbot Robert founded the monastery of Citeaux (Cistercium) near Dijon, which as the parent monastery of the Congregation of the Cistercians became the most formidable rival of Clugny. The Cistercians were distinguished from the Brethren of Clugny by voluntary submission to the jurisdiction of the bishops, avoidance of all interference with the pastorates of others, and the banishing of all ornaments from their churches and monasteries. The order continued obscure for a while, till St. Bernard (§ 102, 3), from A.D. 1115 abbot of the monastery of Clairvaux (Claravallis), an offshoot of Citeaux, by his ability and spirituality raised it far above all other orders in the esteem of the age. In honour of him the French Cistercians took the name of Bernardines. The hostility between them and the Brethren of Clugny was overcome by the personal friendship of Bernard and Peter the Venerable. By the statutory constitution, the so-called Charta charitatis, drawn up in A.D. 1119, the administration of all the affairs of the order was assigned to a general of the order, appointed by the abbot of Citeaux, the abbots of the four chief affiliated monasteries, and twenty other elected representatives forming a high council. This council, however, was answerable to the general assembly of all the abbots and priors, which met at first yearly, but afterwards every third year. The affiliated monasteries had a yearly visitation of the abbot of Citeaux, but Citeaux itself was to be visited by the four abbots just referred to. In the 13th century this order had 2,000 monasteries and 6,000 nunneries.
5. The Congregation of Scottish Monasteries in Germany owed its origin to the persistent love of travel on the part of Irish and Scottish monks, which during the 10th century received a new impulse from the Danish invasions (§ 93, 1). The first monastery erected in Germany for the reception exclusively of Irish monks was that of St. Martin at Cologne, built in the 10th century. Much more important, however, was the Scottish monastery of St. James at Regensburg, founded in A.D. 1067 by Marianus Scotus and two companions. It was the parent monastery of eleven other Scottish cloisters in South Germany. Old Celtic sympathies (§ 77, 8), which may have originally bound them together, could not assert themselves in the new home during this period as they did in earlier days; and when Innocent III., at the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, sanctioned them as a separate congregation bound by the Benedictine rule, there certainly remained no longer any trace of Celtic peculiarities. They were distinguished at first for strict asceticism, severe discipline and scientific activity, but subsequently they fell lower than all the rest in immorality and self-indulgence (§ 112).

§ 98.2. New Monkish Orders.―Reserving the great mendicant orders, the following are the most celebrated among the vast array of new orders, not bound by the Benedictine rule:

1. The Order of Grammont in France, founded by Stephen of Ligerno in A.D. 1070. It took simply the gospel as its rule, cultivated a quiet, humble and peaceable temper, and so by the 12th century it had its very life crushed out of it by the bold assumptions of its lay brethren.
2. The Order of St. Anthony, founded in A.D. 1095 by a French nobleman of Dauphiny [Dauphiné], called Guaston, in gratitude for the recovery of his son Guérin from the so-called St. Anthony’s fire on his invoking St. Anthony. He expended his whole property upon the restoring of a hospital beside the church of St. Didier la Mothe, in a chapel of which it was supposed the bones of Anthony lay, and devoted himself, together with his son and some other companions, to the nursing of the sick. At first merely a lay fraternity, the members took in A.D. 1218 the monk’s vow. Boniface VIII. made them canons under the rule of St. Augustine (§ 45, 1). They were now called Antonians, and devoted themselves to contemplation. The order spread greatly, especially in France. They wore a black cloak with a T-formed cross of blue upon the breast (Ezek. ix. 9) and a little bell round the neck while engaged in collecting alms.
3. The Order of Fontevraux was founded in A.D. 1094 by Robert of Arbrissel in Fontevraux (Fons Ebraldi) in Poitou. Preaching repentance, he went through the country, and founded convents for virgins, widows and fallen women. Their abbesses, as representatives of the Mother of God, to whom the order was dedicated, were set over the priests who did their bidding.
4. The Order of the Gilbertines had its name from its founder Gilbert, an English priest of noble birth. Here too the women formed the main stem of the order. They were the owners of the cloister property, and the men were only its administrators. The monasteries of this order were mostly both for men and women. It did not spread much beyond England, and had at the time of the suppression of the monasteries twenty-one well endowed convents, with orphanages and houses for the poor and sick.
5. The Carthusian Order was founded in A.D. 1086 by Bruno of Cologne, rector of the High School at Rheims. Disgusted with the immoral conduct of Archbishop Manasseh, he retired with several companions into a wild mountain gorge near Grenoble, called Chartreuse. He enjoined upon his monks strict asceticism, rigid silence, earnest study, prayer, and a contemplative life, clothed them in a great coarse cowl, and allowed them for their support only vegetables and bran bread. Written statutes, Consuetudines Cartusiæ, which soon spread over several houses of the Carthusians, were first given them in A.D. 1134 by Guido, the fifth prior of the parent monastery. A steward had management of the affairs of the convent. Each ate in his own cell; only on feast days had they a common meal. At least once a week they fasted on salt, water and bread. Breaking silence, permitted only on high festivals, and for two hours on Thursdays, was punished with severe flagellation. Even the lay brethren were treated with great severity, and were not allowed either to sit or to cover their heads in the presence of the brothers of the order. Carthusian nuns were added to the order in the 13th century with a modified rule.
6. The Premonstratensian Order was founded in A.D. 1121 by Norbert, the only German founder of orders besides and after Bruno. A rich, worldly-minded canon of Xanthen in the diocese of Cologne, he was brought to another mind by the fall of a thunderbolt beside him. He retired along with several other like-minded companions into the rough valley of Prémontré in the bishopric of Laon (Præmonstratum, because pointed out to him in a vision). In his rule he joined together the canonical duties with an extremely strict monastic life. He appeared in A.D. 1126 as a preacher of repentance at the Diet of Spires, was there elected archbishop of Magdeburg, and made a most impressive entrance into his metropolis dressed in his mendicant garb. His order spread and established many convents both for monks and for nuns.
7. The Trinitarian Order, ordo s. Trinitatis de redemptione captivorum, was called into existence by Innocent III., and had for its work the redemption of Christian captives.
8. The Cœlestine Order was founded by Peter of Murrone, afterwards Pope Cœlestine V. (§ 96, 22). Living in a cave of Mount Murrone in Apulia, under strict penitential discipline and engaged in mystic contemplation, the fame of his sanctity attracted to him many companions, with whom in A.D. 1254 he established a monastery on Mount Majella. Gregory X., in whose presence Peter, according to his biographer, hung up his monkish cowl in empty space, upon a sunbeam which he took for a cord stretching across, instituted the order as Brethren of the Holy Spirit. But when in A.D. 1294 their founder ascended the papal throne, they took his papal name. This order, which gave itself up entirely to extravagant mystic contemplation, spread over Italy, France and the Netherlands.

§ 98.3. The Beginnings of the Franciscan Order down to A.D. 1219.―The founder of this order was St. Francis, born in A.D. 1182, son of a rich merchant of Assisi in Umbria. His proper name was Giovanni Bernardone. The name of Francis is said to have been given him on account of his early proficiency in the French language; “Francesco”―the little Frenchman. As a wealthy merchant’s son, he gave himself to worldly pleasures, but was withdrawn from these, in A.D. 1207, by means of a severe illness. A dream, in which he saw a multitude with the sign of the cross, bearing weapons designed for him and his companions, led him to resolve upon a military career. But a new vision taught him that he was called to build up the fallen house of God. He understood this of a ruined chapel of St. Damiani at Assisi, and began to apply the proceeds of valuable cloth fabrics from his father’s factory to its restoration. Banished for such conduct from his father’s house, he lived for a time as a hermit, until the gospel passage read in church of the sending forth of the disciples without gold or silver, without staff or scrip (Matt. x.), fell upon his soul like a thunderbolt. Divesting himself of all his property, supplying the necessaries of life by the meanest forms of labour, even begging when need be, he went about the country from A.D. 1209, sneered at by some as an imbecile, revered by others as a saint, preaching repentance and peace. In the unexampled power of his self-denial and renunciation of the world, in the pure simplicity of his heart, in the warmth of his love to God and man, in the blessed riches of his poverty, St. Francis was like a heavenly stranger in a selfish world. Wonderful, too, and powerful in its influence was the depth of his natural feeling. With the birds of the forest, with the beasts of the field, he held intercourse in childlike simplicity as with brothers and sisters, exhorting them to praise their Creator. The paradisiacal relation of man to the animal world seemed to be restored in the presence of this saint.―Very soon he gathered around him a number of like-minded men, who under his direction had decided to devote themselves to a similar vocation. For the society of “Viri pœnitentiales de civitate Assisii oriundi” thus formed Francis issued, in A.D. 1209, a rule, at the basis of which lay a literal acceptance of the precepts of Christ to His disciples, sent forth to preach the kingdom of God (Matt. x.; Luke x.), along with similar gospel injunctions (Matt. xix. 21, 29; Luke vi. 29; ix. 23; xiv. 26), and then he went to Rome to get for it the papal confirmation. The pope was, indeed, unwilling; but through the pious man’s simplicity and humility he was prevailed upon to grant his request. In later times this incident was in popular tradition transformed into a legend, representing the pope as at first bidding him go to attend the swine, which the holy man literally obeyed. Innocent III. was the more inclined to yield, owing to the painful experiences through which the church had passed in consequence of its unwise treatment of similar proposals made by the Waldensians thirty years before. He therefore gave at least verbal permission to Francis and his companions to live and teach according to this rule. At the same time also Francis heartily responded to the demand to place at the head of his rule the obligation to obey and reverence the pope, and to conclude with a vow of the most rigid avoidance of every kind of addition, abatement, or change. There was no thought of founding a new monkish order, but only of a free union and a wandering life, amid apostolic poverty, for preaching repentance and salvation by word and example. On entering the society the brothers were required to distribute all their possessions among the poor, and dress in the poor clothing of the order, consisting of a coarse cloak bound with a cord and a capouch, to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God wherever their master sent them, and to earn their livelihood by their usual occupation, or any other servile work. In case of need they were even to beg the necessaries of life. Thus mendicancy, though only allowed in case of necessity, soon came to be transformed by the lustre of the example of the poverty of Jesus and His disciples and mother, who all had lived upon alms, and by the idea of a twofold merit attaching to self-abnegation, inasmuch as not only the receiver, by voluntarily submitting to the disgrace which it involved in the eyes of the world, but also the giver of alms, obtained before the judgment seat of God a great reward. But neither as wages for work nor as alms were the brothers permitted to accept money, but only the indispensable means of life, while that which remained after their own wants had been supplied was divided among the poor. From time to time they withdrew, either singly or in little groups, for prayer, contemplation, and spiritual exercises into deserts, caves, or deserted huts; and annually at Pentecost they assembled for mutual edification and counsel in the small chapel at Assisi, dedicated to “Mary of the Angel,” given to St. Francis by the Benedictines. This church, under the name of the Portiuncula, became the main centre of the order, and all who visited it on the day of its consecration received from the pope a plenary indulgence. The number of the brothers meanwhile increased from day to day. When representatives of all ranks in society and of all the various degrees of culture sought admission, it soon became evident that the obligation to preach, hitherto enjoined upon all the members of the order, should be restricted to those who were specially qualified for the work, and that the rest should take care to carry out in their personal lives the ideal of poverty, joined with loving service in institutions for the poor, the sick, and the lepers. A further move in the development of the order, tending to secure for it an independent ecclesiastical position, was the admission into it of ordained priests. Their missionary activity among Christian people was restricted at first to Umbria and the neighbouring districts of central Italy. But soon the thought of a missionary vocation among the unbelievers got possession of the mind of the founder. Even in A.D. 1212 he himself undertook for this purpose a journey to the East, to Syria, and afterwards to Morocco; in neither case, however, were his efforts attended with any very signal success. In A.D. 1218, Elias of Cortona, with some companions, again took up the mission to Syria, with equally little success; and in A.D. 1219 five brethren were again sent to Morocco, and there won the crown of martyrdom. In that same year, A.D. 1219, the Pentecost assembly at Assisi passed the resolution to include within the range of their call as itinerants the sending of missions, with a “minister” at the head of each, into all the Christian countries of Europe. They began immediately, privileged with a papal letter of recommendation to the higher secular clergy and heads of orders in France, to carry out the resolution in France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while at the same time Francis himself, accompanied by twelve brethren, again turned his steps toward the East.

§ 98.4. The Franciscans from A.D. 1219 to A.D. 1223.―Soon after the departure of St. Francis the report of his death spread through Italy, and loosened the bonds which, by reason of the obligation to render him obedience hitherto operative, had secured harmony among the brethren. Francis had, on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, laid upon his companions only the commonly accepted rules of fasting, but the observance of a more rigorous fast required his own special permission. Now, however, some rigorists, at a convention of the elders, gave expression to the opinion, that the brethren should be enjoined to fast not as hitherto, like all the rest of Christendom, only on two, but on four, days of the week, a resolution which not only removed the rule altogether from its basis in Luke x. 7, 8, but also broke the solemn promise to observe the wish of Innocent III., incorporated in it, that in no particular should it be altered. And while the rule forbade any intercourse with women, brother Philip obtained a papal bull which appointed him representative of the order of “poor women,” afterwards the Nuns of St. Clara, founded in A.D. 1212 on the model of the Franciscan ideal of poverty. Another brother, John of Capella, sought to put himself at the head of an independent order of poor men and women. Many such projects were being planned. So soon as news reached Francis of these vagaries, he returned to Italy, accompanied by his favourite pupil, the energetic, wise, and politic Elias of Cortona, whose organizing and governing talent was kept within bounds down to the founder’s death. Perceiving that all these confusions had arisen from the want of a strictly defined organization, legitimized by the pope and under papal protection, Francis now endeavoured to secure such privileges for his order. He therefore entreated Honorius III. to appoint Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, afterwards Pope Gregory IX., previously a zealous promoter of his endeavours, as protector and governor of his brotherhood; and he soon with a strong hand put a stop to all secessionist movements in the community. A vigorous effort was now made by the brotherhood, suggested and encouraged by the papal chair, to carry out a scheme of transformation, by means of which the order, which had hitherto confined itself to simple religious and ascetic duties, should become an independent and powerful monkish order, to place it “with the whole force of its religious enthusiasm, with its extraordinary flexibility and its mighty influences over the masses, at the service of the papacy, and to turn it into a standing army of the pope, ever ready to obey his will in the great movements convulsing the church and the world of that time.” Honorius III. took the first step in this direction by a bull addressed, in Sept., A.D. 1220, to Francis himself and the superiors of his order, there styled “Ordo fratrum minorum,” by which a novitiate of one year and an irrevocable vow of admission were prescribed, the wearing of the official dress made its exclusive privilege, and jurisdiction given to its own tribunal to deal with all its members. Francis was now also obliged, willing or unwilling, to agree to a revision of his rule. This new rule was probably confirmed or at least approved at the famous Pentecost chapter held at the Portiuncula chapel in A.D. 1221, called the “Mat Chapter” (C. storearum), because the brethren assembled there lived in tents made of rush-mats.283 It is, as Carl Müller has incontestably proved, this same rule which was formerly regarded by all as the first rule composed in A.D. 1209. The older rule, however, formed in every particular its basis, and the enlargements and modifications rendered necessary by the adoption of the new ideas appear so evidently as additions, that the two different constituents can even yet with tolerable certainty be distinguished from one another, and so the older rule can be reconstructed. But the development and modification of the order necessarily proceeding in the direction indicated soon led to a gradual reformation of the rule, which in this new form was solemnly and formally ratified by Honorius III. in November, A.D. 1223, as possessing henceforth definite validity. In it the requirement of the literal acceptance of the commands of Jesus on sending out His disciples in Matthew x. and Luke x. is no longer made the basis and pattern, as in the two earlier rules, but all the stress is laid rather upon the imitation of the lives of poverty led by Jesus and His apostles; as an offset to the renunciation of all property, the obligation to earn their own support by work was now set aside, and the practice of mendicancy was made their proper object in life, came indeed to be regarded as constituting the special ideal and sanctity of the order, which in consequence was now for the first time entitled to be called a mendicant or begging order. At its head stood a general-minister, and all communications between the order and the holy see were conducted through a cardinal-protector. The mission field of the order, comprising the whole world, was divided into provinces with a provincial-minister, and the provinces into custodies with a custos at its head.―Every third year at Pentecost the general called together the provincials and custodes to a general chapter, and the custodes assembled the brethren of their dioceses as required in provincial and custodial chapters. The dress of the order remained the same. The usual requirement to go barefoot, however, was modified by the permission in cases of necessity, on journeys and in cold climates, to wear shoes or sandals.

§ 98.5. The Franciscans from A.D. 1223.―There was no mention in the rule of A.D. 1223 of any sort of fixed place of abode either in cloisters or in houses of their own. The life of the order was thus conceived of as a homeless and possessionless pilgrimage; and as for the means of life they were dependent on what they got by begging, so also it was considered that for the shelter of a roof they should depend upon the hospitable. The gradual transition from a purely itinerant life had already begun by the securing of fixed residences at definite points in the transalpine district and first of all in Germany. After the first sending forth of disciples in A.D. 1219, without much attention to rule and without much plan, had run its course there with scarcely any success, a more thoroughly organized mission, under the direction of brother Cæsarius of Spires, consisting of twelve clerical and thirteen lay brethren, including John v. Piano Cupini, Thomas v. Celano, Giordano v. Giano, was sent by the “Mat Chapter” of A.D. 1221 to Germany, which, strengthened by oft-repeated reinforcements, carried on from A.D. 1228 a vigorous propaganda in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and Norway. In accordance with the rule of A.D. 1223 Germany as forming one province was divided into five custodies, but in A.D. 1230 into two distinct provinces, the Rhineland and Saxony, with a corresponding number of custodies. Even more brilliant was the success attending the mission to England in A.D. 1224. On their missionary tours the brethren took up their residence temporarily in hospitals and leper houses, or in hospitable parsonages and private houses, and preached by preference in the open air, where the people flocked around them in crowds, occasionally at the invitation of a bishop or priest in the churches. Presents of lands gave them the opportunity of erecting convents of their own, with churches and burying-grounds for themselves, which, placed under the charge of a guardian, soon increased in number and importance. The begging, which was now made the basis of the whole institution, was regulated by the principle, that, besides the benefactions voluntarily paid into the cloister, monks sent forth at particular terms, hence called Terminants284 with a beggar’s bag, should beg about for the necessaries of life. With agriculture and industrial work, and generally all bodily labour, the brothers had nothing to do. On the contrary, what was altogether foreign to the intention of the founder and their rules, and so originating not from within the order itself, but from without, first of all by the admission of scientifically cultured priests, a strong current set in in favour of scientific studies, stimulated by their own personal ambition as well as by rivalry with the Dominicans. These scholarly pursuits soon yielded abundant fruit, which raised the reputation, power, and influence of the order to such a height, that it has been enabled to carry out in all details the task assigned it in the papal polity. Architecture, painting, and poetry also found among the members of the order distinguished cultivators and ornaments.―Supported by accumulating papal privileges, which, for example, gave immunity from all episcopal jurisdiction and supervision, and allowed its clergy the right in all parts, not only of preaching, but also of reading mass and hearing confessions, and aided in its course of secularization by papal modifications and alterations of its rule, which permitted the obtaining and possessing rich cloister property, the order of Minor Brothers or Minorites soon could boast of an extension embracing several thousands of cloisters.―Francis, wasted by long-continued sickness and by increasing infirmities, was found dead, in A.D. 1226, stretched on the floor of the Portiuncula chapel. Two years afterwards he was canonized by Gregory IX., and in A.D. 1230 there was a solemn translation of his relics to the beautiful basilica built in his honour at Assisi. The legend, that a seraph during his last years had imprinted upon him the bloody wound-prints or stigmata of the Saviour was also turned to account for the glorification of the whole order, which now assumed the epithet “seraphic.”―The one who possessed most spiritual affinity to his master of all the disciples of St. Francis, and after him most famous among his contemporaries and posterity, was St. Anthony of Padua. Born in A.D. 1195 at Lisbon, when an Augustinian canon at Coimbra he was, in A.D. 1220, received into the communion of the Minorites, when the relics of the five martyrs of Morocco were deposited there, and thereupon he undertook a mission to Africa. But a severe sickness obliged him to return home, and driven out of his course by a storm, he landed at Messina, from whence he made a pilgrimage to Assisi. The order now turned his learning to account by appointing him teacher of theology, first at Bologna, then at Montpellier. For three years he continued as custos in the south of France, going up and down through the land as a powerful preacher of repentance, till the death of the founder and the choice of a successor called him back to Italy. He died at Padua in A.D. 1231. The pope canonized him in A.D. 1232, and in A.D. 1263 his relics were enshrined in the newly built beautiful church at Padua dedicated to him. Among the numerous tales of prodigies, which are said to have accompanied his goings wherever he went, the best known and most popular is, that when he could obtain no ready hearing for his doctrine among men, he preached on a lonely sea-shore to shoals of fishes that crowded around to listen. His writings, sermons, and a biblical concordance, under the title Concordantiæ Morales SS. Bibliorum, are often printed along with the Letters, Hymns, Testament, etc., ascribed to St. Francis.―Among the legends of the order still extant about the life of St. Francis is the Vita I. of Thomas of Celano, written in A.D. 1229, the oldest and relatively the most impartial. On the other hand, the later biographies, especially that of the so-called Tres socii and the Vita II. of Thomas, which has been made accessible by the Roman edition of Amoni of 1880, written contemporaneously somewhere about A.D. 1245, as well as that of St. Bonaventura of A.D. 1263, recognised by the chapter of the order as the only authoritative form of the legends, are all more or less influenced by the party strifes that had arisen within its ranks, while all are equally overladen with reports of miracles. In A.D. 1399, by authority of the general chapter at Assisi, the “Liber Conformitatum” of Bartholomew of Pisa pointed out forty resemblances between Christ and St. Francis, in which the saint has generally the advantage over the Saviour. In the Reformation times an anonymous German version of this book was published by Erasmus Alber with a preface by Luther, under the title, Der Barfüssermönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran, Wittenberg, 1542. The most trustworthy contemporary source of information has been only recently again rendered accessible to us in the Memorabilia de Primitiv. Fratrum in Teutoniam Missorum Conversatione et Vita of the above-named Giordano of Giano, embracing the years 1207-1238, which G. Voigt discovered among his father’s papers, and has published with a full and comprehensive introduction. The Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence have re-edited it “after the unique Berlin manuscript,” as well as the supplementary document, the De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia, in the first volume of their Analecta Franciscana, Quar., 1885.―Thode, in his Fr. v. A. und die Anfänge d. Kunst d. Renaissance in Ital. (Berl., 1885), has described in a thorough and brilliant style the mighty influence which St. Francis and his order exerted upon the development of art in Italy, especially of painting and architecture, as well as of poetry in the vernacular; for he has shown how the peculiar and close relation in which the saint stood to nature gave the first effective impulse to the emancipation of art from the trammels of formalism, and how the new artistic tendency, inspired by his spirit, was first given expression to in the building and adorning of the basilica at Assisi dedicated to him.285

§ 98.6. Party Divisions within the Franciscan Order.―That the founder was by no means wholly in sympathy with the tendency which prevailed in his order from A.D. 1221, and only tolerated what he was no longer in a position to prevent, might have been guessed from the fact that from that time he withdrew himself more and more from the supreme direction of the order, and made it over to Elias of Cortona, as his general-vicar, who in existing circumstances was better fitted for the task. But from his Testament it appears quite evident that he strictly adhered to the views of his early days, and even attempted a last but fruitless reaction against the tendency to worldly conformity that had set in. Thus, for example, it still puts all the brethren under obligation to perform honourable labour, and will allow them to beg only in case of necessity, but especially forbids them most distinctly by their sacred vow of obedience from asking any privilege from the papal chair, or altering the simple literal meaning of the rule of the order, and of this his last will and testament by addition, abatement, or change. After his death, on 4th October, 1226, Elias retained in his hand the regency till the next meeting of the Pentecost chapter; but then he was deprived of office by the election of John Pareus as general-minister, a member of the stricter party. Meanwhile the increasing number and wealth of their cloisters and churches, with their appurtenances, made it absolutely necessary that the brethren should face the question how the holding of such possessions was to be reconciled with the strict injunction of poverty in the sixth chapter of their rule, according to which “the brothers are to possess nothing of their own, neither a house, nor an estate, nor anything whatsoever, but are to go about for alms as strangers and pilgrims in this world.” At the next general chapter, in A.D. 1230, this question came up for discussion, along with that of the validity of the testament above referred to. When they could not agree among themselves, it was decided, in spite of all the protestations of the general, to request by a deputation the advice of the pope, Gregory IX., on this and certain other disputed questions. With reference to the testament, the pope declared that its demands, because issued without the consent and approval of the general chapter, could not be binding upon the order. With reference to the property question, he repudiated the rendering of the rule in such a way as if in this, just as in all other orders, only the possession of property on the part of individual brothers was forbidden; but the membership of the order as a whole could not be prevented from holding property, as directly contrary to the literal statements of the rule, without, however, entering upon the question as to whose property the movables and immovables standing really at the call of the order were to be considered. And as he had at an earlier date, on the occasion of sending a new Minorite mission to Morocco, granted as a privilege to the order to take alms in money, which was allowed by the rule only for the support of sick brethren, for the reason that without money they would not be able there to procure the necessaries of life, so he now extended this permission for other purposes essential to the good of the order, e.g. building and furnishing of cloisters and churches, as not contrary to the rule, if the collecting and spending of the money is carried on, not by members of the order, but by procurators chosen for the work. It was probably to this victory of the lax party that Elias owed his elevation at the next election, in A.D. 1332, to the office of general. It also enabled him to maintain his position for seven years, during which he showed himself particularly active and efficient, not only as general of the order, but also in political negotiations with the princes of Italy, especially as mediator between the pope and the emperor, Gregory IX. and Frederick II. But his government of the order in a despotic and lordly manner, and his reckless endeavours to conform to worldly customs, intensified the bitterness of his pious opponents, and his growing friendliness with the emperor lost him the favour of the pope. And so it came about that his overthrow was accomplished at the general chapter in Rome, in A.D. 1239. He now openly passed over into the service of the emperor, against whom the ban had anew been issued, accompanied him on his military campaigns, and inveighed unsparingly against the pope in public speeches. As partisan of the banned emperor, already de jure excommunicated, the ban was pronounced against him personally in A.D. 1244, and he was expelled from the order. He died in A.D. 1253, reconciled with the church after a penitential recantation and apology. His four immediate successors in the generalship all belonged to the strict party; but the growing estrangement of the order from the interests and purposes of the curia, especially too its relations to the Evangelium æternum, pronounced heretical in A.D. 1254 (§ 108, 5), produced a reaction, in consequence of which the general, John of Parma, was deprived of office in A.D. 1257. With his successor, St. Bonaventura, the opposition succeeded to the undisputed control of the order. The difficult question, how the really pre-eminently rich cloister property was to be reconciled with the rule of the order requiring absolute abandonment of all possessions, found now among the preponderating lax party, the so-called Fratres de communitate, its solution in the assertion, that the goods in their hands had been bestowed upon them by the donors only in usufruct, or even that they were presented not so much to the order, as rather to the Romish Church, yet with the object of supporting the order. Nicholas III., in A.D. 1279, legitimated the theory, for he decided the question in dispute in his bull Exiit qui seminat, by saying that it is allowed to the disciples of St. Francis to hold earthly goods in usufruct, but not in absolute possession, as this is demanded by the example of Christ and His apostles. But now arose a new controversy, over the form and measure of using with a distinction of a usus moderatus and a usus tenuis or pauper, the latter permitting no store even of the indispensable necessaries of life beyond what is absolutely required to satisfy present needs. Those, on the other hand, who were dissatisfied with the principles affirmed in the papal bull, the Spirituales or Zelatores, with Peter John de Oliva and Ubertino de Casale at their head, assumed an attitude of open, fanatical opposition to the papacy, identifying it with antichrist (§ 108, 6). A section of them, which, besides the points about poverty, took offence at the lax party also over questions of clothing reform, obtained permission from Cœlestine V., in A.D. 1294, to separate from the main body of the order, and, under the name of Cœlestine Eremites, to form an independent communion with a general of their own. They settled for the most part in Greece and on the islands of the Archipelago. Boniface VIII., in A.D. 1302, peremptorily insisted upon their return to the West and to the present order. But as he died soon after, even those who had returned continued their separate existence and their distinctive dress.―Continuation, § 112, 2.

§ 98.7. The Dominican or Preaching Order.―St. Dominic, to whom this order owes its origin, was born, in A.D. 1170, at Calaruega, in Old Castile, of a distinguished family (De Guzman?). As a learned Augustinian canon at Osma, he had already wrought zealously for the conversion of Mohammedans and heretics, when Bishop Diego of Osma, entrusted in A.D. 1204, by King Alphonso VIII. with obtaining a bride for his son Ferdinand, took him as one of his travelling retinue. The sudden death of the bride, a Danish princess, rendered the undertaking nugatory. On their homeward journey they met at Montpellier with the Cistercian mission, sent out for the conversion of the Albigensians (§ 109, 1), the utter failure of which had become already quite apparent. Dominic, inflamed with holy zeal, prevailed upon his bishop to enter along with himself upon the work already almost abandoned in despair; and after the bishop’s early death, in A.D. 1206, he carried on the enterprise at his own hand. For Albigensian women, converted by him, he founded a sort of conventual asylum at Prouille, and a house at Toulouse, which was soon afterwards gifted to him, became the first centre where his disciples gathered around him, whence by-and-by they removed into the cloister of St. Romanus, assigned to them by Bishop Fulco. During the Albigensian crusade, the thought ripened in his mind that he might secure a firmer basis and more powerful support for his enterprise by founding a new, independent order, whose proper and exclusive task should be the combating and preventing of heresy by instruction, preaching, and disputation. In order to obtain for this proposal ecclesiastical sanction, he accompanied his patron, Bishop Fulco of Toulouse, in A.D. 1215, to the Fourth Lateran Council at Rome. But pope and council seemed little disposed to favour his idea. The former, indeed, sought rather to persuade him to join some existing ecclesiastical institution, and carry out his scheme under its organization. Consequently Dominic, with his sixteen companions, resolved to adopt the rule of St. Augustine, augmented by several Præmonstratensian articles. When, however, Honorius III. had ascended the papal chair, Dominic hastened again to Rome, and in A.D. 1216 obtained from this pope without difficulty what Innocent III. had refused him, namely, permission to found a new, independent order, with the privilege of preaching and hearing confession everywhere. Then, and also subsequently, he preached frequently with great acceptance to those living in the papal palace, and thus an opportunity was afforded of establishing the office of a magister sacri palatii, or papal court preacher, which was immediately occupied, and has ever since continued to be held, by a Dominican. At a later period the supreme censorship of books was also assigned to this same official. The first general chapter of the order met at Bologna in A.D. 1220. There the vow of poverty, which was hitherto insisted upon only in the sense of all the earlier orders as a mere abandonment of property on the part of individuals, was put in a severer form, so that even the order as such kept itself free from every kind of possession of earthly goods and revenues, except the bare cloister buildings, and exhorted all its adherents to live only on begged alms. Thus the Dominicans, even earlier than the Franciscans, whose rule then permitted begging only in case of need, constituted themselves into a regular mendicant order. Dominic, however, chose voluntary poverty for himself and his disciples, not like St. Francis simply for the purpose of securing personal holiness, but rather only to obtain a perfectly free course for his work in the salvation of others. The official designation, “Ordo fratrum Prædicatum,” was also fixed at this chapter.286 At the second general chapter, in A.D. 1221, there were already representatives from sixty cloisters out of eight provinces. Dominic died soon after, at Bologna, on 6th August, 1221, uttering anathemas against any one who should corrupt his order by bestowing earthly goods upon it. He was canonized by Gregory IX. in A.D. 1233. His immediate successor, Jordanus, wrote his first biography, adorned, as we might expect, with endless miracles.

§ 98.8. According to the constitutional rules of the order, collected and revised by the third general of the order, Raimund de Pennaforte, about A.D. 1238, the general who stands at the head of the whole order, residing at Rome, magister generalis, is elected to office for life at the general chapter held annually at Pentecost, and he nominates his own socii as advisory assistants. The government of the provinces is conducted by a provincial chosen every four years by the provincial chapter, assisted by four advisory definitores, and each cloister elects its own prior. The mode of life was determined by strict rules, severe fasts were enjoined, involving strict abstinence from the use of flesh, and during particular hours of the day absolute silence had to be observed. In the matter of clothing, only woollen garments were allowed. The dress consisted of a white frock with white scapular and a small peaked capouch; but outside of the cloister a black cloak with capouch was worn over it. From the favourite play upon the name Dominican, Domini canes, in contrast to the dumb dogs of Isaiah lvi. 10, the order adopted as its coat of arms a dog with the torch of truth in its mouth. The special vocation of the order as preachers and opponents of heresy required a thorough scientific training. Every province of the order was therefore expected to have a seminary capable of giving a superior theological education to the members of the order, to which they gave the name of a studium generale, borrowed from the universities, although the predicate was here used in a sense much more restricted (comp. § 99, 3). But ambitious desires for scientific reputation incited them to obtain authority for instituting theological chairs in the University of Paris, the most celebrated theological seminary of that age. The endeavour was favoured by a conflict of Queen Blanca with the Parisian doctors, in consequence of which they left the city and for a time gathered their students around them partly at Rheims, partly at Angers, while the Dominicans, encouraged by the bishop, established their first chair in the vacant places in A.D. 1230. The Franciscans too accomplished the same end about this time. The old professors on their return used every means in their power to drive out the intruders, but were completely beaten after almost thirty years of passionate conflict, and the nurture of scholastic theology was henceforth all but a monopoly of the two mendicant orders (§ 103, 3). The art of ecclesiastical architecture and painting, which during this age reached a hitherto unattained degree of perfection, found many of its most distinguished ornaments and masters in the preaching order. And in zeal for missions to the Mohammedans and the heathen the Franciscans alone could be compared with them. But the order reached the very climax of its reputation, influence, and power when Gregory IX., in A.D. 1232, assigned to it exclusive control of the inquisition of heretics (§ 109, 2).―The veneration of the devout masses of the people, who preferred to confide their secret confessions to the itinerant monks, roused against both orders the hatred of the secular clergy, the preference shown them by the popes awakened the envy of the other orders, and their success in scientific pursuits brought down upon them the ill-will of the learned. Circumstances thus rendered it necessary for a long time that the two orders should stand well together for united combat and defence. But after all those hindrances had been successfully overcome, the rivalry that had been suppressed owing to temporary community of interests broke out all the more bitterly in the endeavour to secure world-wide influence, intensified by opposing philosophico-dogmatic theories (§ 113, 2), as well as by the difference in the interpretation and explanation of the doctrine of poverty, in regard to which they strove with one another in the most violent and passionate manner (§ 112, 2). From having in their hands the administration of the Inquisition the preaching order obtained an important advantage over the Minorites; while these, on the other hand, were far more popular among the common people than the proud, ambitious Dominicans, who occupied themselves with high civil and ecclesiastical politics as counsellors and confessors of the princes and the nobles.―Continuation, § 112, 4.

§ 98.9. To each of the two mendicant orders there was at an early date attached a female branch, which was furnished by the saint who founded the original order with a rule adapting his order’s ideal of poverty to the female vocation, and therefore designated and regarded as his “second order.”

1. The female conventual asylum, founded in A.D. 1206 at Prouille, may be considered the first cloister of Dominican nuns. The principal cloister and another institution, however, was the convent of San Sisto in Rome, given to St. Dominic for this purpose by Honorius III. In all parts of Christendom where the preaching order settled there now appeared female cloisters under the supervision and jurisdiction of its provincial superior, with seclusion, strict asceticism, passing their time in contemplation, and conforming as closely as possible to the mode of life and style of clothing prescribed for the male cloisters. This institution was presided over by a prioress.
2. The order of the Nuns of St. Clara, as “the second order of St. Francis,” was founded by St. Clara of Assisi. Born of a distinguished family, endowed with great physical beauty, and destined to an early marriage, in her eighteenth year, in A.D. 1212, she was powerfully impressed by the teaching of St. Francis, so that she resolved completely to abandon the world and its vanities. She proved the earnestness of her resolve by obeying the trying requirement of the saint to go through the streets of the city clad in a penitent’s cloak, begging alms for the poor. On Palm Sunday at the Portiuncula chapel she took at the hand of her chosen spiritual father the three vows. Her younger sister Agnes, along with other maidens, followed her example. Francis assigned to this union of “poor women” as a conventual residence the church of St. Damiani restored by him, from which they were sometimes called the Nuns of St. Damiani. When in A.D. 1219 St. Francis undertook his journey to the east, he commended them to the care of Cardinal Ugolino, who prescribed for them the rule of the Benedictine nuns; but after the saint’s return they so incessantly entreated him to draw up a rule for themselves, that he at last, in A.D. 1224, prepared one for them and obtained for it the approval of the pope. Clara died in A.D. 1253, and was canonized by Innocent IV. in A.D. 1255. Her order spread very widely in more than 2,000 cloisters, and can boast not only of having received 150 daughters of kings and princes, but also of having enriched heaven with an immense number of beatified and canonized virgins.

§ 98.10. The other Mendicant Orders.―The brilliant success of the Franciscans and Dominicans led other societies, either previously existing, or only now called into being, to adopt the character of mendicants. Only three of them succeeded, though in a much less degree than their models, in gaining position, name and extension throughout the West. The first of these was the Carmelite Order. It owed its origin to the crusader Berthold, Count of Limoges, who in A.D. 1156 founded a monastery at the brook of Elias on Mount Carmel, to which in A.D. 1209 the patriarch of Jerusalem prescribed the rule of St. Basil (§ 44, 3). Hard pressed by the Saracens, the Carmelites emigrated in A.D. 1238 to the West, where as a mendicant order, under the name of Frates Mariæ de Monte Carmelo, with unexampled hardihood they repudiated their founder Berthold, and maintained that the prophet Elias had been himself their founder, and that the Virgin Mary had been a sister of their order. What they most prided themselves on was the sacred scapular which the Mother of God herself had bestowed upon Simon Stock, the general of the order in A.D. 1251, with the promise that whosoever should die wearing it should be sure of eternal blessedness. Seventy years later, according to the legends of the order, the Virgin appeared to Pope John XXII. and told him she descended every Saturday into purgatory, in order to take such souls to herself into heaven. In the 17th century, when violent controversies on this point had arisen, Paul V. authenticated the miraculous qualities of this scapular, always supposing that the prescribed fasts and prayers were not neglected. Among the Carmelites, just as among the Franciscans, laxer principles soon became current, causing controversies and splits which continued down to the 16th century (§ 149, 6).―The Order of Augustinians arose out of the combination of several Italian monkish societies. Innocent IV. in A.D. 1243 prescribed to them the rule of St. Augustine (§ 45, 1) as the directory of their common life. It was only under Alexander IV. in A.D. 1256 that they were welded together into one order as Ordo Fratrum Eremitarum S. Augustini, with the duties and privileges of mendicant monks. Their order spread over the whole West, and enjoyed the special favour of the papal chair, which conferred upon its members the permanent distinction of the office of sacristan to the papal chapel and of chaplain to the Holy Father (Continuation, § 112, 5).―Finally, as the fifth in the series of mendicant orders, we meet with the Order of Servites, Servi b. Virg., devoted to the Virgin, and founded in A.D. 1233 by seven pious Florentines. It was, however, first recognised as a mendicant order by Martin V., and had equal rank with the four others granted it only in A.D. 1567 by Pius V.

§ 98.11. Penitential Brotherhoods and Tertiaries of the Mendicant Orders.―Carl Müller was the first to throw light upon this obscure period in the history of the Franciscans. The results of his investigations are essentially the following: In consequence of the appearance of St. Francis as a preacher of repentance and of the kingdom of God there arose a religious movement which, not merely had as its result the securing of numerous adherents to the association of Minor Brethren directed by himself, as well as to the society of “poor women” attaching itself to St. Clara, but also awakened in many, who by marriage and family duties were debarred from entering these orders, the desire to lead a life of penitence and asceticism removed from the noisy turmoil of the world in the quiet of their own homes while continuing their industrial employments and the discharge of civil duties. As originating in the movement inaugurated by St. Francis, these “Fratres pœnitentiæ” designated themselves “the third order of St. Francis,” and as such made the claim that they should not be disturbed in their retired penitential life to engage upon services for the State, military duty, and so forth. In this way they frequently came into conflict with the civil courts. Although in this direction powerfully supported by the papal curia, the brotherhoods were just so much the less able to press their claim to immunity in proportion as they spread and became more numerous throughout the cities of Italy, and the greater the rush into their ranks became from day to day from all classes, men and women, married and unmarried. The right of spiritual direction and visitation of them was assigned in A.D. 1234 by Gregory IX. to the bishops; but in A.D. 1247 Innocent IV., at the request of the Minorites, issued an ordinance according to which this right was to be given to them, but they were not able in any case to carry it out. Not only the secular clergy were opposed, but they were vigorously aided in their resistance by the Dominicans.―In A.D. 1209, at the beginning of the Albigensian crusade, St. Dominic had founded, at Toulouse, an association of married men and women under the name of Militia Christi, which, recognisable by the wearing of a common style of dress, undertook to vindicate the faith of the church against heretics, to restore again any goods that had wrongfully been appropriated by them, to protect widows and orphans, etc. This Militia migrated from France to Italy. Although originally founded for quite different purposes than the Penitential brotherhoods, it had the same privileges as these enjoyed conferred upon it by the popes, and assimilated itself largely to these in respect of mode of life and ascetic practices, and practically became amalgamated with them. But still the Penitential brotherhoods always formed a neutral territory, upon which, according to circumstances, sometimes the secular clergy, and sometimes one or other of the two mendicant orders, but much more frequently the Minorite clergy, exercised visitation rights. The first attempt at effecting a definite separation arose from the Dominicans, whose seventh general, Murione de Zamorra, prescribed a rule to those Penitential brotherhoods which were more closely related to his order. Upon their adopting it they were loosed from the general society as “Fratres de Pœnitentia” S. Dominici, and described as exclusively attached to the preaching order. In A.D. 1288, however, Jerome of Arcoli, the former general of the Franciscans, ascended the papal throne as Nicholas IV., and now used all means in his power to secure to his own order the supremacy in every department. In the following year, A.D. 1289, he issued the bill Supra montem, in which he prescribed (statuimus) a rule of his own for all Penitential brotherhoods; and then, since on this point, out of regard for the powerful Dominican order, he did not venture to do more than simply recommend, added the advice (consulimus), that the visitation and instruction of these should be assigned to the Minorite superiors, giving as a reason that all these institutions owed their origin to St. Francis. Against both the prescription and the advice, however, the bishops, as well in the interest of their own prerogatives as for the protection of their clergy, threatened in vocation and income, raised a vigorous and persistent protest, which at last, however, succumbed before the supreme power of the pope and the marked preference on the part of the people for the clergy of the orders. Those brotherhoods which adopted the rule thus obtruded on them stood now in the position of rivals, alongside of those of St. Dominic, as “Fratres de pœnitentia” S. Francisci. The Dominican Penitentials afterwards adopted the name and character of a “third order of St. Dominic” or “Tertiaries.” In the Franciscan legends, however, the rule drawn up by Nicholas IV. soon came to be represented as the one prescribed to the Penitentials on their first appearance in A.D. 1221 by St. Francis himself, only ratified anew by the pope, and has been generally regarded as such down to our own day.―The rapid growth in power and influence which the two older mendicant orders owe to the Tertiary Societies, induced also the later mendicant orders to produce an imitation of them within the range of their activity. Crossing the Alps the Penitential brotherhoods found among these orders, on this side, an open door,―the Franciscan brothers being especially numerous,―and entered into peculiarly intimate relations with the Beghard societies which had sprung up there, forming, like them, associations of a monastic type.

§ 98.12. Working Guilds of a Monkish Order.―(1) During the 11th century, midway between the strictly monastic and secular modes of life, a number of pious artisan families in Milan, mostly weavers, under the name of Humiliati, adopted a communal life with spiritual exercises, and community of handicraft and of goods. Whatever profit came from their work was devoted to the poor. The married continued their marriage relations after entering the community. In the 12th century, however, a party arose among them who bound themselves by vows of celibacy, and to them were afterwards attached a congregation of priests. Their society was first acknowledged by Innocent III. in A.D. 1021. But meanwhile many of them had come under the influence of Arnold (§ 108, 6), and so had become estranged from the Catholic church. At a later period these formed a connection with the French Waldensians, the Pauperes de Lugduno, adopted their characteristic views, and for the sake of distinction took the name of Pauperes Italici (§ 108, 12).―Related in every respect to the Lombard Humiliati, but distinguished from them by the separation of the sexes and a universal obligation of celibacy, were the communities of the Beguines and Beghards. Priority of origin belongs to the Beguines. They took the three monkish vows, but only for so long as they belonged to the society. Hence they could at any time withdraw, and enter upon marriage and other relations of social life. They lived under the direction of a lady superior and a priest in a so-called Beguine-house, Curtis Beguinarum, which generally consisted of a number of small houses connected together by one surrounding wall. Each had her own household, although on entrance she had surrendered her goods over to the community and on withdrawing she received them back. They busied themselves with handiwork and the education of girls, the spiritual training of females, and sewing, washing and nursing the poor in the houses of the city. The surplus of income over expenditure was applied to works of benevolence. Every Beguine house had its own costume and colour. These institutions soon spread over all Belgium, Germany, and France. The first Beguine house known to us was founded about 1180 at Liège, by the famous priest and popular preacher, Lambert la Bèghe, i.e. the Stammerer. Hallmann thinks that the name of the society may have been derived from that of the preacher. Earlier writers, without anything to support them but a vague similarity of sound, were wont to derive it from Begga, daughter of Pepin of Landen in the 7th century. Most likely of all, however, is Mosheim’s derivation of it from “beggan,” which means not to pray, “beten,” a praying sister, but to beg, as the modern English, and so proves that the institute originally consisted of a collection of poor helpless women. We may compare with this the designation “Lollards,” § 116, 3.―After the pattern of the Beguine communities there soon arose communities of men, Beghards, with similar tendencies. They supported themselves by handicraft, mostly by weaving. But even in the 13th century corruption and immorality made their appearance in both. Brothers and sisters of the New (§ 108, 4) and of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5), Fratricelli (§ 112, 2) and other heretics, persecuted by the church, took refuge in their unions and infected them with their heresies. The Inquisition (§ 109, 2) kept a sharp eye on them, and many were executed, especially in France. The 15th General Council at Vienna, in A.D. 1312, condemned eight of their positions as heretical. There was now a multitude of Beguine and Beghard houses overthrown. Others maintained their existence only by passing over to the Tertiaries of the Franciscans. Later popes took the communities that were free from suspicion under their protection. But even among these many forms of immorality broke out, concubinage between Beguines and Beghards, and worldliness, thus obliging the civil and ecclesiastical authorities again to step in. The unions still remaining in the time of the Reformation were mostly secularized. Only in Belgium have a few Beguine houses continued to exist to the present day as institutions for the maintenance of unmarried women of the citizen class.287

§ 98.13. The Spiritual Order of Knights.―The peculiarity of the Order of Knights consists in the combination of the three monkish vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with the vow to maintain a constant struggle with the infidels. The most important of these orders were the following.

1. The Templars, founded in A.D. 1118 by Hugo de Payens and Godfrey de St. Omer for the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. The costume of the order was a white mantle with a red cross. Its rule was drawn up by St. Bernard, whose warm interest in the order secured for it papal patronage and the unanimous approbation of the whole West. When Acre fell in A.D. 1291 the Templars settled in Cyprus, but soon most of them returned to the West, making France their headquarters. They had their name probably from a palace built on the site of Solomon’s temple, which king Baldwin II. of Jerusalem assigned them as their first residence.288―Continuation, § 112, 7.
2. The Knights of St. John or Hospitallers, founded by merchants from Amalfi as early as the middle of the 11th century, residing at first in a cloister at the Holy Sepulchre, were engaged in showing hospitality to the pilgrims and nursing the sick. The head of the order Raimund du Puy, who occupied this position from A.D. 1118, added to these duties, in imitation of the Templars, that of fighting against the infidels. They carried a white cross on their breast, and a red cross on their standard. Driven out by the Saracens, they settled in Rhodes in A.D. 1310, and in A.D. 1530 took possession of Malta.289
3. The Order of Teutonic Knights had its origin from a hospital founded by citizens of Bremen and Lübeck during the siege of Acre in A.D. 1120. The costume of the knights was a white mantle with a black cross. Subsequently the order settled in Prussia (§ 93, 13), and in A.D. 1237 united with the order of the Brothers of the Sword, which had been founded in Livonia in A.D. 1202 (§ 93, 12). Under its fourth Grandmaster, the prudent as well as vigorous Hermann v. Salza, A.D. 1210-1239, it reached the summit of its power and influence.
4. The Knights of the Cross arose originally in Palestine under the name of the Order of Bethlehem, but at a later period settled in Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland. There they adopted the life of regular canons (§ 97, 5) and devoted themselves to hospital work and pastoral duties. They are still to be found in Bohemia as holders of valuable livings, with the badge of a cross of red satin.

In Spain, too, various orders of spiritual knights arose under vows to fight with the Moors (§ 95, 2). The two most important were the Order of Calatrava, founded in A.D. 1158 by the Cistercian monk Velasquez for the defence of the frontier city Calatrava, and the Order of Alcantara, founded in A.D. 1156 for a similar purpose. Both orders were confirmed by Alexander III. and gained great fame and still greater wealth in the wars against the Moors. Under Ferdinand the Catholic the rank of Grandmaster of both orders passed over to the crown. Paul III. in A.D. 1540 released the knights from the vow of celibacy, but obliged them to become champions of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Both orders still exist, but only as military orders of merit.

§ 98.14. Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.―The name of Bridge Brothers, Frères Pontifex, Fratres Pontifices, was given to a union founded under Clement III., in Southern France, in A.D. 1189, for the building of hospices and bridges at points where pilgrims crossed the large rivers, or for the ferrying of pilgrims over the streams. As a badge they wore a pick upon their breast. Their constitution was modelled upon that of the Knights of St. John, and upon their gradual dissolution in the 13th century most of their number went over to that order.―Petrus [Peter] Nolescens, born in Languedoc, of noble parents and military tutor of a Spanish prince, moved by what he had seen of the sufferings of Christian slaves at the hand of their Moorish masters, and strengthened in his resolve by an appearance of the Queen of Heaven, founded in A.D. 1228 the knightly order of the Mercedarians, Mariæ Virg. de mercede pro redemptione Captivorum. They devoted all their property to the purchase of Christian captives, and where such a one was in danger of apostatising to Islam and the money for redemption was not procurable, they would even give themselves into slavery in his place. When in A.D. 1317 the Grand Commandership passed over into the hands of the priests, the order was gradually transformed into a monkish order. After A.D. 1600, in consequence of a reform after the pattern of the rule of the Barefoots, it became a mendicant order, receiving the privileges of other begging fraternities from Benedict XIII. in A.D. 1725. The order proved a useful institution of its time in Spain, France and Italy, and at a later period also in Spanish America.

§ 99.1. Dialectic and Mysticism.―With the exception of the speculative Scotus Erigena, the Schoolmen of the Carlovingian Age were of a practical turn. This was changed on the introduction of Dialectic in the 11th century. Practical interests gave way to pure love of science, and it was now the aim of scholars to give scientific shape and perfect logical form to the doctrines of the church. The method of this Dialectic Scholasticism consisted in resolving all church doctrines into their elementary ideas, in the arranging and demonstrating of them under all possible categories and in the repelling of all possible objections of the sceptical reason. The end aimed at was the proof of the reasonableness of the doctrine. This Dialectic, therefore, was not concerned with exegetical investigations or Scripture proof, but rather with rational demonstration. Generally speaking, theological Dialectic attached itself to the ecclesiastical system of the day as positivism or dogmatism; for, appropriating Augustine’s Credo ut intelligam, it made faith the principal starting point of its theological thinking and the raising of faith to knowledge the end toward which it laboured. On the other hand, however, scepticism often made its appearance, taking not faith but doubt as the starting point for its inquiries, with the avowed intention, indeed, of raising faith to knowledge, but only acknowledging as worthy of belief what survived the purifying fire of doubt.―Alongside of this double-edged Dialectic, sometimes in conflict, sometimes in alliance with it, we meet with the Mystical Scholasticism, which appealed not to the reason but to the heart, and sought by spiritual contemplation rather than by Dialectic to advance at once theological science and the Christian life. Its object is not Dogmatics as such, not the development of Fides quæ creditur, but life in fellowship with God, the development of Fides qua creditur. By contemplative absorption of the soul into the depth of the Divine life it seeks an immediate vision, experience and enjoyment of the Divine, and as an indispensable condition thereto requires purity of heart, the love of God in the soul and thorough abnegation of self. What is gained by contemplation is made the subject of scientific statement, and thus it rises to speculative mysticism. Both contemplation and speculative mysticism in so far as their scientific procedure is concerned are embraced under the name of scholastic mysticism. The practical endeavour, however, after a deepening and enhancing of the Christian life in the direction of a real and personal fellowship with God was found more important and soon out-distanced the scientific attempt at tabulating and formulating the facts of inner experience. Practical mysticism thus gained the ascendency during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, and formed the favourite pursuit of the numerous inmates of the nunneries (§ 107).

§ 99.2. The Philosophical Basis of Dialectic Scholasticism was obtained mainly from the Aristotelian philosophy, which, down to the end of the 12th century, was known at first only from Latin renderings of Arabic and even Hebrew translations, and afterwards from Latin renderings of the Greek originals (§ 103, 1). Besides Aristotle, however, Plato also had his enthusiastic admirers during the Middle Ages. The study of the writings of Augustine and the Areopagite (§ 90, 7) led back again to him, and the speculative mystics vigorously opposed the supremacy of Aristotle.―At the outset of the philosophical career of scholasticism in the 11th century we meet with the controversy of Anselm and Roscellinus [Roscelin] about the relations of thinking and being or of the idea and the substance of things (§ 101, 3). The Nominalists, following the principles of the Stoics, maintained that General Notions, Universalia, are mere abstractions of the understanding, Nomina, which as such have no reality outside the human mind, Universalia post res. The Realists, on the contrary, affirmed the reality of General Notions, regarding them as objective existences before and apart from human thinking. But there were two kinds of realism. The one, based on the Platonic doctrine of ideas, taught that General Notions are really existent before the origin of the several things as archetypes in the Divine reason, and then also in the human mind before the contemplation of the things empirically given, Universalia ante res. The other, resting on Aristotle’s doctrine, considered them as lying in the things themselves and as first getting entrance into the human mind through experience, Universalia in rebus. The Platonic Realism thought to reach a knowledge of things by pure thought from the ideas latent in the human mind; the Aristotelian, on the other hand, thought to gain a knowledge of things only through experience and thinking upon the things themselves.―Continuation, § 103, 1.

§ 99.3. The Nurseries of Scholasticism.―The work previously done in cathedrals and cloister schools was, from about the 12th century, taken up in a more comprehensive and thorough way by the Universities. They were, as to their origin, independent of church and state, emperor and pope. Here and there famous teachers arose in the larger cities or in connection with some celebrated cloister or cathedral school. Youths from all countries gathered around them. Around the teacher who first attracted attention others gradually grouped themselves. Teachers and scholars organized themselves into a corporation, and thus arose the University. By this, however, we are to understand nothing less than a Universitas litterarum, where attention was given to the whole circle of the sciences. For a long time there was no thought of a distribution into faculties. When the multitude of teachers and students demanded a distribution into several corporations, this was done according to nations. The name signifies the Universitas magistrorum et scholarium rather than an articulated whole. The study here pursued was called Studium generale or universale, because the entrance thereto stood open to every one. At first each university pursued exclusively and in later times chiefly some special department of science. Thus, e.g. theology was prosecuted in Paris and Oxford and subsequently also in Cologne, jurisprudence in Bologna, Medicine in Salerno. The first university that expressly made provision for teaching all sciences was founded at Naples in A.D. 1224 with imperial munificence by Frederick II. The earliest attempt at a distribution of the sciences among distinct faculties was occasioned by the struggle between the university of Paris and the mendicant monks (§ 103, 1), who separated themselves from the other theological teachers and as members of a guild formed themselves in A.D. 1259 into a theological faculty. The number of the students, among whom were many of ripe years, was immensely great, and in some of the most celebrated universities reached often to ten or even twenty thousand. There was a ten years’ course prescribed for the training of the monks of Clugny: two years’ Logicalia, three years’ Literæ naturales et philosophicæ, and five years’ Theology. The Council at Tours in A.D. 1236 insisted that every priest should have passed through a five years’ course of study.291

§ 99.4. The Epochs of Scholasticism.―The intellectual work of the theologians of the Middle Ages during our period ran its course in four epochs, the boundaries of which nearly coincide with the boundaries of the four centuries which make up that period.

1. From the 10th century, almost completely destitute of any scientific movement, the so-called Sæculum obscurum, there sprang forth the first buds of scholarship, without, however, any distinct impress upon them of scholasticism.
2. In the 11th century scholasticism began to show itself, and that in the form of dialectic, both sceptical and dogmatic.
3. In the 12th century mysticism assumed an independent place alongside of dialectic, carried on a war of extermination against the sceptical dialectic, and finally appeared in a more peaceful aspect, contributing material to the positive dogmatic dialectic.
4. In the 13th century dialectic scholasticism gained the complete ascendency, and reached its highest glory in the form of dogmatism in league with mysticism, and never, in the persons of its greatest representatives, in opposition to it.

§ 99.5. The Canon Law.―After the Pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) many collections of church laws appeared. They sought to render the material more complete, intentionally or unintentionally enlarging the forgeries and massing together the most contradictory statements without any attempt at comparison or sifting. The most celebrated of these were the collections of bishops Burchard of Worms about A.D. 1020, Anselm of Lucca, who died in A.D. 1086, nephew of the pope of the same name, Alexander II., and Ivo of Chartres, who died in A.D. 1116. Then the Camaldolite monk Gratian of Bologna undertook not only to gather together the material in a more complete form than had hitherto been done, but also to reconcile contradictory statements by scholastic argumentation. His work appeared about A.D. 1150 under the title Concordantia discordantium canonum, and is commonly called Decretum Gratiani. A great impulse was given to the study of canon law by means of this work, especially at Bologna and Paris. Besides the Legists, who taught the Roman law, there now arose numerous Decretists teaching the canon law and writing commentaries on Gratian’s work. Gregory IX. had a new collection of Decrees of Councils and Decretals in five books, the so-called Liber extra Decretum, or shortly Extra or Decretum Gregorii, drawn up by his confessor and Grand-Penitentiary, the learned Dominican Raimundus [Raimund] de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], and sent it in A.D. 1234 to the University of Bologna. Boniface VIII. in A.D. 1298 added to this collection in five parts his Liber Sextus, and Clement V. in A.D. 1314 added what are called after him the Clementinæ. From that time down to A.D. 1483 the decretals of later popes were added as an appendix under the name Extravagantes, and with these the Corpus juris canonici was concluded. An official edition was begun in A.D. 1566 by the so-called Correctores Romani, which in A.D. 1580 received papal sanction as authoritative for all time to come.292

§ 99.6. The Schoolmen as such contributed nothing to Historical Literature. Histories were written not in the halls of the universities but in the cells of the monasteries. Of these there were three kinds as we have already seen in § 90, 9. For workers in the department of Biblical History, see § 105, 5; and of Legends of the Saints, § 104, 8. For ancient Church History Rufinus and Cassiodorus were the authorities and the common text books (§ 5, 1). An interesting example of the manner in which universal history was treated when mediæval culture had reached its highest point, is afforded by the Speculum magnum s. quadruplex of the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (Bellovacensis). This treatise was composed about the middle of the 13th century at the command of Louis IX. of France as a hand-book for the instruction of the royal princes. It forms an encyclopædic exposition of all the sciences of that day in four parts, Speculum historiale, naturale, doctrinale, and morale. The Speculum doctrinale breaks off just at the point where it should have passed over to theology proper, and the Speculum morale is a later compilation by an unknown hand.293

§ 100.1. The degree to which Classical Studies were pursued in Germany during the period of the Saxon imperial house is shown by the works of the learned nun Roswitha of Gandersheim, north of Göttingen, who died about A.D. 984. The first edition of her works, which comprise six dramas on biblical and ecclesiastical themes in the style of Terence, in prose interspersed with rhymes, also eight legends, a history of Otto I., and a history of the founding of her cloister in leonine hexameters, was issued by the humanist Conrad Celtes, with woodcuts by Dürer in A.D. 1501.―Notker Labeo, president of the cloister school of St. Gall, who died in A.D. 1022, enriched the old German literature by translations of the Psalms, of Aristotle’s Organon, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, and various writings of Boethius [Boëthius].―In England the educational efforts of St. Dunstan (§ 97, 4) were powerfully supported by Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester, who quite in the spirit of Alfred the Great (§ 90, 10) wrought incessantly with his pupils for the extension and enrichment of the Anglo-Saxon literature. Of his scholars by far the most famous was Aelfric, surnamed Grammaticus, who flourished about A.D. 990. He wrote an Anglo-Saxon Grammar, prepared a collection of homilies for all the Sundays and festivals and a free translation from sermons of the Latin Fathers, translated also the Old Testament heptateuch, and wrote treatises on other portions of Scripture and on biblical questions.295

§ 100.2. Italy produced during the second half of the century many theologians eminent and important in their day. Atto, bishop of Vercelli, who died about A.D. 960, distinguished himself by his exegetical compilations on Paul’s epistles, and as a homilist and a vigorous opponent of the oppressors of the church during these rough times. Still more important was his younger contemporary Ratherius, bishop of Verona, afterwards of Liège, but repeatedly driven away from both, who died A.D. 974. A strict and zealous reformer of clerical morals, he insisted upon careful study of the Bible, and wrought earnestly against the unblushing paganism of the Italian scholars of his age as well as against all kinds of hypocrisy, superstition, and ecclesiastical corruptions. This, and also his attachment to the political interests of the German court, exposed him to much persecution. Among his writings may be named De contemptu canonum, Meditationes cordis, Apologia sui ipsius, De discordia inter ipsum et clericos.―In France we meet with Odo of Clugny, who died in A.D. 942, famed as a hymn writer and homilist, and, in his Collationum Ll. iii., as a zealous reprover of the corrupt morals of his age. In England and France, Abbo of Fleury taught toward the end of the century. From England, where he had been induced to go by St. Dunstan, he returned after some years to his own cloister of Fleury, and by his academic gifts raised its school to great renown. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and history. He also composed a treatise on dialectics, in which he makes his appearance as the first and most eminent precursor of the Schoolmen. Chosen abbot of his monastery and exercising strict discipline over his monks, he suffered a martyr’s death by the hand of a murderer in A.D. 1004.―Gerbert of Rheims, afterwards Pope Sylvester II. (§ 96, 3, 4), during his active career lived partly in France, partly in Italy. Distinguished both for classical and Arabic scholarship, he shone in the firmament of this dark century as it was passing away († A.D. 1003) like a star of the first magnitude in theology, mathematics, astronomy, and natural science, while by the common people he was regarded as a magician. Under him the school of Rheims reached the summit of its fame.

§ 101.1. The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.

1. Fulbert opens the list, a pupil of Gerbert, and from A.D. 1007 Bishop of Chartres Before entering on his episcopate he had founded at Chartres a theological seminary. His fame spread over all the West, so that pupils poured in upon him from every side.
2. The most important of these was Berengar of Tours, afterwards a canon and teacher of the cathedral school of his native city, and then again archdeacon at Angers. He died in A.D. 1088. The school of Tours rose to great eminence under him.
3. Lanfranc, the celebrated opponent of the last-named, was abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, and from A.D. 1070 Archbishop of Canterbury (§ 96, 8). He died in A.D. 1089. He wrote against Berengar Liber de corpore et sanguine Domini.
4. Bishop Hildebert of Tours, who died in A.D. 1134, famous as a writer of spiritual songs, was a pupil of Berengar. But he avoided the sceptical tendencies of his teacher, and, warned of the danger of dialectic and following the mystical bent of his mind, he applied himself to the cultivation of a life of faith, so that St. Bernard praised him as tantam columnam ecclesiæ.
5. The monastic school of Bec, which Lanfranc had rendered celebrated, reached the summit of its fame under his pupil Anselm of Canterbury, who far excelled his teacher in genius as well as in importance for theological science. He was born in A.D. 1033 at Aosta in Italy, educated in the monastery of Bec, became teacher and abbot there, was raised in A.D. 1093 to the archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury, and died in A.D. 1109. As a churchman he courageously defended the independence of the church according to the principles of Hildebrand (§ 96, 12). As a theologian he may be ranked in respect of acuteness and profundity, speculative talent and Christian earnestness, as a second Augustine, and on the theological positions of that Father he based his own. Though carrying dialectic even into his own private devotions, there was yet present in him a vein of religious mysticism. According to him faith is the condition of true knowledge, Fides præcedit intellectum; but it is also with him a sacred duty to raise faith to knowledge, Credo ut intelligam. Only he who in respect of endowment and culture is not capable of this intellectual activity should content himself with simple Veneratio. His Monologium contains discussions on the nature of God, his Proslogium proves the being of God; his three books, De fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi, develop and elaborate the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology; while the three dialogues De veritate, De libero arbitrio, and De casu diaboli treat of the object, and the tract Cur Deus homo? treats of the subject, of soteriology. The most able, profound, and impressive of all his writings is the last-named, which proves the necessity of the incarnation of God in Christ for the reconciliation of man with God. It was an epoch-making treatise in the historical development of the church doctrine of satisfaction on Pauline foundations.296 Anselm took part in the controversy of the Greeks by his work De processione Spiritus (§ 67, 4). He discussed the question of predestination in a moderate Augustinian form in the book, De concordia præscientæ et prædest. et gratiæ Dei cum libero arbitrio. In his Meditationes and Orationes he gives expression to the ardent piety of his soul, as also in the voluminous collection (426) of his letters.297
6. Anselm of Laon, surnamed Scholasticus, was the pupil of Anselm of Canterbury. From A.D. 1076 he taught with brilliant success at Paris, and thus laid the first foundation of its university. Subsequently he returned to his native city Laon, was made there archdeacon and Scholasticus, and founded in that place a famous theological school. He died in A.D. 1117. He composed the Glossa interlinearis, a short exposition of the Vulgate between the lines, which with Walafrid’s Glossa ordinaria (§ 90, 4), became the favourite exegetical handbook of the Middle Ages.
7. William of Champeaux, the proper founder of the University of Paris, had already taught rhetoric and dialectic for some time with great success in the cathedral school, when the fame of the theological school of Laon led him to the feet of Anselm. In A.D. 1108 he returned to Paris, and had immense crowds listening to his theological lectures. Chagrined on account of a defeat in argument at the hand of Abælard, one of his own pupils, he retired from public life into the old chapel of St. Victor near Paris, and there founded a monastery under the same name for canons of the rule of St. Augustine. He died in A.D. 1121 as Bishop of Chalons.
8. The abbot Guibert of Nogent, in the diocese of Laon, who died about A.D. 1124, a scholar of Anselm at Bec, was a voluminous writer and, with all his own love of the marvellous, a vigorous opponent of all the grosser absurdities of relic and saint worship. He wrote a useful history of the first crusade, and a work important in its day entitled, Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat. His great work was one in four books, De pignoribus Sanctorum, against the abuses of saint and relic worship, the exhibition of pretended parts of the Saviour’s body, e.g. teeth, pieces of the foreskin, navel cord, etc., against the translation or distribution of the bodies of saints, against the fraud of introducing new saints, relics, and legends.

§ 101.2. Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy, A.D. 1050-1079.―Berengar of Tours elaborated a theory of the eucharist which is directly antagonistic to the now generally prevalent theory of Radbert (§ 91, 3). He taught that while the elements are changed and Christ’s body is really present, neither the change nor the presence is substantial. The presence of His body is rather the existence of His power in the elements, and the change of the bread is the actual manifestation of this power in the form of bread. The condition however of this power-presence is not merely the consecration but also the faith of the receiver. Without this faith the bread is an empty and impotent sign. Such views were publicly expressed by him and his numerous followers for a long while without causing any offence. But when he formally stated them in a letter to his friend Lanfranc of Bec, this churchman became Berengar’s accuser at the Synod of Rome in A.D. 1050. The synod condemned him unheard. A second synod of the same year held at Vercelli, before which Berengar was to have appeared but could not because he had meanwhile been imprisoned in France, in an outburst of fanatical fury had the treatise of Ratramnus on the eucharist, wrongly ascribed to Erigena, torn up and burnt, while Berengar’s doctrine was again condemned. Meanwhile Berengar was by the intervention of influential friends set at liberty and made the acquaintance of the powerful papal legate Hildebrand, who, holding by the simple Scripture doctrine that the bread and wine of the sacrament was the body and blood of Christ, occupied probably a position intermediate between Radbert’s grossly material and Berengar’s dynamic hypothesis. Disinclined to favour the fanaticism of Berengar’s opponents, Hildebrand contented himself with exacting from him at the Synod of Tours in A.D. 1054 a solemn declaration that he did not deny the presence of Christ in the Supper, but regarded the consecrated elements as the body and blood of Christ. Emboldened by this decision and still always persecuted by his opponents as a heretic, Berengar undertook in A.D. 1059 a journey to Rome, in order, as he hoped, by Hildebrand’s influence to secure a distinct papal verdict in his favour. But there he found a powerful opposition headed by the passionate and pugnacious Cardinal Humbert (§ 67, 3). This party at the Lateran Council in Rome in A.D. 1059, compelled Berengar, who was really very deficient in strength of character, to cast his writings into the fire and to swear to a confession composed by Humbert which went beyond even Radbert’s theory in the gross corporeality of its expressions. But in France he immediately again repudiated this confession with bitter invectives against Rome, and vindicated anew against Lanfranc and others his earlier views. The bitterness of the controversy now reached its height. Hildebrand had meanwhile, in A.D. 1073, himself become pope. He vainly endeavoured to bring the controversy to an end by getting Berengar to accept a confession couched in moderate terms admitting the real presence of the body and blood in the Supper. The opposite party did not shrink from casting suspicion on the pope’s own orthodoxy, and so Hildebrand was obliged, in order to avoid the loss of his great life work in a mass of minor controversies, to insist at a second synod in Rome in A.D. 1079 upon an unequivocal and decided confession of the substantial change of the bread. Berengar was indiscreet enough to refer to his private conversations with the pope; but now Gregory commanded him at once to acknowledge and abjure his error. With fear and trembling Berengar obeyed, and the pope dismissed him with a safe conduct, distinctly prohibiting all further disputation. Bowed down under age and calamities, Berengar withdrew to the island of St. Come, near Tours, where he lived as a solitary penitent in the practice of strict asceticism, and died at a great age in peace with the church in A.D. 1088. His chief work is De Cœna S. adv. Lanfr.―Continuation, § 102, 5.

§ 101.3. Anselm’s Controversies.

1. On the basis of his Platonic realism, Anselm of Canterbury constructed the ontological proof of the being of God, that there is given in man’s reason the idea of the most perfect being to whose perfection existence also belongs. When he laid this proof before the learned world in his Monologium and Proslogium, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who was a supporter of Aristotelian realism, opposed him, and acutely pointed out the defects of this proof in his Liber pro insipiente. He so named it in reference to a remark of Anselm, who had said that even the insipiens who, according to Psalm xiv. 1, declares in his heart that there is no God, affords thereby a witness for the existence of the idea, and consequently also for the existence of God. Anselm replied in his Apologeticus c. Gaunilonem. And there the controversy ended without any definite result.
2. Of more importance was Anselm’s controversy with Roscelin, the Nominalist, canon of Compiègne. He in a purely nominalistic fashion understood the idea of the Godhead as a mere abstraction, and thought that the three persons of the Godhead could not be una res, οὐσία, as then they must all at once have been incarnate in Christ. A synod at Soissons in A.D. 1092 condemned him as a tritheist. He retracted, but afterwards reiterated his earlier views. Anselm then, in his tract De fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi contra blasphemias Rucelini, proved that the drift of his argumentation tended toward tritheism, and vindicated the trinitarian doctrine of the church. For more than two centuries Nominalism was branded with a suspicion of heterodoxy, until in the 14th century a reaction set in (§ 113, 3), which restored it again to honour.

§ 102.1. The Contest on French Soil.

1. The Dialectic Side of the Gulf.―Peter Abælard, superior to all his contemporaries in acuteness, learning, dialectic power, and bold freethinking, but proud and disputatious, was born at Palais in Brittany in A.D. 1079. His first teacher in philosophy was Roscelin. Afterwards he entered the school of William of Champeaux at Paris, the most celebrated dialectician of his times. Having defeated his master in a public disputation, he founded a school at Melun near Paris, where thousands of pupils flocked to him. In order to be nearer Paris, he moved his school to Corbeil; then to the very walls of Paris on Mount St. Genoveva; and ceased not to overwhelm William with humiliations, until his old teacher retreated from the field. In order to secure still more brilliant success, he began to study theology under the Schoolman Anselm of Laon. But very soon the ambitious scholar thought himself superior also to this master. Relying upon his dialectical endowments, he took a bet without further preparation to expound the difficult prophet Ezekiel. He did it indeed to the satisfaction of scholars, but Anselm refused to allow him to continue his lectures. Abælard now returned to Paris, where he gathered around him a great number of enthusiastic pupils. Canon Fulbert appointed him teacher of his beautiful and talented niece Heloise. He won her love, and they were secretly married. She then denied the marriage in order that he might not be debarred from the highest offices of the church. Persisting in this denial, her relatives dealt severely with her, and Abælard had her placed in the nunnery of Argenteuil. Fulbert in his fury had Abælard seized during the night and emasculated, so that he might be disqualified for ecclesiastical preferment. Overwhelmed with shame, he fled to the monastery of St. Denys, and there in A.D. 1119 took the monastic vow. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil. But even at St. Denys Abælard was obliged by the eager entreaties of former scholars to resume his lectures. His free and easy treatment of the church doctrine and his haughty spirit aroused many enemies against him, who at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 1121 compelled him before the papal legate to cast into the fire his treatise De Unitate et Trinitate divina, and had him committed to a monastic prison. By the intercession of some friends he was soon again set free, and returned to St. Denys. But when he made the discovery that Dionysius at Paris was not the Areopagite the persecution of the monks drove him into a forest near Troyes. There too his scholars followed him and made him resume his lectures. His colony grew up under his hands into the famous abbey of the Paraclete. Finding even there no rest, he made over the abbey of the Paraclete to Heloise, who had not been able to come to terms with her insubordinate nuns at Argenteuil. He himself now became abbot of the monastery of St. Gildasius at Ruys in Brittany, and, after in vain endeavouring for eight years to restore the monastic discipline, he again in A.D. 1136 resumed his office of teacher and lectured at St. Genoveva near Paris with great success. He wrote an ethical treatise, “Scito te ipsum,” issued a new and enlarged edition of his Theologia christiana, now extant as the incomplete Introductio ad theologiam in three books, and composed a Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judæum et Christianum, in which the heathen philosophers and poets of antiquity are ranked almost as high as the prophets and apostles. In Sic et Non, “Yes and No,” a collection of extracts from the Fathers under the various heads of doctrine contradictory of one another, the traditional theology was held up to contempt.

§ 102.2.

Abælard maintained, in opposition to the Augustinian-Anselmian theory, that faith preceded knowledge, that only what we comprehend is to be believed. He did indeed intend that his dialectic should be used not for the overthrow but for the establishment of the church doctrine. He proceeded, however, from doubt as the principle of all knowledge, regarding all church dogmas as problems which must be proved before they can be believed: Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus. He thus reduced faith to a mere probability and measured the content of faith by the rule of subjective reason. This was most glaring in the case of the trinitarian doctrine, which with him approached Sabellian modalism. God as omnipotent is to be called Father, as all wise the Son, as loving and gracious the Spirit; and so the incarnation becomes a merely temporal and dynamic immanence of the Logos in the man Jesus. The significance of the ethical element in Christianity quite overshadowed that of the dogmatic. He taught that all fundamental truths of Christianity had been previously proclaimed by philosophers and poets of Greece and Rome, who were scarcely less inspired than the prophets and apostles, the special service of the latter consisting in giving currency to these truths among the uncultured. He turns with satisfaction from the theology of the Fathers to that of the apostles, and from that again to the religion of Jesus, whom he represents rather as a reformer introducing a pure morality than as a founder of a religious system. Setting aside Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, he regards the redemption and reconciliation of man as consisting in the awakening in sinful man, by means of the infinite love displayed by Christ’s teaching and example, by His life, sufferings and death upon the cross, a responding love of such fulness and power, that he is thereby freed from the dominion of sin and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God.298―Abælard’s fame and following grew in a wonderful manner from day to day; but also powerful opponents dragged his heresies into light and vigorously combated them. The most important of these were the Cistercian monk William of Thierry and St. Bernard, who called attention to the dangerous tendency of his teaching. St. Bernard dealt personally with the heretic, but when he failed in converting him, he appeared in A.D. 1141 at the Synod of Sens as his accuser. The synod condemned as heretical a series of statements culled from his writings by Bernard. Abælard appealed to the pope, but even his friends at Rome, among whom was Card. Guido de Castella, afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., could not close their eyes to his manifest heterodoxies. His friendship for Arnold of Brescia also told against him at Rome (§ 108, 7). Innocent II. therefore excommunicated Abælard and his supporters, condemned his writings to be burnt and himself to be confined in a monastery. Abælard found an asylum with the abbot Peter the Venerable of Clugny, who not only effected his reconciliation with Bernard, but also, on the ground of his Apologia s. Confessio fidei, in which he submitted to the judgment of the church, obtained permission from the pope to pass his last days in peace at Clugny. During this time he composed his Hist. calamitatum Abælardi, an epistolary autobiography, which, though not free from vanity and bitterness, is yet worthy to be ranked with Augustine’s “Confessions” for its unreserved self-accusation and for the depth of self-knowledge which it reveals. He died in A.D. 1142, in the monastery of St. Marcellus at Chalons, where he had gone in quest of health. He was buried in the abbey of the Paraclete, where Heloise laid on his coffin the letter of absolution of Peter of Clugny. Twenty-two years later Heloise herself was laid in the same quiet resting place.299

§ 102.3.

2. The Mystic Side of the Gulf.―Abælard’s most famous opponent was St. Bernard of Clairvaux (§ 98, 1), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (doctor mellifluus), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur. The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (excessus) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “more angelorum” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only attained unto by him occasionally and partially through God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon and in the tract De diligendo Deo. In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his Tractatus de erroribus Petri Abælardi. To the department of dogmatics belongs De gratia et libero arbitrio; and to that of history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ 149, 5). The most important of his works is De Consideratione, in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet, he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him among the doctores ecclesiæ (§ 47, 22 c).―Soon after the controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée (Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154, in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius (§ 47, 23) ascribed reality to the universal term “God” in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have a Quaternity. At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned, but he himself was left unmolested.300

§ 102.4.

3. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.―At the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor made an important concession to the dialecticians by entering with as much energy upon the scientific study and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school was Hugo of St. Victor. Descended from the family of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries as Alter Augustinus or Lingua Augustini, Hugo was one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and, endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by his early death in A.D. 1141. In his Eruditio didascalica we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church history.301 His Summa sententiarum is an exposition of dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart of Abælard’s Sic et Non. The ripest and most influential of all his works, and the most independent, is his De sacramentis christ. fidei, in 2 bks., in which he treats of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view of the Sacraments (§ 104, 2). His exegetical works are less important and less original. His mysticism is set forth ex professo in his Soliloquium de arrha animæ and in the series of three tracts, De arca morali, De arca mystica, and De vanitate mundi. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive stages of lectio, cogitatio, meditatio, oratio, and operatio reaches to contemplatio or the vision of God.―Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his convent, was the Scotchman Richard St. Victor, who died in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than his master―though this too is shown in his 6 bks. De trinitate, a scholastic exposition of the Cognitio or Fides quæ creditur―he mainly devoted his energies to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of the “Affectus” or Fides qua creditur, which aims at the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished as mentis dilatatio, sublevatio, and alienatio. Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions of Scripture passages, the most important are, De præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii. patriarchis, and the 4 bks. De gratia contemplationis s. de arca mystica. These are also known as Benjamin minor and B. major. In Richard there appears the first indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement hostility.

§ 102.5.

4. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Dialectics.―After Abælard’s condemnation theological dialectics came more and more to be associated with the church doctrine and to approach more or less nearly to a friendly alliance with mysticism. Hugo’s writings did much to bring this about. The following are the most important Schoolmen of this tendency.
   1. The Englishman Robert Pulleyn, teacher at Oxford and Paris, afterwards cardinal and papal chancellor at Rome, who died about A.D. 1150. His chief work is Sententiarum Ll. VIII. Though very famous in its day, it was soon cast into the shade by the Lombard’s work.
   2. Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard], born at Novara in Lombardy, a scholar of Abælard, but powerfully influenced by St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor, was Bishop of Paris from A.D. 1159 till his death in A.D. 1164. He published a dogmatic treatise under the title of Sententiarum Ll. IV.; of which Bk. 1 treated of God, Bk. 2 of Creatures, Bk. 3 of Redemption, Bk. 4 of the Sacraments and the Last Things. For centuries this was the textbook in theological seminaries and won for its author the designation of Magister Sententiarum. He himself compared this gift laid on the altar of the church to the widow’s mite, but the book attained a place of supreme importance in mediæval theology, had innumerable commentaries written on it and was officially authorized as the theological textbook by the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215. It is indeed a well arranged collection of the doctrinal deliverances of the Fathers, in which apparent contradictions are dialectically resolved, with great skill, and wrought up together into an articulate system, but from want of independence and occasional indecision or withholding of any definite opinion, it falls behind Hugo’s Summa and Robert’s Sentences. It had this advantage, however, that it gave freer scope to scholars and teachers, and so was more stimulating as a textbook for academic use. The Lombard’s works include a commentary on the Psalms and Catenæ on the Pauline Epistles.
   3. The Frenchman Peter of Poitiers (Pictaviensis), one of the ablest followers of the Lombard, was chancellor of the University of Paris toward the end of the century. He wrote 5 bks. of Sentences or Distinctions, which in form and matter are closely modelled on the work of his master.
   4. The most gifted of all the Summists of the 12th century was the German Alanus ab Insulis, born at Lille or Ryssel, lat. Insulæ. After teaching long at Paris, he entered the Cistercian order, and died at an advanced age at Clairvaux in A.D. 1203. A man of extensive erudition and a voluminous writer, he was called Doctor universalis. He wrote an allegorical poem Anticlaudianus, which describes how reason and faith in union with all the virtues restore human nature to perfection. His Regulæ de s. theologia give a short outline of theology and morals in 125 paradoxical sentences which are tersely expounded. A short but able summary of the Christian faith is given in the 5 bks. De arte catholicæ fidei. This work is characterized by the use of a mathematical style of demonstration, like that of the later school of Wolf, and an avoidance of references to patristic authorities, which would have little weight with Mohammedans and heretics. He is thus rather an opponent than a representative of dialectic scholasticism. The Summa quadripartita c. Hæreticos sui temporis ascribed to him was written by another Alanus.

§ 102.6. The Controversy on German Soil.―The provost Gerhoch and his brother, the dean Arno of Reichersberg in Bavaria, were representatives of the school of St. Victor as mediators between dialectics and mysticism. In A.D. 1150 Gerhoch addressed a memorial to Eugenius III., De corrupto ecclesiæ statu, and afterwards he published De investigatione Antichristi. He found the antichrist in the papal schisms of his times, in the ambition and covetousness of popes, in the corruptibility of the curia, in the manifold corruptions of the church, and especially in the spread of a dialectic destructive of all the mysteries of the faith. The controversy in which both of these brothers took most interest was that occasioned by the revival of Adoptionism in consequence of the teaching of French dialecticians, especially Abælard and Gilbert. It led to the formulating of the Christological doctrine in such a form as prepared the way for the later Lutheran theories of the Communicatio idiomatum and the Ubiquitas corporis Christi (§ 141, 9).―In South Germany, conspicuously in the schools of Bamberg, Freisingen, and Salzburg, the dialectic of Abælard, Gilbert, and the Lombard was predominant. Its chief representatives were Folmar of Triefenstein in Franconia and Bishop Eberhard of Bamberg. The controversy arose over the doctrine of the eucharist. Folmar had maintained like Berengar that not the actually glorified body of Christ is present in the sacrament, but only the spiritual substance of His flesh and blood, without muscles, sinews and bones. Against this gross Capernaitic view (John vi. 52, 59) Gerhoch maintained that the eucharistic body is the very resurrection body of Christ, the substance of which is a glorified corporeity without flesh and blood in a carnal sense, without sinews and bones. The bishop of Bamberg took offence at his friend’s bold rejection of the doctrine approved by the church, and so Folmar modified his position to the extent of admitting that there was on the altar not only the true, but also the whole body in the perfection of its human substance, under the form of bread and wine. But nevertheless both he and Abælard adhered to their radical error, a dialectical dismemberment of the two natures of Christ, according to which the divinity and humanity, the Son of God and the Son of man, were two strictly separate existences. Christ, they taught, is according to His humanity Son of God in no other way than a pious man is, i.e. by adoption; but according to His Divine nature He is like the Father omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. In respect of His human nature it must still be said by Him, “My Father is greater than I.” He dwells, however, bodily in heaven, and is shut in by and confined to it. Only His Divine nature can claim Latria or adoratio, worship. Only Dulia, cultus, reverence, such as is due to saints, images, and relics, should be given to His body and blood upon the altar. Gerhoch’s doctrine of the Supper, on the other hand, is summed up in the proposition: He who receives the flesh of the Logos (Caro Verbi) receives also therewith the Logos in His flesh (Verbum carnis). Folmar and Eberhard denounced this as Eutychian heresy. A conference at Bamberg in A.D. 1158, where Gerhoch stood alone as representative of his views, ended by his opponents declaring that he had been convicted of heresy. In A.D. 1162 a Council at Friesach in Carinthia, under the presidency of Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg, reached the same conclusion.

§ 102.7. Theologians of a Pre-eminently Biblical and Ecclesiastico-Practical Tendency.

1. Alger of Liège, teacher of the cathedral school there, was one of the most important German theologians in the beginning of the 12th century. He resigned his appointment in A.D. 1121, to spend his last years in the monastery of Clugny, in order to enjoy the company and friendship of its abbot, Peter the Venerable; and there he died about A.D. 1130. The school of Liège, in which he had himself been trained up in the high church Cluniac doctrine there prevalent, flourished greatly during his rule of twenty years. His chief works are De Sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Domini in 3 bks., distinguished by acuteness and lucidity, and a controversial tract on the lines of Radbert against Berengar’s doctrine condemned by the church. In his De misericordia et justitia he treats of church discipline with circumspection, clearness, and decision.
2. Rupert of Deutz, more than any mediæval scholar before or after, created an enthusiasm for the study of Scripture as the people’s book for all times, the field in which the precious treasure is hid, to be found by any one whose eyes are made sharp by faith. He was a contemporary and fellow countryman of Alger, and died in A.D. 1135. Though he refers to the Hebrew and Greek texts, he cares less for the literal than for the speculative-dogmatic and mystical sense discovered by allegorical exegesis. In his principal work, De trinitate et operilus ejus, he sets forth in 3 bks. the creation work of the Father, in 30 bks. the revealing and redeeming work of the Son, from the fall to the death of Christ, and in the remaining 9 books the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, from the resurrection of Christ to the general resurrection. He maintains in opposition to Anselm (who was afterwards followed by Thomas Aquinas) that Christ would have become incarnate even if men had not sinned (a view which appears in Irenæus, and afterwards in Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, John Wessel, and others). In regard to the Lord’s Supper he maintained the doctrine of consubstantiation, and he taught like pope Gelasius (§ 58, 2) that the relation of the heavenly and earthly in the eucharist is quite analogous to that of the two natures in Christ.302
3. The Benedictine Hervæus in the cloister of Bourg-Dieu, who died about A.D. 1150, was distinguished for deep piety and zealous study of Scripture and the fathers. He wrote commentaries on Isaiah and on the Pauline Epistles, the latter of which was ascribed to Anselm and so published among his works.

§ 102.8.

4. John of Salisbury, Johannes Parvus Sarisberiensis, was a theologian of a thoroughly practical tendency, though a diligent student of Abælard and an able classical scholar, specially familiar with the writings of Cicero. As the trusted friend of Hadrian IV. he was often sent from England on embassies to the pope. In Becket’s struggle against the encroachments of the Crown upon the rights of the church (§ 96, 16) he stood by the primate’s side as his faithful counsellor and fellow soldier, wrote an account of his life and martyrdom, and laboured diligently to secure his canonization. He was made Bishop of Chartres in A.D. 1176, and died there in A.D. 1180. His works, distinguished by singularly wide reading and a pleasing style, are pre-eminently practical. In his Policraticus s. de nugis Curialium et vestigiis Philosophorum he combats the nugæ of the hangers on at court with theological and philosophical weapons in a well balanced system of ecclesiastico-political and philosophico-theological ethics. His Metalogicus in 4 bks. is a polemic against the prostitution of science by the empty formalism of the schoolmen. His 329 Epistles are of immense importance for the literary and scientific history of his times.
5. Walter of St. Victor, Richard’s successor as prior of that monastery, makes his appearance about A.D. 1130, as the author of a vigorous polemic against dialectic scholasticism, in which he combats especially Christological heresies and spares the idolized Lombard just as little as the condemned Abælard.303 He combats with special eagerness a new heresy springing from Abælard and developed by the Lombard which he styles “Nihilism,” because by denying the independence of the human nature of Christ it teaches that Christ in so far as He is man is not an Aliquid, i.e. an individual.
6. Innocent III. is deserving of a place here both on account of his rich theological learning and on account of the earnestness and depth of the moral and religious view of life which he presents in his writings. The most celebrated of these are De contemtu mundi and 6 bks. Mysteria evang. legis ac sacramenti Eucharistitæ, and during his pontificate, his epistles and sermons.

§ 102.9. Humanist Philosophers.―While Abælard was striving to prove Christianity the religion of reason, and for this was condemned by the church, his contemporary Bernard Sylvester, teacher of the school of Chartres, a famous nursery of classical studies, was seeking to shake himself free of any reference to theology and the church. Satisfied with Platonism as a genuinely spiritual religion, and feeling therefore no personal need of the church and its consolations, he carefully avoided any allusion to its dogmas, and so remained in high repute as a teacher and writer. His treatise, De mundi universitates. Megacosmus et Microcosmus, in dialogue form discussing in a dilettante, philosophizing style natural phenomena, half poetry, half prose, was highly popular in its day. It fared very differently with his accomplished and like-minded scholar William of Conches. The vehemence with which he declared himself a Catholic Christian and not a heathen Academic aroused suspicion. Though in his Philosophia mundi, sometimes erroneously attributed to Honorius of Autun, he studiously sought to avoid any contradiction of the biblical and ecclesiastical theory of the world, he could not help in his discussion of the origin of man characterizing the literal interpretation of the Scripture history of creation as peasant faith. The book fell into the hands of the abbot William of Thierry, who accused its author to St. Bernard. The opposition soon attained to such dimensions that he was obliged to publish a formal recantation and in a new edition to remove everything objectionable.

§ 103.1. The Writings of Aristotle and his Arabic Interpreters.―Till the end of the 12th century Aristotle was known in the Christian West only through Porphyry and Boëthius. This philosophy, however, from the 9th century was diligently studied in Arabic translations of the original text (§ 72) by Moslem scholars of Bagdad and Cordova, who wrote expositions and made original contributions to science. The most distinguished of these, besides the logicians Alkindi in the 9th, and Alfarabi in the 10th century, were the supernaturalistic Avicenna of Bokhara, † A.D. 1037 Algazel of Bagdad, inclined to mysticism or sufism, † A.D. 1111, and the pantheistic-naturalistic Averroes of Cordova, † A.D. 1198. The Moors and Spanish Jews were also devoted students of the peripatetic philosophy. The most famous of these was Maimonides, † A.D. 1204, who wrote the rationalistic work More Nebochim. On the decay of Arabic philosophy in Spain, Spanish Jews introduced the study of Aristotle into France. Dissatisfied with Latin translations from the Arabic, they began in A.D. 1220 to make translations directly from the Greek. Suspicions were now aroused against the new gospel of philosophy. At a Synod in Paris A.D. 1209 (§ 108, 4) the physical writings of Aristotle were condemned and lecturing on them forbidden. This prohibition was renewed in A.D. 1215 by the papal legate and the metaphysics included. But no prohibition of the church could arrest the scientific ardour of that age. In A.D. 1231 the definitive prohibition was reduced to a measure determining the time to be devoted to such studies, and in A.D. 1254 we find the university prescribing the number of hours during which Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics should be taught. Some decades later the church itself declared that no one should obtain the degree of master who was not familiar with Aristotle, “the precursor of Christ in natural things as John Baptist was in the things of grace.” This change was brought about by the belief that not Aristotle but Erigena was the author of all the pantheistic heresies of the age (§§ 90, 7; 108, 4), and also by the need felt by the Franciscans and Dominicans for using Aristotelian methods of proof in defence of the doctrine of the church. Philosophy, however, was now regarded by all theologians as only the handmaid of theology. Even in the 11th century Petrus [Peter] Damiani had indicated the mutual relation of the sciences thus: Debet velut ancilla dominæ quodam famulatus obsequio subservire, ne si præcedit, oberret.304

§ 103.2. On account of their characteristic tendencies Avicenna was most popular with the Schoolmen and after him Algazel, while Averroes, though carefully studied and secretly followed by some, was generally regarded with suspicion and aversion. Among his secret admirers was Simon of Tournay, about A.D. 1200, who boasted of being able with equal ease to prove the falseness and the truth of the church doctrines, and declared that Moses, Christ, and Mohammed were the three greatest deceivers the world had ever seen. The Parisian scholars ascribed to Averroes the Theory of a twofold Truth. A positive religion was required to meet the religious needs of the multitude, but the philosopher might reach and maintain the truth independently of any revealed religion. In the Christian West he put this doctrine in a less offensive form by saying that one and the same affirmation might be theologically true and philosophically false, and vice versa. Behind this, philosophical scepticism as well as theological unbelief sought shelter. Its chief opponents were Thomas Aquinas and Raimund Lull, while at a later time Duns Scotus and the Scotists were inclined more or less to favour it.

§ 103.3. The Appearance of the Mendicant Orders.―The Dominican and Franciscan orders competed with one another in a show of zeal for the maintenance of the orthodox doctrine, and each endeavoured to secure the theological chairs in the University of Paris, the principal seat of learning in those days. They were vigorously opposed by the university corporation, and especially by the Parisian doctor William of St. Amour, who characterized them in his tract De periculis novissimorum temporum of A.D. 1255 as the precursors of antichrist. But he was answered by learned members of the orders, Albert the Great, Aquinas, and Bonaventura, and finally, in A.D. 1257, all opposition on the part of the university was checked by papal authority and royal command. The Augustinians, too, won a seat in the University of Paris in A.D. 1261.―The learned monks gave themselves with enthusiasm to the new science and applied all their scientific gains to polemical and apologetical purposes. They diligently conserved all that the earlier Fathers down to Gregory the Great had written in exposition of the doctrine and all that the later Fathers down to Hugo St. Victor and Peter the Lombard had written in its defence. But what had been simply expressed before was now arranged under elaborate scientific categories. The Summists of the previous century supplied abundant material for the work. Their Summæ sententiarum, especially that of the Lombard, became the theme of innumerable commentaries, but besides these, comprehensive original works were written. These were no longer to be described as Summæ sententiarum, but assumed with right the title of Summæ theologiæ or theologicæ.

§ 103.4. Distinguished Franciscan Schoolmen.―Alexander of Hales, trained in the English cloister of Hales, doctor irrefragabilis, was the most famous teacher of theology in Paris, where in A.D. 1222 he entered the Seraphic Order. He died in A.D. 1245. As the first church theologian who, without the excessive hair-splitting of later scholastics, applied the forms of the peripatetic philosophy to the scientific elaboration of the doctrinal system of the church, he was honoured by his grateful order with the title of Monarcha theologorum, and is still regarded as the first scholastic in the strict sense of the word. His Summa theologica, published at Nuremberg in A.D. 1482 in 4 folio vols. was accepted by his successors as the model of scientific method and arrangement. The first two vols. treat of God and His Work, the Creature; the third, of the Redeemer and His Work; the fourth, of the Sacraments of the O. and N.T. The conclusion, which is not extant, treated of Præmia salutis per futuram gloriam. Each of these divisions was subdivided into a great number of Quæstiones, these again into Membra, and these often into Articuli. The question at the head of the section was followed by several answers affirmative and negative, some of which were entitled Auctoritates (quotations from Scripture, the Fathers, and the teachers of the church), some Rationes (dictates of the Greek, Arabian, and Jewish philosophers), and finally, his own conclusion. Among the authorities of later times, Hugo’s dogmatic works (§ 102, 4) occupy with him the highest place, but he seems to have had no appreciation of his mystical speculations.―His most celebrated disciple John Fidanza, better known as Bonaventura, had a strong tendency to mysticism. Born at Bagnarea in the district of Florence in A.D. 1221, he became teacher of theology in Paris in A.D. 1253, general of his order in A.D. 1257, was made Cardinal-bishop of Ostia by Gregory X. in A.D. 1273, and in the following year was a member of the Lyons Council, at which the question of the reunion of the churches was discussed (§ 67, 4). He took an active part in the proceedings of that council, but died before its close in A.D. 1274. His aged teacher Alexander had named him a Verus Israelita, in quo Adam non peccasse videtur. Later Franciscans regarded him as the noblest embodiment of the idea of the Seraphic Order next to its founder, and celebrated the angelic purity of his personality by the title doctor seraphicus. Sixtus IV. canonized him in A.D. 1482, and Sixtus V. edited his works in 8 fol. vols. in A.D. 1588, and gave him in A.D. 1587 the sixth place in the rank of Doctores ecclesiæ as the greatest church teacher of the West. Like Hugo, he combined the mystical and doctrinal sides of theology, but like Richard St. Victor inclined more to the mystical. His greatest dogmatic work is his commentary in 2 vols. fol. on the Lombard. His able treatise, De reductione artium ad theologiam, shows how theology holds the highest place among all the sciences. In his Breviloquium he seeks briefly but with great expenditure of learning to prove that the church doctrine is in accordance with the teachings of reason. In the Centiloquium, consisting of 100 sections, he treats summarily of the doctrines of Sin, Grace, and Salvation. In the Pharetra he gives a collection of the chief authorities for the conclusions reached in the two previously named works. The most celebrated of his mystical treatises are the Diætæ salutis, describing the nine days’ journey (diætæ) in which the soul passes from the abyss of sin to the blessedness of heaven, and the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in which he describes as a threefold way to the knowledge of God a theologia symbolica (=extra nos), propria (=intra nos) and mystica (=supra nos), the last and highest of which alone leads to the beatific vision of God.

§ 103.5. Distinguished Dominican Schoolmen.―(1)Albert the Great, the oldest son of a knight of Bollstadt, born in A.D. 1193, at Laningen in Swabia, sent in A.D. 1212, because too weak for a military career, to the University of Padua, where he devoted himself for ten years to the diligent study of Aristotle, entered then the Dominican order, and at Bologna pursued with equal diligence the study of theology in a six years’ course. He afterwards taught the regular curriculum of the liberal arts at Cologne and in the cloisters of his order in other German cities; and after taking his doctor’s degree at Paris, he taught theology at Cologne with such success that the Cologne school, owing to the crowds attracted to his lectures, grew to the dimensions of a university. In A.D. 1254 he became provincial of his order in Germany, was compelled in A.D. 1260 by papal command to accept the bishopric of Regensburg, but returned to Cologne in A.D. 1262 to resume teaching, and died there in A.D. 1280, in his 87th year. His amazing acquirements in philosophical, theological, cabalistic, and natural science won for him the surname of the Great, and the title of doctor universalis. Since the time of Aristotle and Theophrastus there had been no investigator in natural science like him. Traces of mysticism may be discovered in his treatise Paradisus animæ, and in his commentary on the Areopagite. Indeed from his school proceeded the greatest master of speculative mysticism (§ 114, 1). His chief work in natural science is the Summa de Creaturis, the fantastic and superstitious character of which may be seen from the titles of its several books: De virtutibus herbarum, lapidum, et animalium, De mirabilibus mundi, and De secretis mulierum. He wrote three books of commentaries on the Lombard, and two books of an independent system of dogmatics, the Summa theologica. The latter treatise, which closely follows the work of Alexander of Hales, is incomplete.305

§ 103.6. The greatest and most influential of all the Schoolmen was the Doctor angelicus, Thomas Aquinas. Born in A.D. 1227, son of a count of Aquino, at his father’s castle of Roccasicca, in Calabria, he entered against his parents’ will as a novice into the Dominican monastery at Naples. Removed for safety to France, he was followed by his brothers and taken back, but two years later he effected his escape with the aid of the order, and was placed under Albert at Cologne. Afterwards he taught for two years at Cologne, and was then sent to win his doctor’s degree at Paris in A.D. 1252. There he began along with his intimate friend Bonaventura his brilliant career. It was not until A.D. 1257, after the opposition of the university to the mendicant orders had been overcome, that the two friends obtained the degree of doctor. Urban IV. recalled him to Italy in A.D. 1261, where he taught successively in Rome, Bologna, Pisa, and Naples. Ordered by Gregory to take part in the discussions on union at the Lyons Council, he died suddenly in A.D. 1274, soon after his return to Naples, probably from poison at the hand of his countryman Charles of Anjou, in order that he might not appear at the council to accuse him of tyranny. John XXII. canonized him in A.D. 1323, and Pius V. gave him the fifth place among the Latin doctores ecclesiæ.―Thomas was probably the most profound thinker of the century, and was at the same time admired as a popular preacher. He had an intense veneration for Augustine, an enthusiastic appreciation of the church doctrine and the philosophy which are approved and enjoined by this great Father. He had also a vein of genuine mysticism, and was distinguished for warm and deep piety. He was the first to give the papal hierarchical system of Gregory and Innocent a regular place in dogmatics. His Summa philosophiæ contra Gentiles, is a Christian philosophy of religion, of which the first three books treat of those religious truths which human reason of itself may recognise, while the fourth book treats of those which, because transcending reason though not contrary to it, i.e. doctrines of the incarnation and the trinity, can be known only by Divine revelation. He wrote two books of commentaries on the Lombard. By far the most important work of the Middle Ages is his Summa theologica, in three vols., in which he gives ample space to ethical questions. His polemic against the Greeks is found in the section in which he defines and proves the primacy of the pope, basing his arguments on ancient and modern fictions and forgeries (§ 96, 23), which he, ignorant of Greek and deriving his knowledge of antiquity wholly from Gratian’s decree, accepted bona fide as genuine. His chief exegetical work is the Catena aurea on the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, translated into English by Dr. Pusey, in 8 vols., Oxf., 1841, ff. In commenting on Aristotle Thomas, unlike Albert, neglected the treatises on natural science in favour of those on politics.―The Dominican order, proud of having in it the greatest philosopher and theologian of the age, made the doctrine of Thomas in respect of form and matter the authorized standard among all its members (§ 113, 2), and branded every departure from it as a betrayal not only of the order but also of the church and Christianity. The other monkish orders, too, especially the Augustinians, Cistercians, and Carmelites, recognised the authority of the Angelical doctor. Only the Franciscans, moved by envy and jealousy, ignored him and kept to Alexander and Bonaventura, until the close of the century, when, in Duns Scotus (§ 113, 1), they obtained a brilliant teacher within their own ranks, whom they proudly thought would prove a fair rival in fame to the great Dominican teacher.306

§ 103.7. Reformers of the Scholastic Method.―Raimund Lull, a Catalonian nobleman of Majorca, born in A.D. 1234, roused from a worldly life by visions, gave himself to fight for Christ against the infidels with the weapons of the Spirit. Learning Arabic from a Saracen slave, he passed through a full course of scholastic training in theology and entered the Franciscan order. Constrained in the prosecution of his mission to seek a simpler method of proof than that afforded by scholasticism, he succeeded by the help of visions in discovering one by which as he and his followers, the Lullists, thought, the deepest truths of all human sciences could be made plain to the untutored human reason. He called it the Ars Magna, and devoted his whole life to its elaboration in theory and practice. Representing fundamental ideas and their relations to the objects of thought by letters and figures, he drew conclusions from their various combinations. In his missionary travels in North Africa (§ 93, 16) he used his art in his disputations with the Saracen scholars, and died in A.D. 1315 in consequence of ill treatment received there, in his 81st year. Of his writings in Latin, Catalonian, and Arabic, numbering it is said more than a thousand, 282 were known in A.D. 1721 to Salzinger of Mainz, but only 45 were included in his edition of the collected works.

§ 103.8. Roger Bacon, an English monk, contemporary with Lull, worked out his reform in a sounder manner by going back to the original sources and thus obtaining deliverance from the accumulated errors of later times. He appealed on matters of natural science not to corrupt translations but to the original works of Aristotle, and on matters of theology, not to the Lombard but to the Greek New Testament. He prosecuted his studies laboriously in mathematics and the Greek language. Roger was called by his friends Doctor mirabilis or profundus. He was a prodigy of learning for his age, more in the department of physics than in those of philosophy and theology. He was regarded, however, by his own order as a heretic, and imprisoned as a trafficker in the black arts. Born in A.D. 1214 at Ilchester, he took his degree of doctor of theology at Paris, entered the Franciscan order, and became a resident at Oxford. Besides diligent study of languages, which secured him perfect command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, he busied himself with researches and experiments in physics (especially optics), chemistry, and astronomy. He made several important discoveries, e.g. the principle of refraction, magnifying glasses, the defects of the calendar, etc., while he also succeeded in making a combustible material which may be regarded as the precursor of gunpowder. He maintained the possibility of ships and land vehicles being propelled most rapidly without sails, and without the labour of men or animals. Yet he was a child of his age, and believed in the philosopher’s stone, in astrology, and alchemy. Thoroughly convinced of the defects of scholasticism, he spoke of Albert the Great and Aquinas as boys who taught before they learnt, and especially reproached them with their ignorance of Greek. With an amount of brag that smacks of the empiric he professed to be able to teach Hebrew in three days and Greek in the same time, and to give a full course of geometry in seven days. With fearless severity he lashed the corruptions of the clergy and the monks. Only one among his companions seems to have regarded Roger, notwithstanding all his faults, as a truly great man. That was Clement IV. who, as papal legate in England, had made his acquaintance, and as pope liberated him from prison. To him Roger dedicated his Opus majus s. de emendandis scientiis. At a later period the general of the Franciscan order, with the approval of Nicholas IV., had him again cast into prison, and only after that pope’s death was he liberated through the intercession of his friends. He died soon after in A.D. 1291.307

§ 103.9. Theologians of a Biblical and Practical Tendency.

1. Cæsarius of Heisterbach near Bonn was a monk, then prior and master of the novices of the Cistercian monastery there. He died in A.D. 1230. His Dialogus magnus visionum et miraculorum in 12 bks., one of the best specimens of the finest culture and learning of the Middle Ages, in the form of conversation with the novices, gives an admirable and complete sketch of the morals and manners of the times illustrated from the history and legends of the monks, clergy, and people.
2. His younger contemporary the Dominican William Peraldus (Perault), in his Summa virtutum and Summa vitiorum, presents a summary of ethics with illustrations from life in France. He died about A.D. 1250, as bishop of Lyons.
3. Hugo of St. Caro (St. Cher, a suburb of Vienne), a Dominican and cardinal who died in A.D. 1263, gives evidence of careful Bible study in his Postilla in univ. Biblia juxta quadrupl. sensum (a commentary accompanying the text) and his Concordantiæ Bibliorum (on the Vulgate). To him we are indebted for our division of the Scriptures into chapters. At the request of his order he undertook a correction of the Vulgate from the old MSS.
4. Robert of Sorbon in Champagne, who died in A.D. 1274, was confessor of St. Louis and teacher of theology at Paris. He urged upon his pupils the duty of careful study of the Bible. In A.D. 1250 he founded the Sorbonne at Paris, originally a seminary for the education and support of the poorer clergy who aspired to the highest attainments in theology. Its fame became so great that it rose to the rank of a full theological faculty, and down to its overthrow in the French Revolution it continued to be the highest tribunal in France for all matters pertaining to religion and the church.
5. Raimund Martini, Dominican at Barcelona, who died after A.D. 1284, was unweariedly engaged in the conversion of Jews and Mohammedans. He spoke Hebrew and Arabic as fluently as Latin, and wrote Pugio fidei contra Mauros et Judæos.308

§ 103.10. Precursors of the German Speculative Mystics.―David of Augsburg, teacher of theology and master of the novices in the Franciscan monastery at Augsburg, deserves to be named first, as one who largely anticipated the style of speculative mysticism that flourished in the following century (§ 114). His writings, partly in Latin, partly in German, are merely ascetic directories and treatises of a contemplative mystical order, distinguished by deep spirituality and earnest, humble piety. The German works especially are models of a beautiful rhythmical style, worthy of ranking with the finest creations of any century. He is author of the important tract, De hæresi pauperum de Lugduno, in which the pious mystic shows himself in the less pleasing guise of a relentless inquisitor and heresy hunter.―A brilliant and skilful allegory, The Daughter of Zion, the human soul, who, having become a daughter of Babylon, went forth to see the heavenly King, and under the guidance of the virgins Faith, Hope, Love, Wisdom, and Prayer attained unto this end, was first written in Latin prose; but afterwards towards the close of the 13th century a free rendering of it in more than 4,000 verses was published by the Franciscan Lamprecht of Regensburg. Its mysticism is like that of St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor.―In speculative power and originality the Dominican Theodorich of Freiburg, Meister Dietrich, a pupil of Albert the Great, far excelled all the mystics of this century. About A.D. 1280 he was reader at Treves, afterwards prior at Würzburg, took his master’s degree and taught at Paris, A.D. 1285-1289. About A.D. 1320, however, along with Meister Eckhart (§ 114, 1), he fell under suspicion of heresy, and nothing further is known of him. Among his still unpublished writings, mostly on natural and religious philosophy, the most important is the book De beatifica visione Dei per essentiam, which marks him out as a precursor of the Eckhart speculation.―On Female Mystics, see § 107.

§ 104.1. The Liturgy and the Sermon.―The Roman Liturgy was universally adopted except in Spain. When it was proposed at the Synod of Toledo in A.D. 1088 to set aside the old Mozarabic liturgy (§ 88, 1), the people rose against the proposal, and the ordeals of combat and fire decided in favour of retaining the old service. From that time both liturgies were used side by side. The Slavic ritual was abandoned in Moravia and Bohemia in the 10th century. The language of the church services everywhere was and continued to be the Latin. The quickening of the monkish orders in the 11th century, especially the Cluniacs and Cistercians, but more particularly the rise of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the 13th century, gave a great impulse to preaching. Almost all the great monks and schoolmen were popular preachers. The crowds that flocked around them as they preached in the vernacular were enormous. Even in the regular services the preaching was generally in the language of the people, but quotations from Scripture and the Fathers, as a mark of respect, were made in Latin and then translated. Sermons addressed to the clergy and before academic audiences were always in Latin.―As a preacher of repentance and of the crusades, Fulco of Neuilly, † A.D. 1202, regarded by the people as a saint and a miracle worker, had a wonderful reputation (§ 94, 4). Of all mediæval preachers, however, none can be compared for depth, spirituality, and popular eloquence with the Franciscan Berthold of Regensburg, pupil and friend of David of Augsburg (§ 103, 10), one of the most powerful preachers in the German tongue that ever lived. He died in A.D. 1272. He wandered from town to town preaching to crowds, often numbering 100,000 men, of the grace of God in Christ, against the abuse of indulgences and false trust in saints, and the idea of the meritoriousness of pilgrimages, etc. His sermons are of great value as illustrations of the strength and richness of the old German language. Roger Bacon too (§ 103, 8), usually so chary of praise, eulogises Frater Bertholdus Alemannus as a preacher worth more than the two mendicant orders together.

§ 104.2. Definition and Number of the Sacraments (§§ 58; 70, 2).―Radbert acknowledged only two: Baptism including confirmation, and the Lord’s Supper. Rabanus Maurus by separately enumerating the bread and the cup, and counting confirmation as well as baptism, made four. Hugo St. Victor again held them to be an indefinite number. But he distinguished three kinds: those on which salvation depends, Baptism, Confirmation, and the Supper; those not necessary and forming important aids to salvation, sprinkling with holy water, confession, extreme unction, marriage, etc.; those necessary for particular callings, the ordination of priests, sacred vestments. Yet he prepared the way for the final ecclesiastical conception of the sacraments, by placing its Elementa Corporalia under the threefold category as divinam gratiam ex similitudine repræsentantia, ex institutione significantia, and ex consecratione continentia. Peter the Lombard took practically the same view, but fixed the number of the Sacraments at seven: Baptism, Confirmation (§ 35, 4), the Supper, Penance, Extreme Unction, Marriage, and Ordination (§ 45, 1). This number was first officially sanctioned by the Florentine Council of A.D. 1439 (§ 67, 6). Alexander of Hales gave a special rank to Baptism and the Supper, as alone instituted by Christ, while Aquinas gave this rank to all the seven. All the ecclesiastical consecrations and benedictions were distinguished from the sacraments as Sacramentalia.―The Schoolmen distinguished the sacraments of the O.T., as ex opera operante, i.e. efficacious only through faith in a coming Redeemer, from the sacraments of the N.T. as ex opera operato, i.e. as efficacious by mere receiving without the exercise of positive faith on the part of all who had not committed a mortal sin. Against old sectaries (§§ 41, 3; 63, 1) and new (§§ 108, 7, 12) the scholastic divines maintained that even unworthy and unbelieving priests could validly dispense the sacraments, if only there was the intentio to administer it in the form prescribed by the church.309

§ 104.3. The Sacrament of the Altar.―At the fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215 the doctrine of Transubstantiation was finally accepted (§ 101, 2). The fear lest any of the blood of the Lord should be spilt led to the withholding from the 12th century of the cup from the laity, and its being given only to the priests. If not the cause, then the consequence, of this was that the priests were regarded as the only full and perfect partakers of the Lord’s table. Kings at their coronation and at the approach of death were sometimes by special favour allowed to partake of the cup. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity was dogmatically justified, specially by Alex. of Hales, by the doctrine of concomitantia, i.e. that in the body the blood was contained. Fear of losing any fragment also led to the substitution of wafers, the host, for the bread that should be broken.―A consecrated host is kept in the Tabernaculum, a niche in the wall on the right of the high altar, in the so-called liburium or Sanctissimum, i.e. a gold or silver casket, often ornamented with rich jewels. It is taken forth, touched only by the priests, and exhibited to the kneeling people during the service and in solemn processions.

§ 104.4. Penance.―Gratian’s decree (§ 99, 5) left it to the individual believer’s decision whether the sinner could be reconciled to God by heart penitence without confession. But in accordance also with the teaching of the Lombard, confession of mortal sins (Gal. v. 19 ff. and Cor. v. 9 f.), or, in case that could not be, the desire at heart to make it, was declared indispensable. The forgiveness of sins was still, however, regarded as God’s exclusive prerogative, and the priest could bind and loose only in regard to the fellowship of the church and the enjoyment of the sacraments. Before him, however, Hugo St. Victor had begun to transcend these limits; for he, distinguishing between the guilt and the punishment of the sinner, ascribed indeed to God alone the absolution from the guilt of sin on the ground of sincere repentance, but ascribed to the exercise of the priestly function, the absolution from the punishment of eternal death, in accordance with Matthew xviii. 18 and John xx. 23. Richard St. Victor held that the punishment of eternal death, which all mortal sins as well as venial sins entail, can be commuted into temporal punishment by priestly absolution, atoned for by penances imposed by the priests, e.g. prayers, fastings, alms, etc.; whereas without such satisfaction they can be atoned for only by the pains of purgatory (§ 61, 4). Innocent III., at the fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, had the obligation of confession of all sins raised into a dogma, and obliged all believers under threat of excommunication to make confession at least once a year, as preparation for the Easter communion. The Provincial Synod at Toulouse in A.D. 1229 (§ 109, 2) insisted on compulsory confession and communion three times a year, at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The three penitential requirements, enforced first by Hildebert of Tours, and adopted by the Lombard, Contritio cordis, Confessio oris, and Satisfactio operis continued henceforth in force. But Hugo’s and Richard’s theory of absolution displaced not only that of the Lombard, but, by an extension of the sacerdotal idea to the absolution of the sinner from guilt, led to the introduction of a full-blown theory of indulgence (§ 106, 2). As the ground of the scientific construction given it by the Schoolmen of the 13th century, especially by Aquinas, the Catholic Church doctrine of penance received its final shape at the Council of Florence in A.D. 1439. Penance as the fourth sacrament consists of hearty repentance, auricular confession, and satisfaction; it takes form in the words of absolution, Ego te absolvo; and it is efficacious for the forgiveness of sins. Any breach of the secrecy of the confessional was visited by the fourth Lateran Council with excommunication, deposition, and lifelong confinement in a monastery. The exaction of a confessional fee, especially at the Easter confession, appears as an increment of the priest’s income in many mediæval documents. Its prohibition by several councils was caused by its simoniacal abuse. By the introduction of confessors, separate from the local clergy, the custom fell more and more into disuse.

§ 104.5. Extreme Unction.―Although as early as A.D. 416 Innocent I. had described anointing of the sick with holy oil (Mark vi. 13; Jas. v. 14) as a Genus Sacramenti (§ 61, 3), extreme unction as a sacrament made little progress till the 9th century. The Synod of Chalons in A.D. 813 calls it quite generally a means of grace for the weak of soul and body. The Lombard was the first to give it the fifth place among the seven sacraments as Unctio extrema and Sacramentum exeuntium, ascribing to it Peccatorum remissio et corporalis infirmitatio alleviatus. Original sin being atoned for by baptism, and actual sins by penance, Albert the Great and Aquinas describe it as the purifying from the Reliquiæ peccatorum which even after baptism and penance hinder the soul from entering into its perfect rest. Bodily healing is only a secondary aim, and is given only if thereby the primary end of spiritual healing is not hindered. It was long debated whether, in case of recovery, it should be repeated when death were found approaching, and it was at last declared to be admissible. The Council of Trent defines Extreme Unction as Sacr. pœnitentiæ totius vitæ consummativum. The form of its administration was finally determined to be the anointing of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands, as well as (except in women) the feet and loins, with holy oil, consecrated by the bishop on Maundy Thursday. Confession and communion precede anointing. The three together constitute the Viaticum of the soul in its last journey. After receiving extreme unction recipients are forbidden again to touch the ground with their bare feet or to have marital intercourse.

§ 104.6. The Sacrament of Marriage (§ 89, 4).―When marriage came generally to be regarded as a sacrament in the proper sense, the laws of marriage were reconstructed and the administration of them committed to the church. It had long been insisted upon by the church with ever-increasing decidedness, that the priestly benediction must precede the marriage ceremonial, and that bridal communion must accompany the civil action. Hence marriage had to be performed in the immediate vicinity of a church, ante ostium ecclesiæ. As another than the father often gave away the bride, this position of sponsor was claimed by the church for the priest. Marriage thus lost its civil character, and the priest came to be regarded as performing it in his official capacity not in name of the family, but in name of the church. Christian marriage in the early times required only mutual consent of parties (§ 39, 1), but the Council of Trent demanded a solemn agreement between bride and bridegroom before the officiating priest and two or three witnesses. In order to determine more exactly hindrances to marriage (§ 61, 2) it was made a law at the second Lateran Council in A.D. 1139, and confirmed at the fourth in A.D. 1215, that the parties proposing to marry should be proclaimed in church. To each part of the sacrament the character indelibilis is ascribed, and so divorce was absolutely forbidden, even in the case of adultery (in spite of Matt. v. 32 and xix. 9), though separatio a mensa et toro was allowed. Innocent III. in A.D. 1215 reduced the prohibited degrees from the seventh to the fourth in the line of blood relationship (§ 61, 2).

§ 104.7. New Festivals.―The worship of Mary (§ 57, 2) received an impulse from the institution of the Feast of the Birth of Mary on 8th of September. To this was added in the south of France in the 12th century, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on the 8th December. Radbert (§ 91, 4) by his doctrine of Sanctificatio in utero gave basis to the theory of the Virgin’s freedom from original sin in her conception and bearing. Anselm of Canterbury, however, taught in Cur Deus Homo? ii. 16, that Mary was conceived and born in sin, and that she like all others had sinned in Adam. Certain canons of Lyons, in A.D. 1140, revived Radbert’s theory, but raised the Sanctif. in utero into the Immaculata conceptio. St. Bernard protested against the doctrine and the festival; sinless conception is a prerogative of the Redeemer alone. Mary like us all was conceived in sin, but was sanctified before the birth by Divine power, so that her whole life was faultless; if one imagines that Mary’s sinless conception of her Son had her own sinless conception as a necessary presupposition, this would need to be carried back ad infinitum, and to festivals of Immaculate Conceptions there would be no end. This view of a Sanctificatio in utero, with repudiation of the Conceptio immaculata, was also maintained by Alex. of Hales, Bonaventura, Albert the Great, and Aquinas. The feast of the Conception, with the predicate “immaculate” dropped, gradually came to be universally observed. The Franciscans adopted it in this limited sense at Pisa, in A.D. 1263, but when, beginning with Duns Scotus (§§ 113, 112), the doctrine of the immaculate conception came to be regarded as a distinctive dogma of the order, the Dominicans felt called upon to offer it their most strenuous opposition.310 (Continuation, § 112, 4.)―To the feast of All Saints, on 1st November, the Cluniacs added in A.D. 998, the feast of All Souls on 2nd November, for intercession of believers on behalf of the salvation of souls in purgatory. In the 12th century the Feast of the Trinity was introduced on the Sunday after Pentecost. Out of the transubstantiation doctrine arose the Corpus Christi Festival, on the Thursday after Trinity. A pious nun of Liège, Juliana, in A.D. 1261, saw in a vision the full moon with a halo around it, and an inward revelation interpreted this phenomenon to indicate that the festal cycle of the church still wanted a festival in honour of the eucharist. Urban IV. gave effect to this suggestion in A.D. 1264, avowedly in consequence of the miracle of the mass of Bolsena. A priest of Bolsena celebrating mass spilt a drop of consecrated wine, which left a blood-red stain on the corporal or pall (§ 60, 5), in the form of a host. The festival did not come into favour till Clement V. renewed its institution at the Council of Vienne, in A.D. 1311. The church, by order of John XXIII. in A.D. 1316, celebrated it by a magnificent procession, in which the liburium was carried with all pomp.

§ 104.8. The Veneration of Saints (§ 88, 4).―The numerous Canonizations, from the 12th century exclusively in the hands of the popes, gave an impulse to saint worship. It was the duty of Advocatus diaboli to try to disprove the reports of virtues and miracles attributed to candidates. The proofs of holiness adduced were generally derived from thoroughly fabulous sources. The introduction of the name of accepted candidates into the canon of the mass gave rise to the term canonization. Beatification was a lower degree of honour, often a preliminary to canonization at a later period. It carried with it the veneration not of the whole church, but of particular churches or districts. The Dominican Jacobus a Voragine, who died in A.D. 1298, in his Legenda aurea afforded a pattern for numerous late legends of the saints. A Parisian theologian who styled it Legenda ferrea, was publicly expelled from his office. The Veneration of Mary, to whom were rendered Hyperdoulia in contradistinction from the Doulia of the saints, not only among the people, but with the most cultured theologians, publicly and privately, literally and figuratively, in prose and poetry, was almost equal to the worship rendered to God, and indeed often overshadowed it. The angel’s salutation (Luke i. 28) was in every prayer. Its frequent repetition led to the use of the Rosary, a rose wreath for the most blessed of women. The great rosary attributed to St. Dominic has fifteen decades, or 150 smaller pearls of Mary, each of which represents an Ave Maria, and after every ten there is a greater Paternoster pearl. The small or common rosary has only five decades of beads of Mary with a Paternoster bead for each decade. Thrice repeated it forms the so-called Psalter of Mary. The first appearance of the rosary in devotion was with the monk Macarius in the 4th century, who took 300 stones in his lap, and after every Paternoster threw one away. The rosary devotion is also practised by Moslems and Buddhists. In cloisters, Saturday was usually dedicated to the Mother of God, and was begun by a special Officium S. Mariæ. May was called the month of Mary.―In the 11th century no further trace is found of the Frankish opposition to Image Worship (§ 92, 1). But this in no way hindered the growth of Relic Worship. Returning crusaders showered on the West innumerable relics, which notwithstanding many sceptics were received generally with superstitious reverence. Castles and estates were often bartered for pretended relics of a distinguished saint, and such treasures were frequently stolen at the risk of life. No story of a trafficker in relics was too absurd to be believed.―Pilgrimages, especially to Rome and Palestine, were no less in esteem among the Western Christians of the 10th century during the Roman pornocracy (§ 96, 1) or the tyranny of the Seljuk dynasty in Palestine (§ 94). The expectation of the approaching end of the world, rather gave them an impulse during this century, which reached its fullest expression in the crusades.―Continuation, § 115, 9.

§ 104.9. The earliest trace of a commemoration of St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins is met with in the 10th century. Excavations in the Ager Ursulanus near Cologne in A.D. 1155 led to the discovery of some thousand skeletons, several of them being those of males, with inscribed tablets, one of the fictitious inscriptions referring to an otherwise unknown pope Cyriæus. St. Elizabeth of Schönau (§ 107, 1) at the same time had visions in which the Virgin gave her authentic account of their lives. Ursula, the fair daughter of a British king of the 3rd century, was to have married a pagan prince; she craved three years’ reprieve and got from her father eleven ships, each with an equipment of a thousand virgins, with which she sailed up the Rhine to Basel, and thence with her companions travelled on foot a pilgrimage to Rome. On her return, in accordance with the Divine instruction, Pope Cyriæus accompanied her, whose name was on this account struck out of the list by the offended cardinals; for as Martinus Polonus says, Credebant plerique eum non propter devotionem sed propter obtectamenta virginum papatum dimississe. Near Cologne they met the army of the Huns, by whom they were all massacred, at last even Ursula herself on her persistent refusal to marry the barbaric chief.―In the absence of any historical foundations for this legend, an explanation has been attempted by identifying Ursula with a goddess of the German mythology. An older suggestion is that perhaps an ancient inscription may have given rise to the legend.311

§ 104.10. Hymnology.―The Augustan age of scholasticism was that also of the composition of Latin hymns and sequences (§ 88, 2). The most distinguished sacred poets were Odo of Clugny, king Robert of France (Veni, sancte Spiritus, et emitte), Damiani, Abælard, Hildebert of Tours, St. Bernard, Adam of St. Victor,312 Bonaventura, Aquinas, the Franciscan Thomas of Celano, A.D. 126O (Dies iræ), and Jacopone da Todi, † A.D. 1306 (Stabat mater dolorosa). The latter, an eccentric enthusiast and miracle-working saint, called himself “Stultus propter Christum.” Originally a wealthy advocate, living a life of revel and riot, he was led by the sudden death of his young wife to forsake the world. He courted the world’s scorn in the most literal manner, appearing in the public market bridled like a beast of burden and creeping on all fours, and at another time appearing naked, tarred and feathered at the marriage of a niece. But he glowed with fervent love for the Crucified and a fanatical veneration for the blessed Virgin. He also fearlessly raised his voice against the corruption of the clergy and the papacy, and vigorously denounced the ambition of Boniface VIII. For this he was imprisoned and fed on bread and water. When tauntingly asked, “When wilt thou come out?” he answered in words that were soon fulfilled, “So soon as thou shall come down.” Sacred Poetry in the vernacular was used only in extra-ecclesiastical devotions. The oldest German Easter hymn belongs to the 12th century.313 The Minnesingers of the 13th century composed popular songs of a religious character, especially in praise of Mary; there were also sacred songs for travellers, sailors, soldiers, etc. Heretics separated from the church and its services spread their views by means of hymns. St. Francis wrote Italian hymns, and among his disciples Fra Pacifico, Bonaventura, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone followed worthily in his footsteps.

§ 104.11. Church Music (§ 88, 2).―The Gregorian Cantus firmus soon fell into disfavour and disuetude. The rarity, costliness, and corruption of the antiphonaries, the difficulty of their notation and of their musical system, and the want of accurately trained singers, combined to bring this about. Singers too had often made arbitrary alterations. Hence alongside of the Cantus firmus there gradually grew up a Discantus or Cantus figuratus, and instead of singing in unison, singing in harmony was introduced. Rules of harmony, concord, and intervals were now elaborated by the monk Hucbald of Rheims about A.D. 900, while the German monk Reginus about A.D. 920 and the abbot Opo of Clugny did much for the theory and practice of music. In place of the intricate Gregorian notation the Tuscan Benedictine Guido of Arezzo, A.D. 1000-1050, introduced the notation that is still used, which made it possible to write the harmony along with the melody, counterpoint, i.e. punctum contra punctum. The discoverer of the measure of the notes was Franco of Cologne about A.D. 1200. The organ was commonly used in churches. The Germans were the greatest masters in its construction and in the playing of it.―Continuation, § 115, 8.

§ 104.12. Ecclesiastical Architecture.―Church building, which the barbarism of the 10th century, and the widespread expectation of the coming end of the world had restrained, flourished during the 11th century in an extraordinary manner. The endeavour to infuse the German spirit into the ancient style of architecture gave rise to the Romance Style of Architecture, which prevailed during the 12th century. It was based upon the structure of the old basilicas, the most important innovation being the introduction of the vaulted in place of the flat wooden roof, which made the interior lighter and heightened the perspective effect. The symbolical and fanciful ornamentation was also richly developed by figures from the plants and animals of Germany, from native legends. Towers were also added as fingers pointing upward, sometimes over the entrance to the middle aisle or at both sides of the entrance, sometimes over the point where the nave and transepts intersected one another, or on both sides of the choir. The finest specimens of this style were the cathedrals of Spires, Mainz, and Worms. But alongside of this appeared the beginnings of the so-called Gothic Architecture, which reached its height in the 13th and 14th centuries. Here the German ideas shook themselves free from the bondage of the old basilica style. Retaining the early ground plan, its pointed arch admitted of development in breadth and height to any extent. The pointed arch was first learnt from the Saracens, but its application to the Gothic architecture was quite original, because it was not as with the Saracens decorative, but constructive. The blank walls were changed into supporting pillars, and became a magnificent framework for the display of ingenious window architecture. A rich stone structure rose upon the cruciform ground plan, and the powerful arches towered up into airy heights. Tall tapering pillars symbolized the heavenward strivings of the soul. The rose window over the portal as the symbol of silence teaches that nothing worldly has a voice there. The gigantic peaked windows send through their beautifully painted glass a richly coloured light full on the vast area. Everything in the structure points upward, and this symbolism is finally expressed in the lofty towers, which lose themselves in giddy heights. The victory over the kingdom of darkness is depicted in the repulsive reptiles, demonic forms, and dragon shapes which are made to bear up the pillars and posts, and to serve as water carriers. The wit of artists has made even bishops and popes perform these menial offices, just as Dante condemned many popes to the infernal regions.314

§ 104.13. The most famous architects were Benedictines. The master builder along with the scholars trained by him formed independent corporations, free from any other jurisdiction. They therefore called themselves “Free Masons,” and erected “Lodges,” where they met for consultation and discussion. From the 13th century these lodges fell more and more into the hands of the laity, and became training schools of architecture. To them we are largely indebted for the development of the Gothic style. Their most celebrated works are the Cologne cathedral and the Strassburg minster. The foundation of the former was laid under Archbishop Conrad of Hochsteden in A.D. 1248; the choir was completed and consecrated in A.D. 1322 (§ 174, 9). Erwin of Steinbach began the building of the Strassburg minster in A.D. 1275.

§ 104.14. Statuary and Painting.―Under the Hohenstaufens statuary, which had been disallowed by the ancient church, rose into favour. Its first great master in Italy was Nicola Pisano, who died in A.D. 1274. Earlier indeed a statuary school had been formed in Saxony, of which no names but great works have come down to us. The goldsmith’s craft and metallurgy were brought into the service of the church by the German artists, and show not only wonderful technical skill, but also high attainment in ideal art. In Painting the Byzantines taught the Italians, and these again the Germans. At the beginning of the 13th century there was a school of painting at Pisa and Siena, claiming St. Luke as its patron, and seeking to impart more life and warmth to the stiff figures of the Byzantines. Their greatest masters were Guido of Siena and Giunta of Pisa, and the Florentine Cimabue, † A.D. 1300. Mosaic painting mostly on a golden ground was in favour in Italy. Painting on glass is first met with in the beginning of the 11th century in the monastery of Tegernsee in Bavaria, and soon spread over Germany and all over Europe.315―Continuation, § 115, 13.

§ 105.1. Knighthood and the Peace of God.―Notwithstanding its rude violence there was a deep religious undertone in knighthood, which came out in Spain in the war with the Saracens, and throughout Europe in the crusades. What princes could not do to check savagery was to some extent accomplished by the church by means of the injunction of the Peace of God. In A.D. 1034 the severity of famine in France led to acts of cannibalism and murder, which the bishops and synods severely punished. In A.D. 1041 the bishops of Southern France enjoined the Peace of God, according to which under threat of anathema all feuds were to be suspended from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, as the days of the ascension, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. At a later council at Narbonne in A.D. 1054, Advent to Epiphany, Lent to eight days after Easter, from the Sunday before Ascension to the end of the week of Pentecost, as well as the ember days and the festivals of Mary and the Apostles, were added. Even on other days, churches, cloisters, hospitals, and churchyards, as well as priests, monks, pilgrims, merchants, and agriculturists, in short, all unarmed men, and, by the Council of Clermont, A.D. 1095, even all crusaders, were included in the peace of God. Its healthful influence was felt even outside of France, and at the 3rd Lateran Council in A.D. 1179 Alexander III. raised it to the rank of a universally applicable law of the church.

§ 105.2. Popular Customs.―Superstition resting on old paganism introduced a Christian mythology. In almost all the popular legends the devil bore a leading part, and he was generally represented as a dupe who was cheated out of his bargain in the end. The most sacred things were made the subjects of blasphemous parodies. On Fool’s Festival on New Year’s day in France, mock popes, bishops, and abbots were introduced and all the holy actions mimicked in a blasphemous manner. Of a similar nature was the Festum innocentum (§ 57, 1) enacted by schoolboys at Christmas. Also at Christmas time the so-called Feast of Asses was celebrated. At Rouen dramatic representation of the prophecies of Christ’s birth were given; at Beauvais, the flight into Egypt. This relic of pagan license was opposed by the bishops, but encouraged by the lower clergy. After bishops and councils succeeded in banishing these fooleries from consecrated places they soon ceased to be celebrated. Under the name of Calends, because their gatherings were on the Calends of each month, brotherhoods composed of clerical and lay members sprang up in the beginning of the 13th century throughout Germany and France, devoting themselves to prayer and saying masses for living and deceased members and relatives. This pious purpose was indeed soon forgotten, and the meetings degenerated into riotous carousings.

§ 105.3. Two Royal Saints.―St. Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew II. of Hungary, married in her 14th year to St. Louis IV., Landgrave of Thuringia, was made a widow in her 20th year by the death of her husband in the crusade of Frederick II. in A.D. 1227, and thereafter suffered many privations at the hand of her brother-in-law. Her father confessor inspired her with a fanatical spirit of self denial. She assumed in Marburg the garb of the Franciscan nuns, took the three vows, and retired into a house of mercy, where she submitted to be scourged by her confessor. There she died in her 24th year in A.D. 1231. Her remains are credited with the performance of many miracles. She was canonized by Gregory IX., in A.D. 1235, and in the 14th century the order of Elizabethan nuns was instituted for ministering to the poor and sick.316―St. Hedwig, aunt of Elizabeth, married Henry duke of Silesia, in her 12th year. After discharging her duties of wife, mother, and princess faithfully, she took along with her husband the vow of chastity, and out of the sale of her bridal ornaments built a nunnery at Trebnitz, where she died in A.D. 1243 in her 69th year. Canonized in A.D. 1268, her remains were deposited in the convent church, which became on that account a favourite resort of pilgrims.

§ 105.4. Evidences of Sainthood.

1. Stigmatization. Soon after St. Francis’ death in A.D. 1226, the legend spread that two years before, during a forty days’ fast in the Apennines, a six-winged seraph imprinted on his body the nail prints of the wounded Saviour. The saint’s humility, it was said, prevented him speaking of the miracle except to those in closest terms of intimacy. The papal bull canonizing the saint, however, issued in A.D. 1228, knows nothing of this wonderful occurrence. What was then told of the great saint was subsequently ascribed to about 100 other ascetics, male and female. Some sceptical critics attributed the phenomenon to an impressionable temperament, others again accounted for all such stories by assuming that they were purely fabulous, or that the marks had been deceitfully made with human hands. Undoubtedly St. Francis had made those wounds upon his own body. That pain should have been felt on certain occasions in the wounds may be accounted for, especially in the case of females, who constituted the great majority of stigmatized individuals, on pathological grounds.
2. Bilocation. The Catholic Church Lexicon, published in A.D. 1882 (II. 840), maintains that it is a fact universally believed that saints often appeared at the same time at places widely removed from one another. Examples are given from the lives of Anthony of Padua, Francis Xavier, Liguori, etc. This is explained by the supposition that either God gives this power to the saint or sends angels to assume his form in different places.

§ 105.5. Religious Culture of the People.―Unsuccessful attempts were made by the Hohenstaufens to institute a public school system and compulsory education. Waldensians and such like (§ 108) obtained favour by spreading instruction through vernacular preaching, reading, and singing. The Dominicans took a hint from this. The Council of Toulouse, A.D. 1229 (§ 109, 2), forbade laymen to read the Scriptures, even the Psalter and Breviary, in the vulgar tongue. Summaries of the Scripture history were allowed. Of this sort was the Rhyming Bible in Dutch by Jacob of Maërlant, † A.D. 1291, which gives in rhyme the O.T. history, the Life of Jesus, and the history of the Jews to the destruction of Jerusalem. In the 13th century Rhyming Legends gave in the vernacular the substance of the Latin Martyrologies. The oldest German example in 3 bks. by an unknown author contains 100,000 rhyming lines, on Christ and Mary, the Apostles and the saints in the order of the church year. Still more effectively was information spread among the people during the 11th and subsequent centuries by the performance of Sacred Plays. From simple responsive songs they were developed into regular dramas adapted to the different festivals. Besides historical plays which were called Mysteries=ministeria as representations of the Ministri eccl., there were allegorical and moral plays called Moralities, in which moral truths were personified under the names of the virtues and vices. The numerous pictures, mosaics, and reliefs upon the walls helped greatly to spread instruction among the people.317

§ 105.6. The National Literature (§ 89, 3).―Walter v. d. Vogelweide, † A.D. 1230, sang the praises of the Lord, the Virgin, and the church, and lashed the clerical vices and hierarchical pretensions of his age. The 12th century editor of the pagan Nibelungenlied gave it a slightly Christian gloss. Wolfram of Eschenbach, however, a Christian poet in the highest sense, gave to the pagan legend of Parcival a thoroughly Christian character in the story of the Holy Grail and the Knights of the Round Table of King Arthur. His antipodes as a purely secular poet was Godfrey of Strassburg, whose Tristan and Isolt sets forth a thoroughly sensual picture of carnal love; yet as the sequel of this we have a strongly etherealized rhapsody on Divine love conceived quite in the spirit of St. Francis.―The sprightly songs of the Troubadours of Southern France were often the vehicle of heretical sentiments and gave expression to bitter hatred of the Romish Babylon.318

§ 106.1. Ban and Interdict.―From the 9th century a distinction was made between Excommunicatio major and minor. The latter, inflicted upon less serious offences against the canon law, merely excluded from participation in the sacrament. The former, called Anathema, directed against hardened sinners with solemn denunciation and the church’s curse, involved exclusion from all ecclesiastical communion and even refusal of Christian burial. Zealots who slew such excommunicated persons were declared by Urban II. not to be murderers. Innocent III., at the 4th Lateran Council A.D. 1215, had all civil rights withdrawn from excommunicates and their goods confiscated. Rulers under the ban were deposed and their subjects released from their oath of allegiance. Bishops exercised the right of putting under ban within their dioceses, and the popes over the whole church.―The Interdict was first recognised as a church institution at the Synod of Limoges in A.D. 1031. While it was in force against any country all bells were silenced, liturgical services were held only with closed doors, penance and the eucharist administered only to the dying, none but priests, mendicant friars, strangers, and children under two years of age received Christian burial, and no one could be married. Rarely could the people endure this long. It was therefore a terrible weapon in the hands of the popes, who not infrequently exercised it effectually in their struggles with the princes of the 12th and 13th centuries.

§ 106.2. Indulgences.―The old German principle of composition (§ 89, 5), and the Gregorian doctrine of purgatory (§ 61, 4), formed the bases on which was reared the ordinance of indulgences. The theory of the monks of St. Victor of the 12th century regarding penitential satisfaction (§ 104, 4), gave an impetus to the development of this institution of the church. It copestone was laid in the 13th century by the formulating of the doctrine of the superabundant merit of Christ and the saints (Thesaurus supererogationis Christi et perfectorum) by Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Aquinas. The members of the body of Christ could suffer and serve one for another, and thus Aquinas thought the merits of one might lessen the purgatorial pains of another. Innocent III., in A.D. 1215, allowed to bishops the right of limiting the pains of purgatory to forty days, but claimed for the pope exclusively the right of giving full indulgence (Indulgentia plenaria). Clement VI. declared that the pope as entrusted with the keys was alone the dispenser of the Thesaurus supererogationis. Strictly indulgence was allowed only to the truly penitent, as an aid to imperfect not a substitute for non-existent satisfaction. This was generally ignored by preachers of indulgences. This was specially the case in the times of the crusaders. Popes also frequently gave indulgences to those who simply visited certain shrines.

§ 106.3. The Church Doctrine of the Hereafter.―All who had perfectly observed every requirement of the penances and sacraments of the church to the close of their lives had the gates of Heaven opened to them. All others passed into the Lower World to suffer either positively=sensus, inexpressible pains of fire, or negatively=damnum, loss of the vision of God. There are four degrees corresponding to four places of punishment. Hell, situated in the midst of the earth, abyssus (Rev. xx. 1), is place and state of eternal punishment for all infidels, apostates, excommunicates, and all who died in mortal sin. The next circle is the purifying fire of Purgatory, or a place of temporary punishment positive or negative for all believing Christians who did not in life fully satisfy the three requirements of the sacrament of penance (§ 104, 4). The Limbus infantum is a side chamber of purgatory, where all unbaptized infants are kept for ever, only deprived of blessedness in consequence of original sin. Then above this is the Limbus Patrum, “Abraham’s bosom,” where the saints of the Old Covenant await the second coming of Christ.

§ 106.4. Flagellation.―From the 8th century discipline was often exercised by means of scourging, administered by the confessor who prescribed it. In the 11th century voluntary Self-Flagellation was frequently practised not only as punishment for one’s own sin, but, after the pattern of Christ and the martyrs, as atonement for sins of others. It originated in Italy, had its great patron in Damiani (§ 97, 4), and was earnestly commended by Bernard, Norbert, Francis, Dominic, etc. It is reported of St. Dominic that he scourged himself thrice every night, first for himself, and then for his living companions, and then for the departed in purgatory. The zealous Franciscan preachers were mainly instrumental in exerting an enthusiasm for self-mortification among the people (§ 98, 4). About A.D. 1225, Anthony of Padua attracted crowds who went about publicly lashing themselves while singing psalms. Followers of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5) as Flagellants rushed through all Northern Italy in great numbers during A.D. 1260, preaching the immediate approach of the end of the world.319

§ 107.1. Two Rhenish Prophetesses of the 12th Century.―St. Hildegard was founder and abbess of a cloister near Bingen on the Rhine, where she died in A.D. 1178 in her 74th year. Grieving over clerical and papal corruptions, she had apocalyptic visions of the antichrist, and travelled far and engaged in an extensive correspondence in appealing for radical reforms. St. Bernard and pope Eugenius III. who visited Treves in A.D. 1147 acknowledged her prophetic vocation, and the people ascribed to her wonderful healing power.―Hildegard’s younger contemporary was the like-minded St. Elizabeth of Schönau, abbess of the neighbouring convent of Schönau, who died in A.D. 1165. Her prophecies were mostly of the apocalyptic-visionary order, and in them with still greater severity she lashed the corruptions of the clergy. She also gave currency to the legend of St. Ursula (§ 104, 9).

§ 107.2. Three Thuringian Prophetesses of the 13th Century.―Mechthild of Magdeburg, after thirty years of Beguine life, wrote in a beautiful rhythmical style in German her “Light of Deity,” setting forth the sweetness of God’s love, the blessedness of glorified saints, the pains of purgatory and hell, and denouncing with great moral earnestness the corruptions of the clergy and the church, and depicting with a poet’s or prophet’s power the coming of the last day. Influenced by the apocalyptic views of Joachim of Floris (§ 108, 5), she also gives expression to a genuinely German patriotism. With her it is a new preaching order that leads to victory against antichrist, and the founder of this order, who meets a martyr’s death in the conflict, is a son of the Roman king. In contrast with Joachim, she thus makes the German empire not a foe but the ally of the church. Mechthild’s prophecies largely influenced Dante, and even her name appears in that of his guide Matilda.―Mechthild of Hackeborn, who died in A.D. 1310, in her Speculum spiritualis gratiæ published her visions of a reformatory and eschatological prophetic order, more subjective and personal than those of the former.―Gertrude the Great, who died in A.D. 1311, is more decidedly a reformer than either of the Mechthilds or any other woman of the Middle Ages. A diligent inquirer into the depths of Scripture, she renounced the veneration usually shown to Mary, the saints, and relics, repudiated all the ideas of her age regarding merits, ceremonial exercises, and indulgences, and in the exercise of simple faith trusted only to the grace of God in Christ. She seems to belong to the 16th rather than to the 13th century. Her visions, too, are more of a spiritual kind.

§ 108.1. The Cathari.―Opposition to hierarchical pretensions led to the spread of sects, especially in Northern Italy and France, from the 11th century. Hidden remnants of Old Manichæan sects got new courage and ventured into the light during the period of the crusades. In France they were called Tisserands, because mostly composed of weavers. In Italy they were called Patareni or Paterini, either from the original meaning of the word, rabble, riff-raff (§ 97, 5), or because they so far adopted the attitude of the Pasaria of Milan, as to offer lay opposition to the local clergy, or because of the frequent use of the Paternoster. Of later origin are the names Publicani and Bulgări, given as opprobrious designations to the Paulicians. The most widely current name of Cathari, from early times a favourite title assumed by rigorist sects (§ 41, 3), had its origin in the East. In France they were called Albigensians, from the province of Albigeois, which was their chief seat in Southern France.―Of the Writings of the Cathari we possess from the end of the 13th century a Provençal translation of the N.T., free from all falsification in favour of their sectarian views. Their tenets are to be learnt only from the polemical writings of their opponents, Alanus ab Insulis (§ 102, 5), the Dominican Joh. Moneta, about A.D. 1240, and Rainerius, Sacchoni, Dominican and inquisitor, about A.D. 1250.

§ 108.2. Besides their opposition to the hierarchy, all these sects had in common a dualistic basis to their theological systems. They held in a more or less extreme form the following doctrines: The good God who is proclaimed in the N.T. created in the beginning the heavenly and invisible world, and peopled it with souls clothed in ethereal bodies. The earthly world, on the other hand, is the work of an evil spirit, who is held up as object of worship in the O.T. Entering the heavenly world he succeeded in seducing some of its inhabitants, whom he, when defeated by the archangel Michael, took with him to earth, and there imprisoned in earthly bodies, so as to make return to their heavenly home impossible. Yet they are capable of redemption, and may, on repentance and submission to purificatory ordinances, be again freed from their earthly bonds and brought home again to heaven. For this redemption the good God sent “the heavenly man” Jesus (1 Cor. xv. 47) to earth in the appearance of man to teach men their heavenly origin and the means of restoration. The Cathari rejected the O.T., but accepted the N.T., which they read in the vernacular. Marriage they regarded as a hindrance to Christian perfection. They treated with contempt water baptism, the Supper, and ordination, as well as all veneration of saints and relics, and tolerated no images, crosses, or altars. Prayer, abstinence, and baptism of the Spirit were regarded as the only means of salvation. Preaching was next to prayer most prominent in their public services. They also laid great stress upon fasting, genuflection, and repetitions of stated formulæ, especially the Lord’s Prayer. Their members were divided into Cregentz (credentes or catechumens) and Bos homes or Bos crestias (boni homines, boni Christiani=perfecti or electi). A lower order of the catechumens were the Auditores. These were received as Credentes after a longer period of training amid various ceremonies and repetition of the Lord’s prayer, etc. The order of the Perfecti was entered by spiritual baptism, the Consolamentum or communication of the Holy Spirit as the promised Comforter, without which no one can enjoy eternal life. Even opponents such as St. Bernard admit that there was great moral earnestness shown by some of them, and many met a martyr’s death with true Christian heroism. Symptoms of decay appeared in the spread among them of antinomian practices. This moral deterioration showed itself as a radical part of this system in the so-called Luciferians or devil worshippers, whose dualism, like that of the Euchites and Bogomils (§ 71), led to the adoption of two Sons of God. Lucifer the elder, wrongly driven from heaven, is the creator and lord of this earthly world, and hence alone worshipped in it. His expulsion (Isa. xiv. 12) is carried out by the younger son, Michael, who will, however, on this account, whenever Lucifer regains heaven, be sent with all his company into eternal punishment. Of an incarnation of God, even of a docetic kind, they know nothing. They regarded Jesus as a false prophet who was crucified on account of the evil he had done.―Catharist sects suspected of Manichæan tendencies were discovered here and there during the 11th century. In the following century their number had increased enormously, and they spread over Lombardy and Southern France, but were also found in Southern Italy, in Germany, Belgium, Spain, and even in England. They had a pope residing in Bulgaria, twelve magistri and seventy-two bishops, each with a Filius major and minor at his side. In A.D. 1167 they were able to muster an œcumenical Catharist Council at Toulouse. Neither clemency nor severity could put them down. St. Bernard prevailed most by the power of his love, and subsequently learned Dominicans had more effect with their preaching and disputations. They found abundant opportunity of displaying their hatred of the papacy during the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. In spite of terrible persecution, which reached its height in the beginning of the 13th century in the Albigensian crusade (§ 109, 1), remnants of them were found down into the 14th century.

§ 108.3. The small sect of the Pasagians in Lombardy during the 12th century, protesting against the Manichæan depreciation of the O.T. of the Catharists, adopted views of a somewhat Ebionite character. With the exception of sacrifice, they enforced all the old ceremonial observances, even circumcision, and held an Arian or Ebionite theory of the Person of Christ. Their name meaning “passage,” seems to refer to pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and possibly from this a clue to their origin may be obtained.

§ 108.4. Pantheistic Heretics.

1. Amalrich of Bena taught first philosophy, then theology, at Paris in the end of the 12th century. In A.D. 1204 Innocent III. called him to account for his proposition, Christian in sound, but probably pantheistically intended, that no one could be saved who is not a member in Christ’s body, and obliged him to retract. His death occurred soon after, and some years later we find traces of a pantheistic sect founded on the alleged doctrines of Amalrich vigorously propagated by his disciple William the goldsmith. God had previously appeared as Father incarnate in Abraham, and as Son in Christ, and now henceforth as the Holy Spirit in every believer, who therefore in the same sense as Christ is God. As such, too, he is without sin, and what to others would be sin is not so to him. In the age of the Son the Mosaic law lost its validity, and in that of the Spirit, the sacraments and services of the new covenant. God has always been all in all. We find him in Ovid as well as in Augustine, and the body of Christ is in common bread as well as in the consecrated wafer on the altar. Saint worship is idolatry. There is no resurrection; heaven and hell exist only in the imagination of men. Rome is Babylon, and the pope is antichrist; but to the king of France, after the overthrow of antichrist, shall the kingdoms of the earth be subject, etc. A synod at Paris in A.D. 1209 condemned William and nine priests to be burnt, and four other priests to imprisonment for life, and ordered that Amalrich’s bones should be exhumed and scattered over an open field. Regarding the physical works of Aristotle as the source of this heresy, the council also prohibited all lectures upon these (§ 103, 1). This was seen to be a mistake, and so in A.D. 1225 Honorius III. fixed on the true culprit and condemned the De divisione naturæ of Erigena (§ 90, 6). The penalties inflicted did not by any means lead to the rooting out of the sect. During the whole 13th century it continued to spread from Paris over all eastern France as far as Alsace, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and in the 14th century reached its highest development in the pantheistic-libertine doctrines of the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5). We never again meet with the name of Amalrich, and the sects were never called after him.
2. David of Dinant at the same time with Amalrich taught philosophy and theology in the University of Paris. He also lived for a long while at the papal court in Rome, high in favour with Innocent III. as a subtle dialectician. The Synod of Paris of A.D. 1209, which passed judgment on the Amalricians, pronounced David a heretic and ordered his works to be burnt. He avoided personal punishment by flight. The central point of his system was the assumption of a single eternal substance without distinctions, from which God, spirit (νοῦς), and matter (ὕλη) sprang as the three principles of all later forms of existences (corpora, animæ, and substantiæ æternæ). God is regarded as the primum efficiens, matter as the primum suscipiens, and spirit as the medium between the two. David’s scholars never formed a sect and never had any connection apparently with the followers of Amalrich.
3. The Ortlibarians were a sect condemned by Innocent III., followers of a certain Ortlieb of Strassburg about A.D. 1212. They held the world to be without beginning. They looked upon Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary, sinless like all other children, but raised to be son of God only through illumination from the doctrines of their sect, which had existed from the earliest times. They admitted the gospel story of Christ’s life, sufferings, and resurrection, not, however, in a literal but only in a moral and mystical acceptation. The consecrated host was but common bread, and in it was the body of the Lord. A Jew entering their sect needed not to be baptized, and fellowship with them was sufficient to secure salvation. There is no resurrection of the flesh; man’s spirit alone is immortal. After the last judgment, which will come when pope and emperor are converted to their views and all opposition is overcome, the world will last for ever, and men will be born and die just as now. They professed a strictly ascetic life, and many of them fasted every second day.

§ 108.5. Apocalyptic Heretics.―The Cistercian abbot Joachim of Floris, who died in A.D. 1202, with his notions of the so called “Everlasting Gospel,” as a reformer and as one inclined to apocalyptic prophecy, followed in the footsteps of Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schönau (§ 107, 1). His prophetic views spread among the Franciscans and were long unchallenged. In A.D. 1254 the University of Paris, warning against the begging monks (§ 103, 3), got Alexander IV. to condemn these views as set forth in commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah ascribed to Joachim, but now found to be spurious. Preger doubts but, Reuter maintains the genuineness of the three tracts grouped under the title of the Evangelium æternum. The main points in his theory seem to have been these: There are three ages, that of the Father in the O.T., of the Son in the N.T., and of the Holy Spirit in the approaching fulness of the kingdom of God on earth. Of the apostles, Peter is representative of the first age, Paul of the second, and John of the third. They may also be characterized as the age of the laity, the clergy, and the monks, and compared in respect of light with the stars, the moon, and the sun. The first six periods of the N.T. age are divided (after the pattern of the forty-two generations of Matt. i. and the forty-two months or 1260 days of Rev. xi. 2, 3) into forty-two shorter periods of thirty years each, so that the sixth period closes with A.D. 1260, and then shall dawn the Sabbath period of the New Covenant as the age of the Holy Spirit. This will be preceded by a short reign of antichrist as a punishment for the corruptions of the church and clergy. By the labours of the monks, however, the church is at last purified and brought forth triumphant, and the life of holy contemplation becomes universal. The germs of antichrist were evidently supposed to lie in the Hohenstaufen empire of Frederick I. and Henry VI. The commentaries on Isaiah and Jeremiah went so far as to point to the person of Frederick II. as that of the antichrist.

§ 108.6. Ghibelline Joachites in Italy, mostly recruited from the Franciscans, sided with the emperor against the pope and adopted apocalyptic views to suit their politics, and regarded the papacy as the precursor of antichrist. One of their chiefs, Oliva, who died in A.D. 1297, wrote a Postilla super Apoc., in which he denounced the Roman church of his day as the Great Whore of Babylon, and his scholar Ubertino of Casale saw in the beast that rose out of the sea (Rev. xiii.) a prophetic picture of the papacy.―In Germany these views spread among the Dominicans during the 13th century, especially in Swabia. The movement was headed by one Arnold. who wrote an Epistola de correctione ecclesiæ about A.D. 1246. He finds in Innocent IV. the antichrist and in Frederick II. the executioner of the Divine judgment and the inauguration of the reformation. Frederick’s death, which followed soon after in A.D. 1250, and the catastrophe of A.D. 1268 (§ 96, 20), must have put an end to the whole movement.

§ 108.7. Revolutionary Reformers.

1. The Petrobrusians, whose founder, Peter of Bruys, was a pupil of Abælard and a priest in the south of France, repudiated the outward or visible church and sought the true or invisible church in the hearts of believers. He insisted on the destruction of churches and sanctuaries because God could be worshipped in a stable or tavern, burnt crucifixes in the cooking stove, eagerly opposed celibacy, mass, and infant baptism, and after a twenty years’ career perished at the stake about A.D. 1126 at the hands of a raging mob. One of Peter’s companions, Henry of Lausanne, whose fiery eloquence had been influential in inciting to reform, succeeded to the leadership of the Petrobrusians, who from him were called Henricians. St. Bernard succeeded in winning many of them back. Henry was condemned to imprisonment for life, and died in A.D. 1149.
2. Arnold of Brescia, who died in A.D. 1155, a preacher of great moral and religious earnestness, addressed himself to attack the worldliness of the church and the papacy. Except in maintaining that sacraments dispensed by unworthy priests have no efficacy, he does not seem to have deviated from the church doctrine. Officiating as reader in his native town, his bishop complained of him as a heretic to the second Lateran Council of A.D. 1139. His views were condemned, and he himself was banished and enjoined to observe perpetual silence. He now went to his teacher Abælard in France. Here St. Bernard accused him at the synod convened against Abælard at Sens in A.D. 1141 (§ 102, 2) as “the armour-bearer” of this “Goliath-heretic,” and obtained the condemnation of both. He was then excommunicated by Innocent II. and imprisoned in a cloister. Arnold, however, escaped to Switzerland, where he lived and taught undisturbed in Zürich for some years, till Bishop Hermann of Constance, at the instigation of the Saint of Clairvaux, threatened him with imprisonment or exile. He was now taken under the protection of Guido de Castella, Abælard’s friend and patron, and accompanied him to Bohemia and Moravia. On Guido’s elevation as Cœlestine II. to the papal chair in A.D. 1143, Arnold returned to his native land. From A.D. 1146 we find him in Rome at the head of the agitation for political and ecclesiastical freedom. For further details of his history, see § 96, 13, 14. A party of so-called Arnoldists occupied itself long after his death with the carrying out of his ecclesiastico-political ideal.

§ 108.8.

3. The so called Pastorelles were roused to revolution by the miseries following the crusades. An impulse was given to the sect by the news of the imprisonment of St. Louis (§ 94, 6). A Cistercian Magister Jacob from Hungary appeared in A.D. 1251 with the announcement that he had seen the Mother of God, who gave him a letter calling upon the pastors to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. Those who have heard the Christmas message are called of God to undertake the great work which neither the corrupt hierarchy nor the proud, ambitious nobles were able to perform; but before them, the poor shepherds, the sea will open a way, so that they may hasten with dry feet to the release of king Louis. His fanatical harangues soon gathered immense crowds of common people around him, estimated at about 100,000 men. But instead of going to the Holy Land, they first gave vent to their wrath against the clergy, monks, and Jews at home by murdering, plundering, and ill treating them in all manner of ways. The queen-mother Blanca, favourable at first, now used all her power against them. Jacob was slain at Bourges, his troops scattered, and their leaders executed.
4. In the Apostolic Brothers we have a blending of Arnoldist and Joachist tendencies. Their founder, Gerhard Segarelli, an artisan of Parma, was moved about A.D. 1260 by the sight of a picture of the apostles in their poverty to go about preaching repentance and calling on the church to return to apostolic simplicity. He did not question the doctrine of the church. Only when Honorius in A.D. 1286 and Nicholas IV. in A.D. 1290 took measures against them did they openly oppose the papacy and denounce the Roman church as the apocalyptic Babylon. Segarelli was seized in A.D. 1294 and perished in the flames with many of his followers in A.D. 1300. Fra Dolcino, a younger priest, now took the leadership, and roused great enthusiasm by his preaching against the Roman antichrist. He bravely held his ground with 2,000 followers for two years in the recesses of the mountains, but was reduced at last in A.D. 1307 by hunger, and died like his predecessor at the stake. He distinguished four stages in the historical development of the kingdom of God on earth. The first two are those of the Father and the Son in the O.T. and the N.T. The third begins with Constantine’s establishment of the Christian empire, advanced by the Benedictine rule and the reforms of the Franciscans and Dominicans, but afterwards falling into decay. The fourth era of complete restoration of the apostolic life is inaugurated by Segarelli and Dolcino. A new chief sent of God will rule the church in peace, and the Holy Spirit will never leave the restored communion of His saints. Remnants of the sect were long in existence in France and Germany, where they united with the Fraticelli and Beghards. Even in A.D. 1374 we find a synod at Narbonne threatening them with the severest punishments.

§ 108.9. Reforming Enthusiasts.

1. A certain Tanchelm about A.D. 1115 preached in the Netherlands against the corruptions of the church. He claimed like honour with Christ as being assisted by the same Spirit, is said to have betrothed himself to the Virgin Mary, and to have been killed at last in A.D. 1124 by a priest.
2. A Frenchman, Eon de Stella of Brittany, hearing in a church the words “per Eum qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos,” and understanding it of his own name, went through the country preaching, prophesying, and working miracles. He secured many followers, and when persecuted, fled to the woods. He denied the Divine institution of the hierarchy, denounced the Roman church as false because of the wicked lives of the priests, rejected the doctrine of a resurrection of the body, denied that marriage was a sacrament, and regarded the communication of the Spirit by imposition of hands the only true baptism. In A.D. 1148 troops were sent against him, and he and many of his followers were taken prisoners. His adherents were burnt, but Eon was brought before a synod at Rheims, where he answered the question of the pope Eugenius III., “Who art thou?” by saying Is qui venturus est, etc. He was then pronounced deranged and delivered over to the custody of the archbishop.

§ 108.10. The Waldensians.

1. Their Origin.―A citizen of Lyons, named Valdez (Valdesius, Waldus, the Christian name of Peter, given to him first 120 years later, is quite unsupported), who had become rich by the practice of usury, an occupation condemned by the church, was about A.D. 1173 deeply impressed by reading the legend of St. Alexius, and was in his spiritual anxiety directed by a theologian to the words of Christ to the rich young ruler in Matthew xix. 21. Making over to his wife only his landed property, and distributing all the rest of his possessions among the poor, and then, for further instruction in regard to the imitation of Christ required of him, having applied himself to the study of the gospels, the Psalter, and other biblical books, and a selection of classical passages translated for his use by two friendly priests out of the writings of the Fathers into the Romance dialect, he founded in A.D. 1177, in company with certain men and women, who were prepared like himself to abandon the world and all its goods, a society for preaching the gospel among the people. In accordance with the Lord’s command to the seventy disciples (Luke x. 1-4), they went forth two and two in apostolic costume, in woollen penitential garments, without staff or scrip, their feet protected with merely wooden sandals (sabatas, sabots), preaching repentance, and proclaiming the gospel message of salvation throughout the land, in order to bring back again among the people the Christian life in its purity and simplicity. The Archbishop of Lyons prohibited their preaching; but they referred to Acts v. 29, and appealed, praying for a confirmation of their association, to the Third Lateran Council of A.D. 1179, under Alexander III., which, however, scornfully dismissed their appeal. As they nevertheless still continued to preach, Pope Lucius III., at the Council of Verona, in A.D. 1184, laid them under the ban. They had hitherto no intention of offering any sort of opposition to the doctrine, worship, or constitution of the Catholic church. Even the Catholic authorities did not so much take offence at what they preached but rather only at this, that they without ecclesiastical call and authority had assumed the function of preaching. Innocent III., also, admitted the imprudence of his predecessor, and favoured the plan of a Waldensian who had left his brethren to transform the association of the Pauperes de Lugduno into the monastic-like lay union of Pauperes Catholici, to which in A.D. 1208 he assigned the duties of preaching, expounding Scripture, and holding meetings for edification under episcopal supervision. But this concession came too late. Since the church had itself broken off the fetters which had previously bound them to the traditional faith of the Catholic church, the Leonists had gone too far upon the path of evangelical freedom to be satisfied with any such terms. Innocent now renewed the ban against them at the Fourth Lateran Council of A.D. 1215. Of the later life and work of the founder we know with certainty only this, that he made extensive journeys in the interests of his cause. Even during his lifetime (he died probably about A.D. 1217) the members (socii) of the society (Societas Valdesiana) founded by him had spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of the south of France, the east of Spain, the north of Italy, and the south of Germany, and had even crossed the Channel into England. They were named, in accordance with their fundamental principle, as well as from the starting point of their apostolic mission, Pauperes de Lugduno or Leonistæ=from Lyons, also from the covering of their feet, Sabatati; but they styled themselves among one another fratres and sorores, and their adherents among the people amici and amicæ; while the Catholic polemical writers, who for a similar class among the Cathari had employed the distinctive terms Perfecti and Credentes, made use of these designations in treating of the Waldensians. The latter continue “in the world,” that is, in the exercise of their family duties, and the discharge of civil obligations, and all the positions and entanglements connected therewith; while the former devoted themselves to a celibate life, to absolute poverty, to incessant preaching from place to place, and to unconditional refusal of all oathtaking, and a literal acceptance of all the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, involving the rejection of any sort of fixed residence, and on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, any handiwork that would earn for them the necessaries of life. They had their own ministri for the administration of the sacraments; but these were elected only ad tempus, namely once a year, simply for the discharge of that duty. At the head of the whole community down to his death stood the founder himself. He led the entire movement, received new members into the societas, and chose and ordained the ministri.―The two most important sources for the primitive history of the Waldensian movement, mutually supplementing one another, are, the Chronicon Laudunense of an unnamed canon of Laon in the Mon. Germ. Scrr. xxvi. 447, and the tract De Septem Donis Spir. S. of the inquisitor Stephen de Borbone, who died A.D. 1261, which is given in full in de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, etc., Paris, 1877.

§ 108.11.

2. Their Divisions.―One of the oldest, most important, and most reliable sources of information regarding the affairs of the old Waldensians was first published by Preger in 1875, in his Beiträge z. Gesch. d. Waldensier im MA., namely, an epistle embodied by the “anonymous writer of Passau” in his heretic catalogue, from the “Poor Men of Italy” to their fellow believers in Germany, ad Leonistas in Alamannia, in which they give a report of the proceedings at a convention held at Bergamo in A.D. 1218, with the deputies from “the ultramontane,” that is, the French, “Poor Men.” On the basis of this communication Preger has contested the view that the “Poor Men of Italy” were the Waldensians, and traces their origin rather to the working men’s association of the Humiliati that had already sprung up in the eleventh century (§ 98, 7), which having even before this, by adopting Arnoldist ideas, become estranged from the Catholic church, came also into connection with Valdez, appropriated many of his opinions, and then entered into fraternal relations with the French Waldesians. This theory, as also no less the explanations connected therewith of the constitutional and doctrinal differences of the two parties, has been proved by Carl Müller in his Die Waldensier u. ihre einzelne Gruppen bis Auf d. 14. Jhd. to be in many particulars untenable, and he has shown that the Waldensian origin of “the Poor Men of Lombardy” is witnessed to even by this epistle. The results of his researches are in the main as follows: The movement set on foot in A.D. 1177 by Valdez of Lyons in the direction of an apostolic walk and conversation was transplanted at a very early period into northern Italy, and found there a favourable reception, especially in the ranks of the Humiliati. These, too, as well as Valdez, in A.D. 1179, approached Alexander III. with the prayer to authorize their entering on such a vocation, but were also immediately repulsed, attached themselves then to the “Poor Men of Lyons,” submitting to the monarchical rule of their founder, and along with them, in A.D. 1184, fell under the papal ban. Yet among the Lombards a strong craving after greater independence and freedom soon found expression, which asserted itself most decidedly in the claim to the right of their own independent choice and ordination of lifelong organs of government for their society, as well as for priestly services, which, however, Valdez, fearing a dissolution of the whole society from the granting of such partial independence, answered with a decided refusal. With equal decision did he insist upon the disbanding of those workmen’s associations for common production, which the Lombards, as formerly the Humiliati, formed from the laymen belonging to them, and forbade them even engaging in any handicraft which they had hitherto pursued alongside of their spiritual vocations, as inconsistent with the apostolic life according to the prescriptions of Christ in Luke x. Thus it came about, in consequence of the unyielding temper of both parties, that there was a formal split; for the Lombards appointed their own independent præpositus, who, just like their ministri charged with the conduct of worship, held office for life. In the course of the year the split widened through the adoption of other divergences on the part of the Lombards. Yet after the death of the founder, about A.D. 1217 they entered upon negotiations about a reunion, which found a hearty response also among the French. By means of epistolary explanations a basis for union in regard to those questions which had occasioned the separation had already been attained unto. The French granted to the Lombards independent election and ordination of their ministers for church government and worship, and allowed the appointment to be for life, while they also agreed to the continuance of their workmen’s associations. In May, A.D. 1218, six brethren from the two parties were at Bergamo appointed to draw up definite terms of peace, and to secure a verbal explanation of other less important differences, which was also accomplished without difficulty. The whole peace negotiations, however, were ultimately shattered over two questions, which first came to the front during the verbal explanations: (i.) Over the question of the felicity of the deceased founder, which the Lombards were disposed to affirm only conditionally, i.e. in case he had been penitent before his death for the sins of which he had been guilty through his intolerant treatment of them, while the French would have it affirmed unconditionally; and (ii.) over the controversy about the validity of the dispensation of the sacrament of the altar by an unworthy person. On both sides they were thoroughly agreed in saying that not the priest, but the omnipotence of God, changed bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper into the body and blood of Christ. But while the French drew from this the conclusion that even an unworthy and wicked priest could truly and effectually administer the sacrament, the Italians persisted in the contrary opinion, and quoted Scripture and the writings of the Fathers to prove the correctness of their views.

§ 108.12.

3. Attempts at Catholicizing.―On the origin, character, and task of the Pauperes Catholici referred to above, the epistles of Pope Innocent III. regarding them afford us pretty accurate and detailed information. The first impulse toward their formation was given by a disputation with the French Waldensians held by Bishop Diego of Osma at Pamiers in A.D. 1206, by means of which he succeeded, aided by the powerful co-operation of his companion St. Dominic, in persuading a number of the heretics to return to the obedience of the Catholic church. Among those converted on that occasion was the Spaniard Durandus of Osca (Huesca), who now laid before the pope the plan of forming from among the converted Waldensians a society of Catholic Poor Men under the oversight of the bishops, which, by appropriating and carrying out all the fundamental principles of the Waldensian system―apostolic poverty, apostolic dress, apostolic life, and apostolic vocation, according to Luke x.―would not only paralyse or outbid the ministry of the heretical Poor Men among the people, but would also open up the way for their own return and attachment again to the church. The pope approved of his plan, and confirmed the union founded by him in A.D. 1208. The undertaking of Durandus seems to have been from the first not altogether without success in the direction intended. At least we find that Bernard Primus was encouraged one and a half years later to found a second similar society on essentially the same basis, which Innocent III. approved and confirmed. This later association was distinguished from the earlier only in this, that it allowed its members, besides their itinerant preaching and pastoral work, to engage also in their own handicraft. We are now led, by this difference, to the conclusion that, as the institution of Durandus issued from the bosom of the French Waldensians, that of Bernard had its origin among the groups of the Poor Men of Lombardy. This supposition is further confirmed when we observe that the latter, in drawing up its Catholic confession of faith, expressly abjures the formerly cherished conviction of the inefficacy of sacramental actions performed by unworthy priests. But the reason why both these unions, notwithstanding papal approval and support, failed to exert any permanent influence is to be sought pre-eminently in this, that, tainted as their reputation was with the memory of their former heresy, they were soon far outrun and overshadowed by the two great mendicant orders, which wrought with ampler means and appliances in the same direction.

§ 108.13.

4. The French Societies.―What these found fault with in the Catholic church was, not its dogmatics, to which, with the single exception of the doctrine of purgatory and all therewith connected, indulgence, masses for souls, foundations, alms, and works of piety on behalf of the dead, they firmly adhered; nor yet its liturgical institutions, which, with the exception of masses for souls, they left untouched; nor yet its hierarchical constitutions per se, for they transferred its leading principles into their own organization: but it was simply this, that its clergy had become guilty of the deadly sin of assuming and exercising the apostolic prerogative without undertaking the obligations of apostolic poverty, the apostolic life, and the apostolic vocation, which alone warranted such assumption. But as they thus, nevertheless, firmly adhered to the Catholic principle of the validity of a sacrament administered even by an unworthy person, if only he had authority for doing so from the church, they could allow themselves, and specially their lay adherents, to take part in all Catholic services and acts of worship, without regarding themselves or their followers as under obligation to yield obedience to the pope and the bishops, or to recognise their spiritual jurisdiction, authority to inflict punishment, and right of arbitrary legislation in regard to fasts, festivals, impediments to marriage, etc.―As to the organization of the society, it is now perfectly clear that there was a threefold division of offices: bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Reception into the Societas Fratrum was consummated by the imparting of the ordination of deacon. This, however, was preceded by a longer or shorter novitiate, i.e. a period of trial and preparation for the apostolic vocation of preaching. The entrance into this novitiate (conversio) required the surrender of all property for the benefit of the poor, and on the part of those already married the abandonment of every form of marital relationship; and on reception into the brotherhood the vow of obedience to the superiors was exacted, as well as a vow of celibacy and chastity.―To the bishop, who as such was also called minister and major or majoralis, belonged the right to administer the sacraments of penance and ordination, as well as the consecration of the eucharistic elements; he might preach wherever he chose, and he assigned to presbyters and deacons their spheres of labour. The presbyters, in addition to preaching, also heard confessions, imposed penance, and granted absolution, but did not administer the punishments imposed, for this was the exclusive function of the bishop.―The deacons were only to preach, but not to hear confession, and their special duty consisted in collecting contributions for the support of the brethren. That also women, on the basis of Titus ii. 3, 4, were admitted into these societies is an undoubted fact. Their position was essentially the same as that of the deacons; but the number of preaching sisters continued always relatively small.―After the death of the founder the society once a year chose from among the existing bishops two rectores, who now together administered that supreme government and high priesthood which had previously been exercised by the founder alone. It was, however, by-and-by found desirable to revert to the older monarchical constitution, but all through the 13th century this office was held only by a yearly tenure. The retiring bishops, however, received for life the rank and title of major. But even over the rector stood the commune or congregatio; i.e. the general chapter assembled once or twice in the year, in which the brethren of all the three orders had a seat and vote. The obligation to wear the apostolic dress, persistence in which would have in a very short time thrown all the brethren into the Moloch arms of the Inquisition, was abandoned soon after the erection of that tribunal in A.D. 1232.―The lay adherents attracted by the preaching and pastoral activity of the brethren, the so-called Amici, Fautores, Receptatores, were not organized as exclusive and independent communities, because their continued participation in the services and sacraments of the Catholic church was regarded as permissible. On the other hand, they maintained, as far as possible, regular intercourse with the brethren, who in various styles of dress visited them secretly, preached to them, exhorted and instructed them, prayed with them and said grace at their tables, heard their confessions, imposed penances and granted absolution, uttering the formula of absolution, however, not in the language of an absolute judicial proclamation, but as a supplication and fervent desire. The Amici were allowed to make their Easter confession and observance of the Supper at the Catholic service. The brethren had of course also an independent celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which occurred only once a year, on Maundy Thursday, but was confined as a rule to the brothers and sisters there assembled. The profound acquaintance with Holy Scripture, especially the New Testament, not only among the preaching “brothers,” but also among their “friends,” many of whom knew by heart a large portion of the New Testament, was the subject of general remark and the occasion of astonishment. Besides Holy Scripture, the selection of patristic passages used by Valdez and the Moralia of Gregory the Great were in high repute as means of instruction and edification.―The systematic efforts put forth from A.D. 1232 for the uprooting and extirpating of heresy wrought effectually among the French Waldensian “brethren” and “friends.” The remnants of them that survived the persecution were driven farther and farther into the remotest valleys of the western and eastern spurs of the Cottian Alps, into Dauphiné and Provence on the French side, and into Piedmont on the Italian side.―The most important sources are: Adv. Valdens. sectam, of Bernard Abbot of Fonscalidus, who died in A.D. 1193; Doctrina de Moda Procedendi a Hæret. of the Inquisition at Carcassone and Toulouse of A.D. 1280; the consultatio of Arch. Peter Amelius of Narbonne and the provincial synods held under him in A.D. 1243, 1244; and the recently published Practica Inquisition. of the inquisitor Bernard Guidonis of A.D. 1321.―Continuation, § 119, 9A.

§ 108.14.

A representation of the origin and character of the old Waldensian movement completely different from that given in the sources mentioned and used in the preceding sections, especially in reference to the French societies, has been current since the middle of the 16th century in the modern Waldensian tradition, and by means of falsified or misunderstood documents has been repeated by most Protestant historians down to and including U. Hahn. The investigations of Dieckhoff and Herzog first demolished for ever those fabulous creations of Waldensian mythology, though more recent Waldensian writers, e.g. Hudry-Ménos, but not Comba, seek still tenaciously to assert their truth. According to these traditions, long before the days of Waldus of Lyons there were Waldensian, i.e. Vallensian communities in the valleys of Piedmont, the “Israel of the Alps,” the bearers of pure gospel truth, whose origin was to be traced back at least to Claudius of Turin, while others fondly carried it back to the Apostle Paul, who on his journey to Spain (Rom. xv. 24) may have also visited the Piedmontese valleys. It was to them that Peter of Lyons owed his spiritual awakening and his surname of Waldus, i.e. the Waldensian. For proof of this assertion we are referred to a pretty copious manuscript literature said to be old Waldensian, written in a peculiar Romance dialect, deposited in the libraries of Geneva, Dublin, Cambridge, Zürich, Grenoble, and Paris. Upon close and unprejudiced examination of these literary pieces, of which the oldest portion cannot possibly claim an earlier date than the beginning of the 14th century, it has become quite apparent that these, in so far as they are not fabrications or interpolations, do not afford the least grounds for justifying those Waldensian fantasies. This view is further corroborated by the fact, that the most careful and thorough investigator in this department, Carl Müller, confidently maintains the conviction and shows the basis on which it rests, “that the whole so-called Waldensian literature of the pre-Hussite period has been without exception derived from Catholic and not from Waldensian sources.” The falsifications in this reputed old Waldensian group of writings referred to, by means of interpolation, omission, and alteration in the tracts belonging to that collection, as well as the forging of new writings, and that simply for the purpose of vindicating for their society the mythical fame of a primitive, independent, and ever pure evangelical church, first found place after the Protestantizing of the Romance or Piedmontese Waldensians, and were thereafter successfully turned to account bona or mala fide by their historians, Perrin, Leger, Muston, Monastier, etc. In the Nobla laiczon (=lectio), e.g. a religious doctrinal poem, in the statement of vv. 6, 7, that since the origin of the New Testament writings 1,400 years had passed (mil e 4 cent anz) the figure 4 was erased, so that it might appear to be an ascertained fact that in A.D. 1100, seventy years before the appearance of Waldus, there were already Waldensian communities in existence. But when, in A.D. 1862, the Morland manuscripts, which had been lost for 200 years, were again discovered in Cambridge library, there was found among them a copy of the Nobla laiczon, in which before the word cent an erasure was observable, in which the outlines of the loop of the Arabic numeral 4 were still clearly discernible. In another piece contained in this collection the passage referred to was quoted as “mil e CCCC anz.” Hussite writings translated from the Bohemian were also palmed off as genuine Waldensian works of the earlier centuries, and were in addition provided with the corresponding date. A manuscript of the New Testament at Zürich was assigned to the 12th century; but on more careful scrutiny it was shown that the writer must have had before him the Greek Testament of Erasmus. But the most glaring case of falsification is seen in the “Waldensian Confession of Faith,” first adduced by Perrin as evidence of the faith of the old Waldensians, to which a later hand had ascribed as the date of its composition the year 1120. It copies almost word for word the utterances of Bucer as given in Morel’s report of his negotiations with that divine and Œcolampadius. In this way a new stamp has been put upon the doctrinal articles of the old Waldensians.320

§ 108.15.

5. The Lombard-German Branch.―In regard to the Lombards themselves, since the epistle of Bergamo we have only scanty reports, and these are found in the treatise of Monata, of 1240, Adv. Catharos et Valdenses, and in the Summa de Catharis et Leonistis of the Dominican inquisitor Rainerius Sacchoni, of 1250. We have ampler accounts, however, from their German mission-field, which had already extended so far as to stretch from the Rhine provinces into Austria. From the time of the unsuccessful endeavours at Bergamo to effect a union between the two principal groups, there was, so far as we are aware, no further intercourse between the two. On the other hand, the German Waldensians during the 13th and 14th centuries maintained a pretty regular communication with their Italian brethren.―In general, too, the Lombards continued, along with their German offspring, to hold firmly by the fundamental tenets of the primitive Waldensian faith. Their preaching brothers and sisters were also called in Germany Meister (magistri) and Meïsterinnen, the men also Apostles and Twelve-Apostles, or, since also there, next to preaching, they had as their most essential and important spiritual function the administration of the sacrament of penance, Beichtiger (bihter), confessors. The view that had been already so vigorously maintained at Bergamo, that a priest guilty of mortal sin, and such in their eyes were all Catholic priests, could not efficaciously administer any sacrament, led them naturally to assume a much freer attitude toward the Catholic church, which summed itself up in the radical principle, that everything connected with that church which cannot be shown from the New Testament to have been expressly taught and enjoined by Christ or His apostles, is to be set aside as an unevangelical human addition. This position however was insisted upon by them less in criticism and confutation of the church doctrine than in opposition to the practices of the church as a whole. In consequence of this criticism, they, transcending far the mere negations of the French, rejected not only all church festivals, beyond the simple Sunday festival, not only all processions and pilgrimages, all ceremonies, candles, incense, holy water, images, liturgical dress and cloths, all consecrations and blessing of churches, bells, burying grounds, candles, ashes, palms, robes, salt, water, etc., but also the centre and climax of all Catholic worship, the mass; not only of purgatory and everything in church practice that had sprung from it, not only ban and interdict, but also invocation of saints, image and relic worship, etc. Yet all the masters did not go equally far in this negative direction. Especially during the second half of the 13th century a remarkable reaction set in against the severity and exclusiveness of that negation, because increasing persecution obliged them to withdraw into secrecy as much as possible with their confession and their specifically Waldensian forms of worship, or to suspend their services altogether, and indeed, to save themselves from the suspicion of heresy, to allow to themselves and their lay adherents liberty to engage in the services of the Catholic church, and to submit to the indispensable demands of the church, such as the attendance at mass, making confession, and taking the communion at Easter. They held indeed firmly by the principle, Quod sacerdos in mortali peccato sacramentum non possit conficere, but they comforted themselves by the assurance already expressed at Bergamo, that the Lord Himself directly gives to the worthy communicant who, in case of need, receives the sacrament from the hand of an unworthy priest, what by him cannot be communicated, for the transubstantiation is effected not in manu indigne conficientis, but in ore digne sumentis. Thus during the times of oppression they kept their own observance of the supper quite in abeyance, the dispensation of which was not among them, as among the French, restricted to the masters; but on this account they laid all the greater weight on the necessity of confession to their own clergy as those who could alone give absolution. Also the prohibition of all oaths as well as bloodshedding, therefore also of military service, and the acceptance of magisterial and judicial offices, was strictly adhered to.―A peculiar adaptation of the Roman Catholic tradition of the baptism and donation of Constantine, which seems to have found no acceptance among the French, became a favourite legend among all the Lombard and German Waldensians. According to it the ancient church had existed for three hundred years in apostolic humility, simplicity, and poverty. But when the Roman bishop Sylvester was endowed by the emperor Constantine the Great with such superabundance of worldly might, riches, and honour, the period of general decline from the apostolic pattern set in. Only one of his fellow clergy protested, and was, when all enticements and threatenings proved of no avail, driven away along with his adherents. The latter increased and spread by-and-by over the earth. After a violent persecution, which had almost cut off all of them, Peter Waldus made his appearance with his companion, John of Lyons, as the restorer of the apostolic life and calling, etc. To this there was subsequently attached another legend. The brethren had previously based their right to discharge all priestly functions with the greatest confidence simply on their apostolic life, and so they could not conceal from themselves at a later period the fact that the want of continued apostolic succession, on which the Catholic church rested the claims of their priests, would place the Waldensian masters very much in the shade as compared with the Catholics. They began, therefore, not only to claim that their founder Waldus had been previously a Roman presbyter, but also to devise the fable of a bishop or even a cardinal of the Romish church, through whose favour that defect had been overcome.―Continuation, § 119, 9.

§ 108.16.

6. Relations between the Waldensians and Older and Contemporary Sects.―Owing to the extraordinarily lively and zealous propagandist activity of the sects at the time of the origin and early development of the Waldensian movement, there can scarcely be a doubt that the latter, after it had freed itself from all obligation of obedience to the pope and bishops, and had been driven out by them, must at various points have come into close relations with the other sects which, like it, had risen in rebellion against the papacy and the hierarchy, and like it had been persecuted by these. The numerous sect of the Cathari holds a conspicuous position in this connection. That Waldus and his companions must have decidedly repudiated the dualistic principles which all these otherwise greatly diverging Catharist sects had in common is indeed quite self-evident; but this by no means prevented them from recognising and appropriating such particular institutions, forms of organization or modes of worship, peculiar moral requirements, etc., practised by them as might seem fitted to further their own ends. And that this actually was done, many noticeable points of agreement between the two plainly indicate. Thus on both sides we find a similar division of members, the Perfecti and Credentes corresponding to the Fratres and Amici, and the kind of spiritual care which the former took of the latter, the grace at table said by the itinerant preachers, the importance attached to the possession and use of bread that had been blessed by the brethren, the frequent use by both of the Lord’s Prayer, the rejection of purgatory and everything connected therewith, also the prohibition of swearing and of military service, the refusal of the magisterial jus gladii, etc. On the other hand, however, it is more than probable that at last the remnants of the Cathari which escaped the Inquisition in great part had found refuge among the Waldensians in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, and there became assimilated and amalgamated with them (§ 119, 9A).―Further, the assumption that the Lombard Waldensians had first reached the principle by which they are distinguished from their French brethren, about the incapacity of unworthy priests for dispensing the sacraments, from outside influences, perhaps from the Arnoldists, is raised almost to a certainty by the statement made by their deputies at Bergamo in A.D. 1218, that they had even themselves in earlier times held the opposite view.―Even the pantheistic tendency of an Amalrich and the Brethren of the New Spirit may have found entrance among the German Waldensians, and have there given origin to the sect of the Ortlibarians.

§ 109.1. The Albigensian Crusade, A.D. 1209-1229.―Toward the end of the 12th century sects abounded in the south of France. Innocent III. regarded them as worse than the Saracens, and in A.D. 1203 sent a legate, Peter of Castelnau, with full powers to secure their extermination. But Peter was murdered in A.D. 1208, and suspicion fell on Raymond IV., Count of Toulouse. A crusade under Simon de Montfort was now summoned against the sectaries, who as mainly inhabiting the district of Albigeois were now called Albigensians. A twenty years’ war was carried on with mad fanaticism and cruelty on both sides, in which guilty and innocent, men, women, and children were ruthlessly slain. At the sack of Beziers with 20,000 inhabitants the papal legate cried, “Slay all, the Lord will know how to seek out and save His own.”321

§ 109.2. The Inquisition.―Every one screening a heretic forfeited lands, goods, and office; a house in which such a one was discovered was levelled to the ground; all citizens had to communicate thrice a year, and every second year to renew their oath of attachment to the church, and to refuse all help in sickness to those suspected of heresy, etc. The bishops not showing themselves zealous enough in enforcing these laws, Gregory IX. in A.D. 1232 founded the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and placed it in the hands of the Dominicans. These as Domini canes subjected to the most cruel tortures all on whom the suspicion of heresy fell, and all the resolute were handed over to the civil authorities, who readily undertook their execution.322―Continuation § 117, 2.

§ 109.3. Conrad of Marburg and the Stedingers.―The first Inquisitor of Germany, the Dominican Conrad of Marburg, also known as the severe confessor of St. Elizabeth (§ 105, 3), after a three years’ career of cruelty was put to death by certain of the nobles in A.D. 1233. Et sic, say the Annals of Worms, divino auxilio liberata est Teutonia ab isto judicio enormi et inaudito. He was enrolled by Gregory IX. among the martyrs. Perhaps wrongly he has been blamed for Gregory’s crusade of A.D. 1234 against the Stedingers. These were Frisians of Oldenburg who revolted against the oppression of nobles and priests, refused socage and tithes, and screened Albigensian heretics. The first crusade failed; the second succeeded and plundered, murdered, and burned on every hand. Thousands of the unhappy peasants were slain, neither women nor children were spared, and all prisoners were sent to the stake as heretics.

§ 110.1. Boniface VIII. and Benedict XI., A.D. 1294-1304.―Boniface VIII., A.D. 1294-1303 (§ 96, 22), was not inferior to his great predecessor in political talents and strength of will, but was destitute of all spiritual qualities and without any appreciation of the spiritual functions of the papal chair, while passionately maintaining the most extravagant claims of the hierarchy. The opposition to the pope was headed by two cardinals of the powerful Colonna family, who maintained that the abdication of Cœlestine V. was invalid. In A.D. 1297 Boniface stripped them of all their dignities, and then they appealed to an œcumenical council as a court of higher jurisdiction. The pope now threatened them and their supporters with the ban, fitted out a crusade against them, and destroyed their castles. At last after a sore struggle Palæstrina, the old residence of their family, capitulated. Also the Colonnas themselves submitted. Nevertheless in A.D. 1299 he had the famous old city and all its churches and palaces levelled to the ground, and refused to restore to the outlawed family its confiscated estates. Then again the Colonnas took up arms, but were defeated and obliged to fly the country, while the pope forbade under threat of the ban any city or realm to give refuge or shelter to the fugitives. But neither his anathema nor his army was able to keep the rebellious Sicilians under papal dominion. Even in his first contest with the French king, Philip IV. the Fair, A.D. 1285-1314, he had the worst of it. The pope had vainly sought to mediate between Philip and Edward I. of England, when both were using church property in carrying on war with one another, and in A.D. 1295 he issued the bull Clericis laicos, releasing subjects from their allegiance and anathematizing all laymen who should appropriate ecclesiastical revenues and all priests who should put them to uses not sanctioned by the pope. Philip then forbade all payment of church dues, and the pope finding his revenues from France withheld, made important concessions in A.D. 1297 and canonized Philip’s grandfather, Louis IX. His hierarchical assumptions in Germany gave promise of greater success. After the first Hapsburger’s death in A.D. 1291, his son Albert was set aside, and Adolf, Count of Nassau, elected king; but he again was overthrown and Albert I. crowned in A.D. 1298. Boniface summoned Albert to his tribunal as a traitor and murderer of the king, and released the German princes from their oaths of allegiance to him. Meanwhile, during A.D. 1301, Boniface and Philip were quarrelling over vacant benefices in France. The king haughtily repudiated the pretensions of the papal legate and imprisoned him as a traitor. Boniface demanded his immediate liberation, summoned the French bishops to a council at Rome, and in the bull Ausculta fili showed the king how foolish, sinful, and heretical it was for him not to be subject to the pope. The bull torn from the messenger’s hands was publicly burnt, and a version of it probably falsified published throughout the kingdom along with the king’s reply. All France rose in revolt against the papal pretensions, and a parliament at Notre Dame in Paris A.D. 1302, at which the king assembled the three estates of the empire, the nobles, the clergy, and (for the first time) the citizens, it was unanimously resolved to support Philip and to write in that spirit to Rome, the bishops undertaking to pacify the pope, the nobles and citizens making their complaint to the cardinals. The king expressly forbade his clergy taking any part in the council that had been summoned, which, however, met in the Lateran, in Nov., 1302. From it Boniface issued the famous bull Unam Sanctam, in which, after the example of Innocent III. and Gregory IX., he set forth the doctrine of the two swords, the spiritual wielded by the church and the temporal for the church, by kings and warriors indeed, but only according to the will and by the permission of the spiritual ruler. That the temporal power is independent was pronounced a Manichæan heresy; and finally it was declared that no human being could be saved unless he were subject to the Roman pontiff. King and parliament now accused the pope of heresy, simony, blasphemy, sorcery, tyranny, immorality, etc., and insisted that he should answer these charges before an œcumenical council. Meanwhile, in A.D. 1303, Boniface was negotiating with king Albert, and got him not only to break his league with Philip, but also to acknowledge himself a vassal of the papal see. The pope had all his plans laid for launching his anathema against Philip, but their execution was anticipated by the king’s assassins. His chancellor Nogaret and Sciarra, one of the exiled Colonnas, who, with the help of French gold, had hatched a conspiracy among the barons, attacked the papal palace and took the pope prisoner while he sat in full state upon his throne. The people indeed rescued him, but he died some weeks after in a raging fever in his 80th year. Dante assigns him a place in hell. In the mouth of his predecessor Cœlestine V. have been put the prophetic words, Ascendisti ut vulpes, regnatis ut leo, morieris ut canis.324 His successor Benedict XI., A.D. 1303, 1304, would have willingly avenged the wrongs of Boniface, but weak and unsupported as he was he soon found himself obliged, not only to withdraw all imputations against Philip, who always maintained his innocence, but also to absolve those of the Colonnas who were less seriously implicated.

§ 110.2. The Papacy during the Babylonian Exile, A.D. 1305-1377.―After a year’s vacancy the papal chair was filled by Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a determined supporter of Boniface, who took the name of Clement V., A.D. 1305-1314. He refused to go to be enthroned at Rome, and forced the cardinals to come to Lyons, and finally, in A.D. 1309, formally removed the papal court to Avignon, which then belonged to the king of Naples as Count of Provence. At this time, too, Clement so far yielded to Philip’s wish to have Boniface condemned and struck out of the list of popes, as to appoint two commissions to consider charges against Boniface, one in France and the other in Italy. Most credible witnesses accused the deceased pope of heresies, crimes, and immoralities committed in word and deed mostly in their presence, while the rebutting evidence was singularly weak. A compromise was effected by Clement surrendering the Templars to the greedy and revengeful king. In the bull Rex gloriæ of A.D. 1311 he expressly declares that Philip’s proceeding against Boniface was bona fide, occasioned by zeal for church and country, cancels all Boniface’s decrees and censures upon the French king and his servants, and orders them to be erased from the archives. The 15th œcumenical Council of Vienne in A.D. 1311 was mainly occupied with the affairs of the Templars, and also with the consideration of the controversies in the Franciscan order (§ 112, 2).―Henry VII. of Luxemburg was raised to the German throne on Albert’s death in A.D. 1208 in opposition to Philip’s brother Charles. Clement supported him and crowned him emperor, hoping to be protected by him from Philip’s tyranny. At Milan in A.D. 1311 Henry received the iron crown of Lombardy; but at Rome the imperial coronation was effected in A.D. 1312, not in St. Peter’s, the inner city being held by Robert of Naples, papal vassal and governor of Italy, but only in the Lateran at the hands of the cardinals commissioned to do so. The emperor now, in spite of all papal threats, pronounced the ban of the empire against Robert, and in concert with Frederick of Sicily entered on a campaign against Naples, but his sudden death in A.D. 1313 (according to an unsupported legend caused by a poisoned host) put an end to the expedition. Clement also died in the following year; and to him likewise has Dante assigned a place in hell.

§ 110.3. After two years’ murderous strife between the Italian and French cardinals, the French were again victorious, and elected at Lyons John XXII., A.D. 1316-1334, son of a shoemaker of Cahors in Gascony, who was already seventy-two years old. He is said to have sworn to the Italians never to use a horse or mule but to ride to Rome, and then to have taken ship on the Rhone for Avignon, where during his eighteen years’ pontificate he never went out of his palace except to go into the neighbouring cathedral. Working far into the night, this seemingly weak old man was wont to devote all his time to his studies and his business. The weight of his official duties will be seen from the fact that 60,000 minutes, filling 59 vols. in the papal archives, belong to his reign.―In Germany, after the death of Henry VII. there were two rivals for the throne, Louis IV. the Bavarian, A.D. 1314-1347, and Frederick III. of Austria. The pope, maintaining the closest relations with Robert of Anjou, his feudatory as king of Naples and his protector as Count of Provence, and esteeming his wish as a command, refused to acknowledge either, declared the German throne still vacant, and assumed to himself the administration of the realm during the vacancy. At Mühldorf in A.D. 1322 Louis conquered his opponent and took him prisoner. He sent a detachment of Ghibellines over the Alps, while he made himself master of Milan and put an end to the papal administration in Northern Italy. The pope in A.D. 1323 ordered him within three months to cease discharging all functions of government till his election as German king should be acknowledged and confirmed by the papal chair. Louis first endeavoured to come to an understanding with the pope, but soon employed the sharp pens of the Minorites, who in May, 1324, drew up a solemn protest in which the king, basing his claims to royalty solely on the election of the princes and treating the pope as one who had forfeited his chair in consequence of his heresies (§ 112, 2), appealed from this false pope to an œcumenical council and a future legitimate pope. John now thundered an anathema against him, declared that he was deprived of all his dignities, freed his subjects from their allegiance, forbade them, under pain of anathema, to obey him, and summoned all European potentates to war against the excommunicated monarch. Louis now sought Frederick’s favour, and in A.D. 1325 shared with him the royal dignity. In Milan in A.D. 1327 he was crowned king of Lombardy, and in A.D. 1328 in Rome he received the imperial crown from the Roman democracy. Two bishops of the Ghibelline party gave him consecration, and the crown was laid on his head by Sciarra Colonna in the name of the Roman people. In vain did the pope pronounce all these proceedings null and void. The king began a process against the pope, deposed him as a heretic and antichrist, and finally condemned him to death as guilty of high treason, while the mob carried out this sentence by burning the pope in effigy upon the streets. The people and clergy of Rome, in accordance with an old canon, elected a new pope in the person of a pious Minorite of the sect of the Spirituales (§ 112, 2), who took the name of Nicholas V. Louis with his own hand placed the tiara on his head, and was then himself crowned by him. All this glory, however, was but short lived. An unsuccessful and inglorious war against Robert of Naples and a consequent revolt in Rome caused the emperor in A.D. 1328, with his army and his pope, amid the stonethrowing of the mob, to quit the eternal city, which immediately became subject to the curia. He did not fare much better in Tuscany or Lombardy; and thus the Roman expedition ended in failure. Returning to Munich, Louis endeavoured in vain amid many humiliations to move the determined old man at Avignon. But Nicholas V., the most wretched of all the anti-popes, went to Avignon with a rope about his neck in A.D. 1328, cast himself at the pope’s feet, was absolved, and died a prisoner in the papal palace in A.D. 1333. Next year John died. Notwithstanding the expensive Italian wars 25,000,000 gold guldens was found in the papal treasury at his death.―Roused by his opposition to the stricter party among the Franciscans (§ 112, 2), its leaders lent all their influence to the Bavarian and supported the charge of heresy against the pope. Against John’s favourite doctrine that the souls of departed saints attain to the vision of God only after the last judgment, these zealots cited the opinions of the learned world (§ 113, 3), with the University of Paris at its head. Philip VI. of France was also in the controversy one of his bitterest opponents, and even threatened him with the stake. Pressed on all sides the pope at last in A.D. 1333 convened a commission of scholars to decide the question, but died before its judgment was given. His successor hasted to still the tumult by issuing the story of a deathbed recantation, and gave ecclesiastical sanction to the opposing view.

§ 110.4. Benedict XII., A.D. 1334-1342, would probably have yielded to the urgent entreaties of the Romans to return to Rome had not his cardinals been so keenly opposed. He then built a palace at Avignon of imposing magnitude, as though the papacy were to have an eternal residence there. Louis the Bavarian retracted his heretical sentiments in order to get the ban removed and to obtain an orderly coronation. The first diet of the electoral union was held at Rhense near Mainz, in A.D. 1338, where it was declared that the election of a German king and emperor was, by God’s appointment, the sole privilege of the elector-princes, and needed not the confirmation or approval of the pope. This encouraged Louis to assert anew his imperial pretensions. Benedict’s successor Clement VI., A.D. 1342-1352, added by purchase in A.D. 1348 the city of Avignon to the county of Venaissin, which Philip III. had gifted to the papal chair in A.D. 1273. Both continued in the possession of the Roman court till A.D. 1791 (§ 165, 13). Louis, now at feud with some of the powerful German nobles, sought to make terms of peace with the new pope. But Clement was not conciliatory, and made the unheard of demand that Louis should not only annul all his previous ordinances, but also should in future issue no enactment in the empire without permission of the papal see; and on Maunday Thursday, A.D. 1346, he pronounced him without title or dignity and called upon the electors to make a new choice, which, if they failed to do, he would proceed to do himself. As fittest candidate he recommended Charles of Bohemia, who was actually chosen by the five electors who answered the summons, under the title of Charles IV., A.D. 1346-1378, and had his election confirmed by the pope. The new emperor solemnly promised never to set foot on the domains of the Roman church without express papal permission, and to remain in Rome only so long as was required for his coronation. Louis died before he was able to engage in war with his rival, and when, six months later, the next choice of Louis’ party also died, Charles was acknowledged without a dissentient voice. He was crowned emperor in Rome by a cardinal appointed by Innocent VI., in A.D. 1355. Without doing anything to restore the imperial prestige in Italy, Charles went back like a fugitive to Germany, despised by Guelphs and Ghibellines. But in the following year, at the Diet of Nuremberg, he passed a new imperial law in the so called Golden Bull of A.D. 1356, according to which the election of emperor was to be made at Frankfort, by three clerical electors (Mainz, Cologne, and Treves) and four temporal princes (Bohemia, the Palatine of the Rhine, Saxony, and Brandenburg), and he appeased the pope’s wrath by various concessions to the curia and the clergy.

§ 110.5. The famous Rienzi was made apostolic notary by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343, and as tribune of the people headed the revolt against the barons in A.D. 1347. Losing his popularity through his own extravagances he was obliged to flee, and being taken prisoner by Charles at Prague, he was sent to Avignon in A.D. 1350. Instead of the stake with which Clement had threatened him, Innocent VI., A.D. 1352-1362, bestowed senatorial rank upon him, and sent him to Rome, hoping that his demagogical talent would succeed in furthering the interests of the papacy. He now once more, amid loud acclamations, entered the eternal city, but after two months, hated and cursed as a tyrant, he was murdered in A.D. 1354, while attempting flight.―By A.D. 1367 things had so improved in Rome that, notwithstanding the opposition of king and court and the objections of luxurious cardinals unwilling to quit Avignon, Urban V., A.D. 1362-1370, in October of that year made a triumphal entrance into Rome amid the jubilations of the Romans. Charles’ Italian expedition of the following year was inglorious and without result. The disquiet and party strifes prevailing through the country made the position of the pope so uncomfortable, that notwithstanding the earnest entreaty of St. Bridget (§ 112, 8), who threatened him with the Divine judgment of an early death in France, he returned in A.D. 1370 to Avignon, where in ten weeks the words of the northern prophetess were fulfilled. His successor was Gregory XI., A.D. 1370-1378. Rome and the States of the Church had now again become the scene of the wildest anarchy, which Gregory could only hope to quell by his personal presence. The exhortations of the two prophetesses of the age, St. Bridget and St. Catherine (§ 112, 4), had a powerful influence upon him, but what finally determined him was the threat of the exasperated Romans to elect an anti-pope. And so in spite of the renewed opposition of the cardinals and the French court, the curia again returned to Rome in A.D. 1377; but though the rejoicing at the event throughout the city was great, the results were by no means what had been expected. Sick and disheartened, the pope was already beginning to speak of going back to Avignon, when his death in A.D. 1378 put an end to his cares and sufferings.

§ 110.6. The Papal Schism and the Council of Pisa.―Under pressure from the people the cardinals present in Rome almost unanimously chose the Neapolitan archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI., A.D. 1378-1389. His energies were mainly directed to the emancipating of the papal chair from French interference and checking the abuses introduced into the papal court during the Avignon residence; but the impatience and bitterness which he showed in dealing with the greed, pomp, and luxury of the cardinals roused them to choose another pope. After four months, they met at Fundi, declared that the choice of Urban had been made under compulsion, and was therefore invalid. In his place they elected a Frenchman, Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who was enthroned under the name of Clement VII., A.D. 1378-1394. The three Italians present protested against this proceeding and demanded, but in vain, the decision of a council. Thus began the greatest and most mischievous papal schism, A.D. 1378-1417. France, Naples, and Savoy at once, and Spain and Scotland somewhat later, declared in favour of Clement; while the rest of Western Europe acknowledged Urban. The two most famous saints of the age, St. Catherine and St. Vincent Ferrér (§ 115, 2), though both disciples of Dominic, took different sides, the former as an Italian favouring Urban, the latter as a Spaniard favouring Clement. Failing to secure a footing in Italy, Clement took possession of the papal castle at Avignon in A.D. 1379. The schism lasted for forty years, during which time Boniface IX., A.D. 1389-1404, Innocent VII., A.D. 1404-1406, and Gregory XII., A.D. 1406-1415, elected by the cardinals in Rome, held sway there in succession, while at Avignon on Clement’s death his place was taken by the Spanish cardinal Pedro de Luna as Benedict XIII., A.D. 1394-1424. The Council of Paris of A.D. 1395 recommended the withdrawal of both popes and a new election, but Benedict insisted upon a decision by a two-thirds majority in favour of one or other of the two rivals. An œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1409, dominated mainly by the influence of Gerson (§ 118, 4), who maintained that the authority of the councils is superior to that of the pope, made short work with both contesting popes, whom it pronounced contumacious and deposed. After the cardinals present had bound themselves by an oath that whosoever of them might be chosen should not dissolve the council until a reform of the church in its head and members should be carried out, they elected a Greek of Candia in his seventieth year, Cardinal Philangi, who was consecrated as Alexander V., A.D. 1409-1410, and for three years the council continued to sit without effecting any considerable reforms. The consequence was that the world had the edifying spectacle of three contemporary popes anathematizing one another.

§ 110.7. The Council of Constance and Martin V.―Alexander V. died after a reign of ten months by poison administered, as was supposed, by Balthasar Cossa, resident cardinal legate and absolute military despot, suspected of having been in youth engaged in piracy. Cossa succeeded, as John XXIII., A.D. 1410-1415. He was acknowledged by the new Roman king, Sigismund, A.D. 1411-1437, and soon afterwards, in A.D. 1412, by Ladislas [Ladislaus] of Naples, so that Gregory XII. was thus deprived of his last support. The University of Paris continued to demand the holding of a council to effect reforms. Sigismund, supported by the princes, insisted on its being held in a German city. Meanwhile Ladislas [Ladislaus] had quarrelled with the pope, and had overrun the States of the Church and plundered Rome in A.D. 1413, and John was obliged to submit to Sigismund’s demands, He now summoned the 16th œcumenical Council of Constance, A.D. 1414-1418 (§ 119, 5). It was the most brilliant and the most numerously attended council ever held. More than 18,000 priests and vast numbers of princes, counts, and knights, with an immense following; in all about 100,000 strangers, including thousands of harlots from all countries, and hordes of merchants, artisans, showmen, and players of every sort. Gerson and D’Ailly, the one representing European learning, the other the claims of the Gallican church (§ 118, 4), were the principal advisers of the council. The decision to vote not individually but by nations (Italian, German, French, and English) destroyed the predominance of the Italian prelates, who as John’s creatures were present in great numbers. Terrified by an anonymous accusation, which charged the pope with the most heinous crimes, he declared himself ready to withdraw if the other two popes would also resign, but took advantage of the excitement of a tournament to make his escape disguised as an ostler. Sigismund could with difficulty keep the now popeless council together. John, however, was captured, seventy-two serious charges formulated against him, and on 26th July, A.D. 1415, he was deposed and condemned to imprisonment for life. He was given up to the Count Palatine Louis of Baden, who kept him prisoner in Mannheim, and afterwards in Heidelberg. Meanwhile the leader of an Italian band making use of the name of Martin V. purchased his release with 3,000 ducats. He now submitted himself to that pope, and was appointed by him cardinal-bishop of Tuscoli, and dean of the sacred college, but soon afterwards died in Florence, in A.D. 1419. Gregory XII. also submitted in A.D. 1415, and was made cardinal-bishop of Porto. Benedict, however, retired to Spain and refused to come to terms, but even the Spanish princes withdrew their allegiance from him as pope. The cardinals in conclave elected the crafty Oddo Colonna, who was consecrated as Martin V., A.D. 1417-1431. There was no more word of reformation. With great pomp the council was closed, and indulgence granted to its members. As the whole West now recognised Martin as the true pope the schism may be said to end with his accession, though Benedict continued to thunder anathemas from his strong Spanish castle till his death in A.D. 1424, and three of his four cardinals elected as his successor Clement VIII. and the fourth another Benedict XIV. Of the latter no notice was taken, but Clement submitted in A.D. 1429, and received the bishopric of Majorca.―Martin V. on entering Rome in A.D. 1420 found everything in confusion and desolate. By his able administration a change was soon effected, and the Rome of the Renaissance rose on the ruins of the mediæval city.325

§ 110.8. Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basel.―Martin V. commissioned Cardinal Julian Cesarini to look after the Hussite controversy in the Basel Council, A.D. 1431-1449. His successor Eugenius IV., A.D. 1431-1447, confirmed this appointment. After thirteen months he ordered the council to meet at Bologna, finding the heretical element too strong in Germany. The members, however, unanimously refused to obey. Sigismund, too, protested, and the council claimed to be superior to the pope. The withdrawal of the bull within sixty days was insisted upon. As a compromise, the pope offered to call a new council, not at Bologna, but at Basel. This was declined and the pope threatened with deposition. A rebellion, too, broke out in the States of the Church; and in A.D. 1433 Eugenius was completely humbled and obliged to acquiesce in the demands of the council. One danger was thus averted, but he was still threatened by another. In A.D. 1434 Rome proclaimed itself a republic and the pope fled to Florence. The success of the democracy, however, was now again of but short duration. In five months Rome was once more under the dominion of the pope. Negotiations for union with the Greeks were begun by the pope at Ferrara A.D. 1438. A small number of Italians under the presidency of the pope here assumed the offices of an œcumenical council, those at Basel being ordered to join them, the Basel Council being suspended, and the continuance of that council being pronounced schismatical. Julian, now styled “Julianus Apostata II.,” with almost all the cardinals, betook himself to Ferrara. Under the able cardinal Louis d’Aleman (§ 118, 4), archbishop of Arles, some still continued the proceedings of the council at Basel, but in consequence of a pestilence they moved, in A.D. 1439, to Florence. A union with the Greeks was here effected, at least upon paper. The Basel Council banned by the pope, deposed him, and in A.D. 1439 elected a new pope in the person of Duke Amadeus of Savoy, who on his wife’s death had resigned his crown to his son and entered a monkish order. He called himself Felix V. Princes and people, however, were tired of rival papacies. Felix got little support, and the council itself soon lost all its power. Its ablest members one after another passed over to the party of Eugenius. In A.D. 1449 Felix resigned, and died in the odour of sanctity two years afterwards.326

§ 110.9. Only Charles VII. of France took advantage of the reforming decree of Basel for the benefit of his country. He assembled the most distinguished churchmen and scholars of his kingdom at Bourges, and with their concurrence published, in A.D. 1438, twenty-three of the conclusions of Basel that bore on the Gallican liberties under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, and made it a law of his realm. For the rest he maintained an attitude of neutrality towards both popes, as also shortly before the electors convened at Frankfort had done. Those assembled at the Diet of Mainz in A.D. 1439 recognised the reforming edicts of Basel as applying to Germany. Frederick IV., A.D. 1439-1493, who as emperor is known as Frederick III., under the influence of the cunning Italian Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (§ 118, 6), though at first in the opposition, went over to the side of Eugenius IV. in A.D. 1446 upon receiving 100,000 guldens for the expenses of an expedition to Rome and certain ecclesiastical privileges for his Austrian subjects. Some weeks later the electors of Frankfort took the same steps, stipulating that Eugenius should recognise the decrees of the Council of Constance and the reforming decrees of Basel, and should promise to convene a new free council in a German city to bring the schism to an end, which if he failed to do they would quit him in favour of Basel. But at the diet, held in September of that year at Frankfort, the legates of the pope and of the king succeeded by diplomatic arts in coming to an understanding with the electors met at Mainz. Thus it happened that in the so-called Frankfort Concordat of the Princes a compromise was effected, which Eugenius confirmed in A.D. 1447, with a careful explanation to the effect that none of these concessions in any way infringed upon the rights and privileges of the Holy See. In the following year Frederick in name of the German nation concluded with Eugenius’ successor, Nicholas V., the Concordat of Vienna, A.D. 1448. The advantages gained by the German church were quite insignificant. Frederick received imperial rank as reward for the betrayal of his country, and was crowned in Rome, in A.D. 1452, as the last German emperor.

§ 110.10. Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Pius II., A.D. 1447-1464.―With Nicholas V., A.D. 1447-1455, a miracle of classical scholarship and founder of the Vatican Library, the Roman see for the first time became the patron of humanistic studies, and under this mild and liberal pope the secular government of Rome was greatly improved. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, in A.D. 1453, produced excitement throughout the whole of Europe. The eloquence of the pope roused the crusading spirit of Christendom, and oratorical appeals were thundered from the pulpits of all churches and cathedrals. But the princes remained cold and indifferent. After Nicholas, a Spaniard, the cardinal Alphonso Borgia, then in his seventy-seventh year, was raised to the papal chair as Calixtus III., A.D. 1455-1458. Hatred of Turks and love of nephews were the two characteristics of the man. Yet he could not rouse the princes against the Turks, and the fleet fitted out at his own cost only plundered a few islands in the Archipelago. Calixtus’ successor was Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the able and accomplished apostate from the Basel reform party, who styled himself, with intended allusion to Virgil’s “pius Æneas,” Pius II., A.D. 1458-1464. The pope’s Ciceronian eloquence failed to secure the attendance of princes at the Mantuan Congress, summoned in A.D. 1459 to take steps for the equipment of a crusade. A war against the Turks was indeed to have been undertaken by emperor Frederick III., and a tax was to have been levied on Christians and Jews for its cost; but neither tax nor crusade was forthcoming. Pius demanded of the French ambassadors a formal repudiation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and when they threatened the calling of an œcumenical council, he issued the bull Execrabilis, which pronounced “the execrable and previously unheard of” enormity of an appeal to a council to be heresy and treason. In A.D. 1461 the pope, by a long epistle, attempted the conversion of Mohammed II., the powerful conqueror of Constantinople. As the discovery of the great alum deposit at Rome in A.D. 1462 was attributed to miraculous direction, the pope was led to devote its rich resources to the fitting out of a crusade against the Turks. He wished himself to lead the army in person, in order to secure victory by uplifted hands, like Moses in the war with Amalek. But here again the princes left him in the lurch. Coming to Ancona in A.D. 1464 to take ship there upon his great undertaking, only his own two galleys were waiting him. After long weary waiting, twelve Venetian ships arrived, just in time to see the pope prostrated with fever and excitement.

§ 110.11. Paul II., Sixtus IV. and Innocent VII., A.D. 1464-1492.―Among the popes of the last forty years of the 15th century Paul II., A.D. 1464-1471, was the best, though vain, sensual, greedy, fond of show, and extravagant. He was impartial in the administration of justice, free from nepotism, and always ready to succour the needy. His successor, Sixtus IV., A.D. 1471-1484, formerly Franciscan general, was one of the most wicked of the occupants of the chair of Peter. His appeal for an expedition against the Turks finding no response outside of Italy, his love of strife found gratification in fomenting internal animosities among the Italian states. In favour of a nephew he sought the overthrow in A.D. 1478 of the famous Medici family in Florence. Julian was murdered, but Lorenzo escaped, and the archbishop, as abettor of the crime, was hanged in his official robes. The pope placed the city under ban and interdict. It was only the conquest of Otranto in A.D. 1480, and the terror caused by the landing of the Turks in Italy, that moved him to make terms with Florence. His nepotism was most shamelessly practised, and he increased his revenues by taxing the brothels of Rome. His powerful government did something towards the improvement of the administration of justice in the Church States and his love of art beautified the city. In A.D. 1482 Andrew, archbishop of Crain, a Slav by birth and of the Dominican order, halted at Basel on his return from Rome, where he had been as ambassador for Frederick, and, with the support of the Italian league and the emperor, issued violent invectives against the pope, and summoned an œcumenical council for the reform of the church in its head and members. The pope ordered his arrest and extradition, but this the municipal authorities refused. After a volley of bulls and briefs, charges and appeals, and after innumerable embassies and negotiations between Basel, Vienna, Innsbrück, Florence, and Rome, in which the emperor abandoned the archbishop and the papal legates dangled an interdict over Basel, the authorities decided to imprison the objectionable prelate, but refused to deliver him up. After eleven months’ imprisonment, however, he was found hanged in his cell in A.D. 1484. Sixtus had died three months before and Basel was absolved by his successor Innocent VIII., A.D. 1484-1492. In character and ability he was far inferior to his predecessor. The number of illegitimate children brought by him to the Vatican gave occasion to the popular witticism: “Octo Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas, Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem.” The mighty conqueror of half the world, Mohammed II., had died in A.D. 1481. His two sons contested for the throne, and Bajazet proving successful committed the guardianship of his brother to the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. The Grandmaster transferred his prisoner, in A.D. 1489, to the pope. Innocent rewarded him with a cardinalate, and Bajazet promised the pope not only continual peace, but a yearly tribute of 40,000 ducats. He also voluntarily presented his holiness with the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side. All this, however, did not prevent the pope from repeatedly but ineffectually seeking to rouse Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. To this pope also belongs the odium of familiarizing Europe with witch prosecutions (§ 117, 4).327

§ 110.12. Alexander VI., A.D. 1492-1503.―The Spanish cardinal Roderick Borgia, sister’s son of Calixtus III., purchased the tiara by bribing his colleagues. In him as Alexander VI. we have a pope whose government presents a scene of unparalleled infamy, riotous immorality, and unmentionable crimes, of cruel despotism, fraud, faithlessness, and murder, and a barefaced nepotism, such as even the city of the popes had never witnessed before. He had already before his election five children by a concubine, Rosa Vanossa, four sons and one daughter, Lucretia, and his one care was for their advancement. His favourite son was Giovanni, for whom while cardinal he had purchased the rank of a Spanish grandee, with the title Duke of Gandia, and when pope he bestowed on him, in A.D. 1497, the hereditary dukedom of Benevento. But eight days after his corpse with dagger wounds upon it was taken out of the Tiber. The pope exclaimed, “I know the murderer.” Suspicion fell first upon Giovanni Sforsa of Pesaro, Lucretia’s husband, who had charged the murdered man with committing incest with his sister, but afterwards upon Cardinal Cæsar Borgia, the pope’s second son, who was jealous of his brother because of the favour shown him by Lucretia and by her father. Alexander’s grief knew no bounds, but sought escape from it by redoubled love to the suspected son. In A.D. 1498 the papal bastard resigned the cardinalate as an intolerable burden, married a French princess, and was made hereditary duke of Romagna. Suddenly at the same time, and in the same manner, in A.D. 1503, father and son took ill. The father died after a few days, but the vigour of youth aided the son’s recovery. Cæsar Borgia was at a later period cast into prison by Julius II., and fell in A.D. 1507 in the service of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. It was generally believed that Alexander died of poisoned wine prepared by his son to secure the removal of a rich cardinal. The father as well as the two brothers were suspected of incest with Lucretia. This pope, too, did not hesitate to intrigue with the Turkish sultan against Charles VIII. of France. With unexampled assumption, during the contention of Portugal and Spain about the American discoveries, he presented Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1493 with all islands and continents that had been discovered or might yet be discovered lying beyond a line of demarcation drawn from the North to the South Pole. Once only, when grieving over the death of his favourite son, had this pope a twinge of conscience. He had resolved, he said, to devote himself to his spiritual calling and secure a reform in church discipline. But when the commission appointed for this purpose presented its first reform proposals the momentary emotion had already passed away. Nothing was further from his thought than the calling of an œcumenical council, which not only the king of France, but also the Florentine reformer Savonarola demanded (§ 119, 11).

§ 110.13. Julius II., A.D. 1503-1513.―Alexander’s successor, Pius III., son of a sister of Pius II., died after a twenty-six days’ pontificate. He was followed by a nephew of Sixtus IV., a bitter enemy of the Borgias, who took the name of Julius II. He was essentially a warrior, with nothing of the priest about him. He was also a lover of art, and carried on the works which his uncle had begun. His youthful excesses had seriously impaired his health. As pope, he was not free from nepotism and simony, in controversy passionate, and in policy intriguing and faithless. He transformed the States of the Church into a temporal despotic monarchy, and was himself incessantly engaged in war. When he broke with France, which held Milan from A.D. 1499 with Alexander’s consent, Louis XII., A.D. 1498-1515, convened a French national council at Tours in A.D. 1510. This council renewed the Pragmatic Sanction, which in a weak hour Louis XI., in A.D. 1462, had abrogated, and had in consequence obtained, in A.D. 1469, the title Rex Christianissimus, and refused to obey the pope. Also Maximilian I., A.D. 1493-1519, who even without papal coronation called himself “elected Roman emperor,” directed the learned humanist Wimpfeling of Heidelberg to collect the gravamina of the Germans against the Roman curia, and to sketch out a Pragmatic Sanction for Germany. France and Germany, with five revolting cardinals, convoked an œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1511. Half in sport, half in earnest, Maximilian spoke of placing on his own head the tiara, as well as the imperial crown. The pope put Pisa, where only a few French prelates ventured, under an interdict, and anathematized the king of France, who then had medals cast, with the inscription, Perdam Babylonis nomen. In a murderous battle at Ravenna, in A.D. 1512, the army of the papal league was all but annihilated. But two months later, the French, by the revolt of the Milanese and the successes of the Swiss, were driven to their homes ingloriously, and the schismatic council, which had been shifted from Pisa to Milan, had to withdraw to Lyons, where it was dissolved by the pope “on account of its many crimes.” Meanwhile the pope had summoned a council to meet at Rome, the fifth œcumenical Lateran Council, A.D. 1512-1517, at which however only fifty-three Italian bishops were present. There the ban upon the king of France was renewed, but a concordat was concluded with Maximilian, redressing the more serious grievances of which he had complained. The pope succeeded in freeing Northern Italy from French oppression, and only his early death prevented him from delivering Southern Italy from the Spanish yoke.

§ 110.14. Leo X., A.D. 1513-1521.―John, son of Lorenzo Medici, who was cardinal in A.D. 1488, in his eighteenth year, when thirty-eight years of age ascended the papal throne as Leo X.; a great patron of the Renaissance, but luxurious and pleasure-loving, extravagant and frivolous, without a spark of religion (§ 120, 1), and a zealous promoter of the fortunes of his own family. The attempt of Louis XII., with the help of Venice, to regain Milan failed, and being hard pressed in his own country by Henry VIII. of England, the French king decided at last, in Dec., 1513, to end the schism and recognise the Lateran Council. His successor, Francis I., A.D. 1515-1547, was more fortunate. In the battle of Marignano he gained a brilliant victory over the brave Swiss, in consequence of which the duchy of Milan fell again into the hands of France. At Bologna, in A.D. 1516, the pope in person now greeted the king, who proferred him obedience, and concluded a political league and an ecclesiastical concordat with his holiness, abrogating the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., but maintaining the king’s right to nominate all bishops and abbots of his realm, with reservation of the annats for the papal treasury. The Lateran Council, though attended only by Italian bishops, was pronounced œcumenical. During its five years’ sittings it had issued concordats for Germany and France, the papal bull Pastor æternus was solemnly ratified, which renewed the bull Unam sanctam and by various forgeries proved the power of the pope to be superior to the authority of councils, quieted the bishops’ objections to the privileges of the begging friars by a compromise, and as a protection against heresy gave the right of the censorship of the press to bishops, while explicitly asserting the immateriality, individuality, and immortality of the human soul.328

§ 110.15. Papal Claims to Sovereignty.―From A.D. 1319 the popes secured large revenues from the Annats, revenues for a full year of all vacancies; the Reservations, the holding of rich benefices and bestowing them upon payment of large sums; the Expectances, naming for payment a successor to an incumbent still living; the Offices held in commendam, provisionally on payment of a part of the incomes; the Jus spoliarum, the Holy See being the legitimate heir of all property gained by Churchmen from their offices; the Taxing of Church property for particularly pressing calls; innumerable Indulgences, Absolutions, Dispensations, etc. The happy thought occurred to Paul II., in A.D. 1469, to extend the law of Annats to such ecclesiastical institutions as belonged to corporations. He reckoned the lifetime of a prelate at fifteen years, and so claimed his tax of such institutions every fifteenth year. The doctrine of the papal infallibility in matters of faith, under the influence of the reforming councils of the 15th century, was rather less in favour than before. The rigid Franciscans opposed the papal doctrine of poverty (§§ 98, 4; 112, 2); and John XXII. was almost unanimously charged by his contemporaries with heresy, because of his views about the vision of God. Even the most zealous curialists of the 15th century did not venture to ascribe to the pope absolute infallibility. A distinction was made between the infallibility of the office, which is absolute, and that of the person, which is only relative; a pope who falls into error and heresy thereby ceases to be pope and infallible. This was the opinion of the Dominican Torquemada (§ 112, 4), whom Eugenius IV. rewarded at the Basel Council with a cardinalate and the title of Defensor fidei, as the most zealous defender of papal absolutism. From the 14th century the popes have worn the triple crown. The three tiers of the tiara, richly ornamented with precious stones, indicated the power of the pope over heaven by his canonizing, over purgatory by his granting of indulgences, and over the earth by his pronouncing anathemas. Until the papal court retired to Avignon the Lateran was the usual residence of the popes, and after the ending of the schism, the Vatican.329

§ 110.16. The Papal Curia.―The chief courts of the papal government are spoken of collectively as the curia, their members being taken from the higher clergy. The following are the most important: the Cancellaria Romana, to which belonged the administration of affairs pertaining to the pope and the college of cardinals; the Dataria Romana, which had to do with matters of grace not kept secret, such as absolutions, dispensations, etc.; while the Pœnitentiaria Romana dealt with matters which were kept secret; the Camera Romana, which administered the papal finances; and the Rota Romana, which was the supreme court of justice. Important decrees issued by the pope himself with the approval of the cardinals are called bulls. They are written on parchment in the Gothic character in Latin, stamped with the great seal of the Roman church, and secured in a metal case. The word bull was originally applied to the case, then to the seal, and at last to the document itself. Less important decrees, for which the advice of the cardinals had not been asked, are called briefs. The brief is usually written on parchment, in the ordinary Roman characters, and sealed in red wax with the pope’s private seal, the fisherman’s ring.

§ 111.1. The Moral Condition of the Clergy was in general very low. The bishops mostly lived in open concubinage. The lower secular clergy followed their example, and had toleration granted by paying a yearly tax to the bishop. The people, distinguishing office and person, made no objection, but rather looked on it as a sort of protection to their wives and daughters from the dangers of the confessional. Especially in Italy, unnatural vice was widely spread among the clergy. At Constance and Basel it was thought to cure such evils by giving permission to priests to marry; but it was feared that the ecclesiastical revenues would be made heritable, and the clergy brought too much under the State.―The mendicant orders were allowed to hear confession everywhere, and when John de Polliaco, a Prussian doctor, maintained that the local clergy only should be taken as confessors, John XXII., in A.D. 1322, pronounced his views heretical.

§ 111.2. The French concordat of A.D. 1516 (§ 110, 14), which gave the king the right of appointing commendator abbots (§ 85, 5), to almost all the cloisters, induced many of the younger sons of old noble families to take orders, so as to obtain rich sinecures or offices, which they could hold in commendam. They bore a semi-clerical character, and had the title of abbé, which gradually came to be given to all the secular clergy of higher culture and social position. In Italy too it became customary to give the title abbate to the younger clergy of high rank, before receiving ordination.

§ 112.1. The Benedictine Orders.―For the reorganization of this order, which had abandoned itself to good living and luxury, Clement V., at the Council of Vienna, A.D. 1311, issued a set of ordinances which aimed principally at the restoration of monastic discipline and the revival of learning among the monks. But they were of little or no avail. Benedict XII. therefore found it necessary, in A.D. 1336, with the co-operation of distinguished French abbots, to draw up a new constitution for the Benedictines, which after him was called the Benedictina. The houses of Black Friars were to be divided into thirty-six provinces, and each of them was to hold every third year a provincial chapter for conference and determination of cases. In each abbey there should be a daily penitential chapter for maintaining discipline, and an annual chapter for giving a reckoning of accounts. In order to reawaken interest in scientific studies, it was enjoined that from every cloister a number of the abler monks should be maintained at a university, at the cost of the cloister, to study theology and canon law. But the disciplinary prescriptions of the Benedictina were powerless before the attractions of good living, and the proposals for organization were repugnant to the proud independence of monks and abbots. The enactments in favour of scientific pursuits led to better results. The first really successful attempt at reforming the cloisters was made, in A.D. 1435, by the general chapter of the Brothers of the Common Life, who not only dealt with their own institutions, but also with all the Benedictine monasteries throughout the whole of the West. The soul of this movement was Joh. Busch, monk in Windesheim, then prior in various monasteries, and finally provost of Sulte, near Hildesheim, A.D. 1458-1479. The so called Bursfeld Union or Congregation resulted from his intercourse with the abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Bursfeld, on the Weser, John of Hagen (ab Andagine). Notwithstanding the bitter hostility of corrupt monks and nuns, there were in a short time seventy-five monasteries under this Bursfeld rule, where the original strictness of the monastic life was enforced. The rule was confirmed by the council of A.D. 1440, and subsequently by Pius II. Most of the cloisters under this rule joined the Lutheran reformation of the 16th century, and Bursfeld itself is at this day the seat of a titular Lutheran abbot.―A new branch of the Benedictine order, the Olivetans, was founded by Bernard Tolomæi. Blindness having obliged him to abandon his teaching of philosophy at Siena, the blessed Virgin restored him his sight; and then, in A.D. 1313, he forsook the world, and withdrew with certain companions into almost inaccessible mountain recesses, ten miles from Siena. Disciples gathered around him from all sides. He built a cloister on a hill, which he called the Mount of Olives, and founded under the Benedictine rule a congregation of the Most Blessed Virgin of the Mount of Olives, which obtained the sanction of John XXII. Tolomæi became its first general, in A.D. 1322, and held the office till his death, caused by infection caught while attending the plague stricken in A.D. 1348. There were new elections of abbots every third year. The Olivetans were zealous worshippers of Mary, and strict ascetics. In several of their cloisters, which numbered as many as one hundred, the study of theology and philosophy was diligently prosecuted. They embraced also an order of nuns, founded by St. Francisca Romana.

§ 112.2. The Franciscans.―At the Council of Vienna, in A.D. 1312, Clement V. renewed the decree of Nicholas III., and by the constitution Exivi de paradiso decided in favour of the stricter view (§ 98, 4), but ordered all rigorists to submit to their order. But neither this nor the solemn ratification of his predecessor’s decisions by John XXII. in A.D. 1317 put an end to the division. The contention was now of a twofold kind. The Spirituals confined their opposition to a rigoristic interpretation of the vow of poverty. The Fraticelli carried their opposition into many other departments. They exaggerated the demand of poverty to the utmost, but also repudiated the primacy of the pope, the jurisdiction of bishops, the admissibility of oaths, etc. In the south of France within a few years 115 of them had perished at the stake; and the Spirituals also suffered severely.―The Dominicans were the cause of a new split in the Seraphic order. The Inquisition at Narbonne had, in A.D. 1321, condemned to the stake a Beghard who had affirmed, what to the Dominicans seemed a heretical proposition, that Christ and the apostles had neither personal nor common property. The Franciscans, who, on the plea of a pretended transference of their property to the pope, claimed to be without possessions, pronounced that proposition orthodox, and the Dominicans complained to John XXII. He pronounced in favour of the Dominicans, and declared the Franciscans’ transference of property illusory; and finding this decision contrary to decrees of previous popes, he asserted the right of any pontiff to reverse the findings of his predecessors. The Franciscans were driven more and more into open revolt against the pope. They made common cause with the persecuted Spirituals, and like them sought support from the Italian Ghibellines and the emperor, Louis the Bavarian (§ 110, 3). The pope summoned their general, Michael of Cesena, to Avignon; and while detaining him there sought unsuccessfully to obtain his deposition by the general synod of the order. Michael, with two like-minded brothers, William Occam (§ 113, 3) and Bonagratia of Bergamo, escaped to Pisa in a ship of war, which the emperor sent for them in A.D. 1328. There, in the name of his order, he appealed to an œcumenical council to have the papal excommunication and deposition annulled which had now been issued against him. After the disastrous Italian campaign in A.D. 1330, the excommunicated churchmen accompanied the emperor to Munich, where they conducted a literary defence of their rights and privileges, and charged the pope with a multitude of heresies. Michael died at Munich, in A.D. 1342.―After the overthrow of the schismatic Minorite pope, Nicholas V. (§ 110, 3), the opposition soon gave in its submission. But to the end of his life John XXII. was a bloody persecutor of all schismatical Franciscans, who showed a fanatical love of martyrdom, rather than abate one iota of their opposition to the possession of property.

§ 112.3. The strict and lax tendencies were brought to light in connection with successive attempts at reformation. In A.D. 1368 Paolucci of Foligni founded the fraternity of Sandal-wearers, which embraced the remnants of the Cœlestine eremites (§ 98, 4). This strict rule was soon modified so as to admit of the possession of immovable property and living together in conventual establishments. Those who adhered rigidly to the original requirements as to seclusion, asceticism, and dress were now called Observants and the more lax Conventuals. Crossing the Alps in A.D. 1388, they spread through Europe, converting heretics and heathens. Both sections received papal encouragement. Their leader for forty years was John of Capistrano, born A.D. 1386, died A.D. 1456, who inspired all their movements, and as a preacher gathered hundreds of thousands around him. His predecessor in office, Bernardino of Siena, who died in A.D. 1444, was canonized after a hard fight in A.D. 1450. John was deputed by the pope in that same year to proceed to Austria and Germany to convert the Hussites and preach a crusade against the Turks. His greatest feat was the repulse, in A.D. 1456, of the Turks, under Mohammed II., before Belgrade, ascribed to him and his crusade, which delivered Hungary, Germany, and indeed the whole West, from threatened subjection to the Moslem yoke. Capistrano died three months afterwards. Notwithstanding all the efforts of his followers, his beatification was not secured till A.D. 1690, and the decree of canonization was not obtained till A.D. 1724.―Continuation § 149, 6.

§ 112.4. The Dominicans.―The Dominicans, as they interpreted the vow of poverty only of personal and not of common property, soon lost the character of a mendicant order.―One of their most distinguished members was St. Catharine of Siena, who died in A.D. 1380, in her thirty-third year. Having taken the vow of chastity as a child, living only on bread and herbs, for a time only on the eucharistic elements, she was in vision affianced to Christ as His bride, and received His heart instead of her own. She felt the pains of Christ’s wounds, and, like St. Dominic, lashed herself thrice a day with an iron chain. She gained unexampled fame, and along with St. Bridget procured the return of the pope from Avignon to Rome.―The controversy of the Dominicans with the Franciscans over the immaculata conceptio (§ 104, 7) was conducted in the most passionate manner. The visions of St. Catherine favoured the Dominican, those of St. Bridget the Franciscan views; during the schism the French popes favoured the former, the Roman popes the latter. The Franciscan view gained for the time the ascendency. The University of Paris sustained it in A.D. 1387, and made its confession a condition of receiving academic rank. The Dominican Torquemada combated this doctrine, in A.D. 1437, in his able Tractatus de veritate Conceptionis B. V. In A.D. 1439, the Council of Basel, which was then regarded as schismatical, sanctioned the Franciscan doctrine. Sixtus IV., who had previously, as general of the Franciscans, supported the views of his order in a special treatise, authorized the celebration of the festival referred to, but in A.D. 1483 forbade controversy on either side. A comedy with a very tragical conclusion was enacted at Bern, in connection with this matter in A.D. 1509. The Dominicans there deceived a simple tailor called Jetzer, who joined them as a novice, with pretended visions and revelation of the Virgin, and burned upon him with a hot iron the wound prints of the Saviour, and caused an image of the mother of God to weep tears of blood over the godless doctrine of the Franciscans. When the base trick was discovered, the prior and three monks had to atone for their conduct by death at the stake. (Continuation § 149, 13.) A new controversy between the two orders broke out in A.D. 1462, at Brescia. There, on Easter Day of that year, the Franciscan Jacob of Marchia in his preaching said that the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, until its reassumption by the resurrection, was outside of the hypostatic union with the Logos, and therefore as such was not the subject of adoration. The grand-inquisitor, Jacob of Brescia, pronounced this heretical, and at Christmas, A.D. 1463, a three days’ disputation was held between three Dominicans and as many Minorites before pope and cardinals, which yielded no result. Pius II. reserved judgment, and never gave his decision.

§ 112.5. The Augustinians.―In A.D. 1432, Zolter, at the call of the general of the Augustinians, reorganized the order, and in A.D. 1438 Pius II. gave a constitution to the Observants. The “Union of the Five Convents” founded by him in Saxony and Franconia, with Magdeburg as its centre, formed the nucleus of regular Augustinian Observants, which had Andrew Proles of Dresden as their vicar-general for a second time in A.D. 1473. Notwithstanding bitter opposition, the union spread through all Germany, even to the Netherlands. In A.D. 1475 the general of the order at Rome took offence at Proles for looking directly to the apostolic see, and not to him, for his authority. He therefore abolished the institution of vicars, insisted that all Observants should return to their allegiance to the provincials, and make full restitution of all the cloisters which they had appropriated, and empowered the provincial of Saxony to imprison and excommunicate Proles and his party, in case of their refusal. Proles did not submit, and when the ban was issued appealed directly to the pope. A papal commission in A.D. 1477 decided that all Observant cloisters placed by the duke under the pope’s protection should so continue, confirmed all their privileges, and annulled all mandates and anathemas issued against Proles and his followers. With redoubled energy and zeal Proles now wrought for the extension and consolidation of the congregation until A.D. 1503, when he resigned office in his 74th year, and soon after died. He was one of the worthiest and most pious men in the German Church of his time; but Flacius is quite mistaken when he describes him as a precursor of Luther, an evangelical martyr and witness for the truth in the sense of the Reformation of the 16th century. Energetic and devoted as he was in prosecuting his reformation, he gave himself purely to the correcting of the morals of the monks and restoring discipline; but in zeal for the doctrine of merits, the institution of indulgences, mariolatry, saint and image worship, and in devotion to the papacy, he and his congregation were by no means in advance of the age.

§ 112.6. As his successor in the vicariate the chapter, in accordance with the wish of Proles, elected John von Staupitz. He had been prior of the Augustinian cloister at Tübingen, and became professor of theology in the University of Wittenberg, in A.D. 1502. Like his predecessor, he devoted himself to the interests of the congregation, and by the union which he effected between it and the Lombard Observant congregation, he greatly increased its importance. In carrying out a plan for uniting the Saxon Conventuals with the German Observants by combining in his own hand the Saxon provincial priorate with the German vicariate, he encountered such difficulties that he was obliged to abandon the attempt; but he succeeded thus far, that from that time the Conventuals and Observants of Germany dwelt in peace side by side. He directed the troubled spirit of Luther to the crucified Saviour (§ 122, 1), and thus became the spiritual father of the great reformer. The new constitutions for the German congregations, proffered by him and accepted by the chapter at Nuremberg, A.D. 1504, are characterized by earnest recommendations of Scripture study. But of a deep and comprehensive evangelical and reformatory application of them we find no traces as yet, even in Staupitz; neither do we see any zealous study of Augustine’s writings, and consequent appreciation of his theological principles, such as is shown by the mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries. All this appears later in his little treatise “On the Imitation of the Willingly Dying Christ” of A.D. 1515. A discourse on predestination in A.D. 1517 moves distinctly on Augustinian lines, and the mysticism of St. Bernard may be traced in the book “On the Love of God” of that same year. True as he was to Luther as a counsellor and helper during the first eventful year of struggle, the reformer’s protest soon became too violent for him, and in A.D. 1520 he resigned his office, withdrew to the Benedictine cloister at Salzburg, and died as its abbot in A.D. 1524. His continued attachment to the positive tendencies of the Reformation is proved by his “Fast Sermons,” delivered in A.D. 1523.―His successor Link, Luther’s fellow student at Magdeburg, was and continued to be an attached friend of the reformer. Unsuccessful in his endeavours to remove abuses, he resigned office in A.D. 1523, and became evangelical pastor in Altenburg, and married. The very small opposition chose in place of him Joh. Spangenberg, who, unable to withstand the movement among the German Conventuals, as well as among the Observants, resigned in A.D. 1529.

§ 112.7. Overthrow of the Templars.―The order of Knights Templar, whose chief seat was now in Paris and the south of France, by rich presents, exactions, and robberies in the island of Cyprus, vast commercial speculations and extensive money-lending and banking transactions with crusaders and pilgrims and needy princes, had acquired immense wealth in money and landed property in the East and the West. They had in consequence become proud, greedy, and vicious. Their independence of the State had long been a thorn in the eye of Philip the Fair of France, and their policy was often at variance with his. But above all their great wealth excited his cupidity. In a letter to a visitor of the order Innocent III. had in A.D. 1208 bitterly complained of their unspirituality, worldliness, avarice, drunkenness, and study of the black art, saying that he refrained from remarking upon yet more shameful offences with which they were charged. Stories also were current of apostasy to Mohammedanism, sorcery, unnatural vice, etc. It was said that they worshipped an idol Baphomet; that a black cat appeared in their assemblies; that at initiation they abjured Christ, spat on the cross, and trampled it under foot. A Templar expelled for certain offences gave evidence in support of these charges. Thereupon in A.D. 1307 Philip had all Templars in his realm suddenly apprehended. Many admitted their guilt amid the tortures of the rack; others voluntarily did so in order to escape such treatment. A Parliament assembled at Tours in A.D. 1308 heartily endorsed the king’s opinion, and the pope, Clement V., was powerless to resist (§ 110, 2). While the pope’s commissioners were prosecuting inquiries in all countries, Philip without more ado in A.D. 1310 brought to the stake one hundred Templars who had retracted their confession. The œcumenical council at Vienne in A.D. 1311, summoned for the final settlement of the matter, refused to give judgment without hearing the defence of the accused. But Philip threatened the pope till a decree was passed disbanding the order because of the suspicion and ill repute into which it had fallen. Its property was to go to the Knights of St. John. But a great part had already been seized by the princes, especially by Philip. Final decision in regard to individuals was committed by the pope to the provincial synods of the several countries. Judgment on the grand-master, James Molay, and the then chief dignitaries of the order, he reserved to himself. Philip paid no attention to this, but, when they refused to adhere to their confession of guilt, had them burnt in a slow fire at Paris in A.D. 1314. Most of the other knights turned to secular employments, many entered the ranks of the Knights of St. John, while others ended their days in monastic prisons.―Scholars are to this day divided in opinion as to the degree of guilt or innocence which may be ascribed to the Templars in regard to the serious charges brought against them.330

§ 112.8. New Orders.―In A.D. 1317 the king of Portugal, for the protection of his frontier from the Moors, instituted the Order of Christ, composed of knights and clergy, and to it John XXII. in A.D. 1319 gave the privileges of the order of Calatrava (§ 98, 13). Alexander VI. released them from the vow of poverty and allowed them to marry. The king of Portugal was grand-master, and at the beginning of the 16th century it had 450 companies and an annual revenue of one and a half million livres. In A.D. 1797 it was converted into a secular order.―Among the new monkish orders the following are the most important:

1. Hieronymites, founded in A.D. 1370 by the Portuguese Basco and the Spaniard Pecha as an order of canons regular under the rule of Augustine, and confirmed by Gregory XI. in A.D. 1373. Devoted to study, they took Jerome as their patron, and obtained great reputation in Spain and Italy.
2. Jesuates, founded by Colombini of Siena, who, excited by reading legends of the saints, combined with several companions in forming this society for self-mortification and care of the sick, for which Urban V. prescribed the Augustinian rule in A.D. 1367. They greeted all they met with the name of Jesus: hence their designation.
3. Minimi, an extreme sect of Minorites (§ 98, 3), founded by Francis de Paula in Calabria in A.D. 1436. Their rule was extremely strict, and forbade them all use of flesh, milk, butter, eggs, etc., so that their mode of life was described as vita quadragesimalis.
4. Nuns of St. Bridget. To the Swedish princess visions of the wounded and bleeding Saviour had come in her childhood. Compelled by her parents to marry, she became mother of eight children; but at her husband’s death, in A.D. 1344, she adopted a rigidly ascetic life, and in A.D. 1363 founded a cloister at Wedstena for sixty nuns in honour of the blessed Virgin, with thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight lay brothers in a separate establishment. All were under the control of the abbess. She also founded at Rome a hospice for Swedish pilgrims and students, made a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem, and died at Rome in A.D. 1373. The Revelationes S. Brigittæ ascribed to her were in high repute during the Middle Ages. They are full of bitter invectives against the corrupt papacy; call the pope worse than Lucifer, a murderer of the souls committed to him, who condemns the guiltless and sells believers for filthy lucre. There were seventy-four cloisters of the order spread over all Europe. Her successor as abbess of the parent abbey was her daughter, St. Catherine of Sweden, who died in A.D. 1381.
5. The French Annunciate Order was founded in A.D. 1501 by Joanna of Valois, the divorced wife of Louis XII., and when abolished by the French Revolution it numbered forty-five nunneries.

§ 112.9. The Brothers of the Common Life, a society of pious priests, gave themselves to the devotional study of Scripture, the exercise of contemplative mysticism, and practical imitation of the lowly life of Christ with voluntary observance of the three monkish vows, and residing, without any lifelong obligation, in unions where things were administered in common. Pious laymen were not excluded from their association, and institutions for sisters were soon reared alongside of those for the brothers. The founder of this organization was Gerhard Groot, Gerardus magnus, of Deventer in the Netherlands, a favourite pupil of the mystic John of Ruysbroek (§ 114, 7). Dying a victim to his benevolence during a season of pestilence in A.D. 1384, a year or two after the founding of the first union institute, he was succeeded by his able pupil and assistant Florentius Radewins, who zealously carried on the work he had begun. The house of the brothers at Deventer soon became the centre of numerous other houses from the Scheld to the Wesel. Florentius added a cloister for regular canons at Windesheim, from which went forth the famous cloister reformer Burch. The most important of the later foundations of this kind was the cloister built on Mount St. Agnes near Zwoll. The famous Thomas à Kempis (§ 114, 7) was trained here, and wrote the life of Groot and his fellow labourers. Each house was presided over by a rector, each sister house by a matron, who was called Martha. The brothers supported themselves by transcribing spiritual books, the lay brothers by some handicraft; the sisters by sewing, spinning, and weaving. Begging was strictly forbidden. Besides caring for their own souls’ salvation, the brothers sought to benefit the people by preaching, pastoral visitation, and instructing the youth. They had as many as 1,200 scholars under their care. Hated by the mendicant friars, they were accused by a Dominican to the Bishop of Utrecht. This dignitary favoured the brothers, and when the Dominican appealed to the pope, he applied to the Constance Council of A.D. 1418, where Gerson and d’Ailly vigorously supported them. Their accuser was compelled to retract, and Martin V. confirmed the brotherhood. Though heartily attached to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, their biblical and evangelical tendencies formed an unconscious preparation for the Reformation (§ 119, 10). A great number of the brothers joined the party of the reformers. In the 17th century the last remnant of them disappeared.331

§ 113.1. John Duns Scotus.―The date of birth, whether A.D. 1274 or A.D. 1266, and the place of birth, whether in Scotland, Ireland, or England, of this Franciscan hero, honoured with the title doctor subtilis, are uncertain; even the place and manner of his training are unknown. After lecturing with great success at Oxford, he went in A.D. 1304 to Paris, where he obtained the degree of doctor, and successfully vindicated the immaculata conceptio B. V. (§ 104, 7) against the Thomists. Summoned to Cologne in A.D. 1308 to engage in controversy with the Beghards, he displayed great skill in dialectics, but died during that same year. His chief work, a commentary on the Lombard, was composed at Oxford. His answers to the questions proposed for his doctor’s degree were afterwards wrought up into the work entitled Quæstiones quodlibetales. The opponent and rival of Thomas, he controverted his doctrine at every point, as well as the doctrines of Alexander and Bonaventura of his own order, and other shining stars of the 13th century. In subtlety of thought and dialectic power he excelled them all, but in depth of feeling, profundity of mind, and ardour of faith he was far behind them. Proofs of doctrines interested him more than the doctrines themselves. To philosophy he assigns a purely theoretical, to theology a pre-eminently practical character, and protests against the Thomist commingling of the two. He accepts the doctrine of a twofold truth (§ 103, 3), basing it on the fall. Granting that the Bible is the only foundation of religious knowledge, but contending that the Church under the Spirit’s guidance has advanced ever more and more in the development of it, he readily admits that many a point in constitution, doctrine, and worship cannot be established from the Bible; e.g. immaculate conception, clerical celibacy, etc. He has no hesitation in contradicting even Augustine and St. Bernard from the standpoint of a more highly developed doctrine of the Church.

§ 113.2. Thomists and Scotists.―The Dominicans and Franciscans were opposed as followers respectively of Thomas and of Scotus. Thomas regarded individuality, i.e. the fact that everything is an individual, every res is a hæc, as a limitation and defect; while Duns saw in this hæcitas a mark of perfection and the true end of creation. Thomas also preferred the Platonic, and Duns the Aristotelian realism. In theology Duns was opposed to Thomas in maintaining an unlimited arbitrary will in God, according to which God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing chosen is good because He chooses it. Thomas therefore was a determinist, and in his doctrine of sin and grace adopted a moderate Augustinianism (§ 53, 5), while Duns was a semipelagian. The atonement was viewed by Thomas more in accordance with the theory of Anselm, for he assigned to the merits of Christ as the God-Man infinite worth, satisfactio superabundans, which is in itself more than sufficient for redemption; but Duns held that the merits of Christ were sufficient only as accepted by the free will of God, acceptatio gratuita. The Scotists also most resolutely contended for the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, while the Thomists as passionately opposed it.―Among the immediate disciples of Duns the most celebrated was Francis Mayron, teacher at the Sorbonne, who died in A.D. 1325 and was dignified with the title doctor illuminatus or acutus. The most notable of the Thomists was Hervæus Natalis, who died in A.D. 1323 as general of the Dominicans. Of the later Thomists the most eminent was Thomas Bradwardine, doctor profundus, a man of deep religious earnestness, who accused his age of Pelagianism, and vindicated the truth in opposition to this error in his De causa Dei c. Pelagium. He began teaching at Oxford, afterwards accompanied Edward III. as his confessor and chaplain on his expeditions in France, and died in A.D. 1349 a few weeks after his appointment to the archbishopric of Canterbury.332

§ 113.3. Nominalists and Realists.―After nominalism (§ 99, 2) in the person of Roscelin had been condemned by the Church (§ 101, 3) realism held sway for more than two centuries. Both Thomas and Duns supported it. By sundering philosophy and theology Duns opened the way to freer discussion, so that by-and-by nominalism won the ascendency, and at last scarcely any but the precursors of the Reformation (§ 119) were to be found in the ranks of the realists. The pioneer of the movement was the Englishman William Occam, a Franciscan and pupil of Duns, who as teacher of philosophy in Paris obtained the title doctor singularis et invincibilis, and was called by later nominalists venerabilis inceptor. He supported the Spirituals (§ 112, 2) in the controversies within his order. He accompanied his general, Michael of Cesena, to Avignon, and escaping with him in A.D. 1328 from threatened imprisonment, lived at Munich till his death in A.D. 1349. There, protected by Louis the Bavarian, he vindicated imperial rights against papal pretensions, and charged various heresies against the pope (§ 118, 2). In philosophy and theology he was mainly influenced by Scotus. In accordance with his nominalistic principles he assumed the position in theology that our ideas derived from experience cannot reach to a knowledge of the supernatural; and thus he may be called a precursor of Kant (§ 171, 10). The universalia are mere fictiones (§ 99, 2), things that do not correspond to our notions; the world of ideas agrees not with that of phenomena, and so the unity of faith and knowledge, of theological and philosophical truth, asserted by realists, cannot be maintained (§ 103, 2). Faith rests on the authority of Scripture and the decisions of the Church; criticism applied to the doctrines of the Church reduces them to a series of antinomies.―In A.D. 1339 the University of Paris forbade the reading of Occam’s works, and soon after formally condemned nominalism. Thomists and Scotists forgot their own differences to combine against Occam; but all in vain, for the Occamists were recruited from all the orders. The Constance reform party too supported him (§ 118, 4).333 Of the Thomists who succeeded to Occam the most distinguished was William Durand of St. Pourçain, doct. resolutissimus, who died in A.D. 1322 as Bishop of Meaux. Muertius of Inghen, one of the founders of the University of Heidelberg in A.D. 1386 and its first rector, was also a zealous nominalist. The last notable schoolman of the period was Gabriel Biel of Spires, teacher of theology at Tübingen, who died A.D. 1495, a nominalist and an admirer of Occam. He was a vigorous supporter of the doctrine of the immaculate conception, and delivered public discourses on the “Ethics” of Aristotle.

§ 113.4. Casuistry, or that part of moral theology which seeks to provide a complete guide to the solution of difficult cases of conscience, especially where there is collision of duties, moral or ecclesiastical, makes its first appearance in the penitentials (§ 89, 6), and had a great impetus given it in the compulsory injunction of auricular confession (§ 104, 4). It was also favoured by the hair-splitting character of scholastic dialectics. The first who elaborated it as a distinct science was Raimundus [Raimund] de Pennaforte, who besides his works on canon law (§ 99, 5), wrote about A.D. 1238 a summa de casibus pœnitentialibus. This was followed by the Franciscan Antesana, the Dominican Pisana, and the Angelica of the Genoese Angelus of A.D. 1482, which Luther in A.D. 1520 burned along with the papal bull and decretals. The views of the different casuists greatly vary, and confuse rather than assist the conscience. Out of them grew the doctrine of probabilism (§ 149, 10).

§ 113.5. The Founder of Natural Theology.―The Spaniard Raimund of Sabunde settled as a physician in Toulouse in A.D. 1430, but afterwards turned his attention to theology. Seeing the need of infusing new life into the corrupt scholasticism, he sought to rescue it from utter formalism and fruitless casuistry by a return to simple, clear, and rational thinking. Anselm of Canterbury was his model of a clear and profound thinker and believing theologian (§ 101, 1). He also turned for stimulus and instruction to the book of nature. The result of his studies is seen in his Theologia naturalis s. liber creaturarum, published in A.D. 1436. God’s book of nature, in which every creature is as it were a letter, is the first and simplest source of knowledge accessible to the unlearned layman, and the surest, because free from all falsifications of heretics. But the fall and God’s plan of salvation have made an addition to it necessary, and this we have in the Scripture revelation. The two books coming from the one author cannot be contradictory, but only extend, confirm, and explain one another. The facts of revelation are the necessary presupposition or consequences of the book of nature. From the latter all religious knowledge is derivable by ascending through the four degrees of creation, esse, vivere, sentire, and intelligere, to the knowledge of man, and thence to the knowledge of the Creator as the highest and absolute unity, and by arguing that the acknowledgment of human sinfulness involved an admission of the need of redemption, which the book of revelation shows to be a fact. In carrying out this idea Raimund attaches himself closely to Anselm in his scientific reconciling of the natural and revealed idea of God and redemption. Although he never expressly contradicted any of the Church doctrines, the Council of Trent put the prologue of his book into the Index prohibitorum.

§ 113.6. Nicholas of Cusa was born in A.D. 1401 at Cues, near Treves, and was originally called Krebs. Trained first by the Brothers at Deventer (§ 112, 9), he afterwards studied law at Padua. The failure of his first case led him to begin the study of theology. As archdeacon of Liège he attended the Basel Council, and there by mouth and pen supported the view that the council is superior to the pope, but in A.D. 1440 he passed over to the papal party. On account of his learning, address, and eloquence he was often employed by Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V. in difficult negotiations. He was made cardinal in A.D. 1448, an unheard of honour for a German prelate. In A.D. 1450 he was made bishop of Brixen, but owing to a dispute with Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, he suffered several years’ hard imprisonment. He died in A.D. 1464 at Todi in Umbria. His principal work is De docta ignorantia, which shows, in opposition to proud scholasticism, that the absolute truth about God in the world is not attainable by men. His theological speculation approaches that of Eckhart, and like it is not free from pantheistic elements. God is for him the absolute maximum, but is also the absolute minimum, since He cannot be greater or less than He is. He begets of Himself His likeness, i.e. the Son, and He again turns back as Holy Spirit into unity. The world again is the aggregated maximum. His Dialogus de pace, occasioned by the fall of Constantinople in A.D. 1453, represents Christianity as the most perfect of all religions, but recognises in all others, even in Islam, essential elements of eternal truth. Like Roger Bacon (§ 103, 8), he assigns a prominent place to mathematics and astronomy, and in his De separatione Calendarii of A.D. 1436 he recommended reforms in the calendar which were only effected in A.D. 1582 by Gregory XIII. (§ 149, 3). He detected the pseudo-Isidore (§ 87, 2) and the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) frauds.

§ 113.7. Biblical and Practical Theologians.

1. The Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra, doctor planus et utilis, a Jewish convert from Normandy, and teacher of theology at Paris, did good service as a grammatico-historical exegete and an earnest expositor of Scripture. Luther gratefully acknowledges the help he got in his Bible translation from the postils of Lyra.334 He died in A.D. 1340.
2. Antonine of Florence played a prominent part at the Florentine Council of A.D. 1439, and was threatened by Eugenius IV. with the loss of his archbishopric. He discharged his duties with great zeal, especially during a plague and famine in A.D. 1448, and during the earthquake which destroyed half of the city in A.D. 1457. As an earnest preacher, an unwearied pastor, and upright churchman he was universally admired, and was canonized by Hadrian VI. in A.D. 1523. He had a high reputation as a writer. His Summa historialis is a chronicle of universal history reaching down to his own time; and his Summa theologica is a popular outline of the Thomist doctrine.
3. The learned and famous abbot John Trithemius, born in A.D. 1462, after studying at Treves and Heidelberg, entered in A.D. 1487 the Benedictine cloister of Sponheim, became its abbot in the following year, resigned office in A.D. 1505 owing to a rebellion among his monks, and died in A.D. 1516 as abbot of the Scottish cloister of St. James at Würzburg. Influenced by Wessel’s reforming movement (§ 119, 10), he urged the duty of Scripture study and prayer, but still practised and commended the most extravagant adoration of Mary and Ann. Though he was keenly alive to the absurdity of certain forms of superstition, he was himself firmly bound within its coils. He lashed unsparingly the vices of the monks, but regarded the monastic life as the highest Christian ideal. He pictured in dark colours the deep and widespread corruption of the Church, and was yet the most abject slave of the hierarchy which fostered that corruption.

§ 114.1. Meister Eckhart.―One of the profoundest thinkers of all the Christian centuries was the Dominican Meister Eckhart, the true father of German speculative mysticism. Born in Strassburg about A.D. 1260, he studied at Cologne under Albert the Great, but took his master’s degree at Paris in A.D. 1303. He had already been for some years prior at Erfurt and provincial vicar of Thuringia. In A.D. 1304 he was made provincial of Saxony, and in A.D. 1307 vicar-general of Bohemia. In both positions he did much for the reform of the cloisters of his order. In A.D. 1311 we find him teacher in Paris; then for some years teaching and preaching in Strassburg; afterwards officiating as prior at Frankfort; and finally as private teacher at Cologne, where he died in A.D. 1327. While at Frankfort in A.D. 1320 he was suspected of heresy because of alleged intercourse with Beghards (§ 98, 12) and Brothers of the Free Spirit (§ 116, 5). In A.D. 1325 the archbishop of Cologne renewed these charges, but Eckhart succeeded in vindicating himself. The archbishop now set up an inquisition of his own, but from its sentence Eckhart appealed to the pope, lodged a protest, and then of his own accord in the Dominican church of Cologne, before the assembled congregation, solemnly declared that the charge against him rested upon misrepresentation and misunderstanding, but that he was then and always ready to withdraw anything that might be erroneous. The papal judgment, given two years after Eckhart’s death, pronounced twenty-eight of his propositions to be pantheistic in their tendency, seventeen being heretical and eleven dangerous. He was therefore declared to be suspected of heresy. The bull, contrary to reason and truth, went on to say that Eckhart at the end of his life had retracted and submitted all his writings and doctrines to the judgment of the Holy See. But Eckhart had indignantly protested against the charge of pantheism, and certainly in his doctrine of God and the creature, of the high nobility of the human soul, of retirement and absorption into God, he has always kept within the limits of Christian knowledge and life. Attaching himself to the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrines, which are met with also in Albert and Thomas, and appealing to the acknowledged authorities of the Church, especially the Areopagite, Augustine, and Aquinas, Eckhart with great originality composed a singularly comprehensive and profound system of religious knowledge. Although in all his writings aiming primarily at quickening and edification, he always grounds his endeavours on a theoretical investigation of the nature of the thing. But knowledge is for him essentially union of the knowing subject with the object to be known, and the highest stage of knowledge is the intuition where all finite things sink into the substance of Deity.336

§ 114.2. Mystics of Upper Germany after Eckhart.―A noble band of mystics arose during the 14th and 15th centuries influenced by Eckhart’s writings, who carefully avoided pantheistic extremes by giving a thoroughly practical direction to their speculation. Nearest to Eckhart stands the author of “The German Theology,” in which the master’s principles are nobly popularized and explained. Luther, who took it for a work of Tauler, and published it in A.D. 1516, characterized it as “a noble little book, showing what Adam and Christ are, and how Adam should die and Christ live in us.” In the most complete MS. of this tract, found in A.D. 1850, the author is described as a “Friend of God.”―The Dominican John Tauler was born at Strassburg, studied at Paris, and came into connection with Eckhart, whose mysticism, without its pantheistic tendencies, he adopted. When Strassburg was visited with the Black Death, he laboured as preacher and pastor among the stricken with heroic devotion. Though the city was under an interdict (§ 110, 3), the Dominicans persisted for a whole year in reading mass, and were stopped only by the severe threats of the master of their order. The magistrates gave them the alternative either to discharge their official duties or leave the city. Tauler now, in A.D. 1341, retired to Basel, and afterwards to Cologne. In A.D. 1437 we find him again in Strassburg, where he died in A.D. 1361. His thirty sermons, with some other short tracts, appeared at Leipzig in A.D. 1498. The most important of all Tauler’s works is, “The Imitation of the Poverty of Christ.” It was thought to be of French authorship, but is now admitted to be Tauler’s.337―Rulman Merswin, a rich merchant of Strassburg, in his fortieth year, A.D. 1347, with his wife’s consent, retired from his business and forsook the world, gave his wealth to charities, and bought in A.D. 1366 an old, abandoned convent near the city, which he restored and presented to the order of St. John. Here he spent the remainder of his days in pious contemplation, amid austerities and mortifications and favoured with visions. He died in A.D. 1382. Four years after his conversion he attained to clear conceptions and inner peace. His chief work, composed in A.D. 1352, “The Book of the Nine Rocks,” was long ascribed to Suso. It is full of bitter complaints against the moral and religious corruption of all classes, and earnest warnings of Divine judgment. Its starting point is a vision. From the fountains in the high mountains stream many brooks over the rocks into the valley, and thence into the sea; multitudes of fishes transport themselves from their lofty home, and are mostly taken in nets, only a few succeed in reaching their home again by springing over these nine rocks. At the request of the “Friend of God from the Uplands” he wrote the “Four Years from the Beginning of Life.” His “Banner Tract” describes the conflict with and victory over the Brothers of the Free Spirit under the banner of Lucifer (§ 116, 4, 5).

§ 114.3. The Friend of God in the Uplands.―In a book entitled “The Story of Tauler’s Conversion,” originally called “The Master’s Book,” but now assigned to Nicholas of Basel, it is told that in A.D. 1346 a great “Master of Holy Scripture” preached in an unnamed city, and that soon his fame spread through the land. A layman living in the Uplands, thirty miles off, was directed in a vision thrice over to go to seek this Friend of God, companion of Rulman. He listened to his preaching, chose him as his confessor, and then sought to show him that he had not yet the true consecration. Like a child the master submitted to be taught the elements of piety of religion by the layman, and at his command abstaining from all study and preaching for two years, gave himself to meditation and penitential exercises. When he resumed his preaching his success was marvellous. After nine years’ labour, feeling his end approaching, he gave to the layman an account of his conversion. The latter arranged his materials, and added five sermons of the master, and sent the little book, in A.D. 1369, to a priest of Rulman’s cloister near Strassburg. In A.D. 1486 the master was identified with Tauler. This however is contradicted by its contents. The historical part is improbable and incredible, and its chronology irreconcilable with known facts of Tauler’s life. We find no trace of the original ideas or characteristic eloquence of Tauler; while the language and homiletical arrangement of the sermons are quite different from those of the great Dominican preacher.

§ 114.4. Nicholas of Basel.―After long hiding from the emissaries of the Inquisition the layman Nicholas of Basel, in extreme old age, was taken with two companions, and burned at Vienna, as a heretic, between A.D. 1393-1408. He has been identified by Schmidt of Strassburg with the “Friend of God.” This is more than doubtful, since of the sixteen heresies, for the most part of a Waldensian character, charged against Nicholas, no trace is found in the writings of the Friend of God; while it is made highly probable by Denifle’s researches that the “Friend of God” was but a name assumed by Rulman Merswin.

§ 114.5. Henry Suso, born A.D. 1295, entered the Dominican cloister of Constance in his 13th year. When eighteen years old he took the vow, and till his twenty-second year unceasingly practised the strictest asceticism, in imitation of the sufferings of Christ. He completed his studies, A.D. 1325-1328, under Eckhart at Cologne, and on the death of his pious mother withdrew into the cloister, where he became reader and afterwards prior. The first work which he here published, in A.D. 1335, the “Book of the Truth,” is strongly influenced by the spirit of his master. Accused as a heretic, he was deposed from the priorship in A.D. 1336. His “Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the favourite reading of all lovers of German mysticism. Blending the knight’s and fanatic’s idea of love with the Solomonic conception of Wisdom, which he identifies sometimes with God, sometimes with Christ, sometimes with Mary, he chose her for his beloved, and was favoured by her with frequent visions and was honoured with the title of “Amandus.”―Like most of his fellow monks at Constance, Suso was a supporter of the pope in his contest with Louis the Bavarian, while the city sided with the emperor. When, in A.D. 1339, the monks, in obedience to the papal interdict, refused to perform public worship, they were expelled by the magistrates. In his fortieth year Suso had begun his painful career of self-discipline, which he carried so far as to endanger his life. Now driven away as an exile, he began his singularly fruitful wanderings, during which, passing from cloister to cloister as an itinerant preacher, he became either personally or through correspondence most intimately acquainted with all the most notable of the friends of mysticism, and made many new friends in all ranks, especially among women. In A.D. 1346, along with eight companions, he ventured to return to Constance. There however he met with his sorest trial. An immoral woman, who pretended to him that she sorrowed over and repented of her sins, while really she continued in the practice of them, and was therefore turned away by him, took her revenge by charging him with being the father of the child she was about to bear. Probably this painful incident was the occasion of his retiring into the monastery of Ulm, where he died in A.D. 1366. In him the poetic and romantic element overshadowed the speculative, and in his attachment to ecclesiastical orthodoxy he kept aloof from all reformatory movements.

§ 114.6. Henry of Nördlingen is only slightly known to us by the letters which he sent to his lady friend, the Dominican nun Margaret Ebner. He was spiritually related to Tauler, as well as to Suso, and shared with the great preacher in his sorrows over the calamities of the age, which his sensitive nature felt in no ordinary degree during enforced official idleness under the interdict. His mysticism, by its sweetly sentimental character, as well as by its superstitious tendency to reverence Mary and relics, was essentially distinguished from that of Tauler. His friend Margaret, who had also a spiritual affinity to Tauler, and was highly esteemed by all the “Friends of God,” was religiously and politically, as a supporter of the anathematized emperor, much more decided. In depth of thought and power of expression however she is quite inferior to the earlier Thuringian prophetesses (§ 107, 2).―Hermann of Fritzlar, a rich and pious layman, is supposed to have written, A.D. 1343-1349, a life of the saints in the order of the calendar, as a picture of heart purity, with mystic reflections and speculations based on the legendary matter, and all expressed in pure and simple German. Hermann, however, was only the author of the plan, and the actual writer was a Dominican of Erfurt, Giseler of Slatheim.―A Franciscan in Basel, Otto of Passau, published, in A.D. 1386, “The Four-and-Twenty Elders, or the Golden Throne,” which became a very popular book of devotion, in which the twenty-four elders of Revelation iv. 4, one after another, show the loving soul how to win for himself a golden throne in heaven. Passages of an edifying and contemplative description from the Fathers and teachers of the Church down to the 13th century are selected by the author, and adapted to the use of the unlearned “Friends of God” in a German translation.

§ 114.7. Mystics of the Netherlands.

1. John of Ruysbroek was born, in A.D. 1298, in the village of Ruysbroek, near Brussels. In youth he was addicted more to pious contemplation than to scholastic studies, and in his sixtieth year he resigned his position as secular priest in Brussels, and retired into a convent of regular canons (§ 97, 3) near Brussels, where he died as its prior in A.D. 1481, when eighty-eight years old. He was called doctor ecstaticus, because he regarded his mystical views, which he developed amid pious contemplation in the shades of the forest, and there wrote out in Flemish speech, as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. His mysticism was essentially theistic. The unio mystica consisted not in the deification of man, but was wrought only through the free grace of God in Christ without the loss of man’s own personality. His genuine practical piety led him to see in the moral depravity of the clergy, not less than of the people generally, the cause of the decay of the Church, so that even the person of the pope did not escape his reproof. Numerous pilgrims from far and near sought the pious sage for counsel and quickening. His favourite disciple was Gerhard Groot of Deventer, who impressed much of his master’s spirit upon the brotherhood of the Common Life (§ 112, 9).―Of this noble school of mystics the three following were the most distinguished.
2. Hendrik Mande, who died A.D. 1430, impressed by a sermon of Groot’s, and favoured during a long illness by visions, abandoned the life of a courtier for the fellowship of the Brethren of Deventer, and in A.D. 1395 entered the cloister of Windesheim, to which he bequeathed his wealth, and where he continued to enjoy visions of the Saviour and the saints. His works, written in Dutch, are characterized by spirituality and depth of feeling, copious and appropriate imagery, and great moral earnestness.
3. Gerlach Peters was the favourite scholar of Florentius in Deventer. He subsequently entered the monastery of Windesheim, where, after a painful illness, he died in A.D. 1411, in his thirty-third year. “An ardent spirit in a body of skin and bone,” praising God for his terrible bodily sufferings as a means of grace bestowed on him, his devotion reaches the sublimest heights of enthusiasm. He wrote the Soliloquium, the voice of a man who has daily struggled in God’s presence to free his heart from worldly bonds, and by God’s grace in the cross of Christ to have Adam’s purity restored and union with the highest good secured.
4. Thomas à Kempis, formerly Hamerken, was born in A.D. 1380 at Kempen, near Cologne. He was educated at Deventer, and died as sub-prior of the convent of St. Agnes, near Zwoll, in A.D. 1471. To him, and not to the chancellor Gerson, according to the now universally accepted opinion, belongs the world renowned book De Imitatione Christi. Reprinted about five thousand times, oftener than any other book except the Bible, it has been also translated into more languages than any other. Free from all Romish superstition, it is read by Catholics and Protestants, and holds an unrivalled position as a book of devotion. A photographic reproduction of the original edition of A.D. 1441 was published from the autograph MSS. of Thomas, by Ch. Ruelans, London, 1879.338

§ 115.1. Fasts and Festivals.―New Mary Festivals were introduced: F. præsentationis M. on 21st Nov. (Lev. xii. 5-8), F. visitationis M. (Luke i. 39-51), on 2nd July. In the 15th century we meet with the festivals of the Seven Pains of Mary, F. Spasmi M., on Friday or Saturday before Palm Sunday. Dominic instituted a rosary festival, F. rosarii M., on 1st Oct., and its general observance was enjoined by Gregory XIII. in A.D. 1571.―The Veneration of Ann (§ 57, 2) was introduced into Germany in the second half of the 15th century, but soon rose to a height almost equal to that of Mary.―The Fasts of the early Church (§ 56, 7) had, even during the previous period, been greatly relaxed. Now the most special fast days were mere days of abstinence from flesh, while most lavish meals of fish and farinaceous food were indulged in. Papal and episcopal dispensations from fasting were also freely given.

§ 115.2. Preaching (§ 104, 1).―To aid and encourage preaching in the language of the people, unskilled preachers were supplied with Vocabularia prædicantium. Surgant, a priest of Basel, wrote, in the end of the 15th century, a treatise on homiletics and catechetics most useful for his age, Manuale Curatorum. In it he showed how Latin sermons might be rendered into the tongue of the people, and urged the duty of hearing sermons. The mendicants were the chief preachers, especially the mystics of the preaching orders, during the 14th century (§ 114), and the Augustinians, particularly their German Observants, during the 15th (§ 112, 5), and next to them, the Franciscans.―The most zealous preacher of his age was the Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrér. In A.D. 1397 he began his unprecedentedly successful preaching tours through Spain, France, Italy, England, Scotland, and Ireland. He died in A.D. 1419. He laboured with special ardour for the conversion of the Jews, of whom he is said to have baptized 35,000. Wherever he went he was venerated as a saint, received with respect by the clergy and prelates, highly honoured by kings and princes, consulted by rich and poor regarding temporal and spiritual things. He was canonized by Calixtus III. in A.D. 1455. Certain Flagellants (§ 116, 3) whom he met in his travels followed him, scourging themselves and singing his penitential songs, but he stopped this when objected to by the Council of Constance. His sermons dealt with the realities of actual life, and called all classes to repent of their sins. Of a similar spirit was the Italian Dominican Barletta, who died in A.D. 1480, whose burlesque and scathing satire rendered him the most popular preacher of the day. In his footsteps went the Frenchmen Maillard and Menot, both Franciscans, and the German priest of Strassburg, Geiler of Kaisersberg, quite equal to them in quaint terseness of expression and biting wit. All these were preeminently distinguished for moral earnestness and profound spirituality.339

§ 115.3. The Biblia Pauperum.―The typological interpretation of the Old Testament history received a fixed and permanent form in the illustrations introduced into the service books and pictures printed on the altars, walls, and windows of churches, etc., during the 12th century. A set of seventeen such picture groups was found at Vienna, of which the middle panels represent the New Testament history, sub gracia, above it an Old Testament type from the period ante legem, and under it one from the period sub lege. This picture series was completed by the Biblia pauperum, so called from the saying of Gregory I., that pictures were the poor man’s Bible. Many of the extant MSS., all depending on a common source, date from the 14th and 15th centuries. The illustrations of the New Testament are in the middle, and round about are pictures of the four prophets, with volumes in their hands, on which the appropriate Old Testament prophecies are written. On right and left are Old Testament types. The multiplication of copies of this work by woodcuts and types was one of the first uses to which printing was put.340

§ 115.4. The Bible in the Vernacular.―The need of translations of the Bible into the language of the people, specially urged by the Waldensians and Albigensians, was now widely insisted upon by those of reformatory tendencies (§ 119). On the introduction of printing, about A.D. 1450, an opportunity was afforded of rapidly circulating translations already made in most of the European languages. Before Luther, there were fourteen printed editions of the Bible in High and five in Low German. The translations, made from the Vulgate, were in all practically the same. The translators are unknown. The diction is for the most part clumsy, and the sense often scarcely intelligible. Translations had been made in England by the Wiclifites, and in Bohemia by the Hussites. In France, various renderings of separate books of Scripture were circulated, and a complete French Bible was issued by the confessor of Charles VIII., Jean de Rely, at Paris, in A.D. 1487. Two Italian Bibles were published in Venice, in A.D. 1471, one by the Camaldulite abbot Malherbi, closely following the Vulgate; the other by the humanist Bruccioli, which often falls back on the original text. The latter was highly valued by Italian exiles of the Reformation age. In Spain a Carthusian, Ferreri, attempted a translation, which was printed at Valencia in A.D. 1478. More popular however than these translations were the Bible Histories, i.e. free renderings, sometimes contracted, sometimes expanded, of the historical books, especially these of the Old Testament. From A.D. 1470 large and frequent editions were published of the German Plenaries, containing at first only the gospels and epistles, afterwards also the Service of the Mass, for all Sundays and festivals and saints’ days, with explanations and directions.

§ 115.5. Catechisms and Prayer Books.―Next to preaching, the chief opportunity for imparting religious instruction was confession. Later catechisms drew largely upon the baptismal and confessional services. In the 13th and 14th centuries the decalogue was added, and afterwards the seven deadly sins and the seven principal virtues. Pictures were used to impress the main points on the minds of the people and the youth. The catechetical literature of this period, both in guides for priests and manuals for the people, was written in the vernacular.―During the 15th century there were also numerous so-called Artes moriendi, showing how to die well, in which often earnest piety appeared side by side with the grossest superstition. There were also many prayer books, Hortuli animæ, published, in which the worship of Mary and the saints often overshadowed that of God and Christ, and an extravagant belief in indulgences led to a mechanical view of prayer that was thoroughly pagan.

§ 115.6. The Dance of Death.―The fantastic humour of the Middle Ages found dramatic and spectacular expression in the Dance of Death, in which all classes, from the pope and princes to the beggars, in turn converse with death. It was introduced into Germany and France in the beginning of the 14th century, with the view of raising men out of the pleasures and troubles of life. It was called in France the Dance of the Maccabees, because first introduced at that festival. Pictures and verbal descriptions of the Dance of Death were made on walls and doors of churches, around MSS. and woodcuts, where death was generally represented as a skeleton. Hans Holbein the Younger gave the finishing touch to these representations in his Imagines Mortis, the originals of which are in St. Petersburg. In this masterpiece, the idea of a dancing pair is set aside, and in its place forty pictures, afterwards increased to fifty-eight, full of humour and moral earnestness, pourtray the power of death in the earthly life.341

§ 115.7. Hymnology (§ 104, 10).―The Latin Church poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries was far beneath that of the 12th and 13th. Only the mystics, e.g. Thomas à Kempis, still composed some beautiful hymns. We have now however the beginnings of German and Bohemian hymnology. The German flagellators sang German hymns (§ 116, 3), and so obtained much popular favour. The Hussite movement of the 15th century gave a great impulse to church song. Huss himself earnestly urged the practice of congregational singing in the language of the people, and himself composed Bohemian hymns. The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren were specially productive in this department (§ 119, 8). In many churches, at least on high festivals, German hymns were sung, and in some even at the celebration of mass and other parts of public worship. The spiritual songs of this period were of four kinds: some half German, half Latin; others translations of Latin hymns and sequences; others, original German compositions by monks and minstrels; and adaptations of secular songs to spiritual purposes. In the latter case the original melodies were also retained. Popular forms and melodies for sacred songs were now secured, and these were subsequently appropriated by the Reformers of the 16th century.

§ 115.8. Church Music (§ 104, 11).―Great improvements were made in organs by the invention of pedals, etc. Church music was also greatly developed by the introduction of harmony and counterpoint. The Dutch were pre-eminent in this department. Ockenheim, founder of the second Dutch school of music, at the end of the 15th century, was the inventor of the canon and the fugue. The greatest composer of this school was Jodocus Pratensis, about A.D. 1500, and next to him may be named the German, Adam of Fulda.

§ 115.9. Legendary Relics.―The legend of angels having transferred the house of Mary from Nazareth, in A.D. 1291, to Tersato in Dalmatia, in A.D. 1294 to Reccanati, and finally, in A.D. 1295, to Loretto in Ancona, arose in the 14th century, in connection with the fall of Acre (§ 94, 6) and the overthrow of the last remnants of the kingdom of Jerusalem. When and how the legend arose of the Scala santa at Rome being the marble steps of Pilate’s prætorium, brought there by St. Helena, is unknown.―Even Frederick the Wise, at an enormous cost, brought together 1,010 sacred relics into his new chapel at Wittenberg, a mere look at which secured indulgence for 100 years. In a catalogue of relics in the churches of St. Maurice and Mary Magdalene at Halle, published in A D. 1520, are mentioned a piece of earth, from a field of Damascus, of which God made the first man; a piece from a field at Hebron, where Adam repented; a piece of the body of Isaac; twenty-five fragments of the burning bush of Horeb; specimens of the wilderness manna; six drops of the Virgin’s milk; the finger of the Baptist that pointed to the Lamb of God; the finger of Thomas that touched the wounds of Jesus; a bit of the altar at which John read mass for the Virgin; the stone with which Stephen was killed; a great piece of Paul’s skull; the hose of St. Thomas of Canterbury; the baret of St. Francis, etc. The collection consisted of 8,933 articles, and could afford indulgence for 39,245,100 years and 220 days! Benefit was to be had by contributions to the church, which went into the pocket of the elector-archbishop, Albert of Mainz. The craze for pilgrimages was also rife among all classes, old and young, high and low. Signs and wonders and newly discovered relics were regarded as consecrating new places of pilgrimage, and the stories of pilgrims raised the fame of these resorts more and more. In A.D. 1500 Düren, by the possession of a relic of Ann, stolen from Mainz, rapidly rose to first rank. The people of Mainz sought through the pope to recover this valuable property, but he decided in favour of Düren, because God had meanwhile sanctioned the transfer by working many miracles of healing.

§ 115.10. The Italian National Literature.342―Dante Alighieri, born at Florence in A.D. 1265, was in A.D. 1302 banished as a Ghibelline from his native city, and died an exile at Ravenna, in A.D. 1321. His boyish love for Beatrice, which after her early death continued to fill his soul to the end of his life, gave him an impulse to a “New Life,” and proved the unfailing source of his poetic inspiration. His studies at Bologna, Padua, and Paris made him an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, but alongside of his scholastic culture there lay the quick perception of the beautiful, combined with a lively imagination. He was thus able to deal with the burning questions of his day in one of the greatest poetic masterpieces of any age, people, or tongue. His Divina Commedia describes a vision in which the poet is led, first by the hand of Virgil, as the representative of human wisdom, through Hell and Purgatory, then by Beatrice, whose place at times is taken by the German Matilda (§ 107, 2), and finally by St. Bernard, as representatives of revealed religion, through Paradise and the several heavens up to the empyræum, the eternal residence of the triune God. The poet presents his readers with a description of what he saw, and reports his conversations with his guides and the souls of more important personages, most of them shortly before deceased, in which the problems of philosophy, theology, and politics are discussed. His political views, of which he treats ex professo in the three books of his De monarchia, are derived from Aquinas’ theory of the State, but breathe a strong Italian Ghibelline patriotism, so that he places not only Boniface VIII. but also Frederick II. in Hell. In the struggle between the empire and the papacy he stands decidedly on the side of the former. With profound sorrow he bewails the corruption of the church in its head and members, but holds firmly by its confession of faith. And while lashing vigorously the corruptions of monkery, he eulogizes the heavenliness of the lives of Francis and Dominic.343 Petrarch, who died in A.D. 1374, broke away completely from scholasticism, and turned with enthusiasm to classical studies. He combated superstition, e.g. astrology, but also contends against the unbelief of his age, and in his letters and poems lashes with merciless severity the immorality of the papacy and the secularization of the church.344 In Boccaccio again, who died in A.D. 1375, antipathy to scholasticism, monkery, and the hierarchy had reached its utmost stage. He has no anger and denunciation, but only contempt, reproach, and wit to shoot against them. He also makes light of the moral requirements of Christianity and the church, especially the seventh commandment. But in later years he manifested deep penitence for the lascivious writing of his youth, to which he had given reckless and shameless expression in his “Decameron.”

§ 115.11. The German National Literature.―The German prose style was greatly ennobled by the mystics (§ 114), and the highest development of German satire against the hierarchy, clergy, and monks was reached by Sebastian Brant, of Strassburg, who wrote in A.D. 1494 his “Ship of Fools.” Among popular preachers John Tauler held the first rank (§ 114, 2). In Strassburg, Geiler of Kaisersberg distinguished himself as an original preacher. His sermons were full of biting wit, keen sarcasm, and humorous expressions, but also of profound earnestness and withering exposures of the sins of the clergy and monks. His best known work is a series of sermons on Brant’s “Ship of Fools,” published in A.D. 1498.

§ 115.12. The Sacred Drama (§ 105, 5).―The poetic merit of most of the German mysteries performed at high festivals is not great. The Laments of Mary however often rose to true poetic heights. Comedy and burlesque too found place especially in connection with Judas, or the exchangers, or the unconverted Magdalene. A priest, Theodoric Schernberg, wrote a play on the fall and repentance of the popess Johanna (§ 82, 6). On Shrove Tuesday plays were performed, in which the clergy and monks were held up to ridicule. Hans Roseuplüt of Nuremberg, about A.D. 1450, was the most famous writer of German Shrovetide plays. In France, about the end of the 14th century, a society of young people of the upper rank was formed, called Enfans sans souci, whose Sotties, buffooneries, in which the church was ridiculed, were in high repute in the cities and at the court. Their most distinguished poet was Pierre Gringoire, who, in the beginning of the 16th century, in the French Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs, parodied the Servus servorum (§ 46, 10), and the church is represented as the old befooled mother. The numerous Italian mysteries were produced mainly by the gifted and cultured sons of Tuscany, who had already developed their native tongue into a beautiful and flexible language. In Spain, during the 15th century, the Autos, partly as Christmas plays and partly as sacramental or passion plays, were based on the ancient mysteries, and in form inclined more to the allegorical moralities.

§ 115.13. Architecture and Painting (§ 104, 12, 14)―Gothic architecture was the prevailing style in the churches of Germany, France, and England. In Italy, the humanist movement (§ 120, 1) led to the imitation of ancient classical models, and thus the Renaissance style was introduced, which flourished for 300 years. Its real creator was the Florentine Bruneleschi, who won imperishable renown by the grand cupola of the cathedral of Florence. Bramante, died A.D. 1514, marks the transition from the earlier Renaissance of the 15th century to the later of the 16th, at the summit of which stands Michael Angelo, A.D. 1474-1564. After a plan of Bramante Julius II., in A.D. 1506, began the magnificent reconstruction of St. Peter’s at Rome, the execution of which in its gigantic proportions occupied the reigns of twenty popes. It was completed under Urban VIII., in A.D. 1636. This great building, in consequence of the traffic in indulgences, entered on to defray its cost, became the occasion of the loss to the papacy of the half of western Christendom.―Sacred Statuary, in the hands of Ghiberti, died A.D. 1455, and Michael Angelo, reached the highest stage of excellence.―Of Painting, the Augustan age of which was the 15th century, there were properly four schools. Giotto, who died in A.D. 1336, was founder of the Florentine school, which was specially distinguished by its delineations of sacred history. To it belonged the Dominican Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, who painted only as he prayed, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, and Michael Angelo. Then there was the Lombard or Venetian School, at the head of which stands Giovanni Bellini, died A.D. 1516, which turned away from the church and applied itself with its fresh living colouring to the depicting of earthly ideals. Its most eminent representatives were Correggio, died A.D. 1534, and Titian, died A.D. 1576. In the Umbrian school, again, the spirit of St. Francis continued still to breathe. Its greatest master was Raphael of Urbino, the noblest and most renowned of all Christian painters, distinguished also as an architect. The German school had its ablest representatives in the brothers Hubert and John van Eyk, Albert Dürer, and Hans Holbein the Elder.―Continuation § 149, 15.

§ 116.1. Two National Saints.―John of Nepomuk, of Pomuk in Bohemia, was from A.D. 1380 pastor, then canon, archiepiscopal secretary, and vicar-general of Prague. King Wenzel had him seized, cruelly tortured, and flung over the bridge into the Moldau, because, so runs the legend, he as confessor of the queen sturdily refused to betray the secrets of the confessional, but really because he had roused the king’s anger to the uttermost in a violent controversy between the king’s archbishop, John of Jenzenstein, and the chapter over their election and consecration of an abbot. The confession legend appears first in an Austrian writer of A.D. 1451, who gives it distinctly as a tradition. It is evidently connected with the Taborite rejection of the Catholic doctrine of auricular confession (§ 119, 7). If it be accepted as true, then, seeing that all the older chroniclers ascribe the cruel treatment of this prelate to the share he took in the abbot’s election, it will be necessary to assume two victims of the king’s wrath instead of one. The John Nepomuk of the legend, and the confessor of the queen, was tortured by the king’s command in A.D. 1383; the other, who figures in the old chronicles as archiepiscopal vicar-general, and is simply called John, was tortured in A.D. 1393, and then thrown over the bridge into the Moldau. This latter story appears first in a Bohemian chronicle of A.D. 1541. In the 17th century the Jesuits, in order to deprive the heretical national saint and martyr John Huss of his supremacy by bringing forward another genuine Bohemian, but also a thoroughly Catholic saint, gave currency to the legend, adorned with many additional stories of miracles. Benedict XIII. (§ 164, 1) was just the pope to aid such a device by sanctioning, as he did in A.D. 1729, the canonization of a purely fictitious saint-confessor John Nepomuk. He is patron saint of bridges, whose image in Bohemia, and other strictly Catholic lands, is met with at almost every bridge, and is reverenced as the protector from unjust accusations, as well as the dispenser of rain in seasons of great drought. Although no mention is made of the story about the confessional in the letter of complaint to Rome by Archbishop Jenzenstein, Catholic historians still insist that the confessor’s steadfastness was the real cause, the election of the abbot the ostensible cause, of the martyrdom of A.D. 1393.345 The need of strengthening the position of the Romish church, in face of the progress of the Swiss Reformation of the 16th century, led also to the elevation of the recluse, Nicolaus [Nicolas] of Flüe upon the pedestal of a Swiss national saint. Esteemed even before his birth a saint by reason of signs and wonders, “Brother Claus,” after a long, active life in the world, in his 50th year, the father of ten children, forsook house and home, with the approval of his wife, abstained from all nourishment save that of the sacrament, and died, after spending nineteen years in the wilderness, in A.D. 1487. During this period he was the trusted adviser of all classes upon public and private affairs. He is specially famous as having saved Switzerland, by appearing personally at the Diet of Stanz, in A.D. 1481, stopping the conflict between cities and provinces, which threatened to break up the confederation and bring about civil war, and suggesting the peaceable compromise of the “Agreement of Stanz.” That Brother Claus did assist in securing harmony is a well established fact, but it is also demonstrable that he was not personally present at Stanz. He was beatified by Clement X. in A.D. 1671, but notwithstanding repeated endeavours by his admirers, he has not yet been canonized.

§ 116.2. The Maid of Orleans, A.D. 1428-1431.―Joan of Arc was the daughter of a peasant in the village of Domremy, in Champagne. Even in her thirteenth year she thought she saw a peculiar brightness and heard a heavenly voice exhorting her to chastity and piety. She now bound herself by a vow to perpetual virginity. Afterwards the heavenly voices became more frequent, and the brightness took the shape of the archangel Michael, St. Catharine, and other saints, who saluted her as saviour of her fatherland. France was, under the imbecile king Charles VI., and still more after his death, rent by the rival parties of the Armagnacs and Burgundians. The former fought for the rights of the dauphin Charles VII.; the latter supported his mother Isabella and the English king Henry V., who was succeeded in A.D. 1422 by his son Henry VI., then only nine months old. Joan was the enthusiastic supporter of the dauphin. He found himself in A.D. 1428 in the greatest straits. The last bulwark of his might, the city of Orleans, was besieged by the English, and seemed near its fall. Then her voices commanded Joan to relieve Orleans, and to accompany the dauphin to his coronation at Rheims. She now published her call, which had been hitherto kept secret, overcame all difficulties, was recognised as a messenger of heaven, assumed the male attire of a soldier, and placed herself at the head of an enthusiastic crowd. Great success attended the movements of this girl of seventeen years. In the latter campaigns of the war she became the prisoner of Burgundy, who delivered her over to the English. At Rouen she was subjected to an ecclesiastical tribunal, which after four months’ investigation condemned her to the stake as a heretic and sorceress. In view of the fire, her courage failed. Yielding to the persuasion of her confessor, she acknowledged her guilt, and had her sentence commuted to that of imprisonment for life. But eight days later she was led forth to the stake. Her rude keepers had taken away her female attire, and forced her to wear again male garments, and this act to which she was compelled was made a charge against her. She died courageously and piously in A.D. 1431. At the demand of her family, which had been ennobled, a revision of the process against her was made in A.D. 1450, when she was pronounced innocent, and the charges against her false. The endeavour of Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, in A.D. 1876, in the name of Catholic France, to have her canonized, was not responded to by the papal curia. The infallible church, that had burnt her as a witch in A.D. 1431, could scarcely give her a place among its saints, even after 450 years had gone.

§ 116.3. Lollards, Flagellants, and Dancers.―During a plague at Antwerp in A.D. 1300 the Lollards made their appearance, nursing the sick and burying the dead. They spread rapidly over the Netherlands and the bordering German provinces. Like the Beghards however, and for the same reasons, they soon fell under suspicion of heresy, and were subjected to the persecution of the Inquisition, until Gregory XI., in A.D. 1347, again granted them toleration. But the name Lollard still continued to be associated with heresy or hypocrisy (§ 119, 1).346 The Flagellant fraternities, which had sprung up in the 12th century (§ 106, 4), greatly increased during this period, and reached their height during the 14th century. Their influence was greatest during the visitation of the Black Death, A.D. 1348-1350, which cost Europe many millions of lives. Issuing from Hungary, rushing forth with the force of an avalanche, and massing in great numbers on the upper Rhine, they spread over all Germany, Belgium and Holland, Switzerland, England, and Sweden. Entrance into France was refused them at the bidding of the Avignon pope Clement VI. In long rows of penitents, with uncovered head, screaming forth their penitential songs, and with tears streaming down their cheeks, they rushed about lashing their bare backs. They also from city to city and from village to village read aloud a letter of warning, said to have been written by Christ, and brought to the Patriarch of Jerusalem by an angel. This paroxysm lasted for three years. In Lombardy, in A.D. 1399, when famine, pestilence, the Turkish war, and expectation of the end of the world inclined men to such extravagances, the Flagellants made their appearance again, dressed in white robes, and so called Bianchi, Albati. Princes, scholars, and popes, universities and councils sought to check this silly fanaticism, but were not able to suppress it. Many Flagellants were also heretical in their views, spoke of the hierarchy as antichrist, withdrew from the worship of the church, declared the bloody baptism of the scourge the only true sacrament, and died at the stake of the Inquisition.―The Dancers, Chorisantes, were a sect closely related to the Flagellants, but their fanaticism seemed more of a pathological than of a religious order. Half naked and crowned with leaves they rushed along the streets and into houses, dancing in a wild, tumultuous manner. They made a great noise in the Rhine Provinces in A.D. 1374 and in A.D. 1418. They were regarded as demoniacs and cured by calling upon St. Vitus.

§ 116.4. The Friends of God.―During the 14th century many detachments of mystic sects spread through all Southern Germany, and even from the Netherlands to Hungary and Italy. A powerful religious awakening, with an undertone of contemplative mysticism, was now experienced in the castles of the knights, in the shops of artisans, and in the stalls of traders, as well as in the Beguine houses, the monasteries, and nunneries of the Dominicans and other monkish orders. A great free association was then called forth under the name of “Friends of God” (John xv. 15), whose members maintained personal and epistolary correspondence with one another. The headquarters of this movement were Cologne, Strassburg, and Basel. Its preachers and supporters were mostly Dominicans. They drew their intellectual and spiritual nourishment from the writings of the German mystics. They repudiated all sectarian intentions, carefully observed the rites and ceremonies and attended on the worship of the church, and accepted all its dogmas. But all the greater on this account was their sorrow over the deep decay of religious and moral life, and their lamentations over the corruption of the clergy and hierarchy. Fantastic visionary conceptions, however, derived from the domain of mysticism, were by no means rare among them.

§ 116.5. Pantheistic Libertine Societies.―A demoniacally inspired counterpart to the fraternity of the “Friends of God” is found in the sect of the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit. This sect, derived for the most part from the artisan class, may be regarded as carrying out to a consistent development the views of Amalrich of Bena (§ 108, 4). We meet with these in the beginning of the 14th century wandering about, missionarising and agitating in all parts of Southern Germany as well as in Switzerland, while they were particularly numerous in the Rhine Provinces, where Cologne and Strassburg were their main resorts. Often associating with strolling Beghards (§ 98, 12) they are frequently confounded with these. They were communistic libertine pantheists. Every pious man is a Christ, in whom God becomes man. Whatever is done in love is pure. The perfect are free from the law, and cannot sin. The church with her sacraments and institutions is a thorough cheat; purgatory, heaven, and hell are mere figments, the marriage bond contrary to nature, all property is common good, and theft of it allowable. Their secret services ended with immoral orgies. The Inquisition exterminated the sect by sword and stake.―The Adamites in Austria in A.D. 1312 and the Turlupines in the Isle of France showed similar tendencies. In the beginning of the 15th century they reappeared as Homines intelligentiæ at Brussels. In A.D. 1421 the Hussite leader Ziska rooted out the Bohemian Adamites or Picards, who went naked after the pattern of paradise, and had a community of wives. Picard is just a modification of the heretical designation Beghard. They gained a footing in several villages, and built an establishment on a small island in a tributary of the Moldau, from which they made excursions into the surrounding districts, until Ziska put an end to them by conquering the island in A.D. 1421.

§ 117.1. Indulgences.―The scholastic theory of indulgences (§ 106, 2) was authoritatively proclaimed by Clement VI. in A.D. 1343. The reforming councils of the 15th century wished only to prevent them being misused, for the purpose of filling the papal treasury. Sixtus IV., in A.D. 1477, declared that it was allowable to take money for indulgences for the dead, and that their souls might be freed from purgatory. The pert question, why the pope would not rather free all souls at once by the exercise of his sovereign power, was answered by the assertion that the church, in accordance with Divine righteousness, could dispense its grace only discrete et cum moderamine. The institution of the jubilee gave a great impulse to the sale of indulgences. In A.D. 1300 Boniface VIII., at the bidding of an old man, proclaimed a complete indulgence for one hundred years to all Christians who would do penance for fifteen days in the churches of the apostles at Rome, and by this means gathered from day to day 200,000 pilgrims within the walls of the Holy City. Later popes made a jubilee every fiftieth year, then every thirty-third, and finally every twenty-fifth. Instead of appearing personally at Rome, it was enough to pay the cost of such a journey. The nepotism and extravagance of the popes had left an empty exchequer, which this sale of indulgences was intended to fill. The war with the Turks and the building of St. Peter’s gave occasion to repeated indulgence crusades. Traffickers in indulgences in the most barefaced way cried up the quality of their wares; the conditions of repentance and purpose of reformation were scarcely so much as named. Indulgences were even granted beforehand for sins that were contemplated.

§ 117.2. The Inquisition, since A.D. 1232 under the direction of the Dominicans (§ 109, 2), spread through all European countries during the 14th century. While the papal court resided at Avignon the Inquisition was at its height in France, where Waldensians and Albigensians, Beghards and Lollards, Fraticelli and Fanatical Spiritualists, were brought in crowds to the stake and subjected to the most cruel tortures. Bernard Delicieux, a Franciscan, raised his voice, A.D. 1300-1320, against the inhuman cruelty of the inquisitors, and with noble independence and heroic bravery appealed to king and pope against the merciless sacrifice of so many victims. He was shut up for life in a dark dungeon, and fed on bread and water.―In Germany, where, from the murder of Conrad of Marburg in A.D. 1233 (§ 109, 3), for almost a century and a half we find no trace of a regularly constituted Inquisition, it made its appearance again in A.D. 1368. During that year Urban V. issued a bull, by which he required that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Germany should support with their counsel and influence the two inquisitors who were searching out the heretical Beghards and Beguines (§ 116, 5), and place their prisons at the disposal of the Holy Office, which had still no prison of its own. His successor, Gregory XI., in A.D. 1372 increased the number of inquisitors in Germany to five, one in each of the archdioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Salzburg, Magdeburg, and Bremen; while his successor, Boniface IX., in A.D. 1399 added a sixth for North Germany. But these papal bulls would probably, owing to the disinclination of the Germans to the Inquisition, like the attempts of Gregory IX., never have been put in force, had not Charles IV. (§ 110, 4, 5) taken up the matter with an ardent zeal that even went beyond the intentions of Urban and Gregory. During his second journey to Rome, in A.D. 1369, he issued from Lucca four imperial decrees, and in A.D. 1378 from Treves a fifth, by which he granted to the Inquisition throughout Germany all the rights, powers, and privileges which it had anywhere, and required that all civil and ecclesiastical authorities, under pain of severest penalties and confiscation of all their goods, should support the Inquisition in its search for heretics and in its discovery and burning of all religious writings in the vulgar tongue composed and circulated by laymen or semi-laymen.―The Spanish Inquisition was re-established under Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1480, and thoroughly organized by the grand-inquisitor Torquemada, A.D. 1483-1499. One of the first inquisitors appointed by him in A.D. 1484 was an Augustinian, Pedro Arbires, who amid the most unrelenting cruelties performed the duties of his office with such zeal, that in sixteen months many hundreds had perished at the stake; but his fanatical career was ended by his murder at the altar in A.D. 1485. Not only the two who did the deed, but also all their relatives and friends, to the number of two hundred, suspected of complicity in a plot, were burned, while the “martyr” himself was beatified by Alexander VII. in A.D. 1661, and canonized by Pius IX. in A.D. 1867. This terrible tribunal further undertook the persecution of the hated Moors and Jews who had been baptized under compulsion (§ 95, 2, 3), which through numerous confiscations greatly enriched the national exchequer of Spain. This institution reached its highest point under the grand-inquisitor the Cardinal Francis Ximenes, A.D. 1507-1517, under whom 2,536 persons were burnt alive and 1,368 in effigy. The auto da fès, which ended at the stake, were conducted with a horrible pomp. Even those who were acquitted of the charge of heresy were compelled for a long time to wear the san benito, an armless robe with a red cross marked on it before and behind. According to Llorente, who had been general secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, the Spanish inquisition, down to its suppression by Joseph Buonaparte in A.D. 1808, had executed in person 31,912, burned in effigy 17,659, and subjected to severe punishments 291,456.347

§ 117.3. The Bull “In Cœna Domini.”―It was customary to repeat from time to time the more important decrees of excommunication, to show that they were still valid. In this way the famous bull In Cœna Domini was gradually constructed. The earliest sketch of it was given by Urban V., who died in A.D. 1370, and it was published in its final form by Urban VIII. in A.D. 1627. It contains a summary of all the rights of the Roman hierarchy, with anathemas against all opposing claims, not only on the part of secular princes and laymen, but also of antipapal councils, and concludes with a solemn excommunication of all heretics, to which Paul V. in A.D. 1610 added Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists, together with all their sympathisers. Pius V., in A.D. 1567, in a new redaction insisted that it should be read yearly in the Catholic churches of all lands, but could not get this carried out, especially in France and Germany. In A.D. 1770 Clement XIV. forbade its being read.

§ 117.4. Prosecution of Witches.―Down to the beginning of the 13th century many churchmen had spoken against the popular superstition regarding sorcery, witchcraft, and compacts with the devil, and a whole series of provincial councils had pronounced such belief to be heathenish, sinful, and heretical. Even in Gratian’s decretal (§ 99, 5) there was a canon which required the clergy to teach the people that witchcraft was a delusion, and belief in it incompatible with the Christian faith. But upon the establishment of the Inquisition in the beginning of the 13th century witchcraft came more and more to occupy the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities. Heresy and sorcery were now regarded as correlates, like two agencies resting on and serviceable to the demoniacal powers, and were therefore treated in the same way as offences to be punished with torture and the stake. The Dominicans, as administrators of the Inquisition, were the most zealous defenders of the belief in witchcraft, whereas the Franciscans generally spoke of it simply as foolish, heathenish, and heretical. Thomas Aquinas included it in his theological system, and Eymerich in his Directorium Inquisitorium (§ 109, 2). Yet witch prosecutions were only occasional incidents during the 14th and 15th centuries, especially in Germany, where clergy and people were adverse to them. But it was quite otherwise after Innocent VIII., on 3rd December, 1484, by his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, complaining of previous laxity, called attention to the spread of witchcraft in the country, and appointed two inquisitors, Sprenger and Institor, to secure its extermination. These administered their office with such zeal and success, that in A.D. 1489 at Cologne they were able, as the result of their experiences, to publish under the title Malleus maleficarum a complete code for witch prosecutions. From the confessions wrung from their victims by torture and suggestive questions, they obtained a full, dogmatic system of compacts and intrigues with the devil, of Succubis and Incubis, of witch ointment, broomsticks, and ovenforks, of witches’ sabbaths, Walpurgis nights, and flights up chimneys. Soon this illusion spread like an epidemic, and thousands throughout Germany and all other Catholic countries, mostly old women, but also some young maidens, were subjected to the most horrible tortures, and after confession had been extorted, to death by fire. The Malleus accounted for the fact that women and very rarely men were found engaged in such proceedings, by this statement: Dicitur enim femina a feret minus, quia semper minorem habet et servat fidem, et hoc ex natura.―The Reformation of the 16th century made no change in these horrible proceedings, which rather rose to a height during the 17th century. Theologians of all confessions believed in the possibility and reality of compacts with the devil, and regarded this to be as essential to an orthodox creed as belief in the devil’s existence. The jurists and civil judges in Protestant and Catholic countries were no less narrow-minded and superstitious than the theologians. Among Catholics the most celebrated defenders of the witch prosecutions were Jean Bodin (§ 148, 3), Peter Binsfeld, and the Jesuit Mart. Delrio (§ 149, 11). Among Protestant vindicators of these prosecutions may be named the Heidelberg physician Thomas Erastus (§ 144, 1), James I. of England, and the famous criminal lawyer Carpzov of Leipzig. Noble men however were not wanting on both sides who were shrewd and sensible enough to oppose such crude conceptions. In the 16th century we have the physician Weier, who wrote his De præstigiis dæmonorum in A.D. 1563, and in the 17th the Jesuits Tanner and Spee (§ 149, 11; 156, 3), and the Dutch Protestant Bekker (§ 160, 5). The writings of the Halle jurist Thomasius in A.D. 1701, 1704, were the first to tell powerfully in favour of liberal views. In A.D. 1749 a nun of seventy years old was burnt at Würzburg as a witch. In A.D. 1754 a girl of thirteen and in A.D. 1756 one of fourteen years were put to death at Landshut as suspected of witchcraft. In German Switzerland a servant girl at Glarus in A.D. 1782 was the last victim. In bigoted Catholic countries the delusion lasted longer, but prosecutions were seldomer carried the length of judicial murder. In Mexico however, the Alcade Ignacio Castello of San Jacobo on 20th August, 1877, “with consent of the whole population,” burnt five witches alive. Altogether since the issue of the bull of Innocent there have been certainly no less than 300,000 women brought to the stake as witches.

§ 118.1. The Literary War between Imperialists and Curialists in the 14th Century.―The literary controversy over the debatable land between church and State was conducted with special vigour in the earlier part of our period, on account of the conflict between Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France (§ 110, 1). The ablest vindicators of the independence of the State were the advocate Peter Dubois and the Dominican theologian John of Paris. Among their scholars were the men who twenty years later sought refuge from the wrath of Pope John XXII. at the court of Louis the Bavarian at Munich. Of these the most important was the Italian Marsilius of Padua. As teacher of theology, philosophy, and medicine at Paris, in A.D. 1324, when the dispute between emperor and pope had reached its height, he composed jointly with his colleague John of Jandun in Champagne a Defensor pacis, a civil and ecclesiastical memoir, which, with an insight and clearness very remarkable for that age, developed the evangelical mean of the superiority of the State over the church, and of the empire over the papacy, historically, exegetically, and dogmatically; and for this end established theories of Scripture and tradition, of the tasks and place of the church in the State, of excommunication and persecution of heretics, of liberty of faith and conscience, etc., which even transcend the principles laid down on these points by the Reformation of the 16th century. Both authors accompanied Louis to Italy in A.D. 1326, and there John of Jandun died in A.D. 1328. Marsilius continued with the emperor as his physician, counsellor, and literary defender, and died at Munich between A.D. 1341-1343. In A.D. 1327 John XXII. condemned the Defensor pacis, and Clement VI. pronounced its author the worst heretic of all ages. The book, often reprinted during the 16th century, was first printed at Basel in A.D. 1522.

§ 118.2. Alongside of Marsilius there also stood a goodly array of schismatical Franciscans, with their general, Michael of Cesena, at their head (§ 112, 2), who were like himself refugees at the court of Munich. They persistently contested the heresies of John XXII. in regard to the vision of God (§ 110, 3) and his lax theory of poverty. Their polemic also extended to the whole papal system, and the corruption of church and clergy connected therewith. The most celebrated of them in respect of scientific attainments was William Occam (§ 113, 3). His earlier treatises dealt with the pope’s heresies, and only after the Diet of Rhense (§ 110, 4) did he take up the burning questions about church and State. In the comprehensive Dialogus he rejects the infallibility of the pope as decidedly as his temporal sovereignty, and denies the Divine institution of the primacy. Also a German prelate, Leopold of Bebenburg, Canon of Würzburg, and from A.D. 1353 Bishop of Bamberg, inspired by genuinely German patriotism, made his appearance in A.D. 1338 as a brave and prudent defender of imperial rights against the assumptions of the papacy.―The ablest of all Marsilius’ opponents was the Spanish Franciscan Alvarus Pelagius, who wrote in A.D. 1330 the treatise De planctu ecclesiæ, in which, while sadly complaining of the corruption of the church and clergy, he yet ascribes to the pope as the vicar of Christ unlimited authority over all earthly principalities and powers, and regards him as the fountain of all privileges and laws. A still more thoroughgoing deification of the papacy had appeared a few years earlier in the Summa de potestate ecclesiæ ad Johannem Papam by the Augustinian Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona. But neither he nor Pelagius, in view of the manifest contradictions of the pope’s doctrines of poverty (§ 112, 2), dared go the length of maintaining papal infallibility. A German canon of Regensburg, Conrad of Megensburg, also took part in the controversy, seeking to vindicate and glorify the papacy.

§ 118.3. Reforming Councils of the 15th Century.―The longing for reform during this period found most distinct expression in the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel (§ 110, 7-9). The fruitlessness of these endeavours, though they had the sympathy of the people generally, shows that there was something essentially defective in them. The movement had kept itself aloof from all sectaries and separatists, wishing to hold by and reform the presently existing church. But its fault was this, that it insisted only upon a reformation in the head and members, not in the spirit, that it aimed at lopping off the wild growths of the tree, without getting rid of the corrupt sap from which the very same growths would again proceed. Only that which was manifestly unchristian in the pretensions of the hierarchy, the covetousness and greed of the pope, the immorality of the clergy, the depravity and ignorance of the monks, etc.―in short, only abuses in hierarchical constitution and discipline―were dealt with. There was no word about doctrine. The Romish system, in spite of all its perversions, was allowed to stand. The current forms of worship, notwithstanding the introduction of many unevangelical elements and pagan superstitions, were left untouched. It was not seen that what was most important of all was the revival of the preaching of repentance and of justification through Him who is the justifier of the ungodly. And so it happened that at Constance Huss, who had pointed out and followed this way, was sent to the stake, and at Basel the doctrine of the immaculate conception (§ 112, 4) was admitted as a doctrine of the church. It was not merely the election of a new pope opposed to the Reformation that rendered the negotiations at Pisa and Constance utter failures, the wrong principle upon which they proceeded insured a disappointing result.

§ 118.4. Friends of Reform in France during the 15th Century.

1. Peter d’Ailly, professor and chancellor of the University of Paris, Bishop of Cambray in A.D. 1397 and cardinal in A.D. 1411, was one of the ablest members of the councils of Pisa and Constance. He died in A.D. 1425 as cardinal-legate in Germany. His chief dogmatic treatise, the Quæstiones on the Sentences of the Lombard, occupies the standpoint of Occam. In many of his other works he falls back upon the position of the mystics of St. Victor (§ 102, 4), and recommends with much warmth the diligent study of the Scriptures. His ideas about church reform are centred in the affirmation of the Gallican Liberties, which he had to maintain as a French bishop, but are expressed with the moderation becoming a Roman cardinal. In opposition to Occam and the Spirituals, he founds the temporal sovereignty of the pope on the Donatio Constantini. He also holds by the primacy of the Roman bishop, as firmly established by Scripture. But the πέτρα of Matthew xvi. 18 he understands not of Peter, but of Christ. In this passage therefore no pre-eminence is given to Peter over the other apostles in the potestas ordinis, but by the injunction of John xx., “Feed My sheep,” such pre-eminence is given in the potestas regiminis. The œcumenical council, as representative of the whole church, stands superior to the pope as administrative head.
2. d’Ailly’s successor as professor and chancellor was the celebrated Jean Charlier, better known from the name of his birthplace near Rheims as Gerson. Having denounced the Duke of Burgundy’s murder of the Duke of Orleans, and having thus incurred that prince’s hatred, he withdrew after the Council of Constance into Bavaria. Soon after the duke’s death, in A.D. 1419, he returned to France, and settled at Lyons, where he died in A.D. 1429. Like d’Ailly, Gerson was a decided nominalist, and sought to give new life to scholasticism by combining with it Scripture study and mysticism. He, too, was powerfully influenced by the Victorine mystics, and yet more by Bonaventura He had no appreciation of the speculative element in German mysticism. Gerson was the first French theologian who employed the language of the people, particularly in his smaller practical tracts. He was mainly instrumental in bringing about the Council of Pisa. In the Council of Constance he was one of the most conspicuous figures. Restrained by no personal or official relationship with the curia, he could by speech and writing express himself much more freely than d’Ailly. The principle and means of the reform of the church, in its head and members, was recognised by Gerson in his statement that the highest authority of the church is to be sought not in the pope, but in the œcumenical council. He held however in every point to the Romish system of doctrine. He did indeed unweariedly proclaim the Bible the one norm and source of all Christian knowledge, but he would not allow the reading of it in the vernacular, and regarded all as heretics who did not in the interpretation of it submit unconditionally to the judgment of the church.
3. Nicholas of Clemanges was in A.D. 1393 rector of the University of Paris, but afterwards retired into solitude. He had the profoundest insight into the corruption of the church, and acknowledged Holy Scripture to be the only source of saving truth. From this standpoint he demanded a thorough reform in theological study and the whole constitution of the church.
4. Louis d’Aleman, cardinal and Archbishop of Arles, who died in A.D. 1450, was the most powerful and most eloquent of the anti-papal party at Basel. He was therefore excommunicated by Eugenius IV. At last submitting to the pope, he was restored by Nicholas V. and in A.D. 1527 beatified by Clement VII.

§ 118.5. Friends of Reform in Germany.

1. Even before the appearance of the Parisian friends of reform, a German, Henry of Langenstein, at Marburg had insisted upon the princes and prelates calling an œcumenical council for putting an end to schism and reforming the church. In a treatise published in A.D. 1381 he gave a sad but only too true picture of the desolate condition of the church. The cloisters he designated prostibula meretricium, cathedral churches speluncæ raptorum et latronum, etc. From A.D. 1363 he taught in Paris, from A.D. 1390 in Vienna, where in A.D. 1397 he died as rector of the university.
2. Theodorich or Dietrich of Niem in Westphalia accompanied Gregory XI. from France to Rome as his secretary in A.D. 1377. From A.D. 1395-1399 he was Bishop of Verdun, was probably present at the Council of Pisa, and certainly at that of Constance. He died in this latter place in A.D. 1417. His writings are of great value for the history of the schism and of the councils of Pisa and Constance. His language is simple, strong, and faithful.
3. Gregory of Heimburg was present at the Basel Council, in terms of close friendship with Æneas Sylvius, who was then also on the side of reform. He became in A.D. 1433 syndicus at Nuremberg, went to the council at Mantua in A.D. 1459 as envoy of Duke Sigismund of Austria, was banished in A.D. 1460 by his old friend, now Pius II., afterwards led a changeful life, never free from the papal persecutions, and died at Dresden in A.D. 1472. His principal writings on civil and ecclesiastical polity, powerful indictments against the Roman curia inspired by love for his German fatherland, appeared at Frankfort in A.D. 1608 under the title Scripta nervosa justitiæque plena.
4. Jacob of Jüterboyk [Jüterbock], who died in A.D. 1465, was first a Cistercian monk in Poland and teacher of theology at Cracow, then Carthusian at Erfurt, and to the end of his life a zealous defender of the positions of the Council of Basel, at which he was present in A.D. 1441. His writings leave untouched the doctrines of the church, but vigorously denounce the political and moral corruption of the papacy and monasticism, the greedy misuse of the sale of indulgences, and insist upon the subordinating of the pope under general councils, and their right even to depose the pontiff. Whoever contests this latter position teaches that Christ has given over the church to a sinful man, like a bridegroom who surrenders his bride to the unrestrained will of a soldier. All possession of property on the part of those in sacred offices is with him an abomination, and unhesitatingly he calls upon the civil power to put an end to this evil.
5. The Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (§ 113, 6) also for a long time was one of the most zealous friends of reform in the Basel Council.
6. Felix Hemmerlin, canon at Zürich, was to the end of his life an ardent supporter of the reform measures of the Council of Basel, at which he had been present. As he gave effect to his views in his official position, he incurred the hatred and persecution of the inmates of his convent to such an extent, that they laid a plot to murder him in A.D. 1439. His whole life was an almost unbroken series of sufferings and persecutions. These in great part he brought on himself by his zealous support of the reactionary party of the nobles that sided with Austria in opposition to the patriotic revolutionary party that struggled for freedom. Deprived of his revenues and deposed from office, he was imprisoned in A.D. 1454, and died between A.D. 1457-1464 in the prison of the monastery of the Minorites at Lucerne, martyr as much to his political conservatism as to his ecclesiastical reformatory principles. His writings were placed in the Index prohibitorum by the Council of Trent.
7. To this place also belongs the work written in the Swabian dialect, “The Reformation of the Emperor Sigismund,” which demands a thoroughgoing and radical reform of the clergy and the secular priests, insisting upon the renunciation of all personal property on the part of the latter, enforcing against prelates, abbots, monasteries, and monks all the reforms of the Basel Council, and making proposals for their execution in the spirit of the Taborites and Hussites. The author is styled in the MSS. Frederick of Landscron, and describes himself as a councillor of Sigismund. The tract was therefore regarded during the 15th and 16th centuries as a work composed under the direction of the emperor, setting forth the principles of reformation attempted at the Basel or Constance Council. According to Böhm its author was the Taborite Reiser (§ 119, 9), who, under the powerful reforming impulse of the Basel Council of A.D. 1435-1437, composed it in A.D. 1438.

§ 118.6. An Italian Apostate from the Basel Liberal Party.―Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, born at Siena in A.D. 1405, appeared at Basel, first as secretary of a bishop, then of a cardinal, and finally of the Basel anti-pope Felix V., as a most decided opponent of Eugenius IV., and wrote in A.D. 1439 from this point of view his history of the council. In A.D. 1442 he entered the service of the then neutral Emperor Frederick III., was made Poeta laureatus and imperial councillor, and as such still fought for the independence of the German church. But in A.D. 1445, with all the diplomatic arts which were so abundantly at his disposal, he wrought to secure the subjection of the emperor and German princes under the pope (§ 110, 10). Made bishop of Siena in A.D. 1450, he was raised to the cardinalate by Calixtus III. in A.D. 1456, and two years later ascended the papal throne as Pius II. The lasciviousness of his earlier life is mirrored in his poems, novels, dialogues, dramas, and letters. But as pope, old and weak, he maintained an honourable life, and in a bull of retractation addressed to the University of Cologne exhorted Christendom Æneam rejicite, Pium recipite!

§ 118.7. Reforms in Church Policy in Spain.―Notwithstanding the church feeling awakened by the struggle with the Moors, a vigorous opposition to papal pretensions was shown during the 14th century by the Spanish princes, and after the outbreak of the great schism the anti-pope Clement VII., in A.D. 1381, purchased the obedience of the Spanish church by large concessions in regard to appointment to its bishoprics and the removal of the abuses of papal indulgences. The popes, indeed, sought not unsuccessfully to enlist Spain in their favour against the reformatory tendencies of the councils of the 15th century, until Ferdinand of Aragon [Arragon], A.D. 1479-1516, and Isabella of Castille [Castile], A.D. 1474-1504, who had on account of their zeal for the Catholic cause been entitled by the pontiff himself “their Catholic majesties,” entered so vigorous a protest against papal usurpations, that toward the end of the 15th century the royal supremacy over the Spanish church had won a recognition never accorded to it before. They consistently refused to acknowledge any bishop appointed by the pope, and forced from Sixtus IV. the concession that only Spaniards nominated by the Crown should be eligible for the highest ecclesiastical offices. All papal rescripts were subject to the royal approval, ecclesiastical tribunals were carefully supervised, and appeals from them were allowed to the royal judicatures. The church had also to give ordinary and extraordinary tithes of its goods and revenues for State purposes. The Spanish inquisition (§ 117, 2), thoroughly recognised in A.D. 1483, was more of a civil than an ecclesiastical institution. As the bishops and inquisitors were appointed by the royal edict, the orders of knights (§ 98, 13), by the transference of the grand-mastership to the king, were placed in complete subjection to the Crown; and whether he would or not Alexander VI. was obliged to accord to the royal commission for church and cloister visitation and reform the most absolute authority. But in everything else these rulers were worthy of the name of “Catholics,” for they tolerated in their church only the purely mediæval type of strict orthodoxy. The most distinguished promoter of their reforms in church polity was a Franciscan monk, Francis Ximenes, from A.D. 1492 confessor to Isabella, afterwards raised by her to the archbishopric of Toledo, made a Roman cardinal by Alexander VI., and grand-inquisitor of Spain in A.D. 1507. He died in A.D. 1517.

§ 119.1. Wiclif and the Wiclifites.―In England the kings and the Parliament had for a long time withstood the oppressive yoke of the papal hierarchy. Men too like John of Salisbury, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Bradwardine had raised their voices against the inner corruption of the church. John Wiclif, a scholar of Bradwardine, was born about A.D. 1320. As fellow of the University of Oxford, he supported in A.D. 1366 the English Crown against the payment of tribute to the papal court then at Avignon, admitted by John Lackland (§ 96, 18), of which payment had now for a long time been refused. This secured him court favour, the title of doctor, and a professorship of theology at Oxford; and in A.D. 1374 he was chosen as member of a commission which was to discuss at Brügge in the Netherlands with the papal envoys the differences that had arisen about the appointing to ecclesiastical offices. After his return he openly spoke and wrote against the papal “antichrist” and his doctrines. Gregory XI. now, in A.D. 1377, condemned nineteen propositions from his writings, but the English court protected him from the strict inquiry and punishment threatened. Meanwhile Wiclif was ever becoming bolder. Under his influence religious societies were formed which sent out travelling preachers of the gospel among the people. By their opponents they were called Lollards (§ 116, 3), a name to which the stigma of heresy was already attached. Wiclif translated for them the Scriptures from the Vulgate into English. The bitterness of his enemies now reached its height. Just then, in A.D. 1381, a rebellion of the oppressed peasants that deluged all England with blood broke out. Its origin has been quite gratuitously assigned to the religious movement. When he had directly repudiated the doctrine of transubstantiation, a synod at London, in A.D. 1382, condemned his writings and his doctrine as heretical, and the university also cast him out. Court and Parliament could only protect his person. He now retired to his rectory at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where he died on 31st December, 1384.―For five centuries his able writings were left unprinted, to moulder away in the obscurity of libraries. His English works have now been edited by Matthews, London, 1880. Lechler of Leipzig edited Wiclif’s most complete and comprehensive work, the “Trialogus” (Oxford, 1869), in which his whole theological system is developed. Buddensieg of Dresden published the keen antipapal controversial tract, “De Christo et suo adversario Antichristo” (Leipzig, 1880). The Wiclif Society, instituted at the fifth centenary of Wiclif’s death for the purpose of issuing critical editions of his most important works, sent forth as their first performance Buddensieg’s edition of “twenty-six Latin controversial tracts of Wiclif’s from MSS. previously unprinted,” in 2 vols., London, 1883. Among Wiclif’s systematic treatises we are promised editions of the Summa theologiæ, De incarnatione Verbi, De veritate s. Scr., De dominio divino, De ecclesia, De actibus animæ, etc., some by English, some by German editors.―As the principle of all theology and reformation Wiclif consistently affirms the sole authority of Divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures. He has hence been called doctor evangelicus. Anything that cannot be proved from it is a corrupting human invention. Consistently carrying out this principle, he denounced the worship of saints, relics, and images, the use of Latin in public worship, elaborate priestly choir singing, the multiplication of festivals, private masses, extreme unction, and generally all ceremonialism. The Catholic doctrine of indulgence and the sale of indulgences, as well as the ban and the interdict, he pronounced blasphemous; auricular confession he regarded as a forcing of conscience; the power of the keys he explained as conditional, its binding and loosing powerless, except when in accordance with the judgment of Christ. He denied the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, and affirmed, like Berengar, a spiritual communication thereof, which however he makes dependent, not only on the faith of the receiver, but also on the worthiness of the officiating priest. The doctrine of purgatory he completely rejected, and supported Augustine’s predestinationism against the prevalent semipelagianism. The papacy was antichrist; the pope has his power only from the emperor, not from God. The hierarchical system should be replaced by the apostolic presbyterial constitution. Ordination confers no indelible character; a priest who has fallen into mortal sin cannot dispense the sacrament. Every believer is as such a priest. The State is a representation of Christ, as the God-Man ruler of the universe; the clergy represent only the poor and suffering life of His humanity. Monkery is contrary to nature, etc.―Wiclif’s supporters, many of them belonging to the noblest and most cultured orders, were after his death subjected to violent persecution, which reached its height when the House of Lancaster in the person of Henry IV. ascended the English throne in A.D. 1399. An act of parliament was passed in A.D. 1400 which made death by fire the punishment of the heresy of the Lollards. Among the martyrs which this law brought to the stake was the noble Sir John Oldcastle, who in A.D. 1418 was hung up between two beams in iron chains over a fire and there slowly burnt. The Council of Constance in A.D. 1415 condemned forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s writings, and ordered his bones to be exhumed and scattered abroad. Many germs sown by him continued until the Reformation came.348

§ 119.2. Precursors of the Hussite Movement.―Owing to its Greek origin (§ 79, 2, 3), the Bohemian church had a certain character of its own and barely tolerated the Roman constitution and ritual. In Bohemia too the Waldensians had numerous supporters during the 13th century. And even before the appearance of Huss three distinguished clergymen in and around Prague by earnest preaching and pastoral work had awakened in many a consciousness of crying abuses in the church.

1. Conrad of Waldhausen was a famous preacher when called by Charles IV. to Prague, where after fifteen years’ labour he died in A.D. 1369. Preaching in German, he inveighed against the cupidity, hypocrisy, and immorality of the clergy and monks, against the frauds connected with the worship of images and relics and shrines, and threw back upon his accusers the charge of heresy in his still extant Apologia.
2. More influential than Conrad as a preacher of repentance in Prague was John Milicz of Cremsier in Moravia, who died in A.D. 1374. Believing the end of the world near and antichrist already come, he went to Rome in A.D. 1367 to place before Urban V. his scheme of apocalyptic interpretation. Escaping with difficulty from the Inquisition, he returned to Prague, and there applied himself with renewed zeal to the preaching of repentance. His preaching led to the conversion of 200 fallen women, for whom he erected an institution which he called Jerusalem. But the begging friars accused him before Gregory XI. as a heretic. Milicz fearlessly went for examination to Avignon in A.D. 1374, where he soon died before judgment had been passed. The most important of his works is De Antichristo.
3. Matthias of Janow, of noble Bohemian descent, died in A.D. 1374, after fourteen years’ work as a preacher and pastor in Prague. His sermons, composed in Bohemian, lashed unsparingly the vices of the clergy and monks, as well as the immorality of the laity, and denounced the worship of images and relics. None of his sermons are extant, but we have various theological treatises of his on the distinguishing of the true faith from the false and the frequent observance of the communion. At a Prague synod of A.D. 1389 he was obliged to retract several of his positions, and especially to grant the propriety of confessing and communicating half-yearly. Janow however, like Conrad and Milicz, did not seriously contest any fundamental point of the doctrine of the church.

§ 119.3. John Huss of Hussinecz in Bohemia, born A.D. 1369, was Bachelor of Theology at Prague, in A.D. 1394, Master of Liberal Arts in A.D. 1396, became public teacher in the university in A.D. 1398, was ordained priest in A.D. 1400, undertook a pastorate in A.D. 1402 in the Bethlehem chapel, where he had to preach in the Bohemian language, was chosen confessor of Queen Sophia in A.D. 1403, and was soon afterwards made synodal preacher by the new archbishop, Sbynko of Hasenburg. Till then he had in pious humility accepted all the doctrines of the Romish Church, and even in A.D. 1392 he offered his last four groschen for an indulgence, so that for a long time dry bread was his only nourishment. But about A.D. 1402 he reached an important crisis in his life through the study of Wiclif’s theological works.―Bohemians who had studied in Oxford brought with them Wiclif’s philosophical works, and in A.D. 1348 the discussion on realism and nominalism broke out in Prague. The Bohemians generally sided with Wiclif for realism; the Germans with the nominalists (§ 113, 3). This helped to prepare an entrance for Wiclif’s theological writings into Bohemia. Of the national party which favoured Wiclif’s philosophy and theology, Huss was soon recognised as a leader. A university decree of A.D. 1403 condemned forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s works as heretical, and forbade their promulgation in lectures or sermons. Huss however was still highly esteemed by Archbishop Sbynko. In A.D. 1405 he appointed Huss, with other three scholars, a commission to investigate a reputed miracle at Wilsnack, where on the altar of a ruined church three blood-red coloured hosts were said to have been found. Huss pronounced the miracle a cheat, and proved in a tract that the blood of Christ glorified can only be invisibly present in the sacrament of the altar. The archbishop approved this tract, and forbade all pilgrimages to the spot. He also took no offence at Huss for uttering Wiclifite doctrine in his synod sermon. Only when, in A.D. 1408, the clergy of his diocese complained that Huss by his preaching made the priests contemptible before the people, did he deprive him of his function as synod preacher. When the majority of cardinals at Leghorn in A.D. 1408 took steps to put an end to the schism, king Wenzel determined to remain neutral, and demanded the assent of the university as well as the clergy of his realm. But only the Bohemian members of the university agreed, while the rest, along with the archbishop, supported Gregory XII. Sbynko keenly resented the revolt of the Bohemians, and forbade Huss as their spokesman to preach within his diocese. Huss paid no attention to the prohibition, but secured a royal injunction, that henceforth in the university Bohemians should have three votes and foreigners only one. The foreigners then withdrew, and founded the University of Leipzig in A.D. 1409. Huss was made first rector of the newly organized University of Prague; but the very fact of his great popularity in Bohemia caused him to be profoundly hated in other lands.349

§ 119.4. The archbishop escaped prosecution only by unreservedly condemning the doctrines of Wiclif, burning his books, and prohibiting all lectures upon them. Huss and his friends appealed to John XXIII., but this did not prevent the archbishop burning in his palace yard about two hundred Wiclifite books that had previously escaped his search. For this he was hooted in the streets, and compelled by the courts of law to pay the value of the books destroyed. John XXIII. cited Huss to appear at Rome. King, nobles, magistrates, and university sided with him; but the papal commission condemned him when he did not appear, and the archbishop pronounced anathema against him and the interdict against Prague (A.D. 1411). Huss appealed to the œcumenical council, and continued to preach. The court forced the archbishop to become reconciled with Huss, and to admit his orthodoxy. Sbynko reported to the pope that Bohemia was free from heresy. He soon afterwards died. The pope himself was the cause of a complete breach, by having an indulgence preached in Bohemia in A.D. 1412 for a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the powerful adherent of Gregory XII. Huss opposed this by word and writing, and in a public disputation maintained that the pope had no right to grant such indulgence. His most stanch supporter was a Bohemian knight, Jerome of Prague, who had studied at Oxford, and returned in A.D. 1402 an enthusiastic adherent of Wiclif’s doctrines. Their addresses produced an immense impression, and two days later their disorderly followers, to throw contempt on the papal party, had the bull of indulgence paraded through the streets, on the breast of a public prostitute, representing the whore of Babylon, and then cast into the flames. But many old friends now withdrew from Huss and joined his opponents. The papal curia thundered against him and his followers the great excommunication, with its terrible curses. Wherever he resided that place was put under interdict. But Huss appealed to the one righteous Judge, Jesus Christ. At the wish of the king he left the city, and sought the protection of various noble patrons, from whose castles he went forth diligently preaching round about. He spread his views all over the country by controversial and doctrinal treatises in Latin and Bohemian, as well as by an extensive correspondence with his friends and followers. Thus the trouble and turmoil grew from day to day, and all the king’s efforts to restore peace were in vain.

§ 119.5. The Roman emperor Sigismund summoned Huss to attend the Council of Constance (§ 110, 7), and promised him a safe-conduct. Though not yet in possession of this latter, which he only got at Constance, trusting to the righteousness of his cause, for which he was quite willing to die a martyr’s death, he started for Constance on 11th October, A.D. 1414, reaching his destination on 3rd November. On 28th November he was sentenced to imprisonment at a private conference of the cardinals, on the pretended charge of an attempt at flight, first in the Dominican cloister, then in the bishop’s castle of Gottlieben, where he was put in chains, finally in the Franciscan cloister. Sigismund, who had not been forewarned when he was cast into prison, ordered his release; but the council convinced him that Huss, arraigned as a heretic before a general council, was beyond the reach of civil protection. His bitterest enemies and accusers were two Bohemians, Michael of Deutschbrod and Stephan of Palecz. The latter extracted forty-two points for accusations from his writings, which Huss from his prison retracted. D’Ailly and Gerson were both against him. The brave knight John of Chlum stood faithfully by him as a comforter to the last. For almost seven months was he harassed by private examinations, in which, notwithstanding his decided repudiation of many of them, he was charged with all imaginable Wiclifite heresies. The result was the renewed condemnation of those forty-five propositions from Wiclif’s writings, which had been condemned A.D. 1408 by the University of Prague. At last, on 5th June, A.D. 1415, he was for the first time granted a public trial, but the tumult at the sitting was so great that he was prevented from saying a single word. Even on the two following days of the trial he could do little more than make a vain protest against being falsely charged with errors, and declare his willingness to be better instructed from God’s word. The humility and gentleness of his demeanour, as well as the enthusiasm and believing joyfulness which he displayed, won for him many hearts even outside of the council. All possible motives were urged to induce him to submit. Sigismund so exhorted him, with the threat that if he did not he would withdraw his protection. The third and last day of trial was 8th June, A.D. 1415, and judgment was pronounced in the cathedral church on the 6th July. After high mass had been celebrated, a bishop mounted the pulpit and preached on Romans vi. 6. He addressed Sigismund, who was present, “By destroying this heretic, thou shalt obtain an undying name to all ensuing generations.” Once again called upon to recant, Huss repeated his previous protests, appealed to the promise of a safe-conduct, which made Sigismund wince and blush, and kneeling down prayed to God for his enemies and unjust judges. Then seven bishops dressed him in priestly robes in order to strip him of them one after another amid solemn execrations. Then they put on him a high pyramidal hat, painted with figures of devils, and bearing the inscription, Hæresiarcha, and uttered the words, “We give thy soul to the devil.” He replied: “I commend it into the hands of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” On that same day he was given over by Sigismund to Louis Count-palatine of the Rhine, and by him to the Constance magistrates, and led to the stake. Amid prayer and praise he expired, joyfully, courageously, and confidently, showing himself worthy to rank among the martyrs who in the best times of Christianity had sealed their Christian confession with their blood. His ashes were scattered on the Rhine. The later Hussites, in accordance with an old Christian custom (§ 39, 5), celebrated the day of his death as the dies natalis of the holy martyr John Huss.―Jerome of Prague had gone unasked to Constance. When he saw that his longer stay would not help his friend, but only involve himself in his fate, he left the city; but was seized on the way, and taken back in chains in April, A.D. 1415. During a severe half-year’s imprisonment, and wearied with the importunities of his judges, he agreed to recant, and to acquiesce in the sentence of Huss. But he was not trusted, and after as before his recantation he was kept in close confinement. Then his courage revived. He demanded a public trial before the whole council, which was at last granted him in May, A.D. 1416. There he solemnly and formally retracted his previous retractation with a believer’s confidence and a martyr’s joy. On May 30th, A.D. 1416, he, too, died at the stake, joyfully and courageously as Huss had done. The Florentine humanist Poggio, who was present, has given enthusiastic expression in a still extant letter to his admiration at the heroic spirit of the martyr.

§ 119.6. In all his departures from Romish doctrine Huss was dependent upon Wiclif, not only for the matter, but even for the modes of expression. He did not however separate himself quite so far from the Church doctrines as his English master. He firmly maintained the doctrine of transubstantiation; he was also inclined to withhold the cup from the laity; and, though he sought salvation only from the Saviour crucified for us, he did not refuse to give any place to works in the justification of the sinner, and even invocation of the saints he did not wholly condemn. While he energetically protested against the corruption of the clergy, he never denied that the sacrament might be efficaciously administered by an unworthy priest. In everything else however he was in thorough agreement with the English reformer. The most complete exposition of his doctrine is found in the Tractatus de ecclesia of A.D. 1413. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination is its foundation. He distinguishes from the church as a visible human institution the idea of the church as the true body of Christ, embracing all elected in Christ to blessedness from eternity. Its one and only head is Christ: not Peter, not the pope; for this church is no monster with two heads. Originally and according to Christ’s appointment the bishop of Rome was no more than the other bishops. The donation of Constantine first gave him power and dignity over the rest. As the church in the beginning could exist without a pope, so the church unto the end can exist without one. The Christian can obey the pope only where his commands and doctrines agree with those of Christ. In matters of faith Holy Scripture is the only authority. Fathers, councils, and popes may err, and have erred; only the word of God is infallible.―That this liberal reforming Council of Constance, with a Gerson at its head, should have sentenced such a man to death is not to be wondered at when we rightly consider how matters stood. His hateful realism seemed to the nominalistic fathers of the council the source of all conceivable heresies. It had even been maintained that realism consistently carried out would give a fourth person to the Godhead. His devotion to the national interests of Bohemia in the University of Prague had excited German national feeling against him. And, further, the council, which was concerned only with outward reforms, had little sympathy with the evangelical tone of his spirit and doctrine. Besides this, Huss had placed himself between the swords of two contending parties. The hierarchical party wished, in order to strike terror into their opponents, to show by an example that the church had still the power to burn heretics; and the liberal party refused to this object of papal hate all protection, lest they should endanger the cause of reformation by incurring a suspicion of sympathy with heresy.―The prophecy said to have been uttered by Huss in his last moments, “To-day you burn a goose (this being the meaning of Huss in Slavonian), but from its ashes will arise a swan (Luther’s coat of arms), which you will not be able to burn,” was unknown to his contemporaries. Probably it originated in the Reformation age from the appeals of both martyrs to the judgment of God and history. Huss had often declared that instead of the weak goose there would come powerful eagles and falcons.350

§ 119.7. Calixtines and Taborites.―During the imprisonment of their leader the Hussite party was headed by Jacob of Misa, pastor of St. Michael’s church in Prague. With consent of Huss he introduced the use of the cup by the laity and rejected the jejunium eucharisticum as opposed to Matthew xxvi. 26. This led to an interchange of controversial tracts between Prague and Constance on the withholding of the cup. The council decreed that whoever disobeys the Church on this point is to be punished as a heretic. This decree, followed by the execution of Huss, roused Bohemia to the uttermost. King Wenceslaw died in A.D. 1419 in the midst of national excitement, and the estates refused to crown his brother Sigismund, “the word-breaker.” Now arose a civil war, A.D. 1420-1436, characterized by cruelties on both sides rarely equalled. At the head of the Hussites, who had built on the brow of a steep hill the strong fortress Tabor, was the one-eyed, afterwards blind, John Ziska of Trocznov. The crusading armies sent against the Hussites were one after another destroyed; but the gentle spirit of Huss had no place among most of his followers. The two parties became more and more embittered toward one another. The aristocratic Calixtines (calix, cup) or Utraquists (sub utraque), at whose head was Bishop Rokycana of Prague, declared that they would be satisfied if the Catholic church would concede to them four articles:

1. Communion under both kinds;
2. Preaching of the pure gospel in the vulgar tongue;
3. Strict discipline among the clergy; and
4. Renunciation by the clergy of church property.

On the other hand, the Taborites would have no reconciliation with the Romish church, regarding as fundamentally corrupt in doctrine and worship whatever is not found in Scripture, and passing over into violent fanaticism, iconoclasm, etc. After Ziska’s death of the plague in A.D. 1424, the majority of the Taborites elected Procopius the Great as his successor. A small party that regarded no man worthy of succeeding the great Ziska, refused him allegiance, and styled themselves Orphans. They were the most fanatical of all.―Meanwhile the Council of Basel had met (§ 110, 8) and after long fruitless negotiations it was resolved in A.D. 1433 that 300 Hussite deputies should appear at Basel. After a fifty days’ disputation the four Calixtine articles with certain modifications were accepted by the council. On the basis of this Basel Compact the Calixtines returned to the Romish church. The Taborites regarded this as shameful treason to the cause of truth, and continued the conflict. But in A.D. 1434 they were utterly annihilated at Böhmischbrod, not far from Prague. In the Treaty of Iglau in A.D. 1436 Sigismund swore to observe the compact, and was recognised as king. But the concessions sworn to by church and state were more and more restricted and ultimately ignored. Sigismund died in A.D. 1437. In place of his son-in-law, Albert II., the Utraquists set up a rival king in the person of the thirteen year old Polish prince Casimir; but Albert died in A.D. 1439. His son, Ladislaus, born after his father’s death, had, in George Podiebrad, a Calixtine tutor. After he had grown up in A.D. 1453, he walked in his grandfather’s footsteps, and died in A.D. 1457. The Calixtines now elected Podiebrad king, as a firm supporter of the compact. Pius II. recognised him in the hope that he would aid him in his projected war against the Turks. When this hope was disappointed he cancelled the compact, in A.D. 1462. Paul II. put the king under him, and had a crusade preached against him. Podiebrad however still held his ground. He died in A.D. 1471. His successor, Wladislaw II., a Polish prince, though a zealous Catholic, was obliged to confirm anew to the Calixtines at the Diet of Cuttenberg, in A.D. 1485, all their rights and liberties. Yet they could not maintain themselves as an independent community. Those of them who did not join the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren gradually during the 16th century became thoroughly amalgamated with the Catholic church.

§ 119.8. The Bohemian and Moravian Brethren.―George Podiebrad took Tabor in A.D. 1453, and scattered the last remnants of the Taborites. Joining with the evangelical Friends of God, they received from the king a castle, where, under the leadership of the local pastor, Michael of Bradacz, they formed a Unitas fratrum, and called themselves Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. But in A.D. 1461 Podiebrad withdrew his favour, and confiscated their goods. They fled into the woods, and met for worship in caves. In A.D. 1467 the most distinguished of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren met in a Bohemian village, Shota, with the German Waldensians, and chose three brethren by lot as priests, who were ordained by Michael and a Waldensian priest. But when the validity of their ordination was disputed, Michael went to the Waldensian bishop Stephen, got from him episcopal consecration, and then again ordained the three chosen at Shota, one, Matthias of Conewald, as bishop, the other two as priests. This led Rokycana to persecute them all the more bitterly. They increased their numbers however, by receiving the remnants of the Waldensians and many Utraquists, until by the beginning of the 16th century they had four hundred congregations in Bohemia and Moravia. Under Wladislaw II. persecution was stopped from A.D. 1475, but was renewed with great violence in A.D. 1503. They sent in A.D. 1511 a confession of faith to Erasmus (§ 120, 6), with the request that he would give his opinion about it; which he however, fearing to be compromised thereby, declined to do. After the death of Bishop Matthias, in A.D. 1500, a dislike of monarchy led to the appointment of four Seniors instead of one bishop, two for Bohemia and two for Moravia. The most important and influential of these was Luke of Prague, who died in A.D. 1518, rightly regarded as the second founder of the union. He impressed a character upon the brotherhood essentially distinct in respect of constitution and doctrine from the Lutheran Reformation.―Continuation § 139, 19.

§ 119.9. The Waldensians.

1. The range of the missionary enterprise of the Lombard-German Waldensians was widely extended during the 14th century. At the close of that period it stretched “from western Switzerland across the southern borders of the empire, from the upper and middle Rhine along the Main and through Franconia into Thuringia, from Bohemia up to Brandenburg and Pomerania, and with its last advances reached to Prussia, Poland, Silesia, Hungary, Transylvania, and Galicia.” The anonymous writer of Passau, about A.D. 1260 or 1316, reports from his own knowledge of numerous “Leonists,” who in forty-two communities, with a bishop at Einzinspach, in the diocese of Passau, were in his time the subject of inquisitorial interference, and in theory and practice bore all the characteristic marks of the Lombard Leonists. The same applies to the Austrian Waldensians, of whose persecution in A.D. 1391 we have an account by Peter of Pilichdorf. We may also with equal confidence pronounce the Winkelers, so called from holding their services in secret corners, who about this time appeared in Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and the Rhine Provinces, to be Waldensians of the same Lombard type. Their confessors, Winkelers in the narrower sense, were itinerant, celibate, and without fixed abode, carrying on missionary work, and administering the sacrament of penance to their adherents. Although, in order to avoid the attentions of the Inquisition, they took part in the Catholic services, and in case of need confessed to Catholic priests, they were nevertheless traced about A.D. 1400 to Strassburg. Thirty-two of them were thrown into prison, and induced under torture to confess. The Dominicans insisted that they should be immediately burned, but the council was satisfied with banishing them from the city. At a later period the Hussites obtained an influence over them. One of their most notable apostles at this time was Fr. Reiser of Swabia. In his travels he went to Bohemia, attached himself to the Hussites there, received from them priestly ordination, and in A.D. 1433 accompanied their representatives to the Basel Council. Then Procopius procured him a call to a pastorate in the little Bohemian town of Landscron, which, however, he soon abandoned. Encouraged by the reformatory tendency of the council, he now remained for a long time in Basel, then conducted missionary work in Germany, at first on his own account, afterwards at the head of a Taborite mission of twelve agents, in which position he styled himself Fridericus Dei gratia Episcopus fidelium in Romana ecclesia Constantini donationem spernentium. At last, in A.D. 1457, he went to Strassburg, with the intention of there ending his days in peace. But soon after his arrival he was apprehended, and in A.D. 1458, along with his faithful follower, Anna Weiler, put to death at the stake.―On the Waldensians in German Switzerland, and the Inquisition’s oft repeated interference with them, Ochsenbein gives a full report, drawn from original documents, specially full in regard to the great Inquisition trial at Freiburg, in A.D. 1430, consisting of ninety-nine wearisome and detailed examinations. Subsequently terrible persecutions, aiming at their extermination, became still more frequent in Switzerland. Also the Swiss Waldensians already bore unmistakable marks of having been influenced by the Hussites. Finally, Wattenbach has made interesting communications regarding the Waldensians in Pomerania and Brandenburg, based upon a manuscript once in the possession of Flacius, but afterwards supposed to have been lost, discovered again in the Wolfenbüttel library in A.D. 1884, though in a very defective form, which contains the original reports of 443 prosecutions for heresy in Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Thuringia. By far the greatest number of these trials were conducted between A.D. 1373 and 1394, by the Cœlestine provincial Peter, appointed inquisitor by the pope. From A.D. 1383 Stettin was the centre of his inquisitorial activity, and on the conclusion of his work he could boast that during the last two years he had converted to the Catholic faith more than 1,000 Waldensians. The victims of the Inquisition belonged almost exclusively to the peasant and artisan classes. Their objectionable doctrines and opinions are essentially almost the same as those of their ancestors of the 13th century. Although equally with their predecessors they abhorred the practice of the Catholic church, and declared all swearing and slaughter to be mortal sin, they yet in great part, and as it seems even without the application of torture, were persuaded to abjure their heresy, and incurred nothing more than a light penance. They did this, perhaps, only in the hope that their indulgent confessors would absolve them from their sin. The last protocols bring us down to A.D. 1458. Since a great number of these heretics were found again in Brandenburg, the elector caused one of their most distinguished leaders, the tailor Matthew Hagen, and three of his disciples to be taken prisoners to Berlin, and commissioned the Bishop of Brandenburg to investigate the case; but owing to his sickness this duty devolved upon John Cannemann, professor and doctor of theology. The elector was himself present at the trial. The investigation showed that the Waldensians of Brandenburg had evidently been influenced in their opinions by the Bohemian Taborites, and that they were constantly in close communion with them, and Hagen confessed that he had been there ordained by Fr. Ryss or Reiser to the clerical office. When Hagen persistently refused to retract, he was delivered over to the civil authorities for punishment, and was by them executed, probably at the stake. His three companions abjured their heresy, and on submitting to church discipline and wearing clothes marked with the sign of the cross, were pardoned. Cannemann then proceeded to Angermünde, where in the city and surrounding country crowds of such heretics resided; and there he succeeded without great difficulty in bringing them to abjure their errors and accept the Catholic confession.―The Waldensians in Bohemia and Moravia quite voluntarily amalgamated with the “United Brethren” there. The remnants of the German and Swiss Waldensians may have attached themselves to the Reformation of the 16th century, but probably for the most part to the Protestant sects of that age, some joining Schwenkfeld, and still more going with the Anabaptists, to whom they were essentially much more closely related than to Luther or Zwingli.―As to the ultimate fate of the Lombard Waldensians themselves, we know nothing. Probably many of them sought escape from the persecutions which raged against them among the French Waldensians in the valleys of Piedmont.

§ 119.9A.

2. The remnants of the French Waldensians and their lay adherents down to the beginning of the 14th century had for the most part settled in the remote and little cultivated valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps. This settlement, which bore the character of an assembly as well as that of an isolation, now rendered indispensable the organization of an independent congregational order, such as had never been attempted before. In the arrangements of this community, not only was the question of clerical rank simplified by the combination of the order of bishop or majoralis with that of the presbyter, to which combined office was given the honourable designation of “barbe,” uncle, and instead of the hitherto annual tenure of this office was introduced a life tenure, but also to the laity was assigned a share in the church government at their synod meetings. A bull of John XXII., of A.D. 1332, informs us that then in the Piedmontese valleys ita creverunt et multiplicati sunt hæretici, præcipue de secta Waldensium, quod frequenter congregationes per modum capitali facere inibi præsumpserunt, in quibus aliquando 500 Valdenses fuerunt insimul congregati; yet certainly not merely clergy, as among the earlier congregations on the yearly tenure. The great, yea, extraordinarily great, number of the Waldensians in the Piedmontese valleys is proved by this, that from thence, since A.D. 1340, flourishing colonies of Waldensians were transplanted into Calabria and Apulia with the connivance of the larger proprietors in those parts. Those who had settled on the western side, in the province of Dauphiné, succumbed completely in A.D. 1545 to the oft repeated persecutions. The colonies of southern Italy, however, seem long to have led a quiet and little disturbed life under the protection of the territorial princes, until their adoption of Protestant views called down upon them the attention of the Inquisition, and led to their utter extermination in A.D. 1561. On the other hand, the Waldensians of Piedmont, in spite of continuous oppression and frequently renewed persecution, maintained their existence down to the present day. When in the beginning of the 15th century their residence came under the sway of the Duke of Savoy, the persecutions began, and lasted down to A.D. 1477, when a crusade for their extermination was summoned by Innocent VIII., which ended in the utter rout of the crusading army by Savoy and France. They had now a long period of repose, till their adoption of Protestant views in the 16th century anew awakened against them the horrors of persecution. In this time of rest brotherly intercourse was cultivated between the Waldensian groups and the Bohemian Brethren, who had hitherto maintained relations only with the German Waldensians. This movement originated with the Bohemians. Even at an earlier date, these, inspired by the wish to seek abroad what they could not obtain at home, namely, communion with a church free from Romish corruptions, had made a voyage of discovery in the east, which yielded no result. Now, in A.D. 1497, they determined to make another similar search, under the leadership of Luke of Prague, in the primitive haunts of the Waldensians in France and Italy. The deputies went forth, beginning with the south of France, and the remnants of the French communities in their settlements among the Piedmontese Alps. More detailed reports of their intercourse with these no longer exist, but it cannot be doubted that there was a mutual interchange of religious writings. It is a question therefore that has been much discussed as to which party was the chief gainer by this interchange. But it can now be no longer questioned that the Waldensians, as those who were far less advanced in the direction of the evangelical reformation, learnt much from the Bohemians, and by transferring it into their own literature, secured it as their permanent property.

§ 119.10. The Dutch Reformers sprang mostly from the Brothers of the Common Life (§ 112, 9).

1. John Pupper of Goch in Cleves, prior of a cloister founded by him at Mecheln, died A.D. 1475. His works show him to have been a man of deep spirituality. Love, which leads to the true freedom of sons of God, is the material, the sole authority of Scripture is the formal, principle of his theology, which rests on a purely Augustinian foundation. He contends against the doctrine of righteousness by works, the meritoriousness of vows, etc.
2. John Ruchrath of Wesel, professor in Erfurt, afterwards preacher at Mainz and Worms, died in A.D. 1481. On the basis of a strictly Augustinian theology he opposed the papal systems of anathemas and indulgences, and preached powerfully salvation by Jesus Christ only. For the church doctrine of transubstantiation he substituted one of impanation. He spiritualized the doctrine of the church. Against the ecclesiastical injunction of fasts, he wrote De jejunio; against indulgences, De indulgentiis; against the hierarchy, De potestate ecclesiastica. The Dominicans of Mainz accused and condemned him as a heretic in A.D. 1479. The old man, bent down with age and sickness, was forced to recant, and to burn his writings, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life in a monastery.
3. John Wessel of Gröningen was a scholar of the Brothers of the Common Life at Zwoll, where Thomas à Kempis exerted a powerful influence over him. He taught in Cologne, Lyons, Paris, and Heidelberg, and then retired to the cloister of Agnes Mount, near Zwoll, where he died in A.D. 1489. His friends called him Lux mundi. Scholastic dialectics, mystical depths, and rich classical culture were in him united with a clear and accurate knowledge of science. Luther says of him: “Had I read Wessel before, my enemies would have said, Luther has taken everything from Wessel, so thoroughly do our ideas agree.” His views are in harmony with Luther’s, especially in what he teaches of Holy Scripture, the universal priesthood of Christians, indulgence, repentance, faith, and justification. He taught that not only popes but even councils may err and have erred; excommunication has merely outward efficacy, indulgence has to do only with ecclesiastical penalties, and God alone can forgive sins; our justification rests on Christ’s righteousness and God’s free grace. Purgatory meant for him nothing more than the intermediate position between earthly imperfection and heavenly perfection, which is attained only through various stages. The protection of powerful friends saved him from the persecution of the Inquisition. Many of his works were destroyed by the diligence of the mendicant friars. The most important of his extant writings is the Farrago, a collection of short treatises.351
4. The priest of Rostock, Nicholas Russ, in the end of the 15th century, deserves honourable mention alongside of these Dutchmen. Living in intimate relations with Bohemian Waldensians, he was subjected to many indignities, and died a fugitive in Livonia. He wrote in the Dutch language a tract against the hierarchy, indulgences, worship of saints and relics, etc., which was translated into German by Flacius. A copy of it was found in Rostock library in A.D. 1850. It is entitled, “Of the Rope or of the Three Strings.” The rope that will raise man from the depths of his corruption must be made up of the three strings, faith, hope, and love. These three strings are described in succession, and so the book forms a complete compendium of Christian faith and life, with a sharp polemic against the debased church doctrine and morals of the age.

§ 119.11. An Italian Reformer.―Jerome Savonarola, born A.D. 1452, monk and from A.D. 1481 prior of the Dominican cloister of San Marco in Florence, was from A.D. 1489 in high repute in that city as an eloquent and passionate preacher of repentance, with even reckless boldness declaiming against the depravity of clergy and laity, princes and people. With his whole soul a Dominican, and as such an enthusiastic admirer of Thomas, practising rigid self-discipline by fasts and flagellations, he was led by the study of Augustine and Scripture to a pure and profound knowledge of the evangelical doctrine of salvation, which he sought, not in the merits and intercession of the saints, nor in the performance of good works, but only in the grace of God and justification through faith in the crucified Saviour of sinners. But with this he combined a prophetic-apocalyptic theory, according to which he thought himself called and fitted by Divine inspiration, like the prophets of the Old Testament, to grapple with the political problems of the age. And, in fact, he made many a hardened sinner tremble by revealing contemplated secret sins, and many of his political prophecies seem to have been fulfilled with surprising accuracy. Thus he prophesied the death of Innocent VIII. in A.D. 1492, and proclaimed the speedy overthrow of the house of the Medici in Florence, as well as the punishment of other Italian tyrants and the thorough reformation of the church by a foreign king crossing the Alps with a powerful army. And lo, in the following year, the king of France, Charles VIII., crossed the Alps to enforce his claims upon Naples and force from the pope recognition of the Basel reforms; the Medici were banished from Florence, and Naples unresistingly fell into the hands of the French. Thus the ascetic monk of San Marco became the man of the people, who now began with ruthless energy to carry out, not only moral and religious reformatory notions, but also his political ideal of a democratic kingdom of God. In vain did Alexander VI. seek by offer of a cardinal’s hat to win over the demagogical prophet and reformer; he only replied, “I desire no other red hat than that coloured by the blood of martyrdom.” In vain did the pope insist that he should appear before him at Rome; in vain did he forbid him the pulpit, from which he so powerfully moved the people. An attempt to restore the Medici also failed. At the carnival in A.D. 1497 Savonarola proved the supremacy of his influence over the people by persuading them, instead of the usual buffoonery, to make a bonfire of the articles of luxury and vanity. But already the political movements were turning out unfavourably, and his utterances were beginning to lose their reputation as true prophecies. Charles VIII. had been compelled to quit Italy in A.D. 1495, and Savonarola’s assurances of his speedy return were still unfulfilled. Popular favour vacillated, while the nobles and the libertine youth were roused to the utmost bitterness against him. The Franciscans, as members of a rival order, were his sworn enemies. The papal ban was pronounced against him in A.D. 1497, and the city was put under the interdict. A monk of his cloister, Fra Domenico Pescia, offered to pass the ordeal of fire in behalf of his master, if any of his opponents would submit to the same trial. A Franciscan declared himself ready to do so, and all arrangements were made. But when Domenico insisted upon taking with him a consecrated host, the trial did not come off, to the great disappointment of a people devotedly fond of shows. A fanatical mob took the prophet prisoner. His bitterest enemies were his judges, who, after torture had extorted from him a confession of false prophecy most repugnant to his inmost convictions, condemned him to death by fire as a deceiver of the people and a heretic. On 23rd May, A.D. 1498, he was, along with Domenico and another monk, hung upon a gallows and then burned. The believing joy with which he endured death deepened the reverence of an ever-increasing band of adherents, who proclaimed him saint and martyr. His portrait in the cell once occupied by him, painted by Fra Bartolomeo, surrounded with the halo of a saint, shows the veneration in which he was held by his generation and by his order. His numerous sermons represent to us his burning oratory. His chief work is his Triumphus crucis of A.D. 1497, an eloquent and thoughtful vindication of Christianity against the half pagan scepticism of the Renaissance, then dominant in Florence and at the court. An exposition of the 51st Psalm, written in prison and not completed, works out, with a clearness and precision never before attained, the doctrine of justification by faith. It was on this account republished by Luther in A.D. 1523.352

§ 120.1. Italian Humanists.―Italy was the cradle of humanism, the Greeks who settled there (§ 62, 1, 2), its fathers. The first Greek who appeared as a teacher in Italy was Emmanuel Chrysoloras, in A.D. 1396. After the Council of Florence, Bessarion and Gemisthus Pletho settled there, both ardent adherents of the Platonic philosophy, for which they created an enthusiasm throughout all Italy. From A.D. 1453 Greek littérateurs came in crowds. From their schools classical culture and pagan ideas spread through the land. This paganism penetrated even the highest ranks of the hierarchy. Leo X.353 is credited with saying, “How many fables about Christ have been used by us and ours through all these centuries is very well known.” It may not be literally authentic, but it accurately expresses the spirit of the papal court. Leo’s private secretary, Cardinal Bembo, gave a mythological version of Christianity in classical Latin. Christ he styled “Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter,” the Holy Spirit “the breath of the celestial Zephyr,” and repentance was with him a Deos superosque manesque placare. Even during the council of Florence Pletho had expressed the opinion that Christianity would soon develop into a universal religion not far removed from classical paganism; and when Pletho died, Bessarion comforted his sons by saying that the deceased had ascended into the pure heavenly spheres, and had joined the Olympic gods in mystic Bacchus dances. In the halls of the Medici there flourished a new Platonic school, which put Plato’s philosophy above Christianity. Alongside of it arose a new peripatetic school, whose representative, Peter Pompanazzo [Pomponazzo], who died A.D. 1526, openly declared that from the philosophical point of view the immortality of the soul is more than doubtful. The celebrated Florentine statesman and historian Macchiavelli,354 who died A.D. 1527, taught the princes of Italy in his “Prince,” in direct contradiction to Dante’s idealistic “Monarchia,” a realistic polity which was completely emancipated from Christianity and every system of morality, and presented the monster Cæsar Borgia (§ 110, 12) as a pattern of an energetic prince, consistently labouring for the end he had in view. Looseness of morals went hand in hand with laxity in religion. Obscene poems and pictures circulated among the humanists, and their practice was not behind their theory. Poggio’s lewd facetiæ, as well as Boccadelli’s indecent epigrams, fascinated the cultured Christian world as much by their lascivious contents as by their classical style. From the dialogues of Laurentius Valla on lust and the true good, which were meant to extol the superiority of Christian morals over those of the Epicureans and Stoics, comes the saying that the Greek courtesans were more in favour than the Christian nuns. The highly gifted poet, Pietro Aretino, in his poetical prose writings reached the utmost pitch of obscenity. He was called “the divine Aretino,” and not only Charles V. and Francis I. honoured him with presents and pensions, but also Leo X., Clement VIII., and even Paul III. showed him their esteem and favour. In their published works the Italian humanists generally ignored rather than contested the church and its doctrines and morality. But Laurentius Valla, who died A.D. 1457, ventured in his Adnotationes in N.T. freely to find fault with and correct the Vulgate. He did even more, for he pronounced the Donation of Constantine (§ 87, 4) a forgery, and poured forth bitter invectives against the cupidity of the papacy. He also denied the genuineness of the correspondence of Christ with Abgarus [Abgar] (§ 13, 2), as well as that of the Areopagite writings (§ 47, 11) and questioned if the Apostles’ Creed was the work of the apostles (§ 35, 2). The Inquisition sought to get hold of him, but Nicholas V. (§ 110, 10) frustrated the attempt and showed him kindness. With all his classical culture, however, Valla retained no small reverence for Christianity. In a still higher degree is this true of John Picus, Prince of Mirandola, the phœnix of that age, celebrated as a miracle of learning and culture, who united in himself all the nobler strivings of the present and the past. When a youth of twenty-one he nailed up at Rome nine hundred theses from all departments of knowledge. The proposed disputation did not then come off, because many of those theses gave rise to charges of heresy, from which he was cleared only by Alexander VI. in A.D. 1493. The combination of all sciences and the reconciliation of all systems of philosophy among themselves and with revelation on the basis of the Cabbala was the main point in his endeavours. He has wrought out this idea in his Heptaplus, in which, by means of a sevenfold sense of Scripture, he succeeds in deducing all the wisdom of the world from the first chapter of Genesis. He died in A.D. 1494, in the thirty-first year of his age. In the last year of his life, renouncing the world and its glory, he set himself with all his powers to the study of Scripture, and meant to go from land to land preaching the Cross of Christ. His intentions were frustrated by death. His saying is a very characteristic one: Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet.

§ 120.2. German Humanism.―The home of German humanism was the University of Erfurt, founded A.D. 1392. At the Councils of Constance and Basel Erfurt, next to Paris, manifested the greatest zeal for the reformation of head and members, and continued to pursue this course during the twenty years’ activity of John of Wesel (§ 119, 10). About A.D. 1460 the first representatives of humanism made their appearance there, a German Luder and a Florentine Publicius. From their school went forth among others Rudolph of Langen, who carried the new light into the schools of Westphalia, and John of Dalberg, afterwards Bishop of Worms. When these two had left Erfurt, Maternus Pistorius headed the humanist movement. Crowds of enthusiastic scholars from all parts of Germany gathered around him. As men of poetic tastes, who appreciated the ancient classics, they maintained excellent relations with the representatives of scholasticism. But in A.D. 1504 Busch, a violent revolutionist, appearing at Erfurt, demanded the destruction of the old scholastic text-books, and thus produced an absolute breach between the two tendencies. Maternus retired, and Mutian, an old Erfurt student, assumed the leadership in Gotha. Erfurt and Gotha were kept associated by a lively intercourse between the students resident at these two places. Mutian had no literary ambitions, and firmly declined a call to the new University of Wittenberg. All the more powerfully he inspired his contemporaries. His bitter opposition to hierarchism and scholasticism was expressed in keen satires. On retiring from public life, he devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Shortly before his death he wrote down this as his confession of faith: Multa scit rusticus, quæ philosophus ignorat; Christus vero pro nobis mortuus est, qui est vita nostra, quod certissime credo. The leadership passed over to Eoban Hesse. The members of the society joined the party of Luther, with the exception of Crotus Rubianus. Ulrich von Hutten was one of the followers of Mutian, a knight of a noble Franconian family, inspired with ardent patriotism and love of freedom, who gave his whole life to battle against pedantry, monkery, and intolerance. Escaping in A.D. 1504 from Fulda, where he was being trained for the priesthood, he studied at Erfurt, fought in Maximilian’s army with the sword, in Mutian’s and Reuchlin’s ranks with the pen, and after the fall of Sickingen became a homeless wanderer, until he died in want, in A.D. 1523, on Ufenan, an island in the Lake of Zürich.355

§ 120.3. Next to Erfurt, Heidelberg, founded in A.D. 1386, afforded a congenial home for humanist studies. The most brilliant representative of humanism there was Rudolph Agricola, an admirer and disciple of À. Kempis and Wessel. His fame rests more on the reports of those who knew him personally than on any writings left behind by him. His pupils mostly joined the Reformation.―The University of Wittenberg, founded by Frederick the Wise in A.D. 1502, was the nursery of a wise and moderate humanism. Humanist studies also found an entrance into Freiburg, founded in A.D. 1455, into Tübingen, founded in A.D. 1477, where for a long time Reuchlin taught, and into Ingolstadt, founded in A.D. 1472, where the Duke of Bavaria spared no efforts to attract the most distinguished humanists. Conrad Celtes, a pupil of Agricola, taught at Ingolstadt until his removal to Vienna in A.D. 1497. Eck and Rhegius, too, were among its ablest alumni. As a bitter opponent of Luther, Eck gave the university a most pronounced anti-reformation character; whereas Rhegius preached the gospel in Augsburg, and spent his life in the service of the Reformation. Reuchlin also taught for a time in Ingolstadt, and the patriotism and reformatory tendencies of Aventinus the Bavarian historian received there the first powerful impulse. At Nuremberg the humanists found a welcome in the home of the learned, wealthy, and noble Councillor Pirkheimer. In Reuchlin’s controversy with the scholars of Cologne he showed himself an eager apologist, and headed the party of Reuchlin. He greeted Luther’s appearance with enthusiasm, and entertained the reformer at his own house on his return from the discussion with Cajetan (§ 122, 3), on account of which Eck made the papal bull against Luther tell also against him. What he regarded as Luther’s violence, however, soon estranged him, while the cloister life of his three sisters and three daughters presented to him a picture of Catholicism in its noblest and purest form. His eldest sister, Christas, abbess of the Clara convent at Nuremburg [Nuremberg], one of the noblest and most cultured women of the 16th century, had a powerful influence over him. He died in A.D. 1530.

§ 120.4. John Reuchlin, born in A.D. 1455 at Pforzheim, went to the celebrated school at Schlettstadt in Alsace, studied at Freiburg, Paris, Basel, and Orleans, taught law in Tübingen, and travelled repeatedly in Italy with Eberhard the Bearded of Württemberg. After Eberhard’s death he went to the court of the Elector-palatine Philip, and along with D’Alberg [Dalberg] did much for the reputation of the University of Heidelberg. Afterwards he was for eleven years president of the Swabian court of justiciary at Tübingen. When in A.D. 1513 the seat of this court was removed to Augsburg he retired to Stuttgart, was called in A.D. 1519 by William of Bavaria to Ingolstadt as professor of Greek and Hebrew. On the outbreak of the plague at Ingolstadt in A.D. 1520, he accepted a call back to Tübingen, where he died in A.D. 1522. He never gave in his adhesion to the reforming ideas of Luther. He left unanswered a letter from the reformer in A.D. 1518. But as a promoter of every scientific endeavour, especially in connection with the study of the original text of the O.T., Reuchlin had won imperishable renown. He was well entitled to conclude his Rudimenta linguæ Hebraicæ of A.D. 1506 with Horace’s words, Stat monumentum aëre perennino, for that book has been the basis of all Christian Hebrew philology.356 He also discussed the difficult subject of Hebrew accents in a special treatise, De Acc. et Orthogr. Hebr. 11. iii, and the secret doctrines of the Jews in his De arte Cabbalistica. He offered to instruct any Jew who wished it in the doctrines of Christianity, and also to care for his temporal affairs. His attention to rabbinical studies involved him in a controversy which spread his fame over all Europe. A baptized Jew, Pfefferkorn, in Cologne in A.D. 1507 exhibited a neophyte’s zeal by writing bitter invectives against the Jews, and in A.D. 1509 called upon the Emperor Maximilian to have all rabbinical writings burnt because of the blasphemies against Christ which they contained. The emperor asked the opinion of the universities of Mainz, Cologne, Erfurt, and Heidelberg, as well as of Reuchlin and the Cologne inquisitor Hoogstraten. Erfurt and Heidelberg gave a qualified, Reuchlin an unqualified answer in opposition to the proposal. The openly abusive Jewish writings, e.g. the notorious Toledoth Jeschu, he would indeed condemn, but all other books, e.g. the Talmud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, books of sermons, prayers, and sacred songs, as well as all philosophical, scientific, poetic, and satirical writings of the Jews, he was prepared unconditionally to defend. Pfefferkorn contended against him passionately in his “Handspiegel” of A.D. 1511, to which Reuchlin replied in his “Augenspiegel.” The theological faculty of Cologne, mostly Dominicans, pronounced forty-three statements in the “Augenspiegel” heretical, and demanded its suppression. Reuchlin now gave free vent to his passion, and in his Defensio c. calumniatores suos Colonienses denounced his opponents as goats, swine, and children of the devil. Hoogstraten had him cited before a heresy tribunal. Reuchlin did not appear, but appealed to Pope Leo X. (A.D. 1513). A commission appointed by Leo met at Spires in A.D. 1514, and declared him not guilty of heresy, found Hoogstraten liable in the costs of the process, which was enforced with hearty satisfaction by Franz von Sickingen in A.D. 1519. But meanwhile Hoogstraten had made a personal explanation of his affairs at Rome, and had won over the influential magister sacri palatii, Sylvester Prierias (§ 122, 2), who got the pope in A.D. 1520 to annul the judgment and to condemn Reuchlin to pay the costs and observe eternal silence. The men of Cologne triumphed, but in the public opinion of Germany Reuchlin was regarded as the true victor.

§ 120.5. A multitude of vigorous and powerful pens were now in motion on behalf of Reuchlin. In the autumn of A.D. 1515 appeared the first book of the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum, which pretended to be the correspondence of a friend with the Cologne teacher Ortuinus Gratius of Deventer. In the most delicious monkish Latin the secret affairs of the mendicant monks and their hatred of Reuchlin were set forth, so that even the Dominicans, according to Erasmus, for a time regarded the correspondence as genuine. All the more overwhelming was the ridicule which fell upon them throughout all Europe. The mendicants indeed obtained from Leo a bull against the writers of the book, but this only increased its circulation. The authors remained unknown; but there is no doubt they belonged to the Mutian party. Justus Jonas, a member of that guild, affirms that Crotus Rubianus had a principal hand in its composition. The idea of it was probably suggested by Mutian himself. Ulrich von Hutten repudiated any share in it, and on internal and external grounds this is more than probable. Busch, Urban, Petrejus, and Eoban Hesse most likely contributed to it. In order to keep up the deception, Venice was given as the place of publication, the name of the famous Aldus Manutius, the papal publisher of Venice, was put upon the title, and a pseudo-papal imprimatur was attached. The second book was issued in A.D. 1517 by Frobenius in Basel. The monkish party published as a counterblast Lamentationes obscurorum virorum at Cologne in A.D. 1518, but the lame and forced wit of the book marked it at once as a ridiculous failure. The monks and schoolmen were once and for ever morally annihilated.357

§ 120.6. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was the most brilliant of all the humanists, not only of Germany, but also of all Europe. Born in A.D. 1465, he was educated by the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer and Herzogenbusch, and afterwards forced by his relatives to enter a monastery in A.D. 1486. In A.D. 1491 he was relieved from the monastic restraints by the Bishop of Cambray, and sent to finish his studies at Paris. He visited England in A.D. 1497, in the company of young Englishmen to whom he had been tutor. There the humanist theologian Colet of Oxford exerted over him a wholesome influence that told upon his whole future life. After spending a year and a half in England, he passed the next six years, sometimes in France, sometimes in the Netherlands; was in Italy from A.D. 1507 till A.D. 1510; then again for five years in England, for most of that time teaching Greek at Cambridge; then other six years in the Netherlands; and at last, in A.D. 1521, he settled with his publisher Frobenius in Basel, where he enjoyed intercourse with the greatest scholars of the day, and maintained an extensive correspondence. He refused every offer of official appointment, even the rank of cardinal, but in reality held undisputed sway as king in the world of letters. He did much for the advancement of classical studies, and in various ways promoted the Protestant Reformation. The faults of the scholastic method in the study of theology he unsparingly exposed, while the misdeeds of the clergy and the ignorance and sloth of the monks afforded materials for his merciless satires. The heathenish spirit of many of the humanists, as well as the turbulent and revolutionary procedure of Ulrich von Hutten, was quite distasteful to him; but his Pelagianising tendencies also prevented him from appreciating the true character of the gospel. He desired a reformation of the Church, but he had not the reformer’s depth of religious emotion, world-conquering faith, self-denying love, and heroic preparation for martyrdom. He was much too fond of a genial literary life, and his perception of the corruption of the church was much too superficial, so that he sought reformation rather by human culture than by the Divine power of the gospel. When the Reformation conquered at Basel in A.D. 1529, Erasmus withdrew to Freiburg. He returned to Basel in A.D. 1536 for conference with Frobenius, and died there under suspicion of heresy without the sacraments of the church. His friends the monks at an earlier period, on the occasion of a false report of his death, had said in their barbarous Latin that he died “sine lux, sine crux, sine Deus.” The most important of his works are his critical and exegetical treatises on the N.T. The first edition of his Greek N.T., with Latin translation, short notes, and three introductory sections, was published in A.D. 1516. In the second edition of A.D. 1519, one of these introductory sections, Ratio veræ theologiæ, appeared in a greatly extended form; and from A.D. 1522 it was issued separately, and passed through several editions. Scarcely less important were his paraphrases of all the biblical books except the Apocalypse, begun in A.D. 1517. He did much service too by his editions of the Fathers. On his polemic with Luther see § 125, 3. His Ecclesiastes s. concionator evangelicus of A.D. 1535 is a treatise on homiletics admirable of its kind. In his “Praise of Folly” (Ἐγκώμιον μωρίας, s. Laus stultitiæ) of A.D. 1511, dedicated to his friend Sir Thomas More, he overwhelms with ridicule the schoolmen, as well as the monks and the clergy; and in his “Colloquies” of A.D. 1518, by which he hoped to make boys latiniores et meliores, he let no opportunity pass of reproaching the monks, the clergy, and the forms of worship which he regarded as superstitious. Also his Adagia of A.D. 1500 had afforded him abundant scope for the same sort of thing. A piety of the purest and noblest type, derived from the schools of the Brothers of the Common Life, and from intercourse with Colet, breathes through his Enchiridion militis christiani of A.D. 1502.358―Continuation § 123, 3.

§ 120.7. Humanism in England.―In England we meet with two men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus, of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform within the Catholic church. John Colet in A.D. 1496 returned to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained, not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. There, in A.D. 1498, he attached himself closely to Erasmus and to young Thomas More, who was studying in that place. In A.D. 1505 Colet was made doctor and Dean of St. Paul’s, in which position he expounded with great success whole biblical books and large portions of others in his sermons. After his father’s death in A.D. 1510, he applied his great wealth to the founding of a grammar school at St. Paul’s for the instruction of more than 150 boys in classical, biblical, and patristic literature. A convocation of English bishops in A.D. 1512, to devise means for rooting out heresy (§ 119, 1), gave him the opportunity in his opening sermon to speak plainly to the assembled bishops. He told them that reform of their own order was the best way to protect the church against the incursion of heretics. This aroused the bitter wrath of the old, bigoted Bishop Fitzjames of London, who disliked him exceedingly on account of his reforming tendencies and his pastoral and educational activity. But the archbishop, Warham of Canterbury, repelled the bishop’s fanatical charge of heresy as well as King Henry’s suspicions in regard to the political sympathies of the simple, pious man. Colet died in A.D. 1519.―Thomas More, born in A.D. 1480, was recommended to the king by Cardinal Wolsey, and rose from step to step until in A.D. 1529 he succeeded his patron as Lord Chancellor of England. In bonds of closest intimacy with Colet and Erasmus, More also shared in their desires for reform, but applied himself, in accordance with his civil and official position, more to the social and political than to the ecclesiastical aspects of the question. His most comprehensive contribution is found in his famous satire, “Utopia,” of A.D. 1516, in which he sets forth his views as to the natural and rational organization of all social and political relations of life in contrast to the corrupt institutions of existing states. The religious side of this utopian paradise is pure deism, public worship being restricted to the use of what is common to all religions, and peculiarities of particular religions are relegated to special or private services. We cannot however from this draw any conclusion as to his own religious beliefs. More continued to the end a zealous Catholic and a strict ascetic, and was a man of a singularly noble and steadfast character. In the controversy between the king and Luther (§ 125, 3) he supported the king, and as chancellor he wrote, in direct contradiction to the principles of religious toleration commended in his “Utopia,” with venomous bitterness against the adherents of the anti-Catholic reformation. But he decidedly refused to acquiesce in the king’s divorce; and when Henry quarrelled with the pope in A.D. 1532 and began to carry out reforms in a Cæsaro-papistic manner (§ 139, 4), he resigned his offices, firmly refused to acknowledge the royal supremacy over the English church, and, after a long and severe imprisonment, was beheaded in A.D. 1535.359

§ 120.8. Humanism in France and Spain.―In France humanist studies were kept for a time in the background by the world-wide reputation of the University of Paris and its Sorbonne. But a change took place when the young king Francis I., A.D. 1515-1547, became the patron and promoter of humanism. One of its most famous representatives was Budæus [Buddæus], royal librarian, who aided in founding a college for the cultivation of science free from the shackles of scholasticism, and exposed the corruptions of the papacy and the clergy. But much as he sympathized with the spirit of the Reformation, he shrank from any open breach with the Catholic church. He died in A.D. 1540. His like-minded contemporary, Faber Stapulensis, as a teacher of classical literature at Paris gathered crowds of pupils around him, and from A.D. 1507 applied himself almost exclusively to biblical exegetical studies. He criticised and corrected the corrupt text of the Vulgate, commented on the Greek text of the gospels and apostolic epistles, and on account of this, as well as by reason of a critical dissertation on Mary Magdalene of A.D. 1521, was condemned by the Sorbonne. Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Orleans protected him from further persecution. Also his former pupil, William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who was eagerly endeavouring to restore morality and piety among his clergy, appointed him his vicar-general, and gave him an opportunity to bring out his French translation of the New Testament from the Vulgate in A.D. 1523, which was followed by a translation of the Old Testament and a French commentary on the pericopes of the Sundays and festivals. As Faber here represented the Scriptures as the only rule of faith for all Christians, and taught that man is justified not by his works, but only by faith in the grace of God in Christ, the Sorbonne charged him with the Lutheran heresy, and Parliament, during the king’s imprisonment in Spain (§ 126, 5) in A.D. 1525, appointed a commission to search out and suppress heresy in the diocese of Meaux. Faber’s books were condemned to the flames, but he himself, threatened with the stake, escaped by flight to Strassburg. After his return the king provided for him a safe retreat at Blois, where he wrought at his translation of the Old Testament, which he completed in A.D. 1528. He spent his last years at Nérac, the residence of his patroness Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, where he died in A.D. 1536 in his 86th year. Though at heart estranged from the Catholic church, he never formally forsook it.―In Spain Cardinal Ximenes (§ 118, 7) acted as the Mæcenas of humanist studies. The most distinguished Spanish humanist was Anton of Lebrija, professor at Salamanca, a fellow labourer with Ximenes on the Complutensian Polyglott, and protected by him from the Inquisition, which would have called him to account for his criticism of the Vulgate. He died in A.D. 1522.

§ 120.9. Humanism and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century.―Humanists, in common with the reformers, inveighed against the debased scholasticism as well as against the superstition of the age. They did so however on very different grounds, and conducted their warfare by very different methods. While the reformers employed the word of God, and strove after the salvation of the soul, the humanists employed wit and sarcasm, and sought after the temporal well-being of men. Hence the reaction of the despised scholasticism and the contemned monasticism against humanism was often in the right. A reformation of the church by humanism alone would have been a return to naked paganism. But, on the other hand, classical studies afforded men who desired a genuine reformation of the church a rich, linguistic, philosophical, and scientific culture, without which, as applied to researches in church history, the exposition of Scripture, and the revision of doctrine, the reforms of the sixteenth century could hardly have been carried out in a comprehensive and satisfactory manner. The most permanent advantage won for the church and theology by the revival of learning was the removal of Holy Scripture from under the bushel, and giving it again its rightful place as the lamp of the church. It pointed back from the Vulgate, of which since A.D. 1500, some ninety-eight printed editions had appeared, to the original text, condemned the allegorical method of exposition, awakened an appreciation of the grammatical and historical system of interpretation, afforded scientific apparatus by its philological studies, and by issuing printed Bibles secured the spread of the original text. From the time of the invention of printing the Jews were active in printing the Old Testament. From A.D. 1502 a number of Christian scholars, under the presidency of Ximenes, wrought at Alcala at the great Complutensian Polyglott, published in A.D. 1520. It contained the Hebrew and Greek texts, the Targums, the LXX., and the Vulgate, as well as a Latin translation of the LXX. and of the Targums, with a much-needed grammatical and lexical apparatus. Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp published at Venice various editions of the Old Testament, some with, some without, rabbinical commentaries. His assistants were Felix Pratensis, a learned Jew; and Jacob ben Chaijim, a rabbi of Tunis. As the costly Complutensian Polyglott was available only to a few, Erasmus did great service by his handy edition of the Greek New Testament, notwithstanding its serious critical deficiencies. Erasmus himself brought out five successive editions, but very soon more than thirty impressions were exhausted.

§ 122.1. Luther’s Years of Preparation.―Martin Luther, a miner’s son, was born on November 10th, A.D. 1483. His childhood was passed under severe parental control and amid pinching poverty, and he went to school at Mansfeld, whither his parents had migrated; then at Magdeburg, where, among the Brothers of the Common Life, he had mainly to secure his own support as a singing boy upon the streets; and afterwards at Eisenach, where Madame Ursula Cotta, moved by his beautiful voice and earnest entreaty, took him into her house. In A.D. 1501 he entered on the study of jurisprudence at Erfurt (§ 120, 2), took the degree of bachelor in A.D. 1502, and that of master in A.D. 1505. During a fearful thunderstorm, which overtook him as he travelled home, he was driven by terror to vow that he would become a monk, impressed as he was by the sudden death of an unnamed friend which had taken place shortly before. On the 17th July, A.D. 1505, he entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt. In deep concern about his soul’s salvation, he sought by monkish asceticism, fasting, prayer, and penances to satisfy his conscience, but the inward struggles only grew stronger. An old monk proclaimed to the weary inquirer, almost fainting under the anxiety of spirit and self-imposed tortures, the comforting declaration of the creed, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Still more powerful in directing him proved the conversation of his noble superior, John Staupitz (§ 112, 6). He showed him the way of true repentance and faith in the Saviour crucified not for painted sins. Following his advice, Luther diligently studied the Bible, together with, of his own accord, Augustine’s writings. In A.D. 1507 he was ordained priest, and in A.D. 1508 Staupitz promoted him to the University of Wittenberg, founded in A.D. 1502, where he lectured on the “Dialectics” and “Physics” of Aristotle; and in A.D. 1509 he was made Baccalaureus biblicus. In the autumn of the same year he went again, probably by Staupitz’ advice, to Erfurt, until, a year and a half afterwards, he obtained a definite settlement at Wittenberg. Highly important for his subsequent development was the journey which, in A.D. 1511, he took to Rome in the interests of his order. On the first view of the holy city, he sank upon his knees, and with his hands raised to heaven cried out, “I greet thee, holy Rome.” But he withdrew utterly disgusted with the godless frivolity and immorality which he witnessed among the clergy on every side, and dissatisfied with the externalism of the penitential exercises which he had undertaken. During his whole journey the Scripture sounded in his ear, “The just shall live by his faith.” It was a voice of God in his soul, which at last carried the blessed peace of God into his wounded spirit. After his return, in A.D. 1512, Staupitz gave him no rest until he took the degree of doctor of divinity; and now he gave lectures in the university on Holy Scripture, and afterwards preached in the city church of Wittenberg. He applied himself more and more, by the help of Augustine, to the study of Scripture and its fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone. About this time too he was powerfully influenced by Tauler’s mysticism and the “Deutsche Theologie,” of which he published an edition in A.D. 1516.

§ 122.2. Luther’s Theses of A.D. 1517.―The æsthetic and luxurious pope Leo X. (§ 110, 14), avowedly for the building of St. Peter’s, really to fill his own empty coffers, had proclaimed a general indulgence. Germany was divided between three indulgence commissions. The elector-cardinal Albert of Mainz, archbishop of Magdeburg, and brother of Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, undertook the direction of the commission for his archiepiscopal province, for which he was to receive half the proceeds for the payment of his debts. The most shameless of the traffickers in indulgences employed by him was the Leipzig Dominican prior, John Tetzel. This man had been sentenced at Innsbrück to be drowned for adultery, but on the intercession of the Elector of Saxony had his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. He now was taken from his prison in order to do this piece of work for Albert. With great success he went from place to place, and offered his wares for sale, proclaiming their virtues in the public market with unparalleled audacity. He went to Jüterbock, in the vicinity of Wittenberg, where he attracted crowds of purchasers from all around. Luther discovered in the confessional the corrupting influence of such procedure, and on the afternoon of All Saints’ Day, October 31st, A.D. 1517, he nailed on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg ninety-five theses, explaining the meaning of the indulgence. Although they were directed not so much against the principle of indulgences as against their misunderstanding and abuse, they comprehended the real germ of the Reformation movement, negatively in the conception of repentance which they set forth, and positively in the distinct declaration that the grace of God in Christ can alone avail for the forgiveness of sin. With incredible rapidity the theses spread over all Germany, indeed over all Europe. Luther accompanied them with a sermon on indulgence and grace. The immense applause which its delivery called forth led the supporters of the old views to gird on their armour. Tetzel publicly burnt the theses at Jüterbock, and with the help of Wimpina posted up and circulated at Frankfort and other places counter-theses. The Wittenberg students purchased quantities of these theses, and in retaliation burnt them, but Luther did not approve their conduct. In April, A.D. 1518, Luther went to Heidelberg, to take part there in a regular chapter of the Augustinians, which was usually accompanied by public preaching and disputations by members of the order. The disputation, which on this occasion was assigned to Luther, gave him the welcome opportunity of making known to wider circles these philosophical and theological views which he had hitherto uttered only in Wittenberg. The professors of the University of Heidelberg repudiated and opposed them, but in almost every case mildly and with tolerance. On the other hand, many of the young theologians studying there enthusiastically accepted his doctrines, and several of them, e.g. Martin Bucer of Strassburg (§ 125, 1), John Brenz and Erhard Schnepf of Swabia (§ 133, 3), as well as Theobald Billicanus, afterwards reformer of Nördlingen, etc., there and then consecrated themselves to their life work.

§ 122.3. Prierias, Cajetan, and Miltitz, A.D. 1518, 1519.―Leo X. at first regarded the matter as an insignificant monkish squabble, and praised Brother Martin as a real genius. He gave no heed to Hoogstraten’s outcry of heresy, nor did he encourage the Dominican Prierias in his attack on Luther. The book of Prierias was a harmless affair. Luther gave it a short and crushing reply. Prierias answered in a second and third tract, which Luther simply republished with sarcastic and overwhelming prefaces. The pope then enjoined silence upon his luckless steward. In May, A.D. 1518, Luther wrote a humble epistle to the pope, and added a series of Resolutiones in vindication of his theses. Staupitz is said to have revised both. Meanwhile it had been determined in Rome to deal with the Wittenberg business in earnest. The papal procurator made a complaint against Luther. A court was commissioned, which summoned him to appear in person at Rome to answer for himself. But, on the representations of the University of Wittenberg and the Elector Frederick the Wise, the pope charged Cardinal Cajetan, his legate at the Diet of Augsburg, to take up the consideration of the matter. Luther appeared, and made his appeal to the Bible. The legate however wished him to argue from the schoolmen, demanded an unconditional recantation, and at last haughtily dismissed “the beast with deep eyes and wonderful speculations in his head.” Luther made a formal appeal a sanctissimo Domino Leone male informato ad melius informandum, and quitted Augsburg in good spirits. The cardinal now sought to rouse Frederick against the refractory monk, but Luther’s buoyant and humble confidence won the noble elector’s heart. Cajetan continued a vigorous opponent of the reformed doctrine. But Luther’s superiority in Scripture knowledge had so impressed the cardinal, that he now applied himself closely to the study of the Bible in the original tongues; and thus, while firmly attached to the Romish system, he was led on many points, e.g. on Scripture and tradition, divorce, injunctions about meats, the use of the vernacular in public worship, the objectionableness of the allegorical interpretation, etc., to adopt more liberal views, so that he was denounced by some Roman Catholic controversialists as guilty of various heresies.―Luther had no reason in any case to look for any good from Rome. Hence he prepared beforehand an appeal for an œcumenical council, which the publisher, against Luther’s will, at once spread abroad. In Rome the cardinal’s pride was wounded by the failure of his undertaking. A papal bull defined the doctrine of indulgences, in order more exactly to guard against misrepresentations, and an accomplished courtier, the papal chamberlain, Carl von Miltitz, a Saxon, was sent to Saxony, in A.D. 1519, as papal nuncio, to convey to the elector the consecrated golden rose, and to secure a happy conclusion to the controversy. The envoy began by addressing a sharp admonition to Tetzel, and met Luther with hypocritical graciousness. Luther acknowledged that he had acted rashly, wrote a humble, submissive letter to the pope, and published “An Instruction on some Articles ascribed to him by his Traducers.” But after all the retractations which he made at the diet he still firmly maintained justification by faith, without merit of works. He promised the nuncio to abstain from all further polemic, on condition that his opponents also should be silent. But silent these would not be.

§ 122.4. The Leipzig Disputation, A.D. 1519.―John Eck of Ingolstadt had engaged in controversy with a zealous supporter and colleague of Luther, Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, professor and preacher at Wittenberg, and Luther himself took part in the discussion between the two. This disputation came off at Leipzig, and lasted from June 27th to July 16th. But Eck’s vanity led him not only to seek the greatest possible fame from his present disputation, but also to drag in Luther by challenging his theses. Eck disputed for eight days with Carlstadt about grace and free will, and with abundant eloquence, boldness, and learning vindicated Romish semi-Pelagianism. Then he disputed for fourteen days with Luther about the primacy of the pope, about repentance, indulgences, and purgatory, and pressed him hard about the Hussite heresy. But Luther sturdily opposed him on the grounds of Scripture, and confirmed himself in the conviction that even œcumenical councils might err, and that not all Hussite doctrines are heretical. Both parties claimed the victory. Luther continued the discussion in various controversial treatises, and Eck, too, was not silent. New combatants also, for and against, from all sides appeared upon the scene. The liberal humanists (§ 120, 2) had at first taken little notice of Luther’s contention. But the Leipzig Disputation led them to change their attitude. Luther seemed to them now a new Reuchlin, Eck another specimen of Ortuinus Gratius. A biting satire of Pirkheimer (§ 120, 3), “Der abgehobelte Eck,” appeared in the beginning of A.D. 1520, exceeding in Aristophanic wit any of the epistles of the Obscurantists. It was followed by several satires by Ulrich von Hutten, who received new inspiration from Luther’s appearance at Leipzig. Hutten and Sickingen, with their whole party, undertook to protect Luther with body and soul, with sword and pen. This was a covenant of some advantage to the Reformation in its early years; but had it not been again abrogated, it might have diverted the movement into an altogether wrong direction. From this time forth Duke George of Saxony, at whose castle and in whose presence the disputation had been conducted, became the irreconcilable enemy of Luther and his Reformation.

§ 122.5. Philip Melanchthon.―At the Leipzig Disputation there also appeared a man fated to become of supreme importance in the carrying out of the Reformation. Born on February 16th, A.D. 1497, at Bretten in the Palatinate, Philip Melanchthon entered the University of Heidelberg in his thirteenth year, and at the age of sixteen published a Greek grammar. He took the degree of master at seventeen, and at twenty-one, in A.D. 1518, on the recommendation of his grand-uncle Reuchlin, he was made Professor of Greek in Wittenberg. His fame soon spread over all Europe, and attracted to him thousands of hearers from all parts. Luther and Erasmus vied with one another in lauding his talents, his fine culture and learning, and his contemporaries have given him the honourable title of Præceptor Germaniæ. He was an Erasmus of nobler form and higher power, a thorough contrast to Luther. His whole being breathed modesty, mildness, and grace. With childlike simplicity he received the recognised truths of the gospel. He bowed humbly before the powerful, practical spirit of Luther, who also, on his part, acknowledged with profound thankfulness the priceless treasure God had sent to him and to his work in this fellow labourer. Melanchthon wrote to his friend Œcolampadius at Basel an account of the Leipzig Disputation, which by chance fell into Eck’s hands. This occasioned a literary controversy, in which Eck’s vain over-estimation of himself appears in very striking contrast to the noble modesty of Melanchthon. He took part in the Reformation first in February, A.D. 1521, by a pseudonymous apology for Luther.361

§ 122.6. George Spalatin.―In consequence of his influential position at the court of the elector, which he obtained on Mutian’s (§ 120, 2) recommendation, after completing his philosophical, legal, and theological studies at Erfurt, George Burkhardt, born in A.D. 1484 at Spalt, in the diocese of Eichstadt, and hence called Spalatinus, played an important part in the German Reformation. Frederick the Wise, who had, in A.D. 1509, entrusted him with the education of his nephew John Frederick, appointed him, in A.D. 1514, his court chaplain, librarian, and private secretary, in which capacity he accompanied the elector to all the diets, and was almost exclusively the channel for communicating to him tidings about Luther. John the Constant, in A.D. 1525, made him superintendent of Altenburg, and took him with him to the diets of Spires, in A.D. 1526, 1529, and of Augsburg in A.D. 1530. John Frederick the Magnanimous, his former pupil, employed him in A.D. 1537 on important negotiations at the conference of the princes at Schmalkald [Schmalcald] (§ 134, 1). From A.D. 1527 Spalatin was specially busy with the visitation and organization of the Saxon church (§ 127, 1), conducted, in the interests of the Reformation, an extensive correspondence, and composed several works on the history of his times and the history of the Reformation.

§ 123.1. Luther’s Three Chief Reformation Writings, A.D. 1520.―In the powerful treatise, “To His Imperial Majesty and the Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of the Christian Condition,” which appeared in the beginning of August, A.D. 1520, Luther bombards first of all the three walls behind which the Romanists entrenched themselves, the superiority of the spiritual to the civil power, the sole right of the pope to interpret Scripture and to summon œcumenical councils. Then he commends to the laity, as consecrated by baptism to a spiritual priesthood, especially civil rulers ordained of God, the task of carrying out the reformation which God’s word requires, but the pope and clergy hinder; and then finally he makes a powerful appeal for carrying out this work in a practical way. He exposes the false pretensions of the papal curia, demands renunciation of annats and papal confirmation of newly elected bishops, complete abandonment of the interdict and the abuse of excommunication, the prohibition of pilgrimages and the begging of the monks, a limitation of holy days, reform of the universities, permission to the clergy to marry, reunion with the Bohemian Picards (§ 119, 8), etc.―The second work, “On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” is a dogmatic treatise, and is directed mainly against the misuse of the sacraments and the reckoning of them as seven, which have been made in the hands of the pope an instrument of tyranny over the church. Only three are recognised as founded on Scripture: baptism, penance, and the Lord’s Supper, with the remark that, strictly speaking, even penance, as wanting an outward sign, cannot be styled a sacrament. The doctrine of transubstantiation, the withholding of the cup from the laity, and the idea of a sacrifice in the mass are decidedly rejected. The third treatise, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” enters the ethical domain. It represents the life of the Christian, rooted in justifying faith, as complete oneness with Christ. His relation therefore to the world around is set forth in two propositions: A Christian man is a free lord over all things, and subject to no one; and a Christian man is a ministering servant of all things, and subject to every one. On the one hand, he has the perfect freedom of a king and priest set over all outward things; but, on the other hand, he yields complete submission in love to his neighbour, which, as consideration of the weak, his very freedom demands.362

§ 123.2. The Papal Bull of Excommunication, A.D. 1520.―In order to reap the fruits of his pretended victory at Leipzig, Eck had gone to Rome, and was sent back triumphant as papal nuncio with the bull Exsurge Domini of June 16th. It charged Luther with forty-one heresies, recommended the burning of his works, and threatened to put him and his followers, if they did not retract in sixty days, under the ban. Miltitz renewed his attempts at conciliation, which, however, led to no result, although Luther, to show at least his good will, attended the conference, and, as a basis for a mutual understanding, published his treatise, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” in Oct., A.D. 1520. He accompanied this with a letter to the pope, in which he treated him with personal respect, as a sheep among wolves and as a Daniel sitting among lions; but there was in it no word of repentance or of any desire to retract. It could easily have been foreseen that these two documents would prove thoroughly distasteful to the Romish court. Meanwhile Eck had issued the bull. Luther published a scathing polemic against it, and renewed his appeal, made two years before, to an œcumenical council. In Saxony Eck gained only scorn and reproach with his bull; but in Lyons, Mainz, Cologne, etc., Luther’s works were actually burnt. It was then that Luther took the boldest step in his whole career. With a numerous retinue of doctors and students, whom he had invited by a notice posted up on the blackboard, on the 10th Dec., A.D. 1520, at the Elster gate of Wittenberg, he cast into the blazing pile the bull and the papal decretals with the words, “Because thou hast troubled the saints of the Lord, let eternal fire consume thee.” It was the utter renunciation of the pope and his church, and with it he cut away every possibility of a return.

§ 123.3. Erasmus, A.D. 1520.―Erasmus (§ 120, 6) had been hitherto on good terms with Luther. They entertained for one another a genuine regard. Diverse as their positive tendencies were, they were at one in contending against scholasticism and monkery. Erasmus was not sorry to see such heavy blows dealt to the detested monks, and constantly refused to write against Luther; he had also, he confessed, no wish to learn from his own experience the sharpness of Luther’s teeth. When the papal bull appeared, without hesitation he disapproved it, and indeed refused to believe in its genuineness. He, as the oracle of his age, was applied to by many for his opinion of the matter. His judgment was that not the papal decision in itself but its style and form should be disapproved. He desired a tribunal of learned, pious men and three princes (the emperor and the kings of England and Hungary), to whose verdict Luther would have to submit. When Frederick the Wise consulted him, he expressed the opinion that Luther had made two mistakes, in touching the crown of the pope and the belly of the monks; he regretted in Luther’s proceedings a want of moderation and discretion. Not without profit did the elector hear the oracle thus discourse.―Continuation § 125, 3.

§ 123.4. Luther’s Controversy with Emser, A.D. 1519-1521.―Emser, secretary and orator in the service of Duke George, after the Leipzig Disputation, which he had attended, sought by letter-writing to alienate the Bohemians (§ 139, 19) from Luther, representing him as having there spoken bitterly against them. This roused Luther to make a passionate reply. After several pamphlets of a violent character had been issued by both combatants, Emser issued his charge in a full and comprehensive treatise, to which Luther replied in his work, “The Answer of Martin Luther to the Unchristian, Ultra-ecclesiastical, and Over-ingenious Book of Emser at Leipzig.” They had also a sharp passage at arms with one another, in A.D. 1524, over the canonization of Bishop Benno of Meissen, in which Emser, by his duke’s order, took a zealous part (§ 129, 1). But all the later writings in this controversy Luther left unanswered. Emser, with great bitterness, assailed Luther’s translation of the Bible, in which he professed to have found 1,400 heretical falsifications and more than 1,000 lexical blunders. Luther was candid enough to acknowledge that several of his animadversions were not unfounded. On Emser’s own translation, which appeared shortly before his death in A.D. 1527, see § 149, 14.

§ 123.5. The Emperor Charles V.―The Emperor Maximilian had died on 12th Jan., A.D. 1519. The Elector of Saxony, as administrator of the empire, managed to determine the election, which took place on 28th June, A.D. 1519, against the French candidate, Francis I., who was supported by the pope, in favour of the young king of Spain, Charles I., grandson of Maximilian. Detained at home by Spanish affairs, it was 23rd Oct., A.D. 1520, before he was crowned at Aachen. All hopes were now directed toward the young emperor. It was expected that he would put himself at the head of the religious and national movement in Germany. But Charles, uninspired by German sentiment, and even ignorant of the German language, had other interests, which he was not inclined to subordinate to German politics. The German crown was with him only an integral part of his power. Its interests must accommodate themselves to the common interests of the whole dominions, upon which the sun never set. The German movement he regarded as one, indeed, of high importance, but he regarded it not so much from its religious as from its political side. It afforded him the means for keeping the pope in check and obliging him to sue for his favour. Two things required he of the pope as the price of suppressing the German movement: renunciation of the French alliance, and repeal of the papal brief by which a transformation had been recommended of the Spanish Inquisition, the main buttress of absolute monarchy in Spain. The pope granted both demands, and the hopes of the Germans in their new emperor, that he would finally free their nation from the galling yoke of Rome, were thus utterly blasted.

§ 123.6. The Diet at Worms, A.D. 1521.―Immediately after the arrival of the bull the emperor gave it the full force of law in the Netherlands, where he was then staying. He did not at once venture to make the same proclamation for Germany, specially from regard to Frederick the Wise, Luther’s own prince, who insisted that he should not be condemned unheard. Personal negotiations between Frederick and the emperor and his councillors at Cologne, in November, A.D. 1520, ended with a demand that the elector should bring Luther to the diet, summoned to meet at Worms, on 28th January, A.D. 1521; but at the desire of Aleander, the papal nuncio, who energetically protested against the proposal that civil judges should treat of matters of faith with an already condemned heretic, the emperor, in December, withdrew this summons. In the beginning of February there came a papal brief, in which he was urgently entreated to give effect to the bull throughout Germany. Aleander even sketched an imperial mandate for its execution, but was not able to prevent the emperor from laying it before his councillors for their opinion and approval. This was done in the middle of February. And now there arose a quite unexpected storm of opposition. The councillors demanded that Luther should be brought under an imperial safe conduct to Worms, there to answer for himself. His attacks on Romish abuses they would not and could not regard as crimes, for they themselves, with Duke George at their head, had presented to the pope a complaint containing 101 counts. On the other hand, they declared that if Luther would not retract his doctrinal vagaries, they would be prepared to carry out the edict. They persisted in this attitude when another scheme was proposed to them, which insisted on the burning of Luther’s writings. In the beginning of March a third proposal was made, which asked only for the temporary sequestration of his works. And to this they agreed. The emperor, though against his own will, submitted to their demand, and cited the reformer of Wittenberg to answer for himself at Worms. On 6th March he signed a summons, accompanied with a safe conduct, both intended, as Aleander said in writing to Rome, rather to frighten him from coming than with any desire for his presence. But the result was not as they desired. The courier appointed to deliver this citation was not sent, but instead of him, on the 12th, an imperial herald, who delivered to Luther a respectful invitation beginning with the address, “Noble, dear, and worshipful sir.” This herald was to bring him honourably and safely to Worms, and to conduct him back again in safety. All this was done behind the back of Aleander, who first came to know about it on the 15th, and certainly was not wrong in attributing the emperor’s change of mind to a suspicion of French political intrigues, in which Leo X., notwithstanding his negotiations for an alliance with the emperor, was understood to have had a share. Two weeks later, however, such suspicions were seen to be unfounded. Too late the sending of the herald was regretted, and an effort was made to conciliate the nuncio by the publication of the sequestrating mandate, which had been hitherto suppressed.

§ 123.7. Luther was meanwhile not idle at Wittenberg, while waiting with heroic calm the issue of the Worms negotiations. He preached twice daily, delivered lectures at the university, taught and exhorted by books, letters, and conversations, fought with his opponents, especially Emser, etc. While Luther was engaged with these multifarious tasks the imperial herald arrived. He now set everything aside, and on 2nd April boldly and confidently obeyed the summons. The fears of his Wittenberg friends and the counsels to turn back which reached him on his way were rejected with a heroic consciousness that he was in the path of duty. He had written on 14th March to Spalatin, Intrabimus Wormatiam invitis omnibus portis inferni et potentatibus aëris; and again from Oppenheim he wrote him, that he would go to Worms even if there were as many devils there as tiles upon the roofs. Still another attempt was made upon him at Oppenheim. The emperor’s confessor, Glapio, a Franciscan, who was by no means a blind worshipper of the Roman curia, thought it possible that a good understanding might be reached. He was of opinion that if Luther would only withdraw the worst of his books, especially that on the Babylonish Captivity, and acknowledge the decisions of the Council of Constance, all might be agreeably settled. With this in his mind he applied to the Elector of Saxony, and when he received no encouragement there, to Franz von Sickingen, who invited Luther, on his arrival at Ebernburg, near Worms, to an interview with Glapio; but Luther declined the invitation.―His journey all through was like a triumphal march. On 16th April, amid a great concourse of people, he entered Worms, along with his friends Justus Jonas and Nic. Amsdorf, as well as his legal adviser Jerome Schurf. He was called to appear on the following day. He admitted that the books spread out before him were his, and when called on to retract desired one day’s adjournment. On the 18th the trial proper began. Luther distinguished three classes of his writings, systematic treatises, controversial tracts against the papacy and papal doctrine, and controversial tracts against private individuals, and did not know that he had said anything in them that he could retract. He was asked to give a direct answer. He then gave one “without horns or teeth,” saying that he could and would retract nothing unless proved false from Scripture, or on other good and clear grounds, and concluded with the words, “Here stand I; I can no otherwise! God help me, Amen.” Among the German knights and princes he had won many hearts, but had made no favourable impression on the emperor, who, when Luther denounced the absolute authority of councils, stopped proceedings and dismissed the heretical monk. On the following day, without consulting the opinion of the councillors, he passed sentence of unconditional condemnation. But the councillors would not have the matter settled in this fashion, and the emperor was obliged, on 24th April, to reopen negotiations before a select commission, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Treves. Of no avail was a private conference of the archbishop and Luther on the 25th, in which the prelate accompanied his exhortation to retract with the promise of a rich priorate in his neighbourhood under his own and the emperor’s protection and favour. Luther supported his refusal by confident reference to the words of Gamaliel, Acts v. 38. On 26th April he left Worms unhindered; for the emperor had decidedly refused to yield to the vile proposal that the safe conduct of a heretic should be violated.―In consequence of Luther’s persistent refusal to retract anything, the majority of the diet pronounced themselves ready to agree to the emperor’s judgment against him. The latter now assigned to Aleander the drawing up of a new mandate, which should in the severest terms proclaim the ban of the empire against Luther and all his friends. After it had been approved in an imperial cabinet council, and was ready for printing in its final form in Latin and German, with the date 8th May, it was laid before the emperor for signature, which, however, he put off doing from day to day, and finally, in spite of all the nuncio’s remonstrances, he decided that it must be produced before the diet. When it appeared that this must be done, the two nuncios were all impatient to have it passed soon. But it was only on the 25th May, after the close of the diet, and after several princes, especially the Electors of Saxony and the Palatinate, had gone, that Charles let them present the edict, to which all present agreed. On the 26th May, after Divine service in church, he solemnly signed the Latin and German forms, which were published with blast of trumpets on the following day, and on Wednesday the sequestrated books of Luther were burnt.―Undoubtedly political motives occasioned this long delay in signing the documents. Perhaps he suspected the pope of some new act of political treachery; probably also he wished to postpone the publication of the edict until the imperial councillors had promised to contribute to his proposed journey to Rome, and perhaps until the nobles dissenting from the proceedings against Luther had departed.

§ 123.8. The Wartburg Exile, A.D. 1521, 1522.―Some days after Luther had dismissed the imperial herald, his carriage was stopped in a wood near Eisenach by two disguised knights with some retainers. He was himself carried off with show of violence, and brought to the Wartburg, where he was to remain in knight’s dress under the name of Junker Georg without himself knowing anything more of the matter. It was indeed a contrivance of the wise elector, though probably he took no active share in the matter, so that he could declare at Worms that he knew nothing of the Saxon monk. The most contradictory reports were spread. Sometimes the Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg (§ 122, 2) was thought of as the perpetrator of the act, sometimes Franz von Sickingen (§ 124, 2), sometimes a Franconian nobleman who was on intimate terms with Frederick. And as the news rapidly spread that Luther’s body, pierced with a sword, had been found in an old silver mine, the tumult in Worms became so great that Aleander had good cause to fear for his life.―From the Wartburg Luther maintained a lively correspondence with his friends, and even to the general public he proved, by edifying and stirring tracts, that he still lived, and was not inclined to be silenced or repressed. He completed the exposition of the Magnificat, wrought upon the Latin exposition of the Psalms, issued the first series of his “Church Postils,” wrote an “Instruction to Penitents,” a book “On Confession, whether the Pope have the Power to Enjoin it,” another “Against the Abuses of the Mass,” also “On Priestly and Monkish Vows,” etc. When Cardinal Albert, in September, A.D. 1521, proclaimed a pilgrimage with unlimited indulgence to the relic shrine at Halle (§ 115, 9), Luther wrote a scathing tract, “Against the New Idol at Halle.” And when Spalatin assured him that the elector would not suffer its being issued, he declined to withhold it, but sent him the little book, with imperative orders to give it over to Melanchthon for publication. While Spalatin still delayed its issue, Luther left his castle, pushed his way toward Wittenberg through the very heart of Duke George’s territories, and suddenly appeared among his friends in the dress of a knight, with long beard and hair. When he heard that the mere report of what he was proposing to do had led those in Halle to stop the traffic in indulgences, he decided not to proceed with the publication, but instead he addressed a letter to Albert, in which the archbishop had to read many a strong word about “the knavery of indulgences,” “the Pharaoh-like hardened condition of ecclesiastical tyrants,” etc. The prelate sent a most humble, apologetic, and gracious reply to the bold reformer. Luther then returned to his protective exile, as he had left it, unmolested. But the longer it continued the more insupportable did this electoral guardianship become. He would rather “burn on glowing coals than spend thus a half idle life.” But it was just this enforced exile that saved Luther and the Reformation from utter overthrow. Apart from the dangers of the ban of the empire, which would have perhaps obliged him to throw himself into the arms of Hutten and his companions, and thus have turned the Reformation into a revolution this confinement in the Wartburg was in various ways a blessing to Luther and his work. It was of importance that men should learn to distinguish between Luther’s work and Luther’s person, and of yet greater importance was the discipline of this exile upon Luther himself. He was in danger of being drawn out of the path of positive reformation into that of violent revolutionism. The leisure of the Wartburg gave him time for calm reflection on himself and his work, and the extravagances of the Wittenberg fanatics and the wild excuses of the prophets of Zwickau (§ 124, 1) could be estimated with a freedom from prejudice that would have been impossible to one living and moving in the midst of them. Besides, he had not reached that maturity of theological knowledge needed for the conduct of his great undertaking, and was in many ways fettered by a one-sided subjectivism. In his seclusion he could turn from merely destructive criticism to construction, and by undisturbed study of Scripture became able to enlarge, purify, and confirm his religious knowledge. But most important of all was the plan which he formed in the Wartburg, and so far as the New Testament is concerned carried out there, of translating the whole of the Scriptures.363

§ 123.9. The Attitude of Frederick the Wise to the Reformation.―Frederick the Wise, A.D. 1486-1525, has usually been styled “the Promoter of the Reformation.” Kolde, however, has sought to represent him as favouring Luther because of his interest in the University of Wittenberg founded by him, the success of which was largely owing to Luther, and because of his patriotic desire to have German questions settled at home rather than in Rome. This author supposes that after the Diet of Worms Frederick took no particular interest in the Reformation, beyond watching to see how things would turn out. To all this Köstlin has replied that Frederick’s whole attitude during the Diet of Worms betrayed a warm and hearty interest in evangelical truth; that his correspondence with Tucher of Nuremberg, A.D. 1518-1523, supports this view; that in one of these letters he addresses his correspondent with evident satisfaction as a good Lutheran; that in another he incloses a copy of Luther’s Assertio omnium articulorum; that at a later period he forwards him a copy of Luther’s New Testament, and expresses the hope that he will gain spiritual blessing from its perusal. He himself found it his greatest comfort in the hour of death, partook of the communion in both kinds after the reformed manner, which takes away all ground for the suspicion that he yielded only to the importunities of his brother John and his chaplain Spalatin. And even though Frederick, as late as A.D. 1522, continued to increase the rich collection of relics which he had previously made for his castle church, this only proves that not all at once but only bit by bit he was able to break away from his earlier religious tendencies and predilections.

§ 124.1. The Wittenberg Fanaticism, A.D. 1521, 1522.―In A.D. 1521 an Augustinian, Gabriel Didymus or Zwilling, preached a violent tirade against vows and private masses. In consequence of this sermon, thirteen of the brethren of his order at once withdrew. Two priests in the neighbourhood married. Carlstadt wrote against celibacy and followed their example. At the Wittenberg convent, secessions from the order were allowed at pleasure, and mendicancy, as well as the sacrifice of the mass, was abolished. But matters did not stop there. Didymus, and still more Carlstadt, spread a fanatical spirit among the people and the students, who were encouraged in the wildest acts of violence. The public services were disturbed in order to stop the idolatry of the mass, images were thrown out of the churches, altars were torn down, and a desire evinced to put an end to theological science as well as to clerical orders. A fanatical spirit began now also to spread at Zwickau. At the head of this movement stood the tailor Nicolas Storch and a literate Marcus Stübner, who boasted of Divine revelations; while Thomas Münzer, with fervid eloquence, proclaimed the new gospel from the pulpit. Restrained by energetic measures taken against them, the Zwickau prophets wandered abroad. Münzer went to Bohemia, Storch and Stübner to Wittenberg. There they told of their revelations and inveighed against infant baptism as a work of Satan. The excitement in Wittenberg became greater day by day. The enemies of the Reformation rejoiced; Melanchthon could give no counsel, and the elector was confounded. Then could Luther no longer contain himself. Against the elector’s express command he left the Wartburg on 3rd March, A.D. 1522, wrote him a noble letter, availed himself of his knight’s incognito on the way, and appeared publicly at Wittenberg. For a week he preached daily against fanaticism, and got complete control of the wild revolutionary elements. The prophets of Zwickau left Wittenberg. Carlstadt remained, but for a couple of years held his peace. Luther and Melanchthon now laboured to secure a positive basis for the Reformation. Melanchthon had already made a beginning in A.D. 1521 by the publication of his Loci communes rerum theologicarum. Luther now, in A.D. 1522, against the decided wish of his friend, published his Annotationes in epist. t. Pauli ad Rom. et Cor. In Sept. of the same year appeared Luther’s translation of the N.T. Besides these he also issued several treatises in defence of the Reformation.

§ 124.2. Franz von Sickingen, A.D. 1522, 1523.―A private feud led Franz von Sickingen to attack the Elector and Archbishop of Treves in A.D. 1522, but soon other interests were involved, and he was joined by the whole party of the knights. Sickingen’s opponent was a prelate and a pronounced enemy of the Reformation, and he was also a prince and a peer of the empire. In both characters he was opposed by Sickingen, who called for support in the name of religion and freedom. The knights, discontented with the imperial government and bureaucracy, with princes and prelates, crowded to his standard. Sickingen would also have gladly secured the monk of Wittenberg as an ally, but Luther was not to be won. Sickingen’s enterprise failed. The Elector of the Palatinate and the young Landgrave of Hesse hasted to the help of their beleaguered neighbours. The knights were overthrown one after another; Sickingen died of mortal wounds in May, A.D. 1523, immediately after the taking of the shattered Ebernburg. The power of the knights was utterly broken. The Reformation thus lost indeed brave and noble protectors, but it was itself saved.

§ 124.3. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, A.D. 1524, 1525.―Even after the suppression of the Wittenberg fanaticism, Carlstadt continued to entertain his revolutionary views, and it was only with difficulty that he restrained himself for a few years. In A.D. 1524 he left Wittenberg and went to Orlamünde. With bitter invectives against Luther’s popism, he there resumed his iconoclasm, and brought forward his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, in which the real presence of the body and blood of Christ was absolutely denied (§ 131, 1). In order to prevent disturbance, Luther, by the order of the elector, went to Jena, and there in Carlstadt’s presence preached most emphatically against image breakers and sacramentarians. This roused Carlstadt’s indignation. When Luther visited Orlamünde, he was received with stone throwing and curses. Carlstadt was now banished from his territories by the elector. He then went to Strassburg, where he sought to win over the two evangelical pastors, Bucer and Capito. Luther issued a letter of warning, “To the Christians of Strassburg.” Carlstadt went to Basel, and published violent tracts against Luther’s “unspiritual and irrational theology.” Luther replied in A.D. 1525, earnestly, thoroughly, and firmly in his treatise, “Against the Heavenly Prophets, or Images and the Sacraments.” Carlstadt had secured the support of the Swiss reformers, who continued the controversy with Luther. He involved himself in the Peasants’ War, and afterwards, by Luther’s intercession with the elector, obtained leave to return to Saxony. He retracted his errors, but soon again renewed his old disorderly practices; and, after a singularly eventful career, died as professor and preacher at Basel during the plague of A.D. 1541.

§ 124.4. Thomas Münzer, A.D. 1523, 1524.―The prophets when expelled from Wittenberg did not remain idle, but set themselves to produce all sort of disorders in church and state. At the head of these disturbers stood Thomas Münzer. After his expulsion from Zwickau, he had gone to Bohemia, and was there received as an apostle of the Taborite doctrine (§ 119, 7). In A.D. 1523 he returned to Saxony, and settled at Allstadt [Allstädt] in Thuringia, and when driven out by the elector he went to Mühlhausen. In both places he soon obtained a large following. The Wittenberg Reformation was condemned no less than the papacy. Not the word of Scripture but the Spirit was to be the principle of the Reformation; not only everything ecclesiastical but also everything civil was to be spiritualized and reorganized. The doctrine of the evangelical freedom of the Christian was grossly misconceived, the sacraments despised, infant baptism denounced, and sole weight laid on the baptism of the Spirit. Princes should be driven from their thrones, the enemies of the gospel destroyed by the sword, and all goods be held in common. When Luther wrote a letter of warning on these subjects to the church at Mühlhausen, Münzer issued an abusive rejoinder, in which he speaks contemptuously of Luther’s “honey-sweet Christ,” and “cunningly devised gospel.” From Mühlhausen, Münzer went forth on a proselytising crusade in A.D. 1524, to Nuremberg, and then to Basel, but found little response in either city. His revolutionary extravagances were more successful among the peasants of Southern Germany.

§ 124.5. The Peasant War, A.D. 1524, 1525.―The peasants of the empire had long groaned under their heavy burdens. Twice already, in A.D. 1502, 1514, had they risen in revolt, with little advantage to themselves. When Luther’s ideas of the freedom of a Christian man reached them, they hastily drew conclusions in accordance with their own desires. Münzer’s fanatical preaching led to the adoption of still more decidedly communistic theories. In August, A.D. 1524, in the Black Forest, a rebellion broke out, which was, however, quickly suppressed. In the beginning of A.D. 1525 troubles burst forth afresh. The peasants stated their demands in twelve articles, which they insisted upon princes, nobles, and prelates accepting. All Franconia and Swabia were soon under their power, and even many cities made common cause with them. Münzer, however, was not satisfied with this success. The twelve articles were too moderate for him, and still more distasteful to him were the terms that had been made with the nobles and clergy. He returned to Thuringia and settled again at Mühlhausen. From thence he spread his fanaticism through the whole land and organized a general revolt. With merciless cruelty thousands were massacred, all cloisters, castles, and palaces were ruthlessly destroyed. Boldly as Luther had attacked the existing ecclesiastical tyranny, he resolutely left civil matters alone. He preached that the gospel makes the soul free, but not the body or property. He had profound sympathy for the sorely oppressed peasants, and so long as their demands did not go beyond the twelve articles, he hoped to be able to regulate the movement by the power of the word. The revolutionists had themselves in their twelfth article offered to abandon any of their claims that might be found to have no countenance from the word of God. When Münzer’s disorders began in Thuringia, Luther visited the cities most threatened and exhorted them to quiet and obedience. But the death of the elector on 5th May called him back to Wittenberg. From thence he now published his “Exhortations to Peace on the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants,” in which he speaks pointedly to the consciences of the nobles no less than of the peasants. But when the agitation continued to spread, and one enormity after another was perpetrated, he gave vent to his wrath in no measured terms in his book, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Peasants.” He there, with burning words, called upon the princes vigorously to stamp out the fanatical rebellion. Philip of Hesse was the first to take the field. He was joined by the new Elector of Saxony, Frederick’s brother, John the Constant, A.D. 1525-1532, as well as by George of Saxony and Henry of Brunswick. On 15th May, A.D. 1525, the rebels were annihilated after a severe struggle at Frankenhausen. Münzer was taken prisoner and beheaded. Even in Southern Germany the princes were soon in all parts masters of the situation. In this war 100,000 men had lost their lives and the most fertile districts had been turned into barren wastes.

§ 125.1. Spread of Evangelical Views.―The most powerful heralds of the Reformation were the monkish orders. Cloister life had become so utterly corrupt that the more virtuous of the brethren could no longer endure it. Anxious to breathe a healthier atmosphere, evangelists inspired by a purer doctrine arose in all parts of Germany, first and most of all among the Augustinian order (§ 112, 6), which almost to a man went over to the Reformation and had the glory of providing its first martyr (§ 128, 1). The order regarded Luther’s honour as its own. Next to them came the Franciscans, prominent during the Middle Ages as a fanatical opposition (§ 98, 4; 108, 5; 112, 2), of whom many had the courage to free themselves of their shackles. From their cloisters proceeded, e.g., the two famous popular preachers, Eberlin of Günzburg and Henry of Kettenbach in Ulm, the Hamburg reformer Stephen Kempen, the fervent Lambert reformer of Hesse, Luther’s friend Myconius of Gotha, and many more. Other orders too supplied their contingent, even the Dominicans, to whom Martin Bucer, the Strassburg reformer, belonged. Blaurer of Württemberg was a Benedictine, Rhegius a Carmelite, Bugenhagen a Premonstratensian, etc. At least one of the German bishops, George Polenz of Samland, openly joined the movement, preached the gospel in Königsberg, and inspired the priests of his diocese with the same views. Other bishops, such as those of Augsburg, Basel, Bamberg, Merseburg, sympathised with the movement or at least put no hindrance in its way. But the secular clergy gave crowds of witnesses. In all the larger and even in some of the smaller towns of Germany Luther’s doctrines were preached from the pulpits with the approval of the magistrates, and where these were refused the preachers took to the market-places and fields. Where ministers were wanting, artisans and knights, wives and maidens, carried on the work.―One of the first cities which opened its gates freely to the gospel was Strassburg. Nowhere were Luther’s writings more zealously read, discussed, printed, and circulated than in that city. Shortly before Geiler of Kaisersberg (§ 115, 11) had prepared the soil for receiving the first seed of the Reformation. From A.D. 1518 Matthew Zell had wrought as pastor at St. Laurence in Münster. When the chapter forbade him the use of the stone pulpit erected for Geiler, the joiners’ guild soon made him a wooden pulpit, which was carried in solemn procession to Münster, and set up beside the one that had been closed against him. Zell was soon assisted by Capito, Bucer, Hedio, and others.

§ 125.2. “The Sum of Holy Scripture” and its Author.―This work, called also Deutsche Theologie, appeared anonymously at Leyden in A.D. 1523, and was confiscated in March, A.D. 1524. In various Dutch editions and in French, Italian, and English translations, it was soon widely spread over Europe; but so vigorously was it suppressed, that by the middle of the century it had disappeared and was forgotten. In A.D. 1877 the Waldensian Comba discovered and published an old Italian version, and Benrath translated into German in A.D. 1880 an old Dutch edition of A.D. 1526, and succeeded in unravelling for the most part its interesting history. He found that it was composed in Latin, and on the entreaty of the author’s friends rendered into Dutch. This led to the discovery, in the possession of Prof. Toorenenberger of Amsterdam, of the Latin original, which had appeared anonymously at Strassburg in A.D. 1527 with the title, Æconomica christiana. Benrath has also discovered the author to be Hendrik van Bommel, who was in the first half of A.D. 1520 priest and rector of a sisterhood at Utrecht, expelled in A.D. 1536 from Cleves, from A.D. 1542 to 1560 evangelical teacher and preacher at Wesel, dying in A.D. 1570 as pastor at Duisburg. The “Sum” is evidently influenced by those works of Luther which appeared up to A.D. 1523, its thoroughly popular, edifying, and positive contents are based upon a careful study of Scripture, and it is throughout inspired by the one grand idea, that the salvation of sinful men rests solely on the grace of God in Christ appropriated by faith.

§ 125.3. Henry VIII. and Erasmus.―Henry VIII. of England, as a second son, had been originally destined for the church. Hence he retained a certain predilection for theological studies and was anxious to be regarded as a learned theologian. In A.D. 1522 he appeared as the champion of the Romish doctrine of the seven sacraments in opposition to Luther’s book on the “Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” treating the peasant’s son with lordly contempt. Luther paid him in the same coin, and treated his royal opponent with less consideration than he had shown to Emser and Eck. The king obtained what he desired, the papal honorary title of Defensor fidei, but Luther’s crushing reply kept him from attempting to continue the controversy. He complained to the elector, who consoled him by reference to a general council (comp. § 129, 1). The pretty tolerable relations between Erasmus and Luther now suffered a severe shock. Erasmus, indebted to the English king for many favours, was roused to great bitterness by Luther’s unmeasured severity. He had hitherto refused all calls to write against Luther. Many pulpits charged him with having a secret understanding with the heretic; others thought he was afraid of him. All this tended to drive Erasmus into open hostility to the reformer. He now diligently studied Luther’s writings, for which he obtained the pope’s permission, and seized upon a doctrine which would not oblige him to appear as defender of Romish abuses, though to gauge and estimate it in its full meaning he was quite incompetent. Luther’s life experiences, joined with the study of Paul’s epistles and Augustine’s writings, had wrought in him the conviction that man is by nature incapable of doing any good, that his will is unfree, and that he is saved without any well doing of his own by God’s free grace in Christ. With Luther, as with Augustine, this conviction found expression in the doctrine of absolute predestination. Melanchthon had also formulated the doctrine in the first edition of his Loci communes. This fundamental doctrine of Luther was now laid hold upon by Erasmus in A.D. 1524 in his treatise, Διατριβή de libra arbitrio, pronounced dangerous and unbiblical, while his own semi-Pelagianism was set over against it. After the lapse of a year, Luther replied in his treatise, De servo arbitrio, with all the power and confidence of personal, experimental conviction. Erasmus answered in his Hyperaspistes diatribes adv. Lutheri servum arbitrium of A.D. 1526, in which he gave free vent to his passion, but did not advance the argument in the least. Luther therefore saw no need to continue the discussion.364

§ 125.4. Thomas Murner.―The Franciscan, Thomas Murner of Strassburg, had published in A.D. 1509 his “Fools’ Exorcism” and other pieces, which gave him a high place among German satirists. He spared no class, not even the clergy and the monks, took Reuchlin’s part against the men of Cologne (§ 120, 4), but passionately opposed Luther’s movement. His most successful satire against Luther is entitled, “On the Great Lutheran Fool as Exorcised by Dr. Murner, A.D. 1522.” It does not touch upon the spiritual aspect of the Reformation, but lashes with biting wit the revolutionary, fanatical, and rhetorical extravagances which were often closely associated with it. Luther did not venture into the lists with the savagely sarcastic monk, but the humanists poured upon him a flood of scurrilous replies.

§ 125.5. A notable Catholic witness on behalf of the Reformation is the “Onus ecclesiæ,” an anonymous tract of A.D. 1524, written by Bishop Berthold Pirstinger of Chiemsee. In apocalyptic phraseology it describes the corruption of the church and calls for reformation. The author however denounces Luther as a sectary and revolutionist, though he distinctly accepts his views of indulgences. He would reform the church from within. Four years after, the same divine wrote a “Tewtsche Theologey,” in which, with the exception of the doctrine of indulgence, the whole Romish system is vindicated and the corruptions of the church are ignored.

§ 126.1. The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1522, 1523.―The imperial court held its first diet in the end of A.D. 1522. Leo X. had died in Dec., A.D. 1521, and Hadrian VI. (§ 149, 1), strictly conservative in doctrine and worship, a reformer of discipline and hierarchical abuses, had succeeded with the determination “to restore the deformed bride of Christ to her pristine purity,” but vigorously to suppress the Lutheran heresy. His legate presented to the diet a letter confessing abuses and promising reforms, but insisting on the execution of the edict of Worms. The diet declared that in consequence of the admitted corruptions of the church, the present execution of the Worms edict was not to be thought of. Until a general council in a German city, with guaranteed freedom of discussion, had been called, discussion should be avoided, and the word of God, with true Christian and evangelical explanation, should be taught.

§ 126.2. The Diet at Nuremberg, A.D. 1524.―A new diet was held at Nuremberg on 14th Jan., A.D. 1524. It dealt first of all with the question of the existence of the imperial court. The reformatory tendencies of the government showed that what was vital to this court was so also to the Reformation. This party had important supporters in the arch-catholic Ferdinand, who hoped thus to strengthen himself in his endeavour to obtain the Roman crown, in the Elector of Mainz, the prime mover in the traffic in indulgences, who had personal antipathies to the foes of the court, in the elector of Saxony, its proper creator, and in the princes of Brandenburg. But there were powerful opponents: the Swabian league, the princes of Treves, the Palatinate and Hesse, who had been successful in opposition to Sickingen, and the imperial cities, which, though at one with the court in favouring the Reformation, were embittered against it because of its financial projects. The papal legate Campegius also joined the opposition. Hadrian VI. had died in A.D. 1523, and was succeeded by Clement VII., A.D. 1523-1534. A skilful politician with no religious convictions, he determined to strengthen in every possible way the temporal power of the papal see. His legate was a man after his own mind. The opposition prevailed, and even Ferdinand after a struggle gave in. The newly organized governing body was only a shadow of the old, without power, influence, or independence. Thus a second (§ 124, 2) powerful support was lost to the Reformation, and the legate again pressed for the execution of the edict of Worms. But the evangelicals mustering all their forces, especially in the cities, secured a majority. They were indeed obliged to admit the legality of the edict; they even promised to carry it out, but with the saving clause “as far as possible.” A council in the sense of the former diet was demanded, and it was resolved to call a general national assembly at Spires, to be wholly devoted to religious and ecclesiastical questions. In the meantime the word of God in its simplicity was to be preached.

§ 126.3. The Convention at Regensburg, A.D. 1524.―While the evangelical nobles, by their theologians and diplomatists, were eagerly preparing for Spires, an assembly of the supporters of the old views met at Regensburg, June and July, A.D. 1524. Ignoring the previous arrangement, they proceeded to treat of the religious and ecclesiastical questions which had been reserved for the Spires Diet. This was the result of the machinations of Campegius. The Archduke Ferdinand, the Bavarian dukes, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and most of the South German bishops, joined the legate at Regensburg in insisting upon the edict of Worms. Luther’s writings were anew forbidden, their subjects were strictly enjoined not to attend the University of Wittenberg; several external abuses were condemned, ecclesiastical burdens on the people lightened, the number of festivals reduced, the four Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, set up as the standard of faith and doctrine, while it was commanded that the services should be conducted unchanged after the manner of these Fathers. Thus was produced that rent in the unity of the empire which never again was healed.―The imperial and the papal policies were so bound up with one another, that the proceedings of the Nuremberg diets, with their national tendencies, were distasteful to the emperor; and so in the end of July there came an imperial rescript, making attendance at the national assembly a crimen læsæ majestatis, punishable with ban and double-ban. The nobles obeyed, and the assembly was not held. With it Germany’s hopes of a peaceful development were shattered.

§ 126.4. The Evangelical Nobles, A.D. 1524.―Several nobles hitherto indifferent became now supporters of the Reformation. Philip of Hesse, moved by an interview with Melanchthon, gave himself enthusiastically to the cause of evangelical truth. Also the Margrave Casimir, George of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, the Elector Louis of the Palatinate, and Frederick I. of Denmark, as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, did more or less in their several countries for the furtherance of the Reformation cause. The grand-master of the Teutonic order, Albert of Prussia, returned from the Diet of Nuremberg, where he had heard Osiander preach, doubtful of the scripturalness of the rule of his order. He therefore visited Wittenberg to consult Luther, who advised him to renounce the rule, to marry, and obtain heirs to his Prussian dukedom (§ 127, 3). The cities took up a most decided position. At two great city diets at Spires and Ulm in A.D. 1524, it was resolved to allow the preaching of a pure gospel and to assist in preventing the execution of the edict of Worms in their jurisdiction.

§ 126.5. The Torgau League, A.D. 1526.―Friends and foes of the Reformation had joined in putting down the peasant revolt. Their religious divergences however immediately after broke out afresh. George consulted at Dessau in July, A.D. 1525, with several Catholic princes as to means for preventing a renewal of the outbreak, and they unanimously decided that the condemned Lutheran sect must be rooted out as the source of all confusion. Soon afterwards two Leipzig citizens, who were found to have Lutheran books in their possession, were put to death. But Elector John of Saxony had a conference at Saalfeld with Casimir of Brandenburg, at which it was agreed at all hazards to stand by the word of God; and at Friedewald in November Hesse and the elector pledged themselves to stand true to the gospel. A diet at Augsburg in December, for want of a quorum, had reached no conclusion. A new diet was therefore summoned to meet at Spires, and all the princes were cited to appear personally. Duke George meanwhile gathered the Catholic princes at Halle and Leipzig, and they resolved to send Henry of Brunswick to Spain to the emperor. Shortly before his arrival, the emperor had concluded a peace at Madrid with the king of France, who had been taken prisoner in the battle of Pavia. Francis I., feeling he could not help himself, had agreed to all the terms, including an undertaking to join in suppressing the heretics. Charles therefore fully believed that he had a free hand, and determined to root out heresy in Germany. Henry of Brandenburg brought to the German princes an extremely firm reply, in which this view was expressed. But before its arrival the elector and the landgrave had met at Gotha, and had subsequently at Torgau, the residence of the elector, renewed the league to stand together with all their might in defence of the gospel. Philip undertook to gain over the nobles of the uplands. But the fear of the empire hindered his success. The elector was more fortunate among the lowland nobles. On 9th June the princes of Saxony, Lüneberg [Lüneburg], Grubenhagen, Anhalt, and Mansfeld met at Magdeburg, and subscribed the Torgau League. Also the city of Magdeburg, emancipated since A.D. 1524 from the jurisdiction of its archbishop, Albert of Mainz, and accepting the Lutheran confession, now joined the league.

§ 126.6. The Diet of Spires, A.D. 1526.―The diet met on 25th June, A.D. 1526. The evangelical princes were confident; on their armour was the motto, Verbum Dei manet in æternum. In spite of all the prelates’ opposition, three commissions were approved to consider abuses. When the debates were about to begin, the imperial commissioners tabled an instruction which forbade them to make any change upon the old doctrines and usages, and finally insisted upon the execution of the edict of Worms. The evangelicals however took comfort from the date affixed to the document. They knew that since its issue the relation of pope and emperor had become strained. Francis I. had been relieved by the pope from the obligation of his oath, and the pope had joined with Francis in a league at Cognac, to which also Henry VIII. of England adhered. All Western Europe had combined to break the supremacy gained by the Burgundian-Spanish dynasty at Pavia, and the duped emperor found himself in straits. Would he now be inclined to stand by his instruction? The commissioners, apparently at Ferdinand’s wish, had kept back the document till the affairs of the Catholics became desperate. The evangelical nobles felt encouraged to send an embassy to the emperor, but before it started the emperor realized their wishes. In a letter to his brother he communicated a scheme for abolishing the penalties of the edict of Worms and referring religious questions to a council. At the same time he called for help against his Italian enemies. Seeing then that in present circumstances it did not seem advisable to revoke, still less to carry out the edict, the only plan was to give to each prince discretionary power in his own territory. This was the birthday of the territorial constitution on a formally legitimate basis.

§ 127.1. The Organization of the Church of the Saxon Electorate, A.D. 1527-1529.―Luther wrote in A.D. 1528 an instruction to visitors of pastors in the electorate, which showed what and how ministers were to preach, indicated the reforms to be made in worship, protested against abuse of the doctrine of justification by urging the necessity of preaching the law, etc. The whole territory was divided under four commissions, comprising lay and clerical members. Ignorant and incompetent religious teachers were to be removed, but to be provided for. Teachers were to be settled over churches and schools, and superintendents over them were to inspect their work periodically, and to these last the performance of marriages was assigned. Vacant benefices were to be applied to the improvement of churches and schools; and those not vacant were to be taxed for maintenance of hospitals, support of the poor, founding of new schools, etc. The dangers occasioned by the often incredible ignorance of the people and their teachers led to Luther’s composing his two catechisms in A.D. 1529.

§ 127.2. The Organization of the Hessian Churches, A.D. 1526-1528.―Philip of Hesse had assembled the peers temporal and spiritual of his dominions in Oct., A.D. 1526, at Homberg, to discuss the question of church reform. A reactionary attempt failed through the fervid eloquence of the Franciscan Lambert of Avignon, a notable man, who, awakened in his cloister at Avignon by Luther’s writings, but not thoroughly satisfied, set out for Wittenberg, engaged on the way at Zürich in public disputation against Zwingli’s reforms, but left converted by his opponent, and then passed through Luther’s school at Wittenberg. There he married in A.D. 1523, and after a long unofficial and laborious stay at Strassburg, found at last, in A.D. 1526, a permanent residence in Hesse. He died in A.D. 1530.―Lambert’s personality dominated the Homberg synod. He sketched an organization of the church according to his ideal as a communion of saints with a democratic basis, and a strict discipline administered by the community itself. But the impracticability of the scheme soon became evident, and in A.D. 1528 the Hessian church adopted the principles of the Saxon church visitation. Out of vacant church revenues the University of Marburg was founded in A.D. 1527 as a second training school in reformed theology. Lambert was one of its first teachers.

§ 127.3. Organization of other German Provincial Churches, A.D. 1528-1530.―George of Franconian-Brandenburg, after his brother Casimir’s death, organized his church at the assembly of Anspach after the Saxon model. Nuremberg, under the guidance of its able secretary of council, Lazarus Spengler, united in carrying out a joint organization. In Brunswick-Lüneburg, Duke Ernest, powerfully impressed by the preaching of Rhegius at Augsburg, introduced the evangelical church organization into his dominions. In East Friesland, where the reigning prince did not interest himself in the matter, the development of the church was attended to by the young nobleman Ulrich of Dornum. In Schleswig and Holstein the prelates offered no opposition to reorganization, and the civil authorities carried out the work. In Silesia the princes were favourable, Breslau had been long on the side of the Reformation, and even the grand-duke who, as king of Bohemia, was suzerain of Silesia, felt obliged to allow Silesian nobles the privileges provided by the Diet of Spires. In Prussia (§ 126, 4), Albert of Brandenburg, hereditary duke of these parts, with the hearty assistance of his two bishops, provided for his subjects an evangelical constitution.

§ 127.4. The Reformation in the Cities of Northern Germany, A.D. 1524-1531.―In these cities the Reformation spread rapidly after their emancipation from episcopal control. It was organized in Magdeburg as early as A.D. 1524 by Nic. Amsdorf, sent for the purpose by Luther (§ 126, 5). In Brunswick the church was organized in A.D. 1528 by Bugenhagen of Wittenberg. In Bremen in A.D. 1525 all churches except the cathedral were in the hands of the Lutherans; in A.D. 1527 the cloisters were turned into schools and hospitals, and then the cathedral was taken from the Catholics. At Lübeck, nobles, councillors, and clergy had oppressed and driven away the evangelical pastors; but the councillors in their financial straits became indebted to sixty-four citizens, who stipulated that the pastors must be restored, the Catholics expelled, the cloisters turned into hospitals and schools, and finally Bugenhagen was called in to prepare for their church a Lutheran constitution.

§ 129.1. Luther’s Literary Works.―In A.D. 1524 appeared the first collection of spiritual songs and psalms, eight in number, with a preface by Luther. His reforms of worship were extremely moderate. In A.D. 1523 he published little tracts on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, repudiating the idea of a sacrifice in the mass, and insisting on communion in both kinds. In A.D. 1527 he wrote his “German Mass and Order of Public Worship” (§ 127, 1) which was introduced generally throughout the elector’s dominions. He wrote an address to burgomasters and councillors about the improvement of education in the cities. Besides his polemic against Erasmus and Carlstadt, against Münzer and the rebellious peasants, as well as against the Sacramentarians (§ 131), he engaged at this time in controversy with Cochlæus. A papal bull for the canonization of Bishop Benno of Meissen (§ 93, 9) called forth in A.D. 1524 Luther’s tract, “Against the new God and the old Devil being set up at Meissen.” He was persuaded by Christian II. of Denmark to write, in A.D. 1526, a very humble letter to Henry VIII. of England (§ 125, 3), which was answered in an extremely venomous and bitter style. When his enemies triumphantly declared that he had retracted, Luther answered, in A.D. 1527, with his book, “Against the Abusive Writing of the King of England,” in which he resumed the bold and confident tone of his earlier polemic. A humble, conciliatory epistle sent in A.D. 1526 to Duke George was no more successful. He now unweariedly continued his Bible translation. The first edition of the whole Bible was published by Hans Lufft in Wittenberg, in A.D. 1534. A collection of sayings of Luther collected by Lauterbach, a deacon of Wittenberg, in A.D. 1538, formed the basis of later and fuller editions of “Luther’s Table Talk.” A chronologically arranged collection was made ten years later, and was published in A.D. 1872 from a MS. in the Royal Library at Dresden. Aurifaber in his collection did not follow the chronological order, but grouped the utterances according to their subjects, but with many arbitrary alterations and modifications. The saying falsely attributed to Luther, “Who loves not wine, women, and song?” etc., is assigned by Luther himself to his Erfurt landlady, but has been recently traced to an Italian source.

§ 129.2. The famous Catholic Church historian Döllinger, who in his history of the Reformation had with ultramontane bitterness defamed Luther and his work, twenty years later could not forbear celebrating Luther in a public lecture as “the most powerful patriot and the most popular character that Germany possessed.” In A.D. 1871 he wrote as follows: “It was Luther’s supreme intellectual ability and wonderful versatility that made him the man of his age and of his nation. There has never been a German who so thoroughly understood his fellow countrymen and was understood by them as this Augustinian monk of Wittenberg. The whole intellectual and spiritual making of the Germans was in his hands as clay in the hands of the potter. He has given more to his nation than any one man has ever done: language, popular education, Bible, sacred song; and all that his opponents could say against him and alongside of him seemed insipid, weak, and colourless compared with his overmastering eloquence. They stammered, he spoke. It was he who put a stamp upon the German language as well as upon the German character. And even those Germans who heartily abhor him as the great heretic and betrayer of religion cannot help speaking his words and thinking his thoughts.”

§ 130.1. Ulrich Zwingli.―Zwingli, born at Wildhaus in Toggenburg on January 1st, A.D. 1484, a scholar of the famous humanist Thomas Wyttenbach at Basel, was, after ten years’ service as pastor at Glarus, made pastor of Maria-Einsiedeln in A.D. 1516. The crowding of pilgrims to the famous shrine of Mary at that place led him to preach against superstitious notions of meritorious performances. But far more decisive in determining his attitude toward the Reformation was his appointment on January 1st, A.D. 1519, as Lent priest at Zürich, where he first became acquainted with Luther’s works, and took sides with him against the Romish court party. Zwingli soon took up a distinctive position of his own. He would be not only a religious, but also a political reformer. For several years he had vigorously opposed the sending of Swiss youths as mercenaries into the armies of foreign princes. His political opponents, the oligarchs, whose incomes depended on this traffic, opposed also his religious reforms, so that his support was wholly from the democracy. Another important distinction between the Swiss and German movements was this, that Zwingli had grown into a reformer not through deep conviction of sin and spiritual conflicts, but through classical and biblical study. The writings of Pico of Mirandola (§ 120, 1), too, were not without influence upon him. To him, therefore, justification by faith was not in the same degree as to Luther the guiding star of his life and action. He began the work of the Reformation not so much with purifying the doctrine, as with improving the worship, the constitution, the ecclesiastical and moral life. His theological standpoint is set forth in these works: Comment. de vera et falsa relig., A.D. 1525; Fidei ratio ad Car. Imp., A.D. 1530; Christian. fidei brevis at clara expos., ed. Bullinger, A.D. 1536; De providentia Dei; and Apologeticus. Of the two principles of the anti-Romish Reformation (§ 121) the Wittenberg reformer placed the material, the Zürich reformer the formal, in the foreground. The former only rejected what was not reconcilable with Scripture; the latter repudiated all that was not expressly enjoined in Scripture. The former was cautious and moderate in dealing with forms of worship and mere externals; the latter was extreme, immoderate, and violent. Luther retained pictures, altars, the ornaments of churches, and the priestly character of the service, purifying it simply from unevangelical corruptions; Zwingli denounced all these things as idolatry, and burnt even organ pipes and clock bells. Luther recognised no action of the Holy Spirit apart from the word and sacrament; Zwingli separated it from these, and identified it with mere subjective feeling. The sacraments were with him mere memorial signs; justification solely by the merits of Christ as a joyous assurance of salvation had for him a negative rather than a positive significance, i.e. opposition to the Romish doctrine of merits; original sin was for him only hereditary moral sickness, a naturalis defectus, which is not itself sin, and virtuous heathens, like Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, and Cato were admitted as such into the society of the blessed, without apparently sharing in the redemption of Christ. His speculations, which led on one side almost to pantheism, favoured a theory of predestination, according to which the moral will has no freedom over against Providence.365

§ 130.2. The Reformation in Zürich, A.D. 1519-1525.―In A.D. 1518 a trafficker in indulgences, the Franciscan Bernard Samson, of Milan, carried on his disreputable business in Switzerland. At Zwingli’s desire Zürich’s gates were closed against him. In A.D. 1520 the council gave permission to priests and preachers in the city and canton to preach only from the O. and N.T. All this happened under the eyes of the two papal nuncios staying in Zürich; but they did not interfere, because the curia was extremely anxious to get auxiliaries for the papal army for an attack on Milan. Zwingli was promised a rich living if he would no more preach against the pope. He refused the bait, and went on his way as a reformer. The continued indulgence of the curia allowed the Reformation to take even firmer root. Zwingli published, in A.D. 1522, his first work, “Of Election, and Freedom in Use of Food,” and the Zürichers ate flesh and eggs during Lent of A.D. 1522. He also claimed liberty to marry for the clergy. At this time Lambert came from Avignon to Zürich (§ 127, 2). He preached against the new views, disputed in July with Zwingli, and confessed himself defeated and convinced. Zwingli’s opponents had placed great hopes in Lambert’s eloquence and dialectic skill. All the greater was the effect of the unexpected result of the disputation. The council, now impressed, commanded that the word of God should be preached without human additions. But when the adherents of the Romish party protested, it arranged a public disputation on 29th Jan., A.D. 1523, on sixty-seven theses or conclusiones drawn up by Zwingli: “All who say, The gospel is nothing without the guarantee of the Church, blaspheme God;―Christ is the one way to salvation;―Our righteousness and our works are good so far as they are Christ’s, neither right nor good so far as they are our own,” etc. A former friend of Zwingli, John Faber, but quite changed since he had made a visit to Rome, and now vicar-general of the Bishop of Constance, undertook to support the old doctrines and customs against Zwingli. Being restricted to Scripture proof he was forced to yield. The cloisters were forsaken, violent polemics were published against the canon of the mass and the worship of saints and images. The council resolved to decide the question of the mass and images by a second disputation in October, A.D. 1523. Leo Judä, Lent priest at St. Peter’s in Zürich, contended against image worship, Zwingli against the mass. Scarcely any opposition was offered to either of them. At Pentecost, A.D. 1524, the council had all images withdrawn from the churches, the frescoes cut down, and the walls whitewashed. Organ playing and bell ringing were forbidden as superstitious. A new simple biblical formula of baptism was introduced, and the abolition of the mass, in A.D. 1525, completed the work. At Easter of this year Zwingli celebrated a lovefeast, at which bread was carried in wooden trenchers, and wine drunk from wooden cups. Thus he thought the genuine Christian apostolic rite was restored. In A.D. 1522 he had married a widow of forty-three years of age, but he publicly acknowledged it only in A.D. 1524. He penitently confesses that his pre-Reformation celibate life, like that of most priests of his age, had not been blameless; but the moral purity of his later life is beyond suspicion.

§ 130.3. Reformation in Basel, A.D. 1520-1525.―In Basel, at an early period, Capito and Hedio wrought as biblical preachers. But so soon as they had laid a good foundation they accepted a call to Mainz, in A.D. 1520, which they soon again quitted for Strassburg, where they carried on the work of the Reformation along with Bucer. Their work at Basel was zealously and successfully continued by Röublin. He preached against the mass, purgatory, and saint worship, often to 4,000 hearers. On the day of Corpus Christi he produced a Bible instead of the usual relics, which he scornfully called dead bones. He was banished, and afterwards joined the Anabaptists. A new epoch began in Basel in A.D. 1523. Œcolampadius or John Hausschein, born at Weinsberg in A.D. 1482, Zwingli’s Melanchthon, was preacher in Basel in A.D. 1516, and was on intimate terms there with Erasmus. He accepted a call in A.D. 1518 to the cathedral of Augsburg, but a year after withdrew into an Augsburg convent of St. Bridget. There he studied Luther’s writings, and, in A.D. 1522, found shelter from persecution in Sickingen’s castle, where he officiated for some months as chaplain. He then returned to Basel, became preacher at St. Martin’s, and was soon made, along with Conrad Pellican (§ 120, 4 footnote), professor in the university. Around these two a group of younger men soon gathered, who energetically supported the evangelical movement. They dispensed baptism in the German language, administered the communion in both kinds, and were indefatigable in preaching. In A.D. 1524 the council allowed monks and nuns, if they so wished, to leave their cloisters. Of special importance for the progress of the Reformation in Basel was the arrival in A.D. 1524 of William Farel from Dauphiné (§ 138, 1). He had been obliged to fly from France, and was kindly received by Œcolampadius, with whom he stayed for some months. In February he had a public disputation with the opponents of the Reformation. University and bishop had interdicted it, but all the more decided was the council that it should come off. Its result was a great impulse to the Reformation, though Farel in this same year, probably at the suggestion of Erasmus, whom he had described as a new Balaam, was banished by the council (§ 138, 1).366

§ 130.4. The Reformation in the other Cantons, A.D. 1520-1525.―In Bern, from A.D. 1518 Haller, Kolb, and Mayer carried on the work of the Reformation as political and religious reformers after the style of Zwingli. Nic. Manuel, poet, satirist, and painter, supported their preaching by his satirical writings against pope, priests, and superstition generally. Also in his Dance of Death, which he painted on the walls of a cloister at Bern, he covered the clergy with ridicule. In A.D. 1523 the council allowed departures from the convents, and several monks and nuns withdrew and married. The opposition called in the Dominican John Haim, as their spokesman, in A.D. 1524. Between him and the Franciscan Mayer there arose a passionate discussion, and the council exiled both. But Haller continued his work, and the Reformation took firmer root from day to day.―In Muhlhausen [Mühlhausen], where Ulr. von Hutten spent his last days, the council issued a mandate in A.D. 1524 which gave free course to the Reformation. At Biel, too, it was allowed unrestricted freedom. In East Switzerland, St. Gall was specially prominent under its burgomaster Joachim v. Watt, who zealously advanced the interests of the Reformation by word, writing, and action. John Karsler, who had studied theology in Wittenberg in A.D. 1522, and was then obliged, in order to avoid reading the mass, to learn and practise the trade of a saddler, preached the gospel here in the Trades’ Hall in his saddler’s apron in A.D. 1524, and took the office of reformed pastor and Latin preceptor in A.D. 1537. He died in A.D. 1574 as President of St. Gall. In Schaffhausen Erasmus Ritter, called upon to oppose in discussion the reformed pastor Hofmeister, owned himself defeated, and joined the reform party. In the canton Vaud Thos. Platter, the original and learned sailor, afterwards rector of the high school at Burg, laid the foundations of the Reformation. In Appenzel and Glarus the work gradually advanced. But in the Swiss midlands the nobles raised opposition in behalf of their revenues, and the people of Berg, whose whole religion lay in pilgrimages, images, and saints, constantly opposed the introduction of the new views. Lucerne and Freiburg were the main bulwarks of the papacy in Switzerland.

§ 130.5. Anabaptist Outbreak, A.D. 1525.―In Switzerland, though the reformers there had taken very advanced ground, a number of ultra-reformers arose, who thought they did not go far enough. Their leaders were Hätzer (§ 148, 1), Grebel, Manz, Röublin, Hubmeier, and Stör. They began disturbances at Zolticon near Zürich. Hubmeier held a council at Waldshut, Easter Eve, A.D. 1525, and was rebaptized by Röublin. During Easter week 110 received baptism, and subsequently more than 300 besides. The Basel Canton, where Münzer had been living, broke out in open revolt against the city. St. Gall alone had 800 Anabaptists. Zürich at Zwingli’s request at once took decided measures. Many were banished, some were mercilessly drowned. Bern, Basel, and St. Gall followed this example.367

§ 130.6. Disputation at Baden, A.D. 1526.―The reactionary party could not decline the challenge to a disputation, but in the face of all protests it was determined to be held in the Catholic district of Baden. The champions and representatives of the cantons and bishops appeared there in May, A.D. 1526, Faber and Eck leading the papists and Haller of Bern and Œcolampadius of Basel representing the party of reform. Zwingli was forbidden by the Zürich council to attend, but he was kept daily informed by Thos. Platter. Eck’s theses were combatted one after another. It lasted eight days. Eck outcried Œcolampadius’ weak voice, but the latter was immensely superior in intellectual power. At last Thomas Murner (§ 125, 4) appeared with forty abusive articles against Zwingli. Œcolampadius and ten of his friends persisted in rejecting Eck’s theses; all the rest accepted them. The Assembly of the States pronounced the reformers heretics, and ordered the cantons to have them banished.

§ 130.7. Disputation at Bern, A.D. 1528.―The result of the Bern disputation was ill received by the democrats of Bern and Basel. A final disputation was arranged for at Bern, which was attended by 350 of the clergy and many noblemen. Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Haller, Capito, Bucer, and Farel were there. It continued from 7th to 27th January, A.D. 1528. The Catholics were sadly wanting in able disputants, and they sustained an utter defeat. Worship and constitution were radically reformed. Cloisters were secularized; preachers gave their official oath to the civil magistrates. There were serious riots over the removal of the images. The valuable organ in the minster of St. Vincent was broken up by the ruthless iconoclasts. A political reformation was carried out along with the religious, and all stipendiaries received their warning.

§ 130.8. Complete Victory of the Reformation at Basel, St. Gall, and Schaffhausen, A.D. 1529.―The Burgomaster von Watt brought to St. Gall the news of the victorious issue of the disputation at Bern. This gave the finishing blow to the Catholic party. Thus in A.D. 1528, certainly not without some iconoclastic excesses, the Reformation triumphed.―In Basel, the council was divided, and so it took but half measures. On Good Friday, A.D. 1528, some citizens broke the images in St. Martin’s Church. They were apprehended. But a rising of citizens obliged the council to set them free, and several churches from which the images had been withdrawn were given over to the reformers. In December, A.D. 1528, the trades presented a petition asking for the final abolition of idolatry. The Catholic party and the reformed took to arms, and a civil war seemed imminent. The council, however, succeeded in quelling the disturbance by announcing a disputation where the majority of the citizens should decide by their votes. But the Catholic minority protested so energetically that the council had again recourse to half measures. The dissatisfaction of the reformed led to an explosion of violent image breaking in Lent, A.D. 1529. Huge bonfires of images and altars were set a blaze. The strict Catholic members of the council fled, the rest quelled the revolt by an unconditional surrender. Even Erasmus gave way (§ 120, 6). Œcolampadius had married in A.D. 1528. He died in A.D. 1531. In Schaffhausen up to A.D. 1529 matters were undecided, but the proceedings at Basel and Bern gave victory to the reformed party. The drama here ended with a double marriage. The abbot of All Saints married a nun, and Erasmus Ritter married the abbot’s sister. Images were removed without tumult and the mass abolished.

§ 130.9. The first Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1529.―In the five forest cantons the Catholics had the upper hand, and there every attempted political as well as religious reform was relentlessly put down. Zürich and Bern could stand this no longer. Unterwalden now revolted, and found considerable support in the other four cantons, and the position of the cities became serious. The forest cantons now turned to Austria, the old enemy of Swiss freedom, and concluded at Innsbrück in A.D. 1529 a formal league with King Ferdinand for mutual assistance in matters touching the faith. Trusting to this league, they increased their cruel persecutions of the reformed, and burnt alive a Zürich preacher, Keyser, whom they had seized on the public highway on neutral territory. Then the Zürichers rose up in revolt. With their decided preponderance they might certainly have crushed the five cantons, and then all Switzerland would have surrounded Zwingli in the support of reform. But Bern was jealous of Zürich’s growing importance, and even many Zürichers for fear of war urged negotiations for peace with the old members of the league. Thus came about the First Treaty of Cappel in A.D. 1529. The five cantons gave up the Austrian league document to be destroyed, undertook to defray the costs of the war, and agreed that the majority in each canton should determine the faith of that canton. As to freedom of belief it was only said that no party should make the faith of the other penal. This was less than Zwingli wished, yet it was a considerable gain. Thurgau, Baden, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, Neuenburg, Toggenburg, etc., on the basis of this treaty, abolished mass, images, and altars.

§ 130.10. The Second Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1531.―Even after the treaty the five cantons continued to persecute the reformed, and renewed their alliance with Austria. Their undue preponderance in the assembly led Zürich to demand a revision of the federation. This led the forest cantons to increase their cruelties upon the reformed. Zürich declared for immediate hostilities, but Bern decided to refuse all commercial intercourse with the five cantons. At the diet at Lucerne, the five cantons resolved in September, A.D. 1531, to avert famine by immediately declaring war. They made their arrangements so secretly that the reformed party was not the least prepared, when suddenly, on the 9th October, an army of 8,000 men, bent on revenge, rushed down on the Zürich Canton. In all haste 2,000 men were mustered, who were almost annihilated in the battle of Cappel on 11th October. There, too, Zwingli fell. His body was quartered and burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds. Zürich and Bern soon brought a force of 20,000 men into the field, but the courage of their enemies had grown in proportion as all confidence and spirit departed from the reformed. Further successes led the forest cantons, which had hitherto acted only on the defensive, to proceed on the offensive, and the reformed were constrained to accept on humbling terms the Second Treaty of Cappel of A.D. 1531. This granted freedom of worship to the reformed in their own cantons, but secured the restoration of Catholicism in the five cantons. The defeated had also to bear the costs of the war, and to renounce their league with Strassburg, Constance, and Hesse. The hitherto oppressed Catholic minority began now to assert itself on all hands, and in many places were more or less successful in securing the ascendency. So it was in Aargau, Thurgau, Rapperschwyl, St. Gall, Rheinthal, Solothurn, Glarus, etc.

§ 132.1. The Pack Incident, A.D. 1527, 1528.―In A.D. 1527 dark rumours of dangers to the evangelicals began to spread. The landgrave, suspecting the existence of a conspiracy of the German Catholic princes, gave to an officer in Duke George’s government, Otto von Pack, 10,000 florins to secure documents proving its existence. He produced one with the ducal seal, which bound the Catholic princes of Germany to fall upon the elector’s territories and Hesse, and to divide the lands among them, etc. The landgrave was all fire and fury, and even the Elector John joined him in a league to make a vigorous demonstration against the purposed attack. But Luther and Melanchthon pressed upon the elector our Lord’s words, “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” and convinced him that he ought to abide the attack and restrict himself to simple defence. The landgrave, highly offended at the failure of his project, sent a copy of the document to Duke George, who declared the whole affair a tissue of lies. Philip had begun operations against the elector, but was heartily ashamed of himself when he came to his sober senses. Pack when interrogated became involved in contradictions, and was found to be a thoroughly bad subject, who had been before convicted of falsehood and intrigues. The landgrave expelled him from his territories. He wandered long a homeless exile, and at last, in A.D. 1536, was executed by Duke George’s orders in the Netherlands. All this seriously injured the interests of the gospel. Mutual distrust among the Protestant leaders continued, and sympathy was created for the Catholic princes as men who had been unjustly accused.

§ 132.2. The Emperor’s Attitude, A.D. 1527-1529.―The faithlessness of the king of France and the ratification of the League of Cognac (§ 126, 6) led to very strained relations between the pope and the emperor. Old Frundsberg raised an army in Germany, and the German peasants, without pay or reward, crossed the Alps, burning with desire to humiliate the pope. On 6th May, A.D. 1527, the imperial army of Spaniards and Germans stormed Rome. The so-called sack of Rome presented a scene of plunder and spoliation scarcely ever paralleled. Clement VII., besieged in St. Angelo, was obliged to surrender himself prisoner. But once again Germany’s hopes were cast to the ground by the emperor. Considering the opinion that prevailed in Spain, and influenced by his own antipathy to the Saxon heresy, besides other political combinations, he forgot that he had been saved by Lutheran soldiers. In June, A.D. 1528, at Barcelona, he concluded a peace with the pope and promised to use his whole power in suppressing heresy. By the Treaty of Cambray, in July, A.D. 1529, the French war also was finally brought to a conclusion. In this treaty both potentates promised to uphold the papal chair, and Francis I. renewed his undertaking to furnish aid against heretics and Turks. Charles now hastened to Italy to be crowned by the pope, meaning then by his personal attentions to settle the affairs of Germany.

§ 132.3. The Diet at Spires, A.D. 1529.―In the end of A.D. 1528 the emperor issued a summons for another diet at Spires, which met on 21st Feb., A.D. 1529. Things had changed since A.D. 1526. The Catholics were roused by the Pack episode, halting nobles were terrorized by the emperor, the prelates were present in great numbers, and the Catholics, for the first time since the Diet at Worms, were in a decided majority. The proposition of the imperial commissioners to rescind the conclusions of the diet of A.D. 1526 was adopted by a majority, and formulated as the diet’s decision. No innovations were to be introduced until at least a council had been convened, mass was everywhere to be tolerated, the jurisdiction and revenues of the bishops were in all cases to be fully restored. It was the death-knell of the Reformation, as it gave the bishops the right of deposing and punishing preachers at their will. As Ferdinand was deaf to all remonstrances, the evangelicals presented a solemn protest, with the demand that it should be incorporated in the imperial statute book. But Ferdinand refused to receive it. The Protestants now took no further steps, but drew up a formal statement of their case for the emperor, appealed to a free council and German national assembly, and declared their constant adherence to the decisions of the previous diet. This document was signed by the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, George of Brandenburg, the two dukes of Lüneburg, and Prince Wolfgang of Anholt [Anhalt]. Of the upland cities fourteen subscribed it.

§ 132.4. The Marburg Conference, A.D. 1529.―The Elector of Saxony and Hesse entered into a defensive league with Strassburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg at Spires. The theologians present agreed only with hesitation to admit the Zwinglian Strassburg. The landgrave at the same time formed an alliance with Zürich, which attached itself to the interests of Francis I. of France. Thus began the most formidable coalition which had ever yet been formed against the house of Austria. But one point had been overlooked which broke it all up again, viz. the religious differences between the Lutheran and Zwinglian confessions. Melanchthon returned to Wittenburg [Wittenberg] with serious qualms of conscience; Luther had declared against any league, most of all against any fraternising with the “Sacramentarians,” and the elector to some extent agreed with him. Even the Nuremberg theologians had their scruples. The proposed league was to have been ratified at Rotach in June. The meeting took place, but no conclusion was reached. The landgrave was furious, but the elector was resolute. Philip now summoned leading theologians on both sides to a conference at Marburg in his castle, which lasted from 1st till 3rd Oct., A.D. 1529. On the one side were Luther, Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, from Wittenberg, Brenz from Swabia, and Osiander from Nuremberg; on the other side, Zwingli from Zürich, Œcolampadius from Basel, Bucer and Hadio [Hedio] from Strassburg. After, by the landgrave’s well-meant arrangement, Zwingli had discussed privately with Melanchthon, and Luther with Œcolampadius, during the first day, the public conference began on the second. First of all several points were discussed on the divinity of Christ, original sin, baptism, the word of God, etc., in reference to which suspicions of Zwingli’s orthodoxy had been current in Wittenberg. On all these Zwingli willingly abandoned his peculiar theories and accepted the doctrines of the œcumenical church. But his views of the Lord’s Supper he stoutly maintained. He took his stand upon John vi. 63, “The flesh profiteth nothing;” but Luther wrote with chalk on the table before him, “This is My body,” as the word of God which no one may explain away. No agreement could be reached. Zwingli declared that notwithstanding he was ready for brotherly fellowship, but this Luther and his party unanimously refused. Luther said, “You are of another spirit than we.” Still Luther had found his opponents not so bad as he expected, and also the Swiss found that Luther’s doctrine was not so gross and capernaitic as they had imagined. They agreed on fifteen articles, in the fourteenth of which they determined on the basis of the œcumenical church doctrine to oppose the errors of Papists and Anabaptists, and in the fifteenth the Swiss admitted that the true body and blood of Christ are in the sacrament, but they could not admit that they were corporeally in the bread and wine. Three copies of these Marburg articles were signed by the theologians present.―Continuation, § 133, 8.

§ 132.5. The Convention of Schwabach and the Landgrave Philip.―A convention met at Schwabach in Oct., A.D. 1529, at which a confession of seventeen articles was proposed to the representatives of the Swiss, but rejected by them. Meanwhile the imperial answer to the decisions of the diet had arrived from Spain, containing very ungracious expressions against the Protestants. The evangelical nobles sent an embassy to the emperor to Italy; but he refused to receive the protest, and treated the ambassadors almost as prisoners. They returned to Germany with a bad report. Hitherto there had been only a defensive federation against attacks of the Swabian League or other Catholic princes. Luther’s hope that the emperor might yet be won was shattered. The question now was, what should be done if an onslaught upon the reformed should be made by the emperor himself. The jurists indeed were of opinion that the German princes were not unconditionally subject to the emperor; they too have authority by God’s grace, and in the exercise of this are bound to protect their subjects. But Luther did not hesitate for a moment to compare the relation of the elector to the emperor with that of the burgomaster of Torgau to the elector; for he maintained the idea of the empire as firmly as that of the church. He insisted that the princes should not withstand the emperor, and that they should bear everything patiently for God’s sake. Only if the emperor should proceed to persecute their own subjects for their faith should they renounce their obedience. The landgrave’s negotiations with Zwingli also led to no result. For political purposes, notwithstanding the opposition of Wittenberg, there was formed a coalition of all the Protestants of the north with the exception of Denmark, extending also to the south and embracing even Venice and France. The Swiss would stop the way of the emperor over the Alps; Venice would be of service with her fleet, and the most Christian king of France was to be summoned as the protector of political and religious freedom of Germany. But these fine plans were seen to be vain dreams when the time for putting them in practice came round.

§ 132.6. The Diet of Augsburg, A.D. 1530.―From Boulogne, where the pope crowned him, the emperor summoned a diet to meet at Augsburg, at which for the first time in nine he was to be personally present. He would once again seek to induce the Protestants quietly to return to the old faith, and so his missive was very conciliatory. But before its arrival new irritations had arisen at Augsburg. The Elector John allowed the preachers accompanying him, Spalatin and Agricola, to engage freely in preaching. The emperor was greatly displeased at this, and sent him a request to withdraw this permission, which, however, he did not regard. On 15th June, accompanied by the papal legate Campegius (§ 126, 2, 3), he made a brilliant entrance, the Protestants, on the ground of 2 Kings v. 17, 18, offering no opposition to all the civil and ecclesiastical reception ceremonies. This gave the emperor greater confidence in renewing the demand to stop the preaching. But the Protestants stood firm, and Margrave George called down the unmeasured wrath of the emperor by his decided but humble declaration, that before he would deny God’s word, he would kneel where he stood and have his head struck off. Just as decidedly he refused the emperor’s call to join the Corpus Christi procession on the following day, even with the addition that it was “to the glory of Almighty God.” At last they yielded the matter of the preaching so far as to discontinue it during the emperor’s stay, on the other party undertaking to discontinue controversial discourses. On 20th June the diet opened. The matter of the Turkish war was on the emperor’s motion postponed, to allow of the thorough discussion of the religious questions.

§ 132.7. The Augsburg Confession, 25th June, A.D. 1530.―In view of the diet the evangelical theologians prepared for the elector a short confession in the form of a revision of the seventeen Schwabach Articles, the so called Torgau Articles. Melanchthon employed the days that preceded the opening of the diet in drawing up on the basis of the Torgau Articles, in constant correspondence with the evangelical theologians, the Augsburg Confession, Confessio Augustana. This concise, clear, and decided though temperate document received the hearty approval of Luther, who, as still under the ban, was kept back by the elector at Coburg. It contained twenty-one Articuli fidei præcipui, and also seven Articuli in quibus recensentur abusus mutati. On 24th June the Protestants said they desired their confession to be publicly read. But it was with difficulty that they obtained the emperor’s consent to allow its being read on the 25th June, and even then not in the public hall, but in a much smaller episcopal chapel, where only members of the diet could find room. The two chancellors of the electorate, Baier and Brück, appeared, the one with a German, the other with a Latin copy of the confession. The emperor wished the Latin, but the elector insisted that on German soil the German copy should be read. When this was done Dr. Brück handed both copies to the emperor, who kept the Latin one and gave the German one to the Elector of Mainz. Both were subscribed by Elector John, Margrave George, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, Landgrave Philip, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, and the cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen. The confession made a favourable impression on many of the assembled princes, and many prejudices were dissipated; while the evangelicals were greatly strengthened by the unanimous confession of their faith before the emperor and the empire. The Catholic theologians Faber, Eck, Cochlæus, and Wimpina were ordered by the emperor to controvert the confession. Meanwhile Melanchthon entered into negotiations with the legate Campegius, in which his love of peace went so far as to withdraw all demands for marriage of the clergy, and the giving of the cup to the laity, and to allow the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishops, reserving the question about the mass to the decision of a council. But these weak concessions found little or no favour among the other Protestants, and the legate could make no binding engagement until he consulted Rome. On 3rd Aug. the confutation of the Catholic theologians was read. The emperor declared that it maintained the views by which he would stand. He expected the princes would do the same. He was defender of the Church, and was not disposed to suffer ecclesiastical schism in Germany. The Protestants demanded for closer inspection a copy of the confutation. This was refused. The landgrave now left the diet. To the elector he said that he gave over to him and to God’s word body and goods, land and people; and to the representatives of the cities he wrote: “Say to the cities that they are not women, but men. There is no fear; God is on our side.” The zealous Papist Duke William of Bavaria declared to Eck, “If I hear well, the Lutherans sit upon the Scripture and we alongside of it.” The cities siding with Zwingli, Strassburg, Memmingen, Constance, and Lindau, presented their own confession drawn up by Bucer and Capilo [Capito], the Confessio Tetrapolitana. In its eighteenth article it taught that Christ gives in the sacrament His true body and His true blood to be eaten and drunk for the feeding of the soul. The emperor had a Catholic reply read, with which he expressed satisfaction. Luther had meanwhile from Coburg supported those contending for the confession by prayer, counsel, and comfort. He preached frequently, wrote many letters, negotiated with Bucer (§ 133, 8), wrought at the translation of the prophets, and composed several evangelical works of edification.

§ 132.8. The Conclusions of the Diet of Augsburg.―The firm bright spirit of the minority made it seem to the Catholic majority too considerable to allow of an open breach. A further attempt was therefore made to reach some agreement. A commission was appointed, comprising from either side two princes, two doctors of canon law, and three theologians. On the twenty-one doctrinal articles, with the exception of that on the sacraments, they were practically agreed, but the Protestants were called upon to abandon everything in regard to constitution and customs. Thus the attempt failed. Five imperial cities took the side of the emperor, the rest attached themselves to the Protestant princes. The Protestants wished to read Melanchthon’s apology for the Augsburg Confession against the charge of the Catholic confutation, but the emperor with unbending stubbornness refused. This was the most decided piece of work Melanchthon ever did. At the close of the diet, 22nd Sept., the Protestant princes were informed that time for reflection would be allowed them till 15th April of the following year; meanwhile they should not enforce any innovations and should allow confession and the mass in their territories. The early calling of a council was expressly promised. The princes of the church had all their rights restored. The emperor declared his firm determination to enforce in its full rigour the edict of Worms, and commissioned the public prosecutor to proceed against the disobedient even to the length of putting them under the ban. The judicature was formally and expressly empowered to carry out the conclusions of the diet. Finally, the emperor expressed the wish that on account of his frequent absence his brother Ferdinand should be chosen King of Rome. The election was accordingly soon carried out at Frankfort; but the elector lodged a protest against it.