A History of the Reformation Volume II Part 31

"Better never to have come here at all," said a Spanish Bishop, "than to be reduced to mere spectators." Few ecclesiastical a.s.semblies have seen stormier scenes than took place during these later sittings of the Council of Trent.

In the end, the papal diplomacy prevailed. His conciliatory manner helped Pius through difficulties in which another would have failed. No man was readier to give way in things which he did not consider essential, and what he promised he scrupulously performed. The success of the last meeting of the Council was due to bargaining and dexterous persuasion. When the critical point arrived, and it seemed as if the Council must fall to pieces, his agents, Morone and Peter Canisius, the great German Jesuit, won Ferdinand over to the Pope's side. Similar persuasive diplomacy secured the influence of the Cardinal of Lorraine.

Even Philip of Spain was brought to see that the Spanish Bishops were asking too much.

It must also be remembered that while Pius IV. refused to tolerate any loss of papal rights or privileges, he consented to and did his best to carry out numberless salutary reforms; and that the Council of Trent not only reorganised, but greatly purified the Roman Church. Almost all that was good in the reformation wrought by his predecessor Paul IV. was made part of the Tridentine regulations.

The special matter in dispute between the Pope and the great majority of non-Italian Bishops concerned the relations in which the Bishops of the Catholic Church stood to the Bishop of Rome, whom all acknowledged as their head. The Spanish, French, and German Bishops were strongly opposed to that doctrine of papal supremacy which had been a.s.siduously taught by the canonists of the Roman Curia for at least two centuries, and which was called _curialism_. Curialism taught that the Pope was lord of the Church in the sense that all the clergy were his servants, and that Bishops in particular were mere a.s.sistants whom he had appointed for the purpose of oversight to act as his vicars. Whatever powers of jurisdiction they possessed came from him, and from him alone.

The opposite conception, that insisted on at Trent by the northern and Spanish Bishops, that maintained at the great Councils of Constance and Basel, was that every Bishop had his power directly from Christ, and that the Pope, while he was the representative of the unity of the Church, and therefore to be recognised as its head, was only a _primus inter pares_, and subject to the episcopate as a whole in Council a.s.sembled. The question kept cropping up in almost all the discussions in the Council which turned on reform. It began as early as the fifth session (June 17th, 1546) and went on intermittently; but it positively raged in the later sessions.

The question was raised on its practical side. One of the standing abuses in the mediaeval Church was the non-residence of Bishops. The Council was pa.s.sionately called upon by the Spanish and northern Bishops to declare that residence was a necessary thing, and unanimously responded that it was. Their function was the oversight of their dioceses, and this could only be done when they were resident. But how was this to be enforced? To compel the Bishops to reside within their dioceses would depopulate the Court of Rome, and make it very much poorer. Bishops from every country in Europe were attached to the Roman Court, and their stipends, drawn from the countries in which their Sees lay, were spent in Rome, and aided the magnificence of the papal entourage. The reformers felt that a theoretical question lay behind the practical, and insisted that the oversight and therefore the residence of Bishops was _de jure divino_ and not merely _de lege ecclesiastica_--something enjoined by G.o.d, and therefore beyond alteration by the Pope. Behind this lay the thought, first introduced by Cyprian, that every Bishop was within his congregation or diocese the Vicar of Christ, and in the last resort responsible to Him alone. Thus the old conciliar conception, maintained at Constance and at Basel, faced the curial at Trent; and both were too powerful to give way entirely. In spite of his Italian majority, the Pope could not get a majority for a direct negative denying the _de jure divino_ theory. At the final vote, sixty-six fathers declared for the _de jure divino_ theory, while seventy-one either rejected it altogether or voted for remitting it to the decision of the Pope. The Pope dared not make use of the liberty of decision thus accorded to him by a majority of five. If he did he would then be left to face the European Roman Catholic Courts of Germany, France, and Spain--all of whom supported the conciliar view.

Thus the theoretical question was left undecided at Trent, but the papal diplomacy prevailed to the extent of creating a bias in favour of curialist ideas, which left the Pope in a stronger position as regards the episcopate than any other General Council had ever placed him in.

The prominence given to the _Roman_ (_i.e._ the papal) Church throughout the decisions of the Council, beginning with the way in which the Constantinopolitan (Nicene) Creed was affirmed;[720] the insertion of the phrase _His own Vicar upon earth_;[721] the injunction that Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and all others who of right and custom ought to be present at a provincial council ... _promise and profess true obedience to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff_;[722] the 10th clause in the _Professio Fidei Tridentinae_: "I acknowledge the holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church for the mother and mistress of all Churches; and I promise and swear true obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ"; the way in which the Council at its last session (Dec. 4th, 1563) left entirely in the Pope's hands the confirmation of its decrees and the measures to be used for carrying them out; and above all its calm acquiescence in the Bull _Benedictus Deus_ (Jan. 24th, 1564), in which Pope Pius IV. reserved the exposition of its decrees to himself[723]--all testify to the triumph of curialist ideas at the Council of Trent. The Roman Catholic Church had become, in a sense never before universally accepted, the "Pope's House."

This Council, so eagerly demanded, so greatly protracted, twice dissolved, buffeted by storms in the political world, exposed, even in its later sessions, to many a danger, ended in the general contentment of the Roman Catholic peoples. When the prelates met together for the last time on the 4th of December 1563, ancient opponents embraced, and traces of tears were seen in many of the old eyes.

It had done three things for the Roman Catholic Church. It had provided a compact system of doctrine, stript of many of the vagaries of Scholasticism, and yet opposed to Protestant teaching. Romanism had an intellectual basis of its own to rest on. It had rebuilt the hierarchy on what may be called almost a new foundation, and made it symmetrical.

It had laid down a scheme of reformation which, if only carried out by succeeding Pontiffs, would free the Church from many of the crying evils which had given such strength to the Protestant movement. It had insisted on and made provisions for an educated clergy--perhaps the greatest need of the Roman Church in the middle of the sixteenth century.

All this was largely due to the man who ruled in Rome. Pope Pius IV., sprung from the shrewd Italian middle-cla.s.s, caring little for theology, by no means distinguished for piety, had seen what the Church needed, and by deft diplomacy had obtained it. A stronger man would have snapped the threads which tied all parties together; one more zealous would have lacked his infinite patience; a deeply pious man could scarcely have employed the means he continually used. He was magnificently a.s.sisted by the new Company of Jesus. No theologians had so much influence at Trent as Lainez and Salmeron; the Council would have broken down altogether but for the aid given by Canisius to Morone in his negotiations with the Emperor.

Pius IV. was not slow to fulfil the promises he had made to sovereigns and Council. The Breviary and the Missal were revised, as Ferdinand had requested. Ecclesiastical music was purified. Exertions were made to establish colleges and theological seminaries. But a sterner Pontiff was needed to guide the battle against the growing Protestantism. He was found in the next, Pope Pius V.

The influence of Cardinal Borromeo, the pious nephew of Pius IV., was powerful in the Conclave, and was exerted to procure the election of Michele Ghislieri, Cardinal of Alessandria, who took the name of Pius V.

The new Pontiff had entered a Dominican convent when fourteen years of age, and had given himself up heart and soul to the strictest life his Order enjoined. He had all the zeal for strict orthodoxy which characterised the Dominicans, an asceticism which never spared himself, and a detestation of the immoralities and irregularities which too often disgraced the lives of ecclesiastics. He carried the habits of the cloister with him into the Vatican. He never missed attendance at the prescribed services of the Church, and in his devotion there was no trace of hypocrisy. He was a Pope to lead the new Romanism, with its intense hatred of heresy, its determination to reform the moral life, and its contempt for the Renaissance and all its works. Philip II. of Spain sent a special letter of congratulation to Cardinal Borromeo to thank him for his efforts in the Conclave.

The new Pontiff believed, heart and soul, in repression. He meant to fight the Reformation by the Inquisition and the Index; and these two instruments were unsparingly used.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.[724]

-- 1. _The Inquisition in Spain._

The idea conveyed in the term Inquisition is the punishment of spiritual or ecclesiastical offences by physical pains and penalties. It was no new conception in the Christian Church. It had existed from the days of Constantine. So far as the mediaeval Church is concerned, historians roughly distinguish between the Episcopal, the Papal, and the Spanish Inquisitions. In the half-barbarous Church of the early Middle Ages, in which a curious give-and-take policy existed between the secular and civil powers, a seemingly consistent understanding was arrived at between Church and State, which may be summed up by saying that it was recognised to be the Church's duty to point out heretics, and that of the State to punish them--the Church being represented by the Bishops.

This episcopal Inquisition took many forms, and was never a very effective instrument in the suppression of heresy.

In 1203, Pope Innocent III., alarmed at the spread of heresies through southern France and northern Italy, published a Bull censuring the indifference of the Bishops, appointing the Abbot of Citeaux his delegate in matters of heresy, and giving him power to judge and _punish_ heresy. This was the beginning of the Inquisition as a separate inst.i.tution. It was an act of papal centralisation, and a distinct encroachment on the episcopal jurisdiction. The papal Inquisition, thus started, took root. It did not displace the old episcopal Inquisition; the two existed side by side; but the "Apostolic Tribunal for the suppression of heresy" was by far the more effective weapon. It was usually managed by the Dominican and Franciscan Orders.

The Spanish Inquisition took its rise in the closing decades of the fifteenth century. The Popes had frequently desired to see the papal Inquisition introduced into Spain, and leave had always been refused by the sovereigns, jealous of papal interference. Pope Sixtus IV. had gone the length of granting to his Legate, Nicolo Franco, "full inquisitorial powers to prosecute and punish false Christians who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites," but Isabella and Ferdinand did not allow him to exercise them. But the power and wealth of the _Conversos_--Jews who had nominally embraced Christianity--had made them detested by the Spanish people, and a large section of the clergy were clamouring for their overthrow. Thomas de Torquemada, the Queen's confessor, eagerly pressed the Inquisition upon his royal penitent, and at last the sovereigns applied to the Pope for a Bull to enable them to establish in Spain an Inquisition of a peculiar kind. It was to differ from the ordinary papal Inquisition in this, that it was to be strictly under royal control, that the sovereigns were to have the appointment of the Inquisitors, and that the fines and confiscations were to flow into the royal treasury. The Bull was granted (November 1st, 1478), but the sovereigns hesitated to use the rights it conveyed. After a year's delay, two royal Inquisitors were appointed (September 17th, 1480), and the first _auto-da-fe_, at which six persons were burnt, took place on February 6th, 1481. The succeeding years saw various modifications in the const.i.tution of the Holy Office; but at last it was organised with a council, presided over by an Inquisitor-General, Thomas de Torquemada.

He was a man of pitiless zeal, stern, relentless, and autocratic; and he stamped his nature on the inst.i.tution over which he presided. The Holy Office was permitted to frame its own rules. The permission made it practically independent, while all the resources of the State were placed at its command. When an Inquisitor came to a.s.sume his functions, the officials took an oath to a.s.sist him to exterminate all whom he might designate as heretics, and to observe, and compel the observance by all, of the decretals _Ad abolendum, Excommunicamus, Ut officium Inquisitionis_, and _Ut Inquisitionis negotium_--the papal legislation of the thirteenth century, which made the State wholly subservient to the Holy Office, and rendered incapable of official position any one suspect in the faith or who favoured heretics. Besides this, all the population was a.s.sembled to listen to a sermon by the Inquisitor, after which all were required to swear on the cross and the Gospels to help the Holy Office, and not to impede it in any manner or on any pretext.

The methods of work and procedure were also taken from the papal Inquisition. The Inquisitors were furnished with letters patent. They travelled from town to town, attended by guards and notaries public.

Their expenses were defrayed by taxes laid on the towns and districts through which they pa.s.sed. Spies and informers, guaranteed State protection, brought forward their information. The Court was opened; witnesses were examined; and the accused were acquitted or found guilty.

The sentence was p.r.o.nounced; the secular a.s.sessor gave a formal a.s.sent; and the accused was handed over to the civil authorities for punishment.

When Torquemada reorganised the Spanish Inquisition, a series of rules were framed for its procedure which enforced secrecy to the extent of depriving the accused of any rational means of defence; which elaborated the judicial method so as to leave no loop-hole even for those who expressed a wish to recant; and which multiplied the charges under which suspected heretics, even after death, might be treated as impenitent and their property confiscated. The Spanish Inquisition differed from the papal in its close relation to the civil authorities, its terrible secrecy, its relentlessness, and its exclusion of Bishops from even a nominal partic.i.p.ation in its work. Thus organised, it became the most terrible of curses to unhappy Spain. During the first hundred and thirty-nine years of its existence the country was depopulated to the extent of three millions of people. It had become strong enough to overawe the monarchy, to insult the episcopate, and to defy the Pope.

The number of its victims can only be conjectured. Llorente has calculated that during the eighteen years of Torquemada's presidency 114,000 persons were accused, of whom 10,220 were burnt alive, and 97,000 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment or to public penitence.

This was the terrible instrument used relentlessly to bring the Spanish people into conformity with the Spanish Reformation, and to crush the growing Protestantism of the Low Countries. It was extended to Corsica and Sardinia; but the people of Naples and Sicily successfully resisted its introduction when proposed by the Spanish Viceroys.

-- 2. _The Inquisition in Italy._

Cardinal Caraffa (afterwards Pope Paul IV.), the relentless enemy of the Reformation, seeing the success of this Spanish Inquisition in its extermination of heretics, induced Pope Paul III. to consent to a reorganisation of the papal Inquisition in Italy on the Spanish model, in 1542. The Curia had become alarmed at the progress of the Reformation in Italy. They had received information that small Protestant communities had been formed in several of the Italian towns, and that heresy was spreading in an alarming fas.h.i.+on. Caraffa declared that "the whole of Italy was infected with the Lutheran heresy, which had been extensively embraced both by statesmen and ecclesiastics." Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits highly approved of the suggestion, and they were all-powerful with the Cardinal Borromeo, the pious and trusted nephew of the Pope. In 1542 the Congregation of the Holy Office was founded at Rome, and six Cardinals, among them Cardinals Caraffa and Toledo, were named Inquisitors-General, with authority on both sides of the Alps to try all cases of heresy, to apprehend and imprison suspected persons, and to appoint inferior tribunals with the same or more limited powers.

The intention was to introduce into this remodelled papal Inquisition most of the features which marked the thoroughness of the Spanish inst.i.tution. But the jealousy of the Popes prevented the Holy Office from exercising the same independent action in Italy as in Spain. The new inst.i.tution began its work at once within the States of the Church, and was introduced after some negotiations into most of the Italian princ.i.p.alities. Venice refused, until it was arranged that the Holy Office there should be strictly subject to the civil authorities.

Although modelled on the Spanish inst.i.tution, the work of the Holy Office in Italy never exhibited the same murderous activity; nor was there the same need. The Italians have never showed the stern consistency in faith which characterised the Spaniards. It was generally found sufficient to strike at the leaders in order to cause the relapse of their followers. Still the records of the Office and contemporary witnesses recount continuous trials and burnings in Rome and in other cities. In Venice, death by drowning was subst.i.tuted for burning. The victims were placed on a board supported by two gondolas; the boats were rowed apart, and the unfortunate martyrs perished in the waters. The Protestant congregations which had been formed in Bologna, Faenza, Ferrara, Lucca, Modena, Naples, Siena, Venice, and Vicenza were dispersed with little or no bloodshed. A colony of Waldenses, settled near the town of Cosenza in the north-central part of Calabria, were made of sterner stuff. Nothing would induce them to relapse, and they were exterminated by sword, by hurling from the summits of cliffs, by prolonged confinement in deadly prisons, at the stake, in the mines, in the Spanish galleys. One hundred elderly women were first tortured and then slaughtered at Montalto. The survivors among the women and children were sold into slavery. Such was the work of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, and the measures to which it owed much of its success.

-- 3. _The Index._

Leaders of the Counter-Reformation in Italy like Popes Paul IV. and Pius V. were determined on much more than the dispersion of Protestant communities and the banishment or martyrdom of the missionaries of Evangelical thought. They resolved to destroy what they rightly enough believed to be its seed and seed-bed--the cultivation of independent thinking and of impartial scholars.h.i.+p. They wished to extirpate all traces of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries, Italy had been "the workshop of ideas," the _officina scientiarum_ for the rest of Europe. The Inquisition, in Italy as in Spain, attacked the Academies, the schools of learning, above all the libraries in which the learning of the past was stored, and the printing-presses which disseminated ideas day by day. They had the example of Torquemada before them, who had burnt six thousand volumes at Salamanca in 1490 on pretence that they taught sorcery.

It was no new thing to order the burning of heretical writings. This had been done continuously throughout the Middle Ages. The episcopal Inquisition, the Universities, the papal Inquisition, had all endeavoured to discover and destroy writings which they deemed to be dangerous to the dogmas of the Church. After the invention of printing such a method of slaying ideas was not so easy; but the ecclesiastical authorities had tried their best. The celebrated edict of the Archbishop of Mainz of 1486, prompted by the number of Bibles printed in the vernacular, and trying to establish a censors.h.i.+p of books, may be taken as an example.[725]

Pope Sixtus IV. in 1547 had ordered the University of Koln to see that no books (_libri, tractatus aut scripturae qualescunque_) were printed without previous licence, and had empowered the authorities to inflict penalties on the printers, purchasers, and readers of all unlicensed books. Alexander VI. had sent the same order to the Archbishops of Koln, Mainz, Trier, and Magdeburg (1501). In a _Const.i.tution_ of Leo X., approved by the Lateran Council of 1515, it was declared that no book could be printed in Rome which had not been expressly sanctioned by the _Master of the Palace_, and in other lands by the Bishop of the diocese or the Inquisitor of the district; and this had been h.o.m.ologated by the Council of Trent.[726] From its reorganisation in 1543 the papal Inquisition in Rome had undertaken this work of censors.h.i.+p.

Outside the States of the Church the suppression of books and the requirement of ecclesiastical licence could only be carried out through the co-operation of the secular authorities; and they naturally demanded some uniformity in the books condemned. This led to lists of prohibited books being drawn up--as at Louvain (1546 and 1550), at Koln (1549), and by the Sorbonne, who managed the Inquisition for the north of France (1544 and 1551). Pope Paul IV. drafted the first papal Index in 1559. It was very drastic, and its very severity prevented its success.[727] It was this _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ which was discussed by the Commission appointed at the Council of Trent.[728]

The Commission drafted a set of ten rules to be followed in constructing a list of prohibited books, and left the actual formation of the Index to the Pope. This new Index (the Tridentine Index) was published by Pope Pius IV. in 1564. His successor, Pius V., appointed a special Commission of Cardinals to deal with the question of prohibited books. It was called the Congregation of the Index, and although distinct from the Inquisition, worked along with it. Its work was done very thoroughly.

Italian scholars.h.i.+p was slain so far as the peninsula was concerned. The scholars.h.i.+p of Spain and Portugal was also destroyed. Learning had to take shelter north of the Alps and the Pyrenees. So thoroughly was the work of prohibition carried out, so many difficulties beset even Roman Catholic authors, that Paleario called the whole system "a dagger drawn from the scabbard to a.s.sa.s.sinate all men of letters"; Paul Sarpi dubbed it "the finest secret which has ever been discovered for applying religion to the purpose of making men idiots"; and Latini, a champion of the Papacy, declared it to be a "peril which threatened the very existence of books."

The rules for framing the Index, drafted by the commission of the Council of Trent, are curious reading. The writings of noted Reformers, of Zwingli, Luther, and especially of Calvin, were absolutely prohibited. The Vulgate was to be the only authorised version of the Scriptures, and the only one to be quoted as an inspired text. Scholars might, by special permission of their ecclesiastical superiors, possess another version, but they were never to quote it as authoritative.

Versions in the vernacular were never to be quoted. Bible Dictionaries, Concordances, books on controversial theology, had to pa.s.s the strictest examination at the hands of the censors before publication. The censors were directed to examine with the utmost care not merely the text, but all summaries, notes, indexes, prefaces, and dedications, searching for any heretical phrases or for sentences which the unwary might be tempted to think heretical, for all criticisms on any ecclesiastical action, for any satire on the clergy or on religious rites. All such pa.s.sages were to be expunged.

North of the Alps the Index had small effect. It was impotent in lands where the Reformation was firmly established; and in France, papal Germany, and north Italy a cla.s.s of daring colporteurs carried the prohibited tracts, Bibles, and religious literature throughout the lands.

The tremendous powers of suppression set forth in the Tridentine rules could not avoid doing infinite mischief to thought and scholars.h.i.+p, even if placed in the hands of qualified and well-intentioned men. But the censors were neither capable nor high-minded. Scholars refused the odious task. Commentaries on the Fathers were read by men who knew little Latin, less Greek, and no Hebrew. They were discovered extorting money from unfortunate authors, levying blackmail on booksellers, listening to the whispers of jealous rivals.

So effectually was learning slain in Italy, that when the Popes at the close of the sixteenth century strove to revive the scholars.h.i.+p of the Church and to gather together at Rome a band of men able to defend the Papacy with their pens, these scholars had to work under immense disabilities. Baronius wrote his _Annals_, and Latini edited the Latin Fathers, both of them ignorant of Greek, and both hara.s.sed by the censors.h.i.+p.

Some of the more distinguished leaders of the Counter-Reformation saw the dangers which lurked in this system of pure suppression. The great German Jesuit, Canisius, who did more than any other man for the maintenance and revival of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, pointed out that destruction was powerless to effect permanent good. The people must have books, and the Church ought to supply them. He laboured somewhat successfully to that end.

-- 4. _The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation._

Neither the Inquisition nor the Index account for the Counter-Reformation. Repression might stamp out Reformers in southern Europe; but faith, enthusiasm, unselfish and self-denying work were needed to enable the Roman Church to a.s.sume the offensive. These were supplied to a large extent by the devoted followers of Ignatius Loyola.

Roman Catholicism reached its ebb during the pontificate of Pius IV. It stood everywhere on the defensive, seeing one stronghold after another pa.s.s into the hands of a victorious Protestantism. Pius V., his successor, was the first fighting Pope of the new Roman Catholicism. He had behind him the reorganisation effected by the Council of Trent; the Roman Catholic revival of mediaeval piety of which Carlo Borromeo, Philip Neri, and Francis de Sales were distinguished types; the Inquisition and Congregation of the Index; and, above all, the Company of Jesus.

Romanism under his leaders.h.i.+p boldly a.s.sumed the offensive.

In 1564 it seemed as if all Germany might become Protestant. The States which still acknowledged the Papacy were honeycombed with Protestant communities. Bavaria, the Rhine Provinces, the Duchy of Austria itself, were, according to contemporary accounts, more than half-Protestant.

Nearly all the seats of learning were Protestant. The Romanist Universities of Vienna and Ingolstadt were almost deserted by students.

Under the skilful and enthusiastic leaders.h.i.+p of Peter Canisius, the Jesuits were mainly instrumental in changing this state of things. They entered Bavaria and Austria. They appeared there as the heralds and givers of education, and took possession of the rising generation. They established their schools in all the princ.i.p.al centres of population.

They were good teachers; they produced school-books of a modern type; the catechism written by Canisius himself was used in all their schools (it transplanted into Romanism the Lutheran system of catechising); they charged no fees; they soon had the instruction of the Roman Catholic children in their hands. The astonished people of town and country districts began to see pilgrimages of boys and girls, conducted like modern Sunday-school treats, led by the good fathers, to visit famous churches, shrines, holy crosses, miraculous wells, etc. The parents were induced to visit the teachers; visits led to the confessional, and the confessional to the directorate. Then followed the discipline of the _Spiritual Exercises_, usually shortened to suit the capacities of the penitents. Whole districts were led back to the confessional--the parents following the children.

The higher education was not neglected. Jesuit colleges founded at Vienna and Ingolstadt peopled the decaying universities with students, and gave them new life. Student a.s.sociations, on the model of that founded by Canisius at Koln, were formed, and were affiliated to the Company of Jesus. Pilgrimages of students wended their way to famous shrines; talented young men submitted their souls to the direction of the Jesuit fathers, and shared in the hypnotic trance given by the course of the _Spiritual Exercises_. A generation of ardent souls was trained for the active service of the Roman Church, and vowed to combat Protestantism to the death.