of d 4 a (California
Mooted Questions of History
Mooted Questions of History
REVISED EDITION
HUMPHREY J. DESMOND
Author of "The Church and the Law," "Outlooks and Insights," etc.
BOSTON • MABLIEB AND COMPANY, Limited • MDCCCCTI
Copyright, 1895, 1900, by H. J. DESMOND
Second Impression
SPRECKELS
PREFACE
THE plan pursued in the following pages is to give, under each topic, a succinct state- ment of the facts, — embodying the lead- ing points of information necessary to a clear view ; and to follow this with quo- tations from some well-known historians, indicating briefly their judgment upon the whole case, or upon controverted points thereof.
Several new chapters and some fifty quotations have been added in the re- vision. It has not been deemed advis- able to enlarge the treatment of any of the topics, inasmuch as the merit sought for the book is brevity. 'A number of foot- notes, however, have been added.
109966
CONTENTS
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES, PAST AND PRESENT . 1
I. THE "DARK AGES" ...... 16
II. CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZER ... 37
III. " THE MONKS OF OLD " .... 52
IV. THE PAPAL POWER ...... 65
V. THE CRUSADES ........ 84
VI. PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS ... 95
VII. SAVONAROLA ........ 107
VIII. BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER ..... 117
IX. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING . . . 128
X. INDULGENCES ........ 140
• XI. THE CAUSE AND SUCCESS OF PROTES-
TANTISM .... .... 153
XII. CHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS . . 164
XIII. THE REFORMATION AND RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY ......... 171
XIV. THE REFORMATION AND CIVIL LIBERTY 186 XV. Two POLITICAL THEORIES OF THE
REFORMATION TIME ..... 197
XVI. THE REFORMATION AND LITERATURE . 201
viii CONTENTS
PAGE XVII. ' ' BLOODY MARY" AND ' ' GOOD QUEEN
BESS" 211
XVIII. THE INQUISITION 218
XIX. THE JESUITS 230
* XX. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLO- MEW'S DAY 249
XXI. THE EDICT OF NANTES .... 261
XXII. THE PERSECUTION OF THE IRISH . 268
XXIII. GALILEO 285
XXIV. THE GUNPOWDER PLOT .... 296 XXV. THE "POPISH PLOT" 303
XXVI. THE LORD GORDON RIOTS ... 309
XXVII. MARYLAND LED THE WAY 313
OF THE
( UNIVERSITY )
MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES, PAST AND PRESENT
IN an essay which he contributed to the " Edinburgh Review " nearly seventy years ago, Macaulay indicates his con- ception of the good historian by suggesting that if Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hundreds of folio pages with copies of state papers, had condescended to be "the Bos- well of the Long Parliament," he would have proven not only more interesting but also more accurate. In a subsequent essay written in review of Hallam's " Constitu- tional History of England," Macaulay says that the ideal history is "a compound of poetry and philosophy,'* something which calls into play the imagination as well as the reason. These are the opinions of a 1
2 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOBY
comparatively recent historian, and yet they present a decided contrast with current con- ceptions of what good historical writing should be.
Macaulay, who will perhaps be remem- bered more as an essayist than as an historian, said enough, in the article to which I have alluded, to make clear, even to the historians of his own age, the prime necessity of greater accuracy ; yet such is not the lesson that he particularly enforces. With him, it is still a question of style rather than of facts, of ability to interest rather than the ability to separate the chaff of legend from the grain of truth. The modern essayist reviews the ancient historians, but his criticism is not that they are deficient either in rhetoric or interest : Herodotus manufactures the speeches he puts in the mouths of Aristides and Gelon. History as written by Thucy- dides " calls into play the imagination quite as much as the reason." Xenophon places, on the pages of his sober chronicles, dreams, omens, and prophecies for which he asks equal credence. As for Livy, " no historian with whom we are acquainted has shown so complete indifference to truth," says
HISTORICAL ATTITUDE* 3
Macaulay. And so on with the rest of the ancients. " Nothing," says Profes- sor Mahaffy, " shows more clearly the won- derful importance of style and literary genius than the way in which such authors as Tacitus and Thucydides blind modern commentators in questions of evi- dence. Tacitus has been clearly proven from his own statements thoroughly untrustworthy."
As for the modern historians, Macaulay thinks that the best of them have been " seduced from truth not by their imagina- tion but by their reason." Hume he re- gards as an accomplished advocate, with all the vices of the special pleader. Robert- son and Gibbon are little better. President Adams of Wisconsin University, in a " Man- ual of Historical Literature," published some years ago, continues these rather un- favorable judgments on well-known histo- rians. For instance, he thinks that for the purpose of strict historical information the account which Hume gives of a partic- ular period of history is of no more value than the account of Sir Walter Scott in "The Fortunes of Nigel." The likes and
4 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
dislikes of Froude are too intense ever to allow him to be strictly judicial. Indeed, during an interchange of amenities, Pro- fessor Freeman has intimated that Froude was constitutionally unable to tell the truth. Kinglake, who may be said to have held a brief against Napoleon Third, writes as " an energetic hater." As for Macaulay him- self, while the consummate art of his " His- tory of England" as a literary creation is conceded, yet he is always the victim of an intense partisan spirit, and therefore all of his writings have " something of the flavor of a political pamphlet."
Of Yon Hoist's " Constitutional History of the United States," which enforces so gloomy a view of our institutions, Pres- ident Adams says : " If the judicious pecuniary support given to the author for the prosecution of his investigation by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, and alluded to in the preface of the third volume, had been granted for the express purpose of subsidizing a systematic at- tempt to undermine the foundation of republican institutions and throw ridicule upon them in the eyes of the royalists,
HISTORICAL, ATTITUDES 5
the academy would have abundant rea- sons to be satisfied with the result."
" What is history," asked Napoleon, "but merely fable agreed upon ? " De Maistre did not hesitate to indict all the history of the last three centuries as a conspiracy against truth. "As time rolled on," to use the words of Ignatius Donnelly, " it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends ; while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians."
But at last we reach an epoch when it is increasingly true that
u The legendary tales that pleased of yore Can charm an understanding age no more."
A new science of history has come into be- ing with the present generation. The in- terest that we have in the historians of the past becomes chiefly a literary interest.
History perhaps can never become an exact science ; the human element will in- evitably assert itself to some extent. Race and religious sympathies will warp human judgments ; but if we have more faith-
6 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
fulness to scientific methods of investiga- tion— a more careful application of the rules of evidence in reviewing old au- thorities and new testimony, with truer and broader perspectives, — there are grounds for expecting excellent results in the future! We may mention, as points of excellence in the history that the present age is writing : first, the disposition to look for the best means of information, to consult and to weigh adequately documentary sources; second, the disposition to discuss and in- vestigate facts more critically, to revise pre- viously held judgments, and to gain a true perspective of events ; and third, greater impartiality and a more sincere disposition to seek and publish truth for truth's sake.
The more scientific method of historical writing owes its beginning to the disposi- tion on part of historians to go to the best documentary sources for their facts. Pos- sibly we may say that the Bollandists in the compilation of the " Acta Sanctorum " were the real originators of this method. Their care and erudition in throwing the chaff of legendary miracles and wonder- working out of the lives of the saints
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES 7
whom they commemorated, had about it many of the methods of the best modern historians.
Michelet, in 1836, claims to have been the pioneer of the "documentary age" of history; but at that time most of the archives were still closed to the investi- gator. The new epoch really began in 1859. Then, Italy leading the way, most of the other governments of Europe threw open their archives. As late as June, 1895, Lord Acton said in an address at Oxford : " We are still at the beginning of the documentary age which will tend to make history independent of historians." Kanke, one of the most careful as well as the most colorless of historians, did most of his work prior to the documentary age, and all of his seventy volumes, in the opinion of Lord Acton, might be rewritten to advantage. President Adams, in discussing Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, says that all histories of the Napoleonic epoch written prior to the publication of "the Napoleon Correspond- ence " must be regarded as incomplete and imperfect. As illustrating the influence of the introduction of new documentary evi-
8 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
deri'ce upon accepted historical opinions, we may mention the unfavorable impression which the recent publication of the Me- moirs of Barras has had on the reputation of Josephine. The throwing open of the Spanish archives discovered the letters' of De Quadra, an envoy of Spain to the court of Queen Elizabeth, and these letters threw new light on one of the dark deeds of the reign, — the suspected murder of Amy Robsart. As the wife of Lord Dudley she stood in the way of his ambition to wed the queen. All evidence of the suspected crime had been removed so far as the Brit- ish state papers went, — as indeed they might, for this tragedy of guilty love was enacted almost at the steps of the throne. But here, after four hundred years, comes testimony showing that even in high court circles the advisability of poisoning the neglected wife was considered some time in advance of her death.
Especially with reference to the view which historians have taken of the middle ages have later researches worked a revolu- tion. Palgrave says that for years a " dead- set " was made against those ages as periods
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES 9
of darkness and superstition. This conspir- acy against the middle ages received a set- back in the scholarly work of Hallam, but upon other grounds even Hallam has be- come obsolete. " Researches in France and Germany," says President Adams, "have added so much to the fund of mediaeval history that very little of what has been written thirty years ago can now be re- garded as conclusive authority." As to the influence of more careful and impartial criticism of later historians, many instances might be furnished of old errors dispelled and truer conceptions arrived at. The ap- plication of the rules of evidence to methods of historical research is finely illustrated in the discussion by John Fiske of the William Tell myth ; or in the discussion by Baring- Gould of the story of the alleged female Pope Joan. The William Tell myth had found its way for years into respectable his-
x^tory unquestioned. Swiss patriotism swore by it. Indeed, one adventurous writer who doubted this interesting story was con-
A demned in 1760 by the Canton of Uri, in Switzerland, to be burned to death.
The story of the female Pope Joan re-
10 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
ceives credence even in so pretentious a work as Mosheim's " Ecclesiastical History." Both myths appear to have originated some two hundred years after the time, it is alleged, Pope Joan and William Tell, re- spectively, lived. Both stories were repeated time and time again in different countries, and grew in detail as they grew in age. Modern historians have found both entirely unsupported by any credible testimony. Fiske shows how the William Tell story makes its appearance in Denmark, Iceland, and the Rhine country, every detail being
' identical, even to the passage where Tell explains that the arrow was hidden "to kill thee, tyrant, had I slain my son."
Referring to contemporary accounts of the famous "Popish plot," Macaulay indi- cates something of the hereafter of partisan history by remarking : " These stories [one of which represented that the Catholics started the great London fire of 1666] are now altogether exploded. They have been abandoned by statesmen to aldermen, by aldermen to clergymen, by clergymen to old
N women, and by old women to Sir Harcourt Lees."
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES 11
There are other stories which have also gotten down to the credulity of Sir Har- court Lees or his counterparts in our gener- ation. It is scarcely necessary to allude to them here ; they have passed from history to controversy, from controversy to legend- ary, and from legendary to a place beside the narratives of Baron Munchausen and the escapades of Little Red Riding Hood. There are historical traditions, however, that are in the process, and not so far ad- vanced as these. Aldermen yet believe them. Clergymen (sad to say) tell them. Or, if given up in such quarters, old women still pin their faith to them, and make them the material for nursery yarns to bias the minds of children, and unconsciously affect the adult judgment in after years.
Of course there is some iconoclasm about this sifting of the old legends. We are de- prived of some picturesque incidents. Doubt is thrown upon the " winged words " of many historical figures. We can no longer be sure that Louis XIV. said " I am the state," or that Galileo declared, " It still moves," or that Wellington said at Waterloo, " Up, guards, and at them." But these interest-
12 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
ing episodes may be still preserved. The classification is wrong, It is only necessary to transfer them from the department of history to that of fiction.
In the matter of gaining a truer perspec- tive of the past, the modern historian is also at an advantage. In the earlier years of the century the historians, who in- structed the English-speaking races, made Napoleon and Wellington of equal stature. Time has left Bonaparte still monumental, but Wellington has dwindled in the great Corsican's shadow. In the eighteenth cen- tury Brutus was the pet of the liberty-lov- ing orators and publicists ; in the nineteenth century this judgment is reversed, and it is perceived that Caesar was the real friend of the democratic movement, and Brutus but a heroic reactionary. There was recently published Babbington's " Fallacies of Race Theories/' wherein such carelessly accepted opinions as that of Tacitus on the ancient Germans and that of Mommsen on the ancient Gauls are subjected to analysis and found wanting. Tacitus was never in Ger- many, yet because he praised the Germans as a chaste and virtuous people he has be-
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES 18
come a race authority. Mr. Babbington says : " The Germans, who assume to be our teachers in history as in everything else, make the cause of their ancestors a personal one, ransack all the writers of antiquity to prove the virtues of the Teutons and the vices of the Romans," and as a consequence " the measure of liberty and virtue modern nations possess is attributed to the influence of German blood and German ideas ; " which position is not at all so certain when we go back of the race eulogists and re-examine the facts.
The truth of history is most commonly tampered with, not by pure inventions, but rather in matters of more or less plausibil- ity concerning the details — which color events ; of going to the question of motives — which determine the credit or the guilt of acts and occurrences.1
1 As Professor Prothero truthfully said at Edinburgh University : " Take any great movement you please — the Crusades, for instance, or the Reformation ; analyze it as minutely as possible, ascertain all its conditions, its gen- eral causes, its immediate occasions — there remains the incalculable human element, which defies the processes of exact science. We cannot be certain of this man's mo- tives, nor measure the influence which that man exerted.
14 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
A careful sifting process is necessary to get at the undoubted facts in all contro- verted cases, and, as the ordinary reader cannot afford the time or expense of origi- nal investigation and research, it seems a more practical course to call in the repu- table historians of all schools and sects, and from their testimony to get as near to the truth as possible.1
We must not permit ourselves to be the dupes of those fierce partisans who lived in other ages and wished their opponents to be misjudged by posterity. We are not prop- erly part of this elder age of the world unless we share its maturer judgment, and unless we possess its ability of seeing through the one-sided details presented by the skilled apologists of parties and sects, in less instructed centuries, to defend their actions or to asperse the conduct of their adversaries.
The human element in the subject calls out the human element in the student. Not only is the investigation obscured, but the sympathies of the investigator are aroused, and his judgment is liable to be warped at every turn. History alone suffers from this doubly distorting medium. Other sciences are free from its effects."
1 " Historic truth never can be elicited save by com- parison," says Sir Francis Palgrave ("History of Nor- mandy and England," Preface).
HISTORICAL ATTITUDES 15
Neither do we want to inherit the parti- san prejudices of conflicts waged in former centuries. Our condition for a cooler and more deliberate judgment is better, and our perspective for giving the facts their just importance is also better. We must not have the opinions of angry, uncharitable, unwise men forced upon us ; but we must seek for ourselves the broad, dispassionate, accurate view that alone can make the lessons of the past helpful. Our loyalty to Truth is above all loyalty to any institution or party, past or present.
In a survey of a series of controverted historical topics, this will occur as a safe method of procedure :
1. What are the facts of the case, as fairly conceded by all sides ?
2. What is a just estimate from a gen- eral survey of the matter, on the basis of these facts ?
3. Is this estimate borne out by the opinions of historians who are ranged, so far as the general issue goes, on the other side ? If that be the case, then the facts and the conclusions may be regarded as reasonably certain.
I
THE "DARK AGES"
"I know nothing of those ages which knew nothing." . . . / have often thought I should have liked to ask him how he came to know so curious and important a fact respecting ages of which he knew nothing. — MAITLAND.
IT has been pertinently said, that the " darkness " of certain mediaeval cen- turies is all in the minds of the per- sons applying the term. From those distant shores of the past, very few echoes reach us in these first years of the twentieth cen- tury. Superficial observation has concluded that there was " little going on/' and that the entire population was, as the phrase is, " sunk in ignorance," not to mention " superstition " and " barbarism."
De Maistre's notion that history is " a conspiracy against truth" receives some illustration in this attitude towards the middle ages. " A dead set," says Sir Fran-
THE "DAKK AGES" 17
cis Palgrave, "has been made against the middle ages as periods immersed in dark- ness, ignorance, and barbarity. But, most of all, have these censures been directed against mediaeval Christianity." l Fleury indicates that this conspiracy to blacken the middle ages began with the Humanists of the Renaissance period. Their move- ment was a reaction against the old learn- ing ; to commend the new tone they wished to impart to civilization, it was necessary to deprecate the old. The Reformation readily adopted the same unfavorable view ; and the sceptical writers of the eighteenth century had a natural antipathy to ages dominated, as the mediaeval centuries were, by Christianity. The more researchful his- torian of the nineteenth century has been disturbing this censorious judgment against the middle ages, by manifesting a disposi- tion to go over the ground again in a more scientific spirit.
The term " dark ages " has been deemed comprehensive enough to cover the ninth, N tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth cen- turies. The masses in those ages could
1 History of Normandy and England (Preface). 2
18 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
neither read nor write. We find in legal instruments of the time : " And the afore- said lord hath declared, that he does not yknow how to sign his name, owing to the fact of his being a nobleman." And a knight being asked to read the Scriptures, retorted : " I am not a clerk ; I have a family to support." l
Illiteracy, however, is not ignorance. Nor would inability to read mean as much in the ninth century as it does in the twen- tieth. Let the world of to-day lose the " art preservative of the arts," — printing ; let the newspaper vanish from the land, and the cheap school book be a thing of the past; throw us back to the condition of manuscript books, multiplied slowly and painfully, — and instead of five million illit- erates, such as we have to-day in this land of light and progress, we might have twenty or thirty millions.
The illiterate people in the ages previous to the invention of printing were more intelligent, for their time, than are the illit- erate of to-day. To be unable to read
1 Maitland, however, inclines to think that illiteracy was not so common as these instances might seem to indicate.
THE "DARK AGES'* 19
nowadays means backwardness, neglect of opportunities, and stupidity. Quite the contrary in the mediaeval epoch : illiteracy was excusable, and, in a certain sense, fashionable, inasmuch as it was a common condition. The naturally intelligent, who in our day would be " common-schooled," were, in that epoch, illiterate.
Another consideration that must be borne in mind in instituting comparisons between the ninth and the nineteenth century is the circumstances of mediaeval civilization. For over three centuries (to A. D. 750) civi- lized Europe was the field of successive waves of barbarian conquest. Franks, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Yandals, Alans, Huns, and Lombards followed each other with destructive incursions. One .wave pushed the other further on. The barba- rians apparently did not conquer for the purpose of occupying the soil and building up empires, but for the purpose of plunder. The condition was consequently one of con- tinued commotion through several genera- tions. The case of the Vandals is in point : they pushed through France and settled for a time in Spain ; later, eighty thousand of
20 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
them crossed, under Genseric, to Carthage, where a Vandal empire was established for al- most a century ; and the Vandals, organized as pirates, came down upon the commerce of the Mediterranean and even returned to desolate Rome. Attila inflicted himself as' the " scourge of God " upon Christian Europe. The Northmen broke the calm after the other barbarians had subsided, and the Moslem invasion from the South was only checked by Charles Martel after a desperate battle (A. D. 732). The assimilation of ten successive waves of northern barbarians, and the blow such invasions meant to exist- ing and civilizing institutions made the task of mediaeval society most difficult and gradual.
Civilization had, in fact, to be begun over. We do not call a boy decrepit because he lacks the strength of a man. Neither ought we to slur the society of the tenth century as " dark " and " ignorant " because it did .not rapidly attain the standards of our day. There is no responsibility where the conditions are natural and inexorable. The mediaeval centuries were constantly forcing the civilization and culture of European
THE "DARK AGES" 21
society forward. It was the germinating epoch of the modern world. There was no standing still, no retrogression. There was constant advance. In the epoch that in the retrospect seems most hopeless and un- progressive, i. e., about the close of the tenth century, several conspicuous inventions were made that the modern world finds of indispensable value : clocks were constructed by the monk Gerbert, the musical scale by the monk Guy, and another monk in 1285 devised spectacles.1 Common schools for the masses date even a little earlier, and some of the great universities of modern Europe were founded in the spirit of im- provement that strongly evinced itself.
The nineteenth century goes back to the eleventh to admire the magnificent Gothic architecture that flourished in that epoch, leaving monuments that are copied in the finest temples of to-day.2 And the state of
1 Gunpowder was invented about the year 1278. Arabic notation came into use about the year 1275. Paper was manufactured from rags early in the twelfth century. In the same century the mariner's compass came into use.
2 Under the influence of Pugin, the second quarter of the nineteenth century saw a revival, especially in Eng-
22 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
architecture has been shrewdly accepted by historians as one of the safest gauges of the progress attained in the other arts.
Out of a library of the literature of the middle ages, consisting of great folios of "the Fathers/' tomes of historical annals and " monkish chronicles," and a whole de- partment of poetry and fiction, three great books have come down to us from those centuries, each bearing the stamp of immor- tality. Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) left to the world the " Summa Theologica," which has for six hundred years been the standard authority on the teachings of the great church of Christendom.
Dante (1265-1321) wrote the "Divina Coinmedia," which has won him a name in the world of literature unsurpassed by any writer of the Christian era, Shakespeare alone excepted.
Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) wrote the " Imitation of Christ," which has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible. In the
land and America, of the Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century. It had been discarded for three hun- dred years, but now it was enthusiastically revived.
THE "DARK AGES" 23
Cologne library there are samples of six hundred editions of this work, brought out in the nineteenth century alone.
HALL AM: Limits of the epoch
"It is not possible to fix accurate limits to the middle ages ; though the ten centuries from the fifth to the fifteenth seem, in a general point of view, to constitute that period."
Hallam, The Middle Ages, pref . to first edition.
GOLD WIN SMITH: "Ages of light"
"Hume and Robertson," says Gold win Smith, "have long been consigned to dis- grace for their want of accurate erudition, especially in relation to the middle ages, which to them are merely the dark ages : while to the medievalist of our day they appear to be the special ages of light/'
PALGBAVE: Unjust disparagement of the middle ages
"Abstractedly from all the influences which we have sustained in common with the rest of the civilized commonwealth, our British disparagement of the middle ages
24 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
has been exceedingly enhanced by our griz- zled ecclesiastical or church historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. . . . These 6 standard works/ accepted and received as Canonical Books, have tainted the nobility of our national mind. An ade- quate parallel to their bitterness, their shabbiness, their shirking, their habitual disregard of honor and veracity, is hardly afforded, even by the so-called ' Anti-Jaco- bin' press during the revolutionary and Imperial wars. The history of Napoleon, his generals, and the French nation, col- lected from these exaggerations of selfish loyalty, rabid aversion, and panic terror, would be the match of our popular and prevailing ideas concerning Hildebrand, or Anselm, or Becket, or Innocent III., or mediaeval Catholicity in general, grounded upon our ancestral traditionary ' standard ecclesiastical authorities,' such as Burnett's ' Reformation,' or Fox's ' Book of Martyrs.' . . . The scheme of, and intent of, me- diaeval Catholicity was to render faith the all-actuating and all-controlling vitality. . . . So far as the system extended, it had the effect of connecting every social element
THE "DARK AGES" 25
with Christianity. And Christianity being thus wrought up into the mediseval system, every mediaeval institution, character, or mode of thought afforded the means or vehi- cle for the vilification of Christianity. Never do these writers, or their School, whether in France or in Great Britain, Voltaire or Mably, Hume, Robertson, or Henry, treat the Clergy or the Church with fairness, not even with common honesty. If histori- cal notoriety enforces the allowance of any merit to a priest, the effect of this extorted acknowledgment is destroyed by a happy turn, a clever insinuation, or a coarse innu- endo. Consult, for example, Hume, when compelled to notice Archbishop Hubert's exertions in procuring the concession of the Magna Charta ; and Henry, narrating the communications which passed between Gregory the Great and Saint Austin."
Sir Francis Palgrave, History of Normandy and England. London: Macmillan & Co., 1878. (Pref- ace, pp. xiv-xviii.)
EMERSON: Human thought never more active
" In modern Europe the middle ages were called the Dark Ages, ten centuries,
26 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
from the fifth to the fifteenth. Who dares to call them so now ? They gave us deci- mal numbers, gunpowder, glass, chemistry, and Gothic architecture; and their paint- ings are the delight and tuition of our age. . . . The darkness of those times arises from our own want of information, not from the absence of intelligence that distinguished them. Human thought was never more active and never produced greater results in any period of the world."
Emerson, " Progress of Culture," in Letters and Social Aims, p. 204. Boston, 1895.
C ABL YLE : Shakespeare the flowerage of the middle ages
" This glorious Elizabethan era, with its Shakespeare as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself at- tributable to the Catholics of the middle ages. The Christian faith, which was the theme of Dante's song, had produced the practical life which Shakespeare was to sing."
Carlyle, " Hero and Poet."
THE "DARK AGES" 27
MAITLAND: Our grandsires of the dark ages
" I cannot help wishing that the reader who has formed his idea of the dark ages only from some modern popular writers — I do not mean those who have written pro- fessedly on the subject — could be at once fairly thrown back into the midst of them. I cannot help thinking that he would feel very much as I did the first time that I found myself in a foreign country. A thou- sand novelties attracted my attention. . . . Well, and these old folks of the dark ages were our grandfathers and grandmothers ; and, in a good many points, vastly like our- selves, though we may not at first see the resemblance in the few smoky family pic- tures which have come down to us ; but 6 had they not eyes ? ' ' had they not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas- sions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer ' as we are ? ' Yes ; but they knew nothing.' Well, then it is strange to
28 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
think how they could do and say so much as they did without any knowledge."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, pp. 30-31. London: John Hodges, Pub., 1890.
BLACKSTONE in error
The professors of law in the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, collaborating on a " History of English Law before the Time of Edward I./' conjointly declare: "Black- stone's picture of a nation divided into two parties — ' the bishops and clergy ' on the one side contending for their foreign juris- prudence ; ( the nobility and the laity ' on the other side adhering ' with equal perti- nacity to the old common law ' — is not a true one. It is by 6 Popish clergymen ' that our English law is converted from a rude mass of customs into an articulate system ; and when the ' Popish clergymen/ yield- ing at length to the Pope's commands, no longer sit as the principal justices of the king's court, the golden age of the common law is over."
STOKES : The task of the Church
Frederick Stokes, in his Introduction to Maitland's " Dark Ages," thus sums up the
THE "DARK AGES" 29
situation : " Almost every vestige of civiliza- tion had perished under the attacks of the Teutonic invaders. The work of founding a polity and a civilization had to be recom- menced, and this is one of the salient facts to be borne in mind in judging of the Dark Ages. The men of those ages had to re- create the political and social world. They had to rebuild almost from the foundation. Not quite ; for Christianity, the basis of European civilization, had not only sur- vived the storms of the age of invasion, but had to a large extent converted the barba- rians themselves."
HALL AM: What the Church did
" It was no crime of the clergy that the Huns burned their churches, or the Nor- mans pillaged their monasteries. It was not by their means that the Saracens shut up the supply of papyrus, and that sheep- skins bore a great price. Europe was al- together decayed in intellectual character, partly in consequence of the barbarian incursions, partly of other sinister influences, acting long before. We certainly owe to the Church every spark of learning which
30 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
then glimmered, and which she preserved through that darkness to rekindle the light of a happier age."
Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix. (Notes).
SCHLEGEL : Achievements of the time
" In the middle age, however, as in anti- quity, the era of the foundation of states and nations, the era of legislation preceded that of the arts and of general refinement. ... Of ignorance, however, and defective civilization, it is scarcely possible to ac- cuse an age wherein the Mediterranean was covered with ships as richly laden, and its coasts by commercial cities as prosperous and powerful, as the most flourishing epoch of Greece ... an age wherein architecture soared with a new flight and painting at- tained such high and hitherto unparal- leled development and perfection ; an age wherein philosophy almost too widely cul- tivated became an affair of state and practical life, wherein all the historical and literary knowledge which was at that time by any channels accessible was pur- sued with passionate eagerness and desire, when natural science and mathematics
THE "DARK AGES 31
were investigated and studied with untir- ing eagerness, until at last the two grand discoveries by which the mind of man attained its majority, the discovery of the new hemisphere and planetary motions, that is, of the true magnitude of the heaven and earth, crowned the research and labors of centuries."
Course of Lectures on Modern History, by Frede- rick Schlegel ; edition of Bohn's Library, London, 1849, Lectures 9 and 10, pp. 118-119.
HALL AM: Mediaeval common schools
" The praise of having originally estab- lished schools belongs to some bishops and abbots of the sixth century. They came in place of the Imperial schools, overthrown by the barbarians. In the downfall of that temporal dominion, a spiritual aristocracy was providentially raised up, to save from extinction the remains of learning and of religion itself. Some of these schools seem to have been preserved in the south of Italy, though merely, perhaps, for elemen- tary instruction. . . . The cathedral and conventual schools, created or restored by Charlemagne, became the means of pre-
32 MOOTJB1> QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
serving that small portion of learning which continued to exist. They flourished most, having had time to produce their fruits, under his successors, Louis the Debonair, Lothaire, and Charles the Bald."
Hallam, Introd. to Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 27. New York : Harper Bros.
MAITL AND : Churchmen well read
"If the modern ecclesiastic should ever meet with a crop-eared monk of the tenth century, he may, if he pleases, laugh at him for not having read Virgil ; but if he should himself be led to confess that, though a priest of Christ's Catholic church, and nourished in the languages of Greece and Rome till they were almost as familiar to him as his own, he had never read a single page of Chrysostom or Basil, of Augustine or Jerome, of Ambrose of Hilary — if he should confess this, I am of the opin- ion that the poor monk would cross him- self, and make off without looking behind him."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 207. London: John Hodges, Pub., 1890.
THE "DARK AGES" 33
FKOUDE : The Mediaeval clergy
"Never in all their history, in ancient times or modern, never that we know of, have mankind thrown out of themselves anything so grand, so useful, so beautiful as the Catholic church once was .... Wisdom, justice, self-denial, nobleness, purity, high- mindedness, — these are the qualities before which the free-minded races of Europe have been contented to bow ; and in no order of men were such qualities to be found as they were found six hundred years ago in the clergy of the Catholic church."
James Anthony Froude, Lecture I. on the " Times of Luther and Erasmus" (Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. i.)-
BOSANQUET: An epoch of architecture
" We speak sometimes of the ' Dark Ages/ and in matters of the exact science perhaps they were dark enough. Yet we must deduct something from our youthful ideas of their obscurity when we find that our truest lovers of beauty fix the building- age of the world between the years 500 and 1500 of our era. Architecture, more than any other art, is an index to the
34 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
happiness and freedom of the people ; and during this period of a thousand years an architecture pure in its principles, reason- able in its practice and beautiful to the eyes of all men, even the simplest, covered Europe with beautiful buildings from Con- stantinople to the north of Britain. In the presence of this manifestation of free and productive intelligence, unmatched even in ancient Greece and Rome, and utterly unmatchable to-day, we may usefully re- flect upon the expressive and constructive force of Christendom, even in its darkest hours. The more closely we examine the question, the less ground we shall find for the conception of the middle ages as a long sleep followed by a sudden awakening. Rather we should consider that ancient Greece was the root, and ancient Rome the stem and branches of our life; that the Dark Ages, as we call them, represent its flower, and the modern word of science and political freedom the slowly matured fruit/'
Bosanquet, The Civilization of Christendom, eh. iii.
THE "DARK AGES" 35
FERGUSSON : Excellence of mediaeval archi- tecture
"Not even the great Pharaonic era in Egypt, the age of Pericles in Greece, nor the great period of the Roman Empire, will bear comparison with the thirteenth century in Europe, whether we look to the extent of the buildings executed, their won- derful variety and constructive elegance, the daring imagination that conceived them, or the power of poetry and of lofty religious feelings that is expressed in every feature and in every part of them."
Fergusson, History of Architecture.
HALLAM: An intellectual impulse in 1O7O
" About the latter part of the eleventh century a great ardor for intellectual pur- suits began to show itself in Europe, which in the twelfth broke out into a flame. This was manifested in the numbers who repaired to the public academies or schools of philosophy."
Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix. p. 604.
DURTJY : Greatness of the thirteenth century
" The most remarkable period of the middle ages is the thirteenth century.
36 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
Two great popes, Innocent III. and In- nocent IV., then occupied the chair of St. Peter ; a saint sat on the throne of France, and on that of the Empire a prince upon whom the gaze of the world has rested ever since, Frederick II. Italy tempora- rily regained her independence. England established her public liberties, wrote her great charter, instituted her parliament. The crusades failed; but the results of these great enterprises were still dazzl- ingly manifest. That great movement of men ]ed to a great movement of things and ideas. Commerce, industry, letters, the arts advanced by leaps and bounds; schools multiplied; studies progressed; na- tional literature was started; great names appeared : Albertus Magnus ; Thomas Aqui- nas, Roger Bacon, Dante."
History of France (ch. xv.) by Victor Duruy, Member of the French Academy. New York : Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
II
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZER
There was never found in any age of the world either philosophy, or sec/, or religion, or law, or discipline, which did so highly exalt the good of the community, and increase pri- vate and particular good, as the holy Christian faith. — BACON.
THE moral forces in society were all throughout the middle ages en- gaged in a stupendous labor of regeneration.
1. In the pagan world slavery was an es- tablished and unquestioned condition. Plato made it the topic of eulogy in his " Repub- lic." But all the instincts of Christianity were hostile to human bondage. " It is not ordained," protested St. Augustine, " that man should rule over man ; his do- minion is solely over brute creation." Reit- erated by the canons of the Church and in the writings of her school-men, these ideas slowly but surely undermined the custom
38 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
of slavery. First by improving the condi- tion of the slave, then by protecting his freedom when manumitted, and finally by making it a meritorious act to give freedom to serfs and to ransom captives, the Church accomplished a mighty stride in the path of human equality.
2. The elevation of woman proceeded on a similar principle. Marriage was made a sacrament, and chastity a virtue. Monogamy was prescribed; polygamy de- nounced. From being an inferior, the wife was raised to the position of a companion and an equal. So transcendent a change could have come only through powerful religious conviction.1
i The place of honor assigned by the Church to the Virgin Mother of God, and the sanctity and protection given to nuns and pious women, under the teachings of the Church, silently but surely elevated the whole mediaeval conception of woman. Mrs. Jameson says: *' The protection and better education given to women in these early communities, the venerable and distin- guished ranks assigned to them, when as governesses of their order they became in a manner dignitaries of the Church ; the introduction of their beautiful and saintly effigies clothed with all the insignia of sanctity and authority into the places of worship and books of devotion, did more, perhaps, for the general cause of womanhood than all the boasted institutions of chivalry."
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZEB 39
3. Chivalry was the efflorescence of this religious sentiment under the conditions of feudalism. Its cardinal principles were courage, gentleness of manner, and respect for sacred things. Undoubtedly it oper- ated as a most potent solvent against barbarism and the attributes of the rude warrior.1
1 The four qualities of true knighthood were valor, loyalty, courtesy, and munificence, that is, a disdain for money, and a disposition generously to relieve distress and reward service. Burke's description of chivalry is familiar ; he speaks of it as " the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise." " Never, nevermore," he says, " shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive even in servitude itself the spirit of an exalted freedom : " and he adds, " that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness."
" A very fascinating picture of chivalous manners has been drawn by a writer of considerable reading and. still more considerable ability, Mr. Kenelm Digby, in his * Broad Stone of Honor.' The bravery, the courteous- ness, the munificence, above all, the deeply religious character of knighthood and its reverence for the Church, naturally took hold of a heart so susceptible of these emotions, and a fancy so quick to embody them. St. Palaye himself is a less enthusiastic eulogist of chivalry,
40 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
, 4. The " Truce of God," originating in France about 1050, and spreading into Ger- many and England, was another device of the Church against the ferocity of the age. It was made ground for excommunication to do battle on four days of the week (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), corresponding with the passion and resur- rection of Christ. Council after council reiterated this decree. A wonderful cessa- tion of feudal strife and bloody knight errantry ensued as a consequence. v 5. The establishment of trade unions, guilds, and corporations was one of the most progressive steps in the history of the middle ages.1 Religion had much to do with
because he has seen it more on the side of mere romance, and been less penetrated with the conviction of its moral excellence." — Hallam, Middle Ages, part ii. ch. ix. page 597 (note).
1 Referring to the trade corporations of the middle ages, Duruy says : " The members of a corporation ob- tained from it mutual protection, and aid for old men, widows, and orphans. Each had a patron saint, festi- vals, and a treasury. The chiefs prevented frauds and watched over the observance of the regulations. These regulations required a long and strict apprenticeship, and assured to the members of the corporation the monopoly of their industry ; so that for each profession the number of masters was fixed by the corporation
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZEB 41
these associations ; they bore the names of saints and respected certain church holidays. Sandi, in his " Civil History of Venice/' counts over sixty trade corporations in that city at the beginning of the fifteenth cen- v^tury. The Hanseatic League was modelled after religious communities, even to the extent of enjoining celibacy.
6. The influence of the Church was nat- urally exerted in favor of the poor and the decrepit.1 Hospitals were placed by the secular governments under the charge of bishops and religious orders, and asylums were respected as Church property.
7. The mitigation of the criminal code, the restraint of tyranny, the protection of the weak as against the exactions of the strong, and the inculcation of gentle man- ners were direct consequences of Christian teachings. The Sermon on the Mount was the great text of the mediaeval preacher;
itself. The result was that there was no competition, because there was no liberty, and prices were maintained at a high rate. But this severe discipline was neces- sary to an infant industry." (Duruy, History of France, ch. xv.)
1 See Gasquet's Henry VTIT. and the English Mon- asteries, vol. i. p. 107 ; vol. ii. pp. 95, 101.
42 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
and, indeed, no lessons were more in demand and of more wholesome effect.
FISHER : The Mediaeval Church
" The Church of the middle ages I do not consider a mitigated evil, but an in- calculable benefit to society. . . . Even the papacy, as is shown, was in the medi- aeval period in many respects a beneficial institution."
Fisher, History of the Reformation, prefatory note to 2d ed., 1883.
GIBBON: A salutary antidote
" The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote. They prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, shel- tered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or restored the peace and order of civil society."
Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. Ixi. (vol. vi. p. 230, Harper Bros. ed. 1880).
ADAMS : Fusion of races
"Here, then, is the work of the middle ages. To the results of ancient history were
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZER 43
to be added the ideas and institutions of the Germans, to the enfeebled Roman race was to be added the youthful energy and vigor of the German. Under the conditions which existed this union could not be made a harmonious and homogeneous Christendom, could not be formed, except through anarchy, ignorance, and superstition."
Gr. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, Introd.
GUIZOT : Promoted peace
" She [the Church] combated with much pertinacity and perseverance the great vices of the social condition, particularly slav- ery. . . . The Church did not labor less worthily for the improvement of civil and criminal legislation. . . . Finally, she en- deavored by every means in her power to suppress the frequent recourse which at this period was had to violence, and the continual wars to which society was so prone."
Guizot, History of Civilization, Lecture 6.
GUIZOT: The Church overcame barbarism
" No society ever made greater efforts than the Christian Church did from the
44 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
fifth to the tenth century to influence the world about it and to assimilate it to itself. When its history shall become the partic- ular object of our examination, we shall more clearly see what it attempted. It attacked, in a manner, barbarism at every point in order to civilize it and rule over it."
Gkiizot, History of Civilization, vol. i. Lecture 3, p. 75.
MACAULAY: The Church abolished slavery
" Before the Reformation came, she [the Church] had enfranchised almost all the bondsmen in the Kingdom [England]."
Macaulay, History of England, vol. i. p. 33.
LECKY: Passing of the gladiator
" The extinction of the gladiatorial spec- tacle is, of all the results of early Christian influence, that upon which the historian can look with the deepest and most un- mingled satisfaction."
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. ch. iv. p. 38 (D. Appleton & Co., 1877).
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVIL.IZJ3K 45
DUBUY: Manifold work of the Church
"Before even thinking of constituting the State intelligently, it was necessary to elevate the individual and the family ; this double task was the work of the middle ages. The Church worked at it energetically by establishing the sanctity of marriage, even for the serf ; by preaching the equality of all men in the eyes of God ; by proclaim- ing, through its maintenance of the principle of election, the rights of intelligence in the face of the feudal world which recognized only the rights of blood ; by raising to the chair of St. Peter a serf like Adrian IV. or the son of a poor carpenter like Gregory VII."
History of France (p. 125), by Victor Duruy. New York : Crowell & Co., Publishers.
LECKY: The Church protected the people
"The relations of rulers to their subjects,' and of tribunals to the poor, were modified by the intervention of the Church. When Antioch was threatened with destruction on account of its rebellion against Theodosius, the anchorites poured forth from the neigh-
46 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
boring deserts to intercede with the ministers of the Emperor, while Archbishop Flavian went himself as a suppliant to Rome. St. Ambrose imposed public penance on Theo- dosius on account of the massacre of Thessalonica. Synesius excommunicated for his oppression a governor named An- dronicus ; and two French councils, in the sixth century, imposed the same penalty on all great men who arbitrarily ejected the poor. St. Abraham, St. Epiphanius, and St. Basil are all said to have obtained the remission or reduction of oppressive imposts. To provide for the interest of the widows and orphans was part of the ecclesiastical duty, and a Council of Macon anathematized any ruler who brought them to trial with- out first apprising the Bishop of the diocese. A council of Toledo, in the fifth century, threatened with excommunication all who robbed priests, monks, or poor men, or refused to listen to their expostulations. . . . As time rolled on, charity assumed many forms, and every monastery became a centre from which it radiated. By the monks the nobles were overawed, the poor protected, the sick tended, travellers sheltered, prisoners
CHRISTIANITY A3 A CIVILIZE R 47
ransomed, the remotest spheres of suffering explored."
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. ch. iv. pp. 83-84 (ed. of D. Appleton & Co., 1877).
FISHER : Saved Europe from anarchy
" The feudal system was an atomic con- dition of political society. In this state of things the Church, through its hierarchical organization under one chief, did a benefi- cent work for civilization, by fusing the peoples, as far as its influence went, into a single community and subjecting them to a uniform condition. The mediaeval papacy, whatever evils may have been connected with it, saved Europe from anarchy and lawlessness."
History of the Reformation, by George P. Fisher, D.D., Professor of Eccl. Hist, in Yale College, ch. ii. p. 32 (ed. of Chas. Scribner & Sons, 1883).
LECKY : Christian charity in the middle ages
" In no form of charity was the beneficial character of the Church more continually and more splendidly exercised than in redeeming captives from servitude. . . . St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great,
48 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
St. Csesarius of Aries, St. Exuperius of Toulouse, St. Hilary, St. Remy, all melted down or sold their church vessels to free prisoners. St. Cyprian sent a large sum for the same purpose to the Bishop of Nicomedia. St. Epiphanus and St. Avitus, in conjunction with a rich Gaulish lady named Syagria, are said to have rescued thousands. St. Eloi devoted to this object his entire fortune. St. Paulinus of Nola displayed a similar generosity. . . . When, long afterward, the Mohammedan conquests in a measure reproduced the calamities of the barbarian invasions, the same unwearied charity was displayed. The Trinitarian monks, founded by St. John of Matha in the twelfth century, were devoted to the release of Christian captives, and another society [Our Lady of Mercy] was founded with the same object in view by St. Peter Nolasco in the following century.'7
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. ch. iv. pp. 73-74 (ed. of D. Appleton & Co., 1877).
FKOUDE : The Church as a teacher
" Never, in all their history, in ancient times or modern, never, that we know of,
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZEB 49
have mankind grown out of themselves any- thing so grand, so useful, so beautiful as the Catholic Church. In these times of ours, well-regulated selfishness is the recognized rule of action ; every one of us is expected to look out for himself first and take care of his own interests. At the time I speak of, the Church ruled the State with the authority of a conscience, and self-interest, as a motive of action, was only named to be abhorred. The bishops and clergy were regarded freely and simply as the immediate ministers of the Almighty ; and they seem to me to have really deserved that high estimate in their character. Wis- dom, justice, self-denial, nobleness, purity, high-mindedness — these are the qualities before which the freeborn of Europe have been contented to bow ; and in no order of men were such qualities found as they were found six hundred years ago in the clergy of the Catholic Church. They were allowed to rule because they deserved to rule, and in the fulness of reverence kings and nobles bent to their power, which was nearer to their own. Over prince and subject, chief- tain and serf, a body of unarmed, defence- 4
50 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
less men reigned supreme by the magic of sanctity. They tamed the fiery Northern warriors who had broken in pieces the Roman empire. They taught them — they brought them really and truly to believe -r— that they had immortal souls, and that they would one day stand at the awful judg- ment bar, and give account of their lives there."
Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (vol. i.), " Times of Erasmus and Luther," Lecture 1.
HALL AM: On chivalry
" The best school of moral discipline which the middle ages afforded was the institution of chivalry. . . . The spirit of chivalry left behind it a more valuable successor. The character of knight gradually subsided in that of gentleman; and the one distinguishes European society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as much as the other did in the preceding ages. A jealous sense of honor, less romantic but equally elevated ; a ceremonious gallantry and politeness; a strictness in devotional observances ; a high pride of birth, and feeling of independence of any sovereign
CHRISTIANITY AS A CIVILIZEB 51
for the dignity it gave ; a sympathy for martial honor, though more subdued by civil habits, — are the lineaments which prove an indisputable descent."
Hallam, Middle Ages, part ii. ch. ix.
Ill
"THE MONKS OF OLD"
1 envy them, those monks of old , Their books they read, their beads they told. G. P. R. JAMES
/ like a church ; I like a cowl ;
I love a prophet of the soul ;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles.
EMERSON
WHATEVER view may now obtain respecting monasteries, there can be no doubt that " the monks of old " * enjoyed the average good opinion of their age. In times of violence the mon- astery lands were held inviolate ; the monk
1 St. Anthony (250-356) is regarded as the founder of monachism. In 529 St. Benedict re-organized monachism, and the Benedictine rule gradually prevailed in the monasteries all over western Europe. Waves of reform, such as those inaugurated at Cluny and Citteaux, transpired during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the thirteenth century the Dominicans and Franciscans appeared.
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 53
travelled without retinue. The avarice of the half-pagan nobility led to the suppres- sion and spoliation of the rich monasteries at the time of the Reformation. But pop- ular favor was still on the side of the monks. We have an instance of this in English history. In 1536 all the northern counties of England rose in rebellion at the suppression of the lesser monasteries. This uprising was known as the " Pilgrimage of Grace."
What are now called " the extinct virtues " — voluntary poverty, chastity, and obedience — were the monastic vows chiefly insisted upon until the sixth century. Then St. Benedict added the requirement of manual labor, and among the rocks of Subiaco, forty miles from Rome, the foun- dations were laid for the monasticism of history.
1. The old monastic maxim which Car- lyle so much admired, " Labor is prayer," naturally yielded marked results. The monks improved the rude agricultural science of their age, bringing to their tasks in the field the keenness of study and con- templation. Immense tracts of land in
54 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
the Hercynean woods, in the morasses of Holland, in the forests of Burgundy, and the fens of Lincolnshire, were caused to bloom as a garden by their labor. The most populous country in Europe to-day stretches between St. Omer and Liege. It was formerly a marsh, transformed by cowled and hooded tillers.
2. Cities and centres of population grew up about the fortresses of industry and peace established by monks. Under the shadow of the abbey, the husbandman was free from feudal rapacity. The etymology of such place-names as Munich is sufficiently significant.
3. The poor and weak were the especial solicitude of the mediaeval monasteries. England's " poor laws " date from the sup- pression of the abbeys. Prior to that time, this social burden and duty was discharged by organized church agencies. " The monks,' ' says Edmund Burke, " were the sole channel through which the bounty of the rich could reach the poor in any continued stream, and the people turned their eyes towards them in all distresses."
4. In times of barbarous forays, feudal
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 55
warfare and social violence, the peaceful, contemplative, and religious mind naturally sought a retreat for safety and kindred association. Weariness and adversity also craved a refuge. In this respect monas- teries were an inevitable product of the age. " 0 father abbot," says Wolsey in Shake- speare's play,
" An old man broken by the storms of state Is come to lay his weary bones among you; Give him a little earth, for charity."
5. Some of the " great books " of the world were written in these mediaeval re- treats. " The Imitation of Christ " and the " Spiritual Combat " breathe of the solemn stillness and interior peace of monastic life. Our world may aspire to, but it can never quite realize, the contemplative spirit of those works.
6. The literature of antiquity was safely stored away in the monasteries until the period of the Renaissance. It was the labor of years to multiply the classical authors, but even in an age of manuscript books rich libraries were found in many abbeys. The thirty-two thousand manuscript books
56 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
in the great library at Paris are almost entirely in the handwriting of monks. The Bible was copied and illuminated, and the annals and chronicles of every country were for several centuries recorded solely by monks.
7. The schools of the middle ages were of monastic origin. The synods of the clergy and the capitularies of Charlemagne directed that schools should be opened in connection with the abbeys. Free common schools were an invention of the monks. The universities were a natural outgrowth. That of Paris, although springing from a small monastery school, had thirty thousand students in the time of Abelard. The majority of existing European universities date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.1
8. Quite naturally, minds educated in the monasteries began, eventually, to rule in the affairs of Church and State. Pope Gregory VII., called Hildebrand, came from
1 The growth of Oxford and Cambridge universities in England synchronizes with "the coming of the friars." These were not monastic universities ; nevertheless the monastic influence built them up.
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 57
the monastery of Cluny to work a great revolution in ecclesiastical polity. Peter the Hermit drew all Europe into the Crusades. Lanfranc, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Aqui- nas exerted influences of the most far- reaching character upon the thought and temper of their times.
9. Monopolizing the learning of the age, the monastery generally led the way in science and material progress. Alchemy, medicine, astronomy, geography, and other natural sciences were distinct tendencies of monastic studies in the fifteenth century. The numerous inventions made by monks — clocks, gunpowder, the musical scale, specta- cles, etc. — are easily recalled.
10. One is impressed with the necessity of organized forces in the work of civiliza- tion and Christianization accomplished in the middle ages. There was an eternal fit- ness that the monasteries should undertake this mission. Fortresses of culture against barbarian invasions, they subsequently be- came centres from which missionaries issued forth to subjugate the world. A counter invasion was undertaken by surpliced monks in the very cradle of the Goths
58 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
and Vandals. They penetrated Russia and Scandinavia, and built their outposts in Iceland and Greenland.
Abuses, of course, crept in. Worldly- minded abbots were installed by the secular arm. Great wealth carried its inevitable temptations, and religion was disfigured by barbarism. But the sum total was progress, and the debt of society must be paid by a favorable and a liberal judgment.
FROUDE : The monastic system
" Let us now turn to another vast feature of the middle ages — I mean the monas- teries. . . . The monks, as the brother- hoods were called, were organized in different orders with some variety of rule, but the broad principle was the same in all. They were to live for others, not for themselves. They took vows of poverty that they might not be entangled in the pursuit of money ; they took vows of chastity, that the care of a family might not distract them from the work which they had undertaken. Their efforts of charity were not limited to this world. Their days were spent in hard bod- ily labor, in study, or in visiting the sick.
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 59
At night they were on the stone floors of their chapels, holding up their withered hands to heaven, interceding for the poor souls who were suffering in purgatory. The world, as it always will, paid honor to exceptional excellence. The system spread to the furthest limits of Christen- dom. . . . And gradually lands came to them, and wealth, and social dignity, — all gratefully extended to men who deserved well of their fellows; while no landlords were more popular than they, for the sanc- tity of the monks sheltered their depend- ents as well as themselves."
James Anthony Froude, Times of Erasmus and Luther (Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. i. pp. 56-58, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1884).
MAITLAND : What the monasteries were
" It is impossible to get even a superfi- cial knowledge of the mediaeval history of Europe, without seeing how greatly the world of that period was indebted to the monastic orders ; and feeling that, whether they were good or bad in other matters, monasteries were beyond all price in those days of misrule and turbulence, as places
60 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
where ( it may be imperfectly, yet better than elsewhere) God was worshipped — as a quiet and religious refuge for helpless in- fancy and old age, a shelter of respectful sympathy for the orphan maiden and tfye desolate widow — as central points whence agriculture was to spread over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal bread to millions perishing with hunger and its pestilential train — as repositories of the learning which then was, and well- springs of the learning that was to be — as nurseries of art and science, giving the stimulus, the means, and the reward to in- vention, and aggregating around them every head that could devise and every hand that could execute — as the nucleus of the city which, in after days of pride, should crown its palaces and bulwarks with the towering cross of its cathedral."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 2 (John Hodges, Pub., London, 1890).
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA : Moiiachism a deeply seated principle
" But the most philosophical mode of viewing .its [monachism's] relation to Chris-
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 61
tianity is to recognize that monachism has made a part of every creed which has at- tained a certain stage of ethical and theo- sophical development ; that there is a class of minds for which it always has had a power- ful attraction, and which can otherwise find no satisfaction ; and consequently, that Christianity, if it is to make good its claim to be a universal religion, must provide ex- pression for a principle which is as deeply seated in human nature as domesticity itself, albeit limited to a much smaller sec- tion of mankind."
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. xvi. p. 698.
EMERTON : Monks led the age
" So we have, over and over again, great waves of monastic reform sweeping over European society, and carrying with them, let it be fairly understood, usually all that was best and most forward-looking in the community. The conclusion we have to draw from this fact is that the mediaeval world was right; and it knew its own needs, and was trying to provide for them in its own way. Our business is, not to criticise these means of social improvement, but — and
62 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
this is far more difficult — to understand them."
Mediaeval Europe, p. 558, by Ephraim Emerton, Prof, of History in Harvard University. Boston : Gmn & Co., 1894.
LECKY: Industrial advances led by the monks
" Here, again, the influence of the Church was exerted with unwavering beneficence and success. The fathers employed all their eloquence in favor of labor; but it is to the monks, and especially to the Bene- dictine monks, that the change is pre- eminently due. At a time when religious enthusiasm was directed towards the mo- nastic life as towards the ideal of perfection, they made labor an essential part of their discipline. Wherever they went, they re- vived the traditions of old Roman agricul- ture, and large tracts of France and Belgium were drained and planted by their hands. The monks of the order of St. Basil devoted themselves especially to painting, and all the mediaeval architects whose names have come down to us are said to have been ec- clesiastics, till the rise of those great lay
"THE MONKS OF OLD" 63
companies who designed or built the cathe- drals of the twelfth century. A great num- ber of the towns of Belgium trace their origin in this manner to the monks. . . . By these means the contempt for labor which had been produced by slavery was corrected, and the path was open for the rise of the industrial classes which followed the crusades."
Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii. pp. 231-232.
L.ECKY: Monks as builders
" In France, the low countries, and Ger- many they were pre-eminently agriculturists. Gigantic forests were felled, inhospitable marshes were reclaimed, barren plains culti- vated by their hands. The monastery often became the nucleus of a city. It was the centre of civilization and industry, the sym- bol of moral power in an age of turbulence and war."
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. eh. iv. p. 184.
Hallam : Monasteries preserved books
" The monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline, and held out, at the worst,
64 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
more opportunities for study than the secular clergy possessed, and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their most im- portant service was as secure repositories for books. All our manuscripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have descended to us by any other channel ; at least there were intervals when I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries existed."
Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix. part i. p. 484.
IV THE PAPAL POWER
Then wakes the power which in the age of iron Burst forth to curl the great, andraive the low. Mark where she stands — around her form I
draw The awful circle of our solemn church.
BULWER LYTTON, Richelieu, IV. 2.
I. HILDEBRAND
* f' | "\HE Bishop of Rome was so much
annoyed by Lombard free-booters,
-*- towards the middle of the eighth
century, that he called upon Pepin, the
French king, to come over the Alps and
establish peace. When Pepin subdued the
Lombards, he made the Pope sole ruler of
Rome and the country near by.1
i During the pontificate of Gregory I., known as Gregory the Great (590 to 604), the Pope gradually became the political ruler of Rome. Nominally, Rome was under the jurisdiction of the Exarchate of Ravenna, who was the representative of the emperor at Constanti- 5
66 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
This was a great advantage to the spirit- ual head of the Christian Church. It relieved him from the influence and annoy- ance of petty kings and princes. But the Papal office was not hereditary. The petty kings had an opportunity of stepping in a't the death of the Pope and exercising con- siderable influence in selecting his successor. For their busy interference they claimed the privilege of appointing the bishops in their neighborhoods, and controlling the religious patronage. If they happened, as they frequently did, to be avaricious per- sons, there were scandalous sales of the best bishoprics and other unexemplary proceedings.
During the tenth century good men bit- terly deplored the number of such abuses. Some of the Popes were appointed as the creatures of German emperors. Many im- portant sees were filled by court favorites utterly unworthy of sacred offices.
The Church soon made a stupendous effort to free itself from such worldly vassal-
nople. When Pepin carne to Rome to repel the Lom- bards, he gave the entire Exarchate (extending east to the Adriatic) to the Pope.
THE PAPAL POWER 67
age. It found a wise and adroit Moses in the monk Hildebrand.1 His first step was to advise the Pope to designate a college of cardinals, which should thereafter have the naming of Roman pontiffs. Later on, Hildebrand was himself chosen Pope, and took the name of Gregory VII.
A ceremony called the " investiture " of bishops, or the conferring upon them of the ring and crosier of their office by the em-
1 It is significant of the social power of the Church, that this man who defied kings was the son of a humble carpenter. Born in Tuscany A. D. 1013 and educated in Rome, he became a monk at the famous monastery of Cluny in France. He served a long apprenticeship in the work of the Church before he was called to the high- est place in its government. He was virtually the ad- viser and counsellor of five of the Popes who preceded him, influencing them all towards measures which re- formed and elevated the Church of the times. It was not until he had attained his sixtieth year that Hilde- brand himself became Pope. When he died in exile (A. D. 1085) he said, " I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile." Newman says : " Gregory thought he had failed : so it is ; often a cause seems to decline as its champion grows in years, and to die in his death ; but this is to judge hastily ; others are destined to complete what he began. No man is given to see his work through. 'Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening,' but the evening falls before it is done." — Essays, Grit, and Hist., vol. ii. p. 316.
68 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
peror, had grown to mean more than a mere formality. The substance went with it; the actual selection of the bishop was implied in his investiture.1 Henry IV. of Germany had been particularly insistent in his exercise of this prerogative. The Church was disgraced by the "bishops" thus thrust upon her.
Gregory VII. cut the Gordian knot by prohibiting the investiture and censuring any prince who kept it up.
The manner in which the emperor met this papal act illustrates his conception of the civil ruler's power. He called a meeting of his bishops and deposed Gregory from the papal office, not forgetting to set up one of his own court favorites in the former's place.
Gregory VII. saw that he must fight the devil with fire. His counterblast came at once (A. D. 1076) in a proclamation absolv-
1 " The ring and crosier, it was asserted by the Papal advocates, were the emblems of that power which no monarch could bestow ; but even if a less offensive sym- bol were adopted in investitures, the dignity of the Church was lowered, and her purity contaminated when her highest ministers were compelled to solicit the patronage or the approbation of laymen." — Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. vii. part i. p. 655.
THE PAPAL POWER 69
ing the German people from allegiance to Henry. The ground taken was that the emperor had broken his coronation oath. That oath required him to protect the Church and respect his people's liberties. It happened that just then Henry was fail- ing in both particulars. The act of Gregory met with a wonderful response. Every- where the monks and friars denounced Henry as no longer fit to rule. The lords gathered and repudiated him. He was a king without a throne, and it became the highest policy on his part to repent.
This he did by a famous journey to Canossa. The Pope forgave him too easily, not discerning his purpose of revenge, for he subsequently drove Gregory from Rome, and the aged pontiff died in exile. But the Papal policy was fixed, and in the year 1122 the German emperor formally resigned the alleged right of " investiture/' 1
Gregory deposed Henry in self-defence ; some of Gregory's successors kept up the war in Africa with the same object in view.
1 This was by virtue of the famous "Concordat of Worms." Meanwhile Henry V. had succeeded his father as emperor of Germany.
70 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
A great contest with Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany, was ended in 1177. The Papal authority won again. A few years afterwards King John of England asked the Pope to order the French king to< give Normandy back to Britain, — implying that authority for such an act resided in the Roman See. Innocent III. did not do so, but he afterwards found occasion to de- clare John's throne forfeited, and to absolve the English from their allegiance.
II. THE DEPOSING POWER
For two centuries following Hildebrand's struggle with Henry IV. it seems to have been the generally received opinion that the Pope might depose sovereigns where such valid reasons existed as oppression of the people, heresy, and vice. The precise basis of this opinion is not clear. Some regard it as a development of feudalism, the Pope being recognized as the suzerain of all the sovereigns of Christendom. As a matter of fact, many rulers, at different times, placed their dominions under the direction of the Pope, or invoked the papal authority to
THE PAPAL POWER 71
recover their possessions. The deposing power may also have developed from a disposition to regard the Pope as the arbiter in disputes between Christian rulers. Still another view regards the deposing power as the received public law of the middle ages — from the fact that Kings and Emperors in order to reign lawfully had to profess the Catholic faith and be in communion with the Pope. Fenelon found a basis for the deposing power in the fact that the Pope was the final judge of all political contracts involving " allegiance." He, as the chief pastor of the Church, was bound, in dis- puted cases, to instruct people consulting him as to whether they were obliged to keep their oaths of fealty.
It seems clear that the deposing power of the Pope never was, and is not now, regarded as an article of Catholic faith. Pius IX. in a sermon quoted by Cardinal Soglia, said : u No one now thinks any more of the right of deposing princes, which the Holy See formerly exercised, and the supreme pontiff even less than any one." l
1 Ferraris, Papa, quoted in Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.
72 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
It was a species of international law which the events of history, religious and political upheavals, have practically abro- gated. But while it was exercised, and during the ages when people recognized it, it undoubtedly served to promote liberty and to curb the cruelty and cupidity of sovereigns.
In our age the people do almost every year what the Popes did but rarely. The breed of kings has improved ; there were numbers of mediaeval monarchs who ought to have been deposed, but who were let alone. The Papal anathemas struck men like Henry IV. and John Lackland, who richly deserved the scaffold.
HI. MORAL CHARACTER OF THE POPES
Of the two hundred and sixty Popes, seventy-nine have been canonized by the Catholic Church as saints, pre-eminent for their holiness.
Some fifteen or twenty of the remainder have been variously accused of immorality, political ambition, and criminal intrigue. It is noteworthy that the characters of several
THE PAPAL POWER 73
thus accused have been vindicated by Prot- estant biographers. Voigt, in his Life of Gregory VII., Hurter's Innocent III., Eich- horn, Luden, Mueller, and Leopold Ranke have cleared up much fiction and partisan tradition reflecting upon the moral charac- ter of a dozen Pontiffs.
An instance of the absurdity of some of these fables is found in the story of Pope Joan. A learned woman, disguised as a man, succeeded, so the narrative runs, in deceiving the churchmen and securing her own selection to the Papal throne, which she occupied for nearly three years. This story is traced back to within two hundred years of the alleged date of the female Pope's pontificate. It is found wanting in a single element of authenticity, and no modern historian gives it any credence.1
The tenth century furnishes us the most certain instances of immoral or bad Popes. Society was then in a transitional state. Rome was described as the "hostelry of nations." The " bad Popes " are variously estimated by Catholic writers as from six to twenty. " We have forty-three virtuous,
1 See Baring-Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages.
74 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
to one bad pope/' says Cardinal Gibbons (Faith of our Fathers, chap. xi.), " while there was a Judas Iscariot among the twelve Apostles."
Writers like Leopold Ranke (History of the Popes) describe the Roman Pontiffs of the first ages and of later times (since the rise of Protestantism) as irreproachable in their moral characters. Yoigt ( Gregory VII., vol. ii. p. 98) says : " The Holy See was the only tribunal that could set any limits to imperial despotism as a second defender of humanity." Roscoe (Life of Leo X., vol. i. p. 53) says : " The Popes may in general be considered as superior to the age in which they lived."
FISHER: The mediaeval papacy
"The mediaeval papacy, whatever evils may have been connected with it, saved Europe from anarchy and lawlessness."
Fisher, History of the Reformation, ch. ii. p. 32.
!Lilly : Hildebrand an apostle of liberty
" Gregory (VII.) was the savior of politi- cal freedom too. He was the founder of
THE PAPAL POWER 75
communal liberty in Italy, the apostle of Italian independence."
W. S. Lilly, Chapters in European History, vol. i. p. 183.
SOTJTHEY: The savior of Europe
" If the Papal power had not been adapted to the conditions of Europe, it could not have subsisted. It was the remedy for some of the greatest evils. We have to look to the Abyssinians and Oriental Christians, to see what Europe would have become with- out the Papacy. It was morally and in- tellectually the conservative power of Christendom. Politically, it was the sa- vior of Europe. For, in all probability, the West, like the East, must have been overrun by Mohammedanism, and sunk in irredeemable degradation if, in that great crisis of the world, the Church had not roused the nations to a united and prodi- gious effort commensurate with the danger. In the frightful state of society which some- times prevailed, the Church everywhere pre- sented a controlling and remedial influence."
Southey, Book of the Church.
76 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
WHEATON: Papal authority a blessing
"The influence of the Papal authority, though sometimes abused, was then felt as a blessing to mankind ; it rescued Europe from total barbarism ; it afforded the only asylum and refuge from feudal oppression."
Wheaton, History of the Laws of Nations, p. 33.
COMTE: A basis of judgment
" The papal hierarchy," says Comte, " in fact, constituted, in the middle ages, the main bond among the various European nations, after the decline of the Roman sway ; and in this view the Catholic influ- ence ought to be judged, as De Maistre truly remarked, not only by the ostensible good which it produced, but yet more by the imminent evil which it silently obvi- ated, and which, on that account, we can only inadequately appreciate."
GUIZOT: The Papacy and liberty
" When a pope or bishop proclaimed that a sovereign had lost his rights, that his sub- jects were released from their oath of fidel- ity, this interference, though undoubtedly
THE PAPAL POWER 77
liable to the greatest abuse, was often, in the particular case to which it was directed, just and salutary. It generally holds, in- deed, that where liberty is wanting religion, in a great measure, supplies its place. In the tenth century the oppressed nations were not in a state to protect themselves or to defend their rights against civil violence — religion, in the name of Heaven, placed itself between them/'
Guizot, History of Civilization, vol. i. Lecture 5, p. 124, 3d Am. ed. (Hazlitt's Notes).
COQUEREL: Despotism prevented
"In those ' dark' ages we see no example of tyranny comparable to that of the Do- mitians at Rome. A Tiberius was impos- sible then ; Rome would have crushed him. Great despotisms exist when kings believe that there is nothing above themselves. Then it is that the intoxication of un- limited power produces the most fearful crimes."
Coquerel, Essai sur 1'Hist. Generate du Chris- tianisme, p. 75.
78 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
ROBERTSON: A real benefit
" The Pontifical monarchy taught the nations and kings to regard themselves mutually as compatriots, as being both equally subject to the divine sceptre of re- ligion ; and this centre of religious unity has been throughout many ages a real benefit to the human race."
Robertson, Charles V.
SISMONDI : The Pope defender of the people
" In the midst of the conflicts of jurisdic- tions, the Pope alone proved to be the de- fender of the people, the only pacifier of great disturbances. The conduct of the Pontiffs inspired respect, as their benefi- cence merited gratitude."
Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics.
LiEIBNITZ : Hindered many evils
" It must be confessed that the solicitude of the Popes concerning the canons and Ecclesiastical discipline, was from time to time most beneficial ; and that, by influ- encing kings, in season and out of season, either by the authority of their office or by
THE PAPAL, POWER 79
the threat of ecclesiastical censures, the Pontiffs hindered many evils. And noth- ing was more common than that kings should subject themselves, in their treaties, to the censure and correction of the Pope, as in the treaty of Bretigny in 1360, and in the treaty of Staples in 1492."
Leibnitz, De actorum publicorum usu.
LEIBNITZ: The Pope as umpire among the nations
" If all would become Catholics and be- lieve in the infallibility of the Pope, there would not be required any other umpire than that of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. If the Popes resumed the authority which they had in the time of Nicholas the First or Gregory the Seventh, it would be the means of obtaining perpetual peace and conducting us back to the golden age."
Leibnitz, Id.
LECKY: Popes who saved Home
" But everywhere amid this chaos of dis- solution we may detect the majestic form of the Christian priest mediating between the hostile forces, straining every nerve to
80 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
lighten the calamities around him. When the Imperial city was captured and plun- dered by the hosts of Alaric, a Christian church remained a secure sanctuary, which neither the passions nor the avarice of the Goths transgressed. When a fiercer than Alaric had marked out Rome for his prey, the Pope St. Leo, arrayed in his sacerdotal robes, confronted the victorious Hun, as the ambassador of his fellow-countrymen, and Attila, overpowered by religious awe, turned aside in his course. When, twelve years later, Rome lay at the mercy of Gen- seric, the same Pope interposed with the Vandal conqueror, and obtained from him a partial cessation of the massacre."
Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. ch. iv.
PALGBAVE : A Pope's moral courage
"Hildebrand, sparing neither the bribed nor the bribers, incurred the inveterate odium of all the delinquents. Hildebrand had no respect to persons or judgment. Sin levelled emperors and beggars before him."
Sir Francis Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, vol. i. p. 112.
THE PAPAL, POWER 81
SCHLEGEL: Origin of the Papal power
" Hence the high authority which Rome then exercised over kings and emperors was grounded, first, on a political claim growing out of the circumstances which accompanied the revival of the western em- pire ; and secondly, on the general opinion of that time respecting the subordination of the temporal to the spiritual power."
Schlegel, Philos. of Hist., p. 137.
LOTGABD : Kings appealed to the Pope
" This doctrine, hostile as it might be to the independence of sovereigns, was often supported by the sovereigns themselves. Thus, when Richard I. was held in captiv- ity by the emperor, his mother, Eleanor, repeatedly solicited the Pontiff to procure his liberation by the exercise of that au- thority which he possessed over all tem- poral princes. Thus, King John Lackland (whose excesses afterwards provoked against himself the animadversion of the Church) invoked the aid of the same authority to recover Normandy from the King of France. At first, indeed, the Popes contented them-
6
82 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
selves with spiritual censures ; but in an age when all notions of justice were modelled after the feudal jurisprudence, it was soon admitted that princes, by their disobedience, became traitors to God ; that as traitors they ought to forfeit their kingdoms, the fees which they held of God ; and that to pronounce such sentence belonged to the Pontiff, vicegerent of Christ upon earth."
Lingard, History of England, vol. iii. of the 3d London ed./p. 35, note.
SCHLEGEL : A voice against despotism
" By the princes themselves was the head of the Church first called upon to de- cide weighty matters of state and to exert influence over the affairs of Europe. . . . We cannot deny, on examining closely the wants of the situation and the spirit of those times, that it accomplished much good ; that not seldom it protected the oppressed cause of justice. ... It seemed desirable and whole- some that even against the mightiest rulers one voice dared still to be raised alone for justice — a voice of which he should stand
THE PAPAL, POWER 83
in awe ; which he could not silence by mere force."
A Course of Lectures on Modern History, by Fred- eric Schlegel, Bonn's Popular Library, London, 1849, Lectures 6-7, p. 88.
THE CRUSADES
Then blame not those who, by the mightiest lever Known to the moral world, imagination, Upheave (so seems it) from her natural station All Christendom ; — they sweep along (was never So huge a host) to tear from the unbeliever The precious tombs, their haven of salvation.
WORDSWORTH
RELIGIOUS fervor and devotion were not the only causes of those on- slaughts of United Europe against Mohammedan Asia, called the Crusades. The immediate purpose was to protect the liberty and life of Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. There was a continuous breach of international rights in this respect, to redress which, any spirited modern nation would take up the sword. But the deep, underlying motive was the apprehension of Christian Europe for its own safety.
THE CRUSADES 85
"Mussulman impiety," said the contem- poraneous Pope Urban II.,1 " has overspread the fairest regions of Asia ; Ephesus, Nice, and Antioch have become Mohammedan cities; the barbarous hordes of the Turks have planted their colors on the very shores of the Hellespont, whence they threaten war to all our states of Christendom. Unless you oppose a mighty barrier to their triumphant course, how can Europe be saved from invasion, how can the storm be averted which has so long threatened to burst upon our countries ? " 2
With Christian civilization it was a war of self-preservation.
1. In this respect the Crusades were a notable success. Instead of waiting, as dis- united states, to receive the blow of Moham- medan invasion, the nations of Europe " took time by the forelock," welded them- selves into unity, and made the aggressive move themselves. The Saracens and Selju-
1 He addressed a great council at Piacenza, in 1095, at which two hundred bishops and nearly four thousand priests were present.
2 Michaud, History of the Crusades, vol. i. Michaud's work continues (despite some errors) to be the great standard authority on the Crusades.
86 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
kians were beaten to the ground. The issue for supremacy was inevitable between the religion born at Galilee and that born at Mecca. Rome saw farthest ahead.1
The first (A. D. 1090), fifth (A. D. 1201), and sixth (A. D. 1228) Crusades were the most important, at least in their results.
In 1099 the first Crusaders captured Jerusalem and set up a Christian kingdom there which lasted eighty-eight years. In 1205 a Latin empire was established in place of the Greek empire at Constantinople, and the Eastern schism appeared to be at an end. But this union of the Eastern and Western churches lasted only until 1261, when the Latin empire was overthrown. Jerusalem again came into the possession of the Christians by treaty in 1229 (as a result of the sixth Crusade), but in 1242 the hordes of Jenghiz Khan again swept away the Christian dominion ; nor did the subsequent Crusaders ever get as far as the Holy City. The last or ninth Crusade went out, A. D. 1270, under St. Louis, King of France.
1 It is in this connection that Cardinal Newman re- marks that those who in our time speak so bravely against the Pope owe it to the Pope that they can speak at all.
THE CRUSADES 87
Nazareth was taken, but there the enterprise ended.1
2. From the East the returning Crusaders brought back new inventions, new fabrics like the silk manufacture, alchemy, the Arabic notation, and all the impetus to science and letters that came from contact with Syria, Greece, and other strange lands.2 In the history of civilization this alone was sufficient to compensate for the blood and treasure expended in these movements.
3. The Crusades were a blow at feudalism, cutting off the petty nobility and securing more orderly government. Travelling be- came easier. The enfranchised boroughs and the free cities sprang up by reason of the Crusades.
4. The art of navigation was improved in the transport of armies. Nations built
1 It is estimated that nearly two million people lost their lives in the two centuries of the Crusades. The cessation of private warfare at home nearly counter, balanced this loss.
2 However beneficial attrition with other civilizations proved, we must not fall into the error of those who, in their eagerness to disparage Christianity, imagine that Moorish or Saracen civilization was superior to the Chris- tian civilization of the middle ages.
88 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
navies. The mariner's compass was brought into use.
5. And from this circumstance came the growth of commerce and the upbuilding of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, those great mediaeval marts whose trade with Asia and Africa was of world-wide note, and whose population of bankers and mer- chants laid the foundation of our modern commercial law as we read it.
Thus a movement undertaken in what to materialists seems a spirit of fanaticism and superstition, justified itself even in their eyes by promoting Europe's material growth.
BISHOP STUBBS : The Crusades a benefit to society
"The Crusades are not, in my mind, either the popular delusions that our cheap literature has determined them to be, nor Papal conspiracies against kings and peoples, as they appear to the Protestant con- troversialist. . . . They were the first great effort of mediaeval life to go beyond the pursuit of selfish and isolated ambition ; they were the trial feat of the young world essaying to use, to the glory of God and the
THE CRUSADES 89
benefit of man, the arms of its new knight- hood. . . . That in the end they were a benefit to the world no one that reads can doubt ; and that in their course they brought out a love for all that is heroic in human nature — the love of freedom, the honor of prowess, sympathy with sorrow, persever- ance to the last, and patient endurance without hope, — the chronicles of the age abundantly prove ; proving moreover that it was by the experience of those times that the former of these virtues were real- ized and presented to posterity."
Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History, p. 157, by Wm. Stubbs, D.D. , Bishop of Chester, Regius Prof, of Modern History at Cambridge and Edin- burgh. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1885.
ADAMS : A universal stimulus
" The Crusades had a most profound effect on the people of Europe. The age was one of great stir and stimulus. Mind was aroused. The crusaders were brought into contact with better civilization than their own and were taught that they had many things yet to learn. Before the age of the Crusades had closed, and produced at least
90 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
in part by them, there occurs the great intellectual epoch of the thirteenth century which created the scholastic system in philosophy and founded the universities of Europe. . . . An even more immediate effeqt of the Crusades was the stimulus which they gave to commerce, and the changes which followed in this direction were as far reach- ing and profound as the intellectual."
European History, p. 217, by Geo. B. Adams, Pro- fessor of History in Yale University. New York : The Macmillan Co., 1899.
ARCHBISHOP TRENCH: Moral effects
" Such a purpose and aim was the Cru- sades, during well-nigh two centuries, for Europe; and the answer which Christian Europe made to the appeal is a signal testi- mony of the preparedness of the middle ages for noble thoughts and noble deeds. To the high thoughts which they kindled in so many hearts, to the religious consecra- tion which they gave to the bearing of arms, we are indebted for some of the fair- est aspects of chivalry, as it lives on a potent and elevating tradition to the present day. Thus to them we owe the stately
THE CRUSADES 91
courtesies of gallant foes able to under- stand and to respect one another, with much else which has lifted up modern war- fare into something better than a mere mutual butchery, even into a school of honor in which some of the gentlest and noblest men have been trained/'
Archbishop Trench, Lectures on Mediaeval Church History.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA: Arrested Mo- hammedanism
" They [the Crusades] failed, indeed, to establish the permanent dominion of Latin Christendom, whether in New Rome or Jerusalem, but they prolonged, for nearly four centuries, the life of the Eastern Empire, and by so doing they arrested the tide of Mohammedan conquests as effectually as it was arrested for Western Europe by Charles Martel on the plains of Tours."
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., article " Cru- sades," vol. vi. p. 629.
Cox: Crusades saved Europe
"We must not forget that by rolling back the tide of Mohammedan conquest
92 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
from Constantinople for upward of four centuries they [the Crusades] probably saved Europe from horrors the recital of which might even now make one's ears tingle."
G. W. Cox, The Crusaders, ch. xv. p. 224.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA : Economic effects
"The Crusades undoubtedly produced a powerful economic effect by transferring, in many cases, the possessions of the feudal chiefs to the industrious classes, whilst, by bringing different nations and races into contact, by enlarging the horizon and the conception of the populations, as by afford- ing special stimulus to navigation, they tended to give a new activity to inter- national trade."
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. xix. p. 352.
GUIZOT : Enlarged the ideas of Europe
"The principal effect, then, of the Crusades was a great step towards the emancipation of the mind, a great progress towards enlarged and liberal ideas. . . . Such, in my opinion, are the real results of
THE CRUSADES 93
the Crusades, — on the one hand extension of ideas and the emancipation of thought, on the other a general enlargement of the social sphere and the opening of a wider field for every sort of activity: they pro- duced at the same time more individual freedom and more political unity."
Guizot, History of Civilization, vol. i. Lecture 8.
LA CBOIX: Developed commerce
" The effect of the Crusades was, never- theless, a complete revolution in the man- ners and customs of the western nations : the suppression of servitude, the founding of the free towns, the alienation and the division of the feudal laws and the develop- ment of the commercial system."
Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, p. 134, by Paul La Croix, Curator of the Imperial Library of the Arsenal, Paris. London : Chapman and Hall, 1874.
ROBERTSON: Promoted chivalry
" The same spirit of enterprise which had prompted so many gentlemen to take arms in defence of the oppressed pilgrims of Palestine, incited others to declare them-
94 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
selves the patrons and avengers of injured innocence at home. When the final reduc- tion of the Holy Land under the dominion of infidels put an end to these foreign expeditions, the latter was the only employ? ment left for the activity and courage of adventurers. To check the insolence of overgrown oppressors ; to rescue the help- less from captivity ; to protect or to avenge women, orphans, and ecclesiastics, who could not bear arms in their own defence ; to redress wrongs and remove grievances — were deemed acts of the highest prowess and merit. Valor, humanity, courtesy, jus- tice, honor, were the characteristic qualities of chivalry."
William Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V.
VI
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS
1 would rather die ten times over than make a schism. — ERASMUS.
IT is worthy of remark that six of the earlier heresies in the history of the Church should have arisen respecting the divine persons of the Godhead. The Arians (325) taught that Christ was infe- rior to the other persons of the Trinity.1 The Macedonians (381) taught that the Holy Ghost was inferior. The Nestorians (431) taught that there were tivo persons (not two natures) in Christ. The Eutych- ians (451) taught that there was but one
1 The Arians constituted by far the most consider- able heresy of the early ages. Arius died in 336, but Arianism prospered after his death. The West Goths received Christianity in the Arian form, and the East Goths and Lombards also were Arians. This heresy dominated Spain and Africa and Northern Italy for more than a hundred years, nor did it decline until the end of the sixth century.
96 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
nature — the divine. The Monothelites (680) held that Christ had no human will. The Manichseans (280-1215) taught that Christ did not assume a real human body, but merely appeared in one, like the angels of the Old Testament.
The Pelagian heresy denied the doctrine of original sin. The Iconoclasts opposed sacred images. And the heresy of Beren- garius (1078) denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
During the latter middle ages the most famous heresies .were those of the Albigenses and Waldenses, condemned by the Council of Lateran in 1179; and the teachings of Wycliffe and his disciple, Huss, condemned by the Council of Constance in 1414.
These may be styled premature Protes- tantisms, from the fact that they expressed the religious unrest of their time. The Calvinists were proud to trace their an- cestry to the Waldenses, and Wycliffe is sometimes styled the prototype of English Protestantism.
The Albigenses were so styled after Albi, a town in southern France, where the sect
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS 97
became numerous about 1200. Pope Inno- cent III. sent Peter, of Chateau-neuf, and three other monks to convert them; but they murdered Peter and terrified his fol- lowers. Count Raymond of Toulouse sided with them, and they carried things with a high hand. The murder of the Pope's legate was the occasion of a crusade against Toulouse and Albi, led by Simon of Mont- fort, at the head of a French army. The war1 lasted intermittently from 1209 to 1227, and finally drifted from a religious to a political contest. The Albigenses were utterly crushed.
Respecting the nature of the Albigensian teachings, contemporary writers agree in connecting them with the Manichaeans.
This, too, is Bossuet's opinion. Hallam and Mosheim substantially coincide with him. Identification with Manichaeism is re- garded as a damning indictment against the Albigenses. The judicial records of the
1 The battle of Murret (1213) decided the war against the Albigenses. Raymond of Toulouse was then de- posed, and Simon de Montfort, who had led the Crusa- ders, and whose son figures as the founder of the English Parliament, was given the fiefs that formerly belonged to Raymond.
7
98 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
middle ages are full of the blackest crimes attributed to this sinuous and surreptitious sect.
Mani, a Persian teacher of the third century, compounded Paganism and Chris- tianity into a system of doctrines, which persisted through the centuries in vari- ous forms and under various names. One author counts over seventy Manichaean sects.
The popular and legal dislike towards the Manichaeans was due, not so much to their theological vagaries as to their reputed immoralities. They were described as Me- diseval Mormons. They inculcated devil- worship, denied the divinity of Christ, rejected the Old Testament, and repudiated the observance of Sunday.
Their midnight orgies, their hatred of marriage, their incests, fornications, and suicides were the scandals of the middle ages. They united secrecy and hypocrisy as methods of covering their tracks.
In France they were called, from their origin, Bulgarians; in some parts of Italy, Publicans, a corruption of the word Pauli- cians ; in the provinces, where they were
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS 99
most numerous, Provincials, or, after 1208, Albigenses, from the town of Albi in Lan- guedoc ; in the Milanese Territory, Cathari, i. e., the Pure, or Paterenes and Paterinians, a name which they had usurped from the anti-simoniacal Catholic Church party in Milan; in Belgium, Piphiler or Weavers, from the trade which the greater number of them followed, and sundry other names ; but the generic term, Manichseans, was given to them universally, and was accepted by themselves in their disputations with Catholics.
The Albigenses held many of the Mani- chaean doctrines and rivalled them in many points of violence and debauchery. " I have seen on all sides," says Stephen, Abbot of St. Genevieve, describing to the King of France the condition of Albigen- sian Toulouse, " churches burned and ruined to their foundations ; I have seen the dwell- ings of men changed into the dens of wild beasts."
The Waldenses, who were also termed Yaudois and Poor Men of Lyons, were fol- lowers of Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons.
100 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
In 1160 Waldo, affected by the death of a fellow merchant, gave his property to the poor, and led a life of poverty. In teach- ing that malefactors ought not to be con- demned, but should be allowed to go at large, — after the manner of the tares described in the parable, — the Waldenses came into conflict with the civil power. They denounced oaths as sinful, and advo- cated Communism. The Mass and Purga- tory were eliminated from their religion. They thought the clergy ought to hold no property. Ultimately some of them drifted into the immoral and pagan customs of the Albigenses. The fact that they existed about the time and in the neighborhood of the Albigenses has led to their being con- founded with these more unworthy sectaries.
The heresies of Wycliffe (1324-84) and John Huss (1375-1414) bore fruits in the Lollards of England and the Bohemian Brethren of Prague. Henry V. put down the former on the charge of conspiracy, and the Bohemian Brethren, after a bloody civil war, expired of inanition.
Wycliffe continued a priest of the Catholic
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS 101
Church to the time of his death. His divergence from Catholic teaching had refer- ence to the supremacy of the Pope in spirit- ual matters, which he partly controverted, and to certain regulations respecting the authority of Bishops over priests. He seems to have recanted his views prior to his death.
Huss followed Wycliffe in most points, but was. more violent in his methods. He attended the Council of Constance under a safe conduct from the Emperor Sigismund. The council condemned his teachings as heretical, and heresy being at that time a violation of the civil as well as the ecclesi- astical law, the secular arm took hold of Huss after the council had got through with him. He was burned at the stake July, 1414.
HALL AM : The Albigenses were Manichaeans
" The tenets ascribed to them [the Albi- genses] by all contemporary authorities coincide so remarkably, with those held by the Paulicians, and in earlier times by the Manichaeans, that I do not see how we can reasonably deny what is confirmed by sepa-
102 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
rate and uncontradicted testimonies, and contains no intrinsic want of probability."
Hallam, View of the Middle Ages, ch. ix. part ii.
MILMAN: Adverse to Christian morals ,
" Western Manichgeism, however, though it adhered only to the broader principles of Orientalism, the two co-equal conflicting principles of good and evil, the eternity of matter, and its implacable hostility to spirit, aversion to* the Old Testament as the work of the wicked Demiurge, the unreality of the suffering Christ, was, or became, more Manichaean than its Grecian parent, Pauli- cianism. . . . Western Manichseism is but dimly to be detected in the eleventh cen- tury. . . . But in the twelfth century Mani- ch seism is rampant, bold, undisguised. Everywhere are Puritans, Paterines, Popu- lars, suspected, or convicted, or confessed Manichseans. . . . The chief seat of these opinions was in the south of France. . . . Their religion was chivalry, but chivalry becoming less and less religious ; the mis- tress had become the saint, the casuistry of the Court of Love superseded that of the confessional. There had grown up a gay
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS 103
license of manner adverse not only to the austerity of monkish Christianity but to pure Christian morals."
Henry Hart Milman, History of Latin Christian- ity, vol. v. ch. viii. pp. 159-163. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1861.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA : Their creed
" The descent of the Albigenses may be traced with tolerable distinctness from the Paulicians, a sect that sprang into existence in the Eastern Church during the sixth cen- tury. The Paulicians were agnostics, and were accused by their enemies and persecutors of holding Manichsean doctrines which, it is said, they vehemently disowned. Their creed, whatever it may have been precisely, spread gradually westward through Europe. In the ninth century it found many ad- herents in Bulgaria, and three hundred years later it was maintained and defended, though not without important modifications, by the Albigenses in the south of France. . . . They [the Albigenses] inherited and used, as has already been said, certain doctrines of eastern origin, such as the Manichaean dualism, diocetism in relation
104 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
to the persons of Christ, and a theory of metempsychosis. They seem, like the Mani- chaeans, to have disowned the authority of the Old Testament ; and the division of their adherents into the perfecti and credences is similar to the Manichsean distinction between electi and aucKtori"
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. i. p. 454.
: Manichsean opinion in the twelfth century
" Nothing is more curious in Christian history than the vitality of the Manichsean opinions. That wild, half-poetic, half- rationalistic theory of Christianity appears almost suddenly in the twelfth century, in living, almost irresistible power, first in its intermediate settlement in Bulgaria, and on the borders of the Greek Empire, then in Italy, in France, in Germany, in the remote West at the foot of the Pyrenees. The chief seat of these opinions was in the south of France."
H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book ix. ch. viii.
PREMATURE PROTESTANTISMS 105
SCHAFF-HERZOG : Their violence
"In a short time the Albigenses had congregations with schools and charitable institutions of their own. Then they drove away the Roman Catholic priests from the churches, took possession of the buildings, and elected their own priests and bishops. . . . This state of things caused, of course, great alarm at Rome."
The Schaff-Herzog Dictionary, vol. i., article on Albigenses.
STEPHEN : Albigensian immoralities
" The imputations of irreligious heresy and shameless debauchery, which have been cast with so much bitterness on the Albigenses by their persecutors, and which have been so zealously denied by their apologists, are probably not ill-founded, if the word Albi- genses be employed as synonymous^ (with the words Provenceaux or Languedo^aans, for they were apparently a race among whom the hallowed charities of domestic life, and the reverence due to divine ordi- nances and the homage due to divine truth, were often impaired, and not seldom extin-
106 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
guished by ribald jests, by infidel scoffing, and by heart-hardening impurities. Like other voluptuaries, the Provenceaux (as their remaining literature attests) were accustomed to find matter for merriment in vices which would have moved wise men to tears."
Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, Lecture 7.
VII SAVONAROLA
They never fail who die
In a great cause. The block may soak their gore, Their heads may sodden in the swn, their limbs Be strung to city gates and castle walls ; But still their spirit walks abroad.
BYRON.
ABOUT the time that Columbus was setting out on his first voyage of discovery (1492), a Dominican friar, Jerome Savonarola, forty years of age, was rising into fame as a moral and political leader at Florence.
His influence began as a pulpit orator and a moral reformer. In the course of events he became a law-giver to the people of Florence, a virtual dictator over the politics as well as the morals of the city; and then, towards the years of his down- fall, the victim of a bitter partisan struggle. Six short years (1492-98) saw him first the
108 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
idol of the people and afterward done to death under a cloud of popular infamy by the same fickle populace who had once idolized him and whom he had so greatly served.
He had come to Florence in 1482 ; ibut it was not until seven years later that he began to acquire fame as a preacher in that city. His sermons were jeremiads, de- nouncing and lamenting the vices of the age, and predicting the dire punishments which God had in store for Florence. He did not spare the rulers, either of church or state. Lorenzo de' Medici was then the the autocrat of Florence, where the Medicis had ruled for half a century. Savonarola was uncompromising in his opposition to Lorenzo. The latter induced an Augus- tinian friar, Mariano, to attack Savonarola. Mariano was discomfited ; and, later, retired to Rome, where his bitter enmity to Savon- arola continued. Lorenzo died in 1492 and was succeeded by his son Piero. The moral and political condition of Florence con- tinued to degenerate under Piero de' Medici. As a result, the influence and power of Savonarola, as a censor of the evil moral
SAVONAROLA 109
condition of the city, increased. He became prior of St. Mark's, and his ecclesiastical jurisdiction was made an independent one.
In 1494 Charles VIII. of France in- vaded Italy with 60,000 men. Calamity and misery followed his march. Savona- rola went at the head of a delegation of Florentines to meet the French king at Pisa. In the mean time the Florentines expelled Piero de' Medici. Largely through the influence of Savonarola, the visit of the French was not as disastrous as it might have been. A new government was set up at Florence which was nominally a re- public. Savonarola was now by common consent the law-giver to his people as well as the moral censor of the city. The years 1494-97 were, more or less, years of a rigor- ous puritanism for the people of Florence.
A reaction was inevitable. Savonarola's denunciations had offended Pope Alexander VI. The expelled Medici were his enemies. The young bloods of Florence bridled under his rigorous morality. The aristocratic party opposed him. These enmities began in 1496, and their machinations finally effected his downfall. Savonarola was
110 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
forced into a conflict with the Pope ; first by his refusal to visit Rome, then by his opposition to the Pope's order uniting the Florentine and Tuscan Dominicans. The Pope's purpose was to withdraw Savonarola from Florence. Finally, towards the middle of 1497, Alexander VI. excommunicated Savonarola ; * not on the ground of heresy, however, but on account of his disobedience in the affair of the union of the Dominican congregations. In the latter part of that year Savonarola celebrated mass and later resumed preaching, notwithstanding the ban of excommunication. Then the Pope threatened to issue an interdict against the city of Florence, unless the Signory or government would exclude Savonarola from the pulpit or imprison him or send him to Rome. The pressure of this threat, and the final preponderance in the government of Florence of the party opposed to him, led to Savonarola's arrest, his trial and his death, May 23, 1498. He was first hung, and then his body was burned.
1 Rev. J. L. O'Neil, O.P., in a recent work, " Was Savon- arola Excommunicated?" (Boston: Marlier, Callanan & Co., Publishers), has raised an interesting question.
SAVONAROLA m
Such is the story of Savonarola. His conflict with the Pope grew out of political, moral, and disciplinary issues rather than out of any questions of doctrine.1 In all his difficulties he proclaimed himself " a true son of the Church." His indiscretions and his faults were due to his excessive earnestness and his devotion to the welfare of the people who put him to death. His motives were good and his life was unself- ish. He was a devout and holy man, though doubtless at times an enthusiast and a visionary.
The elements of opposition, unable to meet him directly on the issue of good government vs. oligarchy and debauchery, pulled wires at Eome. They sought to get him disciplined on some matter of ecclesias- tical regulation or procedure. He undoubt- edly erred in disobeying the commands of his superior ; he erred in the more impor- tant consequences of his first error, by continuing to officiate as a priest after
1 " It did not occur to him to doubt the institutions of his Church or to question her authority," says Mrs. Oli- phant (The Making of Florence). " He was no apostle of reform (as understood by Luther)," says Symonds (Hist. Renaissance).
112 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
he had been excommunicated. His enemies had him technically in the wrong — as they planned.
History has since reversed the judgment of those days. Savonarola is now generally regarded as a great and good man. One of the later Popes, it is said, contemplated canonizing him as a saint of the Church. He was revered by St. Philip Neri and many other saintly men. Raphael painted him among the doctors of the Church. Fifteen Italian bishops in 1898 took part in the Savonarola commemorative exercises at Florence.
C ANTtT : Savonarola's career
" Savonarola *' was " a man of faith, of superstition, of genius, abounding in char- ity. Contrary to Luther, who confided en- tirely in reason, he believed in personal inspiration. Arguments in his favor, as well as against him, may be drawn from his works, which, as a whole, evidence his attempt to harmonize reason with faith, Catholicity with political freedom. ... In no wise did he impugn the authority of the Roman See, although he resisted one
SAVONAROLA 113
whom he believed to be an illegitimate oc- cupant of that See, and against whom he tried to invoke a council which would re- form the Church legitimately. Pride re- sulted from popularity, opposition induced excess, but he worked with a pure con- science and without personal ambition. His opinions he endeavored to propagate by ex- ample, and not by force ; he believed in the efficacy of truth. . . . Thinking to guide a mob by means of passion and of the hurly- burly of street crowds, he fell a victim to one and the other, as commonly happens. . . . The fame of Savonarola remains sus- pended between heaven and hell, but all deplored his death, and especially, perhaps, those that had caused it. ... Not one of the followers of the great friar figures among the disciples of Luther or among the betrayers of his country's liberty. Michel- angelo, who raised bastions for his native city, and also the grandest church in Chris- tendom, always venerated Savonarola."
Cesare Cantti, Gli Eretici d' Italia, Torina, 1865, vol. i. pp. 234-235.
8
114 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
RANKE : His asceticism
" Among these rich, influential, educated, and solemn people [the people of Florence] a Dominican, Hieronymus Savonarola of Ferrara, had succeeded in making himself universally esteemed. He was, it is true, strict with himself and others, a solitary walker, a monk by inclination, and a man who also knew how to control his harsh voice. He admonished his monasterial brethren to give up all their property. He spared no one, not one of his fellow-citi- zens, the Brescians, the Florentines, nor his liege lords, the Pope and Lorenzo de' Medici, and all this could not help securing him a certain influence. But what made him really powerful were, before all else, his doctrines and his prophetic gifts."
Von Ranke, History of the Roman and German People, p. 85.
NEWMAN : A favourable view
In his sermon on the mission of St. Philip, Cardinal Newman depicts Savonarola as " a true son of St. Dominic in energy, in sever- ity of life, in contempt of merely secular learning : a forerunner of St. Pius the Fifth
SAVONAROLA 115
in boldness, in resoluteness, in zeal for the honor of the house of God, and for the res- toration of holy discipline. It was the truth of his cause, the earnestness of his convic- tions, the singleness of his aims, the impar- tiality of his censures, the intrepidity of his menaces, which constituted the secret of his success."
CREIGHTON: The lesson of his career
" Savonarola's fate (says Creighton) is a type of the dangers which beset a noble soul drawn by its Christian zeal into con- flict with the world. More and more he was driven to fight the Lord's battle with carnal weapons, till the prophet and states- man became inextricably entangled, and the message of the new life was interwoven with the political attitude of the Florentine Kepublic. Little by little he was driven into the open sea, till his frail bark was swallowed by the tempest. He encouraged Florence to adhere to an untenable position till all who wished to bring Florence into union with Italian aspirations were driven to conspire for his downfall."
Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. iii. p. 247.
116 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
CREIGHTON: Later attitude of churchmen
" Even a pope so purely secular as Alexan- der VI. is said in latter years to have re- gretted Savonarola's death. Julius II. or- dered Raffaelle to place him among the doctors of the Church in the great fresco of the ( Disputa,' and his claims to canoniza- tion were more than once discussed. The Church evidently grieved over his loss when he was gone, when political difficulties had passed away, and the memory of the fer- vent preacher of righteousness remained."
Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. iii. p. 248.
Macaulay: Savonarola not a Protestant
" The spirit of Savonarola had nothing in common with the spirit, religious or politi- cal, of the Protestants of the North."
Macaulay's Essays (Von Ranke) .
VIII BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER
" Thou hast set Thy Word as a light to my feet." — THOMAS A KEMPIS (A. D. 1425).
IT is ascertained that at least twenty- two versions, or different translations, of the Bible existed in the various tongues of Europe before Luther was born. Over seventy editions of the entire Bible in vernacular tongues were printed during the seventy years intervening from 1460 to 1530.1 The Bible was printed twenty times in the German language before Luther's translation appeared (1530).
Two copies of a German Bible, printed in 1466, are preserved in the Senatorial library at Leipsic. The Mazarin Bible is
1 The " Reportoriurn Bibliographicum," printed at Tubingen, reckons consecutively ninety-eight distinct edi- tions before the year 1500, independently of twelve other editions which, together with the Latin text, presented the glossa ordinaria or the postillas of Lyranus."
118 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
considered the earliest complete book pub- lished. It was printed in Latin about 14 5 5.1
A German edition of the Bible, published in 1460, is the earliest book printed with metal type and on both sides of the leaf.
Rev. Dr. Maitland, a learned divine of the Church of England, estimates that fifty Latin editions of the Bible were published before Luther was born. " To say nothing of parts of the Bible or of books whose place is uncertain, we know of at least twenty editions of the whole Latin Bible printed in Germany alone before Luther was born."2
Sickendorf, a biographer and disciple of Luther, mentions three German editions of the Bible, published at Wittenberg in 1470, 1483, and 1490.3
Menzel, in his history of Germany, says : " Before the time of Luther the Bible had already been translated and printed in both High and Low Dutch." 4
Throughout the middle ages the Bible was the great popular book of Europe. Dr. Maitland says that the very literature
1 Hallam, Literature of Europe, vol. i. p. 96.
2 Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 469.
8 Commentaries on Luther, libr. i. sec. 51. 4 Menzel, vol. ii. p. 223.
BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER 119
of the time is written in the words and phrases of Scripture.
Fragments of Bishop Uphilas' Scriptural translation, written in the fourth century, are our oldest specimens of the Gothic tongue. The Venerable Bede and King Alfred both contributed Anglo-Saxon translations of parts of the Bible. In the fourteenth cen- tury John de Tarvisa made a full English translation.
The Protestant biblical scholar. Bishop Usher, states that the first French transla- tion of the Bible was made in 1478. It was successively republished sixteen times before 1546. A Flemish translation by Merland, in 1210, is also mentioned by Usher. Seven editions of this version were printed before Luther's translation appeared.
The complete Bible in Spanish was edited by Boniface Ferrer, in 1405. The Spaniards are to be credited, too, with the first poly- glot edition of the Sacred Scriptures.1 This
1 Carranza. the celebrated Archbishop of Toledo, says in the Prologue to his "Commentaries": "Before the heresies of Luther appeared, I do not know that the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue were anywhere forbidden. In Spain the Bible was translated into Span- ish by order of the Catholic sovereigns, at the time when
120 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
edition was printed in six different lan- guages at Madrid, in 1515, under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes. Italian translations of the Bible were common throughout the middle ages, and numerous editions were printed at Venice, Florence, Naples, and Rome prior to Luther's time. A Bohemian Bible was published at Prague in 1488. There are Danish authorities who state that the Icelanders had an entire translation of the Scriptures in the thir- teenth century.
One of the greatest books of the middle ages is the " Imitation of Christ " by Thomas a Kempis, published about the year 1425.
We find in its pages the best evidence of the mediaeval attitude and^ practice in the matter of Bible-reading. A Kempis, who was a monk in the archdiocese of Cologne, had himself made a MS. copy of the Bible. In the first book, chapter i. of the " Imita- tion," there are some useful directions about reading the Holy Scriptures : —
" All Holy Scripture should be read in the
the Moors and Jews were allowed to live among the Christians according to their own law."
BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER 121
spirit in which it was written. Our curiosity is often a hinderance to us in reading the Scriptures, when we wish to understand and to discuss, where we ought to pass on in simplicity. ... If thou wilt derive profit, read with humility, with simplicity, with faith, and never wish to have the name of learning/'
In the eleventh chapter of the fourth book he says : —
" I shall have moreover for my consola- tion and a mirror of life Thy Holy Books, and above all Thy Most Holy Body for my especial remedy and refuge. . . . Whilst detained in the prison of this body I acknowledge that I need two things, food and light. Thou hast therefore given to me, weak as I am, Thy Sacred Body for the nourishment of my soul and body, and Thou hast set Thy word as a light to my feet. Without these two I could not live ; for the word of God is the light of soul and Thy Sacrament is the bread of life. These also may be called the two tables set on either side in the storehouse of Thy holy Church."
The mediaeval mind, as here laid bare, does not seem to raise any questions as to
122 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
whether it is wise to read the Bible or as to whether the Bible is difficult to procure. These matters are evidently not even con- templated as possible issues ; on the contrary, the excellence of Scripture reading and its necessity as "the light of the soul" are dwelt upon. Be it remembered, too, that this manual of A Kempis came at once into the hands of the laity as well as of the clergy, for it went into the vernaculars of every nation in Europe only a few years after its first publication.
In 1877 Mr. H. Stevens published, at South Kensington, a " List of Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition," respecting which an English paper makes this comment : " This catalogue will be very useful for one thing, at any rate, as disproving the popular fable about Luther '$ finding the Bible for the first time at Erfurt about 1507. Not only are there many editions of the Latin Vulgate long anterior to that time, but there were actually nine German editions of the Bible in the Caxton Exhibition earlier than 1483, the year of Luther's birth, and at least three more before the end of the century."
BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER 123
HALLAM: The Bible in the vernacular
" In the eighth and ninth centuries, when the vulgate had ceased to be generally intelligible, there is no reason to suspect any intention in the Church to deprive the laity of the Scriptures. Translations were freely made into the vernacular languages, and, perhaps, read in churches. . . . Louis the Debonair is said to have caused a Ger- man version of the New Testament to be made. Otfrid, in the same century, rendered the gospels, or, rather, abridged them, into German verse. This work is still extant.''
Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. ix. part ii.
BLUNT : The Bible open to the laity
The well-known Anglican writer, Dr. Blunt, in his " History of the Reformation " (vol. i. pp. 501-502) tells us that " there has been much wild and foolish writing about the scarcity of the Bible in the ages preceding the Reformation. It has been taken for granted that the Holy Scripture was almost a sealed book until it was printed in English by Tyndal and Coverdale, and that the only source of knowledge respecting it before
124 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
then was the translation made by Wycklrffe. The facts are . . . that all laymen who could read were, as a rule, provided with their Gospels, their Psalter, or other devo- tional portions of the Bible. Men did, in fact, take a vast amount of personal trouble with respect to the productions of the Holy Scriptures ; and accomplished by head, hand, and heart what is now chiefly done by paid workmen and machinery. The clergy studied the Word of God and made it known to the laity ; and those few among the laity who could read had abundant opportunity of reading the Bible, either in Latin or Eng- lish, up to the Reformation period."
MAITLAND: The Bible in the dark ages
" To come, however, to the question, Did people in the dark ages know anything of the Bible ? Certainly, it was not as commonly known and as generally in the hands of men as it is now, and has been almost ever since the invention of printing — the reader must not suspect me of wish- ing to maintain any such absurd opinion ; but I do think that there is sufficient evidence (1) that during that period the
BIBLES BEFOKE LUTHEK 125
Scriptures were more accessible to those who could use them, (2) were, in fact, more used, and (3) by a greater number of per- sons, than some modern writers would lead us to suppose."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 220.
MAITLAND: The Bible in Germany
Dr. Maitland says : "To say nothing of parts of the Bible, or of books whose place is uncertain, we know of at least twenty different editions of the whole Latin Bible printed in Germany only, before Luther was born. . . . Before Luther was born the Bible had been printed in Rome, Naples, Florence, and Piacenza, and Venice alone had furnished eleven editions."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 469.
KEUSS : The Bible often printed
Reuss says : " No book was so frequently published, immediately after the first inven- tion of printing, as the Latin Bible, more than one hundred editions of it being struck off before the year 1520."
126 MOOTJSD QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
HAL LAM: The First German Bible
" The first German printed Bible, bearing the arms of Frederick III., issued from the Mainz press in 1462. In 1462 Faust published a Bible commonly called the Mentz Bible."
Hallam, Introd. to Literature, part i. Lecture 3.
Another version appeared in 1466, two copies of which are still preserved in the Senatorial library at Leipsic. Other ver- sions were published rapidly.
MAITL AND : A fable about Luther
" Before Luther was born the Bible had been printed in Rome, and the printers had the assurance to memorialize his Holiness, praying that he would help them off with some copies. It had been printed, too, at Naples, Florence, and Piacenza ; and Venice alone had furnished eleven editions. No doubt, we should be within the truth if we were to say that beside the multitude of manuscript copies, not yet fallen into dis- use, the press had issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible; to say nothing of Psalters, New Testaments, or
BIBLES BEFORE LUTHER 127
other parts. And yet, more than twenty years after, we find a young man who had received " a very liberal education," who " had made great proficiency in his studies at Magdeburg, Eisenach, and Erfurt," and who, nevertheless, did not know what a Bible was, simply because " the Bible was unknown in those days. [This refers to the absurd story — as told by D'Aubigne, — of Luther " discovering " a Bible for the first time when he was twenty years old]."
Maitland, The Dark Ages, p. 506.
NOTE. — Dr. De Costa, in the " Catholic World Maga- zine" for August, 1900, tells the story of the chained Bible at Erfurt in 1507:
"No doubt there was a chained Bible at Erfurt in 1507. Chained Bibles were found two hundred years later, as chained directories are seen to-day in hotels. The preface of the pre-Luther German Bibles stated that the book was 'for the use of unlettered simple folk, lay and spiritual.' They were quoted freely in sermons, and when Luther's edition appeared, Zwingle, a fellow- reformer, charged Luther with changing and mutilating the Word of God, which was deliberately done in the King James' translation, as the revised edition now shows."
IX
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
Then sculpture and her sister arts revived, Stones leaped to form and rocks began to live, With sweeter notes each rising temple rang, A Raphael painted and a Vida sang.
POPE.
THERE was a gradual recovery from barbarism and disorder all through- out the middle ages ; but the epoch usually referred to as that of the " Revival of Learning" comes towards the close of mediaeval history. What had been going on at a slow pace during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries then broke into a canter and a gallop ; and the rapidity with which new things came into use — inventions crowding in upon each other, commerce broadening into discovery, and the material comforts of the people vastly improving — tended to make the people feel a new strength and take a more cheerful view of life.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 129
Although " the horologue of Time does not peal out the passage from one era to another," the epoch of the Revival may be said to date from the invention of printing in 1440. It culminated about the end of the century, in what was termed " the Golden Age " of Pope Leo X. Leo was one of the Medici, a Florentine family, justly famed for its patronage of the arts.
The manifestations of the epoch were in its literature, its discoveries, and its politi- cal and material advances.
The nations began to develop their ver- naculars. Poetry and history were writ- ten in other tongues besides the scholastic Latin. England had her Chaucer, and Italy her Petrarch. Vigorous German, elegant French, and sonorous Spanish were rounded and polished into literature.
The rise of free cities, the development of commerce, the Hanseatic league, and the spread of the Italian banking system were other features of the age.
Marco Polo, the famous Venetian naviga- tor, had daring competitors in Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama. They rounded the Cape of Good Hope and planted Euro-
9
130 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
pean outposts in the Indies. Finally Co- lumbus comes with his discovery of a new world, — 1492, — year of the greatest event in the Christian era.
The cannon booming at the siege of Constantinople, in 1453, was a clear arid emphatic announcement to the world that the age of gunpowder was at hand.
1. The fall of that city, then the capital of Greek culture, sent scores of learned refugees into Italy, Germany, and France, where they were received with open arms and installed as teachers in the universities.1
2. This, and the invention of printing — an almost contemporaneous occurrence — are considered the two great causes of the revival of learning.
The Greeks roused a new interest in classical study. Simultaneously there was a new interest in scientific study, partly but not entirely due to contact with the Arabs and Moors. The literature of every coun-
i " The drooping Muses then he westward called,
From the famed city by Propontic sea, What time the Turk the enfeebled Grecian thralled : Thence from their cloistered walks he set them free."
THOMSON.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 131
try felt the impulse of this awakened con- verse. It was a "new birth" to letters, and the epoch has been fitly so called, — the Kenaissance.
As for printing, it is easy to imagine its vast importance.1 It went into immediate and universal use. The Bible was in type A. D. 1455. Pamphlets, political screeds, satires, lampoons, caricatures, and popular songs were sent into circulation by the thousands. Letters were brought down to the masses.
We may properly add as other and more remote causes of the revival : —
3. The Crusades, which, the more they are studied, the more drastic does their in- fluence on European civilization appear.
4. The great universities, founded in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, under the fostering care of the Church, now efflorescing under the ray of reflected light
1 u Gutenberg, without knowing it, was the Mechan- ist of the New World. In creating the communications of new ideas, he had assured the independence of reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers con- tained in it more power than the armies of kings and the thunder of pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language." — LAMARTINE.
132 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
let in from the East ; — stored with the in- tellectual energies of the preceding ages and conserving the libraries of Europe.
The larger number of the great univer- sities of modern Europe were established in the middle ages. Those of Paris, Oxford', Bologna, and Ferrara were in existence for a century or more prior to A. D. 1000. As to the age of the others, the following are the most generally accepted dates: Sala- manca, 1200 ; Cambridge, 1280 ; Prague, 1358; Vienna, 1365; Ingolstadt, 1372; Leipsic, 1408 ; Louvain, 1425 ; Basle, 1469; Alcala, 1517.
Considering the population and condition of Europe at the time, fifteen universities was a generous allowance; and it hardly accords with the popular notion of the cul- ture of those days that so great provision was required for higher education. This is especially true when we are informed that Oxford had a larger enrolment during the middle ages than it has had at any time since, — some three thousand halls being required for the convenience of students, and the attendance varying from 5000 to 25,000. The eloquence of Abelard is said to have
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 133
drawn nearly 30,000 students to the Uni- versity of Paris, and they came from all parts of Europe. The reconquest from barbarism must have been in an advanced stage, when the mind of Europe created such emporiums of learning.
HALLAM: Mediaeval universities
" At Oxford, under Henry III., it is said there were 30,000 scholars, — an exaggera- tion which seems to imply that the real number was very great. A respectable writer asserts that there were fully 10,000 at Bologna about the same time. ... At the death of Charles VII. in 1453, it [the University of Paris] is said to have con- tained 25,000 students."
Hallam, View of the Middle Ages, ch. ix. part ii.
ADAMS : Scholasticism organized the univer- sities
" In another direction the age of scholas- ticism exerted a permanent influence upon the intellectual history of the world. This was in the organization of the universities of Europe. The intense eagerness to learn which characterized the times seized upon
134 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
the best of the already existing schools and transformed them. The number of students grew enormously, and at the same time the number and skill of the teachers. The branches of learning began to be differen- tiated from one another, and teachers and students to specialize in their studies. New methods of study were also introduced, — dialectics in theology and the use of Jus- tinian's code in law. With the increase in numbers, these schools took on a more defi- nite organization and became great self- governing communities of a democratic cast, or at least democratic after a certain stage in the course of education had been reached. Together they formed indeed a kind of international community with a common language, very frequent immigration from one to another, and a recognized standing in any one for those who held the degrees of another. In most of these universities the student life and much of the instruction centred in the college system, which survives to-day in the English universities."
European History (p. 264), by Geo. B. Adams, Professor of History in Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899.
THE REVIVAL, OF LEARNING 135
SCHAFF: Renaissance matured under the Pope
" This literary and artistic movement ex- tended from the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century. It is variously styled the Revival of Letters., the age of Humanism, by the French term Renaissance, and the Italian Rinascimento. In the wid- est sense the Renaissance comprehends the revival of literature and art, the progress of philosophy and criticism, the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the extinction of feudalism, the development of the great nationalities and languages of modern Europe, the emancipation of en- slaved intelligence, the expansion and freedom of thought, the invention of the printing press, the discovery and exploration of America and the East ; in one word, all the progressive developments of the later middle ages. . . . The Renaissance was born in the Republic of Florence, under the patronage of the Medici family, and matured in Rome under the patronage of the Pope. From these two centres it spread all over Italy, France, Germany, Holland, and Eng- land. It ascended the papal throne with
136 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
Nicholas V. (1447-55), the founder of the Vatican Library, and was nurtured by his successor, Pius II. (1458-64), Sixtus IV. (1471-84), who founded the Sistine Chapel, Julius II. (1503-13), who called Bramante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael to Rome, and Leo. X. (1513-22), who gave them the most liberal encouragement in their works of art. The Renaissance was the last great movement of history in which Italy and the Popes took the lead."
The Renaissance (ch. ii. pp. 9-10), by Philip Schaff , D.D., Prof, of Church History in Union Theological Seminary. New York : G-. P. Putnam & Sons, 1891.
PASTOR: Encouraged by the Church
" The partial and short-sighted view which condemned the whole Renaissance movement as dangerous to faith and morals, cannot be considered as that of the Church. At this time, as throughout the whole of the middle ages, she showed herself to be the patroness of all wholesome intellectual progress, the protectress of all true culture and civilization."
History of the Popes (since the close of the Mid- dle Ages), by Dr. Ludwig Pastor, Prof, of His- tory in the University of Innsbruck, vol. i. p. 54. London: John Hodges, Pub., 1891.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 137
SYMONDS: Italy led the way
" The reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was that Italy possessed a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations were still semi- barbarous. It was at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire in her Communes of the thirteenth, but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last began."
J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Age of the Despots, ch. i.
PASTOR: Nicholas V. and the revival of learning
" It has often been said that the Renais- sance itself ascended the Papal Throne with Nicholas V. Yet it must not be forgotten that the great Pontiff was throughout on the side of the genuine and Christian Re- naissance. The founder of the Vatican Li- brary, like Fra Angelico whom he employed to paint his study in that palace, knew how
138 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
to reconcile his admiration for the intellec- tual treasures of the past with the claims of the Christian religion ; he could honor both Cicero and St. Augustine, and could appre- ciate the grandeur and beauty of heathen antiquity without being thereby led to forget Christianity. The leading idea of Nicholas V. was to make the capital of Christendom the capital also of classical literature and the centre of science and art. The realization of this noble project was, however, attended with many difficulties and great dangers. If Nicholas V. overlooked or underestimated the perils which threat- ened ecclesiastical interests from the side of the heathen revolutionary Renaissance, this is the only error that can be laid to his charge. His aim was essentially lofty and noble, and worthy of the Papacy. The fear- lessness of this large-hearted man in face of the dangers of the movement — a fearless- ness which has in it something imposing — strikes us all the more forcibly when we consider the power and influence which the Renaissance had at this time attained in Italy. The attempt to assume its guidance was a great deed and one worthy of the
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 139
successor of the Gregories and the Inno- cents."
Pastor's History of the Popes, ch. i. p. 55.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPEDIA: Began in Italy
" The Renaissance must, indeed, be viewed mainly as an internal process whereby spirit- ual energies latent in the middle ages were developed into actuality and formed a men- tal habit for the modern world. The pro- cess began in Italy, and gradually extended to the utmost bounds of Europe, producing similar results in every nation and establish- ing a common form of civilization."
Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. xx. p. 238.
1
INDULGENCES
Let us do no injustice to the beliefs of our ancestors. — HINDOO SAYING.
iHE word " indulgence/' according to Webster, is derived from the Latin verb indulgere, "to be kind or tender to one." He defines an indulgence to be : " Remission of the temporal punish- ment due to sins, after the guilt of sin has been remitted by sincere repentance ; abso- lution from the censures and public penances of the Church." 1
This, though not fully explicit, does not differ greatly from the definition given by Catholics themselves in their catechisms and by their recognized authorities, both before
i An indulgence is thus denned by the Century Dic- tionary : " A remission of the punishment still due to sin after sacramental absolution, this remission being valid in the court of conscience and before God, and being made by an application of the treasure of the Church on the part of a lawful superior." This definition in respect to clearness also leaves something to be desired.
INDULGENCES 141
and after the time of the Protestant Refor- mation. As a definition, however, it may not prove so clear and comprehensive as the average reader would desire. Indulgences have played a part in history, and it is quite important to obtain a right grasp of their nature and object.
We clear the ground for this right under- standing by stating what indulgences are not. They are not licenses to commit sin ; neither are they pardons for sins already committed. Having disposed of these mis- apprehensions, we may take up Webster's definition and examine its terms.
An indulgence is a remission granted by the Pope or Church " of the temporal pun- ishment due to sins : " — a discharge or par* don from some kind of punishment which would otherwise have to be endured.
But what is meant by " temporal punish- ment due to sins" ? In the Bible (2 Kings xii. 13-14), the Prophet Nathan says to David : " The Lord also has taken away thy sin ; nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, for this thing the child that is born of thee shall surely die." Though
142 MOOTED QEESTIONS OF HISTORY
the eternal guilt of David's sin was forgiven, the temporal punishment was still to be ex- piated. The Church imposed penances upon its repentant children as a commutation of the temporal punishment due sin. Among the early Christians, severe penances were imposed on those of the faithful who con- fessed to grievous sins. Violation of the Sabbath day, by any servile work, for in- stance, was punished by three days on bread and water. Perjury was punishable by the sinner being obliged to sell all his goods and give the proceeds to the poor. In the course of time it became a more general practice to remit these severe penances upon the penitent complying with certain condi- tions, such as prayer and almsgiving ; and this mitigation or remission was regarded an indulgence on the part of the Church.
It never was the teaching of the Church, nor the belief of the Christians in any age, that an indulgence was a forgiveness of sin, much less a license to commit sin.
Luther, when he attacked the alleged traffic in indulgences, did not question the right of the Church to grant them, nor did he say that they were not of great spiritual
INDULGENCES 143
value.1 It was somewhat later in his career that he came out against the whole teaching on indulgences ; it was not until he struck at other Catholic teachings, such as Papal supremacy, priestly celibacy, and the neces- sity of good works for salvation.
Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, together with confession and repentance, were the conditions prescribed in the famous bull of Leo X., proclaiming an indulgence. Even D'Aubigne' says : " In the Pope's bull some- thing was said of repentance of the heart and confession of the lips." 2 Pope Leo X. desired to use the alms thus contributed in completing St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome,3 than which
" What could be
Of earthly structures in His honor piled Of sublimer aspect ? Majesty, Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled."
1 He did not as yet impugn the doctrine of indulgen- ces itself, and he expressed his conviction that their good father, the Pope, must be altogether unaware of the ex- tent to which such abuses [sale of indulgences] were al- lowed to prevail." — Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xx. p. 326.
2 Vol. i. p. 214.
8 St. Peter's was begun in 1506 and completed in 1629. It cost nearly fifty million dollars.
144 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, was com- missioned by the Archbishop of Mentz and Magdeburg to preach the indulgence in Germany. Luther, an Augustinian friar, was moved to denounce Tetzel's methods and to point out his mistakes. At first the conflict seemed to be merely a " monkish quarrel."
As to what Tetzel's mistakes were, there is a mass of controversy. It was charged that his way of presenting the advantages of indulgences to the people partook of the nature of a sale. Still, D'Aubignc?, an ultra- Protestant historian, tells us that " the hand that delivered the indulgence could not receive the money, — that was forbid- den under the severest penalties/'1 Con- fession and repentance were always made prerequisites.
But the very payment of money as a part of a religious duty, whether for alms or for practical good works, could quite easily take on the appearance of a purchase. Es- pecially would this be the ease if the other and more essential requirements, such as true sorrow, humble confession, and full
i Vol. i. p. 214.
INDULGENCES 145
reparation, were slurred over and the most stress laid upon almsgiving.
An eminent Catholic authority (Cardinal Gibbons in his " Faith of our Fathers," page 393) says : " Tetzel's conduct was disavowed and condemned by the repre- sentative of the Holy See. The Council of Trent, which was held some time after- wards, took effectual measures to put a stop to all irregularities regarding indul- gences, and issued the following decree : ( Wishing to correct and amend the abuses which have crept into them, and on oc- casion of which this signal name of Indul- gences is blasphemed by heretics, the holy Synod enjoins in general, by the present decree, that all wicked traffic for obtaining them, which has been the fruitful source of many abuses among the Christian people, should be wholly abolished.' " l
Indulgences as defined A.D. 15OO
The following definitions of indulgences are taken from popular books of instruction that were current in Germany at the end
1 Sess. xxv., Dec. de Indulgentiis. 10
146 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The Seelenfuehrer says : " Know ye, that indulgence does not forgive your sins, but only remits the punishment which you have deserved. Know ye, that you can obtain no indulgence when you are in sin, and have not confessed and truly repented, and really determined to improve your life ; for otherwise all is to no purpose."
The Summa Johannis, of the year 1480, declares that " only he who sincerely repents of his sins can gain the indulgence ... if the man be in a state of mortal sin he can- not gain the indulgence, for it is not given to sinners."
" To those who said that indulgence was forgiveness of sins for money, and therefore that it could be bought," the explanation of the Articles of the Creed (A. D. 1486), re- marks : " That it was a question of the praise and honor of God, and not of the collection of money."
Again, " The indulgence is not given to. those who simply contribute to the building of churches, unless they are in a state of grace, and give out of piety, in true faith,
INDULGENCES 147
with great confidence in the communion of Saints, and their merits, in whose honor and praise the churches are built, and with special confidence in the mercy and help of God."
See Janssen, History of the German People, vol. i. pp. 41-42.
Documentary Evidences
For a full and scholarly review of the documentary aspects of the indulgence of 1517 the reader is referred to Janssen's "History of the German People," and es- pecially to the fourteenth letter in his An mein Kritiker (To my Critics), Freiburg, 1882. The bull proclaiming the indul- gence and the instructions to the preachers of the indulgence throughout Germany are quoted to show that confession, sincere re- pentance, and fasting were conditions to be insisted upon with much emphasis from all who sought the indulgence. Even Tetzel, in his anti-theses, directed against Luther's theses, is quoted as explaining that no indulgence can be gained except by sincere repentance and confession. No alms were to be demanded ; contributions were to be
148 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
voluntary. " That in spite of the strict regu- lations of the instructions to the preachers of the indulgence, grievous abuses occurred, I have," says Janssen, " set forth in my history (vol. ii. p. 77)." All the documents of the case have been gathered by Kapp, a Lutheran authority (Leipsic, 1721), and Janssen's citations are to Kapp's collection.
Decrees of the Council of Trent (A.D. 1545)
The Council of Trent asserts that the power of conferring indulgences was given by Christ to the Church; that she has always used this power; that the use of indulgences, as being most salutary, is to be retained in the Church ; that those are condemned by the Council who say that the Church has no power of granting them. In granting them, moderation is to be ob- served, lest Church discipline be enervated. Abuses are to be reformed. All evil gains are to be abolished. Other abuses, that cannot be specially prohibited, are to be reported in the Provincial Synod by the Bishop, reviewed by the other Bishops in the Synod, and referred to the Pope, "that thus the gift of the holy indulgences may be dis-
INDULGENCES 149
pensed to all the faithful, piously, holily, and incorruptibly."
Sess. xxv. ch. 21, Waterworks translation, p. 277.
" It is decreed that these heavenly treas- ures of the Church are administered not for gain but for godliness."
Sess. xxv. ch. 9.
CARDINAL WISEMAN: Defines indulgences
The learned Cardinal Wiseman, in a pastoral letter, says : " Many persons will be inclined to incredulity when I tell them that an indulgence is no pardon for sin of any sort, past, present, or future. It is no more than a remission by the Church, in virtue of the keys, of a portion, or the entire, of the temporal punishment due to
sin."
Cardinal Wiseman, London Tablet, June 17, 1854.
CARDINAL GIBBONS: Defines indulgences
" The word indulgence originally signified favor, remission, or forgiveness. Now it is commonly used in the sense of unlawful gratification, and of free scope to the
150 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
passions. Hence, when some ignorant or prejudiced persons hear of the Church granting an indulgence, the idea of license to sin is at once presented to their minds. An indulgence is simply a remission, in whole or in part, through the superabun- dant merits of Jesus Christ and His saints, of the temporal punishment due to God on account of sin, after the guilt and eternal punishment have been remitted. It should be borne in mind that, even after our guilt is removed, there often remains some pun- ishment to be undergone, either in this life or in the next, as an expiation to divine sanctity and justice."
Cardinal Gibbons, Faith of Our Fathers, pp. 384-385.
WILMERS : Definition by a Jesuit authority
" An indulgence is a remission of temporal punishment due to sin after the sin itself has been remitted, granted outside the sac- rament of penance. In the sacrament of penance the temporal punishment is com- muted into a lighter penance ; by indul- gence it is remitted ; not simply, however, but by the application of the satisfactions
INDULGENCES 151
of Christ and of the saints intrusted to the Church's keeping. . . . Indulgences are salutary, not only because they remit tem- poral punishment due to sin, but also be- cause they encourage sinners to become reconciled to God, and promote the fre- quentation of the sacraments and the practice of good works. If, at times, alms- giving is prescribed as a condition for gain- ing an indulgence, the indulgence is in that case no more purchased for money than heaven is purchased by any other alms given with a view to eternal salvation.''
Handbook of Christian Religion (pp. 360-362), by Rev. W. Wilmers, S. J. New York: Benziger Bros., Pub., 1891.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA: The Catholic teaching stated
" Indulgence in Roman Catholic theology is defined as the remission, in whole or in part, by ecclesiastical authority, to the peni- tent sinner of the temporal punishment due for sin. It must carefully be borne in mind that in Roman Catholic orthodoxy indul- gence is never absolutely gratuitous, and that those only can, in any circumstances, validly receive it who are in full communion
152 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
with the Church, and have resorted to the sacrament of penance, in which alone, after due contrition and confession, provision is made for the graver penalty of sin."
Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xii. pp. 846-847. ,
ADAMS: Money was given as alms
"A letter of indulgence was a written document granted by some one in authority in the Church, by which, in view of some pious act, the temporal penalties of sin were said to be remitted or changed in character in favor of the holder. The letter itself, which was written in Latin as an of- ficial document of the Church, stated that the remission was of no avail without due repentance and forsaking of sin. For three centuries or more it had been customary in the Church to grant these letters in return for donations of money to be applied to charitable uses or to advance the interests of the Church on the theory that the gift of alms was a pious act which might take the place of penance in other forms."
European History (p. 302), by Geo. B. Adams, Professor of History in Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899.
XI
THE CAUSE AND SUCCESS OF PROTESTANTISM
For, in fact, it is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. . . . If Luther had been born in the tenth century, he would have effected no Reformation. If he had never been born at all, it is evident that the sixteenth century could not have elapsed with- out a great schism in the church.
MACAULAY.
CAUSE and pretext are two different things. The occasion for the out- break of Lutheranism in Germany was the method pursued by Tetzel and other monks in the preaching and grant- ing of indulgences. As well might we at- tribute the American Revolution to the destruction of the gunpowder stored at Lexington and Concord, where
" the embattled farmer stood, And fired the shot heard round the world,"
154 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
as to make Tetzel's extravagance and abuse the cause of the Protestant revolution. The Lexington gun set in motion multiform and latent causes that reached back for a gen- eration. The fight on indulgences broad- ened into a clash of authority that swept into its current causes existing for centuries.
These causes existed from the beginning of the Christian era, and they exist to-day. During the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies they expressed themselves in the heresies of Berengarius, the Albigenses, Peter Waldo, Huss, and Wycliffe. They have since continued to operate with Prot- estantism, splitting it up into numbers of warring sects, by means of local and pro- vincial reformation-moves, such as the Methodist secession from the Church of England.
The Protestant Reformation, in fact, does not differ in cause from the great heresies which preceded it. All had their source in the tendency of the human mind to set private judgment above established author- ity, whether in religion, law, or letters.
The time was not ripe for a successful revolution when Wycliffe wrote, or when
PROTESTANTISM : CAUSE ; SUCCESS 655
Berengarius preached ; or these men lacked Luther's alternate cunning and boldness ; or they failed to lay hold of the means and methods of success which he eagerly grasped. Here was the difference : it was not in cause, it was merely in circumstance and success.
The moral and material condition of the Church was not bad at the epoch Luther appeared. It was worse a century earlier — at the time of the " great schism." The circumstances of the Lutheran movement, which made it a successful revolution, may be briefly stated as follows :
1. It everywhere sought the protection and support of princes. The Emperor Maximilian, Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and Philip of Hesse were Luther's stead- fast friends. In the first instance, they favored him because of their dislike of the Papal power. Afterwards he made it their interest to join forces with him. He flat- tered their power. He taught that they were rulers by divine right, and that un- questioning obedience was the religious duty of the subject. He made them the arbiters on ecclesiastical questions. A church subservient and accommodating to
156 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
the civil power was exceedingly agreeable to potentates whose absolutism had always been, more or less, interfered with by bish- ops and Popes. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa patronized the Reformation ; in Den- mark, Christian II. ; in England, Henry VIII., for a time, and Elizabeth ; in France, the Court of Navarre and the Prince of Conde ; in the Netherlands, William of Orange.
2. It utilized the rich lands and treas- ures of the monasteries with astute policy. To the kings, electors, and petty princes the reformers virtually said : " Embrace our cause and we will give you the wealth of. the monasteries and the churches. It will pay you well. It will fill your cof- fers, and the new religion will put a salve upon your consciences by calling this expe- dition of plunder a new crusade, — a stroke against the minions of Satan and the dis- ciples of anti-Christ." The bait to avarice worked powerful conversions ; the adhesion of princes to the new creed being followed by a public profession of faith by way of a raid on the convents. The Elector of gaxony filled his sideboard with vessels
PROTESTANTISM : CAUSE ; SUCCESS 157
taken from the sacristies of churches. Luther remarked with shrewd humor : "The ostensories of the churches made many converts to the new gospel." Gus- tavus Vasa, in Sweden, Christian of Den- mark, and Henry VIII. of England, made the suppression of the monasteries the first act in the drama of the Reformation.
After the wealth of the Church had gone to the kings and princes, and through them to the court favorites, the reformers could sagely say : " Our fortunes and yours are inseparable. If we fall, you lose your new properties. You read your title to them through our teachings. Let the old re- ligion reconquer and there will have to be restitution."
3. There is no doubt that the abolition of celibacy brought to the Protestant move- ment a great body of ex-monks who worked for it with the zeal of men working for the gratification of desires and their own sal- vation from social obloquy. The Teutonic knights went over in a body, on this prin- ciple. The vituperation and vigor of the new gospel came, in a large degree, from this following.
158 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
4. The art of printing was another, and, perhaps, a principal reason for the success, in 1517, of what had failed in the previous centuries. The reformers made instant and effective use of this means of sowing broad- cast their views. They multiplied books; pamphlets, satires, burlesques, caricatures, and fiery appeals. These methods naturally moved the populace and won partisans.
BISHOP STUBBS : Won by force
" Where Protestantism was an idea only, as in France and Italy, it was crushed out by the Inquisition ; where, in conjunction with political power, and sustained by ecclesiastical confiscation, it became a physical force, there it was lasting. It is not a pleasant view to take of the doctrinal changes, to see that where the movements toward it were pure and unworldly, it failed ; where it was seconded by territorial greed and political animosity, it succeeded."
Bishop Stubbs, Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History, p. 233.
MACAULiAY : Methods of the Reformers
" We cannot but remember that libels scarcely less scandalous than those of
PROTESTANTISM : CAUSE ; SUCCESS 159
Hebert, mummeries scarcely less absurd than those of Clootz, and crimes scarcely less atrocious than those of Marat, disgrace the early history of Protestantism."
Macaulay's Essays : " Burleigh."
HAL.LAM : Current fallacies
" Whatever may be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther's doctrines, we should be very careful, in considering the Reformation as a part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers, — like D'Aubigne, for example. Such is this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the pre- vailing superstitions, was desirous of intro- ducing a more rational system of religion ; or, that he contended for freedom of in- quiry, and the boundless privileges of indi- vidual judgment ; or, what others have been pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learn- ing and ancient philosophy led him to at- tack the ignorance of the monks and the crafty policy of the Church, which with- stood all liberal studies. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every
160 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
man of plain understanding — excepting, perhaps, D'Aubigne — who is acquainted with the writings of the early reformers or who has considered their history, must acknowledge.'*
Hallam, History of Literature, vol. i. p. 165.
MOSHEIM: Much violence
"For every impartial and attentive ob- server of the rise and progress of the Refor- mation will acknowledge that wisdom and prudence did not always attend the trans- actions of those that were concerned in this glorious cause ; that many things were done with violence, temerity, and precipitation : and what is still worse, that several of the principal agents in this great revolution were actuated more by the impulse of pas- sions and views of interest than by a zeal for the advancement of true religion."
Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History.
HALLAM: Force used in England
" An historian whose bias was certainly not unfavorable to Protestantism (Burnett, vol. iii. pp. 190, 196) confesses that all en- deavors were too weak to overcome the aver-
PROTESTANTISM: CAUSE; SUCCESS 161
sion of the people towards reformation, and even intimates that German troops were sent for from Calais on account of the bigotry with which the bulk of the nation adhered to the old superstition. This is somewhat an humiliating admission, that the Protes- tant faith was imposed upon our ancestors by a foreign army. It is certain that the re-establishment of popery on Mary's acces- sion must have been acceptable to a large part or perhaps the majority of the nation."
Hallam, Const. Hist, of England, vol. i. ch. ii.
MACAULAY : How Protestantism succeeded in England
"A king whose character may be best described by saying that he was despotism itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a servile Parliament, — such were the instruments by which Eng- land was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest.'*
Macaulay's Essays : " Hallam." 11
162 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
SMILES : In Ireland
" The ' Reformation from Popery ' was completed in Elizabeth's reign. The history of this movement in Ireland is, throughout, one of merciless persecution, of wholesale spoliation, and of murderous cruelty. The instruments by which it was accomplished were despotic monarchs, unprincipled min- isters, a rapacious aristocracy, and venal and slavish parliaments. It sprung from brutal passion, was nurtured in selfish and corrupt policy, and was consummated in bloodshed and horrid crime. 6 The work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest/ Such was the e Reformation/ and such were its instruments; and the consequences which flowed from it, at least in Ireland, were of a kindred character for centuries to come."
Samuel Smiles, History of Ireland and the Irish People under the Government of England.
BRITISH ENCYCLOPAEDIA: In Sweden
" In Sweden the Reformation was estab- lished concurrently with the political revo-
PROTESTANTISM: CAUSE; SUCCESS 163
lution which placed Gustavus Yasa on the throne. It was, however, only too appar- ent that the patriot king was largely influ- enced by the expectation of replenishing his exhausted exchequer from the revenues of the Church, and, as in Germany and Eng- land, the assent of the nobility was gained by their admission to a considerable share in the confiscated property."
Encyclopaedia Britannica: " Reformation," vol. xx. p. 336.
fHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS
Reputation is an idle and most false im- position ; oft got without merit, and lost with- out deserving. — SHAKESPEARE.
LUTHER and Melanchthon were the leaders of Protestantism in Ger- many, Calvin and Zwinglius in France and Switzerland, and John Knox in Scotland. In England and Sweden the monarchs, Henry VIII. and Gustavus Vasa, were the reformers.
Luther was a man of force, audacity, and great power of expression. He is criticised for his violence, his cunning, and his roy- stering. Melanchthon was the scholar of the Reformation, and the gentleman, too, perhaps. Beyond the charge of wavering in his doctrines and frequently changing his views, he is the least assailed of any of the reformers. Calvin was the master
CHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS 165
of a polished and logical style. His char- acter was grave, gloomy, and despotic. Zwinglius was impetuous and warlike; he died at the head of a band of soldiers in 15.31. Knox, who has been termed the "ruffian of the Reformation," was coarse, violent, and gloomy, but master of a style of rude eloquence that swayed what he termed the "rascally multitude."
All of these men, except Calvin and Melanchthon, had been ordained priests prior to their rupture with the Church. Luther married a nun ; Knox signalized his revolt from Rome by taking a wife, and Cal- vin and Zwinglius married wealthy widows.
Luther's sermons are the best evidences of his style. His shrewd adaptation of doctrines to please princes and conciliate powerful magnates shows his cunning and astuteness. He permitted Philip of Hesse to have two wives, but he enjoined secrecy lest the " rough peasants '' might also claim that privilege. His "Table Talk" purports to be a collection of his wit and wisdom delivered at the Black Eagle tavern, where he met boon companions and drank copious quantities of wine. The famous saying, —
166 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
u Who loves not woman, wine, and song Remains a fool his whole life long,"
is Goethe's rendering of a sentiment very generally attributed to Luther. Hallam seems to believe the supposition " almost justified that there was a vein of insanity in his very remarkable character." l
Calvin's vindictiveness is sufficiently shown in his conduct towards Servetus. He lured his victim to Geneva and then had him condemned to death. Geneva was governed by Blue Laws of a much stricter kind than those which prevailed in the New England colonies. At times the sway of Calvin is comparable to the French " Reign of Terror/' and the character of Marat, as drawn by Carlyle, has resemblances to that of Calvin.
FKOUDE: An unfavorable view of the Re- formers
" Lord Macaulay can hardly find epithets strong enough to express his contempt for Archbishop Cranmer. Mr. Buckle places
1 Constitutional History of England, vol. i. ch. ii. p. 73 n.
CHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS 167
Cranmer by the side of Bonner, and hesi- tated which of the two characters is the more detestable. . . . An unfavorable es- timate of the Reformers, whether just or unjust, is unquestionably gaining ground among our advanced thinkers. "
James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, Times of Erasmus and Luther, vol. i. p. 48. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1884.
SCHAFF-HERZOG : Condoned bigamy
" Here we may mention his [Luther's] at- titude towards the second marriage of Philip of Hesse. This prince, loving another woman than his wife, secured the opinion from the Reformer that while monogamy was the original institution of God, cases might arise to justify bigamy ; but the second marriage should, for prudential reasons, be kept secret. The marriage took place March 3, 1540, in the presence of Melanchthon." Schaff-Herzog Dictionary, article on Luther.
TYTLER: A dispensation for polygamy
"While the tenets of Luther were rapidly gaining ground in the North, the following fact will convince us that he ar-
168 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
rogated to himself an authority very little short of that of the Pope in Germany. Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, had taken a disgust at his wife, a princess of the house of Saxony, who, he alleged, was intolerably ugly and addicted to drunken- ness. The secret was that he had fallen in love with a young lady of the name of Saal, whom he wanted to marry. Luther at this time, with five of his followers, was holding a kind of synod at Wittenberg, for the regulation of matters regarding the Church. The Landgrave presented to him a petition, setting forth his case, in which he at the same time insinuated that in case Luther and the doctors should refuse him a dispensation of polygamy he should perhaps be obliged to ask it of the Pope. The synod were under considerable diffi- culty. The interest of the Landgrave was too considerable to be disregarded, and at the same time, to favor him, they must as- sume to themselves a power of breaking a law of Scripture. The temporal considera- tion was more powerful than the spiritual one. They agreed to give Philip a dispen- sation for polygamy, and he accordingly
CHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS 169
married his favorite, — even with the con- sent of his former wife."
Tytler, Universal History, vol. iv. book vi. ch. xx. p. 290. New York : Harper Bros., Pub., 1857.
SCHAFF-HERZOG: Calvin's intolerance
"It is idle to shield Calvin from the charge of bringing about Servetus' death, . . . but at the same time it is easy to ex- cuse him on the ground of the persecuting spirit of the age. Strange as it may seem, the Protestants who had felt the persecu- tions of Rome were ready to persecute all who followed not with them."
Schaff-Herzog Dictionary, article on Calvin.
HALLAM: Knox advocated persecution
"In a conversation with Maitland, he [Knox] asserted most explicitly the duty of putting idolaters to death. Nothing can be more sanguinary than the Reformer's spirit in this extraordinary interview. St. Dominick could not have surpassed him. It is strange to see men professing all the time our modern creed of charity and tolera- tion extol these sanguinary spirits of the sixteenth century."
Hallam, Const. History of England, vol. i. ch. iil p. 147 n.
170 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
JOHN KNTOX: A reformer's idea of tolera- tion
" While the posterity of Abraham/' says Knox, " were few in number, and while they sojourned in different countries, they were merely required to avoid all participation in the idolatrous rites of the heathen; but as soon as they prospered into a kingdom, and had obtained possession of Canaan, they were strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all the monuments and in- centives. The same duty was now incum- bent on the professors of the true religion in Scotland : formerly, when not more than ten persons in a country were enlightened., it would have been foolishness to have de- manded of the nobility the suppression of idolatry. But now when knowledge had been increased," etc.
Quoted in Dr. M'Crie's Life of John Knox, vol. ii. p. 122.
XIII
THE REFORMATION AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Decide all controversy by Infallible artillery ; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks ; Call fire and sword and desolation A godly-thorough-Reformation.
BUTLER: Hudibras.
TO what does the world of to-day owe such religious liberty as it pos- sesses ? Certainly to no principle or tendency born of the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century. The Spanish Inquisition was not abolished until 1814. Catholic emancipation from the persecution of English Protestantism did not transpire until 1829. The nineteenth century came, but the laws of Saxony, disqualifying Catholics from holding property, still per- sisted in the " cradle of the Reformation." Down to 1850 it was still a capital offence
172 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
for any Catholic clergyman to cross the Danish frontier ; down to 1876 only Prot- estants could hold office in New Hampshire ; and even in our own day no Catholic may hold an office of trust or honor in Sweden. The Protestant Keformation sought to sub- stitute one form of orthodoxy for another. The old orthodoxy fought for its life ; if Protestantism triumphed, it knew that the rack and the fagot would be its fate. Keligious hate and suspicion were engen- dered, and persecutions followed as a natural consequence. Religious liberty came only after the Reformation movement had run its course, and freedom of conscience is a reaction rather than a result.
Luther taught and preached the propriety and need of religious persecution. So did Calvin. The heavy treatise that the latter wrote on the "Punishment of Heretics" may still be consulted by any reader who wishes to study the arguments justifying the burning of human beings for religious differences. Luther had his victim in Karl- stadt, whom he banished and exiled. Calvin had his victim in Serve tus, whom he decoyed to Geneva and burned.
REFORMATION AN1> LIBERTY 173
These apostles were zealously followed in this particular by all their disciples. Beza, in France, and the leading English church- men, even down to the eighteenth century, were believers in the right and duty of persecution for religious convictions.1
The policy of nations was guided by that belief. The first condition of religious in- tolerance — a union of Church and State — was taken at the start by every country which adopted Protestantism. The triumph of the Eeformation was always marked by the immediate promulgation of laws against Catholics and dissenters. This was the case in Hesse and Saxony ; under Gustavus Yasa in Sweden ; under Elizabeth in Eng- land ; and under the House of Orange in the Netherlands.
The colonists of Massachusetts, fleeing from religious tyranny, — and of whom we might naturally expect they would spurn that
1 An article in the Westminster Confession of Faith (CXX1I. p. 86, ed. 1845) asserts that " the civil magistrate hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed."
174 MOOTEI> QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
which had exiled them, — were yet so im- bued with the cult of the Keformation time that they re-enacted on American soil the odious intolerance of their mother country. Quakers were imprisoned, Baptists were banished, and " Papists " were pilloried and tortured. Men had to forget the unnatural feelings born of the Reformation time, and to revert to natural common-sense before they concluded to give up persecution. The hates, the envies, and the prejudices of the religious upheaval had to be cleared away before men's minds could calmly arrive at an earnest desire for toleration. When there is an outcropping of the old spirit, we may be sure that it is a reversion to what has been termed the "fury of the Ref- ormation time." *
LECKY : Catholic and Protestant persecution
"Catholicism was an ancient Church. She had gained a great part of her influ-
1 " It is very strange and very humiliating for human reason that when the middle age had vanished ; when Charron and Montaigne had just written those books so impregnated with the spirit of scepticism, precisely then, in the full light of the sixteenth century, persecution of sorcerers entered on the most violent phase. " (Rambaud, History of Civilization, vol. i. p. 571, Paris, 1883.)
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 175
ence by vast services to mankind. She rested avowedly on the principle of author- ity. She was defending herself against ag- gression and innovation. . . . She might point to the priceless blessings she had be- stowed upon humanity, to the slavery she had destroyed, to the civilization she had founded, to the many generations she had led with honor to the grave. She might show how completely her doctrines were interwoven with the whole social system, how fearful would be the convulsion if they were destroyed, and how absolutely incompatible they were with the acknowl- edgment of private judgment. These con- siderations would not make her blameless, but they would, at least, palliate her guilt." " But what shall we say of a church that was but a thing of yesterday; a church that had as yet no services to show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind; a church that was by profession the creature of private judgment, and was in reality generated by the intrigues of a corrupt court, which nevertheless suppressed by force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to salvation ; which by all her
176 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTOKY
organs and with all her energies perse- cuted those who clung to the religion of their fathers ? What shall we say of a religion which comprised at most but a fourth part of the Christian world, and which the first explosion of private judg- ment had shivered into countless sects, which was nevertheless so pervaded by the spirit of dogmatism that each of these sects asserted its distinctive doctrines with the same confidence, and persecuted with the same unhesitating violence, as a church which was venerable with the homage of twelve centuries ? ... So strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it may, I believe, be truly said that there were more instances of partial toler- ation being advocated by Roman Catholics than by orthodox Protestants."
Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i. p. 51, ed.
1870.
GUIZOT: Violation of conscience
" The Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury was not aware of the true principles of intellectual liberty. ... On the one side it did not know or respect all the
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 177
rights of human thought ; at the very moment it was demanding these rights for itself it was violating them toward others. On the other hand it was unable to estimate the rights of authority in the matters of reason."
Guizot, History of Civilization, pp. 261-262.
HAZLITT: Protestant persecution
" It is evident, moreover, . . . that the Reformers, just as much as the Papists, held it a right to inflict coercion, physical pains, and death upon those who denied what they regarded as the essential faith ; it was a century and a half before Protest- ants learned definitely that they had no right to inflict death, imprisonment, stripes, or fines upon heretics. . . . Calvin burnt Servetus for heresy; the mild Melanchthon approved the act ; so did Bucer. (Calv. Epist. p. 147, Genoa, 1575.) Calvin, in his letter to the Earl of Somerset, Lord Primate of England (Epist. 67), speaking of the Papists and of the fanatic sect of " Gospellers," says expressively, " they ought to be repressed by the avenging sword." Speaking of executions in England for re- 12
178 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
ligious opinions, Hazlitt says : " It appears many were put to death in the reign of Henry VIII. ; some in the time of Edward VI. ; one hundred and sixty Roman Catho- lics in the reign of Elizabeth ; sixteen or seventeen in that of James ; and more than twenty by the Presbyterians and Republicans."
Hazlitt, notes to his edition of Guizot's History of Civilization, pp. 266-267.
HALL AM: "The deadly original sin"
" Persecution is the deadly original sin of the reformed churches ; that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion as his reading becomes more extensive.''
Hallam, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. ' ch. ii. p. 105.
STRICKLAND : Persecution upheld by all
" It is a lamentable trait in human nature that there was not a sect established at the Reformation that did not avow, as part of their religious duty, the horrible necessity of destroying some of their fellow-creatures
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 179
on account of what they severally termed heretical tenets."
Strickland, Queens of England.
BRYCE : Inconsistency and intolerance
" The will of the sovereign, as in Eng- land, or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland, im- posed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of mediaeval intolerance without their justifi- cation. Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those who were not Catholic, who were no more apostolic than their neighbors, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and venerable author- ity in the name of rights which they now denied to others."
Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, ch. xviii. p. 328.
GIBBON: Reformers defended persecution
" The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed, with equal vigor, their creeds and confessions ; they asserted
180 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
the right of the magistrate to punish the heretic with death."
Gibbon, Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. liv.
MACAUL.AY: Dishonest as well as intol- erant
"Rome had at least prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance, despot- ism in an upstart sect, infallibility claimed by guides who acknowledge that they had passed the greater part of their lives in error, restraints imposed on the liberty of private judgment at the pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own proceedings only by asserting the liberty of private judg- ment,— these things could not long be borne. Those who had pulled down the crucifix could not long continue to persecute for the surplice. It required no great sagacity to perceive the inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves; who demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it; who execrated persecution, yet persecuted ; who urged reason against the authority of one
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 181
opponent, and authority against the reason of another." Macaulay's Essays, " Hampden."
MACAULAY: Protestants persecuted each other
"In the Palatinate a Calvinistic prince persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony a Lutheran prince persecuted the Calvinists. Everybody who objected to any of the ar- ticles of the Confession of Augsburg was banished from Sweden. In Scotland Mel- ville was disputing with other Protestants on questions of ecclesiastical government. In England the jails were filled with men who, though zealous for the Reformation, did not exactly agree with the Court on all points of discipline and doctrine. Some were persecuted for denying the tenet of reprobation; some for not wearing sur- plices."
Macaulay's Essays (Review of Von Ranke's Hist, of Popes).
LECKY: Intolerance of the Scotch and Swedes
" When the Reformation triumphed in Scotland, one of its first fruits was a law
182 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
prohibiting any priest from celebrating, or any worshipper from hearing mass, under pain of the confiscation of his goods for the first offence, of exile for the second, and of death for the third. That the Queen of Scotland should be permitted to hear mass in her own private chapel was publicly denounced as an intolerable evil. ' One mass/ exclaimed Knox, ( is more fearful to me than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in part of the realm.' In France, when the government of certain towns was conceded to the Protestants, they immedi- ately employed their power to suppress absolutely the Catholic worship, to prohibit any Protestant from attending a marriage or a funeral that was celebrated by a priest, to put down all mixed marriages, and to prosecute to the full extent of their power those who had abandoned their creed. In Sweden, all who dissented from any article of the Confession of Augsburg were at once banished. As late as 1690 a synod was held at Amsterdam, consisting partly of Dutch and partly of French and English ministers, who were driven to Holland by persecution, and in that synod the doctrine
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 183
that the magistrate has no right to crush heresy and idolatry by the civil power was unanimously pronounced to be 6 false, scan- dalous, and pernicious/ '
Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii. pp. 49-50.
BUCKLE : Scotch bigotry worse than French
" It must be admitted that in Scotland there is more bigotry, more superstition, and a more thorough contempt for the religion of others, than there is in France. And in Sweden, which is one of the oldest Protestant countries in Europe, there is, not occasionally but habitually, an intolerance and a spirit of persecution which would be discreditable to a Catholic country, but which is doubly disgraceful when proceed- ing from a people who profess to base their religion on the right of private judgment."
Buckle, History of Civilization in England, vol. i. p. 264.
GREEN : In England
"The suffering of the Protestants had failed to teach them the worth of religious liberty; and a new code of ecclesiastical
184 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
laws, which was ordered to be drawn up by a board of commissioners as a substitute for the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, although it shrank from the penalty of death, attached that of perpetual imprison- ment or exile to the crimes of heresy', blasphemy, and adultery, and declared excommunication to involve a severance of the offender from the mercy of God and his deliverance into the tyranny of the devil."
Green, History of the English People, etc., book vi., ch. L, " The Reformation," p. 226.
GREEN : " Heretics ought to be put to death "
" The spirit of Calvinistic Presbyterianism excluded all toleration of practice or belief. . . . For heresy there was to be the punishment of death. Never had the doctrine of persecution been urged with such a blind and reckless ferocity. ' I deny/ wrote Cartwright, ' that upon repent- ance there ought to follow any pardon of death. Heretics ought to be put to death
now/
Id., book vi., ch. v., " England and the Papacy."
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 185
GREEN: The policy of the Huguenots
" If the Protestant lords in Scotland had been driven to assert a right of noncon- formity, if the Huguenots of France were following their example, it was with no thought of asserting the right of every man to worship God as he would. From the claim of such a right, Knox or Coligni would have shrunk with even greater horror than Elizabeth. What they aimed at was simply the establishment of a truce till, by force or persuasion, they could win the realms that tolerated them for their own."
Green, History of the English People, etc., book vi., ch. iii., " England of Elizabeth."
FISHER: Milton's "liberality"
" Even Milton, it may be observed here, did not carry his doctrine of liberty of conscience so far as to lead him to favor the toleration of the mass and other cere- monies of Roman Catholic worship, which, as being idolatrous, he thought should be forbidden."
Fisher, History of the Reformation, ch. xv.
XIV
THE REFORMATION AND CIVIL LIBERTY
The splendid empire of Charles V. [1546- 1555] was erected on the grave of liberty.
MOTLEY.
THE denial of free will by the early Protestants, and Luther's exaggera- tion of the obedience due princes, were tendencies adverse to progress in civil liberty ; but their influence was slight compared with that of other circumstances growing out of the conflict of creeds.
No inconsiderable progress had been made in political freedom at the epoch when Luther appeared. In England, France, Spain, and Germany, we find Par- liaments, States General, Cortes, and Diets. The people had acquired representative forms. The ancient liberties of England were formulated in the Magna Charta;
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 187
there was trial by jury and there was the habeas corpus. Free cities flourished ; and in Italy, the Republics of Genoa, Venice, Sienna, Florence, and Pisa conserved great popular liberties. With the natural mo- mentum of progress and the art of print- ing, there should have been no halt or retrogression.
Unhappily, this was precisely what oc- curred after the Protestant movement was fairly launched. In some instances, popu- lar excesses, the revolts of the Anabaptists, and the anarchy caused by the new teach- ing led to a reaction towards strong gov- ernment. In other places the reformers courted the support of the princes and kings by clothing them with religious au- thority taken from the Pope. The prince, uniting the authority of head of the State and head of the Church, became absolute and uncurbed.
This was the case in England, where the Parliament showed itself the pliant tool of Henry VIIL, and where James I. pro- claimed the doctrine of kingly divine right. It explains the unequalled absolutism of the Lutheran princes of Germany and the King
188 MOOTED QUESTIONS OF HISTORY
of Prussia, even as late as the eighteenth century. The same train of events blotted out all representative forms in Denmark under Frederick III. in 1669, and in Sweden under Charles XI. in 1680.
In fact, Protestantism and absolutism were simultaneous eras. A century after Luther, representative government had fallen into decay. Strong centralized mon- archies ruled all Europe, — in France by virtue of the religious wars, and in Spain by reason of contagious example abroad.
The liberty of the press, which was little restricted during the first half -century of printing, becomes the subject of close sur- veillance in the epochs of religious conflict ensuing. The freedom with which Eras- mus criticises princes in the early portion of the sixteenth century is punished as se- dition in the seventeenth. Milton makes a timid and unavailing plea for more liberty; yet things have only slightly bettered even a hundred years after Milton.
We might naturally expect that in the turmoil of religious conflict there would be a notable loss of respect for life and property. The persecution of recusants and the confis-
REFORMATION AND LIBERTY 189
cation of church property were not without a demoralizing influence on the safety of human life and the security of all kinds of property. Law and liberty go hand in hand. In the midst of civil conflict and religious hatred the conditions for progress in political freedom, were decidedly un- favorable. There was universal regress, and then slow recovery. Civil liberty made greater strides in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century than in all the three hundred years preceding.
GUIZOT: Unfavorable to free institutions
"In Germany, far from demanding po- litical liberty, the Reformation accepted, I shall not say servitude, but the absence of liberty [p. 259]. ... It rather strength- ened than enfeebled the power of princes ; it was rather opposed to the free institu- tions of the middle ages than favorable to their progress [p. 258]. . . . In England it consented to the existence of a church as full of abuses as ever the Romish Church had been, and much more servile [p. 259]. ... It doubtless left the mind sub- ject to all the chances of liberty or thral-
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dom which might arise from political institutions."
Guizot, History of Civilization, pp. 258, 259.
HALL, AM: Withdrew liberty of judgment
" The adherents to the Church of Rome have never failed to cast two reproaches on those who left them : one, that