XXVI. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH…

XXVI. THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

The abrogation of celibacy in England was a process of far more perplexity and intricacy than in any other country which adopted the Reformation. Perhaps this may be partially explained by the temperament of the race, whose fierce spirit of independence made them quick to feel and impatient to suffer the manifold evils of the sacerdotal system, while their reverential conservatism rendered them less disposed to adopt a radical cure than their Continental neighbors.

In no country of Europe had the pretensions of the papal power been so resolutely set aside. In no country had ecclesiastical abuses been more earnestly attacked or more persistently held up for popular odium, and the applause which greeted all who boldly denounced the shortcomings of priest and prelate shows how keenly the people felt the evils to which they were exposed. William Langlande, the monk of Malvern, was no heretic, yet he was unsparing in his reprobation of the corruptions of the church:—

“Right so out of holi chirche, Alle yveles springeth, There inparfit preesthode is, Prechours and techeris .. .. . And prechours after silver, Executours and sodenes, Somonours and hir lemmannes; That that with gile was geten, Ungraciousliche is despended; So harlotes and hores Arn holpe with swiche goodes, And Goddes folk, for defaute thereof, For-faren and spillen.”[1119]

And he boldly prophesied the violent downfall of the whole fabric—

“Right so, ye clerkes, For youre coveitise, er longe, Shal thei demen dos ecclesiæ, And youre pride depose. Deposuit potentes de sede, etc. .. .. . Leveth it wel ye bisshopes The lordshipe of your londes For evere shul ye lese, And lyven as levitici, etc.”[1120]

But while the people greeted these assaults with the keenest pleasure, they were attached to the old observances, and were in no haste to see the predictions of the poet fulfilled. A little sharp persecution was sufficient to suppress all outward show of Lollardry, and there was no chance in England for the fierce revolutionary enthusiasm of the Taborites.

As the sixteenth century opened, John Colet did good work in disturbing the stagnation of the schools by his contempt for the petrified theological science of the schoolmen. His endeavor to revert to the Scriptures as the sole source of religious belief was a step in advance, while he was unsparing in his denunciations of the corruptions which were as rife in the English church as we have seen them elsewhere. Yet Colet, though at one time taxed with heretical leanings, kept carefully within the pale of orthodoxy, and seems never to have entertained the idea that the evils which he deplored were to be attacked save by a renewal of the fruitless iteration of obsolete canons.[1121] Perhaps, however, his friend and disciple, Sir Thomas More, is the best example of this frame of mind in England’s worthiest men, the besetting weakness of which made the Anglican reformation a struggle whose vicissitudes can scarce be said to have even yet reached their final development.

Before Luther had raised the standard of revolt, More keenly appreciated the derelictions of the church, and allowed his wit to satirize its vices with a freedom which showed the scantiest respect for the sanctity claimed by its hierarchy.[1122] Yet when Luther came with his heresies to sweep away all abuses, More’s gentle and tender spirit was roused to a vulgarity of vituperation which earned for him a distinguished place among the foul-mouthed polemics of the time, and which is absolutely unfit for translation.[1123] As regards ascetic observances, before the Lutheran movement, More seems to have inclined towards condemning all practices that were not in accordance with human nature, though he appears willing to admit that there may be some special sanctity, though not wisdom, in conquering nature.[1124] After the commencement of the Reformation, however, his views underwent a reaction, and he not only defended monastic vows, but he even went so far as to argue that by the recent marriages of the Saxon reformers God had manifested his signal displeasure, for in the old law true priests could be joined only to the chastest virgins, while God permitted these false pastors to take to wife none but public strumpets.[1125] If he accused Luther of sweeping away the venerable traditions of man and of God,[1126] he showed how conscientious was this rigid conservatism when he laid his head upon the block in testimony for the principal creation and bulwark of tradition—the papal supremacy.

A community thus halting between an acute perception of existing evils and a resolute determination not to remove them was exactly in the temper to render the great movement of the sixteenth century as disastrous to themselves as possible. How to meet the inevitable under such conditions was a problem which well might tax the acutest intellect, and Wolsey, whose fate it was to undertake the task, seems to have been inspired with more than his customary audacious ingenuity in seeking the solution.

Wolsey himself was no ascetic, as the popular inscription over the door of his palace—“Domus meretricium Domini Cardinalis”—sufficiently attests. A visitation of the religious houses undertaken in 1511 by Archbishop Warham had revealed all the old iniquities without calling forth any remedy beyond an admonition.[1127] In 1518, Wolsey himself had attempted a systematic reformation in his diocese of York, and had revived the ancient canons punishing concubinage among his priesthood;[1128] and in 1519 we find him applying to Leo X. for a Bull conferring special power to correct the enormities of the clergy.[1129] When, in 1523, he proposed a general visitation for the reformation of the ecclesiastical body, Fox, Bishop of Winchester, urged it as in the highest degree necessary, stating that he himself had for three years been devoting all his energies to restore discipline in his diocese, and that his efforts had been so utterly fruitless that he had abandoned all hope of any change for the better.[1130] Cranmer, indeed, in his “Confutation of Unwritten Verities,” had no hesitation to say that “within my memory, which is above thirty years, and also by the information of others that be twenty years elder than I, I could never perceive or learn that any one priest, under the pope’s kingdom, was ever punished for advoutry by his ordinary.”[1131] It may readily be believed, therefore, that Wolsey fully recognized the utter inefficiency of the worn-out weapons of discipline. Yet he was too shrewd a statesman not to foresee that reformation from within or from without must come, and, in taking the initiative, he commenced by quietly and indirectly attacking the monastic orders. As a munificent patron of letters, it was natural that he should emulate Merton and Wykeham in founding a college at Oxford; and “Cardinal’s College,” now Christ Church, became the lever with which to topple over the vast monastic system of England.

The development of the plan was characteristically insidious. By a Bull of April 3d, 1524 (confirmed by Henry, May 10th), Clement VII. authorized him to suppress the priory of St. Frediswood at Oxford, and to remove the monks for the purpose of converting it into a “Collegium Clericorum Seculorum.”[1132] This was followed by a Bull, dated August 21st of the same year, empowering him as legate to make inquisition and reformation in all religious houses throughout the kingdom, to incarcerate and punish the inmates, and to deprive them of their property and privileges, all grants or charters to the contrary notwithstanding.[1133] The real purport of this extraordinary commission is shown by the speedy issue of yet another Bull, dated September 11th, conceding to him the confiscation of monasteries to the amount of 3000 ducats annual rental, for the endowment of his college, and alleging as a reason for the measure that many establishments had not more than five or six inmates.[1134]

The affair was now fully in train, and proceeded with accelerating momentum. On the 3d of July, 1525, Henry confirmed the incorporation of the college; his letters-patent of May 1st, 1526, enumerate eighteen monasteries suppressed for its benefit, while other letters of May 10th grant seventy-one churches or rectories for its support, and yet other grants are alluded to as made in letters which have not been preserved.[1135] In 1528 these were followed by various other donations of religious houses and manors; and during the same year Wolsey founded another Cardinal’s College at Ipswich, which became a fresh source of absorption.[1136]

Had Henry VIII. entertained any preconceived design of suppressing the religious houses, his impatient temper would scarcely have allowed him to remain so long a witness of this spoliation without taking his share and carrying the matter out with his accustomed boldness and disregard of consequences. At length, however, he claimed his portion, and procured from Clement a Bull dated November 2d, 1528, conceding to him, for the benefit of the old foundations of the King’s Colleges at Cambridge and Windsor, the suppression of monasteries to the annual value of 8000 ducats.[1137] This was followed by another, a few days later, empowering Wolsey and Campeggi, co-legates in the affair of Queen Katharine’s divorce, to unite to other monasteries all those containing less than twelve inmates—thus suppressing the latter, of which the number was very large.[1138] Another Bull of the same date (November 12th) attacked the larger abbeys, which had thus far escaped. It ordered the two cardinals, under request from the king, to inquire into the propriety of suppressing the rich monasteries enjoying over 10,000 ducats per annum, for the purpose of converting them into bishoprics, on the plea that the seventeen sees of the kingdom were insufficient for the spiritual wants of the people.[1139] The report of the cardinals apparently seconded the views of Henry, for Clement granted to them, May 29th, 1529, the power of creating and arranging bishoprics at their discretion, and of sacrificing additional monasteries when necessary to provide adequate revenues.[1140] It is probable that the monks who had been unceremoniously deprived of their possessions did not in all cases submit without resistance, for the Bull of November 12th, 1528, suppressing the smaller houses, was repeated August 31st, 1529, with the suggestive addition of authority to call in the assistance of the secular arm.[1141]

Wolsey was now tottering to his fall. Process against him was commenced on October 9th, 1529, and on the 18th the Great Seal was delivered to More. His power, however, had lasted long enough to break down all the safeguards which had for so many centuries grown around the sacred precincts of ecclesiastical property; and the rich foundations which covered so large a portion of English territory lay defenceless before the cupidity of a despot, who rarely allowed any consideration, human or divine, to interfere with his wishes, whose extravagance rendered him eager to find new sources of supply for an exhausted treasury, and whose temper had been aroused by the active support lent by the preaching friars to the party of Queen Katharine in the affair of the divorce. Yet it is creditable to Henry’s self-command that the blow did not fall sooner, although it came at last.

It is not my province to enter into the details of Henry’s miserable quarrel with Rome, which, except in its results, is, from every point of view, one of the most humiliating pages of history. The year 1532 saw the proclamation of the king commanding the support of his subjects in the impending rupture, and the subscription of the clergy to a paper which, with unparalleled servility, placed the whole ecclesiastical constitution of the kingdom in his absolute power.[1142] The following year his long-protracted divorce from Katharine of Arragon was consummated; the annates were withdrawn from the pope, and Henry assumed the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England.[1143] In 1535 an obedient Parliament confirmed the acts of the sovereign, and forbade the promulgation of any canons by synods or convocations without his approval. The power of the pope was abolished by proclamation; and Universities and prelates rivalled each other in obsequiously transferring to Henry the reverence due to Rome.[1144]

The greater portion of the monasteries, which had already experienced a foretaste of the wrath to come, hastened to proclaim their adhesion to the new theological autocracy, and means not the most gentle were found to persuade the remainder. The Carthusians of the Charter House of London gave especial trouble, and the contest between them and the king affords a vivid picture of the times. There is something very affecting in the account given by Strype of the humble but resolute resignation with which the prior and his monks prepared themselves for martyrdom in vindication of the papal supremacy.[1145] Their courage was soon put to the test. Between the 27th of April and the 4th of August, 1535, the prior and eleven of his monks were put to death with all the horrors of the punishment for high treason;[1146] but neither this nor the efforts of a new and more loyal prior were able to produce submission. In 1536 ten of the most unyielding were sent to other houses, where several of them were subsequently executed, and in 1537 ten more were thrown into Newgate, where nine of them died almost immediately—it is to be presumed from the rigor of their confinement and the foulness of the jail. In 1539 the few that remained were expelled; the house was seized and used as an arsenal, until it was given to Sir Edward North, who changed it into a residence, pulling down the cloisters and converting the church into his parlor.[1147]

The most conspicuous of the recalcitrants, however, was the powerful order of the Franciscans. These refused the oath exacted of them, causing no little trouble, and affording a cover for the intrigues of that large body of the clergy who were dissatisfied with the innovations, but afraid of open opposition.[1148] This precipitated the ruin of the monastic orders, which could not, under any circumstances, have been long delayed, and a general visitation was considered the most effective means of encompassing their destruction. It was accordingly ordered in 1535, and as their immorality and neglect of their sacred duties had passed almost into a proverb, there was not much difficulty in accumulating evidence to justify the measure. The visitation was commanded to examine into the foundation, title, history, condition of discipline, and number and character of the inmates of all religious houses;[1149] and, as might have been expected, the report disclosed a state of affairs which called for the immediate removal of so foul a source of corruption and scandal. The visitors had their work assigned them in advance, and they performed it thoroughly; but we cannot assume that the evils which they described were the creation of their own invention to gratify the wishes and advance the purposes of their master.

One of the earliest abbeys visited was that of Langdon, where the visitor, Dr. Leighton, suddenly breaking open the abbot’s door, found him with his concubine, whose disguise as a man was discovered secreted in a coffer. Leighton’s account of this little adventure “scribullede this Satterday,” to his patron, Cromwell, is full of humor, showing how thoroughly he enjoyed his success, and how fully he was assured that the Secretary would likewise be gratified by it.[1150] Bishop Burnet’s general summary of the result of the visitation asserts that “for the lewdness of the confessors of nunneries, and the great corruption of that state, whole houses being found almost all with child; for the dissoluteness of abbots and the other monks and friars, not only with whores, but married women; and for their unnatural lusts and other brutal practices; these are not fit to be spoken of, much less enlarged on, in a work of this nature. The full report of the visitation is lost, yet I have seen an extract of a part of it, concerning 144 houses, that contains abominations in it equal to any that were in Sodom.”[1151]

The good bishop was not likely to extenuate what he had read, but we yet may readily believe the truth of his account of it, for we cannot assume that the charges were manufactured, like the accusations against the Templars, for the purpose of serving as an excuse for confiscation. The monasteries were not likely to have improved in morals since Archbishop Morton described a similar condition of affairs half a century earlier; nor is there any ground for imagining them better than their Continental contemporaries, whose lapses were the subject of animadversion by censors favorable to the monastic system. Scarce anything, indeed, can be conceived worse than the condition of the German convents as described in a document drawn up by command of the Emperor Ferdinand to stimulate the sluggishness of the council of Trent.[1152] A short account of “The Manner of Dissolving the Abbeys,” by a contemporary,[1153] states the result of the visitation in terms even stronger than those of Burnet, and Strype gives some most suggestive extracts from the report of the visitation of the diocese of Litchfield.[1154] Descriptions of the disorders of special houses are very frequent in the private letters of the visitors and commissioners to Cromwell,[1155] which may be the more readily believed, since they also report favorably of many abbeys as being well governed, and of the utmost benefit to their neighborhoods through their generous hospitality and charity. It should be added that, in some districts at least, the morals of the laity were no better than those of the clergy.[1156] Nicander Nucius, who visited England about the year 1545, in relating the suppression of the monastic orders, gives as bad an account of their discipline as Burnet. He is not, of course, an original authority, but, as an impartial observer, his statements are worthy of consideration as reflecting the current views of society at the period.[1157] It was evidently for the purpose of influencing public opinion abroad that a book on the subject was written in Italian by William Thomas, who summed up by stating that the visitors found “not seven, but more than 700,000 deadly sins,” and who received the reward of his vivacity by being put to death under Queen Mary.[1158]

A portion of the people were ready and eager to welcome the secularization of the religious houses. Their views and arguments are set forth with more force than elegance in the well-known “Beggars’ Petition,” which calculates that, besides the tithes, one-third of the kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their sole serious occupation in destroying the peace of families and corrupting the virtue of women. The economical injury to the commonwealth, and the interference with the royal prerogative of the ecclesiastical system, were argued with much cogency, and the king was entreated to destroy it by the most summary methods. That any one should venture to publish so violent an attack upon the existing church, at a time when punishment so prompt followed all indiscretions of this nature, renders this production peculiarly significant both as to the temper of the educated portion of the people, and the presumed intentions of the king.[1159]

The visitation produced the desired effect. In 1536, after reading the report, Parliament passed without opposition a bill suppressing, for the benefit of the crown, all monasteries with less than twelve inmates or possessing a revenue under £200 per annum. Three hundred and seventy-six houses were swept away by this act, and the “Court of Augmentations of the King’s Revenue” was established to take charge of the lands and goods thus summarily escheated. The rents which thus fell to the king were valued at £32,000 a year, and the movable property at £100,000, while the commissioners were popularly supposed to have been “as careful to enrich themselves as to increase the king’s revenue.” Stokesley, Bishop of London, remarked, concerning the transaction, that “these lesser houses were as thorns soon plucked up, but the great abbots were like putrefied old oaks, yet they must needs follow, and so would others do in Christendom before many years were passed.” But Stokesley, however true a prophet in the general scope of his observation, was mistaken as to the extreme facility of eradicating the humble thorns. The country was not as easily reconciled to the change as the versatile, more intelligent, and less reverent inhabitants of the cities. Henry, unluckily, not only had not abrogated Purgatory by proclamation, but had specially recommended the continuance of prayers and masses for the dead,[1160] and thousands were struck with dread as to the future prospects of themselves and their dearest kindred, when there should be few to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the benefit of departed souls. The traveller and the mendicant, too, missed the ever open door and the coarse but abundant fare, which smoothed the path of the humble wayfarer. Discontent spread widely, and was soon manifested openly. To meet this, most of the lands were sold at a very moderate price to the neighboring gentry, under condition of exercising free hospitality, to supply the wants of those who had hitherto been dependent on conventual charity.[1161]

The plan was only partially successful, and soon another element of trouble made itself apparent. Of the monks whose houses were suppressed, those who desired to continue a monastic life were transferred to the larger foundations, while the rest took “capacities,”[1162] under promise of a reasonable allowance for their journey home. They received only forty shillings and a gown, and with this slender provision it was estimated that about ten thousand were turned adrift upon the world, in which their previous life had incapacitated them from earning a support. The result is visible in the act for the punishment of “sturdy vagabonds and beggars,” passed by Parliament in this same year, inflicting a graduated scale of penalties, of which hanging was the one threatened for a third offence.[1163]

This was a dangerous addition to society when discontent was smouldering and ready to burst into flame. The result was soon apparent. After harvest-time great disturbances convulsed the kingdom. A rising, reported as consisting of twenty thousand men, in Lincolnshire, was put down by the Duke of Suffolk with a heavy force and free promises of pardon. In the North matters were even more serious. The clergy there were less tractable than their southern brethren, and some Injunctions savoring strongly of Protestantism aroused their susceptibilities afresh. Unwilling to submit without a struggle, they held a convocation, in which they denied the royal supremacy and proclaimed their obedience to the pope. This was rank rebellion, especially as Paul III., on the 30th of August, 1535, had issued his Bull of excommunication against Henry, and self-preservation therefore demanded the immediate suppression of the recalcitrants. They would hardly, indeed, have ventured on assuming a position of such dangerous opposition without the assurance of popular support, nor were their expectations or labors disappointed. The “Pilgrimage of Grace,” according to report, soon numbered forty thousand men. Although Skipton and Scarboro’ bravely resisted a desperate siege, the success of the insurgents at York, Hull, and Pomfret Castle was encouraging, and risings in Lancashire, Durham, and Westmoreland gave to the insurrection an aspect of the most menacing character. Good fortune and skilful strategy, however, saved the Duke of Norfolk and his little army from defeat; the winter was rapidly approaching, and at length a proclamation of general amnesty, issued by the king on the 9th of December, induced a dispersion of the rebels. The year 1537 saw another rising in the North, but this time it only numbered eight thousand men. Repulsed at Carlisle, and cut to pieces by Norfolk, the insurgents were quickly put down, and other disturbances of minor importance were even more readily suppressed.[1164]

Strengthened by these triumphs over the disaffected, Henry proceeded, in 1537, to make the acknowledgment of papal authority a crime liable to the penalties of a præmunire;[1165] and, as resistance was no longer to be dreaded, he commenced to take possession of some of the larger houses. These did not come within the scope of the act of Parliament, and therefore were made the subject of special transactions. The abbots resigned, either from having been implicated in the late insurrections, or feeling that their evil lives would not bear investigation, or doubtless, in many cases, from a clear perception of the doom impending in the near future, which rendered it prudent to make the best terms possible while yet there was time. Thus, in these cases, the monks were generally pensioned with eight marks a year, while some of the abbots secured a revenue of 400 or 500 marks.[1166] In an agreement which has been preserved, the monks were to receive pensions varying from 53_s._ 4_d._ to £4 a year, according to their age.[1167] In some cases, indeed, according to Bishop Latimer, in a sermon preached before Edward VI., the royal exchequer was relieved by finding preferment for most unworthy objects—“however bad the reports of them were, some were made bishops and others put into good dignities in the church; that so the king might save their pensions that otherwise were to be paid them.”[1168] An effectual means, moreover, of inducing voluntary surrenders was by stopping their source of support, and thus starving them out. Richard, Bishop of Dover, one of the commissioners in Wales, writes to Cromwell, May 23d, 1538: “I thinke before the yere be owt ther schall be very fewe howsis abill to lyve, but schall be glade to giffe up their howseis and provide for them selvys otherwise, for their thei schall have no living.” In anticipation of the impending doom, many of the abbots and priors had sold everything that was salable, from lands and leases down to spits and kitchen utensils, leaving their houses completely denuded. The letters of the commissioners are full of complaints respecting this sharp practice, and of their efforts to trace the property. Another mode of compelling surrenders was by threatening the strict enforcement of the rules of the order. Thus, in the official report of the surrender of the Austin friars of Gloucester, we find the alternative given them, when “the seyd freeres seyed ... as the worlde ys nowe they war not abull to kepe them and leffe in ther howseys, wherfore voluntaryly they gaffe ther howseys into the vesytores handes to the kynges use. The vesytor seyd to them, ‘thynke nott, nor hereafter reportt nott, that ye be suppresseyd, for I have noo such auctoryte to suppresse yow, but only to reforme yow, wherfor yf ye woll be reformeyd, accordeyng to good order, ye may contynew for all me.’ They seyd they war nott abull to contynew,” whereupon they were ejected.[1169]

In the year 1538 the work proceeded with increased rapidity, no less than 158 surrenders of the larger houses being enrolled. Many of the abbots were attainted of treason and executed, and the abbey lands forfeited. Means not of the nicest kind were taken to increase the disrepute of the monastic orders, and they retaliated in the same way. Thus, the Abbot of Crossed-Friars, in London, was surprised in the day time with a woman under the worst possible circumstances, giving rise to a lawsuit more curious than decent;[1170] while, on the other hand, the Abbess of Chepstow accused Dr. London, one of the visitors, of corrupting her nuns.[1171] Public opinion, however, did not move fast enough for the rapacity of those in power, and strenuous exertions were made to stimulate it. All the foul stories that could be found or invented respecting the abbeys were raked together; but these proving insufficient, the impostures concerning relics and images were investigated with great success, and many singular exposures were made which gave the king fresh warrant for his arbitrary measures, and placed the religious houses in a more defenceless position than ever.[1172]

Despite all this, in the session of 1539 all the twenty-eight parliamentary abbots had their writs, and no less than twenty sat in the House of Lords.[1173] Yet the influence of the court and the progress of public opinion were shown in an act which confirmed the suppressions of the larger houses not embraced in the former act, as well as all that might thereafter be suppressed, forfeited, or resigned,[1174] and May 9th, 1540, by special enactment, the ancient order of the Knights of St. John was broken up, pensions being granted to the grand prior and some of the principal dignitaries.[1175] These measures consummated the ruin of the monastic system in England. Henceforth it was altogether at the king’s mercy, and his character was not one to temper power with moderation. In 1539 there are upon record fifty-seven surrenders of the great abbeys,[1176] and a large number in 1540, the good house of Godstow being the last of the great monasteries to fall. Of the old monastic system this left only the chantries, free chapels, collegiate churches, hospitals, &c., which were gradually absorbed during the succeeding years;[1177] until the necessities of the king prompted a sweeping measure for their destruction. Accordingly in 1545 a bill was brought in placing them all at his disposition. There were some indications of opposition, but the king pleaded the expenditures of the French and Scottish wars, and solemnly promised his Parliament “that all should be done for the glory of God and common profit of the realm,” whereupon it was passed.[1178] It is computed that the number of monasteries suppressed by these various measures was 645; of colleges, 90; of chantries and free chapels, 2374; and of hospitals, 110.[1179]

A vast amount of property thus passed into the hands of the court. The clear yearly rental of the suppressed houses alone was rated at £131,607 6_s._ 4_d._—an immense sum in those days; but Burnet states that in reality it was almost tenfold the amount.[1180] Small as may have been the good effected by these enormous possessions in the hands of the monks, it was even more worthless under the management of its new masters. Henry admitted the heavy responsibility which he assumed in thus seizing the wealth which had been dedicated to pious uses, and he entertained magnificent schemes for devoting it to the public benefit, but his own necessities and the grasping avarice of needy courtiers wrought out a result ridiculously mean. Thus he designed to set aside a rental of £18,000 for the support of eighteen “Byshopprychys to be new made.”[1181] For this purpose he obtained full power from Parliament in 1539,[1182] and in 1540 he established one on the remains of the Abbey of Westminster. Those of Chester, Gloucester, and Peterboro’ were established in 1541, and in 1543 those of Oxford and Bristol,[1183] and one of them, that of Westminster, was suppressed in 1550, leaving only five as the result. The people were quieted by assurances that taxes would be abrogated forever and the kingdom kept in a most efficient state of defence; but subsidies and benevolences were immediately exacted with more frequency and energy than ever.[1184] Splendid foundations were promised for institutions of learning, but little was given; a moderate sum was expended in improving the sea-ports, while broad manors and rich farms were granted to favorites at almost nominal prices; and the ill-gotten wealth abstracted from the church disappeared without leaving traces except in the sudden and overgrown fortunes of those gentlemen who were fortunate or prompt enough to make use of the golden opportunity, and who to obtain them had no scruple in openly tendering bribes and shares in the spoil to Cromwell, the omnipotent favorite of the king.[1185] The complaints of the people, who found their new masters harder than the old, may be estimated from some specimens printed by Strype.[1186]

If it be asked what became of the “holy idle thieves” and “sturdy loobies” whom the Beggars’ Petition so earnestly desired to be thrown upon the world, the answer may be found in the legislation of Edward VI. A poor-law, the commencement of a series which to this day has pressed upon England with ever-increasing weight, was enacted in 1552.[1187] This tells its own story, but even more suggestive was another bill for the suppression of vagabondage, the provisions of which mark not only the inhumanity of the age, but the magnitude of the evil caused by the violent acts of Henry. Every able-bodied man loitering in any place for three days without working or offering to work was held to be a vagabond. He was thereupon to be branded on the breast with a letter V, and adjudged as a slave for two years to any one who might bring him for that purpose before a justice of the peace.[1188] Such was the ignominious end of the powerful and wealthy monastic orders of England.

The monastic establishments of Ireland shared the same fate. Rymer[1189] gives the text of a commission for the suppression of a nunnery of the diocese of Dublin, in 1535. The insubordination of the island, however, rendered it difficult to carry out the measure everywhere, and finally, in 1541, it was accomplished by virtually granting their lands to the native chieftains. These were good Catholics, but they could not resist the temptation. They joined eagerly in grasping the spoil, and the desirable political object was effected of detaching them, for the time, from the foreign alliances with the Catholic powers which threatened serious evils.[1190]

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It is a striking proof of Henry’s strength of will and intense individuality of character, that, in thus tearing up by the roots the whole system of monachism, he did not yield one jot to the powerful section of his supporters who had pledged themselves to the logical sequence of his acts, the abrogation of sacerdotal celibacy in general. While every reason of policy and statesmanship urged him to grant the privilege of marriage to the secular clergy, whom he forced to transfer to him the allegiance formerly rendered to Rome; while his chief religious advisers at home and his Protestant allies abroad used every endeavor to wring from him this concession, he steadily and persistently refused it to the end, and we can only guess whether his firmness arose from conscientious conviction or from the pride of a controversialist.

Notwithstanding his immovable resolution on this point, his power seemed ineffectual to stay the progress of the new ideas. An assembly held by his order in May, 1530, to condemn the heretical doctrines disseminated in certain books, shows how openly the advocates of clerical marriage had promulgated their views while yet Wolsey was prime minister and Henry gloried in the title of Defender of the Faith. Numerous books were denounced in which celibacy was ridiculed, its sanctity disproved, and its evil influences commented upon in the most irreverent manner.[1191] These doctrines were sometimes carried into practice, and the orthodox clergy had little ceremony in visiting them with the sharpest penalties of the canons. It was about this time that Stokesley, Bishop of London, condemned to imprisonment for life Thomas Patmore, the incumbent of Hadham in Hertfordshire, for encouraging his curate to marry and permitting him subsequently to officiate; and the unfortunate man actually lay for three years in gaol, until released by the intercession of Cranmer.[1192] This severity offers a significant contrast to the lenity which punished priestly incontinence with trifling fines and penalties, or sold licenses to sin almost openly.[1193]

If the reforming polemics were thus bold while Henry was yet orthodox, it may readily be imagined how keenly they watched the progress of his quarrel with the pope, and how loud became their utterances as he gradually threw off his allegiance to Rome and persecuted all who hesitated to follow in his footsteps. He soon showed, however, that he allowed none to precede him, and that all consciences were to be measured by the royal ell-wand. Thus his proceedings against the Carthusians and Franciscans in 1534 were varied by a proclamation directed against seditious books and priestly marriages. As we have seen, some unions had taken place, and all who had committed the indiscretion were deprived of their functions and reduced to the laity, though the marriages seem to have been recognized as valid. Future transgressions, moreover, were threatened with the royal indignation and further punishment—words of serious import at such a time and under such a monarch.[1194]

In spite of all this, the chief advisers of Henry did not scruple to connive at infractions of the proclamation. Both Cranmer and Cromwell favored the Reformation; the former was himself secretly married, and even ventured to urge the king to reconsider his views on priestly celibacy;[1195] while the latter, though, as a layman, without any such personal motive, was disposed to relax the strictness of the rule of celibacy. During the visitation of the monasteries, for instance, the Abbot of Walden had little hesitation in confessing to Ap Rice, the visitor, that he was secretly married, and asked to be secured from molestation. The confidence thus manifested in the friendly disposition of the vicar-general was satisfactorily responded to. Cromwell replied, merely warning him to “use his remedy” without, if possible, causing scandal.[1196] A singular petition, addressed to him in 1536 by the secular clergy of the diocese of Bangor, illustrates forcibly both the confidence felt in his intentions, and the necessity of the Abbot of Walden’s “remedy” in the fearful state of immorality which prevailed. There had been a visitation in which the petitioners admit that many of them had been found in fault, and as their women had been consequently taken away, they pray the vicar-general to devise some means by which their consorts may be restored. They do not venture to ask directly for marriage, but decency forbids the supposition that they could openly request Cromwell to authorize a system of concubinage. Nothing can be more humiliating than their confession of the relations existing between themselves, as ministers of Christ, and the flocks entrusted to their spiritual care. After pleading that without women they cannot keep house and exercise hospitality, they add: “We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at ale-houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in nowise board us in their houses.”[1197]

The tendencies thus exhibited by the king’s advisers called forth the remonstrances of the conservatives. In June, 1536, the lower house of convocation presented a memorial inveighing strongly against the progress of heresy, and among the obnoxious opinions condemned was “That it is preached and taught that all things awght to be in comen and that Priests shuld have wiffes,” and they added that books containing heretical opinions were printed “cum privilegio,” were openly sold among the people, and were not condemned by those in authority.[1198] Possibly it was in consequence of this that in the following November Henry issued a circular letter to his bishops in which he commanded them—“Whereas we be advertised that divers Priests have presumed to marry themselves contrary to the custom of our Church of England, Our Pleasure is, Ye shall make secret enquiry within your Diocess, whether there be any such resiant within the same or not”—and any such offenders who had presumed to continue the performance of their sacred functions were ordered to be reported to him or to be arrested and sent to London.[1199] Curiously enough, there is no reference to the subject in the “Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie to stablyshe Christen Quietnes and Unitie amonge us,” issued by Henry in this year.[1200]

Notwithstanding the ominous threat in the letter to the Bishops there appears, about this period, to have been great uncertainty in the public mind respecting the state of the law and the king’s intentions. Two letters happen to have been preserved, written within a few days of each other, in June, 1537, to Cromwell, which reveal the condition of opinion at the time. One of these complains that the vicar of Mendelsham, in Suffolk, has brought home a wife and children, whom he claims to be lawfully his own, and that it is permitted by the king. Although “thys acte by hym done is in thys countre a monstre, and many do growdge at it,” yet, not knowing the king’s pleasure, no proceedings can be had, and appeal is therefore made for authority to prosecute, lest “hys ensample wnponnyched shall be occasion for other carnall evyll dysposed prestes to do in lyke manner.” The other letter is from an unfortunate priest who had recently married, supposing it to be lawful. The “noyse of the peopull,” however, had just informed him that a royal order had commanded the separation of such unions, and he had at once sent his wife to her friends, threescore miles away. He therefore hastens to make his peace, protesting that he had sinned through ignorance, though he makes bold to argue that “yf the kyngys grace could have founde yt laufull that prestys mught have byn maryd, they wold have byn to the crowne dubbyll and dubbyll faythefull; furste in love, secondly for fere that the byschoppe of Rome schuld sette yn hys powre unto ther desolacyon.”[1201]

It is evident from these letters that there was still a genuine popular antipathy to clerical marriage, and yet that the royal supremacy was so firmly established by Henry’s ruthless persecutions that this antipathy was held subject to the pleasure of the court, and could at any moment have been dissipated by proclamation. In fact, the only wonder is that any convictions remained in the minds of those who had seen the objects of their profoundest veneration made the sport of avarice and derision. Stately churches torn to pieces, the stone sold to sacrilegious builders, the lead put up at auction to the highest bidder, the consecrated bells cast into cannon, the sacred vessels melted down, the holy relics snatched from the shrines and treated as old bones and offal, the venerated images burned at Smithfield—all this could have left little sentiment of respect for worn-out religious observances in those who watched and saw the sacrilege remain unpunished.

Notwithstanding the reforming influences with which he was surrounded, Henry sternly adhered to the position which he had assumed.[1202] When, in 1538, the princes of the Schmalkaldic League offered to place him at its head, and even to alter, if possible, the Augsburg Confession so as to make it a common basis of union for all the elements of opposition to Rome, Henry was well inclined to obtain the political advantages of the position tendered him, but hesitated to accept it until all doctrinal questions should be settled. The three points on which the Germans insisted were the communion in both elements, the worship in the vulgar tongue, and the marriage of the clergy. In the Convocation of that year a series of questions was submitted for decision embracing the contested points, and the clergy decided in favor of celibacy, private masses, and communion in one element.[1203] Thus sustained, Henry was firm, and the ambassadors of the League spent two months in conferences with the English bishops and doctors without result. On their departure (August 5th, 1538), they addressed him a letter arguing the subjects in debate—the refusal of the cup, private masses, and sacerdotal celibacy—to which Henry replied at some length, defending his position on these topics with no little skill and dexterity, and refusing his assent finally.[1204] The reformers, however, did not yet despair, and the royal preachers even ventured occasionally to debate the propriety of clerical marriage freely before him in their sermons, but in vain.[1205] An epistle which Melanchthon addressed him in April, 1539, arguing the same questions again, had no better effect.[1206]

In the spring of 1539 Henry renewed negotiations with the German princes, and his envoys in soliciting another visit from deputies of the League held out some vague promises of his yielding on the point of celibacy. The Germans in turn, to show their earnest desire for union with England, submitted a series of propositions, in which they suggested that the marriage of priests might be left to the discretion of the pope, and that if it were to be prohibited only persons advanced in life should be ordained.[1207] Both parties, however, were too firmly set in their opinions for accord to be possible. Notwithstanding any seeming hesitation caused by the policy of the moment, Henry’s mind was fully made up, and the consequences of endeavoring to persuade him against his prejudices soon became apparent. Even while the negotiations were in progress he had issued a series of injunctions degrading from the priesthood all married clergy, and threatening with imprisonment and his displeasure all who should thereafter marry.[1208] Argumentation confirmed his opinions, and he proceeded to enforce them on his subjects in his own savage manner, “for though on all other points he had set up the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession,” yet on these he had committed himself as a controversialist, and the worst passions of polemical authorship—the true “odium theologicum”—acting through his irresponsible despotism, rendered him the cruellest of persecutors. But a few weeks after receiving the letter of Melanchthon, he answered it in cruel fashion.

In May a new parliament met, chosen under great excitement, for the people were inflamed on the subject of religion, and animosities ran high. The principal object of the session was known to be a settlement of the national church, and as the reformers were in a minority against the court, the temper of the Houses was not likely to be encouraging for them.[1209] On the 5th of May, a week after its assembling, a committee was appointed, at the king’s request, to take into consideration the differences of religious opinion. On the 16th, the Duke of Norfolk, who was not a member of the committee, reported that no agreement could be arrived at, and he therefore laid before the House of Lords, for full discussion, articles embracing—1st. Transsubstantiation; 2d. Communion in both kinds; 3d. Vows of Chastity; 4th. Private Masses; 5th. Sacerdotal Marriages; and 6th. Auricular Confession. Cranmer opposed them stoutly, arguing against them for three days, and especially endeavoring to controvert the third and fifth, which enjoined celibacy, but his efforts and those of his friends were vain, when pitted against the known wishes of the king, who himself took an active part in the debate, and argued in favor of the articles with much vigor. Under such circumstances, the adoption of the Six Articles was a foregone conclusion. On the 30th of May the chancellor reported that the House had agreed upon them, and that it was the king’s pleasure “that some penal statute should be enacted to compel all his subjects who were in any way dissenters or contradicters of these articles to obey them.” The framing of such a bill was intrusted to two committees, one under the lead of Cranmer, the other under that of the Archbishop of York, and they were instructed to lay their respective plans before the king within forty-eight hours. Of course the report of the Archbishop of York was adopted. Introduced on the 7th of June, Cranmer again resisted it gallantly, but it passed both Houses by the 14th, and received the royal assent on the 28th. It was entitled “An Act for abolishing Diversity of Opinions in certain Articles concerning Christian Religion,” and it stands as a monument of the cruel legislation of a barbarous age. The Third Article was “that Priests after the order of Priesthood might not marry by the Law of God;” the Fourth, “that Vows of Chastity ought to be observed by the Law of God,” and those who obstinately preached or disputed against them were adjudged felons, to suffer death without benefit of clergy. Any opposition, either in word or writing, subjected the offender to imprisonment during the king’s pleasure, and a repetition of the offence constituted a felony, to be expiated with the life of the culprit. Priestly marriages were declared void, and a priest persisting in living with his wife was to be executed as a felon. Concubinage was punishable with deprivation of benefice and property, and imprisonment, for a first offence; a second lapse was visited with a felon’s death, while in all cases the wife or concubine shared the fate of her partner in guilt. Quarterly sessions were provided, to be held by the bishops and other commissioners appointed by the king, for the purpose of enforcing these laws, and the accused were entitled to trial by jury.[1210] Vows of chastity were only binding on those who had taken them of their own free will when over twenty-one years of age.[1211] According to the Act, the wives of priests were to be put away by June 24th, but on that day, as the act was not yet signed, an order was mercifully made extending the time to July 12th.[1212]

Cranmer argued, reasonably enough, that it was a great hardship, in the case of the ejected monks, to insist on the observance of the vow of chastity, when those of poverty and obedience were dispensed with, and when the unfortunates had been forcibly deprived of all the advantages, safeguards, and protection of monastic life.[1213] The matter, however, was not decided by reason, but by the whimsical perversity of a self-opinionated man, who, unfortunately, had the power to condense his polemical notions in the blood of his subjects.

To comprehend the full iniquity of this savage measure we must remember the rapid progress which the new opinions had been making in England for twenty years; the tacit encouragement given them by the suppression of the religious houses, and by the influence of the king’s confidential advisers; and the hopes naturally excited by Henry’s quarrel with Rome and negotiations with the League of Schmalkalden. In spite, therefore, of the comparatively mild punishments hitherto imposed on priestly marriage, which were no doubt practically almost obsolete, such unions may safely be assumed as numerous. Even Cranmer himself, the primate of Henry’s church, was twice married, his second wife, then living, the niece of Osiander, being kept under a decent veil of secrecy in his palace.[1214] When, after his fruitless resistance to the Six Articles, the bill was passed, he sent his wife to her friends in Germany, until the death of his master enabled him to bring her back and acknowledge her openly;[1215] but vast numbers of unfortunate pastors could not have had the opportunity, and perhaps lacked the self-control, thus to arrange their domestic affairs. Even the gentle Melanchthon was moved from his ordinary equanimity, and ventured to address to his royal correspondent a remonstrance expressing his horror of the cruelty which could condemn to the scaffold a man whose sole guilt consisted in not abandoning the wife to whom he had promised fidelity through good and evil, before God and man—a cruelty which could find no precedent in any code that man had previously dared to frame.[1216]

As might be expected, numerous divorces of married priests followed this Draconian legislation, and these divorces were held good by the act of 1549, which, under Edward VI., granted full liberty in the premises to ecclesiastics.[1217] Even Henry, however, began to feel that he had gone too far, and the influence of Cromwell was sufficient to prevent the harshest features of the law from being enforced in all their odious severity, especially as the projected marriage with Ann of Cleves and the alliance with the German Lutherans rendered active persecution in the highest degree impolitic. When the comedy of Henry’s fourth marriage culminated in the tragedy of Cromwell’s ruin (June, 1540), the reactionary elements again gathered strength. There can be no little doubt that the atrocity of the law had greatly interfered with its efficient execution and had aroused popular feeling, for now, although the Vicar-General was removed, the Catholics passed with speedy alacrity a bill moderating the act of the Six Articles, in so far as it related to marriage and concubinage. For capital punishment was substituted the milder penalty of confiscation to the king of all the property and revenue of the offenders.[1218]

The Six Articles, as thus modified, remained the law of England during the concluding years of Henry’s reign, nor is it likely that any one ventured to urge upon him seriously a relaxation of the principles to which he had committed himself thus definitely. The fall of Cromwell and the danger to which Cranmer was exposed for several years were sufficient to insure him against troublesome remonstrants, even if his increasing irritability and capriciousness had not made those around him daily more alive to the danger of thwarting or resisting his idlest humor. How little progress, indeed, the Reformation had thus far made in England is shown in a letter written in 1546 by John Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, during the exile into which he was forced by the act of the Six Articles—“Our king has destroyed the pope, but not popery; he has expelled all the monks and nuns, and pulled down their monasteries; he has caused all their possessions to be transferred into his exchequer, and yet they are bound, even the frail female sex, by the king’s command, to perpetual chastity. England has at this time at least ten thousand nuns, not one of whom is allowed to marry. The impious mass, the most shameful celibacy of the clergy, the invocation of saints, auricular confession, superstitious abstinence from meats, and purgatory, were never before held by the people in greater esteem than at the present moment.”[1219]

On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, and Edward VI. succeeded to the perilous throne. Not yet ten years of age, his government of course received its direction from those around him, and the rivalry between the protector Somerset and the chancellor Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, threw the former into the hands of the progressives, as the latter was the acknowledged head of the reactionary party. The ruin of Southampton and the triumph of Somerset, strengthened by his successful campaign in Scotland, soon began to develop their natural consequences on the religion of the country. Under the auspices of Cranmer, a Convocation was assembled, which was empowered to decide all questions in controversy. When the primate was anxious to again enjoy the solace of his wife’s company and to relieve both her and himself from the stigma of unlawful marriage, it is easy to understand that the subject of celibacy would receive early and appropriate attention; and so confident were the reformers of success that they did not hesitate to enter into matrimony without waiting for any formal sanction.[1220] Accordingly, on December 17, 1547, a proposition was submitted to the effect that all canons, statutes, laws, decrees, usages, and customs, interfering with or prohibiting marriage, should be abrogated, and it was carried by a vote of 53 to 22. No time was lost. Two days afterwards a bill was introduced in the Commons permitting married men to be priests and to hold benefices. It was received with so much favor that it was read twice the same day, and on the 21st it was sent up to the Lords; but in the Upper House it raised debates so prolonged that, as the members were determined to adjourn before Christmas, it was laid aside. This might be the more readily agreed to, since on the 23d an act was approved which abolished numerous severe laws of the former reign, including the statute of the Six Articles, and was immediately followed by another granting the use of the cup to the laity and prohibiting private masses.[1221]

The repeal of the Six Articles left the marriage of the clergy subject to the previous laws of Henry, imposing on it various pains and penalties, but with the votes recorded in Convocation and Parliament, it is not likely that much vigor was displayed in their enforcement. Those interested could thus afford to await the reassembling of the Houses, which did not take place until November 24, 1548, but they claimed the reward of their patience by an early hearing in the session. On the 3d of December a bill was introduced, similar to that of the previous year, rendering married men eligible to the priesthood; it passed second reading on the 5th, and third reading on the 6th. Apparently encouraged by the favorable reception accorded to it, the friends of the measure resolved on demanding further privileges. The bill was therefore laid aside, and on the next day a new one was presented which granted the additional liberty of marriage to those already in orders. It conceded to the established opinions the fact that it were better that the clergy should live chaste and single, yet, “as great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage,” therefore all laws and canons inhibiting sacerdotal matrimony should be abolished. This bill, after full discussion, was read a second and third time on the 10th and 12th, and was sent up to the Lords on the 13th. Again the Upper House was in no haste to pass it. It lay on the table until February 9, 1549, when it was stoutly contested, and, after being recommitted, it finally passed on the 19th, with the votes of nine bishops recorded against it.[1222]

Cranmer and his friends were now at full liberty to establish the innovation by committing the clergy individually to marriage, and by enlisting the popular feeling in its support. During the discussion they had not been idle. Much controversial writing had occurred on both sides, in which Poynette, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, took an active part, while Bale, Bishop of Ossory, distinguished himself on the same side by raking together all the foul stories that could be collected concerning the celibate clergy—a scandalous material not likely to be lacking in either quantity or quality. Burnet declares that no law passed during the reign of Edward excited more contradiction and censure, and the matrimonialists soon found that, even with the act of parliament in their favor, their course was not wholly a smooth one. Cranmer ordered a visitation in his province, and directed as one of the points for inquiry and animadversion, “Whether any do contemn married priests, and, for that they be married, will not receive the communion or other sacraments at their hands,”[1223] which distinctly reveals the difficulties encountered in eradicating the convictions of centuries from the popular mind. Sanders says, and with every appearance of probability, that the Archbishop of York united with Cranmer in ordering a visitation of the whole kingdom, during which the visitors investigated particularly the morals of the clergy, and used every argument to impel them to marriage, not only declaring celibacy to be most dangerous to salvation, but intimating that all who adhered to it would be regarded as papists and enemies of the king.[1224] The active interest which Cranmer took in the question is manifested by the fact that when Dr. Richard Smith, who had fled to Scotland in consequence of having endeavored to stir up a tumult at Oxford against Peter Martyr, desired to make his peace and return, the inducement which he offered to the Archbishop of Canterbury to obtain for him the king’s pardon was that he would write a book in favor of priestly marriage, as he had previously done against it.[1225]

The Reformers speedily found that they were not to escape without opposition. The masses of the people throughout England were in a state of discontent. The vast body of abbey lands acquired by the gentry and now inclosed bore hard upon many; the raising of rents showed that secular landlords were less charitable than the ancient proprietors of the soil; the increase of sheep-husbandry threw many farm laborers out of employ;[1226] and the savage enactments, already alluded to, against the unfortunate expelled monks show how large an element of influential disaffection was actively at work in the substratum of society. Those priests who disapproved of the rapid Protestantizing process adopted by the court could hardly fail to take advantage of opportunities so tempting, and they accordingly fanned the spark into a flame. The enforcement of the new liturgy, on Whitsunday, 1549, seemed the signal of revolt. Numerous risings took place, which were readily quelled, until one in Devonshire assumed alarming proportions. Ten thousand men in arms made demands for relief in religious as well as temporal matters. Lord Russel, unable to meet them in the field, endeavored to gain time by negotiation, and offered to receive their complaints. These were fifteen in number, of which several demanded the restoration of points of the old religion, and one insisted on the revival of the Six Articles. On their refusal, another set was drawn up, in which not only were the Six Articles called for, but also a special provision enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. This was likewise rejected; but during the delay another rising occurred in Norfolk, reckoned at twenty thousand men, and yet another of less formidable dimensions in Yorkshire. Russel finally scattered the men of Devon, while the Earl of Warwick succeeded in suppressing the rebels of Norfolk, when the promise of an amnesty caused the Yorkshiremen to disperse.[1227]

The question of open resistance thus was settled. Cranmer and his friends had now leisure to consolidate their advantages and organize a system that should be permanent. In 1551, he and Ridley prepared with great care a series of forty-two articles, embodying the faith of the church of England, which was adopted by the convocation in 1552, and was ordered to be signed by all men in orders and all candidates for ordination.[1228] Burnet speaks of it as bringing the Anglican doctrine and worship to perfection. It remained unaltered during the rest of Edward’s reign, and under Elizabeth it was only modified verbally in the recension which resulted in the famous Thirty-nine Articles—the foundation stone of the Episcopalian edifice. Of these forty-two articles, the thirty-first declared that “Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God’s law to vow the estate of a single life or to abstain from marriage.”[1229]

The canon law had thus invested the marriage of the clergy with all the sanctity that the union of man and wife could possess. Yet still the deep-seated conviction of the people as to the impropriety of such proceedings remained, troubling the repose of those who had entered into matrimony, and doubtless operating as a restraint upon the numbers of the imitators of Cranmer. Among the interrogatories drawn up by John Hooper for the visitation of his diocese of Gloucester, in 1552, is one which enquires whether any midwife refuses to attend the confinement of women who are married to ministers of the church[1230]—a suggestion which indicates how rooted was the popular aversion to such matches. If Strype’s description of the clergy of the period, indeed, be correct, there was nothing in the character of the body to overcome the popular aversion in consideration of its purity and devotion to its sacred duties.[1231] The act of 1549 had to a certain extent justified these prejudices by admitting the preferableness of a single life in the ministers of Christ, and it was resolved to remove every possible stigma by a solemn declaration of parliament. A bill was therefore prepared and speedily passed (Feb. 10th, 1552), which reveals how strong was the popular opposition, and how uncertain the position of the wives and children of the clergy. It declares “That many took occasion, from the words in the act formerly made about this matter, to say that it was only permitted, as usury and other unlawful things were, for the avoidance of greater evils, who thereupon spoke slanderously of such marriages, and accounted the children begotten in them to be bastards, to the high dishonor of the King and Parliament, and the learned clergy of the Realm, who had determined that the laws against priests’ marriages were most unlawful by the law of God; to which they had not only given their assent in the Convocation, but signed it with their hands. These slanders did also occasion that the Word of God was not heard with due reverence.” It was therefore enacted “That such marriages made according to the rules prescribed in the Book of Service should be esteemed good and valid, and that the children begot in them should be inheritable according to law.”[1232] A still further confirmation of the question was designed in a body of ecclesiastical law which was for several years in preparation by various commissions appointed for the purpose. In this it was proposed to make the abrogation of celibacy even more distinctly a matter of faith, for, in the second Title, among the various heresies condemned is that which, through the suggestion of the Devil, asserts that admission to holy orders takes away the right to marry. This work, however, though completed, had not yet received the royal assent, when the death of Edward VI. caused it to pass out of sight until 1571, when it was printed by Foxe and brought to the attention of Parliament, but was laid aside owing to the opposition of Queen Elizabeth.[1233]

* * * * *

If the Protestants indulged in any day-dreams as to the permanency of their institutions, they were not long in finding that a change of rulers was destined to cause other changes disastrous to their hopes. Even the funeral of Edward, on the 8th of August, 1553, afforded them a foretaste of what was in store. Although Cranmer insisted that the public ceremonies in Westminster Abbey should be conducted according to the reformed rites, Queen Mary, still resident in the Tower, had private obsequies performed with the Roman ritual, where Gardiner celebrated mortuary mass in presence of the queen and some four hundred attendants. When the incense was carried around, after the Gospel, it chanced that the chaplain who bore it was a married man, and the zealous Dr. Weston snatched it from him, exclaiming, “Shamest thou not to do thine office, having a wife as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as thou!”[1234]

Trifling as was this incident, it foreboded the wrath to come. Though Mary was not crowned until October 1st, she had issued writs for a parliament to assemble on the 10th, and, as an entire change in the religious institutions of the country was intended, we may not uncharitably believe the assertion that every means of influence and intimidation was employed to secure the return of reactionary members. These efforts were crowned with complete success. The Houses had not sat for three weeks, when a bill was sent down from the Lords repealing all the acts of Edward’s reign concerning religion, including specifically those which permitted the marriage of priests and legitimated their offspring; and after a debate of six days it passed the Commons.[1235]

The effect of this was, of course, to revive the statute of the Six Articles, and to place all married priests at the mercy of the queen; and as soon as she felt that she could safely exercise her power, she brought it to bear upon the offenders. A day or two after the dissolution of parliament she commenced by issuing a proclamation inhibiting married priests from officiating.[1236] The Spanish marriage being agreed upon and the resultant insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt being suppressed, Mary recognized her own strength, and her Romanizing tendencies, which had previously been somewhat restrained, became openly manifested. On the 4th of March, 1554, she issued a letter to her bishops, of which the object was to restore the condition of affairs under Henry VIII., except that the royal prerogatives as head of the church were expressly disavowed. It contained eighteen articles, to be strictly enforced throughout all dioceses. Of these the seventh ordered that the bishops should by summary process remove and deprive all priests who had been married or had lived scandalously, sequestrating their revenues during the proceedings. Article VIII. provided that widowers, or those who promised to live in the strictest chastity, should be treated with leniency, and receive livings at some distance from their previous abode, being properly supported meanwhile; while Article IX. directed that those who suffered deprivation should not on that account be allowed to live with their wives, and that due punishment should be inflicted for all contumacy.[1237]

No time was lost in carrying out these regulations. By the 9th of the same month, a commission was already in session at York, which cited the clergy to appear before it on the 12th. From an appeal which is extant, by one Simon Pope, rector of Warmington, it appears that men were deprived without citation or opportunity for defence;[1238] and that this was not infrequent is probable from the proceedings commenced against offenders of the highest class, designed and well fitted to strike terror into the hearts of the humbler parsons. On the 16th a commission was issued to the Bishops of Winchester (Stephen Gardiner), London (Bonner), Durham, St. Asaphs, Chichester, and Landaff, to investigate the cases of the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of St. Davids, Chester, and Bristol, who, according to report, had given a most pernicious example by taking wives, in contempt of God, to the damage of their own souls, and to the scandal of all men. Any three of the commissioners were empowered to summon the accused before them, and to ascertain the truth of the report without legal delays or unnecessary circumlocution. If it were found correct, then they were authorized to remove the offenders at once and forever from their dignities, and also to impose penance at discretion. This was scant measure of justice, considering that the marriage of these prelates had been contracted under sanction of law, and, if that law had recently been repealed, that at least the option of conforming to the new order of things could not decently be denied; yet even this mockery of a trial was apparently withheld, for the congé d’élire for their successors is dated March 18th, only two days after the commission was appointed.[1239]

During the summer the bishops went on their visitations. The articles prepared by Bonner for his diocese are extant, among which we find directions to inquire particularly of the people whether their pastors are married, and, if separated, whether any communication or intercourse takes place between them and their wives; also, whether any one, lay or clerical, ventures to defend sacerdotal matrimony.[1240] Few of the weaker brethren could escape an inquisition so searching as this, and though some controversy arose, and a few tracts were printed in defence of priestly marriage,[1241] such men as Bonner were not likely to shrink from the thorough prosecution of the work which they had undertaken.

When the convocation assembled in this year, it was therefore to be expected that only orthodox opinions would find expression. Accordingly, the lower House presented to the bishops an humble petition praying for the restoration of the old usages, among the points of which are requests that married priests be forcibly separated from their wives, and that those who endeavor to abandon their order be subjected to special animadversion. This clause shows that many unfortunates preferred to give up their positions and lose the means of livelihood, rather than quit the wives to whom they had sworn fidelity, demanding, as we shall see, much subsequent conflicting legislation. The social complications resulting from the change of religion are also indicated in the request that married nuns may be divorced, and that the pretended wives of priests have full liberty to marry again.[1242]

Everything being thus prepared, the purification of the church from married heretics was prosecuted with vigor. Archbishop Parker states that there were in England some 16,000 clergymen, of whom 12,000 were deprived on this account, many of them most summarily; some on common report, without trial, others without being summoned to appear before their judges, and others again while lying in jail for not obeying the summons. Some renounced their wives, and were yet deprived, while those who were deprived were also, as we have seen, forced to part with their wives. We can readily believe that the most ordinary forms of justice were set aside, in view of the illegal and indecorous haste of the proceedings against the married bishops described above, but Parker’s estimate of the number of sufferers is greatly exaggerated. According to Dr. Tanner, in the diocese of Norfolk—then estimated at one-eighth of the whole kingdom—there were only 335 deprivations on this account; and at York, from April 27th to December 20th, 1554, there were only fifty-one ejected.[1243] It is probable, therefore, that the list throughout England would not exceed three thousand; yet when to these are added the hosts who no doubt succeeded in retaining their positions by a compliance with the law in quietly putting away their wives,[1244] it will be seen that the privilege of marriage had been eagerly improved by the clergy, and that an amount of misery which it would be difficult to estimate was caused by the enforcement of the canons.

The proceedings in the case of John Turner, rector of St. Leonard’s, London, would seem to show that the extremity of humiliation was inflicted on these unfortunates. Cited on March 16th to answer to the charge of being a married man, he confessed the accusation, and we find him on the 19th condemned to lose his benefice and be suspended from all priestly functions, to be divorced from his wife, and to undergo such further punishment as the canons required. The sentence of divorce soon followed, and on May 14th he was obliged to do penance in his late church in Eastcheap, holding a lighted candle in his hand and solemnly declaring to the assembled congregation—“Good people, I am come hither, at this present time, to declare unto you my sorrowful and penitent heart, for that, being a priest, I have presumed to marry one Amy German, widow; and, under pretence of that matrimony, contrary to the canons and custom of the universal church, have kept her as my wife, and lived contrary to the canons and ordinances of the church, and to the evil example of good Christian people; whereby now, being ashamed of my former wicked living here, I ask Almighty God mercy and forgiveness, and the whole Church, and am sorry and penitent even from the bottom of my heart therefore. And in token hereof, I am here, as you see, to declare and show unto you my repentance: that before God, on the latter day, you may testify with me of the same. And I most heartily and humbly pray and desire you all, whom by this evil example doing I have greatly offended, that for your part you will forgive me, and remember me in your prayers, that God may give me grace, that hereafter I may live a continent life, according to His laws and the godly ordinances of our mother the holy Catholic Church, through and by His grace. And do here, before you all, openly promise for to do during my life.”[1245] Such scenes as these were well calculated to produce the effect desired upon the people, but we can only guess at the terrorism which was requisite to force educated and respectable men to submit to such degradation.

All this was done by the royal authority, wielding the ecclesiastical power usurped by Henry VIII. Strictly speaking, it was highly irregular and uncanonical, but as the papal supremacy was yet in abeyance it could not be accomplished otherwise. At last, however, the kingdom was ripe for reconciliation with Rome. In calling the parliament of 1554, the queen issued a circular letter to the sheriffs commanding them to admonish the people to return members “of the wise, grave, and Catholic sort.”[1246] Her wishes were fulfilled, and ere the year was out Cardinal Pole was installed with full legatine powers, and Julius III. had issued his Bull of Indulgence, reuniting England to the church from which she had been violently severed.[1247] An obedient parliament lost no time in repealing all statutes adverse to the claims of the Holy See, but its subserviency had limits, and one class largely interested in the reforms of Henry had sufficient influence to maintain its heretical rights. The church lands granted or sold to laymen were not revendicated. Indeed, the queen, in her call for the parliament, had felt it necessary to contradict the rumour that she and Philip intended the “alteration of any particular Man’s Possessions.” Though the transactions by which they had been acquired were wholly illegal; though no duration of possession could bar the imprescriptible rights of the church, yet the nobles and country gentlemen enriched by the spoliation were too numerous and powerful, and the reclamation of the kingdom was too important, to incur any peril by unseasonably insisting on reparation for Henry’s injustice. The abbatial manors and rich priories, the chantries, hospitals, and colleges were therefore left in the impious hands of those who had been fortunate enough to secure them,[1248] and the miserable remnants of the religious orders were left to the conscience of the queen, who made haste to get rid of such fragments of the spoil as had been retained by the crown.[1249]

Whatever tacit understanding there may have been on this delicate subject between Queen Mary and Pope Julius was not assented to by the imperious Caraffa who shortly afterwards ascended the chair of St. Peter. Elected May 23, 1555, he lost no time in proclaiming the imprescriptible rights of the church, and by his Bull “Injunctum nobis” issued June 21st, he pronounced null and void “de apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine” all transactions by which ecclesiastical possessions had passed into the hands of laymen, who were duly threatened with excommunication for prolonged attempts to hold their unhallowed acquisitions.[1250] The effort of course was fruitless, but the spirit in which the English protestants watched the apparent opening of a breach between England and Rome is well expressed in a letter of Aug. 23, 1555, from Sir Richard Morrison to Henry Bullinger—“This anti-Paul, Paul of the apostasy, the servant of the devil, this antichrist newly created at Rome, thinks it but a very small plunder that is offered to him, that he is again permitted in England to tyrannise over our consciences, unless the revenues be restored to the monasteries, that is, the pigsties; the patrimony, as he calls it, of the souls that are now serving in the filth of purgatory. Our ambassadors, who went to Rome for the purpose of bringing back the wolf upon the sheep of Christ, are now with the emperor, and bring us these demands of the chief pontiff: God grant that he may urge them in every possible way.”[1251] The hopes of the reformers however were disappointed, for Paul IV. gave way, and on the reassembling of Parliament, Oct. 23, 1555, a Bull was read by which the pope assented to the arrangement agreed to by Cardinal Pole, confirming the church lands to their new possessors.[1252]

Cardinal Pole, indeed, was not remiss in giving the sanction of the papal authority to all that had been done. Convoking a synod, he issued, in 1555, his Legatine Constitutions, by which all marriages of those included in the prohibited orders were declared null and void. Such apostates were ordered to be separated by ecclesiastical censures and by whatever legal processes might be required; all who dared to justify such marriages or to obstinately remain in their unholy bonds were to be rigorously prosecuted and punished according to the ancient canons, which were revived and declared to be in full force in order to prevent similar scandals for the future.[1253] As the queen by special warrant had decreed that all canons adopted by synods should have the full effect of laws binding on the clergy, these constitutions at once restored matters to their pristine condition. It was doubtless in order to mark in the most conspicuous manner his detestation of clerical marriage that Pole descended to the pettiness of ordering the body of Peter Martyr’s wife to be dug up from its resting-place, near the tomb of St. Frideswide in Christ’s Church, Oxford, and to be buried in a dung-hill.[1254]

It was easy to pass decrees; it was doubtless gratifying to eject married priests by the thousand and to grant their livings to hungry reactionaries or to the crowd of needy churchmen whom Italy had ever ready to supply the spiritual wants and collect the tithes of the faithful. All this was readily accomplished, but the difficulty lay in overcoming the eternal instincts of human nature. The struggle to effect this commenced at once.

It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that those who had entered into matrimony with the full conviction of its sanctity would willingly abandon all intercourse with their wives, although they might yield a forced assent to the pressure of the laws, the prospect of poverty, and the certainty of infamous punishment. Accordingly we find that the necessity at once arose of watching the “reconciled” priests, who continued to do in secret what they could no longer practise openly. Some, indeed, found the restrictions so onerous that they endeavored to release themselves from the bonds of the church rather than to submit longer to the separation from their wives; and this apparently threatened so great a dearth in the ranks of the clergy that Cardinal Pole, as Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1556, forbade the withdrawal of any one from the mysteries and functions of the altar, under pain of the law.[1255]

Notwithstanding all this legislation, royal, parliamentary, and ecclesiastical, the question refused to settle itself, and the Convocation which assembled on the 1st of January, 1557, was obliged to publish an elaborate series of articles, which demonstrated that previous enactments had either not been properly observed or that they had failed in effecting their purpose. Thus the prohibition of marriage to those in priests’ orders was formally renewed. Such of the married clergy, who had undergone penance and had been restored, as still persisted in holding intercourse with their separated wives, were to be deprived irrevocably of their office, and only to be admitted to lay communion—thus reversing the policy of Cardinal Pole’s injunctions. As all priests who had been married were obnoxious to the people, they were to be removed from the priesthood; or, at least, on account of the scarcity of ministers, to act only as curates, and to be incapable of holding benefices until a thorough course of penance should have washed away their sins. Even then, in no case were they to officiate in the dioceses wherein they had been married, but were to be removed to a distance of at least sixty miles, and if detected in any intercourse with their wives, they were to incur severe punishment, a single interchange of words being sufficient to call down the penalty. To insure the observance of these rules, all synods were directed to make special inquiry into the lives of these unfortunates, who were thus to exist under a perpetual surveillance, at the mercy of inimical spies and informers.[1256] This may, perhaps, be considered a moderate expiation for men who, in those days of fierce religious convictions, possessed that flexibility of faith which enabled them to change their belief with every dynastic accident.

If the rigid rules now introduced were successful in nothing else, they at all events succeeded in restoring the old troubles with the old canons. Denied the lawful gratification of human instincts, the clergy immediately returned to the habits which had acquired for them so much odium in times past, and the rulers of the church at once found themselves embarked in the sempiternal struggle with immorality in all its shapes and disguises. If the scandalous chronicles of the period be worthy of credit, neither Gardiner nor Bonner, nor other active promoters of the canons, were without the visible evidences of the frailty of the flesh;[1257] and though they were above the reach of correction, the minor clergy were not so fortunate. The Convocation of 1557, which issued the stringent regulations just quoted, was also obliged to promulgate articles concerning the residence of women with priests, and the punishment of licentiousness, similar to those which we have seen reproduced so regularly for ten centuries. Cardinal Pole, too, in his visitation of the same year, directed inquiries to be made on these points in a manner which shows that they were existing, and not merely anticipated evils.[1258]

* * * * *

Fortunately for the character of the Anglican clergy, the reign of reaction was short. On the 17th of November, 1558, Queen Mary closed her unhappy life, and Cardinal Pole followed her within sixteen hours. The Marian persecution had been long enough and sharp enough to give to heresy all the attractions of martyrdom, thus increasing its fervor and enlarging its circle of earnest disciples; and the sudden termination of that persecution, before it had time to accomplish its work of extirpation, left the reformers more zealous and dangerous than ever. Heresy had likewise been favored by the discontent of the people arising from the disastrous and expensive war with France, which aided the improvident restoration of the church lands in impoverishing the exchequer and in rendering necessary heavy subsidies from the nation, repaid only by cruelty and misfortune. Dread of Spanish influence also had a firm hold of the imagination of the masses, while the church itself was especially unpopular, as the conviction was general that the ill-success of Mary’s administration was attributable to the control exercised by ecclesiastics over the public affairs. Under such auspices, the royal power passed into the hands of a princess who, though by nature leaning to the Catholic faith and disposed to tread in the footsteps of her father, was yet placed by the circumstances of her birth in implacable hostility to Rome, and who held her throne only on the tenure of waging eternal warfare with reaction. The reformers felt that the doom of Catholicism was sealed. Emerging from their hiding-places and hastening back from exile, the religious refugees proceeded at once to practise the rites of Edward VI. Elizabeth, however, after ordering some changes in the Roman observances, forbade, on the 27th of December, all further innovations until the meeting of Parliament, which was convoked for January 23, 1559.

Parliament assembled on the appointed day and sat until the 8th of May. It at once passed acts resuming the ecclesiastical crown lands and restoring the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and it repealed all of Mary’s legislation concerning the power of the papacy. Several other bills were adopted modifying the religion of the kingdom, with a view of discovering some middle term which should unite the people in a common form of belief and worship.[1259] Anxious to avoid all extremes, it negatived the measures introduced by the ardent friends of the Reformation, and among the unsuccessful attempts was one which proposed to restore all priests who had been deprived on account of marriage. This, indeed, was laid aside by the special command of the queen herself.[1260]

The question of clerical marriage was thus left in a most perplexed and unsatisfactory condition. The Six Articles had been repealed by Edward VI., and had been virtually revived by Mary; but Mary’s efforts had been to restore the independent jurisdiction of the church, and she had therefore not continued to regard the Six Articles as in force, the canons of synods and the legatine constitutions of Pole being the law of her ecclesiastical establishment. This was now all swept away, a statute to fill the void was refused, and men were left to draw their own deductions and act at their own peril. Elizabeth refused the sanction of law to sacerdotal marriage, and would not restore the deprived priests, yet she did not enforce any prohibitory regulations, and even promoted many married men. Dr. Parker, the religious adviser of Ann Boleyn, who had left him in charge of her daughter’s spiritual education, was married, and one of Elizabeth’s earliest acts was to nominate him for the vacant primacy of Canterbury, which after long resistance he was forced to accept. The uncertainty of the situation and the anxiety of those interested are well illustrated by a letter to Dr. Parker, dated April 30th, just before the rising of Parliament, from Dr. Sandys, afterwards Bishop of Worcester: “The bill is in hand to restore men to their livings; how it will speed I know not.... Nihil est statutum de conjugio sacerdotum, sed tanquam relictum in medio. Lever was married now of late. The queen’s majesty will wink at it, but not stablish it by law, which is nothing else but to bastard our children.”[1261] In this, Dr. Sandys spoke nothing but truth, and those who were married were obliged formally to have their children legitimated, as even Dr. Parker found it necessary to do this in the case of his son Matthew.[1262]

At length Elizabeth made up her mind, and in the exercise of her royal supremacy she asked for no act of Parliament to confirm her decree. Archbishop Parker has the credit of being the most efficient agent in overcoming her repugnance to the measure, and the ungracious manner in which she finally accorded the permission shows how strong were the prejudices which he had to encounter. In June, 1559, she issued a series of “Injunctions to the Clergy and Laity” which restored the national religion to nearly the same position as that adopted by Edward VI., and it is curious to observe that when she comes to speak of sacerdotal matrimony, she carefully avoids the responsibility of sanctioning it herself, but assumes that the law of Edward is still in force. All that she does, therefore, is to surround it with such limitations and restrictions as shall prevent its abuse, and although this form had perhaps the advantage of establishing the legality of all preëxisting marriages, yet the regulations promulgated were degrading in the highest degree, and the reason assigned for permitting it could only be regarded as affixing a stigma on every pastor who confessed the weakness of his flesh by seeking a wife.[1263]

From the temper of these regulations it is manifest that if Elizabeth yielded to the advice of her counsellors and to the pressure of the times, she did not give up her private convictions or prejudices, and that she desired to make the marriage of her clergy as unpopular and disagreeable as possible. It was probably for the purpose of meeting her objections that the order for a return of the clergy, issued by Archbishop Parker, October 1st, 1561, contained in the blanks issued the unusual entry classifying them as married or unmarried,[1264] and Strype informs us that in the Archdeaconry of London the returns show the ministry for the most part to have been filled with married men.[1265] Even the haughty spirit of the Tudor, thus, could not restrain the progress which had now fairly set in. Those around her who controlled the public affairs were all committed to the Reformation, and were resolved that every point gained should be made secure. When, therefore, in 1563, there was published a recension of the Forty-two Articles issued by Edward VI. in 1552, resulting in the well-known Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, care was taken that the one relating to the liberty of marriage should be made more emphatic than before. Not content with the simple proposition of the original that “Bishops, priests, and deacons are not commanded by God’s law either to vow the estate of a single life, or to abstain from marriage,” the emphatic corollary was added, “Therefore it is lawful for them as for all other Christian men to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to Godliness”[1266]—such as we find it preserved to the present day. This specific declaration in a special article marks the necessity which was felt to place the matter beyond controversy, as a rule of practice. The Articles on Justification and Works of Supererogation (Arts. xi. and xix.) would have sufficed, so far as principle was concerned.

This was not an empty form. Not only the right to marry at their own discretion, thus expressly declared, did much to relieve them from the degrading conditions laid down by the queen, but the revival and strengthening of the article marked a victory gained over the reaction. When, in 1559, the queen appointed a commission to visit all the churches of England and enforce compliance with the order of things then existing, the articles prepared for its guidance enjoin no investigation into opinions respecting priestly marriage, showing that to be an open question, concerning which every man might hold his private belief.[1267] After the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, however, this latitude was no longer allowed. In 1567 Archbishop Parker’s articles of instruction for the visitation of that year enumerate, among the heretical doctrines to be inquired after, the assertion that the Word of God commands abstinence from marriage on the part of ministers of the church.[1268] As we shall see, it was about the same time that the council of Trent likewise erected the question of clerical marriage into a point of belief.

Yet Elizabeth never overcame her repugnance to the marriage of the clergy, nor is it, perhaps, to be wondered at when we consider the contempt in which she held the church of which she was the head,[1269] and her general aversion to sanctioning in others the matrimony which she was herself always toying with and never contracting. When she made her favorites of both sexes suffer for any legalized indiscretions of the kind, it is scarcely surprising that she always looked with disfavor on those of the clergy who availed themselves of the privilege which circumstances had extorted from her, and which she would fain have withheld. When Archbishop Parker ventured to remonstrate with her on her popish tendencies, she sharply told him that “she repented of having made any married bishops.” This was a cutting rejoinder, but even more pointed was the insolence from which his life-long services could not protect his wife. The first time the queen visited the archiepiscopal palace, on her departure she turned to thank Mrs. Parker:—“And you—madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you, so I know not what to call you—but, howsoever, I thank you.”[1270] So in Ipswich, in August, 1561, she found great fault with the marriage of the clergy, and especially with the number of wives and children in cathedrals and colleges—a feeling possibly justified by occasional disorders not unlikely to occur. In 1563 we find Sir John Bourne complaining to the Privy Council that the Dean and Chapter of Worcester had broken up the large organ, the pride of the cathedral, which had cost £200; the metal pipes whereof were melted into dishes and divided among the wives of the prebendaries and the case used to make bedsteads for them; the copes and ornaments, he added, would likewise have been distributed had not some of the unmarried men prevented it, “and as by their Habit and Apparel you might know the Priests wives, and by their Gate in the Market and the Streets from an hundred other Women: so in the Congregation and Cathedral Church they were easy to be known by placing themselves above all other of the most ancient and honest Calling of the said City.”[1271] There was no lack of persons to pour such stories into the queen’s ear, and, with her well-known tendencies, it is no wonder that her counsellors found it difficult to restrain her to the simple order which she issued from Ipswich, declaring “that no manner of person, being either the head or member of any college or cathedral church within this realm, shall, from the time of the notification hereof in the same college, have, or be permitted to have, within the precinct of any such college, his wife, or other woman, to abide and dwell in the same, or to frequent and haunt any lodging within the same college, upon pain that whosoever shall do to the contrary shall forfeit all ecclesiastical promotions in any cathedral or collegiate church within this realm.” Burghley, in sending this royal mandate to Parker, remarks, “Her Majesty continueth very evil affected to the state of matrimony in the clergy. And if [I] were not therein very stiff, her Majesty would openly and utterly condemn and forbid it. In the end, for her satisfaction, this injunction now sent to your Grace is devised. The good order thereof shall do no harm. I have devised to send it in this sort to your Grace for your province; and to the Archbishop of York for his; so as it shall not be promulged to be popular.”[1272] It is doubtless to this occurrence that we may attribute the last relic of clerical celibacy enforced among Protestants, that of the Fellows of the English Universities.

This injunction of Queen Elizabeth caused no little excitement. Though Burghley had prudently endeavored to prevent its becoming “popular,” yet Cox, Bishop of Ely, in remonstrating against its cruelty to those whom it affected in his cathedral seat, shows that it was speedily known to all men, and that it gave exceeding comfort to the reactionaries—“What rejoicing and jeering the adversaries make! How the godly ministers are discouraged, I will pass over.”[1273] In the Universities, where crowds of young men were collected, there might be some colorable excuse for the regulation, but in the splendid and spacious buildings connected with the cathedrals some milder remedy might easily have been found, and the mandate was particularly unpalatable to married bishops. Parker himself, who was individually interested in the matter, made a personal appeal to the queen, the result of which was to wound him deeply, as well as to show him how extreme were her prejudices on the subject. He pours forth his feelings in a letter to Burghley describing the interview—“I was in an horror to hear such words to come from her mild nature and Christianly learned conscience, as she spake of God’s holy ordinance and institution of matrimony. I marvel that our states in that behalf cannot please her Highness, which we doubt nothing at all to please God’s sacred Majesty.” He deplores the effect which it must produce on the people—“We alone of our time openly brought in hatred, shamed and traduced before the malicious and ignorant people, as beasts without knowledge to Godward, in using this liberty of his word, as men of effrenate intemperency, without discretion or any godly disposition worthy to serve in our state. Insomuch that the queen’s Highness expressed to me a repentance that we were thus appointed in office, wishing it had been otherwise.” The interview had evidently been stormy, and Parker had been made to feel the full force of Elizabeth’s perverseness—“I have neither joy of house, land, or name, so abased by my natural sovereign good lady; for whose service and honor I would not think it cost to spend my life”—and he even goes so far as to threaten resistance—“I would be sorry that the clergy should have cause to show disobedience, with oportet Deo obedire magis quam hominibus. And what instillers soever there be, there be enough of this contemned flock, which will not shrink to offer their blood to the defence of Christ’s verity, if it be either openly impugned or secretly suggilled.”[1274] Evidently, before Parker could have been driven to such scarcely covered threats, there must have been an intimation by the angry queen that she would recall the permission to marry, which, in the existing state of the law, she could readily have done.

The same spirit which rendered the marriage of a pastor dependent on the approbation of the neighboring squires caused the retention of ancient rules, which prove the profound distrust still entertained as to the discretion and morality of the clergy, and the difficulty with which the Anglican church threw off the traditions of Catholicism. Thus, even in 1571, Grindal, Archbishop of York, promulgates a modification of the canon of Nicæa, forbidding the residence with unmarried ministers of women under the age of sixty, except relatives closely connected by blood.[1275] Indeed, in some remote corners of the kingdom the old license was kept up. Archbishop Parker, about the year 1565, in speaking of the diocese of Bangor, states—“I hear that diocese to be much out of order, both having no preaching there and pensionary concubinary openly continued, notwithstanding liberty of marriage granted.”[1276] It evidently required time to accustom the clergy to the substitution of the new privileges for the old.

Although sacerdotal marriage was now fully sanctioned by the organic canon law of the church, yet it was still exposed to serious impediments of a worldly character. When thus frowned upon by her who was in reality, if not in name, Supreme Head of the church; when the wife of the primate himself could be exposed to such indelible impertinence; when the marriage of every unfortunate parson was subjected to degrading conditions, and when it was assumed that his bride must be a woman at service, the influences affecting the matrimonial alliances of the clergy must have been of the worst description. The higher classes of society would naturally model their opinions on those of the sovereign, while the lower orders had not as yet shaken off the prejudices in favor of celibacy, implanted in them by the custom of centuries. Making due allowance for polemical bitterness, there is therefore no doubt much truth in the sarcastic account which Sanders gives of the wives of the Elizabethan clergy. Taking advantage of the refusal of Parliament to formally legalize such marriages—a refusal which could not but greatly affect the minds of the people—he assumes that the wives were concubines and the children illegitimate in the eyes of the law; consequently decent women refused to undergo the obloquy attached to a union with a minister of the church, who was therefore forced to take as his spouse any one who would consent to accept him. The wives of prelates were ostracized; not received at court, and sharing in no way the dignities of their husbands, they were kept closely at home for the mere gratification of animal passion. The members of universities had been wholly unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain the same license, which was only granted to the heads of colleges, under condition that their wives should reside elsewhere, and should rarely pollute with their presence the learned precincts.[1277]

The accuracy of this sarcastic description is confirmed by a statement made by Percival Wiburn for the benefit of his friends in Zurich, subsequent to the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles. He asserts that “The marriage of priests was counted unlawful in the times of queen Mary, and was also forbidden by a public statute of the realm, which is also in force at this day; although by permission of queen Elizabeth clergymen may have their wives, provided only they marry by the advice and assent of the bishop and two justices of the peace, as they call them. The lords bishops are forbidden to have their wives with them in their palaces; as are also the deans, canons, presbyters, and other ministers of the church, within colleges, or the precincts of cathedral churches.”[1278] It is not a little curious, indeed, to observe that in spite of the formal declaration in the Thirty-nine Articles, the absence of a special act of Parliament long caused the question to remain a doubtful one in the public mind. As late as July, 1566, Lawrence Humphrey and Thomas Sampson, two zealous Protestants, in denouncing “some straws and chips of the popish religion” which still defaced the Anglican church, state that “the marriage of the clergy is not allowed and sanctioned by the public laws of the kingdom, but their children are by some persons regarded as illegitimate;” in answer to which, Bishops Grindal and Horn rejoined that “the wives of the clergy are not separated from their husbands, and their marriage is esteemed honorable by all, the papists always excepted.”[1279] The matter evidently was still regarded as a subject of controversy, not yet decided beyond appeal; and the experience of the previous quarter of a century had accustomed men to too many vicissitudes for them to feel safe with so slender a guarantee as the Articles afforded. The Catholics still constituted a very large proportion of the population, and they scarcely concealed their feelings towards the innovation. When Sir John Bourne quarrelled with Dr. Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, among the formal articles of accusation which he presented to the Privy Council was the assertion that the Bishop in a sermon had ridiculed celibacy and had decried the virtue of unmarried priests.[1280] The knight apparently believed that this would be damaging to the bishop, and the latter seems likewise to have thought so, for in his answer he emphatically denied it, retorting that his adversary was a papist who had mass celebrated in his house and who was in the habit of applying the most opprobrious epithets to the wives of priests.[1281] So when in 1569 the Catholics of the North rose in insurrection under the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, one of the grievances of which they complained was the marriage of the ministers of Christ.[1282] During the whole of this transition period the question was evidently one which occupied largely the public mind, and in the diversity of opinion it was not easy to see what the ultimate decision might be. When an irrevocable step such as marriage was legal only during the pleasure of a capricious woman, whose assent was known to have been extorted from her, it is no wonder that it should be looked upon with disfavor by all prudent relatives of women inclined to venture on it.

Such a state of feeling could not but react most injuriously on the character of the great body of the clergy. It deprived them of the respect due to their sacred calling, and consequently reduced them to the level of such scant respect as was accorded to them. How long this lasted, and how materially it degraded the ministers of Christ as a body, cannot be questioned by any one who recalls the description of the rural clergy in the brilliant third chapter of Macaulay’s History of England. In 1686 an author complains that the rector is an object of contempt and ridicule for all above the rank of the neighboring peasants; that gentle blood would be held polluted by any connection with the church, and that girls of good family were taught with equal earnestness not to marry clergymen, nor to sacrifice their reputation by amourous indiscretions—two misfortunes which were commonly regarded as equal.[1283]

Thus eagerly accepted and grudgingly bestowed, the privilege of marriage established itself in the Church of England by connivance rather than as a right; and the evil influences of the prejudices thus fostered were not extinguished for generations.

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XXVII. CALVINISM

When John Calvin formulated the system of theology which bears his name, sacerdotal marriage had already become recognized as one of the necessary incidents of the revolt against Rome. That the French Huguenots should accept it accordingly was therefore a matter of course. Calvin himself manifested his contempt for all the ancient prejudices by marrying, in 1539, Idelette de Bure, the widow of the Anabaptist Jean Stordeur, whom he had converted.[1284] The Huguenot Confession of Faith was drawn up by him, and was adopted by the first national synod, held at Paris in 1559. Of course the Genevan views of justification swept away all the accumulated observances of sacerdotalism, and ascetic celibacy shared the fate of the rest.[1285] The discipline of the Calvinist church with regard to the morality of its ministers was necessarily severe. The peculiar purity expected of a pastor’s household was shown by the rule which enjoined any church officer whose wife was convicted of adultery to dismiss her absolutely, under pain of deposition, while laymen, under such circumstances, were exhorted to be reconciled to their guilty partners.[1286] Any lapse from virtue on the part of a minister was visited with peremptory deposition;[1287] nor was this a mere idle threat such as were too many of the innumerable decrees of the Catholic councils quoted above, for the proceedings of various synods show that it was carried sternly into execution. A list of such vagrant and deposed ministers was even kept and published to the churches, with personal descriptions of the individuals, that they might not be able to impose on the unwary. Indeed, the national synod of Lyons, in 1563, went so far as to punish those ministers who brought contempt upon the church by unfitting marriages;[1288] and, though this was omitted from the final code of discipline, it shows the exceeding strictness with which the internal economy of the ecclesiastical establishment of the Huguenots was regulated.

The relations of the Catholic church with its apostates were somewhat confused, and they varied with the political exigencies of the situation. Ecclesiastics who left the Catholic communion did not hesitate to enter into matrimony;[1289] and when the desolation of civil war rendered a forced tolerance of the new religion necessary, their position was a source of considerable debate, varying with the fluctuations of the tangled politics of the time. The Edict of Pacification of Amboise, in March, 1562, was held by the Huguenots to legalize the marriages of these apostates, but the explanatory declaration of August, 1563, ordered their reclamation by the church under pain of exile. When the Spanish alliance gave fresh assurances of triumph to the Catholics this was enforced with increased severity. The Edict of Roussillon, in 1564, commands that all priests, monks, and nuns, who had abandoned their profession and entered into matrimony, shall sunder their unhallowed bonds and return to their duties. Recalcitrants were required to leave the kingdom within two months, under pain, in the case of men, of condemnation to the galleys for life, and in that of women, of perpetual imprisonment.[1290] As most of the Calvinist ministers necessarily belonged to the class thus assailed, the effect of this legislation in stimulating the troubles of the kingdom can readily be perceived.

The dismal strife of the succeeding ten years at length showed that, in spite of the Tridentine canons, the toleration of this iniquity was a necessity. Thus in the Edicts of Pacification issued by Henry III. in 1576 and 1577 there is a provision which admits as valid the marriages theretofore contracted by all priests or religious persons of either sex. The issue of such unions was declared competent to inherit the personalty of the parents and such realty as either parent might have acquired, but was incapable of other inheritance, direct or collateral.[1291]

The church was forced to submit to this temporizing tolerance of evil, and condescended to entreaty since force was no longer permitted. In 1581, the council of Rouen, while deploring the number of monks and nuns who had left their convents, apostatized and married, directs that they shall be tempted back, treated with kindness, and pardon be sought for them from the Holy See.[1292] In the final settlement of the religious troubles, the concessions made by Henry III. were renewed and somewhat amplified by the Edict of Nantes in 1598.[1293] When the reaction came, however, these provisions were held to be only retrospective in their action, and were not admitted as legalizing subsequent marriages. Thus in 1628 a knight of Malta, in 1630 a nun, and in 1640 a priest of Nevers, who had embraced Calvinism, ventured on matrimony, but were separated from their spouses and the marriages were pronounced null.[1294] These decisions were based on the principle that the celibacy of ecclesiastics was prescribed by municipal as well as by canon law, and that a priest in abjuring his religion did not escape from the obligations imposed upon him by the laws of the kingdom.[1295]

In Scotland, as in France, the question of sacerdotal marriage may be considered as having virtually been settled in advance. Lollardry had not been confined to the southern portion of Great Britain. It had penetrated into Scotland, and had received the countenance of those whose position and influence were well calculated to aid in its dissemination among the people. In 1494, thirty of these heretics, known as “the Lollards of Kyle,” were prosecuted before James IV. by Robert Blacater, Archbishop of Glasgow. Their station may be estimated from the fact that they escaped the punishment due to their sins by the favor of the monarch, “for divers of them were his great familiars.” The thirty-four articles of accusation brought against them are mostly Wickliffite in tendency, and their views on the question of celibacy are manifested in the twenty-second article which accuses them of asserting “That Priests may have wives according to the constitution of the Law and of the Primitive Christian Church.”[1296]

The soil was thus ready for the plough of the Reformation; while the temper of the Scottish race gave warrant that when the mighty movement should reach them, it would be marked by that stern and uncompromising spirit which alone could satisfy conscientious and fiery bigots, who would regard all half-measures as pacts with Satan. Nor was there lacking ample cause to excite in the minds of all men the desire for a sweeping and effectual reform. Corruption had extended through every fibre of the Scottish church as foul and as all-pervading as that which we have traced throughout the rest of Christendom.

Not long after the year 1530, and before the new heresy had obtained a foothold, William Arith, a Dominican, ventured to assail the vices of his fellow churchmen. In a sermon preached at St. Andrews, with the approbation of the heads of the universities, he alluded to the false miracles with which the people were deceived, and the abuses practised at shrines to which credulous devotion was invited. “As of late dayes,” he proceeded, “our Lady of Karsgreng hath hopped from one green hillock to another: But, honest men of St. Andrewes, if ye love your wives and daughters, hold them at home, or else send them in good honest company; for if ye knew what miracles were wrought there, ye would thank neither God nor our Lady.” In another sermon, arguing that the disorders of the clergy should be subjected to the jurisdiction of the civil authorities, he introduced an anecdote respecting Prior Patrick Hepburn, afterwards Bishop of Murray. That prelate once, in merry discourse with his gentlemen, asked of them the number of their mistresses, and what proportion of the fair dames were married. The first who answered confessed to five, of whom two were bound in wedlock; the next boasted of seven, with three married women among them; and so on until the turn came to Hepburn himself, who, proud of his bonnes fortunes, declared that although he was the youngest man there, his mistresses numbered twelve, of whom seven were men’s wives.[1297] Yet Arith was a good Catholic, who, on being driven from Scotland for his plain speaking, suffered imprisonment in England under Henry VIII. for maintaining the supremacy of the pope.

How little concealment was thought requisite with regard to these scandals is exemplified in the case of Alexander Ferrers, which occurred about the same time. Taken prisoner by the English and immured for seven years in the Tower of London, he returned home to find that his wife had been consoled and his substance dissipated in his absence by a neighboring priest, for the which cause he not unnaturally “spake more liberally of priests than they could bear.” By this time, heresy was spreading, and severe measures of repression were considered necessary. It therefore was not difficult to have the man’s disrespectful remarks construed as savoring of Lutheranism, and he was accordingly brought up for trial at St. Andrews. The first article of accusation read to him was that he despised the Mass, whereto he answered, “I heare more Masses in eight dayes than three bishops there sitting say in a yeare.” The next article accused him of contemning the sacraments. “The priests,” replied he, “were the most contemnors of the sacraments, especially of matrimony.” “And that he witnessed by many of the priests there present, and named the man’s wife with whom they had meddled, and especially Sir John Dungwaill, who had seven years together abused his own wife and consumed his substance, and said: because I complain of such injuries, I am here summoned and accused as one that is worthy to be burnt: For God’s sake, said he, will ye take wives of your own, that I and others whom ye have abused may be revenged on you.” Old Gawain Dunbar, Bishop of Aberdeen, not relishing this public accusation, sought to justify himself, exclaiming, “Carle, thou shalt not know my wife;” but the prisoner turned the tables on him, “My lord, ye are too old, but by the grace of God I shall drink with your daughter or I depart.” “And thereat there was smiling of the best and loud laughter of some, for the bishop had a daughter married with Andrew Balfour in that town.” The prelates who sat in judgment found that they were exchanging places with the accused, and, fearful of further revelations from the reckless Alexander, commanded him to depart; but he refused, unless each one should contribute something to replace the goods which his wife’s paramour had consumed, and finally, to stop his evil tongue, they paid him and bade him begone.[1298]

All prelates, however, were not so sensitive. When Cardinal Beatoun, Archbishop of St. Andrews, primate of Scotland, and virtual governor of the realm, about the year 1546 married his eldest daughter to the eldest son of the Earl of Crawford, he caused the nuptials to be celebrated with regal magnificence, and in the marriage articles, signed with his own hand, he did not hesitate to call her “my daughter.” It is not difficult, therefore, to credit the story that the night before his assassination was passed with his mistress, Marion Ogilby, who was seen leaving his chamber not long before Norman Leslie and Kirkaldy of Grange forced their way into his castle.[1299] His successor in the see of St. Andrews, John Hamilton, was equally notorious for his licentiousness; and men wondered, not at his immorality, but at his taste in preferring to all his other concubines one whose only attraction seemed to be the zest given to sin by the fact that she was the wife of one of his kindred.[1300]

This is testimony from hostile witnesses, and we might perhaps impugn their evidence on that ground, were it not that the Catholic Church of Scotland itself admitted the abandoned morals of its members when the rapid progress of Calvinism at length drove it in self-defence to attempt a reform which was its only chance of salvation. In the last Parliament held by James V. before his death in 1542, an act was passed exhorting the prelates and ecclesiastics in general to take measures “for reforming of ther lyvis, and for avoyding of the opin sclander that is gevin to the haill estates throucht the spirituale mens ungodly and dissolut lyves.”[1301] Nothing was then done in spite of this solemn warning, though the countenance afforded to the Reformers by the Regent Arran, strengthened by his alliance with Henry VIII., was daily causing the heresy to assume more dangerous proportions. When, therefore, the Catholic party, rallying after the murder of Cardinal Beatoun, at length triumphed with the aid of France, and sent the young Queen of Scots to marry Francis II., they seemed to recognize that they could only maintain their advantage by meeting public opinion in endeavoring to reform the church. Accordingly, in November, 1549, a council was convoked at Edinburgh, of which the first canon declares that the licentiousness of the clergy had given rise to the gravest scandals, to repress which the rules enjoined by the council of Bâle must be strictly enforced and universally obeyed. The second canon is no less significant in ordering that prelates and other ecclesiastics shall not live with their illegitimate children, nor provide for them or promote them in the paternal churches, nor marry their daughters to barons by endowing them with the patrimony of Christ, nor cause their sons to be made barons by the same means.[1302]

This was of small avail. Ten years afterwards, the progress of heresy becoming ever more alarming, another council was held, in March, 1559, to devise means to put a stop to the encroachments of the enemy. To this assembly the Catholic nobles addressed an earnest prayer for reformation. After alluding to the proceedings of the Parliament of 1542, they add, “And siclyk remembring in diverss of the lait provinciale counsales haldin within this realm, that poynt has been treittet of, and sindrie statutis synodale maid therupon, of the quhilks nevertheless thar hes folowit nan or litill fruitt as yitt, bot rathare the said estate is deteriorate ... it is maist expedient therefore that thai presentlie condescend to seik reformation of thir lyvis ... and naymlie that oppin and manifest sins and notor offencis be forborn and abstenit fra in tyme to cum.” In this request they had been anticipated by the Reformers, who, the previous year, in a supplication addressed to the queen-regent, included among their demands “That the wicked, slanderous and detestable life of Prelats and of the State Ecclesiasticall may be reformed, that the people by them have not occasion (as of many dayes they have had) to contemne their Ministrie and the Preaching whereof they should be Messengers.”

The council, thus urged by friend and foe, recognized the extreme necessity of the case, and did its best to cure the immedicable disease. Its first canon reaffirmed the observance of the Basilian regulations, and appointed a commission empowered to enforce them; and, that nothing should interfere with its efficiency, the Archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow made a special renunciation of their exemption from the jurisdiction of the council. The second canon, in forbidding the residence of illegitimate children with their clerical fathers, endeavored to procure obedience to the rule ordered by the council of 1549, by permitting it for four days in each quarter, and by a penalty for infractions of £200 in the case of an archbishop, £100 in that of a bishop, and leaving the mulct to be imposed on inferior ecclesiastics at the discretion of the officials. The third canon prohibited the promotion of children in their father’s benefices, and supplicated the queen-regent to obtain of the pope that no dispensations should be granted to evade the rule. The fourth canon inhibited ecclesiastics from marrying their daughters to barons and lairds, and endowing them with church lands, or making their sons barons or lairds with more than £100 annual income, under pain of fine to the amount of the dowry or lands abstracted from the church; and all grants of church lands or tithes to concubines or children were pronounced null and void.[1303]

When such legislation was necessary, the disorders which it was intended to repress are acknowledged in terms admitting neither of palliation nor excuse. The extent of the evil especially alluded to in the latter canons is further exemplified by the fact that during the thirty years immediately following the establishment of the Reformation in Scotland, more letters of legitimation were taken out than were issued in the subsequent two centuries. These were given to the sons of the clergy who were allowed to retain their benefices, and who then made over the property to their natural children.[1304]

* * * * *

Such being the state of morals among the ministers of the old religion, it is easy to appreciate the immense advantage enjoyed by the Reformers. They made good use of it. Knox loses no opportunity of stigmatizing the “pestilent Papists and Masse-mongers” as “adulterers and whoremasters,” who were thus perpetually held up to the people for execration, while the individual wrongs from which so many suffered were noised about and made the subject of constantly-increasing popular indignation.[1305] Yet the abrogation of celibacy occupies less space in the history of the Scottish Reformation than in that of any other people who threw off the allegiance to Rome.

The remote position of Scotland and its comparative barbarism rendered it in some degree inaccessible to the early doctrines of Luther and Zwingli. Before it began to show a trace of the new ideas, clerical marriage had long passed out of the region of disputation with the Reformers, and was firmly established as one of the inseparable results of the doctrine of justification professed by all the reformed churches.[1306] Not only was it thus accepted as a matter of course by all converts to the new faith, but that faith, when once introduced, spread in Scotland with a rapidity proportioned to the earnest character of the people. The permission to read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, granted by Parliament in 1543, doubtless had much to do with this; the leaning of the Regent Arran to the same side gave it additional impetus, and the savage fierceness with which the Reformers were prepared to vindicate their belief is shown by the murder of Cardinal Beatoun, which was countenanced and justified by Knox himself. Powerful nobles soon saw in it the means of emancipating themselves from the vacillating control of the regent; nor was the central authority strengthened when, in 1554, the reins of power were wrested from the feeble Arran and confided to the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, who found herself obliged to encourage each party by turns, and to balance one against the other, to prevent either Catholic or Calvinist from obtaining control over the state. Then, too, as in Germany and England, the temporal possessions of the church were a powerful temptation to its destruction. From the great Duke of Chatelleraut to the laird of some insignificant peel, all were needy and all eager for a share in the spoil. When, in 1560, an assembly of the nobles at Edinburgh listened to a disputation on the Mass, and the Catholic doctors were unable to defend it as a propitiatory sacrifice, the first exclamation of the lords revealed the secret tendencies of their thoughts—“We have been miserably deceived heretofore; for if the Mass may not obtain remission of sins to the quick and to the dead, Wherefore were all the Abbies so richly doted and endowed with our Temporall lands?”[1307]

Of course less selfish purposes were put forward to enlist the support of the people. On the 1st of January, 1559, when the storm was gathering, but before it had burst, the inmates of the religious houses found affixed to their gates a proclamation in the name of “The Blinde, Crooked, Lame, Widows, Orphans, and all other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as cannot work,” ordering the monks to leave the patrimony intended to relieve the suffering, but usurped by indolent shavelings, giving them until Whit-Sunday to make their exit, after which they would be ejected by force, and ending with the significant warning—“Let him, therefore, that hath before stolen, steal no more, but rather let him work with his hands that he may be helpfull to the poore.”[1308]

Such a cry could hardly fail to be popular, but when the threat was carried into execution, the blind and the crooked, the widow and orphan received so small a share of the spoil that they were worse off than before. As we have already seen in England, the destruction of the Scottish monasteries was the commencement of the necessity of making some public provision for paupers.[1309] The nobles seized the lion’s share; the rest fell to the crown, subject to the payment of the very moderate stipends assigned to the comparatively few ministers required by the new establishment, and these stipends were so irregularly paid that the unfortunate ministers were frequently in danger of starvation, and were constantly besieging the court with their dolorous complaints. Where the lands and revenues went is indicated with grim humor by Knox, in describing the resistance offered in 1560 to the adoption of his Book of Discipline by those who had professed great zeal for the Lord Jesus. Lord Erskine had been one of the first and most consistent of the “Lords of the Congregation,” yet he also refused to sign the book—“And no wonder, for besides that he had a very evill woman to his wife, if the Poore, the Schooles, and the Ministerie of the Church had their owne, his Kitchin would lack two parts and more of that which he unjustly now possesseth.”[1310]

Yet, when compared with the rich abbatial manors of England or the princely foundations of Germany, the spoil of the church was mean indeed. Knox had resided much abroad, and had seen the vast wealth which the piety of ages had showered upon the church in the most opulent lands of Europe, yet his simplicity or fanaticism finds source of wondering comment in the homespun luxury of the unfortunate monks whom he assisted in dispossessing. When the destruction of the monasteries in 1559 commenced by a brawl in Perth, caused by a sermon preached by Knox, and three prominent convents were broken up, he expatiates on the extravagance revealed to sight—“And in very deed the Grey-Friers was a place so well provided that unlesse honest men had seen the same, we would have feared to have reported what provision they had, their sheets, blankets, beds and coverlets were such that no Earle in Scotland had better: Their naperie was fine; they were but 8 persons in the Convent, and yet they had 8 puncheons of salt beef (consider the time of the yeere, the eleventh of May), wine, beere, and ale, beside store of victuals belonging thereto.”[1311] Imagine an abbot of St. Albans or an abbess of Poissy reduced to the coverlets and salt beef which the stern Calvinist deemed an indulgence so great as to be incredible!

Still, in so impoverished a country as the Scotland of that period, even these poor spoils were a motive sufficient to prove a powerful aid to the conquering party in the struggle. And yet, amid all the miserable ambitions of the Erskines and Murrays, the Huntleys and Bothwells, who occupied the prominent places in the court and camp, we should do grievous wrong to the spirit which triumphed at last over the force and fraud of the Guises, if we attributed to temporal motives alone the movement which expelled licentious prelates and drove Queen Mary to the fateful refuge of Fotheringay. The selfish aims of the nobles would have been fruitless but for the zealous earnestness of the people, led by men of iron nature, who doubted themselves as little as they doubted their God, and who, in the death-struggle with Antichrist, were as ready to suffer as they were ruthless to inflict. Nor can the disorders of the Catholic clergy be rightly imputed to the temperament of the race, for the Reformers, who carried with them so large a portion of the middle and lower classes, preached a system of rigid morality to which the world had been a stranger since the virtues of the Germanic tribes had been lost in the overthrow of the Empire; and they not merely preached it, but obtained its embodiment in a code of repressive laws, which their vigilant authority strictly enforced.

I have said above that the question of celibacy appears but rarely in the course of the contest, yet, notwithstanding the causes which rendered it a less prominent subject of debate than elsewhere, it occasionally rises to view. The first instance of clerical marriage that I find recorded occurred in 1538, when Thomas Coklaw, parish priest of Tillibodie, married a widow of the same village named Margaret Jameson. This, however, was not done openly and defiantly, as in Germany, but in secret, and the married couple continued to dwell apart. That the infraction of the canons was not without danger was shown by the result, for, when it became known, Coklaw was tried by the Bishop of Dumblane and condemned to perpetual imprisonment; but his relatives broke open his dungeon and he escaped to England. When, early in the following year, a group of reformers, including Dean Thomas Forret, Friar John Killore, Friar John Beverege, and others, were put on trial, their presence at this wedding was one of the crimes for which they were executed upon Castle Hill at Edinburgh.[1312] In fact, the abrogation of the rule of celibacy, in Scotland as elsewhere, was necessarily one of the leading points at issue between the Reformers and the Catholics. Thus, when George Wishart, one of the early heretics who ventured openly to preach the Lord Jesus, was seized, in spite of powerful protectors, and after a prolonged captivity was brought for trial before Cardinal Beatoun in 1545, in the accusation against him article 14th asserted, “Thou false Hereticke hast taught plainly against the Vows of Monks, Friers, Nuns, and Priests, saying, That whosoever was bound to such like Vows, they vowed themselves to the state of damnation. Moreover, That it was lawfull for Priests to marry wives and not to live sole.” Wishart tacitly confessed the truth of this impeachment by rejoining—“But as many as have not the gift of chastity, nor yet for the Gospel have overcome the concupiscence of the flesh, and have vowed chastity; ye have experience, although I should hold my tongue, to what inconveniences they have exposed themselves.”[1313] He was accordingly condemned as an incorrigible heretic, and promptly burnt. Yet when, in 1547, John Knox held his disputation with Dean Wynrame and Friar Arbuckle, though the nine articles drawn up for discussion ranged from the supremacy of the pope and the existence of purgatory to the payment of tithes, the subject of vows of chastity was not even mentioned.[1314]

Still, even as late as 1558 the trial of Walter Mill shows that the question was even yet agitated in the controversies between the polemics of the two parties. Mill had been a priest and had married, and the first of the articles of accusation against him was that he asserted the lawfulness of sacerdotal marriage. To this he boldly assented, declaring that he regarded matrimony as a blessed bond, open for all men to enter, find that it were better for priests to marry than to vow chastity and not preserve it, as they were wont to do. Condemned to the stake, the unfortunate old man commanded the sympathies of the people, even in the archiepiscopal town of St. Andrews. No one could be found to act as executioner, until at length one of the servants of the archbishop consented to fill the abhorrent office; but when a rope was sought with which to bind the wretched sufferer to the stake, no one would furnish it, and the tragedy was necessarily postponed. Equally unsuccessful was the next day’s search, until the archbishop, fearing to lose his victim, gave the cords of his own pavilion, and the sentence was carried into effect. Even after the sacrifice, the popular feeling was manifested raising a pile of stones as a monument on the place of torture, and as often as these were cast aside by the priests they were replaced by the people, until the followers of the archbishop carried them off by night, and used them for building.[1315]

These incidents show us that the question received its share of attention in the controversy by which each side endeavored to secure the support of the nation, but it makes no appearance in public negotiations and declarations. Thus, in 1558, when the growing strength of the Lords of the Congregation led the Catholics to offer concessions, which were rejected by the conscious power of the Reformers, there was no allusion to celibacy on either side. In fact, between the respective leaders, the questions were almost purely personal and political; while among the conscientiously religious supporters of either party, opinions were too rigidly defined for argument. Convictions were too divergent and too firm for compromise or concession to be possible, and Catholic and Calvinist grimly recognized, as by a tacit understanding, the alternative of extermination. When the English alliance at last drove the Catholics to the wall, and in July, 1560, there assembled the parliament to which by the Articles of Leith was referred the duty of effecting a settlement of the kingdom, the vanquished party made no struggle against their fate. Such Catholic prelates and lords as took their seats refrained from all debate, and allowed the victors to arrange the temporal and spiritual affairs of the kingdom at their pleasure.

In this settlement, our subject affords a curious comparison between the English and Scotch churches. In the former, at a period even later than this, it was considered necessary to embody a renunciation of celibacy in the organic law, which has been maintained to the present day. In the latter, ecclesiastical marriage had become already so firmly established in the minds of the Reformers that it was accepted as a matter of course, which needed no special confirmation. Although laws were passed prohibiting the Mass and abolishing the supremacy of the pope, none were thought necessary to legalize the marriages of the clergy. Even in Knox’s Confession of Faith, adopted by the parliament on the 17th of July, there is no direct allusion to the matter. The only passage which can be construed as having any bearing upon it occurs in Chapter XIV., when considering “What works are reputed good before God”—“And evill works we affirme not onely those that are expressly done against God’s commandment, but those also that in matters of religion and worshipping of God have no assurance, but the invention and opinion of man, which God from the beginning hath ever rejected, as by the prophet Isaiah and by our Master Christ Jesus we are taught in these words—In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines which are precepts of Men.”[1316]

Nothing more, in fact, was needed when the triumph of the new ideas was so complete that Knox could exultingly exclaim, “For what Adulterer, what Fornicator, what known Masse-monger or pestilent Papist durst have been seen in publike within any Reformed Town within this Realme before that the Queen arrived?... For while the Papists were so confounded that none within the Realme durst avow the hearing or saying of Masse then the thieves of Tiddisdale durst avow their stouth or stealing in the presence of any upright judge.”[1317] When persecution thus had changed sides, no minister could feel that his nuptials required special authorization. How thoroughly, indeed, they were legitimated is shown by a curious little incident occurring in 1563. A minister named Baron made complaint to the General Assembly that his wife, an English woman named Anne Goodacre, “after great rebellions by her committed,” had left him and taken refuge in England, whereupon he requested the Assembly to have her brought back to him. Spotswood, the Superintendent of Lothian, with Knox and Craig, actually wrote to Archbishop Parker officially asking him to have the woman sought for and sent to Scotland; but Parker, considering it to be an international question and beyond his sphere, prudently referred the request to Secretary Cecil.[1318]

It were foreign to our object to enter into the dark details of Mary’s short and disastrous reign. The intrigues of the camarilla, the boyish weakness of Darnley, the subtlety of Rizzio, and the coarse ambition of Huntley and Bothwell, were alike harmless against the earnest reverence of the people for the new faith; and the expiring struggles of Catholicism were too feeble to give any practical importance to the vain attempts at reaction.

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XXVIII. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT

It has already been observed that the dissolute and unchristian life of the priesthood was one of the efficient causes which led to the success of the Reformation. At an early period in the movement, the Catholic church felt the necessity of purifying itself, if it was to retain the veneration of the people; and the veneration of the people was now not merely a source of revenue, but a condition of the very existence of the stupendous structure reared upon the credulity of ages. As soon as it became clearly apparent that Lutheranism was not to be suppressed by the ordinary machinery, and that it was spreading with a rapidity which portended the worst results, an effort was made to remove the reproach which incorrigible immorality had entailed upon the church. Allusion has been made above to the stringent measures of reform proclaimed by the legate Campeggi at Ratisbon, in 1524, in which he acknowledged that the new heresy had no little excuse in the detestable morals and abandoned lives of the clergy—a truth repeatedly admitted by the ecclesiastical authorities.[1319] His well-meant endeavors had little result, and we have seen that, some years later, Erasmus still urged the abolition of the rule of celibacy as the only practicable mode of removing the scandal.

Not long afterwards the Gallican church made a strenuous effort of the same nature to check the spread of Lutheranism. In 1521, before it had to encounter a hostile heresy, the council of Paris had deplored the pervading corruptions with exceeding candor. The condition of conventual discipline was such as to threaten the very existence of the system, and the customary denunciations of ineradicable abuses were freely published.[1320] In 1528 the Cardinal-legate Duprat, Chancellor of France, held a council in Paris, where he condemned, seriatim, the new doctrines as heresies, and elevated the rule of celibacy to the dignity of a point of faith.[1321] He also caused the adoption of a series of canons designed to remove from the church the disgrace caused by the laxity of clerical morals and manners. The bishops were instructed to enforce the decrees of the councils and of the fathers until concubinage and incontinence should be completely exterminated, and a rule was laid down which would have been eventually effectual if conscientiously carried out. No one was thereafter to be admitted to holy orders without written testimony as to his age and moral character from his parish priest, substantiated by the oaths of two or three approved witnesses.[1322] At the same time similar councils were held at Bourges by the Cardinal Archbishop Tournon, and at Lyons by Claude, Bishop of Macon. To what extent these excellent rules were put in force may be guessed by a description of the French clergy in 1560, as portrayed by Monluc, Bishop of Valence, in a speech before the royal council. The parish priests were for the most part engrossed in worldly pursuits, and had obtained their preferment by illicit means, nor did there seem much prospect of an improvement so long as the prelates were in the habit of bestowing the benefices within their gift on their lackeys, barbers, cooks, and other serving men, rendering the ecclesiastics as a body an object of contempt to the people.[1323] We need, therefore, not be surprised to find in the councils of the period a repetition of all the old injunctions, showing that the maintenance of improper consorts and the disgrace of priestly families were undiminished evils.[1324] This description of the French clergy is most emphatically extended to the whole church in the project for reformation drawn up by order of Paul III. in 1538, and to these evils are attributed the innumerable scandals which afflicted the faithful, as well as the contempt in which the ecclesiastical body was held and the virtual extinction of all reverence for the services of religion.[1325]

In 1530 Clement VII. addressed himself vigorously to the task of putting an end to the scandalous practice of hereditary transmission of benefices, which he describes as almost universal. A special Bull was issued, prohibiting the children of priests or monks from enjoying any preferment in their father’s benefices, and, recognizing that the Roman curia was one of the chief obstacles to all reform, he provided that if he or his successors should grant dispensations permitting such infraction of the canons, they should be considered as issued unwittingly, and be held null and void.[1326] Like so many others, this Bull seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as issued, and the pecuniary needs of the Roman court rendered it unable to abandon so lucrative a source of revenue. Even as soon as 1538 the cardinals to whom Paul III. committed the task of drawing up the project of reformation cautiously intimate that they hear of such dispensations being granted, and to this they attribute a large share of the troubles of the church and the enmity felt towards the Holy See.[1327] This warning passed unheeded, and, as we have seen, in 1559 a Scottish council prayed the queen-regent to use her influence with the pope to prevent dispensations being granted to enable illegitimate children to hold preferment in their father’s benefices,[1328] while in 1562 the frequency and readiness with which such dispensations were still obtained are enumerated in a list of abuses laid before the council of Trent by Sebastian King, of Portugal, as one of the matters requiring reformation by the supreme power of the council.[1329] To this and other similar appeals the papal legates loftily replied that laws were not to be prescribed to the Holy See;[1330] and the motive for the refusal is easily comprehended when we see that in the “Taxes of the Penitentiary” the price for a dispensation admitting the bastard of a priest to holy orders was a ducat and a carlino.[1331]

In Spain, the most dangerous opponent of the Reformation, Ignatius Loyola, succeeded to some extent in repressing the public and unblushing manifestation of concubinage. His biographer states that the female companions of the Peninsular clergy were accustomed to pledge their faith to their consorts, as if united by the marriage-tie, and that they wore the distinguishing costume of married women, as though glorying in their shame.[1332] Scandalized by this, on his return to his native land, in 1535, Ignatius exerted himself to abolish it, together with other priestly peccadilloes, and his influence was sufficient to procure the enactment and enforcement by the temporal authorities of sundry laws which relieved the Spanish church from so great an opprobrium.[1333] Yet, though this semi-authorized cohabitation may have been checked, the custom of notorious concubinage continued to flourish. Bernardino Diaz de Luco, a Spanish jurist, not long afterwards, deplores the frequency of the vice, but warns judges that they should not be over-severe in repressing it, since so few are found guiltless, and there is danger that those who are restrained from it may be forced into darker sins.[1334]

About the same time, Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, undertook the reformation of his extensive diocese. He assembled a council which issued a series of 275 canons, prescribing minutely the functions, duties, and obligations of all grades of the clergy. As regards the delicate subject of concubinage, he contented himself with quoting the Nicene canon prohibiting the residence of women not nearly connected by blood, and added that if the degeneracy of the times prevented the enforcement of a regulation so strict, at all events he forbade the companionship of females obnoxious to suspicion.[1335] The good bishop himself could hardly have expected that so mild an allocution would have much effect upon a perverse and hardened generation.

In 1537, Matthew, Archbishop of Salzburg, assembled his provincial synod, which, recognizing the urgent necessity of preserving the church and protecting the people, adopted a series of reformatory canons. Apparently afraid of promulgating them, however, it was resolved to suppress them for the present under the pretext that the approaching general council would regulate the discipline of the church at large, and the archbishop contented himself with a pastoral letter addressed to his suffragans, in which he urged upon them to consider the contamination to which the laity were exposed through the vices of their pastors, and timidly suggested that, if the clergy could not restrain their passions, they should at all events indulge them secretly, so that scandal might be avoided and the punishment of their transgressions be left to an avenging God.[1336]

Even in the council of Trent itself, the Bishop of St. Mark, in opening its proceedings with a speech, January 6th, 1546, drew a fearful picture of the corruption of the world, which had reached a degree that posterity might possibly equal but not exceed. This he assured the assembled fathers was attributable solely to the wickedness of the pastors, who drew their flocks with them into the abyss of sin. The Lutheran heresy had been provoked by their own guilt, and its suppression was only to be hoped for by their own reformation.[1337] At a later session, the Bavarian orator, August Baumgartner, told the assembled fathers that the progress of the Reformation was attributable to the scandalous lives of the clergy, whose excesses he could not describe without offending the chaste ears of his auditory. He even asserted that out of a hundred priests there were not more than three or four who were not either married or concubinarians[1338]—a statement repeated in a consultation on the subject of ecclesiastical reform drawn up in 1562 by order of the Emperor Ferdinand, with the addition that the clergy would rather see the whole structure of the church destroyed than submit to even the most moderate measure of reform.[1339]

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It is not to be wondered therefore that the Christian world had long and earnestly demanded the convocation of an œcumenic council which should represent all parties, should have full powers to reconcile all differences, and should give to the ancient church the purification thus recognized as the only efficient means of healing the schism. This was a remedy to the last degree distasteful to the Holy See. The recollections of Constance and Bâle were full of pregnant warnings as to the almost inevitable antagonism between the Vicegerent of Christ and an independent representative body, believing itself to act under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, claiming autocratic supremacy in the church, and convoked for the special purpose of reforming abuses, the most of which were fruitful sources of revenue to the papal court. Such a body, if assembled in Germany, would be the pope’s master; if in Italy, his tool; and it behooved him to act warily if he desired to meet the unanimous demand of Christendom without risking the sacrifice of his most cherished prerogatives. Had the council been called in the early days of the Reformation, it could hardly have prevented the separation of the churches; yet, in the temper which then existed, it would probably have effected as thorough a purification of the ecclesiastical establishment as was possible in so corrupt an age. By delaying it until the reactionary movement had fairly set in, the chances of troublesome puritans gaining the ascendency were greatly diminished, and the papal court exposed itself to little danger when, under the urgent pressure of the emperor, it at length, in 1536, proposed to convoke the long desired assembly at Mantua.[1340]

A place so completely under papal influence was not likely to meet the views of the opposition, and it is not surprising that both the Lutherans and Henry VIII. refused to connect themselves with such a council. The latter, indeed, in his epistle of April 8, 1538, to Charles V., expressed himself more forcibly than elegantly:—“Nowe, if he [the pope] calle us to one of his owne townes, we be afraid to be at suche an hostes table. We saye, Better to ryse a hungred, then to goo thense with oure bellyes fulle.”[1341] The formality of its opening, May 17th, 1537, was therefore an empty ceremony; its transfer to Vicenza was little more; and, as no delegates presented themselves up to the 1st of May, 1538, it was prorogued until Easter, 1539, with the promise of selecting a satisfactory place for the meeting. The pressure still continued until, in May, 1542, Paul finally convoked it to assemble at Trent. The Reformers were no better satisfied than before. They had so long professed their readiness to submit all the questions in dispute to a free and unbiased general council, that they could not refuse absolutely to countenance it; but they were now so completely established as a separate organization, that they had little to hope and everything to fear from the appeal which they had themselves provoked, and nothing which Rome could now offer would have brought them into willing attendance upon such a body.[1342] They accordingly kept aloof, and on the assembling of the council, November 22d, 1542, its numbers were so scanty that it could accomplish nothing, and it was accordingly suspended in July, 1543. When again convoked, March 15th, 1545, but twenty bishops and a few ambassadors were present; these waited with what patience they might command for accessions, which were so tardy in arriving that when at length the assembly was formally opened, on the 13th of December, the number had increased by only five. For fifteen months the council continued its sessions, completely under the control of the pope, and occupied solely with measures designed to draw the line between the Catholic and the Reformed churches more sharply than ever.

The appeals of the German bishops and of the imperial ambassadors for some effective efforts at reform became at length too pressing, and to evade them, in March, 1547, the council was transferred to Bologna, against the earnest protest of the emperor and the Spaniards, who refused to follow.[1343] At Bologna little was done except to dispute over the sharp protests of the emperor and to adjourn the council from time to time, until, after falling into universal contempt, it was suspended in 1549. Julius III., who received the tiara on the 22d of February, 1550, signalized his accession by convoking it again at Trent; and there it once more assembled on the 1st of May, 1551.

At that time Lutheranism in Germany was under the heel of Charles V.; Maurice of Saxony was ripening his schemes of revolt, and concealing them with the dexterity in which he was unrivalled; it was the policy of both that Protestant theologians should take part in the discussions—of the one, that they should there receive their sentence; of the other, that their presence might assist in cloaking his designs. The flight from Innspruck, followed by the Transaction of Passau, changed the face of affairs. The Lutheran doctors rejoicingly shook the dust from their feet as they departed from Trent, complaining that they had been treated as criminals on trial, not as venerable members of a body assembled to decide the gravest questions relating to this life and that to come. Other symptoms of revolt among the Catholic nations were visible, and on the 28th of April, 1552, the council again broke up.[1344]

Ten years passed away; the faithful impatiently demanded the continuation of the work which had only been commenced, and at last the pressure became so strong that Pius IV. was obliged to reassemble the council.[1345] His Bull bears date November, 1560, but it was not until twenty years after Trent had witnessed the first convocation that the holy men again gathered within its walls, and on the 18th of January, 1562, the council resumed its oft-interrupted sessions. The States of the Augsburg Confession had been politely invited to participate in the proceedings, but they declined with the scantest of courtesy.[1346]

During this long-protracted farce there were times when those who sincerely desired the restoration of the church could not restrain their impatience. In 1536, Paul III., who earnestly admitted the necessity of some reform, called to his aid nine of his prelates most eminent for virtue and piety, as a commission to prepare a scheme for internal reformation.[1347] According to a papal historian, his object in this was to stop the mouths of the heretics who found in the Roman court an inexhaustible subject of declamation.[1348] For two years the commission labored at its work, and finally produced the “Consilium de emendanda ecclesia,” to which allusion has been made above.

The stern and unbending Cardinal Caraffa was head of the commission, assisted by such men as Contarini, Sadoleto, and Reginald Pole. They seem to have been inspired with a sincere desire to root out the chief abuses which gave such power to the assaults of the Protestants, and the result of their labors affords us a picture of ecclesiastical corruptions almost as damaging to the church as the complaints of the Diet of Nürnburg. As regards celibacy, they were disposed to make no concession; indeed, they protest against the facility with which men in holy orders were able to purchase from the Roman curia dispensations to marry. It is significant, however, that they had so little confidence in the possibility of purifying the religious orders that they actually recommended the abolition of the whole monastic system. To prevent individual cases of suffering they proposed that the convents should not be immediately abolished, but that all novices should be discharged and no more be admitted, thus allowing the orders to die out gradually, as had been done in Saxony; and meanwhile they urged that, to prevent further scandals, all nunneries should be removed from the supervision and direction of monks.[1349] The “Consilium,” in fact, was so candid a confession of most of the abuses charged upon the church by the reformers that Luther forthwith translated it and published it with a commentary, as an effective pamphlet in aid of his cause. Caraffa himself, after he had attained the papacy, under the name of Paul IV., quietly put his own work, in 1559, into the Index Expurgatorius.[1350]

The changes recommended in the “Consilium” attacked too many vested interests for Paul III., however earnest himself, to be able to give it effect. The project therefore was dropped and only resulted in rendering still more clamorous the call for a reform in the head and members of the church. As, moreover, it had shown the powerlessness of the papacy to overcome acknowledged abuses, the only hope of a radical change, such as was needful, was seen to lie in the untrammelled debates of a great assembly, which should meet as a parliament of the nations; and the prospect of this grew more and more distant. While the project of transferring the council from Trent was being matured, it occurred to the papal court that possibly the objections to that measure and the pressure on the council for a thorough reformation might be averted by showing a disposition on the part of Rome to undertake the task of cleansing the Augean stable. It was also recognized as an important gain if the council could be confined to the harmless task of defining questions of faith, while the substantial powers involved in reforming the corruptions of the church could be claimed and exercised by the Pope. Accordingly Pius III. drew up an elaborate Bull designed to limit some of the more flagrant pecuniary abuses which existed, and exhorting the bishops to correct the morals of their subordinates. This was sent to the legates at Trent, but they and their confidants unanimously agreed that, in the existing temper of the council, the promulgation of such a document would be in the highest degree imprudent. It was accordingly suppressed, and has only seen the light within the present century.[1351] In its failure the church lost but little, for it touched the evils of the time with a tender and hesitating hand, and would have proved utterly inefficacious.

At length, when shortly afterwards the unmannerly urgency of the Germans, clamoring for decided measures of reform, was met by the translation of the council to Bologna in 1547, and men despaired of further results from it, Charles V. resolved to take the matter into his own hands, and to effect, for his own dominions at least, that which had been vainly expected of the council for Christendom. The “Interim,” which has already been alluded to, was intended to answer this purpose as far as Lutheranism was concerned, in healing the breach of religion. The other great object of the council, the restoration of the neglected discipline of the church, he attempted to effect by means of the secular authority of the empire acting on the regular machinery of the Teutonic ecclesiastical establishment. How utterly neglected that discipline had become is inferable from an expression in the important and carefully drawn project which had been laid by Charles before the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541, to the effect that if the canon requiring celibacy was to be enforced, it would be necessary also to revive those canons which punished incontinence, thus admitting that there existed no check whatever upon immorality.[1352]

To accomplish this desirable revival of discipline he accordingly caused the adoption by the Diet of Augsburg of a code of reformation, well adapted, if enforced, to restore the long-forgotten purity of the church, while at the same time it acknowledged that the degeneracy of the times rendered impossible the resuscitation of the ancient canons in their strictness. Thus, after reciting the canon of Neocæsarea (see p. 51), it adds, that as such severity was now impracticable, those in holy orders convicted of impurity should be separated from their concubines, and visited with suspension from function and benefice proportioned to the gravity of the offence. A repetition of the fault was punishable with increased severity, and incorrigible sinners who were found to be incapable of reformation were finally to be deprived of their benefices. As concubines were threatened with immediate excommunication, it is evident that a severity was designed towards them which was not ventured on with respect to their more guilty partners. Relaxation of the rules is also observable in the section which, despite the Nicene canon, permitted the residence of women over forty years of age, whose character and conduct relieved them from suspicion.[1353] The imperative injunctions of chastity laid upon the regular clergy, canons, and nuns, show not only the determination to remove the prevailing scandals, but also the magnitude and extent of the evil.[1354]

Nor was this all. Local councils were ordered for the purpose of embodying these decrees in their statutes, and of carrying out with energy the reformation so earnestly desired. Thus, in November, 1548, about five months after the Diet, a synod assembled at Augsburg, which inveighed bitterly against the unclerical dress and pomp of the clergy, their habits of drunkenness, gluttony, licentiousness, tavern-lounging, and general disregard of discipline; and adopted a canon embracing the regulations enacted by the emperor.[1355] The Archbishop of Trèves did not wait for his synod, but issued, October 30th, a mandate especially directed against concubinary priests, in which he announced his intention of carrying out the reform commanded by Charles. He could find no reason more self-evident for the dislike and contempt felt by the people for so many of the clergy than the immorality of their lives, differing little, except in legality, from open marriage. “This vice, existing everywhere throughout our diocese, in consequence of the license of the times and the neglect of the officials, we must eradicate. Therefore all of you, of what grade soever, shall dismiss your concubines within nine days, removing them beyond the bounds of your parishes, and be no longer seen to associate with loose and wanton women. Those who neglect this order shall be suspended from office and benefice, their concubines shall be excommunicated, and they themselves be brought before our synod to be presently held.”[1356]

These were brave words, but when, some three weeks later, the synod was assembled, and the malefactors perchance brought before it, the good bishop found apparently that his flock was not disposed to submit quietly to the curtailment of privileges which had almost become imprescriptible. His tone accordingly was softened, for though he deprecated their immorality more strongly than ever, and asserted his intention of enforcing his mandate, he condescended to argue at much length on the propriety of chastity, and even descended to entreaty, beseeching them to preserve the purity so essential to the character of the church, the absence of which had drawn upon the clergy an odium which could scarce be described in words.[1357] How slender was his success may be inferred from the fact that the next year he felt it necessary to hold another synod, in which he renewed and confirmed the proceedings of the former one, and endeavored to reduce the monks and nuns of his diocese into some kind of subjection to the rules of discipline.[1358]

The Archbishop of Cologne was as energetic as his brother of Trèves, with about equal success. On September 1st he issued the Augsburg Formula of Reformation, with a call for a synod to be held on October 2d. At the same time he manifested his sense of the primary importance of correcting clerical immorality by promulgating a special mandate respecting concubinage. He asserted this to be the chief cause of the contempt popularly felt for the church,[1359] and he ordered all ecclesiastics to send their women beyond the bounds of their parishes within nine days, under the penalties provided in the imperial decree. The synod was held at the time indicated, and, though it adopted no regular canons, it accepted the Augsburg Formula and the mandate of the archbishop, with a trifling alteration.[1360]

This proved utterly ineffectual, for in March, 1549, he assembled a provincial council, in which he deplored the license of the times, which rendered the strictness of the ancient canons unadvisable, and he announced that it had been decided to proceed gradually with the intended reforms. As to the morals of the clergy, he stated that everywhere the cure of souls was delegated to improper persons, many of them living in the foulness of concubinage, in perpetual drunkenness, and in other infamous vices, encouraged by the negligence of bishops and the thirst of archdeacons for unhallowed gains. The unions of those who, infected by the new heresies, did not hesitate to enter into matrimony, were of course pronounced illicit and impious, their offspring illegitimate, and the parents anathematized; but for those who remained in the church, yet submitted to no restraint upon their passions, a more merciful spirit was shown, for the punishments ordered by the Diet of Augsburg were somewhat lightened in their favor. The extreme license of the period may be understood from another canon directed against the comedians, who, not content with the ordinary theatres, were in the habit of visiting the nunneries, where their profane plays and amatory acting excited to unholy desires the virgins dedicated to God.[1361] No one acquainted with the coarseness of the drama of that rude age can doubt the propriety of the archbishop’s reproof. Supplementary synods were also held in October, 1549, and February, 1550, to perfect the details of a very thorough inquisitorial visitation of the whole province.

This visitation, so pompously heralded, did not take place. At a synod held in October, 1550, the archbishop made sundry lame excuses for its postponement. Another synod was assembled in February, 1551, at which we hear nothing more of it; but the prelates of the diocese were requested to collect such ancient and forgotten canons as they could find, which might be deemed advantageous in the future;[1362] and with this the work of reformation in the province of Cologne appears to end.

In 1549, Ernest, Archbishop of Salzburg, assembled the synod of his extensive province, but when his clergy understood that it was intended to confirm the reformatory edict of the emperor, they had the audacity to present a petition praying that the clause ordering the removal of their concubines should not be enforced. They declared that the attempt to do so would be attended with serious difficulty, and that it would lead to greater evils than it sought to remove, and they asked that the consideration of the matter should be referred to the general council, whose reassembling was no longer dreaded. The synod, with a proper sense of its dignity, refused to receive the shameless petition, and listened rather to those of its members who complained of the practice of the officials in receiving bribes for permitting illicit indulgences, and the representations of Duke William, of Bavaria, who asserted that the Lutheran heresy had been caused by the scandalous corruption of the church. A canon was accordingly adopted which renewed the regulations of Bâle and ordered the speedy removal of all recognized and notorious concubines.[1363]

In October and November, 1548, and April, 1549, the Bishops of Paderborn, Wurzburg, and Strassburg held synods which adopted the reformatory measures decreed at Augsburg.[1364] These were preparatory to the metropolitan synod of Mainz, assembled in May, 1549, which commanded that no one should be thereafter admitted to orders without a preliminary examination by his bishop on the subject of doctrine, and testimonials from the people as to purity of character. After thus wisely providing for the future, attention was directed to the present. It was declared intolerable that, in spite of the reiterated prohibitions of the fathers and councils, concubines should be universally kept; the Basilian canon was therefore revived, and its enforcement strictly enjoined on the ordinaries, who were forbidden in any manner to connive at these disorders for the sake of profit.[1365]

The pressure was continued, for when Cambrai, which owed temporal obedience to the emperor, while ecclesiastically it formed part of the province of Rheims, neglected to adopt the Formula of Augsburg for two years, it was not allowed to escape. In October, 1550, a synod was finally assembled there under stringent orders from Charles, and the Formula was published, together with an elaborate series of canons, which would have been well adapted to correct abuses that were not incorrigible.[1366]

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Charles had thus exerted all the resources of his imperial supremacy, and, whether willingly or not, the powerful prelates who ruled the German church had united in carrying out his views. The temporal and spiritual authorities had thus been concentrated upon the vices of the church, and if its reformation had been possible, in the existing condition of its organization, some improvement must have resulted from these combined and persistent efforts. How nugatory were the results may be guessed from a memorial presented in 1558, by the University of Louvain, to Philip II., exhorting him to grant no toleration to the heretics, but, at the same time, urging upon him the absolute necessity of some comprehensive system of reform to purify the church, all the orders of which were given over utterly to the twin vices of avarice and licentiousness.[1367] The same testimony is borne by a consultation drawn up in 1562 by order of the Emperor Ferdinand. After alluding to the efforts at reform made by Paul III. and Charles V., it declares that their only result has been to make the condition of clerical morality worse than before, exciting the hatred of the people for their priests to an incredible pitch, and doing more to inflame the ardor of heresy than all the teaching of Christian truth can do to restrain it.[1368]

As the failure of all efforts to improve clerical morality under the existing rules of discipline was thus found to be complete, there arose in the minds of thinking men a conviction, such as Erasmus had already declared, that, since all other measures had proved fruitless, the only mode of securing a virtuous clergy was to remove the prohibition of marriage. At the Polish Diet of 1552 petitions praying for sacerdotal matrimony were presented, and, though they failed in their object, the Diet of 1556 authorized King Sigismund Augustus to address Paul IV. with a request, in the name of the nation, to grant it as well as communion in both elements.[1369]

The dissension thus existing within the church is exhibited in a volume published in 1558 by Stanislas Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland, earnestly arguing against communion in both elements, clerical marriage, and the use of the vulgar tongue in worship. As regards celibacy, he assumes that it had been maintained unbrokenly for fifteen hundred years, and was not now to be abandoned to gratify a few disorderly monks. The example of the Greek church he meets by pointing out that the Greeks were suffered to be persecuted by the Turks; the argument that marriage would purify the church he silences with the observation that many married men are adulterers; and he holds it to be a doubting of God to suppose that the gift of continence would be denied to those who properly seek it.[1370] In spite of the logic of polemics such as Hosius, the opinions of the innovators continued to gain ground, until at length they won even the highest dignitaries of the empire, and in 1560 the Emperor Ferdinand himself undertook their advocacy with the pope, after having for some years countenanced the practice within his own territories.

Almost immediately on the consecration of Pius IV., in addressing to him an argument for the reassembling of the council of Trent, or the convocation of a new council, Ferdinand seized the opportunity to ask especially for the communication of the cup to the laity, and permission for the clergy to marry. The latter of these points he considered to be the only remedy for the fearful immorality of the church, for, though all flesh was corrupt, the corruption of the priesthood surpassed that of all other men.[1371] That he had not waited for the papal assent to favor these innovations within his own dominions is shown by his statement that the Archbishop of Salzburg had recently, in a synod, earnestly called upon him to put a stop to the progress which they were making, but, he added, his long experience in such matters had shown him what was possible, and what impossible, and he had accordingly set forth the difficulties of the task in a paper addressed to the archbishop, a copy of which he inclosed to the pope.[1372]

The nuncio Commendone, in transmitting this document to Rome, accompanied it with a letter from the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg, recommending the postponement of the question until the reassembling of the council of Trent, and, as Pius answered it in this sense, no further action was taken, though Ferdinand made haste to repeat his demand, in view of the impatience of both clergy and people, who could ill brook the delays inseparable from the discussion of the subject in so unwieldy a body.[1373] When Commendone, moreover, passed through Cleves on his way to the council, then about to be reopened, the Duke of Cleves earnestly besought him to lend his influence to the accomplishment of the measure, urging as a reason that in the whole of his dominions—and he was sovereign of three populous duchies—there could not be found five priests who did not keep concubines. In order to secure his favor for the approaching council, Commendone did not scruple to hold out expectations that the concessions would be granted.[1374]

During the progress of the Reformation, when the fate of the Catholic church of Germany had sometimes seemed to hang in the balance, no princes had earned a larger title to the gratitude of Rome than the powerful Dukes of Bavaria, who were the leaders of the reaction. Yet now the influence of that important region was thrown in favor of the abrogation of celibacy, and Duke Albert was the first who boldly brought the matter before the council by a demand for ecclesiastical marriage, presented on the 27th of June, 1562. To this the evasive answer was returned that the council would take such action as would be found to redound to the glory of God and to the benefit of the church.[1375] During the same year the Emperor Ferdinand also repeatedly urged its consideration. A plan for the reform of the church presented by his delegates not only called attention to the necessity of purifying the morals of the regular and secular clergy, but demanded that, to some nations at least, the privilege of sacerdotal marriage should be conceded.[1376] Another elaborate paper argued the question with much temperate force, and declared that many priests had already married for the purpose of escaping the corruptions of celibacy, while studiously preserving themselves from the errors of Lutheranism. Out of a hundred parish priests scarcely one could be found who was not either openly or secretly married, and it was necessary to tolerate them to prevent the utter destruction of the church.[1377]

A third document is extant, without date, which was laid before the cardinals of the papal court by the emperor, in which the question was argued at considerable length and with much vehemence. After asserting that from the records of the primitive church celibacy was not then recognized as imperative, it proceeded to declare that if marriage ever were permissible, the present carnal and licentious age rendered it a necessity, for not one Catholic priest out of fifty could be found who lived chastely. All were asserted to be notoriously dissolute, scandalizing the people and inflicting great damage on the church. The request was made not so much to satisfy the priests who desired marriage as to meet the wishes of the laity, for many patrons of livings refused presentation to all but married men. However preferable a single life might be for the clergy, it therefore was thought better to give it up than to leave open the door to the scandalous impurities traceable to celibacy. Another weighty reason was alleged in the great scarcity of priests, caused alone by the prohibition of marriage, in proof of which it was urged that the Catholic schools of divinity were all but empty and the episcopal function of ordination nearly disused, while the Lutheran colleges were crowded by those who subsequently obtained admission into the true church, where they worked incredible mischief. The argument that the temporal possessions of the church would be imperilled by sacerdotal matrimony was met by indignantly denouncing the worldly wisdom which would protect such perishable interests at the cost of innumerable souls sacrificed by the existing condition of affairs. For these and other reasons it asked that marriage should in future be allowed to all the priesthood, whether already in orders or to be subsequently admitted: that married men of good character and education should be ordained to supply the want of pastors: that those who had contracted matrimony, in contravention of the canons, should no longer be ejected, seeing that it was most absurd to turn out men because they were married, while retaining notorious concubinarians, and that if, with equal justice, both classes should be dismissed, the people would be left almost, if not entirely, destitute of spiritual guides. The paper concluded by asserting that if the prayer be granted the clergy could be retained in the church and in the faith, to the great benefit of their flocks, and that the scandal of promiscuous licentiousness, which had involved the church in so much disgrace, would be removed.[1378]

This vivid sketch of the condition of the church, with the evils which were everywhere felt, and the remedies which suggested themselves to clear-sighted and impartial men, was as ineffectual as other similar efforts had been, for to all such arguments the council of Trent was deaf. France, too, was more than willing to see celibacy abolished. M. de Lanssac, the French ambassador, was ordered to place himself in close relations with the representatives of the emperor, and to unite with them in seeking the relaxation of all regulations which tended to prevent the reunion of the Protestants, while the Gallican bishops were commanded to show themselves reasonable and yielding in such matters; and when Lanssac reported the demands of the emperor, comprehending clerical marriage among other changes, Charles IX. assented to them in terms of warm commendation.[1379] The Cardinal of Lorraine, moreover, was instructed to urge some measures efficient to reform the licentious lives of the ecclesiastics which spread corruption and debauchery among the people, while permission for priestly marriage was recommended as one of the means essential to recall the heretics to the bosom of the true church.[1380] As a compromise, however, the French prelates contented themselves with suggesting that none but elderly men should be eligible to the priesthood, and that the testimony of the people in favor of their moral character should be a prerequisite to ordination, in hopes that by such means the necessary purification of the clergy at least could be effected, while the sharpest measures should be adopted to punish their licentiousness.[1381]

All this was useless, and, in fact, it is difficult to imagine how any one could expect a reform of this nature from a body composed of prelates all whom were obliged by Pius IV., in a decree of September 4th, 1560, to solemnly swear to a profession of faith containing a specific declaration that the vows of chastity assumed on entering into holy orders or monastic life were to be strictly observed and enforced.[1382] The question thus was prejudged, and the council was more likely to listen to Bartholomew a Martyribus, the Archbishop of Bracara, who laid before them a paper containing the points which, in his opinion, required reformation, among which were the revival of the canons respecting concubinary bishops and priests, the prohibition of sons succeeding to their father’s benefices, and the excommunication of confessors who debauched their fair penitents[1383]—though when the sturdy archbishop in a stormy debate declared that “illustrissimi cardinales egent illustrissima reformatione,” he doubtless was held to be a most uncourtly and impracticable reformer.

Despite all the urgency from without, it was not until the 8th of February, 1563, after the council had been in session for more than a year, that the theologians at last arranged for disputation the articles on matrimony, and laid them before the council for discussion. They were divided into five classes, of which the fourth was devoted to the bearing of the subject on the clergy, consisting of two propositions artfully drawn up to justify rejection, while preserving the appearance of presenting the subject for deliberation.—That matrimony was preferable to celibacy, and that God bestowed grace on the married rather than on the single.—That the priests of the Western Church could lawfully contract marriage, notwithstanding the canons; that to deny this was to condemn matrimony, and that all were at liberty to marry who did not feel themselves graced with the gift of chastity.[1384]

The disputation on the various questions connected with matrimony commenced the next day, and was continued at intervals for six months. By August 7th all the canons on the subject were agreed to, except the one on clandestine marriages, which gave the fathers much more trouble than the more important decision respecting the retention of celibacy.[1385] This latter, indeed, was a foregone conclusion. In the minute account, transmitted from day to day by Archbishop Calini to Cardinal Cornaro, in which all the details of internal discussion and external intrigue attainable by a quick-witted member of the council were reported, there is no allusion to the subject. No debates or diversity of opinion are mentioned, no intimation that the matter was regarded as open to a doubt, and even the appeals made by the emperor and other potentates are passed over in silence, for the very sufficient reason that the papal legates, who controlled all the business of the council, refused to allow them to be read.[1386] In their reply to the emperor’s remonstrances, indeed, they declared that to have such a subject publicly broached in the council would create a fearful scandal throughout Christendom, and Pius IV. approved of their answer as the best that could be given.[1387] It is no wonder, therefore, that in the correspondence of the nuncio Visconti the only allusion to the matter is a simple reference, under date of March 22, 1563, to the demand previously made by the Duke of Bavaria.[1388]

In fact, when, on March 4th, the 5th and 6th articles were reached, they were both unanimously pronounced heretical without any prolonged debate. Doctor Juan de Ludegna pronounced a “disputation” on the subject, the tone of which showed that the result was already decided, and that the only disposition of the council was to vilify those who desired the abrogation of celibacy.[1389] A discussion, however, then arose as to the power of the pope to dispense the clergy, both regular and secular, from the obligation of celibacy, and on this point there was considerable diversity of opinion, occupying numerous successive meetings in its settlement. The majority were in favor of the papal power; and its exercise in the existing condition of the church was even recommended by those who recognized the evils of the system, but shrank from the responsibility of themselves introducing the innovation. This was promptly rebuked by the conservatives, according to Fra Paolo, with the remark that a prudent physician would not attempt to cure one disease by bringing on a greater.[1390] The legates, indeed, were blamed for allowing any discussion on so dangerous a topic, since, if priests were permitted to marry, their affections would be concentrated on family and country, in place of the church; their subjection to the Holy See would be diminished, the whole system of the hierarchy destroyed, and the pope himself would eventually become a simple Bishop of Rome.[1391] If such consequences as these were anticipated by the able men who represented the papal interests, we may readily believe that Pallavicini speaks the sense of the managers of the council when he remarks, concerning the princes who exerted themselves in favor of sacerdotal marriage, that they seemed to consider that the council had been convoked for the purpose not of condemning but of contenting the heretics, whom they proposed to convert by gratifying in place of repressing their contumacious desires.[1392] If this be so, the Protestants were amply justified in refusing to submit their cause to a body so different in its objects from that free and unbiased œcumenic council to which they had so often appealed from their persecutors.

Yet, notwithstanding that the policy of the church was thus immutable, there seems to have been no hesitation in holding out fallacious hopes to the expectant populations. When, in the spring of 1563, the Bavarians, wearied with endless promises, rose in revolt and demanded the use of the cup and priestly marriage, their duke was obliged to make a promise to his Diet that if the required concessions were not granted in June, by either the council or the pope, he would himself give the desired permission. The threatened defection of this Catholic stronghold caused such alarm that the legates at Trent forthwith despatched Niccolo Ormanetto to the duke, to persuade him to withdraw his promised reforms under a pledge that the council would take such order as would satisfy the demands of his people.[1393]

These promises were soon forgotten, though it was not until the 11th of November that the canons on matrimony were finally adopted and formally published. Of these there are two relating to our subject. The first one pronounced the dread anathema on all who should dare to assert that clerks in holy orders, monks, or nuns could contract marriage, or that such a marriage was valid, since God would not deny the gift of chastity to those who rightly sought it, nor would He expose us to temptation beyond our strength. The other similarly anathematized all who dared to assert that the married state was more worthy than virginity, or that it was not better to live in celibacy than married.[1394]

Thus the church, in endeavoring to meet the novel exigencies caused by the progress and enlightenment of mankind, in place of making the concessions demanded by almost all beyond the narrow pale of the papal court, devoted its energies to the miserable task of separating itself as widely as possible from those who had left it.[1395] Its rulers seemed to imagine that their only hope of safety lay in intrenching themselves behind the exaggerations of those particular points of policy which had afforded to their adversaries the fairest chances of attack. The faithful throughout Germany might suffer from the absence of the ministers of Christ, or might endure yet more from the unrestrained passions of the wolves in sheep’s clothing let loose among their wives and daughters, but the church militant in this conjuncture dreaded even more to lose the aid of that monastic army which, in theory at least, had no earthly object but the service of St. Peter; it selfishly feared that the parish priest who might legitimately see his fireside surrounded by a happy group of wife and children would lose the devotion which a man without ties should entertain for the prosperity and glory of the ecclesiastical establishment; and perhaps, more than all, it saw with terror avaricious princes eager for the secularization of that immense property to which it owed so large a portion of the splendor which dazzled mankind, of the influence which rendered it powerful, and of the luxury which made its high places attractive to the ambitious and able men who controlled its destiny. To put an end, therefore, at once and forever, to the mutterings of dissatisfaction among those who compared the calm and virtuous life of the Protestant pastors with the reckless self-indulgence of the ministers of the old religion, it was resolved to place the canon of celibacy in a position where none of the orthodox should dare to attack it, and to accomplish this the simple rule of discipline was elevated to the dignity of a point of belief. As the church had already been forced, in defending the rule from the assaults of the reformers, to attribute to it apostolic origin, we may not perhaps be surprised that it was made a point of doctrine, but we cannot easily appreciate the reasons that would justify the anathema launched against all who regarded the marriage of those in holy orders as binding. The dissolution of such marriages, as we have seen, was not suggested until the middle of the twelfth century, and the decision of the council thus condemned as heretics the whole body of the church during three-quarters of its previous existence.

Although the doctrinal canon threw the responsibility of priestly unchastity upon God, yet as the council had so peremptorily refused to adopt the remedy urged by the princes of the empire, it did not hesitate to employ human means to remove, if possible, the scandals which God had permitted to afflict the church. The decree of reformation, published in December, 1563, contained provisions intended to curb the vice which the Tridentine fathers, with all their reliance on Divine power, well knew to be ineradicable. These provisions, however, were little more than a repetition of what we have seen enacted in every century since Siricius. Any ecclesiastic guilty of keeping a concubine, or woman liable to suspicion, was admonished; disregarding this first warning, he was deprived of one-third of his revenue; if still contumacious, suspension from functions and benefice followed; and a persistence in guilt was then visited with irrevocable deprivation. No appeal from a sentence could gain exemption; these cases were removed from the jurisdiction of inferior officials and confided to the bishops, who were enjoined to be prompt and severe in their decisions; while guilty bishops were liable to suspension by their provincial synods, and, if irreclaimable, were sent to Rome for punishment. The illegitimate children of priests were pronounced incapable of preferment. Those already in orders, if employed in their fathers’ parishes, were required, under pain of deprivation, to exchange their positions within three months for preferment elsewhere, and any provision made by a clerical parent for the benefit of his children was pronounced to be a fraud.[1396]

Such were the regulations which this great general council of the Catholic church considered sufficient to relieve the establishment of the curse which had hung around it for a thousand years. There is nothing in them that had not been tried a hundred times before, with what success the foregoing pages may attest. In some respects, indeed, they were not as prompt and efficacious as the decrees which Charles V. and his bishops had promulgated a few years previous, and which had proved so lamentably inefficient. There were not wanting enlightened members of the council who bitterly felt the inefficiency of what they were doing, but the undignified haste of the closing sessions, and the all-powerful opposition of Rome, rendered them unable to accomplish more. As the Bishop of Astorga said in a letter to Granvelle—“They are not as we would have wished, to correct the abuses and scandals of the church, which cause so many to fall into error, but we have to do what we are permitted to do, not what we would wish to do.”[1397] Heretics, indeed, who asserted that there was in reality no intention of suppressing concubinage, could point in justification to the curious fact that, while previous councils had provided heavy penalties against the concubines of priests, that of Trent passed them over as though they were guiltless.

* * * * *

Strange as it may seem, the anathema so decidedly enunciated by the council did not deter Albert of Bavaria and the Emperor Ferdinand from continuing their efforts to procure for their subjects the benefit of a relaxation of the canon. The decision of a majority of the doctors of the council favoring the papal power of dispensation suggested the mode of obtaining it. Although the form of the canons had been adopted on the 7th of August, and the previous proceedings left no doubt as to their authoritative promulgation in full session, yet, on the 26th of August, the nuncio Visconti writes that he had heard from his colleague Delfino, then in Vienna, that the three ecclesiastical electors (Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne), the Archbishop of Salzburg and the Duke of Bavaria had held a conference, in which it was resolved to unite with the emperor in an appeal for Bulls permitting the marriage of the clergy and the use of the cup by the laity.[1398] Early in September the emperor wrote to his ambassadors, stating that he had called together at Vienna the deputies of the electors and princes of the empire, where, after mature deliberation, it had been determined to ask the cup and clerical marriage of the pope and not of the council; that a protocol had already been drawn up, which accompanied the despatch, but as it was a matter not yet fully settled, he desired it to be communicated to no one but the Count de Luna, the ambassador of Philip II.[1399]

It was not, however, until February, 1564, after the conclusion of the council, which brought its weary labors to an end on the 4th of December, 1563, that Ferdinand and Albert presented their requests to Pius IV. The two papers were essentially the same. In the name of the princes of the empire, after demanding the communion in both elements for the laity, they proceeded to argue earnestly for the other concession. Perhaps the decided opposition of the council to the principle of sacerdotal marriage had produced an influence upon them; perhaps they had found themselves obliged to yield some of their own views in order to secure the coöperation of the Teutonic hierarchy; be this as it may, their demands were greatly abated. In place of asking, as before, the privilege for the clergy at large, they now reduced their entreaties to the simple request of allowing such Catholic priests as had entered into matrimony, to retain their wives and perform their functions, which they assured the pope was absolutely essential to the preservation of the fragments of the church still doing battle with the prevailing heresies throughout Germany.[1400] They likewise asked that in such places as could not obtain a sufficiency of pastors, the bishops should be empowered to ordain married laymen of approved piety, learning, and fitness.

These appeals were successful as far as communion in both elements was concerned, for, on April 16th, Pius granted that concession under certain conditions. The subject of priestly marriage, however, he still postponed, and on June 17th we find Ferdinand writing to Cardinal Morone, to express his thanks for what he had obtained, and to urge the other subject on the consideration of the papal court. He had instructed his ambassador, he said, to press it earnestly, and he besought the Cardinal to aid in so pious and advantageous a work.[1401]

Nor was this the only means which Ferdinand, then verging rapidly to the grave, adopted to attain the object of his unwearied pursuit. George Wicelius had thrown aside the monastic gown in 1531, to embrace the errors of Lutheranism, but had returned to the old religion. His learning and piety earned for him a deserved reputation, and elevated him to the position of imperial councillor, where his talents were devoted to the endless task of bringing about a reconciliation between the churches. George Cassander, equally eminent, had never incurred the imputation of apostasy, but had labored with tireless industry to convert his erring brethren from heresy to the true faith. Men like these might perhaps be heard when the voice of princes and prelates, actuated by motives of personal advantage, met a deaf ear; and Ferdinand applied to them for disquisitions on the subject.[1402] Before their labors were concluded the monarch was dead (July 25, 1564), but his son Maximilian II. inherited his father’s ideas, and gladly made use of the opinions which the learned Catholic doctors had no hesitation in expressing.

Both took strong ground against celibacy. Cassander, while defending the church for originally introducing the rule, deplored the terrible and abominable scandals which its untimely enforcement caused throughout the church, and he urged that the reasons which had led to its introduction not only existed no longer, but had even become arguments for its abrogation, since now the choice lay only between married priests and concubinarians. He declared it to be the source of numerous evils, chief among which was promiscuous and unbridled licentiousness, and he added that the already scanty ranks of the priesthood were deprived of the accessions which were so necessary, since men of a religious turn of mind were prevented from taking orders by the universal wickedness which prevailed under the excuse of celibacy, while pious parents kept their sons from entering the church for fear of debauching their morals. On the other hand, those who sought a life of ease and license were attracted to the holy calling which they disgraced. He was even willing to permit marriage in orders, arguing that it was only a question of canon law, in which faith and doctrine were not involved. As regards the monastic orders, while fully appreciating the principles upon which the system was founded, he warmly deplored the corruption engendered by wealth and luxury. Though the convents contained many pious and holy men, still for the most part religion was forgotten in the observance of ceremonies that had lost their significance, and nothing could be more licentious and profane than the life led in many of the monasteries.[1403] Wicelius was equally severe in his denunciations of the clerical licentiousness attributable to the rule of celibacy, and concluded his tract by attacking the supineness, blindness, and perversity of the prelates who suffered such foulness to exist everywhere among the priesthood, in contempt of Christ, and to the burdening of their consciences.[1404]

It was already evident that both the great objects for which the council of Trent had ostensibly been assembled were failures; that it would effect as little for the purification of the church as for the reconciliation of the heretics. Perhaps Maximilian felt that under these circumstances no one could deny the necessity of such changes as would at least afford a chance of the reformation that could no longer be expected of the Tridentine canons; perhaps he felt strengthened by the support of his ecclesiastical counsellors and controversialists; perhaps, with the zealous hopefulness of youth, he felt a confidence of which age and many disappointments had deprived his father; or perhaps he was encouraged by the concession to his subjects and to those of Albert of Bavaria, of the communion in both elements, not knowing that in two short years it would be withdrawn. Certain it is that in a negotiation with the Bishop of Vintimiglia, papal nuncio at his court, he lost no time in renewing, with increased energy, the effort to obtain the recognition of married priests. After the departure of the nuncio, he addressed, in November, 1564, a most pressing demand to Pius IV., in which he declared that the matter brooked no further postponement; that throughout Germany, and especially in his dominions, there was the greatest need of proper ministers and pastors; that there was no other measure which would retain them in the Catholic church, from which, day by day, they were withdrawing, principally from this cause. He assured the Holy Father that the danger was constantly increasing, and that he feared a further delay would render even this remedy powerless to prevent the total destruction of the old religion. If only this were granted to the clergy, even as the cup had been communicated to the laity, he hoped for an immediate improvement. The bishops could then exercise their authority over those who at present were beyond their control, as unrecognized by the church; and so thoroughly was this lawless condition of affairs understood that a refuge was sought in his provinces by those disreputable pastors who were banished from the Lutheran states on account of their disorderly lives.[1405] His brother, the Archduke Charles, was equally urgent, in a letter which he addressed, a few days later, to the Pope, repeating the same arguments, and assuring him that the only hope for the true religion in his dominions was to find some means of admitting the services of a married clergy.[1406]

Ferdinand and Maximilian were actuated in these persevering efforts not merely by the desire of gratifying the wishes of their people, or of remedying the depravity of the ecclesiastical body. It had been a favorite project with the father, warmly adopted by the son, to heal the differences between the two religions, and to restore to the church its ancient and prosperous unity. In their opinion, and in that of many eminent men, the main obstacle to this was the question of celibacy. It was evidently hopeless to expect this sacrifice of the Lutheran pastors, while numerous members of the Catholic church regarded the change as essential to the purification of their own establishment. The only mode of effecting so desirable a reconciliation was therefore to persuade the pope to exercise the power of dispensation which the council of Trent had admitted to be inherent in his high office. The spirit of the papal court, however, was that which Pallavicini attributes to the council—that the heretics were to be cut off, and not to be cajoled into returning. Pius IV. himself was not personally averse to the plan so persistently urged upon him, but those around him saw greater dangers in concession than in refusal. De Thou, indeed, says that he was inclined to grant the privilege for the territories of Maximilian, but that Philip II., at the instigation of Cardinal Pacheco, fearing an example so dangerous to his turbulent and excitable subjects in the Netherlands, opposed it strenuously, and sent Don Pedro d’Avila to Rome, who persuaded the pope to elude the demand, by keeping matters in suspense, and by holding out prospects of accommodation destined never to be accomplished.[1407]

This is probably not strictly correct. Maximilian’s demand had perhaps been rendered more pressing than respectful by the necessity of conciliating his people in view of the war with John of Transylvania and the Turks. Its tone was not relished at Rome, nor could the papacy be expected to listen with as much patience to remonstrances from a prince who had just grasped the reins of power as it had to those of the mature and experienced Ferdinand, especially as Maximilian had been shrewdly suspected of secretly leaning to the tenets of the Reformers.[1408] The response to Maximilian was therefore of the sharpest. Pius replied, arguing against clerical marriage and positively declaring that it would not be tolerated,[1409] and to prevent further trouble Cardinal Commendone was sent to warn him that any interference with the interests of religion would be visited with the severest penalties; in fact, he was threatened with deprivation of the imperial title, and a convocation of the Catholic princes for the purpose of electing a successor.[1410]

The Catholic church thus definitely accepted the ancient canons, erected them into an article of faith, and resolved to meet whatever consequences might flow from their maintenance. In the existing condition of clerical morals, we are almost justified in saying that it assumed the position attributed by St. Bernard to the Manichæans of the twelfth century—that they took vows of continence in order to cover their incontinence, and that marriage was the only sexual relation which they regarded as a sin.[1411] We shall see hereafter what were the results of this abnormal position.

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