History for ready reference, Volume 4, Nicæa to Tunis (part 2 of 11)

History for ready reference, Volume 4, Nicæa to Tunis (part 2 of 11)

The Council in this extreme step failed to carry public opinion with it. It was not merely that Eugenius denounced his competitor by the worst names he could think of, declaring him a hypocrite, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a Moloch, a Cerberus, a Golden Calf, a second Mahomet, an anti-christ; but the Church in general shrank back in alarm at the prospect of another Schism, to last, it might be, for well-nigh another half century. And thus the Council lost ground daily; its members fell away; its confidence in itself departed; and, though it took long in dying, it did in the end die a death of inanition (June 23, 1448). Again the Pope remained master of the situation, the last reforming Council,—for it was the last,—having failed in all which it undertook as completely and as ingloriously as had done the two which went before."

R. C. Trench, Lectures on Medieval Church History, lecture 20.

"In the year 1438 the Emperor John and the Greek Patriarch made their appearance at the council of Ferrara. In the following year the council was transferred to Florence, where, after long discussions, the Greek emperor, and all the members of the clergy who had attended the council, with the exception of the Bishop of Ephesus, adopted the doctrine of the Roman church concerning the possession of the Holy Ghost, the addition to the Nicene Creed, the nature of purgatory, the condition of the soul after its separation from the body until the day of judgment, the use of unleavened bread in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the papal supremacy. The union of the two churches was solemnly ratified in the magnificent cathedral of Florence on the 6th of July 1439, when the Greeks abjured their ancient faith in a vaster edifice and under a loftier dome than that of their own much-vaunted temple of St. Sophia. The Emperor John derived none of the advantages he had expected from the simulated union of the churches. Pope Eugenius, it is true, supplied him liberally with money, and bore all the expenses both of the Greek court and clergy during their absence from Constantinople; he also presented the emperor with two galleys, and furnished him with a guard of 300 men, well equipped, and paid at the cost of the papal treasury; but his Holiness forgot his promise to send a fleet to defend Constantinople, and none of the Christian princes showed any disposition to fight the battles of the Greeks, though they took up the cross against the Turks. {2441} On his return John found his subjects indignant at the manner in which the honour and doctrines of the Greek church had been sacrificed in an unsuccessful diplomatic speculation. The bishops who had obsequiously signed the articles of union at Florence, now sought popularity by deserting the emperor, and making a parade of their repentance, lamenting their wickedness in falling off for a time from the pure doctrine of the orthodox church. The only permanent result of this abortive attempt at Christian union was to increase the bigotry of the orthodox, and to furnish the Latins with just grounds for condemning the perfidious dealings and bad faith of the Greeks. In both ways it assisted the progress of the Othoman power. The Emperor John, seeing public affairs in this hopeless state, became indifferent to the future fate of the empire, and thought only of keeping on good terms with the sultan."

G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, book 4, chapter 2, section 6 (volume 2).

Pope "Eugenius died, February 23, 1447; … but his successors were able to secure the fruits of the victory [over the Council of Basel] for a long course of years. The victory was won at a heavy cost, both for the Popes and for Christendom; for the Papacy recovered its ascendancy far more as a political than as a religious power. The Pope became more than ever immersed in the international concerns of Europe, and his policy was a tortuous course of craft and intrigue, which in those days passed for the new art of diplomacy. … To revert to a basis of spiritual domination lay beyond the vision of the energetic princes, the refined dilettanti, the dexterous diplomatists, who sat upon the chair of St. Peter during the age succeeding the Council of Basle. Of signs of uneasiness abroad they could not be quite ignorant; but they sought to divert men's minds from the contemplation of so perplexing a problem as Church reform, by creating or fostering new atmospheres of excitement and interest; … or at best (if we may adopt the language of their apologists) they took advantage of the literary and artistic movement then active in Italy as a means to establish a higher standard of civilisation which might render organic reform needless."

R. L. Poole, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, chapter 12.

ALSO IN: J. E. Darras, General History of the Catholic Church, 6th period, chapter 4 (volume 3).

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1438; and 1515-1518.

PAPACY: A. D. 1439. Election of Felix V. (by the Council of Basle).

PAPACY: A. D. 1447-1455. The pontificate of Nicolas V. Recovery of character and influence. Beginning of the Renaissance.

See ITALY: A. D. 1447-1480.

PAPACY: A. D. 1455. Election of Callistus III.

PAPACY: A. D. 1458. Election of Pius II., known previously as the learned Cardinal Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, historian and diplomatist.

PAPACY: A. D. 1464. Election of Paul II.

PAPACY: A. D. 1471-1513. The darkest age of Papal crime and vice. Sixtus IV. and the Borgias. The warrior Pontiff, Julius II.

"The impunity with which the Popes escaped the councils held in the early part of the 15th century was well fitted to inspire them with a reckless contempt for public opinion; and from that period down to the Reformation, it would be difficult to parallel among temporal princes the ambitious, wicked, and profligate lives of many of the Roman Pontiffs. Among these, Francesco della Rovere, who succeeded Paul II. with the title of Sixtus IV., was not the least notorious. Born at Savona, of an obscure family, Sixtus raised his nephews, and his sons who passed for nephews, to the highest dignities in Church and State, and sacrificed for their aggrandisement the peace of Italy and the cause of Christendom against the Turks. Of his two nephews, Julian, and Leonard della Rovere, the former, afterwards Pope Julius II., was raised to the purple in the second year of his uncle's pontificate." It was this pope—Sixtus IV.—who had a part in the infamous "Conspiracy of the Pazzi" to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1469-1492.

"This successor of St. Peter took a pleasure in beholding the mortal duels of his guards, for which he himself sometimes gave the signal. He was succeeded [1484] by Cardinal Gian Batista Cibò, a Genoese, who assumed the title of Innocent VIII. Innocent was a weak man, without any decided principle. He had seven children, whom he formally acknowledged, but he did not seek to advance them so shamelessly as Sixtus had advanced his 'nephews.' … Pope Innocent VIII. [who died July 25, 1492] was succeeded by the atrocious Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, a Spaniard of Valencia, where he had at one time exercised the profession of an advocate. After his election he assumed the name of Alexander VI. Of 20 cardinals who entered the conclave, he is said to have bought the suffrages of all but five; and Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, whom he feared as a rival, was propitiated with a present of silver that was a load for four mules. Alexander's election was the signal for flight to those cardinals who had opposed him. … Pope Alexander had by the celebrated Vanozza, the wife of a Roman citizen, three sons: John, whom he made Duke of Gandia, in Spain; Cæsar and Geoffrey; and one daughter, Lucretia."

T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, volume 1, pages 105, 108, 175, 177-178.

Under the Borgias, "treasons, assassinations, tortures, open debauchery, the practice of poisoning, the worst and most shameless outrages, are unblushingly and publicly tolerated in the open light of heaven. In 1490, the Pope's vicar having forbidden clerics and laics to keep concubines, the Pope revoked the decree, 'saying that that was not forbidden, because the life of priests and ecclesiastics was such that hardly one was to be found who did not keep a concubine, or at least who had not a courtesan.' Cæsar Borgia at the capture of Capua 'chose forty of the most beautiful women, whom he kept for himself; and a pretty large number of captives were sold at a low price at Rome.' Under Alexander VI., 'all ecclesiastics, from the greatest to the least, have concubines in the place of wives, and that publicly. If God hinder it not,' adds this historian, 'this corruption will pass to the monks and religious orders, although, to confess the truth, almost all the monasteries of the town have become bawd–houses, without anyone to speak against it.' With respect to Alexander VI., who loved his daughter Lucretia, the reader may find in Burchard the description of the marvellous orgies in which he joined with Lucretia and Cæsar, and the enumeration of the prizes which he distributed. {2442} Let the reader also read for himself the story of the bestiality of Pietro Luigi Farnese, the Pope's son, how the young and upright Bishop of Fano died from his outrage, and how the Pope, speaking of this crime as 'a youthful levity,' gave him in this secret bull 'the fullest absolution from all the pains which he might have incurred by human incontinence, in whatever shape or with whatever cause.' As to civil security, Bentivoglio caused all the Marescotti to be put to death; Hippolyto d' Este had his brother's eyes put out in his presence; Cæsar Borgia killed his brother; murder is consonant with their public manners, and excites no wonder. A fisherman was asked why he had not informed the governor of the town that he had seen a body thrown into the water; 'he replied that he had seen about a hundred bodies thrown into the water during his lifetime in the same place, and that no one had ever troubled about it.' 'In our town,' says an old historian, 'much murder and pillage was done by day and night, and hardly a day passed but some one was killed.' Cæsar Borgia one day killed Peroso, the Pope's favourite, between his arms and under his cloak, so that the blood spurted up to the Pope's face. He caused his sister's husband to be stabbed and then strangled in open day, on the steps of the palace; count, if you can, his assassinations. Certainly he and his father, by their character, morals, open and systematic wickedness, have presented to Europe the two most successful images of the devil. … Despotism, the Inquisition, the Cicisbei, dense ignorance, and open knavery, the shamelessness and the smartness of harlequins and rascals, misery and vermin,—such is the issue of the Italian Renaissance."

H. A. Taine, History of English Literature, volume 1, pages 354-355.

"It is certain … that the profound horror with which the name of Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear, was not felt among the Italians at the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the 16th century. This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the time of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend, which, like all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects. Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. … Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond belief.' His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed in his pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed, he laid the real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of the large European monarchies. … Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practised—to such an extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency; 'Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him, laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. … Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened. Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favour of his children. The fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving 40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. … Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to two Spanish nobles. … History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colourless. The legend which made her a poison-brewing Mænad, has been proved a lie—but only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. … It seems now clear enough that not hers, but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her married life in Rome a byeword. She sat and smiled through all the tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair port in the Duchy of Ferrara. … [On the 12th of August, 1503], the two Borgias invited the Cardinal Carneto to dine with them in the Belvedere of Pope Innocent. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Alexander died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp struggle with the poison."

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, chapter 6.

The long-accepted story of Pope Alexander's poisoning, as related above by Mr. Symonds, is now discredited. "The principal reason why this picturesque tale has of late been generally regarded as a fiction is the apparent impossibility of reconciling it with a fact in connexion with Pope Alexander's last illness which admits of no dispute, the date of its commencement. The historians who relate the poisoning unanimously assert that the effect was sudden and overpowering, that the pope was carried back to the Vatican in a dying state and expired shortly afterwards. The 18th of August has hitherto been accepted without dispute as the date of his death: it follows, therefore, that the fatal banquet must have been on the 17th at the earliest. {2443} But a cloud of witnesses, including the despatches of ambassadors resident at the papal court, prove that the pope's illness commenced on the 12th, and that by the 17th his condition was desperate. The Venetian ambassador and a Florentine letter-writer, moreover, the only two contemporary authorities who assign a date for the entertainment, state that it was given on the 5th or 6th, … which would make it a week before the pope was taken ill. … It admits … of absolute demonstration that the banquet could not have been given on the 12th or even on the 11th, and of proof hardly less cogent that the pope did actually die on the 18th. All the evidence that any entertainment was ever given, or that any poisoning was ever attempted, connects the name of Cardinal Corneto with the transaction. He and no other, according to all respectable authorities (the statement of late writers that ten cardinals were to have been poisoned at once may be dismissed without ceremony as too ridiculous for discussion), was the cardinal whom Alexander on this occasion designed to remove. Now, Cardinal Corneto was not in a condition to partake of any banquet either on 11 August or 12 August Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, who attributes the pope's illness to a fever contracted at supper at the cardinal's villa on 5 August, says, writing on the 13th, 'All have felt the effects, and first of all Cardinal Adrian [Corneto], who attended mass in the papal chapel on Friday [11 August], and after supper was attacked by a violent paroxysm of fever, which endured until the following morning; yesterday [the 12th] he had it again, and it has returned to-day.' Evidently, then, the cardinal could not give or even be present at an entertainment on the 12th, and nothing could have happened on that day to throw a doubt on the accuracy of Burcardus's statement that the pope was taken ill in the morning, which would put any banquet and any poisoning during the course of it out of the question. … There is, therefore, no reason for discrediting the evidence of the two witnesses, the only contemporary witnesses to date, who fix the supper to 5 August or 6 August at the latest. It is possible that poison may have been then administered which did not produce its effects until 12 August; but the picturesque statement of the suddenness of the pope's illness and the consternation thus occasioned are palpable fictions, which so gravely impair the credit of the historians relating them that the story of the poisoning cannot be accepted on their authority. … The story, then, that Alexander accidentally perished by poison which he had prepared for another—though not in itself impossible or even very improbable—must be dismissed as at present unsupported by direct proof or even incidental confirmation of any kind. It does not follow that he may not have been poisoned designedly."

_R. Garnett, The Alleged Poisoning of Alexander VI. (English Historical Review, April, 1894)._

"Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of St. Peter's, that materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice stain his pontificate. His one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, who threatened to enslave Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray [see VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509] against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy [see ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513]; in each case adding the weight of the Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. … Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, wearied with the continual warfare of the old 'Pontefice terribile.'"

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: J. C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, book 9, chapter 5 (volume 8).

M. Creighton, History of the Papacy, book 5, chapters 3-17.

_W. Gilbert, Lucrezia Borgia._

P. Villari, Life and Times of Machiavelli, introduction, chapter 4 (volume 1); book 1, chapters 6-14 (volumes 2-3).

PAPACY: A. D. 1493. The Pope's assumption of authority to give the New World to Spain.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1493.

PAPACY: A. D. 1496-1498. The condemnation of Savonarola.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1490-1498.

PAPACY: A. D. 1503 (September). Election of Pius III.

PAPACY: A. D. 1503 (October). Election of Julius II.

PAPACY: A. D. 1508-1509. Pope Julius II. and the League of Cambrai against Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509.

PAPACY: A. D. 1510-1513. The Holy League against France. The pseudo-council at Pisa. Conquests of Julius II.

See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513.

PAPACY: A. D. 1513. Election of Leo X.

PAPACY: A. D. 1515-1516. Treaty of Leo X. with Francis I. of France. Abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII. The Concordat of Bologna. Destruction of the liberties of the Gallican Church.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1518.

{2444}

PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517. Monetary demands of the court and family of Pope Leo X., and his financial expedients. The theory of Indulgences and their marketability.

"The position which the pope [Leo X.], now absolute lord of Florence and master of Siena, occupied, the powerful alliances he had contracted with the other powers of Europe, and the views which his family entertained on the rest of Italy, rendered it absolutely indispensable for him, spite of the prodigality of a government that knew no restraint, to be well supplied with money. He seized every occasion of extracting extraordinary revenues from the church. The Lateran council was induced, immediately before its dissolution (15th of March, 1517), to grant the pope a tenth of all church property throughout Christendom. Three different commissions for the sale of indulgences traversed Germany and the northern states at the same moment. These expedients were, it is true, resorted to under various pretexts. The tenths were, it was said, to be expended in a Turkish war, which was soon to be declared; the produce of indulgences was for the building of St. Peter's Church, where the bones of the martyrs lay exposed to the inclemency of the elements. But people had ceased to believe in these pretences. … For there was no doubt on the mind of any reasonable man, that all these demands were mere financial speculations. There is no positive proof that the assertion then so generally made —that the proceeds of the sale of indulgences in Germany was destined in part for the pope's sister Maddelena—was true. But the main fact is indisputable, that the ecclesiastical aids were applied to the uses of the pope's family."

L. Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

"Indulgences, in the earlier ages of the Church, had been a relaxation of penance, or of the discipline imposed by the Church on penitents who had been guilty of mortal sin. The doctrine of penance required that for such sin satisfaction should be superadded to contrition and confession. Then came the custom of commuting these appointed temporal penalties. When Christianity spread among the northern nations, the canonical penances were frequently found to be inapplicable to their condition. The practice of accepting offerings of money in the room of the ordinary forms of penance, harmonized with the penal codes in vogue among the barbarian peoples. At first the priest had only exercised the office of an intercessor. Gradually the simple function of declaring the divine forgiveness to the penitent transformed itself into that of a judge. By Aquinas, the priest is made the instrument of conveying the divine pardon, the vehicle through which the grace of God passes to the penitent. With the jubilees, or pilgrimages to Rome, ordained by the popes, came the plenary indulgences, or the complete remission of all temporal penalties—that is, the penalties still obligatory on the penitent—on the fulfillment of prescribed conditions. These penalties might extend into purgatory, but the indulgence obliterated them all. In the 13th century, Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas set forth the theory of supererogatory merits, or the treasure of merit bestowed upon the Church through Christ and the saints, on which the rulers of the Church might draw for the benefit of the less worthy and more needy. This was something distinct from the power of the keys, the power to grant absolution, which inhered in the priesthood alone. The eternal punishment of mortal sin being remitted or commuted by the absolution of the priest, it was open to the Pope or his agents, by the grant of indulgences, to remit the temporal or terminable penalties that still rested on the head of the transgressor. Thus souls might be delivered forthwith from purgatorial fire. Pope Sixtus IV., in 1477, had officially declared that souls already in purgatory are emancipated 'per modum suffragii'; that is, the work done in behalf of them operates to effect their release in a way analogous to the efficacy of prayer. Nevertheless, the power that was claimed over the dead, was not practically diminished by this restriction. The business of selling indulgences had grown by the profitableness of it. 'Everywhere,' says Erasmus, 'the remission of purgatorial torment is sold; nor is it sold only, but forced upon those who refuse it.' As managed by Tetzel and the other emissaries sent out to collect money for the building of St. Peter's Church, the indulgence was a simple bargain, according to which, on the payment of a stipulated sum, the individual received a full discharge from the penalties of sin or procured the release of a soul from the flames of purgatory. The forgiveness of sins was offered in the market for money."

G. P. Fisher, The Reformation, chapter 4.

The doctrine concerning indulgences which the Roman Catholic Church maintains at the present day is stated by one of its most eminent prelates as follows: "What then is an Indulgence? It is no more than a remission by the Church, in virtue of the keys, or the judicial authority committed to her, of a portion, or the entire, of the temporal punishment due to sin. The infinite merits of Christ form the fund whence this remission is derived: but besides, the Church holds that, by the communion of Saints, penitential works performed by the just, beyond what their own sins might exact, are available to other members of Christ's mystical body; that, for instance, the sufferings of the spotless Mother of God, afflictions such as probably no other human being ever felt in the soul, —the austerities and persecutions of the Baptist, the friend of the Bridegroom, who was sanctified in his mother's womb, and chosen to be an angel before the face of the Christ,—the tortures endured by numberless martyrs, whose lives had been pure from vice and sin,—the prolonged rigours of holy anchorites, who, flying from the temptations and dangers of the world, passed many years in penance and contemplation, all these made consecrated and valid through their union with the merits of Christ's passion,—were not thrown away, but formed a store of meritorious blessings, applicable to the satisfaction of other sinners. It is evident that, if the temporal punishment reserved to sin was anciently believed to be remitted through the penitential acts, which the sinner assumed, any other substitute for them, that the authority imposing or recommending them received as an equivalent, must have been considered by it truly of equal value, and as acceptable before God. And so it must be now. If the duty of exacting such satisfaction devolves upon the Church,—and it must be the same now as it formerly was,—she necessarily possesses at present the same power of substitution, with the same efficacy, and, consequently, with the same effects. And such a substitution is what constitutes all that Catholics understand by the name of an Indulgence. … Do I then mean to say, that during the middle ages, and later, no abuse took place in the practise of indulgences? Most certainly not. {2445} Flagrant and too frequent abuses, doubtless, occurred through the avarice, and rapacity, and impiety of men; especially when indulgence was granted to the contributors towards charitable or religious foundations, in the erection of which private motives too often mingle. But this I say, that the Church felt and ever tried to remedy the evil. … The Council of Trent, by an ample decree, completely reformed the abuses which had subsequently crept in, and had been unfortunately used as a ground for Luther's separation from the Church."

N. Wiseman, Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church, lecture 12.

PAPACY: A. D. 1517. Tetzel and the hawking of Indulgences through Germany.

"In Germany the people were full of excitement. The Church had opened a vast market on earth. The crowd of customers, and the cries and jests of the sellers, were like a fair—and that, a fair held by monks. The article which they puffed off and offered at the lowest price, was, they said, the salvation of souls. These dealers travelled through the country in a handsome carriage, with three outriders, made a great show, and spent a great deal of money. … When the cavalcade was approaching a town, a deputy was dispatched to the magistrate: 'The grace of God and St. Peter is before your gates,' said the envoy; and immediately all the place was in commotion. The clergy, the priests, the nuns, the council, the schoolmasters, the schoolboys, the trade corporations with their banners, men and women, young and old, went to meet the merchants, bearing lighted torches in their hands, advancing to the sound of music and of all the bells, 'so that,' says a historian, 'they could not have received God Himself in greater state.' The salutations ended, the whole cortege moved towards the church, the Pope's bull of grace being carried in advance on a velvet cushion, or on a cloth of gold. The chief indulgence-merchant followed next, holding in his hand a red wooden cross. In this order the whole procession moved along, with singing, prayers, and incense. The organ pealed, and loud music greeted the hawker monk and those who accompanied him, as they entered the temple. The cross he bore was placed in front of the altar; the Pope's arms were suspended from it. … One person especially attracted attention at these sales. It was he who carried the great red cross and played the principal part. He wore the garb of the Dominicans. He had an arrogant bearing and a thundering voice, and he was in full vigour, though he had reached his sixty-third year. This man, the son of a goldsmith of Leipsic, named Dietz, was called John Dietzel, or Tetzel. He had received numerous ecclesiastical honours. He was Bachelor in Theology, prior of the Dominicans, apostolic commissioner and inquisitor, and since the year 1502 he had filled the office of vendor of indulgences. The skill he had acquired soon caused him to be named commissioner-in-chief. … The cross having been elevated and the Pope's arms hung upon it, Tetzel ascended the pulpit, and with a confident air began to extol the worth of indulgences, in presence of the crowd whom the ceremony had attracted to the sacred spot. The people listened with open mouths. Here is a specimen of one of his harangues:—'Indulgences,' he said, 'are the most precious and sublime gifts of God. This cross (pointing to the red cross) has as much efficacy as the cross of Jesus Christ itself. Come, and I will give you letters furnished with seals, by which, even the sins that you may have a wish to commit hereafter, shall be all forgiven you. I would not exchange my privileges for those of St. Peter in heaven; for I have saved more souls by my indulgences than the Apostle by his discourses. There is no sin so great, that an indulgence cannot remit it. Repentance is not necessary. But, more than that; indulgences not only save the living, they save the dead also. Priest! noble! merchant! woman! young girl! young man!—harken to your parents and your friends who are dead, and who cry to you from the depths of the abyss: "We are enduring horrible tortures! A small alms would deliver us. You can give it, and you will not!"' The hearers shuddered at these words, pronounced in the formidable voice of the charlatan monk. 'The very instant,' continued Tetzel, 'the piece of money chinks at the bottom of the strong box, the soul is freed from purgatory, and flies to heaven.' … Such were the discourses heard by astonished Germany in the days when God was raising up Luther. The sermon ended, the indulgence was considered as 'having solemnly established its throne' in that place. Confessionals were arranged, adorned with the Pope's arms; and the people flocked in crowds to the confessors. They were told, that, in order to obtain the full pardon of all their sins, and to deliver the souls of others from purgatory, it was not necessary for them to have contrition of heart, or to make confession by mouth; only, let them be quick and bring money to the box. Women and children, poor people, and those who lived on alms, all of them soon found the needful to satisfy the confessor's demands. The confession being over—and it did not require much time—the faithful hurried to the sale, which was conducted by a single monk. His counter stood near the cross. He fixed his sharp eyes upon all who approached him, scrutinized their manners, their bearing, their dress, and demanded a sum proportioned to the appearance of each. Kings, queens, princes, archbishops, bishops, had to pay, according to regulation, twenty-five ducats; abbots, counts, and barons, ten; and so on, or according to the discretion of the commissioner. For particular sins, too, both Tetzel in Germany, and Samson in Switzerland, had a special scale of prices."

J. N. Merle D'Aubigne, The Story of the! Reformation, part 1, chapter 6 (or History of the Reformation, book 3, chapter 1).

ALSO IN: M. J. Spalding, History of the Protestant Reformation, part 2, chapter 3.

PAPACY: A. D. 1517. Luther's attack upon the Indulgences. His 95 Theses nailed to the Wittenberg Church. The silent support of Elector Frederick of Saxony. The satisfaction of awakened Germany.

"Wittenberg was an old-fashioned town in Saxony, on the Elbe. Its main street was parallel with the broad river, and within its walls, at one end of it, near the Elster gate, lay the University, founded by the good Elector—Frederic of Saxony—of which Luther was a professor; while at the other end of it was the palace of the Elector and the palace church of All Saints. The great parish church lifted its two towers from the centre of the town, a little back from the main street. {2446} This was the town in which Luther had been preaching for years, and towards which Tetzel, the seller of indulgences, now came, just as he did to other towns, vending his 'false pardons'—granting indulgences for sins to those who could pay for them, and offering to release from purgatory the souls of the dead, if any of their friends would pay for their release. As soon as the money chinked in his money-box, the souls of their dead friends would be let out of purgatory. This was the gospel of Tetzel. It made Luther's blood boil. He knew that what the Pope wanted was people's money, and that the whole thing was a cheat. This his Augustinian theology had taught him, and he was not a man to hold back when he saw what ought to be done. He did see it. On the day [October 31] before the festival of All Saints, on which the relics of the Church were displayed to the crowds of country people who flocked into the town, Luther passed down the long street with a copy of ninety-five theses or Statements [see text below] against indulgences in his hand, and nailed them upon the door of the palace church ready for the festival on the morrow. Also on All Saints' day he read them to the people in the great parish church. It would not have mattered much to Tetzel or the Pope that the monk of Wittenberg had nailed up his papers on the palace church, had it not been that he was backed by the Elector of Saxony."

F. Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution, part 2, chapter 3 (c).

"As the abuse complained of had a double character, religious and political, or financial, so also political events came in aid of the opposition emanating from religious ideas. Frederick of Saxony [on the occasion of an indulgence proclaimed in 1501] … had kept the money accruing from it in his own dominions in his possession, with the determination not to part with it, till an expedition against the infidels, which was then contemplated, should be actually undertaken; the pope and, on the pope's concession, the emperor, had demanded it of him in vain: he held it for what it really was—a tax levied on his subjects; and after all the projects of a war against the Turks had come to nothing, he had at length applied the money to his university. Nor was he now inclined to consent to a similar scheme of taxation. … The sale of indulgences at Jüterbock and the resort of his subjects thither, was not less offensive to him on financial grounds than to Luther on spiritual. Not that the latter were in any degree excited by the former; this it would be impossible to maintain after a careful examination of the facts; on the contrary, the spiritual motives were more original, powerful, and independent than the temporal, though these were important, as having their proper source in the general condition of Germany. The point whence the great events arose which were soon to agitate the world, was the coincidence of the two. There was … no one who represented the interests of Germany in the matter. There were innumerable persons who saw through the abuse of religion, but no one who dared to call it by its right name and openly to denounce and resist it. But the alliance between the monk of Wittenberg and the sovereign of Saxony was formed; no treaty was negotiated; they had never seen each other; yet they were bound together by an instinctive mutual understanding. The intrepid monk attacked the enemy; the prince did not promise him his aid—he did not even encourage him; he let things take their course. … Luther's daring assault was the shock which awakened Germany from her slumber. That a man should arise who had the courage to undertake the perilous struggle, was a source of universal satisfaction, and as it were tranquillised the public conscience. The most powerful interests were involved in it;—that of sincere and profound piety, against the most purely external means of obtaining pardon of sins; that of literature, against fanatical persecutors, of whom Tetzel was one; the renovated theology against the dogmatic learning of the schools, which lent itself to all these abuses; the temporal power against the spiritual, whose usurpations it sought to curb; lastly, the nation against the rapacity of Rome."

L. Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: J. Köstlin, Life of Luther, part 3, chapter 1.

C. Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation, chapter 5.

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1517-1523.

PAPACY: A. D. 1517. The Ninety-five Theses of Luther.

The following is a translation of the ninety-five theses:

"In the desire and with the purpose of elucidating the truth, a disputation will be held on the underwritten propositions at Wittemberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Monk of the Order of St. Augustine, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and ordinary Reader of the same in that place. He therefore asks those who cannot be present and discuss the subject with us orally, to do so by letter in their absence. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: 'Repent ye,' etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence.

2. This word cannot be understood of sacramental penance, that is, of the confession and satisfaction which are performed under the ministry of priests.

3. It does not, however, refer solely to inward penitence; nay such inward penitence is naught, unless it outwardly produces various mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty thus continues as long as the hatred of self—that is, true inward penitence—continues; namely, till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority, or by that of the canons.

6. The Pope has no power to remit any guilt, except by declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God; or at most by remitting cases reserved for himself; in which eases, if his power were despised, guilt would certainly remain.

7. God never remits any man's guilt, without at the same time subjecting him, humbled in all things, to the authority of his representative the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and no burden ought to be imposed on the dying, according to them.

9. Hence the Holy Spirit acting in the Pope does well for us, in that, in his decrees, he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Those priests act wrongly and unlearnedly, who, in the case of the dying, reserve the canonical penances for purgatory.

11. Those tares about changing of the canonical penalty into the penalty of purgatory seem surely to have been sown while the bishops were asleep.

12. Formerly the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

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13. The dying pay all penalties by death, and are already dead to the canon laws, and are by right relieved from them.

14. The imperfect soundness or charity of a dying person necessarily brings with it great fear, and the less it is, the greater the fear it brings.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient by itself, to say nothing of other things, to constitute the pains of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven appear to differ as despair, almost despair, and peace of mind differ.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems that it must needs be that, as horror diminishes, so charity increases.

18. Nor does it seem to be proved by any reasoning or any scriptures, that they are outside of the state of merit or of the increase of charity.

19. Nor does this appear to be proved, that they are sure and confident of their own blessedness, at least all of them, though we may be very sure of it.

20. Therefore the Pope, when he speaks of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean simply of all, but only of those imposed by himself.

21. Thus those preachers of indulgences are in error who say that, by the indulgences of the Pope, a man is loosed and saved from all punishment.

22. For in fact he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which they would have had to pay in this life according to the canons.

23. If any entire remission of all penalties can be granted to anyone, it is certain that it is granted to none but the most perfect, that is, to very few.

24. Hence the greater part of the people must needs be deceived by this indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalties.

25. Such power as the Pope has over purgatory in general, such has every bishop in his own diocese, and every curate in his own parish, in particular.

26. The Pope acts most rightly in granting remission to souls, not by the power of the keys (which is of no avail in this case) but by the way of suffrage.

27. They preach man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.

28. It is certain that, when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory desire to be redeemed from it, according to the story told of Saints Severinus and Paschal.

30. No man is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of the attainment of plenary remission.

31. Rare as is a true penitent, so rare is one who truly buys indulgences—that is to say, most rare.

32. Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers.

33. We must especially beware of those who say that these pardons from the Pope are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God.

34. For the grace conveyed by these pardons has respect only to the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, which are of human appointment.

35. They preach no Christian doctrine, who teach that contrition is not necessary for those who buy souls out of purgatory or buy confessional licences.

36. Every Christian who feels true compunction has of right plenary remission of pain and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. The remission, however, imparted by the Pope is by no means to be despised, since it is, as I have said, a declaration of the Divine remission.

39. It is a most difficult thing, even for the most learned theologians, to exalt at the same time in the eyes of the people the ample effect of pardons and the necessity of true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves punishment; while the ampleness of pardons relaxes it, and causes men to hate it, or at least gives occasion for them to do so.

41. Apostolic pardons ought to be proclaimed with caution, lest the people should falsely suppose that they are placed before other good works of charity.

42. Christians should be taught that it is not the mind of the Pope that the buying of pardons is to be in any way compared to works of mercy.

43. Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons.

44. Because, by a work of charity, charity increases, and the man becomes better; while, by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment.

45. Christians should be taught that he who sees anyone in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgences of the Pope, but the anger of God.

46. Christians should be taught that, unless they have superfluous wealth, they are bound to keep what is necessary for the use of their own households, and by no means to lavish it on pardons.

47. Christians should be taught that, while they are free to buy pardons, they are not commanded to do so.

48. Christians should be taught that the Pope, in granting pardons, has both more need and more desire that devout prayer should be made for him, than that money should be readily paid.

49. Christians should be taught that the Pope's pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful, if through them they lose the fear of God.

50. Christians should be taught that, if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians should be taught that, as it would be the duty, so it would be the wish of the Pope, even to sell, if necessary, the Basilica of St. Peter, and to give of his own money to very many of those from whom the preachers of pardons extract money.

52. Vain is the hope of salvation through letters of pardon, even if a commissary—nay the Pope himself—were to pledge his own soul for them.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the Pope, who, in order that pardons may be preached, condemn the word of God to utter silence in other churches.

54. Wrong is done to the word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons that [than] on it.

55. The mind of the Pope necessarily is that, if pardons, which are a very small matter, are celebrated with single bells, single processions, and single ceremonies, the Gospel, which is a very great matter, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, and a hundred ceremonies.

56. The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope grants indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known among the people of Christ.

{2448}

57. It is clear that they are at least not temporal treasures, for these are not so readily lavished, but only accumulated, by many of the preachers.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and of the saints, for these, independently of the Pope, are always working grace to the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell to the outer man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church are the poor of the Church, but he spoke according to the use of the word in his time.

60. We are not speaking rashly when we say that the keys of the Church, bestowed through the merits of Christ, are that treasure.

61. For it is clear that the power of the Pope is alone sufficient for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases.

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

63. This treasure, however, is deservedly most hateful, because it makes the first to be last.

64. While the treasure of indulgences is deservedly most acceptable, because it makes the last to be first.

65. Hence the treasures of the Gospel are nets, wherewith of old they fished for the men of riches.

66. The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men.

67. Those indulgences, which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain.

68. Yet they are in reality in no degree to be compared to the grace of God and the piety of the cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to receive the commissaries of apostolic pardons with all reverence.

70. But they are still more bound to see to it with all their eyes, and take heed with all their ears, that these men do not preach their own dreams in place of the Pope's commission.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed.

72. But he, on the other hand, who exerts himself against the wantonness and licence of speech of the preachers of pardons, let him be blessed.

73. As the Pope justly thunders against those who use any kind of contrivance to the injury of the traffic in pardons.

74. Much more is it his intention to thunder against those who, under the pretext of pardons, use contrivances to the injury of holy charity and of truth.

75. To think that Papal pardons have such power that they could absolve a man even if—by an impossibility—he had violated the Mother of God, is madness.

76. We affirm on the contrary that Papal] pardons cannot take away even the least of venial sins, as regards its guilt.

77. The saying that, even if St. Peter were now Pope, he could grant no greater graces, is blasphemy against St. Peter and the Pope.

78. We affirm on the contrary that both he and any other Pope has greater graces to grant, namely, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc. (1 Corinthians xii. 9).

79. To say that the cross set up among the insignia of the Papal arms is of equal power with the cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. Those bishops, curates, and theologians who allow such discourses to have currency among the people, will have to render an account.

81. This licence in the preaching of pardons makes it no easy thing, even for learned men, to protect the reverence due to the Pope against the calumnies, or, at all events, the keen questionings of the laity.

82. As for instance:—Why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of most holy charity and of the supreme necessity of souls—this being the most just of all reasons—if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of that most fatal thing money, to be spent on building a basilica—this being a very slight reason?

83. Again; why do funeral masses and anniversary masses for the deceased continue, and why does not the Pope return, or permit the withdrawal of the funds bequeathed for this purpose, since it is a wrong to pay for those who are already redeemed?

84. Again; what is this new kindness of God and the Pope, in that for money's sake, they permit an impious man and an enemy of God to redeem a pious soul which loves God, and yet do not redeem that same pious and beloved soul, out of free charity, on account of its own need?

85. Again; why is it that the penitential canons, long since abrogated and dead in themselves in very fact and not only by usage, are yet still redeemed with money, through the granting of indulgences, as if they were full of life?

86. Again; why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the one basilica of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers?

87. Again; what does the Pope remit or impart to those who, through perfect contrition, have a right to plenary remission and participation?

88. Again; what greater good would the Church receive if the Pope, instead of once, as he does now, were to bestow these remissions and participations a hundred times a day on any one of the faithful?

89. Since it is the salvation of souls, rather than money, that the Pope seeks by his pardons, why does he suspend the letters and pardons granted long ago, since they are equally efficacious.

90. To repress these scruples and arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to solve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the Pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian men unhappy.

91. If then pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the Pope, all these questions would be resolved with ease; nay, would not exist.

92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ: 'Peace, peace,' and there is no peace.

93. Blessed be all those prophets, who say to the people of Christ: 'The cross, the cross,' and there is no cross.

94. Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ their head through pains, deaths, and hells.

95. And thus trust to enter heaven through many tribulations, rather than in the security of peace."

H. Wace and C. A. Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, page 6-13.

PAPACY: A. D. 1517-1521. Favoring circumstances under which the Reformation in Germany gained ground. The Bull "Exurge Domine." Excommunication of Luther. The imperial summons from Worms.

"It was fortunate for Luther's cause that he lived under a prince like the Elector of Saxony. Frederick, indeed, was a devout catholic; he had made a pilgrimage to Palestine, and had filled All Saints' Church at Wittenberg with relics for which he had given large sums of money. His attention, however, was now entirely engrossed by his new university, and he was unwilling to offer up to men like Tetzel so great an ornament of it as Dr. Martin Luther, since whose appointment at Wittenberg the number of students had so wonderfully increased as to throw the universities of Erfurt and Leipsic quite into the shade. … {2449} As one of the principal Electors he was completely master in his own dominions, and indeed throughout Germany he was as much respected as the Emperor; and Maximilian, besides his limited power, was deterred by his political views from taking any notice of the quarrel. Luther had thus full liberty to prepare the great movement that was to ensue. … The contempt entertained by Pope Leo X. for the whole affair was also favourable to Luther; for Frederick might not at first have been inclined to defend him against the Court of Rome. … The Court of Rome at length became more sensible of the importance of Luther's innovations and in August 1518, he was commanded either to recant, or to appear and answer for his opinions at Rome, where Silvester Prierias and the bishop Ghenucci di Arcoli had been appointed his judges. Luther had not as yet dreamt of throwing off his allegiance to the Roman See. In the preceding May he had addressed a letter to the Pope himself, stating his views in a firm but modest and respectful tone, and declaring that he could not retract them. The Elector Frederick, at the instance of the university of Wittenberg, which trembled for the life of its bold and distinguished professor, prohibited Luther's journey to Rome, and expressed his opinion that the question should be decided in Germany by impartial judges. Leo consented to send a legate to Augsburg to determine the cause, and selected for that purpose Cardinal Thomas di Vio, better known by the name of Cajetanus, derived from his native city of Gaeta. … Luther set out for Augsburg on foot provided with several letters of recommendation from the Elector, and a safe conduct from the Emperor Maximilian. … Luther appeared before the cardinal for the first time, October 12th, at whose feet he fell; but it was soon apparent that no agreement could be expected. … Cajetanus, who had at first behaved with great moderation and politeness, grew warm, demanded an unconditional retraction, forbade Luther again to appear before him till he was prepared to make it, and threatened him with the censures of the Church. The fate of Huss stared Luther in the face, and he determined to fly. His patron Staupitz procured him a horse, and on the 20th of October, Langemantel, a magistrate of Augsburg, caused a postern in the walls to be opened for him before day had well dawned. … Cajetanus now wrote to the Elector Frederick complaining of Luther's refractory departure from Augsburg, and requiring either that he should be sent to Rome or at least be banished from Saxony. … So uncertain were Luther's prospects that he made preparations for his departure. … At length, just on the eve of his departure, he received an intimation from Frederick that he might remain at Wittenberg. Before the close of the year he gained a fresh accession of strength by the arrival of Melanchthon, a pupil of Reuchlin, who had obtained the appointment of Professor of Greek in the university. Frederick offered a fresh disputation at Wittenberg; but Leo X. adopted a course more consonant with the pretensions of an infallible Church by issuing a Bull dated November 9th 1518, which, without adverting to Luther or his opinions, explained and enforced the received doctrine of indulgences. It failed, however, to produce the desired effect. … Leo now tried the effects of seduction. Carl Von Miltitz, a Saxon nobleman, canon of Mentz, Treves, and Meissen, … was despatched to the Elector Frederick with the present of a golden rose, and with instructions to put an end, as best he might, to the Lutheran schism. On his way through Germany, Miltitz soon perceived that three fourths of the people were in Luther's favour; nor was his reception at the Saxon Court of a nature to afford much encouragement. … Miltitz saw the necessity for conciliation. Having obtained an interview with Luther at Altenburg, Miltitz persuaded him to promise that he would be silent, provided a like restraint were placed upon his adversaries. … Luther was even induced to address a letter to the Pope, dated from Altenburg, March 3rd 1510, in which, in humble terms, he expressed his regret that his motives should have been misinterpreted, and solemnly declared that he did not mean to dispute the power and authority of the Pope and the Church of Rome, which he considered superior to everything except Jesus Christ alone. … The truce effected by Miltitz lasted only a few months. It was broken by a disputation to which Dr. Eck challenged Bodenstein, a Leipsic professor, better known by the name of Carlstadt. … The Leipsic disputation was preceded and followed by a host of controversies. The whole mind of Germany was in motion, and it was no longer with Luther alone that Rome had to contend. All the celebrated names in art and literature sided with the Reformation; Erasmus, Ulrich von Hutten, Melanchthon, Lucas Cranach, Albert Durer, and others. Hans Sachs, the Meistersänger of Nuremberg, composed in his honour the pretty song called 'the Wittenberg Nightingale.' Silvester von Schaumburg and Franz von Sickingen invited Luther to their castles, in case he were driven from Saxony; and Schaumburg declared that 100 more Franconian knights were ready to protect him. … The Elector Frederick became daily more convinced that his doctrines were founded in Scripture. … Meanwhile, Luther had made great strides in his opinions since the publication of his Theses. … He had begun to impugn many of the principles of the Romish church; and so far from any longer recognising the paramount authority of the Pope, or even of a general council, he was now disposed to submit to no rule but the Bible. The more timid spirits were alarmed at his boldness, and even Frederick himself exhorted him to moderation. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that Luther sometimes damaged his cause by the intemperance of his language; an instance of which is afforded by the remarkable letter he addressed to Leo X., April 6th 1520, as a dedication to his treatise 'De Libertate Christiana.' … The letter just alluded to was, perhaps, the immediate cause of the famous Bull, 'Exurge Domine,' which Leo fulminated against Luther, June 15th 1520. The Bull, which is conceived in mild terms, condemned forty-one propositions extracted from Luther's works, allowed him sixty days to recant, invited him to Rome, if he pleased to come, under a safe conduct, and required him to cease from preaching and writing, and to burn his published treatises. If he did not conform within the above period, he was condemned as a notorious and irreclaimable heretic; all princes and magistrates were required to seize him and his adherents, and to send them to Rome; and all places that gave them shelter were threatened with an interdict. {2450} The Bull was forwarded to Archbishop Albert of Mentz; but in North Germany great difficulty was found in publishing it. … On December 10th Luther consummated his rebellion by taking that final step which rendered it impossible for him to recede. On the banks of the Elbe before the Elster Gate of Wittenberg, … Luther, in the presence of a large body of professors and students, solemnly committed with his own hands to the flames the Bull by which he had been condemned, together with the code of the canon law, and the writings of Eck and Emser, his opponents. … On January 3rd 1521, Luther and his followers were solemnly excommunicated by Leo with bell, book, and candle, and an image of him, together with his writings, was committed to the flames. … At the Diet of Worms which was held soon after, the Emperor [Charles V., who succeeded Maximilian in 1519] having ordered that Luther's books should be delivered up to the magistrates to be burnt, the States represented to him the uselessness and impolicy of such a step, pointing out that the doctrines of Luther had already sunk deep into the hearts of the people; and they recommended that he should be summoned to Worms and interrogated whether he would recant without any disputation. … In compliance with the advice of the States, the Emperor issued a mandate, dated March 6th 1521, summoning Luther to appear at Worms within twenty-one days. It was accompanied with a safe conduct."

T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 2, chapter 3 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 2 (volume 1).

P. Bayne, Martin Luther: his Life and Work, book 5, chapter 3; book 8, chapter 6 (volumes 1-2).

_J. E. Darras, History of the Church, 7th period, chapter 1 (volume 4)._

P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, volume 6, chapter 4.

PAPACY: A. D. 1519-1524. The sale of Indulgences in Switzerland. Beginning of the Reformation under Zwingli.

Near the close of the year 1518, Ulric Zwingle, or Zwingli, or Zuinglius, already much respected for his zealous piety and his learning, "was appointed preacher in the collegiate church at Zurich. The crisis of his appearance on this scene was so extraordinary as to indicate to every devout mind a providential dispensation, designed to raise up a second instrument in the work of reformation, and that, almost by the same means which had been employed to produce the first. One Bernhard Samson, or Sanson, a native of Milan, and a Franciscan monk, selected this moment to open a sale of indulgences at Zurich. He was the Tetzel of Switzerland. He preached through many of its provinces, exercising the same trade, with the same blasphemous pretensions and the same clamorous effrontery; and in a land of greater political freedom his impostures excited even a deeper and more general disgust. … He encountered no opposition till he arrived at Zurich. But here appears a circumstance which throws a shade of distinction between the almost parallel histories of Samson and Tetzel. The latter observed in his ministration all the necessary ecclesiastical forms; the former omitted to present his credentials to the bishop of the diocese, and acted solely on the authority of the pontifical bulls: Hugo, Bishop of Constance, was offended at this disrespectful temerity, and immediately directed Zwingle and the other pastors to exclude the stranger from their churches. The first who had occasion to show obedience to this mandate was John Frey, minister of Staufberg. Bullinger, Dean of Bremgarten, was the second. From Bremgarten, after a severe altercation which ended by the excommunication of that dignitary, Samson proceeded to Zurich. Meanwhile Zwingle had been engaged for about two months in rousing the indignation of the people against the same object; and so successfully did he support the instruction of the Bishop, and such efficacy was added to his eloquence by the personal unpopularity of Samson, that the senate determined not so much as to admit him within the gates of the city. A deputation of honour was appointed to welcome the pontifical legate without the walls. He was then commanded to absolve the Dean from the sentence launched against him, and to depart from the canton. He obeyed, and presently turned his steps towards Italy and repassed the mountains. This took place at the end of February, 1519. The Zurichers immediately addressed a strong remonstrance to the Pope, in which they denounced the misconduct of his agent. Leo replied, on the last of April, with characteristic mildness; for though he maintained, as might be expected, the Pope's authority to grant those indulgences, … yet he accorded the prayer of the petition so far as to recall the preacher, and to promise his punishment, should he be convicted of having exceeded his commission. … But Zwingle's views were not such as long to be approved by an episcopal reformer in that [the Roman] church. … He began to invite the Bishop, both by public and private solicitations, with perfect respect but great earnestness, to give his adhesion to the evangelical truth … and to permit the free preaching of the gospel throughout his diocese. … From the beginning of his preaching at Zurich it was his twofold object to instruct the people in the meaning, design, and character of the scriptural writings; and at the same time to teach them to seek their religion only there. His very first proceeding was to substitute the gospel of St. Matthew, as the text-book of his discourses, for the scraps of Scripture exclusively treated by the papal preachers; and he pursued this purpose by next illustrating the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles of Paul and Peter. He considered the doctrine of justification by faith as the corner-stone of Christianity, and he strove to draw away his hearers from the gross observances of a pharasaical church to a more spiritual conception of the covenant of their redemption. … His success was so considerable, that at the end of 1519 he numbered as many as 2,000 disciples; and his influence so powerful among the chiefs of the commonwealth, that he procured, in the following year, an official decree to the effect: That all pastors and ministers should thenceforward reject the unfaithful devices and ordinances of men, and teach with freedom such doctrines only as rested on the authority of the prophecies, gospels, and apostolical epistles."

G. Waddington, History of the Reformation, chapter 27 (volume 2).

{2451}

"With unflagging zeal and courage Zwingli followed his ideal in politics, viz., to rear a republic on the type of the Greek free states of old, with perfect national independence. Thanks to his influence Zurich in 1521 abolished 'Reislaufen,' and the system of foreign pay [mercenary military service]. This step, however, brought down on the head of Zurich the wrath of the twelve sister republics, which had just signed a military contract with Francis I. … It was only in 1522 that he began to launch pamphlets against the abuses in the Church-fasting, celibacy of the clergy and the like. On the 29th of January, 1523, Zwingli obtained from the Council of Zurich the opening of a public religious discussion in presence of the whole of the clergy of the canton, and representatives of the Bishop of Constance, whose assistance in the debate the Council had invited. In 67 theses, remarkable for their penetration and clearness, he sketched out his confession of faith and plan of reform. … On the 25th of October, 1523, a second discussion initiated the practical consequences of the reformed doctrine—the abrogation of the mass and image worship. Zwingli's system was virtually that of Calvin, but was conceived in a broader spirit, and carried out later on in a far milder manner by Bullinger. … The Council gave the fullest approval to the Reformation. In 1524 Zwingli married Anne Reinhard, the widow of a Zurich nobleman (Meyer von Knonau), and so discarded the practice of celibacy obtaining amongst priests. … In 1524 Zwingli began to effect the most sweeping changes with the view of overthrowing the whole fabric of mediæval superstition. In the direction of reform he went far beyond Luther, who had retained oral confession, altar pictures, &c. The introduction of his reforms in Zurich called forth but little opposition. True, there were the risings of the Anabaptists, but these were the same everywhere. … Pictures and images were removed from the churches, under government direction. … At the Landgemeinden [parish gatherings] called for the purpose, the people gave an enthusiastic assent to his doctrines, and declared themselves ready 'to die for the gospel truth.' Thus a national Church was established, severed from the diocese of Constance, and placed under the control of the Council of Zurich and a clerical synod. The convents were turned into schools, hospitals, and poorhouses."

Mrs. L. Hug and R. Stead, Switzerland, chapter 22.

ALSO IN: H. Stebbing, History of the Reformation, chapter 7 (volume l).

C. Beard, The Reformation (Hibbert Lectures, 1883). lecture 7.

J. H. Merle D'Aubigné. History of the Reformation, books 8 and 11 (volumes 2-3).

M. J. Spalding. History of the Protestant Reformation, part 2, chapter 5.

P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, volume 7, chapters 1-3.

PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1522. Luther before the Diet at Worms. His friendly abduction and concealment at Wartburg. His translation of the Bible.

"On the 2nd of April [1521], the Tuesday after Easter, Luther set out on his momentous journey. He travelled in a cart with three of his friends, the herald riding in front in his coat of arms. … The Emperor had not waited for his appearance to order his books to be burnt. When he reached Erfurt on the way the sentence had just been proclaimed. The herald asked him if he still meant to go on. 'I will go,' he said, 'if there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the house-tops. Though they burnt Huss, they could not burn the truth.' The Erfurt students, in retaliation, had thrown the Bull into the water. The Rector and the heads of the university gave Luther a formal reception as an old and honoured member; he preached at his old convent, and he preached again at Gotha and at Eisenach. Caietan had protested against the appearance in the Diet of an excommunicated heretic. The Pope himself had desired that the safe–conduct should not be respected, and the bishops had said that it was unnecessary. Manœvres were used to delay him on the road till the time allowed had expired. But there was a fierce sense of fairness in the lay members of the Diet, which it was dangerous to outrage. Franz von Sickingen hinted that if there was foul play it might go hard with Cardinal Caietan—and Von Sickingen was a man of his word in such matters. On the 16th of April, at ten in the morning, the cart entered Worms, bringing Luther in his monk's dress, followed and attended by a crowd of cavaliers. The town's people were all out to see the person with whose name Germany was ringing. As the cart passed through the gales the warder on the walls blew a blast upon his trumpet. … Luther needed God to stand by him, for in all that great gathering he could count on few assured friends. The princes of the empire were resolved that he should have fair play, but they were little inclined to favour further a disturber of the public peace. The Diet sate in the Bishop's palace, and the next evening Luther appeared. The presence in which he found himself would have tried the nerves of the bravest of men: the Emperor, sternly hostile, with his retinue of Spanish priests and nobles; the archbishops and bishops, all of opinion that the stake was the only fitting place for so insolent a heretic; the dukes and barons, whose stern eyes were little likely to reveal their sympathy, if sympathy any of them felt. One of them only, George of Frundsberg, had touched Luther on the shoulder as he passed through the ante–room. 'Little monk, little monk,' he said, 'thou hast work before thee, that I, and many a man whose trade is war, never faced the like of. If thy heart is right, and thy cause good, go on in God's name. He will not forsake thee. A pile of books stood on a table when he was brought forward. An officer of the court read the titles, asked if he acknowledged them, and whether he was ready to retract them. Luther was nervous, not without cause. He answered in a low voice that the books were his. To the other question he could not reply at once. He demanded time. His first appearance had not left a favourable impression; he was allowed a night to consider. The next morning, April 18, he had recovered himself; he came in fresh, courageous, and collected. His old enemy, Eck, was this time the spokesman against him, and asked what he was prepared to do. He said firmly that his writings were of three kinds: some on simple Gospel truth, which all admitted, and which of course he could not retract; some against Papal laws and customs, which had tried the consciences of Christians and had been used as excuses to oppress and spoil the German people. If he retracted these he would cover himself with shame. In a third sort he had attacked particular persons, and perhaps had been too violent. Even here he declined to retract simply, but would admit his fault if fault could be proved. He gave his answers in a clear strong voice, in Latin first, and then in German. {2452} There was a pause, and then Eck said that he had spoken disrespectfully; his heresies had been already condemned at the Council at Constance; let him retract on these special points, and he should have consideration for the rest. He required a plain Yes or No from him, 'without horns.' The taunt roused Luther's blood. His full brave self was in his reply. 'I will give you an answer,' he said, 'which has neither horns nor teeth. Popes have erred and councils have erred. Prove to me out of Scripture that I am wrong, and I submit. Till then my conscience binds me. Here I stand. I can do no more. God help me. Amen.' All day long the storm raged. Night had fallen, and torches were lighted in the hall before the sitting closed. Luther was dismissed at last; it was supposed, and perhaps intended, that he was to be taken to a dungeon. But the hearts of the lay members of the Diet had been touched by the courage which he had shown. They would not permit a hand to be laid on him. … When he had reached his lodging again, he flung up his hands. 'I am through!' he cried. 'I am through! If I had a thousand heads they should be struck off one by one before I would retract.' The same evening the Elector Frederick sent for him, and told him he had done well and bravely. But though he had escaped so far, he was not acquitted. Charles conceived that he could be now dealt with as an obstinate heretic. At the next session (the day following), he informed the Diet that he would send Luther home to Wittenberg, there to be punished as the Church required. The utmost that his friends could obtain was that further efforts should be made. The Archbishop of Treves was allowed to tell him that if he would acknowledge the infallibility of councils, he might be permitted to doubt the infallibility of the Pope. But Luther stood simply upon Scripture. There, and there only, was infallibility. The Elector ordered him home at once, till the Diet should decide upon his fate. … A majority in the Diet, it was now clear, would pronounce for his death. If he was sentenced by the Great Council of the Empire, the Elector would be no longer able openly to protect him. It was decided that he should disappear, and disappear so completely that no trace of him should be discernible. On his way back through the Thuringian Forest, three or four miles from Altenstein, a party of armed men started out of the wood, set upon his carriage, seized and carried him off to Wartburg Castle. There he remained, passing by the name of the Ritter George, and supposed to be some captive knight. The secret was so well kept, that even the Elector's brother was ignorant of his hiding place. Luther was as completely lost as if the earth had swallowed him. … On the 8th of May the Edict of Worms was issued, placing him under the ban of the empire; but he had become 'as the air invulnerable,' and the face of the world had changed before he came back to it: … Luther's abduction and residence at Wartburg is the most picturesque incident in his life. He dropped his monk's gown, and was dressed like a gentleman; he let his beard grow and wore a sword. … The revolution, deprived of its leader, ran wild meanwhile. An account of the scene at Worms, with Luther's speeches, and wood cut illustrations, was printed on broadsheets and circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies. The people were like schoolboys left without a master. Convents and monasteries dissolved by themselves; monks and nuns began to marry; there was nothing else for the nuns to do, turned as they were adrift without provision. The Mass in most of the churches in Saxony was changed into a Communion. But without Luther it was all chaos, and no order could be taken. So great was the need of him, that in December he went to Wittenberg in disguise; but it was not yet safe for him to remain there. He had to retreat to his castle again, and in that compelled retreat he bestowed on Germany the greatest of all the gifts which he was able to offer. He began to translate the Bible into clear vernacular German. … He had probably commenced the work at the beginning of his stay at the castle. In the spring of 1522 the New Testament was completed. In the middle of March, the Emperor's hands now being fully occupied, the Elector sent him word that he need not conceal himself any longer; and he returned finally to his home and his friends. The New Testament was printed in November of that year, and became at once a household book in Germany. … The Old Testament was taken in hand at once, and in two years half of it was roughly finished."

J. A. Froude, Luther: a Short Biography, pages 28-35.

ALSO IN: G. Waddington, History of the Reformation, chapters 13-14 (volume 1).

W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., book 2 (volume 1).

C. Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation, chapter 9.

J. Köstlin, Life of Luther, part 3, chapter 9.

PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1535. Beginning of the Protestant Reform movement in France. Hesitation of Francis I. His final persecution of the Reformers.

"The long contest for Gallican rights had lowered the prestige of the popes in France, but it had not weakened the Catholic Church, which was older than the monarchy itself, and, in the feeling of the people, was indissolubly associated with it. The College of the Sorbonne, or the Theological Faculty at Paris, and the Parliament, which had together maintained Gallican liberty, were united in stern hostility to all doctrinal innovations. … In Southern France a remnant of the Waldenses had survived, and the recollection of the Catharists was still preserved in popular songs and legends. But the first movements towards reform emanated from the Humanist culture. A literary and scientific spirit was awakened in France through the lively intercourse with Italy which subsisted under Louis XII. and Francis I. By Francis especially, Italian scholars and artists were induced in large numbers to take up their abode in France. Frenchmen likewise visited Italy and brought home the classical culture which they acquired there. Among the scholars who cultivated Greek was Budæus, the foremost of them, whom Erasmus styled the 'wonder of France.' After the 'Peace of the Dames' was concluded at Cambray, in 1529, when Francis surrendered Italy to Charles V., a throng of patriotic Italians who feared or hated the Spanish rule, streamed over the Alps and gave a new impulse to literature and art. Poets, artists, and scholars found in the king a liberal and enthusiastic patron. The new studies, especially Hebrew and Greek, were opposed by all the might of the Sorbonne, the leader of which was the Syndic, Beda. He and his associates were on the watch for heresy, and every author who was suspected of overstepping the bounds of orthodoxy was immediately accused and subjected to persecution. {2453} Thus two parties were formed, the one favorable to the new learning, and the other inimical to it and rigidly wedded to the traditional theology. The Father of the French Reformation, or the one more entitled to this distinction than any other, is Jacques Lefèvre. … Lefèvre was honored among the Humanists as the restorer of philosophy and science in the University. Deeply imbued with a religious spirit, in 1509 he put forth a commentary on the Psalms, and in 1512 a commentary on the Epistles of Paul. As early as about 1512, he said to his pupil Farel: 'God will renovate the world, and you will be a witness of it'; and in the last named work; he says that the signs of the times betoken that a renovation of the Church is near at hand. He teaches the doctrine of gratuitous justification, and deals with the Scriptures as the supreme and sufficient authority. But a mystical, rather than a polemical vein characterizes him; and while this prevented him from breaking with the Church, it also blunted the sharpness of the opposition which his opinions were adapted to produce. One of his pupils was Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, who held the same view of justification with Lefèvre, and fostered the evangelical doctrine in his diocese. The enmity of the Sorbonne to Lefèvre and his school took a more aggressive form when the writings of Luther began to be read in the University and elsewhere. … The Sorbonne [1521] formally condemned a dissertation of Lefèvre on a point of evangelical history, in which he had controverted the traditional opinion. He, with Farel, Gérard Roussel, and other preachers, found an asylum with Briçonnet. Lefèvre translated the New Testament from the Vulgate, and, in a commentary on the Gospels, explicitly pronounced the Bible the sole rule of faith, which the individual might interpret for himself, and declared justification to be through faith alone, without human works or merit. It seemed as if Meaux aspired to become another Wittenberg. At length a commission of parliament was appointed to take cognizance of heretics in that district. Briçonnet, either intimidated, as Beza asserts, or recoiling at the sight of an actual secession from the Church, joined in the condemnation of Luther and of his opinions, and even acquiesced in the persecution which fell upon Protestantism within his diocese. Lefèvre fled to Strasburg, was afterwards recalled by Francis I., but ultimately took up his abode in the court of the King's sister, Margaret, the Queen of Navarre. Margaret, from the first, was favorably inclined to the new doctrines. There were two parties at the court. The mother of the King, Louisa of Savoy, and the Chancellor Duprat, were allies of the Sorbonne. … Margaret, on the contrary, a versatile and accomplished princess, cherished a mystical devotion which carried her beyond Briçonnet in her acceptance of the teaching of the Reformers. … Before the death of her first husband, the Duke of Alençon, and while she was a widow, she exerted her influence to the full extent in behalf of the persecuted Protestants, and in opposition to the Sorbonne. After her marriage to Henry d'Albret, the King of Navarre, she continued, in her own little court and principality, to favor the reformed doctrine and its professors. …

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1528-1563].

The drift of her influence appears in the character of her daughter, the heroic Jeanne d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV., and in the readiness of the people over whom Margaret immediately ruled to receive the Protestant faith. … Francis I., whose generous patronage of artists and men of letters gave him the title of 'Father of Science,' had no love for the Sorbonne, for the Parliament, or for the monks. He entertained the plan of bringing Erasmus to Paris, and placing him at the head of an institution of learning. He read the Bible with his mother and sister, and felt no superstitious aversion to the leaders of reform. … The revolt of the Constable Bourbon [see FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523] made it necessary for Francis to conciliate the clergy; and the battle of Pavia, followed by the captivity of the King, and the regency of his mother, gave a free rein to the persecutors. An inquisitorial court, composed partly of laymen, was ordained by Parliament. Heretics were burned at Paris and in the provinces. Louis de Berquin, who combined a culture which won the admiration of Erasmus, with the religious earnestness of Luther, was thrown into prison." Three times the King interposed and rescued him from the persecutors; but at last, in November, 1529, Berquin was hanged and burned.

G. P. Fisher, The Reformation, chapter 8.

"Such scenes [as the execution of Berquin], added to the preaching and dissemination of the Scriptures and religious tracts, caused the desire for reform to spread far and wide. In the autumn of 1534, a violent placard against the mass was posted about Paris, and one was even fixed on the king's own chamber. The cry was soon raised, 'Death! death to the heretics!' Francis had long dallied with the Reformation. … Now … he develops into what was quite contrary to his disposition, a cruel persecutor. A certain bourgeois of Paris, unaffected by any heretical notions, kept in those days a diary of what was going on in Paris, and from this precious document … we learn that between the 13th of November, 1534, and the 13th of March, 1535, twenty so-called Lutherans were put to death in Paris. … The panic caused by the Anabaptist outbreak at Munster may perhaps account for the extreme cruelty, … as the siege was in actual progress at the time. It was to defend the memories of the martyrs of the 29th of January, 1535, and of others who had suffered elsewhere, and to save, if possible, those menaced with a similar fate, that Calvin wrote his 'Institution of the Christian Religion.' A timid, feeble-bodied young student, he had fled from France [1535], in the hope of finding some retreat where he might lose himself in the studies he loved. Passing through Geneva [1536] with the intention of staying there only for a night, he met the indefatigable, ubiquitous, enterprising, courageous Farel, who, taking him by the hand, adjured him to stop and carry on the work in that city. Calvin shrank instinctively, but … was forced to yield. … Calvin once settled at Geneva had no more doubt about his calling than if he had been Moses himself."

R. Heath, The Reformation in France, book 1, chapters 2-3.

ALSO IN: H. M. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, chapters 2-4 (volume 1).

R. T. Smith, The Church in France, chapter 12.

PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1555. Beginnings of the Reformation in the Netherlands.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1521-1555.

{2454}

PAPACY: A. D. 1522. Election of Adrian VI.

PAPACY: A. D. 1522-1525. The deepening and strengthening of the Lutheran Reformation and its systematic organization. The two diets of Nuremberg. The Catholic League of Ratisbon. The formal adoption of the Reformed Religion in Northern Germany.

"Fortunately for the reformation, the emperor was prevented from executing the edict of Worms by his absence from Germany, by the civil commotions in Spain, and still more by the war with Francis I., which extended into Spain, the Low Countries, and Italy, and for above eight years involved him in a continued series of contests and negotiations at a distance from Germany. His brother, Ferdinand, on whom, as joint president of the council of regency, the administration of affairs devolved, was occupied in quelling the discontents in the Austrian territories, and defending his right to the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia; and thus the government of the empire was left to the council of regency, of which several members were inclined to favour innovation, In consequence of these circumstances, the Lutherans were enabled to overcome the difficulties to which innovators of every kind are exposed; and they were no less favoured by the changes at the court of Rome. Leo dying in 1521, Adrian, his successor, who, by the influence of Charles, was raised to the pontifical chair, on the 9th of January, 1522, saw and lamented the corruptions of the church, and his ingenuous, but impolitic confessions, that the whole church, both in its head and members, required a thorough reformation, strengthened the arguments of his opponents. … Nothing, perhaps, proved more the surprising change of opinion in Germany, the rapid increase of those whom we shall now distinguish by the name of Lutherans, and the commencement of a systematic opposition to the church of Rome, than the transactions of the two diets of Nuremberg, which were summoned by the archduke Ferdinand, principally for the purpose of enforcing the execution of the edict of Worms. In a brief dated in November, 1522, and addressed to the first diet, pope Adrian, after severely censuring the princes of the empire for not carrying into execution the edict of Worms, exhorted them, if mild and moderate measures failed, to cut off Luther from the body of the church, as a gangrened and incurable member. … At the same time, with singular inconsistency, he acknowledged the corruptions of the Roman court as the source of the evils which overspread the church, [and] promised as speedy a reformation as the nature of the abuses would admit. … The members of the diet, availing themselves of his avowal, advised him to assemble a council in Germany for the reformation of abuses, and drew up a list of a hundred grievances which they declared they would no longer tolerate, and, if not speedily delivered from such burdens, would procure relief by the authority with which God had intrusted them. … The recess of the diet, published in March, 1523, was framed with the same spirit; instead of threats of persecution, it only enjoined all persons to wait with patience the determination of a free council, forbade the diffusion of doctrines likely to create disturbances, and subjected all publications to the approbation of men of learning and probity appointed by the magistrate. Finally, it declared, that as priests who had married, or monks who had quitted their convents, were not guilty of a civil crime, they were only amenable to an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and liable at the discretion of the ordinary to be deprived of their ecclesiastical privileges and benefices. The Lutherans derived their greatest advantages from these proceedings, as the gross corruptions of the church of Rome were now proved by the acknowledgment of the pontiff himself. … From this period they confidently appealed to the confession of the pontiff, and as frequently quoted the hundred grievances which were enumerated in a public and authentic act of the Germanic body. They not only regarded the recess as a suspension of the edict of Worms, but construed the articles in their own favour. … Hitherto the innovators had only preached against the doctrines and ceremonies of the Roman church, without exhibiting a regular system of their own." But now "Luther was persuaded, at the instances of the Saxon clergy, to form a regular system of faith and discipline; he translated the service into the German tongue, modified the form of the mass, and omitted many superstitious ceremonies; but he made as few innovations as possible, consistently with his own principles. To prevent also the total alienation or misuse of the ecclesiastical revenues, he digested a project for their administration, by means of an annual committee, and by his writings and influence effected its introduction. Under this judicious system the revenues of the church, after a provision for the clergy, were appropriated for the support of schools; for the relief of the poor, sick, and aged, of orphans and widows; for the reparation of churches and sacred buildings; and for the erection of magazines and the purchase of corn against periods of scarcity. These regulations and ordinances, though not established with the public approbation of the elector, were yet made with his tacit acquiescence, and may be considered as the first institution of a reformed system of worship and ecclesiastical polity; and in this institution the example of the churches of Saxony was followed by all the Lutheran communities in Germany. The effects of these changes were soon visible, and particularly at the meeting of the second diet of Nuremberg, on the 10th of January, 1524. Faber, canon of Strasburgh, who had been enjoined to make a progress through Germany for the purpose of preaching against the Lutheran doctrines, durst not execute his commission, although under the sanction of a safe conduct from the council of regency. Even the legate Campegio could not venture to make his public entry into Nuremberg with the insignia of his dignity, … for fear of being insulted by the populace. … Instead, therefore, of annulling the acts of the preceding diet, the new assembly pursued the same line of conduct. … The recess was, if possible, still more galling to the court of Rome, and more hostile to its prerogatives than that of the former diet. … The Catholics, thus failing in their efforts to obtain the support of the diet, on the 6th of July, 1524, entered into an association at Ratisbon, under the auspices of Campegio, in which the archduke Ferdinand, the duke of Bavaria, and most of the German bishops concurred, for enforcing the edict of Worms. {2455} At the same time, to conciliate the Germans, the legate published 29 articles for, the amendment of some abuses; but these being confined to points of minor importance, and regarding only the inferior clergy, produced no satisfaction, and were attended with no effect. Notwithstanding this formidable union of the Catholic princes, the proceedings of the diet of Nuremberg were but the prelude to more decisive innovations, which followed each other with wonderful rapidity. Frederic the Wise, elector of Saxony, dying in 1525, was succeeded by his brother, John the Constant, who publicly espoused and professed the Lutheran doctrines. The system recently digested by Luther, with many additional alterations, was introduced by his authority, and declared the established religion; and by his order the celebrated Melanchthon drew up an apology in defence of the reformed tenets for the princes who adopted them. Luther himself, who had in the preceding year thrown off the monastic habit, soon after the accession of the new sovereign ventured to give the last proof of his emancipation from the fetters of the church of Rome, by espousing, on the 13th of July, 1525, Catherine Bora, a noble lady, who had escaped from the nunnery at Nimptschen, and taken up her residence at Wittemberg. The example of the elector of Saxony was followed by Philip, landgrave of Hesse Cassel, a prince of great influence and distinguished civil and military talents; by the dukes of Mecklenburgh, Pomerania, and Zell; and by the imperial cities of Nuremberg, Strasburgh, Frankfort, Nordhausen, Magdeburgh, Brunswick, Bremen, and others of less importance. … Albert, margrave of Brandenburgh, grand-master of the Teutonic order, … in 1525, renounced his vow of celibacy, made a public profession of the Lutheran tenets, and, with the consent of Sigismond, king of Poland, secularised Eastern Prussia."

W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria, chapter 28 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 3, chapters 2-5 (volume 2).

P. Bayne, Martin Luther: his Life and Work, books 10-13 (volume 2).

L. Häusser, The Period of the Reformation, chapters 5-6.

PAPACY: A. D. 1523. Election of Clement VII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1523-1527. The double-dealings of Pope Clement VII. with the emperor and the king of France. Imperial revenge. The sack of Rome.

See ITALY: A. D. 1523-1527, and 1527.

PAPACY: A. D. 1524. Institution of the Order of the Theatines.

See THEATINES.

PAPACY: A. D. 1525-1529. The League of Torgau. Contradictory action of the Diets at Spires. The Protest of Lutheran princes which gave rise to the name "Protestants."

"At the Diet of Nuremberg it had been determined to hold an assembly shortly after at Spires for the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs. The princes were to procure beforehand from their councillors and scholars a statement of the points in dispute. The grievances of the nation were to be set forth, and remedies were to be sought for them. The nation was to deliberate and act on the great matter of religious reform. The prospect was that the evangelical party would be in the majority. The papal court saw the danger that was involved in an assembly gathered for such a purpose, and determined to prevent the meeting. At this moment war was breaking out between Charles and Francis. Charles had no inclination to offend the Pope. He forbade the assembly at Spires, and, by letters addressed to the princes individually, endeavored to drive them into the execution of the edict of Worms. In consequence of these threatening movements, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse entered into the defensive league of Torgau, in which they were joined by several Protestant communities. The battle of Pavia and the capture of Francis I. [see FRANCE: A. D. 1523-1525] were events that appeared to be fraught with peril to the Protestant cause. In the Peace of Madrid (January 14, 1526) both sovereigns avowed the determination to suppress heresy. But the dangerous preponderance obtained by the Emperor created an alarm throughout Europe; and the release of Francis was followed by the organization of a confederacy against Charles, of which Clement was the leading promoter.

See ITALY: A. D. 1523-1527.

This changed the imperial policy in reference to the Lutherans. The Diet of Spires in 1526 unanimously resolved that, until the meeting of a general council, every state should act in regard to the edict of Worms as it might answer to God and his imperial majesty. Once more Germany refused to stifle the Reformation, and adopted the principle that each of the component parts of the Empire should be left free to act according to its own will. It was a measure of the highest importance to the cause of Protestantism. It is a great landmark in the history of the German Reformation. The war of the Emperor and the Pope involved the necessity of tolerating the Lutherans. In 1527, an imperial army, composed largely of Lutheran infantry, captured and sacked the city of Rome. For several months the Pope was held a prisoner. For a number of years the position of Charles with respect to France and the Pope, and the fear of Turkish invasion, had operated to embolden and greatly strengthen the cause of Luther. But now that the Emperor had gained a complete victory in Italy, the Catholic party revived its policy of repression."

G. P. Fisher, The Reformation, chapter 4.

"While Charles and Clement were arranging matters in 1529, a new Diet was held at Spires, and the reactionists exerted themselves to obtain a reversal of that ordinance of the Diet of 1526 which had given to the reformed doctrines a legal position in Germany. Had it heen possible, the Papist leaders would have forced back the Diet on the old Edict of Worms, but in this they were baffled. Then they took up another line of defence and aggression. Where the Worms Edict had been enforced, it was, they urged, to be maintained; but all further propagation of the reformed doctrines, all religious innovation whatever, was to be forbidden, pending the assemblage of a General Council. … This doom of arrest and paralysis —this imperious mandate, 'Hitherto shall ye come, but no further,'—could not be brooked by the followers of Luther. They possessed the advantage of being admirably led. Philip of Hesse supplied some elements of sound counsel that were wanting in Luther himself. … Luther regarded with favour … the doctrine of passive obedience. It was too much his notion that devout Germans, if their Emperor commanded them to renounce the truth, should simply die at the stake without a murmur. … {2456} The most ripe and recent inquiries seem to prove that it was about this very time, when the Evangelical Princes and Free Cities of Germany were beginning to put shoulder to shoulder and organise resistance, in arms if necessary, to the Emperor and the Pope, that Luther composed 'Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,' a psalm of trust in God, and in God only, as the protector of Christians. He took no fervent interest, however, in the Diet; and Philip and his intrepid associates derived little active support from him. These were inflexibly determined that the decree of the majority should not be assented to. Philip of Hesse, John of Saxony, Markgraf George the Pious of Brandenburg-Anspach, the Dukes of Lunenburg and Brunswick, the Prince of Anhalt, and the representatives of Strasburg, Nürnberg, and twelve other free cities [Ulm, Constance, Reutlingen, Windsheim, Memmingen, Lindau, Kempten, Heilbron, Isna, Weissemburgh, Nordlingen, and St. Gallen], entered a solemn protest against the Popish resolution. They were called Protestants. The name, as is customary with names that felicitously express and embody facts, was caught up in Germany and passed into every country in Europe and the world."

P. Bayne, Martin Luther, his Life and Work, book 14, chapter 4 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, books 4-5 (volumes 2-3).

J. H. Merle D'Aubigne, History of the Reformation, book 10, chapter 14, and book 13, chapter 1-6 (volumes 3-4).

J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, section 311 (volume 3).

PAPACY: A. D. 1527-1533. The rupture with England.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534.

PAPACY: A. D. 1530-1531. The Diet at Augsburg. Presentation and condemnation of the Protestant Confession of Faith. The breach with the Reformation complete.

"In the year 1530, Charles V., seeing France prostrate, Italy quelled, and Solyman driven within his own boundaries, determined upon undertaking the decision of the great question of the Reformation. The two conflicting parties were summoned, and met at Augsburg. The sectaries of Luther, known by the general name of protestants, were desirous to be distinguished from the other enemies of Rome, the excesses committed by whom would have thrown odium upon their cause; to be distinguished from the Zwinglian republicans of Switzerland, odious to the princes and to the nobles; above all, they desired not to be confounded with the anabaptists, proscribed by all as the enemies of society and of social order. Luther, over whom there was still suspended the sentence pronounced against him at Worms, whereby he was declared a heretic, could not appear at Augsburg; his place was supplied by the learned and pacific Melancthon, a man timid and gentle as Erasmus, whose friend he continued to be, despite of Luther. The elector, however, conveyed the great reformer as near to the place of convocation as regard to his friend's personal safety rendered advisable. He had him stationed in the strong fortress of Coburg. From this place, Luther was enabled to maintain with ease and expedition a constant intercourse with the protestant ministers. … Melancthon believed in the possibility of effecting a reconciliation between the two parties. Luther, at a very early period of the schism, saw that they were utterly irreconcilable. In the commencement of the Reformation, he had frequently had recourse to conferences and to public disputations. It was then of moment to him to resort to every effort, to try, by all the means in his power, to preserve the bond of Christianity, before he abandoned all hope of so doing. But towards the close of his life, dating from the period of the Diet of Augsburg, he openly discouraged and disclaimed these wordy contests, in which the vanquished would never avow his defeat. On the 26th of August, 1530, he writes: 'I am utterly opposed to any effort being made to reconcile the two doctrines; for it is an impossibility, unless, indeed, the pope will consent to abjure papacy. Let it suffice us that we have established our belief upon the basis of reason, and that we have asked for peace. Why hope to convert them to the truth?' And on the same day (26th August), he tells Spalatin: 'I understand you have undertaken a notable mission—that of reconciling Luther and the pope. But the pope will not be reconciled and Luther refuses. Be mindful how you sacrifice both time and trouble.' … These prophecies were, however, unheeded: the conferences took place, and the protestants were required to furnish their profession of faith. This was drawn up by Melancthon." The Confession, as drawn up by Melancthon, was adopted and signed by five electors, 30 ecclesiastical princes, 23 secular princes, 22 abbots, 32 counts and barons, and 39 free and imperial cities, and has since been known as the Augsburg Confession.

J. Michelet, Life of Luther, (translated by W. Hazlitt), book 3, chapter 1.

"A difficulty now arose as to the public reading of the Confession in the Diet. The Protestant princes, who had severally signed it, contended against the Catholic princes, that, in fairness, it should be read; and, against the emperor, that, if read at all, it should be read in German, and not in Latin. They were successful in both instances, and the Confession was publicly read in German by Bayer, one of the two chancellors of the Elector of Saxony, during the afternoon session of June 25, held in the chapel of the imperial palace. Campeggio, the Papal Legate, was absent. The reading occupied two hours, and the powerful effect it produced was, in a large measure, due to the rich, sonorous voice of Bayer, and to his distinct articulation and the musical cadence of his periods. Having finished, he handed the Confession to the Emperor, who submitted it for examination to Eck, Conrad Wimpina, Cochlæus, John Faber, and others of the Catholic theologians present in the Diet." These prepared a "Confutation" which was "finally agreed upon and read in a public session of the Diet, held August 3rd, and with which the Emperor and the Catholic princes expressed themselves fully satisfied. The Protestant princes were commanded to disclaim their errors, and return to the allegiance of the ancient faith, and 'should you refuse,' the Emperor added, 'we shall regard it a conscientious duty to proceed as our coronation oath and our office of protector of Holy Church require.' This declaration roused the indignant displeasure of the Protestant princes. Philip of Hesse … excited general alarm by abruptly breaking off the transactions, lately entered upon between the princes and the bishops, and suddenly quitting Augsburg. Charles V. now ordered the controverted points to be discussed in his presence, and appointed seven Protestants and an equal number of Catholics to put forward and defend the views of their respective parties." {2457} Subsequently Melancthon "prepared and published his 'Apology for the Augsburg Confession,' which was intended to be an answer to the 'Confutation' of the Catholic theologians. The Protestant princes laid a copy of the 'Apology' before the emperor, who rejected both it and the Confession. … After many more fruitless attempts to bring about a reconciliation, the emperor, on the 22nd of September, the day previous to that fixed for the departure of the Elector of Saxony, published an edict, in which he stated, among other things, that 'the Protestants have been refuted by sound and irrefragable arguments drawn from Holy Scripture.' 'To deny free-will,' he went on to say, 'and to affirm that faith without works avails for man's salvation, is to assert what is absurdly erroneous; for, as we very well know from past experience, were such doctrines to prevail, all true morality would perish from the earth. But that the Protestants may have sufficient time to consider their future course of action, we grant them from this to the 15th of April of next year for consideration.' On the following day, Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg, speaking in the emperor's name, addressed the evangelic princes and deputies of the Protestant cities as follows: 'His majesty is extremely amazed at your persisting in the assertion that your doctrines are based on Holy Scripture. Were your assertion true, then would it follow that his Majesty's ancestors, including so many kings and emperors, as well as the ancestors of the Elector of Saxony, were heretics!' … The Protestant princes forthwith took their leave of the emperor. On the 13th of October, the 'Recess,' or decree of the Diet, was read to the Catholic States, which on the same day entered into a Catholic League. On the 17th of the same month, sixteen of the more important German cities refused to aid the emperor in repelling the Turks, on the ground that peace had not yet been secured to Germany. The Zwinglian and Lutheran cities were daily becoming more sympathetic and cordial in their relations to each other. Charles V. informed the Holy See, October 23, of his intention of drawing the sword in defence of the faith. The 'Recess' was read to the Protestant princes November 11, and rejected by them on the day following, and the deputies of Hesse and Saxony took their departure immediately after. … The decree was rather more severe than the Protestants had anticipated, inasmuch as the emperor declared that he felt it to be his conscientious duty to defend the ancient faith, and that 'the Catholic princes had promised to aid him to the full extent of their power.' … The appointment of the emperor's brother, Ferdinand, as King of the Romans (1531), gave deep offence to the Protestant princes, who now expressed their determination of withholding all assistance from the emperor until the 'Recess' of Augsburg should have been revoked. Assembling at Smalkald, … they entered into an alliance offensive and defensive, known as the League of Smalkald, on March 29, 1531, to which they severally bound themselves to remain faithful for a period of six years."

J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, section 312 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: H. Worsley, Life of Luther, chapter 7 (volume 2).

F. A. Cox, Life of Melancthon, chapter 8 (giving the text of the "Augsburg Confession").

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532.

PAPACY: A. D. 1530-1532. Protestant League of Smalkalde and alliance with the king of France. The Pacification of Nuremberg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532.

PAPACY: A. D. 1533. Treaty of Pope Clement VII. with Francis I. of France, for the marriage of Catherine d'Medici.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547.

PAPACY: A. D. 1533-1546. Mercenary aspects of the Reformation in Germany. The Catholic Holy League. Preparations for war.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1533-1546.

PAPACY: A. D. 1534. Election of Paul III.

PAPACY: A. D. 1534-1540. Beginnings of the Counter-Reformation.

"A well-known sentence in Macaulay's Essay on Ranke's 'History of the Popes' asserts, correctly enough, that in a particular epoch of history 'the Church of Rome, having lost a large part of Europe, not only ceased to lose, but actually regained nearly half of what she had lost.' Any fairly correct use of the familiar phrase 'the Counter-Reformation' must imply that this remarkable result was due to a movement pursuing two objects, originally distinct, though afterwards largely blended, viz., the regeneration of the Church of Rome, and the recovery of the losses inflicted upon her by the early successes of Protestantism. … The earliest continuous endeavour to regenerate the Church of Rome without impairing her cohesion dates from the Papacy of Paul III. [1534-1549], within which also falls the outbreak of the first religious war of the century.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552.

Thus the two impulses which it was the special task of the Counter-Reformation to fuse were brought into immediate contact. The onset of the combat is marked by the formal establishment of the Jesuit Order [1540] as a militant agency devoted alike to both the purposes of the Counter-Reformation, and by the meeting of the Council of Trent [1545] under conditions excluding from its programme the task of conciliation."

A. W. Ward, The Counter Reformation, pages vii-viii.

"I intend to use this term Counter-Reformation to denote the reform of the Catholic Church, which was stimulated by the German Reformation, and which, when the Council of Trent had fixed the dogmas and discipline of Latin Christianity, enabled the Papacy to assume a militant policy in Europe, whereby it regained a large portion of the provinces that had previously lapsed to Lutheran and Calvinistic dissent. … The centre of the world-wide movement which is termed the Counter-Reformation was naturally Rome. Events had brought the Holy See once more into a position of prominence. It was more powerful as an Italian State now, through the support of Spain and the extinction of national independence, than at any previous period of history. In Catholic Christendom its prestige was immensely augmented by the Council of Trent. At the same epoch, the foreigners who dominated Italy, threw themselves with the enthusiasm of fanaticism into this Revival. Spain furnished Rome with the militia of the Jesuits and with the engines of the Inquisition. The Papacy was thus able to secure successes in Italy which were elsewhere only partially achieved. … In order to understand the transition of Italy from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation manner, it will be well to concentrate attention on the history of the Papacy during the eight reigns [1534-1605] of Paul III., Julius III., Paul IV., Pius IV., Pius V., Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., and Clement VIII. In the first of these reigns we hardly notice that the Renaissance has passed away. In the last we are aware of a completely altered Italy."

J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, chapter 2, with foot-note (volume 1).

{2458}

PAPACY: A. D. 1537-1563. Popular weakness of the Reformation movement in Italy. Momentary inclination towards the Reform at Rome. Beginning of the Catholic Reaction. The Council of Trent and its consolidating work.

"The conflict with the hierarchy did not take the same form in Italy as elsewhere. … There is no doubt that the masses saw no cause for discontent under it. We have proof that the hierarchy was popular—that among the people, down to the lowest grades, the undiminished splendour of the Papacy was looked upon as a pledge of the power of Italy. But this did not prevent reform movements from taking place. The Humanistic school had its home here; its opposition tendencies had not spared the Church any more than Scholasticism; it had everywhere been the precursor and ally of the intellectual revolt, and not the least in Italy. There were from the first eminent individuals at Venice, Modena, Ferrara, Florence, even in the States of the Church themselves, who were more or less followers of Luther. The cardinals Contarini and Morone, Bembo and Sadolet, distinguished preachers like Peter Martyr, Johann Valdez, and Bernardino Occhino, and from among the princely families an intellectual lady, Renata of Ferrara, were inclined to the new doctrines. But they were leaders without followers; the number of their adherents among the masses was surprisingly small. The Roman Curia, under the Pontificate of Paul III., 1534-49, vacillated in its policy for a time; between 1537-41, the prevailing sentiments were friendly and conciliatory towards Reform. … They were, in fact, gravely entertaining the question at Rome, whether it would not be better to come to terms with Reform, to adopt the practicable part of its programme, and so put an end to the schism which was spreading so fast in the Church. … An honest desire then still prevailed to effect a reconciliation. Contarini was in favour of it with his whole soul. But it proceeded no further than the attempt; for once the differences seemed likely to be adjusted, so far as this was possible; but in 1542, the revulsion took place, which was never again reversed. Only one result remained. The Pope could no longer refuse to summon a council. The Emperor had been urging it year after year; the Pope had acceded to it further than any of his predecessors had done; and, considering the retreat which now took place, this concession was the least that could be demanded. At length, therefore, three years after it was convened, in May, 1542, the council assembled at Trent in December, 1545. It was the Emperor's great desire that a council should be held in Germany, that thus the confidence of the Germans in the supreme tribunal in the great controversy might be gained; but the selection of Trent, which nominally belonged to Germany, was the utmost concession that could be obtained. The intentions of the Emperor and the Pope with regard to the council were entirely opposed to each other. The Pope was determined to stifle all opposition in the bud, while the Emperor was very desirous of having a counterpoise to the Pope's supremacy in council, provided always that it concurred in the imperial programme. … The assembly consisted of Spanish and Italian monks in overwhelming majority, and this was decisive as to its character. When consulted as to the course of business, the Emperor had expressed a wish that those questions on which agreement between the parties was possible should first be discussed. There were a number of questions on which they were agreed, as, for example, Greek Christianity. Even now there are a number of points on which Protestants and Catholics are agreed, and differ from the Eastern Church. If these questions were considered first, the attendance of the Protestants would be rendered very much easier; it would open the door as widely as possible, they would probably come in considerable numbers, and might in time take a part which at least might not be distasteful to the Emperor, and might influence his ideas on Church reform. The thought that they were heretics was half concealed. But Rome was determined to pursue the opposite course, and at once to agitate those questions on which there was the most essential disagreement, and to declare all who would not submit to be incorrigible heretics. … The first subjects of discussion were, the authority of the Scriptures in the text of the Vulgate, ecclesiastical tradition, the right of interpretation, the doctrine of justification. These were the questions on which the old and new doctrines were irreconcilably at variance; all other differences were insignificant in comparison. And these questions were decided in the old Roman Catholic sense; not precisely as they had been officially treated in 1517—for the stream of time had produced some little effect—but in the main the old statutes were adhered to, and everything rejected which departed from them. This conduct was decisive. … Nevertheless some reforms were carried out. Between the time of meeting and adjournment, December, 1545, to the spring of 1547, the following were the main points decided on:

1. The bishops were to provide better teachers and better schools.

2. The bishops should themselves expound the word of God.

3. Penalties were to be enforced for the neglect of their duties, and various rules were laid down as to the necessary qualifications for the office of a bishop.

Dispensations, licenses, and privileges were abolished. The Church was therefore to be subjected to a reform which abolished sundry abuses, without conceding any change in her teaching. The course the council was taking excited the Emperor's extreme displeasure. … He organized a sort of opposition to Rome; his commissaries kept up a good understanding with the Protestants, and it was evident that he meant to make use of them for an attack on the Pope. This made Rome eager to withdraw the assembly from the influence of German bishops and imperial agents as soon as possible. A fever which had broken out at Trent, but had soon disappeared, was made a pretext for transferring the council to Bologna, in the spring of 1547. The imperial commissioners protested that the decrees of such a hole-and-corner council would be null and void. The contest remained undecided for years. Paul III. died in the midst of it, in November, 1549, and was succeeded by Cardinal del Monte, one of the papal legates at the council, as Pope Julius III. {2459} The Emperor at length came to an understanding with him, and in May, 1551, the council was again opened at Trent. … The assembly remained Catholic; the Protestant elements, which were represented at first, all disappeared after the turn of affairs in 1552.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552; and 1552-1561.

After that there was no further thought of an understanding with the heretics. The results for reform were very small indeed. The proceedings were dragging wearily on when a fresh adjournment was announced in 1552. Pope Julius III. died in March, 1555. His successor, the noble Cardinal Cervin, elected as Marcellus II., died after only twenty-two days, and was succeeded by Cardinal Caraffa as Paul IV., 1555-9. … He was the Pope of the restoration. The warm Neapolitan blood flowed in his veins, and he was a fiery, energetic character. He was not in favour of any concessions or abatement, but for a complete breach with the new doctrines, and a thorough exclusiveness for the ancient Church. He was one of the ablest men of the time. As early as in 1542, he had advised that no further concessions should be made, but that the Inquisition, of which indeed he was the creator, should be restored. It was he who decidedly initiated the great Catholic reaction. He established the Spanish Inquisition in Italy, instituted the first Index, and gave the Jesuits his powerful support in the interests of the restoration. This turn of affairs was the answer to the German religious Peace. Since the Protestants no longer concerned themselves about Rome, Rome was about to set her house in order without them, and as a matter of course the council stood still." But in answer to demands from several Catholic princes, "the council was convened afresh by the next Pope, Pius IV. (1559-65), in November, 1560, and so the Council of Trent was opened for the third time in January, 1562. Then began the important period of the council, during which the legislation to which it has given a name was enacted. … The Curia reigned supreme, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the Emperor and of France, decided that the council should be considered a continuation of the previous ones, which meant—'All the decrees aimed against the Protestants are in full force; we have no further idea of coming to terms with them.' The next proceeding was to interdict books and arrange an Index. …

See PAPACY: A. D. 1559-1595.

The restoration of the indisputable authority of the Pope was the ruling principle of all the decrees. … The great achievement of the council for the unity of the Catholic Church was this: it formed into a code of laws, on one consistent principle, that which in ancient times had been variable and uncertain, and which had been almost lost sight of in the last great revolution. Controverted questions were replaced by dogmas, doubtful traditions by definite doctrines; a uniformity was established in matters of faith and discipline which had never existed before, and an impregnable bulwark was thus erected against the sectarian spirit and the tendency to innovation. Still when this unity was established upon a solid basis, the universal Church of former times was torn asunder." The Council of Trent was closed December 4, 1563, 18 years after its opening.

L. Häusser, Period of the Reformation, chapters 19 and 16.

ALSO IN: J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction, chapters 2-3 (volume l).

L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, books 2-3 (volume l).

_L. F. Bungener, History of the Council of Trent._

_T. R. Evans, The Council of Trent._

A. de Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni, book 1, chapter 3.

[IMAGE: Map of CENTRAL EUROPE AT THE ABDICATION OF CHARLES V (1556). AUSTRIAN HAPSBURGS. SPANISH HAPSBURGS. VENETIAN POSSESSIONS. GENOESE POSSESSIONS. ECCLESIASTICAL STATES OF THE EMPIRE. STATES OF THE CHURCH.]

[IMAGE: CENTRAL EUROPE SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS ABOUT 1618. LUTHERAN. ZWINGLIAN. CALVINIST. UNITED BRETHREN. CATHOLIC. LANDS RECLAIMED BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH DURING THE COUNTER REFORMATION SHOWN THUS. GREEK. MOHAMMEDAN.]

PAPACY: A. D. 1540. The founding of the Order of the Jesuits.

See JESUITS: A. D. 1540-1556.

PAPACY: A. D. 1545-1550. Separation of Parma and Placentia from the States of the Church to form a duchy for the Pope's family. The Farnese.

See PARMA: A. D. 1545-1592.

PAPACY: A. D. 1550. Election of Julius III.

PAPACY: A. D. 1555 (April). Election of Marcellus II.

PAPACY: A. D. 1555 (May). Election of Paul IV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1555-1603. The aggressive age of the reinvigorated Church. Attachment and subserviency to Spain.

Giovanni Piero Caraffa, founder of the Order of the Theatines, was raised to the papal chair in 1555, assuming the title of Paul IV. He "entered on his station with the haughty notions of its prerogatives which were natural to his austere and impetuous spirit. Hence his efforts in concert with France, unsuccessful as they proved, to overthrow the Spanish greatness, that he might extricate the popedom from the galling state of dependence to which the absolute ascendancy of that power in Italy had reduced it. Paul IV. is remarkable as the last pontiff who embarked in a contest which had now become hopeless, and as the first who, giving a new direction to the policy of the holy see, employed all the influence, the arts, and the resources of the Roman church against the protestant cause. He had, during the pontificate of Paul III. [1534-1549], already made himself conspicuous for his persecuting zeal. He had been the principal agent in the establishment of the inquisition at Rome, and had himself filled the office of grand inquisitor. He seated himself in the chair of St. Peter with the detestable spirit of that vocation; and the character of his pontificate responded to the violence of his temper. His mantle descended upon a long series of his successors. Pius IV., who replaced him on his death in 1559; Pius V., who received the tiara in the following year; Gregory XIII., who was elected in 1572, and died in 1585; Sixtus V., who next reigned until 1590; Urban VII., Gregory XIV., and Innocent IX., who each filled the papal chair only a few months; and Clement VIII., whose pontificate commenced in 1592 and extended beyond the close of the century [1603]: all pursued the same political and religious system. Resigning the hope, and perhaps the desire, of re-establishing the independence of their see, they maintained an intimate and obsequious alliance with the royal bigot of Spain; they seconded his furious persecution of the protestant faith; they fed the civil wars of the Low Countries, of France, and of Germany."

G. Procter, History of Italy, chapter 9.

"The Papacy and Catholicism had long maintained themselves against these advances of their enemy [the Protestant Reformation], in an attitude of defence it is true, but passive only; upon the whole they were compelled to endure them. Affairs now assumed a different aspect. … It may be affirmed generally that a vital and active force was again manifested, that the church had regenerated her creed in the spirit of the age, and had established reforms in accordance with the demands of the times. {2460} The religious tendencies which had appeared in southern Europe were not suffered to become hostile to herself, she adopted them, and gained the mastery of their movements; thus she renewed her powers, and infused fresh vigour into her system. … The influence of the restored Catholic system was first established in the two southern peninsulas, but this was not accomplished without extreme severities. The Spanish Inquisition received the aid of that lately revived in Rome; every movement of Protestantism was violently suppressed. But at the same time those tendencies of the inward life which renovated Catholicism claimed and enchained as her own, were peculiarly powerful in those countries. "The sovereigns also attached themselves to the interests of the church. It was of the highest importance that Philip II., the most powerful of all, adhered so decidedly to the popedom; with the pride of a Spaniard, by whom unimpeachable Catholicism was regarded as a sign of a purer blood and more noble descent, he rejected every adverse opinion: the character of his policy was however not wholly governed by mere personal feeling. From remote times, and more especially since the regulations established by Isabella, the kingly dignity of Spain had assumed an ecclesiastical character; in every province the royal authority was strengthened by the addition of spiritual power; deprived of the Inquisition, it would not have sufficed to govern the kingdom. Even in his American possessions, the king appeared above all in the light of a disseminator of the Christian and Catholic faith. This was the bond by which all his territories were united in obedience to his rule; he could not have abandoned it, without incurring real danger. The extension of Huguenot opinions in the south of France caused the utmost alarm in Spain; the Inquisition believed itself bound to redoubled vigilance. … The power possessed by Philip in the Netherlands secured to the southern system an immediate influence over the whole of Europe; but besides this, all was far from being lost in other countries. The emperor, the kings of France and Poland, with the duke of Bavaria, still adhered to the Catholic church. On all sides there were spiritual princes whose expiring zeal might be reanimated; there were also many places where Protestant opinions had not yet made their way among the mass of the people. The majority of the peasantry throughout France, Poland, and even Hungary, still remained Catholic. Paris, which even in those days exercised a powerful influence over the other French towns, had not yet been affected by the new doctrines. In England a great part of the nobility and commons were still Catholic; and in Ireland the whole of the ancient native population remained in the old faith. Protestantism had gained no admission into the Tyrolese or Swiss Alps, nor had it made any great progress among the peasantry of Bavaria. Canisius compared the Tyrolese and Bavarians with the two tribes of Israel, 'who alone remained faithful to the Lord.' The internal causes on which this pertinacity, this immovable attachment to tradition, among nations so dissimilar, was founded, might well repay a more minute examination. A similar constancy was exhibited in the Walloon provinces of the Netherlands. And now the papacy resumed a position in which it could once more gain the mastery of all these inclinations, and bind them indissolubly to itself. Although it had experienced great changes, it still possessed the inestimable advantage of having all the externals of the past and the habit of obedience on its side. In the council so prosperously concluded, the popes had even gained an accession of that authority which it had been the purpose of the temporal powers to restrict; and had strengthened their influence over the national churches; they had moreover abandoned that temporal policy by which they had formerly involved Italy and all Europe in confusion. They attached themselves to Spain with perfect confidence and without any reservations, fully returning the devotion evinced by that kingdom to the Roman church. The Italian principality, the enlarged dominions of the pontiff, contributed eminently to the success of his ecclesiastical enterprises; while the interests of the universal Catholic church were for some time essentially promoted by the overplus of its revenues. Thus strengthened internally, thus supported by powerful adherents, and by the idea of which they were the representatives, the popes exchanged the defensive position, with which they had hitherto been forced to content themselves, for that of assailants."

L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, book 5, section 2 (volume 1).

PAPACY: A. D. 1559. Election of Pius IV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1559-1595. The institution of the Index.

"The first 'Index' of prohibited books published by Papal authority, and therefore, unlike the 'catalogi' previously issued by royal, princely, or ecclesiastical authorities, valid for the whole Church, was that authorised by a bull of Paul IV. in 1559. In 1564 followed the Index published by Pius IV., as drawn up in harmony with the decrees of the Council of Trent, which, after all, appears to be a merely superficial revision of its predecessor. Other Indices followed, for which various authorities were responsible, the most important among them being the Index Expurgatorius, sanctioned by a bull of Clement VIII. in 1595, which proved so disastrous to the great printing trade of Venice."

A. W. Ward, The Counter-Reformation, chapter 2.

PAPACY: A. D. 1566. Election of Pius V.

PAPACY: A. D. 1570-1571. Holy League with Venice and Spain against the Turks. Great battle and victory of Lepanto.

See TURKS: A. D. 1566-1571.

PAPACY: A. D. 1572 (May). Election of Gregory XIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1572. Reception of the news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1572 (AUGUST-OCTOBER).

PAPACY: A. D. 1585. Election of Sixtus V.

PAPACY: A. D. 1585. The Bull against Henry of Navarre, called "Brutum Fulmen."

See FRANCE: A. D. 1584-1589.

PAPACY: A. D. 1590 (September). Election of Urban VII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1590 (December). Election of Gregory XIV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1591. Election of Innocent IX.

PAPACY: A. D. 1591. Election of Clement VIII.

{2461}

PAPACY: A. D. 1597. Annexation of Ferrara to the States of the Church.

"The loss which the papal states sustained by the alienation of Parma and Placentia was repaired, before the end of the 16th century, by the acquisition of a duchy little inferior in extent to those territories:—that of Ferrara." With the death, in 1597, of Alfonso II., the persecutor of Tasso, "terminated the legitimate Italian branch of the ancient and illustrious line of Este. But there remained an illegitimate representative of his house, whom he designed for his successor; don Cesare da Este, the grandson of Alfonso I. by a natural son of that duke. The inheritance of Ferrara and Modena had passed in the preceding century to bastards, without opposition from the popes, the feudal superiors of the former duchy. But the imbecile character of don Cesare now encouraged the reigning pontiff, Clement VIII., to declare that all the ecclesiastical fiefs of the house of Este reverted, of right, to the holy see on the extinction of the legitimate line. The papal troops, on the death of Alfonso II., invaded the Ferrarese state; and Cesare suffered himself to be terrified by their approach into an ignominious and formal surrender of that duchy to the holy see. By the indifference of the Emperor Rodolph II., he was permitted to retain the investiture of the remaining possessions of his ancestors: the duchies of Modena and Reggio, over which, as imperial and not papal fiefs, the pope could not decently assert any right. In passing beneath the papal yoke, the duchy of Ferrara, which, under the government of the house of Este, had been one of the most fertile provinces of Italy, soon became a desert and marshy waste. The capital itself lost its industrious population and commercial riches; its architectural magnificence crumbled into ruins, and its modern aspect retains no trace of that splendid court in which literature and art repaid the fostering protection of its sovereigns, by reflecting lustre on their heads."

G. Procter, History of Italy, chapter 9.

PAPACY: A. D. 1605 (April). Election of Leo XI.

PAPACY: A. D. 1605 (May). Election of Paul V.

PAPACY: A. D. 1605-1700. The conflict with Venice. Opposition of Urban VIII. to the Emperor. Annexation of Urbino to the States of the Church. Half a century of unimportant history.

"Paul V. (1605-1621) was imbued with mediæval ideas as to the papal authority and the validity of the canon-law. These speedily brought him into collision with the secular power, especially in Venice, which had always maintained an attitude of independence towards the papacy. Ecclesiastical disputes [growing out of a Venetian decree forbidding alienations of secular property in favor of the churches] were aggravated by the fact that the acquisition of Ferrara had extended the papal states to the frontiers of Venice, and that frequent differences arose as to the boundary line between them. The defence of the republic and of the secular authority in church affairs was undertaken with great zeal and ability by Fra Paoli Sarpi, the famous historian of the Council of Trent. Paul V. did not hesitate to excommunicate the Venetians [1606], but the government compelled the clergy to disregard the pope's edict. The Jesuits, Theatines, and Capuchins were the only orders that adhered to the papacy, and they had to leave the city. If Spain had not been under the rule of the pacific Lerma, it would probably have seized the opportunity to punish Venice for its French alliance. But France and Spain were both averse to war, and Paul V. had to learn that the papacy was powerless without secular support. By the mediation of the two great powers, a compromise was arranged in 1607. The Jesuits, however, remained excluded from Venetian territory for another half-century. This was the first serious reverse encountered by the Catholic reaction. …

See VENICE: A. D. 1606-1607.

The attention of the Catholic world was now absorbed in the Austrian schemes for the repression of Protestantism in Germany, which received the unhesitating support both of Paul and of his successor, Gregory XV. [1621-1623]. The latter was a great patron of the Jesuits. Under him the Propaganda was first set on foot. … The pontificate of Urban VIII. (1623-1644) was a period of great importance. He regarded himself rather as a temporal prince than as head of the Church. He fortified Rome and filled his states with troops. The example of Julius II. seemed to find an imitator. Urban was imbued with the old Italian jealousy of the imperial power, and allied himself closely with France. … At the moment when Ferdinand II. had gained his greatest success in Germany he was confronted with the hostility of the pope. Gustavus Adolphus landed in Germany, and by a strange coincidence Protestantism found support in the temporal interests of the papacy. The Catholics were astounded and dismayed by Urban's attitude. … Urban VIII. succeeded in making an important addition to the papal states by the annexation of Urbino, in 1631, on the death of Francesco Maria, the last duke of the Della Rovere family. But in the government of the states he met with great difficulties. … Urban VIII.'s relatives, the Barberini, quarreled with the Farnesi, who had held Parma and Piacenza since the pontificate of Paul III. The pope was induced to claim the district of Castro, and this claim aroused a civil war (1641-1644) in which the papacy was completely worsted. Urban was forced to conclude a humiliating treaty and directly afterwards died. His successors [Innocent X., 1644-1655; Alexander VII., 1655-1667; Clement IX., 1667-1669; Clement X., 1670-1676; Innocent XI., 1676-1689; Alexander VIII., 1689-1691; Innocent XII., 1691-1700] are of very slight importance to the history of Europe. … The only important questions in which the papacy was involved in the latter half of the century were the schism of the Jansenists and the relations with Louis XIV."

R. Lodge, History of Modern Europe, chapter 12.

ALSO IN: J. E. Darras, General History of the Catholic Church, period 7, chapter 7; period 8, chapters 1-3 (volume 4).

_T. A. Trollope, Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar._

_A. Robertson, Fra Paolo Sarpi._

PAPACY: A. D. 1621. Election of Gregory XV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1622. Founding of the College of the Propaganda. [Transcriber's note: 2022: "Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples."]

Cardinal Alexander Ludovisio, elected pope on the 9th of February, 1621, taking the name of Gregory XV., "had always shown the greatest zeal for the conversion of infidels and heretics; this zeal inspired the design of founding the College of the Propaganda (1622). The origin of the Propaganda is properly to be traced to an edict of Gregory XIII., in virtue of which a certain number of cardinals were charged with the direction of missions to the East, and catechisms were ordered to be printed in the less-known languages. But the institution was neither firmly established nor provided with the requisite funds. Gregory XV. gave it a constitution, contributed the necessary funds from his private purse, and as it met a want the existence of which was really felt and acknowledged, its success was daily more and more brilliant. {2462} Who does not know what the Propaganda has done for philological learning? But it chiefly labored, with admirable grandeur of conception and energy, to fulfil its great mission—the propagation of the Catholic faith—with the most splendid results. Urban VIII., the immediate successor of Gregory XV., completed the work by the addition of the 'Collegium de Propaganda Fide,' where youth are trained in the study of all the foreign languages, to bear the name of Christ to every nation on the globe."

J. E. Darras, General History of the Catholic Church, period 7, chapter 7, section. 10 (volume 4).

PAPACY: A. D. 1623. Election of Urban VIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1623-1626. The Valtelline War.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

PAPACY: A. D. 1644-1667. Pontificates of Innocent X. and Alexander VII. Growth of Nepotism.

Sixtus V. had "invented a system of nepotism which was so actively followed up by his successors, that even a short reign provided the means of accumulating a brilliant fortune. That pontiff raised one nephew to the rank of cardinal, with a share of the public business and an ecclesiastical income of a hundred thousand crowns. Another he created a marquess, with large estates in the Neapolitan territory. The house of Ferretti thus founded, long maintained a high position, and was frequently represented in the College of Cardinals. The Aldobrandini, founded in like manner by Clement VIII., the Borghesi by Paul V., the Ludovisi by Gregory XV., and the Barberini by Urban VIII., now vied in rank and opulence with the ancient Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini, who boasted that for centuries no peace had been concluded in Christendom in which they were not expressly included. On the death of Urban VIII. (29th July 1644) the Barberini commanded the votes of eight-and-forty cardinals, the most powerful faction ever seen in the conclave. Still, the other papal families were able to resist their dictation, and the struggle terminated in the election of Cardinal Pamfili, who took the name of Innocent X. During the interval of three months, the city was abandoned to complete lawlessness; assassinations in the streets were frequent; no private house was safe without a military guard, and a whole army of soldiers found occupation in protecting the property of their employers. This was then the usual state of things during an interregnum. Innocent X., though seventy-two years of age at his election, was full of energy. He restrained the disorders in the city. … Innocent brought the Barberini to strict account for malpractices under his predecessor, and wrested from them large portions of their ill-gotten gain. So far, however, from reforming the system out of which these abuses sprung, his nepotism exhibited itself in a form which scandalised even the Roman courtiers. The pope brought his sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchina, from Viterbo to Rome, and established her in a palace, where she received the first visits of foreign ambassadors on their arrival, gave magnificent entertainments, and dispensed for her own benefit the public offices of the government. … Her daughters were married into the noblest families. Her son, having first been appointed the cardinal-nephew, soon after renounced his orders, married, and became the secular-nephew. The struggle for power between his mother and his wife divided Rome into new factions, and the feud was enlarged by the ambition of a more distant kinsman, whom Innocent appointed to the vacant post of cardinal-nephew. The pontiff sank under a deep cloud from the disorders in his family and the palace, and when he died (5th January, 1655) the corpse laid three days uncared for, till an old canon, who had been long dismissed from his household, expended half-a-crown on its interment. … Fabio Chigi, who came next as Alexander VIII. [VII.] brought to the tottering chair a spotless reputation, and abilities long proved in the service of the church. His first act was to banish the scandalous widow; her son was allowed to retain her palace and fortune. Beginning with the loudest protestations against nepotism, now the best established institution at Rome, in the phrase of the time, the pope soon 'became a man.' The courtiers remonstrated on his leaving his family to live a plain citizen's life at Siena: it might involve the Holy See in a misunderstanding with Tuscany. … The question was gravely proposed in consistory, and the flood-gates being there authoritatively unclosed, the waters of preferment flowed abundantly on all who had the merit to be allied with Fabio Chigi. After discharging this arduous duty, the pope relieved himself of further attention to business, and spent his days in literary leisure. His nephews, however, had less power than formerly, from the growth of the constitutional principle. The cardinals, in their different congregations, with the official secretaries, aspired to the functions of responsible advisers."

G. Trevor, Rome, from the Fall of the Western Empire, pages 416-418.

PAPACY: A. D. 1646. The Hostility of Mazarin and France.

See ITALY: A. D. 1646-1654.

PAPACY: A. D. 1653. The first condemnation of Jansenism.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1602-1660.

PAPACY: A. D. 1667. Election of Clement IX.

PAPACY: A. D. 1670. Election of Clement X.

PAPACY: A. D. 1676. Election of Innocent XI.

PAPACY: A. D. 1682-1693. Successful contest with Louis XIV. and the Gallican Church.

"It has always been the maxim of the French court, that the papal power is to be restricted by means of the French clergy, and that the clergy, on the other hand, are to be kept in due limits by means of the papal power. But never did a prince hold his clergy in more absolute command than Louis XIV. … The prince of Condé declared it to be his opinion, that if it pleased the king to go over to the Protestant church, the clergy would be the first to follow him. And certainly the clergy of France did support their king without scruple against the pope. The declarations they published were from year to year increasingly decisive in favour of the royal authority. At length there assembled the convocation of 1682. 'It was summoned and dissolved,' remarks a Venetian ambassador, 'at the convenience of the king's ministers, and was guided by their suggestions.' The four articles drawn up by this assembly have from that time been regarded as the manifesto of the Gallican immunities. The first three repeat assertions of principles laid down in earlier times; as, for example, the independence of the secular power, as regarded the spiritual authority; the superiority of councils over the pope; and the inviolable character of the Gallican usages. {2463} But the fourth is more particularly remarkable, since it imposes new limits even to the spiritual authority of the pontiff. 'Even in questions of faith, the decision of the pope is not incapable of amendment, so long as it is without the assent of the church.' We see that the temporal power of the kingdom received support from the spiritual authority, which was in its turn upheld by the secular arm. The king is declared free from the interference of the pope's temporal authority; the clergy are exempted from submission to the unlimited exercise of his spiritual power. It was the opinion of contemporaries, that although France might remain within the pale of the Catholic church, it yet stood on the threshold, in readiness for stepping beyond it. The king exalted the propositions above named into a kind of 'Articles of Faith,' a symbolical book. All schools were to be regulated in conformity with these precepts; and no man could attain to a degree, either in the juridical or theological faculties, who did not swear to maintain them. But the pope also was still possessed of a weapon. The authors of this declaration—the members of this assembly—were promoted and preferred by the king before all other candidates for episcopal offices; but Innocent refused to grant them spiritual institution. They might enjoy the revenues of those sees, but ordination they did not receive; nor could they venture to exercise one spiritual act of the episcopate. These complications were still further perplexed by the fact that Louis XIV. at that moment resolved on that relentless extirpation of the Huguenots, but too well known, and to which he proceeded chiefly for the purpose of proving his own perfect orthodoxy. He believed himself to be rendering a great service to the church. It has indeed been also affirmed that Innocent XI. was aware of his purpose and had approved it, but this was not the fact. The Roman court would not now hear of conversions effected by armed apostles. 'It was not of such methods that Christ availed himself: men must be led to the temple, not dragged into it.' New dissensions continually arose. In the year 1687, the French ambassador entered Rome with so imposing a retinue, certain squadrons of cavalry forming part of it, that the right of asylum, which the ambassadors claimed at that time, not only for their palace, but also for the adjacent streets, could by no means have been easily disputed with him, although the popes had solemnly abolished the usage. With an armed force the ambassador braved the pontiff in his own capital. 'They come with horses and chariots,' said Innocent, 'but we will walk in the name of the Lord.' He pronounced the censures of the church on the ambassador; and the church of St. Louis, in which the latter had attended a solemn high mass, was laid under interdict. The king also then proceeded to extreme measures. He appealed to a general council, took possession of Avignon, and caused the nuncio to be shut up in St. Olon: it was even believed that he had formed the design of creating for Harlai, archbishop of Paris, who, if he had not suggested these proceedings, had approved them, the appointment of patriarch of France. So far had matters proceeded: the French ambassador in Rome excommunicated; the papal nuncio in France detained by force; thirty-five French bishops deprived of canonical institution; a territory of the Holy See occupied by the king: it was, in fact, the actual breaking out of schism; yet did Pope Innocent refuse to yield a single step. If we ask to what he trusted for support on this occasion, we perceive that it was not to the effect of the ecclesiastical censures in France, nor to the influence of his apostolic dignity, but rather, and above all, to that universal resistance which had been aroused in Europe against those enterprises of Louis XIV. that were menacing the existence of its liberties. To this general opposition the pope now also attached himself. … If the pope had promoted the interests of Protestantism by his policy, the Protestants on their side, by maintaining the balance of Europe against the 'exorbitant Power,' also contributed to compel the latter into compliance with the spiritual claims of the papacy. It is true that when this result ensued, Innocent XI. was no longer in existence; but the first French ambassador who appeared in Rome after his death (10th of August, 1689) renounced the right of asylum: the deportment of the king was altered; he restored Avignon, and entered into negotiations. … After the early death of Alexander VIII., the French made all possible efforts to secure the choice of a pontiff disposed to measures of peace and conciliation; a purpose that was indeed effected by the elevation of Antonio Pignatelli, who assumed the tiara with the name of Innocent XII., on the 12th of July, 1691. … The negotiations continued for two years. Innocent more than once rejected the formulas proposed to him by the clergy of France, and they were, in fact, compelled at length to declare that all measures discussed and resolved on in the assembly of 1682 should be considered as not having been discussed or resolved on: 'casting ourselves at the feet of your holiness, we profess our unspeakable grief for what has been done.' It was not until they had made this unreserved recantation that Innocent accorded them canonical institution. Under these conditions only was peace restored. Louis XIV. wrote to the pope that he retracted his edict relating to the four articles. Thus we perceive that the Roman see once more maintained its prerogatives, even though opposed by the most powerful of monarchs."

L. Ranke, History of the Popes, book 8, section 16 (volume 2).

PAPACY:A. D. 1689. Election of Alexander VIII.

PAPACY:A. D. 1691. Election of Innocent XII.

PAPACY:A. D. 1700. Election of Clement XI.

PAPACY:A. D. 1700-1790. Effects of the War of the Spanish Succession. Declining Powers.

The issue of the War of the Spanish Succession "will serve to show us that when the Pope was not, as in his contest with Louis XIV., favoured by political events, he could no longer laugh to scorn the edicts of European potentates. Charles II. of Spain, that wretched specimen of humanity, weak in body, and still weaker in mind, haunted by superstitious terrors which almost unsettled his reason, was now, in the year 1700, about to descend to a premature grave. He was without male issue, and was uncertain to whom he should bequeath the splendid inheritance transmitted to him by his ancestors. The Pope, Innocent XII., who was wholly in the interests of France, urged him to bequeath Spain, with its dependencies, to Philip, Duke of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV., who claimed through his grandmother, the eldest sister of Charles. {2464} He would thus prevent the execution of the partition treaty concluded between France, England, and Holland, according to which the Archduke Charles … was to have Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands, while France took the Milanese, or the Province of Lorraine. The Archbishop of Toledo seconded the exhortation of the Pope, and so worked on the superstitious terrors of the dying monarch that he signed a will in favour of the Duke of Anjou, which was the cause of lamentation, and mourning, and woe, for twelve years, throughout Europe, from the Vistula to the Atlantic Ocean. …

See SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702; and ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702.

The Duke of Marlborough's splendid victories of Blenheim and Ramillies … placed the Emperor Joseph (1705-11), the brother of the Archduke Charles, in possession of Germany and the Spanish Netherlands and the victory of Prince Eugene before Turin made him supreme in the north of Italy and the kingdom of Naples

See GERMANY: A. D. 1704; NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1706-1707; ITALY: A. D. 1701-1713.

The Pope, Clement XI., was now reduced to a most humiliating position. Political events had occurred … which served to show very plainly that the Pope, without a protector, could not, as in former days, bid defiance to the monarchs of Europe. His undutiful son, the Emperor, compelled him to resign part of his territories as a security for his peaceful demeanour, and to acknowledge the Archduke Charles, the Austrian claimant to the Spanish throne. The peace of Utrecht, concluded in 1713 [see UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714], which produced the dismemberment of the monarchy, but left Philip in the peaceful occupation of the throne of Spain, did indeed release him from that obligation; but it did not restore him to the 'high and palmy state' which he occupied before he was obliged to submit to the Imperial arms. It inflicted a degradation upon him, for it transferred to other sovereigns, without his consent, his fiefs of Sicily and Sardinia. Now, also, it became manifest that the Pope could no longer assert an indirect sovereignty over the Italian States; for, notwithstanding his opposition, it conferred a large extent of territory on the Duke of Savoy, which has, in our day, been expanded into a kingdom under the sceptre of Victor Emmanuel and his successor. We have a further evidence of the decline of the Papacy in the change in the relative position of the States of Europe as Papal and anti-Papal during the eighteenth century, after the death of Louis XIV. The Papal powers of Spain in the sixteenth century, and of France, Spain, and Austria, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, determined the policy of Europe. … On the other hand, England, Prussia, and Russia became, in the eighteenth century, the great leading powers in the world. … The Pope, then, no longer stood at the head of those powers which swayed the destinies of Europe. … The Papacy, from the death of Louis XIV. till the time of the French Revolution, led a very quiet and obscure life. It had no part in any of the great events which during the eighteenth century were agitating Europe, and gained no spiritual or political victories."

A. R. Pennington, Epochs of the Papacy, chapter 10.

PAPACY: A. D. 1713. The Bull Unigenitus and the Christian doctrines it condemned.

See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715.

PAPACY: A. D. 1721. Election of Innocent XIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1724. Election of Benedict XIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1730. Election of Clement XII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1740. Election of Benedict XIV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1758. Election of Clement XIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1765-1769. Defense of the Jesuits, on their expulsion from France, Spain, Parma, Venice, Modena and Bavaria.

See JESUITS: A. D. 1761-1769.

PAPACY: A. D. 1769. Election of Clement XIV.

PAPACY: A. D. 1773. Suppression of the Jesuits.

See JESUITS: A. D. 1769-1871.

PAPACY: A. D. 1775. Election of Pius VI.

PAPACY: A. D. 1789-1810. Founding of the Roman Episcopate in the United States of America.

In 1789, the first episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States was founded, at Baltimore, by a bull of Pope Pius VI., which appointed Father John Carroll to be its bishop. In 1810, Bishop Carroll "was raised to the dignity of Archbishop, and four suffragan dioceses were created, with their respective sees at Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Bardstown, in Kentucky."

J. A. Russell, The Catholic Church in the United States (History of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, pages 16-18).

PAPACY: A. D. 1790-1791. Revolution at Avignon. Reunion of the Province with France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1790-1791.

PAPACY: A. D. 1796. First extortions of Bonaparte from the Pope.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER).

PAPACY: A. D. 1797. Treaty of Tolentino. Papal territory taken by Bonaparte to add to the Cispadane and Cisalpine Republics.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

PAPACY: A. D. 1797-1798. French occupation of Rome. Formation of the Roman Republic. Removal of the Pope.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797-1798 (DECEMBER-MAY).

PAPACY: A. D. 1800. Election of Pius VII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1802. The Concordat with Napoleon. Its Ultramontane influence.

See FRANCE A. D. 1801-1804.

PAPACY: A. D. 1804. Journey of the Pope to Paris for the coronation of Napoleon.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1804-1805.

PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814. Conflict of Pius VII. with Napoleon. French seizure of Rome and the Papal States. Captivity of the Pope at Savona and Fontainebleau. The Concordat of 1813 and its retraction.

Napoleon "had long been quarrelling with Pius VII., to make a tool of whom he had imposed the concordat on France. The Pope resisted, as the Emperor might have expected, and, not obtaining the price of his compliance, hindered the latter's plans in every way that he could. He resisted as head of the Church and as temporal sovereign of Rome, refusing to close his dominions either to the English or to Neapolitan refugees of the Bourbon party. Napoleon would not allow the Pope to act as a monarch independent of the Empire, but insisted that he was amenable to the Emperor, as temporal prince, just as his predecessors were amenable to Charlemagne. They could not agree, and Napoleon, losing patience, took military possession of Rome and the Roman State."

H. Martin, Popular History of France, since 1789, volume 2, chapter 12.

{2465}

In February, 1808, "the French troops, who had already taken possession of the whole of Tuscany, in virtue of the resignation forced upon the Queen of Etruria, invaded the Roman territories, and made themselves masters of the ancient capital of the world. They immediately occupied the castle of St. Angelo, and the gates of the city, and entirely dispossessed the papal troops. Two months afterwards, an imperial decree of Napoleon severed the provinces of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino, which had formed part of the ecclesiastical estates, under the gift of Charlemagne, for nearly a thousand years, and annexed them to the kingdom of Italy. The reason assigned for this spoliation was, 'That the actual sovereign of Rome has constantly declined to declare war against the English, and to coalesce with the Kings of Italy and Naples for the defence of the Italian peninsula. The interests of these two kingdoms, as well as of the armies of Naples and Italy, require that their communications should not be interrupted by a hostile power.'"

Sir A. Alison, History of Europe, 1789-1815, chapter 51 (volume 11).

"The pope protested in vain against such violence. Napoleon paid no attention. … He confiscated the wealth of the cardinals who did not return to the place of their birth. He disarmed nearly all the guards of the Holy Father—the nobles of this guard were imprisoned. Finally, Miollis [the French commander] had Cardinal Gabrielle, pro-Secretary of State, carried off, and put seals upon his papers. On May 17, 1809, a decree was issued by Napoleon, dated from Vienna, proclaiming the union (in his quality of successor to Charlemagne) of the States of the pope with the French Empire, ordaining that the city of Rome should be a free and imperial city; that the pope should continue to have his seat there, and that he should enjoy a revenue of 2,000,000 francs. On June 10, he had this decree promulgated at Rome. On this same June 10, the pope protested against all these spoliations, refused all pensions, and recapitulating all the outrages of which he had cause to complain, issued the famous and imprudent bull of excommunication against the authors, favourers, and executors of the acts of violence against him and the Holy See, but without naming anyone. Napoleon was incensed at it, and on the first impulse he wrote to the bishops of France a letter in which he spoke in almost revolutionary terms 'of him who wished,' said he, 'to make dependent upon a perishable temporal power the eternal interest of consciences, and that of all spiritual affairs.' On the 6th of July, 1809, Pius VII., taken from Rome, after he had been asked if he would renounce the temporal sovereignty of Rome and of the States of the Church, was conducted by General Radet as far as Savone, where he arrived alone, August 10, the cardinals having all been previously transported to Paris. And to complete the spoliation of the pope, Napoleon issued on the 17th of February, 1810, a senatus-consultum which bestowed upon the eldest son of the emperor the title of King of Rome, and even ordained that the emperor should be consecrated a second time at Rome, in the first ten years of his reign. It was while oppressed, captive and deprived of all council, that the pope refused the bulls to all the bishops named by the emperor, and then it was that all the discussions relative to the proper measures to put an end to the viduity of the churches were commenced. … The year 1810, far from bringing any alleviation to the situation of the pope and giving him, according to the wishes and prayers of the ecclesiastic commission, a little more liberty, aggravated, on the contrary, this situation, and rendered his captivity harder. In effect, on February 17, 1810, appeared the senatus-consultum pronouncing the union of the Roman States with the French Empire; the independence of the imperial throne of all authority on earth, and annulling the temporal existence of the popes. This senatus-consultum assured a pension to the pope, but it ordained also that the pope should take oath to do nothing in opposition to the four articles of 1682. … The pope must have consoled himself, … even to rejoicing, that they made the insulting pension they offered him depend upon the taking of such an oath, and it is that which furnished him with a reply so nobly apostolic: that he had no need of this pension, and that he would live on the charity of the faithful. … The rigorous treatment to which the Holy Father was subjected at Savona was continued during the winter of 1811-1812, and in the following spring. At this time, it seems there was some fear, on the appearance of an English squadron, that it might carry off the pope; and the emperor gave the order to transfer him to Fontainebleau. This unhappy old man left Savona, June 10, and was forced to travel day and night. He fell quite ill at the hospice of Mont Cenis; but they forced him none the less to continue his journey. They had compelled him to wear such clothes … as not to betray who he was on the way they had to follow. They took great care also to conceal his journey from the public, and the secret was so profoundly kept, that on arriving at Fontainebleau, June 19, the concierge, who had not been, advised of his arrival, and who had made no preparation, was obliged to receive him in his own lodgings. The Holy Father was a long time before recovering from the fatigue of this painful journey, and from the needlessly rigorous treatment to which they had subjected him. The cardinals not disgraced by Napoleon, who were in Paris, as well as the Archbishop of Tours, the Bishop of Nantes, the Bishop of Evreux, and the Bishop of Treves, were ordered to go and see the pope. … The Russian campaign, marked by so many disasters, was getting to a close. The emperor on his return to Paris, December 18, 1812, still cherished chimerical hopes, and was meditating without doubt, more gigantic projects. Before carrying them out, he wished to take up again the affairs of the Church, either because he repented not having finished with them at Savona, or because he had the fancy to prove that he could do more in a two hours' tête-à–tête with the pope, than had been done by the council, its commissions, and its most able negotiators. He had beforehand, however, taken measures which were to facilitate his personal negotiation. The Holy Father had been surrounded for several months by cardinals and prelates, who, either from conviction or from submission to the emperor, depicted the Church as having arrived at a state of anarchy which put its existence in peril. They repeated incessantly to the pope, that if he did not get reconciled with the emperor and secure the aid of his power to arrest the evil, schism would be inevitable. Finally, the Sovereign pontiff overwhelmed by age, by infirmities, by the anxiety and cares with which his mind was worried, found himself well prepared for the scene Napoleon had planned to play, and which was to assure him what he believed to be a success. {2466} On January 19, 1813, the emperor, accompanied by the Empress Marie Louise, entered the apartment of the Holy Father unexpectedly, rushed to him and embraced him with effusion. Pius VII., surprised and affected, allowed himself to be induced, after a few explanations, to give his approbation to the propositions that were imposed, rather than submitted to him. They were drawn up in eleven articles, which were not yet a compact, but which were to serve as the basis of a new act. On January 24, the emperor and the pope affixed their signatures to this strange paper, which was lacking in the usual diplomatic forms, since they were two sovereigns who had treated directly together. It was said in these articles, that the pope would exercise the pontificate in France, and in Italy;—that his ambassadors and those in authority near him, should enjoy all diplomatic privileges;—that such of his domains which were not disposed of should be free from taxes, and that those which were transferred should be replaced by an income of 2,000,000 francs;—that the pope should nominate, whether in France or in Italy, to episcopal sees which should be subsequently fixed; that the suburban sees should be re-established, and depend on the nomination of the pope, and that the unsold lands of these sees should be restored; that the pope should give bishoprics 'in partibus' to the Roman bishops absent from their diocese by force of circumstances, and that he should serve them a pension equal to their former revenue, until such time as they should be appointed to vacant sees; that the emperor and the pope should agree in opportune time as to the reduction to be made if it took place, in the bishoprics of Tuscany and of the country about Geneva, as well as to the institution of bishoprics in Holland, and in the Hanseatic departments; that the propaganda, the confessional, and the archives should be established in the place of sojourn of the Holy Father; finally, that His Imperial Majesty bestowed his good graces upon the cardinals, bishops, priests, and laymen, who had incurred his displeasure in connection with actual events. … The news of the signing of the treaty occasioned great joy among the people, but it appears that that of the pope was of short duration. The sacrifices he had been led to make were hardly consummated, than he experienced bitter grief; this could but be increased in proportion as the exiled and imprisoned cardinals, Consalvi, Pacca, di Pietro, on obtaining their liberty, received also the authorization to repair to Fontainebleau. What passed then between the Holy Father and these cardinals I do not pretend to know; but it must be that Napoleon had been warned by some symptoms of what was about to happen; for, in spite of the agreement he had made with the pope to consider the eleven articles only as preliminaries which were not to be published, he decided nevertheless to make them the object of a message that the arch-chancellor was charged to submit to the senate. This premature publicity given to an act which the pope so strongly regretted having signed must have hastened his retractation which he addressed to the emperor by a brief, on March 24, 1813. … This time, the emperor, although greatly irritated by the retractation, believed it was to his interest not to make any noise about it, and decided to take outwardly no notice of it. He had two decrees published: one of February 13, and the other of March 25, 1813. By the first, the new Concordat of January 25 was declared state law; by the second, he declared it obligatory upon archbishops, bishops, and chapters, and ordered, according to Article IV. of this Concordat that the archbishops should confirm the nominated bishops, and in case of refusal, ordained that they should be summoned before the tribunals. He restricted anew the liberty that had been given momentarily to the Holy Father, and Cardinal di Pietro returned to exile. Thereupon, Napoleon started, soon after, for that campaign of 1813 in Germany, the prelude to that which was to lead to his downfall. The decrees issued 'ab irato' were not executed, and during the vicissitudes of the campaign of 1813, the imperial government attempted several times to renew with the pope negotiations which failed. Matters dragged along thus, and no one could foresee any issue when, on January 23, 1814, it was suddenly learned that the pope had left Fontainebleau that very day, and returned to Rome. … Murat, who had abandoned the cause of the emperor, and who … had treated with the coalition, was then occupying the States of the Church, and it is evident that Napoleon in his indignation against Murat, preferred to allow the pope to re-enter his States, to seeing them in the hands of his brother-in-law. While Pius VII. was en route and the emperor was fighting in Champagne, a decree of March 10, 1814, announced that the pope was taking possession again of the part of his States which formed the departments of Rome and Trasmania. The lion, although vanquished, would not yet let go all the prey he hoped surely to retake. … The pope arrived on April 30, at Cesena, on May 12, at Ancona, and made his solemn entry into Rome on May 24, 1814."

Talleyrand, Memoirs, part 6 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: D. Silvagni, Rome: its Princes, Priests and People, chapters 35-39 (volume 2).

C. Botta, Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon, chapters 5-8.

M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon, volume 4, chapters 6 and 11-12.

Selections from the Letters and Despatches of Napoleon, Captain Bingham, volumes 2-3.

Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. Helena, volume 5 (History Miscellany, volume l).

P. Lanfrey, History of Napoleon, volume 3, chapters 13 and 16.

PAPACY: A. D. 1814. Restoration of the Jesuits.

See JESUITS: A. D. 1761)-1871.

PAPACY: A. D. 1815. Restoration of the Papal States.

See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF.

PAPACY: A. D. 1823. Election of Leo XII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1829. Election of Pius VIII.

PAPACY: A. D. 1831. Election of Gregory XVI.

PAPACY: A. D. 1831-1832. Revolt of the Papal States, suppressed by Austrian troops.

See ITALY: A. D. 1830-1832.

PAPACY: A. D. 1846-1849. Election of Pius IX. His liberal reforms. Revolution at Rome. The Pope's flight. His restoration by the French.

See ITALY: A. D. 1848-1849.

{2467}

PAPACY: A. D. 1850. Restoration of the Roman Episcopate in England.

"The Reformation had deprived the Church of Rome of an official home on English soil. … But a few people had remained faithful to the Church of their forefathers, and a handful of priests had braved the risks attendant on the discharge of their duties to it. Rome, moreover, succeeded in maintaining some sort of organisation in England. In the first instance her Church was placed under an arch-priest. From 1623 to 1688 it was placed under a Vicar Apostolic, that is a Bishop, nominally appointed to some foreign see, with a brief enabling him to discharge episcopal duties in Great Britain. This policy was not very successful. Smith, the second Vicar Apostolic, was banished in 1629, and, though he lived till 1655, never returned to England. The Pope did not venture on appointing a successor to him for thirty years. … On the eve of the Revolution [in 1688] he divided England into four Vicariates. This arrangement endured till 1840. In that year Gregory XVI. doubled the vicariates, and appointed eight Vicars Apostolic. The Roman Church is a cautious but persistent suitor. She had made a fresh advance; she was awaiting a fresh opportunity. The eight Vicars Apostolic asked the Pope to promote the efficiency of their Church by restoring the hierarchy. The time seemed ripe for the change. … The Pope prepared Apostolic letters, distributing the eight vicariates into eight bishoprics. … The Revolution, occurring immediately afterwards, gave the Pope other things to think about than the re-establishment of the English hierarchy. For two years nothing more was heard of the conversion of vicariates into bishoprics. But the scheme had not been abandoned; and, in the autumn of 1850, the Pope, restored to the Vatican by French bayonets, issued a brief for re–establishing and extending the Catholic faith in England.' England and Wales were divided into twelve sees. One of them, Westminster, was made into an archbishopric; and Wiseman, an Irishman by extraction, who had been Vicar Apostolic of the London District, and Bishop of Melipotamus, was promoted to it. Shortly afterwards a new distinction was conferred upon him, and the new archbishop was made a cardinal. The publication of the brief created a ferment in England. The effect of the Pope's language was increased by a pastoral from the new archbishop, in which he talked of governing, and continuing to govern, his see with episcopal jurisdiction; and by the declaration of an eminent convert that the people of England, who for so many years have been separated from the see of Rome, are about of their own free will to be added to the Holy Church. For the moment, High Churchmen and Low Churchmen forgot their differences in their eagerness to punish a usurpation of what was called the Queen's prerogative. The Prime Minister, instead of attempting to moderate the tempest, added violence to the storm by denouncing, in a letter to the Bishop of Durham, the late aggression of the Pope as 'insolent and insidious, … inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation.' … Amidst the excitement which was thus occasioned, Parliament met. The Speech from the Throne alluded to the strong feelings excited by 'the recent assumption of ecclesiastical titles conferred by a foreign Power.' … It declared that a measure would be introduced into Parliament to maintain 'under God's blessing, the religious liberty which is so justly prized by the people.' It hardly required such words as these to fan the spreading flame. In the debate on the Address, hardly any notice was taken of any subject except the 'triple tyrant's insolent pretension.' On the first Friday in the session, Russell introduced a measure forbidding the assumption of territorial titles by the priests and prelates of the Roman Catholic Church; declaring all gifts made to them, and all acts done by them, under those titles null and void; and forfeiting to the Crown all property bequeathed to them." Action on the Bill was interrupted in the House by a Ministerial crisis, which ended, however, in the return of Lord John Russell and his colleagues to the administration; but the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, when it was again brought forward, was greatly changed. In its amended shape the bill merely made it illegal for Roman Catholic prelates to assume territorial titles. According to the criticism of one of the Conservatives, "the original bill … was milk and water; by some chemical process the Government had extracted all the milk." After much debate the emasculated bill became a law, but it was never put into execution.

S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 23 (volume 5).

ALSO IN.: J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 20 (volume 2).

J. Stoughton, Religion in England, 1800-1850, volume 2, chapter 13.

PAPACY: A. D. 1854. Promulgation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

"The thought of defining dogmatically the belief of all ages and all Catholic nations in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin dated back to the beginning of his [Pius IX.'s] pontificate. By an encyclical letter dated from his exile at Gaeta, he had asked the opinion of all the patriarchs, primates, archbishops and bishops of the universe as to the seasonableness of this definition. The holding of a general council is attended with many embarrassments, and cannot be freed from the intrigues and intervention of the so-called Catholic powers. Pius IX. has initiated a new course. All, even the most Gallican in ideas, acknowledge that a definition in matters of faith by the pope, sustained by the episcopate, is infallible. The rapid means of communication and correspondence in modern times, the more direct intercourse of the bishops with Rome, makes it easy now for the pope to hear the well-considered, deliberate opinion of a great majority of the bishops throughout the world. In this case the replies of the bishops coming from all parts of the world show that the universal Church, which has one God, one baptism, has also one faith. As to the dogma there was no dissension, a few doubted the expediency of making it an article of faith. These replies determined the Holy Father to proceed to the great act, so long demanded by [the] Catholic heart. … A number of bishops were convoked to Rome for the 8th of December, 1854; a still greater number hastened to the Eternal City. … That day the bishops assembled in the Vatican to the number of 170, and robed in white cape and mitre proceeded to the Sixtine Chapel, where the Holy Father soon appeared in their midst." There, after befitting ceremonies, the pontiff made formal proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, in the following words: "By the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, and our own, we declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful. {2468} Wherefore, if any shall dare—which God avert—to think otherwise than as it has been defined by us, let them know and understand that they are condemned by their own judgment, that they have suffered shipwreck of the faith, and have revolted from the unity of the Church; and besides, by their own act, they subject themselves to the penalties justly established, if what they think they should dare to signify by word, writing, or any other outward means.' … The next day the sovereign pontiff assembled the sacred college and the bishops in the great consistorial hall of the Vatican, and pronounced the allocution which, subsequently published by all the bishops, announced to the Catholic world the act of December 8th."

A. de Montor, The Lives and Times of the Roman Pontiffs, volume 2, pages 924-926.

PAPACY: A. D. 1860-1861. First consequences of the Austro-Italian war. Absorption of Papal States in the new Kingdom of Italy.

See ITALY: A. D. 1859-1861.

PAPACY: A. D. 1864. The Encyclical and the Syllabus.

"On the 8th of December 1864, Pius IX. issued his Encyclical [a circular letter addressed by the Pope to all the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of the Church throughout the world] 'Quanta cura', accompanied by the Syllabus, or systematically arranged collection of errors, condemned from time to time, by himself and his predecessors. The Syllabus comprises 80 erroneous propositions. These are set forth under 10 distinct heads: viz. 1. Pantheism, Naturalism, and Absolute Rationalism; 2. Moderated Rationalism; 3. Indifferentism, Latitudinarianism; 4. Socialism, Communism, Secret Societies, Biblical Societies, Clerico-Liberal Societies; 5. Errors concerning the Church and her rights; 6. Errors concerning Civil Society, as well in itself as in its relations with the Church; 7. Errors concerning Natural and Christian Ethics; 8. Errors concerning Christian marriage; 9. Errors concerning the Civil Princedom of the Roman Pontiff; 10. Errors in relation with Modern Liberalism.

Immediately under each, error are given the two initial words, and the date, of the particular Papal Allocution, Encyclical, Letter Apostolic, or Epistle, in which it is condemned. Whilst, on the one hand, the publication of the Encyclical and Syllabus was hailed by many as the greatest act of the pontificate of Pius IX., on the other hand, their appearance excited the angry feelings, and intensified the hostility, of the enemies of the Church."

J. N. Murphy, The Chair of Peter, chapter 33.

The following is a translation of the text of the Encyclical, followed by that of the Syllabus or Catalogue of Errors:

To our venerable brethren all the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops in communion with the Apostolic See, we, Pius IX., Pope, send greeting, and our apostolic blessing:

You know, venerable brethren, with what care and what pastoral vigilance the Roman Pontiffs, our predecessors—fulfilling the charge intrusted to them by our Lord Jesus Christ himself in the person of the blessed Peter, chief of the apostles —have unfailingly observed their duty in providing food for the sheep and the lambs, in assiduously nourishing the flock of the Lord with the words of faith, in imbuing them with salutary doctrine, and in turning them away from poisoned pastures; all this is known to you, and you have appreciated it. And certainly our predecessors, in affirming and in vindicating the august Catholic faith, truth, and justice, were never animated in their care for the salvation of souls by a more earnest desire than that of extinguishing and condemning by their letters and their constitutions all the heresies and errors which, as enemies of our divine faith, of the doctrines of the Catholic Church, of the purity of morals, and of the eternal salvation of man, have frequently excited serious storms, and precipitated civil and Christian society into the most deplorable misfortunes. For this reason our predecessors have opposed themselves with vigorous energy to the criminal enterprise of those wicked men, who, spreading their disturbing opinions like the waves of a raging sea, and promising liberty when they are slaves to corruption, endeavor by their pernicious writings to overturn the foundations of the Christian Catholic religion and of civil society; to destroy all virtue and justice; to deprave all minds and hearts; to turn away simple minds, and especially those of inexperienced youth, from the healthy discipline of morals; to corrupt it miserably, to draw it into the meshes of error, and finally to draw it from the bosom of the Catholic Church. But as you are aware, venerable brethren, we had scarcely been raised to the chair of St. Peter above our merits, by the mysterious designs of Divine Providence, than seeing with the most profound grief of our soul the horrible storm excited by evil doctrines, and the very grave and deplorable injury caused specially by so many errors to Christian people, in accordance with the duty of our apostolic ministry, and following in the glorious footsteps of our predecessors, we raised our voice, and by the publication of several encyclicals, consistorial letters, allocutions, and other apostolic letters, we have condemned the principal errors of our sad age, re-animated your utmost episcopal vigilance, warned and exhorted upon various occasions all our dear children in the Catholic Church to repel and absolutely avoid the contagion of so horrible a plague. More especially in our first encyclical of the 9th November, 1846, addressed to you, and in our two allocutions of the 9th December, 1854, and the 9th June, 1862, to the consistories, we condemned the monstrous opinions which particularly predominated in the present day, to the great prejudice of souls and to the detriment of civil society—doctrines which not only attack the Catholic Church, her salutary instruction, and her venerable rights, but also the natural, unalterable law inscribed by God upon the heart of man—that of sound reason. But although we have not hitherto omitted to proscribe and reprove the principal errors of this kind, yet the cause of the Catholic Church, the safety of the souls which have been confided to us, and the well-being of human society itself, absolutely demand that we should again exercise our pastoral solicitude to destroy new opinions which spring out of these same errors as from so many sources. {2469} These false and perverse opinions are the more detestable as they especially tend to shackle and turn aside the salutary force that the Catholic Church, by the example of her Divine author and his order, ought freely to exercise until the end of time, not only with regard to each individual man, but with regard to nations, peoples, and their rulers, and to destroy that agreement and concord between the priesthood and the government which have always existed for the happiness and security of religious and civil society, For as you are well aware, venerable brethren, there are a great number of men in the present day who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of naturalism, as it is called, dare to teach that the perfect right of public society and civil progress absolutely require a condition of human society constituted and governed without regard to all considerations of religion, as if it had no existence, or, at least, without making any distinction between true religion and heresy. And, contrary to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, of the church, and of the fathers, they do not hesitate to affirm that the best condition of society is that in which the power of the laity is not compelled to inflict the penalties of law upon violators of the Catholic religion unless required by considerations of public safety. Actuated by an idea of social government so absolutely false, they do not hesitate further to propagate the erroneous opinion, very hurtful to the safety of the Catholic Church and of souls, and termed "delirium" by our predecessor, Gregory XVI., of excellent memory, namely: "Liberty of conscience and of worship is the right of every man—a right which ought to be proclaimed and established by law in every well-constituted State, and that citizens are entitled to make known and declare, with a liberty which neither the ecclesiastical nor the civil authority can limit, their convictions of whatever kind, either by word of mouth, or through the press, or by other means." But in making these rash assertions they do not reflect, they do not consider, that they preach the liberty of perdition (St. Augustine, Epistle 105, Al. 166), and that "if it is always free to human conviction to discuss, men will never be wanting who dare to struggle against the truth and to rely upon the loquacity of human wisdom, when we know by the example of our Lord Jesus Christ how faith and Christian sagacity ought to avoid this culpable vanity." (St. Leon, Epistle 164, Al. 133, sec. 2, Boll. Ed.) Since also religion has been banished from civil government, since the doctrine and authority of divine revelation have been repudiated, the idea intimately connected therewith of justice and human right is obscured by darkness and lost sight of, and in place of true justice and legitimate right brute force is substituted, which has permitted some, entirely oblivious of the plainest principles of sound reason, to dare to proclaim "that the will of the people, manifested by what is called public opinion or by other means, constitutes a supreme law superior to all divine and human right, and that accomplished facts in political affairs, by the mere fact of their having been accomplished, have the force of law." But who does not perfectly see and understand that human society, released from the ties of religion and true justice, can have no further object than to amass riches, and can follow no other law in its actions than the indomitable wickedness of a heart given up to pleasure and interest? For this reason, also, these same men persecute with so relentless a hatred the religious orders, who have deserved so well of religion, civil society, and letters. They loudly declare that the orders have no right to exist, and in so doing make common cause with the falsehoods of the heretics. For, as taught by our predecessor of illustrious memory, Pius VI., "the abolition of religious houses injures the state of public profession, and is contrary to the counsels of the Gospel, injures a mode of life recommended by the church and in conformity with the Apostolic doctrine, does wrong to the celebrated founders whom we venerate upon the altar, and who constituted these societies under the inspiration of God." (Epistle to Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, March 10, 1791.) In their impiety these same persons pretend that citizens and the church should be deprived of the opportunity of openly "receiving alms from Christian charity," and that the law forbidding "servile labor on account of divine worship" upon certain fixed days should be abrogated, upon the fallacious pretext that this opportunity and this law are contrary to the principles of political economy. Not content with eradicating religion from public society, they desire further to banish it from families and private life. Teaching and professing these most fatal errors of Socialism and Communism, they declare that "domestic society, or the entire family, derives its right of existence solely from civil law, whence it is to be concluded that from civil law descend all the rights of parents over their children, and, above all, the right of instructing and educating them." By such impious opinions and machinations do these false spirits endeavor to eliminate the salutary teaching and influences of the Catholic Church from the instruction and education of youth, and to infect and miserably deprave by their pernicious errors and their vices the pliant minds of youth. All those who endeavor to trouble sacred and public things, to destroy the good order of society, and to annihilate all divine and human rights, have always concentrated their criminal schemes, attention, and efforts upon the manner in which they might above all deprave and delude unthinking youth, as we have already shown. It is upon the corruption of youth that they p]ace all their hopes. Thus they never cease to attack the clergy, from whom have descended to us in so authentic manner the most certain records of history, and by whom such desirable benefit has been bestowed in abundance upon Christian and civil society and upon letters. They assail them in every shape, going so far as to say of the clergy in general—"that being the enemies of the useful sciences, of progress, and of civilization, they ought to be deprived of the charge of, instructing and educating youth." Others, taking up wicked errors many times condemned, presume with notorious impudence to submit the authority of the church and of this Apostolic See, conferred upon it by God himself, to the judgment of civil authority, and to deny all the rights of this same church and this see with regard to exterior order. {2470} They do not blush to affirm that the laws of the church do not bind the conscience if they are not promulgated by the civil power; that the acts and decrees of the Roman Pontiffs concerning religion and the church require the sanction and approbation, or, at least, the assent, of the civil power; and that the Apostolic constitutions condemning secret societies, whether these exact, or do not exact, an oath of secrecy, and branding with anathema their secretaries and promoters, have no force in those regions of the world where these associations are tolerated by the civil government. It is likewise affirmed that the excommunications launched by the Council of Trent and the Roman Pontiffs against those who invade the possessions of the church and usurp its rights, seek, in confounding the spiritual and temporal powers, to attain solely a terrestrial object; that the church can decide nothing which may bind the consciences of the faithful in a temporal order of things; that the law of the church does not demand that violations of sacred laws should be punished by temporal penalties; and that it is in accordance with sacred theology and the principles of public law to claim for the civil government the property possessed by the churches, the religious orders, and other pious establishments. And they have no shame in avowing openly and publicly the thesis, the principle of heretics from whom emanate so many errors and perverse opinions. They say: "That the ecclesiastical power is not of right divine, distinct and independent from the civil power; and that no distinction, no independence of this kind can be maintained without the church invading and usurping the essential rights of the civil power." Neither can we pass over in silence the audacity of those who, insulting sound doctrines, assert that "the judgments and decrees of the Holy See, whose object is declared to concern the general welfare of the church, its rights, and its discipline, do not claim the acquaintance and obedience under pain of sin and loss of the Catholic profession, if they do not treat of the dogmas of faith and manners." How contrary is this doctrine to the Catholic dogma of the full power divinely given to the sovereign Pontiff by our Lord Jesus Christ, to guide, to supervise, and govern the universal church, no one can fail to see and understand clearly and evidently. Amid so great a diversity of depraved opinions, we, remembering our apostolic duty, and solicitous before all things for our most holy religion, for sound doctrine, for the salvation of the souls confided to us, and for the welfare of human society itself, have considered the moment opportune to raise anew our apostolic voice. And therefore do we condemn and proscribe generally and particularly all the evil opinions and doctrines specially mentioned in this letter, and we wish that they may be held as rebuked, proscribed, and condemned by all the children of the Catholic Church. But you know further, venerable brothers, that in our time insulters of every truth and of all justice, and violent enemies of our religion, have spread abroad other impious doctrines by means of pestilent books, pamphlets, and journals which, distributed over the surface of the earth, deceive the people and wickedly lie. You are not ignorant that in our day men are found who, animated and excited by the spirit of Satan, have arrived at that excess of impiety as not to fear to deny our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, and to attack his divinity with scandalous persistence. We cannot abstain from awarding you well-merited eulogies, venerable brothers, for all the care and zeal with which you have raised your episcopal voice against so great an impiety.

_Catalogue of the Principal Errors of Our Time Pointed Out in the Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclical and other Apostolical Letters of Pope Pius IX._

I.–PANTHEISM, NATURALISM, AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM.

1. There is no divine power, supreme being, wisdom, and providence distinct from the universality of things, and God is none other than the nature of things, and therefore immutable. In effect, God is in man, and in the world, and all things are God, and have the very substance of God. God is, therefore, one and the same thing with the world, and thence mind is confounded with matter, necessity with liberty of action, true with false, good with evil, just with unjust.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

2. All action of God upon man and the world should be denied.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

3. Human reason, without any regard to God, is the sole arbiter of true and false, good and evil; it is its own law in itself, and suffices by its natural force for the care of the welfare of men and nations.

(See Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1802.)

4. All the truths of religion are derived from the native strength of human reason, whence reason is the principal rule by which man can and must arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind.

(See Encyclicals, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1840, and "Singulari quidem," March 17, 1850, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

5. Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to the continual and indefinite progress corresponding to the progress of human reason.

(See Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

6. Christian faith is in opposition to human reason, and divine revelation is not only useless but even injurious to the perfection of man.

(See Encyclical "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846, and Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

7. The prophecies and miracles told and narrated in the sacred books are the fables of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the sum of philosophical investigations. The books of the two Testaments contain fabulous fictions, and Jesus Christ is himself a myth.

(Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

II. MODERATE RATIONALISM.

8. As human reason is rendered equal to religion itself, theological matters must be treated as philosophical matters.

(Allocution, "Singulari quidem perfusi.")

9. All the dogmas of the Christian religion are indistinctly the object of natural science or philosophy, and human reason, instructed solely by history, is able by its natural strength and principles to arrive at a comprehension of even the most abstract dogmas from the moment when they have been proposed as objective.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Gravissimus," December 4, 1862. Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

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10. As the philosopher is one thing and philosophy is another, it is the right and duty of the former to submit himself to the authority of which he shall have recognized the truth; but philosophy neither can nor ought to submit to authority.

(Letters to Archbishop Frising, "Gravissimus," December 11, 1862; and, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

11. The church not only ought in no way to concern herself with philosophy, but ought further herself to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving to it the care of their correction.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, December 11, 1862.)

12. The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregation fetter the free progress of science.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, December 11, 1862.)

13. The methods and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of the age and the progress of science.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

14. Philosophy must be studied without taking any account of supernatural revelation.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

N. B.—To the rationalistic system are due in great part the errors of Antony Gunther, condemned in the letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne "Eximiam tuam," June 15, 1847, and in that to the Bishop of Breslau, "Dolore haud mediocri," April 30, 1860.

III.—INDIFFERENTISM, TOLERATION.

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he shall believe true, guided by the light of reason.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851; Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

16. Men who have embraced any religion may find and obtain eternal salvation.

(Encyclical, '"Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Ubi primum," December 17, 1847; Encyclical, "Singulari quidem," March 17, 1856.)

17. At least the eternal salvation may be hoped for of all who have never been in the true church of Christ.

(Allocution, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1865; Encyclical, "Quanto conficiamur mœrore," August 17, 1863.)

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true religion in which it is possible to be equally pleasing to God, as in the Catholic church.

(Encyclical, "Nescitis et vobiscum," December 8, 1849.)

IV.—SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM, CLANDESTINE SOCIETIES, BIBLICAL SOCIETIES, CLERICO-LIBERAL SOCIETIES.

Pests of this description have been frequently rebuked in the severest terms in the Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Quibus, quantisque," August 20, 1849; Encyclical, "Nescitis et vobiscum," December 8, 1849; Allocution, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1854; Encyclical, "Quanto conficiamur mœrore," August 10, 1863.

V.-ERRORS RESPECTING THE CHURCH AND HER RIGHTS.

19. The church is not a true and perfect entirely free association; she does not rest upon the peculiar and perpetual rights conferred upon her by her divine founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights and limits within which the church may exercise authority.

(Allocutions, "Singulari quidem," December 9, 1854; "Multis gravibus," December 17, 1860; "Maxima quidem," June, 1862.)

20. The ecclesiastical power must not exercise its authority without the toleration and assent of the civil government.

(Allocution, "Meminit unusquisque," September 30, 1851.)

21. The church has not the power of disputing dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic church is the only true religion.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

22. The obligation which binds Catholic masters and writers does not apply to matters proposed for universal belief as articles of faith by the infallible judgment of the church.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

23. The church has not the power of availing herself of force, or any direct or indirect temporal power.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

24. The Roman pontiffs and œcumenical councils have exceeded the limits of their power, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even committed errors in defining matter relating to dogma and morals.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

25. In addition to the authority inherent in the episcopate, further temporal power is granted to it by the civil power, either expressly or tacitly, but on that account also revocable by the civil power whenever it pleases.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

26. The church has not the natural and legitimate right of acquisition and possession.

("Nunquam," December 18, 1856; Encyclical, "Incredibili," September 17, 1862.)

27. The ministers of the church and the Roman pontiff ought to be absolutely excluded from all charge and dominion over temporal affairs.

(Allocution, "Maximum quidem," June 9, 1862.)

28. Bishops have not the right of promulgating their apostolical letters without the sanction of the government.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

29. Spiritual graces granted by the Roman pontiff must be considered null unless they have been requested by the civil government.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

30. The immunity of the church and of ecclesiastical persons derives its origin from civil law.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

31. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction for temporal lawsuits, whether civil or criminal, of the clergy, should be abolished, even without the consent and against the desire of the Holy See.

(Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852; Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

32. The personal immunity exonerating the clergy from military law may be abrogated without violation either of natural right or of equity. This abrogation is called for by civil progress, especially in a society modelled upon principles of liberal government.

(Letter to Bishop Montisregal, "Singularis nobilisque," September 29, 1864.)

33. It does not appertain to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, by any right, and inherent to its essence, to direct doctrine in matters of theology.

(Letter to Archbishop Frising, "Tuas libenter," December 21, 1863.)

34. The doctrine of those who compare the sovereign pontiff to a free sovereign acting in the universal church is a doctrine which prevailed in the middle ages.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

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35. There is no obstacle to the sentence of a general council, or the act of all the nation transferring the pontifical sovereign from the bishopric and city of Rome to some other bishopric in another city.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

36. The definition of a national council does not admit of subsequent discussion, and the civil power can require that matters shall remain as they are.

(Apostolic Letter, "Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

37. National churches can be established without, and separated from, the Roman pontiff.

(Allocution, "Multis gravibus," December 17, 1860; "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861.)

38. Many Roman pontiffs have lent themselves to the division of the church in Eastern and Western churches.

(Apostolic Letter, " Ad Apostolicas," August 22, 1851.)

VI.—ERRORS OF CIVIL SOCIETY, AS MUCH IN THEMSELVES AS CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH.

39. The state of a republic, as being the origin and source of all rights, imposes itself by its rights, which is not circumscribed by any limit.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

40. The doctrine of the Catholic church is opposed to the laws and interests of society.

(Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846; Allocution, "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849.)

41. The civil government, even when exercised by a heretic sovereign, possesses an indirect and negative power over religious affairs.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

42. In a legal conflict between the two powers, civil law ought to prevail.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

43. The lay power has the authority to destroy, declare, and render null solemn conventions or concordats relating to the use of rights appertaining to ecclesiastical immunity, without the consent of the priesthood, and even against its will.

(Allocution, "In consistoriali," November 1, 1850; "Multis gravibusque," December 17, 1860.)

44. The civil authority may interfere in matters regarding religion, morality, and spiritual government, whence it has control over the instructions for the guidance of consciences issued, conformably with their mission, by the pastors of the church. Further, it possesses full power in the matter of administering the divine sacraments and the necessary arrangements for their reception.

("In consistoriali," November 1, 1858; Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

45. The entire direction of public schools in which the youth of Christian States are educated, save an exception in the case of Episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies, the taking of degrees, or the choice and approval of teachers.

(Allocution, "In consistoriali," Nov. 1, 1850; "Quibus luctuosissimis," September 5, 1861.)

46. Further, even in clerical seminaries the mode of study must be submitted to the civil authority.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

47. The most advantageous conditions of civil society require that popular schools open without distinction to all children of the people, and public establishments destined to teach young people letters and good discipline, and to impart to them education, should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority and interference, and should be fully subjected to the civil and political power for the teaching of masters and opinions common to the times.

(Letter to Archbishop of Friburg, "Quum none sine," July 14, 1864.)

48. This manner of instructing youth, which consists in separating it from the Catholic faith and from the power of the church, and in teaching it above all a knowledge of natural things and the objects of social life, may be perfectly approved by Catholics.

(Letter to Archbishop of Friburg, "Quum none sine," July 14, 1864.)

49. The civil power is entitled to prevent ministers of religion and the faithful from communicating freely and mutually with the Roman Pontiff.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

50. The lay authority possesses of itself the right of presenting bishops, and may require of them that they take possession of their diocese before having received canonical institution and the Apostolical letter of the Holy See.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

51. Further, the lay authority has the right of deposing bishops from their pastoral functions, and is not forced to obey the Roman Pontiff in matters affecting the filling of sees and the institution of bishops.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851; Allocution, "Acerbissimum.")

52. The government has a right to alter a period fixed by the church for the accomplishment of the religious duties of both sexes, and may enjoin upon all religious establishments to admit nobody to take solemn vows without permission.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

53. Laws respecting the protection, rights, and functions of religious establishments must be abrogated; further, the civil government may lend its assistance to all who desire to quit a religious life, and break their vows. The government may also deprive religious establishments of the right of patronage to collegiate churches and simple benefices, and submit their goods to civil competence and administration.

(Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1862; "Probe memineritis, " January 22, 1885; and "Quum sæpe, " July 26, 1858.)

54. Kings and princes are not only free from the jurisdiction of the church, but are superior to the church even in litigious questions of jurisdiction

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

55. The church must be separated from the State and the State from the church.

(Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1862.)

VII.—ERRORS IN NATURAL AND CHRISTIAN MORALS.

56. Moral laws do not stand in need of the Divine sanction, and there is no necessity that human laws should be conformable to the laws of nature and receive their sanction from God.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

57. Knowledge of philosophical and moral things and civil laws may and must be free from Divine and ecclesiastical authority.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

58. No other forces are recognized than those which reside in matter, and which, contrary to all discipline and all decency of morals, are summed up in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means and in the satisfaction of every pleasure.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862. Encyclical, "Quanto conficiamur," August 10, 1863.)

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59. Right consists in material fact. All human duties are vain words, and all human facts have the force of right.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

60. Authority is nothing but the sum of numbers and material force.

(Allocution, "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.)

61. The happy injustice of a fact inflicts no injury upon the sanctity of right.

(Allocution, "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861.)

62. The principle of non-intervention must be proclaimed and observed.

(Allocution, "Novos et ante," September 27, 1860.)

63. It is allowable to withdraw from obedience to legitimate princes and to rise in insurrection against them.

(Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; Allocution, "Quisque vestrum," October 4, 1847; Encyclical., "Noscitis et nobiscum," December 8, 1849; Apostolic Letter, "Cum Catholica," March 25, 1860.)

64. The violation of a solemn oath, even every guilty and shameful action repugnant to the eternal law, is not only undeserving rebuke, but is even allowable and worthy of the highest praise when done for the love of country.

(Allocution, "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849.)

VIII.—ERRORS AS TO CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE.

65. It is not admissible, rationally, that Christ has raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1852.)

66. The sacrament of marriage is only an adjunct of the contract, from which it is separable, and the sacrament itself only consists in the nuptial benediction.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1852.)

67. By the law of nature the marriage tie is not indissoluble, and in many cases divorce, properly so called, may be pronounced by the civil authority.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1852; Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852.)

68. The church has not the power of pronouncing upon the impediments to marriage. This belongs to civil society, which can remove the existing hindrances.

(Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.)

69. It is only more recently that the church has begun to pronounce upon invalidating obstacles, availing herself, not of her own right, but of a right borrowed from the civil power.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

70. The canons of the Council of Trent, which invoke anathema against those who deny the church the right of pronouncing upon invalidating obstacles, are not dogmatic, and must be considered as emanating from borrowed power.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

71. The form of the said council, under the penalty of nullity, does not bind in cases where the civil law has appointed another form, and desires that this new form is to be used in marriage.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

72. Boniface VIII. is the first who declared that the vow of chastity pronounced at ordination annuls nuptials.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.)

73. A civil contract may very well, among Christians, take the place of true marriage, and it is false, either that the marriage contract between Christians must always be a sacrament, or that the contract is null if the sacrament does not exist.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851.; Letter to King of Sardinia, September 9, 1852; Allocutions, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852; "Multis gravibusque," December 17, 1860.)

74. Matrimonial or nuptial causes belong by their nature to civil jurisdiction.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1851; Allocution, " Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852.)

N. B.—Two other errors are still current upon the abolition of the celibacy of priests and the preference due to the state of marriage over that of virginity. These have been refuted—the first in Encyclical, "Qui pluribus," November 9, 1846; the second in Apostolic Letter, "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.

IX.—ERRORS REGARDING THE CIVIL POWER OF THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF.

75. The children of the Christian and Catholic Church are not agreed upon the compatibility of the temporal with the spiritual power.

(Apostolic Letter, August 22, 1852.)

76. The cessation of the temporal power, upon which the Apostolic See is based, would contribute to the happiness and liberty of the church.

(Allocution, "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849.)

N. B.—Besides these errors explicitly pointed out, still more, and those numerous, are rebuked by the certain doctrine which all Catholics are bound to respect touching the civil government of the Sovereign Pontiff. These doctrines are abundantly explained in Allocutions, "Quantis quantumque," April 20, 1859, and "Si semper antea," May 20, 1850; Apostolic Letter, "Quum Catholica Ecclesia," March 26, 1860; Allocutions, "Novos" September 28 1860; "Jamdudum" March 18, 1861; and "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.

X.—ERRORS REFERRING TO MODERN LIBERALISM.

77. In the present day it is no longer necessary that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other modes of worship.

(Allocution, "Nemo vestrum," July 26, 1855.)

78. Whence it has been wisely provided by law, in some countries called Catholic, that emigrants shall enjoy the free exercise of their own worship.

(Allocution, "Acerbissimum," September 27, 1852.)

79. But it is false that the civil liberty of every mode of worship and the full power given to all of overtly and publicly displaying their opinions and their thoughts conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people and to the propagation of the evil of indifference.

(Allocution, "Nunquam fore," December 15, 1856.)

80. The Roman pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to and agree with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.

(Allocution, "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861.)

----------Syllabus: End--------

PAPACY: A. D. 1869-1870. The Œcumenical Council of the Vatican. Adoption and Promulgation of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility.

"More than 300 years after the close of the Council of Trent, Pope Pius IX., … resolved to convoke a new œcumenical Council. … He first intimated his intention, June 26, 1867, in an Allocution to 500 Bishops who were assembled at the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter in Rome. … The call was issued by an Encyclical, commencing 'Æterni Patris Unigenitus Filius,' in the 23rd year of his Pontificate, on the feast of St. Peter and Paul, June 29, 1868. It created at once a universal commotion in the Christian world, and called forth a multitude of books and pamphlets even before the Council convened. … {2474} It was even hoped that the Council might become a general feast of reconciliation of divided Christendom; and hence the Greek schismatics, and the Protestant heretics and other non-Catholics, were invited by two special letters of the Pope (September 8, and September 13, 1868) to return on this auspicious occasion to 'the only sheepfold of Christ.' … But the Eastern Patriarchs spurned the invitation. … The Protestant communions either ignored or respectfully declined it. Thus the Vatican Council, like that of Trent, turned out to be simply a general Roman Council, and apparently put the prospect of a reunion of Christendom farther off than ever before. While these sanguine expectations of Pius IX., were doomed to disappointment, the chief object of the Council was attained in spite of the strong opposition of the minority of liberal Catholics. This object … was nothing less than the proclamation of the personal Infallibility of the Pope, as a binding article of the Roman Catholic faith for all time to come. Herein lies the whole importance of the Council; all the rest dwindles into insignificance, and could never have justified its convocation. After extensive and careful preparations, the first (and perhaps the last) Vatican Council was solemnly opened amid the sound of innumerable bells and the cannon of St. Angelo, but under frowning skies and a pouring rain, on the festival of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, December 8, 1869, in the Basilica of the Vatican. It reached its height at the fourth public session, July 18, 1870, when the decree of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed. After this it dragged on a sickly existence till October 20, 1870, when it was adjourned till November 11, 1870, but indefinitely postponed on account of the extraordinary change in the political situation of Europe. For on the second of September the French Empire, which had been the main support of the temporal power of the Pope, collapsed with the surrender of Napoleon III., at the old Huguenot stronghold of Sedan, to the Protestant King William of Prussia, and on the 20th of September the Italian troops, in the name of King Victor Emmanuel, took possession of Rome, as the future capital of United Italy. Whether the Council will ever be convened again to complete its vast labors, like the twice interrupted Council of Trent, remains to be seen. But, in proclaiming the personal Infallibility of the Pope, it made all future œcumenical Councils unnecessary for the definition of dogmas and the regulation of discipline. … The acts of the Vatican Council, as far as they go, are irrevocable. The attendance was larger than at any of its eighteen predecessors. … The whole number of prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, who are entitled to a seat in an œcumenical Council, is 1,037. Of these there were present at the opening of the Council 719, viz., 49 Cardinals, 9 Patriarchs, 4 Primates, 121 Archbishops, 479 Bishops, 57 Abbots and Generals of monastic orders. This number afterwards increased to 764, viz., 49 Cardinals, 10 Patriarchs, 4 Primates, 105 diocesan Archbishops, 22 Archbishops in partibus infidelium, 424 diocesan Bishops, 98 Bishops in partibus, and 52 Abbots, and Generals of monastic orders. Distributed according to continents, 541 of these belonged to Europe, 83 to Asia, 14 to Africa, 113 to America, 13 to Oceanica. At the proclamation of the decree of Papal Infallibility, July 18, 1870, the number was reduced to 535, and afterwards it dwindled down to 200 or 180. Among the many nations represented, the Italians had a vast majority of 276, of whom 143 belonged to the former Papal States alone. France with a much larger Catholic population, had only 84, Austria and Hungary 48, Spain 41, Great Britain 35, Germany 19, the United States 48, Mexico 10, Switzerland 8, Belgium 6, Holland 4, Portugal 2, Russia 1. The disproportion between the representatives of the different nations and the number of their constituents was overwhelmingly in favor of the Papal influence."

_P. Schaff, History of the Vatican Council (appendix to Gladstone's 'Vatican Decrees' American edition)._

The vote taken in the Council on the affirmation of the dogma "showed 400 'placet,' 88 'non placet,' and 60 'placet juxta modum.' Fifty bishops absented themselves from the congregation, preferring that mode of intimating their dissent. … After the votes the Archbishop of Paris proposed that the dissentients should leave Rome in a body, so as not to be present at the public services of the 18th, when the dogma was formally to be promulgated. Cardinal Rauscher, on the other hand, advised that they should all attend, and have the courage to vote 'non placet' in the presence of the Pope. This bold counsel, however, was rejected. … The recalcitrant bishops stayed away to the number of 110. The Pope's partisans mustered 533. When the dogmatic constitution 'De Ecclesia Christi' was put in its entirety to the vote, two prelates alone exclaimed 'non placet.' These were Riccio, Bishop of Casazzo, and Fitzgerald, Bishop of Peticola, or Little Rock, in the United States. A violent thunderstorm burst over St. Peter's at the commencement of the proceedings, and lasted till the close. The Pope proclaimed himself infallible amidst its tumult. … The Bishops in opposition, after renewing their negative vote in writing, quitted Rome almost to a man. … Several of the German bishops who had taken part in the opposition thought that at this juncture it behoved them, for the peace of the Church, and the respect due to the Dogma once declared, to give way at the end of August. They assembled again at Fulda, and pronounced the acceptance of the decree. … Seventeen names were appended to the declaration. Among them was not that of Hefele [Bishop of Rottenburg] who, it was soon made known, was determined under no circumstances to submit to the decision of the Council. His chapter and the theological faculty of Tübingen, declared that they would unanimously support him. A meeting of the Catholic professors of theology, held at Nuremberg, also agreed upon a decided protest against the absolute power and personal infallibility of the Pope. The German opposition, evidently, was far from being quelled. And the Austrian opposition, led by Schwarzenberg, Rauscher and Strossmayer, remained unbroken. By the end of August the members of the Council remaining at Rome were reduced to 80. They continued, however, to sit on through that month and the month of September, discussing various 'Schemes' relative to the internal affairs of the Church."

Annual Register, 1870, part 1, foreign History, chapter 5.

{2475} But on the 20th of October, after the Italian troops had taken possession of Rome, the Pope, by a Bull, suspended the sittings of the Œcumenical Council. Most of the German bishops who had opposed the dogma of infallibility surrendered to it in the end; but Dr. Döllinger, the Bavarian theologian, held his ground. "He had now become the acknowledged leader of all those who, within the pale of the Romish Church, were disaffected towards the Holy See; but he was to pay for this position of eminence. The Old Catholic movement soon drew upon itself the hostility of the ecclesiastical authorities. On the 19th of April 1871 Dr. Döllinger was formally excommunicated by the Archbishop of Munich, on account of his refusal to retract his opposition to the dogma of infallibility. … A paper war of great magnitude followed the excommunication. Most of the doctor's colleagues in his own divinity school, together with not a few canons of his cathedral, a vast number of the Bavarian lower clergy, and nearly all the laity, testified their agreement with him. The young King of Bavaria, moreover, lent the support of his personal sympathies to Dr. Döllinger's movement. … A Congress of Old Catholics was held at Munich in September, when an Anti-Infallibility League was formed; and the cause soon afterwards experienced a triumph in the election of Dr. Döllinger to the Rectorship of the University of Munich by a majority of fifty-four votes against six. At Cologne in the following year an Old Catholic Congress assembled, and delegates attended from various foreign States. … Dr. Döllinger … was always glad to give the Old Catholic body the benefit of his advice, and he presided over the Congress, mainly of Old Catholics, which was held at Bonn in 1874 to promote the reunion of Christendom; but we believe he never formally joined the Communion, and, at the outset, at any rate, he strongly opposed its constitution as a distinct Church. From the day of his excommunication by the Archbishop of Munich he abstained from performing any ecclesiastical function. He always continued a strict observer of the disciplinary rules and commandments of the Roman Catholic Church. … The Old Catholic movement did not generally make that headway upon the Continent which its sanguine promoters had hoped speedily to witness, though it was helped in Germany by the passing of a Bill for transferring ecclesiastical property to a committee of the ratepayers and communicants in each parish of the empire. When the third synod of the Old Catholics was held at Bonn in June 1876 it was stated by Dr. van Schulte that there were then 35 communities in Prussia, 44 in Baden, 5 in Hesse, 2 in Birkenfeld, 31 in Bavaria, and 1 in Würtemberg. The whole number of persons belonging to the body of Old Catholics was—in Prussia, 17,203; Bavaria, 10,110; Hesse, 1,042; Oldenburg, 249; and Würtemberg, 223. The number of Old Catholic priests in Germany was sixty. Subsequently some advance was recorded over these numbers."

Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times, volume 4, pages 213-216.

ALSO IN: _Quirinus (Dr. J. I. von Döllinger), Letters from Rome on the Council._

_Janus (Dr. J. I. von Döllinger), The Pope and the Council._

_J. I. von Döllinger, Declarations and Letters on the Vatican Decrees._

_H. E. Manning, The Vatican Council._

_Pomponio Leto (Marchese F. Vitelleschi), The Vatican Council._

_E. de Pressense, Rome and Italy at the opening of the Œcumenical Council._

_W. E. Gladstone, The Vatican Decrees._

The following is a translation of the text of the Constitution "Pastor æternus" in which the Dogma of Infallibility was subsequently promulgated by the Pope:

"Pius Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, with the approval of the Sacred Council, for an everlasting remembrance. The eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls, in order to continue for all time the life-giving work of His Redemption, determined to build up the Holy Church, wherein, as in the House of the living God, all faithful men might be united in the bond of one faith and one charity. Wherefore, before he entered into His glory, He prayed unto the Father, not for the Apostles only, but for those also who through their preaching should come to believe in Him, that all might be one even as He the Son and the Father are one. As then the Apostles whom He had chosen to Himself from the world were sent by Him, not otherwise than He Himself had been sent by the Father; so did He will that there should ever be pastors and teachers in His Church to the end of the world. And in order that the Episcopate also might be one and undivided, and that by means of a closely united priesthood the body of the faithful might be kept secure in the oneness of faith and communion, He set Blessed Peter over the rest of the Apostles, and fixed in him the abiding principle of this twofold unity, and its visible foundation, in the strength of which the everlasting temple should arise, and the Church in the firmness of that faith should lift her majestic front to Heaven. And seeing that the gates of hell with daily increase of hatred are gathering their strength on every side to upheave the foundation laid by God's own hand, and so, if that might be, to overthrow the Church; We, therefore, for the preservation, safe–keeping, and increase of the Catholic flock, with the approval of the Sacred Council, do judge it to be necessary to propose to the belief and acceptance of all the faithful, in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal Church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred Apostolic Primacy, in which is found the strength and sureness of the entire Church, and at the same time to inhibit and condemn the contrary errors, so hurtful to the flock of Christ.

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